K Parker - Memory

'Are you all right?' she said. 'You look awful.'

He shook his head. 'I'm sorry,' he replied. 'Only-this is where I live.'

'I just said so, didn't I?'

He stared; at the table, the chairs, the candle-stand. 'I remember this room,' he said. 'Do you realise what that means? I remembered-'

She shrugged. 'That's good, surely.'

(And no crows anywhere; not a dream. Not that; or this-unless the crows painted on the door counted, in which case all the years he'd spent here, with her, had been a dream too.) 'I remembered that time,' he said, 'when I came home and you'd found me that book-'

'Ah yes.' She laughed frostily. 'The one you liked so much you gave it away at once. What a thing to remember, after-'

'I remembered.' He felt weak in the legs, backed into a chair, and sat down awkwardly. 'Your brother,' he said suddenly, 'the man who found me in the woods. He really is your brother, isn't he?'

She smiled. 'Well done,' she said. 'Do you remember his name?'

'Turvo.' Poldarn frowned. 'He's got a crippled hand, I noticed it the first time I saw him. And Turvo-'

She nodded. 'You did that,' she said, 'in a year-end duel. You managed to end the bout without killing him, just crippling his right hand; because,' she added sourly, 'you loved me. We all thought you were wonderful, especially Turvo.'

'So that house he took me to, where I met you-'

'That's right,' she replied, smiling; then she went on, 'I couldn't believe you wouldn't figure it out, even if you had lost your memory. Did you really think someone could afford a house like that just from doing well in the dried-fish business?'

'Turvo-but I thought he'd died. Didn't somebody say-?'

She looked at him again. 'Wrong prince,' she said. 'You must be thinking of Prince Choizen. Name ring a bell?'

He felt as though his throat was being crushed from the inside. 'Choizen,' he said. 'Our son.'

'Killed,' she said. 'A month or so ago.' She closed her eyes. 'I'd sent him to find you. Silly, really,' she went on, 'because he hadn't set eyes on you for twelve years, not since Dad sent him away to school because he didn't want his grandson growing up under your influence, so how was he supposed to recognise you if he did find you? But no, I had to write to him, ask him-' She looked up. 'He found you,' she said. 'And of course, you weren't to blame.'

He stared at her. 'I don't understand,' he said.

She was looking over his shoulder, at someone who wasn't there. 'He wrote to me,' she went on, 'said he'd heard something interesting, about Muno Silsny and some unknown saviour; he had an idea, from something they'd found in Father Tutor's papers after he died, before Deymeson was destroyed-He was on his way to find you, but he never got there. Robbers, they said, somewhere between Falcata and that foundry place.' He glanced at her, but there was nothing to see. 'So,' she went on, 'now all I've got left is you.'

The young, loathsome nobleman he'd been forced to kill, on the road, that miserable day with Chiruwa, when everything had gone wrong. Small world. 'Me,' he said.

'That's right.' She was so calm it was frightening. 'Our son's dead, and that's that. I finally stopped crying last week, when Turvo wrote and said he'd found you at last, in the forest. You know, I was ashamed. I caught myself thinking, my baby's been murdered by some disgusting bandit, but Ciartan's coming home, so that's all right… I knew, of course: about you losing your memory, all the stuff about Xipho Dorunoxy. That was a horrible trick, don't you think? Typical Deymeson; and now she's got her baby and I've lost mine, but I've got you-' She allowed herself one terrible, dry sob. 'So I guess I've won, in the end. On points-isn't that what the monks say about a duel, when both the fighters die but one of them was carved up a little bit more than the other?' She reached out with her fingertips, violating his circle, touching the melted skin of his face. 'I've got what's left of you,' she said. 'Not your face, and not your memory, because they're both gone for ever, but I've got what's left, at the end. Is that winning, do you think? Winner takes all?'

'I suppose,' he said quietly.

She sighed, as if trying to clear all the air out of her body. 'The one thing I always needed to know,' she said, 'and I never dared ask; because there was always the tiny risk, the million-to-one chance, that you'd give me an honest answer, tell me the truth… Now I can ask, and it's all right, because you don't know the bloody answer: did you love me? Really? Or was it always Xipho?'

I killed our son, because I had to, with the axe I found in the ditch in the field where I killed the crows; and she wants to know if I loved her. 'Yes,' he said. 'I loved you very much. I had a dream about it.'

'A dream with crows in?'

'Yes.'

She closed her eyes, nodded. 'That's all right, then,' she said. 'There now, I've asked, and you've given me the answer I wanted to hear.' She opened her eyes and smiled at him; it was like staring down a deep well. 'Because I love you, Ciartan,' she said. 'I always have. I know you only married me because you wanted the connection with Dad, because you needed each other for business. I know what you thought of me-airhead, clothes horse, worthless little rich girl. Didn't matter. It hurt so much that you despised me, because-' She shook her head. 'Doesn't matter,' she said. 'You're here now, and that's the main thing. I rescued you, and I'm going to keep you safe, and you need me just to stay alive and I'm the only one who can protect you now.' His face must have betrayed what he'd been thinking, because she laughed grimly, and said, 'It wasn't easy, mind, rescuing you. It was as though you didn't want to be rescued. As soon as it was confirmed that it really was you at that foundry place, I sent Turvo's best men to fetch you, but that idiotic old man in charge of the garrison-he thought they'd come to take you away to be killed, you see, and so he gave them that horrible Gain Aciava instead. And when he got here and we realised what'd happened, he figured out that I knew where you were, and reported back to his master, Cleapho; and so now we're going to have a civil war, just because Brigadier Muno wanted to repay you for saving his nephew's life. Everything to do with you goes horribly wrong sooner or later, which makes loving you ruinously expensive, if you see what I mean. This,' she said, holding out her hand and showing him Muno Silsny's badge. 'When I heard that General Muno'd given this to you, I thought, now it'll be all right, he'll use it to come straight here, safely.' She frowned. 'You do know what this is, don't you? It's Dad's personal warrant, you could've gone anywhere with this. I gave it to Muno Silsny specially, just in case it was you he was looking for. But no, you have to go and give it away to some beggar in the street…' She paused, looked at him. 'How did you get it back, by the way?' she asked.

'I met her again,' Poldarn replied. 'The old mad woman.'

'Oh. How fortuitous. You always did have a habit of giving away expensive presents; like that stupid book, of course. When I think of the trouble I went to-'

Poldarn couldn't help grinning. 'But I got that back, too,' he said. 'Gain Aciava gave it to me, at the foundry.'

'Really?' She didn't sound all that interested. 'Well, they always did say you were lucky, Ciartan. If you got drunk and fell in the sewer you'd find a gold piece. After all, you gave me away when you turned against Dad, and here we are again.'

He looked up. 'Did I?'

'You don't-No, of course, how silly of me. Yes, you were going to, though you never actually got round to it; and then he was too smart for you. He's always been too smart for you, Ciartan, but there, I never did love you for your intelligence. Truth is, everybody's smarter than you are; Dad, Cleapho, the new man, Xipho, Father Tutor. Even Gain Aciava, and he's one notch below the little squirmy things you find in dead trees. Even-' She grinned coldly. 'Even silly little me. You always thought you were one step ahead, and all the time you were always one step behind, and someone else was leading you along like a pig to market. There, I've been meaning to tell you that for I don't know how long, but I never had the nerve to actually come out and say it. But you're mine now, so I can.' She looked into his eyes for a moment, then shrugged. 'The silly thing is,' she said, 'really, this is the crowning moment of my entire life, the one thing I've wanted ever since I was that silly young girl who loved you at first sight; I should be happy-' She shuddered. 'And this whole ghastly pantomime, with Turvo, pretending I was that bitch's sister, just because I had to know: had you really lost your memory or was it just another ridiculous game? If you were coming back, was it just because you thought you'd be able to patch things up with Dad and save your miserable neck; had you really loved the bitch all along? But that's all fine now, because when you said you wanted to kill Dad it sounded like you meant it; and of course, you'd know that Xipho Dorunoxy never had a sister. But the main thing is, you don't know; you can't remember if you ever really loved me, so that information is lost and gone for ever, and so there's ho danger at all that one day you'll look me in the eye and say, No, I never cared a damn about you, it was all just pretending and lies. So I'm safe, and I've won. Isn't that wonderful!'