Guy Kay - Sailing to Sarantium

It was, she added, eyeing him in the firelight of the common room, difficult to test this, of course. She had been willing, however, to make the trip north out of too-boring Rhodias amid the colours of autumn to the well-known hospice and healing waters near Mylasia. One sometimes met-only sometimes, of course-the most interesting people when one travelled.

Did not Martinian find this to be so?

"Check for bedbugs."

"I know that, you officious lump of metal. "He had dined a second time tonight with the lady; they had had a third flask of wine this time. Crispin was aware of the effect of it on himself.

"And talk to me in your head, unless you want people to assume you are mad."

Crispin had been having difficulty with this. It was good advice. So, as it happened, was the first suggestion. Crispin held a candle over the sheets, with the blanket pulled back and managed to squash a dozen of the evil little creatures with his other hand.

"And they call this an Imperial Posting Inn. Hah!"

Linon, Crispin had learned quite early in their journeying together, was not short of opinions or shy with regard to their expression. He could still bring himself up short in a quiet moment with the realization that he was holding extended conversations in his mind with a tempera- mental sparrow-like bird made of faded brown leather and tin, with eyes fashioned from blue glass, and an incongruously patrician Rhodian voice both in his head and when speaking aloud.

He had entered a different world.

He had never really stopped to consider his attitude to what men called the half-world: that space where cheiromancers and alchemists and wise-women and astrologers claimed to be able to walk. He knew-everyone knew-that Jad's mortal children lived in a world that they shared, dangerously, with spirits and daemons that might be indifferent to them, or malevolent, or sometimes even benign, but he had never been one of those who let his every waking moment be suffused with that awareness. He spoke his prayers at dawn, and at sunset when he remembered, though he seldom bothered to attend at a sanctuary. He lit candles on the holy days when he was near a chapel. He paid all due respect to clerics-when the respect was deserved. He believed, some of the time, that when he died his soul would be judged by Jad of the Sun and his fate in the afterlife would be determined by that judgement.

The rest of the time, of late, very privately, he remembered the unholy ugliness of the two plague summers and was deeply, even angrily unsure of such spiritual things. He would have said, if asked a few days ago, that all alchemists were frauds and that a bird such as Linon was a deception to gull rustic fools.

That, in turn, meant denying his own memories of the apple orchard, but it had been easy enough to explain away childhood terrors as trickery, an actor's voice projection. Hadn't they all spoken with the same voice?

They had, but it wasn't a deception after all.

He had Zoticus's crafted bird with him as a companion and-in principle, at least-a guardian for his journey. It sometimes seemed to him that this irascible, ludicrously touchy creature-or creation-had been with him forever.

"I certainly didn't end up with a mild spirit, did I?" he remembered saying to Zoticus as he took his leave from the farmhouse that day.

"None of them are," the alchemist had murmured, a little ruefully. "A constant regret, I assure you. Just remember the command for silence and use it when you must." He'd paused, then added wryly, "You aren't particularly mild yourself. It may be a match."

Crispin had said nothing to that.

He had already used the command several times. In a way it was hardly worth it… Linon was almost intolerably waspish after being released from darkness and silence.

"Another wager" the bird said now, inwardly, "leave the door unlocked and you won't sleep alone tonight."

"Don't be ridiculous!" Crispin snapped aloud. Then, recollecting himself, added silently, "This is a crowded Imperial Inn, she's a Rhodian aristocrat. And," he added peevishly, "you have nothing to wager in any case, you lump of stuff."

"A figure of speech, imbecile. Just leave the door unbolted. You'll see. I'll watch for thieves."

This, of course, was one of the benefits of having the bird, Crispin had already learned. Sleep was meaningless to Zoticus's creation, and as long as he hadn't silenced Linon he could be alerted to anything untoward approaching while he slept. He was irked, though, and the more so because a fabricated bird had roused his temper.

"Why would you possibly assume you have the least understanding of a woman like that? Listen to me: she plays little games during the day or over dinner out of sheer boredom. Only a fool would regard them as more." He wasn't sure why he was so irritated about this, but he was.

"You really don't know anything, do you?" Linon replied. Crispin couldn't sort out the tone this time. "You think boredom stops with the meal? A stable boy understands women better than you. Just keep playing with your little glass chips, imbecile, and leave these judgements to me!"

Crispin spoke the silencing command with some satisfaction, blew out his candle and went to bed, resigned to being night food for the predatory insects he'd missed. It would be much worse, he knew, at the common hostel the others in the party had been forced to continue on towards for the night. An extremely small consolation. He didn't like travelling.

He tossed, turned, scratched where he imagined things biting him, then felt something doing so and swore. After a few moments, surprised at his own irresolution, he got up again, walked quickly across the cold floor, land slid home the bolt on the door. Then he crawled back into the bed. He had not made love to a woman since Ilandra died. He was still awake some time later, watching the shape of the waning blue moon slide across the window, when he heard the handle tried, then a very soft tapping at the door.

He didn't move, or speak. The tapping came again, twice more-light, teasing. Then it stopped, and there was silence again in the autumn night. Remembering many things, Crispin watched the moon leave the window, trailing stars, and finally fell asleep.

He woke to morning noises in the yard below. In the moment he opened his eyes, surfacing from some lost dream, he had a swift, sure realization about Zoticus's bird, and some wonder that it had taken him so long.

He was not greatly surprised to discover, when he went downstairs for watered ale and a morning meal, that the Lady Massina Baladia of Rho-dias, the Senator's wife, and her mounted escorts and her servants had already left, at first daybreak.

There was a mild, unexpected regret here, but it had been almost intolerable to envisage his re-entry into this sphere of mortal life as a coupling with a Jaded Rhodian aristocrat playing bed games on a country night- not even knowing his true name. In another way, it might have been easier that way, but he wasn't.. detached enough for that.

On the road again in the chill early-morning breeze, he soon caught up with the merchants and the cleric who had waited for him at the inn up the road. Settling into the long day's striding, he remembered his realization upon first awakening. He drew a breath, released Linon from silence in the bag on the mule's back, and asked a question.

"How dazzlingly brilliant of you," the bird snapped icily. "She did come last night, didn't she? I was right, wasn't I?"

White clouds were overhead, swift before the north wind. The sky was a light, far blue. The sun, safe returned from its dark journey under the icy cold rim of the world, was rising directly in front of them, bright as a promise. Black crows dotted the stubble of the fields. A pale frost glinted on the brown grass beside the road. Crispin looked at it all in the early light, wondering how he'd achieve that rainbow brilliance of colour and gleaming with glass and stone. Had anyone ever done frost-tipped autumn grass on a dome?