Guy Kay - Sailing to Sarantium

He was halfway along another narrowing, twisty lane, heading towards the noise of the waterfront, where the masts of ships were leaning in the crisp breeze, when he received an idea, along with a memory from Carullus's army camp.

He would describe it that way, afterwards, to himself and to the others. Receiving the thought. As if it had been handed to him from without, startling in its suddenness. He would attribute it to the god, and keep to himself a recollection of a grove in the Aldwood.

He asked directions of two apprentices, endured their smirks at his accent, and duly turned towards the landward walls. It was a long walk through a large city, but the boys had been honest with him and not mischievous, and in due course Vargos saw the sign of The Courier's Rest. It made sense that it was near the triple walls: the Imperial riders came in that way.

He'd heard about this inn for years. Had been invited by various couriers to come by if ever he was in the City, to share a flask or three with them. When he'd been younger, he'd understood that a drink with certain of the riders would likely be followed by a trip upstairs for some privacy, which never did hold any appeal for him. As he grew older the invitations lost that nuance and suggested only that he was a useful and easygoing companion to those enduring the steady hardship of the road.

He paused on the threshold before going in, his eyes slowly adjusting to the closed shutters and the loss of light. The first part of his new thought hadn't been especially complicated: after the experiences of the morning it was obvious he had a better chance of learning something from someone who knew him than by continuing to ask questions of sullen strangers near the harbour. Vargos had to admit that he wouldn't have answered any such questions himself. Not from the Urban Prefect's men, not from an inquisitive Inici new to the City.

The deeper idea-the thing given to him on the street-was that he was now looking for someone in particular, and thought he might find him here, or receive word of him.

The Courier's Rest was a good-sized inn, but it wasn't crowded at this hour. Some men were having their midday meal late, scattered among the tables, singly and in pairs. The man behind the stone counter looked up at Vargos and nodded politely. This wasn't a caupona; he was nowhere near the harbour. Civility might be cautiously assumed here.

"Fuck that barbarian up the backside," said someone in the shadows. "What's he think he's doing in here?"

Vargos shivered then, unable to stop himself. Fear, undeniably, but something else as well. He felt in that moment as if the half-world had brushed close to him, forbidden magic, a primitive darkness in the midst of the City, in the crisp, clear day. He would have to pray again, he thought, when this was over.

He knew the voice, remembered it.

"Buying a drink or a meal if he likes, you drunken shit. What are you doing here someone might ask?" The man serving drinks and food glared across the counter top at the shadowed figure.

"What am I doing here? This been my inn ever since I joined the Post!"

"And now you aren't in the Post. Notice I haven't booted you out? I've more than half a mind to. So watch your fucking tongue, Tilliticus."

Vargos had never claimed his thoughts proceeded at any speed. He needed to… work things through. Even after he heard the known voice and then the confirming name, he walked to the counter, ordered a cup of wine, watered it, paid for it, took his first sip, before anything coalesced properly in his mind, the recognized voice merging with the summoned recollection from the army camp. He turned. Offered another silent prayer of thanks, before he spoke.

He was quite sure of himself now, as it happened.

"Pronobius Tilliticus?" he said quietly.

"Fuck you, yesh," said the shadowy figure at the corner table.

Some men turned to glance at the other man, distaste in their expressions.

"I remember you," said Vargos. "From Sauradia. You're an Imperial Courier. I used to work the road there."

The other man laughed, too loudly. He was clearly not sober. "You "n me both, then. I used to work the road, too. On a horse, on a woman. Fading on the road." He laughed again.

Vargos nodded. He could see more clearly now in the muted light. Tilliticus was alone at his table, two flasks in front of him, no food. "You aren't a courier any more?"

He pretty much knew the answer to this already, with a few other things. Holy Jad had sent him here. Or, he hoped it was Jad.

"Dishmished," said Tilliticus. "Five days ago. Last pay, no notice. Dishmished. Like that. Want a drink, barbarian?"

"I have one," Vargos said. He felt something cold in himself now: anger, but a different sort than he was accustomed to. "Why were you dismissed?" He needed to be sure.

"Late with a post, though it's none of anyone's fucking business."

"Everyone fucking knows," another man said grimly. "You might mention fraud at the hospice, throwing away posted letters, and spreading disease while you're at it."

"Bugger you," said Pronobius Tilliticus. "As if you never slept with a poxed whore? None of that would've mattered if the Rhodian catamite…" He fell silent.

"If the Rhodian hadn't what?" Vargos said quiedy.

And now he was afraid, because it truly was very difficult to understand why the god might have helped him in this way, and try as he might not to do so he kept thinking and thinking now of the Aldwood and the zubir and that leather and metal bird Crispin had carried in around his neck and left behind.

The man at the table in the corner made no reply. It didn't matter. Vargos pushed himself off from the bar and went back out the door. He looked around, squinting in the sunlight, and saw one of the Urban Prefect's men at the end of the street in his brown and black uniform. He went over to him and reported that the person who had hired the soldiers who'd killed three men last night could be found at the table immediately to the right of the door in The Courier's Rest. Vargos identified himself and told the man where he could be found if needed. He watched as the young officer walked into the tavern, and then he headed back through the streets towards the inn.

On the way there he stopped at another chapel-a larger one, with marble and some painted decoration, including the remains of a wall fresco behind the altar of Heladikos aloft, almost entirely rubbed out- and in the dimness and the quiet between services he prayed before the disk and the altar for guidance through and out of the half-world into which he seemed to have walked.

He would not pray to the zubir, whatever ancient power of his own people it represented, but within himself Vargos sensed a terrible awareness of it, immense and dark as the forests on the borders of his childhood.

Carullus was still in his room, evidendy sleeping off wounds and treatment, when Crispin came downstairs just past midday. He felt muzzy-headed and disoriented himself, and not only from the wine he'd had last night. In fact, the wine was the least of his afflictions. He tried to put his aching head around some of the things that had happened in the two palaces and the Sanctuary and in the street afterwards, and then to come to terms with who had been in his room-on his bed-when he'd stumbled back at dawn. The conjured image of Styliane Daleina, beautiful as an enamelled icon, only made him feel more unsettled.

He did what he'd always done at such times as this, back home. He went to the baths.

The innkeeper, eyeing Crispin's unshaven scowl with a knowing expression, was able to offer a suggestion. Crispin looked about for Vargos who was also-unaccountably-absent. He shrugged, ill-tempered and querulous, and went out alone, blinking and squinting, into the irritating brightness of the autumn day.