Marina Dyachenko - The Scar

“I beg you to continue,” said Egert ingratiatingly. “I find this extremely interesting. So this Order of Lash still exists?” The student glared eloquently at Toria and then raised his eyes to the ceiling. Egert was not blind; he had no problem reading in this action the student’s utmost contempt for his academic knowledge. However, to take notice of the behavior of this ratty, pitiful student was beneath his dignity.

Toria smiled in embarrassment. “I would be quite happy to talk to you about it, but we are very tired from the road, so I suppose it is time for us to go.” She stood up smoothly, leaving her glass of wine unfinished.

“Mistress Toria!” Egert jumped up with her. “Perhaps it may be that you will allow me to fulfill my duties as a host tomorrow? If you are really interested in the local sights of interest, I am considered an expert on them, the best in the entire city.”

Egert considered Kavarren’s sights of interest to consist mainly of taverns and the paddocks of the fighting boars, but the credulous Toria was taken in by his utterly unartful trap. “Is that so?”

The student groaned heavily.

Not paying him the slightest attention, Egert nodded energetically. “Without a doubt. Will you permit me to know your plans for tomorrow?”

“They have yet to be determined,” the youth answered morosely. Peering at him through narrowed eyes, Egert noted with amusement that students were capable of becoming angry.

“Mistress Toria”—Egert turned to the girl as if there had never been a student born into the world—“tomorrow I ask that you plan for a sightseeing tour, dinner at the finest establishment in Kavarren, and an evening excursion on a boat. The Kava is an extremely picturesque little river, did you notice?”

She somehow seemed to deflate. Her eyes darkened and now they seemed like twin pits beneath a troubled sky.

Egert smiled as charmingly, as sincerely, and as vulnerably as he could. “I didn’t understand half your tale. I would truly like to ask you a few questions about this, um, gentleman, who gave the world the Order of Lash. And to show my gratitude for the tale, I, your humble servant, will arrange everything for your pleasure. Everything that you require will be laid at your feet. Until tomorrow!”

He bowed and left; the tall, middle-aged guest followed his exit with a weary gaze.

The custodian of the Town Hall delayed and shook his head for a long time: the book depositories were in a useless state; a large portion of the books had been destroyed in a fire, which had occurred about thirty years ago. He worried that a beam might very well fall on the heads of the young people. The researchers, however, were adamant, and in the end they were allowed access to the treasures they wished to see.

Of those treasures, however, there remained only pitiful crumbs: those very few that the fire had spared had become fat with an entire generation of rats. Raking through the rubbish and litter, the researchers kept exploding into exclamations of despair. Egert, appearing in the book depository with an enormous bouquet of roses, found the young couple just at the moment when, amidst the general ruin, they finally found a corner that had survived more or less intact.

They completely ignored Egert’s arrival. The student was hanging somewhere under the ceiling, swaying on a broken-down stepladder; Toria was craning her neck to watch him, and in her pose Egert saw something akin to worship. Tufts of spiderwebs were tangled in her hair, but her eyes were shining and her soft lips were half-open with delight as she listened to the student, who spoke without ceasing.

He was bursting with words like a fountain bursts with water. Reading out incomprehensible passages from a book, he interpreted them for Toria in the same breath. Long, outlandish names rolled off his tongue while he floridly reasoned out runic texts, and from time to time he switched over into some language that Egert did not know. The girl took a heavy, dusty volume from his hand, and her tender fingers caressed its binding so reverently that Egert experienced a moment of irrational jealousy toward the book.

He stood there for nearly half an hour without being honored by so much as a single glance. Annoyed, he placed the bouquet in the nearest corner and left. His wounded pride pricked unpleasantly at his soul.

The young guests returned to the inn just in time for supper, but once that was over Toria did not leave her room, nor did she answer the courteous note Egert sent her.

On the following day, the custodian of the Town Hall had an appointment with the beneficent Lord Soll, and so the young researchers, who turned up for their books, received a bewildering refusal: it was entirely impossible today; the stairs were under repairs; the keys were under guard. The student and Toria, astonished, were forced to return to the inn. Egert sat in the dining room the entire day, but still Toria did not descend the stairs.

It rained all night long. The rain drenched the student, who departed for the Town Hall in the morning and again returned defeated. It was well after dinner when the clouds finally dispersed and the sun began to peek down upon the drenched city; the young couple, having been so inactive for the past two days, decided to go out for a walk.

As if they were afraid to walk very far away from the inn, the student and his fiancée turned back and forth several times along the drying street, completely unaware of how many attentive eyes kept watch over them through the windows of the Faithful Shield. One noted that the student watched over his fiancée far better than the merchant Vapa watched over his wife; another noted that the wife of the merchant could not hold a candle to the visiting beauty; yet another began to laugh.

Then Karver appeared in the path of the two promenaders.

The spectators, glued to the windows of the Faithful Shield, watched as Karver, as if by chance, grazed the student’s shoulder and then bowed apologetically, almost to the ground; the student bowed as well, and Karver joyfully started a conversation with him, and after asking most humbly for Toria’s permission, led the young man to the opposite side of the street. Waving his arms about, he had herded the student still farther along the street, almost to the corner, when Egert emerged from the doors of the tavern.

Toria answered Egert’s formal greeting with a polite yet reserved nod. She did not seem bewildered or fearful; her eyes, as detached as before, looked at Egert attentively, fearlessly, and with patient inquisitiveness.

“Well, you’re a cunning one, aren’t you,” said Egert with rough reproach. “You made a promise, you did. I waited for the continuation of your tale, and you never came down even once!”

She sighed. “Tell the truth. You’re not the least bit interested in that.”

“Me?” erupted Egert.

Toria looked over her shoulder, searching for her fiancé; catching that tense glance, Egert scowled and began speaking in a low voice.

“What is the point of your seclusion? Are you really preparing yourself for the role of the humble wife, and for such a tyrannical little husband? What’s so terrible about a little conversation, or perhaps a stroll? What’s wrong with having dinner together, or taking a boat ride? But perhaps I’ve offended you somehow. Or maybe you don’t belong to yourself?”

She turned away from him; Egert feasted his eyes on her profile.

“You are so persistent,” she said reprovingly.

“And what would you have me do?” Egert marveled sincerely. “The most beautiful woman in the world is visiting my town.”

“Thank you. You have peculiar notions of hospitality. But I must leave you.” Toria took a step in the direction where the garrulous Karver had ensnared the student.