"Ah." Myste stacked her emptied plates to the side with a sigh of satisfaction; Alberich pushed his beside them. "I don't mean you to begin nattering at me at this moment, Alberich. I just meant that when you feel like it, I'd be glad of your addition to the Chronicles. And I don't mind being a listener if all you want to do is talk. Think out loud, maybe. Or just talk to hear Karsite."
He smiled slightly. "Knowing your unending curiosity, I thank you for your patience."
"My curiosity has as much as it needs on a regular basis right now," Myste replied. "You know, before Elcarth took me on, I was never satisfied. I wanted to know, not so much what was going on, but why. That was the thing that drove me mad, sometimes. Why had this or that law been made, why were your people such persistent enemies, why—Well, there are always more questions than answers. Now I'm able to find out my whys, more often than not, and more to the point, I'm entitled and encouraged to do so." She smiled, and her lenses glittered. "Maybe that's why I was Chosen; I can't think of any other reason."
He laughed. "Is that why you were always such a thorn in my side, as a Trainee? That you could not be told to do a thing without wanting the reason for it?"
She shrugged. "I don't take orders well unless I know why the order is being given. And I'll be the first to admit to you that I'm very lucky and have been unusually favored in that way. Most people can't afford to indulge that particular luxury; they either follow their orders without question, or—well, there are unpleasant consequences for wanting answers." She rubbed her thumb absently against the little "clerk's callus" on the side of the second finger of her right hand, a callus created by hours of pressure from a pen.
He nodded, wondering suspiciously if she was hinting at his past.
"The more I'm in the courts, the more I realize that," she continued. "As a clerk, well, I knew why I was doing what I was doing. It was obvious. Pointless, perhaps, but obvious." She glanced up at him, sideways. "You know, you have to be a clerk, I think, before you realize just what a pother people make over nothing. And the sheer amount of ill-will that people seem to think must go down on paper, or die. Dear gods!"
"What, letters?" he asked.
"No. People mostly write their own vitriol in letters. We're a literate people, Alberich; that's mandated by the Crown. Just as Karsite children are required to go to the temple for religious instruction, ours are required to get instruction in reading, writing, and figuring. No, I meant legal documents, that's mostly what a clerk handles. At least, my sort of clerk. There are others who do things about money, but I've never had that kind of head for figures. I saw a lot of wills." She sighed. "A lot of wills. And depositions. And the documents involved in lawsuits. Well, since you've been acting as bodyguard to young Selenay, you've seen what happens when something gets as far as the courts!"
He nodded again. "But it is important to them."
"Some people have too much leisure, if that's what's important to them," she said sourly. "Wrangling over dead granny's best bedcover, as if the fate of the Kingdom depended on it, when all the while down there in the South—"
She couldn't finish; she just sat there, shaking her head.
He thought back about all of the things he had observed while Selenay sat, either in judgment as the principal judge or as an assistant when she was still a Trainee. "I do not understand it either," he said, then added, with a touch of humor, "but then, I never had so many possessions that things took on a great importance to me."
She burst out laughing at that. "Whereas I have too many, thieving magpie that I am! So I suppose I should understand them! Then again, most of my possessions are books, so I still don't understand why people would get into such a state over a few pence or a set of silver." She looked ever-so-slightly superior.
"And if it was dead granny's library that was in dispute?" he asked shrewdly, to puncture that superiority.
She saw it—and bravely took the blow. "There you have me. Dead in the black." She laughed. "Oh, look. The rain's starting to slacken up!"
He glanced out the window. She was right; the downpour had turned into something lighter, and the lightning had moved off into the far distance. "It could be just a lull," he warned, as she made as if to get up.
"Could be, but I'll take my chances. I need to get back up the hill; I'm tutoring a couple of Trainees." She did get up then, and he found himself wishing she would stay.
He stifled an impulse to catch hold of her hand to prevent her leaving, but she seemed to sense something, and turned back toward him.
"I meant that, about nattering at me, Alberich," she said. "You know, I don't put personal things in the Chronicles. Not unless they're reasons for something happening, and it would have to be a pretty important something. And Alberich?"
"Yes?" Something had passed—was passing—between them. Something he didn't recognize and didn't understand. She stared at him; he sensed her eyes behind those lenses, oddly intent.
"You might try talking to Geri as well. After all, that's what he's there for, isn't it?" She had an oddly wry smile on her face. "Well, all things considered, that's part of his job, I'd think—to be talked at."
And with that remarkable statement, she was gone.
He sat there for some time, in the half-dark, wondering why this conversation seemed to have—well—a feeling of importance about it.