“He needs another pair of hands just now,” Rosseth said. “We’ve three separate parties coming to market and likely to be with us for a week, maybe two. It will be more than Marinesha can handle alone, and I’ll be too busy myself to help her. If he can work, even a bit, I think I could talk to Karsh.”
Tikat said, “I can work.” He tried to stand up, and very nearly made it. “But only until Lukassa comes back, because then we will go home together.” Simple and clear as that.
Dardis came up to me then to grunt, “Run-through in five minutes,” and away out of range before I could get in amongst his ribs and tell him what I thought of that. Twenty years leading the company, playing the Wicked Lord Hassidanya at every crossroads between Grannach Harbor and the Durli Hills, and he’s still terrified of drying up in the last act, the way it happened that one time in Limsatty. Which means that we are condemned, if you please, to rehearse and rehearse that wretched old masque at every free moment, probably for the rest of our lives. Still, it did give me a decent excuse to stop sleeping with him—better Rosseth’s dreams, better horses breaking wind, than those lines in my ear in the middle of the night—and we’ve been much better friends ever since, I do believe. Odd, the way these matters work out.
Rosseth pulled the tunic over Tikat’s head and nodded me away, saying, “Go on, it’s all right—I’ll let him rest awhile, and then we’ll go and see Karsh. It’s all right.” When I looked back from the stable door, the boy was sitting up, trying again to stand and getting tangled up in those blessed legs, like a newborn marsh-goat that already knows it has to walk right now or die. In my own experience, there’s not a soul in the world, male or female, worth that kind of devotion—but there, as I told you, all I know is my lines, so there you are.
TIKAT
When I woke I asked about the Rabbit, and the stable boy said that he had already bitten two horses and one actor, so I went back to sleep.
The second time I woke alone to twilight and silence, except for the occasional stamp and whuffle below. The players, or whatever they were, had gone, and the boy, Rosseth, was whistling somewhere outside. I climbed down from the loft, going slowly, noticing in a far-off way that I was wearing a tunic too small for me, stiff with other peoples’ dried sweat. There was a dog, I remember—my head seemed to become huge as a cathedral, and then slowly small again, every time he barked. I saw the Rabbit in a stall near the door; he whinnied at me, but it was such a long way, and I could not reach him. I leaned against the door and said, “Good Rabbit. Good Rabbit.”
From the stable door, the inn bulked larger than any building I had ever seen. Two chimneys, lights in every window, laughter and cooking smoke blowing down the night breeze that cooled my face and made my legs feel a little stronger. I started toward the inn because I thought Lukassa might be there.
Rosseth found me under a tree next to the hog pen. I had been sick, I think, but I had not fainted again—I knew as well who and where I was as I understood that it would be better for me to stay on all fours for a little while longer. He crouched beside me, saying, “Tikat. I’ve been past this place twice, looking for you. Why didn’t you call out?”
When I did not answer, he put his hands under me and began trying to lift me to my feet. I pushed him away, harder than I meant to, perhaps, and he sat back on his heels and stared at me without speaking for a long time. He was a year or two younger than I, and built very much like the Rabbit: short-legged and thick through the chest, with shaggy red-gold hair, a wide mouth, and quick dark eyes. A kind, curious, irritating face, I thought it then. I said, “I don’t need any help.”
Rosseth grinned at me, unoffended, unmalicious. “Then you and Karsh should get along wonderfully well. He doesn’t give it. Come,” and he held out his hand.
“I don’t need your Karsh,” I said. “I need Lukassa and my horse, nothing more.” I got to my knees then, and we faced each other like that, while the hogs grunted in the deepening dark, muzzles pushing between the raw fence posts, trying to reach the place where I had vomited.
“Lukassa has not returned,” Rosseth answered, “nor have her friends. As for what you need and don’t need, believe me, the only thing that matters right now is Karsh’s permission to sleep here and eat here while you recover. Come on, Tikat.” Suddenly he looked his age, and very anxious with it.
I stood up without his aid, but my legs buckled under me at the third step. Rosseth caught me, but I was growing very tired of being picked up and patted and set down somewhere else, like a baby, and I shook him away again. “I can crawl,” I said. “I have crawled before.”
Rosseth blew out his breath, exactly the way the Rabbit does when he is displeased with me. Then he took hold of me and dragged me upright once more, would I or would I not. Stronger than they looked, those small, broken-nailed hands. He said in my ear, “I am not doing this for you, but for Lukassa. You are her friend, so I must help you until she comes back. After that, you can put your bloody pride where it belongs. Come on. You can either lean on me or I’ll just keep picking you up. Come on.” I felt him chuckle, setting his shoulder under mine. “You and Karsh,” he said. “I can hardly wait.”
The inn was somehow smaller within than it had seemed from outside. We entered through the kitchen—a woman came pushing past us in the greasy smoke, and then a man, but I never really saw them, my eyes were watering so. Someone was chopping meat so furiously that the racket drowned out whatever he was screaming. Rosseth led me like a blind man into the dining hall, where the smoke thinned out enough for me to see a good dozen or more people seated at their dinners. The chairs and tables were rough, splintery work, legs all uneven—I remember that especially, remember thinking, Oh, we do much better than that back home. The hall felt cold to me after the kitchen, in spite of the flames booming in the fireplace. It had a low ceiling of soot-blackened half-logs, held up by huge posts with the bark still on them. There were three lamps hanging from the crossbeams, swinging slowly in a draft and sending long, slow shadows twisting over the plaster walls. Rushes rattled underfoot.
No one took any notice of us. The guests looked little different from the ones who used to stop the night with Grandmother Taiwari, who alone in our village kept a room or two for travellers. A few merchants, a long table full of drunken drovers, a sailor, a holy man and woman making a pilgrimage to the hills—and off in a far corner, watching everything, a fat, pale man in a dirty apron. Rosseth led me toward him, saying out of the smiling side of his mouth, “Remember this. He detests people who contradict him, but he despises people who don’t. Bear it in mind.” The fat man watched us approach.
Close to, he was bigger than I had thought, exactly as his inn seemed smaller. Raw dough, nothing but dough, a gingerbread man who had magically escaped the oven.
His face was bread pudding, with moles and blemishes for the occasional raisin or berry; but the eyes stuck into it were round and blue and surprised, a little boy’s eyes under the creased, pouchy lids of a grum old man. I do not know if they would have seemed ordinary eyes in a gentler face. What I know is that I have never again in my life seen eyes like the eyes of fat Karsh the innkeeper.