Miss Nyateneri carried on for some while about murder, irresponsibility and the law, but that was all for show. I am also too old not to know that sort of thing when I see it. I did marvel at it though: two ragged little heaps of laundry stiffening there, as her muscles and nerves and heart must surely have been freezing and stiffening in her, in the wind that always seems to come after that sort of thing; and she still able to rant briskly away at me just as though her own wash had come back dirty. I let her run down—that was fair enough—and then I said, “We have no sheriff or queensman in Corcorua, but there is a county magistrate who rides through every two months or so. By good fortune, he is due here in another four or five days. We can turn this matter over to him then, as you please.”
Well, that quieted Miss Nyateneri in a hurry. I don’t mind saying that it was a pleasure to watch her lower her eyes, hug her elbows tight, and mumble about her and her companions’ need for haste and privacy. I don’t take any particular joy in someone else’s discomfiture— what good is that to me, after all?—but of those three women who had imposed themselves on my custom two very long weeks ago, this one had been a special nuisance on her own account, from the moment that fox of hers ran off with my hen. So I folded my own arms and enjoyed myself while she fumbled on and the boy glowered as though I were menacing his darling, a head and more taller than he. Her left hand was hurt in some way; he kept touching it very gently, very shyly. Two long weeks for both of us, truly.
At last I interrupted, saying, “In that case, I think what’s wanted here is a shovel and silence. Do you agree?” She stared at me. I went on. “We landlords deal in forgetfulness as much as in food and wine. All that interests me about these men you killed is that they were no strangers to you. They followed you to my inn, as that mad carl from the south followed your friend, as worse trouble will follow you all here—do not even bother to lie to me about that. I can do nothing, you stay against my will, by force of arms, but do me at least the small honor of not asking me to be concerned. The boy and I will bury your dead. No one else will know.”
She smiled then: only the quickest, leanest sort of fox-grin, but real enough even so, and the first such courtesy she had ever offered to her host at The Gaff and Slasher. “Do other guests misprize you as much as I have?” she wanted to know. “Say yes, please, of your kindness.”
“How can I tell?” I asked her in my turn. The boy was goggling past me, but I never looked over my shoulder. “I deal in forgetfulness,” I said. “I ask only whether people wish a warming pan, an extra quilt, or perhaps a stuffed goose at dinner. The goose is Shadry’s specialty, and requires a day’s advance notice.” I heard the black woman, Lal, chuckle at my side, and the white one’s breath in the darkness beyond.
“Much else requires notice,” Lal murmured, “and doesn’t get it.” Miss Nyateneri’s face slammed shut—you could hear it, and I am not an imaginative man. Lal said, “Go back to your guests, good Master Karsh. My friends and I will deal with this foolish business. You may take Rosseth with you.”
A notably arbitrary tone she always had, that one, but just then I could yield to it happily enough. I was a good ten strides gone before it occurred to me that the boy was not following. When I turned he was standing with his back to me, facing the three of them, saying, “I will bring you a spade. At least let me do that, let me get the spade.” Hands on his hips, head shaking stubbornly. He was doing just that in the hayloft, in the potato patch, when he was five.
“Rosseth, we do not need you.” Lal’s voice was sharp, even harsh, almost as much so as I could have wished. “Go with your master, Rosseth.” He turned away from her and flung toward me, marching so blindly that he would have blundered right into me if I hadn’t stepped aside. I looked back at the women—they were not looking at us, but drawing together over those dead bodies like so many ravens—and then I walked behind the boy back to the inn. For the first time in a very long while, I followed him.
LAL
Good or ill, it might all have been avoided if I hadn’t already been drinking. I drink very seldom—it is one of the many pleasant habits that my life has never been able to afford—but then I drink with a purpose. You will say that I should have been rejoicing: that this day had not only set Nyateneri and me squarely back on the track of the one I called my friend and she the Man Who Laughs, but also offered us at least some part of a vision of some part of his fate. True enough, and a meaningless, useless kind of truth it seemed, that evening long ago in a little low room smelling of Karsh’s life, Nyateneri’s fox, and the dozen pigeons Karsh kept in the attic directly above. What good to know that our dear magician had lived near Corcorua in a ridiculous pastry tower, and had been betrayed by a beloved companion—himself in turn slain by demons of some sort—when there was no imagining how long ago this had all happened, or where in this world he might have fled? Lukassa could tell us no more than that terrible chamber had told her; for the rest, the trail was even colder than it had been when we set out in the morning. My friend would have to come to us now—there was truly no going to him.
For my part, I was weary from my skin inwards, angry with everything from my skin on out, and capable neither of thought nor of sleep. So I had Karsh send up what he complained were his last three bottles of Dragon’s Daughter—the southernmost wine in his cellar, so red that it is almost black—and I was decently into the second when word came that I was wanted at the bathhouse. I brought the bottle with me, for company’s sake. Lukassa followed.
When I drink too much—and I only drink too much, as I have said—I most often become sullen, brooding and resentful. Perhaps this is my true nature, and all else of me a mask, who knows? I said no word to Nyateneri—no questions, no reproaches, nothing—while the three of us were burying the two bodies in a wild tickberry patch, a tedious distance from the bathhouse. It was work we both knew, and best done mum in any case. I finished the second bottle then, without offering it round. Nyateneri said something in her own tongue over the graves, and we walked back to the inn with her looking sideways at me on my left and Lukassa sneaking glances on my right. And I said nothing at all until we were in our room with the last wine bottle open before me. I am like that, to this day. It is why I prefer to travel alone.
Then, finally, I rounded on her, on Nyateneri. I am not proud of much that I said, and there is no reason to recount every word. The main of it was that she had deceived Lukassa and me: she had endangered our lives from the moment we met, saying that no one pursued her and all the while knowing that those two killers were drawing nearer as she lied to us. When she defended herself, pointing out that she had said only that no one anywhere wanted her back, never that she was not wanted dead—oh, then I lost language completely and came around the table reaching for her. Which was certainly foolish—hurt and tired or not, she was still stronger than I—but she swiftly put the bed between us, holding up her hands for peace. In the attic the pigeons woke up and began gurgling and flapping, making chilly dust filter down between the rafters.