Nyateneri shrugged. “I was invited to become a force in the convent, and beyond it. They had been training me for this since my childhood, and the time had now come for me to take my place with them, a superior being among superior beings. I was honored in a way, even grateful, and I still am. If they had not offered me the chance of power, I might never have been certain—as I was, on the instant—that power was not what I wanted. To spend the rest of my life as a sort of ringmaster of secrets, to be trapped forever in the dreary hidey-holes of the great with old unspeakable histories hanging head-down from the roof of my mouth, like sleeping bats—no, no, that bony little northern girl never agreed to that.“ Nyateneri struck the table again, with her wine-mug this time; but then she looked away and spoke very softly, not at all to us but to the fox, no doubt of it. ”She agreed to many things that she had no objection to, and to some others as well, but she never agreed to that.”
The fox looked straight back at her and yawned very deliberately, as he had on the night of our meeting. They know each other like lovers, I thought, past love itself, past hatred, past questions, past trust or betrayal. I wondered how they had met, and how long ago, and how long foxes live. Nyateneri went on, “You cannot say no to such an offer. It is not allowed. So I said yes. I said, yes, thank you, I am not worthy.”
“And you ran away that same night.” Lukassa, leaning forward, brown eyes living Nyateneri’s tale exactly as they lived any legend I ever told her. Nyateneri’s thin, short smile. “I knew they would guard my door that night. I was gone within an hour. I have been running ever since.”
Now some of the drovers crash past the door, yelling, laughing, spitting, stumbling into each other—Efranis, westerners far from home, by their curses. Karsh’s sudden voice, quieting them—not a growl, but the sound that a large animal makes before the real growl. That fat man knows how to run an inn, whatever else he chooses not to know. The holy couple keep to their chanting, as we to our grim drinking. This is all so long ago.
“Well,” I said. “Perhaps when this news gets back, the convent will grow tired of sending out killers to be killed.” Nyateneri drew a very long breath, plainly about to reply. Then, instead, she stood up and walked to the window, looking out at dark leaves and a few stars. I said, “Perhaps there will be no more teams after this one.”
How long did it take her to turn and look at me? A long time, I think, but drink slows much down for me, so that I cannot be sure. It seemed a long time. Perhaps she never turned at all—I only remember her words, and the sound of her voice, whispering, “I have not told you everything,” and bringing me instantly to my feet, wine or no wine, saying, “No, of course not, you never do.” Did I shout it? I think I shouted. I really think I knew what was coming.
“There are always three of them,” she said. “Always.” Did we hear the first quiet steps on the stairs then, or just after, after I had begun screaming at her again? Nyateneri said, “Lal, be still, I am telling you the truth. The third moves apart from the other two; he watches, but he is not with them. He is always the cleverest, they make sure of that. He is never far away. Be still, be quiet, Lal.” The knock came then, very gentle; you almost had to be listening for it.
NYATENERI
I was praying that it would be anyone but him. Anyone. I would have welcomed that third assassin, right then, sword hand no good and the rest of me feeling in much the same shape as those two stiffening underground. Just not him, not now, if it please any interested deity. I am exhausted and afraid, and I cannot tell what will happen. I am afraid to see him now.
Lal rose to open the door. I said, “Don’t,” not meaning to say it. Lal looked at me. I stood up myself then.
LAL
When I stood, the room pulsed in and out around me, and I had to close my eyes because the blurry throb of the candles made me dizzy. For that moment I could not even see Nyateneri clearly as she moved to the door. But my mind was knife-cold. I braced myself with the back of the chair, and I thought, Stupid, stupid, I should not have touched the wine again, not after the bathhouse. Whoever is on the other side of that door, killer or drover or pot-boy, could slaughter the stupid three of us as we stand. What is happening, what have I let myself come to? I put Lukassa behind me. My hands were sweating so that the swordcane slipped and slipped between them, and would not come open.
THE FOX
Yesyesyesyes, I smell him. I smell them all. Pigeons, too.
ROSSETH
The actors came in late and quarrelsome, but they didn’t wake Tikat. They didn’t wake me, either, for I hadn’t even tried to sleep. I was sitting up in the loft, watching the moon start down and Tikat trying to claw his way through the straw pallet I had fixed for him. Lisonje, the one I always liked, climbed the ladder and popped her bewigged head through the trapdoor to ask me, “How fares our sylvan swain?”
“Well enough, so’t please you, madam,” I answered, “in the body.” Every time the troupe came to stay with us—two or three weeks of every summer I could remember—I would be talking like them by the time they left again, and Karsh would spend the next week at least growling and grinding it out of me. I told Lisonje what had happened when Lukassa returned—no more than that—and she leaned on her elbows and regarded Tikat for a while without saying anything. She was still in her paint and costume as the wicked Lord Hassidanya’s mistress, and she looked like a child who has been up very late with grown people.
“Once,” she said finally, “and not too long ago, either, I would have shooed you down this ladder and lain down in that straw with him, for comfort’s sake. And I might even now, if he were someone else and would not hate me and himself so stupidly afterward.“ She thought about it a moment longer, then shook her head briskly and said, ”No, not even then, no, I wouldn’t. I’m done with comforting, must remember that.“ Patting my hand, she started back down, but she put her head in again to say, ”Rosseth, be watchful with him. I’ve seen that kind of heartbreak sleep before. If I were you, I’d wake him every so often. He doesn’t want ever to wake again.”
She slept quickly, as did the others. I did not move until I could identify every snore from every stall, from old Dardis’ whinnying blasts to Lisonje’s dainty chirpings. Then, as she had bid me, I shook Tikat by the shoulder until he blinked at me, whispering to him, “Something worrying the hogs, I must see to them. Go back to sleep.” He cursed me clearly and healthily, and was asleep again before he had turned over in the straw.
I had no choice. I know perfectly well that most people who say that mean only that they have no excuse for the choice, and more than likely I was no different. But I was truly anxious about Nyateneri—where else might she be bloodlessly wounded besides her sword hand?—and it seemed to me that it would do no harm to ask whether I could be of any further aid. As for what Lal had said to me, where had Lal been when Nyateneri and I were at grips with those laughing little men in the bathhouse? We had shared a battle and a kiss, we had faced death together—not shoulder to shoulder, perhaps, but together—and I was entitled, obliged, to see to my comrade’s comfort. Such reasoning it was that took me barefoot down the ladder, all the way to the inn and up the stairs to that room without waking so much as an actor, a hog, or Karsh snoring in the empty taproom, cheek pillowed in the crook of his elbow.