Lukassa stirred against me. I handed her to Tikat as gently as I could. Our eyes met briefly; then he bent his head and touched her hair. I looked away. Arshadin retorted, “I kept my bargain. If they were too weak to hold you, what shall they do with me? Nothing has changed.”
Behind me Karsh was muttering, “I’ll kill him. Let me just get my hands on him, I’ll kill him.” I thought he meant Arshadin; that he had realized who was finally responsible for the destruction of The Gaff and Slasher. But he was glowering at the fox, who went on sitting up, observing everything with its tongue lolling and its expression serenely scornful. It turned at his words, and looked at me as it had from Soukyan’s saddlebag that first day, with my true name glimmering and turning far down in its eyes.
The old man said, “Arshadin, there is no time. I will agree to anything you like, but we must get you gone from here this minute. Arshadin, listen to me. I am begging you.”
Arshadin laughed. It was a surprising laugh, slow and suddenly real and deeply amused, and I hear it still and wonder. Did he laugh in the comfort of arrogance, in certainty that his dear-bought new power would shelter him from any revenge, human or other? Or was it the laughter of someone with nothing to lose and no possible escape to debate? I don’t know, of course, but there are worse ways to remember a bad man.
“Nothing has changed,” he repeated. “Only you could come back from where you have been still whining at me to behave.” The air crumpled again, close beside him. A ripple appeared in it, exactly like the circles that spread out and out when you toss a stone into quiet water. This circle darkened, tightened, and became a blue mouth, its lips sparkling wetly with tiny red and blue teeth. Arshadin turned and struck at it, crying out words that sounded like trees snapping in a windstorm, one after another. The round mouth pushed forward, as though for a dreadful kiss. It puckered around him, drew him in, and was gone.
In the silence, I heard Tikat singing. He had never looked up, but was rocking Lukassa in his arms, his long light hair half-hiding her face, mingling with her own dark tangle, as he droned along so softly. I knew the song—it was the lullaby about Byrnarik Bay. He had the words all wrong; or perhaps I do.
TIKAT
She slept without stirring for not quite three days. Without asking leave, I put her in the best upstairs room, the one that Rosseth says goes vacant all year sometimes, because Karsh insists on keeping it for the kind of people who rarely come to Corcorua. When Karsh grew noisy about it, the tafiya said to him, mildly enough, “Good Master Innkeeper, when Lukassa wakes in this bed, that day will I restore your establishment to its former condition, and get rid of the stink-beetles in your walls into the bargain. But if you say another word on the matter between now and then—” and he gestured around him at the wreck that the wizard Arshadin had made of The Gaff and Slasher—“I promise you that you will forever look back on this as the good old days.” Karsh stormed off to check on the outbuildings, and the tafiya sighed and sat down to watch Lukassa through the night. He did better than his pledge, in fact, for we all woke on the third morning to find the inn’s roof back where it should be, whole windows set neatly into new frames in remade walls; the floors certainly as level as they ever were, the two stone chimneys as straight, the foundations probably more sound, and such things as beer pumps, cisterns, and water pipes working as though they’d never been wrenched up like weeds. The stink-beetles were indeed gone, and the sign over the front door had been freshly painted over, which strangely infuriated Karsh. He stamped around all that day mumbling that there had been nothing wrong with the sign the way it was, and that there never was a wizard who knew when to leave well alone. Which is true enough, as I can say now.
Lukassa did not wake until that evening. The fox was asleep on her bed, and the tafiya had fallen asleep himself; or I think he had—he was a deceitful old man in some ways, and enjoyed being so. She came awake all at once, her eyes too ready for terror. I put my hands lightly on her arms, chancing the terror, and said, “Lukassa.”
I am not certain whether I could have borne it if she had not known me this time. But I saw that she did even before she spoke. She said, softly but clearly, “Tikat. There you are, Tikat.”
“I’m here,” I said, “and you’re here with me, and so is he,” and I nodded toward the tafiya snoring earnestly in his chair. I said, “You saved him. I think you saved us all.”
She did not answer, but looked at me in silence for a long time. Her face was a stranger’s face, which was as it should be. Love each other from the day we are born to the day we die, we are still strangers every minute, and nobody should forget that, even though we have to. Marinesha looked in at the bedroom door, smiled shyly, and went away again. Lukassa said, “When I was there, in that place, I heard you calling me.”
My throat was raw with it still. I bowed my head over her hands. She went on, halting often. “Tikat, I don’t remember you from—from before the river. He says I never will remember, not you, not myself, not anyone.” There were tears in her eyes, but they did not fall. “But I do know that you are my friend and care truly for me. And that I have hurt you.” One hand turned over in mine to close on my fingers.
“It was nothing you could help,” I said. “No more than I could help calling after you, I never thought you would hear me.”
“I did, though.” She smiled for the first time, the smile she always tries to rein in, because if her happiness spreads past the left corner of her mouth a crooked tooth shows. “It was very annoying, until I needed it to find my way back. But then I couldn’t hear it anymore.”
“I couldn’t call anymore,” I said. Lukassa looked into my eyes and nodded. Her hand closed tighter on my hand. I said, “I couldn’t, Lukassa.” She nodded again. I turned my head to watch the fox: slanting eyes shut tight, fluffed-out tail across his muzzle, the black-tipped fur parting with his dainty snores. Lukassa stroked him with her free hand, and he wriggled against it without ever waking. “He was the man in the red coat, you know,” I said. “I met him on the way here, when I was following you and Lal.”
“There is something else he is,” Lukassa whispered. “Something else, something not like anything.” I could barely hear her, and she did not go on. We were silent for a while, just holding hands, looking at each other, looking away. All the questions I wanted to ask her sat on the bed with us: the mattress seemed to sag under their weight. At last Lukassa said, “I want to tell you about that place, about being there. I want to tell someone.”
I began to say, “I have no right—” but she interrupted me. She said, “I want to tell you, but I cannot. The person who could have told you how it was is dead.” I stared at her, not understanding at all. Lukassa said, “She never came back—she died on the other side of that black gate, as surely as the girl you knew died in the river. And here I am, here I am talking to you, and who am I? Tikat, am I dead or alive, can you tell me that? And if I am alive, who am I?” She tried to pull her hand from mine, but I held hard onto it, even when her emerald ring ground against my finger. The fox woke up and yawned elaborately, stretching his forepaws and watching us.