“How do you know?” Rosseth had hold of my hand, a child’s blind clutch, which I still felt long after he had let go. “He’s strong, you don’t know. I never thought he’d last out the first night he came, but he did, he did, and he’ll last through this one too. You don’t know.” He was blinking very fast.
Nyateneri looked at him with more softness than I had ever supposed in that swaggering woman. “He does, Rosseth. He knows.” Rosseth stared at her for a long time before he nodded very slowly. Nyateneri said, “He wants us there. You, me, Lal, Lukassa—Tikat.” She paused just enough to let me know whose idea I was. “He wants us all there.”
“Why tomorrow night?” Rosseth’s dark eyes were dry and stubbornly angry now, the way he gets. “How can he—why tomorrow night?”
“Because of the new moon.” Nyateneri seemed genuinely surprised. “Wizards can only die on new-moon nights.” Plainly she had thought that even louts like us must have known so simple a thing, and was annoyed with herself for the assumption. She turned away without another word, but the fox sat where he was, yellow gaze never leaving me. I heard him in my head, no mistaking that grating, derisive bark: Well, boy, well now, fellow horsethief, and aren’t you a longer way from home than anyone in the world? I could not move from where I stood until he stretched himself lingeringly, fore and aft, like any dog or cat, then sauntered off after Nyateneri. A dust-draggled little bird flew up almost under his nose, and he pounced stifflegged at it but missed.
Rosseth was looking at me as I had looked at the fox. He said, “You have another new friend.”
“Not likely,” I said. “I leave a few tidbits out now and then, to persuade him to spare Karsh’s chickens. He knows my smell by now, I suppose.”
“When did you ever care about Karsh’s chickens?” Rosseth’s voice was tight and thin. I shrugged and reached for the last beam remaining, but Rosseth caught my hand again, crying out, “Tikat, no one tells me what is happening. Why is the wizard really dying? How can he be certain that he will go with the new moon tomorrow night? Something terrible is happening, and no one will tell me what it is. Guests fight in their rooms—horses kick down their stall doors and go at each other like demons, for no reason, even poor old Tunzi. Marinesha says that Shadry wakes everyone every night, screaming that he is being buried alive. Why did Gatti Jinni throw a wine bottle at that street-singer yesterday? Why does the well water smell filthy-sweet as gangrene, and why won’t the wind ever, ever stop? What is Karsh trying so hard to say to me—and why now, why now?—why do you have secrets with a fox? And Tikat, Tikat, what is watching? What is watching us all out of the wind and the well and the horses’ eyes?”
I put my arm around his shoulders. He looked as surprised by the gesture as I felt. Rosseth always called a—a something, a wishfulness—from me that no one else has ever summoned, except Lukassa. It frightened me each time, but each time a bit less. I said, “I don’t know. I was sure it must be my imagining.”
Rosseth shook his head violently. “No, it is all real. Tikat, talk to me, let us put what knowledge we do have side by side. I will tell you what I almost see—you tell me what you think you imagine. I’ll tell you what I begin to guess—you’ll say what you—”
“—what I fear,” I said, thinking of the wizard. Rosseth blinked in puzzlement. I said, “Never mind. Go on, Rosseth. Let’s talk, then.”
So we talked for a long time, longer than we ever had before, while spiking the last beam in place and plastering a mix of straw and horse dung over the roof to seal the cracks. We do it just so at home. I spoke of the fox being also Redcoat, and of my drowned Lukassa having been drawn up from the riverbed by Lal’s song. Rosseth drew breath both times to give me the lie, but did not; no more than I when he told me about Nyateneri being no woman but a man named Soukyan, who had left two other men— fell, dire men—dead in the bathhouse. (Was it one such who touched me and left me unconscious in the corridor outside the wizard’s room? I never knew.) He flushed and stammered over much of that, but I understood enough to pat his shoulder and nod slightly. In my village, one of our priests says that love between men is a great sin— the other argues that nothing at all is sinful except weak ale, overdone meat, and building a fire in any way but his. As for me, my notions in such matters are my notions.
“So what do we know, when all’s said?” I asked at last. “We know that Lal and Soukyan came here in search of their friend, their master, and that they found him the prey of a wizard named Arshadin, more powerful than he. Agreed so far?”
Rosseth objected. “We don’t know that Arshadin is the greater wizard. If this one were in his proper health, rested and strong, it might well be another story.” Rosseth is very loyal.
“That’s as may be,” I said, “but it’s Arshadin who keeps him from resting, who sends voices and visitations to plague him by night, if Marinesha’s to be believed. So that makes Arshadin his master, by my count.” Rosseth chewed his lower lip and looked stubborn. I said, “And if this Arshadin can do such wicked wonders, then he’s like enough to be at the bottom of all else that’s been bedeviling The Gaff and Slasher all summer.” I realized that I had never spoken the inn’s name since the day I arrived there, and suddenly I longed more than I can say for the world in which I had never known it.
Rosseth was nodding eagerly, beginning to speak, but I cut him off as coldly as I could. “Not that any of this is any of my concern. This midden-heap is your home, not mine, and there’s my one great joy in life just now. Whatever happens or does not happen, whatever becomes of your squabbling little wizards, I’ll be off where I belong, and never know.” I stood up. “We’re done—I am supposed to help Gatti Jinni in the storerooms.”
Rosseth let me get to the door before he said, “Lukassa will be here.” I began to answer, but he interrupted me as harshly as I had done to him. “And so will I be, and Marinesha, who has been kind to you. Will you truly never want to know what became of us, Tikat?”
Two years younger than I, and already going for the belly like a starving sheknath. We stared silently at each other until I looked down first. I said, “I will not leave until she is in a safe place, if there can be such a place for her. Afterward—why, afterward the Rabbit and I may as well go home as anywhere.” Rosseth said nothing. I went on. “The rest of you must look after yourselves. I have no skill at loving more than one person at a time, and that is hard enough. Now I’m going to the storerooms.”
I was already outside the smokehouse, closing my eyes against the onslaught of light, when he called to me. “Tikat? I have lived here all my life and never once called it home, not once. But you are right—it is my home, after all, and I will defend it as well as I can, and my friends, too. Thank you, Tikat, for teaching me.” I did not turn, but kept walking toward the inn, uphill in the pounding sunlight.
THE POTBOY
That was the best time there ever was at that place, because Shadry used to fall asleep by noon, sprawled across his big chopping block like one of his own thick, slubbery sides of meat. Once he began snoring, he’d never stir until it was time to prepare the evening meal, if anyone had the strength to eat. Even so, none of the others ever dared to sneak out of the kitchen with me, not for so much as a quick squint at the guests, or to pet Rosseth’s old donkey. They all curled themselves away in the darkest corners they could find and slept through the day like our master. Snoring exactly like him, too, some of them.