I am still saying hello and how are you and what have you been up to when Jajett gets into a screaming row with the proprietor’s daughter. Unlike the disorderly drunk, the daughter gives as well as she gets. She knows a working girl when she sees one. She is not shy about going into detail on that score, either. Jajett points out that an innkeeper’s daughter is not like to be able to brag about her virtue.
Things quickly roll downhill from there. The daughter and Jajett both seem to be having a rare old time. Since they do, I get the proprietor to pour me a brandy. Then I go back to my friends.
Pointing toward the two gals still slanging away at each other, Ett Brashli says, “You always did know how to liven up an evening, didn’t you, Baek?”
“Never a dull moment when I’m around,” I agree, and knock back half the brandy at a gulp. I did not look for Lady Ett to be here tonight.
She is a noblewoman from across the Sleeve, which is what they call the channel between Dunlin and Ecnarf. She likes it better here than she does in Dunlin. That is what makes an expat, I suppose. I sure like it better here than I do back in Dubyook.
When I first came to Sirap, right after the war ended, I felt lower than if I were still in a trench. I had just found out that the sawbones’ almost was not good enough, and that it did not look as if it ever would be good enough. Not the kind of thing to lift a man’s spirits.
But when I met Ett Brashli, it did not seem to matter. She did not seem to care. She cared about me, not about the almost. The way I was then, that seemed a bigger miracle than any of the ones the preachers go on about in the temples. That she cared about me made me care about myself, which I had quit doing. Ett Brashli is one of those people who are good for other people. There are never enough people like that, dammit. Never.
If you meet somebody like that, you want to keep her forever. I would not have been able to keep Lady Ett forever even without the almost. I understand that now, though I did not then. No one ever keeps Lady Ett for long. She is one of those people, too. It is sad, but there you are.
And here I am, knocking back brandy at The Gilded Peasant. And there is Ett Brashli. And there is the guy she is with now, another Dunliner. His name is Kime Kelbam. The only thing wrong with him, aside from his having her when I do not, is that money dribbles through his fingers like water. He is younger than I am, and he has gone through more cash than I will ever see.
Kime knows Lady Ett and I were tight not so long ago. He cannot very well not know. Ett has never been good at keeping secrets, and she never will be. You need to understand that from the start if you want to have anything to do with her. If knowing bothers him, he has never shown it. He always treats me like an old chum, and he is no different now. He is a good egg, Kime is.
He treats Obert Ohn like an old chum, too. Obert came over here to make something of himself that he could not in Dubyook. He has done a little writing, which is how I know him. Some of it is not too bad. Some of it, I must say, is not too good.
What he has made of himself since he met Ett Brashli is a nuisance. He moons after her as if he just now discovered women. If she told him to take a long hike off a short pier, he might leave her alone. Or he might go and do it—you never can tell. But she will not tell him anything like that. She is too kind. And how many people can resist being worshiped as if they are gods?
“What’s your friend’s name? Do you even know?” Without Ett’s smile, the question would be snotty.
As is, I smile back. When Ett Brashli smiles at you, you cannot help smiling back. “She’s Jajett,” I say. “So there.” I stick out my tongue at Lady Ett like a little kid.
She laughs at me. No, with me. Obert Ohn sends me a look that should stretch me dead on the shabby carpet. I think he must have had his sense of humor surgically removed along with his tonsils when he was small. Naturally, he resents anybody who managed to grow up with a whole one.
Something smashes, back near the bar. Sweet Jajett and the proprietor’s daughter do not get along at all. Two large, burly waiters hustle Jajett to the door. She bites one of them. He slaps her. She bites him again. She has spirit, that one. They throw her out, spirit and all.
“Sirap is getting dull,” Kime says.
“How drunk are you?” I ask him. “They put on a show like that, and you say it’s dull?”
“Maybe it’s getting too exciting,” Ett Brashli says. “They really are the same thing when you look at them the right way, aren’t they?”
“No,” I answer.
She shakes her head in mock sadness. “Poor Baek. Always so literal. What Kime means is, we want to get out of Sirap for a while. Out of Ecnarf altogether, in fact. We’re thinking of taking the train down to Astilia and watching the bulls in Amblona. You’ve done that, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” I say. “Are you sure you want to? It’s not all pretty, you know.”
“That’s the point,” Ett says. “The whole point.”
I look over at Kime Kelbam. As far as I know, he has never gone to Amblona. But he was in the war. He will have a notion of what I mean when I say it is not all pretty. Lady Ett does not seem to.
But he just shrugs. “It will be something different, anyhow.”
“Yes! It’ll be something different!” For Ett Brashli, that is the only thing that matters. She goes out of her mind when things stay the same for long. Even aside from my almost, we would not have lasted as a couple. Nothing she does ever lasts. But we would have had one hell of a time for a while. We did have one hell of a time for a little while.
“I studied Astilian at the university,” Obert Ohn says. “I’d like to get the chance to speak it.”
“Well, come along, then, for heaven’s sake,” Kime says. “You may even end up useful. Who knows?”
“Who knows anything for sure these days?” Lady Ett says.
There are an awful lot of things I do not know for sure. Ask anyone. He will tell you. You can count on that. If the anyone you ask is a woman, she will tell you even more. You can count on that, too. But I do know the chance Obert Ohn wants is not the chance he talks about.
Kime has to know the same thing. He says what he says even so. It is not that he does not care. But Ett will do what Ett will do, and you can either get out of the way or stay there and get smashed. With her like that, Kime already understands the running of the bulls. He may want to see it, but he does not need to.
Lady Ett and Kime get their tickets to Amblona and go on down with some other people they know. Obert Ohn and I follow them a few days later. No one is in any tearing hurry. Ett has some side trips she wants to make. Kime does not mind. It would not do him any good if he did, but he does not. And Obert and I plan on getting in some fishing. Northern Astilia has some good trout steams.
I do not know a better way to travel than the train. There are faster ways, but a train is plenty fast. Someone else does the driving, so you do not have to pay attention to what is right in front of you. You can read a magazine article if you like, or write one. You can lean back in your seat and close your eyes and let everything go on without you.
Or you can look out the window. The countryside in Ecnarf is fine. South of Sirap, the war did not hurt it badly. And Astilia stayed out of this latest round of madness. The scars there are old. Most of them have healed over.
Even high up in the mountains that mark the border between Ecnarf and Astilia, the meadows stay green and beautiful. Animals graze on them. From a train window, the animals look like dots—small gray ones, bigger ones brown or black. Herdsmen, themselves as brown and wizened as tree trunks, stump across the grass or sit in the shade of the boulders as they keep an eye on their beasts.