"There aren't any pictures in this book, Kekoja."
"Now you tell me."
Duran smiled. "Don't lie to me," he said mildly. "I don't like that. You can read, can't you?"
Kekoja flinched, then grimaced. "Aye. Some."
"That surprises me."
"S'pose so."
"Who taught you?" He thought of a lasting puzzle: the storyteller, the foreigner whose Ancari was sometimes—astonishing good. "Your grandfather?"
"Aye." The Sabirn boy shifted uneasily in bed, then looked up at Duran. "But I don't read too good, and I can't read fast. I can speak Ancari better'n I can read it."
"I think you're not telling me the whole truth, Kekoja." He took the book back to the desk and laid it down. "I think you're a damned lot smarter than you want to show."
Kekoja lifted his chin. "An' what difference'd that make, that I can read, or that I'm smart? Who'd care one way or the other?"
"Your grandfather obviously cares, or he wouldn't have taught you. Knowledge is never anything to be ashamed of."
"You ain't Sabirn."
Duran drew a long breath. "No, I'm not. But I think I understand what you're saying."
Kekoja's wary expression persisted. "Grandfather says you're a fair man. Even when it gets your neighbors mad."
"I guess that sums it up."
"Why?"
Why? The question Duran had asked himself over and over. Why are you doing this? Why are you courting disaster? Why, why, why?
"I'm not sure," he said, falling back on utter honesty before this boy, this street urchin he had rescued from a beating at the hands of other ragtags who looked and lived much the same. "I suppose I don't like to see injustice. I don't like to see things misunderstood." He waved a hand at the books, the shelves. "That's why I'm an alchemist; that's why I operate my shop. Because I want to know what things really are. . . . I want to understand them. And I can't believe something's bad simply because I don't understand it."
"That could get you in trouble," Kekoja said seriously. "Understanding things."
Duran laughed quietly, folded his arms, lighter-hearted, he had no notion why. "You're damned right it could, lad. It has. But I haven't given up trying to understand things."
"You aren't afraid of us Sabirn?"
"Oh, yes, as much afraid of you as I am of my own kind. There's good and bad in all of us, whether we be Sabirn, Torhyn, or Ancar. It's simply easier to overlook our own bad traits and assign them to people who aren't like us. Have you ever been afraid of things like that?"
Kekoja nodded slowly.
"Of something new? Of something strange?"
Kekoja nodded again.
"Because it was truly frightening, or because you'd never seen anything like it before?"
"Both."
"Smart boy. Aye, we can be afraid of something we know all too well . . . or too little. Ah, lad! Now there's the thing—I suppose I'm not afraid of Sabirn because I think I know you better than most folk. I've heard all the tales spread about your people, but so far I haven't seen any of them coming true."
"They say we steal."
"And I imagine some of you do. So do some Ancar. So do some Torhyn. Some have titles." Duran shook his head. "Nothing special in that."
"They say we're wizards."
"Now that I would like to see," Duran said. "Most cheat. I haven't met a real one yet, though I suppose that doesn't mean there aren't any."
Kekoja cocked his head. "Grandfather was right. You are a strange one."
Duran laughed and drew the chair out from behind the desk so he could sit facing Kekoja. "I suppose I am."
"Why do you talk with Sabirn?"
"I'm interested in your legends, your stories. That's why your grandfather fascinates me."
"Why?"
"I save stories. I collect them like some men collect books. Somewhere in those stories is a key to the past, to what really happened."
"When?"
"Hundreds of years ago—when your people ruled their empire."
The Sabirn boy's face went very hard in the lamplight. "That was a long time ago."
"Aye. So long ago most of the facts are probably forgotten by now. But legends can hide facts, lad, beneath their fanciful surfaces. That's what I'm after. I'm like a man who sifts sand through a sieve hunting for gold."
The room grew silent. The windows stood wide open to the summer night. Duran could hear crickets, the cry of nighthawks, the barking of a faraway dog. He looked at Kekoja, but the boy seemed lost in thought.
"Grandfather knows," Kekoja said finally. "He knows the most stories of any of us."
"Maybe sometime he'll tell the ones he hasn't told."
"Maybe. You write these stories down? All of them?"
Duran nodded. "What I can remember of them after they're told."
"In these books?"
"In some. I write what your grandfather says. What the other Sabirn say, the ones I've hired to help me when I go to the country." Duran suddenly remembered what Vadami had told him about a legendary Sabirn wizard. "Have you ever heard of someone named Siyuh?"
Kekoja's eyes widened; he sat bolt upright in the bed. "Ziya!" he whispered.
"A story you know?"
"No." The boy looked down, leaned back up against the wall, and folded his arms across his chest. "I don't."
"Are you sure?"
The lad would not meet his eyes. "Nothing," Kekoja repeated.
Duran knew he had missed something there. The moment was gone; he could not recapture it.
"I'm tired," Kekoja said, turning his back on Duran and stretching out on the bed. "Let's go to sleep."
"If you want." Duran frowned at the boy, wishing he knew what had happened. One moment, Kekoja had been open and friendly; the next, he exuded all the charm of a stone.
And gave him the floor again.
CHAPTER SIX
A huge clap of thunder shook the house the following morning and jarred Duran out of a deep sleep. He sat up in his bedding, rubbed his shoulder, and looked around. It was dark enough outside to be night, and the rain had started to fall heavily.
"Damn." He rose to his feet, lit the lamp on the bedside table, and stretched the stiffness from his neck and back. Yawning, he walked across to an open window.
The wind had picked up and blew in off the harbor. Duran could hardly see across the narrow alleyway that divided his block from the building next door. He cursed again, drew the window shut, and hurried over to the other window. Rain blew in there, too, and Duran's sleeves were soaked by the time he got the window closed.
He walked to the window at the front of the room, shut it partially, and returned to the bed. Kekoja was sitting up now, rubbing his eyes. Duran nodded a good morning to the Sabirn boy, drew the chamber pot out from under the bed, and used it.
"You next, lad," he said, standing and pulling on his hose. He stuffed his feet into his shoes and walked away from the bed to give Kekoja some privacy.
"Slops men'll be drenched to the bone this morning," Kekoja said.
"If they come now," Duran said, looking out the window at the downpour, "they'll be drowned. Is your head better?"
"Aye. Doesn't hurt near as much."
Duran turned around. "How's your ankle?"
Kekoja set the pot down, sat down on the bed, and rubbed his foot. "Feels fine. But it felt fine yesterday, too."
Duran crossed his arms on his chest. "Walk for me. Just across the room and back."
Lightning flared, followed instantly by another crash of thunder. Kekoja flinched, stood, and made the limping trip back and forth. He waited by the bed, his dark eyes watching Duran's face.
"Looks good," Duran said. "Better than yesterday."