I drank some more wine. “No, just trying to make sense of my visit to the Halls of Judgment.”
“That was years ago,” said Aliera. “A long time, for you.”
“There,” I said. “You see? It’s all about time. Everything is about time. Time to do this, time to do that, need to get the timing right, this happened before that did. Time is everything. If sorcery were to provide a way to control it—”
“It doesn’t,” said Sethra.
“Okay. Too bad.”
She frowned. “Vlad, is there something going on?”
“No,” I said, because I didn’t think there was. “I’m just, I don’t know, fascinated.”
“You’re fascinated by everything,” said Aliera, as if that were a bad thing.
“Yeah. Part of being an Easterner. No telling what odd directions our curiosity will take us.”
Aliera nodded. “Yes. Lack of discipline in thinking. That’s probably why you keep getting conquered.”
“No, we just keep running out of time,” I said, and the conversation drifted off onto other things.
I stared out at the ocean-sea, then up at the cliffs.
“Boss?”
“That isn’t supposed to be there.”
“What?”
“That chunk of rock, up there, sticking out from the cliff. It shouldn’t be there.”
“I don’t—”
“It fell. During the Interregnum.”
“Oh,” he said. Then, “When are we?”
“Your guess is as good as mine, except that it’s before or during the Interregnum.”
My first thought was to remove my amulet and see if I had my connection to the Orb. It should be safe, right? If I was back in time to before the Jhereg was after me, they wouldn’t be looking for me yet. And they certainly wouldn’t look for me in the past.
I almost did it, but then I hesitated. Just how confident was I that I wasn’t still inside the manor, even though strange paths took me through time? Not all that confident, when I thought about it.
I looked out at the restless water again and considered.
9. The Miseries of Odelpho
I can tell you, from having lived near it all my life, that the air does funny things around the ocean-sea. Gusts come from odd directions, and the prevailing wind changes for no discernible reason, sometimes whipping around in circles, so that when you watch the leaves, they seem like they’re caught up in a shield spell. Being on a cliff in front of a cave mouth looking directly out over the surf doesn’t do anything to reduce the effect. My cloak opened and closed in spite of the hardware weighing it down, and my hair kept slapping different sides of my face or getting in my eyes, reminding me that I should have tied it. I had gotten into the habit of tying it many years ago, when I came near to bungling a job because it got in my eyes at the wrong moment, but I prefer it free, and hadn’t had a need to worry about it for some time.
I pulled my cloak closed and stared out over the water. There were fewer wrecks on the shore, fewer tops of masts sticking out of the water, than in my day—the collection of small vessels that get smashed on the rocks and forgotten. That, as much as seeing Kieron’s Watch jutting out like it hadn’t a care in the world, convinced me I had left my own time and entered another. That is not something I was expecting the day before yesterday when I went to the market for javorn sausage. In a life full of weird things, this was—well, it was one of them.
“Boss? Uh, what do we do?”
“I have no idea.”
Rocza shifted nervously on my other shoulder. I guess she was picking up on how upset Loiosh was, because he was too much in tune with me not to be pretty disturbed. I’d never messed with time before, and the concept was scary. Maybe the Necromancer could deal with it, and probably Sethra would at least have a good idea of what not to do, but I didn’t. I stood there, afraid to move. I mean, if I walked forward and climbed the cliff, could I travel East, find an ancestor of mine, and kill him? No, no. I had no intention of doing that, but just the idea that I could was immobilizing. And if I couldn’t? How would that work? And if I could meet an ancestor, did that mean I could meet myself? What would I say to myself? What would myself say to me? We probably wouldn’t get along very well.
Part of me refused to believe any of this was possible, but I couldn’t come up with a reason why not, so it just made things worse. I felt like I was standing in a bubble of impossibility.
There was room for a couple more steps before an almost sheer drop. To my left was a sort of path going up among the rocks that looked like it might be possible to climb. Did I want to?
That Loiosh wasn’t saying anything at all gave me a good idea of how this was affecting him. I licked my lips. I dropped the torch to free my hands for climbing, took a step forward, turned, and set my foot on a rock that was just outside the mouth of the cave, at the beginning of what I hoped was a path that would lead all the way to the top.
And I was inside again.
I exhaled slowly, and realized that this was good. No, I could not go back in time and prevent myself from existing. I didn’t know why, but I knew I couldn’t, and you can laugh at me as much as you want, but just knowing that made me feel better about the world I was living in. Even more, it meant there were a whole lot of things that I didn’t want to think about that I could happily ignore.
I looked around: I was in someone’s bedroom.
It was big enough for a family of Easterners to live comfortably. Two families: one of them could live on the bed. In addition to sheer size, the thing that tells you you’re in the bedroom of someone rich is the lack of clothes. They always have walk-in wardrobes, or even whole other rooms for dressing—nothing you’d need is ever nearby. Being rich means making everything inconvenient. Remember to attribute that when you quote it. T-A-L-T-O-S.
There were glass windows, big ones, that looked out on the ocean-sea. I was relieved, though not surprised, that Kieron’s Watch was missing, just like it was supposed to be. I wondered if it had been arranged for all the walls to face the ocean-sea, then stopped thinking about it when the headache threatened. And at first I didn’t see a mirror, which surprised me, but then I realized that there was one built into a long, dark reddish vanity, and I hadn’t noticed it as a mirror because, well, vanities have mirrors, right? I felt a little foolish.
I looked around the room again. Yeah, someone once lived here, but it hadn’t been used, or cleaned, in a while. Whoever had lived here was important, just judging by size and the furnishings and by the psiprint of a youngish Dragaeran girl in shadow, only a quarter profile visible, hair blending into the darkness: it wasn’t the sort of artwork you’d leave in a guest room—you had to want to fall asleep looking at it. I could probably spend an hour looking everything over carefully and make a few deductions about whomever it was who slept here, but it wouldn’t help me solve the mystery. I assumed it was probably Zhayin himself, because why not?
So, fine. I had stepped out from a cave, started to climb a hill, and in one step had moved forward two hundred years and ended up in a bedroom. Sure. Why not have a magical connection of unknown properties between a sheer drop to the ocean-sea and your bedroom? You can spend a nice day watching the waves a few hundred years ago, then to bed. It’s like adding a porch.