I stood up and walked out the door, nodded to the two guards. They nodded back, looking wary but determinedly not frightened. As I was making up my mind what to do, three Teckla in Vallista livery, none of whom I recognized, walked in front of me holding covered trays. I smelled strong spices and something that reminded me of watermelon. They continued down the hall, unlocking a door just before the lieutenant’s office, going through it. I heard it lock behind them.
“What’s through there?” I asked.
“Couldn’t say,” said Trev.
“Mind if I look?”
“I’m afraid that’s not permitted.”
I thought about making an issue of it. At a guess, Zhayin and perhaps Discaru and maybe a few others were in a dining room that way. But I wasn’t sure what I could learn from them now that I couldn’t learn just as well later. And I was getting a little tired of wandering aimlessly around hallways.
“Maybe you should escort me out and I’ll be on my way,” I said.
“We’ll be happy to,” said Trev, which I was pretty sure was just honesty.
She took the lead, the guy followed me. “Watch your distance,” said Trev.
I was shown out the door, feeling like I’d missed a chance to learn some important things, but not sure what I should have done differently. I wished I could have explored the place a little more. I looked around, noting what I could about the area and the castle. Even the outside might have told me something.
It still might.
“Loiosh?”
“Yes!”
“Then … now.”
I let a dagger fall into my hand and reversed it. There was flapping and cursing behind me. Trev was already drawing when she turned, and took a backward step; but I was moving by that point. I closed the distance and caught her on the chin with the pommel. I turned to see Loiosh and Rocza in the other guy’s face, biting at him, flapping their wings, staying out of the way of his flailing steel. They were both pretty good at this game by now.
“Drop your weapon,” I said. “Or die. I’m good either way.”
He called me a bad name, still swinging his weapon.
“Back off, give him a chance to surrender if he wants to.”
They returned to my shoulder. At the same time, I dropped the dagger and drew my rapier, then advanced so that by the time he faced me I was already inside his guard. He froze, I froze, and he called me another bad name.
He dropped his sword.
“Kneel, hands behind your back.”
I sheathed my rapier and picked up the dagger I’d dropped, reversed it.
Okay, let’s stop and talk about knockout points for a minute. Years ago, Cawti and I saw The Falling Damps at Axon House. We had excellent seats (five rows back, just off center) thanks to Morrolan, and we had a wonderful time. We especially loved the banter and the fights (when Highrunner picks up Rakkos and throws him into the Baron’s men, I cheered like everyone else). But on the fourth day there was a sequence where Atasu, in sneaking into Valguard, knocks out three guards with three perfect shots to the head and then knows exactly when they’ll wake up. Mostly what this did was provide a lot of conversation between Cawti and me that night, because she didn’t buy it either. Yes, you can knock out a Dragaeran (or, presumably, a human) with one good, hard smack, especially on the chin (Cawti explained it in terms of smashing the brain against the skull, which sounds sort of reasonable). There are other knockout points as well. But the thing is, none of them are reliable or predictable. Sure, if I hit a guy perfectly, I can be pretty sure he’ll be out—for five seconds, or maybe ten minutes, or maybe a day, or maybe forever. And I said pretty sure, not absolutely sure.
Point is, if you’d rather knock someone out than kill him, that’s fine, but don’t bet your life on getting him in one shot, and don’t make predictions on how long he’ll be out.
Okay, so, where was I? Right. The guy was on his knees. I walked behind him, wound up and swung with the dagger hilt like I was serving in courtball (I’ve never played courtball, though I’ve seen it), and he went down. I took the time to see if they were both really good and out. I couldn’t be sure, but from their eyes and their breathing I was pretty confident. I put my weapons away and looked up at the top of the castle; no one seemed to be watching us. Good, then.
My plan was to take a walk around the place, noting what I could, until either I attracted attention, or the strange properties of the manor told me I’d reached some sort of boundary by transporting me to somewhere. In fact, I didn’t get very far: I was maybe a quarter of the way around what I guessed was the back of the place, walking just to the side of a narrow cart road, when my eye was caught by an odd door: It was almost parallel to the ground, angled up just slightly. I’d seen a door at just that angle.
I made sure no one had spotted me yet, and approached it. It was a single door but nearly as wide as two, and secured by a padlock. If we were to rate padlocks by time, this one was only about ten seconds. I did the thing, it made the click, and I removed it. I put it aside, pulled the door open, and descended three steps into the same wine cellar I’d seen at the manor.
12. The River at Housetown
I stood for a minute at the bottom of the stone stairway, looking around to convince myself that, yes, this really was the same wine cellar, and trying to figure out what it meant. Same size, same number of racks, and what sealed it was the drip of water in the corner exactly where there had been a brownish stain in the manor. As I stood there, it occurred to me that I might as well steal a bottle. And my thought after that was, what if I took a bottle that still existed back where I was going? What would happen if two wine bottles from different times existed together? How often have you had to worry about that?
I poked around a little more, enough to convince myself that the hallways and storage rooms—now full of fruits, vegetables, bolts of cloth, and boxes of nails—were also the same. I stopped short of going through the door out of the cellar, but I looked through it, and there was a wide stairway.
I went back the other way, and eventually found the stairway that, in the manor, had gone down to a cave. Here, too, there were torches, but they weren’t burning. I stopped and lit one with the flint and steel they sell in the Easterners’ quarter, and without which I don’t know how I’d have lived for the last few years. Once the torch was burning well, I followed the stairway down. In the manor, this had let out into a cave, here it was—
A cave, but a completely different one. Lower, narrower, a lot sandier. For a minute I was completely disoriented, I guess because my brain wanted to orient itself by a sea that wasn’t there, but then it gave it up and got back to work. I went left, and the cave unceremoniously ended after a dozen paces; there were no marks on the wall. I turned and went back. As I passed the door, I thought for a moment I was smelling the ocean-sea again, but no, it was all wrong.
It was a long walk, and at times I had to turn sideways when the walls narrowed. What makes caves? Why do they behave like that? Someone must know.
I saw light ahead of me, and took some consolation that at least the back of the cave and the front went in the directions they were supposed to. I stepped out of the cave and into the fading light of early evening. Not the ocean-sea, it was a river, the cave opening onto its bank, perhaps thirty feet from the water, flowing from my right to my left. It was not a big river, and not a fast river, certainly puny compared to the one that cut through Adrilankha, but I could tell it was navigable because I have a good eye for such things and because there were a couple of small barges poling their way along it, both heading downriver.