“Oh, does he indeed?” I said. Because I didn’t want him to think that I was someone who jumped whenever Rosseth snapped his fingers. “Well,” I said, “you can go tell the Lord Rosseth that the Princess Marinesha will be there in good enough time to suit herself, and if that doesn’t suit him, there’s a delightful man in the kitchen who wants him downstairs this minute.” Because Shadry absolutely hated Rosseth; it was dreadful what he used to put that boy through. I was sorry after I’d said that about Shadry. I said to Tikat, “I’ll be up when I can, I just have to clean away these pieces and hope Karsh doesn’t notice.” But I knew he would.
Tikat had the prettiest eyelashes I’ve ever seen. You wouldn’t imagine a village boy like him having such long, thick eyelashes, the color of warm afternoon sun on the courtyard dust when it’s getting late. And he was tall, much taller than Rosseth, and there was that voice; and if he’d only paid a little attention to his hair, it would have looked like—I don’t know. Like a beautiful bird or an animal, all by itself. Not that I ever gave him more than “good morning” or “good evening,” I’m sure, but he was always very courteous to me, so that shows you.
But this time he was different. I can’t tell you how different he was—if I said he was pale as this or shaking like that, then you’d think that was the difference, that thing, and it wasn’t. Only that I hadn’t seen him like that before. He said, “Marinesha, you will have to tell him yourself. I can’t go back up there.”
“What is it?” I said. “What’s the matter with you?” His voice was so low. I mean, it isn’t as though I didn’t know what the trouble was. There probably wasn’t even a guest who didn’t know that he’d come all this terrible journey to find his girl, and then that pale, whispering little—well, I’ll just say that little thing—just turned away and pretended she didn’t even know him. I thought it was shameful, and I thought the other two put her up to it, the showy, arrogant pair of them, and I wasn’t the least bit shy about saying so. Which took the wind out of a certain stable boy, I can tell you, but what did I care for that? Tikat had manners, and if there is one thing in this world I respect, there you have it. Manners.
But all he said was, “I can’t—I am a coward—I cannot,” and he was past me and gone, almost knocking Shadry over as he came through, which made me laugh—I couldn’t stop myself. So after that there was nothing to do but smooth down Shadry, hide the bits of the broken porringer, and go up to Rosseth. He had just finished settling the oldest man I ever saw onto a straw mattress on the floor. The old man’s eyes were closed, and he was the color of old snow. I was servant to a hedge-doctor once—hardly more than a baby, I was—and I have seen dead people, many of them. I would have thought he was dead, except that Rosseth was talking to him. He was saying, ”There you are, sir, as comfortable as anyone at The Gaff and Slasher. I’m sure your friends will be returning by this evening. If there’s anything more I can do for you.“ But the old man said never a word.
“The only thing you can do for that one,” I said from the doorway, “is to ask him where he wants his body sent, and what sort of priests should meet the coach.” Rosseth spun around and glared at me, but I just smiled. Rosseth always hated it when I did that, just smiled at him in that way. I said, “And the best thing you can do for yourself is pray that Karsh doesn’t miss that spare mattress. He’d turn out your insides to stuff a new one.”
Rosseth gave that long, long, patient sigh that was always his way of annoying me. He said, “This gentleman has only come to see his friends. He won’t be staying the night.”
“He won’t last the night,” I said. Rosseth put a finger to his lips, but I certainly didn’t pay that any mind. I said, “Those three sluts will come back to find a dead man waiting for them.” Which suited me well enough, and I laughed right there, just thinking about it. “Poor things. The only kind of man they won’t be able to get any use out of. I don’t suppose.”
Oh, wasn’t Rosseth furious at me, though? I did it on purpose, I don’t mind telling you that. Because ever since those women came to the inn, Rosseth had been growing more and more impossible, especially in the last week or two. We’d been used to having our nice restful chats, when Karsh wasn’t around, and sometimes our little walks in the woods or even an afternoon in Corcorua— but now he couldn’t talk about anything except Lal’s beautiful hands or Nyateneri’s elegant ways, or how charming and friendly that Lukassa was, once you got to know her. So tedious, so tiresome. I’m afraid I’d just run out of patience with his daydreaming, that’s all.
“Marinesha,” he said to me—like that, through his teeth—“Marinesha, come here and sit down.” He sat down himself by the mattress and beckoned me over. I stood where I was, thank you very much, until he said, “Please,” really rather nicely. Then I went and sat across from him, on the other side of the old man, and I said, “Well?” Just that, you see.
Rosseth said, “You know something about healing. More than I do, unless it’s a horse. Tell me what to do.”
“I’ve told you already,” I said. “Ask him where he wants to be buried. He hasn’t eaten for days, by the look of him, and he must have gotten caught in that squall that came up over town this morning. And he’s very old. That’s all that’s wrong with him, but there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Well, Rosseth looked so stricken at that that I really felt sorry for him. Some people look nicer when they’re sad, and Rosseth was one of those. I asked, “Why should a stranger trouble you so? I’m sure he’s a good old man, but he’s no uncle of yours. Or is he?” I added that last because Rosseth is an orphan—I mean, I am, too, which gave us anyway that much in common—but at least I’d always known my parents’ names and where they came from, and poor Rosseth didn’t even know where he was born. So the man could have been a relative of his, you see, like anyone.
Rosseth said, “Look at him. He’s somebody, he’s important.” At that I got angry all over again, and I said, “Why? Because he’s a friend of theirs? That’s what it is, that’s why you’re going on like this, isn’t it?” But Rosseth just shook his head.
“Look at him, Marinesha,” he kept saying. “Look at him.” So finally I took my first real look at that old man’s face—I mean, past the smudgy, gappy old mouth, past the lines and wrinkles and scratches, and the dirt ground into them all, past the awful grayness, past everything, past the features themselves, if you understand me. And I don’t know—I don’t know—looking at him just started to make me happy, in a funny way. It made me want to cry, too, but it was the same thing. I don’t know, I just stared and stared, and Rosseth did too, and we didn’t talk any more.
By and by we heard Karsh shouting downstairs for Rosseth. I said, “You go on. I’ll just bide with him for a little.” So Rosseth looked at me a moment, and then he smiled and touched my shoulder, and he said, “Thank you,” and went out. And I sat there by the mattress, watching that old man, and presently I went and got a cloth to clean his face with a bit. Because there was no reason he ought to be dirty, even if he was old and sick and maybe dying. And while I was doing it, he opened his eyes.
“Oh,” he said. “Marinesha.” Just as though we’d known each other forever, and he was surprised to see me, but pleased, too. He had a thoughtful sort of voice, with just the least bit of an accent. He said, “My, I feel rather like a kitten getting its face washed by its mother. A refreshing way to wake up, I must say.” When he smiled, it didn’t matter that there were teeth gone.
I was very shy with him, all of a sudden. I couldn’t help wishing that he’d gone on sleeping, just a while longer. I stood up quickly, and I said, “Sir, are you feeling better? What can I do for you?” Just like Rosseth, after all.
He laughed then. I don’t know how to tell you about his laugh. A shaky little gasp of a laugh it was, this side of a cough, really, but you wanted to hear it again. He said, “Well, you could go on standing there in the sunlight—I wouldn’t ask for more than that—but I think my friends are on the stairs. I know you don’t much care for them, and I’d not want to shame you after such kindness.”
And the next thing, there they were, the three of them, banging the door open and filling the room with their clatter and swagger. They stood there with their mouths open and their eyes popping, exactly like a row of fish in the market, and then the black one stammered out, “Rosseth told us—” and Miss Nyateneri swung her shoulders and demanded, “Where have you been?” like the boldface she was. As for that other one, she went straight to him and dropped on her knees beside the mattress. She put her hands between his, showing off that great vulgar emerald she always wore. He touched it, and he smiled and said something like, “So, it finds its way home again,” which I didn’t understand. But she was crying, of all things, and then he said, “Be still, be still. You are where you should be. Be still now.”
Nobody gave me any more of a glance than they would a dish of dog scraps, of course, not when I opened the door and not when I closed it behind me. But I stood on the landing for a moment, not eavesdropping, just getting myself ready for what was waiting downstairs—dirt and smoke and food smells, Karsh and Shadry yelling, Gatti Jinni waiting his chance to get me in a corner, farmers and soldiers already laughing-drunk in the taproom, guests badgering me to do forty different tasks for them at once, and my own chores going on till midnight, longer if I wasn’t lucky. What I had to do, you see, was make myself forget how nice it was just being alone with that old man—at least until I could get off with it by myself somewhere. I mean, otherwise who’d ever go downstairs?
LAL
Of course we were jealous, both of us—how could we not have been jealous? Here we were, Nyateneri and I, having journeyed at great risk and labor to a far country to aid our dearest master, having searched for weeks longer after that, day on dreary day, just for some sign of his presence in the world—and then having to stand and watch while he ignored us to greet a stranger, Lukassa, as though she were his long-lost daughter. Yet how could it have been different? He always went where the need was greatest, immediately, without having to be told. My life is witness to this, as is Nyateneri’s.
Nevertheless, if he had called her chamata while all the soothing and comforting was going on, I think I might have hit him. That is my name, even if I don’t know what it means. (I did hit him once, by the way, very long ago, when I was flailing mad with fear, and so young that I truly expected him to kill me for it.) But he spoke another name entirely, looking at Nyateneri and me over Lukassa’s head, which was bowed in the hollow of his thin shoulder. He said, “His name is Arshadin.”
He loves to do that, to sail from one of your unasked questions to another, like a monkey somersaulting through the high branches. He never lies—never—but you must climb right after him if you want to keep up at all. It is exactly as maddening as he intends it to be, and at times the urge to make him scramble a bit himself is overwhelming. I nodded towards Nyateneri and replied, “His name is Soukyan. I don’t like it much.”
The smile was unchanged, as tender and secret as ever. “In that case, I should go on calling him Nyateneri. Unless he objects very strongly.” He looked solemnly back and forth from one to the other of us, as though he were settling a nursery dispute.
Nyateneri and I looked directly at each other, I think for the first time since that night we must all remember by different names. In the week since he and Rosseth and Lukassa and I had stumbled out of that battered, tipsy bed, we had trudged on about our everlasting search without saying more than we had to, communicating mostly by swift sidelong glances. Yet nothing much seemed to have changed, except that Nyateneri—his woman’s guise reassumed, largely for the sake of Karsh’s sanity—had taken over the tiny room next door, and that poor Rosseth could neither stay away from us nor speak to us. For Lukassa, as far as I could tell, the events of that night might have been no more than a sweet, lingering dream; for myself, they represented an annoying complication. I make love only with very old friends, of whom I have very few, and with whom there is no danger of falling in love, no chance of being distracted from the task or the journey at hand, and no need to guard my back. I do not sleep with recent acquaintances, traveling companions, professional associates, or people who are too much like me, and Nyateneri/Soukyan was all of these, as well as the most profound deceiver I had ever known in a life spent among liars. Whatever else might be between us— and I was not such a priggish fool as to imagine that there was nothing—there could never possibly be trust, not for a man who had tricked me so shamingly, and so dangerously.
Injured pride, certainly; but there was regret in it, too, which is even rarer than trust, in my life.
Nyateneri said stiffly, “I am used to the name. I will answer to it.” Then he went and knelt by the mattress, and my friend rested a hand on his head. I stood still, almost swaying with joy and relief, and irritated with everyone in the world. Even when my friend beckoned to me, I stood where I was.
“There’s my Lal,” he said without mockery. “My Lal, who must see everything, must think of everything, must be responsible for everything. Chamata, I teach those who come to me only what I am certain will be useful to them one day. I knew that you would always live close enough to Uncle Death to nod to him in the street, so I taught you a small trick of picking his pocket as you pass him by. As for your comrade here, he came flying from such hounds as even you have not yet known—hounds that will run on his track as long as he lives.” Nyateneri looked at no one, showed nothing. My friend’s voice went on, quavering with fatigue, and a little also with his old laughter. “Hounds can smell wonderfully well, but they see quite poorly. You might say that I taught Nyateneri a way of confusing their vision, at least for a while.” The last words bent upwards toward a question.
“For a while,” Nyateneri said. “The last ones hunted by scent. The third still runs loose.”
My friend nodded, unsurprised. “Ah, there’s the difficulty in depending on tricks—they never work all the time, even the best of them. And when you have used them all, there is truly nothing left, nothing of yourself before the tricks, or beyond them. He taught me that, Arshadin.”
The room was very still. I had to say something. I said, “Arshadin. The boy who came not long after I did, with the hill accent and the funny ears.” And almost at the same time, Nyateneri said, “I remember. Short, southern, kept a chikchi flute in his shirt all the time.” But my friend turned his head slowly from one side to the other, being too tired and weak even to shake it properly.
“You do not know Arshadin,” he said. “Neither of you. Nor did I.” He closed his eyes and was silent for a time, while Lukassa fussed about with pillows and Nyateneri and I stared at each other: wordlessly, grudgingly walking side by side through days and nights no less shared for falling years apart. Oh, you never could hurry him, never get anything out of him but in his own way. Do you remember, do you remember how he used to, over and over, did he ever say to you, I remember, yes, and didn’t that always drive you mad? I heard a fly buzz in a corner of the window as we stood there, and Rosseth’s pet donkey braying creakily for winter apples.
The pale, exhausted eyes, that had been so joyously green, came abruptly open. “I missed you after you were gone, chamata.” His voice was even and ruminative. “I was not prepared for that, missing someone, not at my age. As well start cutting new teeth or singing under young girls’ windows. It was”—he hesitated briefly—“it was disconcerting.”
I blinked speechlessly at him, recalling that he had neither embraced me nor so much as waited to watch me go, that day when I set out alone again into the world because he said it was time. I was still young, and he was all I had then, and I cried for him many a night, huddled in my blanket under dripping trees, no more than their branches between me and the wind. But it would never have occurred to me to wonder whether he felt at all lessened or lonely without me, and the idea seemed nearly as unnatural to me even now as it must have done to him. Nyateneri smiled slightly, without malice. It annoyed me anyway.
“Disconcerting,” my friend went on. “Either I am more sentimental than I knew, or else my vanity starves without someone to rescue and protect and teach. However that may be, Arshadin appeared at my door when I was, if you like, at a low ebb, a bit at loose ends. An ordinary-looking boy, without your fierce charm, Lal, without Nyateneri’s presence. Nor was he a fugitive of any sort, but a farmer’s second son, well-fed, moderately educated, and most calmly certain about what he meant to do with his life.” He paused, absently stroking Lukassa’s hair and looking with great deliberation from one to the other of us. I am the Inbarati of Khaidun, if I never see Khaidun again—and I never will—raised from infancy to tell tales, but I learned as much of the storyteller’s sly art from that man as I did from my mother and grandmother and all my aunts. I never told him that.
My friend said, “Arshadin’s simple, single ambition was to be the greatest magician who ever walked the earth. He achieved it.”
Rosseth’s donkey brayed again just at that moment, which set us all laughing too loudly. My friend fell silent again for a moment, and then resumed, speaking almost to himself. “You always wonder about it, you know, if you are one of those who cannot resist the enticement of teaching. What will happen when I meet someone with a greater gift than my own? It is easy enough to be kind and helpful to those who do not threaten me—but how will it be with one who is my master and does not yet realize it? How will I be in that day?”
Nyateneri and I began speaking at once, but he stilled me with a gesture that was no less commanding for being so frail and miniature. “If you don’t mind, we can leave out the part where you both assure me loudly that I could never have to face such a decision. We all meet our masters, all of us—why do you think we are in this world?— and I am telling you that I met mine one overcast afternoon when I went to the door with my mouth still full of tea-cake. I knew him on the instant—as you will know a greater swordsman one day, Lal, with the first salute of your blades. And I invited him in for tea.”
