In Which We Leave
on a Trip
I am always at a loss to know how much to believe of my own stories.
—WASHINGTON IRVING
Slovotsky's Law Number Nineteen: When telling a story, effect trumps truth.
—WALTER SLOVOTSKY
Stash used to swear that it really happened, but lying runs in the Slovotsky family. Me, I don't believe it.
Story goes like this:
Once, when I was real young—three or so—Stash put me on a kitchen counter, and held out his hands.
"Jump, Walter, jump," he said. "Don't worry; I'll catch you."
"No, you won't," I said. "You'll let me fall."
"Jump, Walter, jump. Really—I'll catch you. Honest."
We went back and forth for awhile, him holding his huge hands out for me, me scared, knowing that this was some sort of test.
I jumped. And he stepped back and I fell on the floor, hard.
I lay there crying. "But you said you'd catch me."
"That will teach you not to trust anybody," he said.
I've thought about it, over the years. I've thought a lot about it. Doing it would have been cruel, and my father would have cut his hands off before being cruel to me. But pretending that he had done it, maybe that's different. What he was telling me was true: guaranteed, if you live long enough, and trust people even casually, somebody you've trusted will let you down.
They're only human; everybody's fallible, including me. Particularly me.
Is it better to learn that through a childhood calamity that maybe never really happened or to risk learning it when it really matters?
Don't tell me that lies are always cruel.
Jason found me down in the fencing studio, a large room at the east end of the barracks annex. A light and airy place: one wall consisted mainly of shutters open to the daylight, the other wall was regularly whitewashed.
I'd taken out a practice saber and a straw dummy and—after a good stretch; you need those more and more as the years go by—I was practicing some lunges, working my thigh muscles so hard they practically screamed.
As a friend of a friend used to say, "After forty, it's patch, patch, patch." The maintenance costs on the physical plant keep going up, but the infrastructure keeps wearing down. My right knee had developed what was looking like a long-term ache, although it only got real bad when I overdid things. Still, not good. I thought about ice, and I thought about heat, and I thought a lot about traveling over to Little Pittsburgh to see the Spider, and find out if he could put some whammy on my cartilage.
"Mind if I join you?" Jason asked. He was dressed in a white cotton tunic with matching pantaloons bloused into the tops of his boots: good workout clothes.
"Why? Am I falling apart?" I gestured at the rack of practice weapons. "Sure. Pick a toy."
"Thanks." He selected a pair of mock Therranji fighting sticks and gave a few practice swats at my favorite sparring partner: a wooden pillar, covered with hemp matting that ran floor to ceiling. He blocked an imaginary blow, parried another, then hammered out a quick tattoo against the covered wood. Thwocka-thwok-thwok-thwok-thwok.
"Want some free advice, worth what you pay for it?" I asked, taking up an on-guard stance opposite him.
He nodded. "Sure." He moved one stick back defensively, and thrust the other one out tentatively.
"Don't try to be able to do everything. Balance yourself between overspecialization and not being able to learn anything." I moved in and gently parried an experimental thrust, beat his stick hard aside, then withdrew.
"Nice," he said. He tried a complex maneuver that I didn't quite follow, which probably foreshadowed an attack against my sword arm; I parried easily and moved to the side, letting his lunge take him by me, blocking his attempted slash with his left stick.
"Thankee much, young Cullinane." I faked a slash at his right wrist, then turned the movement into a thrust that would have skewered him through the chest except for two things: one, we were using practice weapons; two, Jason blocked—too nicely by half!—with his left stick.
It had taken me too long to figure out what he was doing—he wasn't trying real Therranji stick play. He was fighting two-swords style, using his left stick as though it was a dagger, his right like a saber. Close in, the dagger is a killing weapon—if you go corps-a-corps against a two-swords man, you'd best not already have something interesting to do with your free hand. At normal fighting distance, it's a decidedly annoying additional blocking device and threat, particularly the ones with the pronged hilt that can trap your blade.
The classic one-sword solution to the two-sword problem is straightforward, in both senses. You maneuver your opponent into taking a square stance—all attack and little defense—while you're in a three-quarters or side stance, very effective on defense. Block hard on the long sword, then attack the long-sword arm, hit it hard, withdraw enough to be sure that he's lost the weapon—that's not the point to get eager—then skewer him.
Forget fencing targets, forget one-cut finishes. All those pretty lunges in an attempt to get through to the body aren't worth half as much as a good, deep cut down the forearm, a slice through muscle and tendon that leaves a weapon dropping from a bloody hand.
I was thinking about too much theory, I guess; Jason worked his way through my defense and gently bounced what I was thinking of as his blocking stick off my head.
"Damn." I backed off, rubbing at the sore spot. It hurt.
He smiled. "Another point?"
"Nah."
He set the fighting sticks back in the rack, then turned to face me. "You don't think much of the idea of sniffing around Ehvenor, do you?"
"No, I don't." I shook my head. "I don't like messing around with magic."
He nodded. "I understand that. I agree. But a messenger just arrived. Seems there's other things going on near Ehvenor, too—there's been a 'Warrior lives' killing in Fenevar."
*Complete with note. In English, apparently.*
I hadn't heard from the dragon for hours.
"Mikyn?"
He shrugged. "Possibly not. It's our only lead."
Now, that was something reasonable. I mean, handling an outpouring of the magical was out of my league, but following a clue toward a lost friend was something I could handle.
"One party or two?" he asked.
Two parties was the obvious solution. One to look into Faerie, one to chase after Mikyn. One party to contain me, one not. But, still, what would we do when we caught him? Arrest him? For what?
Mikyn, you're under arrest for suspicion of being crazy because we haven't heard from you for too long.
Nah. On the other hand, if he had gone over the edge . . . well, it needed somebody relatively senior and trustworthy. There was a shortage of those. "I dunno. Let me talk it over with Ahira."
Jason nodded. "Sure. Let's go."
"Now?"
"Is there some problem with now?"
The dwarf was in the darkened smithy, again, his finished mail shirt hanging from a frame on the wall. Light from the coals reflected from his eyes, making them all red and demonic. He had a piece of work going in the forge. It looked like the start of something: a piece of thumb-thick bar stock about the length of my forearm, with another, shorter piece welded perpendicularly onto it, about a quarter of the distance from one end.
"What's that going to be?" I asked.
He smiled as he slipped the joint back into the forge, and worked the bellows, hard. Heat washed against my face in a solid wave, while rivulets of sweat worked their way through the hair and the scars on his naked chest. He had been at it for some time; the thick hot air in the smithy was filled with the not-unpleasant reek of fresh sweat.
"Don't you remember those newfangled nightsticks the police were starting to wear, back on the Other Side? I figured I'd give one a try." He tapped the hammer gently against the end. "The handle's supposed to spin—I've got Kayren whittling a collar for this. I'll slip it over, then flare out the end just a trifle."
"I remember them," I said, "but those were made of wood."
Ahira smiled. "I figure I can handle the extra weight." He was silent for a long moment. "You're trying to decide whether or not it's one party or two."
Jason looked disgusted. "Oh, come on."
"Hey, kid," I said, "you have a friend for more than twenty years, and spend most—"
"Too much, anyway," the dwarf put in.
"—of your waking life with him, and he'll read your mind, too."
Trouble was, Ahira was only close, this time. I was more thinking about keeping the hell out of the Faerie matter than I was about who would be looking into it.
The dwarf shrugged. "It's pretty obvious. The Faerie matter is more important, but the likelihood that it's something we can affect, one way or the other, is small. On the other hand, Mikyn is one of ours, and so is the Warrior myth we created. We have to look into that." He was silent for a moment. "One party," Ahira said. "Mainly to check out Ehvenor; that takes priority over looking for Mikyn."
"That seems awfully clear to you," I said. I can't always read his mind—Ahira's smarter than I am. But sometimes I can divert him.
"Andrea's necessary for Ehvenor," he said, ignoring the objection, "and I'm not going to let her wander around without us."
"Is that an issue?"
He pursed his lips for a moment. "Yes. She's going, she says, and Tennetty's going with her. Tennetty is dangerous without proper supervision—so that means at least one more of us."
Jason cocked his head to one side. "How about two parties? We've got more people available. Durine, Kethol, and Piro, for a start."
"We could let you take Kethol and company and go haring after Mikyn," Ahira said, as though considering it.
"Well, yes."
"Bad idea," the dwarf said. "I want them around, keeping an eye on the family." That's how Ahira referred to my wife and daughters: the family, as though none other mattered. I understand that. "If Daherrin was here, we could get some help from his team, but he's not. We don't have enough for two parties." He smiled at Jason. "The lesson begins: pick the party."
Jason made a fist, and stuck out his thumb. "Me."
"Who's going to take care of the pups?" I asked. "I thought you were going to take responsibility for them."
Jason smiled weakly. "I guess I have to add the job to the scullery maids' roster—and Jane says she'll take a turn."
I grinned back at him. "Handy to have a bit of rank, eh?"
"I tried to handle it without delegating it to them. Okay?" Not waiting for a smartass answer, Jason added the index finger. "Second is Mother—you're right that we have to have a wizard in on this, if we're going to look into the Faerie matter." He was missing the point: Andrea was already insisting on checking out Ehvenor. The only question was who would go with her, not whether or not she would go. "Then there's you two." He rubbed at the side of his nose with his middle finger. "You don't like the idea of trying to do two things at once, do you?"
I snorted. "I sometimes have enough trouble doing one thing at once." I cocked my head to one side. "Don't you have any misgivings about taking your mother along on this?"
She had handled herself well in Velen, and I'd been watching her closely since. She looked fine, not much different at all, although maybe there was a bit more of a rosy glow to her cheeks than usual. But going out in harm's way wasn't something Andrea had been doing, not since the very beginning. And if it required magic?
Again, it was all academicor:—Andrea was going, and that was that—but Ahira and I were teaching Jason; "academic" doesn't mean "irrelevant."
"No," Jason said. "I don't." Jason's expression wasn't one of unconcern; it was a cold and distant look, the expression of a chessmaster who knows the value of his pieces, and will push them around the board into the right place, no matter whose face the piece wears.
"It's necessary," he said. He added his little finger. "Tennetty." He held out his hand, fingers spread. "Five of us. Small enough not to draw unnecessary attention, small enough to hide with a little cover, large enough to handle some trouble. Ellegon to drop us off and pick us up. Just outside of Ehvenor, I'd think."
"No," Ahira said. "If there's something really sticky going on there, we don't want to drop right in on it. Better to work our way up to it, and sniff around as we go. The locals may have done some of the looking into things for us."
Better, yes. Best was to keep the hell out of it. I didn't say as much, but I guess my face showed it.
Ahira turned to Jason. "Give us a minute, will you?"
"But—"
"Now will be fine," he said, gesturing to the door of the smithy. "You can get my saddle from the stable. I want to put a few more equipment rings on it."
He stood in the doorway, watching the boy walk away, then turned back to me.
"Give it up, Walter," Ahira said. "You don't have to go, nobody's going to hold an axe to your throat. But you know you're going, just as well as I do." His chuckle was hollow in his barrel chest. "Three reasons; take your pick. First," he said, "because while this whole thing about creatures coming out of Faerie was distant, as of about ten days ago it became local, it became personal. Your wife and kids live in this country, in this barony, and you're no more going to leave that kind of menace uninvestigated than I am."
He looked up at me. "Second reason: Jason, Andy, Tennetty, and I are going. You're not going to let us go into this alone," he said, as though daring me to dispute it.
"Noble guy, aren't I?" I smiled.
He didn't take the bait, not directly. "One last reason," he said, not looking me in the eye. "Your wife won't let you touch her, and if you can get away for awhile, you won't have to deal with that. You can put off handling that for as long as we're on the road." He turned back to the forge.
I wanted to be angry, to be furious with him for mentioning it. If he'd said it in the presence of anybody else, I know I would have been.
But he was right. On all three counts.
Damn, damn, damn.
Jason walked through the doorway, a saddle slung over his shoulder. "Where do you want this?" he asked.
"Just dump it on the floor," Ahira said. "You'd best go pack. We leave in the morning."
As we walked away, Jason's brow furrowed. "What was that all about?"
"What?"
He gestured clumsily. "Ahira. It was like he was . . . I don't know. Not there. Angry, maybe. Was it something I said?"
"Nah. It's not you. Game face," I said.
"Eh?"
"Never mind."
He frowned.
I thought about explaining that even when you look at the football game as a job, as a way to pay for school, you get yourself psyched up for it, and that when you trot out on the field, your heart pumping hard, the ground springy beneath your feet, ready to, say, grab a quarterback and slam him down so hard that his descendants will still ache, there's a kind of glare you wear, whether or not you intend to. And then I thought about how he probably didn't have the background to appreciate it, and how I didn't feel like explaining football to a This Sider.
And then I thought about how if I kept saying "Never mind" to the kid every time he asked a question, he was going to slip a knife into me someday, so I just smiled.
"Honest," I said. "It's not important."
I'd said goodbye to the kids, and to the pups, so I went over the list one more time. Weapons, clothes, food, money, miscellaneous. Miscellaneous was, as always, the largest category. I was packed for running, if necessary—the most important stuff was in either my belt pouch or my small rucksack.
Grab and run, if I had to. When the shit comes down, you grab your friends, and—if time—your essentials. Leave the rest be.
There was a gout of fire below in the courtyard.
*They're waiting for you. So am I.*
So wait a bit longer.
My big rucksack was packed solid; I took it to the window and tossed it down to Ahira's waiting hands. Thunk,
I turned back to Kirah. "Like the old days, eh, old girl?" I asked, smiling.
She didn't smile back. "I don't want you to go."
Walter Slovotsky's advice to wives whose husbands are packing for a trip: be nice. Let problems lie.
Look—trivial problems can wait, or you can solve them yourself while your spouse is gone. That's why we call them trivial, eh? They're not important. You can't solve anything serious between the time he takes his rucksack down out of the closet and when he heads out the door. That's not the time to try.
All it can do is screw up his mind while he's gone. So leave it be. This wasn't a time to be discussing that; it wasn't the time for either of us to be discussing anything.
The obvious thing, the right thing for me to do was to ignore what she'd just said.
"Right," I said. "And you don't want me to stay, either. You can't stand to have me touch you, remember?"
"Please. Don't blame me for that." She faced me in the doorway. "It's not my fault, Walter. I try, but every time you touch me, it's like . . ." she raised her hand in apology, as a shudder shook her frame. "I'm sorry."
Walter Slovotsky's advice to husbands leaving on a trip is ever the same . . .
I gripped her arms tightly, ignoring her struggles. "It's not my fault, either, Kirah. I didn't do that to you, and I won't be blamed for it. I won't—" I started, then stopped, and let her go. She gripped herself across the middle and turned away. Her shoulders shook as she fell to her knees.
"No." I won't live my life in penance for harm others have done to you, I didn't quite say.
*It's neither of your fault, if you want my opinion,* Ellegon said, his voice pitched only for me.
Thanks. I think I needed that.
*All part of the service. Should we get going, or do you want to have a few more tender moments with your wife?*
I kissed the tips of my fingers and held them out toward her back. "Goodbye, Kirah."
Ah, parting is such sweet sorrow . . .
The sun had shattered the chill of the earliest morning, but clouds were moving in, and the sky to the east was slate gray and threatening. Time to get going—flying through rain is no fun at all.
Jason and Andrea had already climbed up and fastened themselves into their seats on the rigging we'd lashed to Ellegon's broad back, while Ahira was under the dragon's belly, giving the knots a last check. I'm as safety-conscious as anybody else, but riding Ellegon isn't like riding a horse—he'll let you know if things start to give.
*Alternately, if I do have it in for you, a few strands of rope aren't going to make a difference.* The dragon snorted, startling the honor guard of soldiers who had gathered to bid us good journeying.
Doria was taking her duties as Steward seriously—she had a list of things to do sticking out of her blouse pocket.
"Going to have this place in good shape by the time we're back, eh?" I asked, with a knowing smirk.
She smiled and shrugged. "I lost my old profession when I defied the Mother; I'd better find something else I can do." She knew better. If nothing else, there was always a job open at the Home school, teaching English, civics, and pretty much anything else; besides, Lou Riccetti would be glad to have her around.
"Home ec majors," I sniffed. I gave Doria a quick squeeze goodbye, then climbed up and belted myself into the saddle behind Tennetty.
She turned in her seat and gave me a quick glare. "You took long enough."
"Leave it be." Andrea frowned her into silence.
"Everything okay?" Ahira asked, as he levered himself into his seat and belted himself in, too firmly; dwarves dislike flying almost as much as they do traveling by boat.
Jason felt at the butt of his revolver, from where it projected under his jacket. "All set."
Tennetty folded her arms in front of her chest and leaned back against the pile of gear lashed between the two of us. "Fine."
Andrea gestured in impatience. "Let's go."
"Ducky," I said. "Let's get the fuck out of here."
*Hang on . . .*