Vallista

15. This Smooth Magic

Since I’d left the castle, it had gone from afternoon to dusk and now it was back to evening. All of this random messing around from night to day and back was going to do serious damage to my sleep cycle. The drugs they’d given me probably wouldn’t help much either. I was probably going to have a long, long, nap after this was all over; maybe a couple of days’ worth. For now, though, I didn’t feel tired. I did feel warm, however; I shrugged my cloak back off my shoulders, only now realizing that it’d been colder at the other place. Temperature is one of those things I notice when I’m not busy with anything else.

Loiosh stirred in my cloak, then, without saying a word, made his way up to my shoulder. I felt him grip and flap as he nearly lost his balance.

“You sure you’re all right there?”

“I feel better here.”

“All right.”

“What now?”

“I think we backtrack, and keep an eye out for Discaru.”

“I thought you killed him.”

“In a different time. He’s a demon, remember? I only banished him from that place.”

“But it’s connected, and—”

“Yeah, I know. And maybe he’s gone from here. I just don’t want to count on it and be surprised.”

“Yeah. Good thinking, Boss.”

To be clear, I thought he was probably right—I was pretty sure Discaru was gone from this world; but if I was wrong, things could get ugly. One reason I’m still around to tell you these stories is because when I’m doing big things that are crazy, I try to play it safe with as much of the little stuff as I can. It’s worked so far, right? Of course, “It’s worked so far, right?” do pretty well as last words, so let’s not get cocky about it.

I took a look around the courtyard area in case there was anything I’d missed, but if so I missed it again. And then it was back into the passage, and back around, making tedious but necessary stops to pick the locks on the other doors just to make sure that, yes, they really did lead back into the same courtyard, just like they appeared to.

Eventually I came back to where I’d first entered the passage. What now? Retrace my steps the whole long, bloody way? To where? To do what? I had my answers now, at least some of them, but I didn’t know what to do with them. I know what I wanted to do: go find Zhayin and smack him around a little just on general principle. But that probably wasn’t the best way to get my answers and solve Devera’s problems. What was?

Okay, I’d start by retracing my steps, just for lack of a better idea.

Once more, then, into the bedroom. I frowned at the strange window-doors; I wasn’t sure that was the way I’d come in, but how else?

I tested the doors, they opened, and I stepped through.

And I was back on the cliff. I didn’t think I’d ever get used to this.

I took a few steps down, and I was outside the cave again. There was an extinguished torch at my feet. I picked it up, tried to light it, failed, then stepped into the cave out of the wind and managed to get it going. The stairway was where it was supposed to be; I followed it up and was back in the cellar beneath the manor. I deliberately avoided looking around too much as I went through it; I didn’t want any more distractions. It was a long walk, all in all, up and down, and through scary rooms of sorcery and boring hallways, but then I was back to—

There. That was the room where Discaru had brought me to the Halls of Judgment. Would it work without him there? Or was he still there, waiting for me, really annoyed at me for having shoved a Great Weapon up under his chin? There was also the question of did I want to visit the Halls of Judgment again. That was easy: no, I didn’t. I like it when there are questions I know the answer to.

I went farther down the hall until I stood in the room with the fake wall, with the thing on the other side. It didn’t come bursting out while I stood there, which I thought was kind of it. I stared at the wall. One way or another, I don’t think you and I are done with each other, my friend. I turned and went back through the door and continued down the spiral stairway that emerged—I’m tempted to say as usual—on the wrong side of the hall.

I walked down the hall, remembering where things were, or should be, or might be but probably weren’t. Like, directly above me should have been the room where I’d reached the Halls of Judgment, the little room where I’d seen Discaru, then the hidden cell that contained the beast. Like I said, that should have been above me, but where was it, really, relative to where I was? It was slightly crazy-making. I kept trying, pointless as it was, to fit it all into my head. What was past the beast room? The balcony above the ballroom? No, that should be farther back. The armory, then. No, the mirror room.

The mirror room.

A workshop cabin full of glass sheets, silver, an oven, and a bunch of things whose use I didn’t understand. Put them together, and what do you get? Mirrors. Lots of mirrors.

Use of mirrors is one of the few things Eastern witchcraft and sorcery have in common. Glass with a silver backing reflecting light is used in all manner of things. For necromancy? Well, form a connection with the Halls in order to create a link with a higher plane, then bounce it off mirrors to symbolically reflect it through the manor; the odd backwardness in places, where things were on the wrong side of the hall, or up when they should be down, was just a side effect of the spell.

Well, so what? I mean, I’d already tried to hit one of the damn things, and all I’d gotten was a numb hand.

“Lady Teldra, Boss,” said the brains of the outfit.

Damn.

“That could be interesting. When did you think of it?”

“First time you hit the mirror.”

“Why didn’t you mention it then?”

“Because it could be interesting.”

Straight ahead to the ballroom, then up—a stairway up that actually went up. Around the edge of the balcony, and there was the mirror room. I pulled the door open.

Was I really going to do this?

“Ready, Loiosh?”

“Not really, Boss.”

Of course I was going to do this. I drew Lady Teldra. She had her most usual form, the thin, very long knife or very short sword. Without giving myself time to consider consequences, I picked out the nearest mirror, thought, Verra, I hope this doesn’t kill me, and gave it a good, hard, backhand cut right across the middle.

This time, the transition was not smooth. It wasn’t subtle, either. I felt like my teeth were about to rattle themselves out of my head, the room spun, there was a roaring in my ears, and then I was facedown, still holding Lady Teldra.

I opened my eyes. The floor was a hard, manufactured substance of pure white. I turned my head, and there was a wall next to me that seemed to be made of the same thing.

“Hello, my dear. Would you mind terribly putting that away?”

I knew that odd, weird, echoey voice.

I raised my head. “Goddess?”

“Whom were you expecting?” said Verra. “Please be so kind as to sheathe your weapon, my love.”

“Where are Loiosh and Rocza?”

“They didn’t come through whatever strange device brought you to me.”

I got up on my knees, stared at Lady Teldra, then sheathed her.

“Thank you,” said Verra. “So, little Vladimir, what brought you to me today?”

“Yeah,” I said. I stood up slowly. I seemed to be all right. “Yeah, that would be my first question. But don’t worry, there are others. A lot of others.”

“Goodness,” she said. “Well then, be comfortable.”

We were sitting—her in a big chair on a raised dais, me in something padded and comfortable. I’m not even talking about the sudden travel without teleport, just suddenly appearing somewhere else. I was getting bored with it.

“Let’s start,” said my patron goddess, “with how you got here. What happened?”

“I hit a magic mirror with a Great Weapon in a house that travels from the past to the future and contains halls that exist necromantically across worlds, including the Halls of Judgment—you know, like you do.”

“Ah,” said Verra. “I see.”

“Good. Then explain it?”

“You refer to a magic mirror. What is the enchantment?”

“Goddess, what in the world would make you think I’d know that?”

She nodded. “Of course.” She looked thoughtful. “You meant it, when you said past and future?”

“I know about the past, I’m pretty sure about the future.”

“Connected by hallways.”

“And doors, yeah. Mostly doors.”

“So someone did it.”

“Yeah, someone did it. Did what?”

“Something the Vallista have been attempting for thousands of years. Tens of thousands. But someone managed it. Now, of all times. Was it a Vallista?”

“Yeah. What do you mean, now of all times?”

“I’ve suspected, my beautiful young Vladimir, but I didn’t know.” She smiled. “We should celebrate.”

“Celebrate. Right. Yes. Let’s celebrate. What are we celebrating?”

A table popped into existence next to me, then a glass cup formed like a flower. She also had one, and a bottle.

“Come,” she said.

“All right.”

I got up and went over to her, climbed the dais, and let her pour the wine, then I went back and sat down again.

She raised her glass. “The end of an era.”

“What era?”

“A very, very long era.”

“And, it just ended today?”

“No, no. It ended more than two hundred years ago. I just wasn’t sure until today.”

“Well, good then. I guess all of my questions are answered.”

“Vlad, your sarcasm grows wearisome. If you continue, I won’t give you any more wine.”

“Fine, fine.”

I raised my cup and drank some. “Dear Goddess!” I said.

“Yes?”

“Uh, this is, this is really, really good.”

“Yes. I’ve been saving it.”

“I mean, really good.”

“Shut up and drink.”

“Yes, Goddess.”

I drank some more, trying to commit it to memory. It was sweet, very sweet, but without the annoying too-much that usually comes with sweet wine. It was like drinking light, like drinking purity, and all of it was doing a dance on my tongue that defied me to pull the pieces apart.

“That is, well, thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“So, ah, just what are we celebrating?”

“Don’t think, Vlad. Concentrate on the wine.”

Yeah, that was a good plan. I did that. I would kill for wine like that. Okay, I guess that’s not saying much, what with all the things I’ve killed for. But you know what I mean.

The wine took up all of my thinking for three cups, at which time, alas, it was gone. But if I die tomorrow, I’ve had that. It was almost enough to make me forgive the goddess for, well, everything else she had ever done.

“All right,” I said, putting my cup down. “What exactly have we just celebrated?”

“The end of an era, as I said. And that, I’m afraid, is as much time as I can spare. This is big, my dear Vlad. There are things I must do, things I must prepare, gods in whose face I must laugh while crying in my best theatrical voice, ‘Told I thee not so?’”

“Uh, what?”

“I should bring you back to where you were. Mmm. That may be difficult. I think I can manage it by—”

“Goddess!”

She tilted her head and looked at me. “Yes, little one?”

“What is going on? How did I get here? What’s Devera doing there? Why—”

“Devera?” she said sharply. She had been half out of her chair, now she sat down and looked at me. “What has Devera to do with this?”

“She’s the one who got me into it.”

“Into what, exactly?”

“Brought me to the house, the place, the”—I coughed—“platform where all of this happened.”

“Why?”

“She’s trapped there.”

“Trapped? Impossible.”

“Uh, if you say so.”

She settled back fully into her chair, the way you do if you plan to be there for a while. “Tell me everything,” she said.

I glared at her. “You first.”

She stood up. “Vladimir—”

I didn’t stand up, but I touched Lady Teldra’s hilt and said evenly, “Do not threaten me, Goddess.”

“You would draw that, on me, in my own home?”

“Only if I have to.”

“You’re a fool.”

“Is that why you picked me? I mean, the first time. When I was Dolivar. You needed some idiot you could wield like a tool, who’d be too stupid to know he was being played? Was that it? All the way back, the first time? I’m stupid, Goddess, but maybe not as stupid as you think I am.”

She slowly sat down again, and I let go of Lady Teldra’s hilt.

“First of all,” she said, “I didn’t pick you, Devera did. Second, it wasn’t because you’re a fool, it was because she thought you’d be willing to stand up to her grandmother when it was needed.”

“So, in other words, a fool.”

She chuckled, and I relaxed a little more. If Loiosh had been here, fool would have been the kindest thing he’d have called me.

“One thing,” I said.

“What?”

“When I was remembering that, that life with Dolivar when you and I first met—at least, I assume it’s the first time.” I paused, but she didn’t choose to comment. “I remember thinking that Devera must have been around nine years old.”

“What of it?”

“Well, Dragaerans grow slowly, right? I mean, by the time they’re grown up, a human would be dead.”

“Yes, that’s true, now.”

“Now?”

She nodded.

“When did it change?”

“Gradually, over an immense length of time. You know how long the Empire has existed.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Yes?”

“That seems an odd thing to happen.”

“A natural side effect.”

“Of what?”

“Of the way the Jenoine tampered with the world.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It was a result of their whole effort. No, not effort. Experiment.”

“Experiment?”

“They live a long time, Vlad. Long by Sethra’s standards, long by mine. And they’re observers, and they are absolutely heartless, at least where other species are concerned. This world is an experiment to see if a society can be made to stagnate.”

“I am lost.”

“Societies develop and change, Vlad. There are inventions, and inventions have repercussions throughout society; associations among people grow and become different.”

“If you say so.”

“You’ve never seen it, because, for one thing, you don’t live long enough, and for another, that hasn’t happened here. Or rather, it has, but it has been very, very slow. The formation of the Empire, from scattered tribes, took tens of thousands of years. Without the interference of the Jenoine, it would only have taken hundreds.”

“That’s—I don’t know what to say.”

“I was one of their servants, and I didn’t enjoy it. My sisters and I took offense at the whole idea, not to mention how they treated us, so we took action.”

“The Great Sea of Amorphia.”

She nodded. “It didn’t undo what they’d done, but it introduced a certain amount of slow, gradual progress. Between that and our efforts to keep them from interfering, things have moved. A little. But now…” She smiled.

“Now what?”

“I should have realized it, of course. Adron’s Disaster. That was it. Seventeen Cycles. They built in their stability, and I destabilized it. That was the proof it worked. I should have recognized my own handiwork.”

“Um. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about Devera, my granddaughter, my little seed of catalyst thrown into the swamp of stagnation. Catalyst, yes, the silver tiassa. How did I not recognize it?”

“Goddess, I have no idea—”

“Devera. A product of the Interregnum.”

“That makes no sense. Her mother wasn’t even around during the Interregnum. I know, I rescued her myself.”

“Yes.” She smiled. “From the Halls of Judgment. Where she came in a disembodied form because of the actions of her father. It was, after all, why I introduced that ability into the e’Kieron line so long ago, though I had no idea in what way it would bear fruit.” By now, I was generating questions faster than I could even remember them. She kept talking. “But there it is, time out of time, stretching from the first disaster to the second, and the second brought everything—even you, my oh-so-tough Easterner—together to create little Devera, the perfect catalyst to unlock—everything. This is splendid. I should open another bottle of that wine.”

“Yes, that would be—”

“Tell me everything that happened.”

I was done trying to fight her on it. I gave her a more-or-less complete version of events, leaving out things that were none of her business, or that I’d promised not to mention. She listened, nodding occasionally, her eyes fixed on me like they’d keep me pinned to the chair.

When I finally stopped, she sat back and rubbed her chin with one of her weird fingers. At length she said, “What aren’t you telling me?”

“Stuff,” I said.

“How did she end up trapped there?”

“I don’t know.”

“You didn’t ask her?”

“Our conversations kept being cut short by her vanishing abruptly.”

She nodded. “Of course, yes, that would happen.”

“Why?”

She brushed it aside as if it didn’t matter, which, with my luck, meant it was the key to the whole thing (it wasn’t, but I didn’t find that out for a bit).

“All right, then,” she said. “It makes sense now.”

“I’m glad it makes sense to someone. Can you explain why, when I struck the mirror, it brought me here?”

“I am certain,” she said dryly, “that if you put your whole mind to it, you can work out why it was that when you, in your typical subtle, discreet, and nuanced way, blasted a big hole in the fabric of the universe, you happened to come here.”

“Uh…”

Verra, I hope this doesn’t kill me.

“Right,” I said. “Got it.”

She shrugged. “That’s a relief. Come with me.”

I followed her down a narrow white hallway, trying to organize my questions into something coherent. The hall ended in an arched opening, with a large room on the other side, also white, except that it didn’t. I followed her through the arch, and we were in an entirely different room, circular, not especially big, with windows looking out—

“Hey,” I said. “This is Morrolan’s—”

She unceremoniously pushed me. I fell backward into one of the windows, and ended up—

Of course. In the manor, on my back, just outside the mirror room.

“Boss?”

“Loiosh, you wouldn’t believe—”

“I think you should get up.”

I know that tone. I did so. “How long was I—”

“Not long, just a couple of minutes. But just as you vanished, there was that sound.”

“What sound?”

“You know, like, stones rolling?”

Crap.

“Yeah, I must have set off an alarm.”

“Uh-huh. Should we run?”

“To where?”

I glared at me in the mirror I’d just tried to break, and I glared back.

That’s when I heard a scuffling sound behind me, just as Loiosh said, “Boss!”

I turned around, and there was the big, ugly, misshapen thing making its way toward me from down the hall. As far as I could judge, it wasn’t coming to raise my Imperial county to a duchy.

No messing around this time; I drew Lady Teldra.

“Plan, Boss?”

“Can you distract it?”

“Maybe.”

“Let’s go for that.”

It was coming very fast, and it was very big.

Okay, thing. Let’s do this. I dropped into a crouch, watching how it moved, gauging distance. Loiosh and Rocza were on its back, biting it, filling it with venom that none of us expected to have any effect, at least not soon. It didn’t even seem to notice them, and I could tell that Loiosh was offended. As the thing got up to me, Loiosh left its back and flew into its face; I rolled to the side as it continued right up to where I’d been and stumbled into the mirrors, which caused nothing whatever to happen, unfortunately.

But it did leave the thing’s back exposed.

I struck, and it twisted like it could feel it coming and I missed, and at the same time it lashed out at me and I caught a hand to my head and saw spots in front of my eyes and felt a little sick. I backed up as fast as I could, but it was faster; at the last minute I rolled forward, scampered between its legs without a shred of dignity, and came up behind it, but I didn’t even try to take a shot; I just put some distance between us. Loiosh and Rocza landed on its back again and bit it some more, and it still didn’t seem to even be aware of them.

It was really fast, that thing. Inhumanly fast. I scrambled to the side and ducked, avoiding another great thump—I swear the air of its fist passing almost knocked me down. I looked for an opening, but it stopped and turned too quickly for me to do more than gaze wistfully at its exposed back before its teeth were in my face again.

Rocza flew close enough that I felt the psychic equivalent of an indrawn breath from Loiosh, but the thing stopped long enough to swipe at her, and that gave me a moment to pull a shuriken from my cloak and—here’s hoping—whip it at the damn thing’s eye.

Almost. It hit it where its eyebrow would have been if it had one, which caused it to flinch for a second, at which time the shuriken fell to the ground; it didn’t even stick. Really? I backpedaled, pulled another, tried again, whipping it like a throwing knife, overhand, which sacrificed a little accuracy for force.

The shuriken went flying over its shoulder and I turned and sprinted down the hall. Was the armory near by? Was there anything in the armory that would help? I could see the advantage of having a halberd, I just couldn’t see the possibility of finding it and taking it and positioning it before that thing crushed me.

I tossed a knife over my shoulder and heard it clank. Stupid—the thing wasn’t smart enough to slow down. There were more flapping sounds. Then I had a great idea: there’s a pocket that I had tailored in the back of my cloak to keep various odds and ends, and one of them was a small vial of oil that I’d use to keep doors from squeaking, and I realized that I might be able to spill it on the floor and make the thing slip. Two problems: one, pulling something from the back of my cloak without slowing down enough for it to get me, and two, I no longer carried the oil.

But it was a really good idea, wasn’t it?

When I felt its breath on the back of my neck I stopped and dropped to the ground, fully prone, fists clenched against my head, elbows locked at my sides, then I said something like “Ugh” as its foot hit my left arm enough to numb it and make me wonder if I’d broken it. It went sprawling. I didn’t even wait to stand up, I just sort of got to my knees and leapt on top of it, Lady Teldra first.

It was already rising, but Lady Teldra went into its side nearly to the hilt, and then I was flying through the air, and I swear to you by my hope of rebirth, I hit the Verra-be-damned ceiling. Then, presumably, I fell to the floor, though I don’t exactly remember that part.

Some time later—Loiosh says about ten minutes—I sat up and looked around. I knew I’d been in a fight, and I figured I’d probably won, but I couldn’t make it come together. Eventually I spotted the big, ugly thing with Lady Teldra sticking out of it just above where people have a hip, and I wobbled over there and drew her, and cleaned her off on the thing’s body as my brain reconstructed the events.

I stared at it. At him. Poor bastard. Toddler goes wandering off, gets possessed by a demon, or maybe just warped by one, I don’t know, and then spends I don’t know how long locked in a little room and then ends up like this. I felt bad for him.

Then I ended up needing a minute for introspection. I felt bad for him? Since when did I start feeling bad for people I had to kill? Well, yeah, but this wasn’t the usual thing. Other times, what led me to kill them was a result of their own decisions. This thing, this person, had never made any decisions. It had all happened to him, and then I had happened to him. A lousy way for a life to go. And there wasn’t even, really, anyone to blame for it. I hate it when I don’t have anyone to blame. I usually get out of it by blaming Verra.

Verra. Sheesh.

“Boss? What happened when you vanished?”

“Loiosh, when we get out of this, you and I are going to have a long talk about it, and maybe you can make sense of it.”

“Uhhh. I can’t wait?”

I took a last look at the poor creature I’d just killed, then turned away.

Well done, Vlad. You lived. You’ve also almost certainly pissed off a few people as soon as they find the big white naked, ugly dead guy. I wasn’t sure there was anyone left in the place I had any reason to be afraid of, but I couldn’t be completely sure there wasn’t either.

I went back and stood in front of the mirrors. I had dried blood on the side of my face, and it looked like I was developing a black eye.

“Boss, you’re beautiful.”

“Shut up.”

I checked to see if my hands were shaking. Is it strange that I needed to look? Anyway, they weren’t shaking much. I was convinced these mirrors were the answer, or at least a big part of it. That when I’d struck one with Lady Teldra I’d been transported to Verra’s Halls, and that the beast had come after me, seemed like good evidence that I was right.

“Boss? Any ideas?”

“No. You?”

“Yeah. Let’s just kill everyone we meet and see if that does anything.”

“Not the dancer. I liked her.”

“You’re getting soft.”

I looked over at the body. Did I need to hide it? I wasn’t sure how I could, but did I need to? No, I guess of all the ways things could go down, being arrested for that particular murder was the least likely.

And no one was here anyway—

The door I’d just closed opened. I pressed myself against a wall and let a dagger drop into my hand, and I waited.

And stick me with flags and call me a fair if three servants, each holding a tray of food, didn’t come walking out, cool as you please, as if emerging from a room full of mirrors were the most natural way in the world to serve dinner. They didn’t turn around, they didn’t appear to see the dead lump of monster not twenty feet away from them; they just went down the spiral stair, not marching, but walking at the same pace; there was almost an air of ritual about it. I moved so I could keep watching as they went out the door of the ballroom.

“Boss? What—?”

“I have no idea. Don’t even ask.”

“But you remember those three—”

“I remember.”

I went back down the stairway and out the door, catching sight of them as they turned a corner. I stayed a good distance back and followed the long twisty path. Two of the servants stopped in the kitchen; the third continued on. As I passed the kitchen I heard voices: the servants, then, taking their meal. I reached the passage to the first corridor I’d come to and stuck my head around as the servant went into the room where Zhayin had been.

So, that’s why the kitchen was empty: the food was brought in from the other place. From the past. They cooked food in the past and brought it to the present. Sure, why not? Why had I never done that? Everyone should do that.

“Loiosh, have I gone completely down the well?”

“Maybe.”

“Thanks.”

I tried to put the stuff Verra had told me out of my head, because it wasn’t helping me with this.

It was tempting to just go rushing in and have a talk with Zhayin, demand some answers. But I wasn’t sure he’d give them to me, and then I’d probably get mad and kill him, and besides, it’s rude to interrupt someone’s dinner.

I went back to the little room just before the ballroom and shut the door behind me. Finally, I was doing something I was good at, had done before, and was confident I could do with quiet competence: waiting. It was most of an hour, but then I heard the footsteps, the same slow, deliberate pace.

I waited until they were past me, then stuck my head out, and, yes, all three were there, bringing the dirty dishes and leftovers back to the past, to clean the dishes and give the leftovers to the kethna or the other servants. Once they were past me, I waited for another minute, then followed them from a good distance. I was just coming up the stairs when they coolly disappeared once more into the mirror room. They still hadn’t realized there was a body there.

I hesitated after they’d passed; there were a couple of ways to play this from here, but I knew what I wanted to do. There had been something nagging at me for a while, and, even if it wasn’t part of the big picture, I wanted to get it settled.

I gave myself some time to come up with reasons not to—almost a whole second—then I went back and around and poked my head back into the room where I’d gotten my meal the day before. There was a rope hanging there, vanishing into a hole in the ceiling. I pulled it.

In under a minute, Harro appeared and bowed. “My lord,” he said. “How may I serve you?”

“Just a little conversation, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“Not in the least.”

“Would you like to sit?”

“I should prefer to stand, if I may, my lord.”

“That’s fine.”

I sat down and stretched out my legs.

“What did you wish to discuss, my lord?”

“Hevlika.”

I was watching closely; there was definitely a tightening around his jaw as he attempted not to react.

“What did you wish to know, sir?”

Remember when I was talking about how you need to use different means to get different people talking? Well, sometimes you need different means to get the same person talking, if it’s on different subjects. Let’s take Harro, for example: an Issola, a butler; he was all about duty. He’d rather die than violate his duty, which made it a question of turning it around, so that one aspect of his duty required him to violate another. When it was a personal matter, and didn’t violate his duty, that was entirely different, requiring an alternate form of negotiation.

I drew the dagger from my right side. It was big, as knives go, really more fighting knife than dagger, what with the wide blade curving wickedly down to the point for the last four inches—it’s the sort of knife that makes one think of long gashes in the torso with entrails falling out of them. Most of us don’t care for images like that applied to our person.

I held it loosely in my hand, thumb and forefinger at the crossguard, letting it bounce up and down like a snake looking for where to strike.

“Tell me about you and Hevlika.”

His eyes were wide, and on the knife, which was where I wanted them. I waited for a little while as his mouth, which seemed to have lost all connection to the rest of him, did a credible imitation of a fish.

“Maybe you’d like to sit down?” I said.

He sat on the bed and continued looking at the knife. At last he managed, “How did you know?”

I shook my head. “You’re confused about who is asking questions and who is answering them. I”—I pointed the knife at my chest—“am asking. You”—I pointed the knife at him—“are answering. Start answering now.”

“I…”

“Yes. You. Good. Good start. You and Hevlika. What’s the connection?”

“I’ll … I’ll call for help.”

“I don’t think I believe you, Harro. I don’t think you’re capable of generating a sound much louder than a whimper. But if you want, sure. I’m not sure who you’re expecting to rescue you, though. That monster that used to be Zhayin’s son is lying up on the balcony above the ballroom, getting cold and waiting for the excitement of its body getting rigid. As for Discaru, I believe I managed to send him back to whatever strange, unreal place spawned him, although I could be wrong. But if you want to try anyway, go ahead. I’ll only cut you twice for each scream, and only one of those will be on your pretty face.”

He stared at me.

I tapped the flat of the blade against my palm and gave him a few seconds to consider his options. He looked at the door and I chuckled. “No, I don’t think that’s a good idea.” He turned his attention back to the knife.

“We were.…”

“Yes. You were?”

“I’m in love with her.”

“Yeah? How’d that work out for you?”

“She hates me.”

“Where’d you meet?”

“I had occasion to accompany my lord to the dance, and I saw her.”

“Uh-huh. You saw her. Onstage.”

He nodded.

“And then, what? You decided she was destined to be your true love?”

“I—you make it sound pitiful.”

“No, pitiful is how you arranged for Gormin to be expelled from the House, just to get him out of the way.”

“Out of the way? I had no idea they were involved!”

As he said that, he took his eyes from the knife and looked at my face. I believed him.

“So, it was just to get his job? You made up the part about them being involved, had no idea it was true, and used it so you could get his job to be close to her? Really?”

He looked down again, at the floor now, not the knife. I took it as a yes.

“How long have you known that you’re a complete moron?”

“About two hundred years.”

“Here’s what I don’t get—no, here’s one of about a thousand things I don’t get. How is it that, back then, after you’d managed to get Gormin’s job by being a slimy worm with no more decency than your basic suckerfish, Hevlika never saw you? I mean, never even knew you were there?”

“How did you—”

I smacked the flat of the blade against my hand. He swallowed and changed his mind. “That was at Lord Zhayin’s orders, my lord.”

“But how?”

“It wasn’t difficult. I stayed away from the theater, and from her chambers. She never mingled. Back then, she either saw Lord Zhayin, or she’d visit the village.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“How long did that go on?”

“It wasn’t long, my lord. Only until the manor could be occupied, which was less than a hundred years ago. Most of the time has been spent working on the sorcery, you know, not the construction. Once the household—that is, Lord Zhayin, and Lord Discaru, and Gormin, and Odelpho, had taken up occupancy here, he no longer minded. That’s when Hevlika and I actually met.”

I nodded. “Good. Down to nine hundred and ninety nine.”

“My lord?”

I shook my head. “Then answer me this: Why?”

“Why what, my lord?”

“Why didn’t Zhayin want the two of you to meet?”

“I don’t know, my lord.”

“Um. Humor me. Take a guess. I won’t hold it against you if you’re wrong. I’m holding so much against you now there’s no more room anyway.”

He spread his hands.

“Why?” I repeated.

He looked thoughtful. “I don’t know, but, well, he was very secretive about everything in those days. He was always careful who spoke to whom, and we suspect that Discaru would sometimes cast listening spells on us. Perhaps it was part of that?”

“Huh,” I said. “And he isn’t like that anymore?”

“It’s different now,” he said.

“Go on.”

“Now he just tries to limit the intercourse between here and the old castle. The servants who bring the food are all deaf, and those of us here are forbidden to journey back there. I wouldn’t know how to, but I know it’s done, because of the food.”

“So, that’s why there are no guards here. He doesn’t want to bring them from the past. But then, why not hire some from here and now? And cooks as well?”

“I don’t know, my lord. Maybe he will. It’s only just been finished.”

“All right,” I said. “I think I’ve gotten as much from you as I can.”

“What are you going to do with me, my lord?”

I shrugged. “I should probably kill you, you know. Just to put you out of your misery.”

He made no response whatsoever.

“Are you inclined to live, Harro?”

“My lord?” He swallowed. “Yes, my lord.”

“Good. Because I’m not going anywhere. Well, I mean, I am, I’m leaving this place as soon as I figure out how. But I’ll still be in the area. And if, by chance, someone starts taking legal action to become reinstated in his House, and if in the process you’re questioned, you’ll cooperate, and you won’t lie. Because if you lie, you die. Is there an understanding between us?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Good. Okay, tell me something else, then. Why did you stay? To be near her, because you liked the work, or just inertia?”

“All of those, I think,” he told the floor between his feet.

The floor didn’t seem impressed.

I looked at him; he avoided looking at me. “Never mind,” I said. “I think you’ve managed to make yourself more miserable than anything I could do. Go be miserable. Don’t say anything, just get out of here, and do whatever it is you do. If I want anything, I’ll ring.”

He didn’t even say “Yes, my lord,” which might give you an idea of what kind of shape he was in.

The door closed behind him. I hoped this would all be over soon; I was hungry.

16. On the Night of the Surly Mood

I gave Harro time to get clear, then left the room and made my way back to the ballroom, then up to the balcony, and to the door to the theater. I stood in front of it, took a breath, and opened it.

And I was sitting down.

That transition was one of the hardest to get used to. I wasn’t in the same seat as before, but almost; maybe one forward and two to the side or something. That, by itself, would mean a great deal to someone who wasn’t me.

There was no sign of Hevlika, so I settled in to wait. I’m not sure why I was so convinced that sooner or later she would show up, but I was, and in maybe a bit less than half an hour, she did; just walking onto the stage. She noticed me at once, because she always noticed her audience. She’d said so.

She jumped down from the stage, walked up, and sat down in the chair next to me. As per protocol, she stared straight ahead.

“You really don’t recognize me?” I said.

“Of course I do. You were here yesterday.”

“I mean from before.”

“I don’t understand.”

“We met before, at a house called the Seven Jewels.”

She frowned for a minute, then turned and looked at me. “That was you?”

I nodded.

She scrutinized my face with no sign of recognition—maybe we really do all look the same. Then she glanced at my left hand, and said, “Yes, I remember.”

I nodded.

“How is it possible?”

“It’s complicated.”

“But Easterners—”

She broke off.

“Yeah,” I said. “We don’t generally live that long. I cheated.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I don’t either, entirely. But that conversation we had a few hundred years ago? That was a few hours ago for me.”

“The manor.”

“Yeah.”

“Who are you?”

“Vladimir Taltos, Count of Szurke by the grace of Her Majesty, former Jhereg, current traveler, nehixta, and connoisseur of fine food and drink.”

“I don’t recognize that one word. Is it Serioli?”

“No, one of the languages of the cat-centaurs. I was called that once. She translated it to ‘one who cuts himself twice on the same knife.’”

“It doesn’t sound like a compliment.”

“I got the feeling it was mostly used of children who won’t learn to stay out of things they should leave alone. Somewhere I’m sure there is a desecrator who could explain the full cultural significance and get it entirely wrong.”

“I don’t recall much of our last conversation. Just that you asked a lot of questions.”

“And I warned you not to trust Harro.”

She frowned. “Yes, I sort of remember that. I know I don’t trust him.”

“He’s the one who got Gormin expelled from the House of the Issola.”

She turned and looked at me again, and this time didn’t look away. “Why would he do that?”

“He’s in love with you.”

The look on her face was mostly disgust, with an overlay of disbelief. I turned my head so I was facing the stage and waited while it sank in.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“To be honest, I’m not entirely sure. It seemed like something you should know. Besides, I sort of liked Gormin before he drugged me and tried to interrogate me.”

“I can’t believe he’d do that.”

“He was acting under orders.”

“When did this happen?”

“A few hundred years ago. Or earlier today, depending on how you look at it.”

“Gormin,” she said. “He…”

“Is it hard, living under the same roof as him?”

She cleared her throat and turned back to the stage. “That’s a little personal.”

“We got more personal than that, back before.”

“Did we? I don’t remember. And I can’t think why I would.”

“Neither can I. It didn’t seem very Issola-like.”

“Perhaps that was close to”—she looked for the words to get around saying what she didn’t want to say—“to when things happened with Gormin. I wasn’t myself, then. What is it?”

“Hmmm? What is what?”

“Your fingers are twitching.”

I looked at them and made them stop. “I feel like killing someone, but there’s no one I’m sure needs killing. Harro’s a bastard, but not enough of one for me to put a knife into his eye.”

“I … can’t imagine what that must feel like.”

“Really? You can’t? You’ve never been angry?”

“Well, yes, of course I’ve been angry.”

“That’s what it feels like.”

“All right.”

We didn’t speak for a little while after that.

“Back then,” she said at last. “Did you ever explain what you were doing?”

“Sort of.”

“Want to try again? If I can help you, I will.”

“All right. Do you know about the mirrors?”

“The practice room? Of course. I work out there every day.”

“No, the other mirror room.”

“Oh. I’m not to go in there.”

“It’s pretty much the magic focus for the entire place.”

“I guess it could be. But I don’t know any details. I haven’t made much of a study of sorcery, beyond what everyone knows.”

It’s hard to explain to someone what you don’t understand yourself. “Okay,” I said. “I’ve got some of it. The manor wasn’t built here, it appeared here. I put that together when I saw all the dead plants—never mind. I found a cave, with sorcerous markings on it, that was, well … think of it as an anchor, all right? They built it, and one of the parts of it had to—”

I broke off.

“What?” she said after a moment.

“I think I have it,” I said. “Paths, hallways, doors, necromantic mirrors. The mirrors provide a way to turn physical motion into motion through worlds, which sometimes means through time. That’s how it got here. There are places it is anchored—like the cave under the cellar, and the Halls of Judgment, and the place in the past where they started construction. The mirrors work like Morrolan’s windows—”

“What?”

“Uh, never mind. The thing is, all the pathways in the manor, controlled by the mirrors, are sort of, well, think of it like they’re stacked on top of each other. Zhayin’s idea is to be able to make additional pathways to different worlds, that you can reach just by opening a door or walking down a hall.”

I felt myself frowning. “Only, he hasn’t done it yet. All he has is a way to reach the Halls, the future out from the courtyard, and the past—the anchors. He hasn’t built any of the pathways, just a lot of places where they can go, which is why right now they turn into just odd rooms placed in strange places; it’s like he set up a bunch of sheaths but hasn’t put the daggers in them yet. Why hasn’t he? Oh, right. Harro said the manor had just recently been completed.

She nodded. “Two days ago is when we shifted. I’ve been living in the manor for years and years, but it was next to the old castle, by the river, and then we were suddenly here.”

“That’s it, then,” I said. “Time.”

“Pardon?”

“Pathways in space are pathways in time, when you’re going between worlds. I’m sure if the Necromancer were here she could explain it so it made sense, but that’s the best I can do.”

“I don’t—”

“It’s all about Tethia, and you, and Harro, and Gormin.”

“I’ve never met Tethia.”

“Yes, exactly. Because she died, you see.”

“When?”

“Yes, exactly. When. When and where. That’s the part that’s hard to wrap my head around, but it sort of makes sense.”

“You’ve lost me.”

“Tethia died here, in the manor, in the past, but was trapped in the now.”

She shook her head.

“Try it this way: Tethia was involved in casting those spells for a couple of hundred years. You never met her, because her part of things involved being in the future.”

“The future?”

“Uh, the then future, the now now.”

“I don’t, wait, I think I see what you mean. She did her work here, near Adrilankha, in the time and place where the manor was going to be.”

“Yes, casting the spells that would allow it to exist.”

“But how did she get here? How did she move through time that way?”

“My head hurts.”

“Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. I’m working it out, I think. Try this: She didn’t really move through time. In the Halls of Judgment, there are a lot of times and places to choose from, maybe an infinite number, I don’t know. But while Zhayin was overseeing the building of the physical structure, Tethia was spending her time in the Halls of Judgment, making the magical connections that corresponded to it. When they were both done, the manor appeared here.”

“But Tethia was…”

“Yeah, okay. She was in the Halls of Judgment, with her spells following pathways to here and now, and she was here and now, with spells sending pathways to the Halls.”

“But you said she wasn’t traveling in time. That’s where I’m lost.”

“Yeah, me too.”

I really did feel like I was on the verge of a headache. You know that feeling that hits you when you put the pieces of a puzzle together and it all instantly makes sense? I like that better. “Okay,” I said, speaking slowly as it worked its way through my skull, “In the Halls, in the travel between worlds, time and place are part of the same thing. So, if she was in the Halls, she could find a place that was a time. That’s what she was connecting the manor to. You can think of it as a place and a time above us, that touches our own. That’s why she kept calling it a platform.”

“That sort of makes sense. But then, what happened to her?”

“That’s what I’m going to find out.”

She nodded. “There’s a sorcerer here. Maybe—”

“Discaru. Yeah. He wasn’t helpful. And I’m pretty sure he’s no longer around.”

“Oh?”

I took that as an invitation to tell her more and declined by not saying anything. She seemed to think that was an excellent choice, and did the same. I broke first. “How are you?”

“M’lord?”

“With what I told you. About Gormin and Harro. How are you doing with it?”

“It’ll take some time to settle in.”

“Will it be hard to act normal with Harro? I mean, if you even want to?”

“I don’t know.”

I shook my head. “I just don’t understand it. I can’t wrap my head around it.”

“Around what?”

“You two. You and Gormin, I mean. You’re together, all is well, then his House changes, and, boom, everything’s different. It isn’t even that his station changed, because it didn’t. It’s just his House. How can you let that—”

She was quiet for a few seconds as I broke off and stared into space. Then she said, “What?”

I shook my head, my brain spinning. “That’s it,” I said finally. “It all ties together. The Houses. The Cycle. The Empire. The Disaster. Stagnation. Catalyst. All of it.”

She waited patiently until I started to get up, then she said, “Vlad, you can’t just leave it like that.” Her tone was one of amusement, but she had a point. I sat down again.

“Sorry. Too much, too fast. And, yeah, this affects you.”

“How? What?”

“I don’t think I can explain it, except to say that you—I mean Dragaerans, all of you—have been fu—messed with. And it permeates everything you do, even who you let yourself love, and it was done deliberately by the Jenoine because they wanted to see what would happen.”

“Ah.…”

“You’re very nice. You don’t want to say ‘You’re crazy.’ That’s sweet.”

She put on an Issola smile, but didn’t say I was wrong.

“Okay, believe it or not, whatever. A lot of this I’ve known for years, some of it is new and I’m putting it together, and my head is spinning. But just tell me this: why is it so unthinkable to marry someone from another House?”

“Well, because … you wouldn’t understand.”

“No, I wouldn’t. But the odd thing is, you don’t either. You know it, you feel it, but you don’t understand it.”

She looked at me, then slowly returned her eyes to the stage.

“Sorry,” I said. “This must be making you uncomfortable.”

She said, “Maybe we should talk about your problem.”

“Sure.”

“Maybe if you explain it? I mean, what exactly you’re trying to do.”

I shrugged. “All right. There’s a girl named Devera. She was born in the Halls of Judgment. Her grandmother is a goddess, her—”

“Which goddess?”

“Verra. Her father is the shade of Kieron the Conqueror.”

“Go on.”

I blinked. All right, well, if she was just going to accept all that as if it were reasonable, I might as well tell her the rest. I went through the conversations I’d had, the things I’d seen, the oddness of the room design, my conclusion about Lady Zhayin, and about the mirrors. She didn’t say anything, but nodded at a few of my conclusions, and winced when I spoke of killing Discaru and the thing that had once been Zhayin’s son.

When I’d finished, she was quiet for a long time, then she said, “Devera.”

“What about her?”

“You described Devera appearing and disappearing. Why does she keep doing that?”

“Um. Yeah. I guess I just thought, well, because of her nature.”

“That doesn’t answer the question though, does it?”

“No, I suppose it doesn’t. You’re right.”

“So?”

“So, you’ve got me asking the right question, now how do I figure out the answer?”

“I can’t help you with that.”

“Every time you say you can’t help me, it means I’m about to learn something.”

She smiled at the stage. “I think that’s more you than me.”

“Maybe. Well, okay. It isn’t just her nature, or she’d do it all the time. And it isn’t just the manor, or it would be happening to everyone.”

“Which means?”

“It’s the interaction.”

She nodded.

I laughed. “Well, good then. In order to understand how the place works, I need to figure out why Devera keeps disappearing, which I can do as soon as I’ve figured out how the place works.”

She smiled at the stage again. I wondered if the balcony was getting jealous. She said, “Well, none of the rest of us vanish. That gives you lots of people to talk to.”

I chuckled. “That’s true. Polite of you. Except…”

“What?”

“Tethia.”

“What about her?”

“She also vanished abruptly.”

“But, isn’t she a ghost? You said she was a ghost. I mean, ghosts do that, right?”

“I don’t know. I’ve only ever met one before this.”

She nodded. “And I’ve never met any.”

“And I think she’s pretty much confined to that one room, whether she’s a ghost or whatever else she is.”

Hevlika nodded. “That makes sense.”

“So I guess I’ll go talk to her.”

She nodded.

“I doubt I’ll run into you again.”

“It’s been a pleasure.”

“Thank you. For dancing.”

She smiled and nodded, and I went through the door.

I had a theory.

I returned to the room where I’d slept, grabbed the rope hanging from the ceiling and pulled it twice, and waited. The wait went on far longer than it should have; I was about to conclude that my theory was wrong, or else you just can’t find good servants, when Gormin appeared, looking hesitant.

“Sir? You rang twice.”

“Yeah.”

“The call for Harro is once, and for me it is three times, so I was uncertain—”

“My mistake. I meant you.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Who is two?”

“No one, at present.”

“Of course. I’d like to speak with you. Want to sit?”

“I’d prefer to stand, sir.”

I knew he’d say that, but I had to ask. I sat down in the chair. It was like a repetition of the little drama I’d played out with Harro just an hour before. Or maybe that was the rehearsal, and this was the performance.

I said, “You remember me, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I mean, from before, when you drugged me and tried to interrogate me.”

He stared over my shoulder and was silent.

“Answer,” I said. “Do you remember me?”

“I didn’t recognize you at first. And then I wasn’t sure.”

“But now you do, and you are.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. I’m not altogether pleased about that, you know. Especially because to me it was only yesterday. But you suspected that, didn’t you?”

He did his “staring over my shoulder” thing again. If he kept that up I was going to get irritated.

“Answer me,” I said. “Did you suspect that?”

He nodded.

“So you know about paths through time.”

“I—know there are odd things. There are rooms we are not permitted to visit, and restrictions as to with whom we can speak. And I’ve known for a long time that my lord Zhayin was working to solve the problem of a structure that could reach other worlds.”

“But not that he’d solved it?”

“Not then,” he said.

“When?”

“Two days ago, I heard a scream. I tried to see where it came from and became lost. Eventually I reached a window, and we were on a cliff.”

“And that was your first clue that the entire manor had moved?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Who screamed?”

“I don’t know, sir. I asked Discaru if he knew anything and he told me it was none of my concern.”

Well. Salute me and call me General. I hadn’t expected that. A mysterious scream, just as the manor is appearing at its new location. Another piece fell into place. I let it buzz around in my head for a minute, then I said, “Well, interesting as that is, it isn’t what I wanted to talk to you about.”

He cleared his throat. “No, I imagine not.”

“And it isn’t about the unpleasantness when we met before, either.”

“Sir?”

“It’s about Hevlika.”

His jaw clenched, and he again fixed his eyes over my shoulder. I waited it out, and he said, “What about her?” His voice was a lot smaller.

“I know what happened. I know who had you expelled from the House.”

“Yes,” he said. “Harro. He was in love with her.”

I blinked. And there was another surprise. “Okay,” I said. “I hadn’t expected you to know that. When did you find out?”

“When he appeared. I suppose a couple hundred years ago.”

“Have you talked to him?”

“There didn’t seem to be anything to say, sir.”

“And you never spoke to her about it?”

“How could I?”

“Yeah, how could you. Tell me something else.”

“Sir?”

“The food. It comes from the old castle, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The servants cook it, bring it through the mirror room?”

He nodded.

“Why?”

“Sir?”

“Why not bring staff here? There’s a really nice kitchen, a big pantry. Why not use it?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Good. Yes. Perfect.”

“I don’t understand.”

“No, but I think I might be starting to.”

“What—?”

“No, don’t ask. It’s bubbling around in my head, and there are still things I don’t get. But it’s the mirrors, and it’s Discaru, and it’s Zhayin. And it’s the front door.”

“The front door, sir?”

“When I first spoke with Zhayin, he was surprised that I was able to get in, and he was surprised that the front door wouldn’t open. Had you ever gone in or out of that door?”

“Of course. Many times.”

“I mean, since the manor arrived here on the cliff.”

“Oh. No, I haven’t had occasion to.”

“Right. And what about the other door?”

“Sir? What other door?”

“Exactly. A house this size with only one door to the outside?”

“Well, there is the door to the courtyard.”

“Yeah. And there’s one on the side that goes to—have you ever gone out that one?”

“No, sir.”

“Don’t. It’s disturbing.”

“Yes, sir.”

Necromantic paths to alternate worlds, doors that opened to different times but not really because you couldn’t go anywhere—

“Are you all right, sir?”

“I think I’m getting a headache.”

“Would you care for some springroot tea? It has been known to be efficacious—”

“No, no. I’ll be fine.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I will figure all of this out.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Adron’s Disaster changed everything.”

“Sir?”

“I’m just starting to realize what that means. You wouldn’t, because you’re living it, it’s part of your life. But I’m getting it.”

“I don’t—”

“Dragaeran history, as it was, started with the explosion that created the Great Sea of Amorphia, and it ended with Adron’s Disaster.”

He got that look you get when you don’t want to rile up the madman. I ignored it and kept going. “Right now, you’re operating on inertia. But none of the old rules apply. Everything’s changing. The Houses. The Cycle. All of it. And you could be part of it, old guy.”

“Yes, sir, no doubt—”

“All you have to do to be part of it is walk up to Hevlika and say, ‘I love you.’ See, I’m the most romantic assas—Easterner you’ll ever meet. But it’s true. That’s how this place, Precipice Manor, came to exist. Part of that same disruption, knocking holes in things. It’s shaken up everything. And one thing it’s going to do is change the Houses. Go ahead. Do it. Just go up to her—”

“I could never.”

I looked at him. I thought about Cawti, and the way she used to look at me, and the way she looked at me now, and I wanted to hit the idiot over the head with a chair. I knew it was none of my business, but I wanted to.

“Fine,” I said. “Tell you what. How about you just go watch her dance. See where it leads from there.”

He sighed. “If only I could.”

“Why can’t you?”

“My duties—”

“Right. I have the feeling your duties are going to be considerably lighter soon. I’d go and watch her when she dances. She likes having an audience.”

“I—all right. And sir?”

“Hmm?”

“I’m sorry.”

“About?”

“Drugging you.”

“Oh. I never blame the dagger for where it’s pointed. Well, almost never.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Look, I’m not trying to tell you your business—no, wait, I am. I just want you to know that I had a talk with Harro, and if you go to the House and claim it was all a lie, he’ll admit it.”

“Sir? He will?”

“Yeah. If you go to the Iorich Wing of the Palace, there’s an advocate named Perisil who can either help you, or point to someone who will. If he’s willing to deal with an Easterner, he’ll be willing to deal with a Teckla. So you can probably fix all of this without ignoring the House thing. But I still think you should. Anyway, think about it, and do whatever you bloody want to.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“That will be all,” I said, because I’ve always wanted to say that to a servant, and I don’t dare say it to Tukko.

Gormin didn’t appear to find it odd; he just bowed and went about his business. I sat there and considered. What I really wanted to do now was ask Discaru a few questions. Unfortunately, I’d made that impossible.

“Boss? Is there a plan?”

“Getting there.”

“I was afraid of that. It worries me when you have a plan.”

“Yeah, me too.”

17. Zhayin’s Heir

I made my way back to that room with the long table and didn’t run into anyone. I walked in like it was no big deal, sat down, and waited. There was some of the emotional deadening I’d felt before, but not as intense—which is an odd word to use about something that removes intensity, but you know what I mean. I waited, and eventually even that passed, and then I said, “Hey, Tethia. It’s Vlad. Got a minute?”

I waited, and after a while my glib words didn’t seem so clever. I was in the middle of trying to come up with some other way to perhaps reach her when Loiosh said, “Boss!”

I turned around and there she was, sitting in a chair on the other side of the table. I looked closely, and from what I could see, the padding on the chair wasn’t compressed the way it would be if she were really there. But I could see her, and presumably we could hear each other, so who cared about the rest? Corporeality is overrated. Taltos. You remember the spelling.

“Hey there,” I said. “Remember me?”

“Vlad,” she said.

“Good. That means time isn’t—never mind. Can we talk?”

“We are talking now.”

“Yeah. You say you built this place. This ‘platform.’”

“No, I designed it. My father built it.”

“Right. But you figured out how to anchor it in the Halls of Judgment so it could cross worlds.”

“It isn’t anchored in the Halls, it only passes through them.”

“Okay. But tell me something: why is it you keep disappearing?”

“I don’t know. Is it important?”

“I want to understand how this platform works. And that’s part of it.”

“You’re a necromancer?”

“No.”

“Then I don’t think I can explain.”

“Try?”

She nodded. I thought that would be an appropriate, or at least an ironic, moment for her to vanish, but thank Verra, for once the world withheld its irony. “Let’s try it this way, then. You have a familiar. Do you understand the mechanism for how you communicate with him?”

“No, but I’m very curious.”

“Ah. Well. All right, then. Another way: You say I vanish. I don’t vanish, and I don’t even move, really. Not much, at any rate. I turn.”

“Turn. All right. You have my attention.”

“That’s why it happens so randomly. Right now, I’m working very hard to hold myself still, because the least shift in position”—she smiled—“I almost moved just now to demonstrate it, will bring me to another state.”

“I’m still listening.”

“Time and space seem like distinct things, but they’re not. They’re the same. This matters because, where I was born, places and times come together as—” She looked frustrated, then she vanished, but reappeared just as I was preparing a good curse. I didn’t tell her that at least some of that I’d figured out, because I didn’t want to interrupt the flow. She said, “Do you understand what it means to be a god or a demon?”

“Yes. It means you can manifest in more than one place at the same time. Oh. Are you a god or a demon?”

“No. If I were, I would have control of this process, and I wouldn’t shift the way I do.”

“I don’t get it.”

“I know.” She frowned. “All right, I think I can explain it. To acquire powers of a god or a demon means to gain the awareness of the connections between different worlds, and to be able to move among them, and to control that movement. If you do not have these powers, but were born in a place where they meet, you can always see them, sometimes move among them, and only occasionally control the movement. Does that help?”

I nodded slowly. “Yes. Yes, that helps.”

She was silent while I compared this with what I knew about Devera. Yeah, it made sense. But—

“Okay, here’s what I’m not getting. How is it you ended up being born in the Halls of Judgment?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I wish I did.”

Me too. “Maybe I’ll find out,” I said.

She smiled a little. “Maybe you will.”

I wondered what all of this had to do with how I communicated with Loiosh. I wondered how Devera seemed able to move where she wanted to—except here. I wondered how—

“I have another question,” I said.

“I’m still here.”

“This room. The effect it has. How is that possible? It’s not sorcery, because I’m protected from sorcery. It feels like a psychic effect, but I’m protected from that too. Before you said it was the nature of the room itself, but I don’t understand how that’s possible.”

“There is an art to it,” she said. “It has been studied by the Vallista for thousands of years. The windows, the color, the tilt of the chairs and their height: all work to produce the effect.”

“There’s more to it than that, I think.”

“Oh, yes. But you see, that’s the heart of it. Those feelings become part of the designer of the room, and part of every craftsman who works on it. You draw it into yourself, like inhaling, and then you exhale it in your craft.”

“Um. Sounds like witchcraft.”

“The Eastern art. I’ve heard of it, but know nothing about it.”

“I’m not saying that’s what it is, it’s just, it sounds like it. Or I guess feels like it would be more accurate.”

“It is as much art as it is sorcery, but the result is that the feelings become inseparable from the room. As I said before, the effect on you was more pronounced than it would have been on a human.” She was polite enough not to add, “because your brain is weaker,” or something.

“I think I kind of get it,” I said, though I didn’t really and I still don’t. But with any luck, I wouldn’t need to. I’d gotten the answer to the question I’d come for, and that by itself made this an occasion for celebrating if I’d had anything to celebrate with. I needed more of Verra’s wine.

“What do you know of your state?” I asked her.

“I don’t entirely understand it. I feel like I died. But I’m here.”

“What do you remember?”

“Running.”

“To something, or from something?”

“From something, I think.”

“From what?”

“I don’t know.”

“All right. You don’t seem exactly like a ghost.”

“How much experience with ghosts do you have?”

“A little. Tell me something. What do you want?”

She was silent for a long time, then she said, “If I am dead, then I’d like to be free so I can move on, or rest, or reincarnate, however fate should decide.”

“But what could hold you here?”

“I don’t know. It would have to be necromancy.”

“Discaru,” I said.

“Who?”

There’s a particular kind of annoyance that comes when you realize you’ve killed some bastard before you know all the stuff he’d done that would have given you even more satisfaction in killing him. I’d never had that happen before. Oh, well. “Never mind,” I said. “A demon. It’s gone now. The question is, why?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think I do,” I said. “And I think I know why I’m here.”

“That’s something many of us never learn.”

I snorted. “I meant it in a slightly more practical sense. I think you did it.”

“Did what?”

“I think as you were dying, you reached out to the Halls, and got some help.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“Yeah, you don’t remember dying. But I think you were asking for help from a god, and managed to reach Devera instead.”

“Who is Devera?”

“Not a god.”

“Oh. So it didn’t work.”

“I think it sort of did. And I think I’m on track for fixing the rest of it now.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Good. We’re even. Tell me something else?”

“Anything I can.”

“What does the guide look like for your House?”

“Guide?”

“I don’t know what to call it. The Dragons memorize a book so they know how to navigate the Paths of the Dead. The Hawks have a signet ring that acts as a guide. The Jhereg wear a pendant that works like the ring, and the Tiassa get a tattoo that works like the book. What do the Vallista use?”

“Oh. Our key. It’s a piece of linen, usually dyed yellow, with purple threads that indicate the proper paths, usually made into a dress, or a toga, or a sarong.”

“Does it appear with you when you die, like the ring, or do you have to memorize it, like the book?”

“You’re dressed in it when you go over the Falls. You remove the thread as you progress, and it gradually falls apart, so that you arrive in the Halls naked.”

“That’s how you established the connection with the Halls, right?”

“Yes.”

“Was that the only one your family had?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I believe I do, however.”

She nodded.

“All right, I think I have what I need. Thank you for your help.”

“Good luck,” she told me.

This time, because I was looking for it, I caught the slight turn in her chair she made just before she vanished. I drummed my fingers on the table. I wanted to find Lord Zhayin and have it out with him, shake him until I’d squeezed the answers out, but no, there was something else I needed to do first.

I stood up and headed out.

I emerged from the cave, went up the path, through the bedroom, and out, then to the nursery. She was sitting in a rocking chair, her eyes closed. I watched her for a while, trying to interpret the expression on her face as she dreamed, then it started to feel creepy so I cleared my throat.

She opened her eyes, took me in, and stood up. “My lord?”

“Hello, Odelpho.”

“Hello, my lord.”

“May I trouble you with another question?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Why did you lie to me?”

“My lord … I…”

“About the kitchen, and the cooks there. That’s nonsense. You knew that didn’t happen. It seems an odd thing to lie about. Why?”

“My lord, I—”

“Stop it. Answer my question.”

She was scared, but I figured that was because, well, I’m scary. The question was, was she also scared of someone else? If so, who and why and how much? “If you’re worried about Discaru,” I said, “he’s not going to be around anymore.”

She tilted her head. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” I said. It wasn’t a lie. I was pretty sure. And turned out I was right, so no harm.

“I … may I sit down?”

“Of course,” I said. Where were my manners? What would Lady Teldra say?

She folded her hands in her lap and said, “What happened to him?”

“He had an accident,” I said.

She studied my face as if expecting me to wink or smile or something. I didn’t, so she just nodded.

“He’s the one who wanted you to lie about the kitchen?”

“Yes.”

“When did he tell you to do that?”

“Just before we spoke, my lord. Perhaps an hour?”

“So, it was me in particular he didn’t want to know about it.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Why?”

“He didn’t say, my lord.”

Yeah, he didn’t have to. He’d have known when he saw me that I shouldn’t be there. He couldn’t have known about Devera, but he must have realized that Tethia had done something that resulted in me being there, which meant that I had to be prevented from learning about the manor until I could be disposed of, because—

Tethia. It all came back to her, and to what she knew and what she could tell, and what had happened to her, and why. I studied Odelpho and considered.

She looked uncomfortable with me staring at her. She shifted and said, “Will that be all, my lord?”

“Not quite. I’m curious about something. It isn’t terribly important, but do you go outside at all?”

“Sometimes.”

“And pick apples?”

She nodded, then frowned. “Is there something—”

“No, no. You just set me a little mystery, is all.”

“I like apples.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“You had one?”

“I had two. They were good.”

“I’ll be tending the trees myself from now on.”

“There’s no gardener?”

“At the old castle, not here.”

“Of course. There were lots of things Discaru didn’t want known, weren’t there?”

She nodded.

“Such as Lady Zhayin’s visit to the Halls of Judgment.”

She looked down.

“Were you with her?”

She nodded.

“You took care of Tethia, there, in the Halls.”

She nodded again.

“Odelpho, how did Tethia die?”

“Her mother died during the Interregnum.”

“Odelpho!”

She jumped a little, then looked down again.

“Tell me what happened. It can’t hurt you now.”

She remained still, eyes fixed on the floor. I was getting tired of people staring at the floor or over my shoulder.

“Odelpho, tell me how Tethia died.”

“It was the monster,” she said.

“The monster? That, ah, I mean, Lord Zhayin’s son?”

She nodded. “It chased her. I don’t know why. She couldn’t get out, so she tried to escape to the roof. In the end, she threw herself off it into the ocean-sea. She had only returned that day. I hadn’t seen her since she was a child, when she went off to, well, I don’t know. But I hadn’t seen her in so long, and an hour after she was back, she was dead.”

She looked like was about to cry. I said, “How?”

“My lord?”

“How could she get off the roof?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Have you ever been up there?”

“Only that one time. I saw her jump. Lord Discaru came up behind me, and he was able to control the beast. He said I must never speak of it. Is he really gone?”

“Yeah.”

“Good,” she said, like she meant it.

“How did it get loose?”

“My lord?”

“You said it was chasing Tethia. How did it get out of its cell?”

“I don’t know. It was just after the completion of the construction, when we first appeared here, so perhaps something went wrong.”

“Or something went right.”

“My lord?”

I shook my head.

“Thanks for your help, Odelpho. What did you say your name means?”

“Delpho means ‘home of the bear’ in the ancient language of the Lyorn, my lord.”

“Nice name,” I said. “Take good care of it.”

I bowed to her because I felt like it, and went on my way.

Time to end things.

Zhayin put his book down as I came in. “Well, what do you—”

“Shut up or I’ll kill you. Is that clear enough? I hate killing people for free, but I’m already inclined to make an exception for you, so don’t give me any more reasons.”

“I’ll—”

“You’ll what? Discaru is gone. That monster of yours is dead. Who—”

“Dead?”

“—is going to protect you? The dry-nurse or the butler?”

He glared at me. The news that his son was dead seemed to affect him not at all. Maybe I shouldn’t let that bother me, especially with what else he’d done, and the fact that his son had become an inhuman monster hundreds of years before. As I said, maybe I shouldn’t have, but I thought about my own son, and I liked him even less.

He reached for a pull-rope next to him. I said, “You don’t want to do that. Your guards are in the past, and in the old castle, and they have to go through the mirror room and down stairs to get here. By the time they’ve done that, I will have sliced open your belly to see how many times I can wrap your entrails around your neck.” Hey, look: if you’re going to threaten someone, making it graphic is always better. I wouldn’t really have done that, but it was effective, all right? Don’t judge me.

“And you don’t even want to, do you? You want as few people from the past here as possible, because the more who know about it, the more chance someone will figure out what you did, and find a way to get the message out, even from two hundred years ago. But I still want to see how much your entrails will stretch. Or maybe I won’t even bother. Maybe I’ll just stick you. With this.” I drew Lady Teldra. She appeared as I’d first seen her, a very long, thin knife, slight teardrop shaping along the blade. She was beautiful.

I once had someone explain to me that we don’t have real interactions with people, we have interactions with the image of those people we carry in our heads. I don’t know. Maybe. But I figure if I stick a Great Weapon into a guy’s eye, it’s close enough to a real interaction for most purposes.

“What do you want?” he said. His voice was hoarse.

“Take your clothes off,” I said.

His eyes widened.

“What do you think—”

I walked toward him until the point was inches from his face. “Take. Your. Clothes. Off.”

He was shaking. He had every right to. He stood up, undid the belt of his robe, and let it fall off his shoulder. He wore thin yellow pants under it. I let him keep those.

“Hand me the robe,” I said.

He stared down the length of Lady Teldra, then picked up the robe and handed it over.

“Sit down,” I said.

He did.

I sheathed Lady Teldra, and he visibly relaxed. “What are you—”

“Shut your mouth or I will cut out your tongue,” I suggested.

I drew a small throwing knife from inside of my cloak, found a piece of purple thread on the robe, and cut it. Then I looked Zhayin in the eyes, and started pulling on the thread. He swallowed. It all came out in one long tear; it took maybe a minute. When I was done, there were pieces of yellow silk on the floor, and a length of purple thread in my hand. I dropped the thread, and as I did so I heard, as if from far away, a deep metallic “click.”

“There,” I said. “Now the door is open.”

He started to speak, but someone else did first. “Uncle Vlad!”

“Hello, Devera. This is Lord Zhayin, who murdered his own daughter and trapped you here.”

She turned and looked at him, then turned back to me. “I don’t like him very much,” she announced.

“Yeah, that’s two of us. But you’re free now.”

“I know.”

“And so is the woman who brought you here.”

She nodded.

“I should get going now, Uncle Vlad. I need to go back to yesterday and find you.”

“Of course you do,” I said.

“Are you, are you going to hurt him?”

“I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t.”

“Well, thank you, Uncle Vlad.”

“You’re welcome, Devera.”

She vanished, like she does. I moved a chair so it was facing him and a little too close. Then I leaned forward. I said, “I know what you did, I just want to know why you did it. I have a suspicion, but I hope I’m wrong, because I don’t want there to exist anyone who—never mind. Start talking.”

He didn’t speak.

I said, “Tethia solved the problem, didn’t she? She figured it all out, how to cut through the Halls of Judgment to permit travel to other worlds.”

He grunted, which I took as a yes.

“But you’re not there yet. You just put the touches on the basics of it, and now you’re ready to extend the platform to wherever you can find access points. And you had a friendly demon lined up to help with that, except now you’ll have to find another, because he accidentally fell on my Morganti knife when he was trying to kill me. I feel bad.”

He went back to glaring.

“Or maybe I’ll kill you, in which case you won’t have to worry about it. But, here’s my question: Why is Tethia dead? And not only dead, but trapped here, locked into this place? Oh, I know how you did it. You bound her to the Paths of the Dead with your key, that robe. I get that part. But why? Did you need a soul in order to make it work? No, you didn’t. Was it a tragic accident that the monster you accidentally created happened to get loose just at the point when her work was done? No, it wasn’t. Was it some fluke of her having designed the place that, after she died, she was unable to leave? No, it wasn’t.

“You control the door to the thing’s lair, don’t you? You released it first when I showed up, but—and here’s the part that took me the longest to figure out—you failed to tell Discaru, so he thought it escaped and recaptured it. That’s pretty funny, when you think about it. You’re really bad at this stuff. Then you released it again when I started messing with the mirrors, only this time there was no Discaru, so I put it out of its misery. If that makes you sad you’re the worst hypocrite this sad Empire has ever produced. You used your son—what remained of him—to kill your daughter, didn’t you? Only this time your friend the demon was in on it with you. You’d sealed the entire structure so no one could leave, but he opened it up just enough for her to jump off it, didn’t he? That way she’d be dead and you wouldn’t even have a mess to clean up. He was a good friend to you, always ready to do your dirty work. I’d say I’m sorry I dispatched him, but I’d be lying.

“Only that wasn’t the end of it. After she died, Discaru bound her to the manor, so you could keep her here. He used the front room to contain her soul, to keep her trapped. I know he did it, and I know he did it for you, but why? That’s my question. Why did you kill your own daughter, and then prevent her soul from moving on? What did you get out of it?”

“If you’re going to kill me, just—”

I pulled the dagger from my boot. Not Lady Teldra, not this time, but a nasty stiletto. “Answer the question.”

“I don’t like answering people who are threatening me.”

“Okay, fair enough. I won’t threaten.” I transferred the blade to my other hand, then slapped him across the face. His head rocked, and when it came back, I transferred the dagger again and slapped him with the other hand. He put his arm up and slid forward and I gut-punched him. He doubled over on his knees on the floor and started retching.

I sat down again and waited. After a minute, I said, “There. You see? No threat. Would you like me to not threaten you again?”

After a minute he looked like he could maybe form words. I got up and assisted him back into his chair; he flinched when I moved, but sat down.

“I’m listening,” I said.

“What do you want?”

“Why did you have your own daughter killed?”

He raised his head and looked at me. “I’d been working on it all my life.”

“It? You mean—”

“Creating a crossplanar platform. A place to live through which one could walk the halls and visit worlds as if they were rooms.”

“Well, at any rate, you’ve managed a place where you walk into rooms and end up in places that make no sense.”

He shook his head. “That is nothing, trivial. A matter of adjusting the mirrors. The principle is there, it works; that is how you can reach the Halls of Judgment, and the Housetown castle. It works.”

“Okay, I believe you. It works. And?”

“All my life. More than three thousand five hundred years I devoted to this. That is a hundred times as long as your kind lives.”

I didn’t correct his arithmetic, or comment that it explained why he was having trouble adjusting the mirrors. I said, “Okay, whatever. That doesn’t explain—”

“Three thousand, five hundred years. And after all of that, she, my own daughter, would get all the credit.”

“But she solved the problem, didn’t she?”

“No! I did! I solved it by bringing her to the Halls to be born! That was my idea! I arranged for her to have the power, to be able to walk from world to world, bringing reality with her as if it were a length of string, tied in one place, carried to another. The House gives an award, you know. An award for superlative design, for building something no one else has been able to build. For all time, that award—”

“Which you’d cheated to get?”

He snuffled like a puppy. “Cheated,” he said. “I didn’t cheat. I restored things to the way they should have been.”

“Fine, you did all that amazing stuff,” I said, “I’m sure if I were an Athyra I’d understand that, and if I were a Vallista I’d care. But I’m just a humble, simple Easterner. So I just say, so what?”

“So what? So what? Didn’t you hear me?”

“Yeah, I heard you. You had the bright idea to forge your daughter as if she were a tool, and it worked, and all you care about is whose name gets in which history books. I heard it, I just don’t believe it. What sort of worthless waste of skin and bones cares more about that than his own daughter? Not to mention your wife; you got her killed too, didn’t you. Because of reasons that are none of your business, I get to see my son every month. Maybe every week if I’m lucky. Those are the best days I have. And, hey, maybe family isn’t the most important thing to everyone. Fine. But you had your own daughter killed, and are now trying to erase the memory of the thing she … you know, you just might be the most disgusting, worthless specimen of a Dragaeran I’ve ever seen, and I’ve killed dozens of you guys, all of whom deserved it. I’m impressed.”

I might as well have saved my breath for all the effect it had on him. “There’s no point in trying to make you understand,” he said.

“No,” I agreed. “There isn’t.”

“What are you going to do now?”

“I’m going to go home, find someplace where they let Easterners stay, and take a long bath and try to scrub your filth out of my soul.”

He couldn’t come up with an answer to that, so he just looked disgusted.

“And that isn’t all, is it? You sealed the place. No one can get in or out? You kept all of your servants in the past, where there was no one to tell, except three, and your pet dancer who is too good for you. And you sealed the doors to make sure they couldn’t leave. Only I got in, and you never could figure out how that happened.”

“Tethia—”

“She’ll be fine,” I said. “As for you, I’m not so sure.”

“Do what you will,” he said. “The manor still stands. I accomplished what no one else has before.”

“Yeah,” I said. “And if that had been enough for you, I wouldn’t be standing here deciding whether to kill you before I leave.”