Orca by Steven Brust Page A

“Well. That’s interesting. Surprising, too.”
    “That the Organization is involved?”
    “No, no. Not that.”
    “What?”
    He shook his head and appeared to be lost in thought—like I’d told him more than I thought I had, which was certainly possible. So I gave him a decent interval, then said, “What is it?”
    He shook his head again. I felt a little irritated but I didn’t say anything. He said, “It doesn’t make sense, that’s all.”
    “What doesn’t?”
    “How well do you know Stony?”
    “Quite.”
    “Would he lie to you?”
    “Certainly.”
    “Maybe that’s it, then. In any case, someone lied, somewhere along the line.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Let me think about this, all right? And do some checking on my own. I want to follow something up; I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.”
    I shrugged. There’s no reasoning with Vlad when he gets a mood on him. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll be back in the morning.”
    He nodded. Then he said, “Kiera?”
    “Yes?”
    “Thanks.”
    “You’re welcome.”
    I slept late the next day, because there was no reason not to. It was around noon when I got to the cottage, and no one was there except the dog. It shuffled away from me. I devoted some effort to making friends with it, and of course I succeeded. I talked to it for a while. Most cat owners talk to their cats, but all dog owners talk to their dogs; I don’t now why that is. I’d been there an hour or so when the dog jumped up suddenly and bolted out the door, and a minute or so later Hwdf’rjaanci returned with Savn. I said, “Good day, Mother. I hope you don’t mind that I let myself in. I’ve made some klava.”
    She nodded and had the boy sit down, then she closed the shutters. I realized that each time I’d been there during the day the windows had been shut. I got her some klava, which she drank bitter.
    I said, “What have you learned, Mother?”
    “Not as much as I wish,” she said. I waited. She said, “I think the two biggest problems are the bump on the head and the sister.”
    “Can’t the bump be healed?”
    “It has healed, on the outside. But there was some damage to his brain.”
    “No, I mean, can’t the damage be healed? I know there are sorcerers—”
    “Not yet. Not until I’m sure that, if I heal him, I won’t be sealing in the problem.”
    “I think I understand. What about the sister?”
    “He feels guilty about her—about her being exposed to whatever it was that happened.”
    She nodded. “That’s the real problem. I think he’s somehow using guilt about his sister to keep from facing that. He creates fantasies of rescuing her, but always shies away from what he’s rescuing her from. And then he loses control of the fantasies and they turn into nightmares. It’s worse, I think, because he used to be apprenticed to a physicker, so he’s even more tormented about what he did than most peasant boys would be.”
    I nodded. Speaking like this, she’d changed somehow—she wasn’t an old woman in a cottage full of ugly polished wood carvings, she was a sorcerer and a skilled physicker of the mind. It now seemed entirely reasonable that, as Vlad had told me, the locals would come by from time to time to consult with her on whatever their problems might be.
    “Do you have a plan?”
    “No. There’s too much I don’t understand. If I just go blundering in, I might destroy him—and myself.”
    “I understand.” I opened my mouth and closed it again. I said, “What are the walks for?”
    “I think he’s used to walking. He gets restless when he’s sitting for too long.”
    “And the closed shutters? Are they for him, or do you just like it that way?”
    “For him. He’s had too much experience, there have been too many things for him to see and hear and feel all at once—I want to limit them.”
    “Limit them? But if he’s trapped in his head, won’t it help to give him things outside his head to respond to?”
    “You’d think so,