Caldrea.
I finally got my wish late in the afternoon, when he came briskly through the double door, walked into the open, then halted midway to the bushes and to shout this speech to the air. “My dear Soukyan, if you are within the sound of my voice, as I would think you are, may I first heartily praise your determination and your ingenuity—and may I also assure you that these admirable qualities will make no least difference to the outcome of this night. Savor your remaining hours here, since I do not for a moment imagine you will be wise enough to employ them in running for your life. Which would not help, either; if I wished to call them off now, they would pay no slightest heed to me. Take it as a compliment, Soukyan, and do enjoy this beautiful evening. The night will be less so.”
He bowed formally, as he had done so often upon leaving my cell, and went back into the mansion. I lay still for some time.
I did take advantage of the twilight’s sweet-smelling warmth by slipping back into the woods to tend to dinner. Without my bow or the trimoira dagger, I was not only defenseless, but faced nourishing myself on tilgit for what might well be my last meal. That thought being completely intolerable, I fashioned a snare from a V-shaped branch and a few supple twigs, caught a plump starik , and devoured it raw.
Death had been much on my mind all that day, in the most practical sense. Giving Master Caldrea proper credit for intelligence, and for having known me in my childhood, I assumed that he would expect me to attempt to recover my weapons, and would have them all under heavy guard, inaccessible, as I would have done in his place. But I could not even find out where they were being kept, no matter whom I followed, no matter how many risks I took to spy on hurrying monks and tantalizing clumps of sentries. Barring a stout tree-limb trimmed into some sort of bludgeon, I was shortly about to face empty-handed an unknown number of the most gifted and pitiless killers I had ever encountered. Utterly absurd frustration at one end of the day, suicide at the other: Soukyan to the life, Lal would have said.
At one point I even crawled as close as I dared to the stable, thinking that the weapons might have been hidden in the hayloft, but heard only my own mare, who nickered when she sensed me near. Any guards who knew horses, Hunters or no, would have been out and swarming on the instant, so I discounted the stable and moved on.
Somewhere around that time, with dark coming on, I realized that I was beginning to look seriously at promising branches.
Dusk is a bad time for me—always, since I was very young, long before I became whatever exactly I am. I have never known why that should be, and it still irritates me. A mercenary may grow wistful, even sentimental, regretting losses and mistakes, stupidities and misjudgments and crimes that cannot easily be remembered as mistakes…but what kind of regrets can a small boy possibly have who begins to cry as the sky turns slowly violet and the first twinge of cold comes into the air? I have no more fear of midnight than Lal-after-dark does, and the deep hours before dawn have often been my own high noon. But twilight can be hard, and right then I was desperate enough to determine on a completely insane gamble in order to acquire at least some weapon. I focused on one guard, younger than the others, who seemed not to be guarding anything in particular, but rather strutting here and there, striking poses with his long broadsword. As he wandered increasingly close to the shadow where I lay, I prepared to pounce, catch him by the neck, strangle him silent, and drag him into the woods to finish him. I am good at this. If I were not, I would have been long dead myself.
But with that boast on record, let me report further that as I crouched, behind me a wheezing old voice rasped quietly, “Stir an inch and die, traitor Soukyan!”
Brother Laska .
I turned my head and saw him
I finally got my wish late in the afternoon, when he came briskly through the double door, walked into the open, then halted midway to the bushes and to shout this speech to the air. “My dear Soukyan, if you are within the sound of my voice, as I would think you are, may I first heartily praise your determination and your ingenuity—and may I also assure you that these admirable qualities will make no least difference to the outcome of this night. Savor your remaining hours here, since I do not for a moment imagine you will be wise enough to employ them in running for your life. Which would not help, either; if I wished to call them off now, they would pay no slightest heed to me. Take it as a compliment, Soukyan, and do enjoy this beautiful evening. The night will be less so.”
He bowed formally, as he had done so often upon leaving my cell, and went back into the mansion. I lay still for some time.
I did take advantage of the twilight’s sweet-smelling warmth by slipping back into the woods to tend to dinner. Without my bow or the trimoira dagger, I was not only defenseless, but faced nourishing myself on tilgit for what might well be my last meal. That thought being completely intolerable, I fashioned a snare from a V-shaped branch and a few supple twigs, caught a plump starik , and devoured it raw.
Death had been much on my mind all that day, in the most practical sense. Giving Master Caldrea proper credit for intelligence, and for having known me in my childhood, I assumed that he would expect me to attempt to recover my weapons, and would have them all under heavy guard, inaccessible, as I would have done in his place. But I could not even find out where they were being kept, no matter whom I followed, no matter how many risks I took to spy on hurrying monks and tantalizing clumps of sentries. Barring a stout tree-limb trimmed into some sort of bludgeon, I was shortly about to face empty-handed an unknown number of the most gifted and pitiless killers I had ever encountered. Utterly absurd frustration at one end of the day, suicide at the other: Soukyan to the life, Lal would have said.
At one point I even crawled as close as I dared to the stable, thinking that the weapons might have been hidden in the hayloft, but heard only my own mare, who nickered when she sensed me near. Any guards who knew horses, Hunters or no, would have been out and swarming on the instant, so I discounted the stable and moved on.
Somewhere around that time, with dark coming on, I realized that I was beginning to look seriously at promising branches.
Dusk is a bad time for me—always, since I was very young, long before I became whatever exactly I am. I have never known why that should be, and it still irritates me. A mercenary may grow wistful, even sentimental, regretting losses and mistakes, stupidities and misjudgments and crimes that cannot easily be remembered as mistakes…but what kind of regrets can a small boy possibly have who begins to cry as the sky turns slowly violet and the first twinge of cold comes into the air? I have no more fear of midnight than Lal-after-dark does, and the deep hours before dawn have often been my own high noon. But twilight can be hard, and right then I was desperate enough to determine on a completely insane gamble in order to acquire at least some weapon. I focused on one guard, younger than the others, who seemed not to be guarding anything in particular, but rather strutting here and there, striking poses with his long broadsword. As he wandered increasingly close to the shadow where I lay, I prepared to pounce, catch him by the neck, strangle him silent, and drag him into the woods to finish him. I am good at this. If I were not, I would have been long dead myself.
But with that boast on record, let me report further that as I crouched, behind me a wheezing old voice rasped quietly, “Stir an inch and die, traitor Soukyan!”
Brother Laska .
I turned my head and saw him
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