Pazel. “And I’m certain you do. The last clear memory I have is how you stared at me. As if I’d just told you I’d killed a baby. I couldn’t very well demand honesty when we were all playing charades with Arunis and Fulbreech. But that’s over, and I want to hear the truth.”
“Thasha-”
“Now.”
The others exchanged glances. They had all discussed it; she could see the awareness in their eyes. At last Hercol cleared his throat.
“Let me,” said Pazel suddenly. He stood up from the bed and rubbed his face with one hand. She thought suddenly how old he looked, how loss and danger had bled the child out of him, out of them all. He was young and old at once. He took her hands.
“You said, I didn’t mean to. It was never supposed to happen. And then you asked if I believed you. That was all.”
Thasha felt a coldness settle over her like sudden nightfall. She felt Pazel’s grip tighten, but the sensation was far away. Air, they were saying, give her air, take her to the window. She stumbled forward and leaned on the sill.
For a moment she felt better-good enough to speak one of her father’s salty naval curses, and to hear them laugh with relief. Then she raised her eyes and looked out through the window.
Masalym shimmered before her in the midday heat. But it was not the same place. The Lower City was bustling with life-humans, dlomu, smaller numbers of other beings she could not identify. Thousands went about their business, and the homes were solid and cheerful, flower boxes in the windows, fruit trees in the yards, carts pulled by dogs or donkeys rattling down the streets. Human children, dlomic children, milled together in a schoolyard. An old dlomic man sat by his old human wife, feeding birds in a square.
Thasha blinked, and the shadows grew longer. Now the humans were pulling the carts: were chained to the carts, chained in work teams, chained to wooden posts in the square where the couple had sat a moment before. The dlomu’s faces were as hard as the leather whips they swung. A few humans were still well dressed: the ones carrying dlomic babies, or holding parasols over dlomic heads.
Another blink, and it was midnight. The city was on fire. The dlomu ranged the streets in rival bands, charging one another, stabbing, slashing, cutting throats. Mobs raced from broken doorways with armfuls of stolen goods, prisoners at sword-point, dlomic girls in nightdresses, wailing. The humans scurried in terror, bent low to the earth. They wore rags, when they wore anything at all.
Once more the scene changed. It was a bleak, ashen dawn. Masalym was a city nearly abandoned. The few dlomu to be seen were rebuilding as best they could. The human faces were gone entirely.
“Never to return,” said Thasha aloud.
“We might yet,” said Pazel, embracing her. “The ship’s nearly repaired. We might find a way.”
“Never,” Thasha repeated. “I won’t let her. She had her chance, and look what she did with it. Look at that city, by the Blessed Tree. Are you looking?”
“We see it,” said Hercol. “We’ve been looking at it for days.”
“I won’t let her, Pazel,” said Thasha, trying hard to feel his arms around her. “I want you to stay with me. She can try whatever she wants, but this is me, this is my life, and I will never, ever let her come back.”
Strange Couriers
5 Modobrin 941
234th day from Etherhorde
PROFESSOR J. L. GARAPAT
Odesh Hened Hulai
Entreats Your Participation in a Gathering of
Extraordinary Consequence for the Several Worlds
Guest of Honor:
Felthrup Stargraven of Pol Warren, Noonfirth, NW Alifros
Tomorrow nightfall
The old tap room, The Orfuin Club
Admission by This Card Only
Your Absolute Discretion Is Assumed
The historians passed the card from hand to hand. They were sharp-eyed and earnest, and ready for a confrontation. It was not right for them to have been stopped at the door. “Extraordinary consequence be damned,” muttered the first of them. “How consequential can it be, Garapat, if your guest of honor never bothered to show?”
“But of course Mr. Stargraven is here!” said Garapat, a tall, frail human with a serious voice and colossally thick glasses in bone frames dangling from his nose. He waved at the round table, which was cluttered with pipe- stands, cakes, gingerbread, mugs of cider and ale, someone’s fiddle, countless books, one black rat. The old leather chairs outnumbered their occupants, but the half dozen seated guests had the look of determined squatters, prepared to resist their eviction.
“Where?” said the historians, jostling. “That animal, that rat? Felthrup Stargraven is the rat?”
“Hello,” said Felthrup miserably.
The historians wanted to squeeze into the room, but could not manage to do so without overtly shoving the old professor from the doorway. Most of the newcomers were humans or dlomu, but there was also a translucent Flikkerman; and the first historian, their leader, had the dusky olive skin and feathered eyes of a selk. It was to the latter that Garapat addressed himself.
“He’s come with a ghastly dilemma,” whispered the professor, indicating Felthrup. “Night after night he’s braved the River of Shadows. He’s no mage, and has no travel allowance. He’s just leaped in and dreamed his way here, by grit and courage. And he’s up against-” The professor leaned close, and whispered in the first historian’s ear. The listener started, jerking his head back to look the professor in the eye.
“A little rat,” he said, “has pitted himself against them?”
“There are worlds at stake,” said Garapat. “Someone has to help him.”
“And naturally that someone is you,” said another historian, who had blue ink-stains on the hand that gripped the door frame. “What’s the matter with you, Garapat? Why do you spend so much time in this club, picking up strays?”
“Garapat’s a fool,” said someone at the back of the crowd.
“He’s from a hell-planet,” said another. “It’s called Argentina. He leaves every chance he gets.”
“Listen,” said Garapat, unperturbed by their slander, “this was terribly hard for me to arrange, and it’s been a washout, and the poor rat’s spirits are so low. Cibranath couldn’t travel, Ramachni’s nowhere to be found. And Felthrup can’t keep making this journey-indeed he doubts he will ever be able to come here again. Leave us a while longer, won’t you?”
“You were supposed to vacate an hour ago,” said the first historian. He had managed to wedge his foot into the meeting room. “And you know perfectly well we can’t work in the common chamber. The tables are far too small. Besides, this is the only summoning room in the Orfuin Club. We can’t finish our work without Ziad, and we can only summon him here. Now, if you please-”
Garapat made one more attempt, reminding them that Alifros was a magnificent world, that a number of their mutual friends called it home, and asking if they were truly willing to contribute to its destruction merely for the sake of a prearranged meeting to discuss the editing of a history text? But the last question doomed his case. Was the study of history some esoteric pastime, rather than a vital tool for understanding the present? The historians bristled at the notion. “I’m going to fetch the innkeeper,” said someone. “Rules are rules.”
Garapat sighed and looked back toward the table. Felthrup had overheard the debate.
“Let them in!” he squeaked, waving his paws. “You’ve done everything I could have hoped for, dear
