'Could anyone?' Mihn countered. 'There is no way of knowing that until it's too late. In a duel I suspect he is unbeatable, for that is how the Gods intended him to be. I would have a better chance using an assassin's weapon, and even then, would I ever get close enough?'
'I suppose not.' Vesna could hear the disappointment in his own voice and realised he had been hoping that Mihn's prodigious skills would provide the answer.
'Whatever the chances,' Mihn said in a firm voice, 'I will not use an edged weapon again. The more I think on it, the more I believe my duty lies with Isak himself. My failure was one of the mind or soul, not the body, and it is not my body that shall secure my atonement.'
Vesna struck a sulphurous alchemist's match and put it to the filled bowl of his pipe. The shadows seemed to deepen around them in the sputtering light. They continued in silence for a while. The houses of Hamble Lanes slowly thinned as they neared the city wall.
'Did I ever tell you how my father died?' Vesna said suddenly. ' 'You did not.'
The count drew on his pipe and exhaled. A small cloud of smoke obscured his face for a moment. 'He died in a duel when I was a young man, fighting a knight twenty years younger than he over the honour of a cousin.'
'That sounds a waste of life to me.'
'Honour's a funny thing. Sometimes it makes demands you'd prefer it didn't.'
'How sorely was the cousin's honour offended?'
'Oh, not badly, but nonetheless my father felt the boy didn't deserve a kicking for so trifling a reason.' He grimaced. 'A telling-off would have sufficed, so I was told.'
'There was no magistrate to intervene? I was led to believe this civilised nation of yours has a tradition of law.'
Vesna turned to look at Mihn. In the near-darkness he couldn't tell if Mihn's words had been gentle mocking rather than condemnation.
'Unfortunately,' he continued at last, 'magistrates have sons too, sons they are loyal to, whatever the faults. Less a flaw of civilisation I think, than one of humanity.'
'So it was an excess of pride all round that led to your father's death,' Mihn said solemnly. 'A great shame.'
'The odd thing is that my father knew the likely outcome of a duel; he was past fifty, and he'd never been anything more than a decent swordsman.'
'Yet he offered battle all the same? Because of honour.'
'The boy was family; that was all that mattered to him. He used to say 'there are those you are related to who'll never be your family, and those of a different tribe you'll gladly call 'brother'. Never stand aside when those you consider family are assailed.''
'So the insult could not be ignored? Bruises heal in a few weeks, death rarely so.'
'Someone had to stand up for those who could not, that was how my father saw it,' Vesna said sadly.
'I think I can guess the rest of the story,' Mihn said, still looking straight ahead.
'Who says there's more to tell?'
'There's more.'
'How do you know?' Vesna heard the wariness in his own voice. M ihn had a way of encouraging those with guilty thoughts to hear an unspoken reproach when he spoke.
'I know because I know you, and I know stories. Tales are not told without a reason. But first, I have the conclusion of the tale. Your father died, you discovered this when you returned home from whatever trip you had been on. Had the old man waited, he would have been alive perhaps even today. A bully does not kill the father of one destined to be a hero without finding himself taken to account, and you are here to tell me the story.'
Vesna found himself nodding at Minn's words. 'He was the first man I killed.'
'You were away being schooled in arms? He probably only saw the child you'd once been. How many strokes did it take?'
'Three.'
Mihn was silent for a while. Eventually he spoke again. 'And your reason for telling me?'
Vesna sighed. 'Honour can get you killed. It will if you seek to protect it often enough.'
'Yet sometimes there is more to life than that – sometimes a stand must be taken in full acknowledgement of the price. Your father realised that. He wanted those he considered family to realise he valued them above his own life.'
'In defence of those you consider family,' Vesna continued, eyes fixed in the distance.
'I hear a question hanging in the air.'
'Yes. Who do you consider family?'
In a voice so quiet that Vesna wasn't sure he heard it exactly, Mihn said, 'Those I would make sacrifices for – those I would follow into the Dark Place, if need be.'
The two men fell silent. Only the clatter of hooves on the cobbled street and Vesna's long puffs disturbed the quiet. Minutes passed and Vesna's thoughts had not left the conversation, but all of a sudden he heard a noise, somewhere off to the right – the scrape of a roof tile, perhaps. Both men turned immediately. Vesna slid a hand behind him to grip the crossbow hanging from his saddle.
He'd wound and cocked the weapon before leaving; night had few witnesses and some of the things lurking in the streets wouldn't be looking merely to rob him. There were gargoyles and colprys both willing to attack a human, though such attacks were rare, and bands of enraged penitents roaming the streets.
'Can you see anything?' Vesna said softly, loading a quarrel into the bow.
'No, but I doubt it'll be anything that requires that,' Mihn said, cocking his head, trying to hear better. 'No man would be up on the roofs tonight, not in this cold, and I can't believe any creature would attack two men on horses.'
Vesna continued to stare at the silent houses, but there was no sound beyond the sound of hooves. 'If you say so.' He turned back to check their route, but kept the bow in his lap all the same.
The brothel they were heading for was a large fortified building set against the wall itself. It had been secured on a peacetime lease from the City Council, and most likely was unaffected by the recent unrest. It was easily defended, and it catered to noble tastes, so there was money to spend on guards, quite aside from the fact that most of the patrons would have come armed.
'Are we close to Death's Gardens?' Mihn asked suddenly, pointing off to their right.
'Yes, I think so.' Vesna frowned for a moment and turned in his saddle to inspect the streets running south. 'Yes, they're that way, past the Poacher's Moon shrine.' He pointed down one street.
Death's Gardens was the name given to a small public park owned by the cult of Death. It was less than two hundred yards long on any of its three sides. Much of it was given over to ancient cultivated yews, and in the centre was a miniature lake which, for no good reason Vesna had ever been able to fathom, contained a pair of pike that the priests of Death fed. Ehla, the witch of Llehden, and the Demi-God Fernal had scandalised the people of the city by building themselves a camp in the gardens, having both found themselves uncomfortable in the bustling confines of Tirah Palace, but the clerics of the city had thus made only a token protest at their presence. Witchcraft was no more frowned upon than magery, and the priests were more concerned about the mages, being traditional competitors, richer and not accompanied by a terrifying Demi-God.
'You want to visit the witch at this hour?'
'I am plagued by questions and I believe she understands the nature of the Land better than any other I trust with my thoughts.'
'It's a bit late for social calls, isn't it?' Vesna pulled his fox-lined cape tighter about his body and suppressed a shiver. The cold prickled sharply on his face and rubbing his cheeks with the palms of his gloves only increased his discomfort.
Mihn shrugged. 'She will not complain; it is her purpose in life to be there when others need her help.' He nudged his horse in the right direction.
As he passed Vesna, the count saw rare uncertainty on Mihn's face and reminded himself that the failed Harlequin had been alone since being cast out of his tribe. It would be hard for him to take any sort of advice from others.
'Thank you, for bringing me out this way. I- I've not really left the Palace since returning. I think- It appears I fell out of the habit of enjoying myself quite a while ago.' A flicker of embarrassment showed in Mihn's eyes.
