“Once this spring, sieur,” he said. “And I know these two men in black are torturers. But you're no torturer, sieur, though you're dressed like one.”
I let that pass. “You have never seen me?”
“No, sieur.”
“Very well, perhaps you have not.” (How strange it was to realize that I had changed so much.) “Ouen, since you do not know me, it might be well if I knew you. Tell me where you were born and who your parents were, and how you came to be employed at this inn.”
“My father was a shopkeeper, sieur. We lived in Oldgate, on the west bank. When I was ten or so, I think, he sent me to an inn to be a potboy, and I've worked in one or another since.”
“Your father was a shopkeeper. What of your mother?” Ouen's face still held a waiter's deference, but his eyes were puzzled. “I never knew her, sieur. Cas they called her, but she died when I was young. In childbirth, my father said.”
“But you know what she looked like.”
He nodded. “My father had a locket with her likeness. Once when I was twenty or so I came to see him and found out he'd pledged it. I'd come into a bit of money then helping a certain optimate with his affairs — carrying messages to the ladies and standing watch outside doors and so on, and I went to the pawnbroker's and paid the pledge and took it. I still wear it, sieur. In a place like ours, where there's so many in 'n out all the time, it's best to keep your valuables about you.”
He reached into his shirt and drew out a locket of cloisonne enamel. The pictures inside were of Dorcas in full face and profile, a Dorcas hardly younger than the Dorcas I had known.
“You say you became a potboy at ten, Ouen. But you can read and write.”
“A bit, sieur.” He looked embarrassed. “I've asked people, various times, what writing said. I don't forget much.”
“You wrote something when the torturer was here this spring,” I told him. “Do you recall what you wrote?” Frightened, he shook his head. “Only a note to warn the girl.”
“I do. It was, ‘
Ouen tucked his locket under his shirt. “It was only that she was so much like her, sieur. When I was a younger man, I used to think that someday I'd find such a woman. I told myself, you know, that I was a better man than my father, and he had, after all. But I never did, and now I'm not so sure I'm a better man.”
“At that time, you did not know what a torturer's habit looked like,” I said. “But your friend Trudo, the ostler, knew. He knew a good deal more about torturers than you, and that was why he ran away.”
“Yes, sieur. When he heard the torturer was asking for him, he did.”
“But you saw the innocence of the girl and wanted to warn her against the torturer and the other woman. You were right about both of them, perhaps.”
“If you say it, sieur.”
“Do you know, Ouen, you look a bit like her.” The fat innkeeper had been listening more or less openly. Now he chuckled. “He looks more like you!”
I am afraid I turned to stare at him.
“No offense intended, sieur, but it's true. He's a bit older, but when you were talking I saw both your faces from the side, and there isn't a patch of difference.”
I studied Ouen again. His hair and eyes were not dark like mine, but with that coloring aside, his face might almost have been my own.
“You said you never found a woman like Dorcas — like that one in your locket. Still you found a woman, I think.” His eyes would not meet mine. “Several, sieur.”
“And fathered a child.”
“No, sieur!” He was startled. “Never, sieur!”
“How interesting. Were you ever in difficulties with the law?”
“Several times, sieur.”
“It is well to keep your voice low, but it need not be so low as that. And look at me when you speak to me. A woman you loved — or perhaps only one who loved you — a dark woman — was taken once?”
“Once, sieur,” he said. “Yes, sieur. Catherine was her name. It's an old-fashioned name, they tell me.” He paused and shrugged. “There was trouble, as you say, sieur. She'd run off from some order of monials. The law got her, and I never saw her again.” He did not want to come, but we brought him with us when we returned to the lugger.
When I had come upriver by night on the Samru, the line between the living and the dead city had been like that between the dark curve of the world and the celestial dome with its stars. Now, when there was so much more light, it had vanished. Half-ruinous structures lined the banks, but whether they were the homes of the most wretched of our citizens or mere deserted shells I could not determine until I saw a string on which three rags flapped.
“In the guild we have the ideal of poverty,” I said to Drotte as we leaned on the gunnel. “But those people do not need the ideal; they have achieved it.”
“I should think they'd need it most of all,” he answered. He was wrong. The Increate was there, a thing beyond the Hierodules and those they serve; even on the river, I could feel his presence as one feels that of the master of a great house, though he may be in an obscure room on another floor. When we went ashore, it seemed to me that if I were to step through any doorway there, I might surprise some shining figure; and that the commander of all such figures was everywhere invisible only because he was too large to be seen.
