Innkeeper's Song

When I could open my eyes, the i

“Take him away with you,” he said to Rosseth after a time. “Feed him in the kitchen, let him sleep where he will, and in the morning set him to cleaning the bathhouse and stopping those holes you haven’t yet touched, where the frogs get in. After that, Shadry should have some use for him in the kitchen.” He opened his eyes wide for a moment and peered at me with some kind of wonder that I was too weary to understand, drawing a breath as though to say something further, important, something to do with Lukassa, with me. But instead he looked at Rosseth again, mumbling, “Those two, those men, anywhere about, have you seen them?” Rosseth shook his head, and Karsh turned without another word and disappeared into a back room. He moved gracefully, the way a wave swells and rolls from shore to shore, never quite breaking. My mother, who was also fat, moved that way.

Rosseth said, very quietly, “My,” and began to laugh.

He said, “I know what I told you, but I can’t believe—” and his voice trailed away a second time. “Come on,” he said, “you’ve earned as much di

ROSSETH

They came back just as Tikat and I were finishing our meal, which we ate outside, sitting under the tree where Marinesha liked to hang her washing. I heard them first—three plodding horses and the unmistakable squeak of Lal’s saddle, which no amount of soaping and oiling could get rid of. Tikat knew it too: he dropped his bowl and wheeled to see them passing in the dusk, turning into the courtyard, Nyateneri’s eyes and cheekbones catching the light as she leaned to say something to Lal. Lukassa rode some way behind them, reins slack, looking down. None of them noticed us as they went by.

In honesty, I forgot about Tikat for the moment. His concern with Lukassa was his concern; mine was to warn Nyateneri about the two smiling little men who had come seeking her. I jumped up and ran calling, and Lal as well as Nyateneri reined in to wait for me. Behind me I heard Tikat crying, “Lukassa!” and the sorrow and the overwhelming joy and thankfulness in that one word were more than I could understand then, or ever forget now. I did not look back.

Clinging to Nyateneri’s stirrup, I panted out everything: what the men had done and said, how they had looked, sounded, what it had felt like to be breathing the air they breathed—very nearly as terrible as strangling in their hands. I remember how vastly pleasant it was, when I got to that part, to hear Lal miss a breath and feel Nyateneri’s hand tighten on my shoulder for just a moment. She seemed neither frightened nor surprised, I noticed; when Lal asked her, “Who are they?” she made no reply beyond the tiniest shrug. Lal did not ask again, but from that point she watched Nyateneri, not me, as I spoke.

I was telling them how Karsh had gotten the men to leave the i

Tikat came up after her, moving very slowly, exactly as you do when you’re trying not to frighten a wild creature. His face, his whole long body, all of him was plainly numb with bewilderment. He said—so carefully, so gently—“Lukassa, it’s me, it’s Tikat. It’s Tikat.” Each time he said his name, she shuddered further away from him, keeping Lal’s horse between them.

Nyateneri raised an eyebrow, saying nothing. Lal said, “The boy is her betrothed. He has followed us a very long and valiant way.” She saluted Tikat with a strange, flowing gesture of both hands at her breast—I was never able to copy it, though I tried often, and I have never seen it made again. “Well done,” she said to him. “I thought we had lost you a dozen times over. You know how to track almost as well as you know how to love.”

Tikat turned on her, his eyes as mad as Lukassa’s, not with fear but with despair. “What have you done to her?” he shouted. “She has known me all her life, what have you done? Witch, wizard, where is my Lukassa? Who is this you have raised from the dead? Where is my Lukassa?” Three hours I’d known him, proud and stubborn and cranky, and my heart could have broken for him.

“Well, well, well, well, well,” Nyateneri said softly to nobody. Lal reached out and took hold of Lukassa’s hands, saying, “Child, listen, it’s your man, surely you remember.” But Lukassa jerked back from her as well, scrambling frantically down from her horse and rushing toward the i

In the silence, Nyateneri murmured, “Secrets everywhere.”

“Yes,” Lal said. “So there are.” She swung down from her saddle, and after a moment Nyateneri joined her. Lal handed me the three horses’ reins, saying only, “Thank you, Rosseth,” before she hurried toward the i

I did what I could. I took all the reins in one hand, and I put my free arm around Tikat’s shoulders, and I brought everybody back to the stable. The horses crowded me, eager for their stalls, but Tikat came along as docilely as though he were on a rope himself, or a chain: head low, arms hanging open-palmed, feet tripping over weed-clumps. He said no word more, not even when I helped him up the ladder to the loft, raked some straw together, gave him my extra horse-blanket, and wished him goodnight. While I was rubbing the horses down, I thought I heard him stirring and muttering, but when I climbed up again to bring him some water, he was deeply asleep. I was glad for him.

With the horses taken care of, I thought I had better go up to the i