Innkeeper's Song

TIKAT

She slept without stirring for not quite three days. Without asking leave, I put her in the best upstairs room, the one that Rosseth says goes vacant all year sometimes, because Karsh insists on keeping it for the kind of people who rarely come to Corcorua. When Karsh grew noisy about it, the tafiya said to him, mildly enough, “Good Master I

Lukassa did not wake until that evening. The fox was asleep on her bed, and the tafiya had fallen asleep himself; or I think he had—he was a deceitful old man in some ways, and enjoyed being so. She came awake all at once, her eyes too ready for terror. I put my hands lightly on her arms, chancing the terror, and said, “Lukassa.”

I am not certain whether I could have borne it if she had not known me this time. But I saw that she did even before she spoke. She said, softly but clearly, “Tikat. There you are, Tikat.”

“I’m here,” I said, “and you’re here with me, and so is he,” and I nodded toward the tafiya snoring earnestly in his chair. I said, “You saved him. I think you saved us all.”

She did not answer, but looked at me in silence for a long time. Her face was a stranger’s face, which was as it should be. Love each other from the day we are born to the day we die, we are still strangers every minute, and nobody should forget that, even though we have to. Marinesha looked in at the bedroom door, smiled shyly, and went away again. Lukassa said, “When I was there, in that place, I heard you calling me.”

My throat was raw with it still. I bowed my head over her hands. She went on, halting often. “Tikat, I don’t remember you from—from before the river. He says I never will remember, not you, not myself, not anyone.” There were tears in her eyes, but they did not fall. “But I do know that you are my friend and care truly for me. And that I have hurt you.” One hand turned over in mine to close on my fingers.

“It was nothing you could help,” I said. “No more than I could help calling after you, I never thought you would hear me.”

“I did, though.” She smiled for the first time, the smile she always tries to rein in, because if her happiness spreads past the left corner of her mouth a crooked tooth shows. “It was very a

“I couldn’t call anymore,” I said. Lukassa looked into my eyes and nodded. Her hand closed tighter on my hand. I said, “I couldn’t, Lukassa.” She nodded again. I turned my head to watch the fox: slanting eyes shut tight, fluffed-out tail across his muzzle, the black-tipped fur parting with his dainty snores. Lukassa stroked him with her free hand, and he wriggled against it without ever waking. “He was the man in the red coat, you know,” I said. “I met him on the way here, when I was following you and Lal.”

“There is something else he is,” Lukassa whispered. “Something else, something not like anything.” I could barely hear her, and she did not go on. We were silent for a while, just holding hands, looking at each other, looking away. All the questions I wanted to ask her sat on the bed with us: the mattress seemed to sag under their weight. At last Lukassa said, “I want to tell you about that place, about being there. I want to tell someone.”

I began to say, “I have no right—” but she interrupted me. She said, “I want to tell you, but I ca

“You are as alive as I am,” I said, “and you are yourself. If you are not the Lukassa I followed here, maybe there never was any such person. Myself, I ca

“No,” she said very quietly. “Lal would take me along with her, if I asked her, but only because I asked. And Soukyan—” She spread her hands out, and I saw the scars I had been feeling, the two long cloudy blotches on the pale right palm, and the dark whiplash across the back, just below the ring. She said, “Soukyan would take me if Lal asked. So there we are.” Her smile was not the one I knew.

I took her hand and kissed the scarred palm. She clenched it for a moment, then let it fall open again. I said, “I would take you anywhere, but I don’t know a place to go.” We were quiet for a little, and then I added, “We could always stay here and work at the i

It was said as a joke, but her face clouded and I realized that she had taken me seriously. I was just begi

How long had he been awake and listening? We never knew. You never do know with him. We turned together, and there he sat, green eyes as mocking as the fox’s yellow eyes. Very full of himself, he was, exactly like the fox.

“It seems that my lamisetha can wait a bit longer,” he said. “I will take you with me.” When he looked at Lukassa, his eyes changed. He said to her, “I have passed the gates of death myself, but I was worse than dead. I would have been worse than dead through all eternity, if not for you. So you have a claim on me that I will never outlive. Also—”

Lukassa shook her head fiercely. She said, “What I did, I did without choice, without any idea of what it all meant. I have no claim on anyone.” Her voice was tired and flat.

“Don’t interrupt,” the old man said severely. “I turned Soukyan to stone once for ten minutes, for interrupting me one time too many.” But he was smiling at Lukassa almost with admiration. He said, “Also. Apparently my need to be forever teaching somebody something has survived the black gate as well as I. If you have sense enough to come with me, I may be able—”

Lukassa broke in again, “I do not want to be a wizard. Not for me, not ever.” She took hard hold of my hand again.