“So the games are to teach him logic?’’
Robert nodded. “They are a start. This is very basic problem-solving.”
Magnus’s pale blue eyes were fixed upon the cards on 9261.01 3/13/03 12:53 PM Page 64
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the table. “I’ve played four lords, Robert. You taught it to me, remember? It is a difficult game. He won’t win many.’’
Robert smiled. “It’s not about winning. It’s about recognizing a no-win situation. See, he’s recognized that those four cards ensure that he can’t win.” They watched as Talon gathered up the cards, leaving the lords in place, and started a new game. “At first, he went through the entire deck to reach the point of realizing he had no chance of winning. Now, less than two days later he’s recognizing the more subtle combinations that show he can’t win.’’
“Very well. So he’s got potential, talent even. That doesn’t address the question of what it is you plan to do with the boy.’’
“Patience, my impetuous friend.” He glanced at Magnus, who watched Talon with a fixed gaze. “It would have been better had you more of your father’s temperament than your mother’s temper.’’
The white-haired man didn’t shift his gaze, but he did smile. “I’ve heard that from you more than once, old friend.” He then looked at Robert. “I’m getting better at reining in my temper, you know.’’
“Haven’t destroyed a city in the last few weeks, have you?’’
Magnus grinned. “Not that I noticed.” Then the stern expression returned. “I chafe at these games within games.’’
“Ah,” said Robert. “Again your mother’s son. Your father has taught me over my entire adult lifetime that we can only deal with our enemies when they present themselves. Over the last thirty years we’ve seen so many different assaults upon the tranquillity of our lives that it defies imagining. And there’s only been one constant.”
“Which is?” Magnus turned his attention again to Talon’s game.
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“That no two ploys of the enemy have been alike. The servants of the Nameless One are cunning, and they learn from their mistakes. Raw power failed, so now they achieve their goals through stealth. We must respond in kind.’’
“But this boy . . . ?”
“Fate spared him for a reason, I believe,” said Robert.
“Or at least, I’m trying to take advantage of an unexpected opportunity. He’s got . . . something. I think had this tragedy not befallen his people, he would have grown up to be simply another young Orosini man, a husband and father, warrior when the need arose, farmer, hunter, and fisherman. He would have taught his sons the ways of his ancestors and died in old age satisfied at his lot.
“But take that same lad and forge him in the crucible of misfortune and heartbreak, and who knows what will occur? Like fired iron, will he become brittle and easily broken, or can he be turned to steel?’’
Magnus remained silent as Talon began another game.
“A dagger, no matter how well forged, has two edges, Robert. It can cut both ways.’’
“Don’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs, Magnus.’’
Magnus grinned. “My father never knew his mother, so the only grandmother I’m aware of did a fair job of conquering half the world; I wouldn’t have dreamed of teaching her anything.”
“And you have your mother’s nasty sense of humor, too.” He turned from the King’s Tongue to Roldemish to say, “Talon, that’s enough. It’s time for you to return to the kitchen. Leo will tell you what needs to be done.’’
Talon put the cards away in a small box and handed the box to Robert, then hurried to the kitchen.
Magnus said, “I’m still uncertain what you think this boy will contribute to our cause.’’
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Robert shrugged. “Your father showed me many things when I was young, but the most important lesson of all was simply the very nature of your home. Your island provided refuge and school to all manner of beings I couldn’t have imagined in my most youthful dreams.” He pointed toward the kitchen. “That boy may prove to be nothing more than a valuable servant, or perhaps a well-crafted tool.” His eyes narrowed. “But he also could be something far more important, an independent mind loyal to our cause.’’
Magnus was silent for a long moment. Then he said, “I doubt it.’’
Robert smiled warmly. “We had doubts about you when you were younger. I remember a certain incident when you had to be confined to your room for . . . what was it? A week?’’
Magnus returned a faint smile. “It wasn’t my fault, remember?”
Robert nodded indulgently. “It never was.’’
Magnus looked toward the kitchen. “But the boy?’’
“He has many things to learn,” said Robert. “Logic is only a start. He must come to understand that even the most important issues in life can often be seen to be games, with a sense of risk and reward and how to calculate them.
He must learn when to walk away from a conflict, and when to press his luck. Much of his nature, what he was taught as a child among his people, must be taken from him. He must learn about the game of men and women—did you know his future wife was being arranged for him while he waited upon a mountaintop for his manhood vision?’’
“I know little of the ways of the Orosini,” confessed Magnus.
“He knows nothing of the most common knowledge in the city; he has no sense of duplicity and deceit, so he has 9261.01 3/13/03 12:53 PM Page 67
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almost no instinct for when someone is lying to him. Yet he has a sense in the wild that would rival that of a Natalese Ranger.’’
“Caleb told me he hunted like no city-born man,”
agreed Magnus.
“Your brother spent years with the elves; he should know.’’
“Agreed.”
“No, our young friend Talon is an opportunity. He is, perhaps, unique. And he is young enough that we may be able to educate him to be something few of us can be.’’
“Which is what?” asked Magnus, clearly interested.
“Unlimited by our heritage. He’s still able to learn, while most of us at his age are already convinced we know everything.”
“He does seem a ready student,” Magnus conceded.
“And he has a sense of honor that would serve a LaMutian Captain of Tsurani descent.’’
Magnus raised an eyebrow. Those of Tsurani descent were as hidebound where honor was concerned as any men living. They would die to discharge a debt of honor. He looked for a moment to see if Robert was exaggerating and realized that he wasn’t. “Honor is useful, at times.’’
“He has a mission already, even if it has yet to come to the surface of his mind.’’
“Mission?”
“He is Orosini. He must hunt down and kill the men responsible for the obliteration of his people.’’
Magnus let out a long sigh. “Raven and his band of cutthroats. No mean feat, that.’’
“The boy’s already a hunter. When he is ready, he’ll seek them out. I would rather have him do so with better weapons than his bare hands and native wit. So, there is much we must teach him, both of us.’’
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“He has no skill for magic, I imagine, or else you would have sent him back to Father instead of bringing him up here.’’
“True, but there are other skills besides magic, Magnus. I am not jesting; he has a nimble mind, and there are far more complex tasks to discipline thought than playing games with car
ds. If he is to serve us, he must be as tough in spirit and intellect as he already is in body. He may not have any skill in magic, but he will face it, and he will face minds far more adept in backstabbing, double-dealing, and deception than he could possibly imagine.’’
“If it’s double-dealing you’re worried about, you should have brought in Nakor to tutor him.’’
“I might still, but not yet. Besides, your father has Nakor down in Kesh on some errand or another.’’
Magnus stood up. “Ah, then the prospect for war between the Kingdom of the Isles and the Empire of Great Kesh is now excellent.”
Robert laughed. “Nakor doesn’t wreak havoc every-where he visits.’’
“No, just most places. Well, if you think you can ready the boy to chase down Raven and kill him, good luck.’’
“Oh, it’s not Raven and his murderers I’m concerned with. Hunting them is only part of Talon’s training, albeit his journeyman’s piece. If he should fail, then he would lack the true test of his skills.’’
“I’m intrigued. What lies beyond?’’
“Talon will avenge his people when he kills everyone responsible for the obliteration of the Orosini. Which means he may not rest until he faces down and destroys the man behind that genocide.”
Magnus’s eyes narrowed, the pale blue becoming icy.
“You’re going to turn him into a weapon?’’
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Robert nodded. “He will need to kill the most dangerous man living today.’’
Magnus sat back on the seat again and folded his arms across his chest. He looked toward the kitchen as if trying to see through walls. “You’re sending a mouse to beard a dragon.’’
“Perhaps. If so, let’s ensure the mouse has teeth.’’
Magnus shook his head slowly and said nothing.
__
Talon hauled water up the hill and saw that Meggie waited for him and that she was frowning. She was the antithesis of Lela, tiny where Lela was voluptuous, fair to the point of pallor where Lela was dark, plain where Lela was exotic, dour where Lela was exuberant. In short, at not even twenty years old, she was more than halfway to being a middle-aged scold.
“Took you long enough,” she said.
“I didn’t realize there was a rush on,” said Talon, now comfortable with the idiomatic Roldemish he was being told to use almost exclusively.
“There’s always a rush on,” she snapped.
Following her up the hill, Talon asked, “Why did you come down to meet me?’’
“Kendrick said I was to find you and tell you you’d be serving again tonight in the dining room.” She wore a shawl of drab green, which she gathered tightly around her shoulders as she walked before him. The days were growing cold and the nights colder; autumn was turning to winter, and soon snow would come. “There’s a caravan from Ordon to Farinda staying over tonight, and it seems there’s someone important traveling with it. So, Lela and I are assigned to the common room with Lars, and you and Gibbs to the dining room.’’
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“You could have waited until I got back to the kitchen to tell me that,” Talon observed.
“When I’m told to do something, I do it at once,” she snapped. She picked up her pace, hurrying on ahead. Talon watched her stiff back as she walked in front of him.
Something struck him odd for a moment, then he realized what it was; he liked the way her hips moved as she climbed the hill. He felt that same strange stirring in his stomach he often felt when he was alone with Lela and wondered about that. He didn’t particularly like Meggie, but suddenly he found himself thinking of the way her nose turned up at the tip, and how on those very rare occasions she smiled at something, she got tiny lines—crinkles Lela called them—at the corners of her eyes.
He knew that something had passed between Meggie and Lars for a while, but that for some reason they were barely speaking to one another now, while everyone spoke with Lela. He pushed away his discomfort. He knew what passed between men and women—his people were open enough about sex, and he had seen many women naked at the bathing pool when he was still a child—yet the actual fact of being close to a young woman caused him much distress. And these people were not Orosini—they were outlandish—though after an instant’s further thought he had to concede that now he was the outlander. He did not know their rituals, but they seemed to make free with their bodies before they were pledged. Then he realized that he didn’t even know if they did pledge. Perhaps they didn’t have marriage like the Orosini at all.
Kendrick had no wife as far as Talon was aware. Leo was married to the heavy woman, Martha, who oversaw the baking, but they were from some distant place called Ylith.
Perhaps here in Latagore men and women lived apart, only . . . he shook his head as they reached the outer gate to 9261.01 3/13/03 12:53 PM Page 71
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the stabling yard. He didn’t know what to think. He resolved to speak of this with Robert should the opportunity arise.
He noticed that Meggie was standing in the porch, waiting for him. “Fill the barrels,” she instructed.
Softly he said, “I know what to do.’’
“Oh, do you?” she returned, her meaning obscure.
As she turned to hold the door open, he waited, then moved past her. As she closed the door behind him, he put down the large buckets of water and said, “Meggie?”
“What?” she said, turning to face him, her face set in a half frown.
“Why do you dislike me?’’
The openness of the question took her aback. She stood speechless for a moment, then brushed past him, her voice soft as she said, “Who said I didn’t like you?’’
Before he could answer, she was gone from the kitchen.
He picked up the buckets and carried them to the water barrels. He really didn’t understand these people.
__
After dinner that night, Talon sought out Robert, who stayed in a room at the back of the inn, on the first floor.
He knew he had a life-debt to this man. He knew that until he was released from that debt, he would served Robert de Lyis for the rest of his life, or until such time as he saved Robert’s life. But he was uncertain as to the plans Robert had for him. He had been numb with grief and overwhelmed by the changes in his life since Midsummer, but now with winter fast approaching, he had come to think about the future more and wonder what his fate would be after the spring came, and the next summer was upon him.
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He hesitated before the door; he had never intruded upon Robert’s privacy before, and did not even know if such an approach was permitted. He took a breath, then knocked lightly.
“Come in.’’
He slowly opened the door and leaned in. “Sir, may I speak with you?’’
Robert’s room contained only four items of furnishings: a bed, a chest for his clothing, a small table, and a stool. He sat upon the stool in front of the table, consulting a large object, which appeared to Talon to be many parchments bound together. Next to it rested a candle, the room’s only illumination. A water basin and a pitcher indicated the table’s other function when Robert was not using it for his work.
“Come in and close the door.’’
Talon did so and stood awkwardly before Robert. “Is it permitted?” he asked at last.
“Is what permitted?”
“For me to ask you a question.”
Robert smiled. “Finally. It is not only permitted, it is encouraged. What is on your mind?’’
“Many things, master.’’
Robert’s eye
brows went up. “Master?”
“I do not know what else to call you, and everyone says you’re my master.’’
Robert waved to the bed. “Sit down.’’
Talon sat awkwardly.
“To begin with, it’s appropriate for you to call me
‘Master’ in front of anyone well known to us, but when we are alone, or with Pasko, you may address me as ‘Robert.’
Understood?”
“I understand that is what I am to do. I do not understand why.’
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Robert smiled. “You have as keen a wit as you do an eye, Talon of the Silver Hawk. Now, what is it you wished to see me about?’’
Talon composed his thoughts, taking a few moments to weigh his words. Then he asked, “What are your plans for me?’’
“This concerns you?’’
Talon lowered his eyes for a moment, then remembered his father’s words, that he should always meet another man’s gaze and always face a problem directly. “It concerns me.’’
“Yet you have waited for months to ask.’’
Talon again fell silent. Then he said, “I have had to consider much. I am without a people. Everything I know is gone. I do not know who I am anymore.’’
Robert sat back. He drummed his fingers lightly upon the table, then said after a while, “Do you know what this is?” He touched the large bound sheaf of parchment.
“It is writing, I think.’’
“This is called a book. In it is knowledge. There are many books with many different kinds of knowledge in them, just as each man is a different kind of man.
“Some men live their lives, Talon, without having to make many decisions. They are born to a place, grow up in that place, marry and father children in that place, grow old and die in that place. This is how it was to have been for you, is it not?’’
Talon nodded.
“Other men are cast adrift by fate and must choose their own lives. That is how it is with you now.’’
“But I am in your debt.’’
“And you shall repay that debt. Then what?’’