Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.
Robert Frost
When arguing with friends or family, the worst position you can be in is when you're right and they know you are. It limits your ability to plead guilty to a lesser, as they know you don't really mean it.
Walter Slovotsky
Almost twenty years changes a lot.
When I first saw the valley of Varnath, as the elves call it, it was the dark green of forest and grasslands, broken only by silver threads of streams running down from the mountains into the central lake. Brightly colored birds twittered in the trees, and butterflies and the smell of flowers filled the air.
At least, that's the way I remember it. I don't remember as clearly the ache of my tender butt from too many days in the saddle, or the way my jerkin kept rubbing against the spot where some bug the size of my left nut had sucked out a quart of blood, leaving behind God's Own Mosquito Bite.
Then again, which would you choose to have close to the top of your mind? The beauty and the pleasure, or the pain and the itch?
Now, what had been grasslands below was a plaid patchwork of fields, mostly in shades of brown, separated by only strips of forest. Sort of like the valley had been given a bikini wax. Lines of power cable stretched from the forest at the foot of the falls, running both into the town of Home itself and out toward the foothills. Thinner wires ran out toward the nearest farmshaving a telegraph handy was more important, perhaps, and certainly a lot cheaper, than electricity.
Over in Engineer Territory, by the lowest of the foothills, near what we called the Batcave (Karl and I used to break into a little tune that went "dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah," in a joke that even the other Other Siders never found all that funny), a cluster of factories belched foul, sulphurous smoke into the air, and as the warm air currents over a fallow field gave Ellegon some added (and in my opinion, unneeded) lift, they brought with them the smell of rotting manure.
Which may have been wonderful for next year's wheat and potatoes, but did little for my nostrils.
Progress sometimes stinks.
Still, the lake was clean and clear and blue, and looked inviting, as the dragon circled down toward the town square. Lou knew better than to use the lake as a dumping ground; doesn't take long to turn a small lake into a large, smelly cesspool.
I lowered myself to the solid ground, although as always after a long dragonback ride, it felt just a little jellyish under my feet, and it took me a minute to be able to stand straight instead of like a drunk on his third tankard.
It gets harder to travel as I get older; I felt like I had been either on the road for weeks or buried for daysit's hard to tell the differenceand am sure that I looked it.
Adahan, on the other hand, ran his neatly manicured fingers through his hair, gave a quick tug to his combination pistol/swordbelt, and tucked the ends of his tunic into his trousers, looking disgustingly fresh as he hoisted his bag to his shoulder.
"Well, where do we go?" he asked.
I didn't know; I'd sort of expected to be met.
*Understandable. Nobody around here has anything else to do except greet Walter Slovotsky, and ask if they may be of service.*
Bren Adahan smirked, and I resolved to have a few short words with the dragon about the nature and practice of private conversation.
*And what would you do if I told you to stuff it? Refuse to beg me to help you next time?*
A small troop of men was exiting from a low brick building next to the granary, and a stream of schoolchildren was already, well, streaming out of the doors of the schoolhouse toward the square. Voices called out greetings
for the dragon.
*What did you expect? A parade?* He turned his huge saurian head toward the approaching children. *Stand back, please, until I'm unloadedyou don't want to get in the way.*
One of the menEvain, I think his name was; he had been on Daven's raiding team at one pointcalled out a greeting to me, but another glared at him and grumbled something about work to be done.
It took only a couple of minutes for the men to unload Ellegon and unstrap his rigging. The dragon, surrounded by at least three dozen children ranging in age from about six to about sixteen, carefully lumbered off toward the lake, their shouts of glee occasionally interrupted by a skyward gout of fire and a mental caution.
*Benric, if you keep pushing Katha, I can promise you you'll be last in line for a dive, andMenten, be patient, yes, I'll swim out with you. Karl, you can't climb up on me when I'm walkingit's too tricky.*
That last gave me a start, but I kept it out of my face. There were more than a couple children named after Karl, and even a Walter or two. There was even a chubby-cheeked blond girl, her hair done up in a complex braid that spoke of her mother's Aersten ancestry, named Tennetty, although it would be hard to think of a person looking less like Ten.
I looked over at Bren.
He shrugged. "Me, too."
Just as well. I wouldn't want to be the only person spooked.
A horse-drawn flatbed wagon had been pulled up to the pile of bags and boxes, and Bren and I joined in the loading. It was good to be doing something as simple and stable as lifting a bag onto the weathered boards, but with eight of us working, it was only a matter of a couple of minutes until the driver released the brake, and with a click of his tongue and a twitch of the reins, sent the wagon rattling down the road.
Two figures emerged from the dark of the brick house, one dwarf, one human, the dwarf moving at a quick but comfortable hobble despite the fact that his right leg, from just above the knee down, was a knobby piece of wood terminating in a brass ferrule.
"Nehera, Petros," I called out.
The scars that crisscrossed Nehera's lined face, reminders of whippings he had received long ago, had faded almost to invisibilityor, more accurately, taken on the permanent just-this-side-of-sunburn red that years over his forge had given the rest of his face, forearms and hands. His treetrunk-thick forearms were heat-reddened beneath the short, dark hair, save in a few dozen spots where white scars told of a small spattering of hot metal.
But he stood with his back straight, and his crooked-toothed smile broadened as he extended a hand. "Walter Slovotsky'tis good to see you, years though it's been." Idly, he used the brass tip of his peg leg to kick a small stone out of the road and into the strip of trees surrounding the square.
The years had been kind to the dwarf, albeit not to Petros, whose face was too deeply lined for somebody ten years younger than me. There was a sort of watery look to his eyes, and when he stopped in front of me, he just glared, which didn't seem to stretch his face into an unusual state. His beard was still scraggly, although that was the only thing that looked young about him. He looked more like a jury than a welcoming committee. "Lou wants to see you," he said. "He's waiting; let's go."
"So what's the problem?" I asked. "Why the cold shoulder?"
"Bast is back," he said, his words paced evenly, carefully. "He says that you've given away the secret of gunpowder."
"Oh," I said. I would have rather said I did not, and how dare you suggest that I would, but not only wouldn't that have been true, but I wouldn't have been able to get away with it.
Nehera smiled at me, but Nehera always smiled at everyone.
I first met Louis Riccetti as a freshman, in a music appreciation class that he was taking to fulfill a distribution requirement and that I was taking because I, well, appreciated music. He had been balding even thenwell, to be fair, his hair was thinning and his hairline retreatinghis eyes were well on their way to a permanent squint, and his shoulders were tending toward the hunched. He was nineteen, I think, but looked at least five, maybe ten years older. From the pocket protector down to his white socks with brown shoes, he looked like a classic computer geekalthough he in fact wasn't; he didn't have much use for computers. Appearances can be deceiving, even when they're not trying to be.
To a background of Bach and Beethoven, Ravel and Rameau, Mozart and Mendelssohn, Puccini and Prokofiev, we had struck up a distant friendship mainly based on my having spent one summer as an apprentice blacksmith at Sturbridge Villagebeing a smith is a tough, hot, sweaty job; being a part-time apprentice smith a hundred steps from a locker room complete with high-pressure shower and a Coke machine isn'tand his interest in metalworking of all sorts, which had eventually led to my invitation to a gaming session with Professor Deighton . . .
But that was another country, and another time.
We were all getting older. The fringe of hair that rimmed his scalp was a dingy gray with occasional bits of black, and although his arms and legs were skinny, he had developed a permanent potbelly that pushed against the buttons of his shirt as he pushed his chair back from his desk and folded his hands in his lap, eyeing me with rather more appraisal than approval.
"Greetings, Mr. Mayor," I said, trying for a light tone.
"Hello, Walter. Greetings, Baron Adahan," he said, with a nod and a smile that was clearly intended for Adahan, although the smile was hardly big enough to bother with. "Have a seat."
The shades had been drawn, and the room was dark. On his desk, crowned with a bleached parchment lampshade, an electric light glowed, although the desk had been placed so that more than enough light would stream in through the mottled-glass window for any sort of paperwork. Lou was showing off.
"You want to talk about the gunpowder," I said.
His lips pursed for a moment, and then he nodded. "Yeah. That would be a good start. I want to give you a fair hearingBast said you gave out the secret."
"Well, yes, I did, and I did it in order to save not only my own life, and Bast's and Kenda'sbut Ahira's, Tennetty's, Jason's, and Andy's."
He was toying with a smooth stone, a paperweight or something, that he had taken from his desktop. "He mentioned that," Lou said, as though that factor had already been weighed in my defense and found to be negligible. "He also said that you had a chance to . . . back out of the problem."
Yes, I perhaps could have had Erol Lyneian and all the crew aboard his ship killed, but the rest of us wouldn't have been able to sail it, not in the rocky waters near Ehvenor, not to the hill overlooking the gleaming city, where the Three waited . . .
Without thatwithout usFaerie would have continued to leak out into reality, and the trickle of strange, magical creatures would have become a full-fledged flood.
I hadn't known that at the time, though. I had known that Andy said we needed to get closer to Ehvenor, and I had trusted her.
And I'd had little appetite for a fight anyway, not after the way we had almost been killed in Brae, and maybe part of that was because I was slowing down.
"Maybe," I said. "But I was there and you weren't, and it was my call, not yours." I shrugged. "I guess I could have waited until they started sawing away on me, or on Andy or any of the rest, but I didn't. It was a nice bit of strategysplit up two allies quite neatly, and got us out of there intact." I snorted. "And, by the way, put an end to a local lord who stuck a bunch of your engineers up on poles to die of exposure."
He took a deep breath and let it out. "Which doesn't make it right, does it?"
I could have argued, I could have pointed out that the secret was going to get out eventually, and what with Home and the Holtun-Bieme Empire preparing to switch over to smokeless powder and sealed ammunition, it wasn't like I'd given away the store. There had been the too-expensive slaver rifles around for years, after all.
And I could have pointed out that the secret no more belonged to Lou than it did to me, that I knew fifteen-three-and-two as well as he did, even if he had grown to think of it as his property, to be shared with only his most inner circle of engineers.
His eyes rested on mine long enough to make me wish I knew of a side exit. A quick leap over the desk, a slap on the throat to silence him long enough for me to deal with Petros, and
and I'd still have Nehera to handle, although the dwarf had never been quick-witted, but
Ellegon? You wouldn't happen to be ready for a quick getaway, would you?
*Probably not.* The dragon's mental voice was laconic and indifferent. *I'm playing. Leave me alone.*
without Ellegon, I'd still be in the valley, having just attacked Lou, the Engineer, who was surrounded by a bunch of disciples only a little more devoted to him than the Apostles were to their Teacher.
Ever wonder why you don't see a lot of little kids named Judas Iscariot?
He smiled thinly. "Well, I guess we'll let it go, given that I don't see any other good choice."
I felt Bren Adahan relax just a trifle, and realized that he had been keyed up, ready to move, to follow my lead, presumablyor, conceivably, to rap me on the head and hand me over to Lou.
Save it for later. "You know what I've always liked about you, Lou?" I asked.
"What?"
"That having me killed never's seemed to you to be a good choice."
He didn't smile at the pleasantry. I would have said something like What are you, an audience or a jury? but under the circumstances . . .
"What do you need?" he asked.
"For tonight? Food for fourBren and I are hungrytwo beds, and all the news that anybody's heard about the Warrior. For tomorrow, five of Daven's best trackers, supplies, money, and guns."
"Guns," he said.
Among old friends, it's not always the things you say, but sometimes the things you don't say.
He didn't say: after giving away the secret of black powder, something I've been saving for as long as possible, you're asking me to put revolvers in your hands, and that's asking a lot, Walter, probably more than I should give you.
And I didn't say: look, Lou, I'm not Karl, and I'm not the world's best swordsman, and I'm going in harm's way with Bren Adahan at my side, not Karl and Ahira and Tennetty and Chak, and I need every bit of edge I can get, and a repeating handgun would be a big one.
And he didn't say: the Therranji want to annex us, and to keep them at bay we need an edge, something scary enough that they won't push hard and turn it into war, and right now, smokeless powder is a big part of that, too important to be risked on the likes of you.
And I didn't say: I know. And I know we're always going to disagree on that, but I'm asking you anyway.
And he didn't say: and since you know too much about the making of it, and since I know you'll spend information instead of your life, I can't even let you leave here, much less give you a sample of a repeating handgun.
No. We didn't say anything. But he looked at me for a long time, and then he pulled open a drawer in his desk, pulled out a wooden box, and, removing a keychain from around his neck, opened the box with a small key.
Inside the box, under an oilcloth that Lou pulled aside, on a bed of blue satin, like some sort of jewels, two pistols lay, not quite touching, nested together like a yin and yangunless you prefer a more earthy metaphor; I always dosurrounded by a circle of half-moon clips, each of which held three shiny brass cartridges.
The pistols weren't black powder flintlocks, but revolvers, more blackened than blued, the barrel length maybe four inches, the grips polished bone, carefully checkered for a good grip. The sights were low and rounded, unlikely to catch on clothing. Not exactly pocket pistols, but easy enough to conceal underneath a tunic, or even strap to an ankle if your trousers were blousy enough. They looked a bit strange to me, but I quickly figured it outthey had been made smooth, with no sharp edges to catch on clothing as you tried to draw. Even the hammer spur was abbreviated and rounded.
Lou knew what he was doing, at least when it came to making things.
He picked one up and idly opened the cylinder, revealing the shiny brass heads of six cartridges, then slowly, gently, closed the cylinder. "If you flick it shut, the way they used to on TV," he said, "you're pretty quickly going to knock the cylinder out of alignment. Screws the accuracy all to hell. Always push the cylinder closed." He tucked it into his belt, then picked up the other, opened it, showed it, closed it. "This one's mine; the other's yours."
Petros was on his feet. "No. You're not."
Petros might as well have not been talking, and when he opened his mouth again, Nehera reached over and laid a flipper of a hand on Petros' arm.
"No safety switch," Lou went on, "but the hammer is blocked from the firing pin unless the trigger's pulled back. It will not fire, even cocked, if the trigger isn't held back, so you can keep a round under the hammer. There's only a few of these," he said, "and they're trickier to make than they look; the rest of your party will have to do with Benden's breechloading flintlockspaper cartridges," he said. "Faster than muzzleloaders, but not quite up to these. There's a target range out on the East road, and the armorer will issue you as much ammunition as you want," Lou said. "I'd say go through at least two boxes; carry two with you. Save your brass. You can have one of the apprentices clean the gun for you."
The right thing to do was nod silently, but nobody told my mouth that, "I can clean up after myself."
"Yeah." Lou put the gun back in the box, closed the top, turned the key, carefully removed the key and slapped it on top of the box. He slid it across his desk to me, then put his hands on the surface of his desk and pushed himself to his feet. He came around the desk, a hand outstretched.
When I took it, it felt stronger than it used to be.
When I was younger, I used to think that it was something special just between the six of usme, Ahira, Karl, Andy, Doria, and Loubecause we were Other Siders, trapped in a world we had never made, or because we were such special people. It took me years to realize that it was the years, the years that we had shared not just the big thingssweat and tears, blood and pain, food and shelter, the birth of kids, the death of mutual friendsbut the little things: the idle conversation at the end of a long day, the ongoing argument over whether a gelding or a mare made for a better saddlehorse.
It was the little things that were important, and the little things I really missed with Kirah. I've lost too many people I care about, and sometimes I didn't realize how much I cared until they were gone.
And I hadn't realized how important Lou was to me, just personally, until he said, Don't make me wrong, but he didn't need to say it with words; he said it with a smile that spoke of trust, and more important, of friendship.
We were friends again.
"I like the lightbulb," I said. "Impressive."
"Yeah." He grinned. "Thought you might."
There are parts of all this that you can have for the asking: the mud, the blood, and the crud, for a start. The separation from the familyhow many nights have I been robbed of tucking my baby daughter in for the night? The road food and the fearboth taste lousy in my mouth.
But there are compensations: like a lake shore near a stream inlet, where the soft grasses ran not only up to the edge of the lake but into it, and beneath the cold water were soft and pleasant against my feet and between my toes; like warm afternoon air carrying with it the mellow tang of sunbaked grasses and distant cheery shouts from where, hidden beyond the small island placed off-center in the lake, children played and splashed with a dragon, an occasional gout of flame reaching skyward to punctuate some mental caution; like a box containing two pistols holding down my clothing on the shoreline.
A few feet away, a few feet farther out, beyond the spot where the gentle slope of the lake dropped off to God-knows-how-deep, Bren Adahan was treading waterfor the exercise, I guess. He tossed his head to clear the water out of his eyes, sending bright drops arcing high into the sunlight.
"Blood and dust tomorrow, but we swim and soak today, eh, Walter Slovotsky?"
"Something like that, Baron," I said. "Best to put off some suffering, when you can."
Professional trick: when you've got something serious to worry aboutsay, getting involved in a chase for a former companion who has gone both crazy and ballisticand there's nothing useful that worrying about that will do, pick something relatively minor and worry about that, instead.
It won't do you any good, mind, but you won't feel as bad.
I thought about the hell I'd be in for when I got home, from Andy. I'd said I'd take her out on the road with me, and I wouldbut not now, not for this. Bad enough to be chasing after Jason and Ahira; worse to be looking for Mikyn; best not to involve her in me fleeing from the Emperor, even though my guess was that he would want to let it all drop rather than letting me defy him so openly. (Take it out on my family? Are you kidding? Nobody in court would even suggest it. Somebody raises their hand to my family, they don't just have Walter Slovotsky cutting it off: add Ahira, Ellegon, and Lou, for starters.)
There wouldn't be any hell to pay from Aeia, or the girls. Aeia would just cock her head to one side and smile, and maybe hold me a little too tight, but I wouldn't mind. Janie and Doranne were used to having me around, and to having me gonethey'd be happy to see me, but neither of them would have missed me the way I missed them.
I heard distant hoofbeats and counted four horses, as I casually felt at the scabbard still strapped to my calf, and closed my eyes for a moment to be sure I could recall the spot on the island where I'd stashed a getaway kit some years back.
But it wasn't anything to worry aboutjust a couple of pretty young, more than vaguely pretty young women in Engineer jeans and flannel workshirts, each leading a spare horse. The taller, slightly blonder of the two girls tossed a pile of towels to the grass and swung a long leg over the saddle, dismounting prettily. I guess I imprinted early on young women in tight jeans, and the high heels of her riding boots gave an unusually nice line to her legs.
"Walter Slovotsky?" she called out.
Bren jerked a thumb at me. "Him. My name's Bren."
She made a moue. "Yes, Baron. I've heard. I'm Barda; she's Arien. We're journeymen. The Engineer said that if we brought you some towels, fed you enough supper, and asked you real prettily, you might be persuaded to talk about internal combustion engines."
I smiled at Adahan, as though to say, I won't tell on you if you don't tell on me, and he chuckled and spread his hands.
"Anything's possible," I said. "After you join us for a swim."
Her smile broadened. It was a pretty smile. Not as pretty as Aeia's, mind, but it was much, much closer. "Well, I thought you'd never ask."
She was already unbuttoning her shirt as she kicked off her boots, and after a quick hesitation, Arien followed her lead.
It's always interesting to watch pretty girls undress. As I say, the work does have its compensations.
The dream is always the same:
We're trying to make our escape from Hell, millions of us streaming across the hot rocks, while behind us the volcano rises immensely large, spewing demons and lava with equal vigor. Sometimes it's hard to tell the differenceahead, a glowing red crack in the rock spews forth what at first looks like a blob of lava, but the blob gathers itself together and flows uphill, like an amoeba, except faster, fast enough to engulf one poor bastard who barely has time enough to get a scream out before the molten rock flows over his head, his hair burning until it disappears in the roiling surface.
Up ahead, Lou Riccetti, wearing a fireman's coat, but his balding head bare as always, is out in front of a bunch of fire trucks, directing the men of Company 23 as the water from their hoses holds both lava and demons at bay.
But one of the trucks is unmanned, and there's a gap in their line that needs filling.
"Not exactly our kind o' war, eh, Bull?" His smile threatens to split his broad face in two, but Charley Beckwith's Southern drawl is firmly intact as he and Bull Simons grab a hose and fumble with it before it stiffens as it fills.
Simons chuckles. "Since when did that ever stop either of us?" he shouts back as old Jonas Salk steps in to help steady the hose, rewarded by a quick grin from Simons.
I'm hardly surprised to see Sister Berthe of Toulousethe nun we used to call "Sister Birth of the Blues"lunge for a hose that's gotten away from some others, even though she's not able to steady it until Jimmy Stewart lends a hand. Then again, that was the way Sister Berthe waswhen they retired her from St. Olaf's, she went to work as a teacher's aide in an inner city school, saying that at least until she couldn't see to read, she'd teach children how to read.
But he is there again. Past where Karl and Andy, both of them old and white-haired, take their places between an ancient Tennetty and a fat, withered Buddha, past where Golda Meir stands arguing with Teddy Roosevelt about who is and isn't too old to be doing this, he stands with his band of sailors. His shoulders are huge, still, and his head is still erect. His skin is browned almost like leather by the sun, his hair and beard are bleached as white as his sailor's tunic, with the gold bands of royalty at its hem. "Come," he calls to his companions, "there is work to be done, once more, once more. The hour grows late." His voice is strange, as though it's been broken, but has carried a long way.
I press through the crowd until I face him. "Who the hell are you?" I ask him.
His face is wrinkled, its creases deep and dark.
"Why," he says, "I'm nobody." And he smiles.
But I have to know who he is. It's important; I can live with the nightmares, with the waiting behind to face the demons, if only I know who he is.
"I'm Nobody," he repeats.
Then I wake up.
I woke, an old Crosby, Stills and Nash song playing in the back of my head, the blankets under me wet with sweat.
The lamp over on the table next to the door was hooded, its wick trimmedit was more of a nightlight than anything else. To wake up with somebody new wasn't uncomfortable, but to wake in a strange cabin in the dark would be a bit much.
The windows on both ends of the cabin were covered only with latticed shutters, letting enough cool night air flow through the cabin to chill me to the bone.
I slipped out of bed, rubbing at the odd scratch and bite mark, glad that she had clean fingernails. A towel hung on a hook near the window over the bed; I rubbed myself dry, and at least a little less cold, before I dressed silently, to avoid disturbing Arien.
I give good silent.
She was sort of curled up in the blankets, leaving one long, amazingly strong leg bare from toe to waist.
There was another set of surprises. I'd been flirting mainly with Barda, the more outgoing of the two, all evening, and expected to end the night with her, but the two of them had gone off for a private conversation, and it was Arien who had offered to show me the guest cabin I'd been assigned. While I wouldn't want it to get around, I didn't have the courage to ask whether it was because she had won or lost the coin toss.
There had been other surprises; I'd thought of her as quiet and shy. Live and learn, I always say.
I was still sleepy, but going back to bed right now would mean going back to dream. Better to get a bit of fresh air, and maybe see if the pantry was open over at the apprentice barracks.
I was reaching for the doorknob when I heard Arien turn in the blankets. "Walter . . ." Her voice was muffled by the pillow. " . . . if you're trying to get away, shouldn't you be taking your gear?" she asked.
"Yeah. Had a bad dream; I just need to clear my head."
"Mmm. Wake me when you get back?"
"Sure," I said, lying. I'm not eighteen anymore; I haven't been for more than twenty years. I just needed to clear my head, and then sleep.
"Mmph."
I think she was asleep before I had the door closed behind me.
The six cabins lined the street opposite the Engineer apprentice barracks, a two-story rough-hewn wooden building that looked like somebody had stacked a typical wooden house on top of a log cabin.
Which is what had happened, actually.
It had started off as a storehouse, back before we had a sawmillwe had just squared off a few dozen logs, then built the house like we were working with oversized Lincoln Logs (a dragon is better than a crane, although a crane doesn't leave toothmarks). Home building techniquesand, for that matter, Home home-building techniqueshad improved dramatically over the years with the addition of a sawmill, some freed carpenters, and the ironworks.
But there was no reason to tear the old storehouse down, and when it was turned into the barracks, another story had just been piled on top of it. The kitchen was at the rear, and a lantern burned in the window.
Two kids, a skinny, acne-spattered boy of maybe fifteen and a round-faced girl, were working out some sort of math problem on a slate they'd set up on the table over by the door, and Petros was busying himself with a copper kettle on the boxy iron stove, feeding the stove a few pieces of scrap wood, then carefully poking at the fire with a wood-handled poker.
"Evening, Walter," he said evenly, no trace of hostility in his voice. "Tea?"
"Sure."
"Just another minute; it's almost hot enough."
The kids sort of mumbled something, then said a quick goodnight and left, taking their slate with them, when Petros looked pointedly toward the door.
"G'night, kids. Nice meeting you," I said.
Petros dumped a palmful of tea into a teapot, irised the stove's vents open a little, then adjusted the kettle down on the flat burner before finding a chair. He didn't seem to notice that he still had the poker in his hand, and I didn't seem to notice that I had the hilt of a knife concealed in mine.
Then he did look down at the poker in his hand, and just hung it by its leather loop on a peg on the wall.
"Are you usually up this late?" I asked.
"Woman works from sun to sun, but the deputy mayor's job is never done," he said, setting a couple of mugs down on the counter.
"Not bad."
A quiet chuckle. "I listen to Lou a lot." He spooned a dripping teaspoonful of honey into each, then went to the stove for the hot water. "Probably more than anybody ever listened to anybody else. Learned a lot from him, but I didn't learn everything I know from him." It occurred to me that his first move would be to try to splash me with it, and that my move would be to protect my eyes and let the rest of my skin look out for itself. Nail him with the knife, then raise a cry.
But he just poured the steaming water into the porcelain teapot, set the kettle back down next to the stove, and brought the teapot and the mugs over to the table.
"I figured part of my job was to have a word or two with you before you leave in the morning," he said, as though it hadn't been a full minute since either of us spoke, "and I also figured that you'll be on your way early."
"So, have your word."
He nodded, slowly. "It's simple. Lou's retiring from the mayor's job next year. Says he wants to spend more time in the shop, the lab, and his study. I've got the Engineer vote, and enough of Samalyn's farmer faction that the job's mine if I want it."
"I guess congratulations are in order."
He went on as though he hadn't heard me: "I've been working toward this for years now, and for more reasons than I care to go into with the likes of you, I want it."
"You, like, want me to pass out campaign literature?"
"What I want is you to be absent. What I want is no Walter Slovotsky deciding that he's getting too old to be running around saving the world, and that he ought to settle down and relieve Lou of a job Lou never really wanted, with a few young women engineers to keep him warm on cold winter nights."
I could have said something like that had never occurred to me, but the truth won't always set you free, or even be believed. "And in return I get to walk out that door alive?"
"No. No threat. I'll not end the night with my throat cut, and the dragon to swear that I threatened you before you bravely defended yourself." He snickered. "No. I'm a farmer and a politician, Walter. I'll not go hand-to-hand with you. I'm not threatening you; I'm just telling you to back off. No showing up unexpectedly around election time. No sudden withdrawals of all of your gold deposits to see what that does to the local economy. And no spilling of the secret of making smokeless powder just to see what interesting things it'll stir up, the way you did with black powder. I don't care if your last years are boring; I don't want any unnecessary excitement here."
"Would you take my word on it?"
"No." He poured tea into both mugs, then set the teapot down and sat back, gesturing at me to take my pick. He shook his head. "I'm not asking you, Walter Slovotsky. I'm just telling you how it is. Drink your tea, go back to your cabin, and in the morning get gone, and stay away from my home."
The lantern was still dimly lighting the cabin when I got back, and Arien was still asleep as I quickly undressed and slid into bed next to her.
Things change, over the years. I had helped to build this place, and make it live, but it wasn't my home anymore. Just another place to visit, or not.
I lay on my back, my head pillowed on the palms of my hands, and tried to sleep.