Vallista--A Novel of Vlad Taltos Page 5
“Yes.”
“There’s something kind of sick about that.”
“Is there?”
“Well, you know, he keeps you here, makes you dance—”
“Lets me stay here, lets me dance. He’s my audience. He loves my dancing.”
“It is beautiful.”
“Thank you. But without him, I’d have no one to dance for.”
“Eh, what? Why?”
“You don’t know dancing. I’m good, but not good enough. Not anymore. Not since the injuries.”
“Injuries?”
“That might be the wrong word. The wear and tear.”
“I don’t—”
She stuck out her leg and rested it on the seat in front of her. I tried not to look. I understand that social customs about modesty don’t apply to dancers, but her legs were covered only by tights, and I wasn’t used to seeing a woman’s legs close up. She didn’t appear to notice my discomfort.
“Most of the damage,” she said, “is from jumping and landing. Some, of course, comes from the poses, but in my case, it was the hard surfaces. Thousands and thousands of landings.”
“Wait,” I said. “I’ve missed something. Damage?”
“To my leg. And hips. And, of course, feet. I can’t say I have fallen arches, because I don’t have any arches at all. It hurts when I walk, and when I stand still, and when I sit.”
“I—”
“Also, of course, my knee.” She put her leg down and put the other one up. “Much the same with this leg, but the knee problems aren’t as bad. To the left, however, I have hip and lower-back pain on this side.”
“Can’t medical sorcery help?”
“It helps a lot. It’s why I can still dance. But it can’t fix everything. And a lot of the damage happened during the Interregnum, when nothing could be done, and now it’s too late. But even at its best, there are limits to what can be done if you destroy your body.”
I thought about the various places on my person I’d been stabbed or cut, and how many of them still hurt sometimes, or, worse, itched.
I cleared my throat. “And so—”
“There are things I can’t do anymore. None of the troupes will have me. It’s how things work—we dance, our bodies break down, we stop dancing. But Lord Zhayin saw me, and liked my work, and so I have an extra few centuries. In the old days, in Housetown, I used to dance for his Teckla, too, but now I have to ration myself. The problem isn’t the pain, you see. It’s the not dancing. I hate not dancing.”
There was very little expression in her voice as she said that, and she continued staring straight ahead.
“So if, instead of dancing, you’d—”
“Not dancing was never an option.”
I considered. “That’s kind of a horrible thing. Do what you love, destroy yourself.”
“Better than destroying someone else.”
That was a little close to the mark. “You know who I am?”
“Vlad,” she said. “You told me.”
“Okay. Because what you said … never mind. How long have you been here?”
“Are all Easterners this curious?”
“How many Easterners have you met?”
“You’re the second. The other asked as many questions as you.”
“I’ll bet he wasn’t as good-looking.”
She didn’t laugh. She said, “It was a long time ago. And you all look alike to me. Although he didn’t have any jhereg with him. And I think his hair was lighter.”
“Never trust an Easterner without a pair of jhereg. How long did you say you’ve been here?”
When she didn’t answer at once, I glanced over at her, and she was frowning. “I’m not entirely sure,” she said.
“Interesting,” I said.
She shrugged.
“No idea? Days, weeks, years, decades?”
“Decades, anyway. Since the Interregnum. What’s the difference? I’m here now.”
“Yeah, so am I. And it may not matter to you, but I’m trying to figure this place out.”
“I don’t understand. What’s to figure out?”
“Why the kitchen was empty, and where the bread came from.”
“That doesn’t seem—”
“Also, what that weird thing was that made one of the servants scream.”
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“Not to mention why it is that half the time when I walk through a door in this place what I find can’t possibly be where it seems to be. I find that upsetting.”
“I understand.”
“Not to mention the whole matter of the ghost.”
“Ghost?”
“Or something. A woman named Tethia who—”
“Tethia?”
“Yes. You know the name?”
She frowned. “It sounds familiar, but I can’t think from where. Perhaps my Lord Zhayin has mentioned her.”
“But you don’t know anything about her?”
She shook her head.
“So, if you can’t tell me what’s going on around here, who can?”
“Lord Zhayin.”
“Yeah, I don’t think he cares to. Who else?”
“His butler.”
“Right. Harro. He’s not very forthcoming either.”
Her lips twitched. “I don’t think forthcoming is on the list of butler virtues. Also, I don’t trust him.”
“Why not?”
She frowned. “I can’t say. There’s something … no, I don’t know why. I just don’t.”
“All right. In any case, butler virtues aren’t something I’ve ever studied.” I found I was tapping Lady Teldra’s hilt and stopped. She was never a butler.
“What’s bothering you?” she asked.
“That’s an awfully direct question.”
She shrugged.
“Nothing really,” I said. “I’m just wandering around a magical building acting as if everything is perfectly normal.”
“Well, I’m talking to an Easterner with a jhereg on each shoulder, acting like that’s normal.”
“Your point?”
“I sympathize.”
I rubbed my chin with the back of my fist. “You know, I can’t imagine doing that.”
“Sympathizing?”
“No, being a butler. I mean, I can imagine slaving away on some long-holding if it was that or starve, and I can imagine being the Lord of some short-holding, and I can imagine singing for tavern meals if I could sing, and I can imagine being a foot soldier—I’ve been a foot soldier. But I just can’t imagine walking around all stiff and proper and telling some rich fuck when his dinner is ready, and never saying anything I felt like saying. It’d make me crazy.”
“Why do you care so much?”
“I don’t know. Maybe something about your dance brought it out. Is it magic?”
“Not the way you mean it.”
“Okay.”
“To answer your question, I think some people take satisfaction just from doing their duty.”
“Um. Okay.”
She smiled. “I wish I could help you.”
“You have,” I said. “Good luck with the injuries. And the dancing.”
I got up and walked to the aisle. There was a door in the back, but I had to wonder if there was another. I walked forward like I knew what I was doing, hopped up on the stage, and kept going. I glanced back. Hevlika was still sitting there, watching me. “Don’t worry,” I said. “It’s just a stage I’m going through.”
The door opened with no sound. I went through, and was back in the dining room. I continued to the balcony, stopping directly in front of the set of doors I hadn’t yet opened.
“Predictions, Loiosh?”
“Hah.”
I flung open the doors.
“Mirrors,” I said.
“Lots of them, Boss.”
The walls were mirrored, the ceiling was mirrored, the floor was mirrored. I stood there looking at myself over and over again.
“Who would do this?”
“Whoever did all the rest of it?”
“But who would make a room like this? I mean, really, someone said, ‘I know! I’ll fill a room up with mirrors! That will be fun!’”
“You know they’re magic, Boss.”
Yeah, by now there was no doubt that they were magic. It was just annoying that given all the spells that involved mirrors, I understood none of them.
“We going in, Boss?”
“No.”
“Good choice.”
“Although we could—”
“Boss!”
“All right. But it does make me realize something: I’m a pretty good-looking guy.”
“Sure, Boss.”
“But I should trim my mustache.”
“Yeah, that’s just what I was thinking.”
I shut the door and turned around, and—
“Devera!” I said. “I’ve been looking for you.”
She nodded. “I know. I’ve been looking for you, too.”
If she’d been human, she’d have been about nine years old, and would have looked a bit like one of those skinny waifs you see in South Adrilankha begging you for coins while another cuts your purse. Well, except for how she dressed. She wore loose-fitting black pants with a silver stripe and an even looser-fitting shirt that was also black but decorated with silver, all of it worth more than those waifs would ever manage to steal. She had a black ribbon in her shoulder-length blond hair to keep it rigorously back out of her eyes.
I said, “Can you tell me what I’m supposed to be doing here?”
“Help me get out.”
“Help you get out? You led me here.”
“That was tomorrow-me. It’s today-me that’s trapped.”
“Oh. Of course. How foolish of me.”
“Boss, did you really understand—”
“Not even close, Loiosh.”
“Oh, good.”
“Can you explain, Devera?”
“I don’t understand it, Uncle Vlad.”
“Oh. So, what do you want me to do?”
“I don’t know.”
I’d have made some remark there about how helpful she was being, but while you can be gently ironic with Devera, you can’t be sarcastic with her. You just can’t.
“Okay, can you tell me which way to go from here?”
She looked around, then shook her head. Great.
“All right,” I said. “Why don’t you just tell me the story. I mean, what happened.”
“Okay. I was visiting Daddy, and—”
“So, excuse me, that would be in the Halls of Judgment?”
She nodded.
“And that was yesterday?”
She nodded again, and I realized that that was not a useful question; “today” and “yesterday” and “tomorrow” obviously meant something to Devera, but they didn’t mean the same things they meant to me: her “yesterday” might be a thousand years ago, or next month, or right now. My head didn’t actually start hurting, but it felt like it wanted to, and would if I kept thinking about it.
I said, “So you were there. How did you end up here?”
“I don’t know, but I couldn’t get out.”
“Then how did you find me?”
“Oh, I did that tomorrow.”
“Oh,” I said. “Yes, of course.”
She nodded.
I took a deep breath and let it out. “Please, Devera. Try to explain as clearly as you can, what happened, and how I can help you.”
“But, Uncle Vlad, I don’t know what happened.” She looked like she was about to cry, which I found more upsetting than any number of attempts on my life had been.
“That’s okay,” I said. “Just do your best.”
She wiped a wrist over her eyes and nodded. She wasn’t a little kid, but when she acted like one, was it an act? You tell me.
“All right,” she said. “After I saw Daddy, I went to the Vestibule to visit Great-Grandmama, and—”
“Wait, who? Where?”
“The Vestibule. Darkness.”
“You were visiting darkness?”
She nodded.
“Uh, you mean there was no light?”
“No, no. I mean her. Darkness.”
“Darkness is a person?”
“She’s a god, silly,” said Devera, as if anyone should have known.
“Oh,” I said. “Yes, of course. How foolish of me.”
“Uncle Vlad!”
“Yeah, okay. Go on.”
“And you know how when you walk through the Halls there are all those time spikes? Well—”
“Wait, what?”
“You know. The time spikes.”
“I—I don’t remember those.”
“Oh. Well, that’s how you get to the Vestibule.”
“I guess there were things I didn’t get to see.”
She nodded. “It’s a big place,” she said. She’s very understanding.
“So, the Vestibule?”
“Yeah, and I was visiting Darkness, and then, well, I just took a step and I was here.”
“Right. Okay. And then you got out tomorrow, right?”
“Yes, but only because you helped me. That’s why I came to get you.”
“Why me? Why not your mother, or Sethra Lavode, or Morrolan, or the Necromancer? For that matter, why not Verra?”
She shook her head, her hair flinging about. “I can’t,” she said. “Mama would … if I…” She looked at the floor. “I’m not supposed to visit Darkness.”
“Oh. Okay, you came to me because you were doing something you shouldn’t have, so you can’t go to any of the others, and you don’t know what happened or how I can fix it, but I’m the only one you can go to. There. I think I’m caught up.”
“Does it scare you?”
“No, it’s fine.”
“Then you aren’t caught up,” she said, nodding vigorously.
“That makes a little too much sense. Why aren’t you supposed to visit Darkness?”
“Mama says she isn’t proper company.”
“Your mother—Aliera, we’re talking about Aliera here—says she isn’t proper company.”
Devera nodded.
“That is, Aliera e’Kieron, the daughter of Adron e’Kieron, the man who blew up the Empire? She is saying that Darkness isn’t proper company?”
Devera nodded again.
“Did she say why?”
She looked down. “I don’t know.”
“Devera.”
She continued looking down.
“Devera, why did your mother say Darkness isn’t proper company?”
“Mama doesn’t like how she eats.”
“Oh. Well. I guess that might be a bad example. How does she eat?”
“She eats worlds.”
“Oh. Well. And she lives in the Vestibule, near the Halls of Judgment?”
“She doesn’t live there. But I can find her there.”
“When she isn’t eating worlds.”
Devera nodded.
“Loiosh, how did I end up in a situation where—”
“Don’t even go there, Boss.”
Devera giggled.
“So,” I said. “All right. I get why you don’t want your mother to find out, or your grandmother, but why not one of the more powerful types?”
“They’d tell on me.”
“And I won’t?”
She shook her head.
“Why won’t I?”
“Because you know how to keep secrets.”
I started to tell her about all the stuff I’d been telling to complete strangers, then remembered how much I’d been leaving out. I said, “Yeah, I guess I do. So, what do you need me to do?”
“I don’t know!” her voice was a little shrill.
“Can you explain how it is you know that I can help, but not what it is I have to do?”
“I need someone to help me. And you’re someone, aren’t you?”
“I’ve often wondered.”
“I need someone to help me find a way out, and…” Her voice sounded quivery and then she stopped, looking down.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll try to help. Do you know—”
She vanished.
“Well, bugger.”
“Surprised?”
“Not really. But we’re adding that vanishing bit to the things we need answers to.”
“I’m sure it’s not important, Boss.”
“Heh.”
I stood there for a minute, just absorbing the conversation and failing to figure out what it meant. When I’d wasted enough time, I shrugged and set it aside as best I could.
So, now where? Back through the theater and out the other doors, or back down the stairs?
Somewhere in this place was an answer, and I hadn’t yet identified the question.
I went through the dining hall to the theater—or, at any rate, the door that had opened into a theater a few minutes before. I went through it, and, as before, there was that disorientation and I found myself sitting. The consistency was oddly reassuring.
I watched the stage for a few minutes, but Hevlika didn’t appear. I got up and went through the doors in the back.
They opened to a wide corridor, mostly done in pale yellow with white trim, decorated with a couple of mirrors on each side with small tables below them, and a few paintings and psiprints. The carpet was a dark blue, rich and thick. As was becoming my habit, I turned to look at the door behind me. It was still there, and I could still see the back seats of the darkened theater. Well, then.
I walked down the hallway. I could imagine it being full of nobles, all dressed in their Houses’ finest finery—winged boots, sequined tights, high-collared, sweeping gowns—as they waited for the door to open. That’s what this hallway was for; had it ever been used? There was a “snick” as the doors behind me closed. There was a door on the right; I opened it and was nearly shocked to see something that made perfect sense: a long room with hardwood floors, mirrors on both sides, and a rail running all around it. Just the sort of place a dancer would use to practice. I shut the door and continued.
The hallway ended with a large table beneath a larger mirror. I was getting tired of looking at myself. A door stood on either side. This one, or that one? The last several hours had been filled with choices and no rational basis to choose one or the other. I was getting annoyed.
I tried the one on the left, but it was locked. I studied the lock, then got the necessary objects from the pocket inside of my cloak, and a minute or so later had it opened.