After a time, she said hesitantly, “Savn ...”
“What is it, Polyi?”
“Will you tell me something?”
“Sure.”
“Do you like Lova?”
“Vlad, wake up,” said Savn. “I think the food’s ready.”
“I’m awake,” said the Easterner in a voice so low Savn could hardly hear it. “Let’s see the norska.”
Savn suddenly wondered how much of the conversation Vlad had overheard, and decided it had been stupid to talk about it right in front of him in any case. He took the spit off the stones and showed it to Vlad.
“It’s done,” announced the Easterner. “Help me sit up.”
Savn and Polyi put the spit back on the stones, then helped him sit up.
“Now I want to stand.”
Savn said, “Are you sure you should—”
“And help me to the latrine.”
“Oh. All right.”
They took his arms and helped him up, and guided him to the other cave, and held him up until he was done. Then they brought him back and helped him sit up against the wall of the cave. The jhereg scampered along with him all the way. He sat there for several moments, breathing deeply, then nodded. “Let’s eat,” he said.
While they’d been helping him, part of the norska had burned slightly, but the rest was fine.
They ate in silence at first. Savn thought it was one of the best things he’d ever eaten. He wasn’t certain what Polyi thought, but she was eating with great enthusiasm.
“Do you know,” said Savn suddenly, “it just occurred to me that if there are people looking for us, and if they are at all nearby, the smell will bring them right to us.” He took another bite of roasted norska.
Vlad grunted and said, “Should my friends take that as a compliment on their choice of food?”
Savn took his time chewing and swallowing, then said, “Yes.”
“Good. I think the cave is deep enough that no smells will escape.”
“AH right,” said Savn.
Polyi was still eating and not talking. Savn tried to decide if she was looking sullen, but he couldn’t tell.
“It’s the wine that does it,” said Vlad. His voice seemed slightly stronger; at any rate, he seemed to have no trouble talking. “Cooking over an open flame is its own art, and doesn’t have much to do with oven cooking or stove cooking. I’m not really good at it. But I know that wine always helps.”
Savn wondered if it was the wine that made the norska taste so good, or if it was really the circumstances—if it wasn’t still the feeling that he was on some sort of adventure. He knew there was something wrong with thinking about it this way, but how could he help it? He was sitting in a cave with a man who spoke of killing His Lordship, and he was eating norska taken with magic—
“Vlad,” he said suddenly.
“Mroi?” said Vlad. Then he swallowed and said, “Excuse me. What?”
“I had always heard that it was bad luck to hunt with magic, except for finding the game.”
“I’ve heard that, too.”
“Well, then,” said Savn. “What about—”
“Oh, this? Well, it wasn’t exactly magic. At least, not directly.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Never mind. It isn’t important.”
Savn decided that he was probably never going to understand what Vlad thought important. The most trivial things seemed to provoke the biggest reactions, like when Savn had mentioned that His Lordship’s men hadn’t been using Morganti weapons. Savn shook his head, wondering.
All of a sudden Polyi said, “You can’t kill His Lordship.”
Vlad looked at her without speaking.
Savn said, “Polyi—”
“Well,” she said to Vlad. “You can’t.”
“Of course not,” said Vlad.
“But you mean to. I know it.”
“Polyi—”
“Just out of curiosity,” said Vlad, “why couldn’t I kill him?”
“He’s a wizard.”
“So?”
Polyi frowned. “They say that he can never die, because his magic protects him. They say that there are rooms in his keep where he just walks in and comes out younger, and that he is only as old as he wants to be. They say—”
“And how much of this do you believe?”
“I don’t know,” said Polyi.
Savn said, “If it’s true, though—”
“It’s true that he’s a sorcerer.”
“Well, then?”
“No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style.”
Savn couldn’t find an answer to that, so he didn’t make one. He looked at Polyi, but she was just staring angrily at Vlad. There was a sense of unreality about the entire conversation—it was absurd that they could be talking about killing His Lordship as if discussing the price of linen. There had been a time, some five years before, when he, Coral, and Lan had drunk wine until they had become sick. The thing he remembered most clearly about the incident, other than walking around for the next week hoping Mae and Pae didn’t find out about it, was sitting with his head bent over, focusing on nothing except the tabletop, slowly memorizing every mark on it. The memory came back to him with such a rush that it almost brought along the giddy, sickly, floating feeling he had had then.
At last he said, “But what if he is undead, like you say?”
“He is,” said Vlad. “That makes it a little trickier, that’s all.”
“Then you admit you’re going to do it,” said Polyi, in the same tone of voice she used upon discovering the piece for her game under Savn’s blankets.
“What if I am?” said Vlad. “Do you think I should just let him kill me?”
“Why don’t you teleport away?” said Savn.
“Heh,” said Polyi. “Teleport? If he could do that, he could have fixed his finger.”
“Polyi—” said Savn.
“First of all,” said Vlad, looking at Polyi. “I’m not a physicker. A physicker who knew sorcery could have healed my hand if I’d gotten to him quickly. Now it would be very difficult, and I haven’t been in touch with anyone that good in some time.
“Second,” he continued, looking now at Savn, “never attempt complicated sorcery—and teleportation is complicated—when you’re weak in the body. It upsets the mind, and that can be fatal. I’ve done it, when I’ve had to, and I will again, if I have to. But I’ve been lucky, and I don’t like to depend on luck.
“Third,” he said, addressing them both, “I do, indeed, intend to kill Loraan—Baron Smallcliff. But I’m in no shape to do so now. He knows I want to kill him; he killed Reins in order to draw me in, so that when I tried to kill him he could kill me. I don’t know everything that’s going on yet, so I don’t know how I’m going to kill him. If I did, I certainly wouldn’t tell you. I wouldn’t have told you this much if I hadn’t betrayed myself already, and if I didn’t owe it to you.
“But there it is,” he said. “I’ve told you my plans, or as much of them as I have. If you want to betray me, I can’t stop you.”
He looked at them and waited. At last Savn said, “I don’t know what to do.”
“I think we should go home,” said Polyi.
“Then what?” said Savn.
“I don’t know.”
Savn looked at the Easterner, who was watching them carefully, his expression blank. “She’s right,” said Savn. “We really should go home.”
“Yes,” said Vlad. “I’ll be all right here.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. And, whatever happens, no one is going to be able to take me by surprise.”
Savn glanced at the jhereg and nodded.
Vlad settled back against the wall of the cave and closed his eyes. “I believe I will sleep now. Will you help me to lie down?”
When they were done eating, they gave the bones to the jhereg, who seemed well pleased with them. Savn wanted to say goodbye to Vlad, but the Easterner was sound asleep. He and Polyi left the cave together, blinking in the bright afternoon sun. They started for home.