‘So unless you’re a Malakasian general’s wife holidaying in the southern territories, amusing yourself with a bit of local colour, you’re a thief. Probably quite a good one.’
A brief look of horror passed over her face, replaced almost immediately by a look of fear. ‘Who are you?’ she whispered, unobtrusively sliding one hand beneath the table.
Hoyt liked her other voice much better. ‘I am the one who is going to break that hand if you don’t keep it up here where I can see it.’
She complied, and he added, ‘Good. Thanks. You should have listened when I asked you to go away, but I guess I was about the only target here – and I did enjoy the seduction routine; you’re very good at it.’
‘Pissing demons,’ she said, staring at him. Without looking down, she stabbed a piece of meat and bit it off the blade, then chewed slowly. ‘You’re a thief,’ she said finally.
‘Nice to meet you. I’m Hoyt. I’m from Southport.’
Knowing she had been bested, at least on this occasion, she smiled. ‘I’m Ramella. I’m from Landry.’
‘A pleasure, Ramella of Landry.’ Hoyt offered to pour her a goblet of wine, but she took the flagon from him and helped herself.
‘You must have done well today.’ She gestured towards the meal.
‘Ramella,’ Hoyt decided to take the risk, ‘I have had one of the most glorious days of my life, and I will be completely honest with you, I don’t have a heavy purse, but I do have enough for this meal, and a bit left for my room upstairs. If you actually meant what you said, I would be very happy to take you up on your offer – we have, after all, moved beyond that awkward “getting to know you” phase, so why not?’
Ramella leaned back in the chair, sipping her wine and fiddled with the leather thong tied loosely about her neck. Nothing dangled from it, no charms, jewellery or icons; it was just a leather tie, but Hoyt couldn’t take his eyes off the way the leather strip caressed the soft skin above her tunic.
Smiling her seductive grin, Ramella leaned forward, and gestured for him to do likewise. As he did so, Hoyt could feel her breath on his cheeks, could smell the heady aroma of wine and venison. He held his breath, not wanting to cloud the air with anything but her scent. He waited, expecting her to kiss him and praying she wasn’t about to knife him beneath the table.
When she spoke, he was confused – her words were nowhere in the long list of possible replies to his invitation.
Ramella of Landry leaned across the table, breathing pungent fumes into Hoyt’s face, and said, ‘I think he’s coming out of it.’
‘I think he’s coming out of it,’ Hannah repeated, working some of the stiffness from her shoulder. The querlis had helped – Hoyt rewrapped it each morning with a new poultice – but her arm remained immobile. She felt stronger, though, and was desperate to try going without her shoulder wrapped or her arm in a sling.
‘Yes, you’re right,’ Alen said, ‘and it worked blazingly fast. Great rutting lords, but this is a remarkable substance.’
Hoyt blinked to clear his eyes. Instead of a beautiful thief, Alen and Hannah were staring back at him. Hannah’s shoulder was wrapped, and he recognised his handiwork. Cold, confused, and utterly surprised to find them here, outside, he asked, ‘Where’s Ramella?’
Alen laughed. ‘I’d like to know that, too, Hoyt. You never mentioned her before. She sounded quite intoxicating.’
Hoyt thought his head might crack open. ‘Is she here? Where are we?’
Hannah sat beside him. ‘We’re in Malakasia, north of the Great Pragan Range and moving towards Welstar Palace. Do you remember any of that?’ There was a concerned look in her eyes.
In a rush, everything came back to him: their journey, the forest of ghosts, the pouch of bark Churn had found on the Malakasian corpse – and his crazy decision to test it out. As his memories washed over him in a wave, he started to tremble. Hannah put her good arm around him, and he revelled in the warmth of her touch.
‘Unholy whores, but that was real!’ he cried. ‘I was there, Alen, there in your house. It was like yesterday – there were details I would never be able to remember now, not even on my best day with my clearest recollections. I saw it alclass="underline" your house, the fireplace off that little room you called your study, the one with the green and brown rug on the floor – I haven’t seen that rug in a hundred Twinmoons, but I could weave it for you, today, without missing a detail. I don’t remember you smoking, though, or having a dog, but the rest of it was so real.’ He paused, shaking his head as if to clear it.
‘It was the day you gave me the first books in my collection. I never told you what happened afterwards, but I left your place that night and I met a woman. She was a thief, and gods, but I was in love with her.’
‘Sounded more like lust from where we were sitting,’ Hannah said.
‘Call it what you like,’ Hoyt chuckled, ‘but she was the sexiest woman I’ve ever seen. I asked her to stay with me that night. I couldn’t help it; my whole head was caving in just looking at her. I couldn’t-’ He paused, considered his rambling storyline and ended with, ‘I don’t suppose you need all those details, do you?’
‘We need a few,’ Alen said. ‘I don’t recall smoking, and I have never had a dog.’
Several tumblers clicked into place in Hoyt’s mind. ‘The dog. Hannah, you remembered a dog, too, both when you came through the forest of ghosts, and again when I set the bone in your shoulder. Isn’t that right?’
She nodded. ‘It was more than remembering him. When I was in the forest, it was as if reality had changed. I was there with my parents, and the dog was there too – that dog was there at my parent’s house in Denver, but we never had a dog. I spent a long time wondering which were my real memories.’
‘How very odd.’ Hoyt shook the last of the fog from his mind. ‘What do you think, Alen? Is it just some strange effect of the narcotics in this bark?’
‘It must be,’ Alen said. ‘I wouldn’t worry about it. It’s clear that we all experienced the most memorable times in our lives, and whether they were a highest high – collecting that medical library in Middle Fork – or a lowest low, like Churn’s family massacre or my leaving Reia in England, the memories are as vivid as any dream we’ve ever experienced. And they’re repetitive and very real – and captivating, in that none of us have been able to escape them without some outside intervention.’
‘What happened to me?’
‘You were out all day, so we cut the strip holding the piece of bark around your neck. It wasn’t long after we took it off that you started to come back to us.’ Hannah held up the thong on which Alen had carefully affixed a piece of the bark.
‘A leather strip,’ Hoyt said under his breath. ‘That’s another detail.’
‘What?’ Hannah asked.
‘It’s nothing, but Alen is right, some of the details are things we seem to be adding. The dog is one. I don’t know why you added it to your memories, and I can only guess that I added it because you mentioned it after your last episode, so you must have put the idea in my head. The dog appeared in my memory as an added bonus, just like this leather strip: I knew you had attached the bark to my neck with it, and as a result it appeared in my memory as an exceedingly seductive piece of jewellery Ramella was wearing the night we met. But I can’t remember if she really was wearing a leather thong around her neck the night we met.’
‘She probably wasn’t,’ Hannah said. ‘I am convinced we had a dog at the house in Denver, but I know we never did.’
Hoyt turned to Alen. ‘Well, let’s document that as a side-effect.’
‘Added details and embellished memories?’
‘Ramella’s breasts didn’t get bigger, if that’s what you mean, but yes, the dog and the leather thong both seem very real to me now – yet I know you never had a dog when I used to visit in those days.’
‘Right, and I didn’t smoke, either.’
‘There’s that, too. The dog sort of makes sense, in an odd, shared way between me and Hannah, but the smoking? I can’t figure it.’