17

When Garric entered the common room he found his father standing at the bar, transferring the guests' accounts from tablets to a sheet of paper made from linen rags. There was still enough light through the west window to throw the waxed boards into shadowed relief, and the evening trade hadn't yet begun.

Only charges amounting to more than a silver anchor rated the formality of a paper tally, but Garric knew the total for Benlo, his daughter, his guards, and his animals would be well above that figure. The past week had been a uniquely profitable one for the borough in general and the inn in particular.

Reise turned when the door opened. He looked at Garric with inquiry.

"Ah, Father," the boy said. "I thought that, well, things will be busy in the morning. So I ought to say goodbye today while it's, ah, quiet."

Reise nodded approval. "You've always shown foresight," he said. "In addition to your other virtues, of course."

He looked down at the goose quill in his hand. He wiped the nib between thumb and forefinger so that the ink wouldn't dry and clog it, then met Garric's eyes again and continued, "We none of us know what the future will bring; in that sense tomorrow is no different from any other day. I expect you'll return here with a tidy sum in silver and experience of the sort a young man with coins in his pocket can gain in a city."

Reise smiled with the left side of his face, scarcely more than a nervous tic. "I expect you to be prudent," he said. "But I'm not a fool, and you're not a charred old stick like your father. Have fun, but don't get in over your head."

"Ah, I should be back in ten days," Garric said. "I'll probably turn right around, but unless Tenoctris stays in Carcosa I'll still be traveling at her pace."

He glanced at the sheet of accounts. Reise's handwriting was the best sort of professional script: each letter as clear as those of a book page, but without the embellishments and flourishes that concealed meaning in the name of beauty. Garric wrote as well as anyone else in the hamlet, but he knew that he'd never equal his father's elegant clarity.

"Yes, as I say, the future will be whatever it chooses to be," Reise said.

He set the pen down on the edge of the bar, tented his hands, and resumed, "While I have no doubt of your ability to take care of yourself, Garric...and no illusions about my ability to take care of anything, least of all another human being. Still and all, you might at some point find yourself in need of some help that I could give you. I'll give you any help within my ability."

Reise deliberately turned, picked up the pen in one hand, and with the other tilted a wax tablet better to the light. He dipped the nib again in his pot of oak-gall ink.

"Ah, thank you," Garric said to his father's back. "I figure, you know... I'll be back in ten days."

He started for the stairs, planning to decide which clothing to carry. Lora came to the open door of the kitchen and said, "Garric? Will you come in here? I have a few things to say to you."

Garric felt his guts tense. His father didn't look up from his accounts. "Yes, Mother," Garric said.

Lora held the door for Garric and closed it behind him. They were alone in the kitchen: Lora could cook for Benlo and his entourage without additional help.

Garric stopped in the middle of the room and crossed his hands behind his back because he didn't know what else to do with them. Lora faced him. She looked like a bitter, angry doll.

"I've always loved you, Garric," she said. "No mother ever loved a child more!"

Her harsh, defensive voice proved that in her heart Lora knew as well as Garric did that she was lying. To the extent that his mother had ever cared for any person beyond herself, that person was Sharina.

The door onto the courtyard opened. Ilna stepped into the kitchen. "I came to get the—" she began.

"It can wait!" Lora shouted. "I suppose because you didn't have a mother, nobody taught you to knock before coming through a door, is that it? I'm having a discussion with my son!"

Garric had turned his head when the door opened beside him. He saw Ilna's face go stiff in an expression that could have broken stones. Lora was a person who blurted out anything she pleased when she was angry. She seemed to think that other people forgot her words because she herself did. Ilna, and especially Ilna's anger, was of a very different sort.

The girl nodded with cold politeness and backed out of the kitchen, closing the door behind her. The panel didn't bang against the jamb. There was nothing hot or fleeting about Ilna's rage.

"You think your mother's an old fool who has nothing to say that you need to hear," Lora said in a wholly different voice from the one with which she'd started the conversation. "Well, I'm old, all right. I don't need you to tell me that when I've got a mirror. But I know things about women, boy; and men too, even after all these years buried here."

It struck Garric, and not for the first time, that his mother wasn't a fool. She couldn't have done as much harm as she had if she'd been stupid.

"Mother," he muttered, looking at water stains on the plaster behind Lora, "I'll be back in ten days. Two weeks at the outside. I'm just driving some sheep to Carcosa."

Lora sniffed. "As if you'll come back here after you've seen a city," she said. "As if anybody with sense would. And that girl Liane has her eye on you besides."

"Mother!" Garric said. He was ready to crawl under the table in embarrassment.

"Well, that's what I want to tell you about, boy," Lora continued. "Remember that you're in charge when you're dealing with that girl or any girl. Don't let their airs or their looks or the clothes they wear put you off. Don't whine, don't beg. Let them know that they have to come to you."

She looked Garric up and down in cold appraisal, the way he might have judged the lines of a sheep. He wanted to sink into the stone floor. She nodded approval.

"They'll come," she said. "Never fear that, boy. They'll come in droves."

"I don't want droves of women!" Garric said. "Mother, I'm just driving sheep to Carcosa! And anyway—"

He heard his voice catch and drop into a husky lower register.

"—Liane's a fine lady. She wouldn't be interested in me."

Lora shook her head in wonder and disgust. "Oh, I've raised a paragon, I have," she said. "The sort of man a good girl dreams about and maybe one in a thousand might find."

She stepped closer to Garric and lifted his chin with two fingers, forcing him to meet her eyes. "Listen, boy," she said. "Always remember this: a lady is a woman first."

It was odd to hear Lora speaking in a tone of authority, so different from the shrill boastfulness that was as much a part of her person as the careful hairdo.

She put her hand on the latch of the common-room door, but she continued to hold her son with her eyes. "I'm not telling you what to do with this Liane or any of the other fine ladies you'll meet. But I'm telling you to do it on your own terms or you're a fool."

She pulled the door open and gestured Garric through it in dismissal.

"As great a fool as your father," Lora added.