Two-Bit Heroes

by Doris Egan

  He straighted his silk robe. "Tell me who, and I'll tell you what I can."

  And so he did. Grateth had turned farmer and stayed in the Northwest Sector. Des had said something about a possible job with the Capital Touring Company, but it fell through, and his present whereabouts were a mystery. "He's not been taken out and beaten for trying to fix the flyer races, though. I checked."

  "What about Sembet Triol? He wasn't at the fort that night—"

  "No." Stereth bit his lip. "He was pardoned, but his noble family refused to take him back."

  "But an Imperial decree is supposed to wipe out the past—"

  "The Sakris are an older family than the Mellevils." The Emperor's name was Mellevil. I hadn't known that Sembet Triol was a Sakri. So was our client, if you recall—though I don't suppose it would have made any difference if we'd known about the connection. The Sakris are a large family.

  "Where is he, then?"

  "I don't know. He left his short sword at the Justice House, took his purse of compensation, and told me he was going west. I don't know where. I suppose we'll never know."

  We'll never know. Such a final phrase. There's an expression on Ivory: Penathi so mai, "the wind we hear in the branches, that we'll never see." It means, let it go. Like ishin na' telleth, it was an Ivoran motto I couldn't live up to.

  Where was the structure? Where was the beginning, the middle, and the end? All these tales and myths had never fully prepared me for the fact that there are just some things we're never going to know. What song the Sirens sang, or what name Achilles used when he hid among the women. Where Sembet Triol had gone and what would

  become of him, and why magic worked for some people and not others, and exactly when Tavia had begun to hate me.

  Ran was saying, "What is this purse of compensation business?"

  "I arranged for five hundred tabals in gold to go to every member of the original band, or everyone who was in the fort that night."

  No gold for us? I glanced at Ran, whose look replied, Let's not press our luck. He said to Stereth, "What about the others?"

  Stereth shrugged. "They all got pardons."

  "But no cash. Some of them are going to end up outlawed again."

  "There were over four hundred of us at the end," said Stereth reasonably. "The government couldn't process and pay off each one individually. They never would have taken my negotiations seriously if I'd insisted on that."

  "Did you push for it at all?" I asked.

  He reached for a bowl of kinuts from a nearby pedestal and handed it to me. "Life is as it is. They're better off than they were before they met me, aren't they?"

  This was true, but depressing nevertheless.

  Stereth was gazing at Ran now. "I hope I've been helpful. Perhaps in future you can do some service for me, gracious sir Cormallon."

  Ran blanched and said, "I'm always eager to perform a service for a friend." A noncommittal generalization.

  "As Minister for Provincial Affairs, I'm always looking for new talent. Theodora—Tymon, I mean—is welcome as well."

  Minister for Provincial Affairs. For the first time I gave that phrase some thought. The Emperor would have been happy to give him that, because it was a post nobody wanted. For one thing, it involved actual work. For another, and this was the basic point, it meant dealing with the provinces… which in the view of the Six Families, were one step up from dungheaps. The overwhelming majority of food shipments, tah, weapons, and military personnel came from the provinces, but you wouldn't think it to listen to the news coming out of the capital. They were a self-involved lot there, and any provincial kid worth his salt,

  lying awake at night listening to the Net, wanted to run off to the capital to make his fortune. Whereas if they'd just all stay home and organize, nothing could stop them.

  Stereth was a man with provincial experience. Surely these thoughts had crossed his mind. Perhaps I was being paranoid, but it seemed to me suddenly that all the provinces needed was somebody with vision to coordinate an alliance, and Stereth seemed just the one to do it. Or get beheaded trying.

  I would be interested in following his career—from afar.

  Ran, I saw, was giving Stereth's offer courteous consideration. I met his eyes across the table and softly mouthed the words, "Beware of heights."

  He turned a bland smile toward Stereth. "I don't want to disappoint you, but the affairs of my House take up so much time…"

  Stereth made a dismissive gesture. "Think no more of it! Just an idea." He reached for another pedestal, topped by a dish of candied fruit. "Have a piece?" he said.

  Ran hesitated almost too lengthily, then took one.

  The doors to the visiting room closed behind us, and I drank in a deep breath. "It's good to be alive, isn't it?"

  I spoke in Standard, as the doorkeeper was with us.

  Ran said, "He was careful to use both our names. I wonder what he'll ask in return for keeping silent about this little chapter in our lives."

  We reached the vestibule, where the doors to the garden stood open. I saw the head of a security guard beyond one of them. "Please wait here a moment," said the doorkeeper in his quavering voice. "Your escort will be along shortly." And he tottered over and took a seat on the stool by the wall.

  "Whatever it is," I said, "we'll worry about it then." Nothing seemed too difficult to handle at that moment, under the dappled starlight slanting over the floor, amid the heavy scent of the roses. I breathed in perfume and night wind.

  "The avoidance of death sometimes has this effect," said Ran practically, as he seated himself on a bench.

  I sat beside him and wondered about a culture that specializes in buying off or absorbing its enemies. It didn't

  always work, though, did it? Look at Petev and Copalis in Death of an Emperor.

  "Ran, I have a question."

  He sighed. "No, I don't know what the salad reference means, Theodora. Nobody knows. Let's just go home and get some sleep."

  "I wasn't even thinking about that!"

  "Oh. Sorry. What was it, then?"

  (I should tell you, in case it starts driving you crazy, as it did me, that we never did figure out what the salad reference meant. Several weeks later I got up the courage to call Octavia and ask her, thinking that if she left the planet before I found out it would dog me for the rest of my life. We spoke briefly over the Net, and I still recall her wide-eyed, angry look when I asked her if it had anything to do with her transfer to Produce Control. "No it doesn't, Theodora. You know what it means." The impression I got from her was one of incredulous disbelief at my nerve in pretending ignorance. Then she said, "I can't believe you," and switched off. So not only don't I know, my pet theory was knocked out of the ring.

  But Ran's reminder got me to thinking briefly about this afternoon, and it occurred to me that I might have ruined the expedition for poor Shez, who'd had no idea what was going on. I remembered how silent she'd been, right up till the time that Kylla'd told her to say good-bye to Aunt Theod—

  "My gods!"

  "What?" said Ran, looking around sharply.

  "I've become one of the Cormallon aunts!"

  He burst out laughing. After a minute he said, "Next time send up a few flares so I can follow your thought processes."

  "Here they are," said the old doorkeeper suddenly, as the two armed Imperials who'd brought us in earlier appeared in the entranceway.

  "Please follow us, gracious sir and lady," said one, and

  we were careful to do so circumspectly. One doesn't fool around with Imperials.

  So we left Stereth's little palace and followed them over the pebbled pathways under the stars toward the gate. Fountains splashed on either side of us. And I thought of the journey back from Tuvin in the groundcar, the whole long tired trip, and how I wakened from a nap to look out on my right at the well-watered fields near the river. It was nearly twilight and the low sun made long, delicious shadows in the lush grass. A white house with wooden pil
lars was set in from the road. A broad expanse of lawn ran south of it, bordered on the edges by tasselnut trees that bent toward the river. And in the middle of this sea of dappled grass, standing by herself, was a little girl who whirled her arms as though directing a great and invisible orchestra. She was too intent to see us pass.

  What was in her mind? Was the man who'd come out on the porch of the white house, who stared north and south as though searching for something, her father? Of course I never saw her again, and I suppose there'll be no reason ever in my life to return to the Tuvin Road. And I thought of all the hints, all the flashing gleams on the river, all the stories we'll never know the endings of.