by Peter David
He had no idea what was going on, but Tacit nonetheless followed me. I wasn’t aware of it at first, because even when he was making no effort to conceal himself, Tacit still moved like a ghost. But a carelessly snapped twig under his foot tipped me that Tacit was behind me. I didn’t care. All I knew was that I had to get back to the tavern.
I burst through the door and saw Stroker standing by the fireplace. There were only a handful of regular customers there, and they were clustered together and muttering in low tones. Everyone turned and looked at me, and there was darkness in their eyes that held something ominous within. Even Stroker, who had never given two damns about me, looked as if he was actually, albeit momentarily, concerned.
As if we were already halfway through a conversation, I said, “Where is she?” I must have been quite a sight at that moment, with my hair flattened around me from the rain, my clothes disheveled, tracking in mud from the Elderwoods. But I didn’t care about any of that. More alarmingly, neither did Stroker seem to care.
Stroker indicated the back room with a quick tilt of his chin. I headed toward it and threw open the door, to discover Astel sobbing over my mother’s corpse.
I stood there for a long moment, the reality now having caught up with my most fevered imaginings. Madelyne’s eyes were open, but she was staring at nothing, her soul having departed the body and left the lids up in the way that someone might hurriedly flee a house and leave the door ajar.
I felt a hand on my shoulder, realized it was Tacit’s, and pushed it aside. I entered the room and stood over Astel. To my distant surprise, I felt exceptionally calm. “What happened?”
“A … a Journeyman,” Astel managed to get out. “I … there were raised voices. I heard, everyone heard. He wanted her to do things … disgusting things … she wouldn’t have any part of. She was a good and decent whore, and wouldn’t have any truck with what that … that pig wanted.” She accentuated the “p” in “pig” so that she spat upon saying the word. “His friends caroused outside, and he tried to take her here, to do his filthy …” Her voice shuddered and she took a moment to compose herself. I didn’t rush her. What would have been the point? “We heard furniture being thrown about. And the snap when he broke her neck, the bastard … I heard that, too. We all did.”
“His name,” I said tonelessly. “Did any of you get his name, so he can be found.”
“No. But before she died, she left her mark on him a’right. If you see him, that will help you identify him, sure as I’m breathing.”
“Her mark?” Tacit spoke up.
Astel flexed her hand in a clawlike motion and made a sweeping gesture. I understood immediately. Madelyne had always kept her fingernails long and sharp. If she chose to employ them as weapons, I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to have the damn things raking across my face. And sure enough, I could see traces of blood on the fingernails of her right hand. She’d bloodied her murderer something fierce, that much was certain.
Her murderer …
A cold fury was beginning to build in me, as I walked slowly across the dirty room and, passing my hand over her face, shut her eyes. Something had to be done about this.
I would like to tell you that I was motivated by a sense of justice, of honor. But these matters were of little relevance to me. I knew that this was an unjust world, and to expect any sort of equity within it was a complete waste of time.
But … she was mine. She was my mother. I had, by turns, loved her, pitied her, loathed her. In the final analysis, however, she was the only mother I had, and some brute had come along and taken her from me, had stolen from me. He had taken that which was mine, that which he had no right to take.
I had so little. So little. How dare some thug try and rob me of what little I had.
“Can you describe him beyond the mark?” I asked.
“Tall. A big man … at least two heads higher than you. Massive built he was, with a scowl dark as thunderclouds and the strength of five men, at least. Maybe ten.”
I didn’t like the sound of that.
“Tell me you’ll find him … find him and kill him for what he did,” Astel continued with bubbling ire. “Tell me you will.”
“I’ll do better,” I said. “I’ll find his mother … and kill her.”
“Wait a minute,” Tacit said immediately and even Astel seemed taken aback. “You can’t do that,” continued Tacit.
“The hell I can’t. Watch me.”
“Kill some woman you don’t even know!”
“He did!” I pointed out, indicating my mother’s body.
“But that’s not the point! If you were going to try and kill him, that’d be one thing—”
“It certainly would. It would be suicide. You heard her description of him. He’d annihilate me.”
“Po,” Tacit said slowly, “you can’t do it. You can’t just kill an innocent woman because of something her son did.”
“Well, I have to do something!”
“Not you. We. We have to do it. We will find him … we will find the man who did this … and we will exact vengeance on your mother’s behalf.”
“Why?” I stared at him incredulously. “Why ‘we’? Why are you mixing into this? This isn’t your concern.”
“Of course it’s my concern. You’re my friend!”
I looked at the dead body of my mother, which Astel was just in the process of covering with a sheet. “Why do you have to do that?” I muttered.
“Do what? What do you mean?”
Thunder cracked overhead, and something about the sound of the heavens, combined with something in Tacit’s voice—such a matter-of-fact, “how-could-you-even-ask” attitude—pushed me over an edge that I didn’t even realize I was standing near.
“Why do you have to try and be heroic all the time!” I said in frustration. “Why do you have to see everything so ‘clearly’? What do you think you’re trying to prove?”
“Prove?” He shook his head. “I’m not trying to prove anyth—”
“Oh, the hell you aren’t!” I was shouting by that point, uncaring if anyone outside heard me. “That’s all you ever do! Try to prove how much better you are than I am! How much nobler, how much more heroic! Tacit, who can move with the grace of a unicorn! Tacit, with the heart of a gryphon! The heroic cutpurse and rogue, trying to make everybody’s life a little bit better! I’m sick of it! I’m sick of you! Haven’t you gotten that yet? Don’t you understand that?”
“Po,” he said slowly, moving his hands in a “calm down” gesture, “I know that you’re upset. Your mother’s body is not even cold, her murderer protected by a vast army …”
“An army that you’d take on single-handedly, no doubt, in order to accommodate a friend! And you’d probably win, too!” It all came spilling out, everything I’d bottled up. “Damn you! God damn you! Damn you for your perfection and innate wonderfulness! Damn you for being so much better than I am, and leaving me to look at you and be sick with envy!”
“Apropos, my friend—”
“I’m not your friend! How many ways do I have to spell this out for you! I cannot stand you, all right? I can’t stand the sight of you! Whenever I look at you, all I see is all that I am not! I can never measure up to everything that you are!”
“But we’re not in competition, Apropos!”
“That’s the worst thing of all. You see, you’re not in competition. You’re so skilled, so wonderful, so perfect, that you don’t even realize it!” I was sweating profusely, my forehead positively dripping, and the salt from it sopped down and stung my eyes. I wiped them furiously, hoping that it didn’t seem as if I were weeping. That would have been simply intolerable. “You’re just someone who served a purpose, that’s all! Nothing more than that!” His face was resolutely stoic. I stepped closer in, suddenly consumed with an overwhelming desire to hurt him. “Must I spell it out? I used you! Used you for protection, for knowledge. You were a means to an end, that’s all. All your heroics and your taking on thi
s quest or that cause. And now you’re going to do it again, with my mother, and drag me along with it as if throwing my life away against some behemoth is going to bring her back. And the worst is, you’ll probably expect great deeds out of me! Probably fix it so that it’s my hand that lays the villain low or something equally noble. The hell with your nobility! The hell with you! Do you finally comprehend? Do we finally have an understanding, Tacit? Do we?”
I wasn’t sure what I expected him to do. Rant, perhaps, or strike me, or hurl invective.
But all he did was just look at me with what seemed infinite sadness, and then he shook his head and said quietly, “Perhaps … you are right. Perhaps this is something you’d best do alone. Handle the matter as you wish. May you find whatever justice you deem your mother worthy of, Apropos. May you find everything you seek.”
I was fairly trembling with rage. “Stop being so damned polite! Didn’t you hear anything I said?”
“I heard everything you said. And I forgive you.”
He bowed slightly to Astel, placed a respectful hand upon my mother’s cold one for a moment as if wishing her good journey, and then turned and left.
“I don’t need your forgiveness any more than I need your friendship!” I shouted after him. I doubt that he heard me, and truthfully, it wouldn’t have made much difference if he had.
It was done. I was rid of him. It was about time, really. I’d learned from him every reasonable skill he had to offer. I didn’t need him anymore. Particularly if he was going to lead me on some quest that would get me killed, as if my mother would ever know or care. “Exact vengeance on your mother’s behalf,” Tacit had said. What a colossal crock that was. My mother had no more behalf. She was beyond such human concerns as justice.
“Justice. There has to be justice for her,” Astel said, as if she could read my thoughts. She pointed a quavering finger at me. “And you have to get it for her. You’re her son. She believed in you.”
I looked at her body, now covered by the sheet, and thought about her natterings about destiny and such. Then I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror mounted on the wall nearby. Moderate height was I by that point, with a fairly well muscled upper torso. But my right leg was still a fairly useless object, and overall I looked very unimpressive, leaning on my staff and assessing my abilities and worth.
“More fool she,” I said.
Astel’s movement was quick. I never even saw her hand swing in its arc. But I certainly felt the impact as it cracked against my face.
There was cold, hard fury in Astel’s face. “You little creep,” she fairly snarled. “I caught you when your mother’s womb expelled you. I was there when you sank your teeth into Stroker’s throat. Your mother sold her body to buy you a roof over your head, and what have you done in return? Never offered her so much as a soft word, much less made any effort to support yourself or make her life better!”
“I … did … from time to time,” I protested, but it sounded rather lame the way I said it. My face was smarting but I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of seeing me reach up and rub it.
“You did nothing, except hang about with Tacit or glower at your mother ever since you found out what she did in order to provide for you.”
“That’s not true.” I thought about the time that I’d pressed the coin into her sleeping hand, but I wasn’t about to share that memory with Astel. It would seem as if I was defensive, providing excuses. So I simply repeated, a bit more sullenly, “That’s not true. And … and I’ve made money. I have. Lots of money, hidden away. Money I was going to give her!” And at that point it was a complete lie, because I’d never had any intention of giving her a single sovereign. But just as before I’d wanted to upset Tacit, now I was seized with the desire to do something about those contemptuous looks that Astel was giving me.
She shook her head in haughty disbelief. “I don’t think you know what true and false are anymore.”
“You don’t know anything, Astel,” I said angrily. If she could be accusatory, I could be, too. “You’ve known me my whole life, and you don’t know anything about me!”
“I know that Tacit at least had some measure of the right idea, and you treated him like garbage!” she said, pointing at the door in indication of the direction he’d gone. “I know that at least he had his heart in the right place! Where’s your heart, Apropos?!”
“Hidden away where the likes of you can never find it!”
We were very close, taking step upon step toward each other, our bodies both trembling with our respective fury. “I wouldn’t bother looking for your heart!” she shot back. “Why should I seek out such a shriveled and pathetic thing as that! Your mother lies dead, and your only plan is to track down some helpless woman and murder her!”
“What would you have me do, Astel? Throw my life away combating some brute that’ll slay me, like as not? And what good will that do her?!”
“You’re a coward!”
“I’m a realist! If living in the real world makes me a coward in your eyes, then fine! Who gives a damn what you think?”
“You do!” She shoved me. With my lame leg, I almost stumbled, but I recovered and shoved her back. When she came at me again, I caught both her wrists and held them easily. Thunder blasted even louder, so loud that it seemed as if it were in the room with us.
“You have no compassion!” she shouted over the thunder as she struggled in my grasp. “No care for anything save yourself … no love … no …”
Her body was right up against mine, and that was when I kissed her fiercely. It was a clumsy movement, my skull cracking against hers so hard that we were both momentarily dazed. She was nearly twice as old as I, but still damned attractive. She tried to pull away from me. I kissed her again, feeling something building deep within me, something that was demanding it be unleashed. Rain was pouring down, slamming against the walls, and the wind was howling. She sunk her teeth into my lower lip, drawing blood, and I pulled away momentarily. Triumph flashed in her eyes, but there was something else in there as well, something that prompted me to bring my mouth savagely down upon hers once more, and this time there was only the mildest resistance. When I bore her down to the floor, all resistance was gone.
With my mother’s corpse lying covered on a table five feet away, I had my first woman. It was hardly the ambience that one could have wished for, but I suppose in retrospect that there was something symbolic about it.
Chapter 7
We lay close to each other for some time, holding each other tight, skin against skin so that it took our bodies as long as possible to cool. “That was … unexpected,” I said, my voice sounding a bit huskier than it had a little while earlier.
“Life is full of surprises,” said Astel. She was idly fingering the wispy curls of chest hair. “Do you know what I think you lacked, Apropos?”
“Is this going to be an alphabetical list, or are you going to go from largest to smallest?”
She smiled at that. I guessed I had amused her. “I think you lacked confidence. The sort of confidence that can only be gotten by … by becoming a man. A true man,” she added.
“Is that what it takes, then? What of monks who swear themselves to lives of celibacy?”
She made a dismissive noise. “They’re busy making love to God, or whatever permutation thereof is interesting to them.” She drew herself even closer to me. If she’d held me any tighter, she would have been in back of me. “Confidence,” she said again, as if she’d just settled a dispute for herself.
“And is that why you and I had it off just now? So that you could help build my confidence?”
She sighed contentedly. “A little, perhaps. But also … I hate to admit it … I’ve wondered about it for a long time. Fantasized about it. I know, I know how strange it is. After all, I held you in my arms when you were newborn. But perhaps that was part of the excitement as well. Watching you grow into young manhood, coming into your own.”
“And before, w
hen you spoke of my heartlessness?”
Propping her head up on one hand, Astel said, “We say things when we’re angry, Apropos. Things we don’t really mean. I think it’s what we do when we’re not angry that has greater weight, don’t you.” She leaned over and kissed me once more, and I felt my body begin to respond on its own. The second time we had sex was far less rushed. I was hardly what one would call experienced, but I did have the benefit of being a fast learner.
It was a short time later when we finally dressed and emerged from the room where my mother’s body lay. Only a handful of people remained in the tavern at that point, most of them so drunk into oblivion that they could have been on the sun and wouldn’t have known their whereabouts. Stroker, however, cleaning glasses behind the bar, was stone-cold sober. Since he usually relegated those chores to wenches and such, clearly he had things on his mind. He glowered at us from beneath his beetled brow.
“I’ve sent for the funerian,” he growled. “He’ll take the body and dispose of it.” Not for Stroker were the niceties of asking after the state of mind of the newly orphaned.
“Dispose of it how?” I asked. “Where will she be buried?”
“Buried!” He snorted. ” ‘Less you’ve got money for a grave site, she’ll just be made ashes in the funerian’s kiln.”
It was clear that his mentioning my having money was such a preposterous notion that my temper started to flare. “Money!” I retorted. “I’ll have you know that—”
Then I felt Astel’s hand gripping my arm warningly. I wasn’t quite sure what the problem was, but it was clear that she didn’t want me to continue. Cutting myself short in what I hoped was a vaguely smooth manner, I ended the sentence lamely, “—that if I could get it, I would. Wait a minute … what about her money?”
