Free The Book of Athyra by Steven Brust Page B

silent.
    Vlad said, “Are they also vassals of Baron Smallcliff?”
    “Yes. He’s also the Baron of Bigcliff.”
    Vlad nodded. “What else?”
    “I don’t know. I know that someone else is lord over in Whiterock, though. A Dzurlord. We hear stories about him.”
    “Oh? What kind of stories?”
    “Not very nice ones. You have to work his fields two days of the week, even in the bad years when it takes everything to keep your own going, and he doesn’t care how hard that makes it for you, or even if you starve, and sometimes he does things that, well, I don’t really know about because they say I’m too young to know about them, but they’re pretty awful. His tax collectors can beat you whenever they want, and you can’t do anything about it. And his soldiers will kill you if you get in their way, and when the Speaker tried to complain to the Empire they had him killed, and things like that.”
    “Things like that don’t happen here?”
    “Well, the tax collectors can be pretty mean sometimes, but not that bad. We’re lucky here.”
    “I suppose so.”
    They fell silent again. Vlad continued staring down at the River Flats. Eventually Savn said, “Vlad, if you aren’t enjoying nature, what
are
you doing?”
    “Watching the people.”
    “They’re odd,” said Savn.
    “So you said. But you didn’t tell me in what way they’re odd.”
    Savn opened his mouth and shut it. He didn’t want to pass on what Mae and Pae said about them, because he was sure Vlad would just think he was being small-minded. He finally said, “They talk funny.”
    Vlad glanced at him. “Funny? How?”
    “Well, there used to be a tribe of Serioli who lived down there. They only moved away a few hundred years ago, and until then they lived right next to the people from Bigcliff, and they’d talk all the time, and—”
    “And the people from Bigcliff use Serioli words?”
    “Not when they talk to us. But it’s, that, well, they put their words together different than we do.”
    “Can you understand them?”
    “Oh, sure. But it sounds strange.”
    “Hmmm,” said Vlad.
    “What are you watching them for?”
    “I’m not certain. A way to do something I have to do.”
    “Why do you always talk that way?”
    Vlad spared him a quick glance, which Savn could not read, then said, “It comes from spending time in the company of philosophers and Athyra.”
    “Oh.”
    “And having secrets.”
    “Oh.”
    A strange feeling came over Savn, as if he and Vlad had achieved some sort of understanding—it seemed that if he asked the Easterner a question, he might get an answer. However, he realized, he wasn’t certain what, of all the things he wondered about, he ought to ask. Finally he said, “Have you really spent a great deal of time around Athyra nobles?”
    “Not exactly, but I knew a Hawklord once who was very similar. And a drummer, for that matter.”
    “Oh. Did you kill them, too?”
    Vlad’s head snapped up; then he chuckled slightly. “No,” he said, then added, “On the other hand, it came pretty close with both of them.”
    “Why were they like Athyra?”
    “What do you know of the House?”
    “Well, His Lordship is one.”
    “Yes. That’s what brought it to mind. You see, it is a matter of the philosophical and the practical; the mystical and the mundane.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “I know that,” said Vlad, still staring out at the River Flats.
    “Would you explain?”
    “I’m not certain I can,” said Vlad. He glanced at Savn, then back out over the cliff. “There are many who are contemptuous of the intellectual process. But those who aren’t afraid of it sometimes discover that the further you go from the ordinary, day-to-day world, the more understanding you can achieve of it; and the more you understand of the world, the more you can act, instead of being acted upon. That,” he added, almost as an afterthought, “is exactly what witchcraft is about.”
    “But you said before you