The price of victory- - Thieves World 13 (92 page)

"Your trade is prospering, I can see!" Cappen Varra surveyed Lalo's smock—stained now with paint and perspiration, but good linen, and new. "You never used to offer to pay for the beer!"

Lalo took a long draft and grimaced, wondering whether this batch was a little off or he was losing his taste for the stuff.

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"A lot of things are different now, including me," he agreed. He looked at his old friend, wondering if here was someone who might understand.

"You haven't—made— anything else, have you?" whispered Cappen Varra. Involuntarily they both looked at the blank wall where once Lalo had drawn the accumulated evil of the Vulgar Unicorn and breathed into it a soul.

"No. I wear a mask over my mouth when I paint these days so tHat I won't breathe life into anything by chance," said Lalo. "But I've learned to do a few other things. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference be tween imagination, or art, and what's real!"

"I understand—" The harper held out his tankard to be refilled. "I nearly got lynched once when I sang a story I thought I'd made up and it turned out to be true."

"How can that happen?" exclaimed Lalo. "When I paint, or you sing, are we spying on reality without knowing it, no more to be blamed than a mirror going down the road that reflects both the sky and the mire-or are we shaping it somehow?"

"Do the stars or the cards create our futures, or does the person who reads them define what will be?" echoed Cappen Varra. The beer had put the sparkle back into his eyes. "That's a question for the Mageguild, not for me!"

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"Not the Mageguild!" Lalo shuddered. "They'd look for a way to sell it. I only ever met one mage who cared for magic more than money. He was the Imperial Magelord, and he taught me how to seek truth in my painting. But that was years ago. He's probably dead by now."

"Got a theory—" said Cappen Varra, whose tankard had just been refilled for the third time. "Reality's not solid. 'S like clay, but most people don't have th' strength to mold it, or know how. The gods can. Mages can shape it with their spells, 'n' artists, sometimes—" he gazed at Lalo owlishly over the rim of his tankard, and the limner realized abruptly that after Cappen Varra's privations, even the Vulgar Unicorn's sour beer had been too much for him. And evening was coming on. The limner could not possibly leave his old friend alone and incapable in this part of town.

"Gilla will have dinner ready by now—" he said briskly. "Why don't you come along home with me?"

Cappen Varra grinned. "Think I'm drunk? Maybe so. Easier this way. I know about changing things, see—I sang a door open to th'other world, sang up a crowd o' demons to kill the folks who'd captured me. Killed everybody. Just like th' Black Unicorn—" His eyes filled with tears.
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"Even th' children!"

Lalo cast a swift look at the wall. As the lamps were lit he seemed to see that demonic form still shadowed there. But he had banished it! And after that they had scraped down and replastered the wall!

"Come on! We're getting out of here!" He tossed some coins on the table and grasped his friend's arm. Why had he started asking these questions? The concept of an unalterable fate was bad enough, but the idea of a malleable reality at the mercy of anyone who could master it terrified him.

"Were the girls at the Aphrodisia House very beautiful?" Latilla stared into Darios's face earnestly.

"Yes, of course." The young man blushed, and Lalo hid a smile. "But some of them were very silly as well."

"And so are you," said Gilla repressively. "Eat your supper, Tilla, and let the poor boy tell his tale."

The color faded from Darios's face and he turned to Lalo again. "I wish you had been with me, sir. It was hard enough to do the exorcism with them all chattering around me like magpies, but I managed to com plete the ceremony. 1 don't know if it will do any good, though. Each dream I heard from one girl seemed to inspire the next to tell of some
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thing even more terrible. By the time I got through, the girls were all hysterical."

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"Did you sense anything demonic?" asked Cappen Varra curiously, pushing his bowl away. Drunk or sober, Cappen Varra retained his good manners, but the last of the beer fumes seemed to have worn off.

As usual, Gilla had risen to the occasion. After a disapproving sniff at their breath, she had ladled out enough fish stew with rice and red pep pers for everybody. And the minstrel had eaten with an appetite that endeared him to his hostess, who beamed upon him now. She had even agreed to let him stay in Ganner's old room for a while.

Darios shrugged. "The atmosphere was upset, but that's only to be expected. I couldn't concentrate well enough to say."

"I can add some more cream sauce if the stew is too hot for you," said Gilla, eyeing his plate.

"What?" Darios looked down and took another spoonful. "No, it's wonderful mistress—I was just distracted."

Cappen Varra cleared his throat and began a long and convoluted story
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about a camel drover, a prostitute, and a priest of Anen.

He was just finishing when the door swung open and Wedemir strode in.

"I've sewn the new insignia on the tunic you brought me, dear. Have you eaten? I can make up some more pilaf—" Gilla began, but Lalo motioned her to silence. Wedemir's eyes met his gratefully.

"I need to apologize to Valira," he said. "Whatever is wrong at the Aphrodisia House is catching! Last night half the men woke up shouting about demons!"

"What do you mean—what exactly did they say?" Darios asked.

Wedemir's face grew grim. "Valira told us that the girls dreamed of lost lovers. Well, the bonds between fighting men are just as strong—and our losses—you know how many have died these past few years!"

"Are their ghosts returning?" whispered Gilla. "Are the dead going to walk among us again?" Lalo shuddered, remembering that terrible time.

"It would be impossible," said Darios. "That kind of manifestation requires a power source of a magnitude unavailable in Sanctuary any more!"

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"They are not returning in their bodies, thank the gods!" exclaimed Wedemir. "But there's enough magic coming from somewhere to power these hauntings. The lads feel they're being watched, things break, they have stupid accidents. The amulet sellers in the Bazaar are doing a brisk trade!"

"Perhaps the exorcism you did at the Aphrodisia House today will stop it, Darios—" suggested Lalo.

"I'll have you up to the barracks tomorrow to repeat the process if it

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does'" said Wedemir, "Another few days of this and the men will be no use at all!"

But Darios was still looking worried, and that night Lalo's sleep was haunted by memories of the Black Unicorn. In the morning they were awakened by a messenger from the Aphrodisia House, bearing a chypre scented letter from Myrtis herself begging Lalo to come to her.

"A four and a three!" cried Ricio as the dice bounced across the wooden floor. "I'll stake you my new saddlecloth you can't better that,
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Ottar!"

Wedemir looked up from his tally sheet as the voices rose. There was no rule against dicing among his soldiers as long as it stayed friendly, but for a moment there had been a disturbing sharpness in the boy's tone. He knew already that Ricio couldn't carry his wine, but all they had here was thin beer.

There was a murmur of agreement from the other man. Once more the dice cup rattled, he heard a shout from the kibitzers as the cubes fell.

"He's taken you proper, Ricio, lad—" said someone. "Better call it a night, now. I know for a fact that you've lost all your pay, and it's against regs to wager your gear!"

"I'm not rolled up!" said Ricio-"Got this!" Laughing shrilly, he held up a shimmering silver ball. "Love gift from a lovely lady. Ottar! Stake you this for all you've won and your back pay!"

"Give it up, Ricio!" called his friends. "Your luck is out. What's Joia gonna think if you lose that too?"

He rounded on them, waving his tankard so that the liquid inside splashed his friends. "Shut up, you! Don't you say her name!" He turned back to Ottar, who was watching him speculatively. "You Traid to try again? You 'fraid my luck'll change?" Ottar shrugged fatalistically. Ricio
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laughed, shook the dice cup, and threw. "Five and five!" he cried, slap ping the cup into his opponent's hand.

"Hey!" cried one of the others, licking his wet hand, "he's got brandy in here!"

As Wedemir got to his feet he heard the click of dice across the floor.

"Six and six," said Ottar, reaching for the silver ball.

"No!" shrieked Ricio. "You barbarian swine!" Wedemir took another step towards him, and then everything changed. The room was filled with pale-haired northerners, waving bloody knives; Wedemir smelled smoke. He started to turn, saw Ricio's knife flash. Instinct took over and his callused fist connected with the boy's jaw.

There was a sudden silence. Wedemir blinked and rubbed his fist, star ing at men who looked back at him with equally astonished eyes. Where

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had the barbarians gone? No one made a sound but Ricio, who moaned as the silver ball rolled from his hand, and Ottar picked it off the floor. One of the other men sniffed at Ricio's tankard. "Well," he said sadly,

"there's nothing but beer in here now."
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"Lalo my dear, surely you understand that this has got to end!" Myrtis poured fragrant spice tea into a cup and handed it to him. "The worst of the nightmares seem to be over, but the girls are haunted by their memo ries. It is bad for trade."

Lalo shifted uneasily on the overstuffed cushion, hoping he would not slide off and spill tea all over the ivory satin brocade. He was a little unnerved by Myrtis's trust. Even Darios, sitting quietly behind him, wore an exasperating expression of calm expectance.

"My pictures won't be what the girls expect, you know—"

"I've told them it's for publicity," said Myrtis. "They'll come in one by one, and you'll draw them. If I don't like the results I don't have to use them, you know."

Lalo put down his teacup and picked up his drawing pad, and Myrtis rang her little bell.

The Aphrodisia House accepted only the most beautiful. Darios's flushed face showed Lato what it was like to look at them simply as a man. No wonder the lad had found his exorcism hard going. But the limner saw them with other eyes. As he began to work, outer awareness fell away.

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Not many had spirits as beautiful as Valira's, but in several he found depths of faith and fortitude that would have astonished their customers. He saw on their souls the scars of neglect and cruelty and despair. In many he found jealousy or greed. In almost all of them he saw fcar.

"Afraid?" Myrtis laughed bitterly when the last girl had gone. "Of course they fear. Age, illness, poverty—all they have is their beauty. Every one of them fears what will happen when it is gone. The attention their lovers pay them is their reassurance. But you should look again, Lalo—that's not all your pictures show."

Blinking, he focused on the shaded backgrounds with which he had surrounded his sketches, and realized that they were more than random lines. It was not only the portraits that showed fear—the fears themselves were pictured on the page. He shook his head in pity, understanding now what had made the faces that way.

"There are your hauntings, Madam Myrtis," said Darios.

"Destroy them!" she exclaimed.

"I cannot—" said Lalo. "They are not my fears. But perhaps I can change them." A sweep with the eraser and a few deft strokes trans

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formed a demon to a godling, emaciated old age to serenity. Another change took the lines of discontent from a pretty mouth, put hope back into sullen eyes. The sketches had been simple. Altering them into some thing the girls would be flattered to hang in their bedchambers did not take long.

"Let us see if this improves the atmosphere—" He handed the pictures to Myrtis.

"But that's not what you saw!" objected Darios.

"No, but when Madam Myrtis gives these sketches to her girls, per haps this is what they will see—and believe—and believing, make it so," answered Lalo, remembering what Molin Torchholder had asked him to do. "I only wish I knew what it was that suddenly gave their fears such power!"

"My lady Kurrekai is one of the great ones that attend the Beysa herself"—the palace maid laughed at her soldier—"with a serpent for a neckpiece an* all. She has a different headdress for every day of the week, an' she's generous. What do I need with presents from you?"

"Even this one?" growled Ottar. He pulled something from his pouch and offered it shyly. The girl exclaimed as the wrapping fell away and the sun glittered on the silver ball. "Pretty, huh? Does your lady have one o'