There is a queen in this country still, in her black castle down in Fors na’Shachim. Or perhaps it’s a king by now, or the army back again, no matter. The tax collectors stay the same, whoever rules. But king, queen, or jumped-up captain, one day I mean to travel there and seek audience. It will be a hard and tiresome journey, and any highwaymen will have to wait in line for whatever the coachmen and hostellers leave me; and then it will take the last coins hidden in my shoe-soles to bribe my way into line to make my complaint. But I will be heard. If it costs me my head, believe that I will be heard.
“Your Majesty,” I will say, “where in all your royal scrolls and parchments of law is it decreed that Karsh the innkeeper is to be forever denied a single moment of simple peace? Where have your noble ministers set it down that when I am not being racked by the daily balks and foils of running my poor establishment, I am to be plagued by an endless succession of zanies, frauds, incompetents, and maniacs? And please, just to satisfy an old man’s curiosity, sire, where do you get them? Where could even so great a monarch as yourself procure, all at the same time, three madwomen—none of whom is even remotely what she claims to be—an impossible bumpkin who claims to be betrothed to the maddest of the lot, a stable full of penniless actors who keep my guests’ horses awake with their goings-on, and a stableboy who was never worth much to begin with and lately shows real promise of becoming a complete liability? And that final touch of true genius, those two chuckling little assassins who ended up dead in my bathhouse—Your Majesty, my peasant palate isn’t sensitive enough to appreciate such brilliance. To me it’s all equal, all blankly vexatious; why waste such jewels of aggravation on fat, weary Karsh? Show me only where this is written, and I will trudge the long way back to The Gaff and Slasher and trouble you never again.“ I will say all that to someone on a throne before I die.
Not that it will change a thing—I have no illusions about that. My lot is my bloody lot, whoever inscribed it wherever, and if I were to doubt it for a moment, all I have to do is remember that evening when I stood looking dumbly down at two sprawled bodies by lantern-light, while that brown soldier-nun Nyateneri had the face to demand whether I sent such attendants to wait on everybody who bathed at my inn. The boy was standing as close to her as her skin would let him, glaring at me, defying me to send him about his proper business. And so I would have done, but for the way—no, let it go, it’s nothing to do with anyone, and besides, I had other affairs to think about. Dead men had put The Gaff and Slasher into my hands thirty years ago, long enough for me to have learned just how easily two more dead men could snatch it away again. And I am too old to start over as some other innkeeper’s Gatti Jinni.
Miss Nyateneri carried on for some while about murder, irresponsibility and the law, but that was all for show. I am also too old not to know that sort of thing when I see it. I did marvel at it though: two ragged little heaps of laundry stiffening there, as her muscles and nerves and heart must surely have been freezing and stiffening in her, in the wind that always seems to come after that sort of thing; and she still able to rant briskly away at me just as though her own wash had come back dirty. I let her run down—that was fair enough—and then I said, “We have no sheriff or queensman in Corcorua, but there is a county magistrate who rides through every two months or so. By good fortune, he is due here in another four or five days. We can turn this matter over to him then, as you please.”
Well, that quieted Miss Nyateneri in a hurry. I don’t mind saying that it was a pleasure to watch her lower her eyes, hug her elbows tight, and mumble about her and her companions’ need for haste and privacy. I don’t take any particular joy in someone else’s discomfiture— what good is that to me, after all?—but of those three women who had imposed themselves on my custom two very long weeks ago, this one had been a special nuisance on her own account, from the moment that fox of hers ran off with my hen. So I folded my own arms and enjoyed myself while she fumbled on and the boy glowered as though I were menacing his darling, a head and more taller than he. Her left hand was hurt in some way; he kept touching it very gently, very shyly. Two long weeks for both of us, truly.
At last I interrupted, saying, “In that case, I think what’s wanted here is a shovel and silence. Do you agree?” She stared at me. I went on. “We landlords deal in forgetfulness as much as in food and wine. All that interests me about these men you killed is that they were no strangers to you. They followed you to my inn, as that mad carl from the south followed your friend, as worse trouble will follow you all here—do not even bother to lie to me about that. I can do nothing, you stay against my will, by force of arms, but do me at least the small honor of not asking me to be concerned. The boy and I will bury your dead. No one else will know.”
She smiled then: only the quickest, leanest sort of fox-grin, but real enough even so, and the first such courtesy she had ever offered to her host at The Gaff and Slasher. “Do other guests misprize you as much as I have?” she wanted to know. “Say yes, please, of your kindness.”
“How can I tell?” I asked her in my turn. The boy was goggling past me, but I never looked over my shoulder. “I deal in forgetfulness,” I said. “I ask only whether people wish a warming pan, an extra quilt, or perhaps a stuffed goose at dinner. The goose is Shadry’s specialty, and requires a day’s advance notice.” I heard the black woman, Lal, chuckle at my side, and the white one’s breath in the darkness beyond.
“Much else requires notice,” Lal murmured, “and doesn’t get it.” Miss Nyateneri’s face slammed shut—you could hear it, and I am not an imaginative man. Lal said, “Go back to your guests, good Master Karsh. My friends and I will deal with this foolish business. You may take Rosseth with you.”
A notably arbitrary tone she always had, that one, but just then I could yield to it happily enough. I was a good ten strides gone before it occurred to me that the boy was not following. When I turned he was standing with his back to me, facing the three of them, saying, “I will bring you a spade. At least let me do that, let me get the spade.” Hands on his hips, head shaking stubbornly. He was doing just that in the hayloft, in the potato patch, when he was five.
“Rosseth, we do not need you.” Lal’s voice was sharp, even harsh, almost as much so as I could have wished. “Go with your master, Rosseth.” He turned away from her and flung toward me, marching so blindly that he would have blundered right into me if I hadn’t stepped aside. I looked back at the women—they were not looking at us, but drawing together over those dead bodies like so many ravens—and then I walked behind the boy back to the inn. For the first time in a very long while, I followed him.