Distant tales of the Dichotomy

It was Thara’s idea to play Liar’s Cup.

“I’m not drinking,” said Fel.

“Of course you’re drinking.”

“I’m sixteen.”

“In Veilrest you’re a man at fourteen. In Sorticia you’re a man at fifteen. In the Gilded Moth you’re a man when you’ve paid.” She slid a heavy clay mug across the table. “It’s cloudberry sap-cider. It’s got about as much kick as a wet sock. Veyra, tell him.”

“It is very mild.”

“Then why are you drinking it?”

“Because it is delicious,” said Veyra, with a glint, “and because I am no longer on watch.”

It was true. For the first time in a week, her bow was off her back. It leaned against the wall behind her, with her quiver, and she sat easily on the bench with her cloak open and her braid undone, and the lamplight made her look younger. The sharp, grave lines of her face had softened. Fel realized, with a small jolt, that she looked happy.

He picked up the mug.

It was sweet. It was thick and golden, like honey thinned with sunlight, and it tasted of berries and warm bread and something spiced. It hit the back of his tongue and sent a gentle, spreading warmth down into his chest. He drank half of it before he noticed.

“There he is.”

Brannoch picked up his own mug, a mug the size of a bucket, and nodded gravely. Thara slammed hers on the table.

“The rules are simple! Everyone tells a story. It can be true, or it can be a lie, and everyone else has to guess which. If you’re caught, you drink. If you’re not, they drink. If somebody cries, the whole table drinks. If Brannoch speaks more than three sentences in a row, the whole table gets a free round.”

“That is not a rule.”

“It’s the best rule. Fel, you start.”

“I don’t know any stories.”

“Everybody knows one story. It’s the one they tell when they’re drunk.”

“I’m not drunk.”

“Not yet,” said Thara, and grinned like a wolf.

He thought about it. He drank a little more. Then, because the cider made it easy, and because the fire was warm and the faces around him were kind, he told them about the Willow’s Drip.

He did not tell them about the burning. He told them about the sign that had swung over the door, and the big bar, and the way Orcus used to shout at the drunks and slip free bread to the beggars. He told them about the time he had accidentally set the stable on fire. He told them about the long grey woman who had picked him up out of a gutter and carried him home on her shoulder and fought with a giant about whether he could stay. He did not say her name. But he said enough.

When he stopped, nobody spoke.

Thara had put down her mug. Brannoch had taken a very long breath through his nose. Veyra sat with her chin on her hand, looking at him with an expression he could not read, and her violet eyes were bright in the firelight.

“True,” said Thara, rather hoarsely. “Obviously true. Nobody could make that up.”

“It’s true.”

“She sounds like a good woman,” said Brannoch.

“She was.”

“Mm.” The big man turned his mug slowly on the table. “My mother was like that. She is dead now. She was the loudest woman in the valley, and she carried me out of a burning house once, and she never let me forget it.” He drank. “I think of her whenever it rains.”

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There was a long silence.

“That was four sentences,” said Thara softly. “Round’s on me.”

They all drank.

By the third round, the common room had begun to blur at the edges.

It was not unpleasant. Fel felt warm and light and a little ridiculous, as if he were floating a foot above his chair. The fiddler had struck up a tune that made his feet tap. A woman at the next table had started to sing. Thara had climbed on the bench to demonstrate how to throw a knife while blindfolded, and Brannoch, with an air of weary resignation, was holding the target, a turnip, in his outstretched hand.

“Hold still, you great ox!”

“I am holding still.”

“You’re breathing.”

The knife hit the turnip dead center. A cheer went up. Brannoch looked at the turnip, and at the blade sticking out of it, and at the thin line of green juice running down his thumb, and said nothing at all.

Fel was laughing so hard he could not breathe.

He had not laughed like this since the Gallows. It came up out of his chest in great, helpless, wheezing whoops, and when he wiped his eyes, he saw that Veyra was watching him.

She was smiling. It was a real smile, not the small, dry, suppressed flicker he had grown used to. It was wide and a little crooked, and it changed her whole face, and it was aimed directly at him.

“What?” he said.

“Nothing.”

“You’re staring.”

“I am observing.”

“You’re observing me?”

“You laugh like a donkey,” said Veyra. “It is very bad. I like it.”

His face, which was already warm from the cider, went hot.

“That’s… I mean… thanks.”

“I did not say it was a compliment.”

“You said you liked it.”

“I said it is bad.” She drank. Her eyes glittered over the rim of the mug. “I have a very low opinion of my own taste.”

Later, when the common room had thinned and the fiddler had gone to bed, they found themselves alone.

Thara and Brannoch had gone up. Dovra had gone to sleep with a cloth over her face and the pipe still in her mouth. The hearth had burned to orange embers, and the lamps had been dimmed, and the tall windows facing the street glowed pale and silver with the light of the White Tree.

Veyra had pushed one open. She sat on the sill with her feet drawn up and a mug in her hands, looking out over the roofs, and after a moment Fel sat beside her.

The city was beautiful at night. It was a sea of silver, laid out under a sky of ten thousand stars, and the Tree stood over it like a great pale lantern, shedding light. Far below, a river glimmered. Somewhere in the dark, a night bird was singing.

They did not speak for some time.

“Why do you want to go home?” said Veyra, at last.

He had been expecting a different question.

“What?”

“You said it, in the Hall. I want to go home. But you also said you have no one. That your friends are gone, and the city burned, and the woman who raised you is dead.” She turned her head. “What are you going back to?”

He opened his mouth. Shut it.

It was a good question. It was the best question anybody had asked him in a long time, and he did not have an answer.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Vili. Loria. They might still be alive. I don’t know. Maybe they think I’m dead.” He turned the mug in his hands. “And I don’t… I mean, there’s nothing back there that I…” He stopped. “I think I just don’t want to be the one who left.”

She did not say anything.

“Isn’t that stupid?”

“No.”

“I made a promise,” he said. “A stupid one. To a kid. And I made a promise to a woman who’s dead. And I left two people in a crystal. And I keep thinking that if I can just get back, I can fix it. That’s all. That’s the whole thing.”

She was quiet for a long time. When she spoke, it was very softly.

“My mother went down the mountain when I was nine.”

He looked at her.

“She was a hunter, like me. A better one. She went to the lowlands to trade skins, and she never came back.” Her eyes were on the Tree. “Everyone said she was dead. The elders told me to stop waiting. But I waited. I waited for six years. I told myself that I was only learning to shoot so that I could find her.” A faint, wry smile. “I am still learning.”

“Is that why you came?”

“Partly.” She shrugged. “The road to the city is the only road I have not walked all the way to the end.”

Her hand was resting on the sill between them. It was a long, slim, callused hand, and it lay a finger’s width from his own. He was very aware of it. He was very aware of everything: the warmth of the cider, the cold of the night air, the slow, steady beat of his own heart.

He did not move his hand.

Neither did she.

“You are a strange boy, Fel,” said Veyra. She was not looking at him now. She was looking at the stars. “You say that you have nothing. And yet you have a huge number of people who would follow you into a fire.”

“I don’t.”

“Brannoch has not said a word to a stranger in six years. He said nine sentences to you tonight. Thara has not told that story about her father to anyone but me.” She hesitated. “And I…”

She stopped.

He waited.

“I am tired,” said Veyra, abruptly. She slid off the sill. “We have a long day tomorrow. We should sleep.”

“Veyra…”

“Good night, Fel.”

She went to the stairs. At the bottom step she paused, with her back to him and one hand on the rail, and the lamplight caught the edge of her cheek and the point of one small black horn.

“For what it is worth,” she said, without turning around, “I think you are going to be very hard to leave.”

Then she was gone, up the stairs, into the dark.

Fel sat alone on the windowsill with an empty mug, and a glowing hand, and a heart that was beating much too fast.