It does not feel like home.
This should not surprise me. I have not been back in more than thirty years. Much has changed: I do not remember quite this many strangers slouching through the street, wandering landless peasants whose faces are slack with the loss of an entire way of life. My memory has faded, too. I remember these crumbling half-timber buildings as cozy, somehow; welcoming. I remember the mud in the streets as wholesome, and the swine sniffing through the gutters as cute. I remember warm fires, and gentle hands, and everything else has faded in my memory like a tapestry left too long in the sun.
But the color is still full in this place, not faded. It is drenched in darkness and rain and misery. The smell of filth and despair - I do not remember it. But I have smelled it all over the world. I cannot mistake it. I just -
I somehow didn't expect it to be the smell of home.
I have been running hard for weeks now, and I feel stretched thin: too little sleep, too many hours looking over my shoulder, too much of silence and shadow. I went three hundred miles on a train, then two days on foot to avoid a border crossing, then I bought a horse and rode until a priest spotted me in a small town, and his eyes went wide. So I sold the horse and detoured, eighty miles by ferry, then three days' walk cross-country to shake pursuers, then an airship under a false name, then another four days on the road, two on foot and two by coach, and then...
I feel ragged, and old, and very alone. And now I am here: home. But I do not want this - not this. And I have nowhere else to go.
I am thinking seriously about just getting drunk. The tavern is just there; I can see the candlelight in its windows. I lean heavily on my staff, almost sleeping upright, and feel my boots sink into the filth of the street. A group of pilgrims passes to my left, chanting with exhausted exaltation. I lean my forehead against the cool steel that caps my staff's end. I try to pray.
Some old instinct, inherited from generations of medieki, makes me open my eyes and look up just in time. Then: a crash of shattered glass, and a man sails through the tavern's window, and lands in a heap in the mud at my feet.
For a moment, we look at each other. I offer my hand to help him up. The man squints at it, and then at my face. This close, the shadows beneath my tricorn conceal little. The man's eyes go wide, and I see the recognition there. "You too?" the stranger mutters blearily.
Bounty hunter. I lift my staff slightly, casually, and bring its end down on the side of the man's head. He crumples into the mire. It is such a calm, careless motion - I could just be shaking mud off the staff - that somehow, even in this crowded street, nobody seems to give it a second look.
Or perhaps this sort of thing just happens all the time here. I do not remember that either. But maybe there's a lot I don't remember about this place.
Enough. I need to get out of the street.
I walk over to the tavern. For a moment, the crazy thought of just stepping through the broken window flits through my mind. Sleep deprivation. I go to the door instead, push it open, step immediately sideways: the old inquisitor's instinct. Never stand in silhouette. I tuck my chin so that my tricorn hides my face, and blink: slowly, deliberately, forcing my eyes to adjust to the dim candlelit interior of the tavern.
Sure enough, there is a brawl in process. Two men stand in a corner, near the window: a hard-looking man in a cloak, with sword in hand, and a younger man in country clothes with clenched fists. They are surrounded by armed men with a lean and desperate look to them. A third man - younger, in nice blue clothes - has just parried the cloaked man's blade, saving one of the ruffians' lives. A young woman with dark hair is brandishing an OGEIE rosette, to little obvious effect. Everyone here must know that she is a long way outside her jurisdiction.
This does not concern me. None of it. I feel a twist in my gut, a pang of conscience: I have too often consoled myself with that exact thought, in the face of suffering and injustice. Not my problem. But this time, it is true. I cannot know the rights or wrongs of this fight, and no one is helped if I get myself killed interfering in it.
I look around the rest of the room, and stop dead.
I recognize two women. One of them is short, about my age, wearing a pointy hat - a borderline blasphemous parody of a witch. She is shouting with intoxicated fury at the brawlers, likewise to little obvious effect. Alexandria Ashwood. I feel an irresistible smile flicker over my face. Some people never change.
The other woman is younger, half my age, dressed in a black travelling cloak. She has the angelic face and golden ringlets of an Ancerrian painting. And she is an inquisitor. I know, because I trained her.
I could probably kill Venusta. This is not the problem. The problem is that I won't; she is too young, and I have too much blood on my hands already. But I have no doubt that, if she gets the chance, Venusta will kill me. I remember the fanaticism behind those blue eyes, the utter ruthlessness that comes from knowing, whatever you do, that you are right. I tried my best to teach her that the world was not so black and white, but she never wanted to learn.
I should go. I should go, now, and think of some other place to run. Maybe the Deadlands. There has to be another -
Venusta sees me. For a moment, across the crowded tavern and its brawlers, our eyes meet. I know that even in my ragged travelling clothes, she recognizes me: the weathered face, the distinctive, archaic, wrought-iron longsword sheathed across my back. Venusta's deadly-beautiful blue eyes widen, just a fraction.
No use running, now. Just as well. I am too tired anyway: down below the body, down where it matters.
Instead I walk across the tavern to the bar. The barman is watching the unfolding brawl with exquisite boredom. He looks me over, and comes to an obvious conclusion: another armed vagrant.
Instead, I speak Robezan, and order a kozicowe: juniper beer, the traditional beverage of the border country. The barman blinks. Even here in Robaiziche, our historic homeland, Robezans are now a small minority. We are the old people from before the Commonwealth, the people of the woods, indigenous. This barman is from Robaiziche, but he is not Robezan. In this one way, I belong to this place more than he does.
The barman pours me the juniper beer, and goes back to watching the fight. I drop a few copper pennies on the bar, and take my beer over to the table where Venusta sits. A white-haired woman has just left the table. Moving carefully, keeping both my hands in clear view, I lean my staff against a chair and put my kozicowe on the table and sit down opposite Venusta.
Why am I doing this? I honestly don't know. Perhaps I am just too tired to do anything else.
I speak Mordian now. "Salve, Venusta." I take off my tricorn and run my fingers through my short grey hair, feeling the sweat of too many days on the road. I look steadily at the young woman. "Are you here for me?"
