It was purest bait, of course, and Nyateneri must have known it for bait immediately. In any event, she took a great soldier’s swig, set the bottle down so that the wine jumped from the neck, and said to the walls, “The first ones caught me in less time than that. The convent breeds none but the best.”
That left me breathless and speechless, I confess it. Nyateneri was well into the second bottle before I was able to ask, “The first ones? There were—there have been others?”
Nyateneri’s smile this time, made her look old. “Two other teams. They hunt in teams, and there is no losing them. You have to kill them.” The smile clenched on me, exactly as I had imagined it gripping fat Karsh. Nyateneri said, “By and by, more swiftly than you’d think, the word gets back to the convent, and then a new team comes after you. I am the first ever to survive three such hunts. They will be displeased.”
It took Lukassa to speak again, after a long silence, to ask the question that I was too profoundly bewildered to ask. She said, “Why? Why must they kill everyone who leaves them? They wouldn’t do that if they knew what it was to be dead.” There was an unpitying gentleness about her voice that was strangely terrible to hear. I can hear it still.
Nyateneri put her unhurt hand on Lukassa’s hand. She did not squeeze at all, or stroke it; only left it there for a little moment. “I rather think they do know,” she said, “more than most, anyway. They have too much knowledge at that place, too many secrets, and that is what may not leave.” Lukassa drew breath for another question, but Nyateneri forestalled it, laughing and mimicking her, not unkindly, in a child’s eager voice. “ ‘What secrets, what knowledge?’ Oh, they are grand and foul secrets, Lukassa, dreadful secrets, secrets of kings, queens, priests, generals, judges, ministers: secrets that would shake down temples here, an empire there, start this war, end that, compel her to flee her crown, him to slay himself, them to destroy a nation in order to keep one pitiful truth hidden. Stupid secrets, stupid secrets.”
She slapped the other hand down on the table: not hard, but hard enough so that her lips flattened and her face lost a half-shade of color. I said, “Let me see that,” but she held the hand out away from me and went on talking, her voice not less but more even than before. “The convent is very old. I do not know how old. The people there are of all kinds, some old, some quite young, as I was. The one thing they have in common is that they all bring their secrets with them. You must, everyone must have at least one secret to tell, or you cannot be admitted.”
“You were nine years old,” I said. I held her eyes with mine while I reached for her hand again. The back and the beginning of the wrist felt cushiony with heat, but my fingertips could find nothing broken. Nyateneri closed her eyes. “I had secrets enough for them. They were happy to take me in, and I—I was content there, I was, for a long time. I grew strong there. I learned a great deal. Pour me some more wine or give me my hand back. What garden spell are you working now?”
“No magic—only something I’ve seen done in the South Islands to fool pain. At times I can do it. They taught you much about pain in the convent, didn’t they?”
Nyateneri emptied her mug in two gulps. She said, “I knew somewhat already,” and then nothing for a long time while she drank and I drank, and I worked on her hand. Lukassa sat on the bed and watched us both, slipping some of her wine to the fox when she thought I wasn’t looking. The tree hisses at the window; outside on the landing, slow feet tramp by, a heavy voice grumbles a sea-song—the sailor on his way to bed. Further off, next room but one, the holy man and woman are chanting in quiet antiphony. I know the prayer, a little.
“Why did you leave?” Her hand was beginning to respond—I have no idea why that island trick works as it does, and I am never comfortable with the sense of near-scalding water pumping through my own flesh, even though I know it to be illusion. But it does work.
Nyateneri shrugged. “I was invited to become a force in the convent, and beyond it. They had been training me for this since my childhood, and the time had now come for me to take my place with them, a superior being among superior beings. I was honored in a way, even grateful, and I still am. If they had not offered me the chance of power, I might never have been certain—as I was, on the instant—that power was not what I wanted. To spend the rest of my life as a sort of ringmaster of secrets, to be trapped forever in the dreary hidey-holes of the great with old unspeakable histories hanging head-down from the roof of my mouth, like sleeping bats—no, no, that bony little northern girl never agreed to that.“ Nyateneri struck the table again, with her wine-mug this time; but then she looked away and spoke very softly, not at all to us but to the fox, no doubt of it. ”She agreed to many things that she had no objection to, and to some others as well, but she never agreed to that.”
The fox looked straight back at her and yawned very deliberately, as he had on the night of our meeting. They know each other like lovers, I thought, past love itself, past hatred, past questions, past trust or betrayal. I wondered how they had met, and how long ago, and how long foxes live. Nyateneri went on, “You cannot say no to such an offer. It is not allowed. So I said yes. I said, yes, thank you, I am not worthy.”
“And you ran away that same night.” Lukassa, leaning forward, brown eyes living Nyateneri’s tale exactly as they lived any legend I ever told her. Nyateneri’s thin, short smile. “I knew they would guard my door that night. I was gone within an hour. I have been running ever since.”
Now some of the drovers crash past the door, yelling, laughing, spitting, stumbling into each other—Efranis, westerners far from home, by their curses. Karsh’s sudden voice, quieting them—not a growl, but the sound that a large animal makes before the real growl. That fat man knows how to run an inn, whatever else he chooses not to know. The holy couple keep to their chanting, as we to our grim drinking. This is all so long ago.
“Well,” I said. “Perhaps when this news gets back, the convent will grow tired of sending out killers to be killed.” Nyateneri drew a very long breath, plainly about to reply. Then, instead, she stood up and walked to the window, looking out at dark leaves and a few stars. I said, “Perhaps there will be no more teams after this one.”
How long did it take her to turn and look at me? A long time, I think, but drink slows much down for me, so that I cannot be sure. It seemed a long time. Perhaps she never turned at all—I only remember her words, and the sound of her voice, whispering, “I have not told you everything,” and bringing me instantly to my feet, wine or no wine, saying, “No, of course not, you never do.” Did I shout it? I think I shouted. I really think I knew what was coming.
“There are always three of them,” she said. “Always.” Did we hear the first quiet steps on the stairs then, or just after, after I had begun screaming at her again? Nyateneri said, “Lal, be still, I am telling you the truth. The third moves apart from the other two; he watches, but he is not with them. He is always the cleverest, they make sure of that. He is never far away. Be still, be quiet, Lal.” The knock came then, very gentle; you almost had to be listening for it.