Chapter 28
“Oh good,” Zale said, when they returned to the Temple of the White Rat. “The librarians were asking if I’d bring you over. A delegation was dispatched this morning to collect your arthropod friend, but there are still many questions, as I’m sure you’d expect.”
“Oh no,” Edmund said, “not the library.” His mouth quirked at the corners. “Such an imposition.”
“I had a feeling you’d say that.” The lawyer gave the Dervish a droll look, inviting him to join in the joke. He did, but not without a fleeting pang of jealousy. The two were so comfortable in each other’s company, unlike Edmund and the Dervish, who scraped against each other like iron and flint.
“Do you have the time to walk us over?” Edmund asked, as they started out the door. “I don’t want to take away from your work.”
“Not to worry. The joy of being a solicitor-sacrosanct is that suddenly I have legal assistants, who are all extremely young and eager and handle quite a lot of the research. I feel like a fraud, to be honest.” They scowled. “Though they will keep coming into my office and touching my papers.”
Remembering the stacks and ramparts in Zale’s office, the Dervish wondered how anyone could enter the space without touching their papers, but decided not to say so.
The lawyer was being extremely helpful, and there was no need to antagonize them, just because they could talk to Edmund on a level that the Dervish couldn’t.
I bet they already know all about myrmecochory. And green parakeets. And that tree that drips acid on you.
He was, however, still prettier.
Zale and Edmund talked like old friends as they walked, as if they’d grown up together instead of exchanging letters.
The Dervish plodded along behind, watching the city, half hoping that a footpad would jump out of an alley so that he could heroically save the day.
Sadly, the local footpads appeared to be on holiday.
The library was one of those big civic buildings made of marble that the Dervish tended to avoid on principle.
There were bas-reliefs along the top and carved statues of people holding books, and one of a naked woman and a lion who were probably supposed to be fighting.
The sculptor had made certain choices that left the exact relationship in doubt.
“It’s supposed to be Truth wrestling with Ignorance,” Zale said, following the Dervish’s gaze.
“… Wrestling.”
“Yes, I know. If you think this is bad, you should see the artist’s version of Justice battling society’s ills.
There was a riot at the unveiling and the Archon refused to have it outside the courthouse.
I’m told the Scarlet Guild bought it at a steep discount and the artist moved to Anuket City in disgrace. ”
“Ignorance often does screw over truth,” Edmund said solemnly.
The Dervish choked on a laugh. “Edmund!”
The scholar blushed, but met his eyes defiantly. “Well, it does.”
“I’m starting to think that traveling with me has been a corrupting influence.”
Zale led the way around the side of the building to a rather less impressive entrance, which did not have any allegories lurking around it.
Once inside, they were met by a small knot of people in robes, who despite being different shapes, sizes, ages, and genders all shared a common stamp.
These were people, the Dervish thought, who knew where all the historical bodies were buried.
“Oh, thank goodness you’re here. We had some questions,” one of the librarians said. “We’re trying to prepare a room for our visiting scholar, but we have no idea what she would like. We were hoping you might have some ideas…?”
“Yes, of course,” Edmund said. Soon he was deep in conversation with the group, about such important topics as bedding, diet, and how fresh the moss needed to be. Zale looked on with a bemused expression.
“How did you two end up writing each other?” asked the Dervish, when it became obvious that there was nothing either of them were going to be able to contribute to the discussion anytime soon.
Zale laughed softly. “I happened to wander into the Vagrant Hills, purely by accident. When I came out again, I began looking for information on the subject. Many of the texts, as you might imagine, are far more fanciful than accurate. There was one, however, that was clear and concise and written from firsthand experience. So I wrote to the author and he wrote back.” They nodded in Edmund’s direction, dropping their voice.
“It gave me a bit of a turn when I realized that I’d been corresponding with that Learned Edmund. ”
The Dervish’s confusion must have shown on his face. Zale’s eyebrows went up. “You know. The one who found the cure for werkblight.”
“He didn’t tell you?” Zale asked, then snorted. “No, of course he wouldn’t have. I get the impression that he’d rather forget about it, to be honest.”
The lawyer and the Dervish had left the library and found a small public house just outside, which was good, because the Dervish felt the strong need for a drink.
“How bad was it?” he asked. “I mean, Edmund talks about it like it was horrible, and the case we saw was bad enough, but I have no real idea how far it spread.”
“It was bad. Not as many cases as you might see if smallpox swept through, but no one knew what caused it. It didn’t follow the normal patterns of a disease.
People became intensely paranoid. It happened so fast, and all anyone could do was board up houses and wait to see if anyone lived.
The only ones who would pick up the dead were the grave-gnoles, and the bodies had to be burned.
At least two religions had to issue dispensations saying that cremation was acceptable in blight cases and wouldn’t condemn the deceased to hell.
” The lawyer stared into their brandy. It was still too early for most people to be drinking, so the inside of the public house was dim and quiet.
“There was a suspicion for a while that gnoles carried it, even though gnoles never get it, and you can imagine what happened then.”
The Dervish winced. His imagination was much too good.
“Ten, fifteen people a day were coming down with it at the height. One hundred percent mortality rate.” Zale took a large swallow of brandy, and the Dervish wondered what they had personally seen.
“And then about a dozen houses of healing all get a letter from the Temple of the Many-Armed God suggesting that they treat the blight with a massive dose of the concoction they use to treat hay fever. Hay fever, for the Rat’s sake.
If it hadn’t had the Many-Armed God’s seal on it, no one would have listened, but they’re brilliant, even if most of them are assholes. ” They paused. “Something wrong?”
“I’ve had some encounters with the Many-Armed God’s people,” the Dervish said. “In … ah … another life.” He drained his brandy and gave the bartender the half nod that indicated a second one would not go amiss. “Never mind that. The treatment worked?”
“Like a charm. You have to get it fast, though. The blight is an allergic reaction of sorts, but the healers say that it’s not like anything else they’d ever encountered.
One told me once that it felt like some kind of curse masquerading as an allergy.
But now, thanks to Edmund, maybe one in fifty people die of it. ”
“About how many lives is that, do you think?” the Dervish asked. “That he’s saved?”
“Thousands,” Zale said instantly. “Tens of thousands.”
“Ah.” The Dervish didn’t know whether to laugh or rage or fall down weeping on the bar. Fortunately the second brandy arrived before he had to decide. “He never said. We even talked about werkblight, and he just never brought it up.”
“Well, he wouldn’t, would he?” Zale’s smile was wry. “That was seven years ago. Old news.”
“Seven years … what was he, a toddler?”
Zale snickered. “Genius knows no age, apparently.”
The Dervish fumbled for a suitable phrase and eventually settled on “Shit.”
“These days, despite having single-handedly saved the population of a small country, he’s pretty sure he’s failed everyone because he didn’t single-handedly lead the Many-Armed God’s people out of their nasty little misogynist cocoon.
” Zale slugged back more brandy. “Bastards. They didn’t deserve him. ”
The Dervish clinked his glass against Zale’s. “They didn’t,” he said.
And apparently neither did I.
Zale went back to the library. The Dervish went for a walk.
As the shock and brandy wore off, he found, nonsensically, that he was getting angry.
You were supposed to tell people when you were a hero who saved tens of thousands of lives.
Otherwise they’d go around thinking that you were a feckless dreamer who had to be watched closely to make sure you didn’t bludgeon yourself to death with a pinecone on accident.
You should at least say, “Excuse me, I think I can manage a walk down the road by myself, I did happen to save fifteen people a day from having their skin melted off.” But no, you just sat on that information, and when some jackass started raving about how your order were murderous butchers, instead of saying, “Actually, about that…” you apologized humbly and never brought it up.
He was mad at Edmund for being so goddamn humble and at himself for being such a goddamn self-assured fool. He’d been resenting Edmund for being his wielder and thinking condescending thoughts about his innocence and meanwhile the man was going around being the next best thing to a saint.
Shit.
The Dervish vowed to himself to bring this up in a calm, rational manner, and thus the moment that Edmund walked through the door of their room, he snapped, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Edmund looked blank. He’d shaved his beard and his cheeks were pale, while the sunburn on his nose had started to peel. “Tell you what?”
“That you cured the werkblight!”
“Oh.” His face fell. “That.”
“Yes, that. Ancestors, Edmund, you saved thousands of people! Tens of thousands, Zale tells me!”
“I didn’t, though. Not really.” He sat down on his bed, looking tired. “The healers did all the work, I just made a connection and sent it out under an impressive-looking seal.”
The Dervish took a deep breath. “Edmund.”
“Yes?”
“Do you remember when I fought off those bandits?”
“Of course I do! It was amazing!”
“Damn straight it was.” Edmund’s admiring look warmed him, despite his best efforts. “Now, if somebody said, ‘Eh, that wasn’t very impressive, he just stabbed a couple people, they mostly fell over their own feet,’ what would you say?”
“Obviously I’d argue with them.” Edmund scowled. “Fine, I see what you’re getting at. But it’s not the same thing. And anyway, you’ve probably done some amazing heroic fight … things … and never mentioned it either.”
“I did once pull two children from a burning building.”
“What? You did?”
“Yes, but I don’t think it counts when you’re the one who set the building on fire.”
Edmund’s expression was equal parts awe, horror, and disbelief. The Dervish plowed onward. “I’m just saying—look—dammit, be more impressed with yourself! Or tell people so they can be impressed for you.”
The scholar gazed at him soberly. “Nothing I do, no matter how impressive, will ever make up for what my order did to you.”
“No, it won’t. But nothing that bastard did to me will take away the fact that you saved thousands of lives, either. It’s not about that. It’s—dammit, Edmund, I am not asking you to make up for something somebody else did!”
Which, up until that minute, was a lie. But saying the words out loud made something untwist in the Dervish’s chest, because he realized that was exactly what he had been asking, and of course it was impossible.
And sweet, absurd Edmund, who knew everything there was to know about green parakeets and flowers spread by ants and very little about human hearts, had been trying to do the impossible, because it seemed like somebody should.
The Dervish sat down on the bed next to Edmund. “What happened will never be okay,” he said. “You can’t put it right. No one can. Some things just can’t be made right again.”
Edmund seemed to shrink into himself and the Dervish caught his hands.
“No,” he said, feeling a strange bubble of laughter in his throat.
“You don’t understand. In my head, I kept wanting it fixed.
I wanted to go back in time and change it.
But I can’t. And if it can’t be fixed, we can just …
stop trying to fix it. Go do something else with our lives. Anything we want.”
“I left the order because I knew I couldn’t fix it,” Edmund said slowly. “But…” He took a deep breath. “I don’t want to leave you.”
“I’d like to think that there’s more to me than the bits that can’t be fixed.
” The laughter finally escaped, and he let it.
It was hoarse and a bit cracked, but it was a laugh all the same.
“I’m probably always going to be sensitive about the scars and I’m never going to want to be pinned down, and I’ll always be touchy about some things.
But you don’t have to fix them. I don’t have to fix them. That can just be the way things are.”
“Can you actually do that? Isn’t that sort of trauma just … there?”
“It’s my damn trauma, I’ll do what I want with it.” The look on Edmund’s face made him laugh again. “Everybody has things that bother them. Why can’t I just have things that bother me?”
“It feels like a bit more than a bother.”
“Yes, yes, it was horrible. But—I kept deluding myself that if I could just find the right person to kill, it would somehow remake the past. Screw the past. I’m so tired of it.”
Edmund stared at their joined hands for a long time, and then finally said, “Can we still try to fix the sword thing?”
“Ancestors, I hope so,” the Dervish said, and then, because he felt strange and giddy and light and tired of talking, he leaned in and covered Edmund’s mouth with his.