Page 11 of Arrows

“And I don’t like waiting for permission. I think I’ll go ahead and do the river, actually. I can do it from here, and it’ll make for interesting negotiations tomorrow.”

Interesting would be one word for it. “Do you need…anything? More tea?”

“I can make tea if I want it.”

A hush landed, for a few implacable minutes. Van tried not to fidget. Himself, in the magician’s bed. Himself well-fucked and evidently not needed for anything else. Lorre hadn’t brought back his clothes.

The fire, in its gleaming bowl, crackled and popped. The bed was more luxurious than any in Van’s parents’ inn. He stuck his toes under a fold of brocade. “I think I remember you were born in Valpres. From that story.” And then he remembered what else happened in that story, and very nearly buried himself in the luxurious bed to scream a bit.

“You think you remember that.” Lorre tapped the river, on the map. “And what does that story tell you about me?”

He couldn’t say that. He couldn’t.

“Go on. What does the world think, about me?”

The world. The world was upside-down and inside-out. Van didn’t know how to draw his own map for this.

He was sitting naked in Lorre’s bed. A simple bowman, not even an officer, only a twenty-eight-year-old volunteer from a fishing village. While the magician, wearing indigo ribbons and silk, leaned over a fanciful marble table and considered a map of kingdoms and boundaries. With war, or an avoidance of war, at stake. The night couldn’t get stranger.

On that thought, he gathered up all his courage. Lorre had asked, and it’d been practically a dare. “They say you killed your own father. Or wanted him dead, at least.”

“Is that what they’re saying about us?” Lorre drew a line across the map with a fingertip; ink followed, formed a new experimental boundary.

Van, unsure of the correct reply, stayed silent.

A spike of sapphire glanced his way. “Do you believe it? Also, how much does the average person in Averene care about these canyons?”

“Where? Oh. I don’t think anyone lives there. Is it good for farmland?”

“No, but it’s pretty. Colorful. Friendly, if you know how to speak sandstone. That river’s a problem, of course. It’s changed course since this map was made. So I’ll have to drop in and say hello.”

“Are you…redrawing the map of the Middle Lands?”

“Yes. Literally. You’ll see it tomorrow. You didn’t answer me.”

“Ah. No, I…don’t think you did?” It came out more a question than he’d meant it to be.

Lorre laughed. “But you don’t know.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“You don’t know me.”

“I just think…you wouldn’t. It’d be like—how could someone even think—I mean, your own father.”

Lorre laughed again, not out of amusement. The ink flattened into a blotch under his fingertip, a crushed star, a stain over parchment. “You have such faith in people. Touching.”

“You don’t?”

“As it happens, I didn’t kill him. I was a porpoise at the time. I had no idea he was even ill. His heart, was what I heard when I surfaced. I hadn’t known he had one.” Lorre blinked at the map, lifted his finger, blew a kiss at ink-stains. The ink, including the smudge on his skin, scampered back to its previous position. “Don’t bother contradicting anyone. I don’t mind the story.”

Van caught himself about to ask, you don’t? a second time, and instead tried, “Why would you want people to think—”

“He wasn’t very likeable,” Lorre said, “and neither am I. And stories are power. You can either leave or go to sleep; I’ll be working on the new river for a while.”

“You disappeared my clothes.”

“Oh. Do you want them?”

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