‘You want something done, and you want me to do it for you. One of these days before long we’ll have to discuss my wages.’
‘Wages?’
‘I don’t work for nothing, Em. That’s unprofessional.’ He continued on across the bridge, his spear at the ready.
‘You want gold, I suppose?’ she asked in an accusatory tone.
‘Oh, gold’s all right, I suppose, but I’d really rather get paid in love. Love can’t be counted, so it’s probably even more valuable than gold.’
‘You’re confusing me, Althalus.’
‘I was trying hard enough.’
‘You’re teasing me, aren’t you?’
‘Would I do that? Me? Little old loveable me?’
They reached the other side of the bridge, and Althalus stopped, listening intently for the wailing sound of Ghend’s sentinel, but the forest and mountains remained silent. ‘It must have gotten bored,’ he said.
‘Maybe,’ her voice murmured dubiously.
He turned to take one last look at the House, but it wasn’t there any more. ‘Did you do that?’he demanded.
‘No, it takes care of that itself. You were able to see it when you came here because you were supposed to. Nobody else needs to see it, so they can’t. Let’s go to Arum, pet,’ she said. Then she stirred around inside the bag-like hood of his cloak until she was comfortable and went to sleep.
They covered about fifteen miles that day, traveling along the brink of the precipice Althalus still thought of as the edge of the world, despite the frozen glaciers that now loomed off to the north. As evening approached, they took shelter in a clump of stunted trees, and Althalus built a fire. Then Emmy provided him with the words that produced bread and a roasted chicken.
‘Not too bad,’ she observed, nibbling at a piece of chicken, ‘but isn’t it a little overdone?’
‘I don’t criticize your cooking, Em.’
‘Just a suggestion, pet. I wasn’t criticizing.’
He learned back against a tree, stretching his feet out to the fire. ‘I think there’s something you need to know, Em,’ he said after some reflection. ‘Before Ghend hired me to go steal the book, I was having a run of bad luck. It might have worn off by now, but nothing was working for me the way it was supposed to.’
‘Yes, I know. I thought the paper money in Druigor’s strongbox was a nice touch, didn’t you?’
He started at her. ‘It was you? You were behind all that bad luck?’
‘Of course. If luck hadn’t turned sour, you wouldn’t have even considered Ghend’s proposititon, would you?’
‘And before that, you were the one responsible for all the good luck I was so famous for?’
‘Well, of course it was me, pet. If you hadn’t had such a streak of good luck, you wouldn’t have even recognized bad luck when it came along, would you?’
‘You’re the goddest of fortune, aren’t you, Em?’
‘It’s a sideline, pet. We all play with the luck of certain people. It’s a way to get them to cooperate.’
‘I’ve been worshiping you for years, Emmy.’
‘I know, and it’s been just lovely.’
‘Wait a minute,’ he objected. ‘I thought you said that you didn’t know that it was Ghend who hired me to steal the Book. If you were perched right on my shoulder to play games with my luck, how could you have missed it?’
‘I wasn’t quite that close, Althalus. I knew that somebody was going to do it, but I didn’t know it’d be Ghend himself. I thought he’d have some underling take care of it – Argan, maybe, or Khnom. I’m sure it wouldn’t have been Pekhal.’
‘Who are they?’
‘Ghend’s underlings. I’m sure you’ll meet them before this is all over.’
‘You almost got me killed in Equero, you know. Some of those arrows came awfully close when I was running across Kweso’s garden.’
‘But they didn’t hit you, did they? I wasn’t going to let anything happen to you, pet.’
‘That notion of paper money was your idea, wasn’t it? Nobody could actually believe that paper’s worth anything.’
‘The idea’s been around for a while. People who are in the business of buying and selling things write little notes to each other. They’re a sort of promise to pay, and they’re not as cumbersome as gold is. The people of Maghu have sort of formalized the idea.’
‘Were you the one who arranged for Gosti Big Belly to lie to me about what was in his strongroom?’
‘No. That was probably Ghend. He had as much reason as I did to want you to be unlucky right then.’
‘I wondered why everything was turning so sour. I had people pouring trash on my luck from both sides of the fence.’
‘Isn’t it nice to have everybody so concerned about you?’
‘Then my luck has changed back now?’
‘Of course it has, Althalus. I’m your luck, and I’ll love you all to pieces – as long as you do just exactly as I tell you.’ She patted his cheek then with one soft paw.
A few days later they reached the place where the dead tree stood. ‘It’s still here?’ Althalus was a bit startled.
‘It’s a landmark, pet. We sort of like to keep it here as a reference point.’
They turned south there and traveled down through Kagwher for a week or so. Then late one afternoon they crested a hill and saw a rude village huddled in the next valley. ‘What do you think, Em?’ Althalus said back over his shoulder. ‘Should we go on in and talk with a few people? I’ve been out of touch for quite a while, so it might not be a bad idea to find out what’s happening in the world.’
‘Let’s not leave memories of our passing lingering behind us, pet. Ghend has eyes and ears everywhere.’
‘Good point,’ he agreed. ‘Let’s sleep here, then. We can slip past that village before daybreak tomorrow.’
‘I’m not really sleepy, Althalus.’
‘Of course not. You’ve been sleeping all day. I’m the one who had to do the walking, and I’m tired.’
‘All right, we’ll rest your poor little legs here, then.’
Althalus wasn’t really all that tired, however. There was something about the rude village below that had immediately caught his eye when he’d crested the hill. There was a corral on the southern edge of the village, and there were horses in that corral and a number of rude saddles laid over the top rail. It was still a long way to Arum, and riding would probably be faster – and easier – than walking.
