Part Three: Just Because You're Paranoid....
“If you knew who the people whom I have upset, you'd... begin to understand.” I say. “We all have a master we live and work for. This is what it is to be a part of a society. The king and the nobles work for the people, the Church work for God, and the people work for one another. Everything is organized to the benefit of the common people.”
“You, though....” He falls silent, then shoots a look at me I can't help but feel like is him stopping himself from asking me for whom I work. “You ain't common, though, is ya? I don't think so. No one does. Who else in town can talk to everyone – from the lowest born to the highest?”
“You aren't exactly like these people yourself. I noticed it immediately.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. I don't like to describe people to them. They don't like it, either right or wrong, as badly as we all want to be seen and heard and understood – no one wants to think they are that transparent. But... Yeah. You – most people, common people, are born, live, and die without ever developing a sense of self. You're different. You understand yourself on a... I don't know, higher level.”
“What does that mean? Of course everyone senses themselves.”
“It means that the average person has no concept of themselves outside or separate from the herd. They do not identify as 'I', as an individual. Most of them barely have names. Everyone wants to be heard, but almost no one is listening.
“'Look,' says the Teacher, this is what I have discovered: Adding one thing to another to discover the scheme of things— While I was still searching but not finding— I found one upright man among a thousand, but not one upright woman among them all. This only have I found: God created mankind upright, but they have gone in search of many schemes. Who is like the wise? Who knows the explanation of things? A person’s wisdom brightens their face and changes its hard appearance.'”
He gives me a look like he thinks my face has a hard appearance; the look one gives when they believe you've said something stupid or blindly hateful.
“Listen— I know that if I were born female I would not enjoy the priveleges I enjoy today. I would not be able to go where I go, speak with whom I speak. The world is not and has not been for all of recorded Western history a welcoming or especially joyous place for women. There are reasons for this – too many reasons to explain, now.”
“You mean that you don't know all of them.”
“I don't know. I don't form opinions about things outside of my control or expertise. But.... The Greeks hated and marginalized women, and the rest of history has followed suit. Why? Because Solomon was right? Because there are no upright women? Surely not. But women— They benefit from the way things are, too. They are no better than men. The ancients believed that they are unteachable and irredeemable. They gave lots of reasons, like women only care what men think of them sexually, or they only know how to use their wiles; that they are spiritually inferior or some-other-how inferior. But the more women I meet, the more I think it has nothing to do with that and everything to do with the fact that they already think they know everything and can and will never be wrong about anything. They act like their mothers – regardless of their age. They're counter-intuitive. No man can ever know enough about anything to offer a valid opinion, but they fall over themselves for a compliment on their appearances.” I laugh. I can't help it. What I'm saying is absurd and I know it. Too easy to argue away as prejudice. “But never forget that the men who rule today were birthed by mothers, were raised by their mothers to believe that women are inferior to them and that their rightful place is to lead. Alexander the Great's—”
“Isn't all of this true about men and their fathers, too?”
“Of course it is.”
The tavernmaster looks at me over his shoulder and offers a knowing smile and a wink.
“Told you it was about a girl.”
“It's not about a girl.”
“How's your wife?”
“Fine, I'd imagine. I wouldn't know.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“That's... not how our marriage works. We are not the happy homemaking couple.”
“I know ya didn't marry her for love, though she is pretty enough. Pretty enough, rich enough, smart enough. Not enough to threaten ya. But enough to be worth the money ta spent to buy her.”
“You're not wrong. Neither am I ashamed or embarrassed by my choice. Love is... for someone else. I can't love – it would be cruel. I'm not going to be in Genoa forever.”
They'll find me, eventually.
I haven't exactly been... subtle, have I?
I do not fear the inevitable
“She won't thank me, but when I am gone, she will find herself the richest person in town – she will go instantly from good enough to be a foreigner's wife to the most eligible widow in Christendom.”
“How do you figure your benefactors won't try to take your holdings back if you just disappear?”
“Because – I got one of the Consuls to agree that if I went missing for a full week, he'd declare me dead.”
“How does that prevent them from doing anything?”
I chuckle, a private little amusement just for myself. “Because – everything I own, everything everyone assumes that I own, it's all in her name. Every deed. Every title. All of it. She doesn't know it – but she owns everything I've earned.”
Everything except what's in my basement.
“And you believe he will honor your last will and testament?”
I nod. “It was under a particularly ugly oath – he crossed his heart; not only did he hope to die if he broke faith, he'd stick a needle in his eye .”
The tavernmaster laughs. “You might be a damned fool, Sorcerer.”
“I might be. Then again, I might not. The past is dead. We want what people from a mythical history never had. It's the same old tale. It was tedious when Plate wrote about it in Republic, and I'm not particuarly interested in getting into it.”
“Uh huh. Uh huh. Right. Let's pretend I haven't read that – for anyone listening in (haha). What are you talking about?”
“Might vis-a-vis making right.”
“I see.”
“No, you don't.” I sigh “We have been taught to believe, at every level of society – in nearly every society – that might makes right. Because we have decided that greatness is defined as taking what you want from life. Because history is written by the victors and its glossary is filled with words praising the villains.”
That's the kind of thing you follow with a swig from a cup. I was intensely aware that I had no cup from which to swig. And that we seemed to have been walking for a long time.
“And what is the right way to live?”
“I don't know.”
“I thought ya knew everything.”
I looked at him sharply. “I never said that.”
“That's what they say about you.”
The alarm bells quit peeling in my ears. Why was I so suspicious of him today? He'd never once given me cause to think he was anything other than what he was – just a tavernmaster. And besides—
“They're not wrong.”
He laughs. Then looks over his shoulder. His laugh becomes surprised, serious.
“You mean that.”
“Not the way they do.”
“...Then how?”
I struggle with this – visibly – for many seconds. In part because words will not come to my mouth. My mind has blanked.
If you train yourself not to think about something, you are less likely to accidentally blurt it out – Freud notwithstanding. This was my theory, at the time, at least. Turns out when you do that, you don't know what to say when you decide it might be time to talk about it.
“I... don't know how much I can tell you.”
“Is it a long story or something?” I realize that the tavernmaster has turned and is asking over his shoulder. “Not like we don't have the time.”
“It's not that. I've just never talked about it before.”
“I wouldn't worry about it so much. Your wizard friends wouldn't let nothin bad happen to you.”
I stop and wait for him to turn.
“What wizard friends?” I ask, trying to sound unalarmed and like I don't know who he means. Anything but what I'm feeling.
“Nobody particular. Guy like you's gotta know other guys like you. Can't think they'd just let em... kill ya like that.”
“You don't know my wizard friends”
He laughs, but it's not for my benefit.
“All right, then, calm down.We got all the time in the world. Let's talk about somethin else— How'd you meet Regina anyway? Through Francis? Her husband?”
I nod.
“Hm. Can't say I wanna imagine the kind of work he'd have for you. Wipin the minds o debt collectors? Tellin him which dice to lose on? Healin whores after he beds em? Like he beats his wife? I bet soon as she learned what ya was she pounced on ya like ya was the best lily pad on the pond.”
“She's rich and married. They usually are if they're interested in me.”
“And your wife is all right with that?”
“When among the nobility....”
“You think that because Regina knew that it would get her husband's goat to sleep with you that your wife is sleepin around too?”
I shrug.
“The way you talk about bein amongst the nobility— You said that like 'When in Rome, do as the Romans do.'”
“I did.”
“Then you wasn't born noble.”
I don't say anything.
“I just figured since you got two names, that meant you was noble.”
“Who else has two names? What nobles? In the country, people very nearly don't bother with a name at all.”
“I don' know. You're the only Cymry I every met.”
If the tingling of my skin were a net, I was well and fully constricted now.
How does he know I'm Welsh?
He knows something. He's trying to tell you something.
I swallowed hard. Not willing to ponder whether my Instinct were right, I silenced my thoughts.
“Seems like everyone who sleeps on my floor has a different naming convention. Different people is different, kid.”
“We're all the damn same.”
“Near enough, when we get down to it. But it's how we're different that makes us individuals. Different.”
“Our differences are what make us terrified.”
“Hm. So you're lower born'n me, then, huh?”
I look past the tavernmaster, across the empty plaza to his tavern, and am less surprised than despondent to find that we are less than halfway there. Then I'm distracted again by him saying:
“Y'know....” the tavernmaster says, his voice more musing than I thought possible. “I been sittin outside that door seems like ages – greetin people, askin em how they're doin, bout their kids, whatever. I remember em, make em smile. Let em feel like someone cares, you know?”
“You're making them feel real.”
“Feel real? Whaddya mean? Course they're real.”
“I mean that you see and treat them like people – like individuals – like they matter in and of themselves.”
“They do, are – do you not think so?”
“I don't know. I don't know that what I think matters.”
“Of course it does. Why do you think that?”
“Because I'm only 25.”
“Yeah, I guess so. I met a lot of people over the years. Got to know some of em. Some o'em real well. The rest.... People think ya only see what they want ya to. But humans is humans. Just because they don't differentiate the I from the We, don't separate the Self from the Us don't mean they ain't still human. The pilgrims I meet, they ain't all good people doin their duty like a good Christian. Don't make em Evil, though. Just men n women who's wandered off track. I don't need to tell a sorcerer such as yaself about the life of the ordinary man. I'm sure between all the important work ya do keepin all the whores in town with coin in their pockets, you spend the rest o your time workin longside the common man.” He flashes me an ironic wink over his shoulder. “But, you know, I heard it said most people don't go no further'n bout ten miles from the place they's born. Nobles, too, now. It's not just cus a man n his family's tied to the land—“
“Like they've always been.”
“Not everybody lives how we do. Look at the Magyars – the Vikings.”
“And look how reviled they, their ancestors, their antecedents, their cousins and correlatives and all the similar nomadic, unsettled peoples, if we have to call them anything, are. Look at the Hebrew, Jewish, people.”
“Is it a coincidence your office is up there among the Jews? A man n his family is tied to the land cus they gotta work it.”
“Surfs are an only-slight modification of the Roman slave system. I know.”
“Then ya know somebody's gotta. Corn needs growin. Stuff needs made. We can't all talk with the gods, kid. Somebody's gotta till n tend the land - them grapes in your vineyards, stomp em n watch em at the vintner. Who ya think milks ya cows n makes that cheese n cures that ham comin off your farms in Parma? More'n that – who do ya think keeps them farms n grapes n the men n women that live n work on em safe from people with no claim to your lands, their homes, who wanna take the spoils n the lives for their own? I'll tell ya. Skilled human hands. Hands taught skills older'n any kind o old a young'n like you could even start to comprehend. Older'n history. Thousands o years. Thousands o thousands o thousands. Gifts from gods long ago forgotten, their shrines abandoned or destroyed, their followers long swallowed by the sands of time.”
He looks back at me; I nod and offer him a polite, “Mmhmm.”
He makes a face I can't read: turning down the corners of his mouth and peaking up his eyebrows.
“So people ain't got much reason – or time – to leave. Even in cities n towns like this. What reason you gonna give your ol man that ya gonna be gone all day?”
“I don't know,” I cut in. “I didn't tell mine I was leaving.”
“What? Son... that's two hands just gone. How old was ya?”
“Don't worry about it.”
“What did he do? Were you the oldest?”
“We were shepherds.”
Why am I answering this?
I didn't know. Maybe I was feeling nostalgic. I looked up from where I had been watching the cobbles disappearing beneath my feet. The tavern wasn't far. Maybe a few minutes.
Hm. We must be walking slow.
Really slow.
The urge to check the distance we'd covered causes me to become aware that I feel eyes on the back of my head; my body was alert, like waiting for a stick to snap somewhere nearby in the dark of a nightmare forest. My head freezes in an eyes-open rigor naturalis. My spine straightens, my step hitches, and it comes suddenly and violently to my attention that it feels like Genoa is abandoned, herself lost to – or in – his sands of time.
For a single moment, the briefest of seconds—
Oh, no. What if Genoa was completely destroyed 400 years ago or whatever? What if I'm the only person who's actually here? What if I'm dead, and this is—
“Hell, kid. That's all ya're gonna give me? Shepherds? I thought ya was gonna tell me a story or somethin.”
“What story is there to tell?” I ask, frowning and brought back to the moment – to him. “I'm no David. No shepherd cum giant slayer.”
“Why'd ya leave? Shepherdin ain't a bad life for a man. Get good with that sling or a bow or strong enough to hold a spear n shield – make ya nough coin to buy a wife n take her back to them sheep n raise ya some lil Robbies. That's a good life for a man. Decent. Honest.”
“You don't think I'm decent and honest?” I ask, chuckling.
“I only know what I seen with my eyes n heard with my ears. Ya know it's been two years, today?”
“Two years?”
“Since ta come to town, yeah. Two years, today. Two years ago, you dragged your skinny ass through my door. Practically crawlin, soakin wet, lookin like ya'd crawled ya way through every marsh n swamp n mud pit between here'n the Friuli Marches. Stinkin o piss n shit n lookin worse n the shit on the bottom of another shit's boot. N if you don't mind me sayin so, kid, ya look like you're about to turtle head.”
He gets quiet for a moment, perhaps waiting for me to get offended – or respond.
“Talk round town's been you n Regina split up. Some of em think she left you, but most of em think was you broke it off. Prolly got bored of her, some say. Others think she wanted ya to leave ya wife for her. Everybody knows she wants out from under the thumb of that fat prick she's got for a husband.”
“And what do you think?”
“What do I think? I don't think nothin. I'm a tavernmaster, kid. We don't exactly got a creed. Nothin fancy like you witches n warlocks n the like. But we got honor all our own. Pride. Tradition. Hospitality goes back to the Beginnin. The world wasn't always like it is now, Kid. It wasn't uncommon, not so long ago, for a low-born person to work and strive and travel the world until he could find a land to call home. But before then, long before then, before the darkness come n took the civilizations of which we have only ruined memories—“
He suddenly falls silent, his head titling toward the ground as with regret or bitter memories – or like he'd said something – or some how – that he should not have.
“In the earliest days, there was no taverns. There was no nothin, really. But, y'know, after towns n cities started poppin up. There was nowhere you could go to seek succor in the worst of the wastes of the wilderness of this world. Your only option was the tent of another man – and no one was more dangerous to a man with a good tent, a warm fire, healthy donkey and daughters, food n fresh water than a wanderer in the wastes facin the delirium of days o thirst. The gods decided they'd had enough o their people killin one another in this desolation, n commanded that travelers be hospitable to one another.”
“Yes. And even by Jesus' day our wickedness was such that we'd nearly entirely forgotten it. You have to know the story of the Good Samaritan.”
“Refresh my memory.”
I clear my throat. “Luke 10: verses 25 to 37:
“On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. 'Teacher'” he asked, 'what must I do to inherit eternal life?'
“'What is written in the Law?' he replied.'“How do you read it?'
“He answered, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and, Love your neighbor as yourself.'
“'You have answered correctly,' Jesus replied. 'Do this and you will live.'
“But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, 'And who is my neighbor?'
“In reply Jesus said: 'A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’
“'Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?'
“The expert in the law replied, 'The one who had mercy on him.'”
“Jesus told him, 'Go and do likewise.'”
The tavernmaster laughs. I frown at him.
“You know, I can't say I ever expected to hear you of all people quotin scripture from memory.” When he looks back and sees my frown, he clears his throat and says, “Just kiddin. Jeez. But, yes. This is something of why taverns and inns and those people, individuals and tribes, who remember the commandment of Hospitality is linked – to a sacred duty of information and sating the human needs. You heard your boy Jesus: The Samaratin took him to an inn.”
“You don't think it has anything to do with kings and emperors et al needing people to be at these waystations; and that giving them a pseudo-spiritual calling is the way to get them to get their kids to do it, too?”
He doesn't turn back to me, but I can see his frown in the wrinkles of his bald pate.
“No. I don't think that. I don't think nothin like that.”
“Humans have a habit of institutionalizing individual responsibility. Since it's too hard to house and feed strangers and the less fortunate on our own, we create organizations to do it for us. Worry not. I don't know if you have kids.” I don't even know your name, I suddenly realize. “But as soon as you figure out a way to get the Church to let you even have your townsfolk as patrons so you can charge for your services – which, if things continue as they are, with the way you spend your gold equating to how your soul will be judged in the afterlife, it could be a while before cups and their consumption will not belong to Dionysus and his cousins – but soon enough you and yours will find a way to be as rich and powerful as kings in your own rights. It is the way of those who protect sacred information: to parlay it for riches.”
“You don't trust me, do ya?”
I looked at him and considered lying. He turned over his shoulder and laughed. Had it really already been two years?
“No,” I finally agreed. “Not even a little bit.”
“Why? Have I ever been anythin but honorable?”
I leveled him with a that's ridiculous furrowed brow. “You are a tavernmaster. There is only one other creature whom I trust less.” I find myself laughing. I'd never said this aloud: “An innkeeper.”
“And yet you come n drink my piss beer every day. Do you think you're doin me some kind of favor? Like, kid, your ass don't stink any less n the pirates n killers n whores who sleep on my floor as it is.”
“Hardly. You said it yourself – you're a font of information. Everyone talks to you. You know everyone's business. And you're motivated by your business to share. You need me about as much as I need you. That's the way of things, right? The Circle of Life.”
He laughs. Hard. Stopping, even, to slap his leg a few times. “You got me there, kid. But... I see. Is that all I am to you? A tool? Something to get information from?”
“That is what you are, is it not?” I stop. My hands were in the pockets of my jacket. My posture was neutral. But I most certainly was challenging him. And my eyes made sure he knew it. “Just a tavernmaster?”
He stops and turns to face me, but can not quite meet my eye.
“Is that how you think of all of them, too?” He gestures to Genoa at large.
“I don't think of them. They do enough of that, when they bother to think of anything at all, for both of us. But do I characterize them in my mind in this same way? … We all have a role to play, a purpose in life and to our society,” I answer my own question with a shrug. “There is no shame in being a shepherd or saint, a knecht or king. A prince, as they say, or a pauper. The shame is in doing or receiving less than one's fair share.”
He considered me for a long moment. “What is your role, then, Robert Longshore? If that really even is your real name.”
“Of course it's not. Longshore? Don't be stupid. And... I don't know.”
The tavernmaster didn't say anything. He just turned and started walking. So I did the same, unconcerned by the silence. Then I said:
“People like us, people who live and exist at or on the literal and/or metaphorical crossroads, we are feared and mistrusted because we are trustworthy. Your sacred duty, those of the healer, the seer, the priest, the king.... This is why you are trusted – trusted to have food and drink and a safe place to sleep. You are needed, necessary, for society to function – if it can be said to – as it does – as it did. We overlook your wickedness because you do what we will not.”
“I live at the literal tween-space tween Genoa and elsewhere and the metaphorical tween-space tween wilderness and savagery. Ya said 'Us.' What tween space are you master of, sorcerer?”
These last words gave me cold chills.
“None, I suppose. If not nothing, I am the lord or spaces between between-spaces.”
He stopped again to put his hands on his hips and regard me with a long, probing look.
“Who are you really, not-Robert Longshore? Why are you in Genoa?”
Compulsion is a difficult experience to express, to explain. The compulsion to eat when we are not hungry, or to hear a song, or to read a book we have not in many years; to have another drink when you know you've had two too many. I felt compelled to tell him the truth – again. I don't know pressed my tongue against my teeth. I didn't. Instead, I told another truth:
“To disappear.”
This crashed the tavernmaster's face in a frown. “A man with your... gifts wanted—“
“Wants.”
“Wants to disappear? What hunts you, little lizard?”
“Who said someone is hunting me?”
Or did he mean haunts?
The tavernmaster shrugs. His face softens, becoming suddenly grandfatherly.
“You n me, what we do ain't so different. We just represent different traditions. Tell me if I heard wrong. But this is how I know you: They used to talk about you walkin round town. Talkin with people, but not really talkin. You used to ask em questions. Get em talkin, n just listen. Nobody minded. It got around quick when you started helpin people. Findin stuff, talkin with animals, predictin wells n weather. Didn't take long, neither, fore I wasn't the only one talking bout ya with strangers—“
“I know you were talking about me with people. Of course I do. You're talking to me like I'm— I'm not an idiot. Pilgrims and sailors had to talk to someone. And if they're interested in talking to someone... well, there's only one person in town who knows or cares about the things I do. You'd have to be terrible at your job not to. And I know you're not that. So—“
“Thanks, kid. Jesus. What am I talking to you like?”
I struggled to answer, even groaning with the effort in my throat. I didn't want to answer, and yet the truth was like a hot coal on my tongue: I needed it out. “A child,” I said, feeling instantly small and foolish.
We stopped almost simultaneously. I can't say that I chose to do so first, neither can I claim to have reacted to him as I was looking at my feet. This is, in fact, how I learned they were still.
“How old did you say you was?”
I looked up at him. Any effort to deny my glower would be a lie. “Twenty and five.”
“By what metric are you not a child, in comparison with me? When I was your age, you—“
“Weren't even a gleam in my father's eye. I know. Probably not even a glimmer of a glimmer in my grandfather's eye.” He only smiled. “But that's a flawed question.”
“How so?”
“Because what are we comparing? The number of summers we have survived? In that regard, there will be someone who regards me as a child until I'm the oldest living creature left. And even then....”
“Yes?”
“I was just thinking of stories like Cain – doomed to walk the world forever. Sisyphus and his boulder. I've been thinking about eternity a lot lately.”
“That so?”
I hadn't meant to say that.
“Yeah. Well – let's say there are gods. You've probably heard that I speak with and for them. It would be against my better interests to deny them. Not only in an effort to avoid my own hemlock tea, but because doing so to you could put me out of business. Not just the Christian gods, but all the multitudinous saints, angels, demons, spirits, and, yes, gods of the world's mystical traditions.”
He blinks.
“If they exist, what human is not a child? What human is not to them as an ant is to me? The way I was taught...” The urge to look behind me, to see the face of my killer before my inevitable doom, is nearly overwhelming.
“What were you taught?”
“I was taught that it's possible for a Man to become as a god. Maybe even a god himself. I was trained....”
“You were trained?”
“I shouldn't be talking about this.”
“Why not?”
“Because. I'm not supposed to talk about it.”
He stops and half-turns so he's still looking over his shoulder as if to gesture to the whole of the plaza. “Who is going to overhear?”
“It's not being overheard that worries me.” My ears practically buzz with formicatious feet.
“Then what is it? Why can't you tell me?”
“It's not you. I can't tell anyone.”
“Who am I going to tell?”
I sighed, letting myself show my mounting frustration. “It's not about whom you're going to tell! It's about what or whom you might know. What or whom you might be. You can't ever know anyone. You can't really know them. Not what's in their minds, hidden in their hearts. You can learn about a man. Even things he doesn't want you to know. But you aren't always better off knowing. Things are how and what they are. Hoping to change them is a fool's dream. A slave's wish on a star to be king.”
“Dreams come true, kid. Slaves've become kings. All you gotta do is want it bad enough.”
“Want,” I spit like a curse. “Want is the root of all suffering. Just – just stop. You don't understand. You can't. Unless you can. If I tell you, you have to kill me. If you don't— They could find us both and make us kill one another – if not both of us.”
Admittedly, that was what could happen. Nothing could also happen.
“I heard a story once.” My eyes stole a glance to either side. My voice lowered. “These three boys once snuck into one of their... meetings. They were caught. Put in a room just big enough for the three of them, with nothing but the key to the door – and a knife. Two of the boys were found outside the secret entrance. Dead. The kind of knife wounds you'd expect. No one ever saw the third again.”
“And you believe that? Their reach? Their unquestioning loyalty to secrecy?”
“Whether I believe or not does not matter. What matters is whether you believe – or anyone listening in.” I hadn't meant to make that addendum.
“I know lots of people and I known many more. Your secret is one that I very likely already know. Relieve yourself of its burden. Speak freely that I may give my honest and informed counsel.”
Weird, hearing him talk like that.
So unnatural, but it flows off his tongue.
Like this aspect is artificial.
I thought about it - seriously - for about two seconds. Long enough to think that sharing the burden with someone - anyone - was better than trying to fumigate it to forgetfulness. And then to realize:
“No. If you know, then you also know that the penalty for speaking their name is death. That I’m even doing this at all is against the rules.”
“But if they’re after you—Let’s say that we’re talking about the same people - a shadowy group who influence world events in secret. Let’s call them the Illuminati, because—”
“That’s definitely not what they call themselves.”
“Exactly. So it’s perfect. The Illuminati, and I know about them. You no doubt'll assume I’m one of them. So if you speak about them any more than this, I’m obligated to kill ya on the spot. You have to ask yourself why I’m talking about this at all. If I know, then I am in contact with these people. If I am in contact with them, I have been for years. If that’s the case, then I know about you. I know alllllll about ya. If they want ya as badly as ya think, everyone who knows them knows about ya. That’s why ya form a secret cabal in the first place: to easily spread secret knowledge around the world so ya have people anywhere ya want to spend time with whom ya can sit around n have secret meetings. If all of these things is true n ya have no reason to believe they're not, then y're left with one question to ask: Why. Why have I not turned ya in? Why am I telling you this?”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Because I want to. Because you need an ally in what’s coming ahead.
“When ya come in my tavern, it was already dark. I was thinkin o tuckin in for the night. I don't think you even seen me. Jus stumbled to the back o the room, as far from the windas n the silvery light o that moon as ya could. The wife said ya was prolly a killer, runnin away from somethin. And obviously hooked on that junk poppy plant. I told her, a man with the kind o Tuscan silver pourin outta his pockets like you had, he ain't runnin from no murder, and ya wasn't no thief. You was a man accustomed to riches – and that opium only gets ya lookin like that when ya out of silver. Not when you got enough o the shit to buy an army to take Genoa n pass er down to whatever your Junior's named. Maybe Giovanni?”
“After you?”
“Nah.” He winks.
You fish about as well as the Genovese.
He knows you don't know his name.
“The guy in the Church stories.”
“Got it.”
“A few weeks later, after you'd bought that ruin ya call an office n started fixin er up, I heard tell Adelbert had a bounty out for a best friend in his court and his favorite consort. They said the guy hadn't been in Lucca long and probably hadn't gotten far.”
You've heard the expression 'my blood ran cold.' Forgive me, but I know no other way to describe it – besides maybe being found with my hand in the cookie jar. I was caught, had, exposed.
“But I didn't think nothin of it. What's a tavernmaster like me need with that kinda silver? Well, then I don't see ya for a week. I'm worried anyway, so when a ship comes in a few days ago, and I'm talkin with The Captain, I ask im if he'd heard any stories, like I would, anyway. But I'm hopin to hear about ya, so I'm askin questions I wouldn't normally. Now, don't worry – I never said your name. Never even described you. Haven't ever said your name when ya wasn't around. And no one's ever around when we're together. Who would hear? But, look. If that was you, and the description – I asked for details – was a deadringer for ya. If it was, I just... I just wanna know what happened to the girl. Did ya really take her, like Adalbert says?”
“She died.”
You tried to save her.
And she died.
“Oh. But not by—”
“Yeah.”
“Oh. ...Hard to... come back from that one.”
“...Was that a pun?”
“Wasn't meant to be. What are we doing out here? Standin around the plaza like a coupla goons when my tavern's right here. We've waited long enough. We need to talk, and some things are only safe to discuss in the safety of one's threshold.”
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