Vlad Taltos - 10 Dzur by Steven Brust

Author:Steven Brust [Brust, Steven]
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Action & Adventure, Vlad Taltos
ISBN: 9780765341549
Publisher: New York : Tor, 2006.
Published: 2007-10-29T08:00:00+00:00

9

CHILLED DEFRINA

Mihi removed the wine and replaced it with a new bottle, providing us with new glasses, as

well. Again the feather, the glove, the tongs.

Defrina is a white wine with just a hint of, of all things, cherries. The sweetness, which would

normally have been too much for me, was cut by an extra chill that Mihi had put on it just for me.

The first sip said a merry hello to the flavors already dancing around my tongue, and then it slid

down my throat still leaving behind it the taste of the trout, but brightened just a little, if that

makes any sense.

I leaned back and studied my dinner companion. "Fun," I repeated. He grinned and nodded.

The first several things that came to mind were all sarcastic, but sarcasm didn't really go with

Valabar's trout and a good, chilled white wine. I said, "Can you explain that?"

He frowned and considered for a moment, then said, "You know, I don't think I can. I'll try."

I drank some wine and nodded.

"You see," he said. "There's this feeling you get when things are happening almost too fast for

you to handle, and if you make a mistake, you're dead. You'd be scared out of your mind if you

weren't too busy. Do you know what I mean?"

"Well, I know how I feel at times like that. I don't much care for it?'

"Don' t you?"

I ate some more fish and drank some more wine.

"In fact," I said, "I don' t remember enjoying it, or not enjoying it. Like you said, I'm too busy?'

"Well, there you are."

I grunted. "Afterward, though, I hate it."

He grinned. "I guess that's the difference?'

"As long as there is one."

"That's just what I was thinking, Loiosh."

"Of course," he added, "the cause enters into it as well.”

“The cause?"

"The reason you're fighting."

"Oh. It isn't just to fight?"

"Well, sometimes it is."

"You mean, most of the time it is?"

"Yeah, most of the time."

"Uh huh?'

"But not the important times?'

"Mmm. Care to explain that?"

"It isn't difficult. When you do something big, you want it to matter." He looked at me. "Well,

don't you?"

"I don't usually get into things by my own plan. I get dumped into them, and then I'm too busy

trying to stay alive to think about the im-portance of the cause?'

He nodded as if he understood.

I had another bite of fish, and another sip of wine.

I remembered a friend I'd had named Ricard—one of the few peo-ple I knew who weren't

involved with the Organization. He was an Easterner, a stocky fellow with thin hair, and we'd

eaten dinner to-gether, gotten drunk on his boat on the bay, and argued about matters great and

small. He worked ten hours a day, four days a week, doing what I pretended to do keeping the

books for a slaughterhouse—and two or three evenings a week would play obscure music on the

cimbalon at an obscure house in South Adrilankha. Every couple of months he would have saved up

enough silver to take me out for dinner at Val-abar's, and I'd take him a month later; we might or might

not have dates with us.

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