Memory - [Scavenger 03] by K.J. Parker

Author:K.J. Parker
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-02-28T12:53:59.125000+00:00

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Chapter Ten

'You know her, then?' the driver was asking.

Pulling himself back out of his complicated train of thought, Poldarn shook his head; fat raindrops scattered from the sodden brim of his hat. 'Met her a couple of times on the road, that's all. Crazy old bat, but fairly harmless.'

The driver shrugged. 'She didn't seem to know you.'

'Hadn't seen her since I got myself all burned up,' he replied. 'Don't suppose many people would recognise me after that.'

'That'd be it, then.' The driver was silent for a while, thinking; a slow process but not without a certain grandeur, like the turning of a giant waterwheel. 'So why'd you help her out, then, if she's just some old nutcase you met on the road?'

Good question. Poldarn's turn to think for a moment. 'I have this odd feeling she's good luck,' he replied. 'Like a mascot or something. If I help her out, at some point I'll get a slice of good luck myself when I need it, later on down the line.'

'Fair enough,' said the driver, in the manner of one humouring an armed lunatic. 'Has it worked like that, then?'

It hadn't actually occurred to him to consider the point, so he considered it. First time he'd met the daffy old woman with the little wicker cage, he'd also met Gain Aciava. Second time, he'd taken part in that ghastly botched robbery shortly afterwards, when he'd had to kill the vicious teenager. 'No,' he admitted. 'Quite the opposite, in fact. Only goes to show, intuition's an arsehole.'

That went over the driver's head like a skein of migrating geese, but he didn't seem to mind. The driver was one of those people who seem to treat the intelligent and articulate as speakers of a foreign language; if he understood one word in twenty, he was happy. 'Doesn't seem much point to it, then,' the driver went on. 'I mean, if you get bad luck for helping her out instead of good, why help her out? Anyhow, that's how I see it.'

'You're probably right,' Poldarn sighed. 'But she was headed for Torcea, so I don't suppose I'll ever see her again.'

'Just as well, really.'

'Just as well,' he agreed.

It had happened on his last night in Falcata. He'd been there a whole week, instead of one night and one morning as he'd planned, but some river or other had flooded and washed away the causeway on which the main east road crossed some bog, or at least that was what he'd been told next morning at the stage office; the taproom of the Benevolence Rewarded had been thick with rumours about rebel armies, bandits, the Amathy house on the prowl again, the Mad Monk and all sorts. So he'd wandered up and down the damp grey city's uninspiring main thoroughfare, wondering why half the shops were shut and the other half were empty; he'd spent money he couldn't afford on needled beer he didn't want; he'd stood looking over the parapet of the

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