The Book of Athyra (Vlad Taltos, #6-7) by Steven Brust

Author:Steven Brust [Brust, Steven]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy
ISBN: 9781101665749
Publisher: Berkley Books; Penguin Group
Published: 2003-02-03T16:00:00+00:00

2

ON THE WALL OF a small hostelry just outside of Northport someone had written in black, sloppy letters: “When the water is clean, you see the bottom; when the water is dirty, you see yourself.”

“Deep philosophy,” I remarked to Loiosh. “Probably a brothel.”

He didn’t laugh. Call me superstitious, but I decided to find another place. I nodded to the boy to follow. I’m not sure when he started responding to nonverbal cues; I hadn’t been paying that much attention. But it was a good sign. On the other hand, that had been the only improvement in the year he’d been with me and that was a bad sign.

Wait for it, Kiera; wait for it. I’ve done this before. I know how to tell a Verra-be-damned story, okay?

So I kept walking, getting closer to Northport. I’d come to Northport because Northport is the biggest city in the world—okay, in the Empire—that doesn’t have any sort of university. No, I have nothing against universities, but you must know how they work—they act like magnets to pull in the best brains in an area, as well as the richest and most pretentious. They are seats of great learning and all that. Now I had a problem that required someone of great, or maybe not-so-great learning, but walking into a university, well, I didn’t like the idea. I don’t know how to go about it, and that means I don’t know how to go about it without getting caught. For example, what happens if I go to, say, Candletown, and inquire at Lady Brindlegate’s University, and someone is rude to me, and I have to drop him? Then what? It makes a big stink, and the wrong people hear about it, and there I am running again.

But I figured, what if I find a place with a lot of people but no institution to suck up the talented ones? It means it’s going to be a place with a lot of hedge-wizards, and wise old men, and greatwives. And that’s just what I was looking for—what I had been looking for for most of a year, and not finding, until I hit on this idea.

I’ll get to it, I’ll get to it. Trust me.

I got a little closer to town, stopped at an inn, and—look, you don’t need to hear all this. I stayed out of a fight, listened to gossip, pumped a few people, went to another inn, did the same, repeat, repeat, and finally found myself at a little blue cottage in the woods. Yes, blue—a blue lump of house standing out from all the greens of the woods surrounding Northport. It was one of the ugliest objects I’ve ever seen.

The first thing that happened was a dog came running out toward us. I was stepping in front of Savn and reaching for a knife before Loiosh said, “His tail is wagging, boss.”

“Right. I knew that.”

It was some indeterminate breed with a bit of hound in it—the sleek build of a lyorn

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