Innkeeper's Song

ROSSETH

No one invited me, not in words. Nyateneri and I looked at each other, and I babbled out whatever I babbled, and then she stepped back from the door and I walked into the room.

This is how it was. They were all standing—Lal behind the table, Lukassa between the bed and the window. The room smelled strongly of wine, of course, and there were empty bottles rolling everywhere; but the three of them were not drunk, not as I understood it then. Drunkenness to me was dragging Gatti Jinni up to his sad garret once a month, or watching Karsh wearily facing down some grinning bargeman with a meat-knife in one hand and a broken bottleneck in the other, with two farmers bleeding and vomiting on the floor. For myself, I rarely got a chance at anything but red ale in those days, and almost never enough of that even to feel drowsy. I never saw Karsh himself drunk, by the way. Karsh only drinks alone.

Yes, naturally I noticed certain things, even I. Nyateneri remained pale and taut as I had left her, but her changing eyes had gone a deep gray with no blue in them whatever, and they were very bright, as exhaustion will make eyes look sometimes. Lal was smiling—not at me, I thought even then, but at something just behind and above me—but the smile seemed to keep wandering from her mouth to her own golden eyes, and then back by way of the warm dark of her cheeks and brow. And Lukassa—Lukassa was the one who looked straight at me in that first moment, with high color in her face and a look of laughter barely held in. I had never seen her look at all like that, and oh, Tikat went through me like a slash of ice. I could not help it.

What did I feel, in that little room with those three women I loved, and the door creeping shut behind me of its own slow weight? What do you think I felt? I was hot and cold by turns: lips and ears afire one minute, stomach frozen solid the next. Lal’s vagrant smile had me trembling until I could hardly stand, while Lukassa’s flushed cheekbones turned me rigid as one of those enchanted idiots in the players’ shows. And Nyateneri? I took her left hand as gently as I could—it seemed to cry out in my grasp, like a trapped animal—and I kissed it, and then I raised up on my toes (only slightly, mind you) and I kissed her on the mouth, saying as loudly as I could, “I love you.” And I had never said that before in my life, although I had been with a woman, more or less.

Nyateneri sighed into my mouth. I can still taste that sigh today, all wine and surrender—more to herself than to me, certainly, but what did I care then? She said something against my lips—I don’t know what it was she said. Over her shoulder I could see the fox in the corner, eyes shut tight, ears and body stiff with attention, red tongue smoothing his whiskers, left, right.

No, I did not sweep her up on the instant and carry her across the room to the bed (so few strides for so great a journey!). In the first place, I would likely enough have injured myself, being new at this, too; in the second, my first step had a wine bottle under it, and Nyateneri herself had to catch me up; and in the third place—well, in the third place there stood Lal and Lukassa. And whatever else you choose to believe of me, and of my story, believe that I was a modest boy. Lustful, certainly; ignorant and fearful, without question; but not vain. Vanity came a stride or two later.