Robin Hobb & Steven Brust - The Gypsy

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PROLOGUE

LATE AUTUMN, HALF MOON, WAXING

/ hope you don't mind

If I rest inside your door

Please forgive the snowy footprints

I'm tracking on your floor.

"RED LIGHTS AND NEON"

Doom teka teka teka doom teka tek.

Doom teka teka teka doom teka tek..

Doom teka teka teka doom teka tek.

There is something about the sound of the tambou-

rine.

The zils rattle or ring in the same tones and pitches

as the kettles in which you heat the water or stew the

meat, and the calfskin head that is as old as Nagy-

papa will predict the rain by saying dum or the dry-

ness by saying doooooom. When the tambourine is

played well, the feet move on wings of their own, and

the heart leaps with them, while the lips/ distant ob-

servers above, cannot help but smile a little/ no mat-

ter how somber the mood. This is why the dance and

the laughter are one, and whoever says different is

either deluded or in the service of You Know Who.

And You Know Who has many servants.

Some are weak, some are strong. Some need guid-

2 THE OYPSY

ance day by day; others, well/ others can work their

evil on their own, and bring more souls into the sway.

For example, there is the Fair Lady, Luci, who—

No. We will not dwell on that now, there is plenty

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of time later. Now, we are remembering the tambou-

rine, which is as perfect a match for the fiddle as the

onion is for the bacon, and the memory of the ear

and the tongue is forever, which is as it should be.

These things stay with a person, no matter how many

years have passed, or what paths he has trod. Once

those sounds are in his blood/ he can never forget—

Never forget—

Umm. . . .

Somewhere, perhaps half a mile to his left, a siren

divided the evening into sections. Why do they call them

sirens, he wondered. What sort of sailor would be at-

tracted to them? The question was rhetorical and ironic.

He wasn't worried. He had no reason to think the

siren was for him, so he continued to stroll down

Saint Thomas, which seemed to be the street where

appliance stores gathered, with a few grocers and li-

quor stores interleaved between them like the thick

cloth that keeps the pottery from breaking against it-

self when—

Umm. . . .

He had been a sailor once—twice? Something like

that. He remembered rope burns on his hands; end-

less buckets of fash soup; toothless, fair-haired men

with food in their beards shouting to him in Dutch;

salt water in his mouth; the sick-sweet smell of rum;

earplugs so the batteries wouldn't deafen him; scrap-

ing sounds of a too-small tool against an ugly green

metal hull; salt water in his mouth. He almost re-

membered meeting a small shark once/ but this could

have been a dream. He'd never met a siren, in any

case.

It was coming closer. He almost ducked into a

storefront from some urge to flee, but there was really

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Prologue 3

no reason to think they were looking for him. He kept

walking.

A wooden door opened almost in his face and a

burly figure in a red plaid jacket walked away from

him. He noticed the jacket and thought. Is it cold, then?

He could see his breath, and there was a light coating

of snow on the sidewalk, so it must be. He looked at

his own clothing and saw only a very thinly woven

cotton shirt/ pale yellow with a few blue threads for

embroidery. He wore baggy blue pants of the same

material, and high doeskin boots. These should not

be enough to keep him warm. Perhaps he ought to

go inside. A sign above the door said ST. THOMAS

BAR, which meant it was a public house. The door

had opened before him, which could as easily be a

Sign as it could be a Trap or nothing at all, and the

siren, which ought not to have anything to do with

him, was getting closer. He opened the door and

stepped inside, entering another alien world, which

is what any new place is, after all, isn't it?

Cigarette smoke, an anemic blue, hung over a pool

table, entwined with a neon BUDWEISER sign, and

crept over to a long bar where a fat man in an apron

was talking with a smiling patron. The fat man's fea-

tures were not unpleasant, and his nose had been

broken at least twice; the patron hunched his shoul-

ders as if the world had been too much for him for a

long time, and he had a large scar down the side of

his neck—a knife scar.

The fat man noticed him and said, "What'll it be?"

"I ... that is, brandy."

"How d'you want it?"

"How—?"

"You all right, buddy?"

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"I think so."

"Want me to call someone?"

"No. Just let me sit down."

4 THE GYPSY

"Sure. Sit down. Maybe you shouldn't have any-

thing right now."

"Maybe you're right."

"You driving?"

"What?"

"You got car keys?"

"Car . . . keys? I don't think so."

"Good. Just sit there for a while and I'll call you a

cab. You got any money?"

"Well, I—I don't know." He put his hands in his

pockets and began removing things; An oddly formed

lump of heavy grey metal, the key to room fourteen

of some hotel somewhere, an empty bottle for sixty-

five milligram pills of Darvon, a nickel and three pen-

nies, He stared at this collection, wondering if it had

any significance. The pillbottle; he remembered

something about that—he had just been trying to get

more pills/ when—what happened? He shook his

head/ frustrated.

The fat man said/ "Shit. Never mind, now. What's

your name?"

"Ummm, Chuck—Charles, I think."

"Yeah, you look like a Charles. Okay/ just sit tight.

No one here will hurt you. You'll feel better in a

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while. I'm Tony, by the way."

"Thank you. Tony. Do not write the letter."

"What?"

"Do not write the letter. It will bounce three times

and bite three times and leaving you kissing dust."

"Is that a poem or something?"

"It is for you."

"What letter are you talking about?"

"I don't know."

The man with the scar looked up. "He some kind

of nut. Tony?"

"Hell if I know."

"Did you write a letter?"

The bartender paused/ glanced at Charles, then

Prologue 5

back at the patron. He cleared his throat. "I just told

you about my daughter."

"The dyke?"

"Shut the fuck up."

"Hey, you said it first."

The bartender stared at a soapy glass in his hand.

"I was gonna write and tell her not to bother coming

home for winter break/ but. ..."

"This guy gives me the creeps. Tony."

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