
and as pretty as a girl, but what made him most attractive was that he never noticed
the attention he got, making Savn think of Master Wag’s story about the norska and
the wolf.
Savn looked around the house to see if Firi was there, and was both disappointed
and relieved not to see her; disappointed because she was certainly the prettiest girl in
town, and relieved because whenever he even thought about speaking to her he felt he
had no place to put his hands.
It was only during harvest that Savn was allowed to purchase a noon meal,
because he had to work from early in the morning until it was time for him to go to
Master Wag, and his parents had decided that he needed and de—
served the sustenance. And because there was no good way to allow Savn to buy a
lunch and deny one to his sister, who would be working at the harvest all day, they
allowed her to accompany him to Tern’s house on the condition that she return at
once. After they had eaten, Polyi returned home while Savn continued on to Master
Wag’s. As he was walking away, he glanced up at the roof of Tern’s house, but the
jhereg had not returned.
The day at Master Wag’s passed quickly and busily, with mixing herbs, receiving
lessons, and keeping the Master’s place tidy. The Master, who was stoop-shouldered
and balding, and had eyes like a bird of prey, told Savn, for the fourth time, the story
of the Badger in the Quagmire, and how he swapped places with the Clever Chreotha.
Savn thought he might be ready to tell that one himself, but he didn’t tell Master Wag
this, because he might be wrong, and the Master had a way of mocking Savn for
mistakes of overconfidence that left him red-faced for hours.
So he just listened, and absorbed, and washed the Master’s clothes with water
drawn from the Master’s well, and cleaned out the empty ceramic pots, and helped fill
them with ground or whole herbs, and looked at drawings of the lung and the heart,
and stayed out of the way when a visitor came to the Master for physicking.
On the bad days, Savn found himself checking the time every half hour. On the
good days, he was always surprised when the Master said, “Enough for now. Go on
home.” This was one of the good days. Savn took his leave, and set off. The afternoon
was still bright beneath the orange-red sky.
The next thing to happen, which was really the first for our purposes, occurred as
Savn was returning home. The Master lived under the shadow of Smallcliff along the
Upper Brownclay River, which was half a league from the village, and of course that
was where he gave Savn lessons; he was the Master, Savn only an apprentice.
About halfway between Smallcliff and the village was a place where a couple of
trails came together in front of the Curving Stone. Just past this was a flattened road
leading down to Lord Smallcliff’s manor house, and it was just there that Savn saw
the stranger, who was bent over, scraping at the road with some sort of tool.
The stranger looked up quickly, perhaps when he heard Savn’s footsteps, and
cursed under his breath and looked up at the sky, scowling, before looking more fully
at the lad. Only when the stranger straightened his back did Savn realize that he was
an Easterner. They stared at each other for the space of a few heartbeats. Savn had
never met an Easterner before. The Easterner was slightly smaller than Savn, but had
that firm, settled look that comes with age; it was very odd. Savn didn’t know what to
say. For that matter, he didn’t know if they spoke the same language.
“Good evening,” said the Easterner at last, speaking like a native, although a
native of a place considerably south of Smallcliff.
Savn gave him a good evening, too, and, not knowing what to do next, waited. It
was odd, looking at someone who would grow old and die while you were still young.
He’s probably younger than I am right now, thought Savn, startled. The Easterner was