The villager was still covered in the filth from his pigsty as he stomped into the tavern’s courtyard. Konrad, however, was used to bad smells and worse hygiene. For him, the furious scowl and mindless glare on the man’s face served as the first warning of impending ugliness.
“You foul whores!” The man’s voice was both shrill and raspy. His eyes were a dense black that seemed to deepen the overlay of shadow within the walled courtyard. “My son is not for the likes of you.”
The insult, which was directed at two of his favorite people in the world entire, almost caused Konrad to set aside his first rule. If you can kill most people who annoy you, he wondered yet again, why should you exercise restraint?
His answer was the same as it had been generations ago. Restraint permitted the possibility of honor and friendships. And life was far too long to endure in solitude.
Still, men who sprayed ignorance before them every time they opened their mouths and dripped it behind them as they blundered through the world, like hyenas that had just exited a deep stream, did test his resolve.
“I will whip your foul corruption from this place,” the man raved. If he had been on a stage, perhaps the droplets of spittle from his mouth might be visible to those in the first few rows. His promise might lack originality, but he did sound sincere.
A stretched moment of silence was broken only by the gentle thump as Konrad’s mug landed on the table. He had never been a man who easily tolerated insults to the superb players who traveled with him, and he had a particular fondness for his two female companions. Both were capable and extremely proud women. They might prefer to protect themselves; they might even be amused rather than offended. In either case, he was annoyed, and he was the leader of this fine troupe.
A sharp gesture and a released trickle of Konrad’s power sent the rude hyena flying backwards and upwards over the courtyard’s wall, and deposited him in what undoubtedly was a winded heap of surprised humanity somewhere on the other side. In a just world, Konrad expected that bones would have broken during his landing; in this world, the man most likely escaped with a bruise on his ass.
For ten long seconds, none of the revelers in the tavern courtyard moved or said anything. A small flock of happily oblivious swallows darted acrobatically across the sky above them. The stiff breeze that swirled within the courtyard and buffeted slowly numbing noses probably meant little to the inebriated men of the village—perhaps they did not even notice it.
Konrad’s companions, though, knew him well enough to interpret the sign as evidence of a wrestling match with his temper, and while his friends might be confident in his eventual victory, they were wise enough to stay clear of the struggle. He had pledged long ago never to kill another person, a pledge that was much more difficult to keep than he had expected. Power, any type of power, is so easy to use and so difficult to stop using. Konrad had acted to preempt a response from his two female companions: both controlled power enough to have sent the man on an even longer aerial journey and had nasty, convoluted senses of humor. But by acting, he had removed the leash from his own darker impulses, and chaining them up again was difficult.
The paralysis of the villagers had more mundane origins. They were dealing with the surprise of seeing a harmless cat turn into a mountain lion and, even worse, one that was sitting in their midst. Actors were funny and entertaining. Actors traveled with beautiful women. (Even in the middle of their mental turmoil, most of the villagers kept one increasingly unfocused eye on the intoxicating figures of the two women in Konrad’s troupe.) Actors were harmless. Weak.
That illusion shredded in the minds of the onlookers even before the breeze calmed.
Konrad, who was sitting on a flat bench in the courtyard, chugged the last few swallows of ale in his mug before slapping a hand down on the trestle table. A dangling strand of ivy brushed his back as he stood; the walls were as tall as a man and covered with ropy growth; the soil here was rich and dark, and it rained fairly frequently—a farmer’s paradise.
Twenty pairs of eyes followed his movements, but six of those pairs mattered most because they belonged to his fellow actors and actresses. The sun was only three hours past its highest point in the sky, but the courtyard’s walls and the overhanging trees offered the drinkers ample protection from its heat. Even within the shade provided by an ancient oak tree, Konrad could see the rippling wave of disappointment cross their faces. They were having such a wonderful time.
“Sorry, my brothers and sisters,” he said, “but our fun is over for now. Time to move along.”
A chorus of groans—melodious and harmonized, of course, for he traveled only with the very best players—arose from the circle of alcoholically mellowed actors around him. The Berry brothers—John and Morton—made the least noise, which was predictable. They were the troupe’s acrobats, the best at playing the fight scenes, and not so coincidentally, they were the best at sneaking through darkness and at getting out of locked rooms. Necessary skills, on occasion.
The Teacher—Allyn of Khartras was his birth name but only Konrad used it, and only rarely—was loud, but then he was always loud. Tall, thin, he blazed with a different fire than the uptight man who had interrupted their revelry, and it almost seemed to be consuming him. Soaking wet, with stones in his pockets, he might—might—weigh as much as Lady Trouble did.
And Big William, of course, carefully calibrated his groan so that it did not draw too much additional attention to him. The troupe’s men knew that they were bit players in this scene; the featured performers were the two women.
“Oh, truly, Konrad?” The question came from Lady Trouble, one of the actresses, who was tapping her chin with one exquisitely manicured fingernail as she spoke. She unleashed her smile on the onlookers. “But this village is such a delight. The young men are so . . . vigorous.”
Lady Trouble somehow paired the gleeful innocence of a mischievous child with the knowing eyes of an experienced courtesan. In face and form, she had all of the features, curves, and textures necessary to inflame almost any man’s desire. Her definition of fun, though, struck many others as the same as torture.
Yet if she had an equal in beauty anywhere in the Seven Kingdoms, it might be the woman sitting across from her.
The other woman—all dark hair and dark eyes, dressed in dark fabric, and, honesty compelled Konrad to note, the frequent victim of dark moods—let out a sad, soft groan. To Konrad’s eyes, the sound almost appeared to knock several burly young men off of their benches.
“For once, I find myself in agreement with the Lady,” Madam Lovely said, her lips pouting. “But I hope that if we must leave this delightful settlement, we might visit a burg or a city. The grown men here are so serious and so ripe with the scents of nature. I like their muscles, to be sure, but I do wish they had access to more fragrant soaps. They would be happier, and I truly miss smelling perfume on someone else’s body.”
Konrad smiled. “Sadly, we must be going,” he said. “Once that nasty fellow denounces us, this village’s leaders surely will declare us to be bad influences on their morals.” The energy needed to fend off a mob might draw unwanted attention from those with the power to truly inconvenience or even kill him and his companions. And in Konrad’s experience, such a confrontation always cost them dearly. Running was less satisfying but also far less risky.
A bark of laughter escaped Big William, who was sitting across the table. It actually sounded more like a bear’s frustrated roar, but Big William was among friends who knew the differences between his various noises. Even Konrad winced at the sound Big William made when he was truly angry. Fortunately, sometime before the Interregnum, during the worst of the chaos after the Old Empire’s collapse, was the last time William had lost his temper, and that was long ago.
“Us?” Big William’s amused roar sounded again. “The boys and I haven’t done anything but drink a few dozen ales. Trouble and Lovely, though, have been . . . busy. If we have to eat dust on the road so soon, it’s their fault.”
“Duly noted,” Konrad said, in an appropriately severe tone. The tone was for the ladies; his small scowl, though, included Big William. “But what you showed our audience members during Act III last night undoubtedly will be a topic of their deliberations.”
“That was art,” Big William protested, “and at least I kept my shirt on. Trouble took off everything. Talk about an attentive audience. John even dropped a pin on the stage; you should have seen his smirk. He should be ashamed of dropping out of character.” A peanut, thrown from the other end of the table with pinpoint accuracy, bounced off of William’s nose. John Berry was a man of few words when he was drinking, but he knew how to throw.
A tolling reverberation from the church’s bell floated across the village like an ominous thundercloud; an answering cluck escaped from Konrad’s month. This was a pious village, but today was an unusual day for a mass and no smart priest packed his parishioners into a poorly ventilated church at three hours past noon. Not anywhere in the Seven Kingdoms, which were located on a large island far enough south that its inhabitants saw snow far less frequently than did people in the Tiberian Empire.
The church’s bell had another use: signaling a gathering of the village’s men and most prominent property holders. And Konrad could see only one obvious reason for calling such a gathering: he and his merry band of friends.
“We’ll discuss it on the road,” Konrad responded. “For now, let us go.”
The six other players stood and followed him out of the courtyard. Theirs was a graceful procession, because the entire world was a stage, after all, and they were the best actors on it.
#
Less than half an hour later, Konrad and his troupe were on the road again, already several miles from the village. He, Big William, and Lady Trouble were riding, and the dust of the late summer puffed up under their mounts’ hooves. The rest of the troupe rode on the wagon that also carried their costumes and stage weapons—it was a cleaner ride, but the wagon’s wheels occasionally banged into a rut or dip in the road, jarring the bones of the passengers.
In this region of the Seven Kingdoms, most villages were separated from their nearest neighbors by ten or twenty miles of rough, and often partially overgrown, roads. But the encroaching vegetation was more an indication of the soil’s fertility than of sparse traffic. Generations had passed since the fall of the Old Empire, the Recovery that had begun during the days of the current rulers’ grandparents was well along, and commerce was reaching the boiling point in all of the major kingdoms. South Harbor, the largest port city on the island, was less than one hundred miles away, and so a number of traders and caravans frequented this road.
Yet a traveler rarely encountered other people more than once every day or two. So the dust cloud that flared up behind them a few hours after they left the village was a bad sign.
Konrad sighed. They apparently had a posse on their tail.
“Will they kill us?” Lady Trouble asked, clutching at his arm. Her eyes were a blue sea glistening with gathering tears. “Or will you kill them? Protect me and I am yours.”
“Squeeze harder,” he told her, “and open your eyes wider. Take rapid, shallow breaths.”
She nodded and shifted to conform to his suggestions. She became the very picture of a distressed damsel. “You haven’t answered my questions,” Lady Trouble murmured, and then shifted back into character. “Oh, who will save me?”
“Perhaps I like smelling you while you whimper in my ear.”
“No doubt,” she said, “yet I still lack an answer.”
“These are ignorant villagers,” he said, shrugging. “I’m not going to kill them for being stupid. If that was my standard, we’d have no time for rehearsals.”
#
Konrad waited until the posse had ridden to within twenty feet of the wagon, until its members had reined their horses to a halt, until the leader had opened his mouth to speak, before he unleashed a wide stream of power. In two seconds, ten men had been lifted from their saddles, and imprisoned in invisible cages above the ground. Bulging eyes and faces twisted into panicked grimaces were omnipresent.
“I am afraid these good people are under my protection,” Konrad drawled. “You will not be allowed to harm them. The only question now is whether you and your men will feel pain on this day.”
“We’re not here to hurt you,” the leader, the only one that Konrad was allowing enough freedom of motion to speak, forced out against the constriction around his torso and throat.
“Really?” Konrad smiled. “Well, that is a relief. The last gentleman from your village used the word whip; I do not like that word, and I am pleased to hear that you might agree. Tell me more.” He released the man, who thumped back onto his horse’s saddle.
Konrad did not release the others, and the nine members of the posse dangled behind the leader, a few feet above ten immobilized horses, all of which had skittish looks in their eyes. If the horses had larger brains, they might have supplemented their fear with bafflement. Instead, though, instinct ruled—the horses were merely terrified. A regrettable necessity.
The man coughed and rubbed at his throat. “So you’re that Konrad,” he said.
“Yes,” Konrad admitted.
“I told them there was more to your group than met the eye.” The man glanced over at Lady Trouble and blood tinged his cheeks. “But I’m afraid their eyes were focused on . . .”
Lady Trouble, a lover of language, tried to be helpful. “My lips? My breasts? My stomach?” She paused and raised an eyebrow. “My—”
“On a more engaging sight,” the man burst out, disrupting the progression of Lady Trouble’s helpful suggestions.
Her velvety laughter sent a shiver down Konrad’s spine; the effect on the villager was rather more dramatic. The man’s face turned as red as a well-washed beet.
“Oh, I like him,” Lady Trouble said. “He is so polite and so emotional. Perhaps when you are finished talking, he and I might converse. At length.”
Konrad held up one hand to quell her. “I am that Konrad,” he told the posse’s leader. “And if not for the horde of poor imitators, perhaps your foul fellow would have displayed better manners. But although various bards have exaggerated my temper, I’m really not inclined to let anyone mistreat my companions.”
Through no intention of his own, Konrad had become known as a member of the Trickster Pantheon. Many people considered him to be a god, which he knew was an incorrect belief. Unfortunately, when short-lived people found out that he had witnessed the days before the fall of the Old Empire, they were all too eager to label him and his peers as gods.
In most cases, perhaps all cases, their faith was sadly misplaced. Like other mages, Konrad could draw on the power stored even in the smallest particle of living or nonliving things; he was simply very, very good at doing so, which opened up a treasure box of new possibilities—an extended lifespan was simply the most important but not necessarily the most difficult usage.
So, yes, he was a powerful man, but certainly not a god. Indeed, during his long life, Konrad had only met one person who might have a legitimate claim to that title—a god, a truly immortal being with apparently limitless power—and the man claimed he did not know for certain what he was. Konrad was awaiting further evidence before reaching his own conclusion.
“Please,” the villager said. “We’re not here for the reasons you think. My name is Adam, and I was sent to try to repair some of the damage Donald caused by confronting you. The village council voted against his request: you and your troupe are welcome to return.”
Konrad felt the eyes of Lady Trouble and the rest of his troupe fall upon him. More accurately, he felt the weight of their barely repressed hilarity. They loved to see him as the surprised victim of his own mistaken assumptions. He shrugged. “That was wise,” he told Adam. “Word travels quickly in our circles.”
Adam nodded. “And the years would seem longer without the entertainment offered by troupes like yours.”
“I am surprised. We so rarely encounter people who live up to their own beliefs.” But because Konrad was the person whom he was, he could not resist a jab at his troupe. “Do you truly think that we should return? My companions are the best in the world at stirring emotions, and they undoubtedly will continue to enjoy themselves in your village. That surly moron—Donald?—soon will discover new reasons to be angry.”
Adam winced, but then nodded bravely. “The hospitality laws are clear. You were welcomed and can remain until you commit a serious crime. Sex with the willing, even those who are married and should know better, is not a crime.”
“I am awed—awed—by your council’s wisdom and integrity,” Konrad said.
In fact, he was. Only then did he realize how deeply cynicism’s roots had reached into him. The clouds seemed to cover the sun for a moment. Or perhaps his dramatic instinct thought that they should be doing so.
Adam dipped his head before locking eyes with Konrad again. “I won’t lie to you,” he said. “Some members of the council wanted to track you down and use the tar and feathers. The vote was close.”
Konrad nodded. “Then let’s not overly test your virtue’s stamina. We will stay one more night, so that we can leave you your pride, even as we disrupt your domestic harmony.”
“That is wonderful news,” Lady Trouble said, kneeing her horse forward and grasping the man’s arm. “You have saved me from a vile fate—can you imagine me wearing nothing but tar and feathers?—and I am overflowing with gratitude. We will have hours—hours, I say—for our talk. I quiver with anticipation.”
To Konrad’s eyes, the man seemed to be quivering, too, but his expression seemed to be almost fearful, which was confusing. Lady Trouble did not generally scare people.
Konrad released his hold on the remaining men and the horses. The men thumped down on their horses’ backs, while no fewer than seven of the horses decorated the landscape with large chunks of dung. A fertilizing stench quickly surrounded them.
Hearty laughter came from the Teacher. “If one were a philosopher,” he said, grinning at Konrad and untying the strip of cloth that held his long black hair back in a ponytail, “one might interpret this as a commentary on the human condition or simply as the droppings of these seven terrified animals. Is it the first, do you think? We may need ale to stimulate our thoughts. Lots of ale. Kegs of it.”
Konrad winced. Both he and the people of the village had a long night ahead of them.
#
Six hours, and any number of awkward apologies or thwarted glares, later, Konrad was matching stares with Donald in the tavern’s courtyard. The man might be a raving idiot, but he had a backbone, Konrad had to admit. Undoubtedly, the fanatical Donald was memorizing the names of weak former friends who succumbed to the depravity so freely indulged in by Konrad’s companions, and pondering further punishments for them. The thought affirmed Konrad’s doubts about humanity’s humaneness, and he was sipping morbidly at a mug filled with fine, nutty ale when Adam joined him at his table.
“I need your help,” Adam said. “Your companion is . . . determined. And quite explicit about her desire to bed me. I don’t want that to happen.”
“You don’t?”
“No,” the man said. “Well, yes. But no.”
“Ah,” Konrad observed.
Adam grimaced. “My betrothed died from the Two-Day Sickness less than six months ago. Bedding your companion would feel like a betrayal.”
“I see,” Konrad said. He looked over Adam’s shoulder to where Lady Trouble hovered patiently and at a discrete distance, like a benign praying mantis. She was always gracious. “Lady Trouble, I must ask you to choose another. This man is grieving for a lost love, and we will respect his grief.”
She approached the table. “If you had told me,” she reproached her former prey, “I would have understood. I am not intentionally cruel.” A woeful sigh, a mournful shrug, and an abrupt start, as if an idea had only just entered her mind, and then Lady Trouble bestowed her most radiant smile upon Konrad. “It seems that, finally, you must satisfy me.”
Konrad shook his head, smiling gently at the Lady. “I know that you will respect my grief as well.”
She lifted up her hands, as if she were praying. “For two hundred years? Isn’t that a bit much to expect of me?” They were rhetorical questions. “You are simply impossible,” she said. Taking a deep breath and rallying, she seated herself at the table, very close beside Adam, who flinched. “Oh, be at ease. You are safe now, and I—I—am doomed to a night of boredom, to hours of loneliness, unless I can find someone else worthy of my regard. Any suggestions?”
Before Adam could answer, Big William walked into the courtyard with a mug in hand. Even though his broad shoulders nearly brushed the doorjambs, the loud revelry from the common room floated through the door with him, merging with the only slightly more subdued celebrations at the outside tables. He said nothing as he joined the rest of the troupe at its table, contenting himself with sipping his ale. They all turned toward him anyway; these ostentatious sips were part of his routine.
“The Empire has taken Kimmelsport,” Big William finally shared. “One trader said that Emperor Marcus himself fought on the walls or in the city—he wasn’t certain—during the taking. His army suffered few casualties and remains in good shape.”
The news brought back old memories. Konrad had been young, less than two hundred years old, and only recently come to full mastery of his power when the Old Empire imploded in an orgy of savage butchery. He still remembered walking on snow, listening to the rolling crunches under his feet, as the long columns of refugees had fled to the south. And the east. And west.
Almost ten years passed before the memories of the blood-sodden heaps of bodies and the emaciated corpses of starved children faded enough to allow him to laugh again. He had never returned to the Empire in all the years since then, and he was not pleased to hear that the Empire had stepped closer to him. Nor, for different reasons, was at least one of his companions.
A shocking expletive escaped from Madam Lovely’s dainty mouth. She was sitting beside Konrad, so he had a close look at her thwarted glare. “You must cheat,” she muttered to Big William. “What witchery lets you hear news so quickly?”
“Before you hear it, you mean,” Big William riposted. “I don’t need to cheat. I have a lot of friends with good ears. And thanks to our patron here, I pay them well for such valuable tidbits.” He shrugged. “It only looks like witchcraft.”
“Oh, please,” she said. “You know that I hate modest men.”
Big William grinned. “Madam Lovely, you don’t hate anyone, so far as I know.”
Madam Lovely blushed. Konrad almost doubted his own eyes, but it was true—she blushed. “Well,” she muttered. “Well, I like some people more than others. Right now, I like most of them more than I like you.” She glanced at Konrad and sighed. “So it is once again time to move away from this part of the world. Perhaps east to the Free Cities?”
Konrad enjoyed her surprise as he shook his head. He cleared his throat. Ostentatiously. “Now, we know our destination for the journey beginning in the morning,” he announced. “We’re off to Ravenwood.”
Ravenwood was a large and wealthy duchy, with a capital city of the same name, and in normal circumstances, it would have been a wonderful destination for the troupe. Now, though, a simple fact of geography disrupted any visions of lucrative playing fees: Ravenwood was immediately southwest of Kimmelsport. From point to point, the distance between the two cities was a ten-day march for an army.
The Teacher choked on a swallow of ale. “Ravenwood?” He croaked, wiping at his mouth and clutching his mug close to his chest—the gesture was a bit overdone, Konrad thought. “Have you finally lost your sanity, old friend? If William’s news is correct—and I do not doubt that it is,” he added hastily as the spymaster’s face darkened, “then that whole region is about to light off into a furnace of war. The Empire will almost certainly move on Ravenwood next. And if the Emperor is traveling with the army, he will have his best mages with him.”
There was old history between Konrad and the Empire’s mages. Old but very, very bloody history. If they learned that Konrad had returned to lands within their reach, they might try, once again, to end his long life.
Konrad smacked his scholarly companion on the back. “Exactly,” he boomed in his second-best stage voice. “He’d be a fool not to go to Ravenwood. And we shall meet him there.”
With a mournful moan, Teacher stumbled up from his bench. “But why?” Without even waiting for an answer, he headed toward the door leading into the tavern; perhaps he was shifting to something stronger than ale.
Konrad left the question unanswered as he met an appraising stare from Big William.
“Emperor Marcus is making a miscalculation,” Big William said. One hand rubbed his neatly trimmed beard. “The Three Cities will not stand aside this time. They will aid Ravenwood. So will King Martin of Khartras. The Emperor is going to touch off a huge war.”
Konrad nodded. “Yes, he is,” he said, “but do not be so quick to assume that Marcus will be surprised. He might want that war now.”
“Unification?” Big William’s tone was incredulous. “He’s gambling everything on one roll of the dice.”
“I believe so, yes.”
Big William chugged all of the ale in his mug, as if he needed an excuse to do so. “Then Teacher’s question was a better one than I knew: why are we going to Ravenwood?”
“Wars suck the humor from a people,” Konrad muttered. “Ravenwood’s men and women will need something to laugh at. I think we all will.” He surveyed his fellow actors. “Dust off the pages of your comedies, my friends. We are done with tragedies for the while.”
Adam, who was sitting on Konrad’s right, listening quietly but with wide eyes to the exchange, cleared his throat. “I, for one, will be sorry to see you go.” The man had apparently mustered his courage, because he glanced at Lady Trouble. “All of you.”
Konrad reached out and touched Adam’s shoulder. “The hyenas tend to feed in our wake,” he said. “Our dear friend Donald might hold a grudge against you for sitting at our table.”
Adam stared across the courtyard at the brooding sentinel of morality, who was sitting at a table with his arms crossed and a sour expression on his face, and Konrad and his fellows saw a bit of the tempered steel within their new friend as the stare turned into a glare, into a contest of wills.
“I can handle him,” Adam asserted, tilting his head to spit on the packed mixture of hay and dirt that covered the courtyard.
Konrad, for one, believed him, and signaled his approval by tapping his mug against Adam’s. Both men drank deeply, as if trying to clear their mouths of a foul taste.
The revelry that evening was more subdued than the troupe’s normal gatherings, but his friends were nothing if not resilient. The men consumed copious quantities of ale, and the two women dented the tavern’s stock of the finest red wines.
Konrad drank very little, instead spending his time talking to Adam about the village’s struggle to claim more arable land from the surrounding forests and swamps, about its internal squabbles over religion and money and dowries. What fascinated him even more than the subjects they discussed was Adam’s tenacious optimism and unself-conscious enjoyment of his life here in the village.
Konrad was still feeding off of that heady dose of optimism when he stepped away from the table. Otherwise, he would never have taken the risk of halting briefly at Donald’s table.
For a moment, neither of them said anything. The fire burning in Donald’s eyes contrasted starkly with the rigid slabs of the man’s cheeks and the thin line of his mouth.
Konrad scowled. “You offend me,” he murmured. “Your continued existence causes me to doubt that goodness rules this world. But it might ease your mind to know that my people and I will wait until your life has ended before we pass this way again.”
Surely the man’s wife, or mother, or children, or someone loved him. People found worth in the strangest places.
Konrad stopped outside of the courtyard to rest his ears before retiring for the night. Leaning his back against the cool stones of the wall, he watched the sky. It was free of clouds, and he knew, in an approximate sense, just how far away the twinkling stars actually were. Like most of his peers, he had traveled partway toward them before eventually realizing how boring the trip was going to be.
Standing a few paces away from the wall and inhaling deep breaths of the cool air, he still heard the light rustle of fabric from his left.
“You surprised me tonight,” Madam Lovely said. She moved beside him. “And the answer you offered to William leaves me unsatisfied. What has changed in you? What has decided you to put us back within the Empire’s reach?”
Konrad shrugged and faced her. The moonlight was faint but bright enough for him to see her eyes. In them shone the compassion and kindness that the troupe members cherished and which was their secret reason for her stage name. Those same qualities were some of the reasons why he had loved her sister so deeply. The Empire’s mages had failed to kill him two hundred years ago, but they had managed to kill her sister Miriam, his lover, and three other friends. Good friends.
On his bad days, Konrad still wished that he could have lain beside Miriam and died with her. The sigh that the remembered pain pushed from his lungs was somehow distinguishable from those he often loosed when he was acting. A mystery of his craft—real pain always trumped pretend versions, although on rare occasions the difference was slight. His best explanation for the difference was that the mind knew when it was seeing something beautiful. The most tragic production in the world was still a transient piece of art. Still a work of beauty.
“I met a man today who was able to transcend ignorance,” Konrad answered, “and he was not alone in this small village. Not alone, even in a village where people like Donald also live. Humanity is a stew, not a broth. The reminder was one I apparently needed. Again.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know yet,” he admitted. “But I am going to take an active role. There are too many rotten ingredients in the stew.” He smiled against the wave of sadness that rose up within him. “Donald must have a large family.”
During the trip to Ravenwood, Konrad suspected that he would spend hours seeking for a way to act without adding to the ranks of his worshipers or killing all of the ignorant yet functionally innocent pig herders who inevitably stood among the ranks of the Emperor’s regiments and walked on the streets of the Empire’s cities, towns, and villages.
“Be careful,” Madam Lovely said. “You could lose more than your life on this trip.” She hesitated, staring up at the shining stars. “But I believe you’ll think of something.”
Konrad certainly hoped so. Perhaps he would find a different solution. Perhaps there also might be some way to make sure that someone else received all of the credit, to find someone else who could carry the burden of good deeds. A god surely would never need to grapple with such choices.
