Jonas’s glass first. “Now, my friend, tell me everything you’ve done since the three troublesome boys arrived, and everything you know, and everything you have planned. I would not have you leave out a single jot.”
“First show me your sigul.”
“Of course. How prudent you are.”
The man in black reached inside his robe and brought out a square of metal—silver, Jonas guessed. He tossed it onto the table, and it clattered across to Jonas’s plate. Engraved on it was what he had expected—that hideous staring eye.
“Satisfied?”
Jonas nodded.
“Slide it back to me.”
Jonas reached for it, but for once his normally steady hand resembled his reedy, unstable voice. He watched the fingers tremble for a moment, then lowered the hand quickly to the table.
“I . . . I don’t want to.”
No. He didn’t want to. Suddenly he knew that if he touched it, the engraved silver eye would roll . . . and look directly at him.
The man in black tittered and made a come-along gesture with the fingers of his right hand. The silver buckle (that was what it looked like to Jonas) slid back to him . . . and up the sleeve of his homespun robe.
“Abracadabra! Bool! The end! Now,” the man in black went on, sipping his wine delicately, “if we have finished the tiresome formalities . . .”
“One more,” Jonas said. “You know my name; I would know yours.”
“Call me Walter,” the man in black said, and the smile suddenly fell off his lips. “Good old Walter, that’s me. Now let us see where we are, and where we’re going. Let us, in short, palaver.”
14
When Cuthbert came back into the bunkhouse, night had fallen. Roland and Alain were playing cards. They had cleaned the place up so that it looked almost as it had (thanks to turpentine found in a closet of the old foreman’s office, even the slogans written on the walls were just pink ghosts of their former selves), and now were deeply involved in a game of Casa Fuerte, or Hotpatch, as it was known in their own part of the world. Either way, it was basically a two-man version of Watch Me, the card-game which had been played in barrooms and bunkhouses and around campfires since the world was young.
Roland looked up at once, trying to read Bert’s emotional weather. Outwardly, Roland was as impassive as ever, had even played Alain to a draw across four difficult hands, but inwardly he was in a turmoil of pain and indecision. Alain had told him what Cuthbert had said while the two of them stood talking in the yard, and they were terrible things to hear from a friend, even when they came at second hand. Yet what haunted him more was what Bert had said just before leaving: You’ve called your carelessness love and made a virtue of irresponsibility. Was there even a chance he had done such a thing? Over and over he told himself no—that the course he had ordered them to follow was hard but sensible, the only course that made sense. Cuthbert’s shouting was just so much angry wind, brought on by nerves . . . and his fury at having their private place defiled so outrageously. Still . . .
Tell him he’s right for the wrong reasons, and that makes him all the way wrong.
That couldn’t be.
Could it?
Cuthbert was smiling and his color was high, as if he had galloped most of the way back. He looked young, handsome, and vital. He looked happy, in fact, almost like the Cuthbert of old—the one who’d been capable of babbling happy nonsense to a rook’s skull until someone told him to please, please shut up.
But Roland didn’t trust what he saw. There was something wrong with the smile, the color in Bert’s cheeks could have been anger rather than good health, and the sparkle in his eyes looked like fever instead of humor. Roland showed nothing on his own face, but his heart sank. He’d hoped the storm would blow itself out, given a little time, but he didn’t think it had. He shot a glance at Alain, and saw that Alain felt the same.
Cuthbert, it will be over in three weeks. If only I could tell you that.
The thought which returned was stunning in its simplicity:
Why can’t you?
He realized he didn’t know. Why had he been holding back, keeping his own counsel? For what purpose? Had he been blind? Gods, had he?
“Hello, Bert,” he said, “did you have a nice r—”
“Yes,