Guy Gavriel Kay – Ysabel (страница 15)

“Melanie said more than two hundred thousand.”

“Who’s Melanie again?”

“My father’s assistant. I told you yesterday. She has notes on everything.”

“What a geek.” Kate grinned. “Way, way more than two hundred thousand. Some people say half a million, with the women and children. Some say more.”

Ned whistled softly. It seemed called for. Someone glanced over and he grimaced an apology. He tried to imagine that many people moving across a landscape and gave up. He couldn’t visualize it: just got an image of computer-generated orcs.

“Anyhow,” Kate said, “Rome ordered Marius here from Africa and he took charge. They’d been creamed by the tribes in that first battle, and all the soldiers were afraid of them.”

“But he won?”

“Spoiling the ending, you. Yeah, he won. From what I gather, he steered them into a trap by the mountain. He had a better position, and when the fight started some of his men ambushed the Celts’ camp where their families were. When they turned to defend them, the Romans just pounded on them from behind and it was a massacre. That’s your two hundred thousand dead. Marius saves the day. They built him monuments around here, but they’ve all fallen down.”

Ned looked at her awhile. “You’re good, you know.”

She shrugged. “Google is your friend.”

“Nope. You’re good.” He finished his orange juice. “So, like, if he hadn’t beat them, they’d have taken Rome?”

“Maybe. No Roman Empire. Celts settle Italy. Really different world. This battle was a huge deal.”

Ned shook his head. “Why doesn’t anyone know this stuff?”

“You kidding? People don’t even know World War Two.”

He looked at her. “I really need that paper of yours.”

“I’ll bet you do. I’ll think about it.” She hesitated. “I mean, no, of course I’ll give it to you. But doesn’t it seem pretty trivial after what—”

“Kate, it seems completely trivial! Essays? Are you kidding me? But if I think too much about this afternoon or yesterday I’ll freak.”

“There’s…nothing now? Inside you?”

He faked a shrug. “I’m too distracted by that way-cool tank top of yours.”

“No jokes. Tell me.”

“I told you. Nothing today since we left the battlefield. Nothing yesterday from the time our guy walked out on us. N-O-thing.”

“Have you tried to…?” she trailed off.

“Tried to what?” He knew he was sounding irritated, and knew it was unfair. “Control it? You gonna play Yoda now? ‘Use the Force, Young Ned’?”

“Stop joking.”

“I have to joke or I’ll go screwy with this. Be grateful you aren’t dealing with it!”

She was silent a moment. “I am,” she said. “I am grateful. But I was there too. I’m not trying to hassle you.”

Ned felt ashamed. “I’m not being cool, am I? Sorry.”

“Hard to be cool if you’re tasting blood and stuff.”

“Yeah.” He couldn’t think of anything else to say.

Kate waved her hand for the bill. “Okay, I’ll take off. Call me tomorrow, if you like. After school.”

“Don’t go yet,” he said quickly. She looked at him. “I…there’s no one else I can talk to. I need to touch base. If you don’t mind.”

“I said call me. I meant it.” She flushed a little.

He sighed. “I did try, actually, middle of last night, to see if I could feel anything. Problem is, I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing, or controlling. Maybe I do need a Jedi Master.”

“Not me, Young Ned. I can give you an essay, though. Want me to email it?”

“That’d be good.” She took out her notebook and he gave her his hotmail address, and added his new cell number.

“Reminds me,” she said. “You asked about Celts, where they were around here?”

“And of course you found out. Google is your friend?”

“Google is my midnight lover.”

“I’m not sure I’m ready to hear that, actually.”

She laughed. “They were all over the area. Which figured. There’s one place I’ve seen that we can walk to if you want. Above the city.”

The waiter came by and they paid for their drinks.

“Might as well,” Ned said. “Can’t tomorrow, we’re going to Arles.”

She nodded. “Day after? Thursday? Meet after school, say, outside Cézanne’s studio? Can you find it? We have to go that way.”

“I’ll find it. Where are we going?”

“It’s called Entremont. Where the Celts were based before the Romans built this city.”

“Okay. I’ll be outside that studio at five. I’ll call you tomorrow, when we get back from Arles.”

“Cool.” She got up, stuffed the notepad in her pack. They walked out together. On the street he turned to her.

“Thanks, Kate.”

She shrugged. “Down, boy. You may not like the essay.”

“Now who’s joking?”

She made a face. “Okay. You’re welcome. Call me.”

She gave him a little flip-wave with one hand, then turned and walked along the cobblestones. He watched her go.

Inside the café, the man in the grey leather jacket, two tables over from where they’d been, puts down his newspaper. There is no need to hide his face any more.

He might have learned something here, he is thinking.

A thread, a way into the labyrinth. This is a possibility, no more than that, but it is that. When you were in urgent need and time was very short and your enemy had most of the weapons—at this point—you used tools like these two children, and prayed to your gods.

In one way it is obvious; in another, the girl is entirely right: there are too many choices here. And from where he is—outside the fires—he has no easy way to narrow them down.

There are still too many places, that hasn’t changed, but he’s decided something, sitting here—and these two are at the heart of it, despite what he said to them yesterday.

The boy, from the start. From before the baptistry, since he’s being truthful—and he always is, with himself.

He isn’t certain about the girl. He’d waited and watched them from a distance yesterday, after leaving the cloister. Saw them walk here. Made an assumption they’d be back. If he’d been wrong, if they had met elsewhere, not after school, or not at all, he wouldn’t have been unduly disturbed. Few things affect him that much any more. When he is in the world again, when he returns, his is an entirely focused existence.

He is only ever alive for one thing. Well, two, really.

At the same time, he wasn’t surprised when they did show up here. Nor by what he heard the girl say, from behind the screening pages of Le Monde. They have no business going where they are going two days from now, but he might.

He might have many lives’ worth of business there. Or not. He might lose this time, before it even begins. It has happened. It is unfair, an unbalanced aspect of the combat, but he has long since moved beyond thinking that way. What is fairness, in this dance?

His sitting here is, in the end, just a feeble reaching out for signs—from two children who have nothing to do with the tale. At the same time, he has learned (he’s had a long time to learn) that little is truly coincidence. Things fall into patterns. You can miss patterns, or break them, but they are there. He’d acted upon that yesterday, and now.

He finds a few coins, drops them on the table, rises to go.

“Why didn’t I know you were here?”