Running of the Bulls

If you meet somebody like that, you want to keep her forever. I would not have been able to keep Lady Ett forever even without the almost. I understand that now, though I did not then. No one ever keeps Lady Ett for long. She is one of those people, too. It is sad, but there you are.

And here I am, knocking back brandy at The Gilded Peasant. And there is Ett Brashli. And there is the guy she is with now, another Dunliner. His name is Kime Kelbam. The only thing wrong with him, aside from his having her when I do not, is that money dribbles through his fingers like water. He is younger than I am, and he has gone through more cash than I will ever see.

Kime knows Lady Ett and I were tight not so long ago. He cannot very well not know. Ett has never been good at keeping secrets, and she never will be. You need to understand that from the start if you want to have anything to do with her. If knowing bothers him, he has never shown it. He always treats me like an old chum, and he is no different now. He is a good egg, Kime is.

He treats Obert Ohn like an old chum, too. Obert came over here to make something of himself that he could not in Dubyook. He has done a little writing, which is how I know him. Some of it is not too bad. Some of it, I must say, is not too good.

What he has made of himself since he met Ett Brashli is a nuisance. He moons after her as if he just now discovered women. If she told him to take a long hike off a short pier, he might leave her alone. Or he might go and do it—you never can tell. But she will not tell him anything like that. She is too kind. And how many people can resist being worshiped as if they are gods?

“What’s your friend’s name? Do you even know?” Without Ett’s smile, the question would be snotty.

As is, I smile back. When Ett Brashli smiles at you, you cannot help smiling back. “She’s Jajett,” I say. “So there.” I stick out my tongue at Lady Ett like a little kid.

She laughs at me. No, with me. Obert Ohn sends me a look that should stretch me dead on the shabby carpet. I think he must have had his sense of humor surgically removed along with his tonsils when he was small. Naturally, he resents anybody who managed to grow up with a whole one.

Something smashes, back near the bar. Sweet Jajett and the proprietor’s daughter do not get along at all. Two large, burly waiters hustle Jajett to the door. She bites one of them. He slaps her. She bites him again. She has spirit, that one. They throw her out, spirit and all.

“Sirap is getting dull,” Kime says.

“How drunk are you?” I ask him. “They put on a show like that, and you say it’s dull?”

“Maybe it’s getting too exciting,” Ett Brashli says. “They really are the same thing when you look at them the right way, aren’t they?”

“No,” I answer.

She shakes her head in mock sadness. “Poor Baek. Always so literal. What Kime means is, we want to get out of Sirap for a while. Out of Ecnarf altogether, in fact. We’re thinking of taking the train down to Astilia and watching the bulls in Amblona. You’ve done that, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” I say. “Are you sure you want to? It’s not all pretty, you know.”

“That’s the point,” Ett says. “The whole point.”

I look over at Kime Kelbam. As far as I know, he has never gone to Amblona. But he was in the war. He will have a notion of what I mean when I say it is not all pretty. Lady Ett does not seem to.

But he just shrugs. “It will be something different, anyhow.”

“Yes! It’ll be something different!” For Ett Brashli, that is the only thing that matters. She goes out of her mind when things stay the same for long. Even aside from my almost, we would not have lasted as a couple. Nothing she does ever lasts. But we would have had one hell of a time for a while. We did have one hell of a time for a little while.

“I studied Astilian at the university,” Obert Ohn says. “I’d like to get the chance to speak it.”

“Well, come along, then, for heaven’s sake,” Kime says. “You may even end up useful. Who knows?”

“Who knows anything for sure these days?” Lady Ett says.

There are an awful lot of things I do not know for sure. Ask anyone. He will tell you. You can count on that. If the anyone you ask is a woman, she will tell you even more. You can count on that, too. But I do know the chance Obert Ohn wants is not the chance he talks about.

Kime has to know the same thing. He says what he says even so. It is not that he does not care. But Ett will do what Ett will do, and you can either get out of the way or stay there and get smashed. With her like that, Kime already understands the running of the bulls. He may want to see it, but he does not need to.

Lady Ett and Kime get their tickets to Amblona and go on down with some other people they know. Obert Ohn and I follow them a few days later. No one is in any tearing hurry. Ett has some side trips she wants to make. Kime does not mind. It would not do him any good if he did, but he does not. And Obert and I plan on getting in some fishing. Northern Astilia has some good trout steams.