Damn, he thought. It's probably not even eight yet. I should have slept a bit longer, maybe carried the dream on to when I left town to go fight at Mohacs. He started tip-toe away, then snorted impatiently, strode back and rapped sharply on the door.
There was a squeal from inside, and overlapping it came Aurelianus' flustered but authoritative, 'Who is it?'
'Finn Mac Cool.'
After a moment the door opened and one of the maids,
with face averted, ducked around the Irishman and hurried away. 'Come in, Brian,' said Aurelianus with weary patience.
The room might have been completely rearranged since Duffy's last visit, but it hadn't changed; it was still a heaped, candlelit collection of tapestries, jewelled weapons, beakers a-bubble with no source of heat, books big enough to serve as walls for a small man's house, and obscure animals stuffed in unlikely postures. The old wizard sat cross-legged on an upholstered stool.
Duffy jerked a thumb after the retreating maid when he'd shut the door. 'I thought that kind of thing wasn't good for you half-breeds.'
After closing his eyes for ten seconds, Aurelianus stared at him and shook his head. 'Your years as a mercenary soldier have coarsened you, Brian, to the point where you're unfit for gracious company. I was merely asking her if any of the maids had tried to come into my room recently; a new girl might not have been told that this room isn't to be entered. And didn't I say nine o'clock?'
'I decided I might have to be heading back to the barracks at around nine. Why don't you just lock your door?'
'Oh, I do, most of the time, but I forget occasionally, and I often misplace my keys.'
'Isn't that kind of careless?' Duffy found a chair, tipped a cat out of it and sat down. 'After all, I suppose some of this junk must be valuable to somebody...'
'Yes,' the old man snapped. 'Very valuable, quite a lot of it. The thing is, I tend to rely - perhaps too heavily! -on other protections.' He nodded toward the door, above and around the top of which Duffy noticed a structure that combined the features of a parrot-perch and a dollhouse. 'Would you like some brandy?'
'What? Oh, certainly.' He waited until the wizard had
poured two glasses of a golden Spanish brandy and handed him one. 'Thank you. What was it you wanted to see me about?' He took a sip, swallowed it, then took a bigger one.
'Nothing special, Brian, I just wanted to chat. After all, I haven't seen you in months.'
'Ah. Well, there's one thing I wanted to talk to you about. Werner intends to fire Epiphany, and this job is just about all she's got in the world. I'd be grateful if you'd tell him she's a permanent employee, and that he'd better not torment her.'
Aurelianus blinked at him quizzically. 'Very well. I gather you and she are not... seeing each other anymore?'
'That's right. She blames you for it, and I'm not sure I don't agree with her.'
To the Irishman's surprise, Aurelianus did not raise his eyebrows and protest. Instead, the old man took a long sip of his wine and said, 'Maybe that's fair and maybe it's not. If it is, try to imagine what things would have broken it up, if I hadn't. Or do you really think you would have run off and lived happily ever after in Ireland?'
'I don't know. It's not - it wasn't - impossible.' Duffy picked up the bottle and refilled his glass.
'How old are you, Brian? You ought to know by now that something always breaks up love affairs unless both parties are willing to compromise themselves. And that compromising is harder to do the older and less flexible and more independent you are. It just isn't in you, Brian. You could no more get married now than you could become a priest, or a sculptor, or a greengrocer.'
Duffy opened his mouth to voice angry denials, then one corner turned up and he closed it. 'Damn you,' he said wryly. 'Then why do I want to, half the time?'
Aurelianus shrugged, 'It's the nature of the species. There's a part of a manes mind that can only relax and go
to sleep when he's with a woman, and that part gets tired of always being tensely awake. It gives orders in so loud a voice that it often drowns out the other components. But when the loud one is asleep at last, the others regain control and chart a new course.' He grinned. 'No equilibrium is possible. If you don't want to put up with the constant seesawing, you must either starve the logical components or bind, gag and look away in a cellar that one insistent one.'
Duffy grimaced and drank some more brandy. 'I'm used to the rocking, and I was never one to get motion-sick,' he said. 'I'll stay on the seesaw.'
Aurelianus bowed. 'You have that option, sir.'
The Irishman smiled at the sorcerer with something akin to affection. 'Do I gather you've been through one or two of these affairs yourself?'
'Oh, aye.' The old man leaned back against a bureau, reached up over his head and found one of his dried snakes. He rolled it unlit between his fingers, staring at it thoughtfully. 'Not in the last three centuries, thank the heavens, but in my comparative youth - yes, a number of entanglements, artfully baited, but each one eventually ending with its own version of the one standard ending.'
Duffy drained his glass again and set it on the table. 'This is a side of you I never glimpsed,' he said. 'Tell me about these girls - tell me about the last one, three centuries ago, for God's sake.'
The wizard's glass was empty, too, and for a moment he goggled at the snake in his left hand and the glass in his right. Then, coming to a decision, he held the glass out for Duffy to refill. 'She was a Sussex witch named Becky Banham,' he said as the liquor splashed messily into his glass. 'She was a small-time country witch, but definitely the real thing - not one of these horoscoping crystal-gazers.'