The Book of Taltos Read Free

lived among Dragaerans, rather than in the Eastern ghetto, so our neighbors didn’t associate with us, and our only other family was my father’s father, who didn’t come to our side of town, and my father didn’t like bringing me to Noish-pa’s when I was an infant.
    You’d think I’d have gotten used to being alone, but it hasn’t worked thatway. I’ve always hated it. I still do. Maybe it’s an instinctive thing among Easterners. The best times were what I now think must have been slow days at the restaurant, when the waiters had time to play with me. There was one I remember: a big fat guy with a mustache and almost no teeth. I’d pull his mustache and he’d threaten to cook me up for a meal and serve me with an orange in my mouth. I can’t think why I thought that was funny. I wish I could remember his name.
    On reflection, my father probably found me more a burden than a pleasure. If he ever had any female companionship, he did a good job of keeping it hidden, and I can’t imagine why he would. It wasn’t my fault, but I guess it wasn’t his, either.
    I never really liked him, though.
    I suppose I was four years old before my father began taking me regularly to visit my grandfather. That was the first big change in my life that I remember, and I was pleased about it.
    My grandfather did his job, which was to spoil me, and it is only now that I’m beginning to realize how much more he did. I must have been five or six when I began to realize that my father didn’t approve of all the things Noish-pa was showing me—like how to make a leaf blow slightly askew of the wind just by willing it to. And, even more, the little slap-games we’d play that I now know to be the first introduction to Eastern-style fencing.
    I was puzzled by my father’s displeasure but, being a contrary little cuss, this made me pay all the more attention to Noish-pa. This may be the root of the problems between my father and me, although I doubt it. Maybe I look like my mother, I don’t know. I’ve asked Noish-pa who I resemble, and all he ever says is, “You look like yourself, Vladimir.”
    I do know of one thing that must have hurt my father. One day when I was about five I received my first real beating, which was delivered by, I think, four or five punks from the House of the Orca. I remember that I was at the market running an errand of some sort, and they surrounded me, called me names I can’t remember, and made fun of my boots, which were of an Eastern style. They slapped me a few times and one of them hit me in the stomach hard enough to knock the wind out of me; then they kicked me once or twice and took the money I had been given to make the purchases. They were about my own size, which I guess means they were in their lateteens, but there were several of them, and I was pretty banged up, as well as terrified of telling my father.
    When they were finished with me, I got up, crying, and ran all the way to South Adrilankha, to my grandfather’s house. He put things on the cuts that made me feel better, fed me tea (which I suspect he spiked with brandy), brought me home, and spoke to my father so I didn’t have to explain where the money had gone.
    It was only years later that I actually got around to wondering why I’d gone all the way to Noish-pa’s, instead of going home, which was closer. And it was years after that when I got to wondering if that had hurt my father’s feelings.

    A BOUT TWENTY-TWO HOURS AFTER Kragar left to set things up, I was leaning back in my chair, which has a strange mechanism that allows it to tilt, swivel, and do other things. My feet were up on the desk, crossed at the ankles. The toes of my boots pointed to opposite corners of the room, and in the gap between them Kragar’s thin face was framed. His chin is one that a human would call weak, but Kragar isn’t—that’s just another one of his innate illusions. He is built of illusions. Some natural, others, I think, cultivated.