The Last Four Things by Paul Hoffman Page B

hearth.
    â€˜I’m not your hero.’
    â€˜Yes, you are,’ taunted the girl. ‘You saved me.’
    â€˜I didn’t save you. You just happened to be in the bushes when I took back my stuff. I didn’t even know you were there.’
    â€˜Your heart knew,’ teased the girl.
    â€˜Think what you like,’ said Kleist. ‘Tomorrow you go where you were going and I’ll go somewhere else as far away from you as possible.’
    â€˜My people believe,’ said the girl, chattering as happily as a starling, ‘that when you save someone’s life, you’re responsible for them for ever.’ This claim was as outrageous a lie as she had ever told and contrary to everything the Klephts believed when it came to matters of obligation.
    â€˜Where’s the sense in that?’ said an exasperated Kleist. ‘It should be the other way around.’
    â€˜All right. Now I’m responsible for you.’
    â€˜Firstly,’ said Kleist, ‘I don’t give a toss what your people believe and secondly I don’t want you to be responsible for me – I want you to go away.’
    The girl laughed.
    â€˜You don’t mean that. Tell me your name.’
    â€˜I don’t have a name. I’m nameless.’
    â€˜Everybody has a name.’
    â€˜Not me.’
    â€˜Shall I tell you my name?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜I knew you were going to say that.’
    â€˜Then why did you ask?’
    â€˜Because I looove ,’ she said, lengthening the sound of the word, ‘to hear the sound of your voice.’ And she laughed again. It took perhaps two hours for Kleist to be completely done for.
    Two days later Cale and Gil watched as the Folk accepted, clearly after some argument and with a lot more caution, the surrender of the six surviving Redeemers. They were tied up and loaded in a wagon and ten minutes later had vanished beyond the tabletop mountain.
    â€˜How many more times?’ said a morose Gil.
    Cale did not answer but walked down off the rise, mounted his horse and started back to the not entirely reliably named Fort Bastion. Five days after their arrival there, the four of them were back in the Sanctuary and facing a bad-tempered Bosco.
    â€˜I told you to stay in the veldt until you’d sorted the problem out.’
    â€˜I have sorted it out.’
    Cale had the pleasure of surprising Bosco into silence, not something in all their long association he had been able to do before.
    â€˜Explain.’
    Cale did so. When he’d finished Bosco looked dubious, not because Cale had been unconvincing but because hisclaims looked too good to be true. Bosco was being offered a way out of what was becoming a terrible trap with its origins in the ludicrous events that had caused the execution of his two hundred and ninety-nine carefully chosen vanguard. When someone offered you a way out of the teeth of your greatest problem that was not the time, in Bosco’s experience, to worry about the price, or even whether it was a delusion made plausible by desire. People believe what they want to believe. It was perhaps, thought Bosco, the most beautifully true of all the great truisms. He had little choice but to accept, even if it did coincide exactly with what he most needed.
    â€˜While you were away I had the Purgators put on parade and had one of their members executed in front of them. It was an arduous death. And I mean arduous to watch. When you tell them what you want from them they will have had a very recent reminder of what will happen if they fail to come up to the mark.’
    â€˜Not all the Purgators are suitable. There are about thirty who’re too mad or stupid to be of any use. But I’m not an executioner. I want them sent to the Bastille at Marshalsea.’
    â€˜What makes you so sure they’d be better off?’
    â€˜That’s as might be. I told you I’m not an executioner.’
    â€˜Very well.