milliways_bar | (no subject)

"Who are you?"

A therapist-smile.

"How do you self-define?"

"I am el Mariachi," El says. "Who are you?"

His other finger taps a rhythm against the side of his cup.

"God."

He sets up a counter rhythm, uneven, illogical.

"You can call me Dworkin."

"Si," El says.

"And what are you doing here?"

"Idling."

He shrugs, with the shoulder without the hunch.

"There's time yet to pass."

"It seems like you don't have much time left," El pauses. "Senor."

"I have all the time in any world ever."

He smiles.

"I'm older than your Jesus times fifty thousands."

(deleted comment)

"You are lucky, then."

"Am I?"

He tilts his head.

"It tells a good deal about what sort of person is speaking whether they say that, if they mean it."

El nods. "And what does it say about me, then?"

No comment as to whether or not he meant it.

"That you don't care for much at all any more. Numb thing. And blinder than brown-eyes."

Sands, something whispers, not Dworkin's voice but his, at the same time. You're from the same place as him.

"Sands is here?" El asks. "Donde?"

"It depends if Random's gone and found him or not."

Dworkin sounds a little put out.

"I lost him in some space-time or another. It might have been Earth, circa the sixteen hundreds. Possibly. It might have been Aorso too, of course, lovely planet, I can hardly tell the difference."

El takes this in calmly.

"Ah," he says.

"I'm sure he's back by now. Random does know what he's doing."

A small scowl.

"In most things. His puta human excluded."

"You do not like his boyfriend?" El asks.

"A son of Amber should have better taste. All of my other grandchildren dabble with humans, most of them do not lack wit enough to settle and decide to keep them. It does not befit his station. He will have to come back to the castle one day, and struggle for the throne, create worlds and destroy them and walk through nearly all of them, by the time the moment has come, and a Prince cannot have such a one as Salazar waiting behind in his chambers. The human does not have the temperment for it."

El nods. "Si."

"Random is not exactly as he seems."

In case he missed that part.

"And Ramon does not have the wit for diplomacy in the High Courts."

"Maybe they don't want High Courts," El says.

He imagines his fingers running a tune.

"Duty," he snaps, "is more important than want. When you're born to a station you cannot forsake it, and Random is one of the Nine Princes of Amber. His father will sort it out, if it needs sorting, he'll have no qualms about another human's blood on his hands. You all die eventually."

"Duty. Yes," El says.

"But that does not mean that he wants it."

"If he wanted it, he'd have been killed by now. He's not good enough to last through the political struggles."

His lips twitch in a slightly mocking smile.

"Youngest of the bunch. Barely nine thousand years old."

El blinks. Wets his lips. "And you are his grandfather."