My own hurt and anger vanished.
“I’ve been such a petty fool!” I exclaimed. Gwendolyn looked at me, puzzled. I reined in my horse.
“What’s this about?” she asked, pulling up her own mount.
“I’m sorry; I’ve been—preoccupied with my own problems. You don’t expect you’ll ever see him again, do you?”
She stared at me for a moment, her face pale. “No,” she said quietly. “He’ll die in Blain. Or Prygg, more likely.”
She started her horse moving again. She said nothing for a long time. Just stared straight ahead, a trickle of tears wending down her cheeks.
“You can’t be sure of that,” I said eventually. “He seems a singularly capable fellow.”
She shook her head. “You don’t understand, Benvenuti. With a Rap Sheet in their hands, and the Cruds to organize them, every police agency in Grotum—and there’s more of them than you can count—will be able to coordinate their efforts perfectly. The Roach’s name will be at the top of their list. And he won’t be that hard to find, anyway. Where the enemy’s blows are hardest, that’s always where you’ll find The Roach. It’s part of the tradition, you know.”
My face must have shown my puzzlement.
“What’s this?” she demanded. A faint smile came on her face. “Do you mean to tell me that the legend of The Roach isn’t told to all Ozarine children, along with all the other legends?”
I shook my head.
“Not surprising. I don’t actually believe the legend myself. I don’t even know if The Roach does. Whenever I ask, he just smiles and changes the subject.”
“What is the legend?”
“Well, it goes like this. Supposedly, way back at the beginning of time, when Joe invented everything, he had one friend—his best friend Sam—who tried to talk him out of it. Tried to tell Joe he was afraid these new inventions wouldn’t work out all that well in the end. Joe wouldn’t listen to him, saying he didn’t see where he had any choice. But after his friend kept pestering him, Joe finally threw up his hands and invented The Boots. He gave them to his friend and said: ‘All right, dammit, if my inventions don’t work right, you can use these to kick ’em out.’ Then, after the inventions went bad, and Joe was frozen up, his friend took it on the lam and he’s been kicking ass ever since.”
“But that’s impossible!” I cried. “The man can’t be more than fifty years old.”
Gwendolyn grinned. “Well, the legend has it that the original Roach finally realized it was going to take an awful long time to properly stamp out the inventions. So he founded a line—a family line, he said, with a proper pedigree—to give the lowlifes something to match up against the pedigrees of the high and mighty. Every generation since, as far back as you can go in the history of Grotum, there’s always been a Roach. It can be anybody, as long as they’re a bastard and they can wear The Boots. It was the first Roach who chose the name. He said that since the high and mighty went around naming themselves after predators—eagles, lions, bears, and such—that his line would be named after the most persistent and indestructible animal known to man.”
I laughed.
“Isn’t it perfect?” said Gwendolyn, chuckling. “When I first heard the name, as a teenager, I was just mortified. The revolution was such a shiny thing to me then, like a crystal vase, and the name seemed so—so undignified. But then I met The Roach himself, and I understood.”
She fought back tears. ” ‘Dignity’s not to be found in the word, lass’ he said to me. ‘Look for it in the deed. Let the enemy have their eagle standards and their roaring lions, and their scepters and their thrones. Eagles and lions are endangered species, anyway. Much rather be a roach. Every time they think they’ve exterminated us, they come back into the kitchen and—there we are! And boots are a much more useful heirloom than crowns.’
“Anyway, that’s the legend. Like I said, I don’t actually believe it. I don’t believe any of this Joe stuff. But it’s a comfort, sometimes, and when I’m around The Roach I almost do believe it. Although—”