Roar gave him a stiff smile as Asher sat down. “Good to see you here,” he said in a tone designed not to carry too far.
“I haven’t missed a meeting in six months,” Asher pointed out, stung.
“Considering how often you bothered attending before last summer, I still feel relief when you arrive.”
Asher tried to dismiss the implied criticism as the meeting started. He was used to Roar’s constant prodding. It was a big-brother thing, and most of the time he deserved it. But now he was getting flak for something that had happened more than six months ago.
It soured his outlook, which had been precarious to start with. He was not fond of the council meetings, which meandered on for far too many hours, covering little of direct interest to the New York hall. Roar got more out of the endless discussions and wrangling than Asher did.
He found his mind wandering. Why had he started attending these things without fail? It wasn’t as if he’d had a sudden wake-up call last summer, turned over a new leaf and mended his ways. He’d just…started attending. He could even count the exact number of meetings he had come to (six), because somewhere in the darker recesses of his mind he had been keeping count. Noticing.
What had changed? He couldn’t think of anything…well, that wasn’t true. Since Jessica had broken up with him, he hadn’t had a single relationship that had lasted beyond a first date. Even the first dates had slowed to a trickle. That was different.
He roamed over the landscape of his life, taking a tally. He wasn’t drinking as much—not that he had been drinking huge amounts to start with. Well, maybe the odd indulgence or two (every night, you mean). But there were some Kine for whom drinking was their major pastime. Roar liked his scotch, too. Then there were the endless barrels of mead supplied for any official event. Getting sloppy was a Kine tradition.
But he’d just…stopped. He had a glass of wine in the evenings when he was home, but he was rarely at home. The bank and the restaurant seemed to be chewing up more of his time than ever before, and the new franchise he’d started in New Mexico was booming, too.
He was busy. When had life become so damned busy? Last solstice, he’d stood at the windows to his apartment, watching a Christmas parade go by—not the big Manhattan affair, but a smaller community one put on by the Lions Club or somesuch—and considered how barren and empty his life was compared to the average human, who had family and friends and commitments and responsibilities. Well, that had changed, too.
Asher had grown up on the equivalent of what humans now called farms. It had been a very large establishment and as the second son of a king, he had responsibilities quite a bit different from the average villager and farmhand. But because he had spent his childhood in rural farming country, he was very familiar with the annual cycle of summer growth and winter fallow, spring blooming and autumn endings. He still tended to think in countrified metaphors and it occurred to him as he sat in the council meeting and brooded about the shifts in his life that he had entered a change of season, one that had come unlooked for and slipped in the door with the quietness of a late autumn, when leaves suddenly turned overnight.
It had been a very long time since such a shift had happened. The novelty of it kept him preoccupied for the rest of the meeting.
When the council was adjourned, Sindri, the little dark man, came up to Asher. He was barely five and a half feet tall, and Asher had never met anyone quite like him, either Kine or human. There were all sorts of races and breeds within the Kine, for battles had been fought all over the world and all of them had heroes, but Sindri did not seem to match any of the races of man. He was quite bald and his head was high domed. He had taken advantage of his baldness to tattoo across his head and face markings that no one but Sindri recognized. They might have been tribal markings, or some ancient runes that had long been forgotten. Some speculated that the markings were to do with Sindri’s interest in magic, that the markings themselves had power that no one on Midgard understood.
It gave him an odd appearance among so many of the Kine, who tried to blend in with their human surroundings. There were just as many pairs of jeans and business suits at the meeting as there were traditional robes and gowns. Sindri, however, always wore a plain black robe, completely devoid of any identifying cut or design. Asher couldn’t recall seeing him outside a Kine hall. He didn’t seem to have any connection with humans; he lived and worked among the halls. Stefan and Eira used him as a consultant and he seemed content with the uneventful life to be found among the Kine.
He approached Asher now, the long and wide sleeves of his robe swinging as he hurried. “Freyr Askr,” he said. The formal greeting.
“Freyr Sindri,” Asher acknowledged.
“You’re leaving so soon?” Sindri asked, as Asher pushed his chair in.
“I have business back in New York. It’s a busy day for me.”
“That’s a pity. I thought I might be able to coax you into an evening of quiet enjoyment, here.” Sindri gave him a stiff smile. “I will walk you to the portals and talk on the way. It will not slow your departure.” He stepped aside.
Asher couldn’t find anything in the man’s words that he could use as a reason to refuse, even though he wanted to. Sindri was being courteous and reasonable, but Asher had never got around to liking him. He had not spent enough time in his company and nothing the man did in public had given him reason to seek him out or for the both of them to spend time together where he might get to know Sindri better.
It would be churlish to brush him off, just because he didn’t know him well enough, so Asher waved his hand, silently indicating that Sindri should accompany him.
Sindri turned and paced alongside him as Asher threaded his way between the thinning council members, heading for the door. The portals were in the big central hall, just beyond the council room.
“You seemed somewhat distracted during the meeting,” Sindri ventured. “Not that it was obvious to everyone at the table, I assure you. But I did sense that your mind was elsewhere.”
“And that is why you seek me out?” Asher asked curiously.
“Boredom at council meetings is an interesting emotion to detect.”
“I have things on my mind. It wasn’t boredom,” Asher corrected him.
Sindri smiled. “Last year at the feast of the equinox, I heard you talking with your brother, the earl. Do you remember the occasion?”
“Remind me.”
“You were discussing the rules of laun.”
Asher recalled the conversation with a jolt. “You heard that?”
“You were speaking quite loudly.”
Asher stepped around the door and Sindri slipped between others and caught up with him, while Asher considered him more carefully. “So I was talking about laun. So what?”
“You have a very interesting perspective on the matter.”
“I’m not the only one who thinks it should be discarded.”
“Dilettantes, all of them,” Sindri replied. “You feel rather more strongly about it than any of its other detractors.”
Asher halted and turned to face him. “It was a private conversation at the end of a long night and everyone had been drinking.” He glanced around the huge rotunda, looking to see if anyone was taking an interest in their conversation now. “Talking about breaking laun is not a smart move. Not in any hall, but especially not here.”
“And most especially your brother’s hall,” Sindri added. He held out his hands in a gesture of acceptance. It made the sleeves of his robe swing, almost like wings. “I have a salon here, just off this hall. I entertain friends there. It would please me if you would stop by.”
“I cannot,” Asher replied. “I did say I had a busy day back home.”
“Home. What an interesting name for it.” Sindri gave him a short smile that thinned his lips. “You are welcome in my salon whenever you wish to visit. The door is always unlocked for you.”
It was an odd way of phrasing it. Who is the
door locked against? Asher wondered. But he gave the same polite smile that Sindri had used. “You are a considerate host. I appreciate the invitation.” The words were automatic.
Sindri stepped back, clearly disengaging. “Do bear my offer in mind. I suspect you will find more of a home in my salon than ever your empty hall has provided.”
“I will consider your offer,” Asher lied with flat sincerity. “Thank you.”
Sindri turned and walked away and Asher hurried with even more urgency across the hall to the alcove where the portals were located. He wanted to be home—yes, home, damn it—as quickly as possible.
But when he stepped through to the hall, it rang with echoes, hollow and empty. There was a soft shuffle of feet and murmurs at the entrance where Kine were stepping between the two portals that flanked the stairs. Most of them were acknowledging the guards at the head of the stairs, or talking to each other as they walked through in pairs. But the rest of the hall was bereft even of Amica. It was neat and clean.
Asher hurried down the steps and headed for the street. Forty minutes later, he was home. It had taken nearly forty times longer to travel the length of Manhattan as it had to step around the globe from Norway to the United States.
Such was his fractured life.
He had uncorked the wine bottle straight after shutting the door and dropping his keys onto the desk next to it….
* * * * *
….and he couldn’t remember so much as loosening his tie before gulping down half of the first glass.
He looked around the apartment now. There were two bottles, empty, on the coffee table in front of him. Another on the dining table over in the corner by the big windows. Were there more in the kitchen? He didn’t have the energy to get up off his ass and look.
He fell back against the sofa and looked up at the ceiling, blowing out a heavy breath. He remembered it all now. There were some parts, when he had been swimming at the bottom of the wine, that he couldn’t pull together except in hazy snatches of impressions, but everything leading up to that first mouthful of wine was clear.
And he still didn’t know why he had taken that first mouthful. It was like someone or something had goosed him into it. He had reacted to an invisible stimulus…what the hell had triggered him?
He tried to summarize the day in headlines. The meeting, Sindri…and that was it.
Sindri. Was it something to do with him? But he had been hurrying to get away from the meeting before Sindri had got close enough to open his mouth. Yet…and yet…he had been hurrying even more after their conversation, which had left him with an unsettled feeling.
Guilt, it’s guilt, you daft bugger.
Sindri had stirred up feelings of guilt.
Yet he had been sitting in the meeting feeling a small sense of pride because of the way his life seemed to be settling down (dismay, asshole. That was dismay).
Really?
Asher straightened up and leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees and threading his fingers together. Think! he commanded himself. It was an old exercise, this self-demand for clear thinking. Confessors and insightful friends were scant in the life of the Kine. They had to think for themselves because talking through their problems wasn’t possible.
You were ready to bolt at the end of the meeting because your buttons had already been pushed. Sindri just nudged you over the edge.
Why?
He frowned. His head was starting to throb now, with the heavy bass beat of a drum. He was going to pay mightily for this day of hiding away from the truth.
Pushed…pushing…people pushing him around.
Charlee. The thought came to him suddenly, from nowhere. And that made the thing he had been trying to dredge up from his sodden consciousness rise to the surface and make itself felt again.
He glanced at the window, where the frost was starring the glass in a graceful reversed bell curve, remembering.
It had been early fall, when the leaves were turning but not yet falling. Ylva had someone sweep the sidewalk in front of the restaurant every day so silly customers didn’t slide on a leaf and sue them for negligence. Asher liked fall and winter, because it reminded him of when he was young. He always felt happier when the leaves turned.
Charlee had stopped by after school, as always, and her red hair had been a match for the maples out the front of the store and went well with the darker browns and maroons that Ylva used for napkins and tablecloths in winter. She seemed to glow with energy, with happiness, with life.
They had been talking about….they had been talking about….
* * * * *
“What do you mean, it doesn’t matter?” Charlee asked, as she carefully lined up the seams of the napkin she was folding, concentrating on getting it just right. “Of course it matters!”
“You’re never going to get it perfect,” Asher pointed out. “There’s no such thing.”
“I don’t want it perfect.” She didn’t lift her head or shift her gaze away from the napkin. The overhead light was making a halo around the top of her head. “I just want it to be the very best I can do.”
“The customer isn’t going to care.”
She put the carefully folded napkin in front of him. “But I care and I’ll know if I don’t do it properly.”
“So?”
Ylva just smiled as she sipped her tea, although he had a feeling that she was laughing at him. But she wouldn’t come right out and laugh in front of Charlee. She had too much class to make him look small, even in front of a child who was more than smart enough to figure such things out for herself.
Charlee crossed her arms. “So, because,” she replied. Then she leaned on her arms, sliding them across the tablecloth so she was looking directly at him from a foot closer. “Have you ever not done something, or done something bad because it was easier than doing the good or right thing?”
Asher rolled his eyes. “Do you want a list? We could be here a while.”
“Really?” Her interest was piqued. She straightened up. “Like what things?” she asked, avidly curious.
“Things,” Asher said flatly. “Most of them things that a ten year old shouldn’t know about.”
“I’m eleven.”
“When you’re eighteen, come ask me.”
“You’ll tell me then?” Her eyes lit up.
“Probably not, but by then you’ll know why I won’t.”
Charlee pouted.
“Let’s assume he did something bad, for the sake of your argument,” Ylva said.
Charlee glanced at him and Asher knew exactly what she was thinking about. Lonzo.
“Not just something bad,” Charlee said quickly, “because people do bad things for really good reasons, sometimes. I mean doing something bad because it’s easier than doing good, or not doing something good because it’s easier not to.”
“Let’s say I’ve done both of those,” Asher said. He shifted on his chair, feeling a sudden discomfort. If he had really analyzed his uneasiness then, he would have recognized that what Charlee was describing was pretty much his entire life now, but denial is a powerful thing. He pushed the recognition away and closed a mental door on it.
“Then, if you have, then you know the prickly gruellies you get when you do it?”
“The what?” Asher asked as Ylva laughed, this time out loud.
Charlee rolled her eyes. “The prickly gruellies. That’s that I call them. I don’t know if they’ve got a real name. You know, when your tummy gets all knotty, and you get hot and sticky, especially under the arms. You feel sick, but you’re not really sick, but if you get ‘em bad enough, you really could be sick. And your heart goes a million miles an hour.”
“Are you talking about a guilty conscience?” Ylva asked. “Because guilt does all that to a person.”
“Yeah, it could be guilt. See, I told you it probably had a name. But the thing is, you get the pricklies, you get guilty, even when you don’t do something or you do something bad and you get
clean away with it. You might not get ‘em so bad you want to up-chuck—”
“Vomit, Charlee. If you must talk about it at all, use the right word,” Ylva said softly.
“Okay, vomit,” Charlee amended easily. She rubbed her fingers through her hair, causing the mass to wave and toss before letting it fall back over her shoulders.
“You don’t up-chuck,” Asher said, shooting Ylva an amused glance, “but you get the prickly gruellies anyway. Sitting in the back of your mind. Making you sweat, even just a little bit.”
“Yes,” Charlee agreed, her hand pressing flat on the tabletop for emphasis. Then she pulled the next napkin over in front of her. “That’s why I do things as good as I can, even if no one is watching. I hate the pricklies. They’re horrible.”
“Me, too,” Asher said with feeling.
* * * * *
The light had nearly disappeared from the window while he had been trying to remember. The last of the sunlight struck the pane and glistened as it reflected off the thousand surfaces of the frost.
“Prickly gruellies,” he whispered wonderingly.
Hadn’t he spent the last few months trying to avoid the many, many prickly gruellies in his life? He’d turned up to meetings, made appointments, looked after business. He’d virtually stopped drinking and the barnyard dance of first dates had soured in his mouth because of the hypocrisy inherent in wooing a woman who was looking for a relationship that he could never provide.
All because a ten (eleven)-year-old girl had prodded his guilt.
That was why he had tried to dive back down the rabbit hole as soon as the meeting had finished. That’s why Sindri’s talk of bucking the system had sat so ill with him. Not because Charlee was right, but because he didn’t like it.
He covered his face with his hands. Prickly gruellies. It was such a good name for them.
Then all the cascading thoughts swirled together and finally he understood why the window had kept drawing his attention. Calling silently to him. It was five o’clock and freezing outside. He’d let Charlee walk to the subway alone, in the cold.
The Branded Rose Prophecy Page 8
