“Asher,” Ylva murmured, bringing his attention back to her.
“Mmm?”
“I’ve already decided what I’m going to do with my life.” She said it in a way that alerted him.
“You’re leaving the restaurant. Leaving me.”
“Yes, Asher. I’m leaving. It’s time.” She gave his arm a little shake. “I’ve been running your life for you for forty-three years. You don’t need me anymore.”
“Bullshit,” he said violently, anger stirring. “No one knows the restaurant better than you.”
“You can afford to hire the best manager in the city. They will run the restaurant better than I ever did.” Her gentle response told him that her decision had been made. He knew from hard experience that no argument he could muster would change her mind now.
With a vexed sigh, he let it go. It was the only choice he had. “What are you going to do?” he asked, feeling a little numb. The shock, he suspected, would set in later. Ylva had been a part of the fabric of his life for a very long time, both as one of the Kine and as an Eldre.
“I’m going to buy a house across from Central Park. I know exactly the one I want. Then I’m going to start my own business.”
“What sort of business?”
“A school. A sort-of school.”
“Children?” he asked, surprised.
“Women,” she amended. “Young and young at heart, and those willing to learn.”
“Human women? What will you be teaching them?”
“Amica,” Ylva corrected him. They had reached the front door and she opened the tall brass and glass door for him. With her hand on the long handle, she smiled at him. “I’ll teach them everything I know.”
“Amica?” he repeated, astounded. “Why on earth would you want to do that?”
“Because there are none of us left to teach. Those of the Kine,” she amended, “have learned all there is to know. There will be no more of us, so the knowledge must be passed on. We cannot give the knowledge to humans. The Amica are the natural successors.”
“Stefan will not like that,” Asher said, thinking of Stefan’s almost blind adherence to laun. Ylva’s plan ran perilously close to breaking laun.
“You forget,” Ylva told him. “I am no longer one of the Kine. I owe no allegiance to Stefan, or whoever sits upon his seat next. I do it for the women, Asher. Eira would understand perfectly.”
“But you will not tell her, will you?” Asher guessed.
“It quite possibly will slip my mind. It has been so long since I spoke to her.” Ylva’s smile was cheeky, reminding Asher of many more occasions in the past when she had worn that smile, besides the time in northern Russia.
Asher laughed and stepped past her, pushing on the storm door that protected the vintage one that Ylva held open. Ylva stopped him with her hand on his arm again. “Askr,” she said gently.
He looked down at her.
“About Charlee…”
His gut tightened. “What about her?”
Ylva’s fingers gripped the sleeve of his jacket, tightening slowly. “I’ve never said anything. I wouldn’t have, except that today seems to be a good day to say it. I’m entitled to say it, because today is my husband’s funeral.”
Asher stared at her. His heart had picked up speed. “Say what?” he asked. His lips felt rubbery, like they didn’t really belong to him.
“Let her go, Asher,” Ylva said softly. “Let Charlee go and let her live her life.”
The shock of her words seemed to jolt his entire spine. Asher cast about for something to say. Anything. What emerged was a weak protest. “I’m not holding her. Gods, Ylva, do you really think that—”
She shook his arm, silencing him. It was more the look on her face that stopped his words than her shaking him.
“Jerry was eighteen when I met him,” Ylva said urgently. “Eighteen. It took me nearly ten years to work up the courage to pick him over the Kine and I don’t regret my choice, but you would, Asher. The Kine are everything to you and you would grow to hate her—”
“She’s a little girl, Ylva. You can’t assume—”
“I know what time does,” Ylva flung back. “I see her looking at you. She’s young, but she’s a woman and in a few years she’s going to know what she wants and you can’t give her what she wants. You’ll destroy her because of what you are, and I don’t want that for either of you.”
Asher swallowed, his throat abruptly dry, as he stared down at her.
“Think about it,” Ylva said. “Promise me.”
Promises. He’d made promises before. “I’ll think about it,” he said hoarsely.
Ylva let his arm go and stepped away.
Asher pushed his way out of the house, almost startled by the chill of the day and the low, mournful light. All the houses along the street had colored lights tacked around their windows and doors and threaded through balcony railings and it reminded him it was Christmas for humans. The winter solstice for the Kine.
The reminder made him angrier, although he wasn’t sure why (everyone else knows who they belong with) it should do so.
He flagged down a cab as it passed and gave directions for the restaurant. The driver had music playing softly, but Asher could hear the melody. Jimmy Buffett was warbling about how he had everything but snow.
“Could you turn that off?” Asher growled.
The startled driver met his eyes in the rear-view mirror, then clicked the music off with a stab of his finger.
Asher grew more restless the closer the cab got to the restaurant. He fidgeted. He shifted on the seat. He pushed his hands through his hair. There was a tight band around his chest and butterflies were rousing in his stomach.
After twelve minutes by the digital clock on the driver’s dashboard, Asher gripped the wire mesh barrier. “Can you pull over?” he asked. His voice was thick.
The driver must have thought he was going to puke, for he swerved to the curb with a suddenness that made the hood of the cab dip and the tires squeal. Another taxi behind them blared its horn, an aural middle finger, as it scooted by.
Asher was thrown against the door. He splayed his hand flat against the glass. It was cool against his fingers. The chill always made him think of the white, cold winters of home, the long part of the year when everyone stayed inside around the fire as much as possible. Men repaired harnesses, made tools, sharpened blades and more. The women sewed and wove cloth, cooked and cleaned. Children were allowed to play once they had completed the household tasks that had been assigned to them, for everyone worked to support the family. But they had been warm times. They had been comforting.
“Four-fifty,” the cab driver said, prompting him to get out.
Asher sat up. “Head for Wall Street,” he said. “I’ve changed my mind.”
He hadn’t really changed his mind. He just knew he couldn’t go to the restaurant (can’t face Charlee, you mean). He needed time. Breathing room.
As the cab pulled away from the curb once more, something related to relief touched him and that made him angry, too.
* * * * *
The cab dropped him off on Pearl, as directed, and Asher took the elevator, too impatient to climb the stairs.
Roar was sitting at the table, a pile of paperwork in front of him. He looked up as Asher walked in, then turned himself on the chair, propping one elbow on top of the files and the other on the back of the chair. The modern pen and calculator on the table and the jeans he wore were jarring notes against the traditional embroidered open robe he wore over his jeans. “You look like you lost a battle,” he said. “Who was she?”
Asher moved straight to the cupboard where Roar kept his scotch. “Do you mind?”
“As I’m out, not at all.”
Asher glanced into the cupboard. No scotch. There was crème de menthe and daiquiri mix. He wasn’t so desperate for a drink that he’d touch either of them. The scotch would have been a concession as it was. “No mead?” Asher asked hopefully
.
“Too long since the last feast,” Roar replied. He only brought mead into the hall for special occasions, as it didn’t keep well.
“It’s the solstice,” Asher pointed out.
“Solstice is eight days away.”
Asher shut the cupboard, irritated. He did want to drink, after all. Mead was the exact thing he wanted. It wasn’t his favorite, but he could almost feel the touch of the thin, cool liquid against the back of his throat, and the slightly bitter after-taste of the honey and spices. Why he would abruptly thirst for mead he didn’t stop to analyze (feasts, family, happy times), but he did know where he could get some, almost guaranteed. He straightened up. “Gotta go,” he told Roar.
“That’s okay,” Roar replied. “Monthly rosters are going to be better company than you tonight, I’m guessing.”
Asher waved away Roar’s comment with an impatient gesture, heading for the door.
“Be careful!” Roar called after him.
* * * * *
Asher stared at the heavy wood and iron door, his heart thudding unevenly. Why was he here?
There’ll be mead.
Was he really so weak that criticism from a trusted friend would send him running to find a barrel of mead to drown himself in?
Despite the thought, he lifted his hand to pick up the iron knocker and paused. A clear, cold, sober voice whispered silently. Go back home. This isn’t for you.
Why was he here?
The selfish, whiny part of him rose up, protesting. I just want a drink, for Odin’s sake. Why am I dithering like a four year old? It’s just a drink.
When Ylva had said her piece at the front door, a series of quick images had flittered across his mind. Charlee, some years ahead of now, sitting at a window seat (what seat would that be? He didn’t have one. He was pretty sure she didn’t. But there had been one in the house he’d lived in, in Amsterdam, nearly three hundred years ago….). She had been bowed over, her face in her hands, hiding the older version of herself from his inner eye. She had the same radiant hair, spilling over her shoulder in red waves and curls. He couldn’t see her face, but he could see well enough that she was bent over with grief, and he was the reason why. He had done this.
You can’t give her what she wants.
It was the self-loathing that was rising like the tide inside him with each repetition of that image that finally made him reach for the knocker for a second time.
The door opened before he could touch it. The man who opened it fell back a step in surprise. Asher searched for his name. Øystein, who had been brought to the First Hall a long time after Asher had. He was based out of New Delhi now, or had been the last time Asher had spoken to him.
“Askr Brynjarson!” Øystein said.
“It’s Asher Strand at the moment,” Asher told him.
Øystein actually rolled his eyes. Rolled them. The reaction jolted Asher. He had never seen anyone treat laun so casually, especially inside the Second Hall itself.
“You’re coming inside?” Øystein asked, stepping back and bringing the heavy door with him.
The open door drew Asher’s attention to the noise and light beyond. It had registered subliminally, but now he noticed consciously that it was dim inside, and the light flickered like that of candles, lamps or a fire. The sounds coming from the room were more than familiar to him. Because the Second Hall was beneath Tryvannshøyden, the lingua franca of the hall was Norwegian. There was a babble of voices and much laughter flowing over him, all spoken in the language of his childhood.
It was a reminder of evenings around the supper table, while his family and his father’s men and their women entertained themselves after a long day in the fields, or a long day of fighting. Both peppered Asher’s childhood memories. There would be singing and dancing, drinking games, and music, but what Asher remembered most clearly was the laughter that punctuated it all. Here it was again.
“Sindri is at the fireside. Come and say hello,” Øystein urged him, waving him in with his hand and stepping back so Asher could enter. Asher found himself moving into the room, drawn by the sounds. There was even music, played quietly enough so it was a sub-layer to the conversation, lending its joy and beat to the mingling happening over the top of it.
He could see that the mead was plentiful, too. There was short mead, sack mead and long mead, at least. His throat contracted dryly at the sight, but this was Sindri’s salon. It was polite to speak to him first, before he accepted a cup of the man’s hospitality.
Øystein led him through the room, which was a large, stone-lined chamber without windows, like most in the Second Hall were. There was the huge fireplace at the end, also stone, but carved into elegant scrollwork, with two lions’ heads on either side of the stone mantel. It was taller than most of the men standing near it and was burning fiercely, throwing off light and heat.
Sindri stood on the left of the fireplace with a bronze cup in his hand. He alone in the room wore traditional robes. Actually, the robes he always wore, the unrelieved black. Everyone else wore modern clothing. Some of it was very modern, and alternative in taste. Asher did a quick tally and figured he was the only one wearing a suit. There were jeans, leather pants and jackets, skinhead clothing with its rips and tears, safety pins and studs, bohemian artist casual, a few kilts, and a lot more leather. Most of its seemed to be dark in color, which made Asher‒with his hair and his silver-grey suit‒stand out like a beacon. He was definitely turning heads.
He knew everyone in the room by name, or knew them well enough to recognize even though he might not have spoken to them before. It wasn’t that the Kine were few in number, although their numbers diminished each year. It was simply that they had all been here on Midgard for so long that Asher had got to know most of his fellow Kine over time.
There were no women in the room, not even Amica pouring drinks. That was an oddity he would explore later. For now, he needed to pay his respects to his host.
Øystein presented him. “Lord Sindri. You know Stallari Asher Strand, of the New York hall.”
“Stallari to the earl Hroar Brynjarson, and brother besides.” Sindri inclined his head in a short bow. “Yes, Asher and I are acquainted, thank you, Øystein. Would you please pour the man a drink?” His Norwegian was flawless, as had been his English when Asher had spoken to him last year. In part, that was why the mystery of Sindri’s origins remained unresolved. He spoke all languages equally well, with no accent to betray his roots. “Short or long, Asher?” he asked.
“Long, please.” He liked the beery taste of hops they included in “long” mead, which the mead was called simply to differentiate it from short mead. The spices and bubbles of short mead tasted too much like sweet champagne with curry powder or pepper in it, a taste he had never grown accustomed to, although the ladies liked it a great deal.
Øystein went away to get the drink. Asher studied the short man in front of him. For the moment, they were alone, for the pair Sindri had been speaking to had melted away as Øystein brought him closer. “You call yourself ‘Lord’?” Asher asked curiously.
“I do not. But here in my salon, my guests do.”
“The English title? It’s an odd choice.”
“Freyr is such an old word,” Sindri said, with a small smile. “In here, we do not cling to tradition as much as our beloved Annarr and Regin would prefer.”
Asher looked around the room with an exaggerated swivel of his head. “Then you fooled me.”
“Ah, I do see why you might be confused. The solaces of homes we all remember are not the same as traditions that obligate us unnecessarily. In here, you are free to relax, Asher Strand, in any way that you find the least binding.”
A large cup with a smooth bowl and elegantly curved stem was thrust into Asher’s hand. Øystein intruded on the conversation only enough to pass the cup to him, then withdrew.
Asher curled his fingers around the cup but did not drink. Not yet.
“Please, do not wait upon my w
elcome to take your first sip,” Sindri told him. “Go ahead and drink. I know you want to. As I said, here you can do anything you want, be anything you want.”
Asher lifted the cup slightly toward him. “My thanks.” He took a long swallow. The mead was excellent, as it always was in the Second Hall.
But Sindri had not finished his declaration. “If you would rather pretend you are human, why, we can accommodate that.”
Asher lowered his cup, looking at him. “Excuse me?”
Sindri laughed, showing very white teeth. His black eyes glittered. “Did you think I had forgotten our long-ago conversation about the values of laun and the role of the Heirleifr on this very modern Midgard we find ourselves shipwrecked upon?”
Asher considered him. Sindri had used the full and proper name for the Kine. He didn’t recall anyone else using the name for a very long time, except for formal records in the halls. Sindri was an odd mix of old and modern ideas. Did the ancient attitudes come from studying the old records as much as it was rumored he did? And if so, where did he get his modern ideas? For he certainly wouldn’t have come by them here in the longhouse, with Stefan at the helm. Yet it was said he never left the hall.
Asher shoved all his questions aside. He really didn’t care. The mead was flowing and for right now, he didn’t have to remember what he could or couldn’t say.
He deliberately up-ended the cup in a slow arc, draining it. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand and threw the cup to the floor. A cheer went up from those around him and a patter of applause.
Sindri smiled with satisfaction. “There is plenty more where that came from, my friend.”
“Good,” Asher told him and took off his jacket.
* * * * *
Charlee opened the screen door slowly, so it wouldn’t squeak, and leaned inside. The kitchen was the same organized hysteria it always was, but she had learned from Patrick, one of the sous chefs, and from things Pierre had referred to, that a busy kitchen always looked chaotic, but if it was a good kitchen, there was an order and control to the activity. It was just emotional chefs and harried staff venting their stress by swearing, or throwing up their hands or something that made the kitchen look like it was on the brink of imploding. But dishes rattled and oil popped, which added to the racket, as Patrick said with a cheerful grin. He was the most unflappable man Charlee had ever met. Only someone as calm as he could have coped with Pierre for a boss.
The Branded Rose Prophecy Page 15
