Love and Sacrifice: Book Two of the Prophecy Series

by Tove Foss Ford

  At the park, Borsen released Magic’s lead, bidding him to stay near. The clock tower struck three.

  The dog romped across the unkempt park lawn, sniffing here and there, stopping frequently to ascertain his master’s whereabouts before making further forays.

  Borsen approached the statue of Glorantha silently, waiting for memory to return. He concentrated on senses other than sight, waiting for an impression that would let him know this was the place he sought.

  He had not been able to sleep. The parting from Menders had been deeply painful; excitement and loneliness did the rest. He’d finally decided to seek out the statue he believed he remembered from a day when he was only four years old.

  A dilapidated bench on one side of the statue drew him. In a moment, the smell of wet wood sparked the old memory. A heavy mist made the bench glisten in the light from the few working streetlamps and the pale crescent of Eto, Eirdon’s larger moon.

  Borsen reached out and touched the frieze around the base of the statue. A moment later, he knelt on the bench, pressing his face against the cold, wet marble.

  “Mama,” he whispered. Magic ran over and snuffled at his master before sighing in a great whoosh and settling on the ground beside the bench.

  Erdahn, Mordania

  9

  Borsen’s

  B

  orsen knelt next to an enormous thin slab of facing marble as the workcrew slowly slid another slab alongside. He was watching the pattern of green veins snaking richly across the crystalline surface of the white stone, waiting for a match.

  “Just a little further, men,” he said encouragingly. “I think … yes! Another match, that’s it! Here, let’s mark it.” He pulled out his pencil and picked up the long measuring stick the stonemasons used, pushing it carefully across the polished surface of the marble where the foreman caught it and helped him straighten it. They drew the marking lines true with those on the slab they’d matched it to.

  “Borsen, will you look at the waste on this one?” the foreman groaned.

  “It won’t be wasted,” Borsen replied, sitting back and rubbing his knees. They ached, despite the cloth workman’s knee pads he, like all the other men on the work team, were using. “Counters, walls where it doesn’t have to match, steps, sidewalk out front. That’s why I’m buying it by the slab, so we’ll have plenty. It will be a saving in the long run. And I’m only matching the marble for the façade.”

  “You’ll still have a lot of waste,” the foreman said gloomily. “If you’d bought book-matched slabs, it would be a lot less.”

  “I don’t like book-matched marble.” Borsen grinned up at him. “I want it to look like one continuous slab.”

  The foreman gave up and laughed.

  “There’s no stopping you, is there? All right then, have at the marble, let’s find another match.”

  “Food!” bellowed the man who had been sent for lunch. There was general approbation. Borsen allowed himself to be heaved up by the foreman, who had been responsible for the rapid building of Eiren’s school. It was a relief to be up off the floor thick with marble dust. He hurried with the others to the stove in the corner where the chunky, heavy sandwiches favoured by construction tradesmen were being doled out.

  “And two for the boss,” said the fellow with the bag of sandwiches, handing Borsen his usual double portion.

  “Where do you put it all, boss?” one of the men teased, as someone did every day.

  “Into my personality. It’s larger than I am,” Borsen answered, sitting down among them and tearing into the food, gratefully accepting the cup of hot coffee passed down the line to him.

  There was the usual snickering, but he knew the men liked and respected him because he worked with them and he knew what he wanted. He hadn’t handed them a bunch of wild plans, impossible to carry out, before snugging up in his townhouse, expecting them to work miracles. He was out here in the cold, crawling around the warehouse on his hands and knees.

  When he wasn’t here matching marble, he was at his building, lending a hand with the refurbishment. He even worked there on rest days, keeping things moving, doing the detailed finishing work he enjoyed the most. After eight years at The Shadows, he had plenty of carpentry experience. He had no problems with his work crew not respecting him, though he often had as many as three hundred men all working on the place at once.

  They were matching the marble slabs that would be used on the building façade. It was tedious, frustrating, slow work. He knew the men hated it, but he found it oddly fascinating – but then, he loved marble. He had been delighted when his uncle told him to go ahead and have his building exactly the way he wanted it to be. That meant marble. Lots of marble.

  He’d first seen marble when he was only four and his mother had been alive. On that day, his father was roaming up and down The Promenade in Erdahn, looking to shoplift or pickpocket while casing the neighborhood for possible housebreaking. His mother, who always refused to have anything to do with his father’s thieving, took Borsen into the shelter of the marble plinth of Queen Glorantha’s statue when a sudden rainstorm blew up.

  Back then he hadn’t been able to see much, but he was fascinated by the dark green veining in the white marble. He traced it with his skinny little hand while his mother recited a poem to him about the Giants under the ground, the life force of Eirdon that sometimes thrust up through the soil in the forms of great stone hands and faces.

  “There are Giants in the ground,

  There are Giants in the sky.

  When clouds are thick and rolling,

  You see them striding by.

  When the snow drifts deeply,

  There are giants far below.

  Sleeping in the places,

  Where all men’s bones shall go.”

  She’d been able to keep her beautiful white eyes fully open because of the rainclouds dimming the sunlight. He could remember her sweet face and how she’d held her cape over him so he would stay dry while he rubbed his hands over the smooth marble again and again.

  “Always remember that you are Thrun, my little son,” she’d whispered. “Remember you are from the first people of Eirdon.”

  All he had to do to hear his mother’s voice in his mind was to run his hand over the polished surface of a statue or building façade. He’d decided that he would have marble in his establishment. So now he didn’t care that he’d spent a total of thirty-five hours so far crawling around, matching the veining on the white and green marble that would be on the façade of his building. More would be inside – black marble in the foyer, yellow marble with gold veins in much of the rest of the building, with touches of pink, green and brown marble elsewhere, for contrast.

  Borsen leaned back on his packing crate seat and tucked into his second huge sandwich. He was starving and exhausted. It would be a long afternoon, after which it would be all he could do to walk the three blocks home and crawl into the bathtub for a hot soak. He would do justice to whatever Varnia had made for dinner and then fall into bed. It was the pattern of his days now – and it was a pattern he was grateful for, because it kept him occupied all the time.

  Borsen found Erdahn to be unsettling, even though as a child he had lived in it a time or two because of his father’s endless migrations. He’d never been entirely on his own in a large city before and he’d had some experiences in the last couple of months that he was in no hurry to repeat.

  He was extremely grateful for Kaymar’s honest and frank advice when he was younger. Kaymar had made no bones about the fact that there were men who were going to find Borsen irresistable for a number of reasons, including his small stature, his youthfulness and his exotic features. He could be certain he would be approached by men who were interested in nothing more than his body. Indeed, it had already happened, more than once.

  His first proposition in Erdahn came from a man who walked up to him on the street and offered him a knee trembler in a nearby alley, earning himself a close view of
Borsen’s largest knife and a brisk refusal. Borsen had been propositioned before, in Surelia and Artreya, but by men who were less crude and more philosophical about being refused.

  There were also men on the work crew who were interested. At least they had been friendly and respectful. They treated him as a person they would like to know, not just a piece of meat they wanted to rut. Refusing them had been a matter of giving the impression he was already attached, something they assumed immediately once he graciously turned them down. He still felt at ease with them after disappointing them, but some of the streets in Erdahn were places he simply didn’t go any longer. Better to stick to work and townhouse – and The Shadows, if he could get free to get over there. So far, he hadn’t been able to go home. There was so much to do.

  When Borsen wasn’t at the building site, he was going through warehouses, looking for furnishings for his store, searching for stock, ordering fabrics, supplies, light fixtures, thread and a million other things that would be needed. He was also recruiting and hiring tailors, finishers, salesmen and cleaning staff, to begin work as soon as he had the store open.

  “End of break, boss?” one of the men asked. Borsen looked up, a little startled. He took out his watch.

  “Take some more time, fellows,” he said. “It’ll be a long, hard grind this afternoon. Let’s rest our bones a while longer.”

  He could see by their smiles it was the right thing to say. Being stingy about a few minutes’ rest would lose him much more than a little time.

  ***

  Stevahn Rondheim was watching the activity at the building directly across from his family’s bank on the Promenade in Erdahn. He had a bird’s eye view from his third story office that fronted on the street.

  The building had been vacant for over a year, attracting handbills and vagrants. The Promenade had gone downhill of late, as funding to municipal works dwindled during Mordania’s most recent skirmish with Artreya. Businesses like his own paid cleanup crews to keep the sidewalks and adjacent road clean, but there were many stretches of The Promenade riddled with loose cobblestones, horse shit and trash. The empty building had become an eyesore. It was with considerable interest that he’d observed activity across the way, beginning some weeks ago.

  Intially, the building was shown to potential buyers. Then a fine carriage pulled up and two men, accompanied by one of Erdahn’s most prestigious property brokers, went over the building in minute detail. On successive days, they returned with various people, obviously carpenters and other tradesmen. Surveyors made measurements, plumbers came and went, glaziers stood out in the road and gazed up at the dingy and dark windows.

  It was obvious the two men, who resembled each other and must be father and son, were coming from somewhere far enough away that they could not be in Erdahn daily. Then, after the rumor that the vacant building had indeed been sold went up and down The Promenade, the younger man was continually present, along with an army of workmen. Where most renovation projects might have a crew of ten, there were at least a hundred men all working on the building at once, sometimes many, many more.

  Stevahn’s secretary had news.

  “The word is that it’s going to be a tailor shop,” she announced.

  “That whole building for a tailor shop?” Stevahn asked in disbelief. “They’re gutting the entire thing.”

  “They say he’s a master tailor,” she replied. “Goes by only one name, something beginning with a ‘B’. The newssheet man told me, but I’ve forgotten. He’s supposed to be very good. Perhaps he plans to rent the rest of it.”

  His secretary was a twitterhead, so he didn’t give her announcement much credence. Anyway, he was far too occupied with watching the progress on the building from his office window.

  The industry and effort expended was amazing. Cranes on the roof winched building materials from dray carts appearing at clockwork intervals in the street. Tons of lumber, carpeting, glass, mirrors and crated items were lifted from an endless procession of vehicles. The armies of workers were rapidly converting what had been a gloomy and dull mercantile into something quite other. It was intriguing – and the young man who was constantly on the site was even more so.

  He’d been immaculately turned out in a black suit and matching topper when he appeared with the older man who resembled him so closely. He was still beautifully, if more casually dressed as he moved around the site all day long. He seemed at ease with the workmen and thought nothing of picking up a hammer or helping to move a heavy object. He sported dark, flowing, waist length hair that was usually clipped back out of his way. He wore spectacles and a dark jawline beard and moustache of a style not common in Erdahn. Small statured, he gave the impression of being a boy, but it was obvious he was full grown.

  He was also fearless. More than once Stevahn watched agog as the young man hitched a ride from the ground to the building’s roof on a load being winched up by a crane, holding the cable with one hand.

  What was more, the young man stayed at the building after the workmen had gone home for the day. He could be heard hammering or sawing away into the evening. Sometimes when Stevahn stayed late at the bank, he could see lamplight within the darkened building across the street.

  He was intrigued.

  His secretary, who had been trying unsuccessfully for two years to seduce him, finally came up with some real information.

  “His name is Borsen,” she said excitedly, watching as the young man stepped off a second story windowsill onto a load of lumber being winched skyward. “He’s the tailor. He bought the building outright. Paid in gold drammarks.”

  “What the hells is a tailor doing running around a construction site all day long?” Stevahn asked her, watching as the young man – Borsen – lightly stepped off the pile of lumber as it drew level with the roof.

  “I don’t know, but that’s who it is,” his secretary answered, sighing to herself.

  “Incredible,” Stevahn muttered, watching the slender figure silhouetted against the sky, hands on hips, looking across the rooftops of Erdahn. Borsen was standing on a narrow plank spanning a four-story drop. He stood there as confidently as if he was standing on a solid, granite floor.

  “Are we going to finish this letter?” his secretary asked, her voice bleak.

  Perhaps the poor thing has caught on, finally, Stevahn thought. I am not interested in her – or in any woman.

  ***

  The next day, the marble started arriving.

  The drays stretched back for blocks, drawn by eight horse teams, wheels creaking with the weight of slabs of marble of all colors – pink marble from Fambre, Baramban golden marble, the famous Portos green-veined white marble. The slabs were followed by pillars, stair risers and treads, floor tiles, mantlepieces.

  Borsen was everywhere the marble was being installed, pointing out the joins, watching as the slabs for the exterior of the building were put into position, helping to inch them this way and that until the veining appeared to be unbroken. Someone has spent hours finding just where to join these sections, Stevahn thought in awe. I’ll bet it was that fellow, kneeling on the floor of some warehouse, lining up marble slabs with the help of these men. And now he’s out there, his sleeves rolled up, helping them swing those almighty huge chunks of rock around and making sure that all is perfect. What sort of man is that?

  The glass began arriving next. In no time, a solarium was completed on the roof.

  In five months’ time, the project was finished. The last pile of refuse was carted away. A cleaning crew went in, scrubbing the place top to bottom. The sidewalk was replaced with marble slabs and a sign was installed over the massive mahogany doors:

  BORSEN’S

  Practicality – Functionality – Exquisite Style

  “A bit pretentious for a tailor shop run by a boy,” Stevahn’s secretary said irritably.

  “They say he’s twenty-two or three,” Stevahn answered, watching as drays unloaded hundreds of bolts of fabric and boxes full of wh
at must be supplies. “Not a boy.”

  Suddenly Borsen himself ran out of the building and hefted a box, exchanging some cheery words with the drayman. He darted back into the building, only to return a moment later to heft another box. Stevahn forgot all about the report he was dictating, watching him.

  ***

  Dear Katrin,

  It’s done. There is not one more bit of timber to sand, marble to polish, there are no more nails to bash with a hammer. The cleaning crews are going through one more time tomorrow and we will spend two weeks arranging and getting the displays put together – and then Borsen’s will open for business.

  I’d be a liar if I didn’t say I was so tired I could scream, but screaming would take too much energy. This will not be a long letter, but Kaymar and Ifor are heading back tomorrow and I wanted to let you know it’s all done and ready to be seen! I do hope you’re well enough to come and see. I’ve thought of you and Hemmett so much and really look forward to showing you through the place and amazing you with my wood paneled elevator.

  I never thought working at tailoring would be a vacation but it will seem like it after the last five months. Remind me, should I ever decide to take up life anew as a carpenter, of just how all my bones ached today. It’s going to be strange getting used to holding needles and pins again after all these months of hammers and crowbars!

  I’m heading for the tub now. I hope to see you soon. Maybe you can come over next time Uncle comes. It’s hard to believe. It happened so fast it almost seems like a dream.

  Love,

  B

  ***

  “And how much of it did you do yourself?” Menders asked, looking Borsen up and down. He’d been taken on an exhaustive tour of inspection of Borsen’s establishment. “You’ve lost weight you can’t afford to, my boy.”