The brass doorknob rattled loosely in its collar, then turned slowly, hesitantly, and eased silently open.
Valin stood in the doorway, his eyes probably no wider than Ian’s own.
He looked like shit. His normally swarthy skin was pale as skim milk, and one thick but trembling hand clutched his robe to his belly, probably more to hold his guts in than to hold his robe shut. Steri-strips were spread in a fan across the right side of his face, holding a half-dozen wounds together, and drool had caked at the corners of his thick, fleshy lips. His eyes had trouble focusing, and he leaned against the doorframe for balance or support, or probably both.
But the amazing thing about the dancing bear is not how gracefully he dances but that he dances at all: it was a wonder that Valin was alive, and a miracle on the order of the parting of the Red Sea that he could stand.
“Ian Silver Stone,” Valin said, dropping to his knees, “this one prays that he has not disturbed thy rest.”
“To thy feet, Son of Vestri,” Ian said, as he took a step forward and grabbed hold of the dwarf’s free hand with his uninjured hand. It was like squeezing a side of beef—the muscles under Valin’s skin were thick and strong.
But the dwarf came quickly to his feet anyway, supporting himself as he did, not pulling even a little on Ian’s arm.
Which was just as well; Ian slumped against the wall. He probably shouldn’t have been trying to move so quickly, not with his head full of narcotics.
Running feet pounded on the floor below and then thudded quickly up the stairs.
“What do you think you are doing?” Martha Sherve said.
Ian started to make some comment about how if she’d actually been a nurse as long as she said she had been, she’d have seen a patient on the way to or from a bathroom before, but the thought shriveled and died in the cold heat of her glare.
“I was just helping him, Mrs. Sherve,” he said. “I heard something—”
“There’s an intercom box on the nightstand beside your bed. I take it you’re going to claim you were too loopy to remember me telling you to use that if you needed anything.”
Well, any port in a storm. That probably was what it was. “Sure,” he said with a nod. “That’s it.”
“Then how come you remember that now?” She sniffed, then wrinkled her nose. “Back to bed with the both of you; I’ll clean things up in here and be along with another shot for you.”
Before Ian could say so much as a word, Martha Sherve had her left arm around Valin’s waist and his thick right arm levered over her shoulders, and had him halfway down the hall toward the guest room that the Thorsens called the Sewing Room, to distinguish it from the guest room that they called the Guest Room.
Ian could have followed her to argue, but discretion was the better part of valor, after all, and hydraulic pressure reminded him that his bladder was getting no emptier standing here. He closed and locked the bathroom door behind him and flicked on the light switch. With a high-pitched tinkling of flickering fluorescents and a low whirrrr of a hidden motor, the lights and fan came on.
The bathroom was spotless, as though it hadn’t been used, well, ever—at least not since its last cleaning. And the roll of toilet paper… ? The free end had been folded into an intricate shape, sort of like what Ian had seen in some hotel—the Hyatt, maybe? Except there it had just been folded into a triangle; this looked like a piece of origami.
It would feel like a minor but real sacrilege to disturb that; it was just as well that he only had to take a leak, he thought, suiting action to thought. And just as well that a stream of urine couldn’t overflow a modern toilet.
Yes, And I’ve told you a billion times not to exaggerate.
There was a quiet knock on the door.
“Ian?” Karin Thorsen’s voice was pitched carefully, as though she feared being overheard. Which was strange?
“Yes?” Ian rearranged his robe and tied it hurriedly, then opened the door.
Why was Karin Thorsen standing there in her pajamas and robe, her long hair tied back for sleep?
One fugitive strand caressed her cheek. Ian didn’t blame it.
Ian took a halting step forward. “Is everything okay?” he asked.
She grinned crookedly.
“That is just what I was going to ask you,” Karin said. “I don’t normally get up in the middle of the night,” she went on, “but I heard you and Martha Sherve talking, and I wanted to be sure that all was well.”
Middle of the night? Ian’s head spun. He had either been sleeping a lot longer, or a lot shorter, than he had thought.
“Shorter,” she said with a smile, as though she could read his mind, something he sincerely hoped she couldn’t.
In Ian’s view, you weren’t responsible for what you thought—only for what you said and did. Not the way he had been raised, of course; George Orwell could have taken lessons from Ben Silverstein on the subject of thought-crime. There might be something psychologically perverted about being hot for a friend’s mother, but he could live with that. What he couldn’t live with was letting her use that to manipulate him again. He had known what she was doing last time, but it hadn’t mattered. It was like with Freya; except, of course, that he knew he could trust Freya, and he knew he couldn’t trust Karin Thorsen. To her, he was expendable, particularly in comparison with her son and her husband.
He knew that she liked him, and he had the distinct sensation that the sexual attraction was mutual, although what she would see in a tall, skinny geek like him was one of those woman-things that he had to take on faith because it never did make any sense.
But like him or not, she would gladly slit his belly and dump his guts into a basin if her son’s or her husband’s feet needed warming.
Unless, of course, he concentrated and persuaded her otherwise, letting the heavy golden ring on his finger pulse an indictment of himself as a scumbag. It would be a particularly safe form of rape, and Karin would think she had consented, as in fact she would have…
But what you felt and what you thought was your own damn business, as long as you goddamn kept it to your goddamn self.
“Do you think you’re going to go right back to sleep?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said, after a moment. Then he changed his mind and shook his head. “No, I’d better not. I’m feeling groggy from too much sleep as it is.”
And probably from too much Percocet or Percodan or Percodammit, as well as whatever other drugs were coursing their way through his system. His shoulder ached, true enough, but he hardly needed to have been taking so much painkiller. It wasn’t like he’d just had his belly opened, or something. He’d royally wrenched his shoulder, and there certainly was a sore spot where he had hit his head, but what he needed now was probably more food and exercise than sleep and drugs.
“Coffee?” She smiled perhaps a touch shyly.
“I… don’t think so,” he said. At four in the morning? he didn’t say. Still, it was probably best to stay up, anyway, and try and get some semblance of a regular sleep rhythm going again.
“You are due another Percocet. You can wash it down with some coffee and a piece of coffee cake.”
“I’ll pass on the Percocet, but come to think of it, maybe I will take you up on that coffee.” He forced a grin. “Better yet, I’ll show you how we make coffee in the city.” He frowned. “After I get dressed.”
After we both get dressed, he thought. He was far too conscious of the fact that there were only two layers of cloth and sensible inhibitions between them. Not that he would do anything, but he would worry about doing something.
“Your clothes are on the old bureau,” she said. “Except for the socks; you can take a pair of Torrie’s.”
He was a little surprised to find Hosea down in the kitchen, sitting at the table over a steaming cup of coffee and a plate piled high with bacon, toast, and four eggs, sunny-side up, that made the plate look like a pair of Siamese twins staring up at Ian. Although Ian didn’
t know why he should be; Hosea didn’t need much sleep, and when the two of them had been on the road together, Hosea had been up before Ian almost all the time.
Hosea poured thick cream from the pink Depression glass creamer until, by accident or design, the coffee was exactly the same shade of brown as the hand holding the creamer. “Good morning, Ian Silver Stone,” he said. “You slept long; I hope you slept well.”
“I haven’t checked the Scoreboard,” Ian said. “But I think my inner demons finally won in sudden death overtime.”
For a moment, Hosea’s dark face creased puzzlement, but then the wrinkles in his forehead smoothed, and his tight lips loosened into a smile that revealed teeth white as good ivory. “Ah. Very funny.”
Then why is neither of us laughing? Ian sat down gingerly in the chair opposite and poured himself a cup of coffee from the carafe. It was hot and strong, just as he liked it, not the thin, weak stuff everybody in Hardwood seemed to drink by the quart. “You made coffee?”
“No,” came Karin’s voice from the archway that led to the dining room. “I did.” She was in her usual sort of outfit of plaid shirt and jeans, a common way of dressing around here, particularly in the winter, for people of both sexes. But, Ian had long since noticed, most of the clothes were not cut to fit quite so tightly, with just enough give to make them look comfortable.
And, of course, he thought, half-trying not to watch as she stretched up to bring coffee cake down from the top of the fridge, few women in Hardwood or elsewhere would have filled out the jeans quite so interestingly.
And if you can get your mind off your friend’s mom’s admittedly terrific ass, maybe you can figure out how to get out of doing what you know damn well she’s going to try to talk you into doing.
She cut two large pieces and one small one, barely more than a sliver, and set each down on a piece of Royal Copenhagen china—part of a much better set than the Flora Danica that Benjamin Silverstein had spent an improbably large amount of money on. She set a plate down at each of their places before sitting down herself. Ian and Karin and Hosea had each picked up a piece of coffee cake and taken a nibble before Ian started chuckling.
Karin raised an eyebrow. “ ‘Oh’?”
He waved a hand, dismissing it. “Never mind.”
“Is this something that the whole class can share?” she asked, insisting.
No point in arguing about it. “It’s nothing much,” he said. “It just struck me as funny that we’re eating with our fingers off of fine china.”
It took her a moment to get it, and then she laughed, a sound of distant silver bells that almost painfully reminded him of Marta. “I guess it’s just a matter of what you’re used to,” she said. “I mean, I know of people in the city who have rooms in their house with fancy furniture covered in clear plastic, and nobody ever sits, much less lives.”
Ian nodded. He’d had a girlfriend, once, whose parents had had a living room like that. He’d actually thought it was kind of sweet, if a bit strange.
“There’s a lot of people in the city like that,” he said. “In the city you find a lot of people who say what they don’t mean. Out here, you find a lot of people who don’t say what they do mean.”
“Oh?”
“Oh, like, ‘I could eat’ doesn’t just mean that whoever is saying it could eat; what it really does mean is anything from ‘I’m kind of hungry’ to ‘Thank you for bringing that up; I was about to chew my own arm off.’ ”
All three of them laughed. “Or,” he found himself saying, “when somebody says, ‘Would you like coffee and coffee cake?’ what she really means is ‘How can I talk you into going to Tir Na Nog, again, to stop the Sons from killing my son?’ ”
The room was suddenly quiet. Both Hosea and Karin sat motionless, utterly still. Ian heard the long, low whistle of a train approaching a crossing off in the distance. Which meant that he didn’t need to look at the clock to know that it was 5:35 and that the Soo Line twice-daily was just passing to the north of town. He held her eyes unblinking for what felt like an hour, although one corner of his mind kept counting pulse beats and only got to twenty-five.
She opened her mouth, swallowed hard, then swallowed hard again. “I don’t have the right,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper, “to take offense at that.” She folded her fingers in front of her on the table, interlocking them until her knuckles were bone white, like the china. “I lost that right when I talked you out of taking my husband along with you, when Hosea needed to be brought to Tir Na Nog.”
Hosea nodded, like a judge pounding a gavel in judgment. “And so you did, Karin,” he said, his voice gentle as always. “But you do take offense, don’t you?”
“No.” She shook her head. “No.”
“Well,” Ian said, “you’re right. It makes sense.” He wanted to work his shoulder, to see how it was healing, but that would have been stupid, so he didn’t. He tried to limit himself to doing one stupid thing at a time, and what he was about to say was precisely as stupid as walking through a mine field. Which is to say perhaps very stupid, perhaps not stupid at all. But not safe, regardless. “It makes sense.”
“Ian.” Hosea leaned forward. “She is telling the truth. She does not want you to go.”
Yeah, sure. And I’m the fucking Queen of the May.
“No. Please listen to me, Ian. Please don’t go. Not now. Not with Thorian away. He’ll—” she caught herself and closed her eyes tightly for a moment. “He won’t believe me,” she said. “He’ll think I talked you into it.”
“Why would he think that?” Ian asked. “Just because you did just that not six months ago?” The trouble was, still, that her arguments had made sense. And they made more sense this time. “But never mind that. I can explain things to Thorian. He can’t come with me, not where I’m going.”
Hosea nodded sagely. “The Dominions, of course.”
“The Fire Duke.” Ian folded his hands in his lap. “I think I can call on him for the return of a favor,” he said.
He fondled the heavy ring on his finger. It would not disturb Ian’s sense of morality to use the ring to persuade His Warmth to help him out. Not one whit, considering that the present Fire Duke owed his position to Ian’s having killed the imposter who had replaced and impersonated His Warmth’s father. And the dukes of the Dominions were known to have solid working relationships with at least some of the Sons of Fenris.
It was hardly a detailed strategy, but it was, at least, the beginning of a plan.
Hosea nodded again. “You seem to have thought this through,” he said, placing his palms on the table and making as though to rise.
“I’ll manage.”
“I suppose I had best get to packing.”
“No.” Ian gestured him back into his seat. “I can’t take you for the same reason that I can’t take Thorian. You’ve got too much history over there, the both of you.”
In the Dominions, Thorian Thorsen was known as Thorian the Traitor. Yes, Ian might—might—be able to trade some official gratitude for unofficial pardon. But he wouldn’t be able to trade away the anger and the resentment of the Duelist’s Guild, the House of Steel, as they called it. And he most certainly couldn’t count on the support of Thorian del Orvald, the Duelmaster, because Thorian del Orvald was Thorian Thorsen’s father, and he could no more let familial affection stand in his way than any other ruler could, even though the territory the Duelmaster ruled was a corner of his society, not real estate.
But Ian wasn’t arrogant enough to think he was ready to take on Tir Na Nog alone. He would have liked to have had Arnie Selmo with him, but Arnie Selmo wasn’t available. Torrie would have been fine, but he wasn’t available, either. He might even have settled for Maggie—she really wasn’t all that good with a sword, not by Ian’s standards—but people didn’t expect a girl to be even as adequate as Maggie was.
But she wasn’t available either.
For a moment, he played with the idea of seeing if he could e
nlist Marta’s brother, but he realized that would only be an excuse to travel to Vandescard and see Marta. It wasn’t just the hunger for the taste of her lips on his, for the warmth and supple strength of her body at night, but that was part of it.
And while the Thorsen men could afford to think with their dicks, that was a luxury that Ian had never been permitted.
There was only one more candidate… “So I’ll take Valin,” he said.
Karin Thorsen’s eyes went wide. “Valin? He’s just this side of death.”
“No, not really.” Hosea pursed his lips together thoughtfully. “He was,” he said, “but dwarves heal rapidly. That which doesn’t kill them won’t keep them down for long.” His right hand, as usual, lay limp in his lap, but somehow or other he managed to eat the coffee cake without dropping so much as a crumb on his lap or the table. Ian wished he knew how Hosea did that.
Hosea turned to him. “You’ll take the Hidden Way from the clearing,” he said. “If you don’t look for hidden turns, you’ll likely emerge at the place where the Sons brought Thorian and his family, only a few days from the Southern Pass, even at a fairly slow pace.”
Ian frowned. “I was hoping you knew a way that could bring us directly back to Falias.” The Hidden Way from Falias emerged in the clearing; there should be some way to take it back to Falias.
“I’m sorry.” Hosea shook his head, sadly. “I’m sure there is a way,” he said, tapping a long forefinger against his temple. “But I couldn’t tell you what it is.” His jaw clenched for just a moment, and his cheek muscles stood out in sharp relief. “There was a time…” he shook his head slowly, sadly, in resignation. “Regrets,” he said, “are not the most useful of emotions.” His eyes stared sadly at something infinitely far away as he sipped at his coffee.
Ian smiled. “I could’ve told you that myself.”
Hosea shook himself, a tremor running up and down his body for just a moment, and when it stopped, his warm smile was back in place, and his eyes rested gently on Ian’s. “Well then,” he said, “let’s take a look at you.”
The Crimson Sky Page 9
