The Crimson Sky

by Joel Rosenberg

  Or could he?

  It was embarrassing that he was barely able to keep up with these two old men. Were their muscles made of some untiring rubber?

  Or were they every bit as tired as he was, but just more stubborn?

  More than two could play at that game. “Does he ever come down from here?” Ian asked, forcing his voice to be as level and normal as he could.

  “Rarely,” Darien del Darien said. “And more rarely, of recent years. That’s largely traditional, though. The Scion is, oh, special, not like the rulers of the other Cities. He can’t afford to be… as involved as His Solidity or His Warmth typically chooses to be, not in everyday affairs.”

  If speaking while climbing caused Darien del Darien the slightest physical distress, it didn’t show in his face or in his voice.

  “That’s where you come in, I take it.”

  “Come in? Ah.” Darien del Darien nodded. “Yes.” His thin lips pursed, then split in a smile. “I see. You were under the impression that the klaffvarer in the Old Keep is like the klaffvarers of the other Cities?” He shook his head and turned to Hosea. “Is there some reason you didn’t tell him otherwise, Orfindel?”

  Hosea didn’t answer for a moment. “I did, but I’m not sure that Ian took the point.”

  Great. So now I’m stupid.

  “No,” Hosea said, responding to the unvoiced thought, “it’s not stupidity. It’s lack of, oh, orientation. Things are different here, and they don’t quite fit into the same molds that you’re used to.”

  “Everything’s different everywhere,” Ian said.

  “Ah. My point precisely,” Hosea said. “Although,” he said, idly, “it’s not always been the custom that the Scion remain so much above it all as this one appears to.”

  “He feels,” Darien del Darien said, “that the less he interferes in everyday matters, the more puissance his presence has when he does choose to involve himself.”

  Well, maybe that was the pravda, and maybe it was even true. But a theoretical ruler, kept isolated from actual rule, wasn’t unknown.

  For something like a thousand years, the emperor of Japan and his court were virtual prisoners of whatever clan or family was actually running the country, trotted out only rarely to show the other nobles who really ran things. The Shogunate had ended sometime in the nineteenth century—Ian wasn’t clear on the details—during the something-or-other Restoration. Meiji, that was it: the Meiji Restoration.

  But the Japanese had slipped into a sort of civilian-military Shogunate again, and that had brought them into and through World War II…

  … only to be ended at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

  Was Darien del Darien afraid that the rule of the Scion’s klaffvarer would end with the Promised Warrior? If there was a polite way to ask, Ian couldn’t figure out what it might be—he’d ask Hosea later.

  With every turn around the spire, the disk above grew closer, and Ian could—finally—make out the dark hatchway that stood as the only entrance.

  If the Scion wanted to keep himself aloof and away from it all, this certainly did it. The circular stairway terminated on a landing, where a preposterously ordinary-looking wooden ladder stood as the only way up and into the darkness above.

  “If you’ll be kind enough to wait for a moment, I’ll see if the Scion will receive us.” Climbing with infuriating ease, Darien del Darien disappeared up into the darkness.

  Ian leaned against the cold stone and took a deep breath. “Well, we know who has gone soft lately.”

  “There are different kinds of toughness, Ian,” Hosea said. “And Darien del Darien and I do have less muscle to haul around than, well, some other people do.”

  Darien del Darien’s face appeared in the hole above. “Come up, if you please.”

  Ian hadn’t quite known what to expect—that was always a problem in Tir Na Nog; you got used to it after a while, maybe too used to it—but he had expected something comfortable and luxurious. This was, after all, where the Scion lived, and given the luxury that went with even guest chambers in the Cities, Ian had expected at least another few levels of higher opulence and comfort.

  But the round room was spare and almost monastic. A series of quartz windows, curved like the wall they were set into, let in light, if not a view. The floor was a mosaic of small pieces of wood, seeming randomly cut, carefully fit together so that only the contrasting grain revealed the joint.

  A small, curved dining table was set into the far wall, supporting a crystal pitcher of water and some glasses—Ian had seen more elegant-looking glasses in the Thorsen kitchen—and a small pot of tea on a cast-iron stand, warming over an alcohol flame. The smell of the burning alcohol cut through a musty smell of rot and mold, like that of a damp basement.

  There were only two chairs in the room, both deep and low, each with a small table next to it. One table was piled high with papers, some loose, some bound together; the other was clean, save for a pen and inkwell set, and a small, rather ordinary-looking knife that Ian would have wanted to call a hunting knife, although he doubted that there was a lot of hunting going on up here.

  A long black curtain, suspended from a brass bar set high into the walls, cut a chord across the back curve of the room. If there was any real luxury to be had up here, it was concealed behind there.

  Well, Scion, why don’t you leave your dancing girls for a moment, and come out and chat?

  “Good day to you,” a quiet voice said from behind the curtain. “I thank you for coming to see me.” It was hard to guess the age of the speaker. Male, certainly, and not young, but not with any quaver of age in the voice.

  “You are welcome, of course,” Hosea said. “I’m curious, though. Do you mind me asking a question?”

  “That would, I suppose, depend on the question. Chance it and see.”

  “Why are you sitting behind the curtain?” Hosea gestured at it, not that the Scion could see it “This isn’t the first time I’ve visited the Old Keep, and—”

  “That is certainly true. You built it, after all, Orfindel.”

  “Well,” Hosea said, “there’s legends that it was built by an Old One who was called Arvindel, and Orfindel, and undoubtedly many other things less savory—but that hardly makes me one and the same Orfindel, does it?”

  “No.” There was a thin chuckle. “That isn’t what makes you the same one. But let that pass, for now.”

  “I was saying,” Hosea went on, “that I’ve been here before, but I haven’t known the Scion to be quite this, well…”

  “Private,” the Scion said. “The word you’re looking for is, I think, ‘private.’ ”

  Or reclusive, Ian thought. Was that the Scion’s choice, or his supposed majordomo’s?

  And why the curtain?

  Right about now it would have been nice to have a little dog handy to pull the curtain back. You couldn’t blame a dog for doing that, after all. He wasn’t at all sure what the dog would find—other than it wouldn’t be Frank Morgan. The Scion’s voice sounded a lot more like Wallace Beery.

  Then again, I’m no Judy Garland. Although the temptation to click his heels and say, There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home would have been irresistible, if Ian had thought it might even do some good.

  “No, Orfindel, you haven’t. I am of… of a quiet temperament, these days, and I have arranged to be seen by very few people.”

  “The Heir and the klaffvarer are the only ones, I hear,” Hosea said.

  “You hear too well, perhaps. Solitude and distance suit me.”

  “Okay, fine,” Ian said. “And if solitude and distance suit you, why go digging up trouble by sending your dogs after the Thorsens? Sounds to me like you’re buying yourself a lot of trouble.”

  Darien del Darien’s jaw dropped, and Hosea took a step back.

  Apparently, it just wasn’t done to speak bluntly to the Scion.

  “An… interesting question, Ian del Benjamin,” the Sci
on said.

  Ian wasn’t sure what the point of that naming was—so what if the Scion knew about Ian’s shithead of a father? If there was a threat there, it didn’t bother Ian.

  Hey, Scion, go ahead and send your dogs after Daddy Dearest, eh? I won’t give a shit.

  Well, that wasn’t true. He shouldn’t care, but he would. That was the way of it. Another addition to the list of unfairnesses in life; in the back of his head, a little voice would always be saying to Ian that if only he had said and done the right things, if only he’d cleaned his room better or had better grades or listened better or had better friends or hobbies or knew when to talk and when to shut up better … if only he’d done better, his dad would have loved him.

  And while he could remember nights lying in bed when Dad was out, hoping against hope that this time he would have managed to wrap his car around a tree and killed himself, every time that goddamn garage door wheezed its way into life‘, sending Ian turning toward the wall, hoping that this time he could feign sleep well enough that Dad would just stagger off to his own room and pass out…

  Each goddamn time there was a hint of something vaguely like relief in his gut.

  “I prefer to be called Ian Silverstein,” Ian said, “or Ian Silver Stone. That’s what she calls me,” he said. There could be no harm in reminding the Scion that Ian had some powerful friends.

  “You mean Freya? The she who is better known as Frida the Ferryman’s Wife?” the Scion said. “She is rather well-preserved for her age, isn’t she? You know, Orfindel, I’ve always envied you Old Ones your long lives, but I guess you’re used to that envy.”

  Hosea didn’t answer.

  “Arnie Selmo, though,” Ian went on, “the fellow who wields Mjolnir?—you’ve seen his lightning to the south—he just calls me Ian.”

  “You think they’d avenge any harm done you?” The tone was casual, as though the Scion was asking the time of day, just for the sake of conversation.

  “I certainly hope so,” Ian said. “More to the point, I hope you think they’d avenge any harm done me.”

  “Very well. Do I misunderstand that they’re friendly to the Thorian del Thorians, both the older and the younger?”

  “Well, yes.” Arnie? On the Night of the Sons, Arnie had charged out into the night to face a pack of the Sons in their wolf form, armed with nothing but a shotgun, a shotgun that could do little more than annoy a Son.

  “Then why, you fool, do you think that I’d go to great difficulty to make myself such powerful enemies? And for what? Am I insane, that I’d earn their enmity—and yours, if you’re the Promised Warrior of legend—just for some cheap retribution against a former subject, over a matter that Orfindel himself has rendered moot?

  “No.” The Scion’s voice lost all hint of lightness and gentleness. It curled and rasped like a sandpaper snake. “It’s never been me. It’s never been the Cities. It wasn’t the Dominions that sent the Sons hunting through the Hidden Ways for Thorian del Thorian; it was an Old One, a fire giant, masquerading as the Fire Duke, and he did it not for the Dominions, but for himself, to lure Orfindel out of hiding and into his hands.”

  Because, at least then, Hosea knew where the Brisingamen jewels were, and although he had resisted torture before, although his body had been tormented for years, badly enough to stir the conscience of even a Cities duelist, he had bound himself by his word to protect Torrie and Karin, and if that meant giving up the jewels, the fire giant had thought he would.

  Was he right?

  Yes, he was. Hosea didn’t give his word easily not because he disliked breaking it, but because he couldn’t, because his oath bound him absolutely, inescapably. He had returned to Tir Na Nog at least twice to protect Torrie and Karin, not just because he cared for them—although he obviously did—but because he had promised Karin’s father that he would, a promise given knowing that Old Man Roelke would turn him and Thorian del Thorian away at a time when he couldn’t afford to face that possibility.

  “So it wasn’t you,” Ian said. “Okay, I’ll accept that.”

  “How very generous of you,” the Scion said, his voice low and icy.

  “But then who did it?”

  “I don’t know,” the Scion said, his voice noticeably weaker after the outburst. He coughed, and the coughing became a coughing fit.

  Darien del Darien rose from his chair. “The Scion is very busy,” he said, “and he needs his rest.”

  “No, klaffvarer, I need to—”

  “No.” Darien del Darien’s manner had none of the servant in it. “You need your rest, Scion. You must save your energies for, for other things.”

  Only iron self-control kept Ian from nodding in self-congratulation. He had had it right, after all. The Scion was the vassal of his supposed butler, and it was Darien del Darien that ruled the Dominions.

  Was it Darien del Darien who had sent the Sons out again? Certainly Herolf had responded obediently to him. If so, why? And what could Ian do about it?

  “But, no, Darien,” the Scion said. “I have enough energy, enough—”

  “If I’m to serve you properly, I must be the judge of that, Scion.” Darien del Darien drew himself up straight, no trace of a servant in his manner. Not servant, not vassal … but what was he? “I have promised to serve you faithfully—not with blind obedience, Scion, but with utter faith—as long as I breathe, and if I can no longer keep that promise, I’ll no longer draw a breath.”

  There was a hollow chuckle from behind the curtain. “Are you threatening me, old friend?”

  “No; I make no threats against you, Scion. But if you’ll not listen to me, perhaps after my body lies broken and bleeding at the base of your spire, perhaps then you’ll listen to my son and heir—he can’t serve you with my experience, but he has no lack of loyalty in him.”

  Darien del Darien walked to the ladder, removing the heavy gold chain and medallion from his neck as he did. He dropped it to the floor with a clanking of chain that echoed loudly in the confines of the small room. “Shall he assume his duties this day? I warn you—no, Scion, I threaten you—he will keep faith with you with every bit as much loyalty as I always have, and if you won’t heed his counsel on matters of your own well-being, you’ll find yourself with nobody but my twelve-year-old grandson to wait upon your needs.”

  There was a thin laugh. “I understand that Darien del Darien the Youngest is a bright boy, and a good companion to my Heir.”

  Darien del Darien apparently took that as surrender, he stooped to pick up his chain of office from the floor, and then slowly straightened, draping it again about his neck.

  How many times, Ian wondered, had the two of them played this scene? It had the reek of familiar routine to it, but if it was for show they were better actors than he thought; it felt sincere. Darien del Darien really would have killed himself if the Scion hadn’t relented.

  Darien del Darien stroked the black curtain with an outstretched hand, a motion familiar and affectionate. “Rest now,” he said, quietly. “I’ll be back later with some broth, perhaps, and a bit of bread. Yes, I know you have little appetite, but you must eat.” He made a brushing-away gesture toward Ian and Hosea. “I’ll deal with these two, you may trust me on that.”

  “Trust you? I have always trusted you, my old friend.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  A Cry In The Night

  Torrie finished buckling Jeff into the vest, covering the high white collar with a plaid scarf, its frayed edges showing that it had seen better days.

  “Pull the straps tight, Torrie,” Jeff said, then let his breath out with a whoosh so that Torrie could tighten them, which he did.

  It didn’t look like much, but Torrie had tried his knife on a spot near the hem. Even the covering had been difficult to cut, and he had not been able to get his knife to penetrate the core, much less cut through.

  “Kevlar? Dad didn’t know,” he said. “I’m fond of the brand name, though.”

  “Second Chance.�
� Jeff Bjerke grinned. “It’s supposed to be able to stop a hot .44 Magnum. With any luck it’ll at least slow a Son down.” He chewed his lower lip for a moment. “If he goes for me first.”

  Dad shrugged. “If he goes for me first, he has to expose himself to you, if you stay close enough. So he has to. Just some broken timing, one quick beat, and we should be able to bring him down.”

  With luck. Torrie helped the two of them dress and arm themselves, then walk out the door.

  Their footsteps pounded on the stairs, and then they were gone.

  “Your father can handle himself,” Maggie said, taking his hand. Her hand was warm and dry. “And Jeff impresses me as pretty sharp, pretty fast, too.”

  Torrie nodded. There was something about the relationship between Maggie and his father that he had never quite liked, as though …

  Well, no. He looked down at Maggie’s face. Was there more than a hint of fear in the eyes?

  “If you’re scared,” he said, “that means that you understand the situation.”

  She didn’t answer; she just turned away and stalked off to the kitchen, busying herself straightening out something that clattered, although what there was to straighten out or, clean in that spotless kitchen was something that Torrie couldn’t figure out.

  It felt wrong to be here, but somebody had to be with Maggie. Yes, she could take care of herself under most circumstances—and would resent being taken care of even when it was necessary—but this wasn’t most circumstances.

  Shit.

  He glanced down at his watch. 10:51. Three whole minutes since they had left.

  He tried to read the newspaper, but he couldn’t focus. Maggie didn’t believe in TV, so he couldn’t zone out in front of it. He considered taking out the Arkansas stone to touch up the edge of his sword, but the edge of his sword was sharp already. The snubnose revolver was in his pocket, and he was tempted to take it out and check it again, but it was a gun, and you just didn’t handle guns out of nervousness.