If one fleet had thought to seize the Scepter, and another fought to take it, it might be something worth the having. If nothing else, it would be a quest out of the ordinary. And if she found the Scepter, and if she could take it from those who had wrecked the Molnar’s fleet, and if it had the powers that legend gave it, possession of it might give the Ardry at last the power to rule. That was a lot of “ifs,” but she was a Hound.
Still, even should the Stonewall Scepter prove as inert as the Ourobouros Circuit, the Ardry would at least have another bauble for the Royal League Museum on High Tara. Tully O’Connor was an art lover, and fancied himself an amateur archaeologist. He would be pleased with whoever brought him such an artifact, and favor at court was not something to be shunned.
But it bothered her that she didn’t know what Grimpen knew, or thought he knew.
An Craic
“And what is it you know, or think you know?” the scarred man asks, so suddenly that the harper at first does not realize that he had broken the thread once more.
“I am the one come seeking to know,” she temporizes, and teases a tune from her strings. The scarred man watches her fingers dance for a time and waits for a true answer.
“You knew her then, this Bridget ban?” she says.
It is not an answer, but only another question. Yet, the scarred man treats it as an answer. “Of course, I knew her. How do you suppose I learned her part in it? I knew all of them, the gods’ curses that I did; for the knowing of this tale has been a hard burden.” The scarred man plays a little with his bowl, spinning it, and pushing it from hand to hand.
“And what of Bridget ban?” the harper insists.
The scarred man bows his head. “She was a witch-woman. She enchanted men and used them as casually as a workman uses his tools, and as casually puts them aside when the need is past. You could not measure the arrogance in her—nor could you notice it, when she chose that you did not. What you do with those strings, she could do with a glance and a gesture. Give me Gwillgi and his tight, explosive ferocity, or even Grimpen and his implacable persistence. No one will ever love them.”
The harper is surprised to find genuine tears in the old man’s eyes. She hadn’t thought him capable of it. “And did she love as greatly as she was loved?”
“How much do you already know?” the scarred man asks again. “What was your purpose in coming here? She may have loved hugely or not at all. When one can feign love as well as she, who could ever tell the dross from the gold? That was the horror of it.” He bows his head and dabs at his tears. The harper sees him tense, and a shudder like a small earthquake passes through his frame. His hands shoot out and grab the table’s rim.
When he raises his head, she sees the same distant, mocking quality in his eyes as when she first met him. And there are no tears.
“Have you begun to see the pattern yet?” he asks with the old curl back in his lips. If a portion of him mourns the memory of Bridget ban, that portion has retreated out of sight for now. The glimpse of it had pleased the harper. It had proven him capable of feeling.
“I’ve seen that two of the three who possessed the Dancer have died terribly,” she says.
“Is there another way to die? I hadn’t heard. Who can face the endless dark and not feel terror?”
“The Molnar.”
“He never faced it. His madness was his blinders. It was those looking on who saw the face of it—the bright blue eye of Sapphire Point in the broad black face of the Rift.”
“There is another side to the Rift,” she pointed out.
“Take no comfort from flawed analogies. If there is another side of death, none have come back to tell us of it.”
“There are ancient legends that, once, someone did.”
The scarred man laughs like broken glass. “Are you one of them?”
“If one may believe one ancient legend, of a Twisting Stone, why not another, and more comforting one?”
“Because comfort is a lie.”
“But the Fudir seems to have been a clever man. He would have seen the pattern…Ah. Yes, he knew only of Jumdar’s death, not of the Molnar’s. Only a madman draws kolam from a single point.”
“And a man caught up in the immediacy of events may find it hard to step back and appreciate the pattern. That requires a distance that the Fudir did not yet have. Even the cleverest man may be blind.”
The harper plucks a sharp chord from her strings. “But two points make no pattern. Jumdar and the Molnar died for different reasons, not because they had possessed the Dancer. Jumdar may have been the modern, careful sort of soldier and the Molnar the ancient, careless sort, but neither of them could have supposed Death to be a stranger. Besides, January has not died, and he possessed it first.”
The scarred man smiles horribly. “All men die,” he answered. “It is only a matter of when, and how.”
Goltraí: The Leaving that’s Grieving
The Fudir became a momentary folk hero on New Eireann, the scarred man says…
…when the word went about that he wanted to go to the Hadramoo. Everyone assumed that it was to take revenge on the rievers, and while they thought it a mad idea, both madness and revenge are well thought of on New Eireann and they applauded the sentiment. It never occurred to anyone other than Hugh—and maybe January—that he might have any other motive, for people engulfed by their own tragedies presume that others are too, or ought to be.
But reaching the Hadramoo required first leaving New Eireann, and this was proving remarkably difficult.
The rievers had systematically destroyed the alfvens on every interstellar ship in or around Port Eireann, so the only vessel presently capable of leaving the system was January’s New Angeles. Other ships would eventually appear—ICC freighters to service the orbital factories, tourist cruises to enthuse over the molten geysers—but none were expected soon. Cerenkov wakes had been detected out beyond the coopers, but they had been bound elsewhere and slid smoothly past New Eireann on the Grand Trunk Road, oblivious to the disaster below.
January’s New Angeles could carry twenty people in reasonable comfort, and perhaps another ten or so in reasonable discomfort. Beyond that, as he smilingly put it, he’d arrive at Jehovah with a ship full of corpses. That was a great many fewer berths than there were people clamoring to have them, so naturally the prices rose. Most of those wanting off New Eireann were technicians and managers who had been working the orbital factories—those who had not been aboard them when the Cynthians struck. More than one such, asked to pay his passage out-system, denounced January as a “profiteer,” by which they meant that they should be able to escape at his expense.
But New Angeles was not, as January pointed out, a subsidized charity, nor had he the deep pockets of the ICC or, indeed, of their own corporations. He had expenses to meet—fuel, port fees, rations, and supplies. The Laser Lift was out of commission, and he would have to boost into orbit by rockets alone. That required disposable boosters, also expensive. He took promissory notes in Gladiola Bills drawn on their employers—and redeemed those chits as soon as he could, exchanging them at a discount with Port Eireann for fuel and with local merchants for the food, drink, and air he would need to keep his passengers alive during the transit. The Port Authority and the merchants assumed the risk because Gladiola Bills were hard currency, and the sooner January reached Port Jehovah, the sooner word of the catastrophe could be spread and help summoned.
The Fudir found January in the freighter’s control room, reviewing readiness reports with Hogan, Barnes, and Tirasi. The captain welcomed him with his usual rosy-cheeked smile and told him to go fuck himself.
“I’m not asking for one of the passenger berths,” the Fudir explained. “I’ll ship as an instrument tech. You still need one.”
“Do I, now?” January remarked, as if in surprise. “Bill, do I need an instrument tech?”
Tirasi looked up from the screen he had been checking, glanced briefly at the Fudir. “Not w
hile I’m aboard.”
January smiled at the Fudir. “Port Eireann tells me, because I’m running an ‘errand of mercy,’ they won’t insist on a full crew—not that they ever were sticklers like Port Jehovah.”
“With me along, you won’t have to work watch-and-watch,” the Fudir pointed out.
Without looking up from her console, Maggie B. said, “We’ll manage.”
“Beside,” said January, “your certificate reads ‘Kalim DeMorsey of Bellefontaine,’ and if I’ve learned nothing else since landing here, it’s that whoever else you might be, you’re not him.” He picked up a thinscreen and began checking preflight items against his database.
“The name was a convenience,” the Fudir admitted, “but the qualifications were real.”
January glanced at him. “Were they. How do I know? Your word?” His tone implied what that word was worth.
“No, my work. On the trip out here.”
But the captain shook his head. “If I took you on knowing your certificate was false, I could lose my own license. Hogan, have Chaurasia’s technicians finished the quality check on our alfvens?”
“Not yet, Chief.”
“Remind them they’re under warranty from Gladiola yards. I know it wasn’t ICC’s fault that New Eireann’s magnetic cushions were off-line, but I only want to know if my alfvens are still up to Yard specs after that emergency brake.”
“Can you take me as a passenger, then?”
January seemed surprised to find the Fudir still in the control room. “A passenger? If you have the fare, I can put you on the waiting list. At number…”
“Fifty-seven,” said Maggie B. “We can fit him into our third trip; but another ship will probably come along before then.”
“You can have my wages back from the outbound voyage. I can pay you the rest when I get to Jehovah.”
Maggie B. said, “You shore seem dang eager to run out on your buddy.”
January shook his head. “Sorry. No money, no ticket.”
“How am I supposed to get off this place, then?”
January grunted and frowned over his checklist, running his finger down the screen. He showed it to Tirasi. “You see there anything about helping an imposter and petty crook back to Jehovah?” Tirasi shook his head. “No sir, I surely do not.” So January shrugged and pointed, as if helpless, to the checklist. “Sorry, it’s not my problem. Look, ‘Fudir,’ you and that ‘Ringbao’—that O’Carroll—tricked your way on board my ship to come here and start that bloody civil war up again. I don’t like being tricked and I don’t like being used.” He slapped the thinscreen checklist on his console. “Now, leave my ship before I call up Slugger.”
The Fudir complained of this later in the office Hugh had appropriated in Cargo House. “He was playing with me. It’s that eternal smile of his. He makes you think he’s in on it, that he’s on your side. Then—wham—he blindsides you.”
Hugh made no reply and did not even look up from the reports he was reading until the glaziers at work on the window began to put their equipment away. “Finished?” he asked them.
The senior glazier tugged his forelock. “That we are, O’Carroll. And bulletproof, too.” A knuckle tap on the pane demonstrated this property. “No one’ll be pot-shotting yer honor; not through this here window.”
Hugh thanked the men and they left, and he stood and walked to the window, where he gazed down on the carpark, from which the wrecked vehicles had already been cleared. A bicyclist appeared, racked his bike in a row of other requisitioned bikes, and ran into the building. Another messenger, another report. Hugh hoped it was for one of the other ministers on the United Front.
Farther off, in New Down Town, repair parties were razing unstable structures with wrecking balls and dozers. While he watched, the Fermoy Hotel fell in on itself, raising a cloud of debris, gray and white and black, that seemed for a moment a smoky outline of the building itself, as if its ghost had survived the building’s demise. That’s where the gardy first raised the Loyalist flag, he thought. Work gangs spread out and began hauling the debris into wagons, some horse-drawn, others motor vehicles brought up from the relatively unscathed south. From this distance, the work gang looked like children at play.
“It’s good to know,” the Fudir said, “that when someone does pot-shot you, it will be through another window entirely.”
Hugh turned from his melancholy survey to face the man who had brought him back to this. “You think January was putting on a happy face to fool you? I’d not expect you to complain of deception.”
“I’m a ‘scrambler.’ Deception’s what I do. January’s supposed to be ‘on the square.’” The Fudir joined him by the window. “I didn’t think there was an unbroken pane of glass in all New Eireann.”
“They came up from the Mid-Vale,” Hugh explained, missing the humor. “Handsome Jack organized the plants down there that make the crystal tourist souvenirs to switch to window glass. There’s a plastic plant in County Ardow doing the same.” He rapped the new window with a knuckle. “Maybe this should have been plastic. But Jack and I agreed it was important that I do business with Mid-Vale suppliers, not only with the Loyalists in the Ardow.”
“Politics,” said the Fudir.
Hugh shrugged. “You say that like a dirty word. But—cut deals or cut throats. Your pick.” He crossed his arms. “Who’s on my list today?”
The Fudir had appointed himself the task of separating from the chaff of those eager to meet with Hugh the wheat of those who actually needed to. It was not a very arduous duty—it consisted mostly of telling people “no” without obviously telling them “no”—and if the Fudir was practiced at any one thing, it was at not being obvious. The work would keep him busy while he awaited a ship. He opened his notebook and toggled the calendar with his stylus. “Kiernan Sionnach, from the Reek Guides, is your ten o’clock. He wants to know how you plan to rebuild the tourist trade.” He shook his head. “Sometimes, I think people have no sense of priorities.”
“It’s that politics thing, again,” Hugh told him.
The window shook to a dull thud and both men looked up. Over Lower Newbridge Street, on the far side of town, a plume of smoke rose. Hugh sighed. “Another fine old building down.”
But the Fudir frowned and shook his head. He laid his notebook on Hugh’s desk and came to the window. “No. No, that was a bomb.” Even as he spoke, the banshee wail of distant sirens arose and the gang dismantling the Down Hotel paused in their work and looked off to the west.
“A bomb…?” Hugh said. “But…Who…? Why…?”
The Fudir crossed his arms and studied the ragged cityscape at the base of the hill. “There is a Terran saying attributed to the Auld Deceiver. ‘Better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven.’ Some people”—and he pointed with a toss of his head toward the black plume that now curled in the distance—“will first create the Hell over which they mean to rule.”
That evening, a space yacht entered the Eireannaughta system out of Port Jehovah. That meant a few more berths for refugees, and the Fudir was determined to secure at least one of those berths for himself. So a few days later, when the yacht had reached Low Eireann Orbit, the Fudir took a bicycle from the rack in front of Cargo House and pedaled down to the Port. Others on the street, assuming he was on some errand for Little Hugh—by now his close association with the Ghost of Ardow was common knowledge—made way for him. A few waved, and one wag shouted, “On to the Hadramoo!”
At the Passenger Terminal, he found several score out-system techs mobbing the newly repaired terminal doors, crowding and shoving, and waiting for the yacht’s pilot to emerge. The Fudir continued around to the maintenance gate on the east side of the field. There, a large sign read ABSOLUTELY NO ADMITTANCE. WATCH YOUR STEP. He dismounted and chained the bicycle to the fence.
The Fudir exchanged friendly greetings with the watchman—he had made a practice of standing various low-level functionaries to their pints—and they discus
sed for a few minutes the latest lorry-bomb, which had demolished Handsome Jack’s party headquarters. “Ask me,” said the watchman, “that was Jack hisself done it. Settin’ up Little Hugh as the goat.” The man was a staunch Loyalist and when the Fudir pointed out that Hugh himself had given Jack quarters in Cargo House, answered, “The bitter to keep an oy an’ ’im.” The Fudir’s policy was never to argue with a man you’re going to ask for a favor, so he said that he had been sent to the Port to learn how many refugees the newcomer’s yacht could take.
The watchman did not ask to see an authorization. “She’s grounding in no more’n a dekaminute. Pilot-owner’s name…” He checked his manifest as he swung the gate open. “Ah, his name’s Qing Olafsson, sez here.”
The Fudir paused as he passed through the gate. “Qing Olafsson?”
“Aye. D’ye know him?” The guard seemed to think that all off-worlders knew one another.
The Fudir shook his head. “No.” But he frowned and fell into thought as he crossed the field to Inward Clearance.
A wooden bench had replaced the padded chairs in the waiting room at Inward Clearance and a clipboard with paper sheets had replaced the computer terminals on which tourists and businessmen had once registered their arrivals and departures. One smashed and blackened terminal bore a handwritten sign: OUT OF ORDER. The bench was empty and the Fudir set himself to await the pilot’s arrival.
Olafsson Qing. He didn’t believe in coincidence, bizarre or otherwise; not where that name was concerned. What business had They on a remote place like New Eireann? The Brotherhood should never have gotten mixed up with Them. The Great Game was best appreciated from a distance.
A slim, sallow-featured man was standing at the kiosk filling out the inbound forms. The Fudir, immersed in his thoughts, had not noticed him enter. Now he rose from the bench. “Slawncha,” he said, holding out a hand to Olafsson. “I’m from the ‘Welcome Wagon.’” That drew a blank look—or a blanker look: the Fudir had never seen such an unremarkable countenance. “I’ve come down from Cargo House. I suppose you’ve learned about our situation here while you crawled down from the exit ramp.”
The January Dancer Page 17
