Honeyed Words (5 page)

“Aye,” Cassidy said, taking her hand in his, kissing the back of it, and bowing. “A beauty who knows the origins of ancient names and can best young Ari there is a friend to be cherished.”

Katie seemed to melt. “He’s cute,” she said, hanging onto my arm. “For an oldster.”

Cassidy laughed, grabbed us each by one arm, and marched us over to his party. He introduced us to the rest of the band, and before you knew it, Katie had a bottle of mead and a twelve-string guitar. I sat behind her, one hand on the small of her back, while she launched into a round of drinking songs.

I hung with them for an hour, maybe two. Not really sure. The alcohol buzz and the general windowless, smoky haze sorta killed any real sense of time. When they showed no chance of slowing down, I excused myself to find a bathroom.

Katie stopped playing midchord, her hand over the strings and a worried look on her face. “Where are you going?”

“Bathroom,” I whispered to her, leaning against her shoulder. “You keep playing.”

A moment of panic flashed across her face. She glanced around, taking in the room, the people, the party. “Be careful,” she said.

I placed my hand on her shoulder. “I’ll be okay,” I promised. “You keep playing. I’ll be back before you know it. Just need a spot of fresh air.”

She leaned her cheek against my hand. “Don’t be gone long.”

I kissed her and squeezed the hand over the fret of the twelve-string. “Sing something raunchy,” I whispered. “I’ll be back in two shakes.”

She smiled at that and nodded.

I glanced over at Cassidy, who’d watched the scene carefully. “I’ll watch over her,” he said to me.

I nodded and took off. It was just the bathroom.

The room turned around one more corner, and I found a couple of roadies doing coke near an exit. One of them pointed out the washrooms, and I left them to their drugs. The room was fairly crowded, but I managed to do what I needed to do without resorting to the men’s lavatory.

I wandered the party after that, grabbing another beer and listening to snippets of conversation. Seems that since I’d killed Jean-Paul, Vancouver had undergone some sort of renaissance. Crime was flourishing—prostitution, drugs, gambling, all sorts of vice—but the city was friendlier, less seedy. The new guy in charge was apparently the self-proclaimed King of Vancouver. Unlike Jean-Paul, who got his demands met using charm, wit, and torture, this guy only demanded profits and loyalty. Pretty much he left his people alone to do their business.

I bet he had an easier time retaining employees than Jean-Paul. I’d seen how he treated his close and personals when he got angry. I couldn’t imagine what doing business with him had been like.

Just thinking of Duchamp made my right hand hurt. I clenched and unclenched my fist a few times, working out the kinks. You could barely see the scarring, and I had a good eighty percent usage of that hand again. The knitting was helping, much to my chagrin. The pain still haunted me though. Ghost pain, the doctor said, but I woke shaking some nights with visions of my wrist burned down to the bone by dragon fire.

There was this one moment, however, when I was sure the witch, Qindra, had visited me in the hospital. I distinctly recall her chanting, the smell of whiskey, and a blue fog that rolled from her mouth and doused the fire in my arm like calm, cool water.

As I wandered back, I could see Katie was having the time of her life. She was holding her own with The Harpers. Ari had disappeared with a couple of his girls. Good riddance, I thought. He reminded me too much of our main actor over at Flight Test—JJ Montgomery. Decent actor, but a shit when it came to women.

What made some men such pigs? Sex was important, and pretty obsessing at times, but to crawl all over all those women while the others were there watching—what was the point, beyond narcissism?

And what was with the women? Why would they allow themselves to be used like that? I knew I was still fighting through the prudish ways instilled in me by my Ma and Da, but as much as I disagreed with Da particularly, I think he was right on one thing: You need to treat each other with respect. He thought there were two standards, which I didn’t agree with. You didn’t just respect women, especially because they were weaker or some such. You respected all people—allowed them their individual rights, without stringing them along, filling them with false hope.

Like that girl outside waiting to get into a party she’ll never see in her lifetime.

I needed some air. Things were suddenly too stuffy. I thought about making my way over to Katie, telling her where I was going, but the noise had reached a point where I couldn’t think, and the memories were thick with pain.

I went back to the coke roadies and chatted them up, told them I needed some air. They introduced me to Pablo, the bouncer at the back door, let him know I was “one cool chick.”

Whatever.

Four

The great hall swallowed the quiet noises of the children as they scampered about doing their duties. The house had settled back into a routine—as much as could be expected after the last rage had taken so many of the favorites.

Qindra sat at tea with her mistress worrying over Nidhogg’s growing weakness. “What is it you wish, Mother?”

Nidhogg placed her teacup on the saucer daintily. “I like not these rumors of the King of Vancouver.”

Is that all?
“Surely that is beneath your station,” Qindra said, keeping her eyes downcast. “You are grieving.”

Nidhogg slammed her fist on the table, sending teapot and cup dancing, spilling tea. “Do not mollycoddle me, child. I am fully aware of what goes on within my own domain.”

“Yes, mistress.” She could not risk her raging again. “Vancouver is in flux, but it will not sink into chaos.”

“I cannot tolerate one of the Reaver’s brood moving in. It would unsettle things.”

That would be unpleasant. The wild ones wished to rule openly—break the compact, and the chattel be damned. Luckily they were in the minority, and kept that way by the high council.

“Perhaps you should claim it as your own,” Qindra finally said. “Until a suitable caretaker can be determined. None would dare question your right.”

Nidhogg considered a moment, the gleam in her eye as bright as ever. “Intriguing thought. Or, perhaps we should watch this King of Vancouver, secretly support his claim on the city, if for no other reason than to thwart that jackanapes, Frederick Sawyer.”

Qindra smiled. “You are quick in the game of thrones,” she proffered. “I will make some subtle inquiries.”

Nidhogg nodded and then took up her teacup as if nothing untoward had occurred. “You are invaluable,” she said. “Your mother would have been proud.”

Luckily the teacup covered her reaction. Qindra took a quiet sip and let the thought of her mother’s broken body fade from her mind. How many had Nidhogg destroyed in her rages? How many lost to the madness?

“I thank you for your kind words.”

They sipped their tea in quiet solitude. The very house itself seemed to hold its breath. Around the great hall, the others remained motionless, frozen in their tasks. Only their breathing gave them away as living beings.

Nidhogg sat her cup aside, drew a long stuttering breath, and whimpered. “The blood,” she whispered. “I cannot rid the air of its stench.”

Qindra sat her teacup down, slid to the floor, and folded her hands on her mistress’s knee. “Come away with me, only for a drive. Leave this house and breathe the fresh air.”

Nidhogg stroked Qindra’s hair with her gnarled hand. “You are as a daughter to me, fair one. But I cannot leave here, as you well know. It is unseemly for me to be seen out in the world of whisperers and spies.”

Paranoia,
Qindra thought. She bowed her head, setting her cheek on her hands.

“You have not lain your head upon my lap in many a year,” Nidhogg whispered. After a moment, she began to croon a ragged tune.

Qindra recognized it. A lovely ballad she remembered her mother singing, back before she fell to Nidhogg’s madness. “I love that song,” she said. “I miss you singing.”

Nidhogg stopped stroking her hair but kept her hand on Qindra’s head. “I am old,” she said as if this were a new discovery. “And I fear my own mind ofttimes.”

“Hush, now.” Qindra started to raise her head, but Nidhogg held her firmly in place, her strength suddenly manifest.

“’Ware, child,” Nidhogg said, her voice clear and crisp. “It is I who am the mistress, you the servant.”

Qindra tried to relax, let her muscles grow limp. “I meant no disrespect, mistress.”

“I am rid of sleep these nights,” Nidhogg went on as if Qindra had not spoken. “Death haunts my dreams—death and decay.”

Qindra looked around the room as best she could. The newly appointed Eyes sat clutching her book, her face painted with nausea and fear.

Fear, you should,
Qindra thought.
Your predecessor died screaming at that very spot.

“The wheel is broken,” Nidhogg continued. “The world has grown ill. I can taste the black blood. Dark magic is upon my land.”

Dark magic? Wheel?
Qindra’s mind raced. She’d noticed nothing. Mayhap it was time to change her focus from the young smith, Beauhall, and seek out this new obsession that unsettled her mistress.

“The dead,” Nidhogg wailed. “The dead will give me no peace.”

Several of the smaller children began to cry, nearly silently, but loudly enough for Qindra’s ears.

Nidhogg held her there for a very long time. Qindra began to ache from the awkward position. “Shall I quiet the dead, Mother?” she finally asked.

Nidhogg said nothing immediately; then she began to hum another song, one Qindra did not recognize—full of dissonance and discord. After several minutes, she pulled her hand from Qindra’s head.

Quindra slid to the floor, barely daring to breathe.

Nidhogg kept singing as she reached beside her chair and pulled out her knitting. She began to croak out words in the ancient tongue.

Only the words
regret
and
decay
were clear to Qindra’s mind. A song of loss and mourning.

Qindra lay on the ground at her mistress’s feet until the most ancient of dragons dropped her knitting to her lap and filled the great hall with her quiet snores.

Only then did Qindra crawl away, not even rising to her knees until she’d reached the great doors to the main house. Only then did she rise, brush off her dressing gown, and look back at her mistress.

“Leave her,” she said quietly to the room. “Return to your rooms and say your prayers this evening.”

She did not wait to see if they complied but opened the doors and swept out into the hall.

The wheel is broken, blood haunts my mistress, and the dark magic is upon the land. Ill tidings and damnable luck.

She returned to her room, to her scryings and her runes. There would be little sleep in this house this evening, of that she was sure.

Five

It was chilly out there after being in the crowded party. It was around two in the morning, and I could see my breath. Fall was strange in the Pacific Northwest. Seventies in the day and low forties at night. I hugged my arms and walked out across the gravel toward the two large tour buses.

I didn’t have any particular reason; they were just the only two things out there. Past them across a dozen feet of scrub was a service road with no traffic. It was pretty quiet, actually—a nice change from the overwhelming drone of the party. I stopped at the first tour bus, leaned back against it, and closed my eyes, letting my body relax and drawing in breaths of clear night air.

The cold made me think of flying. I’d ridden the Valkyrie’s winged horse and chased the dragon through the thick clouds as the morning sun broke over the horizon. I could almost feel the cold wet of the clouds as we soared across the mountains. Of course, the final battle had been filled with pain and heat. Burning, roasting, charring flame. My right hand spasmed and I bolted up from the side of the bus, remembered smoke burning my eyes—blistering my lungs.

I leaned forward, hands on knees, and tried to breathe. The cool air felt good going into my body, and the smoke and fire were just vivid memories. After a minute I heard a noise around the side of the bus. It sounded like someone moaning. My mind clicked over into hyperawareness, and I rolled onto the balls of my feet, knees slightly bent, my hands in tight fists.

I listened closely and heard a shuffling and another moan. I edged around the bus and peered around, ready to kick someone’s ass.

What I saw through the open door of the bus, instead of a bad guy, troll, or mugger, was Ari doing the nasty with two of the groupies.

I pulled my head back, hoping they hadn’t seen me. Not that I thought they’d have seen a flying saucer if it landed in the scrub alongside the road.

Two girls and one guy screwing on the stairs inside the bus. He was living the dream. The Red Sonja–looking chick had her face buried in the crotch of the petite girl with tattoos, piercings, and green hair. The rock star was doing Red from behind. I couldn’t be sure they even noticed Ari. At least the girls were really into each other. He’d be out of the picture soon enough.