“If Fennimore recovers completely, then I’ll accept your apology and we’ll be good. If not, there won’t be enough words or deeds in your collective lifetimes to ever make it right.”
She turned her back on them and walked out.
When she returned a half hour later with Farnsworth, there was no one else in the Chamber. Elora had thought to bring some tissues. Even though Farnsworth had not shed a tear publicly, not during the funeral proceedings or while directing the traffic of so many guests converging on Jefferson Unit at one time, Elora anticipated that, sooner or later, she would let go.
Farnsworth wasn’t given to emotional displays. She wasn’t dramatic and wasn’t hysterical. She did have a little bit of a temper, but it took some doing to draw out of her. She stared at the portrait transfixed then looked at Elora with bright eyes. When one tear spilled, Elora handed her a tissue. Farnsworth accepted gratefully, but that was it. One tear. Elora thought that meant that Farnsworth had probably been ideally suited to the man whose visage was hung proudly on the wall like a guardian in spirit.
Looking back up at the painting with admiration clearly written on her face, Farnsworth’s eyes moved downward to the gold plaque.
In honor of
Solomon Neuhm Nemamiah
Jefferson Unit Sovereign
Knight of The Order of the Black Swan
Farnsworth turned to Elora. “Thank you. It’s perfect.”
Elora just nodded. “He was one of a kind.”
Farnsworth laughed quietly. “Oh yes. Indeed.”
The following morning, Elora was cooing, exchanging gurgles and baby talk with Helm as he sat in a ray of sunshine that seemed to seek him out. Nanny had come early to bathe, dress, and feed him. Helm had just learned to sit up and was enjoying showing off his new trick. He got excited about his mother’s rapt attention, waved his arms fast like he was trying to fly, lost his balance, and tumbled over onto his side. It didn’t hurt him in any way, but his face crumpled at Elora’s laughter and he cried.
Ram came striding out of the bedroom at that moment. “Ram. Thank the gods. You’re just in time. I hurt Helm’s feelings and can’t pick him up to comfort him and say I’m sorry.”
Ram went straight for the baby. “Sensitive are ye? Just like the ole man.”
Elora snorted at that.
Ram picked Helm up, groaning. “Ack. Monq is right little one. You do weigh a ton.” He cuddled the baby into his chest and rocked him a little. “Now tell your da about the trouble. Is mum bein’ mean to you again?”
Helm rubbed his nose into Ram’s chest, grabbed one perfectly pointed ear with his little fingers, and looked over at Elora as if to confirm that, yes, indeed she was being mean to him.
“I’m sorry, Helm,” she began, “I truly didn’t realize that you can’t take teasing.”
Ram smiled at Elora over their son’s head.
Meeting his eyes, she said, “So what are the plans for today? Nanny tells me she’s on duty the rest of the day.”
The smile left Ram’s face just as Elora heard commotion outside in the Courtpark four floors down. “What’s going on out there?”
She opened the French doors and stepped out onto the balcony. The portable bleachers had been hauled out of storage and were stacked along the rugby field sideline where they were being set up by trainees. She wheeled around on Ram and narrowed her eyes.
“’Tis a memorial. You know Sol always loved the annual game.”
She gaped. “You’re really going to play that card, Ram? You have no shame at all.” Helm’s head jerked at his mother’s tone. Ram shrugged, bouncing Helm, and did his best to look innocent. “How did you manage to hide this from me?”
“You’ve been busy.”
“Ugh!”
“About the plans for the day…”
“What time?”
“One.”
Elora gave Ram a dirty look before storming into their bedroom and slamming the door. Ram felt Helm jump a little in his arms when the door slammed.
The baby leaned out to get a look at his dad’s face to gauge whether or not he should be alarmed. Ram kissed Helm’s head and said, “No cause for bein’ concerned. Your mum’s a wee bit on the temperamental side. And this snit is no’ exactly a surprise, is it?”
Elora called Litha from the bedroom. “Did you know about this?”
“Just found out.”
“So what are we gonna do about it?”
“Show up and cheer?”
Elora barked out a laugh. “Yeah. We’re too easy.”
“We are.”
“Come early for lunch. Just us. If they’re going to play, they shouldn’t eat first.”
“Okay. I’ll drop Storm off at your place and we can grab something in the solarium.”
“We should make them watch us eat something they love and make yummy noises the whole time.”
Litha laughed and disconnected.
Ram was right about one thing. Sol did love the annual celebration of masculine strength and stupidity. Testosterone at its finest.
With all knights playing, except for Fenn and Elora, they were three short of the forty four players needed, twenty two on a team, fifteen on the field at a time with seven replacements. In order to come up with the right number, they had to press Baka into service along with the recently retired Glyphs and the newly active Glen.
Everyone in Jefferson showed up. The bleachers filled with cooks, meds, clericals, researchers, trainees, maintenance, instructors. Everyone.
Simon was tapped to coach one team and Fenn got the other. They were playing old school, which meant no referees. Captains decided on rules and the knights would honor them, on their honor. The first order of business was a coin toss for which team would be shirts and which would be skins.
The knights who weren’t American would have been fine with short shorts and knee socks, but the Americans refused to wear the traditional “sissy garb”. So most played in jeans. It wasn’t a practical approach to ease of movement. But it looked good.
Just before the game started, a couple of the trainees raced out carrying a card table and folding chair. They had just finished setting it up when another showed up with a portable P.A. Spaz walked in front of the bleachers waving his microphone in an exaggerated farce of a victory lap. Elora’s groan was voiced, but not heard above the crowd’s cheer.
When she’d told Kay exactly what she thought of the results of his series of trainee lectures on disco, he had just laughed and walked off.
Spaz plugged in. “Testing. Testing. And it’s a fine day for a game at Jefferson. Let’s strike a match and get this game started, gentlemen!”
No one on B Team was surprised that Storm was chosen to captain his side. He faced off the other captain, a Frenchman named Sinoret, and called heads. It was tails, which meant that Sinoret was privileged to choose shirts.
Elora’s lips pressed together. To her chagrin, that meant Rammel would be shirtless, which in turn meant that it would be another year of overhearing women use her mate’s name in the same sentence with phrases like “wet panties”.
A rain the day before had left the grass vulnerable to punishment. Within half an hour they had torn up the field so that it was beyond repair and would have to be re-sodded. They’d also torn each other up so that, with players covered in mud, sweat, and blood, it looked more like war than sport. The boys seemed to take perverse pleasure in bashing the opposition until the end, when they were so exhausted they could barely reward each other for a game well-fought with stomach bumps and beer spray.
Most of the women were appalled and fascinated at the same time.
Spaz was clearly biased toward B Team’s side and announced the game accordingly, but nobody seemed to mind.
Glen got pulverized twice because of glancing at the sidelines to see if Rosie was watching. Rosie jumped up and down and cheered like a, well, like a cheerleader. She didn’t question why Glen was included in the game when no other train
ees were playing, probably assuming it had something to do with acting as temporary Sovereign.
He was delaying telling her that he was being inducted into active hunter duty, that he was a new member of Z Team, and that he would probably be assigned elsewhere. He just had a feeling none of that was going to go over well. There was no question in his mind that his chemistry with Rosie was the once-in-a-lifetime kind. He just wasn’t ready to settle in one place and take a job that didn’t include hazard pay. Someday, sure. Just not yet. He had some more living to do first.
Storm could have been a professional athlete. Litha knew he was a beautiful male at the peak of physical perfection, but she didn’t know he could move with the grace of a dancer and the fluidity of water. Though he’d never been that interested in sports, it looked like there was some pleasure for him in “letting the horses out”.
On the last play, he went down with a muscle strain, and had to be helped off the field by Ram and Kay. Still, his face was a vacillating conflict, grimacing because of the pain and grinning because of the victory. Somebody took a snapshot of the three of them coming off the field together that would be treasured by the respective families for generations thereafter.
Litha gave Elora a hug being careful to avoid both shoulder and face. It didn’t need to be said out loud. The rugby game turned out to be just what was needed to restore a sense of optimism and life. The boys were banged up, but feeling great and there was a sense of buoyancy in the air.
“It doesn’t mean our original objections weren’t legitimate,” Elora said.
“No,” Litha agreed. “It just means things change.”
Elora looked into Litha’s eyes with warmth and affection. “Some things don’t.”
Litha smiled and shook her head. “No. Some things don’t change. They’re forever.”
“By the way, gorgeous necklace. Looks incredible with your eyes.”
Litha automatically reached up to touch the jade stones and beamed. “Thank you. It’s a gift from Storm. Souvenir.”
Rosie came bouncing over, breathless. “What’s going on here? Group hug?”
The women brought her in to form a circle. They were still basking in the essence of familial sorority when Glen came up.
“Hey,” he said, looking at Rosie like the sun didn’t rise before she got up.
“Ew.” She scrunched up her nose and jumped away from him. “Talk to me after you’ve had a shower.”
Glen looked down at his mud-streaked body, smelled his armpit, and then looked up at Rosie, grinning wickedly. “Come on. Give us a kiss.”
She squealed and darted away while he gave a mock chase. While her mother and auntie watched, Litha said, “She could do worse.”
“No doubt. I take it Storm agrees with you?”
“Um, well, we haven’t really had time to…” Litha’s eyes scanned the crowd and came to rest on Storm who was watching the chase with dark interest. And intensity. And something else less definable. “Uh oh. I guess we should have made time to tell him.”
EPILOGUE_I
The twenty Ralengclan sent to assassinate the former Briton princess never returned. The entire team had been wiped out. Gone. Vanished. No survivors.
It was a bright sunny morning when Rothesay barged into Archer’s lab to say that the project was pronounced a failure. Officially. That wasn’t the only news he brought. The rest of it was that Archer was to go back to square one and start again.
He turned toward Rothesay with a blank look, then told his assistants to take a break before he stepped a few paces away to open a cabinet door. He withdrew a very old bottle of whiskey and began to pour into two glasses. As he watched the amber liquid transfer from one container to another, a hundred thoughts coalesced in his brain, which was, of course, faster and more complex than any artificial intelligence in the foreseeable future. The whirl of words and images was distilled down to a single word.
Rothesay.
Archer knew he had been complicit in a campaign of insanity that could only have been fueled by passion so misguided that it had either originated as psychosis or wandered there from pressure. It was a given that Rothesay hated Laiwynn. Every single Ralengclan had stories to tell and reasons to hate the former oppressors. But the result of Rothesay’s obsession had brought the total of dead Ralengclan to forty. So far. With nothing to show for it. And, apparently, the Council was going to continue to go along with missions conceived by a madman, no challenge being strong enough to dissuade them from pursuing a path of lunacy.
Nodding at Rothesay, he said, “Let’s drink to success.”
Rothesay smiled, but it did nothing to warm his expression. “Sure.”
They clinked glasses and drank.
Four minutes later, Rothesay was crumpled on the composition floor with lifeless, vacant eyes staring at nothing. And everything. Archer had slipped a couple of drops of his priceless potion into the drink. It was a masterpiece if he did say so himself. Untraceable. No residue. Flawless mimicry of a heart attack.
Archer threw the rest of his untainted shot back and savored the slow burn all the way down his esophagus. As he looked at his victim, he thought about his crimes and knew that Rothesay’s execution went on the shorter list of good things he had done in his lifetime.
In another minute his assistants would return and he would have his speech ready. Poor fellow. It was quick and severe. Shame. Not a thing Archer could have done.
POSTSCRIPT
"Do no' be thinkin’ the irony is lost on me." Elora looked at Ram with a blank expression full of innocence. "I know you’re dyin' to say it."
"Okay. If it'll make you feel less guilty, I'll say it. We came here so that we'd be safe from Stagsnare assassins. Guess what? We’re not."
"Yeah. So look outside in the hallway."
Elora opened the apartment door and stepped into the hall. There was an entire set of vintage Louis Vuitton trunks stacked one on top of the other. She turned back to Ram and grinned.
"We're going home."
“Does that smile mean I’ll be gettin’ lucky tonight?”
“You’re lucky every night, elf.”
He laughed. “And that would be the truth of it.”
AFTERWORD
As to Kellan Chorzak, some things, especially things with vast potential to embarrass, take on a life of their own and sometimes that life seems to be eternal. One day Chorzak’s grandson would be recruited by Black Swan and be initiated into the knighthood where stories of legendary exploits are told and retold. And, in his old age, sometimes, when Sir Chorzak was alone with that grandson, the young knight would refer to him as Spazmodoc, The Voice of the Fray.
EPILOGUE_II Excerpt from Solomon’s Sieve, Order of the Black Swan
COMING SPRING OF 2014
CHAPTER 1
Regrets? Well, sure. Nobody dies without regrets.
The only way to avoid that would be to sleep even less than I did and be rearranging your priorities every minute. Of course, if you rearranged your priorities every minute, then there’d be no time for anything else and, at the end of your life, you’d regret that you’d wasted your time working so hard at trying to reach the finish line without regrets that you never got anything done.
What’s my biggest regret? The first thing that comes to mind isn’t exactly a regret, but more a disappointment. I wish I’d had more time to spend with Farnsworth.
I never expected to find love so late in life. Neither did she. I asked her once why she’d never married. She said she was waiting for the right crusty old bastard to come along. I liked that answer. Honestly, I liked just about everything about Farnsworth. I wish I had told her that. Just like that.
All those years I would stop off at the Hub and grab one of those rank strong coffees with a cheese and ham and egg thing they nuked while I waited, which was never long because the way I stared at them made them so fidgety they could hardly wait to give me my order and get me the hell out of their space.
M
akes me smile just thinking about it.
Every morning I was just steps away from where Farnsworth was working in Operations, really running the whole show at Jefferson Unit while I was taking credit for it. Fuck me. She’s one of a kind.
It’s funny to think that all those years she was right there. I must have seen her from time to time, but we just never made that connection. I guess it’s not exactly funny.
Now that I have one foot on the other side, the pieces all fit together better and it’s easier to see things clearly. Got to stop and laugh at my own jokes, because who else is going to?
Oh. Well, I guess to get the joke you’d have to be aware that, at the moment, I only have one foot. Looks like the godsdamn dune buggy cut off one of my legs. And my life. I’m bleeding out. The worst part is that, while I’m doing it, I’m listening to the weeping of the only woman I ever loved. Criminently. That’s the hardest part.
The only reason I can joke about this is because it’s temporary. If I thought it was permanent there’d be nothing funny about it at all. But I can’t stay gone. There’s too much going on right now.
I was planning to wait until I got back from the first vacation I ever took in my life to inform the interested parties, that would be almost everyone I know, that the great bright promise of curing vampirism with a vaccine… well, it’s not working. And, unfortunately, the conclusion is that it’s not going to work. Ever.
It’s starting to look like it would be easier to rid the world of cockroaches and we all know how that’s going. No one doubts that, in the end, cockroaches will be the last life form left on Earth. Maybe in the universe.
So I don’t have any plans for crossing to the other side and dancing in the sunshine or singing “Kum Ba Yah” with people who don’t have anything better to do. I’m going to lie here and wait until this body gives up the ghost, while this magnificent woman beside me cries her heart out. Then I’m going to raise hell until they find a way to bring me back.
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