The Fire Duke

by Joel Rosenberg

  She had handled it. It was the family way.

  It was just a matter of handling things. You took a look at what the situation was, you examined your options, and you acted on them. The only time there was any need to shout and scream and prance about was when you’d decided that was the best thing to do, and Karin had never decided that was the best thing to do. There was always another way.

  Two years at Macalester had persuaded her that she wanted to stay in Hardwood, where she knew everybody, and not move on to the city the way others had. The town fit her too well; she liked sitting around with Sandy Hansen, talking about anything or nothing, or catalog shopping for needlepoint designs with Minnie Hansen. She liked chatting with old Tom Norvald when she walked over to the post office to mail a package, and on the way back stopping off at the store to pick up a pound of meaty bacon sliced paper-thin, the way only Vicky Teglund would bother.

  She wanted the town, but she didn’t want to live the marginal sort of life that too many did in town.

  And she liked Thorian, and she wanted him.

  Even when she had turned up pregnant—finally, trying to coordinate her cycle with college vacations and assignations with Thorian had turned out to be trickier than she thought—she had simply explained things to Thorian, told him that she was going to finish her degree while pregnant, then come home to raise the baby, and he could either marry her and let her manage the family money or give her enough of his hidden stash of gold coins to support the two of them; no problem either way.

  He married her, of course, as she had always intended that he would.

  And Hosea hadn’t said anything, but had smiled knowingly, as she had always intended that he would, too.

  Assaying costs were high, but a few pounds of homemade gold ingots turned into a large stack of bills, which she turned into stock certificates, which she turned into more stock certificates.

  And, soon, when her trading had run up enough profits to justify it, they had bought the old Halvorsen place and settled in to what she found a perfect life. Stock and options trading wasn’t hard, provided you weren’t too greedy, were willing to work hard at it and admit your mistakes to yourself, and were never unwilling to cut your losses. Karin wasn’t greedy; hard work didn’t bother her; mistakes happened; and cutting losses was a brutal necessity.

  It was fun, finally. All of it. Raising a child was fun; it was like gardening in fast motion. Gardening was fun, as long as you knew you would never miss a meal if your garden failed. Housekeeping was fun, as long as you had two adults to split the chores with, and enough money so that you never needed to scrimp or cut corners. Her mother had always saved soap splinters to mold into a new bar; Karin threw out too-small bars of soap.

  She had been afraid that in order to have that kind of life, she would have to leave Hardwood, but the town fit her like a glove.

  And then there was Thorian. He was incredibly easy to get along with, amazingly vigorous in bed, even after all these years—and always puzzled and puzzling over life in the latter half of the twentieth century. He was amazing both in what he would and wouldn’t, could and couldn’t, do. He was honest to the point of bluntness in private, except about his own history; he simply wouldn’t discuss it directly, and she had had to give up asking. He would happily spell her for a week of cooking upon request, and would make the bed and do laundry without a fuss, but would not clean a floor no matter what, unless it was a floor in the barn. With the exception of a few times that Torrie had done something really dangerous, like playing in the knife drawer as a toddler, Thorian had never raised a hand to him, but he insisted that Torrie be able to use a sword as though in a real duel, not just for sport.

  Well, that was beginning to make sense. Hosea’s crazy stories, which always began as though they were a fairy tale, had turned out to be true. Thorian really was some sort of champion, and he was in trouble for having freed Hosea (and, at least putatively, for stealing all those golden coins with the strange markings and the unknown face on them), and the trouble had come looking for them.

  Yes, she had been scared—the Sons’ attack had frightened her more than anything that had ever happened to her, but Thorian had showed up before they could quite cart her off, and even with a knife to his throat, he had handled it.

  Her Thorian would handle it.

  Karin Thorsen sat back in the coach and smiled over at where he sat diagonally across from her. The guard sitting next to her didn’t want them across from each other, and he was wise enough not to sit next to Thorian, because, even bound though he was, Thorian could have taken him if he was within reach.

  But with his wrists bound in front of him, and his ankles manacled together and tied to a thick brass staple on the floor of the carriage, he couldn’t kick out; the thin wire around his neck was tied to a similar overhead staple. If he attempted to lunge out of his seat, he would throttle himself quickly.

  Thorian just smiled encouragingly.

  The carriage followed a bend in the road, and again the road disappeared in the window, leaving Karin with the feeling of being suspended in space over a mountain ledge.

  But this time, it revealed the City.

  Falias looked like it had been carved out of the top of a mountain range by a giant artisan who had simply cut away almost everything that didn’t look like City. Spires and turrets rose high, but no higher than the sloping ridgeline would have. The slope had been cut to leave behind terraces of windowed walls, some surrounded by ramparts and balustrades, others with small gently sloped piazzas that served as the roofs for lower levels.

  She had expected something austere and gray, but the City was all in green and gold; many of the piazzas were overgrown with huge trees and intricate gardens; other, lower ones were merely squares of green vegetable or golden corn that, despite their terracing and height, reminded her of the fields around Hardwood.

  A gate loomed in front of and above them: thick, ancient oaken timbers held together with brass fittings that had long worn a patina of jade green, filling an opening in the mountainside, the battlements above set into the side of the mountain.

  Thorian smiled at her. “ ‘Tis something, eh?” he said in Bersmal, then switched to English. “If I see the right opportunity, I’ll make a break by myself and come back for you later; do not despair,” he said, lifting his bound wrists as though gesturing at something out the window.

  “There is to be no talking,” the guard said in Bersmal. “You’ll have plenty of time to talk to His Warmth, I trust.” He was a big man, bigger than Thorian, lightly armored in the black and flame-colored livery of the House, but was armed only with a short truncheon, its hilt wrapped in leather. Whether it was Branden del Branden or Herolf who was really in charge of the party, he knew what he was doing.

  Give my Thorian a sword, she thought, and he could take you all on.

  No, that wasn’t true. Thorian was a man, not an elemental force. He would carve through this bullyboy without slowing down, and could slice his way through another dozen or more, perhaps. But there were more than a dozen of them, some of them with bows.

  Karin tried not to draw herself up straight. “Do what you have to,” she said.

  The guard glared at her. “There is to be no talking,” he said.

  “Do what you have to,” she repeated.

  Branden del Branden had dismounted from his carriage, and strode to the gate. A brass plate, incongruously bright and gleaming, was set into the side of the gate; a long hammer lay in an inset in the wall nearby. He took the hammer down, and swung it once, twice, three times tentatively, then struck hard against the brass plate.

  Thrummmm. Karin as much felt it as heard it. It was as though it echoed through the whole mountain.

  Thrummmm. Again.

  Smoke wafted from the battlements above the gate, bringing a smell to Karin that reminded her of french fries, silly as that sounded. She shrugged.

  A face appeared on the battlements above, and called down a mut
tered challenge to Branden del Branden, who responded with a word and a gesture.

  The doors opened, swinging silently on hidden hinges, and the procession made its way inside.

  It was, for lack of a better word, a courtyard about the size of a football field, stinking of horse piss and manure, although Karin found those smells reassuring.

  It was easy to see why: the mountain-side wall was a high-arched entrance to stables, while a narrow passage, barely wide enough for three men to walk side by side, topped by battlements, led into the city. Soldiers on the battlements above the passageway could make life difficult to impossible for an invading army, even if the battlements contained the only defense.

  She doubted that they did; the feel of the arrangement was familiar, although where she had read of it or seen it escaped her at the moment. How did she know that there would be several turns and a broad, sweeping curve in the entry, and that both turns and the curve would contain surprises for an invader?

  She shook her head. It didn’t matter.

  Soldiers in the now familiar black and red-orange livery of the House of Flame waited in the courtyard, although each of these sported a pair of brassards with the flame symbol that Karin knew she had seen somewhere before, but couldn’t quite remember when.

  A face peeked in the window. “Thorian del Thorian, by my mother’s beard!” he more boomed than said, swinging the carriage door open. He was a big, thick man, barrel-chested, his smile a broad white island of teeth in a full, inky beard badly in need of a trim.

  “Ho, Ivar del Hival,” Thorian said. “How have you been?”

  “Oh,” Ivar said, “I wouldn’t complain.” His grin broadened. “It’s never safe to complain. I see you are well, albeit a bit thicker in the belly than I remember.”

  “That may be,” Thorian said.

  “Although I shouldn’t point fingers, when all fingers point back to me.” Ivar del Hival patted at his own ample belly. “You’re old, but every bit as fast in the wrist, eh?”

  Thorian shrugged. “That also may be. We perhaps will see.” He smiled. Karin had never seen him smile quite like that. It was friendly, but there was an undertone of threat to it.

  “As I’m sure we shall.” He offered a hand to Karin; at Thorian’s slight nod, she took it. “You would be the wife of my old friend?” he asked, swinging the door of the carriage open.

  She nodded as she accepted his help to the ground. Torrie and Maggie were already out of their carriages; Branden del Branden and a small contingent of soldiers were leading them toward the next gate.

  “Karin Thorsen,” she said. “And you are his good friend Ivar del Hival?”

  His hand was strong, and the fingers ridged with familiar calluses, but his grip was gentle. “I have that honor,” he said.

  At Thorian’s glare, Ivar del Hival finally released her hand. “Ah, he’s spoken of me, then?”

  Well, no, he hadn’t. But there didn’t seem to be any point in admitting that, not right here and now. “How could he not?”

  Ivar del Hival fingered his beard. “Well, then, I see that you and I shall get along famously,” he said, offering her his arm. “May I have the honor of escorting you to His Warmth? He is rather eager to meet you. All of you.” He eyed her clothing. “After, that is, we see about getting you washed and dressed; His Warmth dislikes informality.”

  “You make us sound like guests,” she said. “Rather than people who have been kidnapped, and dragged here under threat of death.”

  Ivar del Hival bit his lower lip for a moment, considering. “Yes, I rather do, don’t I?” He tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow and patted at it. “But don’t trust anything I say; I’m rather more charming than I am reliable.”

  “Somehow I doubt that,” she said. “I suspect you are far more reliable than you are charming. And I find you very charming.”

  Ivar del Hival grinned. “I wouldn’t think of arguing with a lady.”

  Torrie’s forehead hurt from the frowning. The passageway into the City had felt strangely familiar to Torrie, although he couldn’t place it. Uncle Hosea’s stories about the Cities and about the Wars of the Cities had never given any of this detail, so that couldn’t be it.

  But there was something funny about it, and he wasn’t the only one to notice. Mother, on the arm of that fat, bearded guy, noticed it too, but they were being kept too far apart to compare notes.

  Deliberately?

  Branden del Branden caught Torrie trying to exchange a mouthed word with Mother, and his brow furrowed. “You would be planning something, perhaps?” He rapped a metal-knuckled glove against the wall. “I would doubt that this is the place for it, unless you know some Hidden Way that I don’t.” He smiled. “If so, I’d take it as a year favor if you’d be kind enough to show it to me, even if in attempting a break.”

  “No, nothing like that. Besides, there wouldn’t be—” Torrie shut himself off. No, there would be no hidden passageway in the main entrance; that would obviate the purpose of it. There was an art to such things: the purpose of, say, the Guest Room wasn’t obviated by the secret door between it and Torrie’s room; the door could be locked from either side to give privacy. That was the function of what Hosea called a residence room, after all: to give privacy. A lockable way in and out didn’t do violence to the spirit of it; it enhanced the nature of the room.

  Maggie frowned at him. What? she mouthed.

  He shook his head. Later. There was something important in all of this.

  So far, the passageway had been open on top, leaving them vulnerable to anybody on the battlements more than a dozen feet above, but now it closed down to a tunnel, lit by a series of lanterns feeding off a too-thick silver tube that led inward. Torrie wondered what it would take to make the tube spurt burning oil into the passageway, sucking off oxygen as it fried invaders—but he didn’t wonder whether that could be done, just how.

  It was all too familiar.

  He knew that the next turn would lead into a broad sweeping tunnel, curved sharply enough that he—or an invading army—wouldn’t be able to see more than a few yards down it, but not so curved that three men walking abreast would tend to bump into each other.

  And it did; and the passageway finally opened on a broad, cobblestone plaza, rimmed by dozens of gnarled potted oaks that looked like they should have been hundreds of years old except that they were barely a dozen feet tall.

  Torrie squinted, and he could almost see them as leafy dwarf warriors standing guard forever.

  The far end of the plaza forked into stone staircases. One was broad, its lifts deep and risers low, leading up toward another plaza; the other, steep and narrower, led up through the green slope toward the castle above.

  That was the one their party took.

  The day had begun to heat up, but under the canopy of leaves the air was cool and damp, although a bit musty. Even so, Torrie broke a sweat keeping up with the guards as they climbed up the stairs, stopping momentarily at each landing before turning and taking the next pitch.

  Ahead of him, past a trio of guards, Mom and Dad seemed to be keeping up okay, and Maggie was panting only a little.

  He smiled at her. “Hold on,” he said, in Bersmal, “it all should top out soon.”

  Ivar del Hival frowned. “Your father seems to have told you rather a lot about the City. Or is it the Cities?”

  Torrie shrugged. “Not really; I just estimated how high the keep was, and have kept count of the steps.” That sounded lame, but it appeared to satisfy Ivar del Hival, at least for the moment.

  It wasn’t Dad. It was Hosea. Hosea’s sense of style, of building, clearly had been influenced by the design of Falias. The knocking panel he had installed in their house was of the same design as that huge knocking plate at the outer gate here; the curved entry passages were shaped like the curved gates to the holding pens that Uncle Hosea and Dad had built for the Ericsons—pigs would balk at sharp angles, and sometimes try to turn back in a straightawa
y, but they would follow a curved chute as far as it went.

  And a stairway going up the side of a hill would have increasingly short cutbacks until it reached the top, just like the funny-looking stairs that Uncle Hosea had helped Einar Aalberg with down at the silo. It looked funny, sure, but it meant that as you climbed and got tired, you would reach a landing and a built-in resting place with increasingly fewer steps.

  It was the same style here.

  Just about where he had expected it, the last landing broke on a sharp turn and a mere dozen steps up to a narrow veranda, rimmed by an old stone fence mortared in moss and ivies. An old oak double door stood open, a dark passageway beyond.

  “ ‘This way to the dungeon,’ eh?” Torrie asked.

  Ivar del Hival grinned, but Branden del Branden pursed his lips together for a moment.

  “Would that it were, Thorian del Thorian the Younger,” Branden del Branden said, “but it’s hardly a crime to be born the son of a traitor, or to kill a man in a duel.”

  They were met at the door by a trio of Vestri, led by an almost comically skinny man of about fifty, Torrie guessed, his skinniness only exaggerated by the short trousers and black stockings he wore, although the gold-trimmed, knee-length black jacket—coat? It looked more like an overlong, dyed lab coat than anything else—did lend him an air of dignity.

  He crooked his right arm in front of him and bowed. “By order of His Warmth, you are welcomed to Falias. I am Jamed del Bruno, klaffvarer to His Warmth,” he said.

  Maggie’s brow wrinkled.

  “Klaffvarer,” Torrie said. “Keybearer. Butler. Major-domo.”

  Jamed del Bruno sniffed. “Permit me to show you to the Green Room; His Warmth will see you after luncheon, and there is,” he paused to sniff again, “much to do between now and then.”

  As prisons went, it wasn’t bad. The Green Room turned out to be a suite of rooms, high in the southeastern tower of the main keep, built into a thirty-degree slice of that level, sleeping rooms off a radial hallway that opened on a huge room up against the curve of the outside wall.