The Whirlwind in the Thorn Tree

by S. A. Hunt

  I apologized and ran through a door in the back into a short hallway. An exit door that led to a serviceway alley. I looked up and saw a ribbon of stars two stories up. Someone jumped over the gap.

  The end of the serviceway opened onto a steep hill leading up to the next terrace, a fence at the top. The other-me sailed off the roof, kicking and flailing, landing in an awkward crouch on the rim of the board fence. I heard him swear out loud in the night as I scrambled up the embankment and found a place where the planks had been pried loose.

  I lifted them and dove through the hole.

  Other-Me was lying on his back in the dirt, at the edge of a large garden. He rolled over and pulled one of the tines of a tomato cage out of his forearm with a choked scream of anguish, then threw it at me and ran the other direction, the heels of his boots floundering in the loose soil.

  “Stop!” I flinched, and threw up my arms to bat the cage away. A drop of his blood hit my bottom lip.

  “Wasn’t me!” he cried, drawing a pistol and firing it.

  I screamed like a little girl and dropped, scrambling backwards. Someone ran at me from behind. When I turned to confront him I saw it was Walter Rollins, revolvers in his hands.

  “Who are you chasing, bastard?”

  “I think Sardis Bridger,” I panted. “Stop calling me bastard.”

  “It’s better than what I could be calling you,” said the Deon, and he took off running after the Other-Me.

  _______

  Far from the riotous merry-making of the celebration, two people sat on a veranda set into the roof of the Rollins’ house. The lights of the city sprawled down the hill from them, as if they sat on the dark shore of an ocean filled with light. A few empty glass flutes sat on the table with a half-bottle of wine from the Rollins’ cellar, uncorked by one of the house staff.

  “It’s nice to finally have a moment away from everybody,” said Noreen. “We’ve been on the go since Ross ran into me at the coffee shop.”

  “Yeah,” said Sawyer. The spring night air promised warmer days, a draft just the cold side of comfortable. It didn’t faze them, though, because they were together, and they were always warm when they were together. Ever since they’d huddled for warmth on the raft in the frigid trial of the Aemev.

  That was the first time they’d truly held each other, and neither of them could keep it out of their minds for long, especially not him.

  “I love this place,” said Noreen.

  Sawyer nodded, half to himself, half to her. “Me too.”

  After a hesitant pause, he elbowed her softly and said, “Not as much as I love you, though.” As he said it, his heart seemed to swell, and his face rushed with heat.

  She gave him a coy smile and pretended to hide her face behind her outstretched arm, her hands clasped in front of her on the tabletop. “I do declare you’re getting sweet on me, Mr. Winton.”

  He thought about scooting a little closer to her, and then he did, and put an arm around her as well.

  Noreen put her hand in his, interlacing their fingers. “Thank you for taking care of me when I was sick. I don’t think I ever thanked you for that.”

  “You didn’t have to thank me,” said Sawyer. “You don’t have to thank me for anything ever.”

  She canted her head quizzically.

  “I knew from the second you kissed me in the parking lot at the hotel that I’d do anything in the world for you,” he said. “You stole my heart that day. I didn’t know then that I’d end up following you into another world, but I’m glad I did.”

  Noreen made a noise of contentment.

  “I’d follow you to the ends of the Earth and another world besides,” he said. He reached up and swept her bangs out of her face, pulling her close to kiss her on the forehead. The closeness of her skin and the smell of her platinum-blonde hair made his heart flash again.

  He lingered for a second, inhaling her with a sigh, so he could remember the smell, the floral scent of the bath-house soap and the salt of the ocean that still remained even days later.

  Startling him a bit, she reached up and took his rough jawline in the palms of her hands, and kissed him on the lips.

  He settled into her soothing proximity, her familiarity, and cupped the back of her neck, striving into the kiss, savoring the silky texture of her tongue and her nose pressing against the side of his own. Their teeth grazed against each other, and he could taste the mellow sweetness of the culipihha wine.

  He was struck with a sudden alarum by the power of his feelings for her, and it faded away, replaced by an ironclad sense of devotion.

  She pulled away and looked up into his eyes. “Not that we had any choice, but if I’m going to be dragged into an unreal place like this, I wouldn’t want anybody else here with me. I’m glad you’re here,” she said, and caressed his face, sweeping a hand down his temple. “I love you too, Fred.”

  “Fred?!” asked Sawyer. “What? Who is Fred?”

  “You know, Fred, from Scooby-Doo. You call Ross Scooby, so I get to call you Fred.”

  “I don’t have to wear the scarf, do I?”

  “Yes. You must wear the scarf.”

  “Looks like I’m making a trip to the bazaar tomorrow, then,” he said. “You know this means I get to call you Daphne, right?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Noreen, swerving her head. She held up a finger in warning and said, “Bitch, I’m Velma, one hundred percent. I’m all nerd. You better recognize.”

  Sawyer snorted. He was still smiling as he pushed her hair behind her ear and kissed her on the cheek, and then the corner of her eye. She climbed into his lap and he continued kissing her face, and then her throat.

  She kissed him on the mouth. This time he expected it, and returned it with a new ferocity. He reached into the kiss as his jaw worked, as if he were eating the last, sweetest apple in existence. He couldn’t get enough, and wanted it all for himself. He breathed deeply of her, and wrapped his arms around her slender frame. She was intoxicating, every inch and every scent of her; it felt like he had fallen into quicksand, and there was no hope of escape. He couldn’t fathom the idea of turning away from her at this point.

  By the way she returned his desperate, starving kisses, it didn’t seem like she wanted to either. They lunged and gulped at each other, panting deeply through their noses.

  The girl bit him softly on the earlobe and purred in his ear, “Take me to my room, please.”

  Normand looked up at the dark god’s glass mask. Figures perched in the rafters, clothed in tattered shadows, their white faces fixed on him like a loft full of barn owls. Dozens of them, just waiting for him to make a move.

  “I solved your riddles, ghost,” said the gunslinger. “Now call off your hounds.”

  “We never shook on the deal,” said the kindly voice from a grille in the front of the cell.

  Normand pulled something out of his jacket pocket. It was the stick of dynamite he’d taken off of Roger’s corpse, with one of the rubber washers pushed onto the end. He walked over to the flat thing that the god had produced out of the machine earlier and dropped it into the hole in the middle. The washer kept it from falling through.

  He lit the fuse and stepped away. The tray tried to slide back into the wall with a whine of clockwork, but the dynamite was in the way. It tried several more times.

  “What are you doing?” asked the god. “What is that?”

  “Shake on that,” said Normand, and he ran for the door, clamping his hat onto his head.

  With a choir of shrieking, the Wilders descended on him; he threw open the door and the room upended itself with a noise like a planet tearing itself in half.

  —The Fiddle and the Fire, vol 7 (unfinished) “The Gunslinger and the Giant”

  Ed’s Other Life

  AS SOON AS I AWOKE, I slid out of the four-poster bed and stood in the middle of the guest bedroom, teetering, my mouth tasting of cat shit and my head full of bees. It took half a minute of standing there in m
y underwear to realize that I had no fresh clothes to put on.

  The outfit I’d bought in Salt Point was gone, and just as well, because it was a mess. My fingers smelled like pancakes.

  I went to the window, drew the curtain with sticky hands, and winced at the lance of pain in the back of my head. The sun sat on the mountaintops like a giant golden eagle egg, sending spears of white into the misty gorge.

  Tendrils of fog rolled up from the lake, encompassing the world and making a mystery of it. I could see sleek sand-colored dhows cutting through the silver water, made of some paper-smooth wood and pulled by kites.

  Men and women bustled here and there about their business, milling up and down the road outside.

  I was in a wing of the manor that faced the front lane, where traffic between the town market and the fertile upper steppes was in full force. Despite my misery, I opened the window and waved to some of the passersby that happened to notice me.

  From her perch on the bench seat of a haycart, a sweet-faced little Tekyr girl waved enthusiastically back. I smiled and she grinned, lifting my spirits, calling, “Kiet lyh-rurk!”

  I echoed it right back, whatever it meant. I closed the window and heard a knock at the door.

  It was a matronly woman in a gray wool frock, holding my laundered clothes. “Good morning, ser,” she said. “Oh! I’m already impressed with you. You don’t seem remotely as ruined as the Deon is. It’s nice to have a man about the house that can hold his liquor for a change.”

  I was grateful to see that the suite had its own bathtub, and it even had hot running water. I lathered up and soaked until the water was tepid and my hands were wrinkled. The crisp morning light and impeccably clean bathroom made my morning ritual into a process of paradise. Once I was dressed, I wandered into the manor proper.

  The Rollins house was a sprawling complex in the same Mexi-Medi style as the rest of Maplenesse, albeit in a much better condition than the pastel-colored barrios I’d sprinted through last night. The walls were pueblo as most inland buildings here, and paintings of Ainean calligraphy and watercolor scenes hung in simple frames over ornate, fragile-looking wooden furniture.

  I found Walter and Garrod sitting at a large, heavy table in an equally large dining room. A crude, unlit candle chandelier dangled over their heads, and the Deon looked like a puppet with his strings cut. He slumped in his seat with his hat pulled low over his eyes and a deep frown on his face.

  Quartermaster Garrod was sipping a cup of coffee and had no shirt on, gracing us all with an unobstructed view of his leathery belly and thatch of gray chest hair.

  The table itself was laden with a good number of platters arrayed with an orchard’s worth of fruits (including the apple-potato things I’d taken to referring to as “applotatoes”); bean-and-bacon falafel balls; savory-looking prosciutto and pancetta marbled with white fat; crusty croissants; fluffy, crisp-edged waffles; grilled flatbreads layered with waxen white cheese, cilantro, and dried tomatoes; spongy spinach quiche; lemon-zest madeleines. I also saw what turned out to be brioche stuffed with salmon coulibiac and brioche filled with boiled cabbage and sausage.

  I’m approximating most of this, by the way. There are very few analogs between Earth and Destin when it comes to culture, but culinary dishes seemed to be one thing that I was able to recognize. I knew what prosciutto and pancetta were from eating NATO chow, but don’t ask me how I knew what a “brioche” was.

  I sat at the table by Walter’s right hand and said, “Good morning.”

  That hand had a fork in it, which tilted toward me. “It is entirely possible to murder a man with eating utensils. Lower your voice, bastard, or you will witness the definition of agony.”

  I silenced myself with a smile of pursed lips. A Tekyr attendant appeared and poured me a cup of coffee.

  “And you,” Walter said, pointing the fork at Garrod. The quartermaster looked down at his naked chest and took another sip of coffee from his dainty teacup.

  “No shirt, no shoes, no service,” I said.

  Walter speared the cabbage brioche on his plate and left the fork standing up in it. Garrod grunted, closed up his robe and cinched it with a sash. He was wearing a cherry-red silken robe with embroidered birds, which looked very feminine on such a coarse-looking old man.

  The Tekyr attendant brought me a plate with an enormous omelet, with bacon crumbled over the top of it. She spoke to me in a long string of nonsense syllables I recognized as Tekyrian. She accented several of the words by hooting through the airholes along her neck.

  I winced in apology, shrugging. She repeated herself so that I could understand her. “After last night’s feast, I thought you would appreciate something other than waffles.”

  “Oh. Umm—how do you say thank you very much in your language?”

  “D’nerg ayo fiha los’n.”

  I recited it back to her, which earned me a flustered smirk. “Very good,” she said, and went away again.

  “I was unable to detain Sardis,” mumbled Walter, as I tucked into my breakfast. “He escaped into the hills before I could lay hand to him.”

  Noreen and Sawyer shuffled out of a doorway holding hands, and joined us at the table. Neither of them looked as ill as I felt—they were in fact joined at the hip, murmuring animatedly to each other. As I talked to Walter, they grazed off of the platters in front of them.

  The Tekyr came back with cups of coffee. It wasn’t the rich coco-mocha coffee like the bath-house in Salt Point, but it was delicious nonetheless. I took a croissant, pulled the middle out by one end and ate it, then rolled up a piece of pancetta and plugged the hole with it.

  As I chewed the improvised sandwich, I said, “The last thing Sardis said was, ‘Wasn’t me.’”

  “Pure, unadulterated lies,” said the Deon. “Sardis was the last person to see Lord Eddick alive. He continues to evade the authorities even now. If he isn’t responsible for Eddick’s disappearance, then where is he? Has Eddick fled to Zam?”

  “According to his literary agent Maxwell Bayard, my father was murdered.”

  “I just realized something,” said Noreen. “Your names are two sides of the same coin.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “His name is Sardis. Your first and middle names are Sidney Ross. Sardis...Sid Ross. Maybe this guy’s your brother or something. I figure you two have the same father and different mothers.”

  “Murdered, then,” said Walter. “With his own guns, no doubt. They are not in his lodge on the hill. I expect that Sardis has taken them.”

  “His father had guns?” asked Sawyer.

  “Eddick was a gunslinger,” said the Deon. “Obviously not in the same realm of acumen as my father and I, and especially not as skilled or as fearless as Normand Kaliburn, but he was one of us, yes. Does that surprise you?”

  “It does,” I admitted.

  “Whorin’ and shootin’,” said Quartermaster Garrod, chuckling through a mouthful of food. “Sounds like you didn’t know your father as well as you thought you did.”

  “He died in our world. Bayard didn’t say how he died, or how he got out of Destin.”

  “Strange.”

  A man came in with a lyre, tuning it as he entered. “Music to aid the digestion, sera.”

  Walter raised his butterknife over his head by the blade, preparing to throw it. The man turned around without even slowing and walked right back out.

  “I expect you’d like to take a look at Lord Eddick’s cottage before we strike out for Ostlyn,” he said, glaring at the lyrist as he left. “Perhaps you’ll be able to find some clue as to why your would-be brother assassinated your father.”

  _______

  The trek was a short but winding hike up the side of the ridge, into the treeline behind the Rollins house. The picturesque path was little more than a dirt trail through tall grass, trod barren by years of passing feet. To our left was a steep slope shadowed in tall pine trees; to our right was a neck-breaker of an incline, slippery wi
th pine needles.

  Over the sparse trees marching down the wash, we could see the distant horseshoe of Maplenesse framing the lake as it glittered in the morning sun.

  My two friends were all over each other on the walk up to Ed’s cottage like a couple of handsy teenagers.

  “Looks like you two had a good Mokehlyr last night,” I said.

  Noreen smiled sheepishly and pretended that she hadn’t heard me. Sawyer grinned, focusing on his feet.

  I left it at that.

  My father’s house turned out to be a two-story weaver’s cottage tucked back into a sun-dappled glen. A widow’s walk extended from the second floor, serving as a roof for a little porch with a pair of wicker chairs and a glass-topped table. A symphony of birdsong serenaded our approach.

  I spied a chessboard facedown on the floor behind one of the chairs, and chess pieces were scattered all over the porch. “Odd,” I said, pushing the door open.

  My breath was stolen as soon as I entered the cottage.

  The walls were arrayed with a catalog’s worth of artifacts and paraphernalia from Ed’s adventures in Destin. Baskets hung from chains affixed to hooks in the ceiling, filled with coins, bullets, oddly-shaped stones, marbles, and other bric-a-brac. Mismatched pieces of battle-worn armor dangled from nails in the plaster walls, from scrollworked steel morions and pauldrons to the sleek green June-bug armor from K-Set.

  Parchment sketches of posing people and scenes of action were nailed up alongside antique shields, with the faces of wolves etched into them. The mounted heads of exotic wildlife stared blandly from their wooden plaques, between shelves displaying dishes on which scenes and creatures had been painted with intricate goldleaf and brilliant colors.

  All the things I had expected at his cold, unlived-in house in Blackfield. This was his true house.

  A large desk dominated one end of the room, looking out through the front window onto the hill and the spectacular view of the city. On it was a manual typewriter and a ceramic stein full of pencils and fountain pens, along with an inkwell and several knick-knacks. A little turtle hewn from soft green jade, and a stainless steel whiskey flask with a bullet lodged in one broad side of it.