The Sterkarm Handshake

by Susan Price

  The button at the waist was simple enough, but you had to be an Elf to fasten them below that.

  In the closet where Andrea had fetched his dagger, he found his shirt, doublet, and belt. From the bed he took the jakke, with its layers of leather, cloth and iron plates. It slumped weightily from his hand. He didn’t waste time putting on the clothes but slung them over his shoulder. From beneath his pillow he took his dagger, and his pouch with the very last of his food and beer.

  The wallet Windsor had given him was lying on the floor at the foot of the bed, where it had fallen. He picked it up and put it in his pouch. Money was always useful in his own world. He supposed that Elf-Money would be useful in Elf-Land. He reached back to the bed for the baseball cap too, and put it on. The more he dressed like an Elf, the better.

  He was at the door of the room, ready to go, but still it was hard. He thought of Andrea, coming back and finding him gone. She’d think he’d gone without caring, without thinking of her—well, serve her right, and what would she care? But though he tried to be angry, a hope persisted that he’d misunderstood, that she hadn’t, after all, betrayed him.

  He turned back to the bed, to the big bunch of flowers the Elf had brought. They were wrapped in some Elvish stuff, as transparent as water, that crackled like flames on wood. He didn’t want to touch it, though the Elf had held it without harm.

  There was an opening at the top, and he reached through that and pulled out a large red flower, gaudy and blowsy. Its thick stem was thorned, and it reeked. He carried it over to the chair where Andrea usually sat and left it on the seat, hoping she would see it and guess he had left it there as a good-bye. He only wished he had a rose to leave for her, like the ones that grew in the woods near the tower.

  Going back to the door of the room, he opened it and looked out into the wide corridor. The walls out there were smooth, without plaster or beams, and in color something like dried grass. Though only a corridor, it was brightly lit, as Elvish places always were. There were many doors, and many Elves walking here and there—he saw Andrea, her back toward him, and Elf-Windsor standing several yards away. People passed them by, but they were paying attention only to each other. Andrea was all eyes for her Master, the Elf-Man. The sight held Per by the door a moment longer than he should have stayed.

  He stepped out into the corridor, bare chested and barefoot, carrying his clothes over his shoulder, walking away in the opposite direction from where Andrea and Windsor stood. People passed him and glanced at him, but no one tried to stop him, as he’d feared they might. Within a few feet he came to a staircase and paused for a moment, awed.

  Huge windows filled the stairwell with light, so the pale walls shone. The stairs were covered with cloth, and had delicate handrails of polished wood and polished silver. In its beauty and wealth, the stair was truly Elvish.

  Then he remembered that the important thing about the stair was that it went down, toward the ground, and he started down.

  “It’s illegal!” Andrea said. “It’s kidnapping!”

  “What a stroke of luck I’ve got you to advise me. Since young Sterkarm doesn’t officially exist 21st side, tell me, exactly what law am I breaking by putting him up in the lap of luxury and making sure he has everything he could possibly want?”

  “He hates it here! He won’t eat! And you expect me to go back and carry on while Per stays here! Didn’t you hear what Toorkild said?”

  “I think you should keep your voice down, young lady. We are in a hospital.”

  “‘Bring him back alive, or don’t come back!’ That’s what he said! How do you think he’s going to welcome me if I go back without Per?”

  “Now you listen to me, Miss. I’ve got billions of pounds’ worth of technology lying idle, and personnel drawing wages for sitting on their arses. And why? Because the bloody Sterkarms are camped around our office, 16th side, like a picket line, and my survey teams won’t go out past them!”

  “Yes, but—”

  Windsor raised his voice slightly and easily shouted her down.

  “So what are you paid for? FUP is filling up your bank account every month, and in return you’re supposed to liaise for us 16th side, isn’t that right? And you have them eating out of your hand, don’t you? So I’m told. Did you think it was all going to be a walk in the country, writing your little book on our time and snogging your toy-boy back there? Well, sorry to tear you away from him, but we’d quite like you to actually earn your money now, please. I want you back there this afternoon, squaring it with the Sterkarms. And if that’s too much to ask of you, there’re always the Job Centers, dear.”

  Windsor’s closeness, his loud voice, his height and sheer bulk, were intimidating. She wanted to stand up to him but could feel herself shaking with anger and nerves. If she tried to speak, her voice would squeak. And his accusations that she’d coasted along on FUP’s time, his assertion that he only wanted her to earn her wages, were hard to argue against … But even while she hung her head in silence, she knew that keeping Per 21st side was wrong. She tried to think of something to say but couldn’t. She needed a notepad, a pen and a few hours to draft and redraft her arguments.

  Windsor, seeing that she’d fallen quiet, said, “We could rig up a video in the office, I suppose. Let them in a few at a time to see—I don’t know—film of young Sterkarm looking happy and wearing a party hat.”

  Andrea let a moment pass in silence, and then said, “You can’t keep Per here by himself. He’ll go crazy. He’ll be so lonely. It would be cruel.”

  “He’ll have the time of his life,” Windsor said.

  “Mr. Windsor … you don’t even begin to understand, do you?”

  “I understand very well that while young Sterkarm is here, old Sterkarm will do exactly what I tell him, how I tell him, when I tell him, for as long as I tell him—and that will make a refreshing change.”

  “And if he doesn’t, what then?” Andrea said.

  Windsor looked at her as if she’d made some incomprehensible noise.

  “Mr. Windsor, if Toorkild calls your bluff about Per, what will you do?”

  “Well,” Windsor said, “I doubt if he’s really going to want to find that out, is he? Be at the Tube at three.”

  10

  21st Side: Joe Sterkarm

  The Elves’ sick house was big. Per descended one staircase of two long flights and came upon another corridor just like the one above: brilliantly lit, lined with doors, the floor covered in cloth, and pictures hung on the walls. A thumping and twittering inhabited the very air about him, and was louder as he passed under boxes high on the walls, as if the boxes held yelling spirits. Elves, many Elves, came and went in both directions, with an incessant din of chattering voices and trampling feet. So many Elves, all swirling by, their mouths all working, their eyes all darting at him, bewildered him, made his heart beat faster, until it was hard to think. So many. More than leaves in the wood or stones in the stream, more than crowded Carloel on market day—and this was but one corridor in a sick house.

  There were so many kinds of Elves. Some dressed all in white, some all in blue, some all in black. Some Elves had skins as brown as peat water, and dark, dark hair and eyes—those, he supposed, were the Black Elves he’d heard tell of, though he’d always thought the “black” had meant they had dark hair or wore dark clothes.

  There were small Elves, children—and he had always heard that Elf-Children were few. Why else did the Elves steal mortal babies? But these children seemed healthy and were dressed in brilliant colors, as were the women. Yellows brighter than gorse, reds brighter than holly berries. Gold and gems dangled from their ears. The women all had their skirts hiked up to their knees, as if they were working in the fields; and all wore their hair uncovered, as if unmarried. So many of them had their hair cropped short that he supposed it must be an Elvish custom and not a punishment.

  An
Elf-Woman went by him, seated in a chair that moved along by itself, humming as it went. An Elf-Man walked by the other way, talking into a—a far-speak, but one that had no leash fastening it to the wall. Two Elf-Women each carried huge bunches of giant, fiercely colored Elvish flowers. And all the time the air twittered and beeped and hissed and buzzed.

  On and on the corridor went, an endless straight line, and all the Elves stared at his bare chest and his bare feet. He opened one of the many doors, hoping to find some refuge where he could put on his clothes, perhaps even a way out of the building.

  Behind the door was another brightly lit room, like the one he’d spent the past days in, but luckily empty of Elves. He closed the door after him, dropped his things on the bed and dressed, quickly pulling on his shirt, which hung loose almost to his knees. Its side was stained brown with his blood, and the linen had dried hard. The doublet was hard to put on because he had to thread his arms through the ribboned sleeves, and it, too, was ruined with bloodstains. His mother would not be pleased—but he’d welcome her displeasure, since he’d have to reach home before she could shout at him.

  He put on the jakke, shrugging its weight onto his shoulders and fastening its large hooks and eyes. Wearing it, he felt safer, and a little more confident.

  He threaded his pouch back onto his belt and would have slipped the belt through the loops of his dagger’s sheath too, but then thought it better not to let the Elves see that he was armed. Instead, he pushed the sheath inside his right sleeve, buckling one of the sheath’s straps around his wrist. It was difficult to push the dagger’s hilt past the narrow opening of his doublet’s cuff, and the blade was so long that the sheath’s point pressed out against the elbow of his shirt. But he was able to hold the pommel in his right hand, and keep the weapon both ready and hidden.

  The room, like all Elf-Rooms, had big windows of great, flat, sheer sheets of glass, and even from close by the door he was able to see that he was still high above the ground. He went back into the corridor, where he drew fewer stares, and kept doggedly on past the closed doors until the passage opened out into a big room with such huge windows, stretching from floor to ceiling on either side, that he had to raise his hand to his eyes against the light. Here there were thickets—indoors, above ground—of lush green bushes, and crowds of Elves sitting on chairs that were all cushion. The cushions were of such violent colors—yellow, violet, scarlet, green—that to look at them was to feel needles in the eyes. And here again was all the din of Elf-Land redoubled: crashes, clangs, twitterings and the laughing of staring Elves.

  He kept close by the wall, meaning to make his way around the edge of the room to the other side, but this brought him against one of the windows. He looked down to the ground below, and the view was so clear, he felt that he might fall. His back still to the wall, he edged away from the window.

  To get to the other side of the room he would have to walk across the open space in the middle, leaving his back exposed to attack. He leaned against the wall, his heart thumping heavily, trying to find the nerve.

  Opposite him, he saw an Elf-Man’s head come up through the floor. Per jumped and stood stiff against the wall, watching. An Elf-Woman’s head came into view beside the man’s—then their shoulders appeared, and the rest of them, sliding upward. They were inside a little room with walls of glass that slid up through the floor. Its door opened, and they stepped out and walked toward him. He watched them until they passed by him into the corridor. Then he looked back at the little room and saw more Elves get into it. The room slid down through the floor and disappeared.

  It took him a few heavy beats of his heart to work out that the room was going through the ceiling to the floor below. Was that how he had to get to the ground? Rather than trust himself to Elf-Work in a box like that, he’d break a window and jump.

  But he caught sight of Elves going up stairs beyond the little glass room. The only way he was going to reach the stairs was by crossing the open room. So he ran. He reached the other side feeling unsteady, as if a little drunk, and with the muscles of his wounded leg twanging. To feel so weak so soon dismayed him, but he refused to think of it. Leaning on the handrail, he went down the stairs, favoring his hurt leg.

  At the bottom was yet another long corridor, with yet more doors. Per opened the nearest door. An Elf-Man, in a long robe, was sitting in a chair near the bed and stared at him. Per looked at the windows and saw that they were open, and that he was on ground level at last.

  “Good day,” he said to the Elf-Man, with a slight bow, as he closed the door behind him. The Elf-Man continued to stare, watching Per as he crossed the room, turned his back to the window, set his hands on the sill and boosted himself up.

  He was astonished at how much effort it took, used as he was to finding such things easy. He wondered if it was some Elf-Work, a spell laid on him to prevent his escape. If so, it failed, because he got onto the sill and swung his left leg over it, even though his arms shook.

  He glanced back at the Elf-Man’s startled face, and raised a hand. “Fare you well.” The muscles complained in his hurt leg as he tried to lift it over the sill, and he had to help it with his hands—but he managed, and dropped to the grass.

  Under his bare feet, the earth felt cool and the grass soft and damp, and it was a relief to be outdoors again, though it was a strange world. Nearby was a planting of the big, gaudy Elf-Flowers, redder than blood and glaring as gold as narange juice. The air drummed and roared.

  But if he’d been blindfolded and his ears plugged with wax, he’d still have known he was far from Man’s-Home. The very air felt different as it touched his skin, as he breathed it in, though it was hard to say how. It smelled wrong, somehow.

  He paused a second while he cast about in his mind for the direction of the room he’d lived in for the past days. From the window of that room Andrea had waved, saying, “Dilsmead Hall is that way …” And that was the way he had to go.

  He reached the corner of the immense building and stopped, stooping forward to lean on his knees. He felt slightly giddy, and his leg was aching, not badly, but steadily. Still:

  What can’t be cured

  Must be endured.

  In front of him was a gravel drive leading toward a gateway in a wall. As he approached it, a box on wheels—a box of a glaring, brilliant blue—a noisy, groaning box of metal on black wheels—moved toward him, its wheels thrashing in the gravel and throwing up stones. Its metal sides flashed in the sun, and it had windows of glass as sheer and flat as those of the building, and they too flashed. Per stopped short, alarmed, watching as the thing sped past him with weight and power.

  He stood still, on the verge of turning back to the sick house. Never had he missed Sweet Milk so much, or so much wanted the company of his cousins.

  But he either went back to be Elf-Windsor’s hostage or he went on, no matter how hard his heart beat. He clenched his hand around the pommel of his dagger and went on, walking on the grass beside the graveled path, moving as quickly as he could because he was more likely to be seen leaving by the gate—but, that day, he didn’t think he had the strength to climb the wall.

  The gate had no guards, though the sick house was walled. But from beyond the gate came such a din, such a savage roaring and screeching and whirring, that Per came to a halt again. The din struck him about the head and made him shake. He had never heard the like of such noise. Even the sounds of battle, of yells and shrieks, and swords banging on shields and clanging on helmets, was nothing like this.

  He came to a stop. He couldn’t go on, into that din. He couldn’t go back. Maybe this was his fate, in Elf-Land, to stand frozen in that spot forever.

  Andrea, her face red, her blood pumping fast, hurried back along the corridor to Per’s room. Windsor was the big boss; what he said was law. At three o’clock sharp she was going to be at Dilsmead Hall, ready to go back 16th side. What Windsor didn’t
know was that Per was going with her.

  What happened after that—well, there was no point in thinking about it or worrying about what would happen. She just flat out wasn’t going to abandon Per, whatever Windsor or anyone else said. Or did. When she asked herself what was more important—her job, FUP’s dealings 16th side, or Per—then she felt no doubt at all. She was scared when she thought of the trouble she would be in, but being scared didn’t alter what was important. When the balloon went up, she would just have to cope.

  She barged into the room, saying, “Per!” Not seeing him in the bed, she looked around at the armchairs, the corners. He wasn’t there.

  Going over to the door of the bathroom, she tapped, and then opened it. The bathroom, too, was empty.

  For a moment she was dizzy with fright and anger, and thought: Windsor! He’d had Per moved somewhere. Then her mind started to work, and she asked herself how he’d have had the time. She saw the drip stand still beside the bed, the line from it now dripping healing accelerant onto the carpet. The bedcover was stained with blood. The line hadn’t been removed by a doctor. Per had pulled it out himself, as he’d been threatening he’d do.

  The big bouquet of flowers and the basket of fruit were still on the bed, but the jeans and baseball cap and jakke were gone. Andrea turned from the bed and opened the closets. Per’s doublet, shirt and belt were gone too. Standing, she threw back the bedcovers, letting the flowers and fruit fall on the floor. She pulled aside the pillows. Per’s pouch and his dagger were missing. Per had done a runner.

  He hadn’t waited for her. He hadn’t trusted her at all, but had gone haring off. What was he going to do in Elf-Land? He’d only the faintest idea of where he was going, and no idea at all of the dangers he would meet on the way. The ring road, the railway lines, muggers.

  She clutched at her head with both hands, trying to hold together the panic and half-formed plans that filled it. Hospital security—if she got them to search the hospital building and grounds, Per might still be on the premises somewhere. Or would that make it official that Per was missing? Would Windsor be alerted?