The January Dancer (21 page)

“Expecting someone?” Olafsson asked. He had been watching the hoist keenly, but the Fudir was not surprised to find him aware of the goings-on about him.

“I thought it might rain,” he said, indicating dark red clouds gathering above the distant Reeks. The hot, violent updrafts on the other side sometimes created rains of gray ash over the Vale. Olafsson spared them only a glance.

“We’ll be gone before then. It’s the bicyclist that bothers me.”

“Bicyclist…”

“It’s your friend,” Olafsson said a moment later as the approaching figure rounded a blasted ICC packet. “I hope he doesn’t intend to prevent your leaving.” He surreptitiously loosened the flap on one of his pockets.

The bike that O’Carroll had taken was too small for his frame and he appeared almost comical, an awkward set of pumping knees, as he rode between two shattered corporate shuttles.

“Climb the stairs, Fudir,” said Olafsson, stepping between him and Hugh.

“That would be rude,” the Fudir answered. “I think he’s come to say good-bye.”

Olafsson grunted, but made no response.

Hugh turned his bike into a tight circle and skidded to a stop just in front of them. Letting the bike fall to the ground, he strode up to the departing pair. “I finally remembered,” he said, pointing a finger at the Fudir, “when I first met ‘Kalim DeMorsey,’ and I’m after wondering how this spalpeen knew of that name at all.”

Olafsson may have been expecting a great many things, but this was not among them, and he turned to give the Fudir a puzzled look, for the Fudir had given him that very name to use on the warrant.

The courier had not shown many lapses of attention in the short time the Fudir had known him, but this one was all that Little Hugh needed. He tackled Olafsson around the chest, pinning his arms to his side and knocking the man to the ground. The Fudir was impressed. Hugh had to believe he was fighting a Hound’s Pup; and that meant he had tossed both legal and physical prudence to the winds.

Olafsson appeared to no more than shrug and Hugh was thrown aside. Hugh rolled and rose—and Olafsson already had a weapon in his hand.

“Don’t shoot!” the Fudir cried.

Olafsson cocked his head, but this time he did not take his eyes off the O’Carroll. “I didn’t think there were more than five men alive who could have done what you did, and four of them are…I’m sorry, PM, but your friend really is urgently needed on Jehovah. Now, I’d suggest leaving as quickly as you came.”

“Sahbs,” said the Fudir. “Company.”

A band of armed toughs had emerged from the two wrecked company shuttles and advanced now on the three men standing at the base of the yacht. At their head strode Voldemar O’Rahilly wearing a sleeveless vest and bearing the sweep-gun he’d been given by the ICC during the Cynthian raid. Hugh, unarmed, turned to face them.

The Direct Action fighters leveled their weapons; but O’Rahilly raised his left arm and patted them down. “There’s no need for blood this day, boyos,” he said. “Hugh and I, we’ve spilt too much blood together for me to be happy spilling his.” Then, to Hugh, “But it seems to me only fair that if you arrived here with the Terran, you should leave with him as well.” His bearded lips split into a red grin. “Symmetry’s appealing, ain’t it?”

“But the Cause…” Hugh protested.

“Will carry on widdout yez; as we did durin’ yer exile. Come on, now, the both of ye, be boardin’ the yacht.”

The
both
of ye? The Fudir looked for Olafsson and saw him nowhere. Had he managed to slip unseen into his ship? But no, he spied the courier now,
in the midst of Voldemar’s men.
And with a weapon in either hand.

The Fudir wasn’t sure he liked the odds on that; but neither was he sure which way the odds broke. “Hugh, better do as he says.”

The O’Carroll raised a chin. “And if I don’t?”

“I said I wouldn’t be happy wid it,” Voldemar answered. “Never said I wouldn’t do it.” And with that, he aimed his sweeper directly at the Fudir.

As a way of not shedding O’Carroll blood, it was ingenious; but the Fudir wished O’Rahilly had picked some other way.

But Voldemar hesitated and the Fudir realized that Olafsson was now standing directly behind him and one of his weapons was shoved against Voldemar’s spine. “I’d really rather you not damage my goods,” the courier told the faction leader.

The Fudir saw a cloud of doubt pass across Voldemar’s face and the two of them locked gazes for a moment. Then Voldemar shrugged. “What we got here,” he said, “is what yez’d call a ‘conundrum.’ Ye can kill me, for sure—no boyos, hold off for just a wee bit and we’ll see if we can’t untie this widdout we all get burned, especially me. Ye can kill me, Pup; but ye’ll only do it if I actually do damage to yer goods, so to speak. I gotta shoot first, right? It’s what ye call a ‘code of honor’ or something. Now you wouldn’t like that, and I wouldn’t like that, and for sure old Fudir here wouldn’t like that. So let’s try something we can all like. All I’m askin’ ye to do is take one more passenger. That’s all. I mean, by the gods, man! Think of the mess we’d be after layvin’ here for the maintenance crew!”

“I won’t have it be said,” Hugh announced, “that I ran out on my people.”

“Oh, don’t ye worry none about that. When the guard at the gate finally gets hisself untied, he’ll let everyone know it was a shanghai job—by Jack’s Rebels! Man, you’re a legend—
and I need that legend
—but I don’t need
you
. Fact is, yez’ve gone soft. Cozyin’ up an’ makin’ dayls wid Handsome Jack an’ all. That ain’t fookin’ right. Yez’re a traitor to the O’Carroll.”

“To myself, ye mean?” Hugh said bitterly. Then he jerked when he felt Olafsson’s weapon pressed to his side.

“I am persuaded by the man’s rhetoric,” the courier said. “Also, I have counted his guns; and while there might be a certain philosophical satisfaction in letting things play out, I really do need to take the Fudir back unharmed to Jehovah. If your presence is the price, so be it.”

Hugh’s shoulders slumped. “If I’d brought my bodyguards with me,” he said.

“There would have been a bloodbath for sure,” the Fudir said. He had already taken two steps up the stairs. “Count your blessings. And mine.”

Shoulders slumped, Hugh followed him up the stairs with Olafsson directly behind him. At the head of the stairs, and just before closing the airlock, the courier turned and faced the faction fighters. “I’m not sure how wide the blast circle is for these strap-on boosters, but I’ll be lighting off directly.”

The Fudir saw Voldemar and his men scrambling for the edge of the field before the lock had fully closed.

“I’ll be back!” Hugh shouted through the closing crack. “I’ll be back,” he said again, after it had closed. And then, in a piteous voice, he added, “Oh, my poor world! My poor world!”

“Oh, my poor world,” the scarred man mocks.
“And it wasn’t even his own world!
He was born on Venishànghai.
”

“But he grew on New Eireann,” the harper says, idly strumming a lament on her instrument. It doesn’t sound quite right and she isn’t sure why. “And where a person grows may matter more than where he sprouted.”

“How did he ‘grow’ on New Eireann? He came there already a man.”

“He promised he’d be back, but he didn’t swear this time
on his father’s name.
That seems like growth to me.”

The scarred man smiles like a razor. “You noticed that, did you?”

“I did. I wonder if
he
did, at the time.” Underneath the lament, she plucks out in a minor off the fourth mode the motif she had begun to think of as
The Fudir’s Theme,
a twisting melody that never quite resolves. The scarred man surprises her by saying, “Yes. I think you’ve gotten it right.”

“It must have been a schizophrenic voyage,” the harper suggests. “Olafsson wants to go to Jehovah; the Fudir wants to go to the Hadramoo; and Little Hugh wants to go back to New Eireann. They’re pulling three ways. The mean value is to stand still.”

“Yes, standing still is a difficult means of pursuit. Although”—and here his gaze turns intently and discomfortingly on the harper—“there are times when it works.”

The harper stills her strings and sets the harp aside. The Bartender has brought over two plates of stew, the hearty, plain sort consonant with Jehovah’s austere nature. She recognizes carrots and onions and a stringy meat that suggests pastures rather than vats. Curious, she tastes it and finds it much like artifact meat, only different in texture. The great doors at the front of the Bar open briefly on some arrivals to reveal a night well advanced.

“Tell me,” she says when she has swallowed. “I don’t understand why the Fudir went through the charade of being ‘arrested.’ Why didn’t he simply leave when Olafsson gave him the chance?”

The scarred man eats as if filling a pit with a shovel. “Because when history repeats itself,” he says, without swallowing, “the second time must be a farce.”

“What do you mean, farce? Voldemar’s ambush—Oh.”

“Yes. The ‘arrangements’ the Fudir made the night before. Considering how things ran out afterward, it was probably the best thing he could have done.”

“What do you mean?”

“We have two theories. The one more favorable to the Fudir’s character is that he had come to like Hugh, and New Eireann, and could not bear to see either ruined by the inevitable three-way struggle with Jack and Voldemar.”

“You mean, better a
two-
way struggle?”

But the scarred man shakes his head and cackles with brief and unpleasant glee. “No,” he says around another spoonful of stew, so that streamers of gravy dribble from the corners of his mouth. “He made more than one set of arrangements that night. Jack’s men ambushed Voldemar as he was leaving the Port and cut the head right off the snake. So things worked out in the end. The Fudir left New Eireann with competent, undivided leadership, and saved Hugh’s face by shanghaiing him. No one could say Hugh had run off.”

The harper is skeptical. “And those were the Fudir’s motives? They seem rather high for a man so low.”

The scarred man looks into the darkness of his stew. “Perhaps those were motives he thought of afterward. But we can no longer ask him.”

“He died then? So we don’t really know what happened.”

“Ah. The beginnings of wisdom.” He applies himself once more to his meal.

“What was the second reason? You said there were two.”

The scarred man shrugs. “He needed someone to watch his back.”

“That’s a less noble reason,” the harper agrees.

“Yes. It is.”

“There’s a third reason.”

The scarred man raises his face from his stew. He swallows and wipes his lips with his hand. “Is there?”

“Friendship. They were in the dance together.”

The scarred man gives that some thought. “Maybe,” he allows. “Sometimes you can triangulate what really happened from the testimonies of those who were there.” His grin reveals ruined teeth. “But you don’t have even that. You’ve only my account of their accounts.”

“Do you embellish, then?”

He shrugs. “Even engineers prepare their plans and levels from more than one perspective. It’s late, and you’ve played three times tonight. Four, if you count our conversation. Do you have rooms at the Hostel?”

“I thought I would stay here. They’ve rooms upstairs, you said.”

The scarred man nods, but says nothing.

“Room 3-G, if it’s available.”

Another grin. “We might be a little snug, you and us.”

The harper studies him for a long moment, and he simply waits her out. Finally, she says, “Another room, then.”

The scarred man signals to the Bartender, makes a sign, and points to the harper. Shortly, one of the servants comes with a homing key and lays it on the table. “Compliments of the house,” she murmurs, and her eyes caress in turn the harper and her instrument.

“You may want to consider what I’ve told you so far,” the scarred man says. “It will give you something to sleep on, if not someone to sleep with.”

“Will Hugh escape once they reach Jehovah and try to return to New Eireann? Will the Fudir slip loose from Olafsson and heigh for the Hadramoo? Will Olafsson find Donovan or will Greystroke catch up with him? And what of…And what of Bridget ban? What has she been doing in the meantime?”

“That,” the scarred man suggests, “will give you something to wake up for.”