The Branded Rose Prophecy Read online

  Chocolate sat down next to Charlee, her shoulder brushing Charlee’s calf, as if it was the natural place to be. Charlee shrugged and answered his question. “I don’t go out very often. Mostly. But I found Chocolate, y’see.” It sounded like the truth. She was keeping her side of the deal.

  “I guess you’ve learned how dangerous it is, sneaking out.”

  “Could’ve been really bad,” she agreed. “But it wasn’t, coz of you.”

  It brought them very neatly to his dilemma. “You watched it all,” he said, easing into it.

  She licked her lips. He could almost feel her caution rising. But she honored their agreement. “Yeah,” she said, her voice low.

  “You saw…” He took a breath. This was harder than he thought it might be. Laun defined his life and shaped the secrecy that was part of it. She had seen his sword and him using it. Normally a situation like that had only one outcome. Why had he even pulled her out of the alley? He should have left her there and waited for them to come as they always did. They would have dealt with Charlee as they did any human who learned of them.

  “You mean I saw your sword,” Charlee finished for him. “The magic one.” She said it matter-of-factly, like an adult would say “your camcorder, the black one.”

  Asher stared at her. She had accepted the sword’s disappearance. Just like that. No questions. No disbelief or vain attempt to rationalize away what she had seen.

  He drew in a deep breath. Her absolute acceptance made this much easier for him to arrange the compromise that would save both their hides, if he could just get past his own reluctance to speak the words aloud. In that respect, Charlee was way ahead of him.

  “The magic sword,” he made himself say, agreeing with her. His voice dropped as he said it, and he fought the need to look around and see who might be eavesdropping on their conversation. He felt foolish, using the childish words she had used. Just say it, you idiot, he raged at himself. They had a deal. Truth for truth. “You seeing my sword puts you in a different sort of trouble, Charlee. You and me, both.”

  She didn’t look worried, or scared. She considered him for a moment. “You had to save Chocolate,” she pointed out. “The gang didn’t give you a choice.”

  It wasn’t what he had expected her to say. He wasn’t sure what he had thought she might respond with, but this adult reasoning was a surprise. Her reaction stepped right over the questions he presumed she would have. Who says you have to keep it secret? What sort of trouble am I in? Even a protest over how unfair it was would have been more in line with what he knew of kids and their fierce focus on their own concerns.

  “They won’t see it that way. But I can’t talk about that,” he added. “Just like you can’t talk about this. Any of it.” He looked her in the eye, confident that she would understand this part of it. “Just like you don’t want me to talk about you being out of the house without your folks knowing.”

  Charlee stood still, thinking it through. She was a slim, straight girl with long legs. The nimbus of coppery red hair looked almost kinky. Her skin was very pale, as if her hair had stolen all the life and color from it. Her head came up to just under his shoulder. He judged she was around ten or so, but figured he was probably wrong. What did he know of kids?

  Her dark brown eyes refocused on him. “Another deal?” she asked, then kicked up her leg behind her and slapped at a mosquito on her ankle. Chocolate stirred and her tongue lolled.

  Asher felt relief. She had understood. “Another deal,” he confirmed. “But this is a grown-up deal, Charlee. You can’t even tell your best friend at school. No one. Not ever.”

  She just stared at him, taking it in.

  Asher wasn’t satisfied. “What I did to that kid…”

  “He wasn’t a kid. He was a gangster,” she said instantly.

  “What I did,” Asher insisted, for she had to understand the gravity of this, “it was bad.”

  “You saved Chocolate.”

  “But if the people you know, your friends and family, if they had seen what I did, they would be shocked and angry at me.” It was a wild over-simplification of what they would really do, but it would make the point.

  “You killed him,” Charlee said, using frank truth once more. She shrugged. “He kicked Chocolate.”

  He blew out his breath. “What do they do to people who kill other people, Charlee? I know you know this.”

  Her eyes seemed to be enormous in her face as she came up with the answer. She spoke slowly. “They go to prison. Sometimes…worse.” She pressed her lips together. Then, “But…Chocolate,” she added helplessly and bent to stroke the dog’s soft fur between her ears. Chocolate panted happily, shifting on the warm concrete.

  “That’s what the people you know would do,” Asher said. “But the people I know, Charlee, they would do much more than that.”

  Her eyes seemed to grow even larger. “Are you in a gang?” she whispered. In her small world, people who did such unspeakable things, people who could do more than execute criminals, were in gangs.

  “I can’t tell you any more,” Asher replied. “It would make things even worse for you. I just need to know that you understand the deal and why you must keep it.”

  “Tell no one. Forever an’ ever. I got it.”

  Asher let out his breath slowly, controlling his reaction of deep relief. “So let’s find somewhere for Chocolate to stay, then you need to climb back in your window.”

  They turned and walked slowly along the path, discussing possible homes for Chocolate and the last of his worry over the incident drained away. She was a child, but he trusted her to keep her word.

  It never occurred to him that he might be the one to break the deal.

  * * * * *

  Asher watched Charlee shimmy up the external plumbing at the back of her house and disappear through her bedroom window, before heading back to Cauldwell Avenue, where he could hail a cab. There was no point in going home now. Because of the battle, they would be expecting him at the hall.

  The cab dropped him off on Pearl twenty minutes later. For the last thirty-two years, the way to the hall had been from Pearl, although the entrance had been relocated a dozen times over the last century or so, using one of the three sides of the building with street access. They had tried using the alley between the building and its neighbor as an entry point, but that had lasted for only five short years. It was easier to blend in with the locals using a street entrance.

  He bypassed the elevator and took the stairs. It had been too long since he’d been to the gym. He needed the exercise.

  The stairs stopped two floors short of the top of the building, although there was nothing that would tell a human visitor—or an official inspector—that there were two more floors above.

  Asher punched in the code. The buttons were unmarked. Anyone with legitimate business on this floor had to remember the pattern and hit the right ones. He pushed his way out into the foyer beyond. The guard of the day looked up briefly as the fire door opened, saw him, and returned his gaze to the narrow section of the foyer where the elevators emerged. No one could select the elevator button for this floor without a security code, just like the fire exit door, but tailgaters were always possible.

  When Asher passed the guard, he murmured his name in acknowledgment and got a nod in return. The guards were not encouraged to talk while they were on shift, although if a human did manage to get past the security codes and wandered into the foyer, the guard would turn into a congenial and chatty stranger willing to help them find how to get to where they needed to go (“no, not on this floor, ma’am. I’m pretty sure the dentist surgery is on the third”) and would shepherd them back into the elevator, all without the human even suspecting they were being guided away from exploring.

  The foyer was empty of anyone but the guard, who sprawled on an old leather armchair, ostensibly reading a magazine.

  Apart from the narrower section of the foyer where the elevators disgorged passengers, the pa
ssage was really a big, almost square, room. The green linoleum was a sea of dark smoothness. The well-waxed and cared-for surface always gleamed. During daylight hours the light came through the high arched windows at the end of the foyer opposite the elevators, to fall on the linoleum. At night, the floor reflected the radiance from three big chandeliers overhead. They were heavy wrought iron creations and yellow cylindrical shades clustered thickly on the ends of their metal branches.

  The fire escape door was at the same end as the arched window, tucked into the corner. There were no other entries or exits from the foyer, except one. Opposite the row of leather club chairs ranked against the wall, where the guard was currently sitting, were the doors to the hall.

  They were big commercial five-panel doors. They had started out as oiled teak but now they were dark with age and the impact of many hands pushing against them. The bottoms were chipped and scratched by shoes and boots. They were utterly ordinary and modern doors, designed to blend in with the portions of the building that humans were allowed to see. The handles were industrial grey steel, curving in minimalistic arches. The doors gave no hint of what lay behind their bland facade.

  Nevertheless, Asher’s spirits never failed to lift when he saw them. Once he stepped through them he could become himself.

  He thrust out his hand and pushed against the right-hand door of the big pair, swinging it open.

  Scents peculiar to the hall washed over him in a swirl caused by the movement of the door. They brought to mind quick flashes of impressions and sensations: the cool touch of mead in his mouth, and the dusky smell of hide stretched over frames. The sound of laughter and music from the many, many feasts he had attended. The raw touch of cold air from the open fire vent.

  He didn’t have to recall the yellow light that infused the air, for it bathed the wide steps in front of him now, flickering with a warm glow. He looked up. The walls, which were made of rough-cut timbers that had been worn to smoothness over the years, held a pair each of flaming sconces. Their flames barely moved in the still room. They ran on gas, but when the hall had first been built, the flames had fed on oil-soaked rags, just like the lamps in the First Hall.

  Asher could remember any number of occasions when the steps in front of him had been choked with people climbing slowly up to the main level. There were other times when friends had lingered on the steps, pulled to one side to talk earnestly or lightly. Many of his memories included friends holding horns and cups, their faces flushed by the mead.

  There was no one lingering on the steps tonight but at the top, where the stairs gave way to the hall itself, two more guards stood facing the other end, their backs to the stairs. Asher had never made the mistake of thinking the guards had failed to notice his arrival, despite their lack of reaction.

  He climbed the stairs quickly and stood at the top. One of the guards turned his head just enough to see him and confirm his identity. Asher nodded at him and murmured his name. Unlike the guard out in the foyer, these guards were wearing traditional clothing and leather armor, helmets and shields. Their spears stood taller than them.

  Asher looked around, checking to see who was in the hall. The room stretched out before him. It was over one hundred feet from where he stood to the other end where the dais was located. The tall, carved chair sitting on the dais was empty. The walls soared for twenty feet, pushing through the upper floor of the building to the roof.

  When they had first designed the hall, just over a hundred years ago, they had reached back to their common roots for inspiration. Asher suspected that most of them had wanted a reminder of older, more human times, even though such an idea had not been mentioned. No one spoke of the Descent. They had used words like “traditional” instead, and so the hall had been built.

  The long walls of the elongated space were curved so that they bowed out in the middle. They were lined with the same once-rough wood palings that lined the stairs. Every twelve feet or so along their length, sconces flickered. Three tiers butted up against each long wall. The first was knee-high, a comfortable sitting height. The second was waist-high and the third breast-high. Each tier was wide enough for a table and benches, and the top tier was dotted with both. The tables on the top tier were never removed. For a feast, more tables would be added to the lower tiers.

  Marching along the front of both lower tiers, massive pillars that had once been trees rose to the roof. Where each pillar touched the roof, heavy beams radiated out around them, making starred patterns of support.

  The hall was so wide that despite the tiers on either side, there was still a good thirty feet of clear space in the center, at the widest point of the room. In that respect, the hall differed from the narrow langhaus of his childhood.

  There were several women working in the hall, all of them Amica. One was running a motorized cleaner over the floor. Two more were sweeping tiers and straightening up the tables and benches. He recognized them, although he could not name but one of them. The one whose name he knew was tending the firepit and he strode down the hall toward her. Erica lifted her head as his footsteps echoed up from the tiles, and gave him a small smile of acknowledgment.

  The tiles were a concession to modern living. If they had maintained the rigid standards dictated by tradition, the floor would be dirt and the fire would be fueled by wood. But in the middle of New York, endless supplies of firewood would draw attention, as would sandy footsteps leading out of the building.

  Erica straightened up from her crouch over the massive firepit as Asher drew near. She was wearing yoga pants and a T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up to her shoulders. Her hair was pinned up on top of her head. Her hands and the lower half of her forearms were covered in black grime.

  The firepit sat in the center of the room. It was the length of one of the tables and just as wide. The edges of the pit were protected by flat stones, which thrust jagged teeth up to calf height. The floor of the pit was also stone, although this had been mortared and was flat and featureless.

  What looked like a bonfire’s worth of logs and stumps were scattered artfully across the pit, hiding the gas burners strung throughout the fake logs. The fire was never extinguished and wouldn’t be for as long as the hall was able to welcome the Kine. But right now, two of the sets of gas burners had been turned off, leaving the one on the far end still flickering over the logs. It allowed Erica to clean the logs and the burners that were unlit.

  She carefully brushed stray hair out of her eyes with the back of her wrist, but still left a smear behind. Her smile was warm. Friendly. “Stallari,” she said, using his official title, which was proper for within the hall.

  “I’m looking for the earl. Is he in his quarters?”

  “I believe he is waiting for you there.”

  Asher held in his reaction. Just for the slightest moment, for the merest heartbeat, he felt a mild irritation. The constant sense of community and the peculiar sensitivity that the Kine had for the wellbeing of all in their ranks meant a decrease in personal privacy and an uptick in the level of accountability each of them had to all others. Normally, that intimacy was reassuring. Tonight, it did not sit well and he knew why. You’re trying to hide something from people who can sense when you’re in trouble.

  Unhappy, he made his way to the doorway just off to the side of the main dais. It punched through the tiers, into the wall behind. Normal electric light shone through from the opening, spilling onto the same formerly rough planking that made up the dais.

  Wafting faintly through the door were the sounds of one of Roar’s beloved operas. If he was listening to opera, he was in a bad mood.

  Asher headed for the doorway. Time to face the music. Pun intended…but it didn’t make him feel any better.

  * * * * *

  When Charlee slithered through the half-open window onto her bed, no one thrust open her bedroom door, demanding to know where she had been. Nothing had changed since she had slipped out just over sixty minutes ago. Her homework was still sitt
ing on her bedside table. The lamp was still on. Her Janet Jackson poster still hung on the wall with one corner rolling over, casting a shadow over Janet’s face.

  Charlee’s pink floral jeans, which she had worn today and would wear again tomorrow, were lying across the foot of her bed.

  Downstairs, she could hear the sound of the TV. Southern accents. Her father was watching Dallas. That meant her mother was probably in the kitchen, sitting at the table with her glass in front of her, lined up next to her cigarette packet and the glass ashtray she used.

  Charlee shucked off her clothes and wriggled into her nightgown, moving as silently as she could and staying away from the center of the room where the squeaky board was. As she dressed, her father started to cough. The rasping hack started off as they all did, with a few soft barking noises. Then it got hold of his throat and lungs and squeezed, and the sound changed and became something that made Charlee wince and wonder if her father wouldn’t rip out the back of his throat and spit it up.

  But he always got control of the cough. She waited for him to clear his throat with another noisy rasp, then silence, except for the soft sounds of Bobby Ewing complaining about something.

  Nothing had changed…but everything had.

  She flung back the covers—it was too warm to lie beneath them—and settled into bed with the sheet pooling around her hips and her pillow propped up between her and the head of the bed, cushioning her back. She opened her homework up and stared blindly at the equations, until the black text blurred and all she could see was fuzzy grey lines and squiggles.

  Everything had changed, including her.

  Magic was real. Heroes were real. She thought of all the things she had not believed until tonight. She had learned the so-called truth about Santa Claus four years ago, when Lucas had tried to explain why there had been no Christmas tree that year, or any year since, and why her gift from Santa had come wrapped in newsprint and twine, as that was all he had been able to find. Since then she had gradually worked her way through the children’s pantheon, dismissing it all: fairies, pixies, witches and demons. Puff the Magic Dragon. Aslan. The tooth fairy didn’t put money under pillows and steal teeth. Stepping on cracks didn’t break anyone’s back. Halloween was just a great way to collect more candy in two hours than she saw for the entire rest of the year.