expression didn’t change, not one iota. It didn’t even look as if Linken’s words had registered. Maybe they hadn’t, but he didn’t care. His part of the job was near its end. As such, it was time for celebration, and his imagination carried him off, his reward already spent, fine cigars just waiting to be smoked laid across his desk.
The lift ground to a halt and Isaac followed the clean-shaven man past the shadow of a poplar tree, staying a few steps to the back and side. A small task?
As they stepped into the sun, Isaac felt his body become lighter, the sun activating something within him that had long lain dormant. He smiled and spread his arms wide, Linken looking at him askance.
Isaac’s mind raced back to his boyhood, up through his days as a teenager, and then through his adult years until he arrived back in the present. Nope, there was no question about it. He’d only been good at one thing in his life.
Crymson
Don’t scream. She balled her fists. Don’t scream. Crymson stood before the manor’s front door, one of finished alder, dark knots on its face. She’d had time to study its beauty because she’d knocked upon it three times in her fifteen minutes on the front stoop. Her shadow cleaved in two the bright reflection of the door’s window, allowing Crymson a glimpse of the manor’s brilliantly polished alabaster floor – marble, maybe. A light blue rug with evenly combed tassels lay across the floor’s center, daring visitors to muss it. Behind the rug was a set of two-toned stairs, steps alternating between shades of light and dark, a smooth banister guiding the way.
She looked down at her buckskin slippers, caked with dirt and less wholesome materials from the morning’s walk. Hope brown and light blue look good together.
Crymson grasped the door’s handle, shaped in the form of a peacock, and pushed, but the door didn’t budge. Color in her cheeks, she made a show of examining her face while discreetly checking the window’s reflective surface to see if anybody had noticed. Nobody watching, she pulled open the door, its hinges soundless.
To her left, just beyond the view provided by the door’s front window, stood an older man, his head a wreath of grey, thick-framed glasses threatening to bend and break his neck. He bowed, a very small crease of his hips. “You’re tardy. If you would follow me.”
Crymson remained in the doorway. “Tolver.”
The servant partly turned, still presenting his back to her. “Yes?”
“How would the Count like it if I told him that his beloved servant refused to even open the door for a Priestess of the Cao Fen?” Crymson’s voice held a soft edge.
Tolver completed the turn and faced her. “He needn’t know anything of the sort.”
“Then perhaps in the future, it would be wise to have your hand on its handle the moment you see me enter the gate.”
He bowed, incrementally lower this time. “If you would follow me,” he repeated.
They walked through an open archway, decorated with runes depicting an ancient battle, its figures wielding swords and flailing at some monstrous beast. Crymson followed the old servant at a goodly distance, making sure to scrape her feet on the previously spotless rug. They passed hallway after hallway, paintings sprinkled liberally throughout, all with the same person: a plump, grey-haired man in heroic poses, atop a mountain of slain rivals, others contemplative, the man’s eyes fixed on distant, unseen objects, and still another with the grey-haired man spinning across a crowded dance hall, a faceless woman in his arms.
Warrior, philosopher, wooer of all things beautiful. How modest.
Finally, the interconnected hallways opened into a room, its lush carpet a deep red that Prolifia’s craftsmen hadn’t produced in generations. Intricate tapestries covered grey walls, each a variation of red and depicting fantastical creatures of fire: dragons, phoenixes, salamanders, even a chimera. Chairs cut from relatives of the front door, with blue and white striped cushions, were arranged in a square, a small, similarly squared table at their center. The only sign of life was a lonely, broad-leaved plant to the right of the room’s other archway.
Tolver, whose balding skull she was tempted to paint and use for target practice, hadn’t bothered to face Crymson since her unseemly entrance. “Would the Priestess care for refreshments while she waits?”
Your blood in a wine glass, please. “No, thank you.”
“As you will. The Count will be down soon enough.” The old servant bowed, pushed his glasses up his