“All right I don’t play in your league! But you’re in exile, too! That shows you weren’t so smart!”
Somehow her words burned and I knew they were wrong.
“Like hell I am!” I said.
She laughed again.
“I knew that would get a rise out of you,” she said. “All right, you walk in the Shadows on purpose then. You’re crazy.”
I shrugged.
She said, “What do you want? Why did you really come here?”
“I was curious what you were up to,” I said. “That’s all. You can’t keep me here if I don’t want to stay. Even Eric couldn’t do that. Maybe I really did just want to visit with you. Maybe I’m getting sentimental in my old age. Whatever, I’m going to stay a little longer now, and then probably go away for good. If you hadn’t been so quick to see what you could get for me, you might have profited a lot more, lady. You asked me to remember you one day, if a certain thing occurred….”
It took several seconds for what I thought I was implying to sink in.
Then she said, “You’re going to try! You’re really going to try!”
“You’re goddamn right I’m going to try,” I said, knowing that I would, whatever it was, “and you can tell that to Eric if you want, but remember that I might make it. Bear in mind that if I do, it might be nice to be my friend.”
I sure wished I knew what the hell I was talking about, but I’d picked up enough terms and felt the importance attached to them, so that I could use them properly without knowing what they meant. But they felt right, so very right. . . .
Suddenly, she was kissing me.
“I won’t tell him. Really, I won’t, Corwin! I think you can do it. Bleys will be difficult, but Gerard would probably help you, and maybe Benedict. Then Caine would swing over, when he saw what was happening—“
“I can do my own planning,” I said.
Then she drew away. She poured two glasses of wine and handed one to me.
“To the future,” she said.
“I’ll always drink to that.”
And we did.
Then she refilled mine and studied me.
“It had to be Eric, Bleys, or you,” she said. “You’re the only ones with any guts or brains. But you’d removed yourself from the picture for so long that I’d counted you out of the running.”
“It just goes to show you never can tell.”
I sipped my drink and hoped she’d shut up for just a minute. It seemed to me she was being a bit too obvious in trying to play on every side available. There was something bothering me, and I wanted to think about it.
How old was I?
That question, I knew, was a part of the answer to the terrible sense of distance and removal that I felt from all the persons depicted on the playing cards. I was older than I appeared to be. (Thirtyish, I’d seemed when I looked at me in the mirror—but now I knew that it was because the shadows would lie for me.) I was far, far older, and it had been a very long time since I had seen my brothers and my sisters, all together and friendly, existing side by side as they did on the cards, with no tension, no friction among them.
We heard the sound of the bell, and Carmella moving to answer the door.
“That would be brother Random,” I said, knowing I was right. “He’s under my protection.”
Her eyes widened, then she smiled, as though she appreciated some clever thing I had done.
I hadn’t, of course. but I was glad to let her think so.
It made me feel safer.
Chapter 4
I felt safe for perhaps all of three minutes. I beat Carmella to the door and flung It open.
He staggered in and immediately pushed the door shut behind himself and shot the bolt. There were lines under those light eyes and he wasn’t wearing a bright doublet and long hose. He needed a shave and he had on a brown wool suit. He carried a gabardine overcoat over one arm and wore dark suede shoes. But he was Random, all right-the Random I had seen on the card-only the laughing mouth looked tired and there was dirt beneath his fingernails.