The Sterkarm Handshake (20 page)

The stories had always said that the Elves were rich and powerful, that they lived for three hundred years in palaces lit by gems, wore colored clothes every day and never went hungry—but as he leaned against the wall and felt it thrum while a great wagon crashed by, he realized that the power and wealth of the Elves went far, far beyond anything he had heard or imagined.

The path beneath his feet wasn't of dirt or grass, but of large flat paving stones, or a dimpled black stuff he didn't know, or a gray stuff. He stooped to touch it, and it felt like stone but it looked like stone melted. There were seams and patches of paving stones, and black stuff, and gray stuff, all pitted with puddles, in which gaily colored scraps floated. Scraps blew all about. There were pieces of valuable metal, oblongs of flat, crinkled metal that would make an arrowhead, just lying abandoned on the ground, thrown away. He picked one up and was able to bend it in his hands, it was beaten so thin—but he didn't think it was iron. Elves feared iron, so it was said, and it didn't have the feel of iron. Still, he was half minded to take it with him for the tower smith, but maybe such Elvish gear would be unlucky. He dropped it again.

He stopped to spit dirt from his mouth, and to wipe at his eyes with his shirtsleeve. With freshly dried eyes, he looked up into the blue sky and saw a tiny dot speeding over the sky's bowl, drawing behind it a double white line—of smoke? His heart beat faster again as he watched the dragon pass overhead. Lucky for him, it was flying high and heading far off.

And then he came in view of the castle.

It was a castle. There was nothing else it could be. And something about the way it hugged the ground of its low hill and held its towers against the sky plucked at his memory. Yet it was nothing like a castle.

It was hard to study it because the Elf-Carts still raced and roared beside him, and Elves were passing by, and they were walking down a ramp into a hole under the Elf-Carts' track But he saw that, instead of stone, the castle was built of brick, and was surrounded by smooth green lawns, cropped short as if grazed by sheep. The castle's ditch was all grass-grown, and was filled with neither water nor stakes, and a brick bridge was built across it. A castle without defenses.

He turned away, meaning to look again at this hole in the ground, but his eye was caught and drawn upward. The Elf-Carts careering by had seemed so fearsome that he had hardly looked beyond them to the other side of the broad road. The more Elvish buildings, even now, he scarcely saw except as blocks. But there rose above them, into the sky, a square tower of reddish, grayish stone.

He looked over his shoulder at the castle, his heart skipping with alarm, and again turned to look at the tower.

It was the tower of Carloel Cathedral. He'd seen it against the sky many, many times, and he had good reason to remember it. Beneath that tower, a bishop had cursed all Sterkarms living, dead and as yet unbegotten … Nothing had come of it, and they had laughed and said, “Not even God dares meddle with us!”

Carloel Cathedral, where his family had been cursed, stood almost at the gates of Carloel Castle, where they imprisoned any Sterkarm found within the city walls after sunset. The defenseless Elf-Castle behind him stood just where Carloel Castle would be if the tower was the cathedral. And the tower was just where the cathedral would be if the castle was Carloel Castle. But in Carloel there was no racing track of Elf-Carts between the cathedral and the castle. There were no dragons flying overhead. And the castle wasn't built of brick, defenseless and unguarded.

Per stood by the ring road and the underpass, looking from the castle to the cathedral, thinking “Elf-Land,” thinking “Carloel,” and unable to think anything else.

At the hospital gate, Andrea turned uphill, trusting Per's sense of direction to have taken him that way. Shading her eyes, she looked up the road ahead of her—and saw him! He was well ahead of her, almost at the limit of the road she could see, before it topped the hill and disappeared down the other side. She cupped her hands to her mouth and shouted his name, but she'd never been much good at shouting, and he didn't hear her above the traffic. She wasn't sure that he would have stopped if he had.

She ran to catch him up, but everything was against her: She was no runner, the road was uphill, and she had on pumps which, even if low-heeled, were not designed for running. After hopping on one foot to recover a shoe that had slipped off, she settled for walking as briskly as she could, even though out of breath.

Per had disappeared over the brow of the hill. She knew what lay beyond it. There was the castle, which was still in use as an army barracks and bore little resemblance to the castle Per had known; and there was an underpass that led under the road and allowed pedestrians to reach the city center. If Per wandered through there, and got among the crowds, she'd never find him. “Oh hell!” She took off her shoes and, carrying them in her hands, began to run again, dodging the flattened tin cans, puddles and broken glass as well as she could.

On a piece of cardboard torn from a carton, Joe had written “Homeless. Please help.” It lay on the wet tiles of the underpass floor in front of him, beside a plastic cup holding a few coins. People gave more readily if they could see that others already had, but if there was too much money in the cup, they thought he'd already got all he deserved and wouldn't give him any more. Whenever the cup held about a pound, Joe put all but a few coins into his pocket.

He hated it, sitting there on his arse, asking people to give him money. He used to be the one with a job and plenty of money in his pocket, dropping money into charity boxes. When people passed him by without giving him anything, and gave him a look, he could see them thinking, “Why isn't a big lump like you working for his money?” It made him feel sick. But he'd tried being proud. Pride went hungry.

His sneakers were still wet from a heavy rainstorm the day before, and his feet were sticky and damp inside them. The floor was hard and cold under his bum, and he couldn't get his back comfortable against the wall—but the underpass sheltered him from rain squalls and, for a while, it had been a good place to catch office workers on their way to the city center for lunch, and tourists on their way to and from the castle. Things had gone quiet, though. Joe was trying to decide whether to stick around and see if the office workers who hadn't given him anything were in a better mood on their way back after lunch, or whether to just go and get something to eat himself. He probably had enough for a hamburger. He was sick of hamburgers. He never had liked them much.

Sausage sandwiches were what he'd like. He'd like to fry the sausages himself until they were almost black and splitting, and then halve them lengthwise and arrange them on the bread, and dribble brown sauce along them. And to go with it he'd like a big mug of tea that he'd made himself, the way he liked it, and not cat's piss in a squeezy plastic cup.

But to eat like that, you had to have a place of your own, with a kitchen cupboard you could keep a package of tea and a loaf of bread in, and a little gas ring to cook it on. A bedsit would do. He liked to keep his daydreams realistic—then there was more chance of their coming true.

Not that he could see much hope of getting even a bedsit anytime soon. He could make twenty, thirty pounds a day, begging—and then, every day, he had to spend it all. The money soon went when you had to buy your breakfast, dinner and tea at fast-food joints. He could buy cheaper food in a supermarket, but he had nowhere to cook it and nowhere to keep it. At the end of every day, there wasn't anything left to save up for rent.

A front door with a lock and his own key. And a bed. And a kitchen cupboard and a gas ring. That's all he'd need, to start with. He could sit on the bed.

No more sleeping on concrete and cardboard. No more being cold all night, and having wet feet for days on end. No more drunks pissing on him, or giving him a kick, because they had a job and a house and he didn't, and somehow that was good reason to kick him.

And when he had the studio, he'd get himself a lady friend to share it all with him. Snuggle up in the bed together. Get up and make her a cup of tea. And a sausage sandwich. A woman with some meat on her bones, one who'd enjoy a sausage sandwich. Heaven on bloody earth!

Voices shouted near him, sharp and angry. He tipped his head forward and opened his eyes. At the bottom of the ramp leading down into the underpass from the pavement above, a young couple were squabbling. Joe was about to close his eyes again when he noticed that both of them had bare feet.

The man was backing away from the woman into the underpass, but then gave a sort of cringing upward look at the underpass roof, swung around, and backed out again. He had a bright-red baseball cap on his head, a sort of sleeveless, quilted body warmer worn over a long, loose shirt that hung to his knees, a pair of blue jeans and nothing on his feet at all.

The young woman, who was alternately snapping and pleading at him, was a nice big buxom lass, a bit older than the lad. If she was going to break up with him, it was a pity Joe hadn't managed to get that studio yet. Her face was all pink, and her long brown hair, which had been pinned up on top of her head, was falling down in long strands. She wore one of those long, loose dresses that always looked so womanly, with a light coat over it, and had a nice shapely pair of calves in dark stockings—but her feet were bare because, for some reason, she was carrying her shoes in her hand, and her stockings' feet were shredded.

Joe felt like some entertainment. He linked his hands around his knees and watched.

“It be only me,” Andrea said. “There be no one with me, tha canst see there be nobody with me. I'm going to take thee home, Per.”

“Nay,” Per said, pulling away from her.

“I'm going to try anyway. It be all we can do. If we go quickly—”

“Gan back to thy Master,” Per said.

“Per, come
on
!” She tried to pull him into the underpass, but he twisted his wrist against her thumb's hold and easily broke her grasp.

“Nay,” he said, stepping back from under the overhanging shelf of the underpass, with an apprehensive upward glance.

“What dost mean, nay?” For the first time since she'd caught up with him, she began to listen to what he was saying. “We be ganning to Elf-Gate! That be what tha wants, is it no? Now come on!”

“I ken,” he said to her. “I ken tha brought me here to be a hostage for thy Master! If I gan—”

“I brought thee here to save thy life!”

“—thou'lt lead me into ambush!”

“Per! I never heard such … How canst
think
that?”

“I'll no gan with thee,” he said, and looked past her, at the way she'd come, as if he still expected to see people following her.

“Oh? And where be thee going?” She went to take his arm again.

He stepped back, lifting his arms out of her reach. “I'll find my way.”

“How? How? Per, don't be such a sheep's head—”

Angered, he pushed her away. She stumbled back a step or two, and hurt her foot by treading on a flattened tin can. Looking down, she saw her white feet sticking out of her ruined black stockings and remembered that she had her shoes in her hand. “Oh, Per!”

He had backed out from under the underpass again and stood at its entrance, looking up at the pavement above. It was plain that he hadn't an idea what to do but still wasn't going to do what she wanted him to do.

Andrea dropped her shoes to the ground, put them on, and marched over to him. She grabbed his wrist in both hands. “Come
on
! Stop—playing—silly—” She dragged at him with all her strength and weight, and because he was still weak—and because, she had an awful suspicion, he was lighter than she was—she managed to drag him forward a few steps, even though he leaned back and braced his heels against the tiles.

Then he stopped leaning back, and came toward her, closing the arm's-length gap between them. She started to lose her balance and stumble backward, and he used her grip on his arm to swing her around, and then she was tripping over something—his foot—and thumping down on her backside on the cold, hard, damp tiles of the underpass floor. She gave a squeal more of surprise than hurt, and then another of exasperation when Per wrenched his wrist out of her hold and drew back from her again.

“Hey!” Joe said. Both Per and Andrea turned to him. Joe got to his feet. “Hey, have a care!” Even as he spoke, he knew he'd made a mistake, but too late now. Anyway, he couldn't just sit there and watch a girl get roughed up when calling out might stop it. He walked over to her, to offer her a hand up. The lad pulled a knife on him.

Joe didn't see where the knife came from. It was just there, all of a sudden, in the lad's fist, pointing up at him. It was black and wicked, its triangular blade damn near as long as Joe's forearm and narrowing abruptly to a needle point. It was such a vicious-looking knife that Joe was half afraid it might attack him of its own accord, whatever its owner decided. My big mouth, he thought, raising his hands, and backing off. “Okay, okay. Forget I spoke.”

Oh my God! Andrea thought, and floundered to her hands and knees, scrambling to her feet. “Per! Put up! Don't!”

“Quiet!” Per said. “Stay back!” His eyes were on Joe. He'd seen the big Elf-Man sitting against the wall when he'd first looked into the underpass, but he hadn't seemed to offer any threat. Now he wondered—was he part of an ambush? Had Andrea used a far-speak and behind his back quickly arranged an ambush, here in this defile under the road? He glanced quickly over his shoulder, to see if anyone was coming up behind him, and down the length of the underpass, to see if anyone was waiting there.

“Love,” Joe said to the girl, “you clear off out of it, quick, go on!” As soon as she was clear, he'd leg it himself, and forget the few coins still in his plastic cup. He wasn't shy of getting into a fight if he had to, but he had a policy about knives: Run away!