Valentine was glad he looked genuinely pleased.

The man nodded to Valentine, then shook Ahn-Kha's hand. "Thought you bought it in the Big Burn."

"I've been in hiding, my Ian. Please to meet my new brother, David."

Ian shut the door and sent a thick bolt home.

"You no longer run your route?" Ahn-Kha asked.

'The routes are drying up. Even north. Those of us who still want to draw food work carrying guns now. The General's giving us the squeeze."

"Then perhaps we can do business. We wish to see the Big Man about the General."

"Lost cause. That rat's got muscle from here to KC. Keeps trying to get us to come on base, wear his damned cross. Doesn't sit right with me-lots of us-going down there just to salute and put new heels on Reaper boots. This is House talk only, but immyho, the Big Man says that's the only alternative to just pulling up and leaving for God knows where. He's down to trying to get us a good deal and keep us off base."

* * *

Within fifteen minutes, they were speaking to the Executive of House Holt.

The Big Man wasn't big, or even of average size. Valentine guessed him to be about four feet nine inches, and a bantamweight to boot. He had lush black hair falling back from the crown of his head to his thick beard. An open-necked shirt, silver-buckled belt, and cuffed pants over pointed-toe boots. He was bowlegged, pigeon-chested.

Valentine guessed his age to be mid-forties. When Valentine was training to be a Wolf, he heard a senior Wolf talk about a generation the veteran called the "children of chaos." In the years of what the Free Territory called the Overthrow, many babies were born underweight and malnourished as a rule, and in the tumultuous years that followed, they never had a chance to catch up. Valentine had known only a few from those hard years, compact-framed like the man before him, but generous spirits. Extreme hardship, it seemed to Valentine, had polarized that generation to extremes of magnanimity or selfishness.

Valentine hoped for magnanimity.

Their host stood at a window on the third floor, surveying Old Omaha from a floor-to-ceiling window, the layered panes somewhat distorting the view. He stood resting against a chair; the chair and its mate sat to either side of a wooden chess table with gold and silver pieces arranged on the board and beside it. The office was opulently furnished around an immense wooden desk and bookcase, but it seemed crammed-with everything from statues to rugs to paintings to vases and urns-rather than arranged, especially when compared with Roland Victor's in Kansas.

The corner nearest them, separated from the Big Man by a folding screen, was occupied by a squint-eyed assistant. She wrote in a ledger resting upon a drafting table. The Big Man's burled desk had nothing on the top except a lamp and a leather blotter.

"Ahn-Kha." The Big Man had a flat voice, a trifle reedy. "What brings you and your 'bodyguard' to my house?"

"My compliment on your promotion," Ahn-Kha said. "What became of the Big Man?"

"Ravies. Some rats they'd released, I suppose on the Ozarks to the south, made it into one of our barges. Bad luck; he was checking incoming cargoes and stuck his hand into a bag of rice without wearing gloves."

"You took the name along with the Executive title?"

"Sort of a joke. I don't mind."

The Big Man walked around to his desk and sat down. He moved stiff-leggedly, with the aid of a pair of canes. The canes disappeared as soon as he sat.

"Shall we leave right now?" Ahn-Kha asked.

"Without introducing your friend?" the Big Man asked.

"His name is David."

He swiveled his gaze to Valentine. "I should explain. Ahn-Kha and I have had our differences in the past. I didn't care for our house trading weapons with his kind." He returned to Ahn-Kha. "I accused you of eating human babies, as I recall. Ten years ago I... anger tended to get the better of me. Anger that had nothing to do with the Golden Ones."

"For my part, I challenged him to combat," Ahn-Kha added. "Aggravating insult with greater insult."

"Was there a duel?" Valentine said when neither offered an end to the story.

"No," the Big Man said. "Calmer heads interceded. Unless you wish to take up the challenge?"

Ahn-Kha closed his eyes, opened them. "No."

Valentine felt some of the tension seep away. "We need your help. House Holt's help."

Tags: E.E. Knight Vampire Earth Fantasy
Source: readsnovelonline.net