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."

"What do you offer? We're traders. Smugglers, to some. Quislings to others. I saw you take off a Wolf parang."

"My company was destroyed this spring," Valentine said. The truth, even shaded, was preferable to a plausible lie. "Our request is unusual."

"January, please get our guests some sandwiches and lemonade." The woman behind the screen slipped out.

"Lemonade?" Valentine asked, going over to the chess set.

"Thanks to the Kurians, they grow fine in some of the more sheltered parts of the Missouri Valley."

Valentine stared down at the pieces. The gold king was in trouble-nothing but a castle and a pawn protected him from a knight, two pawns, a bishop, and the silver king.

"Do you play?" the Big Man asked, turning his chair.

"A little. My dad taught me. I used to play it with my adopted father-neither of us were very good."

"Do you see a way out for the black king? I'm trying for a draw."

"Black meaning the gold one?"

"Yes. Sorry. Convention requires black and white no matter what the color of the pieces are."

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