Dominion, Fred Saberhagen [uplifting book club books TXT] 📗

She looked that way as Simon the Great emerged from the elevator. He appeared to be in a daze, a trance. Vivian had him by the arm, she was guiding him, manipulating him. Another slave, another toy for Vivian.

   Hildy said: “Saul, at least tell me one thing right now.”

   “If I can. What is it?”

   “Just now, right after everything seemed to blow up, I saw this young man. I don’t mean the magician, someone else. That wall blew open and there was a doorway, an opening, with light streaming out… and he was there, and he was very handsome, and at the same time his face was the—the most hideous thing I’ve ever seen in my life, I don’t know why—”

   “Shh!” Saul hissed it fiercely, at the same time darting a glance toward Vivian. But Vivian was fully occupied with whatever she was doing with Simon, leading him toward the door of the once-secret passage, and whispering in his ear meanwhile.

   Hildy would not be put off. “I want an answer, Saul. Who was he? He was trying to come through that doorway, and then something stopped him. It was an object like a cross, I couldn’t see how it was being held. Except that it wasn’t a regular cross, it was more like the hilt of a sword. Who was he, Saul?”

   “Hildy, I said there was a purpose uniting the family, remember? I’m afraid he’s what this is all about.”

   Her lips soundlessly formed questioning words.

   With gentle seriousness her husband said: “He’s Vivian’s lover. He has been, for more than a thousand years.”

NINETEEN

   Being out on the street wearing jail issue was better than walking around town in that damned flowered gown; but it really wasn’t, when you came right down to it, a whole hell of a lot better. In the shadowed mouth of an alley, Hawk leaned against a dingy brick wall, considering things.

   He’d had to wait around in his tiny VIP cell until nearly midnight, when things at headquarters started to get really busy, as he’d surmised they would. As soon as that happened, surveillance necessarily slackened. He had remembered to turn the lock in the cell door open before he left, which he thought would perhaps make his disappearance at least a little less memorable. There was still going to be trouble for the guards in charge of seeing to it that cell doors stayed locked, but Hawk wasn’t running any charitable organization. He hadn’t asked anyone to arrest him in the first place.

   He considered that he’d managed his departure very smoothly, for a magician long out of practice. He’d appeared on the street not many blocks from headquarters, got his bearings at once —Chicago was an easy city to do that in, with its logical grid of street numbers—and then he’d started walking, heading without any conscious plan back toward his old stamping grounds on Skid Row.

   If any of the passersby he encountered on the first leg of his hike had recognized his clothing as jail issue, they weren’t about to make an issue of it. HaHaa, A wise decision on their part.

   He couldn’t help noticing as he began to walk that physical movement was a lot easier for him now than it had been a few days ago, before Carados picked him up. Involuntary defensive powers, long dormant, had been mobilized. It would seem that Carados had actually done him a favor. He paused before a darkened plate glass window, to look at himself in the half-mirror inside its steel grill. Yes, his figure was straighter than it had been for some time—for a long time. His pants were zipped. Danger and abuse had served as tonics. It puzzled him that he had been so terrified a few days ago, cowering away from the hunters of helpless old men. He didn’t have to take that kind of crap. Not from the likes of them, at least.

   No good answer suggested itself. Next question, obviously: Where did he go from here? But he didn’t want to try to think that through just now.

   Hawk had walked on until he’d covered half a mile, then ducked into the mouth of this alley, as if to take a leak. Actually he just wanted to be able to close his eyes and concentrate for a minute or so. If he couldn’t answer questions at least maybe he could do something about his shirt. He figured that the shirt was the clothing item most conspicuously identifiable as jail issue; the shoes were plain, the pants could be any new workpants of medium blue.

   He spent a couple of minutes with eyes closed, leaning against the dirty brick wall, mumbling. After a couple of tries (this kind of thing had never been his specialty) Hawk’s plain blue jail shirt was a muddy brown, crisscrossed by an ugly pattern of thin pink stripes. Not quite what he’d been aiming for. But, come to think of it, just the kind of inelegance that would fit in perfectly on Skid Row.

   Hawk left the alley and moved again along the midnight street, borne quickly by his new, healthy walk. The shirt was all right. Actually he felt a little proud of it; and anyway it felt good just to have done something again. Maybe later, if he felt like it, he could work on the colors a little more. Meanwhile…

   Meanwhile what was he going to do now? He had been putting off making a conscious decision, but the Street, Skid Row, was drawing near. It appeared that by default he was going back to his old haunts, but what was he going to do when he got there?

   …anyway if he made the shirt look too good, somebody would try to roll him, no, mug him was the proper word, now that he was standing up on his two feet again. By bloody hell, he wished they’d try. He wished