Otherwise by John Crowley Read Free Book Online Page B

unhesitatingly. It was inconceivable to her that he, a Gray, in no matter how disastrous a day, could swear falsely.
    Perhaps indeed he hadn’t. Without the Grays, Learned Redhand would be someone else’s younger brother, nothing more, the Grays’ strength and health were his. In any case, soon or late, there would be a testing of that oath, a reckoning. He wondered how he would bear.
    He rose to go. The autumn evening had grown dense; the great age of the garden seemed to him suddenly palpable, and deeply melancholy.
    Haspensweek Eve, and suddenly cold even in the City in its cup of mountains. That night they moved King Little Black from the Citadel to an old Black mansion, long shuttered, that sat inaccessible on a finger of rock, called Sping, just outside the High City gates.
    For it had been decided, in a Whole-meeting of the Protectorate, that Red Senlin was Little Black’s heir, and Viceroy too in times of the King’s madness. The Black lords, of course, had stayed away from the meeting; so had many others. And even the Reds and Folk ombudsmen who had come, mostly dependents of Senlin’s and Redhand’s, were so glum and silent that Red Senlin had ended his brief screaming insults and arguments, his shouts echoing in the near-empty rotunda. No matter; It had been decided.
    The small cavalcade, shielded by armed men, moved through the shadowed dark of the thousand-faced street. It had been decided that the King was indeed in his madness now, and for sure looked at least sickly and weak. He huddled on his nag, folded up in an old black cloak, and looked apprehensively from the silent crowd to the gleam of axes and spears, the smoky, flaring torches of his escort.
    The Viceroy Red Senlin rode with his golden Son. It had been decided that the Son and his younger brother, dark Sennred, with a number of adherents, should ride toward Senlinsdown and rally there all the Protector’s friends. Young Harrah, the Viceroy had learned, had gone off in quite another direction, toward the Black Downs and the Queen.
    Redhand rode on the King’s right side; on his left rode Redhand’s father, Old Redhand. Around Old Redhand’s neck hung an ancient chain, giltwork once, now worn again to the naked iron, that had ever been the sign of the chiefest of the vast Redhand clan. From this old chain hung now something new: the great carved beryl that is the City’s seal, borne by the King’s lieutenant, Master of the City—until recently, Black Harrah.
    It had been decided that the family Redhand should inherit that rich honor.
    It had been more than deference in Redhand that had insisted that not he but his father be given the City seal. Redhand knew that war with the Queen would come quick as anger, and he had hoped that the City seal would keep his father safe in the City while he and Red Senlin acted out the treasonous show they had trumped up together against the old man’s wishes. But it hadn’t worked. It had been instead decided—by Old Redhand, decided with all his remaining strength and will—that in case of sudden need the seal would devolve upon his son, and he, Old Red-hand, would take command of the Redhand arms. He wasn’t too old to fight for his friend.
    Redhand tried to keep his eyes on the street, on the King, on the faces of the crowd—but they were drawn by his father’s face. It was a face marked like a cliffside by wind and time, harder than his steel, and not softened by the halo of sparse hair he wore in the old fashion cropped close around his ears. His eyes, unlike his son’s, were drawn to nothing, but looked ahead, farther than the end of the street or the end of the world.
    When they passed through Farinsgate and out onto the Heights outside the City walls, the crowd became thinner. It wasn’t a time for High City people to be outside their gates. The great mansions of this side, Farin’s House, Blackharbor, were dark; only one house was lit, there, at the causeway’s end, on the rock Sping,