Bones of Haven Read online

  "Where do you think you're going?"

  "I'm visiting my sister," said Saxon. "Is there a problem?"

  "Yeah. You could say that. You're not from around here, not with fancy clothes like those. You don't belong here. This is Serpent territory. We're the Serpents. You want to walk around where we live, that's going to cost you. Think of it as an informal community tax."

  The others laughed at that, a soft dangerous sound, and watched Saxon with dark, unblinking eyes. Saxon just nodded, unmoved.

  "And how much would this tax be?"

  "Everything you've got, friend, everything you've got."

  The young tough rose lithely to his feet, holding his knife out before him. Saxon stepped forward, took him by the throat with one hand, and lifted him off his feet. The Serpent's eyes bulged and his grin vanished. His feet kicked helplessly inches above the floor. He started to lift his knife, and Saxon turned and threw him the length of the hall. He slammed into the end wall by the door, and slid unconscious to the floor. Saxon looked at the Serpents still blocking the stairs, and they scrambled to get out of his way.

  He started up the stairs, and one of them produced a length of steel chain from somewhere and whipped it viciously at Saxon's face, aiming for the eyes. The other two produced knives and moved forward, their eyes eager for blood. Saxon swayed easily to one side and the chain missed, though he felt the breath of its passing on his face. His attacker stumbled forward, caught off balance, and Saxon took the Serpent's throat in his hand and crushed it. Blood flew from the man's mouth, and he fell dying to the floor. Saxon kicked him out of the way. That left two.

  He slapped the knife out of one Serpent's hand, and kicked the other in the leg. He felt, as well as heard, the bone break beneath his boot. The man fell back, screaming and clutching at his leg. The other was down on one knee, scrabbling frantically for his knife. Saxon kicked him in the face. The Serpent's neck snapped under the impact, and he flew 'backwards to lie unmoving on the hall floor. Saxon turned and looked at the last Serpent, who cringed from him, his back pressed against the stairway banisters. Saxon reached down, grabbed a handful of the man's leathers, and lifted him up effortlessly, so that they were face to face. Sweat ran down the Serpent's face, and his eyes were wide with shock and fear.

  "Who are you?"

  "I'm Saxon. Wulf Saxon. I've been away, but now I'm back. I'm going up to visit my sister now. If anyone feels like coming up after me and disturbing my visit, I'm relying on you to convince them that it's a bad idea. Because if anyone else annoys me, I'm going to get really unpleasant."

  He dropped the Serpent, and continued on up the stairs without looking back. The second floor was dark and gloomy. The windows had been boarded up, and there were no lamps. The doors all looked much the same, old and hard-used and covered with an ancient coat of peeling paint. The numbers had been crudely carved into the wood, probably because any attached number would have been pried off and stolen in the hope someone would pay a few pennies for it. In this kind of neighborhood, anything that wasn't actually nailed down and guarded with a drawn sword was considered fair game.

  He found the right door, raised a hand to knock, and then hesitated. He wondered suddenly if he wanted to meet the person his sister had become. Billy Doyle had been a good sort once; brave, reliable, honorable. Saxon slowly lowered his hand. His sister was Annathea, not this Jenny Grove; whoever she was. Perhaps the best thing would be to just turn around and leave. That way he'd at least have his memories of Annathea. He pushed the temptation aside. He had to know. Whatever she'd done, whoever she'd become, she was still family, and there might be something he could do to help. He knocked briskly at the door. There was a pause, and then he heard the muffled sound of footsteps from inside.

  "Who is it?"

  Something clutched at Saxon's heart like a fist. The voice had been that of an old woman. He had to cough and clear his throat before he could answer.

  "It's me, Anna. It's your long-lost brother, Wulf."

  There was a long pause, and then he heard the sound of bolts being drawn, and the door opened to reveal a faded, middle-aged woman in a shapeless grey robe. Her thin grey hair had been pulled back into a tight bun, and he didn't know her face at all. Saxon relaxed a little, and some of the weight lifted from his heart. He had come to the wrong place after all. He'd make his excuses, apologize for disturbing the old lady, and leave. And then she leaned forward, and raised a veined hand to touch his arm, her face full of wonder.

  "Wulf? Is it really you, Wulf?"

  "Annathea?"

  The woman smiled sadly. "No one's called me that in years. Come in, Wulf. Come in and tell me why you abandoned your family all those years ago."

  She stepped back while he was still searching for an answer, and gestured for him to enter. He did so, and she shut the door, carefully pushing home the two heavy bolts. Saxon stood uncertainly in his sister's single room and looked around him, as much to give him an excuse for not speaking as anything else. It was clean, if not particularly tidy, with a few pieces of battered old furniture that wouldn't have looked out of place in the city dump. Which was probably where they'd come from. A narrow bed was pushed up against the far wall, the bedclothes held together by patches and rough stitching.

  The woman gestured for him to sit down on one of the uncomfortable-looking chairs pulled up to the fire. He did so, and she slowly lowered herself into the facing chair. Her bones cracked loudly in the quiet, sounding almost like the damp logs spitting in the fire. For a while Saxon and the woman just sat there, looking at each other. He still couldn't see his sister in the drawn, wrinkled face before him.

  "I hear you used to be married," he said finally.

  "Ah yes. Dear Robbie. He was so alive, always joking and smiling and full of big plans. Sometimes I think I married him because he reminded me so much of you. That should have warned me, but I was lonely and he was insistent. He ran through what was left of the family fortune in twelve months, and then I woke up one morning and he was gone. He left me a nice little note, thanking me for all the good times. I never saw him again. Things were hard for a while after that. I had no money, and Robbie left a lot of debts behind him. But I coped. I had to."

  "Wait a minute," said Saxon, confused. "What about the rest of the family? Why didn't they help you?"

  Jenny Grove looked at him. "I thought you'd know by now. They're all dead, Wulf. It broke mother's heart when you ran off and left us without even a word or a note. Father spent a lot of money hiring private agents to try and track you down, but it was all money wasted. Your friends were convinced something must have happened to you, but they couldn't find out anything either. Mother died not long after you left. She was never very strong. Father faded away once she was gone, and followed her a year later. George and Curt both became soldiers. George joined the army, and Curt became a mercenary. You know they never could agree on anything. They died fighting on opposite sides of the same battle, over fifteen years ago. That just left me. For a long time I clung to the hope that you might come back to help me, but you never did. After a while, after a long while, I stopped hoping. It hurt too much. How could you do it, Wulf? You meant so much to us; we were all so proud of you. How could you just run off and leave us?"

  "I didn't," said Saxon. "I got caught in a sorcerer's trap.

  I was only released today. That's why I haven't aged. For me, twenty-three years ago was yesterday."

  "Stealing," said Jenny Grove. "You were out stealing again, weren't you? Everything you had, wealth and power and position; that wasn't enough for you, was it? You had to have your stupid little thrills as well, didn't you?"

  "Yes. I'm sorry."

  She looked at him, too tired and beaten down even to be bitter, and he had to look away. There was a long, awkward silence as he searched for something to say.

  "Why… Jenny Grove?" he said finally.

  She shrugged. "Your money took us out of the Northside, and let us live the good life, for a w
hile. I wish it hadn't. It made it so much harder to go back to being nothing again. Annathea and her life became just a dream, a dream I wanted to forget, because it drove me mad. So I became Jenny Grove, who'd never been anything but poor, and had no memories to forget."

  "But what about our friends? Did none of them help you?"

  "Friends… you'd be surprised how quickly friends disappear once the money's run out. And you made a lot of enemies when you disappeared so suddenly. Friends who'd been as close as family wouldn't even speak to us, because of the way you left them in the lurch. They were convinced we must have known about it, you see. Not everyone turned their back on me. Billy Doyle—you remember Billy—he helped sort out the debts Robbie left me, and helped me start a new life. I drove him away in the end. He was part of the old days, and I just wanted to forget. Dear Billy; he had such a crush on me when we were younger. I don't suppose you remember that."

  "I remember," said Saxon. "He told me where to find you."

  "That was good of him."

  "Yes, it was. He said… everyone around here knew you. What do you do, these days?"

  "I read the cards, tell fortunes, that sort of thing. Father would never have approved, but it's harmless enough. Mostly I just tell them what they want to hear, and they go away happy. I have my regular customers, and they bring me enough to get by on."

  Saxon smiled for the first time. "That's a relief, at least. From the way Billy said it, I was afraid you might have been a… well, a lady of the evening."

  "You mean a whore. I was, dear. What else was there for me, then? But I got too old for that. I decided I'd spent enough time staring at my bedroom ceiling, and took up the cards instead. Dear me, Wulf, you look shocked. You shouldn't. There are worse ways to make money, and you'll find most of them here in the Hook. Why did you come here, Wulf? What do you want from me?"

  Saxon looked at her. "You're my sister."

  "No," said Jenny Grove flatly. "That was someone else. Annathea Saxon died years ago—of a broken heart, like her parents. Go away, Wulf. We've nothing to say to each other. All you can do is stir up memories best forgotten by both of us. Go away, Wulf. Please."

  Saxon rose slowly to his feet. He felt so helpless it hurt. "I'll get some money together, and then I'll come back and see you again."

  "Goodbye, Wulf."

  "Goodbye, Anna."

  He left without saying any more, and without looking back. Jenny Grove stared into the crackling fire, and wouldn't let herself cry until she was sure he'd gone.

  Saxon stomped down the stairs, scowling angrily. There had to be someone left from his past who'd be glad to see him. Someone he'd started on the road to success… He smiled suddenly. Richard Anderson. Young Richard had been just starting out in Reform politics twenty-three years ago, and Saxon had provided both financial and personal backing when no one else believed in Anderson at all. Saxon had believed in him. Richard Anderson had shown drive and ambition and an almost savage grasp of how to play the political game. If anyone had succeeded and prospered in Saxon's absence, it would be Anderson. And someone with his genius for keeping a high profile shouldn't be that difficult to track down.

  He started down the stairs that led to the ground floor, and then stopped suddenly, his hand dropping to his sword. The entry hall was crammed with a dozen young toughs and bravos, all wearing the same leathers as the four Serpents he'd encountered earlier. Apparently the survivor had gone running for his friends. Well, crawling anyway. They carried knives and clubs and lengths of steel chains, and they looked at Saxon with mocking grins and hungry eyes. Saxon looked calmly out at them.

  "I've had a bad day, my friends. You're about to have a worse one."

  He ran down the last few stairs and launched himself into their midst. He landed heavily on two Serpents, and his weight threw them all to the floor. He lashed out with his fist, and one Serpent's face disappeared in a mess of blood and broken bone. Stamping down hard as he rose to his feet, Saxon felt the other Serpent's ribs break and splinter under his boot. Knives and bludgeons flailed around him, but he was too fast for them. He moved among the Serpents like a deadly ghost, his fists lashing out with supernatural strength and fury. He picked up one of his assailants and used him as a living flail with which to batter his fellows. The Serpent screamed at first, but not for long. Bones broke and splintered, blood flew on the air, and Serpents fell to the floor and did not rise again. Saxon soon tired of that, and threw the limp body away. He needed it to be more personal. He needed to get his hands on them.

  But the few remaining Serpents turned and ran rather than face him, and he was left alone in the hallway, surrounded by the dead and the dying. Blood pooled on the floor and ran down the walls, the stink of it heavy on the air. Saxon looked slowly around him, almost disappointed there was no one left on whom he could take out his frustration, and realized suddenly that he wasn't even breathing hard. Something strange had happened to him during his time in the Portrait. He'd lost his mind, and recovered it in some fashion he didn't really understand, but he'd gained something too. Not only had he not aged, but when he fought it was as though all the lost years burned in him at once. He was stronger and faster than anyone he'd ever known. The Serpents hadn't been able to lay a finger on him. His gaze moved slowly over the broken and bloodied bodies that lay scattered across the hallway, and he grinned suddenly. He'd been away, but now he was back, and he wasn't in the mood to take any shit from anyone. Haven might have gone to hell while he was away, but he was going to drag it back to civilization, kicking and screaming all the way if necessary.

  He left the tenement building and strode off into the Northside, in search of Richard Anderson.

  "Councilor Anderson," said Saxon. "I'm impressed, Richard; really. You've come up in the world."

  Saxon leaned back in his chair and puffed happily at the long cigar he'd taken from the box on Anderson's desk. The rich smell of cigar smoke filled the office, obliterating the damp smell from Saxon's clothes. There were fresh bloodstains on his clothes too, but so far, Anderson had carefully refrained from mentioning them. Saxon looked around the office, taking his time. He liked the office. It had been his once, back when he'd been a Reform Councilor. One of the first Reform Councilors, in fact. The office had been extensively renovated and refurnished since then, of course, and it looked a hundred times better. Everything was top quality now, including the paintings on the walls. Saxon could remember when the only painting had been a portrait of their main Conservative rival. They'd used it for knife-throwing practice. Saxon sighed, and looked down at the floor. There was even a fitted carpet now, with an intimidatingly deep pile. He looked back at the man sitting on the opposite side of the desk, and tried hard to keep the frown off his face.

  Councilor Richard Anderson was a stocky, tolerably handsome man in his middle forties, dressed in sober but acceptably fashionable clothes. Saxon thought he looked ridiculous, but then fashions had changed a lot in the past twenty-three years. Anderson looked impassively back at Saxon, wearing a standard politician's face—polite but uninvolved. There was nothing in his expression or posture to show how he felt about seeing the man who had once been his closest friend and colleague, back from the dead after all the long years. Nothing except the slow anger in his eyes.

  "What the hell happened to you, Richard?" said Saxon finally. "How did you of all people end up as a Conservative Councilor? You used to be even more of a Reformer than I was; a hotheaded rebel who couldn't wait to get into politics and start making changes. What happened?"

  "I grew up," said Anderson. "What happened to you?"

  "Long story. Tell me about the others. I assume they haven't all become Conservatives. What's Dave Carrera doing these days?"

  "He's an old man now. Sixty-one, I think. Left politics after he lost two elections in a row. Runs a catering business in the Eastside."

  "And Howard Kilronan?"

  "Runs a tavern, the Inn of the Black Freighter."

  "Aaron
Cooney, Padraig Moran?"

  "Aaron was killed in a tavern brawl, twenty years ago. I don't know what happened to Padraig. I lost touch over the years."

  Saxon shook his head disgustedly. "And we were going to change the world. We had such hopes and such plans… I take it there is still a Reform movement in Haven?"

  "Of course. It's even had a few successes of late. But it won't last. Idealists don't last long in Haven as a rule. What are you doing here, Wulf?"

  "I came to see a friend," said Saxon. "I don't seem to have many left."

  "What did you expect, after running out on us like that? All our plans fell apart without you here to lead us. You were a Councilor, Wulf; you had responsibilities, not just to us but to all the people who worked and campaigned on your behalf. When you just up and vanished, a lot of people lost heart, and we lost the Seat on the Council back to the Conservatives. All of us who'd put money into the Cause lost everything. Billy Doyle spent a year in a debtors' prison. You know how he felt about you, and your sister. Have you seen her yet?"

  "Yes. Why didn't you do something to help her?"

  "I tried. She didn't want to know."

  They sat in silence for a while, both of them holding back angry words. Saxon stubbed out his cigar. The taste had gone flat. He rose to his feet and nodded briskly to Anderson. "Time to go. I'll see you again, Richard; at the next election. This is my office, and I'm going to get it back."

  "No, wait; don't go." Anderson rose quickly to his feet and gestured uncertainly. "Stay and talk for a while. You still haven't told me how you've stayed so young. What have you been doing all these years?"