The January Dancer

An Craic

“Oh, my poor world,” the scarred man mocks. “And it wasn’t even his own world! He was born on Venishànghai.”

“But he grew on New Eireann,” the harper says, idly strumming a lament on her instrument. It doesn’t sound quite right and she isn’t sure why. “And where a person grows may matter more than where he sprouted.”

“How did he ‘grow’ on New Eireann? He came there already a man.”

“He promised he’d be back, but he didn’t swear this time on his father’s name. That seems like growth to me.”

The scarred man smiles like a razor. “You noticed that, did you?”

“I did. I wonder if he did, at the time.” Underneath the lament, she plucks out in a minor off the fourth mode the motif she had begun to think of as The Fudir’s Theme, a twisting melody that never quite resolves. The scarred man surprises her by saying, “Yes. I think you’ve gotten it right.”

“It must have been a schizophrenic voyage,” the harper suggests. “Olafsson wants to go to Jehovah; the Fudir wants to go to the Hadramoo; and Little Hugh wants to go back to New Eireann. They’re pulling three ways. The mean value is to stand still.”

“Yes, standing still is a difficult means of pursuit. Although”—and here his gaze turns intently and discomfortingly on the harper—“there are times when it works.”

The harper stills her strings and sets the harp aside. The Bartender has brought over two plates of stew, the hearty, plain sort consonant with Jehovah’s austere nature. She recognizes carrots and onions and a stringy meat that suggests pastures rather than vats. Curious, she tastes it and finds it much like artifact meat, only different in texture. The great doors at the front of the Bar open briefly on some arrivals to reveal a night well advanced.

“Tell me,” she says when she has swallowed. “I don’t understand why the Fudir went through the charade of being ‘arrested.’ Why didn’t he simply leave when Olafsson gave him the chance?”

The scarred man eats as if filling a pit with a shovel. “Because when history repeats itself,” he says, without swallowing, “the second time must be a farce.”

“What do you mean, farce? Voldemar’s ambush—Oh.”

“Yes. The ‘arrangements’ the Fudir made the night before. Considering how things ran out afterward, it was probably the best thing he could have done.”

“What do you mean?”

“We have two theories. The one more favorable to the Fudir’s character is that he had come to like Hugh, and New Eireann, and could not bear to see either ruined by the inevitable three-way struggle with Jack and Voldemar.”

“You mean, better a two-way struggle?”

But the scarred man shakes his head and cackles with brief and unpleasant glee. “No,” he says around another spoonful of stew, so that streamers of gravy dribble from the corners of his mouth. “He made more than one set of arrangements that night. Jack’s men ambushed Voldemar as he was leaving the Port and cut the head right off the snake. So things worked out in the end. The Fudir left New Eireann with competent, undivided leadership, and saved Hugh’s face by shanghaiing him. No one could say Hugh had run off.”

The harper is skeptical. “And those were the Fudir’s motives? They seem rather high for a man so low.”

The scarred man looks into the darkness of his stew. “Perhaps those were motives he thought of afterward. But we can no longer ask him.”

“He died then? So we don’t really know what happened.”

“Ah. The beginnings of wisdom.” He applies himself once more to his meal.

“What was the second reason? You said there were two.”

The scarred man shrugs. “He needed someone to watch his back.”

“That’s a less noble reason,” the harper agrees.

“Yes. It is.”

“There’s a third reason.”

The scarred man raises his face from his stew. He swallows and wipes his lips with his hand. “Is there?”

“Friendship. They were in the dance together.”

The scarred man gives that some thought. “Maybe,” he allows. “Sometimes you can triangulate what really happened from the testimonies of those who were there.” His grin reveals ruined teeth. “But you don’t have even that. You’ve only my account of their accounts.”

“Do you embellish, then?”

He shrugs. “Even engineers prepare their plans and levels from more than one perspective. It’s late, and you’ve played three times tonight. Four, if you count our conversation. Do you have rooms at the Hostel?”

“I thought I would stay here. They’ve rooms upstairs, you said.”

The scarred man nods, but says nothing.

“Room 3-G, if it’s available.”

Another grin. “We might be a little snug, you and us.”

The harper studies him for a long moment, and he simply waits her out. Finally, she says, “Another room, then.”

The scarred man signals to the Bartender, makes a sign, and points to the harper. Shortly, one of the servants comes with a homing key and lays it on the table. “Compliments of the house,” she murmurs, and her eyes caress in turn the harper and her instrument.

“You may want to consider what I’ve told you so far,” the scarred man says. “It will give you something to sleep on, if not someone to sleep with.”

“Will Hugh escape once they reach Jehovah and try to return to New Eireann? Will the Fudir slip loose from Olafsson and heigh for the Hadramoo? Will Olafsson find Donovan or will Greystroke catch up with him? And what of…And what of Bridget ban? What has she been doing in the meantime?”

“That,” the scarred man suggests, “will give you something to wake up for.”