After a time, it subsided and I slept, there in the chair. After a much longer time, the door opened and Flora entered. It was night outside, once more.
She was dressed in a green silk blouse and a long woolen skirt that was gray. She had on walking shoes and heavy stockings. Her hair was pulled back behind her head and she looked slightiy pale. She still wore her hound whistle.
“Good evening,” I said, rising.
But she did not reply. Instead, she walked across the room to the bar, poured herself a shot of Jack Daniels, and tossed it off like a man. Then she poured another and took it with her to the big chair.
I lit a cigarette and handed it to her.
She nodded, then said, “The Road to Amber—is difficult.”
“Why?”
She gave me a very puzzled look.
“When is the last time you tried it?”
I shrugged.
“I don't remember.”
“Be that way then,” she said. “I just wondered how much of it was your doing.
I didn't reply because I didn't know what she was talking about. But then I recalled that there was an easier way than the Road to get to the place called Amber. Obviously, she lacked it.
“You're missing some Trumps,” I said then suddenly, in a voice which was almost mine.
She sprang to her feet, half her drink spilling over the back of her hand.
“Give them back!” she cried, reaching for the whistle.
I moved forward and seized her shoulders,
“I don't have them,” I said. “I was just making an observation.”
She relaxed a bit, then began to cry, and I pushed her back down, gently, into the chair.
“I thought you meant you'd taken the ones I had left,” she said. “Rather than just making a nasty and obvious comment.”
I didn't apologize. It didn't seem right that I should have to.
“How far did you get?”
“Not far at all.” Then she laughed and regarded me with a new light in her eyes.
“I see what you've done now, Corwin,” she said, and I lit a cigarette in order to cover any sort of need for a reply.
“Some of those things were yours, weren't they? You blocked my way to Amber before you came here, didn't you? You knew I'd go to Eric. But I can't now. I'll have to wait till he comes to me. Clever. You want to draw him here, don't you? He'll send a messenger, though. He won't come himself.”
There was a strange tone of admiration in the voice of this woman who was admitting she'd just tried to sell me out to my enemy. and still would—given half a chance—as she talked about something she thought I'd done which had thrown a monkey wrench into her plans. How could anyone be so admittedly Machiavellian in the presence of a proposed victim? The answer rang back immediately from the depths of my mind. it is the way of our kind. We don't have to be subtle with each other. Though I thought she lacked somewhat the finesse of a true professional.
“Do you think I'm stupid, Flora?” I asked. “Do you think I came here just for purposes of waiting around for you to hand me over to Erie? Whatever you ran into, it served vou right.”
“All right I don't play in your league! But you're in exile, too! That shows you weren't so smart!”
Somehow her words burned and I knew they were wrong.
“Like hell I am!” I said.
She laughed again.
“I knew that would get a rise out of you,” she said. “All right, you walk in the Shadows on purpose then. You're crazy.”
I shrugged.
She said, “What do you want? Why did you really come here?”
“I was curious what you were up to,” I said. “That's all. You can't keep me here if I don't want to stay. Even Eric couldn't do that. Maybe I really did just want to visit with you. Maybe I'm getting sentimental in my old age. Whatever, I'm going to stay a little longer now, and then probably go away for good. If you hadn't been so quick to see what you could get for me, you might have profited a lot more, lady. You asked me to remember you one day, if a certain thing occurred...”
It took several seconds for what I thought I was implying to sink in.
Then she said, “You're going to try! You're really going to try!”
“You're goddamn right I'm going to try,” I said, knowing that I would, whatever it was, “and you can tell that to Eric if you want, but remember that I might make it. Bear in mind that if I do, it might be nice to be my friend.”
I sure wished I knew what the hell I was talking about, but I'd picked up enough terms and felt the importance attached to them, so that I could use them properly without knowing what they meant. But they felt right, so very right...
Suddenly, she was kissing me.
“I won't tell him. Really, I won't, Corwin! I think you can do it. Bleys will be difficult, but Gerard would probably help you, and maybe Benedict. Then Caine would swing over, when he saw what was happening—”
“I can do my own planning,” I said.
Then she drew away. She poured two glasses of wine and handed one to me.
“To the future,” she said.
“I'll always drink to that.”
And we did.
Then she refilled mine and studied me.
“It had to be Eric, Bleys, or you,” she said. “You're the only ones with any guts or brains. But you'd removed yourself from the picture for so long that I'd counted you out of the running.”
“It just goes to show you never can tell.”
I sipped my drink and hoped she'd shut up for just a minute. It seemed to me she was being a bit too obvious in trying to play on every side available. There was something bothering me, and I wanted to think about it.
How old was I?
That question, I knew, was a part of the answer to the terrible sense of distance and removal that I felt from all the persons depicted on the playing cards. I was older than I appeared to be. (Thirtyish, I'd seemed when I looked at me in the mirror—but now I knew that it was because the shadows would lie for me.) I was far, far older, and it had been a very long time since I had seen my brothers and my sisters, all together and friendly, existing side by side as they did on the cards, with no tension, no friction among them.
We heard the sound of the bell, and Carmella moving to answer the door.
“That would be brother Random,” I said, knowing I was right. “He's under my protection.”
Her eyes widened, then she smiled, as though she appreciated some clever thing I had done.
I hadn't, of course. but I was glad to let her think so.
It made me feel safer.
Chapter 4
I felt safe for perhaps all of three minutes. I beat Carmella to the door and flung It open.
He staggered in and immediately pushed the door shut behind himself and shot the bolt. There were lines under those light eyes and he wasn't wearing a bright doublet and long hose. He needed a shave and he had on a brown wool suit. He carried a gabardine overcoat over one arm and wore dark suede shoes. But he was Random, all
