Hold The Dark: A Markhat story Read Free

door as you pass and offer to fit you for a new jacket. “I have one perfect for sir,” I was told. “Roomy at the shoulders, tight at the waist. Won’t you have a look?”
    I would not, and he merely nodded and withdrew.
    Now that’s civilization.
    I set my jaw and counted streets, urging my aching feet onward. I crossed Sellidge and Vanth and Remorse and Bathways.
    I dodged a pair of hairless, gauze-wrapped Reformist street preachers on Fingel and hit Broadway. Broadway is lined with blood-oaks older than Rannit. All the oaks bear axe-scars on their trunks, where it is said that mobs of desperate townsfolk tried and failed to fell the behemoths for firewood during the harsh winter and ill-timed coal miner’s strike of sixty-nine.
    I eased my pace and counted monstrous trees. I passed beneath sixteen scarred blood-oaks before reaching the intersection of Broadway and Hent. And there, at the corner, loomed the Velvet—three slate-roofed, glass-windowed, brass-worked, brick-walled stories of steamy adolescent fantasies come absolutely positively true.
    The big oak front doors faced south, toward me. The Velvet was set back from the street a stone's throw, surrounded by lush meadow-grass, bubbling fountains and knee-high beds of fireflowers. A flight of wide, shallow marble stairs led from the cobblestone walkway to the brass-worked oaken doors. A single bored ogre leaned against the door, his arms folded across his chest, his eyes ahead and unblinking.
    You seldom see ogres dressed in anything more than a sarong and sandals. The Velvet's doorman, though, wore a long-cut red tail-coat, black dress pants, black boots and white silk shirt with ruffles at the sleeves. All specially made and generously cut, of course, to accommodate his bulging ogre muscles and furry ogre frame.
    I emerged from the shade of the last blood-oak and marched toward the Velvet. The ogre's wet brown gaze picked me up as I darted across Hent, and he watched me every step of the way after.
    I eased onto the cobblestone walk, took a deep breath. The air smelled of fireflowers and a faint gentle perfume, and it was cooler there than even in the blood-oak’s shade.
    I ambled through the flower-beds, halted at the foot of the stair. The ogre hadn’t moved.
    I nodded and lowered my gaze briefly in greeting. Which may have been a mistake. I doubted that the Velvet’s clients were terribly concerned with matters of ogreish etiquette. But it never hurts to make friends.
    He didn’t blink, or return my eye-dip.
    I shrugged. “May I enter?”
    He let my words hang for a moment. Then, with a great show of elaborate grace, he doffed his three-cornered, feathered hat, stepped out of my path, and motioned me to the doors with a grand, easy sweep of his clawed four-fingered hand.
    “Enner, ’ordship,” he growled, grinning around his tusks. “Enner.”
    The doors opened as I hit the top step, and then I was inside, leaving sarcastic ogres and the clatter and rumble of downtown Rannit behind.
    The doors shut. You know the Velvet doors are shut because all the street noise stops. You take a breath and the scent of the beds of fireflowers is gone, but something sweeter and more subtle rides the air.
    My jaw dropped. I’d been inside the High House, right after the War, but the Velvet put the Regent’s digs to shame.
    I was alone for perhaps ten heartbeats. I breathed the sweet air, gawked at the gleaming marble tiles, the dark rich walnut paneled walls and the general glowing opulence of the place.
    The gold-plated coat-hooks by the door were probably worth more than my entire building, fifteen blocks away.
    One of the three tall white doors on the far side of the foyer opened, and a woman entered. It was then I realized the Velvet kept a sorcerer in its hire.
    He or she knew the business. The woman that approached was absolutely the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen, human, Elvish or otherwise.
    She glided to stand before me. She was blonde and tall