Old Tin Sorrows Read Free

three beards, three mustaches, and six clean shaven. The Stantnor blood was strong. They looked like brothers instead of generations going back to the foundation of the Karentine state. Only their uniforms dated them.
    All of them were in uniform or armor. Stantnors had been professional soldiers, sailors, Marines—forever. It was a birthright. Or maybe an obligation, like it or not, which might explain the universal dyspepsia.
    The last portrait on the left was the General himself, as Commandant of the Corps. He wore a huge, ferocious white mustache and had a faraway look in his eyes, as if he were standing on the poop of a troopship staring at something beyond the horizon. His was the only portrait that hadn’t been painted so its subject’s eyes followed you when you moved. It was disconcerting, having all those angry old men glaring down. Maybe the portraits were supposed to intimidate upstarts like me.
    Opposite the General hung the only portrait of a young man, the General’s son, a Marine lieutenant who hadn’t developed the family scowl. I didn’t recall his name, but did remember him getting killed in the islands while I was in. He’d been the old man’s only male offspring. There wouldn’t be any more portraits to put up on those dark-paneled walls.
    The hall ended in a wall of leaded glass that rose the hallway’s two storey height, a mosaic of scenes from myth and legend, all bloodthirstily executed: heroes slaying dragons, felling giants, posturing atop heaps of elvish corpses while awaiting another charge. All stuff of antiquity, when we humans didn’t get along with the other races.
    The doors through that partition were normal size, also filled with glass artwork from the same school. The butler, or whatever he was, had left them ajar. I took that as an invitation.
    The hall beyond could have been swiped from a cathedral. It was as big as a parade ground and four storeys high, all stone, mostly swirly browns from butterscotch to rust folded into cream. The walls were decorated with trophies presumably won by Stantnors in battle. There were enough weapons and banners to outfit a battalion.
    The floor was a checkerboard of white marble and green serpentine. In its middle stood a fountain, a hero on a rearing stallion sticking a lance into the heart of a ferocious dragon that looked suspiciously like one of the bigger flying thunder-lizards. Both of them looked like they’d rather be somewhere else. Couldn’t say I blamed them. Neither one was going to get out alive. The hero was about one second short of sliding off the horse’s behind right into the dragon’s claws. The sculptor had said a lot that, undoubtedly, no one understood. I told them, “You two want to scrap over a virgin, you should work a deal.”
    I headed for the fountain, heels clicking, the walls throwing back echoes. I turned around a few times, taking in the sights. Hallways ran off into the wings. Stairs went up to balconies in front of each of the upper floors. There were lots of polished round brown pillars and legions of echoes. The place couldn’t be a home. Only thing I’d ever seen like it was a museum. You had to wonder what went on inside the head of a guy who would want to build a place like that to live.
    It was damned near as cold in there as it was outside. I shivered, checked out the fountain up close. It wasn’t going, or at least I’d have had its chuckles for company. Seemed a pity. The sound would have improved the atmosphere. Maybe they only turned it on when they were entertaining.
    I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for the idea of being rich. I guess most people do. But if this was the way the rich had to live, I thought maybe I could settle for less.
    My trade has taken me into any number of large homes and every one seemed to have a certain coldness at its heart. The nicest I’d hit belonged to Chodo Contague, TunFaire’s emperor of the underworld. He’s a grotesque, a real blackheart, but