Old Tin Sorrows Read Free Page A

his place at least fakes the life and warmth. And his decorator has his priorities straight. Once when I was there the house was littered with naked lovelies. That’s what I call home furnishings! That’s a lot more cheerful than a bargeload of instruments of war.
    I dropped my duffel bag, put a foot up on the fountain surround, and rested my elbows on my knee. “You boys go ahead with what you’re doing. I’ll try not to disturb.” Hero and dragon were both too preoccupied to notice.
    I looked around. Where the hell was everybody? A place that size ought to have a battalion for staff. I’d seen livelier museums at midnight. Well . . . 
    All was not lost. In fact, things had started to look up.
    I’d spotted a face. It was looking at me around a pillar supporting the balconies to my left. The west wing. It was female and gorgeous and too far away to tell much else, but that was all I needed to get my blood moving again. The woman attached was as timid as a dryad. She ducked out of sight an instant after our eyes met.
    The part of me that is weak wondered if I’d see more of her. I hoped so. I could get lost in a face like that.
    She did a little flit into the nearest hallway. I got just a glimpse but wanted her to come back. She was worth a second look, and maybe a third and a fourth, a long-haired, slim blonde in something white and gauzy, gathered at the waist by a red girdle. Around twenty, give or take a few, and sleek enough to put a big, goofy grin on my face.
    I’d keep an eye out for that one.
    Unless she was a ghost. She’d gone without making a sound. Whatever, she was going to haunt me till I got a closer look.
    Was the place haunted? It was spooky enough, in its cold way . . . I realized it was me. Might not bother someone else. I looked around and heard the clash of steel and the moans of those who had died to furnish all those emblems of Stantnor glory. I was packing my own haunts in and letting the place become a mirror.
    I tried to shake a darkening mood. A place like that turns you somber.
    The guy from the front door marched in after the girl disappeared, his heels clicking. He came to a perfect military halt six feet away. I gave him the once-over. He stood five-foot-eight, maybe a hundred seventy pounds, in his fifties but looking younger. His hair was wavy black, slicked with some kind of grease that couldn’t beat the curl. If he had any gray, he hid it well, and he still had all the hair he’d had when he was twenty. His eyes were cold little beads. You could get ice burns there. He’d kill you and not even wonder if he was making orphans.
    “The General will see you now, sir.” He turned and marched away.
    I followed. I caught myself marching in step, skipped to get out. In a minute I was back in step. I gave it up.
    They’d pounded it in good. The flesh remembered and couldn’t hear the rebellion in the mind.
    “You have a name?” I asked.
    “Dellwood, sir.”
    “What were you before you got out?”
    “I was attached to the General’s staff, sir.”
    Which meant absolutely nothing. “Lifer?” Dumb question, Garrett. I could bet the family farm, I was the only nonlifer in the place, excepting the girl—maybe. The General wouldn’t surround himself with the lesser breeds called civilians.
    “Thirty-two years, sir.” He asked no questions himself. Not into small talk and chitchat? No. He didn’t care. I was one of them.
    “Maybe I should have come to the tradesman’s entrance.”
    He grunted.
    “Tough.” The General had my respect for what he’d accomplished, not for who he’d been born.
    Dellwood had twenty years on me but I was the guy doing the puffing when we hit the fourth floor. About six wise remarks ran through my alleged brain but I didn’t have wind enough to share them. Dellwood gave me an unreadable look, probably veiled contempt for soft civilians. I puffed awhile, then to distract him said, “I saw a woman while I was waiting. Watching me. Timid