D-squared raised an eyebrow. “We have already advanced to the point of doing work! One imagined that this was to be a purely social gathering, Mr. Forthrast.” But he was only kidding, as he now indicated by winking, and nodding in the direction of—
Richard turned around and stepped clear of the rapidly growing fan cluster to see Devin Skraelin making his entrance. He wondered whether Devin had been twitching the curtain in his suite, waiting for Don Donald to emerge onto the terrace so that Devin could arrive last. As usual, he was trailed by two “assistants” who seemed too old and authoritative to merit that designation. Richard had been able to establish that the female “assistant” was an intellectual property lawyer and that the male was a book editor who had been sacked in the latest publishing industry cataclysms: he was now Devin’s captive scribe.
“Thank you,” Richard said. “More on this later, if you please.”
“I can’t wait!”
Richard moved to intercept Devin but was cut off by Nolan Xu, who was just about the worst Devin Skraelin fanboy in the whole world. Nolan had, until now, been largely marooned behind the Chinese border by visa and exchange-rate hassles, but during the last year or so he’d been finding it easier and easier to make long forays out to the West. Some men in that position would have headed straight for Vegas, but Nolan, for a combination of personal and business reasons impossible to sort out, went to science-fiction and fantasy conventions.
Richard pulled up short and spent a few moments watching the interaction. Devin had lost 211 pounds (at least that was the figure posted on his website as of six hours ago) and now looked hefty, but not so obese as to draw attention to himself. He paid due attention to Nolan but never let more than about five seconds expire without casting a glance in Don Donald’s direction. If Richard had been a random observer of the scene, he’d have guessed that one of the two writers was an assassin and the other his intended victim. He’d have been hard-pressed, though, to know which was which.
Professor Cameron, for his part, remained supremely affable and civilized until he was good and ready to acknowledge Devin’s presence, then pivoted on the balls of his hand-tooled loafers and swept—there was no other word for it—across the terrace to extend a hand of greeting to his rival.
“As if he owns the place,” Richard muttered.
“The Schloss?” asked Chet, who was just hanging around keeping an eye on things. All Chet knew of fantasy literature was that it was a useful source of van art.
“No,” said Richard. “T’Rain.”
LATER THEY DINED in the Schloss’s banqueting hall, which was fairly standard-issue Bavarian fortress architecture. Several tables had been joined end to end to make a single very long one. “Just like Shakey’s Pizza Parlor!” remarked Devin, when he saw it. “Just like High Table at Trinity,” said D-squared. Richard, the only man in the room who had dined at both of those places, could see merit in both points of view, so—trying to be the agreeable host—he signaled agreement with each, while hiding a growing feeling of unease over what would happen when these two men ended up sitting across the Shakey’s/Trinity table from each other. For seats had been assigned. Richard was at the head of the table. Devin and Professor Cameron were adjacent to him, facing each other. Nolan was next to the latter, so that he could gaze lovingly across the table at the former, and Pluto was next to Devin, on the theory that Don Donald would feel more at home if somewhere in his field of view was a ridiculously intelligent geek of limited social skills. Pluto’s chair faced the glass windows that opened out onto the terrace, so that he could relieve his boredom by inspecting the shape of the mountains that rose up on the opposite side of the valley.
So much for all the people who’d be in earshot of Richard. From there the seating arrangement propagated down the table according to someone’s notion of hierarchy and precedence. The menu was middle-European hunting-lodge cuisine as reinterpreted by the culinary staff that Richard and Chet had drawn to the place over the years. The venison, for example, was farm raised, therefore certifiably prion-free, ensuring that Corporation 9592 would not go belly-up in a few decades as its entire senior echelon was struck down by mad cow disease. The wine list made a diplomatic nod or two in the direction of British Columbia’s nascent viticultural sector and then lunged decisively south of the border. D-squared made some insightful remarks about a nice dry Riesling from the Horse Heaven Hills and Devin requested a Diet Coke. Lots of curiosity was expressed, on all sides, about the Schloss and how Richard and Chet had come to build it. Richard explained that it had originally been put together from bits and pieces of three different structures in the Austrian Alps, which had been bought by a certain Austro-Hungarian mining baron (literally a baron). He’d caused the pieces to be shipped down the Danube to the Black Sea and thence all the way around the world to the mouth of the Columbia, then up to a place where the stuff could be loaded onto a narrow-gauge mining railway that no longer existed, whose right-of-way, now a bike and ski path, ran through the grounds of the Schloss. Then fast-forward to its discovery and prolonged rehabilitation by Richard and Chet. Richard left out all material having to do with drug money and motorcycle gangs, since that was amply covered by the Wikipedia entry that all present had presumably read and perhaps even edited.