Wizard and glass - Stephen King [105]
“And so we will, madam,” Roland said, “for your greeting has made us joyful.” He took her hand, and, with no calculation whatever, raised it to his lips and kissed it. Her delighted laughter made him smile. He liked Olive Thorin on sight, and it was perhaps well he met someone of that sort early on, for, with the problematic exception of Susan Delgado, he met no one else he liked, no one else he trusted, all that night.
6
It was warm enough even with the seabreeze, and the cloak-and coat-collector in the foyer looked as though he’d had little or no custom. Roland wasn’t entirely surprised to see that it was Deputy Dave, his remaining bits of hair slicked back with some sort of gleaming grease and his monocle now lying on the snow-white breast of a houseman’s jacket. Roland gave him a nod. Dave, his hands clasped behind his back, returned it.
Two men—Sheriff Avery and an elderly gent as gaunt as Old Doctor Death in a cartoon—came toward them. Beyond, through a pair of double doors now open wide, a whole roomful of people stood about with crystal punch-cups in their hands, talking and taking little bits of food from the trays which were circulating.
Roland had time for just one narrow-eyed glance toward Cuthbert: Everything. Every name, every face . . . every nuance. Especially those.
Cuthbert raised an eyebrow—his discreet version of a nod—and then Roland was pulled, willy-nilly, into the evening, his first real evening of service as a working gunslinger. And he had rarely worked harder.
Old Doctor Death turned out to be Kimba Rimer, Thorin’s Chancellor and Minister of Inventory (Roland suspected the title had been made up special for their visit). He was easily five inches taller than Roland, who was considered tall in Gilead, and his skin was pale as candlewax. Not unhealthy-looking; just pale. Wings of iron-gray hair floated away from either side of his head, gossamer as cobwebs. The top of his skull was completely bald. Balanced on his whelk of a nose was a pince-nez.
“My boys!” he said, when the introductions had been made. He had the smooth, sadly sincere voice of a politician or an undertaker. “Welcome to Mejis! To Hambry! And to Seafront, our humble Mayor’s House!”
“If this is humble, I should wonder at the palace your folk might build,” Roland said. It was a mild enough remark, more pleasantry than witticism (he ordinarily left the wit to Bert), but Chancellor Rimer laughed hard. So did Sheriff Avery.
“Come, boys!” Rimer said, when he apparently felt he had expressed enough amusement. “The Mayor awaits you with impatience, I’m sure.”
“Aye,” said a timid voice from behind them. The skinny sister-in-law, Coral, had disappeared, but Olive Thorin was still there, looking up at the newcomers with her hands decorously clasped before that area of her body which might once have been her waist. She was still smiling her hopeful, pleasant smile. “Very eager to meet you, Hart is, very eager, indeed. Shall I conduct them, Kimba, or—”
“Nay, nay, you mustn’t trouble yourself with so many other guests to attend,” Rimer said.
“I suppose you’re right.” She curtseyed to Roland and his companions a final time, and although she still smiled and although the smile looked completely genuine to Roland, he thought: She’s unhappy about something, all the same. Desperately so, I think.
“Gentlemen?” Rimer asked. The teeth in his smile were almost disconcertingly huge. “Will ye come?”
He led them past the grinning Sheriff and into the reception hall.
7
Roland was hardly overwhelmed by it; he had, after all, been in the Great Hall of Gilead—the Hall of the Grandfathers, it was sometimes called—and had even peeped down on the great party which was held there each year, the so-called Dance of Easterling, which marked the end of Wide Earth and the advent of Sowing. There were five chandeliers in the Great Hall instead of just one, and lit with electric