CYCLE B  |  Book 5

Savagery of Drums

PREVIEW | Savagery of Drums

Cheroxie Irwin is employed by a prestigious Lucerna law firm, Eliot Falconer.  She's Alan Barrington's personal assistant.  This position gives her windows that enable her to observe the lives of a great many people.  She's recently been looking through three of these.  She sometimes wishes that the windows came with blinds she could close.

Through window one, she sees a man dying of cancer.  In the past, he's been known by a great many names.  When he first met Gina Vasari, thirty years ago, she began referring to him as Odysseus, and he retaliated by calling himself Orcus.  For now the name he's using is Harry Dacken.  He's been receiving excellent treatment at the Yale Cancer Center, but he's determined to escape from his caregivers there, at least for a short time.  He has some important work to do here in Lucerna.  Cheroxie's guess is that he plans to introduce himself to Kari LaMarca.

Window two enables Cheroxie to observe Malory Ballantyne.  He's wrestling with a problem.  He just recently purchased a luxury condo here in Lucerna, and in the course of doing so, he engaged a young Chinese woman, Cheroxie's friend Joie Ko, as his lawyer.  In the course of working with her, Malory found himself getting close to her, in a big-brother way, and she revealed to him that she's an illegal immigrant.  She also revealed that she was now effectively a slave of the Japanese mobster who facilitated her entry into Canada.  Malory would like to end her slavery, but he can't think of any good way to do so.  Joie informed him that if she makes any move to break free, members of her family, people still living in China, will be killed.

Window three enables Cheroxie to catch glimpses of Kari LaMarca.  Kari has known Malory for more than two years, and she's fallen in love with him.  But she admits this to nobody, not even to herself.  She is close enough to him, and also to Joie, to observe their growing relationship.  She knows that Joie spends nights at Malory's apartment, and she draws the obvious conclusion. 

All three of these people are proceeding along  tracks that are now in parallel.  To Cheroxie's way of thinking, the tracks of the two men, Orcus/Odysseus and Malory, are destined to converge with Kari's.  What happens next is something she can't predict.