The Armageddon Rag by George R. R. Martin
“Who?” Maggie asked from behind.
“You sent me an invitation,” Lark said.
“Yeah, sure, but you weren’t here…I mean you didn’t rizvip, and the party started hours a—”
“Spit it out, Blair,” Lark said. “Hell, the star always arrives last.” He sauntered past Sandy into the room.
“Lark!” Maggie exclaimed. “Couldn’t keep away, huh?”
Bambi got up from her knitting and rushed across the room to embrace him warmly.
Froggy looked askance and made his rude wet noise. “He’s brought that guitar. He’s going to sing. I know it, I do, I do.” He rolled his eyes.
“This is a reunion, correct? I always used to play when we got together in the old days, so I thought it’d be fun if…”
“You used to try to play for us in the old days, Lark m’boy,” Froggy said. “Which is an entirely different matter.”
“What are you drinking, Steve?” Sandy asked him.
Lark gave him that old mocking smile. “Lark,” he said.
Maggie whooped. “He done it again!”
“Can you get me into the Name-of-the-Month-Club?” Froggy asked. “I’ll be a good member, I will, I will.”
Bambi gave him a smile and a supportive hug. “Good.”
Lark stretched out in a chair, his leg casually flung over one arm. “Got tired of that whole advertising scene, you know? Three-piece suits and three-martini lunches get boring after a while. It’s an exciting life, but superficial. So I figured I’d take a break from life in the fast lane, come out and see how you clowns were getting along.”
“Life in the fast lane,” Sandy echoed.
“It’d burn you out in a week, Blair,” Lark told him.
“No doubt,” Sandy said.
“Sander is more suited to life in the rest stops,” Froggy suggested.
“So,” Sandy said, “when did you get fired, Lark?”
The Ellyn smile flickered, then faded entirely. “I didn’t get fired,” he said with a touch of petulance. “The account I was working on went to another agency, and I was let go. It happens all the goddamned time in advertising, and it’s no reflection on—”
Maggie sat down in his lap. “Shut up,” she said. She kissed him on the nose. “Bambi will hit you with a cupcake if you keep on.”
“A chocolate cupcake,” Bambi said dangerously. “With creme filling. Very inorganic.”
“It’ll throw your aura right out of kilt, it will, it will,” said Froggy.
Lark Ellyn looked from one smiling face to the other and gave a disgusted shake of his head. “I can’t believe I’m here with you losers,” he said.
“We may be losers, but we’re your losers,” Froggy told him.
Sandy brought Lark a glass of champagne. He accepted it, sipped, gave Maggie a sip, and then looked up. “Blair, it kills me to say so, but I guess you’ve got congratulations coming. That book of yours is doing real well, I’m told.”
“It’s paying for your champagne,” Sandy said. “Six weeks on the Times bestseller list.”
“And counting!” Maggie said. Her grin was crooked and very drunken. “I bet it stays up there forever!”
“We could have a pool,” Froggy said.
“I haven’t had time to read it yet,” Lark said, “but I will. I promise.”
“You’ll probably wait for the paperback, you will, you will,” Froggy said accusingly.
“It’s dedicated to you,” Sandy said.
Lark Ellyn almost choked on his champagne. He came up gasping and spitting. On his lap, Maggie was roaring with laughter and kicking her legs in the air. “What?” Lark said finally. “You’re bullshitting me. Come off it, Blair. We don’t even like each other.”
Sandy grinned. “I didn’t say it was dedicated to you alone. I’ve got better taste than that. It’s dedicated to all of you.”
“A cheap trick, Sander m’boy,” Froggy complained. “A mass dedication is just a sleazy way of driving up sales of the book, don’t think I don’t know it. If I don’t get a solo dedication soon, I swear, I’m going to stop teaching you how to pick up girls.”
“I want to see it,” Lark said.
Sandy nodded. “I’ve got a copy in the bedroom.” He went back and picked it up. It was a nice, thick, heavy hardbound book. On the dust jacket was a photo of the Nazgûl in concert, with the crosshairs of a rifle over Pat Hobbins’ face. The Year of the Nazgûl, read the title, in bright letters. In smaller print, below, it said An Insider’s Account, by Sander Blair.
He brought it back and handed it to Lark, open to the dedication page, which read:
To Maggie, Lark, Bambi, Froggy and Slum
…I got by with a little help from my friends
“But what does it mean?” Lark said, “Got by what?”
“Read the book,” Sandy said. “It’s all in there. I hope you understand it better than the reviewers. They don’t even know whether it’s fiction or journalism.” He shrugged. “To tell the truth, there are times that I’m not sure myself.” He went to the bar, poured himself some champagne, and took a small sip. “I appreciate the congratulations,” he said, “but sometimes I wonder if I really deserve them. It was a book that… well… almost wrote itself.”
“Modesty alert!” blared Froggy, cupping his hands over his mouth. “Modesty alert, modesty alert. Stop him before he gets humble.”
Lark flipped through the pages, frowning. “That woman is going to go on trial soon, isn’t she? What’s her name?”
“Ananda Caine,” Maggie said. She made a face. “Tacky bitch.”
“That was only one of her aliases, as it turned out,” Sandy said. “She had a lot of names. A lot of hurt, too. Her father was an old folk singer who killed himself after he was black-listed. Ananda herself had been gang-raped in Alabama in the early Sixties when her mother was doing civil rights work down there. She was only thirteen. At times I can almost understand everything she did. At times I can’t understand at all. I guess it’ll all come out in the trial. I wonder if they’ll believe even half of it.” He sighed, drank some more champagne. “My publisher figures the trial will be page one for months, and that it will send sales of my book through the roof. So much for literature.”
Lark was looking at the dedication again. “Thanks, I guess,” he said. He looked up once more and said, “Hey, what about Slum? Where’s the old Slummer?”
That wiped the smile off everyone’s faces quickly enough. “I forgot,” Sandy said, “you don’t know about Slum.” He told him, wearily. Lark looked incredulous by the time he was finished. “That’s why I did the book, really,” Sandy concluded.
“I don’t get it, Blair,” Lark said. “How’s the book going to help Slum?”
“The story was wild enough so I knew it’d be a cinch to hit big. And I was right in the middle of it.” He smiled wanly. “My publisher tells me it’s outselling Butcher’s latest by a nice comfortable margin now. And every fucking cent is going into a fund to pay Slum’s legal costs. I’ve already gotten some high-priced hotshit lawyers, and Froggy has gotten some of his ACLU friends interested. And if I run out of money, Peter Faxon has offered to help. Faxon and I have gotten pretty close since West Mesa, and believe me, Peter could buy and sell Butcher out of loose change. There’s no guarantees, but—” he raised his glass “—a toast, to Slum, who I hope like hell will be here drinking with us next year!”
Lark raised his glass. Maggie climbed off his lap, moved unsteadily to the bar, and poured for the rest of them. They all drank, even Bambi, who did not believe in alcohol. It tasted damn good, sweet and cold and full of promise.
Afterward Froggy told an elephant joke, and they went from there to grape jokes to dead baby jokes, and finally everyone was drunk enough and stoned enough so they were willing to let Lark sing. He sang “Lemon Tree” and “Leavin’ on a Jet Plane” and “If I Had a Hammer,” and Froggy sat next to him mumbling, “If you had a hammer you’d smash your thumb, you would, you
He sat bemused, sipping flat champagne and staring at his sleeping friends. Perhaps he slept himself; he wasn’t sure. But he was awake when dawn came streaming through the window. The room was full of heavy breathing and morning stillness, and it reminded Sandy of mornings at Maggie’s place in the old days, when the whole gang had spent the night. Sometimes she’d wake them with the smell of frying bacon, and a blare of music from the stereo.
He rose and went to the phone and called down for four orders of bacon and eggs, and one bowl of crunchy Granola. As for the music, he’d had a stereo brought up last night, for the party. He went over and glanced at the albums.
But of course none of them would do. There was only one choice. He had it in the bedroom, an advance promo copy given him by Faxon before the general release. He had wanted to play it for them last night, but what with one thing and another, he had never gotten around to it.
The photo on the album jacket had been taken in the Philadelphia city dump. They stood there surrounded by abandoned refrigerators, old tires, broken TV sets, and couches with the stuffings spilling out. There were six of them now; the original three, Larry Richmond on rhythm guitar, a damned good keyboard player, and their brand new lead vocalist, a whip-thin young black kid whose voice was almost as exciting as Hobbins’ voice had been. The Nazgûl, the jacket read, Back from the Junkyard!
All new songs, rewritten and rearranged for the larger group. Sandy held it in his hands, wondering how it would sound, how it would sell. There were no guarantees. But there never were.
He carried the album back to the stereo, slit the plastic sleeve with his thumbnail, and placed the record carefully on the turntable. They woke to the song of “Thursday’s Child,” who has far to go.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
George R. R. Martin sold his first story in 1971 and has been writing professionally ever since. He has written fantasy, horror, and science fiction, and for his sins spent ten years in Hollywood as a writer/producer, working on The Twilight Zone, Beauty and the Beast, and various feature films and television pilots that were never made. In the mid ’90s he returned to prose, his first love, and began work on his epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire. He has been in the Seven Kingdoms ever since. Whenever he’s allowed to leave, he returns to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he lives with the lovely Parris and two cats named Augustus and Caligula who think they run the place.
BOOKS BY GEORGE R. R. MARTIN
A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE:
Book One: A Game of Thrones
Book Two: A Clash of Kings
Book Three: A Storm of Swords
Book Four: A Feast for Crows
Dying of the Light
Windhaven (with Lisa Tuttle)
Fevre Dream
The Armageddon Rag
Dead Man’s Hand (with John J. Miller)
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS:
A Song for Lya and Other Stories
Songs of Stars and Shadows
Sandkings
Songs the Dead Men Sing
Nightflyers
Tuf Voyaging
Portraits of His Children
Edited by George R. R. Martin
New Voices in Science Fiction, Volumes 1–4
The Science Fiction Weight-Loss Book
(with Isaac Asimov and Martin Harry Greenberg)
The John W. Campbell Awards, Volume 5
Night Visions 3
Wild Cards I–XV
Now, here’s a special preview of the next book in George R. R. Martin’s landmark series
A FEAST FOR CROWS
the riveting sequel to
A GAME OF THRONES
A CLASH OF KINGS
and
A STORM OF SWORDS
On sale now
CERSEI
A cold rain was falling, turning the walls and ramparts of the Red Keep dark as blood. The queen held the king’s hand and led him firmly across the muddy yard to where her litter waited with its escort. “Uncle Jaime said I could ride my horse and throw pennies to the smallfolk,” the boy objected.
“Do you want to catch a chill?” She would not risk it; Tommen had never been as robust as Joffrey. “Your grandfather would want you to look a proper king at his wake. We will not appear at the Great Sept wet and bedraggled.” Bad enough I must wear mourning again. Black had never been a happy color on her. With her fair skin, it made her look half a corpse herself. Cersei had risen an hour before dawn to bathe and fix her hair, and she did not intend to let the rain destroy her efforts.
Inside the litter, Tommen settled back against his pillows and peered out at the falling rain. “The gods are weeping for grandfather. Lady Jocelyn says the raindrops are their tears.”
“Jocelyn Swyft is a fool. If the gods could weep, they would have wept for your brother. Rain is rain. Close the curtain before you let any more in. That mantle is sable, would you have it soaked?”
Tommen did as he was bid. His meekness troubled her. A king had to be strong. Joffrey would have argued. He was never easy to cow. “Don’t slump so,” she told Tommen. “Sit like a king. Put your shoulders back and straighten your crown. Do you want it to tumble off your head in front of all your lords?”
“No, Mother.” The boy sat straight and reached up to fix the crown. Joff’s crown was too big for him. Tommen had always inclined to plumpness, but his face seemed thinner now. Is he eating well? She must remember to ask the steward. She could not risk Tommen growing ill, not with Myrcella in the hands of the Dornishmen. He will grow into Joff’s crown in time. Until he did, a smaller one might be needed, one that did not threaten to swallow his head. She would take it up with the goldsmiths.
The litter made its slow way down Aegon’s High Hill. Two Kingsguard rode before them, white knights on white horses with white cloaks hanging sodden from their shoulders. Behind came fifty Lannister guardsmen in gold and crimson.
Tommen peered through the drapes at the empty streets. “I thought there would be more people. When Father died, all the people came out to watch us go by.”
“This rain has driven them inside.” King’s Landing had never loved Lord Tywin. He never wanted love, though. “You cannot eat love, nor buy a horse with it, nor warm your halls on a cold night,” she heard him tell Jaime once, when her brother had been no older than Tommen.
At the Great Sept of Baelor, that magnificence in marble atop Visenya’s Hill, the little knot of mourners were outnumbered by the gold cloaks that Ser Addam Marbrand had drawn up across the plaza. More will turn out later, the queen told herself as Ser Meryn Trant helped her from the litter. Only the highborn and their retinues were to be admitted to the morning service; there would be another in the afternoon for the commons, and the evening prayers were open to all. Cersei would need to return for that, so that the smallfolk might see her mourn. The mob must have its show. It was a nuisance. She had offices to fill, a war to win, a realm to rule. Her father would have understood that.
The High Septon met them at the top of the steps. A bent old man with a wispy grey beard, he was so stooped by the weight of his ornate embroidered robes that his eyes were on a level with the queen’s breasts… though his crown, an airy confection of cut crystal and spun gold, added a good foot and a half to his height.
Lord Tywin had given him that crown to replace the one that was lost when the mob killed the previous High Septon. They had pulled the fat fool from his litter and torn him apart, the day Myrcella sailed for Dorne. That one was a great glutton, and biddable. This one… This High Septon was of Tyrion’s making, Cersei recalled suddenly. It was a disquieting thought.
The old man’s spotted hand looked like a chicken claw as it poked from a sleeve encrusted with golden scrollwork and
They made their way through the Hall of Lamps beneath colored globes of leaded glass, Tommen’s hand in hers. Trant and Kettleblack flanked them, water dripping from their wet cloaks to puddle on the floor. The High Septon walked slowly, leaning on a weirwood staff topped by a crystal orb. Seven of the Most Devout attended him, shimmering in cloth-of-silver. Tommen wore cloth-of-gold beneath his sable mantle, the queen an old gown of black velvet lined with ermine. There’d been no time to have a new one made, and she could not wear the same dress she had worn for Joffrey, nor the one she’d buried Robert in.
At least I will not be expected to don mourning for Tyrion. I shall dress in crimson silk and cloth-of-gold for that, and wear rubies in my hair. The man who brought her the dwarf’s head would be raised to lordship, she had proclaimed, no matter how mean and low his birth or station. Ravens were carrying her promise to every part of the Seven Kingdoms, and soon enough word would cross the narrow sea to the Nine Free Cities and the lands beyond. Let the Imp run to the ends of the earth, he will not escape me.
The royal procession passed through the inner doors into the cavernous heart of the Great Sept, and down a wide aisle, one of seven that met beneath the dome. To right and left, highborn mourners sank to their knees as the king and queen went by. Many of her father’s bannermen were here, and knights who had fought beside Lord Tywin in half a hundred battles. The sight of them made her feel more confident. I am not without friends.
Under the Great Sept’s lofty dome of glass and gold and crystal, Lord Tywin Lannister’s body rested upon a stepped marble bier. At its head Jaime stood at vigil, his one good hand curled about the hilt of a tall golden greatsword whose point rested on the floor. The hooded cloak he wore was as white as freshly fallen snow, and the scales of his long hauberk were mother-of-pearl chased with gold. Lord Tywin would have wanted him in Lannister gold and crimson, she thought. It always angered him to see Jaime all in white. Her brother was growing his beard again as well. The stubble covered his jaw and cheeks, and gave his face a rough, uncouth look. He might at least have waited till Father’s bones were interred beneath the Rock.