Discord's Apple

by Carrie Vaughn

  The place was dusty, decrepit. A broken chair slumped in a corner; scraps and trash littered the floor. A table stood against a far wall. On it was a shortwave radio set. Tracker’s hopes rose for a second, until she saw that it was smashed.

  Footprints in the dusty floor led to the stairs under the trapdoor.

  If she went down there, she’d be stuck. Only one exit, no light—something wasn’t right here. But if she could learn something to take back to the others and figure out what was really going on, the risk might be worth it.

  She started down the stairs.

  This tunnel, at least, hadn’t collapsed. When she reached the bottom of the stairs, a light became visible ahead, coming from a room. Shadows flickered, as if someone moved in front of a lamp.

  Tracker pressed herself to the wall and continued forward. She heard subdued voices speaking English.

  “Comrade, thank you. I look forward to a long and profitable relationship.”

  “Absolutely.” That voice was American. “You’ll have those weapons shipments, and I trust you’ll use them only on targets designated by our colleague here?”

  A third voice, with a clipped accent: “It would be tragic if this war were to fall out of our control.”

  Tracker came close enough to the door to lean around and look.

  She saw the man in fatigues first. He was facing her, and her eyes widened. It was him, the agent she was supposed to rescue. She recognized him from his dossier photo.

  He was shaking hands with a man in a Russian military uniform. The third man wore Chinese insignia on his uniform.

  “I can guarantee we’ll have American troops in place by the end of the year. With our peacekeeping efforts, we should be able to keep this thing going for years.”

  “And our governments will continue to leave us in control,” said the Chinese officer.

  They were making a deal. They wanted a world war. Whatever negotiation was being settled here would keep these men, the old military elite, in power indefinitely. Gods moving their pawns across the world.

  Tracker thought of a dozen melodramatic options: stand and challenge them, demand explanation, face them down like she was in some Hollywood spy thriller. Get them to reveal their nefarious plan. Unlikely.

  She should just shoot them all before they even knew she was here. But she wondered if there wasn’t some logical explanation for this meeting: the Russians and the Chinese were on the edge of war, the Americans had already picked sides—and the American agent hadn’t said anything about peace.

  Then the choice was out of her hands.

  “Tracker? You can come out of the dark now.”

  The American had spotted her. She didn’t move from her shelter behind the doorframe. The military officers touched their guns, resting in belt holsters. The agent was smiling, though, regarding her as he would a wayward child.

  “Where are your friends?” he said. “What good is my trap if I don’t catch you all?”

  Goddamn it, she’d walked right into it. She exhaled a silent breath. The unholy trio probably had a back entrance staked out and a way to collapse the tunnel on top of her. She revealed herself, leaning partway around the doorframe.

  “Gentlemen,” said the agent to his colleagues. “Meet Tracker, the intelligence expert for the Eagle Eye Commandos.”

  The two officers flinched, their eyes widening. Was her reputation really that scary? Probably not hers personally.

  The agent turned back to her. “So. Where are they?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “They wouldn’t have sent you here by yourself.”

  She kept her mouth shut on that one. Instead she asked, “When did you turn traitor?”

  “I haven’t,” he said, his smile unwavering.

  She winced, her brow furrowing with confusion. He chuckled, just like the villain in a spy film. “I’m here with the full authority of the U.S. government.”

  “Planning a war?”

  “You don’t think wars just happen, do you?”

  “And what do you want with us?” she said, her voice hushed.

  “We’ve decided that you’ve become a liability. You and your team are out of control. And what the U.S. can’t control—it destroys.”

  She shot him.

  A knock came at the door, and Evie almost fell off the sofa. She muttered and took a deep breath to still her racing heart, then gathered herself to answer the call. She almost hoped it was Alex, wanting to know if she’d guessed yet. But it was probably seven dwarves looking for a glass coffin.

  Mab was in the kitchen, trembling like she wanted to bark. Wagging her tail, she looked up at Evie. So it wasn’t the bad guys. She opened the door a crack. Two men stood on the porch. One was the brusque old man from the other day. Merlin.

  The other man was in his thirties, fresh and rugged looking, like he spent a lot of time outdoors. Sandy blond hair swept back from his square-jawed face to touch the collar of his brown leather jacket. Jeans, a gray T-shirt, and work boots completed his outfit. He wore a trimmed beard, and laugh lines marked the corners of his eyes. He stood straight and tall, and smiled at her. He had blue eyes.

  He looked like he should have been in a country music video, or starring in soaps, or modeling Harley-Davidsons. He couldn’t be—he just couldn’t be.

  Mab sat nearby, her tail brushing the floor. Evie opened the door wider. “Hello?”

  The younger man said, “Hello. I’ve come to see about a sword. Merlin here says it’s stuck in a rock round back.” He had an accent like a mild version of a Celtic brogue. “I thought we should ask before we went tromping round your property.”

  Evie leaned against the doorframe, her knees weak. She wondered if she should bow. She wondered what sort of vacuous expression she was giving him. He was looking back expectantly, like he was used to dealing with bewildered women.

  Mab took the opportunity to push around Evie and throw herself at the stranger, tail-wagging, bouncing in place. Arthur caught her before she could rear up and topple him over, as she seemed intent on doing. He kept her gently but firmly grounded.

  “Well—hello, there! Aren’t you a fine beast?” He scratched her ears with both hands, sliding down her back to thump her sides, and Mab whined ecstatically.

  “She likes you,” Evie said, her voice gone vague. Arthur beamed in reply.

  “Um, Miss Walker, if you don’t mind?” Merlin jerked his head to gesture around to the back of the house.

  “Yeah. Um. This way.” Shaking her head to dispel her foggy wonderment, she stepped off the porch. She was aware of the two men following her, Merlin trodding almost on her heels, and Arthur still playing with Mab, who bounded alongside like she’d found her soul mate.

  Arthur. If she’d seen him hanging around a construction site or a biker bar, she wouldn’t have given him a second glance. Until he smiled and looked at her with those eyes.

  They rounded the far corner of the house, and she stepped aside. “Here it is.”

  Merlin had seen it before, but still he stopped to gape.

  Arthur stepped past him, his face drawn with a sad, heartbroken look, like he was approaching the dead body of a long-lost friend. History shone through his eyes, memories, intense and desolate. He looked to be in his thirties, but he was older, much older, as if he had been reborn a hundred times and retained the memories of each of those lives.

  Evie wished her father were here to see this.

  He reached the stone and took hold of the sword’s grip. Squeezing, he took a deep breath and pulled. The sword came out as smoothly as if from a scabbard, with the barest slipping noise.

  The blade gleamed when he held it aloft; he turned it, studying it with a haunted gaze. Evie resisted an impulse to drop to her knees—Arthur, the true king, the rightful bearer of Excalibur stood before her.

  Arthur turned the sword so it pointed to the ground. He knelt with the point resting on earth, his hands laced together over the grip and cross guard. He
bowed his head low and his lips moved, undoubtedly in prayer.

  Evie’s heartbeat rattled, anxious that she was watching something private, that she had no business intruding. She and Merlin stood side by side.

  “How did you know to come here?” she said, her voice hoarse. “How did you find us?” Hopes Fort was halfway around the world from Britain.

  He nodded at the praying Arthur and said, “Faith.”

  “And why—why now?”

  “Because there is need.”

  “What need?”

  “At the end of one age, the shattering of the old era, someone has to stand by to pick up the pieces and build the new one.” He said this with the same straightforward tone, no matter how Evie gaped at him.

  The ground began to tremble. Mab whined and turned circles, then stopped to look across the prairie at nothing. The trembling increased in violence, shaking Evie to her bones. She swore she could hear the house’s foundations rattling.

  After living in Southern California, she knew what an earthquake felt like. She sat down before she fell, grabbed Mab, and hugged her. Already off balance, the dog toppled into her lap. Merlin stuck out his arms for balance. Arthur, still kneeling, held his sword ready and looked for an enemy.

  Then it ended.

  A temblor like this wasn’t particularly frightening—it might even have been as high as a 6 on the Richter scale. Except this was Colorado. Colorado had baby earthquakes, imperceptible, every decade or so. What was a magnitude-6 earthquake doing in Hopes Fort?

  She ran to the house, Mab loping alongside her. Merlin and Arthur followed. She dashed into the kitchen, vaguely aware that there could be aftershocks and she should stay outside. But she had to find out if her father was okay.

  The house phone was dead. The lines must have been down. She tried the light switch, and the electricity was gone as well. Hopes Fort was probably going to be a disaster area. No one around here knew what to do with a quake like that.

  In a moment of irrational panic, she remembered her laptop and the thousand words or so she’d produced that morning. Her heart sinking, she checked the living room next, dreading what she’d find on the screen.

  The battery had saved her. Her work was intact, and knowing full well she was luckier than she had any right to be, she saved the file and shut down the machine. Now to check on her father.

  Merlin and Arthur stood in the kitchen. The sword seemed to fill the room.

  She retrieved her mobile phone and dialed Johnny Brewster’s number.

  “We’re sorry, your call cannot be completed—”

  She clicked off the phone with a huff and started pacing.

  “What’s happening?” Arthur said.

  “Phone lines are down. Electricity’s out. I’m worried about my dad.” She wondered if she’d have to explain telephones and electricity to the ancient warrior, but he didn’t seem confused.

  “My lady, if my sword may be of any use to you, command me.”

  She felt dizzy, lurching with a moment of displacement. Despite the leather coat and blue jeans, he was a knight. He held his sword like he knew how to use it, his stance was ready. He had said “my lady” like he meant it. The late nights reading Tolkien and dreaming of kings, her thirteen-year-old’s daydreams, came rushing back.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I think what I really need to do is find my dad, to make sure he’s all right. I’m sure you all have . . . better things to do. Than hang around here, I mean.”

  Merlin crossed his arms. “Do you think it coincidence that such a tremor shook the earth at the very moment he—” He gestured significantly at Arthur. “—claimed his birthright? I believe our destiny lies here.”

  Evie considered, and for some reason thought of Hera on her doorstep. If she had to blame the earthquake on anyone, it would be her. “Yeah, actually, I think it is a coincidence. Sorry.” Merlin scowled. Evie found her car keys and headed for the door.

  Mab bounced in place beside her, bumping her nose against Evie’s hip, whining, and shoving all the way to the door. With her bulk, the wolfhound significantly impeded her progress. “Mab, get out of my way! Back off!”

  Mab dashed ahead and planted herself in front of the kitchen door. She wasn’t so impolite as to growl, but Evie thought she looked like she wanted to. Her ears were flat, her gaze threatening. Mab didn’t want her to leave.

  Gently, Arthur said, “Wouldn’t he come home, if something were wrong? Wouldn’t someone contact you? Perhaps you should wait.”

  What a sane and reasonable suggestion. She rubbed her face and slumped against the wall. Mab wagged her tail apologetically.

  “We could look for him, if you like.”

  “No, we can’t,” Merlin said. “Mr. Walker can take care of himself, I’m sure.”

  His face alight and eager, Arthur was almost bouncing. “It’s a scouting mission, Merlin. I won’t have a chance to do anything like this once the troubles start.”

  “We don’t know this town, we don’t know what’s out there—there may be more earthquakes. Besides, you have a destiny.”

  “And what am I supposed to do—camp out here until that destiny sneaks up on me and pounces? I’d rather be doing something.”

  Merlin glared at the warrior for all the world like a parent with a hyperactive child. He straightened, and said with utmost patience, “What does Miss Walker say?”

  Arthur turned that brilliant, boyish expression on her. She couldn’t help but smile back. She was beginning to understand what it meant to have a destiny sneak up on you and pounce.

  “I’d really appreciate it if you could find out if he’s okay.”

  Arthur lifted a brow and grinned at Merlin, as if saying, You see?

  Merlin grumbled under his breath for a moment. “A scouting mission, eh?”

  “A short one.”

  Exhaling a long-suffering breath, the old man said, “All right.”

  Evie swore Arthur did a little celebratory arm-jerk, like a teenager who’d gotten the car for the night.

  She found the belt and scabbard for Excalibur in the Storeroom. Arthur wouldn’t be parted from the sword, no matter how strange he’d look striding down Main Street with the weapon slung on his person. “I’ll tell them I’m in a play,” he said, as if he’d had to deal with the problem before.

  She saw them off from the front porch.

  “We’ll return as soon as we have news,” Arthur said. He bowed, a gracious gesture that made Evie’s heart flutter. Where was this guy when I was in high school and giddy?

  The earthquake was the signal to move.

  It quickly put the town in an uproar. People weren’t used to this sort of thing here. Once the phones cut out and the power lines went down, chaos took over. The Curandera had promised only that the main roads leading into town would be impassable. The rest worked nicely, however. No one could reach the town by any other method, either.

  Robin watched the park in front of Town Hall from an unobtrusive doorway.

  The police officer with Frank Walker dropped the old man off at the police station, to assist with the Red Cross. Frank complained, argued, and harangued the younger man, who had thought he was being sly about putting Frank in the least-strenuous job possible. Frank, it seemed, was doing his best to deny his illness. The officer—his name was Johnny—kept trying to tell Frank how much he was needed at the station. It turned out, when people started gathering at the station because the power was out and their phones were dead, Frank really was needed to help settle them down, while the uniformed officers patrolled the town to assess the damage.

  A line had formed in front of Frank, who stood on the dried-up lawn in front of the police station directing people to the Red Cross shelter, which had already been set up in a tent in the town park; they were distributing coffee and fielding calls on a satellite phone. He held a clipboard, where he wrote down specific problems: buildings that had collapsed or looked like they were going to, gas or water lines that might
have ruptured. Mostly he assured people, in a steady, confident voice, that everything was under control. Didn’t matter if they really were; he only had to tell people they were. The usual government statement.

  Robin cut to the front of the line.

  “I really need someone to help me,” Robin said, gripping Frank’s elbow.

  Frank tried to gently brush him away. “Sir, if you’ll just get in line with the others—”

  “I think my wife is in labor.” It was the most persuasive thing Robin could think to say.

  It worked. Frank’s eyes got wide. He gave the clipboard to the next person in line and put his hand on Robin’s back, urging him forward.

  Robin led him around the corner, down a side lane, to the back of the building, where the Wanderer’s rented sedan was waiting. The Wanderer stood at the open back door.

  “This way, right here!” Robin said when the old man seemed to lag. He pointed at the car. He didn’t keep up the act; he couldn’t help but grin. Frank suspected. Brow furrowed, he looked at Robin, the Wanderer, the car, and back to Robin, as if he knew who they were.

  Before he could bolt, the Wanderer said, “Mr. Walker, we really need you to get in.”

  His voice sent a chill down even Robin’s spine. Frank turned pale. Robin couldn’t exactly say what the Wanderer was or what power he wielded. Mostly it was his attitude, the implications behind his stonelike gaze, his unflappable manner. It was like the man had looked into hell and would be more than happy to tell you what he had seen there. And he would do so in that flat, emotionless tone of voice.

  He didn’t need to carry a weapon or make threats to get people to do what he wanted. Robin took Frank’s arm and guided him into the car, closing the door behind him.

  Robin got in on the other side. The Wanderer climbed into the driver’s seat and moved the car into the street.

  Evie tried calling Bruce on the cell phone and couldn’t get a signal. Hardly surprising and just as well. What could she say to him?

  Hey, Bruce, you won’t believe who just showed up on my doorstep.

  He’d only chew her out for not getting any pictures of the sword.