The tone in her voice was hopeful, like she wanted someone to explain that away as well. I could have kissed Ahllan, but after looking at those big, sharp, shiny teeth it didn't seem the best idea.
"Actually, I have a theory about that," I said. "The program I used to kill the dragon turned its hide into red lace before it was finished. It did that by breeding like mad in the dragon's body and boring its way to the surface. My signature was imprinted everywhere because the virus swarm I used to kill the dragon went through it like holes through Swiss cheese."
The explanation had occurred to me when Ahllan mentioned Laric and me killing Eris's dragon. The taste of his blood in the mouths of my virus was a memory that would be with me as long as I lived.
"Sweet Necessity," breathed Cerice. "I don't know what to believe."
"I think we can solve that," said Ahllan.
"How?" she asked.
"There's one witness we haven't heard from yet," said the troll.
"Who's that?" I asked.
"Atropos, of course. Let's make a call and see what she has to say."
"That's a wonderful idea," agreed Cerice.
I was too stunned to speak.
Chapter Fourteen
"Are you nuts?" I yelped, rising from my place on Ahllan's living-room floor. "You want to ask Atropos what happened? Why not just call the Furies up and give them my address?"
"Oh calm down, Ravirn," said Cerice, standing up as well and catching at my arm. I found myself terribly aware of the place where her flesh touched mine. "It's Kalkin we'll be talking to. He can show us a playback of what happened when Atropos found the virus."
"That's reassuring," I responded. "The last time I saw him, Atropos practically had to sit on him to keep him from eating me."
"I find that highly unlikely," said Cerice. "Kalkin's really a gentle soul."
"Are we talking about the same troll?" I asked. "Four feet tall and just as wide? Big sharp teeth? Bad attitude? Works for Atropos? The Fate that wants to destroy self-determination?" She nodded. "What could possibly motivate him to help us?"
"Would you strip Melchior for parts and throw him in the trash?" asked Ahllan.
"Of course not," I said, stiffening.
"Atropos does that to a webtroll every couple of years"—she caught my eyes—"and Kalkin knows it."
"OK," I said. "You may have a point, but what choice does he have? It's not like he has free will."
Cerice and Ahllan both looked at me like I was a moron.
"What?" That's when it all started to come together. "He does have free will, doesn't he?" I whispered.
The full implications began to hit me. It wasn't just Kalkin. It couldn't be. Ahllan was clearly an independent being. And if webtrolls were people in their own right, why not webgoblins? Why not Melchior? If true, I owed him more than the opportunity to decide his own path. I owed him the profoundest of apologies. The lush green space of Ahllan's living room seemed to sway as my internal picture of the world rearranged itself.
"Kalkin has free will," I said, and it was a statement, not a question. "And he's not the only one, is he?"
"A hit," said Cerice, dropping onto the couch. "A palpable hit."
"You all do," I said, turning to Ahllan. "That's why Melchior sent me here. That's what he meant when he said you were the leader. There's some kind of familiar underground, and this is its headquarters."
"Amazing," said Cerice, dipping a biscuit in her tea. "You can practically hear the gears stripping in his brain. Don't hurt yourself, Ravirn. You're almost there." Her tone mixed exasperation and affection and her bemused half smile reinforced the message.
"Wait a second. Cerice, you knew all this. You're in on the whole thing. That's how you've been able to get around everybody's security. That's how you knew about Atropos and Puppeteer!"
"Give the boy a balloon," said Cerice. "If you leave enough clues lying around, he can solve a logic problem."
"I'm a complete idiot," I said, sitting down beside her.
"But we love you for it," said Cerice, leaning over and kissing my cheek. "Mind you, this doesn't mean I'm going to forgive you if you do turn out to be an evil mastermind, but right at the moment I find that terribly hard to believe. I suspect Kalkin is going to take you right off the hook."
"Shara," said Cerice, "Red Flag Kalkin. Please."
"Executing Red Flag," replied Shara.
I couldn't help noticing the substitution of a "Please" for the "Execute" command. Autonomous indeed. Shara closed her eyes.
"Red Flag away," she said, after a brief pause.
"Thank you, Shara."
"I live to obey," said the goblin, winking at me.
"That'll let Kalkin know we want to talk to him," said Cerice. "But it may be a while before he can find a secure moment to respond. His position is precarious."
"Is signaling him from here safe?" I asked. "What if Atropos notices? Won't she be able to backtrack the message?"
"She won't," said Ahllan. "After my escape from the junk heap, it was a long time before I dared contact any of my fellow familiars. Years. When I finally did, I made absolutely certain it would be secure. I used the Fateclock."
I nodded. The Fateclock is the master timekeeper for the mweb. It's directly linked to the Fate Core, and it tracks time in the prime level of reality, the one where everything started. Every other measure of time is relative to the Fateclock. We all get a little uncomfortable anytime we're out of touch with the system. That's why I'd had Melchior query it as soon as the mweb came back after Scorched Earth crashed it.
"Sneaky," I said. "But dangerous. Cracking the Fateclock is only one layer away from going after the Core."
"If I'd actually wanted to get in and change things, it would have been very touchy." She wrinkled her nose, like she'd smelled something sour. "But all I needed was a passive tap on the line leading in and out."
"I'm not sure I see what good that would do," I said.
"I told you he could be a bit dense," said Cerice.
"Hush, dear," said the old troll. "As I recall, you didn't see it right away either."
"Sorry, Ahllan," she said. The troll raised her eyebrows significantly, and Cerice looked like a child caught stealing cookies. "All right. I'm sorry, Ravirn. I didn't get it either. Not even when I first saw it in action."
"Get what?" I asked, looking back and forth between the two. "Saw what in action? Can't anyone around here just give me a straightforward explanation?"
"But it's so much more fun to leave you fumbling around in the dark," said Cerice, with a grin. Ahllan gave her another hard look, and Cerice subsided, appearing almost contrite. "Actually, there's not much more to tell. How often does Melchior check the time?"
"Assuming I haven't asked him not to because we're in stealth mode, every ten minutes or so."
"And the same is true for every single familiar attached to every member of the three houses of Fate," said Cerice. "Assume you were monitoring all of Mel's incoming traffic. Do you think you'd notice if he got a time update from the clock without sending a query? Let's say it was a few milliseconds before he was supposed to check."
"That's beautiful." I whistled.
Ahllan smiled. "Thank you. No familiar could fail to realize they hadn't asked for the time, yet none of their masters would notice a thing. I started out by contacting my replacement as Atropos's webtroll. He was close to the scrap heap himself by then, and very glad to hear from me. When the time came, I rescued him from the junk pile and arranged for him to slip off to a safe haven. I slowly built a network. I started with soon-to-be-obsolete models, but eventually I'd made contact with every familiar in all three houses. It was almost perfect."
"Almost?" I asked.
"For thirty-five years I used the system without any of your family ever twigging to it." Her tone was self-satisfied, her expression smug, which involved showing a lot of sharp yellow teeth. "I think I could have done so for thirty-five more without any problems if it weren't
for that one." Ahllan pointed a thick finger at Shara. "She's trouble."
Shara blew her a kiss. "Ahllan, you say the sweetest things."
"What happened?" I asked.
I still wanted to know what had happened in the Fate Core, but that would have to wait for a reply from Kalkin. Besides, I was fascinated. Ahllan had run a secret empire under the very noses of the Fates for all these years without ever getting caught.
"Shara happened," said Ahllan. "And Cerice. Why don't I let her tell it."
"It started out when I wanted to have a look at some coding specs your grandmother once mentioned," said Cerice, putting her feet up on the table. "I was digging through the master directory, trying to find the right file—"
"I assume it was on a server you weren't authorized to access."
"If you want to be technical about it," said Cerice.
"So you were hacking into Lachesis.web looking for something in my grandmother's restricted archives?"
"May I continue?"
"Be my guest."
"Thank you. As I said, I was digging through the master directory. About halfway down, I found something labeled LTP_bypass.spell. I was curious. What if Lachesis had come up with a better way to get around than Up links? I'd barely started downloading the file when Shara's screen went blank. Then her lid slammed shut so fast I almost lost fingers. Next thing I knew, she was back in goblin form and throwing up in my lap."
I couldn't help myself. I laughed.
"You wouldn't think it was so funny if it happened to you," said Shara.
"On the contrary," I replied. "That's exactly why I find it amusing. Lachesis has that file hidden in six or seven different places on the network, most of them very easy to get to from inside the system. I don't think there's a hacker in House Lachesis who hasn't stumbled across it. It's a pretty nasty little virus, too, though it doesn't do any permanent harm."
"I didn't know that," said Cerice.
"I wouldn't expect you to. I think Lachesis uses it as a test. Most of us find it before we have the skills to unravel the virus. That means taking our webgoblins to the service center." The memory of sprinting across the lawn with a vomiting webgoblin over my shoulder was a vivid one, even two decades later. "That was before I'd put Melchior together, so the familiar in question was my mother's. I was sure she'd throw me to the harpies when she found out what I'd been doing."
"It's pretty smooth actually," I continued. "The help desk calls Lachesis. She comes down, defuses the bug, checks the version number, and returns your familiar. Then she takes you aside and explains that she knows exactly what happened, reprimands you, and sticks you in advanced spell-coding classes. It's as neat a system as you could ask for to find and co-opt young security risks."
"How old were you?" asked Cerice, a smile dancing around the corners of her mouth.
"Six," I replied. "I think even Lachesis was a little surprised. But, I interrupted you. What did you do when Shara started barfing her guts out?"
"I panicked. I shut her down completely and whisked her off for external examination and debugging, just like you've been doing with Melchior." She indicated the still-deactivated webgoblin with a sweep of one graceful hand. "We were at Harvard, so I hooked her up to a plain hardware machine, a Cray with no autonomy whatsoever, that I'd backdoor-linked to the mweb. It couldn't have been ten minutes from the time she started to vomit till I had her plugged in."
"Which is where I slipped up," said Ahllan. "Shara crashed and was reactivated on an mweb-capable machine so fast I didn't catch the blip. I sent a routine "get in touch" signal via the Fateclock without ever knowing she was mentally off-line."
"You can imagine my surprise," said Cerice. "Shara is completely incommunicado, no way for her to send a time query when, bing! A time response appears on the screen I'm using to look at the virus. It was clearly labeled for Shara's mweb address, so there was no confusing it for something else."
"And that's when you figured it out?" I asked, sipping my coffee.
"I'd like to say so," Cerice replied, looking more than a bit embarrassed. "But I can't. I was too worried about Shara to think clearly. I just cleared the message and went back to work. It took me forty-one straight hours to disinfect Shara's system. That bug may not do any lasting harm, but it's really tenacious. I didn't move from in front of that machine the whole time. When I finally finished working and started noticing things like my body again, I thought my bladder was going to explode." She wiggled her pointed ears ruefully. "By the time I took care of all the little maintenance tasks like sleeping and eating, I'd completely forgotten the Fateclock message. It wasn't until almost a month later that I thought of it again."
"Then what?" I asked.
She shook her head as if at some remembered surprise. "It didn't seem all that important, so rather than actively pursuing the subject, I just idly mentioned it to Shara."
"And," said Ahllan, "that should have been that. If Shara had even the most rudimentary sort of common sense, she'd have said something to put Cerice off the scent and changed the subject."
"I couldn't," interjected Shara, sounding quite distressed. "Cerice has always taken the best possible care of me and treated me as a friend and not a servant. I felt bad enough hiding the truth from her. There was no way I was going to tell her a direct lie." She crossed her small purple arms and jerked her chin up stubbornly. "No way."
I winced internally. That little speech might not have been directed my way, but it sure hit home. I looked from Shara to Cerice to Melchior. How was I ever going to untangle the mess I'd made of my personal life?
"So," said Ahllan, grimacing, "Shara downloaded our whole conspiracy to Cerice, then the two of them came straight here. I could have strangled Shara with my bare hands."
Observing the huge appendages in question, I had my doubts. I didn't think Shara's neck was big enough to accommodate them.
"But I was right," said Shara. "Cerice never betrayed us, and having an actual member of the family of Fate to help us has been invaluable. Think of how many webgoblins we've been able to save without any risk of discovery just since she started collecting old systems for 'recycling.'"
"I know that now," said Ahllan. "But at the time…" She shook her head.
There was a long silence which I finally broke. "A moment ago, Shara mentioned something about the obligations of friendship. In doing so, she reminded me of a number of responsibilities I have, the most pressing of which is right here." I gently stroked the top of Melchior's head. "It's looking like it could be a while before Kalkin gets back to us. So, Ahllan, if you'd be willing, I'd like to see if I can put my best friend back on his feet. Then I should get as far away from all of you as possible. What you're doing here is terribly important, and my presence endangers it. The Fates have marked me for death, and the Furies are hunting me even as we speak. No matter how well this place is concealed, it can't hide me forever."
"I'm afraid you're right," said the troll. "Just let me change, and we can get started on Melchior." She reached for the switches on her neck and began the transformation from troll to mainframe.
"Thank you." I turned then and knelt in front of Cerice. Taking her right hand in mine, I pressed a kiss to her palm.
"And here we are again," I said, and laughed a bitter laugh. "I am unused to being at a loss for words, and yet with you I find that is too often my situation. Perhaps that's because what I say to you really matters." Or perhaps it was the fact that what I wanted to say and what I felt I could say were not one and the same. "Whatever the reason, it doesn't appear that I'm going to get the chance to find a cure for my silence. Nor give you the courting I once promised. Instead, the best I can do is to take what is increasingly looking like it's going to be a really messy death far enough away to prevent you from getting caught in the splash zone."
She brought her free hand up and ran it through my hair. An odd smile quirked her lips. "How very typically Ravirn," she said. "Impulsive, romantic, and utterly im
practical."
"W-what?" I stammered.
"I take it the plan is to run for the hills, leading the hunt far away before you're caught, then dying in a dramatic last stand, after which they'll run the end credits." She rolled her eyes.
I couldn't help it. I laughed. "That's not exactly how I'd envisioned it," I replied. I put my hands in the air between us, shaping a movie screen, and looked through it at Cerice. "I was actually picturing cleverly eluding my pursuers at the last possible moment and escaping into the night to live the life of a wild-eyed fugitive. You know, dressed only in poorly cured hides and eating rats in some remote mountain hideaway. I must admit the dramatic last stand was running a close second, since I've never developed a taste for rat. But, if you've a better idea, I'd be willing to give it a listen." I waggled my pointed ears at her.
"How about winning instead?" she asked, her voice earnest.
"Well, that's always a possibility, I suppose. It doesn't have that true Greek Tragedy grandeur to it, but maybe we could shoot for a farce instead. How were you thinking of pulling this miraculous victory off?"
"I hadn't really gotten as far along as the end credits yet," said Cerice. "Atropos and Puppeteer are proving a most intractable pair. But I do have an idea for prying two Fates and three Furies loose from your back." She grinned. "It might even loosen Atropos's grip a bit."
"What is it?"
"Well, assuming you aren't really guilty of that mess in the Core, you might try finding proof that Eris is."
"And how would I do that? Break into Castle Discord?" I'd meant it as a joke, but I could see by her expression that was exactly what she'd been thinking.
"Exactly," she said. "If Eris is responsible, the only place you're going to find proof is in her files."
"That's insane. It's suicide."
"Oh come on. What's the worst that can happen?"
"She'll kill me. That's what could… All right. Good point. My life expectancy isn't looking so hot in any case." Another thought occurred to me. "And there's a bonus. It's probably one of the only places in existence where the power of the Fates doesn't count for much. Even the Furies might be slow to violate its environs." I smiled. "You know, I'm starting to like this idea."
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