by Ari Marmell
Uh, the second one, that Ielveith had given me, not the first which was full of holes, and possibly still full of police studying those holes.
I shoved the papers off the writing desk and pulled a sheaf of parchment from my coat. I’d picked this up from a local shop, same time I bought the camera. Basically our version of “photo stock,” the parchment was specially treated with herbs and reagents that… Well, here.
I spread the parchment out, positioned the camera right next to it, and whispered to it for a minute. And the camera went to work.
Atop our cameras, where yours hold those big honking flashbulbs, sits a circular frame. At my whispering, the cobweb that filled that frame began to tremble and sway, and a few dozen itsy-bitsy spiders poured out as though it was a faucet. They passed over the outer casing, where their tiny minds were temporarily imprinted with the images stored in the crystal ball that was the camera’s heart. Then, their smaller-than-a-pinprick legs tracing detail finer than anything your film can develop, they scurried across the waiting parchment.
Those herbs and reagents? Blended specifically to react with the natural substances of the spiders. The little creatures scuttled, back and forth, round and round, and an impossibly meticulous picture began to form. From the smallest shape to the most minute differences in texture or contrast, the blacks and whites and greys revealed everything.
The first picture done, the spiders cleared the parchment just long enough for me to lift it up, exposing the next sheet, and they were at it again. And again.
And again.
In just a couple hours, they were done. And I was as ready as I ever would be.
* * *
“Oh, it’s quite all right. By all means, I’ll be delighted to make time for Mr. Oberon.” The voice from the office door, again cutting through the hubbub and clamor of the crowded chamber, was not merely resonant, but heavy with gloating. It was damn near enough to knock a guy from his feet.
It was also very obviously an enormous relief to the poor clerk, who for some reason had gone pale and begun to whimper as I sauntered through the door and headed, grinning, for his desk. Now, having been saved the trouble of further tormenting the poor sap, I made for the judge’s private office, ignoring the puzzled stares from everyone who knew how packed his schedule was, and the angry glowers from those who had legitimate appointments with him.
“I gotta say, judge, this is a nice change from last time. This mean we can be friends after all?”
Ylleuwyn planted himself in his chair and magnanimously gestured for me to sit. I magnanimously sat.
“We,” he said, and I could see him relishing every word like a fine steak, “are nothing of the sort, Mick. I just wanted to tell you, to your face, that you’re an idiot.”
“Ah. Couldn’t trust something that sensitive to a messenger, I imagine?”
“Did you honestly believe that offering me political leverage on a rival would change anything? Even if I had the information you wanted, the thought that I could be so easily bought—”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re mortally offended, and would never lower yourself to so much as hold a door for me, and blah, blah, blah. You want me to get you a phonograph? You could make a record and hear yourself talking all the time.”
It’s probably petty of me to say that I was tickled pink when his expression fell, when he realized I wasn’t gonna make his gloating any fun. Petty, but true.
“I think it’s time that you departed, Mick. I—”
“You’d better take a look at this before I go, Ylleuwyn.”
He peered suspiciously at the envelope I’d pulled from my coat and tossed onto his desk. “It won’t bite you,” I said.
He grudgingly tore it open at one end—and then his face went tight as a drum as he started to flip through the sheaf of parchment. “What the hell is this?!”
“It looks, Your Honor, like you accepting a gift. A list of names and all manner of personal secrets and skeletons—that is, leverage—of a dozen members of Alderman Rycine’s staff. From a goblin.” I tsk-tsked at him. “Conspiring with the Unseelie against one of your own? This is not gonna do your position in the Court any good at all when it gets out, judge.”
You wouldn’t think that a guy could flush and go pale at the same time, would you? The contrast painted targets on his cheeks.
“You can’t begin to make out what I’m being handed in these pictures!”
“Not these, no. But you know as well as I do that the spiders capture that kinda detail. You just gotta have ’em sketch the picture big enough to see it. And I promise you, the crystal ball with those images is nice and safe.”
“These can be faked!”
I’m pretty sure my eyebrow shot up into my hairline. “Yeah, but it ain’t easy. And there’s a lot more magics that can verify ’em. Your desperation’s starting to show, Your Honor.”
Yeah, it really was. I saw his eyes flicker down to something behind his desk and then over to the right—trying hard not to move toward the plaque on the wall behind him.
“You could pull a gat or a sword,” I said. “I dunno that I’d call it a good idea, though.”
“Nobody in this building would doubt my word if I told them you attacked me, and I was merely defending myself.”
“Oh, everyone would doubt it; they just wouldn’t say anything. More to the point, it wouldn’t make your problem go away. Anything happens to me, the pictures go out.”
“You—You…!”
“I hope you’re more eloquent than this in Court, Ylleuwyn.”
“You dirty, scum-sucking bastard! You’ve whored yourself out to the Unfit! You’re worse than they are! You…”
I let him sputter and rant for a minute or two, and then reached over and tapped the nearest picture on the desk. He jumped, then quieted down, glaring promises of painful murder into my soul.
I wondered if he’d feel better knowing just how much I hated being where I was. Owing the Unseelie isn’t too different from owing the devil, except it’s even less predictable. And the fact that Queen Mob had been willing to throw away leverage—even against a player as relatively minor as Alderman Rycine—was scary enough to make a crocodile sweat. She said they had no use for it, that they had better things to hold over Rycine if necessary, but I didn’t quite buy it.
If it was a load of bunk, it meant that having me in her debt was more important to Boss Eudeagh than what she had on a noble, however minor, of the Chicago Seelie. And that just made her plans for me, whatever they were, look even more like the headlamp of an oncoming locomotive, and me tied to the tracks.
But again, it was done, and no amount of fretting over it would change anything. (Which wouldn’t stop me from fretting, of course.)
“So… The Ottati changeling?” I pressed.
Ylleuwyn’s glare sharpened. “I told you, I have no idea who—”
I tapped the picture again. “Do not.” Tap. “Waste.” Tap. “My time.” Tap-tap. “I’m going to ask once more. And you’re going to give me some useful information.”
“I—”
“And if you tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about, or otherwise lie to me, or make any attempt to deflect the question, I’m leaving, and I’m taking at least the next hundred years of your political career and ambitions with me.
“Now… What do you know about the Ottati changeling?”
Ylleuwyn was about to swallow his beard. “You son of a bitch, you can’t do this!” Then, as I started to rise from the chair, “All right! All right, damn you.”
He sighed, staring at his hands, as I sat back down. Then, “I do recall the Ottati girl, yes. I didn’t take her myself, or arrange for it, but I was aware of it.
“You see,” he continued, now looking up once more, “the child wasn’t taken by whim or by chance. It was a pact.”
A-hah! “So someone was targeting the Ottati family!”
He nodded. “I have no idea why, but yes. Someone—a mortal—very specific
ally wanted that child to be taken. Not slain, not kidnapped by a human, but claimed by the Fae and replaced with a changeling.”
“Someone with connections here?” I asked.
“I doubt it. We were contacted through a fairly poorly enacted rite. I imagine the individual had little if any experience with magic of any sort.”
I pressed a knuckle to my trap in thought. “So some Joe or Jane comes outta nowhere and decides, ‘I want this kid gone. Hey, I know! I’ll just ring up the Seelie Court, and have them handle it!’ That about right?”
“As awkward as you make it sound, that is, indeed, what happened.”
“Huh.”
“Several of us sensed the ritual’s calling, and discussed the mortal’s petition at some length. Eventually, we decided that there was no reason not to grant the request—as you pointed out, the Unfit may produce more changelings than we, but we must keep up our population of servants—and the deed was done.”
Holy hell, but I wanted to pound the son of a bitch in the mug until he was inhaling teeth! The deed was done. That casually, he and his cohorts had torn a child away from her family—and for no better reason than because someone had asked, and because hey, why not?
“All right,” I growled through jaws clenched tight enough to bend bronze. “So who was it? Who orchestrated the pact?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Ylleuwyn…”
“I can’t! Secrecy was part of the pact; I’m bound by oath. I literally cannot give you the names of anyone involved!”
Okay, that last part was horsefeathers. That a human would swear the Fae to secrecy about his or her name, that I could buy. But that the pact would include anonymity for the other Fae involved? I doubt it. More probably, Ylleuwyn was worried about the political repercussions of dragging any other nobles into this—maybe even more’n he was worried about my photos.
But that was okay by me. Much as I might want to know who was involved, all I needed was…
“So where’s the girl? Who ‘owns’ her?”
“Mick—”
“Don’t tell me if they were involved in the original pact, or if they traded for her later on. Don’t tell me how they were involved, if they were. Just tell me who’s got her now.”
“I don’t—”
“Now, goddamn it!” I don’t even remember moving, just that I was suddenly standing, leaning over the desk, ready to snap it—or maybe him—in half. “If the next fucking word out of your mouth isn’t either a name or a place, those photos are going everywhere. Where’s the girl?”
A writhing, dying worm of a vein throbbed beneath his forehead, and his fingernails gouged furrows in the wood—but I had him, and no matter how foul and bilious his pride tasted, all he could do was choke it down.
“Goswythe. You contemptible jackal, we gifted her to Goswythe.”
I knew the name, though only second- or third-hand. Goswythe was a hanger-on and sycophant of the Court, a gink with aspirations but no title. He just happened to be more useful and more favored’n most.
He was also a phouka, which made him—well, not necessarily dangerous, but damn irritating. Most of his kind ain’t part of either Court; they’re what used to be called solitary Fae. They spend most of their time in the form of a horse, a dog, a rabbit, or whatnot, and think it’s just a hoot to trick wanderers into getting lost, or—in horse form—into taking a wild and terrifying ride. Real comedians, these guys.
But a few, a few get ambitious. They learn to take on human shapes, as well as animal, and try to make themselves useful enough to earn a position or a simple title among the Seelie. They’re driven, they’re obnoxious, and they lie worse’n Pinocchio on a first date.
“All right. And where do I find Goswythe?”
For the first time in long minutes, Ylleuwyn smiled, a hateful, malignant leer of crooked teeth. “Last I heard, he’d left Elphame for the mortal world.
“Where,” he continued spitefully as my heart tried to squeeze itself into my left big toe and the room seemed to close in around me, “he could look like absolutely anyone. Best of luck to you in your search, you self-righteous bastard.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
It was just as windy, but not as wet as Seelie territory or as cold as Unseelie, when I stormed across the streets and sidewalks of Chicago—your Chicago—a couple days later. My dogs were slapping the concrete hard enough to hurt through my shoes, and people were hustling to clear my way. I’m pretty sure, at one point, I actually stared down a traffic signal.
I was heading down Halstead, away from the more upmarket blocks, gunning for someone who really, really didn’t want me to find him. I’d already called on his regular hangouts (for the second time in a little more’n a week) and with each joint he wasn’t in, I just got more steamed. If he wasn’t here, either, if I had to get back on the goddamn L one more time to find him, there were gonna be bruises.
Well, more bruises. From the lowdown I’d picked up at his last haunt, he’d already gotten the tar beat outta him once today.
Good.
It got a little cooler as I moved farther from downtown, farther away from the windows of the steel towers bouncing sunlight down onto the little people scurrying below, and the breeze was brisk enough that I wasn’t getting too many snootfuls of car exhaust off the streets. Woulda been a nice walk, under other circumstances.
I knew I was getting close long before I spotted the “Soup, Coffee, and Doughnuts FREE for the Unemployed” sign. I knew ’cause I’d started passing up the people waiting some streets back. The line stretched for block after block, a shifting serpent of despair; hundreds and hundreds of people, wearing faded clothes and faded dreams, waiting dully for the Depression to end—or at least for the first hot meal they’d had in days. Not even those breezes could do a blessed thing about the sour reek that hovered overhead.
I shoved through them as I approached the door, ignoring every curse and every glower, wrinkling my nose against the smell, and made myself not care. Maybe you think that makes me hard—hell, maybe it does—but there were just too many of them. I couldn’t carry enough sympathy to go around, not and leave room inside me for anything else. Fae or mortal, nobody could.
It was easier today; hot under the collar as I was, I’m not sure I’d have given much of a hoot about anything. After everything I’d been through and discovered in Elphame, not to mention what it meant about some of the people I’d talked with back here, I was mad enough to spit iron. (Plus, Pete’d been over an hour late meeting me, yesterday morning. Wound up being nothing big—he’d just scampered farther under last night’s moon than he’d realized, and took longer getting back—but it’d just been one more thing for me to fret over.)
I finally pushed through the lines, around one unshaven, particularly smelly bird in a ragged coat and a floppy newsboy cap, and found myself inside.
It was pretty nice, far as soup kitchens go; not as upscale as the ones Al had built during his year of so-called philanthropy before he was convicted, but following suit all the same. The chefs and servers behind the counter were dressed in cleaner whites than I’d seen at Thompson’s Diner, and the soups and coffees smelled pretty appetizing. (Well, not disgusting, which for me and food means about the same thing.)
My blinkers adjusted to the shade a lot quicker’n yours would, and I was already casting around from row to row of long tables, hunting my mark, when a fella came toward me from around the corner. I saw him nodding and talking to a few folks on his way, volunteers and customers both, and saw that some of them were pointing my way. Guess they didn’t take too well to me shoving through ’em the way I had.
Tough.
“Hold on, there, mister.” He was a tall guy, a little swarthy, with his sleeves rolled up and his shirt flattened like he’d been wearing an apron. “I sympathize, but we got people been waiting here for hours. You can’t just barge in this—”
“And you are?” I interrupted.
“Me? Timmy
Pinetti. I run this joint.”
“Well, Mr. Pinetti, I ain’t here for your soup.” I flashed him my PI ticket. Not as good a door opener as a copper’s tin, but usually pretty effective. “I’m looking for someone.”
“Huh. I’m sorry, detective…” He paused, then went on when I didn’t bother filling in the blank. “But these people come to me ’cause they’ve got nowhere else to go. I’m not gonna let you hassle anyone here. You’ll just have to find your man some other time.”
For the first time, I stopped scoping the place long enough to face him. “Look, bo, I can appreciate that. But the gink I’m looking for, he ain’t one of your customers—not legitimately, anyway. Franky Donovan. You might know him as Four-Leaf Franky. He’s a cheap grifter, taking whoever he can for whatever they got. If he’s here—and I’m told he’s here often—it’s ’cause he got beat up and robbed, probably by someone he owed. He’s just taking advantage of you rather’n spend an honest buck.”
At this point, I was getting some curious (and some nasty) glowers from the surrounding patrons, and Pinetti didn’t look too happy at what he was hearing. I’ll give him this, he took a minute to think on it before he shook his head. “I’m sorry, detective,” he said again, “but I only got your word on that. If I start—”
“Blond hair, glasses, suit you wouldn’t use to wash a nice car.”
I could see the guy starting to lose his temper—tight jaw, clenching fists, all of it—and I can’t say as I could blame him. “If I start making exceptions—”
“Take me to him. Now.”
I hit him with everything I had, every bit of will I’d started gathering since I first recognized he was gonna be a problem, backed by the fury and impatience that’d been pooling in my mind for days. I punched into his thoughts, smacking aside his reluctance, dragging to the fore his anger at being used and his worry about further trouble in his joint. It was, without resorting to my wand, about the hardest I could hit in your world.