Ladislas had a leg injury, a twisted ankle sustained as he left the Frog Prince. Joseph was almost recovered from the craters and divots that had marked him a few minutes before. And two of the villagers, one of them a child, were dead, killed during the triplane's strafing run; another was hurt.
The villagers added wood to the fire raging in the fortress. The lake's last remnant of Castilian rule would never be rebuilt.
Doc's associates retreated to the Frog Prince dock to watch the structure burn down. Noriko and Welthy worked to repair the damage done the plane during the strafing run.
One of the prisoners talked freely when pressed. "We were set up in some wretched hole of a town," he said. "The old man called it Lady of the Birds."
"Ixquetzal," said Ish. "Territorial capital of the blood-drinking sons of Castilians."
"He rented a warehouse, had us set everything up in a chalk circle. Said when we got here, all we had to do was hold the fort. When the ceremony was done, he'd bring us back. He was supposed to bring us back."
Doc dragged the man off to the cargo hold, then returned to the dock. Alastair said, "Ixquetzal next, I assume. Duncan will be working up the strength to bring them back."
Doc shook his head. "It took a tremendous amount of energy for Duncan to send them here at all. To bring them back would probably have killed him. Powrie probably had a return arrangement; the rest were sacrificed. He'll have packed up and taken off already. We need to get back to Neckerdam. Noriko, how long on the repairs?"
"We could take off now, but I don't want to fly all the way home on three engines. By dawn, I think, for the port inboard engine."
"Dawn." Doc balled up his fists, pressed them to his eyes. "All right. Keep at them. We need to get Harris and Gaby to where we can protect them."
Harris, dressed once more in his grimworld jeans, sat with his back to one of the dock's wooden support poles. "Let me get something straight, Doc. Duncan has to kill us if he's going to forge a new link between the worlds. He can't do that while we're alive because we have the wrong whatchamacallit valences."
"Firbolg. Yes. You could go back to the grim world and he would not need to kill you. But Gaby he would still need to kill. Remember, her Firbolg Valence lights up their registers on either world."
"Right. So we have to wait around until he makes a move on us. We can set up the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marines around us, but it all boils down to when he decides to attack."
"Correct. Or until Caster's `umbilical cords' recover. Which could be months or years."
"So rather than wait, I think we need to force his hand."
"I'd considered that. The best way would be to begin the very ceremony he wants to initiate. Threaten to define the new links ourselves." He smiled apologetically at Gaby. "Of course, we'd have to send Harris home and kill you first."
"Let's not," she said.
"But even if we pretended to be planning it, Duncan has a few grimworlders of his own on the fair world. We got one tonight, but we'd have to capture the other two and send them home first."
Harris shook his head. "So let's take a different approach. Bring in more grimworlders of our own. Or make him think that we're about to, so he has to act right away to stop us. It's better than waiting around."
Doc considered that. "You're right, and I'm an idiot." He rose. "Ish, I need you to translate for me with the village leader. I have to apologize, make restitution to him somehow for the unhappiness I've brought to Itzamnál. Everyone, we leave when Noriko pronounces the engine ready."
By the time the sun rose they'd been in the air for half a bell.
Harris stared at the wooden ceiling above his bunk. Angus Powrie's beret was tucked away in the storage drawer beneath him. Noriko had been too numbed by events to think about it, but he knew that the royal family of Acadia would want to have it—tangible evidence of the death of their enemy. But it felt strange to take a trophy from a man he'd helped to kill.
A hand parted the curtain. It was Gaby, dressed in her yellow nightshirt. Her expression was grave.
"Hi," he said.
"I want to make a deal with you."
"Shoot."
"As soon as we get back to Neckerdam, you go home to New York."
"And?"
"And once everything is done here, I join you." She blinked. "We give it another try. Us."
He thought about it. "You want me to leave you behind? Why?"
"So you'll be safe. So you'll get away from all this craziness. It's doing something very bad to you, Harris. That whole thing with that athletic cup was just too weird. You have to go home."
He studied her face, the features that he held in so many corners of his memory. He wondered what she would have looked like in a bridal gown. "No."
"Yes, Harris. It's what I want you to do."
"Sorry."
"Why not?"
He stirred, restless. "Gaby, it's kind of hard to explain."
"Do it anyway."
"Okay. For years and years now, I've kind of defined myself by fighting. Harris Greene, Great Fighter. People would look at me and that's what they'd say. I really was, you know. So you want to know why it was I lost so much?"
"Why?"
"Because they expected it. They wanted it. I could see the other guy's eyes, and he wanted me to lose. The crowds wanted me to lose. It's taken me all this time to figure out that I was just giving them what they wanted. Maybe just so they'd like me better."
"What does this have to do with what I was talking about?"
"I'm not going back to New York just so you'll like me better. Turn my back on Doc and all the rest? Maybe cost him the little bit of an edge I could give him? What would that make me?" He paused to consider his next words. "Gaby, I've decided that I really love this place. I'm not going to let Duncan Blackletter wreck it. I'm not going to throw the one fight that ever mattered. And when it's done, I'm going to stay here."
"I'm not. I'm going home."
He closed his eyes. He felt one more little piece of his heart break away and go drifting into the void. "Funny. I've said this once tonight already."
"What's that?"
"I love you. And good-bye."
He waited for her to leave.
She didn't. He looked at her again.
She was smiling at him, the gentle smile she would save for him in the moments they were closest. He hadn't seen it in a long time. It made his chest ache.
She bent down to give him a kiss like warm silk. It sent an electric charge to his fingertips and toes. He took her head in his hands and sustained the kiss.
Gaby drew back, still smiling, then climbed into the bunk with him. She reached up to draw the curtains closed.
"Gaby—what the hell's going on?"
She brushed her cheek along his. "Do you remember my uncle Pete?"
"Another one of your dizzying non sequiturs. Pedro, right? The cop? Yeah. I met him when he came up from Mazatlán to visit you. He told funny stories about his job."
"My favorite uncle. When he was young, he went to the university. He was going to be a poet. I read some of his poems. They were wonderful."
Harris put his arms around her and pulled her close—gently, afraid that she might evaporate. No, she was real; he could feel the warmth of her through the nightshirt. He felt himself grow hard beneath his boxer shorts. He didn't adjust himself to conceal it from her. "Baby, I don't understand."
"They talked him out of it. His brothers and his father. They said it wasn't manly. Poetry, I mean. So he became a cop like the rest of them. Sits on his lawn furniture and drinks beer and watches the clouds go by, and wishes he were flying up there with them. When I met you, you were so much like him, always dreaming. You could always make me laugh."
"Leave our sex life out of it, okay?"
She chuckled and kissed him again. "The problem was, there was never a direction I could point at and say, `That's the way Harris is going. That's who he is.' You always just did whatever I want
ed. Whatever anybody wanted. I waited and waited for you to become you, and you never did. After a while you were part me, part Uncle Pete. There was no such person as Harris."
"So you dumped me because I was putty in your hands."
"Uh-huh. I don't want putty, Harris. I push all the time. How am I supposed to respect someone who doesn't push back? And now you do." She ran her hand through the hair on his chest.
"Gaby, what would you have done if I had taken you up on your deal just now?"
"I would have watched you go home and then cried a lot. Because I decided I wasn't going back. I'm staying here, too."
"You lied to me."
She smiled down at him. "Damned right I did. I reserve the right to do that. Now, why don't you shut up for a minute?" She tugged down the waistband of his shorts.
He arched to make that easier, pulled the shorts the rest of the way down, kicked them free. He ran his hand up the smooth curve of her leg, carrying the hem of her nightshirt up with it. She wore nothing beneath it. She helped him pull the garment off and discarded it to the side.
Skin to skin, for the first time in forever. She leaned down to brush her lips across his; he stroked her from the nape of her neck to the swell of her behind, luxuriating in the feel of her. She reached down to take a hold of him and moved down to guide him into her.
"Gaby, I don't want to spoil this—"
"So don't talk, dummy."
"— but we're lying in an open compartment."
"Oh, yeah." She smiled at him. "Harris, this is the fair world. If anybody's listening, they can stuff cotton in their ears, or cheer, or sing along if they want. I can take it if you can." She began to move atop him.
* * *
A few steps away, Alastair listened until he identified the noises faintly audible over the engine growl. He rolled over, pulling the pillow around his head. "Well, it's about time," he grumbled.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Gaby continued to work on her Gift. She was able to spend more time each day in Gabrielle's room without developing headaches. But each day she found she needed to be closer to the talk-box for her Gift to work. Finally, she found she had to keep her hands on it.
Yet even as the range of her Gift dwindled, she learned how to do something Gabrielle had long known—to force open the "eyes" of talk-boxes at specific addresses rather than just wait for voices to alert her to their presence. She could call direct to Doc's talk-box whether or not he was there, or to any other talk-box she'd already visited; she could explore, sensing unknown talk-boxes as eyes, and force them open. Her growing versatility pleased her.
That, and Harris. Things were finally working out. The recent change between them kept her happily distracted.
Doc put her in charge of the private grid of talk-box cameras set up throughout his headquarters—his version of a closed-circuit security camera network. With the turn of a tuning dial, she could change her talk-box viewpoint to throughout Doc's floors, including the basement levels, the exterior of the Monarch Building, even the distant Gwaeddan Air Field hangar.
And when she was within the Sidhe Foundation grid, working from Gabrielle's little room, she was able to flit from view to view with the speed of thought.
She also continued her research into Duncan Blackletter . . . and, for that matter, into Dr. Desmond MaqqRee, and the feud that had erupted between the two men more than thirty years before.
Doc wouldn't help; as always, he just shook his head and told her it wasn't relevant. "I've made him my responsibility. That's all you need worry about. Stop prying."
But she didn't. She pored through old newspapers from Novimagos and other nations. She consulted birth records, sometimes calling civic halls as far away as Cretanis. She sought homelords who had owned properties rented by either man.
She could find no birth record for Duncan Blackletter. That was hardly surprising; it was commonly believed that his name was a false one. But neither could she find a birth record for Doc. Though the fair world was not as crazy for paperwork as the grim world, she was already learning that it was unusual for someone to be given as important a task as building bridges for the throne of Cretanis without having a lengthy paper trail pointing to his family and education. She couldn't even find out where Dr. Desmond MaqqRee had received his degree.
Doc arranged for the painting of conjurer's circles throughout the four stories that served him as headquarters. By the time he was done, every room was decorated with four or five of the things, none quite touching another, arranged to occupy the maximum possible floor space. Harris spent days carefully stepping between freshly painted lines and symbols, then helped lay concealing rugs over the circles, brown wrapping paper over the ones in the hangar.
"Your cleanup bill is going to be amazing," he told Doc. "Even if they don't attack."
"Yes. But in the likely event Duncan uses another of his rockets to launch a conjurer's circle into our mist, this should spoil some of his plans." Doc sighed and rubbed his eyes. "Assuming, that is, that I find enough time to study, correct, and activate every one of these damned things."
"There's no need to curse, Doc."
A false gas-line scare engineered by Doc allowed him to evacuate the ten floors beneath his. The Sidhe Foundation provided the inconvenienced businesses with temporary accommodations in an unfinished skyscraper. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Galt Athelstane and a unit of his Novimagos Guard took possession of the topmost of the abandoned floors, the same floor from which the Changeling's men had fired their rocket many days before.
Caster accepted Doc's thanks and the offer of a boat trip back to Cretanis—accompanied by Foundation bodyguards. "I would be delighted to help you at any time," he said. "But next time, let's keep it to something I can solve over the talk-box, shall we?"
At the end of the third day, Doc announced, "We move to step two."
The room cost four pennies a day and was almost worth it. The floor sagged. So did the bed and exhausted-looking chair. Even the radiator was bowed in the middle. Fergus Bootblack, sitting on the bed, looked at the bottle of potato liquor in his hand and decided that it was the only thing with straight lines in the entire room. He took another drink. It even burned a straight line down his throat.
"I was surprised to learn—"
Fergus jerked in surprise, banging his head on the wall behind. He almost dropped the bottle.
Doc stood in front of him. Harris Greene closed the door to the hall and leaned back against it.
Doc waited for Fergus to regain his composure. He started over. "I was surprised to learn that you were living in a place like this."
Fergus stared at his visitors. They had to be here to shoot him, finally.
He said, "Can't afford anything better. No one will hire me because you fired me." He offered the bottle to Doc.
Doc shook his head. He sat in the chair—and sat farther down than he apparently expected to; his rear nearly met the floorboards. "No one will hire Fergus Bootblack, no. You could have left and changed your name. You didn't."
"I'm used to my name."
"And it seems to me that Blackletter would want you. You're good at what you do and have served him satisfactorily in the past. He'd pay you enough to live better than this."
Fergus carefully capped the bottle and set it aside. It wouldn't do to have something bad happen to it when he was shot. That would be unfair to a decent bottle of liquor. "His men offered."
"And you refused. Checked in here under your true name. A stupid thing to do if you've recently disappointed someone like Duncan Blackletter. Why did you do it?"
He mumbled something inaudible.
"Why, Fergus?"
"Because I'm sorry." Fergus covered his eyes. That way the sudden tears wouldn't show. His drunkenness and weakness revolted him. "I'm sorry. Enough? Will you go now? Or at least shoot me?"
"I could do that. Or I could give you a chance to make it up to me."
Fergus looked up without meaning to. Doc
's expression was calm, serious. Compromised, Fergus just wiped his eyes. "I don't understand."
"I want you to do something for me, Fergus. You might die doing it. But if you don't—well, you'll never work for me again, but I'll give you a letter of recommendation from the Foundation. Worth gold in any profession. You'd be able to keep your name, maybe make it worth something again."
Fergus licked dry lips. "What do you want me to do?"
"Go to Blackletter's people. Tell them you've reconsidered. Tell them I denied you the last pay I owed you, so you broke into my floors to take what you were owed. And you saw some things you're sure they'll want to know about. Things that have driven up your asking price." He considered. "Of course, they'll want you to prove yourself. Harris had some ideas about that."
It was the quietest bell of the night, the time when the milkmen begin their rounds, and the three men sitting in the car fidgeted in the third hour of their surveillance.
Then one came alert and pointed. "Here he is."
Fergus looked up. Alastair Kornbock walked the final steps to the stoop of his building. The man's step was brisk, his face merry. The bottle in his hand was still half-full.
He was to the top of the stairs and reaching for the front door handle when Fergus called his name.
He turned and saw Fergus and the other man as they emerged from the parked car. The driver remained in his seat and started the vehicle.
Alastair smiled drunkenly. "Grace, Fergus. Who is your friend?" Then his expression changed. "Wait, you're—"
"Do it," said the tall man.
Fergus gulped and brought up a short-barrelled revolver, aiming the iron sights at the center of Alastair's stomach.
Alastair dropped his bottle and reached under his coat. He had his pistol in his hand before the bottle shattered.
Fergus squeezed the trigger. The gun kicked. Alastair staggered back, slamming into the doorway, breaking glass. Redness appeared over his heart. He slid down to sit against the door. His expression was shocked, pleading.
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