by Eileen Wilks
Rule looked up from the folder. He was on the second page, she noted. “A company came up with a polymer that showed promise initially, but they can’t make it work longer than…what was it, thirty minutes?”
“Thirty max,” Cullen agreed. “Theory suggests that no substance can shield well against raw magic for long because matter is, by definition, not magically inert.”
Lily’s eyebrows went up. “By definition? No, wait—don’t explain that.” Once Cullen got going on theory it was hard to shut him up.
His grin flashed. “I’ll spare you. Mind, not everyone agrees with that theory, but most do, which is why most everyone is looking to combine some type of natural shielding with shaped magic. Charms, in other words. I won’t go into all the reasons that’s so hard to do, but one big problem is that tech isn’t very useful if it lacks input and output. You can build an underground bunker and shield the hell out of it and be pretty sure the computer inside is protected, but as soon as you hook that computer up to something else—even if it’s a wireless connection—you’ve breached the shield.”
“But you’re not going to go into that.” Her hand moved automatically, jotting down notes that would help her remember later: even wireless = shield breach.
“Right. Because the real drawback to creating a shield isn’t the difficulty, though that’s huge. It’s that even if you succeed, all you’ve done is deflect the magic. Say you’re Delta Airlines and the shielding on your big 747 deflected the hell out of a magic surge, but that deflected power hit the cell tower you were flying over and now the phone company’s suing you. Or maybe it hit a small plane that couldn’t afford fancy shielding, and that plane crashed.” He shook his head. “Shields are not the answer.”
“You found another answer.” Shields = deflected magic = collateral damage.
“Damn straight. Based on you and dragons.”
Her forehead wrinkled. Dragons were magical sponges. So was she, to a much lesser degree. “You want to soak up the magic instead of deflecting it?”
“Soak it up and store it…that’s the way to go. We do know something about storing magic. Not as much as the sidhe, but something. Enough to get me started, but I wasn’t making much headway until I started playing around with truth charms. You know that Arjenie burns them out?”
“That’s what you said, yeah. Something about her Gift overloads them.” Benedict’s new Chosen had a rare Gift, a variant of the sidhe ability to cast illusions that let her go undetected. It wasn’t true invisibility. It was better, because it also baffled hearing, scent, and most wards.
“I was curious about that, and so was she, so we experimented a bit. We figured it out, too. Her Gift is essentially the ability to lie to the mind. Even when she isn’t actively lying, the kind of magic she uses overloads any truth charm touching her.”
“That makes sense.” Arj. magic mental lie—overloads trth charms, her pen noted. She snuck a glance at Rule. He was on the last page, but she wasn’t sure he was reading it. He seemed to be off in some private world, staring at the words without seeing them.
“But the cool part is what that meant. It meant the charms were soaking up some of her magic. They had to be, or they wouldn’t burn out. Only a teensy trace, sure, but when I looked into it, I found that truth charms sample a trace of whatever magic is around—including raw magic.”
Trth charms sampl magic. “No one knew this?”
He shrugged. “No reason to. They’re designed to work on nulls as well as Gifted, so why would they sample magic? Plus the amount of power they sample is so tiny…it took a lot of tinkering with my magnify spell before I could see it, but I did see it. That was the first time I’d seen any formed magic work at all the way your Gift does—by sampling a smidge of magic—so I knew I was onto something. After a godawful amount of trial and error, I made a charm that does more than sample. It acts as a funnel, sending all the magic it comes in contact with into an array of lemon quartz crystals.”
“Why lemon quartz?”
“Trees are too big and diamonds cost too damn much.”
“Okaaaay.”
“If I explained about trees, you’d yell at me for getting sidetracked. As for diamonds, they are the best portable way to store raw magic, no question about it. But they don’t provide a great matrix for elemental magic, and the power the charm funnels is…you might say it’s predisposed toward becoming mind-magic. It’s not there yet, but the potentialities have been changed by the charm, giving it an affinity for Air, which is the element for mind-magic. Mind, all this classifying by element type is as imprecise as most generalizations. We’re really talking about how the magic gets shaped by whatever absorbs then releases it, so—”
“Cullen.”
“Too much? Okay. I used lemon quartz because Air magic can’t be stored, but mind-magic can, and lemon quartz is generally the best matrix for mind-magic. But in this case, the power settles easily into lemon quartz.” He stopped. His expression shifted to gloom. “And that’s the problem.”
“I thought the problem was that the device makes the unGifted have false memories. Memories of weird stuff.”
“It does that when the array discharges suddenly, and it does that because the magic is unstable when it enters the array. It finishes transforming into mind-magic while it’s in there, but the initial instability messes up the matrix.” He brooded on that a moment before adding, “At least I think that’s what’s happening.”
“Why does the discharge only affect nulls?”
He shrugged. “I’ve told you what I know. I need the damn prototype back to run more tests.”
“You can make another if you have to, right?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Tell her,” Rule said.
Okay, he had been listening, after all.
“But…” Cullen’s gaze went significantly toward the front seat.
Rule closed the folder. “Oh, very well. Scott, you will not speak of or otherwise reveal what Cullen says about his prototype to anyone who is not present in this car now. José, the same instruction for you, with the exception of your Rho. That was unnecessary,” he added to Cullen, “but I trust you feel better now.”
Cullen scowled and looked at Lily. “No notes. This does not go into your report. It doesn’t get written down.”
“I’ll agree to keep it off the record for now. I can’t agree it will never go in the record.”
His scowl didn’t ease. “Rule—”
“You mistake my authority if you think I can tell Lily what to do.”
“I just thought…never mind.” He looked directly at Lily. “No notes.”
She clicked her pen and set it down.
“I made the prototype over five weeks ago. It’s still working.”
“Okay.”
He made an impatient sound. “Five weeks, and I haven’t renewed the charm.”
“But you told me charms couldn’t last beyond one moon cycle without being renewed. Only artifacts can.…shit. You mean—”
“It’s not an artifact. Not really. It has about as much in common with real artifacts as Alexander Volta’s ‘voltaic pile’ would with a modern lithium battery. But it is the first self-renewing charm created in our world since the last adept died, and it is possibly a first step toward creating a genuine artifact.”
“But that means…” Her fingers twitched. Writing things down helped her think, dammit. “That means that whoever took it may not be interested in how it protects tech, or in creating weird fake memories. They may have had it stolen because it’s a…a quasi-artifact. Who else knows about this?” she demanded.
“Three more people than did a minute ago,” he said dryly. “The only ones I’ve told until now were Cynna, Rule, and Isen. But it’s possible the wrong person saw the prototype. I’m no adept. I don’t know how to hide the guts of a spell or charm the way they did. If a sorcerer saw my prototype, he or she might be able to figure out what it was. What it could do, if not e
xactly how it worked.”
“So now we’ve got sorcerers as well as several major corporations for suspects.” Not that this expanded their pool enormously. Sorcerers were extremely rare. But they were also extremely secretive, which meant they’d have a helluva time figuring out who, exactly, went on the suspect list. “And you’re just now mentioning this?”
He sighed. “We probably have to add one more group to your list.”
“Who?’
“You know that trade delegation that arrived in D.C. via the Edge gate about two weeks ago? First inter-realm trade in hundreds of years.”
“Of course.” The news had been full of it.
“The delegates include three elves, several humans who seem to be servants, and a halfling of some kind.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen the pictures. She’s kind of…shit. You don’t mean—”
“I’m afraid so. Last week, I heard from some flunky in the State Department. Benessarai An’Cholai expressed an interest in seeing a demonstration of my prototype. We’re supposed to meet on January second.”
Shit, shit, shit. “Don’t tell me this Beness-whatever is a sidhe lord.”
“Ben-ESS-er-aye. Accent on the second syllable.”
“Benessarai,” she repeated impatiently. “Is he a sidhe lord?”
“He’s certainly sidhe—an elf—but not a lord. Or so the flunky said.”
“Would he be able to see magic the way you do? Some sidhe do, right? And how did he even hear about your prototype?’
“Excellent questions, and when you find the answers I hope you’ll share them with me.”
SEVENTEEN
THE addition of the sidhe—any sidhe—to the mix changed things considerably. Lily called Ruben with the news on the way to the airport. She put her phone on speaker. No point in pretending it was a private conversation. Not with lupi hearing.
Ruben made an ah sound of satisfaction. “There’s a connection,” he said definitely. “I don’t know what, but one or more of our visiting sidhe are connected to this theft. Your investigation is suddenly more important, Lily, but also a good deal trickier. There are political ramifications—you’ll let me worry about those—and the trade delegation has been granted temporary diplomatic immunity.”
Lily grimaced. “So I can’t arrest them even if they are guilty as hell.”
“The connection might be innocent. I don’t at the moment see how, but that doesn’t negate the possibility. For now, focus on finding out who’s involved and why they wanted the prototype and let me worry about how to make an arrest, if one is warranted. I have a feeling the ‘why’ will prove important. Oh, and ask Mr. Seabourne to please keep that appointment. I’d very much like to know why Benessarai is interested enough in the prototype to fly across the country.”
Cullen twisted around in his seat—his was sitting up front—and snorted. “So would I. The sidhe know how to make real artifacts. I’d also like to know how he heard about the prototype in the first place. Learning anything will be a real trick, of course, given the way the sidhe are about information. They consider secrecy an art form. Literally.” Cullen sighed. “Of course, Benessarai may not show up now, especially if he was just wanting a chuckle at the barbarian’s crude little device.”
Lily asked Ruben if he’d heard all that. Assured that he’d caught most of it, she said, “I can’t see this elf guy crossing the country just to laugh at your prototype.”
Cullen shook his head. “Elves are not human. They don’t organize life the way we do—and by ‘we’ I mean lupi as well as humans, because we both sort the world into good and evil. Elves don’t. On a fundamental level, they just don’t. Their highest value is dtha, which roughly translated means knowledge and beauty, which they don’t consider separate constructs, but more like two shades of the same color, or two lenses in a pair of glasses. Amusement is part of dtha. And no, I don’t understand why, but it is, and it matters to them in ways that seem frivolous or absurd to us. You know that sidhe lord I met when he came here on walkabout?”
“You’ve told me about him.”
“He violated an important ban to come to our realm. He left his land, his people, and sundered himself from a vast amount of power—he was a sidhe lord, remember, with the land-tie and all that implies. And he did all that because he thought it would be amusing.”
“If elves are so secretive, how did you learn so much from him?”
“We made a deal. I can’t tell you about what. That’s part of the terms of the deal.”
Lily thought about that a moment. “And was he amused by his visit?”
Cullen looked surprised, then grinned. “I asked him that myself. He said he was.”
Lily glanced at Rule, sitting beside her. He hadn’t said one word since she punched in Ruben’s number. He seemed to be listening, but in an abstracted way. “I need to know whatever you’ve got about Benessarai and the other delegates,” she told Ruben.
“I’ll have Ida send you the file. It’s quite slim, unfortunately. We do know that none of them are from Rethna’s realm—at least, the realm they claim to represent isn’t the one he came from. Arjenie tentatively confirms that, based on conversations with three of them. I’ll call both her and State and see what they can tell me that isn’t in the file.”
“Okay.” She hesitated, then, watching Rule, said, “About Jasper Machek…do I have the authority to make a deal with him if it leads us to whoever hired him to steal the device?” She’d told Ruben who Jasper Machek was. She’d had to. Rule hadn’t objected. He hadn’t really reacted at all.
“Are you certain you can separate your connection to him from the needs of the investigation?”
Lily considered several answers. She settled for a simple “no.”
“That’s honest, at any rate. I think you’d best tell him you can offer only a provisional agreement, which I’ll have to approve.”
That was better than she’d feared. She thanked Ruben and disconnected. “Are you okay with that?’ she asked Rule.
He smiled. It didn’t touch his eyes. “Fine. I’d rather Machek isn’t arrested. Imprisonment wouldn’t affect him the way it would one of my people, but I’m unable to see it as a decent sort of deterrent or punishment.”
But Machek is one of your people, she wanted to say. From the human side of your family. Instead she took his hand and kept silent and wondered if she was being wise or really, deeply foolish.
* * *
LILY hadn’t visited San Francisco in years. The city hadn’t had any major magic-related crimes since she switched from local law enforcement to the federal variety, and before that…well, she and Cody used to come up here when they could both get time off. She figured it was normal to avoid a place loaded with memories after a bad breakup.
She did wonder, as their plane circled SFO, what kind of memories the city held for Rule. If she asked, he’d tell her, but then he’d get to ask her the same thing. She thought about that and decided it was okay. He knew about Cody, after all. But she’d ask later, when they were alone. Surely they’d be alone again sometime.
They did not leave the airport in Rule’s usual choice of cars. His brother had told him to stop being so damn predictable, so he’d been tricky instead. He’d reserved a Mercedes, but changed it to a BMW at the rental desk. Scott drove. Hungry lupi were not focused lupi, so they picked up hamburgers and ate them as they wound up and down, through and around.
They were stopped at a light on Market Street when Rule got a call from Mike, who was holding down the fort at the hotel where they’d stay. “Already? But he hasn’t had time to go to Clanhome, much less…” A longish pause. “Hmm. Welcome him for me, then, and feed him. Tell him it will be at least an hour before I can be there to accept and could be longer, but the delay is one of necessity, not disrespect.” He disconnected and looked at Lily. “Isen is being unconventional again. The new Laban Rho just arrived at the hotel looking for us. He brought one of the Laban counselors to act as witness.”
“Witness for what?”
“Isen told him I would accept his submission on Nokolai’s behalf.”
“Is that kosher?”
“Oh, yes. It’s been done in the past, when circumstances didn’t permit the usual ceremony and witnesses.” He glanced at the back of Scott’s head.
Lily understood that she wasn’t supposed to ask what in the world Isen was up to, not within Scott’s hearing. She didn’t, but she wondered really hard.
They ended up on a horizontally challenged street in a neighborhood that was nothing like the kind of places where she’d hung out with Cody. It was an older area, but older in the pricey way, the kind of street where people sacrificed parking for charm and period details. Parked cars lined the curbs. Scott was lucky to find a spot two and a half blocks from their goal.
It was at least ten degrees colder here than back in San Diego. Lily was glad for her jacket and the brisk walk to keep her blood moving. She suspected Rule didn’t notice. Preoccupied was one way to describe him. Silent was another. Scared, she suspected, would also fit, though he might not know it.
At the corner nearest Machek’s home, they stopped. Tall, narrow Victorians with shared walls crowded the sidewalk on one side of the street. On this side the houses were a different style, identical aside from paint and whatever landscaping their owners had chosen for the pocket-size front yards. Each had a single-car garage at street level flanked by a long staircase leading to the second-floor entry; the stairs would make a claustrophobe uncomfortable, she thought with a glance at Rule, being closed in by walls on both sides. Wide bow windows arced out over the garages. “It’s the blue one in the middle of the block, right?”
“Yes.” Rule glanced at Scott. “Disposition?”
“Chris on the roof,” Scott said. “Alan and Todd are on the adjoining roofs. The rest are patrolling.”
That much Lily could see for herself. Barnaby and Steve were chatting across the street from Jasper Machek’s house. Joe was with them, investigating a lamppost. Joe wore a harness and a leash and wagged his tail at a passing Pomeranian yapping at the end of its leash, but Joe did not look like a dog. He looked like a wolf trying to impersonate a dog. “You really think no one will guess what he is?”