by Eileen Wilks
A smile tucked itself into the corners of Alycithin’s lips, making her look more catlike than ever. “Will you promise not to repeat what I tell you to any sidhe, and to withhold it as much as you honorably may from your own people?”
Lily thought that over, looked for trouble spots, and found one. “I will promise not to reveal it to any out-realm sidhe, and to withhold it as much as I honorably can from my own people.”
“Out-realm sidhe? But Earth has no…I see that you do not intend to explain.”
Lily shook her head. Arjenie’s secret wasn’t hers to reveal.
“Very well. I accept those terms. Do you so promise?”
“I do.”
“Benessarai and Lord Rethna were friends of the third degree. This is not known in my realm. This is not known by his father, Lord Thierath. Benessarai is known to have been friends with Lord Rethna, but all think it was of the fifth degree. He is not the only one now tainted in this way, for Rethna entertained widely among the lords of many realms, but there is no real danger from such an association. Fifth-degree friends have liking for each other, but very limited bonds of obligation. Third degree is quite different.” She took a slow breath. “That is the real reason Lord Sessena ensured I was coleader of this delegation. Benessarai needs a success to redeem himself, yes, but he also needs to be watched. Above all, it cannot be known that he had such close ties to Lord Rethna.”
Lily tried to think herself into Alycithin’s shoes. Her big fear was the Queens, Lily thought. Her people were scared that whatever was happening in Rethna’s realm would spill over into theirs. “It must have come as a shock when I told you that Friar, who is allied with or working for Benessarai, is the Great Bitch’s creature.”
“The…oh.” Amusement flashed in her eyes. “This is how you refer to the one we do not name? How charmingly irreverent. Also clever. Even a casual use-name may acquire resonance with sufficient repetition, but I think she will not recognize any resonance with that appellation. It was a shock, yes, but it did allow me to make sense of some things that have been bothering me. I have reworked my plans considerably while we talked. And so I have given you the knowledge to destroy me utterly, should you disregard your word. Just as I could destroy you, did I choose to dishonor mine. I have made us equal in power, Lily Yu. Do you see why?”
“You needed me to believe you,” she started. Stopped, and went in a slightly different direction. “And this is a negotiation. You can’t truly negotiate with someone who lacks power, can you?”
“Precisely! I like you, Lily. You are so grave, but quick and flexible. Those qualities do not often march together. I cannot violate my agreement with Robert Friar.”
“Even if he violates it first? Robert Friar places no value on his word. The Binai who killed Rethna was freed from her contract with him because he’d already broken it.”
“With all respect to the Binai, a vow is far more binding than a contract. If Robert Friar proves dishonorable, I have erred by entering into an agreement with him. My error does not affect what I have bound myself to do. And yet I must find a way to keep such a one from succeeding, for reasons both moral and personal. You were correct that I have been uneasy. I had…suspicions about Benessarai’s goals, but he and I are, to use your word, rivals. I thought he meant simply to damage my standing. I thought he did not understand why it would be disastrous to bring the masking device back to our realm.”
“The masking device? Is that what you call—wait. You mean you don’t want to take it back to your realm. You want to destroy it.”
She nodded. “Such a device would destabilize our realm. Hostages are fundamental to both our economic and our civic life, and the masking device would drastically alter the way power is balanced between hostage-holder and those with whom they would negotiate. Centuries-old agreements would turn unsteady. Imagine what would happen in your world if only one side in a contract had the means to enforce it. I took pains to explain this to Benessarai. He understood only that making such a device available would weaken my position, for my Gift is, indeed, both rare and valuable. He does not see the repercussions…or so I thought. Hoped. This is why I took the risk of making my own deal with Robert Friar. It took some time to learn what he wanted enough to…I believe your word is double-cross? An interesting word. I wanted him to double-cross Benessarai. You were the price he asked. As part of our agreement,” she added, “he is bound to observe the code.”
Lily snorted. “And you believed him?”
“If he does not, I must in all honor kill him. He knows this.”
“He may not be as afraid of you as he ought to be.”
She shrugged. “I arose from the warrior caste. If he did not know what that means, he should have asked.”
“That won’t be much consolation to me if he’s already fed me to his goddess.”
Alycithin’s lip curled in distaste. “Death magic?”
“That’s what I think he’s got in mind, yeah. He may want to do some really unpleasant things to me first, but apparently I’d make a tasty snack for her. Death magic violates one of those Queens’ Laws, doesn’t it?”
“This is not one of the Queens’ realms, however.”
“Bummer.” Lily decided she’d gone as far as she could without having a clue what they were negotiating. “Alycithin, I am puzzled. You want something from me, and you are unwilling or unable to say what. Nor have you offered me anything or hinted at what you might offer. Negotiations among your people may be conducted this way, but it’s not what I understand.”
“That is plain speaking.” The halfling woman spread her hands. “I cannot tell you. To do so would violate my word.”
Even bigger bummer. Lily drummed her fingers on the table. Alycithin hadn’t told her all this without a reason. There was a hint, a clue, hidden in what she’d been told, but damned if she could spot it. Maybe she hadn’t asked the right question yet. “Can you tell me what you promised Friar?”
This smile spread slowly. “That I can do. I agreed to take you hostage, if possible, and then hold you until Robert Friar notifies me that he is ready to exchange you for the masking device. While I hold you, I must make sure you have no weapons and no means of contacting your people. I am to let you know that you are going to pass into his hands.”
“Wanted me to worry about that, did he?”
“I believe so. Lily, Robert Friar is your dielgraf. Your soul-enemy.”
“That sounds about right. Is that all of the agreement?”
“Oh, no. Robert Friar was meticulous in his terms. Neither I nor my people can in any way reveal your situation, either while you are my hostage or after you become his, to anyone who is not sidhe. When Robert Friar tells me he is ready to take possession of you, I must make the exchange promptly and without attempting to alter or add to the terms of our agreement. At that point, if we have both honored the terms of our agreement, we are mutually bound not to act against each other, or allow our agents to so act, for twenty-four hours.”
“Is that the exact wording? You can’t reveal my situation to anyone who is not sidhe?”
“That is the wording. However—” She held up a hand, stopping Lily before she spoke. “You have hinted that someone in your realm is sidhe. While speaking to such a one would be allowed under one of the terms, it violates another. I vowed to hold you. Were I to reveal your presence while you are in my custody, I would be acting against that vow.”
“After I’m not in your custody anymore…?”
Alycithin smiled. She all but purred. “I did not agree to see that you remained in Robert Friar’s custody. Only that neither I nor my agents would act against him for twenty-four hours.”
Lily wasn’t purring. This, she wanted to say, is your solution? Your deal?
From the halfling’s perspective, maybe it looked like a good deal. Maybe Alycithin would have gone happily to torture and death if she knew she would be avenged. Maybe Lily would think so, too, if killing Robert Friar were her o
nly goal.
Problem was, she really wanted to be alive and at least mostly intact when Rule came racing to her…which he would do long before the twenty-four hours were up. Once Lily was away from Alycithin’s Gift, the mate bond should work fine.
Alycithin didn’t know about the mate bond. That was the important takeaway from her offer. She didn’t know about the bond, so she wasn’t honor-bound to keep Lily from using it. Lily spoke slowly, as if reluctant. “You have my phone.”
“Yes.”
“You know how to use it?”
“Of course. I do not understand how the device works, but from what I have seen, most people in your realm do not understand it, either, yet they operate phones without this understanding.”
“One of the contacts on my phone is for a sidhe who passes as human. Will you take my word for this?”
“Do you give me your word?”
“I do.”
“Then yes, I accept that this is true.”
“Will you call this person and reveal what you can, in honor, speak of concerning my situation?”
“Twenty-four hours after the exchange, yes, I will. But you have not yet told me this person’s name.”
Lily looked up at the ceiling. Drummond was still all misty. She looked down at her hands. “I have a question about your code. Does it allow you to give me aid in pursuing my spiritual needs?”
It was Alycithin’s turn to be puzzled. “It would depend on the type of aid, but if it does not violate the terms of my agreement, then yes.”
“I am facing either death or torture or both. I need to meditate to strengthen myself for the coming ordeal. It would be a great aid to my meditation if I had my ring.”
She shook her head. Her sadness seemed genuine. “I am sorry, Lily. The charm on your ring holds arguai—which, by definition, means I cannot measure or judge the nature of the power it holds. I cannot be certain you will not somehow use it to escape.”
“If by arguai you mean that something’s there, but it isn’t exactly magic, then that’s what I’ve sensed about the charm. I don’t know how to use the whatever-it-is, or even if I could. I’m a sensitive. I can’t use magic. I simply want the ring as a focus for my meditation.” If she’d broken through briefly to Rule using a crude drawing of the toltoi…and she had. She was sure of that, even if she didn’t know if he’d “heard” a single word. If a crude drawing helped enough for that, having the real thing on her hand ought to let her do a lot more.
Alycithin’s eyebrows lifted in polite skepticism. “Most objects containing arguai are used as foci, and usually in spiritual practices. You…oh. You truly do not know what you were entrusted with, do you?” She sighed. “I am sorry. I still cannot allow you to have it. Arguai acts unpredictably. It might choose to reveal its nature to you, or act through you even if you do not consciously will such action.”
Strike three and you’re out. Good thing she wasn’t playing baseball. “In that case, may I have privacy and a candle?”
“Of course.” Alycithin seemed glad Lily had asked for something she could agree to. “My people, too, sometimes use a candle as a focus. This is specifically allowed in the code. I will have to enspell the flame, of course. It will burn long if you do not move the candle or attempt to use it to burn anything else.”
That sounded like tricky spellwork. Cullen could do it, Lily felt sure, but not casually. Alycithin seemed to consider it a minor task. “Thank you.”
“And if I may know the name of the person you wish me to call when it is time?”
“Arjenie. Arjenie Fox.”
Several minutes later, Sean had been invited to join Alycithin in the main room. Lily sat on a pillow on the floor of the bedroom where she’d awoken. The walls were playing chamber music, a piece Lily didn’t recognize. Alycithin brought the candle in herself while the armed elf—Dinalaran—kept his SIG trained on Lily. She chanted softly with her hand hovering over the candle’s wick. A flame popped into being there.
The elf and the halfling left, closing and no doubt locking the door behind them. Lily tried to settle. Her heart was racing. She felt halfway nauseous. Drummond, she said.
Nothing happened. No white mist. No annoying yet reassuring ghostly shape.
She swallowed. If she couldn’t even reach Drummond, how was she going to…Try again, she told herself. This time she spoke his name. “Drummond.”
And this time it worked. He shaped up pretty quickly. And he was grinning. Actually grinning. “We’re at 1132 North Bretton. The neighbors ordered pizza and gave the address. 1132 North Bretton.”
Hot damn. She sent him that along with a quick, fierce grin. Now I have to make use of what you learned. You need to go in the other room or something so I can concentrate.
He seemed to notice the candle for the first time. “What the hell are you doing?”
Trying to mindspeak someone else. Someone who can send help to 1132 North Bretton.
He hesitated, then jerked a quick nod and went misty. He didn’t go in the other room, though, but drifted up to the ceiling.
She’d just have to pretend he wasn’t there, watching. Or whatever he did when he was misty.
Look into the flame, Sam always said. Find me there.
One more thing Alycithin didn’t know about Lily. Her teacher, her grandfather-in-magic, was the black dragon…who was currently about five hundred miles away. Who approached teaching in a toss-the-kid-in-the-water-and-see-if-she-drowns sort of way. And Lily was really bad at mindspeech and had little to no chance of reaching that far…
Don’t think about that.
She might suck at mindspeech, but Sam was very, very good at it. He mindspoke across the entire damn continent—five hundred miles was no problem for him. But it might not be five hundred miles. He overflew San Francisco regularly; it was part of his territory, one of the cities he’d agreed to patrol to sop up excess magic. He didn’t keep to a strict schedule, but this was the right part of the week for his overflight. He might be at Laban Clanhome right now, chowing down on a couple cows.
If not, well, she’d had a breakthrough, hadn’t she? She was a little better than totally sucky now.
She might be able to reach Rule again. Without the toltoi she wasn’t confident she could, but she might. But she couldn’t hold the connection long enough to be sure he “heard” the address, much less who held her, what their capabilities were, what part Robert Friar played, or why the elves wanted the prototype. With Sam, all she had to do was get the merest whisper of a message to him and he’d do the heavy lifting. At minimum, he could pass what she told him to Rule. At maximum…she didn’t know what Sam’s maximum was, and she wouldn’t find out today. He wouldn’t exert himself that much. But all he really had to do was tell Rule where she was. And Rule would take it from there.
Lily looked into the candle flame.
FORTY
THE conference room at the FBI’s San Francisco office was small and crowded. The room smelled of clan—Scott, Mike, and Alan were among those at the table—but also of stale coffee, humans, and all the various scents they were so fond of. In addition to cologne, aftershave, and shampoo, Rule smelled six different brands of deodorant. One of them wasn’t working as well as it might.
His wolf did not like it here. It didn’t help that humans were forever closing doors. It was a damn fetish with them. Rule told his wolf to settle, that they were hunting Lily and everyone here was helping and he needed to focus, dammit.
“Stop that,” Madame Yu snapped.
Everyone looked up at her. The man who’d just come in—Agent Smith or something similarly bland—stopped in midstride.
“Stop closing the door,” Madame Yu said. “The air is stale in here.”
“Sure,” Agent Smith said. “No problem.” He swung the door wide open. Everyone else went back to studying their printouts.
Rule made a mental note to buy Madame Yu something foolishly extravagant. He gave her a grateful nod and looked back at his own
set of lists.
The California Department of Public Safety had coughed up a list of the owners of cars with license plates ending in LT250, along with their addresses of record and driver’s license numbers. That was on a database. Upon being served with the warrant, the bank had produced a list of every transaction in the last two days. That was a paper list. A very long paper list. It was a busy branch. Rule had gotten a second list from the bank, too—also on paper, but much shorter. That one contained only those transactions involving accounts that had been opened since the sidhe delegation arrived two weeks ago.
They’d been able to eliminate those account holders quickly. No matches. Not even any near misses.
Rule was operating on the assumption the elves had had help acquiring false identities, bank accounts, and renting a condo or house or apartment under their fake IDs. That help had probably come from Friar. They might have been in touch with him well ahead of their arrival. It was also possible one or more of them had been here much longer than two weeks. A few sidhe could cross between realms without a gate. Most of those with that skill were lords, according to Cullen. Most, but not all. Arjenie’s father was able to cross realms.
So they would check older accounts as well. Robert Friar had been recruited by her six years ago, so Rule eliminated accounts more than six years old. That still left them with a very long list.
The data from DPS had been easy enough to import into the Bureau’s computers. They’d tried scanning in the bank’s list, then importing the scanned data. It hadn’t worked. Scanning introduced too many errors. So they were doing it the old-fashioned way, comparing the two lists visually, looking for matches on the names, addresses, or driver’s license numbers.
Cullen was still searching. His copter had refueled twice—and had been detained at the airport the second time. The pilot had to fly so low for Cullen to see the kind of detail he needed that they were breaking some law or another. Rule had applied to Ruben for help, and the airport had released pilot, copter, and Cullen. They were back up again.