One is Come

by C. H. MacLean

  Chapter 24

  Baskilon

  Stephan took a deep breath. The energy flowed over and through him, pushing out a sigh of relief. He settled into the small couch like a toad into mud.

  “I really wish I could do that for myself,” he said. “Can you imagine how invincible the warrior would be that could heal himself?”

  Gheneve opened her eyes as she lost contact with the energy. Her shoes disagreed with each other, click thunk, as she took steps across the cement to a rug, away from the couch. She picked her jacket up off one of the two desks across from the couch and slipped it on.

  “You know I would if I could,” he said. “I don’t want to have you come here.”

  “Better here than anywhere else,” she said, taking his line. She said it with a touch of sarcasm, though he didn’t seem to catch it.

  “Yes,” he said painfully, “we certainly can’t be seen in public, or at your place.”

  Conflicting emotions made a reply like juggling cats, so she let it drop. To change the subject and finish the other half of what she thought of as her duty, she pulled a thick envelope from her jacket. “Here, take this.”

  He shook his head even as he reached for it. “You don’t have to do that. I am fine, really.” He quickly opened the envelope for a reassuring glance, then with a word and flick of his hand, made it disappear. “You sure have come a long way.”

  “We both have,” she said, rising to leave.

  “I thought so, but it doesn’t seem like it recently.” He rose too, slowly at first, then more easily. He took her line this time. “But, it will all be better soon, right?”

  She glanced at his face, but could only manage tossing a small smile for her younger brother. She never liked this place, but tonight for some reason she was especially motivated to leave. Then again, she really should visit him more, she should stay longer, the Conclave would never find out. She hesitated, and turned back to him. She searched his face for the boy that she grew up with, the boy she promised she would rescue with herself.

  Their eyes met, then flared wide in unison as thudding footsteps hit them at the same time. They were momentarily kids again, terrified of what they knew was coming. Like those old days, Gheneve took charge. She quickly motioned to the lamps, and then the chairs.

  Unlike those old days, Stephan used magic to douse the lights and pull them both to their hiding places. The room became a den of shadows. The door opened to cast light into the room. The unsuspecting light was eaten by the dark pools that spilled across the two chairs behind the two large desks.

  Cawnal strode in and sat on the edge of his desk. A large, shaved-head man with a large, lumpy nose followed him past the couch and dropped to one knee on the rug in front of Cawnal’s desk, bowing his head.

  Cawnal reached behind himself and pushed a button on his desk. The door shut with a clunk. “All right,” he said. “Now, what happened?”

  The man slightly raised his head. “Initial attempt unsuccess-sful,” he said with a lisp.

  Cawnal picked his teeth with a fingernail. “Yes, I got that. It was a simple mission, like stealing candy from a baby. What happened?”

  “Magic.” the bald man said. “Powerful female magic sslew him, desstroyed him. The magic that felled my clutch-brother wass very powerful; I felt itss echo.” His eyes flicked to the chairs behind Cawnal as he paused. The bald man continued, taking the silence for an opportunity. “I wass told there wass no threat of magic! He wass-ss killed...” his lisp increased and he stopped, cutting his rising anger short. He restarted without the emotion, but the increased lisp remained. “The loss-ss, the failure wass-ss becausss-ss of…at leass-sst…miss-ss-information.”

  Cawnal laughed, a low and rolling chuckle. With a smooth motion he was off the desk and moved around, still laughing, to playfully swat the bald man's right shoulder. It sounded like slapping a horse. He was apparently unaware of the growing tension his laughter was causing in the large man's body.

  Cawnal let his laughter end as he moved back to his desk, directly in front of the man. “You must be tired of wearing that disguise. Let me remove it.” He started to move one of his hands as the bald man appeared to be starting to speak. Cawnal interrupted and kept his hand moving in a small circle. “Yes, this will make it more difficult for you to speak, but don’t worry.” He brought his other hand up to make another small circle, then brought them together with a clap that covered what he muttered at the same time. He leaned back against his desk to watch, and said, “I have heard enough. Besides, that lisp is brutally annoying.”

  With the clap, the bald man seemed to shimmer, and then his features began to melt away. His eyes grew, and fell back against his head. His nose flattened and fell into his face, which was shooting out. His shoulders drooped and grew feathers. In a moment, he was fully transformed, back into his true appearance as a baskilon.

  He remained on one knee, but his upper lip pulled back from his large fangs and his eyes flashed with anger. His tail slowly curled under him. His forked tongue flicked out the barest distance beyond his lips as the muscles in his arms twitched.

  “Yes,” Cawnal said, standing up, staring without a shred of fear into the monster’s eyes. “I have heard enough. Your mission was a failure because your clutch-brother was incompetent,” he said, suddenly leaning forward to sneer in the face of the baskilon. He slid smoothly two steps to the left, dropping his left hand on the monster's right shoulder. “Not his fault, of course,” he said. The monster turned his head, careful to avoid scratching his fangs on his chest, to look at the hand on his shoulder. “Baskilon are all meat-head imbeciles.”

  The monster hissed loudly, and his powerful tail flexed, propelling his great body upward and to his right. Cawnal was expecting this, and quickly swung his left hand across to grab the monster’s rising snout. At the same time, as the beast was springing, he flexed his right arm and brought his right elbow smashing down on the beast's snout.

  The baskilon's head snapped down onto its rising chest. Its right fang scratched across its chest, doing little damage. Its left fang, however, aligned by Cawnal’s hand, drove deep into its chest. The creature fell forward, its initial lunge suddenly stopped, ending in a crumpled heap.

  Cawnal looked down. “I am unimpressed with your abilities,” he smiled thinly. “You’re fired.”

  He kicked the body as he walked around it to pull out the chair behind his desk. “I knew her plan wouldn't work, never know why the king listens to that blond troublemaker,” he muttered, not noticing the shadow on the chair slide off and under the desk. He sat and flicked the computer monitor on.

  He hit a few keys, and light flickered across his face. His face showed surprise, anger, disappointment. “So you are not tough, just getting help,” he muttered. Then he laughed. “This is not Rogue Central Command, but Grand Central Station!”

  He got up, walked over to the couch and sat down. “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” he said. He waited for a moment. “Stephan, you fool, don’t you know this office is under video surveillance? When I went to delete the video of this meat sack, guess what I saw?” His voice growled. “Both of you get out here now.”

  The shadow still on the other desk chair swirled, expanded and filled into the form of Gheneve. Stephan crawled out from under Cawnal’s desk a moment later. He came around, started to say something, but was stopped by the reality of the dead baskilon.

  Cawnal looked at them. “I never understood why they made them with such long fangs. More of a hindrance than a help, I would say.” Cawnal snickered at his own joke. Neither of the other two even smiled.

  “I know I authorized it, and it was at the king’s command, but yet another of your plans failed, eh, Stephan?”

  Stephan started to protest, but Cawnal talked over him. “Oh, I know that there are other traps amongst their belongings, but they are alerted, and it is very unlikely that they will be taking anything in the least suspicious with them, now is it?�
� He paused, but Stephan had visibly deflated at this point. Cawnal nodded, satisfied. “No, Rightad is nothing if not willing to make sacrifices to protect the end goal. We taught him that one,” he chuckled again.

  Abruptly he snarled. “But how did they defeat your stupid monster? It just had to paralyze the girl, grab her and leave. I don’t know if I believe it was magic,” he said, gesturing at the monster’s body, “it doesn’t take magic to bring down a snake-face if you know what you are doing. But what if it was magic that defeated him! It must be impossible—I was there when they Swore. Or is it possible the boy could have done it?”

  It wasn't a question, and Stephan knew better than to answer, or even flinch. He was past trying to defend himself, past even thinking of reminding Cawnal the baskilon was as much Cawnal’s idea as his. All he wondered was if he was going to end up dead on the floor too.

  “Well,” Cawnal continued, “doesn’t matter. His lying tongue—it’s forked, even!—can tell us nothing. It really doesn’t matter anyway. The king doesn't care how we drive the boy from his family and bring him in. No, it doesn’t affect the plan. In fact, it speeds it up a touch, a good thing.” His lips smiled, a slash of red. “Now, there is just the matter of how to handle the failures here.”

  Gheneve jumped in. “No need to say anything to anyone, I think. Of course, for me, it makes no sense to breathe a word. But it seems that to point out the good parts of your plan would risk exposing the failures to your superiors,” she said. “Who knows how one of them might react?” She glanced from Stephan, to the body of the baskilon, to Cawnal. “The only problem I see right now is the large, messy one lying on your carpet. In fact, as long as Stephan had a way to incinerate that mess, there would be no real evidence of anything, would there?” She paused, sizing up Cawnal expertly. “I have an energy dampening bubble up here for now, but the intensity of the energy required to get rid of the body by magic might leak out and would surely leave a strong residue after I left. A portal could be traced back. Either one reported to the local Conclave authority would cause problems for the king, I think? Yes, I can see how he wouldn't admit to manipulating mus and most of the Conclave for decades. I would guess he would just suddenly discover you have been working for the Rogues, well, the real Rogues, betraying him the whole time? I hear the Conclave does nasty things to Rogues.” She paused, giving Cawnal a chance to imagine himself on the other side of the punishment. “With magic out, incineration is the only way, isn’t it? With all the recent developments, time and effort are so valuable. It really would be punishment enough to have to get rid of this failure.” She waved casually at the body on the floor.

  Cawnal thought for a moment, pretending to weigh his options. Stephan held his breath while Gheneve appeared calm.

  “Yes, well, I must be feeling generous today,” Cawnal said at last. “Stephan, if you can clean up your mess, I think that would suffice.” He nodded once. Stephan took it as a reminder to start breathing again. Gheneve whipped her phone out and sent a quick text. Cawnal looked pointedly at Stephan. “Lucky for you to have such resourceful connections.”

  “Now,” he continued, gesturing to the door, “get hopping. After that, you will receive instructions. I am going to find out where the Rightads are headed.” He got up, went to his desk, and made a show of wiping off the chair.

  Stephan looked anxiously at Gheneve, who took him aside and whispered to him for a moment. They both went over and worked to roll the heavy body into the large rug. When finished, Stephan tried to stuff the end of the tail into the rug, but it kept poking out. Gheneve waved him off. Stephan got up and used magic to remove the bit of blood on the cement. There was a knock at the door. Gheneve went quickly to the door and opened it. Two large, thick-browed men stood there, holding a rolled-up rug. Gheneve whispered briefly. They nodded, dropped the one rug down and hefted the other wordlessly. Gheneve got down, unrolling the new rug, waving Stephan to leave with the two men when he tried to help. He looked at Cawnal once before following on the two men’s heels.

  Cawnal looked up to watch Stephan shut the door with a shake of his head. “He used to have such promise, it’s a shame.”

  “Perhaps he had his promise beaten out of him,” Gheneve dared to say, rising from her knees.

  “He will either grow stronger or die,” Cawnal replied, staring directly into her face.

  She stared back for a moment, then looked back to the rug. She made to leave, throwing over her shoulder, “Be sure to erase the video of the body leaving, won’t you?”

  Cawnal laughed, nodding. “Survivors don’t miss details, do we?” The last thing she heard before sliding out the door was Cawnal saying, “Where will you run?” She wasn't sure if he was talking to her or the computer, but knew the answer anyway. There was nowhere to run.