Queen of Wands-eARC

by John Ringo

  “I’m not being led around,” Wulfgar said, munching on a sandwich. “But I get the feeling that Janea’s not going to pass this point as long as I’m here. Or she only passes in the few cases where my back is turned.”

  “We’re not being allowed to find her,” Drakon said, walking up. “I was in the gaming areas looking for her when I ran across the old man from the anime room. And got to talking. And completely lost track of the mission. His name is Ken Suno.” He flexed his jaw and shook his head. “Damn me for not seeing it.”

  “Seeing what?” Sharice asked.

  “At a guess?” Drakon said. “Su-san-o-o. Brother of Amaterasu. Major Shinto god. Here he’s the head of the anime track.”

  “Damn,” Wulfgar muttered, his eyes widening. “The guy who heads up security…”

  “What?” Sharice asked.

  “Huge blond guy,” Wulfgar said, shrugging. “Blue eyes, but he doesn’t look Scandinavian or Aryan. More…Greek.”

  “Name?” Drakon asked.

  “Mike. Michael.”

  “Holy Mother,” Sharice whispered. “The Michael? Transformed God of War? Patron saint of elite forces? Archangel Michael?”

  “At a guess.”

  “Okay, no getting on the wrong side of security,” Drakon said.

  “I helped a little old lady up the steps the other day,” Wulfgar said. “Pear shaped. Looked about a thousand years old. Guess what her con name was? Al Mater.”

  “The All-Mother?” Sharice asked.

  “Ta-da,” Wulfgar said, then winced. “Svar…”

  “Svarog?” Sharice said. “Tell me we didn’t just do a deal with Svarog.”

  “Think so,” Wulfgar replied. “Hope that doesn’t come back to bite us in the butt someday.”

  “European,” Drakon said.

  “Slavic god of smithing,” Sharice said, shuddering.

  “Not a nicey-nice god, I take it,” Drakon said, nodding. “Fun.”

  “Gods and avatars,” Sharice said, looking around at the crowds. “Lost souls and people in dream state. I said it but I didn’t really grok it, you know?”

  “Which means Odin is somewhere around,” Wulfgar said, starting to grin. “And Thor.”

  “Thor could be rolled fully into Michael at this point,” Sharice pointed out. “You might have already met him.”

  “Fir, surely,” Wulfgar said, then shrugged. “Good enough, for that matter. But it also means there are demons,” he added as a girl dressed as a succubus walked by.

  “Neutral ground,” Sharice said.

  “I don’t see Michael enforcing neutral ground,” Drakon said. “I mean, I don’t know much about Christian myth, but I don’t see it.”

  “I think Barb would probably say that it’s ineffable,” Sharice said, shrugging. “Even demons are God’s creations. They’re fallen angels.

  * * *

  “There is no way,” Doris said, looking around the room.

  The backstage of the ballroom was packed with contestants. It was a sea of redheads in everything from elaborate fantasy costumes to a feather and two bangles. The only similarity was that there was some red to their hair, ranging from strawberry blonde to auburn, and they had three tears painted under the left eye.

  “I can’t win this,” Doris said. “Look at Garnet!”

  The previous year’s winner’s costume was an elaborate laser-cut leather demon complete with the talons.

  “That must have cost an arm and a leg.”

  “More like a soul,” Daphne said. “Souls. But they weren’t hers. Win or lose, you are going to participate. And have you looked more closely? Most of them truly don’t have a chance. They’re just here because for thirty seconds, eight thousand people will be looking at them.”

  Now that Doris had some time to recover from her shock, she had to admit the little pirate had a point. More than half the women in the room really would look better in street clothes. Spandex was a privilege, not a right. And even for those who had some semblance of the real “Dawn” look, most of the costumes ran to the sort of thing you got from a Halloween shop. Little Bo Peep and Sexy Cop.

  That left, out of probably two hundred, maybe thirty who were contenders. Considered honestly, Doris was in that category. So those were the girls to beat.

  At which point…

  “I’m still not going to win,” Doris said.

  “Seek the Grail,” Daphne said. “You may find it or not, but the value is in the search.”

  “Do you know Duncan Folsom?” Doris asked.

  “I know the name,” Daphne said. “But we’ve never met. We run in slightly different planes but we’re aligned.”

  “If you’re going to register, please do,” the lady at the table said. She looked as if she could have been an entrant once upon a time. “We need to get this show going.”

  “Yes,” Doris said. “I’m registering.”

  “Stage name?”

  “Excuse me?” Doris said.

  “Most people use their mystic name,” the lady said. “It cuts down on the stalkers. Or you can use your mundane name. Up to you.”

  “Myst…” Doris said, frowning. “I don’t really have…”

  “Sure you do,” Daphne said. “Think about it. Everyone does, they just hold it deep inside. Who are you, really? Doris Grisham of White Springs, Alabama?”

  “Yes,” Doris said. “I am. And…no, I’m not.”

  “The Faces,” Daphne said, softly. “The thousand faces of the hero, the nine billion names of God. Who is the Goddess within? What name calls once from the darkness, twice from the light?”

  “Janea,” Doris said hesitantly. “My name’s Janea.”

  “Good one,” the lady said, writing it down on a form. “Original. Okay, you’re done. Your friend has to stay. Only contestants from here on out.”

  “Good luck,” Daphne said, hugging her. “Truth is, we’re from about as far apart as anyone could imagine, but I think I’ve grown knowing you. Which takes some doing.”

  “You’re…going to be around when I’m done, right?” Doris asked.

  “Always,” Daphne said, giving her a kiss on the cheek. “But when you win, I think there will be others who will want to greet you. There are some who have been waiting to see who you become. I hope we see each other before the end of the con, but that’s tonight at midnight. And everyone will be gathering for Dead Dog. But I’ll be with you when you hear the whisper of the wind.”

  “What?” Doris said.

  “Just go, honey,” Daphne said, pushing her into the throng. “Be the Goddess.”

  Doris waved as she walked away but Daphne didn’t look back. She already missed the little pirate and hoped that they’d be able to meet again and get some contact information before the end of the con. She thought about the last conversation for a second and then frowned.

  “Plane?”

  * * *

  Waiting for the contest was about the most nerve-wracking experience of her whole life. The girls had been assigned numbers at random rather than as they turned up, to keep people from gaming the system. Winners tended to be either early in the contest or very late.

  Despite that system, Doris suspected some sort of foul play since Garnet’s entry was next to last. Worse, Doris had somehow gotten the slot right before the previous year’s winner. Which meant she was probably going to be upstaged.

  And the more time she had to think, the less she liked her costume. It wasn’t elaborate enough to win for the costuming value—several of the judges were serious costumers—and it was too elaborate to win her points for sexy.

  One by one the contestants went out, did their little pirouette or, in rare cases, some sort of routine, and then in some cases submitted to questions from the judges. If you didn’t get questioned, it was pretty clear you weren’t in the running. But most of the girls weren’t really there to win, as Daphne had pointed out. So most of them came back happy looking. The few that didn’t were the “contenders” who weren
’t asked questions.

  There were fewer than ten girls left and Doris started to sidle towards the front. It was no big deal. Walk out, do the quick dance, come back. Hopefully the judges wouldn’t ask her questions.

  “‘Did you do the costume yourself?’” Doris muttered, sliding over to the wall by the stage entrance. “‘Except for most of it, which I bought in a stripper shop.’ ‘How long have you been costuming?’ ‘How long has the con been going on?’”

  “Now the little newb is talking to herself,” Garnet said. “How quaint.”

  Doris had been so focused on the stage, she hadn’t even noticed the woman walk up.

  “Well, it’s talk to myself or talk to you,” Janea said. “I’ll take talking to air first.”

  “Think you’re special?” Garnet snarled. “You’re nothing but a tiny little nobody in this con. You’re nothing. You’re worthless.”

  “Which is why you keep picking on me, right?” Janea said. “Because I’m so worthless you know I’m going to kick your ass.”

  “Really?” Garnet said, smiling. “Think so?”

  Without the slightest warning, she snatched off half the barely attached appliances on the costume, ripping the dress in the process. “Not now.”

  “Oh…” Doris said. “You…you…”

  “And next…Janea…presenting Dawn, Warrior of the East.”

  “Good luck,” Garnet said.

  Doris stood, just breathing hard for a moment, then reached up and ripped the rest of the elaborate fake armoring off the dress, ripping more of it in the process.

  “…Dawn, Warrior of the East…?”

  * * *

  Janea strode onto the stage without even glancing at the judges or the crowd, then spun into a lotus position with her back to the crowd. She opened up the brooch on her cloak and spun it out of the way, then drew her swords and laid them, crossed, in front of her on the stage.

  The music started and she stood up, took her right sword, and stuck it through the constraining material of the dress between her legs, and cut from just below her crotch to the floor. She spun up on one foot in a pirouette and the two swords lashed the remaining fabric away, the leg-length pieces flipping away through the air like butterflies. Then she started to dance.

  Everything else fell away then. For Janea, when she was in movement the world became the dance. The crowd did not matter, the judges did not matter, Garnet did not matter. Only the dance.

  There have been sword dances performed in every society that had periods when the sword was the paramount weapon, from Caucasus saber dances to Wu-Shu. Most of them had little to do with actual combat. But they mostly shared the peculiarity of performing them being a life-and-death event for the performer. Most styles involved moving the blade very close to the performer’s body. The closer the blade to the body, the faster…that was the essence of the sword dance.

  The dance of Janea was not one style, not one way. A watcher would see elements of Wu-Shu, Hungarian and Cossack, and even Choliya, but it maintained that single essence.

  To balance on the razor blade between life and death. To trim the hairs but not the skin.

  When Janea came to her feet and started dancing, her costume was already in tatters. As she danced, it became more so.

  Roll out of the bed

  Look in the mirror

  And wonder who you are

  Another year is come and gone

  * * *

  “Okay, we found Janea,” Wulfgar said, his mouth hanging open.

  He had seen Janea dance before. He’d even snuck into a club she was working at, which made him feel very much like a pervert. But he’d never seen her dance. Not like this.

  She was a spinning dervish across the stage, the double swords flickering in and out and a veritable torrent of material flying away from her rapidly denuding body. There could be no question that the swords were razor sharp. Not only were they slicing through the fabric of the costume like paper, she was, in time with the dance and often while in the air, catching pieces in midair and cutting them smaller. She was already down to not much more than a micro-mini and a halter. She couldn’t go much further without being down to “no costume.”

  “I think the judges are enjoying it,” Sharice said dryly, as Janea flipped one of the cut bits of dress with a sword tip to settle on the head of the creator of Dawn.

  “They’re not calling time on her, anyway,” Wulfgar said.

  “I think the crowd would rise up in fury if they did,” Sharice said. “Damn…”

  “That is…” Drakon said, his jaw dropping as Janea somersaulted across the stage, bits of material still flying off as the swords flashed in and out. “I would have said that was physically impossible.”

  But maybe you touch one life

  And the world becomes a better place to be

  Maybe you give their dreams another day

  Another chance to be free

  * * *

  Janea had carefully choreographed her planned dance. This wasn’t it. What she was doing, how she was doing it, she wasn’t exactly sure. She also didn’t know if she was dancing well. But she also didn’t care. There was only the dance.

  As the last bars of the song closed, she dropped to a split facing the judges, slid her swords up between the veil and her face, ripped the veil away with a flick of the wrist to give it some heft, then dropped the prescribed lock of hair over her cheek. As the piece of gauze settled to the stage, it was quiet enough she thought she could hear it touch the ground. She distinctly heard the “tink” as the swords crossed in front of her.

  The MC wasn’t asking any questions—she wasn’t sure why, but he looked too stunned or something—so she bounced twice to get some momentum, popped straight to her feet and walked off the stage.

  “Beat that, bitch,” Janea said as she walked past Garnet.

  * * *

  “She gets presented the Crown and the Prize in the Hyatt main lobby,” Wulfgar said, pressing through the crowd. “We can probably make contact there.”

  “Think again,” Drakon countered. “She’s going to be surrounded by security. All you’re going to get is blinded by camera flashes.”

  “It’s the best chance we’re…” Wulfgar paused as someone even larger than he was stepped in front of them.

  “Sorry…” the guy said. He was dressed a bit like some sort of bird and was wearing an eagle mask. “But it’s time for you guys to go home.”

  “Excuse me?” Wulfgar said. “And who are you to…”

  “Wulfgar,” Sharice said, carefully. “Don’t start anything. We’re looking for a friend.”

  “We know,” the eagle man said. “Which is why I’m explaining, politely, that she’s going to be busy for the rest of the convention. And that Pat says it’s time for you to go home. Most of the mundanes go home after the Dawn show. You don’t want to stay for Dead Dog. Mundanes who stay for Dead Dog sometimes never make it home.”

  “Is that a threat?” Wulfgar asked.

  “No, that is information,” the bird man said, tilting his head sharply to the side. “If you’d like a threat, it can be arranged.”

  “We’re just going,” Sharice said, suddenly, grabbing his arm.

  “But…” Wulfgar said. It wasn’t as if she could move him.

  “We’re going, Wulfgar,” Sharice said. “Back to the room. Then we’ll pack and go home.”

  “But…” Wulfgar said as he let himself be dragged away.

  “Just shut your fool Asatru mouth,” Sharice said, walking as rapidly as she could through the crowd.

  “No call to be…”

  “Asatru are horrible about studying other religions,” Sharice said as they left the Hyatt. “So take my word for it, we are leaving.”

  “Malakbel?” Drakon asked.

  “Ancient Assyrian?” Sharice said. “Maybe. I don’t think so, though. Think…Barb.”

  “You mean the White God?” Wulfgar said, craning his head to look for the Eagle Ma
n. The guy, despite being huge, had disappeared. And most of the crowd seemed to be people in mundane dress who were headed for the exits.

  “Not…exactly,” Sharice said. “But those who wait on the lord will find new strength. They will fly high on wings like eagles. They shall run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint. I can quote a half a dozen other verses, not to mention Nostradamus. I don’t think that messenger was from any minor god you can care to name. So we are leaving.”

  * * *

  Doris was left alone for a moment to blink at the crown in her hands. There was no way that those were actual rubies. They looked real, but it was amazing what they could do with synthetics these days…

  “Janea.”

  The woman was probably in her forties, blonde, with a face that was not so much kind as so understanding of humanity, it had sort of gone past unkind to wise.

  “Ma’am?” Doris said.

  The past hour had been a blur. Garnet had most assuredly not won and security had become involved. She’d never even gotten close to Doris. Knowing what was going to happen, two guys dressed like goons had interposed themselves when she left the stage to very muted applause. One move towards Janea had been enough for them to wrap her up in tentacles and drag her out of the room.

  The judges had asked questions, later, mostly along the lines of “Are you seeing anyone?” She wasn’t even sure what she’d answered. Pretty much everything from when she’d picked up her swords was a blur.

  Now someone else she didn’t know wanted something.

  “I am Regina,” the woman said. “I’m the Senior Director of Programming. Since you are now Programming, I’m your Senior Director.”

  “Okay?” Doris said.

  “Your time from now until Dead Dog is blocked out,” Regina said. “First there is the formal presentation of the Crown, and the prize of course. Then interviews with select media. Then the visit to the Green Room to meet select Guests. Last, Dead Dog where you will be formally Chosen and given appropriate transportation home.”

  “I get a ride?” Doris said.

  “Yes, dear,” Regina replied, softly. “You get a ride home. You didn’t know that was the actual prize?”