“I received a message from him this morning …”
“So you said. That makes you the last person we know of to have communicated with him before he died. Other than his murderer.”
“He was killed.” I could hear the tired bitterness in my voice, as if from a distance.
“It was obvious and very messy. NightTown style. A hit.”
I mentally reviewed her questions. “And you suspect me?”
Emerantha sighed. “No. Particularly not with the recent difficulties you’ve been having. Besides, when we tracked your subjective timeline against the killing, witnesses placed you in Sidelines Altaforte. You’ve been too busy to kill anyone. But I wondered if they were connected—your problems and his.”
I thought about the Whitesnakes. “I don’t see how they could be.” I again considered what she’d told me. “NightTown style? Knives? Ceremonial? Cultists?”
A slight shake of her head dismissed the idea out of hand. She and Corvinus had been friends for a long time. The tightness in her face was the only trace of the grief and rage and stress tamped down inside. “Something ripped him apart. Took considerable strength. Blood everywhere.” The words came out of her in short, forced bursts. “No witnesses. No sounds. No nothing.”
“Who investigated the scene?”
“We did. He was one of ours, after all. CrossTown Territorial Police took over after that, of course.”
“You tested for Power.” It was not a question.
“Naturally,” she said curtly. “It was clean. Some odd traces, here and there, but nothing more than expected in the abode of someone like Corvinus. Less, actually.”
“No Faerie taint?” I asked sharply.
“The only remarkable thing was the overall lack of traces we found. We found nothing distinctive.” She gave me a wan smile. “It would have been an easy answer, at least.”
It would have raised as many questions as it put to rest, I thought. “Why the question about what we might have been working on?”
“The place was torn apart,” Emerantha said grimly. “So was his workshop downstairs. I suspect that someone was looking for something. You’re one of the few Corvinus trusts … trusted. You’ve worked with him over the years on other projects. Your perspective, power and mobility have given Corvinus more options than he had before he took you as apprentice. If he were engaged in something major, it would not have surprised me to find he had pulled you in.”
“A robbery? You think Corvinus was killed in a robbery?”
“No simple robbery.” She paused, biting her lip as she thought. “You and I both know the precautions Corvinus took. It would have been difficult to break through his defenses. Everything was down. No alarms were raised. That takes entirely too much power for my comfort. So someone or something with power enough to break through Corvinus’s defenses and do it quietly had to be involved. Even more concerning, something had enough power and subtlety to remove and block all traces. Even temporal traces. No scrying was possible. The place was swept clean. Given all that, you know and I know that something big had to be behind the attack. This wasn’t spontaneous. This was planned. And you know Corvinus. Always exploring. Always digging. Always researching. When I heard that you were being hunted, I started looking for a tie between Corvinus, you, and his attacker. Seems a little much for the timing of the bounty on your head and Corvinus’s murder to be coincidence, don’t you think?”
I didn’t answer. I was busy thinking. I knew it wasn’t Silverhand—he was pissed at me, and he could be a vicious bastard, but he wasn’t the kind to hit Corvinus to get to me. No Faerie traces had been found. I had a momentary picture of the Fae and the Whitesnakes working together and snorted in disbelief. Not even my wildest paranoid fantasies could go that far. No self-respecting Fae would stoop so low.
I thought about Emerantha’s questions, then looked up at her sharply. “What have you heard?”
She looked taken aback by the abrupt question. “What?”
“You heard me.” I glared at her. “What have you heard that Corvinus might have been working on? What did you think I might know something about? Are you trying to solve a murder, or reconstruct his research?”
Her eyes narrowed at the last. I wondered if I had gone too far. “Listen, boy,” she snarled. “This is how it works: you look for a motive that fits the facts. The involvement of power fits the facts. Reconstructing his research might tell us who would want it.”
I stood, my gaze locked on hers. “There are a couple of other possibilities, aren’t there? It could have been done from inside the defenses. Corvinus could have summoned something and lost control of it, right? Or he could have let someone in, someone he knew and trusted, like an old friend or a former apprentice. Given my skills, given my familiarity with Corvinus’s captive powers, it might be possible for me to cover my tracks thoroughly, right?”
We were scowling at each other at that point. Then Emerantha raised one hand. “You’re right. I apologize, but I have to push this. We did consider that possibility. We checked as well as we could to find any traces that the murderer might have left or any clues to the killer’s identity. I’ve never seen all traces eradicated like that. Even old layers of Corvinus’s working in the house were removed. We investigated and found nothing on you, or me, or the half a dozen other people Corvinus might have let into his sanctum. Why am I investigating any common research the two of you might have been doing? Because I know for a fact that Corvinus had developed something. He as much as told me that he had a living inquiry running that could rewrite CrossTown history, and I still don’t know what he meant by that. He seemed to think it was important. Maybe someone else did too. Maybe someone thought it important enough to kill for.”
“Who else knew?”
She shrugged. “You, I would have thought.”
“That might be what he wanted to talk to me about,” I said.
“Likely,” Emerantha admitted.
I sat back down. “So what now?”
“The CrossTown Territorial Police have locked down Corvinus’s place, hoping that someone or something will show,” Emerantha said. “I’m checking with the base of practitioners, but so far those willing to talk have nothing to say, and not one of the rest has the connections to be suspicious. And then there’s you. If this happened because of something the two of you were working on—that is to say, if you’re lying to me because of an oath or some misplaced sense of loyalty—it might behoove you to remember that you could well be the next target of the killer, if what was sought was not found. Worse, you may be telling the truth, and the killer may still be seeking you.”
“What do you want from me?” I asked suspiciously.
Emerantha Pale grinned in spite of herself. “You remind me of Corvinus, at times. You’ve been associating with him long enough that some of his habits rubbed off on you. I want you to come in. I want you to place yourself under the Union’s protection.”
I considered before shaking my head. “Nope. You want bait. I don’t do bait. There’re already too many sharks in the water, with no guarantee that you’ll hook the right one.”
“Go off on your own, and you might wind up as cut bait,” she warned me.
“I’ll take my chances.”
She signed off without another word. I watched the air over Vayne’s desk fade to normalcy, sat there and stewed for a minute. “Vayne!”
The door opened soundlessly. “If you still want refuge, I’ll give it to you.”
“No. You’re right. I need to keep moving.”
“Vengeance should be left to He who owns it.”
I gave him a tight smile. “I’m more concerned about survival than vengeance right now. And as I recall, He helps those who first help themselves.”
Vayne snorted laughter at that and I looked at him crossly. “What?”
“Nothing.” He smirked. “It’s just that when pagans start quoting scripture I figure that I’m more than halfway there.”
> I left him to his amusement and hit the street. I needed to formulate a plan. I needed a refuge that wasn’t known to every Tom, Dick, and Emerantha. I needed to avoid CrossTerPol’s intervention. I thought about my vices and I came to an internal resolution. For a man dodging bounties and unknown killers, NightTown would be considered an unusual place to hide, at the very least.
CHAPTER X
THE WANDERWAY from TechTown to NightTown can be surprisingly short. Of course, that Way passes through some extraordinarily rough neighborhoods. Not one of my favorite routes. So I took the long route, through DreamTown. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
I got lucky. The first shot missed.
I had been strolling down a thoroughfare in a mixed crowd of revelers (revelry being the primary business of DreamTown) assured of my safety by the simple expedient of losing myself in the throng. I kept turning over what little I knew of Corvinus’s death in my mind. I decided abruptly that at the first opportunity I’d have to do some investigating on my own, try to find some evidence to confirm or contradict the information Pale had given me. I was admiring the long crimson sunset, complete with a drawn out green flash obvious to everyone who even glanced casually in that general direction, when something spang!ed off the wall next to me, showering me with chips of brick and mortar.
Now for a guy who’d just found out that he had a price on his head, I had not to that point been remarkably bright. My reflexes, however, were pretty good. I dove for the cover and possible escape of a nearby alleyway.
In the narrow confines of the alleyway, something shiny and metal rose up on too many legs and leaped for me. I reached for the possibility of escape, and felt the resistance of anchors on that Way. I smashed through those anchors in an instant of strength driven by desperation. The time it took to drop the anchors blocking my Way, however, let the killer’s drone reach me. It literally knocked me out of that reality and into the next.
The machine stabbed me twice, once in the leg and once in the body as I fell to my back. I put a spread hand on its slick metal carapace. It rose above me in a blur of slashing legs. I braced myself and threw it back, taking shallow cuts all along my arms and shoulders.
It landed on its side in the black mud, and rolled over with three lampreys already burrowing into its hull, their dull gray skins beginning to fluoresce, displaying brilliant patterns of living light as they consumed the power plant driving my attacker. The killer drone rose and managed two staggering steps toward me before collapsing. The mud around it came alive as more lampreys hit the area. The smell of ozone built in the air, coiling electric fields bristling hairs all over my body.
I did a little collapsing myself, as the White Rose did her best to keep me healthy. I had used quite a few resources lately. My body seemed a frail vessel for my survival instinct. Even the steady touch of the White Rose faltered, her sweet scent lost in the earthy taste of blood and iron. I needed a place to rest and recuperate. But first, I needed to make sure that the lampreys were enough to finish the job on my metal attacker.
I regained enough focus to see the thing’s mechanical legs twitching spastically as more lampreys came writhing up out of the mud and into its hull. Bubbles of displaced air made a continuous soft popping as more and more lampreys rose to the area looking for scraps. The ultrasonic whine of teeth eating through alloy hide set my teeth on edge. That particular killing machine wouldn’t be going anywhere any time soon.
I had found an old salvage yard on the edge of TechTown a long time ago and used it a few times. The lampreys wouldn’t touch anything without a power source, but they were hell on machines. They occupied a valuable niche in an old dumping ground for obsolete military hardware. I suspected that they had been put together some time back by a skilled bioengineer from TechTown, or perhaps by an ecomage for hire.
I grunted as I bent forward, shifting my weight onto my good leg.
“And what do you think you’re doing?” the White Rose snapped.
“Making sure that your good work isn’t wasted,” I responded mildly. “Or don’t you think that anyone skilled enough to have anchored a Road might be able to track through it?”
I called up Shaper. He came to my mind’s eye as a glittering fabric of color. “You need me?”
“I need to make myself less like myself.”
“You mean a disguise?” Shaper laughed. “Human?”
My lips twisted. “Human and male. Similar build, same center of gravity. I haven’t played this game enough to keep my reflexes in anything too radically different.”
“You’re not making this easy.” He paused as he considered, then brightened. “I have it!”
“What?” I asked suspiciously.
“Age.”
“I don’t like …”
“Exactly.” If he had hands, he would have been rubbing them together. “Anyone who knows anything about you knows how averse you are to aging. Not that it’s uncommon, but you’re obsessed. Point is,” he continued hurriedly as I scowled, “that no one will look for you as an old man. And all you have to do is look old and different enough. It would take deeper searching to penetrate what I have in mind, and who will look for you under a wrinkled face?”
I thought about his proposal. It made sense. It wouldn’t work against Fetch, but it might help with some of the crowd of bounty hunters out to collect fifty easy golden hours. I nodded abruptly. “Do it.”
I felt my flesh crawling over my bones. Sharp pains stabbed me in my joints, forcing me to stoop. I watched my hair grow down over my eyes and fade to gray colorlessness. It took a certain amount of effort to hold the disguise in place, but that effort could yet pay significant dividends—if it worked.
The White Rose protested this use of valuable resources that she needed for the healing process, but I forestalled her. When Shaper had completed his task, I sent him back to the depths of the Legion.
“The situation’s more serious than you thought,” Blade said quietly. He stood beside me on the walls of my spirit as I lingered and thought about my next step.
“This doesn’t change anything,” I answered. “I still need to hide out for a while.”
I had planned on going to ground in the Canyons of Steel. Bordering TechTown and NightTown, the Canyons of Steel were a maze of ruined technology, stalked by mutants, killer machines, old warbots, androids, cyborgs, and other things I didn’t care to spend time around. It did have the advantage of being highly unfriendly territory for the Fae, however, and not comfortable ground for the Whitesnakes, either.
The attempt on my life had changed my perspective. Hiding in a den of potential bounty hunters, most of whom had machine resistance to sorcery, sounded more and more like a bad idea. The enemy had the initiative. I needed to take that away and reduce their advantages, not add to them. I had been thinking with the Fae in mind, not focused on the price on my head. The Whitesnake bounty had become as much of a threat as Fetch.
“Are you sure you want to go this alone?” the White Wolf asked suddenly.
I turned to regard him. “And upon whom would I risk bringing this plague?”
“You do have a standing invitation in NightTown,” Blade said.
“No,” I said without hesitating. “I can’t afford to owe anyone else.”
“She has a certain … hunger for your company,” Blade said. “I understand your reluctance. But in her place of power, she has influence over the forces of life and death. Even Fetch would be uncomfortable there. I doubt he would seek to face both you and Eliza Drake in her own territory. She would be glad to give you shelter. And the Whitesnakes would not dare to hunt you in that place, though some of the hunters might.”
What Blade said made sense. I didn’t want to deceive Eliza by visiting her on false pretenses, though her invitation had been open for quite some time. I did regard her as a close enough friend that I wouldn’t lie to her. On the other hand, if anything did go down in that place, her aid would be invaluable. Her retinue was well
able to take care of itself. It was worth considering.
If any of my hunters appeared in that place, I could wind up in Eliza’s debt if I needed her aid. I wanted to avoid that. Paying off that kind of debt could easily be the first step down a path toward becoming Eliza’s vassal. I enjoyed being around Eliza, but on my terms, not hers. She was a vampire after all.
Blade’s argument put me in a quandary. The machines of the Canyons of Steel would be a constant threat to me. Eliza Drake could provide refuge from the Whitesnakes and Fetch, but her help could carry a heavy cost.
I might have been forced to choose the more evil of the two hazards. I smiled. Eliza Drake would definitely be much more attractive company than a bunch of surly cyborgs, and I have always enjoyed the company of dangerous women.
They don’t come much more dangerous than Eliza Drake.
There are many ways to become acknowledged as a Power in CrossTown, but all those ways boil down to outlasting one’s enemies and becoming a landmark in the myriad, shifting landscapes of that complicated place. Eliza Drake had seen many enemies come and go, and her place on the edge of NightTown had come to reflect her presence to the extent that her domain shaped itself to her desire. The land reflected her will. That made her truly formidable in that place—and Eliza was plenty formidable without her environs rising to her aid.
I limped forward, despite the White Rose’s admonition that she had not yet completed her work, and took a path out of there that took me past some of the wilder combinations of Night-Town and TechTown. Skirting the Ways to the Canyons of Steel, I hurried as well as I was able, keeping my collar turned up, my hat pulled down, and my face averted. I hoped that the rich petroleum smell of the mud would cover most of the scent of blood. NightTown had too many occupants with a taste for blood.
The ambush in DreamTown had been a pretty good trap, as traps go. The sniper might have missed deliberately, or simply provided insurance, but either way the would-be assassin had taken advantage of my weakness by employing a mechanical ally without a spirit to bind. Anchoring the WanderWay had shown more preparation than I liked to consider given the short time the bounty had been active. On the other hand, the price on my head was fifty golden hours, and it could have been active since the night before without coming to the notice of either Pale or Vayne. I had been fortunate that the assassin had possessed less skill than I at the more esoteric aspects of the Roads, or that he had spent his money on cheap anchors—if the assassin had been a “he.”
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