I can’t do this one over the phone.
I pulled out my phone, found Val’s number. Sent a text: back in Fresno, safe now. You still in London?
I waited for a reply, numb. Taking in the damage a second time. I pulled half of my broken, useless artifacts off my body and threw them on the floor with the rest. Wonder if I should call Vega?
But not yet, I decided.
I couldn’t deal with anything until I looked Ceinwyn in those ageless blue eyes and asked for the truth.
With only my SDR on my finger and my monocle in a pocket, I felt half naked. Lighter, that’s for sure. I started pooling anima just to feel safer.
My phone beeped. There was a message from Val: good to hear. Yes, in London for a few more days. Ceinwyn says we’ll come see you after we’re done here. She seems worried about you.
I bet she is.
But I couldn’t wait. Not a few more days. The travel time to London would be bad enough. At least I’ll feel safe on the plane. That was a new one. Safe in a tin can thousands of feet from the ground I loved so much.
I turned to my metal table at the center of my shop. The metal table I’d trapped Annie B in the first time we met. The metal table that took all them experiment blasts like a champ. Best purchase I ever made.
Metal.
I taped the top of it. “I’m home, Mini-Meta,” I told the geo-fairy that lived inside of the thing. It followed me from the Asylum all those months ago and didn’t respond to any of my threats about killing it, so . . . eventually I just gave up and got used to it.
Even dragons need strings.
Besides . . . it was about as close as I’d ever come to having a pet.
The metal of the table moved, indenting a seam that turned into a word. Vampires.
“I know, they’re gone now and they didn’t find it, so you did a good job.”
Happy.
“At least one of us is,” I murmured.
Sad? Fire Queen?
That was a big sentence for Mini.
“No, she’s fine.” Val . . . what I wouldn’t give to be able to confess to her instead of a piece of geo-anima that didn’t know it was supposed to be inanimate. “Had some vampires of my own to deal with.”
Angry.
Val. In the stories, women are always there for the hero to have something to save or fight for. In the real world, women have lives of their own, they ain’t even there when the not-so-hero needs to have some sympathy.
“Just me and Mini-Meta.”
Mini did a figure-eight inside the metal, happy.
“I need it, I’m gonna block you.”
Ready.
I threw geo-anima at the table, liquidizing the metal on one end into a small block, which Mini swiftly moved into. On the other side the metal built into a small mountain, like a kid building a sand castle. One part of the sand box rises, the other part of the sand box falls. In the fallen part of my metal table appeared the Shaky Stick, throbbing with geo-anima, waiting to be used.
World-Breaker.
Jinshin Ken of Hiroto Arashi.
Earthquake Sword.
I pulled out my monocle to look at it. To make sure.
Thirteen anima types interwoven in a knot even Alexander would never be able to free, even with a sword. Same as always.
I took the World-Breaker from it’s hiding place and slid it in the specially made pouch just for it I’d sewn into all my geomancer coats. Now I felt safe.
Not Annie B, not Paine, not Root with his fifty Constructs could hurt me.
Physically.
All Ceinwyn would need was a few words to do more damage than the rest combined. But the World-Breaker couldn’t save me from her.
I picked up the block of metal as well. “Good for travel?” I asked it.
Travel! appeared in super tiny print along one side.
“Here we come, London.”
[CLICK]
Ye Olde Shit Hole on the Thames.
The nation that gave us Chaucer and Shakespeare and the Spice Girls.
Fuck you, England.
Not for the Spice Girls.
For Shakespeare.
Four years of Jethro Smith shoveling that at us students. Things are all fine and dandy when it’s Hamlet or King Lear, but by Quad the guy had to dig deep, and when you’re reading all the “King Henrys” and the damn teacher makes you read the part because of your name . . . well . . .
Fuck you, England.
If only you didn’t give the world the Stones . . . oh, how I’d be calling you worse than a shithole.
Of course you gave the world more than just the arts, for a long time you were a center of the mancer world as well. Just as Paris was thick with vampires, you were thick with the Mancy. Her Royal Majesty’s Conservatory of the Elements in Cambridge, the Rejuvenation Society in Bath, and in London itself, the Guild of Artificers.
Yup.
The enemy.
The first one at least.
Ceinwyn and Val were inside the Guild’s nondescript headquarters according to Ceinwyn’s secretary. A meeting with Guild Master Massey about improving the portable anima tester design. As always, the Recruiters wanted progress and the Guild wanted none.
Like the Vampire Embassies, the Guild’s building went down into the earth too, but that’s where geomancers are supposed to be, so I couldn’t say I was surprised. I never saw those elevators on the first trip to the place, only the meeting and business rooms up top. Down below you would find archives and libraries and . . . a prison.
I knew this, but wasn’t interested in the tour.
I was only interested in a flashdrive and an olive branch.
I meant business, heading through the front doors with half-an-hour of anima locked inside me. They couldn’t sense it there, but I still drew stares in my beat up geomancer’s coat. A few Guild members chatted together in clumps around the greeting hall, skullcaps on their heads like men from a time long gone. Tradition. Solidity. That was the Guild.
Not defiance.
Not the earthquake.
Stone, unmoving. Steel, reassuring. Gems, glittering bright.
The air of the place itself made me feel rebellious. So many years of geo-anima being used and pooled and released had left the greeting hall with the smell of dirt and dust. “What you think, Mini?” I asked my metal cube.
Old. Tired. Boring.
“Damn right. You’re a good influence, Mini.”
The Best.
Getting the World-Breaker and Mini’s cube through airport security had been about as fun as expected. Though I’d been more worried about something happening to the flashdrive with Inanina’s plotting on it. But the TSA doesn’t give a shit about world altering information, only jade dildos and ‘puzzle cubes.’
I stalked up to a secretary. She was a geomancer too. Don’t see a lot of female geomancers like you don’t see a lot of male hydromancers, but it’s not a complete exclusion like Mentimancy or Aeromancy. So of course when they had one in their midst, the Guild made her a secretary.
Cocksuckers are still stuck in the 60s.
The 1760s.
I felt bad for her, so I didn’t give her a ton of shit. “Artificer Price here to see Ceinwyn Dale,” I said.
She blinked at me. She had green eyes and brown hair. Reminded me of Christmas Ward a little, but not quite. Not any Earthquake in her, just a precious gem. Break the diamond and it goes cut, cut, cut, I thought about Paine. What’s an earthquake become when it breaks?
I didn’t have an answer.
Hope I never found out.
Guess that some Recruiter shows up to give you a needle in the neck these days.
Paine.
I was so scared of that guy just a few days ago and now . . . well, I’m not stupid, I was still scared of him. But he was a far away threat now. Not my problem. Fuck, he was killing vampires, that made him the enemy of my enemy, didn’t it?
Ain’t going that far. Ain’t being Paine’s friend.
> But I could pretend he didn’t exist when I had to deal with Ceinwyn and Root and Divines on every side.
“Artificer . . . Price?” the secretary asked.
“King. Henry. Price.”
“Oh,” she said, eyes on me like I was some mythological beast.
Know the feeling more than you ever will, lady. “Here to see Ceinwyn Dale,” I repeated.
“She’s in a meeting with Guild Master Massey,” the secretary told me.
“I know. He won’t mind. It’s another chance for him to lick my balls and hope I agree to join this place.”
Her jaw dropped.
While some of the world had changed under my feet, my ability to shock was still intact. “Call and tell them I’m here, please.”
It was Val who arrived to get me ten minutes later. I got a brief view of dark eyes and blond hair and then she jumped on me in a hug, arms all the way around me, mine all the way around her.
“You stink like blood and sweat and dirt,” she mumbled into my shoulder.
“We can’t all be rainbows and sunshine,” I mumbled back into her . . . chest. Damn tall women.
We still didn’t release each other. “I was worried,” she told me.
“Just a vampire or twenty,” I downplayed it all.
She pulled back enough to get a look at my face.
I tried to smile.
She wrinkled her nose at me. “Blood and sweat and dirt.”
“Wasn’t too bad physically, just one mindfuck after another,” I explained.
I kissed her and for five whole seconds everything was okay.
Then I pulled away and remembered what I had to do. “I need to yell at Ceinwyn. I’ll . . . tell you everything after.”
Val motioned for a door leading deeper into the place. “Hours and hours of the black haired bimbo trying to seduce you?”
“And trying to get me killed.”
“I don’t care about that,” Val grinned wickedly, “I just want to hear how frustrated she became.”
“Cruel, cruel star.”
“She stole a night with my boyfriend away from me, she’s lucky she left town before I could light her on fire,” Val said with unusual heat.
“For which said boyfriend traveled all the way to London to make up it to you,” I said, trying to gain points I’d need later if Ceinwyn’s conversation didn’t go well.
“Too bad you’re in such a hurry or we could find a bathroom stall and get started making up before tonight.”
I pulled out my monocle to check.
“What?” Val asked, blond eyebrow quirked at me.
“Just making sure.”
Like I’d set down some challenge, she did find a bathroom stall and it was very much Valentine Ward.
[CLICK]
“Half-an-hour later,” Ceinwyn immediately made an acute observation once we arrived in the room she and Guild Master Massey were having their meeting in.
I was so happy at the sight of her, timeless as always, and of mine and Val’s attempt at a standardized identification process, that it took me five whole seconds to remember I was pissed off at Ceinwyn.
I must have scowled, judging by the way she smiled sourly across the room. She leaned against the wall, in a blue dress that ended just above her ankles. Traditional looking, but then the Guild liked tradition and as Ceinwyn trained me a long time ago: Recruiters become whatever the recruit needs to say ‘yes.’ The dress made her look older, more constrained, less of a blast of wind that will arrive and fade away in an instant, the world never the same after her passing.
Guild Master Massey was an old guy in a skull cap and brown robes. Fuck him, cocksucker doesn’t deserve any more of my time than that. I put a palm in his face as he tried to greet me. “Later, Massey, I’ve got business with the Divine Nii-Vah’s ward.”
Ceinwyn’s smile soured further as she nodded at the Guild Master and at Val. “Keep the Guild Master company, I promise not to hurt your boyfriend for his coming presumptions.”
Val smirked. “Be good, both of you. No scratching.”
Val.
I hadn’t thought about what this would do to her if it went bad.
Come on, Ceinwyn, just give me some answers.
Ceinwyn didn’t leave her position against the wall. “You look angry with me.”
“Like you can’t believe.”
“And what have I done to earn it?”
“Lie.”
“I do that,” she admitted, “I know you’re not good at it, that you’ve never been good at it, but . . . I do lie frequently. Whenever I must, in fact.”
I felt sick. I wanted to leave the room. I just wanted . . . things to be what they were. But it couldn’t be what it was. Not with what I’d experienced and what I knew. Ignorance and bliss were gone.
“So you know about Nii-Vah.”
“Don’t pretend Annie and Nii-Vah both haven’t talked to you.”
“Anne called, worried about you. Nii-Vah called and asked for a favor,” Ceinwyn told me.
“I wonder what it is,” I sarcastically asked the room-at-large.
“I think you’re going to ask something of me I can’t give you, King Henry.” Her timeless eyes pleaded with me to revert back into that bright little shit she found in Visalia, not the troubled genius I’d become.
“I know about Nii-Vah,” I said, “and Inanina—who tried to kill me three times—and Eresha—who’s dead now.”
Ceinwyn crossed the room to touch me, concerned, but I stepped away from her. She nodded, like she respected my need for space. “All very evil, aren’t they? Even Nii-Vah, really. She’s lawful, but still a parasite like all of them. I never wanted you to enter their world, King Henry. I thought meeting Anne and having some fun would be good for you, would help you along with your experiments, but I didn’t expect you would almost die or that it would end up in the Divine Chamber or that you’d be here . . . standing there with so much frustration and . . .”
She trailed off as I pulled out the flashdrive and put it onto a table next to us. “Guessing this is the favor Nii-Vah wants from you.”
“I suppose it is.”
“Are you her creature Ceinwyn? Are we all just their creatures?”
Her eyes turned hard at the idea. “I am her ward, I am her protégée, but that is all, King Henry. I use her. She uses me. It’s the vampire way and it’s a vampire world. Do they run the world? I know you’ve been asking yourself that since you met the Divines, I know how you think. No, they don’t. We’ve warred with them on and off for thousands of years, sometimes finding success and at others failing horribly, almost destroying human civilization. Right now the world is in balance. You don’t like that because of your personality, but I do.”
“It’s fucked up,” I said.
She nodded. “In places it is fucked up, but it works. I like being the freak, King Henry. I like being the improbable woman with the dead parents and the dead lover and dead friend. I like that my life is a rarity and not common. You want to try for another war? You want Pocket and Raj and half your classmates dead? How about Victoria? Or Maxwell? Or Christmas?”
Every name was like a bullet in my belly. “I didn’t come here to make war, Ceinwyn. I came here for you and me. I’m sick of . . . not trusting you.”
“And what have I done that’s so untrustworthy? Haven’t I saved you plenty of times? Haven’t I backed up your ideas and your experiments even when I disagreed with them? What more do you want from me, King Henry?”
“The truth!” I shouted at her. “That’s business shit. I want the truth. Give me the truth I can’t handle, Colonel Jessup. That I’m too young to know and all that. I’m sick of this half-in, half-out place you and me are now. Either we put all our cards on the table or . . . I’m done.”
“How?” she asked, surprised. “You owe—”
“You nothing,” I told her. “Annie gave me a million dollars for this last job. Your loan is paid off. One call to the bank will close it.”
“You’ll be capital crunched without a line of credit,” she pointed out.
“I know. I don’t care.”
A good long Ceinwyn Dale and King Henry Price silence.
A few minutes of it as we stared at each other trying to decide how far we could give, if we could find a way on each end of a tug-a-war neither of us had realized existed since that first day in Visalia.
“What truth haven’t I given you?” she finally asked.
“You have T-Bone spying on me.”
She shrugged. “I knew you’d figure that out and you’re both friends now, what’s the harm?”
Part of me wonders how much more amazing you would be if you hadn’t been raised by a vampire, Ceinwyn. Or at least how much more human you would be. Say what you will about King Henry Price, he’s also the most fallible human on the planet. “I found out about your parents and your grandfather and Nii-Vah from Anne.”
Ceinwyn glanced at the floor. “And?”
“Why didn’t I hear it from you? Why didn’t I know it already? That’s what I’m saying, Ceinwyn: enough with the mysterious shit. I’m scared, okay? I see enough of what’s going on to know it’s beyond me, but . . . I’m part of this world, I’m here, so I have to deal with it and to deal with it I have to trust the people around me.”
“I was trained by Nii-Vah,” Ceinwyn said, “until I was fourteen, then the Lady looked out for me, both of them have ever since. What does knowing this change?”
“I understand you better, for one.”
“And you don’t like what you see?” she asked, a little hurt.
“Let’s talk about Obadiah Paine,” I said instead.
I’d only seen the expression that came over Ceinwyn’s face a few times in my life. Pure God of the Winds type furor. “Let’s not,” she said in a tone that made my balls shrivel.
“Annie B told me a little about him too.”
“Did you ever think that maybe Anne has motives of her own at play in all this?”
“Sure she does.” So do I, like not telling you Paine is the Curator until I know you’re on my side.
I nodded at the flashdrive. This had all been about trust, but we might have even been less on the same side than when I walked through the door. “Did Nii-Vah tell you what was on that?”
“She didn’t.”
The Foul Mouth and the Headless Hunny (The King Henry Tapes) Page 38