Hunter's Oath

by Glynn Stewart

  I’d fought the Wizard’s traitorous minions in his own home. Plus, the Wizard’s Sight meant that he could have watched almost any of my various fights over the months I’d been in Calgary. But what…

  I finally caught up. I picked up the rod and flexed it experimentally. Despite its dark exterior, it moved easily. It was no hardwood, but exactly the kind of flexible wood that would have once served for a bow…or for a handle.

  With a snap, I cracked the whip handle through the air, conjuring Fire and Force through it with carefully measured strength. My usual green faerie fire burned with an intensity I’d never commanded before, a new core of deadly white power.

  “Is that…as terrifying a thing as I think it is?” Shelly asked carefully.

  “Few are those men like my trùm forge arms for,” Lan Tu said quietly. “Fewer still are those who receive those arms as gifts.”

  “I didn’t think that the heirs of Merlin gave gifts,” I told the goblin woman. “Not without strings, not without duties. Powers do not give gifts without price, Lan Tu. What does your master desire?”

  “He said you would know,” she replied. “He said you would say something of the sort—and that ‘what would be done regardless cannot be regarded as a price.’ He asks that only that you fulfill the oath you already swore and bring the monsters in his city to justice again.”

  I snorted. If MacDonald’s price was that I dealt with Chernenkov and the Masked Lords, I would pay it gladly.

  If his price was that I broke an Unseelie Court, defied a Power of the High Court, and challenged an order that had brought civil war to the fae for my entire life…well, MacDonald was right.

  I was going to fulfill my oath.

  Once Lan Tu had left, Shelly produced a bottle of wine and a pair of glasses from a bag. She filled the glasses and handed me one.

  “I don’t pretend to follow half of what goes on with you lot, but I’m right in that that’s a spectacular gift, right?” she asked.

  “MacDonald is a Power,” I said quietly. “Basically, a little-g god. If he chose to, he could destroy Andrell’s Court with a snap of fingers. But the Covenants and his own oath say he can’t. But…he won’t stand by and let Andrell cover for a murderer.”

  “So, he gives you that?” she gestured to the whip handle.

  “Yeah. Lan Tu is right when she says there are few Wizard-forged weapons in the world, and the vast majority are in the hands of the Wizards’ Augments, men and women like the Enforcers MacDonald used to have,” I told her. “This is beyond spectacular, Shelly. But…the task I’ve been set is beyond impossible.”

  “So, the Wizard is giving you a chance?” she said.

  “Maybe. It might be enough.” I shook my head. “Might not be, either. I don’t fucking know. I can’t fight a Noble, Shelly, and my Queen wants me to defeat two—and take at least one prisoner.”

  The human sighed.

  “And that’s assuming Andrell doesn’t try and stop you himself, I take it?” she asked.

  “If Andrell tries to stop me, it’s done,” I admitted. “It’s over. I can’t fight a Fae Lord, Wizard-forged weapon or not.”

  I studied the black handle on the table, with its fitted shoulder holster. It was no real surprise that the holster fit my body as perfectly as the whip itself fit my hand. A Wizard’s power was nothing to be trifled with.

  MacDonald was an ally, possibly even a friend…and he terrified me.

  “I’m guessing you had your own reasons to be here,” I noted. “What have you got for me?”

  “I went over the receipts and invoices you sent me. The ordering companies were fronts, lies and forgeries. I’m sure that’s a surprise.”

  “I don’t suppose you found anything useful?”

  “I lost the trail in Cuba again, which I find fascinating,” she replied. “Not a lot of people have the connections to run an ownership trail through Cuba. Panama? Sure. Monte Carlo? Definitely. Switzerland? Harder than it used to be, but still doable.

  “Cuba? That’s an odd one.”

  “Does that help us at all?” I asked.

  “Interestingly…yes,” Shelly told me with a chuckle. “Because so few could do that, they relied on that cover more than they should. And while I have no connections in Cuba, it happens that I go for lunch every couple of weeks with a lawyer who works for a company helping Cuba exploit their local oil reserves.”

  I blinked.

  “So?”

  “So, she managed to get someone in Cuba to trace the records for us,” Shelly told me. “We didn’t get all of them. There were more traces out of Cuba than I expected, and some of those disappeared in Panama and other places. A bunch went to Delaware, though, which is a pretty good shield.”

  “Delaware?”

  “Lot of odd rules around ownership. It all traces back to about six law firms, to be honest, and I can’t do much from there without asking questions that will draw attention,” she admitted.

  “Which means we know more but not anything useful,” I noted.

  She chuckled.

  “I don’t know who owns the end of the chain, no,” she agreed. “What I did manage to do, however, was find some other things in Calgary they own…including a certain warehouse.”

  Now she had my attention.

  “And what else?” I asked slowly.

  “Nothing else as large,” Shelly told me. “Another two dozen or so rental properties like the one Chernenkov was staying at. A handful of restaurants, a bar…and a motel on Sixteenth Ave.”

  “Give me the list,” I said. “I need to go looking again.”

  She passed me a USB key.

  “Be careful, Jason,” she told me. “I don’t think these are owned by the Unseelie Court. If these ‘Masked Lords’ are in play…these are their Calgary assets.”

  “I know,” I confirmed. “But…I have a job to do.”

  Shelly shook her head.

  “I don’t envy you. Good luck.”

  26

  Inga and Mary showed up in the morning. Somehow, I was unsurprised that both women came equipped for war—and my lover showed up with a massive rolling suitcase that turned out to contain the two long arms I’d left in the wardrobe’s hidden compartment.

  “I don’t have any spare MP5s,” she noted, “but Talus said you’d know how to use this.”

  Not only was the Israeli-built .45 caliber Jericho automatic familiar, unless I was severely mistaken, it was the exact same gun I’d been given by Queen Mabona…and abandoned in a vampire den under the city.

  Apparently, Talus’s people had retrieved the weapon and hung onto it for the last six months.

  “Yeah, I know this one,” I admitted. I took the gun, double-checked its action and holster. “What about ammo?”

  “We have a few magazines that should fit,” Theino told me as the goblin stepped through the door. “And a stockpile of cold iron rounds.” He shrugged with a degree of minor embarrassment. “We owe our lives to Talus, Master Kilkenny. That does not mean we weren’t prepared for some of the fae to betray us.”

  “Thank you,” I told him. I then caught up with the fact that the goblin was wearing a sleeveless tactical vest and had a .45 automatic of his own at his belt. “You look loaded for bear.”

  “Of course,” he agreed, pulling a black bandana out and tying it across his face. “I will be coming with you. My people may hide from even the supernatural world, but we have our debts and we will not stand by while Talus’s family and Court are threatened.”

  Inga snorted, the Valkyrie carrying none of the modern weaponry the rest of us were packing. She wore the silver blade of her old affiliation along with a pair of cold iron-bladed knives.

  “Guns break and run out of ammunition,” she told us. “Blades and spells are more reliable. Or claws, I suppose, in Ms. Tenerim’s case.”

  Mary chuckled.

  “Claws and teeth are all well and good, but when I shoot someone, I don’t have to wash my mouth out with whisky
afterwards,” she noted. “And I don’t have the speed or strength to want to tangle with any serious supernatural in hand-to-hand. As the saying goes: ‘God made men and women, and Sam Colt made them equal.’”

  “I’d rather you were nowhere near any fighting at all,” I told Mary. “Of course, I lost that argument before I ever met you, so I don’t even try anymore. Come on, then, all of you. I’ve got info from Shelly that gives us a place to start.”

  I’d borrowed a projector from the goblins and spent the night going over the data Shelly had given me. When I laid it over an online map, it gave us a set of red pins on the map I was showing on the living room wall.

  “This was the safehouse.” I tapped the pin in the northwest. “Has anyone checked that out since my…visit?”

  “O’Malley went looking for you when he hadn’t heard anything in a few hours,” Mary told me. “He called it in; he was worried.” She shrugged. “By morning, we saw them moving out. We tried to follow them, but there were a lot of vehicles and we only had three people on hand when they moved.”

  “I could hope, but I’m not surprised,” I admitted. “I’m surprised O’Malley went looking for me. I told him not to.”

  She laughed.

  “When O’Malley first met you, one of his friends was introducing your face to the pavement,” she pointed out. “I think he feels he owes you something for that. And he wasn’t dumb enough to try and rescue you; that’s for sure.”

  “Was there anything left?” I asked.

  “If there was, no one will ever know,” Theino said grimly. “They set fire to the place and burned it all down. Fire department is still buzzing over just why there was so much gasoline in the place. Was supposed to be an industrial distribution center, after all.”

  “Damn.” I wished I was surprised, but if there was anything the Masked Lords had to be good at to survive twenty-odd years of conflict against the Fae High Court, it was covering their tracks.

  “We don’t know any other locations of theirs for certain,” I told my companions, then gestured at the map. “We have some possibilities, though. Blue pins are locations I know, official locales of the Unseelie Court in Calgary. Purple dots are locations where we can trace ownership into the same cluster of front companies and bullshit that owned the safehouse and the house Chernenkov was originally staying at, and were buying the guns and ammo that filled the safehouse.

  “We can safely assume all of that has moved,” I noted grimly. “Which means that our enemy has serious military-grade hardware at play.”

  “Love, there’s a South African army battle rifle and a Russian assault shotgun leaning against the wall behind you,” Mary reminded me. “Military-grade hardware is hardly a monopoly of our enemy.”

  “We have a handful of military small arms,” I told her. “They have enough small and heavy arms to equip a special forces company. Guns, rocket launchers, grenade launchers, explosives.” I shook my head. “Yeah, we have a lot of that, but not to this scale and quantity. The Masks are preparing for a war…and the target is the Calgary Seelie Court.

  “If that strike gets launched, we’ve failed,” I said flatly. “Open war in the fae community isn’t something we can come back from. We can call the Hunt in at that point…but a lot of people will die.”

  “The Hunt is no more of a precise tool than any other military force,” Inga agreed. “If Ankaris comes here to end a war between Courts, dozens will die. He is…more of a blunt instrument than Calebrant was.”

  “We know that Gráinne will probably be where Andrell is,” I noted. “That’s not a fight I want to pick. If we can lure her to a spot away from the Lord, we can go after her. Our easier target, in many ways, is the one we’ve been after from the beginning: Chernenkov.”

  “You are officially dead,” Mary reminded me. “What’s the plan?”

  “Our most likely places for Chernenkov are these.”

  I tapped three locations on the map. I’d spent a lot of time thinking about it, and now I laid it out for my allies.

  “The fourth most likely place is Andrell’s Court itself, but I think he’ll want to keep things separated for now,” I noted. “The next up is a motel owned by the Masked Lords. It’s still open, popular with mortal travelers, but they could tuck a few redcap mercs and Chernenkov in there.

  “Second is an old-style pub in the northeast. It’s not officially a hotel or boarding house, but they’ve got a couple of rooms upstairs.

  “Third is one of the new hotels at the airport, which the Unseelie Court owns in its entirety through various fronts and funds,” I concluded. “We need to check out all three.”

  “I can tell if she’s at any of them,” Mary told the others. “I know her scent.”

  “That might open up a solid option, then,” Inga noted. “Mary and I go have lunch at the bar and the hotel, and Theino goes and sneaks around the motel.”

  “No one will see me,” the goblin promised. “Few see a goblin unless we want them to—or a Viet Cong.”

  “I hate to ask this of—”

  “Everyone in this damn room is a volunteer, including you, last I checked,” Mary cut me off. “We’ll find the bitch, Jason. And then, well, I bet you we can think of a way to use that to lure Gráinne out into the open, too.

  “And if you give me a clean shot at the bitch that stuffed a cold iron dagger in my boyfriend’s chest, believe me, she is not going to be running to Andrell to complain about Covenant violations.”

  It was not my inclination to let others go into the field for me…but that our enemies believed me to be dead was one of our few advantages there. I kissed Mary goodbye and let my friends go out to see what they could find while I returned to the computer map and tried, desperately, to work out just what the Masked Lords’ plan was.

  I could see the logic behind their objective if I’d guessed it right. If Oberis’s Court was destroyed, preferably in a way that couldn’t be pinned on Andrell, then Andrell would find himself in the position Oberis had been in: the only Court in Calgary.

  That Court would then be responsible for heartstone distribution, which would allow them to siphon off heartstone for the Masked Lords. Mixed with gold, it would provide them with the orichalcum for powerful magical weapons.

  Mixed with mercury, it would provide them with quicksilver, the terrifyingly addictive but powerful substance that dramatically enhanced fae abilities. Armed with quicksilver in my blood, I’d been able to break through the barriers against teleportation and stepping Between that MacDonald had woven over his Tower.

  Without it, well, the “merely” gnome-forged barriers the Masked Lords had used against me had stolen my strongest defense and tool when I fought Gráinne. If I could avoid being trapped like that again, the Wizard’s gift might even the odds between me and the Fae Noble.

  Might. We were talking about a Noble, after all. Who was I to think I even stood a chance?

  I sighed and studied the map.

  A single Court that they controlled would be an unending supply of advantages for the Masked Lords. It would give them somewhere to store weapons without fear of discovery. A place for safehouses no one would be hunting. A strong home base that they could strike from with impunity.

  In fact, it was almost a surprise that they hadn’t had one before. I didn’t know enough fae history to be sure of that, though. All I knew about the Masked Lords had come from Inga.

  That they’d killed three Powers was terrifying, but they’d then disappeared for my entire life. A few conflicts here and there, and now this. Was this an example of what they’d been doing in those previous incidents? Laying groundwork for takeovers, burying resources, making allies?

  It was…all too likely. Control of Calgary and the heartstone supply would be a powerful tool in their arsenal.

  On the other hand, to pull that off, they needed to make sure that the attack wasn’t blamed on Andrell. Which, I supposed, was what Chernenkov was there for. A rogue actor with her own grudge agai
nst Calgary’s Nobles and Vassal…

  Fuck.

  She’d never meant to detonate the chlorine bomb. There were reasons for a Pouka to do so—fear seasoned the meat for them, as I understood—but they really didn’t justify an atrocity of that scale.

  And she’d never meant to carry it out. That was how we’d known she was there. She hadn’t been betrayed. The whole fight at the Stampede had been a setup.

  Which meant there was one more factor in play, one more potential thread to pull that we hadn’t even though of.

  The laptop I’d been given didn’t have much in terms of software, but Talus had seen it loaded with an encrypted and anonymous Fae-Net email, with at least his address in its memory.

  The email I sent was short and to the point:

  Who told us Chernenkov was coming?!

  It turned out that Talus had left video-call software on the laptop as well, which promptly started ringing about ten minutes later. I accepted the call to find myself looking at the older fae’s office. I’d never actually been to Talus’s office—my understanding was that even Oberis didn’t know where his right-hand man hung his hat in Calgary—but from the view, it was somewhere in downtown.

  Somewhere very high in downtown.

  A moment after the call started, Talus himself stepped back into the view of the camera and dropped into an expensive-looking black leather executive chair.

  “Sorry, I was adjusting the camera to, well, hide my office,” he told me with a mischievous grin. “We need to talk, but I’m not giving away all of my secrets.”

  “We do need to talk,” I agreed. “Chernenkov was never going to blow the Stampede, Talus. That whole thing was a setup—to get us to give her a reason to go after Oberis’s Court with mercs and firepower.”

  Talus’s amusement dissolved.

  “Fuck. You’re sure?”

  “They didn’t exactly hand me their business plan,” I said drily. “But it adds up. The Masked Lords need a base, and they needed a ‘rogue operator’ to clean out Oberis’s Court without landing the blame on Andrell. Which brings me back to my question, Talus. Who told us Chernenkov was coming?”