Robert Charrette - Arthur 03 - A Knight Among Knaves

by Robert N. Charrette

  Maybe Bennett's gift had something of the same purpose. It was another tie to Faery, and another way to connect John to him. Had he known what Shahotain was going to give John? John wouldn't put it past him. Here are your mothers, John, pick one. Pick a life. Your choice, no pressure. But you can't have both, because they come from different worlds.

  Did it have to be that way? Two mothers, one mortal and gone from his life, and the other of whom he knew nothing. Well, he had two fathers, too, one an elven prince and the other gone from his life before he had a chance to know him. He hadn't realized before the odd symmetry of that: two mothers and two fathers and one of each unknown. His sets of parents made a strange reflection, almost as strange as the still barely familiar face he saw mirrored in the pool. That face was his, but it wasn't the one he'd grown up with.

  Was that reflection an answer, a sign that the John Reddy tie thought he'd been was gone, dissolved away in magic? He picked up the encased disk. Even the case reflected his elven visage.

  "Your spells won't work on that, don't you know?"

  Yuri? John turned his head. It was Yuri, no more than three yards away and leaning on a staff. John had been too wrapped in his thoughts to notice the urisk's arrival.

  Pointing with his stick at the disk, Yuri said, "Dead, isn't it? Dead to magic."

  "Nothing's dead to magic." That's what Shahotain said.

  "Not dead?" Yuri tilted his head to look sidelong at the disk. "Maybe to a great one's magic—a truly great one—but to lesser folk dead enough. A thing of the sunlit world, isn't it? It doesn't belong here."

  The disk that offered him a chance to reconnect with Marianne Reddy didn't belong here in the otherworld. With his longing to see her again, maybe John didn't belong here either. His gaze drifted again to the pool and to his image. An elf, no doubt about it, not a mall rat, or a collegiate fencer, or even a runaway and ganger. In the pool the reflections of stars glittered about his head like a crown of fire. He'd been told that he was a royal prince of elfland. As a child he'd dreamed of such a life. Here, it could be his. Would be his. Some of it already was. Here, his dreams were coming true. Maybe he did belong here after all.

  So why couldn't he bring himself to toss the disk into the pool and be done with it?

  "A surprise to see you here, isn't it, Great Jack?"

  "Oh? And why is that?"

  "It is the changeling way of things. Your life among the other great ones grows familiar, does it not? The lights are brighter, the music sharper and more poignant, the company more suitable to your needs and station. Is that not the way of it?"

  Life at the keep had been more comfortable than he'd expected.

  "A surprise, too, that you are not happy."

  "That a personal insight, or just another part of the way of things?"

  Yuri didn't respond.

  John shifted his gaze from his reflection to Yuri. The urisk was half man, half goat, like some kind of DNA-fluxed chimera, neither one nor the other, but frozen in between, a bunch of bits and pieces that didn't quite blend. Sort of like John. No, that was wrong, John saw as he studied him. Yuri did manage to blend it all together. There was a solemn, if forlorn, peace about him, the sort of comfort and acceptance of his lot that John wished he knew how to find.

  "How do you do it, Yuri?"

  "Do What?"

  "Find peace."

  "Know my place, don't I?"

  They were silent for a while, John thinking about just what his own place might be. It was the sort of companionable silence John had once shared with Faye. He hadn't seen her for some time, had been woefully neglectful. He wondered where she was, and in wondering, felt her presence. Nearby.

  Yuri reacted to his start. Nodding knowingly as John scanned the nearby trees. "Here she came, to look in the pool. Strange, isn't it, to see a sprite sad?"

  "Hush, Yuri," Faye said as she emerged from the shadows under the trees from which Yuri had once watched. "John doesn't need to hear that."

  No, he didn't, but he had. He'd never intended to hurt her. It was just—well—

  "You are coming into your estate," she said. "Your aura is much stronger. I'm very glad for you."

  Her smile was radiant, forgiving and loving, and a balm to John's spirit, but then her presence had always had a soothing, reassuring effect on him. For reasons that he didn't understand, she was treating him better than he deserved. "Why?"

  She broke eye contact with him, looking down at her feet. She stole a glance at Yuri, and John thought she blushed. Shyly, she looked at John again. "You're my prince."

  John couldn't think of anything to say.

  She didn't let the silence drag out. "You're not thinking of abandoning the court to go back to the sunlit world and search for Marianne Reddy, are you?"

  He had been thinking of that, but he was a little scared to go alone. "Would you come with me if I did?"

  "Of course. But it would be wrong."

  Who had been telling her that? "Says who?"

  "You would lose so much."

  "What about what I could regain?"

  "Anything you might regain would pass from you again in time. Think about your new estate. You belong in the court."

  Why was she giving him the elven party line? "Bennett tell you to say that?"

  Faye shook her head, eyes solemn.

  "The speaker of the truth is of no consequence compared to what he speaks," Yuri said. "What you are, you are, Great Jack. Belong to the court, don't you?"

  Maybe so. "Everybody is giving me the same line. Pardon me if I get a little suspicious considering that it's Bennett's." "Why so suspicious, John? Bennett's given you your opportunity to be what you were born to be."

  "he's been giving me other things, too." He told them about Bennett's gift and about his friends' speculations concerning the memento. Neither of them seemed to like it when John mentioned the plan to examine the crystal magically that he and his friends had come up with.

  "John, you can't be serious about tampering with Bennett's gift," Faye said.

  "Why not?"

  She blinked, hesitant. "Well, it's not proper. Bennett entrusted the crystal to you. You shouldn't go prying into it."

  Prying? Didn't he have a right to know? "If Bennett trusted me, he would just tell me my mother's name."

  "Consider his reasons, John."

  "Damn his reasons!" Faye's sympathetic tone made light of all Bennett's lies and deceptions. "I want to know who my real mother is! How the hell am I supposed to make decisions without knowing all the facts?"

  Yuri murmured agreement. John recognized the urisk's ploy to calm him down. There really wasn't any need to be angry at these two, and John told them that he wasn't angry. Not at them. Yuri spoke.

  "So, think you that the others are right? Could the crystal hold a clue to your true mother's identity?"

  "I guess so. They've been studying magic longer than I have, and they seem to think the possibility is there. Sure, why not?"

  "Possibility, yes, possibility there might be."

  "Glad you think so too."

  "I? That I did not say, but you are right, they should know better than me." Yuri looked at him mournfully. "And they have offered to help you uncover it, haven't they?"

  "Yes, they have."

  "Thought so, didn't I?" Yuri said, nodding as if John's answer confirmed something. "Considered, have you, what they gain from this?"

  What did they need to gain? "They're my friends. They want to help me."

  "No other reasons?" Faye asked.

  "They don't like Bennett."

  "See this as a way to harm him, do they?"

  John didn't buy Yuri's suggestion. "Harm him? Not really. It's more in the nature of a prank."

  "Names, Great Jack. Forgotten about names so soon?"

  Of course he hadn't forgotten. "What can knowing her name harm? She's gone. Bennett said so."

  Yuri raised a bushy eyebrow. "Names are still names. Connections can still embarr
ass. Think you about the politics of the court?"

  "I don't give a damn about Faery politics."

  "John, there's a lot you don't know about politics here," Faye said.

  It was not as if she had ever taught him about Faery politics. It wasn't that long ago that he hadn't known the difference between a sprite and an elf. Sprites might spend time at the court, but they were not part of the court. Most of them weren't bright enough to understand politics. What did Faye know about all this anyway. She was probably just afraid that John might anger Bennett. "I don't think there's anything to worry about. No one's going to get hurt."

  "No one? If trust you break with the prince, you will embarrass your sire, won't you?"

  "Embarrassed? Bennett?" John laughed. "If that's the result, I'm all for it. Serve him right."

  They argued some more but John stopped listening. He knew now what he was going to do. He would go along with his friends' plan to wrest whatever secrets they could from the crystal. Bennett might want to keep the identity of John's mother a secret, but John had a right to the information. And have it he would! If uncovering the secret caused Bennett problems, fine. Let Bennett take his lumps.

  CHAPTER

  14

  Benton crawled the bug a little higher, then a little more, until he had a view of the bodies.

  "Zoom. Three steps. Do it now."

  His comp relayed the order to the bug and the lens eyes obeyed. The wasted face of a victim filled his monitor. He studied the image. It would take proper tests to confirm it— tests he wouldn't get to make, since the cops had this site locked up—but he felt sure. This was one of his quarry's kills all right, and he'd missed it again. He was beginning to doubt he'd ever get as close to it as he had last August.

  He crawled the bug back to the edge of the window frame, where it would be less conspicuous, and set it to record. Unlikely he'd learn anything he didn't already know, but it paid to cover all bets. He was glad to see only SIU cops and a couple of corp investigators. If the authorities had any idea what was going on, the feds would be infesting Armianco's Stamford rezcom.

  lust as well. Feds got in the way and complicated what should be simple. The longer they stayed out of this, the happier he would be.

  He entered what little he had on this latest strike, including his personal evaluation of the circumstances, into the truck's comp. It wasn't good, hard data, but it would give his expert systems something to start working on until he gave them better. He wanted them working out predictive probabilities now. This kill was days old; there'd be another soon.

  His expert systems, operating with his data and encrypted stuff from his employer, had gotten him close a couple of times now. Close enough that the "resonator" that his patron had supplied had registered the presence of his quarry. Unfortunately, the resonator wasn't very precise. Sooner or later he'd get lucky and the systems would give him a location near enough that he could get to the scene in time to catch his quarry while it was still involved in the kill. Sooner would be his preference; he was running out of continent on which to chase the thing.

  For the moment there was little he could do. Time to contact his patron.

  The false front of the truck's entertainment center was already down. He popped open the storage compartment and took out the induction headset. Settling the pads on his temples, he checked the contact integrity before initiating the call. The feed to his headwear was clear. Calling up his directory, he eyeballed his patron's number and initiated it. The garage vanished and the virtual meeting room appeared before his eyes.

  He didn't like being cut off from the world this way even though he should be safe enough with the truck's minder watching. But you had to play to contract if you wanted to get paid, and the contract specified telepresence meetings. They were paying enough for him to take the chance.

  The meeting room appeared empty, but he knew better.

  "Benton here," he announced. It was an old telephone habit; there was no need to identify himself by speech. The coded connective handshake that had gotten him into the virtual meeting room was enough, even without the very recognizable image that the telepresence system was showing his patron.

  His patron appeared: a well-muscled human shape of smooth, liquid gold with features too perfect to be real; no clothes, not even genitalia. Benton supposed the nearly featureless image was supposed to evoke thoughts of gods, but in these days of high-resolution imagery, it looked more like a digital antique. It had to be a style thing; he knew his patron had access to better, because he knew who his patron was. Anton Van Dieman, up-and-coming suit, a veep actually, at Network Securities, an arm of Metadynamics. Benton wasn't supposed to know, but he'd cheated. Purely in the interest of his own safety, of course. It was always best to know who you were working for. Just in case.

  "It has been some days," Van Dieman said.

  "It's struck again."

  "You're sure?"

  "Nothing on the resonator, since it's been a few days, but yeah, I'm sure."

  "You say the resonator did not react, but you are sure it was what we seek. How can that be? Was the resonator functioning properly?"

  It had worked before and the diagnostic routines checked out. "I'm more worried about the capture device working." That hadn't been field-tested—for obvious reasons.

  "I begin to think that you need not concern yourself with that."

  "Hey, don't fade on me now. We're getting closer all the time. Next time maybe, or the time after that. I'll get it." There was a big bonus for "getting" it.

  The golden image waved a dismissive hand. "I do not doubt your prowess, but priorities have changed. I have observed, and appreciate, your diligence in this matter."

  Benton's minder flashed notice of a financial transaction. Van Dieman's appreciation was substantial. Benton smiled at the compliment as he listened to his patron continue.

  "However, I think it best if you pursue other matters for the moment. This situation has moved beyond the solution you represent."

  The situation reported on the wallscreen looked no closer to solution than the last time Pamela Martinez had checked on it. Disturbing. A string of incidents related only by apparent cause of death.

  Was this some new monster, or had the old one risen again to plague the world?

  As far as she knew, she and her people were the only ones to see the whole picture. Local media and police departments had linked some of the incidents into small chains; no more than half a dozen of the component elements showed up in any of them. Only the National Illuminator™ had gathered several of the chains together, in their terror story of a lethal new retrovirus; but they had included several clearly inappropriate deaths in their count. They did not know the real story.

  She looked again at the geographical plot. The dates attached to the plot points told the tale. From the earliest in California to this most recent in Stamford, the unfolding pattern showed an eastward trend. The progression was neither straight nor steady, save for that brief period at the beginning of August when five closely spaced incidents mapped out a straight line pointed at New England. At the time she had thought nothing of it, but now that the killer had struck in New England that line looked more significant. Had it been an anomaly in the data collection, or was it a significant, if obscure, clue? There was no way for her to know, certainly it had baffled her best analysts, but she had suspicions now— fears actually—that this killer might indeed be an old problem returned to haunt her.

  The killer had come ashore nearly a year ago when the Wisteria had made port in San Francisco. Where it had come from before that was a mystery that only the Wisteria's dead crew knew. That ship's last port before San Francisco had been in New Zealand, but so far there were no reports of similar deaths from there or anywhere in the South Pacific region. Wisteria had been boarded somewhere along its route. There were no clues as to where.

  The chain of deaths was a waking nightmare. Medical reports on the deaths, where available, look
ed too much like oilier reports sealed in Project Charybdis's files. Too much like Quetzal's victims.

  "Tell me, Hagen, is it Quetzal?"

  "Quetzal is dead."

  "A revenant, then? Some summoning left as a fail-safe? An avenger connected to his cult? You understand the manifestations of magic better than I. What is it?"

  Hagen frowned at her, clearly unhappy to be sidetracked from the discussion he'd started. "The Wisteria killer is an unknown, but a direct connection to Quetzal is unlikely."

  "How can you know that?"

  "It is the best evaluation my people have come up with."

  His people were not people at all, but dwarves, another species that had secretly shared the earth with humans for as long as there had been humans. Now, with the world on the edge of dissolving into magical chaos, they had emerged from hiding. Like her they wished to mitigate the effects of magic's rising tide. The dwarves had faced and dealt with the menace of magic before, and that experience was why Pamela valued them as allies. Such experience would give her an edge in positioning Mitsutomo to survive in the chaotic new world that was dawning. Unfortunately Hagen and his dwarven cabal were a secretive bunch, and despite their shared fear of and antipathy for magic, they were far too cautious to trust her completely. She understood that. She didn't trust them completely either.

  Could she trust them in this matter?

  "I don't believe that we can ignore this problem," she said. "Whatever this thing is, it is killing people and it is headed this way."

  Hagen glanced at the map, repeating what he had been telling her all along. "Its path is unpredictable."

  "But suggestive. I think, Mr. Hagen, that this is one of those situations in which you know more than you are willing to tell me. Am I right?"

  "No," he said. She wondered if he had forgotten about the stress monitors in his chair, or if his people had found some way to beat the technology. The chair registered agitation, but didn't confirm a lie.