Aware

by Andy Havens

  This one is different, Bastiaan thought, all calm and relaxation draining away from him. He seems to be… different… odd. Something hiding and not hiding at the same time. The image he got from the monocle was not like what he was seeing for the other two men. It was as if he couldn’t look away from the newcomer. Like his eye was being drawn to him through a kind of… vacuum. Like…

  Like I’m falling toward him… Bastiaan thought with a sudden shock of terror up his spine.

  He put the monocle down and shuddered, thinking about…

  A cliff? Why should this ordinary looking man remind me of a steep, treacherous cliff?

  He didn’t understand. But he didn’t understand a lot about what was going on around him. He seemed to be remembering things. Like his name. And that he didn’t like ice-cream. But it was all still very fuzzy and jumbled.

  Bastiaan left Ken sleeping in their room and walked down the hall. He knew there would be a staff person in the office near the front of the building. There were guards around, of course. Gentle but firm. Not wearing guns or anything like that. Just there to be helpful. That’s what they said.

  I don’t want to be here anymore, he thought. He’d been content to sit back and maybe learn some new things from the monocle. Maybe try to listen in on some other meetings. Perhaps even share the insights from his newfound device with Ken. But the appearance of the new man on the porch… the one who wants me to fall… that changed his mind and settled his course utterly.

  I am not Thomas Brownfield Edgington. I do not like ice-cream. And I do not like that man.

  Even without the monocle in place, Bastiaan could now sense the overlapping fields of the security cameras as they turned back and forth. It was no effort whatsoever to stroll carefully between their passes, avoiding their gaze entirely. At the staff station, he waited until the woman bent over to get something out of her desk drawer and then silently slid by.

  The door was trickier. It was on one of those keycard locks. But there was a place next to one of the decorative plants in the foyer where he knew the color of his robe would blend very well with the shadows. All he had to do was stand just-so and wait.

  So he waited. Until one of the guards opened the door from the inside, heading out into the yard.

  Which wasn’t a help. So he waited more. Very quiet, very still. Had she looked up from her crossword puzzle and stared right at Bastiaan, the night staff administrator could have seen him easily. He wasn’t hidden so much as… very inconspicuous.

  Finally, the guard came back in from outside, opening the door with his keycard. Just as it was about to close, Bastiaan hustled sideways three steps. He was silent and timed it perfectly so that the door didn’t even touch the hem of his bathrobe. Then he stood there, inconspicuous again, until he was sure that neither the guard or the administrator would see him.

  He looked out across the field and wasn’t sure what to do. So he put the monocle back into his eye and saw eight different paths that would take him out of the Farm without much effort. He picked one at random and began to take the careful, measured steps that would help get him away from

  that person.

  Back on the porch the three men continued talking quietly, drinking their craft beer.

  An hour or so later, a guard came to let them know that there was some kind of ruckus at the front gate.

  * * * * *

  Mirkir had been in “guard doze” mode for a couple hours when the gate rattled. For him dozing meant that one eye and half his mind would sleep while the other would watch the garden and its prisoner. The fellow had been walking around, examining the various topiary and poking into the broken storage shed. He’d had two more bottles of water to drink and another snack bar. He’d toyed with some of the clippers, looking back at the hedges as if thinking about doing some trimming. Then he sighed and put them down.

  It was just after sundown when the noise of someone shaking the iron fence woke him into “full guard” mode. His left eye and right brain had been dreaming about a Frisbee and it took him about three seconds to come completely awake, jumping down to the ground to go see what was going on out front.

  Over his shoulder, he grunted an order at the other two gargoyles. They nodded, understanding that they were to keep a close watch on the prisoner.

  At the end of the short, brick tunnel, Mirkir saw a Reckoner of Blood standing at the gate, ready to give it another shake.

  “Brother Guardian,” the woman said simply. “I come for the prey.”

  Mirkir was not a complex creature. But he was not stupid. Had this been a person from Earth, he would have bitten the lock on the gate open immediately and allowed (gratefully) another of his Domain to take over. But Blood is not Earth.

  So he woofed, “Who are you?”

  The woman, dressed in elegant black leathers with blue and silver highlights, struck a short bow and said, “I am Loryys, Clan Chief of the Stone Tribes, beholden to Zav Ner’ynth, Master of Stone, who sits at the feet of Bloodlord Sekhemib Senbi, may he rule forever.”

  She was large, but like a bodybuilder. No fat on her. Broad of shoulder. Long, dark hair tied back in a sensible ponytail. Mirkir could only see a few of the clan tattoos writhing around her wrists and peeking out the neck of her shirt. They were enough to confirm the truth of what she said.

  It never occurred to Mirkir to doubt the markings of Blood. Anyone who tried to counterfeit that ink would experience a particularly gruesome death.

  “I hear you, Blood Sister,” said Mirkir. “But I await orders from Earth.”

  She nodded. “I have them. I am sent by Earth Lord Damon Mohz to collect the prey. I have this sign from him to prove my right.”

  Loryys reached into her coat pocket and withdrew a small, light-blue flower on a stem with three leaves and one thorn. To all Mundanes and most Reckoners, it would seem just that—a pale bloom on a dying twig. But Mirkir could read the authenticity in its message as well as he could the dancing marks on the Blood’s skin.

  Nodding, he stepped forward and bit through the lock on the gate, letting it swing slowly and noisily inward a bit.

  “Favor, Blood Sister,” he asked as she stepped in. She squatted down beside the dragon-dog-thing and patted him on the shoulder. “Ask, brother,” she said.

  He gestured at the broken lock with his nose and then into the garden. “Put new lock on as you go?”

  She nodded and smiled. “Easily granted, friend monster.”

  He grinned at that and wagged his stubby, stone tail.

  She called me ‘monster.’

  Following along at her heel, Mirkir reentered the garden and saw that Tenniel, the Chaotic, was sitting on the stone bench looking nervous.

  “Who are you?” he asked, standing up quickly.

  Loryys approached him to about arm’s length and replied, “You need to come with me.”

  “I’m not going anywhere until someone explains why I’ve been tied up and kept in this garden all day. I may have been, what? Badly behaved last night, but that’s no reason…”

  Loryys reached out and slapped him hard on the side of his head. He nearly stumbled with the shock and power of it. But he stood back up quickly, angry and shaking.

  “You have no right! There is no warrant between us! Why would you…”

  He got no further. Loryys reached up with one hand and began the gestures and incantations of a Blood Way. It silenced Tenniel, hearing those whispers spoken, but Mirkir only frowned.

  Blood will not flow in the garden, he thought. Just as Chaos will not roll.

  Something was different here, though. Something was wrong. Both Mirkir and Tenniel felt it. No Way of Blood should be possible within the confines of an Earth Home. Not without an Earth Reckoner giving permission as sponsor, escort or co-creator.

  It made Mirkir very uncomfortable. Like water freezing between his pores or birds pooping all over him. It was slimy and itchy and…

  Not right. Not right for here.

  T
enniel reached out his own hand and tried to speak, but all that came out was a small squeak. He tried again, and made no sound. He looked afraid and confused, as if something was silencing his words as he spoke them. He began to look around, turning his head left and right, as if searching for an exit.

  Loryys continued casting her Way, reaching out to hold his hand in both of hers. Tenniel reacted as if he’d been burned, trying to pull away from her but failing.

  To Mirkir, it seemed as if the man was getting colder. Like whatever this slimy, itchy thing was that he was feeling was also coating the Chaos Reckoner, drawing away his strength as it silenced him. The gargoyle could barely hear the whispered words of the Blood Chief, but the air around her seemed to still, to become dead and without sound or scent or color.

  The Clan Chief finally finished her spoken invocation and pulled Tenniel into a close, hard bear hug. Mirkir could see the man’s face over her shoulder, contorted and tense. He opened his mouth to vent what the gargoyle thought should have been an ear-splitting scream. Again, there was nothing but silence.

  The man’s face twisted and tears leaked from the corners of his eyes. He struggled against the embrace of the Blood, but his efforts were futile, like a child trying to break away from a wild animal or wrestler. It was pathetic and sad and, while the man was from another House, Mirkir thought to himself…

  That’s not right…

  Finally, the Blood Way dissipated, sound and color returned to the garden, and Tenniel grew still in Loryys’ embrace, twitching a few times but seemingly much, much calmer.

  Loryys stepped away from him, keeping his hands held in hers, and said to him, “Your name is Wayne K. Daniels. You are most recently from Hartford, Connecticut. You grew up in San Francisco. You studied dental hygiene. You cleaned people’s teeth for years. But you got sick and now you can’t work.”

  Tenniel just stood there, swaying slightly, hands limp in hers, eyes staring off into a vague, middle distance somewhere beyond the walls of the garden.

  “Repeat that back to me, please,” Loryys said.

  “My name is Wayne K. Danfied…”

  “Daniels.”

  “My name is Wayne K. Daniels. I am from Hartford, Connecticut. I grew up in San Francisco. I studied… teeth cleaning. I cleaned people’s teeth for a long time. But I got sick. And I can’t go to work now.”

  Loryys shrugged and released his hands. “Close enough. What’s your name?”

  “My name is Wayne K. Daniels.”

  “Good boy,” she said, wiping her hands off on her jacket. She squatted down by Mirkir again and asked, “Where is the spare lock? I’ll fix the gate on my way out, Little Brother.”

  He pointed with his nose at the shed and Loryys poked around until she found one of the two spare locks tucked into the back behind packages of gloves and some various insecticide packets.

  “Let’s go, Wayne K. Daniels,” she said to Tenniel.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “We’re going on a bus ride,” she answered. “It’s a nice bus. There’s music and snacks.”

  “Where does the bus go,” he asked absentmindedly, still looking around as if trying to focus on something. Anything.

  “The bus goes home, Wayne. You’re going home.”

  “OK,” he said and walked over to stand next to her.

  She has Earth sign, Mirkir thought. And orders from a Master.

  It still didn’t sit well with him. Blood is not Earth.

  Seeming to share his unease, Hayyel and Brayach both jumped down to land beside him on the slight grassy hill at the center of the garden as Loryys slowly led the dazed man out toward the gate.

  “Bloodwork in Earth home?” Hayyel hissed.

  Mirkir tapped a stone foot.

  “Verrry Irrrregular,” Brayach trilled in his gurgly, liquid voice.

  Mirkir growled in agreement.

  Perhaps emboldened by his recent excursion, perhaps confused by the lack of direct orders, Mirkir made a decision.

  “Watch garden,” he said to his two fellows. They nodded, understanding, as their leader trotted off down the brick tunnel. They heard the Blood Chief fixing the lock and closing the latch. After a moment, they heard the clattery sound as Mirkir cast himself through the iron bars of the gate.

  Brayach looked in the direction of the gate and writhed back-and-forth in clear discomfort.

  “Mirkir brrrrave. But slow. I watch garrrrden,” he said. “I watch alone.”

  Hayyel, frowning, seemed to follow the gist of his cousin. He nodded, making a clacking sound of agreement with his stony beak. Unfurling ornamental wings, the eagle-thing took a few running steps and then jumped up into the darkening sky.

  Alone now in the enclosed topiary, Brayach decided to sleep inside the brick-lined tunnel that ran between the garden and the street. He curled his fishy tail up under his chin and tried to relax. But sleep eluded him. He was worried about Mirkir and Hayyel. He didn’t understand what had been happening in the garden. He had liked the Chaos man more than the Blood Chief and the smell of that last Way was just very wrong. Very wrong.

  Unable to rest, he waited and watched the cars and pedestrians and bikes and birds and all manner of city creatures pass by the iron gate. Some of it he understood, some he didn’t. But he was good at waiting and watching.

  “Verrrrry irrrrrregular,” he muttered to himself every now and then. “Very, verrrry.”

  * * * * *

  Helen McKey returned to the Library a bit after the time of her normal dinner break. None of the other staff were surprised that she’d been out-and-about a couple of times. They all knew that she did errands for Monday. If her tasks weren’t listed on the administrative calendar, that was her business. And his.

  She found Wallace hard at work in his cubicle, poring over recordings that might have a bearing on Jimson’s gang of tags.

  As she approached, he looked up and said, “I can’t find that they had any name besides ‘Jimson’s Gang.’”

  “That’s a bit odd,” she agreed, sitting in the guest chair opposite his workstation. She was, of course, dressed and coiffed as Mrs. McKey, though he could not stop seeing little glimpses of Hieretha peeking out.

  I’m going to need to put a lid on that, he thought to himself. I worked here for decades and never had any inkling of her outside persona. If she wants to keep them separate, I need to respect that.

  So he pushed down thoughts of tattoos, leather and shotguns and concentrated on the report he was reading.

  “Yes. Odd,” he replied. “Almost every gang of tags I’ve ever heard of takes some kind of moniker. Sometimes from the House that employs them. Sometimes based on their own internal folklore or mythology. Sometimes it’s just…”

  “Whimsy?” Helen filled in.

  “Yes. That’s as good a word as any.”

  He gestured at the text on his screen. “As far as anything we have here, they were never much of anything, frankly. We have records of our staff dealing with them twice before at their house, both times providing requested information that was well within the bounds of Earth tag behavior. And two of his gang came to the Library itself once, looking for lore related to both Blood and Flux history.”

  McKey asked, “What was the Flux request?”

  He clicked the computer screen a couple of times and said, “The ‘Radiant Flow Dialogues’ by Parkham MarColl.”

  “Odd,” she said. “That’s a bog-standard text. They didn’t need to come to the main Library for something like that. It’s available, well… pretty much anywhere.”

  Wallace shrugged. “Who knows with tags.”

  She nodded. “It’s just odd. Partly because, as Earth tags, they’d always check an official request by their seigneur. Any record of who that was?”

  “I thought they worked for... What did you call him? ‘Uncle Stoke?’ From the Bloods.”

  “No,” Helen said. “Uncle is a term of art that a tag gang will use for a Reckoner they
do errands for outside of their House affiliation. I knew that Jimson did some side jobs for Stoke. I was probing to see if maybe the Blood Chief had anything to do with the deck we were searching for. It being Blood art and all.”

  “But I don’t think he did,” said Wallace, clicking his mouse to keep the screen-saver from kicking in.

  “I don’t think so either. There was nothing about Stoke in the Way you pulled from Jimson. Jimson worked for a minor Earth Baron who reported up to Rain. So it wasn’t odd for Rain to be stopping by. But we still don’t know why Jimson got the cards from the Library.”

  Wallace turned in his chair to face her. “Ah, yes. That reminds me. What did you learn from Mer'eket’s son?”

  McKey grinned and Hieretha peeked out again at Wallace, though he tried hard not to see it.

  “Avar’eket,” she replied. “Avar, for short. Yes. I learned a little from him.”

  “And what might that be?” said a quiet voice behind them.

  They both jumped a bit as Solomon Monday, Master of Sight, also known simply as “The Librarian” appeared, instantly and silently.

  Wallace stood up, still unused to working directly with the Master of his House.

  “Sir. Yes. Uh… Good to… uh…”

  “Relax, Wallace,” McKey said, standing up herself and smoothing her hair – now back to its simple pixie-cut–over her ear. “How are you today, Mr. Monday?”

  “I am well, Mrs. McKey. You’ve had a couple unusual errands this past week.”

  He was tall and thin and severe looking. Because of his dark brown skin and penchant for dark clothing, he often seemed to fade into the background or the shadows of any room he occupied. Some took this as a sign that he was either introverted or overly somber. But McKey knew he was simply very good at observation, at being quiet and at listening. He was serious about his work and the running of his House. Both for the sake of his own people, and because he believed that he provided an essential service for all the Domains. While not given to easy levity, McKey knew her Master could have a sense of humor when it was appropriate.