"Right. And I won almost all the time. Not because I was better than everyone I fought; I wasn't. It was because," he leaned close to whisper in her ear, "I could really take a beating."
She managed a faint smile. "What?"
"I could take more damage than they could. More pain. Keep my mind sharp. Keep hitting. It discourages them when they beat the living hell out of you and you keep on hitting. To do that, you have to fight through the pain."
From the street below came the sound of a siren, a more rapid cycle of noise than he was used to from the ambulances of his world. He managed a prayer to lend wings to the feet of the ambulance attendants.
"That's my name," she said.
"What is?"
"Ixyail. It means, `the lady of pain' in the tongue of my people."
"Because you inflict pain or receive it?"
The faint smile returned. "Inflict, I think. Until today. Hush, now. I have to talk to someone." Her eyes closed.
"Ish, dammit, don't fade away on me!"
"Hush. I will be well. The pain cannot kill me." She relaxed against him.
Finally he looked up at Noriko. Her gaze was on him, not Ixyail, and her eyes were wide—whether with surprise or with revulsion he could not tell. Noriko wiped away a tear rolling down her cheek.
Two men in hospital whites were in the office a minute later. The dark-haired man, probably the ambulance driver, carried on his shoulder two poles wrapped with cloth; Zeb inferred a stretcher. The blond, whose bag indicated he was a doctor, checked Ish's pulse with an ungainly-looking stethoscope, carefully thumbed open her eyelids and pronounced her unconscious, and timed her breathing. Then he sat back a minute as Zeb described what Ish had said.
"Sounds like an arrow of the gods," he said.
"A what?"
"Just what it sounds like. A sudden piercing pain leading to collapse and quick death. Not a stroke; arrows of the gods leave a lingering residue of devisement. But this young lady is still with us and not, I think, fading, which is something new to me. Let's get her to Lord Reev's as fast as we can—"
"Thown Hospital. Special request of the Sidhe Foundation."
The doctor shrugged. "Sidhe Foundation paid for my medical education. I'd drive her to Lackderry if they asked." He gestured for the driver to set the stretcher down.
Zeb carefully handed Ish over to them. As he stood, he looked again at Noriko. Her imperturbable expression was still gone; she seemed troubled. Guilty. "What is it?" he asked.
"You just did something—something extraordinary. I wouldn't have known how. I would have let her die."
"I doubt that."
"I don't. You have no respect for the forces that attacked her. I do, and I would have doomed her." She turned to watch the doctor and driver transferring Ish to the stretcher. "I hope she forgives me."
* * *
There was almost a delay at the hospital as a large orderly tried to prevent Zeb from following the stretcher in. Zeb grabbed the man's outstretched hand, twisted, was rewarded with the sound of a bark of pain as the orderly went to one knee. Zeb brushed past him without altering pace or expression. Noriko walked around the kneeling man, not acknowledging him, as she followed. The next orderly read their eyes and didn't interfere.
Alastair was just inside, already in medical whites, and directed the stretcher, Zeb, and Noriko into an emergency theater.
"Where's Doc?" Zeb asked.
"Getting the money together. Waiting for their call." While the driver and the blond doctor arrayed Ish on the examination table, Alastair began taking instruments from his bag and laying them out on a silver tray. Some were medical instruments Zeb recognized; others, including gems, small musical pipes, leather bags and rattles, seemed less professional.
"Je-zus. He couldn't hand that off to somebody?"
"We needed a deviser to work with the money and then to look at the delivery site. That means him or me. I'm better with the injured." Alastair dismissed the ambulance crew with a wave and a thanks. "If you're wondering, it is eating Doc from within that he can't be here now. So tell me everything." He affixed a lavender-tinted monocle to his eye and bent over the unconscious woman.
* * *
Gaby depressed the button on the intercom-like device the fairworlders called a dicto. "Call coming in from the building switchboard. I'm told it's a rough voice."
Doc's voice, tight and weary, came back. "I have it."
Gaby touched the main panel of the switchboard serving the Sidhe Foundation floors. As she had six separate times since their return to the Monarch Building, she relaxed and let her consciousness be tugged into the Grid.
This time she did not invoke the imaginary bedchamber that was her usual haven while navigating the Grid; time was at a premium. Now she floated in a black void, distant from her body, which she could no longer feel. Words jangled through her, both halves of Doc's conversation, and she oriented herself toward them.
Doc's voice first: "—as you demanded. Fifty thousand, silver."
Another voice, one Gaby recognized from the radio broadcast. "And no tricks. No beacons. No curses. We'll find them and make you pay."
Gaby broadened her perceptions, trying to find the same words being spoken elsewhere, slightly out of phase, at some odd angle or distance. Doc's voice and that of the other man were still loudest, but now beneath them was the buzz of an entire city's talk-box traffic.
Calls could be traced by mechanical means. That meant having an operative at the Grid company and running among towering blocks of relay equipment in order to physically trace the relays handling the call. That took many minutes, and no career criminal would be foolish enough to stay on the line that long.
But Gaby's Gift, though less reliable, let her conduct a call trace much more swiftly than the mechanical technique . . . when it worked.
"No tricks. But I still have to know where to bring it."
"King's Park on King's Road. You'll know where to put the coinage when you see it. You have exactly one chime to get it in place . . . or thousands of deaths fall on your shoulders."
" . . . on your shoulders." Gaby heard the distant echo of those words. She flew toward them.
Doc's voice lessened in volume as her attention moved; she could barely make out his words. "One chime. Impossible. This is twenty manweights of silver. I need more time."
"A pity. You do not have it. The timepiece is running."
Gaby swept toward the man's words, enfolded them, spread out from them in all directions. Even as the man hung up the talk-box she got an impression of his surroundings; then his disconnect thrust her back into her body.
She shook her head to clear dizziness away and again hit the dicto button for the garage. "Doc, I have them. I can find them, anyway. Morcymeath, near the docks, a six-story residential building. I can't visualize it but I'll know it when I see it."
Doc's voice came back, weary. "Just stake it out. Call the Novimagos Guard and let them lead the raid."
"And who's going with you?"
"No one."
"The hell you say. You need backup—"
"We're running low on associates." He disconnected.
* * *
Doc pulled out onto King's Road and headed north. He shifted gears, grudging the vehicle's sluggish performance. It was a big military truck painted in dull red, the back end covered by a reinforced bronze frame holding up a red cloth cover that flapped in the breeze. Its name was Deuce because Harris said it was like the "deuce and a half" trucks from his grim world, and it was more than adequate to haul the fortune in silver that rested in fifty heavy bags in the back . . . but it was not speedy.
He noticed that his knuckles were white on the wheel. It didn't surprise him. Gods and goddesses, let Ixyail be well.
As he got the truck up to speed he began honking nearly continuously to persuade slower drivers ahead that he was not going to slow for them. Vehicles pulled aside and pedestrians crossing the street scattered for him. If someone did
linger in his path, he'd brake . . . but he preferred for no one to test him. Preferred not to lose the precious ticks of the clock such an action would cost him. Time. Did Alastair get to her in time?
When traffic allowed, he glanced at the coin bouncing around on the seat beside the passenger door. It was a worn, ordinary-looking silver lib . . . and the very sort of trick the Bergmonk brothers had warned him not to implement. The devisement he and Alastair had cast upon it would be almost invisible, undetectable by all but the most proficient of devisers. But a full chime after it was warmed by the touch of a hand, its devisement would become active, radiating a beacon he or Alastair might be able to detect.
If he decided to add it to the treasure in back, that is.
He swore, using an expletive his associates had never heard him voice. The coin was subtle, but his enemies knew so much about him. They knew his methods. If he dropped the coin in amongst the ransom and they detected it, thousands might die.
Two-thirds into the time he'd been allowed, King's Park, with its riotously colored flower gardens and Khemish pylons, came into view ahead. He blared his way through traffic, ignored the wave-off of a guardsman directing traffic, and headed straight toward the curb.
No time to search on foot. He hopped the curb, the truck's cargo weight sending a painful shudder through the vehicle, and drove right up on the grass and through the first long bed of yellow flowers. Hand-linked lovers and painters sitting before portable easels scattered before him.
The Bergmonk on the talk-box had been correct: His target was easy to spot. A transference circle was painted onto the grass toward the center of the park. It was on the broad lawn a hundred paces or so from the Greater Pylon from Khem, an ancient obelisk brought to Novimagos by treasure hunters long ago.
There wasn't enough time to unload the cargo of silver. He kept his hand on the horn and drove straight onto the white circle. He set the brake, then bailed out of the driver's seat to look at the damage he'd done to the white circle.
The paint was fresh. With his bare hands he smeared undried paint across the brown trenches his tires had made in the grass, restoring the circle to its unbroken state. This was the simplest sort of transference circle, meaning the corresponding circle, where the truck would arrive, was not far away.
Someone was shouting: "Goodsir, are you mad?"
He returned to the driver's door and, reluctantly, scooped up the special lib, sliding it into a shirt pocket, smearing both with paint as he did so. "Sidhe Foundation business," he shouted back. "Were you here when this was painted?"
Another voice, a boy's: "I was!"
Doc trotted over. The shouter was a round-cheeked boy of maybe twelve summers, dressed in a red playsuit that had until very recently been clean. Doc stood well away from him; if his opponents intended some extra assault, such as a sniper's attack, he wanted to avoid endangering innocents. "What did you see?"
"Three old men. Thick. They had beards. They had paint cans and shovels."
"How long ago?"
The boy shrugged. "Two or three chimes. I don't know. Are they bad eamons?"
Doc nodded absently. "I'm going to ask you to look at some cameos at—did you say shovels? Did they bury something?"
"At the center of the circle. They buried some of the paint cans."
Doc resisted the temptation to swear again. "All right, boy. I want you to run that way," he pointed toward the far end of the park, "as fast as you can, right now. Go!"
The boy hesitated a moment, as if trying to gauge whether Doc were joking, and ran. Doc himself ran around the truck, shouting "In the name of the Novimagos Guard I order everyone back! Get back! Bomb! Bomb!"
Some of the onlookers began moving back—a few steps, too slowly.
Doc sighed, then pulled his handgun from his shoulder holster and began firing—in all directions, but into the earth.
The onlookers began running.
The truck shimmered as though it alone were sitting under the desert sun. Doc began running, too.
* * *
"Interesting notion," Alastair said. "Arrow of the gods. Young Doctor Dermot may have been close to the truth." He continued making hand-waving passes over Ish, staring at her with his left eye closed.
Zeb and Noriko each kept a hand on Ish's, though she still exhibited no sign of consciousness. "What does that mean?"
"Just what it sounds like. A god decides he doesn't like a mortal and shoots him dead. The arrow isn't physical—at least, none has ever been found."
"You're saying that there's a real god who wants Ish dead."
"I doubt that." Alastair opened his eye and cupped his chin in his hand to stare down at Ixyail. "It takes a lot these days to make a god that angry at a mortal. And Ish, despite her sharp tongue, doesn't go out of her path to insult the gods."
Ish's lips twitched into a smile. "Sharp tongue." Her eyes opened. "I protest." Her voice was weak but steady.
Alastair breathed a sigh that sounded to Zeb like relief. He bent over her. "How do you feel?"
"Much better. Terrible."
"You fell unconscious and worried Zeb and Noriko unto death."
"No. I went to talk to the other me."
Zeb snorted. "The other you? Is she as bad-tempered as you are?"
"Worse."
Alastair bent over to examine her eyes. "And what did she tell you?"
"That she wasn't hurt. She didn't have a blade in her belly. So I knew Zeb was right. The injury was a lie." She smiled up at Zeb. "You saved my life, Zeb. Thank you."
"All part of the service, ma'am."
"Did you tell Doc?"
Zeb frowned. "About you? Of course. He couldn't come—"
"No, no, no. About the other—my notepad? Did you see my notes? About the other building. The building with the vandalism."
"Other building. Oh, God. Tell me."
She told him.
* * *
Doc ran. He didn't have to see the truck to know what was happening. The devisement of transference was preparing to move the truck to a circle some distance away. Now, to the eye of the observer, the truck would appear to be twisting, warping, shrinking—in a moment it would be gone with nothing but fresh ruts left behind to mark its presence.
He heard the pop of its disappearance. He didn't slow his run, but continued to catch up to the innocents he'd shooed away. Some of those before him looked over their shoulders, saw him coming on fast, and picked up the pace, sure that he was running them down.
Then there was light and heat on his back. He threw himself forward, skidding on the damp grass, and a fraction of a moment later the sound of the explosion and bow wave of displaced air hit him. He felt it sweep over him, a hot but not burning blast, and saw it catch up to those ahead of him—men and women suddenly felled by the impact.
* * *
Half a chime later, Doc was still moving among the people who'd been knocked flat by the bomb, and among others farther away who'd been cut by glass falling from surrounding buildings. Though most of those windows had shattered inward, pieces of glass had sometimes clung to the window frames and then fallen out moments later. Fortunately, no one had been seriously hurt. His back still felt sunburned, and would for some time. Sirens screamed the approach of ambulances and guard vehicles.
He moved more slowly than usual, still rubber-legged with relief. It wasn't relief at his own survival, but at the results of his too-quick call to Thown Hospital, and news from a nurse that Ish would survive whatever had struck her down.
Even while helping the burned and injured, staring into their shocked and frightened faces, Doc had had a hard time keeping a smile from his face.
He stopped to help bandage an elderly man whose scalp had been slashed open by glass. The man perched on a stoop as Doc worked. "Thought you were supposed to be Daoine Sidhe," the man said in a tone that could have been taken as garrulous or argumentative.
Doc finished wrapping cloth torn from his shirt around the man's skull. "I a
m."
"Isn't this a bit beneath you? Patching the common man?"
"Are you common? I saw you comforting a young mother and her baby while others stood by and complained about their bad luck. That doesn't seem common to me."
"No, no, don't change the subject." Then the old man changed the subject. He stared up, past the summits of nearby skyscrapers. "What in the name of the gods is that?"
Doc looked up.
Another fireball raced across Neckerdam's sky and began its descent.
Chapter Nine
Knowing it was futile, Doc ran north along King's Road toward the descending ball of destruction. He had run no more than thirty paces before it dropped from sight behind the skyline.
Moments later, the fatal sound of explosion carried to him—much more distant, much more deadly than that which had endangered him minutes before.
He leaped onto the running board of the first Novimagos Guard car he saw. He didn't have to direct the driver to the proper location. Both men were grim and pale as the car raced north.
* * *
"What in Anoon was that?" The shouter was Rudi Bergmonk, and the target of his ire, Albin, was just hanging up the talk-box. They stood in the living room of their Morcymeath apartment, its wallpaper stained with rust from years of roof leaks. Seated respectively on a sagging sofa and a solid hardwood chair that looked as though it had seen decades of use were Jorg and Egon, turning their attention from speaker to speaker as they followed the exchange of words.
Albin smiled. "That was the Kingston Guardian, meeting their richly deserved fate. And, not incidentally, that was also Plan Two."
"That was never Plan Two! There was no Plan Two!" Rudi stared incredulously. "The deal was, we threaten, they pay, we find a new target to threaten. We got the money. Why did you do this?"
"Those were the orders." Albin shrugged. "Rudi, we have a chance to change the world. We're going to. Whatever the cost."
Rudi stepped up to him. Anger trembled in his voice. "That's not what we're about. We take banks and payrolls. Smart and fast. Only shoot those who're in our way. Those people weren't in our way!"
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