Changer (Athanor)
Page 23
“Right over there, right over there! Yes, that will do.”
Chris Kristofer sets down the stack of folding chairs and leans against the wall, trying to conceal that he is breathing hard. Unfortunately, Vera Tso proves to be as sharp-eyed as she is hard-driving.
“Are you all right?” she asks.
“Fine, fine!” Chris assures her heartily. “Just pinched my finger between two of the chairs. I’ll start setting them up right away, Miss.”
Their conversation is interupted by the entry of two more men, each bearing another stack of chairs. Someone calling from elsewhere in the hacienda draws Vera away.
Chris starts unfolding the chairs, arranging them to face the speaker’s platform at the other end of the room. He hopes that Bill is having more luck with his own snooping.
Soon after the water-use meeting, Chris had told Bill about his determination to learn more about Arthur Pendragon. The college student had reacted with enthusiasm, helping to interview the neighbors, trying to gain access to Pendragon Estates, and following up a couple more cryptic e-mails assuring them that something big was going on.
The initial results had been disappointing. The neighbors knew next to nothing about three people who lived behind the high wall. Pendragon Estates proved impenetrable by the usual means. Salespeople, fund-raisers, and panhandlers were rejected without preference—none ever got past the heavy wrought-iron front gate. Chris even went so far as to acquire an electronic eavesdropping device, but met with nothing but static.
Then Bill had observed that Pendragon Estates was renting party supplies from a local merchant. The two investigators joined the crew for one delivery and triumphantly rode past the gate that had previously remained stubbornly closed.
Within minutes, Chris had acquired more information than he had during the previous month and a half. The hacienda at the center of the tree-shrouded grounds proved to have been restored with taste and apparently with no thought for expense. Clearly, it can house more than the three permanent inhabitants and more than those three are currently in residence. However, he can’t tell if they live there permanently or were present for whatever event requires a truckload of folding chairs, card tables, glassware, and sundry other items.
Soon after the two professional movers have left Chris to continue setting up, Bill Irish wheels in a last load of chairs.
“C’mon,” he hisses at Chris. “Coast’s clear!”
Chris hurries over and looks down the hallway. He can hear voices arguing in the general direction of the kitchen. Unzipping his fanny pack, he takes out a small camera.
Bill tugs his arm. “I think the offices are this way!”
With Bill pushing his chairs in the lead, Chris snaps pictures of his surroundings. From the expensive rugs and knickknacks, to the art hung on the walls, evidence of great wealth is all around him. Where are the servants who keep this place so gleamingly clean? In all his days of hanging around, he had seen no evidence of any coming or going. Did Pendragon keep separate servants’ quarters, perhaps with wetback slave labor?
Confidently, Bill opens the door to an office near the entry foyer. “Take a peek,” he whispers. “I’ll keep watch. If someone sees us, we’re just taking these chairs to the foyer.”
Chris hopes the excuse will do. The office he has entered is decorated with examples of the most exquisite weaving he has ever seen—and he has a Southwesterner’s jaded eye. He snaps a few shots as he moves across to the desk. It is singularly free of paperwork, and the computer screen is dark.
Damn.
“Nothing doing there, not without a lot more time,” he says to Bill, emerging and shutting the door behind him. “It’s a completely modern office. Let’s stow those chairs in the foyer. We might have more luck upstairs.”
Bill agrees. They hasten up the broad stairway with its hand-carved banisters.
“Money, money everywhere,” Chris says softly, “yet nobody does a drop of work, no one is listed in anyone’s database of prominent fortunes. I bet the IRS would love to see this place.”
“Which way do we go?” Bill says.
“Pick a direction at random,” Chris says, leading the way down a corridor, trying doors, and finding them locked.
“This place is almost like a hotel,” Bill offers. “What do you want to bet that the guests will be checking in tomorrow?”
“How about,” says a clear, baritone voice with a slightly singsong accent, “today?”
Chris turns around slowly. Between them and the stairway stands a hirsute Asian man radiating a distinct air of belligerence. A suitcase rests by his feet.
“Who are you?” continues the stranger, his bristly beard jutting out aggressively. “And what are you doing up here?”
“We’re deliverymen,” Bill says quickly. “We’re just checking out where…”
“You may be deliverymen,” the stranger interrupts, “but I doubt that you should be here. Come! Let me make certain that you are trespassing before I beat the skin off of you.”
There is no arguing with him. Chris and Bill obediently march down the steps into the entry foyer. Chris is mentally constructing excuses when their progress is interupted by an enormous broad-shouldered man with shining dark skin.
“Well, hello, Katsuhiro,” he says in a deep, rumbling voice that is all the more menacing for its precise, rather British accents. “I thought I smelled your particular stench.”
Their captor sneers, “I am Oba-san, to you, Dakar Agadez. Stop acting like the lump of iron that you are and let me pass. I have business with Arthur.”
“So do we all,” says Dakar Agadez, “or why else would we be here? I came to offer him my services in preparing for…”
For the first time Dakar notices the two investigators. Chris swallows hard, his carefully prepared excuses withering to nothing beneath the black man’s deep, wild gaze. Terror rises within him, clouding his mind.
“What do you have here?”
“Two thieves I caught prowling above,” Katsuhiro snarls.
“I should have known you couldn’t deal with them yourself, that you’d go sniveling to Arthur…”
“YOU!” Katsuhiro roars something unintelligble. Dakar howls back. Within moments, massive fists are raised.
Realizing that they are momentarily forgotten, Chris fights down his fear, grabs Bill, and drags him out the front door and across the grounds to the delivery truck.
When they are safely back at Chris’s house, the two men review their experiences and the data they have gathered.
“I’ll offer a theory as to what Mr. Arthur Pendragon is up to,” Chris says solemnly. “There’s only one thing that would pay for living so far beyond his apparent earnings and for doing business with ruthless thugs like the two we met.”
“I bet I can guess,” Bill says with a shiver.
“That’s right.” Chris lets the words roll off his tongue, imagining the breaking story. “Illegal drugs.”
Nattily attired in a crisp beige-linen suit, Sven Trout gets out of the taxi that has delivered him to the front door of Arthur’s hacienda at about two in the afternoon.
After paying the driver, he pauses to admire the rambling adobe-brick building, its wide windows, wooden trim, and neatly tended garden beds proclaiming the best of the old and the new. There are several outbuildings as well: stables, storage buildings, a potting shed. No doubt most of these remain from when the hacienda was a working farm.
Straightening his bolo tie and picking up his suitcase, Sven strides to the front door and rings the bell.
It is answered after a moment by Anson A. Kridd, attired in a casual, floor-length caftan printed with bold stripes. He’s munching a chocolate donut.
“Hello, Anson.”
“H’lo, Sven. Come in.”
Sven does so, not concealing his admiration for the lovely, understated decor of the front foyer. Wooden benches crafted along Spanish colonial lines are grouped around wool rugs to make cozy conversation areas
in the vast space. More rugs hang on the walls. The mantel of the kiva fireplace set into one corner is decorated with several pieces of pottery by local artists. A baby grand piano fills the opposite corner.
“Very nice,” Sven says. “Very. So, Arthur’s got you working as doorman, hey, Anson?”
The black man smiles. “Worse, eh? Nursemaid. Eddie was badly hurt a week or so ago. I came to take care of him.”
“Hurt?”
“Car wreck. Broken leg and ribs. He’s hobbling, tiring himself terribly, trying to do all like before. The accident couldn’t have come at a worse time than before the Lustrum Review.”
Sven has lots of experience hiding his feelings, so he suppresses a satisfied grin and instead makes a nod that indicates acknowledgment and a touch of pity. He and Eddie have never gotten along very well, so showing more than general interest would be unwise. Indeed, he expects that if Eddie, rather than Vera, had been managing arrangements when he called for a room, the inn would have been full.
Anson gestures for Sven to follow and heads toward one of the openings radiating off the entry foyer.
“All the rooms upstairs were bespoken when you called,” he says, the lilting rise and fall of his accent making the simple phrase poetry, “so you are on the ground floor. We have put you in a single room that shares a bath with another room. We hope you won’t mind.”
His words seem sincere. Sven reminds himself that despite Anson’s close friendship with Eddie, he, too, has had his problems with Arthur.
“Who’s my bathroom-mate-to-be?” Sven asks.
Anson chuckles. “The Changer and a coyote pup named Shahrazad.”
The Changer! Sven’s heart nearly skips a beat, and he hopes that his fair complexion doesn’t reveal his flush of excitement.
“The Changer?” he says, and is pleased that his voice shows only mild interest. “He’s in out of the wilds?”
“That’s right.”
Anson doesn’t volunteer why. Sven, of course, knows why, and feels smug. His surveillance of Arthur’s hacienda has been far from perfect, restricted mostly to the outer grounds, and comings and goings. When the Changer vanished at about the same time that Lovern did, Sven hoped that he would return, but this is his first confirmation that he had. He hadn’t dared watch the airport too closely lest he be noticed at this critical juncture—many athanor could sense a fellow even in a shifted shape, and too many are beginning to arrive for the Review.
“Well, I hope he doesn’t snore.”
“It wouldn’t matter,” Anson says, unlocking the door to Sven’s room. “The soundproofing is very good. Here is your key. It opens both this lock and the one to the bathroom.”
“Thanks. What about on the Changer’s side?”
“He has different locks. If you are using the toilet and want privacy, there is a latch you can throw.”
Anson starts to turn away, then pauses. “Tonight, as you know, there is the opening reception so there will be a buffet. If you get hungry before then, there’s stuff in the refrigerator.”
“Great!”
“Most of us are helping with last-minute arrangements. That’s why no one else has come to greet you. However, you are welcome to sit in the central courtyard.”
“And if I want to pitch in?”
“I’ll be in the kitchen. Come and find me there, and I’ll put you to work.” The Spider rubs his belly. “They’ve asked me to supervise the catering deliveries! Hah!”
Sven, who knows something of the Spider’s legendary appetite, grins appreciatively. “I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.”
“Very good.”
When he is alone, Sven goes into the bathroom he will share with the Changer. It is very nicely appointed with double sinks, a toilet, and a shower and tub. If it weren’t for the painting on one wall, the eclectic fish-shaped soap dish, the softness of the towels, it could be a bathroom in a better hotel.
He tries the door to the Changer’s room and finds it locked. Pressing his ear to the door, he strains to hear. Nothing.
Blood. He needs the Changer’s blood. Now Fate has conspired to make him neighbors with his proposed victim.
Whistling softly a very old tune, Sven Trout trades his linen suit for a short-sleeved button-down shirt and blue jeans, then heads for the kitchen.
Anson is unpacking several boxes of ready-to-heat quiche. A lean but muscular dark-haired man with a coyote pup sitting on his feet is polishing a silver tray.
“Hello, Changer,” Sven says cheerily.
Blood.
Six hours later, the foyer that had been so empty and elegant when Sven arrived is bustling with activity. A cosmopolitan throng mills about, filling the benches, devouring the buffet supper, and listening to Tommy Thunderburst perform on acoustic guitar and piano.
Nor are they restricted to the foyer. The central courtyard rapidly fills, and the guests spill out into the gardens, where benches are conveniently placed. Fragments of conversation make a music of their own:
“Hello! It’s been a long time!”
“Since the Wilson administration, I think. I’ve been living in Pakistan.”
“Why ever would you do that?”
Tonight, Albuquerque’s weather is perfect. The skies are clear and dark. The temperature is cool enough that formal wear is comfortable and remains crisply elegant.
“Welland! I’m so glad to see you. Are you still doing swordsmithing?”
“Pretty much as a hobby, these days. There’s so little demand I have avoided drawing attention to myself.”
“Would you consider doing some work for a friend?”
Drifting through the crowds, Louhi listens to snatches of conversation, greets old friends and acquaintances. There is no one here she has not known for at least two hundred years. Sometimes she finds this stifling.
“Patti Lyn, I have a hard time imagining you working on the stock exchange.”
“Why, Jon? I’m no fool—like a couple I could name—believing that the old ways to power will still work.”
“But you were always so hot-tempered!”
“If you think the stock exchange is silent but for the clatter of ticker tape, you need to update your image of the world. The world market is the last true battlefield and one with real long-term potential. Honestly, I have more to do with an immortal existence than cut off people’s heads with swords.”
Louhi passes Sven, who is absorbed in teasing Lil Prima. Lil looks stark and elegant, as if she had been poured out of molten gold and then had a skin stretched over her. Whatever Sven is saying does not amuse her. Her gaze, green as jealousy, is only for Tommy. Tommy’s gaze is only for his guitar.
Near the buffet table, Katsuhiro Oba and Arthur are busily discussing video cameras and computer modems. A few paces away, Dakar Agadez, hulking and black like wrought iron, argues contemporary African politics with Anson A. Kridd.
Louhi walks past, hears a conversation that interests her.
“I don’t need to look any further than those gathered here to see the real danger to the continued prosperity of the athanor. We’ve been living as humans for so long that the crafts that set us apart are being neglected.”
“Do you mean magic, Oswaldo?”
“I do. I have had little help getting instruction, yet I have the talent. I would wager that among us we no longer have a dozen skilled generalists.”
“You must be kidding!”
Eddie, leaning on his crutches, is flirting mildly with Tin Hau, who is calling herself Alice Chun these days, and writing novels set in ancient China. They had been married once, during one of the periods when Arthur and Eddie were not on good terms. Louhi suspects that there is still affection between them.
Now, in the courtyard, the Hero Twins (she forgets their current names) are debating the fragmentation of Eastern Europe with Vera and Patti Lyn Ansinbeau, who is best known as Morrigan.
Louhi drifts past and nods to Amphitrite, who is talking low voiced about industrial wa
ste and human expansion to Isidro Robelo and Cleonice Damita of the South American contingent.
Out in the garden, Louhi pauses to admire several pieces of sculpture, to chat with a tawny cat who knew Ramses the Great, to offer her opinion on Caribbean package tours to the Vagrant. Finally she sees the one who she has subconsciously been seeking.
He is in coyote form, grey, with a darker cross about his shoulders. Beneath the ornamental junipers and cedars, a young female coyote is chasing a brace of jackalopes easily half her own size. Even at a distance, Louhi can tell that the older coyote is watchful of the little one’s play.
She wants to go over to him, but he is in the company of Frank MacDonald, Old MacDonald, Francis of Assisi. Frank has no trouble speaking the languages of animals. Like Finn or Sigurd, his ears have been opened to their speech. He is a friend of the nonhuman, especially the nonmonstrous among the immortals: the Raven of Enderby, the Cats of Egypt, the Chinese nightingale, the Southwestern jackalope. It is like him to seek the Changer in such a noisy gathering.
Although Louhi can take many shapes, she only understands the speech of animals through spells. Not wishing to work even a simple bit of magic in such a gathering, she turns away and finds herself face-to-face with the one person she did not care to see.
Lovern looks very fine this evening. His long silver-grey hair is bound in a ponytail by a silver band; his beard and mustache are closer cut than she recalls from days of old. He wears a loose jacket and matching trousers of rough black silk. His tuxedo shirt is unruffled and white.
Louhi can sense the little emanations of power from the studs that close the shirt, from the cuff links, from the rings on the wizard’s hands. Here, in his liege lord’s hacienda, Lovern does not precisely flaunt his power, but where other adepts have left most of their amulets, as others have left their weapons, at the door, Lovern maintains his. It is a subtle reminder of his position in the King’s esteem.
“Hello, Louhi,” Lovern says, brilliant blue eyes seeking to meet her own. “You look lovely tonight.”