Unbinding

by Eileen Wilks

  “You know,” Kai said, “I’d like to sit down.” Her body had used up its adrenaline and was suddenly in the shaky stage. Really shaky. Dammit.

  “Over here,” José said, gesturing to the building on their left. “We’ll be out of the way.”

  Feeling foolish—it was such a beginner’s mistake to overspend power!—Kai followed him inside the café proper. She plunked herself down at the nearest table and looked around. The place was deserted. “I wish there was someone I could order coffee from.”

  “I can get you some,” a young-looking guard said cheerfully. He had gorgeous dark eyes and tawny skin . . . Kennedy, that was his name. Kennedy Garcia. “If it’s okay with José, that is. My sister used to work here. The owners are good folks. They won’t mind.”

  “You can’t just go grab whatever you want.”

  “We’ll leave money to cover it,” José assured her. “Arjenie?”

  She shook her head. “I’m wired already.”

  José studied Kai’s face. “You do look wiped. You should probably eat something. Kennedy—”

  “No,” she said quickly, before he appropriated a three-course meal for her. “I used too much power too fast, but food won’t help me recover the way it would you.”

  Arjenie sat next to Kai. “Who knew Ackleford had a sense of humor? A weird one, sure, but I had no idea he found anything funny.”

  “Surprised me, too. People do have unexpected nooks and crannies.” Kai felt disconnected. One moment she was getting shot at. The next she was sitting in a deserted restaurant while someone fetched her coffee. “You’re acting like the danger’s over,” she said to José. “Is it?”

  “Of course not, but the sniper’s probably gone. His rifle isn’t working.” A quick grin. “He won’t know what happened or why, so it’s bound to make him want to be elsewhere. They might even catch him. It will take some luck, but either the cops Boyd sent after him or the copter Ackleford diverted might—”

  “Ackleford diverted a helicopter?”

  “The one those TV types had hovering over the scene. I heard him arranging it while we were headed for cover. The man does know how to multitask.” His eyes stayed busy checking out their surroundings. José might think the sniper was gone, but he wasn’t assuming anything. “I should report in while I have the chance. Isen will want to know what happened. Justin, you’ve got the patrol for now.” He made one of those hand signs the guards used. A dark-haired man nodded, and José stepped back and took out his phone.

  “That is one amazing spell,” Arjenie said. “You look drained, though.”

  Kai made a face. “It’s a power hog even when done right, but I pumped more into it than I should have. Beginner’s mistake.”

  “Is that spell why you didn’t take a gun when you went questing with Nathan? Because people in Faerie can make guns not work?”

  “That’s right. The spell’s widely known, though not everyone who knows it can cast it. Like most spells that are primarily oral, it takes a ton of practice, and not everyone wants to invest the time. Not everyone has the power needed, either, but enough people can cast it to make guns unpopular.”

  Doug looked surprised. “They’ve got guns in Faerie? I thought they were all about swords and knives.”

  “They are. A few hundred years ago, though, guns started showing up. Probably a gnomish invention—at least, the elves blame the gnomes for it. The elves were seriously unhappy. Guns offend their aesthetic sensibilities, plus they were destabilizing the power balance, and elves are almost as big on stability as they are on beauty. The Queens came up with a special ward that can be set over a large area, like a city. It targets gunpowder, turns it inflammable. The ward was only partly effective, though. Some of the—oh, thank you, Kennedy.” She accepted the mug of coffee gratefully and sipped. Good and strong, just what she needed. Maybe it would do something about the headache knocking on her door.

  “So what went wrong with the ward?” Arjenie asked.

  “The ward works great, but not every place could be warded, plus not all the lords accepted the Queens’ terms for the spell to set the ward. Maybe the Queens would have ended up adding guns to their thou-shalt-not list. Opinions vary about that, and the Queens aren’t saying. In the end, it didn’t matter. There was this one lord—an adept, a real top-drawer, A-list kind of guy—and he really, really hated guns. He developed the spell I just used. And he gave it away.”

  Arjenie looked suitably shocked. Doug looked puzzled. “That’s unusual?”

  “Elves give away lots of things casually—food, clothes, art, even gems. Not spells. Their economy is partly knowledge-based. They hoard knowledge in general, but magical knowledge especially, because it’s dangerous. Giving it away would be like—oh, like giving away guns to anyone who wanted them. This adept broke that taboo, and it worked. His spell spread throughout the realms. Now no one can depend on guns to work, so no one uses them. Almost no one,” she added conscientiously. “There’s still a few around, so it pays to know the spell.”

  José must have been listening even as he spoke with Isen, because when he put his phone away he asked, “How does this spell work? It doesn’t change the gunpowder. You said our guns would start working again, and they wouldn’t if the gunpowder had been rendered inflammable.”

  “It tells guns not to fire. And no, I don’t know what that means, except that it’s the sort of thing adepts can do. That’s the remarkable thing about this spell. It isn’t adept-level, but it ought to be.”

  Arjenie’s forehead pleated. “We ran into an elf lord once,” she said. “Me and Benedict and Cullen and Lily and Rule. He wanted to make Rule and Benedict slaves. He didn’t use that spell when Lily started shooting him. The bullets couldn’t hit him, but her gun worked.”

  Kai shrugged. “Either he wanted to show off—you know, see the tough guy, bullets just bounce off me—or he was conserving his power for some reason. Even when you cast it properly, this one’s a power hog.”

  “That makes sense. He’d just finished opening and modifying a gate, so he must’ve been lower on power than he liked. He was here on Earth, you see, so he couldn’t draw on the land-tie.”

  Which was interesting, but beside the point, as was her own explanation of the sidhe history with guns. She needed to focus, dammit. Which was hard with her head pounding. Kai rubbed the back of her neck with one hand.

  “Headache?” Arjenie said sympathetically. “That’s a common reaction to depletion. You sure eating won’t help?”

  “Nothing helps but time. Ibuprofen wouldn’t hurt, though, if anyone has some.”

  “Sure, in my purse.” Arjenie grimaced. “Which I left in the car because I had the backpack to carry. Sorry.” Her gaze shifted. “I wonder what’s got him worked up?”

  Kai followed her gaze. Franklin Boyd was headed their way. His lips were tight and he was scowling, but his colors didn’t look angry so much as frustrated.

  “He got away,” the assistant chief said abruptly when he reached them. “He did leave us a couple cartridges. Highly unprofessional of him. Either he was panicked or he isn’t a pro.”

  “Why are you saying ‘he’?” Kai asked.

  “Playing the odds. A female sniper is possible, but highly unlikely.”

  “Well, if he or she is gone, we need to get busy. I need to give the building a thorough survey while Doug does it his way. And maybe . . .” Kai looked at José. “Can one of your men Change and check out the spot the sniper was? See if he can pick up the sniper’s scent?”

  José considered that briefly. “I’d like to keep as many men with you and Arjenie as possible, but Doug’s got to Change, anyway. He can check out the sniper’s perch as well as the transformed building.”

  “Okay. If you could have one of your men go with him, Assistant Chief—”

  “Hold on. I haven’t agreed to let any of you go
anywhere.”

  Kai huffed out a breath. “Do I need to get Ackleford? Because this is the sort of thing he brought us here to do. If nothing else, Doug can tell us for sure if the shooter’s a human.”

  That startled him. “What else could it be?”

  “A team of brownies. An elf. A gnome. Various kinds of halflings. A lupus from another clan. None of those is likely, but it’s good to be sure.”

  Boyd called someone over—the man with a gold bar on his collar, who started toward them. José motioned to Doug, who stepped slightly apart. And Changed.

  Kai loved watching lupi Change. She’d seen it several times now, and she couldn’t have said why she loved watching it, no more than she could say what she saw, which literally made no sense—as in, it didn’t register properly on her senses. Not sight or hearing, smell or touch. And yet it moved her. Everything about Doug slid sideways into an elsewhere she couldn’t perceive, yet somehow knew. Even his thoughts were both here and not-here as they froze for an instant in a pattern of great pain—then broke free.

  An enormous black-and-tan wolf stood atop the pile of clothes that Doug had been wearing a moment ago. He grinned at them, tongue lolling.

  “Son of a bitch.” Boyd sounded almost reverent.

  “That’s an expression we don’t care for,” José said, “but I understand you meant no offense. Doug, you know what you need to find out. Remember—no heroics. If anything sprouts thorns or seems likely to attack, you get out of there fast.”

  Doug nodded.

  “He understands you.” Boyd must have known that four-footed lupi understood language, but it was obvious from his patterns that he was having trouble processing what he’d seen.

  “Of course,” José said, and nodded at the man Boyd had summoned. “Lieutenant Calverone? I don’t know if you recall, but we met a few months ago. I’m—”

  “José Alvarez. You helped two of my officers nab a rapist. I’m not likely to forget that.” Calverone held out a hand for José to shake. “Good to see you again. I take it this is . . . I was going to say one of your men, but that’s not the right word at the moment.” He gave a wry smile. “One of your people?”

  “Doug McMillan,” José said. “He needs to check out the transformed building and the sniper’s perch on top of that church.”

  Calverone glanced at his superior, who nodded. “I’m to be his escort? Good enough. Shall we go, Doug?”

  “Um—hang on a minute,” Kai said. She looked at Arjenie. “It might be good to know if any wards have been set around the hobbit house.”

  “Oh? Oh! I see what you mean. Maybe that’s the reason no one’s been hurt or snatched. There could be some kind of trigger that didn’t get pulled, but it’s still there, waiting.”

  “It seems possible.” A side effect of Arjenie’s Gift was her sensitivity to wards. “Do you think you can do it without, uh . . .” Kai made a vague gesture. Arjenie’s ability to slip into stealth mode was supposed to be a secret. She’d used it at Fagioli, but in all the confusion, no one seemed to have noticed.

  “I only have to be slightly unobtrusive in order to sense wards.”

  In other words, she’d use her Gift so marginally that she’d still be seen, though people might forget she was there. Kai nodded and looked at José. He’d put his body between her and the bullets. She understood the logic. Lupi healed better by far than she, faster and more completely. But logic be damned. They could be killed, and she did not want him playing shield again.

  Asking about the risk to him and his men wouldn’t get her a straight answer, though. Asking about the risk to Arjenie might. “I need your professional opinion. Is it safe for Arjenie and me to go out there?”

  “If I thought the risk was unacceptably high, I’d let you know. You do what you need to do.”

  Kai wasn’t happy with her choices, but that was often the case. “Okay. Let’s go.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  “I vote we go.” Cullen still looked emaciated, but Benedict had been right. There was a man in the driver’s seat again, not a wolf.

  Nathan and Benedict had waited hours for Cullen to wake up. Those hours had passed slowly, but Nathan’s initial terror had faded as it became obvious the sniper had not shot Kai. If Kai had been seriously injured, Dell would have known; if Kai had been killed, Dell would either be dead or unconscious. So Kai was all right, and Benedict was sure Arjenie had survived, too. He wouldn’t explain how he knew, but his certainty was persuasive.

  “It’s worth trying,” Benedict said. “If we’re wrong about the way time works here, might as well find out.”

  “Dell?” Nathan said.

  The chameleon nodded firmly.

  “We’re agreed, then.” Nathan wasn’t surprised. None of them wanted to stay in the grotto, and if their reasons were a mix of the practical and the emotional, there was nothing wrong with that. On the practical side, they hoped to find a more stable time zone, which is why they would head for the clearing where they’d first appeared. Dyffaya had used it twice to bring people here, so it was probably highly congruent with the physical world. They could hope that meant it was time-congruent as well.

  Clearly, even if location was a factor in how time flowed within the godhead, it wasn’t the only one. The magical displays proved that Dyffaya could control the flow of time here when he wanted to. The enormous one that had appeared just before Britta died had shown Earth in lockstep with time here. So maybe they’d improve their time-flow, maybe they wouldn’t. Why not try? Britta had died here. Cullen had suffered here. Those were reasons enough to leave.

  It was easy to do, with nothing to pack. A moment to settle their marching order and they were off, with Dell and her two-member harem ranging out ahead and Benedict serving as rear-guard. Cullen walked beside Nathan. They’d no need to run this time, which was just as well. Cullen wasn’t up to it.

  As they moved out down the dry ravine Cullen returned to a subject they’d touched on briefly. “Why did her body poof?”

  It was obvious who he meant. He’d been grimly amused when he learned that the meat his wolf had waited for so painfully wouldn’t have been available to him, after all.

  Benedict said, “Maybe Dyffaya sent it back.”

  Cullen nodded. “Could be. Could also be that the godhead itself doesn’t keep dead things around. We haven’t seen so much as a dead leaf, have we?”

  Now that was an interesting notion. Was it the god or the godhead that didn’t want dead things around? “Dyffaya isn’t exactly alive himself.”

  “Not exactly dead, either. But his body is. Do you know what happened to it?”

  “Mage fire. That’s not what killed him, mind, but that’s what they did with his body. Burned every trace of it.”

  “Hmm.” Thoughtfully Cullen sprouted a tiny flame on one fingertip. Black flame.

  Nathan stopped dead. “Don’t do that!”

  The tiny flame winked out. “Needed to see if I could. If things work here the way I’m used to.”

  “Try asking,” Nathan said dryly. “Mage fire is chancy under the best circumstances, and this is an extremely high-magic place.”

  “I can see that.” Cullen spoke with exaggerated patience. “It’s damn distracting at times.”

  “Then maybe you didn’t realize that using mage fire in a high-magic area is like playing with matches while floating in a swimming pool filled with kerosene.”

  Cullen glanced at his hand, then back at Nathan. “Anything else I should know?”

  “Undoubtedly, but I’m not sure where to start.”

  Benedict was amused. “Start with the assumption that he doesn’t have the sense not to play with matches when floating in a pool of kerosene.”

  So as they walked, Nathan talked about the properties of high-magic places. He went into more detail on magic sickness, touched on the kinds of spells
that might function differently here, and warned them about changes they might notice—loss of appetite being one symptom, but not everyone developed that. Looked like lupi were among those who didn’t. Sleep problems were common, with some people sleeping too much and others finding it difficult to fall asleep at all. The latter was common with elves, some of whom stopped sleeping altogether.

  He also warned them again that they had to assume Dyffaya overheard everything they said. He doubted that the god was listening at all times, but they’d have no way of knowing when he was. No way, either, to know which Earth languages Dyffaya knew. Nathan doubted the god could absorb a new language the way dragons did, mind-to-mind, but there was an adept-level spell that was almost as good. It could capture an entire language from only a few sentences. They couldn’t try writing in the dirt, either. The god might not be observing them every moment, but Nathan suspected he’d set up magical triggers. Certain actions would probably draw his attention. Writing in the dirt was likely one of those triggers.

  The telling took an hour or so. Answering Cullen’s questions took longer. He was—surprise!—intensely curious about this strange place in which they found themselves, and he had information of his own to offer. He’d run a few basic experiments on the materials at hand, with interesting results. “Leaves, rocks, bark, dirt—it’s all elementally balanced.”

  “Leaves with Fire attributes?” Nathan said, startled.

  “And rocks with Air. Everything partakes equally of North, South, East, and West, too. I think it’s all the same substance.”

  “It’s all spirit, of course, but . . .” But Nathan had assumed that what looked like a leaf was a leaf, regardless of what stuff had been used to make it. “It’s not created,” he said slowly. “Nothing here was created. It’s shaped. Shaped at a very fine level, or it wouldn’t matter if you ate lettuce or meat. But shaped.”

  “You say that like it matters,” Benedict said.

  “Of course it matters,” Cullen said. “We may not know why yet, but it matters.”