The Reign of the Brown Magician

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  But maybe not.

  He hadn’t worried about it in any case; he hadn’t cared. If the Empire wanted to subvert and conquer Faerie, it wasn’t any skin off his nose—he still controlled all the magic, so they couldn’t touch him or his, and he could leave and go home to Earth any­time he wanted.

  At least, he could if he could get Rachel and Nancy to agree.

  And Susan, too, he supposed.

  So far, though, the three revenants had not expressed any interest in returning to Earth.

  They hadn’t voiced any objections, either; they were frankly disinterested.

  It was really very depressing. Pel no longer blamed the Empire; Susan assured him that she was just as changed as the others, so the delay couldn’t have been all that important.

  The change was just that extra spark Shadow had referred to. Whatever it was, it was gone, irretrievably.

  Pel had talked to the revenants, argued with them, studied them with all the magical resources at his disposal, and still hadn’t found anything broken that he could fix, anything missing that he could replace. All of them readily acknowledged that they were changed; they could remember thinking that things were important, they could remember laughing and crying and caring, but all that was gone. When they had first come back there’d been something, all three agreed on that, but it had faded and vanished, like a pleasant dream upon waking. It might have just been a lingering habit of caring, rather than the emotions themselves, but whatever it had been, even that was gone now.

  And it didn’t matter to them. That was the worst part, Pel thought—that they didn’t care that they’d lost something. That they didn’t care about anything.

  Including him.

  He had asked Nancy, one night, if she still loved him. He had expected her to either say, “Yes, of course,” or to say something about how he had let her be killed, how he had let her down.

  But she hadn’t said anything like that.

  She had shrugged.

  “Not really,” she had said.

  “Not really.”

  What was he supposed to do now?

  How could he make her love him again?

  He didn’t know; it had been eating at him for days.

  So Curran’s arrival was a welcome distraction. He hoped the little diplomat would recover quickly.

  * * * *

  “Miletti still says there’s nothing new,” Major Johnston said, and Amy guessed what was coming.

  She’d been anticipating it for the last few days, really; things had been so quiet since that one final raid, and the Empire sending an envoy.

  “There’s absolutely no sign that the Empire’s taking any interest in Earth any­more,” Johnston continued. “They’re still involved with Faerie, more or less, but the situation has lost its criticality; Mr. Brown is no longer counter-attacking, or resisting minor Imperial incursions. Miletti says they even sent another telepath into Faerie the day before yesterday, the first one since Ms. Thorpe—they’d never have risked that when Brown was taking active counter-measures. And apparently Brown isn’t really running Faerie, anyway; he’s holed up in that fortress of his, ignoring everything.”

  Amy nodded.

  “My point, Ms. Jewell, Ms. Thorpe, is that there’s no longer any perceptible threat to the national security here—and it’s damned hard to convince most people that there ever was one; nobody wants to believe in invaders from another dimension, even if they’ve seen the evidence. I can’t justify my requests for funding any more consultations. I’ve managed to get Miletti into the budget as an ongoing special surveillance, which means I’ve got at least six months before they review what he’s costing us and eliminate it, but you two were outside consultants, and orders are to end the project, which means paying you your expenses and per diem to date and saying good-bye.”

  “I understand, Major,” Amy said.

  “We’d hoped that Miletti might want to keep Ms. Thorpe on as his guest,” Johnston added, “but he says he prefers to have her leave.”

  “I’d rather stay with Amy, anyway,” Prossie said.

  “If it’s any comfort, the cuts also mean pulling out our observation post at your house,” Johnston said. “We’ll be paying you a lump-sum compensation for that. It won’t be very much, but maybe it’ll tide you over for awhile.”

  “Thank you,” Amy said.

  For a moment, she and Johnston looked at each other, not saying anything; it had really all been said, but neither was in a hurry to cut the conversation short.

  At last, Amy stood up.

  “I guess that’s it, then,” she said. “Thank you for your consideration, Major.”

  “You’re very welcome, Ms. Jewell, and I’m very sorry for all the inconvenience. Feel free to call me if there’s anything you need to discuss—you have the number.” He hesitated, then added, “And if we’ve misjudged, and the Galactic Empire starts dropping paratroopers in your back yard, you call me right away, any time, day or night, and then you get out of there—you’ve done more than your share.”

  “Thank you,” Amy said again.

  * * * *

  “So what brings you here?” Pel asked, looking Curran over as he stood in his ragged shirt and leather pants, squinting against the glare of the matrix.

  The last time Pel had seen the Imperial diplomat had been out in the Low Forest, in his treehouse, and it occurred to Pel that Nancy and Rachel might like that treehouse. Especially Rachel.

  Or at least, they would have before they died; now they probably wouldn’t care.

  “I was sent in response to your raid on the guildhall on Iota Cephus IV,” Curran said. “His Imperial Majesty wishes me—or wished me, at any rate—to extend his fondest greetings, and to inquire what prompted this unwarranted attack on his people. He believes—believed—that this must be the result of a misunderstanding, and asked what could be done to rectify the situation.” He cleared his throat. “I feel constrained to use the past tense, because of the long delay in my arrival. We regret that we have no faster way of reaching your capital.”

  “My capital?” Pel looked around at the white stone columns and walls. “It’s not a capital, it’s a goddamn fortress. As for that raid, if it’s the one I think it was, it wasn’t a misunderstanding, I was just royally pissed off—imperially pissed off, in fact.” He smiled bitterly at his feeble joke.

  Curran hesitated. “I’m afraid I don’t recognize the idiom, but I take it to mean you were angry about something. Was it something that the Empire was responsible for?”

  “No, no.” Pel waved a hand in dismissal. “Nothing like that. A personal matter. At the time I thought it was the Empire’s fault, but it wasn’t.”

  “Then all is well between yourself and His Imperial Majesty, and His Majesty’s servants?”

  “As far as I’m concerned, sure. I’m still pissed…still annoyed that you people took so damn long to deliver what you’d promised, but that’s all.”

  “Then may I convey to His Imperial Majesty your assurances that there will be no further attacks on his dominions?”

  “No,” Pel said, “because I haven’t decided about that. I may just attack again, if I feel like it. But I’m not currently planning anything.”

  Curran hesitated. “His Imperial Majesty may not find that entirely reassuring.”

  “Fuck His Imperial Majesty, then,” Pel said. “It’s the best answer he’s going to get.”

  Curran swallowed uneasily. “There are two other matters,” he said.

  “What?” Pel asked. He was getting tired of this. Curran wasn’t anywhere near as funny without his fancy costume.

  Of course, not much was really funny any­more, with Nancy and Rachel the way they were.

  “The lesser is to ask, on my own behalf as much as my government’s, if it would be possible for you to transport me back to the Empire magically, to save me the journey back to the forests of Sunderland.”

  “Sure,” Pel agreed. “I can’t guarantee wher
e in the Empire you’ll come out, though; I never learned all the place names.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Curran bowed.

  “What’s the other?”

  “Please remember, sir, that I have been out of touch for almost a fortnight, so this may no longer be relevant, but part of my original charge was to request the return of the hostages you took in the course of the prolonged misunderstanding between yourself and certain former ministers of His Imperial Majesty’s government. It was His Imperial Majesty’s understanding, perhaps faulty, that they were to be returned when the bodies of your wife and daughter had been delivered. That was done some time ago.”

  “The hostages,” Pel said. His last trace of good humor vanished. Curran was no longer funny at all.

  Pel had completely forgotten about the hostages. They were undoubtedly still somewhere in the dungeons beneath the fortress—Shadow had burrowed out miles of dreary passages, lined with cells and chambers, and Pel had ordered the prisoners taken there and looked after…

  And then he’d forgotten all about them.

  “Yes, sir,” Curran said. “I was told that there were over a hundred, including His Excellency Shelton Grigsby, Governor-General of Beckett.”

  “No,” Pel said, “you can’t have them. I’m keeping them.”

  “But, sir…”

  “You tell His Imperial Flatulence that I’m keeping them until he gives back all my spies, and gets all his spies out of Faerie, and proves it. He expected me to prove it when my people turned themselves in, let’s see how he does it!”

  “Sir, His Imperial Majesty had no part in that unfortunate…”

  “It’s his fucking empire, isn’t it?” Pel demanded.

  Curran struggled for words.

  “Then it’s his goddamn responsibility.” He shifted in his throne. “I’ve had enough of this. Just shut up for a few minutes, Curran, and I’ll open a portal for you—but I’ll send the hostages back when I’m good and ready, and not a moment before.”

  Curran hesitated, opened his mouth, closed it—then bowed, and stepped back.

  Pel reached out into the matrix and began preparing a portal into the Empire.

  As he did, he tried not to think about those neglected and forgotten hostages.

  He wondered where they all were, and whether they were still alive.

  * * * *

  “I hate to pull it,” Johnston said, looking over the latest budget statement. “We don’t have anyone who can watch Faerie for us the way Miletti watches the Empire. And Brown might turn up at any time.”

  “Well, sir, what if he does?” the lieutenant asked. “Won’t that mean it’s all over?”

  “Except for the lawsuits,” Johnston agreed. “His sisters are trying to have him declared legally dead, and they’re fighting his mortgage company, which wants to foreclose, and he’s got some problems with unfinished business from his consulting firm.”

  “None of that’s really any of our concern, though, is it, sir?”

  “The mortgage might be, but no, not really,” Johnston admitted, putting down the clipboard. “All right, we pull out, and his sisters can have the house.”

  * * * *

  Pel sat in his throne and stared for a long, long moment at the empty air where Curran had stepped through the portal to the Empire—to somewhere in the Empire, Pel didn’t know where. He hadn’t worried about which portal he had opened.

  All those hostages…He still had all those people down in the dungeons, and he’d completely forgotten about them.

  But what did it really matter? What did anything matter, if his wife and daughter didn’t love him any­more?

  He looked up at the hole in the throne room ceiling, raised a hand—then lowered it again.

  What did any of it matter?

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “He didn’t say what he wanted from us?” the Emperor asked, baffled.

  The telepath replied, “Mr. Curran says it was his impression that Mr. Brown didn’t really want anything. It was his impression that Mr. Brown was depressed about something, and simply didn’t want to deal with us.”

  “We don’t understand,” the Emperor said. “Ask Mr. Curran if he thinks further approaches might be more productive.”

  The telepath did not reply for several seconds, as the question and answer were relayed. Then he said, “It’s Mr. Curran’s belief that further approaches by representatives of the Empire might be productive, but might equally well be disastrous—Mr. Brown is, Mr. Curran judges, in a state of extreme whimsicality, liable to do anything at all, for no reason whatsoever.”

  “And he might launch another raid at any time?”

  “So he said, your Majesty.”

  “And he’s not returning the hostages?”

  “He is not, your Majesty.”

  “That’s intolerable. Really.”

  “Yes, your Majesty.”

  His Imperial Majesty George VIII marched back and forth along the antique carpet, thinking hard. “We don’t understand this man,” he muttered. “And we can’t send one of you to read his mind, because you can’t. And those spies of his that we spoke to knew nothing about him. He’s an enigma, an alien…”

  He stopped pacing and looked up.

  “What about his family?” he asked.

  “His wife and daughter…” the telepath began.

  “No, no, we know about them,” the Emperor said, dismissing Nancy and Rachel with a wave of his hand. “Does he have no brothers or sisters, no close friends we might interview?”

  “I don’t know, your Majesty. There were the other Earthpeople who traveled with him…”

  “Yes, there were!” the Emperor said, raising a finger triumphantly. “Yes, exactly! There were those women, what were the names…”

  “Amy Jewell, your Majesty, and Susan Nguyen, and there was the madman, Ted Deranian.”

  “Yes, well, a madman won’t do us any good, but what about the others?”

  “Susan Nguyen appears to be living in the fortress in Faerie, your Majesty, and Amy Jewell has returned to her home on Earth.”

  “Has she?”

  “Yes, your Majesty.”

  “And is she, by any chance, the one whose home lies almost directly below our arrival point on Earth?”

  “Yes, your Majesty, she is.”

  “Oh, that’s excellent, then! Fetch her immediately!”

  The telepath blinked. “Your Majesty?”

  “Oh, read our bloody mind, will you? It’s so much quicker.”

  “Yes, your Majesty,” the telepath agreed.

  * * * *

  “They want the Jewell woman to talk to Brown,” Miletti said, between gulps of bourbon.

  “What for?” the lieutenant asked, startled.

  “How the bloody hell should I know?” Miletti shouted at him. He threw the glass of bourbon on the rocks at the lieutenant’s head, but missed. He glared angrily, then realized his drink was gone and snatched up the half-empty bottle, cuddling it close.

  “How should I know?” he repeated. “How do I know any of this?”

  He swigged bourbon.

  The lieutenant watched him warily for a moment, then went to call the major.

  * * * *

  Amy marveled at her kitchen.

  When the Air Force men had pulled out they had cleaned up, and had done, she had to admit, a better job on the kitchen than Amy had ever done herself. The place was spotless.

  The rest of the house wasn’t quite so good—there was a cigarette burn on her couch, and some sort of brown stain on the carpet in the upstairs hall, though mostly it was all right.

  The kitchen was wonderful, though; it shone, from the chrome faucets to the brass-plated doorknobs. They had even scrubbed the windows.

  She looked out through the sparkling-clean glass at the remains of I.S.S. Ruthless, still lying out there in her yard.

  She remembered someone saying that some of the machinery aboard was partly made of platinum; maybe she c
ould salvage that and sell it to a jeweler?

  Or maybe she could sell the whole thing to an amusement park somewhere—she ought to be able to get at least the cost of hauling it away.

  “It’s still there,” Prossie said, as she leaned over Amy’s shoulder.

  “A little bit of home, huh?” Amy asked.

  Prossie shook her head. “Maybe,” she said, “but it’s not anything I’m nostalgic about.”

  “No?”

  “No. I miss my family, and I miss my talent, but I don’t miss being in the military. And actually, even though I miss being able to read minds, it’s nice to be alone sometimes, too, to know that my thoughts are my own.” She stepped back, away from Amy. “I don’t suppose that’s anything you’d understand—your thoughts have always been your own.”

  “Well, the way you mean, yes,” Amy agreed, “but there were certainly times when I paid too much attention to what other people thought.” She hesitated, and asked, “Have you settled on what you want to do yet?”

  “I want to study psychology,” Prossie said, “and probably become a therapist—that’s the right word?”

  Amy nodded.

  Prossie smiled wryly. “After all, I’m the only person on this planet who’s ever really known what other people are thinking.” She sighed. “But it’s going to be expensive, isn’t it? I’m still not used to worrying about money like this; back home…I mean, back in the Empire, I was government property, and everything I wanted was either provided for me or forbidden.”

  “Maybe we can find you a scholarship somewhere.”

  “I wouldn’t know how to begin,” Prossie said. “And after all, I don’t even have a…a diploma?”

  “That’s the word,” Amy agreed. “But we can get you a GED easily enough, I’m sure.”

  “I hope…”

  Prossie stopped in mid-sentence, her mouth falling open.

  Amy whirled, guessing even before she looked out the window what had so surprised Prossie.

  The ladder that had unrolled out of thin air was still dancing and swinging, not yet settled into place.

  * * * *

  Pel stared moodily at the two Nancys as they sat talking over their dinner.

  He hadn’t bothered to eat lately; somehow, it didn’t seem to matter. All the others had to eat, though.