by Scott Duff
“Go on up and see your father, Martin,” I said softly. “He didn’t give up. There’s no reason you should either.” He ran out of the room with his feet on fire. “Where’s Ian?”
“Down at the stables at the moment,” said John. “He’s been checking on Marty every half hour or so, but trying to stay back, out of the way, just being there for him. How a kid his age would even think to do that…” He shook his head, uncomprehending.
“He went through it himself three years ago,” Ferrin said from the doorway. Bishop stood beside him looking angry and tired. “The stables, you say?”
“Yes, I’ll walk with you,” John said and got up from the table. Bishop took his seat, setting his plate aside and putting a small valise in its stead.
“Elven silk?” he asked, signing a complicated glyph on the top of the valise, popping the locks. “Don’t you think that’s in bad taste?”
“Actually, I consider it a delicious irony and a huge slap in the face considering,” I said, moving my plate aside. “Haven’t we done enough for you recently?”
“And don’t think that’s not humbling, young man,” he said quickly, arching an eyebrow imperiously. “But the two of you seem to find the trouble quickly so rather than skip around you, I thought I’d go directly to you.” He reached into his briefcase to pull out a thick bound file, tossing it across the table. It landed picture perfect across my placemat. It was a cute little gambit, a subtle play of power, and I wondered how often it worked for him.
“Perhaps when I get back, I’ll be more willing to consider looking,” I said, resting my chin on my hands, elbows on the table around his file. Implicitly accepting his information from his point of view. I learned a more subtle trick driving down the road one day last month. The moment he turned his attentions elsewhere, I’d return the file to his care.
“And where are you planning to go next?” he asked. “This seems to be the only place that has withstood your presence.”
“You’re being rude, Bishop,” warned Gordon, his voice gravelly and rumbling with power. Bishop paled against his dark blue satin shirt, pausing before speaking again.
“Yes, Cahill, you are right. My apologies, Seth, I am under a lot of stress right now, but I should not have allowed that to get the better of me,” he said with sincerity and looking directly at me. I think he actually meant it. Hmm. Maybe pigs could fly. I nodded my acceptance of his apology.
“I thought you weren’t supposed to get here for another few hours,” I said to him.
“That was Mr. Ferrin looking at commercial flight schedules,” he responded. “I cannot fly commercially and prefer not to do it at all.”
“What have you learned from last night’s fiasco, Mr. Bishop?” Peter asked. I wouldn’t necessarily agree with his word choice but to some degree, he was right. The elves had waltzed right over him, bottom-up and top-down.
“Precious little in the few hours we’ve had,” he said tiredly, rubbing his face vigorously. “The elves’ bodies are defying classification. The traitors are showing to be plants. And what looked like a rushed and randomly completed convocation was a carefully orchestrated assassination attempt on a massive scale. The few suspects we have are denoted in the f…” He waved his hand vaguely in my direction then noticed nothing between my elbows. I smiled demurely as he reached into his briefcase without looking and pulled out the file again. He handed to Gordon this time and asked, “Would you give this to them with they return from their chores, Gordon?”
“Certainly, Thomas,” answered Gordon. Interesting. Gordon just moved himself up on the social-political ladder. His aura streaked through with unease when he did it. He didn’t like it, that I could see, but he seemed to be rebuilding his self-image, just like Martin was doing. Coping. I realized that it wasn’t Gordon that moved himself up that ladder. Bishop had moved him up the ladder, to replace his father. It may have been necessary, but I didn’t have to like it.
“What did you mean by the elves defied classification?” I asked.
“That the normal test for High Elves came up ambiguous,” Bishop said. “Neither Winter nor Summer.”
“Why are those the only choices you think you have?” I asked, shaking my head. “I’ve never understood that.”
“There are no other kinds,” Bishop said, sitting up with brows knitted together. He knew he was right just as strongly as he knew the sun would rise in the morning.
“Shrank,” I said, looking down at my shirt, not that I could see him this close. “Are you a Summer or a Winter pixie?”
“No, Master Seth,” squeaked the pixie, not leaving the confines of his sling in my shirt. He did poke a leg out lazily.
“That’s not possible,” Bishop said, shocked.
“I’ve been meaning to ask about that,” I said, turning to Peter. “Isn’t it instantly obvious to you whose bindings an elf holds? Like something in their eyes?”
Peter thought for a moment and it looked like he was about to say “no” when he stopped. “Oh,” he stretched to word out for a few seconds as he searched through his memories. “Only recently. I see what you mean and why you’re so sure of whom. They hide this from us, don’t they?”
“Probably,” I agreed. At least I knew I wasn’t the only one now.
“But… for millennia… the elves…” stammered Bishop.
“And for years during the Cold War, the only nations to exist in the world were the United States and the USSR said the Canadian to the Brit,” Peter said sarcastically. “Seth said at Dunstan’s that these weren’t Summer’s or Winter’s elves. You’ve had time to adjust to the idea.”
“All right, then,” Bishop sighed, exasperated. “A third option then. Who?”
“Fourth, I know who holds Shrank’s geas,” I said. “And I would think that there are more possibilities than that, but none quite so powerful, I’m sure.”
“Seth,” Gordon rumbled. He didn’t like playing mediator.
“I’m sorry, Gordon. It just seems so obvious from a logical standpoint that I don’t see why everybody isn’t seeing it. Of the three most powerful elves in Faery, it isn’t Winter or Summer, therefore it is MacNamara. Simple, logical elimination. Yet no one wants to say it but me.”
“But he is bound, too,” argued Bishop. “Isn’t he?”
I laughed. “Yes, to power, not to Winter or Summer. And he’s rather obvious about it. Does it right in front of everyone.”
“What are you planning to do?” Bishop asked.
“Kill him.”
“How?” Bishop pressed.
I shrugged. “I haven’t known how I was going to do anything else I’ve done and I’ve managed.”
Bishop leaned forward, looking past Gordon to Peter. “And you’re going to follow him on this fool’s errand?”
“I’m sure we’ll run into Ehran and Ethan along the way,” Peter said smiling back at him. “And he does have a knack for beating the odds, you’ll have to admit.”
“I’m going, too,” said Gordon with conviction.
“Like Hell!” cried all three of us in unison.
“Your family needs you, Gordon,” I said. “Right here and right now. I won’t take you away from them.”
“The two of you can’t face MacNamara alone, Seth,” Gordon argued. “I helped last night and I can help now.”
“Yes, Gordon, you helped,” I said as I rose from the table. It was easier to make an impassioned plea while pacing. “I’ll even go so far as to say you lynchpinned the entire night. Twice. If it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t be here now, most of Europe would be gone and a good deal of the Eastern seaboard of the United States would be a salty marsh from the backwash.” From the look on Bishop’s face, he hadn’t known how bad the resonance was if it had hit.
“But right now, there are three people that you care about—that I care about—that need you here. Just… be here, Gordon.”
“I can’t do that, Seth,” he stood, his chair falling to the floor. The whole house
shook when he slammed his hands to the table. His brown eyes were surrounded by red and tears streamed down his face. “I saw what you did for him. I know the pain you bore for over two hours. You kept his blood pumping and his lungs moving while you screamed and screamed and screamed and we couldn’t make you let go until Braelynn managed a nerve block in his spine and to restart his rebuilt heart. I won’t let you go alone, Seth. That’s all there is to it!”
We faced each other across the table quietly for a time. I wasn’t the only one who could make impassioned pleas apparently and I didn’t know what to do about this one.
“Looks like he trumped your family card with one of his own, little brother,” Peter said quietly. Like I needed that pointed out to me.
“You’re putting me in a terrible position here, Gordon,” I said with resignation.
“You are not going alone,” he said gruffly, stressing each word.
“No,” said Bishop, standing up beside him. “He’s not. At the very least, we can offer some distraction. Give me a few hours.” He picked up the file he’d given to Gordon and tossed it across the table to me, landing in a more haphazard way. “Some light reading to keep you distracted. Come on, Gordon, let’s go make some calls.” He took his valise and headed for the door with Gordon in tow.
Gordon looked back at Peter at the door and demanded, “Don’t you let him leave!”
“Like I can control him?” Peter called at the empty doorway.
“We should just leave,” I said, sitting down at the table across from him.
“That would not be a good idea and you know it,” Peter said. “You’ve been lucky with the Cahills, you know. You’ve only seen a small part of them over a few weeks, but they’re not exactly the big happy family you see. Felix and Gordon are too much alike to exist together without conflict and Felix supplied that in spades. Whatever your father did or said to him a year ago was enough of a kick in the pants that he managed to start building a bridge to Gordon. Not a perfect relationship but a start to one. Then you came in a plopped a bridge down on top of Martin to both Felix and Gordon. Enid’s been trying to do that for years.”
At the mention of Enid, I reached up into the wards and sought my mother. She was still in the infirmary, unconscious, wrapped in the Pact spell and protected with medical stasis magic. Lucian had both helped and hindered her and while it was possible that MacNamara was at the root of this, too, I had a nagging feeling that he wasn’t. I couldn’t explain why. I pulled out of the wards before I got maudlin.
“So, looks like we have a few hours to kill,” I said. “Anything you feel like doing?”
Chapter 57
Two hours later, we were in a field with the Ferrin brothers riding along the shady edges with Shrank flitting around in the clover. It was a nice afternoon with an absolutely beautiful view across the pastures and down through the valley to the house. I suspect we’d been guided in that direction by the grooms that were always in sight. The wards gently buzzed twice and slowly faded away.
Within moments, three large portals opened onto the driveway to the house and started rapidly disgorging men and women carrying packages and boxes. Their only apparent goal was to get out of the way of the person behind them. I couldn’t help but to look inside the portals while they were open. They were right there in front of me, energetically ripping at space. Noisy and power-consuming to maintain, by the looks of them. All felt like different people, made with a different magic, leading to different places. The far end collapsed on its own when the magician maintaining it cut its power and closed the near end. The tunnel itself shriveled into a one-dimensional string forever connecting the two places. That was an interesting side effect.
“Damn, that was loud,” muttered Peter.
“You heard that from here?” asked Ferrin across Ian.
“Like a card in bicycle spokes,” I said, coming up in front of them. “A stampede of wild horses could be quieter. Please, I beg you, Peter, tell me I’m not that loud.”
“You’re slick as snot,” said Ferrin. “Even with a gate. No intervening space what so ever. Haven’t seen Peter do that one yet.”
“No, you’re nowhere near that loud,” Peter agreed with Ferrin. “As for a gate, let’s see what’s going on then. Giddyap.” He spurred his horse into a light gallop down the slight decline toward the stables. Ian laughed and took off after him. Peter disappeared through the portal he created a few hundred feet down the hill with Ian fast on his heels. Ferrin panicked at Ian’s disappearance, spurring his horse forward into a confused spiral. Neither he nor the horse was in danger of getting hurt but I pulled him off and calmed the horse anyway.
“You know you’ve got to learn to let go a little,” I said as he climbed back on the horse. “He’s growing up. He’s gonna want to get out on his own sometimes.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, then,” he said testily. “If I don’t load it down with C-4 first.”
I barked out a laugh. “You’re not quite the street punk you presented yourself to be originally.”
“Every street punk has a story, mate,” he said. “Mine just had an unusual ending.”
“Are you guys coming?” called Ian’s disembodied head from fifty feet away.
“Ewww! Don’t do that! That’s creepy!” I yelled at him. He giggled in that little boys’ way that told me he was going to find as many ways to gross me out as possible with this if I didn’t hurry. We didn’t give him much time before we trotted the horses through Peter’s gate. It was a nice and smooth transition, without the ragged edges and very little noise. Six people stood beside Peter watching us as we rode through and he pulled the far side through, closing the connection neatly, without leaving that telltale string behind.
“He taught me,” Peter told them. “And his are a lot less noisy.” He grinned at us as we dismounted and handed the reins to the groom handling Peter’s and Ian’s horses. “So, Mike, what’dya think?”
“Didn’t feel a thing,” Ferrin said, moving closer to his brother. It was quite crowded here, close to two hundred people, so I understood his protectiveness.
The doors swung open wide and Gordon, Bishop, and John stepped out onto the entry, looking quickly over the gathering. John and Bishop started calling names and directing people into and around the house, splitting them into groups that had no meaning to me but hopefully they understood. Gordon surveyed the crowd, brightening when he saw us.
“Seth, Peter, excellent timing! Please come with me! Ian and Michael, you, too,” he called over the heads of many people. He headed out through the throng straight out from the door and through the small garden bed in the center of the drive. As we angled our way through the mass of people to Gordon, every single one of them seemed to know us and spoke to us by name, not expecting a reply either, just saying “hello” and acknowledging us. It was eerie. Okay, it was creepier than Ian’s disembodied head, but at the moment Ian was safely atop Ferrin’s shoulders so at least he was buffered from the weirdness. He was getting a kick out of how many people knew Ferrin by name. By the time we’d made it to Gordon, the drive was almost clear.
“How did all those people know you, Michael?” Ian asked once Ferrin had swung him to the ground.
“I dunno, Yonnie,” he said shaking his head. “I’ve been a little busy lately, but honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen most of those people before.”
“You won MacNamara’s Games,” I said. “That alone would be enough for most of these people to know you.”
“Not so much,” Gordon countered, stepping up to us. “Not everyone considers that particular part of our society important at all. These people are more aware of last night’s uh… adventures.”
So much for low profile for a Pact holder, but I didn’t ask for this part either so screw ‘em if they can’t take a joke. I had no idea what that meant but I heard it in a movie.
“These people weren’t there, either,” I said suspiciously.
“Bis
hop had models of the resonance waves bounced throughout four continents,” Gordon explained. “Then he made sure that the rumor mill ran at exponential speeds and included as much visual imagery as possible, which meant last night’s ballroom battle played a big part in his PR campaign.”
“I still didn’t play that much of a part in that either,” Ferrin said, looking down at Ian as innocently as possible. “Don’t you go believin’ no cock’n’bull stories they tell ya.”
Ian narrowed his eyes up at his brother. “Are you telling me that you didn’t kick some serious wizard ass on top of a gay bar in London? Then take out another ten or twelve in Germany? That’s what Peter said. He said I should ‘specially ask you why you were at the gay bar in the first place.”
Ferrin was bright red after Ian’s mention of London and it looked like he’d dislocated his jaw by the time Ian finished speaking. Peter was hiding behind a smiling Gordon but his snickering gave his hiding place away.
“So he didn’t mention that I was there to meet him and that he left before I got there?” Ferrin managed after a moment of shooting daggers at Peter with his eyes. “Or should I say, got tossed. That because of me, a group of zealots got a chance to pop Seth when they shouldn’t even have seen him. Seth requires excellent backup. I was the only thing available at the time so I had to perform. In the ballroom, Seth was able to break the spell under the wards that helped to hide the elves. I was one of the few close enough to pass the spell to. And I got hurt then, pretty badly too.”
“That guy got his face emulsified for his trouble, too,” said Peter still snickering behind Gordon. “Hope fingerprints and id’s hold out.”
“Gordon, what’s up? What are we here to see?” I asked, trying to move the conversation away from London gay bars.
“I fully believe that Martin can call up the Castle,” he said and he did seem confident his brother could pull it off well. “The problem is he said something in front of Mother. Now, she wants him to prove it.” He wasn’t trying to hide his smile at all. “I think she’s in for a big surprise, really.” He stamped his foot and a rumble issued through the ground.