by Gwynn White
He glanced at his wristwatch. On schedule. The PA system filtered through the ceiling. His heart raced. Chill. Plenty of time left to hit the other two stalls on his list.
Overhead, the crowd erupted. Restive destriers whinnied in response, and Ran did not hear the clank of greaves until he rounded a corner and nearly collided with a knight in full armor, carrying his helm under his arm.
Ran sidestepped. The knight stopped dead and stared. A grin spread over his snubnosed, jowly face. “I don’t believe it!”
Neither did Ran.
He was standing face to face with Cyril Suffolk, who’d been top of the Pages League of Great Britain and Ireland when Ran was bottom of it.
Keen as mustard, Cyril’d always been. Just the type to get his armor on early and come to check on his destrier himself.
“I didn’t know you were still doing tourney,” Ran blurted idiotically.
“You … but no—but … I’m sorry. I just have to ask. Is it… is it you, Ran?”
Ran backed away. He said in German, “Sorry, I don’t—I’m not him. You’ve made a mistake. I don’t…”
“Oh. Well, sorry,” Cyril said, also switching into German. All highborn Englishmen could speak German as well as their own language. “You look just like him, that’s all…” Cyril’s fair brows knotted. “Ran? Ran, it is you. Come on, I recognize you. I spent a whole semester at Dublin Castle when we were seven.” He advanced, his armor clinking.
“I’m not,” Ran said desperately. His mind was going blank. “You can’t tell anyone you’ve seen me. It’d be dangerous. For you.”
“Oh, bollocks! Don’t you know everyone’s been looking for you for years and years? Actually, you were given up for dead back in the eighties.” Cyril grinned, marvelling at the unpredictability of life. “This is incredible! It’s huge! You’re the rightful heir to the throne, didn’t you know? Come on, come up to our box. Everyone’s had about enough of darling Madelaine, I can tell you. Oh, and did you know Adair is fighting in the foot combats? Adair Stuart, you remember him! So there’s a bunch of Stuarts here, too. They’ll look after you all right; they’ll get you home.”
“I’m not going home!”
“Why?” Cyril was the picture of puzzlement.
Into the blankness of Ran’s mind popped an idea. It was a terrible one but it was the only thing he could think of.
He exerted his fancier’s knack. To Plains Princess, and every other destrier in the stalls nearby, he whispered in his mind: ~Enemy! Enemy! Quick! Kick! Batter! Smash! Charge! Bite! Trample! Attack!
Noise exploded from the stalls. Adamantine hooves crashed into flimsy walls. The fearsome steeds, bred for war and starved for twenty-four hours to sharpen their battle lust, shattered their stalls and pranced forth. Cyril’s mouth opened in a scream of panic and that was the last Ran saw of him. A gigantic white stallion reared, whinnying. Ran ducked under its belly.
He fled through the obstacle course of surging horseflesh and shattered stalls. Fleeing the noise behind him, he dashed back to the emergency stairs and threw himself up them two at a time. He didn’t stop until a blank landing confronted him. Winded, he collapsed against the rail.
Before he even got his breath back, he doubled over and puked. It felt like he was bringing his bowels up.
I killed him. I killed him.
Ran had killed a man before. When he was nine, when he had the Worldcracker, the legendary sword of Britain’s kings, he had used it to kill a man called the Shackler. But that had been an accident. This time he had done it on purpose.
He spat repeatedly, trying to get the taste of sick out of his mouth. Then he went back down to the fourth floor.
The stands rang with the shrieks of whistles. Commercials flashed on the jumbo screens at either end of the stadium. Spectators balancing beers, popcorn, and cheese fries clogged the stairs. The tilts were about to start. Ran sank into his seat beside his friends.
“Mission accomplished?” Dominic asked.
Tourney security had to have found Cyril’s body by now. Would they postpone the tilts? Cancel the rest of the tourney? Had anyone seen Ran fleeing the scene?
“I only did one of them,” he whispered. “Couldn’t get to the other two.”
Dominic passed the news to the others. Sonya Zalyotin, at the end of the line, leaned forward to stare at Ran. He scowled and pressed himself back into the hard plastic seat. Why do I have to take all the risks, anyway?
But he knew why. His friends were incurables, one and all. Any little injury could be fatal to them. So they crafted the curses that made a destrier sluggish, disobedient, or sleepy. And Ran applied them.
If he hadn’t been down in the stables he wouldn’t have bumped into Cyril Suffolk.
Wouldn’t have had to kill him.
No regrets, he told himself. You did what you had to do.
The tilts started on time. The powers that be had evidently decided that there was nothing to gain from announcing the news of a fatal accident in the stables. And a lot to lose: namely the hundreds of thousands of marks riding on this perenially popular event.
Including the friends’ savings.
“Entering the West lists for House Magyar, it’s Sir Adrus Gergely on Plains Princess!”
Ran’s friends tensed. Betting slips peeked out of nervously clenched fists. Ran tried to look as if he still cared.
The destriers highstepped into the lists. The cameras zoomed in on the favors knotted around the knights’ pauldrons. At the bugle, the spurs went in, they started to trot and then to canter… and Plains Princess pulled to the left. Resisting her rider’s frantic heaves on the reins, she slowed to a walk, dipped her head over the hurdles, and lipped up a mouthful of grass. Her opposite number, a bay named Holy Thunder, also slowed down. He knew his job and this wasn’t it.
The commentators went to town on Plains Princess’s refusal. Holy Thunder’s rider, relishing an easy victory, brandished his lance. Plains Princess spat out her mouthful of grass, realizing it was astroturf. The spectators howled with laughter.
One false start was allowed. The Magyar knight managed to get Plains Princess back to their end of the lists, but even before the bugle blew again, it was clear that the destrier wasn’t going anywhere. She rubbernecked like a tourist, peering through her blinkers at the stands. Her rider bowed to the inevitable. He dropped the point of his lance to the turf, conceding. The other knight rode a victory lap, the colors of Haus Isenburg fluttering from his upright lance.
Figuring in the likely losses from the other two jousts they’d bet on, the friends had made enough money to cover their tickets and train fare to Konigsberg, leaving some over for beer.
Two Days Later. May 18th, 1989. Hamburg
There were six of them: Dominic, Perry, Katrina, the Zalyotin siblings, and Ran. They had grown up together, sharing everything from pencil erasers to bronchitis.
Dominic, Perry, and Katrina had no families. The International Monetary Fund had rescued them from the slums of Oslo, Berlin, and Munich respectively.
Ran had no family, either, as far as the others knew.
The Zalyotins, Erik and Sonya, were the son and daughter of the manager of the conciliation department, but no one held that against them.
All of them were incurables except Ran.
When they were younger, he hadn’t minded that he couldn’t study magic with the others. In fact he’d gloried in his free afternoons. But now they were eighteen to nineteen years old, the five incurables were studying nothing but magic. Which left Ran at loose ends. He killed time by reading books, looking after the lab animals, and wandering off into the town to play cards and chess at smoky coffee houses.
Outside the IMF, he was the normal one, as far as anyone could tell. The others were sickos, freaks, guilty until proven innocent. They had to hide their incurability by dyeing their naturally red hair and concealing any bruises or scrapes with makeup. But here, he was the misfit.
He sat in the corner of the s
chool lab, reading the newspapers while the others worked on their practice spells.
“Any interesting opportunities?” Perry said, looking up from the distillation apparatus.
They could see he was reading the tourney section. They did not know he was searching for any mention of Cyril Suffolk.
“Ah, no, nothing coming up,” Ran said, quickly flipping the newsprint pages. “That seriously pongs, Perry.”
They all laughed, although he hadn’t said anything funny. They were eager to believe he was back to normal. He hadn’t been able to pretend, after the Konigsberg Spring Invitational, that there was nothing wrong.
The lab stank of simmering poisons. Vents labored, noisy but ineffective. Posters flapped on the scabby, whitewashed walls: HAVE YOU WASHED YOUR HANDS Tactical OutcomesDAY? and an old IMF propaganda poster that showed a relic tag with the slogan THE ONLY GUARANTEE OF VIRTUE. The benches were equipped with gas burners, retorts, distillation apparatuses, and an unreliable dehydrator. The faucet in the corner dripped loudly into the metal sink. The big refrigerator for perishable materials groaned, perpetually on the verge of perishing itself.
“I’m so bored,” Katrina moaned. Head on one hand, she flicked through her notes, looking for the Latin words she needed to complete her practice spell. “I’m so sick of this do-goody-good bullshit.”
Dominic, the big Norwegian with peroxided hair, implored her, “Take courage, my friend. The Agency needs you to qualify as a conciliator so you can help filthy rich bastards pretend the sanctity crisis isn’t hammering their credit ratings. Sorry, what did I say? I mean, so that you can save the world. Yeah. That’s it.”
Sonya Zalyotin said humorlessly, “Like we’re going to save the world with good-luck charms. When are they going to teach us the cool stuff?”
“Like, never,” Perry said. “The Agency doesn’t do black magic. We had to spend a year searching old bookshops just to find the runes for those pony-fiddling hexes.”
From next door came the sound of younger incurables rumpusing, getting out of hand as the end of the school day approached.
Ran stood up and put his coat on. The others fell silent, watching him out of the corners of their eyes. Before he reached the door, the school secretary opened it. “Ireland? Manager wants to see you.”
“Now?” Ran said.
“As soon as you can get there.” The secretary reddened with pleasure at seeing him in trouble.
He had to walk ten minutes to the bus stop, and then it was halfway across town to the Agency campus, so he had plenty of time to reflect that his name had been a mistake, too. Ran Ireland! He’d once been the Lord Protector of Ireland, and he’d even kept his old nickname as his first name. At the age of nine, he’d thought he was being clever. Why hadn’t Mihal told him he was being an idiot? Stopped him from endangering himself?
Having refused to rush, he expected to find Mihal waiting impatiently for him. Or maybe the loyalty police. Instead, he was told to wait outside the manager’s office.
Opposite the hard bench in the hall hung a long mirror. Ran stared at himself. At first, he hadn’t been able to understand how Cyril Suffolk had recognized him. They hadn’t met since they were nine. Ran had been a sturdy kid, and now he was skinny. His teenage growth spurt had left him stranded at five foot eight. He had a pointy, ratty sort of face—he took after his Wessex father, not his Sauvage mother. And he dyed his hair black now, instead of blond. He was un-fucking-recognizable!
But now, staring into the mirror, he saw the same little boy who’d washed up here at the age of nine, scared of his own family, scared of terrorists, scared of everything.
Of course Cyril had recognized him. He hadn’t changed a bit.
Mihal came out of his office. “What the hell have you done now?”
Ran stood up. “You tell me. What have I done now?”
“Cyril Suffolk, a promising young tourney knight, aged nineteen. At the Konigsberg Spring Invitational. You lot were at that tourney. The young man was inexplicably trampled by a dozen destriers that inexplicably spooked and got loose from their stalls. Whenever I hear inexplicable, you come to mind.”
“Is he dead?”
“Yes. They suspect foul play, but fortunately for you, he was too badly injured to talk before he died. They’re processing his relics at the Preservation Center now. That’s how I found out. They notify the conciliation department any time a highly rated living saint dies of… inexplicable … causes.”
“So no one else knows.” Ran felt so weak with relief he wanted to sit down. It was all right if Mihal knew, if no one else did. After all, it was Mihal who’d rescued him from his old life, persuaded the IMF to hide him. As Cyril Suffolk had pointed out, Ran had a claim to the throne of Britain as least as good as the present queen’s. So the Governors of the IMF were keeping him in reserve for emergencies. They wouldn’t turn him over to the police.
“Why’d you do it?” Mihal was a Russian of Uzbeki extraction, living proof that the Agency recruited magicians wherever it could find them, without regard for nationality. His face was cratered with old smallpox scars that turned white when he was upset. He drove his fingers into his grey-streaked ponytail. “You can’t go around killing people! I’ve failed very badly with you if you don’t understand that.”
“He wanted me to come back to Britain and be king. I mean, for fuck’s sake. I had no choice.”
“Don’t you want to be king, then?”
“No.”
“What do you want to be?”
“A conciliator,” Ran muttered. “I want to be a conciliator. But I can’t. All the others are learning magic and I can’t. I used to be like them. Now I’m different from everyone. What happened to me?”
“You’re not the only one who’d like to know that,” Mihal said gently. “You’re a mystery. No one knows how you were cured. If we did know, it would transform the world.”
“Oh, I’m just joking! I hated being an incurable. I remember that. Everything used to hurt. Now I don’t even catch colds.”
“You feel left out. That’s our fault. We haven’t known what to do with you now that you’re an adult.”
“I think I might become a professional fancier. I’d like to work with dragons.”
But the idea had lost much of its appeal since he used his fancier’s knack to kill a man.
Mihal sighed. “Come with me. Churchill and Klawitz want to talk to you.”
Reluctantly, Ran followed him down the hall. Clerks and secretaries trotted along with their arms full of files. The IMF was a bureaucracy. Mihal left Ran in the visitors’ lounge and went through to the executive suite of the conciliation department.
Ran wandered around the lounge looking at the insipid watercolor landscapes. No portraits of royalty hung here. The IMF was impartial, non-partisan. Insofar as they could be, with their headquarters located in Germany.
“Ran? They’ll see you now.”
Jack Churchill had been the director of the conciliation department ever since Ran came to live here. For years and years he had seemed not to change and then he had suddenly shrivelled into a grey-haired crab. Meanwhile his deputy had died of some horrible wasting disease. The former manager of the department, Lom Klawitz, had been promoted to deputy director, while Mihal had gotten Klawitz’s old job.
Churchill confronted Ran across his desk, flanked by the other two. Klawitz was rhythmically flexing his fingers around a rubber squeezy ball. He was in a wheelchair. Ran never could look at him without a shudder, imagining one of his friends similarly confined. They were incurables. Death or disability could strike any one of them, any time.
“So you want to be a conciliator,” Churchill said with a grin that showed the roots of his yellow teeth.
“No,” Ran said. “I was joking. I can’t be a conciliator. I’m not an incurable. Not a magician.”
“These things can be finessed.” Churchill leaned forward, holding out a tube of stiff paper. “Congratulations.”
&nbs
p; Ran took the paper and unrolled it.
Ran Ireland is hereby attested to have graduated from the IMF Hagiomasy Institute. Signed by all the governors of the Fund.
“Without honors?” Ran said.
“Sorry,” Churchill said. “Couldn’t manage that on short notice. Does it matter?”
“Not really.” His mouth was dry. What’s going on?
“You will be going undercover as an assayer,” Churchill said. Wizened as he was, he projected an air of authority. Ran cringed. Jack Churchill was said to be the best magician in the world, a master of both the white magic that the IMF condoned, and the black magic it did not. He could summon spirits, talk to ghosts, change the weather by rattling a handful of bones, and kill a man with the clippings of his fingernails. Whether or not that was all true, Churchill knew things other people did not. He said now, “Your job will be to stay hidden.”
Ran waited. But that seemed to be all. “Why?”
Klawitz threw his squeezy ball on the desk. “You’re a bad influence on your friends. You distract them with your crazy ideas. Persuade them to travel across Germany to tourneys when they should be studying …”
Mihal said deferently, “Perry, Dominic, and Katrina are slum kids. They’re not follow-the-leader types. I know—I used to teach them.”
“And your own kids, Zalyotin?” Klawitz said. “It doesn’t bother you that they’ve been wandering all over Europe, rigging jousts, endangering themselves and the Fund?”
Mihal bowed his head.
“Go home and pack your bags,” Klawitz said to Ran. “Take warm-weather stuff, but you’ll want a fleece or two as well. And a hat.”
Ran squeezed his new diploma so hard that it compressed to the diameter of a pencil. “I don’t get it. I mean, where are you sending me?”
“As far away from here as you can get without falling off the planet. The Congo.”