Worldweavers: Cybermage

by Alma Alexander

  “This Humphrey May,” Tesla said. “What exactly is his own role in all of this? In my own experience with the Federal Bureau of Magic, whenever they did something it was for their own reasons, not anyone’s well-being. I am a little disturbed that he is involved so deeply in all of this.”

  “He thought it might be possible to get you back,” Thea said. “To give back what you’d lost. To reclaim you. I know he was doing it for his own reasons, but when I said I would help find those pigeons of yours, I told him I was doing it for you, not for him. All I wanted to do was try and set you free; I don’t know what he wanted, exactly, or what he would take instead of that if he didn’t get it.”

  “He would have taken you,” Tesla said shrewdly. “He was betting on one of us. I would be very careful around the FBM, my dear.”

  “I wouldn’t say you were far wrong,” Terry said, “even though my uncle runs the place. But Thea, we need to do something. He’s been a confounded nuisance, and I can’t tell him to bug off; he’s technically my boss.”

  “What would the Alphiri want with that pigeon they stole?” Tess asked.

  “Hold it for ransom, maybe, or hold it over our heads as a threat. They will find a way to make a profit on the situation,” Terry said grimly. “They’ll threaten to wring its neck if we don’t produce its fellows, or Tesla.”

  “I thought they did not steal,” Kristin said, clutching her cage as though her mere touch would protect the precious birds inside it. “But Corey…”

  “Exactly. Corey.” Thea tossed her hair back in a small frustrated gesture. “They stole nothing. They bought the pigeon from Corey. And Corey had no compunction about stealing. None at all. Well, two can play at that game.”

  “Oh?” Ben said sharply.

  “Who knows someone who’s got Tersii in the house?” Thea said, turning to her friends.

  She was greeted with five sets of blank stares.

  “The Faele Cleaner Clan?” Tess echoed. “The imps that do the housework when nobody’s looking, and as long as everybody pretends not to notice?”

  “Those,” Thea said, beginning to grin.

  “But they’re the lowest Faele rank there is—they have no power at all. What do you want with the Tersii?”

  “Uh,” Ben said, hesitating. “I don’t know, not for sure, but my father’s lab is always immaculate, and I never see him tidying up. It could be one of the Tersii, but I don’t know for sure.”

  “Worth a try,” Thea said. “I hope it’s the helpful kind and not the malicious tribe. Getting tangled up with those would be all we need right now.”

  “Tersii, for heaven’s sake? Why do you want to get tangled up with the Faele anyway? Don’t we have enough trouble on our plate?” Tess said.

  But Tesla was wearing a wolfish smile. “I think I understand,” he said. “Good luck.”

  “Wait for me here,” Thea said. “Ben, can you describe your father’s lab for me?”

  “I can do better than that. Take me with you, and I’ll get you there directly,” Ben said.

  “All right, then. The sooner we—”

  “Wait.”

  They turned to see Magpie standing a little apart from them, laying down a small silk-wrapped bundle.

  “Take me with you too,” she said.

  Thea stared at her and then nodded.

  “Okay,” she said. “The rest of you, wait here. Come on, Ben.”

  She typed something on her wrist pad, showed it to Ben, who murmured assent, and hit ENTER.

  The three of them found themselves in an empty laboratory, just at the instant that someone had switched off the overhead lights and was softly closing the door behind them. They heard the snick of a lock, and then they were alone in a large room, with a couple of safety lights over two of the benches and the muted glow of the light in the fume cupboard. It glinted on glassware—some rinsed and left out to dry on one of the benches, the rest piled into the scarred and pitted sink.

  “It’s promising,” Ben said. “It never looks like this in the morning.”

  “Shhh,” Thea said, straining forward to see.

  They waited in silence, without moving, until they heard a sound, very faint, of glass clinking against glass. Thea hid a smile as she typed something else into the wrist pad, hiding the small screen’s glow under her sleeve; in the next instant, she was standing beside the sink without ever having actually physically moved, and a smothered squawk from her closed hand betrayed the presence of an astonished and furious little man less than a foot tall. Ben and Magpie hurried over. At first, all they could see were two angrily waving arms below a peaked brown hat that seemed two sizes too large for its owner.

  “Put me down! Put me down this instant! Put me down, you great human elephant! We had a deal! You weren’t even supposed to know I was here!”

  “It’s hard not to know, when you do what you do,” Ben said, unable to help himself.

  The Tersii’s hat turned around, revealing a small, pointed face with dark eyes and a broad, bulbous nose. The gnome stared at Ben, his lips pursed in an annoyed grimace of recognition.

  “You,” he said peevishly. “I should’ve known. It was an inside job.”

  “Hush,” Thea said. “I have another deal for you—you, or someone else of your kindred. I mean you no harm, and will not reveal your presence to anybody. Nor will anyone else here. Your secret is safe with us if you will lead us to those we need to speak to.”

  “What do you want?” the Tersii said suspiciously, squinting up at Thea.

  “I need a changeling.”

  The Tersii stared at her. “That will cost you.”

  “That’s my problem. Mine, and whoever it is I bargain with. Do we have a deal with you?”

  “Uh, sure. But I can’t get you a changeling. You’d need to go much further up the hierarchy for that. The Court, even.”

  “How do I get there?”

  “They don’t let just anyone…” the Tersii said, outraged.

  “Yes, but it was the Faele themselves who labeled me a seeker in my cradle,” Thea said. “I’m not just anyone. How do I get there?”

  “Let me get my boss,” the Tersii said, after a pause. “I can’t do any of this. I’m just clean-up crew. I earn my keep; I’m a working-class body, not like some mucky mucks up above me.”

  “Like your boss?” Magpie said, unable to help herself.

  The Tersii blinked. “Tricksy. I didn’t say that. Let me go, and I’ll get—”

  Thea shook her head. “No. You can call him. I’ll let you go when he gets here. The boss.”

  The Tersii, looking sulky, straightened his hat with both hands. “Fine,” he said sullenly. “Oh, fine.”

  He tilted his head and closed his eyes for a moment, and then opened them again. “Coming,” he said. “Can I get on with my work now? You sure nobody will know?”

  “Oh everybody knows,” Ben said. “But nobody will have seen you. Cross my heart.”

  Thea opened her hand and the little man stepped smartly out of her reach, straightening his clothes as he did so. “Caught like a nipper,” he muttered to himself. “As though I haven’t been doing this for a hundred and fifty years.”

  “Do they really live that long?” Magpie said, astonished, turning to Thea.

  “How do you know how long their year is?” Thea said, grinning.

  A small, theatrical flash of white light announced the arrival of the Tersii worker’s boss. He stood just a smidge taller than his underling, and his hat was more gold than brown, but other than that, he didn’t look much different from the original Tersii, who had vanished somewhere into the pile of dirty glassware and by the sound of things was hard at work.

  “Well, who wants me?” the boss Tersii asked with some asperity.

  “Lay off my father’s phosphorus,” Ben muttered. “I recognize that flash.”

  “I come bargaining,” Thea said, ignoring the interruption. “I need a changeling.”

  Boss Tersii stood up a l
ittle straighter. “A changeling,” he said. “You don’t say. And what might this changeling be for?”

  “That’s for the one who can provide me one to know,” Thea said.

  “Well, I can’t,” the little man said, throwing his arms wide. “Did that doofus over there tell you this was something I could accomplish? I’ll flay him….”

  “No,” Thea said. “What he said, I believe, is that you can give us access to a higher level. To the Court.”

  “The Court isn’t in session,” Boss Tersii said, crossing his arms.

  “They will be,” Thea said. “For this. Get the message out.”

  “You would summon the Court here? To this filthy place?”

  “I’m working as fast as I can!” the original Tersii grumbled from the sink.

  Thea shrugged. “Here, or wherever they choose.”

  “A changeling. What would a human want with a changeling?”

  “Not a human changeling. A pigeon changeling.”

  Ben whipped his head around to stare at Thea, his mouth hanging open. He looked like he was about to say something, but Magpie touched his arm gently, giving him a light shake of her head.

  Boss Tersii didn’t entirely miss all of that, but he was far too busy trying to make sense of Thea’s words to pay all that much attention.

  “A pigeon changeling?” he echoed, not bothering to conceal his astonishment. “What possible use would there be in a Faele pigeon changeling?”

  “Court,” Thea said sweetly. “Call them and find out.”

  The Boss Tersii looked the three of them up and down. “Great galumphing humans,” he muttered. “You’d stomp on the Court with those clodhoppers and that would be the end of that. I will get the Queen’s Chancellor.”

  “The Queen,” Thea said, gently but insistently. “Or else the Chancellor will just have to go and get her himself. What I ask is not for the common official.”

  “The Chancellor is a Royal Paladin, I will have you know,” Boss Tersii said.

  “The Queen,” Thea said.

  “Oh, fine,” Boss Tersii said. “On your own head be it. I can tell you now she is not used to being summoned by the likes of you. She will not be happy.” He winked out.

  Ben shook off Magpie’s hand and turned to Thea. “Are you sure you know what you are doing?” he whispered.

  Thea smiled and shook her head. “Nope,” she said. “I’m figuring things out as I go along. I’ve got the Feds behind me—for now—and Humphrey’s still backing me.”

  “But he doesn’t know what you’re doing, either,” Ben said doggedly.

  “He never did,” Thea said. “But even if all that fails, I have Tesla. I have me.”

  “You might be putting too much in that basket. Even Elemental magic can’t take on two other polities at once.”

  Further conversation was prevented by an odd distortion of the air above one of the benches. It slowly resolved into a window that looked into what appeared to be a forest glade wreathed in amethyst twilight. Lanterns filled with fireflies hung from twigs and branches, most of them in an arch above a bower thick with rose petals on which reclined the tiny, delicate form of an exquisite silver-haired woman with a single white gem on her brow. She held what looked like a large jeweled hatpin as a scepter. Her arms were weighed down with silver bracelets from wrist to elbow, and she wore a fragile-looking silver gown that glittered with tiny crystals over an undergarment of a shimmering royal purple.

  “This,” said the Queen of the Faele Court, “had better be good.”

  Thea bobbed a small curtsy. “Your Majesty,” she said. “I come for help only you can give.”

  “Sounds promising already,” the Queen said, with just a touch of irony. “What did you have in mind?”

  “Something important to me has been stolen. I want it replaced with a Faele changeling. This does not have to be a permanent thing at all—just long enough so that the thief doesn’t notice the switch. And I want the original restored to me.”

  “A living something. Else you would not be asking for a changeling at all.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty. A bird.”

  “It sounds elaborate,” the Queen said, after a pause. “Perhaps a shade too elaborate. If stolen, why can it not be recovered by more straightforward means? And perhaps more to the point, who holds it?”

  “Well, this is why I need your people and their skills,” Thea murmured. “It is being held by the Alphiri.”

  The Queen sat up, throwing her scepter down on her bower. “Then it wasn’t stolen,” she said. “The Alphiri do not steal. This is known. They make a bargain, and they hold to it.”

  “It was stolen from one of the Human Polity by one whom your polity knows well, and has done many deals with: the Trickster. If the Alphiri bargained with him, then that is between them and the Trickster, but the bird of which I speak was stolen, from us.”

  “You seriously expect my people to bring the wrath of the Alphiri on our heads?” the Queen asked. “Why would I do such a thing? And if you are right and the Trickster is involved, he is not part of this Court, but is an Elder Spirit of a fellow polity ratified by formal law. His word easily carries the weight of my own within the hierarchy, and I have no say over what he does or does not do. I owe you nothing. Nothing that I want to get the Alphiri angry at me over, anyway.”

  “What if there is nothing they can do to you?”

  “They would know it was me,” the Queen said. “A Faele changeling pigeon? Who else would sanction or make possible such a thing?”

  “But you yourself said it—the Alphiri understand a bargain,” Thea said. “And you would be making one, with us. We—the Human Polity—would stand surety for this one. If they wish to challenge that, they will have to take it to the Polity Court for arbitration. And our lawyers are just as well versed in cross-polity law as the Alphiri are.”

  “You are a younger polity,” the Faele Queen said slowly. “You haven’t felt Alphiri fury. Not yet. Not completely.”

  “Neither would you. Immunity.”

  “No,” the Queen said, shaking her head slowly. “It goes a long way, but it doesn’t go far enough. I will not risk—”

  “Wait,” Magpie said, stepping forward.

  Thea turned, astonished.

  Magpie already held all the earrings from both her ears and half a dozen rings cupped in one hand. With the other, she was in the process of undoing the clasp of a chain bearing a large prismatic crystal that hung around her neck. It came loose even as she spoke and she poured it into the hand with the rest of the loot. Then she held it all out to the Queen.

  “There is more,” she said, “where these came from. It may be more or less valuable than the chance to actually pull one over on the Alphiri with absolute impunity. Everything I own that is shiny and that sparkles—and I can see that there is a love of such things in your court, Your Majesty—I pledge it all.”

  “Magpie,” Thea began, strangely moved.

  But the Queen leaned forward. “Bring it closer,” she instructed, waving Magpie to approach with one imperious hand. “I wish to see.”

  “Magpie, wait,” Thea said, putting out a hand to restrain her friend, but Magpie shook her off.

  “I owe it,” she said. “For the other life I couldn’t touch.”

  “Bring it,” the Queen said. “Now.”

  Magpie stepped forward, holding out her hand.

  The Queen reached out with both her exquisite hands and rummaged around in the stash in Magpie’s palm. She lifted her head, and a winged minion stepped up to her from the shadows beyond the firefly lights; she said something into its pointed ear, and the minion nodded and vanished in a bright spark of light. When the messenger returned a few minutes later, he made his report—quite a lengthy one—into the Queen’s ear, again out of earshot. When he was done, the Queen dismissed him with another wave of her hand.

  “Your offer pleases me,” the Queen said. “It would be satisfactory…to liberate the pigeon from Alph
iri captivity.”

  “And restore it to us,” Thea said.

  The Queen shook her head. “The price for that is still too high,” she said. “Even with your promised immunity. Even with all of this. I cannot put myself or my people at such risk.”

  Thea bit her lip, and then lifted her head to speak again, but once more Magpie spoke first.

  “Then I will offer more,” she said faintly. “Your kindred has always known the power of true-names, better than any other.”

  “This is true,” the Queen said. “I am listening.”

  Magpie swallowed hard.

  “I am called Magpie,” she said. “That is the name by which everyone knows me, everyone calls me. It is my true-name, always has been, even though it is not the name given to me in the cradle—but it is the name that makes me who I am, what I am. I have already offered you everything that makes that name fit me, for I no longer own any shiny thing that a magpie might covet. But I will lay the name, too, at your feet tonight. For the rest. For the pigeon’s safe return.”

  Her words fell into a stillness so profound that time seemed to have stopped.

  Thea found herself staring at Magpie, her eyes filled with tears. Ben had locked his hand around Thea’s free wrist with a white-knuckled grip, his attention wholly focused on Magpie.

  “It is acceptable,” the Queen said at last, after a long moment of silence. “It is done. When the changeling bird has been left in place of your own, and the real one procured, I will send word. So let it be.”

  The girl once known as Magpie allowed the silver and crystal in her hand to fall at the Queen’s feet, and stepped back, her head bowed, veiled in her own dark hair, her hands empty of rings, her throat empty of necklace and crystal and charm, a stranger without a name. The Queen made a sharp gesture with her hand, and the air closed over the rose-petal bower under firefly lanterns. They were back in the laboratory, with only the safety lights and the dim glow of the fume cupboard to light them. Even the Tersii were gone; they were quite alone.

  “Mag…” Ben began, his throat tight, but the name really didn’t fit anymore. It had been given away, freely, the last jewel in a dragon hoard of gems. He fell silent.