Crusader

by Andrew Smith

  “Like crouching in the brush?” Mary asked, skeptical

  Mme. Rumella shrugged. “Something to think about,” she said once again, and returned to Hunter, who had polished off nearly a dozen cookies in her short time away. “You’re going to ruin your diet.”

  “I’ve been eating game for the past three centuries. To hell with my diet,” he said through cookie.

  “So may I ask how you came to be here with Voz?”

  “Suerte is dangerous. I thought I might need help.”

  “Well, you certainly picked the most helpful person in the city,” Mme. Rumella remarked. “How did you get her to work with out?”

  Hunter explained. “It’s like I’ve been her favorite uncle forever, even though we’ve never met.”

  “And how is that?”

  “Nice,” said Hunter, as though the word were foreign to him. “Weird, but nice. She’s the one who convinced me to come visit you, actually.”

  “You weren’t going to come?” Mme. Rumella asked.

  “Er, well...”

  “Hunter, honestly. You disappear for centuries, then come back and don’t even want to say ‘hello’? For shame.”

  “Sorry, Mme. Rumella.”

  Mme. Rumella nodded satisfactorily. “You know, Hunter, if Suerte is who you say, there’s still something I don’t understand: No-one in the city has ever heard of him. How is it possible that he’s been here for that long and word never spread to anyone?”

  “He was very careful. He managed to become a major underworld figure without anyone knowing it. Maybe he worked through agents, maybe he simply planted the command to forget him in everyone’s mind. Personally, I think all his years distributing sorcerous merchandise was just leading up to this election.”

  “But what could anyone do with the post of mayor?” Mme. Rumella asked

  “I don’t know. But you can be sure that with Suerte, it’s not his civic pride.”

  Mme. Rumella announced that she needed some time to think, and prepared tea for everyone. Mary trounced Leila at chess, and Hunter and Voz were invited to stay at the shop, for purposes of security. They accepted, and Mme. Rumella made up two more guest beds. As she was slipping on a pillow case, Leila caught her arm.

  “Mme. Rumella, can I ask you something?”

  “You may,” she replied

  “What’s the deal?”

  “Pardon?”

  “With this Hunter guy. Mary told me he helped you stop Lionel, then disappeared.”

  “First of all, pet, I told you that last week. It is true though. He disappeared into the forests immediately afterwards, and only just returned.”

  “But why? What was he doing?”

  “Hunting,” she smiled. Then, more seriously, added, “For Suerte apparently.”

  “The mayor guy?”

  “The same. You remember the crystals that where the Focus of Lionel’s spell? Well, he had to get it somewhere, and his supplier happened to be none other than Mr. Suerte. When I smashed the first crystal, someone appeared out of nowhere to take the second.”

  “What happened?”

  Mme. Rumella closed her eyes. “I heard that it was a terrible struggle. Mr. Suerte, it would appear, is far more dangerous than he looks. Hunter got there a moment too late to save Analisa, and Suerte escaped.”

  “Annalisa? That was his wife?”

  Mme. Rumella nodded. “Annalisa Da Cartagio. She was... Amazing, actually. She truly was. And she and Hunter were so in love. After Lionel was defeated, Hunter went after Suerte. I suppose he couldn’t find him in the city, and so he went into the forests.”

  “Da Cartagio? Kind of a funny name.”

  “Well, she was originally from ancient Carthage.”

  “How ancient?”

  “You’ve heard of Dido?”

  “That’s pretty ancient.” Leila paused, deciding, and finally asked the question on her mind. “I... I don’t want to sound all Machiavellian or anything, but... Why didn’t you just kill him? Lionel, I mean.”

  “Who says we didn’t, pet?”

  “What?”

  “He’s a necromancer, remember. The lines between life and death can get a touch blurry when one deals with that ilk,” Mme. Rumella informed her.

  “So he’s dead?”

  “You saw him last week in Teo,” Mme. Rumella reminded her. “Did he look dead?”

  “No... So he’s alive.”

  “Relatively speaking.”

  Leila glared at her. “I’m going to go and find Jason Oblivion. Even he would be less opaque than you.”

  “Ouch, pet, that really stings!”

  “Shut up.”

  * * * *

  The next day dawned, and streams of customers poured into Mme. Rumella’s Tea Shop. Hunter and Mary were the first of her house guests to rise, followed by Leila, then Voz, and finally her young nephew. During a break, Mme. Rumella walked over to them, all hanging about in the back corner.

  “Would you break it up a little, please? You look incredibly suspicious and you’re garnering attention.”

  Jason Oblivion walked up behind her. “I barely noticed you,” he said

  “Hear that? If someone is watching us, they would know that we’re all working together. Now please disperse,” Mme. Rumella ordered and returned to the bar.

  “If someone with any sense in their head is watching us, they’d see me, Hunter, and Mary together and run for the mountains,” Voz remarked.

  Hunter gave a wry smile and Mary snickered lowly.

  “Still, maybe we should,” Leila suggested. “Why ruin the surprise? I’m gonna run across the street and grab some work,” she said and did

  Mary challenged someone to a game of chess, and Voz accepted. The morning was uneventful until Grace Owen appeared.

  “Hey guys. Remember that whole ‘maybe we should watch the building’ idea from yesterday? Perhaps one of us, meaning one of you since Van and I have already taken long shifts, should go do that.”

  Mary volunteered and stood to leave. “Only because you’re losing,” Voz taunted.

  Mary bent down and moved her sole remaining knight. “Check.”

  Voz glared at the board and moved her king to the right. Mary slid a rook down the board. “Checkmate.”

  “Damn,” said Voz. “Should have seen that coming.”

  Grace walked with Mary to the Mulhoy, since her building was nearby. “I’ll tell you what Van told me: nothing happened. You’re probably going to wish you’d brought a book. In fact I was thinking that Lionel probably wouldn’t walk in there in broad daylight, so maybe we should just wait until dark to watch the place, that way we don’t have to waste our time sitting around all day.”

  “No,” Mary disagreed. “It’s best that we have someone there at all times. Lionel, however much it may pain me to say it, is fairly crafty, and might just find a way to get in without being noticed.”

  “The place is swarming with people,” Grace protested. “People who all know and work with Jones.”

  “New kids,” Mary sighed.

  As the Mulhoy came into view round the bend, Mary and Grace said their good-byes and Mary leapt up to the vantage point Grace had pointed out to her. The next building was a hotel from Israel, and taller than the Mulhoy, but not so tall that it was impossible to see in the institute’s windows. Grace had pointed out the fire escape. Mary laughed at her and promised to teach her the feather spell at a later date.

  Mary regretted not having brought a coffee, and in five minutes was completely bored. She summoned herself a chair and glanced occasionally down at the Mulhoy as she examined fabric swatches. She still had yet to cover the ‘old lobster and lemon’ couch. Mary herself liked the red, but the yellow was blinding and the pattern gave her a headache. In the end, she did go with a good, bright red, since the room in general was so sedate.

  It was early afternoon. Mary wished they had discussed how long the shifts were to last, and fervently hoped Mme. Rumella or that nephew o
f hers would come to relieve her. She thought of the new wrinkle they had learned of the previous night: Delilah Runestone eavesdropping on the mayoral candidate. Would he become mayor as Fernando predicted, Mary wondered, supposing she would learn after election day. When is election day, though?

  Her thoughts drifted back to Delilah. She tried to see the connection between the Standard and the mayor, and the only thing she could think of was Lionel. Perhaps they were in league together? But why would Suerte, even if he had been, as Mme. Rumella informed her, Lionel’s old supplier, join forces with him now that Lionel’s star had faded? Mary shook her head. She had no idea what Suerte was up to, or what he wanted, so she could draw no reasonable conclusions. Every time they seemed to figure one thing out, something or someone new would arrive on the scene and render all their theories obsolete. Or in this case a whole group of things, including Suerte, Delilah Runestone, Hunter Blue and Voz. A part of Mary didn’t trust Voz. Usually she took no interest in events, and that suited Mary fine. Why would she suddenly join up with Hunter? Because he had attempted to murder her mother? Even in this world, that explanation was highly suspect. Or maybe I’m being paranoid, Mary suggested to herself.

  * * * *

  Leila wanted to take the day off of intrigues and finish wading through the morass of the Osiris papers. Benny wanted a little actual rest on his vacation. Hunter was anxious to get to Suerte Headquarters and keep watch, so that he would be close enough to act when the moment arrived. Voz had no specific preference, but thought perhaps that they should all listen to Mme. Rumella, as she seemed to have a sense of these things.

  “I’m telling you,” Mme. Rumella insisted. “It’s been, what, ten days since the Crusader first arrived, which means it’s been that amount of time, plus however long it took him to travel from wherever it is he came, plus the time it took for the people guarding the Standard to notice it was missing and send him. It’s all coming to a head, and soon. We can’t afford to wait round any longer. We’re relatively sure that Lionel is the one with the Standard, and soon the means to use it. If that’s true, he’s almost undoubtedly at the mansion. We need to go and find whether it is, and hopefully stop him today.”

  She looked around her.

  “I agree,” Voz piped up. “Let’s you and me go, at least.”

  “We’re off then,” said Mme. Rumella, unfastening her apron

  “Wait, auntie, I’ll come too,” Benny said

  “Yeah okay,” said Leila. She tapped the Osiris papers with her pen and they zoomed across the street to the museum to deposit themselves in the proper place. Or so she hoped

  Hunter nodded gruffly and they exited, Mme. Rumella quickly snatching her purse on the way.

  The mansion was a few centuries out. Not as old as St. Vrain, for example, but equally abandoned as that place had been a few weeks ago. Memories tended to stick around in the Woven City, and people still recalled what had happened here centuries ago. It had been here only a few months when Lionel took it over. He had wanted somewhere central.

  Mme. Rumella mused that she was acquiring more assistance on this caper than was the average. Come to think, the last time this many people had gotten involved with her ventures was back when she was last at the very mansion she now approached. Leila again caught her arm.

  “I know this is off topic,” she began, “but you said your nephew was eighteen, right?”

  “Correct.”

  “Well, he’s big, but looking at his face, I would have to guess he was maybe sixteen.”

  “Children grow at different rates, pet, especially here. He’s as old as he could hope to look at his age. You should see some of his university friends: they look twelve.”

  “Thank God I didn’t come here till I was in my twenties,” Leila declared.

  Mme. Rumella chuckled. The mansion finally came into view. The smile fell from her face as she examined it. They were still in sun, but she could see the dark clouds looming in the sky above the house. They stepped into the patch of land on which the mansion sat, and the world darkened. Leila shivered despite herself. “It’s just a creepy mansion with dark storm clouds. Nothing to be worried about,” she quietly assured herself.

  “Now that’s a pathetic fallacy if ever I saw one,” Benny announced. Everyone stared at him. “Sorry, we were just talking about them in English...”

  They examined the place with a mix foreboding, suspense, and contempt before climbing the small staircase to the front door. Mme. Rumella announced that she wished Mary were here to perform an Incantrance, so they could look for safeguards.

  “I can only hear a few,” said Voz, “but that doesn’t mean there aren’t a whole lot of quiet ones.”

  “You can hear magic?” Leila asked, incredulous

  “Yes.”

  “And I wish you would stop calling it ‘magic’ instead of sorcery,” Mme. Rumella chimed in. “It sounds so tacky.”

  “It doesn’t really make sounds so much as little vibrations, but that’s what sound is, basically,” Voz expounded. “Not all sorceries do it though.”

  “So what, the big ones are louder and the little ones are quieter?” Leila asked.

  “It had nothing to do with size or complexity. It’s just the nature of the spell.”

  “That’s helpful.”

  “I can’t explain it any better than that, so you’ll have to live with it,” said Voz crossly. She pointed at the door. “There are a couple on the door. I can’t tell what they do, but it’s bound to be bad.”

  “So do we fly through a window?” Benny suggested.

  “It’s always flying, isn’t it?” Mme. Rumella asked.

  “No, I’ll get it,” said Voz. She leaned down and removed a poorly cared-for wand from her leather boot. “I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone what I’m about to do.”

  “What are you about to do?” Leila worried

  “Protect you,” she answered. “It’s actually pretty simple. However sorcerous, my voice still needs a medium to travel through. If I create one field-of-force around you, then another exactly on top of it, and then expand the outer one, my voice can’t penetrate. Just...don’t look at it too closely.”

  “A vacuum,” Leila said, catching on. “Clever.”

  “Thanks,” said Voz, and performed the spells. Then she rounded on the house, and screamed. The air tore open. Something black appeared, from nowhere, from the space between spaces. Leila was glad to see that it came nowhere near them. Instead, it hit the large double doors which, along with a fair section of the front wall, was blasted to splinters. Wood and plaster rained into the entryway.

  Voz stopped screaming and cancelled the force fields.

  “We sure know how to make an entrance,” came Leila’s dry remark

  “Did anyone ever tell you you’re hot when you do that?”

  “Benny!” cried Mme. Rumella and Leila in unison, Leila slapping his arm and Mme. Rumella hitting him with her purse.

  Benny was still smiling as he drew his Focus and started forward. The others followed suit. There were no light sources inside, and the heavy cloud cover let little sun through. They crept forward cautiously into the gaping hole. In classic fashion, they split up to search the house. Hunter’s arquebus was in his hands, ready to fire at a moment’s notice. He and Voz quietly ascended the stair.

  Hunter leapt into the upstairs hallway, sweeping left and right with his gun. Voz casually peeked her head round from behind him to observe the empty hall. All the doors were open, save the one at the far right of the hallway, facing them.

  “I’ll take the left,” said Hunter economically. He stuck the barrel of his gun into the first room on his side of the hallway. Empty. There was a large armoire on the far wall. Hunter crept forward and flung open the door to find nothing but a moth-eaten dressing gown.

  Voz gingerly peeked in each room, but could tell they were empty. If someone were so much as breathing within, she would have heard them. She waited for Hunter b
y the final door. “Took you long enough,” she said. He shot her an unimpressed look and gestured to the closed door with his chin. She stepped to the side as he kicked it open. They peered within.

  “Dear lord,” said Voz. “Who ever thought that paisley curtains were a good idea?” she asked, indicating the decaying articles flapping in the breeze of the open window.

  Hunter ignored her. “Must’ve just been the wind. Come on.”

  Voz followed him as he exited.

  * * * *

  “This is it,” Mme. Rumella informed the others as they reached the bottom of the long stairwell.

  “It’s two stories tall. Kind of excessive for a basement, don’t you think?” Leila asked to the room.

  “What’s with all the knickknack shelves?” Benny inquired

  “That’s where all the assorted sorcerous objets d’art were placed,” Mme. Rumella informed him. “And here,” she said, indicating a small wooden table with a round top, “is where the crystals went.”

  “So how did you get close enough to smash the big crystal?” Leila asked.

  “Like so.” Mme. Rumella tapped on the wall directly behind the wooden table. It sounded hollowly. “Apriti,” she said, and tapped it with he wand. The false wall came open with a push. “He put the crystal into place and the spell began. Lionel assumed he would be safe within the sweep of the spell. He was nearly right. The others tried to break in. Especially poor Hunter,” she added sadly. “I made my way round the edges and smashed the crystal.”

  “How?”

  “Like so,” she replied, and her wand became a ten-pound sledge. “Nothing so extravagant as Mary’s, I’m afraid, but nonetheless effective when you want something smashed.”

  “Nice,” said Leila appreciatively.

  Mme. Rumella returned her wand to its normal form as Hunter and Voz entered. “Nothing?”

  “Nothing,” Voz answered.

  Leila sighed. “And to think,” she said, “I was all excited about there being no such thing as a breaking and entering charge here. If we break into one more empty building, I’m gonna hit something fragile with something heavy.”