Greyblade

by Andrew Hindle

  “We’ll get to Karl,” Greyblade promised, “but the important part of that battle, for us, is the groundwork. That was the full prophecy, then?” he asked, reviewing the clauses without much hope. “The full edited prophecy, I mean.”

  “There was one other recurring line,” Magna said, taking another unhurried swallow of her drink and skimming the interface device with her free hand. “I was never quite sure whether it referred to you or something else,” she tapped the device. “Ware the Ferry Man. Pay him nothing until you are safe on the far bank. Pay him nothing even then.”

  Greyblade nodded. “Sound economic advice for the prospective traveller on many a long and strange road.”

  “That’s where it sinks back into … well, metadata,” Magna agreed apologetically. “I’ll send you the full file.”

  “Alright,” Greyblade nodded his thanks as Magna tapped the file to prominence on the interface’s virtual shadow, allowing him to snap it up. At a glance, it was indeed high- to reactor-grade bullplop. “So – sorry to keep coming back to this, but – you’re saying there are ten literal sisters I need to conscript into this fight?”

  “Yes,” Magna said, settling back in her chair. “And you know the wildest part of my gift?” she picked up her cup and glanced into it, then put it back on the tabletop with a decisive click. “Somewhere in your head, or in your databases, you already know all this. You already know who you need to find. I’ve told you the answer, but you already knew it. And you’re the one who has to get from here to there.”

  THE FULL NORMAN

  While Magna had another cup of coffee, Galatine continued to nurse his first and Ludi defied initial impressions and went to a refrigerator to pull out some actual solid breakfast, Greyblade told the TrollCagers in very broad terms about their discovery of Damorak activity on Earth, Karl the Bloody-Handed’s presence, and the emerging plan to deal with it. In the process, he also attempted to fold the new data of Magna’s prophecy into a mix that already included Galatine’s bizarre new science project.

  The explanation wasn’t helped by the fact that Fat Tuesday was still squatting by the table, happily listening to everything. Knowing the Ogres wouldn’t react well to hearing about Karl the Bloody-Handed and His prime worshippers – if the Damoraks were a sore point for the Destarion, they were a lethal point for the Ogres – he opted to refer to the Damoraks as ‘crayfish’,15 and their God as ‘not the cheesecake guy’. This rendered his explanation decidedly surreal, and left him hungry.

  The explanation also wasn’t helped by Gabriel’s insistence that he not use the word ‘plan’ to describe his idea, either.

  “It’s more of a proof of concept at this point,” the Archangel insisted.

  “Anyway, I told him we’ll arrange a way back into the Quarter for him and lay down a false pub crawl trail with Osrai,” Ludi said, returning to the table with some small plates and a deep dish of … well, ‘solid breakfast’ was about all you could say about it, on reflection.

  “What is this?” Greyblade asked, scanning the steaming yellow-and-orange blocks of carbohydrates, starch and fat. One part appeared to be a legume.

  “Full Norman,” Ludi replied proudly. “Eggs, bacon, fried potatoes, sausage and baked beans. In an enriched flavour and supplement block with complex fatstitute,” she went back to the fridge and pulled a wrapped package from a freezer compartment. She hefted it two-handed across the room to Tuesday, who snagged it and unwrapped it with unexpected deftness to reveal an identical but still-frozen cube. He pulled his massive helmet aside and dropped the mist-shedding block into his maw.

  “Humanity can under no circumstances be allowed to spread beyond this world,” Greyblade told Gabriel.

  Magna snorted and scooped one of the Full Norman servings onto a plate. “You don’t want any, then?”

  “I think eating it might void my warranty.”

  “More for us,” Ludi grinned.

  “So,” Galatine spoke up after they’d sat drinking coffee and either eating or watching-eating in reflective silence for a time, “there’s an excellent chance you’re going to be intercepted by Fagin and his stooges before you get much further with your planning. Time is definitely of the essence and getting you back into Dumblertown is a priority, like Ludi said. Before you leave Earth again, you need to tell your allies what we need to be doing.”

  “Wait, back up – Fagin?” Greyblade turned his visor towards Gabriel.

  “This is where Magna’s Whispered Truths start turning into Muttered Bunkums,” Ludi said in amusement.

  “Galatine and I have been working for a long time on a theory that Mercibald Fagin, head of – among many other things – TrollCage Storage, is back on Earth and up to his old tricks,” Magna told Greyblade, including Gabriel in the admission since he seemed just as baffled as Greyblade was. “We consulted with the Drake and Saint Brandine of the Demonslayers, and even with Osrai. No corroborating data. But since you mentioned the possibility, what with the … crustacean and the not-cheesecake and the veil signal you followed here … I figured it was worth throwing into the mix. Not a vision,” she added, shrugging. “Just muttered bunkum like Ludi said.”

  “Mutter some more,” Greyblade invited, looking up ‘Saint Brandine’ while he was at it. She was a figure in the media rather than the church, and didn’t seem to have anything to do with actual Demons, although her broadcasting and communications company was also owned by Synfoss and Fagin. She also wasn’t a Saint – ‘Saint’ just seemed to be her first name, and ‘Brandine’ her second. Actually it was Brandine Saint and her name was reversed for her public persona, but none of that seemed important.

  “Are you done snooping out the Demonslayers yet?” Ludi asked slyly.

  “No,” Greyblade admitted, “but I can do two things at once. Tell me about Mercibald Fagin.”

  “There’s nothing to tell,” Ludi said, still grinning. “The current head of the massive corporate food pyramid that we’re calling Synfoss for the sake of convenience is a Kenyan-Deschaui bureaucrat named Dudley Stanton. He looks like a salesman. And not a successful one.”

  “If he’s head of Synfoss he must be a pretty good salesman,” Greyblade suggested.

  “We’re fairly sure he’s a figurehead,” Magna said, “along with half a dozen other heads of different groups. The power patterns are subtle – too subtle for even the Drake to piece together for sure – but Demons have worked behind the scenes for a long time.”

  “They’re not known for being covert,” Gabriel reiterated.

  “That’s true – except Mercy has always quite notably been an exception to that,” Galatine replied. “And this isn’t so much covert, as it is … emergent. We think Mercy came back on the scene after the Last War of Independence ended, or as it was ending. He may have even orchestrated some of it. I didn’t have insider knowledge of the funding and leadership – my life was in the technology,” he faltered, then continued, “but things changed, in the last days. A lot of it was just the fact that the guns worked, and the war came so suddenly to an end. Everybody stumbled. But since then, things have continued. We’d already crossed a line – we crossed it on Darling’s Day,” again he paused, then gathered himself and went on. “There are other explanations, but we believe Mercibald Fagin has resumed control of human commerce and is worming his way back into power.”

  “Pushing humanity to greater lengths,” Magna said sadly, “to make the Brotherhood turn their eyes from Earth.”

  Gabriel looked at Greyblade frankly.

  “That’s … fairly close to what’s happened,” Greyblade conceded, then turned from Magna to Galatine. “You have a theory, don’t you?” he asked. “More than just ‘Mercy is back’.”

  “Our theory starts in more or less the same place yours did,” Galatine said. “The veil.”

  “Really?”

  “It all fits together,” Magna explained, and even Ludi was looking more serious now. “You found some clue that there was still research
going on. I don’t exactly understand what that clue was, but there’s only one way that’s possible.”

  “All the veil research on Earth was destroyed during the exile,” Galatine took up, “but there was still something operating. The space probe.”

  “Mercy 1,” Gabriel said softly. “But that was…”

  “Lost when the solar system was folded back out into Earth, Hell and Cursèd,” Magna nodded. “We all assumed the same. Galatine and I think that it was still intact, just not transmitting anymore. And there was nothing on Earth to pick up the signals anyway. When the Four Realms were restored and the Pinians came back and Mercy went into hiding, he found the probe again. Down in the seared realms. He found it, and he examined it, and now he’s back.”

  “And where does the veil data even fit into all this?” Greyblade asked.

  “Isn’t that obvious?” Ludi replied.

  “Maybe to those of us with mystic know-how-things-go power,” Greyblade replied, feeling mildly disgruntled that the young human had figured something out that his layers and layers of tactical subroutines had failed to. And also, if he was being honest, a little concerned at how smoothly she’d done so.

  “You don’t need to be insighted,” Galatine said. Greyblade turned his visor in the Gunsmith’s direction, but Galatine did not flinch this time. “You just need to know what the Drake did find. There’s nothing about a veil like the one that hid Earth during the Flutter, but there’s research and development into field generation technology that is functionally indistinguishable from it, right up until the final implementation stages.”

  “Field generation technology.”

  “For the generation of matter from energy,” Galatine said.

  “I must be getting old,” Greyblade complained. “I still don’t see the connection…” he slowed as realisation dawned. “Make it about something else,” he echoed the ancient wisdom of Brutan the Warrior. “Until it isn’t.”

  “With soul-power, it would certainly be possible to implement a matter-from-energy construction field,” Galatine nodded grimly, “but it would also be possible to turn the equations on their heads and use the same energy to fold matter away into intangible space. As soon as you mentioned the secrecy that’s necessary for this … proof of concept of yours, the risks of getting the Firstmades involved, it all…” he gestured hopelessly, outlining something simply too enormous and horrifying to put into words.

  Fortunately, by this point Greyblade had finally caught up.

  So, he thought, this is why I’m here.

  “The bastard,” he said simply.

  “Help an old bugger out here, Kisser,” Gabriel implored.

  “We’re sitting here cooking up some vague plan to trap and kill Karl,” Greyblade said, “and all this time, Mercy’s had the same idea. He’s going to get his veil generator working, hook it up to the tortured souls of a couple of million poor stupid humans, and then let the Pinians find out that he’s … whatever, fixing to give Earth away to the enemies of the Brotherhood. And when the Pinians show up ready to sink continents and chew taka sap, he’ll drop the veil on them. The Disciples will be trapped for another couple of thousand years. Maybe more.”

  “Leaving Heaven open to another occupation,” Ludi said darkly. “And they’ll make it stick this time.”

  “And the … magnitude of the interference we’re talking about,” Greyblade said, still being careful not to upset Fat Tuesday even though it was starting to look like a perfect time for the big fellow to get upset, “means we might even get Jalah down here.”

  “Could the veil contain a Firstmade God?” Gabriel frowned.

  “You tell us,” Galatine replied quietly. “You were in there the first time. Did the Pinians get out? Did God get in?”

  “Not really,” Gabriel admitted, “although there was technically a conduit…”

  “And would Mercy’s veil need one of those?” Greyblade asked.

  “No,” Gabriel said. “Shit,” his deep-set amber eyes widened. “Shit.”

  “Yeah,” Ludi agreed.

  “So,” Magna addressed Greyblade casually, “how’s that wrath of yours coming along?”

  TO IMPRISON A GOD

  They sat, once again, speechless and reflective for a while. Eventually, Fat Tuesday broke the silence.

  “Say when we’se goin’ bashing,” he instructed, lurching to his feet and stumping away from the table.

  Greyblade watched the Ogre sling his club over his shoulder and crash away through the kitchen doorway, which had been widened and heightened but nowhere near enough. Then he turned to Gabriel.

  “Probably going to debrief the others,” the Archangel said.

  “Debrief them?” Greyblade laughed just a little wildly. “What’s he going to say?”

  “That someone’s going to switch a thingy on and trap Earth behind a thingy,” Gabriel replied, “possibly trapping the Pinians here so their enemies can move on Heaven.”

  “And how are they likely to react to that?”

  “As long as he also mentions that we have a plan of some sort and it sounds complicated, they’ll all probably default to ‘say when we’se goin’ bashing’ the way Tuesday did,” Gabriel answered. “Of course, if Fatty happens to mention ‘Karl what isn’t cheesecake Karl’, Big Thundering Bjørn might just connect that to the Lapgod.”

  “And what then?”

  Gabriel raised a long, gnarled finger. “We’ll know in about thirty seconds.”

  They sat, Magna occasionally sipping her second or possibly third coffee, in silence again for another minute or so. Then there was a musical crash and the roar of big cheaty fuck from the basement as the Ogres resumed their air hockey. Gabriel grinned, but it wasn’t quite enough to hide his relief.

  “Okay,” he said, “Tuesday didn’t mention Karl,” he looked thoughtful. “Which is surprising, because they do like their cheesecake…”

  “So Mercy is using Karl and the Damoraks as bait and Earth as a trap, and turning the veil into a … a net,” Greyblade brought them back to the point.

  “Probably,” Magna stressed. “The sociocultural data you and the Drake ran through could be interpreted in other ways.”

  “Probably,” Greyblade acknowledged. These were dangerously sharp primates.

  “And we’re not all sold on the idea of Mercy being back, either,” Ludi added. “I haven’t seen anything like that.”

  “Your insights are given by Jalah,” Gabriel told her, “same as my powers, and Magna’s, and Sister Bazinard’s. And Demons come from the Adversary in the Castle. They’ve always been a sort of blind spot, even for Angels and Archangels.”

  “This whole trap would be a fair way off springing yet,” Galatine said, “but I’ve been out of the research and development loop for twenty-five years. Mercy is playing a slow and dangerous game.”

  “That’s one way to put it,” Gabriel said. “Another would be to say he’s juggling with Gods, and is completely fucking insane.”

  “I don’t really understand how Jalah wouldn’t be aware of Karl’s presence here,” Ludi said, “but maybe this explains it. The Pinians aren’t aware because it’s being kept under wraps. It’s deniable right now – and even if it wasn’t, we have to be complicit in keeping it quiet. Because Jalah or the Destarion will come in here and demolish the world, and their action would be all the more abrupt and immediate if they found out that veil tech was being added to our repertoire. And we don’t want Earth destroyed any more than the enemy does.”

  Greyblade tilted his hand back and forth. “The enemy’s worst-case scenario at this point is still a win for them,” he said. “One less human world, one less Pinian world, a slap in the face of Jalah’s sovereign realms, the Firstmades themselves … but it still wouldn’t be the best case scenario.”

  “Mercy would probably prefer a scenario where he lives,” Gabriel agreed.

  “You think he’d survive after sealing himself inside a trap with the Pinians?” Magna asked.
“I know he survived once, but it wasn’t his fault last time, and the Disciples have been gunning for him ever since. And that’s without Jalah in here too.”

  “Oh, I don’t think Mercy will be inside the veil,” Greyblade said. “I think he sees himself marching at the Darkings’ side when they attack Heaven. Maybe even making a department switch from the Adversary’s service direct to the Lapgods’.”

  “Does he, by gum,” Gabriel growled. “Well, just promise me one thing, Kisser.”

  “What’s that?”

  “If your crazy plan to surgically remove Earth from the Four Realms succeeds, make sure Mercy is here when it happens. And make sure the Damoraks know he got Karl killed.”

  “Still slightly premature,” Greyblade said, “but fine.”

  “Anyway,” Magna said, “the enemy’s best-case seems to be something they’ve been working on since the exile. Converting the veil into a net, the Earth into a trap, and we can’t call them out because it would escalate the conflict in a way Mercy’s plan will neatly sidestep,” she nodded acknowledgement to Greyblade. “As will your solution,” she added, “if it works.”

  “Thanks,” Greyblade muttered.

  “It’s an arms race in a library,” Galatine said.

  “And do we have any way of knowing when this arms race will end?” Greyblade asked. “Has the Drake got any sort of timeline on this … field generation project that’s acting as a front for the veil work?”

  Galatine shook his head. “No way of knowing, although we can get her to snoop some more. There might be delays, but a lot of unattainable things become pretty attainable with soul-power.”

  “And the device itself?” Greyblade pressed.

  “Who knows?” Galatine said. “They might not even have a device yet. It might still be in nice safe conceptual space. If they’re smart, that’s where it will stay until it’s completely ready – and once it is, they’ll be able to build it in a week. But I think we’ve got time. If Mercy’s here, remember, he’s still working his way back into his various corporations after thirty years.”