Just after dawn I walked out the front door in my flesh and blood. I saw the car that Marji's friend had sent right away—they weren't making any effort to be subtle. Long black touring car, with two guys in the front seat and one in the back. I made sure that they saw me come out of the Karnes house and I walked up to them nice and slow, my hands obvious and empty.
The driver rolled down the window and gave me a polite look.
“I'm Sam Jackknife,” I said. “Marji's friend. I was wondering if you boys would do me a favor.”
It took a fair bit of persuasion, but in the end they agreed to drive me out to just past the gates of Summerisle, drive back with my unconscious body, watch over it for two hours, then drive back with it to just outside the gates again.
I figured that two hours should be enough for me to go see the Mayor and get back, unless I ran into problems. If I didn't wake up when they were outside the gates the second time they were to tell Marji right away.
As soon as the car was outside Summerisle's wards I slid out of my body. I was standing in the middle of the road. I jogged up the on-ramp and onto the expressway, wishing I had Karin's talent at traveling. I broke into a run on the expressway, gaining speed until I was passing the sparse traffic moving into the city this early. Without my body to slow me down I was able to make the exit for Government House in twenty minutes.
I could see the wards from the expressway, a ball of deep red fire that surrounded the entire block. I could see the watchers, too, the Mayor's bound servitors circling like great winged serpents carved from shadow. One buzzed me, flew down close enough that I could have reached up and touched it's unflesh, then it zipped back through the wards, a hole opening in the flaming wall to let it through.
A few moments later another hole opened, this one at ground level, and a human mage walked out in spirit.
“You're Jackknife?” he asked. He was a middle-aged man in a neat suit, and his form had the same crisp solidity as Karin's spirit form.
“I am,” I said. “I'd like to see the Mayor.”
“Follow me,” he said. “Don't leave the path.”
As he spoke the ground beneath him started to glow faintly, a silvery sheen like moonlight on wet asphalt. I walked after him very carefully, staying to the middle of the glowing track.
We walked through the wall of Government House and into corridors I'd never seen before, a maze of short passages of dark stone. We didn't go down any stairs, but after a few minutes we walked into the Mayor's office cavern.
The Mayor looked the same to my spirit eyes as he did in the flesh, and I was sure that he saw me perfectly clearly.
“Leave us, Gordon,” the Mayor said, and the human mage was gone, just like that.
The great golden eyes turned to me. “Report, Envoy.”
I filled him in on the night's events, and that Grandmother Wolf was on her way.
“Tak is a popular man,” the Mayor said slowly, when I had finished, “and I cannot move against him without unquestionable proof. Humans accept my rule only so long as it is balanced by the Parliament. If they should suspect that I seek to bring down an MP to increase my own power...” He trailed off.
“You have to catch him in the act,” I said. “We have to let him make his move—and he won't move unless he thinks he can get away with it.”
“I see that you understand my difficulty,” he rumbled.
I understood it. I didn't like it, but I knew the thin political line that the Mayor had to walk.
“Suppose he doesn't make a move?” I asked.
“Then we will have the testimony of Grandmother Wolf. That will result in him losing face and I am confident that he will lose his seat, even if he escapes prison.” The great eyes closed and he paused in thought. With his eyes still closed he continued, “I anticipate that he will attempt to stop the morauxe from testifying, however. So long as he believes that there is a chance to maintain his power, he will take it. That is his nature.”
“But he won't do it himself,” I objected. “He's got that rashling gang, the Blind Jokers.”
“In itself an interesting development,” the Mayor observed. “The Jokers are mercenaries, they are known to sell their loyalty, and to change it frequently. Rashlings are never to be trusted. Given Tak's history, why does he not seek allies from Nivose?”
Why indeed? Grandmother Wolf had called hiring the Blind Jokers an act of desperation. Tak once had contacts in the Nivose underground. Why wasn't he using them? Rashlings could pass for human, but that didn't seem to be reason enough.
“You say that the morauxe intimated that Tak had set the police on his own partners?” the Mayor asked.
I nodded slowly. “Yeah. And if Grandmother Wolf knew that, then she would have spread the story around. He's burned in Nivose.”
“Morauxe have certain notions regarding honor and personal integrity,” he agreed. “Notions that I understand the Grimm shares.”
Of course. Another piece fell into place. Why had the Grimm involved himself in the affair at all? Not to save Karin, he could care less about her. Tak had acted dishonorably, and the Lord of Nivose wanted him to pay.
“Rashlings are more... flexible, ethically,” the Mayor mused. “They are followers of chaos, and they guide their lives by what they call the Great Wheel of Chance. I believe that it may be possible to give that wheel an extra spin today. In any event, Tak will surely see that this is too important a matter to leave to hirelings. He will be there and once he shows his hand I will be free to act.”
I chewed that over.
“So...” I said at last, “I get to go down to the docks, pick up Grandmother Wolf, take her to Government House and get jumped by the Blind Jokers along the way, and if Castor Tak shows his face you'll intervene, but not until then. Is that about right?”
“I would not presume to tell you where your duty lies, Envoy,” the dragon said softly. “You must determine that for yourself.”
“Yeah,” I nodded. “Thank you for your time, your honor. If you will excuse me, I have business to attend to.”
“Of course, Envoy,” he said, then, “Gordon?”
The human mage was at my side again. He nodded and gestured for me to follow him. A dozen steps later I was standing outside the wards of Government House.
I headed back to the parkway, pausing to check the clock on the side of the Merchants Bank building. It was just over an hour since I left Summerisle—I'd have time for a leisurely walk back.
I didn't tend to go out in the spirit during the day in the Midworld, and I had forgotten how different it felt when the sun was up. There was a warm energy to the world, a kind of glow, as if everything was lightly coated with a honey glaze.
I walked past sidewalk cafes and bakeries and pawn shops. The Grimm was wrong, I decided. This was my home, and it always would be.
However, he was right when he pointed out that I should probably be spending more time in Nightmare. As a guest, representing my father's household in the slow motion political demolition derby of the Realms. I didn't have to join in the scheming, just show my face and smile. And I should make arrangements to see my mother, too.
If only she weren't so damned scary.
At the Landsend Expressway I paused a moment and decided to take the outer road. I had time, and even immaterial it was nerve-wracking to run alongside the speeding cars.
Big shiny elixir stations, homey looking diners, low warehouse-like buildings offering unbeatable deals on used furniture. Oh, and the people!
Humans wearing their passions and pleasures like torches, glowing in the buttery light. I watched a pretty girl stepping jauntily, her nipples trailing sparks like the after-image of fireworks, on her way to an assignation. An old man stepped to one side to let her by, and I could see the red glow of the pain in his joints fade for a moment as he watched her pass.
I swam through the crowd, aware and unobserved. Not my species, but they were my people. I would take their side against all the devils in Nightmare. The Midworld glowed with life, it spilled out into the street like a wave. The nine realms were essentially parasitic, they fed on this energy, refined it, worked strange magics upon it. The breath of humanity was the power that fueled the universe, and I was swept away by that power, carried along in a stream of brilliant pneuma, a transparent fish in a rainbow stream.
Then a pair of eyes met mine. Hostile eyes, violet and almond shaped, set in a bone-white face framed by acid-green hair.
Rashling. Looking at me through a window underneath a sign that read “Cash Advance Loans Open 24 Hours.”
I passed quickly, unwilling to look back to see if his gaze was following me.
It didn't have to be related. Rashlings were native illusionists and a lot of them passed for human—a lot more than the CPS was willing to admit. The animosity between Mistrigris and my father went way back—long before either Castor Tak or I were born. The odds were good that it was just some random stranger who saw me and hated me on sight.
Sure. I increased my pace and watched the crowd around me with a new wariness.
Ahead on the sidewalk a moraue, fox-faced and half human height, was handing out fliers for a new burger joint. He automatically offered one to me, then gave me a needle-toothed grin when he realized that I couldn't take it.
I hurried down the street, looking away. I was getting paranoid. Not every oneiroi in the Midworld was part of some conspiracy.
Still, I wanted to get off the street and back to Jake's house. I could wait just outside Summerisle's wards for Marji's friends to return, and maybe they'd be early.
I crossed the street—a rattling old pickup truck with a piano in the back passing through me—and over the wall that separated the outer road from the expressway. I loped along the shoulder, the rushing traffic oblivious to my presence.
They were waiting for me at the train station.
Two carloads of them. They came boiling out of the cars as I came abreast of them, in sleek black suits, weapons in their hands. The weapons were complicated things with hooked blades swinging from chains, probably imports from Bascose, and the metal had the greasy blue glow of steel that had been enchanted to kill spirits.
They could hurt me. With me cut off from my body by Summerisle's wards they could hurt me very badly. Maybe bad enough that I couldn't get back into my flesh when the security men brought their car back outside the wards. I didn't heal wounds to the spirit as fast as wounds to the flesh.
This could be bad. This could be really bad.
I ran, and tried to figure out where I was going. Ahead of me was the red glow of the wards, and the Blind Jokers were behind me. I didn't know what time it was, but I knew I couldn't get too far from the exit from Summerisle. My plan was coming apart, and it had seemed so simple.
They were coming in a ragged line, eight of them. Their outlines were crisp and clear, so they had dropped their veils. Idly I wondered what the train station guards would make of this, a mob of armed rashlings running to attack a patch of empty air. How fast would Summerisle PD respond to something like that?
Not fast enough to keep me from getting good and stomped I was sure.
A blade on a chain came swinging out of the crowd towards my face and I dropped, hit the pavement, and skidded. In moments they would be on me, so I bounced back up on my feet and jumped the one in front. I couldn't rip its spirit out of its body like I did the thug in the alley behind Fortune's Favored, but I stunned it and it went down. I kept going past it.
The others were turning to give chase, and there were more of those damned blades on chains swinging towards me. I went low under them and knocked down another one, but the first one I'd hit was getting to its feet. More chained blades were in the air. It didn't seem fair that the gang could use those damned flying guillotines without hitting each other, but rashlings had better than human dexterity and I was sure they'd practiced using them as a team. All I could do was try to stay in the middle of them and limit their field of fire. If they got me in the open they'd slice me to ribbons.
I rolled back towards them and clawed into one's guts, making it screech like a bus with bad brakes. The one beside it choked up on its chain until it held its blade like a fish gutting knife, then it slashed at my face. Getting out of the way of the stroke banged my head against the pavement and even though my skull was someplace else I saw stars.
Then an amplified voice shouted “PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPONS.”
Summerisle PD. I made a mental note to buy season tickets to the annual Policeman's Ball.
I didn't know how far the Blind Jokers would go to fulfill a contract, so I rolled and got shakily to my feet as soon as I could, staggering away from the rashlings.
They were being perfect gentlemen for the cops, though, the ground around their booted feet covered with chains and knives, eight pairs of pale hands in the air.
That made sense. All the cops had on them was disturbing the peace, and they probably wouldn't file that much unless the gang pushed them. Local constabularies try to avoid charging resident aliens, and even if some or all of them were in the Midworld unlawfully the worst they could expect was deportment back to Bascose.
Not that I was complaining. They'd stopped trying to skewer me.
I edged slowly towards the wards. It was possible that the PD had a mage responding to the call, but I doubted it. Cops with magical training tended to work in the detective bureau. So I figured that I was invisible to the officers. Sure enough, all of their attention was focused on the rashlings.
I found an out of the way spot by the gatehouse and watched the cops hassle the Jokers for papers. I'll admit it, I've spent worse quarter hours. Then the car I was waiting for broke the wards and the siren sound of my body called to me like a high dollar bet on a lead pipe cinch.
I slid inside, sat up, opened my eyes, and said, “Thanks, guys, I owe you one.”
The man beside me just about jumped out of his skin, and I felt the car jerk as the driver reacted. They were pros, though, and got it back under control.
“You need to go anywhere else?” The driver asked.
“Just back to the Karnes place,” I said.
He nodded and pulled a u-turn, headed back to the gate.
Five minutes later I walked in Jake's front door. I found Karin in the kitchen, fussing with the coffee maker. I pushed her out of the way and set it for twelve cups. It was going to be a long day.
“Where have you been?” she asked me.
“Talking with the mayor,” I said.
She leaned back against a cabinet and folded her arms across her chest. “You're serious, aren't you? You were talking to the actual honest to goodness mayor?”
“Yep,” I said, looking in the fridge. Jake and Marji were out of eggs.
“How...” Karin paused. “How did he sound?”
I glanced over at her. “Upset.”
“No,” Karin shook her head. “I mean... he's a dragon. Every time there's an announcement from the mayor's office some undersecretary reads it on the air. I always wondered, does he... talk? I mean, like a human being talks? Or does he breath fire and they read his smoke signals or something?”
I tried not to laugh, almost succeeded. “He talks,” I told her. “He sounds like a regular human, more or less. He doesn't like publicity, I know, but he'll sit down and have a conversation just like anybody else.”
Karin looked at me for a long moment. “You live a very strange life, Samhain,” she said at last.
While I was trying to come up with some way to answer that Jake came into the kitchen in a pair of pajama pants, half-asleep, tropism drawing him towards the gurgling coffee maker.
“Ooh, la la!” Karin said with a grin. “Beefcake for breakfast.”
Jake looked away, reddening.
I said, “You don't have much for breakfast.”
Jake fumbled a pair of cups out of the dish drainer, started filling them. “So we go out.”
I frowned. “I don't like the idea of leaving the wards. I had some trouble this morning.”
I thought that Jake might ask what kind of trouble, but he just took his cups, adding sugar to one and milk to the other, and said, “There's a diner down the beach, inside the wards. Give us a few minutes and we can all head out.”
Fair enough. I poured Karin a cup. She took both milk and sugar, a lot of each.