Authors: Saje Williams
Chapter Six
The night unfolded above him and his eyes snapped open. Raven lay in his bed for a long moment, staring up at the ceiling, listening to the sound of his house humming with a hundred new footsteps and voices he did not immediately recognize.
He pulled himself out of bed and went to take a shower. Once he was finished, he quickly toweled off and dressed, listening at the hidden door for any sign of unseen watchers. When he was certain it was safe, he opened the door and slipped out.
He made his way to the sitting room, where he found Val, Goban, and a young man he didn’t recognize sitting around sipping wine and chatting amiably. He wiped the scowl from his face and walked in.
“Didn’t know we were planning a party,” he observed dryly.
“Sometimes parties just happen,” Val answered sweetly. “They’ve got another offer for us—this one I think you’ll like.”
“Really? Do tell.” He smiled, wanting desperately to grit his teeth.
How
dare
she bring people into his house while he was sleeping? Didn’t she realize how dangerous that could be?
And where was Cerberus?
Curled up in the corner in front of the fireplace, basking in the heat from the flames. Raven shook his head in disgust.
Some guard dog
you
turned out to be.
The dog flopped over on his back, lolled his head off the hearth, and peeled open one eye. The mouth slowly parted into a grin and he kicked one back leg idly.
Ah, yes. Canine for ‘fuck you.’
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“Who are you?” he asked the young goateed man, determined to ignore the dog’s response entirely.
“Bryon Beard,” he replied, in the clipped tones of Muraz—the great southern city, said to be the birthplace of the Provincial Alliance itself.
The mightiest of the city-states at one time, Muraz’s navy was still legendary.
“Should I know the name?” Raven asked, aware that he was being rude and not really giving a damn. The man shouldn’t have been in his house without his permission.
This earned him a hesitant smile. “I’m the seventh son of Jamus Beard, Governor of Muraz.”
Raven glanced at Goban. “Another Governor? This is beginning to look like a conspiracy.”
This actually caused Goban to glance around suspiciously. Raven stifled a laugh. The power of suggestion was an amazing thing. “This is big, Raven,” Goban murmured. “Bryon here has come bearing the tale of a powerful artifact, buried in the frozen land at the bottom of the world.”
“And this is important because…?”
“We want to retrieve it,” Bryon answered smoothly.
“What’s this artifact supposed to do?”
Raven glanced at Val. That was a good question. The notion of traipsing around the Arctic really didn’t make him want to cheer, but locating a powerful artifact could be the only way they could tip the balance without betraying TAU in the bargain.
He’d have to reach that ship and destroy the weapons before he went anywhere else, though. That was a given. If the rebels couldn’t have them, there was no way on this or any Earth he’d leave them to the Church.
Bryon’s lip twitched slightly. Raven was probably the only one who caught it. But whatever he was about to say was only part of the truth.
“It’s referred to in texts as the Fist of the Redeemer, the unknown face of the Three-Fold-God—the one who has yet to come. The one who will reconcile humanity with the other faces of God and usher in an age of wonder.”
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Great. Kid sounds like a religious fanatic.
But Raven had to admit what he was hearing was a damn sight better than anything the Deacons had to say. He’d never bothered to delve too far into this religion of theirs. Religion had long struck him as a dangerous business and one hell of an efficient way to screw your head sideways.
Thinking that you
know things you don’t really know is a recipe for disaster stew.
“But that’s not all, is it?” Val leaned forward, her gaze suddenly predatory. “There are other artifacts you believe you’ll find there, aren’t there?”
The young man shrank back in his chair, eyes widening so far Raven was afraid he was going to injure himself. “How…how did you know that?”
Raven coughed just loud enough to catch Bryon’s attention. “Valerie is a woman of singular talents,” he told him. “Now how about you tell us about these other artifacts too? Pretty please?”
“Okay.” Bryon took a deep breath. “I’ve been studying the text for the past five years, and I think I’ve been able to piece together how the stuff got there and what it might be. I’m sure you know the legend of Black Crag.”
“Sure,” said Goban.
Raven and Val exchanged glances. “We’re not from around here,”
they said in unison.
“Oh. Well…Black Crag was a warrior—one of the Avenger’s Holy Knights. He led the battle against the frost giants and reportedly chased them all the way back to their home. He died in battle, even as he thrust his sword through the ribs of the very last giant. They fell together in the midst of a storm of fire and when it abated, the other Knights could find no trace of him or his gear. They surmised that he’d been dropped through the ice into a crevice, one so deep they couldn’t hope to retrieve him. They performed their service there and returned home in mourning.”
“So what kind of artifacts was he carrying…reportedly?” It was easy to tell this guy had spent most of his life living in books. He didn’t know www.samhainpublishing.com 41
Saje Williams
the value of a short descriptive phrase. Raven stared down at him and he fidgeted in response.
“The Fist of the Redeemer, which we assume is some sort of mystical mace, plus something called a ‘soul gem.’ It allowed Black Crag to steal some of the powers of those he faced, weakening them and strengthening him.”
“Anything else?”
“Maybe,” the young man squeaked. “We’re not sure. There’s something about a Horn of Worlds but we don’t know anything about that one.”
“Uh-huh.” Raven clapped his hand down on Bryon’s shoulder.
“Thanks for leveling with us, kid.”
“Kid? I’m older than you are,” Bryon objected.
“Don’t bet on it,” Raven replied. “Fine. We’ll go find these artifacts of yours. Maybe we’ll stumble across this Redeemer of yours too.”
“Maybe you will.”
“We’ll need to be outfitted. I can handle the cold, but she can’t. We’ll need the best cold-weather gear available.”
“I have a hundred gold Seals for just that purpose,” Bryon said. “Do you know where we can get the equipment you need?”
“Absolutely. If you’ll give us a few…” He gestured to Val, indicating that he’d like to talk to her. She nodded and followed him down the hallway.
He spun on her. “Don’t bring people into my house when I’m asleep.”
“What, you don’t trust them? Or don’t you trust me?”
He leaned in within inches of her nose. “I don’t trust
anybody.
”
“That must be very lonely for you.”
That
stopped him mid-rant. “What?”
Val tilted her head and gave him a penetrating stare. “It must be lonely to be the only person you feel you can trust. Like being locked inside a box with knives sticking through it.”
He shook his head rapidly as if it had suddenly become shrouded in cobwebs. “I’m not lonely.”
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“Yeah, right. Raven, the big, bad vampire…the killer of monsters. So bad-ass he doesn’t want or need anybody. Well, you’re wrong, Raven.
You’ve been hurt, sure. But we’ve
all
been hurt. Nothing unusual about that.”
“You can’t read my mind.”
“No. I can’t. But I know people. I don’t rely exclusively on my gifts to figure people out. For one, it’s not necessary, and, for two, it’s rude to read other agents. I know I tried to read you once and it was wrong. You just had me so confused I didn’t know what to do.”
“You always leave me that way,” he told her. Then, without warning, he leaned forward and pressed his mouth against hers.
Val felt her knees buckle slightly and thought for a moment that she was trying to melt into him. Something electrical pulsed between them and her heart began to skip to a whole new rhythm.
She pushed herself back and out of the kiss. She’d actually been trying to push him away, but found in that moment what the word
‘impossible’ meant. Or the term ‘immovable object.’ “What did you do
that
for?”
“I wanted to. Now—shall we lead these two to the outfitter’s shop?”
He turned and walked away, grabbing his jacket from the coat-rack by the door.
The whole way down the hall Val found her gaze glued to his butt.
Could an ass actually be perfect?
She wouldn’t have thought so before meeting Raven. Now she was certain of it. Why had he kissed her? Why did she like it so much? They were always at odds. Maybe that was part of the chemistry between them.
Forget about that,
she thought, annoyed with herself.
We’ve got more
important things to concentrate on, dammit. Like a trip to the North Pole.
She still couldn’t believe he’d kissed her.
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The trip to the outfitters didn’t go badly, but Val could tell Raven wasn’t happy with the revelation that both Bryon and Goban were coming along on the expedition. His distaste for the scholarly Governor’s son was palpable. If not for the fact the young man seemed so socially inept, Val was certain he would’ve picked it up himself.
Goban certainly had. He exchanged more than one amused glance with the vampire as they explained the use of this or that item in the outfitter’s shop.
The proprietor, a spindly, long-limbed man with the habit of craning his neck so he looked a bit like a vulture sitting on a gnarled old tree waiting for something to die, watched with something approaching complete disinterest, despite the fact that they obviously intended to spend money on his wares.
Raven seemed to take this in stride, which suggested he was used to this fellow’s demeanor. Val wanted to grab him by his buzzard neck and shake him, but thought that would be a little extreme. Apparently he was the only complete outfitter in the city, or the only one Raven trusted for whatever reason.
The whole operation took less than half an hour. The proprietor called into the back of the shop and a couple of sizable lackeys loaded their purchases aboard the wagon as the party looked on. Catching a few moments apart from the others, Raven ghosted up to Val. “I’m going to need you to distract them somewhere up the coastline, give me a chance to find the ship without them catching on.”
She nodded. “How are you going to deal with the you-don’t-work-in-the-daytime factor?”
“They don’t have vampires here,” he reminded her. “No suspicions to raise—they don’t make connections between night and evil, thankfully.
We can pretend it’s some strange curse.”
“You’re pretty used to this, aren’t you?”
He shrugged. “This isn’t the first world I’ve been undercover on—just the first one where being what I am doesn’t equal an automatic death sentence if they figure it out.”
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“Assuming they can pull it off,” she remarked absently. “How are we going to transport you?”
“Didn’t you notice? I ordered a six foot, airtight crate. An unusual request, you’d think, but apparently the Church Deacons have a standing order for one just like it once a month.”
“Once a month? What the hell for?”
“That’s a question I’d dearly love to ask them,” he replied. “I’ve included it on my list.”
“You’ve got a list of questions you want to ask them? That’s rather sad, don’t you think? It’s not as if they’ll ever be answered.”
He gave her a dirty look and shook his head, taking a step away as the others approached.
“What’s the crate for?” Goban asked curiously.
“You’ll find out,” Raven replied off-handedly. “So are we ready to go?”
The watchman glanced toward the moon and calculated. “Uh-huh.
Bryon has hired us a ship to take us to the northernmost port, where we’ll hire several sledges and dog teams to take us farther north. All we have to do is load up and we can sail with the morning tide. Sometime about dawn, I would think.”
At this news, Raven smiled. That would put them, at the most, one day behind the ship they were pursuing, Val noted mentally. At least he’d come fully on board with the idea that the weapons needed to be destroyed, and she knew he’d find some way to get it done.
At least she could trust him that far. In other respects she still hadn’t figured out exactly how far she could trust him. Hopefully this venture, odd as it was, would give her the answers to that particular question.
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Chapter Seven
“Where’s Raven?” Bryon asked, sidling a little too close for comfort as Val stood with him on the
Rakehell’s
poop deck. He seemed a decent enough guy, but he’d grown entirely too friendly since she’d emerged from her cabin a few hours earlier. Allowing her to accompany them on this mission with few questions asked had given her a rather prejudicial view of how progressive they actually were, but the truth remained that a woman who dressed in men’s clothing and engaged in predominately male pursuits was enough of an anomaly that certain things were clearly taken for granted.
Maybe the assumption was that a woman who voluntarily took a man’s role was of loose morals or character and would be easy pickings for the likes of Bryon, or maybe he just found her that attractive. Or maybe he was just that friendly.
She could find out for sure, of course, but she was hesitant to read him. It was one thing to use one’s talents in pursuit of the mission, but quite another to mind-probe someone who was ostensibly an ally for personal reasons.
The day had dawned thick with fog, but by mid-day they found themselves sailing under a bright and sunny sky. The crew swarmed the rigging, trying to catch every breeze to their best advantage. Val knew almost nothing of nautical things but had some wild imagining that she would learn something of value on this journey.
The sailors, being a superstitious lot, as she had been told sailors often were, avoided her as if she were a plague carrier. She’d been afraid that they’d make assumptions about her due to her manner of dress, 46
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but, so far, they’d done everything possible to even avoid even acknowledging her existence.
If only I was so fortunate with Bryon,
she thought. Though, she had to admit, that was rather unfair. He hadn’t done anything overt, and it would be easy to assume that he had nefarious designs on her body.
What does it say about me that I detect lecherous intentions where
they might not exist?
she wondered, even as she inched carefully away from him. She nearly laughed aloud at herself. It said that she had a well-reasoned suspicion of male motivations, even though it
felt
like a knee-jerk reaction.
It might not be true that all men think with their little
heads, but the damn things have entirely too much influence in general.
She once read a theory that penis size, and the lack thereof, had a startling effect on diplomacy as a public policy. She wasn’t entirely certain how accurate it was, but she found it amusing to contemplate regardless.
Gunboat diplomacy as an exercise in penile projection. Why doesn’t
that surprise me?
“So where are you from?” Bryon asked her. She winced inwardly.
That was one of the worst questions for an agent to receive unless he or she had already developed a plausible cover story. She hadn’t had the opportunity yet—she knew far too little about this world to come up with something believable. “I’d really rather not talk about it,” she answered.
Unfortunately this didn’t appear to be an acceptable answer. “Your accent says you’re from one of the Southern provinces—Talmar or Jesepha, maybe? I’ve never been to either, but I’m curious. Is the weather really pleasant all year long?”
She had a sudden sense that this wasn’t as innocent a line of questioning as it first appeared. He was fishing for something—looking for some misstep on her part? Just because she couldn’t simply dive into his mind and extract the information she wanted didn’t mean she couldn’t take advantage of the emotional context he was broadcasting as they spoke.
She thought back to the map she’d seen briefly before going through the worldgate. One of the two provinces mentioned wasn’t in the www.samhainpublishing.com 47
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southern regions at all—it was in the north-eastern region which would have corresponded to the Balkan states on Earth. The other one was on what would be the Mediterranean Sea—Greece, Italy, and part of what might be considered the Middle East. Or, as one of her instructors had called it—the ‘Muddle East.’
She gave him a dubious look. “I can only assume you misspoke.
Talmar is a northern province. I was born in Jesepha…though the circumstances of my birth and upbringing aren’t something I want to discuss. The weather
is
pleasant, though.”
She’d been fortunate enough to travel to Earth itself as part of her training, so she’d actually visited the climes they were discussing. She’d spent a month working in the olive orchards while there, learning about the region and its history at the same time.
They tried to do that with every graduating class, but at times the political atmosphere on Earth Prime grew too contentious and the agencies refrained from including such field trips in their regimen.
The aftermath of the Cen War had changed Earth’s political landscape in some respects, but some regional conflicts still cropped up from time to time. The Mediterranean region had been the focus of a great number of religious conflicts over the past several centuries and old hatreds died hard. The Adjuster’s Office troops did their best to contain these conflagrations but occasionally they flared out of control anyway.
Much of the agency’s teachings were vehemently anti-religious and they used such things as the ongoing brushfire conflicts on Earth Prime to provide an example of why religious sentiment was a dangerous trend in human affairs and why
all
revealed religions should be regarded with suspicion. There were other examples on various other Earths, of course, but Earth Prime provided some of the best examples. The agencies had arisen, after all, from Earth Prime and its explosive history, and the agents were steeped in Earth Prime culture from an early age. In fact, most—but not all—of the agents were originally from Earth Prime in the first place, so, in fact, many were the direct inheritors of the religious and regional prejudices that provoked these conflicts in the first place.
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train their agents away from any consideration of their origins with respect to their dealings with one another. Val herself hailed from North America, from the western side of the former nation of Canada, so had never been introduced to any of the more extreme ways of thinking that prevailed in some of the other regions.
And all of this,
she thought,
is completely beside the point at the
moment.
She was trying to get inside Bryon’s head, not take a lengthy journey through the maze of her own mind.
He showed a level of religious fanaticism she found truly disturbing, and wanted nothing more than to find some way to disrupt it—to shock him out of what she saw as his superstitious assumptions.
Bryon now laughed sheepishly, though she definitely had the impression that it was an affected response. He wanted her to believe it had been a mistake, but her feelings told her something totally different.
He’d been trying to trip her up, which made her wonder what his intentions were. Why would he assume she
could
be tripped up in the first place—unless he had some suspicion that his world had been infiltrated by operatives from somewhere else entirely.
Possible, she admitted to herself. He worked for his father, who’d helped finance the purchase of out-world weapons, so it was actually likely that they’d put two-and-two together to determine that the circumstances on their world were being influenced by at least one outside agency. If one, why not more?
This was not a line of reasoning she had any interest in fostering, though she had no idea how to nip it in the bud. If she continued to try to evade his questions, he’d simply grow increasingly suspicious, which was
also
something they wanted to avoid. If the locals started suspecting their motives it could only spell trouble for their mission in general.
At first she’d been fooled by his vapid, rather foppish exterior, but looking in his gray eyes now she determined that the exterior masked a rather insightful, devious mind. His attempts to get the truth from her had been clumsy, but she had no reason to suspect that they weren’t deliberately clumsy. After all, what could it possibly hurt to let her know specifically that they suspected her of being some sort of out-world www.samhainpublishing.com 49
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operative? Every bit of pressure they brought to bear on her would make it that much more likely she’d slip up and reveal something she was trying to keep hidden.
It would be easy to assume these people were unsophisticated savages, but nothing could be farther from the truth. People in these cultures often learned the ways of intrigue early, especially if they themselves had political connections. In some ways they might well be
more
advanced in these areas than the typical agent, considering that they had to contend with merchant houses, foreign governments, and spies within their own ranks.
They lived within wheels within wheels, dealing with influence peddlers, self-promoting sycophants, and deceitful courtiers from almost the moment they left their mothers’ teats.
She herself was probably extremely naive in this respect when compared to him. She didn’t care for that realization in the least.
Of
course, that’s why there’s a big difference between trained agents and
experienced ones. All the training in the world can only prepare us to gain
the experience we need—it can’t replace it.
“I’m not feeling so good,” she said, standing abruptly. “I think I’m going to go lie down for a while.”
He looked as though he was about to object, but seemed to shrug inwardly. “As you wish.”
She could feel his penetrating stare following her as she descended the ladder from the upper deck and disappeared from view. Something told her that this was going to be a trial in more ways than one.
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