Cybermage, page 25
Kristin suddenly sucked in her breath. “I think it might have to wait,” she said, tossing her head at something back towards Cheveyo’s outside hearth. “We might have a problem.”
Everyone spun around to look.
Beside the fire pit an Alphiri portal had opened a coruscating doorway, and through that, even as all eyes were upon it, stepped first two tall male Alphiri, dressed in unusually simple and appropriate attire of dark ankle-length robes, and then a woman whose loose dark-gold hair was held back by a burnished, jewelled circlet. She wore little more by way ornament, except for one solid, heavy signet ring that looked like it was weighing down her left hand.
Humphrey actually winced, closing his eyes.
“It’s the Alphiri Queen,” he said in a low voice. “That’s all we need.”
FIFTEEN
Terry, who had already half-pulled his laptop out of its case, froze in mid-motion as the Alphiri Queen stepped out of the portal and looked around. Thea nudged him with a foot; he turned his head a little to glance back at her and she nodded at him and at the computer–keep going, this might need to be done in a hurry.
“We come in pursuit of something that belongs to us,” the Queen said regally.
Terry opened up the laptop screen and waited, his hand poised on the button that would switch the machine on.
“Something we had bargained for,” one of the other Alphiri said.
“Fair price for fair trade,” the other added.
Terry punched the button as they spoke, knowing the Alphiri way of always talking in threes, masking the noises of the computer’s waking-up routine under the sound of Alphiri voices.
Thea had never quite managed to get over her fear of the Alphiri–but she bit down on it, tasted its harsh and bitter residue in her mouth, and stepped forward
“Your Majesty,” Thea said with great formality, “there is nothing here that lawfully belongs to the Alphiri, or may be bargained for with intent to purchase.”
The human polity does not sell its people.
“We do not seek a person,” the Alphiri Queen said, her eyes flickering briefly over Thea and then regally dismissing her.
“We seek a bird,” the second Alphiri said. “A creature.”
“We have bought creatures before from the Human Polity,” said the third, in a tone of triumphant reason.
“The bird is not a bird,” Thea said. “The bird carries a part of a human being, it belongs to that human being, and to nobody else. If you bought it and paid for it, then you must take up that contract with the party from whoever you bargained with. You already know that you have bought something that the one who offered it for sale had no right to sell. And we know that you know it.”
“Oh, now,” said Corey the Trickster, stepping out from behind one of the two Alphiri escorts. “It was a pigeon. Humans buy and sell kittens and puppies and birds every day. I broke no laws. I only sold a dumb beast which someone else had a use for, and wanted, and I could provide.”
“I was wondering how they got here so fast,” Thea muttered. “Why am I not surprised that you are here, Miss Kay Otis?”
There was a snort of disbelief behind her, and Thea spared a quick glance back at Humphrey, whose hands were clenched into fists at his sides, his expression an interesting mixture of astonishment and fury. Terry, just off to Humphrey’s left, caught Thea’s eye and shook his head minutely, hands still flying over his keyboard.
Tesla had risen from his crouch beside the pigeon cage and stood beside Cheveyo, the two men both looking at the Alphiri Queen in a strangely serene manner, as though she concerned neither of them.
“We buy from the one who sells,” the Queen said, quelling Corey with a look.
“We are not responsible for what went before.”
“We cannot be expected to trace the origin of every purchase.”
“And yet, you must, when you deal with us, who hold history to be important,” Thea said. “How would you lay claim to what you call your property? How was it marked?”
“It was a bird,” the Queen said.
“One that you call a pigeon,” said the second Alphiri.
“A gray and white bird,” the third Alphiri added helpfully.
“One of those?” Thea said, indicating the cage.
The Queen deigned to turn her head, just a little.
“It may be,” she said.
“Could be.”
“Perhaps.”
“Which one?” Thea asked politely.
The Queen turned back to her, without speaking, her face set in an expression of an unspoken royal affront. But Tesla, who saw where Thea was heading, gave a small approving nod.
“There are three,” Thea said, somehow managing to keep her voice cool and level as she bore the Queen’s withering stare. “in the cage. Can you tell–without a trace of doubt–which one it is that you claim to have lost?”
All the Alphiri stared at the cage.
“The middle one,” the Queen said, after a small hesitation.
The other two spoke at once, stepping on each other’s words.
“The one on the left.”
“The one on the right.”
“Oh, great,” Corey muttered, rolling his eyes.
The two Alphiri escorts’ expressions did not change, but they managed to give an impression of cringing as the Queen raised an eyebrow in their direction with a distinctly frosty expression. She did not even bother to look at Corey; it was as though he were suddenly beneath her notice. Thea saw him rouse at that, a little annoyed at being so completely sidelined by the very people he had plotted and connived for. A stray raven feather suddenly popped out from under his left sleeve, and he plucked at it with his right hand, emitting a low growl.
But Thea couldn’t afford to allow her attention to linger on what Corey was up to.
“If you had brought the changeling,” Thea said quietly to the Alphiri Queen, “you might have had a basis for comparison–but the people you had sent to New York, Your Majesty, will already have told you that pigeons look very much alike…”
The Queen’s head came around sharply.
“You know about this. The changeling bird that was left in place of the one we had purchased.”
“You know it was stolen.”
“You know it was stolen from us.”
“Well, I could tell,” Corey muttered, still ignored by everybody.
“No. It was recovered from you, restored to the one to whom it truly belongs, the man who stands beside that cage. You can’t tell which one it is, but he can, he knows precisely which bird is which. That alone proves that it is his property and not yours, however you claim to have obtained it. Everyone knows that the Alphiri pay for what they take, that the Alphiri do not steal. Your polity was built on that reputation. Well, here, you are close to breaking your own fundamental law. Representatives of the Alphiri were there when the pigeon was found. You know how it was obtained–it was taken from a human being’s hands, without that human being’s permission. That’s stealing. If the Alphiri did not take this bird with their own hands, they certainly sanctioned its taking, and even stood back and watched it happen.”
The Queen lifted her chin, rousing herself to her full regal authority.
“The Alphiri do not steal,” she said, her words dripping with outrage.
“Fair price for fair service,” said one of her henchmen.
“We do not cheat,” said the second.
Thea looked sideways again; Terry nodded at her, I’m ready when you are.
“The Faele stole from us,” the Queen said.
“The Faele will be chastised,” the first escort said sonorously.
“The Faele will be punished,” added the second, with a slow nod of judgment.
Thea turned to Humphrey. Now.
He stepped forward swiftly, as though released from a bow. “I speak for the Government of the Human Polity,” he said. “The Faele changeling was left with you on our behest. They were merely agents acting on our behalf; if you have a grievance, it is with the Human Polity. The Faele have been granted immunity in this matter.”
The Queen stared at him. “You cannot do this,” she said.
“It is not your place.”
“It is not your right.”
“Then it will fall squarely in the jurisdiction of the Inter-Polity Court, and we can take it as high as it needs to go,” Humphrey said.
He had stepped up to stand beside Thea, his feet a little apart, his arms at his sides, his back straight. In this moment he was a towering ally, a presence of strength and power who was absolutely on her side. He stood for the human polity in a battle of wits with the Alphiri; Thea wondered if he was even aware that he was doing exactly what he had accused her of doing–standing up to save one man, the man who stood grave and silent beside a cage full of fluttering birds, waiting for the verdict of this confrontation.
Thea lowered her eyes and turned her head just far enough to give Terry a small nod.
He punched a key sequence on his laptop.
At first, nothing happened–but even as the Alphiri Queen opened her mouth to speak again, the three pigeons in the cage somehow went… two-dimensional, flat, glossy, as though they had turned into photographs of themselves. Then those shapes too disintegrated into something that was only barely cohesive, a pigeon-shaped patch of air, one glowing with a light tinged a pale blue, the second a watery pale green, the third a milky ivory. They seemed only barely constrained by the bars of the bird cage.
The Queen took a step back, betraying surprise.
Humphrey’s head had whipped around to where Terry crouched over his computer.
Tesla’s shoulders went rigid under the elegant lines of his dark suit.
Terry stood up, balancing the computer in the palm of his left hand.
“They’re… digitized,” he said faintly, when it seemed that everyone was waiting for an explanation. “To what they really were. Are. The pigeon shapes were merely a disguise, a form that permitted them to exist in our own world–but that is what they are. Energy.”
“Pure Elemental magic,” Humphrey breathed, unable to hide his own astonishment.
“Water, Air, Earth,” Tesla said in a low voice which he only barely managed to keep from trembling as he spoke. He reached out one hand and the three shapes in the bird cage streamed towards him, almost losing cohesion.
“Sir…” Terry said warningly, and Tesla, with a small sigh, withdrew his hand. But not his hot, yearning gaze, looking at what he had lost and lived without for so many years with a tragic joy in the lines of his face.
Thea seized the moment, her heart thumping painfully, and turned to the Alphiri Queen once more. “Your bargain is twice void,” she said. “You said you bought a pigeon, but you couldn’t even pick it out from amongst three of its kind, and now you see that you never had a bird at all. You never bought or paid for… that.” She indicated the three coruscating Elemental clouds with a sweeping gesture of one hand. “One keystroke, and we will restore these things to the man to whom they have always belonged. And once it is done and all these parts that make up one whole have been reunited in a single entity, you can make no further demands–because it will be part of a living entity.”
The Queen turned with a triumphant air. “But that is not true.”
“There is no living entity.”
“Not as you define it.”
Thea pointed at Tesla. “There he stands.”
“Not alive,” the Queen said. “Not as you have defined life.”
“An automaton.”
“A dream.”
“An incomplete entity, at that,” the Queen added.
“There should be four.”
“Four elements, not three.”
“But the fourth one is gone,” Cat said in a small voice, clutching her black silk bundle convulsively.
“That may not be completely true,” said a new voice.
Thea closed her eyes for a moment, remembering–remembering the first time she had heard sunlight speak, those rich warm tones that told her that Tawaha himself, the Sun God, had come to the place of this battle for the soul of one of his children. Where you are, and where light is, I will be with you.
She felt a surge of warmth pass her as Tawaha rounded her side to stand between her and the Alphiri queen.
“Who the hell is that?” Humphrey said, staring.
“Tawaha,” Thea said helpfully. “The Sun God.”
Grandmother Spider had stepped up to Tawaha’s side, morphing into a golden-haired creature, leaving Humphrey unable to make up his mind about who to stare at first or longest, the magically changing woman or the god who wore sun fire in his hair.
“Bring the bird, child,” Tawaha said, beckoning to Cat with one golden hand.
Cat stepped forward, carrying the silk-wrapped body of the Fire Elemental pigeon in both her hands, and laid it at Tawaha’s feet with reverence, like an offering. Tawaha glanced at Grandmother Spider, who went down on one knee, gently folding the silk back until the small body was revealed lying in the middle, wings neatly tucked against its sides. Tawaha gazed on it thoughtfully.
“It is a fire-bird,” he said. “One of my own Element. It is quenched, but as with every fire… there is still an ember, even when it looks like there is nothing left except a dead piece of coal. There is, however, a price.”
He looked up, beckoned Tesla forward, and then turned to Thea as Grandmother Spider rose to her feet.
“This fire can be brought back,” Tawaha said, his eyes resting on Thea, enveloping her in light and warmth. “But it needs a spark. If one who carries the Fire Element offers that spark freely, a spark that only another keeper of the Fire can provide, then this Elemental may take new life from it.. Another… like yourself, child.”
“We can reboot it,” Grandmother Spider said with a small limpid smile. “But there is a danger. As with all things of value, this too has a price.” She threw a smouldering glance at the Alphiri as she said this, as though she was aware that she was using loaded language in the circumstances, and choosing her words deliberately.
Thea had not been aware that she was crying, but she felt the sting of tears in her eyes. “The danger is that the operation might be a success, but the patient might die,” she said. “What you are saying is that if I offer this, then I give my own fire away.”
“That is the way of it,” Tawaha said. “If you give it, you give it as a gift. You give all. You may not hold back any. If you are very lucky, some might remain, perhaps enough, or it might turn and burn you in the backwash. There is peril here. Only you can make that choice.”
Thea’s eyes lingered on the dead Fire Element pigeon at her feet, then up at Tawaha, at Grandmother Spider, and finally at Tesla himself. All she could think of was that sad sweet lullaby he had sung over the body of something he had loved. I will pay for the price of my folly, he had said that, he had meant it, but it would have been hard not to know how much of a chasm it had left within him.
He was not asking. Would never ask. But he met her eyes as she stared at him, squarely, without looking away.
“Yes,” Thea said faintly, letting Tesla see her answer in her eyes, saying the word out loud for the benefit of the others. “Yes.”
She heard a couple of indrawn breaths behind her, a step forward as though someone had tried to rush to her side and rapidly silenced as someone else prevented that, the sound of her name being whispered by a voice she could not identify, could not even call male or female, as though all of her friends and colleagues behind her had spoken it at once in one breath.
But it was Tesla who said her name again, clearly, stepping up to her and taking both her hands in his own.
“Thea,” he said gently. “Thea. Are you certain? Your future still lies before you. Three of my gifts have returned to me–three I may have back–is there need for this sacrifice?”
“Fire was your strongest, Your most treasured. Your most beloved. The one you most missed, wanted, needed,” Thea said. “You are its master; I have barely learned how to raise my eyes to look at it. You named me a new thing, not so long ago. Perhaps it is that I can cling to, and you… you can have back the thing that made you who you are.”
“It is Elemental magic,” said Grandmother Spider. “You don’t know what you might lose should you give up any of it. It may be that you could lose it all. Are you sure you wish to take on this risk?”
“Thea, no…” it was a whisper from the back, again. Thea thought it might have been Terry, or perhaps Cat, her reaction to this much the same as Thea’s had been when Cat had been in this position, giving up the essence of herself.
Thea closed her mind to the whispered plea. “I am sure,” she said.
“And I too must ask–because you have to answer, three times,” Tawaha said. “What you give, can never be returned in the shape that it was given. You give to fill a hole in another, but you may never be able to fill the hole you might leave in yourself. Are you certain you wish to proceed?”
Thea found herself falling through a chaotic whirl of thoughts and memories in her mind. The years in which she could find nothing in her father’s face except disappointment and frustration; the beginnings of an understanding of what she was, or might one day become; the first time she had woven two strands of light together; the destination that the powers that first woke in Cheveyo’s country had led her to–the desperate act that had sealed one who was more like her than any other in her world into a living tomb.
The chance to set another Elemental free from a prison of his own making.
We all pay for the price of our folly.
“Yes,” Thea said.
Tesla, who had not let go of her hands, now lifted both to his lips, and then dropped them, stepping away. Thea was surprised to see his own blue eyes were filled with tears, but then she swallowed hard and turned to face Tawaha with her chin held high.
“What is it that I must do?” she said, and was surprised, under the circumstances, to see both him and Grandmother Spider smiling.
“You have given freely, and therefore it is in my power to do so also,” Tawaha said. “Because you were willing to give the ember of your own gift, I do not have to take it from you. Do you remember, child, the day we first met?”
