Dragons & Dwarves (33 page)

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Authors: S. Andrew Swann

BOOK: Dragons & Dwarves
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It wasn’t just that these people were unashamed partisans, and I was a supposedly objective journalist. I had done enough op-ed pieces to know that unbiased reporting was generally an oxymoron, and reporters have been getting involved in their own stories ever since Councilmen started throwing chairs at people.
No, what really worried me was the fact that I was standing with the losing side. Not just my opinion, mind you. These folks believed that they were on a death watch and it was only a matter of time before the darkness closed in on them. I had seen the fatalism in everyone’s eyes—except, of course, within Baldassare’s carefully crafted expression.
It was hard not to picture everyone here suffering the same fate as Aloeus. However careful they had been, it was only a matter of time. Despite Phillips’ botched manipulation of the SPU, there were certainly more conventional investigations going on over Aloeus’ death . . .
. . . and Bone’s.
. . . and Cutler’s.
. . . and O’Malley’s.
All of it, given the nature of the quarry, would be tainted by SPU involvement. All of it, with the SPU’s help, subject to manipulation by Phillips.
If I had the luxury of time, an explosive exposé would be just what the doctor ordered. As nice as that thought was, there was no way this was something I could just phone in to Columbia. You can’t go around accusing major public figures of murder in print without sources and documentation lined up from here to Lakeside Avenue. To get this into print without a criminal investigation would require more evidence than it would to convene a grand jury. I’m sure, as clumsy as Phillips had been, the evidence was out there. I just didn’t have the weeks to collect and itemize it.
I kept coming at the problem from every angle, and kept getting the same simple, and the same ludicrous, answer:
Despite Baldassare’s reservations, my—and by extension, the Faustians’—only hope lay in getting me a face-to-face with Mayor Rayburn.
The mayor might be adept at fooling himself, or cultivating blind spots where his cronies were concerned, but I doubted that he’d be as willfully blind when someone introduced the possibility that one of those cronies was going off half-cocked without his authorization. It was Rayburn’s nature, there’d be no possible way he could tolerate that kind of challenge to his authority—no matter how loyal Phillips might be.
Easy.
I could picture the headlines the next day. “Newsman slain in foiled assassination attempt.”
Rayburn never went anywhere unguarded. There were always cops, SPU officers, and mages shadowing the mayor to protect him. Any or all of them would be under Phillips’ thumb. Worse, even to set up a meeting alone, assuming Rayburn would be willing, there was no way he’d be able to avoid telling his security team. That would, in turn, let Phillips in on the meeting. God only knows what he’d do then.
The only place that I’d ever seen Rayburn without an extended entourage was in the secret meeting room they had set up under Lakeside.
Eventually, I slept.
 
The sun had come and gone, its light fading from the windows when I opened my eyes. I sat up and looked across to see Ysbail standing in the corner next to the windows, watching me with her metallic eyes.
“How long have you been there?” I asked.
“Does it matter?”
“What do you want?”
“You know what I want.”
“What if Bone Daddy is wrong?”
“Is he?”
I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and swung my feet off the bed. I had not had a restful sleep. My racing thoughts and the heat of the day had kept me awake. But I did now have the embryonic glim merings of a solution to our shared dilemma.
I told her about it.
“It has to be me,” I said “Baldassare has the contacts, but he doesn’t believe. Or, if he does, the best he could say to Rayburn was, ‘This is what Maxwell said.’ It would be easy to dismiss secondhand, especially after he admits his relationship to you.”
Ysbail nodded.
“You all suffer that credibility problem. Even if Rayburn
knows
you’re telling the literal truth. He can always tell himself that your beliefs are skewed. That’s even if you could manage to meet with him, and I’m sure Phillips is watching that line of attack.”
“Perhaps it is as you say. But what good is it for us for Rayburn to know that Phillips is corrupt? We have lost our Portal.”
“You’ve lost
a
Portal,” I corrected her. “Once Rayburn discovers what Phillips has done, is doing, he’ll be driven to distance himself from the guy. He’ll have to establish that the policies that Phillips was trying to advance are not the administration’s.” I looked up. “I think you’ll be able to deal with him, if only to give him political cover from Phillips’ covert activities.”
“You sound very certain.”
“I’m not certain of anything. This role was forced on me, I didn’t volunteer.”
“Perhaps,” Ysbail said. “But we have learned to respect Caleb Washington’s gift.”
“Uh-huh.” I shook my head, telling myself that—if I survived—there was going to be one hell of a story out of this. “As far as getting me and Rayburn in the same room before Phillips gets to do anything about it . . .”
“Yes?”
“You need to tell me, exactly, what is involved in casting that mini-portal of yours.”
 
“You’ve got to be kidding, Maxwell,” Baldassare told me after I’d explained to them all the details of my plan to, in Bone Daddy’s words, pull our butts out of the fire.
“At least he’s got some balls,” said the biker, whose name I’d learned was Boltof. He was, unlike Bone and Friday, an immigrant from Ragnan.
Of course, Boltof couldn’t let a compliment leave his mouth without hunting it down and killing it. He added, “Unless he’s really a spy and this is all a setup.”
“He is not a spy,” Ysbail insisted.
“Besides,” added Friday, “there would be easier ways to inform the administration who we are. The phone comes to mind.”
“Yeah?” Boltof shook his head. “He’s smart enough to know that I’d slice him open if he pulled something like that.”
“We all know,” Baldassare said. “Can we all dispense with the posturing?” He turned to me. “Had Ysbail explained the implications of what you’re suggesting?”
I nodded. “To open a temporary portal somewhere, you need someone who has been there—”
“Someone to visualize the destination,” Ysbail corrected me.
“In this case it is the same thing. I’m the only person we have who’s been there,” I finished.
“You did see what it did to the elves?” Baldassare said.
I nodded. “Ysbail explained it. The spell needs someone to act as a lens, to focus the spell.”
“Someones,”
Baldassare corrected. “This is no simple task. The energies involved are immense.”
Friday rubbed his hands. “Mr. Baldassare does have a valid point.” He said it as if he found it distasteful to allow the man that much. “The last Portal was the first we attempted with as few as two. Angor and Einion nearly collapsed focusing the energy.”
“Exactly,” Baldassare said. “And they were mages, and benefited from an inhumanly tough constitution. A human, especially an untrained one, would have died in their place.”
Boltof chuckled, “Hey, if he wants to—”
“I told you, I discussed this with Lady Ysbail,” I said. “There’s a risk, but it isn’t a suicidal one.”
“You think you’d be better at this than Angor or Einion?” Baldassare asked.
“No,” Ysbail answered for me, and everyone turned to face her. “He realizes he is a novice. You all are forgetting the significant difference between creating a Portal to Galweir and what Mr. Maxwell proposes.”
It only took a moment for Boltof and Friday to get it. Friday nodded, as if it suddenly all made sense, and Boltof just gave a caustic grin. Baldassare frowned and asked, “Will someone enlighten me?”
“In going from point A to point B, there are two things that stress the person guiding the destination,” I told him. “The distance from the source, and that person’s affinity for the target. While Angor and Einion might be adepts, and have an unmatchable affinity for Galweir, the distance from Galweir to the Portal on the Ragnan side was several thousand miles.” I looked into Baldassare’s eyes and tried to gauge his reaction. All I saw was a calculated concern. “My destination lies less than half a mile from the Portal, and lies in a place—at least beneath a place—that I have unquestionable affinity for. My inexperience might cost me, but the other elements we have going for us should make up for it.”
Baldassare nodded. “You are talking about one of the most magically secure places on this side of the Portal.”
“Designed by people who have no idea that Ysbail and her mages can do this. It is also one of the few places I know that Phillips won’t be able to penetrate with his own mages. Once I’m in, the wards are going to protect me.”
“You are
sure
that Nesmith will meet with you?” Friday asked me.
I nodded. “She’s going to want to hear from me, especially after what happened with the gargoyle.”
“Without Phillips?” Friday pressed.
“She has no reason to involve Phillips. This is a law enforcement matter, and she’s the chief law enforcement officer in the city.”
Baldassare nodded. “On this point, I agree with Maxwell. Phillips can’t blatantly insert himself into Nesmith’s turf without exposing himself, and Nesmith seems unlikely to invite a political rival into something that, from Maxwell’s description, is her show.” He smiled grimly. “I won’t pretend to like this, and while I’m not a hundred percent convinced that you’re right about Rayburn, things have descended to the point that some sort of negotiation is the only real option—whatever dangers it might open up.”
“Then why the fuck don’t we just set up the meet with Hizzoner himself?”
I shook my head. “Rayburn’s security is an issue. If he goes anywhere alone, it might tip off Phillips. I’m betting the same attention doesn’t apply to Nesmith. And if
she
sets up a private meeting with the mayor—”
“Lot of ifs,” Boltof said.
“But the reasoning makes sense,” Baldassare asserted.
“Great, so you’re behind this guy now?”
“I’ve yet to hear a more coherent suggestion.” Baldassare walked up and took my arm. “You’re taking a risk.”
More than you have. But then you know that, don’t you?
“How do you want to set up the meeting?” Baldassare asked.
“That’s a sticking point.” I said. “Contacting Nesmith directly has the same issues as contacting Rayburn directly. Any official channel is likely to alert Phillips.”
“I have some ‘unofficial’ channels to contact people in Rayburn’s administration,” Baldassare said.
“I was hoping you would.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
 
“
I
F we’re going to do this,” Baldassare said, “we have to do it right.”
 
I had no illusions that I was dealing with a democracy here. I had a fair certainty that whatever Lady Ysbail said was the rule, despite eruptions from Boltof. Even so, I could feel the political weight in the room shift with Baldassare’s somewhat reluctant endorsement. It was interesting to see how Baldassare could move a room without so much as asking for anyone’s support. The man had a gravity that drew even chaotic personalities like Boltof after him.
Even a genetic aristocrat like Ysbail could feel it.
I felt it, too, at first without realizing it. My initial reaction was simple gratitude at having his support. I had blown most of my intellectual capital in answering his arguments. Somehow, though, through some sort of rhetorical judo, Baldassare was suddenly center stage, laying out exactly how we were going to do this.
It wasn’t until we were fifteen minutes into the details of the plan—a plan I had developed and introduced to these people—that I realized that I hadn’t made a significant contribution since Baldassare had agreed to contact Nesmith to set up the meeting.
“Night would be the best time for this. Better chance that Nesmith will be unobserved during her off time. Lakeside will be pretty much empty except for a few cops, none of whom should be hanging around the meeting area.” Baldassare kept going on, as if it had been his idea. At this point it seemed as if it was.
Watching him, I decided that it was the fact that he never seemed to stop thinking. He was always questioning, hypothesizing, figuring the angles. It was impressive, and scary.
“I’m going to have to set this up as close as possible to the meeting as we can get. The longer lead time we give Nesmith, the more chance that she might, voluntarily or involuntarily, let this slip to Phillips. Two, three hours, at most. And I shouldn’t be anywhere near you people when you do your magic—and you shouldn’t be anywhere near here.”

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