Shadows of Falling Night (11 page)

A servant coughed discreetly, and her heart thudded. The disadvantage of living in a place like this was that things could be very far apart indeed; it took ten minutes to bring them to the library the master had chosen. An odd-looking group—dark men and women wearing striped ponchos and derby-style hats—was leaving as they arrived.

When they entered, the Duc de Beauloup was sitting in a leather chair before a fire, cradling a brandy snifter while Seraphine leaned against the mantel with hers; she was wearing a new form, a slender freckled redhead with great brilliant green eyes, in a 50’s-style Chanel classic, the Little Black Dress.

“Peruvians,” Étienne-Maurice said, with a weight of disgust, and his wife laughed.

Adrian raised an eyebrow. His great-grandfather went on:

“Your Californian branch of the family is responsible. They brought the message of our discoveries to the Andes for the Council. The Spanish-speakers are well enough, for Spaniards, if a trifle provincial and given to hidalgo airs. But the cult up in the Andes called themselves
lik’ichiri
, fat-stealers, and dealing with them is…ah, but enough of that. Even the Power cannot turn a dirty dog of a savage with a bone through his nose and a tom-tom fixation into something worthy of civilized company.”

Ellen blinked. Remember, born in the 1870s, she told herself. Hasn’t seen sunlight since Hitler was a two-bit agitator in Munich.

It was surprising how dealing with an inhuman monster became so
much more difficult when he also had the all-too-human casual prejudices of someone born shortly after the Franco-Prussian War.

The decor of the library was Victorian rather than Louis XV, dark woods and books and carved oak, globes and mounted maps and a few stuffed animal heads. Which was natural enough, he was old but not Louis XV old like the Hôtel; this study would have been very mildly out of date when he was a young man. There was a faint smell of fine tobacco beneath the leather and old books, and Isfahan rugs that looked as if they were from the same generation as their owner.

She’d gotten used to that scent because Adrian smoked occasionally—a purebred couldn’t get cancer. Even with environmental insults like tobacco smoke, that required
bad luck
on the cellular level.

I don’t think the Pompidou Center has much future if the Empire of Shadow ever comes back full-bore. I suspect Great-granddaddy there would have everything built after he went post-corporeal torn down.

Adrienne entered a moment later, alone: she wouldn’t bring a lucy to a conference. In a way, it was an affirmation of Ellen’s status—the Shadowspawn operated in families like the Mafia, only with a bit less old-time sexism since the Power had never been a respecter of gender. In another, it was a one-up for Adrienne, that she dared leave Monica unattended.
She
was probably terrified, and not in a good way…

The servant picked up a crystal decanter that gleamed with a silvery sheen like polished hematite, marked with platinum fleur-de-lis designs. He poured three more glasses, offered them about, then retired to the doorway, standing with his hands crossed before him. Ellen suddenly noticed that he had a tiny radio-bud in one ear, nearly hidden by the antique wig. She sat silently, sniffed aromas of vanilla and spiced flowers, then let the Black Pearl run over her tongue like the essence of passion fruit and sandalwood.

“Very nice,” she said.

Actually true. I never liked brandy until Adrian introduced me to the real thing. And I have to keep the Demon King there sweet, if we’re to have any chance of blocking Adrienne’s coup and then springing our
own
surprise on
her.
Which means I have to help save Great-grandpa…for now. Politics makes strange…oh, God, get that image out of my head!

“Thank you, sire,” she went on.

Étienne-Maurice inclined his head with a gracious-host smile. “Quite good, is it not? A blend of over a thousand eaux-de-vie, I understand, some of them laid down before I was born and none less than forty years old. There
are
things this modern age does better, even if the aesthetics are deplorable. When I still dwelt in the flesh I sampled cognac put in the oak during the reign of the first Napoleon, and it was not quite so fine. Less subtle, though of course my perceptions have improved.”

He nodded to Adrienne. “A point you have made to me,
ma fille
. If we deny the humans all their inventions, there is so much less we can take for ourselves. After all, where would we be if my own father had not been scientific and
progressive
, in his way?”

Adrienne made a wordless sound of appreciation as she sipped her own, with her eyes held reverently closed for a moment before she spoke. The Brézés might not be really human, but they were certainly old-style French about some things. Ellen thought her appreciation was genuine, not just flattery:

“I shall add this to my mental cellar, sire, for only in trance will I see its equal, alas. Also, if we returned the world to the Dark Ages I would miss my aircraft. And motorcycles and fashion shows, for that matter. Castles are so drafty and boring! And I prefer my victims to wash and not have skin diseases.”

The lord of the Shadowspawn put his snifter down and made a small gesture over it to keep the servant from refilling.

“So, Adrian,” he said after a brooding stare over steepled fingers. “You claim that Adrienne is attempting to use a rogue Brotherhood agent to smuggle a nuclear bomb into the Council meeting, despite my embracing her policy preferences? Presumably to wipe us all out and leave her and her faction to inherit the Throne of the World after the humans are put in their place.”

Seraphine smiled, covering her lips for a moment with two fingers as if smothering a chuckle. Adrian kept his face expressionless as he nodded.

“In essence, yes, sire.”

Adrienne chuckled and shook her head indulgently. “And I am supposed to be concealing a
nuclear weapon
from nearly a thousand powerful adepts…in what way or manner, exactly? If I could Wreak on that level, I would be God. Not
a
god,
the
God. Which would be delightful, but which is beyond even my ambitions at present.”

Étienne-Maurice raised his glass and tilted it, viewing the low flames through the dark honey-colored liquid. “That is the crux of the matter, is it not? I could not conceal such a weapon, not if I intended to use it so. If you know of such a means, Adrian, will you drop your shields so that I may verify?”

“If Adrienne will do the same,” Adrian said.

Something went
clank
in Ellen’s head, Wreakings activating to conceal her thoughts, and suddenly all her emotions felt curiously muffled and distant, as if she had just taken a heavy hit of Percocet. It was actually rather welcome in itself, since what she’d been feeling was mostly fear and loathing, but this was the crisis point. If Adrienne was willing to do that, then the Brotherhood’s secret would be out. That would be a
disaster, and destroy the first real advantage the Brotherhood had ever had in the long war: Adrian had given every oath he could think of to its commanders, and submitted to Wreakings that made it impossible for him to betray it to his kin, despite the fact that it would instantly make his story of the smuggled bomb credible.

Adrienne had ferreted it out, of course. If she agreed to open her mind, the secret would be revealed.

Thankfully, the chances of that are—

“No, of course I will not,” Adrienne said cheerfully. “What, and expose my plots?”

Ellen closed her eyes in relief and completed the thought:—
very low.
Then she finished off the brandy to hide the gesture.

“What, you are plotting against me? I am shocked,
chère pucelle
, shocked to the depths of my wicked soul,” Étienne-Maurice said.

He and his wife and great-granddaughter all laughed, his deep, Seraphine’s silvery, Adrienne’s warm and soft. Ellen shivered slightly. Adrian’s face showed nothing at all.

I
have
met a family that’s worse than mine was. And the drawback of being totally—justifiably—paranoid is that it makes you
more
vulnerable to treachery, not less. Because he assumes she’s always been plotting against him along with everyone else, the real plot vanishes in the background noise. It’s…diabolical. It is so fucking Adrienne!

A touch on her arm told her that Adrian had picked the thought out of her head, though she wouldn’t have been surprised if both of them had had it at once anyway.

“And so this accusation…one cannot take it seriously,” Seraphine said.

Étienne-Maurice cocked an eyebrow. “That does not mean it should not be dealt with at all, or that there is no element of truth involved. I
will arrange a ritual this evening…there is certainly enough talent available. Eastern Anatolia, you say, Adrian? I never liked the area, though the Armenian business had a certain crude grandeur—that was the al-Lanarkis, of course. Throwing a curse in that general direction will be a…pardon the expression…good deed.”

“Yes, sire,” Adrian said, rising and bowing. “I would not presume to advise you on the details of a black curse.”

“If I did not know better, I could find an accusation in that!”

Seraphine wiggled her fingers at Adrienne. “Perhaps you would join me instead?” she said. “There is a…guest. A very sincere young priest—a rarity in these degenerate times. I have an amusing scenario in mind, involving a form I picked up in the 40s of the last century, a gloriously beautiful youth of fifteen, just barely sufficiently ripe.”

“That would be lovely, madame,” Adrienne said cheerfully.

In the corridor outside Ellen shivered. “That went better than I thought it might,” she said. “Essentially, we won…sorta.”

“And yet Adrienne is not dissatisfied. That is a bad sign.”

“Would she let you know if she
was
doing a slow burn?”

Adrian quirked an eyebrow. “She and I are twins; she could not entirely conceal it. She is planning some devilment, probably by proxy. And we have many vulnerabilities.”

CHAPTER SIX

Santa Fe, New Mexico

“W
easel! I’m a weaaaasel!” the boy shouted as he dove over the chamiso bush in an explosion of powdery snow.

“Woof! Woof! I’m a wolfie and I’ll
eat you up!
” his sister caroled as she raced after him, eight-year-old arms pumping.

“Come back here, you little
par de esquintles!
” Eusebia Cortines yelled.

Eric Salvador listened and grinned, cradling the shotgun in his arms and keeping his eyes moving over the field of view. You couldn’t keep kids in
all
the time, and this pair were more active than most.

He was a stocky, muscular thirty-one years old, and his upper lip was very slightly lighter than the weathered dark-olive of the rest of his face, where a mustache had been until recently. A scar ran down from his
cheek to the corner of his mouth, giving it a bit of a quirk. Black hair was cropped close to the sides and top of his head, showing with the hood of his jacket thrown back.

He looked like an ex-Marine NCO from here in northern New Mexico. One who’d pulled a tour in the sandpit, Iraq, and one and a quarter on the rockpile—which was what you called Afghanistan, if you were in the Suck and hence among the connoisseurs of bad neighborhoods. And then spent years being a cop, after he healed up from the IED.

All that was exactly what he was. The
indios
among his ancestors had been around here since the last glacial period; the rest was seventeenth-century Spanish and a little Irish several generations back. He’d started to grow love-handles while he was a homicide roach and especially after the divorce—irregular hours and junk food—but they were gone again now.

Because now I’m a Brotherhood soldier, I suppose, sorta-kinda and without most of the regular training yet. Mierda, back in the Suck only with less air support. Hell, I’m the mouj now, running scared because the other side has all the cool toys. Like, they can make your blood boil…literally.

Eusebia—Cheba to her friends—managed to grab Leila and Leon Brézé before they vanished into the darkening juniper and piñon-clad hillside, and escorted them back with a hand under each arm.

“It is late,” she said firmly; she believed children should obey adult caretakers promptly, and didn’t give a damn who their parents were. “It is nearly time for dinner.”

The word
dinner
got the twins’ attention; they were both chowhounds and loved Mexican. Their near-identical triangular faces turned up towards her under mops of raven hair.

“Did
you
cook dinner, Cheba?” the boy asked.

“Yes, I did,
mi rey
.”

“Okay, we’re ready!” his sister said.

“Show me your hands,
reynita
. I thought so. Go and wash,” she said, giving them a little shove towards the front doors.

Her English was much more fluent now, but still a little slow, and had been developing a tendency to a bookish, Worf-like lack of contractions. Eric gave the surroundings a long last look. The house that Adrian Brézé had built northeast of Santa Fe was long and low, built of fieldstone covered with stucco for the most part. The surroundings turned imperceptibly from a xeroscape garden of native plants into shaggy, rocky hills. The sky was turning dark purple to the east, with the first stars just starting to glitter in the high-desert air. The west was still an implausible striation of clouds turning to cream and hot gold and molten copper, fading to teal green and blue above; the snow on the peaks of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains westward was blush-pink for a moment.