Capitulum Quartum

Wherein a war begins

Seneca saw Giles and Eric off early in the morning. "You look like you are in an unusually good mood," he said to Giles, who was indeed smiling pleasantly.

"I dreamed this morning that I was dying of old age, having never become a Wolf," said Giles. "It was beautiful; the second-best dream I have had in centuries of dreaming."

Seneca looked doubtful at that, but said nothing. He handed a large manila envelope to Giles. "You should have everything you need. Aveline has called to say that she will meet you at the airport."

"Don't forget what we talked about," said Giles.

"I have already begun to take care of it."

In the car Eric tried to start a conversation, but Giles merely ignored him, looking out the window. Finally, in irritation, Eric said, "At least tell me where we are going."

"Aveline will meet us at London Gatwick; we'll then take a car to our final destination."

Eric coughed. "We are going to London? As in England? I don't have my passport or anything."

Giles pulled a smaller envelope out of the large envelope and handed it over. When Eric opened it, he found a number of documents, one of which was a passport. He opened it.

"David Actaeon," he read aloud. Then: "How did you get my real passport photo?"

But Giles was back to ignoring him, and Eric had a dull car ride.

The flight, on an Aegidian private jet, was equally dull, but much longer. Giles spent most of the trip with his eyes closed, but obviously not sleeping. Eric seethed.

Aveline, as it turned out, was a stout]woman with gray hair; her face was broad and cheerful, and might have been mistaken for stupid by anyone who did not notice her eyes, which had a clever, almost cunning, set to them.

"I hope your flight went well," she said cheerfully.

"It was wonderful," Giles replied with equal cheer. Eric seethed. But he put on a good face when Giles gestured at him and said, "This is my colleague, David Actaeon."

"Nice to meet you," he said.

"You are a sweet thing, aren't you," she said with cheerful irrelevance. "Roysa and the car are this way."

In the car the clever eyes took on an even more clever look. "Giuseppe has arrived," she said, "and will join us at the retreat tomorrow. We have heard nothing from Vsesalevich. Have you spoken to him?"

"No," said Giles, "everything was through intermediary. That's not uncommon, you know; communication is through Yakutsk, and he is hardly ever there in person." But he looked thoughtful. Then he said, "Do you know Giuseppe's two?"

She shook her head. "I've seen neither of them before. Should I look deeper?"

"It wouldn't hurt, but I don't think it will matter; Giuseppe's not the problem and he knows perfectly well that he can't even manage his figurehead status without my help. That you've heard nothing from Vsesalevich is more worrisome; he should have sent some message by now."

"I'll look into it anyway. As for the Siberians, what should we do?"

"Hmmm," said Giles. He looked out the window and did not answer for a moment. "At present there is nothing to be done," he said finally.

"I don't like playing things by ear," said Aveline.

"Everything is played by ear," Giles replied.

Aveline turned her shrewd eyes on Eric. "So, David," she said, "I don't seem to recall having heard of you."

"We are trying David out for some new responsibilities," said Giles with that air of abstracted indifference which seemed to be his default mood, before Eric could say anything. "He is a young one."

"And you said the name was Actaeon," said Aveline. "An interesting name."

Giles merely smiled and turned the discussion to other things. They talked about the state of things in Britain. Aveline seemed cheerfully pessimistic about everything, and said that she was hoping in a few decades to turn things over to her lieutenant, Roysa, and spend some time in Spain.

"Somehow I have difficulty imagining you lying around the beaches of Ibiza," Giles said. And this started Aveline off on an enthusiastic discussion of the merits and demerits of different locales in Spain. Somehow this branched off into a discussion of various Wolves they both knew -- this one had disappeared, that one was living in Swansea, this other one had committed suicide.

"A great loss, too," said Aveline, still in her cheerful way, "as there were days when I actually liked him."

At times Giles would fall silent, and in those periods Aveline would turn and talk to Eric about arts -- movies, songs, plays, painters -- or politics. She tended to talk about old classics as if they had just come out and politicians who had died long ago and whose names Eric had never heard. Eric began to regard her as somewhat harmless and senile until he had the sudden realization, as the car-ride was beginning to come to an end, that the whole point of her conversation had not been to talk art and politics but to gain a good estimate of how long he had been a Wolf.

It was dark as they drove up the driveway to the retreat house. A little sign in front had the Aegidian silver-A-on-black and the words 'Semele Seminar Centre,' also in silver on black background. The building itself looked much like a house, but a high-end modern house, the kind which has nothing built square but always at angles. As they passed through the entry hall, Eric pointed at a painting hanging above a small table, in which a man in brown was holding the paw of a wolf. "Another one of your Dominicans?" he asked.

Giles gave him a look of irritation mingled with pity and contempt, as if in the middle of annoyance he had had the sudden insight that Eric was the world's most stupid man. "Franciscan," he said shortly. "If he were Dominican he would be wearing black and white. In fact, he is the Franciscan; the painting is of St. Francis and the Wolf of Gubbio." He said this as if he were explaining things to a very small child who should know better, causing Eric to flush with anger again. Seeing this, Giles smiled angelically and continued into the main conference room which occupied most of the first floor.

"There are bedrooms upstairs and to the right," said Aveline to Eric in her usual cheerful tone, "as well as a sitting room. So you should be well-set." She opened her mouth to say something but stopped.

Giles had walked into the center of the room, slowly sliding his hand along the large wooden table, when he had stopped suddenly, frozen in an attitude much like that of a man listening to distant music. He turned to Aveline.

"Where is the car? And is the secret exit still here?" he asked quietly.

"Roysa should be taking it to the garage on the outer perimeter," said Aveline. "And it is. Are we going out that way?"

"You and Eric are."

Aveline pulled out her phone and called Roysa back. Giles pointed at Eric. "He is currently the most vulnerable; at present I have no wish for him to die. There are three for me, but there may be one you will have to take care of yourself. Go."

"Well, then, David Actaeon," Aveline said briskly, grabbing his wrist and dragging him with prodigious speed and strength out of the room, "we are about to have an adventure."

Eric looked back and through the doorway saw Giles calmly adjust his tie and put his hands in his pockets, an expectant look on his face. Aveline turned a corner and Giles was lost to view.

"Come along, come along," said Aveline, as if Eric had had any choice given that her hand was gripped like a steel manacle around his wrist. She stopped only to press a hidden lever or button on the side of the frame of a man-sized mirror, which swung open to reveal a stair and tunnel.

Behind them they heard a loud crash, the breaking of glass, and a scream of pain.

"In you go," said Aveline, shoving him in so that he almost fell flat on his face. She stepped down behind him, closed the mirror-door, and continued to hurry him through the dark tunnel.

Capitulum Tertium

Wherein a plan is made

When Eric, tuxedo-clad, arrived at the party that night, his eye was drawn immediately to the figure of Jolie, standing off to the side, beneath two large paintings, entirely by herself. Anyone's eyes would be, and, at some point in the night or other, everyone's eyes were. The sunglasses were gone and her hair was up, and in her left hand a glass of champagne. She wore a shiny dress of many shades of blue, finely done so that the exact color of the shades seemed to shift as she moved; as it splashed down from her neck it brought out, to startling effect, the light blue of her eyes. She had diamonds around her neck, and in her ears, and in her hair, and around both wrists. No one of these gempieces was massive, but the combined effect was impressive. She seemed like some bright waterfall-goddess, beautiful, haughty, and unapproachable.

Or almost unapproachable, since Eric, after obtaining a glass of champagne himself, approached her immediately. As he drew near, he gestured at the paintings behind her.

"For some reason, Giles doesn't strike me as a religious man."

She turned and looked up at them. They were of equal size, side-by-side and painted in a similar style. Each was an icon of a different man dressed in black and white and holding a book. One of these men was an older man with a bishop's mitre and a crozier in the other hand; the other was an immense hulk of a man, somewhat younger, with a sun-symbol on his chest, who held a church in the other hand.

"They are not here for their religious value," Jolie said, "but for their sentimental value. He once told me that he picked these two out because they were the ones that were most like the originals. He knew them both."

"Another time, and another life," a quiet voice suddenly said right between them, causing them both to jump and spill their champagne. As Jolie had been drinking her glass longer, she fared better in the splash. The voice, of course, was Giles himself, also in a tuxedo, and also with a glass of champagne. The black of the tuxedo make him look even more deathly pale than he had before.

"Jolie, my dear," he said, reaching over and kissing her, "you have outdone yourself tonight. You look splendid." Then, turning to Eric, he said, gesturing at the painting to the left, "That is Albert," and, gestruing to the painting at the right, "That is Thomas." He took a sip from his champagne. "Before I received the Bite I was a Dominican; Albert was my teacher, and there was a time we knew each other well. As you can see, he did well for himself. But it was so long ago, and such a small percentage of all the life that I have led, that I really remember nothing more than fragments. Of Thomas I remember very little at all, and of Albert my most vivid memory is of helping him corner an ostrich." He shook his head. "Such a peculiar thing to remember.

He turned away from the paintings so resolutely that the other two felt compelled to turn as well. "But it was another life. At one point I was entrusted with a message of some importance to an eastern city whose name I do not even recall. The message never made it; the group I was with was waylaid by Lykaios and his followers. Every single one of them was slaughtered, except for me. I was given the Bite and spent the next century or so as a slave, and later assassin, of Lykaios, helping him fight some eastern squabble with some other Wolf warlord. He had a cruel sense of humor, the mighty Lykaios. I suppose it was some sort of private joke to take a Dog of the Lord and make him a Wolf of Lykaios. It must have seemed less funny when I killed him."

He took another sip from his champagne. "I have decided that Eric and I will go on a little trip together tomorrow," he said. "I have arranged to meet Vsesalevich and Giuseppe in a couple of days, with each allowed two Wolves accompanying as a bodyguard. I'll be taking Eric."

Giles did not look at Jolie at all, but her expression was stunned. Then her eyes narrowed. "What are you thinking, Gilles? Eric barely knows anything at all about being a Wolf; you'll need an experienced bodyguard."

This was dismissed with a contemptuous flick of Giles's fingers. "It will be full moon; the bodyguard is a formality. At full moon they could no more kill me than they could kill the moon itself. I could go alone and would not need to fear."

"There are other worries," Jolie insisted. "You could be detained, or...."

"Not in the least," said Giles, shaking his head. "It's on my Island; Aveline will be there. I have all the advantages. Besides," he said with an enigmatic smile, gesturing at Eric, "It will do him good to get out a bit. And meeting with Vsesalevich we might learn something relevant to this renegade Wolf, and I am sure Eric would want to know that immediately."

"He could also be damaged badly if things go wrong."

Giles rounded on Eric suddenly. "How about it, Eric? Do you feel brave enough to handle the risk? Or would you like to stay here where Jolie can protect you?" The tone and face were serious, but the dark eyes were mocking, and Eric flushed with anger.

"I can take care of myself," he said.

"I agree," said Giles. "So let's have no more of this, Jolie. I'll take Eric; just promise me that you and Seneca will keep things orderly while I'm away."

"I don't like it, Gilles. This isn't like you."

The response was a shrug. "My joyless eye finds no object worth its constancy," he said cryptically, and wandered off to talk to others who had attended the party. As Giles had said, it was an Aegidian affair, having nothing to do with Wolves, and thus his conversation was all of investments and policies the rest of the party.

After the party, however, he met with Seneca in his study.

"I don't like it," said Seneca after having heard over brandy of Giles's intention to take Eric -- or "Pretty Puppy" as Giles contemptuously called him -- to the summit. "There are too many things that could go wrong."

"There are always too many things that could go wrong," said Giles, "which is why one should always plan on things going wrong. And I have, to the extent that ordinary ingenuity can manage it. But things are quite favorable in this case. It will be full moon. And it is on my Island, so Aveline will be there."

"Aveline is solid," Seneca said reluctantly. "But I would hate to have her alone to depend on."

"Perhaps, but as I said: full moon. And at full moon I am a more-than-sufficient bodyguard for myself. It will work splendidly."

Seneca leaned back in his chair and looked searchingly at Giles's pallid face; Giles's great, dark eyes looked back unfathomably. Finally Seneca said, "What are you playing at? This is too whimsical for the Wolf who is always a step ahead. What are you really trying to do? I can understand the meeting -- Vsesalevich needs to be confronted with our knowledge of these unauthorized incursions and made to see that, whatever game he is playing, he cannot win it. But taking Eric just to get some training in is too arbitrary."

Giles smiled. "You should know better than to treat me as predictable, Sen. But Pretty Puppy can do me no harm, and possibly some good, I assure you." He took Seneca's glass and poured him another brandy -- Giles himself rarely drank except over dinner, and had no glass himself. As he handed the glass back, Giles said, "Do promise me one thing, Sen. Be discreet about it, but keep a close eye on Jolie while I'm away."

Seneca frowned. "Do you think she will try something while you are gone?"

"She's Jolie; of course she will try something. The real question is whether she will try something that you or I need to worry about. As to that -- I don't think so. Jolie, however, plays the game as if it were poker; bluffs and counterbluffs, smoke and mirrors. One should never go on an estimate of her intentions, but on the objective tendency of her actions given the probabilities on the table. Whatever she actually does while I'm away, it's always worth knowing what she does."

"I can't imagine her doing anything. It just seems reckless."

Giles laughed shortly. "You would say that. It is not reckless. It is Wolfish, at least Wolfish in Jolie's style. But you don't see it because you play the game differently. She may play it like poker, but you play it like chess: few gambles, much maneuvering. You are both extraordinarily talented, but it is why neither of you could really take my place if I were to vanish tomorrow: you play the wrong game."

"What game should we play?" asked Seneca drily. "Badminton? What do you play?"

"Easy to answer, Sen," said Giles. "The game I play is life and death with every breath. Life and death with every breath."