Capitulum Decimum

In long researches, especially when the research is into an obscure or difficult subject, one always discovers bits and pieces that do not easily fit into the grand design -- suggestive, perhaps, but of unknown significance. And this is perhaps true of nothing and no one more than Aegidius, who eludes the eye of the ordinary historian, and appears and disappers in history like a flickering of shadow across the landscape.

(1) Take, for instance, an occurrence I have been able to piece together from various sources. The exact location is impossible to determine with any certainty, but I think it was in France; the time is equally uncertain, but if it occurred in France, the time was almost certainly the late 1930s. I imagine it to have happened in something like this way, and, while some of the precise details may have varied, I have confirmed the substance from several sources.

The first people to notice him were a handful of young men lolling around by a clump of trees. He stood out. While most people here were dark-haired and dark-eyed, as he was, they also had a dark complexion, while he was as pale as an invalid. But it was perhaps not this that made him stand out, but his immaculate, custom-tailored, and very expensive suit. He came toward them.

"I am looking for the Old Woman," he said. "Where may I find her?"

They looked him up and down a bit.

"That is a very nice suit," said one young man, who wore a brightly colored vest.

The stranger threw the vested man sarcastically. "And yet the Old Woman is not in my suit. I have business with her. Where is she?"

The vested young man caught sight of a gleam on the man's wrist. "That is a very nice watch," he said.

"Where is she?" The stranger did not raise his voice in the slightest; if anything it became softer and quieter. But there was an edge to it that gave it both the force of a command and the air of a threat. The young man tried to stare him down, but failed. Shrugging, he pointed towards a tent at the end of the makeshift path.

"Thank you," the stranger said, and continued on his way.

A young woman was weaving something outside the tent; she barely looked up at the stranger.

"I am here to see the Old Woman," he said.

She shouted something back toward the tent. When there was an answering shout, she nodded and gestured at the stranger to enter.

Inside an old woman was sitting on a makeshift chair drinking tea. When she saw the dark-eyed, pale-skinned man she froze, then slowly put down her cup and stared at him as he sat down across from here.

"You know who i am," he said with some mild amusement.

"Yes," the old woman said slowly. "My grandmother told me about you. 'He burns with the light of the full moon, even at new moon, even during the day,' she said. Until I saw you I did not know what she meant. But it is true. The moon itself blazes inside you, almost too bright to bear."

"Do not look too close at it," he said softly. "Those who do lose their way through the sane world. I looked at once, long ago, and I have never found my way back again."

She looked away. "You are the Wolf-King."

"'King' is such a very small word," the stranger said reflectively. "But yes. I am Aegidius, and I am the Invincible Wolf."

"Why are you here?" she asked. "We wish no dealings with you."

Giles smiled. "Your family has had dealings with me for time out of mind. One of your ancestresses performed a very great favor for me. That debt was repaid long ago. But there are dark times coming for your people, and it would be...displeasing to me...if your family were wholly swallowed up in them." He pulled two cards from his pocket and held it out to her. "If anyone in your family is in mortal danger in the years to come, these will help you."

She took the two. On one there was nothing but an address. On the there was printed an ornate white A on a black circle.

"If your family is in dire trouble, send someone to this address and show the people there the second card. They will help protect you."

"Why are you doing this?" she asked.

"Because I still remember," he replied as he rose and left.

She never saw him again. But she did use the card. I have in my possession that card, or one exactly like it; it was sent to me by a colleague. It is well-worn and faded, but the A is still visible.

(2) A bit farther back, in the nineteenth century, there is evidence of small club in London called the Cynthia Club. It was very exclusive, but farther from Pall Mall than was quite fashionable. A hint of scandal always was associated with it, and rumors of decadence, but I believe this was chiefly because they were rumored to be lax about guests of members, even if the guests were women. Any trace of this club, beyond some occasional passing mentions, is gone now, but I believe it to have been a front for Wolves in London at the time. And, perhaps more importantly, I believe it was here that Seneca Lewis first met Giles Scott. Was it a chance meeting? Was Seneca summoned? I do not know.

Of Seneca himself I have been able to find very little; I do not know when he was born, or even where. I do have evidence that he came to London from Barbados, but whether this was his place of birth I do not know. He seems to have risen high in the ranks quite quickly; Giles after the American Civil War seems to have split his time between New York and London; when in New York, he seems to have left London in the hands of Aveline and Seneca. At some point, I do not know when, Seneca went over the Atlantic to help Giles in New York; Giles seems to have started splitting his time between East Coast and West Coast, eventually spending most of his time on the West Coast. The earliest record of the Aegidian Corporation is in New York in the late 1950s; in 1980 there is a legal record of transfer of controlling shares from Giles Scott, allegedly born in 1942, to Giles Scott, allegedly born in 1961. The first linking of Seneca with the company seems to have been at this time, first as Director or Vice-President of Eastern Operations and then as General Director or President; I have not been able to discover when the transition was made, although it was certainly made prior to 2001. That I was able to find even this much about it is due largely to the fact that the rise of Seneca in Aegidian seems closely linked to the increase of public action on the part of the corporation, and with the fame of Giles Scott as a savvy businessman. Most information available to the public about the business seems to be smokescreen -- some of it true but unimportant, some of it probably but unprovably false. At no point does Jolie seem to have been involved with Aegidian, although most of the other major players in this period are. Both Aveline and Elsbietka are names that occur on the small handful of company documents I have been able to find. But of Jolie there is no clear trace in history at all.

Historians, like everyone else, want to find the story. But in matters like this, most of the links are hidden, and all we have is a heap of facts, records of uncertain significance. That we have even this much is due to paper-based bureaucracy, which records its own doings with ceaseless self-regard; but it never tells us what we really want to know. In the end, every identifiable story is just a vein in an extraordinary bulk of uncertainty, and when we have no choice but to plunge our knives in at random, we are left with little more than a mess. Had I the time, perhaps more could be done; but my time is short, and the only goal I can afford is just to get the notable things down on the page.

Capitulum Nonum

The sun coming up next morning over the garden found Giles already sitting on the terrace, brooding over the world. He had a large leather-bound tome with him, for it was his custom to read before and during and after breakfast. But this day the book remained closed on the breakfast table. He was still there, and the book still closed, hours later when Jolie came to breakfast.

"Where is Seneca?" she asked as Marcos began setting the table.

"Seeing to business," said Giles in a vague way, scarcely stirring. "Elsbietka may be joining us at some point."

"Ah." It was very disdainful for a monosyllable. "I would have thought she had important things to do elsewhere."

"Everyone has important things to do elsewhere," said Giles, again in a vague way that made it clear his mind was elsewhere.

Jolie said nothing else as she filled her plate, and after several minutes of silence, Giles shook himself, turned away from the garden, and took his book in hand, without, however, opening it.

"A great deal on your mind?" Jolie said.

His eyes turned briefly toward her and he smiled slightly. "There is always a great deal on my mind," he said. "But yes, I have much to think about."

"This Siberian situation is getting serious, it seems."

"It is not," said Giles, "but it seems that however much I say it, no one believes it. This Ivan, whomever he may be, is hardly a matter of concern at all. It's merely a matter of timing."

"Perhaps, Gilles" said Jolie, raising a very lovely skeptical eyebrow, "but you cannot blame people for doubting when you sit and do nothing."

"Of course I can," said Giles. "I am Aegidius regardless of what anyone thinks I am doing. Do you remember back when I first came across you?"

Jolie put down her silverware and looked at him sidelong as though trying to guess his purpose in raising the question. "Of course I do," she said. "I was wolf-mad. You tracked me down and commanded me to be human, and then I was. And then you said you were Égide, or Gilles, or Giles...."

"...And you said I was English, and I said only in a sense. I wasn't speaking of the very beginning, though, but some of the conversations we used to have. I remember one in particular in which you said I only ruled because might makes right."

"As is still the case. As I recall you seemed displeased by the claim. But, as I said then, it is the way of things: force fait loi. The Age of Aegidius is built on the principle."

Giles shook his head vehemently. "No, Jolie, this is what you have never understood. I impose my will, mais force non fait pas loi; nécessité fait loi. I am merely necessity's executioner. If you had ever lived in the Age of Lykaios you would know the difference in your bones. What Lykaios did cannot be called law. It was something for which there is no word in civilized language. What I have accomplished is a different order of thing entirely. With the madness of the moon I have set limits to the madness of the moon; I have taken chaos and made it order. Now there is law."

"Yes," said Jolie, suddenly scornful. "Now there is law, and it is the will of Aegidius. Gilles commands and it is done. But what do you have us do? Eat breakfast on the terrace, play the businessman, talk and talk and talk, pretend we are the thing that we are not and pretend we are not the thing that we are. You call it order; it is imposed weakness. We are always stepping lightly; let a Wolf break a glass and Aegidius comes down on him. And why? Because you think of it as shameful, as if it were all some disease that must be quarantined. You are still the Dominican; you would have us all do penance for being Wolves."

"We are a disease, Jolie. We are morbid little cancer cells in the body of humanity; we have forgotten how to be human and have been seized by madness. But the time for penance seems to have passed us all by."

"And so we all sit around and do nothing."

"And what would you prefer? That we return to the days of Lykaios, with plunder and pillage?"

"Anything would be better than wasting away. I do nothing these days. Seneca does nothing. You do nothing." She looked at him angrily, then suddenly said, "Tell me, why have you not killed me yet?"

Giles smiled slightly and looked away. Jolie went on. "You know as well as I that have been undermining you for decades now, and that I am breaking away. I know you know it; you can never resist dropping hints. And yet you do nothing. Nothing except talk and drop hints. I knew a time when you killed Wolves for much less."

"Yes," said Giles, still smiling slightly and looking away into the distance. "But those were days when I was still putting necessity into place. Harsher deterrents were called for. And I was a weaker Wolf then, and did not know my strength as well as I do now."

"You are complacent. You simply sit and expect everyone to obey while you grow weak and they grow strong."

He turned his dark eyes back toward her, but the small, confident smile did not change. "I am the least complacent Wolf in the world, Jolie; much less complacent than you. Life and death with every breath."

"And yet here I am. And this Siberian situation. You are losing control of everything."

"Losing control to you?"

She shrugged. "It need not be so. I would not be averse to sharing the power.Together we could put this Ivan in his place. But I will take something, even if only by myself, over the nothing that you have been giving."

Giles laughed. "I admire your impertinence, Jolie-cherie, in generously offering me part of what is already mine. But I have no need for bargains with you. I have done nothing to you yet because you have done nothing to me yet. The most you have done is stir up some restlessness among your fellow Wolves, but that is their fault for being gullible. And perhaps I have also done nothing because I saw your potential on the very day we met. As I told Elsbietka then, you had untold promise. And you still do. Someday you may cast me down from the Throne of Wolves, Jolie, but, if so, that day is centuries away. You are clever, it is true, and have strength of will to sway Wolves and Primes of Wolves, but you are young and have only played the game under the benevolent rules of Aegidius. You do not know how to play when those rules are broken. To this point you have been at my side, however insubordinately. Walk away from me and you will be crushed."

"Words," said Jolie, "all words. I am tired of being bullied by boasts and coaxed by threats. They are just words." She rose and bent over the table to look him in the eye. "And you will find that I know how to play."

Giles simply smiled and looked back. There gazes were locked for several moments, but it was Jolie who looked away first. She straightened and walked back into the house. He watched her go, the small smile still on his face, and then, taking the book which had been in his hand through the entire conversation, opened it and began to read.

It was about half an hour later when Seneca and Elsbietka came out.

"Eric seems to have vanished," said Seneca as he sat down.

"I've no doubt," Giles said drily, and continued reading.

"I notice, too, that Jolie is not here."

Giles closed the book and looked at him sarcastically. "Your powers of observation are exceptional this morning, Sen," he said, also sarcastically. "Do you intend to go through the list of everyone you notice isn't here, or are you hinting at something?"

Seneca was unperturbed. "Is there a connection between the two?"

"For any two things, there is some connection between them. Are we now playing the game of vague questions?"

Elsbietka looked at Seneca and said, "If he's this sarcastic and uncooperative, it must be something important. What has Jolie been up to?"

Seneca glanced at Giles, who was still looking at the two of them sarcastically, then looked back at Elsbietka. "She has been planning a coup. So it has begun."

"Is this true?" she asked Giles sharply.

"Does Seneca have any reason to lie?"

"How long have you known?"

"That it was likely coming? A few decades now. But that she would go through with it more or less now -- a few days."

"And you did nothing?"

Giles put the book on the table forcefully enough that dishes rattled. "If another Wolf accuses me of doing nothing, it will be the last thing they say."

"What I do not understand," insisted Elsbietka, "is how she walked out of here alive if you knew what she was doing."

"She walked out of here alive because I knew what she was doing," said Giles. "The Wolves have known peace a bit too long. They are forgetting why it is necessary to obey me. And a regime of obedience is buit on the principle of the carefully selected deterrent. Jolie cannot harm me; let her have her little rebellion. At the right time we will crush it so spectacularly that Wolves will remember it for centuries."

"Ah," said Elsbietka. "That was why you brought up Charles Louis at the meeting. I wondered; it seemed somewhat excessive if you were simply putting Cotton in his place. Half the table was with us when we tracked Alain down, and they all saw Alain after you were done with him." She shook her head. "I never liked Jolie. It will be a pleasure to rip out her throat."

"I think Jolie might have some things to say about it first," Giles replied.

"So what is our plan?" Seneca asked. "I have difficulty believing you just intend to sit tight."

"I do intend just to sit tight," replied Giles. "Everything else I'll be doing by means of you; it's what I have you for. You will continue trying to uncover the whereabouts of this Ivan. Elsbietka will start preparing against Jolie."

"Gladly," said Elsbietka.

Giles shook his head at her. "Do not underestimate Jolie, Bitka. And do not move too quickly. Your task is to prepare. Jolie has her first moves already planned; do not let yourself be surprised by them."