Since the moon had been waning for some time, it was a dark night. A long, black limousine stopped at a lamplit street corner, and out of it stepped Charlotte and a rough-looking man. She looked around and saw another limousine slowly coming down the street, then nodded to the car she had stepped out of, which then drove off. When the second limousine pulled up, she got in and sat across from the ruddy-faced, beady-eyed Cotton.
"Are you sure you weren't followed?" he asked.
"Of course," she said contemptuously.
"One can never be too sure. And the Fifth Street safehouse was raided. You know that?"
"Of course," she said again, with the same note of contempt.
Cotton waited expectantly for her to say something else, but when she did not, he burst out, "Well, what is Jolie doing about this?"
"Does she need to do anything about it?"
"As long as He is breathing down our necks--my neck!--she had better be."
Charlotte looked idly at her fingernails as if they were a more interesting subject than Cotton's complaints. "She handled Elsbietka, didn't she?"
"Yes," said Cotton coldly. "After I had lost half a dozen Wolves. And all that did was shift our problem from Elsbietka to Seneca."
"And if we take Seneca out of the picture, he will just be replaced by Marcos, or Aveline, or someone else. So what would you have Jolie do?"
"There is only one thing to do," said Cotton, who was getting even more red-faced than usual. "What we set out to do in the first place."
Charlotte regarded him at length, her expression filled with as much contempt as her voice had been. Finally she spoke, "Jolie and I have been wondering when you will finally step up and do something yourself. We've made most of the arrangements to elude pursuit, we took care of Elsbietka, we seem to be expected to take Him out, and what have you done?"
"I've put all my Wolves at your disposal. I've bankrolled everything she's asked without question...."
"Yes, and did you think that we were somehow employees of yours, hired to carry out a revolution on your behalf, while you hunkered down to collect the benefits at the end?"
Cotton's expression went from angry to actively hostile, and he looked at Charlotte's bodyguard in the seat beside her as if measuring how much trouble the Wolf would be if Cotton reached over and strangled her. But he said, "What does our would-be Wolf-Queen want?"
"Not to be Wolf-Queen," Charlotte said. "But she is thinking that since you are expecting her to take care of Aegidius on her own, the least you could do is work harder to keep Seneca, Marcos, and all the others from interfering with that."
"Seneca, Marcos, and all the others? She doesn't ask much, does she?"
"If you wish, she'll take them and you can take Him," Charlotte said sweetly. "I think we would also find that a satisfactory arrangement. I certainly would prefer it; I saw what happened to Alain and Hugh. I'd rather risk your mind than my own. But Jolie is willing to make Him our special project, if only you will keep the others off for long enough that we can make some headway."
Cotton was silent for a moment as he looked out the window. "Very well," he said. "But I do not have the resources to do it for long."
"We know," said Charlotte maliciously. "But it will not take more than a couple of weeks. He will be in for a surprise or two, if Jolie can only get room to breathe."
The limousine returned to the corner at which it had picked her up; she looked down the street to see her own car waiting about a block away, and stepped out. The limousine pulled away, and as it did so she waited for her car to pull up. When it did not, she and her bodyguard exchanged frowning glances and cautiously approached it. The engine was running, but the car was empty and the doors were locked. There was a rustle behind them.
As Cotton's limousine pulled away, he was swearing under his breath. "Jolie will have to be taken care of before long," said Cotton.
His driver looked at him in the rearview mirror. "Do you want me to put someone on it now, or do you want to wait?"
"Wait," said Cotton. "If she really can do something about the Wolf-King, it will be better to have him out of the way first; and if Giles or Seneca puts an end to her, we can step up with clean hands." Then, suddenly: "What the hell is happening?"
A car had turned in front of the limousine and stopped at a stop sign, where it refused to move, while a car from the cross street had turned in to block the other lane. The driver threw the limousine into reverse, but the way behind had already been blocked. Cotton swore, and swore again when Seneca stepped out of one of the cars behind them.
What happened next happened very quickly. Cotton threw open the door and at the same time, there was no Cotton, only a great wolf-shaped darkness racing out into the night. A slight fraction of a blink after that there was no Seneca, only another wolf-like bit of night, more sleak, chasing after the first. There was no transition, no process; just as in a dream there are no fluid changes, but things become other things at once, so here. And the Wolves, too, were not like shaggy beasts. Standing still, you would have sworn them a trick of the night shadows, a darkness that fooled the eye into thinking a wolf or dog was there; perhaps you have had such an experience while out at night. But the Wolves, unlike those tricks of night, were really there, and this could be seen as they moved: too quick to be animal, they were too living to be shadow. They were darker than the night around them, but with eyes like cold red fire, and they moved smoothly in a quiet blur of darkness.
It could hardly, then, been more than a second after the opening of the door that the Cotton-wolf had dashed acrossed the street into a small alleyway, with the Seneca-wolf right at its heels. Down the alley they went and up the next street. To the right across that street was a large warehouse parking lot surrounded by chain-link, and the Cotton-wolf suddenly swerved and, with a great and impossible leap, was over the fence and rushing across the parking lot. The Seneca-wolf followed immediately, but the leap had gained Cotton a few yards, and as they crossed the parking lot and reached the warehouses and the great piles of crates surrounding them, Seneca began to move more cautiously. This gained Cotton a few feet more. Thus it was that Cotton turned a corner and, when Seneca turned it as well, although just a split second later, he had vanished.
Or had apparently vanished. Seneca continued stalking. Except for a little yellow lamp above an exit door down the way there was no light; everything was blackness and mazey piles of crates and debris looming in the faint light like great towers. Through this labyrinth the Seneca-wolf continued the silent hunt, moving more slowly, with smooth motions like a panther in the jungle, swinging its sleak head this way and that. Somewhere in the darkness Cotton waited, measuring each step of the other as he waited to spring. And spring he did. But whether he had made some prior noise too slight for human ear to hear, or had waited too long, or was not swift enough, the Seneca-wolf was ready for it, and instead of a swift and silent kill for the Cotton-wolf, the two rolled over, knocking over one of the towers of crates with a great crash. Over and over they turned, and when they stopped, Seneca was on top with his jaws locked onto Cotton's throat. The Cotton-wolf struggled, but the grip held. Seneca let go, and in another flicker of time, there were only two ordinary men there, one standing and looking down at the other, who lay on the ground staring upward with a pale, still face. Seneca took a small gun out of his pocket, fired repeatedly into Cotton's chest, and then walked away.
The whole chase had taken only a few minutes.
Seneca rejoined the other Wolves, who had taken down Cotton's driver, and the cars in which they came dispersed. "To the mansion, Marcos," he told his driver; "we have good news to report."
They had hardly gone more than a few blocks, however, when Seneca suddenly said, "Stop the car!"
On the side of the street, all alone, an enigmatic smile on his face, stood Giles Scott.
Seneca opened the door for him. "Lovely evening, Sen," Giles said as he got in.
"You should not be out alone," Seneca replied sharply.
The dark eyes flashed at him with something like sarcastic amusement and then they closed, bringing the thick and almost feminine black lashes to rest against the pale cheeks. "Well?" he said. "
Cotton is no longer a problem," said Seneca.
"Good," Giles replied. "And Charlotte?"
Seneca, who was still looking at Giles with a sort of sharpness in his eye, shook his head slowly. "We think she was meeting him tonight, but we seem to have missed her entirely."
"Ah, well," said Giles quietly, no expression on his face. "We are still ahead."
"And what are you doing all the way out here in the middle of the night?"
"I came to join in the fun," said Giles, his eyes still closed. They opened suddenly with their usual disconcerting gaze, and there was a trace of a smile around his mouth. "It looks like your efficiency has robbed me of any chance to play. But it is still very good news."
The two said nothing again on the way home.
If it was good news for Giles, it was bad news for Jolie, but she learned nothing of it until the sun was rising and Charlotte came stumbling in. The blonde woman was in considerable pain.
"We were ambushed," she said. "Cotton is dead, and I barely escaped with my life."
"You've broken your arm."
"Oh, it was not I who broke it, I assure you," Charlotte replied. "But it is healing already. Jolie, we can't simply let them pick us off one by one. We need something substantial."
Jolie said nothing, lost in thought.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Capitulum Undecimum
After Jolie's departure, Elsbietka hunted her, prowling the city each night with a pack of Wolves. Unlike wolves of true nature, Wolves of the moon are preternatural, creatures of shadow. They hunt silently, with ruthless devotion to their pursuit. If you ever are walking at night and they pass you in their pursuit, it is precisely the silence you will hear. The whole world shrinks away from them, hoping not to be noticed, and all grows still. Perhaps a sound or two escapes -- a rustle in the grass, the snapping of a twig, a creaking of branches in some sapling or bush as they brush past. Nothing more. The shadows around you will seem to flicker, not between light and dark, but between dark and darker, very subtly, so that you might have difficulty distinguishing it from some trick of the eyes. Then like a sighing of the wind they will pass, leaving nothing behind them but a cold knot of instinctual fear in your heavily beating heart. If, that is, they paid no attention to you and your heart still beats. Their very ruthlessness, however, may perhaps be your salvation, for when they seek a prey they do not turn aside unnecessarily for anything else. Just stay quiet and small, and hope that you are too unimportant for the attention of the Wild Hunt.
However ruthlessly Elsbietka hunted, however, Jolie evaded capture, as did Cotton and Charlotte. Each trail followed was already cold, each clue a thread that had already been carefully snapped, every safe house uncovered already abandoned. The hunts were not exactly fruitless. Here and there a lesser Wolf fell prey to Elsbietka, lagging behind for whatever reason, and Jolie's little rebellious band was eroded by one member. The Wolves Elsbietka did capture were shown no mercy, for while Elsbietka was gifted with intelligence, and strength of will, and even a sort of natural good humor, she had nothing of forgiveness or mercy in her. Like all the chief Primes of Aegidius, she was an old Wolf, but she was much older than Jolie or Cotton or Charlotte, all of whom became Wolves in the modern era. She knew more savage times, had done more savage things, and the cold, moonlit wolfishness inside her had worked its way very deeply into her heart. The captured Wolves were tortured for every lead and clue they could provide, and then beyond, until finally killed by Elsbietka herself, not in mercy, but simply so that they would no longer be a matter of concern. Giles had known exactly what he was doing in setting her rather than Seneca on the trail; her efficiency was extraordinary. Had it been led by a Wolf less cunning and prepared than Jolie, she would have destroyed the rebellion in a week.
Seneca was gone for several weeks, taking a number of Wolves with him, as he attempted both to remind the European packs of the Will of Aegidius and to discover anything that could be discovered about the new Siberian regime.
As for Giles himself, he shut himself up so that while Seneca was away hardly anyone even saw him. Elsbietka did. Returning in the early morning hours from her hunts she would often find him sitting on the balcony, deep in thought, watching the waning moon or staring into the shadows. She would make her reports, and he would nod, sometimes warning her to be careful, and then dismiss her, going back to his meditation on the moon or on the shadows.
So it went. It all changed quite drastically, however, when Seneca returned from his trip.
"The Europeans are holding," he said cheerfully. The cheerfulness seemed accentuated by his brightly colored vest and an extraordinarily bright yellow bowtie, which he somehow managed to wear as debonairly as he wore all his ties. "I had to put a few people in their proper places, but not much more; the worst troublemakers will no longer be a problem at all, and the rest will remember which Scion of Lykaios they should obey for at least a little while. The Siberians seem not to be interfering directly; I think they are cleaning up their own house before moving outward. But Elsbietka's first guess seems to have been right. All indications are that it is Krasnoyarsk doing the consolidating."
"If they are just going to consolidate," Elsbietka replied, "why did they tip their hand so early?"
Seneca shrugged. "You know how these things are. It's unlikely that all the Wolves are happy with the deposing of Vsesalevitch."
Giles, who had been gazing at the ceiling, brought his dark eyes down to bear on them both. "They will strike here first. The time to take over the European packs has passed. Nothing much can be gained from them at this point. They intended from the first either to move directly against me, or else to lure us onto their own turf."
"That seems risky," said Seneca.
"It was a likely course all along," said Giles, "but it is good to get confirmation. A war of Wolves is most efficiently fought as a war of assassination."
All three were quiet a moment. Then Seneca said, "How is the situation with Jolie coming along?"
"Not well," said Elsbietka, looking away. "I have been unable even to get close."
"I didn't expect you to," said Giles."It is fine. Jolie will always be a step ahead" -- at this Elsbietka set her jaw, but if Giles noticed it he did not show it -- "but the important thing now is to keep her moving until she makes the crucial mistake. It will be soon, I think." And at that he dismissed them both.
It was very late that night when Seneca called the mansion and got Marcos alone in the kitchen. "Tell Giles that he will want to see this himself." And he gave an address.
Marcos hung up the phone, turned, and was startled to find Giles leaning beside him with his elbow on the counter, as if he had been there for ages. "It's a dark night tonight, Marcos. Was that Bitka or Sen?"
"Seneca," said Marcos. "He said you would want to see this in person."
Giles sighed. "I was hoping it would be Bitka. It is a very dark night indeed. Make the car ready."
They both met up with Seneca outside a warehouse tucked away in a sort of large industrial park. A few of Seneca's Wolves kept watch on the entrances. "How badly will I not like this?" Giles asked.
"There is nothing about it to like," said Seneca, his face grim, as he threw open a door. The three stepped inside to see a warehouse floor littered with bodies.
"Fifteen," said Seneca, his face still grim. Marcos's face had taken on a similar expression.
Only Giles seemed unfazed; his pale, boyish face seemed as calm as ever it had as he strolled out among the bodies, his hands in his pockets. "Some of these were useful Wolves, " he said after a moment. "It is almost a pity to have lost them."
"It is worse," said Seneca, pointing to a body in the corner. Giles walked over, with Seneca and Marcos right behind him.
Giles looked down at the body a moment, then sighed, and crouched down beside. "Bitka," he said, "I told you not to underestimate her." He looked her over carefully, taking her hand and looking underneath the fingernails. "Very definitely Jolie's work, but Bitka caused some damage in return."
"And no heart," said Seneca, his voice and face still grim.
"Yes," said Giles. "It makes sense. These aren't the old days, when anyone could peel off with just any Wolves; to oppose the Will of Aegidius one needs Primes. And the easiest way for a Wolf to become Prime is to eat the heart of a Prime." He shook his head. "Jolie-cherie, that is cheating; they are supposed to do the killing themselves. Otherwise you get incompetent Primes."
"Eric has no doubt joined the ranks," Seneca said.
For the first time, Giles's expression changed, becoming very hard and cold. "If she killed Bitka simply so that Pretty Puppy could pretend at being important, she will learn to regret it in every cell of her body." The expression relaxed back into his usual calm. "But it would make more sense to share it out. She caught the most powerful Prime she had any chance of catching. She wouldn't waste such a rare opportunity."
He looked at the body again, closed his eyes, and sighed. "It is almost a pity. She never had the full scope of potential that Jolie had, but she was in every way a creature of strong mind and forceful will. Her kind is only found once every few centuries. She joined me shortly after Vsesalevich and I hunted down the last few Scions of Lykaios. We rolled back the savagery, started a new age, enforced the Will of Aegidius. And in all those centuries, she only tried to betray me and rebel against the Will of Aegidius twice. Such a combination of loyalty and competence is nearly unique. Almost a pity."
He rose suddenly. "Marcos, you are in charge here; clean it all up." Marcos nodded and turned away.
"We cannot let this go unanswered," said Seneca.
"You are quite right," said Giles, thinking. Then: "Fifth and Broadmoor."
"What?"
"It is a safehouse Jolie thinks I do not know about."
Seneca stared at him. "You knew this all along and said nothing?"
Giles shrugged. "The point was never for Elsbietka to catch Jolie, but to harry her. And if only Bitka had taken more precautions all would have been well. But, as you say, now there needs to be an answer. It is unlikely that you will find Jolie there; but you will certainly find something."
Seneca did not look happy, but said, "I will look into it immediately."
"Good," said Giles. "I will walk about a bit until Marcos has finished making arrangements."
It was almost dawn when Seneca, back at the mansion, found Giles gazing thoughtfully at the painting of St. Albert.
"We did not find Jolie," said Seneca. "But I think we've learned enough to pin down Cotton."
Giles nodded without turning his head. Then he suddenly said, "Lykaios saved my life, you know."
"Excuse me?" Seneca said, startled at the change of subject.
"During my journey I became ill. I would certainly not have lasted very long. But then came the Bite. Perhaps part of his joke; take the bookish, sick youth and throw him in and watch the other Wolves tear him apart. He always underestimated me. But I survived, and became an assassin, and then later became Prime when I killed the Red Varulv of Shula, whom even Lykaios feared." He was quiet a moment. "They both became recognized as saints," he said nodding at both of the paintings of the two Dominicans. "I doubt I would have; too little done in too short a life. And nothing of the sort can be guaranteed, anyway. But Lykaios stole even the possibility of it."
He was quiet again and Seneca, who did not know what to say in response to this, took this as an implicit command to leave. But as he reached the door, Giles said, "Seneca." It was quiet, but the force of it carried.
Seneca turned to find Giles's dark eyes shining coldly at him like some dark and frosty night. "Yes?"
"Jolie I wish to question. And, as much as I hate to say it, Pretty Puppy as well. And Charlotte. But Cotton has not been useful to me for some time, and there is nothing of importance he can say to me."
Seneca nodded. "I understand," he said, and left.
However ruthlessly Elsbietka hunted, however, Jolie evaded capture, as did Cotton and Charlotte. Each trail followed was already cold, each clue a thread that had already been carefully snapped, every safe house uncovered already abandoned. The hunts were not exactly fruitless. Here and there a lesser Wolf fell prey to Elsbietka, lagging behind for whatever reason, and Jolie's little rebellious band was eroded by one member. The Wolves Elsbietka did capture were shown no mercy, for while Elsbietka was gifted with intelligence, and strength of will, and even a sort of natural good humor, she had nothing of forgiveness or mercy in her. Like all the chief Primes of Aegidius, she was an old Wolf, but she was much older than Jolie or Cotton or Charlotte, all of whom became Wolves in the modern era. She knew more savage times, had done more savage things, and the cold, moonlit wolfishness inside her had worked its way very deeply into her heart. The captured Wolves were tortured for every lead and clue they could provide, and then beyond, until finally killed by Elsbietka herself, not in mercy, but simply so that they would no longer be a matter of concern. Giles had known exactly what he was doing in setting her rather than Seneca on the trail; her efficiency was extraordinary. Had it been led by a Wolf less cunning and prepared than Jolie, she would have destroyed the rebellion in a week.
Seneca was gone for several weeks, taking a number of Wolves with him, as he attempted both to remind the European packs of the Will of Aegidius and to discover anything that could be discovered about the new Siberian regime.
As for Giles himself, he shut himself up so that while Seneca was away hardly anyone even saw him. Elsbietka did. Returning in the early morning hours from her hunts she would often find him sitting on the balcony, deep in thought, watching the waning moon or staring into the shadows. She would make her reports, and he would nod, sometimes warning her to be careful, and then dismiss her, going back to his meditation on the moon or on the shadows.
So it went. It all changed quite drastically, however, when Seneca returned from his trip.
"The Europeans are holding," he said cheerfully. The cheerfulness seemed accentuated by his brightly colored vest and an extraordinarily bright yellow bowtie, which he somehow managed to wear as debonairly as he wore all his ties. "I had to put a few people in their proper places, but not much more; the worst troublemakers will no longer be a problem at all, and the rest will remember which Scion of Lykaios they should obey for at least a little while. The Siberians seem not to be interfering directly; I think they are cleaning up their own house before moving outward. But Elsbietka's first guess seems to have been right. All indications are that it is Krasnoyarsk doing the consolidating."
"If they are just going to consolidate," Elsbietka replied, "why did they tip their hand so early?"
Seneca shrugged. "You know how these things are. It's unlikely that all the Wolves are happy with the deposing of Vsesalevitch."
Giles, who had been gazing at the ceiling, brought his dark eyes down to bear on them both. "They will strike here first. The time to take over the European packs has passed. Nothing much can be gained from them at this point. They intended from the first either to move directly against me, or else to lure us onto their own turf."
"That seems risky," said Seneca.
"It was a likely course all along," said Giles, "but it is good to get confirmation. A war of Wolves is most efficiently fought as a war of assassination."
All three were quiet a moment. Then Seneca said, "How is the situation with Jolie coming along?"
"Not well," said Elsbietka, looking away. "I have been unable even to get close."
"I didn't expect you to," said Giles."It is fine. Jolie will always be a step ahead" -- at this Elsbietka set her jaw, but if Giles noticed it he did not show it -- "but the important thing now is to keep her moving until she makes the crucial mistake. It will be soon, I think." And at that he dismissed them both.
It was very late that night when Seneca called the mansion and got Marcos alone in the kitchen. "Tell Giles that he will want to see this himself." And he gave an address.
Marcos hung up the phone, turned, and was startled to find Giles leaning beside him with his elbow on the counter, as if he had been there for ages. "It's a dark night tonight, Marcos. Was that Bitka or Sen?"
"Seneca," said Marcos. "He said you would want to see this in person."
Giles sighed. "I was hoping it would be Bitka. It is a very dark night indeed. Make the car ready."
They both met up with Seneca outside a warehouse tucked away in a sort of large industrial park. A few of Seneca's Wolves kept watch on the entrances. "How badly will I not like this?" Giles asked.
"There is nothing about it to like," said Seneca, his face grim, as he threw open a door. The three stepped inside to see a warehouse floor littered with bodies.
"Fifteen," said Seneca, his face still grim. Marcos's face had taken on a similar expression.
Only Giles seemed unfazed; his pale, boyish face seemed as calm as ever it had as he strolled out among the bodies, his hands in his pockets. "Some of these were useful Wolves, " he said after a moment. "It is almost a pity to have lost them."
"It is worse," said Seneca, pointing to a body in the corner. Giles walked over, with Seneca and Marcos right behind him.
Giles looked down at the body a moment, then sighed, and crouched down beside. "Bitka," he said, "I told you not to underestimate her." He looked her over carefully, taking her hand and looking underneath the fingernails. "Very definitely Jolie's work, but Bitka caused some damage in return."
"And no heart," said Seneca, his voice and face still grim.
"Yes," said Giles. "It makes sense. These aren't the old days, when anyone could peel off with just any Wolves; to oppose the Will of Aegidius one needs Primes. And the easiest way for a Wolf to become Prime is to eat the heart of a Prime." He shook his head. "Jolie-cherie, that is cheating; they are supposed to do the killing themselves. Otherwise you get incompetent Primes."
"Eric has no doubt joined the ranks," Seneca said.
For the first time, Giles's expression changed, becoming very hard and cold. "If she killed Bitka simply so that Pretty Puppy could pretend at being important, she will learn to regret it in every cell of her body." The expression relaxed back into his usual calm. "But it would make more sense to share it out. She caught the most powerful Prime she had any chance of catching. She wouldn't waste such a rare opportunity."
He looked at the body again, closed his eyes, and sighed. "It is almost a pity. She never had the full scope of potential that Jolie had, but she was in every way a creature of strong mind and forceful will. Her kind is only found once every few centuries. She joined me shortly after Vsesalevich and I hunted down the last few Scions of Lykaios. We rolled back the savagery, started a new age, enforced the Will of Aegidius. And in all those centuries, she only tried to betray me and rebel against the Will of Aegidius twice. Such a combination of loyalty and competence is nearly unique. Almost a pity."
He rose suddenly. "Marcos, you are in charge here; clean it all up." Marcos nodded and turned away.
"We cannot let this go unanswered," said Seneca.
"You are quite right," said Giles, thinking. Then: "Fifth and Broadmoor."
"What?"
"It is a safehouse Jolie thinks I do not know about."
Seneca stared at him. "You knew this all along and said nothing?"
Giles shrugged. "The point was never for Elsbietka to catch Jolie, but to harry her. And if only Bitka had taken more precautions all would have been well. But, as you say, now there needs to be an answer. It is unlikely that you will find Jolie there; but you will certainly find something."
Seneca did not look happy, but said, "I will look into it immediately."
"Good," said Giles. "I will walk about a bit until Marcos has finished making arrangements."
It was almost dawn when Seneca, back at the mansion, found Giles gazing thoughtfully at the painting of St. Albert.
"We did not find Jolie," said Seneca. "But I think we've learned enough to pin down Cotton."
Giles nodded without turning his head. Then he suddenly said, "Lykaios saved my life, you know."
"Excuse me?" Seneca said, startled at the change of subject.
"During my journey I became ill. I would certainly not have lasted very long. But then came the Bite. Perhaps part of his joke; take the bookish, sick youth and throw him in and watch the other Wolves tear him apart. He always underestimated me. But I survived, and became an assassin, and then later became Prime when I killed the Red Varulv of Shula, whom even Lykaios feared." He was quiet a moment. "They both became recognized as saints," he said nodding at both of the paintings of the two Dominicans. "I doubt I would have; too little done in too short a life. And nothing of the sort can be guaranteed, anyway. But Lykaios stole even the possibility of it."
He was quiet again and Seneca, who did not know what to say in response to this, took this as an implicit command to leave. But as he reached the door, Giles said, "Seneca." It was quiet, but the force of it carried.
Seneca turned to find Giles's dark eyes shining coldly at him like some dark and frosty night. "Yes?"
"Jolie I wish to question. And, as much as I hate to say it, Pretty Puppy as well. And Charlotte. But Cotton has not been useful to me for some time, and there is nothing of importance he can say to me."
Seneca nodded. "I understand," he said, and left.
Monday, January 23, 2012
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.
(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."
"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."
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Capitulum Octavum
It was later that day that I met Giles Scott for the first time. I was shown by Marcos into a small office. It was not Giles's usual office, but a more cheerful one, apparently for guests, and I was the only one there for several minutes. There was a wooden desk in front of a large window, and also some chairs, and two walls were lined with books, some very old, but not so old as the books that lined his main office. In one corner of the room was a large standing globe; but the globe was not of the earth but of the moon. The wall that had neither books nor window was lined with cabinets and tables of matching mahogany, mostly filled with stones and curious knick-knacks from all over the world.
I bent down and looked at one of the stones on the table nearest to me. It was a pinkish stone, as big as large hen's egg. I say 'pinkish', but in fact it seemed to shift somewhat in hue depending on how exactly you looked at it.
"Opal," a quiet voice right next to me suddenly said, causing me to jump. "'It seems to blush and turn pale as if it had a soul.'"
It was Giles himself, of course, his dark eyes looking at me from his feverishly pale face with a disconcerting stare. His pallor somehow made both his slightly curly hair and his eyes seem darker than any hair and eyes should be. He wore a custom-tailored suit with a silver-striped tie and a black vest.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't hear you come in."
He seemed amused. "People rarely do. Won't you have a seat?"
As I sat down in the chair he indicated, he said, "Would you like something to drink?"
"No, thank you," I said. "I don't drink."
"I rarely drink myself," he said, sitting in the chair across the desk from me. "In general, I only drink to calm myself when I am in a state of excitement; and things excite me very rarely. Do you smoke?" He pulled a cigar case out of a drawer.
"No, sorry."
"No apology needed. I only keep them around for others, since I am not a smoker myself. No drinking, no smoking, no gambling." He smiled a smile that was marvellously ambiguous between pleasantness and sarcasm. "I am a man of very few vices."
He leaned back in his chair and regarded me for a moment with one of his unsettling gazes. Then he said, "You are a journalist?"
I hesitated. "In the strict sense, no. I am a historian."
"A much more respectable trade. In what do you specialize?"
"Superstitious practices in Greater Germany in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries."
"That must be a very large field of study."
I do not know what I had expected him to say, but it was not that. "Well, yes," I replied lamely.
"But I take it that it is not in your role as a historian that you are here today?"
I hesitated again. "Well, yes and no."
"The envelope suggested you had information on the recent murder of that girl out in the park."
"I do."
He waited patiently. At least, I suppose it was patience; his eyes seemed to bore into me.
"Perhaps I had better begin at the beginning," I felt myself blurt out.
"That is often the best way to begin," Giles agreed, with a slow nod of the head that managed again to achieve that remarkable borderline between affability and sarcasm.
"I first met Joanne in college; she was a journalism student and I, of course, was a history student. We became fast friends, and throughout our undergraduate years we were largely inseparable. After college, however, we went separate ways. We did keep in touch, with occasional correspondence, and we saw each other about once every other year, but that's about it.
"A few years back, however, Joanne came to me saying that she had uncovered something extraordinary, but that it needed to be investigated carefully before she did anything with it. She couldn't trust it with anyone else, she said, so she had come to me. Also, it had some relationship to my field of study. She had discovered, she said, a secret Wolf-cult with roots going back to medieval Germany. The members of this cult thought of themselves as werewolves." I paused here and waited for him to respond, but he said nothing, simply looking at me with the same patient but disconcerting look.
"How she came across it originally, I do not know. I also didn't make much of it at the time. But what she had was interesting from a historian's perspective: symbols, old names, fragments of stories. I promised to look into them and get back to her. And I did. Some of them I couldn't trace, some of them I could. But it was always very sketchy. I sent what I could find to her, and largely set it aside, except that part of me kept a look-out for anything in fourteenth- or fifteenth-century Germany that might indicate an interest in wolves. Whenever I did, I would mark it in case she would happen to need it, and when I had a fair stack of such things, I sent them to her. It didn't happen often.
"Then a little over a year ago she came to me in great agitation, saying she had stumbled on something even larger than she had thought. She brought me copies of everything she had gathered, which by this point was a quite considerable stack. She also had video footage that was somewhat startling: people vanishing suddenly into shadows, and the like. I didn't know what to make of it, but she said she did: there was indeed a cult of the Wolf, and its members did not merely think they were werewolves, but actually were."
I stopped and reflected. "If it had been anyone else," I said, "I would have laughed at it. But Joanne was no flighty individual, nor was she gullible. She had sense. I promised at least that I would look over what she had brought me and do some research on my own. She said that she had some leads that needed to be followed, and that she would be incommunicando for some time. I got two small packages from her after that, with additional materials; they had no return address, and the postmark was different in each case. That was all until I read the news report about her death, mauled by an animal 'while camping alone in the park'. In the meantime, though, I kept my promise. I went through everything she had gathered and did further research on my own. And I became convinced that she was right, at least in general. There were werewolves among them. And chief among them was Aegidius, sometimes Gide, sometimes Egidio, sometimes Gilles, sometimes Giles, called the Scot. You are he. But more than this, the day after she died I received a last package from her, with a full letter. I know about Eric, I know it all."
He smiled. "Oh, not all, I think. But you are right, I am Aegidius, and master of the Wolves."
"You admit it all?"
"Of course. Why wouldn't I? Seeing the mind of a mere human is not as easy for me as seeing the mind of a Wolf; it is full of shadows, not lit by the moon. But I have moonlight enough in me for the both of us. And it is enough for me to see that nothing I could say could convince you otherwise, and that you know enough that there is no use pretending. But still I would pretend, and still I would deny, were it not for one thing: you knew quite well that coming here would be the death of you. I would inevitably find out eventually, but you would have had more time; instead you willingly ran toward the end. Why was that?"
"I came here to ask a favor from you."
He smiled. It was cold, having nothing of the affability of his previous smile, but it still was sarcastic. "The prey asking the predator for a promise? And what would this be?"
"That you not kill me before you give Joanne the justice she deserves. That Eric, or whoever it was that killed her, die in turn."
His eyes locked mine, and he rose something. He still was somewhat boyish in appearance, and still sickly-pale, but somehow he was also a thing of majesty and terror. I had a sense of vertigo. It seemed as if I saw spread before me an extraordinarily vast panorama of centuries of night, filled with wars and destruction; with plagues and famines; with great Gothic churches, and monks in choir, and friars preaching crusade; with uprisings and revolts and revolutions; with great sailing ships and conquistador armies; with the rising and falling of civilizations. It all seemed too real, too sharp, too clear; for it was lit with the light of a vast and unwaning moon. He stepped around the desk and looked down at me as I, unable to break the gaze, began to tremble, knowing that this was an angel of death come for me.
But after holding me gaze for so long it seemed unbearable, he looked away, gazing as if at something very far off. "Non potest," he said softly to someone or something that was not me. "Non potest ab homine tolli quod sit rationalis, non totaliter; etiam in damnatis manet conscientia."
He looked down at me again; but his gaze, while as unsettling as ever, was no longer terrible. "You do not know," he said. "You do not know what it is to bear this quasi-morbus animorum, this second languor of nature. The moon-wolf in me recognizes you as a threat, and his strength is mingled with the madness of the moon. I cannot outlast him, and no matter how much I tried to prevent it, there would one day come a day in which my strength would give out, and you would die. But I promise you this: you will not die before I have killed the Wolf who killed Joanne." He looked away again. "Go now, before I waver in the decision."
And so I walked out. As I did, Seneca passed me, and he found Giles in a contemplative pose, looking down on the globe of the moon. "I was expecting for the interview, Sen," Giles said abstractedly, reaching out his hand to set the globe spinning.
"I apologize," said Seneca. "But it is Elsbietka. She has something important to tell you. She is in your study."
Giles nodded and Seneca left.
It was about ten minutes later when Giles entered his study to find Seneca sitting beside an agitated Elsbietka. She was holding an already opened envelope.
"Well," said Giles, "What is it?"
She said nothing, merely handing him the envelope. He pulled out a piece of paper and looked at it briefly. "This is written in blood," he said.
"Yes," Elsbietka said.
"And there is moonlight in it. One of yours?"
She nodded. "An acquaintance in Krasnoyarsk."
"The acquaintance in Krasnoyarsk?"
She nodded again. He turned back to the letter.
"'As one Scion of Lykaios to another, I felt obliged to inform you that something of yours was unfortunately destroyed. Ivan.'"
"You do know what this means?" said Seneca. "If he can convince others that he is a Scion of Lykaios -- well, you know what the legends say about the Scions of Lykaios."
Giles cast a sarcastic glance at him. "Yes, I know what the legends say; I made up half of them."
"Could it be true?"
"That he is a Scion of Lykaios?" Giles looked thoughtful. "It is impossible to rule out. Vsesalevich and I hunted down all the ones that were known, but Lykaios was ancient. How remarkable it would be to find out after all this time that I am still not the only one! But it is unlikely."
"Regardless, if he can get enough people to believe him -- and who in the age of Aegidius would dare claim it if he did not think he could get people to believe it?--it will be a problem."
"In fact," said Giles, handing the paper and envelope back to Elsbietka, "it changes nothing essential. But it does give some questions to ask." He looked at them both a moment, then said, "Elsbietka, please do me the honor of staying the night here" -- despite the 'please' it was not a request -- and we will talk more over breakfast tomorrow. In the meantime, I think I will take a walk alone in the garden."
I bent down and looked at one of the stones on the table nearest to me. It was a pinkish stone, as big as large hen's egg. I say 'pinkish', but in fact it seemed to shift somewhat in hue depending on how exactly you looked at it.
"Opal," a quiet voice right next to me suddenly said, causing me to jump. "'It seems to blush and turn pale as if it had a soul.'"
It was Giles himself, of course, his dark eyes looking at me from his feverishly pale face with a disconcerting stare. His pallor somehow made both his slightly curly hair and his eyes seem darker than any hair and eyes should be. He wore a custom-tailored suit with a silver-striped tie and a black vest.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't hear you come in."
He seemed amused. "People rarely do. Won't you have a seat?"
As I sat down in the chair he indicated, he said, "Would you like something to drink?"
"No, thank you," I said. "I don't drink."
"I rarely drink myself," he said, sitting in the chair across the desk from me. "In general, I only drink to calm myself when I am in a state of excitement; and things excite me very rarely. Do you smoke?" He pulled a cigar case out of a drawer.
"No, sorry."
"No apology needed. I only keep them around for others, since I am not a smoker myself. No drinking, no smoking, no gambling." He smiled a smile that was marvellously ambiguous between pleasantness and sarcasm. "I am a man of very few vices."
He leaned back in his chair and regarded me for a moment with one of his unsettling gazes. Then he said, "You are a journalist?"
I hesitated. "In the strict sense, no. I am a historian."
"A much more respectable trade. In what do you specialize?"
"Superstitious practices in Greater Germany in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries."
"That must be a very large field of study."
I do not know what I had expected him to say, but it was not that. "Well, yes," I replied lamely.
"But I take it that it is not in your role as a historian that you are here today?"
I hesitated again. "Well, yes and no."
"The envelope suggested you had information on the recent murder of that girl out in the park."
"I do."
He waited patiently. At least, I suppose it was patience; his eyes seemed to bore into me.
"Perhaps I had better begin at the beginning," I felt myself blurt out.
"That is often the best way to begin," Giles agreed, with a slow nod of the head that managed again to achieve that remarkable borderline between affability and sarcasm.
"I first met Joanne in college; she was a journalism student and I, of course, was a history student. We became fast friends, and throughout our undergraduate years we were largely inseparable. After college, however, we went separate ways. We did keep in touch, with occasional correspondence, and we saw each other about once every other year, but that's about it.
"A few years back, however, Joanne came to me saying that she had uncovered something extraordinary, but that it needed to be investigated carefully before she did anything with it. She couldn't trust it with anyone else, she said, so she had come to me. Also, it had some relationship to my field of study. She had discovered, she said, a secret Wolf-cult with roots going back to medieval Germany. The members of this cult thought of themselves as werewolves." I paused here and waited for him to respond, but he said nothing, simply looking at me with the same patient but disconcerting look.
"How she came across it originally, I do not know. I also didn't make much of it at the time. But what she had was interesting from a historian's perspective: symbols, old names, fragments of stories. I promised to look into them and get back to her. And I did. Some of them I couldn't trace, some of them I could. But it was always very sketchy. I sent what I could find to her, and largely set it aside, except that part of me kept a look-out for anything in fourteenth- or fifteenth-century Germany that might indicate an interest in wolves. Whenever I did, I would mark it in case she would happen to need it, and when I had a fair stack of such things, I sent them to her. It didn't happen often.
"Then a little over a year ago she came to me in great agitation, saying she had stumbled on something even larger than she had thought. She brought me copies of everything she had gathered, which by this point was a quite considerable stack. She also had video footage that was somewhat startling: people vanishing suddenly into shadows, and the like. I didn't know what to make of it, but she said she did: there was indeed a cult of the Wolf, and its members did not merely think they were werewolves, but actually were."
I stopped and reflected. "If it had been anyone else," I said, "I would have laughed at it. But Joanne was no flighty individual, nor was she gullible. She had sense. I promised at least that I would look over what she had brought me and do some research on my own. She said that she had some leads that needed to be followed, and that she would be incommunicando for some time. I got two small packages from her after that, with additional materials; they had no return address, and the postmark was different in each case. That was all until I read the news report about her death, mauled by an animal 'while camping alone in the park'. In the meantime, though, I kept my promise. I went through everything she had gathered and did further research on my own. And I became convinced that she was right, at least in general. There were werewolves among them. And chief among them was Aegidius, sometimes Gide, sometimes Egidio, sometimes Gilles, sometimes Giles, called the Scot. You are he. But more than this, the day after she died I received a last package from her, with a full letter. I know about Eric, I know it all."
He smiled. "Oh, not all, I think. But you are right, I am Aegidius, and master of the Wolves."
"You admit it all?"
"Of course. Why wouldn't I? Seeing the mind of a mere human is not as easy for me as seeing the mind of a Wolf; it is full of shadows, not lit by the moon. But I have moonlight enough in me for the both of us. And it is enough for me to see that nothing I could say could convince you otherwise, and that you know enough that there is no use pretending. But still I would pretend, and still I would deny, were it not for one thing: you knew quite well that coming here would be the death of you. I would inevitably find out eventually, but you would have had more time; instead you willingly ran toward the end. Why was that?"
"I came here to ask a favor from you."
He smiled. It was cold, having nothing of the affability of his previous smile, but it still was sarcastic. "The prey asking the predator for a promise? And what would this be?"
"That you not kill me before you give Joanne the justice she deserves. That Eric, or whoever it was that killed her, die in turn."
His eyes locked mine, and he rose something. He still was somewhat boyish in appearance, and still sickly-pale, but somehow he was also a thing of majesty and terror. I had a sense of vertigo. It seemed as if I saw spread before me an extraordinarily vast panorama of centuries of night, filled with wars and destruction; with plagues and famines; with great Gothic churches, and monks in choir, and friars preaching crusade; with uprisings and revolts and revolutions; with great sailing ships and conquistador armies; with the rising and falling of civilizations. It all seemed too real, too sharp, too clear; for it was lit with the light of a vast and unwaning moon. He stepped around the desk and looked down at me as I, unable to break the gaze, began to tremble, knowing that this was an angel of death come for me.
But after holding me gaze for so long it seemed unbearable, he looked away, gazing as if at something very far off. "Non potest," he said softly to someone or something that was not me. "Non potest ab homine tolli quod sit rationalis, non totaliter; etiam in damnatis manet conscientia."
He looked down at me again; but his gaze, while as unsettling as ever, was no longer terrible. "You do not know," he said. "You do not know what it is to bear this quasi-morbus animorum, this second languor of nature. The moon-wolf in me recognizes you as a threat, and his strength is mingled with the madness of the moon. I cannot outlast him, and no matter how much I tried to prevent it, there would one day come a day in which my strength would give out, and you would die. But I promise you this: you will not die before I have killed the Wolf who killed Joanne." He looked away again. "Go now, before I waver in the decision."
And so I walked out. As I did, Seneca passed me, and he found Giles in a contemplative pose, looking down on the globe of the moon. "I was expecting for the interview, Sen," Giles said abstractedly, reaching out his hand to set the globe spinning.
"I apologize," said Seneca. "But it is Elsbietka. She has something important to tell you. She is in your study."
Giles nodded and Seneca left.
It was about ten minutes later when Giles entered his study to find Seneca sitting beside an agitated Elsbietka. She was holding an already opened envelope.
"Well," said Giles, "What is it?"
She said nothing, merely handing him the envelope. He pulled out a piece of paper and looked at it briefly. "This is written in blood," he said.
"Yes," Elsbietka said.
"And there is moonlight in it. One of yours?"
She nodded. "An acquaintance in Krasnoyarsk."
"The acquaintance in Krasnoyarsk?"
She nodded again. He turned back to the letter.
"'As one Scion of Lykaios to another, I felt obliged to inform you that something of yours was unfortunately destroyed. Ivan.'"
"You do know what this means?" said Seneca. "If he can convince others that he is a Scion of Lykaios -- well, you know what the legends say about the Scions of Lykaios."
Giles cast a sarcastic glance at him. "Yes, I know what the legends say; I made up half of them."
"Could it be true?"
"That he is a Scion of Lykaios?" Giles looked thoughtful. "It is impossible to rule out. Vsesalevich and I hunted down all the ones that were known, but Lykaios was ancient. How remarkable it would be to find out after all this time that I am still not the only one! But it is unlikely."
"Regardless, if he can get enough people to believe him -- and who in the age of Aegidius would dare claim it if he did not think he could get people to believe it?--it will be a problem."
"In fact," said Giles, handing the paper and envelope back to Elsbietka, "it changes nothing essential. But it does give some questions to ask." He looked at them both a moment, then said, "Elsbietka, please do me the honor of staying the night here" -- despite the 'please' it was not a request -- and we will talk more over breakfast tomorrow. In the meantime, I think I will take a walk alone in the garden."
Monday, November 28, 2011
Capitulum Septimum
The Aegidian Building had been made to look innocuous and nondescript, and, as it sat on the edge of a small financial district, this meant that it was four stories of blank glass facade with nothing but its address above the door. A small fountain that stood out front was adorned with a statue that was a jumble of streaks and spheres. I have never learned what it represented; incoherence, perhaps. In any case, it was exactly like any number of modern sculptures adorning any number of financial buildings with sheer glassy walls in any number of financial districts in any number of cities across the world.
If you enter by the front door, you will find a small lobby with a marble floor, a security desk, and two elevator doors at the end; and that is as far as you will ever get. It is even possible that the elevator doors do not open at all. If you inquire about the Aegidian Corporation, you will be given a brochure that talks vaguely about what it calls 'international investment consultancy'. You will then be firmly told that you must leave.
As many such buildings do, however, it has a small parking garage, which also has a set of elevators. These elevators do not have buttons for floors, only a single keypad on the outside to open the door and another inside to operate the elevator; each floor has its own keycode combination. Up you go to whichever floor you choose, there to find a new security desk. The Aegidian Building is a very secure building.
On one of these secure floors is a conference room, and it was there that a meeting of Primes was held at about the time Giles, Seneca, and Jolie would usually have been sitting down to breakfast. There were several of them already there when the three entered. Giles went immediately to one of them, a dark-haired woman with a narrow, girlish face.
"Elsbietka," he said, kissing her on the cheek. "It is good that you have come; we will need your counsel. How are things out east?"
"As good as ever," she replied. Her voice was deep and slightly husky, but still a woman's voice.
Jolie, who was immediately behind, followed suit, and the two kissed each other on the cheek; but it was a very coolly perfunctory kiss on the part of both of them.
"It is good to see you," said Jolie with a tight smile.
"Jolie Corday! It is, indeed," said Elsbietka with an equally tight smile.
"We should have these meetings more often," said Giles cheerfully. "It is always good seeing friends." He sought out Seneca, who had moved to another small cluster of people on the other side of the room, and, catching his eye, gave him a look.
Seneca immediately stepped to the center of the room and cleared his throat. "We have a great deal discuss, so perhaps it is best if we get seated and begin."
The conference table was a long one with curved sides. Looking to the left of Giles we see Seneca, in a wine-colored sweater-vest and a matching bowtie. To his left is Elsbietka, her dark hair somewhat disordered. The delicate-looking woman who looks in her thirties, the one with the short blond hair, is Charlotte; she is actually a distant relative of Jolie. The square-jawed older-looking man to her left is Alexander. Across from Alexander, the woman with the very short curly hair, is Sarah. Next to her is her fraternal twin, Simon. The large, ruddy-faced man with small eyes is Cotton. And next to him, of course, is Jolie, looking perfect as always, which brings us back to Giles, still pale with the pallor the mind associates with terrible sickness.
For me to transcribe the early part of the meeting would be pointless, for it consisted simply of Seneca summarizing what you already know, with Jolie occasionally interjecting a comment and a question occasionally coming from one of the others. Through it all Giles spoke not a single word; he merely turned an attentive gaze to each Wolf in turn. And each Wolf, when those dark eyes rested on him or her, was unsettled by it.
"The major problem we face," said Seneca, summing up, "is our lack of information. Vsesalevich, as far as we know, is dead. Our sources in Yakutsk have gone silent, whether because they are dead or have thrown in their lot with the new regime, we do not know. And we still do not know what happened."
"Yakutsk was always of mostly symbolic importance, anyway," said Elsbietka. "Vsesalevich was most likely to be there, if he was anywhere. If my advice had been followed a few years ago" -- and here she shot a dark look at Jolie -- "we would have worked harder to get insiders in some of the fringe Packs."
"Past policies are under review," said Seneca drily. "At present our focus should be on plans."
"We will need to send people to investigate," said Alexander. "Dangerous work. And there are so many places to start -- Novosibirsk, Omsk, Krasnoyarsk...."
"I would recommend Krasnoyarsk," Elsbietka said. "The Packs of Krasnoyarsk Krai are quite large, relatively speaking, and notoriously restless."
Simon leaned forward. "And what do your sources say?"
She looked sharply at him. "What do you mean?"
"Come now," Sarah said. "We all know that you're not the kind to let things be; you've probably been working on getting information about the fringe Packs for years now."
"Agents in Krasnoyarsk, I wouldn't doubt," said Simon.
Giles looked with interest at Elsbietka, and she broke under the glance. "They have gone silent, too."
"I find it more and more disturbing that this could have all happened without our knowing anything of it," said Seneca.
"Wait," said Alexander, "don't we have one of their agents? The fellow in England?"
"No," said Giles quietly, the first word he had spoken since the meeting began. "We do not have him."
"Why?" asked Cotton with outrage. "Surely he didn't escape?"
"No," said Giles, "he didn't escape. I killed him."
The silence at the table was very deep; the quiet matter-of-factness of the way in which Giles had stated it had, I think, as much to do with its impact as the statement itself. After a few minutes, Cotton said, "But it was full moon." He perhaps meant it to sound incredulous; but it came out as little more than a broken whisper.
"Yes," said Giles, suddenly amused. "It was full moon." He leaned forward and looked around the table, amusement still on his face. "He was a Prime, and it was full moon, and I ripped the moonlight out of his soul, and I tore his heart out of his chest, and he died." He leaned back suddenly. "You are all young," he said, "very young. What, after all, do you know of Lykaios? He was dead long before you received the Bite, long before any of you were born. And thus I can see how it would be tempted to think that all the stories about how Lykaios was called the Invincible, and how I killed him under full moon, were just tall tales, or maybe stores with some grain of truth that grew in the telling over centuries. Particularly since it must seem so very long ago, a legend from out of the hazy mists of time. But I did beat the unbeatable Wolf, the one who had lived so long that he could not even remember his original name, the one every Wolf of the day feared; and the moon was full and bright that night. And I killed this one, too, during full moon.
"Or perhaps you believed the story, but thought that it was so long ago that I had forgotten how I did it, or that it was a unique happening resulting from some freak of fortune. After all, the stories all say that only one Prime has ever been killed at full moon. But there have been others; Lykaios was just the only one worth mentioning. But in this case you can confirm it, if any doubt lingers. Ask Aveline, or Roysa, or this newly minted Wolf, Eric, who comes to us courtesy of some no-name renegade. They left me alone in a room with him, and he was alive; they returned, and he was dead."
The others at the table shifted uneasily in their seats. After an uncomfortable minute or two, Cotton cleared his throat and tried again. "Perhaps it would have been better to have kept him alive; we could have extracted further information from him."
Everyone in the room knew that the event was a sign of the yawning chasm between Giles on the one hand and all the other Primes on the other; everyone knew that Giles had raised it as a banner of his superiority, an emblem of the Wolf-King, a reminder of their place. And thus to everyone's ears this attempt to treat an almost unthinkable action expressing almost unthinkable power as a mere prudential miscalculation sounded as limp as his previous protest. But Giles simply shook his head.
"I stole the moonlight inside of him; I extracted everything he had to tell. It is good, however, that the point has been raised. For I am Aegidius, Death at Full Moon, Scion and Slayer of the Invincible Wolf, the Wolf who can do what no other Wolf has ever found possible, and I assure you," putting his hand on his heart, "that in the conflict to come I will win. I want to be very clear about that. I do not promise comfort and ease, but I promise you that I will not be outmaneuvered or outpowered by any Prime now living. I am beyond mere Primacy. Some of you are young enough, or came to know me late enough, that you only know this by rumor. But there are Wolves who know it. Jolie, for instance." He turned and looked at her; she was looking at her hands.
"Do you remember, Jolie, the time when we hunted down that rebel Pack in the Franche-Comté? You know, the one led by the Wolf who killed Charles Louis outside Saint-Nizier -- what was his name? Hugh, I think?"
"No," said Jolie, still looking at her hands, "it was Alain; Hugh was his brother."
"We made them pay with terror before they died, didn't we?"
"Yes," said Jolie, still looking at her hands.
He leaned back, his face still full of amusement. "But this is no time for old war stories." He rose to his feet. "As Seneca noted, information is our primary concern. Get me information about the Pack of Krasnoyarsk Krai, or anything else that might be of use!" He looked down at Jolie. "Will you be returning to the Manor with us?"
She finally looked up from her hands. "No," she said, "Cotton and I have business to discuss on this renegade Wolf problem."
Giles nodded and smiled and took his leave.
In the elevator, Seneca asked, "Did you discover anything?"
"Of course," said Giles cheerfully. "There is nothing so effective as getting people who hate each other in one room and then having them threatened by a notorious killer. Cotton certainly, and Charlotte probably, are with Jolie; Elsbietka doesn't have any inkling because Jolie wouldn't trust her to keep quiet, and rightly so, she would gladly prefer a chance of killing Jolie to joining with her any day of the week. The rest are various shades of in-between, waiting to see how things tip."
"Does Jolie have any idea that we know? That last bit was heavy-handed."
"Does it matter? If she has any sense -- and she does -- she has been taking that possibility into account from the beginning. But you are quite right; I overdid it. Even after centuries I still can't resist giving that last little jab."
If you enter by the front door, you will find a small lobby with a marble floor, a security desk, and two elevator doors at the end; and that is as far as you will ever get. It is even possible that the elevator doors do not open at all. If you inquire about the Aegidian Corporation, you will be given a brochure that talks vaguely about what it calls 'international investment consultancy'. You will then be firmly told that you must leave.
As many such buildings do, however, it has a small parking garage, which also has a set of elevators. These elevators do not have buttons for floors, only a single keypad on the outside to open the door and another inside to operate the elevator; each floor has its own keycode combination. Up you go to whichever floor you choose, there to find a new security desk. The Aegidian Building is a very secure building.
On one of these secure floors is a conference room, and it was there that a meeting of Primes was held at about the time Giles, Seneca, and Jolie would usually have been sitting down to breakfast. There were several of them already there when the three entered. Giles went immediately to one of them, a dark-haired woman with a narrow, girlish face.
"Elsbietka," he said, kissing her on the cheek. "It is good that you have come; we will need your counsel. How are things out east?"
"As good as ever," she replied. Her voice was deep and slightly husky, but still a woman's voice.
Jolie, who was immediately behind, followed suit, and the two kissed each other on the cheek; but it was a very coolly perfunctory kiss on the part of both of them.
"It is good to see you," said Jolie with a tight smile.
"Jolie Corday! It is, indeed," said Elsbietka with an equally tight smile.
"We should have these meetings more often," said Giles cheerfully. "It is always good seeing friends." He sought out Seneca, who had moved to another small cluster of people on the other side of the room, and, catching his eye, gave him a look.
Seneca immediately stepped to the center of the room and cleared his throat. "We have a great deal discuss, so perhaps it is best if we get seated and begin."
The conference table was a long one with curved sides. Looking to the left of Giles we see Seneca, in a wine-colored sweater-vest and a matching bowtie. To his left is Elsbietka, her dark hair somewhat disordered. The delicate-looking woman who looks in her thirties, the one with the short blond hair, is Charlotte; she is actually a distant relative of Jolie. The square-jawed older-looking man to her left is Alexander. Across from Alexander, the woman with the very short curly hair, is Sarah. Next to her is her fraternal twin, Simon. The large, ruddy-faced man with small eyes is Cotton. And next to him, of course, is Jolie, looking perfect as always, which brings us back to Giles, still pale with the pallor the mind associates with terrible sickness.
For me to transcribe the early part of the meeting would be pointless, for it consisted simply of Seneca summarizing what you already know, with Jolie occasionally interjecting a comment and a question occasionally coming from one of the others. Through it all Giles spoke not a single word; he merely turned an attentive gaze to each Wolf in turn. And each Wolf, when those dark eyes rested on him or her, was unsettled by it.
"The major problem we face," said Seneca, summing up, "is our lack of information. Vsesalevich, as far as we know, is dead. Our sources in Yakutsk have gone silent, whether because they are dead or have thrown in their lot with the new regime, we do not know. And we still do not know what happened."
"Yakutsk was always of mostly symbolic importance, anyway," said Elsbietka. "Vsesalevich was most likely to be there, if he was anywhere. If my advice had been followed a few years ago" -- and here she shot a dark look at Jolie -- "we would have worked harder to get insiders in some of the fringe Packs."
"Past policies are under review," said Seneca drily. "At present our focus should be on plans."
"We will need to send people to investigate," said Alexander. "Dangerous work. And there are so many places to start -- Novosibirsk, Omsk, Krasnoyarsk...."
"I would recommend Krasnoyarsk," Elsbietka said. "The Packs of Krasnoyarsk Krai are quite large, relatively speaking, and notoriously restless."
Simon leaned forward. "And what do your sources say?"
She looked sharply at him. "What do you mean?"
"Come now," Sarah said. "We all know that you're not the kind to let things be; you've probably been working on getting information about the fringe Packs for years now."
"Agents in Krasnoyarsk, I wouldn't doubt," said Simon.
Giles looked with interest at Elsbietka, and she broke under the glance. "They have gone silent, too."
"I find it more and more disturbing that this could have all happened without our knowing anything of it," said Seneca.
"Wait," said Alexander, "don't we have one of their agents? The fellow in England?"
"No," said Giles quietly, the first word he had spoken since the meeting began. "We do not have him."
"Why?" asked Cotton with outrage. "Surely he didn't escape?"
"No," said Giles, "he didn't escape. I killed him."
The silence at the table was very deep; the quiet matter-of-factness of the way in which Giles had stated it had, I think, as much to do with its impact as the statement itself. After a few minutes, Cotton said, "But it was full moon." He perhaps meant it to sound incredulous; but it came out as little more than a broken whisper.
"Yes," said Giles, suddenly amused. "It was full moon." He leaned forward and looked around the table, amusement still on his face. "He was a Prime, and it was full moon, and I ripped the moonlight out of his soul, and I tore his heart out of his chest, and he died." He leaned back suddenly. "You are all young," he said, "very young. What, after all, do you know of Lykaios? He was dead long before you received the Bite, long before any of you were born. And thus I can see how it would be tempted to think that all the stories about how Lykaios was called the Invincible, and how I killed him under full moon, were just tall tales, or maybe stores with some grain of truth that grew in the telling over centuries. Particularly since it must seem so very long ago, a legend from out of the hazy mists of time. But I did beat the unbeatable Wolf, the one who had lived so long that he could not even remember his original name, the one every Wolf of the day feared; and the moon was full and bright that night. And I killed this one, too, during full moon.
"Or perhaps you believed the story, but thought that it was so long ago that I had forgotten how I did it, or that it was a unique happening resulting from some freak of fortune. After all, the stories all say that only one Prime has ever been killed at full moon. But there have been others; Lykaios was just the only one worth mentioning. But in this case you can confirm it, if any doubt lingers. Ask Aveline, or Roysa, or this newly minted Wolf, Eric, who comes to us courtesy of some no-name renegade. They left me alone in a room with him, and he was alive; they returned, and he was dead."
The others at the table shifted uneasily in their seats. After an uncomfortable minute or two, Cotton cleared his throat and tried again. "Perhaps it would have been better to have kept him alive; we could have extracted further information from him."
Everyone in the room knew that the event was a sign of the yawning chasm between Giles on the one hand and all the other Primes on the other; everyone knew that Giles had raised it as a banner of his superiority, an emblem of the Wolf-King, a reminder of their place. And thus to everyone's ears this attempt to treat an almost unthinkable action expressing almost unthinkable power as a mere prudential miscalculation sounded as limp as his previous protest. But Giles simply shook his head.
"I stole the moonlight inside of him; I extracted everything he had to tell. It is good, however, that the point has been raised. For I am Aegidius, Death at Full Moon, Scion and Slayer of the Invincible Wolf, the Wolf who can do what no other Wolf has ever found possible, and I assure you," putting his hand on his heart, "that in the conflict to come I will win. I want to be very clear about that. I do not promise comfort and ease, but I promise you that I will not be outmaneuvered or outpowered by any Prime now living. I am beyond mere Primacy. Some of you are young enough, or came to know me late enough, that you only know this by rumor. But there are Wolves who know it. Jolie, for instance." He turned and looked at her; she was looking at her hands.
"Do you remember, Jolie, the time when we hunted down that rebel Pack in the Franche-Comté? You know, the one led by the Wolf who killed Charles Louis outside Saint-Nizier -- what was his name? Hugh, I think?"
"No," said Jolie, still looking at her hands, "it was Alain; Hugh was his brother."
"We made them pay with terror before they died, didn't we?"
"Yes," said Jolie, still looking at her hands.
He leaned back, his face still full of amusement. "But this is no time for old war stories." He rose to his feet. "As Seneca noted, information is our primary concern. Get me information about the Pack of Krasnoyarsk Krai, or anything else that might be of use!" He looked down at Jolie. "Will you be returning to the Manor with us?"
She finally looked up from her hands. "No," she said, "Cotton and I have business to discuss on this renegade Wolf problem."
Giles nodded and smiled and took his leave.
In the elevator, Seneca asked, "Did you discover anything?"
"Of course," said Giles cheerfully. "There is nothing so effective as getting people who hate each other in one room and then having them threatened by a notorious killer. Cotton certainly, and Charlotte probably, are with Jolie; Elsbietka doesn't have any inkling because Jolie wouldn't trust her to keep quiet, and rightly so, she would gladly prefer a chance of killing Jolie to joining with her any day of the week. The rest are various shades of in-between, waiting to see how things tip."
"Does Jolie have any idea that we know? That last bit was heavy-handed."
"Does it matter? If she has any sense -- and she does -- she has been taking that possibility into account from the beginning. But you are quite right; I overdid it. Even after centuries I still can't resist giving that last little jab."
Friday, November 25, 2011
Capitulum Sextum
Giles stood beside his desk, lost in thought, when Seneca entered the room with a briefcase in hand.
"I don't know what happened to Eric, but he is not at all communicative," Seneca said, setting the briefcase beside his customary chair.
The great Wolf seemed not to hear. After a moment he shook himself and said, "Brandy?"
"Please," said Seneca as he sat down. Giles filled two glasses and handed him one, downing the other all at once, still apparently wrapped up in his thoughts. Seneca contemplated him for a moment. "So, I take it that this turn of events means Vsesalevich is dead?"
"If so," said Giles, "that would almost be a pity. He was older even than I, by perhaps as many as three centuries, and unless there are any hiding out in obscure corners of the world, he and I were the last of the old great Wolves, those who
had achieved Primacy in the bad old days of the Warlords, who had held our own amidst the terrors of the age of Lykaios. But it is always difficult to tell with Vsesalevich; he has faked his death before. Many of my early memories as a Wolf under a Lykaios were of endless searching for Vsesalevich, who had supposedly died but of whom Lykaios had heard rumors that he was still alive. And, of course, they were true, although Lykaios never found him. I did, after Lykaios's death, and, having put the fear of Aegidius into him, I offered him a deal. Together we hunted down all the other Scions of Lykaios, every rival Prime who did not bend the knee; it was the beginning of the order of things under which you have lived your entire life. You cannot imagine the change that it wrought; he and I alone were left to know how much order and civilization we had created out of chaos and destruction. We brought an end to the warring of little Packs and welded them together with terror and death and force of will. So much has changed."
He poured himself another brandy and downed it again. "No, you can never tell with Vsesalevich. But we do know that he is no longer in control, whether it is because he is dead or because he is hiding."
"You are thinking of the fact that they attacked you at full moon?"
"Among other things. They knew full well that they could not seriously harm me. Only two possible motives present themselves: they did it simply to declare war in a showy way, or they were attempting to test the legend of Aegidius, to see how dangerous I really am. Vsesalevich would never be so incautious as to declare war, even if he had grown so mad as to wage it; he would have begun it at once by trying to assassinate me at new moon, quickly and in a surprise attack. I had always prepared for such an eventuality, in fact. And Vsesalevich, of all people, needed no tests to know what I could do. It is a distinctive style; a new player is playing the game of life and death among the Primes. And he wants me to know it. Silver bullets! Can there be any more showy and gaudy attempt to make a statement? The Island is practically littered from one end to another with rowan; a quickenbeam spear or stake would do at least as much damage a little silver bullet, with none of the hassle of going around Britain with distinctive and thus traceable weaponry and ammunition. But the silver bullet catches the attention; it is not a stealth assassin's weapon but a flaunting of one's intent to kill in a language that cannot be mistaken.
"And four relatively inexperienced, relatively weak Primes! They had no way of knowing beforehand that there would only be two Primes, not three, and yet they went four against three in a frontal assault on our own territory. It was a test, to make sure that I am really what the legends say, the Wolf of Wolves, the Full Moon Killer, the Slayer of the Invincible Wolf. It was a boast and a test; it was a challenge to me." He leaned against the desk and folded his arms, and, cocking his head, looked at Seneca.
"It goes to show," said Seneca with a smile, "that you should perhaps have listened to my advice and taken someone with a bit more experience than Eric. Four you could handle, but what if they had managed more?"
"Hmmm," Giles said, looking down at the floor with a peculiarly thoughtful expression on his face. "Hic lupus nuper additus flere dum parat ululat," he said. He suddenly turned an unsettling gaze on the other Wolf. "Tell me, Sen, what happens when the Bite is given to someone who is already a Wolf?"
Seneca was startled by the question. "I suppose I don't know," he said. "Nothing, I would guess."
"I have known it to happen. It provides no greater share of lunacy or lupinity, but it does give one the delirious and feverish symptoms of the original Bite. They dissipate much more quickly than the original symptoms, though."
Seneca steepled his fingers. "You are certain that he was already a Wolf?"
"Certainly certain. Indeed, even before the quick recovery it was a likely possibility. Surely you recall the anomalies in his original story?"
"I remember it being quite incoherent in parts. To be sure, the behavior of the Wolf was odd, but you know that the shock and trauma of the Bite can disorient memory as everything else."
"To be sure; that was a slim possibility of that -- until the swift recovery. But it was always slim, I think. The story we were told certainly had true elements, but the actual behavior of the Wolf was incomprehensible, even allowing for distortion of memory. Any Wolf experienced and clever enough that neither you nor Jolie could track it down would have to be quite impressive. But the Wolf of the story was more cinematic beast than real-life Wolf, all cat-and-mouse gameplaying and horror-movie stereotype, and nothing that one would expect from any kind of impressive Prime. It simply made no sense. Surely, setting aside all speculation, however well-founded, you have suspicions that there is something not quite right with him?"
"I have better than suspicions," said Seneca with a small smile, reaching for the briefcase. As he opened it, he said, "We have several times in the past few weeks been approached by a reporter who wanted an interview with Giles Scott; we put him off, in accordance with the usual policy. But the day after you had left for England, he showed up at Aegidian headquarters again, this time with a package that he insisted be given to me or to you." He pulled a large manila envelope out of the briefcase and handed it to Giles, who took it and opened it.
Inside there was a note and a folder of documents. The folder was marked, in a neat and cautious hand, "JOANNE SOMMERS." Giles leafed through some of the papers and photographs inside and frowned. Then he looked at the note.
"I have information of considerable importance, and request an audience with Aegidius himself." He put the folder and note back into the manila envelope and carefully put the envelope on the desk. "You know how I feel about reporters," he said, "but your reporter may need some reward for his perseverance."
"I already took the liberty of scheduling a tentative appointment tomorrow." Seneca put the briefcase back on the floor beside the chair and leaned back, steepling his fingers again. After a thoughtful silence he said, "The man has always made me uneasy for some reason, but seeing the content of that folder simply floored me. Can it really be the case that Eric is a Sakhan plant?"
Giles shook his head. "That possibility had to be ruled out, but I think we can, in fact, rule it out. For the longest time I was baffled by one question with regard to Pretty Puppy: was he stupid or was he merely pretending to be stupid? After having spent time with him, I think we can safely say that the answer is both." He smiled wolfishly. "What is more, even though he was a Wolf before the night his supposed Bite, he still bears all the unmistakeable features of the newly minted. We both know that it would be foolish to think the Siberians would plant as a spy someone with no experience and no ability to do play the game. Even the amateurs in Sakha and Krosnayarsk Krai play a cunning game."
"Are you absolutely sure that he is not, though? The Siberians have always been good at hiding their minds."
"Not from me. Moon speaks to moon for the Wolf with the mind to hear. I cannot read the heart, but sooner or later anything in the heart comes to the surface, and in all my experience there have only been four Wolves with the ability to hide even the surface of their minds from me for any serious length of time: Lykaios, and Vsesalevich, and Jolie, and you. Maybe Aveline on her best day. Lykaios, and perhaps Vsesalevich, is dead, and neither Vsesalevich, nor you, nor Jolie, nor Aveline could conceivably do it for the extended length of time our hapless Actaeon, our Pretty Puppy, would have had to do it on the plane rides to the Island and back. If Pretty Puppy is such a cunning and powerful Wolf that he can jaunt in here without a care, outmatch you, Jolie, and Vsesalevich, but do it so cleverly as to hide behind a flawless facade of Pretty-Puppiness for endless hours despite my provocations of him, then I will eat my tie and surrender. No, no, no! I would not believe it if Cato insisted on it, or if it were spoken with lightning and thunder by the Sybil herself. At the same time, however, and for the same reason, he cannot be working alone. Which brings us to the most serious problem that faces us, far more serious than this Siberian kerfuffle has yet shown itself to be. What was Jolie doing while I was away?"
Seneca narrowed his eyes and leaned forward. "Nothing much beyond talking to a number of people. Officially she was still investigating this renegade Wolf situation."
Giles nodded. "It is a good excuse to talk to people. I would not be surprised if that were the reason behind this whole renegade Wolf story."
"You do realize what this means?"
"No, and neither do you. The single most important question for us right now is this: Is Jolie working with the Siberians, or is it just something that came up coincidentally?"
"It seems too convenient for coincidence."
"Come now, Sen. You know that if you were planning a coup, you would be able to make such excellent use of any coincidence that no one looking from the outside would be able to tell that you had not planned it that way. And, with all respect to you, Jolie is better at this than you are; her experience exceeds yours by a couple of centuries."
Seneca sat back again, discontentedly. "Unless you force it out of her, we will need time to get the answer to your question. And that ties our hands with regard to her."
Giles took Seneca's brandy glass and refilled it. "Precisely, he said as he handed it back. "Jolie is the more serious problem, but right now the game with her is one of patience and secrecy. Let her make the first slip, before she has any indication that we know what's happening. Keep a discreet eye on her, but I really think you should focus on the Siberian situation."
"We will need to reinforce Giuseppe," Seneca said, taking a sip. "He has always been the weak link in the triarchy, propped up on one side by us and on the other side by Vsaselevich. With Vsaselevich gone, he will lose control quickly; if any news of this has gotten out, half the Packs of Europe are probably already starting to break away. That's not the most important thing, but it is the most urgent. The most important thing is to find out what we can about what went on in Yakutsk to cause the problem. Perhaps it's time for the Aegidian Corporation to make an international tour of its overseas branches. They will need to be reminded of the importance of loyalty to the Aegidian mission. I'll head out for that in a few days. But we should send Giuseppe a back-up of Primes and reliable non-Primes immediately."
"I have already made the arrangements. The rest I leave in your capable hands." Giles moved around his desk to sit in his chair. As he sat back he said, "And Sen -- don't be too hard on Jolie; someday you, too, will find you have to scratch the itch and answer the question of whether you have grown enough to outmatch Aegidius."
"I don't know what happened to Eric, but he is not at all communicative," Seneca said, setting the briefcase beside his customary chair.
The great Wolf seemed not to hear. After a moment he shook himself and said, "Brandy?"
"Please," said Seneca as he sat down. Giles filled two glasses and handed him one, downing the other all at once, still apparently wrapped up in his thoughts. Seneca contemplated him for a moment. "So, I take it that this turn of events means Vsesalevich is dead?"
"If so," said Giles, "that would almost be a pity. He was older even than I, by perhaps as many as three centuries, and unless there are any hiding out in obscure corners of the world, he and I were the last of the old great Wolves, those who
had achieved Primacy in the bad old days of the Warlords, who had held our own amidst the terrors of the age of Lykaios. But it is always difficult to tell with Vsesalevich; he has faked his death before. Many of my early memories as a Wolf under a Lykaios were of endless searching for Vsesalevich, who had supposedly died but of whom Lykaios had heard rumors that he was still alive. And, of course, they were true, although Lykaios never found him. I did, after Lykaios's death, and, having put the fear of Aegidius into him, I offered him a deal. Together we hunted down all the other Scions of Lykaios, every rival Prime who did not bend the knee; it was the beginning of the order of things under which you have lived your entire life. You cannot imagine the change that it wrought; he and I alone were left to know how much order and civilization we had created out of chaos and destruction. We brought an end to the warring of little Packs and welded them together with terror and death and force of will. So much has changed."
He poured himself another brandy and downed it again. "No, you can never tell with Vsesalevich. But we do know that he is no longer in control, whether it is because he is dead or because he is hiding."
"You are thinking of the fact that they attacked you at full moon?"
"Among other things. They knew full well that they could not seriously harm me. Only two possible motives present themselves: they did it simply to declare war in a showy way, or they were attempting to test the legend of Aegidius, to see how dangerous I really am. Vsesalevich would never be so incautious as to declare war, even if he had grown so mad as to wage it; he would have begun it at once by trying to assassinate me at new moon, quickly and in a surprise attack. I had always prepared for such an eventuality, in fact. And Vsesalevich, of all people, needed no tests to know what I could do. It is a distinctive style; a new player is playing the game of life and death among the Primes. And he wants me to know it. Silver bullets! Can there be any more showy and gaudy attempt to make a statement? The Island is practically littered from one end to another with rowan; a quickenbeam spear or stake would do at least as much damage a little silver bullet, with none of the hassle of going around Britain with distinctive and thus traceable weaponry and ammunition. But the silver bullet catches the attention; it is not a stealth assassin's weapon but a flaunting of one's intent to kill in a language that cannot be mistaken.
"And four relatively inexperienced, relatively weak Primes! They had no way of knowing beforehand that there would only be two Primes, not three, and yet they went four against three in a frontal assault on our own territory. It was a test, to make sure that I am really what the legends say, the Wolf of Wolves, the Full Moon Killer, the Slayer of the Invincible Wolf. It was a boast and a test; it was a challenge to me." He leaned against the desk and folded his arms, and, cocking his head, looked at Seneca.
"It goes to show," said Seneca with a smile, "that you should perhaps have listened to my advice and taken someone with a bit more experience than Eric. Four you could handle, but what if they had managed more?"
"Hmmm," Giles said, looking down at the floor with a peculiarly thoughtful expression on his face. "Hic lupus nuper additus flere dum parat ululat," he said. He suddenly turned an unsettling gaze on the other Wolf. "Tell me, Sen, what happens when the Bite is given to someone who is already a Wolf?"
Seneca was startled by the question. "I suppose I don't know," he said. "Nothing, I would guess."
"I have known it to happen. It provides no greater share of lunacy or lupinity, but it does give one the delirious and feverish symptoms of the original Bite. They dissipate much more quickly than the original symptoms, though."
Seneca steepled his fingers. "You are certain that he was already a Wolf?"
"Certainly certain. Indeed, even before the quick recovery it was a likely possibility. Surely you recall the anomalies in his original story?"
"I remember it being quite incoherent in parts. To be sure, the behavior of the Wolf was odd, but you know that the shock and trauma of the Bite can disorient memory as everything else."
"To be sure; that was a slim possibility of that -- until the swift recovery. But it was always slim, I think. The story we were told certainly had true elements, but the actual behavior of the Wolf was incomprehensible, even allowing for distortion of memory. Any Wolf experienced and clever enough that neither you nor Jolie could track it down would have to be quite impressive. But the Wolf of the story was more cinematic beast than real-life Wolf, all cat-and-mouse gameplaying and horror-movie stereotype, and nothing that one would expect from any kind of impressive Prime. It simply made no sense. Surely, setting aside all speculation, however well-founded, you have suspicions that there is something not quite right with him?"
"I have better than suspicions," said Seneca with a small smile, reaching for the briefcase. As he opened it, he said, "We have several times in the past few weeks been approached by a reporter who wanted an interview with Giles Scott; we put him off, in accordance with the usual policy. But the day after you had left for England, he showed up at Aegidian headquarters again, this time with a package that he insisted be given to me or to you." He pulled a large manila envelope out of the briefcase and handed it to Giles, who took it and opened it.
Inside there was a note and a folder of documents. The folder was marked, in a neat and cautious hand, "JOANNE SOMMERS." Giles leafed through some of the papers and photographs inside and frowned. Then he looked at the note.
"I have information of considerable importance, and request an audience with Aegidius himself." He put the folder and note back into the manila envelope and carefully put the envelope on the desk. "You know how I feel about reporters," he said, "but your reporter may need some reward for his perseverance."
"I already took the liberty of scheduling a tentative appointment tomorrow." Seneca put the briefcase back on the floor beside the chair and leaned back, steepling his fingers again. After a thoughtful silence he said, "The man has always made me uneasy for some reason, but seeing the content of that folder simply floored me. Can it really be the case that Eric is a Sakhan plant?"
Giles shook his head. "That possibility had to be ruled out, but I think we can, in fact, rule it out. For the longest time I was baffled by one question with regard to Pretty Puppy: was he stupid or was he merely pretending to be stupid? After having spent time with him, I think we can safely say that the answer is both." He smiled wolfishly. "What is more, even though he was a Wolf before the night his supposed Bite, he still bears all the unmistakeable features of the newly minted. We both know that it would be foolish to think the Siberians would plant as a spy someone with no experience and no ability to do play the game. Even the amateurs in Sakha and Krosnayarsk Krai play a cunning game."
"Are you absolutely sure that he is not, though? The Siberians have always been good at hiding their minds."
"Not from me. Moon speaks to moon for the Wolf with the mind to hear. I cannot read the heart, but sooner or later anything in the heart comes to the surface, and in all my experience there have only been four Wolves with the ability to hide even the surface of their minds from me for any serious length of time: Lykaios, and Vsesalevich, and Jolie, and you. Maybe Aveline on her best day. Lykaios, and perhaps Vsesalevich, is dead, and neither Vsesalevich, nor you, nor Jolie, nor Aveline could conceivably do it for the extended length of time our hapless Actaeon, our Pretty Puppy, would have had to do it on the plane rides to the Island and back. If Pretty Puppy is such a cunning and powerful Wolf that he can jaunt in here without a care, outmatch you, Jolie, and Vsesalevich, but do it so cleverly as to hide behind a flawless facade of Pretty-Puppiness for endless hours despite my provocations of him, then I will eat my tie and surrender. No, no, no! I would not believe it if Cato insisted on it, or if it were spoken with lightning and thunder by the Sybil herself. At the same time, however, and for the same reason, he cannot be working alone. Which brings us to the most serious problem that faces us, far more serious than this Siberian kerfuffle has yet shown itself to be. What was Jolie doing while I was away?"
Seneca narrowed his eyes and leaned forward. "Nothing much beyond talking to a number of people. Officially she was still investigating this renegade Wolf situation."
Giles nodded. "It is a good excuse to talk to people. I would not be surprised if that were the reason behind this whole renegade Wolf story."
"You do realize what this means?"
"No, and neither do you. The single most important question for us right now is this: Is Jolie working with the Siberians, or is it just something that came up coincidentally?"
"It seems too convenient for coincidence."
"Come now, Sen. You know that if you were planning a coup, you would be able to make such excellent use of any coincidence that no one looking from the outside would be able to tell that you had not planned it that way. And, with all respect to you, Jolie is better at this than you are; her experience exceeds yours by a couple of centuries."
Seneca sat back again, discontentedly. "Unless you force it out of her, we will need time to get the answer to your question. And that ties our hands with regard to her."
Giles took Seneca's brandy glass and refilled it. "Precisely, he said as he handed it back. "Jolie is the more serious problem, but right now the game with her is one of patience and secrecy. Let her make the first slip, before she has any indication that we know what's happening. Keep a discreet eye on her, but I really think you should focus on the Siberian situation."
"We will need to reinforce Giuseppe," Seneca said, taking a sip. "He has always been the weak link in the triarchy, propped up on one side by us and on the other side by Vsaselevich. With Vsaselevich gone, he will lose control quickly; if any news of this has gotten out, half the Packs of Europe are probably already starting to break away. That's not the most important thing, but it is the most urgent. The most important thing is to find out what we can about what went on in Yakutsk to cause the problem. Perhaps it's time for the Aegidian Corporation to make an international tour of its overseas branches. They will need to be reminded of the importance of loyalty to the Aegidian mission. I'll head out for that in a few days. But we should send Giuseppe a back-up of Primes and reliable non-Primes immediately."
"I have already made the arrangements. The rest I leave in your capable hands." Giles moved around his desk to sit in his chair. As he sat back he said, "And Sen -- don't be too hard on Jolie; someday you, too, will find you have to scratch the itch and answer the question of whether you have grown enough to outmatch Aegidius."
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