Bite Back 05 - Angel Stakes

by Mark Henwick

  I nodded warily. “I did a job.”

  “Indeed.” He leaned back. “Unfortunately, there may be repercussions from those events, but we must deal with those if and when they arise. At the moment, time is pressing.”

  That didn’t sound especially reassuring, but at least it meant that he wasn’t going to punish me for taking matters into my own hands, against orders.

  Not right now, anyway.

  He gazed at me, steepling his fingers. “You are aware that it has been necessary for me to interrupt the discussions on the formation of a new Assembly, to call a nomicane regarding the Houses of the Eastern Seaboard and their status within my domain.”

  The Houses of the Eastern Seaboard formed the oldest association of Athanate Houses in America. They’d come in the early eighteenth century, and set up Houses on the east coast in the old way, simply declaring their domains and forming the association as others arrived. Skylur had arrived around the same time, but House Altau’s position as head of Panethus meant he’d formed no other associations. Eventually, the Houses of the Eastern Seaboard had joined Panethus.

  At the last Assembly meeting in Denver, earlier this year, Skylur had shown proof that the Warders—a supposedly neutral House who were the guardians of the Assembly—had been making secret deals with Basilikos.

  Skylur had revoked the Warders’ independent status and kicked them out of the country.

  He’d also challenged the core philosophy of the Hidden Path by explicitly committing Panethus to Emergence, and topped the whole thing off by claiming all of North America as his personal Altau domain, giving the twelve remaining Houses of the Eastern Seaboard association the option of swearing fealty to him or leaving.

  They didn’t want to do either of those.

  And then House Ibarre—and who knew how many of the others—had joined with Amaral in attempting to take over Panethus and stop Emergence. Skylur needed to demonstrate that he had a firm grip on his claimed territory, which meant dealing decisively with Ibarre and the rest.

  A nomicane was the closest thing to a trial within Athanate law. It was an open hearing to reveal the facts of a matter.

  I nodded. “Diana and Bian explained it to me.”

  Skylur went on, “And I assume they also explained that House Ibarre is insisting that the matter be addressed at the conference, where his safety is guaranteed, along with that of all the other delegates. If I were to move against him and the other Houses who allied with Amaral to call his Convocation—which is my right under the law—without publicly presenting irrefutable evidence of their treachery, I would lose the support of a significant portion of Panethus. I simply cannot afford to do that at this time.”

  Questioning Skylur was not usually a good idea, but there was one thing I had to get straight in my mind. “May I ask a question?”

  Skylur made an affirmative gesture.

  “You know that Diana has had me studying Athanate law,” I began.

  Skylur nodded.

  “Here’s what I don’t understand. According to Assembly law, if the members of a party represented in the Assembly are unhappy with the leadership, they have the right to call a Convocation and, if they get enough support, to call for a vote to change that leadership.”

  Skylur’s expression was impassive. “That’s correct.” His face grew hard, and I could see a dangerous light in his eyes. “However, I cannot—and will not—allow twelve of the oldest, most powerful Athanate in North America to remain in my domain without giving me their Oath.”

  “I understand that,” I said. “But if they were within their rights to do what they did, I don’t see how we can prove—”

  Skylur interrupted me. “I agreed that they were within their rights under Assembly law.” He waited for a moment, but when I didn’t respond, he went on. “Diana tells me that you have now read the Agiagraphos.”

  For a moment, I thought he’d completely changed the subject. The Agiagraphos was the Athanate book that contained the philosophy of the Hidden Path, the ancient laws that every Athanate followed. The Agiagraphos not only predated the Assembly, it predated the establishment of Panethus and Basilikos. The Hidden Path was old, and it was unchanging. The same wording was recorded on fragile mud tablets and delicate papyrus scrolls as on the translated electronic text I had read on my laptop.

  Written in stone, they said. Literally.

  It also came from a simpler time. The Agiagraphos was bare and brutal in its directions for Athanate life. Disturbingly so.

  And just like that, I got it.

  “You’re taking the position that the Assembly was dissolved when the Warders were dismissed, and so Ibarre can’t claim an Assembly process as his defense. And the Hidden Path is clear—the Agiagraphos states that if he believes you’re the wrong leader of an association, he has to prove it by force. By remaining in your claimed domain and not declaring war on you, the Eastern Seaboard association have effectively given their oath of allegiance to you.”

  “The majority agree the Assembly was dissolved,” Skylur said. “I have had to assume the function of the Warders and give a personal assurance for the safety of all delegates at this conference. I remain in office pending a new Assembly, but the operational rules of the Assembly are suspended. Ibarre—and any of the other Houses who joined with Amaral—were in violation of that Agiagraphos oath of allegiance.”

  And the penalty for that...

  “By the laws in the Agiagraphos,” I said, “you have the right to execute Ibarre and any others you believe were involved in the Convocation.”

  Ibarre was the only one I was sure had agreed to Amaral’s plan. That was why he was the focus of the hearing today. The nomicane had been delayed until I was well enough to attend and give my testimony.

  “That is my right,” Skylur agreed. “However, under the present circumstances, that could prove to be both impractical and ill-advised. Panethus is split between traditionalists, who favor the Agiagraphos, and progressives, who tend to favor the Assembly. The traditionalists want me to execute Ibarre, but they’re also the ones least happy with Emergence. The progressives support Emergence, but would like me to act as if the Assembly rules were still in force.”

  And he needed all of Panethus united behind him.

  His mouth pinched. I found him hard to read at any time; today was no exception. Was he exasperated? Frustrated?

  “What do you want to do with Ibarre, then?”

  “I don’t care about Ibarre,” he said abruptly, and suddenly rose to his feet to pace the width of the patio.

  That unnerved me. Skylur didn’t pace. Skylur didn’t snap at people.

  “The strength of the Athanate is also their weakness,” he said after a long minute. “We are constant. We endure; we abide, while the world turns around us. Human empires have been no more than seasons to our years. We observe. We learn from humanity, we adapt, but we don’t really change. Not here.” He pressed his hand over his heart.

  He paused his pacing to fix me with a stare. “Until now. Until the rate of human development has exceeded our ability to adapt, and the power of human vision has exceeded our ability to hide.”

  He went to the window and stood there, facing out, his hands clasped behind him.

  “Through many of those long years, Diana and I have strived to guide the Athanate onto a path that ensures their survival. When humanity’s view of individuals’ rights and freedoms began to change, we created Panethus to foster the idea of kin and mutual dependence. Later, as human societies became less violent, we created the Assembly to regulate and reduce the fighting between Athanate, which threatened to draw too much attention to us. Just in time, just as humanity’s power passed the critical point, it began to work. Until Matlal broke everything at the last Assembly.”

  Many of those long years. I knew Skylur was old—and that he’d been a leader among the Athanate for a long time—but until now I had never really thought about what that meant. For a moment I glimpsed the centur
ies, rolling back and back into a past so distant I could barely imagine it. How long had he spent walking a knife edge between factions, scheming and manipulating, coaxing here and threatening there—not for his own personal power, as Basilikos claimed, but to ensure the survival of all the Athanate?

  He continued speaking, showing a hint of the passion he usually kept hidden.

  “We need the Assembly. We need its rules to temper the Agiagraphos. We need to erode the mindset of Basilikos, and we need to do it to a timescale which is being dictated to us by humanity. Emergence is the greatest challenge we have ever faced.”

  He swung around to face me.

  “All of which is being sabotaged by an idiot who insists he knows a superior path, and is urged on by Athanate who should know better. An idiot too proud to bend his knee because he thinks that seven hundred years gives him the perspective and respect to lead the party I set up.”

  He returned to sit.

  “I don’t care about Ibarre,” he repeated slowly. “I will kill him, or exile him, or forgive him, just so long as it does not hinder our plans for a safe Emergence.”

  He leaned forward.

  “That applies to anyone and everyone. Nothing can be allowed to stand in the way of a controlled Emergence.”

  His eyes, always extraordinary, locked fiercely onto me and I could feel my pulse pounding in my dry throat.

  “Stalin claimed a single death was a tragedy, and a million just a statistic,” Skylur said. “What do you think of that?”

  “I think he was a psychopathic lunatic,” I said, “responsible for fifty million ‘statistics’, which the disease in his mind prevented him from seeing as people—even the few he knew personally and those he said that he liked.”

  “Yet he had some justification for his claim.” Skylur ignored my anger. “A human being might have a dozen close friends, a couple of hundred acquaintances. In their whole life, they are unlikely to meet more than a few tens of thousands of people. How can they comprehend the lives behind the million statistics, except intellectually? Most humans alive now will be dead before the century is out. How can they feel for the billion behind the million, those who will never be, simply because the million ceased to be?”

  His gaze bored into mine.

  “I cannot claim this blindness. I abide. I must live with the consequences of my decisions, on paranormals and humans alike. I will not bear a billion tragedies till the end of my days, and a failure of Emergence will trigger that scale of disaster.

  “So I plan a course and guide the Athanate, as I have always done. For Emergence to succeed, I need the Assembly to back it. To get the Assembly to back it, I need a solid base and a majority. This I can manage, but what I cannot control is the timescale, because that is dictated to us. Ibarre is a screaming irrelevance to me except that he delays everything to argue his petty points. He may suppose that we are engaged in a duel, that I hate him. I don’t. His only significance to me is that how I deal with him, or fail to deal with him, will shift factions in Panethus and may alter the balance in the Assembly, and we don’t have time.

  “I have determined that the path least likely to delay the adoption of Emergence as a central concern of the Assembly is to hold a nomicane. My only aim is to neutralize Ibarre. I have considered his possible strategies and briefed someone to assist you in the proceedings today. You remember Elizabetta kin-Sherman?”

  Tom Sherman was one of Bian’s security team, and his kin, Elizabetta, was Altau’s Head of Protocol. That was a title that covered everything from laws down to etiquette, so I guessed she was the best person to have with me. I nodded.

  “Ibarre is a complex man. You and Elizabetta can expect something directed against you.”

  “Against me personally?”

  He nodded. “It will be some way of using you or your testimony against me. Whatever it is, I cannot let Ibarre weaken my position in the Assembly, or my security in the country.

  “If I believed that sacrificing myself would deliver a successful Emergence, I would do it. If I believed sacrificing the whole of my House would deliver a successful Emergence, I would do it.”

  He startled me by stretching out one hand and gently touching my face.

  “The death of any single one of us is a tragedy, but the death of millions remains millions of times worse.”

  I got it. I’d been in a part of the army that had faced that truth on every operation: that we were expendable. If Ibarre had cooked up something that Skylur couldn’t dismiss somehow, I was a sacrifice that would be made to keep Emergence on course.

  I sat up straight. “I understand,” I said.

  “I believe you do.”

  At that moment, the sun began to lift over the horizon and light filled the small patio. It became like sitting inside a light bulb.

  “That was only one matter I needed to talk with you about,” Skylur said, relaxing back into his seat and crossing his legs. “Possibly not the most important, either.”

  I managed to not snort, and waited while prickles of apprehension ran down my back.

  More important than being sacrificed for the sake of Emergence.

  “If you’re well enough, I need you working.”

  I cleared my throat to cover for letting my breath out. “I think I’ve recovered.”

  “Good. I concur.” He had returned to his usual calm stillness. “You’ve served me as liaison with the Denver pack, and I have in mind something similar. Something official and visible in the Athanate world. You recall the word syndesmon?”

  “Yeah. That’s one of the first things Naryn asked Yelena—if that was what she was claiming to be. A sort of ambassador.”

  “There’s a great difference between ambassador and syndesmon,” he said. “Syndesmon is actually a Carpathian convention, but it has precedent everywhere. Other Athanate have acknowledged and accepted the position of syndesmon.”

  The first inkling of where he was going sent a thrill through me.

  “A Carpathian syndesmon was intended to be able to represent both sides. To be trusted by both sides.”

  “That’s a huge responsibility,” I managed to say.

  I couldn’t quite believe it. The implication was that, at least in setting policy between Altau and the Were, I’d be telling Skylur what to do.

  Maybe advising was a more tactful way of putting it.

  “I’m glad you see that,” he said.

  “You’re proposing I become syndesmon for Were and Altau.”

  “For Were and the new Assembly,” he said, and my heart stuttered again. Finally, I would be in a position where advocating the interests of one group would not be seen as betrayal of the other.

  “But what if the Were don’t agree?” I asked.

  Skylur raised an eyebrow. “Then they are welcome to nominate anyone else who is both Were and Athanate.”

  He watched me silently for a while. “Well?”

  “Yes,” I blurted. I’d been mentally leaping ahead to what I could do. “Of course.”

  “Good. The benefit we will get from this will be far reaching. It’s urgent, especially here in Los Angeles right now. Tarez and I must brief you fully after the hearing today.”

  “The benefit both sides will get from this,” I said, testing out the job description.

  He acknowledged the point with a dip of his head and a faint smile.

  “Syndesmon,” I said, getting the feel of the term, relaxing a little after what seemed an eternity of aching tension. “I like the job title.” Thinking of my neglected PI business, which I would now definitely not have time for, I said, half-joking, “Do I get a salary with that?”

  “Of course.”

  I stared at him stupidly. I hadn’t actually expected him to say yes. “I do?”

  Skylur was smiling broadly now—broadly enough that my paranoia kicked in.

  What’s the catch?

  “How much?”

  “You’ll have to ask my business manager.”

>   Who the hell is that? Tarez? Please, please, not Naryn.

  But Skylur didn’t give me time to ask.

  “One last, and not unrelated, matter. As you are recovered now, there is no question of appropriating your kin for my purposes without your permission.”

  He had to mean what Alex and Jen were doing to help out.

  “I’m not sure that Alex will have told you how much his assistance is helping in the search for Basilikos cells hiding in Los Angeles.”

  Alex’s Were sense of smell was much better than an Athanate’s. It wasn’t good for pinpointing exactly where the Basilikos were, but he could narrow it down using the scent of their marque. Then the Altau security took over, using their Athanate telergic senses to triangulate on the mental element of the Basilikos marque.

  Athanate and Were made a good team, given the chance. Exactly what my new role was supposed to ensure.

  My brain was suddenly playing catch-up.

  Good teamwork was why Skylur was saying the role of syndesmon was so important in Los Angeles—he wanted the local werewolf pack to work with us.

  “Alex is doing it because it’s the right thing to do,” I said.

  “Nevertheless, he is your kin. As is Jen, and her assistance in running the business side of Altau has been exceptional. I have been able to concentrate almost entirely on the politics of the new Assembly. This has been an immense contribution and something of a revelation to me.”

  I knew Jen had been helping, but Skylur wasn’t one to exaggerate. I realized why he’d found it amusing when I was so obviously wondering who his business manager was.

  “In fact, I will be asking her to formalize this in a permanent commercial relationship,” he said.

  “Kingslund Group and Altau Holdings?”

  “Yes. With your permission, I will ask her today.”

  Skylur was being nice. My oath to him allowed Altau to use all House Farrell, including my kin, for pretty much anything, whether or not I gave my permission.

  Jen would never forgive me if I said no. Kingslund Group was big, but it was a minnow compared to Altau Holdings.