“Brokke was a master of the obvious,” she said.
I shook my head. “Briallen, I’m not interested in competing politics anymore. I just want the truth, whether it comes from the Celts or the Teuts.”
She chuckled. “Don’t confuse people and principles, Connor. Brokke was an arrogant, irritating ass. He knew things that were better shared and let people die when they could have been saved.”
“That’s fair—and beside the point. This thing in my head is powerful. The Elven King died over it. What does it mean?” I asked.
She gazed into her coffee mug. I thought she might be trying to scry off the surface of the liquid. I didn’t feel any of the usual pressure in my head that happened when someone scryed. The dark mass didn’t like my being around the future.
Briallen was considering her response. Based on my experience, she knew something and was trying to decide how little she could get away with sharing—ironic, considering what she had said about Brokke.
She shifted herself on the stool. “Here’s what I think: Donor always struggled with persuading allies that the elves were the victims in the war that led to Convergence. No matter his grievances, he ruled in the authoritarian manner of Alfheim, and the modern world never understood or agreed with that method. He wanted something to help him make his case, and he thought the stone would do it.
“Here’s what I believe: The stone is exactly what he thought it was. It’s the remnant of an older reality, when the righteousness of one’s cause could be demonstrated by having the approval of the Wheel of the World. The stone gave credibility to the one who held it.”
I smirked. “Well, that part’s not working anymore.”
“Isn’t it? You’ve been accused of terrorism by both the Guild and the Consortium, yet neither of them has arrested you. How much is that due to politics and how much to the power in your head?”
“You know I don’t believe the Wheel of the World cares that much about me, or anyone else, for that matter,” I said.
She eyed me with the stern manner of a teacher. “That’s a mistake I’ve tried to correct in you for as long as we’ve known each other, Connor. You’re right. The Wheel of the World doesn’t care about individuals, but it does work through individuals to accomplish Its purposes.”
“So what do you think Its purpose is with me?” I asked.
She lifted her shoulders in a slow shrug. “Maybe exactly what’s happening—the Guild and the Consortium are on the brink of war. If the faith stone is with you instead of someone like Donor and Maeve, maybe that keeps war from breaking out. It creates doubt on both sides about the success of their respective causes.”
“Is that why you gave me the dagger?” I asked.
She seemed startled by the question though why I wasn’t sure. “I gave you the dagger to protect yourself.”
“Really? You didn’t give it to me to get it out of the way?” I asked.
She didn’t meet my gaze but got up and poured herself more coffee. “You were powerless in a dangerous situation. I didn’t want to see you die, Connor. Why are you making it seem like I did a bad thing?”
I removed the dagger from my boot and placed it between us on the counter. As usual, a few runes reacted to the essence around it—the ambient stuff in the air, a powerful being like Briallen, and, no doubt, the resonant energy given off by the stone in my head. “Because you refuse to talk about it. What is this dagger—this sword. Where did it come from?”
“It’s an enchanted blade from Faerie. It has powerful protection wards on in it,” she said.
“Stopping dancing around my question,” I said.
“I don’t know what you’re looking for,” she said.
“Brokke said he recognized the sword when he saw. He said it was one of the signs in his vision that everything might be destroyed. I don’t believe for one friggin’ minute that you don’t know more than you’re saying.”
Briallen’s eyes went cold, and I remembered why people feared her. I had never spoken to her like that, other than juvenile outbursts when I was a teenager. When I was a kid, I did it to test the bounds of authority. As an adult, I realized I was pushing the bounds of rivalry. “I did it to keep it out of Maeve’s hands. She already had the spear. I was afraid if she acquired the sword, it would tip the balance of power between the Seelie Court and the Consortium.”
Her words settled on me like an understanding wrapped in an insult. “I didn’t matter, so I was perfect.”
She scowled. “Don’t put words in my mouth. The fact that the sword responded to you means you were meant to have it. That’s how the Wheel of the World works. Just because it suited my purpose doesn’t mean it’s not what the Wheel of the World wants from you.”
I pushed the blade toward her. “I don’t want it then.”
Briallen stared down at the dagger. “You can’t give it back. You still need it.”
“No, I don’t,” I said.
She shook her head. “Yes, you do. You know it. You said you would only give it back when you didn’t need it anymore. You bound yourself with that condition. Want and need are two different things, Connor. Put the dagger away.”
She was calling my bluff and knew it. I didn’t want her to take it back. I wanted answers. “What did you think would happen when you gave it to me, Briallen? Did you think something like this would have no consequences?”
Her eyes became moist. “I didn’t think it would harm you. I thought the Wheel of the World would turn without you, and the sword would find its place with someone else. You want me to say you were nobody? Fine, you were nobody. Maeve had never heard of you. I thought the sword was safe. I thought you were safe.
“Yeah, well, that brilliant plan didn’t work out so well,” I said.
Briallen went to the kitchen sink and rinsed her mug. She stared out the window above the sink. “I never intended anything bad to happen.”
“How do I use this sword?” I asked.
She kept her back to me. “You’ll have to figure that out yourself.”
I picked up the blade and shoved it back in my boot. “You know what? I was angry at that old man upstairs for ignoring me after my accident. Now, I’m kinda glad he did. Thanks for nothing, Briallen.”
8
I left the house pretty steamed. Briallen had dumped the sword on me. I didn’t ask for it, and now that I had an ominous warning from a dead dwarf who saw the future, she wanted to let the Wheel of the World decide what I should know.
Despite Meryl’s advice to take a break, I couldn’t. It was literally impossible when I was carrying around a dark mass and a faith stone in my head. It wasn’t like I could turn them off and think about them some other time. They were always there—unavoidable, unignorable, and uninvited.
Brokke said that the appearance of the stone, the spear, and the sword were signs of a coming cataclysm. He hinted that one more element needed to appear but hadn’t. It had, but he didn’t know about it. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that another stone ward I had hidden—a stone bowl that produced more essence than it absorbed—was part of the package. Somehow, these things had gravitated to me. I needed to understand them.
Back in the Weird, I picked my way over fallen debris on Calvin Place like a cat walking on a wet floor. Public works trucks couldn’t make it through the narrow lane without scraping the walls of the adjacent buildings, and the people who owned the buildings cared little whether the hazardous stretch inconvenienced anyone. It was an old road, one block long, from a time when horse-pulled carts serviced Boston businesses. Only one occupied storefront had held on through years of change. The dilapidated sign across the length of the building was missing letters, and soot obscured the remaining ones. It didn’t matter in terms of finding the place. Everyone in the Weird knew BELGOR’S NOTIONS, POTIONS AND THEURGIC DEVICES.
The bell over the door rang with one dull clank. Heat wrapped itself around me, too much heat, the kind an ancient boiler the size o
f a trailer truck pumped into old building radiators. Why it was still on so late into spring, only the gods and absentee landlords knew. The dampness accentuated the smell of the store: moist dust, old incense, and the burnt-cinnamon tang of Belgor’s body odor. A murmur of voices drifted from the rear, where the counter and cash register were.
I lingered in an aisle, listening. Sensing pings touched me as the people in back checked to see who had entered. My essence didn’t intimidate or concern them, and they continued their conversational chatter, locals bumping into each other and shooting the shit to delay venturing back to work or whatever passed for work. At the end of the aisle, two brownies and a tall forest elf lounged near the soda case. Belgor sat next to the counter, his bulk threatening to make his stool disappear. He spared me a cursory glance, affecting disinterest, while he listened to the conversation.
I picked up a copy of the Weird Times, the neighborhood rag, and leaned against the wall to read about a rise in assaults along Old Northern Avenue. The police had no comment. An editorial implied that the crimes weren’t being investigated by the Boston P.D. or the Guild. Nothing new there. When priorities were made at either organization, things like the Weird fell to the bottom of the list.
The brownies griped about the ID lines at the police checkpoints at the Old Northern Avenue bridge into the city. They seemed to be some kind of service staffers for downtown hotels and faced the daily annoyance of starting out for work an hour early to account for security delays.
Belgor nodded and hummed as he listened, filing the trivia in his mental archive of all things Weird like a bloated spider sitting on a vast web of information, to be used for barter and gain. Sometimes he made money, and sometimes he saved his considerable skin. He always survived.
The customers bought lottery tickets and wandered out. Belgor’s eyes shifted within fat-folded lids, his long, pointed ears flexing down. We tolerated each other, our association based on needs we wished we could satisfy elsewhere.
“You should clear your sidewalk, Belgor. Someone might get hurt,” I said.
He folded thick arms over his ample stomach. “I do not have a sidewalk, Mr. Grey.”
He was right, technically. Calvin Place was too narrow to have sidewalks. I dropped the newspaper on the counter. “Kind of interesting.”
His eyes scanned the headlines. “Fighting has always been a way of life here.”
I turned the newspaper back to face me, pretending to read the article. “True. And death,” I said.
Belgor pumped his fleshy lips. “You more than anyone knows that.”
I wasn’t sure if that was a dig or not. “I have a question for you, Belgor. Actually, it’s your expertise I need to consult.”
Belgor rolled his wide expanse of shoulders. “I am a simple store merchant, Mr. Grey.”
“Can we cut the bullshit for once, Belgor? I need an answer on something, and if you know something, I’ll be out of here faster than this conversation is going.”
His ears flexed down and back. “And here I thought this was a social call from a dear old friend. What can I do for you?”
I leaned down and withdrew the dagger from my right boot and placed it on the counter. “What can you tell me about this?”
Belgor’s face smoothed in surprise, and his ears shot up. “Where did you get it?”
“That’s not important. I want to hear what you have to say without any context,” I said.
As he reached for the dagger, his hand trembled. A few runes etched in the blade lit with a cool blue light, and Belgor withdrew his hand. “A moment,” he said.
He maneuvered his large mass sideways behind the corner and ducked behind the curtain that led to his back room. He returned wearing an antique pair of jeweler’s glasses, a wired contraption that hooked around his ears. Thin metal arms jutted from the bridge and ended with polished lenses that hovered several inches from his eyes. He used a thick cloth embedded with glass to pick up the dagger. “It’s an old blade out of Faerie. The markings indicate it has passed through several hands.”
“Enchanted swords were a dime a dozen in Faerie,” I said.
“Not like this. There are ancient magics on this blade from more than one source. I do not recognize some of these runes,” Belgor said.
“Does it have a name?” I asked. Swords—important ones anyway—often had names in the deep past. They commemorated great battles or where they were fought, famous people who owned them or died. The dagger was hard to read. While runes covered parts of the blade and pommel, they seemed related to spells. I hadn’t been able to tease a name out.
Belgor hummed, tilting his head up and down to adjust his vision through the lenses. “I see many references to chaos and….” He frowned. “It is hard to say. The phrasing is old, like Old Elvish or even Gaelic. Break? Notch? Perhaps, a gap between two forces.”
“Gap?” I said. That’s the word Brokke had used when he spoke of the darkness within me. He called it the Gap that arose in the moment between the end and the beginning of the Wheel of the World.
Belgor shifted the blade and sighted down its length. “Perhaps. How did this come into your possession?”
“It was a gift, a loan of sorts,” I said. When Briallen had given it to me, I had sensed its age and value, and thought it was too much to accept. I took it on the condition I could give it back to her when I was done with it. I wasn’t sure I regretted that decision now, but it might not have been one of my best. I had no idea at the time that I was binding myself to the blade with a geasa—a form of taboo that would have ruinous consequences if I broke it.
Belgor placed the dagger back on the counter. “Someone did you no favor. I do not know this blade, which, I must say, concerns me. There is something of the Wheel about it, something dire. I do not think it serves the wielder but purposes beyond our ken. How much do you want for it?”
That made me laugh. “Like I said, it’s not really mine to give.”
“I do not think it is anyone’s to give, Mr. Grey. Things like this appear where they need to. It will be difficult to move, but I am sure it will find its next possessor,” he said.
“I wanted confirmation that it was as old as I thought it was,” I said.
“Older than any I have seen. I would not use it. Such things appear at times of war and chaos, and bode no good thing,” he said.
I pushed away from the counter. His words echoed Brokke’s too much for comfort. “Thanks, Belgor. Keep your head down. I’d hate to see you get caught in the middle of a war zone.”
Belgor nodded. “I have lived a long, long time, Mr. Grey. When you realize war is imminent, it is already too late to stop it.”
When I reached the door, he called my name. “It occurs to me that you do not seem yourself.”
It would be an overstatement to say that Belgor sounded sincere, but that he was inquiring about me personally surprised the hell out of me. “How do you mean?”
“You seem to be lacking a certain passion in our interaction. I am in your debt, as you know. If there is anything I can do, let me know.”
I didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t smiling, so it wasn’t all warm and fuzzy between us. I had covered up his involvement in a pretty high-profile crime that would have sent him to prison. Whatever Belgor’s motivations, he saw that as an obligation to me. If even he thought I wasn’t myself and was concerned that I wasn’t, then maybe I needed to take a step back for some serious reassessment.
“Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.”
Outside, the harsh, white sliver of sky between the buildings cast the street in stark, grim light. Spring was having a hard time wrenching winter out of the air. I hesitated at the end of the street as nonchalantly as possible without looking paranoid. Checking my surroundings was second nature at that point in my life and, given recent events, was fast becoming my first nature.
Pittsburgh Street stretched in both directions. Not far off was a door to a basement where I had hidden the stone bowl
that generated essence. The dark mass in my head yearned for essence, and the bowl had provided enough to take the edge off my pain. It also filled a deep physical need, one that had clear addiction issues revolving around it. When I had first picked the hideout location, it was convenient to my apartment. In a few short blocks, I was able to sate the urge. Now, my apartment wasn’t safe, and the Tangle was far enough down Old Northern that a quickie wasn’t feasible. It would have been a shame to miss the opportunity.
On this end of the neighborhood, the streets between Congress and Old Northern were longer than the average city block. Warehouses fronted on Stillings and Pittsburgh, with a long central alley between them. At various points along the way, access lanes allowed egress to the back. I ducked down the nearest one, no more than a pedestrian tunnel four feet wide.
The main alley was a picture of waste and abandonment—dumpsters long gone to rust, wood pallets gone gray, and businesses just gone. Belgor’s was the closest thing to a legitimate business on the block. At night, the darkened warehouses came alive with music and dancing down near Congress. Things people didn’t like to think about happened on this end, both day and night. I walked past boarded-up doors and windows, picking up my pace the closer I got to the squat.
A gunshot echoed up the alley, the sound slapping back and forth against the bricks, growing fainter and fainter as it reached me. Gunfire was not unusual in the Weird, during the day it was less common, though.
I hesitated, considering what I was about to do. I’d told myself I wouldn’t do it anymore, wouldn’t seek out the essence in the stone bowl like some junkie after a fix. I’d told myself that it wasn’t me that wanted it, but the dark mass in my head. I’d told myself that giving in to the urge was giving in to the dark mass, giving in to baser wants that I had left behind. I’d told myself all that, yet found myself drawn to the bowl like a moth to flame.
I put my back to the alley, still hesitating. I wasn’t going to do it. I wasn’t going to give in to the dark mass, give in to its control. I wasn’t going to be manipulated like that.
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