“My lord Morvilind,” said Rusk. “Miss Nadia Moran to see you.”
“Thank you, Rusk,” said Morvilind in his deep, rasping voice. “You may go.”
Rusk bowed and strode from the library, and I went to one knee and bowed my head.
“Lord Morvilind,” I said, keeping my eyes on the gleaming marble floor. For once, I did not make any smart remarks. Morvilind never grew angry if I did. I don’t think I had ever seen him lose his temper. Instead, he simply lifted the crystal vial holding my heart’s blood and inflicted a wave of excruciating pain on me. While I writhed on the floor, he waited patiently and resumed his instructions once I was coherent again.
Like he was training me. Like I was his damned dog.
The thought filled my throat with bile, but I kept the anger from my expression.
“Rise, Miss Moran,” said Morvilind at last, turning to face me. I rose, and he regarded me with those ancient, icy blue eyes. “I trust you have kept yourself in training?”
“Yes, my lord,” I said.
His thin lip twitched in something that was almost a contemptuous smile. “Given the expense of that motorcycle you rolled up my driveway, it seems you have kept yourself profitably occupied indeed.”
“It allows me to answer your summons all the quicker, my lord,” I said.
He stared at me without blinking, and I saw him turning something over in the fingers of his right hand. It was the crystal vial holding the blood from my heart. A little flicker of fear went through me. With it, he could use his magic to do almost anything he wanted to me. If he decided that my last remark had been impudent, he could use the vial to fill me with unbearable agony.
It was cold in the library, thanks to the air conditioning, but a drop of sweat slithered between my shoulders anyway.
I may not have been his dog, but he did not need anything as crude as a leash to control me. Between the blood and Russell, he could make me do anything he wanted.
How I hated it.
“Answer a question,” said Morvilind, turning and tapping a sequence on a keyboard. The monitor on the right shifted to display the face of a middle-aged white man in an expensive-looking suit. He was handsome in a bloodless sort of way, clean-shaven with graying hair and rimless glasses. “Do you know this man?”
“No.” I hesitated. “But…I know him from somewhere.”
“When was the last time you ate a McCade Foods canned meat product?” said Morvilind.
I almost wrinkled up my nose in disgust. “The canned meat all the veterans like? Never.”
“Why not?” said Morvilind.
“Because...it’s full of salt and chemicals and grease,” I said. “If I wanted high blood pressure and morbid obesity, I would at least have a bacon cheeseburger and enjoy the taste…ah, my lord.”
Morvilind did not care. Likely he considered the culinary needs of humans beneath his notice.
“This man’s name is Paul McCade,” said Morvilind. “His father John was a man-at-arms in the army of the Duke of Sioux Falls, and served with distinction in the battles against the Archons across the Warded Ways of the Shadowlands. After the elder McCade retired from the Duke’s service, he took his retirement pay as a pig farm in South Dakota. John McCade proved to have a talent for business, and by the time of his death, McCade Foods was the biggest producer of meat in North America, and McCade himself one of the richest humans in the United Sates. After he died, Paul inherited the company.” A look of amused contempt went over Morvilind’s face. “Unlike his father, who was proud to think of himself as a working-class man who had done well, Paul views himself as a member of the elite. Consequently, he makes certain to ape the tastes of his betters.”
“A lot of imitation Elven art and architecture?” I said before I could stop myself.
“Correct,” said Morvilind. “Gaudy and tasteless. However, like his betters, Paul McCade collects ancient human artwork. Specifically, he has a taste for ancient Assyrian artifacts, taken from eastern Asia before the Caliphate destroyed most of them.”
“And I suppose,” I said, “you want me to get one of those artifacts?”
“You suppose correctly,” said Morvilind. “A stone tablet, weighing approximately nine pounds.” He tapped some keys, and the image on the right monitor changed from Paul McCade’s smug face to a tablet of gray stone covered with strange, angular writing. I didn’t recognize it, but it did look the same as the symbols upon the left monitor.
“What is it?” I said.
“A tablet,” said Morvilind, “containing a passage from a certain text. I wish to add it to my collection.”
I shrugged. “It’s right there. If you know the language the computer can translate it for you.”
“I require the tablet itself,” said Morvilind. “You will obtain it for me.”
I looked at the tablet, at Morvilind, and then back at the tablet.
“It’s magical, isn’t it?” I said. “That’s why you want me to steal it. If you just needed to translate the text, you could do it here. The tablet itself must be enchanted.”
“You reason correctly,” said Morvilind.
I let out a long breath and stared at the image of the tablet.
“Is McCade a Rebel?” I said.
“Not to my knowledge,” said Morvilind.
That was not a reassuring answer. The High Queen might have ruled over Earth for three centuries, but not everyone was satisfied with her rule. The news didn’t report on it, but there were underground Rebel groups. Sometimes they were little more than disgruntled thugs. Sometimes they were well-armed terrorists. And sometimes they tapped into forbidden magic in an effort to overthrow the High Queen. I didn’t care about the Rebels or their stupid plans, but I had gotten caught in the crossfire between the Inquisition and the Rebels during a previous job, and I didn’t want to repeat the experience.
“You have to tell me if he’s a Rebel,” I said. Morvilind gave me a cold look. “My lord. If he’s a Rebel, and the Inquisition comes for him and I get caught…”
“There is no danger to me,” said Morvilind, raising the crystal vial. “I can kill you from a distance long before you reveal anything harmful to me.”
Well. That was reassuring.
“But if I’m captured or killed,” I said, “you’ll never get the tablet.” He made no reaction to that. “And you’d have to waste ten or fifteen years training my replacement.”
Morvilind remained silent, but he tapped the crystal vial with a finger. I flinched, expecting him to send a wave of pain at me through the link of the heart’s blood, but nothing happened. He was playing with me, and likely enjoyed the reaction. I was furious at myself for the show of weakness, and I forced myself to remain motionless, to wait for his answer.
“I do not believe that he is a Rebel,” said Morvilind at last. “He is too rich to be the poorer sort of Rebel, and not philosophical enough to be the richer kind of Rebel. Nevertheless, you have deduced at least part of the truth. McCade has an unhealthy interest in magic, especially for a man who was never part of the Wizards’ Legion. So he collects magical artifacts in secret. Most of his trinkets are useless, but the tablet…I want the tablet. So you are going to get it for me, and you shall obtain it for me within a month.”
“A month?” I said. “It will be hard to pull a job like that off in a month.”
“A month,” repeated Morvilind. “Do not disappoint me, Nadia Moran. It would be tragic if your brother succumbed at last to frostfever after so many years of treatment.”
“I can’t do it in a month,” I said. Morvilind gave the crystal vial a tap, but I kept talking. “McCade is a billionaire, and he’ll have the kind of security money like that can buy. I can get through it, but I need time to prepare. A couple of months, minimum.”
“As it happens, you shall soon have an excellent opportunity,” said Morvilind. “McCade will host a Conquest Day gala in honor of the Duke of Milwaukee, and Lord Tamirlas and his chief vassals shall graciously make an appearance.
”
“They’ll have their own security,” I said, dubious. “Maybe even a few Inquisitors.” Yet I saw the potential in the idea. Hundreds of guests would descend upon McCade’s mansion for the gala. Even if they brought their own bodyguards, that many guests would strain McCade’s security resources. It might be possible to walk off with the tablet during the gala.
Maybe. Maybe not.
“I see the wheels turning,” said Morvilind. “You shall come up with a plan, I have no doubt. The gala is in three weeks.”
“Three weeks?” I said.
“Conquest Day, at least in the United States, is on July 4th.”
“I can’t do it that quickly.”
Morvilind stared at me, his pale, blue-tinged lips twitching into a smile. He was enjoying this, the bastard. “I believe one of your race’s own philosophers said that a hanging is a marvelous way of focusing the mind. Consider your brother, consider the death that awaits him from untreated frostfever, contemplate that deeply…and I believe inspiration shall simply leap into your mind.” He turned from me, facing his monitors once again. “You may go. Rusk shall see you out. Return here once you have the tablet.”
I stared at his back for a moment, shaking with anger.
“My lord,” I ground out. He would punish me if I didn’t say it.
Morvilind waved a hand in dismissal, and I strode out of the library. Rusk waited to escort me from the mansion, but I blew past him, stalked past the ancient statues and the Elven hieroglyphics, and out the door and back to my bike. I tugged on my helmet and threw on my jacket, pausing to check my bike’s handlebars.
The pause was also to make my hands stop shaking.
Three weeks. Three weeks to figure out how to steal something from one of the most heavily guarded buildings in Milwaukee.
I took deep breaths, focusing something other than the anger and the fear. The magical lessons and the unarmed combat training I had received had one other benefit. They allowed me to focus my mind quickly, to calm myself and come up with a plan.
So, a plan.
One thing to do first.
I reached into my coat pocket, drew out a cheap phone, and sent a text message. I dropped the phone back into my pocket, bit my lip for a moment, and nodded to myself.
I started up my motorcycle and left Morvilind’s mansion behind, heading south. Tomorrow, I would come up with a plan. Tonight, I would see the reason I was doing all of this.
Tonight, I was going to go see my baby brother.
Chapter 2: Family
The air smelled of barbecue as I turned the corner from 76th Street to Wisconsin Avenue. I rode past row after row of little two-story, three bedroom houses with fenced yards and narrow driveways. Many of the men-at-arms of the Duke of Milwaukee and his vassals settled here after they received their retirement pay, so I saw a lot of stern-looking middle-aged guys wearing T-shirts adorned with the Elven hieroglyphics of the lords they had served. I saw veterans with shirts bearing the hieroglyphs of Duke Tamirlas of Milwaukee, or the Barons of Wauwatosa and Brookfield and Brown Deer, the Knights of Granville and the Third Ward.
Many of the veterans were missing fingers or arms or legs. I saw a lot of wheelchairs and crutches, and many more women than men. Many men came back wounded from the wars in the Shadowlands, but many men never came back at all.
At least I would never have to worry about that for Russell.
I came to a nice little house on a tree-shaded street. It had a small front yard with a well-tended garden, and a flagpole over the front door flew the colors of the High Queen, the United States, and the House of Morvilind. A little wooden mailbox (hand-crafted, of course) said MARNEYS on the side. I rolled my bike to the curb, put down the kickstand, and hopped off. The garage door was closed, the curtains drawn. I wondered where Dr. Marney and his wife had gone. I pulled my main phone out and glanced at the time.
12:42 PM on a Sunday. Then I felt like an idiot.
They had gone to church.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about the Marneys taking Russell to church with them. I wanted Russell to grow up knowing right from wrong. Which was odd, coming from a professional thief, but I wanted Russell to have a good life, a normal life, a happy life.
Which meant a life away from Elves and their politics…and away from people like me.
But I disliked the idea of church. More to the point, I disliked the idea of God. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe in God, more that I thought Him incompetent, or maybe a fraud. Like, God was supposed to be good, so why had my parents died? Why was Russell afflicted with frostfever? Why was I forced to undertake dangerous and illegal tasks for Morvilind?
The worst part was that Russell and I had it comparatively good. Or better than a lot of people. Russell wasn’t fighting the Archons and God knows what other horrors in the Shadowlands. I wasn’t technically a slave, and I did not spend my days scrubbing an Elven lord’s floor or warming the bed of an Elven lord perverted enough to like human women.
For that matter, we were both still alive.
I had driven past the spell-haunted ruins of Chicago and Baltimore enough times to know what happened to those who provoked the High Queen. Which in turn made me angry when I thought of God again. If He was supposed to be good, why did things like that happen?
The Marneys came home while I stood brooding next to my motorcycle.
So much for the uncanny senses of a master thief.
Dr. James Marney drove an old Duluth Car Company sedan with a few dents in the side. It was an unfortunate shade of brown, but James was too frugal to buy a car with a better color. Given that his frugality helped him keep a roof over Russell’s head, I couldn’t complain. The car rolled up to the garage, and I followed it. The doors swung open, and James got out, hobbling a bit until he could get his cane out. He was a tall, bony man with a graying crew-cut and a lined face. His wife Lucy came out of the passenger side, still athletic and trim despite her age. The back door of the car opened…
“Nadia!”
Russell flew across the driveway and caught me in a hug.
It had only been five weeks since I had seen him last, but I swear he had grown six inches since then. He was only fourteen, but he was already taller than I was, which simply did not seem fair. Our father had been tall, I remembered that much about him. By the time Russell finished growing, I would have to crane my neck to look up at him.
He was thinner than he should have been at his age, his face gaunt and angular. His hair and eyebrows were a ghostly shade of white, a side effect of the frostfever that boiled in his veins. Morvilind’s magic had contained the disease, keeping it from killing him or spreading to anyone else, but the illness still exacted a physical cost on him.
At least that meant he couldn’t be conscripted into the High Queen’s armies the way that Dr. Marney had been, the way my father’s magical ability had taken him into the Wizards’ Legion.
I kept all those musings from my expression. I didn’t get to see Russell as often as I liked, so I tried to keep these visits positive. I wanted him to have a good life, a happy life.
A life that wasn’t anything at all like the way mine would likely end.
So I slipped out of his hug and grinned up at him.
“You,” I said, “have gotten taller.” I tapped his chin. “And you’re going to have to start shaving soon.”
Russell grimaced at that. “I have, once. I didn’t like it. It felt like peeling my face.”
“You get used to it, son,” said James, limping over. He could walk, but his right leg remained rigid, and most of his weight went upon his cane. Years ago, while serving in Morvilind’s men-at-arms in the Shadowlands, James had taken an orcish axe to the leg. He hadn’t lost the leg, and he hadn’t died of infection or gangrene, but his dancing days were done. After taking his pension, James went into civilian medical practice and married one of the nurses. Lucy couldn’t have children for some reason or another, and so they adopted.
Specifically, they adopted Russell. Lord Morvilind, in his great concern for the veterans who had served as his men-at-arms, had arranged for James and Lucy to adopt a poor orphan boy from the kindness of his generous heart…
“Nadia?” said Russell.
Some of my sour thoughts must have reflected on my face.
“Stiff back,” I said. “Too long on the bike.”
“Those things will kill you,” said Lucy. From another woman, the remark might have been condescending. From her, the concern was genuine. She had been a nurse for a long time.
“I always ride carefully,” I lied. Honestly, I sometimes thought a motorcycle crash might be a better fate than what awaited me if I kept doing Morvilind’s work. But if that happened before Morvilind finished casting the spell to cure frostfever, Russell would die.
Six more years. I just had to hang on for another six years. And then…well, then I would figure something out.
“What brings you over?” said James, gesturing towards the house’s back door. We walked there in a slow group, in deference to James’s bad leg. “I thought you’d be busy.”
“Lord Morvilind has a job for me,” I said. James and Lucy and Russell didn’t know what I really did. They thought I was a computer programmer, and I knew just enough about computers to maintain the illusion. Russell was pretty clever, and if he got interested enough in computers that lie was going to come back to haunt me someday. “It’s going to take a couple of weeks, and I don’t know when I’ll be back.”
Russell looked anxious. “It’s not dangerous, is it?”
“Nope,” I said. “Just sitting at a desk and pressing buttons. The only danger is that I’ll die of boredom.”
“Lord Morvilind must have great trust in you,” said Lucy, unlocking the door.
I laughed. “I wish he would find someone else to trust. His lordship can be pretty demanding at…”
“Don’t be elfophobic, dear,” said Lucy as she stepped into the kitchen.
That was the other thing that bothered me about the Marneys. Though to be fair, it bothered me about most people.
Cloak Games: Omnibus One Page 3
