by Gregg Taylor
It was then that she realized what she had seen moving in the trees – she saw him again, stepping casually out from between two sphinxes. She stumbled slightly as she turned and grabbed on to Fenwick’s arm to steady herself. As if by automatic reaction, his elbow lifted slightly, presenting her with a small crook to hold onto if she liked. She wondered exactly how she could do this and make it look like she just sort of forgot to let go of his arm. Who were they supposed to be right now, exactly? Did it matter if they went about arm-in-arm? She decided that it didn’t, just as she remembered what had caused her to stumble in the first place.
“Boss,” she said, “it’s one of our playmates from the hotel last night.”
“Where?” he said, looking at the obelisk and pointing as if he were still pontificating.
“By the sphinxes, to the right,” she said, “about thirty feet back.”
“Good,” he said.
“Good?”
“I don’t mind being watched,” he said, “but I dislike it when I can’t watch the watchers. The last one dropped back ten minutes ago.”
“The last one?” she asked, her brows furrowed crossly.
“We’ve been under observation since we left the hotel.” He smiled at her as if he were discussing something extremely trivial, and she saw the August Fenwick mask come up as he did so out of long habit.
“Why didn’t you say something?” she hissed.
“I assumed you knew,” he said. “Besides, we were having a very pleasant morning, and I didn’t wish to disturb it.”
Kit Baxter’s head whirled as they got closer to the temple entrance. “You didn’t want to spoil our special time being stalked by killers?”
“I haven’t seen anything from this crew that says you and I can’t handle them,” the Red Panda smiled. “It’s their masters with the magic powers that we’re ill-equipped to deal with, and I’m operating under the assumption that they won’t try anything in these crowds in the middle of the day. They’re waiting for us to make a move.”
“And we are…,” she asked, trailing off.
“Boring them to tears, I should expect,” he said, “and waiting for Max to make a move.”
She started to turn her head, but he gave her hand a squeeze with the crook of his arm, the first sign she had that he was even aware of their proximity.
“Don’t bother,” he said. “I’ve got him. Don’t miss the temple over this, it really is amazing. They’re still in the process of excavating it. It used to be almost entirely buried under all of the cities that have been here since it was Thebes.”
“We’re just supposed to keep sightseeing?” she protested.
He shrugged. “Who knows if we’ll ever get back here?” he said. “You always say I never take you anywhere.”
She was pretty sure that she had only said that once, and it was in jest, but it was nice to know he had been listening. “I was just kind of hoping for the pictures,” she mumbled. “I didn’t say nothin’ about assassins.”
“You love it,” he said. “If we weren’t constantly in mortal danger, we wouldn’t know what to do with ourselves.”
She set her second hand on his arm as well and looked up at him, just for an instant. What to do with ourselves? What she didn’t know she bet that she could learn pretty quickly, given the opportunity, but she decided not to say so. If he wanted to show her the sights of ancient Thebes, she could do that.
The temple was an enormous, sprawling thing inside that just seemed to go on and on. Kit was swept up in the wonder of it all, but she wasn’t quite able to turn off the Flying Squirrel’s senses now that they had been awakened. It became clear to her that there were, in fact, three of El-Nemr’s men in the temple with them. If El-Nemr was still in charge of them, or even still alive. His screams last night had been terrible things, and she could only guess at what Thatcher had done to him. Magic gave her the creeps. She and the Boss could out-think and out-fight just about anything, but there didn’t seem to be a way around this hocus-pocus.
Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted something else. A young Egyptian boy who shrank back into the shadows as she turned, but did not disappear entirely or avoid her gaze. He looked to be about nine or ten, poor but not desperate, and he was afraid, that much she could see.
“Red Panda,” she said, interrupting his discourse on Amenhotep’s colonnade, “boy in the shadows. Four o’clock.”
“Oh yes?” he asked, without turning.
“He doesn’t belong. Local, poor, not selling anything,” she said. “And I’ve seen him earlier today, I’m sure of it.”
“Where?” he asked.
“Don’t know,” she admitted, “but I’m sure of it. He sees us, and he sees our shadows, and he’s biding his time. That’s my guess.”
He nodded. “Good enough. Follow my lead,” he said. They walked quietly for another moment, then suddenly broke into a run, turning a corner and ducking immediately behind an enormous sandstone column. He held his hand aloft and closed his eyes in concentration, reaching out with the tendrils of his mind.
Their three pursuers rounded the corner at full speed and stopped for just an instant before running ahead with an excited cry, each of them convinced that they could see their quarry just ahead in the distance. The two of them stood in silence another moment before the young boy Kit had spotted also ran around the corner, more tentatively, but still quickly. He looked from side to side almost hopelessly at seeing no sign of his quarry. Kit whistled at him from the shadows and he turned, his eyes opening wide in amazement and grinning broadly at the sight of them.
“I get the feeling this one is all right,” the Red Panda said, waving the boy over.
“If he isn’t, I quit,” she said seriously.
The boy spoke no English, or if he did, he didn’t speak any to them. He led them quickly and furtively away from the well-trod paths filled with tourists, into the narrow streets and slums of the city. The Red Panda was certain that they had lost their pursuers, but knew they couldn’t stand out much more in these surroundings than if they had been… well, if they had been a six-foot-four man in a white suit and hat travelling with a beautiful redhead. There didn’t seem to be anything more alien to their surroundings to compare it to. The boy led them down an alley to the back door of a shuttered building and gestured that they should enter. He smiled again, pleased with his success, and his grin was an infectious one.
Kit looked at her Boss. “If this is a trap,” she said, “it’s a good one,” and opened the door.
The inside of the broken building was surprisingly cool, but maybe that was only after a morning spent in the desert sun. There were cracks between the boards covering the windows, but after the stunningly bright sunlight outside, the darkness seemed so complete that it almost appeared blue for a moment. In the corner, a patch of the darkness seemed to shift and move. Kit settled back into an action stance and pulled a crimson boomerang from her sleeve, ready to throw it at the next thing that moved.
“That won’t be necessary,” a familiar voice said from the shadows, and Kit gasped in joy in spite of herself.
“I see you got my note,” the Stranger said.
Fifteen
Fenwick squinted in the semi-darkness as he strained to examine the metal bands on Falconi’s wrists. They were the color of dull copper, slightly tarnished, though Fenwick doubted they were made of anything quite as pedestrian as that, and covered most of the Stranger’s forearms.
“Don’t trouble yourself too much, my boy,” Falconi said, “they can’t be removed except by reversing the spell that bound them to me.”
“And you can’t cast it yourself?” Kit asked.
“Not with the bands on,” Max smiled wanly. “The bands are intended to nullify the powers of anyone who uses magic. Fiendish things. Never seen anything like them.”
“Neither have I,” Fenwick said in frustration, “but possibly only because I can hardly see anything in here. Kit, you didn’t think
to bring a flashlight, did you?”
“Sorry, Boss,” she said, “it’s like the surface of the sun outside, I didn’t figure on needing one.”
“Aris Pavli created these wretched things,” Falconi sighed, “and I expect he is the only one that can remove them.”
The Red Panda appeared not to have heard this. “Look, I can’t do a thing like this,” he said. “I’m going to pop out onto the street and see if I can’t buy a candle or a small lamp or something.”
The Stranger sighed. It was still no use telling him anything. “Mind you aren’t followed,” he said.
The Red Panda raised an eyebrow at this. “Who are you talking to?” he asked.
“The large, rich-looking white man who sticks out like a sore thumb in this neighbourhood,” Falconi smiled. Kit covered her face to keep from laughing. The Boss didn’t get a lot of sass-back, except from her, and she reckoned it was good for him. He smiled ruefully and a moment later he was gone.
“So,” Kit said with a smile, “what else is new?”
“Me?” he asked. “I’ve been hiding in the darkness waiting for the cavalry to arrive. Without my powers I’m not much more than a stubborn old man, but at least I’m pig-headed enough to stick with the job until it’s done.”
“If it takes magic to get those thinguses off,” she said, “maybe you called in the wrong cavalry.”
Max shook his head. “Not too many I trust with something this important. And fewer still clever enough to have made it this far off a penny postcard.”
She grinned. “I wouldn’t describe anything we’ve done so far as exactly clever,” she said.
“Clever is all about results,” Falconi said in a fair impression of the Red Panda.
“I’ve heard that somewhere,” she deadpanned. “Like every eight minutes when he was training me.”
Falconi shrugged apologetically. “Sorry about that,” he said. “It was me who told him that one during his awkward apprenticeship with me. It may be the only piece of information that actually stuck with him. People who can’t quite bring themselves to believe in magic shouldn’t study with sorcerers.”
“That’s from Emily Post, isn’t it?” Kit grinned.
He smiled, and for a moment he looked less exhausted. He glanced at the doorway, which remained resolutely closed, and brightened as he leaned in toward her slightly.
“I’m quite pleased to see you travelling together,” he said. “Does this mean that he’s finally come to his senses?”
“Max!” she scolded. “What if he was outside that door listening right now?”
“I don’t know,” Falconi grinned, “perhaps he’d say something like Great Godfrey, what a fool I have been, that kind of thing.”
“I think it is less than likely,” Kit said, her face pulled into a disapproving sideways pout.
“I never had a junior partner in crimefighting,” Falconi said, “but as a stage magician, I have had quite a number of lovely young assistants, and I assure you, I was never one to miss the slightest encouraging sign from any of them. It’s why I have such a pleasant backlog of memories to look back on.”
“I’m sure,” she said wryly.
“There is, currently, an opening for the position of lovely young assistant in my act,” he said gallantly, “if you were at all tired of waiting for tall, dark and oblivious.”
“You’re a million laughs,” she said with a shake of her head.
“That’s all right,” he offered. “I was joking. Sometimes I think your instincts are as terrible as his. How on earth do you two get any detecting done?”
“We found you, isn’t that clever enough?”
“Clever is about results,” he said with his damnably frustrating smile, and said nothing more.
A moment later the door opened and the Red Panda slipped back in with a small piece of candle in his hand. “Not a lot of stores around here,” he said.
“Red Panda,” she scolded, “did you steal someone’s candle?”
“No,” he said, striking a match. “Well, yes. A bit of one. I think we’re trying to save the world here or something. Max, are we trying to save the world?”
“We are trying,” Max agreed. “So far I would not say that we were doing exactly well.” The Red Panda planted the candle in some dripped wax on the floor and held it steady for a moment. When it was standing by itself, he motioned for Max to hold out his arm to be examined in the light. Max complied with a resigned air. “Are you capable of listening while you do this? I think we may be pushing our luck rather with too much activity here.”
“Go ahead,” he nodded. “I’m listening.”
“You might as well know that since you two first coaxed the Stranger from his retirement, others have had the same idea,” he said ruefully. “There seems to be something of a renewed interest in magic these days from some quarters that are… surprising. There have always been practitioners, guardians of the lost arts, but the trade in magic artifacts has never been a robust one. There are simply too few people who understand such things, or have a hope of unlocking their power if indeed they have any power left in them, which is not always the case. But in the last few years, that has stood on its head. Items of true power, mystically gifted items which lost their charge centuries ago, even broken fragments of no use to anyone except perhaps to study… all of them have been selling for tremendous prices. Most of it is done through proxies, sometimes through treasure-hunters… no one really seems to know who is in back of it all, but the business has become a cutthroat one, and I do mean that quite literally.”
“You aren’t fortune-hunting, are you, Max?” Kit asked, surprised. He seemed amused at the question.
“No, dear child,” he smiled. “Not in that way, at any rate. There is a… a sort of a loose organization of devotees of the ancient arts. A regulatory body, if you will. Always been a rather high-minded group, and more than a little high-handed as well – they call themselves the Council of Mages. They saw all this commerce going on and some genuinely dangerous items changing hands, or worse, dropping off the map altogether, and of course they found the whole business less than desirable. They have taken to collecting these items themselves, or at least dragooning formerly retired magic-using superheroes into the task for them.”
“Why not tell them to go whistle?” Kit asked.
Falconi smiled. “I toyed with the idea,” he said. “But their point is hard to argue with. Someone, or possibly a small series of someones, is amassing great otherworldly power. Until we know who, or why, it would be foolish to do nothing and hope for the best.”
“And your playmates, Pavli and Thatcher,” the Red Panda asked, “they are working for this mysterious buyer?”
“Ah,” Falconi smiled, “you have been busy. Pavli is most certainly motivated by money. He is a former council operative, who has allowed himself to fall to the temptation of wealth. He may have a buyer lined up, he may be planning an auction, he may just have a general idea of the sort of price that an item like the Eye of Anubis might fetch. But there will be money at the back of it, that much is certain. Thatcher is quite another matter. I promise you, his search for the Eye is a quest for dark power, and I cannot imagine that he means to part with it.”
“Kind of an odd couple,” Kit suggested.
Falconi shrugged. “They may be planning on betraying one another eventually,” he agreed. “It didn’t stop them from working fairly effectively against me. The Eye of Anubis has managed to stay lost for many centuries. That is partly by design, most experts on the subject feel that the Eye is too dangerous for anyone to possess and is better left wherever it is. But a contributing factor has been, no doubt, that the magic of the ancient Egyptians resonated on quite a different mystic frequency. Most locator spells would never even register it if they were right on top of it. There aren’t more than a handful of spell-casters who would have the necessary skills to trace the energies of the Eye.”
“And is Thatcher one of them, or Pav
li?” asked the Red Panda.
“Neither,” the Stranger frowned. “Not that they didn’t try. In the end, their final plan seemed to be to scare the Council into thinking they were on the verge of discovering the Eye, and then shanghai the poor sap that was sent to try and beat them to it.”
“Subtle,” Kit grinned.
“And I ought to have seen through it,” Falconi agreed. “Before I knew it, they had me in these bands and were setting about the task of… persuading me to give them the knowledge that they needed to trace the Eye’s energies. In the end, all that saved me was a flaw in the bands themselves.”
The Red Panda looked up from the bands he was still examining with an expectant energy.
“A very low-level spell, the sort of thing a child might use, could just creep past the limiting field. It took a great deal of doing, but it could be done. But they aren’t terribly useful spells, so I used them to hide and stayed hidden. If it had occurred to them at all to trace such low-powered magics, I would never have made it.”
Kit looked around at the dark, shabby room. “How did you… what have you been doing for food… for water?”
Falconi smiled and his hands glowed with a blue light that resolved itself into a mist. The mist rose from his hands and formed the shape of a Chinese dragon, which seemed to fly away before dispersing into vapor. “A few extremely limited illusions, together with some good old fashioned prestidigitation, have earned me quite a following of local urchins,” he beamed. “Like the boy who brought you here, and the one that mailed the postcard I wrote to you. They look after me. Keep me a bit like a pet wizard, actually. It’s why Pavli and his men haven’t been able to flush me out. But I admit I am getting sick and tired of hiding.”
