Undone Deeds

by Del Franco, Mark

  Meryl’s office was in one of the lower subbasements of the Guildhouse. Between its depth and her security shielding, it had sustained little damage when the building came down. The levels above were another matter. The next floor up had survived the collapse with mixed results, mainly because Meryl hadn’t had control of the entire area. The floor was devoted to research and investigations—some of it academic, some the Guild equivalent of the police medical examiner’s morgue. We passed a series of rooms that looked all too familiar.

  “When did they put holding cells up here?” I asked.

  Meryl glanced at me with a sly grin. “Oh, something about discovering the dungeon had secret trapdoors and passages.”

  Last year, a prisoner had escaped through one of the secret tunnels. Meryl knew more about the Guildhouse than almost anyone, and no one had bothered to ask her about security then. “Was anyone in here when the building collapsed?”

  Meryl led me through a hallway strewn with debris. “They were evacuated in time. Some prisoners escaped. I double-checked anyway but didn’t find anyone.”

  We entered a section that had not held up as well as the rest of the floor. Cracks had formed in the ceiling and walls. Stone had fallen in places, and walls had collapsed. As I passed a crumbled holding cell, a body signature snagged at my senses. I paused at the remains of a door and scanned the room. “That’s odd. Rand was in here.”

  “Eorla’s Rand?” Meryl asked.

  I stepped inside the room, which was furnished with a bed, chair, and small table. Deactivated dampening wards were anchored in each corner. Rand’s body signature registered the strongest, as if he had spent time there or expended some essence. “His body signature is all over this room. Do you have any records of who was held here?”

  Meryl watched me scan the room. “I haven’t found any. When they closed off this section, they separated the security. Nigel seemed to be running the joint.”

  I restrained myself from looking at her. The easy answer would be to ask Nigel, but Meryl had made it clear that she wasn’t going to let him out of Briallen’s sanctum anytime soon. My curiosity was trumped by Meryl’s revenge. I understood where she was coming from on the issue. I wasn’t going to force her to make any more choices because of me.

  The room revealed nothing about what had happened in it or who had occupied the cell. Rand’s signature and faint whispers of others told me that people had been in the room, but not why. “I’ll see if Rand will tell me anything.”

  We continued down the debris-strewn hallway to the back of the building. The force of the building collapse had shifted the wall and popped a door from its frame, leaving it hanging askew on its hinges. Meryl pushed the door aside to let me by.

  Inside, a makeshift examining room had been set up. A small table occupied the center, the better to access the body from all sides. Druse lay on her back, a plain white sheet covering her nude body. The leanansidhe were small of stature, and she looked like a battered child. People always seemed smaller in death than they did in life, which was somehow sadder.

  Shay had hit Druse with the stone ward bowl, leaving an indentation on the side of her skull like the dent in a deflated ball. The leanansidhe had lived deep underground, hidden from the people and the light. Nigel had cleaned up the body—even the years of dirt and grime. Her skin was bone white, with dark gray shadows. Her whiteless eyes were half-closed, as was her mouth. I had pitied her when she was alive, even though I found her revolting. Death did little to change my feelings.

  Her body hadn’t decomposed. Square stone blocks on each corner of the table had a preservation spell running. I sensed Nigel’s body signature everywhere. “Did you recharge the wards?” I asked.

  Meryl opened and closed drawers in a nearby cabinet. “Yeah. I have to figure out how to get the Guild to take her without their figuring out I’m down here. I’m not in the mood for midnight digging.”

  I lifted the sheet. Old scars riddled the body, but nothing more recent like the head injury. Whatever Nigel was doing, he hadn’t performed an autopsy. “Why did Nigel have her here?”

  Meryl crossed her arms and leaned against a counter. “Most of the stuff in here is for body-signature examination. He was probably trying to figure out what made her tick.”

  “And me, by extension,” I said.

  Meryl sighed with exasperation. “Ah, yes, it comes back to you.”

  I frowned. “It’s not ego. One of the conditions the Guild had for dropping charges against me was that I submit to an exam by Nigel. I refused, but I bet Nigel wanted to investigate his theories.”

  Meryl gazed down at the leanansidhe. “I’m teasing. You’re right. Nigel might not have said much to you after you lost your abilities, but he was interested in what happened to you.”

  I pulled the cloth over Druse and smoothed it out. “For whatever his latest project was, you mean. It wasn’t me he was interested in but my condition.”

  Meryl rubbed my arm with affection. “Can I say something? I know Nigel hurt you, and you guys will probably never be friends again….”

  “Especially since you locked him up in Briallen’s attic and won’t let him out,” I said.

  She grinned. “Well, yeah, that, but don’t forget, whatever his motivations, Nigel isn’t inherently evil.”

  “I didn’t say he was,” I said.

  “Yeah, you kinda do. Don’t mistake his sociopathic tendencies for malice,” she said.

  I smiled down at her. “I didn’t think you were that forgiving. He tried to kill both of us.”

  She nudged me. “And don’t mistake my position with forgiveness. He can only hurt you if you let him. That doesn’t mean you can’t lock the freak up and throw away the key.”

  I hugged her. “I love your brand of tough love.”

  As we stood holding each other, I gazed down at Druse. I didn’t know if a leanansidhe could be rehabilitated, but I did know she didn’t have anyone in her life who cared. I was lucky. I did. If I didn’t, I was positive I would end up on a slab like her.

  My sensing ability picked up the ghost of her body signature. Nigel’s wards had maintained the residual energies as they were when he found her. It didn’t mean she was alive. Like all fey, her signature was unique to her, but the darkness produced a complicating effect. Her signature was riddled with tiny dark pits. Like the larger disruption in my head, they were entry points for the darkness to come out. I realized I had seen a signature like it before.

  Guildmaster Manus ap Eagan was dying. His health had been failing for years, his essence fading away. When Murdock’s father tried to kill me, Eagan had used the last of his energy to defend me. As a result, he had been near death for weeks. I had attended his bedside. My presence provoked a reaction from his body signature. What had been a faint haze erupted into pinpoints of the dark mass. Eagan had had the darkness in him the entire time. It was what was killing him.

  As I stood over Druse, I saw the same pattern of darkness. She had spent her life siphoning essence from others to keep the darkness at bay. When she couldn’t get essence from living beings, she sustained herself by using the stone bowl.

  “Danu’s blood, Meryl, I think I’ve figured out a way to wake up Manus ap Eagan.”

  16

  By the time I reached the subway station through Meryl’s secret access tunnel, I had formulated a plan. If Eagan recovered, macGoren would be kncked off his perch at the Guildhouse. Eagan had always gone his own way within the Seelie Court. He had been among the strongest underKings, standing up to Maeve as far as possible without risking treason. His voice held tremendous sway within the Court, and his recovery would derail Maeve’s plans, at least temporarily.

  It was a nice plan, except I hadn’t had much success against Maeve. I’d slipped her noose a few times, but I hadn’t seriously challenged whatever arcane strategy she had.

  Sirens were blaring as I emerged from Boylston Street station. In the weeks since the Guildhouse collapse, sirens were sound
ed whenever a body was found in the wreckage. Search-and-rescue workers stopped their work to honor the dead. This time, a stream of black cars rushed through the streets, followed by the wailing of police cars. Curiosity got the best of me, and I hurried up to Park Square.

  The square had become a staging area for debris removal. Construction and fire equipment sat amid the rubble. Stocky, hard-faced workers stood by the idle machinery. The salvage crews were mostly human. The recovered bodies were mostly fey. Even in a disaster, divisions between us were apparent.

  When the Guildhouse had come down, it took surrounding buildings with it. Several small shops and restaurants were buried, with no way of knowing who was in them. The Park Plaza Hotel had escaped relatively unscathed except for blown-out windows. Since only the morbidly curious would want a view of the destruction, the hotel had suspended its regular business and become a de facto Guildhouse, housing administrative offices for the Guild as well as the recovery effort. The sidewalk around the hotel was the closest public access to the Guildhouse, and people gathered along the barriers to watch the spectacle of a body’s being carried through the debris.

  With sunglasses and a baseball cap as simple camouflage, I went unnoticed in the crowd. In the press, macGoren had made a lot of noise about what a threat I was, but so far he hadn’t made a serious public move against me.

  Joe popped in. Flits don’t like crowds—especially human crowds—so he came in low and quiet in order not to attract attention. “Word’s out they found someone important,” he said.

  That wasn’t a surprise. Watching rescue operations was much like watching a movie shoot—nothing happening for long periods of time, people standing around doing nothing, then a brief flurry of activity. In this case, the rescue workers were obviously waiting for news camera crews to set up closer to the action. There was no rush. The star of the show was dead. Delays wouldn’t cause any harm, but live news shots brought attention. A local on-scene reporter was more attentive to fixing her hair than the scene behind her.

  “I can think of two people who might generate this much interest,” I said.

  Joe settled on my shoulder, the better to avoid attention. “Shall we wager?”

  I glanced around the square. There were more Consortium agents than Guild staff, and a number of them were military as opposed to standard security. When a situation involved terrorists, you called security forces. When it was a high-level diplomat, you called an honor guard. “It’s Donor. He was higher in the building when it came down. Vize is under a few more layers,” I said.

  Joe grabbed my collar to secure himself. “I wouldn’t know about that, being sucked into a spear and all.”

  When the spear was active, it retained its shape and heft, but became a thing of pure essence. When I fought the Elven King, Joe was caught in the cross fire. The spear somehow destabilized his essence and sucked him inside it. I thought it had killed him, but a few days later, the spear returned him. “What was it like, Joe?”

  “Bright. Dreamlike. White. It was like a nap, only awake,” he said.

  “Did it hurt?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer right away. “Only to leave.”

  Police and fire vehicles had pulled up into a cleared stretch of the main intersection. The heap of the building sloped up from the street, the recognizable remains of turrets, windows, and walls loomed in the chronic cloud of dust that hung over the site, a forlorn, ghostly image of war and destruction that evoked a sense of futility.

  Firefighters and paramedics appeared near the top of a stone pile. Between them, they carried a body strapped to a gurney. Behind them, the tall figure of Bastian Frye appeared, confirming not only that the dead man was not from the Guild but that he was a highly placed individual. The group turned around a pile of granite, allowing me a clear line of sight to the dead body.

  To all appearances, the man on the gurney was dressed in the diplomatic robes of Aldred Core, the Elven King’s ambassador. Core was, in fact, a member of the extended royal family and an important figure in Consortium politics. The dead man was not Aldred Core.

  When Eorla Elvendottir established her court in exile, Donor decided to show up in person to convince her to return to the fold. Not wanting to give the appearance of a king begging a subject—even a royal subject—Donor wore a glamour that changed his appearance to Core’s. He showed his true face only in secrecy while in Boston.

  When I fought Donor at the Guildhouse, he had dropped the glamour by withdrawing his essence from the amulet around his neck. Since he had intended to destroy the Guildhouse all along, he didn’t think there’d be any witnesses. He had been almost right. Everyone who did see him was dead, except me and Joe. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the credibility of macGoren, so no one was going to listen to us.

  When the fey died, their body essences faded away. Depending on the intensity, it happened in moments, like with flits, or days, like with an Elven King. Enough of Donor’s body essence lingered to activate the Aldred Core glamour. Even dead, he was able to maintain his subterfuge.

  An honor guard of elven warriors marched into the square. A saddled horse was led behind them and behind it, a woman with an empty quiver and a man with an empty scabbard. The procession usually happened at elven funerals, but the destroyed Guildhouse was prompting more immediate ceremonial displays of grief.

  It irritated me. The banners the warriors carried were of the Teutonic Consortium and the Core clan. Aldred Core wasn’t dead. He was in hiding while the Consortium sorted how to handle the political crisis of a dead king with no heir—a dead king who was also engaged in his own espionage. The display of mourning wasn’t right. No matter what I thought of Aldred Core, someone somewhere cared about him and thought he was dead. They were seeing him dead. The level of callousness in service to political ends was sickening. Besides, if I was going to be accused of being a terrorist, the least they could do was blame me for the right deaths.

  “Joe, how’d you like to cause an international incident?” I asked.

  He chuckled in my ear. “Is it Tuesday already?”

  “Think you can get in there and remove that glamour stone without being seen?”

  He narrowed his eyes as he stared at the rescue workers. They were repositioning for maximum exposure to the television cameras. “Now?”

  “Now.”

  He winked out. He was fast. I barely noticed the flash of pink over Donor’s chest, and I knew to look for it. I didn’t think anyone else saw him. One moment, what appeared to be Aldred Core was getting the full military honor, in the next, the body blurred and changed to reveal the battered corpse of the Elven King. Donor was recognizable, but having a few tons of building fall on him had not left him with the most attractive appearance.

  Horrified shouts and screams rose from the crowd. News cameramen scurried around the gurney for better angles as they realized whom they were seeing. Another cluster of shouting came from people near a news van. The local female reporter had transformed into a tall, slender version of Aldred Core. Confused, she spun in place, waving her microphone toward the crowd. Chaos was breaking out, absolute, glorious chaos.

  Joe reappeared and dove onto my shoulder as the crowd surged toward the staging area. I backed against the hotel and let people pass. “You had me worried there, buddy. Where’d you go?”

  He giggled. “I thought someone might sense the glamour gem if I came right back here, so I hid it.”

  “Yeah, no one will suspect that the news reporter has it. I’d say that was a great idea,” I said.

  He shook his head vigorously. “Well, I’ve always been the one with great ideas.”

  Sendings fluttered through the air as fey folk relayed news of the event. Bastian remained calm amid the whirl of activity. He wasn’t watching the emergency personnel hustling Donor’s body into an ambulance. He leaned on his staff and scanned the crowd. A cool touch passed across my face, then returned. Bastian was too far for me to see his face, but I sensed his atte
ntion.

  Your doing, Mr. Grey? he sent.

  I shrugged, and Joe grabbed my ear to keep from falling.

  Passions are high. You should have waited. No good will come of this. You were already a target when people thought Aldred was dead. You make things worse for yourself, Bastian sent. He strode down the slope and climbed into the back of the ambulance. It backed slowly through the bystanders, then followed a police escort toward the consulate. The ceremonial warriors milled about the scene with confusion on their faces as the rest of the crowd dispersed.

  Bastian’s comment rankled, like I was participating with him in a shared scheme. The Elven King would have been exposed eventually. The Consortium couldn’t hide his death forever, and I doubted that Aldred Core—the real Aldred Core—would be willing to go into hiding for the rest of his immortal life.

  The truth would come out. If I made a couple of failing monarchies uncomfortable about that, so much the better.

  17

  It didn’t take long for the various players in the city to react to what I’d done. People were angry when they thought I was responsible for killing Aldred Core and the people who died in the Guildhouse collapse. By nightfall, they became outraged when they realized it was the Elven King who had died and not Core. Bastian was right. Death threats flew fast and furious—even from people considered responsible members of society. Ceridwen made me move my quarters—which wasn’t that difficult—and against my wishes, she had people shadowing me if I so much as stuck my nose out the door.

  In the predawn mist, I walked a twisted lane of a cobbled street with no sidewalks. On the edges of my vision, the blue-black buildings to either side shifted in place. The soft whirr of wings in the shadows overhead revealed I wasn’t alone. Ceridwen insisted on the escorts. I told her it wasn’t necessary. She said she didn’t care.

  Through a strange series of events, I counted a Dead fairy queen as an ally, if not a friend. Ceridwen had died in service to the High Queen, an event that did not sit well with her. She had plans for power and plans for revenge. Where I fit into those plans, I wasn’t sure yet, but I knew she considered me a factor. I did promise to help her when she died. Now that she had become the leader of the Wild Hunt, it was going to be hard to say no to her—like accepting bodyguards I didn’t think I needed.