"Real trouble?" said Emma immediately, her ears pricking up.
"ELFs, devils, Shadow Court assassins. Neuman riots. That's when we get called in, when the peacekeepers can't cope. That's Paragon business."
"Any crime or injustice is my business," Emma said briskly, toting her single suitcase with one hand, as though it weighed nothing. "Especially when someone's stupid enough to do it right in front of me."
Lewis manfully suppressed another sigh. He'd been just the same when he first arrived on Logres. No one could tell him anything either. Hopefully she wouldn't take as long as he did to learn that you had to delegate the petty stuff, or you'd drown in it.
"You're going to be very busy," he said, diplomatically.
Lewis escorted Emma to her designated Paragon's apartment. It was a roomy enough place, for one person, in a nice enough neighborhood. On the way there, Emma arrested three muggers, seven pickpockets, and one flasher; who was very lucky not to be shot somewhere extremely unfortunate, when Emma thought he was opening his coat to show her his gun. Lewis decided he wasn't going to hang around while she familiarized herself with her new neighborhood. He didn't think his nerves would stand it. No; a nice quiet, solitary walk was just what he needed. He had a lot of thinking to do, about his various problems, and he thought a lot better when his pulse rate didn't keep going through the roof every ten minutes. So he bade Emma a polite farewell, endured another hug, gave her his private comm number, just in case she needed him in an emergency, and then left as quickly as was still courteous.
He strolled down the pleasant tree-lined boulevard, frowning just heavily enough that the passersby left him strictly alone, and gave some serious thought to what his life had become. He liked to think that he'd done good work in his time as a Paragon, that he'd made a real difference. But it seemed that was behind him now. His visit to the Sangreal had made it painfully clear that his days as a Paragon were over. He was the Champion now, and it was up to him to decide what that was going to mean. He was damned if he was going to be nothing more than Douglas's bodyguard, honorable a position though that might be. Just standing around, twiddling his thumbs, waiting for something to happen. That wasn't him. He needed to be busy, to be… doing things. Useful things.
He needed who and what he was to matter.
He was so taken up with his own thoughts that he didn't notice as the boulevard slowly emptied of other people, until he was walking all alone. He didn't notice how quiet it had gotten, or that the surveillance cameras were slowly turning themselves off, one by one. He was honestly surprised when a bloodred devil appeared suddenly out of an alleyway before him, and moved quickly forward to block his path. Lewis stopped short, blinked a few times, and studied the sight before him. This particular devil was clearly the result of really first-class transformation work from a major-league body shop. Goat's horns curled up from a heavy lowering brow, the thin-lipped mouth was crammed full of pointed teeth, and the bent satyr's legs ended in cloven hoofs. The kind of full body work that cost serious credits. And the disrupter the devil was pointing directly at Lewis's head was also very much top of the line.
Lewis felt like he should applaud, but he really wasn't in the mood. He glared at the devil. "Hellfire Club, right? Nice horns. Go away. I'm busy."
The devil blinked resentfully, suddenly uncertain, and lowered his gun a little. "What?"
"I said; go away. I really don't have time for this right now. Go mug a tourist, or something. Give them a nice story to tell when they get back home."
"Shut up!" said the devil, extending his hairy crimson arm to point the barrel of his gun right between Lewis's eyes. "The Hellfire Club has marked you for death, Lewis Deathstalker!"
Lewis sighed. Just looking at the devil, he could see half a dozen ways to disarm him without putting himself at risk, but he just didn't have the energy. He was composing a really crushing remark when a second figure suddenly erupted from the alleyway, wearing the black domino mask of a Shadow Court assassin, also pointing an energy gun at Lewis.
"Say your prayers, King's Champion! The Shadow Court has sentenced you to… to… wait a minute. Get the hell away from him, you creepy little Hellfire amateur! The Deathstalker is mine!"
"The hell he is!" snapped the devil, bringing his gun quickly around to cover the assassin. "I got here first. Piss off"
"You piss off, you… dilettante! The Shadow Court outranks whatever claim you bunch of degenerates might have on the Deathstalker. So scuttle off back to your body shop, and see if you can still get a refund. And let a real professional deal with this."
"Excuse me," said Lewis.
"I got here first," the devil said stubbornly. "I'm going to shoot him."
"I'll shoot you first," said the Shadow Court assassin. "The credit for this kill is mine. Let all beware the vengeance of the aristocrats!"
"Bunch of pansies," snapped the devil. "Living on past glories, and bemoaning the good old days when you could still have sex with your cousin without people sniggering at you. You wouldn't have the guts to do the kind of things we do every day, just for kicks!"
"Oh yeah?" challenged the assassin. "Like what? What do you weirdos do that's so damned special? Steal the lead off Church roofs and then urinate through the holes?"
"At least we don't marry our brothers and sisters! Look at those ears of yours. You don't get ears like that without centuries of inbreeding and a gene pool so shallow you couldn't even go wading in it. If they were any longer, you could use them to fly."
"You bastard. You utter bastard!"
"Oh look!" crowed the devil. "He's going to cry now!"
"I am not going to cry!"
"Excuse me," said Lewis.
"Shut up!" snarled the assassin, covering the devil with his energy gun. "You get out of here right now, or…"
"Or what? You'll stamp your little foot? Ooh, I'm dead scared, me…"
"That's it! You're dead!"
And that was when the third figure suddenly appeared, swooping down out of the empty sky on a gravity sled with no markings. He wore a long concealing black cloak with the hood pulled well forward to hide his face. He pulled the sled up right beside the group, and then had to stop and pull his hood back a bit so he could see what he was doing, before he could level his energy gun at Lewis.
"Kneel and beg for mercy, Deathstalker! Your life is forfeit, for interfering in the manifest destiny of Pure Humanity. The Neumen…
"Piss off!" said the assassin, his voice rising almost hysterically. "I don't believe this. What is this, amateur night? I am here to kill Lewis Deathstalker, and when the Shadow Court marks someone for death, they are bloody well dead. Go and find your own hero to kill."
"We marked him for death first!" said the devil.
"Prove it!" snapped the assassin.
"I think you'll find Pure Humanity has the prior claim," said the Neuman, climbing awkwardly down from his gravity sled. He tripped over his long cloak and almost fell, till Lewis grabbed him by the arm to steady him. The Neuman absently nodded his thanks, and glared at the other two killers. "The Deathstalker killed our suicide bomber at Court. That makes him our target. You must have seen it. It was on all the news channels."
"Oh, we all saw it," said the Shadow assassin. "Complete bloody balls-up, from beginning to end. You don't stand around making speeches when you've come to kill someone! If he'd just shut up and done his job, he might have pulled it off, but oh no, he had to justify himself with all the usual propaganda claptrap…"
"Statements of intent are important!" said the Neuman. "What's the point of a terrorist atrocity if no one knows why you did it? There are so many fringe groups and looney tunes out there these days, it's vital to make it clear to the media whose cause you're representing; or you can bet a dozen other groups will have claimed responsibility before you can even get a press statement out."
"Typical terrorist," sneered the devil. "All mouth and dogma, and no follow up. If you're going to kill someone, just kill him
. Murder is a philosophical art, not a political."
"Oh yes, you devils are really philosophical," snapped the Neuman. "Getting your kicks by breaking into Churches and playing with yourselves in front of the altar. Thinking you're so daring and evil because you can recite the Lord's Prayer backwards. Get a tape recorder! You don't have an agenda. You don't even have a manifesto. Probably couldn't even spell dialectic. No real aims, except to outrage mummy and daddy. I put it all down to late potty training, myself…"
"You take that back!" shouted the devil, training his gun on the Neuman. And that was when the ELF teleported in, a tall gangling girl dressed in tattered silks with wild tribal tattoos on her face, appearing right next to the group in an impressive cloud of sulfurous smoke. She'd just started to shout something about avenging her fallen brethren from the Arenas when the other three immediately turned and shouted her down.
Lewis walked away, and left them to argue with each other. None of them noticed. Lewis had almost reached the end of the street before they started shooting at each other. He didn't look back.
Back at Parliament House, Lewis searched out King Douglas and discovered he'd come back just in time to stand around and do nothing. Essentially, he got to follow Douglas as he strode rapidly through the endless warren of narrow corridors, plunging into one anonymous back room after another, where the King chaired meetings, oversaw important discussions, brought disparate sides together and generally struggled to establish his own political base by storing up favors for the future. Lewis was pointedly barred from these meetings, on the grounds that no one cared what he had to say, and besides, political deal making went best with the absolute minimum of witnesses. So Lewis did a lot of standing around outside closed and locked doors, looking hopefully about him for more assassins to show up to relieve the monotony.
To his credit he lasted almost two hours before his patience snapped, and he threw a major wobbly. He kicked in the door he'd been guarding, stormed into the chamber with drawn sword and gun, ignoring the startled cries of the politicians, and demanded that Douglas provide him with something useful to do before he went out of his mind with the tedium, and started using the politicians as target practice. The King studied his Champion's flushed face, and decided Lewis might just mean it. He excused himself to the top-ranked civil servants he'd been negotiating with, most of whom were now hiding under the conference table and making clear noises of distress, and hustled Lewis back outside into the corridor.
"All right," he said calmly. "You want something useful to do, I'll oblige you. Jes has just sent word that she has some important shopping to take care of in town. I think we'll all feel a lot happier if she had someone guarding her who could be depended on. House Security promised they'd provide someone, but after that Neuman bomber yesterday, I wouldn't trust them to guard an empty room. You watch over her, Lewis. I'll be fine here."
Lewis glared at Douglas, and when he finally spoke his voice was very calm and very cold and extremely dangerous. "Let me see if I've got this right. You want me to take Jesamine shopping?"
"Yes," said Douglas. "Try and get her back in time for tea."
"Douglas…"
"Lewis; I am your King. This is not a request."
"Really? I thought you were my friend."
"I am, Lewis. Really. But I have other responsibilities now. Look after Jesamine. There are still a lot of death threats coming in, aimed specifically at her. I need to know she's safe. Who else can I depend on like you?"
"It's going to be one of those days," said Lewis sadly. "I can just tell. But, Douglas; when I get back, we're going to have a serious talk."
"Looking forward to it immensely, Lewis."
"You never could lie to me worth a damn, Douglas."
Lewis turned his back on his King and stalked off down the corridor. He could feel Douglas's gaze on his back. Truth be told, once Lewis had had time to think about it, he wasn't actually all that upset by his new assignment. Spending the afternoon in Jesamine Flowers's company had to be more fun than standing around in corridors. And Anne had already told him about the continuing death threats. Apparently most of them came from Jesamine's more extreme fans, outraged that she was giving up her career and turning her back on her admirers to marry the King. If they couldn't have her, no one could… She really did need a bodyguard who knew what he was doing. Lewis had only acted up because he didn't want Douglas to think he was getting soft.
Lewis Deathstalker had stewarded Pure Humanity demonstrations, and stood firm against frenzied Arena fans determined to storm the box office for the last few Season tickets, and faced down all kinds of angry crowds in his time; but he'd never seen anything like the madness that engulfed Jesamine Flowers wherever she went. Her local fans had turned out in force, lying in wait outside her hotel, and every shop Jesamine visited was immediately surrounded by a clumsy, screaming mob, howling their idol's name and shrieking hysterically till they hyperventilated or passed out. They demanded her smile, her wave, her autograph, her attention; as though they were only real if she deigned to recognize their existence. For Jesamine Flowers this was business as usual, and she took it all in her stride. She was surrounded at all times by a small crowd of her own people, experienced in keeping the fans at bay without pissing them off. They formed a living wall and barrier around her, from the moment she and Lewis left the recording company's limousine until she was safely inside the store, but even so Lewis stuck close to her at all times and never let his hand move far from his gun.
The almost animal nature of the crowds fascinated him. He was used to being admired, even adored; all Paragons were. It came with the job. But Paragon fans were usually satisfied to worship their heroes from afar. They knew better than to crowd people who tended to react to surprises with drawn weapons. (There were groupies, of course, but Lewis had never encouraged them. He didn't trust their motives, and besides, they embarrassed him.) Jesamine's fans were a whole different breed. There seemed no end to their numbers, and Lewis found their endless din frankly unnerving. The roar rose and fell, seeming to feed on itself, a disturbing mixture of hysteria, possessiveness, and sheer animal lust. Just the sight of Jesamine in person was apparently enough to drive them right out of their minds. The mob kept surging forward against the tanglefields the big stores had set up, once they heard Jesamine planned to grace them with her presence, and more than once Lewis saw men and women fainting from the excitement, and the sheer crush of bodies. Medics moved slowly through the crowd to retrieve the fallen, sometimes having to actually fight their way past fans reluctant to give up their places.
Jesamine would wave and smile to the fans on her way from the limousine to the store, and then ignored them completely, concentrating on her shopping with a single-minded thoroughness Lewis could only admire. She actually didn't seem to hear the howling of the mob outside. Lewis supposed you could get used to anything, in time. Paparazzi used their personal force shields to bludgeon their way to the very front of the crowds, and then sent their cameras zooming through the air outside the store's windows, trying to get a peep of what Jesamine was buying this week. Cheap gossip shows lived for that kind of trivia. Lewis ignored them, concentrating on the fans, and didn't let himself relax for a moment. He didn't trust the crowd, with their strangely blank eyes and desperate body language. There were undercurrents of anger, even rage, in some of the voices, expressed here and there on hastily lettered placards raised above the heads of the crowd and shaken with some passion. Come back to us, they said. Don't leave us. We made you what you are! By turning her back on her career she was turning her back on them; saying she didn't need them anymore. That they didn't matter. And that, of course, was unacceptable.
What Jesamine might want or need didn't seem to be important to them. Stars existed for their fans, not the other way around. Everyone knew that.
The really big stores had their own private force shield generators, polarized windows, and armed security staff, and customers had to pass through a
ll kinds of sensor equipment just to get in. Lewis set off practically every alarm they had, but everyone made allowances. Not because he was the new Imperial Champion, but because he was with Jesamine Flowers. Lewis found their level of paranoia encouraging, and had actually started to relax a little when a shop assistant suddenly ran forward out of nowhere with an autograph pad in his hand that for one heart-stopping moment looked very like a bomb. Only Lewis knew how close the poor fool came to getting shot. Jesamine smiled graciously at the beaming assistant, and signed her name in a quick practiced scrawl, while Lewis quietly fought to get his breathing back under control. If Jesamine noticed, she never said anything, but after that she went out of her way to keep Lewis close to her, and require his advice on what she was buying.
And she bought a hell of a lot. Lewis was at first impressed and then actually staggered by the sheer amount she was accumulating. She would stride down the aisles, pointing here and there with an imperious finger, not even bothering to look at the price tags. (The really good stuff didn't have price tags, of course. If you had to ask, you couldn't afford it.) She ordered dresses by the dozen, shoes and gloves and hats by the hundred, or so it seemed, and any amount of jewelry and gold and silver bangles, many of which were actual works of art and any one of which cost more than Lewis's annual salary. He was beginning to wonder if he could even afford to breathe the store's rarified and subtly perfumed air. Jesamine tried to order things for Lewis too, when she saw something she thought would suit him, and was honestly surprised when he kept turning her down.
"I'm allowed to buy you things, darling!" she protested finally. "You're my fiance's best friend, and my Champion as well as his. And you saved my life in Court yesterday. Honestly, sweetie, it was the bravest thing I've ever seen. Why won't you let me buy you just a little something or two, to show my appreciation?"
Deathstalker Legacy Page 23
