Sidhe-Devil

by Aaron Allston

  Zeb gave her a stern look. "So your punch-drunk husband thinks I'm going to let everyone get into trouble while I'm off eating filet mignon?"

  "You ought to consider it," she said. "Sidhe Foundation business is sometimes nasty business. And inconvenient—there are times when we jump on a plane and go places for months at a time. Can your business back home stand for you to disappear like that? You don't want to get sucked into it, Zeb."

  "Maybe not. But my partner can manage things without me. I chose one who could be independent."

  Harris looked dissatisfied. "Just like you." He tried another tack. "Zeb, you insisted on coming tonight, and now you've had to kill men. Little nasty men, sure, but men. Has that dawned on you yet?"

  "Yeah." Zeb let out a long, slow breath. "But that was a question I settled in my mind back when I first went into the army. Whether or not I could kill. I decided I could, under the right circumstances. Those circumstances came up tonight and I discovered I was right. If they come up again, I guess I'll do it again. For example, if I see someone using a stone axe to bash in what you laughingly refer to as your brains. You and Gaby are my friends. I don't have very many."

  Harris gave him a cold stare. "Neither do I, and I buried two of them just a few months ago. I don't want to bury you, or have to inform your family."

  With some heat to his voice, Zeb said, "Regardless of where I die, you don't tell my family. Let them read it in the newspaper. It's none of their business."

  Ish said, "Harris, he shoots well and he thinks fast. And you said he was in the army, so he knows what it is to choose a path that he realizes might kill him. If he can follow orders, he is probably suitable."

  Zeb offered Harris a victorious grin. "That's right, theater boy, listen to the lady."

  Harris glared at Ish. "Thanks for the support. Okay, Zeb. If Ish is willing to have some sorry old fight manager tag along with us, you're in."

  "Old, hell. I can whip your ass."

  "In your dreams."

  "Find us a ring."

  They topped a hill and the glittering sea of lights that was Neckerdam rose into view before them.

  Chapter Four

  "So this guy Blackletter kidnaps Gaby because she's sort of a mystical anomaly," Zeb said.

  Harris grinned. "Hey, you know the word `anomaly.' Cool."

  "Yeah, and I'm about to teach you the meaning of the word `defenestration.' "

  They sat in the lab room of the Sidhe Foundation headquarters. This was the ninety-first floor of the black-as-night Monarch Building—or "up ninety," as Zeb had learned the fairworlders called it. This room alone was as large as some sporting halls, and full of tables piled high with laboratory gear, bottles, boxes, tools, machines, and bookcases.

  "Once he cuts the ties between the grim world and the fair world," Zeb continued, "and kills Gaby, he can set up a new filter between them. Make 'em both more the way he wants 'em."

  "Right," Harris said. He returned his attention to the newspapers before him.

  "But the Sidhe Foundation rescued Gaby and stopped Blackletter."

  "Killed him deader than disco."

  "Disco's back from the dead, man."

  Harris grimaced. "Yeah, I guess that was a bad analogy."

  "There's something I don't get."

  "What?"

  "Light, dark, dusky. I'm not clear on what these distinctions mean. Ixyail calls me a `dusky'—why am I not a `dark'?"

  "Oh, boy. Zeb, you're just asking to open up a whole can of worms."

  "I like worms. Out with it, Harris."

  Harris sighed. "Okay. `Light' and `dark' both refer to what we'd call white people. `Light' means fairer than fair, ancestry mostly from northern and western Europe. Blond, red-headed, even some white-haired guys like Doc."

  "The Aryan ideal."

  "Something like that. `Darks' are white folk who tend to have dark eyes, dark hair. More Mediterranean. I'm classed as a dark. In Europe, the New World, and anywhere European countries have colonies, the lights and darks are in charge . . . and the lights always have the majority of top jobs."

  "Why?"

  "Tradition, conspiracy, stubbornness, that sort of thing. Way back when, the lights had the power in a very real sense. Their devisements kicked everybody else's devisements around the block."

  "You're talking about magic now."

  "Yeah, but nobody much uses that word here. Too primitive. Devisement is the science of mysticism; magic is the superstition."

  Zeb snorted. "Like there's a difference."

  "Anyway, the duskies are everyone else who isn't a light or a dark. You. Noriko. Alastair. Gaby and Ixyail are technically duskies, but since they're light-complected, and run around in the company of lights and darks, and have the mannerisms of the fairer folk—"

  "You're telling me they pass for darks."

  "Basically, yes. Anyway, `dusky' is the proper term for them. When you hear `dusker,' it's more like, well—" He looked uncomfortable.

  Zeb didn't let him off the hook. "Like what?"

  "Like nigger."

  Zeb glowered at his friend. "Well, I can't say you didn't try to warn me."

  "I did. Ready to go home now?"

  "No. So, you comfortable with the status quo?"

  It was Harris's turn to glare. "What do you think?"

  "Well, I don't see you marching in the streets with signs in your hand. I see you hooked up with the whitest white guy I've ever seen, living in a nice place, hanging out in a skyscraper office—"

  "Listen, Doc gives less of a damn about color than anyone I've met on either world. Look at who he's surrounded himself with. He sets an example. Some people appreciate what he's doing. Some people just call him a dusker-lover. I get called that, too."

  "Aw, poor thing. My heart breaks for you."

  Doc said, "Status?"

  Both men jumped.

  "Jesus, Doc," said Harris. "Don't sneak up on me like that."

  "What you call sneaking, I call walking." Doc stood beside the table. He wore a sea-green robe. He looked hung over and blinked unhappily into the glare of morning sunlight. "What's our status?"

  Harris said, "Well, we're in the news." He gestured to the stack of folded newspapers on the tabletop. "Big explosion. Sidhe Foundation involved. Kobolde. One of the more rabid papers is talking about a new Kobolde threat and suggesting that the little guys will be breaking into every good light's house to bust up furniture and poop on the rugs."

  Doc snorted, amused. "The associates?"

  "Alastair is subjecting Mr. Rubber Man to some tests, trying to figure out how it was animated. Gaby's on the talk-box, looking into the front that rented the Fairwings factory from the town, and trying to find out how those Kobolde entered Novimagos, what part of the Old Country they're from, and so on. Ish is just back from tracking down some sort of shaman; she was hoping he could tell her more about those skin-crawling sensations she felt last night, but no luck. Noriko's waiting for me down in the gymnasium; we're going to take off and talk to craftsmen who might have built that dart-gun." A little frown crossed Harris's brow.

  "What is it?"

  "Doc, I have a bad feeling that the dart-gun is really important. Not because of what it is—because of what it represents."

  "What does it represent?"

  "Well, it could be that someone here on the fair world has just invented dart-guns out of the blue. It could happen. But I haven't heard of it, and I spent all morning on the talk-box with experts who've never heard of such a thing. Which could mean, since your captors were probably tied in with the guys who crashed my wedding, that they brought the idea of the dart-gun back from the grim world and built it using fairworld technology."

  Doc considered. "Meaning they could have brought back more ideas."

  "Right."

  "I've thought of doing such a thing myself, from knowledge I gained during the brief time I spent on your world. I now know that rocket-propelled airwings are indeed possible. I've been longing t
o design one."

  Harris sighed. "Today, rocket planes. Tomorrow, junk-food franchises. Anyway, I'm just about done with today's mail." He gave Doc a significant look. "We did get the official invitation from the Crown to send athletes to the Sonneheim Games."

  "You and Gaby are awfully insistent about those games."

  "We think they'll be important."

  "Some of your future knowledge?"

  Harris took on an expression Zeb construed to be deliberately blank.

  "All right, Harris. We'll either get someone there to observe or ask someone from the Crown's espionage corps to do so."

  "Thanks."

  Doc turned his attention to Zeb. "Last evening, I did not properly thank you for participating in my rescue. I am in your debt."

  "Don't worry about it."

  "I won't worry. But if you have a need arise, don't hesitate to come to me." He turned away. "I'll be with Alastair in the lab, should you need me."

  * * *

  On the elevator, Zeb asked, "What did he mean about `future knowledge'?"

  "Elementary, my dear Watson—"

  "Don't you ever say that again. You know what it's like to put up with that line all your life?"

  Harris grinned. "Stop bitching. With me, it was `It ain't easy being Greene.' Anyway, unless you've been hit in the head a lot since the last time I saw you, you've probably noticed that everything in the fair world looks a little antiquated."

  "I got that."

  "There's a reason for it. Part of the tie between the fair world and the grim world. The clock on the fair world runs a little behind the grim world. Like about sixty or seventy years."

  "And?"

  "And their history does, too. It sort of mirrors ours. Lots of details different, but the overall structure the same. Gaby's been trying to figure out when it started—that might be a pointer as to when the split between the worlds happened. She's homing in on a date sometime in the Dark Ages. Anyway, the fair world had its own weird versions of the European colonization of the New World, the American revolution, World War One, lots of stuff."

  Zeb considered that as floors slid past the elevator cage. "And if their present is like ours was sixty or seventy years ago—they're about to get to the Depression?"

  "Been there, done that. They call it the Fall. Big economic collapse, happened a few years ago, still not fixed yet. No, we think they're looking at the Second World War. There's a guy in Europe, King Aevar of Weseria. His National Purification Party staged a coup d'etat a few years ago and put him on the throne. The Party is gaining power all through western and central Europe and the talk is that Aevar has imperial ambitions. And the big plank on his platform is kicking all the duskies out of Europe."

  "Racial purity."

  "Bingo."

  "Je-zus. You're talking about Hitler."

  Harris shook his head. "No, and that's the problem. He's an asshole, certainly, and he's going to cause trouble. But as loosely as the fair world follows grimworld history, we can't be sure that he's the kind of genocidal maniac Hitler was. There isn't a Jewish race on the fair world, as far as we can find, though there are what we think are gypsies, and the National Purificationists haven't singled out any specific races to vent against the way the Nazis did. So we don't know what precisely is going to happen."

  "You've told Doc all this."

  "Not exactly."

  "Why not? I'd think you'd want him to know."

  Harris glared. "Oh, thanks for stepping in with all the answers, Zeb. I hadn't considered any of this."

  "Stuff the sarcasm."

  "Stuff the advice. At least until you have some perspective on what Gaby and I have to deal with. What if we went to Doc and said, `King Aevar is going to unite the people of Central Europe and start a war to take over the world, and the people of Wo will side with them, and millions of people will die—' "

  "So what if you do?"

  "What if it's not the truth? Aevar might not be the one; Weseria might not be the place where it starts; Wo might not come into it. Zeb, our preconceptions, if they're acted on, might screw things up completely. What Gaby and I have been doing is telling Doc to look at certain things, monitor specific situations. Like the expansion of Wo's military occupation throughout Asia, like events going on in Weseria. He can put two and two together."

  "A lot of folks who could put two and two together in the Thirties still couldn't predict the Holocaust."

  Harris's tone became exasperated. "Maybe when you've paid your dues on the fair world you can set up shop as Mr. Answer Man. Until then, just watch and learn, okay?"

  "In your dreams."

  * * *

  The city streets and sidewalks were busy but not crowded. Zeb watched the parade of humanity, if that was the correct word in the fair world, in their bright antiquated clothes and massive, new-yet-old automobiles.

  There was a wider range to the sizes and shapes of people here than on the grim world, he saw. Some people could have passed for grimworlders without trouble, though the average person was a little shorter, a little leaner than his grimworld counterpart.

  But there were a lot of folk who just looked strange. People with pointed ears, with noses that looked as though they'd been curved specifically to pop the tops off soda bottles, with spindly builds that would have suggested wasting illnesses had the people not been so energetic. There were men and women standing half Zeb's height who had barrel-shaped torsos. And he thought, though he caught only a glimpse of her, that he saw a woman whose backless dress revealed a hollow place where her back should be, a skin-lined depression large enough to fit a small backpack into.

  He saw plenty of duskies that looked like Alastair—Caucasian features under nut-brown or earth-brown skin—but had only spotted a couple he thought were of African descent.

  He saw men and women carrying rifles. These folk were not uniformed, though several were dressed for more rugged terrain, wearing heavy boots and durable clothes. He caught sight of several of them as they were going down into subway stations and wondered if they would be heading off to the country for hunting or some strange fairworld sport. No one paid them any attention.

  Harris was in the center, Zeb and Noriko to either side; Zeb wondered if Noriko had chosen the arrangement to keep some distance between her and the unknown quantity Zeb represented.

  "Here's the drill," Harris said. "We're going to Wrightway—"

  Zeb snorted. "I'm glad, I don't want to walk the wrong way."

  "Wrightway is a street where a lot of wrights, metal craftsmen, including some of the world's best gunsmiths, have their shops set up. If I have it paced off right, it's approximately where New York's diamond district would be. I'm going to concentrate on the businesses where the proprietors are lights and darks, and Noriko on the duskies."

  "And what am I supposed to do?"

  "Accompany Noriko. Play the part of her bodyguard. See what goes on."

  Noriko's expression didn't change, but Zeb thought he detected a new tension in her body language. She didn't like the idea.

  "So I'm not good enough to go into the shops of the lights and darks?"

  "Dammit, Zeb." Harris sighed and appeared to be collecting his thoughts. "We have a specific assignment. Find out what we can about this dart-gun. See if someone in the wrights' district made it. We can do it efficiently, or we can do it in such a way as to express our own political agendas. We don't know for sure, but lives may be at stake. So you call it."

  Zeb walked in silence for a while. "Seems that during the last few months you've gotten better at making your point."

  "Saves wear and tear on my fists."

  "I don't have to like it."

  "No, you don't."

  * * *

  One westward turn and a few blocks later, Harris left them to enter the first of Wrightway's guncraft establishments. Zeb followed Noriko onward. They walked in a silence Zeb found uncomfortable.

  Finally he asked, "Do we have a problem?"


  It was several seconds before she answered. "Perhaps."

  "What is it?"

  "You must understand, I am not ungrateful. Last night, you were the first of us to get free. Lives hung on ticks of the clock, and you were fast enough to save those lives. I owe you my life."

  "But?"

  "But there is something wrong with you."

  Zeb laughed. "You do go straight to the point. Something wrong with me? First I've heard of it."

  "You gave yourself up to a war-bringer."

  "That's a god, right? You were talking about priests last night."

  "That's a god. A bringer of war. There are many, but like all the gods, they live on in drowsy slumber. The priests, and devisers like Doc, can sometimes bend their ears. Can sometimes give themselves up to one of the gods, to be imbued with some of the god's power."

  "Noriko, where I come from, the gods are more than just drowsy. They're nothing more than legends. If they existed at all, which most people don't believe, they're probably dead now. But I sometimes fight that way there, too. What does that tell you?"

  "That you brought your own demon with you from the grim world to the fair."

  Zeb sighed. "It's not a demon. It's, uh, I don't know, a fugue state. A different state of mind. Very efficient for fighting, especially in the ring. When you're in that state, there's very little going on in your head that isn't fighting."

  "It's fueled by anger. Hatred."

  "Yeah, some of it, maybe."

  She was silent long enough for them to cross another street and pass a cluster of wooden carts laden with fruit for sale. "When you're in the ring," she said, "there are no friends with you."

  "True."

  "Last night, when your gaze fell on Alastair, if his barrel had been oriented toward you, what would you have done?"

  "Nothing." Zeb frowned, trying to recapture his mental state during last night's ambush. He was suddenly no longer so sure of his answer. "Besides, Alastair obviously knows what he's doing with firearms. He's not going to let his aim fall on a friend."

  "He was hurt last night. Dazed. He might have. Zeb, you didn't see your face. The rage in it. The, I don't know, appreciation you showed when you destroyed one of those Kobolde."