Knightfall: Book Four of the Nightlord series

by Garon Whited

  Feeling guilty is my new default state. I’m going to embrace it, live it, learn to love it, because I’m going to be stuck with it. I may as well get used to it.

  Then again, if I get used to it, does it still count as guilt? Or does it turn to indifference? And should I care if it does? Probably, but right now I’m having a hard time caring about much of anything. I just want to get my crap sorted out and go be an irresponsible nobody for a while.

  Ouch. Maybe I’m already being irresponsible.

  Fortunately, Mary’s pretty good at cheering me up, and the Lisbon night life is actually kind of fun. We also improved our Portuguese through practice and digestion. Not a bad way to spend a couple of days, I guess. At least I got some work done with Diogenes, getting him sorted out and set up. He installed his own micro-gate in the robot and I activated it. It worked, so I recovered my Diogephone and left him to his shopping.

  Nexus, Tuesday, March 30th, 2049

  Mary has worked with Diogenes to smooth out some financing. Gambling—well, cheating at gambling—can be lucrative, but it requires ongoing effort on our part. Spending money in the stock market in order to give Diogenes a steady income is another sort of problem. Mary discussed it with Diogenes while I did some more scry-spying on nexus points. When I felt I’d learned all I could, Mary explained the financial side of things.

  “I think we’ve sorted out our local money matters. If you’ll help, that is.”

  “And what, exactly, do I need to do?” I asked.

  “There are two major things. First, we need a bit more capital to work with.”

  “How do I help with that?”

  “Do you know anything about corporate finance or the stock market?”

  “I had a retirement fund,” I replied. Mary waited. I waited.

  “That’s it?”

  “The University had a special type for teachers and some contribution-matching. I don’t remember exactly.”

  “O-kay. To make this as simple as possible…” she paused, thinking. “All right. So, we start by finding a company Diogenes can help. He’s got a lot of information we don’t have in my world. Now, we could start our own business, build a factory, all that stuff, but we would need more faces—you and I would have to run things for a while. Instead, we start with an existing company and hurt it.”

  “Hurt it?”

  “Make it suffer some major setbacks—fires, probably, although a few murders are also on the table. Some CEO-level scandals, too. As the company is reeling from the loss of capital, leadership, and reputation, their stock price goes down. Then we buy.”

  “This sounds a lot like breaking a horse’s leg to pay less for it.”

  “Ah! But then we fix the leg and upgrade it with cybernetic parts.”

  “Go on.”

  “Diogenes will take on the identity of the stockholder. This will get him a foot in the door, so to speak, and let him offer the company new manufacturing techniques, materials, the lot. We may have to show up to shake hands or sign something, but the world is mostly digital—virtual meetings, electronic signatures—so he should be mostly okay. With his ‘eccentric genius’ assistance to the place, they should become an industry powerhouse.”

  “And if this company, whatever it is—”

  “Piezo Plastics. We already picked it out.”

  “—gets bought by someone bigger?”

  “Diogenes?” Mary asked.

  “Then, Professor,” he said, through the Diogephone, “we either take the profits or continue to work with the new company. It is impossible to say until the offer is made. In the meantime, we have a revenue stream from the stock.”

  “I still think you can be put on the payroll as a resident inventor,” Mary insisted.

  “You two can sort that out later,” I decided. “What do you need from me?”

  “Oh. Can you help me frame people for murder and the like?”

  “Maybe. I have some limitations.”

  “I thought of that. It’s why we picked Piezo Plastics to be our business vehicle. The Chief Financial Officer is divorced, has no kids, and orders a call girl every Saturday night. Diogenes isn’t sure if he’s embezzling from the company, but he’s living beyond his means.”

  “I do not have access to privileged or secure information,” Diogenes said. “However, I can search, scan, and correlate all unsecured data on him. I estimate a probability in excess of ninety percent that he is, as you say, ‘cooking the books’ for his own gain, at least in moderation.”

  “All right.”

  “We also,” Mary continued, “have a vice-president in charge of something—”

  “Distribution,” Diogenes supplied.

  “—distribution, yes, who is also divorced. We believe he’s divorced because of his drinking and four counts of domestic violence.”

  “You can access police reports?” I asked.

  “No, Professor, but I can access every news service and all their records.”

  “Ah.”

  “So, we picked this company because we could embarrass it easily and you probably wouldn’t have any objections to losing the two people.”

  “Actually, I was more concerned about the blood.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t leave blood behind, remember? If I kill a dozen prostitutes in his bed and make it look as though he did it before he killed himself, why is there no blood dripping through the mattress?”

  “I…” Mary looked confused and upset. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Here’s something else you didn’t think of.”

  “What?”

  “Once I find someplace to sit down and be boring, I’m going to be boring. I feel certain you could enjoy the occasional burglary to help finance Diogenes’ ongoing world-reclamation project. Or even a big-game hunt in Apocalyptica. For all I know, there’s a world out there where you can go shoot dinosaurs or swipe golden idols from ancient temples.”

  “But Diogenes needs the help now.”

  “So we sell the yacht and you steal more stuff. Or I can set up some diamond-growing spells. Diogenes can produce gold—either mined or recycled or salvaged. If you know anyone who is willing to pay for an assassination, you might do that instead of burglary. International jewel thief is nice, but so is professional assassin, no?”

  “You raise some interesting points,” Mary admitted. “I usually don’t like to kill someone unless I have a real reason. Money isn’t usually a real reason. I’ll have to give it some thought.”

  “Take your time. Diogenes? Anything with critical timing going on?”

  “No, Professor. I am well in advance of my most optimistic projections.”

  “Then let’s hold off on the corporate schemes until Mary gets really bored.”

  “Of course.”

  “Meanwhile, Mary, would you rather tackle a magi fortress, interrupt some ongoing sacrifices and rituals, or poke around an ancient monastery full of corpses?”

  “I love you.”

  “What brings this on?”

  “You know just the right sort of things to say to me.”

  “No, I don’t, but I’m glad I naturally seem to. I love you, too. But which one do you want to tackle?”

  “How about one of the four open ones the Fries were using? They’re minor nexuses, but they’re open, right?”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “Thing is, I’m not sure they have enough power, presently, to do what I want to do. At least, not quickly. They still need to be bandaged, but not until I’ve scanned for the Ball. I want to find out if my Evil Orb is sitting on top of one before we go there.”

  “I see your point. Well, I’m all for sneaking into a magi fortress. For second choice, I’ll distract the ritual people while you sneak in to do your work.”

  “What if the monastery is full of ghosts of ancient martial-arts masters?”

  “Is it likely?” she asked, seriously.

  “No, but it’s possible. They could start doing all sorts
of ghostly kung-fu moves right through us without us even noticing. Except we’ll do this at night, so we can see ghosts. We can pretend we don’t see them. First person to laugh, loses.”

  “You have a way of making the most boring thing in the world sound sort of attractive.”

  “I got you to like me, didn’t I?”

  “You’re not boring. Not to me, anyway.”

  “Thank you. I think. So, monastery?”

  “What sort of monastery?”

  “Mountaintop thing. Tibet, India, stuff like that.”

  “I’ve never been to India. What do I wear?”

  “Adventuring gear. We’re not trying to blend in with the corpses.”

  “I bet we could.”

  “Being a corpse is easy. Not becoming one is the tricky part.”

  “I’ll get my new jumpsuit.”

  “Take your time. It’s almost sundown. We’ll go straight there after dark.”

  “Oh, and Diogenes?” she called.

  “Yes?”

  “Please order some furniture. I’d like some chairs and a table, at least. And make a note we should rent furnished places in the future.”

  “Consider it done.”

  The monastery was one of the mountaintop things. It had a dozen or more wooden buildings, all seeming to sprout right out of the rock. It was hard to tell where one building began and another ended. They all ran into each other in a seemingly haphazard fashion, but still managed, somehow, to seem well designed and carefully thought out. Maybe you have to be a local to understand how it all comes together in such harmony. I sure don’t.

  I picked a doorway inside the place and connected it to our bathroom door. As usual, when transferring from point-to-point within a world, Diogenes deactivated the Diogephone micro-gate. Someday, when we have time and inclination, we’ll see how a gate passing through a gate interacts. Not today, though, and not while I have it in a pocket.

  We dressed for cold weather, just in case we had to spend the day there. I belted on Firebrand while Mary arranged her own weapons. Entering a former fortress of a magi family can be risky.

  We flushed ourselves to India and closed the portal behind us.

  Yep, it was cold. My ears popped and my breath frosted in the air, even though I was slightly above room temperature for Lisbon.

  There was no one home. We hurried through the place, whisking silently from door to door, corner to corner, listening and sniffing and feeling with tendrils. The place lacked any signs of life. Fires were out, lamps were unlit, furniture neatly arranged, the works. The place had all the lived-in feeling of a fresh hotel room. It was a museum of a monastery, not a working model.

  It felt that way until we entered the central hall and found the people, or what remained of them. I counted two hundred and change. They were all facedown on the floor, aimed in the direction of a raised dais.

  Firebrand?

  Yes, Boss?

  I don’t see any life in here. Do you hear anything at all?

  Nope. It’s you and Mary. I’m not even getting any rodents in the walls.

  Me, either. Thanks.

  “I think we’re alone,” I said, aloud.

  “I’m starting to think so, too. What now?”

  “The strongest magical emanations are up there,” I said, nodding toward the dais.

  The dais was surrounded by sculptured artwork, mostly gods and goddesses, I presume. Elephant-headed guy, a lady with four arms, a horned fellow with a trident, you name it—I couldn’t even estimate how many there were.

  Our feet felt fine, though. Either it wasn’t holy ground or these gods were very tolerant.

  In the middle of the dais was a contraption I hadn’t seen before. It was a bronze plate, maybe three meters long and a meter wide, with three posts sticking straight up. On the posts were sixty or seventy brass discs, stacked through the holes in the middle. No two were the same size, and they were arranged oddly. Larger ones were always on the bottom, smaller ones toward the top. Each post had its own set of them, although most of them were on the central post. The stacks were irregular, as though someone started with a smooth, central stack and juggled them between the other posts.

  “Where’s the nexus?” Mary asked.

  “I think it’s here,” I replied, walking around on the raised area. “My nexus-detecting spell is having a hard time locking on.”

  “I can’t imagine why.”

  “Oh, hush, you. I’m concentrating.”

  Mary examined the corpses while I poked around the dais. I was fairly certain I was over the nexus point, but my nexus-detecting spell wasn’t seeing it. I resorted to a tendril search, running invisible lines of psychic darkness out through the stonework, the bronze contraption, the dais, the walls, everything.

  Aha. The bronze thing wasn’t made of bronze. It was orichalcum, and it was larger than it looked. It was locked to the floor with some sort of mechanism related to the posts and the plates, and there was a hollow space beneath it. It wasn’t easy to reach into—orichalcum resists penetration from my tendrils—but I could reach through the stone surrounding it easily enough.

  “Mary? Want to help me pick a lock?”

  “Always.”

  We examined the locking mechanism, slowly tracing it with tendrils. It was an eye-squinting, teeth-gritting sort of job, like reaching through hot sand to feel around the bottom of a bucket.

  “Is there a spell on this?” Mary asked. “I seem to feel a spell on this.”

  “There used to be,” I agreed. “I don’t think it survived the power drop.”

  “I think it has, but it’s too weak to do anything. Be careful when you tap the nexus.”

  “Thank you for the warning. Any idea how to pick the lock?”

  “Yes, but I don’t have enough tendrils, Doctor Octopus.”

  “That’s ‘Professor Octopus,’ if you please.”

  “Okay, Prof. Hold this, here, and be ready to turn it this way…”

  “That’s a spell construct.”

  “I know, and it’s in the way. Trust me. I know what I’m doing.”

  Oh? Firebrand asked.

  “I wasn’t talking to you,” she snapped, and turned her attention to magical lockpicking.

  Ten minutes later, I felt as though I’d been knitted, needlepointed, and crocheted. Tendrils by the score wrapped around, went through, or held in place an equal number of rods, pins, rockers, wheels, and levers, both of the physical and non-physical sorts. I had a headache the size of Monday and was about to call it quits—forget the door, we’ll just bash our way through the damn floor!

  “Got it,” Mary announced. I suppressed a sigh and resigned myself to focusing one minute more. “I’ll give a three-two-one-go. And three… two… one… go.”

  I pushed, pulled, turned, twisted, and groaned. Mary poked something, but I’m not sure what.

  One end of the metal slab, discs and all, tilted upward, counterweighted underneath. We muscled it up; it didn’t want to open all the way. Improperly balanced, perhaps. The opening revealed stone steps leading down. Moist air blew up like a frightened fog. Mist started to form in the temple.

  We regarded the steps for a moment and Mary raised an eyebrow at me.

  “It’s down there, yes,” I agreed. “Hold on.” I borrowed a couple of metal stands—candle stands, prayer wheel stands, whatever. They were metal or wood, but they were rods, long ones, and I jammed several into place to keep the doorway open.

  “Now we can go down.”

  “Paranoid much?”

  “Not that I know of. Why? Has someone been talking behind my back?”

  “Come on. At least we’ll be out of the sunrise.”

  We ducked under the edge and started down. It was a long way. The stairs were cut into the raw rock, obviously following some sort of natural chasm. Some places were tight, as though cut through a narrow gap, others were tunnels where we half-slid, half-wormed our way through. One place was cut along a flat, featureless f
ace of stone, with rock on one side and empty air on the other—with a long drop straight down to a broken, tumbled heap of sharp-looking rubble.

  About sunrise, we stopped and waited for the transformation to run its course.

  Oops. One moment.

  Nexus, Wednesday, March 31st, 2049

  As our eyes switched from night to day, darkness closed in all around us. We also started to notice the cold and the thin air.

  “This hiking trail needs a coffee shop,” Mary remarked.

  “And a gift shop. I could use a souvenir jacket.”

  Mary clicked on a small flashlight.

  “You brought a flashlight?” I asked, surprised.

  “You didn’t?”

  I spent a few moments waving my hands and chanting. A glowing ball of red light appeared and I put it over my head to hover. I stuck my tongue out at her.

  “Close enough,” Mary agreed. “Still down?”

  “We may as well,” I agreed, and we got moving. “Maybe we can find someplace suitable for a gateway and come straight back to it for the evening.”

  “I think I’m going to learn to like this teleportation thing. I was worried we would have to sit here all day until you were ready to tap the nexus.” Mary was quiet for a moment as we tromped along a downward-sloping tunnel. “I have a question.”

  “Shoot.”

  “We just need something to define an opening. A border, a frame—that’s it?”

  “Pretty much. It helps if it’s the right size and shape, but that’s not essential.”

  “And if it’s made out of origamico or iridium?”

  “Also helpful, yes.”

  “Can’t we do something like the cable-gate in Apocalyptica? A coil of memory-metal wire, maybe, with woven iridium and the other stuff. Take it out of your pocket, throw it on the ground, and bam! —instant gateway.”

  I stopped so suddenly Mary bumped into me. I had a similar idea when I was trying to go visit Tort. I should have written it down; I forgot all about it!