He grinned, and Joe shook his head in mock sadness. "Maybe you shoulda had a dose of military school," Joe told him with a spark of impudence.
Tannim blinked at the unexpected display of wicked humor. "That's what my dad kept saying," he admitted. "I guess I ought to be glad he didn't have the money for it."
Joe sized him up as if he were looking at Tannim for the first time. "You'd either have done real good, or real bad," the young man replied at last. "Depending on whether you got to be the brains of an outfit or not."
"Probably real bad," Tannim told him. "When I was younger, I never could learn to keep my mouth shut. Only thing that kept me out of trouble in high school was that the jocks knew I knew how to fix cars, and if they beat me up, next time they were stuck out in the parking lot with a fuel-line block or worse, I'd keep right on trucking."
And the fact that people who beat me up tended to get blocked fuel-lines or worse—and always when they were miles away from a gas station and I had cast-iron alibis. Not my fault they never bothered to get their cars serviced regularly. A little regular maintenance, and their mechanics would have found my little presents.
Ah, well. His former tormentors were like snow on the fired-up gas grill of life, and he had a whole new set of tormentors to deal with.
So who's after my hide now that Vidal Dhu and his crew are out of the picture? That was a good question, actually, and one he would really like to have an answer to. The Unseleighe were less cohesive than a rolling barrel of bullfrogs; it was hard to get them to agree to anything long enough to get beyond the "nuisance" stage. Vidal Dhu had nursed a feud with Keighvin's folk for centuries before Tannim ever came on the scene, and he had targeted Tannim for elimination largely because he was Keighvin's most reliable outlet to the human world.
Could it be that they've decided I'm dangerous to the Unseleighe as a whole, even without my connection to Keighvin? That was possible, and it had happened before. When one human came to know too much about Underhill, that knowledge was often seen as a threat by the Unseleighe. Rightly so; they relied on invisibility in their predation on humankind, and when a human knew what they could do and how they operated, he would be able to tell when something was simply misfortune and when it was caused. And he could move to stop what was going on. Humans always had three things going for them against all the magic of the Sidhe: cleverness, sheer numbers and Cold Iron. Those things alone could stop the Sidhe dead in their tracks.
And when a human knew how to make Cold Iron into a weapon . . .
That made him much more of a danger.
And I'm training Seleighe Sidhe in Cold Iron Magery 101. Yeah, I can see why they might tag me as a problem.
The sun set with a minimum of fanfare; after a cloudless, hot day there was very little color in the west, nothing but a fattened, blood-red ball gliding down below the horizon. It won't be long now, Tannim thought. Chinthliss has a lot of faults, but tardiness isn't one of them.
Full dark came quickly; within fifteen minutes the first stars were out, and within a half hour the only light was from the half moon directly overhead.
Moonlight poured down through the open roof, and Tannim frowned a moment as he contemplated the slowly twisting patterns of moonlight crossing the barn floor. Then he realized what was affecting the moonlight. Jeez! The Gate!
As he ushered Joe out of the way, he felt a little smug for noticing the patterns. Did Chinthliss know that his magic interfered with moonlight just before mage-senses could feel it? For now he sensed that odd internal chiming that meant someone had called up a Gate between this human world and another, and a moment later, the Gate itself appeared.
He'd seen it all before, of course, but Joe never had. The young man's eyes widened as the air where the Gate would be twisted in geometries no mathematician of this world had ever encountered. Something darkened, rotated through dimensions human eyes were not built to perceive, and formed into a gossamer arch made up of hundreds of thin threads of pure power, as if an unearthly spider had been coaxed into spinning the structure.
Then it flared, plates formed across the threads, and sheets of light played with each other in oil-on-water colors.
Tannim patted Joe's shoulder. "Don't worry about it," he said easily. "It's just Chinthliss' way of being invisible."
"But—" Joe said, gesturing at the light show. Then he grinned as he realized what Tannim really meant. "Oh. Yeah."
The entire Gate-structure flared again, and the mage-light built until it would soon be impossible to look at. Tannim pulled out his Wayfarers and flicked them open. Joe shielded his face and winced away. Tannim simply put on his shades and smirked.
Then a note deeper than that of a huge bronze temple-gong vibrated across the barn. It thrummed in Tannim's chest, and he had to close his eyes behind the protection of his dark glasses when the final flare ended.
And then came the deafening silence. Magic was like that sometimes.
The crickets resumed their interrupted nuptial chorus, and Tannim reopened his eyes and took off his glasses.
Directly below where the peak of the arch had been, framed by the blackened walls and silvery moonlight, stood a gaunt but obviously powerful man. His thin features were vaguely oriental. He wore an impeccably-tailored Armani suit, and Tannim knew, although the moonlight was too dim to see colors, that it would be bronze silk.
The man straightened his bolo tie, and the eyes of the little dragon curling around the leather winked with bright topaz flashes.
The man raised one long eyebrow at Tannim in a gesture that Tannim knew perfectly well had been copied after long study of Leonard Nimoy.
"Could you manage subtle, do you suppose?" Tannim asked wistfully, thinking of all the Sensitives for miles around who would be suffering with strange dreams and unexplained headaches thanks to Chinthliss' lust for the dramatic.
His mentor simply raised that eyebrow a little higher, though Tannim could not imagine how he'd done it.
"No," he replied.
CHAPTER FIVE
"Well," Tannim said as they walked into the suite. "It's not home, but it's much."
Chinthliss gazed about with delight and immediately began exploring all of the amenities. Joe was perfectly willing to show him around.
Once they reached the bedrooms, with amazingly spacious closets, Chinthliss produced luggage from somewhere. Armani, of course. Tannim had no idea where the luggage had appeared from, since the dragon hadn't brought anything across the Gate and hadn't loaded anything into the Mach I. Still, Chinthliss spent the first half hour unpacking.
And people accuse me of being a clotheshorse! Then again, Chinthliss didn't wear this form very often, and Tannim knew he found the concept of clothing-as-persona fascinating. Just please, God, don't let him have brought any leisure suits.
Tannim waited, joked, and curbed his own impatience. There was no point in rushing Chinthliss. He would get around to the problem at hand when he felt settled, and not before. Rush him, and you were apt to end up with more trouble than you had in the first place.
At least he was happy with the suite, which was a relief. When Chinthliss was annoyed, he grew uncooperative, and right now, Tannim needed glasnost more than detente.
His old friend finished with his prowling and settled onto the sofa in the living room as Tannim tuned in the local classical station on the radio/TV console. On the table at his mentor's elbow was a tall cola with a great deal of ice; unlike the elves, Chinthliss had no trouble with caffeine, and unlike most of his relatives, he hated tea with a passion. His jacket had been tossed carelessly over the back of a chair, and he had rolled his silk shirtsleeves up to his elbows. He was ready to work.
"Now, tell me again everything that has happened when this young lady appeared, in as much detail as you can recall," Chinthliss ordered, leaning forward to listen intently. The topaz eyes of the dragon bolo tie at his neck glowed with their own muted power.
Tannim obeyed, closing his eyes to concentrate. When he finished,
he fished the gloves out of his jeans pocket and handed them over. "They're custom work, I can tell that much," he said as Chinthliss studied the gloves minutely, then applied the same care to studying the parchment slips. "I didn't realize it until later, but they're both from the right hand, so evidently she doesn't mind wasting whole pairs of custom-made gloves. There's no maker's mark on them, no labels, and the leather isn't stamped. I think they're deerskin, but they're made of very light leather, lighter than any deerskin I've ever seen. They seem to be hand-stitched—"
"They are," Chinthliss interrupted. "With silk thread, which is unusual, to say the least. And the `string' of the backs is also silk."
Tannim gnawed his lip, and reached into the pocket over his right thigh for a cherry-pop. "Where would anyone get silk yarn like that?" he asked, as he unwrapped the candy and stuck it in his cheek.
Chinthliss shook his head. "It is available in your world, but not in too many places," he replied. "And the supply is very limited. It is silk noil, made from the outer, coarser threads of the cocoon. It is normally used to weave heavier material with a rougher texture than this—" He pointed to his shirt. "Under most circumstances, one would not waste such threads, however coarse, on making string for driving gloves. Unless—"
"Unless?" Tannim prompted.
"Unless the wearer wished to make use of some of the magical properties of silk as an insulator," Chinthliss said, and shook his head. "The leather is unusual also; not deerskin, but fawnskin. Very difficult to obtain, and unless I mistake your laws, not legal in this country. The paper, as you probably noticed, has no watermark, and the texture is too even; it might not have been manufactured, it might have been produced magically. The quotes were written with a real quill pen, not metal, but a goose-quill; you can see how the nib has worn down on the longer piece by the time she reached the end of the quote. See there, where the lines are just a little thicker. The ink is of an old style that does not dry quickly and must have sand sprinkled over it to take up the excess. Here—"
He held out the second quote, and tilted the small square of paper to catch the light. Sure enough, the light sparkled off a few crystals of sand stuck in the ink.
"All of this points in only one direction, unless your mysterious lady is so very eccentric that she drives modern cars yet uses the most archaic of writing implements. And unless she is so very wealthy that she can afford to discard hand-tailored driving gloves made with materials one would have to search the world to find."
"Well, we knew she must be using magic," Joe said thoughtfully. "But you're implying there's more than that."
Chinthliss nodded. "These small things indicate a radically different upbringing than you would find in your America, Tannim. I believe these things indicate that she cannot be from this culture, perhaps not this world. She may well not be human."
Joe looked queasy. Tannim wasn't so sure about his own health at the moment.
"Unless she was using illusion to change her eyes, she isn't Sidhe," Tannim interjected. "The Sidhe all have cat-eyes, with slit pupils, not round."
"But most, if not all Sidhe, Seleighe and Unseleighe, use illusion to cover their differences when dealing with mortals," Chinthliss countered. "There is no reason to think that she would change that pattern with you."
Tannim sucked thoughtfully on the cherry-pop and nodded. "Why two right-hand gloves?" he asked.
"Because at the moment she does not wish to kill you," Chinthliss replied. "As my brother taught me once, there is a reason why the left hand is called the `sinister' hand."
Tannim swallowed. "Well, that's handy," he said as dryly as he could. Which was not very. He could not help thinking that she had two perfectly good left-hand gloves somewhere, doing nothing, taking up drawer-space. . . .
And where in the hell was Fox? He hadn't shown in over twenty-four hours!
Wait a minute. . . . "FX was with me just before she showed up the first time. He took one look out the back window of the Mach I, said `Oh-oh,' and flat disappeared," he said. "He hasn't been back since, and he had been bugging me hourly. Old lizard, I think he recognized her. I think he knew her. Wouldn't a kitsune recognize another kitsune, even if a human didn't pick up anything at all? Sort of like a scent on the wind—"
"You are more likely being hunted by a succubus or the like, but that is a very good point, and the answer is probably yes," Chinthliss responded. His brow creased and his eyes narrowed. "Bear in mind though, just as a Sidhe would be sensitive to the `scents' of those creatures from his world, a kitsune is going to be more sensitive to the `scents' of those from his. A gaki, for instance, or a nature-spirit. But that does give me something to work from."
"Can't you do something magical with those gloves?" Joe asked. "I mean, can't you use magic to find out something about her from them?" He bit his thumbnail as Chinthliss turned to look at him, obviously ill at ease with the whole concept. "Isn't that why you shouldn't let something that belonged to you fall into a wizard's hands, because they can use it to put a hex on you or something?"
"Cogent," Chinthliss agreed. "And if these were ordinary gloves, from an ordinary person, such things would bear fruit. But they are the gloves of a mage, and she has made use of the properties of the materials to remove as much of the essence of herself from them as she can."
"Which means it will take some real work to get anything useful out of them," Tannim translated for Joe. "And probably a lot of time."
Chinthliss put the gloves down and stretched. "I shall be comfortable here, and I will need nothing. It grows late. You should sleep, Son of Dragons." He lanced Tannim with a penetrating stare. "You were in need of rest when you came here, as I know only too well. I will consult with my allies and send them sniffing along the path these gloves have traced."
Tannim stood up, and Joe followed his example. "Yes, Mother," he said mockingly. "And I'll take my vitamins and brush my teeth before I go to bed."
Tannim chuckled, and he and Joe let themselves out, leaving Chinthliss sitting on the couch, studying the gloves.
* * *
Shar smiled and petted the little air elementals that flocked around her, vying for her attention. Cross a kitten with a dragonfly and you might have something like these creatures. Less like a classical sylph than a puffball with wings, they were some of her chief sources of information when she did not care to go and gather it herself. They were not very bright, but they could be very affectionate. They seemed to like her.
One in particular was very affectionate, and extremely reliable; that was the one she called "Azure," and set him the particular task of keeping a constant eye on Tannim. She sent him off on his duties with a shooing motion and continued with her own preparations. She had a scheduled meeting with Madoc Skean, the chief of her "allies," and she was not looking forward to it.
The Unseleighe Sidhe was a sadistic, chauvinistic, selfish braggart, and a traitor to his own kind to boot. Most Unseleighe were born "on the dark side," so to speak: boggles and banshees, trolls and kobolds. But some, like Madoc, chose that path. Until recently, he had served as a knight in the court of High King Oberon. Oberon was a fairly tolerant fellow when it came to his subjects and their "games" with mortals—outright mischief was well within the bounds of what was considered amusing. Further, if he felt some foolish human deserved punishment or needed to learn a lesson, he saw no reason why a Seleighe shouldn't do whatever was needful so long as he stopped just short of killing the mortal. But some things he would not abide—and he caught Madoc at one of them. What it was, precisely, Shar did not know, though she could guess—but it had been enough to send Oberon into a red rage. He had physically cast Madoc out, blasting him through several layers of Underhill realities before he came to rest in a battered, broken heap.
It took Madoc some time to recover; once he did, he used the powerful charisma that had made him a brilliant manipulator in Seleighe Court politics and turned it on the Unseleighe left in disarray after the demise of Vidal Dhu and Aur
ilia. He not only organized them, but he attracted others to his side, including Unseleighe Sidhe far more powerful than Vidal Dhu had been.
Powerful Unseleighe Sidhe tended to be solitary souls; they did not like to share their power with anyone, and would support a "retinue" composed of vastly inferior creatures that were easy to control. They formed a "court" mostly as a means of amusement; they seldom agreed on anything. Innate distrust made alliances tenuous at best—an "I won't destroy your home if you don't destroy mine" cold war. But somehow, Madoc won them. And won them to his pet project.
Get rid of Keighvin Silverhair's little pet, the mortal called Tannim.
He managed to persuade them that Tannim, knowledgeable as he was in the ways of the Sidhe and Underhill, was far more of a danger to them than their traditional enemies, the Seleighe Court elves. He convinced them that Tannim was unlikely to turn against his friends, but that there was nothing stopping the young man from marching on Underhill and taking over the areas held by Unseleighe with a small army of Cold-Iron-wielding humans.
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