“That we might be what?” Humphrey asked, after a beat.
“Take him. Use him. Control him.” She paused, and met Humphrey’s eyes squarely. “Use me to control him.”
“So you set out to save him,” Humphrey said a little bitterly, crossing his arms across his chest. “You overhear part of a conversation, take it out of context, and decide that we are the bad guys this time around?”
“You said I was a weapon you would use if you had to,” Thea said.
“I believe I also said I was sworn to protect, and that is what I would do, whatever it takes,” Humphrey said.
“Whatever it takes,” Thea said, nodding. “That’s exactly what freaked me out. Protect what? Against whom?”
“The preservation of the safety and security of the world as you know it is my job,” Humphrey said. “It’s what I do, Thea. You’ve helped save the world a couple of times, and it was a tough thing for you to do—but I save the world on a daily basis from threats you haven’t even heard of.” This time it was Tesla’s turn to react, and he gathered his brows together in a delicate frown at the sweeping statement. But Humphrey was concentrating on Thea. “You decided unilaterally that saving one man—whether or not he needed saving from me—was far more important than perhaps using that man to save the world.”
“Sometimes,” Thea said, “saving a single man is saving the world.”
“I had made my own plans,” Tesla said. “If they had all gone according to my wishes, you would never have had the cube in your possession in the first place. Your young mage reacted on pure instinct—but the instinct was completely correct. I, too, made a bargain with the Faele, back in the days when my body was failing me and I knew it was time to transfer myself to the world I had set up inside the Elemental cube. I knew the FBM would be all over my room and the things I had left behind. So I bargained with the Faele to come and take the cube as soon as I was gone. I had no doubt it would surface when circumstances were correct for it to be found, but I did not want to wait for that day in the vaults of the FBM, where I would be subject, every day, to misguided and incompetent attempts to open my cube by mages who had no idea what they were doing or how to go about it, who saw only the end and did not care about the means, who could not possibly understand the way another Elemental could understand.”
Humphrey was shaking his head a little. “You make us sound like malevolent idiots,” he said. “It’s been a long time since we’ve had a true Elemental to deal with. The ones who are left are all too low-level or too old, their powers failing, to be useful. I’d forgotten just how intransigent an Elemental could be. Your kind has no respect, no understanding, for society’s laws—and you forget that laws are made to protect people.”
“From whom? From us?” Tesla raised an eyebrow at Humphrey. “Just what is it that you think I might do—split the planet like an apple?”
“According to some of the notes we did inherit from you,” Humphrey said, “you had means to do such a thing.”
“If the notes gave you any idea that I ever intended to put such a possibility into practice, you understand even less than I gave you credit for,” Tesla snapped. “Or is it that, if any planet-splitting is to be done, you would prefer it to be on your terms and with you giving the orders?”
Humphrey flushed. “It isn’t like that at all. And if we’re going to talk motives, what made you sequester yourself away in the first place? You couldn’t have possibly known what the future would bring. You were locking yourself away, perhaps for all eternity, and after you had ripped out your Elemental gifts. Why would you do that, if you didn’t have your own agenda?”
“The future would evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments,” Tesla said. “The present, my then-present, belonged to the humanity living in that moment of time; the future, for which I had always worked, was mine. It would bring me what I needed. That much, I knew. The form it would take…I had no way of predicting. Elementals are as inevitable as they are rare—I knew that someday, you would have one again. And what’s more, from observing Thea’s work, I have come to believe that you have an entirely new kind of Elemental on your hands.”
Thea’s heart lurched. “What do you mean?”
“Did they tell you that it was I who cobbled together the first real Nexus?” Tesla said, turning his full attention to her. “At that time, in that place, the thing you know as a computer was only a vision, a pipe dream. But there was a first version of a computerlike device that used tapes to store information.”
“The tapes they found with the cube,” Thea said.
“Precisely. Those were an accessory to the prototype I created. I did not have time to do much more than that. When the Faele came to retrieve the cube, as was our arrangement, they took those tapes as well, and because they had no idea how fragile and vulnerable they were, most of the information on them was lost, as I discovered when I was assisting your friend Terry at the current Nexus. It is so much more than even I envisioned it could be; he knows his way around it, but you…” Tesla touched Thea’s shoulder lightly. “You have harnessed this thing with as much control and raw intuition as I once harnessed the power of Water or Fire in my time. I heard Terry refer to that world by the prefix ‘cyber,’ and in as much as I am—as I had been—a quad-Elemental mage who could rule Water, Fire, Air, and Earth, it is your gift to rule the Cyber-Element, which is as much a basic building block of your world as the rest have ever been.” He paused. “You are a new thing, Thea Winthrop,” he said. “You are a Cyber-Elemental. A Cybermage.”
“That makes you a tri-Elemental.” Humphrey said, staring at Thea.
The shadows in the cool, damp, cedar glade brightened for a moment as a flash of light made all three of them throw up arms to shade narrowed eyes, and then a small winged creature hovered over Thea’s head before coming to rest on her shoulder. It crouched for balance and whispered something directly into her ear with its hands cupped around its mouth for secrecy. Thea listened, then nodded, and the winged imp launched itself and vanished in another shower of sparks.
“Our lost pigeon is home to roost,” Thea said. “It’s with the others. I think we’d better get back there.”
“Wait. Where? Where is everyone? Thea, I am not the enemy! Let me in.”
“Back with Cheveyo,” Thea said.
Humphrey’s eyes narrowed a little. “You owe me that,” he said, his voice tightly controlled.
She sighed. “You’re right. I do. Mr. Tesla, you need to get back into the catcher again.”
“I am at your disposal,” said Tesla, with a small bow.
Thea lifted the dream catcher again and sighted Tesla through it.
“What are you doing? Aren’t those the same dream catchers that you had when the spellspam…Where did he go?” Humphrey looked around wildly as Tesla winked out.
Thea shook the dream catcher lightly to focus his attention back on it. “In here,” she said. “It’s a way of carrying him around. Well? Are you coming?”
Humphrey began to step forward while still in the shadow of the cedars, but the foot that had left damp earth covered with soggy brown cedar fronds dropped from the trees came back down in the soft red dust of Cheveyo’s country.
Thea released Tesla from his dream catcher, and he gave everyone a nod of greeting before striding off to crouch like some large spider before Kristin’s birdcage, where now three birds fussed and cooed. Away to one side a trio of winged Faele waited, squirming, in an obvious agony of impatience. Cheveyo himself presided over the whole scene with poise and serenity.
The Faele scurried forward as soon as they realized they had Thea’s attention.
“We lingered on our Queen’s command until you were here,” one of the Faele said. “We just wished to make certain that the bird was conveyed. The bargain is done, and our obligations are concluded. Yes?”
“My thanks to your Queen,” Thea said.
The Faele glanced over at Humphrey, briefly. “The immuni
ty?”
Humphrey glared at Thea, and then back at the Faele who stood awaiting his answer. Finally he gave a curt nod. “I will see to it,” he said. “Immunity.”
The Faele inclined his head in acknowledgment of the compact that had just been entered into, and then trilled something at his companions in a language too high and fast for the humans to understand. They all launched themselves into the air, vanishing instantly.
“Now what?” Ben said, staring at the cage where Tesla was still communing with the pigeons.
“Terry, you simply…spun them all together, back in the room,” Tess said. “And you reconstituted all of Tesla’s component parts that we had taken off in different directions. Can you do the same thing with him and those pigeons? Just spin them all together in the dream catcher and make him whole again?”
“As whole as he can be, with only three,” Cat murmured. She still carried her bundle—the last pigeon, wrapped in its shroud of black silk—as though expecting a miracle.
“No, I am afraid that would not quite work,” said a new voice, and they all turned to see Grandmother Spider smiling at them from beside Cheveyo. She wore her hair in two dark braids that fell to her waist, her eyes were slanted and dark, and her skin was a burnished bronze.
“Who’s that? Where did she come from?” Humphrey demanded, looking around.
“Grandmother Spider,” Thea said, leaning a little closer to whisper the name.
“She’s someone’s grandmother?” he said, staring.
Grandmother Spider caught his eye, smiling a little, and Humphrey dropped his gaze.
“Should you try that with the catcher that I gave you, all you will accomplish is to integrate three pigeons into a human being,” Grandmother Spider said, graciously passing over Humphrey’s discomfort. “Not their essences, themselves. The reason you were able to bring Tesla himself back together the way you did was simply because all the pieces you were playing with were part of the same puzzle. But the pigeons would have to be rendered less pigeon-like if that were to work with the dream catchers.”
“I…uh, I think I have a way,” Terry said, glancing at Humphrey. He wore a laptop satchel slung diagonally across his body, shoulder to hip. “Tesla and Twitterpat helped me work it out. I need to set up the program, but I think I can digitize the pigeons, sort of, and get them into a form that Tesla can—”
Kristin suddenly sucked in her breath. “I think it might have to wait,” she said, nodding at something back toward Cheveyo’s outside hearth. “We might have a problem.”
Everyone spun around to look.
Beside the fire pit an Alphiri portal had opened, and through that stepped two tall male Alphiri, dressed in unusually simple and appropriate attire of dark, ankle-length robes, followed by a woman whose loose dark-gold hair was held back by a burnished jeweled circlet. She wore little more by way of ornament except one signet ring that looked like it was weighing down her left hand.
Humphrey winced, closing his eyes.
“It’s the Alphiri Queen,” he said in a low voice. “That’s all we need.”
15.
TERRY, WHO HAD ALREADY half pulled his laptop out of its case, froze in midmotion as the Alphiri Queen stepped out of the portal. Thea nudged him; he turned his head to glance back at her, and she nodded at him and at the computer as if to say, Keep going; this might need to be done in a hurry.
“We come in pursuit of something that belongs to us,” the Queen said regally.
Terry opened up the laptop screen and waited, his hand poised on the POWER button.
“Something we had bargained for,” one of the other Alphiri said.
“Fair price for fair trade,” the third added.
Terry punched the button as they spoke; the Alphiri always spoke in threes, and the sound of their voices masked the noises of the computer’s waking-up routine.
Thea had never managed to get over her fear of the Alphiri, but she bit down on it, tasting its harsh and bitter residue in her mouth, and stepped forward.
“Your Majesty,” Thea said with great formality, “there is nothing here that lawfully belongs to the Alphiri, or may be bargained for with intent to purchase.”
The Human Polity does not sell its people.
“We do not seek a person,” the Alphiri Queen said, her eyes flickering briefly over Thea and then regally dismissing her.
“We seek a bird,” the second Alphiri said. “A creature.”
“We have bought creatures before from the Human Polity,” said the third, in a tone of triumphant reason.
“The bird is not a bird,” Thea said. “The bird carries a part of a human being, so it belongs to that human being, and to nobody else. If you bought and paid for it, then you must take up that contract with whomever you bargained with. You already know that the one who offered it for sale had no right to sell. And we know that you know it.”
“Oh, now,” said Corey the Trickster, stepping out from behind one of the two Alphiri escorts. “It was a pigeon. Humans buy and sell kittens and puppies and birds every day. I broke no laws—I only sold a dumb beast that someone else had a use for, and wanted, and I could provide.”
“I was wondering how they got here so fast,” Thea muttered. “Why am I not surprised that you are here, Miss Kay Otis?”
There was a snort of disbelief behind her, and Thea spared a quick glance back at Humphrey, whose hands were clenched into fists, his expression a mixture of astonishment and fury. Terry, just off to Humphrey’s left, caught Thea’s eye and shook his head minutely, hands still flying over his keyboard.
Tesla had risen from his crouch beside the pigeon cage and stood beside Cheveyo. The two men looked at the Alphiri Queen in a strangely serene manner, as though she concerned neither of them.
“We buy from the one who sells,” the Queen said.
“We are not responsible for what went before.”
“We cannot be expected to trace the origin of every purchase.”
“And yet, you must, when you deal with us, who hold history to be important,” Thea said. “How would you lay claim to what you call your property? How was it marked?”
“It was a bird,” the Queen said.
“One that you call a pigeon,” said the second Alphiri.
“A gray and white bird,” the third Alphiri added helpfully.
“One of those?” Thea said, indicating the cage.
The Queen deigned to turn her head, just a little.
“It may be,” she said.
“Could be.”
“Perhaps.”
“Which one?” Thea asked politely.
The Queen turned back to her, her face set in an expression of an unspoken royal affront. But Tesla, who saw where Thea was heading, gave a small approving nod.
“There are three,” Thea said, somehow managing to keep her voice cool and level, “in the cage. Can you tell—without a trace of doubt—which is the one you claim to have lost?”
All the Alphiri stared at the cage.
“The middle one,” the Queen said, after a small hesitation.
The other two spoke at once, stepping on each other’s words.
“The one on the left.”
“The one on the right.”
“Oh, great,” Corey muttered, rolling his eyes.
The Queen raised an eyebrow in the direction of her escorts with a distinctly frosty expression. She did not even bother to look at Corey. Thea saw him rouse at that, annoyed at being sidelined by the very people he had plotted and connived for. A stray raven feather suddenly popped out from under his left sleeve, and he plucked at it with his right hand, emitting a low growl.
But Thea couldn’t afford to allow her attention to linger on Corey.
“If you had brought the changeling,” Thea said quietly to the Alphiri Queen, “you might have had a basis for comparison, but the people you sent to New York, Your Majesty, will already have told you that pigeons look very much alike.”
The Queen’s h
ead came around sharply.
“You know about this. The changeling bird that was left in place of the one we had purchased.”
“You know it was stolen.”
“You know it was stolen from us.”
“Well, I could tell,” Corey muttered, still ignored by everybody.
“No. It was recovered from you, restored to the one to whom it truly belongs, the man who stands beside that cage. You can’t tell which one it is, but he can—he knows precisely which bird is which. That alone proves that it is his property and not yours, however you claim to have obtained it. Everyone knows that the Alphiri pay for what they take, that the Alphiri do not steal—your polity was built on that reputation. You are close to breaking your own fundamental law. Representatives of the Alphiri were there when the pigeon was found, taken from a human being’s hands, without that human being’s permission. That’s stealing. If the Alphiri did not take this bird with their own hands, they certainly sanctioned its taking, and even stood back and watched it happen.”
The Queen lifted her chin. “The Alphiri do not steal,” she said, her words dripping with outrage.
“Fair price for fair service,” said one of her henchmen.
“We do not cheat,” said the other.
Thea looked sideways again; Terry nodded at her—I’m ready when you are.
“The Faele stole from us,” the Queen said.
“The Faele will be chastised,” the first escort said sonorously.
“The Faele will be punished,” added the second, with a slow nod of judgment.
Thea turned to Humphrey. Now.
He stepped forward swiftly, as though released from a bow. “I speak for the government of the Human Polity,” he said. “The Faele changeling was left with you on our behest. They were merely agents acting on our behalf; if you have a grievance, it is with the Human Polity. The Faele have been granted immunity in this matter.”
The Queen stared at him. “You cannot do this,” she said.
“It is not your place.”
“It is not your right.”
“Then it will fall squarely in the jurisdiction of the Polity Court, and we can take it as high as it needs to go,” Humphrey said.
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