by James Hunter
NINE:
Quarters
Lugh edged past us, heading for the door that now filled the hallway: a heavy bastard of dark wood with delicate silver inlays covering the surface in elaborate swirls and patterns that seemed to defy logic. Twisting here, turning there, connecting in nonsensical ways. Looking at the door was like staring at the love child of one of those Magic-Eye puzzles and an M.C. Escher painting. Complicated custom-built wards. Powerful things that’d be one helluva deterrent to unwanted guests.
Lugh fidgeted at the door handle for a moment, turning the silver knob this way, then that, before pulling a fat, ol’-timey skeleton key—dangling off a ring full of similar keys—from his robes and inserting it into a lock. He jiggled the key, metal clinking against metal as he worked, before the door popped open with a creak of wood and rusted metal. “There we have it,” he said. “These damn doors are old. Can be a bit unreliable at times, at least if you don’t know how to caress them just right. A lot like women, I suppose.”
Ailia didn’t acknowledge the innuendo, but rather slipped past him, pushing the door open and offering us all a good look at the room beyond:
The walls were old gray stone, like something you might find in a historic castle, but everything else was new, modern, and sleek. Polished, dark wood floorboards ran underfoot. A massive marble fireplace—cold and dead—occupied the right wall, flanked on either side by arched windows, which overlooked a sprawling forest filled with an assortment of pines and firs. Those windows also offered a downright spectacular view of the night sky overhead—velvety black, near-bursting with pinpricks of diamond light.
Hot damn, the place was classy as shit.
An area rug of browns and grays sprawled in the center of the floor was topped by a heavily padded couch and an accompanying pair of mocha-brown leather armchairs. The chairs sat opposite a small table with a chessboard. Further in, near the back wall, I spotted the ambassador’s desk, a hulking mahogany thing, which probably weighed a friggin’ ton and seemed to demand respect. It was the kinda desk a high-ranking politician might use to receive guests, and the bookcases on either side—chock-full of dusty, complicated legal texts and arcane grimoires—only served to solidify that air of power.
Someone had ransacked his work space.
File folders and papers were strewn about; pages were splayed out on the desktop, while others littered the floor. Several tomes had also been pulled from the bookshelves and carelessly tossed on the ground.
Though the office had clearly been searched, there were no obvious signs of struggle. Nothing broken. No bloodstains, scorch marks, or body parts laying around. The ambassador wasn’t much to look at, but the guy damn near had a license in badassery and an advanced degree in shit-kickery straight from the University of Beat-Downington, so I was reasonably certain he wouldn’t have gone without a fight.
And those wards on his outer door should’ve been more than enough to keep someone out—even one of the High Danann. Unless of course someone had a key, effectively bypassing all those pesky wards. Someone like Lugh.
“Thank you for your assistance,” Ailia said to our guide, the dismissal clear in her words. “Now if you wouldn’t mind, we would like to take a look around.”
“Of course,” Lugh replied smoothly, then made to step into the room. Ailia caught him by the shoulder, curling her fingers into the fabric of his tunic, or whatever the hell it was called. “Alone. You can wait for us out here, but we need to have a look by ourselves. Having you with us could further contaminate the scene—we’ll be looking for residual constructs and wards.”
Lugh grunted and frowned. A brief look of uncertainty passed over his narrow face, then disappeared as fast as it’d come while he slipped back into the hallway. “A bit unorthodox, I suppose, but then what about this situation is orthodox?” He offered her a deep bow, which bordered on mocking, and ushered us into the room like some kind of overly smug door-butler.
Ailia eyed him for a second, and knowing her as well as I did, I could tell she was warring internally about something, though I wasn’t sure what.
After lingering for an uncertain moment, she turned toward James and me and jerked her head toward the room, proceed. James obeyed without hesitation, heading in while he opened himself to the Vis, drawing deeply as he formed a simple construct of air and spirit—a wispy probe, used to detect wards and other Vis workings that might be invisible to the naked eye. I halted long enough to see Ailia through the doorway and into the room proper, then turned to Lugh.
“Not to be offensive”—I offered him a frosty smile—“but am I supposed to tip you? You know, like a bellhop?” I patted my pants pocket absently. “I hope not, ’cause I don’t have any cash on me.” I grimaced. “Boy do I feel red in the face, sorry about that.”
His fingers drummed restlessly on his spear shaft as he rocked back and forth on his heels. “No tip required,” he said at last, “though maybe I can offer you one. I’m a mischief deity by nature, but not all my kin are so open to humor. There are some who might be inclined to take real offense at some of your quips, and our people are well known for their long memories and creative solutions when it comes to revenge. Just a friendly bit of advice.” He flashed me his teeth, in a smirk that leaned toward a snarl. One that never reached his eyes.
“Thanks,” I replied, holding his gaze. “I’ll keep it in mind. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Lord Lugh, I have business to get down to.”
My newfound deference seemed to mollify him a bit and brought a smug grin back to his face.
“We’ll be sure to let you know when we’re ready to have you chauffeur us around some more,” I said, because dammit I just couldn’t help myself. The dickface was begging for it. “Oh, and I’ll check with James to see if he has any spare ones for you.” I pushed the door shut in his stupid face before he could respond.
I turned, only to find Ailia standing a few feet away, glaring death at me with both hands on her hips in a stance I was well familiar with. It was the same stance a senior staff NCO would take right before commencing the dressing-down of a lifetime. She clicked her tongue angrily. “I thought we talked about this? Why must you needle him like that, eh?” I glanced at James, who stood a ways back, studying the ambassador’s quarters in meticulous detail while trying to suppress a shit-eating grin. No help on that front. “These people are dangerous, Yancy. Why can’t you get that through your head?”
“Come on,” I replied with a shrug, then hooked a thumb toward the door. “You really think we should be worried about Lord Lugh? I know the guy’s a godling, but he seems pretty harmless. I mean his official title is court bard. The dude’s a poet—he ain’t no Oghma.”
“Didn’t you listen to anything I said on the way here? Lord Lugh is far from harmless. For one, Dagda might be the royal figurehead of the Danann and Oghma might be court muscle, but Lugh is the brains. And a crafty opponent is far more dangerous than some stupid meathead who excels at nothing more than swinging a club.” She stepped closer and jabbed me in the chest with a finger. “Or shooting an oversized gun. Two, Lugh is also an accomplished warrior, so you mustn’t underestimate his capabilities. He defeated Balor, King of the Fomorians, in single combat on the field of battle. And the spear he wields? Areadbhair. It is a weapon without equal.
“Last”—she grabbed the lapel of my jacket and drew me in close—“he’s hiding something from us. I don’t know what, his mind is too heavily fortified, but he knows more than he’s letting on about. I can’t say if he’s implicit in the ambassador’s disappearance, but I wouldn’t rule it out either.” She let go and eased back a step, solemn, concern tattooed in her eyes.
“People with secrets are dangerous, Yancy. And that holds especially true for the Danann. Now, let’s be professionals and do our jobs.” She pointed toward the rear of the room. “Check out the bedroom and bathroom—make sure we’re not missing anything there. James”—she turned away from me, spearing Sullivan with a glare—�
�stop grinning like an idiot and check the sitting room. I’ll take the desk and work space.”
I stomped off, heading for a connecting hallway at the back of the room, grumbling the whole way. Damn, but I was getting the raw end of things lately. I loved Ailia, but maybe there was a good reason we didn’t work together more.
I shoved my way past a heavy door at the rear of the living space, which let into the ambassador’s sleeping quarters. A cursory visual sweep of the room turned up all of jack shit, not that I’d expected much else. There was a sprawling bed—untouched and unslept in—a heavy antique wardrobe, a nightstand, and a simple desk with an innocuous chair. On the left was a connecting master bathroom: a spacious, modern thing, despite the medieval castle motif, with a huge porcelain tub and a stand up shower big enough for two.
I probed the room with a construct of spirit and air, searching for hidden wards and traps, but that too was a bust.
I stole a quick peek in the bathroom, found nothing, then moseyed over to the wardrobe, flinging back the hardwood doors and casually rummaging through the contents. Suits, slacks, fancy silk ties, and ugly-ass old-man sweaters. Everything looked pretty standard, but I kept my probe of spirit out, tendrils of power washing over the interior and exterior of the cabinet, searching for anything that might’ve been hidden to untrained eyes. Magi—especially paranoid S2 operators like the ambassador—were well known for taking extraordinary precautions when stashing sensitive information.
If he’d discovered something dangerous, there was slim chance he would’ve stored it in his regular files or desk contents. He’d be too-damned smart for a slipshod play like that.
After a few minutes of careful scrutiny, however, I turned up nada. The wardrobe was just a stuffy wardrobe filled with outdated clothes that made me a little nauseous to look at. The ambassador might’ve been a badass, but damn, he dressed like my granddad. Well, a granddad I suppose, though certainly not my granddad. My granddad had been a hardnosed drunk: part tobacco farmer, part riverboat gambler, and all knobby knuckles and quick fists. Papa Dude—that’s what we called him, and no, I have no idea why—wouldn’t have been caught dead in the Mister Rogers garb hanging in this closet.
“I’ve got something out here,” James called, his voice echoing off the stone walls and high ceilings.
I shut the doors to the wardrobe and headed back out into the foyer to find James sitting in one of the armchairs, staring at the chessboard, one hand rubbing at his chin, a look of intense concentration on his face. Ailia carefully set a stack of papers she’d been going through down on the desktop, and the pair of us made our way over.
“The chessboard has a ward built into it,” James said as we approached, though he never took his eyes from the board. “It’s subtle, though. Almost missed it. Some sort of locking mechanism. I can feel the weaves I need to use to unlock it, but something seems …” He paused, searching for the right word. “Off,” he finally finished with a shrug. “Like there’s a missing piece.”
I grunted, drew more deeply from the Vis, and extended my own senses toward the intricately carved chessboard.
I immediately understood James’s assessment.
The board throbbed with a dull, almost hidden power—a complex knot of Vis, equal parts earth, fire, water, and air, all bound and shaped by thin braids of spirit and willpower. It was a lock alright, and by carefully feeling out the dips and grooves in the pattern I could more or less discern the shape of the key. In my line of work, knowing how to pick a regular Rube lock is an essential skill, but picking Vis locks isn’t so different, even if immeasurably more complicated. The dips and grooves in the pattern were deliberately missing pieces to a complex puzzle, which needed to be filled in with the right elemental constructs in order to spring the locking mechanism.
Only a mage could open this type of ward, and only a handful of magi, like Judges or Fist members, would have the training to bypass someone else’s locks. But even as I fiddled and tinkered with different weave patterns, I realized James was right—some essential part to this puzzle was gone, and without it, this lock wasn’t gonna budge.
I startled a little at Ailia’s smoky chuckle. I glanced back over my shoulder at her, frowned and looked a question at her, what gives?
“The missing piece—it’s a chess joke.” She motioned toward the table. “Look at the board.” I carefully surveyed the layout on the tabletop. It appeared someone had stopped the game mid-play, but there weren’t any obvious pieces missing. I gave it a thorough once-over, though, just to be sure. Yep: pawns, knights, bishops, rooks, kings, queens. I’m no Bobby Fischer—chess isn’t really my bag—but I knew enough to say with certainty that all pieces were present and accounted for.
I rubbed at my temples, massaging away a growing migraine. “Yeah, I still got nothin’,” I said with a shake of my head.
Ailia smiled and strutted past me—a star pupil making her way to the chalkboard—pausing momentarily to pat me on the cheek. “It is good you are so pretty. It is not a literal missing piece, but a misplaced piece. The setup on the board is one well known to any average chess player. The black pieces are arrayed in an opening maneuver known as the Ruy Lopez. And the white pieces are in a formation commonly called the Stonewall Attack. Or, I should say, the formation is almost the Stonewall Attack. One piece is out of place.”
She padded to the table, bent over, offering me an unobstructed view of one of her best angles, and picked up an intricately carved, white marble knight. Without hesitation, she shifted the knight to the center of the playing field.
“You’re so full of shit,” I said, staring at the table, mouth slightly agape. “You’re making all that chess stuff up, right?”
The corners of her lips turned up, then she stood and crossed her arms across her chest. “What can I say, I am a woman of mystery and intrigue. Despite what you may think, moi kotik, there are many things you do not know about me.”
“Yeah, but how didn’t I know you were some kinda chess guru? That seems like the kinda thing that would come up eventually.”
“And so it has come up. Eventually,” she replied flippantly. “Besides, I am no chess guru.” She waved a hand through the air as though to wipe away my assertion. “Little better than a novice compared to any master player, and I haven’t played in years. In Russia, my dear, mathematics, critical thinking, strategy, and the art of analysis are held in the highest regard—instead of your television, we had calculus and chess to entertain us as children. Now try the ward.”
I frowned and extended my senses, only to find the ward was now responsive to my probe. James was already working away, face knotted in concentration as he shifted between various elemental configurations in the way you might twist and turn a Rubik’s Cube. I ignored him and focused on the dips and peaks—applying a hint of fire here, a touch of magnetic force there, twisting in strands of earth, speckles of water and air, and fine flows of spirt. After only a few long moments, my jumbled working slipped into place—a hand into a glove—my construct mingling with the one built into the chessboard, until they were a single, working whole.
“Bingo,” I muttered.
A brief flare of light and an uncomfortable burst of heat filled the room as the fireplace to the left belched out a gout of red flame accompanied by the grating sound of shifting stones. The fire guttered in an instant, leaving a cold fireplace in its wake, but a fireplace which had changed. The back row of gray stone, smudged with black soot, had pulled away to reveal a cavity with a single manila file folder inside, tied shut with a length of brown twine, like a Christmas present, and sealed with a blob of red wax. A creamy sheet of neatly folded paper sat on top of the folder, one corner tucked up under the twine.
We all stared at the innocuous file for a long uncomfortable moment as if it might actually be some kinda deadly serpent, coiled and waiting to bite. I guess, in its way, the manila folder was exactly that. The ambassador was missing—captured, maybe dead—and the reason had to be t
ucked away between the covers of that folder. Once we opened it and read its contents, we’d be marked. Huge targets painted onto our friggin’ backs, and whoever was responsible for the ambassador’s abduction would have no choice but to come for us.
They’d have no choice but to make sure we didn’t leave Tír na nÓg alive.
James stood from the chair and cleared his throat. “Well it’s not going to read itself, is it?” he asked, then lumbered forward, squatted down, and retrieved the report from its hidden compartment. Still squatting on his haunches, he drew out the note on top and scanned the contents. He snorted, stood, and extended the note to Ailia. “Our Ambassador Hoehner is one clever cat, I’ll give him that.”
Eyebrows raised, face a picture of curiosity, Ailia accepted the note with a nod and gave it a once-over—a ghost of a smile emerging on her lips—before handing it to me:
Attention: Judge Ailia Levchenko
If you are reading this note then, obviously, I’m missing, likely in a great deal of trouble, or possible dead—a grisly reality every S2 agent is prepared for. Since such is the case, let me say how thrilled and relieved I am to have such an astute operative working on my behalf. Despite what others in the Guild may say or believe, I’ve always held you in high regard and have a great deal of respect and admiration for your talents.
And, in answer to your unspoken question, no, I am not a clairvoyant. If such were the case, I should think I would’ve avoided going missing in the first place. Rather, I know well the workings of the Guild, and I feel superbly confident that they will have dispatched the best—you, Ms. Levchenko—to deal with this matter. Furthermore, I know of no other Judge capable of decoding my chessboard ward.
On to the matter at hand: Things in the court are perilous just now and deadly dangerous for any outsider unwise or unfortunate enough to get caught up in the riptide of Danann politics. No one here is as they seem and all are constantly positioning and repositioning for power or influence. Be cautious in your dealings and always assume you are being lied to and manipulated. The evidence contained within this folder should be self-explanatory, so I won’t belabor the point. One last piece of advice: be wary of Lord Lugh. He is something of a friend to me, yet he is also shrewd, devious, and calculating—such craftiness is as much a part of his nature as the scorpion’s need to sting the frog. Good luck and Godspeed.
