This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical and public figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical or public figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2020 by Michael Scott
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Cover design by Regina Flath
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
About the Author
ENCRYPTED EMAIL—512-BIT ENCRYPTION
From: Niccolò Machiavelli
To: Billy the Kid
Subject: More memories
Dear William,
I trust you are healing well. Remember, we are immortal, not invulnerable, and while I know you have been friends with Black Hawk for many decades, maybe you will pause and reconsider if he ever asks you again to go up against an army of Little People, especially Leprechauns. Next time you might not be so lucky. When you see Scathach, ask her what happened when she fought them. If I’ve learned anything in my long life it is that you don’t mess with the Little People!
I want to circle back to something we touched upon in your last email. I was surprised to discover that you have kept no record of your remarkable life. I would like to encourage you to begin a diary. The process of faithful documentation will certainly spark memories, and the longer you live, the more valuable you will find those memories.
It should come as no surprise to you that over the course of my long life I have kept a daily journal. Long before I became immortal in the sixteenth century, I was in the habit of recording my life in a series of day bookes which I encoded using a cypher given to me by Leonardo da Vinci. (We were never really friends; he was a genius, but he smelled!) At first, they were just a way to note everything that occurred on a daily basis. Later, when I became ageless, the diaries became more important. They allowed me to keep track of the world. When days and weeks and then months blended into one another, when I could recall the years only by the great holidays, events and seasons, my letters and diaries were essential. They gave the years and then the centuries a shape that would otherwise have been lost.
And of course, one of the great gifts of immortality is the ability to put in place plans that take decades to come to fruition. While my memory is excellent, even I was unable to track everything without committing it to paper. Now, although I have access to the most sophisticated bit-locked computers and encrypted journals, I still handwrite my diaries every night. The process helps shape my day.
But even without my diaries, there are certain events that have seared themselves into my memory.
I remember the night I accepted the gift—or was it the curse?—of immortality.
I remember the first time I met Dagon, the millennia-old creature who would become my companion and friend for centuries. (I always regret that you never got to meet: you would have liked him and he would have loathed you.)
I know to the precise hour, the moment I met that dangerous human monster, John Dee.
I can recall with absolute clarity the time Perenelle Flamel and I fought on the slopes of Mount Etna.
As I am writing this to you, what has just struck me is that these memories are of those times I came close to losing my immortal life.
Perhaps that is why I will never forget the time Black Annis came to Paris.
It was 1793: the year of the Terror.
It came to be called that because of a wretched man, whom I disliked intensely, called Bertrand Barère. Billy, you would have despised Barère on the spot. He had what you would call a very punchable face.
Barère liked to call himself a revolutionary; in truth he was nothing more than an amateur politician, who came to a decision only once he saw which way the wind was blowing. He was one of those who voted for the king’s execution, and rounded out his pretty speech by saying “the tree of liberty grows only when watered by the blood of tyrants.” And if that sounds familiar to you, it was because he’d stolen the phrase from your third American president, Thomas Jefferson, who’d used it six years previously. No doubt Barère didn’t think anyone would notice, but I did.
He was a journalist and clearly spent a long time crafting his speeches. In one infamous address, he declared, “Let us make terror the order of the day.”
And that is what they did.
Billy, I have lived through some of Europe’s worst excesses. I grew up in the time of the Borgias and the Medici; I watched the Witch Hunts sweep across nations; I was in Seville during the terrible days of the Great Plague and in France when we lost two million people to the famine. I have seen some truly awful things: the worst of what humanity had to offer. But the Reign of Terror was shocking beyond belief. France was in the midst of the Revolution. There was upheaval everywhere; law and order were breaking down; there were mobs protesting in the streets. So the government of the day decided that the only way to control the country was by terror tactics. They called it “a speedy, severe and inflexible justice.”
It was not justice. In the months following Barère’s pretty speech, thousands would die, disappear or end up imprisoned on false charges.
And sometimes, just sometimes, I wonder if the Terror was not orchestrated by the Dark Elders and their followers. Certainly, it allowed creatures like Black Annis to operate undiscovered, their crimes hidden and lost amid the chaos.
I added Barère’s name to my little black book the moment I heard his plagiarized speech. Those whose names go into my book sooner or later have unfortunate accidents.
There are some immortal humans who choose not to take an active role in politics or public life. They live quietly and try not to leave a mark on t
he world. I have come to the conclusion that this is a waste of their immortality. Before I became immortal I believed that my work, my writings, would make a difference. After I “died” I was determined that I would make a difference.
In Florence, where I lived for most of my life, I learned the value of working behind the scenes. Billy, there is an old saying that comes from the country of your Irish ancestors: “Happy is the man who remains unknown to the law.” In Paris, in 1793, I was the law. Never officially, of course; operating in the shadows, I effectively commanded the various police forces, and my vast fortune ensured that the newly elected politicians did what I told them. Piece by piece, I dismantled the Terror and ensured that those who orchestrated it paid for their crimes. It is true that I saved some lives; I wish I could have saved more.
I thought that humans were the worst part of the Terror.
I was wrong.
I have scanned these pages from my diaries, converted them into text and rendered them in English for you. Perhaps they will encourage you to keep your own diaries and record your adventures.
(As an aside, Billy, you must learn a few more languages. English and Spanish will take you far, but can I also suggest French? And Italian, of course. And if you have Mandarin, Arabic and Hindi, you can travel the world. Don’t tell me you don’t have the time! Time is something we immortals have aplenty.)
When you are fit enough to travel, do come and visit me in Paris. I have an apartment you can stay in on the Rue de Montmorency, almost directly opposite Flamel’s old house. Paris is a city of wonders; I could show you the catacombs beneath the city; the hidden rooms in the Louvre; Notre Dame, where Dee, with a little help from me, brought the gargoyles to life and the leygate in Sacre Coeur that carried Nicholas and the Twins to this city and my attention.
And you did say you wanted to visit Disneyland Paris.
Give my regards to Black Hawk, of course.
And, Billy, try to stay out of trouble.
Your friend
Niccolò Machiavelli
Thursday, 5th Day of September, the First Year of the Revolutionary Calendar of the French Republic (1793 of the Julian Calendar). New Moon.
1
There were mobs in the streets again today. It was not unexpected: it was sunny and warm after weeks of rain. I have noticed that no one likes rioting in wet weather.
All morning I received reports of scattered outbreaks of violence from across the city. One by one, ragged men and women, children too, would rap on the window of the little house on the Rue du Montmorency I used as my headquarters. A few came to the front door; most preferred the rear, where they could slink down the alleyway and collect their coin without being spotted. In every city I’ve lived in, I have maintained a shadow army of ordinary men, women, and children—especially children, for they are invisible. I call them my Irregular Army. My spies know I will pay well for information. They also know that my bodyguard will punish them if they lie or make up stories for me.
Dagon stood guard at the door. He was dressed head to foot in the slightly shabby blue-and-white uniform of the old royal army. His shape was further disguised by a heavy gray frock coat with the collar turned up, and a large bicorn hat on his head. Purple-lensed glasses hid his peculiar eyes, and stuffed leather gloves made it appear that he had the correct number of fingers. No amount of human clothing could disguise the rancid fishy odor that enveloped him, but even without that, my visitors instinctively knew that there was something amiss. They would stand in the door and whisper their secrets to him and he would note them down with a metal stylus on a wax tablet; I have tried to get him to modernize, but he is very firmly stuck in the past. He is fond of telling me that he recorded the original epic of Gilgamesh on wax and in clay, and if it was good enough for Gilgamesh, then it should be good enough for me. Wax, unfortunately, attracts flies.
As my spies hurried past my window, I heard them whisper about Dagon, wondering about his appearance: guessing he was a descendant of the Mongol army, an African, a Turk and a Viking—one even suggested a Golem—but they could not have been further from the truth. I wondered how they would react if they knew he had once been worshiped as a god.
Around noon, Dagon drew a black shade across the front and back windows. This was the signal that I was either not at home or not to be disturbed. Sometimes, the foolhardy ignored the sign. But they only did it once. Dagon has many fine gifts; humor is not one of them.
We sat across the scarred wooden table from one another and had lunch. While my bread was fresh, the cheese was as hard as an old boot, and my wine was probably a week away from becoming vinegar. Dagon delicately picked apart a freshly caught river trout and sucked out the innards with a long black tongue that came with a spike at its tip.
I nodded at the pile of wax tablets and brushed away a cloud of flies. “What do you make of this morning’s reports?” I spoke in Dagon’s hissing tongue, a language not used on earth for millennia. Although I was confident that we were alone, I had survived a long time by being cautious.
“The entire city is in upheaval,” he said, opening his mouth to reveal far too many needle-pointed teeth. His voice was a sticky bubble of sounds. “Food is scarce. People are upset. Some riot in search of attention and answers, others riot simply to be noticed, and others do it because they are bored.”
I divided his wax tablets into two piles. The left-hand stack was little more than gossip and could be discounted, but the four tablets on the right told a very similar story. “See here: Rue de Reuilly, a riot because the police did not investigate the disappearance of a child. And here, just off Rue du Temple, there is unrest because an entire family of children has gone missing and remains uninvestigated. Here, in Rue Reaumur, a brother went in search of a missing sister and then he too disappeared. The police show no interest. Rue Saint-Jean, twins disappeared in the middle of the day.”
Dagon shrugged, an odd movement of his broad shoulders. He had left his watery kingdom a long time ago and had lived on land for countless millennia, but he still found it impossible to mimic certain human movements. “Children go missing all the time. They either turn up, or they do not.”
“You have a heart of gold.”
“I do not,” he answered. “I have a two-chambered heart below my gills. It is muscle, not metal.”
“It is a saying,” I explained.
Dagon dissected the fish with his hooklike claws. “And is this expression a compliment?” he asked.
Deciding that explaining sarcasm to a three-thousand-year old Babylonian fish god was more trouble that it was worth, I tapped the wax tablets again. “There is something going on here. Four reports, all to do with the disappearance of children.”
Dagon stopped chewing.
“And all in the same area,” I reminded him. “The poorest slums in Paris.”
“A child hunter?” he asked.
“You are far older than I am. You must have encountered beings who collected children.”
“I know of creatures who would take a lost child, like a fox taking a chicken. Trolls, were-beasts…” He paused, his lips sticky with bubbles. “But they are individuals, taking single children. You are suggesting something else, something more organized.”
“These are not isolated cases. There are at least eight missing children that we know of. And what about the others, whose parents are dead or missing, lost to war and revolution? Who counts them? In your vast experience, who would steal children?”
Dagon suddenly stood and began to stride around the room, his mouth slowly opening and closing. “Fairy folk, perhaps. They have colonies in just about every country in the world. Many names: Sidhe, fairies, elves, xana, Tomtra, Jogah, Menehune…but they are more or less the same race. Their ancestors came from Danu Talis—the island you know as Atlantis—and were among the first to flee when it was destro
yed by the Twins of Legend. They will swap their own children for humans.”
“Changelings.”
Dagon nodded. “They have a plan that one day, when they have enough Changelings in places of power, they will rise up and proclaim themselves the rulers of this world.” He made a quick dismissive motion. “It will not happen.”
“I cannot see them taking children from the slums. They would take the children of people in positions of powers. Besides, don’t the fairy folk always replace the child they take?” There are no replacement children being left now.
Dagon stopped. “You are correct, of course. So they would not be missed.”
“Do you know whatever happened to the Rattenfänger? Just over five hundred years ago, he took one hundred and thirty children from the town of Hamelin.”
“Disappeared from this realm completely. A host of immortals led by Aoife of the Shadows chased him through countless Shadowrealms. But they never caught him.”
“And the children were never recovered?”
“No.”
“Could he have returned to this world?”
He shook his head with that peculiar movement of shoulders that turned his entire body. “I heard the Witch of Endor did something to the scent of his aura, marked him so that he’d leave a trail wherever he went. As soon as he stepped out of hiding, every Awakened Humani or immortal being within fifty miles would become aware of his presence.”
“Well, something is here! It must be. Perhaps drawn by the Terror, or using the Terror to disguise its activities.”
“Perhaps it is the most cunning and dangerous of all villains,” Dagon said quietly. “A Humani”
The thought had crossed my mind. In the long years of my immortality, I had met Ancients and Elders, Next Generation and immortal humans, but in my experience the most dangerous monsters were human.
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