Genia

What sort of theme would you be looking for?

Over the top?

Wagner. Wagner is always over the top.

We are aimed mainly at casual to very casual players, and we've got #4 down to a T.

I would tell you to check out our SG - but, I will be frank, we are experiencing a certain lull in activity that will likely last till mid-July, because one of the leaders and founders has just been drafted into the army and is marooned away from game, in basic training.

If you are stil inclined to check us out, give me a yell here or in-game. Good luck.

... I am not sure whether that's disappointment or anger. Disconcerting, either way.

Due to certain RL issues (one of the authors got drafted this last week and is currently in basic training, to be precise) we shall be cutting back on posting for this story until such time as he has a little more time on his hands again. We will still be posting at least once a week, however, and expect to finish the story more or less on schedule.

Thank you,

Genia and Dylan

End of public announcement. You may now resume your routine posting.

Virtue is the Official-Unofficial RP server. Supergroups sprout there like mushrooms after a light rain, and there's so much insanity in the Pocket D that it's become downright notorious. If you go to the Virtue forums, they provide a convenient thread that lists all supergroups and villaingroups with their themes, contacts, recruitment policies and so forth. The Virtue community is so active that, as of late, the server has become practically inaccessible half the time, and people have been fleeing it in groups sized anywhere from cliques to droves. But it's not really that bad, in my opinion (my inability to run a single mission notwithstanding).

I don't know about other servers, but there is a pretty decent RP community on Pinnacle as well. They have their own site, separate from the main boards, and they are quite active and like their stories.

I think that if you first defined a theme or character concept, you'd be more likely to get people pointing to specific groups; at the moment they are frightened off by the openminded generalism. I hope this information helps you out.

P.S. My group will always take members who can spell.

Chapter XI
In Which A Reunion Goes Unexpectedly And—

I dropped the receiver back into its cradle. “Oh, hell.”

I had a great deal more eloquent and expressive things running through my head, but that is where they stayed. I am not much for swearing, at least not out loud. It is my assumption, always, that if I am incapable of expressing myself – in the dozen or so languages I know – without lapsing into profanity, then it is time to be silent. I will confess, however, that at that point I had been running through a long and rather elaborate string of Russian and Hebrew – with some English thrown in for good measure – in the back of my brain.

Fischer looked up at me, scared and stunned. “What happened to him?”

“If he opened the door for the wrong people,” I answered, reaching for my coat and scarf off the door handle, “he's dead.”

“We hope that he isn't,” Garent added, standing up and grabbing my suitcase before I could ask him to do so. We would be running, and I was completely incapable of handling a load on the run; Garent, bless him, knew it. “We're going to try and get to him now. Isn't that right, Sofia?”

“Oh, yes,” I answered fervently. “If you want to help your colleague, Herr Fischer, you will do me a favour?”

“Anything!” The flustered academic stared at me with eyes that glittered suspiciously.

“Stay away from de Sarzec’s work for the time being, no matter the temptation. It’s worth more than your life to touch it.” I looked at him, willing for the seriousness of my tone to penetrate. I was not usually encouraging of fear tactics, but there was something deeply obscene to the notion of this man sticking his head into the fire. Fischer apparently was one of these individuals rare at all times and in all places; a genuinely nice human being. I did not want him dead.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said, quite fervently. “Anything else?”

“Call in the Luxembourg airport, and get me a rental car.”

We left Austria in terrible haste, and without much comment. A hasty taxi ride to the airport, and a short spurt of activity there, then we both, and Garent's little backpack as well as my suitcase, were loaded on the small plane to Luxembourg. I had been rapidly developing a royal migraine, air pressure changes conspiring with sleeplessness and stress to bring me down entirely and, when the stewardess brought us drinks, I had to grip the cup in both hands like a child in order to prevent it from spilling in my awkward, insecure grasp.

Only once, when we were already up in the air, did I turn to Garent with anything like conversation. When the plane took off, and the city underneath receded I commented, staring out the little window, “At leas we are out of there.”

Garent turned slowly around from busily examining the cloud formations rapidly thickening around our heads. “You never let go, do you, Sofia?”

“History haunts all of us, one way or another,” I said in a flat voice that concealed nausea and pain. “Some of us it haunts more closely than others.”

“Well, you didn't seem to take it all that badly, what with the bombing and all.”

I stared at him for a while, thinking. Garent was one of the few people in the world who was not fooled by my constant poker face. We've known each other for a long time, and he knew that we all – me, Alexander and Lorenzo too – each had our own mask. Alexander sported the smile and attitude of a clown, worn and ridden with holes like an old suit. Lorenzo cultivated stoicism in the same careful, tidy way he took care of his hat and duster. Mine was the bland, placid serenity of a well-groomed, polite lady, sprinkled with a touch of irony. It went well with my understated wardrobe and sparse makeup. Therefore, a question like that could only be bait, for me to take or leave. Generally, I would prefer to leave... but there were only the two of us, on a plane full of disinterested strangers.

“When I was very young,” I said thoughtfully, “I read a story about Marie Antoinette, the last queen of France. They said that when she went to the guillotine she had to pass though the door of the cell where she was kept, in the Bastille--” I'd pointed the building out to Garent as a by and by, while in Paris, and he nodded in remembrance. “The story said that she had opened her head on the low plinth, because she refused to bow it. So she went to be beheaded like that; forehead bleeding, but head high and back straight.”

“That seems like way too much effort to put in just so that other people wouldn't know.”

“Perhaps,” I said steadily, “but it is well worth it because I would know. If I must go to the gallows, this is how I will do it.”

We flew the rest of the way in silence, with Garent napping, and me chewing through migraine pills like candy.

I have very fleeting impressions of Luxembourg in general, and of the airport in particular. Like all airports in the world, it was completely sterile of all local flavour, and had signs in English, French and German. Like all little European countries Luxembourg has three official languages, and makes use of four or five to conduct its daily business, though the notion should hardly disconcert me. The pilot, I remember, landed well; though I suppose if he had not done so, he might have overflown the borders altogether, sticking the nose of the plane into Germany, Belgium or France.

I had never gone through an airport faster in my life. Snagging my suitcase and hurrying through the long walkways out to the exit I thanked the deities of history that the EU had done away with passports, customs inspections and other nuisances beyond the details of basic security which kept passengers paying and planes off the ground. Fischer, octogenarian or no, was as good as his word at least as far as the rental car was concerned. He had done me one better, in fact, and left the full address of Mr. Donald Bertram (age fifty-seven, citizenship dual) at the counter for me as well. Fifteen minutes later I was zooming down the highway from the airport to the northern exit of Luxembourg City, the GPS barely keeping up with the speed of the turns.

Let me put something firmly down on the record. I am a cautious enough driver, as such things go – living in a city where random objects, as well as flying heroes, in the middle of the road are a real hazard, makes caution an admirable habit – and usually I much prefer the passenger seat, with my husband occupying the wheel. But I got my license in Russia, and Russian driving is the ultimate survival of the fittest test; if you're not fit to dodge anything bigger and heavier than you, don't blame anybody for dying in a car accident. And then I moved to California.

Basically, to make a long story short, when I absolutely have to, I drive like a fiend.

“Right. Turn. Three, Hundred. Meters.” I refrained from tossing the GPS, with its annoying, mechanic voice, out the window, instead dodging a stodgy Luxembourgian vehicle which crawled along the road at an indecent hundred kilometers, shifting momentarily down to take the turn. Bertram, a man of means who had, apparently, liked his quiet, lived well outside the city of Luxembourg in his own private house. A nice thing all around, except when someone attempts murder on you in broad daylight. I slowed down marginally when the map on the GPS zoomed in to show individual little roads, in order to better examine the environment and present an innocuous facade.

The place was deeply green, gently rural, breathed more money than I make in a year, and the houses were literally miles apart. I rolled down my window, and peered out, trying to spot incongruous vehicles. “Lorenzo won't be happy to see me.”

“Assuming that he didn't just go on a murdering spree,” Garent unclenched his hand from the door handle – he didn't comment about my driving, in fact, he seemed pleased by it, but instinct cannot be helped, “-why do you say that?”

I shrugged ruefully, and slowly, soundlessly pulled the small rental into the smooth parking lot of Bertram's house. “He never is.”

The place seemed quiet. There were no scorched marks in front, and the garden was well-manicured and exceptionally well-maintained; the garden of a man who liked his plants, and had time to dedicate to them. The house was two-storied, with large front windows slightly tinted to prevent too much exposure to sunlight. I could not see beyond them into the living room, though they reflected my haggard face, and Garent's calm one, quite nicely.

“All right,” I murmured softly. “Head up, back straight,” and headed toward the door.

I pressed the handle slowly, and the front door swung open with a small, almost nonexistent squeak. I froze nervously at the sound and frowned in concentration, trying to listen. There were noises from within – moving furniture, heavy footsteps, someone spoke briefly over a rush of water, though I could not identify the voice. I leaned my umbrella on the wall carefully, and slid out of my shoes, standing on the wooden floor in my stockings only. Behind me, light mist suddenly obscuring him in a small cloud, Garent ghosted.

The entire place was a shambles. Someone had, with careful methodical, silent aptitude, gone over every possible nook and cranny in it. The bookshelves were practically emptied out, and piles of books threatened to spill over with a clutter from where they lay – which was practically everywhere. The couch pillows were torn off their spots and opened, then tossed. Someone has methodically pulled drawer after drawer of the writing desk, shuffled through papers then overturned the drawers onto the floor. Large, dirty dog tracks lay across the honey-coloured floorboards, leading from the salon further inside. The entire place looked as if, in the night, it had been visited by a silent but not at all neat branch of the KGB.

“Follow the tracks,” I murmured almost inaudibly. Garent nodded, and the cloud grew thicker.

We tiptoed across the floor, to where the sounds of people and things were louder and louder, and stopped in front of the door. The light from the large veranda windows illuminated long, afternoon shadows. I rested my hand on the handle for a moment, and looked at Garent with an eyebrow raised. From within his mist, he shrugged slightly. I pressed the handle slowly and opened the door.

The room beyond was barricaded with overturned chairs and desks. The window, much smaller, in the vein of a regular office, was broken, and the shutters on it were drawn. The glass from the windowpane lay in a wide semicircle underneath the sill. The smell of blood was sharp and thick, and bullet casings were scattered across the floor. In the middle of it all rested the body of what must have been Donald Bertram, mouth open, torso covered with large splotches of red. Above it, Rostov Kushan grinned his cold little grin at me and his young brother, Victor, was blinking in astonishment.

“What is this?” I said softly.

“It doesn't matter now, madam.” Lorenzo was a little off to the side, standing in the shadow by a bookcase. He pointed a gun directly at my head. “Remain still, or you will be shot.”

END OF PART I

Chapter X
In Which Somebody Is Actually Found Alive… And Another Is Not

“Fraulein,” I leaned on the counter, scanning as though by reflex the rows of titles sitting on the table below, on their way to be returned to the shelves. “You’ve just helped my young friend over there. Perhaps you can help me also?”

I’m not much of a thespian; acting never seemed to work for me, somehow. My main critiques involved such words as ‘understated’ and ‘not sufficiently emotional’. I am, however, an absolute professional in that most ingenious art of concealment which Shakespeare defined ‘seek none, conspiracy; hide it in smiles and affability’. And I can be no more affable than to a librarian.

“Sure, madam.” The librarian smiled obligingly, and provided me with the sort of look that anyone who’d ever worked customer service of any kind, any kind whatsoever, recognizes as ‘oh, bother’. “How can I help you?”

I waved the registry list at her. “Hermann Fischer’s your boss, isn’t he? I have his secretarial phone number, but I really need to talk to him, so can you look up his number for me?”

“Sorry, but I can’t do that,” the librarian didn’t look particularly regretful. “It’s the policy.”

“I’ll tell you the truth,” I made an embarrassed face which, for me, means looking a little shiftier than usual, “I’m here on request of a friend of mine, who just was here and, I think, was talking to your boss also. I need to verify something for him. Hey, come to think of it,” I added offhandedly, “you might remember him; pretty tall, white hair, limps a little?”

The girl’s eyes lit.

I suppressed an internal sigh. Lorenzo, damn his Italian soul, is extremely memorable to persons of the female persuasion. I have once seen a picture of him as a relatively young man and, while never quite managing the all-too-narrow standards of a Hollywood actor, the man had the sort of looks which would make women buzz and twirl around him like a swarm of agitated bees, and fathers lock away their daughters muttering about ‘that handsome devil’. Even now, at his advanced age of, thank you very much, a hundred and fourty (going on fifty-one) he could still make heads turn.

“That’s right, I remember him. I helped him pick up a manuscript,” the librarian was nodding enthusiastically. Apparently Lorenzo’d had his charm on the ‘on’ setting. Investigatory work, however, precludes gnashing of teeth and various other visible signs of turning green, and I smiled at the girl who was helpfully pulling out a large phone book. My head was ticking along rapidly, in any case, busily connecting the dots.

“This is the one; some Arabic manuscript. That was it, was it? I didn’t catch him last night, you see.”

“Yeah, I think,” the librarian frowned. “He was looking for that cylinder we were supposed to get from France…”

“Supposed?” I blinked, eyeing her sharply. Antiques nowadays didn’t just disappear into thin air. They were the affair of the government – of several governments oftentimes – subject to much diplomacy, caution, severe security protocols and careful handling. They were, in fact, rapidly escalating from museum exhibits to mythical status and proportions. “You lost an antique?”

“We didn’t lose it,” the girl said indignantly. “It’s in shipping.”

“Really?” I allowed myself to be duly skeptical, though my heart was pummeling away.

“Those damn French,” the librarian was reduced into vexed candour. “They can never get anything right. It’s all a mess. And now with this guy Benveniste dead, and poor Herr Auer dead, half of the Archaeological community in Europe can’t find their hands and feet. Here,” she plunked a piece of paper on the counter. “Hermann’s phone number. Though if you want to catch him quickly, you should go up to his office. He’s in now.” I nodded my thanks. “And say hi to your friend.”

I knocked on Fischer’s door sharply, and, without waiting for a response, stepped in. Fischer’s office was very…sparse. I am all too used to seeing academic clutter of various shades and degrees; most of my fellow professors keep their office in some gradient of artistic disorganization, perhaps based on the notion that it helps them invent and stimulates their scientific work. My own university office looks like a cross between a mad librarian’s nightmares and a good housekeeper’s dreams – depending on how far into my creative throes I am at the moment. Fischer’s office, on the other hand, could feature as an illustration of ‘obsessive compulsive’ in the OED. It was also ridiculously German, as though the man, aware of his nationality and status, was absolutely determined to live up to it by any means possible. There was, however, no occupant visible.

“Herr Fischer?”

A rather incongruous pile of office supplies in the back heaved and twitched nervously, before a man in his very advanced seventies,, maybe slightly less advanced eighties, crawled out of it, backing slowly on all fours. What Fischer missed in eccentricity in the office he applied to his own person. Clearly, the man was my husband’s soul mate, though he dealt with old paper and not mechanical parts and fusion reactors. He wore a sleeveless vest, and the knees of his pants had distinct marks of dust on them, and were just short enough to reveal a pair of fabulously mismatched socks. He even had the Einstein hair that every decent physicist secretly aspires to. “Hello! How can I help you? Uh…”

The Germans like their titles. I took a deep breath and rattled off all of mine. “Frau Doktor-Professor Sofia Rabinovich I’m a friend of Herr Mondavi who was here yesterday nice to meet you.” I gulped for breath and added in English, “And this is Garent.”

“Ooh…” He stared at me in sincere appreciation “A lady of worth and experience!” A chair was dragged out and presented to me with, dear God, a flourish. “Please, grace my office.”

Faced with the enthusiastic little antiquarian and the smirking, obviously amused Garent, I helplessly took a seat. The man fussed over me, relieving me almost forcibly of my coat and scarf, and making a show of hanging them on – for lack of any better accommodations – his office door handle. Then he went to the pile of office supplies to rummage for cups. “You must excuse me. My secretary, she came in today. She cleaned my office, put everything in place, now,” he stared at me in helpless mirth, “I am completely lost.”

I laughed despite myself and decided I rather liked the fellow. He was a living death-blow to stereotypes.

After we were both saddled with coffee cups, I prodded the man gently to the subject of our visit again.

“Yes, yes. Your friend was here yesterday – such a nice young man--”

I spewed coffee. Garent pounded me helpfully on the back.

“—Came in with a reference from Heinrich Auer and picked up the manuscript. We chatted about this sort of thing. He’s a very well-educated young man, they are a rarity nowadays.” More coffee was threatening to wind its way up my nose, but I restrained myself, barely.

“And that cylinder that never showed up?”

“Ah, yes, yes. De Sarzec’s cylinder. Heinrich was obsessed with it; wanted to see it. I don’t think that it has any significance, myself, but Heinrich is our rich patron and generally a very nice man, a pleasure to work with, knows his books.”

The thought of de Sarzec’s work, even in such friendly company, was sobering. “You’ve never been involved in that research yourself?”

“Oh my, no! I’m far too busy! Far, far too busy. A whole library, some of it incredibly valuable, to maintain and that secretary of mine misplaced half my preservation materials,” he sniffed sadly. “De Sarzec’s work was a momentary curiousity, nothing more.”

I stared at him for a while, mouth slightly open, as the notion finally sank in. The only person in my entire inquiry whom I managed to catch alive, and the only person who has not been directly involved in de Sarzec’s work. The idea that this work and its descendants was key wasn’t in fact new – I’d have to be a far greater fool than one could imagine not to make that connection – but here was a (pardon me) living, breathing proof of the matter. What’s more, it rather clinched my assumption that, whoever were the people involved in this affair, I must be getting to them first. Now I knew who these people were, at least by deduction.

“Herr Fischer,” I said, slowly putting my coffee cup on the table. “Do you have a contact number for Auer’s dealer? What was his name? Amann…”

“Oh yes, of course. He gave it to me in case we needed to coordinate some purchase with him directly.”

“Could you dial it for me, please?”

“Right now?” He blinked, raising bushy gray eyebrows.

“If you please.”

He dragged out a phone by its cable, and presented it to me on the table. Several minutes longer were spent with him frantically digging through the pile of office stationery and supplies, papers and stubs of pencil in the corner, until, with a sign, he had extracted a large, leather-bound day planner from the top drawer of his desk, and flipped it open. I dialed and pressed the receiver to my ear anxiously, ready, at this point, for anything.

“Hello.” The voice on the other side of the line was dry and officious but also a little wary.

“I must speak with Mr. Thomas Amann, please.”

“He is not available right now.”

I clenched my teeth. “It’s very important. I must reach him immediately. Is there a home number, or a cell phone? Anything?”

“I am sorry, but he is not available.”

“I must insist,” I, naturally, insisted. “His life may depend on it.”

There was a momentary, astonished silence on the other end of the line, then the voice said, coldly. “You are too late. Thomas Amann has been found dead with a bullet to the back of his head this morning. Good bye.” The receiver clicked.

I dropped the dead receiver back into place and the three of us stared at each other, shocked. Fischer looked frightened; Garent looked uncomfortable.

“Herr Fischer,” I said quietly. “May I strongly advise that you go to the police?”

“Yes, yes,” he was nodding furiously, the jovial expression completely gone from his face. “My God, how horrible… how incredibly odd. First Heinrich, now Thomas. Who next?”

“That is what I must find out. I must know. Who else was involved with this? What names did Auer mention? Or if not him, then Lorenzo. It could be deathly important.” Nobody groaned at the inadvertent, awkward pun. No one even noticed.

“Bertram,” the small, elderly academic allowed finally, rubbing his temples as though his head hurt. “Donald Bertram.”

I sat there, lightning-struck, then grabbed for the phone. “His number!”

Fischer rattled it off, flipping through his little notebook furiously, and we held our breaths as the international dial tone rang.

“Donald Bertram.” The voice on the other end of the line was deep, male and very, very British, aptly matching the name. I exhaled a sigh of profound relief.

“Mr. Bertram,” I spoke quickly. “My name is Sofia Rabinovich, I am a friend of an acquaintance – Lorenzo Mondavi.”

“Ah, yes. How may I help you, madam?”

“Sir, has he gotten in touch with you, contacted you recently?”

“Why… yes. He asked me to meet him today.”

I gulped. “Mr. Bertram, this is very important! People connected to your work have been dying all over Europe. You must be careful! Don’t let anybody in your door until I get there, under any circumstances. Do you—“

“Pardon me, I didn’t hear you. My doorbell rang. If you’ll excuse me a moment.”

I grabbed at the receiver, willing for the force to transfer through the lines somehow. “Mr. Bertram, no! Stop!”

There was the rustle of footsteps and other unidentifiable sounds as he retreated out of earshot. I tried one last time. “Mr. Bertram!”

Then the line went dead.

Most people like the Opposites Attract approach. Personally, perhaps due to real-life bias, I am not a fan of it, and much prefer the Birds of a Feather scenraio, especially if it actually gew up slowly and reliably out of friendship.

So long as your couple isn't Strangled by the Red String and becomes a Romantic Plot Tumour.

I try to pretend as much as possible that the Freedom Phalanx doesn't exist... however, my characters are universally convinced States is an idiot and Azuria has Alzheimers and should not be trusted with her own house keys.

Chapter IX
Where Desserts Make A Brief Appearance

I would very much like to believe that I am a fair and impartial person. Everyone would much rather believe that of themselves, because, try though one may to escape the inevitable, it is not the double helix or the form which makes us human – it is the notion of the Cognitive Dissonance. If one lies to oneself sufficiently artfully, one may be considered within the classification of [censored] Sapiens, small a compliment though it is. Thus, though I was inclined to believe that my actions were objective and led by necessity, I nonetheless was forced to admit to myself that what I had been looking for, all along was, in fact, a way out; a solution which would present those I loved in a good light, and those whom I cared not for in a bad light.

I admit, looking back, that I had not much altered my strategy once this has become apparent to me. Though, let it be written down as a form of justification for myself that I had at least acknowledged the existence of this profound unease and have, thus, perhaps made a step further into the realm of cognizant self-awareness than most people would be willing to attempt. In any event, these ruminations are only tangential to our narrative and should take their proper place.

Where was I?

Ah, yes. Seven o’clock in the morning, a wet street in a rich neighbourhood of Vienna.

There I was; wet, tattered, slightly dirty, biting back yawns and an occasional sneeze in a never-ending sequence (Garent, the lucky fellow, was looking, even under the slowly easing rain, completely well-rested and only a little damp). Frankly, I was at a loss. There were too many dead ends, and not sufficient information to build a full picture upon. And all key persons in the matter seemed to have been struck with an unfortunate case of Dead just before I got my hands on them.

I needed to think, and my head accommodated exponentially less and less thoughts as time passed. In the meantime, though, people were dying. Before I could get to them…

I started.

“I am going at this from the wrong end!” I grabbed at my head and reached for my umbrella.

“What?”

“I’m going at it from the wrong end,” I repeated, digging the umbrella point into the ground, and hauling myself up to my feet. Then, remembering that Garent was not privy to my thoughts, elaborated. “I’m chasing Lorenzo and Rostov down, where I should be applying my brain to the problem, and figuring out not where they were last, but where they would be next.”

“And this just now occurred to you?”

“Don’t be snide,” I chided, though there was little strength behind the scolding. “The stops we made till now were pretty much inevitable. Until Paris, I didn’t even know for certain just what sort of thing Lorenzo is after. As for Vienna… “

“As for Vienna, if they were dead it would all be a moot point anyway.”

I stood on the sidewalk, staring down at the wet hem of my skirt and noting the drenched, pitiful condition in which my shirt collar found itself. I looked, I realized ruefully, like a homeless bum who’d just crawled out of a dumpster. My hair’s wet, heavy weight and the tangles I felt in it when I ran a hand through, only intensified the image. I could only imagine myself the furor in any decent, Teutonic establishment when an apparition of my kind would appear on their doorstep demanding, no less, information about ancient Akkadian artifacts.

I spotted a small café, off of the main street, where the owner was waving a towel over a stove, and two drawn workers were rapidly downing cups of drink. The hasty and sincere explanation that we’ve just arrived from the airport – as well as my rapidly extracted wallet as a demonstration of my ability to fund my short-term stay – convinced the woman to be more or less cordial, as well as allow me the use of her spotless bathroom to change, wash and brush my hair into submission.

“I want to find out more about this Shubat-Anshar and everything connected to it,” I said, thinking out loud as we sat at the small café table. “This is our key, I’m sure, and the more I know about who did what, the better off we’ll all be. So we’ll go to the university library and see what we can dig up. Most universities tend to follow stuff like that pretty carefully. Sadly, my access as a guest would be pretty limited.”

“Don’t you have someone you know? A professor or something,” Garent was dutifully pretending to drink a glass of water.

“Sadly, not in the Archaeology department,” I grimaced. “Besides, the university here doesn’t do my kind of Linguistics, and we don’t move in the same circles. Never mind,” I added hastily, seeing his confusion, “simply put, I have no one to go to. But we should head there anyway and see.”

That was precisely where I and Garent made our way immediately after I rapidly drained my cup of oversweetened coffee. We walked through the central streets with their famous cafes and baroque architecture, with my running commentary – which seemed to bore Garent only mildly – and occasional peering at cafeteria front windows where Viennese desserts were strategically placed to entice visitors.

“Sofia! Would you like one of those?” I was eyeing a large piece of sachertorte, positively dripping with… something… when Garent decided to play teenage brother.

“Are you joking? This is packaged diabetes on a plate!”

“You were staring at it,” he accused.

“I was not!” I grumbled indignantly, stepping rapidly a good two paces away from the glass. I admit, I was a little too close to the pane for comfort… Not that I had my nose sticking to it or anything… well, perhaps only a little, but we really had no time, and the calories, oh, the calories…

“Sofia,” Garent drawled sadistically. “Do you like chocolate cake? I never would have guessed.”

I blushed furiously. “Let’s just go.”

The library was very… European. Large, vaulted ceiling, unused grand fireplace which seemed to have crawled out of the Master and Margarita and could, with little effort, fit not merely a coffin, but an entire pyramid. The windows gaped hugely, and the light fell through them onto a tile marble, illuminating frescoes and marble adornments. It was sufficiently comfortable to look new, and sufficiently old to manage to pull the grandeur with panache. Like every European palace it elevated ostentatious to an art form and, astonishingly, it worked.

I set up shop with my laptop at one of the tables, and laid out a pen and several sheets of paper, for reference purposes.

“Okay, so this is our list of people, all of whom were interested in the temple of Anshar,” I tapped the pen on the table rhythmically until one of the people to my side cringed. Then I stopped, embarrassed. “Of them, two are right here, in Vienna, our Mr. Auer-“ Garent winced and I grinned unrepentantly “-and this fellow Fischer, who, I think is an employee right here, Would you do me a favour?”

“Sure.”

“Go to the reference desk. Ask them if they have a list of the library employees or a directory or something.”

Garent decamped. I watched him momentarily, weaving his way through the slowly increasing masses of students and researchers, making his way towards the reference desk. He stood there for a while, then came back, carrying what looked like a sheaf of stapled papers. “Here you go.”

“Thanks, now—“

I had no opportunity to finish because, uncharacteristically, Garent cut me off. “I thought you’d want to know,” he said, looking at me, and then at the reference desk, “that the person over there spoke to Lorenzo yesterday.”

Chapter VIII
in Which Wishful Thinking Is Employed

Vienna greeted us in a cold and unfriendly manner. Perhaps it was not really that cold and unfriendly, but my own demeanour was stiff and brusque, discomfort tucked carefully away under businesslike drapes. I am never comfortable in this part of the world (the German speaking one, that is), there are too many bad associations for someone such as me. The press of history which, in other places, is a welcome weight, here becomes an unbearable grindstone. There are such places all over Europe where, stepping on the ground, I feel as though I step upon mounds of corpses. To counter that I affect a manner which is as rigid and as arrogant as an aristocrat's, and as uncomfortable as a suit of armour.

I always have a good posture – the result of merciless pounding by purist parents in childhood – but when I am concealing my discomfort, or fear, I move as though a broom were attached to my spine, and a string holding my chin up. It is, if you know me well enough to recognize it, an unmistakable sign. Luckily, few people know me sufficiently well to identify it, and so my pride, at least, is spared.

Walking thus, carrying my suitcase and umbrella, I led Garent and myself through the ordinary tedium speaking little, and only muttering the necessary 'danke schon' or two. It's not that my language is lacking – actually, my German is competent (though not quite as adequate as my French), but – again, as in French – I never managed to entirely rid myself of, not so much an accent, as an improper intonation. In French I merely sound as though I speak the language with a slight tendency to be singsong, which does not incriminate me. In German, however, singsong identifies one rather sharply as a Yiddishist, a notion I found even more uncomfortable.

It would be too much of a distraction from the course of the main story – if this is, indeed, a story – to explain just why and how people like me feel uncomfortable in the German-speaking world. Suffice it to say that, while there, my “racial memory” (I put this in quotation marks, because it is a fictional construct rather than a real one, despite its pervasive influence) works on overdrive.

Be that as it may, we were there, and the night was profoundly cold. The rain which, in Paris, drizzled down lightly, hit us in Vienna in sheets, and the airport was eerily silent, almost dark, at that ungodly hour of the morning. Even inside the terminal I huddled into my coat, chilled to the bone, seeing in every little nuance of the weather a sort of ill omen, though rain was, in the end, only rain.

I stared at the rain distantly through the glass of the terminal windows.

“Where to now?” Garent held out what at least smelled like a paper cup of coffee. I grabbed at it gratefully. It was my second – no, third, I corrected myself, remembering the night before the departure – night in which I got little to no decent sleep, and the effects were showing. Brutally.

“We go to the crime scene immediately as soon as public transportation starts running,” I answered, matter-of-fact, glancing rapidly at the large clock over my head. The hour was three in the morning; we had an hour or two to wait, and I have seldom felt more impatient in my life.

“Makes sense,” Garent accepted the adjustment to our till-now comfortable schedule with nary a blink. “Though couldn’t we go earlier? Cabs are still running, right?”

I blinked, surprised, at this display of common sense. Though, I should say, that’s not quite right; Garent is plenty sensible. It’s his ability to orient himself within the “normal” world which still surprises me. It surfaces at the most unexpected times, and vanishes at times that are still more unexpected. “Quite right,” I said, “And so we could. But… I don’t know what we’d do after we get there. Depending on the answers, being out in the dark, in all that rain, might not be such a good idea.”

Coffee cup in hand, I abandoned the window and settled down to wait.

The cab dropped us off on the street corner, amid tall, modern skyscrapers, at the crack of dawn. The sky was gray-purple and the sun had not even begun contemplating getting out of bed – just as most sane individuals. Only the criminally insane and the criminal were out at this hour. I am still not sure, after all this time, which group we two factored into.

The street corner was entirely cordoned by yellow police tape. Rather ineffectually, I thought, as there was no police there. Of course, Austria being populated, mainly, with Austrians, one could actually expect the 'do not step on the grass' signs many of the immaculately manicured lawns around sported to actually be obeyed. As a point of fact, the lawns all about looked as though dedicated owners had come out and scoured them thoroughly with a microscopic toothed comb; the night had scattered a few dead leaves and branches upon their pristine green expanses, but it had done little additional damage.

Thus, the house we sought was that much easier to spot.

Where there had previously clearly been a marvelous, fastidious lawn and, perhaps, also an exquisite garden – the privilege of gardener-employing rich – now was a blackened expanse of burned stalks and torn-out clots of dirt. I stared at it, mesmerized. Then I explored the walls. The apartment had been on the first floor – very rich, then – with a large patio and a window at least a wall wide. The glass must have been bulletproof, because chunks of it still stood, and large panes of glass lay, flung out as far as the yellow tape.

“That,” Garent observed at my elbow, obviously having conducted the same examination, “was a big explosion.”

“Oh yes,” I breathed. “Is this close enough for you?”

“Sure, whatever works.”

Garent ignored the yellow tape, and shuffled around. Then, slowly, he began to circle, passing as close as he could to the still-inhabited windows of neighbouring houses, peering at them intently. I wondered what he was about, and whether any of the houses presented something especially fascinating – pretty young women, for instance – and bit back a comment about voyeurism without a telescope. I refrained from offering my jaded wisdom, mostly, because Garent had the look in his eyes of someone who was concentrating intently, and, also, because random humour seemed inappropriate.

Garent’s trajectory narrowed, and he edged towards the bombed house with its yellow tape. I looked around and, noting that the street was profoundly empty, quickly lifted up the length of plastic for him, else he would have walked straight into it. Garent walked this way and that, I kept an eye out for potential problems like passers by, police or another batch of terrorists. As unlikely as any of these occurrences may have been, it was better than merely standing there, doing nothing; I was almost faint with the tension.

Several minutes passed in almost absolute silence, the tension increasing to unbearable levels.

“They were here,” Garent said finally, opening his eyes and relaxing from the tense, almost rigid stance he had assumed, “and they left.”

All the air sped out of my lungs in one long exhalation and I melted to the sidewalk, almost crying with relief. “Thank God,” I sat there, burying my face in my hands for a full minute, trying to control the shaking born of released tension and raw nerves and lack of sleep and fear.

“You were taking this harder than I expected,” Garent commented after I gathered myself into some semblance of self-possession, still sitting on the wet, cold sidewalk. I was now sufficiently coherent to feel the wet and cold through the fringe of my coat, but not yet sufficiently balanced to actually do something about it.

“I take objection to people I like exploding,” I said sarcastically, and examined the building with a slightly more clinical look. The glass has been neatly swept from the road to let vehicles through, but the remnants of the lawn were still full of it. It seemed as though half the windows in the building had shattered from shock. The explosion, as far as I could tell, happened inside; everything was spreading outward.

“Are you okay now?”

“Yes...” I considered that to be a satisfactorily true answer though it was not, in reality, accurate. I was suddenly overwhelmingly tired. The adrenaline which kept me functioning in spite of the anxiety fled, and I felt as though I would soon collapse and sleep right there on the sidewalk, in the middle of a police cordon, in a Viennese street. Nonetheless, the answer sufficed insofar as I was incomparably better; life was worth living again.

“Oh, good. So... can we go back to the part where blowing something up is a Rostov-ish thing to do?”

I frowned up at him. He was examining the scene, not quite looking at me. “Do you seriously think it likely?”

“Well, I wouldn't bet money on it but, come on, Sofia; you have to consider the possibility.”

“Can't you tell, now that you're here?”

“Explosives are sort of difficult for me to say much about. I can't figure if they just left a bomb stashed in the place before leaving, and, unless we find what's left of the bomb, I can't tell whether they carried it with them. I don't think we'll have much luck looking, though.”

“Probably not,” I concurred reluctantly. “The police would gather any traces of it they could find. If they didn't clear this place of evidence yet, someone's neck is in a good deal of danger. Drat.” That would have made things so much simpler. Of course, in most cases where magic could make things simpler, it failed rather neatly to work. Apparently there was no magical substitute for plain, old human detective work. “Still, it seems... excessive.”

“Okay,” Garent was willing to make allowances, but he was not backing down. “I'll give; you know Lorenzo a lot better than I do, but you do sort of have... a blind spot about him. Your friends aren't angels, regardless of how much you want them to be.”

“I do not think they're angels!” I objected, indignant. Garent chuckled. “Well, I don't!”

He crossed his arms over his chest and continued staring down at me remorselessly. “Look,” I began, “I don't--”

“Uh huh.” Garent ran a hand through his hair. “Sofia, Rostov is a mercenary. They get hired to kill people... Or did you forget?”

“All right,” I sighed, feeling the wind of conviction slowly flutter out of my sails. “I'll grant. They're not angels and they're not above this sort of thing. If they thought it was necessary for some reason, they'd do it. Still... I don't quite get the right... vibe.”

“Because of something other than wishful thinking?”

“Well...” I fell silent, thinking it through. I am a person of powerful intuitions, as much as I am a creature of logic. My subconscious has a mind of its own – so to speak – and it often moves to make decisions and dictate actions without informing me about them. It then falls to me, with much painstaking labour, to parse through what it had decided and done in order to figure out why. As inconvenient as such a setup is, this is my brain and I have rather learned to live with it. It is when I have to present my reasoning to other people that I encounter severe resistance.

“Well,” I hemmed and hawed for a while before finally getting a coherent sentence out, “actually, yes. It's much too... showy. It's awfully big. Rostov might like big, loud and banging, but Lorenzo doesn't. Now half the police forces in Europe will be on the lookout for a group of terrorists. Why would he want to inconvenience himself like that? He could just... shoot the guy and make less noise. Or poison him. Or do the magic-life-drain thing. All methods as efficient and much, much quieter.”

“The Mafia plants car bombs all the time,” Garent cogently pointed out.

“Bombs are by definition a weapon of terror, Garent,” I objected mildly. “The Mafia uses them because putting car bombs in is relatively easy, and also because they want to make a point. This is a bomb in an apartment – something by definition much more difficult and less neat – and Lorenzo has no reason to try for mass hysteria. Why would he blow someone's house up?”

“Maybe,” Garent suggested, “He wanted to destroy the house?”

I buried my face in my hands. “Oh, come on!”

“Okay, so maybe that is sort of silly, but you have to admit that at least such a possibility exists.”

“Yes,” I said quietly, staring at the rivulets of water flowing at my feet. “Yes... I admit. The possibility exists.”

I love Lorenzo from the brim of his hat to the tips of his very well-shined shoes but, let me tell you, right then and there I wanted to take a broom to his back, without qualms or regrets.

Chapter VII
In Which The Ante Is Upped and Cards Are Played

Vienna Explosion Kills Five!

So I read tremulously, after the howl of sirens on television quieted down somewhat.

[ QUOTE ]

Approximately at four o’clock in the afternoon, an explosion could be heard from one of the most prestigious apartment buildings in Vienna, the residence of the known art collector and philanthropist Mr. Heinrich Auer. The resident himself is presumed among the deceased, together with four people, most likely neighbours and business associates. The names of the other victims were not released. Authorities are currently working on identifying the remains, and informing the families.
Chief of Vienna police told the Associated Press, in response that: “This is a horrible incident, and the police forces and government will dedicate all the resources to discovering the culprits.”
The background for the deed is presumed criminal, though nationalist and political motives are also being investigated.


[/ QUOTE ]

“Etc’ etc’.“ I sat there for a while, hands draped over the keyboard. Sat, because I frankly couldn’t stand, with my hands draped so that the shaking would not be visible.

“Sofia?” Garent was peering over my shoulder as I read, and he was looking at me now.

“Yeah?”

“Everything okay? You sound a little…”

“Oh yes. Fine.” I lied through my teeth, hoping that my voice no longer sounded shaken. I wasn’t fine. I felt white – there was no sensation in my face except cold – which meant I probably looked like a sheet, or a whitewashed wall. “I’m just… taking a minute.”

It was bad. It was very, very bad. I don’t want to describe how bad it was, and I am not certain I can. My mind was doing cartwheels; it felt like some sort of hamster in a wheel, running places with no perceivable results. If Rostov and Lorenzo were among the victims, the possibility of identification stood on almost nil. Their DNA – at least Lorenzo’s – certainly was not on file anywhere, and no one except me knew where they had gone, and even I did not know for certain. They would simply disappear, presumed dead, and no one would spend much time looking. The only option I had was to drop all secrecy and go in, guns blazing.

I struggled to my feet, holding on to the edge of the table, and went to call Rostov.

I haven’t done this before. Not because the number was unavailable but, well… because of the same reason I had began with the murder investigation. A conflagration of reasons wavering between the unwillingness to disturb without real necessity, the fear that I might spook my prey, the notion that if something truly important had been going on the phone calls would remain unanswered. All were good reasons previously, but not any longer: the necessity of verifying that they were actually alive and unhurt came before everything.

The phone rang. I held on to the connection so long as it was feasible, then dropped the receiver to its cradle. Then I sat down on the bed, struggling with panic. It was highly imminent, and would have been, al things told, completely useless. I could do very little for the nausea of fear and the lightheadedness which assaulted me simultaneously. “Nothing.”

“I’m confused. What sort of person would go running around eviscerating people with claws, and then blowing them up?” Garent looked at the computer screen thoughtfully. “That doesn’t seem in style.”

“That’s assuming there is only one person,” I answered hollowly.

“Two groups of people running after the same thing?” Garent frowned. “Though… Now that I think about it blowing someone up seems like a sort of… Rostov-ish thing to do. Don’t you think?”

“No!”

I must have been a little too vehement, because Garent peered at me closely. Much more closely than I would have liked, in my present state. He was a convenient companion in many ways; he was not exceptionally good at reading people and, due to certain limitations, missed clues that otherwise would be highly telltale if he was not utterly attentive. Generally, I could keep a certain level of anonymity with him, even one-on-one, and even though he knew me sufficiently well for that not to be a burden. I was never much inclined to expose my panic to anyone, much less a person twenty years younger than myself.

Now, however, his attention was fully focused, and, thus, quite formidable. “You’re worried. Do you seriously think they died? We don’t even know if they were there.”

“There were four unidentified bodies, or so they assume,” my tone was as inflectionless as before. “They could be anybody. With a sufficiently bad explosion in a small, confined space like an apartment, the only real way to find out that someone was there is to have seen them go in. even then it’s difficult to determine which remains belong to whom – and Lorenzo has no living relatives.”

“I could tell you if they died,” he offered, after staring at me for a full minute.

He could. Garent was a mage with certain additional talents. He could see connections between people like, or so he explained to me, waves in a pool of water. How one was ever supposed to make sense of the chaotic patterns of ripples and intersections in a pool was entirely beyond me but, then, I suppose that is his real talent. Most anybody can imagine a pool, if they try hard enough, but only a very few can tell you what it means.

He also knew perfectly well how much I disliked the notion of divinations of any sort, predictions and guesswork, and how much I doubted the veracity of it. That he had offered was clearly indicative that he’d seen and grasped my distress.

I gulped. “Did they die?”

“I don’t know from here. But we could check out the place, or maybe the bodies… “

I sprang to my feet, fighting nausea as I did. My fear was not gone, but it was, at least redirected towards action. “Come on, Garent. Get packing.”

“Isn’t it late?”

“It is.” I started tossing what little of my luggage I’d pulled out back into the suitcase, raidly folding clothes as I went. “Remember when I said I wasn’t desperate enough to start pulling people out of their beds for a secret police routine?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I am now officially desperate.” I grabbed the receiver from its cradle again, and dialed the lobby for a taxi to the airport. Five minutes later I was ready with the suitcase by the door, while Garent ran into his room to grab his little traveling bag.

Paris Orly is a large airport, though smaller than the monstrosity that is Charles de Gaulle. Our cab screeched into the departures area and halted amid the throng of people, cases, luggage carts and hugging couples that is the usual fare of airports the world over. I paid the driver with shaking hands, and half-ran into the terminal, Garent in tow. My fear had now transformed itself into a rush of pure adrenaline, and an almost frenetic energy that wouldn’t let me sit still for a moment. I felt a world removed from the place I needed to be though – as is the case with most of Europe – I was only a brief two hours’ flight away.

We took our place in the ticket line, and I shifted from foot to foot uncomfortably.

“I seriously think you worry too much,” Garent’s attempt at comfort was admirable, if fell woefully short. “You really have no way of knowing they were there, and you’re just making yourself nervous.”

“I can’t seem to help it,” I confessed. “Someone just upped the ante on us. If anything, this idea of following Lorenzo’s trail, such as it is, is no longer sufficient. If every person he might be in touch with is risking death, we need to bestir ourselves and actually get there before they get shot, or blown up, or clawed to death.”

“Maybe we should start doing that then.”

“Just as soon as I find out if one of my friends has been crushed to little pieces, I will make a point of it,” I answered drily, and concluded the conversation for the duration of our sojourn in line.

“Next!”

“Demoiselle,” I sounded too curt and impolite, but my nerves had run out. “Two tickets to Vienna on the next flight.”

“I’ll check.” A brief moment of typing and an unpleasant frown were followed by a fake, plastic smile. “I’m very sorry; we have no seats left until tomorrow afternoon. There are two business class seats open there.”

“I need something soonest, it’s an emergency.”

“I apologize, but it’s impossible, you should try a different destination to have an emergency at.”

I lost my temper entirely. “Cut that,” I growled, yanking my impressive array of cards out of my wallet and flinging them to the counter in front of the astonished woman’s face. “Garent, your IDs!” He stared at me, befuddled, then added his own cards onto the pile. The stewardess, pale and shaking, stared at me with wide eyes.

“I know every flight has a reservation list of people who never show up,” I told the woman in a flat, distinctly unfriendly voice. “Please make sure two of those seats go to us. And,” I added primly as she printed our passes, making a point of driving the point home, for the benefit of future passengers, fellow victims of misery, if nothing else, “next time, may I suggest not to be facetious when someone tells you they have an emergency?”

“Yes, ma’am…” the woman stammered at me, and handed us the boarding passes, peering cautiously as though she expected us to grow wings and horns on the instant.

I picked up the passes, gathered up my cards, IDs and security passes, all laminated in their own little plastic wraps, busily stuffing them into their designated spots. Garent took up his, still staring at me with an unreadable expression. Half an hour later we were both scrunched between a fat man and a woman with an infant on our way to Vienna.

Chapter VI
In Which Snails Are Demeaned And Flashing Lights Lead The Way

Garent, as I should have anticipated, shifted uncomfortably.

Really, this is a bit of a non-sequitur. I could very well skip this part of the events, as I had conveniently skipped the dismal meal served on the trans-Atlantic plane, and the coffee and croissant I managed to nab in the hotel restaurant before going off to the police station. I could very well present only and solely the dry facts, leaving dinners and side conversation, but that would give nothing of the character of the people involved, and no context for the occurrences. Nature abhors vacuum; not, perhaps, in space, but, certainly, in human interactions. And so…

Garent shifted uncomfortably. “Don’t we have investigating to do?”

“After dinner,” I said rather firmly. “Some of us actually need to eat.”

“But then it would be dark! That was your excuse yesterday!”

“Yes,” I said, very patiently, with great reserve, calmly, in an explanatory tone “It will be dark, and people will be wanting rest. Hence why every research I do after dinner will be on the internet.”

“Oh…” Garent seemed to waver between polite and downright crestfallen. “I guess….”

“Come on, Garent,” I encouraged him, “this is Paris! It has some of the best cuisine in the world, and if you tell people that you went to Paris and didn’t even go to a single restaurant they will put you to mockery for the rest of your natural life. Besides,” I added with a small smile, “it’s not like you have anything better to do.”

Garent, you see, regards food in the same way most normal people regard esoterica like little snakes coiled in their Vodka bottles and ants covered in chocolate. He can abstain from food entirely, and, therefore, he does so. It hasn’t occurred to him yet that not everything that is humanly (or metahumanly) possible is actually a good idea. Neither did it occur to him that food is tasty. Therefore, the notion of a restaurant, for him, is approximately equivalent to a rabid football fanatic watching chick flicks with his wife, or a mother cheering her sons on in a hockey tourneys.

In short, he does it to oblige his favourite people in the world.

Since he actually walked into the restaurant with me, took up a menu and started staring at it as though it were about to bite him, I’ve rapidly and gratefully reclassified myself in that category.

It took us, incidentally, only about fifteen minutes to find a place I deemed appropriate. Because, honestly, if I am already wasting half my monthly wages flying transatlantic and paying for two, I am not about to purchase a hot-dog from a vendour. Luckily, though, the gardens by the Louvre and the Arc de Triumphe, facing the Seine River, constitute an absolutely classic locale for food purchase done in style. I could only have been more pretentious if I’d gone to eat on top of the Eiffel tower. I picked a small place that gave off the atmosphere of home with a touch of class, and promised food that would be plentiful, slightly ordinary, and astonishingly good. I was proven right when the basket of bread on out table made me want to swoon with unrequited love, and the butter had herbs in it.

Garent stared at the menu at length, leafing through it uncertainly, occasionally peering over it at me with the vain hope in his eyes that I would come to his rescue. I did.

“If you want to say you really were in France, try the escargot,” I suggested blandly.

“Ew.” He retreated from the table, face contorted with disgust. “Seriously, Sofia. Do you want me to throw up all over the tablecloth?”

“I want you to first not keep your elbows on it,” I admonished, draping the napkin in my lap as an example. “And if you’re really afraid of overeating, try the onion soup. It’s this one,” I pointed to the entry, writ plainly under Soup, and Garent frowned at me with his customary ‘I am not amused’ look. He did order the soup, however, and poked his spoon at it cautiously. When the soup failed to jump him with claws and fangs extended, he ate it, and didn’t seem to suffer too badly.

The table conversation, such as it was, veered, by my consistent efforts, away from all things Akkadian, museum-ish or related to our trip aside from the city itself. Only once did I skirt the issues at hand.

“You are the only person I know,” I rolled my eyes as Garent was still poking at his soup, “who finds escargot more revolting than a tortured, dead body.”

“I’ve seen a surprising number of bodies,” Garent muttered sourly, “but I never had snails for dinner. So there.”

For a dinner in my company, the affair was surprisingly quiet. I won’t hide that I felt, perhaps, a little gloomy. Here I was, in Paris, the most romantic city on the planet, eating excellent food in an excellent restaurant… and every male with whom there was even the merest scrap of romantic potential in my life was altogether unavailable. Instead I was half a world away from home, eating this splendid dinner… with Garent.

I couldn’t help sighing a little into my teacup.

After dinner, we went back to the hotel. Our hotel, as much as it is worthy of description, is precisely one of these places to which the term ‘nondescript’ can be applied without fear and reproach. It is located in the outskirts of Paris, and from the windows one can see some street lights, and a road. There are no night lights of a glamorous city, no rivers or bridges, not much of anything except roaring motorcycles passing on the nearby highway. The rooms are comfortable enough, but rather stark, and feature a bed, a bathroom, a television and a basic internet connection.

It was this connection that I now put to good use.

Searching online is not my specialty; Alexander does it better and faster. His technical mind manages to grasp how to find the most precise information whereas I seem to be able to search only in sweeping categories. Such general approach is exceptionally useful in the assimilation of information but not, sadly, in its procurement. A generalist’s life in the age of overload is hard. However, the temple of Anshar (as I found out, reading article after article) was a subject esoteric enough that it was possible to narrow down my search to a specific key area, and apply my generalist skills to studying the matter thoroughly.

Of course once I began burrowing into the subject, I became fascinated. That is not, in and of itself difficult; I drool over archaeology like a child, and history makes me forget any and all obligations I have. This time, too, I forgot (for a short while) all about Lorenzo and Rostov, the murders and even Garent – who sat in the room’s spare armchair, idly watching television – and dove into the information headfirst. I was brought back to the present day by a rather accidental reference.

“Oh, look,” I tapped the monitor lightly with a finger, staring at the Louvre pages. “Here is our insane professor.”

“Who?”

I remembered that Garent, so far as I knew, didn’t know French, and so remained ignorant of the conversation I had with the Louvre director. “This fellow, de Sarzec, who donated artifacts to the Louvre.”

“Maybe Lorenzo went to see that guy, too.”

“He’s a few months dead,” I clarified further. “That’s how donation to museums of postmortem works usually happens. And oh, look-- Here’s Lorenzo.”

It was a short article from the associated press wire, published in some obscure culture magazine in the U.K. and was, mostly a listing of collectible antiques sold and purchased. I glanced at the line which interested me specifically:

[ QUOTE ]

• Manuscript, Arabian: Small manuscript famous as the single post-Assyrian mention of the destruction of the temple of Anshar. Arabic calligraphy, well-preserved. Sold for 550,000 USD to Mr. Thomas Amann in the name of the esteemed Mr. Heinrich Auer. The purchaser, a known collector of middle-eastern manuscripts narrowly outbid one Lorenzo Mondavi on behalf of an anonymous party.


[/ QUOTE ]

Another spurt of online tagging and refining brought me, after a half hour or so, a shortened list of likely names, all connected in some way either with Lorenzo or with the Anshar finds. I stretched my aching back, and crossed my hands behind my head.

“So,” I listed, thinking out loud more than speaking to anyone in particular. “We have a list of names. Donald Bertram, Thomas Amann, Fischer, Mark Fuchs, this fellow Hei—“

“Heinrich Auer,” Garent finished, promptly.

“That’s right.” I blinked and turned around to stare at him with surprise. “How do you know?”

He pointed to the television screen, where red and blue sirens flashed, and the rumble of voices could be heard on camera. “Because he’s dead.”

I've seen work by colourblind kids (some of them quite talented) in my vision clinic - it was among work by people with all sorts of.... intresting sight problems.

A lot of them tended to paint what they actually saw, rather than try and fit the convention of a spectrum as we know it. That is, pick the crayons (or pastels, or watercolours, or whatever) according to the colour they appeared to represent. One very talented fellow was pretty big on blue grass. I never did find out what, if anything, became of his drawing habit.

Chapter V
In Which Condolences Are Given

“How interesting,” I breathed, staring at Garent intently. Then I detached myself from the wall, and strode to the edge of the sidewalk raising my hand. A small taxi cab screeched to a halt in front of us with screaming tires and the swarthy driver gave us a white-toothed smile of contentment. He was clearly more accustomed to driving in the streets of Casablanca or Algiers but that was all to the best – we will be that much the faster getting where we were going. “Come on.”

He got in after me. “Where are we going?”

I leaned over to the driver giving him the destination. “It’s about time we visited the crime scene, don’t you think?”

The way was not particularly long. The body was moved to the morgue and forensics institute of the same arrondissement in which the murder had occurred – the 1st – and the centre of Paris, while crowded and packed full of sights, was not, in the end, a large area. The driver took turns with the panache of a motorcyclist, and navigated lights with the enthusiasm of a cavalry soldier, all while speeding like a bona fide pilot. I held on to the seat for dear life.

“Mondavi couldn’t have done it,” Garent stated flatly, his thought rather echoing my own. I grimaced and nodded agreement which was part relief and part worry. It didn’t take much for me to concur to the hypothesis that one of my best friends had, indeed, not just eviscerated an innocent museum curator. Lorenzo was, in many ways, an exceptionally ruthless man… but I trusted his honour better than mine own, and torture had no place there.

“Now all we have to figure out,” I said darkly, staring out the window at the flying chestnut trees, “is just how much of a mess Lorenzo and Rostov are in, and then we can go home.”

We descended into the familiar pyramid of the Louvre, and I found myself, despite everything, grinning in anticipation. It was, after all, one of the greatest museums in the world, comparable only to the British Museum in London and the St. Petersburg Hermitage. The French and British spent centuries prettying up their museums, robbing antiques from every nation of significance on the planet, and now the five-legged lions of Babylon, the Egyptian sphinxes and the Mesopotamian tablets had no better display than this Parisian palace.

We trailed through the museum as slowly as I dared while still having some pity on Garent. Occasionally I found myself trailing a wistful finger on a glass case, or covertly touching a statue. I couldn’t keep my hands off these delicate and yet astonishingly sturdy pieces of antiquity; living time preserved in a bottle, encapsulated in glass, put forth for everyone to see. The place boasted paintings from all over the world, of all styles and artistic movements (though the moderna was, thankfully, ensconced in the Gallerie Lafayette, far from spoiling the ancient beauty of the place) and I nodded a sort of amused greeting to familiar images – light trapped by someone’s whim on canvas and hung from a wall.

Garent had nothing to do in the galleries and galleries of paintings, so we hurried through.

The administrative centre – offices, preservation rooms, unloading areas and all – is neatly concealed under the Tullerie gardens. At the secretarial desk I introduced myself to a thin, nervous woman whose eyes constantly shifted around. Not her natural state, I deduced, but rather the result of shock and fear.

“And this is Garent,” I nodded to my right, (mis)pronouncing his name a la French style, with the emphasis resting squarely on the second syllable. He glared at me. I smirked back. If I could put up with the constant mispronunciation of my name by all and sundry (including but not limited to emphasis), he could handle a single experience, traumatic though it may be.

“Sign here, please.” The woman handed me a pen and a large, bound visitor’s book. I signed and dated my entry, smiling at the secretary, who returned me a terse nervous sort of grimace.

“You get a lot of visitors here, madame?” I asked pleasantly, while flipping idly through the pages, reading times and signatures curiously.

“Oh yes,” the woman livened up a little. “All sorts of experts, visitors, collectors….”

“That must be hard work.”

“Oh no, it’s tolerable,” she slammed the keyboard several times in quasi-frustration. “Except now, of course. That ghastly, ghastly murder…”

I nodded sadly, murmured something sufficiently vague and towed Garent off, holding my umbrella a little off the floor. Marble and empty, echoing corridors did not provide a convenient acoustics; it annoyed me, and spooked everyone around me. “They were here, all right.”

“How did you figure that?”

“I looked them up in the visitor’s book, while I was leafing through it. I know Lorenzo’s handwriting; it’s pretty distinct. Rostov signed right underneath him. And a third person who came at the same date and time, with a very illegible signature,” I added drily. Whoever scrawled his name underneath the other two must have been in a tearing hurry; the signature looked more like a line of unbroken ink than anything else. They had signed in – and signed out – only a short while before Benveniste’s death. We took several turns, and went down a floor, looking around the white, long corridors until I finally poked my head hesitantly into the director’s door.

“Yes?” The man was brusque and lean and, in all ways, quite the opposite of his neighbour and co-worker, the late doctor. He also didn’t seem in the least pleased. I could understand him, as such things went; the last couple days must have been terrible, with reporters and policemen and the curious never giving anyone in the museum a moment’s rest when all they wanted was to forget the whole frightening incident as quickly as possible. “We don’t see reporters outside of press conferences.”

“I… I apologize...” I mumbled. “Perhaps this is a bad time… I heard about Dr. Benveniste, I corresponded occasionally… Was here… Decided to come in person…” I didn’t need to fake my acute embarrassment. I am rather timid with people, uncomfortable busting into their privacy and disturbing them. My demeanor was made more diffident by my profound sense of guilt; here I was, pretending to be the acquaintance of a dead man, faking sympathy where all I felt was a generic, impersonal sort of pity, wheedling information out of a coworker, all with the intent of protecting one who would, potentially, be a suspect for the gruesome murder. Not pretty, admit.

“Oh,” the director rubbed red-rimmed eyes, and the sour expression slowly dropped from his face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that. You understand, of course, how it is here… Come on in.”

After he was mollified, the man seemed inclined to chat, almost relieved that he could spew forth his annoyance with the police and the press, his fear of the Circle and his obvious flustered attitude as to whom to appoint as Benveniste’s replacement. I listened with interest, nodding from time to time, hands draped in my lap. It’s amazing what one can get out of people with sufficiently lengthy silences and the occasional nod.

“That seems like a tragedy,” I slid my own sentence in between the man’s complaints. “Such a brilliant scholar… What was he working on last?”

“Some things we received as donation,” the man grunted sourly, “from a professor fellow here, in the Sorbonne. He was almost half-mad, if you ask me. Muttered some incomprehensible things, was obsessed with the temple of Anshar… only Claude could make head or tale of that mess. Now I am stuck with it.”

“Anshar… Anshar…” I muttered, wracking my brain for any trace of what the name might be. “That’s—“

“Akkadian.”

“Oh, yes.” I seized upon the period gratefully. “I deal with a somewhat later area; Judean and Israelite antiques. An important discovery?”


“If anyone could ever decide what it meant!” the man slammed a balled fist onto the table, then stared at me, shocked, before beginning a run of profuse and half-gibbered apologies. I judged him to be one of these people who, while comfortable enough in a position of moderate authority, bent completely out of shape facing events they could not quantify into their checkbooks, write down into their diaries and mark on their calendars. The director would have been a much happier man if, for the sake of politeness, Benveniste were to hand in a notice regarding his upcoming murder at least two weeks in advance. “And now, without that cylinder Claude was working on, the point seems to be moot anyway.”

“Is it gone?”

“Requisitioned. On loan. So much the better for me. You must excuse me, madame,” he stared at a wall clock, “I have yet another member of the press to placate now.”

I thanked the man for his time, and we rose to go. Perfunctory farewells and well-wishes were exchanged, and we walked out. I couldn’t help feeling, at the least, vaguely worried. Even if they didn’t murder the man, putting artifact theft past Rostov and Lorenzo wasn’t a leap of faith I was quite willing to take. The entire situation was much too ambiguous and complicated for me to make a great deal of deductions on.

We walked out to the cool street. Only then did I finally notice the passage of time; the sun was slowly edging towards west, turning red and small, and the sky was painted with the purples and dark blues of twilight. Between the examination of the body (largely due to being preceded with a tag game of authority with the police) and the visit in the bowels of the Louvre, the day had waned. I was tired, anxious and starving. And things were very quickly about to come to a point where I would be able to do very little.

I decided to relax. This was Paris, after all. While I had no interest in participating in its assorted and supposedly glamorous night life, I was entirely partial to its cuisine.

“Come on,” I told Garent, looking around the bank of the Seine for something that looked good. “Let’s go get dinner.”

Chapter IV
In Which A Curator Is Visited And A Discovery Is Made

I’ve never much liked Paris. My first memories of it placed the city and all in it squarely into the sort of place described by Twain in Innocents Abroad; the marvelous and glorified antiques dirty and covered with a layer of soot, and the picturesque streets in urgent need of sweeping. The entire place was swathed in gray and occluded with fog. It was as though the Parisians, tired of their eternal war with the bastards on the other side of the channel, had gone and stolen the famous London smog. Sadly, just as with many things transported, it suited its new locale not at all.

Nonetheless, the landing in Paris was, for me, a sort of relief; as though a deep-seated background ache in my back had finally subsided. I am, still and in most regards, a European by temperament and inclination, and, while it is impossible for me to feel completely at home anywhere in the end I feel more comfortable here. If asked – and I suppose I am asked, come to think of it – I’d say that the issue is in the weight; the pressure of centuries of history, the feeling of time borne by civilization. It is as though, being what I am, I have become so used to that weight pressing down on my shoulders, oppressing me, that when, in new, young America, it is removed, I feel the lifting off almost as physical pain.

Well, they do say Russians need to be oppressed.

The exit from Charles de Gaulle airport greeted Garent and me with a steady, cold drizzle and a chilly wind. I fumbled around, juggling suitcase, carry-on bag and coat while attempting to remove the plastic wrapping from my packaged umbrella (too much metal content for a carry on item for Airport Security’s liking). Finally, the plastic snapped off, and drifted to the sidewalk in a cloud of rustling sheets. The wind picked it up immediately, and swept it away before I could pretend to be a good environmentalist, and toss it in the garbage bin.

“Give me your arm!” I commanded to Garent, who obliged, looking slightly disconcerted.

I snapped up my umbrella, and put it to its original use for the first time in a year.

“Okay,” Garent looked around, disinterested. “Now what?”

“Hotel, shower, sleep,” I listed wistfully. “Preferably in that order.”

“I thought we had an investigation to run.”

“It’s eleven o’clock at night, Garent,” I pointed out, jerking my chin at the quite evidently dark sky over our heads. “Everybody’s asleep. I am not desperate enough to try for a secret police imitation just yet. If we discover things are really bad, then I’ll start dragging people to interrogations in the middle of the night, not before.”

“Oh,” he shifted from one foot to another, “slipped my mind.”

I had to smile at that. Only Garent was capable of assessing a situation instantly for all its implicit and explicit dangers and, at the same time, failing to notice that it was dark. I grabbed my suitcase and sighed, feeling Garent’s hand lock on my elbow. “Let’s go find a shuttle.”

I slept poorly. I often sleep poorly – natural sensitivity to sound combines with unrestful nervousness, tension, and sometimes worse – but this night was especially erratic. The hotel room’s windows were only several stories over the street, and the constant noise of passing vehicles was loud and jarring in the otherwise quiet environment. I woke up finally and irreversibly about an hour after dawn, feeling heavy, slow and jet-lagged, and, realizing that going back to sleep was a failed endeavour, sat down to attempt to make my plans for the day.

It would be best, I decided, if I were to wave my credentials around as little as possible. I could, of course, throw about the weight of my career, both academic and otherwise, but I would much have preferred not to do so. I thought it likely that, as a rule, my academic credentials would suffice in the places where we would be going. It was not my normal occupation, but few museum curators and staff would say no to a professor of linguistics come visiting.

Then I considered my priorities; the two most obvious routes of investigation open to me were, firstly, to attempt to track Lorenzo down or, secondly, to investigate the murder itself. I quickly decided to opt for the second course, if only to save myself undue embarrassment. I had no intention of stalking friends who were away on a trip to Europe, after all; if the murder were to prove to be innocuous – unconnected, I corrected myself – I would leave matters as they are. Unless it was sufficiently sinister for me to follow up, of course. Only if it appeared to me that there was need would I attempt to track Lorenzo further.

I dressed carefully, and went to knock on Garent’s door.

“You have your cards with you?” We strode out of the hotel into a cool, but sunny, Parisian spring. “IDs and so forth?”

Garent waved his hand, indicating a nebulous place of storage, somewhere in the vicinity of his ear. “Of course.”

“Good,” I waved a hand for a taxi, “because you are now the official consultant for MAGI, expert on all things Circle, here vo-lun-tarily to help them out, and you want a look at the body.”

“I do?” Garent blinked, and dove into the cab behind me. I raised a pointed eyebrow. “Oh, okay. I do. So what does that make you?”

I grinned fiercely. “I’m the person who knows French.”

It seems insignificant to recap our encounters at the police station. The place was, in the vein of every police station out there, filled with busy, nervous people, annoyed officers, unhelpful secretaries and irritable detectives. We made our way through them in the usual manner; cajoling, bullying, asking (repeatedly, many times) and convincing. The basic routine – Garent waving around his ID cards, and me ploughing through the policemen’s indignation with conveniently placed diplomacy (with the occasional help of a gunboat or two) – eventually brought us to the chief detective of Homicide who, after taking a look at Garent and his assortment of stamps, badges and plastic laminated cards, simply sighed in resignation and waved us off with a tired, heavily accented ‘zhust do what you want.’

The small, nearsighted shift pathologist in the morgue squinted at Garent with dubious eyes for almost an entire minute, then looked up at me and shook his head. “He’s quite young, isn’t he?”

“A little older than he looks,” I reassured the man, though not adding ‘but not much’. “We will just have a brief look at Doctor Benveniste’s body, and we’ll go.”

“You came in good time, then.” The man waved us behind him, and led the way on to the mortuary, tossing us a pair of white coats from a rack and puling on a set of gloves. “The family insists on a quick burial just as soon as the forensic report is done.”

I nodded. “And they didn’t like the notion of an autopsy.”

“Not especially,” the man blinked at me several times, his eyes almost, but not quite, level with my own. “Not that there is much need, as you will shortly see… ‘Ere, young man,” he told Garent, speaking English with only a faint trace of generic accent best defined as European, “this is your man.”

He opened the steel door, and rolled the body out. After the plastic was removed I saw that Benveniste was a man of medium height, somewhere in his sixties, moderately overweight and comfortably balding on the forehead. I couldn’t tell much about his face beyond that because a literal half of it was slashed almost entirely off with a large, hooked claw. I breathed through my mouth rapidly.

I do not fear death. To be precise, I do not fear it after it had already occurred. By some combination of nature and nurture I possess a stomach of iron in regards to all things grisly; the daughter of a physician, I am accustomed to dinner conversation that would send most guests hurtling into the bathroom, and entice them to stay there thereafter. Add to that the fact that I’ve worked as EMT during wartime, and my reaction to corpses is downright indifferent. This one, however, evoked a reaction even out of me. The body was practically shredded; the only parts remaining completely intact were the hands and the scalp, with hair attached. The palms of the hands were bruised and blown to twice their size, long slashes with congealed blood running along them.

Garent, eyes narrowed and forehead set in a frown, started pacing around the body, sometimes leaning in to look at one thing or another. I took a palm between my fingers, flipping it over delicately. “What was the cause of death determined to be?”

The pathologist looked sharply at me, then at Garent. He hesitated for a moment, then looked at me again. “Blood loss in the intestine.”

“Really?” I murmured under my breath, leaning closer in to examine Benveniste’s mutilated torso. It smelled like rot and formalin, and I nearly gagged. “So they were not going for a quick kill.”

“What did they need, then?” Garent peered behind my shoulder with attentive eyes.

“Torture.” I replaced the hand in its previous position and it rested, stiffly, on the rolling slab. “A person lives for quite a while after being eviscerated; long enough for him to talk.”

“And did he?” The pathologist stared at me curiously.

“That,” I grimaced, “is altogether beyond me. I think we are quite done here.” I turned to Garent. “Unless there was something else you wanted?”

“No.” We thanked the little doctor who remained, covering the body with its plastic sheet and rolling the trundle into its assigned niche while we walked slowly out of the morgue, and up to the street.

We paced along the corridor slowly; I took slow, steady breaths.

“There is something else, by the way,” Garent noted softly after we were out of earshot, and out of sight of the morgue door.

“Really?” I stopped, turned towards him and leaned on the brick wall of the morgue building.

“Yeah.” He stopped also and I motioned him to keep talking. “The Circle didn’t do it.”

“No?” I pursed my lips, feeling my stomach begin to twist. “How do you know?”

“I know the Circle pretty well,” Garent explained patiently. “And these were the wrong kind of wounds. Thorn daggers leave different wounds, and they’re not the right claws for Behemoths.”

“So then who did do it?”

He shook his head. “No idea. Something big that has claws, but not Circle.”

Chapter III
In Which Family Matters Are Brought To Attention, And Issues Of Trust Are Discussed

I arrived at Garent’s ‘door’ at unholy o’clock in the morning.

It was, in fact, even worse on my end of the country, but the three hour difference played neatly into my impatient hands, and my general sleepless attitude, and I was hopping around the cool, dawny streets of the city the moment it was sufficiently light to say Shma.

Garent is a sweet kid, and very helpful in situations when being intelligent doesn’t suffice. I don’t wish to imply he is in any way stupid; simply that when the task roster has to be divided between the two of us, I usually get the cerebral part, and he gets to throw things around. By this count, together with the ability, all too rare among my circle of acquaintances, to tread delicately in a morally gray area, and not burst into histrionics, he is an incredibly useful fellow to have.

It doesn’t hurt that, at a casual glance, he looks like my son, or little brother. Blond, blue-eyed and small, the colouring superimposes a sort of illusion for the casual observer when we stand side by side that provides a useful, if erroneous, first impression. He does not look much like me if one is attentive; Garent is a handsome fellow, whereas I could be permanently cast into the role of ‘mousy nothing’ in a film (though they would have to provide for a replacement to impersonate the obligatory ‘beautiful all along’ moments) but the illusion is sufficient to mislead in the short span of time it takes to have a casual conversation. My sentiments on the matter aside, it is that much more plausible for a woman to be traveling along Europe with her son than to be doing so with a twenty-years-younger friend. I wasn’t – or so I assumed – going to have much in the way of time; I could afford to spare the sidelong glances.

Garent, being an altogether not normal person, doesn’t have a door for me to come knock at, even metaphorically. I had to content myself with dropping my suitcase in the base of the group of which I was still, nominally, a member. I had been expecting my severance letter for these past months, and none had ever arrived. My biometrics was never taken out of the security system, and the passwords have not been changed without my being notified. An altogether suspicious affair, which left me wondering constantly just what my slightly-clairvoyant friend was planning.

I sat down on the couch, and pulled out a book. The base was empty, sounded hollow; the single, solitary sound about the place was the unnerving, even ticking of a clock, somewhere in the distance, and what sounded, implausibly, like dripping water.

Garent showed up at half-past-unholy.

“Sofia,” he greeted me without a great deal of surprise. “You’re here pretty early.”

“Tell me about it.” My eyes were puffy, and I was already living off of caffeine, guzzling teacup after teacup of incredibly strong, black brew. My blood was slowly turning into a mix of adrenaline, insomnia and sugar. I probably had a slightly wild look about me, because Garent was eyeing me, and the suitcase at my feet, with a certain degree of nervousness.

“You didn’t fight with Alex, did you?”

“God, no!” In my entire married life, all twenty odd years of it, Sasha and I have argued plenty, fought more than enough, and wanted to kill each other with almost alarming frequency. In all that time I’ve come down to packing a suitcase – merely packing, mind – only twice. Perhaps thrice. If nothing else, my natural distaste towards airing my dirty laundry in public would have prevented me from flinging open the front door and storming out every time we quarreled. It was, and still is, in my mind, a form of exhibitionism, playing not only upon the sentiments of the offending and offended party, but also upon the opinion of the neighbours, the family, the public… if I were to step out of my marriage in a huff, this would not be the place I would come to.

“So what’s the matter? Something’s up, isn’t it?”

Garent was almost too astute for his – and my – own good. This time, however, it cut through unnecessary small talk conveniently. I waved him down to the couch, and gave a rather detailed summary of the last day, letters and all.

When I had finished, Garent was looking at me thoughtfully, running a hand through his hair. “It could just be some sort of accident, you know.”

“It could,” I affirmed, albeit in an unconvincing voice, “but then again, it could not and where does that leave us then?”

“Probably somewhere pretty bad.”

“My thought exactly,” I prodded the suitcase with my foot, discharging nervous energy. “That’s what I want to find out. I don’t want to make any fuss; if it’s just a coincidence, we’ll go home after having earned ourselves an unexpected vacation in Paris. You’ve never been to Paris, have you?”

“No.”

“Lovely place, altogether worth seeing.” I cajoled without quite getting to the point of groveling. “And if something is, indeed, going on, I might not be in a position to handle it all by myself.”

Garent blinked. “You’re beginning to scare me, if you’re actually implying that you’re useless.”

“Oh, I am far from useless,” I hastened to reassure him, though, at the moment, I felt rather particularly so. My legs were like jelly after the long night and hasty change of time zones, and I’d been leaning on my umbrella-cane for all it was worth. “But I am in no fighting condition; I’ll be the first to admit that. And if the Circle is actually involved we might have to fight. Besides, taking a partner seems to be traditional for the enterprise. Even Lorenzo took someone with him.”

Someone who very clearly wasn’t me. That hurt, and I didn’t wish to dwell on it. It was not that he would have thought me useless, as Garent suggested. At the least I was still useful as a qualified medic with decades of experience, and as a trained scholar. I still knew more than he did of the present-day world. No, uselessness was not the issue. Trust, on the other hand, was. Rostov was a mercenary; he did contract jobs of all sorts, for anybody who was willing to hire him. He was, I have to admit, the perfect choice for the occasion. He is sufficiently ruthless and practical to not hesitate before firing his formidable collection of weapons, knows enough about the arcane to make correct snap judgments, is intelligent and, perhaps most importantly, has a code of honour which decrees that a job must be seen to its end. When bought, he stays bought.

I rather like Rostov. I just didn’t have to like the circumstances.

The problem in my presence, as I saw it, was precisely that I was not for hire. Lorenzo could not hope to put it on anything but an equal footing and he was not used to answering questions. Asking – yes; answering – not so much. So he had weighted the option and, aside from needing a man of muscle, which I assuredly was not, realized that Rostov would follow his lead, whereas I hadn’t a scrap of docile following left in me.

Garent was saying something, however, and I forced myself to focus. “You were saying?”

“I said,” he repeated patiently, “that one person might not be enough. You know, maybe we should take a couple more?”

“And hang up signs on every billboard in Europe? No,” I shook my head. “Between you, Lorenzo and Rostov – with whatever help you can get from me – we should be able to handle anything thrown at us, don’t you think?”

“That,” Garent muttered under his breath, “assumes that Lorenzo himself is not the problem.”

“It’s not an option I even wish to entertain.”

I was treading very close to a lie. It was not an option I wished to entertain, but, nonetheless, it was an option which hounded me ceaselessly ever since the names on the newscast and the letters on Lorenzo’s table snapped into place. The landscape drawn by such a possibility was eerie and bleak, and I had no wish to tread it. The notion of Lorenzo sweeping through Europe as though he were a hurricane of destruction made me shudder inwardly and yet… and yet was not altogether implausible. It was precisely such an occasion which I most dreaded, and it was for this reason, too, that I had approached Garent rather than seek help elsewhere. Garent’s innate suspiciousness, and his mistrust of Lorenzo, were famed.

Both of us could comprehend murder. We had both come across circumstances where the optimal – perhaps the sole – solution resulted in death. And we had faced it down. The option, thus, that this death had been caused by Lorenzo, did not completely horrify or revolt me. Yet, if he had murdered brutally, and without a cause…

Then it would fall to Garent to do what was necessary in a place where I could not.

“Let’s not make hasty assumptions.” I hoped that none of this furious internal monologue was reflected in my face. “Let us first arrive at the scene, orient ourselves, then decide precisely what course of action we must take.”

“All right, I suppose.” He was not convinced, but he was patient enough not to press me, and let the matter lie.

“We need to hurry up and get you some normal clothes,” I eyed his blue mage-robes critically, and condemned them for the purposes of secrecy. “The plane takes off in three hours.”

I and my muse (excuse me: my muse and I) are on fairly good terms. We have an agreement. I let her run away with any idea I come up with, or like, and make stories circle in my head until they are written; she, on the other hand, relinquishes control of all idea-generating to me.

Meaning: anywhere dark I had gone, I had wanted to go. I'm not altogether sure what that says about me but there it is.

Some of my and my husband's characters.

Sofia Rabinovich lives in Founder's Falls, in a fairly decent garden apartment with her husband Alex and her cat. She works as a professor and researcher of Linguistics at PCU, and scrounges for grants and funds, like any academic.

Alexander Rabinovich who lives, surprise surprise, in the very selfsame apartment, teaches physics and holds the rights to a number of rather unusual patents. A good chunk of the couple's income comes from those.

The two also own one side of a duplex by the sea in Port Oakes.

Lorenzo Mondavi lives in the second half of the aforementioned duplex, where he runs his store of rare books and antiquities. The bookstore is mostly a hobby, though, founded by his brokerage of ancient manuscripts and other rarities for collectors.

Elizabeth Ravenwood rents a studio in Talos and studies in Croatoa. She has a scholarship from University of London as an exchange student and a small stipend from the Midnighters, She supplements her income during the summer on archaeological digs.

Chapter II
In Which The Boredom Of Retirement Is Described, And Later Relieved

The problem with life in retirement, for someone like me, is that it is boring.

I whiled the rest of the day away by doing very little. I went to the park, sitting on a bench with my head tilted back and eyes closed, pretending occasionally I was there to supervise one of the children. Which child varied depending on the amount of attention parents were paying their offspring. I amused myself for a while keeping eye contact with a specific child, nodding at other women, and shifting instantly to a different toddler if the current subject’s parent swam into view.

Having returned home, I settled down on the couch to finally sink my teeth into the books I had, now that Lorenzo was not home, gratefully let myself at. After some time spent reading, however, my concentration wandered, fidgeting in disquiet between the plains of the Midwestern prairies and the lights and fountains of Paris. I was, quite frankly, rather envious; Sasha had painted a picture which, if not precisely cinematic, was nonetheless engaging – he was occupied, constantly on his toes, experiencing adrenaline rushes and the occasional thrill of danger. Lorenzo was enjoying Europe – which I loved – hunting down mysterious antiquities in museums.

I was stuck in California, drinking tea and reading a book.

I pattered around the house, feeling old. Finally, unable to resist the temptation any longer, I settled at my computer, and accessed the news, sifted through several databases which I and Alexander still keep an eye on – officially or otherwise.

It is not that we spy, precisely, but the agencies which we’ve had occasion to cooperate with before tend to roam through the net regularly, flagging down items of interest. These items, ubiquitous and often quite unassuming, often failed to make headlines. Nonetheless, their importance was not diminished by the fact that reporters, as a rule, had a spectacular tendency to fail to recognize important events even if these hit them in the face with a baseball bat, so agencies found it useful to make their own report of the world.

I had long since been spoiled by the easy and plentiful availability of these choicest of morsels, and reading the news otherwise, for me, because a torture I was no longer willing to subject myself to. I had sacrificed half a brain and half a life for the Cause – whatever that may be – I refused to sacrifice an evening.

I leafed through the databases, carefully keeping an eye on the occasional outside interference. The world, surprisingly enough, was sufficiently quiet to satisfy even such a raging paranoid as myself. Paragon, quite obviously,, was an exception to the rule, but that was a city where plots for world domination rose and crumbled in the blink of an eye, and no sensible person could, or would wish, to keep track of them.

A single article, however, caught my eye. It was a clip from an online edition of the Guardian, which read as follows:

[ QUOTE ]

Brutal Paris Murder

Louvre curator body found this morning. Occult activity suspected.

Dr. Claude Benveniste, a known scholar of antiquities, was found this morning dead in his office. He had been missing from his home the previous night, and his wife filed a missing person report with the police. This morning, during a routine inspection, his office door was opened, and the missing doctor found. A team of medics recorded the death. The body was brutally mutilated, the police say, and occult activities related to the Circle of Thorns were being considered as a possible line of investigation.
Dr. Benveniste was head of Near Eastern Antiquities for the last eight years, and was known among the staff as a “quiet, pleasant man whose only interest was research.” According to his employer, Dr. Gerard Beauly, he was never known to be involved with any occult activities.


[/ QUOTE ]

I finished reading the article, discovering to my rather disembodied astonishment that my fingertips, of their own accord, were drumming upon the keyboard shelf restlessly. That feat of coordination, impossible for me a mere few weeks ago, should have, all in and of itself, sent me dancing with joy to renew my defunct EMT license – the inability to perform delicate field operations and treatments was among the most depressing to me – but I had been too concentrated upon something else.

The name was familiar. The title was familiar also. Together with the place of employment – the Louvre, in, as it happens, Paris – faint bells of alarm were rapidly going off in my head. I had not assumed that Lorenzo would have been caught in the turmoil after the death, or was incapable of coping with the loss of a colleague, but… I frowned, rummaging rapidly through the events of the day.

Then I closed the database entries, and half ran out, grabbing the key to Lorenzo’s door as I went.

By the time I had arrived, slightly out of breath from exertion, to his desk, the alarm bells in my head had reached illegal decibels, and hovered thereabouts, clanging at my consciousness methodically, permitting me little concentration. I leafed through the letters on Lorenzo’s table with shaking hands, until, finally, the light of the small desk lamp revealed the letter bearing the ornate letterhead of the Louvre.

It was only one page, with rather short text. It was written in blocky, typed letters, using an old-fashioned typewriter, and dated from the beginning of the month. It read as follows.

[ QUOTE ]

De: Departement des Antiques Orientales, Musee du Louvre,
A: Monsieur L. Mondavi.

Sujet: En reponse a votre enquete…


[/ QUOTE ]

Or, if you really want to know what it said:

[ QUOTE ]

In response to your inquiry

Dear Sir,

I regret to inform you that the artifacts upon which you have inquired are not, presently, on display. Nor will they be available for examination by private parties in the near future. They have been removed for restoration and, in certain cases, detailed study.
Replicas of these artifacts, as well as transcriptions and photographs, can be found in the appropriate internet archives, as well as in the National Library of France, in Paris.
It is my hope that this response has assisted you in your studies, and I apologize for the inconvenience in hope that you will understand the necessity of it.

Sincerely,

Dr. Claude Benveniste
Curator,
Department of Oriental Antiques


[/ QUOTE ]

I hissed under my breath.

The learned doctor Benveniste. The late learned doctor Benveniste. Curator of Near Eastern Antiquities, man with no connection to the occult, brutally mutilated and dead these past twenty four hours. A correspondent of Lorenzo’s at least insofar as to obviously refuse a request. Dead within a few hours of Lorenzo’s arrival in Paris. I suppressed the urge to swear under my breath, and tried to think the situation through.

Quite obviously, correlation did not mean causation; the entire thing could be a dreadful coincidence, a misfortune of the utmost caliber, yet, in the end, merely that. The curator of ancient artifacts, in our world, was not a safe position to be appointed to. Certainly the police could be correct, and the Circle of Thorns – among numerous others – had ample reasons to commit crimes within that realm. Who knew, after all, which of these artifacts were significant, and in what manner? The Circle, as I had ample reason to know, would kill, main or possess over the smallest of trifles, and presumably this Benveniste could no more withstand the attack of a behemoth demon than he could handle a mugging and arson.

I sat at the desk for a while, head between my hands, staring at the paper with unfocused eyes. Was the coincidence not too convenient? Lorenzo departs to Paris, having previously received a letter from a certain man. Shortly after his arrival, the same man is found dead, and suspicion falls upon the mages of the Circle of Thorns, an organization whose history with Lorenzo is long, convoluted and, above al, distinctly unfriendly. Then there was Lorenzo’s letter; conveniently vague, providing no contact details, mentioning in one breath the trip and the “bodyguard Rostov Kushan”.

It figured. It just did.

I groaned. It was far more than my bored, overexcited psyche could take. Grabbing the incriminating letter, and sticking it into the pocket of my jacket, I headed home, where I ransacked the closets and forgotten corners, rapidly packing a suitcase. I called up the airline companies on the East Coast, and flipped the light and power in Sasha’s lab. I headed straight to the closet, and extracted my long, curved, steel-point umbrella.

Then I went to look for Garent.

[u]Part I: … A Traveller From An Antique Land… [u]

Chapter I
In Which A Letter Is Received And A Plant Is Rescued

I am entirely uncertain as to how one should characterize this sort of occurrence. I would not presume to draw far-reaching conclusions, even now, holding all the pieces in my hands and looking back post-factum. I am, furthermore, disinclined to make accusations that cannot stand the test of verifiability, or would be otherwise fallacious. It is always my inclination, I believe, to see my own responsibility in the manner in which events evolve, and I do not see why, for this instance, I should change from my habitual view. So, let it be thus. And let me, therefore, begin at the beginning. At least – as I am the one telling this part of the tale – let it begin at my beginning.

Everything, the good as well as the bad, happened because I absolutely hate being sidelined.

It is a matter of human nature. No one enjoys being left behind, having to sit at the window, spin wool and sigh at the sunset. As it happens, the entire chain of events might have occurred quite differently – I dare hope, even more badly than it did – if some particular details of my everyday life at the time were just slightly different. To wit, everything would have been different had my husband, Alexander, stayed at home, and had my friend, Lorenzo, bothered to make his note to me a single well-placed phone call.

So life will stand and fall; on the whim of a single phone call.

As it happens, my husband was not home. He was gallivanting about, somewhere in the wild, wild west, pretending to be a medical doctor and displaying feats of gunslinging marksmanship to the unsuspecting bystanders. While he was, I am given to understand, much enjoying himself in this manner, I was stuck at home, learning to move about without my umbrella. That had served me as a cane and crutch for several months, but it was edging towards a rather blazing, and distinctly un-rainy, California summer: it was time for said umbrella to find its rightful place in the closet.

I gained that umbrella, and the need for it, in a rather foolish accident which, conveniently, decimated my powers altogether, sending me and mine into a blissful, comfortable, boring retirement.

Until that letter.

The day was one of these very bright, mild ones that neither surprise you with wet showers, nor oppress you with their intolerable, muggy heat. It was a day meant for optimism, and I was quite optimistic. I had been poking about in the pitiful semblance of a garden our house possessed, and was imagining myself quite the green thumb when something in my back decided to demolish my smugness altogether, and popped with a loud snap.

Creaking like an old case of stairs, I unfolded slowly to what nature deemed to be my proper height – all meter sixty of it, barely enough to reach people’s belt buckle – and progressed slowly toward the house. I was mentally preparing myself to many an hour of sulking, boredom, and waiting as I whittled away till Sasha could come pull down things from high shelves for me.

Then I remembered that Lorenzo’s library had several fascinating items upon which I wished to put my hands for quite some time. The items in question were usually being read by him, however, so I spent the last several months quietly pining away, waiting my proper turn. Now, I decided, would be a proper turn. One could hardly deny the pleasure to the sick, after all. I made my way with the speed and grace of an overfed turtle, and, in a fairly short amount of time, was knocking on Lorenzo’s door. I was to be sadly disappointed, however, because there was no answer.

I knocked a few more times, for the effect, and then noticed the sheaf of thick glossy paper tucked into the crack of the door.

Obviously, Lorenzo was not home. Just as obviously, he has left me, in his customary, Victorian way, a missive (calling that three-page monstrosity by the inoffensive, ubiquitous term ‘note’ was, really, quite beyond me) written in his neat handwriting. In English, out of sheer habit.



That, by the way, is my name. At least its second half. The number of times I had heard the first half of my name, Sofia, anywhere in Lorenzo’s proximity can be conveniently counted upon the fingers of one hand while holding a teacup.



And so on and so forth things in this vein, until the flowery but obligatory signature.



A house key on a chain was neatly folded into the envelope.

Well, after a letter like that, what woman with anything resembling sentiment could refuse to water her friend’s plants? Or walk his dog? Or shine his shoes? Lorenzo did not have a dog, and his shoes were thankfully out of reach, but the ‘yours with much gratitude’ made sufficient impression on me. I admit, I have a weakness to a specific type of man; charming, intelligent, articulate and old-fashioned. I married one very much in this vein. Lorenzo might not have been old-fashioned when he was young – sometime in the tail end of the 19th century – but he certainly occupies that niche now. And he can do ‘charming’ and ‘urbane’ well enough to convert rocks. That makes it occasionally difficult to remember that the man is frighteningly intelligent – considerably smarter than yours truly – almost too competent to be real, and sufficiently devious to tutor Machiavelli.

He could use a few reminders on the subject of phone calls, however.

I sighed. It was the 17th, and so Lorenzo must have departed a day ago. The plants, clearly, were in urgent need of watering and several other items on the list beeped red lights of due dates at me. I repossessed the key, and opened the door.

I knew the place quite well – been there countless times – so I squinted into the darkness and was off into the salon without bothering with the first light switch on my way. That, patently, was a mistake, as my foot – an unreliable appendage at best, these days – tangled itself in something on the floor, and sent me sprawling almost onto my nose. Fighting the indignity of a squeal, I grabbed at the offending obstacle, and encountered the contours of a book.

Grumbling softly, I picked myself and the offending printed item up, and slowly made my way to the next light switch down the line. I threw it on, and tried to find the plants under the layers of papers, dust and miscellanea.

Lorenzo, to a large extend like my dear husband, seems to be one of these fastidious people to whom, by virtue of their great reluctance to throw anything away, disorder clings, no matter what they do. Too, they tend to prioritize cleaning their apartments, rooms or drawers quite low on their list – wedged between washing the dishes and purchasing useless household items like spoons, forks and light bulbs – and so Lorenzo easily could have left in the small window of time between ‘clutter’ and ‘must put it all in place’.

It was only, I am sure, by virtue of his phenomenal memory, that he was able to find the documents for his trip. His desk was a marvel of piling and an eccentric sort of classification known to people like me as piling in smaller heaps. Cleaning the place wasn’t on my list, but I had a hard time refusing to indulge my natural impulses and not putting things in their proper places. Besides, if Lorenzo wanted me to handle some documentation for him – which he did – I had to somehow fight my way through his habitual manner of putting things in order. I thoughtfully picked up a tie from the back of a chair, and went to get a dust mop.

Lorenzo’s table did not actually require as much sorting as I’d feared. Though I knew that even that unchallenging task was Sisyphean labour, as the entirety of it would find its way to the desktop again. I sorted and sifted and, in the end, was left with nothing more than a few scattered papers. Some of them, as natural for a person of my unproportional and insatiable curiousity, drew my eye. Don’t get the wrong impression; far be it from me to habitually read other people’s mail. Curiousity is well and good, but courtesy has much greater virtues to recommend itself, and I tend to hold by it. It was not so much that I read the letters as that I held to them for a few moments, unsure as to which of the neat organized stacks of documents each belonged to. It was, therefore, only natural that I should skim to determine their placement.

Lorenzo did keep quite a correspondence.

It was astonishing how many people one could entice to respond if one produced sufficiently nice paper, and elaborate handwriting. Most of the responses were by hand, no less. Only a smattering were typed official letters. One bore the stamps of the Louvre, another was from a Mr. Edgecombe in the British Museum, a third was posted from Cairo. It was not that I had a lack of interesting correspondence; I regularly tossed emails back and forth with several linguists and cognitive psychologists but, for one, most of my correspondence was done by email these days, and, for another, as a procurer of antiquities Lorenzo seemed to keep in touch with every sizeable museum on the planet.

Eventually, I found the placement of the letters – on the desktop, as it happens – smiled to myself, and went to water the drooping plants.

The Lone And Level Sands
or
History, Archaeology, and Other Trifling Matters
written by: Dylan Kennet and Genia Lukin

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings;
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

-Percy Bisshe Shelley, 1818

((No, I have not forgotten about this.

Yes, I have been otherwise occupied with various things.

What things, I hope you will see soon enough, and, I hope, they will be as good a read. Yes, I do intend to take this thread back up in the near future and bring it to a conclusion, though I can't promise specific dates.

End of public announcement here.))