Nosferatu

3

He'd chosen Heidelberg almost randomly. Now, after two days, Serrin was beginning to think the choice had been inspired. The city was quiet, even now, in the tourist season, and looked as though it had barely changed in more than a century. Small white boats still drifted lazily down the Neckar, and people still shopped at the street market where he'd bought a sample of neckarfroschen, one of those hand-made green ceramic frogs, a curious, goblin-like creature with a quizzical expression on its face. The market with its jars of homemade preserves, stalls of feathered hats and drinking steins, fish and fruit and schinken, the ever-present dried ham that was obviously a local specialty was as straight out of the nineteenth century as the rest of the town.

Wandering the streets, Serrin stopped on his way up the narrow one leading to the hilltop castle and gazed idly into the window of a confectionery shop. Some colorful little boxes caught his eye and he bought one, only to find a distressingly heart-shaped chocolate biscuit inside. Accompanying it was a tiny piece of paper, which said that these were "Student's Kisses," sweets sent by one student to a potential sweetheart whose chaperone prevented any more direct expression of ardor.

We've come a long way, Serrin thought bitterly. Nowadays, your sweetheart boffs your brains out for three days, then sells you to the tabloids. He turned left into the Marketplatz and idled on to the Haupstrasse, hunting coffee and fresh-squeezed juice in one of the innumerable cafes.

Maybe I should visit the university, he thought idly. Finish some of that work on masking techniques I was trying to do at Columbia. Oh, what the hell, I've had enough work for a while. Let's go see what Frederick of Bohemia left us on top of that hill.

Kristen ran like crazy away from the multi-colored markets and stalls of Strand Street to disappear into the crowds of Lower Adderley, where she picked her way toward Heerengracht and the waterfront with her scavenger's prize. Today she'd gotten lucky, coming upon the

scene just as the police surprised the steamers in the act of grabbing the wallet from a man they had doubled up on the ground.

Kristen wasn't given to thieving, the police were too hard on that, but she knew when something could be had for nothing. While the police took up the chase in the opposite direction and a couple of bystanders bent down trying to help the groaning victim, she'd gone straight for the shoulder bag still lying on the ground where it must have gotten flung in the scuffle. Snatching it up, clutching it tightly to her chest, she was sure nobody had seen her as she made like a devil rat for the Sisulu Markets. But with her height and headful of tight curls, Kristen wouldn't really feel safe until she got there. All she could do was pray that the effects of her morning's dagga weren't too obvious; the weed had been strong, flighty, brightly mellow.

The builders had modeled it on San Francisco and Sydney, or so they'd said when developing the derelict industrial wasteland of Cape Town's waterfront. And maybe it hadn't turned out too badly after all. The waterfront was her home, one of the few places in all of the Confederated Azanian Nations where you really weren't likely to get shot just for being the wrong skin color, religion, or meta-type. For Kristen, being half-Xhosa, half-Caucasian, that meant a lot. Down here, all she had to worry about was racial prejudice, and not murderous intent.

She gazed idly out at the huge rusting hulk of the oil tanker beached permanently on the sands of the shallow coastline. Some twenty thousand people lived in the gutted remains of that ship, a ragged army of homeless. Many of them labored on the breaking crews that went out each day to work over the junked ships towed into the bay, huge derelicts whose faceless owners had sold them for scrap to the city council. Using nothing more sophisticated than hammers, the tanker people broke their backs pounding up those hulks for the metal. They got peanuts for the scrap just enough to subsist while the city fathers reckoned the price they paid for the abandoned ships cheap if it kept twenty thousand social misfits from

preying on the tourists. Kristen knew one or two of the wreckers, but still hadn't fallen so low herself.

Kristen grinned as she sat down with some kaf and a plate of blatjang, picking at the chicken with one hand while going through the bag with the other. Eighty UCAS dollars, fives and small change; the man must have been using it for small purchases in the markets. No doubt he'd left his plastic and most of his documents back in the hotel security box. Standard tourist precaution, she thought. But eighty bucks suited her just fine. It would feed her for weeks, even buy her a hotel bed. Better still, she could also get high on it for a month.

She looked around to see if anyone was watching, if it would be safe to leave the bag and leave. Uncertain, she pretended to be searching for something, a recalcitrant lip gloss maybe, in its obscured depths. The first thing she pulled out was a magazine, which she dropped carelessly onto the table, and had just begun to fish around in the bottom of the bag when the picture on the magazine's cover caught her attention.

Kristen suddenly felt very cold in the seaside warmth, an unusually balmy, twenty degrees Celsius on this winter day. She wasn't acquainted with more than a handful of elves dangerous, proud-crazy Zulus come to bad times in this city people she knew well to avoid, with their doubled contempt for her mixed race. She had never seen anyone like this elf in her life, of that she was sure. But the image seized her, and wouldn't let go. She flicked the tabloid's pages, saw him seated smiling in the sunshine, then turned the magazine sideways to look at him another way. She knew she'd never seen the bugger. She was also certain she'd known him all her life.

Maybe she'd seen him on a movie poster or on a plug-ger for a rock concert, or maybe on a police poster or something amp; Frag it, she thought, I wish I could bloody well read. Who is he?

As if on cue, the Javanese man rounded the corner of the waterfront, the white of his flowing clothes drifting in the breeze like the clouds scudding toward Table Mountain, and gave her a cheery wave of the hand. She gestured him over, waving the magazine rather foolishly above her head.

"Nasrah, you want to earn a few bucks?" she asked brightly. He raised his eyebrows and smiled.

"You trying to sell me something again, Kristen?" "No, all I want is for you to read to me." He gave her a slightly sideways glance, drew a pair of battered glasses from a pocket, and barely had them perched on his nose before she almost pushed the magazine straight into his chest.

"Here. Start here. Tell me about him."

The wine shop was open late.

Serrin remembered that his Welsh nobleman friend, Geraint, had told him that if ever in Germany, he should try to find eiswein, the extraordinary yellow wine made from grapes rotted on the vine after the first frost had crystallized their liquid into a supremely concentrated fermentation. He took the bottle back to his hotel room, which suddenly filled with the scent of fruits and flowers the moment he uncorked it. Serrin poured himself a glass, then raised the cold wine to his lips and tasted the delicious sweetness as the nectar slid down his throat as smoothly as water dripping from an icicle. He was astonished; nothing he'd ever known had tasted like this. One glass would never be enough.

He woke with a start just after midnight, knocking the empty bottle away as he stretched his arms and yawned wide enough to almost crack his jaw. Hungry now, and sure he would need some exercise before being able to sleep again, he used his night key to let himself out onto the street, passing by the church, making his way through the scattered university buildings toward the bars, where he would still be able to find food at this hour.

The tiny alleyways around the university were deserted, barely lit. Suddenly, panic gripped him as his spell lock screamed with its knowledge. Looking around wildly, the elf was sure only a threat to his life could set off such a warning. He threw up a barrier spell just as the

first heavy dart struck the wall behind him with a brutal crunching sound.

A red spot had also appeared on his chest, an IR rangefinder, and Serrin risked an instant of astral perception to find its source. High on the roofs above he glimpsed a second figure, shadowy and silent, melting out of the shadows to his left. He slipped out of astral in double-quick time and decided to try to take out one of the fraggers with some heavy hitting. No sense in doing things by halves.

As he cast the spell, hellfire lit up the roofs above and a curtain of flame roared around the gunman, ruining his second shot. The man screamed and toppled, his burning body hitting the cobbled streets with a ghastly thud. The rifle that fell from his hands clattered along the street, and a cascade of ammunition also rattled down the rooftops and onto the street. Serrin heard voices in the distance and someone shouting, "Polizei! Bitte, polizei!" The second man was a meter away from him. Serrin could see hand razors snaking from his fingers, discolored blades glittering even in the faint light around him. Jerking himself backward, he found himself suddenly backed up against a wall.

The man grinned. He was almost anonymous in his long, shapeless coat, and Serrin guessed there must be cybereyes under his shades. There was a grim appropriateness about his hunting hat, but another feature clawed at something in Serrin's memory: a triangular scar stamped into his chin. He knew he'd seen it somewhere before, but had no time to wonder where.

The razor claws ripped the mage's arm just as Serrin hit his assailant with a mana bolt, pushing hard with the force of it at the man's psyche and being. His attacker grunted and doubled over as if someone had just kicked him in the guts, but Serrin knew the force he'd put into the spell should have done a lot more than that. He leapt past the man and ran like the wind for the Haupstrasse. Just as he as about to round the corner, the sound of running feet coming at him from the front made the elf halt and back into a shadowed dotirway to cast an invisibility spell. Despite the danger and the adrenaline pumping

through his veins, Serrin felt weak and drowsy, a sign that he was burning up far too much magical energy. Half a dozen drunken students teemed past him, advancing on where Serrin had just left his assailant.

Waiting frantically for them to pass, he noticed something small and metallic gleaming faintly on the ground. He picked it up, thinking he'd dropped it. Then came the wail of sirens from the west of the town, and Serrin had to wait for them to pass before tottering unsteadily back to his hotel. His arm stung like crazy, although there was little blood on his jacket. The wound was barely a scratch. Spirits, he thought, the bastard poisoned me!

He barely made it back to his room, he couldn't call BuMoNa, because he hadn't bought any health care coverage upon arriving. Neither did he want to call the German police, who were sure to wonder about poisoned wounds and blazing bodies in the streets of peaceful Heidelberg. The elf cut a strip of cloth from a spare shirt and bound his left arm with a tourniquet so tight the arm was white within seconds. Then he stuffed everything he could into his suitcase and called a cab. He knew this was crazy, that he was taking an absurd chance with his life, but with the venom making him unable to think straight, his actions were born out of sweating, pallorous fear.

"Hauptbahnhof, danke," Serrin managed to say to the taxi driver, waving enough nuyen in the man's face to buy himself salvation from the sirens, or so he hoped. He got lucky; the ork just grunted, and the car began to slip quietly along the riverside, left through the Bismarck Platz and west into Bergheimerstrasse, leaving the flash of blue lights behind.

Arriving at the train station, Serrin stumbled out of the cab, hoping the driver would take him for just another drunken tourist. Dragging one foot after another, he approached the big board showing the train schedules, and studied it briefly before slotting his credstick into the automatic ticket dispenser. His brain raced: Get the Essen express, change at Mainz for Frankfurt or go through to Bonn. Buy a ticket for Essen in case the police track me. Get off halfway there. The machine must have exhausted

its misanthropy for the day because it finally coughed up his ticket without any of the usual harassment.

Serrin just barely managed to get into the first class car before finally passing out. The wound burned like fire and his throat was dry as dust. Horribly, he felt his muscles stiffening, his breath ragged and gasping. Spirits, he thought, I'm having a seizure. They stuck me with some fragging paralyzing neurotoxic or something. He tried to get to the door of the car and shout for help, realizing too late that death wasn't the smartest way of avoiding the German police, but his leaden limbs refused to obey his brain and he slumped helplessly into the corner seat. His eyes rolled backward in his head and he collapsed.

Serrin was awakened by the conductor as the express pulled out of Koblenz. His arm throbbed and his mouth felt like a parakeet had been living in it, but his heartbeat seemed normal and the only other lingering symptom of the attack was a tight, knotted stiffness in the muscles of his arms and legs. While fumbling in his pockets for the ticket, Serrin's hand rattled something metal and he hurriedly coughed to cover up the sound. Once the conductor finished looking at the ticket as if it were something he'd been unlucky enough to step in, the elf waited for the man to move on up the aisle before pulling the metal object from his pocket. It was a cartridge, the kind used for medical injections. Empty now.

Trank shot, Serrin thought. Odd that I don't remember picking it up, but it explains why I only feel as stiff as hell. Those claws must have been full of tranquilizer too. That means they wanted me alive.

Though the thought should have been reassuring, Serrin found it even more terrifying than someone wanting him dead.

He stared wretchedly at the oncoming glare of the glittering Rhine-Ruhr megaplex and wondered who the hell could be after him. His head swam with images from dozens of Z-grade movies of killers on trains, but his spell lock wasn't giving him any warnings of immediate danger. He tried to figure out what someone might now expect him to do, to second-guess anyone trying to track him. With a start, he remembered the scarred man from JFK and realized that the hit must have been ordered while he was still in New York; from there they'd followed him to Heidelberg. That had taken some doing,

surely; tracing him to Frankfurt would have been easy, but on to the university city?

It has to be a magician, he thought. Someone who could trace me astrally. A magician who wants me alive. The thought hit him like an ice-cold shower.

He got off the train at Bonn and took a taxi directly to the airport. Pushing coins desperately into one of the battery of concourse telecoms, he cursed the broken slot that should have taken a credstick for the call. The number he called was in the heart of London.

"Yeah?" The screen showed the face of a sleepy blonde rubbing her face and peering back at her caller's gaunt visage. She didn't like the look of him at all.

"Is Geraint there?" he pleaded.

"Hey, whoever you are, term, it's five in the morning and "

"It's urgent. Tell him it's Serrin."

"He's not here," she said smugly. "He's in Hong Kong on business. He'll be back in two days. Can I take a message?"

"I'll call back," the elf said curtly and hit the Disconnect. London was close, and a friend who was a member of the House of Lords might be protection worth having. But for the moment he was still alone and twitching in the middle of the night in an unfamiliar airport thousands of miles and an ocean away from home. His hands were shaking even worse than usual. No one seemed to pay him the least attention, however. Looking around, Serrin saw the standard fare of all airports at five in the morning: the beginnings of the business commuter traffic headed for Brussels or Strasbourg; jilted lovers red-eyed and morose; sleepless and angry people denied their flights by some incompetent engineer or air-traffic controller; drunks and chipheads laid out on benches airport security hadn't yet gotten around to cleaning up. Dimly, Serrin remembered some phrase from an English poet: Isn't life a terrible thing, thank God? But God, if he exists, couldn't have created airports, the elf thought glumly. Drek, I should just get on the next plane back to UCAS, to anywhere they can take me. So what if what somebody's probably expecting me to do? What other choice have I got?

He approached the British Airways desk, getting ready for his standard "first plane home" spiel. He was getting good at it by now. But even as the thought came, Serrin felt the beginnings of a smile tugging at his lips. Seattle! Home of sorts.

He pushed his suitcase onto the conveyor at a gesture from the girl yawning behind the desk.

"Mr. Shamandar," she said suddenly, while routinely checking his documents. "There's a message for you. It was delivered a couple of hours ago I nearly forgot."

He took the envelope, then made a hash of trying to open it neatly with his shaking hands, almost tearing the single sheet of white paper as he pulled it out.

Mr. Shamandar, it read, you would find it profitable to investigate the identity of the instigator of your meeting with a certain party this evening. Especially if you studied others in the same position.

It was written in Sperethiel, the elven tongue. Which gave his guts another quick loop-the-loop. "Who gave you this?" he demanded gruffly. "I'm sorry but I don't know," the girl replied, stifling another yawn with her elegantly manicured hands. "I wasn't on the desk at the time. You'd have to ask Frieda, but she won't be back on duty until tomorrow night and your plane is boarding in fifteen minutes."

As he trudged to the departure gate, trembling hands groping for his ID, Serrin felt like a pawn in the midst of some dangerous cat-and-mouse game. In itself that wasn't so unusual. He'd already been scragged royally by life enough times before, but this had a certain starkness to it that he was beginning not to like at all.

Slot, he thought, I'm just getting old, that's all. The elf ran his fingers through his short graying hair and wondered what kind of protection he could buy once he got back to Seattle.

Squinting at the magnificent bloody sunset and the black clouds whipping in from the Atlantic, Kristen stretched her legs and pulled the wrap tighter about her

shoulders against the rapidly cooling air. She was happy with life right now: dollars in her pocket and dagga and drink in her bag, a smile spreading over her face at the thought of dancing at Indra's all night. This couldn't last, of course, it never did; but her luck tended to come in runs and maybe the mugged tourist's bag was the start of such a run.

She meandered down Main as the dull glow of the streetlights grew into a glare, past the plastic and chrome tourist traps of Vesperdene and into the warren of streets between Main and High. The first few big drops of rain sloshed against the sidewalk, promising Cape Town's usual evening drenching. All day Table Mountain had been wearing a shroud of hazy clouds that must have concealed the fifty-kilometer view it offered from its peak on a clear day. Hissing at the rain, she ducked into one of the malls, a whirring blur of neon, trid, video, and colorful humanity.

To her dismay, she walked straight into some lekker-boys laughing their way out of a bar. Cheaply dressed and absurdly proud of their garish clothing, they were as vain as peacocks and unpredictable as hell. The slag who seemed to be at the head of the pack looked at her disapprovingly while preening the lapels of his jacket. The others formed a circle around her before she could react.

"Don't like kaffirs dirtying up my threads," he snarled. Kristen winced at the insult, once spat at blacks by whites and now directed at mixed-race people, usually in one of history's little ironies by blacks.

"I'm sorry. Didn't mean it. Didn't see where I was going. Let me help." She clumsily reached out a hand to wipe at his jacket, but he gripped her wrist painfully and stared deep into her eyes. Kristen had the horrible certainty that this bugger was high on something not very pleasant, then she heard a metallic click behind her. She didn't need to turn around to know it was a knife.

"I ain't got nothing'," she whined, then suddenly remembered the money she was carrying. Even worse than the physical danger was the prospect of losing her treasure so soon after finding it. "Only some dagga. I give it to you, you leave me alone."

The man sneered. "She give us dagga, boys!" A faint swell of derision rose around her. The grip on her wrist tightened and the ganger twisted it a little. Kristen had to bite her lip to keep from yelping in pain.

"Maybe we want something else," he leered, dragging her close and opening his mouth in a broken-toothed smile. His free hand was rising to grab at her breast just as a much larger one seized his shoulder. The world-weary face of a black troll loomed above him.

"We don't want no trouble here, boys," the troll boomed in a deep voice. "Police were round last week and we don't want to see them back again so soon, do we? Run along and play somewhere else, you skollies." The lekkerboy turned and with a cool gaze took in the stun baton in the troll's other hand. Slowly he released Kristen, then made an obscene gesture as he led the rest of the gang off into the night rain, shoving aside anyone in their way.

"Thanks, chummer," Kristen managed to say, shaking worse than she should have. She got in and out of a dozen scrapes like this every week. Maybe that dagga was a little stronger than she'd thought or maybe it wasn't strong enough. "Hey, Muzerala, is that you?"

"You betcha ass," the troll said, not given to much in the way of polite conversation.

"I thought you were working at Indra's. Thought I'd see you there tonight," she replied. "Hell, I need a drink." "I guess you can come in," the troll told her, gesturing to the little bar whose entrance he'd been guarding. Then he shrugged and said, "I had a little disagreement with Indra. She owes me something like three hundred rand in back pay and wouldn't pay up. So I did a little damage cost her that much and more. Won't be seeing me around there for a while."

Kristen parked herself on a bar stool and ordered a beer. With a chaser. The barman looked dubious until Muzerela gave him a nod. "She just had a mess-up with some skollies. Needs a drink," he said. Scowling, the barman rudely pushed a glass across the bar. She didn't waste any precious dollars on him, paying instead with

what was almost the last of her rands. She needed to find Nasser and cut a deal on the bucks.

"Any chance of work?" she said rather pathetically to the troll. The bar was almost empty, which just might make the humiliation of rejection not quite so painful. A place like this wouldn't hire a mixed-race girl any more than it would normally serve one. Still, the troll just might have something, somewhere. But all she got was the offer she should have expected.

"Your face wouldn't fit," the troll said. "Nothing personal. My brother could always find you work, though." "Huh. Thanks but no thanks. I'm not down to that yet," she said, gulping down the beer fast. If the bar owner appeared, it might not be healthy for Muzerela that he'd let her in, especially since he hadn't been working here long. Kristen finished her drink too quickly and headed for the rest room.

Three minutes later she was back on the streets. She'd smoked the joint even faster than usual, and it hadn't been a good idea. She had to get to Indra's, dance away the effects, find Nasser on his late-night rounds and change her money. Then pull a fade fast before word got around and someone decided to slice her up for the money.

Looking up at the street sign, Kristen didn't have to read it to know that the street was named High. She was just chuckling at the appropriateness of it when the face of the American elf drifted into her mind. She was still disturbed by seeing it on the tabloid, and she longed to be able to read the words and try to figure out who he was and why he could seem so significant to her. It was then she saw the two men in the shadow beyond the streetlight, collars raised against the rain that had driven most people off the street. Something told her she wasn't going to be walking any further along High.

By the time the suborbital landed in Seattle, it was late afternoon. Serrin awakened from his doze and stared out the window at the haze shimmering all the way from the runway to the terminal. Great, he thought, limping his way toward customs, that's all I need. Sweltering heat.

By the time he picked up his bags, he'd decided to get a room at the Warwick. Last he'd heard, that luxury hotel had begun to specialize in unobtrusive security for corporate clients who expected a little more than the norm. The rates would be exorbitant, of course, but he was too

exhausted to care.

After a taxi deposited him at the hotel's elegant entrance, Serrin had no difficulty getting a room even without reservations. He asked to have his bags sent up, then took the elevator up to the small suite. Once inside, the door safely secured, he sat down on the edge of the perfectly made bed to work out his next move. But rubbing his chin reflectively only made him realize how badly he

needed a shave.

In the bathroom, Serrin tried not to look too closely at the face staring back at him from the mirror as he wet his skin, then he stopped suddenly and laid the razor down on

the sink.

Maybe a beard wouldn't be a bad idea, he thought. Even with the stubble, I don't look much like that Newsday photo anymore. No one seemed to recognize me down in the lobby. Why should they? New York's week-old news isn't going to raise much of a fuss in Seattle. No, scratch the beard. He made a first pass with the cool steel of the blade, the familiar act of shaving relaxing him enough to ponder the situation calmly.

I need some muscle around me, at least for a while, Serrin reasoned. Then I can try to find out who's after me. He toweled his face, ran a bath, and ordered some sushi from room service.

Stripping off his clothes and rubbing at his painful leg, Serrin wondered why he thought of Seattle as home at all. He hadn't lived here for more than a couple of months at a time in the last five years. And the number of people he could call friends wasn't more than a handful. Besides, he realized guiltily, he hadn't made much effort at keeping in touch with them. Worse, a few calls soon informed him that his two best hopes were, in one case, out of town, and in the other, had upped and relocated to Nagoya.

He'd just bundled himself in the hotel bathrobe when his food arrived. Staring glumly down at the white and pink chunks of fish resting on their bed of rice and hints of vegetation, the elf wondered why he'd ordered it. "Um, wine too, I think," he mumbled. "Red or white?" the waiter asked. "Bring me a bottle of anything red from Australia," Serrin told him, then laughed just for the hell of it. "And two packs of Dunhills." He searched his pockets for some money, then handed the man a twenty. The waiter shrugged; it wasn't a bad tip. The elf was obviously some kind of chiphead or dope freak, but he didn't seem likely to offer any trouble.

After the food, mostly uneaten, and the wine, wholly consumed inside thirty minutes with a side order of three hungrily consumed cigarettes, the elf considered making some more phone calls but decided to sleep instead. Pleasantly lulled by a haze of alcohol, he checked the news service pages on the trid, but the index contained no entry for Serrin Shamandar. That was enough for now. He yawned prodigiously and just managed to crawl under the covers before falling fast asleep.

"Where did you turn this up, Magellan?" Jenna asked, her gaze turning pensively out across Crater Lake, her long elven ringers poised like mantis legs on the sheaf of paper in her lap.

"One has contacts," the male elf sitting opposite her said casually. He knew the green eyes turning to him from the splendors of the Tir Tairngire countryside were hard and cold, but by now he'd learned how to face them down and keep some secrets to himself. He also knew she considered him too valuable to be pressed too hard.

"You have eyes and ears in the councils of the O'Briens?" she said, astonished. Jenna paid Magellan well, but he was going to deserve a bonus for this. If he'd somehow managed to worm his way into the secrets of the elves of Tir na n6g, he was a priceless resource to her. The elves of that faraway country held most of their Tir Tairngire fellows in contempt, and it was almost impossible to learn anything of what they were up to. Unless one was Ehran the Scribe, of course. But he wasn't about to circulate whatever he knew to the other Princes of the Tir Tairngire High Council. Especially not to her.

"It cost me," he said simply, evading her question. "Call it a hundred thousand."

"Agreed." She wasn't going to quibble about the price. This was dynamite if the SES scientific evaluations were correct.

"You will not breathe a word to any other Prince," she said, her tone almost brutal. "I have to think hard on this."

"Have I ever betrayed your secrets?" he said, finding the courage to shoot her a challenging look.

She looked away quickly. "No. Forgive me. It's just that we can't risk a fool like Laverty finding out about something this big. He'd send a squad out to destroy this precious thing. That would be unthinkable."

"There is more, Jenna," the male ventured. "The intelligence report on the German is correct. He is exactly what they say he is. I have made other inquiries." His little finger crooked itself around the long flutted stem of his glass, and he swirled the red liquid around inside the wide, deep bowl.

"No doubt that cost you also," she smiled. The warm glow of what this magical discovery might mean was beginning to permeate her now. The ultimate power of life and death was being offered to her and the thrill was almost too strong to bear.

"Another thirty thousand for research," he said, making a dismissive gesture with his free hand. "Cheap at twice the price.

"I've also learned that he has certain special requirements that aren't easily satisfied. That have led him to kidnap certain rare individuals who can meet those requirements. Apparently his agents botched one such attempt very recently. It looks, of all things, as if the local police stopped two of his hit squad for some minor traffic violation and so they never got to the right place at the right time."

The two elves laughed at the absurd irony. "The target was a mage, as before. I haven't had time to do much research on him, except that he was the one who recently rescued the mayor of New York from being killed by some mad Shi'ite. Three-day wonder stuff. He's disappeared for the time being, but he's got to re-surface again one of these days."

"Find out more about him," Jenna ordered. "We don't want any loose ends."

"There's one complication," Magellan said slowly, realizing that Jenna must not have heard or read about the mage, or else she'd know this one important fact herself. "He is an elf."

"Ah," she said, her hands tightening for just an instant into fists. "Now that does rather complicate matters. Maybe. All right, but we must still find out everything we can about him. Maybe he'll just be glad to have gotten out of this alive, and won't do any snooping around."

"I'll get on to it right away," Magellan said, draining his glass and getting to his feet. He was about to turn toward the door when her expression stopped him.

"Later," she ordered. "You should know by now what the scent of power does to me."

"I was wondering about that," he said with a sly smile. "Let me make two calls to get the other matter started. Then, uh, the water pool?"

"I think I'd prefer you as my servant," she said drily. "Make your calls later."

Serrin woke at seven in the morning after thirteen hours of sleep. He felt less hung over than he had any right to, but it wasn't until he'd drunk half a liter of the steely mineral water on his bedside table that he paused to take a breath. His eyes caught the red winking of the telecom as he set the bottle down. A few taps on the console told him that a call had been received at his message-forwarding number and relayed through to the hotel. For a moment he couldn't even recall having made those arrangements, but then he gave up trying to remember. When he saw who it was had called him, he returned the call right away.

The suave features of the Welshman smiled back at Serrin from the screen. "Good morning, Serrin," his friend breezed in his BBC English accent. "I hear you've been to Germany. What's up?"

"I'm back in Seattle now, or I wouldn't have gotten your message. But they told me you were away for a couple of days."

"Got back a day early. Business concluded earlier than expected," Geraint said simply. "A doddle, old boy. Now, what's the problem?"

The elf paused for a second, not sure where to begin.

"Look, do you want me to call you back with a sampling monitor? To check whether your number is compromised, as I think you might say. We prefer bugged over here."

"I don't think so," Serrin replied uncertainly. He hadn't even contemplated the possibility until Geraint mentioned it, but the thought was evoking all the paranoia of the previous days.

"Come now, aren't you a hero in your native land these days? Read it all in Newsday. Hope there was a decent payoff in it," the Welshman joked.

"No, it's more serious than that," the elf said, then quickly ran down a summary for Geraint.

The Welshman listened carefully, waiting until he was sure Serrin was finished. "How can I help?" he asked finally.

"I don't know," Serrin's usual early-morning mental constipation was refusing to budge. "When I was in Frankfurt, I thought of hopping over to London, until I found out you weren't there."

"Only the delicious Elizabeth," Geraint said mischievously. "Don't worry. She's at Harrods buying some ghastly floral material or other. It won't last, it never does. It's doomed, thank God.

"Look if you need some help tracing the source of your problems, I've got a friend over there could help. His name's Michael Sutherland. Brilliant decker. He could find out the exact value of Fort Knox in less than five minutes." Serrin gave the Welshman a look of disbelief.

"Well, all right," Geraint conceded, "I exaggerate; maybe it would take him seven. We knew each other at Cambridge. I heard our friend Francesca is away in Saudi, so he's the best option. I can call him and make sure he charges you only the minimum. Hell, I can do better than that; I owe you."

Serrin couldn't quite figure that one out. He hadn't seen Geraint face to face since their extraordinary experiences in London the previous year. They'd unmasked a Jack the Ripper clone and got themselves deep into an unholy mess. Everything had worked out all right in the end, but Serrin had noticed something strange about Geraint afterward, an evasiveness, even a faint air of guilt. Serrin trusted Geraint with his life, so it didn't worry him. He guessed that anything strange in his friend's behavior must have to do with the infinitely subtle and treacherous web of British politics. Indeed, Serrin was just as happy not knowing about it if Geraint didn't want to tell him.

"I'll give you a number," the nobleman said, reciting off a telecom code that indicated a classy Manhattan address. "Wait a few hours, though. I'll call him first and remind him of a few favors he owes me. How about getting yourself some muscle? I can't really help you in that department, not Stateside. Or do you want me to send Rani over maybe?"

Serrin smiled. The Punjabi ork was someone you could count on if things came down to the wire. But it hadn't got that bad yet.

"First let me check out some more faces and names here," the elf said. "But thanks. I really appreciate this."

"It's the least I can do. Look, if you get into really deep drek there's always my castle in Wales, right? I'll make sure the staff is on permanent alert for you until I tell them otherwise. Hire a fraggin' private jet and I'll pick up the tab," the Welshman said. The curse words sounded almost comical in his accent.

"I hope it doesn't come to that. But thanks again. And I'll give this guy Sutherland a call after I've done a little checking around locally," the elf said. The smiling face of his friend evaporated as the connection was broken.

Serrin tapped in a local number, and the sleepy face of an ork swam into focus on the screen.

"Hey, Gulrank, I need some protection," the elf said simply. Subtlety would be lost on the samurai.

"Can't help you," the ork said in a tired voice. "Got a month's fee up front from an Intelligencer guy doing research on some lowlife stories. Sorry, chummer." He was about to hit the Disconnect when Serrin spoke urgently to catch his attention.

"Gulrank, I've tried John and he's out of town. Torend too. He moved to Japan. I'm running out of names, chummer, and I need this."

The ork paused for thought. It took some time.

"You could try Tom," he said slowly.

"Spirits! You mean Tom's still around?" The possibility hadn't even occurred to Serrin. The troll had been so hell-bent on self-destruction that Serrin had almost given up on him after the last of his endless binges. It had been so long since anyone had seen or heard of him downtown, that Serrin had simply assumed his friend was dead. In that instant, he realized that he'd deliberately avoided trying to find out about Tom because the thought of his death had been just too painful.

"He's changed," the ork said. "I don't know if he'd do muscle work anymore. Walks the way of Bear these days. Dried out, the works. Still down in Redmond, but I hear he's doing the green number and saving people from the machine. Hell, you ain't seen him since way back, right? You don't know this stuff." "I had no idea," the elf said, astonished. "He talks 'bout you sometimes," the ork said slowly. "I guess you kept him going long enough for him to save himself. Or so he says. You could do a lot worse, chum-mer. You got a friend there, which means you don't have as many worries as you think."

With that the screen went blank. Serrin immediately called down to the desk and ordered a cab for Redmond for nine sharp. That gave him time for breakfast, the first cigarette of the day, and enough spare minutes to figure out what the hell he was going to say to Tom after all these years.

Feeling that the luck was still with her, Kristen retreated into the darkness on her side of the street, her mind racing as she watched the two unmoving figures across the way. The men had their hats pulled down over their faces, but the shadows hid them even better. It was obvious they were up to no good, but Kristen thought maybe she might profit from whatever it was. Didn't her luck always come in runs?