Silent siren, p.13
Silent Siren, page 13
“Would like to hurry this up, thanks,” they interrupted.
“Sorry. All right, good. Carry on,” said the chief.
The phone beeped again as the others dropped off, and Yven left the channel as we sped toward the edge of town and the winding road toward the Interstate. “Gentle Breeze is the kind of chief you want in Interdiction,” he said, fiddling with the heater. “I’ve heard stories regarding some who didn’t give a damn about what happened to their agents as long as the work was finished. She cares about the work, now—ask Pars if you don’t trust me—but everything I’ve seen and heard suggests that she cares just as much about keeping her people intact. The numbers back it up.”
“Oh?”
He nodded. “Healers talk across agency lines. Canna has a vested interest in Interdiction’s safety record—”
“Naturally.”
“Well, at least among the healers, it’s common knowledge that Interdiction has a lower rate of death or serious injury now than it has in a century. Gentle Breeze was promoted to chief in 1983, I believe, and there’s been a steady decline in incidents.” Glancing over in time to catch my surprise, he grinned. “Oh, Lily’s right—Interdiction is still filled with cowboys, and if the stories Pars has told me are even half true, then Gentle Breeze is as liable to jump off a cliff as the rest of them. But that’s where her own safety is concerned. When it comes to her team, she’s all about double-checking the parachutes, if you know what I mean.” He slowed as Enva made a rolling stop through the last intersection at the town line. “Which is why I’m not surprised that she’s been so invested in Kritsa’s recovery. Ultimately, she’s the one who authorizes long-term undercover work, so she probably feels responsible for whatever’s befallen him.”
“Unless he’s gone rogue,” I said.
Yven snorted. “That’s worse. You don’t send an agent on a mission like Kritsa’s unless you trust him. If he’s been toying with DPP all this time, then that would also fall back on Gentle Breeze.”
“She’s not psychic,” I protested, “and double agents happen. Pateme can’t blame her if Kritsa’s fooled everyone.”
“You heard what she said about his file, though. He’s been sending vague reports back for some time, and she’s only now learned of it. If I were the director, I wouldn’t be too hard on her, but…” He shrugged, then reached for his coffee. “Any way this turns out, it’s bound to weigh on her.”
As we sped down the abandoned, snow-blanketed road toward I-64, my thoughts drifted back to my target. “Did I tell you that Mouse has a boyfriend?”
“No,” said Yven, surprised. “You saw him?”
“I saw the way she acted with one of the others. Guy named Daniot Frim, I think. I couldn’t see him because of the freaking spell, but she called him Danny, and that’s the only person with a name anywhere close to that.”
“What gave you impression that they’re—”
“I’ve seen them alone together twice, now, and she was talking about not wanting to wait forever…I mean, they weren’t explicit about their status,” I allowed, “but I’m not so naïve as to think they’re just good friends, know what I mean?”
“Fair.” In the dim light, I could barely see his brow furrow. “I didn’t think Frim was a sorcerer surname…”
“Probably not, since the dude’s a faun.”
Yven said nothing for a long moment, then muttered, “Huh.”
“Yeah. I don’t know about you, but in my imagination, when they’re in bed together, he’s fully masked…”
“Oh,” he groaned, “you had to plant the visual of the alternative, didn’t you? Hooves and horns?”
“You want a farseer, you get the good and the bonus squick.” Nudging him in the shoulder, I said, “Guess interspecies romance isn’t common in the Pactlands, huh?”
“Not particularly,” he admitted. “And if it happens, it’s usually between people with, uh…compatible body types. I mean, I’ve never heard of a centaur and a gnome running off together, you know?”
“So, if you were to fall for, say, a nice sorcerer…”
He paused to choose his words. “My parents would get over it, I think. With fifteen children thus far, they can afford to have a disappointment or two. My grandparents, now, that would be another matter—but again, I’m far from their only grandchild, so the wailing would probably end before the wedding. Or move behind closed doors, at least.”
“Who would they like to see you with instead? And don’t you dare say Vul ti’Dir,” I teased.
He shuddered and hunched over the wheel. “Go ahead and kill me if she’s the only option.”
The society columnist was stunning—or her mask was, at any rate—but she had her eye on Yven, and she rubbed us both like a cheese grater.
“If my grandparents had their pick,” Yven continued, slowing around a turn, “they’d want someone whose status would elevate our family and Hall by extension.”
“Such as…”
“Well,” he said with a chuckle, “you can only go down from main-line ti’Dana.”
“Wait…like my grandfather?”
“Exactly.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean…oh,” he said, finishing in a mumble. “Right. I don’t suppose Lily’s talked with you about the Halls, has she?”
I shook my head. “No. I’ve tried to bring up her family a few times in the last months, but she always changes the subject. What’s so great about ti’Dana? Is it the ‘former king’ thing?”
Yven sighed.
“If this isn’t the time, I—”
“No, it’s fine. Liogh’s doing a wonderful job of clearing the roads,” he assured me. “I’m just trying to think of how much history you need to know in order to understand.”
I waited while he mulled the matter over, watching for deer in the dark stands of trees while I gratefully enjoyed my Subaru’s excellent heater.
“So, uh,” Yven finally began, “before the Pact, there were two elven kingdoms, yes? We’d had more, but the others either fell or merged. One kingdom was based in Scandinavia, while the other was down around the Mediterranean. We were never exactly a widespread people.”
“Okay…”
“And we weren’t the only ones with our own governing bodies. Sorcerers banded together, trolls had clans, and so forth. Anyway, by the sixteenth century, it was obvious that human encroachment was poised to become an insurmountable problem,” he explained. “Their population grew, they spread out, and they looked at everyone else as demonic, so coexistence was increasingly impossible. Most of us moved into the wilder places to survive—the Scandinavian group went to the far north, and the Mediterranean group pushed toward the Caucasus—but the humans kept coming. And it wasn’t just Europe,” he added. “There were sorcerers on six continents in those days, but they communicated among themselves, and their safe havens were falling. Groups would vanish, and the search parties would find nothing but bones and ash.”
I bit my lip, fighting the urge to apologize.
“In 1525, the different magical factions began reaching out to each other, solidifying treaties and discussing what could be done to keep us alive. A group of sorcerers came up with the idea of building what would become the Pactlands, but they needed a place to work in peace, and since any display of magic around humans would end with them being executed as witches, they looked for a patron. The king of the southern elves wouldn’t take them in, but Diriem ti’Dana did.”
That my farsighted great-grandfather saw the wisdom in this plan didn’t surprise me.
“He’d held the northern throne for less than a century by then,” Yven continued, “but thanks to his farsight, he’d kept his people intact, and he controlled a well-hidden stronghold with a massive library. He allowed the sorcerers to stay with him for more than a decade while they built our world, and then they opened it to the other races. But there was the problem of governance, see. The sorcerers might naturally be considered kings and queens of the Pactlands because they were the ones who built and maintained the place, but they instead proposed what became the Forum—representatives of all species operating on equal footing.”
“Sounds fair,” I replied.
“Sure. But if they were going to have a single government, then all the kings and chieftains and whatnot needed to surrender their thrones. Diriem took off his crown to save his people. The king of the southern elves refused, and most of those Halls were wiped out within five years. Not all,” he clarified. “A few abandoned their king and survived. In fact, the highest-ranking southern Hall to break away and join the Pact was ti’Cren.”
“But all the northern Halls followed Diriem?”
“Precisely. They knew he saw disaster if they stayed, and they trusted him.”
“So…the Halls were free to choose their allegiance, then?”
“Not exactly.” Yven groped for his coffee and tanked up. “A long time ago, there were actual halls—fortified strongholds controlled by powerful families. As the kingdoms rose and fell, the Halls backed one leader or another, and when a different kingdom took over, they were subsumed. Not all elves originally had a Hall,” he added, glancing my way. “Most didn’t, in fact, but they swore loyalty to a Hall and gained a measure of protection.”
“A feudal system,” I said.
“More or less. So when the Pactlands exodus occurred, political power went to the new Forum, but the old social hierarchies remained across the Pact races. For us, that meant the Hall system. Mine is one of the old Halls—ti’Ansha was never a major player, but we existed prior to the Pact. Think baronets if you want a rough comparison,” he offered.
I nodded. “Low ranking but still legit.”
“Exactly. But remember how I said there were elves without Halls? Well, since we were starting over, they wanted in, too. Now we have the new Halls—ti’Van and ti’Gata are the largest, but there are others. Everyone in an old Hall is related, but the new ones are conglomerations of multiple families, so you can actually see, say, ti’Van intermarriage.”
“Let me guess: the new Halls don’t have any of the prestige of the old ones.”
“Shocking, isn’t it?” he replied, his voice laden with sarcasm. “We all play nicely, most of the time, but since there are still plenty of us around who remember the pre-Pact days, there’s this thought among certain members of the old Halls that the new ones are putting on undeserved airs.”
“Okay. So, let’s say you brought home a nice ti’Van girl…”
“My grandparents would throw a fit because I’d be marrying down,” said Yven. “Like I said, ti’Ansha isn’t a high-ranking Hall, but we’re still old, and the senior members wouldn’t dream of finding a partner in a new Hall. There’s a degree of pressure put on the younger ones of us to keep that in mind—we shouldn’t want to be the reason that people whisper about the Hall slipping.”
Dark as it was in the car, I couldn’t see him roll his eyes, but I could well imagine it.
“That’s why everyone wants to marry into ti’Dana, then?” I asked.
“Not everyone. I mean, ti’Dana doesn’t have to worry about social cachet—Diriem may be first among equals now, but he’s still first. But the general wisdom is to find a partner within your social standing. Marry down, and you’re dragging the Hall’s reputation with you. Marry up, and then you’re the climbing interloper who gets whispered about. That’s why my parents have encouraged a match between Vul and me—ti’Dir and ti’Ansha are roughly level.”
“And ti’Cren?”
He chuckled. “Still southern newcomers to the old-timers, but prominent and very wealthy. Some say they’ve bought prestige over the last centuries, but they’ve married well, and I can’t imagine many parents would be horrified if their children came home and announced an engagement into that Hall. But that’s probably why Lily’s father raised such a fuss when your grandfather left. Ti’Cren’s been making itself an equal to the highest of the old northern Halls since the early days of the Pact, and I’m sure Lord ti’Cren was furious at the shame.”
As was Lord ti’Dana, I imagined. Diriem had been a king once—no wonder he didn’t want anything to do with me.
Maybe it was the late hour or the darkness emboldening me, but I pressed on, trying to sound like I was merely discussing a hypothetical. “Let’s just say that I were somehow acknowledged into ti’Cren. If I went after a guy in a Hall like ti’Ansha…”
I let the question hang, but Yven followed my train of thought. “There’d be no law preventing it, but it wouldn’t be seen as a good match for ti’Cren. That would be a big step down for you.”
“If I were acknowledged.”
“Right. That’s another matter entirely,” he murmured, and reached for his tumbler again.
I hesitated, then said, “You know…even if Lord ti’Cren came around, I’d always have an asterisk after my name, wouldn’t I?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like, when an athlete sets a record, and then it comes out that he’s been doping all along—he may still get his name in the books, but they’ll stick an asterisk on it to show that something was fishy. So, uh…I mean, if I were acknowledged, I wouldn’t be able to pretend my grandmothers never existed. Maybe ti’Cren wouldn’t clutch its pearls quite so tightly if the mixed-blooded one with the big, flashing asterisk chose someone in, say…a Hall like ti’Ansha.”
Yven didn’t answer that, but his hand found mine and held on tightly.
As we neared the entrance ramp to I-64, Enva slowed, and Yven’s phone began to beep. I took over with the buttons, and her voice sounded through the line. “Lights in the distance. Might be signs, but we’re still too far to see clearly. What’s the plan if the road is blocked?”
“Trust the potion and hope for the best,” Emarae replied.
She huffed a sigh. “I swear, DPP…”
“Where’s your sense of adventure?” he teased.
“Somewhere back in my office, I think. All right, follow our lead,” she said, and signed off.
She picked up speed again, and we drove on beneath the undulating cloud of floating snow. Soon, as we topped a slight hill, the faint lights up ahead formed into glowing yellow letters—a cautionary sign warning that the Interstate was closed. Our combined headlights illuminated the reflective tape of the traffic barrels blocking the road.
“Shit,” I muttered. “What now? We could try to go up the offramp, but getting turned the right way…”
Before Yven could answer me, the barrels began to fly into the grass, tossed like toys in the hands of an invisible giant. The sign followed seconds after, though it landed more carefully on the side of the onramp.
“Traveling with sorcerers does have its perks,” he said, and followed Enva onto the empty Interstate.
Driving at ninety miles an hour in a convoy with snow flung over my head is something I never want to do again. Though Liogh cleared a lane, snow rose on either side of us as high as the bottom of my windows, making it feel as though we were racing through a tunnel or sinking into a frozen sea. I realized I’d been gripping the door for dear life only once Yven slowed to take the ramp into Oilville, but I relaxed far too soon. Not two minutes onto the surface road, a snowplow, magically rendered unaware of us, almost forced Enva into a ditch. She righted herself at the last moment, then called for guidance to the portal site—and Yven, who made this particular trip more than anyone else in our pack, directed her up the road to the break in the trees. We carefully followed her through the woods, driving straight through the decoy tree without a second thought, and then, to my relief, we parked in the clearing by the portal entrance. The snow collapsed behind Gentle Breeze’s Jeep with a muffled boom, and I wondered how Liogh was faring up ahead.
There was no quick way through the portals. Enva requested access, and after a few minutes’ wait, the trees in front of them turned hazy as flashes of color heralded the opening hole. Enva drove through into an artificially lit building on the other side, the checkpoint, and the portal closed behind them.
While an attendant checked the detectives’ credentials, Yven called for access, as my car lacked the little device that most authorized users carried. The attendant on the other end of the line was short with him but mellowed once he named his traveling companions, and without too much fuss, we were allowed to leave my world the way Enva had gone. After a quick chat with the attendant to verify our names in the system, Yven pulled out of the portal building, following Enva, whose Range Rover idled on the side of the road. He parked and climbed out to stretch, and I jogged up to the lead vehicle to check on Liogh.
If Enva looked tired after that drive, Liogh seemed ready to drop. Their eyes had almost closed, and they leaned back against the seat, breathing deeply. “Exhausted?” I asked.
“You have no idea,” they mumbled. “Wake me when we reach the coast. If there’s snow along the way…well, I hope you have good tires.”
When Gentle Breeze cleared the portal, she didn’t bother disembarking. Idling beside our line of cars, she rolled down her window and called, “Ready? I’ve made the arrangements with the attendants. They’re expecting us.”
Pars waited until his chief had driven on to softly groan, and I grinned up at him in sympathy. Turning to Yven, I said, “I can take this leg. Why don’t we trade off?”
“Thanks, but I can manage,” he replied, returning to my car. “Besides, we’ll need someone competent navigating on the other side, and since you’re the closest thing we have to a local…”
“I don’t know southeastern Georgia,” I protested.
He looked back and traced a circle with his fingertip, roughly encompassing the SUVs around us. “You think anyone here is better equipped?”
The answer to that was clearly no, so Yven took the wheel and went first into the portal building that time. Our attendant, a pretty brunette sorcerer with tired eyes, leaned down to his window after verifying our credentials once again. “Have you been through Surrency before?” she asked.
Yven shook his head. “What should we expect?”
