Codespell, p.20
Codespell, page 20
part #3 of Ravirn Series
“What do you think?” she asked. “Will that work for you?”
I put a hand on her right side just beside her breast with its fiery nipple. “Promise not to burn me?”
She giggled. “No. But I promise that you’ll like it.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Later. Much later. Tisiphone and I lay side by side on the bed, she on her stomach, me on my back. Contrary to her intimation, she had not burned me, though I’d experienced fire in some ways I would never have thought possible.
“Kind of lends a whole new meaning to the term burning bush,” I said.
She moved very quickly then, sitting up and flipping me over so that I lay facedown across her lap and giving me a solid swat on the ass.
“Rule one, no bad redhead jokes.”
“I meant it literally,” I said. I didn’t bother to struggle—she was much stronger than I was, a fact that had made our sex more interesting in a number of surprising ways. “Besides, if you’ve got the temper to match the hair . . .”
She swatted me again. “Rule two, no redhead stereotyping. The temper comes from being a Fury, end of story.”
“What’s rule three?” I asked.
“Don’t make me tell you rule three.”
“Is that the rule or—ow!”
She’d swatted me again, letting the very tips of her claws get involved this time.
“All right. No rule three. Can I move now?”
“No,” said Tisiphone. “I want to take a better look at this bullet hole. I don’t like the way it interfered with things. It’s been a very long time for me, and I want you healed up properly so that I can catch up.”
“That sounds like fun. How long is a long time?”
“Seventeen hundred years,” said Tisiphone.
“Wow. If the last hour is anything to go by, catching up is likely to kill me. Maybe we could—ow!” She’d just prodded my scab.
“Sorry. This is going to hurt. Probably quite a lot, but it should really speed things up.”
“What’s—OW!”
It felt as though Tisiphone had dropped a bit of liquid fire on the wound, and it was now burning its way along the track the bullet had taken deep into my flesh. For that matter, considering her nature, maybe she’d done exactly that. Whatever it was, I lost track of everything but the pain for a good minute or two.
“How’s that?” she asked just as the pain peaked.
“It’s damned . . . huh.”
Where everything had been agonizingly hot a moment before as though someone were probing the wound with a fiery dagger, it now seemed as though the blade had been quenched. I could feel the path the bullet had taken as plainly as I might a breeze on my face, but it no longer hurt. Rather, it felt like an ice cube drawn along the line of sunburn, pleasure and relief that almost bordered on pain.
Experimentally, I flexed the muscles of my leg. Much better. Still stiff and sore, but I thought I might be able to put aside the cane now.
“Better?” she asked.
“Yes. What did you do?”
“Wrong question,” she answered.
“Fair enough, tell me the right one.”
“Ask me what I’m going to do,” she said.
“All right. What are you—oh.”
Her hand slid between us where my thighs rested across hers, catching and guiding.
“I wasn’t done with ravishing just yet,” she said. “Is that all right with you?”
“Yeah, fine.”
More time went away.
I lay half-on, half-off of the low futon, pressing my forehead against the cold stone of the floor and desperately trying to shed heat. Tisiphone was sitting cross-legged on the far end of the bed, grinning. It wasn’t fair. She didn’t even really look mussed, and I felt like I’d just run a double marathon.
“You win,” I said, when my breathing had slowed a bit. “I surrender unconditionally.”
“That’s no fun,” she said. “I refuse your surrender and demand a rematch at a later time.”
“That idea does have its merits,” I said with a small grin of my own. “I’ll need a week or three to recover first.”
“Not likely.” She snorted and poked me with a foot, though she kept the claws retracted. “Hostilities could resume at any time and with no warning. You’ll just have to learn to be prepared.”
I laughed and pushed myself back up into a sitting position. “You’re merciless. You know that, right?”
“Fury. Duh. It’s in my job description. Hell, it is my job description. I will promise to give you at least one hour from this moment so that we can get that deferred conversation from earlier out of the way. Where were we?”
“Discussing the fact that your sister Megaera’s going to slice me into neat little ribbons when she finds out about us.”
“She won’t, you know.”
“You sound awfully confident,” I said.
“I am.”
“Why is that?” I asked.
“Because we agreed that we need you in one piece.”
“We being you and Megaera?”
“We being Furies Inc.,” said Tisiphone.
Suddenly feeling colder, I reached down and pulled a blanket over my lap.
“Would you care to elaborate on that?” I asked.
“Necessity is broken.” Tisiphone’s voice was flat and hard, with just the faintest hint of pain underneath. “That’s bad and needs to be fixed, but it’s not our only problem.”
“Nemesis,” I supplied.
“She’s part of it, but we’ve handled her before, and we will this time, too—more finally. No, it’s what she represents that’s the major worry.”
“I’m not sure I’m following you,” I said.
“You should be. In this we share many enemies.”
“You mean the Fates?” I asked.
“Yes, and maybe Hades, though we’re less sure of him. This is causing the three of us a great deal of distress. I think I’ve told you before that full autonomy doesn’t suit us. Necessity made us that way in response to Nemesis, who had the opposite problem. Under normal circumstances, we would probably place ourselves under Fate’s orders until we restored Necessity.”
“But?” I asked.
“But we believe Fate is trying to usurp Necessity’s throne. That’s what you think, too—the message you were trying to get across at the Necessity gateway, before we were interrupted by . . . events, isn’t it?”
“It is,” I said, appreciating her discretion in not criticizing Cerice by name. “The way Fate grabbed total control of the mweb servers seems telling to me. Especially when combined with the wholly unexpected reappearance of Nemesis. ”
“It did to my sisters as well. Alecto in particular is quite smug about already having broken the alliance we formed with the Fates in the first days after Necessity went silent. Megaera argued against it, and Alecto likes to show her up.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask about that and about Persephone, ” I said. The Fates had ordered the Furies to kill me then, and they very nearly had.
Tisiphone looked uncomfortable for a moment. “I am sorry. I had no choice in the matter. You know that, right?” I nodded, and she continued, “I suppose you’ve been wondering why we cut our fresh tie to Fate so soon.”
“The question had crossed my mind,” I said. “I’m not complaining, of course. I’m much happier with you when you’re not trying to kill me.”
Tisiphone stepped off the bed and began to pace. “When it became clear that it was Persephone and not you who was responsible for the damage to Necessity, it also became clear that the Fates had tried to use us to settle their score with you. That didn’t sit well. We don’t like being used, not even a little.”
“That explains your split with Fate, but I still don’t understand why you didn’t go after Persephone.”
She froze, her shoulders stiffening. “I can’t tell you that, Ravirn. Not at this time. I hope you understand.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “I know that Tisiphone the Fury has responsibilities that may conflict with the wants and needs of Tisiphone the individual. As much as I dislike the idea, I’ve come to understand the dual nature of power vs. person. The Raven and Ravirn are decidedly not the same thing.”
“Thank you.” Tisiphone relaxed and turned back to face me with a wistful smile. “That understanding is why we can share what we have today. It’s why I’m glad you’ve become a power at the same time that I mourn for you. It’s not a burden I would wish on anyone I cared about.”
“Uh, Boss.” Melchior poked his head into the still-open doorway. “Could I interject a question?”
“Sure,” I said.
“So, I’ve been sitting out here for a bit, and I couldn’t help overhear the discussion, and I was wondering about something. It—”
“How long have you been there?” I interrupted. I was a little bit appalled by the idea that he might have listened to our entire performance.
“He arrived a few minutes before we finished having sex,” said Tisiphone. “I heard him sit down.”
“How could you have heard me over all that banging and . . .” Melchior trailed off, blushing. “I mean—uh. Well, hmm.”
“I have very good ears, little goblin.” Tisiphone grinned. “And a certain level of paranoia comes with my job.”
“Oh.” Melchior’s entire head had darkened to a deep indigo with embarrassment.
“There’s no need to worry,” said Tisiphone. “I know you have your partner’s best interests at heart, and I have no personal modesty at all. You could have come in and had popcorn for all it would have bothered me.”
Mel opened his mouth and raised a finger.
“Veto,” I said, before he could begin his comment. Whatever it was, I didn’t want to hear it. “Now, you had a question? ”
“More an observation, really.” Melchior came through the door and took a seat against the wall. “She hasn’t yet said why the Furies need you.”
I’d been wondering when she was going to get to that myself but hadn’t wanted to press. I turned and raised an eyebrow at Tisiphone.
“Sorry,” said Tisiphone. “I wasn’t being evasive. It’s just I’m not entirely used to this kind of conversation. Things are very different when speaking with my sisters or with our . . . customers for that matter.”
“What a very diplomatic way of saying victims,” said Melchior.
She gave him a sharp look. “Besides, I would have thought the answer was obvious. We need Ravirn to help us reach Necessity, then to fix her.”
“Oh,” said Melchior.
I blinked several times, trying to take that in. It didn’t help.
“You. Need me. To fix Necessity.” I choked on the last word and had to stop and cough for a moment. “That’s crazy.”
“Who else are we going to get to do it?” she asked quietly. “There really aren’t many powers with the necessary computer skills, and whoever takes the job will have to have total access—the ability to change the very nature of the multiverse. To whom would you give such power? We now know we can’t trust the Fates. Athena’s almost as bad, and she’s entirely in Zeus’s pocket. No one sane trusts Eris. That doesn’t leave a lot of options.”
“I wouldn’t even know where to start,” I said, stalling while I tried to think of someone else who’d be a better fit.
“Start with Shara,” said Tisiphone, before I could think of another name. “That’s a big part of why it has to be you. I got to read Shara’s Fate thread when we were sent after you the last time. There are only four people in the world whom she really trusts. You two”—she pointed at the pair of us—“Ahllan—currently missing—and Cerice, who works for Fate. It’s got to be you.”
I wanted to argue, to say that it wasn’t my problem, that someone else would take care of it, maybe even Cerice, who was already working on it. But Tisiphone was right. Even though I still trusted Cerice on a personal level, she was working for Fate, whom I did not trust at all. I like Discord, but it would be the ultimate act of madness to put her in charge of all of creation, even for one second. After my recent encounter with Athena, I didn’t think much of giving her that kind of power either.
Who else was there? Who would I trust? I couldn’t think of a single name. The gods, my family, have too many quirks and vices and not nearly enough leet skillz among them. But me? Fix everything? The idea was patently insane.
“I see a problem,” I said after a moment.
“What’s that?” asked Tisiphone.
“I don’t trust me either. Not with that kind of power. I don’t trust anybody with that kind of power.”
“Somebody has to do it,” said Tisiphone. “We took a vote, and you won.”
“Simple majority?” I asked.
Tisiphone grinned. “No. Unanimous.”
“Megaera voted to trust me with the very soul of Necessity and everything that entails?”
“She did. She said that at least she knew where to find you and that you weren’t immortal yet.”
“Oh.” Now that I could believe.
Of course, if I got my hands on the source code for everything, I could fix it so Megaera would never bother me again. I could fix a lot of things. I could make the multiverse into my playground. Then I shook my head. That was a Very Bad Idea. I was already being corrupted by the thought of all that power, and I hadn’t even agreed to try it.
“I’m a hacker and a cracker, and you’re offering me the keys to the kingdom,” I said. “This is really a bad idea.”
“Actually,” said Tisiphone, “your hacking past is a big part of why Alecto agreed to the idea. She said you’re sloppy and you consistently overreach, but that you always manage to kludge things together.”
“She thought that was a good thing?” demanded Melchior.
“So did I,” said Tisiphone, turning to face him. “We don’t want someone who’s going to rewrite the master code. We just want someone to get the goddess onto her feet long enough that she can make the decisions on how best to proceed from there. Nothing Ravirn does is seamless; he’s too much of an improviser. Once Necessity has herself back under control, we should be able to find and adjust anything he did fairly easily.”
I opened my mouth to tell her that wasn’t entirely true. I’m an absolute wizard at leaving invisible back doors for example. Then I realized that now might not be the best time to brag that up, so I closed it again. Besides, assuming I took the job, I might want that back door someday.
“Could you toss me my robe, Tisiphone? I need to pace, too.”
“Why bother with the robe?” she asked.
“She’s got a point,” said Melchior. “Ain’t nobody here who hasn’t seen you naked or who’s likely to be offended. Amused on the other hand . . .”
“I care,” I said. “It’s harder to think naked.”
“Weird,” said Tisiphone, bringing me my robe and handing it over. “Here you go, but that’s just weird.”
