Look Behind You (The Order of the Silver Star) (2 page)

Once the officers were back out in the office, the chief turned to Matt with a confused frown. “What was that crack about the Unseelies? You think he’s really in league with the dark fairies?”

“That’s who he was calling on,” Matt replied carefully. “I don’t know if such spells ever work, but I have heard them begun in the past.”

“Begun?”

“We never let such a man finish.”

“You don’t… really believe in magic and fairies, do you?”

“Sir, I’m a good Lutheran. Beyond that, I’m not sure what I believe. I do think there could be more powers in the world than demons and angels, some good, some evil. But I’m quite sure the best advice for all of us comes from Oliver Cromwell: ‘Put your trust in God, and keep your powder dry.’”

The chief nodded slowly as he thought it over.

#####

1
The Unholy Ones (Modern English
Unseelie
comes from the Old English
unsœlig
, which in turn comes from the same Old German root as
unselig
.)

#####

*****

The arraignment hearing slated for Monday morning had its docket expanded once the policeman sent to protect Mrs. Tan succeeded in getting a statement from her that substantiated her husband’s claim. Only a handful of Johnson’s friends showed up to support him, none to accuse Mr. Tan. When the judge threw out the case against Mr. Tan for lack of a clear charge, Johnson tried again to cast his curse. But this time Mr. Tan was faster, interrupting by jumping to his feet and shouting something in Chinese. Johnson fell back as if he’d been slapped. He didn’t speak again until the judge asked him for his plea; then, still looking dazed, he pled guilty.

Matt couldn’t help wondering whether, intentionally or not, Mr. Tan had put Johnson under a truth spell. The Rangers didn’t use magic and knew only enough about it to defend against its use, but Matt had heard that such spells existed. They might be handy, kind of like sodium pentothal—yet how well would a confession obtained that way hold up in court, and what other moral quandaries could crop up if one used that means to get the truth out of someone? No, best leave well enough alone. As for Johnson… well, Matt didn’t know whether the man was enspelled or what the counter-spell might be, and he couldn’t be sure whether Mr. Tan would understand him if he asked. And besides, it might serve Johnson right if he’d been using magic to support his life of crime.

So Matt decided to leave the matter in God’s hands and the court’s and headed back to his home in Marfa. His job was done; his wife was waiting; and he had other worries ahead the next day.

Voting Republican almost felt like a waste of time these days, with the state being overwhelmingly Democrat and the country in love with the socialist policies Roosevelt was offering. Hoover might not be handling the Depression well, but Matt was sure Roosevelt’s policies weren’t the right answer, either. As futile as it seemed, though, he and Amy both felt they needed to vote, not only for Hoover, but also against “Ma” Ferguson in the gubernatorial race. None of the Rangers had forgotten her willingness to keep them virtually chained to their desks and hand out honorary commissions like candy, all for the sake of politics, when she had been governor before. Matt hadn’t been eligible to join until after the primary runoff that had ensured her defeat in ’26, but his memory was as long as his colleagues’.

However, as he drove through the miles and miles of miles and miles that lay between Lilburn and Marfa, with little in the arid landscape to draw his eye save the familiar heights of the Davis Mountains, he found himself musing mostly about family. He and Amy Hoerster hadn’t exactly been high school sweethearts; he’d grown up in Castell and played football for Llano, while she’d lived across the county line in Hedwigs Hill and been a cheerleader for Mason. But somehow he’d fallen into conversation with the cute, petite blonde at one of the baseball tournaments where his younger brother Chris was playing. The game had been called on account of fog, but no one had been in a hurry to try to drive through it, so Matt and Amy had kept chatting, and her wide blue eyes had lit up with interest when he mentioned wanting to join the Rangers. They’d married within the year, and she’d stood by him ever since, even becoming his unpaid secretary and typing his reports from his dictation because her piano-trained fingers could fly over the typewriter keys far faster than he could hunt and peck with his giant mitts. And in Marfa she’d gotten a job running the telephone switchboard, which helped her get to know families even on the more distant ranches as well as Matt had come to know them through his patrols looking for
tequileros
smuggling booze from Mexico. He worried sometimes that life in the desert as a Ranger’s wife would do a number on her health and sanity, but she seemed content enough most days.

And this day, it seemed, was one of those days. Amy had supper in the oven and paper in the typewriter when Matt parked his state-issued black car in the garage next to the kit car Chris had built for them as a wedding present. She met him at the door with a kiss and all the latest gossip, which carried them through eating her excellent roast and peach pie. Then she took his report while he washed the dishes, and after he delivered the finished report to Company A headquarters downtown, she pulled him into the bedroom for a proper welcome-home.

Yet marital bliss couldn’t keep the election off Matt’s mind forever. And Amy always did know what was bothering him.

“What will you do if Ferguson wins?” she asked later that night.

He shook his head. “I don’t know,
Liebchen
. A lot of the men are planning to resign. I don’t want to work for the Fergusons, and it would free us up to go back to the Hill Country. But if we all quit… who’ll be left to protect the state?”

“What about working for another agency, like Presidio County?”

“Guess that’s an option. Wouldn’t be the same, though.”

“I know.” She kissed him. “But it would keep you in the fight, which going back to Castell wouldn’t. And these days, there’s more work for lawmen than there is for most other people.”

He nodded and kissed her back. “Guess I’ll see about talking with the sheriff when we know more.”

But in the end, the decision wasn’t entirely his to make. Both Roosevelt and Ferguson won, and many of the Rangers promptly resigned, including Hamer. Matt might have joined them had he not been called to Odessa on a murder case shortly after having cast his vote. Then in January, one of Ferguson’s first acts as governor was to fire every last man who was still on the Ranger force.

Two weeks later, Adolf Hitler was named chancellor of Germany. Matt hated the man from the first newsreel he saw and had a sinking feeling that the dark days ahead for Texas and for America wouldn’t be over in a hurry. So did Chris, newly graduated from Texas Tech with a Master’s in aviation, who was worried enough about both Germany and the insanity happening in Manchuria that he went off to Virginia to join the newly-formed OSS. And Matt’s own dark days were just beginning, for in mid-February, while he was still deciding on what job offer to accept, Amy’s car was run off the road by a
tequilero
. She died on the way to the hospital.

When Matt and his new colleagues at the Presidio County Sheriff’s Office finally caught the
tequilero
responsible, he was glad he didn’t know Mr. Tan’s truth spell. He would have used it in a heartbeat. As it was, all he really needed were his size, his glare, and the Spanish translation of “You killed my wife” to break the Mexican down. But he would despise tequila for the rest of his life.

*****

The Tuatha Dé Danann didn’t normally pay much attention to mortal politics. The Hundred Years’ War had convinced the
Sidhe
that human wars were best left to—well—humans, and it wasn’t as if the various courts of Faërie didn’t have affairs of their own to tend to. To be sure, those affairs did sometimes concern mortal lands, but that was mostly in peacetime; when it came to war, especially as mortal warfare became more mechanized and destructive, the Fair Folk left well enough alone and thanked humankind to return the favor. Only in rare emergencies would the
Sidhe
intervene to save a favored human or a son of a line that bore fairy blood, and then usually only when the human asked.

Nonetheless, news from Germany began to filter in even to Tír-na-nOg. They were scant whispers at first, mostly passed along with laughter at mortal folly. Some group calling itself the
Schutzstaffel
had started trying to revive or reinvent old Teutonic pagan practices, but at first the fools simply pranced around on the solstice attempting rituals with no meaning or power. O’Donoghue, king of the Tuatha Dé, found it hard to believe that, in this modern Christian world, anyone could seriously try to revive the old faith of the
Sasanaigh
.
2
The prospect was as ridiculous as that nutter Aleister Crowley cribbing bits and bobs out of old books and tying them together with drug-fueled illogic. He’d even tried to claim titles for his so-called religion that were none of his by right, and he hadn’t worked out the connection between his presumption and the calamities the fairies visited on him for months thereafter.

But over the next few years, the SS became less of a joke in Faërie and more of a concern. Its leader, Heinrich Himmler, began digging up grimoires and relics, finding ritual sites with real power, and locating actual warlocks. The Seelie courts on the Continent sent increasingly worried dispatches to O’Donoghue, and not a few of the Unseelie bands even in Ireland started migrating toward Saxony, out of either curiosity or a desire to help such like-minded mortals. Yet O’Donoghue couldn’t be sure what action to take, if any. His peers had no real sense as yet of what sort of power Himmler might have or what his purpose might be; he seemed mainly to be building rituals, following, and inventory.

International concerns notwithstanding, however, life went on in the Land of Youth. O’Donoghue had revels to oversee, fields to bless, and unjust magistrates to torment. He was willing to act if the Tuatha Dé were needed, but until then, he had to assume that mortal affairs needed to be left to mortals, as usual.

One morning in mid-March of 1939, the leprechauns delivered a new batch of shoes to Tír-na-nOg for the upcoming equinox revels, and Niamh decided to break in a pair of hers by pulling a couple of the leprechauns into a ring dance. O’Donoghue laughed as they gamboled about, Niamh’s golden hair flying with as much grace as the bow-legged leprechauns lacked, and debated whether to rescue the poor wee shoemakers by breaking in to dance with his daughter. Before he could decide one way or another, however, they were interrupted by the arrival of a sentry.

“Sire,” the sentry said, bowing low, “there’s a group of
dědeki
approaching under a flag of truce.”

O’Donoghue frowned. A
dědek
was the Czech version of a brownie—solitary and very much a homebody. Even those who were fond of their mortal families had to be expressly invited to move with them. “What on earth are they doing here?” he wondered aloud.

“They bear green branches, Your Majesty. It’s a delegation we’re thinking they are.”

“Curious. Fetch them in.”

The sentry bowed low again and left. O’Donoghue dismissed the leprechauns with his thanks and their promised payment, and Niamh came and stood beside his throne.

Moments later, the sentry returned with the delegation. “
Dědeki
of Sudety, Your Majesty,” he announced.

“You are welcome, friends,” O’Donoghue said. “But I confess myself puzzled. ’Tis far from home you are, and I know your kind not to be great travelers. What errand brings you here?”

One of the hairy wee sprites stepped forward and bowed so low his head nearly touched the ground. “Your fame calls you great and good, O King of Youth,” he croaked. “We seek asylum.”

“Asylum? For what cause?”

“The Germans have taken our homeland. They bring death with them, and worse.”

“But mortal wars do not concern our folk. Why do you flee?”

“They dared to place a thrall on Emil Hácha, to force him to give up the country and make him their puppet.”

O’Donoghue scowled. The type of dark magic needed to enthrall was the province of the Unseelie courts, but even they seldom gave mortals thrall spells that would coerce a man to that degree. “Who has done this thing?”

“We don’t know. Himmler, we think, but it might have been one of his warlocks. They wore him down physically first so the spell would take better effect.”

“How strong a thrall?”

“Light enough that he has still some measure of free will. Our kin in Praha say he resists. But they fear that if he continues, Himmler will send someone to strengthen the spell.”

This was v
ery bad news, but O’Donoghue wasn’t sure yet what to do about it. “Have your people come only here?”

The
dědek
nodded.

“Well, here you are welcome to remain until all is set right, but first I ask that you go with one of my heralds to Scotland. Tell Oberon
and Titania your tale as well. We will take counsel on this matter.”