Night's Pawn

PROLOGUE

SEATTLE, 2048

Awakening
n
. Refers to the return of overt magical activity to the modern world and the reemergence of races and creatures previously believed mythical, such as elves, dwarfs, orks, trolls, dragons, and other beings. This return is marked as occurring on December 24, 2011, though some evidence of the incipient return of magic exists prior to that date.

—Worldwide WordWatch, 2053 edition

The line outside Dante's Inferno was long, mean, and as alien to him as the people who stood in it. He'd been to Seattle before, even to this very club, but the sights never failed to astonish. Certainly, he understood dressing for style, for effect, but physical extremism repelled him. Home, they ran the shadows as hard as any, and their colors showed it. There they wore the clothes that suited them, that made their work and their lives easier and simpler. Every policlub had its own look, its special expression, but none of them would ever have considered overt physical mutilation as a symbol of superiority. Customize and internalize, yes. Flaunt it, however, and you were asking for trouble.

In America, especially in this town, it seemed to him that you weren't anybody unless people noticed you walking down the street. For him, though, a man whose life
was
the streets, to be noticed was almost certain death. A friend once joked that the American affinity for chrome came from some racial memory of century-old automobiles. Here, now, in Seattle, he believed it.

How little subtlety they have, he thought, passing a line of impatient people all wanting to get in to the same place at the same time. A place where they were obviously not wanted. To them, the attempt to penetrate the inner sanctum of Dante's Inferno was as valuable as actually dancing on its glass floors. In Berlin, he thought, people wouldn't play the fool standing in line just to be rejected. They'd simply find another club .

Reaching the door, he stifled a laugh. Dwarfed by the size of the huge troll working the door was a gander-girl looking slick in black and red trying to talk her way inside. A waste of breath. They didn't know her and she wouldn't get in.

With a nod to the troll, he brushed past, earning a curse from the gander-girl. But her City Speak was so mangled and uttered with such guttural inexperience that he stopped and turned to look at her. She was shorter than he, but jacked up to nearly his height by a pair of gleaming black razor-spike boots. Her hair, its color shifting from iridescent blue to white and back again, made a perfect frame for her face. She was beautiful by the standards of either side of the Atlantic if one ignored the cold look in her eyes. She glared at him, waiting for an equally venomous response, but he resisted. Far too much was at stake tonight to humor her.

He gave her a deadpan look and was about to turn and be gone when she surprised him by cursing again, this time in perfect City Speak. He smiled in amusement. Her first curse had been sudden, impulsive, and fractured. The second time was perfect, even down to the crosstalk inflection. She was chip-trained, no question, but trained only. If she'd actually been wearing and accessing a language chip, her first curse would have come out like a veteran's.

He couldn't help but smile even more broadly as he gave her a closer inspection. The clothes were right: all the proper straps and chains tight or loose as fashion demanded. Quad-colored earrings dangled from her ears, glittering and dancing in the lights of the street and the neon of the club's façade. Her iris tint was near-phosphorescent, designed to pull another's eyes to them even in the darkest club. She was absolutely perfect, the ultimate gander-girl. And therein lay the failure in her appearance. But it was that which so intrigued him.

He weighed the options, her paradox versus his own purpose, and decided to take the risk. He nodded again at the troll and spoke just loud enough for him to hear, "Say, chummer, she's with me."

The girl apparently overheard, starting slightly at the words. When he motioned for her to take the lead, she glanced once at the troll, then turned away quickly from his sudden, feral grin. As she stepped forward, he guided her with a gentle pressure of his fingertips at the small of her back. Once again she gave herself away. Her jacket was real denim, not the cheaper synthetic look-alike that a "real" gander-girl would wear.

They continued down and into the uppermost level of the Inferno. Though he hated the place, he'd gradually become a semi-regular out of sheer habit whenever he was in town. There were certain things that always brought him back. He'd first met Dante in London, where he'd performed the club owner some services that had ensured him first-class service in the club thereafter. Information could be a priceless commodity.

The band had apparently just taken the upper stage. A staccato riff from the lead ten-string triggered the sync-systems, bathing every level of the club in pulsing light and liquid noise. Shag metal was apparently the latest rage in Seattle, making his desire to go transcontinental all the stronger. It was enough that he might die tonight, but the idea that his death might be to the accompaniment of a pitiful rendition of "Bangin' the Duke" was too much.

He wanted to believe that his people were not like these nighttrippers thrashing around him. He wanted to believe that back home things were different, that his people had some memory of, and some honor for, the glory of their cultural past. He wanted to believe that he was superior to these Americans with their all-consuming lust for the new. But he knew that Europe's magnificent past had all but vanished from mind, as though it had never been. Technology had blurred the differences between nations, chipped languages had weakened the borders, and the Euro-Wars had utterly destroyed them.

The Restoration might be physically reviving Europe's lands and people, he thought, but it's destroying us culturally. The driving force behind it were the Euro-corps pursuing the grail of unrestricted growth. If the corps could erase national boundaries, it would mean no more import-export tariffs. It would mean the availability of vast pools of cheap labor. It would also mean death to three thousand years of dynamic social expression. Radical politics and a return to nationalism were the only hope for rescuing individualism, the uniqueness of the continent's many peoples. The Neo-Europe District of the global village must not come to pass.

The policlubs had been born out of the urgency many felt for another kind of restoration. They, too, wanted to rebuild Europe, even if it meant a return to more contentious times. Theirs would not be a Europe homogenized for mass consumption. For better or worse, it would be Europa Dividuus. These groups alone kept alive the flame of political activism and individual expression. Without the policlub movement, Europe would soon become a corporate Disney verse.

The various policlubs did not, of course, agree on the means or even the ends, but was that not as it should be? On the surface, the Restoration might appear to be proceeding apace. Behind the scenes, however, Europe was at war—in the streets, in the datafaxes, in the hearts and minds of those alive enough to listen. Europe would not become another Manhattan, not even another Seattle. He'd come to make sure of that.

He blinked, realizing suddenly that he'd been lost in thought, staring at the pulsing, thrashing crowd for longer than he'd have liked. The girl was still there, a few steps away. He tugged gently on her arm, and she turned to eye him quizzically. "Watch the dancers," he said, leaning against a light-filled pole. Relaxing his body and mind, he focused his attention on the pulsing lights of the lasers, letting their silent rhythm take him.

A moment passed.

Then a longer one.

His vision shifted beyond the confines of his body and he was free, viewing the worlds as few others could. He saw the ghostly auras of men and women dancing madly, locked in the mundane world and oblivious to him. He ran his gaze quickly over this level. There was some minor magical activity in the faint auras of cheap trinkets hawked on street corners, but no bright blossoming or dazzling oscillations to warrant further interest.

The iridescent bodies of the dancers on the glass floors at each of the levels below him blocked much of his immediate view, so he released his astral form. Dropping quickly down all the levels, he came to where he could contemplate his destination. He saw the cool green power of the mystical shield-wall enclosing it, but no sign of the person he was supposed to meet. The shield prevented him from knowing whether she was already within its protection. The only way to penetrate its mystery was to walk through, physically, unhindered. The shield was nearly impenetrable to the pure astral body, but to break through it was something neither he, nor most other humans, could do unassisted.

His body jerked once as his wandering spirit returned. He'd discovered his mystical ability very late in life, just a little more than ten years ago, and was still not totally used to it. The girl was looking at him, as though to ask what was next. Taking her hand, he led her away.

They moved down-ramp a few levels. Halfway to the bottom, he paused at the sight of a posturing corporate cowboy. Boldly emblazoned across the back of the man's jacket was the Saeder-Krupp corporate logo showing the dragon and the German flag. The coincidence gave him pause, but he shook off the thought that the woman he was to meet had already completed her mission. It wasn't, after all, so unusual to see people wearing the dragon-logo design. Besides, he was counting on the fact that the woman would know very little of his motives, or his knowledge, at this point. She was both crafty and powerful, but he'd been careful to keep her guessing. "Know your enemy and then use that knowledge against him," was a motto of her following. Well, he hoped that all she knew about him was what he wanted her to know. Regrettably, he knew even less about her.

Reaching the sixth level, he and the girl went to the nearest bar and signaled for the barkeep. Feeling the girl move gently against him, he turned and looked into her eyes. Her gaze dipped and then rose. Behind the slightly glowing tint, her eyes were bright blue. "My name's Ka-ryn," she said, "with a 'y'."

He smiled. "No it's not."

She blinked twice as the bartender appeared, wiping the counter in front of them. Leaning across with a touch of hesitancy, the elf barman pitched his voice so that no one else could hear. "Greetings, my friend," he said in clear, unaccented Russian. "How are things?"

"Harried, as usual," he replied in the same tongue, though definitely rusty.

"A man named Shavan is waiting for you in Hell."

"A man?"

The dark-haired elf shrugged. "Figure of speech. I was only given a name."

The man nodded. "
So ka
. The usual for me and a Firedrake for my friend." He pulled a credstick from its wrist-sheath, but the elf waved it away.

Now the elf spoke in English as he moved down the bar. "All taken care of, chummer," he said. "The Inferno still owes you. And if we don't, then it's on me for old times." The man returned the credstick to its sheath. Old times, indeed. He chuckled and wondered just how much the elf hated him, or feared him.

Just then the crowd roared as a glare of hard, colorless light cut across the level. He'd seen the act before and figured the lead singer must have just triggered a small bit of nightlight and was gleefully trying to shove it down someone's throat. Ah, art.

The girl pressed against him again, her hand lying casually on his arm. "Nice line," she said, dropping the timbre of her voice. "I almost believed you did know. Just for a second."