Worldweavers: Cybermage (18 page)

“This,” said the Queen of the Faele Court, “had better be good.”

Thea bobbed a small curtsy. “Your Majesty,” she said. “I come for help only you can give.”

“Sounds promising already,” the Queen said, with just a touch of irony. “What did you have in mind?”

“Something important to me has been stolen. I want it replaced with a Faele changeling. This does not have to be a permanent thing at all—just long enough so that the thief doesn’t notice the switch. And I want the original restored to me.”

“A living something. Else you would not be asking for a changeling at all.”

“Yes, Your Majesty. A bird.”

“It sounds elaborate,” the Queen said, after a pause. “Perhaps a shade too elaborate. If stolen, why can it not be recovered by more straightforward means? And perhaps more to the point, who holds it?”

“Well, this is why I need your people and their skills,” Thea murmured. “It is being held by the Alphiri.”

The Queen sat up, throwing her scepter down on her bower. “Then it wasn’t stolen,” she said. “The Alphiri do not steal. This is known. They make a bargain, and they hold to it.”

“It was stolen from one of the Human Polity by one whom your polity knows well, and has done many deals with: the Trickster. If the Alphiri bargained with him, then that is between them and the Trickster, but the bird of which I speak
was
stolen, from us.”

“You seriously expect my people to bring the wrath of the Alphiri on our heads?” the Queen asked. “Why would I do such a thing? And if you are right and the Trickster is involved, he is not part
of this Court, but is an Elder Spirit of a fellow polity ratified by formal law. His word easily carries the weight of my own within the hierarchy, and I have no say over what he does or does not do. I owe you nothing. Nothing that I want to get the Alphiri angry at me over, anyway.”

“What if there is nothing they can do to you?”

“They would know it was me,” the Queen said. “A Faele changeling pigeon? Who else would sanction or make possible such a thing?”

“But you yourself said it—the Alphiri understand a bargain,” Thea said. “And you would be making one, with us. We—the Human Polity—would stand surety for this one. If they wish to challenge that, they will have to take it to the Polity Court for arbitration. And our lawyers are just as well versed in cross-polity law as the Alphiri are.”

“You are a younger polity,” the Faele Queen said slowly. “You haven’t felt Alphiri fury. Not yet. Not completely.”

“Neither would you. Immunity.”

“No,” the Queen said, shaking her head slowly. “It goes a long way, but it doesn’t go far enough. I will not risk—”

“Wait,” Magpie said, stepping forward.

Thea turned, astonished.

Magpie already held all the earrings from both her ears and half a dozen rings cupped in one hand. With the other, she was in the process of undoing the clasp of a chain bearing a large prismatic crystal that hung around her neck. It came loose even as she spoke and she poured it into the hand with the rest of the loot. Then she held it all out to the Queen.

“There is more,” she said, “where these came from. It may be more or less valuable than the chance to actually pull one over on the Alphiri with absolute impunity. Everything I own that is shiny and that sparkles—and I can see that there is a love of such things in your court, Your Majesty—I pledge it all.”

“Magpie,” Thea began, strangely moved.

But the Queen leaned forward. “Bring it closer,” she instructed, waving Magpie to approach with one imperious hand. “I wish to see.”

“Magpie, wait,” Thea said, putting out a hand to restrain her friend, but Magpie shook her off.

“I owe it,” she said. “For the other life I couldn’t touch.”

“Bring it,” the Queen said. “Now.”

Magpie stepped forward, holding out her hand.

The Queen reached out with both her exquisite hands and rummaged around in the stash in Magpie’s palm. She lifted her head, and a winged minion stepped up to her from the shadows beyond the firefly lights; she said something into its pointed ear, and the minion nodded and vanished in a bright spark of light. When the messenger returned a few minutes later, he made his report—quite a lengthy one—into the Queen’s ear, again out of earshot. When he was done, the Queen dismissed him with another wave of her hand.

“Your offer pleases me,” the Queen said. “It would be satisfactory…to liberate the pigeon from Alphiri captivity.”

“And restore it to us,” Thea said.

The Queen shook her head. “The price for that is still too high,” she said. “Even with your promised immunity. Even with all of this. I cannot put myself or my people at such risk.”

Thea bit her lip, and then lifted her head to speak again, but once more Magpie spoke first.

“Then I will offer more,” she said faintly. “Your kindred has always known the power of true-names, better than any other.”

“This is true,” the Queen said. “I am listening.”

Magpie swallowed hard.

“I am called Magpie,” she said. “That is the name by which everyone knows me, everyone calls me. It is my true-name, always has been, even though it is not the name given to me in the cradle—but it is the name that makes me who I am, what I am. I have already offered you everything that makes that name fit me, for I no longer own any shiny thing that a magpie might covet. But I will lay the name, too, at your feet tonight. For the rest. For the pigeon’s safe return.”

Her words fell into a stillness so profound that time seemed to have stopped.

Thea found herself staring at Magpie, her eyes filled with tears. Ben had locked his hand around Thea’s free wrist with a white-knuckled grip, his attention wholly focused on Magpie.

“It is acceptable,” the Queen said at last, after a long moment of silence. “It is done. When the changeling bird has been left in place of your own, and the real one procured, I will send word. So let it be.”

The girl once known as Magpie allowed the silver and crystal in her hand to fall at the Queen’s feet, and stepped back, her head bowed, veiled in her own dark hair, her hands empty of rings, her throat
empty of necklace and crystal and charm, a stranger without a name. The Queen made a sharp gesture with her hand, and the air closed over the rose-petal bower under firefly lanterns. They were back in the laboratory, with only the safety lights and the dim glow of the fume cupboard to light them. Even the Tersii were gone; they were quite alone.

“Mag…” Ben began, his throat tight, but the name really didn’t fit anymore. It had been given away, freely, the last jewel in a dragon hoard of gems. He fell silent.

“What do we call you now?” Thea said quietly. “I did not mean for this to happen.”

“
You gave it away
,” Ben said. “It’s theirs now, and it’s your true-name—you gave them yourself. If they call you by that name, you have to come—you have to do whatever they…You took on
chains
, do you realize that?”

“It was my choice,” said the dark-haired girl, lifting her pale face into the glint of the cupboard light. “It isn’t as though I am now nameless—I
have
a name. Catherine. That is the name my parents gave me when I was born. I’ve never owned it, lived by it; I think I answered to it for my first five or six years, and then I gathered up my first shiny thing,
and I became…what I became. But I am…I am Catherine.”

“No, you’re not,” Ben said. “How am I supposed to get used to this? It’s
wrong
….”

“You’re right, she’s not. She’s not a Catherine.” Thea stepped forward and wrapped her friend in a fierce hug. “You’re Cat. I rechristen you Cat.”

“Cat. It’s an animal name.”

“Is that going to be…”

“No, you don’t understand,” Cat said, shaking her head, tears standing in her eyes. “Do you remember when I told you, a long,
long
time ago, that I had gone into the woods looking for the animal that was going to be my own spirit guide? And failed to find one?”

“That was back when we first met,” Thea said.

“Looks like I found it,” Cat said. “Or at least, it found me. I give up the only identity I’ve ever known and another steps up to claim me. An
animal
name. A spirit guide name. Maybe I was meant to find out this way.”

“Cat,” Ben said. “But you were so much of a mag—” He shook his head. “It’s
weird
,” he said. “I can’t even say it anymore. I can’t look at you and think it.”

“It’s gone,” Thea said. “The Faele own it now. It’s theirs, not hers.”

“Do you think the others will notice?” Cat said, staring at her ringless hands.

“I don’t know,” Thea said. “You don’t look anything like I think you should look, but I recognize you anyway. I would know you anywhere.”

“Do you miss it? All the stuff?” Ben waved at his own ear, throat, arm. “I’ve never seen you without it.”

Cat lifted her head. “Miss it? Miss what?” she inquired softly. “It’s as though…it never was. Like I sloughed off a skin. It’s still me, but I’m not sure…” She swallowed, glanced at Thea. “Frankly, I’m terrified,” she said. “I suppose it has to happen sooner or later, and I’d rather just get it over with. Let’s get back to the others.”

“I
HAVE GOOD NEWS AND
bad news,” Thea said as she and her two companions returned to Tesla’s room, echoing Ben’s earlier words. “I spoke to the Faele Queen. They’ll get the missing pigeon for us.”

“Is that the good news or the bad news?” Terry asked pragmatically.

“Something’s…different,” Tess said. “M-Mag…”

The girl who used to be Magpie shook her head. “No longer,” she said quietly. “We will get the pigeon back. But the name…was part of the price.”

“Cat,” Ben said. “Her name is Cat. For Catherine.”

“What have you
done
?” Tess said, aghast. “If they accepted this kind of bargain, they must have thought…and I can’t even think of you anymore as…”

“It was a true-name,” Cat said. “It had value. I
gave it together with the rest—all the jewelry, everything.”

“But now they own you,” Tess said. “They
own
you.”

“But I am no longer the person to whom that name belonged,” Cat said quietly. “They own…a memory of who I used to be.”

“They can make it real. They
can
, uh, Cat. They have a knack with things like this. Sometime in the future, when you least expect it, you’ll have the Faele knocking on your door and asking you for things you don’t want to give them, calling you by your own true-name, making it impossible to refuse.”

“I am so selfish,” Kristin said unexpectedly.

She had hung back a little at first, because the others had known Cat for far longer, and had the right to respond first, to react, to mourn. But now they all turned. Kristin was clutching her elbows with her hands, her arms crossed, her face flushed, and her expression stricken.

“What are you talking about?” Thea said.

“If you had lingered here one moment longer I might even have asked it out loud,” Kristin said. “You were going to speak to the Faele. I know why; I know what’s at stake and I know that I am partially
to blame for the situation.”

“It was hardly your fault…” Ben began, but Kristin shook her head.

“But it’s true. And yet, when you were on the point of leaving here to go and find the Faele…all I could think of was the absolute
need
to ask, to beg, that you talk to them about this.” One of her hands lifted and her fingers fluttered over her unfortunate teeth. “You’d think I’d have learned, after the spellspam three-wishes fiasco. But it’s just that it’s the first thing that anyone sees, ever, and it will always make people want to run and hide.”

Ben stared at her. “I had stopped noticing,” he said, “some time ago, actually.”

Kristin gave him a smile, and then looked back at Cat.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “You went in there willing to give something up. And all I could think about was what might be in it for me.”

Tesla had risen from his chair and had come to stand at the back of the group, looming over them. Now he cleared his throat and they all turned their attention to him.

“Hardly selfish,” he said, “under the circumstances. But as I understand things, it is thanks to
you and your gift that we have the two Elementals that we do. Perhaps it is time you began to look at your identity in terms of your accomplishments and your abilities rather than the superficial impressions others might get from a first glance.” It was pure Tesla, managing to be a compliment and a rebuke at the same time, but he didn’t leave them much time to ponder it, turning instead to Cat and Thea. “As for the rest…speaking as one who has made my own deals with the Faele, it was a good idea, and a brave attempt, and I must offer both my congratulations at your perceptiveness and my grateful thanks for your willingness to carry it out. And I think I owe far more than that…to
you
, my dear.”

He reached out to Cat, and lifted her hand to his lips in a gallant continental gesture that made her blush and drop her eyes. Tesla lifted his head, wrapped both his long-fingered hands around hers, and gazed at her with an expression at once kind and very serious.

“I make you a promise,” he said. “As you have put me in your debt, I stand in yours. Should any of this come back to haunt you, please know that I will stand surety for you in any way that I am able—and
that you will never take harm from this if it lies in my power to put myself in that harm’s way for your sake.”

He might have been on the ebb of his powers, but he stood on the reputation of one who had been and might again be an Elemental mage.

Cat, when she lifted her head again, had tears sparkling in her eyes.

“I failed you, in Colorado,” Cat said. “You—the you here, now—might not remember, but I…”

“I reconstituted him,” Terry murmured. “He knows all that the other avatars learned.”

“
I
failed me in Colorado,” Tesla said. “Not you. There is no way you can bear the responsibility for decisions I made before your generation was born. But remember what I have just said to you.” He squeezed her hand, then dropped it and turned back to Thea. “Now,” he said, “this FBM agent.”

“Oh, yes, please, someone deal with Humphrey May,” Terry said.

“It’s probably about time I gave him an update,” Thea said, lifting her left wrist and gazing at her keypad thoughtfully.

“Are you going to tell him about the cube?” Kristin asked. “That you took it?”

“Before or after you tell him that the Alphiri have one of those precious pigeons he coveted?” Tess added.

“Or that you’ve committed him to giving the Faele immunity for breaking cross-polity laws?” Ben said.

“You did
what
?” Terry said sharply.

“Well, there is a logic to it,” Thea said, shrugging her shoulders. “He’ll probably see the situation for what it is, if I explain it properly. He doesn’t want that pigeon in Alphiri hands any more than we do.”

“Perhaps I should come along to this meeting,” Tesla suggested. “Quite aside from any other considerations, I would very much appreciate another demonstration of this thing that I have now seen you do several times with the device on your wrist.”

Terry held up one of Grandmother Spider’s dream catchers. “I reconstituted him.
All
of him is now in here—you could take him across just as you took the other Tesla into Colorado, and release him whenever you get to wherever you’re going.” He tossed the dream catcher across to Thea, who caught it reflexively.

“What
are
you going to tell Humphrey?” Ben asked.

“Don’t let him bully you,” Terry said. “Do you want me to come with you?”

“You’ve been trying to avoid him, by all accounts,” Thea said, grinning at him. “Thanks, but I’ll be fine.”

“I know
I
wouldn’t be exactly keen to face him alone at this point,” Terry said.

“You won’t have to tell him you have the cube,” Kristin said, glancing at Tesla. “He’ll kind of…get the idea.”

“I suppose he’s going to find out sooner or later,” Thea said. “Very well. If you’ll step into the web, sir…”

Tesla gave her a small, formal bow. She lifted the dream catcher and peered at him until she could hold his entire image within the circle; then she spun it. Tesla vanished, and the dream catcher began to glow once again with a pale blue light as it dangled from Thea’s fingers.

“That will do it,” Thea said, “except it’s hardly what he had in mind when he wanted me to show him what I was doing.”

Ben looked around. “What about the rest of us?” he said. “You might not want an entourage when you get to see Humphrey, but we’re kind
of done here, aren’t we?”

“I don’t want to take the pigeons back to the school,” Thea said. “Not until some sort of arrangements have been made. Particularly not given that I’ll have Tesla himself with me.”

“Cheveyo’s,” Cat said. “Everything will be safe there. And you aren’t going to be gone for that long.”

Ben sniffed. “It’s a lot less
comfortable
than this place,” he said.

“Yes, but I’m not sure I want to abandon you guys inside an Elemental cube, without even its wizard in residence. Cat’s right. Cheveyo’s house is safe enough for the time being, and when I get back from seeing Humphrey, we’ll figure out the rest. Got everything?”

She typed in two lines of instructions on her keypad—one sending herself back to the Academy with the dream catcher, the other sending everyone else with the pigeons to Cheveyo’s house—and pressed
ENTER
. The walls of Tesla’s room vanished around them.

Thea found herself in the cedar woods just behind her residence hall at the school—the same place where she had overheard Humphrey May talking to
Mrs. Chen about her own possible fate. She looked around, but the woods appeared to be deserted; she fished out the dream catcher that housed Tesla, and spun it to release him.

Tesla, his formal dress incongruous under the trees, nodded his thanks to Thea as she retrieved her cell phone from her pocket and punched in Humphrey May’s number. She was expecting voice mail, but Humphrey picked up on the second ring.

“Where are you?” Humphrey said without preamble.

“School. The woods behind the res hall, where you met Mrs. Chen. I’ve got news.”

“Don’t move. I’ll be right there.”

Thea flipped the phone closed as the connection went dead. Tesla, substantial enough in this world to be able to interact with it by touch, held out his hand.

“May I see?” he said, indicating the phone. “The people on New York streets seemed to have those things glued to their ears.” He turned the phone over in his hands, peering at it from every angle. “Fascinating.”

“Humphrey May said he’d be here any minute,” Thea said.

“Your FBM man,” Tesla said. “I had my share of run-ins with the FBM. I will be interested to hear what this one has to say—to see if they have changed at all in the last half a century.”

He handed the cell phone back to Thea, who sighed.

“Did you win?” she asked.

“Win?” Tesla frowned a little, puzzled.

“You and the FBM. The run-ins. Did you win?”

“Not all the time. Juggernauts are hard to stop once they get going. But I held my own,” Tesla said.

“I’m not sure I’ll be able to,” Thea said. “There are times I wish I had a champion—like you promised Cat you’d be for her.”

Tesla inclined his head a little. “But, my dear, I could not be such a thing for you,” he said. “Elemental magic is the stuff from which the world is made. If called to do battle, two Elemental mages would fight side by side and not as each other’s champions or shields. You may be very young still in years and in your understanding of your gifts—but you and I, we are equals.”

A quiet crack of a twig broke the moment. Thea fought down her astonishment and unexpected
exhilaration at Tesla’s words, and peered into the trees.

“I think he’s coming,” she said in a low voice. “Perhaps you’d better…keep out of sight. Let me speak to him alone first.”

“As you wish,” Tesla said, stepping back and blending into the shadows underneath a large cedar tree.

“Where have you
been
?” Humphrey said, as soon as he caught sight of Thea. “You were supposed to check in. I’ve been going out of my mind.”

“Yes, Terry said something about that,” Thea said. “And so did Ben. Sorry. Things got a bit busy. We were a little stretched, trying to get something done on two fronts, and we’ve had…mixed success.”

“Thea,” Humphrey said, a warning in his voice, “I need to know what’s going on.”

“Well,” Thea said, reaching for the same words that had already been used so often, “I have bad news and good news. And you might not entirely agree which is which.”

Humphrey sighed. “Spill it,” he said.

“On the pigeon front,” Thea said, “I’m afraid that the Colorado situation might be…beyond
salvaging. One of them is dead. There doesn’t seem to be much we can do about it—we tried a few things, but they didn’t work. As for the others—two of the remaining pigeons, we’ve got.”

“When? How?” Humphrey said. “I had an agent in the city keeping an eye on Kristin and Ben—they didn’t seem to be meeting with much success. The Alphiri were out there, though.”

“Ben said you had a tail on them,” Thea said.

“Hardly a
tail
. Just a backup, in case something went wrong. But somehow they kept slipping out of his…” He frowned. “Never mind that, now. We have two, but only one died in Colorado. Shouldn’t there be three?”

“One is gone,” Thea said, ticking it off on her fingers. “Two we have in hand. The last one…the Alphiri got.”

Humphrey reached out a hand and leaned heavily on the nearest tree. He said something under his breath, too softly for Thea to hear.

“I knew I should have sent in a stronger force,” he said. “How did it happen?”

“Your spy didn’t tell you that?” Thea asked.

Humphrey glared at her. “I told you, it wasn’t like that. But no, I heard nothing of the sort.”

“That’s because the Trickster was involved again,” Thea said. “It’s entirely possible your guy witnessed the entire incident and had no idea what he saw. But we have…a line on it.”

“A line on what?” Humphrey shook his head, confused.

“That last pigeon. The one that’s missing. I’ve made arrangements, and I’m waiting for word on that. I’m afraid I had to make a promise on your behalf.”

“What did you do?” Humphrey said in a low voice, suddenly sounding afraid.

“You’ll owe immunity to the Faele,” Thea said. “They’re about to go snatch the Water Pigeon from the Alphiri, and leave them a changeling.”

Humphrey opened and closed his mouth several times, like a fish out of water, before he could speak.

“Immunity? To the
Faele
? I owe…immunity…a
pigeon changeling
? The Water…” He stopped, suddenly struck by the precision of that description. “Wait. You can tell the Elements apart? In the pigeons? How can you tell?”

“We couldn’t. We didn’t know, of course. But Nikola Tesla knew.”

“Nikola Tesla knew.” Humphrey May repeated Thea’s words, as though uttering a foreign language that he completely failed to understand. “The cube,” he finally said. “You’ve still got access to the cube. How could you keep this from me? Do you realize what’s been going on back at the office since that thing disappeared?”