Going by what I could see in the rear-view mirror, Rose wasn’t in the car with us. I didn’t have her to turn to.
“I am under the impression,” I said, very slowly and deliberately, buying myself time to think while I tried to structure my thoughts, “that by asking questions, I’m agreeing to pay for the answers.”
“Some answers, yes. But some answers come part and parcel with the bargain you struck.”
Fuck me, what were the exact terms of the deal? I struggled to recall, but I’d been too busy looking out for danger, too tired.
“What answers are those?” I asked. “Or is that cheating?”
“Right now we are engaged in a transaction. As a client, a customer or a contractor, however you might want to look at it, you’re entitled to any assistance we can reasonably give. There is no ‘cheating’,” he said.
“I see.”
“Before I say anything else, we have reached out to the Lord of Toronto on your behalf. He does not know who you are, and views you only as a new practitioner who wants to abide by the rules. He has agreed to let you return to your home and that agreement will give you some security.”
“Okay,” I said. I couldn’t remember him talking. Tired as I was, I was pretty sure any noise along those lines would have woken me up. “That some kind of magical communication? Lawyer telepathy?”
He turned his head and tapped his left ear.
Right. Bluetooth. Obviously.
He said, “The offer he made, does not mean that he is offering you protection. If a resident of Jacob’s Bell or a local tries to hurt you, he won’t do a thing.”
“But he’s not going to come after me?”
“Not for the time being. Others will be seen as presumptuous if they go after you in the meantime. I would expect the least significant players and the allies of the Lord to wait for a cue or an excuse before they act. When it’s convenient for him, he’ll reach out and arrange a meeting. The meeting will decide his stance towards you, and any stance the lesser powers can and will take.”
“What does one typically do, for these sorts of meetings?” I asked.
“A token offering. Deference. Depending on the local power dynamic, the other powers may expect something small. Respect will often do, and it will serve here in Toronto.”
“Any idiosyncrasies?” I asked. “Who is the Lord and how should I approach him?”
“The Lord is an incarnation of Conquest. He’s a sapient embodiment of a concept, and he’s been here for some time, in one form or another.”
“I wouldn’t imagine Conquest is a great fit for Toronto,” I said.
“It was, once. The English presence in North America is young, and Others can be very old. For some, it wasn’t long ago at all that we wiped out the Aboriginal people and took their land. It wasn’t long ago that there was war over what European country would claim sovereignty over this land. Toronto was a site in the war of eighteen-twelve, and Conquest continued to gain power after it was released, with immigrants coming in to reaffirm the invader’s claim to the land.”
“A living manifestation of conquest?” I asked.
“I would hesitate to say ‘alive’.”
“He’s the horseman? One of the four riders of the apocalypse?”
“Yes and no. There are other Conquests, who take different forms based on their history and the eras and events they drew power from. For all intents and purposes, you can consider incarnations to be powerful spirits, often ones with human hosts or an attachment to an object of particular design, an implement without an owner. Some agencies contrive to bring these incarnations into being to suit their devices. Is there an agency invested in the apocalypse and Conquest’s part in that? Yes, but not in the way you’re thinking.”
“What way, then?”
“The apocalypse is an idea with some traction, as are the four horsemen. Some want to use that traction.”
“Ah,” I said. “I think I get what you mean.”
“Such agencies want a narrative, and an Incarnation of Conquest arising from Toronto is a weak narrative at best. If such things come to pass, speculation suggests that another, greater Conquest would find, best, and absorb all its lesser kin for strength before taking action.”
“And nobody’s about to remove the local Conquest from the picture, to keep that from happening?”
“There are bigger things at play, and an Incarnation isn’t a monster you defeat with a sword or gun. It is an idea given life. You support it and feed it through certain ideas, and you defeat it by taking the strength from that idea. Most often, you accommodate them. But anything powerful enough to become sentient and sapient isn’t something that’s going away anytime soon.”
“But if there’s no war-”
“He isn’t War, but Conquest. Massed forces, takeovers, forced change. He continues to find power in other ways. Yes, he prefers warfare and bloodshed, but he can draw power from the steady expansion of civilization into nature, from real estate, from business takeovers, government, law, and other small forms of tyranny. As an Incarnation, he can invest his power. Where Death might bring death to things by touching them, or Love might strike a couple through their hearts with a metaphorical arrow given form, Conquest can do the same.”
“So he’s like a god.”
“He is like a god,” my driver said. “And we could go into a deep discussion of the common elements between gods and incarnations, the abstract versus the straightforward, but that’s outside of the bounds of your agreement with the firm, and I believe we’re on your street.”
I turned to look. Sure enough, I was home.
Hopefully Joel hadn’t evicted me.
“In terms of safety, after I’m in my apartment…”
“I’ve got that handled,” Rose piped up. “I think.”
I turned to look to my right, stupidly, then looked at the mirror. Sure enough, she was situated in the back seat, next to where I’d be if I had a reflection.
There was a stack of books beside her, I noted.
“I’ll take you upstairs,” my driver said.
I gathered up the bags, while Rose grabbed her books in the mirror, and the driver opened the door for the both of us.
He had a book tucked under one arm. I felt a moment’s trepidation.
This favor the lawyers were doing me wasn’t free.
“After you,” my lawyer told me, opening the front door of the building.
“Do I open the door to something ugly if implicitly invite you into the building?” I asked.
“No,” my driver said. “Even if you did, it would be too late to do anything about it, as you implicitly invited us into the building when you asked for an escort to your apartment.”
I nodded.
“This is a stable area, Toronto is,” my escort said. “I wouldn’t worry too much about trouble. You know who your enemies in Jacob’s Bell are, and you should focus your efforts on those fronts. You wouldn’t go amiss with a border around the apartment.”
“A border?”
“Something geometric. There are two schools of thought in binding. There is like binding like, and then there’s binding with the antithesis. The former requires more raw power, but you generally won’t upset them so much. I say generally, but some beings like conflict, and there are any number of other rules.”