He frowned, leaning back. “You’ve upset the balance.”
“Things were stable, now they aren’t.”
“In a nutshell… but there’s a complicating factor. Conquest isn’t as strong as he appears. Strong, to be sure, he can protect Toronto from outside forces, and he can hold his ground, but he isn’t as strong as he appears.”
There were murmurs from our assembled allies.
“I know,” I said. “I’m… I guess I’m not surprised you figured it out too.
Drawing more murmurs.
“You don’t see the problem?” Fell asked. “We all know, for the most part. Maybe the Sisters don’t. The Knights don’t know, I know. But it’s common knowledge.”
“He’s a figurehead,” Nick said.
“He’s a figurehead,” Fell confirmed. “He’s predictable, he’s something we can manipulate in a pinch, and he’s got the job that nobody here wants. If Conquest fails, someone else has to take the job, and unlike Conquest, the rest of us aren’t immune to the thousands of very creative means of assassination that the practitioners of the world might employ.”
He looked around the table.
“When I say things are stable, I’m saying that people are either on board with the figurehead idea, or they’re under Conquest’s thumb, by virtue of being enslaved or being weak. You coming in here, you’ve spoiled that… and that’s why you’re not going to find one more ally in this city.”
6.05
We had no allies. We probably couldn’t even hope for allies.
The people gathered around this spirit-world version of my apartment were silent.
Damn it all.
I’d known we’d be against ugly odds, especially since I was foregoing allies for the chance to subvert Conquest, to steal his assets out from under him. He had the muscle, he had numbers, and he had… very possibly centuries of experience.
I’d known that, but I’d gone ahead anyway. I’d counted on being more indirect. Fell had demonstrated an ability to avoid notice, some kind of enchantment. Evan was good at escaping. Rose was… well, she existed on level that was one step removed from reality. She might very well be hard to pin down. I had the Knights and my cabal to back me up.
I figured we could work around Conquest’s muscle, maybe rally some help, and attack from some oblique angle.
That didn’t work if all of the potential help was just as against me as Conquest was.
“You sided with me,” I told Fell. “Knowing this?”
“I think you know why.”
“You had no other choice,” I said.
“No. The others don’t see the full effect of what it’s done to me and my family, being enslaved, they don’t pay too much attention to it,” Fell said. “Yeah… I had no other choice, not really.”
“Sorry,” I said.
He shrugged. He stood up and crossed the room, looking out the window.
My eye swept over the apartment. Not everything was in place. It was almost as if it had stepped back in time a little, my belongings scattered much as they might have been after the cops ransacked the place. There were other spots where it looked like it had aged, where the paint peeled and the carpet was grungier at the points where it met the wall, cleaner towards the center. The simple contrast between clean and dirty made for starker contrasts.
My eye fell on the table. The sword lay in the middle of it. Ugly, unwieldy, painful to hold, and bearing the Hyena’s features on the hilt and pommel.
“Evan,” I said. “When I took the Hyena, I did it to take it away from Conquest.”
“I thought you got it.”
“I did. He’s caught. And I don’t have plans to do anything with it that will let it go back to doing what it was doing.”
“But it can get free again?”
“Theoretically, but only if given permission. He’s a dog on a leash now,” I said. “I’d rather we held the leash, instead of Conquest holding it.”
“I don’t like it.”
“I know. It’s honestly a little scary for me, too. But it beats the alternatives. Make you a deal?”
“What?”
“I won’t unbind the Hyena without your say so.”
“Hmm…” Evan said.
“Don’t make that decision too quickly,” A woman’s voice. I turned my head to see Rose in the wall-mounted mirrors.
“You’re back.”
“I’m back,” Rose said.
“Why shouldn’t I?” Evan asked.
“Blake made me a similar offer, before. A few times, really. Promised to take my counsel. To give me a chance to offer my input, to decide before he went ahead with anything big. Do you know how many times he’s actually followed through?”