“Then what?” Rose asked.
“Then… well, we’re going to need to hash out a plan of attack.”
“If we run into the Eye and the Shepherd again, we’ll need firepower,” she said.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
“We could let Pauz loose. I know we couldn’t do it back there, but…”
“But it’s dangerous,” I said. “I’m not saying no. I’m saying… we need to be careful. Let’s talk it over when I don’t have my hands full.”
“Yeah,” Rose said.
I applied electrical tape to the wires I could salvage. Or spirit-world electrical tape, as it happened.
I had so many questions about the relation between this world and that one, but the only person present who might have been able to answer was Fell, and Fell was being a grouch, more than the usual.
When I crossed to the workbench to see what might be available, Evan was there, perched on the toolbox lid, looking down at the Hyena’s sword.
“It’s smiling,” he said.
I looked. Sure enough, the engraved face was leering in a fanged smile at the hilt.
“It liked the violence, probably,” I said.
“I hate it,” he said. “I hate it and I can’t do anything to it. I can’t hurt it or make it stop smiling.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Sorry.”
“If I could crap on it, I would. See if it smiled when I dropped a big white and black blob on its face. But I can’t crap.”
“You probably could if you ate something,” I said.
“Really?” he said, with a note of hope. Then he changed moods, “That would take too long.”
“If it’s any consolation, goblins are messed up enough that they would probably enjoy it.”
He made a small, frustrated sound, fluttered down to the sword, and pecked at its eye a few times. When that didn’t do anything, he muttered, “Whatever,” and flew away.
“You’re so blasé,” Alexis commented.
“Me?”
“You, yeah. You’ve totally adapted to this.”
“Barely, if at all,” I said. I found the wire snips and started stripping the most damaged wires of insulation.
“You’re talking to a bird about a smiling sword not twenty minutes after we almost died.“
“Numb more than blasé, I think.”
“You’re rolling with this in a way I couldn’t imagine myself doing if I had a year.”
“Are you regretting the choice? Getting on board?”
Alexis frowned.
“You don’t have to answer. Having to tell the truth doesn’t mean you have to respond to every question.”
“Yes?” she said, as if unsure. “Yes, I regret getting into this. I’m scared, and I’ve sort of made a point of not being scared for my own welfare, the past few years.”
“Yeah,” I said. Alexis had always focused more on the welfare of others than on herself. She had been thrown into the deep end of an awfully big, deep pool, and it didn’t help that she was out of her element, being scared on her own behalf.
“But I don’t regret helping you,” she said. “Or, I don’t regret doing this to help you… even if I’m not sure what I’m doing, yet.”
“It’ll take time,” I said. “Get grounded. Fell will take you somewhere, you do what he says, set up defenses.”
“I’m not a strategist,” she said, “But you don’t win fights just by running away and defending.”
I saw a motion out of the corner of my eye. Ty, bobbing his head in agreement. Tiff sat on the bumper of Fell’s car, just beside him, watching Alexis and me, listening.
“Not normally,” I said. “This fight? I think we can. In fact, I’m more confident than I was.”
That had their attention. Fell shifted position, still ducked under the hood of his car, but keeping an eye on me too.
“The Lord of Toronto is an incarnation. He’s… I don’t want to say his name, but you know what it is. C-word. He’s… the occupying tyrant, ruin, subjugation, the victor ruling over the defeated. Look at the word, at what it means. There’s the past tense and the present. He’s drawing power from past victories where he utterly trampled the loser. We can’t do much about that, except to take away the trophies and subvert the win.”
“My father wrote a great deal on this subject,” Fell said.
“Yeah. Well, there’s the present tense too. C-word in progress. So long as we’re defying him, keeping our spirits up, staying focused, we’re winning. We’re making it so he can’t be that. He can’t be C-word in progress if we’re even or if we’re winning. We can ride this out. I’m betting that if we do, it’ll make him hurt, on some fundamental level. He’ll react to it, and he’ll get impatient.”
“Even if he does,” Fell said, “We don’t have the forces to capitalize on any mistakes.”
“We can get them. Or we work out a situation where we don’t need them,” I said.
“It sounds thin,” Fell said. “Too many enemies on the board here.”
“It is thin,” I said. “But it’s a way through. More importantly, it’s a way through that we can pursue, with the people and forces we have here. We seize territories, just like this. We keep moving. Maybe after Alexis and Ty take over some other spot, we leave this behind, some big fuck you bit of graffiti on the wall to lay claim to the space. Take territory from under his nose.”
“Not much territory,” Ty said.
“No,” I said, “It’s very little in the grand scheme of it all. Thing is… Laird there once compared himself to America, and Conquest isn’t so different. If someone invaded the States and seized a small town, it wouldn’t be much in terms of square footage or overall population, but you can bet the Americans would be pissed.”
“Tell you what,” Fell said. “You’re thinking along the same lines my dad did. Why don’t I grab some of his work while I drop these guys off.”