“What do you do when you disagree with her?”
“I imagine I see spies lurking nearby and I accost them. I do what I can to keep them from overhearing anything more, and I inadvertently let slip that the Behaims have a weapon, and they’re deciding who they should give it to. I’d accidentally share that they stand on the brink of deciding.”
“Timothy or Alister.”
“Just so.”
The gray cat, Hylas, commented, “They’re leaning towards Alister.”
“You asked me what my stake was in this,” I said. “What’s yours, telling me this?”
“We win, whatever happens. We can’t act directly against our masters, but we like to have a say in events.”
“We draw strength from it,” Hylas the gray said.
“If you perish, on the other hand, we’ve indirectly disposed of an intruder.”
“We draw some strength from that as well,” Hylas said.
“Geez,” Evan said. “I want to grow strong too. I’ve been trying to push this fire bird thing, but nooo.”
“Fire? Pah,” Hylas said. “Imagine a bird of the storms, of cascading torrents.”
“Or of the earth,” Cranaus said, “Not conventional, to be sure, but impressive, impossible to ignore. Aspire for greater things than mere flame, my little acquaintance.”
I hesitated.
“Are you gods? Were you gods?” I asked.
“We were men,” Cranaus said. “The sorts who were brief-lived legends, to the point that godhood was a possibility. Nothing more. We subsist now by a long existence of being familiars for one master after another. Chronomancers like to draw the greater legends from history for such a thing.”
“Well, great men,” I said. “Thanks for…”
“Playing fair?” Evan asked.
“It’s not fair though,” I said. “They win either way, either they get to make a move without facing consequences, or they dispose of us. We face a risk either way.”
“Yes,” Hylas said.
“…Which is fair, considering you caught us spying,” I admitted.
“Anyone can spy, where there is an opportunity. But the prerogative of the one who catches the spy to decide the outcome. You liked Benjamin’s words? You act like you would follow them.”
“I’d like to,” I said, “But I’m not sure I can do this with one hand tied behind my back, so to speak. I want to try, if it’s possible.”
“Then try.”
“How bad can this get, me picking a fight with Alister?”
“Not quite so bad as it might get if Alister is given the weapon his family elders want to give him, if he has any reason to fear you.”
“Right,” I said.
“He’s meeting the junior council outside the school,” the cat told me. “Making use of the time between classes to touch base. They’re often late for their first class of the day, after homeroom.”
I hesitated.
“I would go,” he said.
“First,” I said, “Can I ask who’s mounting the attacks on Hillsglade House?”
“That would be Alister,” he said.
Ah.
“Can I ask what the weapon is?”
“You can, but I won’t give you a satisfactory answer. Go now. It’s difficult for something like you to look anything but dangerous, but you’re doing an admirable job, crouched within a windowsill.”
He removed his paw from Evan’s head.
I let go of the window, and with no ground to land on, I instead arrived at the closest patch of light.
This was the Behaim’s play.
I wished I knew more about the weapon.
But Alister was the focus here. How had the revenant phrased it? Sandra wanted to hold to tradition, Johannes wanted to restructure how Others and humans functioned as a society, and the Behaims sought to be on top and then make everything work out.
If they picked Timothy as their champion… I wasn’t sure how it would play out. He hadn’t been talked about much at all. A safe bet. If he was picked, I imagined they wouldn’t strive to be on top in the same way. They’d… I wasn’t sure, maybe they’d be an adjunct to whoever was on top. Being a relative bit player compared to Sandra and Johannes, it was hard to imagine them playing a big role, much less being on top. They’d just be biding their time until someone looked like they were positioned to win, and offer the help needed to finalize it, in exchange for a small share of local power.
Alister, though, had been described in terms of talent, strength, having the ability to make things happen.
Could they catch others off guard? Could the Behaims win, with Alister backing them? I wasn’t sure I liked the idea, given all I’d heard.
“Blake?” Evan called out.
“Here!” I raised my voice.
He perched on a snow-dusted shrub in front of the window I occupied.
“We going to stop him?”
Here was a challenge.
If I sent Evan ahead, or back to Hillsglade House, I was putting him at risk. He could get intercepted along the way.
If we went back together, we risked missing our window of opportunity. The span of time between classes wouldn’t be that big.
If we went ahead together, without notifying Rose… I was risking doing exactly what she was worried about, throwing everything into disarray.
Fuck.
“Yeah,” I said. “We’re going to stop him.”
We moved, Evan flying, me running. We operated on two entirely different planes, two modes of functioning, but there was a measure of synchronicity. Neither one of us fell too far behind. When I looked through the windows or mirrors and up, I could see him half the time.
The decision gnawed at me. There were no cell phones in this universe.
I hated the idea of leaving Rose in the dark.
We reached the school in a relatively short span of time. It remained protected.
The junior members, however, were gathered outside the school grounds, away from their peers.
Mags was among them. Molly was not.
I stopped where I was.
Evan set down on the side-view mirror nearest the car window I occupied.
The sky was a startling blue as I viewed it through the window and mirror. The city dark and worn, beneath the sparkling dust of snow.
The kids, I noted, were all armed. Ready for war.
“I smell blood, here,” Evan commented.