Air Apparent (17 page)

“At least you might have told me where you were going,” she admonished him. “Wira’s been beside herself.” The mirror obligingly put two small images of Wira in a corner, beside each other. “Where are you?”

“At Castle Maidragon, mother.”

“Visiting with Becka? For shame! Not only are you married, so is she.”

“Mother, it’s not—”

But then her smile, unable to remain suppressed, twisted her veil. “I’m glad you’re safe, son. What happened?”

“We think the Random Factor switched places with me. Is he there?”

“The Random Factor! No, he’s not here. There’s only a nebulous dead body here. I trust you didn’t do it?”

“I didn’t do anything. Are you sure that’s not the Factor?”

“If it is, he’s dead, or dead to this world. I don’t think it is.”

“Doesn’t father know? There should be something in the Book of Answers.”

“The Book of Answers has been scrambled; Humfrey’s struggling to put it back into order.” The Gorgon paused. “But you know, that’s something the Factor could have done. So maybe he was here, and left the body.”

“But whose body is it?”

“We wish we knew. It’s a mystery. We were afraid you were being framed for it.”

“I’m not a murderer!”

“We know, son. We’ve kept it quiet until we can exonerate you.”

“May I talk to Wira now?”

“She’s not here. She’s out looking for you.”

“Where is she? I want to be with her.”

“We don’t know, dear. I’m sure she’ll check in in due course.”

“I want to find her!”

“And she wants to find you. Something about an overdue signal to the stork, I think. Why don’t you return here, and be here when she returns?”

“I suppose I’ll have to,” Hugo agreed, disappointed.

“I’ll take you there,” Becka said. “You obviously don’t mind riding dragons.”

“Not when they’re going where I’m going,” Hugo agreed. But he was sorely disappointed that he wouldn’t be back with Wira immediately.

PASSION

Are you satisfied?” the Demoness Mentia inquired.

“I am prostrate,” he confessed.

“You are what?”

“Worn out, tired, exhausted, utterly sated—” He paused. “You haven’t reverted to Metria, have you?”

“Whatever,” she said with mock crossness. “I merely thought you used a dirty word.”

“I did not. Anyway, you certainly proved your point. Are you going to vanish now that you’ve done it?”

“Naturally. That’s what demonesses do.”

“I can’t interest you in a continuing relationship?”

“What continuing interest would I have in a mortal? There was a challenge, I rose to it, now it’s done, and there’s no point in staying.”

“You demons don’t have a conscience,” he said, remembering.

“Well, Metria got half a soul when she married, so I have part of a soul too. That gives us some conscience. It’s a nuisance. What do you care? You have precious little conscience yourself.”

“I couldn’t do my randomizing if I had much of a conscience. It would make me be concerned about the consequences of my actions to others. So I have it parked somewhere out of the way.”

“Why are you interested in a continuing relationship? You’re random, not crazy. I’m the crazy one.” Her head shifted shape until it resembled her bare bottom. Her bottom surely now resembled her head. She was indeed a little crazy. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have wasted a whole night making you delirious,” her voice said from under her skirt.

“I want something from you, of course.”

“I already gave you a night of it. That’s enough.”

“Something else.”

“Oh, with my features reversed? That would be different, all right. But what would be in it for me?”

This wasn’t getting him far. “What can I offer you that would enlist your cooperation taking me somewhere and helping me meet someone?”

Her head and face reformed where they belonged. “Someone else? Who?”

“A girl.”

“You want me to set you up with another woman?” she asked, sparks jumping from her hair and little lightning jags from her eyes. One might almost have supposed she was annoyed.

“It would be complicated to explain.”

“I’m a little crazy, not a little stupid,” she snapped, her teeth striking further sparks.

“But you’d have to keep company with me long enough to hear my explanation.”

She nodded. “True. That would be deadly dull. So ootoodle, as my other self would put it.” She began to fade.

“There’s a small mystery,” he said desperately.

She remained half faded. “Metria has an insatiable curiosity. She must be done with her morning routine by now. I’ll swap out with her. It’s been a while since I emulated her form and seduced her husband. That really annoys her.”

Her half-faded form subtly shifted. “What’s this stupid conundrum?”

“This stupid what?”

“Puzzle, enigma, riddle, maze—”

“Corn?”

“Whatever,” she agreed crossly. “Hey, wait half a moment! That’s not it.”

“Mystery,” he said.

“That’s it. Anyhow, that’s maize, not maze, when its corny. So what’s your deal? Mentia says she already gave you triple the bliss any mortal man deserves, just to make a point. She was crazy to do it.”

“Naturally,” he agreed. “Now I have a stupid, minor, inconsequential little mystery to fathom, and I could use your help to accomplish that.”

“Is it interesting?”

“Dull.”

“You cunning one-eyed card! You know I don’t believe you.”

“Cunning what?”

“King, queen, jack—”

“Knave?”

“Whatever. What’s your mystery?”

Now was the time for truth, as she would catch on quick enough otherwise. “You know I’m the Random Factor.”

“No corn there,” she agreed.

“I tried to escape from the Factory some time ago, and they confined me in the dungeon of Castle Maidragon. I escaped, but now they’re after me. They’ve sent an agent to fetch me back. I don’t want to go back; it would stifle my random nature. So I need to know how this girl proposes to do it.”

“Girl?”

“Maid, damsel, young woman, servant, female—”

“I mean how’s a mere girl going to catch you and bring you back when you can randomize out of it?”

“Exactly.”

“What?”

“Precisely, correctly, properly, accurately, veraciously—”

A puff of steam blew her head off. “I mean how’s it going to happen?” the head called from on high.

“That’s what I want to know. It’s a mystery. Can you help me?”

The head settled back into place. “What kind of help do you want?”

“I want to go to her and investigate without her knowing who I am or what I’m doing.”

“So why don’t you?”

“She’ll know who I am the moment I use my magic. Then she’ll nab me. Unless I know how to stop her.”

“This is intriguing,” the demoness agreed. “Very well, I will help you fathom this corn. What’s your tack?”

“My what?”

“Procedure, technique, plan, course, angle of attack—”

“Approach?”

“Whatever. Answer the question.”

“First you’ll have to take me there, so I don’t have to use my magic, though my magic couldn’t work that way anyway. Then you can pose as my girlfriend or wife—”

“I knew it! You just want me to proselytize!”

The Factor considered momentarily, and decided not to question that. He treated it as the word she had intended. “No. Your crazy half already did plenty of that. I need an innocent identity, and a married man traveling with his wife would seem to be that.”

“A pretend wife.” She considered. “I can do that. But there’s a wonder.”

“A what?”

“Suspicion, mistrust, issue, doubt, dubiousness—”

“Problem,” he said. “Your problem with words.”

She nodded.

She had a point. The moment she opened her mouth, anyone who knew her or had ever heard of her would catch on to her identity. “Maybe you could be mute,” he said.

“Be what?”

“Silent, quiet, still, soundless, stifled—”

“Gagged?”

“Whatever,” he agreed crossly.

“Me? I never shut up! How could I make mischief if I were gagged? The thought gags me. I’m not gaga over it.”

“It won’t work if you mess up words. Maybe it will have to be Mentia after all.”

“That smoky hussy? Never!”

“But obviously you can’t do it.”

She considered two thirds of an instant. “How about Woe Betide?”

“How about what?”

“My child identity. When a sphinx stepped on me long ago I fractured into three forms. The third is a five-year-old waffle.”

Her problem was getting annoying. “Waif?”

“Whatever. She doesn’t have a vocabulary problem. But you have to honor the Adult Conspiracy in her presence.”

“But surely she knows everything you and Mentia know. She would remember the night I just had with that sultry demoness. That would completely fracture the Conspiracy.”

“She’s in de Nile.”

This one threw him. “The what?”

“A river in Mundania. Not. Pretending something doesn’t exist.”

“Denial!” he said, getting it. “You know, that would work. We could be father and daughter, because the mother was toasted by a dragon. Completely harmless. What do you think?”

Metria dissolved into smoke. In more than an instant but less than half a moment she reformed as a cute little tike. “Matches?” she asked, proffering one. “They grant you your fondest wish.”

“I want to abolish that agent.”

She clouded up. “That’s a mean wish.”

He backed off. He didn’t want trouble that would alienate her. “I take it back. But what about your name? How can you be anonymous?”

“Be what?”

Was this really Metria? No, probably just too big a word for the waif. “You need a pretend name. It’s a game. So no one will know who you really are.”

She clapped her little hands. “A game! I’ll be Trace, ’cause I’m only a trace of my grown-up self.”

“Very good. Trace it is. And I’ll be—” He paused, considering. “Fabian. You will pose as my daughter, and when anyone asks you about your mother, you cloud up and say she went away because of a dragon.”

“Goody,” she agreed. “I like being half an orphan.”

“Now we need to go to join Debra. Can you find her?”

“Let me look.” She fuzzed into smoke, which then faded. That was something else she would have to stop: acting like a demoness. Soon it reformed. “Yes.”

“Can you take me there?” He knew the adult demoness could, but this one was much smaller.

“Sure.”

“Then do it, but don’t take me right there. Take me nearby, so Debra doesn’t see me travel and know you are a demoness. After we get there, don’t do any demonly things. Better hide those magic matches, too.”

“Okay.” She fuzzed back into smoke. This time it spread out to encompass him. Then there was the half-familiar wrench, and they were elsewhere.

“Thank you,” he said as the smoke retreated and condensed back into the child. “That was very good, Trace.”

“Ooo,” she said, pleased.

“Now remember, you’re a girl, not a demon.”

“Got it, Daddy,” she said winsomely.

“Where is Debra?”

“Around that copse.”

He looked around. “What corpse?”

“Copse. A thicket of small trees. I’m small, so I relate.”

But she had an adult vocabulary, when she wanted it. “So let’s join them.” But then immediately he had a second thought. “Let’s spy on them first. Go into the copse and see what you can learn.”

“Okay!” the child disappeared into the copse.

Soon she was back. “I couldn’t see them, but I could hear them. They said something about finding the Factor—”

“The Factor!”

“And the Nameless Castle. Only they don’t know where it is.”

They were looking for him? That meant that Debra was coming directly after him. But what was this about the Nameless Castle? What did that have to do with it?

But he doubted that the girl knew what he looked like, because he had been confined for so long in the dungeon cell. So he would try to bluff it out.

They walked around the copse. And there was a woman, a young centaur, and two children. This set him back; which one was Debra? She was supposed to be a teen girl. These were too old, too young, or not human. He couldn’t just ask, because that would give away his advance knowledge.

“Why didn’t you tell me one was a centaur?” he whispered to Trace.

“You didn’t ask.”

Even as a child, this demoness could be annoying.

“People!” the little boy exclaimed, spying them.

Commitment. “Hello,” the Factor called. “May we join you?”

“That depends on who you are,” the woman said.

“Fabian. And my half-orphaned daughter Trace.”

“A girl,” the boy said somewhat disdainfully. “I’m Glow.”

Trace smiled at him. It was almost bigger than she was, and surely owed much to the adult demonesses’ experience. The boy visibly melted.

“I’m Ilene,” the girl said. She looked to be about eleven.

“I am Wira,” the woman said.

“And I am Debra,” the centaur said.

She was a centaur! How could that be? Had the demon been wrong?

“Transformed human,” Debra added.

Oh. “You weren’t satisfied in your original form?” he asked.

“She is carrying me,” Wira said. “I am blind.”

What was the agent doing with a blind woman? This was one curious business. “My regret,” he said politely.

She ignored that, surely fathoming that he hardly cared. She was evidently the leader of this little party. “Where are you going?”

He suffered a sudden flash of genius. “I promised Trace a tour of the Nameless Castle.”

That got the woman’s attention. “You know where it is?”

“Yes,” he lied. Not only did he not know, he had no idea what it was. But he had a plan.

“Well, then,” Wira said. “May we travel with you?”

Exactly. Now he just had to find it. “Of course,” he agreed. Then, to Woe Betide: “Trace, didn’t you have to do something in the woods before we get going?”

She glanced at him, and understood. She had to get out of sight so she could turn demoness and locate the Nameless Castle. Then she could quietly tell him, and he would lead the party there.

“I guess so,” she said. She made her way into the copse.

“What happened to your wife?” the girl, Ilene, asked. It was the sort of question girls did ask.

“She ran afoul of a dragon,” he said. “We don’t like to speak of it.”

“That’s so sad,” the centaur said sympathetically.

That surprised him. That was the Factory Agent who was going to capture him? The oddest thing was that he rather liked the look of her, especially her front. He almost wanted to touch it. But of course that would not be wise, for several reasons. She was a centaur, she was underage, and she was the agent. He had to learn her secret weapon and somehow nullify it. So he had no business liking any aspect of her. She was dangerous. Yet she was a winsome creature, quite unlike either the nymphs or the demoness.

“So who’s taking care of your little girl?” Ilene asked.

“I am. It’s quite a job.”

“Surely so,” Debra agreed with further sympathy. And again it got to him. It would be so easy to believe that she really was a nice girl who really did care. He couldn’t afford that. He had to fathom her secret weapon, then figure out how to nullify it. Before she discovered who he was.

Trace returned. “Done,” she reported matter-of-factly. She meant that she had located the castle, because of course as a demoness she had no natural functions unless she wanted them.

“Then it is time to be on our way,” he said, picking her up in a fatherly manner.

“It’s in the sky,” she whispered in his ear. “Floating over the eastern Gap Chasm now.”

He turned to the blind woman, Wira. “There is one problem. The Nameless Castle is out of reach at the moment.”

“Not out of Debra’s reach,” Wira said.

“Oh, of course. She can fly there. However—”

“You can’t,” the little boy, Glow, said.

“Readily solved,” Wira said. “Debra can carry you there, if you show her the way. Then she’ll know, and fetch the rest of us at leisure.”