Stealing the Elf-King's Roses: The Author's Cut (18 page)

He winced. 
Gee, did I have to phrase it just that way?
 Lee thought. 
And to think I did that without
 
even trying. Maybe I really am a bitch. And maybe I have reason to be.

“Lee,” Matt said. And then paused. “Look,” he said, “I’m not going to get into the whole thing with us right now. I grant you, you have no reason to want to listen to anything I’m suggesting. But this is different. 
Yes
, Big Jim has been wheeling and dealing as always. The man can no more avoid politicking than he can avoid breathing.”

“Shame about that,” Lee said. “He used to be worth something as a prosecutor before his priorities shifted.”

Matt winced again. 
Good
, Lee thought. 
See that fate coming toward you, too? So do other people,
 
and it’s best you know it.
 “That’s not the point,” Matt said. “Lee, this time the politicking has been to some purpose. Jim’s managed to put you right where you’ll be in a position to find out things that are going to make a difference to your case. And he’s made it look as if it was 
just
 politics that did it. With you seconded away to this fact-finding mission, you’ll be able to get a look at things and people that simply haven’t been accessible to investigators from our world before—”

“I am not going to be a party to some random fishing expedition,” Lee said, starting to get angrier and doing her best to keep it from showing. “Do you seriously believe that the Elves are going to allow me to get within screaming distance of anything that’s going to break this case open the way it 
could
 be broken open, if our suspicions are correct? They’re not stupid, Matt!”

“They have no choice but to cooperate now, Lee,” Matt said. “There is a very narrow window of opportunity here, one it 
would
 be stupid to ignore. Just in the wider sense! Elves 
have
 been killing Elves, all over the worlds, in larger than usual numbers. You just happen to be involved in one such case right now. Under no circumstances at any other time would an investigator of such a case have been allowed into Alfheim to do casework. You’ve seen the report, you’ve seen the way these requests are always refused as ‘not in Alfheim’s interest,’ ‘prejudicial to world sovereignty,’ all the other legal fast talk. But just this once, they can’t do it. And you want to walk away? I’d have thought better of you.”

Lee opened her mouth, closed it again. 
He sounds committed.

He sounded committed before, too. To you. And you saw where
that
went.

“Come on, Lee. You’re too much of a professional, too much devoted to serving Justice, to turn your back on this. You know it’s true.”

Bastard
, Lee thought. 
Tell me the truth about myself… or what I really want to believe about
 
myself. What a nasty trick.

“And yes, I know what you’re thinking. Forget it for a moment, Lee! Think about those remaining holes in your prosecution case. They’re smaller than they were… but they’re still there. This whole ‘free state gating’ thing is very nebulous as yet, very technical. But now you have a chance to just walk around inside Alfheim, perfectly innocently, with your eyes open for anything that will substantiate the line of investigation you most want to run down—most especially this clandestine worldgating thing. If you can find any kind of concrete evidence on the ground in Alfheim that supports your theory, anything at 
all
… then you’ve got a potential win. Right now the case might simply have to be shelved because a win with the present evidence is impossible. Too many unanswered questions about your sweeps. Big Jim has bought you some time to answer those questions…even to find plausible theories to underpin them. Something that’ll lead you to dil’Sorden’s real killer, not some poor schmuck of a triggerman.”

He has me. Oh, dear sweet God, he has me, and what do I say?
 “Matt, they are going to know exactly what I’m there for. They’re not going to like it.”

“It’s not going to matter whether they like it or not. The UN&ME is going to be staring over their shoulders the whole time. No one would dare move against someone associated with the official investigation: not a chance. You’re in the position of a lifetime.”

She sat back on the sofa and looked at Matt hard. “I think you know perfectly well it’s not just Alfen background figures that are going to be dragged out into the daylight if our own investigation really takes off,” Lee said. “It’s people from Earth as well. It’s sure not going to hurt Big Jim’s position, 
politically
, when they’re dragged kicking and screaming into the spotlight, is it, Matt?”

He twitched. It was a squirm, stopped halfway through. 
Aha
, Lee thought. 
Now we get to the meat of
 
it. Let’s see how he reacts to
 this. “Besides,” Lee said, “the Alfen have come a little way out of the woodwork of late. I’ve had overtures from them. Did I mention?”

Matt’s brief silence, and the sudden alert look in his eyes told her all she needed to know. “What did they want?”

“They were being cagey. But the roses of Aien Mhariseth were mentioned, Matt. The Elf-King’s roses. Someone was suggesting they might be useful. Someone was suggesting that we should try to… acquire some, as something that might be useful in our case.”

Matt took another long breath. “Go for it, then,” he said.

“Are you out of your 
mind
?” Lee shouted. “Go for it 
how
, exactly? You’d have as much luck waltzing into the Blue House’s rose garden and taking some of theirs.
More!
—since the Secret Service is at least vaguely accountable to the Treasury Department when they shoot you, for the cost of the bullets if nothing else, and the Elf-King is accountable to no one but his own sweet self. Where 
are
 these roses? What do they
do?
How do you use them? Who keeps them, who guards them, who knows how you can get them out of Alfheim without being nabbed at the nearest gating facility by the Alfen Department of Agriculture?” She threw her hands in the air in disgust at his obtuseness.

“I’m just suggesting that you should seem amenable to the overtures they’ve made to you,” Matt said. “But resist. Whoever was making the suggestion may come a little further out of their shell and give you some information that they can be traced by.”

And that you or your boss can make political hay out of
, Lee thought. 
It’s all politics for you, isn’t
 
it. And this leaves me and Gelert where?
“Oh, yeah; right. And when 
they
 don’t resist,” Lee said, “and we find ourselves on Alfen soil and actually having to produce a result? Having to get out the secateurs and raid someone’s garden in some high-security compound? Assuming it actually 
exists
 as something besides a folktale?”

“It must exist,” Matt said. “Otherwise, no one would be bringing up the roses.”

Lee wanted to clutch her head at his naivete. “The roses may only exist as a way for us to prove that some Alfen leak is leaking the way they want it to,” she said, “or that they don’t. It’s going to present problems for Gelert and me, after the fact.”

Matt said nothing for a moment. “Obviously going that far out on a limb would warrant you some form of protection—”

“Oh, 
some
 form. And who exactly is going to protect us?”

“The DA’s Office will do everything it—”

“Bushwah! I want it in 
writing
, Matt. I want a piece of paper with the Bear Seal on it, saying ‘This absolves you of all blame.’ I want a piece of paper that says ‘What the bearer did was done for the good of the State.’ It’s probably not going to be good enough to keep us from being killed, but it’ll clear our poor tattered names after we’re dead.”

The silence surprised her. He genuinely had not considered the possibility that paper immunity might not be enough. “The state Attorney General—”

“This would go straight to national level, Matt, if your boss had either the inclination or the power to swing it. But the state AG’s Office will have to do as a start until he sees where the political advantages lie.” 
And please Herself, he’ll see it in a hurry, because if he doesn’t—

The silence stretched. Finally, Matt said, “I’ll sim a copy of a draft agreement over to your office in the morning. I’m sure the DA will see it your way.”

“Are you?” Lee said.

She let that silence stretch, too. Finally, she said, “I could say I’m sorry that you’re the one that Big Jim has made the bearer of this particular bad news. But I won’t, because I don’t believe you refused the job very hard. You are getting a little too used to doing things for expediency’s sake, Matt, and one day you’re going to go looking for your soul and find that expediency is all that’s left. Meantime, I’ll be waiting for that paperwork…much good may it do us.”

She waved the comm dead and sat hunched over in a state of the most profound annoyance.

He wants me to just trust him.

Hah. 1 did that once.

Lee let out a long breath. 
But could it be…
 the thought came up, 
could it just possibly be that if I had
 
turned a blind eye…the trophy babe would have gone away, and everything would have been the
 
way it was between us, eventually?

Was it my pride that killed this relationship? My refusal to be second best? Or
 seen 
as second
 
best?

She entertained the thought for no more than a few seconds before pushing it away. It annoyed her, for this line of thinking had come up several times lately. 
It has to be stress.

Or desperation
, said that annoying voice in the back of her head. 
Or plain old loneliness.

Lee cursed softly and got up to go into the kitchen; cleaning her gun was on her mind again. Matt’s handsomeness, his kindness—early on, anyway—had lulled her into a sense that everything between them was all right, would always be all right. To find out how wrong she’d been was still an open wound.
I won’t be trusting anyone else that way
, she thought, 
not for a long time…if ever.

She sighed, and went out back for another look at the garden.

*

The next morning Gelert called her, sounding both triumphant and alarmed. “They blinked,” he said.

“So I see…”

The release of the news had been embargoed so as to make the morning live news services: the “papers” would be a little slower in getting it out, but Lee could imagine the headlines in the Pulchritude Paper and its ilk: ELVES SAY YES! would probably be the politest of them. The local live news was running and rerunning the video of that morning’s press conference by the Alfen Ambassador to the UN&ME. She stood there, fair, blond, radiant, dressed in formal black skintights with the typical short Alfen cloak-wrap over it all, and looking for all the world like this whole business had been entirely her government’s idea, as she made the formal statement. She did it fluently, gracefully, without notes. 
Just like an Elf
, Lee thought…

“—full cooperation with the desires of the UN&ME in light of the findings of the FiveInterpol report,” Elen dil’Khelev was saying. “It is the judgment of our government, and of the Elf-King, that our people’s long tradition of privacy in our dealings with the other Worlds, while necessary for the protection of our culture, should on some occasions be relaxed somewhat when good and sufficient reason is presented. We will therefore look forward to receiving the investigative committee empaneled by the UN&ME, at its earliest convenience, and will extend it every appropriate cooperation. That’s the formal statement; and now I’ll take some questions.”

The reporter whom she chose jumped up said, “Ma’am, why has it taken the Alfen government so long to reach this decision?”

The Ambassador laughed gently. “I would instead say, isn’t it unusual that it’s taken so short a time!—which can only be an indicator of how eager we are to cooperate with our cousin worlds and organizations in the UN. None of you will be ignorant of our long history of protecting the privacy and cultural integrity of our people, or of the violation of that principle by citizens of other worlds in the earliest phases of ‘tween-universe commerce, before the Five-Geneva Pact. Many priceless cultural artifacts were lost to us during that period, and the will of our people that Alfheim should be protected from any such further losses has always been one of our government’s highest priorities. We were equally sensitive to the destabilization sometimes caused in other sovereignties by the very nature of some of the artifacts removed from Alfheim without proper protective measures first being taken…so that it’s always seemed the better course to be overly cautious in allowing access to and egress from our world.”

Lee sat there with a dry smile. The ambassador had successfully avoided using the words “treasure hunters,” “smugglers,” or any other term that would say in the open why people in those earlier times would go to Alfheim and try to smuggle artifacts out: because their inherent power, compared to matter in other universes, could in some cases bend the fabric of local reality awry into most unusual shapes. 
As
 
the roses apparently would…
 “In this case, however,” the Ambassador was saying, “we could only be genuinely grateful for the concern among other worlds for the figures concerning mortality among our people in the outworlds, and with some reservations we share their interest in determining the cause of this phenomenon…”

Lee turned to the side of the screen where Gelert was lounging in his living room, with pups scattered around him, sleeping. “So,” she said. “Full cooperation…”

“Full ‘appropriate’ cooperation, whatever that is,” Gelert said, amused. “For the sake of ‘greater transparency.’ ‘A confidence-building measure.’ I guess we’d better start packing. Have you heard any suggestions as to the date?”