Stealing the Elf-King's Roses: The Author's Cut (23 page)

She rummaged around in the cupboards near the minibar, found the ice bucket, a plain square job, and then pocketed her SlipCase and went out, closing the door softly behind her. 
Down at the end of the
 
hall
, Lee thought. 
As far away as possible. Inevitable, isn’t it?…

She went all the way down there, found nothing, and had to backtrack to find what she’d missed the first time—a door that looked exactly like all the others except for a minuscule sign that said SERVICE in Alfen, English, and Xainese. Lee pushed the door open and found a soft-drink vending machine, and an icemaker sitting and humming demurely to itself.

Lee put the bucket in place and pushed the button. The icemaker did what icemakers all over the six worlds did: dropped cubes into the bucket from the greatest possible height and showered her with wet, cold chips and shards. Lee brushed herself off as well as she could, picked up the bucket, and pushed the door open.

“—not his problem at this point,” someone was saying down the hall. What stopped Lee in her tracks was how loud the voice seemed: it sounded as if it was immediately to her right, down toward the end of the hall. Yet when she looked down there, she couldn’t see anything.

“Yes, well, he isn’t going to want it to be a problem later, either. And we should be able to do something about that.”

Why are they as loud as if they’re shouting, when they’re not even in sight?
 Lee wondered. She paused, listening when they stopped speaking. There was a faint hum in her right ear. 
Something wrong
 
with the implant. Oh, that’s just great! Why couldn’t it have failed two hours ago, instead of—

“Let’s not play games: I’m too tired for that right now. And you look worse than I do. What the Senator is going to want to know is exactly what
kind
of something.”

“I wouldn’t care to get too specific at the moment. Certainly not about anything as crass as figures. He doesn’t need to, either. But we’ve been watching the way he’s been voting on the bills that’ve come up over the last few months.”

Lee held still for a moment. Then very, very slowly, to keep it from making any noise, she began letting the door close in front of her…but not all the way.

“Oh really. And your conclusions would be—”

“That the Senator is going to start needing some hefty contributions to his campaign war chest pretty soon, because the benighted apathetic electorate don’t seem to be obliging him. Not even after that last tax cut. Ungrateful of them. He’ll never make it past the NYHampshire primary, the way he’s going.”

No voice spoke for a few seconds. Then the first one said, “And you were thinking of—what, exactly?”

“There’s some business going on in Ellay at the moment that could use some quieting down, to make the situation easier for your man. The dil’Sorden thing. Just having them here isn’t going to do much about it in the long run, I don’t think. Additional measures may be needed. A word with some of the media…some kind of resolution. We can help with that.”

Lee flushed first hot and then cold. 
Them?

“Where is this thing?” said the first voice. Faintly, Lee could hear a button being pushed, angrily, several times. After a pause the first voice spoke again. “Obviously these arrangements go both ways.”

“Of course. Later on, when your man’s where it matters, then we sort out the details. Open access is going to be an issue.”

“Oh, to the candidate, certainly.”

“No, afterward.”

“He’d never want to be seen to do anything, you know, unethical.”

“He wouldn’t have to 
do
 anything. Not about this. Just refrain from—”

Ding!
 the elevator said, the fake electronic “chime” deafening in the implant. Lee clutched the right side of her head, cursing under her breath. “—until the issue’s settled,” said the second voice as the elevator doors slid open. “After that so many people are going to be grabbing for the goodies that any one political figure’s—”

The elevator door closed. All Lee could hear was some faint muttering noises, lost in that electronic hum.

The Senator.

The dil’Sorden thing.

Having
 them 
here.

Her feet were cold. Lee looked down and saw that the ice bucket was dripping condensation on her shoes. But that had nothing to do with the way she suddenly found herself shivering.

Softly she pushed the door open again, listening hard. There was nothing to be heard but the same annoying hum from her implant. Lee came out into the hallway and walked back to the suite, let herself in, put the ice bucket down by the minibar, sat down in the dark, and thought as if her life depended on it… because possibly it did.

*8*

The next morning she found Gelert eating tidily from what appeared to be a Sèvres porcelain soup dish, glancing occasionally at the pad on the floor beside it. The pad was showing a news feed recorded the previous day and handed off to it by the local Alfen network. “What is that?” Lee said.

“The Worlds Today.”

“I mean in the bowl.”

“Best dog food I’ve ever had,” Gelert said. “Either venison or buffalo. How’re you feeling this morning?”

“Better.”

“Me too…”

Lee went over to the two-level table that had been rolled in by room service and uncovered some of the dishes on the top table. Mostly they contained fruit, some of which Lee didn’t recognize, cereals, and breads and cheeses. “Nice,” Lee said.

“Yeah. Not to my taste, but I thought you’d like the look of the stuff. What’s that weird fruit with the ridges?” And silently, into her implant, Gelert said, 
I read your notes. I left you some. But our impressions coincide, pretty
 
much.

“Uh, it looks like carambola. No, wait, it can’t be, it has lots more points.” She paused as if to count. 
I’ll
 
look at them later.
 “Eleven. How about that…”

“Weird.” 
You want to check them on a regular basis after this
, Gelert said as he licked the bowl, 
because I don’t feel comfortable directing your attention to them openly. Our hosts can’t read
 
what we’ve got encrypted, but damned if I’m going to draw their attention to transmissions in
 
progress. They might start looking for some way to crack them, and if they manage it and then
 
overhear us, we’re going to have problems.

Okay.
 “You want some toast?”

“Is there marmalade?”

“You’ll get it in your fur.”

“Will you 
stop
 worrying about my fur! 
I
 can take care of my fur. And no, I don’t need the toast. Eat your breakfast.”

Lee smiled slightly and started assembling a plateful of bread and cheese and a few slices of the fruit. She poured a cup of coffee and took it to sit down at the table by the window, looking out at that astonishing view again. The gasping, slightly heartsick feeling caught her again, but this time it wasn’t as strong. Lee picked up a slice of the greenish fruit, sniffed it, bit into it.

Her senses washed right out. Suddenly she was aware of Gelert sticking his face into hers, and looking at her most peculiarly. “Lee?”

“What?”

“That’s the third time I’ve spoken to you. What’s the matter?”

Lee stared at the fruit. “Wow,” was all she could say for a moment. Then she held the slice out to Gelert. “I think,” she said, “that this could be what Eve was supposed to have offered Adam. I think I understand the problem now.”

Gelert gave her an odd look, then stood up and came over to her. “I’m not normally a veggie person,” he said. “However—” Gelert took the slice of fruit in his mouth, swallowed it.

For a long moment he said nothing. The moment stretched into two, or three. Lee looked at Gelert curiously; his eyes were glazed. But finally he blinked.

“Ouoowawa,”
 he said.

“Yes.”

Gelert sat down, looking bemused. “There always used to be those stories,” Lee said, “about how it was dangerous to eat anything the Elves gave you. That the way time passed got strange: that a year might seem like a day…” She raised her eyebrows. “After this I’ll stick to the bread.”

“It’s true,” Gelert said. He looked at her with a slightly cockeyed expression. “I wonder why I didn’t get anything like that with the meat?”

“We already know you’re a little resistant.”

“I’d be happier to understand why,” Gelert said, shouldering under his saddlebags where they stood in their brace: the brace retracted itself and fastened around him. “Well, I should get going: the finance team is meeting downstairs in ten minutes.”

“Yeah, the tour group’s meeting downstairs about half an hour after that.” Lee looked over at the breakfast cart again and decided to stick with the coffee. “See you later.” 
Good hunting, big guy.

“Right. Have a good day.” 
Meanwhile, you know what you’re here for…

Yes. And so do they. But I’ll get out there and see what I can See.

Gelert grinned, though not straight at her, as the door shut him out. 
Keep your mouthful
, he said.

Lee stood there for a moment, then sat down and started shaking. The brain-blasting intensity of the fruit’s flavor when it had been in her mouth, and the choiceless bliss of surrendering to it, scared her badly. And even so, she still wanted to go over to that cart and eat all that fruit, then go downstairs to the hotel’s restaurant and demand all of it they had, and eat that, too, until there wasn’t any more of it to eat, or until she burst. 
This place is not safe
, she thought, shivering. 
As far as that goes, the stories are
 
true. We know
 nothing 
about these people…the dangers of them, the secrets they hold. But we’ve
 
barged
blithely in here, straight into the lion’s den, to go digging around for the truth. What we dig up… will we survive finding it, I wonder?

She sat there until she thought she was in control of the shaking, then got up and went to get her jotter.

Lee spent perhaps ten minutes reading Gelert’s notes, which were as unnerved as her own, if for different reasons. Then she got ready to go. At the door, she stopped, with a feeling of having forgotten something, and found herself staring at the breakfast cart, on the very point of going over to it again.

Lee shuddered and went out the door fast.

*

The guide for the tour group was waiting for them downstairs, and Lee was surprised and faintly concerned to find that it was Isif dil’Hemrev. “This is my home city,” she said to the small group that gathered in the lobby—Lee and Mellie Hopkins and a few others that Lee didn’t know so well. “So I thought I would walk you through a few of the highlights. It’s not as famous or as historic a city as, say, Aien Mhariseth, but certainly it’s pleasant enough…”

They headed out of the hotel into that bright morning. “We’re lucky with the weather, so far,” Mellie said, throwing Lee a thoughtful glance. She also had not missed the choice of tour guide. 
She’s a spook
, Mellie had said. Lee had always known in a general way that they would all be watched when they got here, but now she found it hard not to look at everyone they passed as if they were spies or informers.

Dil’Hemrev smiled that cool smile of hers with its faint edge of superiority, charming but very much there. “It’s summer here at the moment,” she said, as they headed out of the main street in front of the hotel; “we don’t get a lot of wet weather until the fall. Even if we did, many of the streets we’ll be going down this morning are arcaded. Come along this way…”

She led them down streets that grew steadily smaller in scale, compared to the taller towers that seemed to encircle the harbor proper. Lee looked around in some admiration as dil’Hemrev talked easily about the history of the Alfen who’d first settled here, the industries they practiced, the trade routes they’d established. The city itself, at least in its older buildings, had a look of both antiquity and calm prosperity, its architecture featuring both sharp and curved arches, and a great deal of what looked like a soft green sandstone, the delicate carvings pleasantly blunted by time.

Lee walked along behind the others and let dil’Hemrev’s narration wash over her as she looked at the buildings—apartment houses and shops, rarely more than three or four stories high, with an odd tendency for windows and flights of steps to come in groups of eleven. 
Something cultural?
 she wondered.
Something to do with religion, or superstition?

She resolved to ask dil’Hemrev about it later. But as they walked through the mild, pretty morning, passing various Alfen in the streets and being courteously saluted by them, something began to itch in the back of Lee’s mind. The color of the sandstone started to look a little strange to her: watery, somehow. She would glance at a worn, charming old building that from the corner of her eye had seemed to waver slightly, as if submerged, only to find it perfectly steady when she looked at it. 
I’m not trying to See…
she thought. Yet that was the effect she was getting… as if she was bringing judicial Sight to bear on something, and being resisted.

Or as if this whole place was under a glamour
, Lee thought. Initially, the thought was laughable. There were ways to lay a deceptive seeming over physical objects for short periods—appearances generated by mind or by mechanical instrumentality—that could deceive people without the Sight easily, and those with it with more difficulty. But these required a considerable outlay of energy and couldn’t be maintained long. If what she was perceiving here was indeed a glamour, it was one of a complexity and power Lee had never seen before. 
And if it is a glamour… why are they doing it? Are we being shown some kind
 
of Potemkin village?

What for?…

Lee tried to keep herself from showing any unease and followed along behind their guide, who was talking again now about parts of the city that were said to have sunk under the sea. “There 
is
 an earthquake fault not far from here,” dil’Hemrev was saying. “Every thousand years or so it tends to slip; that may have happened in prehistory, and so the legend persists.”

Lee was refraining from using the Sight just now, if only because it tended to make her walk into things. But even as she and the group turned another corner into yet another tiny street, lined with small and cozy buildings, Lee began to wonder whether the innate “fragility” of Ys she had perceived yesterday was just that: perception, no more, well divorced from reality—or from any reality that mattered here and now. For a psychoforensicist it was always a question: were you doing physical reality a disservice by constantly prying around underneath it, trying to find out what it meant? And here more than usual, the physical reality was so arresting—

But that was the problem. Lee trailed her hand idly along a building’s stonework as she passed, looking at it as she did: looking, just for a flash, judicially—though not very deep, and not long enough to be caught at it. And then she glanced away again, as casually, for what she’d seen was at odds with what she’d felt. The stone under her hand was stone, right enough: but it was being misrepresented by what Lee saw. It was not a small building, but a tall one, possibly even a skyscraper. She was certain of that, without even looking.

I’m being had
, she thought. 
We all are.

And at all costs, I mustn’t let them know that I know it.

Lee kept on walking along with the rest of the tour, and thought, looking casually at everything, trying not to be seen looking at any one thing terribly hard, storing away details for consideration later. In one of the main shopping streets into which dil’Hemrev led them, Lee spent a while playing the witless shopper, staring in store windows which were admittedly full of wonderful things, clothes and appliances and furnishings and art the likes of which she’d never seen. All her credit plates itched. It was the better part of an hour before she again dared to touch the corner of a building as the group and dil’Hemrev turned into a side street. But by then, Lee was ready for the difference between what she felt and what she saw.

It was not a difference in anything so simple as texture. It was the attitude with which the building had been raised. It said, 
I am the matter of eternity: I will last forever: I am permanence, hewn.
 It said the exact opposite of what the skyline had said. There was no tug at the heartstrings here. This was careless strength, unconcerned beauty spoken in the Alfen accent that Lee already knew quite well. These stones wore in spirit the same expression that Lee had seen on a dead Elf in the street, on Omren dil’Sorden’s face in the Ellay County Morgue, belying the fear of a few moments before.

So we’re being shown the beauty that moves…but as a weapon. Or as something to put us off our
 
guard, to keep us from seeing another truth.
 The question was, was that truth necessarily important?

Or does it just seem so to the Elves?
 That was going to take a while to determine. But as far as Lee was concerned, she had had enough of having her heartstrings tugged. 
What’s behind the façades?
 she thought.

They had been on their feet for nearly an hour and a half now. “We might sit down for a little while, if you like,” dil’Hemrev said, again with the slight smile that suggested a touch of pity for humans, who tired, as compared with Alfen, who didn’t, or at least not so easily. “There’s a café near here with a nice view of the parklands behind the city…”

“Sounds like a good idea,” Lee said, if only to break her own silence; she’d been quiet while the others had been oohing and aahing over the surroundings. “It’d be pleasant to sit and have a glass of something and look at the mountains, in such nice weather…”

Dil’Hemrev turned to look at Lee. The shocked, suspicious look sealed over almost instantly, leaving dil’Hemrev’s face serene again; but seeing it, Lee knew immediately that she’d made a mistake, and she had to concentrate on keeping her own face innocent…for whatever good it did.
Oh, God, we’re not supposed to see the mountains, either!

But why?

Dil’Hemrev didn’t deal with what Lee had said, and as she led them to the café, Lee did her best to concentrate on seeming harmless. There was no way to call the word back, no way to cover, and no way her guide was going to forget.
What else have I seen that I’m not supposed to?
 Lee wondered in near panic. 
This is going to mean
 
trouble…