I had a residual mental image of a fishing pond containing a striped bass. It had rippled the surface once; now, if I cast my line properly and could remember to keep my grip on the rod -
“Iskendarian!” I hollered in my head. “Rise and shine!”
Again my thoughts swam. This time, though, they were being shouldered aside - I was growing vague, diffuse, like I’d been on a sudden three-day bender without the benefit of enjoying the taste of the brew going down, my vision was gone, my ears were roaring, I - where was I? What was going on?
“Ah!” someone said, I seemed to be overhearing somewhere off in the fog. “At last, here I - what? What is this? I -”
There was one thing left in my mind, a thing I had been repeating over and over to myself like a mantra, I didn’t know what it was or who I was or much of anything, but there was something I should be doing with this mantra, now what was it? How about -
Clamps closed on my head and swung it around, that voice that had been howling at me abruptly zoomed off into the distance, growing faint and echo-y just before it seemed to fall off a cliff and vanish; it felt as though something with claws was scooping out chunks of my flesh and hurling them over the cliff after it; I could see around me vaguely now a small reeling room where I was sitting in an armchair, or, no, I wasn’t sitting in the chair, I was falling out of it, falling toward the floor but it didn’t look like floor, it looked like a deep dark spinning pit; and while some part of me was noting I had indeed activated the emergency release mechanism and it had worked, leaving Iskendarian caught in the Scapula’s trap, and under cover of his squirming I had managed to ooze away myself instead; another part of me was -
“It’s the Hand,” whispered the Great Karlini. “I’ve never run across them myself, they were always Max’s own running sore, but he described them well enough.” He had shimmied his way along the floor of Shaa’s second-story living room and carefully raised himself to peer over the lower edge of the window frame without ruffling the curtains.
“They are in the back garden too,” said Svin, reappearing from the rear of the flat. “Those crossbow men climbing the trees may be deploying to cover an assault from the roof.”
“How many do you figure there are?”
“I have counted forty-three,” Svin told him. “It is likely there are more.”
“I have had my fill of you fanatics,” Dortonn rasped suddenly. “What will it be next with you, the descent of fiery archangels?”
“Just what do you intend to do instead?” asked Karlini. “It looks like they’re gearing up for an assault out there. Maybe if we’re lucky they’ll give us a come-out-with-your-hands-up first.”
“Perhaps a blast-and-run,” said Dortonn belligerently. “Perhaps I will merely die and spare myself this foolishness.”
“To die have threatening long been you,” Haddo croaked, scuttling briefly out from under an end table. “If to die want you, to die already please proceed. Else if, helpful plan you be.”
“Helpful,” Dortonn snorted. “Very well. I will continue attempting to contact my master. Perhaps he is not beyond reach or rescue, regardless of your vast incompetence.”
“Whatever you want,” said Karlini, “but the Hand are jamming transmissions. I can’t even raise Shaa. Max said their sorcerer was pretty good.”’
“But prone to overreaching,” reminded Wroclaw, “and consequent error.”
“Did Shaa have a secret exit out of this place? Anybody know?”
“Rental is it,” said Haddo. “Passage of secrets is not average lease property equipped.”
“What about that pal of yours, Haddo?” Karlini asked. “Favored-of-the-Gods.”
Haddo did not sound pleased. “Told me did Favored unavailable would he be. Obligations has Favored others to.”
“Great, just great.” The first time Karlini had met Favored he’d gotten the impression the little green guy wouldn’t mind seeing the lot of them dead, with the exception of Haddo; his inaction might help to win him that wish. “Anyone else got a helpful plan in mind, then?”
“Blast,” declared Svin. “Blast and fight.”
“Oh, come on, Svin,” said Karlini, “you can do better than that. Don’t give us that simple barbarian junk. You’re the closest we’ve got to a military advisor, right?”
Svin had squirmed forward to join Karlini at the front window. “They do not seem aware we know they are here,” he observed. “Do you see that small group down the block, the three who appear to be arguing? Can you overhear what they are saying?”
“Without tipping them off,” mused Karlini. That should be no problem. A directional surveillance spell, low-order, not even affecting the trio themselves directly, just amplifying the sound waves that - okay, let’s see now... “The one who’s talking is saying this is a waste of time, they should be out rounding up the real terrorists before they pull some stunt the Scapula doesn’t know about that comes back and bites everybody in the - now he’s just cursing; that one must be the Hand’s battle commander, Romm V’Nisa. Now one of the others, I’d imagine the leader, Gadol V’Nora, is trying to cut him off, saying how many times does he have to remind him they’ve been hired, they work for the Scapula, they’re doing a job, does Romm want them to go back to starving in the hills so he can practice his own strategies again?”
Karlini was getting into their rhythm. “This is Romm: ‘Use your brain then for a minute, why don’t you? Why didn’t the Scapula release extra men for us to do this job properly? You’ve seen the way he operates - he’s using us to tie up his loose end and get ourselves cut apart at the same time; then he doesn’t have to worry about us being a loose end either.’ Gadoclass="underline" ‘But you know he’s promised us a long-term engage -’ Romm: ‘You idiot! You’ve heard the stories coming in. He treats his allies worse than his enemies. Even if we take out Max’s pals and we’re still standing afterwards, who’s he got to throw back next? Even if we had Max on our side again we’d be lucky to get out of this city alive.’ ‘I won’t tolerate this kind of -’ ‘Get your head out of your -’ Oh, now here’s the third one, Chas V’Halila, the sorcerer: ‘Romm has a point. We should think this through again, before we launch the attack. We have Max’s friends penned up, they’re not going anywhere. Yes, we were ordered to be standing by for the Knitting, but that still leaves us plenty of time to resolve the situation here, so what do we have to lose?’ Gadoclass="underline" ‘Both of you, now, questioning my judgment, undermining my -’ Romm: ‘Absolutely correct, O illustrious leader.’”
“Gadol is the one stalking away?” said Svin.
“Yes,” Karlini said, “I think so.”
“You wait here,” Svin told him, “listen for any more interesting news. Prepare a spell to take down the trees with the climbers. Do you see the men with the grappling hooks? They will be the ones who plan to swing to the roof.”
“And you?”
“I will help the others fortify the doors.”
“So we are agreed,” Shaa said. “There are no indications, not even the slightest, that any experimental material has survived the destruction here at the laboratory. Yes, Tildamire? Yes, Jurtan?”
“Uh, Shaa?” said Jurtan, fighting a reflex to raise his hand first; Shaa always made him feel as though he was in class. “What if there’s still some of these microorganisms left, only there’re so few of them we can’t detect them? Couldn’t they still cause trouble, I mean if they start to multiply after we leave? If they could really be all that dangerous wouldn’t it be safer to...”
“To what? Cauterize the neighborhood? Evacuate and quarantine?”