His eyes settled on me again, then slid away. “I find myself in an uncharacteristic situation,” he said. “I need your help. Someone is trying to kill me.”
I tried to stop it, but I think my jaw dropped anyway.
“You’re a god. How can someone be trying to kill you?”
“Oh,” he said in a flat voice. “A god. You noticed that bit with the wife and the balls of fire.”
“Yeah. It’s my job to notice little things like that.”
He was examining the shield again; he really didn’t want to look in my direction, did he. Of course, the shield was worth the once-over. Given the ragged flower-petal hole gashed through the middle of it, you’d wonder how the person holding it had survived. Actually, the person hadn’t. Fortunately, that person hadn’t been me. “You are quite observant indeed,” said the guy in the chair. “Powers of observation are valuable. These powers are one reason I have chosen you to assist me.”
I wished I had gone blind while I’d had the chance; that way I would have stopped noticing unhealthy things, like the fact that he was a god. The damage would have been a lot better in the long run than what he had to have in mind for me. As long as I was at it, I wished I’d lost my tongue too, to keep me from making any more dumb remarks such as actually telling him what I’d seen. But if I couldn’t see new problems to get myself into and couldn’t open my mouth to make them worse, I wouldn’t be myself, then, would I? “You really are a god?” I said. “You’re not going to try to deny it?”
“What would be the goal? Would you treat me differently if you thought me a mere sorcerer?”
“Yeah, I would. I’ve got a lot of experience dealing with people. I feel comfortable around them, even when they’re trying to kill me.”
“All the more reason, then,” he said. “There is no reason for you to feel comfortable around me. We are not peers. You will work for me in this case, but I am not your client. I am your master.”
Fear or no fear, imminent painful death or not, those were fighting words, whoever he was. “You got some kind of nerve,” I said. “I work for who I choose, when I choose. I’ll take your little problem if I want to, after you’ve told me about it, but you can’t just come in here and take over my life. I may let you hire me, but you’re not going to own me. I gave up the whole vassal number years ago.”
“I am not bargaining with you. This is a matter of some urgency. I have been cut off from my primary power source.”
“Magic - that’s another thing. I hate magic. I hate cases that hinge on magic. I hate the idea of magic. In fact, I think I’m starting to hate you, too. I don’t think your case is going to interest me at all. Now why don’t you pick up your cape and your cane and go out the same way you came in?”
He seemed to be enjoying the situation too much, like a boy with a small insect and a growing collection of tiny legs, and that should have warned me. “I thought perhaps you might take that attitude,” he said. “That’s why I took certain precautions.”
“… What precautions?”
“Your metabolism. I’ve linked it to mine.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’ll show you. Hit me. Go ahead.”
I had been thinking about doing just that for some time. I was sure it was a bad idea, but that had never stopped me before. My left took him under the jaw. I felt it in the usual place, in my fist, but that wasn’t all. A sharp pounding pain flashed out of my own chin and up into my head.
He got to his feet while I was still resting on the floor, looking out of crossed eyes. “Metabolism,” he said. “Linked. Anything that affects me affects you. If I run out of power you will most probably die.”
I wondered how I was getting myself into this. Maybe he’d been doing something to me that screwed up my better judgment. My head was certainly screwed up, and it was only seven o’clock in the morning. On the other hand, it looked like my left had as much punch as I’d always given it credit for. I reached for a random thought. “This power stuff,” I said. “I thought you guys had so much power you could do anything. Why do you need me?”
“Why do you have so many questions? Just follow my orders. That is the only valid choice for you.”
I squinted up at the two of him and took a deep breath.
“Like I said, I hate magic. I’ve always hated magic. This situation isn’t likely to make me reconsider, but your little show-and-tell makes it looks like I’m stuck with it. I may be tough but I’m not an idiot. I can tell when I’ve been outplayed. I think surviving the experience is good for a first goal, and I’ll go back to hating it later. If I’m going to get out of this, I’m going to have to do what you want, and do it right. I’m a professional. I assume that’s why you’re here. If I’m going to do a professional job, I’m going to have to know what’s going on.”
He sat down in my chair behind my desk, reached into my drawer and pulled out my flask. “It has been a long time since anyone like you treated me like this,” he said, pouring a long shot down his throat. He smacked his lips, and maybe I felt some of it too, deep down in my chest. “One side of me wants to dismantle you organ by organ and joint by joint, and have oxen run wild over the remains.” Something crackled between his hands, and it wasn’t the flask. I set my jaw as well as I could from my recumbent position on the floor and tried to look as tough as I’d been talking, not an easy concept when you do happen to be lying on the floor.
“But I will not do that,” he said after a minute.
“I will not do that because you happen to be right. If I could do your job I would be doing it myself, but I cannot, so I need your expertise. I will caution you, though. I do know my job. Do not go too far, or I will show you some of its finer points.”
He stared at me. The feel of something large and terrible loomed at my back, waiting to tear me apart, and that would just be the appetizer. I made myself not swallow and stared back at him. “Right,” I said. “So I’ve got those questions.”
He took another swig from the flask. “Very well.”
I hoisted myself gingerly off the floor and into the visitors’ chair. “Let’s start with who’s trying to kill you.”
He looked at me as though he might be reconsidering whether I was the one he needed or not. “If I knew that I would eradicate them.”
“Yeah, right. Then how about, what kind of attempts have they been making on your, uh, life?”
“There has been no direct attempt to discorporate me, no.”
“Okay,” I said. “So how do you know somebody’s trying to kill you?”
“When I tried to leave the city earlier this morning, I discovered a barrier surrounding it.”
Okay, so we were finally getting somewhere. Unless he was one of those mad nutjob gods and the whole thing was in his own head. “Tell me about this barrier.”
He paused and looked disparagingly at me. “The explanation is highly technical.”
“Try me, I can take it.”
He was right, the explanation was technical. What he didn’t know, and what I didn’t want to mention, was that over the years I’d picked up a fair amount of magic theory, purely out of self-defense. Just because I didn’t like magic didn’t mean I couldn’t know something about it. I’d been up against magicians before, and it was always a good idea to have some grasp on their capabilities, and whether they could really carry out the threats they always seemed to enjoy making. So when he started off by saying it was a type of coupling problem, and looked at me to see if I had the slightest idea of what he was talking about, I could raise an eyebrow and nod back with some level of confidence.