So I finished breakfast and called Bren. But all I got was his answering machine, so I looked up the number of his restaurant and dialled it. The line was dead.
I would have tried his mobile, but, like I said, we’re not close. I didn’t know it, or the name of his girl, or even the number of his house. Too late now, right? Just goes to show. Carpe diem, and all that. And so I showered and dressed and went off in haste under gathering clouds to the Flying Pizza, Bren’s place of work (but what a dumb name!), in the hope of getting some sense out of my twin.
It was there that I realized something was amiss. Ten blocks away I knew it already, and the sirens and the engines and the shouting and the smoke were just confirmation. There was something ominous about those gathering thunderclouds, and the way they sat like a Russian hat all spiky with needles of lightning above the scene of devastation. My heart sank lower the closer I got. Something was amiss, all right.
Looking around to ensure that I was unobserved, I cast the visionary rune Bjarkán with my left hand, and squinted through its spyglass shape. Smoke I saw; and lightning from the ground; my brother’s face looking pale and strained; then fire; darkness; then, as I’d feared, the Shadow-and its minions, the wolves, the shadow hunters, boxed into their heavy overcoats.
Those guys, I thought, and cursed. Again.
And now I knew where I’d known them before-and they were pretty bad in that Aspect, too, though I had more on my plate at that time than I do nowadays, and I’ll admit I didn’t give them my full attention. I did now, though, casting runes of concealment about me as I skirted the funnel of black smoke, the funeral pyre of my brother’s restaurant-and for all I knew, of Brendan himself, who had looked pretty wasted in my vision.
I got there at last, keeping an eye out for overcoats, to find fire engines and cop cars everywhere. A line had been cordoned off at the end of the road, and there were men trying to spray water over the great fizzing spume of fire that had already dug its roots deep into the Flying Pizza.
I could have told them they were wasting their time. You can’t put out the work of a firegod-even a god of hearth fire-like it was just a squib. The flames sheeted up, thirty, forty, fifty feet high, clean and yellow and shot through with glamours that would probably have looked like dancing sparks to your kind, but which, if they’d touched you, would have stripped you, flesh to bone, in one.
And Brendan? I thought. Could he still be alive somewhere?
Well, if he was, he must have run. There was no way anyone could have survived that blaze. And it wasn’t like Bren to flee the scene. He had turned and fought; I’d seen as much in my vision, and my brother was so dead set against the use of glamours among the Folk that he wouldn’t have used them if he’d had any kind of choice.
I used Ós-the rune of mystery-to scry my brother’s fate. I saw their faces, thin and wolfish; saw his smile, teeth bared, so that for a second in my vision he could have been me, wild and furious and filled with killing rage. He could be okay, my brother, you know; it just took more time to fire him up. I saw him draw his mindsword-flaming, it was, with an edge that shivered translucent light. A sword that could have cut through granite or silk with the same easy slice; a sword I hadn’t seen since the last time the world ended, a flickering flame of a firegod’s sword that just touched the shadow inside an unbuttoned overcoat and went out like a puff of smoke.
Then, in the dark, they were on him. Question answered. Well, at least my brother went out in style.
I wiped my face and pondered the points. Point one: I was now an only twin. Point two: unless he’d taken his assailants with him (which I doubted), by now the two coats would be on my tail. Point three-
I was just embarking on point three when a heavy hand fell onto my shoulder, another grasped my arm just above the elbow and then both applied a painful pressure, which soon became excruciating as the joint locked and a low, familiar voice rasped in my ear.
“Lucky. I should have known you were in this somehow. This shambles has got your mark all over it.”
I yelped and tried to free my arm. But the other bastard was holding me too tight.
“Move, and I’ll break it,” snarled the voice. “Hell, perhaps I ought to break it anyway. Just for old times’ sake.”
I indicated to him that I’d rather he didn’t. He locked my arm a little further-I felt it begin to go and screamed-then he shoved me hard towards the alley wall. I hit it, bounced, spun round with mindsword ready, half drawn, and found myself staring into a pair of eyes as grim and colourless as a rainy day. Just my luck-a friend with a grievance, which is the only kind I tend to have nowadays.
Well, I say friend. He’s one of our kind, but you know how it is. Fire and rainstorm-we don’t get along. Besides, in his present Aspect he stood taller, weighed heavier, hit harder than me. His face was a thundercloud, and any thought I had of fighting the guy evaporated like cheap perfume. I sheathed the sword and took the better part of valour.
“Hey,” I said. “It’s Our Thor.”
He sniffed. “Try anything, and I’ll douse you cold,” he said. “I’ve got an army of stormclouds ready to roll. You’ll be out like a light before you can blink. Want to try it?”
“Did I ever? Nice greeting, friend. It’s been a long time.”
He grunted. “Arthur’s the name in this present Aspect. Arthur Pluviôse-and you’re dead.” He made it sound like some weird kind of naming ceremony.
“Wrong,” I said. “Brendan’s dead. And if you think I’d be a party to the murder of my own brother-”
“Wouldn’t put it past you,” Arthur said, though I could tell the news had shaken him. “Brendan’s dead?” he repeated.
“’Fraid so.” I was touched-I’d always thought he hated us both.
“Then this wasn’t you?”
“My, you’re fast.”
He glowered. “Then how?”
“How else?” I shrugged. “The Shadow, of course. Chaos. Black Surt. Choose your own damn metaphor.”
Arthur gave a long, soft sigh. As if it had preyed on his mind for such a long time that any news-even bad news-even terrible news-could come as a relief. “So it’s true,” he said. “I was beginning to think-”
“Finally-”
He ignored the gibe and turned on me once more, his rainy-day eyes gleaming. “It’s the wolves, Lucky. The wolves are on the trail again.”
I nodded. Wolves, demons, no word exists in any tongue of the Folk to describe exactly what they were. I call them ephemera, though I had to admit there was nothing ephemeral about their present Aspect.
“Skól and Haiti, the Sky-Hunters, servants of the Shadow, Devourers of the Sun and Moon. And of anything else that happens to be in their way, for that matter. Brendan must have tried to tackle them. He never did have any sense.”
But I could tell he was no longer listening. “The Sun and-”
“Moon.” I gave him the abridged version on the events of last night. He listened, but I could tell he was distracted.
“So, after the Moon, the Sun. Right?”
“I guess.” I shrugged. “That is, assuming there’s an Aspect of Sól in Manhattan, which, if there is-”
“There is,” said Arthur grimly. “Her name’s Sunny.” And there was something about his eyes as he said it, something even more ominous than the rain-swelled clouds above us, or his hand on my shoulder, horribly pally and heavy as lead, that made me think I was in for an even lousier day than I’d had so far.