Bastian relaxed, if going from very stiff to plain stiff was relaxed. “If you were dead, how did you survive?”
“That’s a tale for another time,” I said.
Bastian didn’t participate in conversations. He processed them, one line at a time. His deep eyes, dark wells of iris pinpointed with a rich blue light, stared as if he could read my thoughts. “I shall look forward to hearing it then.”
“I was hoping you could save the Boston P.D. some time and answer a few questions,” I said.
“The Boston Police Department and the Consortium are not on particularly good terms at the moment,” he said.
“All the more reason to earn a little goodwill, don’t you think?” I asked.
“Ask,” he said.
“An elven agent named Alfren was found dead in the Weird last week. Was he one of yours?” I asked.
“At one time. He was no longer in my employ though he did provide occasional information in exchange for funds,” he said.
“He worked for Vize. You had a plant on your own agent?”
“It is no longer a secret between us that I was often in contact with Bergin. Anything I needed to know, he told me,” Bastian said.
“So what information was Alfren providing you that was worth anything?”
“Alfren had connections in Park Square,” he said.
“The Guild? How does a former Consortium agent working for Vize connect to the Guild?” I asked.
“He was quite good, despite his flawed history. Unfortunately, his contact was not as careful,” he said.
“Dead?”
“A fall,” he said.
“The Danann at the power plant?”
“The same,” he said.
Talking with Bastian was an exercise in feints and jabs, admitting to something, then undermining its meaning. Done over beers about politics or religion, it was fun. When it was about murder and espionage, it was dangerous. People died if you misunderstood, and sometimes that was the intent.
“So they were both feeding you information,” I said.
Bastian’s long face cracked a thin smile. “That is the nature of double agents, Mr. Grey.”
And the risk, I thought. Going undercover was a delicate dance. You had to be smart enough to get close to valuable information, which meant you have to provide valuable information. But you had to be careful enough not to expose too much information and make someone suspicious about how you knew so much. If you went deep enough and long enough, you had to pay attention to the line between whom you worked for and whom you worked against. Some people lost sight of it. Those people usually ended up dead.
“You think the Guild had them killed?” I asked.
“Do you want answers or guesses? In coming to me, you have been thrown off the trail by Melusine’s suspicions. Do you prefer I send you down another false trail?” he asked.
In the world of undercover, it wasn’t a coincidence when two people who knew each other were killed within days of each other. “But you don’t know if the Guild was responsible.”
“I am saying that they provided valuable information on Maeve’s troop movements. Now they do not,” he said.
I nodded as if I agreed and understood. Now I had to decide what he was really telling me. Implicating the Guild but claiming he didn’t know might mean he wanted me to go after the Guild. On the other hand, he merely might be helping me sort through the evidence.
“What about the merrow that died? Was she involved with the other two?” I asked.
“That one is a puzzle. She was someone who worked for Melusine, then joined Eorla’s cause,” he said.
“Melusine is the reason I’m asking you,” I said.
He chuckled. “She has always enjoyed stirring the pot between the Guild and the Consortium.”
“All the solitaries do,” I said.
“Indeed. While I do not agree with what Eorla has done, she has given the solitaries hope that someone stands with them instead of relying on the whims of foreign kings and queens,” he said.
“That’s the fey in a nutshell. Today’s friend is tomorrow’s enemy,” I said.
“Yes. What concerns me more is that someone in our operations is a traitor. Undercover agents are understandable. Killing those agents is unacceptable. It is often difficult knowing whom to trust and whom to believe,” he said.
A small prickle went up my spine. When the dwarf Brokke knew he was dying, he told me to believe Bastian. Coming from someone who saw the future, it was hard advice to ignore. Sometimes you had to trust people who lied to you. Sometimes you had to believe people who didn’t act in your best interest. The hard part was knowing when to do which.
Bastian gave me the tiniest smile. “Are we done, Mr. Grey?”
I sighed. “Are we ever?”
21
I paced a warehouse roof in the northern edge of the Tangle as evening settled in. A harbor breeze blew over the desolate remains of buildings that had gone down in a firestorm. The heat had been so intense that the bricks crumbled to dust. From the Tangle to the center of the Weird, entire city blocks had become a wasteland of shattered concrete and brownstone. That was the legacy of a war, a prelude to the conflict Maeve wanted between the Celts and Teuts. Maeve’s war wouldn’t be restricted to a few blocks in a lost neighborhood. She wanted to take countries. She would leave them in worse shape than the soot-stained debris scattering in the wind below my feet.
Gillen Yor had been intrigued over the phone when I pitched him my idea about Manus ap Eagan and the stone bowl. Even Gillen—who stayed out of politics—knew that Eagan was needed in the face of the coming crisis. He arranged for someone to pick me up and bring me out to Brookline, where Eagan lay dying in his own bed.
The exposure of Donor’s death and his espionage tore through the media like its own raging fire. No longer content to let her public-relations people make accusations, Maeve had come out of her compound to accuse the Consortium of an act of war. Technically, she was right—Donor did target and destroy a Guildhouse. He also planned to step it up afterward and go after Maeve more directly. All that said, Maeve was now using the actions of a dead man to justify her own start of a war.
She had moved her troops across the English Channel. Great mist walls of essence hiding her forces had sprung up on sea and land. She had informed Washington that she was sending troops to the U.S. as a precautionary measure. The president agreed, and the American people were distracted by a new argument with Congress over foreign troops on American soil. Meanwhile, the mist wall grew in Boston harbor.
Maeve must have been beyond elated. The Consortium was in chaos, so she had no true opposition there—yet. The human government was rolling over for her, content to let her be the harbinger of war against an enemy they already feared. All of it was in service to her plans. She had moved too quickly for her strategy to be anything but planned. She had wanted this war for a long time.
I understood why Eorla was considering going to Germany. Even if she didn’t take the throne, the Teuts were her people. She had defended them for over a century, lived among them even longer. No one wanted to watch their heritage disappear on the point of a sword. But if she did go, Boston—and the U.S.—would lose a strong opposition voice.
For all her flattery, I didn’t think I could be that voice. I understood her logic—everyone hated me anyway except the people I cared most about. She hadn’t put it that way, but that was the crux of it. Boston needed someone respected—and powerful—to oppose Maeve, if not as an enemy, at least as the friendly opposition. Briallen wouldn’t do it. MacGoren wouldn’t even think of it. The one person that would be able to stand up to Maeve was in a coma.
Manus ap Eagan had been Guildmaster of Boston my entire life. He was also a respected underKing of the Seelie Court. Unfortunately, he had been dying for three years. His illness started as a wasting disease, the fat melting off his frame, then the muscle. The tremendous reserve of essence that his kind enjoyed seeped away day by day.