“It’s not like the Japs would have stopped shooting long enough to let him off. They have no loyalty to their snitches,” Lance said. Being a very long-time Grimnoir, he didn’t seem quite so moved over the death of an Imperium stooge.
Genesse was looking at the broken glass. “There’ll be an armada waiting in Siberia for us now.”
“Good thing we weren’t going there to begin with,” Sullivan said. There was a brass phone mounted on the far wall of the rope room. Sullivan went over, cranked the handle a few times to charge it, then picked up the mouthpiece to raise the bridge. “Captain? This is Sullivan. It’s done. You know what to do.”
“I was wondering why you were lying during your briefing,” Willis said. “Hey, can’t blame a guy for using his Power a little. I didn’t delve in or anything, but the idea that the whole thing was a setup was right at the surface during your talk.”
“Not bad.” Sullivan hadn’t felt any intrusion. The kid was good. He’d have to watch himself better in the future.
“Fuller never built a device that could spot the Pathfinder. Fuller’s brilliant. He can see magic and tweak most any design to get results, but he didn’t know near enough about how that sort of spell worked to even try,” Lance’s mouse said. “Once Fuller sees how their magic looks, maybe, but until then, he’s stuck.”
“But according to Toru, the Chairman’s Cogs have already built some sort of Enemy detector,” Sullivan finished. “That’s where we’re heading.”
Heinrich swam back up through the floor, alone. He solidified, then knocked his hands together, as if dusting them off. “I for one am curious to see how many more Imperium swine we have aboard.”
Lance’s mouse chuckled. “However many are left, you can bet your ass the next one will be a whole lot more careful.”
The Traveler creaked and swayed as they changed course.
The Reader was still confused, but was probably too scared of the other knights’ dangerous reputations to try and read their minds now. Curiosity was great and all, until you were palling around with the knights who’d fought the Chairman and lived to talk about it. “So where are we going?”
“Santa’s workshop,” Lance supplied, which just seemed to confuse the poor Reader even more.
Sullivan just shook his head. He was never much for secrets anyway. “The North Pole.”
Paris, France
Inside a little café in Paris, Faye sat impatiently across from the Grimnoir elder who’d voted to have her murdered, while he took his sweet time sipping a fancy little coffee and watching people walk by in the rain.
“Are you about done yet?” Faye asked him.
“You have asked me that five times already,” Jacques answered pleasantly.
“Six. Because we’ve been here forever.” A few of the other patrons seemed to have overheard her, but nobody seemed particularly curious about someone speaking English. Jacques had said that this part of town had lots of American tourists and ex patriots—whatever that meant. The staff all seemed to know Jacques, like he was a regular here. “All you do is sit around and watch stuff and drink coffee.”
“Watching stuff and drinking coffee is how I choose to spend my time, my dear. I am retired.”
Faye snorted. Retirement was a crazy European idea where you just stopped working when you got old. Who’d ever heard of such a thing? Grandpa had been older than Jacques and he’d still milked cows until the day he’d died. And if he hadn’t been murdered by Madi, she knew Grandpa would still be milking cows today. “Retirement… You guys are funny. You’re still Grimnoir.” She pointed at the black and gold ring on his finger. It matched hers. “Grimnoir don’t retire.”
“That is not my job. That is my life. It is different.”
“Come on. You promised to teach me to be the Spellbound.”
Jacques took another sip. “Now you are putting words in my mouth. I promised you no such thing. You nearly flung me to my death, and I was nice enough to say I would try to help you in your quest for knowledge. I gave you my word that I would keep your presence secret from the society, and that I would help you as best I could. That is what I am attempting to do. I am a kindly old man and you are a bossy girl.”
“Bossy?” By Faye’s standards she hadn’t even been particularly threatening. Jacques still had all his limbs. “You’re supposed to be the big expert on this thing.”
“Indeed. I am…” He let that hang, but after she stared at him expectantly for an eternity, he finally sighed and gave in. “I will tell you everything I know about the Spellbound. Since the elders have decided not to interfere unless you begin to make bad decisions, the very least I can do is help you comprehend what you are dealing with. However, I believe the spell’s results are a direct reflection of the character of the user. Thus, in order for you to understand the Spellbound, I must first understand you.”
Faye waited. Jacques took another sip, then watched a young couple with colorful umbrellas walk by outside. The pretty young waitress came back by and Jacques smiled at her. He was a flirty old man. Then he went back to drinking and watching.
“Well?”
“My, you really are an impatient little girl, aren’t you?”
Faye groaned. “That’s because y’all are so slow.”
He nodded. “Interesting…”
“What?”
“You say that often. You find everyone slow. Don’t you find that at all peculiar?”
“Don’t blame me if all your brains don’t go fast like mine.” Even the smartest people she knew, like Mr. Browning or Mr. Sullivan, made decisions like their heads were filled with molasses. “Nothing personal.”
“I find that fascinating. It isn’t like you have been consorting with anyone slow-witted. I am at least passingly familiar with Pershing’s American knights. They are an intelligent, driven, some would say too-decisive group. Yet everything I’ve learned about you suggests that they seem sluggish to you. Every report I’ve read about you has mentioned it. The astute have commented upon the speed of your intellect, while most have merely dismissed you as being odd.”
“Reports? What reports?”
“After you came to our attention, we learned as much as we could about you. Travelers who live to adulthood are rare enough as it is, but anyone who could survive the Tokugawa and the firing of a Peace Ray becomes a person of interest. I have been speculating about the return of the Spellbound for a very long time. Of course I asked for reports about you. Did you think that I would vote on someone’s fate without knowing everything I could about them first? I am no barbarian.” Jacques paused to eat a cookie, and then washed it down with more coffee.
“I swear Jacques that if you don’t speed this up I’m gonna Travel out of here and take your head with me.”
He raised a single eyebrow. “Like you did with the Chairman’s hands? Now that was quite the impressive feat.”
Faye blushed. It was nice to get some credit once in a while. “Yeah. That was pretty neat.”
“Did you know that trick would work?”
She shrugged. “It seemed reasonable. I guessed it would work. It wasn’t like anyone else was having any luck.”
“Yet, you had never teleported and only taken part of an object before. So how did you know you could do this, especially against one such as the Chairman?”
Faye scowled. “It’s hard to explain. I just looked at everything that was going on, and everything that I’d heard, and I sorta just put it all together real quick.”