Friend, Harlequin thought, is the word we use to describe our very oldest enemies. He made a mental note to write that down, although he later forgot.
He had to actually look at the commlink screen to read the text message; the kind of anachronistic mannerism that caused onlookers under the age of twenty to discretely point and snicker. He didn’t care. He hated the various AR goggles and contacts he’d accumulated over the past decade nearly as much as he hated the augmented reality they enabled. It was hard enough, without superfi cial distractions and spam advertisements, to see every detail of everything that was really there.
What was really there, at the moment, was a sumptuously appointed corner room on the fi ft h fl oor of the hotel La Tremoille, a stone’s throw from the Champs-Élysées, in Paris, the city of lights (and shadows) that he had once loved so dearly. Half-fi nished on the room service tray beside him on the night stand was something expensive, served with toast points, and a local dwarven microbrew. Th e city’s nighttime lights were muted and airy through the silk curtains, which were drawn.
The text message was from noted elven politico, author, and general blowhard Ehran the Scribe. Decrypting the message revealed that it was written in English. Th e two of them knew languages the rest of the world had largely forgotten, which would have allowed perfectly secure communication, but Ehran seemed to feel that those languages should not be sullied through use in mundane correspondence, so he relied on technology instead of esoterica to provide privacy.
“Please reconsider what you’re doing,” Ehran’s text read, conveying some panicked urgency in spite of the mundane medium. “Th ey’re not prepared for this yet. It’s too soon. Th ey’re not ready for this war.”
“War?” Harlequin said, his commlink fl awlessly transcribing it to text. “Who said anything about starting a war?” He added a winking smiley face, and then sent it.
A knock came at the door. Harlequin sleepily slipped out of his body and fl ew through the wall, quickly recognizing the astral signa- ture waiting in the corridor as familiar, expected, and alone. Th e black spots, the negative space where cyberware had replaced natural fl esh, were all in the right place. He opened his physical eyes, rolled lithely off of the bed, and unlatched the door.
At fi rst, looking up, he was confused at the look on the troll’s face, and then he realized he was wearing his pajamas. Th e troll’s cybereyes were animated with a minutely detailed pattern of electric 1s and 0s, and he wore an armored suit of heavy white fabric, specially tailored to his enormous frame. Harlequin’s gaze shift ed from those outlandish eyes to the large armored briefcase that hung in the troll’s meaty right fi st. Th e manacase was specially designed and outfi tted to baffl e astral tracking and tampering, a nice touch.
“Is that it?” Harlequin asked, nonchalantly, in French. “It is,” Le Chifre said. “As promised, Mr. Harlech.”
“I trust the acquisition wasn’t too diffi cult for the team you used?”
particulars in a hotel corridor.
Harlequin went inside, leaving the door wide open, and retrieved a paper envelope from his nightstand, and handed it to the troll, who made it vanish, quick as any magic trick.
“Th ere’s the rest of the payment for you and your operatives that we agreed upon,” Harlequin said.
“Th ank you,” Le Chifre said, and smiled broadly. Th ere was an awkward pause.
“Th e case?” Harlequin asked, raising an eyebrow.
Th e troll handed it to him somewhat reluctantly. “Of course. And if you ever are in town again …”
“I’ll keep you in mind,” Harlequin said, recognizing the euphe- mism. He didn’t believe that Le Chifre or any of the assets he’d tapped were necessarily from Paris. He went into his room and shut the door, dropping the manacase on the bed. He fl ipped open the latches and opened it, and let the darkness within wash over his features. Satisfi ed, he shut it again, and went into the bathroom, the bright fl uorescents overhead automatically fl ickering on.
He turned to the vanity mirror. Without the motley on his face, with his hair dyed and muddy brown and combed back straight, he could almost imagine that he saw lines.
“You look like shit, old man,” he told his reflection. Odd. It seemed to be saying the same thing to him.
The Arab arms dealer regarded Harlequin with the cool, measured disdain he found comfortingly familiar, since he received it from so many. Th e fi xer, named Bel, was short, handsome, and serenely unselfconscious in his handsomeness. He was dark skinned, and his hair, mustache, and beard were all trimmed neat and short. His eyes were alarmingly blue for his complexion, perhaps cosmetically altered. He wore a tan canvas Aces High jacket—the Ace of Clubs model— over a desert-camoufl age suit. Between the two layers, Harlequin saw a heavily customized Remington Roomsweeper in a shoulder holster.
“You paint your face, like clown,” Bel said. “Why is this?” His English was not terrible, but heavily accented and idiomatic. Above the mosques and the glistening corporate skyscrapers that made up Constantinople’s skyline, a fire-colored sunset burned in a haze. Harlequin imagined the dust coloring the sky had been kicked up by the border skirmish between East Turkish forces and the Kurdish Autonomous Zone’s Peshmerga militia that he’d heard about in the
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north from here in Sultan Ahmet Square, formerly the Hippodrome. It was marginally more likely that a sandstorm was on the way.
“You’re not impressed with me, are you?” Harlequin said, in fl aw- less Arabic.
“He’s meeting you in person,” Bel replied in kind, unfazed. He cracked his neck. “He never meets anyone in person.” Th e runners and fi xers that had delivered Harlequin here had briefed him on this man, and he’d nodded, sagely, as though he knew all about it. In truth, he hadn’t, but it didn’t matter. Bel, real name unknown, probably Iraqi or Iranian in nationality, was wanted, badly, by Mossad, and by nearly every other spy agency with an eye on the Middle East. He’d avoided them all for decades, while organizing legendary runs under the noses of the IUM and the NIJ.
Looking in any direction from the center of the public square, Harlequin could see half a dozen 10,000 Daggers mercenaries. Th ey were responsible for the free city of Constantinople’s security. Bel—even with the quartet of rather conspicuous bodyguards that surrounded him, all of them most likely PKK—seemed unconcerned with them, as if he didn’t notice them at all. Most likely, he had his own arrangements made with them, allowing him to do business as easily in Constantinople as he did in the rest of the Middle East. Harlequin’s own people were just outside the park, waiting. He had told them he was fi ne entering alone, but they’d insisted on setting up a perimeter. Protective of him—or more likely, of their investment.
“He just likes me, that’s all,” Harlequin fi nally said, lamely, in English. “Everybody likes me.”
Suddenly, a warm wind passed over them from north to south, pushing forward, bending the palm trees and stirring his hair and the lawn’s grass with its passage. It was accompanied by a not completely unpleasant reptile smell. Harlequin smiled and turned to face south, where he saw a tall Persian woman entering the square. She was not just tall, but statuesque, voluptuously built, with long blue-black hair that fell, pin-straight, to her mid-back. She wore a dark gray pantsuit, velour, the cut too antiquated to qualify even as retro. Her eyes, when she opened them, were nearly all whites.
“Aden,” Bel announced, rather unnecessarily.
Harlequin felt suddenly self-conscious in his torn, “Ayatollah of Rock’n’Rolla” T-Shirt and mustard-stained jeans. He shift ed the manacase from one hand to the other. Whatever. Shit was vintage.
“You know, if I was a hardboiled private dick, I’d have trouble knowing which pronoun to use to refer to you in my ongoing fi rst person narrative,” Harlequin said.
“What do you want?” Aden’s voice thundered telepathically, basso profondo and distinctly male, in Harlequin’s mind. Th oughts took the form of language in metahuman minds, and in this case, that language was Aramaic, of all things. No accident. Harlequin nearly smiled—to think he’d believed Aden had no sense of humor.
“No one has time for pleasantries these days,” Harlequin said in Aramaic, and then tossed the briefcase contemptuously at Aden’s feet. It landed with a loud clatter, and slid forward until it was stopped by Aden’s boot heel. Harlequin saw with some satisfaction that Bel fl inched out of the way from where he was standing behind him, then blinked in surprise that Harlequin hadn’t been obliterated in a blast of killing fi re.
“What is it?” Aden asked, staring at the case. “Elaishón,” Harlequin said. Sperethiel.
Aden rolled his (her?) eyes and picked up the case, fl ipping it open. His frown deepened when he saw what was inside. He handed
“If this is your gift , raé, it is a poor one indeed. You must know I never wanted this.”
“Th e humans have a saying, about power. Something to the eff ect of the one most desirous of it being the least qualifi ed to wield it? Or maybe the reverse. I forget.” English.
“Th e mortals have many sayings,” Aden said dismissively. “You are entirely too fond of all of them. What do you expect fr om me in exchange for this gift ?”
“Nothing,” Harlequin said, smiling innocently. Or as close to innocent as he could manage. “I’m not bartering. I wouldn’t presume.” His grin widened. “I just want you to give the Shroud of Shadows back to Ghostwalker.”
Aden paused, considering. He turned towards the walled obelisk, and placed a hand—fi ngers like graceful snakes, with long, white, manicured nails—on the stone, closing his (her?) eyes in thought. Torn, Harlequin thought, surprised. He’s really torn, isn’t he?
“For this I left my studies?” Aden said, fi nally, turning his attention back to Harlequin. “I want no part of your plots, rinellé.“
“Really? Th e Orange Queen thought you’d want every part of it. She thought you’d be furious, actually. Aft er Ghostwalker’s little stunt at the rift left you comatose and helpless for the UCAS government to extract samples of your vitals for tracking. I wouldn’t want you misdi- recting that anger, Aden, at the poor little mortals.”
“The poor little mortals have forgotten their place. They need a reminder. I will deal with Ghostwalker’s transgression in my own time and in my own way. We are in agreement on this, and that is more impor- tant, for now. Age-old traditions must be preserved. And examples must be made. Th ere are greater confl icts at stake here. Greater enemies. And you are one of them.”
“Really?” Harlequin said, as words and symbols of power cascaded through his mind at the speed of light, tumbling trippingly past his murmuring lips. Each of Bel’s bodyguards slumped over, asleep, as though succumbing to days and days of accumulated fatigue. Bel himself “willingly” handed the briefcase back to Harlequin, looking completely bewildered as to why he’d done so for a moment, before bodily calcifying into a stone statue of himself, a new decoration added to the square.
Distantly, Harlequin registered the sound of suppressed gunfi re as a hail of stick ‘n’ shock rounds from concealed shooters dropped the 10,000 Daggers mercenaries that had begun converging on his position, sending innocent bystanders scattering and pigeons fi lling the sky in mass exodus from the square. But even with all this, the bulk of Harlequin’s attention never left Aden. “Perhaps Lofwyr will be more appreciative of this gift , then, since you don’t want it.”
“You know, I could kill you where you stand,” Aden said, calmly, as if commenting on the weather.
Harlequin smiled so savagely that the corners of his rouged mouth seemed to be on the verge of tinting his earlobes. “You could certainly try,” he said, and rattled the swordbelt he wore slung low over his jeans. Th e belt and the rapier in its holster had been invisible and inaudible as he wandered the streets of the city. To some degree, it was false bravado. Harlequin was far from sure of his chances. Aden had leveled the city of Tehran—that was the rage Harlequin had hoped to turn against Denver, aft er all. Harlequin was many things, he was no easy kill, but he was not a city.
What seemed like an eternity passed between them, the square seemingly emptied of all other motion and sound, as Harlequin gathered all of his magical defenses around himself, plotted his move if worst came
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sound—and Harlequin joined him. It was either laugh or kill each other, aft er all.
“You keep it,” Harlequin said, setting the briefcase slowly on the ground. “Dunkelzahn wanted you to have it, and that’s good enough for me.”
“Giving it to Lofwyr would have been foolish,” Aden said. “He feels the same way as I do, only more so, if possible.” He was, of course, right, and it had been an unlikely gambit to expect Aden’s antipathy toward Lofwyr to outweigh his ability to reason. Alamais, on the other hand, might have been a diff erent story.
“I meant no disrespect, perritaesa,” Harlequin said. “My reputa- tion as … hotheaded is well deserved. I hope that the next time we meet, it’s under friendlier terms.” He doubted that would be the case; as likely as not, the next time they met, only one of them would leave. Th at seemed to be the way things were going, the whole world ‘round.
Hands in pockets, he turned to go. Th e runners he’d hired were in the process of falling back to a prearranged safe house, a wise move aft er fi ring on Constantinople’s security forces. He would meet them there.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Aden asked, when he reached twenty paces.
Harlequin turned around, slapped his forehead with the heel of his hand, and chuckled.
With a completely unnecessary snap of his fi ngers, Bel turned, staggering and gasping, back to flesh. By the time he had clawed his Roomsweeper free of its holster, spinning and snarling in rage, Harlequin was gone.
Leaning against the window of the Gulfstream-Luxe V’s cabin as it taxied to take off , en route to the next item on his carefully compiled mental list—titled “Enemies of my Enemy”—he received another text from Ehran.
“At least think about what you’re doing. You should know better than anyone that these things take time and planning. Sometimes centuries of it. You’re rushing this, and you’re going to make dangerous mistakes. Besides, shouldn’t you be reining in Gwynneplaine? It’s doing considerable damage back in Seattle. And not just to your reputation.”
Harlequin deleted it unanswered.
He had a bigger fi sh to fry. His darker half would have to wait.
Th e old fashioned videophone on the wall rang, stirring him from the groggy recesses of sleep. He dragged himself out of bed, the sheets cool as they fell from his naked skin, and found his way to the phone by memory. Dim gray predawn light that seeped in the computer- polarized windows.
“What is it?” he asked, in a Spanish dialect that hadn’t existed, exactly, before he’d been born. He didn’t look at the screen, but at the girl in the bed, the graceful curve of tanned leg, thigh, and hip that rose from the silk sheets. He felt a tiny prickle of guilt; she was 19. Far too young for him, twenty or thirty years too young, even for how he appeared aft er Léonization.
“Sorry to wake you at this hour, Mr. Chavez. Th ere is someone waiting in your offi ce, sir,” answered the voice on the other side of the line. It belonged to David Martinez, his personal secretary and aide, a sleekly groomed young corporate professional.
Domingo Chavez blinked and looked at the clock on the video phone, turning to it for the fi rst time.
“Ridiculous. I don’t have any appointments scheduled until 10:30,” Chavez said.
“He didn’t … make an appointment, exactly.”
“Th en have security throw him out! Why are you calling me with this—”
“Sir, you don’t understand. He’s in your offi ce.”
“In my offi ce? In the offi ce?” Chavez was becoming quite loud. Th e girl murmured sleepily, a plea for quiet. He ignored her. “Send in a team of Ocelomeh at once!”
“I did sir, immediately,” Martinez said. “And?”
“And they … er … they were forced to withdraw.”
Chavez was nearly stunned. He looked around him for his bath- robe, then barked at the girl to bring it to him. She rose, frightened, and began searching for it as well, near panic. Chavez tried to plan his next move. He did not want any of the other members of the board to fi nd out about this embarrassment, which limited the military muscle he could bring to bear. Unless this damn fool Martinez already had.
“Tell me you didn’t—” Chavez began.
“He asked for you, sir,” Martinez interrupted. Timidly.
“He what?” Chavez said, as the girl tried to put the bathrobe on him. He slapped her away dismissively, and shrugged it on himself. Th en he realized he’d been asking the wrong questions. “Who is this crazy asshole?”
Th e skies over Tenochtitlán were unusually clear that morning, with a pollution index of only 3.6, as an armed and armored helicopter brought Chavez and his escort of Ocelomeh quickly from his residence to the helipad nearest his offi ce. Martinez had pleaded with him to let the Jaguar Guards take him to a previously arranged, secure safehouse
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mage that had forced his way into his offi ce could have chemical or biological weapons with him, a suitcase, or God-only-knows-what. Th e entire wing of the arcology was being evacuated, and wouldn’t he please listen to reason rather than charging in headlong?
As it turned out, he wouldn’t. Chavez would never run from a fi ght.