WebMage (6 page)

"If you'd listen instead of running your mouth you'd know."

I waved an admonishing finger, but my heart wasn't really in it. I owed Melchior too much to treat him harshly. Not that I could let him know that, or I'd never get another jot of work out of him.

He continued. "She also wants you to check in and let her know what's happened as soon as possible. She sounds rather concerned for your welfare, though I can't imagine why. You're far more trouble than she deserves."

"Mel, you're opinionating again."

"Was I? Heavens! I hadn't noticed. I'd better be more careful!"

I sighed. "Forget it. Just send a reply. Tell her I'm alive—"

"Barely," said Mel.

"Hit the high points of where we are and how we got here. Tell her I owe her big-time, tag on some flowery language, and send it."

"Compiling," he said, an abstracted look in his eyes. "Editing. Embellishing. Send-aieee!" He jumped as though he'd been goosed.

"What's the matter, Mel?"

"I don't know. I was accessing the smtp server when I got a big jolt, like I'd stuck my finger in a socket. I'm not sure what happ…" He trailed off and pointed at the floor by the foot of my bed.

I felt a shiver run down my spine. A pale blue light shone there as though from an overhead spotlight, the unmistakable signature of an incoming locus transfer.

My first impulse was to run for it, but there was no way I was going to get an Up link set up and gate out in time. Hell, in the shape I was in, I probably couldn't even get out of bed. I pulled my .45 from the holster Melchior had hung on the headboard.

Like an image fading in on a piece of instamatic film, a figure appeared in the light. It carried a slender sword in its right hand and a diamond-shaped buckler in its left. Red-and-gold lamalar armor covered it from head to toe, and for a second I thought Moric had returned from the dead. I pulled the trigger convulsively in the instant the light vanished, when the figure would be most vulnerable.

But she—and I realized it was a woman then, her breastplate left little doubt—brought her left arm up with a speed that defied vision. Buckler met bullet, and the latter vanished as though it had never been. Before I could fire again she was at the side of my bed. She flicked her blade, slapping the back of my gun hand. There was a flash at the contact, and my arm went numb. The pistol slid from my limp grasp, and the tip of her sword moved to hover above my left eye.

It was impossible to focus on something that close, and I didn't really want to think about it in any case, so I shifted my attention to the woman. She was tall and slender, qualities emphasized by her armor. With this second look I found myself wondering how I could ever have mistaken her for Moric. Besides the obvious clue of the breastplate, the helm was wrong. Instead of a Samurai's demon face, this helm bore the classic T-slit of a Greek hoplite. The colors were wrong as well. Moric's primary was red, but dried blood, not flame. Even more of a contrast, his secondary was bruise blue, miles away from my visitor's cheery gold.

"You have me at a disadvantage, madam," I said.

"Only through the agency of your own idiocy!" The voice was muffled by the golden glass that sealed the T of her helm, but anger suffused it.

"Pardon?"

"I go to all the trouble of pulling your sorry tail out from under the rocker, and what's the first thing you do? Check your e-mail. Fool!"

"Cerice?"

"Of course it's Cerice," she said, sheathing her sword. "Do you think you'd still be alive if it wasn't? Honestly, I don't think you have the sense of a lobotomized tree sloth."

She reached up and caught the crest of her helm, pulling it off. Her long icy hair was braided and bound twice around her head in a coronet that looked elegant while providing an added layer of shock protection. She turned to my familiar, who had just appeared from somewhere in the vicinity of the headboard.

"I don't know how you put up with it, Mel."

"It's a trial, but who else is going to take care of him? Did you bring Shara?"

In response she pulled a virulently purple laptop out of a compartment in the back of her armor. She set it on the floor, where it stretched and twisted into an equally purple webgoblin. Shara was built on a sort of exaggerated hourglass model, and when she moved she swayed a great deal more than mere locomotion required.

In appearance she's sort of a miniature version of Mae West except that her teeth are wickedly sharp, and her hair tends to move of its own accord. As soon as her transformation was complete, she winked one violet eye at Mel and nodded for him to follow her into the corner. The pair scampered off to talk about whatever it is that familiars talk about, and Cerice returned her attention to me.

"Where was I?" she asked.

"I believe you were dressing me down for blatant stupidity."

"Thank you," she said in a sweet contralto, and it was obvious she meant it. Then she proceeded to chew me out in terms any drill sergeant would have been proud of.

"If you're ready to take a breather," I said when she ran down, "I've got a couple of questions and a request."

"What are they?"

"First, how did you find me?"

She paused for a moment, as though weighing her words before speaking. "Isn't it obvious? I embedded a virus in my message to you. It did a quick location scan when you downloaded it. When you went to send a reply, it hitched a ride on the carrier wave to tell me where it was."

That didn't sound feasible, but who was I to argue with success.

"The rest was easy," she continued, "since you hadn't even bothered to set up the most rudimentary wards. I'm frankly shocked that either tactic worked, but that just goes to illustrate my earlier point about your being a low-grade moron. At least you had the sense to shoot first and ask questions later when I arrived. Not that it would have helped if that was the best you could do. Oh, Ravirn." This last was said with a sort of gentle affection as she took a seat beside me on the low bed. Pulling her gauntlets off, she took my right hand between hers. "What am I going to do with you?"

"I could entertain a couple of thoughts on the subject, but they might be best discussed at a later time, as I'm currently somewhat incapacitated. Besides, I have other, more immediate concerns. For example, do you think anyone else could duplicate your performance?"

"Absolutely not," she said.

I wondered at her conviction. There are very few things one hacker can do that another can't replicate. Clearly she knew something she didn't believe anyone else did. But it would have been both rude and futile to try to get her to reveal her hole card.

She continued, "I did find a couple of watchdog programs staking out your e-mail server, but they weren't exactly grade one. I doubt they could have backtracked the link you used to access the mail queue. I tried that and got lost in a maze of subroutines. I'd really like to know how you did that."

"If you ask very sweetly, I might be willing to trade techniques," I replied. "Melchior runs a heavy-duty virus scan on all incoming mail, and I'd love to know why he didn't catch yours."

"Perhaps he wasn't looking in the right place."

"I'll have to think about that. In the meantime I still have a pending request."

"You do indeed. What is it?"

"I'd like you to take a look at my injuries and see what you can do. You're better with healing magic than I am, and I'm feeling awfully vulnerable stuck here on my back."

"I'm sorry," she said, touching the bandage on my neck. "I should have done that before I snarled at you. You do look a bit like a Rottweiler's favorite chew toy." She shook a finger admonishingly. "That doesn't mean I shouldn't have said any of that. I just should have taken care of your injuries first. Let me get a bit more comfortable, then I'll have a look."

She quickly stripped off her armor and padding. Underneath she wore scarlet tights and a very thin gold tunic, neither of which did much to conceal her form. She was tall and slender, with long legs and high, small breasts. Her eyes were a blue that was simultaneously quite pale and shockingly intense. She unbraided her hair and let it fall in a long, white cascade, almost covering ears that were slightly more finely pointed than mine. Her nose was small and straight, with just a hint of an upturn at the tip. High cheekbones and a pointed jaw framed a generous mouth and full lips.

"Gods, but I hate armor," she said, stretching lithely. It was worth watching. "It always feels like a poorly fitted underwire bra worn over the whole body." She grinned. "But that probably doesn't mean much to you, does it."

I shrugged.

"Of course not." She dropped onto the bed next to me. "I'm going to start now, don't move."

I lay very still while Cerice worked on me. A quietly whistled spell and a gentle caress that traced the line of the arrow crease on my neck sealed the wound. As Cerice leaned over me to work, it became very hard to keep my mind off the fact that she was an extremely attractive woman. After taking care of my neck, she stripped the blanket down to my waist and started to unwrap the bandages around my cracked ribs.

"Oh my," she said as she peeled the last of the tape and gauze away.

From the hips upward my skin was a mottled mix of yellow and purple. I was about to tell her it felt better than it looked when she placed her palms firmly on my chest. Her hands were very cold, and I let out a startled yip. One corner of her mouth turned up in a sort of mischievous half smile, but she didn't say a word. Instead, she started to hum. The sound came from deep in her throat and slid weirdly up and down the scale. As she hummed, she slowly slid her hands down my sides. They started out icy cold, but seemed almost painfully hot when they eventually came to rest with her thumbs pressed into the soft flesh inside the points of my hips.

"Breathe," she said, her half smile becoming a full one.

Sheepishly, I drew in a great lungful of air and with it the scent of Cerice. It was sweet with the fragrance of her lilac perfume, and sharp with perspiration brought on by her magical labors on my behalf. I was suddenly very aware that her hands were still pressed tightly against my hips. They lingered there for just a moment longer. Then she reached up to take my left hand. I felt the touch of her fingers long after they had moved on.

She kneaded my injured hand between her own, then shook her head. "What the hell did you do?"

For the first time since I'd bitten off my fingertip I really looked at my pinkie. The end of it was gone of course. That was no surprise. What was startling was the fact that the finger looked as though it had never possessed another knuckle. It ended in smooth clean flesh without a trace of scarring. Anyone who didn't know that I used to have a normal finger would have assumed it was a birth defect.

"I bit it off," I said.

"You what!?" she asked, plainly appalled.

"I had to. It was for a spell. I'd be dead if I hadn't."

"I guess it's a fair trade then."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"The injury is permanent. Open your inner eye and you'll see what I mean."

Viewed with the second sight, the missing knuckle appeared still to be on my hand, but it was completely magically dead. It looked as though it had been sorcerously cauterized, which I suppose it had.

Then I had to go back and give Cerice the whole story from the point at which I'd escaped from Atropos's bedroom. I knew she wouldn't believe a word I said if I told her my real reasons for being there, so I said it had been something of a fishing expedition. She let me get away with that, probably because of my injuries, but it was plain she wasn't really satisfied. Whether that was due to some subtle effect of the curse or just her natural skepticism, I couldn't tell. Either way, I was going to have to give her more information at some later point if I wanted to stay in her good graces, which was, I discovered, a place I very much wanted to be. After I'd brought her up to date, she took a look at my knee.

"You really got yourself torn up, didn't you, Ravirn?" she asked after a few minutes. "This knee needs the help of a good surgeon who won't ask too many awkward questions. Fortunately, I know just the fellow."

"I'm not sure I understand."

"You busted the cap into a lot of little, tiny pieces. Your anterior meniscus has multiple tears, and the rest of your cartilage looks like it went through a salad shooter. It'd take a really good orthopedist ten hours just to piece the cap back together. Combined with the other damage, you're looking at several months of recovery, years if you were human, and a lot of really vicious physical therapy."

"I can't afford that much time with restricted mobility, Cerice. There are too many people who'd like to see me dead."

"I know. That's why I said what I did. I can cast spells that'll weld the bone back into one piece, and seal up the various other holes you've put in the tissue. But it's all scrambled, and I'm not sure where everything belongs. My surgeon friend can put the jigsaw in the right order, after which I can fix it properly. Call it eight hours on the operating table, ninety minutes of spell work, and about a week convalescing."

"I can't do that. If Burnt Offerings worked, Atropos believes I'm dead. I need her to keep believing that at least until I'm healthy enough to run. Otherwise, I might as well hand her my head in person. Every ltp link uses the Fate servers and shows up in the routine data reports. You know that as well as I do. Even with a really clean hack to block my signature, I'd be running a risk that Atropos would spot me. If that happens, I'm dead. It's got to be here, and it's got to be you, Cerice. I don't have anybody else."

"The other Fates only agreed to one attempt on your life. You should be safe enough."

"Do you honestly believe Atropos is going to let me go after I killed Moric?"

"I don't like it," said Cerice, biting her lip. "If this isn't done right, it could cause you problems for the rest of your life."

"If Atropos finds me before I can defend myself, there won't be a rest of my life."

She glared at me and looked like she wanted to argue.