Mayer Alan Brenner - Spell of Fate

“The Scapula seems to specialize in making people nervous,” commented Leen. “You seem better at making them aggravated.”

“You’re not the first one to say that. Arznaak makes me nervous, all right. Especially when I don’t know what he’s up to.”

“Yes, well, you’re not the only one around with that point of view.” What would her brother do with this situation? Leave Max to his fate or string him along? “How much do you know about the Archives?”

“Not as much as I’d like to.”

“Your immediate reflex is to be evasive, do you know that? That’s a habit you might want to try to fight.”

To Leen’s satisfaction, Max looked thoroughly disgruntled. Then he seemed to change his mind about something. “I know about Creeley, of course,” he said. “I’ve read some of his stuff.”

“Creeley? Not the lost papers?” Darn, it had come out before she’d even had a chance to think.

“Nothing’s lost if you know the right place to look,” Max said. “I may be able to get hold of them for you, but anyway I remember most of the interesting stuff. Let’s see, I know about -”

“What do you know about the foundation of the Archives?” Leen interrupted. Max’s response was a slow, calculating, speculative glance from beneath an upraised eyebrow. Uh, oh, Leen thought. I may have overstepped on that one. “How much does anyone know about that?” he said.

Leen paused. She was thinking about motivation. Not just anyone off the street would want to get into the Archives. Even if they knew the real Archives existed, which you could say about few enough people in the first place. What was really going on here? What was he after?

Well, she hadn’t exactly asked him. So she did.

To his own surprise, Max found himself telling her. Not everything - more than he expected, certainly, but not the details of his current scheme - although Leen was enough of an outsider that he might actually be able to tell her that too and maybe get some useful comments in return; still, he was spouting enough to -

“You are right, there,” Leen said. “There is Archival material on some of the gods, and possibly even some vulnerability data, too.”

It was clear to Max that he was out of his element. What had he been talking about? What kind of spell was he under here? Finding material on the gods, of course, right. “I’m particularly looking for loopholes or weaknesses I can exploit,” added Max. “At the moment concerning this one in particular.”

“I stand a better chance of finding it quickly than you would, blundering around without knowing where anything is ... unless you do know where things are, I suppose.”

“Not the way you do, I’m sure.”

Leen regarded him. “I don’t know about you, I think you should know that. I don’t know whether - well, let’s just say I don’t know. But whatever you’re really doing here, whether I trust you or not, there’s something you still may be able to help me with. What’s a little subterfuge between friends, I guess?” Leen shook her head, more to clear it than for effect. Stop lollygagging, she thought. “Look, you’re an antiquarian, a technologist, an artifact specialist, right?”

“I try.”

“Okay, then. I want you to look at something.” She had already started moving again on the path. “Well, come on. What are you waiting for?”

This is not what I expected, Max was thinking. He didn’t know what he’d expected, not really, but this certainly wasn’t it. When you’re used to interpersonal relationships characterized by distrust and stabbing in the back you -

“Come on. Or would you prefer me to feed you to the guardians right now, instead of only potentially later?”

The guardians were clearly withholding their own final judgment too, but as Max launched himself again into motion as well he could feel their willingness to follow Leen’s lead, at least for the moment. With Leen blazing the trail and the guard systems contenting themselves with an occasional querulous jab to remind him who was really in charge, the short trip back to the Archival terminus was the easiest of the several passages he’d experienced. Max knew that was just as well. Between the pummeling from the Watermark and his equally unbalancing encounter with Leen he was not exactly at his prime.

Once through the door, Leen made the expected beeline to check on Robin. Max was lagging behind. “What’s the matter now?” Leen said. “Afraid of what I’ll find?”

“Of course I’m not afraid what you’ll find,” Max growled. “I’m not fond of kids, that’s all.”

Leen now had the door to Robin’s room open. “You can’t hate Robin,” she said, smiling at the occupant. “Look at him - you can’t hate him.”

“Is the man in the funny black suit still there?” Robin said.

“Come on,” Leen ordered, “say hello to Robin.”

“Yes,” Max said under his breath, so that Leen wasn’t quite sure he was actually speaking, “I do. Especially right at the moment.” Then, in his full voice, Max said with convincing sincerity, “Hi there, Robin. How you doing?”

“I think he likes you,” Leen told Max as they retreated into the Archives a few moments later, leaving Robin again to his pursuits.

“I guess that’s a good start,” Max said. “Isn’t it? Or maybe it’s a question of whether Robin’s judgment becomes a generalized response.”

“You want to wedge your own foot deeper down your throat, be my guest. Turn here.”

Max, continuing to trail Leen, pulled off his eye-slit mask and stuffed it roughly in one oversized pocket. This was certainly not the sort of situation where he’d ever imagined he could even be entertaining the question of whether he might have met his match. He –

What was Leen doing, down on her knees in front of that bookcase?

Oh. Oh! “You found this?” Max said.

“Yes. No; actually Robin found it.”

“I thought he showed potential,” Max muttered. “It’s not a trap.”

“Is that a question or -”

“It was a gratuitous remark,” he said, moving slowly down the tight circular stair. “Sometimes I think out loud... Obviously you’ve been through here, you’ve cleaned the place up, if there’d been a trap you would have ... look at this, look at this.” Max approached the alloy wall and the thick dark window. “A metal detector would go berserk in here. You tried probes and got nothing?”

“Nothing,” Leen said. She had seated herself a half-turn above him on the staircase and was watching him prowl the compact room. “Seems like a total null, a blank. Such as what you tried to pull on the guardians and me.”

“So you’re hoping it’ll take one to know one? Well, could be. What did this glass panel look like when you first broke in here?”

“Like it does now, except dustier.”

Max had his face scrunched up against the panel in question, apparently to bring his eye as close to the surface as possible. “If you want my ideas,” he said, in a muffled voice, “you’d be better off telling me whatever you can. There were lights, right? Little round glowing lights?”

“How did you - you weren’t in here the other time you broke -”

“Hold on a second, hold on. I heard about one of these things once, that’s all.”

“There’s another one of these somewhere?”

“That would seem to be the case,” Max stated. “You hear stories like this, you have to figure they’re a myth, except sometimes they’re not. This other one was supposed to be in the tower of one of the gods. There’s so much garbage out there about the gods, I figured, well, who cares anyway, right? It’s not like I was planning to burgle another god, especially one who was probably mythical himself.”