Carrie Vaughn - Discord's Apple

The Greek wandered, apparently aimlessly, for an hour or so. He seemed to be making a circuit of the town. He kept to the outskirts, the backstreets, where the hyperactive authorities weren’t likely to see him and take note.

Toward nightfall, he reached an empty house at the end of a street overgrown with weeds. The place was boarded up, with a faded FOR RENT sign tucked in the door. It might have been empty for years. The man started to open the back door—the lock was broken, but rigged in such a way that it still appeared secure when the door was in place. He gave a little jerk, and it popped open.

Once he had it open a crack, he looked behind. “You can stop following me now.”

Robin winked to visibility, keeping his expression a bored mask to disguise his annoyance at being discovered. Was the man a magician as well? Hera had called him a slave, but perhaps he was hiding something. Oh, he was definitely hiding something. Robin had only to discover what. Peel the man like a grape, and wouldn’t that be fun?

Robin leaned his back against the wall and crossed his arms. The light was fading; the Greek was little more than a shadow, but Robin’s night vision was excellent. He doubted the Greek could study him half as well.

“Good evening, sir,” Robin said.

Unflustered, the Greek let his arms hang relaxed at his side. More than familiar with magic, he was comfortable with it. But if he were a magician himself, surely Hera would know that about him.

“What do you want?” he said.

“Information. I want to learn more about you,” Robin said lightly.

He chuckled. “I’m sure you’ve already learned enough.”

“Never,” Robin said, grinning.

“You’re not one of the old gods.” It was a statement of fact, not a question.

“And would you recognize one of the old gods if you met one?”

“I think I would.”

He sounded so sure of himself. “I learned my trade from some of the old ones. Hermes, Loki, a bit from Coyote, Hanuman—but I am a simple sprite, nothing more.”

“Then you’re a troublemaker. But—you’re old enough to know Hermes?”

No, he wasn’t—merely a devotee of the old one’s art. But he didn’t have to give that away. Robin shrugged. “I’m old enough. Now, my turn for a question: What are you?”

His smile was grim. “Cursed.”

“And your interest in the Walker house is—?”

He leaned against the doorframe and crossed his arms, matching Robin’s pose. “Who says my interest is in the house?”

That puzzled Robin for a moment. His own quest had been so focused on the artifact, had he failed to see what else was happening? Laughable, to assume everyone would have the same goal as himself.

Thoughtful, Robin said, “Ah, I see. Or you could be throwing me off the scent. Attempting to confuse me. Deflecting attention from what you really want.”

“Or not.”

“What would you do to keep her safe?”

At last, Robin put him on the defensive. His shoulders clenched, though his face betrayed no emotion. Before he could answer, Robin said, “My mistress wishes to meet you. She believes you could both benefit from an alliance. Will you come with me to meet her?”

He thought for a moment the Greek slave was going to refuse. The hesitation could only mean that he was considering refusing. Finally, though, he nodded, and followed Robin into the twilight.

The second book of Virgil’s Aeneid told the story of Troy’s last day in vivid, terrifying detail. The rest of the epic was filled with tragedies, battles, lists of ancestors, warriors, wandering travels, catalogs of the dead, and destiny. But none of it held the shock and immediacy of the telling of the fall of Troy. The guy could have written for comic books, the way he painted the scenes and depicted characters with four-color fervor from one episode to the next. Evie could see it all, was scripting it in her mind even as she read. How about it, Bruce—we revive Classics Illustrated. . . .

Something in the story held Alex’s secret. That thought nagged her through her reading, which lasted after nightfall, and long after she should have been hungry. She didn’t forget to worry about her father. Every half hour, or sooner, she looked toward his bedroom. She could go check on him, but didn’t want to wake him if he slept. So she looked at Queen Mab, who was curled up, napping. If something were wrong with her father, Evie felt sure Mab would know.

She found pen and paper and made a list, marking every time she encountered a likely character in the story. There were so many. She trusted the story, pretending it was real and not made up for dramatic effect. If a character died, she crossed the name off the list. If the character died in another story—Agamemnon, for example—she crossed him off the list.

That still left her with a dauntingly long list of characters with polysyllabic names and a tendency to get into trouble.

The Walker library had a wide selection of mythological references, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and the like. Had someone—her father, her grandfather?—tried to identify the objects in the basement? Could the golden fleece be that Golden Fleece? And the shoes, the apples, the enchanted ball gowns, the harps, the spears—Some of the books were very old.

She looked up names in the mythological encyclopedias. She crossed off more of them if she found they’d met untimely ends elsewhere. Many names still remained. Could Alex be Odysseus? He seemed to fade out of the stories, the Odyssey ending with the start of another adventure. She rather hoped he got to live to a ripe and happy old age, with everything he’d had to put up with. Evie thought she’d like to meet Odysseus, out of any of the names on the list.

As if he’d been a real person and not a story.

Merlin said the true king would come to retrieve the sword from the stone, in their backyard. Merlin, as if he was a real person who’d yelled at her father through the closed door.

Alex could be anyone. Or none of them. He was playing mind games with her. She put the books away, crumpled her list, and threw it on the floor. She ate one of the wilted sandwiches, thought about going to bed, but decided she wasn’t tired.

She powered up her laptop.

Write anything. How long had it been since she’d done that? No scripts, no deadlines, no proposals for new projects to pay the rent.

Maybe she should try that novel.

Tracker’s story was still unfinished, still tickling her mind, not leaving room for new ideas. She picked up the thread again. Tracker, Jeeves, and Matchlock were traveling across Siberia in search of American spies to rescue. Jeeves had just guessed her secret—she was in love with their commander. Rather cliché, that, looking back on it. Evie could put a twist in it somehow. Then they were attacked. Which was a cop-out, really.

But she could explain it away. The Russians were suspicious of the Americans, had been following them, wanted to stop them, and hired mercenaries to make the attack look like the work of terrorists. Tracker was separated from Jeeves and Matchlock.

The Jeep swerved to avoid an incoming missile—the bastards had rocket launchers. Sheltered by the sparse foliage that dotted the edge of the tundra, she saw another one taking aim. She didn’t think about it. She jumped, handgun ready, rolled to a stop more expertly than she had any right to hope for, and fired.

She wasn’t a sniper. At this distance, with this much adrenaline in her system, she shouldn’t have hit him. But she did, and he slumped, his weapon falling. Jeeves, Matchlock, and the Jeep were safe.

Rising from her crouch, she looked ahead. The Jeep had swerved to a stop. A dozen soldiers carrying automatic rifles surrounded it. Jeeves and Matchlock held their hands up. Tracker caught her breath and flattened to the ground. She waited for the sound of gunfire that would tell her that her friends had been murdered where they stood. But the sound never came. Instead, the soldiers hauled them out of the Jeep. A thumping noise in the air signaled the arrival of a helicopter. The mercenaries loaded Jeeves and Matchlock into it, climbed in themselves, and flew away.