Eileen Wilks - Death Magic

Fagin steepled his hands on his belly. “You have some understanding of the Gift, then. Patterners are rare, for which we can thank the good God. When the Gift does appear, it’s almost always in the weak form. A weak patterner senses event patterns unconsciously. He may learn how to control his Gift so that his effect on events is less haphazard, but he doesn’t sense the patterns directly. A strong patterner does. A strong and experienced patterner can manipulate those patterns in subtle ways to bring about what he or she wants.”

“I thought all patterners did that.”

“They all affect events, though the weak ones affect them only slightly and often unpredictably. A strong but inexperienced patterner . . . I descend into theory now,” he said apologetically. “Strong patterners are so rare we have no hard data on how their Gift operates, but there is anecdotal and historical evidence. A strong but untrained or inexperienced patterner will generally be adept in one application of his Gift, but not others. Napoleon is a good example.”

She blinked. “He is?”

“Certainly. He’s often lauded as a military genius, but his real genius—and the way he used his Gift most effectively—lay in the social interplay of politics. He was eventually defeated on the battlefield, after all, but never politically. Had he taken the time to become more adept at patterning before plunging his nation into war, he might never have been defeated at all. I suspect Jiri was both a strong patterner and fairly experienced. She was not, however, a fraction as powerful as Friar now is.”

That was so not good news.

Fagin smiled gently. “Patterning is called the Gift of the gods because we believe—and by ‘we’ I mean fusty old academics like me—that some of those who once were worshipped as gods were real beings, adept-level patterners of great power. They were able to influence such a multiplicity of events simultaneously that no single unraveling of their weaving could defeat them. Friar has power an adept would envy. He does not yet have the experience to wield it in a godlike way. That’s one advantage for us. The other—”

“The Shadow Unit,” she said wearily. “You’re going to tell me it’s needed to catch Friar.”

“No, I’m going to tell you that Ruben is needed to run that Unit. There are two Gifts that can confound a patterner. One is ours. Sensitives can’t be affected by the patterner’s manipulations, which makes us the large rock in their artificial stream.”

Rule spoke for the first time since admitting he’d deceived her. “As are lupi, at least as far as Friar is concerned.”

Fagin nodded agreeably. “So you stipulate. Your fiancé,” he added to Lily, “says that lupi are immune to her magic. Since we believe Friar’s Gift comes from her, they would likewise be barriers to his patterning. You and I and the lupi form, ah . . . call us dead spots in his manipulations. He can mobilize events that affect us, but it takes more power because his magic can’t touch us. But there’s only one Gift that can truly act against a strong patterner. Precognition.”

Lily frowned. “Because that’s like patterning? A precog is sensing patterns, I guess, when he gets a hunch.” Or sees visions of the Apocalypse.

Ruben shifted slightly in his chair. “I don’t think so.”

“No?”

“Fagin and I have discussed this.” A smile flickered over Ruben’s thin face. “At length. He would prefer to believe that my Gift picks up patterns from the future, much as a patterner senses patterns in the present. My input is subjective, of course, but it doesn’t feel that way to me. I’ve discussed this with that young woman you sent me for training.”

“Anna Sjorensen.” The other patterner Lily had met.

“Yes. Her Gift is quite weak, so she doesn’t sense patterns directly. This means her experience of her Gift should correspond to what I experience with my hunches if I’m also receiving patterns. Based on our conversation, this doesn’t seem to be the case.”

Fagin snorted. “Which could mean that the future’s patterns are experienced differently than those from the present. Or that you’re two different people and your minds interpret things differently.”

Ruben’s smile returned. “It could. But patterns are a space-time construct. I have a strong feeling that the information my Gift provides is not so bounded—that it comes from elsewhere and elsewhen, a state for which words are unsuited because it lies beyond space-time.”

Rule spoke very politely. “I imagine Sam would enjoy discussing your ideas about time and precognition.”

That widened Ruben’s smile. “I’ve strayed from the topic, haven’t I? Thank you for the reminder. Lily, the point is that I can act as a fulcrum, a way to leverage events away from the path Friar is establishing. To do so, I need the resources and cooperation of a great many people. Hence my leadership of the Shadow Unit.”

She sat with that in silence for a long moment. “Earlier, you said ‘the surviving lupi.’ When you talked about your vision, you said that in one scenario the surviving lupi retreat to their clanhomes. What did you mean?”

Ruben answered carefully, like a man picking his way through a minefield where he knew the location of some—and only some—of the explosives. “There are elements I can’t speak of at this time, but the greatest variation in the scenarios I saw involves the lupi. I believe that variation means that their very existence impedes her power. She has to destroy them to succeed.”

No one moved. No one spoke. It was so quiet Lily could hear her own pulse in her ears, kind of like listening to the sea in a conch shell. Something chinked toward the back of the house. Maybe Deborah was washing dishes.

“All right,” she said at last. “I’m willing to promise my silence about all this. I understand why you’re doing it. I’m willing to offer some of that covert help you mentioned from time to time. But I’m not joining your ghosts.”

I Tmust have rained while they were inside. The air was crisp with ozone, rich with the smell of damp earth. Wet grass glistened. But the sky was clear again and making a spectacle of itself, drifts of stars like spangled gauze swathing the darkness. As they walked to Rule’s car along a path bordered by roses and baby’s breath, Lily’s stomach jittered while her mind jumped around like a hyperactive two-year-old.

She’d asked more questions before they left. Ruben had answered some of them. Not all.

“You turned him down,” Rule said.

“This may be the right thing for him to do. That doesn’t make it right for me.”

“He didn’t stop you from refusing. You aren’t at risk because you know too much. Doesn’t that prove that your fears about the Shadow Unit are misplaced?”

“I’ve got way too many fears at the moment for you to be sweeping them into a single pile and labeling them false. At least I’m restraining my burning urge to arrest people.”

“For now,” he said dryly.

“Look, let’s stipulate Ruben’s right and you’re right and so is whoever else is part of this. I don’t know. I haven’t . . . it’s going to take time for me to get my mind around everything, and we can’t even talk about it! How am I supposed to think it through if I can’t talk about it, or make notes, or . . . but even if you’re all right, that doesn’t mean I have to be part of it.”

He was silent for several paces, then stopped just short of the car. “I hurt you with my silence. I’m sorry for that.”

She stopped. Faced him. “It’s not what you didn’t say, it’s how you pretended. For weeks—”