John Wright - Titans of Chaos

Archer shook off the mood and smiled again. "This was not what we came here to discuss. You had quite another question, did you not?"

"Well," I said, "if, as part of our bargain, if I also asked, I mean, can you make it so my boyfriend, um-"

He laughed. "Now you see why everybody hates me, and wanted me off the throne. I've got the one thing everyone, gods and men alike, thinks he wants, but nobody ever really wants it once he gets it. The first answer to your question is no. I have come around to the opinion that messing up the lives of mortals, and driving them to poetry, or madness, or suicide, is not as funny as it once was.

"You see, I'm a married man these days. Psyche is her name, and she went to Hell and back for me.

"So I believe in true love, now, and my Soul tells me there is a greater love in the universe, a Timelessness beyond time, a supernal Eternity. A Forevermore. I'm a changed man. I'm still cruel, but I don't enjoy it as much.

"The second answer is, you picked the wrong boyfriend. He's the Lost One, isn't he? The Telchine?

Your people, the Nameless Ones, can reach into Telchine skulls and rewire them. You could make him love you with no help from me-and the fact you can do that, just by itself, whether I use the Great Weapon or not, will kill your relationship."

I said, "I would never... never do anything... like that! It would be cheating!"

He grinned his charming grin and shrugged his feathery shrug. "Women are supposed to domesticate men. List the countries where they treat women like dirt, and then list the crude, warlike, and brutal countries. Same list, yes? So you sweet little dears cannot help your sweet little selves. You have to try to change men. Remember your sister, Circe? Women are like that in reverse. Turn pigs into human beings. But a man you can control is not really a man, is he? He's a boychild, not a paterfamilias."

By then Vanity and the boys were approaching, so there was no more time for talk.

The Surprise

I wish I could remember whose idea it was to split up in the shop after Archer left. It must have been mine, because I was the leader. I guess I am responsible for the decision, no matter whose idea it was.

After seeing the boys all dressed up and handsome in their tuxes, the leader made the unilateral decision that we really ought to visit the club down the street anyway.

I said to them, "The same problem exists now as before. As long as we are being hunted, we endanger humans by being near them. So we'll have to search for some spot remoter than the planet Mars. Promixa Centauri might be nice!"

That was greeted by a choir of moans and groans. The troops were not eager for another long trip in an ancient Greek spaceship.

"But this is a victory, troops!" I said over the noise of dissent. "Sort of. The authority of Mavors is overruled. We're not out of the woods yet, but now getting out of the woods is possible. Archer was not willing to stop other fates already in motion, but no new ones will be set against us. If we ever, by our own efforts, get free from the gods, they cannot now simply decree that we'll be caught again. In other words, we still have to find some way to sever the bond between me and Boggin, or deceive Mestor's needle, but once that is done, Phoebe or someone else will not and cannot just predestine us to be found again. The game is still on, but now the playing field is level.

"So how about one last night of celebration before we leave? We're all dressed up, or, at least Vanity is"-I had not even tried on the dress I picked out-"so who wants to go dancing?"

The reaction to that was more enthused.

We had none of us left the store yet. I had gotten the money out from the fourth dimension where it had rested for so long, and everyone but me was all decked out in his finest, with old clothes balled up in shopping bags.

And all seemed amenable to a last night out on the town. Vanity and I still had one or two things to buy. Because who knew when we would get the chance again?

But since sensible people (girls) like to, you know, actually look at what we are buying and actually make informed decisions, it was driving certain not-so-sensible people (boys) slowly crazy, especially since they were standing around in tuxedoes I hadn't paid for yet.

So Colin and Victor wandered off to look at something else, or maybe I ordered them to find a clerk and find out where the checkout was. I don't remember. It just seemed natural at the time.

Quentin went with them.

We were going back into the dress department when Vanity's cell phone played the theme from the William Tell overture in electronic cricket chirps. That is what phones do in America instead of ringing.

Vanity was giggling, and her emerald eyes were dancing with light, and her cheeks turned ever-so-pink (her light complexion lends itself quite easily to blushing) and she was holding the little gizmo-phone in both hands, so that she could cover her mouth with her fingers to hide the giddy smile---

Okay, I am not an idiot. It was not Victor or Colin calling her, see?

Vanity, blushing red as a beet, snapped shut the little phone and, looking only at my chin or ear, said she had something else she had to do right now, and did I mind? She could put in a call to Victor and Colin, and have them come here from wherever part of this vast store into which they had wandered, so I would not be left alone.

"I need to go look at something over by the jewelry counter," she said.

My first thought, of course, was that Quentin was going to pick out a wedding ring. When else do men look at jewelry? But maybe she just wanted him aside to herself for a little snogging practice.

I did not want to be left alone, but, just at that moment, I saw something shining so brightly, so useful, even through the intervening walls and floors, that I knew I had to get it.

That little voice people are supposed to hear when they are in deep need of common sense spoke now in my ear. It told me to go back and get Victor and Colin, because I should not be alone. This shop filled up most of a long city block. It was bigger than Abertwyi village. The fact that Archer could walk up to me in the dressing room showed that across the shop was too far away.

I did not tell my little common sense voice to shut up- I would never do that-but I told it to talk a little quieter. Just a little. Only for a minute.

Because at that very moment, I was looking out across a wide countryside of modern musical instruments. There, bright beneath the neon lights, alone in an almost empty store, I saw it.

There it was, perfect and perfectly tasteless.

It was a guitar. An American guitar. Just like the ones the rock stars use, all those loud and unkempt boys Colin had watched so avidly on the telly during our crossing on the Queen Elizabeth II.

It was black and sleek and metallic and shiny, and had a weird-looking triangular sound-box instead of the normal hourglass shape. It looked like an alien rocket ship poised for takeoff.