John Wright - Fugitives of Chaos

Unfortunately, that meant I had to get up off of Victor's lap.

3.

The storm grew. The Queen Elizabeth II was so mighty a ship, her draft so huge, that she did not even slacken her speed when fifty-meter waves began to pound against her side, and gale-force winds blew nearly solid sheets of screaming rain across her decks. The captain informed the passengers that the hatches to the deck were being chocked, and no one would be permitted up on deck till the storm blew over. But within our stately cabin, there was no roll, no pitch, no sensation of motion. The vessel was simply too large for any storm to disturb her serenity.

But it was loud. Even through the decks and bulkheads, we could hear the sound, the outrageous sound of it, as if a voice of infinite strength and endless hate screamed and roared and yelled one long insane yell, never pausing for breath.

Our cabin portals were black circles. They might have been windows looking into an airless coffin, for all the light they shed. There was no sign of my far horizon, my horizon as wide as the sea. It was as if the portholes had been bricked over.

4.

We spent two hours investigating what turned out to be a dead end. After about forty tries, we knew twoscore ways to cast a spell to read the stars which could easily be detected by someone with Vanity's power.

At the end of that time, Quentin had covered about threescore sheets of paper with pentacles and hexagrams and septagons and octograms, and had burnt out his last wax candle. He looked up at Victor and said, 'That is about all I can do. If there was anyone bugging the stars, they heard us talking to them, and they know what we asked."

You would think, after all that, we would have gotten forty astrological charts' worth of information. But apparently, for real magicians, consulting the stars was a business as complex as the radar, radar-beam deception and counterdeception, radar-jamming, jam-breaking, and anti-jam breaking techniques of the electronic espionage of World War II.

"Here is what we now know," Quentin summarized his results: "The attacker is coming by sea, coming from a dark place where the stars never shine, and of which the stars know nothing. It is not the Olympians. It is someone who intends to kill one or more of us. It is not a Maenad—which might be significant, if Lamia is no longer traveling with the Maenads. It is definitely a female or females."

Colin said, "Or a guy in drag."

"Well, yes. Or an effete male. It is someone older than the established universe, or, at least, older than the stars, since the stars know no birthdate or nativity constellation for the attacker or attackers. She intends to kill many people, including any humans around us. She or they is carrying a talisman of great power with her. I should say 'she or they,' I suppose, since it could be a band of women, for example, amazons or something."

Quentin had written this all out on a little steno note-

book he was using to write down lessons from his dream grimoire. Now he flipped the pages shut with a sigh. "And, if our stars are being bugged, they know we know. The stars are also betting on the other side, and they give us about sixteen-to-one odds."

Colin looked up when he said that. "You are kidding about that last part, right? The stars don't really bet, do they?"

Quentin said, "Not the stars per se, but the mesoaetherians do—the princes of the middle air. They also cheat on their bets, and send omens and signs to people to change the odds of one fate winning out over another. That's why most omens are so vague—if the mesoaetherians are caught, they can always claim they were not really trying to tell the humans things humans are not supposed to know. What's the word from your spy novels, Colin?"

"Plausible deniability."

"Anyway, among the many other illegal things my friends do, they gamble on human suffering and the outcomes of wars and natural disasters. I told you they were like Mafia people."

I raised my hand.

Quentin pointed at me. "Yes? A question?"

"No," I said, feeling tired. "I was only indicating that it was me. I was the one you said that to."

"Oh. I told Amelia. Mafia people."

Victor said to Vanity, "Vanity, call your boat. How long will it take to get here from Antarctica?"

Vanity looked surprised, as if she had been caught unprepared for a pop quiz. "I—I don't—how would I know that? She might be on the far side of the Antarctic. I don't know her top speed. You do know Corus warned Amelia that they can tell when I call my boat?"

Victor nodded. "But the people watching the boat, Mestor and Boggin and his crew, want to keep us alive at all costs, and the people coming for us now want us dead."

Quentin looked down at his diagrams. "They want everybody dead."

Victor said, "What's that?"

Quentin passed him a sheet of paper covered with zodiacal symbols and crabbed mathematical calculations. "Not just us. Everyone. They want everyone dead."

Colin said, "Everyone on the ship?"

I spoke up. "I think he means everyone everyone. The whole enchilada. All living things that breathe.

Lamia told Quentin her master wants to start the last war, the Armageddon, between Cosmos and Chaos, remember? They want the stars torn down and the dome of the sky to collapse." And, before Victor could object that the sky was not literally a dome, I added, "They want to crack the planet like an egg and make an omelet, trigger a nova in Sol. That sort of thing."

Quentin sighed again.

Vanity leaped to her feet. "Oh my goodness!"

Colin said, "What is it?"

Victor said, "Is someone watching us?"

Vanity said, "I didn't get a chance to finish checking all our stuff! There might be a bug, just a physical bug somewhere, planted on us. I never finished looking!"

Victor had a stiff look to his face. I would not have recognized that look even a little while ago, but in my heart I knew what it was. Leaders who make bad decisions get that look. Leaders who think they may have endangered the lives entrusted to them. But what could he have done differently? We had needed Vanity in here to help with Quentin's experiment, which, had it worked, might have told us the nature of, or how to escape from, the coming danger.

Victor said, "Go look through our possessions. Prioritize your investigation. Check the things we got from Paris last. Anything that the enemy touched or handled is suspect. Anything we took from their hands, or…"

Colin said, "Passports. Money. The things Amelia got from ap Cymru."

Vanity said, "I checked mine…"

We all passed our papers over to Vanity, and I included the envelope of money. Vanity closed her eyes and began shuffling through the passports slowly.

I jumped up. It was obvious. So obvious. I said, "It can't be the passports. Those came from ap Cymru.

He is with the Olympians! It's not the Olympians attacking—Quentin just found that out! It's the dress!

My wedding dress!"

Colin said, "What wedding dress? Did you guys hear some story no one bothered to tell me?"

I was running toward my room. Over my shoulder, I shouted back to them, "It's not Lamia attacking. It's not Lamia! It's—"

At that moment, even over the mindless roar of the storm, we heard the hideous, tormented, long-drawn-out shriek and rumble of metal plates, vast and heavy metal plates, grinding and twisting, being torn, buckling under unimaginable, titanic pressure.

The deck heeled over at a forty-five degree angle. I slipped and fell to the carpet. The divan was bolted to the deck, but the pile of clothes boxes atop it was not; fabric and cardboard and scented crepe paper fell over my face. I heard crashes behind me as the bottles slid out of the wet bar and clattered to the floor. Our television, our luxurious television, toppled from its stand and fell with a noise of shattering glass.