“How are you doing in there?” Piering asked. Scotty hadn’t seen the man in years, not since shortly after the accident that had stolen his Moon legs.
“Not bad. Could be a lot better.”
“Can you see the device?”
Darla nodded. “Looks like it’s synched into the door. Mechanics, electronics-try anything, and it will go off. Boom.”
“Can you deactivate it?”
“Same question, same answer. Maybe. With the right tools. All I have is my multi. I’m really not sure. But I’ll try.”
“What can we do out here?”
“Get back. Way back,” she said. “In case I’m wrong.” She turned and looked at Scotty. “You, too, cowboy. I think they have more use for you up top.”
Scotty nodded. He would have backed away from her, but the chamber was too small for any effective backing. “If you’re sure.”
“I don’t think I’m sending you to a picnic, mister. Go on.”
Scotty extended his hand, and Darla shook it, hard. Was she saying good-bye? “Good gaming with you,” he said.
“Good gaming with you, too,” she replied. “Take a deep breath.”
37
1841 hours
Scotty emerged from the pool, water thick as syrup sliding slowly from his face. The cool air bristled with magic. Angelique danced five feet above the ground, levitated by a pillar of light flowing from Sharmela’s palms. He had to look very closely indeed to detect the tiny blur of the “real” Angelique, concealed in radiance.
Ali held both hands in front of him, projecting a wall of shimmering crystal. “I speak to the Gods of my fathers,” he said, “who peopled the Earth in the First Days. Children of Air and Water and Earth. I call upon Zarabanda, God of iron, God of my fathers long ago, to give me strength! I throw off the colonial shackles, and step into my true power as a warrior of my people!” He held his arms up, waiting…
And waiting…
Nothing.
Scotty shivered, wiping himself dry with his shirt, and then slipping his pants back on. Soggy. “What… was that?”
Ali shrugged. “If this is to be my last stand,” he said, “I want to die as a hero of my people, not just another African soldier loyal to one European crown or another.”
“A little late to get political, isn’t it? And… this isn’t a game, Ali-”
The boy laughed at him, but the tone was bitter. “Oh, it’s a game. This entire thing is a game designed to trap my father. He escaped their grasp, but I have been caught. You have been caught. All of you-”
The gamers ceased their practice to listen. Ali seemed to have grown somehow, easily commanding their attention. “All of you!” he said. “Whatever happens here today, know that Prince Ali knows what you have done for him. Know that I will not forget, and that I will not forget you, any of you.”
Sharmela slapped his shoulder, hard. “Nor I you, young mage. You may have concealed secrets, but you have carried yourself with honor.”
She extended her hand to him, and he took it. Wayne placed his hand atop hers. “All of us. We all came from distant lands, at the call of our Queen. And the adventure we have shared went beyond our dreams.”
Scotty still couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. This wasn’t a game! It was…
Oh, what the hell. Some games are played for very high stakes. This time they were betting every marble they had. If there was a right more sacred than the ability to choose the manner of one’s own death, he didn’t know what it could be. He watched as, one at a time, they clapped their hands down one upon the other in a vow of fealty. “We stand together,” Mickey said, and put his hands down. Followed by Maud. And Angelique. They were a clan of a kind, making the very best of the very worst. Something dark and magical glittered in their eyes. For the first time he thought he grasped the logic of it all.
Angelique turned and extended her hand to Scotty. “Come on, big guy. Get in here.”
Scotty hesitated, and then felt the voice inside him say: Oh, why not.
And he put his hand onto the pile. Win, lose or draw, this had been one hell of a game.
“And I,” he said, impressed by the timbre of his voice. “A mere thief, pledge my all in this mortal combat. We stand together!”
The others nodded, a circle of power, well pleased with what they had wrought.
Xavier, a floating bald god, smiled down upon them. “I will help where I can,” he said. His expression grew more serious. “And get ready. Griffin and Gibson, you are both thieves. Your power is stealth. You would have found something right out of Wells, given the right path-” Xavier jerked. “I hear them. Take your places. The pirates are coming.”
Celeste moved slowly, unwilling to take even the slightest chance that some hidden trap or concealed antechamber hewn into the lunar rock or constructed by Cowles engineers might provide comfort and safety to her prey.
They were her prey now, especially that smug bastard Griffin. Nothing else mattered. She would see them all dead, all but Ali… if that was possible.
Kill them all.
Shotz, darling dead Alexander, would not have had that. He would say that she had obligations to her men, to those who had followed him in the name of a country that would never be. An artificial island that might have been their home.
Madness.
She fought the sound of a giggle, a tickle in the back of her throat that triggered the urge to laugh aloud. That would be insane, wouldn’t it?
The five men remaining to her followed behind as they combed the stage, this strange setting decorated like an English manor, seeking signs of life. A game of some kind had been played here, one for which the rules were uncertain. Cannons, strange toy tripods and inanimate costumed grubs were strewn about, as if awaiting commands for a new awakening.
“What is all of this?” Fujita said, crossbow cradled in his huge hands like a child’s toy. The wound in the big man’s side had been bandaged, but it seeped red. Still, he was more than a match for three of these play-acting morons.
“More nonsense,” she said. “I am tired of this fantasy. We will finish this, and go home.”
No one dared disagree aloud, but she could read their expressions. None of them seriously believed that they were going home, regardless of what happened here.
They circled the room and returned to near the big entrance door. Standing between barber’s mirrors, she saw two infinite lines of her own images… skewed. One mirror was ajar, just by a crack. “Here,” she said.
Slow and steady. Their prey were bottled. There was nowhere to go. They could afford to be… careful. Thorough.
Just as Shotz had taught her, long ago. Take care of the small things, and the large ones will take care of themselves.
She looked through the open mirror and into a ramp. A water slide minus the water.
This was not the path they had followed coming up from the pool. There had been more than one route. Shotz had booby-trapped the other door, and this one had been concealed on both ends. So long as her prey was trapped, it did not matter if the last act of this strange story was played out in an English manor, or in the
