Fugitives of Chaos

darkness, who react when I read, and go somewhere and do something to fetch the answers to my questions.'

Victor said, 'You are thinking it might attract more attention?'

'Well, if I were Boggin, and I had the winds at my command, I'd have them watching the princes of the middle air. Why should it be impossible for spirits to spy on each other?'

Victor said, 'This is your area of expertise. Make a suggestion.'

Quentin started gathering his cards up off the floor. 'Leader, two days of reading one book does not make me an expert.'

'But you have an idea.'

'But I have an idea. We take Colin's ring; we have Amelia look along these ropes or webs she seems to be able to see, we have you denature them—demagnitize them, as you call it, not the whole ring, but just one after another—to isolate which strands represent which obligations or which sense impressions.

Colin can add back in any influences you drive out—adding 'energy,' as he calls it. With each strand, as we turn it off and turn it back on, Vanity tells us if anyone is watching us. I do a reading with my cards meanwhile. We see if we can fine-tune it. Fine-tune the ring. If we are really clever about it, we may be able to have the invisibility cast its influence all the way around me doing a reading. You see my idea?'

Colin said, 'Whoever the people are you are getting your information from, turn them invisible, so that Bog-gin's spies can't see them doing whatever it is they do when they answer your questions. Right?'

'Right.'

'What if I cannot turn on what Victor turns off?'

'Then the ring is broken and worthless to us, and we have destroyed a great treasure for no purpose.'

Colin shrugged and nodded, and said to Victor, 'Is there a downside to this, leader-man?'

Victor said, 'If we attract the attention of Boggin or the other Olympians, the worst that will happen is they might send some force to protect us from the lethal attack which is coming. And, by hypothesis, they already have such a force in place, and already have us under some sort of observation that Vanity cannot detect; therefore we lose nothing by this. No. There is no downside, aside from the value of the ring itself, and the general risks, if any, associated with Quentin showing command-symbols to the electromagnetic entities he calls spirits.'

Vanity said, 'I don't see why it can work at all. Only the ring-bearer turns invisible. How do you project it onto someone else?'

Colin said, 'Step on them.'

'I'm serious.'

Colin said, 'So am I. That ring is thorough. When you wear it, nobody sees footprints you make in the water puddles in the girls' locker room, or sees the shower water deflected from your body. Nobody sees the water displacement when you slip naked into a crowded Jacuzzi. No one hears the noises you make when you bump into something. Now, if you pick something up, like an envelope full of money, a person who notices details, like Victor, or whose brain is hard to fool, will spot you.'

Vanity said, 'Were you really in the girls' locker room?'

Colin rolled his eyes. 'What? Do you think I was staring at all the old wrinkled hags they have here on this trip—yeech! But you understand what the logic of the ring has to be? If the ring-bearer can make it so that you do not notice sound waves coming out of my mouth, I don't see (if you'll pardon that expression) why it can't mask someone who talks back to me. If you hear them, you'll know I'm around.

How is that different from all the other clues that I am around it is erasing, such as light photons bouncing off me? I don't go blind when I put this thing on, you know. I must be casting a shadow.'

Victor said, 'Let us try Quentin's experiment, then. He may be able to generate additional information, which may enable us to survive the coming attack.'

I said, 'But they are not bugging the ring, then? I wasn't sure I understood what the ghost of the first owner said.'

Quentin held up the ring. 'Mr. Glum had a right to this ring. It was a wergild. Mrs. Wren cursed his leg so that he could not fix it—haven't you seen Colin simply shrug off mortal wounds, broken wings, things like that? But her enchantments trumped his psionics. She did him wrong by doing that. In retaliation, Glum stole this. At a guess, it would seem, that in the spirit world, two wrongs do make a right. Shall we try my experiments? Ladies? Gentlemen?'

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.