“Last chance for a visit to the potty, or to grab a nibble?” Ahbni asks as we pass a long table strewn with pre-wrapped sandwiches, cans of soda, and snack bars.
Elgar shakes his head, and, as if him declining were the flag at the start of a car race, Ahbni spins on her heel and heads directly for a door at the rear of the room. “This will take us the back way to the ballroom,” she explains, ushering us through.
It is narrow, filled with piles of unused chairs and the scent of concrete dust. The walls are windowless, and the corridor is lit with harsh, buzzing fluorescent lights that make Pip wince. We shuffle along single file. I severely dislike the way this limits my visibility, for I cannot see around the corners. Pip doesn’t like it, either; I can tell by the way her palm starts to grow damp and clammy with fear-sweat in mine. At the head of the line, I can see Ahbni texting, most likely announcing our arrival to volunteers on the other end.
We hit a roadblock in the form of a small mountain of piled cardboard boxes. They are clustered around a doorway, half-piled up a slight ramp that probably heads to a loading dock.
“Oh, yeah,” Pip sighs, rolling her eyes as we all squeeze past this obstacle. “’Cause that’s both fire safe and accessible.”
The corridor eventually opens into a small staging room, carpeted with something hideous and orange, and boxed in with walls of what appears, to my inexpert eye, to be technical equipment for a theater. The computers are similar to those I have at home, but beyond that, all the other wires and baubles and devices are completely incomprehensible. I feel a pull toward them, my natural curiosity piqued, but I do not have time to pursue it.
If we get out of this—when we get out of this—I may consider volunteering with my local community theater group. I’ve seen the posters for auditions on the wall of the coffee shop; perhaps they could use a hacker to run their microphones and lights?
Ah, but I am getting ahead of myself, I decide.
Kashif sets down the case and unlocks himself from it, then waves Elgar over to wire him up with a personal microphone. I watch carefully to ensure that the nervous young man doesn’t slip anything else into Elgar’s pocket, like a spell-pouch, or a rune-scroll.
By my side, Pip is occupied with talking to a young man in a wheelchair, who is coming down the ramp that leads up to, I assume, the wing of the stage. When he reaches the bottom, Pip introduces us all, and Ahbni stands back, eyes on Elgar and her phone, equally.
Then we are leaving Kashif and his case behind to begin the setup, and follow the lad in the wheelchair up to the stage. I see no monsters laying wait, no summoning circles scratched into the hardwood or painted with blood. The Viceroy is not skulking amid the black curtains at the back of it. But the space is filled with many places to hide weapons and bombs. It is high. It soars above us by at least two stories, and the catwalks above are corseted with ropes, and lights, and nooks that I do not have any good excuse to explore. I could bully my way onto them, behave as Kintyre does and simply walk over to the ladder, ignore anyone who tells me that I cannot climb it.
But I dare not release Pip’s hand and break the spell of protection I’ve cast over Elgar. Pip looks up at me in knowing pity, and I feel a sudden swell of affection for my wife. She understands how torn I am, without me ever needing to say it.
Is this what Kintyre thought when he looked at Bevel, out there on the road, in the midst of their adventures? This surge of affection, this sure and steady knowledge that his life was safe cupped in Bevel’s hands? Possibly—though Kintyre is startlingly unaware of himself. Had he known all along that what Bevel looked at him with was love? Had he felt it himself, lodged behind his heart as my love for my wife is lodged behind mine, and mistook it for something else? Indigestion, perhaps?
Kashif calls out: “House is open!”
The murmur of a crowd entering the room fills my ears, and I find Kashif at my side, suddenly, hustling Pip and I back into the staging room and from there, through another narrow doorway and into the auditorium.
“Well,” Pip says, when we find ourselves blinking in the bright fluorescent light of the ballroom. She flexes her fingers in my grip. Behind us, the stage is silent and still, the curtains open, a single spotlight on one black leather club chair. “He’s certainly efficient.”
“That he is.”
She points to two chairs right at the front of the room, beside the center aisle. “Let’s sit?”
We are quick enough to snag the seats, and the VIP status of our badges allows us to keep them. This is a good position from which to have a full view of the stage, and Elgar, as well as the auditorium.
“How you holding up?” Pip asks me, and I am pulled out of my contemplation of the people taking their seats around us.
“I think I am the one who should be asking you,” I say. “How is your back? Your head?”
“Sore, and aching,” she allows. “I feel like I could sleep for a week.”
“Soon,” I tell her.
She smirks morbidly, eyes droopy with exhaustion. “One way or another, eh?”
I kiss her temple reverently. “No need to be such a Debbie Downer.”
Pip snorts a laugh against my chest, chuckling at my use of the Overrealm colloquialism, and pets my thigh with her free hand.
“That’s my
