The Deadliest Game

which Leif and Megan both answered with bows. “Really? Then bring them a couple of chairs, please, and make them comfortable. And excuse yourself.”

Tald bustled about, bringing a couple of light ropewood chairs, which he placed on the far side of the table, and then departed. The man gestured them to the chairs. Leif and Megan sat down.

Megan reflected that she had never actually met someone wearing rose-tinted glasses before, since she knew very few people who actually elected to wear glasses at all, the state of laser surgery being what it was. But here was Fettick wearing them, a tall, slim, somewhat bemused-looking man in a gabardine, which was the height of style for the fourteenth century, but to Megan’s eyes mostly looked like a cross between a monk’s habit and a bathrobe. It’s probably pretty comfortable, though, she thought.

If this was the High House’s throne room, it wasn’t over-decorated. Indeed, the throne was more of a comfy chair — a rather overstuffed one — and it was pulled up to what was probably usually used as a formal dining table, but was now in intensive use as a desk. The beautiful polished ebony surface was almost completely covered with all manner of paperwork and parchments and rolled-up books and sewn-up books, quills and pens and styli and tablets. It looked like an explosion in an old and eclectic library.

“Sir,” Leif said, “thank you for taking the time to see us.”

“Well, you’re welcome…briefly. I hope you understand I’m very busy this morning, and I don’t have a lot of time.” He waved vaguely at the desk.

“We understand entirely,” said Leif. “Sir, do you recognize this token?” He held up the golden coin that Rodrigues had given them.

Fettick fixed a somewhat skeptical look on it. “Game intervention,” he said softly, and whispered something to the computer. It whispered back, inaudibly.

His eyebrows went up. He whispered again. Then he said, “Has Rod Almighty actually been here?”

“Yes, sir. We saw him last night. He sends his regards,” Leif said, which, while not strictly true, struck him as something Rod probably would have said.

“What did he want?”

“He wanted to talk to us about a matter which was concerning us…and that’s why we’ve come to see you,” Leif said.

“Sir,” Megan said, “your forces were in conflict with those of King Argath of Orxen not too long ago.”

“Yes.” Fettick sat down, and a small smile with a slightly feral edge crossed his face. Suddenly he didn’t look quite so feckless. “Yes, we won, didn’t we?”

“Yes, you did. The problem right now, sir, is that anyone who fought a battle against Argath and won appears to be in danger of being — excuse me, I must use the indelicate word—‘bounced.’”

Fettick’s eyes went wide for a moment. “It is indelicate,” he said. And then he looked again at the pocket into which Leif had stuffed the token. “Still, you have that…so I guess we can talk about such things as the Outside. Do you mean that the lady who got bounced the other day was—”

“She was about to have a battle with Argath. She would have won. She was bounced quite near the time when she would have begun fighting. Others have been, too — usually after the battle. But now this kind of thing seems to have started happening before the fact.”

“Is Argath responsible, or is it one of his people, or—”

“No one knows. All we’ve noticed is the connection. And so we’re warning people who have fought with Argath recently, and come out the better, that they should look to their security. Here and elsewhere.”

“And take what kind of precautions?” said Fettick.

Leif and Megan looked at each other. “Uh—” Megan said.

“Exercise more than usual care in your comings and goings,” Leif said. This drill he knew well enough, from his father’s diplomatic connections. “If you have routines in your travel or outside work, vary them. If you have trips scheduled that are really unnecessary, don’t make them. Check out your living space, make sure there are no objects in it that you didn’t put there, that you don’t recognize.”

“Stay inside?” said Fettick. “Opaque the windows? Lock the doors?”

Leif looked at him, and thought maybe it might be wiser to be quiet for a moment.

Fettick sat in his chair again, lacing his fingers over his robe. “Young sir,” he said. “Do you know what I do for my living…‘out there’?”

Leif shook his head. He hadn’t quarried that deeply into Fettick’s background.

“I collect garbage,” said Lord Fettick, “in Duluth, Minnesota. And my line of work requires that I repeat my routine flawlessly, twice a week, on each of three routes. ‘Varying’ a garbage pickup route would be looked on, at the management levels above mine, with grave displeasure.” He sighed. “And yes, I know how that lady was bounced the other night. It was tragic. Have you heard anything about how she’s doing?”

“Still in the hospital,” Leif said, “and no news on when she might be likely to regain consciousness.”

“Yes. Well,” said Fettick. “She was on her way to the store, I think, when someone came along and knocked her car off the road. I work in medium to heavy traffic all day, every day, and if someone wants to kill or maim me, believe me, they’ll have no trouble doing it. My main concern is that they might miss me, and kill one of my workmates. And it sounds, from what you’re telling me, that there’s pretty much nothing that can be done to solve the problem at its root at the moment, that those of us who’re targeted have already committed the offense which has caused the targeting, and there’s nothing we can do to make amends.”

“Probably not,” Leif said.

“That being the case,” said Lord Fettick, “I can either spend the days from now until this person comes after me in a haze of fear, trying to protect against who knows what attack, from no one knows what direction — or I can get on with my life and refuse to be terrified. That’s usually the way to deal with terrorists, isn’t it?”

“While that is, ethically, a superior position,” Megan said softly, “practically, it sometimes has little effect on the terrorists, who count on something like it among proud or brave people. The terrorists have a nasty tendency to go ahead and try to blow you up anyway.”

“Well, let them come,” said Fettick. “I’m going to sit tight and do my job. There, and here.”

The tall slender man got up and came around his desk toward them. “I’ll tell you something for free,” he said. “I’ve had it. Two nights now, two nights of my good gameplay time, which costs me enough on my salary, Argath’s miserable lackey the Duke has been in here making merry with his pestilent little dwarf, ogling my daughter, eating me out of house and home, drinking all my best wine, trying to make me think a dynastic marriage to him is a good idea. Nasty superannuated creature. And here he’s sat, these two nights, trying his best to blackmail me. Or worse, to browbeat me. Trying to sign me up for an alliance in which I have no interest, and one for which I would be condemned from one end of the Northeast to the other, an alliance with a man who attacked my country, attacked me, not eight months ago! The cheapest, nastiest kind of protection racket. And I have to sit here, and mouth platitudes at him for politics’ sake — don’t think I don’t know at least that much about statecraft. I’m about up to here with pressure! I don’t need a life like that. It’s just not worth living.”

He sat back and sighed, looking down at the floor for a moment. “I will take reasonable precautions,” he said. “But no more. Whoever is behind this, I refuse to allow them to control my life. But I do thank you,” he said, “for going out of your way to warn me. I take it there are other stops on your itinerary.”

“Yes,” Megan said. “Duchess Morn—”

Fettick burst out laughing. “You’re going to bring her the same message you’ve brought me?”

“In essence,” said Megan.

“Do you have armor?”

She and Leif looked at each other. “Are we likely to need it?”

“If you’re going to tell her she has to vary her daily routine, you’ll need a testudo at least,” Fettick said. “Well, I wish you luck. I understand that you really do mean well…and if, as I think, you’re somehow involved with the attempt to find out who has been bouncing people, I wish you all the luck you can use. Now I have to get on with things here. But are you sure you won’t stay for breakfast?”

“Uh, no, sir,” Leif said. “Thank you, though. We should get straight on to Duchess Morn’s.”

“Sure you don’t want to think twice about the armor?”

Leif smiled slightly. “I think we’ll manage.”

They bowed to Fettick and headed out.