Dragons & Dwarves

  “Kline,” he said by way of greeting.

  “Mr. Baldassare.”

  We had gathered in the massive library. There were more than enough overstuffed chairs, and the two-story ceiling gave enough headroom even for the elves. The bookshelves covered three walls, ten feet up to a balcony that held more shelves all the way to the ceiling. A massive semicircular arc of windows faced the river and the clearing we had walked from.

  Everyone sat, with the exception of Baldassare and myself. I stood next to a long, wide desk that seemed designed explicitly for holding large volumes flat. Quite a few were open on it. I saw a few non-English titles, a book with mostly Hebrew text amidst circles and linear diagrams, and something that was authored by Alister Crowley.

  “I suppose you have some questions,” Baldassare said as he closed the door.

  “You know me,” I said. “I always do.”

  “You know I support Rayburn, always have. But you probably know by now that the administration has some strange ideas about my friends here.”

  I nodded, walking down the long desk, flipping a few pages here and there at random. I stopped at one ancient-looking tome as thick as my arm and about three feet tall. The writing was hand-lettered in a text I couldn’t recognize from any human alphabet.

  “A fifth column,” I said. “ Elements of an invasion that may or may not come. A threat to the city government on several levels. At the least, a justification for deeper federal involvement. At worst, agents of unregulated and possibly competing access to Ragnan.” I closed the book. The cover was black leather from some animal I didn’t recognize. “I’m wondering what’s your angle, involved in this.”

  Baldassare smiled. “It really isn’t very arcane. I’m a business-man, not a politician. I provide them with logistical support, planning, staff,” he glanced at Friday. “They find their homeland, and I receive sole rights to control human access to that homeland. Sole licensee to export goods from that homeland.”

  Right now Baldassare only received a royalty for each person passing through the Portal. He didn’t have any control over it, didn’t receive anything from tourism, or the goods and services that exist because of the Portal.

  Take what he has now, and add two or three zeros on to it.

  “That’s an incentive,” I said.

  “He has been the one human of any temporal power who’s been sympathetic to our purpose,” Ysbail said.

  Baldassare shrugged and was atypically self-effacing in the way he said, “For all the good it’s done.”

  I looked at Mr. Hell’s Angel, and thought about Bone Daddy, and asked, “How many are in this little underground of yours?” I directed the question at Ysbail.

  She was comforting the two elves, who seemed to be suffering most of the aftereffects of our little rapid-transit exercise. I saw one look at her and shake his head. I preempted her response. “No, I know, let’s keep numbers out of it. But a lot, isn’t it?”

  “Some might say so,” Ysbail said.

  I looked back at the biker and said, “We’re not just talking an elvish homeland, are we?”

  It was Friday who answered. “The Portal created a new underclass. Any mage has two choices here—accept dictation from the government, or suffer marginalization. The ‘Faust’ fantasy perpetrated by the administration is a threat because it—we—represent mages who aren’t under their control. Therefore, we must be brought under submission.”

  Voting with their feet. There was a mage underground here that people on Lakeside dismissed as criminal, a ready source of people who would be candidates for relocation to a place free from the politics and bureaucracy of this city. For all the forces in place that brooked no changes to Cleveland’s control of the Portal, I started to see that there might be as many—if not more—forces who would like to see northeast Ohio’s monopoly on the paranormal come to an end. Which, of course, would contribute to making the former much more strident in their opposition.

  “So, Mr. Baldassare, from what I know, no one here is doing anything illegal. You seem to agree that Mayor Rayburn and company have some wrongheaded ideas about your project. You’re on a first name basis with the mayor. Why haven’t you just walked in his office and set him right?”

  To his credit as a politician, he was expecting the question. “It’s not that simple, Maxwell.”

  “Come on,” I said. “That chain you gave him, from Aloeus, it’s a lie detector. He’d know you were telling the truth.”

  Baldassare nodded. “The Dragon Stone.”

  “So why don’t you?”

  “You’re assuming that politics fundamentally changes when you cannot lie,” Baldassare said. “Truthfulness is different from honesty, and facts can always be dismissed, even if their accuracy is not in question. Shall I paint you a scenario? I confront my old friend, the mayor. I give him the unvarnished truth. He then asks me how I know Faust’s motives. How I know I’m not being duped—”

  “And, of course, you risk alienating one of your chief political patrons.”

  Baldassare didn’t bat an eye. “I’m not just a sugar daddy for this project. Political connections are important. I lose David’s ear, and the whole project loses.”

  “With what happened to Aloeus, it seems like you’ve already lost.”

  The biker muttered something like, “Fucking bastard.” Ysbail was a study in mournful silence.

  Baldasare frowned, “Don’t think I haven’t second-guessed myself since that happened. But when it comes down to it, if Dave was fanatic enough to have someone—to have a dragon—killed over this, then there was no way I was ever going to talk sense into him.”

  “Maxwell believes,” Ysbail said, “that Rayburn didn’t have Aloeus killed.”

  For once, Baldassare looked a little surprised. The expression didn’t wear well on him. His persona was so consciously crafted that the contrast of seeing a truly uncontrolled emotion break the surface gave the feeling of seeing the first crack appear in the ice over a rushing river. He recovered from his lapse quickly enough to make me wonder if I had imagined it.

  “I would like to believe that,” Baldassare said. He walked over to the grand windows and looked out toward the dawn sky. “I’d always thought of him as a friend. It isn’t pleasant thinking him capable of such an act.”

  “You believe it, though?” I asked.

  “I know it,” Baldassare said. “He began ruthless, and he’s only become more so over time.”

  “He also inspires great loyalty, doesn’t he?”

  Baldassare chuckled and wrung his hands behind his back. “Inspires? Not quite.”

  “The chain,” I said. “Aloeus’ gift. It assures him loyalty . . .”

  “It assures him that the people he employs are the sycophants he wants.” There was a trace of bitterness in his voice, letting me see how he could end up supporting people that were so at odds with the administration. He turned around. “David has always wanted control. He never could tolerate dissent. Giving him that chain gave him the keys to Pandora’s box. It allowed him to question everyone’s loyalty, and anyone with imperfect belief in the Rayburn administration was shoved aside for someone with absolute loyalty.”

  “His appointees all support him, unquestioningly,” I said.

  “If he has his way,” Baldassare said, “they worship him.”

  Baldassare was probably right. Rayburn was the wrong person to give that talisman to. It might have enticed him to negotiate with the dragon, and be unsurpassed as a gesture of faith, but it was a mistake to give such a tool to someone convinced of his own righteousness. Even before the Portal, there was Rayburn’s way, and the wrong way. Leaders like that tend to need the balance of opposing views in the people around them. But with Aloeus’ gift, Rayburn had the unprecedented ability, not just to employ people who said what he wanted to hear—but believed what they said.

  “Then,” I said, “it isn’t unlikely that if someone in Rayburn’s administration perceived a threat to
Rayburn, he or she might go to extreme lengths to deal with it.”

  “Of all the fucking bullshit,” the biker sneered at me. “That’s what happened? Rayburn’s goons killed Aloeus, killed Bone, killed that fucking jerk-off reporter of yours?”

  I nodded. “Not Rayburn.”

  “Not Rayburn,” Baldassare repeated. He looked at me with an expression that seemed to acknowledge what I was about to say.

  “Someone inside the administration has gone out of his way to protect Rayburn’s interests. Gone so far that he’s had to protect Rayburn from the knowledge of what was happening.”

  “That’s bullshit,” said the biker.

  “It’s called plausible deniability,” Friday said.

  “Yeah, it’s still bullshit. You telling me that anything goes on without Rayburn knowing? He’s got that damn chain.”

  “I suspect quite a lot happens without his knowledge,” I replied. “Once you’ve surrounded yourself with people of unquestioned loyalty there’s great temptation to trust their judgment. Rayburn is probably so convinced of his infallibility that it hasn’t even occurred to him that his own people might be responsible. No one has to lie to him if the right questions are never asked.”

  Baldassare nodded. “It’s possible, he’s cocksure enough.”

  “How the hell you know this, is what I want to know.” The Hell’s Angel stood up and was glaring at me. “You working for him?”

  “They were going to assassinate him,” Ysbail said. “Mind yourself, now.”

  “Oh, the great one speaks for herself. You know, I’ve been minding myself for, what? Seven years?” He pulled his beard. “I was impressed with you poor fucks, I went along. You promised me a new city, a goddamn new world. What you been delivering is all been bullshit and fuckups—”

  One of the other elves, still recuperating, pushed himself off of the couch. I didn’t remember if he was Angor or Einion. “Do not talk to the Lady like that.”

  “I ain’t one of you Keebler bastards, I’ll talk to the bitch any way I want.”

  The elf got steadily to his feet and interposed himself between Ysbail and the biker. In his eyes I saw something like rage. It was the first genuinely violent emotion I had seen in an elf.

  “Stop this,” Ysbail said. There was a resignation in her tone that was fatal for any sort of leader. If it wasn’t clear before, her voice, the plea for calm, confirmed the fact that this alliance was falling apart. It probably had been since Aloeus plunged into the river.

  “Don’t you get it?” the biker said. “It’s over. The grand plan is shit and best we can do is cut and run.” He looked over at me. “And off anyone who can rat us out.”

  “You will apologize,” the elf informed him. The demand seemed rather ludicrous coming from someone who was barely holding himself upright.

  Ysbail tried again. “No, Einion, he will not.”

  The elf turned to face her and said, “My Lady—”

  “His anger is his own. I will not have you make him deny it.” She looked over at the biker. “You are free to leave us.”

  The biker looked somewhat surprised. “Yeah? And what about him?” He pointed toward me.

  “He is not your concern,” she said.

  “Oh? I’m supposed to walk away so that he can tell Rayburn’s goons to vent my ass? I don’t think so.” He sat himself down and folded his arms.

  Einion shook his head and took a step toward the couch and half collapsed into it. Ysbail stood and helped place him back on the couch. “Too much effort,” she whispered to him. “Rest.” She brushed her hand against his cheek.

  “What happened to them?” I asked.

  “They bore the brunt of forming that portal you walked through,” Baldassare said. “The energy had to be channeled through the people who had walked the ground they were connecting to. The others were basically life support.”

  “You better be worth it,” the biker said.

  Baldassare walked forward and looked at the two nearly comatose elves and said, “If he is correct, he might just be.” He looked up from Ysbail and Einion and said, “It’s a legitimate question, Kline. How do you know? You’ve provided a plausible theory. But it is just that, a theory. One that absolves the mayor of what happened. How do you know it was one of his subordinates?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  IT took a while to tell them, going over my encounters with the upper echelons of this city’s political machine, and going over O’Malley’s last words. The way O’Malley had it, neither Nesmith nor Rayburn knew what had actually happened to the dragon. The attempt to frame Faust was for their benefit as much as the public’s.

  The person who ordered Aloeus neutralized had ties to O’Malley, and had control of enough mages to assassinate the dragon and set up attacks on the Feds’ safe house. Mages that weren’t—given the elvish markings on the bullet that killed Cutler—native to Cleveland. This person had to be loyal to Rayburn, close enough to be unquestioned, and fanatical enough to plan to “neutralize” Aloeus. It also would make sense that, by doing so, he was preventing a direct threat to his own power base.

  “Who do you mean?” Baldassare asked me.

  “Adrian Phillips.”

  The only one who did not give me a blank stare was Baldassare. The others, perhaps, could be forgiven for not knowing the chairman of the Port Authority—though they should’ve. Phillips was the executive in charge of “maintenance” of the Portal. His agency ran the quarantine facilities at Burke Lakefront that housed new arrivals. His agency employed the most mages of any city department. He was part of Rayburn’s political machine, was his campaign manager in his first reelection bid after the Portal. He was adept at finding positions for political cronies; one such was the head of the SPU. He got O’Malley his job.

  I had little doubt that O’Malley was loyal to the Rayburn administration, and to Phillips in particular. And because of the elves’ fealty, the elves were loyal to O’Malley. So, even though the SPU was a police unit under the command of Nesmith, Phillips would be able to run it as a private fiefdom.

  Phillips had spent a lot of time taking the “Faust” rumors and casting “Faust” as the devil. Ysbail and her followers were threats because they weren’t under city control. When he discovered their plans, and the dragon’s part in it, the dragon had to be removed. A new Portal not only threatened Cleveland’s economy, but Phillips’ own power base. He would no longer be able to control who came and left between the worlds.

  He used the Port Authority mages to assassinate Aloeus. Then he used O’Malley and the SPU to attempt a sloppy cover-up.

  Unfortunately for him, Rayburn and Nesmith had taken his beliefs about “Faust” to the obvious next step. They saw Aloeus’ death as a first move in a coming attack from Ragnan. Combine that with the Feds pushing into the jurisdiction, and they needed to come up with “Faust’s” head on a plate.

  “Nesmith wants ‘Faust,’” I said to Ysbail. “She’s pegged you as the prime suspect. And that’s why Caleb Washington was assassinated by the police.”

  My choice of words got the biker’s attention.

  Bone Daddy was a mole for the cops. He was looking for “Faust” and had been for along time. Everyone here probably had two things to thank for the fact that a squad of SPU elves weren’t breaking down the door right now.

  First was, I assumed—and Baldassare confirmed that I assumed correctly—that the network I was looking at was formed of independent cells like any sane guerrilla organization. Bone might have made it high in the echelons, but he hadn’t got far enough to have real contact with the leadership. No Faust.

  Second, and more important, Bone was a real cop. He wasn’t into what O’Malley referred to as “Gestapo tactics.” Caleb Washington wasn’t going to go out of his way to report details on an organization that wasn’t breaking any laws. Instead he spent his time giving the SPU any black market necromancer and two-bit mage who was dealing with illegal shit.

  The biker
, as I had thought, didn’t take well to this.

  “You ain’t telling me he’s no fucking cop . . .”

  “That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”

  “I should fuck you up for saying that.”

  Ysbail held up her hand toward him. “Allow Mr. Maxwell his say.”

  “Of course, when Nesmith lets on to Bone that Aloeus’ death is less than an accident, and that Faust is suspect number one, Bone Daddy is off on his own investigation. He has a major advantage over everyone. He’s pretty damn sure, judging from the reactions he’s seen within the Faustian community, that ‘Faust’ is the least likely suspect. Especially since—if he hadn’t known beforehand, he would realize now—Aloeus was, in at least some important sense, ‘Faust.’

  “Going into his investigation, he questions yours truly and finds a fact that really doesn’t sit well with him.

  “Adrian Phillips was present while they dredged the dragon out of the water. Adrian Phillips was present during the medical examination by Egil Nixon. A medical examination that was falsified to show the death was an accident. Falsified by order of someone other than Nesmith, since her later comments showed she believed the report the honest opinion of the late Coroner Nixon.

  “Unfortunately for Bone, Nesmith didn’t believe Nixon.

  “Unfortunately for Nixon, Phillips couldn’t allow him to disclose exactly what went on aboard the Coast Guard cutter.

  “I don’t know what Bone discovered on his own, but I suspect it was whatever had killed Nixon. Phillips had already shown himself to be an imperfect tactician. Everything from the dragon’s death onward showed no planning, just reaction. It seems quite likely that during the examination Phillips let slip something that identified him as the person behind the dragon’s death. It could have been a mistake as simple as ordering the murder covered up before Nixon gave him his actual findings . . .

  “Whatever Bone found, he didn’t count on O’Malley being Phillips’ creature.