Wolf in the Fold

  "Wait a minute," said Fisher. "If we know where he is, why can't we just walk right in and grab him?"

  "Unfortunately, it's not that simple."

  "Somehow I didn't think it would be," said Hawk.

  Dubois sniffed. "Fenris has gone to ground at Tower MacNeil, just outside the city wall. That much the sorcerers are certain of. But it seems our man has some sorcerous protection of his own, presumably supplied by his superiors. Our people couldn't get close enough to see what his new face looks like."

  "No problem," said Hawk. "We burst in there, arrest everyone, and sort out which is Fenris later."

  "I thought you'd come up with something like that," said Dubois. "Don't even think about it. The MacNeils are one of the oldest and most respected Families in Haven. We don't dare touch them. If it should turn out one of the MacNeils was the traitor, it would be a major scandal. We have very explicit orders to avoid any such thing. And that, Gods help us, is where you come in."

  "All right," said Fisher. "I'll bite. Why us?"

  "Well, thanks to you and your partner's incompetence, what description we did have of Fenris is now obsolete. But at least you two have met the man in person. There's always the chance you'll recognize some mannerism or habit that'll give him away. So you are going in there after him, suitably disguised. Your job is to identify Fenris, and get him out of the Tower without anyone else catching on. It's not much of a plan, so the fact that we're going ahead with it will give you some idea of how desperate we are. Any questions so far?"

  "Yeah," said Hawk. "What kind of place is Tower MacNeil?"

  "Home to the MacNeils for fourteen generations. Protected by old sorcery and one of Haven's finest security firms. The head of the Family, Duncan MacNeil, died last month. Which means, luckily for us, that things are in something of a turmoil at the moment. Duncan's son Jamie is to be the new head of the Family, the MacNeil, as he's called. And, as is customary, all living members of the Family will be gathering at Tower MacNeil to pay their respects to the new head, and jockey for positions of influence and power. Nothing like a Family funeral to bring out the vultures. Fenris will presumably be trying to pass himself off as one of the more remote cousins. This is how we're going to get you in."

  Hawk and Fisher looked at each other.

  "Wait a minute," said Hawk. "You mean we're going to be masquerading as Quality?"

  "Got it in one," said Dubois. "What's the matter? Don't you think you can do it?"

  "That's not the point," said Fisher. "The last I heard, passing yourself off as Quality was still punishable by death. Is that being waived in our case?"

  "No," said Dubois. "Whatever the outcome, officially you were never there. If you do get caught, we'll disclaim all knowledge of you. This is a very delicate situation."

  Hawk thought for a moment. "Is this a volunteer situation?"

  "Yes," said Dubois. "I volunteered you. Given the alternatives, I wouldn't argue if I were you."

  Fisher looked at him steadily. "We don't like being pressured, Dubois. We don't like it at all."

  Dubois fought down an urge to shrink back in his chair as a sudden chill ran through him. Without moving a muscle, Hawk and Fisher had suddenly become dangerous. An air of menace and imminent violence filled the tiny office, as though a slumbering wolf had suddenly awakened and shown its teeth. Dubois paled slightly, but didn't flinch.

  "Renegade Guards tend to have very short life spans," he said evenly. "If anything was to happen to me, you wouldn't even make it to the city gates."

  Hawk smiled. "You might be right, Dubois. But I wouldn't count on it if I were you. We've faced worse odds in the past. We'll do your dirty work for you, this time. I think we owe it to the Council, for letting Fenris get away from us. But if you ever try to pressure us like this again, Dubois, I'll kill you. Believe it."

  Dubois met Hawk's cold stare for a moment, and then looked away. When he looked back, Hawk and Fisher were just Guards again. The air of violence was gone, as though it had never been. For the first time, Dubois understood how they'd gained their reputation. He got to his feet and cleared his throat carefully. He didn't want to sound nervous or uncertain. "Let's go. We've got just under two hours to turn the pair of you into regular young flowers of the aristocracy and deliver you to Tower MacNeil."

  "No problem," said Hawk. "We can be as aristocratic as the next man, if pushed."

  "Right," said Fisher, with an impeccable upper-class accent. "All we have to do is act arrogant and obnoxious at all times, and remember not to blow our noses on our sleeves without crooking our little fingers. What could go wrong?"

  Dubois swallowed hard, but said nothing. There were times when mere words seemed inadequate.

  He hustled them out of his office and through the bustling corridors to an anonymous file room safely out of everyone's way. He ushered them in, and then locked the door behind them. A Guard medical sorcerer rose quickly to his feet, nodded stiffly to the two Guards and looked enquiringly at Dubois. The Commander nodded, and the sorcerer shrugged. He was a dark and intense-looking man in his early forties, with a professional smile and large, powerful hands. He was overdressed in a dark, formal way, as though he were about to attend a funeral. Hawk looked at him suspiciously. He didn't trust Haven doctors. They seemed to believe in suppositories for everything, from warts to deafness. He started to turn to Dubois, but Fisher beat him to it.

  "What's the doctor doing here? We're not sick."

  "This is Wulfgang. You can trust him completely."

  "Why?" said Hawk. "You got something on him too?"

  "Wulfgang specializes in shapechange magic, in a minor way," said Dubois. "Since you both have something of a reputation in Haven, we can't have you walking into Tower MacNeil with your own faces, can we? Wulfgang will give you new faces, which won't be recognized."

  Hawk scowled at the sorcerer. "I'm not feeling too fond of flesh-sculptors right now. What's wrong with a good old-fashioned illusion spell?"

  Dubois sighed impatiently. "Tower MacNeil, like most Quality households, has security spells to show up such things. The Families take their security very seriously. The shapechange won't register because the spell will have finished its work long before you get there. After you return, with your mission successfully completed, we'll give you your own faces back."

  "And if we don't succeed?" said Hawk.

  Dubois smiled coldly. "You screw up in Tower MacNeil, Hawk, and you won't be coming back. Now, stop holding things up, and let the sorcerer get to work on you. We're running out of time."

  Hawk and Fisher looked at each other, and then sat down on the chairs Wulfgang indicated. The sorcerer smiled reassuringly and ran his hands through a series of practiced gestures, muttering under his breath as he did so. A gradual feeling of pressure filled the room, and Hawk's skin crawled as static moved in his hair. The pressure peaked uncomfortably, and then vanished as the sorcerer made a final, decisive gesture. Hawk waited a moment, and then looked down at his hands. They still looked the same to him. He looked across at Fisher, and she looked the same too. He looked back at the sorcerer Wulfgang, who was staring dumbfounded at the two Guards.

  "Why isn't anything happening?" demanded Dubois.

  "I don't know!" snapped Wulfgang. "I can't understand it; the spell just seemed to slide off them." A sudden thought struck him, and he glared at Hawk. "Are you still carrying your suppressor stone?"

  "No, he isn't," said Dubois. "And don't ask what happened to it. That's confidential."

  Wulfgang frowned thoughtfully. "There's nothing wrong with the spell, they're not shielded, so what… ? Wait a minute. Have you two ever been exposed to Wild Magic?"

  "What's that got to do with anything?" said Dubois.

  "There's a big difference between the High Magic that most sorcerers use, and the much rarer Wild Magic," said Wulfgang patiently. "High Magic manipulates aspects of the real world; Wild Magic changes reality itself. So if your people have been exposed to Wild Magic…"
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  "We have," said Hawk. "We were up North when the Blue Moon rose."

  Dubois and Wulfgang stared at the two Guards almost respectfully. "You were there, during the long night?" said Dubois.

  "We were there," said Fisher. "And no, we don't want to talk about it."

  "That's why my spell won't work on them," said Wulfgang. "If they were exposed to the Blue Moon's influence, it'll take more than a simple shapechange spell to affect them. I'm sorry, Commander. There's nothing I can do."

  Dubois sighed. "I might have known you two were going to be trouble. All right. Thank you, Wulfgang. That will be all. The wardrobe mistress should have arrived by now; perhaps you'd be good enough to ask her to step in here on your way out. And Wulfgang, remember: This meeting never took place. You were never here."

  "Of course," said the sorcerer. He bowed politely to Hawk and Fisher, and waited patiently for Dubois to unlock the door so he could leave. Dubois locked the door again after he'd gone.

  "While we're waiting," said Hawk, "there's a few things I'd like to get clear. In particular, why Fenris chose Tower MacNeil as his hiding place. Surely among so many Quality he'd be bound to give himself away sooner or later."

  Dubois pursed his lips. "We have reason to believe Fenris may be of the Quality," he said carefully. "So he'd have no problem passing himself off as a distant MacNeil cousin."

  "Why the hell would one of the Quality want to act as a spy?" said Hawk. "Most spies work strictly for cash, or occasionally political gain. If there's one thing the Quality aren't short of, it's money, and most of them don't give a damn about politics. So what happened to turn Fenris into an agent for a foreign power?"

  "If we knew that, we'd know who he was," said Dubois.

  "Can you at least tell us something about the information he's stolen?" said Fisher. "That might help when it comes to identifying him."

  "I can't tell you anything," said Dubois flatly. "That's being handled on a strictly need-to-know basis. Even I haven't been told. But it must be pretty damned important to have got everyone running round in circles like this. You wouldn't believe the pressure that's been coming down from Above. Let me put it this way: Under no circumstances is the spy Fenris to be allowed to escape from Tower MacNeil. If he tries, you're to stop him, whatever it takes."

  "You mean kill him?" said Fisher.

  "Whatever it takes," said Dubois.

  Hawk smiled sourly. "In other words, it's up to us whether or not we kill a member of the Quality. But if anything goes wrong afterwards, everyone will swear blind we were never given any such order. Right?"

  "Got it in one," said Dubois. "You have a natural gift for politics, Hawk."

  They sat in silence for a while, each thinking their own separate thoughts. There was a knock at the door. Dubois went over and quietly asked who it was. On getting a satisfactory answer, he unlocked the door. But he still stood well back as it opened, one hand resting on his sword till he saw the newcomer was alone. The wardrobe mistress bustled in, in a hurry as usual. Mistress Melanie was tall and scrawny, with a sharp-boned face and a wild frizz of dark curly hair barely restrained by a leather headband. She was one of those people who had so much nervous energy she made everyone else feel tired just looking at her.

  "Are they ready?" she said sharply to Dubois, not even bothering to look at Hawk and Fisher.

  Dubois nodded briskly. "The shapechange didn't take.

  We'll have to rely on standard disguise techniques. Do what you can with them."

  Mistress Melanie made a short tutting sound and glared at the two Guards. "As if we weren't already running behind schedule. All right. Follow me and don't dawdle."

  And with that, she disappeared back out the door while her words were still ringing on the air. Hawk and Fisher hurried after her.

  A short footrace later, they ended up in the wardrobe department. Hawk had never been there before and looked around with interest. Hundreds of costumes hung in neat rows on wire hangers—everything from the latest Quality fashions to a filthy ragpicker's outfit. A great deal of the Guard's work had to be done undercover; inevitable in a city like Haven, where no one shared confidences unless they had to and absolutely no one spoke to the authorities. Unless there was money in it. Half the Guard's annual budget went to information-gathering, a fact which never failed to infuriate the more penny-pinching members of the Council.

  Mistress Melanie sat Hawk and Fisher down in front of the makeup mirrors and studied them thoughtfully. "Yes," she said finally, drawing out the word till it sounded more like no, "The scars are going to be a problem, but a good coat of makeup should cover them. No one'll be able to tell, even at close quarters, but don't let anyone kiss you."

  "I hadn't planned on it," said Hawk.

  Mistress Melanie sniffed. "We're going to have to do something about that eye, of course. A patch is out of the question." She looked hard at Hawk's single eye for a moment, then opened a small lacquered box and rummaged around inside it, finally producing a single glass eye. "Try this."

  "No," said Hawk flatly. "Forget it. I hate the damned things."

  "I can assure you, you'll find it a perfect match," said Mistress Melanie frostily.

  "I said no!"

  "Be reasonable, Hawk," said Fisher. "You can't wear your patch. Any member of the Quality who suffered that kind of injury would have it put right at once with a shape-change spell. And since you can't do that, you'll have to use the glass eye. It won't be for long."

  Hawk growled something indistinct, and accepted the glass eye with bad grace. He scowled at it for a moment, then took off his patch, put it to one side, and gingerly eased the glass eye into the empty socket. He blinked experimentally a few times, and then glared into the mirror. "Hate wearing a glass eye," he growled. "Makes my face ache."

  Fisher looked over his shoulder into the mirror. "She's right, Hawk; they're a perfect match. No one will be able to tell it isn't real."

  Hawk sniffed loudly, unimpressed. Mistress Melanie produced a set of clothes for each of them, and thrust them unceremoniously into Hawk and Fisher's arms. "Try these for size. They're based on the statistics in your official records, but I've had to make some allowances. From the look of you, you've both put on some weight since then. Come on, get a move on; I've got to know if I have to make more alterations, and we've still got your makeup to do."

  Hawk looked at her and raised an eyebrow meaningfully. Mistress Melanie's mouth twitched. "I'll wait outside while you change. Call me if you have any problems."

  She left, closing the door firmly behind her. Hawk took his first good look at his new clothes, and his heart sank. The latest male fashion for the Quality still consisted of tightly cut trousers, a padded jerkin with a chin-high collar, and knee-length leather boots. Plus some rather utilitarian long underwear. The jerkin and trousers were both navy blue with gold thread trim. The military look was in this Season. He looked across at Fisher, and smiled as he saw she was even less enchanted with her new clothes. There was a long flowing gown of lilac blue with frothy lace trim, a great deal of frilly underwear, a formidable-looking corset, and a pair of fashionable shoes that looked hideously uncomfortable. Fisher picked up the corset with a thumb and forefinger and held it out at arm's length, studying it dubiously.

  "Look on the bright side," said Hawk. "At least there isn't a bustle."

  "Do we really have to do this, Hawk?" said Fisher.

  "Well, we could fight our way out of here, and make a run for it."

  "Don't tempt me." Fisher sighed heavily, and began stripping off her furs. "The things I do in the line of duty…"

  It took them the best part of half an hour to climb into their new clothes. There were endless buttons and hooks and eyes, and they all had to be done up in just the right order. Hawk could only just get into the trousers. Even with Mistress Melanie's allowances for his somewhat expanded waistline, it was a very tight fit. Fisher had even more trouble with the corset. Hawk ended up having to put a knee in th
e middle of her back while he pulled the cords tight. Fisher's language became increasingly awful, until finally she was forced to give up from lack of breath. Finally, the ordeal was over, and they stood together before a full-length mirror, judging the effect.

  Despite everything, Hawk had to admit they looked the part. Before them in the mirror stood a gentleman and young lady of the Quality, dressed impeccably in the latest finery. Hawk looked splendid and striking, though the scars on his face still gave him a sinister air, and Fisher looked absolutely stunning. The corset had given her a magnificent hourglass figure, and the long gown made her look even taller. She winked at Hawk coquettishly over her paper fan, and they both laughed.

  "Been a long time since we looked this good," said Hawk finally.

  "A long time," said Fisher.

  Mistress Melanie knocked loudly, and swept in without waiting for an answer. She looked them both up and down, and nodded curtly. "You'll do. Now let's see what we can achieve with a little makeup."

  Another half hour passed before the wardrobe mistress allowed Hawk and Fisher to look into a mirror again, and what they saw kept them silent for a long moment. Their skin was now fashionably pale instead of their usual tan. Fisher's face had been expertly made up with rouge and eye shadow, taking the edge off the harsh lines, and softening the aggressive chin. Her long blond hair had been piled up on top of her head in a complicated design. Hawk's face had changed completely; with the patch gone and the scars hidden under makeup he looked ten years younger, and somehow more at peace with himself and the world. Fisher looked at him and smiled tenderly.

  "I often wondered what you looked like, before the scars."

  "Well?" said Hawk awkwardly. "What do you think?"