Changer's Daughter (55 page)

“That’s an idea,” Arthur says slowly, “but we don’t want to attract the police’s attention. Who knows what Louhi might do? In the past, she’s been capable of turning men into pigs when they annoy her. I’d hate to add another anomaly.”

Frank agrees. “The police might also spot Shahrazad and the griffin. Also, if Louhi is aware that she is being followed, she might alert the police.”

Bill clears his throat. “I hadn’t thought of that. Still, she isn’t going to say a mythological beast and a coyote are chasing her, is she?”

“No,” Arthur says, “but she might weave a glamour so that the police would see them as something else—dangerous animals or something. I don’t know what she can do, but she has been capable of malice in the past.”

“Right,” Bill says. “I’m new to this.”

“Frank, I’ll get Lovern to try to find them,” Arthur promises. “Louhi may have some sort of shield up against scrying, but Shahrazad and the griffin won’t.”

Chris cuts in. “Your Majesty, Lovern is in Las Vegas. When Lilith called to say they’d found the satyrs, she said that he was exhausted and staying on.”

“Locate him right away,” Arthur commands. “Tell him to get back here and why. Bill will brief you later if there is anything more.”

“Right.”

“Is there anything more, Frank?” Arthur sounds hopeful.

“Well, I’ve been studying Louhi’s cage. On the side of her wheel that faced the wall there are some complicated runes scratched into the plastic.”

Arthur gives a low whistle. “A wheel with runes. That sounds like what we’re looking for. Can you copy what it looks like or photo...”

Bill interrupts. “Why doesn’t he just express mail the whole thing? That way Lovern can check it out personally.”

“Great! The voice of the twentieth century speaks. Can you get it to us overnight, Frank?”

“Consider it done.”

“I’ll have you kept posted as things develop.”

“Thanks. I’ll do the same, though, to be honest, I hope there aren’t any more developments.”

“Me too, but I expect that that’s too much to hope for. Thanks again, Frank. Keep a weather eye on the Head.”

“Stinky Joe just showed up, and he’s settling in to watch the Head. I think he’s offended by the chaos in his kingdom.”

“Him and me both,” sighs King Arthur. “Him and me both.”

The air crackles around Shango as he looks down at the mess on his office floor. He is as full of barely restrained electricity as he is of barely restrained temper. Last night had been a cascade of bad news.

First, he had gone by the old Belgian factory where Anson had told him this Oya resided. He had planned to enter via the door on the roof, then kidnap this Oya and at least one of her human associates as hostage against her good behavior and cooperation.

He had the situation choreographed in his imagination and was looking forward to seeing the wind drop, to his armies moving forward shouting
“Kabiesi!”
, proclaiming him, not that fool of a mayor as ruler. It had been too long since he had been so hailed, but with the mayor’s death—a thing he intended to arrange as soon as he had Oya securely in his keeping—he would be the natural successor.

But his plans had become ashes, for when he had made the laborious climb to the top of the factory and had eased open the rooftop door he found the place uninhabited. Sneaking down the stairs, he ghosted through the sleeping family who occupied the second floor, but though he looked down onto many sleeping faces, he did not find Oya, nor did he find any of the athanor.

He did find something that creased his brow with worry. One of the men had the same features as Taiwo, one of his tools, and thus must be Kehinde, Taiwo’s twin. One of the women looked to be Aduke Idowu, Taiwo’s wife. It troubled him that Oya had taken up residence with people so closely related to one of his tools. What did she know? What did she suspect?

Forgoing a hostage, for he had no idea who was dear to Oya and who was not, Shango went up to the roof again. He was preparing to climb down when he saw the white flash of gunfire and heard its fainter report, both coming from the direction of Regis’s compound.

Cursing under his breath, he clambered to the ground, running so that he would be at home when the report of the disturbance was brought to him. He arrived only moments before the messenger and covered for his being up and fully dressed at a time when a respectable minister would be asleep by hollering at the messenger.

“See! You are so slow that I am awakened and have time to ready myself before you even drag your loathsome feet across my doorstep. Take a message to the chief of police!”

He scribbled the message, demanding that an elite squad be prepared for his use and that the off-duty men be awakened and ready for combat. The exhausted runner hurried off, and Shango took a few minutes to gather his favorite weapons, including a set of thunderstones. These he would use only as a last resort—for like any athanor he has learned to dread anomalies—but a burst of lightning from the sky had turned the battle for him more than once.

But when he met his elite squad and raced to Regis’s compound, he was too late. Over half of Regis’s guard was dead, both the night squad who had been on duty and those who had been awakened by the first shots and hurried to back up their fellows. Katsuhiro Oba was gone, as were Taiwo, Teresa, and Regis.

Shango spent a bloody hour searching building by building, room by room, turning over corpses to confirm for himself who was present and who was not. The Balogun did not have time either to mourn or to meditate on the ramifications of the night’s activity. He barely managed to choke out appropriate responses to Shango’s questions and to check off each of the dead on a roster he carried on his clipboard.

At last, leaving the Balogun in command, Shango returns to his house. Only after he has dealt with the host of panicked requests and reports that await him can he escape to his private office and consider what to do next. He can’t decide whether to scream or rejoice when Regis steps from concealment behind a door and bows before him in insolent humility.

The Chief General Doctor is smeared with sewer filth, explaining how he had escaped the compound where so many had died in his defense.

“Hello, boss man,” he says in broad pidgin accents. “And what for we doing now?”

“You fool!” Shango bellows. He forgets himself, forgets his plans, forgets how useful Regis could be in the future—both as a control on those superstitious Nigerians who will be ready to tremble before the God of Smallpox and as a researcher into new and more terrible biological weapons.

Forgetting all of this, Shango strikes his hands together. A bolt of lightning, jolts out from where his hands meet and it hits on the carpet just in front of where Regis stands. The proximity of the electricity wipes the insolent grin from the human’s face.

“
Kabiesi!”
Regis cries, falling flat to the floor, heedless of the burned spot in front of him. “I never knew! Forgive me!”

“That’s better,” Shango replies, but the air still crackles around him.

When the sun rises high, Shahrazad is ready enough to agree to the griffin’s demand that they get to cover. Before this, she had hoped that any moment they would see the truck on the road ahead of them. She had envisioned how they would land on the bed of the truck, how she would break the little window in the back of the cab and reach in to stop Wayne from driving any farther.

She doesn’t fear the mouse, for it is small and she has eaten many mice. It doesn’t particularly bother her that this mouse might well be her half sister. She’d never liked Louhi.

However, they never catch up to the truck, and the griffin, though quite powerful, has grown tired. She has flown several hundred miles, carrying some twenty-five pounds of not-quite coyote. Moreover, she has not flown where people might see her for what she is in a long, long time. Although brighter than either eagle or lion, the griffin is still animal in her adherence to pattern and habit. The higher the sun rises, the slower she flies, until by midmorning she takes them down into the shelter of a copse of trees.

Once Shahrazad has stretched kinks out of muscles unaccustomed to the cramped posture she had maintained on the griffin’s back, she shifts back into her familiar coyote form. The griffin can get plenty of water from the snow, but she cannot leave to hunt without risking detection.

Remembering how once, long, long ago, her father had hunted for her, Shahrazad assumes the responsibility for feeding her companion. It takes a lot of rabbits to satisfy the griffin, but there are plenty here, and, since there are no predators to speak of this near to a highway, Shahrazad finds them easier hunting than the canny creatures she had pursued on the Other Three Quarter’s Ranch.

Gnawing on a leg bone from her own, much smaller, meal, Shahrazad tries to think where Louhi and Wayne might have gone. Respecting the griffin’s greater age and experience, she whines a query. The griffin answers promptly:

“To Lovern. He is the only one who might be able to give her back her body.”

“Lovern?” Shahrazad does not have an inordinate respect for the scrawny wizard. Her father had treated him as if he were some sort of joke, and she herself had encountered Lovern during a rather bad time for the wizard. However, the griffin is adamant.

“Lovern.”

“Lovern belongs to Arthur,” Shahrazad says, “but he has his own den, too. I’ve never been there, but it has been spoken of.”

The griffin nods. “We cannot chase the truck. Let us go to Arthur when darkness falls. The way will be shorter if we do not need to follow these human roads.”

“Do you know where Arthur lives?”

The griffin hunches her feathered shoulders in something like a shrug. “South. In a big city. You lived there. You will find it for us.”

Shahrazad isn’t certain that she can, but as she cannot think of a better plan, she agrees. They sleep side by side then, letting the short November day wheel past.

When twilight comes Shahrazad shifts herself into her hybrid form and climbs onto the griffin’s back. This time when the eagle-puma rises into the air, she takes them south, toward the distant city of Albuquerque.

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