Changer's Daughter (23 page)

Anson crushes his empty soda can between his fingers. “Is he one of us—an athanor?”

“I don’t think so,” Shango replies. “If he is, he is well disguised, for I do not recall meeting him.”

“I wish we had a wizard here who could tell us,” Anson says, “so that we would know if the Accord protects him.”

“The Accord is not designed to protect those who do such things!” Dakar protests.

“No,” Eddie agrees, speaking as the voice of Arthur, upholder of that very Accord, “but it does give any athanor the right to a trial in front of his or her peers.”

“Fuck trials!” Dakar growls.

“In this case,” Eddie says, “all my sympathies are with you. Let’s hope that we don’t find out that this King of Heaven is athanor.”

Shango nods. “I agree, but I do not know of anyone local who has the talent to tell who is and who is not athanor.”

“Maybe,” Anson says, “we can bring someone in—if it comes to that.”

“I think it must come to that,” Shango says. “I cannot calmly sit here and discuss oil deals while my city is ravaged. I think only the vaccinations given in the late 1960s have kept the disease from spreading more widely.”

“That is quite possible,” Anson says. “And I didn’t think you could just sit.”

“Nor can I,” Dakar states.

“Nor,” says Eddie with a deliberate pause, “can I.”

“Nor can I,” Anson admits. “I simply did not wish to force any of you into a dangerous course of action.”

“Then we are agreed,” Shango asks eagerly, “to destroy this Regis?”

“Definitely,” Anson says. “That will be our first order of business, eh?”

“But what will,” Shango looks about, as if realizing for the first time that Katsuhiro is not occupying the chair prepared for him, “our Japanese colleague think?”

Anson spreads his hands wide. “Remember how I told you that we had difficulties, too? That is our difficulty. Katsuhiro Oba has been kidnapped.”

Shango frowns. “Kidnapped? Are you certain?”

“Certain. He vanished from the Lagos airport. We found no trace of him after that. Do you have any idea what might have happened?”

“I do not think I ever mentioned him to my associates by name, only that I might have found a foreign investor,” Shango says. “I am certain I did not mention him, for the Japanese connection was to be our great secret. However, I did mention you a time or two. There seemed no harm in that since we have done small business before.”

Anson purses his lips thoughtfully. “Did you mention that I would be bringing that foreign investor?”

Closing his eyes to concentrate, Shango says woefully, “Yes, I believe that I did.”

“Then an ambitious person could have learned of Katsuhiro through one of my associates.” Anson’s features crease in pain. “The hotelkeeper Adam and his wife, Teresa, are also missing. I told them to prepare for a Japanese guest. This cannot be a coincidence.”

“No.”

The four men sit in gloomy silence, then Shango again surges to his feet, his features suddenly lit by a vicious smile.

“If Regis has taken them, I know where he must be holding them.” He turns off the room light and pulls back the curtain.

“There.”

Shango points toward a blocky shape, just visible in the night.

“That is Regis’s stronghold, a veritable fortress. It was constructed during the oil boom by one of General Yakubu Gowon’s cronies. After Gowon was overthrown in 1975, the building was abandoned for being too associated with tainted policies. It has passed through various hands over the years, but now I happen to know it has a new owner: the King of Hot Water himself.”

“Then,” Dakar says, more excited by the prospect of warfare than by any deep feeling for his fellow athanor, “we must break in there and get Katsuhiro out, and kill this King.”

Eddie shakes his head. “Regis has one disease at his command. What else might he have? We cannot do anything overt unless we are certain that we disable his defenses.”

“Spoilsport!” Dakar snorts. Then he shakes his head, unable to forget those laden altars. “But this time you are right.”

Anson nods agreement. “We all must concur on this. To be impulsive would be to condemn people far more fragile than ourselves to this Regis’s vengeance.”

“Even if we can’t attack at once, we can begin scouting out his fortress,” Shango insists. “Can any of you shift shape?”

Anson nods. “I have a few shapes and a few illusions, but none are terribly powerful or terribly resistant to harm. Still, they will give us an edge.”

“Will you go tonight?”

“After we leave here,” Anson promises, “but first we must depart with the same care that you directed we arrive, eh?”

“
Na
,” Shango agrees, “we don’t want to be defeated before we begin.”

Impulsively, Dakar thrusts out one beefy black hand. Three other hands grasp his in a gesture of solidarity.

“That’s right,” Eddie says. “All for one and one for all!”

“And,” Anson says with a return to his usual irreverent humor, “thus we shall make the King of Heaven fall!”

Shahrazad goes to sleep unhappy the night following her father’s departure. She had thought herself forgiven for her trespass into the wolf pack’s territory, but now she learns that her punishment is to be far worse than any beating. The Changer is going to leave her.

The Changer had taken her hunting that morning, had shown her a new trick for disguising her scent trail, had even shown her that a coyote could climb a tree, if the tree was slanted just a bit. That had amused her greatly.

It had been while they were up in a tree, their forepaws dangling to either side of the limb on which they rested, that he had explained that he was going away for a while.

He had told her that he was no longer angry with her for the encounter with the wolves, had told her that he was only leaving so that she would learn what to do when he would not be with her, but Shahrazad had known the truth.

Her father is so angry with her that he is abandoning her.

Shahrazad has memories of other times her father has left her, but those times she had always stayed with Arthur at his hacienda. Even there she had not been safe. She shudders her skin at the memory of being taken away, tied up to a tree in the darkness. Can that happen again?

The Changer must have known of her fears, but he has left her anyway, has winged off into the afternoon sunlight on dark raven’s wings. Even Frank’s reassurances that he will continue to care for her are not any comfort. After darkness falls without bringing the Changer back, Shahrazad goes out into one of the pastures and sings her sorrow to a starlit sky.

No one answers.

Noticing Pearl the unicorn listening, Shahrazad retreats inside the ranch house. The rug beneath the chair in which the Changer often sat when he talked with Frank still bears some of his scent. She curls up there, nose beneath her tail, and dreams.

Daylight: pale blue, cooler white, like light filtered through clouds, then cast on fresh snow. Shahrazad trots down the hallway toward the Door. As always it is closed.

After her routine attempt to open it, an attempt that fails as always before, she is about to turn away and return to her bed when a scent tantalizes her. She takes a deeper sniff, casting about to make certain of the source but finally she is certain.

The Changer! He is behind that door!

Whining high and eager, acting like a barely weaned pup who smells a meal, she scratches again at the door. It doesn’t open.

She collapses onto her side, puts her nose near the crack beneath it, wuffs deep to draw in the air from the other side.

Yes! There, mingled with scents of pine boards, wool rug, Frank’s boots, and various other common household scents is that of her father.

But there is something not quite right about it, an intermingling of blood. His blood! She has smelled this before, when he traded his eye for her safety. Has he done this thing again?

Furious and panicked, she digs at the carpet outside the door, flings her shoulder against the wood, leaps and falls back until she is battered and bruised. Still she strives to rescue her father—then he will forgive her and stay with her always.

She hears footsteps on the carpet, feels the vibrations of Frank MacDonald’s approach, and stops her frantic attempts. He must not see her, must not know, or he will stop her!

She cringes, looking for a place to hide, but Frank is looking down at her now, bending to lift her by her scruff as if she was but the merest pup and he as tall as the ceiling.

“
What’s wrong, Shahrazad?”
he booms.
“What’s wrong?”

“Shahrazad?”

The coyote trembles beneath the human hand laid upon her shoulders. Fearfully, she opens her eyes, for, contrary to what her memory is telling her, she is not suspended in the air, but still on the floor where she had fallen asleep.

Frank MacDonald kneels next to her, clad in a cat-hair-covered old bathrobe and dog-chewed slippers. His strong hand strokes gently along her spine.

“Bad dream, pup?” he commiserates in a soft voice. “We all have them, time to time.”

He pats her, then scoops her up, not in an undignified fashion, but carefully, as she has seen him carry one of the house cats. She does not wonder that he can lift her so easily. In her mind, she is a frightened pup; he is the adult.

Still carrying her, Frank pads into the kitchen, where he warms her some bread and cheese. After she has eaten this—slowly, as if she is still in her dream, rather than in two quick gulps as would be her wont—he carries her into his bedroom.

He has a large bed. It is already occupied by assorted cats, the clouded leopard, and one of the dogs, but he finds room to set Shahrazad down before taking off his robe and slippers and sliding under the covers.

“There now,” Frank says, reaching out and patting her again. “No need to have nightmares. You’re among friends.”

Shahrazad, meeting the sleepy gaze of a dark red tabby as yellow-eyed as her father, is comforted. She shoves her nose against Frank and drinks in his scent. He smells of human, of the soap with which he washed before bedtime, of the animals he tends, and, beneath it all, of something else.

Too tired to puzzle this out, Shahrazad embraces sleep. Tonight, she knows, there will be no more nightmares.

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