53

CHANGING THE RULES

We were in the center of a crowded university dining room. I won’t say which university, but it was a state school, and the room was large and warm-colored. Our tables and chairs were made out of wood and cushioned in soft but scratchy fabric the same color as the carpeting, a shade caught somewhere between yellow and tan and red. Perhaps someone who was really into nail polish or painting could have identified the hue. I couldn’t.

Emil and one of the pregnant women we’d freed from the schoolhouse were seated on one side of our table. Ben Lafontaine and I were on the other. The food actually looked pretty good, but I was eating pizza just to be safe. It was a college cafeteria, after all, and it’s pretty hard to make inedible pizza.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather do this outside?” Emil asked, his expression as blank and serene as always.

The building we were in was made of white stone, and there was a large walkway with wrought-iron tables visible through the large windows on the side of the dining hall. It was cold and gray outside, and the tables were empty.

Ben shrugged. “I’m good.”

He looked good. Ben wore being the new most powerful werewolf in the Midwest well. He also wore a cowboy hat well, though I’m not sure if it was ironic or what. I was still figuring Ben out.

Emil made an acquiescent gesture with his palm. “How many were-beings do you have hidden in this crowd?”

Ben shrugged. “None. We don’t need them.”

“How many knights do you have on this campus right now?” I asked.

Emil smiled politely. “None. We don’t need them.”

I smiled back, even if it was a little tight. I liked Emil in spite of myself. At least he was up-front about being a bastard.

“Do you have it?” the woman interrupted. I’d never gotten her name. She had some kind of multi-ethnic thing going on. Brown hair, amber eyes, high cheekbones, almost at full term. I could smell werewolf coming off her, though she must not have had her first full moon. When it came, she would die. Her geas would kill her if the change didn’t. No wonder her heart was racing.

Seeing her next to Emil… she had the same coloring, the same cheeks, the same eyes… even the same smell in some weird way.

“You two are related.” It came out sounding like an accusation.

Emil nodded. “Tess is the niece I told you about. I thought she was dead. Hoped she was, honestly.”

Tess flushed. Why had Emil brought her along? What kind of game or angle was he playing now?

“Do you have it?” Emil reiterated.

“We do.” Ben removed a small gift-wrapped parcel from his coat and pushed it across the table.

“And this is…” Emil trailed off.

“A working werewolf potion,” I said. “Bernard did it. He was still trying to figure out two things. A way to turn it into an airborne virus, and a way for werewolf children to survive pregnancy.”

Emil’s niece got upset then. I could see her shoulders tense from how tightly her hand was clenching beneath the table, and her body was dumping a complex cocktail of pheromones.

“And you’re not giving us the secret to this potion.” Emil wasn’t smiling any longer. “You’re giving us a sample so that we can verify that you have it.”

“You’ll never kill everyone fast enough to keep this a secret, Emil,” I said. “There are system commands that will publish the information on the Internet if the files aren’t updated. There are sprites who have hidden the information who aren’t even on this plane anymore. They’re oath-bound to check in every couple of months or years to make sure that the knights haven’t tried to wipe us out.”

“It’s true.” Ben shrugged again. “The only way to keep this under control is to keep us reasonable, peace-loving werewolves around. Not kill us or hold us so that who knows who will do who knows what when the information comes out.”

“I don’t believe you.” Emil was looking at me. “John would never risk something like that. The geas wouldn’t let him.”

My shrug wasn’t as good as Ben’s but it was pretty casual. “You’re right.”

Ben cleared his throat. “It wasn’t John’s idea. He had nothing to do with setting up any of this.” Also true. Sig and Ben and Parth had set the plan into motion before telling me. It was sort of the supernatural version of a nuclear deterrent.

We all paused while a young man in tie-dye and a padded jean jacket came close to the table as he threaded his way through the dining hall. He asked us to excuse him and we did.

“It’s true,” I promised. “I’m not much happier about this than you are, really.”

Emil looked at Ben then. “What do you want?”

“Peace,” Ben said simply.

The woman gave me a sharp, measuring stare. “And what do you want?”

“Peace,” I echoed.

Emil tapped his fingers on the table. I really hoped it wasn’t some signal to some knights somewhere to do something messed up. He addressed Ben. “Suppose we agreed to leave your… what are you calling your new order, anyhow?”

“We haven’t decided yet,” Ben admitted easily. “Some of us want to call ourselves a tribe. Some of us want to be a confederacy or a league. I like the idea of being a round table.”

I looked at him narrowly. This was the first I’d heard of it. Ben had a strange sense of whimsy. He might be serious. He might be referring to a practice I vaguely recalled reading about where some Native American tribes liked to meet at round tables. He might be tweaking Emil in some odd way because Emil represented an order of knights and, you know, a bunch of werewolves calling themselves the round table? Hell, for all I knew he was making fun of the Algonquin Round Table.

He smiled. “I admit, it’s not a very popular suggestion.”

Emil cut through the banter. “Suppose we agreed to peace with your tribe, but you had to hand over Charming. Right now. No questions asked.”

Ben stopped being amused. “Whatever happens, my people aren’t for sale. None of us. Ever.”

Emil lapsed into silence.

“Why do you have such a hard-on for me, Emil?” I asked. “I still don’t really get that.”

He shook his head. “It’s nothing personal. You’re another crack in the dam.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I tried to explain this to you before. The geas doesn’t tell us that knights can’t kill other knights, John,” Emil said. “It doesn’t tell us that we have to stay together. It doesn’t tell us that we can’t experiment with dark arts, or intermingle with the monsters we’re supposed to police. We drill that into our children’s heads as soon as they start learning to talk and tell them it’s part of the geas, but it’s not true. The geas is a compulsion to preserve the Pax Arcana, not a sophisticated set of rules.”

I stared at him. “I know that.”

“Of course you know that!” Emil said impatiently. “You’re living proof of it! But most knights don’t.”

Oh, shit.

“We already have so many factions that it’s affecting our ability to function together,” Emil muttered glumly. “The Rat Runners hate the Swords of Solomon, and the Swords of Solomon hate the Crusaders and the Pajama Party hates the Warhounds, and the Warhounds hate the Bug Huggers, and the Crusaders hate everyone except the Warhounds. The only thing keeping us together is the idea that we have to stay together for the good of the Pax.”

“And because they believe it’s a part of the geas, it is part of the geas,” I said slowly.

“Most people never question the core beliefs they grow up with,” Emil confirmed. “You can look back on any culture five hundred years later and wonder how they could have ever believed some of the contradictory or flat-out insane things they accepted as law or common sense.”

“And I’m a constant reminder that knights can question whatever they want,” I said.

“Yes.” Emil leaned forward and spoke urgently. “You are a loose thread that can cause the whole tapestry to unravel.”

I laughed disbelievingly. “Are you trying to make me believe that committing suicide is the best way for me to preserve the Pax so that my geas will start pressing me to do it?”

He settled back in his chair then, his face expressionless again. “Maybe.”

“Why don’t you write all that down on sandpaper, roll it into a tube, and shove it up your ass?” I invited.

The woman flushed. I don’t think it was my unsophisticated crudity… I think it was the fact that I was talking to her grandmaster that way.

“I don’t care how dangerous the truth is, Emil,” I said. “It’s gotten to the point where you’re doing worse and worse things to keep your lie going. You can tell yourself that it’s to preserve the Pax, but you’re just afraid of change.”

Emil suddenly looked old though I couldn’t say what changed. It wasn’t his body posture or his expression, at least not overtly. “I thought you’d say that.”

“So what’s your contingency plan?” I asked cautiously.

“Knights know you made the sword of truth blaze,” he said. “And we have the example of the Kresniks and Benandanti to prove that men can work with werewolves to preserve the Pax. And you did kill Bernard. I can tell people you were my double agent among the wolves all along. Between that and the leverage this… discovery… gets you… I might be able to arrange that armed truce you want.”

“He killed those knights in Abalmar,” Emil’s niece protested.

“No,” Emil corrected gently. “He persuaded the werewolves to keep our knights alive after they fell into Bernard’s trap. He didn’t know what Bernard was going to do with them, and when he found out, he killed Bernard and set them free. And now John’s going to continue to be my double agent inside this new, more manageable clan that Ben Lafontaine is trying to start. I need him to spy on Ben and guide events so that this never happens again.”

Ben looked at me. “You bastard.”

I shrugged. I was waiting for the “But.”

“But I have three conditions if you two really want peace,” he said. “More than that, actually, but three that aren’t negotiable.”

“What are they?” Ben sounded indifferent.

“First, you’re going to have to let me send you knights to train some of your werewolves to hunt monsters,” Emil said. “And you’re going to have to send us werewolves that we can use for tracking purposes. That’s how I’ll have to pitch it. The vampire war weakened us, and you weakened us even more. All-out war with you will destroy both of us. This is the only way to turn werewolves into an asset instead of a liability. To make us stronger than before instead of weaker.”

“But the knights will have to think it was your idea,” I guessed. “That’s why you want to act like you’re calling the shots and manipulating the dumb werewolves.”

Emil looked at me narrowly. “I’ll tell some of them that, yes. Some kind of exchange program where we get to know each other over time is the only way this is going to work. If it’s going to work. It probably won’t. There’s a lot of bloody water under the bridge.”

Ben growled. “We’ll be your partners but not your dogs. What’s the second condition?”

Emil indicated me. “John works for me. Secretly, but with no more games between us. I’m going to need someone capable who can’t be traced back to me easily.”

“I’ll listen if you need a troubleshooter,” I said. “But like Ben said, I won’t be your slave. What’s the third condition?”

Emil put his hand on Tess’s forearm. “You both agree to be godfathers to my niece’s child.”

Okay, that one came out of nowhere.

The woman began to cry. “I’m… getting a C-section tomorrow. I want my baby to live.”

I didn’t say anything. There was at least some chance that the baby’s geas and the baby’s curse would find some middle ground while the child was at the most adaptable, instinctive, unquestioning state it would ever be in.

“I don’t understand,” Ben said slowly. “Why would you want me to be your child’s godfather, young lady?”

Her face filled with sudden loathing. Somehow, she managed to get farther away from us without moving. “I don’t want any of this.”

“This is my condition.” Emil sounded exhausted. “We are possibly the only three men on this planet who can and will protect my brother’s grandchild, no matter what the consequences. And if you two make a promise to a dying mother to protect her child, you will honor it, even if you don’t know her.”

“And if I don’t promise?” My voice sounded strained.

“Then we destroy each other.” Emil’s pretense of detachment was gone now. His expression was fire and iron. “Or do you think my will is weaker than yours?”

I didn’t, actually.

“You have no idea how hard the thing you are asking for will become. We will bind each other like kings,” Emil said. “You protect my blood. I will protect yours. It is the only tie that will hold.”

Gabriel had said that the loss of a child drove Ben in ways that were deep and unfathomable. He had said that Ben had adopted Cat out of a need to replace a daughter figure. Ben had moved heaven and earth to save Cat even though she had, in many ways, betrayed him. How shrewd was Emil? I had thought we held all the cards, but now I wondered if he wasn’t directing us still. Something was moving inside of Ben Lafontaine. I could feel the currents from two feet away.

“I agree,” Ben said.

It was just a kid. A kid with a knight’s blood and a werewolf’s curse who didn’t deserve any of the world of shit that was about to come down on it.

God help that child. God help me.

“I agree,” I said hoarsely.