Viv’s head wound needed six stitches, and as she hadn’t gotten her new insurance card yet, the hospital made her fill out forms in triplicate assuming full financial responsibility for the procedure. They released her with instructions to come back if she started seeing double, vomiting, or experiencing mental confusion. By that time Janet had already given her statement to the police and left; one officer waited to take down Viv’s story. She stuck to the version she’d given Janet—there had been a big cat in the parking garage, and in trying to flee from it, she had tripped and fallen down the stairs. At the officer’s pointed question, she verified that, yes, she had been drinking.
It was after midnight by the time she got home. Silk scolded her for her tardiness but subsided when Viv climbed into bed and scooped her up close. “And what are you, the Princess of Cats?” Viv murmured as she skritched the soft fur of her neck and chin. “Yes you are, princess, yes you are. Put in a good word for me if you can.” Silk closed her eyes and rubbed her face against Viv’s hand, an energetic purr her only answer.
Viv petted her cat and, gingerly, sent an inward probe to test her own emotions, much as she might carefully prod a tooth that had just gotten a filling. She felt...all right. Proud, even. She had acted entirely on impulse during the fight with Mr. Irusan, but her instincts had been good. She might have saved Janet’s life, even if nobody but the predator cat would ever know it.
She wanted, suddenly, to call her parents; to tell them that the hardy Viking blood still ran true in their daughter, and that when push came to shove she could put up a fight. But of course it was too late, and the last thing she wanted to do was to worry them. Also, they would almost certainly think she was crazy.
She wasn’t, though. Excalibur had come to her for a reason; she’d just have to accept that. She’d been given a job, and if there was anything she believed in, it was the importance of hard work. If her job was to become the modern-day Lady of the Lake, then she would work at that, and darn it, she would do well.
Facing the morning was hard. Viv dragged herself into work, sore and bleary-eyed, wondering if she was feeling concussion-level “mental confusion” or just a normal person’s reaction to nearly being killed by a giant talking cat. She fortified herself with a mug of coffee from the break room and went to find Jennifer, who gasped aloud at seeing her.
“I know,” Viv said unhappily, “I look appalling.” The hospital had shaved the side of her head in order to put in the stitches, and applied a huge bandage on top. “You’ll never believe what happened.”
“A mad lobotomist crashed the party?” Jennifer guessed.
“Maybe you will believe. I was, you know, mingling, and I chatted with a couple of journalists, and one of them, this woman Janet from the Industry Standard, well, she was knocking back the daiquiris—”
“Oh, we know Janet,” Jennifer said.
“She drinks a lot, right? Well, when she was leaving, she seemed kind of unsteady, so I went out with her, I was kind of trying to get her not to drive. And we ended up in the parking lot talking about it, and there was this big cat, like a cougar! Swear to God. We both saw it. It looked like it was coming at us. Janet fainted, and I fell down the stairs when I was trying to get away. It just ran off though. I don’t think the police believed us.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, they actually put in a few stitches, but other than that I’m fine. I, um, do you know if my insurance is active yet?”
“Oh don’t worry,” Jennifer said, “our party insurance will cover you if nothing else, since you were injured working the event. What a freakshow!”
“You have no idea,” Viv said.
At the first opportunity, she slipped off to seek out Noah. He had his own office, sort of: his desk was in a room with a door, anyway, but though he didn’t share it with anybody else, he also couldn’t be said to have the space to himself. Several computers hummed on a wall-mounted rack, and the rest of the room held stacks of boxes overflowing with laptops, monitors, random peripherals, what looked like old modems, other boxy electronic things Viv couldn’t guess the nature of, and rolls and rolls of cables of every size and length.
“Hey,” she said.
“Auugh!” Noah cried.
“Yeah, I know.” Viv closed the door behind her. “I had a run-in with a creature styling itself the King of Cats. Apparently I got between him and his prey.”
“His...prey?”
“Human prey,” Viv clarified. “You’re willing to be Research Lad, right?”
“Sure,” said Noah. “King of Cats. I’ll see what I can dig up. You think he’s related to the fairy Queen?”
“I have no clue. He called himself Mr. Irusan.” Noah typed himself a note, and Viv continued: “You know our plan? To practice this weekend?”
“Uh-huh?”
“Are you free sooner?”
Noah’s eyes focused on her bandaged head. “Things are ramping up quick, huh?”
“They really, really are.”
“Sure, when do you want to train?”
“Tonight. Every night. I mean, every night you’re free.”
“To defend the city from the forces of evil? I’m free,” Noah assured her. “Don’t worry, my gaming buddies can frag some noobs without me.”
“I don’t even want to know what that means,” Viv said cheerfully. “I’ll catch you later then.”
Back at her cube, she sat down to check her e-mail and found in her inbox a message from Auterre Martin. He’d replied to her press release, but the message was short: I found this glass slipper when you ran away last night. Is it yours? Do you want it back?
Viv felt the corners of her mouth curling up in a smile as she immediately clicked the reply button. But her hands hovered over the keyboard, the cursor blinking in the empty message field.
She popped her head into the next cube. “Hey, Jennifer?” When her supervisor turned her dark head, Viv asked: “This is a weird question, but I think one of the journalists I met at the party last night just asked me out. Um, not Janet. Are we—even allowed to date reporters?”
Something guarded flickered behind Jennifer’s carefully made-up eyes. “I used to,” she said evenly. “I don’t think it’s a great idea, to be honest, but you’re not going to get in trouble so long as it doesn’t interfere with your job. And by that I mean, if you leak confidential client information, you will be fired.”
“I don’t know any confidential client information,” Viv pointed out.
“So go crazy,” Jennifer shrugged, and turned back to her computer.
I’m more a Converse kind of girl, Viv typed back to Auterre. But I’d like to hear more scandalous tales of city intrigue, if you’re free some time.
His answer came an hour later, while she was reading up on Nextwave’s list of clients. Have muck here, will rake for yr amusement. Dinner Friday night?
She forced herself to wait until the end of the day before agreeing to the date, so as not to come off as over-eager. But the thought of it kept a smile on her face throughout the day.
At five o’clock Noah dropped by her cube, asking if she wanted to get some food before the sword-practice.
“The truth is,” she said reluctantly, “I’m pretty tight on cash until my first paycheck comes in. I have some ramen and a bag of frozen vegetables back at my place, and I was kind of planning on making a poor man’s chow mein. You can share it with me if you want...”
“Tempting,” said Noah, “only it really isn’t. Come on, I’ll buy.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, happy to.”
“Okay, just let me shut things down here, and grab the sword.”
They ended up at a microbrewery called the Thirsty Bear, a short walk from the office. As they looked over the menus, seated in a dark wood booth with a candle flickering between them, Viv became uncomfortably aware of the date-like nature of the setting. She glanced anxiously at Noah, but he seemed oblivious: at least his rumpled penguin t-shirt, untrimmed beard, and wild halo of curly hair didn’t exactly scream “expectations of romance.”
A waitress came by to take their orders: Viv opted for a chicken caesar salad and a pilsner, while Noah ordered halibut and a red bitter beer. “I thought you might be a vegetarian,” Viv remarked.
“Sort of,” he said. “I try to keep kosher, I mean, I’m not real strict about it, but the no-meat-with-milk thing means that I pretty much eat vegetarian in restaurants. Fish is okay though.”
“Well, for me this is great,” Viv said in a sprightly tone, “because between the party last night, and you springing for me tonight, and this dinner date that I seem to have made for Friday, I’m eating for free half the nights this week.”
Noah blinked at her behind his enormous glasses. “You have a date?”
“Yeah,” she chirped, plowing ahead as if she noticed no awkwardness at all. “I met this incredibly cute guy from the Bay Guardian and he asked me out.”
“He’s not French, is he?” Noah asked darkly.
“Oh no, do you know him? Auterre Martin?”
“That’s the guy! He was Jennifer’s boyfriend for two years. Lots of drama. I can’t believe he asked you out! What an asshole.”
“Oh crud,” Viv whispered. “She’s gonna hate me now and she’s—well, I don’t know if she’s my boss or not, nobody ever really explained it to me.”
“I don’t think she’d hate you,” Noah said, “but don’t tell her. She was kind of a mess after they broke up. I mean, we’re not close or anything, and even I knew about it. She’d really be better off not hearing that he made a pass at you.”
Viv leaned back unhappily, and the strained silence stretched out until the waitress came back with their drinks. Viv immediately took a long gulp.
“So!” she ventured, changing the subject. “How long have you been in the city?” She’d noticed that nobody called it San Francisco, or Frisco, or even S.F.: it was always just The City, as if there was only one city in all the world that could ever really be worth talking about.
“Five years,” said Noah, “I moved down from Seattle,” and so they managed to start chatting about California culture, and then the West Coast in general, and the awkward moment passed.
“So,” Noah said when their dinner arrived, “there’s probably not a good time to bring this up, but I wanted to tell you something else I found out.”
“Not good news then, I take it?”
“It’s not…definite,” Noah said carefully, “but as I was reading up on magic and legends and stuff, I kind of couldn’t help but notice a recurring theme. In all the fairy stories…they particularly target children.”
“Children,” Viv said, hearing a bit of steel creeping into her voice.
“Well, I asked myself: if that were happening here, what would it look like? What predictions could we make? And then I did some checking and—um, mostly I was relieved. Our infant mortality rate is actually lower than most other cities, and from the statistics I could find, our child abduction rate isn’t any higher either.” He took a swig of his beer. “Child abduction statistics are really hard to find,” he said. “Nobody likes to talk about that, I guess.”
“For some reason,” said Viv.
“Hah, yeah, for some reason.”
“I’m sensing a ‘but’ here.”
Noah sighed. “But—it turns out that despite all of our good statistics, San Francisco has fewer children for its population than any other city in America.”
Viv toyed with her chicken, letting that sink in. “But,” she said after a moment, “that could just be demographics, right? It’s expensive to live here, and the jobs here are geared toward young single people—”
“All of that is true of New York, too,” said Noah, “and they’ve got a baby boom going on.”
“Huh,” said Viv. “But it’s not…proof of anything.”
“No,” he said, “no. Just suggestive. And if fairies are responsible, it’s something really subtle. Not murder, not kidnapping. Something else.”
“I don’t know what to do with subtle,” Viv said. “I can’t exactly attack it with a sword.”
“And I think we should get you comfortable with your blade before you go attacking anything,” Noah said, “obvious or not.”
So after dinner they went back to Noah’s apartment, a little one-bedroom on Sutter, to practice with the sword. The apartment was full of vintage details—crown molding, built-in cabinetry, a telephone alcove, even a fold-down ironing board—but Noah had filled it primarily with electronics, and the pretty glass cabinets held action figures rather than china. He had an eclectic group of posters on the wall: one for a person or group named Moxy Früvous, which seemed to be (or be part of) a band; one done in Japanese animation style, showing some kind of half-naked cyborg schoolgirl; one of the promo posters for the first Star Wars movie; and a black-and-white portrait of Errol Flynn grinning raffishly in his feathered cap.
“I’ve given it some thought,” Noah told her as he rummaged in the closet, “and I think you should be practicing with the live steel, with Excalibur. That’s the sword you need to learn, after all. So I’m going to get into harness.” He came out with a jingling pile of metal: on closer inspection, it proved to be an obviously hand-made approximation of a chain mail shirt, fashioned from small metal washers strung tightly together with metal wire. He had a helmet, too, which although dented and nicked looked a little more authentically medieval. “And you can wear these, they’ll be too big for you but they’re better than nothing. I’ll stick with the padded sword.” He handed her a bundle of leather: she shook it out to find a lace-up jerkin and a big pair of electricians’ gloves, which she obediently donned. Noah, she saw, had the duct-tape wrapped stick she’d seen him with at the beach.
“Okay,” Noah said, “I probably don’t have to say this, but don’t get excited and really come at me with that thing, not even as a joke. It’s against SCA rules to be playing with live steel at all. What we’re doing here is dangerous. Mostly for me.”
Viv nodded. “I’ll be careful.”
“So. Put your feet apart, about shoulder width, with your heels on the ground. Bend your knees, but keep your spine and neck straight. Get a good solid stance. Balance is not everything, but without balance you have nothing, so you’ll want to keep your feet apart—when your feet are together, you can be toppled much more easily. Never let your legs get crossed. Okay, now bring your left foot—you’re right-handed, right?—your left foot up and over, so it points toward the wall, and your sword foot is back. Bring your sword up like this.”
Viv emulated his movements, gripping Excalibur and holding it up and to the right of her face. “This is your center guard position,” Noah explained. “From here you can block a lot of snaps, and deliver a few as well. Let’s just practice moving in this position.”
He led her through some basic footwork, practicing moving forward, then back, while maintaining a balanced stance, never picking her feet more than an inch off the floor. She began to feel the burn of holding the sword aloft.
“Okay, let’s try a basic vertical strike.” Noah stepped back, almost at the other wall, raised his sword overhead, and brought it down in a slow forward arc. Viv practiced the movement from her end of the room.
“And here’s how you block a move like that,” Noah added, sweeping his stick above his head horizontally, so it paralleled the floor. Viv practiced that too, and when she was able to execute the move in a sufficiently controlled fashion Noah stepped forward so that she could see how the strike and the block intersected. In slow-motion they brought their sticks together, and then switched positions, Viv the attacker and Noah defending.
“My arms are shaking,” Viv gasped.
“You’re holding your sword too tightly,” Noah said. “A ready position should be comfortable and loose. But if you ever get serious about sword-fighting you might want to lift weights at the gym to build up your upper-body strength. And the strength won’t come as easily to you as it would to a guy. That sword you have could be used one-handed with a shield, but you’ll probably want to use both hands at first.”
“Definitely,” said Viv.
“There are good women fighters in the SCA,” Noah assured her, “but they do have to work harder. Sword-fighting highlights reach and power, and you’ll have to learn to compensate for that, with speed and footwork and by using your larger muscle groups. I mean, speed is partly about strength too, but with training you can improve your reaction time, and be faster than your opponent just because you don’t need to think.”
“Okay,” said Viv, “this all sounds hard. Can’t we skip to the end of the five-minute training montage, right to the part where I’m suddenly a badass?”
“Well,” said Noah, “you’ve got magic, and that will help.”
“It’s not helping much right now,” she sighed.
“I guess your sword knows the difference between a mock fight and real danger. Which, when you think about it, is lucky for me,” Noah said. “And even though sword-fighting really isn’t designed for women, there are some martial arts that are, and I think you could apply a lot of the tricks they use to fighting with the sword. Like exploiting your opponent’s balance, getting them to over-extend, and generating your force from the hips instead of the shoulders.” He stepped back again, holding his practice sword out at a right angle from his body, and demonstrated a mid-level swing, moving his hips to sweep the sword around while keeping his arms straight and level. “See? This is a killing blow, and it doesn’t rely on your biceps.”
Viv imitated him dutifully, though her swing was slow and clumsy.
“You should experiment with different stances too,” Noah said. “Sword foot forward, sword foot back—there are, like, religious arguments about this stuff.”
“Thanks,” Viv said. “I guess I’ll just need to keep practicing.”
“Don’t worry,” Noah smiled. “You’ll get better.”
The rest of the week passed, at work and at home, with something resembling normalcy. Viv got phone service set up in her apartment, and when she came home from practice with Noah the next night, she found that someone had come by and fixed the back door. The gap in the kitchen wall, however, remained, and she often caught Silk nosing around it.
One evening, just as she was falling asleep, she heard small furtive movements coming from the kitchen, and felt Silk spring off the bed. She followed, but when she flipped the switch the kitchen was empty. Silk was staring at the wall.
“Mice,” Viv sighed. “Lovely. If you catch one, princess, it’s catnip and cream for you.”
Friday morning she was late for work: after tearing up her apartment in a search for her house keys, she’d finally located them tucked neatly in one toe of her sneakers. She stalked into Noah’s office and slammed the key ring down on his desk. “They’re cursed,” she announced. “Some stinking fairy has put a curse on my freaking keys. Can you find anything about how to break it?”
“Good morning, hepcat,” Noah replied cheerfully, and Viv reflexively rubbed her head. She’d taken off the hospital bandage, and picked up a five dollar beret from a street vendor to cover the shaved patch on her head. Jennifer had immediately begun teasing her about her bohemian fashion statement, up to and including giving her “snaps” whenever she completed a task, and everyone else in the office was now following suit.
“I’ll look,” Noah said in a gentler tone. “By the way, I did find something on your King of Cats.”
“Spill,” Viv demanded, seating herself on a handy box of junk.
“Well, stories about the King of Cats go across Europe. Mostly it’s about a funeral, a funeral attended by hundreds of cats, all wailing. Somebody sees it, and he hears the cats talking, saying that Old Whiskers or whoever is dead. When he comes home he tells his wife about it, but as soon as he finishes the story their ordinary housecat jumps up from where he’d been napping on the hearth and shouts, ‘Old Whiskers dead? Then I’m the King of Cats!’ And he goes leaping up the chimney and vanishes, never to be seen again.”
“Old Whiskers?” Viv said dubiously. “No. That’s a funny story, but this thing was a man-eater. Not a housecat.”
“Well, there are other stories about fairy cats, or about gigantic cats that have to be killed by heroes. I didn’t find any link specifically between one of them and Morgan le Fay, except that sometimes lions figure in the Arthurian romances. Knights on quests tend to encounter them—sometimes they’re dangerous and sometimes they’re helpful. Oh, and a couple of funny lines I found in books, here’s one: ‘Cats, in Ireland at least, are regarded almost as fairies in their own right, and generally as evil fairies.’ And here’s another: ‘Fairies keep all the domestic animals except cats and fowls, and cats they steal.’”
“Nobody would steal my cat,” Viv said darkly. “She’s the crankiest thing in the world. If she’s not in your lap, then she’s in your face and she’s complaining about it. Loudly. I’m the only one who’ll put up with her.”
“Yeah, that’s all I found,” Noah said. “I’ll look into, um, the curse of the house keys. Although you might be better off taking them to, I don’t know, a psychic or something.”
“Maybe I will,” she said, and pocketed the offending items, though she hardly trusted them to stay put.
She spent the rest of the day inwardly debating, as she had been for days, whether she should e-mail Auterre to break their date. On the one hand, he couldn’t have known that she was working directly with Jennifer. On the other, nothing good could come of seeing him. But on the third hand, it would be more polite to explain the situation in person than through e-mail. Finally she realized that procrastination had made the decision for her: she’d left it too long, and calling off the date at the last minute would be very rude. Anyway, she was still pleased and flattered that he’d asked her out, and surely she could give herself permission to have a little harmless fun—a chance to dress up and spend some time in the company of a handsome man, even if there was no possibility of it going anywhere. Yes, she decided, that would be all right. She’d be up front with him, so there were no hard feelings, and hey. Maybe he had a cute French friend.