To anyone watching from afar—and Kristýna believed there might be watchers in droves—she was enjoying a midafternoon picnic in an empty public park on the outskirts of Paris, with her companion. Clearly, he was a bodybuilder, indulged in odd tattoos, and could be assumed a dour, humorless sort, nose buried in a tattered paperback with a robot and a newt on the cover. Kristýna was playing the part of a middle-class woman of enterprise, no doubt owner of a candle shop, taking off the afternoon. Mack had just finished doing two hundred push-ups.
An idyllic scene beyond their picnic blanket, almost suspiciously free of garbage: Oak and birch trees provided shade, rosebushes splashes of color, and in the distance, beyond their expansive stretch of grass, lay a pond with ducks, while a hedgerow passed close by like a wall, to their left, protecting the lawn from a dark, tangled forest.
Pleasant enough, but not much to Kristýna’s tastes. The current French trend of precision in gardens was too much like turning a wolf on the prowl into a pug with an embroidered ruffle for a collar. She much preferred the wolf.
“Why aren’t we meeting in the forest?” Mack had asked just minutes before as he spread out the picnic blanket. “It would be safer.”
“For us. But he doesn’t trust us. Not entirely. Don’t blame him. I don’t trust us,” she said with a wink for Mack that made him smile uncertainly.
It was true in a sense: Mack had begged off hiding with her in the catacombs after a week of too many tunnels. They had met up again two days later, and she had no idea of where he’d been during that time. True, Mack had no idea what she’d been up to, either.
To a passerby, the marmot that now grazed on the lawn near them, close enough to the hedgerow to bolt for a burrow, would seem to have nothing to do with them, and, as it was not a goat, did not count as a beast subject to confiscation under Lord Crowley’s law. Even if that marmot was, in fact, the Marmot, one of the secret leaders of the resistance to Crowley’s despotic rule and a charter member of the Order of the Third Door.
“An English marmot, assisting the French?” Mack had whispered upon the Marmot’s approach.
“Yes, the times, they are that desperate.”
Kristýna had always believed French-English cooperation resembled “a hen with shoes.” Yet the normal rules need not apply to a marmot who required no other name than the Marmot. Besides, the Marmot was Swiss in origin, had only later become English. To split hairs. Or to acknowledge that she did not know what nationality the Marmot felt he owed allegiance to.
“I like grass,” she murmured, “but cannot see the attraction in eating it.”
“I like grass,” the Marmot murmured back, “and cannot see the harm in eating it.”
“A well-maintained lawn is a thing of beauty.”
“A well-maintained lawn is an utter horror.”
Bona fides established, they could speak freely. In English. The Marmot’s French had not improved with the years, and he knew no Czech. Nor did she know any of the various forms of Marmot.
The Marmot devoured a dandelion whole, then another.
“How goes the resistance?” she asked.
Kristýna was meant to report to him, but they existed not just within the ever-shifting hierarchy of the Order, but also within layers and circles of other allegiances, some of which went back more than a century. All told, it evened out.
The Marmot considered whether to consign a cluster of clover to his buckteeth, reached a decision, and delivered a frenzy of death to the unfortunate white blossoms, then raised his head, scanned 180 degrees of lawn horizon.
“We had an agent close to Crowley. She was meant to observe and report back on his plans. But yesterday she died in an explosion. I’m sure you’ve heard. A bomb of some sort. Ordinary dynamite. The demi-mages missed it.”
“She went … rogue?”
“No. We don’t believe so. We believe Crowley … induced it. To give him the excuse for further excesses against us.”
“Does Crowley need an excuse? For that?” Mack asked.
Most unexpected and unwelcome. Mack never talked during these meetings. Observer only. Once, the Marmot had asked Kristýna, “What does Mack do?” Clear that wasn’t the real question. Not at all.
The Marmot’s aspect darkened, and he stared at Kristýna, teeth prominent, ignoring Mack.
She became very aware, sitting there cross-legged in front of the beast, of the Marmot’s rough physicality, the thickness under the fur that spoke of muscle mass, the toughness even of those beady dark eyes. The huge buckteeth.
Not to mention other qualities. Marmots of a certain persuasion could cast shadows larger than themselves. These shadows had peculiar properties and had been known to detach themselves from their hosts and develop their own agency. Become dangerous, depending on the whims of the marmot in question.
“No, he does not need an excuse,” the Marmot finally said. “Which is why we are also perplexed.”
“Your agent wouldn’t have decided on her own? Felt a need to undertake such an operation. For some reason you could not know?”
“Absolutely certain,” the Marmot said. “She knew how important her spying was to us and how small the chances of assassinating Crowley. Nor was she a fool.”
Just her notes on the schedules and activities of the demi-mages in the catacombs had been invaluable. Now it would be even harder to infiltrate Notre Dame.
“Conclusion?” she asked.
Mack spoke again, still seemingly engrossed in his paperback. “Conclusion: a third party. Someone who would benefit from Crowley rattled, but not dead.”
“Very good,” the Marmot said to Mack. “We concur.”
Hazards and cautions. Alarms and breaches. The Marmot had never acknowledged Mack’s presence before. But just now there had been in the Marmot’s glance toward Mack a hint of familiarity that worried her.
“I have news as well,” Kristýna said, if only to put the moment behind her. Or her paranoia. Whichever it was, she did not like it.
“Source?”
She smiled. “Better you don’t know.” Better for her, since her dandelions spied on more than just Crowley. Although, in theory, marmot shadows could be spying on her dandelions, too. How wicked everyone was. No respect for privacy.
“Go on.”
Was it coincidence that the Marmot chose that moment to snap dandelion stalks in two and munch on the remains? Well, they weren’t hers. The Marmot knew some of her secrets, but hopefully not all, for she still had a spy in Crowley’s war room.
“Crowley has had Verne create a new magic war machine,” Kristýna said, “one which burrows into the ground, like a submarine on land. It will, it is rumored, soon be used as part of a new offensive against either England or Prague. Crowley already, too, has asked Napoleon to draw up new plans for an assault on Prague. As for the Golden Sphere, Crowley thankfully still does not know where It has hidden, although he searches feverishly. Crowley has ordered his familiar Wretch to train some sort of assassin to target members of the Order. Those are the main points.”
“And the not-main points.”
“The saltpeter is in place. Crowley is trying, but he can’t get rid of it all. He can’t possibly get rid of all the garbage in time anyway. Rimbaud is ready. Which is to say, I’m not needed here anymore. Nor is Mack.”
Worse, if Crowley captured them and found a way to make them talk, they would be a liability.
“No one expects you to stay,” the Marmot said. “You’ve done quite enough.”
She smiled. Anyone who knew the Marmot less well would have taken that as a rebuke. And the nagging doubt, despite wanting to leave: Did the Marmot need her gone for some other reason?
“I have tactical intel, too, from the catacombs, but I assume you’ll want me to tell that to the Decipher Duck.”
“Yes, quite.” The Marmot did not trouble himself with that level of detail. Nor did he seem troubled by her other intel. How much of it did he already have from other sources?
“There is another … anomaly,” she said. “One we’ve spoken of before.”
“Namely?”
“Still no evidence that Crowley has begun to fade. No evidence he has left Aurora for any period to counteract the effects.”
No one, not the greatest of magicians, could avoid fading away into a wraith if they stayed in a world not their own. You could stave off the process of disintegration for a year or two, even three. But you would during that period begin to show the signs. It was a natural side effect; you might as well elude gravity. Nor would a quick trip through a door be enough to offset the months, the years, Crowley had now spent in Aurora.
“Troublesome,” the Marmot said.
“Further interference,” Mack said.
Yes, it was, for him to continue to speak up. She gave him an irritated look, but he met it full-on, as if she were the unreasonable one. As if she were the one breaking an unspoken agreement.
“We had hoped our agent would discover the reason for this, but it was not to be …” The Marmot bent a sedge weed with one paw, inspected it, found the weed wanting, let it spring back into position. As he watched it settle, the seed head dispersed into the wind. “I also had hoped Dr. Lambshead might have had some insight, might have said … something?”
“No, he never said anything on that subject. I’m sorry.”
She replied perhaps too quickly, out of unease. The Marmot had never mentioned Dr. Lambshead in front of Mack before, and she had not once in seven years told Mack anything about him.
A couple of men in drab, nondescript clothes began walking along the path to a gazebo to their far right. The Marmot retreated back onto all four legs and rummaged in amongst the grasses of the lawn.
The picnic basket held cheese, wine, and bread. It also hid an impressive assortment of deadly weapons, magical and otherwise. Should they be required.
The Czech term for “whistle-pig” was „píšt’alka prase“, and to most Czechs was a nonsense term, which amused her because a talking marmot was certainly nonsense to the average Czech. The word for “marmot” was simply „svišt’“, but this also meant “baby” or “child.”
Thinking of the Marmot in this way reminded her of his true age, and thus his guile. In the old tongue, the word for marmot also meant “disarming” or “deceptive.” Perhaps because who could on first sight think of a marmot as less than earnest.
This particular svišt didn’t speak again until the two men were suitably distant, apparently using the cover of the gazebo to engage in some passionate kissing. But when the Marmot turned to them again, he changed the subject in what she would later think of as a peculiar way, although in the moment nostalgia snuffed out suspicion.
“Do you remember, Kristýna, when these gardens were full of nectar deer at night? And such beautifully strange blossoms. And so many of the Old Folk.”
The Old Folk were the ancient animals, the ones from folklore rarely glimpsed in the modern era, even less so now that Crowley consigned so much animal life to death.
An affection came flooding back to Kristýna for the Marmot, from before the current troubles. From when there had been no Crowley, no war, no divisions within the Order.
“Of course I remember!” she said. The flying nectar deer were rare everywhere now, their huge gossamer wings like cosmic sails, harvesting moonlight from particles of the air.
“Perhaps one day, the Old Folk will come out of hiding and the nectar deer will return to this place.” The Marmot’s voice, usually impassive, unreadable, contained a rare hint of sadness.
Sometimes she felt sorry for the Marmot; he lived in the past, which could be a beautiful thing, but only in moderation. As she knew well.
The Marmot stood upright, shook off whatever melancholy had come over him.
“Thank you for your report, Kristýna. When will you leave Paris?”
A not-so-subtle hint.
“Tonight.” Not yet for Prague, but soon. They had an opportunity to exploit first.
“I will not ask for where. I know you will tell me if you need to. You might then wander over to the pond. Give the rest of your information to the Decipher Duck—and good luck with your travels.”
“Which duck?” Mack asked.
“Witch duck?” the Marmot asked in confusion.
“Which one of the ducks?” Kristýna clarified. “Is it that mallard trailing a broken wing or the wood duck winking this way with one good eye? For example.”
“It is the only duck that will talk to you.”
“Ah,” both Mack and Kristýna said.
“And you? What will you do now?” Kristýna asked.
The Marmot got a wild look in its eyes, exclaimed, “Sunny hells damn it to all the dark havens, but that is good clover!”
No further answer would be given. The meeting was over, the marmot lost to reverie while committing a brutal series of atrocities against the defenseless clover.
In truth, Kristýna found the bloodthirstiness unsettling, even directed against a few dozen plants. Perhaps especially. Kristýna knew that the Marmot could easily betray her, if it benefited what he thought of as the proper goals of the Order of the Third Door.
Anything was possible for a creature at least two hundred years old, tough as old boot leather, and ruthless as sin.