"Are you sure we should accept the invitation?" Ellen said.
Adrian shook his head. "No," he replied frankly. "But when my great-grandfather issues it, I am sure that the consequences of refusal would be worse. If he simply intended to kill us, we'd probably be dead already."
He left unspoken the knowledge that there were worse things than death, and that his technically dead ancestor might simply be toying with them.
"Ah…honey…"
He turned and looked at her, concern in his dark gold-flecked eyes.
She took a deep breath. He wasn't in the least a bully, not even unintentionally, but his strength of personality could make you feel uncertain about arguing with him just by existing.
"Honey, I don't think you realize just how much I don't want to meet any other Shadowspawn but you. You're the only one I've met who doesn't make me want to kill them, or run screaming, or…And I'm afraid of flashbacks. This great-grandfather of yours, he's the Big Bad, right?"
He nodded. "Grand master of the Order of the Black Dawn and the Council of Shadows," he said. "He has been for over a century."
She closed her eyes. "Okay, this is the guy behind World War One and Two, the Holocaust, the killing fields, the Congolese wars, the Seoul thing, the…the just about everything. And we're supposed to go have dinner with him?" Almost pleadingly: "Look, couldn't I stay here and watch over Professor Duquesne or something? Rather than having dinner with werewolf Hitler and his vampire bride?"
He took her hands. "My dove, for one thing I want you to be safe. Or as safe as possible."
" Safe?" she said.
"This place…the Pavillion Ledoyen…opened in 1791," he replied. "Great-grandfather has been coming here all his…well, life. And postlife. He brought me there on a visit when I was ten, during our annual summer trip to Europe."
Which was forty years ago, Ellen thought. That keeps tripping me up.
Adrian went on: "It's one of the favored spots for Shadowspawn in Paris because of the continuity; there's a truce for the restaurant and grounds. That's one of the main reasons I agreed to this, instead of running immediately. I do not want you anywhere else without me."
"More, I feel stronger with you beside me, also," he said. "We are comrades-in-arms now, as well as lovers. And…you are my link to normalcy, to sanity, to all that is good. Merely being around my great-grandparents is to fall into an alien dimension, ethically."
She hugged him. "Okay, when you put it like that. Sorry for the collywobbles."
"It is nothing."
"Odd to get a dinner invitation from the emperor of the Earth," she mused.
"First among rivals, rather," Adrian said. "And by aspiration, more of a living god. Or unliving god."
"You're frightened, aren't you?" Ellen asked.
He glanced at her quickly. "Anyone who is not afraid of Etienne-Maurice Breze is an idiot," he said quietly. "And Seraphine is only marginally less dangerous, if at all."
Then he smiled a crooked smile. "Yet at least you look lovely."
Even with the tension, that could make her feel a flush of pleasure, and she turned slowly; she was wearing a turquoise sheath, shoulderless, tight above and with a slightly flared skirt three fashionable inches below the knee that showed off her hourglass figure. Her antique shawl shimmered with silver paillettes, and the choker silver necklace held aquamarines laid out in Mhabrogast glyphs, bringing out the deep blue of her eyes.
It was all rather fetching, and the choice of precious metal was not an accident, either. It wasn't precisely that silver was toxic to Shadowspawn; they certainly didn't sizzle at its touch. But the Power couldn't affect it, or could only by massive and painful effort, and silver weapons affected them as ordinary ones did her type of human. That went doubly for night-walkers and postcorporeals, who could make themselves impalpable to ordinary matter with a little warning.
Her fair brows drew together a little, and she paused to adjust Adrian's bow tie-he was in formal evening dress, and looking very fetching in an archaic, rakish James Bond sort of way, especially with the deep red cummerbund.
"Honey, there's something that sort of puzzles me. You can walk through walls, right?"
"Yes, when out of the body, with a little effort."
"Then how come you don't drop right into the ground when you do?"
To her surprise he looked a little alarmed; rather the way a claustrophobic would if confronted with the thought of being buried alive in a small coffin.
"You can, if you're careless, though there's an…instinctual reluctance to let the soles of your feet go impalpable while they're in contact with the earth. And you can go palpable very quickly if you fall over. It's usually a fatal mistake if you don't."
"Why?"
"Because when you're in solid matter you have to stay impalpable. You're sliding through matter and can't affect it, there's nothing to push with. Total darkness, no air…the night-walking body needs to breathe eventually too, remember, even if not as often as the corporeal one."
He took a long breath. "It's an instinctual fear, with us. Those who didn't have it didn't live long enough to breed."
She thought about it for a moment, then shuddered herself. "What happens?"
"Nobody knows. Presumably you slide down until you lose consciousness and your energy matrix disperses in death; it has mass, and gravity affects it. Or until you reach the center of the earth, though the heat would randomize you first."
"Ow. Well, at least there're some disadvantages to the package!"
She took a deep breath and looked around the apartment. They'd been there only a few days, but already it seemed like a home, a welcome refuge against a world larger and colder, stranger and cruder than it was easy to comprehend.
"Will the professor be okay?"
"Probably. I've warded this place as much as I can. He's certainly safer than he would be anywhere else. Safer than he would be if we brought him to my great-grandfather's attention! You, they know about. Him, they do not, as yet."
They rode the elevator down in silence, holding hands. The hired limo's driver held an umbrella over them as they walked out to the curb; a light pattering of cold rain fell on it, and a few drops that evaded it raised gooseflesh on the bare skin of her shoulders. The silk shawl was draped elegantly but uselessly over her elbows; she pulled it up with a gentle chime from the paillettes.
Mentally, she ran through the etiquette of meeting the grand master of the Order of the Black Dawn and the Council of Shadows.
Honey, here's my great-granddad, the emperor of evil, she thought. Oh, well, you know what they say – you fall in love with your fiance but you're stuck with his family!
She shivered slightly, and had no impulse at all to repeat the thought aloud. As attempted jokes went, that cut far too close to the bone.
Pavillon Ledoyen was just off the Champs-Elysees, fronted by a strip of lawn and gardens, surrounded by huge old chestnuts, and then by flowers in pots. It was not far from the Petit Palais; her training immediately classified it as late-eighteenth-century neoclassical in origin with a lot of Victorian work. The side facing the street had a high pediment supported by caryatids in the form of white-robed women, a sculpted architrave above and ledoyen in white on blue. The arched glass awning over the main entrance looked a little more like art nouveau work, the ribs cast as elongated silver maidens. Their limousine swung into the circular driveway, past a fountain with a central statue.
"It's been here awhile, eh?" she said to Adrian, clutching at her purse. "Seventeen ninety-one?"
"With a major renovation in eighteen forty-two," he said.
The blade within the purse was a slight comfort. Her fringed shawl was welcome in the cool autumnal evening air, though the rain had stopped. Streetlights glistened on the pavements, and there was a musty smell of damp fallen leaves from the gardens.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, forcing calm as the doorman bowed them through, and an attendant in a dress almost as elegant as hers escorted them up a grand curved staircase. The main dining room walls were about half floor-to-ceiling windows draped in carnelian curtains with beige blinds; there were oxblood marble pillars against the walls between, and some fairly good period paintings, including what she thought from a brief glance was an actual Watteau.
Napoleon III, basically, but a restrained example of Second Empire style.
There was a very low murmur of conversation from the widely spaced tables; arrangements of striking hibiscus flowers rested between the place settings, and the cloths were white damask over burgundy. She caught more than a few discreetly admiring glances. And a few yellow-flecked eyes lingered on her as well, with a different hunger added.
Oh, great. The chic Shadowspawn hangout. What wine goes with human blood? Or does the blood count as wine and go with food?
Two figures sat at a table set for four, watching her and Adrian approach: a man and a woman with their faces underlit by the candlelight. That wasn't all that made them appear rather sinister, but it didn't hurt the effect, either. Nor did the fact that their eyes weren't flecked with gold. They were the burning hot-sulfur yellow she'd noticed with Adrian's parents at Rancho Sangre, like windows into a pit full of lava; evidently that was a mark of the postcorporeal, unless they deliberately controlled it.
Wait a minute, she's -
"Great-grandfather," Adrian said.
Etienne-Maurice Breze, also born heir to the Duc de Beauloup, looked…
A lot like Adrian, Ellen thought, dazed. That family has to be seriously inbred.
He rose for a moment, and inclined his head slightly, with a lordly insouciance.
Oooof. Talk about presence. It's like getting punched in the gut, psychically speaking. You can't look away, and it's not just those fires-of-Hell eyes.
The little hairs tried to stand up on her arms and down her back. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly through barely parted lips, struggling for control.
A little older, I'd say he was thirty if I didn't know better, a bit…coarser, perhaps. More rugged. An inch or two taller, enough to be just average instead of a bit short like Adrian. Though I suppose when he turned twenty in 1898 he was tall by the standards of the day.
He was certainly dressed differently from his descendant, in a full ankle-length wide-sleeved robe of some rich black velvet, a color that swallowed light, embroidered with black YLI silk thread in sinuous vine patterns around the hems, neck, cuffs and down the front panel. It caught subdued flickers as he moved, looking at Adrian with his head tilted slightly to one side. His long raven hair was pulled back at either side and pinned by a gold-and-ruby clasp at the rear of his skull, with the rest flowing loose beneath it down his back.
The robe was slit halfway down, and fastened with black-and-gray catches of Brazilian onyx. Beneath the black velvet was a high-collared shirt of white silk showing at cuffs and neck. The only other touch of color was a golden ring, set with the jagged trident and black sun.
As the mouse put it: Say what you like about cats, but they've got style.
"Great-grandmother."
This time Ellen blinked a little in surprise, the interrupted thought registering.
Seraphine Breze was black. Specifically she was that dark chocolate color combined with a tall, slim build and sculpted aquiline thin-nosed face that was common in the Horn of Africa, Somalia and Ethiopia and Eritrea. Against it the yellow eyes were like windows into a world of chaotic fire.
She was dressed in a halter-top gown of an old-gold color that showed off the long slim neck and body, slit from ankle to thigh to give a glimpse of a leg like a gazelle's. A broad belt of platinum and blazing blue tanzanite cinched her narrow waist, and more of the blue jewels shone in her mane of sculpted, curled hair.
I could have sworn Adrian said she was French, or at least as much as Shadowspawn can be any human nationality. And…Wait a minute…they've both got swords with them, hanging on the back of their chairs, and nobody's noticing!
Adrian bowed with a hand on his heart; Ellen sank into a carefully practiced curtsy, spreading her own long dress of robin's-egg blue a little as she did. It couldn't hurt…and this was approximately the ruler of the Earth and his consort, or something much closer to that than she'd thought there could be.
A little informal family tete-a-tete with the masters of the universe. Or the chief ranchers of humans.
The Shadowspawn touched fingertips, evidently their equivalent of shaking hands; she'd seen it before, and then exchanged the air kiss on the cheek.
And I don't feel in the least slighted by not being included. I'd rather tongue-kiss a tarantula.
Adrian made the introductions, calmly naming her as "Ellen Breze," and "my wife." Both the Shadowspawn looked at her…
Uh-oh. There's that chocolate-coconut-macaroon look again. Why do these people…things…whatever…find me so attractive, or appetizing, or both? They all want to eat me, metaphorically and then literally. I dont mind it with Adrian, except when I get the flashbacks about his lovely sister and her winning ways, but he doesn't want to kill me as as part of the peak experience.
But they nodded acknowledgment and murmured polite words. Adrian held her chair, and put her purse on the handbag stool; it was all very Old World. Etienne sighed.
"You always were the most willful boy," he said, in a smooth, rich voice that vibrated with undertones of power. "Willfully eccentric, as well."
"It is a Breze characteristic, Great-grandfather," Adrian said lightly. "After all, belonging to the Order of the Black Dawn was an eccentricity in its day, is it not so?"
"And your parents?"
"Well, the last time I saw them. Though that was rather under false pretenses, as I was infiltrating their house with a view to a kill."
Both the older Brezes laughed indulgently; rather as if listening to a child describing a prank.
Which, to them, is pretty much the truth.
"Ah, yes, your father has written an amusing letter about how you deceived him and killed Hajime," Etienne said.
The sommelier came and popped the cork from a bottle of champagne, holding it expertly tilted to keep the noise and foam to a minimum. Then he filled their flutes; it was a Reserve Blanc de Blancs d'Ay Brut Millesime 2000 Grand Cru, tickling her palate with citrus and honey.
Etienne sipped, nodded approval, and continued: "It was about time that someone put the little yellow monkey in his place. We did not reveal the secrets of Power to the swine so that they could raise their hands against their betters."
Ellen choked, then coughed to cover it as the pair looked at her.
Okay, gotta remember this guy was born when Ulysses S. Grant was president and the Eiffel Tower was daring modern architecture. He was my age when Wilbur and Orville were making plans for a flying machine. Plus he's just plain evil, of course.
Gold and beige tableware was set out, and the amuse-bouche bites arrived: langoustine arranged in a little pyramid, an almost liquid mozzarella cheese, miniature samosas, beetroot as well as cheese and olive chips, with a choice of four types of bread: cereal, baguette, shrimp and bacon bits.
"Still, it's good to see family now and then," Etienne said. "Particularly your children, one imagines."
Adrian's hands didn't even pause as he broke a piece of bread, but his nostrils flared slightly.
"I did not have that pleasure. I was under an assumed identity, after all."
Seraphine made a tsk sound. "Ah, well, your parents…our grandchildren, after all…will take excellent care of them. Perhaps better than Adrienne would have, not being either as busy or as ambitious. They much valued their time with you two when you were young, despite having to maintain the pretense that they were your aunt and uncle."
"No more fosterage?" Adrian said.
Ouch, Ellen thought. Adrian really loved his foster parents, even though they were renfields. He still blames himself for their deaths. I don't think he killed them, and Harvey doesn't think so either and he was there, but Adrian still feels responsible.
"No," Etienne said. "That has fallen out of fashion in the past generation. The gap between the powers of child and parent is no longer what it was in our generation, so there is less need for precautions."
Seraphine nodded. "We killed our own parents, of course, as soon as we were adults, the tiresome creatures, but that would be much more difficult now."
Ellen knew a moment's vicious satisfaction. The parents of the…things…she was talking to had been human beings. Very bad human beings, with a lot of Shadowspawn in them, but still not really the ancient predators reborn. They'd used what Power they had to make those genes meet and match…and they'd paid an exquisitely appropriate price for it at the hands of those offspring. The hands, not to mention the teeth.
What did they expect? she thought.
"I am sure they will ensure…forgive me, my descendant…that your little ones have a more conventional attitude to things than you did," Etienne said.
Like, conventional for a sadistic monster. Of course, he is a sadistic monster. Normalcy's all in the point of view, I suppose.
Whatever their moral state or age or background, the Brezes certainly ate in the grand old French manner, in fact almost in the antique French manner-religiously, and with only light conversation so as not to distract. That left her thankful for the chance to observe without offering more than the occasional commonplace.
She'd had a little trouble following the talk at first. Adrian's French was slightly but noticeably old-fashioned. His great-grandparents' version was extremely so, and not only in the way they used contractions. There was a hint of a rolled harshness to the vowels, occasionally words like moe instead of moi, as if they were a considerable way back towards the Middle Ages. Or at least towards the world between the Revolution and the fall of the Second Empire, before the accent of the Parisian bourgeoisie completely triumphed as the standard form.
"How did madame come to meet the duc?" Ellen said at last.
Seraphine raised one elegant eyebrow. "We are cousins, of course…"
Wait a minute, there were black Brezes in Belle Epoque Paris?
At Ellen's look of incomprehension: "Ah, you mean my outfit! Beautiful, is it not?"
We are definitely talking at cross purposes here.
"It's a beautiful dress," she said.
"Oh, no, I mean Ayan," she said, and touched one finger to the opposite arm. "Gorgeous, n'est-ce pas?"
For a moment the gesture itself distracted Ellen's attention from its meaning; the way Seraphine held her wrist and moved the finger was…
Exaggeratedly feminine. Effeminate, in fact; sort of like a drag queen or a really old silent film of Sarah Bernhardt…Why would she…Oh, that's it. It's Edwardian body language, or even Victorian. It's what drag queens imitate these days, passed on down by generations of convention while the way actual women hold themselves and gesture changed. That's the sort of posture that she picked up from her mother as a little girl, before she grew up and tortured her mom to death. She's the real article in more ways than one.
Seraphine went on: "We acquired her near Djibouti shortly before the Great War, when I was still corporeal. Actually bought her as a slave from some nomads, a strange experience but intriguing. Beautiful, and of a fierceness…She lasted an entire year and died exquisitely, such defiance mingled with the pain and despair."
Ellen paused with her fork halfway to her mouth, looked down at the little samosa on it, and doggedly chewed and swallowed.
She's wearing one of her victims like a dress, she thought. Oh, new vistas of ick-ness open at every turn!
Then: Adrienne could have been wearing me for the next thousand years when she felt in the mood, calling up my body's DNA from the memory bank; she certainly drank enough of my blood…and whatnot. God, but I'm glad she's dead. Actually all-the-way dead.
Seraphine turned to Adrian for a moment. "Your Ellen has the most intriguing mind, but what have you been doing with it? The surface is like the armor of an ironclad, there are so many wards and blocks and traps!"
"Elementary precautions, my dear Seraphine," Adrian said.
Suddenly Ellen felt a warmth inside. He's just tolerating them, she thought. Even they can't tell, but I can. And he's flaunting me partly just to piss them off, which I find I don't mind at all.
Etienne went on: "But killing your sister, and the Final Death at that…perhaps a little excessive, mon fils?"
"It's not as if she hadn't tried to kill me often enough," Adrian pointed out. "Serious attempts. And not only in the line of duty, as it were."
"Ah, well, sibling rivalry," Seraphine said tolerantly. "Who can avoid it? I still remember how annoying little Anais was when we were children, taking up our parents' time and being tiresome. And how often I tried to drown her or push her out of windows or set her on fire, even when Maman scolded me for it. What I am really annoyed about, mon chouchou, is that you have neglected us so long. Admittedly you were involved with those horrible Brotherhood vermin, but still, after the closeness of your childhood visits, it is a wounding."
The next course arrived: terre et riviere, a sea urchin-and-avocado dish, and truffe blanche d'Alba, gnocchis legeres, eau de Parmesan, with beetroot and eel.
"These Brittany sea urchins are unrivaled," Seraphine said. "The current chef here is Breton."
"Oh, they're better than the Santa Barabra variety, a little," Adrian said. "But in my opinion those of Hokkaido are fully as good, if not better. The gnocchi are delicious, but extremely un-gnocchi-like."
Odd, Ellen thought. I can actually enjoy dinner under these circumstances. Am I getting callous? Or just…case-hardened? Or am I braver than I thought I was? Or has Adrian turned me into a compulsive foodie? Or all of the above?
The contrast between the buttery richness of the avocado and the sea-kissed taste of the urchins was certainly arresting. They finished the champagne, and she cleared her mouth with some of the bread.
"Ah, turbot with black-truffle emulsion," Etienne pronounced. "Now with this, Meursault. Les Tessons Domaine Michel Bouzereau 2007, I think. It will serve admirably for the Noix de Saint Jacques en coquille senteurs des bois and even for the Jambon blanc truffe spaghetti au parmesan as well. One must not be a purist, like some visiting…foreigner."
He was about to say visiting American, I think, Ellen mused. Well , miracles never cease. Tact.
The sea scallops in their shells were barely steamed, soft-textured and fragrant, with wild wood vegetables, salsify, tomato, turnip and black truffle.
"I do prefer the ham," Seraphine said, looking down in pleasure at the smoked meat in its rectangular nest of al dente spaghetti, with cepe mushrooms and black truffles standing like the masts of a ship. "One grows nostalgic for a sauce that is a true sauce rather than an ethereal wisp, and the truffles are of the earth. I grant you that this is no longer the age of Escoffier, and one must move with fashion, but yet…"
The white Burgundy blossomed in Ellen's mouth like the scent of apple orchards in the springtime.
"I notice Arnaud was not included in this little family gathering," Adrian said. "It would, perhaps, be a little awkward just at the moment."
Ellen closed her eyes for a moment, remembering the way the dead man had fallen, and the other coming for her with the knife. And the mindless killing malice behind the fossa's snarl. When she opened her eyes Seraphine's yellow gaze was on her, avid, and her tongue came out to moisten her lips in what was probably an unconscious gesture; she returned the look with a bland smile and mentally elevated a finger.
"Arnaud, Arnaud," Etienne said with a regretful sigh. "I fear he is more and more a creature of impulse; and impulse always did govern him more than is good. He is unlikely to see the twenty-second century at this rate."
A smile that was at once cultured and feral. "Surely, my dear boy, you do not imagine that if I sought your death I would proceed in so amateurish a manner?"
"Granted, Great-grandfather."
The table was cleared and the desserts came: a concoction of meringue, white chocolate and almonds, pastries filled with chocolate and an iced pistachio side, and a fantasy of cooked and raw grapefruit and lime sweet as palate cleanser. Then coffee, noir for the three Shadowspawn, and noisette for her in deference to American sensibilities, and cognac.
She hadn't liked brandy before she met Adrian-in fact, with her family history, she'd been at least mildly prejudiced against anything distilled.
Of course, before I met Adrian I didn't get Frapin Cuvee 1888 Rabelais, either.
A taste of dried fruits slid across her tongue, nuts, candied oranges, and a wash of cacao and flowers and soft spices; it made you think of hot tropical sunrises seen past the curve of a sail, with the sea breaking white beneath your bowsprit.
Etienne sighed. "Eighteen eighty-eight was a marvelous year…but perhaps I recall it so because I was young, eh? And this…like all the greatest pleasures, it is fleeting, impermanent. Little of this remains; perhaps only a few bottles, and once they are gone it will exist only in memory. As one accumulates experience, more and more resides there."
"I can see that you have reason for cultivating such an outlook," Adrian said carefully.
"Perhaps we come to the meat of the matter with the digestif, eh?"
Ellen took a deep breath. Adrian went on, calm, his tone conversational.
"I have no interest in who is selected to fill the vacant seats on the Council," he said. "Save as it affects the plans for Operation Trimback."
"You are acquainted with that?"
"Yes. Ellen received the details from Adrienne, and I have had Seeings."
"Ah." Seraphine lifted her brows. "Strong ones? Apparently you remember my teaching."
"Very high orders of probability, and tied to my sister. Our world-lines were deeply entangled at the time."
"And which do you favor?" Etienne said. "The plague, as your sister did, or this rather drastic use of nuclear weapons to shred the humans' electronic devices?"
"The EMP attack," Ellen supplied.
The Shadowspawn master waved a hand. "I have no interest in the terminology."
"You should be interested in the effects," Adrian said. "Have you Seen?"
"Nothing immediate. That is a matter of subtlety rather than raw Power; dear Seraphine has always been more sensitive, doubtless you derive it from her. I have had glimpses of the far futures that might be. Quite pastoral and attractive, most of them. A few rather grisly-"
Christ, what would he consider grisly?
"-but those of much lower probability."
"Great-grandfather and lord, I do not think you appreciate just how much would be destroyed if the structure of the technological world were removed at once. Runaway nuclear reactors-scores in France alone!-ruptured oil refineries…"
The older Shadowspawn began to laugh. Adrian merely raised a brow, but Ellen felt a surge of fury. It died as she realized that this wasn't, or wasn't merely, the usual schadenfreude and sadism. There was a genuine irony here.
"I laugh, my dear boy, because I did not grasp the implications. I was quite taken with a return to the medieval period, with us as the noblesse. After all, the Power can do a great many of the same things as the humans' technology. Until your sister carefully explained the problems to me."
He shook his head. "The al-Lanarkis are the primary advocates of the, ah, EMP. Trimback One. She demonstrated convincingly that they argued so because their primary territories would be least affected, and so all the other Shadowspawn would be weakened. They would probably have done it themselves, if I had not strongly hinted we would exterminate their clan down to the babes in arms if they did."
"And the humor?"
"Well, Adrian, you did kill her. And here you are, repeating her so-convincing arguments to me!"
Seraphine sighed. "I will rather miss Adrienne. She reminded me of myself at that age, so passionate and enthusiastic about her causes, yet so carefree and merry and natural."
Yeah, she longed to unleash a tailored supersmallpox on the world so she could take it over and be worshiped as a goddess, and she had a deep, care-free, merry enjoyment of…actually doing things to people that would be squicky even if you just played them. Doing them to me, in particular. And I'm not puritanical about that sort of thing at all.
Etienne continued: "But something must be done. The humans are breeding like cockroaches and threaten to destroy the Earth. And while I could…how did Adrienne put it…turn myself into a guinea pig, walk into a steel box, and have Arianespace launch me to the moon, there would be no food and little amusement there."
Ellen surprised herself by chuckling. That was the sort of thing Adrienne would have said. It was easier to appreciate her sense of humor when you weren't having your head held underwater as foreplay or being chained up and flogged.
Though she was actually pretty good at the chaining and flogging. It was just the knowledge that she might decide to go on until I was dead or crippled. God, I'm glad she's dead. How many times have I thought or said that? Not enough, dammit! I expect to spend the next sixty years being glad she's dead.
Adrian continued earnestly: "Yet you are the grand master. The human governments are under your control. Surely you could take other measures, slower and surer? Our great advantage is that we are not pressed for time."
Seraphine laughed again. "This is a game of intellectual musical chairs! Now you are taking my part, when we discussed this with Adrienne. I thought that the plague scenario was also somewhat risky. Things rarely go as smoothly as one plans, and we would be relying on human scientists doing work we did not understand ourselves."
Her husband looked at her with a crooked smile. "True. Since we are all Brezes, I suppose it to be expected that we find ourselves echoing one another's thoughts. Though in Adrian's case, I suspect his deplorable sentimentality about the cattle is involved."
Adrian shrugged. "True."
Why did he admit that…? Oh, they're telepaths. I suppose true/false is easy to detect, even with screens.
"But that does not affect my argument. Why take the hideous risks, when slower and surer methods are available?"
Etienne shrugged again; it was worthy of Charles Dullin, and Ellen dropped her eyes to her brandy. The gesture was entirely natural, and it reminded her of how old this…manlike creature was.
And Adrian will not die when his body does either, and he could Carry my soul forever…Stop that! You don't have to think about that for decades yet! The world may end in the interim. In fact, it probably will end in the interim.
"It has been tried. The Chinese one-child policy, for example, which our good taotie allies implemented. But while we can make any particular government perform any particular action, we cannot force most of them to adopt many consistent policies over many years, which they are violently unwilling to do. Our puppets would be overthrown, and if we forced their successors to do the same then they would be overthrown…and meantime, our existence would become painfully obvious."
Seraphine sighed. "It is a paradox; we have all power, but only so long as we do not use it very often. It would be much more convenient if we were worshiped openly. Of course, that would also have certain dangers."
"Our existence will become very obvious indeed, if either of the Trimback options is used," Adrian said.
His ancestor nodded. "Yes, but by then the humans would be much weaker. We would be in a position to use the crisis to take control more directly."
Ellen swallowed. Adrian had shared his Seeings with her. They weren't exactly prophecies, the future was a spray of alternate possibilities and not one fixed path, but they did represent the trend of events, the balance of possibilities. Most of them showed a wrecked world; many a world under the open rule of the Council of Shadows. Those were like Hell come to earth, in ways more horrible because they were quiet.
"And besides," the Shadowspawn archimage went on, "Adrienne also convinced me that if the humans are allowed to play with their scientific tools and toys much longer, they will stumble across us anyway. Neglecting to keep an eye on that monkey curiosity of theirs let them develop nuclear weapons, to which we are so vulnerable."
"Which was the result of the Council's starting the world wars," Adrian said. "Shadowspawn perceptions of the future do not altogether free us from the law of unintended consequences."
"Granted. Though the wars were amusing as well…But that is all the more reason to end the project of science. It will let them acquire far too much understanding of the Power. That we cannot allow, and killing too many individual scientists again risks revealing presence by absence."
"Then you will back the EMP attack?"
"No, no. You-and your sister-are quite right there. Far too dangerous. Let it be the plague; we and our servants-" He smiled grimly. "Our renfields, as the younger generation put it…Did I ever mention that I met the man Stoker? He was invaluable to us…In any case, we will be prepared, and when the humans despair we will step forward and stop the pox…when their numbers have been culled sufficiently. One-sixth or one-fifth the current total, that would be more than sufficient. As many as there were when I was your age."
Seraphine smiled; the long, lean, aquiline face of the Somali girl she wore made it extraordinarily wolflike, and her yellow eyes glowed.
"And then the world will be as we wish it, wild and free. Enough humans for servants and food and amusement, enough to make the things we need. Few enough that once more the world will be sweet and uncrowded, the air and water clean, with many plains and woods and mountains empty save for great numbers of beasts. We will have the jets and yachts and things for our palaces and estates, and the humans will have just as much as we choose to give them, and they will worship us. As we wish it, forever."
Ellen sipped more of the brandy. The horrible thing is, that isn't even the worst possible alternative.
"Ah…would you need science for that?" she asked. "Ignorant serfs wouldn't be much use in keeping the central heating going."
"No, no," Seraphine said. "Not science. Only engineering, really. Science we could gradually abolish. A tiresome thing, in any case."
Adrian sighed. "I suppose I must support your position, then, Greatgrandfather," he said. "Option two it is."
He and his progenitor locked eyes for a moment, and then he finished his brandy.
"It will be useful to have your support in Tbilisi, my descendant. You inspire a good deal of fear, which is of course in the end the basis of all respect."
Adrian's bow was graceful. "Thank you for the excellent dinner."
"You would not care to join us for other fare?" His molten-gold eyes paused on Ellen. "Your…wife could participate, in a number of different ways."
"A thousand thanks, but not tonight," Adrian said.
Ellen buried her face in her hands and huddled against Adrian in the back of the limousine.
"Oh, Christ," she said.
"You were splendid, my sweet. You were brave as a lioness."
His arm went around her shoulders, and she could feel the chuckle rumble through his throat. "And it is because of you that we know about the plague that Adrienne and her conspirators developed. And even now the Brotherhood is preparing."
She took a shuddering breath and let it out slowly. "Yes. Will they have enough vaccine?"
"Enough, and knowledge of how to make more. The Council may plan to step in as saviors; instead they will be exposed, and their numbers are so few that even the Power would not be enough, not against a humanity knowing what they are and united against them. Nothing is certain, but it may be the turning point in this long war!"
"Well, that's good to hear. At least this wasn't a complete wash."
"No. And-" He frowned.
"Aha! That's your portentous frown."
"I had a flicker. When Etienne mentioned the children. Something…yes, portentous. A shadow from the future. Something involving them; some decision I will make concerning them. That is…is becoming…a crucial point on which much will turn."
"What sort of decision?"
He smiled. "That is impossible to know at this point."
She punched his shoulder; it was like striking a layer of resilient hard rubber through the fine cloth.
"In other words, you know it'll be important, but not how. And you don't know whether deciding one way or another will make things good or bad!"
"It is often that way when many adepts surrounded a nexus. The most fortunate choice will gradually become clear."
Ellen made an exasperated sound, and then a little squeak as his hand gripped the nape of her neck.
"Perhaps you worry too much, and about the wrong things, my sweet."
Ellen fluttered her long fair lashes. "Why, whatever could you mean, good sir?"