⏹️⏹️OFPMFP Novel: Dark Redemption -- Chapter 66

Chapter 66:  Pieces Come Together

In which Strephon meets the Sinister Mastermind and finds his patience tried.

As soon as Strephon spoke the name, the lights in the chamber came up, and he saw that he was in what appeared to be the office of a successful executive, conservative in its décor, with tasteful wallpaper and carpeting – Strephon could have sworn the floor had been stone just a moment ago – a decorative plant, (genus virgulta officium artificialis), standing sullenly in a corner, and framed facsimiles of newspaper front pages on the walls commemorating notable recent historic events.  There were a total of five paperweights resting on the desk's glossy onyx surface:  a cast iron one like the one in Melchior's office, a crimson one like a large drop of blood, one in silver and one in gold – or was it orichalcum? – and  a purple one like the one Cassandra received. His initial impression, that the paperweights were arranged in a circle, was not entirely correct.  They also made a pentagram, or at least the screen saver for Knox's desktop computer, a bouncing neon pentacle which ricocheted from one corner of the screen to the other, suggested such.

“Inanna!” Knox said in the tone of voice might use to chastise a disobedient cocker spaniel.

Inanna cringed.  “I had no choice!  He forced a promise out of me and then compelled me to bring him to you.  I had no choice!”

Knox silenced her with a wave of his hand.  “Do not worry dear.  All is well.  I wanted him to come.  You have not broken your oath to me.  Yet.”  He gave an unsettling chuckle.  “Bring Mister Bellman a chair.”

Inanna rose from the floor limply, as if she were a marionette plucked up by the shoulders by invisible fingers.  Her arms and legs and even her head hung down until her body was completely vertical and came to rest on her feet.  The Tudor style gown she had been wearing shimmered and became a modern lady's business ensemble.  As she straightened and her head righted itself, Strephon caught a glimpse of her eyes, for the first time since she had brought him to this place.  He expected them to be angry, or frightened, or perhaps pleading.  Instead they were grey and blank, reflecting nothing but a numb fatalism.  He remembered Morrigan's servant, Wisp, having the same leaden eyes.  She too is doomed, Strephon thought, and she knows it.

“No thank you,” Strephon said as Inanna moved to bring a chair for him.  “If you don't mind, I would prefer to stand.”  His legs disagreed, but at the moment his stubborn pride out-voted his stubborn knees.

Inanna hesitated, looking to Knox for instruction.  “As you like,” Knox shrugged.  He gave Inanna a brief nod, and she retreated to a position beside his desk.  “Would you like something to drink?  Coffee?  Gin and tonic?  Absinthe?”

“You can tell me what you've done with Miss True.”

“Miss True?”  Now the blackguard was just being provocative

“The message you had Inanna give to me with the instruction to read at this meeting.  ‘She is doomed,' it said.  If you hadn't intended me to infer that you meant Miss True, you would have been more specific.  And so I repeat:  what do you mean by it?”

“Ah yes.  That.  I will admit to a bit of melodrama there.  To be scrupulously honest, Miss True's doom has not yet overtaken her.  I expect it to happen soon, but for the moment, she is safe.”

“For the moment?  And what is this doom?”

Knox leaned back and affected the manner of an after-dinner sage ruminating about the Meaning of Life over a cigar and brandy.  “Why, do not each of us have a destined path, along which we travel to an unknown destination at an inexorable rate of sixty minutes per hour?”

“I did not come here to indulge in dormitory philosophy,” Strephon snapped.

“But yet you are here; and at the moment you are powerless to do anything to help her one way or the other.  She is out of your reach.  So then, as long as you're here, why not indulge in a little small talk?  For example, I could not help but notice that you seemed surprised to see me here.  Did you really not suspect me?  I had feared I might have been too obvious.”

Strephon decided he might as well play along for the time being, but inwardly he seethed.  “I did suspect you,” he admitted.  “But I was uncertain of what.  I knew when I first met you at Melchior's party that you had a significant magic about you, but I could not discern your aura.  It wasn't that I couldn't identify it; I could not sense any aura about you at all.  That suggested you were a sorcerer of no small ability to mask your identity that well.”

Knox acknowledged the compliment with a slight bow of his head, approaching a semblance of humility.

“At the time, though,” Strephon continued, “I was investigating Melchior, and the thought that there was a hand behind his had not occurred to me.  Since Mechior was trying to gain friends in the City's magical community, I assumed he had invited you for the same reason he invited me:  to curry favor and cultivate an alliance.  My suspicions were raised again when you developed an interest in Miss True's career.”

“There you are again, going on about Miss True! One would think you were going goopy over the gel.”

Strephon set his jaw.  Now the man was definitely trying to provoke him.  “The very fact that you can characterise my regard for Miss True as 'going goopy for her',” he said in a cool, measured tone, “does credit to neither your sense of higher feelings, your honor nor your emotional maturity.”

“Oh my!”  Knox turned again to Inanna.  “I believe that is what is called 'A Burn'.  Do you not agree, Inanna.”

“As you say, sir.”  She did not agree as much as she produced the acceptable response.

Strephon continued.  “Regardless, I still considered Melchior the prime mover and assumed that you had hired Miss True for your paper at his behest.  But already I was beginning to wonder.  I had difficulty believing that the wolf attack on us outside the Tortuga Bay restaurant was a coincidence.  Inanna insisted that Melchior had nothing to do with the Reaver Pack, nor with the silver collars the Reavers wore which bore Fae enchantments.  For a long time this put me on a false track and I was trying to follow werewolves.  Later I learned that Belladonna Morrigan, a witch who had made a study of Fae magic, had made the silver collars.  Well, this definitely ruled out Melchior.  He is a faerie lord himself and would have no need to hire a mortal witch to craft enchantments for him.”

“Indeed not!”

“So that left me with the possibility of two separate factions using faerie magic for their own purposes.  I didn't think Morrigan would have any interest in Wolfen politics herself, so she must have been hired by someone else.  The Faerie Essence drug  which was turning up at Ms. Kuriyama's club, however, put things in a different light.”

“How so?”

“Melchior does not have the connections to coordinate such a multi-faceted plot.  What's more, I don't think he is capable of his triumph:  the Silicon Fae.  He and his cohort are immune to cold iron and have an affinity for technology.  He implies that this was his achievement, that he devised a way of freeing his followers from some of the essential Faerie banes, but I don't think I've heard him make that claim outright.  And I don't think it's even possible.  It would be like trying to raise yourself by pulling on your own eyebrows.  No, whatever magic created Melchior's 'Silicon Fae' was not something of his own creation, but something done to him by somebody else:  someone well-versed in faerie magic, but not a faerie.”

“Someone, I suppose, like me?”

“Well, here we are venturing into speculation.  I can guess that you are powerful, and the fact that you can disguise your aura so well might reflect a familiarity with faerie glamours, but I have no way of knowing the source of your powers.  Other than your mundane ones.  You do business with Melchior, Lukas Bianka and with Aoi Kurayami.  You could easily have a finger in any or all of the plots involving fae magic in the city, and maybe even others I haven't come across yet.”  Strephon stopped.  “My word.  The 'Big Money Man' Apollyon Sedge was complaining about, the one who bought out his grandfather's cult and turned it into a money-making scheme.  Was that you too?”

Knox raised a finger.  “A successful money-making scheme,” he corrected.  “Poor Apollyon.  He shows such potential, yet has to be so obstinate.  That’s the trouble with True Believers:  every now and then they develop inconvenient principles.  But in answer to your question, yes, I am involved with them all.  And you only caught on just now?”

“I assumed, wrongly I now see, that the mastermind I was seeking had to be on the Hidden Council; that anyone powerful enough to control all these schemes would have to be a Council member.  When I acquired a list of the current membership and did not see your name on it, I thought I must be mistaken.”  Knox's grin seemed to be stretching wider than his face, damn the man, and about to dissolve into giggles.  “Certainly it cannot be that you are not important enough to sit on the Council.  Perhaps...”

Realization struck Strephon.  “Perhaps you are too important!  The Council as it currently stands is a group of powerful magical beings, and it is in theory a parliament of equals. If you regarded the other members as inferiors, you might not wish to bother with it.  Most Fae regard meetings as a silly mortal custom; Melchior only wishes to be on the Council because it fits his ambitions in the Faerie Court.  A god would certainly consider himself above the squabblings of mortals.”

“Thoth does not.”

“Thoth, or Timmy, as he prefers, has a peculiar sense of humour and enjoys slumming with the hoi polloi.  A demon, however...”

Strephon paused again.  Something clicked in his mind.  Not exactly a demon, not exactly a god...

“I beg your pardon,” he said, “but have I the honour of addressing Togwogmagog?”

Knox slapped both his hands on his desktop and rose to his feet.  “I've been called that,” he said with a laugh,  As he slowly straightened, both he and his desk began to enlarge.  “I've also been called Cernunnos, and Orion, and Herne the Hunter.  I was once the king of Uruk in ancient Sumeria...” he was now at least twice Strephon's height, maybe more; it was hard to judge, because the room's ceiling seemed to retreat to accommodate his increase in stature.  “...But I prefer to think of myself as the Prince of the Nephilim.”

NEXT:  Strephon’s Mistake