Sons (Book 2) (102 page)

The brownies took the information in stride, already having surmised it from their presence here, being midwives.  The medics were probably trying to figure out exactly how much they knew about pregnancy and childbirth and just as likely thinking, “All of them?”  The women, though, were gobsmacked.  Yeah, I stole the word from Ferrin, but it was a really good word, gobsmacked.  I gave them time to process the information rather than push more on them.

“But I can’t be pregnant, I have birth control in,” one woman objected.  “I had Scarlet Fever as I child.  The doctors said I’d never have children,” said another.  “I am a few days late,” and another.  “Me, too,” and another.  Acceptance and denial spread until only nine were still in denial and those were the worst of the physical issues.

“As I said, Gilán is very life affirming,” I called over the women murmuring around the room.  “Those of you with reproductive issues, it healed fairly quickly once the geas was laid and the euphoria took care of your reserve from there.  You and your companions just did whatever felt good at the time and this was a result.  Gilán also has a penchant for multiple births, so it’s possible that each coupling resulted in another child or that an egg merely split.  That’s what we’re here to discover tonight, to see how many children to expect in forty or so weeks so everyone can start planning.”

“What about the fathers?  What do we tell them?”  asked Lt. Betty Slocum.

“Well,” I started tentatively, “initially, you can tell them anything you want, including nothing, but…” I glanced down at the brownies for help and Leana came to my rescue.

“What our Lord is trying to say, ma’am,” the brownie squeaked, laughing at my discomfort slightly, “is that as the fetus nears birth and gains consciousness in the womb, it will reach for the geas and find Lord Daybreak first.  Then it will find what connects it to him, which is you and its father.  The father will know the child as well as you do by the time it births, regardless of your wishes.”

“What if there are two children by different fathers?” asked Sgt. Marion Winslow.

“Both fathers will know their own child,” Denean answered, smiling.  I don’t think that was a comfort for Winslow.  Maybe she’d been busy that night.

“Now, my biggest concern isn’t this particular incident, but rather what comes after,” I said.  “And pardon me if this seems a little blunt, but you’re not here to be the breeders of the Garrison.  You are
not
obligated to anyone to provide sexual services.  Ever.  You’re here to serve just as the men are, but I want you to have lives outside of that service, too.  Your choices of partners are your own, but be aware that Gilán is very active in procreation and most precautions are useless except abstinence.

“So, let’s see how many kids will be running around here in a few months then we’ll give you a couple of days to think about what you want to tell the fathers, okay?”

~              ~              ~

I shifted back to the house, to the top floor where Ethan and Byrnes were pulling plywood off a window to get to a balcony.  It was one of those that showed from the outside but didn’t have any access from the house.  Kieran was watching them while the construction engineer poked his head into a big hole in the east wall and shined a flashlight down into it.

“That was quick,” Kieran said without looking in my direction.  “How d’it go?”

“Surprisingly well,” I answered.  “They took the news better than I expected and the midwives were a comfort to them.  The medics are freaking out, but I think they’ll be ready when the time comes.”

“All that wiring will have to be replaced,” Peter told the electrician as they came in from a side room together with Velasquez behind them.

“Of course, the ones who thought they couldn’t get pregnant had the hardest time accepting it,” I said coyly, once Velasquez was there.  He’d been so calm when Byrnes was freaking out earlier, but I knew a secret that he didn’t yet.  “One woman had even had a tubal ligation healed nearly instantly and another with genetic difficulties was fixed, too.  They were quite amazed.”

“So how many children in all?” Peter asked smirking at me.

“Sixty, twenty-two with twins and six with triplets,” I answered.

Ellorn giggled as the construction engineer helped him through the hole in the wall.  “Gilán is most insistent, Lord.”

“True,” I said laughing with him.  “I’ve asked the medics to inform the men who’ve had vasectomies that those operations have been reversed, just to be on the safe side.”

Velasquez head swung around to me, his jaw dropping as he turned.  I busted a gut.  I couldn’t help it.  I just nodded and laughed hard.  Latino men could blush and turn bright red, too!  For simplicity’s sake, I blocked the men from hearing us.

“Yeah, Ric, you’re in the exact same boat as Ted, now.  There goes that air of superiority, eh?” I said, still laughing.  “We should have stuck around, guys.  Apparently, it was a hell of a party!”

“Are the commanders expectant fathers?” Kieran asked me over his shoulder and wearing a sly grin.  “Please tell us it was with different women, at least!”  I clamped down on every muscle in my face as hard as I could, but the snickering still came out.  And Kieran only got two thirds of the joke.  Lt. Dixon was the father of the third triplet.  I have no idea how they arranged that one and I wasn’t searching memories to find out either, but it was too funny for words.  Peter was going to have a cow.

“Peter, what’s that called now?” Kieran asked, grinning and crossing his arms.

“’Pulling a train’ is the appropriate term, I believe,” Peter said, chuckling and dusting his hands on his pants.  “Or they could have had her ‘on a spit’.”  When he started a pantomime motion, I busted it again and fell on my ass.  Peter knew too much about sex in its myriad forms.

I finally managed to contain myself enough to pull my knees up and curl my arms around them, still sitting on the floor.  Byrnes turned and started sputtering out an attempt at an explanation.  Jimmy rushed through and grabbed them both by an arm and ushered them quickly out through the door Peter just came through. 

“He took our toys,” Peter complained, snickering and looking through the door after them.

Kieran moved in to take Byrnes place at the windows with Ethan and they had the blockage removed in seconds with the strength difference.  That and Kieran wasn’t afraid to destroy molding he knew wasn’t real in the first place.  It gave a wonderful view of a wall.

Jimmy walked back in with Byrnes and Velasquez following like puppies.

“They’re back,” Ethan said grinning.  “I suppose we should play nice now.”

“It was nice having new victims, though,” Kieran commented, letting the plywood fall to the floor with a bang.

“You should see what they do to the people they don’t like,” Jimmy told the commanders of the Guard.  “Trust me, they’re playing with you.”

“How much longer will you be here tonight?” I asked, watching the dust of drywall floating through the air.

“Maybe half an hour,” Jimmy said.  “Just a few more rooms.”

“Well, I’m calling it a night then.  Got a few things to do in the morning before meeting our new English attorney,” I said.

“You want us to come along for that?” Kieran asked.

“You might want to.  It’s the same location as Bishop’s meeting Wednesday,” I said.  “Pete and I scoped it out earlier tonight.  The place is hidden behind a weird bending in space, quite elegantly done and old, but we didn’t see anything dangerous.”

“Weird how?” Kieran asked facing me.

“The entrance was flawlessly hidden,” Peter said.  “I mean, we knew where it was and we still had to search for it and almost missed it.”

“The walls of the slip were similar to a knowe in concept but not in execution,” I said.  “And I couldn’t identify the metaphor of the magic used at all.  I guess it was more similar to the Weird Ways you took us through in Bankhead.”

“No latent symbology leftover from the original casting?” Kieran asked.

“Nothing decipherable, but it was there once,” I answered.

“So not like your magic,” Ethan said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Take the
Cyntakian Spheres
that Peter uses so well,” Ethan said.  “He’s practiced that spell thousands of times and can do it at a split second’s notice now in several sizes.  With his expanded control, he can handle more with greater vector control as well.  Call one up, Peter.”  Peter did, floating a four-inch green orb above his right hand about an inch, its black ichors bubbling menacingly on its surface.  It was paradoxically beautiful and ugly at the same time.

“Now, you, Seth,” Ethan said, simply.

“I don’t know how,” I said, looking from the orb to Peter and back.

“Seth,” Kieran interceded.  “Do it like you do everything else.  Don’t think about how Pete does it.  Just do it yourself.” 

Well,
that
made all the difference in the world.  Uh-huh.  Just do it.  So now I’m a shoe commercial.  Looking at Peter’s example and being so freshly invoked, I had all the structures available to use, but it was like having all the words of a sentence in a foreign language, but out of order.  Staring into the energy flows of Peter’s example, I started building one from scratch without those structures.  Oddly, the corrosive ichors coalesced a third of the way through and threatened to explode in the atmosphere.  I had to rush to finish the final two thirds to stop that from happening.

“Make it smaller, Seth,” Kieran said calmly.  I looked up from Peter’s example to see Kieran moving back from my five-foot in diameter version encroaching on his space.  Pulling sixteen different energy types through its center shrunk the sphere until it matched Peter’s in size, then I tugged lightly on that point in space until it floated to me.  I made another one, much smaller, and sent it into orbit around the first.  Satisfied I could control two, I made a third, larger version a few feet out and sent the first two into elliptically orbiting it.  I was about to dismiss all three when Ethan snickered.

“Showoff,” he said, still chuckling.

“What?  I just wanted to make sure I could control them,” I said innocently.  The Day hummed, moving me left a few inches.  I twisted right and caught Peter’s fist where it would have connected with my shoulder.

“You bastard!” he said loudly, half-mad, half-joking.  “It took me a year and a half to manage moving one in a straight line!”

“And now you throw hundreds at elves, what’s the problem?” I asked, grinning at him.

“You!  Isn’t anything hard for you?” he asked, chuckling.  Good, he wasn’t really mad at me.

“Look at yours, Seth,” Ethan said, directing us back to the spheres.  “Do you see any difference between yours and Pete’s?  How about you, Peter?”

I stood up and moved closer to mine.  The orbiting spheres got distracting so I dismissed them and centered on the largest one as Peter moved in beside me with his.  There were differences, certainly.  Structures that sat deeply at the center of Peter’s and forced the power to flow in just the right ways were absent in mine.

“There’s no invocation here,” Peter said, concentrating on the sphere.

“That’s Seth’s magic,” Ethan said.  “It looks totally natural doesn’t it?  Like a volcano just spit that out on its own, but we know that’s not possible.”

“Did this ‘slip’ have that same look?” Kieran asked.

“No,” Peter said, shaking his head, still staring at my orb as he tossed his into oblivion.  “From the inside it was very fibrous, sort of like cotton candy.”

“This isn’t the Hilliard Brothers, is it?” Kieran asked suspiciously.

“Yes,” I answered.  “Our solicitor is Ryan Davis of the Hilliard’s.  Why?  Is that a problem?”

“Druid, then,” Kieran pronounced.  “I have no idea if it will be a problem, but it’ll definitely be interesting.  Yes, I believe we will come with you.  Who actually found the entrance anyway?”

“Peter.  He noticed the flaw in the sidewalk as the spell phased slightly.  What’s the problem with druids?” I asked.

“They hate the faery,” Peter answered.  “Understandable, really, considering the elves tried to purge them a thousand years ago.”

“And damn near succeeded,” Kieran said.

A trip to our Dublin bank after breakfast to arrange accounts and a cashier’s check got us ready to meet Ryan Davis of Hilliard Brothers.  Checking the European account balances, I was going to have to move money around soon.  I wasn’t exactly worried, but Peter asked me to set aside at least a day with him to go over expenses so he was concerned, too.  I couldn’t possibly spend all the money my parents left me when they “died” in a normal lifetime, even when I diversified part of it over to Kieran, Ethan, and Peter.  Hell,
they
couldn’t spend what I’d given to them in a normal lifetime.  That didn’t mean we shouldn’t watch where it went.

It was twelve forty before we were done at the bank.

“I was hoping to rent a car and drive up to the office building, but it’s too late for that now,” I complained as we left the building.

“Well, I don’t think that’s going to be too much of a problem,” Kieran said.  “No doubt they’re expecting us to be magicians of some kind or we wouldn’t have been referred to them.”

“Or having trouble with one,” added Peter.

“Less likely, but possible,” Kieran agreed.

“Do we want to start at the top of Deighton or right in front of their offices?” I asked.

“We’re a little pressed for time,” Ethan pointed out.

“Offices then,” I said and started probing the slip of space we visited last night.  “They have wards up now, potent ones.  They weren’t there last night.”

“We can run down and make it on time,” Peter offered.

“In suits?  Nah.  Besides, they’re not Kieran’s wards,” I said.  “They do have an interesting power progression.  Do you want to walk in as a group or should I just wrap us individually?”

“Which would be more impressive to them?” Peter asked.

With a wave of my hand before us, I created the rectangular portal between here and London large enough for the five of us to walk abreast.  The other side connected to the sidewalk outside the Hilliard Brothers offices on Deighton Street.  It looked effortless to any wizard or mage watching only because they couldn’t see our magic anyway, but there was work involved.  The shape of the portal alone required a lot of concentration and will.  Circles were by far the easiest.  Equal pressure on all sides from a point and
voilá
.  Other shapes required many more calculations to start the dimensional shift and a lot more energy to hold it in place.  And the sheer strength it took to punch through the wards without cracking them wide open was remarkable.

“Who wants the lead on this one?” I asked as we stepped into the slip and out of Ireland.  Letting go of the portal was a huge relief that I couldn’t show.

“I’ll take it,” Kieran said.  “I haven’t done much in that regard.”

We changed positions, Kieran in the lead, then Jimmy and me, then Ethan and Peter behind us.  I dropped us at the drive so we had a fair way to go to get to the door.  Apparently, punching through the wards created a buzz because a dozen security men dressed as gardeners appeared at the front of the building, all bearing rakes or hoes or some gardening implement that required a long stick.  Each stick was engraved with some pictographic form of writing I didn’t know.  I didn’t try to translate from this distance and while their auras showed a level of power, they couldn’t have been responsible for the ward.  These were pawns of little consequence.

For such a large building in the middle of a tranquil arboreal valley, walking into Hilliard Brothers was surprisingly like walking into our New York attorneys’ office.  Druidic magic apparently didn’t interfere with computers because they were everywhere and in service.  Still, if their clients were magical, then that would make computer usage difficult.  To experiment with that idea, I tossed a very small amount a power out into the room and watched.  It was pulled immediately down into the ground, but the person nearest that tiny spark of energy looked around uneasily.  Both were curious responses.

Looking back at Peter was enough to draw both Ethan and Peter’s attention from watching Kieran smooze with the receptionist.  Admittedly it was amusing.  Jimmy was watching with rapt attention.  I was pretty sure she’d drag Kieran off to a supply closet any second now, if only he’d make the slightest suggestion of it.  Pointing out into the large main room, away from the first target I’d used, I pushed another spark of energy out and watched as the same thing happened.  I know Ethan followed it further than the floor; I saw his other side move in tandem until it hit then the follow-through matched to a point.

Ethan brushed Peter’s hand and looked over his shoulder through the glass doors.  A gardener was staring at us a short distance away.  His aura did not say “gardener,” though.  Ethan popped into my cavern pulling Peter along like a drunken sailor.  I dropped down and started placing filters around Peter that would help him manage through the link with Ethan.  His was not an easy consciousness to comprehend.

“I cannot believe you jumped into that,” Peter mumbled, still a little hazy.

“You what?” Ethan exclaimed.  He reacted in the real world by turning and staring at me.

“How could you forget that?” I asked him in my cavern.  “That was the beginning of my three day disappearance.  What am I saying?  Whatever healed you mucked around with your memory of those days.  Of course, you don’t remember and I bet you’re going to continue to have problems with it.”

“But… you’ve been here… in my mind… naked?” he asked slowly.

“Yes, as well as entering the weirdness you exist in to see how badly you were hurt,” I told him again, watching Peter pull himself together more.  In another hundredth of a second, he’d be coherent again.  The mind works at different speeds than the body.

“And
Kir’du’Ahn
knows about these incidents?” he asked, totally expressionless, but I knew how easy that was to do here.

“Uh-huh,” I grunted, knowing at any moment
Des’Ra’El’s
Tower of Babel spell would hit me and I’d end up staring at him like an idiot.  I needed off this topic.  “Where did it go?”

“Into a basement, through six feet of rock,” he answered.  “There’s fifteen men in loincloths working some kind of ceremonial magic in a room nearly the size of the building.  There could have been more, hidden from view behind columns.  It basically looks like a giant and powerful sink.”

“But I’m not feeling any kind of a drain,” I muttered to myself.  “Are they directing it somehow?”

“I didn’t think about that,” he said.  “There is a latency period between the placement and dropping through to the sink.”

“Between six- and eight-tenths of a second, the reaction time for the secretary pool out there,” I said.  “I noticed the time difference in sensing its presence the first time.  If it’s directed, that makes it easier to overcome than a broad sink.  Now we just have to figure out what kinds of magic it’s sinking.”

“Or not,” Peter said.  “It’s not an offensive magic, after all.  And their wards were breached.  We still have an escape route if something goes sour.  I’m not saying don’t look for a way around it, but they haven’t done anything more than we have.”

Shrugging, I looked at Ethan.  “He’s got a point.  We could just wait and see.”

“Fine with me,” Ethan said, exiting and pulling Peter with him.  We were gone about a second and a half, still turning back to Kieran from the fake gardener.  The real world sped up for us.

“Mr. Davis will be right down, Mr. McClure,” the receptionist said sweetly as she hung up the phone.

“Thank you, Daphne,” Kieran said and turned back to us, his eyes twinkling.  He moved us toward the chairs against the wall, but I caught a sense of movement in the wall behind him to his right and found a man, presumably Mr. Ryan Davis, waiting at the bottom of a narrow staircase for an opportunity to slip through the one-way façade unnoticed.

“Mr. Davis?” I asked loudly.  Kieran looked over in the same direction.

“I don’t think you were supposed to notice, little brother,” Kieran said softly, leaning in and chuckling.

“Really?” I asked, acting my age, accepting the challenge Kieran laid before me so marginally.  “Oh, dear.  Then perhaps you shouldn’t look down.  They’re quite active in the basement.”  Davis came out of his hidey-hole while we spoke, though Jimmy watched him closely, giving me an excellent view of how his shielding magic worked.  Like most things that worked well, it was simple once you knew what to look for.

When we looked back to him, Ryan Davis stood on the near side of the wall in the same stance watching Kieran with a broad smile.  He was exactly six-foot tall, short cut reddish-brown hair, round face, and light brown eyes.  He wore a three-piece suit in different browns custom fit for his slim build, which he conveniently showed by pulling back his jacket and holding his hand on his waist in a relaxed gesture.

He stepped up to Kieran, extending his right hand openly.  “A pleasure to meet you, Mr. McClure.  I am, indeed, Ryan Davis,” he said in the same light tenor as yesterday’s phone conversation.  “I do apologize for such a suspicious entrance, but following your spectacular arrival, I just wanted a moment of quiet appraisal.”

“No offense taken, Mr. Davis,” Kieran said, smiling in serene calm.  “Young men tend to be quite flashy and little brother is quite new to magic in general.  And he’s rather inquisitive, especially when he encounters new styles and methods.

“I am Kieran,” he said, shaking the druid’s hand while blocking every probing effort Davis made.  “These are my brothers, Seth, Ethan, and Peter, and Seth’s First assistant.”  Kieran didn’t return the probing, implying he didn’t care enough to bother.

“That’s a lot of McClures.  Would it be impolite of me to refer to you by your first names then?” he asked.

“No, not at all,” Kieran replied, “Though, it’s worth mentioning that Peter’s last name is Borland.”

“Yes, Seth mentioned that during our brief conversation yesterday,” Davis said.  “Shall we go upstairs to my office?”

“As long as we use a different staircase,” I said casually.  “Some of us are a bit big to manage the twisty and tight hall.”

“Yes, sir, we have an open staircase expressly for our larger clients,” Davis said with a chuckle.  “Right this way, please.”

“D’you catch that, Pete?” I mumbled, laughing lightly.  “We’re going to the ‘Fat American Stairs’.”

Davis glanced back as he led the way through reception.  He wore a half-cocked grin as he looked at me.  “I doubt I could find two ounces of fat among the five of you to rub together.”

“Check between this one’s ears,” Peter said, lightly shoving Jimmy forward and throwing him off-step.  I caught him before he stumbled into Davis.

“I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t catch your name,” Davis said, cheerfully ignoring the shove.

“’First’ will do,” Jimmy said.  “Everyone calls me by that.”

“Take your job seriously, do you?” Davis asked, his smile broadening.

“Very,” Jimmy said, meeting Davis’ smile with one of equal brightness.  “Seth can be very demanding.”

Kieran laughed.  “When has Seth ever been demanding of anyone but himself?” he asked as he stepped onto the landing to the second floor with Davis.

“Hey!” I objected.  “I’ve demanded stuff from you!”

“Oh, yes, I remember now,” Kieran said, chuckling.  “One you were getting anyway and the other I had no choice about.  Anything else, O Great Demander?”

“Well, no,” I said quietly.

“He does set a high standard, though,” Jimmy said defensively.

“I think we can agree there,” Ethan said.

The second floor was much like the first with fewer people.  Downstairs looked like an expensive office building with large desks and a dozen or so paralegals working at computer terminals or mulling through thick texts.  A few wore headsets, either talking with someone or typing furiously in dictation.  This floor was broken into separate offices, seven total, but only three were currently lit and occupied, though six had secretaries at desks in front of them. 

The seventh office was the largest and most prominent.  The secretary’s desk sat behind the glass doors, but it was empty and the entire room was darkened.  It was neither empty nor dark, just presenting that aspect to us.  I assumed the three men sitting behind the illusion were the Hilliard Brothers.  Davis led us to the center left office, a fairly modern affair with a large oak desk, several wingback chairs and a conference table on one side of the room.  We surrounded the conference table and let him have the head.

“I admit I was only expecting two of you today,” Davis said as we sat down.  “Seth said that Peter and he would be dropping off account information and a retainer.  He didn’t mention meeting the whole family.”

“We felt that since there was the possibility of your firm representing us on a more permanent basis that we should at least meet you, Mr. Davis,” Kieran said smoothly.  “And when Seth noticed the address was the same as a conference we’ve been asked to attend tomorrow, we were intrigued.  We had a second reason to visit, so here we are.”

“Certainly reasonable, yes,” Davis said affably.  “Though you will need to check with your source on that conference tomorrow.  There has been a problem and it may have to be moved.  However when someone of Seymour Steadman’s reputation calls and gives such glowing references for a prospective client, I couldn’t help but jump at the chance.