Authors: Scott V. Duff
“I apologize for the delay, Señor Florian,” I said, offering my hand and smiling. “It was a long car trip out.” Florian’s smirk acknowledged the polite lie for what it was.
“No apologies necessary, Seth,” he said, shaking my hand, his grip strong and firm. “Unfortunately, I was just admitting to Ehran my lack of social graces with regard to you.”
I grimaced, confused. “Oh? In what way?” I asked.
“We have no concept as to how to… interact with an Elf-
King
,” Florian explained. “Especially when history says that such a being cannot exist and when that being is human…”
“Well, considering I don’t know what it means either, I guess we’ll all have to figure it out as we go,” I said, casually shrugging it off. “I would say that this wasn’t a good start, though.”
“There was a problem?” asked the man standing next to Florian. He had a quiet calm about him that said he understood his power and knew how to use it, both politically and magically. His light brown hair was cut to compliment his round face and his brown eyes said “Trust me” but the wolfish smile said “Only so far.”
“Mr. Fuller,” Kieran said beside me, “May I present my brother, Seth. This is Darius Fuller, President of the United States Council and our host for the evening. This is his house.”
Hmm. I know you’re supposed to address the President of the United States as “Mr. President,” but did that social amenity transfer to this situation? “It’s good to meet you, Mr. Fuller,” I said, deciding on the form Kieran used, hand outstretched. “You have a lovely home with an impressive approach, both functional and artfully done.”
“Thank you, Mr. McClure, it is good to meet you as well,” Fuller said amicably, taking my hand in both of his in what Dad once called the “confidence pump.” He said it usually means the man is unsure of himself around you and is trying to get into your personal space so he can quickly gain your confidence by making you feel safe around him. “If eight men do it, don’t trust seven and be careful around the eighth,” Dad said.
As I pulled my hand back, Fuller asked, “You said there was bad start here?”
“Yes, we had a minor disagreement at the front. Mr. Harris has dealt with it, I believe. At least, for the moment,” I said with a smile, trying to diffuse the situation a little. Just a little, really, considering I was still toying with his security.
“Seth,” Kieran said cordially, nudging me a little further down the line. “This is Señor Carlos Felipe Peraza. He is
El Presidente
del Consejo de América del Norte
and our co-host this evening.”
“It is good to meet you, Seth McClure,” Peraza said in flawless English, only lightly accented. “Your achievements in such a short time have been nothing if not phenomenal.”
“Thank you, Señor Peraza,” I said as graciously as possible, as he, too, committed the confidence pump. Maybe it’s a politician’s thing. “I had a lot of help doing everything.”
“Are you sure you’re a teenager?” Fuller asked slyly. “Humility, even after walking over the heads of dozens of wizards without a hint of magic?”
Peter burst out laughing at the comment and both Fuller and Peraza turned, politely surprised at the outburst. Peter was hanging lightly, still laughing, on Ethan’s shoulder, who was bright-eyed and smiling at us.
“I’m afraid Daybreak is being very much the teenager, Mr. Fuller,” Ethan said. “All the cards just haven’t been played yet.” Heads swiveled to me.
“I have no idea what he’s talking about,” I said, as angelically as possible. Phillips, standing seven feet behind me, knew it
probably
wasn’t true, but there was
no way
he was going to call me on it. That left Kieran, who stood looking serenely… dispassionate. He was willing to let it play out either way. Chicken.
Fuller went an entirely different route. “That brings up another issue. Ethan referred to you as ‘Daybreak.’ What is that?”
“’Daybreak’ is the English word for the Fae word in the current form of the common tongue for the sound that represents me,” I said.
“A third translation of your True Name?” Fuller asked.
“That would be a rather severe oversimplification of the process, but it will work conceptually.”
“So conceivably, someone could trace your name backward to your True Name and steal your power just as you stole MacNamara’s,” Fuller asked. I couldn’t tell if he was just curious or if he was actually considering the challenge. It was cute, that he might try. I chuckled.
“No, that’s wrong on several levels,” I said, shaking my head. “My Name is much more than the word used to represent it. Further the circumstances that allowed that to happen no longer exist and I do not suffer from the same disability.”
“So your Fae title is King Daybreak?” Peraza asked.
“I’m probably going to have to find an etiquette guide on this very soon,” I said, trying for disarming. “The last title they gave me was ‘Daybreak, High Lord and Liege-Killer’.”
“Show him, Seth,” Kieran said, urging me suddenly. “What he’s saying, I think, is that Winter Court’s magic is very like the winter and Summer Court, very like summer. Show him Daybreak. Perhaps then he will instead question attempts to look into our aura rather than wonder why we might hide.”
Turning to look at him, I truly had no idea what he meant for me to do. What was I supposed to show, the dark lake? The thundering void of the falls? A few stars overhead? Okay, a few bazillion stars overhead. Dawn at the Palace wasn’t for hours. If he wanted me to show the dawn, I’d have to go far to the east, over the ocean.
Oh, that’s what he wanted. I couldn’t reverse the spells that held the atmosphere thick, but I could stop the alarms when they overloaded and cause a reset. Weird logic there. That meant I’d have to drill harder over the larger space, or compress input and output on both sides—in this case, lenses on both sides focusing on the small hole. This wasn’t any different than wrapping a portal around myself and moving; I was just wrapping a portion of a plane and letting nature run its course for a few seconds.
So that’s what I did. Centering the horizon at two seconds away from sunrise over the ocean, I wrapped the view of my realm around my body and opened the hole. A low murmur shot through the surrounding people as my body turned completely black, shoved into total darkness even in this well-lit area. The first rays of sunlight hit two seconds later in a perfect cross, diffracting in the atmosphere. It made for an impressive display on my chest. Within another two seconds, the sun rose enough to fill my midsection and I could feel the heat warming the suit I wore. In another two, I was blazing from head to toe.
Now I was feeling homesick and the patio was never this bright. Wistfully, I shut down the link and reset Fuller’s wards, plunging the patio back into near darkness.
Standing before two stunned presidents, I said, smiling, “I suppose that could be what you mean…” I was doing a lot of that lately, smiling.
Applause started near me, rippling outward, softly at first, then turned into a hundred-person roar. I startled me enough that when I whirled around to face them, I was wearing the now familiar green and black diamond pattern complete with Swords and Crossbow and Quiver on my back. The applause doubled, then, but neither the Bow nor the Swords could isolate an enemy so I relaxed somewhat, thanking my tools for their quick retrieval.
“That was impressive, Mr. McClure,” Peraza shouted over the noise, which I hoped would die away very soon.
“Gracias, Señor Peraza,” I said. Even if it was only a light show… A gong sounded somewhere in the house, urging Fuller into motion. He stepped lithely onto the edge of a nearby planter and turned to face everyone.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, if I could have your attention, please?” he called out loudly over the gathering, causing the remnants of applause to die away more quickly, thankfully. “Dinner will be served in a very short while. Please remember that we only have the McClures for a short period this evening. We caught them unexpectedly, while they were traveling, and insinuated ourselves into their schedule. We hope to provide everyone with a chance for introduction, but please recall that there are far more of us than of them. We don’t want to crush our guests.”
He finished with a flourished wave at us and hopped off the planter —yeah, a forty-something-looking-year-old man hopped. “We should head to the dining room now,” he said to us. “Try and avoid the rush.”
There was humor in his aura, paralleled in his eyes, and I was pretty sure he meant it would take us time to move that far. He underestimated the awesome effect of Daybreak apparently as he and Peraza took the point of formation and we fell in behind them in pairs, me with Kieran, Ethan with Peter, then Mike with someone from the council’s line I hadn’t met yet. We proceeded in a nice little train with the sea of black dinner jackets and colorful dresses parting in front of us easily. Both presidents were pleasantly surprised by our quick passage when we arrived at the dining room doors only a minute later.
“We were unsure of the protocols to use in our seating arrangements,” Fuller said, turning back to us as we entered the room. At the far end was a raised dais with enough seating for twelve, though its capacity was more like twenty. The rest of the room contained round tables of eight. A few waiters in white waistcoats were still fussing with a couple of tables, but once we entered, they headed for the sides of the room. At each end of the dais, a server already stood ready, expectant. “Clifford assured us that you would not mind choosing your own seats.”
“Really? Clifford said that?” Ethan said, turning to Peter and exchanging their polite smiles for mischievous ones. Then it was a foot race for the far end of the room. I think Ethan could have beaten Peter, but it would have been close without resorting to supernatural powers, an oxymoron where Ethan’s concerned really. In the end, they split the nameplates from the near end of the table evenly and cooperated in their placement.
“I think Clifford set you up, Mr. Fuller,” Kieran said, chuckling and starting for the dais. By the time we got there, Peter and Ethan were coming around to the backside a little disgruntled.
“Get me Phillips, now!” I heard Fuller whisper tersely to the guard by the door. This surprised me because that was a good hundred twenty feet away and it wasn’t exactly quiet through here.
“Not as fun as it could have been with more people,” muttered Peter as he walked past me on the dais. They’d placed him on the far left, sandwiched between a vice-president of the North American council and Phillips, then me then Fuller on my right. Kieran sat on Fuller’s right, across the lectern, followed by Peraza, Ethan, Harris, Mike, and the US council vice-president. Seward sat on the far-left end. I assumed he was Phillips’ mirror in function, maybe a security chief for the North American council. He wouldn’t be too happy when he came in.
I glanced back at Fuller at the door just as Phillips met with him nervously, moving in close to avoid being overheard, even in a whisper.
“Yes, sir?” I heard him say.
“There was an incident tonight?” I heard Fuller, too, but I was certain I could
not
be hearing them.
“Yes, sir,” Phillips whispered curtly. “The McClures met me on the curb of the hotel as expected. They somehow managed to speed the road trip up by shunting the van through space and we arrived ahead of schedule and without our entourage. That alarmed Seward to the extent that he would not allow them to pass through the house until they could be positively identified. We hit an impasse when they agreed to wait but refused to wait in the van. When Seward insisted, the event… escalated. Had Marshal Harris not intervened, it would have been… very bad.”
Fuller stared at him, growing angry and trying to cap it off before it got worse. “Exactly what do you mean by ‘escalated,’ Mr. Phillips?” he asked.
Phillips gulped visibly. “Three things, sir. One, I have now seen his armor twice. The first time, the Day Sword was drawn and directed at my throat. Two, the phrase ‘Breach of Hospitality’ was mentioned. And three, we have been unable to reclaim control of the mansion’s wards since he disabled them.”
Fuller stared at Phillips for a count of three, then said, “And I’m just now finding out about this? Our guests of honor claim a Breach of Hospitality and you’re just
now
telling me about it?”
“Seth, are you being nosy?” Peter asked, slithering up beside me and looking over the room as people began entering.
“Oh, yeah,” I mumbled.
“Calm down, Darius,” Harris said calmly, intercepting someone heading for Fuller, greeting and shaking the third man’s hand. Fuller fumed until Harris extricated himself.
“So what’s going on over there?” Peter asked me, watching the tiny drama unfold.
“Phillips was just telling Fuller an abridged account of what happened on the front lawn,” I recounted. “He was about to blow a gasket when Harris swooped past him and told him to calm down. I give him a fifty-fifty chance of blowing a gasket for that, too. Wait, you can’t hear that?”
“No,” Peter said, laughing through the word. “I don’t know anybody here. This is just weird. I usually know four or five people out of a hundred.”
“Don’t change the subject,” I said, turning back to Fuller as Harris finally managed to get away. “Why can I hear them but you can’t?”