Authors: Edward Lazellari
The ax head was one solid piece of forged stainless steel with two gleaming silver curving blades a foot apart on either end. From the razor-sharp ends it thickened to a smooth five-inch bulge in the center and was topped with a six-inch Kaiser spike shooting up from the ax eye. Underneath was the hole for the handle attachment. The silver handle segments were solid inch-and-a-half-wide cylinders forged from aircraft grade 6.6.2 titanium alloy, grooved the long way with intermittent dwarv design motifs that Malcolm had provided. The valleys of the grooves and etchings were tinted black, making the embossed silver parts of the handle shine brighter by comparison. The design was more for grip than decoration, but there was no reason it couldn’t look impressive, too. Just past the thinner throat of the handle end it swelled into a spherical knob. A leather loop strap was anchored into the knob end.
Mal pulled out the sections and began assembling with the eagerness of a young boy on Christmas morning. He inserted the first handle segment into the head and twisted to hear a satisfying and sturdy click. Then he attached the second half of the handle and it clicked solidly into place. Mal felt the weight, its reach, and balance before resting the weapon vertically on the floor. From ground to head, it was four feet high with six extra inches for the spike.
Scott whistled. “The boys do good work.”
“And fast,” Malcolm said. “I only gave them the specs two days ago.”
“Why not titanium all the way through?” Scott asked. “That head looks heavy.”
“Titanium blade wouldn’t last as long as the steel, and you want weight at the head. Helps drive through bone and muscle.”
Scott was visibly alarmed by the remark. “Really?” he said. “Exactly whose bones do you plan to drive this monstrosity through?”
Mal opened the second box and it also contained an ax, similar to the first, only half the size and completely solid steel.
“Did you not notice one of our party was kidnapped today?” Mal said. He laid the big ax against the wall by the headboard, pushed the boxes off the bed and resumed his work position with the laptop.
Scott poured himself a glass of lemon water at the wetbar. “Cat’s kidnapping is eating everyone up,” Scott said. “Lelani is beside herself. And Collins … he’d been friends with most of our security team for years.”
“You think talking about my feelings will somehow be better than trying to get work done?” Malcolm said, typing away. The monitor’s glow tinted him a frosty blue, adding to his coldness.
“I think not beating yourself up for something you could not have predicted would be a good start.” Scott sat beside Malcolm on the bed and placed a hand on his lap. Mal looked up; he gazed into the face of the man who’d been his partner in every way for the past several years, a man he knew like the back of his hand. Scott thought he knew Malcolm as well, but that was the old Mal—the one who thought he was of this universe. New Mal was a conglomeration of two lives.
“I sent one security man with them to the only source of magical energy on the entire island of Manhattan,” Malcolm said. “How much more stupid could I have been to not anticipate the possibility of an ambush? Even just a random meeting. From the start I should have sent an entire detachment of guards to secure the lay pool and left them there to keep Dorn’s cronies away from the very power they need to vex us.
“I’m very good at secular strategies, Scott. But I’ve been away from Aandor for so long, I had forgotten how to factor wizards into a fight. Dealing with people who can manipulate the laws of nature with a gesture and a wave will put gray hairs on any soldier’s head. We need to be smarter, Scott. This is very serious stuff. We need to be smarter if we’re to get home alive.”
“But I am home,” Scott said, quite solemnly.
Malcolm remained quiet, surprised at his own slip of the tongue. He didn’t know yet how to address this issue. It had been the elephant in the room for a few days now. The problem was, Malcolm wasn’t sure of his own feelings on the subject yet. He had skin in the game in both universes and was torn between staying and going back.
“This is not my home,” Malcolm said. “It’s a beautiful life and I’ve accomplished much, but I came here for a specific purpose.” Mal put the laptop down again and faced his partner.
“I love my village. I love our culture, our cuisine, our work ethic—the songs we sang, the things we built. I miss my home. When the invasion came, I didn’t just run away like half the other members in our party. I knew my purpose was to protect that kid as though my people’s very future depended on it. My people are there.”
“I’m your people, too,” said Scott, trying to keep the pain out of his voice. These revelations had placed a tremendous amount of strain on him. It was hard for Malcolm to hear. Scott really had been his “people” for years, the only friend Mal needed to have a happy life. They had been talking about adopting a child, and perhaps more after that to check off the last remaining requirements of domestic bliss.
Mal knew this conversation was inevitable. Part of being successful in business was the ability to predict events. He already had a sense of the way it might go, and he didn’t want to face it.
“I have two children,” Mal said. “A son, Axel, who’s fourteen, and my daughter Mathilde, nine. Both haven’t even realized yet their pa has lived without them for thirteen years.”
Scott would understand the burden of that responsibility. He had two daughters from a previous marriage that had been a lie from the start, prompted by his southern roots to fit in. Mal liked Scott’s ex very much. She was educated and open-minded and had been a good sport about it all. Scott’s coming out had been a relief to her after years of feeling like she wasn’t attractive enough to retain his interests. She simply didn’t have what turned him on. The girls, Molly and Claire, lived with their mother in Virginia Beach, but Mal and Scott had them up to the Hamptons often for holidays and summer vacation. Scott was a phenomenal father, made possible by his personal happiness in finally living the life he was born to live.
“And where there’s children, there is usually a wife,” Scott said softly, more for his own realization.
“There is a wife. But she’s not as important as you might assume. It was an arranged marriage … a normal custom among my people. We like each other, get on very well, but there was never passion, romance—never a connection of the kind we have.”
“Have? Do you still have
it,
Malcolm? That old queen Balzac couldn’t keep his mouth shut about how much dwarv women look like men. Told the others you were confused about your orientation.”
“Cruz doesn’t know shit about my feelings!” Mal’s ire rose. The complications of the guardians’ lives were bad enough without some effete fool mouthing off his toxic gossip. Balzac was the reason Catherine MacDonnell ended up in Central Park … because he couldn’t keep his hole shut about MacDonnell’s betrothed in Aandor.
“Yes, our women are more masculine,” Mal said. “When the restoration spell hit, I was afraid … worried that knowing my true self again, my feelings for you would wane. I waited and waited for that moment when I would no longer find you—attractive.
“We’re four days in now, Scott, and it hasn’t happened. I can’t make sense of it—I don’t know if I’m a gay dwarv, a straight one, or just utterly confused. This much I know … I love you. As much today as I did before the spell. You’re still the one that turns me on the most in two universes.”
Scott’s eyes welled, mostly with happiness Malcolm thought. His face turned beet red as it always did when he became emotional.
“But your children…,” Scott said.
“Come back with me,” Mal offered.
“Your wife will love that,” Scott said sarcastically. He produced a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his eyes. “Does she get the guest room or do I?”
Mal laughed despite the heart-wrenching truth behind the statement, and Scott joined in.
“I can’t leave Molly and Claire,” Scott said. “They’re not even in high school yet. How could I…?”
“See. It’s not easy,” Malcolm said. “But it’s not just my kids. My people have run out of places to live. Aandor was the only kingdom that could stand up to Farrenheil and its coalition. Many kingdoms won’t take us in. They think of dwarvs as greedy, dirty, and uncouth. Who wants to take on a burden when, in addition to feeding mouths, it only earns you the animosity of one of the richest, most powerful kingdoms on the continent? If Aandor falls, we’ll be pushed out. The dwarvs’ backs are against the proverbial sea. This is as much my fight as it is Callum MacDonnell’s. If he had died in these past years, I would still be leading the charge to save the prince and return to Aandor.”
“What good can one boy do?” Scott said.
Mal arched his eyebrow and considered what he knew. “You’d be surprised,” he said. “We’re governed by accords that were signed in blood by the heads of all twelve kingdoms over a century ago. We are in effect a confederation … a leaderless empire. The heads of the kingdoms are princes, descendants of the emperors of old, but adhering to the accord, none may use the title ‘prince.’ They go by archduke or grand duke. It is one big family squabble over who gets to be in charge over a new empire. The heads of the wizards and religious orders witnessed the accord signing and countersigned to validate it. The age of ascension is sixteen in Aandor. At sixteen, you are a man, free to leave home, marry, join the army, start a business, or rule a kingdom. If Danel, Blood of Ten Kings, returns home, in three years, he will be the first ruler in over a century with ‘prince’ as his title. He would be a step away from producing the next emperor and would draw the support of kingdoms that have so far stayed neutral during this aggression, as well as backing from the Wizards’ Council and priestly orders. The neutral kingdoms don’t like Farrenheil any more than we do, but as long as they stay neutral—don’t criticize the cleansings—Farrenheil lets them be.”
“Because that works so well,” Scott said. “What was it that theologian who lived through World War Two said? ‘…
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me.’”
“Niemöller. Aye,” Malcolm agreed. “But we went through decades of bloody torturous war between kingdoms before the accord was signed. People need to know Danel still has a viable claim before they stick their necks out. It would hearten them, rally them, and may even foster enough force to shut Farrenheil down once and for all. Even Farrenheil’s greatest ally, Verakhoon, would balk at such a rising. But none of it means anything if we don’t get the boy back alive.”
Scott sat on the bed, hands on his lap, rubbing his thighs. It was a lot to take in.
Mal sat next to his partner and rubbed his back. He always liked the texture of Scott’s sweaters, always of the finest wools. “I know you won’t leave the girls,” Mal said.
Scott put his head on Mal’s shoulder and they sat there in perfect balance, each exerting the right amount of push, like the voussoirs of a Roman arch. There would be no solution to their dilemma today. But Malcolm would hold Scott for a little while longer and pretend that tomorrow was an open book.
CHAPTER 26
CAT IN A GILDED CAGE
As consciousness approached, Catherine MacDonnell was vaguely aware her face rested against something soft and satiny. She awoke to find herself in a luxurious king-sized bed in one of the most elegant bedrooms she’d ever seen.
Edwardian
came to mind, and she was sure the furniture, bold in details, with gracious ornamentation, was in the style of one of the Louises, probably the fifteenth. Her bed’s large headboard loomed behind her; what she took for the ceiling at first was really the canopy at the top of a four-poster bed. A diffused yellow light on the nightstand begrudgingly pushed itself through the room leaving the far corners shadowed and mysterious—the heavy drapes, closed, denied her any sense of time of day.
Cat pushed off from the pillow; her vision swirled and she fell back to where she started with a soft poof. The ceiling shifted in a dizzying jig, which even with eyes closed failed to stop. The darkness was as bad as it sloshed like fluid in a shaken jar. Roman candles burst soundlessly on the black screens of her eyelids. Her thoughts were thick, and despite the fog in her memory, the one feeling that came through clear and undiluted was the piercing throb in her temple. Cat was certain she’d been drugged.
Panic grew as the events of Central Park slowly unfurled. She remembered the three men that came out of the woods, especially the one called Kraten—bloody Collins, frozen Lelani, and—
Where’s Bree?
She sat up again, too quickly, and immediately suffered for it. Her senses spun, she again fell back toward the pillow, but made an effort to go off center as though not ending up in the exact same position she started from was somehow less pathetic.
“How many times are you going to do that?” said a voice in a dark corner of the room.
An obscured man sat in the shadows.
She pushed herself up slowly this time. “Who’s there?” Cat asked.
The chair moved forward with the sound of a thin mechanical whir. As he came into the nightstand’s feeble light, Cat saw that it wasn’t a man, but a boy with short spiked brown hair and hazel eyes in a black, padded wheelchair. It was one of those deluxe chairs with a computer monitor and a tube affixed next to his mouth to help him navigate. Velcro straps secured the boy’s torso to the chair and his emaciated arms to the armrests. A U-shaped brace around his parietal bone kept his head from bobbing too far in any direction.
Quadriplegic,
Cat realized.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Tory,” the boy answered. His voice trembled … he was hoarse as though he’d been screaming and burned out his throat.
And why wouldn’t he?
she thought. Being kidnapped by thugs was scary enough when you could move your arms and legs.
“I live in Carroll Gardens with my mom,” the boy continued. “I can’t get a call out to her … there are zero bars on my pad.” He glanced at the monitor. “Do you know why I’m here? No one will tell me anything.”