City of Golden Shadow (47 page)

The rumbling snarl ripped upward into a screech. Orlando found himself flying through the air in a most convincing way. As he struck and rolled, the vast scarlet bulk of the gryphon toppled toward him, fountaining black blood.

"Dzang, man. Ho dzang. Utterly chizz. That was one of your best ever."

Orlando sat up. Fredericks stood next to him, his Pithlit-face wide-eyed with excitement. "Thank God I don't use regular tactors," he said, then groaned as Fredericks helped him up. "But I still wish I'd turned off the feedback. That hurt"

"But you wouldn't get credit for the kill if you did that"

Orlando sighed and looked at the gryphon. Dead, it seemed to take up even more room than before, sprawling across the tiles like an upended bus. "Frigging hell, Frederico, I got other things to worry about. I just want to get into that tower. If Thargor's gonna be declared dead, what does another notch mean?"

"Career statistics. You know, like an athlete or something."

"Jesus, you really scan. Come on."

Orlando picked Lifereaper out of the spreading puddle of dark blood, then wiped it on the corpse's hide before heading confidently toward the door at the back of the balcony. If there had been any more guards lurking, the commotion would surely have brought them by now.

The balcony opened onto the base of a wide stairway composed of writhing human forms. In the light from the wall sconces he could see a row of mouths opening and shutting along the banister. The murmur of their complaining voices filled the room. He would have been more impressed if he hadn't seen an advertisement for the Tortured Souls overlay in a gaming magazine a few weeks before. He curled his lip. "Typical wizard."

Fredericks nodded.

The stairs led up past several more floors, all full of snap-on wizard gear, much of it familiar and most of it fairly low-rent. Orlando decided that Senbar-Flay, whoever he was, had shot most of his allowance on the gryphon.

Shame about that, he thought. Maybe it was insured.

He didn't bother to search any of the lower rooms. Wizard-types, like cats, always opted for the highest perches, as if they had to look down on everyone else. Other than a squadron of large but somewhat sluggish guard-spiders, which Orlando easily dispersed with a few strokes from Lifereaper, they encountered no further opposition.

In the topmost part of the tower, in a great circular room with windows that overlooked Madrikhor in all directions, they found Senbar-Flay, asleep.

"He's not home," said Fredericks, half-relieved. The body was stretched out on a jet-black bier, and surrounded by something that would have looked like a glass box if it had been a bit more substantial. "Got wards around his body, too."

Orlando examined the wizard's inert sim. Senbar-Flay was as heavily robed as he had been at their first meeting, everything but his lidded eyes wrapped in metallic black fabric. He wore a goblin-skull helmet, although Orlando had real doubts the sorcerer had killed the goblin himself: the markets of Madrikhor's Merchant Row were full of such things, harvested by local adventurers and sold so they could improve their weaponry, their attributes, or buy a little extra online time. Adding a more exotic touch to the ensemble, the wizard's hands were gloved in human flesh-but, from the puckered stitching, it did not appear to be his own.

"Glory Hands," noted Fredericks. "I saw 'em in this shop in Lambda. Give you power over the dead, I think. What are you gonna do, Orlando? He's not here."

"I knew he wasn't here when the gryphon didn't bring him out. But this guy sent me down that hole and something weird happened to me there. I want answers." He reached into his pocket and brought out a small black circle the size of a poker chip. "And I'm gonna get 'em."

"What's that?"

"Wizards aren't the only people who can do magic." Orlando dropped the circle onto the floor, then crouched and pulled at its edges until it looked like a manhole the size of a dinner plate. "Beezle! Come here!"

The shambling something with too many legs clambered up out of the black circle. "Keep your shirt on, boss," it growled, "I'm here already."

"What are you doing?" Fredericks was so shocked that Orlando almost laughed-his friend sounded like an old lady. "You can't hack that thing in here! No unregistered agents allowed in the Middle Country!"

"I can do anything if I can make the gear work."

"But you'll be banned forever! Not just Thargor-you!"

"Only if somebody tells. And who would do that?" He fixed Fredericks with a stern look. "Now do you see why I'm not going to register that kill?"

"But what if someone checks the record?"

Orlando sighed for the second time in fifteen minutes. These arguments with Fredericks could go on for days. "Beezle, pull this node apart. Get me every piece of local information you can, but concentrate on communications in and out."

"Will do." The cartoon bug dropped back down into the hole, and immediately the air filled with a ruckus of chainsaws and clawhammers.

Orlando turned back to his friend. "No one's going to check the record unless Senbar-Flay asks them to, and he won't do that if he's got something to hide."

"And if he doesn't have anything to hide?"

"Then I'll have to apologize, won't I? Or at least buy him a new gryphon."

Orlando pulled opened the data window until it blocked his view of Fredericks' frowning face. He opaqued the background, just to make sure no disapproval leaked through, and studied the glowing characters Beezle was pumping out.

"His name's Sasha Diller. Never heard of him. You?"

"No." Fredericks sounded distinctly sullen, perhaps thinking of the potential damage to his own Middle Country franchise if this affair came to the attention of the Table of Judgment.

"Registered in Palm Beach Inner. Huh. I would've thought a rich kid would do better than this-everything except the watch-gryphon is strictly House of Gear." He let his eyes rove down the window. "Twelfth Level-like I couldn't guess. Calls in and out? Hardly any. A couple of codes here I don't recognize. Hmmm. He hasn't been around much lately." Orlando pointed at a section of the window, which reconfigured. He grunted in surprise.

"What?"

"He's been around exactly twice in the last six months. Two days in a row. The second was the one where he gave me the commission."

"That's weird." Fredericks looked down at Senbar-Flay's uninhabited body. "Why don't you just pump out the data you want? We should get out of here."

Orlando smiled. He knew his sim wasn't showing much of it-Thargor didn't smile very well. "Some thief you are. Is this how you act when you're on one of your little jobs? Like a kid sneaking down to rattle his Christmas presents?"

"Pithlit doesn't break the rules of the Middle Country." Fredericks' dignity was wounded. "He's not scared of anything, much-but I'm worried about getting banned for life."

"Okay. It's gonna be a long time before this guy comes back anyway, by the looks of it" Orlando began to close the window, then stopped, arrested by something he'd seen, and enlarged it again. He stared for a long while, long enough to make his friend start to shuffle nervously, then shut it and sent the information to his home system.

"What? What was it?"

"Nothing." Orlando looked down at the hole. "Beezle? You done?"

As if to be contrary, the agent appeared from the general area of the ceiling, dangling on a very cartoony-looking rope that Orlando knew was not part of the wizard's tower decor. "Depends what you mean by done, boss. How fine you want the information sifted? You got all the big stuff already."

Long years of interaction had taught Orlando to translate Beezle's seeming informality. He was probably now tracing the provenance of every piece of snap-on software in the place.

"The big stuff will do. Do a backgrounder on the gryphon, though. A good one."

Beezle spun at the end of his rope for a moment. "Done."

"Then let's get out of here. Hit that rope and start climbing down, Frederico."

"Climbing? Why don't we just go?"

"Because I'm not leaving the way you are. You go the long way. Keep an eye open and make sure we didn't leave any obvious traces-you know, club keys from the Thieves' Quarter Lounge, stuff like that."

"Very funny. What are you going to do?"

"Trust me-you don't want to know."

Orlando gave Fredericks a decent head start. Then, when he felt sure his friend should be shinnying down the rope-Fredericks had spent lots of points on rope-shinnying ability, so Orlando figured he wouldn't be at it too long-he summoned Beezle back.

"What now, boss? We goin' somewhere interesting?"

"Only home. But first I want you to do something. Can we leave a little data bomb behind?"

A grinning mouth appeared in the inky mop of legs. "We are having fun today. Whatcha wanna do, exactly?"

"I can't do anything to the central record, and I certainly can't make a seamless edit like someone did to me, even in this guy's house file-but I can make sure that whoever comes in here next won't know who was here or what happened, not unless they've got Table of Judgment authority."

"Your call, boss. But I can scorch it good, yeah. Complete scramble."

Orlando hesitated. He was taking a big risk-bigger even than Fredericks knew. This had become so important to him so quickly, and he was basing it all on one look at Beezle's data. But he hadn't become Thargor, scourge of the Middle Country, by being afraid to go for broke.

"Scorch it"

"You did what?"

"Pulled it down. Not from the outside-no one will be able to tell unless they actually get into the place." Fredericks, back in one of his bodybuilder sims, leaped out of his chair so quickly that he flew into the air and caromed off the cottage wall. Orlando adjusted the gravity and his friend floated down and bumped to rest beside the pyramid of display cases. "Are you scanned utterly?" Fredericks shouted. "That's not just the Middle Country death penalty, and maybe thrown off the whole net-that's criminal prosecution, too! You destroyed someone's property!"

"Don't get your fenfen in an uproar. That's why I sent you out first. You're in the clear."

Fredericks raised his chunky fists, his sim face (slightly less realistic than Pithlit's, which probably indicated something profound, although Orlando couldn't say what exactly) screwed up in fury. "I don't care about me! Well, that's not true-but what the hell is going on with you, Gardiner? Just because Thargor's dead, you're trying to get yourself thrown off the net. What are you, some kind of martyr?"

Orlando settled back into his virtual couch, smiling. "You sound like my mother."

His friend's cold anger was fierce and surprising. "Don't say that. Don't you dare say that."

"Sorry. Just . . . just spanking you. Look, I'll let you in on something. Beezle! Run that information out for me again, will you?"

The window appeared and hung gleaming in midair like an angelic visitation.

"Now, orb this." Orlando boxed and expanded a small section. "Go on, read it."

Fredericks squinted. "It's . . . it's a shutdown order." He straightened up, a little relief evident in his voice. "Senbar-Flay's tower is gonna be taken down? Then . . . but it still doesn't make sense, Gardiner, what you did. If they're going to drezz it anyway. . . ."

"You didn't finish reading. Look at who told the Middle Country gaming board to shut it down."

"Some judge in . . . Palm Beach County, Florida?"

"And the date-six months ago. And it's only been used twice since that time."

Fredericks shook his head. "I don't get it."

"This guy Diller's dead! Or in jail, or something. Anyway, he ceased to be the operator, pretty much, six months ago. But for some reason it hasn't been drezzed. And, more importantly, someone's used it-used Diller's sim, even! Used it to hire me!"

"Wow. Barking. Are you sure?"

"I'm not sure of anything. But Beezle's checking for me. You got anything yet, Beezle?"

The agent popped out of a crack in the wall beside the picture window. "Got the Diller stuff. Still working on the watch-gryphon."

"Give me what you've got so far. Just tell me."

"Diller, Seth Emmanuel-you want dates and everything?"

"Just summarize. I'll stop you if I want more data."

"He's a coma case-date of shutdown coincides with the date of a trustee being named for his estate. Thirteen years old at last birthday. Parents dead, grandmother applied for legal aid-she's started a lawsuit against Middle Country, plus the hardware manufacturers, primarily Krittapong Electronic and subsidiaries."

Orlando pondered, "So he had enough money to have good equipment, but the grandmother doesn't have enough money to sue?"

Beezle waved his legs for a moment "All the hardware and gear named in the lawsuit's at least four years old, some much older. You want me to get the grandmother's finances? Diller, Judith Ruskin."

"Nah." He turned to Fredericks, who was sitting forward, beginning to believe. "This guy's in a coma, as good as dead, His estate wants his online stuff shut down-probably to save money. And his grandma's suing the Middle Country, too. But it doesn't shut down. And someone else uses it, at least two times. His equipment was nice once, but it's old now and his grandmother doesn't have any money. But there's a top-of-the-line, utterly scorching Red Gryphon on the site to keep people out. How much you want to bet it was purchased after this Diller kid checked out?"

"I'm working on the gryphon, boss," said Beezle. "But it ain't easy."

"Keep trying." He put his feet up on nothing. "What do you think now, Frederico?"

His friend, who had seemed quite excited only a few moments ago, now grew strangely still, as though he had left his sim entirely. "I don't know," he said at last. "This is getting weird, Orlando. Really scanbark. How could someone keep a node open in the Middle Country when the people who run it wanted it shut down?"

"I'll bet that somebody fiddled the central records. We only know because the shutdown order was registered on the node itself when the judge made her decision. But if someone went in and adjusted the central records, the automatic drezz would never happen. You know the system's too big for anyone to notice, at least until the case comes to court and the whole thing gets dragged out again."