Guardians Inc.:Thundersword (Guardians Incorporated #2) (25 page)

“Okay,” Thomas said, taking a bite. “So it’s like a pyramid, and the Council members are at the top, right?” He sat beside Tony. Elise gave him that disbelieving look, the one that said,
Are you kidding, dumb, or just plain ignorant?
He bit down on the pizza, trying to suppress a laugh.

“You're kidding, right?” she finally said, grabbing a slice. “You know you just met the most powerful people on the planet.”

“I didn't ‘meet them,’ Elise,” he said. “It was more like a show and tell. I just stood there and they all just saw me in the flesh. I felt like a Sunday School project. It was also very confusing, I was just dropped there in the middle of a group of people I had never seen before.”

“How many were there?” Elise asked. “Did they all show up?” 

Thomas looked at Bolswaithe who nodded. “If you don't know...” Thomas said, savoring the moment. This was probably the first time he knew more about the company than her. “You probably don't need to know at your clearance level. I'm sorry.”

Tony couldn’t keep from laughing, but Elise remained silent. She was always keen on keeping to regulations, so she wouldn’t ask Thomas to break one.

“Did you ask about going with the Namtarii?” she asked instead.

“We didn’t ask them,” Doctor Franco said as he entered the room. “We told them what we were going to do.”

“That was a quick meeting, Doctor,” Elise said.

“There wasn't much to discuss after Thomas left,” the Doctor answered, winking at Thomas. “We need to go with the Namtarii, and they agreed.”

“I still think that's crazy!” Tony yelled.

“We have less signs than Morgan's team,” the Doctor said calmly. “Hoormel Kian has made sure that every Clan knows about what happened in Ethipothala and the Halls of Remembrance with Mar-Safi, Pillar activity has increased, and on top of that we have reports of Wraith incursions around the world. The truth is that we are getting our backsides kicked,” he said. “We need to come back, and we need to do it soon.”

“If we go I'm taking Bianca's sword,” Tony said, clenching his fist.

“I'll decide who goes,” the Doctor told him and then slammed his fist on the desk. “One more thought like that and I'll relieve you, Mr. Della Francesca!” he said. “Now go and wait for orders. Thomas and Bolswaithe…wait here a second.”

They all turned toward the door. Tony almost slammed the door, Henri followed him as silent as ever, and Elise looked back as if trying to apologize for Tony.

“Prepare the door to the Namtarii's Keep, Bolswaithe. Let the custodians know we are coming, and bring the Graangu Tusks from the Twilight Vault,” the Doctor said once the others had left. “Also, tell Jean Luc, Charles, and Vincent that they'll be coming with us to the Keep.”

“Yes, sir,” Bolswaithe said. He walked out, leaving Thomas alone with the Doctor.

“Tony means well, Doctor,” Thomas said as the Doctor sat down on his desk. “He's just worried.”

“And angry, I know.” The Doctor sighed. “But I don't think he's fit for this mission.”

“Why not?” Thomas asked. If they were really going to visit the Namtarii, he certainly wanted Tony by his side.

“There were sixty original Namtarii,” the Doctor said. “We've killed forty-four, and seventeen of those have died by a Della Francesca's hand.”

“Tony has killed that many?” Thomas asked in disbelief.

“His family, but he hasn’t killed one…yet. That’s actually some of the pressure I read in his mind…he wants to prove himself in front of his family,” the Doctor said. “The Della Francesca have a special link to the Namtarii, a vendetta.”

“Vendetta means revenge, doesn't it?” Thomas sat down on the other side of the desk as the Doctor nodded. “What did the Namtarii do to his family?”

“I think I better let Tony explain that to you. Suffice to say that fulfilling the vendetta is a driving force among the Della Francesca,” the Doctor said.

“So you think he'll try to kill them as soon as he sees them?”

“Exactly, and Bolswaithe told me what the Dealmaker said about Tony,” the Doctor said. “He has a chip on his shoulder.”

Thomas thought for a moment. Maybe Tony would flip out once they were with the Namtarii and would try to kill one of them to gain some honor for himself. He had been hotheaded when he met him, but had become less so as they worked together. In other circumstances Thomas trusted him completely, but this vendetta business seemed serious. Now that he knew Tony’s family had a vendetta against the Namtarii, he had doubts about taking Tony with them.

“I'll give the order for him to stay if you want,” the Doctor said. “You relationship with him won't be affected, Thomas. I'll be the bad guy.”

“No, Doctor,” Thomas said, making up his mind. “I’ll talk with him, and I’m sure we'll be able to take him. I trust Tony.”

The Doctor sighed. “Very well, but I won't allow him to take his great ancestor's sword with him. His great grandfather, Orlando Della Francesca, killed Vincentia, Isaurus’s sister with that weapon, and he's the Namtarii's leader. It would be an unnecessary provocation.”

“I’ll tell him, Doctor,” Thomas said, standing up. “You don't have to be the bad guy all the time.”

The Doctor smiled. “Get your team ready. We leave in three hours.”

“Doctor?”

“Yes, Thomas?”

“I don’t understand why the Clans put so much importance on Mar-Safi? If I hadn’t interfered she would have died already. Do they want her dead?”

“No,” the Doctor responded. “The problem with Mar-Safi is that she is the last of her Clan when she shouldn’t be.”  The Doctor typed into his keyboard and the screens behind him showed images of the Oryx, her anchor species, with locations and statistics around the world. Thomas had seen Oryx in captivity in the San Diego Zoo. They were beautiful antelopes; their great scimitar-like horns slightly curved were their most prominent feature, and the main reason they had been hunted close to extinction.

“The Oryx were almost extinct, but we stopped that from happening. We passed protection laws and fielded expeditions to capture healthy specimens. We set up herds in protected areas and distributed them to zoos around the world, and many breeding programs have been successful. There are thousands of Oryxes living in captivity, way more than those needed to support her. There should be at least a couple of dozen more of her clan.”

“Well,” Thomas said, “she’s…alone.”

The Doctor smiled. “Fauns don’t need sexual reproduction. They are Magical beings. The Magic given by the Life Elemental Pillars creates and sustains them. We don’t know how it works, and they are not telling. The point is that even though we’ve done everything to save Mar-Safi’s Clan, we are failing. Nobody knows why. I don’t think she even knows why, and that’s the problem. Her clan fell under our protection and we aren’t helping at all. What can the other clans expect from us?”

Thomas finally realized why Mar-Safi was so important to Hoormel Kian; he was actually using her as a red flag, an example of just how impotent the Guardians were in helping Fauns. It was an incredibly powerful political weapon, and it would become even more powerful once Mar-Safi died.

“You understand now?” the Doctor asked.

“Yes, I do.”

“Thomas,” the Doctor said, “we urgently need a victory.”

Thomas nodded before leaving the office thinking over all he had learned. He had just begun to accept the idea that he was a Cypher when his horizon of Guardians Inc., the Fauns, and the world had broadened.

So many variables, so many secrets and plans within plans, so many factions, conflicts and interests centered on finding the
Book of Concord
and on the Cypher searching for it.

Centered on him…and Gramps.

Was Gramps feeling the pressure from all sides as Thomas did? He was just aligned with the Azure Guards, the Warmaster, and by extension with the Fauns. He probably didn’t have to deal with the human side of the conflict.

Thomas involuntarily clenched a fist thinking that it was probably
easier
for his grandfather and, for a moment, Thomas actually resented him.

House Della Francesca

“Come in,” Tony said. 

Thomas opened the door into the suite he had secured for Tony on the second floor of the Mansion. Tony’s suite was a little smaller than Thomas’s, but it still rivaled any suite in a luxury hotel—two separate rooms, a large living room with a huge TV screen, enough sofas to hold a small party, and a full-sized kitchen and dining room.

Tony had already taken ownership of his suite and transformed it to suit his tastes. On one side of the living room, he had brought in three pinball machines and a video game console fit for an old money arcade. One wall was fully devoted to the New York Yankees, including a display case with signed balls and players’ cards. The crowning jewel was a jersey encased in glass signed by Babe Ruth himself.

“My grandfather got it as a gift,” Tony said as Thomas admired the jersey. “He helped ‘The Bambino’ with some playful gremlins, which threw off his average in Yankee Stadium.”

“Expensive?” Thomas asked. 

“Ha!” Tony laughed. “It practically belongs in a museum. And one day we'll put it in one.” He softly touched the glass. “But not yet.” 

“The Doctor thinks it might not be a good idea for you to come with us,” Thomas finally said.

“Is it because of what the Dealmaker said?” Tony asked.

“In part,” Thomas replied. “It was hard stuff.”

Tony sighed. “Let me show you something.” He led Thomas to one of the back rooms. Tony had transformed it into a small museum. “The Della Francesca Room,” he said.

Tapestries and display cases full of artifacts filled the room, some of them dating back to the Renaissance era. Tony stopped in front of an oil painting of a man, who was holding a sword. He was richly dressed, and his shoulders were covered with a wolf's skin. On the left side of the painting, a sheep herder was moving a herd of white sheep toward a grand temple that dominated the center of the painting.
“The Wolf of Rimini,”
Tony said. “This is one of the hidden paintings from the first of my ancestors to be a Guardian, Piero Della Francesca.”

“Is Piero the man in the painting?” Thomas asked. He already knew that Piero had been a great painter of the Renaissance and tutored by the last Cypher to find the
Book of Concord
.

“No,” Tony said. “This man is Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, Lord of Rimini and patron of Piero. That...” he said, pointing at the building, “is the Templo Malatestiano, the Cathedral of Rimini. Sigismondo wasn't that much of a religious man, but he rebuilt the cathedral to try and make peace with the Pope.”

“I guess that didn't work,” Thomas said. The signs Piero hid in the painting suddenly became clear with Tony's information. The sheep herder represented the Pope, and the lambs were the army the Pope had sent to Malatesta. Sigismondo was aiming the sword at the sheep, ready to defend his domain from the Pope’s army.

Tony said, “Malatesta lost almost everything against the Pope. Only Rimini remained, and not for very long.”

Tony then told Thomas stories of his other ancestors who had disappeared from mainstream history, because each and every one of them became a Guardian after Piero.

The Della Francesca line had been incredibly diverse in their interests, and it gave the Guardians artists, poets, musicians, explorers and above all, scientists. With a great family and extensive properties in Milan, and their Matriarch being one of the heads of the Guardians Council of Twilight, the House Della Francesca seemed poised to become a powerful shaper of the future world.

“Until the Namtarii came to Milan in 1629,” Tony said bitterly. “They brought the plague with them and killed a quarter of a million people in two years—more than fifty percent of the population and all but one of my ancestors, Bianca Della Francesca.” Tony pointed at a shining armor encased in glass. “She was the first of my family to hunt the Namtarii down, and the first to kill one just outside Tyrol in 1633.”

 “But we had the
Book of Concord
already,” Thomas said. “Didn’t it show what the Namtarii would be doing? Didn’t it give your family time to evacuate before the city was attacked?” The
Book of Concord
showed the Guardians the future history of humanity, and if they already had it, why didn't they take measures against the Namtarii?

Tony smiled. “I guess that's not how it works. I also think that the Namtarii are difficult to keep track of, even with the
Book of
Concord
. In any event, it wouldn't have mattered if my family fled. The Namtarii didn't go to Milan to attack the city; they went there after my family.”

“Why?” Thomas asked.

“I don't know. We’ve actually never known why, but I know this…” Tony said, opening the glass case and pulling the sword from the scabbard attached to the armor's belt. “This is Bianca's Vendetta.” He showed the sword to Thomas, the silvery edge gleaming in the light. It wasn't as long or broad as the sword he was practicing with; it was more slender, elegant, and delicate, a true Lady of the Court weapon that almost looked flimsy in Tony's hand.

“It’s an arming sword. It’s been in my family since before Piero and has the names of our fallen enemies,” Tony said, lifting the sword to his forehead.  Thomas read the names of the fallen Namtarii finely etched on its blade. “Every time my family takes it out from its case a Namtarii dies.” Tony weighed the weapon on his hand, “It has taken seventeen of them already, and its work is not done yet.”

Thomas kept quiet, unsure of what to say. He had built up the courage to tell Tony to leave the sword with them on this trip, but now that he knew Tony’s family and their history with the Namtarii, he weighed against the idea of Tony accompanying them in this mission.

Tony replaced the weapon in its scabbard and closed the glass case with reverence. “No, its work is not yet done,” Tony said with a sigh, “but I won't add a name to it…not on this trip.” Tony walked toward an ornate long case and pulled open the doors. It was a triptych painting from the Renaissance, depicting the faces and names of the sixty Namtarii. Thomas was appalled to see that some of the expertly painted pictures had been crossed over with something that looked like blood while others seemed scratched away with the edge of a sword. “Our collection of enemies…so to speak,” Tony told him.