Pawn (9 page)

“Please no, it’s just a scratch.” But it wasn’t and the look of shock on her face as she stared at his neck told him she thought the same. That bastard had very nearly cut his head off, and it would take time to heal.

“A scratch?” She seemed upset by the word. “Whoever did this to you very nearly killed you. The wound is deep, barely healing and it’s bleeding.” She pulled her hand away from his throat and he could see her fingertips covered in red. Not something he liked seeing. Yet all he could think was that this beautiful creature actually cared that he was hurt. That simply didn’t happen. Not to him.

“You need some medical care.” And just like that the panic intensified. Medical care was the one thing he absolutely couldn’t afford. No doctor seeing him would ever consider his throat wound an accident, and nearly everybody would have seen his face on the news. He’d be picked up by the police in minutes.

“No please, it’s fine.” And he quickly pulled the neck of his T-shirt back up so it covered the wound. But of course it was too late. She’d seen it. And judging from the way her eyes were exploring him, studying him, she’d guessed that the throat wound wasn’t his only injury.

“There’s more isn’t there?” She reached out and touched his shoulder, and even though he knew it would hurt and braced himself, he still couldn’t completely stop himself from wincing. Somewhere during the fall he’d damaged it, maybe broken something in the joint. It was just another one of his many injuries from the crash and the hotel. In less than a week he’d gone from healthy to a walking invalid. But at least he was still alive.

“It doesn’t matter, please.”

Di stared at him, obviously worried, but not knowing what to say for a bit. Then she did and her perfect blue eyes became a determined steel grey.

“I don’t know who did this to you. But the one thing I do know is that it matters very much. No one should hurt another like this. And whoever it is, they have made a dangerous enemy this day.” She was serious. He could see it in the whiteness of her face and the resolutely clenched jaw. Like a lioness angry that someone should dare to threaten her cub. She actually thought it was wrong that someone should have hurt him, and that felt unexpectedly pleasant. It was nice that someone should care, though after so many years without anyone to fill that role, confusing. He didn’t quite know how to react. But the last thing he could afford was for her to get involved. The thought of her being killed by that butcher with the knife or any of the other thugs was too much to bear.

“No! Please don’t say that. Don’t get involved. These people are very dangerous and they’d kill you in a heartbeat.”

“You overestimate them.” She laughed lightly, strangely confident of her likely triumph over the monsters coming for him. But then she had no idea who they were or how dangerous. “It would not be me who would be in danger.”

“Still, you should not get involved. Please.” It worked, finally, and the hard steel glint in her eyes finally vanished to be replaced by concern. But he knew she wasn’t happy. What he didn’t know was why. He wasn’t the sort of person that people cared about. Ever.

“For the moment I will respect your wishes. You are afraid, you needn’t be, but I will allow your fear.” She meant it in a kindly way he knew. Even if it sounded somewhat authoritarian, almost like a stern mother with a naughty child. She wasn’t the sort to ever say anything unkind. How he knew that he couldn’t say, but he knew it for a fact. Her heart was as pure as her face was lovely. Maybe it was something to do with her translating her native tongue into English. Which reminded him of another question circling around in his thoughts. And he had to change the subject.

“Your accent. I don’t recognise it. You’re not English?”

“No, of course not. I’m Greek, a Cypriot in fact. But I travel.”

“Greece. That’s supposed to be a very beautiful country.” For once he apparently knew the right thing to say as another happy smile graced her face, and he wanted to celebrate the return of his tongue.

“It is, and so much warmer than here. Maybe one day you’ll visit my home and I’ll show you the island.” Her words, the very thought left him speechless, again, and it was all he could do to remember to keep standing up. Rufus suddenly wanted nothing more than to do just as she said, and it wasn’t just because men were chasing him. The image of her on an island, maybe even in a bathing suit, simply drove everything else from his mind. Luckily he was saved from having to say anything, it would have been something completely stupid, by the sound of the kettle clicking off. But as she turned away and found some cups, he did manage to wonder how she could have such complete control over him. For a second. Then she turned back, and he stopped wondering about anything at all.

“Maybe later, after coffee, you could show me your car.”

Rufus couldn’t answer her. His mouth had gone completely dry. Beautiful, caring and she liked cars? The gods themselves couldn’t be that generous. But still he managed a sort of nod and guttural grunt, and for some reason she seemed to be happy with that. Happy enough to hand him a cup of the hot coffee and a piece of cake, and sit him down at the table.

“Eat up, drink. Good food and good company will help you heal.” He wasn’t completely sure of that, but she was too lovely to argue with. Besides, she might be right.

They ate the cake and drank the coffee and little by little Rufus learned a tiny bit more about his neighbour. Mostly the unimportant things like what she liked and what made her happy. Things that he discovered he was lousy at asking about. He either sounded like an awkward schoolboy or an interrogator. But then he’d never been good at small talk, never felt the need for it in truth, and Di didn’t seem to mind. She actually enjoyed answering his questions, at least that was how he interpreted her smiles and occasional laughter. And when he told her about himself, about his pathetic life, she even seemed interested. Funnily enough, his life had never seemed that pathetic before he’d met her.

It had to be a trap of course. His every instinct was telling him that. People didn’t just stop by and visit him. Beautiful woman never did. And no one gave a damn about the pain of his childhood, or his few passions. Yet every time he looked at her, stared into her deep blue eyes, he knew she was genuine. She actually did care. How could that be?

Still she did, and for some reason that was enough as the cake and coffee disappeared. And when it was gone, and just when he was beginning to fear that the visit was over, she surprised him anew. She asked to see the car. Naturally he had to show her.

“It’s a very beautiful car.” It was too, the E type roadster in his humble opinion, the most beautiful car ever designed. Grace and beauty found nowhere else on the road, or in his garage. That was why he’d bought it. Family was a nightmare for him. He barely understood the concepts of friendship and love in more than the most cursory way. But beauty he knew. Beautiful art, beautiful music, beautiful food and beautiful cars. The Jaguar had been a wreck when he’d bought it, he couldn’t have afforded it otherwise. But over the years he had restored it bit by bit, to the immaculate road going big cat it had always been meant to be.

“Yes it is.” He so wanted to add something else, something such as how she was even more beautiful, but he held back. Someone far more clever than him might be able to say it and pull it off, but long experience had taught him that he’d just make an ass of himself and probably offend her. He didn’t want that.

“But it’s broken?”

“No, not really. She’s a little bit under the weather at the moment, but she goes. Just needs a little bit of tinkering with the timing.” And a new ignition coil. The poor spark was why the plugs kept fouling. But no woman wanted to know about those sorts of things. Least of all her.

“And a little bit of love? She?” She looked at him with the oddest expression on her face as she finally asked about his use of the pronoun. Surprise and appreciation maybe. Maybe something more. Something that set his pulse racing just a little.

“I know. It’s a bad habit of mine.”

“Not that bad. Not at all. You are a man who appreciates beauty over function?” He was when it came to her, though what exactly her function was he didn’t know. And he was when it came to the Jaguar too. Just not in all things and even as he felt the happiness growing in him, he felt the need to tell her.

“Sometimes. But when I need a reliable car I have a Toyota.” Until a week ago when the most reliable car in the world had shat itself spectacularly on a country road, damned near killing him in the process. But again that wasn’t something she needed to know about. Not when that too was all over the nightly news.

“Function when you need it, beauty when you must have it. You are a surprising man Russ.”

Was that a good thing? It sounded good. But then who was he to know what a beautiful woman would find good?

What he did know though, was that he wanted to learn. He would have given everything he owned just to find out what she might like. And he’d known her for less than an hour.

***********************

Chapter Nine.

Moirae, the spinner sat at one of her desks, in theory reading, but in actuality her thoughts were far away from the book in her lap. They were distant too, far from the study in which she sat, which was a pity.

It was a nice study, though that was probably the wrong word for it. She wasn’t quite sure what the right word would be. Research facility, art gallery, library? Any of them would do a better job of describing it, except that all of them fell short and none of them were found in private houses. Studies were.

Extremely large and spacious, it rivalled in size most modern city libraries, and with books and scrolls and even tablets stacked on shelves to the very top of the twelve foot high walls, she knew it could more than match them in knowledge as well. There were plenty of ornate desks and chairs for someone to sit at as they read them. There were also plenty of small marble plinths dotted around the room, and placed on top of each one, a piece of history or art or science.

Ancient scrolls, some rescued from the Great Library before the fire, the first working telescope, the writings of the bard, a few sculptures and so forth. All stuff that had been lost to the world, that she had gathered over a lifetime. A very long lifetime. Of course it was also stuff that had been lost and thought gone, never to be recovered over the millennia in the mortal world. She took it as one of her duties to rescue lost treasures. One of her many duties.

So when the Great Library had been about to burn, she had walked through it’s many chambers, gathering everything she could. When the bard had got drunk and tossed his writings on the floor, she had been there to pick them up. Her calling gave her the chance to be wherever she needed to be when the time arose.

Not everything she had collected was precious though. Over the previous couple of decades she’d found herself fascinated by kinetic sculptures, and many of the desks and plinths had quite common office knick knacks on them. She loved to play with them, to set the balls of the Newton’s cradle swinging or to watch the whirligig spinning gently in the breeze from the open windows. She had even commissioned a full sized sculpture of David Ascalon’s Wings To The Heavens, which hung just outside in the courtyard. Modern art maybe, but for some reason it inspired her as she worked, and she loved to just sit there in her study and watch it sway gently under the trees through the huge glass doors.

“Mistress.” Moirae looked up from her table to see her handmaiden at the door to the study. Ananke looked worried, and she who was often known as the spinner of threads instantly knew why. She sighed.

“Send Plutos in.” Of course it was him. She’d actually been expecting him for some time. Unlike most of their number, he delved deeply into the matters of mortals, and he noticed when things happened. Especially when anything involving wealth was involved. But then that was his bailiwick. Greed. He called it wealth or fortune or prosperity, or any of a hundred other names, but in the end it was only about greed. And these days, with the rise in the importance of money, his star was in sharp ascendance. He didn’t want anything to interfere with that.

Plutos didn’t wait to be called, waiting was never in his character. Instead he simply strode past her handmaiden almost knocking her aside, and marched across the wooden floorboards to her. It was rudeness of course, calculated rudeness, but his star was rising and he was always bold. Greed was never timid.

The strange thing was that he was never a warrior. There were others who could defeat him easily in battle. But Plutos didn’t care. He just told them he could hire a thousand better warriors. He didn’t even look like a warrior. He looked like a used car salesman, slightly short, tending to the overweight side of the scales, with a hooked nose and a permanent larcenous gleam in his eyes. No amount of overdressing could hide his nature, though naturally he always wore the finest clothes available. Italian designed suits, hand made shoes, silk shirts, and for some reason completely lost to her, a fedora. He dressed to show his wealth. To tell everyone how important he was.

Regardless of his appearance, he believed he held sway in the world of the common man, especially now in these ages of commerce. He probably did. When everything in life was reduced to money, he ruled and he knew it. He carried himself like a ruler. Head held high, chest puffed out, striding everywhere as if he owned it all. A pompous little prince of prosperity. The worst though was his gaze as he stared all around him, taking in everyone and everything including her, and coldly assessing their worth. But then that was his realm. Money.

“Plutos.” She greeted him, though not warmly. The two of them had never been friends, and probably would never be. Most of the others usually paid her some respect, partly out of a sense of kinship, and partly out of fear. She was the only one of them all who could dictate the lives of the others, to an extent. But Plutos, having become so strong these past centuries, no longer felt the need. He launched into his complaint without uttering a single pleasantry.

“Moirae. Been spinning some threads of late?” Of course what he meant were those ones that might upset his concerns. But his concerns were many, and there were few threads she could spin that wouldn’t cross at least some of them. Naturally though, she knew what he was upset about. She’d known he would be four hundred years before when she’d begun spinning this particular pattern.

“You mean Aphrodite.” If he could be direct to the point of insolence then so could she, and if it came to a fight then it wouldn’t be she who limped away to lick her wounds.

“I mean Aphrodite and this pathetic mortal of hers who seems to be turning my followers into a confused gaggle of geese at every turn. That could only be your doing spinner.” He all but yelled it at her, disturbing the calm of her home, daring her to deny him. But she had no intention of denying it.

“Of course it is.” For a moment he stopped dead in his tracks, taken aback, apparently surprised that she would actually admit that she was playing in his bailiwick. That just wasn’t supposed to be done, least of all to him. But only for a moment. Then his stare grew hard again.

“Why? I mean I understand about Aphrodite. She needs to replenish herself and all that as we all do from time to time. To bury herself in the mortal realm for a bit and be worshipped. Especially now when her strength is waning and she is little more than a handmaiden. But why upset my concerns to do it? Let the simpering cow find another follower.” Unspoken was the question of what he thought he could do about it. There wasn’t much, no matter how strong he thought he was becoming, since in this matter his bailiwick had also become hers. But he wouldn’t have wanted to hear that. Greed seldom listened to reason. And if he thought that insulting Aphrodite would help his cause, he was very much mistaken.

“You know that I do only what I have to. My freedom in these matters is limited.”

“Huh!” He snorted at her in disbelief, a sound that only made him seem even less pleasant as if such a thing was possible, and one that she didn’t like to hear in her own home. “You cut and weave the threads of life according to your whim. Don’t deny it. If you interfere in my business it’s because you choose to. And in this matter you would be wise to choose not to.” Threats, finally, and he’d only been in her home for a couple of minutes. At least it would be a short meeting.

“And did you ever think my dear little brother, that in this matter it’s you who is interfering in my business?” She smiled sweetly at him, knowing it would annoy him, as would calling him her little brother. He wasn’t related at all to her, none of them were, and he didn’t want to imagine that they were that close, but it was the ‘little’ that would really sting.

“Your business? This is commerce.”

“No it’s fate. The dice are cast and the game is begun. All I can do now is try to play the odds a little to protect a few innocents and help a sister. You would be well advised to stand clear.”

“Stand clear!” He seemed incensed by the very idea, and he stood up to his full height, which was somewhat less than average, drew in a deep breath and prepared to blast her with his tongue. That was when she stopped him.

With the slightest of gestures she let a few motes of dust accidentally tickle the back of his throat and instead of screaming at her in a rage he began coughing and spluttering uncontrollably, something he surely wasn’t used to. None of them were ever ill in any way and so she figured it would be a good lesson for him. Moirae let him finish before she gave him his marching orders.

“Plutos, this is my business. Fate has a design and a purpose with this mortal, one far more important than your petty dreams of avarice. My hands are very limited in this matter, yours are tied completely. If you interfere with Rufus Hennassy again, no matter how slightly, you will be struck down, hard.” It was a warning and a threat, but oddly enough not hers.

Many people, even many of her own kind, didn’t understand her. They thought she controlled destiny, that she spun and cut and wove according to her own whims. She didn’t. She didn’t have that sort of power. She simply saw the patterns and occasionally managed to retie a strand here, add a new one there, or most distressing of all for her comrades, snipped one when she saw the need. But she could really only tidy around the edges. The woof and weave of fate was mostly already woven.

“Now you can leave.” She dismissed him, politely as was her want, but her voice certain, and despite it being the last thing he surely ever wanted to do, Plutos left, still coughing. He would probably be back though, angrier than before. Much angrier when he discovered what awaited him outside.

She couldn’t hear it of course, the front door was too far away, but she could imagine the scream when he finally exited the house and saw his car. It seemed that pigeons in their hundreds had decided purely by chance to roost on his precious gold, open top rolls, and even in the short time that he’d been with her, they’d left their calling cards all over it. He loved that car. He loved how much it cost and how it told everyone how rich he was.

Served him right for being what the mortals these days called a plonker.

“Mistress?” She looked up to see Ananke standing there again, trying not to smile too broadly. Just as she was. It was always nice to send Plutos packing, though she knew he would be back. He was right in that there was money and wealth involved in this matter, and as the patron of such things, he had a vested interest in seeing that he and his profited. Especially in this case when his dreams were so grand. Plutos thought his schemes were so clever. He didn’t realise that she could see all of them, and when there was the need, nip them in the bud. Still he was not the sort to give up easily.

“Tea please Ananke, and then come and sit with me.” Ananke left her then to get the tea, and Moirae sat back in her seat, thinking. What she was doing was a gamble, one begun four centuries before when she’d suggested to Aphrodite that she should sit for Rembrandt. But it was a necessary one. The rise of Plutos had to be stopped, and even then she had seen him gaining in power. Power to rival the most powerful of them. That was bad.

With his power would come great suffering. Greed was never a good thing, especially in excess. So if he achieved his dreams of dominion, mankind would suffer. For a while, but not forever.

As with every action there was an equal and opposite reaction, as Newton had so wisely said. He’d just thought he was speaking of physics, not celestial politics. He would never have guessed that the two were related. Even if Plutos won, it would be a cold and heartless world that his influence would foster, and there would be a reaction. In time his world would be knocked back, and a better time would return. He couldn’t stop that. Even Plutos would find himself diminished as his bailiwick was slowly torn down and wealth eventually became a failed idea. But that would mean war and strife on an epic scale. It would last for centuries, and the suffering would be terrible. She hoped to avoid that, or at least the worst of it. But everything depended on one timid mortal.

It was time once more to read his destiny, something that was more Ananke’s sphere than hers. Ananke followed the man, she followed the whole of fate. But in the end, the two became one.

“Tea.” Ananke smiled politely as she brought the tray to the table. She was always polite. It was one of the traits that Moirae so valued in her, and part of the reason she had asked her so long ago to share her home instead of keeping her own. Ananke was a goddess in her own right, just a very weak one, her sphere of influence limited. Left to herself she would receive none of the respect she was due, even though her work was often exquisite. But as her handmaiden, few would dare challenge her. No one messed with fate. She was the only one of them that could interfere directly with the other gods. Not just their works, their very lives.