Bad Dreams & Broken Hearts 22: “Times do change, but some things are eternal.”

Tak made a quick gesture and the fireball fizzled, like a match dropped into a puddle.

“That's a new trick,” he said, smiling, “But then, you were always such a clever girl.”

Showing guns and badges, the agents moved into the street, giving terse orders to the drivers. They were going to close off the street, I realized. No witnesses.

“There's no reason that we can't resolve this peacefully,” Tak continued. “Just return the teeth you took from my club. I won't use them for anything nefarious, just a precaution to keep my former partner in retirement. And you give me your promise that you won't make trouble—not that your unsupported word would be worth much against mine—and we'll all just pretend this never happened.” He gave us a broad white smile that was familiar from the newspapers. “This will all just be a bad dream.”

“Counteroffer,” Marji said. “You surrender to those agents and make a full confession. You go to jail, but you get to live.”

Tak shook his head. “You know that's not going to happen. I've spent far too long building my position to let anyone stop me now.”

“You killed Mr. Vetch,” Karin accused.

“Me?” Tak spread his arms. “I was in subcommittee meeting when it happened. In front of a dozen unimpeachable witnesses.”

“Your thug did it. The Blind Joker,” Karin insisted.

“Groundless speculation,” Tak countered. “Not even a tabloid would print that.”

I spoke up. “Do those men know that Grandmother Wolf is under the Lord Mayor's protection?”

“The Lord Mayor,” Tak's voice dripped contempt. “That parasite. An inhuman beast that has outlived its usefulness. Two hundred years ago when we came to these shores we were too weak to kill it and so we had to do its bidding. Times have changed.”

“An inhuman beast that has outlived its usefulness,” Jake quoted back, his voice tight with anger. “The same could be said of you.”

Tak's eyes narrowed. “Mr. Karnes,” he said coldly, “do you realize how vulnerable you are? Do you understand what I could do to you with just one phone call? If you continue to stand against me, I will ruin you.”

Marji shot him.

The report of the gun echoed on the now quiet street, and Tak staggered back and fell heavily against the black car. He got up again almost immediately, though, and there was no blood on his clothes.

“Enough!” he roared. “Everybody dies. Now.”

He raised his hand and there was a ball of lightning in it. He looked at us, considering. “Starting with you,” he said, and cast the ball at Karin.

Jake jumped to the side and knocked Karin out of the path. The ball hit Jake's duffel and he dropped it, staggering.

Karin aimed her wand and shot another fireball. Again Tak countered it, but doing that made him drop the lightning ball he'd been forming and it fizzled out on the sidewalk.

Marji's gun barked again and Tak bent over like he'd been punched in the stomach. Beside me Jake went down to his knees, digging into his bag. Karin raised her metal wand and I could feel her gathering energies.

Tak straightened and howled a word that hurt my ears to hear. In a moment his body was outlined in a corona of lightning, achingly brilliant. I dove at him, without thinking.

The pain was unbelievable. I struck him and felt my body spasm, each muscle clenching like a fist. Momentum carried me into him and his body struck the car. Instantly it caught fire and I felt it settling as the tires burst.

I was burning, unable to scream because my teeth were clenched from the current. My skin bubbled and cracked, and I could smell the roast pork stench of my fat frying. A human would have died in the first five seconds.

But I was not human, and I could not die. At that moment, I regretted it bitterly.

Tak raged at me, reaching for me with limbs of white-hot fire. The contents of my stomach boiled and I vomited steam. I felt my eyeballs pop.

Then it all stopped.

Not the pain, that kept on going, stamping me flat against the pavement as my nerves regrew, seeking the absent skin, but the terrible flow of electricity. For a moment I was still blinded, then my burst eyeballs swelled in their sockets and I saw Tak standing above me, joined by a conduit of lightning to something outside my field of vision.

I gave my neck the order to turn. Regenerating muscles obeyed, under protest.

Jake stood there, something large and metal in his hands. It was sucking up Tak's lightning, like some insane vacuum cleaner. Jake was leaning against the push of the magical forces, his massive body straining.

I could feel heat again, and the car I was leaning against was on fire. I dragged myself away from it, inch by agonizing inch, watching Jake and Tak struggle, joined by a river of white fire. As I crawled I regrew skin.

“How long will that accumulator last?” Tak said, his voice echoing weirdly in my ears. “A few minutes? When it overloads they'll have to scrape you off the pavement.”

“It'll last long enough,” Jake said through clenched teeth.

And then a great shadow eclipsed the sun. There was the sound of monstrous wings.

“Little man,” said the Lord Mayor, his voice huge, “Times do change, but some things are eternal. I am among them.”

Tak looked up and his lightning faded.

“You would not dare,” Tak shouted at the great shadow in the sky. “Strike me down and the people will rise up in revolt against you.”

The mayor came in to land with a ponderous, terrible grace. He settled down in the middle of the street, his great wings folded on his back.

“Perhaps,” he rumbled. “But that will avail you nothing.”

Tak's lightning began building again. He was focused entirely on the mayor.

“Can you stand?” Marji whispered to me, holding out her hand. For answer I let her pull me to my feet and I leaned heavily on her. We staggered to the inadequate shelter of recessed doorway. Jake and Karin joined us.

Tak was a brilliant figure now, his features lost under the blue-white energy that crackled around him. “Come then, beast,” he shouted, “if you would try your strength against mine!”

“O, little man,” the mayor said sadly, “have you forgotten who taught your people the Art?”

The dragon darted forward like a cat catching a mouse. The terrible light was extinguished, and Castor Tak was no more.

Then it was all over but the lawyers.

The testimony of Grandmother Wolf and Karin, given in camera to a special judiciary committee, was enough to keep the parliament from issuing a formal censure to the Lord Mayor for his actions against Castor Tak, although I got the impression that it was a close thing. Grandmother Wolf was allowed to return to Nivose, to her cottage on the moors and her crossword puzzles. She invited us to come visit, any time.

Karin was convicted of Unlawful Use Of Magic, multiple counts, sentence suspended due to special circumstances and the record to be sealed following a year's probation.

Jake and Marji were not charged with any crimes, although both were required to testify in numerous closed sessions. I was invited, not required, to give my own testimony, which I did.

Over and over again.

The Centrists picked up Tak's seat, and made a lot of speeches about the problem of corruption in the City government. The Majoritarians locked their wounds and waited for the next general election.

Theosophists held a Meditate For Justice rally in Founder's Park, with a candlelight vigil. It was rained out.

The Crazy Grays tried to use the flow of drugs from Nivose and the rashling gangs to push through a measure to increase tariffs on goods from Nightmare. It was soundly defeated—too much of the city owed its livelihood to trade across the Dream Sea.

Karin became quite the celebrity. The papers loved her. She was “the plucky young artist who exposed MP Tak's web of drugs and sin.” Overnight every gallery in the city wanted something—anything—from her that they could hang on their walls. Marji got her signed with an agent and made sure the contract was sound.

My own name was kept out of the papers, for the most part, for which I was very grateful. My father has Midworld papers delivered regularly, and he would not have been pleased to see me mentioned in connection to a scandal.

Jake and Marji were mentioned by name, but the stories were short of details, except to say that they had been sponsoring Karin's career as an artist. Marji, of course, made the most of it, being the center of attention at all the season's best dinner parties.

Jake put in a lot of nights and weekends overseeing the construction of the new generators. I got a regular gig with Mo Breckenridge, playing dinner music at an upscale chop house.

MP Tak was right about one thing—times do change. Even the mayor admitted that.

Fresh scandals crowded the Temple Court Drug Conspiracy out of the papers. Joe Steel announced his retirement, took off his tights and opened a restaurant. I got to attend the grand opening party—Mo knew somebody who knew somebody. The food was pretty good.

An uneasy peace descended on the Northeast. People started talking about Home Authority, which I took to mean letting the territories manage their own affairs, or at least some of them. Separatists still made speeches, but it was clear that the majority were willing to take the concessions that Parliament offered and stop making trouble. They were tired of war, even if no one called it a war.

Life, as they say, went on.

One day I received a package from the Nivose embassy, in a diplomatic pouch. Inside there were three tenderloin steaks, wrapped in waxed paper and packed with ice. No note, no explanation or return address.

Gift, message, veiled warning? I had no idea. If my Uncle Grimm wanted to tell me something he could damned well send me a telegram like a normal person. I cooked one of the steaks and found it an excellent cut of meat. I briefly considered the idea that I was supposed to give the other two to Jake and Marji, or Jake and Karin, or Karin and Marji. I gave up trying to puzzle it out and kept them. I ended up cooking them for an intimate dinner with a dancer. Her husband had run out on her to go work in the territories someplace, but she was still legally married.

I wrote my mother a letter, a long chatty one where I talked about my life in the city and my music. She wrote back almost instantly, inviting me to come for a visit. It took me a long time to compose a reply in which I said I would certainly do that very soon, but making no promises.

It was about three months, give or take, after the mayor had eaten Castor Tak that I saw Marji again.