Chapter 50: I’ve Got A Little List
In Which Strephon and Miss True go over their list of suspects.
Fortunately, Strephon recalled that the Tortuga Bay Restaurant, which was not too far out of their way home, served a reasonably good Sunday Brunch buffet, and by the end of the meal, Cassandra had forgiven him. Together they tackled the list.
“Before we begin,” Cassandra said, pushing her plate to one side and organizing her notebook, “let's go over some of our base assumptions.”
“By all means.” Strephon cast the “Zone of Privacy” spell upon their table, modifying it so that the diners in the next booth would not notice their conversation but the wait-staff would still be able to remove their plates and re-fill their tea as needed. “One cannot build a logical argument without establishing some first principles.”
“To begin with, Melchior is plotting something nefarious involving virtual reality games that incorporate fairy magic.”
“That is a given.”
“We don't know exactly what he's going to get out of all this. Not money, certainly.”
“He's a faerie lord. He has no need of mortal currency.”
“Power, then. Influence. His picture on the covers of all the gaming magazines.”
“That is more likely. Faeries depend upon human imagination.”
“They feed on it?”
“Well, it sounds ghoulish that way. It might be more accurate to say that human imagination provides the raw material for their own magic.”
“So this is all about Intellectual Property.”
“You might say so.”
“And Vanir Technologies' games puts Melchior in the position of stimulating the imagination as well as using it, and it becomes a self-generating cycle.”
Strephon nodded. “Much of this Melchior told me himself in our first interview. Of course he was scrupulous to never admit to sedition against Her Majesty.” He paused thoughtfully. “Curious, isn't it? When one vehemently insists that one is not speaking treason, it rather strongly suggests that one is.”
Cassandra made a note of this and continued. “Assumption Two: This plot is connected to other occurrences of Fairy Magic we've discovered in the city: the Reavers' silver collars, the Fairy Essence drug...”
“...The mysterious paperweights...”
“Yes, you must have your paperweights. And perhaps some other things we haven't encountered yet. So far, though, the only evidence we really have that there's a connection between these things is the common denominator of Fairy Magic.”
“Everything is connected,” Strephon intoned with the same solemn confidence which had annoyed him when Lydia Palmer had said the same thing to him a few days previously. “Besides, Devon believes there is a connection, and he is a stubborn sort and difficult to convince. And the paperweights are a connection too.”
“I think that we're starting to get into circular reasoning here. But let's go on. Number Three: There is someone behind Melchior running the whole business.” Cassandra put down her pen. “This is the one I'm most dubious about. We only have Inanna's word that this other mastermind even exists.”
“You don't trust her, do you.”
“Let's just say that I don't think her interest in you is a healthy one.” Strephon must have smiled at that, because Cassandra added, “And you needn't look so smug about it.”
“We have more than Inanna's word. Lord Melchior is keenly infatuated with his own cleverness and likes to remind others of it. In our conversations he goes on endlessly about his Virtual Reality games, but has never mentioned any other schemes. I can't imagine him being able to resist boasting about his other plans, if others he had.”
“Maybe,” Cassandra said, still skeptical. “But we can table that for now. Assuming that there is a Mastermind, what can we infer about them?”
“Them? You think there are more than one?”
“No, but we don't know whether the Mastermind is male or female, do we?
“We do not,” Strephon admitted.
“There we are then. 'They' is a perfectly acceptable pronoun to use in cases where a person's gender is not specified.”
“Acceptable to whom?”
“The Oxford English Dictionary for one.”
“The O.E.D. ought to have a better grasp of the Queen's English.”
“For that matter, Queen Victoria referred to herself in the plural all the time.”
Strephon could see that, grammar be damned, he was not going to win this one. “Very well,” he conceded, “Out of deference to the possibility that our Faceless Fiend might be either a male, a female, or a potentate, we shall use the plural. The person is a person of power and influence, very likely a member of the Hidden Council, since Melchior is deferring to him. Them. Blast.”
Cassandra overlooked his pronoun trouble. “Not necessarily,” she said. “You told me that, according to Inanna, Melchior isn't aware that he's working for someone else's agenda. So they might be manipulating him. They could be someone pretending to be less powerful than they are.”
“By that argument, the Mastermind could be anyone. The Vicar. Mrs. Trotter. Myself.”
“Not just anyone. It has to be a fairy, or someone with a good familiarity with Fairy Magic.”
“You're thinking of Inanna again.”
“I don't think we should overlook her. But Morrigan would count too.”
“By Jove, she would! And we know that she is involved with the Reaver's collars and the paperweights!” Strephon's face fell. “But since she was taken by the Faeries, it would seem unlikely that she was behind it all. She may have been working for our Mastermind, but I'm not sure if that gets us anywhere. Perhaps the list will help.”
He set Lydia Palmer’s list on the table between them.
Hidden Council – Current Membership
Cynthia Vane - Acting Chair (Isis)
Malcolm Raven – Treasurer (WW: Raven Pack)
Timothy Worpleton – Secretary (Thoth)
Bishop Humphrey Martin - (CoE Liaison)
Sir Hugo Main-Rouge (Chief Vampire)
Aoi Kurayami (Associate Vampire)
Lucinda Dupries (WW: Moonshadow Pack)
Lukas Bianka (WW: Reaver Pack)
Tulaan
Dennis Fell – (unaf. Pr.)
“I'm seeing some familiar names,” Cassandra said, looking over the list. “Cynthia Vane is on the Council?”
“She's a member of the International Sisterhood of Independent Sorceresses.”
“Oh. Right, the witches group.”
“You know her?”
“I heard her speak once when she was running for City Alderperson.”
Strephon met the neologism without flinching. “Lydia told me that Ms. Vane was a politician. What is your opinion of her?”
Cassandra thought for a moment. “Militant moderate. Ambitious, but with an eye on which way the wind is blowing.”
“Ambitious. That's something. But she doesn't sound like our mastermind. Not unless her political statements are a cover to her true agenda.”
“Which is probably the case even if she isn't our mastermind. Good gracious! What's Bishop Martin doing here? I thought the Church disapproved of magic and such.”
“They do. But since the shrine where the city's magical nexus is located is owned by the Church, the Council has traditionally granted the Church representation as a courtesy. Usually a non-voting seat. Often the clergy chosen is one who has done some study of magical theory, or history. Sometimes it is even a practitioner – unofficially, of course — but most of the time the position is purely ceremonial and the person is only there as an observer and to say the invocation at the beginning.”
“The Hidden Magical Council starts its meetings with prayer?”
“Yes. At least they did in my day. I don't know if the tradition continues.”
“Somehow that does not seem right.”
“It's tradition.” Strephon frowned. “The Fae are allergic to Holy Symbols and such. I have difficulty imagining Melchior entering into an alliance with our Bishop.”
“They're also allergic to iron, but Melchior seems to have worked out a way around that.”
“Yes... We'll put the Bishop down as a 'maybe' also.”
Cassandra put a question mark after Bishop Martin's name. “What does the 'W.W.' after Lukas Bianka's name mean? Oh. Duh. 'Werewolf.'”
“It used to be that the werewolves only got one seat on the Council. A while back it was decided that each of the larger wolf packs would get its own representative. How they determine which packs are eligible is a perennial issue, and every few generations or so, the Council tries to adjust the by-laws to fix the 'Werewolf Problem.' Usually there are only two wolf seats, but since Lukas Bianka has taken over the Reaver Pack, it has become a significant player in the lupine community.”
“We know that Bianka is involved in the Fae Conspiracy because of the silver collars his pack wears. What do we know about the other two packs?”
“Not much, I'm afraid. The Moonshadow Pack is led by Lucinda DuPres; female pack leaders are not terribly common. Judging from the interactions I observed between her, Bianka and Malcolm Raven at Melchior's party, I would guess that the two male Alphas are trying to court her with the hopes of merging her pack with theirs, and that DuPres is playing her two suitors against each other to maintain her own independence.”
“Sort of like Queen Elizabeth the First.”
“Well spotted!”
Cassandra crinkled her nose. “I think we can rule out Lucinda and Malcolm as our mastermind. Either of them might partner with Melchior, but not with Lukas. And as for Lukas, he seems mostly focused on dominance over the werewolf community.”
“And the Daylight World too. His Decency League has become quite influential, I understand, in City politics.”
“True. And Cynthia Vane belongs to the Decency League too! I had forgotten.” She put another 'query' after Bianka's name and drew an arrow connecting it with Vane's. “We don't seem to be eliminating many possibilities, do we.”
“I'm afraid not.”
“I see there are two vampires on the list. Who's this 'Hugo Main-Rouge'?”
“He's the oldest vampire in the city. I didn't know Sir Hugo was still alive. Or active, to be more precise. Vampire clans aren't like wolf packs; you generally don't see rival groups in a single city. Usually there's only one vampire on the Council at a time and that one being the oldest: the Head Vampire. When Melchior mentioned that Kurayami was on the Council, I assumed that she had taken Sir Hugo's spot.”
“If he's the Head Vampire, then maybe he's our Mastermind.”
“I don't think so. He's... well... a bit dotty. When last I met him, which was back in the Thatcher Administration, he was railing about how the Communists were ruining Britain. Except he kept getting them mixed up with the Catholics. He has never forgiven the Pope for the Gunpowder Plot, you see. That's the problem with some immortals: they keep forgetting which century they're in. And stop looking like you are about to make a sarcastic remark.”
“Me? I wasn't thinking anything. So you figure this Sir Hugo is officially the Head Vampire, but Kurayami is really the one in charge?”
“That would be my guess. And that brings us to the possibility that Kurayami is behind it all.”
Cassandra frowned. “Much as I'd like her to be a villain, she doesn't quite fit. We agreed that Melchior's computer games, the werewolf collars and the Fae Essence drug were all connected somehow, right?”
“Agreed.”
“But Kurayami doesn't allow drugs in her club. She hates them.”
“So she wants people to believe.”
“It's not just that. When I threatened Philippe that I'd tell Kurayami about his dealing Essence, I think he was really frightened. He took it seriously, anyway.”
“Hum. Well, we will put her down as another 'Query' then.
“This 'Dennis Fell', is that the writer? His note says; 'Unaff. Pr.'”
“That's 'Unaffiliated Practitioner'; a dabbler in magic who does not belong to any of the major groups. You've heard of him?”
“He writes comic books,” Cassandras said. Strephon raised an eyebrow. “Well, graphic novels.” Strephon raised the other one. “Surely you've heard of him. He wrote 'A is for Anarchy' and Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes ' and 'The Fellowship of Literary Adventurers.' He's an eccentric recluse. You'd like him.”
Had Strephon a third eyebrow, he would have raised that one too.
“Every once in a while Hollywood makes a movie out of one of his stories and it pisses him off because they get everything wrong. He's something of an amateur occultist as I understand. That's probably why he's on the Council.”
“Very likely. He doesn't sound like a sinister mastermind, but it could very well be the disguise a mastermind might adopt.”
“What about this one? 'Tulaan'. There's no note with it.
“Ah. She's been on the Council for quite a while. She's a river spirit, embodying the River Woggle. Thoth isn't the only deity on the Council. There are quite a few minor nature spirits in Redemption, most of them living in the forest parklands. They don't interact with humans much, not any more at least. For the most part, the agendas with which the Council concerns itself are of no interest to them unless such agendas happen to trespass on their domain.”
“Like that shopping center you were involved with.”
“Exactly.”
Cassandra considered this. “If these nature spirits have little interest in mortal affairs, would they even care about Melchior's plot?”
“I would say no, but for one thing. Tulaan is closely related to the Faeries. Perhaps she even was one once: a Fae who became so enamoured with the beauty of the natural world that she joined with it. That's one story I've heard anyway. So of the current council members, she might have the closest link to the Fairy Court.”
“That brings us to the other deity you mentioned: Thoth, the bookseller. Or Timmy Worpleton. Worpleton?”
“He has a peculiar sense of humor.”
“Thoth was the god of wisdom, wasn't he? He invented writing and such. Such a being would certainly be smart enough to plan a big conspiracy, but would he be the type to do it?”
This one bothered Strephon. He liked Thoth. But there was always something shrewd and calculating, something not quite human, lying just beneath his eccentric humor. He recalled what Thoth had told him regarding Melchior’s VR game: “I think it has the potential to raise human consciousness to a higher level. Either that or condemn mankind to a dystopian thralldom…. Either way, it should be interesting!”
“Perhaps,” Strephon said. “If he thought it would be funny.”
NEXT: Be Prepared
