Chapter 56: Parliamentary Procedure
In Which the Meeting is called to order and Strephon has some decisions to make.
A loud clang came from the end of the Narthex; the sound of Thaddeus striking the stone floor with the steel-shod end of his mace. “Oyez, oyez!” he called. “Attend, all Citizens, Supplicants and Councilmen. The Chamber has been sealed. Take your seats. The Meeting of the Hidden Council shall soon begin!”
Many of the attendees had already found their seats, and those who hadn't filtered towards the public gallery, guided by the castle warders. Thaddeus himself took a position to one side of the Council table.
“What do we do now?” Tobias asked.
“Since we're here,” Strephon said grimly, “we do what we came to do.”
“Which is...?”
Strephon was damned if he knew, but aloud he said, “Follow my lead.”
Tobias took his place behind Strephon's wheelchair. Although he generally preferred to push the chair himself, Strephon was well aware that when attempting to bull one's way through a crowd, it was helpful to have a large, assertive black man doing the pushing.
“I just had a conversation with Tulaan, the River Goddess,” Strephon said in a low voice. “She said my home is in danger. That means Cassandra's in trouble too.”
“I called Grans. She said much the same. She also had a few choice words for you, but I imagine those can wait.”
“I imagine.”
“But she says she'll check in on Cassandra, make sure she's all right.” That gave Strephon a little bit of comfort. “One other thing,” Tobias added, as he maneuvered Strepho towards one of the aisles, “I had a bit of trouble with a couple of the Big Dogs out in the lot.”
“Reaver pack?”
“Possibly. I didn't see any silver collars, but one of them wore a scarf. They might have been lone wolves.”
“The Council grounds are neutral territory! They wouldn't dare attack anyone here!”
“Oh, they didn't attack. Didn't even shift into wolf form. They were just hassling me. I think they were trying to scare me off.”
“Or just trying to delay you.”
Tobias nodded. “Gran says forces are gathering. She ain't happy.”
Tobias did not elaborate because this was when Melchior and Inanna caught up with them. “There you are,” Melchior said. “My apologies for leaving you waiting. I see you found your driver.”
“He has a name,” Strephon thought, but he left the thought unsaid. He noticed that Inanna had a strange, thoughtful expression on her face which made him wonder what Thoth had said to her.
One of the Castle Warders directed the group to the front row of the spectator's gallery, reserved for petitioners. They were placed adjacent to one of the aisles to accommodate Strephon's wheelchair.
All of the Council Members had taken their places by this time. Ms. Vane, the Acting Chair, straightened her agenda papers and re-calibrated the position of her gavel. In the fullness of time, when the last of the stragglers were mostly settled, she nodded to Thaddeus, who once again smote the floor with his staff. “Oyez, oyez! The Meeting of the Hidden Council of the City of Redemption is hereby called to order; the Honorable Cynthia Vane presiding. Let all who come to give complaint or request redress, offer true and faithful testimony. Let all who come as witness attend with sober diligence. Let all who sit at the Council's Table deliberate with justice. Let all the Powers who watch over the City, both temporal and eternal, grant wisdom to those who govern here. Oyez!”
As Thaddeus intoned the traditional preamble, Ms. Vane rose and made her way to the Council Stone in the center of the Chamber. One of the Council's traditions was that all addresses to the Council be made from that stone. Which side of the stone the speaker stood on depended on whether the speaker was addressing the Council or the Community at large. In this case, Ms. Vane faced the audience as she rapped the stone with her gavel three times and officially called the meeting to order. She said nothing which Thaddeus had not already said, but it was not official until she said it. She then relinquished the Stone to Bishop Martin, who advanced to the Stone and took her place while she returned to her seat. This ridiculous and time-consuming dance would be repeated countless times over the course of the meeting, but it was traditional and, Strephon had been told, carried with it a tremendous amount of symbolic power. Which was a fancy way of saying “We've always done it this way.”
Bishop Martin's invocation was a generic prayer, suitable for just about any civic gathering, and couched in ecumenical vagueness. Thankfully, the prayer was not exceptionally long; although Strephon noticed Melchior and Inanna fidgeting during the ordeal. Melchior might be immune to the effects of cold iron, but apparently holy names, even those invoked in the service of banal pieties, could make him uncomfortable.
Strephon had forgotten how much parliamentary procedure bored him. The ritual calling of the role; the minutes of the previous meeting read by the Council Secretary, Thoth, whose dry humor made them somewhat less dull; the Treasurer's Report, which was just dry and made up for it in dullness; and the tedious business of having each speaker walk to and from the Council Stone; made Strephon want to scream “Get on with it!” The River-Woman's enigmatic warnings only made him more impatient.
“Your home is in danger...” If his home was in danger, then so was Cassandra. “You should not be here...” No, he should be with Cassandra to protect her. That was evident. Instead he was stuck here in a boring meeting listening to Thoth now offering birthday greetings to every citizen born in this month. Birthday Greetings?
He had to focus on what he should do when his time came to speak before the Council Stone. Unconsciously he felt his jacket breast pocket for the envelope Inanna had given him in the taxicab that day before. No, that would hardly help under the circumstances, even if he could believe Inanna.
He placed his hands together in his lap and tried to rehearse what he would say. “My name is Strephon Bellman; I reside at number 1827 Fitch Street...” but where should he go from there? The safest course would be simply to endorse Melchior's bid for a Council Seat as Melchior had asked. But safest was not always best. He could try to give him lukewarm support, adhering to the letter of Melchior's request while making clear he was in no way offering an unequivocal endorsement. No, that would please nobody, least of all himself. It would be the coward's way out.
Or he could put his cards on the table: describe in detail the various other incursions of faerie magic in the City he had discovered and cast Melchior as a part of this sinister web. That would be as good as declaring open war against Melchior and Melchior's shadowy puppet master. He didn't like doing that without knowing more about his opponent, but he might not have any choice.
Again his hand strayed to his jacket pocket, and again he put it back. No, that option was out of the question.
The meeting's agenda had moved on to old business. Dennis Fell, the writer who looked like an oak tree, was standing at the Council Stone reading a letter he had drafted for the Council opposing a plan by the County government to close most of the libraries in the county as a cost-cutting measure. He chose to face the spectators for this. Undoubtedly he knew how the individual Council Members were likely to vote, and was playing to their constituency. Strephon had heard about the proposed library closings and was pleasantly surprised that anyone on the Hidden Council would want to get involved in the matter. He would have paid closer attention to Fell's argument had he not his own worries to distract him.
He could feel a growing sense of threat swirling all around him, like storm clouds. That was what Tulaan had called it: “Dark clouds gather,” she said. And Grandma Simms had told Tobias much the same thing. Or perhaps he was just reacting to the concentration of magical forces bound in this location.
Ms. Vane called Melchior Dusk to the Stone. It wouldn't be long now. Melchior gave a confident smile to Strephon and to Inanna and rose. Then he manifested a pair of regal dragonfly wings on his back and flew from his seat in the front row to the center of the Chamber. The show-off. It was a dramatic entrance, though; Strephon had to give him credit for that.
“Greetings, esteemed members of the Hidden Council. I come as a stranger to your city, although my kind has dwelt under the shadows of the English hills for more generations than one can count. For ages we have been sundered, your kind and ours. I come this evening to bring an end to this long separation. It is for this reason, I have passed through your 'Fairy Gate' to bring the Faeries back to Redemption.” He gave a glance over his shoulder to Strephon with a knowing smile, as one who is looking for a compliment for a particularly clever bon mot.
Strephon came to a decision. He wasn't entirely powerless here. He thought of something he could do. He took a calling card and a ballpoint pen out of his pocket and jotted down a quick note.
“What are you doing?” Inanna whispered to him.
“Just writing a note to myself.” She was acting strangely. Of course, she would be nervous too.
“You are going to... do what we discussed, aren't you?”
Evidently she did not want to mention the envelope with the spell in it out loud. Nor could Strephon blame her. He responded with a knowing glance and placed his finger to his nose, much as Thoth had done earlier: a gesture which seemed to convey meaning without actually saying anything.
The gesture seemed to relieve Inanna, but she still seemed troubled by something. “What is it?” Strephon asked.
“Nothing. Just...” Inanna paused. “Do you think I would make a good Clarice?”
“What?” The question took Strephon aback. “Oh, I see. Thoth – Timmy, I mean – has been needling you to change your name, hasn't he.” Inanna gave a self-conscious nod. “Don't pay him any mind. He does that to everybody. Why, he wanted me to change my name to...” Strephon checked himself. That was not something he wished to share. “Well, what he wanted is irrelevant. If you don't mind my advice, you'll stick with your own name.”
“That's just it,” Inanna said quietly. “I don't know my own name.”
This was a direction Strephon had not expected this conversation to take. Against his better judgement, he felt compelled to ask a personal question. “Your name isn't Inanna?”
“That's the name he – that's the name I was given. I don't remember what it was before.”
A sudden realization struck Strephon. “Melchior's immunity to cold iron; how he goes on about being a new breed of Faerie. That comes with a price, doesn't it. These things always do. And part of the price was that you had to give up your name.”
Inanna swallowed heavily, as if words would not come out, and gave a nod.
A sense of outrage arose in Strephon's breast. He didn't know why it should. He'd known people who sold their soul for lesser powers. Still, he could sense her regret. Faeries generally didn't feel things like regret, or guilt. Perhaps that was part of the price too. He had never seen Inanna seem this vulnerable before. Unless it were all a pose. No, she felt ashamed at her admission, that much was palpably genuine.
Melchior was wrapping up his speech now. Strephon didn't have much time. He gave Inanna's hand a pat. “Be who you wish to be,” he said. Trite enough advice, but he could think of nothing better.
Melchior was returning to his seat now, by foot this time. “We shall now hear testimony regarding Mister Dusk's petition,” Ms. Vane announced. “Mister Strephon Bellman.”
Strephon turned his head to speak to Tobias. “I'd like you to push me to the Stone,” he said. Tobias gave him a curious look, and Strephon elaborated, “For theatrical purposes. I can't have Melchior upstaging me.”
Tobias replied with a smile which told Strephon that Tobias knew he had something else in mind, but was willing to play along. As soon as they were out of Melchior's earshot, Strephon slipped his calling card into Tobias's hand. “When you walk past Kurayami's bodyguard, give this to him. Be discreet.”
“Fellow what looks like a male stripper?”
“That's the one.” If Cassandra was right about Kurayami, the note he had written ought to put the cat among the pigeons. And if she was wrong... well, that was useful information to know too. At any rate, he was doing something.
Tobias wheeled him up to the Council Stone and set the chair's brakes as Strephon pulled his crutches out of the back of the chair and hefted himself out of it. He wanted to stand on his own two feet for this, even if he needed the help of canes to do it. He nodded to Tobias, and Tobias stepped away to fulfill Strephon's other commission.
There in the center of the Chamber, directly above the nexus of magic which had defined the City of Redemption even before there was a city; before Henry the VIII, before William the Conqueror, before Augustine of Canterbury, perhaps even before old Togwogmagog himself, Strephon felt himself the center, not just of the room's attention, but of vast powers, perhaps of the whole universe. He had become the cynosure.
Ms. Vane gave him a moment more to center himself before a gentle, but impatient prod. “Your name, please?”
“Ah. Yes. My name is Strephon Bellman, and I reside at Number 1827, Fitch Street. I have faerie ancestry, and have lived in this city for nearly a century and a half now.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kurayami's manservant advance to her and hand her his note. He would not say that her face paled upon reading it – as a vampire, she always looked like that – but her reaction seemed most satisfactory.
The other faces of the Council, however, seemed less reassuring. How many of these were enemies? How many were allied with the malevolent forces outside, the ones which even now might be threatening Cassandra while he remained trapped in this chamber?
He prattled on a bit more about his position having experience both in the Mortal World and in the Faerie Court which, he assured them all, lent weight to his opinion on this matter; all the while vamping frantically trying to decide what his opinion was going to be.
If I called the Hunt, I could break free. That was right. With the Hunt at his call, he could ride out of the Chamber unhindered, with an army at his back to defend Cassandra. But wasn't this what his adversary wanted? He wasn't even sure if the contents of Inanna's envelope had anything to do with the Wild Hunt.
If he took a quick glance at the contents... No, that would be extremely imprudent. The contents could be anything. They could be a malevolent spell designed to ensorcell anyone who read it. But there were ways to identify such things…
Strephon realized that he had paused again, and the Council Members were watching him expectantly. “I beg the Council's indulgence,” he said, reaching into his jacket pocket. “I have prepared a few words for this occasion.”
He conjured up an illusionary pair of reading glasses. They would enable him to cast a spell of identification without being obvious about it. Any observers who noticed anything magical about the spectacles would just put it down to a theatrical flourish, like Melchior's wings. He next removed the envelope and examined it. Slight traces of magic, not too surprising. He didn't seem to sense the existence of a spell inside. Then what was written on it?
“Go on, Mister Bellman,” Ms. Vane insisted.
Blast it all, he had to know. Strephon ripped off the envelope's seal and opened the folded note inside.
It read: “You are too late. She is already doomed.”
NEXT: Wake, Awake