"An Esper," Alys said flatly. "And would you perhaps be a boon companion of The Heroine Alis Landale, as long as you're telling us fairy tales?"
Rune flinched, apparently upset by her sarcasm.
"Actually, Alys, I believe him."
"Galf?"
He shrugged.
"It fits the facts. He's a powerful tech-user. He has access to a fire technique that isn't Foi and a wind technique that isn't Zan. If he says that these are actually magic, then at least it makes some sense."
"If you say so," Alys responded dubiously. She still wasn't quite sure she believed it, but if Galf went along she could at least give the idea the benefit of the doubt.
And it wasn't like she had any better ideas.
"All right, so now what? Obviously we stop whomever's creating these new techniques--Neiryuka and whatnot--before he or she does enough damage to the magic in the air that major disasters happen. How do we find this tech-user?"
"We follow the stone," said Galf. "That's how we got here. The state of the power flows, or whatever Rune called it, tells us that we're getting closer. Man's gonna test these things out in his workshop, under controlled conditions, right?"
"Exactly. Hence the extreme instability; these Nei techniques have been tested over and over here in Valhalla, in their creator's lab."
"Obviously the power he's sucking up in the stones is important somehow. Maybe he's gotta have it to use these...Nei techs, you called them?"
"Nei is an ancient word of power. The command word of a technique is no accident; it resonates with and assists in shaping the power into an effect. That's part of what Gi and Na techniques are about. The word 'Nei' is too powerful, though, for use in anything as transient and impermanent as a technique. He'd have to be insane not to realize that."
"Well, forgive those of us who aren't Espers from not knowing all about the theory and practice behind technique creation," Alys said waspishly. Know-it-all boy was really starting to get on her nerves. Sure, this clearly was his field and he knew more than the hunters did, but Rune was barely older than she was and he constantly talked down to her. He reminded her of nothing so much as Galf when he was in a cranky mood, one of his "I've been alive for too darn long to have to put up with these idiots" routine. Only, Rune wasn't even twenty if Alys was any judge.
He glared at her, obviously ready to snap back, then stopped and sighed.
"You're right," he admitted.
"I know."
"Now, kids, play nice," Galf said. "The key is Derek. Before we got sidetracked, you might remember that I'd found a good lead to him. Since he's doing the fetch-and-carry for our mysterious tech-user, we find him and we've got a direct line to our Nei-maker."
"That's right!" Alys remembered. "You said you'd found a major fence."
"Her name is Ardath Vine. I'm sure she'll be able to point us in the right direction."
"The loyalty of thieves is as dust in the wind," Rune said, obviously quoting from something Alys had never heard.
"Well, let's just say it tends to be a commodity like any other."
-X X X-
Maybe not quite like any other, Alys considered as they faced Ardath Vine. The woman ran, of all things, a weapon store, though the equipment was pretty much low-grade crap.
"I'm afraid that I have no idea whom you are talking about," she said.
"Why does everybody have to say that?" Galf asked no one in particular. "Why, just once, can't someone answer, 'yes I do know that man and here's what you have to do for me so I'll tell you how to find him'?"
Alys patted her mentor on the shoulder.
"It's just one of life's little annoyances," she said.
"So how is this going to work? Do we try to bribe you with our feeble store of cash?" he asked Ardath. "Do we play the heavies and break things? Do you call a bunch of low-rent thugs out of the back room and we prove our seriousness by kicking their rumps back into said back room? Do we let you have the pretty-boy here for a couple of hours to amuse yourself?"
Alys broke up into a fit of unhunterlike giggles at that one. Rune just sighed and shook his head sadly.
"Please, children," he murmured, "can we focus?"
"I could use Foi again," Alys suggested, "and demonstrate why it's so important that we find Derek...presuming the building is still here."
"Don't joke about that," Rune advised. "Remember that, in fact, it might not be if you tried a damaging technique."
Ardath didn't respond to any of the byplay among the hunters; she merely sat there, watching them with an unchanging expression, pleasantly bemused but hard-eyed. Odd eyes, really, Alys thought; the small, black pinpoints didn't match the plump, friendly face or the gray-streaked purple hair.
Then Alys laughed again.
"Hey, Galf, I don't think we're going to get anything out of her, after all."
Galf arched an eyebrow.
"Oh?"
"Look at her eyes? Familiar, aren't they?"
He did, then paused and grinned broadly.
"Yeah, I can see what you mean. Sorry for wasting your time, ma'am; can't hardly expect a woman to rat out on her own son, now, can I?"
"Have a nice day," she said. "Do come again when you're in a buying mood."
"And what, precisely, did that get us?" Rune snapped once they were outside on the street again.
"Patience isn't really your specialty, is it?" Alys said.
"Let's just say I've spent too many years waiting for people who think they know what they're doing to realize that they don't and get out of the way."
"Children, play nice. Given that the apple apparently doesn't fall far from the tree, professionally speaking, I figure that Ardath wasn't going to give her boy up unless we resorted to torture. I presume nobody here is going to suggest that as an option? Good. So, all we'd be doing in there is wasting our time. There's a lesson there, by the way--"
"'Never waste time beating your head against a wall when you should be finding a way around it.' Yeah, I know."
"Which in this case means, the faster we leave, the faster Ardath can send a message to her son letting him know we're in town, and the faster we can follow the messenger right to Derek." He studied his fingernails, checking for imaginary dirt.
"Is he always this smug when he's right?" Rune asked Alys.
"Pretty much. You learn to live with it."
"Kids," Galf sighed.
-X X X-
The job of following the first man who snuck furtively from the back door of the shop fell to Alys. He was obviously a decoy, but his existence had to be honored just in case it was a double-blind. He led her a merry chase down a tangle of curving streets--apparently Valhallan houses were just thrown up wherever people felt like putting them, making the village's layout extremely strange--for about ten minutes before he ducked into a tavern, popped his feet up on a table, and settled in for some serious drinking.
Well, it was what she expected, she grumbled mentally. She was the low woman on the mission and that meant she got the less important jobs when they split up. She headed back towards Ardath's shop, though, by then Galf and Rune were probably long gone after the real messenger.
Alys.
"Rune?" she said, surprised and looking around for the tech-user.
Come to the north end of town, to Vine's Jewelry.
She wasn't hearing his voice, she realized, not out loud. It was like she was thinking it, reciting the words in her mind--only it wasn't her voice or her thoughts, but Rune's!
"What the heck? Rune, can you hear me?"
No response. Apparently not.
I guess the stuck-up pretty-boy really is an Esper. It was almost a relief to think the words herself. It was creepy to have someone else thinking in her head. Still, it was a pretty good way to get a message across town. If she hurried, maybe she wouldn't even miss out on any of the action.
It turned out that she didn't. In fact, she was still about a block away when she heard the explosion. Quite a crowd had gathered around Vine's Jewelry (Derek Vine, proprietor, according to the small print on the sign), and no wonder. A ten-by-eight section of the west wall had fallen into the shop, and the roof was sagging desperately. Alys's heart leapt--had Galf been inside? What had happened?
Alys, come two buildings east.
She turned her head to the right and saw the now-familiar white-mantled figure just visible around a corner. She hurried that way and caught up with Rune.
"Is Galf all right? What's happening?"
"He's fine. We're both fine, thank you."
"I can see you're all right. Where's Galf?"
"Inside here."
He brought her around to the side door of what was apparently an abandoned building. Inside, Galf stood over Derek, who lay bound and gagged on his belly.
"Hey, Alys. I see Rune's Esper trick works," Galf remarked, clearly impressed.
"It's more than a little freaky, but yeah. That would be handy in the field, being able to talk back and forth at a distance, especially if we're out of line-of-sight from each other and can't even use hand signals."
"Unfortunately, the spell only allows messages to be sent," Rune provided, "so you would both have to be Espers--which you are not--for that to work. It is very effective, though, when one does have trained minds working in concert."
"So what happened to the store and how did Derek end up trussed like a roasting goose?"
Galf grinned.
"He thought he'd be sneaky. A couple of minutes after the messenger--a kid of about ten, by the way, and slipperier than an eel--left, the boom goes off. Derek thought he'd use the Hinas technique to teleport to a nearby building and sneak away while we were watching his shop."
"It wasn't a bad plan," Rune grudgingly admitted, "if one ignores the fact that his employer's tampering with techniques turned a quiet little teleport into a very dramatic implosion. Galf realized almost at once what had happened and that this building was the likeliest place for him to teleport to."
Alys nodded.
"I see. It's empty."
"Most folks would kick up a fuss if someone appeared in the middle of their home or ship," Galf agreed. "He was coming out the side door just about when we were going in."
"With predictable results," concluded Rune.
Galf knelt next to the struggling thief. From the small pile of equipment on the floor, it seemed that he had already removed a number of interesting toys Derek could have used to wriggle or cut his way free. He grabbed a fistful of the thief's hair and jerked his head up and back.
"Now you listen to me and listen good, you piece of garbage. I've chased you through three towns, now, which is two more than I like to put up with. I've been in three fights. I've nearly been blown up because of the crap your boss has been pulling with his Nei techniques and what it's doing to everybody else's techs. I have run out of patience with you and with this entire job. You're going to tell me who hired you, where he or she is, and everything you know about what's happening, or else I'm going to start cutting off limbs and we'll see how well your burglary career goes on, say, two peg legs. Now which is it gonna be?"
Derek mumbled something; Galf pulled down the gag.
"You're hunters. You wouldn't do that," he protested.
"I don't suppose you can just rip it out of his head?" Alys asked Rune. The Esper shook his head.
"I'm sorry. I know how to, but I can't actually do it. I need much more training before my mind can use spells of that power."
"Too bad. Guess we do it the hard way."
"Don't make me laugh," Derek sneered. "I know your kind. You don't have the stomach--"
He broke off suddenly because Galf had pressed the point of a knife delicately into the flesh of the thief's lower eyelid.
"Don't I? Any time anyone uses a technique in Valhalla, disasters happen and people probably will die. Every one of those deaths is on your head for helping the techmaster do this. By my figuring, that makes you a mass murderer. I'm betting your friends and neighbors are going to see it the same way, if I explain things."
"I would," Alys agreed, "and I'm not a short-tempered pirate or bandit."
"So let's say that maybe you're right, Derek. Maybe I can't go and cut you to pieces slowly. But I bet there's people in Valhalla who can. If you can't help me finish this job, then you're useless to me, so I can just hand you over to local justice. On the other hand, if you do help me finish the job, then I can get a nice bonus to my commission by keeping you alive and well for trial in Zema, on simple robbery charges. Heck, they're almost a civilized town down there; they don't even hang people for stealing. So if you talk, it's as good as a five-thousand-meseta bribe for me to keep you alive and well. Am I speaking a language you understand, now?"