Chapter Twenty-One

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Audgrim didn’t like that very much. I could tell he would rather have told me no flat out. But he couldn’t really do so. He just didn’t have the position to right now. I’d been accomplishing a great deal for this investigation, and had put myself through several rounds of seriously unpleasant exposure to do so, on top of him using me as bait for information gathering.

I didn’t kid myself into thinking that meant he would feel real loyalty towards me. I wasn’t that naïve. In my experience, most people are generally only as grateful as they’re directly incentivized to be. He would pay back the debt he owed me, sure; that much I felt I could count on. But that was because reputation was everything in our circles, and a reputation as an oathbreaker who reneged on his debts would see him metaphorically and quite possibly literally crucified for it. He was smart enough to know that, to know that the long-term costs outweighed any short-term reward he stood to gain. But I wasn’t counting on him actually caring; I wasn’t even counting on him being too self-interested to discard the possible gain from my ongoing help. People self-sabotage for stupid reasons all the time.

The reason that I was confident he was going to play along had nothing to do with that, and everything to do with the broader context. There were other groups involved now. Audgrim could afford to piss me off without any repercussion, but when you have Jack Tar, the local werewolf pack, and a pretty scary Sidhe also involved? All of whom had a lot of reason to want this situation dealt with successfully, and direct awareness of both how much I’d been helping and the misery I’d put myself through in order to do so?

I wouldn’t need to lift a finger to fuck him over at that point. All I’d have to do was casually mention to one of the other parties involved that I’d had an idea about how to proceed, and he’d refused to cooperate without giving a good reason. As quickly as that, he’d have a lot fewer people around here who wanted to do business with him. And we both knew it.

So while he was clearly pissed that I was trying to go over his head and talk to the people he worked for, he couldn’t really outright tell me no. He growled something about how he couldn’t promise they’d agree, in a tone that made it pretty obvious he hoped they wouldn’t, and that it might take some time before he got a response, then hung up on me.

I sat in a park, and waited. I didn’t really have much else to do today, after all. Saori wouldn’t be back for a while yet, and I was pretty much free until my meeting tomorrow. So I sat, and enjoyed the weather. Cool, grey, a nice breeze. The tree branches moving in the wind were fascinating, hypnotic in much the same way as reflections of sunlight on the river, and I allowed myself to just drift in that for a while.

It was less than an hour before he called me back. “They’ll see you,” he said, sounding rather displeased that this was the response. “Immediately. I can give you a ride.”

At the moment, I would rather have found my own transportation. But I didn’t want to push him on it right now. Just because I had more social capital in this situation didn’t mean I could afford to ignore his entirely, and it didn’t mean I had to be a bitch about it, either. I gave him the address, and waited.

---

He had music playing already when he picked me up, something relatively tolerable that sounded like it had taken too much influence from the 1960’s but at least knew how to execute it competently. He said very little on the way, and the tension in his spine hadn’t eased any since I last saw him. He hadn’t shaved, either.

He was driving slow enough that it was only mildly uncomfortable for me to be aware of the environment, and I was very much watching where we were going, this time. After a while, I said, “Sorry to be so abrupt. Just had some questions for them, and didn’t want to make you waste your time playing go-between.” He would know that there was more to it than that, I was pretty sure, but presenting it as being out of respect for his time made it less blatant that I didn’t want this conversation to be mediated by him. A small olive branch, at best, but I felt it was worth at least trying.

He made a noncommittal sound. And then, a few minutes later, said, “We’re here,” which was a bit unnecessary given he was already pulling into a parking garage.

Stepping outside was a little strange. Pittsburgh’s downtown neighborhood wasn’t spectacularly impressive, certainly not compared to Tokyo. You don’t grow up in arguably the biggest, busiest metropolitan area in the world without being a little jaded about such things. But I’d been a near-recluse for a long time, now, and I was rarely around even this much of a city center in recent years. The skyscrapers, if they counted as such—I’d never really been clear on the definition there—were imposing, looming over me in a way that made me feel small and nervous, like a scuttling rat among giants.

Audgrim went straight to one of them, of course, and I followed. The security guard knew him—hell, she probably worked for him—and waved us through to the elevator without any questions.

It was a long, silent trip up to the top of the building. At least twenty floors, long enough for the silence to become oppressive. I was starting to wonder whether there was more to this than just him being salty about my request. He seemed agitated, sure, but it didn’t feel like the anger was entirely directed at me.

Room 2333 was unlocked. Audgrim followed me in, and closed the door behind us. The click of the latch had a strangely ominous feeling to it, and the room wasn’t much better. On the surface it was just a large conference room, but it had both a deeply-imbued feeling of leaden-grey dvergr magic and an emotional resonance that felt indefinably nervous.

There was only one person waiting for us, not nearly enough to justify such a large room. She was standing at the far wall, which was made entirely of window, and staring out over the city. She was inhuman in her bearing, so obviously inhuman that even ordinary people would register something off about her. It didn’t help that she was wearing a hooded, ankle-length scarlet cloak, one that draped oddly and which to my senses burned with a low, subtle sort of magic.

Audgrim stopped short when he saw her. “Hrafna,” he said, sounding like an odd mix of startled, confused, nervous, and displeased. “They sent you?”

She turned to face us, and while her movements were also subtly inhuman, I didn’t see anything to immediately explain his reaction. She seemed like what my understanding suggested was a typical dvergr: Tall, with a gaunt, severe sort of face, dark hair, dark eyes, pale. She had power hanging over her, a shroud not so different from the cloak, but it wasn’t that strong, and she wasn’t carrying any weapons that I could see.

“Yes,” she said. Her voice was slightly clipped, and had a slight, odd accent. There was little to no emotion in it that I could identify. “They did. Are you going to introduce us, brother?”

Ah. That explained some things.

“Of course,” Audgrim said, sounding like he was trying and failing to imitate her dispassionate tone. “Kyoko, this is my half-sister, Hrafna Rauðfeldr. Hrafna, this is Kyoko Sugiyama, a local woman who is assisting with the situation we’ve discussed.”

That explained some more things. I didn’t immediately recognize the name, but I knew enough to recognize it as a byname, a sort of title or nickname granted in recognition of a trait or achievement. Audgrim, notably, did not have such a name; he was just called Eyvindson after his father. Hrafna (and that name I did recognize, the feminine form of “raven”) did. The difference in status was obvious.

“I am familiar,” she said, still in that flat, dispassionate voice. “You requested to speak with us.”

It wasn’t a question, but I answered anyway. “With the dvergar, yes. There are some questions I have regarding the ongoing troubles in this city, which it seemed best to ask directly.”

Something almost like a smile touched Hrafna’s features, briefly. “You may ask. I do not promise I will answer.” She looked at Audgrim, and there was not a smile of any kind in evidence now. “Your services are appreciated. You have a great deal of work to do, I’m sure.”

The dismissal in her tone was very clear, and only barely veiled enough to be polite. Audgrim nodded stiffly, and left the room, closing the door behind himself. Hrafna actually looked more relaxed after he was gone, and that was somewhat telling.

Now that I was here, I wasn’t quite sure where to start. “I appreciate you taking the time to meet with me,” I said, mostly to buy time. It wasn’t quite thanks. That was a common rule with the fae, and one of the few that I was fairly sure applied with the dvergar. Gratitude could be taken to imply debt. The dwarves were very different from the Sidhe, and all those creatures which were associated with them. But a fixation on debt and obligation, along with an inability to tell direct lies or break direct promises, were things that they had in common as I understood it.

“We understand the service you are providing,” Hrafna said, and oh were there a lot of layers in that sentiment.

I nodded and sat down. I’d done a fair bit of walking earlier, and I was still sore from last night’s convulsions. Besides, it really didn’t matter that it was a more vulnerable position. Hrafna was a full dvergr, and a respected one, and I was sitting pretty much literally in the center of their power locally. Standing or not, if she decided to kill me I wouldn’t live long enough to reach the door.

“I’m not entirely sure I do,” I said. “Understand, that is. I’ve got a decent idea of the basics, but there are a lot of things that aren’t entirely clear to me. It doesn’t seem as simple as an attack on businesses you’re invested in. They just aren’t that important.”

Silence. Hrafna seemed disinclined to waste words. I was fine with that. Silence could be as telling as any answer, sometimes.

“One of your workers was injured,” I continued after a brief pause. “And I’m sure you are not without loyalty. But that’s ultimately a relatively small thing. And as I understand it, your people were paying significant attention even before that happened. I mean, hell, for that matter, it seems like a pretty small thing by the standards of the persons responsible, too. They’ve got bigger agendas than that.”

I was pretty sure I could have heard a pin drop in that room, and it was carpeted.

“Audgrim screwed something up,” I said quietly. That seemed pretty clear to me; there were only so many reasons they would keep him in the dark, why she would have asked him to leave the conversation.

“My brother is not half as clever as he thinks he is.” This time Hrafna’s voice wasn’t quite as dispassionate; I could make out a bit of fondness, a bit of fatigue, and a fair amount of exasperation.

I nodded. “He said that nothing was stolen at the previous locations. I’m inclined to think he’s correct, if only because the people responsible are after bigger game than human businesses. But that doesn’t mean that nothing of value was gained.”

“No,” she agreed quietly. “It does not.” She was silent for a long moment. I waited; I got the impression she was deciding how much to tell me.

Eventually, she continued. “Some of the mortals whose contracts he manages have requested stronger and more esoteric protections than others. Not all of them have the skill to manage those protections themselves. So, he created a tool to allow one of them to do so without that skill.”

It took me a second to figure out what she was saying. When I did, I stared at her, and I’m sure I looked rather shocked. “He gave someone a key to let them get past dvergr warding spells?” I asked, incredulous and feeling like I must have misinterpreted something.

If so, Hrafna did not correct me. “Not half as clever as he thinks,” she said again.

“I should fucking say not,” I muttered. I couldn’t even begin to fathom how stupid that decision had been. Sure, it meant that a normal human could use a supernatural security system without assistance. And I was sure that said human had paid a fortune for that.

But it’s not just within mortal society that the dvergar have a reputation as vaultkeepers. And some of the people who didn’t need assistance with that kind of security used it to protect things a lot more valuable than cash. A lot more valuable. This key probably wasn’t able to get through the dvergar’s other wards perfectly; I was guessing that the magic in question was probably too individual, too tailored for that. But it was like any other kind of security. Once someone knew how the key worked, it became a hell of a lot easier to reverse engineer it.

And he probably still had no idea it had even been taken. How would he, really? Hell, it probably hadn’t been taken during one of the actual attacks. If you knew that kind of system was in place and being used by someone who couldn’t have done so on their own, it was trivial to figure this out. Just hit one place after another until you found one with the right kind of security, and the kind of owner that really shouldn’t have been trusted with it. Then you back off, and rob the owner later on without anyone knowing a thing.

Bloody hell, no wonder the dvergar were pissed at Audgrim. Even I could figure out the danger inherent in giving that sort of key to someone who lacked any personal power with which to protect it. And my only real expertise in the field was a basic understanding of information security thanks to some undergraduate-level cryptography classes. If Audgrim had seriously left a security hole that glaring and there was now a chance of someone using it to attack a much more important system, the surprising thing was less that he was being excluded from conversations than that he was even still alive.

“This has been enlightening,” I said after a few moments. “If there’s nothing else, I won’t keep you longer.”

Hrafna smiled, tight and controlled with no teeth showing, and she said nothing, and watched me leave. Audgrim was nowhere to be seen on the way out of the building.

---

It was already afternoon; I’d taken longer than I realized, it seemed. I wasn’t sure where the time had been lost, but it was fading out towards evening. It was strange to think that this time tomorrow, things would be coming to a head, the mess that had largely dominated my life for the past week or so reaching its conclusion. I still didn’t know exactly what was going down tomorrow night, not quite. But at the moment, it seemed very much like that was when the mages who had been doing all this were planning to move on whatever they were actually planning on stealing, the thing that all of this had more or less just been setting up for. And while it wasn’t strictly impossible that we’d manage to find and stop them before they could actually move on it, my life hadn’t given me much reason to think that things ever went that smoothly for me.

No, I didn’t think there was much chance of that at all, really. We weren’t getting that lucky. Nor was there much chance of this being resolved without violence. Tomorrow night was going to be bloody. It was feeling pretty inevitable.

But tonight was calm. It was peaceful. The sky was still overcast, but the breeze had died down, and the air was still. Looking around, people were going about their day like nothing was out of the ordinary at all. It felt simultaneously unreal and somehow reassuring, a feeling like things were ultimately going to be okay. Logically, I knew that reassurance was false. Life would go on, sure. But that didn’t mean it would go on for me, or for anyone close to me.

But it felt soothing, and I needed that too much in the moment to question whether it made sense. My life felt like it was spiraling out of control, right now. The calm, stable routine of my life, the predictable pattern it had been in, hadn’t been great. The loneliness and the bitterness had been draining and most of my days had been empty. But at least it had been reliable, had been safe. This chaos, even just being involved in things this big to begin with, was…not. I felt lost, and scared, and confused, and even false reassurance was precious right now.

I walked for a little while, and then found a coffee shop. It was a generic chain thing, and decidedly not a coffeehouse (whatever the difference was, I’d really never gotten clear on why Hope felt it mattered which hers was). But it had sugar and caffeine to make up for the sleep I hadn’t been getting, and I could watch people go by on the other side of the window. There were voices inside, and it had a feeling of life in it, and it beat nothing.

I stayed there for a while. The sun was setting by the time Saori called me. I answered the phone absently, sipping at some appalling, overpriced concoction that had enough sugar to make the coffee almost palatable.

“Hi,” the kitsune said cheerfully. “So, talked to my buddy. The good news is, I’ve learned some unsettling things that have seriously disturbing implications for the future. The bad news is, I have a terrible sense of humor and a habit of using the good news, bad news format for really bad jokes, so you’re going to have to get used to this.”

“Cool. I also have good news and bad news. The good news is that I’ve figured some things out and have a relatively good idea what’s going on. The bad news is that I’ve figured some things out, and have a relatively good idea what’s going on. Pick me up downtown?”

Saori laughed in a way that sounded more appropriate to a hyena than a fox, golden and burning and full of hunger, and said she’d be there in five minutes.
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