Stealing the Elf-King's Roses

by Diane Duane

Genres: Fantasy

Synopsis

In an alternate-world Los Angeles, prosecutor/psychic Lee Enfield and her partner, Gelert, investigate the murder of an elf. They soon reveal a deadly network of ties among organized crime, multinational corporations, and planetary governments of the Seven Worlds -- all working together on the "ethnic cleansing" of elves from the alternate world of Alfheim.

Release date: December 21, 2008

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 416

Sample

THE NEW YORK TIMES                                                                         September 8, 2001

Commodities Week

Last week's confirmation by the Nobel high-energy research team at CERN's Erqumitsuliaq (Greenland) Quadruple Array Survey Collider of the existence of a sixth alternate Earth has had widespread effects on the worlds' commodities markets, especially due to the continuing uncertainty as to how soon trade could be permitted with the new world (dubbed “Terra” by the Nobel team).

The team director, Dr. Birgitta Helgasdottir of the University of Mainz, confirmed at a press conference Thursday that the new world has not yet produced the MacIlwain worldgating break-through. Speculation continues to run high as to whether the growing current economic crisis will cause the veto powers to push the UN&ME into allowing an exception to the “technological parity” ruling, and inviting “Terra” into the Five-Geneva Pact. However, there has been early concern in the marketplace about the economic status of the new world, and its inevitable effects on otherwordly marketplaces.

“We haven't had a chance as yet to study the situation in depth,” says Professor Ron Kialeha, Nobel team economist and senior lecturer in intercontinual economics at Queens' College, Cambridge. “But initial findings are encouraging. This world's economy is presently in the late stages of recovery from a mini-recession, in line with early predictions based on the ‘interworld mirroring’ principle, and on ‘Terra's’ present alignment with Huichtilopochtli and Xaihon. Additionally, the new Earth's conventions for handling monetary float and currency exchange conform closely to our norms, even though ‘Terra's’ economy involves an unusually complex grouping of national sovereignties. They've evolved unique solutions to their version of the multiple-currency problem, including several artificial exchange rate mechanisms which seem to have stood them in good stead during the process of ‘decession.’ If ‘Terra’ were to be invited to join the Pact, we don't feel its admission would present any problem even distantly approaching the magnitude of what the UN&ME had to deal with when Midgarth entered. However, the question may soon become moot, since there are presently not just one, but four MacIlwains studying high-energy physics or doing postgraduate physics work at key ‘Terran’ universities—an unmistakable sign that one of them is about to replicate parallel breakthroughs by other physicists with similar names in the other known universes. We don't know which of them is the breakthrough physicist yet—but even if we don't immediately open trade with ‘Terra,’ indications are that they could well be coming after us within three to five years.”

Action on the world commodities market over the last week seems to indicate that both buyers and sellers broadly agree with this assessment. Fairy gold, always a reliable indicator of moods among the worldgating industries, ended the week on the Comex with December contracts at $2825 an ounce, only slightly below the all-time 1967 high caused by the discovery of Xaihon. Trading at London and Chicago Mercantile lagged slightly behind this figure, apparently owing to a decrease in the number of Alfen brokers offering end-of-year contracts. However, according to Martin Zermühle, fairy gold specialist at Shearson, Hamill's Zürich commodities trading bureau, this hedging can be expected to taper off over the next few weeks as interest among the supranational corporations becomes more aggressive in view of the prospect of the profits inevitably awaiting them in a new, unexplored economy.

Elsewhere, nervousness about intra-EU support for genetically engineered crop cultivars in the wake of disagreements at the Copenhagen summit caused October soybean contracts to plunge on the Neue Market, with other losses.

One

All rise for the right honorable Charles Redpath, magistrate,” said the bailiff, “acting in and for the City and County of Los Angeles, in proceedings designated DL-5745-27 and to be enacted this day, April 27, 2004, in the City and County Circuit Court, session nine hundred and forty-five. Let all who desire Justice draw near, and Justice shall be done them.”

Lee was still always amazed that the last sentence of the “blurb” didn't cause a rush for the doors. Nevertheless, everyone stayed where they were, and they all stood up, and in a flurry of black silk robes over that brown tweed suit, here came Charles out of his chambers and up the steps to the bench—a brisk, florid little dark-haired man, running slightly to stoutness now, with a short bristly mustache that could make him look extremely stern until he forgot himself and smiled. But he rarely forgot himself in the courtroom, and when he did, people were usually sorry afterward that they had tried to provoke the smile in the first place, or expected it to indicate humor. Lee kept her face very straight, and noticed that beside her, Gelert was for once not wagging his tail.

“Please be seated,” Charles said, and in a rustle everyone sat down. The court was a little fuller than usual today, for this was sentencing, and the case had attracted some attention in the papers: more than usual, since Mr. Redpath had excused the cameras last week, citing only the traditional stricture (as was his right) that “the camera looks, but Justice sees.” Now the magistrate shuffled through his paperwork and unlimbered his laptop, waiting a moment for the pertinent documents to display themselves. “All right,” he said, “this is the continuation of Ellay City docket 88-38715-4548, the People versus Lawrence J. Blair. …” He looked up from the papers, glanced around the courtroom. “We'll resume as from our recess of last Friday,” he said, “assuming no one has anything strictly procedural to add. Mr. Hess?”

“Nothing, Your Honor,” said Alan: very prudently, Lee thought, since he had pretty much exhausted Mr. Redpath's patience last week with procedural interferences of various kinds, all apparently directed toward one purpose: stalling.

“Ms. Enfield? Madra Gelert?”

“Nothing, Your Honor,” Lee said, and Gelert shook his head.

“Very well. Summations may commence,” Mr. Redpath said. “Prosecution?”

Lee stood up, shrugging her own silks into place over the new light blue dress. As always on a summation and sentencing morning, she was nervous for no good reason, and her chain of office felt like it was askew, and twice as heavy as it really was. She knew she looked all right, knew that she looked polished and professional enough, knew what the jury and Charles Redpath and all the newsies were seeing: a woman of medium height and medium build, face with all the features in the usual order, figure not terrible for her age, and nice hair, for the new shorter cut and the blond streaking worked well. Yet she felt haggard, unprepared, clammy, tired from having stayed up late preparing, and unready for what she knew was about to happen.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Your Honor, and Justice here present—” she said. And all that preparation cut in and started to make her feel better, as it usually did. “You've heard the evidence which my colleague has presented to you. The defendant stands before you now accused of a chain of frauds which have finally caught up with him—several of them directly connected, as we have proven, to the one for which he has been brought before you in this proceeding. …”

Lawrence Blair was a promoter who put together concert packages for various popular and rock musicians, some famous, some just getting started and rather vulnerable, financially at least. Five years or so ago a concert involving several large bands appeared to have been badly undersold by the “packaging” company handling ticket sales. There had been allegations of ineptitude on the part of the packaging company, a couple of civil suits filed, later dropped when Blair entered into a gentleman's agreement with the debtors and promised to repay them their losses.

His debtors accepted the arrangement and settled back to wait a reasonable time to be paid what they were owed, and Blair went on to organize other gigs, some successful, some not. Some of his creditor “clients” got paid, and most did not. “Mr. Blair's defense,” Lee said to the jury, “would like you to believe that the people who didn't get paid on time, or at all, were merely the victims of accidents: lost payments, misunderstandings with the bank, unavoidable cash-flow difficulties. But we've shown that the cause of these nonpayments was Mr. Blair's own redirection of the funds owed these people into other projects destined to make him more money.”

She reminded the jury of dates and names, while in the background hearing Gel lie down on his pad, the links of his chain sounding softly against each other—not the normal gold a human practitioner might wear, but fairy gold—low-carat, but still an extravagance hidden in plain sight. Gel loved such extravagances, and not being caught at them. But that was typical of how he preferred to operate, letting Lee do the “front work” while he stepped softly around in the background, fading into it where necessary.

He had nothing to do this morning except observe the verdict; all his work had been done with his usual skill in the discovery stage of the case. Lee thought sometimes that part of his success at eliciting testimony lay in the continuing fascination of many humans with the madrín. They hadn't been common in Lee's universe until twenty years or so ago, and there were lots of people who were charmed by the sound of a melliflous voice and courteous conversation coming out of what appeared to be a frizzy-coated white wolfhound the size of a small horse. If the big goofy-looking grin Gelert could produce while conducting an interview put people off their guard, Lee didn't mind. And if the lolling tongue and dingbat expression, or the way he twitched those big shell-pink ears around, made other people discount or entirely forget Gelert's expertise, Lee didn't mind that either … and she knew her partner, one of the first products of UCLA's doctorate program in litigative mantics, enjoyed taking advantage of the misapprehension. She threw a glance over her shoulder at him as she wound up her closing statement. Gelert opened those huge jaws in a gigantic, silent stage yawn, exhibiting entirely too many fangs: a private signal of profound confidence and a desire to cut to the chase.

“Joel Delaney's case brings us up to the present,” said Lee, coming to a stand now at the foreman's end of the jury box. “Out of forty performers whom Mr. Blair has engaged to perform over the last three years, only ten have been paid in full: five have received partial payments, well short of what was promised: and the rest, still unpaid, have pooled a significant amount of funds in order to bring this case into the civil courts, so that Justice might be given a chance to operate where other agencies have failed. We ask you to look with us at the defendant and open the way for Justice to enter here; to see the truth of the matter, find him guilty as charged, and to participate in sentencing should the verdict so require.”

Lee nodded to the foreman and to the other jurors, turned and went to sit down. In a few moments Alan was on his feet, and had begun addressing the jury with his usual smoothness. Right now he was making the whole case sound like a series of coincidences, complicated by incompetent accountants, accidents, and badly drawn-up contracts. He went on to make everything Lee had said sound either foolish or mischievous, and finally said, “We ask you to look with us at the defendant, opening the way for Justice; to see the truth of the matter and to find him innocent.”

He sat down.

“Thank you,” said Mr. Redpath, and tapped at his laptop's keyboard briefly. He looked over at the jurors' box. “Before we proceed, do any of you ladies or gentlemen require a recess at this time?”

The foreman, a small round woman with long wavy blond hair, looked down the length of the box at her fellow jurors. Heads were shaken. “No, Your Honor,” she said after a moment.

“Very well.” Mr. Redpath glanced at the bailiff. “Secure the room,” he said.

The bailiff nodded, went over to confirm the time with the clerk of the court: the clerk reached under her desk to touch the button that locked the doors. Mr. Redpath folded down his laptop's screen, then folded his hands in front of him. There was a spate of the usual brief shuffling and last-chance-to-cough coughing. Then things got very still.

The prosaic courtroom—the slightly dusty windows through which the afternoon's sunlight was beginning to pour, the pale golden birch paneling of the walls, the terrazzo floor and the acoustic ceiling, now started to take on a strange, sharp-edged quality, as if another kind of light were starting to suffuse the place, different from the hot sunlight, harsher, clearer. A different view of human affairs began to superimpose itself over the merely human one, as the Other without whom no court was fully functional began to manifest.

Once such manifestations had taken much more work. In ancient Greece, men had compelled Justice's presence by sheer weight of numbers. As technique improved, the Romans and Byzantines managed it with tribunals of fifty, and medieval Europe with only “twelve good men and true.” In this country, most jurisdictions kept the jury as a check on the judiciary process. But you really needed only two or three properly trained people, these days—the two advocates, and the magistrate who maintained the structure which compelled the Power's attention. Once you had Justice's attention, everything else happened very quickly indeed.

That sense of the Other's presence deepened. Mr. Redpath just gazed down at his folded hands as the presence increased in the room, as everything became subtly more visible. Redpath wasn't one of those jurists who went in for voiced invocations or flamboyant gestures; he simply made room in the courtroom for Justice, and it arrived, without fuss, focused and fully empowered. Such matter-of-fact competence would probably push him into the Court of Appeal eventually, maybe even the State Supreme Court. But right now Lee was glad he was here, since with that matter-of-fact quality came the certainty of control. Justice might be a good thing, but if improperly mediated, a cardinal Virtue could get out of hand and affect everyone in a courtroom, not just those in whose cause it had been invoked.

The silence around Lee was no longer something that needed to be enforced. People felt it looking at them. Like small creatures caught suddenly under the regard of something with sharp eyes and sharp claws, people tended to hold still and try not to attract its notice. Yet soon enough that additional effect set in, the sense of the stately presence of an ancient and deserved grandeur, something intangible yet powerful and splendid; possibly what people spoke of when they mentioned “the majesty of the law.” The bailiff, the court clerk, the security guards minding the doors, all stood up when they felt it. Others stood as well, some in a hurry, some more slowly. Finally, only Charles, already standing for Justice in his person, remained seated.

Lee looked into the “well,” the empty space between the bench and the counsels' tables, and Saw edges—that two-edged sword with which the Power manifesting here was so often pictured, immaterial but multiplied many times over, a tangle or nest of potential enforcement, like so much barbed wire. Mr. Redpath swallowed once, a strained motion, and looked up. “Let the defendant come forward and be judged,” he said.

Lawrence Blair came out from behind the defense table, exchanged a suddenly nervous glance with Alan Hess, and stepped out into the well. He stood there with a most neutral expression, one which for Lee didn't hide his feelings at all. Finally, this late in the proceeding, he had had the sense to become afraid.

Lee let her gaze rest on Lawrence Blair and concentrated on letting Justice here present see so clearly through her that others wouldn't be others wouldn't be able to help seeing as well. Across the aisle, Alan Hess was doing the same. And leaning against them like sunlight made solid, heavy and intent, the Power looked at Blair.

Lee looked at the defendant, and waited, letting the Sight work, concentrating on keeping her own thoughts quiet and making of herself a transparent conduit through which Justice could gaze unimpeded. Trained and inured to the Regard as she was, it hurt somewhat. Lee was better than usual at bearing the discomfort, partly because she did so much work in the forensic side of Seeing—perceiving the truth about things. But things hurt less to look at than people, and Lee stood there and shook as the pain increased.

Standing there in the well, among swords of light that he could not see but was beginning to feel, Blair started to tremble too … and inside him, the Balance shook itself loose and wavered between rise and fall. In it lay his soul, and Justice's other tool, the sense of true right or wrong, even more powerful than the mind to work its will on the harboring body.

And the Balance began to sink. Lee Saw in Blair the swathing concealment of self-delusive good intention (… I'll pay them as soon as I have it …) and expediency (… I really need the funds more for this new project, they can wait a little longer …) and calculation (… If I don't pay this guy, he's powerful enough to make trouble down the line …). And from long ago, from sometime buried in his past, the image: his mother's words, when she first caught him stealing. “You little w—”

Even now he tried not to hear the word, to see the image. But Lee saw it as Justice, looking through her, did. She felt the Balance inside Blair shift with a groan—the soul admitting itself, in the unavoidable hot glare of Justice's regard, to have been found wanting, and weighing the scales hard down.

The first sound came from someone on the jury, the kind of angry gasp a man might make when he's cut himself. Then came another, someone wishing they could deny what they saw, and unable to. If only one juror failed to see what both the prosecution and Justice saw, the judgment would not take.

One last soft moan came from the jury box. Lee didn't see who it was, but she felt the mind behind the moan make the verdict unanimous. The Power in the room with them struck through her and Alan like lightning; and the nest of unseen swords rose up, surrounded Blair, and sliced him through.

Blair didn't have a throat for long enough to finish his scream—not a human throat, anyway. The “containment area” in the well, defined by the two-meter-wide, dull red square outline of forcefield on the floor, activated with the administration of the sentence. And in the middle of the square, crouching, stunned, was a weasel. It was a very large weasel, for though Justice might affect the soul in a body, and that body's shape, it had no effect on mass. Clenching its claws against the floor, staring around at its counsel, at Lee, at the magistrate and the jury, the weasel began to make a small, terrible rough sound in its throat, over and over, like a whispered screech.

The pressure of the Regard was gone, vanished like a dream or a nightmare. A lot of people sat down, shocked, but more kept standing, to see better. Lee and Alan both staggered, released, and made their way back to their tables.

Mr. Redpath looked down over his desk at the containment area. “Guilty as charged,” said Mr. Redpath. “Defendant will retain this semblance during the pleasure of inward and outward Justice, here manifested. Upon the end of sentence, the court will be informed whether the defendant desires the optional restitutory stage. Otherwise, here and until the end of sentence, Justice is served.”

The courtroom was very quiet now, that initial rustle of shock and horror having died away. Lee was still blinking hard and trying to get her normal, unaugmented vision back. Boy, she thought, some of the sketch artists in here are going to have a field day with this verdict.

“Your Honor,” said Blair's counsel, “we desire to lodge an appeal at once, on the grounds that the sentence is excessively severe.”

Mr. Redpath looked down again into the containment area, where the weasel was now trying to sit up on its haunches, and failing. It came down hard on its forefeet again, staring at the long delicate claws and breathing fast. “I so allow. See the court clerk for scheduling. However, Mr. Hess,” said Mr. Redpath, looking down at him rather dryly, “I think the verdict's severity is secondary to your client having perjured himself. You may want to take advice from your client's family to discover whether they really want to proceed.”

“Yes, Your Honor,” said Hess, looking glum.

“Then I declare this proceeding to be complete, and I adjourn it sine die,” Mr. Redpath said, and banged his gavel on the desk. “Open the doors; and thank you, ladies and gentlemen.” He got up and headed for his chamber, shrugging his gown back into kilter as he went.

“Please clear the court for the next proceeding,” the bailiff shouted, and people started to file out. In the middle of the courtroom, a uniformed security officer arrived with a large wheeled protective carrier, and there followed an unfortunately humorous interlude while the court security staff tried to get the weasel, presently flinging itself against the walls of the containment area, into the carrier and out of the court.

Lee had been bracing herself against their table. Now Gelert came up beside her and put his cold nose against her neck.

“Stop that,” she said, and pushed his snout away, not half as hard as she would have under less casual circumstances, or if she'd had the strength. She wobbled.

“You need the retiring room?” he said privately, implant to implant.

Lee shook her head, still trying to get her breath back. She would pay the price tonight, in sleep, when the reaction set in and her dreams reflected that inexorable gaze concentrating, not on Blair, but on her. Tomorrow, abashed and sore with yet another reminder of her own many failings, she'd ache all over and not be good for much. But the price was worth paying.

From the other side of the aisle came the shuffle and snap of paperwork and a laptop being put away. She glanced over at Hess, stood up straight as her breathing got back to normal, and reflected that at least she wasn't the only one here who looked completely wrecked. Alan was pale under his tan, and the resultant color made him look very unwell. But “Nice one, Lee,” said Hess to her, polite as always, despite the circumstances.

Lee nodded to him. “Thanks, Al. Look, you did good work, too … Good luck with the appeal.”

He nodded back, went out. “Give me five minutes for the ladies' room,” Lee said to Gelert.

It was closer to ten, for Lee's mascara was nowhere near as waterproof as the manufacturer claimed. But the repairs would suffice for the waiting cameras. She slipped out of her silks with a sigh of relief, took off her chain, folded the silks around it, and stowed everything in her briefcase.

Shortly Lee was out in the echoing glass-and-terrazzo main hall again, where Gelert awaited her, and together they went out through the glass doors into the blinding light of a ferocious afternoon, the temperature now pushing above a hundred. The Santa Ana wind was up, blowing so fiercely that the palm trees around New Parker Plaza were bending in the force of it, and the feather-duster tops hissed and rattled, each individual frond glinting as if wet in the harsh bright sun. Dust flew everywhere. Lee winced a little at the light but could do nothing about it for the moment; for here were the newsies already, two cameras and a few print people, waiting on the courthouse steps to take a statement from them.

“Good afternoon, folks,” Gelert said amiably, sitting down on the top step. Lee, pausing beside him, sneezed. “Afternoon, all,” she said. “Please forgive me, it's the dust …”

“Do you have a prepared statement?” said one of the waiting reporters, not one of the familiar ones. Lee thought she was possibly from Variety or the Reporter.

“No,” Lee said. “We thought we'd just ad-lib today.”

Gelert sneezed too. “Sorry,” he said. “Can everybody hear me okay? My implant's speaker's been acting up lately when the volume's turned up out in the open.”

“No problem,” said the Variety reporter, and the others shook their heads.

“Right,” said a third reporter, a little, casually dressed man with dimples and a deceptively innocent face. “Ms. Enfield, this has been the sixth high-profile case your firm has been assigned to in the last four months. How do you answer the charge that the DA's Office is showing favoritism to you because of your former relationship with—”

“If it was a charge,” Lee said, interrupting him and doing her best to keep her smile casual, “I'd suggest that the person making it should look at the results in the cases involved. Our firm appears to produce results, as this is our fifth ‘win’ out of those six cases. If we're ‘favorites’ with the DA's Office at the moment, it seems we're favorites with Justice as well … and there's no way to buy or influence that. Unless you've found one?” She gave the reporter what she hoped would pass for an amused look.

“The Ellay District Attorney's Office assigns cases to the pool of qualified prosecuting teams on an availability basis,” Gelert said, “as you can confirm by checking the court calendar. Our last five cases have been assigned us because in each case we'd just finished another proceeding, and were available. The luck of the draw. But it helps to know what to do with luck.”

A mutter as some of the reporters paused to take notes. “What message would you send to Mr. Blair's wife and children?” said another.

“That Mr. Blair, like every other defendant,” Lee said, “has himself chosen the form of his punishment. And that we, like his family, look forward to the day when the Justice living inside him, as it lives inside everyone, decides that he's served his sentence and can go free. He, and Justice, will work that out for themselves.”

Another mutter from the reporters. “The case is going to appeal,” said another one.

“That's right,” Gelert said. “And we wish the defendant well. However, we feel that this time out, Justice has prevailed. But then it always does.”

“Dr. Gelert,” said another reporter, a small trim woman with long blond hair tied back, “what's your reaction to the statement made by one of your people recently that direct judicial intervention is a ‘blunt instrument’ in this time of increased understanding of criminal motivation?”

Gelert dropped that big fringed jaw and showed many more of his teeth than Lee thought strictly necessary. “‘Cruel and unusual punishment’ again?” Gelert said. “How can Justice's own self be cruel? And if it's unusual, that's our fault, not Its. ‘Hers,’ if you prefer to see Justice that way; lots of humans do. My people, too, actually.” A gust of wind blew a great swirl of dust across the entrance of the courthouse, Lee sneezed, and so did several of the reporters. Gelert shook himself all over, and his chain rang softly. “My people,” Gelert added, “have no crime. No murder, no assault, no theft, nothing of the kind. Certainly no fraud. It colors some of our opinions about the judicial system here. Me, I'll wait until Councillor Dynef's been mugged for his earrings some night, coming home from the movies in West-wood. After he's needed to go through the courts himself, we'll see how ‘blunt’ he thinks the Hoodwinked Lady's sword is.”

There was some chuckling at that. “Anything else, ladies and gentlemen?” Lee said. “We've got places to be.”

Heads were shaken. “Thanks, then,” Lee said, and she and Gelert turned away. The reporters went off down the stairs.

Lee sneezed again. “Places to be,” Gelert said softly. “What a fibber you are.”

“Huh.” Lee paused to open her briefcase and rummage around in it for her sunglasses. “They keep asking about that,” she muttered. “Why can't they just let it drop?”

“What? The DA's Office? Because they're newsies, as a result of their moms putting scandal in their baby bottles instead of milk. Because it's obvious, and some of them are only good at obvious.”

Lee sighed. “Yeah, but all they have to do is check the facts to find out—”

“Lee, if it was facts they were after, they wouldn't be on the courthouse steps. They would have been inside. That guy from the Times, he's just after evidence to support his pet theory. When he can't find any, he'll stop bothering us.”

She found the sunglasses, then put them on and made a face. “Yeah, okay, you're right,” she said. “It's just this wind getting to me, I guess. …”

“So come on, let's get out of it,” Gelert said. “Let's go eat. I've got a table booked.”

“Absolutely. Where?”

“Perdu.”

She blinked at him. “What, New York? For lunch? We're late for that already. And anyway, nobody could get a booking at that place on the same day they call!”

“I reserved it a week ago. And not lunch. Dinner. If we get our tails up to th