The Necromancer's Gambit: Castling
Nicolas Wilson
I’m buzzing. I’ve had my crash course in Castling. I’m just barely excited enough not to be completely freaking out about how totally unprepared for this I am. I’m trying to keep that warm little high so I don’t go catatonic.
It’s not just that I know how to absorb a giant ball of fire, but that I’m expected to be able to stand between the King and Queen and fire, on command. I try not to focus on that, and instead on what’s going on in the King’s hospital room. He’s going over the list Pawn drew up, all the people he saw going into or coming out of the shadow gambit meeting. “I’ve known Hayden thirty years. I saved his fucking ass from a possession with intent charge. Little parasite.” He isn’t happy.
“The point of this list isn’t to figure out who our enemies are; you’re no Nixon, and this isn’t CReeP,” Queen says, trying to calm him down. “This is the closest we get to polling. This is a third of our biggest donors and supporters, not just not supporting us, but falling behind the other guys. Before the assassination attempt. This is a serious morale problem. We’re being outmaneuvered. This is a vote of no confidence, and the writing on the wall unless we reverse trends.”
Knight bursts into the room, his coat trailing him like a cape. I need to get a thinner coat, cause all mine does is kind of hang there, making my hips look wider; failing that, a cape. “The doctor says we can move you,” he says.
“He also says I’m medically cleared to masturbate;” King says, “does that mean I should do it right this second?”
“Please don’t,” I say, then hope it wasn’t loud enough anyone heard it.
“I have to go out of town,” Knight says. “It’s urgent, and won’t keep. And it’s a good time for you to go into hiding, anyway. By now Baldur’s crew know they didn’t kill you, and they’re likely to take another stab at it- or shot- explosive, whichever.”
“Your bedside manner is atrocious,” King says.
“I’ve heard that,” Knight says, and pulls out a piece of paper. “On that note, I’m going to be leaving you in Rook’s care.”
“And that’s my diploma from Castle school? A prescription for ass-whoopery that I’m to dispense at my discretion?”
“Nope. By what I believe is coincidence, you came to us right before all of the nastiness started. But it isn’t my life on the line, here, it’s theirs. So this is an assurance that you aren’t working both sides.”
“That isn’t nec-” King starts, but Knight cuts him off.
“You don’t get a say. The Arbiter was right, in that I take over what the Castle leaves behind. So it’s my delegation, and my decision.” He tears the piece of paper in half, and writes complementary sigils on each, and hands me one.
“You want me to eat that?”
“I understand your reticence. But I need you to take the King and Queen out of play. And I can’t trust you to do that without this.”
“Sounds like you’re in no position to demand anything.”
“No. I’m not. But I think you’ll do it anyway.”
I start to open my mouth to set the slip of paper on my tongue, but something in his face makes me stop. “If you make an ‘or spit’ joke I’ll find a way to kill you,” I tell him, set it on my tongue and swallow it.
“It’s sympathetic magic- of course you’d know that- and it’ll give me a direct line to you for about a week, when you’ve passed all of it. As far is it goes, I trust you. But know that if my trust was misplaced- if you’re working against us- I’ll kill you, slowly, and it will be a worse kind of death than most people can imagine. Remember Rand?” he asks King.
“Jesus,” he says, closing his eyes. Knight points to him.
“That’s the reaction of somebody who wasn’t there; all I’ve done is explain the thing I did to Rand.”
“Things,” Queen corrects him, and Knight just smiles. I masturbate a huge invisible cock in the air, large enough to knock into the ceiling, to express the size and rigidity of my indifference.
Knight checks the clock on his phone. He’s in a hurry, but he’s also waiting for something. Bishop rounds the corner and comes through the door, and hands me a leather bag. “Magical go-kit, a best-of spellbook and reagents for some common defensive stuff we went over.”
“Thanks,” I tell her, in unison with Knight.
“And the Han countermeasures?” he asks.
“Yeah. There’s a full complement of sympathetic magic tools, as well as some of the blood we took from him.”
“And that kimia I asked for?” She hands him a small black pouch. “And it’ll do what I need?”
She can’t look at him when she says, “Yes.”
“And there’s one more thing,” he says to her. “If Baldur’s people are really on the prowl, we have to take the fight to them. That’s why I want you and Harry to fortify the cabin.”
“What kind of fortifications?”
“Definitely offensive. If we draw them into a siege, they win; they have numbers enough to keep up pressure to keep us pinned, especially at the Centre, your lab, anywhere where we have to worry about collateral damage. But at the cabin, we can make it too costly to sustain an attack.”
“That means traps, the crueler the better. Aim for maximum casualties. And remember, if you can seriously wound a man, you take out three soldiers, because it takes two to pick him up and care for him.”
“They want a fucking war, you’ll bring them one.” Then he turns and walks out. She still seems a little shell-shocked from the speech, so I touch her arm.
“You okay with that?” I ask her.
She thinks for a moment. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but… I’m curious. I spend so much time researching, putting together insanely powerful and creative spells. And most of them, you know, the ones that require a human being as one of the reagents, just languish in a file full of theoretical reactions. But this is, it’s an opportunity to field test those ideas.”
“But they’re people. Assholes, maybe even violent, murdering shitholes, but they’re people.”
“Everyone’s people. But if they’re determined to hurt people I care about, then they’re going to butt up against my determination not to let them. The academic value is just a bonus.”
“You kind of scare me.”
“I get that a lot, actually. People really want to know what I know, and how I know it. They’re fascinated. But whereas most people are content with the trivia answers, the occasional tidbit of information that might happen to find them, I really want to know all of it, the little details like the difference in lethality when using wolfsbane instead of mercury in a poison. And there almost always comes a point when most people who know me quote Oppenheimer at me. That’s usually when it breaks down.”
“The conversation?”
“The relationship. People fear the unknown. But a lot of the things I know, they’re even more fearful once they start being known. A lot of people can’t handle it, how… dangerous the world really is, how scary the secrets of the universe are. To me, it’s all just another variable.”
“So, you’re cold, just like the furthest reaches of space.”
“I’m not the tin man. Shit scares me, same as anybody else. But fear is a completely human reaction, and science is about removing the human element to look at the far more complex and interesting crap happening under our fingertips.”
“So you’re a crap archeologist?”
“I had them put protoscientist on the business cards, cause it sounds more professional, but yeah. And on that note, traps to set, assholes to explode in balls of contagious plasma- it’s like turning people into fireworks that set off more people-fireworks. I’ll try and get some video, cause it should look super-cool,” she says as she leaves.
I look down at the bag still weighing down my arm. “A go bag, huh?” I ask. “So I guess we should go. Ideas as to where to?”
“That’s kind of your job,” Queen says. “And all the usual places are places we shouldn’t be. I think he chose you because you’d be less predictable.”
“I think ‘chose’ implies options…”
“If he didn’t trust you, you wouldn’t be here.”
“Yeah, with a sigil in my guts.”
“That’s his way. If he didn’t think he didn’t need it, it wouldn’t be enough.”
“That was at least a triple-negative; I have no idea what you meant.”
“He trusts you- at least as far as he’s capable of trusting anyone.”
“Yeah, what gives with that? Somebody touch his no-no spot? Did you?”
“That’s awfully bigoted, though, it probably is my fault,” Queen says. “He came into the Gambit during a trying period. He found out things about Pawn, and wanted to investigate. I stopped him. He was never very trusting, but I think that solidified his mistrust- if even we couldn’t trust each other, how was he supposed to trust anyone else?”
“But as far as unpredictable, I think I have an idea. Do you have a car?”
“Crap,” Queen says, “you don’t, do you?”
“Nope.”
“Do you at least know how to drive?”
“That’s really only relevant if you have a car.”
“Are you insured?”
“I don’t see how that’s important.”
“Maybe I should drive.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s part of my job, you know, as castle.”
“This is all extra amusing,” King says, through grit teeth, “but I don’t want to leave the hospital. I have an extra hole in me.”
“Not anymore than the rest of us,” I look at Queen, “or me, I mean.” Queen turns his head to the side. “I sometimes forget you’re not actually just one of the girls.”
“I suppose I should take that as a compliment. But we could always leave the King here for the Kindred,” Queen says. “I’m sure they’re done puncturing him. Probably. If I understand it, they just thought you needed another piercing.”
“You can both suck my old man balls.”
“Sorry,” Queen says, “I don’t perform sex acts that close to the ground.”
“Are they pierced?” I asked, “Because otherwise I don’t understand how we went from piercing to old man balls.”
King grunts, shimmying his shoulders off his mattress. “Are you going to make me get out of bed by myself?”
I get under one of his arms, “I think we were both just preoccupied with finding reasons why we could not suck old man balls.”
“What’d you come up with?” Queen asks, getting under his other arm.
“Irrational fear. They remind me of spider eggs, and I’m compelled to squish them.”
“Oh. I was just going to go with allergic reaction. Uff. You sure weigh a lot for a frail old man.”
“How much are frail old men supposed to weigh?” he asks testily.
“Less than this. We should have got a wheel chair. Feel like I’m going to put my back out.”
“Yes, and it’s uproarious fun having you yank on my gunshot wounded shoulder.”
“I was being thoughtful; the wheelchair would have helped you, too. We could always just dump one of these codgers onto the ground and take theirs. I’m sure the staff would find them pretty quick, just assume they’d fallen and couldn’t get up, laugh at that for a second, assuming they’re old enough to remember that, and help them up. But I guess we’re at the exit, hooray.”
“Where are you parked?” I ask.
“Far, far away.”
“A long time ago?”
“What?” I feel really nerdy for a moment. “I didn’t expect to be the invalid bus driver, um, driving the bus for the invalid, not… you two can stay here while I get it, if that would insulate me from some of the whining.”
“For a while,” King says, as we set him down on the bus stop bench.
I wait until Queen is out of ear shot before I ask King, “So does crap like all of this happen all the time?”
“Almost never,” he says with a smile.
“You should have lied to me.”
“Are you really up for this job?”
“Almost certainly not.”
“You should have lied to me.” He smiles at me; he assumes I was kidding, though I’m not so sure.
Queen pulls up, and I walk around to the driver’s side. He rolls down the window.
“You’re in my seat,” I tell him. He loses all hope.
“I thought you were joking about that, to make me uncomfortable.” He sighs, and starts to unbuckle his seatbelt. “But please be careful You’re uninsured, and it’s a Mercedes. An older one, but a Mercedes. Which means damage costs a whole lot more to repair, price gouging Germans…”
“What, you think this is the first Mercedes I’ve totaled?” I deadpan as I slide behind the wheel.
By the time we hit the freeway, King’s asleep in the back, and I think Queen is catatonic in the passenger seat.
After about twenty minutes Queen perks up. “That’s Knight’s car, up ahead, isn’t it?”
“Yup. He drives like an old lady.”
“By which you mean within 20 miles an hour of the speed limit?”
“If the granny panties fit…”
“That is an image, Knight in granny panties… I think you’ve turned me straight. Quick, show me a boob.”
I flip down his visor, but there’s no mirror there. “Damnit. There was supposed to be, nevermind. But if you’re that ‘curious,’ you can use the rearview mirror to look at my cleavage.”
He leans over to get the angle right. “Nope. Still gross. Pendulous fat sacks, like oversized testicles, only moderately less veiny.”
“Moderately?”
“Just the messenger. But where are we going?”
“I suspect where Knight is.”
“And where’s that?”
“Salem.”
“Just to see if I’m on the same page, here,” Queen says, “Knight asked you to get us someplace safe. So why are we following him around?”
”We’re not. But that’s the area I know, that I’m comfortable in. It’s where I can hide you the best. And it also just happens to be where Knight’s headed, so we’ll have back up, if it comes to that.”
“It’s actually…” King starts, and it seems to take forever before he finishes the sentence with, “ingenuous. I’m impressed.”
“Be impressed when you get home safe. Right now it’s just clever. Only be impressed if it works.”