Due to the whole pilgrimage thing, Brennen Pollexfen had his birthday party a day early, and the guests turned out to be a very...diverse crowd. Anyway, I think there may have been more fey well-wishers than actual guests. Of course, it was hard to tell since any respectable faerie isn’t going to show up in public looking like a faerie. But while they’re all very good at looking like humans, they’re not very good at all at looking like normal humans. They tend to be rather eccentric.
Mostly I just
stood awkwardly in the corner and watched while trying not to make eye contact
with anyone. As I said, I try to stay out of the affairs of the fey, but from
everything I’ve read on the subject a changeling noble is kind of a big deal.
Fey like to play around in the mortal world, so a halfblooded noble with just
enough status to be taken seriously and who happens to be at home in the mortal
world is kind of a major factor in their politics. Basically, if he makes it
through the pilgrimage he’ll be perfectly positioned to meddle in their
meddling. So all the fey who showed up were there to ingratiate themselves to
the lad through gifts of varying degrees of usefulness. I had my own gift (a large
silver knife which had been given a minor blessing from the Lord of the Wilds)
but I didn’t really feel comfortable approaching the lad until things had
settled down a bit and the crowd had thinned. Also, I wasn’t sure how much or
even if he’d been told about me so I was a bit nervous about the conversation
that might emerge. After a while I decided to stop being a wuss and went over
to sit next to the birthday boy.
He didn’t seem very impressed. Not that I
can blame him. I’m only a few years older than him, I’m a little on the scrawny
side, and the utility belt and other practical items of clothing I tend to wear
usually just make me look all the more silly. Apparently he hadn’t heard much
about me except that I was on speaking terms with a big time spirit and that I’d
killed a vampire. I pointed out with what he’s going to go through he needs a
nerd way more than he needs a thug, but he seemed unconvinced. I would have kept going, but that was about when I noticed a familiar face staring at Brennen's drink.
There's a handful of human criminals who are clued in to the supernatural world and who tend to get hired by nasties for jobs that they themselves would find difficult. They help set up false identities, launder money, and steal items from locations that warded or otherwise protected against the spooky side. The Agency has a very relaxed policy when it comes to these criminals and has even been known to interfere with normal law enforcement because their presence actually makes it easier for them to track malevolent supernatural activity. It turns out it's easier to track a vampire's human thug than it is to track the vampire itself. Anyway, I guess this thug upgraded to assassin. And he noticed me notice. And he didn't have to take an extra second to explain why no one should eat or drink anything else. If it had just been a matter of speed I would have got him, but that's not how foot chases work. He just had to get out of my line of sight long enough for me to lose the trail.
Oh well. I found his picture in the files after I got home, so the Agency will take care of him at the next opportunity. Thieves, frauds, and money launderers they don't mind, but assassins are another matter. At least I got a little more respect when I got back. When Brennen asked what I actually had to protect him I told him a little of my expertise, I showed him a few of my tools, and I let drop that I had spent the last two nights coming up with a secret weapon. It never hurts to have an ace in the hole.
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