Lupi 04 - Night Season

what.”
    â€œYou detect nothing else at work?” Ruben asked.
    Cullen shook his head. “Nothing’s tickling my shields.”
    The gnomish woman said something to him. Cullen smiled one of his more charming smiles and thanked her for the advice.
    Things got confusing after that.
    Cynna’s job had taken her all over the U.S. She’d been to Canada once and Mexico twice. Shit, she’d even been to the demon realm. She was an experienced traveler, or thought she was. But nothing could have prepared her for the sheer foreignness of the City.
    Cullen said it reminded him of Cairo. Cynna felt more as if she’d walked onto a huge movie set that inexplicably mixed Star Wars with Camelot and a heavy dash of some old Sherlock Holmes movie. Take the horse-drawn carriage she sat in right now, with Ruben and Cullen. It seemed like something Holmes might have used.
    The street itself was filled with Star Wars extras. She recognized some of the species—the three Ekiba on their ponies, for example. Also the phalanx of brownies giggling their way through the pedestrians and the gnome climbing out of his litter. Others were new to her. Some looked human, but that didn’t tell her much. So did Cullen, but he was lupus.
    The sky might be dark, but the street wasn’t. There were so many mage lights bouncing along or clinging to the buildings that the entire street was brighter than a mall parking lot. This was a broad avenue, paved with stone and crowded with horses, carts, litters, and people. Mostly people. Horses and vehicles kept to the right, though their carriage, like Bilbo’s ahead of them, rode smartly down the middle of the street. Maybe the middle was for government use?
    Most of the streets they passed weren’t broad, paved, or nearly daylight-bright. Some were more like twisty sidewalks, too narrow for any but foot traffic.
    The architecture was Art Deco meets the Arabian Nights. These people liked curves and domes and color; they liked their geometry both crisp and sinuous. There were arches and arabesques and tiles. Lots of tiles, large and small, arranged in intricate patterns, simple stripes, or a single emblem. Some buildings were covered entirely with mosaics. Cynna stared at the black-and-white harlequin design on a three-story structure that was flanked by buildings dressed up in purple, pink, green, and orange.
    Their escort stood out for its sheer lack of color. A troupe of guards on horseback, wearing stiff gray jackets and black leather pants, had met them at the pier. If Cynna had thought that Daniel Weaver, so eager to meet his daughter, would be there, too, she’d been wrong. He was at the Chancellery.
    So was Marilyn Wright, or she would be soon. Ruben had sent Steve Timms ahead with her in the ambulance—a gaily painted wagon that looked more like a gypsy caravan to Cynna than an emergency vehicle, though its four horses had moved off at a good clip.
    Unlike the pair pulling this carriage. They never got above a sedate trot. Neither did the horses pulling the carriage ahead of them, of course, which meant she was free to blame their slow pace on Bilbo. He rode in that carriage with McClosky and Gan.
    Once they finally reached the Chancellery, they’d meet the other councilors but not the chancellor. He was ill, they were told. Cynna wondered if the Council had tossed him in the dungeon for losing the medallion. They probably could. Ruben thought the chancellor’s position was mainly titular—a ten-dollar word that meant he handled ceremonial stuff, but lacked real authority. Kind of like the Queen of England.
    All the varied architecture, body shapes, and other sights might have been easier to process if Cynna hadn’t been dealing with the damned translator charm. The street was noisy. Hawkers cried their wares, riders yelled at pedestrians who didn’t move out of the way, pedestrians yelled back. Everyone was talking to someone, and the charm gave all of it to her at once.
    Bilbo had assured them in his version of English that their brains would learn how to sort the translations they received in such a jumbled stream. But at the moment it was overwhelming, and this damned carriage was too slow. Much too slow.
    Cullen leaned closer and murmured in the ear the translator charm wasn’t using, “You know, your father probably won’t drop dead before we get there.”
    Her head swung so she could scowl at him.