Lupi 09 - Mortal Ties

You don’t mean—”
    “I’m afraid so. Last week, I heard from some flunky in the State Department. Benessarai
     An’Cholai expressed an interest in seeing a demonstration of my prototype. We’re supposed
     to meet on January second.”
    Shit, shit, shit. “Don’t tell me this Beness-whatever is a sidhe lord.”
    “Ben- ESS -er-aye. Accent on the second syllable.”
    “Benessarai,” she repeated impatiently. “Is he a sidhe lord?”
    “He’s certainly sidhe—an elf—but not a lord. Or so the flunky said.”
    “Would he be able to see magic the way you do? Some sidhe do, right? And how did he
     even hear about your prototype?’
    “Excellent questions, and when you find the answers I hope you’ll share them with
     me.”

SEVENTEEN

    T HE addition of the sidhe—any sidhe—to the mix changed things considerably. Lily called
     Ruben with the news on the way to the airport. She put her phone on speaker. No point
     in pretending it was a private conversation. Not with lupi hearing.
    Ruben made an
ah
sound of satisfaction. “There’s a connection,” he said definitely. “I don’t know
     what, but one or more of our visiting sidhe are connected to this theft. Your investigation
     is suddenly more important, Lily, but also a good deal trickier. There are political
     ramifications—you’ll let me worry about those—and the trade delegation has been granted
     temporary diplomatic immunity.”
    Lily grimaced. “So I can’t arrest them even if they are guilty as hell.”
    “The connection might be innocent. I don’t at the moment see how, but that doesn’t
     negate the possibility. For now, focus on finding out who’s involved and why they
     wanted the prototype and let me worry about how to make an arrest, if one is warranted.
     I have a feeling the ‘why’ will prove important. Oh, and ask Mr. Seabourne to please
     keep that appointment. I’d very much like to know whyBenessarai is interested enough in the prototype to fly across the country.”
    Cullen twisted around in his seat—his was sitting up front—and snorted. “So would
     I. The sidhe know how to make
real
artifacts. I’d also like to know how he heard about the prototype in the first place.
     Learning anything will be a real trick, of course, given the way the sidhe are about
     information. They consider secrecy an art form. Literally.” Cullen sighed. “Of course,
     Benessarai may not show up now, especially if he was just wanting a chuckle at the
     barbarian’s crude little device.”
    Lily asked Ruben if he’d heard all that. Assured that he’d caught most of it, she
     said, “I can’t see this elf guy crossing the country just to laugh at your prototype.”
    Cullen shook his head. “Elves are not human. They don’t organize life the way we do—and
     by ‘we’ I mean lupi as well as humans, because we both sort the world into good and
     evil. Elves don’t. On a fundamental level, they just don’t. Their highest value is
dtha
, which roughly translated means knowledge and beauty, which they don’t consider separate
     constructs, but more like two shades of the same color, or two lenses in a pair of
     glasses. Amusement is part of
dtha.
And no, I don’t understand why, but it is, and it matters to them in ways that seem
     frivolous or absurd to us. You know that sidhe lord I met when he came here on walkabout?”
    “You’ve told me about him.”
    “He violated an important ban to come to our realm. He left his land, his people,
     and sundered himself from a vast amount of power—he was a sidhe lord, remember, with
     the land-tie and all that implies. And he did all that because he thought it would
     be amusing.”
    “If elves are so secretive, how did you learn so much from him?”
    “We made a deal. I can’t tell you about what. That’s part of the terms of the deal.”
    Lily thought about that a moment. “And was he amused by his visit?”
    Cullen looked surprised, then grinned. “I asked him that myself. He said he was.”
    Lily glanced at Rule, sitting beside her. He hadn’t said one word since she punched
     in Ruben’s number. He seemed to be listening, but in an abstracted way. “I need to
     know whatever you’ve got about Benessarai and the other delegates,” she told Ruben.
    “I’ll have Ida send you the file. It’s quite slim, unfortunately. We do know that
     none of them are from Rethna’s realm—at least, the realm they claim to represent isn’t
     the one he came from.