I placed my apple beside my cup and took a long drink of coffee.
“Luke?” I said. “Luke who? What do you know of any Luke?”
“Lucas Raynard,” she said steadily, “who trained a band of mercenaries in the Pecos Wilderness in northern New Mexico, issued them supplies of a special ammunition that will detonate in Amber, and sent them all home with it to await his orders to muster and be transported here-to attempt something your father once tried years ago.”
“Holy shit!” I said.
That would explain a lot – like Luke’s showing up in fatigues back at the Hilton in Santa Fe, with his story about liking to hike around in the Pecos, with that round of peculiar ammunition I’d found in his pocket; and all the other trips he’d been making there-more, actually, than seemed absolutely necessary on his sales route. . . . That angle had never occurred to me, but it made a lot of sense in light of everything I’d since learned.
“Okay,” I acknowledged, “I guess you know Luke Raynard. Mind telling me how you came by this?”
“Yes.”
“Yes?
“Yes, I mind. I’m afraid I’m going to have to play this game your way and trade you information a piece at a time. Now that I think of it, it will probably make me feel more comfortable too. How does that sound to you?”
“Either one of us can call it quits at any time?”
“Which stops the trading, unless we can negotiate it.”
“All right.”
“So you owe me one. You just returned to Amber the other day. Where had you been?”
I sighed and took another bite of the apple. “You’re fishing;” I said finally. “That’s a big question. I’ve been to a lot of places. It all depends on how far back you want to go.”
“Let’s take it from Meg Devlin’s apartment to yesterday,” she said.
I choked on a piece of apple. “Okay, you’ve made the point-you have some damn good sources of information;” I observed. “But it has to be Fiona for that one. You’re in league with her some way, aren’t you?”
“It’s not your turn for a question,” she said. “You haven’t answered mine yet.”
“Okay, Fi and I came back to Amber after I left Meg’s place. The next day Random sent me on a mission, to turn off a machine I’d built called Ghostwheel. I failed in this but I ran into Luke along the way. He actually helped me out of a tight spot. Then, following a misunderstanding with my creation, I used a strange Trump to take both Luke and myself to safety. Luke subsequently imprisoned me in a crystal cave-“
“Aha!” she said.
“I should stop there?”
“No, go on.”
“I was a prisoner for a month or so, though it amounted to only a few days, Amber time. I was released by a couple of fellows working for a lady named Jasra, had an altercation with them and with the lady herself and trumped out to San Francisco, to Flora’s place. There, I revisited an apartment where a murder had occurred-“
“Julia’s place?”
“Yes. In it, I discovered a magical gateway which I was able to force open. I passed through it to a place called the Keep of the Four Worlds. A battle was in progress there, the attackers probably being led by a fellow named Dalt, of some small notoriety hereabouts at one time. Later, I was pursued by a magical whirlwind and called names by a masked wizard. I trumped out and came home yesterday.”
“And that’s everything?”
“In capsule form, yes.”
“Are you leaving out anything?”
“Sure. For instance, there was a Dweller on the threshold of the gateway, but I was able to get by.”
“No, that’s part of the package. Anything else?”
“Mm. Yes, there were two peculiar communications, ending in flowers.”
“Tell me about them.”
So I did.
She shook her head when I’d finished. “You’ve got me there,” she said.
I finished my coffee and the apple. She refilled my cup.
“Now it’s my turn,” I said. “What did you mean by that ‘Aha!’ when I mentioned the crystal cave?”