Free Doc Sidhe by Aaron Allston Page B

spreading from chests, heads, limbs. One of them was burned black in places. The last of them, whose head lay four yards from the rest of him, was worst. Harris felt his stomach lurch. He returned to the safe haven of the television corner, restored the sofa to its wall position, and sprawled on it.
    Noriko sat on the sofa opposite, serenely cleaning her blade with a cloth. Her expression was as calm as if she were a statue made of jade. Her weapon—she must have gone straight for it after Gabriela's warning—was a little like the Japanese swords he'd once seen, but much straighter; the sheath lay beside her on the sofa. The sword went from blood-smeared to silvery clean in a couple of minutes, and Harris could see the care Noriko took not to touch its blade. Then she returned it to its sheath and gave him a calm stare. He looked away.
    "You did very well," she said.
    "I want to throw up."
    "Reasonable." She gestured at a small door in the corner. "That is the water closet."
    But he didn't really feel the need, not quite yet.
    * * *
    Doc and Alastair came clattering in from the hallway. The doctor walked over to Harris and Noriko: "The room just downstairs, where they launched that device, is all clear. Smoke all over the room from the rocket. They sapped Leith in the elevator, but he'll recover."
    "The thing that came through the floor was a rocket?" Harris asked.
    "I fear so." Alastair looked disturbed. "Not an explosive one. But then, these floors have wards to protect us against explosive attacks from outside. They must have known that."
    Doc knelt beside the spike in the floor, studying it without touching it, then moved off a few feet to examine what looked like streaks of black paint on the floor. He gave a whistle that sounded appreciative to Harris. "Very clever," he said. "Alastair, look at this."
    The moon-faced doctor wandered over. Doc continued, "This projectile shoots paint out in all directions, very precisely. The paint is so carefully oriented that it forms a continuous circle."
    Alastair looked up at him, startled. "A conjuring circle."
    "Yes. See here, a few shunts sprayed other patches of paint in recognizable patterns. The required symbols of transference."
    Alastair looked at the symbols, and Harris did, too. They appeared to be smeared blobs on the wood, meaningless paint-squiggles. Alastair said, "They're very sloppy, but correct in form. But you have all four floors warded against devisements of transference like that . . . "
    Doc nodded, smiling, encouraging him to continue, and Alastair got it. "But they fired the projectile through the wards , got past them physically. I understand. Damned clever."
    Doc's smile turned grim. "Which means all my wards are effectively useless. I wonder if they can adapt this device for longer-range attacks. Get through any set of wards. I'll have to prepare some new types. All of this means that whoever they are—I assume the Changeling—have a deviser working with them."
    "Hey," said Harris. They all looked at him. "Don't you think it's about time you called the police?"
    "The . . . police," Alastair echoed.
    "You know. Whoever you call when people break into your house, try to kill you, and get killed. They come, they arrest people, there are trials . . . Police."
    Doc nodded and stood. "I have a commission with the Novimagos Guard by special order of the King. By extension, so do my associates. So in a sense, we are the . . . police. Proper forms are being observed."
    "That makes me feel so much better."
    "Everyone, change for the street. Alastair, get Harris some appropriate clothes. We need to find the place where Harris arrived."
     
    Alastair took Harris up two floors by back stairways to a small, bare bedroom. The room was dusty and had a fan mounted on a swivel bracket on the wall. The anonymity of the furnishings gave the place the feel of a hotel room. However, its closet was stuffed full of men's and women's garments in various sizes, and in a few