City Of Swords

They were soaked by the time they reached the cluster of centuries-old buildings at the edge of the Rhône. It looked as if the walls of the medieval structures might tumble down the bank and spill into the river. The grandest, the Palais des Papes, was considered one of the most important Gothic buildings in Europe. Annja had been through it twice in the past.

They shook themselves off just inside the entrance.

“The palace of popes, eh?” Rembert mused. “And the place of dog-men. Hope our fellow has been nice and dry in here.”

Annja cocked her head.

“You never had a dog, did you?” he pressed.

Annja had been raised in an orphanage in New Orleans. There was a resident cat, but she’d never caught more than a glimpse of it—the thing always fled from the children. Her life had been too crowded for pets, and now she traveled so much. She envied people who had such companionship. “No. No dogs.”

“Well, they stink to high heaven when they get wet.”

“I like you better when you smile.”

“That doesn’t mean I think this interview is a good idea.” Rembert brushed the water drops off his camera, then dug a dry handkerchief out of his pocket to wipe it. “So, what’s with this place? Enlighten me a little. Only got an outside shot of it two days ago for color on the city.”

“Gascon Bertrand de Goth—Pope Clement V—moved the papacy here after his election in 1305. This building went up after his death. Terribly expensive...”

“You’d think religious people would spend the money on the poor. It’d be the religious thing to do, wouldn’t it?” Rembert panned the camera around the interior and then got a shot of Annja with her wet hair plastered against the sides of her face.

“This was fortified to withstand attacks, expanded over the years, the wings flanked with high towers. Adjoining buildings were added to enclose the courtyard.”

“Beautiful, but excessive,” Rembert said.

Despite the archaeological significance of the place, Annja agreed with him. A dozen tourists wandered in the cloister, and they looked so tiny under the high, arched ceiling. Like ants. No doubt the rain was keeping the bulk of the tourists away. She tried to imagine what the place had looked like when the popes walked these chambers, before it had been seized and sacked. Before it became the setting for a massacre of revolutionaries in the late 1700s and was turned into a barracks and prison. Frescoes had been obliterated, the interior woodwork used to build stables. But in the early 1900s, when it became a museum, restoration began, and the renovation work still continued all these years later.

The place carried the smell of old stone and cleaning products, and through the open front door came the smell of the wet city and the Rhône. Rembert focused his camera on the tourists.

“So what’s our dog-man look like? A Great Dane? Boxer? A bitzer?”

“Bitzer?”

“Ah, that’s right, no dogs. A bitzer...bits of this and bits of that. A mutt.”

Annja studied the tourists. “No idea. Doug’s note said Gaston would find us. We just have to be visible and wait for him.”

“Wait. That’s great.” Rembert edged farther in, dribbling water on the stone. Annja followed him, looking down corridors that led to other wings. “So we wait. How long? Let’s give him an hour, tops. Would maybe still give us time to catch that plane, and—”

“Mrs. Creed?”

Annja and Rembert whirled around to face a wiry youth standing just past the entrance, squinting against the rain. His oversize pants and jacket made him look small.

“Miss. Miss Creed.” Annja stepped closer. Rembert began filming. “Are you Gaston?” For some reason she had expected someone older.

“Gaston? No. Not me.” The rest of his words were in French. “My brother’s name is Gaston.” He twisted the ball of his foot against the stone. “I am to bring you to him.”

“This isn’t the guy,” Annja whispered to Rembert. “This is his brother.”

The air hissed out between her cameraman’s teeth. He looked at his watch.

“We don’t have time for a scavenger hunt. Gaston was supposed to meet us here. That was the message, right, Annja? That was the deal. We—”

“He doesn’t like to be seen in public, Miss Creed,” the kid interrupted, still speaking French. “He’s only doing this because of the money. You promised money for the interview.”

Rembert recognized the word for money.

“We’re paying for an interview, Annja?”

It happened sometimes. She nodded and said in English, “According to Doug, we’re paying this guy.”

“This just gets better and better.”

Annja almost called it quits, between Rembert’s attitude and the fact that Gaston wasn’t here. But her gut told her to pursue it. “Is he close, your brother? Nearby?” She repeated the questions in French.

The kid nodded. “Under the bridge. Away from the rain and people. He hides there and...you will pay him to talk to you, right? He said he would only talk for money.”

“He talks, and then I make arrangements to pay him. I didn’t bring the money with me.” Annja had not wanted to set herself up for a mugging. “I’m not carrying cash.” She pulled her pants pockets inside out to show him they were empty. “The money is at the hotel. He talks to me, you come back with me to the hotel and get it. I promise to pay.”

The nod became vigorous. “All right. That is all right, I guess. You come now, and then you give me money.”

He turned and tromped out into the rain, Annja and a reluctant Rembert following.

“Wait!” Annja called. “What’s your name?”

Without stopping, the boy replied “Jacques” over his shoulder.

“It’ll be a bitzer, that’s for sure,” Rembert grumbled.

The bank was slick, but Annja navigated it. Her cameraman was not as sure-footed and slid halfway down on the seat of his pants, cradling his camera to his chest and cursing when he bumped across rocks. The city above was clean, but the riverbank was another matter. Plastic foam cups, crushed cigarette packs and other assorted garbage pooled in low spots. The stink of refuse and sodden earth was strong.

“Let’s wrap this up,” Annja said, extending a hand to Rembert.

“I second and third that.” He checked over his camera and wiped at the water again, a futile gesture, as it was raining harder. “Doug’s bad idea is getting worse and worse and worse.”

“Miss Creed.” Jacques slogged forward, pointing to a recess under the bridge. “My brother waits there.”

“Now I have a bad feeling about this,” Annja whispered. The whole thing hadn’t felt quite right, not since she’d read the note from Doug about this interview. Actually, not since she’d set foot in Avignon... But she needed to pursue this. Something niggled at the back of her mind. “Gaston?” She raised her voice to be heard over the running river, the drumming of the rain and the slapping of Jacques’s footsteps ahead of them.

A figure emerged from the shadows. He had a build similar to Jacques’s, but she couldn’t make out any details other than that he looked bedraggled and rumpled.

“I am Gaston.” He spoke English, but his accent was thick.

Annja paused, but Rembert, camera to his face, crunched forward over broken glass and gravel. His backside looked like a mud slick.

“She said she would pay us,” Jacques announced. “Miss Creed has money and—”

“So you’re a cynocephalus?” Rembert asked. He paused and stood directly in front of the man, blocking Annja’s view of him. “One of the dog-men of France? You look pretty human to me. In fact...hey, what are you—”

It happened fast. The two grabbed Rembert and spun him around, the taller putting a knife to his throat, the other producing a blade and holding it to his stomach. Rembert dropped the camera, his arms flailing, but stopped moving when the one named Gaston drew blood.

“Stay still,” Gaston said. “If you want to live.”

Annja had been reaching for the sword with her mind, had felt the sensation of the pommel forming against her palm, but didn’t take it. The blade hung in the otherwhere, waiting.

“I told Jacques the money’s at the hotel.” She peered through the driving rain, eyes locking onto Rembert’s panicked stare. “I’ve only got a few euros with me. You can have them, but—”

“We don’t want your money, Annja Creed. We want your sword.”

The accent. It wasn’t French. Close, but there was a difference.

Gaston nudged Rembert farther out from under the bridge.

“You.” Annja recognized Gaston. He was one of the gang she’d fought in Paris, outside the train station. He was one of the Romanies who’d fled before the police arrived.

What was he doing here?

Had Gaston overheard her talking to Roux, telling him she was coming to this city for another episode of Chasing History’s Monsters?

“The sword! If you hand over the sword, Annja Creed, we’ll let your friend live.”

Chapter 9

“Annja!” Rembert’s face was pale. “What do they want? Money? I’ve got euros. Give them our money!”

Although Rembert didn’t know much French beyond asking where the nearest restaurant and bathroom were—and though he was oblivious to what the pair were really after—he recognized their intent. Annja saw his lower lip quiver. He had broken out in a sweat. He clumsily tried to reach into his pockets, maybe to pull out a wallet, but the Romanies snarled and poked him with their knives. Rembert stood still. Her photographer was not a physically weak man, but neither was he a stupid one.

“The sword, American archaeologist!” the taller of the two shouted. He pressed the knife harder against Rembert’s skin, which was white around the tip of the blade, with a splotch of red showing. “It was not in your hotel room. At either hotel. Where is it? Where is the old sword?”

“I don’t have a sword,” she snapped. Only the two of them, right? Not much of a threat... No threat at all, if Rembert wasn’t in the equation. “Do you see a sword?”

There could be more, hiding behind the embankment or up on the bridge, maybe behind her. She couldn’t hear any other people talking, no crunch of shoes over the gravel and glass at the edge of the river. She wasn’t going to risk a glance over her shoulder—not yet.

Her mind raced. They’d followed her from Paris.... Was it possible that night outside the old train station, when she’d been looking for a fight to ease her soul, they’d actually been looking for her? Her, specifically? That they were the ones doing the stalking? Had they known about her sword before the street fight? Was that possible?

Annja had always tried to be circumspect when she called the sword. She’d never been caught on tape wielding it. She would know if that had been the case; she had contacts all over the world who followed her interests on the internet and who would have notified her. If nothing else, Roux would have said something.

“The sword! Hand it over! Hurry!”

“I’ve got no sword here. No gun. No knife. You can see I have no weapon.” She paused. “But I have money. Euros. We were going to pay for an interview. We’ve got money for that. We can go back to the hotel, all of us, Gaston, and—”

He laughed. “A ruse to get you here. Dog-men.” He spat.

“Look, whoever you are—” She stopped when she heard the cry of some large bird passing low over the river, followed by the noise of a siren, which quickly receded. What sounded like a boat behind her on the river... She doubted anyone on board could see into the shadows under the bridge, but maybe she could do something to get their attention.

“We don’t want your money, American.” The tall one spat again, as if the notion of cash left a bad taste in his mouth, and drew the knife down Rembert’s throat. The pressure was enough to produce a line of blood, but not enough to cause the photographer serious harm.

“Annja!” Rembert howled. “Give them what they want.”

“I do not think you worry about your friend, American archaeologist. I do not think you consider us serious. I can promise you, we are serious. We will kill if we have to.”

His companion laughed and jabbed Rembert in the stomach, again enough to draw blood. “She should take us serious, eh, Dimitru?”

The tall one scowled.

So she had one piece of information, a name: Dimitru. Definitely Romany.

“Dimitru!” Annja had the thug’s complete attention. “You say you want a sword. I could—”

“No. Not a sword. Your sword. The one you flashed in Paris, that night so late. Before the police came and took my brothers.”

“I’ll have to go get it for you.” She extended her arms to her sides and opened her hands as wide as her fingers would stretch. “I’m not carrying a sword.” She turned slowly, taking a deep breath, glad for the opportunity to look behind her. She saw the ship, a barge. Not yet close enough. It didn’t look as if anyone was on deck. She hadn’t heard anyone come up behind her. Other than the threats of the Romanies, she’d heard only the sounds of traffic across the bridge and past the embankment. Finished her circle, she faced the Romany again. They’d pulled Rembert a little deeper into the shadows under the bridge. “It won’t take me long.”

“You think me simple,” the tall one hissed. “You have the sword, Annja Creed. You have it with you. Maybe it is invisible. Maybe it is a ghost thing. But I know you have it.”

“We are done talking to her, right, Dimitru?” The other guy poked Rembert again. “A boat is coming. Someone might see us.”

“They see nothing,” Dimitru said softly. “This rain.”

“Annja,” Rembert pleaded. “What do they want? We can give them money, can’t we? My camera...I dropped it there. They can have that. Annja, tell them they can—”

“We do not want your money,” Dimitru said in English. “We want the woman’s sword. I am done with this.”

“Stop!” Annja cried. “Leave him alone. Let Rembert out of here, let him leave, and you can have the sword. Let—”

“Rembert is our insurance, Annja Creed. Is the sword worth more than his life?”

“Of course not.” She nodded. “Let him go.”

“The ghostly sword for the photographer, then,” Dimitru said. “Now. Make it appear now. Like before.”

Annja felt the pommel touch her palm, and she wrapped her fingers around it.

“What the hell?” Rembert said.

“This what you want?” she asked.

“Drop it and back away,” Dimitru ordered her.

Annja set it gently at her feet in the scrubby weeds and the remains of someone’s fast-food dinner that had been tossed off the bridge. From the Romanies’ vantage point, they wouldn’t be able to see the sword. Annja stepped back and sent it into the otherwhere. Dimitru’s expression didn’t change.

“Let him go. Rembert is not a part of this,” she said. “There’s the sword. We had a bargain.”

Dimitru hurled Rembert behind him, and the shorter Romany kicked the photographer in the back of the legs, dropping him to the gravel. At the same time, Dimitru shot toward Annja, knife slashing to keep her at bay.

“Get back!” he hollered to her. “Get back and no one has to be hurt!”

A dozen steps and he was at the spot where she’d dropped the sword.

“Trick!” he screamed. “Where is it? Petre...she tricked us. Kill the man! Kill him—” The Romany’s voice caught in his throat.

Chapter 10

Instantly, the sword was in Annja’s hands again and she was bringing it around, aiming to strike him in the arm with the flat of the blade. She’d hadn’t meant her blow to be a killing one, but she’d put all her strength behind it, and Dimitru somehow turned into it and rushed her in a crouch. She tried to pull her swing in that last second, but he was too fast and caught himself across the throat. At the same time he managed to stab her in the thigh, but his knife didn’t sink deep.

The knife wound hurt, but worse was the sting of death she thought she could have avoided. Dwell on that later, Annja told herself. She kept hold of the sword with her left hand, and with her right tugged out the knife and dropped it next to the body.

Annja stepped around Dimitru and headed toward the other man. Petre. The wiry Romany emitted a high-pitched wail. He’d been bending over Rembert, one hand grasping the back of his head, the other readying to slice his throat. But at the sight of Annja advancing on him, he bolted, angling up the steep, slick embankment.

The photographer stayed down, wrapping his arms over his head.

Annja glanced at him as she charged after the Romany, dismissing the sword and pumping her fists to speed her feet. Rembert didn’t appear to be badly hurt.

And she desperately needed to find out why they wanted her sword. How they knew about it.

She followed the youth up the bank, sliding once and hitting a chunk of concrete that sent daggers of pain into her knees, almost as bad as the knife wound in her leg. She picked herself up, catching sight of him cresting the top and sprinting into traffic.

Horns blared, tires squealed and someone rolled down his window to spew a stream of curses. Annja dodged the cars, taking only a little more care than her quarry had, which cost her precious seconds.

The rain made the city a blend of blue-grays that caused the buildings and people to look almost surreal—a muted watercolor painting dripping all around her. The storm had increased in intensity in the minutes since she and Rembert had slipped down the bank for the ill-fated interview. Fat drops hammered the pavement and splashed back up like ricocheting bullets.

Her quarry was easy to make out from the other pedestrians braving the weather. None of them were running and pushing people out of their way, and nearly all of them had umbrellas or hats. She was about a block and a half behind him, gaining a little.

“Hé! Que faites-vous?” a pedestrian shouted at her as she nearly tipped him over.

“Sorry,” Annja called over her shoulder.

“Qu’est-ce que tu fous là, toi?” This from a young man not quite as polite as the first.

She tromped through a puddle, sending a spray of water at a stooped woman with a large blue umbrella.

“Appellez la police!” the offended woman hollered. “Appellez les flics! Elle m’a poussé, c’te vache!”

Annja grimaced. She hadn’t pushed the woman. No doubt the police would be arriving soon, anyway, especially if Rembert had called. Lord, what would he tell the cops? Would he mention her sword?

The buildings she thundered past were dirty from age and darkened by the storm. Everything seemed ancient compared to her neighborhood in Brooklyn. Signs on the sidewalk were a blur of colors; she was going too fast to read them.

She lost sight of him when he rounded a corner. When she skidded around it after him, the Palais des Papes loomed into view, the place where she and Rembert had first met “Jacques.” There! She snarled when she spotted him dash through the entrance. It was a beautiful building, holy in its original intent, and she disliked the notion of the Romany punk hurtling through it.

Petre, that was what the other man called him.

“Petre!” she shouted. “Stop, Petre!” The sirens were growing louder. If Rembert hadn’t summoned the police, someone on the sidewalk had. “Stop, Petre! I only want to talk!”

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