Author: Benedict Jacka
Category: Science
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Tobias pointed down at the landscape. “Too far from the entry point to the target, not enough cover. Easy cross fire.”
“With surprise—” another Keeper said.
“One never wants to depend entirely on surprise,” Landis said. “Drakh has unfortunately proven quite skilled at anticipating attacks in the past. Which regretfully leads me back to my earlier question as to the presence or otherwise of our backup plan. I do hope that we’re not it?”
“Unfortunately, I rather suspect we are.”
Tobias nodded as if he’d been expecting it. “Of course,” another Keeper said. “Wouldn’t be a job for the Order of the Shield otherwise, would it?”
“Why don’t we just blow the place up?” someone asked.
“Because the objective isn’t to destroy the mansion,” I said. “The Council want Richard Drakh, alive if possible. Secondary objective is to recover any strategic intelligence and imbued items within the building.”
“Ambitious.”
“For what it’s worth, I agree with you. However, the Council has decided that our operational objectives are to take the mansion intact.”
“Lovely,” Landis said, rubbing his hands together. “Any chance of backup?”
“After a fashion,” I said. I activated the focus, and a pair of aircraft appeared at head height above the mansion, circling lazily. They were small and sleek, grey coloured with swept-back wings. “The Council has—reluctantly—exercised its influence. A flight of Panavia Tornadoes from the RAF, armed with Paveway guided bombs, will be on station when we launch the attack.”
“Didn’t you say the Council wanted the place intact?” Tobias asked.
“I managed to convince them that the risk of the attack failing was high enough that it was worth preparing a backup plan,” I said. “Needless to say, this option should be considered a last resort. It’ll be a pain in the neck for the Order of the Cloak to cover up, it’ll cause significant collateral damage, and most of all, from the Council’s point of view, it’ll mean we’ll have no idea whether Richard Drakh or any of his cabal are dead.”
“I don’t think we need to bomb the place to know the answer to that,” Tobias commented.
“We have been telegraphing this attack for a pretty long time, yes,” I said. “Still, those are our orders. Any other questions?”
I looked around the room. A couple of the Keepers shook their heads.
“Then let’s get ready,” I said. “We’ll be moving out in a little under one hour. Operation is scheduled to start at ten oh five.”
“Into the bloody breach again,” someone commented.
I smiled slightly. “Let’s hope it’s not as literal this time. Look on the bright side. In a couple of hours, this war might be over.”
“And how exactly—?”
* * *
“Alex?”
I snapped back to the present. Anne was standing next to me, holding a tray. “Would you like some?”
I stared for a second, then shook off the memory. “No. Thanks.” The dessert was something white and creamy. I hadn’t noticed her bring it in.
“. . . women’s healthcare is so bad in this country,” Elizabeth was saying. “I had to wait nearly two hours for an appointment and I didn’t get a proper interview until I saw the doctor. It could have been an emergency and they wouldn’t have known . . .”
“Johnathan?” Anne asked, moving around.
“Oh, I really shouldn’t.”
“Come on, Johnathan,” the mother said with a smile. “You can’t come all this way and not try some. I insist.”
“Well, I’d love to, but . . . I hate to be a bother, but is it chilled? Anything lactose based really sets off my allergies if it’s at room temperature.”
“Oh, that’ll be fine,” the mother said. “Anne will put some in the freezer and check on it every few minutes. Then you can have it once it’s cool.”
I looked at her in disbelief.
Anne caught my eye before I could say anything: she gave a tiny shake of her head and I held my tongue. Anne disappeared into the kitchen.
The rest of the people at the table were ignoring me now. The conversation had switched over to education and which schools were the best, and I wasn’t being included. I was fairly sure it was deliberate, but I had trouble making myself care. My thoughts kept wanting to go back to last October.
The raid on Richard’s mansion hadn’t been a disaster, but it hadn’t been a success either. The Council had “won,” in the sense that they’d been left in possession of a smoking pile of rubble. There had been a handful of prisoners who’d been outside the mansion when the bombs had hit, but as with the raid on the Tiger’s Palace, none had been mages. Richard hadn’t shown himself on the battlefield at all, and most of his forces had withdrawn through gates before the airstrike. I’d taken some flak for calling the strike, but not that much. It hadn’t been clear who was winning or losing prior to the pullback, but if the battle had played out, the Council forces would have taken significant losses. As things were, they’d lost very few.
All the same, the Council hadn’t been happy. They’d been hoping that the strike on Richard’s mansion would end the war, or at least shut down his operations. Instead, Richard had simply set up shop in a new base, and one that was sufficiently well hidden that the Council had yet to track it down. The one plus from my point of view was that I’d gained a few converts among the Light ranks. The news had got out that I’d been the one to insist on having those Tornadoes standing by, and that had raised my popularity a bit. It hadn’t done anything to make the mages of the Council like me any more, but the security forces, and to a lesser degree the Keepers, had noticed. People whose jobs put them on the front lines pay attention to these things.
But regardless of my personal fortunes, in the larger scale, the attack had been a failure. To win the war, the Council needed to kill Richard, or force him to the negotiating table. They hadn’t done it in the three months between the Tiger’s Palace raid and the mansion attack, and they hadn’t done it in the nine months between the mansion attack and now.
“. . . farther away from London would be much cheaper, obviously,” Elizabeth was saying. “But I don’t know . . .”
“Yeah, that means you’d have to live with country people.”
“Yes, not really our sort of company.”
Anne reappeared, carrying a serving of the dessert, and set it down in front of Johnathan. “What temperature is it?” Johnathan asked.
“It’s fairly cold,” Anne said.
Johnathan tested it. “Ah, good.”
“Will that be all right?” the mother asked him.
“Well, we live in hope, as they say! But it does look delicious.”
“Oh, thank you,” the mother said to him with a smile. “Anne, while we’re finishing up, could you do the dishes from the main course? That way the sink will be clear for the dessert plates.”
I couldn’t stay quiet any longer. “Did you send your servants home for the evening?”
The conversation at the table stopped as everyone turned to look at me. “Excuse me?” the mother asked.
I could feel Anne’s eyes on me but I didn’t meet them. “Well, you know.” I kept my voice pleasant. “I was wondering who handles the domestic duties when you don’t have guests over to do it.”
The father looked back and forth and hesitated, obviously wondering if he should be intervening. The daughters and their boyfriends watched warily. “I really don’t appreciate your tone,” the mother said.
“I’m sorry, I must have misunderstood.” I rose to my feet. “Tell you what, since I’m not having dessert anyway, I’ll go help. I’m sure we won’t be too long.”
Without waiting for an answer, I turned and walked out into the hallway. The mother stared after us, but by the time she’d ma
de up her mind about what to say, we were already gone.
* * *
Did you really have to do that? Anne asked.
We were in the kitchen washing up. The running of the tap made enough noise that it would have been hard to eavesdrop, but we weren’t talking out loud; we were using a dreamstone, a focus I own that allows for mind-to-mind conversation. It had other powers too, ones that were considerably more dangerous.
Anne and I had fallen into the habit of using the dreamstone whenever we were alone, and often when we weren’t. Anne’s my Council aide, and we’d spent most days over the past year in and out of the War Rooms or the other Council facilities around London. I have a lot of enemies in all of them, and when you work in a place like that, you learn to be careful about being overheard.
Have to, no, I said. Wanted to, yes.
Anne made a frustrated noise. Dreamstone communication is expressive; you get all the emotions that tone of voice can contain, along with a lot more. You didn’t have to insult them.
I took a plate from Anne to rinse. I didn’t insult them.
You were being rude.
Not half as rude as them. Seriously, chilled desserts? I have literally met Dark mages who treat their slaves more politely.
Anne gave a mental sigh. You know, after I’d been living in the Tiger’s Palace for a couple of weeks, I realised Jagadev was reminding me of her. I suppose that should have been a bad sign.
About Jagadev, or about her?
I’m not sure.
I finished with the plate, stacked it on the drying rack, and took another. What the hell is that woman’s issue? I mean, I know she’s not your mother, but you’re still related, right?
Not closely, Anne said. First cousin once removed . . . I did tell you it was complicated.
That’s one way to put it.
You sound like Vari, Anne said. He always hated her.
So was this how you spent most of your childhood? I asked. Being the live-in maid?
Well, I sort of acted as a nurse some of the time too.
You’re kidding.
Beth had allergies, and Grace had some problems with a skin condition, so they needed someone to stay home.
So you were the nanny to a pair of spoilt teenage girls. How the hell did you put up with this?
It was that or the foster system. I didn’t exactly have much choice.
We washed a few more plates in silence. I’m sorry, Anne said at last. I wanted you to have a good evening. Instead you’re spending it like this.
Trust me, I’d much rather be washing dishes with you than sitting at the table with them.
Anne smiled. I was just thinking about how the Council would react if they could see us.
They’d probably wonder what this strange new magical ritual is that involves plates and a sink full of water.
Anne laughed out loud at that one. We kept working in comfortable silence.
As we worked, I flipped idly through the futures, looking to see if anything caught my eye. It’s rare for me not to use my precognition these days: there are very few places where I feel safe enough to relax, and this wasn’t one of them. A shift drew my attention and I looked more closely. Huh.
What is it?
Your sixty percent chance just came in.
Anne glanced down at the plate in her hands; it was one of the last ones. Do you think we should finish up?
I think between the six of them they can probably survive.
We walked down the hall to the front door. We didn’t try to sneak, and as we passed the dining room the conversation stopped. “Hello?” someone called out.
“Apologies, all,” I called back as I put on my coat. “Something’s come up.”
There was a scrape of chairs from the dining room, and after a moment Johnathan appeared in the doorway. “You’re leaving?”
“Urgent call,” I said. “Sorry.”
The mother had appeared behind Johnathan, along with one or two of the others. “Oh,” she said. “Well, I’m sorry you have to go. Perhaps Anne could—”
I cut her off. “I’m afraid that’s not possible. Anne’s my second-in-command. They need her and so do I.” I paused. “I expect she hasn’t told you, but she’s probably higher placed in the government than anyone you’ve ever met.”
Anne shot me a look, but the expressions on the women’s faces were more than worth it. I opened the door. “What’s so urgent anyway?” Johnathan asked.
I stepped out into the summer night. “Meetings.”
chapter 2
The countryside felt peaceful after the noise of London. We were in Devon, on a hillside in a part of the county that seemed to mostly contain fields, trees, and sheep. The sun had set and the sky was lit only by stars and by the fuzzy yellow glow of towns to the south and east. Up on the hillside was a farmhouse.
I like taking a little while to look over an area before an operation. I don’t mean planning or recon, though I do those too; I mean finding a place with a good vantage point, sitting there, and waiting. No matter how many maps I’ve studied, or how many projections I’ve seen, I never feel happy about going into a place until I’ve watched it for a while.
The farmhouse had peeling white paint, with widely spaced windows and slates missing from the roof, and it looked pretty much identical to any of a thousand other old farmhouses scattered around the British countryside. There was a disused yard and a couple of old barns, but according to our information, what we were interested in was underground. The buildings and landscape were clearer than they should have been: Anne had worked an effect to enhance my low-light vision.
I heard a whisper of movement behind me; it was Vari. “Everyone ready?” I asked.
“We’ve been ready for half an hour,” Variam said. “Are we going in or what? We’re not going to learn anything sitting around staring.”
“Learning about things by sitting around and staring is pretty much what I do.”
“I think you do a bit more than that these days.” Variam walked up beside me. “So it’s a go?”
“Entrance is in the cellar behind a false wall. Lock’s a little tricky but I should be able to handle it.”
“Enemies?”
“Can’t tell,” I said. My path-walking lets me follow the futures, in which I take a certain sequence of actions, discovering who or what I’ll meet on the way. But the lock was tricky enough that following the chain of futures all the way through the ones that’d open it and to what was inside would have been slow. I could have done it with more time, but the benefit was marginal, and there was a small but definite chance that we were on a clock. We’d been working this lead for a while and I didn’t want to waste it.
“Eh,” Variam said. “Anne’ll probably spot anyone.”
“How’s Landis’s op going?”
“He says boring. Bodyguarding Council members is a waste of bloody time. I dunno why they keep putting us on it.”
“Just because Richard hasn’t tried assassinations yet doesn’t mean he won’t, but you’re right, it’s a waste of resources. Landis is too important to be doing that kind of work.”
Landis is Variam’s master, or to be more accurate his ex-master—Variam became a journeyman a little while ago and a full member of the Keepers along with it. Up until a year or so ago, a mage as young as Variam would never have been sent on a combat assignment like this without his ex-master to supervise, but with the war, manpower was tight.
“Well, I doubt we’ll need him,” Variam said. “Aren’t going to be any mages, are there?”
“Just traps and whatever’s left of their experiments,” I said. “Of course, if one of those traps is an alarm and they gate in some reinforcements, things are going to get interesting.”
“That’s why we have you around, right?” Variam said. “I mean, they dec
ide to gate in, you’ll be able to give us what? A whole minute’s warning? Now come on, the boys are getting bored.”
I gave the farmhouse a last look and got to my feet.
* * *
We moved up through the farmyard. I was at the front, my attention split between the house looming up in the present and the branching futures ahead. Vari took the right, his movements quick and sure, his turban making him easy to pick out even in the darkness. To the left was Ilmarin, an air mage I’d worked with a lot over the past year. Anne brought up the rear, a slim presence in the darkness, quiet and watchful.
Behind us were the Council security, a detachment of ten led by Sergeant Little. I’d pulled Little out of a hot spot a few years back and it had turned into a good working relationship. Like his men, he wore body armour and carried a submachine gun; to someone who didn’t know better, he and his squad would have seemed like the dangerous ones. They wouldn’t have been wrong, exactly, but it was the four of us on whom the mission would depend.
The standard Keeper doctrine for combat ops is to send a minimum of six to eight mages, with at least three times as many security personnel. But I’d led a lot of these missions over the past year and a half, and I’d come to prefer the speed and responsiveness of a smaller team. Two elemental mages, one living mage, and one universalist gave us the tools to handle most problems, and if things did go wrong then it’s a lot easier to evacuate fourteen than forty.
“Building is dead,” Anne said quietly into my ear through the communication focus. No telepathy this time; everyone else needed to hear what she had to say. Little’s men were on the same circuit, which was another area in which I ran things differently. Normally Keepers have separate communication bands for Council security and for themselves. “Nothing alive on the ground floor.”
“Basement?” Variam asked.
“Not on the first level. Can’t see farther than that.”
“Move up,” I said.
Little’s men advanced, three moving to the door, two more sweeping around each side. The front door lock was dealt with and the security men entered.