Bookworm II: The Very Ugly Duckling (37 page)

Elaine shook her head, angrily. Right now, she didn’t care about Hawthorne, no matter how dangerous he was. She cared about Johan. And Johan seemed to have vanished. Where had he gone?

Her imagination provided too many possibilities, all of them bad. If she hadn’t lost her temper with him, he would have stayed with her. Instead ... Johan had fled her anger, determined never to return; Johan had been killed in the chaos or even committed suicide; Johan had been kidnapped by someone determined to duplicate his powers ... but, in the end, the precise details didn’t matter. She had to find him before matters grew even further out of hand.

“There are too many missing people here,” the Inquisitor reminded her. “I don’t have the manpower to spare for a search.”

Elaine gritted her teeth. She knew he was right. No one apart from Light Spinner and the Inquisitors themselves knew how many Inquisitors there actually were, but the Inquisition had taken a serious blow when Kane had devastated the Golden City. They simply didn’t have the numbers to cope with all of their responsibilities. Right now, the surviving Inquisitors had to track down Hawthorne before he could do something worse, not help her find a missing boy. But the boy was vitally important.

“Thank you,” she said, tartly. It wasn’t fair of her to lash out, but she couldn’t help herself. If she hadn’t been so angry with him ... maybe he would not have run off. As it was, she couldn’t see him anywhere. It wasn’t like Johan
not
to try to help, which meant ...

Her blood ran cold. Johan wanted to prove himself. What was to stop him going after the Dark Wizard himself?

He wouldn’t be that stupid, would he
? Elaine asked herself. The thought was terrifying. An
Inquisitor
would hesitate to go after a Dark Wizard alone, no matter how powerful and skilled he was. Dark Wizards tended to have questionable grips on sanity, which gave them warped powers and a complete lack of scruples. But Johan was brave and determined to prove himself ... and, perhaps, blamed himself for the disaster.

He’s a teenage boy
, she told herself, angrily.
No teenage boy is ever stable
.

She turned back to look at the Inquisitor. “Do you have
any
idea where Hawthorne might be hiding?”

“No,” the Inquisitor said, shortly. “We didn’t even realise he was in the city until the attack began.”

“Thank you,” Elaine said.

She turned and walked rapidly towards the communications office. Crystal balls and other methods of sending messages instantly would cost money – she fumbled in her pocket to make sure that she had enough – but she needed to provide Light Spinner with an urgent report from the city. Post would take at least two days to reach the Golden City. She had the feeling that the Iron Dragons were going to be busy bringing in disaster relief supplies from all over the Empire.

The office was closed, but she saw one staff member cowering behind the desk. It wasn’t a very good job of hiding, she noted, as she drew her wand; she could see him even when he stayed still. Tapping her wand against the door, she unlocked it and stepped inside, then lowered her wand in the hopes that she wouldn’t look
too
threatening. The thought made her smile, ruefully. If there was one thing she
didn’t
look, it was threatening. Very few people were scared of her.

“We’re closed,” a quavering voice said. “Come back tomorrow.”

Elaine had to bite her lip to keep from snickering. “I need to establish a link to the Golden City, now,” she said. She reached into her pocket and produced a handful of gold coins. “This is enough to pay for it, isn’t it?”

The staffer stared at her, nervously. “I ... we’re closed,” he protested. “I ...”

What would Dread do
? Elaine asked herself. The answer was obvious; he would bulldoze his way through any objections until he got what he wanted. But Dread was a trained Inquisitor, with a voice that could compel obedience from even the most hardened of criminals. He’d once told her that it using the right tone was more effective than any charm. But Elaine didn’t quite have the nerve ...

She put the coins on the table. “I would take it as a
personal
favour,” she said, quietly. “Call the remainder of the coins your tip.”

The young man staggered to his feet. “I can’t,” he said. For a moment, Elaine was surprised; a civil servant refusing a bribe?
That
was as unprecedented as Johan’s powers. “The balls have been smashed.”

Elaine blinked in surprise. “Someone has smashed your balls?”

“They shattered, just before the first big explosions began,” the young man said. “I ... I can’t put them back together.”

“No, I suppose you can’t,” Elaine said. She searched her mind for options. “Do you have any inactive spares?”

The young man shook his head. Elaine glared down at the table, cursing under her breath. Crystal balls were fantastically complex pieces of art, each one produced by a trained enchanter; she knew the spells to make them work, but she couldn’t hope to put one together herself, certainly not from destroyed balls. But what had happened to them? Had the first pulse she’d sensed disabled them or had someone managed to work out a spell to take them out? If so ... the results could be disastrous.

Magic communications held the Empire together. Light Spinner would hear, instantly, of a revolt on the other side of the world and be able to take corrective measures. Without magic, it would take months to get word from one side of the Empire to the other. If the network shattered, the Empire would shatter with it. At the very least, it would take years to put the network back together again.

And chaos suits the Witch-King
, she thought. It would make it far harder for Light Spinner and her few allies who knew about the Witch-King to track him down if the Empire was coming apart around them. All of a sudden, she felt torn; she wanted to go after Johan, but at the same time she knew that she had to warn Light Spinner. They needed to put contingency plans in place for dealing with a mass communications breakdown.

“Right,” she said, trying to sound like Dread. The look on the clerk’s face suggested that he was not entirely convinced. “What other options are there?”

The clerk swallowed. “You can hire a horseman to carry dispatches, or you can put them on the Iron Dragon and have them taken to the city ...”

Elaine passed him twenty gold coins. “I am going to write a letter,” she said. “You are going to take it to the Golden City, right to the Palace. I strongly advise you” – she tapped her wand meaningfully – “not to try to
open
the letter. The results would be unpleasant.”

The clerk stared at the money, his eyes going wide. Like the farmer, it was probably more money than he’d ever seen in his life.

“I will,” he said. He coughed. “I mean, I won’t open the letter.”

Elaine smiled. “Good,” she said.

She picked up a piece of paper and an envelope, then scribbled out a quick explanation. Light Spinner – and Dread – could extrapolate the rest, she suspected. The magic pulses she’d sensed might well have reached the Golden City. She sealed the letter, tapped it with her wand to make sure that no one could open it apart from the intended recipient, and passed it to him.

Once he took the letter – and the coins – Elaine strode out of the door. Whatever else happened, she had to track Johan down. The gods alone knew what he thought he was doing.

Chapter Thirty-One

Urgent summons to the Privy Council are becoming more common
, Duncan thought, as he followed the others into the meeting room. One of his predecessors – who hadn’t kept his seat under Light Spinner – had told him that the last Grand Sorcerer had summoned his council as rarely as possible, but then he’d been Grand Sorcerer long enough for everyone to have got into the habit of obedience. Light Spinner was just beginning her reign. Maybe, just maybe, some of her councillors believed that they could wrestle power from her while she was still finding her feet.

Of the twelve councillors, two seemed to be missing. The Head Librarian was away somewhere with Johan – Duncan’s spies had been unable to locate either of them – but Lady Lakeside seemed to have absented herself too. Duncan puzzled over her absence, then looked over at Deferens and knew the answer. Lady Lakeside might not be willing to vote to liberate Jamal and the other terrorists, but if she wasn’t there she couldn’t vote
against
it.

Politics
, Duncan thought, rolling his eyes as he took his seat. But politics had taken his family far and would take it still further, if they kept working away at it. Who knew? Jamal’s child might even have a chance to become Grand Sorcerer.
We need politics to live and rule. That doesn’t mean I have to like it
.

“As of now,” Light Spinner said, without bothering with the formalities, “the murderer of Graham of House Arndell remains unknown. The Inquisitors have followed up every possible lead – they were far from
gentle
– but none of those they interrogated knew who was responsible for the killing. Nor have we been able to identify the magician or magicians who assisted them.”

The table seemed to shiver with indignation. It was fiendishly difficult for a non-magician to escape magicians who were hunting him, at least without magical assistance of his own. The Privy Council would vote to hang the killer, when they caught him, but they would want the magician who had aided him tortured to death slowly and painfully. How
could
he turn against his own kind?

Money, probably
, Duncan thought, ruefully. In his experience, principles only lasted so long; everyone had their price. A few thousand gold coins would tempt a magician to do anything, even kill a fellow magician. Or maybe there had been a grudge against House Arndell that had nothing to do with the young idiot currently locked up in the Watchtower. As far as he knew, the Inquisitors weren’t following up
that
angle of approach. But it wasn’t something he could mention at the table. The gods knew who that would offend.

“So we have a mundane who has killed a magician and got away with it,” Deferens said, into the silence. “I fear that the Levellers are already moving on to the next stage of their campaign.”

“There is no proof that the Levellers were behind the murder,” Light Spinner pointed out, a hint of exasperation clear in her tone. “All of their leaders were interrogated,
thoroughly
. If one of them carried out the murder, they never informed their senior leadership.”

“So we go through them all, one by one,” Deferens said. “And then we send them all off to a penal colony somewhere, if they are no good as slaves.”

Light Spinner’s face was invisible, but Duncan was sure that he detected more than just irritation in the way she carried herself. Lady Lakeside would have argued with Deferens; Light Spinner couldn’t, not without compromising her dignity. And, as perception was almost as important as reality, compromising her dignity would also compromise her position.

“That is not the issue here,” Light Spinner said, finally. “There has been a petition” – she looked at Duncan – “filed for the release of Jamal Conidian and the other terrorists held within the Watchtower. We are, in fact, obliged to try them now.”

“I move to dismiss all charges,” Deferens said, quickly. “Let them be released at once.”

“Seconded,” Lord Ahlstrom said. “We need such young men to maintain our society.”

Light Spinner was unmoving for a long second – probably, Duncan reflected, regretting the absence of magicians who could present the opposing point of view. Lady Lakeside would not have agreed to let them go free without a fight; whatever Deferens had offered her to secure her absence, he decided, had been well worth it. And then there was the missing Head Librarian ... but as long as nine seats were filled, they had a quorum. They could vote ...

“The charges against them are serious,” Lord Falcate said, flatly. He was known for being tough on everyone, including himself. “We should not just release them without some form of ... punishment. Maybe they should be publicly whipped.”

“They are not mundanes,” Duncan said, sharply. Public floggings were common for mundane criminals, particularly the ones not worth the effort of jailing or enslaving, but magicians were spared such indignities. “To have them whipped in public would suggest that we were desperate to prove that we took their crimes seriously.”

“We
do
take their crimes seriously,” Lord Falcate snapped. “They are responsible for the death of nineteen mundanes, vast amounts of pain and suffering and the appearance of a whole new kind of magician. Punishment is clearly indicated.”

“For punishing mundanes who dared to suggest that our society be upended,” Deferens reminded him, smoothly. “Do we really, after the death of young Graham, wish to buy the support of the mob?”

Duncan settled backwards, preparing himself. He suspected that six or seven of the ten Privy Councillors would definitely vote to free them, particularly if he proposed his compromise. The others ... might join them or abstain. Apart from Lord Falcate, there weren’t any others who might vote against. That would leave Light Spinner effectively isolated at the table. If she vetoed their decision, she would face the combined opposition of the entire council.

He tapped the table as the argument grew louder. “I wish to propose a compromise,” he said, softly. “The prisoners come from good families, of decent stock.”

There were nods, although he knew that some of them would definitely consider
his
family to be of lower stock than families who had spent their entire existence in the Golden City. But they would listen long enough to let him make his point.

“Let the families take responsibility for them,” he said. “Whatever else can be said of my son, he has disgraced the family name. I will ensure that he cleans up his behaviour or goes straight back to the Watchtower. The families who wish their sons back can swear an oath to ensure that they no longer commit such crimes.”

“But we may
require
them to commit such crimes,” Deferens pointed out, as planned. “Who knows what the Levellers will do next?”