I F SHE’D DROPPED A HAND GRENADE on the table, with the pin already pulled, she could not have produced a more stunned reaction. They gaped at her.
Prince Jeremy stared in disbelief. “Lady Emily?”
Emily allowed her magic to sparkle lightly, a gust of invisible wind making her hair ripple around her. “You are wasting my time,” she repeated. “You are not negotiating. You are simply repeating your positions, time and time again, and insulting each other. This conference is getting nowhere because you’re both utterly unwilling to compromise.”
She looked directly at the prince, an act that would get her in trouble in some of the more repressive kingdoms. “The days in which the aristocracy held all the power are gone,” she said, flatly. “The common folk have money and weapons and grievances, grievances you needed to address a long time ago. Instead, you dug in and refused to compromise and made it clear that there is no way the commoners can trust you. If you don’t find a way to compromise now, there will be a revolution that will end with your head on a pike – like King Jorlem – or leave you ruling over a city of the dead.”
Prince Jeremy started to splutter. Emily ignored him.
She turned her gaze to Goodman Marco. “You are demanding too much, too fast,” she said. “It will take time to make any sort of change, let alone changes that will make things better without destabilizing the entire kingdom. Your demand for stripping property from the aristocrats, for example, and giving it to the workers will lead to demands for your factories and other businesses to be stripped from you too. Your demand for retroactive justice means it will be impossible to draw a line under the abuses of the past; your demand the aristocracy surrender its power, completely, means they will have to put themselves completely at your mercy. Why would they agree to that?”
Her voice hardened. “I get it. I really do. Why should you wait one moment more for reform, for freedom, for justice? Why should the aristocrats get to keep their vast estates? Why should…”
“My ancestors fought for that land,” Prince Jeremy snapped.
“Really?” Jackson smirked. “We’ll fight you for it.”
“Be quiet!” Emily leaned forward. “You have a choice. You can come to reasonable terms, or you can fight it out until one side wins so completely it can dictate terms to the other. But it won’t end there. War will lead to another war, and then another, with hundreds of thousands dead or driven from their homes…”
She slapped the table. “I have seen war. Men killed, or wounded so badly they were left to die. Women raped and brutalized, children abused or conscripted; villages and towns and entire cities ravaged, then burnt to the ground. You have no conception of the horrors you are about to unleash, if you don’t come to terms. There won’t be a kingdom left if you insist on fighting it out.”
The words hung in the air for a long, cold moment. No one spoke.
Emily stood. “I’ll be leaving now,” she said, directing a look at the messenger at the far side of the chamber. “Have my carriage brought around to the gate, immediately.”
The messenger didn’t even look at his purported master as he hurried out of the room. Emily felt something she didn’t care to look at too closely, a mixture of exultation at exercising raw power and shame for putting the poor man in an terrible position. She had never enjoyed pushing people around, even when they deserved it, and she was all too aware the vast majority of aristocrats would sooner die than be dictated to. But there was no point in prolonging the endless argument. She had to shock them, to bring them to their senses, or resign herself to watching the two sides fight it out.
“I’ll be heading back to Zangaria,” she said, bluntly. “If you are prepared to actually sit down and talk like mature adults, I’ll come back and we can do it. If not…”
She looked directly at the prince. “The risk of starting a war is that you might lose,” she told him. “And if you are defeated, here and now, you will lose everything.”
The prince looked as if he’d bitten into something sour. Emily turned, feeling her magic crackling around her. If the prince was mad enough to draw a concealed weapon and throw it… her back itched as she stepped through the door, the guards jumping back so quickly she suspected they didn’t want to get involved. It was unusual for anyone to call a king and his family out on his behavior, and vanishingly rare for anyone to do it in public. The only people who dared were powerful magicians like Void, Lady Barb… and her . She wondered, suddenly, if Void had felt the same way, all the time.
No wonder he wanted to take over , she thought, grimly. Those idiots are rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic .
She walked down the stairs, silently grateful the conference chamber wasn’t too far into the castle. It would have looked bad if she’d gotten lost, forcing her to ask for directions. She pretended not to notice the servants scattering like mice before an angry cat, too scared of the sorceress or their masters to let themselves be seen. Emily saw a guard flinch as he met her eyes, and she sighed, inwardly. The man was big enough to break her in half, without breaking a sweat, but she had magic and that terrified him. It didn’t help, she reflected, that she didn’t look particularly dangerous. The guard couldn’t quite wrap his head around her.
Her lips twitched as she stepped into the courtyard. The royal coach was already there, the driver’s eyes flickering from her to the gate and back again. The gate was wide open… Emily wondered, suddenly, if the king had issued orders to his men to drop boiling oil, probably mixed with potion, on the coach as it passed through the gate. It wasn’t impossible. He’d have to be crazy, but she’d called him out in front of an audience and people would talk. King Randor would have tried to slap her down, just to make it clear he hadn’t been intimidated… she reached out with her mind, infusing her awareness into the coach’s wards and tightening them. They’d been put together by a professional, but there were limits to how much the wardcrafter could do without linking the wards to a living mind. She extended the wards lightly, making sure to provide some protection for the driver too. Unless the king used Wildfire, something that would risk taking out the castle and much of the city, she should have enough time to bail out if something happened.
The coach rattled into life and drove through the gates. Emily allowed herself a sigh of relief as they passed without incident and turned onto the road, then settled back in her seat and forced herself to think. It would be relatively easy to put together a handful of compromises that would make the kingdom a better place to live and start events moving down a path of gradual reform, but only if both sides agreed to compromise. No aristocrat could accept retroactive justice and no commoner could accept a justice system that penalized commoners for small crimes and let aristocrats get away with great big ones. A handful of relatively minor reforms, given time, would make things a great deal better. If nothing else, ending serfdom would force the landowners to make compromises or watch helplessly as their labor force went elsewhere. It had worked well in Zangaria.
Emily sighed, inwardly. Alassa was not going to be pleased, although she’d admitted it might be too late to prevent a civil war. Too much had happened too fast. The conference had been arranged too quickly, with too little consideration given to how to let both sides talk without the other interrupting them. Emily had tried, but…
Void would have grabbed them by the scruff of their necks and dictated terms to them , Emily thought. She was starting to see the appeal. It would be disastrous, in the long run, but… the temptation was strong. He wouldn’t have been content to let them fight it out if they refused to come to terms .
Her heart twisted. Earth’s history had dozens of examples of people trying to impose settlements by force, or forcing reform so roughly it galvanized reaction. Slow and gradual reform worked better, but… it was frustrating. She could understand why the dissidents wanted everything now , yet… she shook her head, bitterly. There was nothing she could do to prevent the coming war, and bloody slaughter, if both sides refused to come to an agreement. A great many innocent people were about to die.
The carriage rattled again. They were moving down the middle of the road, completely alone… Emily’s eyes narrowed as she sensed something, a moment before the wards screamed . Emily gritted her teeth, staggering under the weight as the wards crumpled, threatening to pop like a soap bubble. If she hadn’t tightened the wards herself, they would have been shattered instantly as a torrent of magic raged through the coach, snuffing out all life as easily as one might step on an ant. She forced herself to stand as the carriage lurched violently, the wheels snapping under the attack and leaving the box crashing to the ground. Emily hoped to hell the driver had had the sense to run – the wards she’d added hadn’t given him anywhere near as much protection – as she pushed her mind into the wards. The raw power was too much to take, at least for her, but she could redirect it… a little. She dared not deflect it. The blast would take down the surrounding buildings, killing most of the inhabitants and leaving the rest wishing they were dead. She shaped a spell and thrust it forward, closing her eyes as the torrent of magic flowed into the spellware. The world seemed to explode with bright light.
Her mind raced as she heard the box cracking behind her, pieces of wood and gold dropping from above and landing on the wooden flooring. A necromancer? There weren’t many magicians who could put out so much magic for so long, and anyone who could would know better. The attack was both incredibly powerful and surprisingly unsubtle, relying on brute force rather than anything less exhausting. Void could have cracked her defenses with far less effort, as could a handful of combat sorcerers. The spell was exactly what a necromancer would do, and yet… it felt wrong.
The rear box exploded. Emily jumped back, splitting her attention between holding the wards and levitating herself into the air, out of the danger zone an instant before the wards finally cracked and the remains of the coach exploded. Emily threw herself into the air, looking around desperately for the source of the attack. The bright light made it hard to see. The air was full of raw magic, crackling so badly she feared for the safety of anyone who stepped into the field. She hoped – prayed – that any innocent bystanders had had the sense to get the hell away, but there was no time to check. There was a magician on the rooftop…
Not this time , Emily thought. A flash of déjà vu ran through her mind. Someone – she’d found out later that it had been Nanette – had rained spells from a rooftop, destroying all hope of peace in Alluvia. Not this time…
She levitated, pushing the flight spell to the limit. It was a risk – someone could easily cancel her spell, sending her plummeting to the ground – but a necromancer might not know how to do it. They tended to have relatively little formal training, not least because someone with the right training would know better than to mess around with necromancy. The raw power wasn’t worth the madness. The figure was a dark shape… Emily blinked hard, clearing her eyes, as the figure drew a wand. A wand…? Emily couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing. The only people who used wands were weak magicians or mundanes, yet the holocaust the would-be assassin had unleashed had been anything but weak.
The figure’s hood fell back, exposing a young woman. She raised her wand…
Emily cancelled the spell she’d intended to use, when she’d thought she was dealing with a necromancer, and cast a sleep spell instead. It was dirty pool, the kind of trick that would make the caster a laughingstock even if it worked – and it rarely did, because a first-year magician could shake the spell off before it took effect. The figure dropped like a stone, the wand hitting the rooftop, rolling over the edge and falling to the street below. Emily dropped to the rooftop herself, readying a fireball while kneeling beside the girl and checking her pulse. She wasn’t faking. She was asleep.
Odd , Emily thought. The girl was clearly no necromancer. She had considerable magical potential… and yet she’d used a wand. Why…?
She studied the girl thoughtfully. She had long red hair, a cute face with freckles and a scar that looked several years old, and she wore an outfit that made her look like a shop girl… loose, but not loose enough to disguise her thinness. She looked harmless, which was meaningless when magic was involved. And that meant… what?
A hatch opened. A trio of guardsmen clambered onto the roof. Emily quietly admired their nerve. They might not have realized the fight was already over…
“My Lady, we’ll take her to the cells,” the leader said. “I… can you do something about the magic down there?”
“I can try,” Emily said. She could feel the magic below, pulsing dangerously. “Take very good care of her.”
She turned to study the handful of devices on the rooftop. A wand of sorts, she thought. It looked like a piece of charred wood removed from a fireplace. A twisted piece of metal, tainted with magic… a battery, perhaps. It might have been a ring, anchoring a pocket dimension, before the power was channeled through the valve… she frowned as she realized there didn’t seem to be a valve. Was it dust? Or had the power been directed through the burnt-out wand instead? It wasn't impossible – Adam and Lilith had found quite a few ways to channel magic – but she’d hoped that fact would’ve remained secret for much longer. The other devices were so badly damaged it was impossible to tell what they’d been…
Lady Barb’s warning echoed through her head. “Emily, if this works, you’ll have made necromancy practical.”
Emily shuddered and levitated herself to the ground, then peered at the haze of magic. It was strong enough to be dangerous. Flickers of light came and went, darting through the air seemingly at random. A person who walked through might not be quite the same afterwards… if he survived at all. She wished she’d thought to bring a magiwriter, but… gritting her teeth, she shaped a pair of spells and cast them into the haze. Bright lights stabbed into the air, laser beams that absorbed and redirected the raw magic before it had time to turn the entire road into a nightmare. She shivered, remembering the first time she’d visited the White City after the nexus point had come back to life. Even then, the city had been incredibly dangerous, a nightmare that made Chernobyl look harmless. A visitor could walk down the wrong street and find himself in a whole other world. Or worse. Some had been so badly warped by the magic that they’d had to be put out of their misery.
She forced herself to stand and watch as the magic drained, her mind elsewhere. Someone had tried to kill her… someone who wanted to start the civil war? Or someone who knew what she’d been sent to do? The sheer power thrown at her was staggering, fully equal to a necromancer’s spells… her heart twisted, bitterly. Lady Barb had warned her… perhaps she should have listened. But without the batteries, the war wouldn’t have been won.
That girl knows the answers , Emily thought, grimly. She wasn’t a necromancer – and she certainly wasn’t a trained magician. The fact she’d carried a wand… her mind spun in circles, trying to understand. Did she not care about the dangers? Or did she not know they existed? Or… She could be the key to finding the person behind all this…
She turned as she heard footsteps behind her. A messenger stood there, his face pale. “My Lady, His Highness wishes me to inform you that you did well,” he said, his voice quivering slightly. Messengers tended to be nervous when bringing bad news, if only because they feared they would be blamed for it. It wasn’t uncommon, amongst the aristocracy. “He also wishes me to inform you that the prisoner will be interrogated and…”
Emily shuddered. The prince was a sadist. She had no doubt of it, if only from the way the servants acted around him. A spoilt brat who could get away with anything he wished… she scowled, so darkly the messenger stepped back a pace. She wouldn’t give a two-dollar bill for the girl’s survival, if the prince got his hands on her. And that meant there might be no answers.
“Take me to her,” she ordered.
The messenger blinked. “My Lady?”
“You heard me,” Emily said. “Take me to her.”
The messenger hesitated, caught between two people far more powerful than himself, then bowed. “Yes, My Lady.”