“Oh, merciful gods. You don’t have rampaging angels with swords stalking about the place.” Gabe let out a breath from the doorway of Schola’s salle. He hadn’t realised how much metaphysical aggravation he’d been carrying around. Two of the three men seated in the salle snorted. Isembard looked baffled for a moment, before settling back into a complicated exhaustion.
Gabe made his proper bow then, waiting for permission to enter the salle. “May I have the freedom of the salle, Professor Fortier?” Isobel, just behind him and to his right, made the same request, half a beat later.
“Come in, make free, both of you.” Isembard said, with a wave. He stood from where he’d been sitting on the bench along the wall, pressing his palm against the whitewashed plaster behind him. Gabe felt the wards close up behind him, smoothly and securely. “My office, shall we? I have the makings for tea.”
Gabe gave a slight salute, then encouraged Isobel over as the other two men stood as well. “Gentlemen, my apprentice, Isobel Thomas. Isobel, Professor Fortier, of course, you know.” She’d had him as a student, though only for general physical skills, not his particular magical speciality. “Alexander Landry of the Council, and Lord Geoffrey Carillon, who holds Ytene. Sorry we’re late. I lost track of time this afternoon. Isobel had to roust me out twice.”
She made the proper bow and murmur, and Gabe was pleased that the formal manners were coming easier to her. She hadn’t grown up with them, and they could be baffling, as Rathna complained on the regular, still. And better yet, she wasn’t cowed. These were impressive people, in a number of ways, but they were also particular allies.
Isembard Fortier was Professor of Protective magics, and Schola’s champion in many ways. He was as attuned to Schola’s magic as Gabe was to Kent, or Geoffrey was to the New Forest. His wife Thesan, the Astronomy professor, was also a particularly good friend of Rathna’s.
Geoffrey himself looked surprisingly at home in the salle, for all he swore he didn’t duel. Alexander’s comfort with the space was much more to be expected. He’d taught here for two years, as well as having trained Isembard himself. Gabe duelled both Isembard and Alexander fairly regularly, when their schedules permitted, to keep his own skills as strong as possible.
They’d agreed to meet here because it was term time, and Isembard couldn’t get free and away for long. But Gabe had also, in the few days since they’d arranged this, wanted desperately to know if a particularly attention-demanding bit of magical work had stretched this far.
A handful of minutes later found them settled in Isembard’s office, supplied with decent tea. The office was also, thankfully, warmer, with a fire in the fireplace. It had been a bitterly cold January, the worst on record, and February wasn’t looking much better. “Explain yourself, Gabe, would you?”
Isembard might look at ease, but he had always reminded Gabe of one of the great cats. He’d had a chance to see tigers in the wild on their last two visits to Rathna’s extended family. There was something about the lazy energy of a tiger sure of its next meal in Isembard. He was getting up into his fifties, and Geoffrey half a decade older, with Alexander grizzled and nearly seventy but still active, but all of them wore it comfortably. Age had made them efficient, not less effective.
“The latest round of the Society of Inner Light has the membership working with a particular visualisation.” Gabe flipped through the notebook he’d set aside for this project and read out loud. “I quote: ‘Let us meditate on angelic Presences, red-robed and armed, patrolling the length and breadth of our land. Visualise a map of Great Britain, and picture these great Presences moving as a vast shadowy form along the coasts, and backwards and forwards from north to south and east to west, keeping watch and ward so that nothing alien can move unobserved.’”
“Oof.” Isembard suddenly looked very tired, and Gabe was sure, all in a moment, he was dealing with some other complexity.
Beside Gabe, Isobel shifted a little in her chair, making her own notes with the little scratches of her fountain pen. She was here to observe and see what she picked up. Gabe had encouraged her to ask questions if she had them, but she tended to keep quiet when she was unsure of her footing. He couldn’t argue with it as a working rule, and so he didn’t fuss her about it, beyond making sure his debriefing after was always thorough.
“No. Nothing like that here. I haven’t felt the brush of anything of the kind.” Isembard let out a long breath, as if he’d been consulting with some local deeper magic.
“I’ve got a contact in the Hebrides. I suspect, though, they’ll say they feel it.” Gabe offered that easily enough.
“And Schola isn’t, because no one without magic remembers we are here.” Alexander gestured broadly. “I think you’re right, but the confirmation would be very helpful. It also has implications for the protections.”
“Mason’s got someone in the Orkneys, too. And we should check the Isle of Man, and ...”
“Making a note, sir.” Isobel piped up beside him. “Channel Islands, Hebrides, Lundy Island, Isle of Man, Orkneys, Isles of Scilly, Shetlands, Isle of Wight. And Ireland, too. Might as well find out what they know.”
Gabe snorted. Their brains worked in rather different ways, but he’d noticed she’d run them down in alphabetical order, as the Penelopes held them. “Just so. Pass it along to Witt and Doyle, would you, while we talk?”
“Sir.” Isobel subsided into the notes for a moment. She wouldn’t need to write more than a few sentences. Witt was expecting something of the kind. And she had the proper diplomatic connections to Ireland, which was neither under the Pact nor part of Albion, whatever the non-magical politics looked like.
“Isembard, is there some other issue here?” Gabe wasn’t sure he was the person to press this point.
“Not the way you mean.” Isembard ran a hand over his face. “We found out last night that one of our recent students had been killed. It’s not public. He - well. Thesan’s taking it hard, and so am I.”
Geoffrey, interestingly, added a comment. “In Germany.” That meant Intelligence work of some sort, then.
Gabe cleared his throat. “His memory a blessing.” He’d picked the custom up from Rathna long ago, and it often seemed the kindest thing he could say. Alexander, he knew, had customs about the name living on mattering, and the memory. “And may the memory touch you kindly.” That bit extra, because he could not have carried that particular weight with anything like that amount of grace.
Isembard nodded once, not curtly, but closing the conversation off. “I’ll pass it along to Thesan.” Then he swept back into business. “Nothing like that here, but I’m quite sure the Lady of Schola wouldn’t have that sort of incongruence. Is that the word I want?”
Alexander nodded. “It’s a different mode than we use, in half a dozen ways. I could write a paper, had I world enough and time.” Certainly, people in Albion held with angels, in their various forms. But it was not a mode anyone well-trained would pick as a visual for the entire country. Too many people had practices where angels played no part. And more than a few knew enough of their history to remember how chaotic Edward Kelley had been for the magic of Albion. And for England, for that matter, though that got less space in the history books.
It had been one of the key case studies of Gabe’s training, actually. He’d spent weeks exploring how to unpick the garbled ritual magics that had gone into Kelley’s attempts and frauds and counterfeits. Gabe nodded. “We’ve noticed odd spots around places. Mostly but not entirely London. A couple of things near the usual sorts of stone circles, people attempting rituals or wardings, but they’ve mostly faded out quickly. The Tower of London, where people think the White Hill is, and Bran’s head. The ones that haven’t, they’re small and private homes or gardens.” Gabe shrugged. That was not a particular worry for his work.
“That brings me to the other question. How much does this angel nonsense interfere with the Pact, Alexander?” Part of that agreement, a key part of it, had to do with humans agreeing to avoid messing with matters of the Fatae. This was perilously close to that line, depending on the nuances of reading fifteenth century legal Latin and its various glosses.
Alexander was the one to look tired now. “We have no particular signs of a direct problem, but a number of issues to keep an eye on. I’m off to Yorkshire when we’re done here. Matters are unsettled. That’s the only way I can put it.”
Geoffrey had been rather quiet. “I’ve noticed that effect in the New Forest. It’s too much in winter still for most of the more obvious signs to be visible. And there’s some pulse of something, down near the southeast. Or more there than anywhere else. Highcliffe, Christchurch. Non-magical, not of Albion, at least. You might go visit, Gabe, and see what you think.” Geoffrey held the land magic for the north of the New Forest, in the ordinary way, but he’d also taken on the duties of regent for the southern half. It was a lot for one man to pay attention to. And Geoffrey’s own Heir, his eldest son Edmund, was still at school.
“Any additional info you can get me?” Gabe wasn’t sure how far he could press here.
“I’ve heard rumours of several groups. Not the expected place for them. I’d have thought London, too. And yet, this predates the war, some of it. Some Rosicrucians, one of the Golden Dawn offshoots, something about an esoteric theatre. Mostly middle-class, that lot, with time to spare before the war, but Rufus has heard of a more mixed group. He’d be willing to see if they’d welcome him. That one respects the Horseman’s Word.” Rufus Pride was Geoffrey’s head of stables, and an excellent man with a horse.
“Please, if it’s not a bother. Though I suppose you’d like to know what’s up.”
“I’d certainly like to know who we might run into on a dark night. It’s hard to keep the place safe, between the war work, the blackouts, the Home Guard, and who knows what else. I putter around keeping my ear out, but there are places I can’t show my own face.”
Geoffrey made light of it, but he did look the perfect slightly daft aristocrat, complete with monocle. More to the point, he sounded like one. Gabe had made a point of having other options, but he’d had his adopted aunts and uncles to help. He didn’t dwell on that; Geoffrey knew his skills and limits, Gabe knew them as well. They didn’t need to discuss. “And nothing of the Fatae?”
“Not of any particular note. The land seems happy enough, but of course, we’re quite aware of the coastline.” If there were any kind of attempt at invasion, it would almost certainly come to Hampshire and the New Forest, and to Kent, first. Gabe and his father had the same set of worries. Only part of the land they held was coastline, with the rest held by Lord and Lady Thanet, just outside Canterbury. They dealt well enough with Gabe’s father, thankfully, though both of them were more overtly political than the Edgartons.
“We’ve been toying with ideas for warding. Stones, something of the kind. I’ve been trying to figure out the Vortimer legends, what seeds of truth they have in practice, in my spare time.” Gabe nodded at Alexander. “You’d mentioned that set in the Council Keep. Something attuned to particular events, if we can describe them precisely enough, magically.”
“I’ll ask Thesan for her notes. She laid out most of the alerts in use here, these days.” Isembard gestured at the castle proper. “And we’ve laid out a set for each of the Houses.”
Something in that surprised Alexander, who raised an eyebrow.
Isembard spread his hands. “I hope we won’t have a bombing raid hit us directly. I’m doing a fair bit to avoid it, besides the usual island protections.” Those had been in place since about 600 AD, but they had been designed and tested against dragons rather than aeroplanes or submarines. “We want to know where the students are, which building. We’re training them to touch a panel by the door of the Keep or their House, as they come and go. It maps - well. It maps onto something we can check, that should hold.”
Gabe was not wrapped in the mysteries of Schola, and he was glad to leave that particular tangle for other people. But he nodded. “Whatever she can share, we’d be grateful. I’ve got maybe a month where I can consult Rathna, too, as she’s got time.”
Isembard and Geoffrey made simultaneous quiet noises, then looked at each other. Their wives were actively doing any number of things for the war effort, just as every man here was, and Isobel as well. But Thesan and Lizzie would be working where they were, in a place they knew, with all the protections that came with it. Gabe nodded once. “We’ll - well. It matters.”
“If that’s where we are, let me run you through a few things, Gabe? I want to see if you can pick up that new approach to reading signatures.” Alexander stretched slightly, and Gabe felt more than saw Isobel react to it. Alexander didn’t exactly look harmless, but he had a knack for not looking nearly as terrifying as he was. This time, he’d shifted from apparently relaxed to intently focused without moving a muscle.
“Both of us?” Gabe wanted Isobel to pick this up, and he was sure he couldn’t teach it half as well. He’d almost caught the knack the last time they’d tried, and Alexander thought this new approach would work better. If it did, it would make Gabe and Isobel’s work vastly easier.
Alexander had managed to pick up a new trick eighteen months ago for seeing how oaths bound and crackled through someone’s magic. Someone who could read that, could map, more or less, what they’d touched. Or what sort of person had done the magic. Gabe had only been able to read the land magic oaths last time, but that only made sense. It was the part that came easiest to him, it always had. With Geoffrey, Alexander, and Isembard here, he’d be able to try his hand at a much wider range.
“Both of you. Ready to see me keep your apprentice master on his toes, Mistress Thomas?” Alexander was cordial, now the essence of etiquette.
Isobel, to Gabe’s great amusement, snorted. “I do that on the regular, Council Member, but I’m always glad to share that task. I’m under orders to make sure he stays busy from higher powers than himself.” Witt and Mason, clearly.
“Come on, come on. If you can pick it up this time, we’ll stop by a bookshop on the way into the office.” It was an entirely practical sort of bribery. The three older men chuckled as Isobel grinned and got up, moving to the door and waiting for Isembard to arrange the protections in the salle.