There was silence. The pack of wolves smelled weakness in their leader. The only soft face in the crowd was Landon’s, but even he looked uncertain. Galler and Tori, for their parts, had their eyes on the floor, wanting to be anywhere else but there.
How could she convince them? What had convinced her?
Common sense, surely? It all added up to a force more complex than a simple mindless attack. No one wanted a war, not on the face of their allegiances. Lord Tarrington hadn’t given any hint of this on the phone. There was a manipulative force –
“Come on.” Hail pushed past Sam, his shoulder barging her into a side-table. She opened her mouth to protest, but he tensed and she flinched, thinking he might hit her. He had the fax, held up demonstratively. “The orders are clear.”
He kept staring at Sam, accusingly, as he marched out of the room. The other agents gave her brief looks, concerned or angry, as they filed out after him. Farnham mumbled, “We’ll be waiting for your instructions in the field, ma’am.” Not serious.
Sam realised she was shaking.
The idiots. The gung-ho idiots. To say nothing of the idiots in London. It made even less sense than Tarrington’s phone call.
Finally, only Landon and Tori remained, watching her with concern.
“What do you want to do?” Landon asked.
“What do you mean?” Sam said, a squeak of insecurity. “The Commission’s made their decision. It’s an awful one, but they’ve made it.”
“Seems to me” – Landon cleared his throat – “that an order was presented, but Agent Hail took it before our acting commander was able to read it. Let alone process it.”
Sam frowned. “What can we do? I can’t send you out there alone.”
Landon took his time, not entirely certain, then shrugged. “Yes. You can.”
15
It wasn’t the first time Letty had been held at gunpoint with the promise of death or imprisonment or some other vile result at the end of a journey. Usually, the idiots could be talked around, or otherwise fought off. But Lightgate wasn’t like the guards who had cornered her during Val’s coup or the chancers who tried their hand at unsanctioned exile-hunting. She kept her distance, with her finger on the trigger, and appeared to be absolutely flexible about the outcome of her plans.
The best Letty could hope for was to choose when to take a bullet.
They were gliding over the warehouse district already, so it wasn’t like she’d be able to pick out somewhere scenic. Maybe over a chimney stack, to give Lightgate a nightmare of a job hauling her body out. But Lightgate wouldn’t give a shit about leaving a Fae corpse behind. She hadn’t cleared up in Broadplain, after all. She hadn’t asked for Letty’s phone when it rang, either; merely offered a look to suggest using it was a bad idea. At least its ringing suggested Pax was alive, trying to get hold of her.
Not far from the FTC, as the building itself came into view, Lightgate glided closer to Letty. She had a brown bottle in her hand, and continued to knock back liquor without it seeming to affect her.
“You ever offer it around?” Letty asked.
“People normally say no,” Lightgate said, and took another long pull. She slowed down, then threw the bottle Letty’s way. It fell halfway between them and Letty hesitated a second before diving after it. When she caught it, Lightgate appeared high above her, limp pistol still trained on her.
Letty hovered still to take a swig, ignoring the smell. It was practically gasoline. She winced it down, then hoarsely said, “I’m used to some strong shit, but that...”
“My own mixture,” Lightgate said. “I call it Assault and Battery.”
A play on battery acid, ground-up ammunition, or worse? Letty didn’t ask.
“Now we’re chums, you ready to save yourself?”
“Chums,” Letty said, taking another sniff of the bottle. It set her nostrils burning. With another Fae, the bottle might have been a weapon. Lightgate would expect that, though. Maybe even invite it. Letty tossed the drink up and Lightgate caught it by the neck, barely appearing to move. In case there was any doubt that she was quick.
“I like you, Letty,” she said. “You’re too smart to be a hero. Heroes are fools, they get early graves. I’ve seen too many to count.”
“That must’ve been tough for you,” Letty said. She looked ahead, towards the FTC building. The scouts might have picked them up at this distance, might be wondering if they’d come closer. Lightgate followed her gaze with a wistful look. They’d both been through some shit there, for sure.
“You ever been back?” Lightgate asked.
“Only the outskirts,” Letty said. “Nothing closer than the peripheries.”
“I got a few ways in. Sympathetic guards, unwatched passages. I used to sit watching them, imagining it. The Fall of the Fae. Their precious buildings burning.”
“They’ve got precious buildings now?”
Lightgate smiled, just a little. “They’re dug in like barnacles. Slightly better tech, improved workshops, but the same dark cage. The same pathetic people.”
“So why’d you come back?” Letty said. “Why go through any of this?”
Lightgate gave it a second. “I miss the old days, don’t you?”
“Not one bit. I want what came before the FTC, the days we never even saw. Back when Fae had a stake in this world, instead of a borrowed bit we might lose at any minute. That place has never been worth it.”
“We can agree on that.” Lightgate saluted with another swig from the bottle. She paused as she lowered it, looking down to the streets. “But would you look at that.”
Letty followed her gesture to a flicker of movement through the buildings. A human car, bouncing back sunlight from the windows and mirrors, kicking up dust from the broken road. Lightgate dropped closer to Letty and held out the bottle. Letty looked from the bottle to Lightgate’s pistols. One in hand, another holstered within grabbing distance.
Letty took the bottle, had a painful swig, then handed it back.
They watched, side by side, as another car appeared, three blocks over. Unmistakably headed towards the FTC. Lightgate pointed: “And there.” A cloud of dust, way off towards the horizon, approaching from the other direction.
“Ah hell,” Letty said quietly. Part of her had hoped it wouldn’t come to this, that the humans had some sense. Surely they knew it hadn’t been a random attack, and they’d stop to ask who was really behind it before doing anything rash?
The two nearest cars stopped at the same time. The dust in the distance settled, too. Lightgate nudged Letty and nodded the other way. Opposite side of the FTC, a fourth plume of dust.
“What do you want to do?” Lightgate asked. “Watch and place some bets first?”
The doors of the nearest car opened. Two men got out. Letty recognised the ginger one, his suit partly hidden behind panels of plasticky body armour. He went to the back of the car and opened the boot. He put on a padded helmet and a chunky backpack, the size and shape of a fridge. His companion came to strap a tube into it.
“What are they using these days, do you suppose?” Lightgate said. “Fire or gas?”
Letty didn’t answer. Both were possible.
“Their detectors can’t be up to much. Shouldn’t they know we’re here?”
“They know there’s Fae around,” Letty said. “At this distance, they can’t pinpoint us.”
Lightgate took one last long pull on the bottle and belched. She tossed it away, to fall between the buildings, then drew her second pistol. She held it towards Letty.
Letty stared at the gun suspiciously.
“Come on, don’t be sour.”
Chances were Lightgate would gun her down for trying to take it. Or gun her down the second she got the inkling Letty might use it on her. Might not even be loaded, might have some kind of safety catch.
“I want you to enjoy this,” Lightgate said. “How often do you get the opportunity to hurt humans?”
Sam kept her phone
in her hand, looking at it anxiously, willing Landon to call and give her something. The field agents blinked on a digital map of the warehouse district, on a mounted wall monitor. Half the Support staff watched alongside her, silently waiting for the dots to move, while the others analysed data from their desks to provide detail.
“Fae guards in the area,” one of the analysts announced. “At least half a dozen outside the city walls. Sending it through.”
A new set of lights blinked up, yellow this time, closer to the centre.
“Give the word,” Hail’s voice came through the speakers.
“Hold,” Sam said, steadily.
“We’re ready,” Hail said, clearly irritated.
“I said hold.”
A phone rang in Mathers’ office. Sam darted between the desks, telling everyone not to move. Please be something. She whipped up the receiver. “Ward.”
“You understand that we still possess devastating capabilities.”
It wasn’t Landon, but a bold female voice Sam instinctively knew, though she’d never heard it before. It had to be the Fae governor, Valoria Magnus.
“Madam Governor,” Sam said. “I am –”
“Withdraw your men immediately,” the Fae governor commanded loudly, forcing Sam to hold the phone away from her ear.
“I can’t,” Sam answered, her jaw locked with frustration. “You have to talk to the Raleigh Commission –”
“This is on you!” The woman’s voice rose furiously. “Your head will roll!”
“It’s not my –”
“It was the humans that struck you!” The governor was all but shrieking. “The Apothel Five. We have evidence, where your people failed – you need to –”
“You know where they are?” Sam interrupted, and Valoria faltered.
“Withdraw your men and I will deliver them to you.”
There was enough hesitation for Sam to confirm the governor was bluffing. But Sam already knew the truth of it; Pax hadn’t unleashed that turnbold. Her silence told the governor she knew.
Valoria breathed heavily on the other end of the line, making no more threats. She simply said, “Withdraw your men now and we can still forgive this.”
Sam swallowed. Wishing she could do it. She said, “The order came from the Commission themselves. But if you’re calling here I guess you already know that.”
Valoria snarled and hung up without another word.
It was baffling that whatever peace the Fae leadership had with the Raleigh Commission had been so easily shattered. Heinous as the Greek Street attack was, why were London being so quick to act?
“They’re in position,” Roper announced, the moment the call ended. Sam gave him a worried look. She could simply refuse to give the order, couldn’t she? She wouldn’t give the order. But it wouldn’t matter. They’d take their own initiative eventually; they already had.
“Tell them to hold, for the love of God,” Sam said, knowing it would make no difference. As Roper reluctantly relayed the command, she made another call.
The second the pay phone rang, Pax jumped at the receiver, willing it to be good news. Bring Letty back, tell me everything is okay. “Where is she?”
“What?” It was Sam Ward alright, but she was thrown. “No, sorry, I don’t have that – something’s happened. Our people have been diverted. And. And...”
Pax was silent for a second. “Diverted where?”
“The FTC. It’s Protocol 21. Total extermination.”
Pax stared through Casaria next to her, through the world. That amounted to more or less the worst response to the morning’s disaster. Countless fairies would die, a whole society erased. “What am I supposed to do about it?”
“You know the Fae,” Ward said. “You know what happened this morning, you have to give me something. I don’t know why the Commission decided this so quickly, it makes no sense –”
“It’s not enough that your people hate the Fae? They’d jump at any excuse.”
“The Ministry is procedural, Pax,” Ward said. “We do things by the book, according to analysis – usually. I’d potentially found your grugulochs, and –”
“You found it? How? Where?”
“I traced the energy, exactly as you said – but it’s too late, our men are about to do something devastating.”
“So tell them to stop! If we can confront the Blue Angel we can end this!”
“How?” Ward demanded. “I’m up against my superiors – they don’t care and it doesn’t add up! You must have some idea of where all this is coming from.”
“I don’t know!” Pax replied, equally exasperated. She caught Casaria watching her, face sour as ever. He’d invite Fae destruction, like the rest of them. Pax insisted, “There was only one fairy behind this that I know of for sure – Lightgate. She’s itching for a fight, maybe nothing more – and the FTC know that. She said herself that their council turned her down, they weren’t interested in her plan. She got anonymous support, from just one source, not a sanction from their whole damn society. That sound like something you want to start a war over? Hell, all she had was a written note...” Pax trailed off, remembering the fairy’s words. “She had an anonymous note. The same sort of manipulative shit this Blue Angel is always doing. Look – you don’t have to tell your bosses it’s the Blue Angel’s doing, just convince them it wasn’t the FTC!”
“I can’t – we have a written order.”
“What? Who gives a shit about a written order?”
“You don’t understand how this office works – the field agents wanted action, and nothing says decisive bloody leadership better than a Commission order, printed and notarised.”
“Which you happened to get as quick as possible?” Pax snorted. “You don’t see that as a problem?” Ward didn’t answer at once, and Pax pictured the insane bureaucratic scenario, office workers deciding things with numbers and printed commands. She paused. The answer was hanging between them; it was in the detail Casaria had already given her, and in the unsettling feeling she’d had in the MEE building. It wasn’t just their superiors’ speed, it was how they gave the order. Pax said, “This printed order, was it faxed?”
“Directly from the Raleigh Commission. From Lord Asquith. It’s how –”
“Through the fax machine on that same floor where that monster tried to tear us apart,” Pax said. “The room at the end, a little useless stationery cupboard, right? Home to the same fax machine that’s been giving you orders for years. Christ, no wonder it’s stayed so well hidden.”
“What?”
“The Blue Angel,” Pax said.
Silence. Casaria was waiting for the conclusion with a frown, and Rufaizu, beyond him, was grinning, anticipating something good. Encouraged by that smile, Pax told herself her instinct was right. The Bright Veins were real, and they told her where the goddamned Blue Angel had its eyes and hands and mouth or whatever it needed to screw the world. She said, “There’s a blue screen in your office. Where you’ve got that fax machine. They can change the appearance of walls, alright? Why not the writing on a piece of paper?”
Ward stayed quiet. Thankfully. It meant she might buy it. She might question everything.
Pax pushed the point. “You’ve wondered how your organisation could be so incompetent or ignorant of things like the dangers of the minotaur or the behaviour of the Fae. The answer is, they aren’t. The details that would tip the Blue Angel’s hand are hidden – I bet you get numbers through this Commission prick, too? Revised balance sheets about your costs and benefits or whatever?”
“Rarely,” Ward answered uncertainly.
“Rarely is good; it knows how to do just enough to keep up the ruse. It’s the Angel.” Pax thumped the wall triumphantly. “In your office, under your noses, playing its games.”
“But that doesn’t make sense –”
“It’s not supposed to. It’s always had you believing the minotaur’s a good thing. That no one should go into the Sunken City. That the
Fae are best kept at arm’s length. Now it wants you to believe the FTC should be wiped out, because we’re asking too many questions, we’re talking. Someone or something in the FTC can take this thing down, with our help, and it doesn’t want us anywhere near joining forces.”
“But that turnbold could’ve killed everyone here –”
“Exactly,” Pax said. “No one left to ask questions and a bunch of outsiders coming in to clear up the mess. You got goons on their way from the main office in London? Is that right?”
Ward hummed affirmation, not liking it.
“Dammit, don’t you see? It’s been manipulating all of you and it didn’t even need an inside man, it can just fuck with your correspondence.”
Ward was quiet again, giving Pax a second to reflect on that image.
Paper being manipulated, messages coming out of nowhere.
“Jesus Christ, it was the Angel. It did what none of the Fae was prepared to do, too. It gave Lightgate that fucking note with the charge codes. Listen to me, this is all the Angel; it wants the Ministry torn apart and it wants the FTC torn apart. This is scorched earth.”
Ward still hadn’t said anything.
“Sam?” Pax said. “You still there?”
“Yeah,” Ward answered, voice weak.
“Stop your people attacking the FTC, however you can.”
“I will,” Sam promised.
“And give me the location of the grugulochs. I don’t know if it’s another trick or whatever, but I’ll know when I’m there, I’m certain. Let me deal with the Blue Angel while you prevent a massacre.”
16
The Ministry men were waiting by the front of their car. Ginger had goggles on, now, like these prats might wear to play squash, and he was talking into a headset. His partner had a rifle of some kind. Or the product of two rifles taped together – ridiculously wide and crude.
“Sends out a blast a mile wide, that thing,” Lightgate said. “Be behind him when it goes off.”
“I don’t want to be near any of that shit,” Letty said. Were the FTC prepared, in any way? They’d been on alert since the weekend, ready to evacuate, but they would’ve been reluctant to flee. A thousand people behind those walls, penned in, waiting for death to arrive.
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