Witches Incorporated

by K. E. Mills

  Gerald felt his jaw drop. “What? No. That can’t be right. I mean, Errol’s a lot of things, Sir Alec—” pillock… plonker… tosser… “but he’s not a traitor.”

  Sir Alec turned from the window. “No? And what makes you so sure of that? It wouldn’t be the first time a Haythwaite has let down his country.”

  I’m so tired, and this is all going too fast. “Sorry, Sir Alec. I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Never mind,” said Sir Alec, and resumed his chair. “The Haythwaite family history is not germane to this conversation. Let us instead look at the unpalatable facts of this new development, shall we?”

  Yes, please. “You said we’ve received reliable intelligence?”

  “We have a janitor in play,” said Sir Alec, nodding. “A long term undercover agent inserted into Jandria more than ten years ago, against the possibility of just this event.”

  More than ten years? One of Sir Alec’s men had been living in a deceptive, hostile foreign country for more than ten years? But—but—

  “Yes, Mister Dunwoody,” said Sir Alec, very dry. “A confronting notion, is it not? What one might describe as the very antithesis of treachery. More than ten years of looking over your shoulder, hoping and praying you don’t make a slip, not one single, infinitesimal mistake, that would reveal to those around you that you’re not at all what you seem. And all the while on alert, living on your nerves, looking for the clue that might save countless lives. Prevent another devastating war. Save the entire world from a thaumaturgical conflagration.”

  Gerald swallowed, his mouth suddenly like sand. “It sounds—” He shook his head. “Very lonely.”

  “It is,” said Sir Alec, his sharp gaze losing its focus. “Lonely and dangerous.”

  Something in the way he said it, some odd little note in his voice, had Gerald looking at him even more closely. He’s speaking from personal experience. But he knew better than to comment on it. Think about Errol, instead. That’s a lot safer. And more comfortable.

  “And this agent in Jandria has seen some of Errol’s airship designs?”

  Sir Alec nodded. “He’s seen copies, yes.”

  Leaning forward, he willed Sir Alec to believe him. “Sir, I don’t mean to contradict you or the janitor who passed you this information, but I really can’t believe Errol would do this. He’s got too much pride. Appearances matter to Errol Haythwaite. Hell, appearances are everything. If you’d heard him tonight, talking to Rottlezinder. He was furious he’d been dragged into this portal investigation.”

  “Perhaps because this investigation threatened to uncover what he’s really been up to,” Sir Alec suggested. “I accept your assertion that Haythwaite is not involved in the portal sabotage. But that in no way means he is innocent of industrial espionage and treason.”

  “But—but—it doesn’t make sense.”

  Again, a swift flash of that chilly smile. “You’ll find, Mister Dunwoody, once you’ve been in this line of work for slightly longer than a few weeks, that many things on their surface do not appear to make sense. Nevertheless they are true. And in due course they often do make sense. At least to the criminals we apprehend. Usually we come to understand their twisted logic, in time. But understanding them is not a prerequisite for catching them. I think that principle was discussed in some depth during your training.”

  “It was,” Gerald admitted. “Except—”

  “Exceptions exist to prove the rule, Mister Dun-woody,” Sir Alec said briskly.

  “So is there any more evidence against Errol? Aside from the fact that his airship design-work has turned up in Jandria? Rottlezinder mentioned some… youthful indiscretions.” He sat back, staring. “Is that why you’re so quick to believe Errol’s trucking treason with Jandria? Because he and Haf Rottlezinder made some mischief when they were students?”

  “Made some mischief…” Sir Alec murmured. “Are you by any chance comparing Rottlezinder to Monk Markham? I wouldn’t. Your friend is flamboyant and frequently thoughtless, but he lacks the cruel streak that marked Rottlezinder’s chequered career.”

  Cruel streak? “Are you saying he and Errol—”

  Sir Alec shook his head. “I’m not saying anything, Mister Dunwoody. As you pointed out, that record is sealed.”

  “Maybe, but whatever’s in it has you believing Errol’s a traitor.”

  “No, Mister Dunwoody,” said Sir Alec, his cool gaze direct and impatient. “The fact that Errol Haythwaite signs his design-work has convinced me of that.”

  Gerald slumped. “Oh.”

  “Yes. Oh.”

  So, things were looking pretty grim for Errol. And why do I care? He’s never done me any favours. He’d see me on the scrap heap, given half a chance. Except… he expected more of himself than that.

  “But that doesn’t mean he’s the one passing his work to the Jandrians, does it?” he said, thoughts racing despite his crushing weariness. “Couldn’t someone be stealing it from him?”

  “If you’re thinking of another Wycliffe wizard, it’s most unlikely,” said Sir Alec. “They’ve all been exhaustively investigated. None of them has access to Jandria.”

  “But Errol does?”

  Sir Alec nodded. “There are some family connections, which are being investigated as we speak. And you mustn’t forget, Mister Dunwoody—the only wizard at Wycliffe’s capable of breaching Errol Haythwaite’s privacy hexes is you, and I’m assuming you’ve not been passing Mister Haythwaite’s designs to the Jandrian government?”

  Oh, ha ha, Sir Alec. Very funny. “Still,” he muttered. “Despite all the evidence, I can’t bring myself to believe Errol’s guilty.”

  “Mister Dunwoody, you have me perplexed,” said Sir Alec, and drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. “There is no love lost between you and Errol Haythwaite. Why are you so determined to defend him in this matter?”

  “Because—well, because I don’t like him,” Gerald said at last, goaded. “It’s too easy to believe the worst of someone you loathe and despise. If it was Monk you were accusing I’d never stand for it, because he’s my friend. So what kind of man would I be if I didn’t apply the same kind of rigour to someone I don’t like, for the sole simple reason that I don’t like him?”

  “What kind of man indeed?” Sir Alec murmured, leaning back in his chair and staring across his desk with a contemplative, narrowed gaze. “That, Mister Dunwoody, is an interesting question.”

  “Where’s Errol now? Is he under arrest? Is he here?”

  Sir Alec glanced at the quietly ticking clock on the wall. “Not yet. But he will be, soon. We wanted to make sure he was cleared by a medical specialist before bringing him into the Department for questioning.”

  “Dalby’s bringing him?”

  Another disapproving pinch of lip. “Senior Janitor Dalby, yes.”

  He pushed to his feet and shoved his hands in his pockets. “You need to let me talk to Errol. Alone.”

  “That’s out of the question,” said Sir Alec. “For one thing it’s been determined at the highest levels that you are never to be publicly identified with this Department. And for another, Mister Dunwoody, you are hardly a qualified interrogator. You are barely a janitor at all. I think you’re allowing tonight’s little achievements to overrule your—”

  You sanctimonious bastard. “If I’m not an interrogator,” he said, his heart thudding, “then what the hell was that business with Monk’s souped-up delerioso incant?”

  Sir Alec’s face hardened. “I don’t recall mentioning a delerioso incant.”

  Oh… bugger. Sorry, Monk. “Sir Alec, don’t dismiss me. I can—”

  But Sir Alec wasn’t so easily sidetracked. “Mister Dunwoody, am I to understand you have violated protocol and contacted—”

  “You made me think I had to torture someone!” he shouted. “And I did. At least, I started to. And then you refused to discuss it afterwards! What did you think I was going to do, Sir Alec? After what Lional did to me, what did you thi
nk? Did you think I was going to smile and shrug and laugh it off?”

  “What I thought or did not think is irrelevant,” Sir Alec snapped. “Mister Dunwoody, this is a serious breach. You have discussed confidential Department business with a non-Department individual.”

  “Oh, don’t give me that!” he snapped. “You’re the one who went to Monk and got him to soup up his incant in the first place! And don’t you go blaming him for this either. He didn’t come to me, I went to him—because what I did in that final test disturbed me and you refused to talk about it.”

  For quite some time, Sir Alec said nothing. Then he nodded at the hard wooden chair. “Sit down, Mister Dunwoody. And do make an effort to moderate your tone. I’m not in the habit of permitting subordinates to shout at me in my own office. Or anywhere else, for that matter.”

  Gerald thudded back into the chair. “I’m sorry. But—”

  “I think, Mister Dunwoody,” Sir Alec said, lowering his hand, “that your best course of action is to leave it at ‘I’m sorry’.” He steepled his fingers again, his pale grey eyes coldly intent. “Now. What makes you think you’re qualified to successfully interrogate Errol Haythwaite?”

  “I don’t want to interrogate him,” he said tiredly. “I just want to talk to him. I mean, you put me into Wycliffe’s in the first place because you know he doesn’t like me any more than I like him. I get under his skin. I throw him off-stride. So let me throw him off-stride. Let me use what I overheard tonight—” He looked at the early morning sky and shrugged. “Last night. If he thinks I believe him about not being in cahoots with Rottlezinder, maybe I can get him talking about this other thing with Jandria, and one of your real interrogators can maybe catch him in a lie. If he’s lying.”

  And I really don’t think he is.

  “I’m sure that sounds terribly exciting in theory, Mister Dunwoody, but there remains the matter of your anonymity,” said Sir Alec.

  Gerald shrugged. “We both know you can fix that, Sir Alec. This Department’s got access to any number of useful, despicable incants.” He snorted. “Probably we invent most of them ourselves.”

  Sir Alec was silent again, one forefinger tapping his lips. “You’d sanction that?” he said at last. No emotion in his voice, no hint of what he was thinking or feeling. “The use of despicable incants against Errol Haythwaite?”

  “Given that I’ve already rearranged his memories once tonight, I’d be a bit bloody hypocritical to complain now, wouldn’t I?” he retorted. “Besides… if it means we stop Jandria from starting another war?” Staring at his knees, he thought about New Ottosland. Remembered all those charred, twisted bodies in the streets. Imagined the same kind of bloodshed here… and in other cities… but with a death toll in the thousands. Imagined death raining down from the sky from military airships. Just another kind of dragon. Looking up, he nodded. “Yes. I can live with hexing Errol. Besides, nothing could hurt him worse than being falsely accused of treason and maybe found guilty of something he didn’t do.”

  Sighing, Sir Alec passed a hand across his face. “Mister Dunwoody,” he murmured. “What a trial you are proving to be.”

  “Um…” said Gerald. “So, would that be a yes?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Pale and dishevelled, his face motley with bruises, its cuts and scrapes covered with sticking plaster, Errol looked up as Gerald entered the small interrogation room. His mouth dropped open and his tired, bloodshot eyes stretched wide.

  “What the hell? What is this rubbish? Dunnywood?”

  Sighing, Gerald dropped into the other chair at the interrogation room’s table. “Hello, Errol.”

  This interrogation room was identical to the one from Monk’s delerioso incant. Four walls. Two doors. No windows. No sign of the scrying crystal that would be feeding images back to Sir Alec and whoever else was observing this… conversation.

  Errol was still staring at him in shock. “Is this some kind of unamusing joke? Or are you under arrest too? Now that I have no trouble believing. I don’t care what I said, you’re responsible for what happened to the new Mark VI prototype. To both prototypes. You’re a walking bloody disaster, Dunwoody. I knew you were trouble the first day I laid eyes on you. And at Wycliffe’s I was convinced. I could smell trouble on you, I could sense it. I could feel there was something very wrong about you.”

  Gerald looked at him. Here we go. “Actually, Errol, what you felt was this.”

  And he let his full rogue wizard potentia flare all around him like the raging nimbus of a newborn sun.

  Every last bit of colour drained from Errol’s face. He scrambled out of his chair and retreated until he hit the nearest wall.

  “That’s not possible,” he whispered, his voice hitching with shock. “That’s a trick. What the hell is going on here? You get out, Dunwoody. I won’t share a room with you. I want nothing to do with you!”

  “Sorry, Errol,” he said, and pulled his potentia back inside himself. “We’re stuck with each other for a little while yet.” He nodded at the chair. “Sit down. There are some things we need to discuss.”

  “Are you bloody deaf, you cretin?” Errol spat. “I’m not talking to you. I don’t know how but you’re responsible for all of this!”

  “No,” he said. “Not all of it. Maybe some of it, in a roundabout kind of way. Look… maybe this will be easier on both of us if I put things back the way they were.” And with a snap of his fingers, and the whisper of a few cruel words, he undid what he’d done to Errol’s memory at Wycliffe’s.

  It took a moment for reality to reassert itself. And then, as Gerald watched, Errol… remembered.

  “I’m sorry about Rottlezinder,” he said, as Errol blindly groped for the chair. “I know you were friends. Used to be friends. And I’m sorry about what I did to you. But you didn’t really give me a choice, Errol.”

  Errol thudded into the chair and pressed his hands flat to his face. It was quite astonishing, to see the polished, sophisticated, exquisitely urbane Errol Haythwaite so completely dismayed. Once, he’d have been delighted to see his nemesis brought so low. But witnessing it now, all he could feel was a tired pity.

  Errol let his hands drop to the table, revealing a bone-white, ravaged face. “Who the hell are you, Dunwoody? What are you?”

  He grimaced. “Yes, well, it seems nobody’s managed to figure that out yet. But I can tell you what I’m not. I’m not your enemy, Errol. I’m trying to help you.”

  “Help me?” said Errol, and wrestled for self-control. “Fine. Then you can answer some questions.”

  “Sure. If I can.”

  “What is this place?” Errol demanded, looking around the cold, unfriendly room. “What am I doing here? What are you doing here? That man—Dalby, is it?—he said there were one or two things about the lab accident that needed clearing up—and then he took me to see some doctor. Said it was a new DoT policy. Except—” He shook his head, dazed. “There wasn’t any lab accident. You—you faked that. So is this about Haf? About him sabotaging Ottosland’s portal network?” Errol leaned across the table, the closest to desperate that Gerald had ever seen him. “Because I had nothing to do with that! You were there at the boot factory, Dunwoody, God knows how or why. Didn’t you hear what I told Haf, didn’t you hear me—”

  “Yes, Errol, I heard,” he said quietly. “We know you weren’t working with Haf Rottlezinder.”

  Errol sat back. “Good. That’s good,” he said un-steadily. “Then I can go.”

  “Not quite yet,” he said. “There’s something else we need to discuss. But before we do… I have to tell you, Errol, I am curious about something.”

  “As if I had the slightest interest in you or your curiosity,” said Errol, sneering. His confidence was seeping back. In his eyes a familiar, icy glitter of dislike. “Get out of here, Dunwoody. I’ve nothing to say to you.”

  Oh, Errol. How can you be such a brilliant wizard and such a fool?

  “Come on, Errol,” he said, and r
ested his clasped hands on the table. “Indulge me, just this once. After all, I did save your life. Go on. What can it hurt?”

  Errol blew out a hard breath and waved his hand. “Fine. Ask what you like. But that doesn’t mean I’ll answer.”

  As invitations went, it was hardly gracious—but given that this was Errol Haythwaite, he’d take what he could get. “Okay. So here’s the thing that has me puzzled, Errol. After Rottlezinder first approached you, why didn’t you tell the Department of Thaumaturgy?”

  “Tell them what?” said Errol, scathing. “That an old friend contacted me out of the blue and asked if I’d like to work with him on a lucrative project?”

  He frowned. “That’s all he said? He didn’t tell you what the project was? Where the money was coming from?”

  “No.”

  “And you didn’t ask?”

  “I wasn’t interested.”

  “And why was that, Errol?” he asked quietly. “Because you knew there was a good chance that if Haf was involved the project would be… questionable?”

  Errol glared at the table. “This is ridiculous.”

  “All right,” he said. “I accept that Haf played his cards close to his chest. I accept that on the face of it there was no reason for you to alert the authorities. Not in the beginning. But Errol… after that first portal accident, and knowing the kind of man Rottlezinder was, you must’ve realised there was a connection. Or at least suspected—but still you kept quiet. And because you kept quiet, scores more people were hurt. For what? So you could protect your precious career? Are you really that shallow, Errol?”

  Errol’s pale, bruised face flushed a dull red. “Watch your mouth, Dunwoody. I don’t take that kind of cheek from tailor’s brats.”

  “Don’t say things like that, Errol,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m the only friend you’ve got in this place.”

  “Ha!” said Errol. “Then I really am in trouble, aren’t I?”

  Oh, lord. “Errol, don’t you get it? You’re in so much hot water right now it’s a wonder you can’t feel the steam.”