by HDA Roberts
Kandi had buried herself under the duvet, which was now shuddering with her suppressed laughter.
"Do I dare ask why you two are naked?" I managed, my brain still churning over the newest complication to my living arrangements.
"It was hot?" Tethys offered.
"Then why are you sleeping under the duvet? And there's air conditioning!"
"Our pyjamas are constricting?"
I groaned and dug Kandi out from under the duvet, exposing a very red face.
"And what do you have to say for yourself?" I asked.
She planted a little kiss on my lips, and while I was distracted she dove back under the covers.
Tethys laughed and cuddled up to my side.
"Do you have any idea what this is going to cost me?" I asked her with a sigh.
She wrapped her arms around my chest and gently shoved me back to my spot before resuming her previous position next to me.
"That's a 'morning' problem. Go back to sleep."
"This isn't over," I said with a yawn.
"I know. I already texted everyone you know about the whole thing."
"What?!"
"Shh, shh. Sleep."
"I hate you so much."
"No you don't."
She kissed me gently on the cheek and settled down again. The last thing I remember before falling back to sleep was Kandi wriggling her way out from where she'd been hiding to resume her spot curled up with her head on my chest.
The hammer fell just after nine o'clock.
Kandi and Tethys had just left my room, heading down to breakfast with the Pixies while I finished dressing. I heard whispering from the corridor.
"Okay, they're gone, now go do what you have to do," Mother said.
"But Miriam-" Father complained.
"No! This is something a father has to do! Now you go in there and you straighten him out! This really is too much, I will not let our son turn into some sort of... some sort of..."
"Genius?" my father muttered under his breath, making me smile.
"What was that?" my mother replied, her voice rising into a dangerous register both Father and I recognised.
"Hedonist," Father corrected.
"Right! Now go fix this!"
Father sighed and knocked on the door.
"Yes?" I said, pretending I didn't know who it was.
"Mathew Graves, we are going to have a little talk!" my father snapped, all the while putting a finger to his lips and checking the corridor.
"Your mother and I are very disappointed in yo- alright, she's gone. I am so proud of you!"
He came along and pulled me into a bear hug.
This might actually be more mortifying than the scolding would have been...
"My boy! A chip off the old block, you are!" he said, ruffling my hair.
I went bright red and started praying for the ground to swallow me whole.
"Please stop," I begged.
"Never! Wait till I tell your Uncle Bertie!"
"No!"
"Yes! I'm telling everyone!"
"But it's not what you think! We just sleep together!"
"Yeah you do!"
"No, no. Not 'sleep together', sleep together, as in snoring. We sleep in the same bed because we're comfortable with each other."
His face fell.
"Aw," he said.
I laughed and so did he.
"Well... that's actually... well, quite sweet. Peculiar, but sweet. Damn it."
I smiled and he sighed.
"So you never...?"
"I am not answering that."
His eyes danced with lascivious hope once again.
"Please stop that."
"No."
We went down to breakfast to find my mother eating with Des, who was also grinning.
Father sat down and explained the situation, looking crestfallen again. Mother looked relieved and Des looked as mortified as I did to be in the room for this conversation.
"I always knew you were a good boy," Mother said.
Liar.
Instead of replying, I simply started on my breakfast. While we were eating, I went over some basic safety rules with them, which amounted to 'don't leave the grounds without Wardens and a Warp-Cat'. They agreed and told me that they intended to spend the day making calls and arranging for some things to be brought down from home, so it wouldn’t be an issue.
When I was finished eating, I excused myself and went looking for Tethys.
She was grinning like the Cheshire Cat when I walked into her office.
"Yes, ha, ha," I said dryly, dropping into a chair.
She laughed and came over to sit on my lap.
She nosed my cheek and settled against me, chuckling all the while.
"We have got to solve this Vampire problem, having your parents in the house is going to cramp my style," she said eventually.
"I was thinking much the same thing.”
"Really?"
“Not the style bit, but we need to accelerate things a little on the Aurelia front. How’s your work with the Elders coming?"
"Very well. I know just about everything worth knowing," she replied. "What did you have in mind?"
"Making their lives as miserable as possible," I replied with a grin. “Could you give me a summary?”
She smiled, got up and went over to her desk, pulling up a stack of folders in various colours, fanning them out in front of her.
"These six are the Elders you've already met, this is the new one, appointed last week," she said.
"Who's the new guy?"
"She goes by the name of Rosanna, no known last name. Nasty piece of work, made a name for herself slaughtering aristocrats during the French Revolution. You being a Lord won't endear you to her. She's nasty and ambitious, and you should deal with her first."
"On the contrary. We deal with the ambitious ones last."
"What? That makes no sense."
"Sure it does."
I explained.
Tethys pounced on me. She liked it when I was clever.
Guess what happened. Go on, guess.
That's right. Just as Tethys’ hands and lips had reached some very interesting places, the door opened to reveal... my mother.
In a cruel twist (that would only be discovered once we’d scraped her off the ceiling), she’d actually come to apologise to Tethys for jumping to the wrong conclusions.
The shriek was so loud that Burglar ran from the building.
Chapter 20
After wasting the rest of the day fixing that problem, I was finally able to get to work, and make some appointments. After consulting with Tethys and Cassandra, we decided to kick off the first part of my new plan in France.
The history of French Magic was actually quite interesting (well, if you were a knowledge-obsessed bookworm like yours truly, anyway). France had been one of the great centres of Magical learning once upon a time, a firm rival to England, even in her heyday. Alas, the French Revolution put an end to that.
As you might imagine, there was very little to distinguish a rich Magician from a rich aristocrat in eighteenth century France. Personally, I find what the French Revolutionaries did repugnant, but the actual movement did have some legitimate grievances before it started building guillotines. And, as much I’d love to say otherwise, the French Magicians of the time were just as culpable as anyone else in the events that led to the Reign of Terror.
Once they saw the way the wind was blowing, the Mages ran just as quickly as the aristocrats, but they could use Portals, so they were significantly better at it. To my knowledge, no Magician was caught in the pogrom, but we, as a people, are very much of the ‘once bitten twice shy’ way of thinking and only about a tenth of the Magicians who’d left France ever bothered to go back. Well, they took a few trips to ‘rescue’ artwork before the Revolutionaries could burn it, but that was it. (Yes, some of them actually did that. Not because the art offended them, mind you, but simply because it was of no prac
tical use in their daily lives except as fuel in their fires. Books, too. Yuk.)
Anyway, why is any of this important?
Well, in order to stay relevant, the comparatively few Magicians of the French Conclave had to find some way to distinguish themselves on the international stage. They didn’t have the numbers for an economic strategy, they didn’t have the knowledge base for scholarship, but they did have contacts. Their exile had spread France’s Magicians throughout Europe and beyond, and when the few came home, those contacts remained. Eventually, they expanded into a pretty comprehensive trade and information network, a rival to any other in Europe.
That’s what I needed.
So, on the following afternoon, which was on a burning-hot Friday, I walked into the French Conclave Building in Marseille. It was a wide, palatial structure, built of white stone, topped with orange tile. Perched on a hilltop overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, it provided a truly spectacular view of the city and its environs.
This wasn’t the Conclave Palmyra loved so much, that was in Paris, but this was the place where the actual business of Magical Governance was done. Not that there was a great deal, the French Magical community wasn’t really into centralised authority. That reduced their Conclave more to the level of a social club and crisis management centre than any sort of government, but they still had some clout, and this was also where their intelligence network was headquartered.
I hadn’t spent a lot of time in France since taking my Seat, but I had no complaints about the place, and I’d even enjoyed myself when I’d visited (which would have surprised anyone who’d seen me swearing my way through GCSE French, cursing the entire country and anyone who spoke the language all the while...). As a people, they were friendly and laid-back, but they were competent when they needed to be and generally quite clever. I had a lot of time for the French Conclave... even if more than a few were in House Aurelia’s pocket.
Much like the building in Stonebridge, Marseille’s was built around a Council Chamber, though theirs was square, rather than the more traditional circle. That grand old room was surrounded by smaller meeting rooms and offices, but also six restaurants and cafes. The very idea of that would be greeted with shrieks back home, but it seemed rather civilised to me.
The French Primus had graciously agreed to see me during his lunch break, and I met him in one of those restaurants. It was simply called 'Soleil' and was accessed by means of a pair of sliding glass doors near the Conclave's main entrance.
There was a young man at the receptionist's desk, and he guided me to a private dining room at the back, where the Primus was waiting with his cabinet. It wasn’t a very large group of people, but thanks to some careful enquiries made by Tethys, I could be assured that at least one of them would be talking to the Aurelia afterwards, which was the whole point of this excursion.
The room was small and cosy, mostly filled by a wide, round table with six places set. There were five people waiting for me, three men and two women. They were a cheerful bunch, already half way down the three bottles of wine they'd ordered.
They really did things differently in France; you wouldn’t generally catch a British Magician touching alcohol, or anything else that altered brain chemistry, except maybe at the odd special occasion, and never to excess. That could cause... well, calamity isn’t a strong enough word.
But, this was France, and seeing as how I’d never heard of a drunken French Magician nearly ending the world, what they chose to put in their bodies was really none of my business.
The Primus was called Christian Hémery. He was a short man, balding at the crown, wearing thick, enchanted glasses and a suit, though without a tie. He seemed to radiate a certain joy about life and always had a smile on his face when I’d encountered him. He introduced his colleagues as I came in, and they all seemed just as relaxed and happy as their nominal superior.
"That's everyone, so welcome, welcome!" he said, waving me to the seat opposite his, in front of the door.
We all sat, and I tried to explain why I was there, but...
"No, no," Hémery said, smiling broadly, "First, we eat! You have not lived until you have tried real Marseille bouillabaisse."
I was in something of a hurry, but I didn’t want to be rude. Besides, I was hungry.
And he was actually right, that was a fantastic bouillabaisse, and I didn't even like fish stew. They served it with freshly baked local bread, and butter churned that morning, followed by an exquisite duck with potatoes fried in goose fat. Finally, when I thought I wouldn't be able to stuff down another thing, they brought in ice cream. Again, locally hand-made, and the perfect end to a wonderful meal. I drank a freshly made fruit juice in place of wine, which might have drawn an angry mutter from any other crowd in that part of the world, but they understood, even if they didn’t entirely approve.
The conversation throughout had been friendly and utterly irrelevant to anything serious. I'd been to a few meals with Magicians back home and there were always at least three debates to interrupt my digestion.
I'll never admit this out loud, but the French way of doing things was actually rather pleasant. We chatted about the weather, the local fishing conditions and the Treasurer tried to polish my terrible French while the others laughed at my awful pronunciation.
It was a very relaxed meal in the company of friendly people, and I greatly enjoyed myself for once.
But, alas, all good things must come to an end. Once the coffee had arrived, and everyone was ready, the Primus turned to me and said, "Lord Shadow, we are at your disposal."
"Thank you, Primus," I said with a nod. "As you may be aware, I recently made an enemy of the Aurelia?"
They all nodded (one may have just been nodding off after too much good food and good wine, though).
"Well, they have already prosecuted three attacks on me and mine, and I have decided to strike back before they can get any further plans off the drawing board."
I pulled my satchel off the floor and placed a folder on the cleared table before spreading out four short dossiers.
"These are the Aurelia Elders Abraham Gaume, Jean-Loup Thévenet, Sonia Jêgou and Germain Marais, and they are my first targets."
"What, all of them?!" Hémery said, almost squawking.
I nodded, "It's essential that I act before these four can meet. Between them, they've come upon information that, when combined, could set me back terribly, even hurt me. My only advantage is that even they don't know what the significance of it is, yet. That would change if all four of them got together. That's why I've come to you. I intend to attack them in seven days' time, and I would ask that your Conclave stay well clear of all proceedings, I want no collateral casualties."
"Seven days? Are you sure that's enough time to prepare something like this?" Hémery asked.
I nodded.
"I have people close to each of them, I know more than enough to organise my strikes."
I didn't actually have any operatives like that, not with the Elders, anyway; too risky with such powerful Telepaths. All the people working those four acted from a distance. A great distance. But the lie had its uses; instilling paranoia, for example.
"We'll provide every cooperation, of course," Bernard Robineau, the Defence Minister said.
I was glad he still wide awake, Robineau was the one with the largest number of untraceable (or so he thought) payments in his bank accounts, many of which led back to Elder Gaume.
I thanked him and there was some more small talk before I left, feeling quite pleased with myself.
I was about to Portal home, but I decided that I wasn't in any rush. I spent some time walking down by the Marseilles waterfront, enjoying the sparkling Mediterranean in a place where I couldn't possibly be recognised (a simple Illusion helped with that).
But, less than half an hour after leaving the restaurant, Tethys called me.
"That didn’t take long to bear fruit,” she said with a chuckle. “And it turns out Robineau wa
sn't the only one in an Aurelian pocket; Hémery and Badeaux were as well."
"Well, we expected Hémery, but Badeaux is a surprise," I said.
Badeaux was the Treasurer, and I'd really hoped that he wasn't part of this, he was such a nice fellow. They all were, actually. It upset me a little that I was going to have to arrange for their careers to come to a stunning halt.
(A very little, they had sold me out.)
"Agreed, and it seems that he works for Marie Bellegarde."
I hissed, "That's not good."
"No. We need her for the second phase, and if she decides to show up to this..."
“Yes, that would be a problem.”
I paced back and forth on a heavy stone wharf, the sounds of the sea soothing and gentle, helping me to think. Bellegarde was the meanest of the Elders. She was over six hundred years old and had spent the first three hundred of those years making Vlad the Impaler look like an amateur. She’d slaughtered her way through the Hussite Wars, helped found the African Slave Trade and the Spanish Inquisition; and that was just the 1400s.
She was the most aggressive of the Aurelia, and she was also the most ambitious. I needed her out and about; I needed her to be active...
I smiled, "I think it may be possible to turn this to our advantage."
"Oh yes?" Tethys asked, her voice throaty.
I explained. She made happy noises.
"Get back here, I want to do things to you," she purred.
See what I mean?
"I have school. And my Mother hasn't come around yet after she caught us the last time."
"Yes, who'd have thought a pervert like you could have come from a family of such prudes?"
"First, hey!" which made her snigger. "And second, you've met my father."
She laughed. "See you later. Cassie said she'd meet you at school. Are you still on schedule for your meeting tonight?"
"Yes. And this one's a little smaller, so we should be able to control the information a bit more carefully."
"It'll have to be careful. Our phone taps on these ones aren’t reliable; they do most of their work by paper and hand, I can't be sure who's speaking to whom."
“I’ll do my best.”