“I’ve never had any class with the girls,” the blond said.
“It’s very odd, indeed,” Delmin said. He looked at Veranix, and his eyes went wide for a second. “Been busy?” He made a gesture to his cheek.
Veranix touched his own cheek and felt something slightly wet. He wiped it on his sleeve and realized it was a bit of blood.
“A bit,” he said, sending a surge of magic to the sleeve of his shirt to clean the blood. A little trick he had gotten quite good at.
“Everyone, please sit down!” Professor Alimen approached the group with six men and women flanking him. Some of them, Veranix knew as other members of the magic faculty, including Madam Castilane, but others were strangers. Strangers with an odd bearing. “I apologize for the confusion, but if you can all sit and quiet yourselves, we can begin.”
The magic students went and sat on the bleachers. Veranix found a place between Delmin and the tall fellow.
Alimen cleared his throat. “I’d like to thank you all for coming here today. I know that none of you are used to this method of doing things, but . . . things are changing. And perhaps that change is for the best. We’ve been teaching magic the same way for decades, and when ‘tradition’ is the only reason not to do something, we should take stock in—”
“What Professor Alimen is saying,” one of the men behind him said, stepping forward. He wore something that put Veranix in mind of a Constabulary uniform, but gray and with a high collar. “Is we are no longer treating magic studies, in your practical usage here, like some sort of dilettante art.”
Veranix and Delmin shared a confused look. That would not be how he would have described the last three years of study.
“But rather,” the man said, “a craft that must be honed and tempered.”
Alimen coughed. “Students, this is Mister Dresser, he will be—”
“Major Dresser,” Dresser said. “I served seventeen years as a specialist mage before retiring from His Majesty’s Intelligence Service. I have earned my rank just as surely as you have, Professor, and I expect you to use it.” He looked to the students. “Children, you should also address me as ‘Major’ or ‘Major Dresser,’ although ‘sir’ is fine in a pinch.”
That was the bearing of Dresser and the two new instructors. Military.
Delmin’s hand went up, and he spoke before any of the faculty called on him. “Professor, is the major a member of the faculty, or is he here as some sort of consultant?”
“Name, son?” Dresser asked.
“Delmin Sarren, fourth-year and prefect. And my question was for Professor Alimen, sir.”
Alimen coughed uncomfortably. “Major Dresser, as well as Lieutenant Goodman and Missus Jacknell, will be teaching here as if they were visiting faculty, and will be treated with the same honors and respect due to anyone of professorial rank.”
“Now,” Dresser said, “this is how things are going to go. There are fifty-five of you, so you will be broken into eleven squads of five.”
Veranix immediately disliked the use of the word “squad” in this context.
“You will train every class day with your squad and your designated squad drill instructor.”
“Drill instructor” was even worse.
“You will learn to work as a cohesive unit, and you’re going to be training together in magical applications that can be used offensively, defensively, and comprehensively.”
“I like nothing about this,” Delmin whispered to Veranix.
“Your effectiveness will be scored and ranked. You will also be in direct competition with each other, as squads will go head to head in exercises.”
Veranix looked to Professor Alimen, who appeared pale and sickened over what was being said.
“Pardon the interruption,” Veranix said. “But all of this sounds explicitly militant in application. How is that appropriate?”
“You all could use a bit of military discipline, for one,” Dresser said. “I won’t tolerate another untimely outburst.”
“You are correct, Mister Calbert,” Alimen said. “We are adopting certain techniques, and while they will have a variety of applications for a professional mage, these . . . initiatives will give each of you certain tools which may empower you, should you seek a career as a mage militant.”
“And successful completion with acceptable scores will entitle you to an officer’s rank,” Dresser said.
“Entitle or obligate?” one student asked.
Dresser snapped his fingers, and with a flash of light, that student’s mouth was gone. Nothing but unbroken skin on the bottom half of his face. He clawed at the spot where his mouth should be.
“I said no further outbursts,” Dresser said. “Consider that an opportunity for advancement. Figure out how to repair yourself.”
Alimen waved his hand and the student’s mouth reappeared, with a sudden and desperate gasp.
“We do not do that to the students,” Alimen said. “Not even under the edicts of the Altarn Initiatives.”
Dresser shot Alimen an ugly look when he said “Altarn Initiatives.” Perhaps the specific name behind these changes was supposed to be kept secret.
Which made Veranix far more curious about what that meant.
A mystery for the future.
“Come on,” he whispered to Delmin. “If we’re getting broken into squads, let’s make sure we’re together.”
Amaya Tyrell lay back on Hemmit’s bed, perfectly content, if physically drained.
“So, you have something interesting for me?” Hemmit asked.
“I thought that was rather interesting,” Amaya said. “If not, I’m doing something wrong.”
“Nothing wrong,” Hemmit said, leaning over to kiss her. She was no longer in the mood to have that beard in her face, though, and blocked him with her hand.
“Let’s not dally all day,” she said.
“Right.” He took the cue and moved away. “You did say you had something.”
“I have thoughts,” she said. “Suspicions about this Grand Ten conspiracy that I cannot substantiate.”
“All right,” he said, getting out of the bed. He went across the room, to a large slateboard that Amaya had always found a little odd for him to own. She suspected he had pilfered it from the Royal College of Maradaine when he was expelled. He wiped the random notes off the board and picked up a piece of chalk. “Let’s go over it fresh.”
“Right,” she said. “We’ve got reasonable suspicion that there is a group of conspirators in the city who fashion themselves after the original Grand Ten. So, ten players, using the ten titles.”
He proceeded to write: Parliamentarian, Man of the People, Lord, Lady, Duchess, Priest, Justice, Soldier, Mage, and Warrior. “And from there?”
“The Warrior we suspect is a Tarian. Likely someone at the Master level. Or Grandmaster Orren himself.” She pushed her way through that last sentence, as distasteful as it was. “I don’t want to believe it is him, but . . .”
“It can’t be discounted,” Hemmit said. “It has to be someone with the ability to have Master Denbar sent to Lacanja. Who else can do that?”
“Really just the Grandmaster. But he could be influenced by someone else.”
He wrote the Grandmaster’s name under “Warrior,” followed by “other Masters.”
“And then what?” he asked.
“For the mage, I feel like it’s got to be someone in Intelligence, in the Red Wolf Circle. Those are the most politically powerful mages.”
“You know Lin is in Red Wolf,” he said.
“And can we completely trust her?”
“She’s not in Intelligence,” Hemmit said. “Red Wolf is the largest Mage Circle in the city, and while members do serve in Intelligence, they aren’t a Circle with an agenda. Half the members are like Lin—low skill mages who just need
Circling to avoid legal trouble.”
Amaya wasn’t entirely convinced, but said nothing more. Something about Lin Shartien put her on guard. Perhaps it was the her strong Linjari accent, or how easily she dropped it when talking to a source. Lin had a great capacity for deception. Hemmit had told her the whole story of their subterfuge as Wissen and Jala, which led to their infiltration of the Haltom’s Patriots.
“But that’s why my eye was on Colonel Altarn today,” Amaya said. “She’s had an unprecedented rise in the past few months. Hardly anyone knew her name a year ago, and now she’s seen in the halls of power more and more. Today I watched her intently.”
“At the garden?”
“Maybe it’s my own suspicion, but I swear, during the ceremony, she looked like she was waiting for something. When the assassin shot . . . it was almost like she was smiling.”
“You think she was behind it?”
“There’s no way that kid got on the grounds with a crossbow alone.”
“The Altarn Initiatives,” Hemmit said, snapping his fingers.
“What’s that?”
He went to a box behind his desk and thumbed through newsprints, copies of The Veracity Press. Taking out a copy, he handed it to her. “Both the University of Maradaine and RCM have had some upheaval in their magic programs. New faculty this semester, and talk of significant changes to the curriculum. I couldn’t find anyone to speak on the record, but several members of Lord Preston’s Circle expressed concern that these ‘Altarn Initiatives’ were damaging the core purpose of teaching young mages.”
“She’s driving curriculum changes at the universities?” Amaya asked, getting out of the bed as she looked over the story. “Put her down. She’s a primary candidate for the Mage.”
He wrote her name. “What about outside of the realm of political power? There are small Circles that have strong agendas. I’ve dug up some troubling things about the Firewings, Light and Stone, the Blue Hand . . .”
“Write it all down,” she said.
He did, and then under the Parliamentarian, wrote several names. “These are members of Parliament that I definitely have my suspicions about.”
“All Traditionalists?” Amaya asked. She put the newssheet down and started stretching her back and shoulders.
“Maybe that’s my bias,” he said. “But these are the members I have some degree of suspicion about. The kind whose character indicates they’d be involved in something underhanded.” He finished writing the names: Vale, Mills, Pollinglen, Bishop, Pike, Millerson, Tellerson, Calinar, Corvi.
“That’s a decent list.”
“They’re also members whose influence stems from connections to the nobility,” he said, pointing to the Lord, Lady, and Duchess on the board. “So that’s the source.”
“How many Duchesses are in the city?” Amaya asked. “I mean, in the whole country, there’s, what, forty?”
“Fifty-one,” he said. “Four live in Maradaine. But that’s presuming our Grand Ten are being that literal about their titles.”
“Right,” Amaya said. She rotated her neck, and it gave off a few too many pops for her taste.
“Soldier?” he asked.
“Let’s find a list of every major, colonel, and general in the city,” she said. “If we’re being less than literal . . .”
“Naval officers as well,” he said. He then wrote on the bottom half of the slateboard. “WHAT DO THEY WANT?”
“Good question,” she said. “That’s what troubles me.”
“That we don’t know?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about what the name the Grand Ten implies. The original one, at least in terms of legend, protected the integrity of the Line of Maradaine during the Incursion. Protected the city, protected the young prince when the rest of the royal family was captured or slaughtered—”
“And authenticating his claim to the throne afterward,” Hemmit said. “Not to mention building the current government we have.”
“So, presuming that they need to have a conspiracy because their intent is revolutionary . . .”
“The True Line nonsense,” Hemmit said.
“That is very troubling,” she said. “Especially in light of today’s assassination attempt.” She shook her head, and started gathering her clothing off the floor. “I should be getting back.”
“And I should get back down to the press,” Hemmit said. “Maresh and Lin will be cross if I’m gone this long.”
“Always duty,” she said, getting her uniform coat on. She kissed him on a part of his cheek with no beard. “But it’s good to get out of my head now and again.”
“Pleasure to serve, madam,” he said with a mock salute.
“Hush,” she said. “I’ll keep my eyes open and stay in touch.” She left with that. There was still so much they didn’t know, but she was certain that Colonel Silla Altarn was someone at the center of the problem.
“We have an Amaya Tyrell problem,” Colonel Altarn said.
Lady Mirianne Henson did not care for her tone or her intrusion. No one was even supposed to know about the secret stairwell from the Grand Ten meeting room to Miri’s office in Henson’s Majestic, but yet Colonel Altarn emerged from Miri’s private door with this pronouncement.
“We would have a real problem if one of my managers or secretaries came in and found you,” Mirianne said.
Altarn waved her hand, and the door shut and latched. “There. No mundane person could get that door open. And if they did, they’d see an empty room.”
“Colonel,” Miri said sharply, “we have established rules of contact, which you are breaking.”
“Because I don’t want a meeting with all ten of us. I want to talk to you about our Amaya Tyrell problem.”
“Oh?” Miri asked, closing her books of accounts for the store. It was clear that Colonel Altarn would not leave without some satisfaction, so she wasn’t going to get other work done until this was handled. Altarn made that point all the more clear by sitting in the chair opposite Miri’s desk. “Is this one of those situations where you act like you are in charge of things, and give me orders, and expect me to take care of them?”
“It’s a situation where I have seen a problem, and it’s one that you are in a position to handle. I come to you directly to not embarrass you in front of the others.”
“So considerate,” Mirianne said, standing up from the desk and smoothing out her coat with her hands. “Those uniforms don’t do anyone justice, Silla. Do you want me to have one of my designers make something for you?”
Altarn looked down at her gray Intelligence uniform. Miri had noticed that she had taken to wearing it far more often since her promotion to colonel. Like a trophy pelt. It was an odd choice, indeed, since the Intelligence uniform was rarely worn outside of the hallways of the central office. Plus, the cut was deeply unflattering.
“It’s perfectly comfortable,” Altarn said.
“At least let me have one of my girls measure you and properly fit it,” Mirianne said. “I mean, you’re already skinny enough. You look like a child playing soldier.”
“Stop that game, Lady Mirianne,” Altarn said firmly. “I’m not some insecure baron’s daughter you can manipulate.”
“The offer is open,” Miri said. “Though you are the one who mentioned embarrassing me in front of the others.”
“I said I didn’t want to do it.”
“And why would I be embarrassed?”
“Because Amaya Tyrell is directly—even intimately—connected with your paramour, Dayne Heldrin.”
“They haven’t been intimately connected in years,” Miri said. Though frankly she found the idea of Dayne and Amaya intimately connecting again quite invigorating. She would enjoy seeing that. “But I get your point. You feel a problem with Amaya is my problem, specifically. Though I
would argue it would be the Grandmaster’s.”
“He’s not quite ready yet to accept the solutions we’ll need to use,” Altarn said. Miri found that phrasing more than a little troubling, especially given the resources Altarn now had at her disposal. “Amaya Tyrell has been working with one of your newsmen, also. So she’s very much your problem.”
“I thought she had just taken him as a lover,” Miri said. “So the two of them are, what, finding their way into your dirty business?”
“My dirty business is all of ours,” Altarn said, though Miri had her doubts about that. There was definitely other business that Silla Altarn had her fingers in, and Miri didn’t want to think too much about that.
“Why do you think she’s now a problem?”
“I know when I’m being watched. And her attention was firmly on me at the palace today.”
“I didn’t notice,” Miri said.
“She was close to Master Denbar, after all.”
That was a point. Master Denbar had gotten too close to the Grandmaster’s involvement, to the Grand Ten as a whole. Perhaps he had passed some information on to Amaya before dying, and she had been searching for them all.
They had been careful, but Miri was well aware that no amount of care was foolproof.
“You think she knows about all of us?”
“I think she suspects there is an all of us. As does Hemmit Eyairin—”
“You have an odd love of using full names.”
“And we know he’s got a connection to that fool from the Patriots who traced his way back to Millerson!”
That was a cause for worry. That boy definitely had figured out far too much, and he had gone completely to ground. And it put Millerson—who thought himself as being in control of things as The Man of the People—in a precarious position. That would require adjustment. “I’m handling Hemmit and the Veracity. It’s all part of the plan.”
“Well, the plan will have to eliminate Miss Tyrell.”
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