by Voss Foster
I nodded. It all sounded about like I would have expected. "The person didn't say anything to you? Did you see anything weird?"
"I don't know. It's all kind of blurry." He squeezed his eyes shut, and his skin began to smoke. It took everything in me not to flinch back. Neither of them needed me afraid of him right now.
Chetra reached over and touched his arm. "Calm, Selal. It's over."
Slowly, Selal cracked open one eye. "Right before she vanished…she said this was our punishment."
"Whose punishment?" I had a damn good idea. Punishment against Al-Sekar. But maybe there was something I was missing, something he could point out.
"She didn’t say. She just said it was our punishment for the past. Then she was gone. It wasn't like remote transport. She didn't walk away, and I didn't see her open a portal. She was just gone."
She was gone. Her hands were huge. She was a damn shapeshifter. They were all damn shapeshifters, and they were punishing these kids, these families for what happened during the War of Unity.
And they didn't look like they were about to stop. "All right. I'm going to let you keep resting." I would have liked to stick around and talk to him a little bit more, but that one final bead of confirmation pushed me forward. "Your mom has my number if you remember anything."
And then I was out, and my phone was out, and I was dialing up Swift. He picked up after a single ring. "What's the news from the hospital."
"Selal's fine. But it was definitely a shapeshifter that got to him. And she said that this was his punishment."
"Which we knew."
"I know we suspected it. But that's confirmation. And that's good reason to start taking caution for the other families, don't you think?"
"That's already a contingency." Swift was calm while I was apparently just catching up with everybody else. "Kimmy's got a list of Sekari families in the US waiting for a reason to spread the word." He blew out a long breath, which just crackled into static over the phone. "Shit, I guess this is the time to spread the word, though. We'll get that moving."
Good. We could save people, still. We could do our jobs. "What about the Kingdoms?"
"Queen Estil is still in Al-Sekar, trying to figure this out."
"No. I mean, do we warn them this is coming their way, too? Because the shapeshifters aren't going to stop with the Mundane."
A pause. "You know as well as I do the Sekari royal family isn't going to listen to what we have to say."
On that, he was right. "Then what's the plan?"
"Stop things here. If it becomes our problem over there, then we can ship right out."
I knew it was the right choice. Well, maybe not the right choice, but it was the choice available to us. The OPA had a little more lax regulations than the rest of the FBI, but not lax enough we could perform operations in another dimension under separate sovereign rule without permission or undeniable cause. Especially not with Svenson breathing down our necks.
But damn it all if I didn't want to storm in and save the whole lot of them. This time, though, I couldn't just throw caution to the wind. Not the least reason being how many lives were already at stake. How many young lives. "I'm heading back now."
"Good. You can wait with King."
More waiting. Great. I hung up and headed back out of the hospital. The last thing any of us should have been doing was waiting around. But that was the situation we all found ourselves in.
Just fucking great.
"Dash. Time to wake up."
A hard impact against my shoulder shocked me up. I scrabbled for my Glock and felt my fingertips against the grip before I noticed it was King shaking me awake. She was fully dressed, her hair damp. On the other side, Gutt was just lacing up his boots.
I took my hand off the gun and grabbed my clothes from their pile on the floor. "What's the situation?"
"Queen Estil came back. Apparently she didn't get good news in Al-Sekar."
"Shocking no one." I got my pants up and buttoned, then threw on my shirt and started to strap up my holster. "Anything more than that?"
"We're meeting with both queens of Tarwald. Now."
"Before coffee?"
She grunted in response, a scowl moving across her face. "Swift promised the pot was full. Not sure I trust the skinny son of a bitch, though." She flashed a tight, grim smile. "Best not to keep the royals waiting."
My jacket wasn't in the best shape, but I shrugged it on anyway, covering the Glock and the whole holster setup. I shoved my feet into my shoes, still tied from the day before. "Let's head."
Gutt stepped up and opened a portal, and all of us filed through. Past the bright and into the office. An office considerably fuller than usual. All the normal crew, gathered around, along with our two royals, I had to assume. Queen Estil standing tall and regal next to a woman with much paler green skin. Seafoam green or teal or something like that. Even Casey had joined this particular meeting. Hopefully just to be part of the team, not to give us some terrible medical news. We didn't need any more cards in this particularly shitty hand.
King made straight for the coffee, once again totally ignoring the dignitaries in the room. And I had to admit, I wanted to follow. But the second queen was already heading my way, hand extended. "Queen Jalima."
I wasn't exactly sure what to do—I was pretty sure you were supposed to bow to royalty—but I just followed her lead and shook her hand. "Agent Dashiel Rourke, your highness."
She waved my comment away like a bothersome insect. "None of this highness crap. I'm a mother who's actually lucky enough to help her son where a lot of mothers couldn't." She looked me up and down. Her voice was husky and brash and her baseline volume seemed to be just on the northside of polite conversation. "You're the agent who carried my son out of that trailer, aren't you?"
"Yes."
"Well, good man. I owe you one."
"It's my job." I made eye contact with Gutt as he closed down the portal. "I think we should get all this information sorted out first. We can handle anything else once we know what we're doing."
King came over with her coffee—I was pretty sure she'd already drained out one cup and this was at least her second—and Queen Jalima backed up into line next to Estil. After a few moments, Estil sighed. "This is technically under the strictest of confidence. The sort of thing that would normally never be revealed outside of a confidence such as exists between Tarwald and Al-Sekar." She reached over and gripped Queen Jalima's seafoam green hand before continuing. "The magic used against the shapeshifters, they tell me they don't know any specifics. Lost to their history as much as it's lost to ours."
Swift nodded. "You're sure they weren't being less than totally honest when it came to that?"
"If they were, then truly they are no longer worthy of the long relationship with Tarwald." She raised her chin and nodded curtly. "I asked for help since my son was attacked by these shapeshifters. Queen Levat gave me no reason to suspect subterfuge." Se shook her head. "The more concerning issue is what Levat and Shivan revealed to me of their own accord… When it comes out that I've let this slip to humans, Levat will not be happy."
"And there are much more important things than Queen Levat right now." Jalima almost sounded tender. Louder than average, but tender.
"I know. I just want to be clear with everyone the delicacy involved here. It will place further strain on the relationships with Al-Sekar."
"Sorry about your diplomacy," said King. "But if you're worried about the OPA, I'm willing to speak for everyone and say that we don't give a flying god damn whether Al-Sekar likes us. They already don't."
And Queen Estil actually smiled at that remark. It was another weird little interaction between the two of them. I guess they liked each other well enough. Or had mutual respect. Or something. Honestly, it was just nice to see someone outside the OPA actually like King. She… made an impression, that was for damn sure, and most people never really looked past that.
Estil nodded and pulled h
erself up higher, shoulders back. "There are rumblings in Al-Sekar. Rumors, but rumors enough that the royal family has been made aware of them. Unrest in the city around the palace. Innate magic spiking beyond what they can even sense and record. Elemental families in a frenzy." She eyes went wide, fixing straight on Swift. "Missing children."
All the air sucked out of the room at that, then came rushing back in with crushing force to fill the vacuum of Queen Estil's words. It didn't take a lifetime of experience or knowledge of magic or even a college degree like I had. We had missing elemental children—walking bombs. They were being kidnapped by a group who hated Al-Sekar. Now Al-Sekar was showing a massive increase in innate magic. The same kind of magic elementals used.
I was right to think that the shapeshifters were getting sloppy because they were close to their end game. The end game was here. It was now. Elemental children, ready to be unsealed in Al-Sekar. A kingdom-wide tragedy.
"She would allow Al-Sekar to erupt rather than reach out to us." Gutt was baring his tusks, and not in the "I'm a troll, this is how we smile" sort of way. His eyes were hard little chips of olivine set in a rough-hewn, bitter mask. "I didn't take her disdain to be that deep."
Honestly, neither did I. They'd certainly both been cold and distant when Gutt and I went to meet with them, and I knew that they'd opposed offering help to the Mundane after the prison break. Still, if this was affecting them and we could help…
"This is why I don't put up with fucking royals." King stomped back to the coffee pot and refilled again. "Present company excluded, but for the most part you're all damn idiots."
Jalima chuckled dryly. "I tend to agree, for the most part. Present company not excluded. All of us in the Hidden Kingdoms are just barely holding anything together at any given moment. But Levat is practically doing her best to ensure a tragedy at this point."
Swift sighed. "We can't do anything about that. But it sounds like probable cause for crossing the borders. Or damn close to it. But without that magic that can keep the shapeshifters at bay, what the hell are we going to do?"
A quiet cough. Bancroft clearing his throat amid the whole mess. He pushed his glasses up slowly. "On that front, I may have something of use. I obviously can't say that I've found any way to recreate the magic as described, but if I could borrow someone with some magical aptitude, I think my research could come closer than what we have now."
Gutt rose. "Do you have something prepared?"
"I do." He slipped out his phone, flicked through it a few times, then passed it over to Gutt. "It's somewhat cobbled together, of course. A combination of the historical record we were given, contemporaneous magic from the ear surrounding the War of Unity, and a bit of intuition that hopefully won't lead us too far astray."
Gutt scanned over the phone screen, nodding along. "It will certainly create some form of containment. I would need someone to test it against, however."
Jalima stood almost immediately. "As long as it won't kill me."
Swift stood at that, too. "Your highness, hate to be a buzzkill, but we can't have the FBI using experimental magic against a member of the royal family of Tarwald. That may not necessarily be directly against protocol, but I'm fairly certain it would fall under the general guidance to not attack foreign dignitaries."
"And I recommend you don't argue against requests from the Queen of Tarwald if you don't want diplomacy to fall apart." She smiled at him. "Children are at stake, Agent Swift, so now isn't the time to stand on formality. If there's an issue with your higher-ups, I'll deal with them." Then she looked back to Gutt. "Do it."
Gutt didn't hesitate the way Swift had. He set the phone down and, staring at the screen, worked his hands through slow, calculated maneuvers. Fingers crossing and uncrossing, bending then bending backwards. Wrists together and then apart, then rotating off each other. And slowly, sure enough, a pale blue light tingled into being around his hands, growing steadily brighter.
With a flick of his wrist, Gutt launched it silently across the way at Jalima. When the light hit, it spread across her skin, locking to her form, trapping her in a layer of blue no more than a quarter-inch thick.
She didn't rock back or move at all. It seemed almost like it didn't affect her, other than some rapid blinking as it spread over her face. "Is this all?"
"Try to break free," said Bancroft. "That's the only real way to be sure of anything."
She nodded and splayed her fingers wide. Then she double dover, clutching her stomach, sucking in sharp breath. She didn't collapse, but her knees shook under her weight.
Estil rushed to her side. "Release her."
Gutt glanced back at the phone. The release took just a simple wave of the hand, shattering the blue seal into a fine mist of light around the queen before it simply vanished. "Are you all right?"
After a few seconds, Jalima righted herself and nodded. "I am, but I wouldn't have been if that was on much longer." Her mouth bowed down into a frown. "It cycles any outward force of magic back into the body of the practitioner. Including my elemental magic. Even the simple conjuring I attempted kept feeding and multiplying into me. It grew each time it came back through."
Which was bad news for anyone who got caught up in that blue light. A feedback loop of magic was the easiest way to get to magical overload. And the harder someone tried to get out of that particular nasty little enchantment, the more magic would be turning back around into their system.
Swift nodded. "Main question: is this going to work?"
Jalima and Gutt looked at each other, then Jalima nodded. "It would incapacitate me, and I'm no slouch."
"I think it's the best to be done on short notice." Gutt nodded to Bancroft. "Nice work."
"I do what I can. As I said, it may not be correct. We don't know what the magic used initially was, and we don’t know enough about shapeshifter physiology to take more than a guess."
"I'll take whatever we can get." Swift was drumming his fingers again, but this time on his knee, so it wasn't too grating. "We're on the clock and we don't know how many minutes are left." He locked eyes with Queen Estil. "You said you have specialists who can get us in and out of Al-Sekar undetected."
"Yes. And we will make them available. But are you willing to risk the wrath of Queen Levat over this?"
"Is she going to go along with our plan if we come out and ask her nicely?"
Estil shook her head grimly. "No, I don't suppose she would. I just wanted you to understand what was at stake."
"We know what's at stake." King tossed her empty coffee cup in the trash. "We all know what's at fucking stake here: children. Dozens of dead little kids. Younger than your son, most of them. Whatever fallout happens is worth it to save even one of them."
Estil nodded. "They believe there's a crisis brewing. Levat and Shivan have already begun the move to the old palace."
That perked my ears, that was for damn sure. "Old palace? How old are we talking about?"
"Thousands of years. It's maintained, but rarely used except when the king and queen need to shelter somewhere secluded."
Swift apparently put it together, too. "Are we talking old enough to have been used in the War of Unity?"
"Yes."
I could almost see the electricity of the information pass from person to person. We knew the shapeshifters had an opening to their Kingdom north of the palace. But now we had a better clue. It would have been this old palace.
Swift jumped up. "All right. This is going to be a big mission. We'll keep it as quiet as we can, but that's only going to be so quiet. As many preets as the field offices can spare, as few humans as we can manage. We want to delay a meeting with the armies of Al-Sekar as long as possible."
Kimmy had already gotten up and was heading to the vault. Likely to send out the missive to the field offices.
Swift carried on, rattling out orders. "Dash, Gutt, you're with me at the old palace. I want you two leading the search for the shapeshifters' kingdom. If we can get to
them there, maybe we can find those kids or stop this whole damn mess before it's too late. I'll play diplomat with the king and queen." He turned to King. "I want you on the ground there, Abigail, but I don't know how the hell to do it where it's not going to fire off alarm bells."
"She'll be our advisor from the Mundane." Jalima put her hands on her hips. "I'm assuming you'd want her near the current palace? We'll pay a visit to the palace with her in tow. No guard is going to attempt to stop the queens of Tarwald from a royal audience."
"Works for me," said King.
Swift nodded. "All right. Word's going out now. How fast can you get the remote transport set up?"
Estil rose to her full, towering height. "They're always at the ready. Say the word."
"We'll mobilize in ten minutes."
Jalima raised one eyebrow at that. "You can get this in motion that fast?"
"We killed Jörmungandr in downtown Manhattan with a skinny greenhorn and a rifle. Getting an operation moving is a cakewalk." He smiled, though it was tight, not his normal aloof grin. "Besides, it's not complex orders. Stand around and wait until you get word on what to do. If you see an elemental kid, take them to safety."
Kimmy marched back out of the vault. "I want in on this if we're saving some damn kids."
Props to her, but we all knew Swift was going to say no. And he did. "Can't risk that many humans gallivanting around Al-Sekar. Stay here and run communications." His eyes sharpened. "We stand out best chance of saving all of them if we can all stay abreast of what's happening."
She looked, just for a moment, like she would argue. Then she nodded. "You better be sure you're fucking comm works better than your phone."