“As you command, Your Majesty,” Dread said.
“I will start conscripting,” Charity said. She’d have to tell the recruiting officers to do it, she knew. “But I ...”
She yawned, suddenly, and staggered as her legs suddenly threatened to give out.
“Go take a nap,” the Emperor said, as if he’d given her a great boon. His voice turned sickly-sweet. “Dread can handle the recruiting sergeants, can’t you?”
Dread didn’t look best pleased, but he nodded.
“Thank you, Your Majesty,” Charity said, as she yawned again. She wasn’t blind to the smirk on his face, or the certainty that he was being kind to someone he considered little better than a pet dog. “I ...”
She yawned. This time, she thought she saw something vast and horrific leaning over the Emperor, something that didn’t seem to quite come into focus. A spider’s web, perhaps, or something stranger. She blinked ...
... And it was gone.
“Go rest,” the Emperor said. “Now.”
Charity obeyed, thinking hard. What was that thing? Something real, something the Emperor had summoned, or something else? Dread clearly hadn’t seen anything ... or, if he had, he hadn’t said a word.
And, when she finally reached her rooms and fell asleep, her sleep was plagued by nightmares.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“This is a waste of time,” Cass grumbled, after twenty minutes had passed. “We’re out here, exposed and helpless ...”
“Wait,” Daria urged. “The Levellers wouldn’t show themselves so openly.”
Johan shrugged, keeping his thoughts to himself. Hawke had approached him ... but that had been before his supposed death. Now, Hawke thought Johan was dead, while two of his companions were a Privy Councillor – assuming that Deferens hadn’t already fired Elaine – and a former Inquisitor. He didn’t blame Hawke for being careful, not when his entire organisation was at stake. Deferens was unlikely to live and let live when he felt his power was being challenged.
The waiter came up to them, carrying a tray of drinks. Johan looked up – the waiter looked utterly unremarkable – and took his drink, then frowned as he saw a flicker of amusement on the waiter’s face. There was no glamour, no attempt to magically hide his features, yet he was sure the man was wearing a disguise. The waiter placed the last two mugs on the table, then smiled at them.
Johan took a gamble. “Hawke?”
“Johan,” Hawke said. “The boss has organised the back room for you and your friends. If you would like to come with me ...?”
Johan exchanged glances with Elaine, then picked up his mug of hot chocolate and rose, following Hawke through a back door and up a cramped flight of stairs. The compartment smelt unpleasant, a mixture of beer, urine and something he didn’t want to identify, but somehow he managed to breathe through his mouth until they reached the top floor. A woman – barely older than himself – stood outside a wooden door, smoking. The outfit she wore left absolutely nothing to the imagination. Hawke nodded to her and she stepped to one side, allowing them to pass. Inside, it was a simple business room, complete with table, chairs and a small drinks cabinet. If it hadn’t been for the aroma, and the mundane candles hanging from the walls, it could have passed for one of his father’s meeting rooms.
“Well,” Daria said. She sounded edgy. If the room smelt bad to him, Johan realised, it had to be far worse for a werewolf. “I never knew this was here.”
“This pub is neutral ground,” Cass pointed out. “Having a place for people to meet runs with the territory.”
“You’re very welcome,” Hawke said, putting the tray down on the table. “I should warn you that this place has a strict no fighting policy. Unless you want to take a round or two in the pit downstairs. It’s quite spectacular and people will bet on you.”
“Bare knuckle fighting isn’t my thing,” Cass said. “And I doubt this place could handle a wizard duel.”
“It couldn’t,” Hawke confirmed. “But most magicians who come here don’t want to fight. They want to get drunk, to feel they’re doing something naughty, and then spend the rest of the night with a whore.”
Johan sensed Elaine’s embarrassment at Hawke’s words. He couldn’t help feeling a little embarrassed too, as well as amused. Was that what Jamal had been doing when he’d been away at the Peerless School? Maybe there was something to be said for not going to the school, after all. But then, he would have happily worked at the Waving Wand if it had meant getting out of the house for a few hours.
“Please, sit,” Hawke said. He sat down at the end of the table, shedding the last fragments of the waiter persona, and gave Johan a friendly smile. “I thought you were dead?”
“The reports of my death were a little inaccurate,” Johan said, as he sat down. “It was decided, by various people, that the city would be happier if it had a report of my death, so one was written and distributed. I thought they could have exaggerated the report a little, maybe come up with an exciting story, but no one would have believed it.”
Hawke smiled, again. “And you’re here now,” he said. His eyes suddenly sharpened. “Why?”
Cass stood behind her chair and leant on it, as if she was unwilling to sit down. “Why a waiter?”
“A waiter hears much and sees all,” Hawke said, dryly. “And no one ever pays attention to the staff.”
He was right, Johan knew. His family certainly hadn’t paid much attention, at least until the staff had taken advantage of his father’s ... indisposition to flee. Jamal had always been more interested in using the maids for sexual pleasure, rather than regarding them as living beings in their own right. Johan wondered, suddenly, what Jamal might have told the maids while they were sharing his bed, then dismissed the thought. It was impossible to imagine Jamal knowing anything useful that he could babble to his unwilling partner.
“Point,” Cass said. “But what about loyalty spells?”
“Not here,” Hawke said. He rested his hands on the table in front of him, then smiled. “And then, I don’t always work as a waiter.”
“True,” Cass said. “I should have recognised you from the start.”
Elaine cleared her throat. “Why ...?”
Hawke rose and gave her a sweeping bow. “Robert Hawke, at your service,” he said. “You may have heard of me.”
Johan felt Elaine’s astonishment. “You’re a merchant!”
“And as powerless as a Powerless,” Hawke said. He sat down, his eyes hooded. “And what could I do if some magician decides he wants my property – or my wife and daughters?”
“So you joined the Levellers,” Cass said, softly. “Why?”
“He had cause,” Johan said, quietly. Hawke’s daughter had been cursed by a magician, one of Jamal’s friends. Johan had broken the spell ... had that really only been ten days ago? It felt like years. “Believe me, he had cause.”
“Very well,” Cass said. “What’s happening out there?”
“Nothing good,” Hawke said. “Homes are being ransacked, hostages are being taken, daughters have been ravished, a handful of people have been enslaved for daring to protest ... and soldiers are being recruited for the Emperor’s armies. I believe they will even start to conscript young men soon enough, as they haven’t had many volunteers.”
Johan blinked. “Why not?”
“Few people would willingly join the army,” Cass said. “It would be one thing if you got to stand around in a fancy uniform all day, but most soldiers either find themselves chasing bandits or serving as targets for mad magicians. There’s just no one to fight.”
“There might be,” Elaine said, quietly. “Not everyone in the Empire is going to be happy about having an Emperor again.”
“Yes,” Daria agreed. “The events of the last six months weakened the Grand Sorcerer’s grip on power. There are quite a few kingdoms that might declare independence if they thought they could get away with it. Deferens would have to fight a long civil war to put the Empire
back together or accept a sundering of his power.”
“He wouldn’t,” Elaine said. “He’s the kind of person who wants it all.”
“Worse than that,” Cass said. “He was raised in a society where endless competition is the order of the day. To beat someone is to claim all they owned, from wives and children to goods and obligations. He won’t allow a state to declare independence; he’ll just see it as another challenge to his power. Civil war will result.”
“Unless the revolts come right up to the mountains,” Daria pointed out. “The Golden City can’t beat the rest of the world on its own, can it?”
“Maybe,” Cass said. “We still don’t know what Deferens was doing last night.”
“I was hoping you could shed some light on it,” Hawke said. “Our best guess is that he killed a great many people.”
“Children,” Elaine said. “But we don’t know why.”
“All that matters is that he has to be stopped before things fall apart completely,” Cass said, firmly. “He has to be stopped.”
“True, true,” Hawke said. His eyes moved from face to face. “In short, things are going to the nine hells. And, with that in mind, what can I do for you?”
Elaine shook her head. “How could things have fallen apart so quickly?”
Cass snorted, rudely. “The Empire was never based on anything but the iron fist in the iron glove,” she said. “It was built on the strong oppressing the weak. The thin veneer of decency you saw was all there was to it.”
“We need to flee the city,” Elaine said. “Can you show us how to escape?”
“The tunnels are heavily guarded,” Hawke said, slowly. “And while bribery might work, some of the soldiers are spellbound. Try to bribe one of those and they’ll cut off your balls.”
Johan winced. His father had once said that everyone had a price ... but someone who was spellbound couldn’t be bribed, or pushed into doing something against the interests of his masters. And there would be no way to know who was spellbound and who wasn’t until it was far too late.
“Then we need a distraction,” Cass said. “Something that will get them away from the tunnels.”
“There are fewer guards on the Iron Dragon tunnels,” Hawke pointed out. “If they happened to be reduced still further, you could probably get out that way.”
Elaine scowled. “I don’t know how to operate an Iron Dragon,” she said. “Do you?”
“Yes, as it happens,” Hawke said. “But why don’t you just walk?”
“Oh,” Elaine said.
Johan felt her embarrassment and cringed, mentally. The Iron Dragons might be out of commission, but the tunnels were ... well, tunnels. There was nothing to stop them from just walking through, unless they happened to encounter an Iron Dragon coming the opposite way. He’d read an article in the broadsheets about a handful of kids stupid enough to do just that, a year ago. They’d been smashed to paste, of course. No one had really given a damn.
“We would still need a diversion,” Cass said, tightly. “Even if they’re not used to thinking of the Iron Dragon tunnels as a way to leave the city, they will still have them guarded.”
“I think I can give you one,” Hawke said. He reached into his pocket and produced a green crystal, which he dropped firmly on the table. “But I would need your oaths, first.”
Cass’s eyes narrowed. “Mundanes are forbidden to use those,” she snapped.
Hawke looked at her, evenly. “And are you going to arrest me for possessing an oathbinder?”
“I should,” Cass said. “Those things can be very dangerous.”
“I need your oaths that you will not betray my confidence,” Hawke said, firmly. “This oathbinder is preset. What we speak of in this room, past this point, will be unspeakable in public, at least until I tell you otherwise.”
“You have some magicians on your side,” Daria said, as Cass picked up the oathbinder and examined it, carefully. “Don’t you?”
Hawke nodded. Johan felt a strange mixture of emotions from Elaine; shock, perhaps, that a magician would betray his own kind, then a grim realisation that she might have done the same thing, if she’d been a different person. She was barely magical enough to go to the Peerless School ... and if she’d been forced to work as a low-power magician instead, she would probably have resented the stronger magicians as much as Hawke did. And she might have aided his plans instead of reporting them.
“I have a question,” Johan said. “What’s to stop Deferens trying to force the information out of us anyway?”
“It would have the Great Houses rising up against him,” Elaine said, quietly. “Oaths are the foundations of our society. To force someone to break one’s oath would outrage every magician with half a brain. They’d all see their own oaths at stake.”
“And crossing that line would mean no going back,” Cass added. She put the crystal down on the table, then sat down and nodded. “We won’t speak your words to anyone outside the group.”
Hawke nodded and tapped the crystal. There was a flash of green light, which faded so rapidly Johan wasn’t sure if it had been real or if he’d imagined it. He felt magic shimmer around him for a second, then fade away. Elaine coughed, then looked at the crystal thoughtfully. It was now cracked and broken.
“Shoddy work,” Cass commented.
“There’s a shortage of carved crystals just now,” Hawke said. “The Emperor has been buying up every box he can find. Prices have been going through the roof and past the mountain peaks.”
“That bad, huh?” Daria asked. “What do you want to tell us?”
Hawke leant forward, his eyes darting from face to face. “We’re planning an uprising,” he said. “But it was always chancy.”
Cass spluttered. “You must be joking!”
“I’m not,” Hawke said, quietly. “The ... problems we faced six months ago convinced many of us that we could no longer endure our lives in the Empire. We started to plan for something more than just pointless protests.”
“You’ll be slaughtered,” Cass said, flatly. “One wave of my hand and you would be my obedient slave! You couldn’t hope to get close enough to me to kill me with a sword before I killed you, or transfigured you, or enslaved you, or merely knocked you into a wall. This plan is madness.”
“There are ways around your spells,” Hawke said.
“None of which would last long enough to save you from an entire city of magicians,” Cass said. She rose to her feet. “This is a waste of time.”
“Sit down,” Hawke snapped, with sudden authority. “How much magic is in the Iron Dragons?”
Elaine frowned. “None,” she said. “They’re purely mechanical.”
“Quite,” Hawke said. “You understand, of course, the problems with using magic for everything?”
“You need a magician to make it work,” Elaine said.
“Exactly,” Hawke said. “In fact, given the tales of great feats performed by magicians in the past, it is actually possible that magic is leeching out of the world. Where are the teleport gates, or the flying castles, or the great beasts that once darkened our skies. Is the magic fading or are our magicians merely forgetting what they could do?”
“Interesting point,” Elaine said. Johan had the sense she wasn’t being quite honest. “But most of those stories grew in the telling.”
Hawke shrugged. “Regardless, there are people who were looking at ways to do things without magic,” he said. “The Iron Dragons are one such example. They may be crude, they may be dependent on iron rails, but they need no magic. And ... well, once they had one success, they just kept looking for more. You should see some of the wonders we created in our workshops.”
“Wonders?” Cass sneered. “I could use magic to make an Iron Dragon.”
“But would it work without draining your magic?” Hawke asked. He reached into his pocket and produced a small vial of grey powder. “Is there any magic in this substance?”
Elaine took the vial
, ran her wand over it, then shook her head.
“One of the problems with potions is that they need a magician to make them work,” Hawke said, as he took back the vial and stood. “You need to use your magic to force the magic inherent in the ingredients to actually blend together. That’s problematic if you don’t have any magic. So people started looking at ways to get potions without using magic, drawing on natural ingredients. Eventually, they discovered this.”
He placed a metal tray on the table, then poured a little powder on the tray and then placed a tiny piece of paper beside it. “Watch carefully,” he said, as he took one of the candles from the wall and carried it back to the table. “This is always interesting.”
Johan watched, puzzled, as he used the candle to light the piece of paper. The flames spread rapidly towards the grey powder and ... the powder exploded. He rubbed his ears as the noise faded away, then stared at the tray. There was a nasty black mark where the powder had been, but the powder itself was gone.
Somehow, he found his voice. “What the hell was that?”
“We call it Firepowder,” Hawke said. “I won’t tell you how many people were killed or injured in accidents before we finally managed to get a working formula that wasn’t dangerously unstable. What I will tell you is that, if emplaced properly, it will make one hell of an explosion.”
“And you plan to use it to kill the Emperor,” Cass said. “Getting it close to the Imperial Palace will be difficult.”
“There are too many guards there,” Hawke said. “We’ve been looking for ways to do it, but we couldn’t find one we were sure would work. We were going to use it against the Watchtower instead.”
Cass stared at him. “You ...”
She broke off. Johan was sure he knew what she was thinking. The Watchtower was warded against all manner of magical threats, but no one had anticipated a non-magical threat. If the Firepowder was completely devoid of magic, it wouldn’t set off any alarms when it crossed the wards. The Levellers could leave their device in plain sight and no one would even notice until it was too late.
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