Wilkinson shrugged. “How much of the American population is Catholic?” He asked. I rolled my eyes. I should have seen that coming. “The President wants to stand for re-election on the strength of the ‘victory’ in New York, so the last thing he wants is the Pope suggesting that American Catholics not vote for him. I think he’s probably overreacting, but…we’ll see.”
He shrugged. “Other than that, the country seems to be returning to normal,” he concluded. “The dragon that assisted you gave us some clout, so we were able to keep a lid on the worst of the trouble. I dare say it’ll spring up again sooner or later – you’ve done nothing about the continued advance of magic – but we can relax for the moment.”
“We defeated a greater evil and were left with a lesser evil,” I said, dryly. “We’ll cope, somehow. We may even be able to come to an agreement with the Faerie now that we have destroyed a Mound, even without the controlling Queen.”
“Yeah,” Wilkinson said. He rubbed his eyes. “There’s no easy way to say this, Glass; I’m no longer the Director of the Guardian Corps.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Why?”
“The President, and some of his staff, feel that I badly mishandled the situation and allowed Vincent Faye to take us right to the brink of disaster,” Wilkinson admitted. “Someone had to pay the price and they selected me. I’d be surprised if they found anyone who wanted the job in a hurry, but I’m out as of two days ago. My Deputy is handling matters until the President finds someone else dumb enough to volunteer, but it may be a while before anyone does.” He laughed dryly. “It may be hard finding someone willing to take responsibility for the cluster-fuck.”
He sobered. “It’s going to get a lot harder,” he added, softly. “Congress is still arguing, but it looks as if some of the harsher laws they’ve been debating are going to pass. We – you – may find yourself trying to enforce them. The Forsaken intrusion scared hell out of Congress and when they found out that it was only possible because of Vincent Faye and his merry band of brothers…”
“I see,” I said. It was unfair. Wilkinson had done everything he could. If anyone was to blame, it was Vincent’s friends and allies in the government. “It wasn't your fault.”
“They’re not looking for someone who actually is guilty, but someone to take the blame,” Wilkinson said. “Don’t you know? Congress is always right, even when it’s wrong. Perhaps especially when it’s wrong.”
“That makes no sense,” Aylia said, as she was helped into the room. She wore a long white nightgown that contrasted nicely with her eyes and hair; I thought she’d never looked more beautiful. “They have to take some of the blame themselves, don’t they?”
“You’re using logic and reason,” Wilkinson said, not unkindly. His face twisted into a weak little smile. “Your father purchased the loyalty of hundreds of congressmen, senators and other government officers by the simple expedient of offering them money, regardless of who they represented. Democrats and Republicans alike were purchased and put to work for him. It’s been going on for years, even before magic; the big corporations purchased the influence they needed. Now that it’s blown up in their faces, they’ll be the loudest voices screaming for your father to be dug up from his grave and put on trial for his crimes. If not…the voters might think that they were to blame and…we couldn’t have that, could we?”
“He wasn't to blame,” Aylia said, as she sat down. Two cats eyed her and decided that she wasn't going to be petting them. “The Forsaken made him what he was. He killed my entire family for it.”
“And you helped to put it all right,” Wilkinson said. “There’s going to be an investigation, and God alone knows how it will end up with so many thumbs in the scale, but no one is going to blame you.”
“Thank you,” Aylia said, sourly. She still looked as weak as I felt. “What now?”
“Now you get to join the training programs for new Guardians,” I said. Wilkinson nodded. “Me…? I get to go home, have a long rest, and then move house.”
“Move house?” Aylia asked. “Why…?”
“Everyone knows where I live now,” I explained. “Cowboy might like having his enemies taking clear shots at him, and no one in their right mind would go anywhere near Englishman’s home unless they had very pressing business, but me…I don’t like that sort of attention. I was enjoying being just another sorcerer on a very wealthy street.”
“Besides, your neighbours have already started a petition to have you evicted,” Wilkinson added. “It seems that they were scared out of their minds when the dragon landed on their roofs and want some guarantee that it will never happen again.”
I snorted. “Good luck to them,” I said. “Have they ever tried telling a dragon what to do?”
“Probably not,” Wilkinson said. He stood up, displacing a pair of cats onto the floor, who made protesting noises until Granny stroked their ears. “In any case, I dare say that my successor will want to debrief you both thoroughly before anything else, so enjoy your recuperation. Goodbye.”
He nodded once and strode out the door. “What?” Aylia asked. “Why…?”
“I’ll explain later,” I said, as the noise of a car departing faded away in the distance. “For the moment…”
I reached out and took her hand. “For the moment, relax,” I said, firmly. “The training will be the hardest thing you’ve ever done, believe me.”
An hour later, I stepped outside into Granny’s garden. It was as spectacular as always, with a mixture of mundane plants and some of the magical plants growing over in Mirkwood. I glanced towards where Yellowstone had once been and remembered the werewolves; I might have to go back into the woods and tell Felincia’s father the full story. He had a right to know what had happened to his daughter, but for the moment…
I looked upwards into the clear blue sky. “Thank you,” I said. “We couldn’t have done it without you.”
“You’re welcome,” Drak Bibliophile said, in my head. I looked around, but I couldn’t see the dragon anywhere. I looked more carefully, but still saw nothing. I couldn’t believe it. A dragon wasn't exactly easy to hide, not one larger than the entire garden. “You would have made it on your own. I merely made it a little easier.”
I frowned. “Why?”
The dragon’s voice seemed to smile. “Why not?”
I turned, still looking for the dragon’s position. It might have been so high in the sky that it wasn't even a speck, but somehow I was sure that it was closer. I looked up towards the roof, wondering if he were perched there somehow, but it was populated only by a flight of greedy birds. The cats probably considered them lunch.
“You gave us vague warnings at first,” I said, slowly. “You only helped us when we needed it. Why…?”
“You had to do it for yourself,” Drak Bibliophile said. “Otherwise, what would it have meant?”
There was a pause. “You killed the Forsaken Fragment, but you didn’t kill all of the Forsaken,” he added. “They’ll be looking around for you now, not just to complete the task of destroying the Faerie, but to learn what happened to part of themselves. It might be wise to do nothing that might attract their attention until you’re ready to deal with them properly, as equals. It should only take a few million years or so.”
He laughed again. “That won’t mean anything to them,” he said. “It shouldn’t mean anything to you either. You have so much potential within you.”
I looked back towards the edge of the woods…and then, at the waterfall splashing down from somewhere deep within the woods. The magic field seemed to twist there and I caught a glimpse of scales and one golden eye. The dragon was submerged in the lake, watching me. A moment later, the golden eye winked.
“Thank you,” I said, wryly. “Will I see you again?”
“Perhaps,” Drak Bibliophile said. The dragon seemed to float out of the water and into the air, his wings spreading out to cast a long shadow on the ground. “There is so much out there for us to see.”
A moment later, Drak Bibliophile launched himself into the air and was gone.
“Enigmatic, thought-provoking and completely useless,” I said, aloud. “Typical dragon.”
I distinctly heard the dragon laugh.
***
“I don’t want any of this,” Aylia said, two weeks later. The Faye House was being searched, carefully, by a group of forensic researchers, backed up by a pair of Guardians. They'd left Aylia’s room alone, though, on my request. “I just want the books.”
I had smiled the moment I saw them. Aylia had more books than I had, which was saying something. They covered everything from vague magical theories to science and history, some of them signed by the authors. I had a sense, suddenly, of the lonely little girl burying herself in books, while her father built his empire and her mother became a social queen, a silly social queen, if Aylia was telling the truth. Her sister, of course, had been spoilt and treated like a princess, until the Forsaken had come into their lives.
“Take them,” I said, opening a magic satchel for her. She could have fitted half the house into the pocket dimension before the spells binding it together threatened to collapse. I won’t go into details, but let’s just say that it involves a lot of lube. “Hell, take anything you want.”
I left her to fill the bag and wandered down to Faye’s study. His books and the countless magical artefacts he had collected weren't going to be sold, or given to Aylia; they were going to go right into the Circle. If nothing else, we could have funded the entire Guardian Corps for years with the Hand of Midas. The others might come in handy for our work; we certainly didn’t want to leave them lying around for anyone to take. The scavengers were probably already gathering. Cowboy had reported that the Magical Mile was selling a suspicious amount of items from somewhere. Maxwell’s collection might not all have been destroyed when the Forsaken vanished.
“There are hundreds of things here,” Guardian What said. He’d picked his name as a joke, although most of us tend to call him the Porn King, because he never met a pornographic movie he didn’t like. He died once, but somehow he got over it and came back to life. The little death jokes were endless. “How did he get his hands on them?”
“I have no idea,” I said, glancing over the catalogue. The list seemed to go on forever, including several items that I could have sworn were nothing, but legends. There were even a handful of items from Faerie. “Did you find any journals, anything like that?”
“Nothing yet,” What said, flatly. “We’re still going through his writings, but most of them appear to relate to devices he intended to create, or have people create for him. We may have a fully report later, although we may have to keep it away from him.”
He jerked a thumb at one of the observers. He was from one of the political parties and had been sent by a senior congressman, probably someone who had taken some of Faye’s money back when he had been alive and a person of the highest repute. The observer looked nervous to be here – a magician’s house was often very dangerous to the unprepared – but he still watched everything. He might not have known what everything was or how it worked, but there was no way to know for sure.
“He’s been looking into everything,” What said. “Do you think they’d mind if…?”
“Probably,” I said. The thought of something accidentally on purpose happening to him was amusing, but unrealistic. Everyone was going around on eggshells at the moment until the true number of people Faye had…bribed became known. Rumour had it that several congressmen were already trying to make deals with the FBI. “Just ignore him.”
I took one last look around the storage room and walked back to Aylia’s room, pausing just long enough to look inside her sister’s room instead. It was just as bad as I had expected, utterly crammed with clothes and jewels, each one probably only worn once, if that. Most of the designer wear would probably end up in the charity shops, unless one of the Guardians or Aylia wanted it. I doubted any of us would. We had more sense of style.
“Aylia?” I asked. “Are you alright?”
“I don’t know,” Aylia said. She looked sad, yet relieved. “I used to tell myself that when I was twenty-one, if my father hadn’t started to teach me proper magic – instead of what I picked up on my own – I would head off and not look back. I never thought about the Guardians as a career, but there were plenty of other magic-users who could teach me what I wanted to know…
“And now I’m leaving, part of me wants to stay.”
“I know how you feel,” I said, wishing I could find something more comforting to say. I was never very good with comforting words. “But look on the bright side.”
Aylia lifted one elegant eyebrow. “The bright side?”
“Yeah,” I said. “You helped defeat an invasion of our world when you knew only a magic you had picked up on your own. What will you be like when you’ve had proper training and experience? You’ll be the greatest of us all.”
The End
Guardian Glass Page 38