The Archimage's Fourth Daughter

by Lyndon Hardy

  “Yes, Mr. Angus?”

  No sign of any of Dinton’s minions yet. But one could not be too sure.

  “The neighborhood here is not the best. I worry about disreputable characters breaking in. Do you by chance know of any in your family who could provide some sort of protection, who could take care of any intrusion if one were to occur?”

  There was silence for a moment. Finally, Ursula said, “I do have a nephew who-well, I do not like his friends. Why do you ask?”

  “Excellent, Ursula,” Angus said. “I would like to hire them-full time and at a wage that would make whatever else they are doing now not as worthwhile.”

  “I don’t know about that, Mr. Angus. I would hate to have something happen, and then you think I was responsible.”

  “Didn’t you say you cannot thank me enough, Ms. Price?”

  “Oh, yes, sir, I did,” Ursula replied, but she did not volunteer more.

  “Ms. Price?” Angus prodded.

  Ursula sighed. “I understand. I will send for Sidney to see you right away.”

  “Excellent! Get him here now, but I do not want to communicate with either him or his friends directly. As with everyone else, that is… your job. Post them on the loading dock. They can receive the incoming shipments and move them to where they will be stored.”

  “Next to the start of the production line, you had the plumbing contractor set up?”

  “Yes, Ursula. Very perceptive as usual. Now if you will excuse me, please return to the reception area. I need to retire to my other office. The one in back with the kiln for — for a little rest.”

  Ursula pulled the door shut behind her as she left. Renting time in an internet café had been easy, Angus thought as he watched her go. A connection node with time to rent. He had not been the most bizarrely dressed one there. Then the mail order laptop, the employment agency… Search, select, order, pay with credit, give the shipping address. He had gotten the hang of it. No need for Emmertyn anymore.

  It was going to be so easy. The civilization of these natives was so interconnected, so efficient. Little needed to be taken care of face to face. The gears turned, and half a world away things happened as one wished.

  But that connectivity, that efficiency made everything so fragile — like a poorly spun spider web that would fail if a single strand were cut. He was but a lone warrior, using a mere smidgen of magical lore, yet he alone could bring everything crashing down in total ruin.

  And soon. Oh-so-soon. Before Dinton could even begin to figure out what he was doing. The radio equipment should arrive tomorrow. Ursula’s nephew probably would know someone who would set him up on the dark web. Then, for enough bitcoins, the labor he needed halfway around the world would be taken care of. No question of legality would ever arise.

  That meant there was only one more piece to the puzzle, and all the preparation would be complete — making sure the paperwork for the transfer of the cylinders of SF6 onto the cargo ships would not have a hitch. He hoped the change notice to the RFP specifying the new delivery address had been properly received and processed by USX. He would hate to have to travel back to Oscar’s hut in order to pick it up.

  Watch and Wait

  BRIANA BRISTLED as she watched Ashley talk into her cell phone. True, she was the one who originally had asked for the older woman’s help. But what happened afterward over the ensuing weeks was unexpected. Almost without realizing it, gradually, bit by bit, she had surrendered her leadership of the group. It was not supposed to be that way. She, the Archimage’s daughter, was the one destined to be immortalized in the sagas.

  “Maurice reports nothing has happened on his shift,” Ashley put down the phone. “He moved the swathing from the cave mouth back to the hut without any problem. No activity there. And Jake reports that, for two days now, there have been no more incoming shipments to the warehouse. The juvenile thugs hanging around the loading dock are bored out of their skulls.”

  “Sitting and doing nothing is very hard,” Briana said. “I could watch as well as the men.”

  “You insisted on keeping possession of the setter,” Ashley said. “We need to have it located in a central place so everyone can phone in with their request to be picked up.”

  “I can run circles around Jake and Fig. I have the greater endurance.” Briana slapped the dagger at her waist. “And I have this, too.”

  She frowned as she watched Ashley act through one of her theatrical sighs. “We seem to have to go over this almost every day,” the older woman said. “Briana, you can’t have your ice cream and eat it, too.”

  “I don’t see why we have to continue watching and waiting — and nothing else. Are we going to wait until the SF6 is spewing into the air before we start doing something?”

  “You did ask for my help,” Ashley said. “And I did come up with a plan that made sense. It was only natural I should be the one who makes sure it is followed. We have to locate the whereabouts of all of the aliens first.”

  “Jake scraped off enough grime from one of the warehouse windows over a week ago. And mounted the CCTV camera there for peering inside. And we have seen the same routine repeated day after day. A single figure clad in a hoodie operating some sort of production line. He’s probably one of the exiles.”

  “We aren’t sure about that,” Ashley said. “No white swathing. Maybe he is only a foreman who likes wearing a hoodie.”

  “Or,” Briana insisted, “maybe he’s the one who was camped in the hut near the cave. Maybe even be the leader! The only other person coming and going is the blind woman during the day. Certainly, she can be no threat. When are we going to attack?”

  Ashley lowered her eyes and shook her head. “I am as anxious as you are,” she said.

  Briana felt even more frustrated. “But as Fig has explained, we know the sulfur has been delivered to the warehouse, and we have seen many shipments of liquefied fluorine following that. There is a production line consuming those two elements and produces a gas as a result. A lone exile must be producing SF6, massive amounts of it. That is the only thing making sense.”

  “A single being responsible for it all?” Ashley rebutted. She raised one eyebrow skeptically. “That’s what doesn’t make sense. Where are the others? The seven hundred minions? What are they up to? Are they peacefully waiting underground for everything to be complete? Or instead, are they somehow dispersed throughout the world ready to release the gas once it is shipped to them? We need more information, Briana. We have to do this right. There won’t be a second chance.”

  “Every day we delay the exile plan gets closer to complete execution.” Briana shot back. “Every day, the chance of disaster for everyone here increases.” She tugged at her loose curl with frustration. “I think we should go into the cave again. This time more of us and in daylight.”

  “And if we do stumble upon hundreds of beings hostile to our existence, what then?”

  The phone rang, interrupting the conversation, and Ashley looked at the caller’s number on the muted TV.

  “Hawaii area code,” she said. “I better take this.”

  She picked up the handset. “USX.”

  “This is Mr. Angus of Kahuna Enterprises calling. We accept your proposal, and I am ready to start. I have my first set of questions.”

  “I am the one to help you,” Ashley said. She covered the mouthpiece and whispered to Briana. “It is a good thing I put my home phone as the contact point when I sent in the proposal.”

  “Hear the accent?” Briana said. “I bet he is one of the exiles.”

  Ashley ignored the comment. Uncovering the handset, she said, “Go ahead, Mr. Angus.”

  Burning the Ship

  THALING LOOKED about Dinton’s alcove. Although the biggest, it was even more sparsely furnished than Angus’ had been. No desk, a simple cushion on the bumpy floor, nothing on the walls. Several teetering stacks of yellowing newsprint haphazardly hid the far wall.

  “How did you manage
to do it?” Dinton snapped. “How did you get almost two-thirds of Angus’ flock choose to join yours rather than mine? I am the eldest brother, and, regardless of who carries the baton, am due the greater respect.”

  “I did nothing, brother.” Thaling flinched from Dinton’s piercing gaze. “Perhaps the majority of Angus’ flock preferred a… preferred a less regimented existence than one you provide. And then once the trend started, more and more followed. You know how we are. No flock member wants to be looked upon as out of step with his friends.”

  “Blubberheads, all of them, just like that Jormind.” Dinton’s frustration pulled at the muscles in his face like bands made of strong rubber. “Patience is all I ask. Patience for only a while longer. The temperature of the surface continues to creep upward. Nothing of substance is being done to stop it. Only half-hearted treaties not agreed to by all of the natives and broken by many. One hundred years more of waiting, two hundred at the most, and this orb will be ours. A mere blink of a sorcerer’s eye compared to what we have already endured.”

  “It is not this world we should desire.” Thaling straightened as tall as he could. “It is our own. We should be working together to… to find a way to return and fight for the right to stay.”

  Dinton laughed, something Thaling did not recall ever happening before.

  “Do not be so simple, brother,” Dinton said. “We were defeated by the Faithful when we were a thousand. How would we win back the right to stay if we only number mere hundreds?”

  He continued before Thaling could answer. “Father was naïve, I now realize. Our ten hundred were not warriors, merely lounge-abouts, pleasure indulgers, ones who panicked and ran when they felt the first bite of a blade.”

  “But perhaps now that we have endured this prison for so long, backbones might be stiffer.”

  “No, I think if the choice came to battle or return to exile, few would stand their ground. To make the ones we lead do that, we would have to act as did the native captain, the one they call Cortez.”

  “Cortez?”

  “I read about him in some of the verbiage.” Dinton waved at the stack of newsprint. “When preparing for battle in a newly found land, he burned his ships behind him so there would be no chance of turning back. It was either die or fight in order to live.”

  He shook his head. “But as for our own kind, one can never be sure which way the wind will blow with any of them. Even two of my most trusted guards allowed Angus to escape. They, of course, deny they did anything wrong. They say they returned to their posts after your visit, and then, sometime later, Angus was gone — vanished without a trace. I wonder. Did you have anything to do with this? Maybe you, too, should be joining the traitors in the wasp pit.”

  “Wait. What?” Thaling said. “You are punishing the guards — and in such a cruel fashion? That… that is not just, not fair.”

  “You have not answered my question.”

  Thaling slumped. He had not thought things all the way through. If the guards were thrown to the wasps, it would be his fault. His fault alone. Mentally reviewing old rituals had not helped. There was no rationalization. He could not let this happen.

  “Such a pronouncement would have to be made by the one who carries the baton,” he said deliberately with weight on every word. “Whoever commands for the next cycle. Whoever wins the game the two of us will play.” He sighed and stared at Dinton as best he could. “If I were to become the bearer of the baton, I will pardon the guards for what they did not do.”

  “Two cannot play the game,” Dinton shook his head. “It requires at least three, and without Angus’ sojourns to the surface, there is no substitute we can procure. I should retain the baton by default.”

  “My sprit… I have thought of another that does not require any implements at all,” Thaling said. “It is called ‘Rock, paper, scissors‘. We will play fifteen times, and the one who first wins eight will be the next carrier of the baton.”

  THALING LOOKED at the assembled rockbubblers waiting his instruction in his private alcove, the one housing the nearly finished portal setter. He patted the baton on his side for the dozenth time, hardly believing he had won so easily. He smiled at his sprites for what they had provided to him — not only the rules of the game but also the winning strategies that had worked as predicted.

  He put the setter aside, replaced it on the table with one of the spare odometer displays, and marched the imps through their paces. Without rousing suspicion, Thaling already had arranged for a census of all of their kind who remained in their exile caverns. Dinton had been correct. The number was slightly higher than seven hundred. To this figure, Thaling added a few dozen more to account for trips to retrieve objects left behind and forgotten. Using the keypad, he entered 769 into the now magical display. It would be bolted into the body of the portal later.

  Despite the difficulty and the time it was taking to finish the calculations for the override of the other setter, he felt some satisfaction with how things were going. With the baton, he had the means to ensure everyone, yes, everyone, would elect to go home. And the idea Dinton had given him made certain there would be no alternative but to fight when they arrived.

  The ritual for making sure only one setter could control the portal at a time was still not finished. Overriding a magical device once it was completed was tricky. But he had made progress. Hopefully, it would not take much longer until it was done. And then, and then, the glorious trip home.

  Watch and Hurry Up

  “GOOD MORNING, miss,” Fig said as he stood in front of Ursula. “Is the owner in?” The reception area was plain and in need of fresh paint. A few old marketing posters were on the walls, faded from years of sunlight filtering in through ragged blinds.

  “Mr. Vargas is not expecting anyone this morning.”

  “Correct. I do not have an appointment.”

  Fig smiled but then realized it did no good at all. The additional CCTVs they had mounted on the building across the street from the warehouse had given a clear view of the front entrance. Every morning, promptly at eight, a cabbie led a woman with a white cane up to it, and she keyed herself inside. Now it was time to find out more about the interior.

  “Perhaps I can show… tell you about my product,” Fig said. While he talked, he clicked open a satchel and deftly set up a camera tripod, one with a small speaker attached to the top. He quietly stepped away from Ursula’s desk and approached the double doors leading into the interior of the warehouse.

  “Every warehouse needs one of these,” he whispered into his microphone headset, the one he used to communicate with the micromites when they were present. His voice relayed into the speaker in front of Ursula, and he hoped she would think he was still standing there.

  Like Briana, he chafed with the inactivity. Once all the mysteries were revealed, he was sure she would come to her senses. She would see that five against seven hundred made absolutely no sense. She would have what she needed to return to Murdina, and then he would…

  No sense in thinking about that now. He jerked his focus back to what he was doing. Feelings were for later. But for now, sixteen hours a day of doing nothing but waiting for something to happen had grown old. He had never contemplated such a thing would be the lot of one who served the Queen of the Eight Universes.

  As Fig continued his patter, he squeezed open one of the double doors and slipped beyond. This was going to be risky, but the CCTV had shown production stopping abruptly yesterday afternoon. Something had changed, and the team needed to figure out what. Looking around, he saw he was not on the main warehouse floor as he had hoped, but in a small office completely undecorated except for a single desk and chair. The desktop was bare except for a laptop to which was attached a standing microphone, one much larger than his own.

  Something to broadcast to workers on the main floor? No, that was not it. As far as he knew, there was only the one. He hastened to a window on the rear wall and peeked between two of the closed b
linds. Fig saw only what he had seen several times before when looking in from outside in the darkness of night or trolling through the CCTV images. Nobody was there, not even the one wearing the hoodie who had run the production line without ceasing, day in and day out like a disciplined automaton.

  Fig’s train of thought was interrupted by the rumble of the loading dock door beginning to rise.

  “Hear that?” Ursula’s voice sounded in his earbuds. We are shipping today. I will have to sign the bills of lading. You have to leave now.”

  “Bills of lading?” Fig continued to chat as he came back into the reception area, switched off his mike and began collapsing the tripod back into his satchel. “Where are you shipping to, somewhere here on the island?”

  “None of your business,” Ursula snapped. “It is time for you to go.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Fig called over his shoulder as he hurried out of the building. Peeking around the corner, he saw the four junior thug wannabes helping a truck driver roll out gas cylinders onto his waiting rig. A second carrier idled nearby, ready to be loaded up next.

  The SF6, Fig realized. The exiles were shipping it out! Finally, something happening. Although not a good thing, he thought with a lurch. If Briana’s little group did not do something soon, it would be too late. He jumped on a motor scooter he had parked nearby and got it started. After a few minutes, the first truck, its cargo area filled with upright cylinders jostling off one another, entered the street, and headed off.

  Fig followed the truck as it crept along. It was an old one with gray wooden side panels, pitted and splintered with age. They swayed in their sockets and banged against the cargo. None of the cylinders was restrained by chain. Like the tune from a carillon played by a tone-deaf musician, a cacophony of deep gongs filled the air.

  The truck continued down to the harbor and then along the wharf, past the more modern moorings to one near the end of the line — a small ship riding quietly with rust showing through paint from decades ago, like bruises that would not heal. A sling hung over the wharf from a weather-beaten hoist next to the opening of a single hold. ‘Mizuno Maru’ declared peeling signage the vessel’s side. The flag of Panama flapped listlessly from a short mast above the bridge. A gull sat on the mast top, cooing to others who circled along the wharf looking for scraps of food. The air smelt of brine, diesel oil, and organic decay.