by A. L. Knorr
She nodded and murmured thank you in Italian four times as he opened it for her and put the soft plugs into her hand. As Janet muffled her hearing, I closed the interior scrim just behind the drapes, shutting out more daylight. I suspected she was asleep before Tomio and I had even closed the door.
“Should we call the polizia?” he whispered as we retreated to the kitchen.
I pulled two glasses from the cupboard and filled them with water, passing one to Tomio. “I think we should call Basil first. He’ll know what to do next. Because this is a crime by a supernatural against a natural, an agency will want to deal with it.” I paused before swallowing more water, wondering how the Agency was coping. “If there’s even someone available to take her case.”
I finally sent the text I had been about to send when Janet collapsed, asking Basil how soon we could talk to him. It was an hour earlier in London but late enough that he’d be up. Even if he wasn’t, I had a duty to wake him. He’d want to know about Janet as soon as possible. I took another gulp of water as we waited for his response. A glance at Tomio gave me pause. “What’s wrong? You look like you swallowed something nasty.”
“It just occurred to me that Janet might not be able to see her family right away.”
I watched his expression drop a foot as he came to the same conclusion I’d come to while still underground. “While Nero is free, she won’t be safe, and neither will her family if she returns home to be with them.”
Tomio put a hand over his stomach and set his water glass down. “Poor woman.”
My phone buzzed as Basil replied that he could be online in three minutes. He told me he’d email me a link to a private video call hosted by the Agency’s servers. I woke up my laptop, then clicked on the link when it came through. Basil’s face fuzzed into view. An alarm bell rang in my head, high and intense as he came into focus. Basil had the same haggard look he’d had just before his father had died.
“We have news,” I said. “I’d say it’s nice to see you except that it looks like you have news too and it isn’t good.”
Tomio and I sank into chairs at the table, crowding together so Basil could see both of us at the same time. Tomio wrapped an arm around my back and let his hand dangle off my shoulder. I appreciated his solidity next to me.
“We’re getting reports of another batch of fires having gone out,” Basil replied, rubbing a cloth over the glass of his spectacles. He shook his head, his mouth a flat line as he placed his glasses on his face.
I was so shocked I couldn’t speak. Tomio said nothing either, but I felt him stiffen.
“There’s no protocol for a disaster of this magnitude. More than half the Agency is down and out. Our projections say that more than half the entire mage population has now lost its fire. We’re getting reports coming through our network in multiples per minute. I don’t want to alarm you but I don’t think it serves you to keep it from you. Do both of you still have your fire?”
Tomio and I both nodded.
“How about you?” I croaked.
“Yes, I am fine, and so is everyone I share a bond with. The Agency has made an interesting correlation. Mage bonds are something that an agency in Istanbul has been tracking. It reports that the fires are not going out in random batches, but in groups clustered by bond. It doesn’t have enough data to prove that it extrapolates out worldwide, but it has enough to show the relationship. That’s enough for me. It’s a theory, but a strong one.”
I closed my eyes and went inward. The urge to scream was strong. It was too much all at once. My promise to Enzo. Gage missing. Fires going out. It all had to be connected. I took a deep breath and opened my eyes.
“It has to do with Nero. We found his underground hideaway and a woman he’s been keeping there against her will for three years. If you didn’t have enough evidence to arrest him before, you have it now.”
Basil rubbed his face and looked at us with bloodshot eyes. “Now that we don’t have a chain-of-command at the Agency equipped to go after him. How ironic. Before you tell me everything, I have to inform you that this call is being recorded. It’s agency protocol. Are you okay with that?”
Tomio and I agreed, and then we began to talk. Basil listened quietly and made a few notes as we described finding Janet and the whole set-up underground. When we finished our story, he excused himself for a few minutes, leaving our connection open, to phone someone at the Agency. Sliding back in front of the screen several minutes later, he explained that he’d called the new acting director and she would contact an Italian authority who could be trusted with next steps in regards to Janet.
“What about Gage?” asked Tomio. “We still don’t know where he is.”
“I suspect that if you find Dante, you’ll find Gage,” replied Basil.
Unpleasant feelings collided like poorly aimed fireworks in my stomach. I disliked how Basil seemed to be putting this all on Tomio and me and implying that he wouldn’t or couldn’t do anything to help us. We might be capable, but we were still just teenagers. I understood that it was traumatizing to have one’s fire go out permanently, but Mehmet had told us that some magi took it very well, even with some relief. Where were those adults? Couldn’t they help us? Even if they no longer had supernatural powers, they were experienced. Weren’t they?
Tomio voiced a similar opinion, his voice so weary and frustrated that he barely sounded like himself. “What do you mean if we find Dante? Even after finding Nero’s underground place and all but solidly proving that he’s connected to what’s happening to mages all over the world, you still won’t send help?”
Basil put up a hand. “I didn’t say that. This situation is changing rapidly. Even now Ms. Shepherd, the acting director, is sharing your discoveries with three other agency heads. She will join us online here as soon as she can. She wants to hear from you directly.”
I put a hand on Tomio’s knee and immediately his fingers closed around mine and he dropped his head. He lifted it a moment later.
“We feel a little abandoned, here,” I said, controlling my voice better than Tomio now that I realized he was further over the edge than I was. I had to be the calm one.
The screen flashed and split in two. Another face fuzzed into view, a woman who looked to be mid-forties with short auburn hair and intense gray eyes. She leaned close to her camera and her face loomed, then pulled back. “Hello?”
I lifted a hand in greeting. “Ms. Shepherd?”
“Yes. Nice to meet you, although I’m sorry for the circumstances,” she replied. “Saxony and Tomio, yes?”
We nodded. Tomio’s leg began to jiggle up and down under my hand and his fingers had not relaxed.
“I’m sorry we don’t have time for ice-breakers.” She looked down as though studying notes in front of her.
“That’s alright,” Tomio muttered, “we’d rather just get to the point.”
She glanced up and nodded. “Good. To verify what you told Basil, and what the language expert told you—”
“Janet Silvestri,” I said.
“Yes, Janet—” She spoke quickly and with sharp consonants. She sounded like someone who was accustomed to being in charge, and in spite of her assertive way of speaking, the way she oozed authority made me feel a little better. “Nero went to Brazil last November and didn’t return until the new year. Stop me only if I am wrong about any of these points, please. He did this when she decoded an artifact that he gave her, linking it to a region by an ancient language. A couple of months later—” she bent her head to review her notes, searching for something.
“In March,” Tomio supplied.
“He had her decode something similar, an artifact that pointed to a region in India via root language, and he went there. This time, he returned sooner, in late April. Following this, your school-mate Ryan met with Nero in Naples and fast-tracked a visa for Iran, while Nero himself went to China, and that’s where Janet believes he is right now.”
“She also said he plans to visit Austr
alia before coming home, and he could be there already,” I supplied. “All of these trips coincide with batches of fires going out, don’t they?”
Ms. Shepherd nodded. “Yes, they do, and your finding Janet gives us the permission we need to pursue and arrest Nero as soon as possible. Thank you for your service thus far, our understanding of the situation has made leaps and bounds thanks to your discoveries.”
“You’re welcome. What’s next?” Tomio’s leg hadn’t stopped jiggling. “We really need to find our friend.”
“Yes, Gage was it? You believe he is in danger of having his fire taken?”
Tomio and I nodded.
“Is Gage of strong character?”
Her question took me off guard. “What do you mean?”
“Do you think he can withstand torture?”
Basil’s expression changed noticeably for the first time since Ms. Shepherd had come on the call. He was unhappy about this line of questioning but he didn’t stop her. Maybe he didn’t have the authority to stop her.
“How are we supposed to know that?” Tomio snapped.
Unbothered by his tone, Ms. Shepherd went on. “You know him better than any of us, and it’s not something we’re prepared to ask his parents about. Do you think he can withstand being dehydrated? Because if he can, and like many mages, he would rather die than pass his fire on to someone else, then it’s unlikely this Dante will succeed in his mission.”
“We’d really like to find him before this torture takes place,” I husked, barely recognizing my own voice.
“Of course, I’m merely trying to ascertain the likelihood of the transfer and how prepared you might be to do what must be done to prevent it from happening, if it hasn’t happened already.”
A cold spike of unease slid its way into my heart. I began to feel afraid of this woman and her icy, emotionless control, the way her soft face contrasted with hard resolve. “What must be done?”
“I’m sorry to say it, but these are desperate times.” She didn’t need to finish the sentence for my mind to call up the rest of it.
Desperate measures. A heavy dread descended over my shoulders and began to press down with stone hands.
“Just say it,” Tomio husked, squeezing my fingers so hard I winced.
“You must return Janet to her underground prison, and quickly.”
Fourteen
The Legends
I stared at Ms. Shepherd to confirm that she hadn’t been making a terrible joke. Heat began to fill my cheeks. “Are you insane?”
“Saxony,” Basil said reproachfully.
For the first time ever, I ignored my headmaster’s chiding completely. My temper strained against control like an angry dog pulling against a chain. “Do you have any idea what that woman has been through? There’s no way in hell you could ever convince me to take her back down there.”
Tomio’s voice was higher pitched than usual. “Why exactly, would we do that to her?”
Ms. Shepherd appeared unbothered by my indignation and answered Tomio instead. “It’s the only chance we have to save Gage. If Nero comes home to find Janet missing, we’ve blown any advantage we might have. He’ll pack up and move kit and caboodle somewhere else and the intel we have on his location will be useless. We’ll have to start over and we’ll be no closer to finding Gage.”
“Ah.” Tomio wiped a hand across his lips and shot me a sideways glance, his brow wrinkled. His look said that he saw the reason in her suggestion and he wondered if I did too.
“We should be facilitating contact with her family,” I said, “not shoving her back underground to be used as bait.”
“She won’t be bait.” Ms. Shepherd shifted as she pulled her chair closer to the screen. Her face loomed so close I could see the lipstick bleeding into the fine lines of her upper lip. “When Nero returns and sees his hideaway and his captive are just as he left them, he won’t suspect anything. She’ll be in no greater danger than the danger she’s been in for the last three years. She can then use his trust in her and his knowing that she can’t tell anyone anything to elicit the whereabouts of Gage.”
I let go of Tomio’s hand and crossed my arms to pin down my hands. I kept wanting to curl my fingers into fists. “What if he doesn’t know? Isn’t it Dante we should be looking for?”
“I understand Dante has already failed at least twice when it comes to mage rituals. Once with you and once with Nicodemo, who he killed. I doubt he will take such a chance again. He’ll be relying on Nero’s skill and knowledge as a mage who has facilitated Burnings, if not endowments, before. Everything points to this event having to happen after Nero returns, not in his absence.” She blinked at us through the thick lenses of her square glasses, expression guileless even while she pitched us the unthinkable.
And, damn it, she was making sense.
“I’m sorry.” I shook my head. “You are probably right, but if you want to plant Janet back underground before Nero gets back you’re going to have to send an agent to do it, because I can’t. I won’t.”
“Isn’t there another way we can locate Dante?” Tomio asked.
“Of course there are other ways. We always examine at least three options for every scenario. But the other options are less likely to be successful. We have powerful computers running highly sophisticated algorithms crunching all the data we can give them.”
“Let’s say we do it your way.” I said, feeling Tomio’s hand tighten over my knee. “I’m just asking the question. Say we take poor Janet underground again and she lies in wait for Nero. Say she gets the information out of him. How does Janet get that information to us in a timely manner? She’ll be forty meters underground, it’s not like she can send us a text.”
But Ms. Shepherd looked happy that I had asked. “When you return her, she’ll take something with her called a Miner Lifeline radio and stash it out of sight in her cell. These radios use ultra-low frequency to pass through rock and have a range of five kilometers. They support both text and voice communications.”
Tomio and I were silent, absorbing this.
“What can’t they do these days,” Tomio finally murmured.
Ms. Shepherd didn’t blink. “Actually, it’s been around since the sixties. They improve the technology every time there’s a mining disaster. Since we can’t employ a telepath, we have to fall back on natural inventions. The first opportunity Janet has once Nero has left her alone, she can send communication to you. You can then decide whether one of you goes after Gage and one of you retrieves Janet, or if you both go after your friend—assuming we understand that Janet is safe enough to wait.”
Tomio and I sat in dubious silence. Her plan had merit, and we weren’t coming up with anything better.
“What about Janet’s family?” I asked. “What do you think they’ll say about us using their daughter this way?”
“If it helps to find Gage before Nero and Dante do something horrible to him, they’ll understand,” said a voice from the door.
Tomio and I turned. Janet stood at the bottom of the stairs, wrapped in a blanket she’d taken from the bed. She was pale, but actually looked better than she’d looked on the street.
“How long have you been there?” Tomio asked.
Ms. Shepherd and Basil greeted Janet, though they couldn’t yet see her on the screen.
“Long enough. My hearing seems to have sharpened considerably during my time underground. I couldn’t not hear you, even with plugs in my ears.” Janet indicated that the plugs were still in as she came into the kitchen and looked at the laptop screen over our heads.
Tomio and I shared a guilty look. We hadn’t been speaking very loudly and the volume on the laptop had been turned down. Fat lot of good it had done.
Janet saw our faces. “Don’t feel badly. I’ll do it. I’m happy to.”
Ms. Shepherd grinned so widely her eyes almost disappeared. “Thank you, Janet. If we are successful, you won’t just be saving Gage but putting a stop to a kind of genocide that
is sweeping through our species.”
Janet nodded. “I don’t want my family to know anything until it’s all over. It will be too difficult for them.”
“You’re made of stern stuff, Ms. Silvestri. The agency and all fire elementals will forever be indebted to you, those of us who remain.”
“A few more days or even weeks makes no difference to me. Knowing that you know where I am and that I have a way of communicating with the outside world will keep me sane until it’s all over. Just promise me that you’ll send a rescue party for me as soon as possible after Gage is found.”
Ms. Shepherd gave a single nod. “Of course. Are you confident Nero will share his whereabouts with you?”
Janet lifted a hand to the amber choker at her neck. “I think he will. As long as we put his rooms back in the order we found them in, he has no reason to suspect me.”
Basil said, “If you have the energy, can you tell us your story? We’ve heard from Saxony and Tomio, but we need as much detail as you can give. We understand if you need to rest further. They say you fainted on the street? Are you feeling better?”
“Yes, thanks. I was overstimulated. I am tired, but I can’t sleep. I would be happy to talk.”
Tomio vacated his chair for Janet and I slid the laptop over so it was her face Basil and Ms. Shepherd were seeing. Moving to lean against a kitchen counter by Tomio, we listened to Janet a second time as she relayed her story. By the time she was finished, she was drooping and yawning again. Ms. Shepherd had asked Janet (with our help as needed) to describe the rooms in detail including how much computer equipment was there, how old she thought it was, what programs Nero had her using, what kind of security he had including a detailed description of the lock on the front door, which I was able to provide. The questions went on and on until Janet could hardly keep her eyelids open, then Ms. Shepherd finally dismissed her.
As Janet returned to the bedroom and we slid in front of the screen, Ms. Shepherd told us she was needed elsewhere and would be back in touch with more details about the plan after we had some rest. It was time to pin Basil down.