by Jenn Stark
“Maybe…” I blew out a breath, but I still wasn’t feeling it. The head of the House of Pentacles was a Frenchman with a penchant for pretty baubles, particularly those that might augment his own natural ability. He was by no means the strongest Connected I’d ever met, but he held his own, in large part due to the combination of crystals, totems, spelled devices, and flat-out magic he’d harnessed, purchased, or stolen to advance his own aims. I didn’t think he was still in the artifact-hunting game, but he certainly kept his finger on the pulse of the arcane black market. And he definitely heard things. But still…
“This is worse than a needle in a haystack,” I grumbled, edging close to a whine. “If someone was affected like Nigel was, and no one was around to see it, then Roland’s lost that opportunity to communicate with us. Why wasn’t he more clear?”
“Most likely, he couldn’t afford to be,” Nigel said. “Maybe he had to send things in code. The message that he decorated my body with would have made no sense to me—no matter how long I studied it. It was only with your penchant for translation that you got the gist of it, not because it made any sense.”
“But how did Roland know I had a penchant for translation?” I pushed. “It’s not like I make a point of advertising that.”
Nigel waved off that question. “He’s not stupid. When you started working for the Magician of the Arcana Council, we all took note. That was one of the highest rollers in the arcane black market. His grasp of the arcane was pretty legendary, so any puzzle you were sent, it’s reasonable that the Magician would be involved in solving it.”
“I guess…” I was feeling argumentative, but I could be excused. Throughout the conversation, I could feel the presence of the Magician growing in my mind, seeking out avenues of ingress. I’d long since warded Nikki and Mrs. French from his inquisitive touch, but I hadn’t ever done the same for Nigel. Anything in the Brit’s mind, the Magician was privy to, but he was deliberately remaining silent—even though we were now straight-up talking about him. Did he want an engraved invitation to the party?
Despite the fact that my mind remained warded against him, the Magician was also adept at reading emotions and body language, the kinds of things that were nearly impossible to ward against. His chuckle was smooth and amused.
“I no longer run the Arcana Council, Miss Wilde,” he reminded me. “You are under no obligation to involve me in your deliberations. I, however, remain, as always, at your service. I also cannot enter Justice Hall without your or your people’s explicit permission, as you may recall.”
“Well, come on, then. We don’t have all day—”
Before I’d even completed the thought, a knock came at the door. Mrs. French whirled in a bustle of Victorian efficiency.
“Well! It’s a good thing I tidied up,” she sniffed, and a few seconds later returned with Armaeus. He was looking much better by far than he had on the plane, fairly bristling with electricity, but no longer outright glowing.
“So what’s the word?” I asked. “You know something we don’t.”
“Almost certainly,” the Magician agreed smugly. “But in this case, I’m happy to share. Nigel, your assumption was correct. Roland’s message went out to five other operatives that I’ve been able to find—and then only by searching for the unique distress signature that arcane runes appearing all over one’s body would cause, as well as the beacons of magic that were required to light up these unfortunate operatives. You’ll be interested to know they stretch throughout the world: Cairo, Moscow, Tokyo, Johannesburg, Sydney.”
“I don’t even know five operatives from the bad old days,” I protested. “I barely put up with Nigel.”
Nigel’s muttered response didn’t quite reach my ears, but made Nikki snort.
“That leads us to two possibilities,” the Magician agreed. “Either Roland put out a general distress signal, triggered by the ring but available to any and all capable of responding…”
“Or it’s a call to the hunt,” Nigel interjected, his pale brows winging up. “An open bid.”
The Magician nodded. “Or he is creating the illusion of such an open bid in hopes of inspiring your and Nigel’s actions, Miss Wilde. Because to your point, you have no direct connection with him, and you have many, many other causes that could occupy your attention.”
“An open bid…” I muttered, mulling over that idea. Even back in the day, I hadn’t usually responded to those. I’d certainly never needed to once I’d met up with the Magician, though open hunts were by far the most lucrative opportunities. “So what you’re telling me is Roland used me as a catalyst to send a message to hunters all over the world to come find him, without giving any indication of what the bounty was? Or the artifact?”
“Unless he is the bounty,” Nigel said. “‘Come save me,’ he said. At least to us.”
I could hear it then, the excitement in Nigel’s voice, an excitement that, despite my best efforts, I could feel echoing deep within me. The lure of the hunt was on him.
“The other afflicted parties, they’re all hunters?” I asked, wondering how anyone could survive the carvings in their flesh, muscle, and bones to possibly kick off an earnest hunt. Nigel had been lucky I’d been so close. Were the other message bearers that fortunate?
“They are. Some of them I’ve even used.” Armaeus rattled off a list of names that meant nothing to me.
“That’s a good list,” Nigel mused. “Unless I miss my guess, most of them are still in operation. Meaning that if they are not currently on a job, they’re with a client, or with other hunters either preparing for or recovering from a job.”
“But what’s the likelihood that they’ll be able to decipher the message?” Nikki asked.
“Or surviving it?” I put in tersely. “Nigel was hurt.”
“I wasn’t hurt that badly,” he scoffed.
“Oh, bullshit,” I countered. “Those glyphs were cut into you all the way to your bones. I know. I was the one who took them off you.”
“Well, you were the most important of the hunters to convince, right?” Nikki put in. “Perhaps the others just had some, you know, temporary tattoos. Or watercolor marker notes. Anyway, there’s still the problem of understanding the message. You said yourself it was a bunch of glyphs in random order. That’s great that Sara here has a facility with Scrabble, but what about these other hunters?”
Nigel turned to her. “Good point. What if their message is neither so dire nor arcane? What if it’s more straightforward and leads them to wherever it is we’re supposed to go?”
“Or, what if they each got different messages that sent them all over the world?” Nikki countered. “They could all be wild-goose chases.”
“All good questions,” the Magician agreed. “Here is another. Who would be savvy enough to create a message that would only be triggered when the Justice of the Arcana Council received the opening salvo? Who’s behind this hunt? I’ve told you that the winds of change are stirring. Power is percolating at a level I haven’t felt during my entire time as Magician, power, if not equal to mine, then certainly a challenge I have heretofore not experienced.”
I grimaced. He was as excited as Nigel was, though arguably for different reasons. Armaeus had been kicking around this earth over eight hundred years. It was reasonable that he was bored. But surely he would recognize that boredom for the trap that it was.
“Are you sure this magic is as strong as you think it is?” I challenged. “Could it be that you’re being made to think that it’s so strong to lure you into a trap?”
“It’s possible,” the Magician agreed. “And yet the magic I felt handling the ring after you gave it to me was nothing compared to the jolt I felt when you first slipped it onto your finger. You were the trigger, Miss Wilde. A highly specific trigger, only recently come into her own power. Evoked by an ancient magic I’ve never felt before, yet one which knows you intimately. Altogether, it makes for a very curious situation, and one that requires much study.”<
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“Well, respectfully, I’m afraid you’re going to have to crash that final exam,” Nigel said. “The operatives you listed, they’re not going to stick around and think about this all that much. And if they got a message we didn’t get…we’ll need to catch up. Quickly.”
12
“Catch up to what exactly? Can we figure what the other operatives received?” I looked at Armaeus. “Can’t you, I don’t know, read their minds or whatever?”
He regarded me with mild reproach. “There are approximately seven billion souls on this planet, Miss Wilde, all of them with extremely noisy minds. Finding the five afflicted parties was not difficult, but they are surrounded with the gale force wind of chaos that is the human experience. In person, yes, of course, I could read them. But from a distance…”
“Well then, that’s where we start,” Nigel put in, his excitement bubbling up again. “Out of the five hunters you’ve named, the dumbest by far is Douglas Fricker. He’s tenacious and a mean fellow, but he falls distinctly short in the brains department. I’d pick him to be on my crew in a heartbeat, but not to make any decisions, if you catch my meaning. Any message he got has got to be clear as a bell or he’d never pick up on it. So we find him, figure out where he’s heading, and we’ve got a plan. If it’s South America, we head there. If it’s not—we reassess.”
“Or we head for South America and be done with it. We’ve got an opal and moonstones, right?” Nikki said, pointing to the ring. “And those are moon symbols. Moon, moon, and moon. And, whaddya know, we kind of want to track down the Moon. We just need to find a cult of moon worshippers to get us started. Where are there temples built for the moon in South America? I gotta think Machu Picchu, yeah? Could it be that easy?”
Armaeus shook his head. “Almost certainly not. I cannot imagine the Arcana Council Moon, if that is the agent behind this search, would telegraph his or her location so blatantly after having remained hidden for millennia. It isn’t logical. Furthermore, while the temple of the moon at Machu Picchu is a seminal site, it’s not the only site dedicated to worship of the moon. Nearly every ancient society built structures for that purpose, and some of them remain to this day.”
“Yes, but…” I countered, again holding up the ring. “This came directly to me. And Nikki’s right, we’ve just started looking for the Moon. That can’t be a coincidence.”
“We’ll probably know a lot more once we track down Fricker,” Nigel insisted. He turned toward Armaeus. “Not to put too fine a point on it, but I rather think you’d be able to crack his head open like a melon once you got within ten feet of the man—and those would probably be the only thoughts you find inside.”
Armaeus lifted his brows haughtily. For a second, I thought he’d reject Nigel’s suggestion out of hand, especially since he wasn’t used to taking direction from any mortal, Connected or otherwise. But the gleam in his eye gave away his own sense of curiosity. “It could be interesting to see how much damage another hunter who received the message might have sustained, given what you endured,” he allowed.
“And you’re the only one who can learn that quickly enough to make a difference,” Nigel agreed somberly. “I can focus on getting us provisioned here, and once we have our destination, we can go wherever in the world it is we’re supposed to go.”
“Uh-huh,” I said drily. “To find whatever it is in the world we’re supposed to find? Do you not see the flaw in this logic? We’re being led on some sort of chase, a hunt with no direction and no discernible prize other than recovering a hunter who’s quite clearly been used as bait for someone far more powerful. What’s really the end game here, for whoever has dangled Roland out there for us? I don’t know if something’s changed since I hunted on a regular basis, but if I didn’t know what it was I was looking for, I didn’t go. And if I didn’t know how I was going to get paid, I also didn’t go.”
“But it’s a riddle quest,” Nigel shot right back at me, his tone far less circumspect than the one he took with Armaeus. “That’s what makes it so interesting.”
I turned to the Magician. “Am I the only person seeing the problem here?”
“It could be a problem. It could also be an opportunity,” Armaeus offered, which was no help at all. “If the Moon is behind this, a hunt in the darkness is, I am forced to agree, a very reasonable path to follow.”
“And if the old girl is looking to have her ego stroked, the idea of a brace of eager hunters searching for her hidden domain is kind of hot, you gotta admit,” Nikki put in.
I blinked at her. “What?”
“Think about it,” she said, gesturing her lacquered fingernails toward Armaeus. “You all haven’t seen or heard from the Moon in thousands of years. She’s not just going to waltz onto the scene like she’s finished her morning coffee and is ready for her first-ever photo op. She’s gonna want to set the stage. If she’s some great and magical sorcerer, she’s gonna want all eyes on her. That’s the way you guys work.”
She said this last to the Magician, but he didn’t dispute her logic.
“There is very little in any of the archives regarding the Moon,” he allowed. “It was a role that was established when the Council was founded at the fall of Atlantis, but, much as with the Sun and the Star, those Council members fractured off very early in the process, leaving the work of the Council to others. The Council’s membership has gone through iterations over time, some quite a few times. But not the Moon, the Sun, or the Star, until quite recently.”
“Would Qadir know anything about the Moon?” I asked, referencing the newly ascended Sun of the Arcana Council. “He inherited the memories of the last Sun, right?”
“It wouldn’t be a bad place to start,” Armaeus began, but once again, Nigel interrupted.
“It would be a bloody awful place to start when we’ve got operatives right now who have already had more than thirty minutes to start their launch,” he said tightly, clearly trying to keep hold of his temper. It was an unusual outburst for him, but then again, he’d just had his body carved up. He could be excused for not maintaining his typically British stiff upper lip. “We’ve a clear lead with Fricker, and we’d be foolish not to follow it. If the man’s up to his ears in rum, talking about nothing at all, then bully for him. But if he’s assembling a team and heading off to Bora Bora, we should know that. Sara here can go, if you don’t want to, right? Maybe with Eshe to help her target Fricker?”
“That won’t be necessary.” Armaeus stood with his own burst of enthusiasm—and for a second, I imagined him as he first started out in his role with the Arcana Council, a young Magician brimming with energy and focus. “I have located the man and can take us both there quite easily. Miss Wilde?”
He held out his hand. I transferred the ring to my jacket pocket, laid my hand in his, and we were off in a puff of smoke.
The Magician’s mode of travel was efficient and painless, in marked contrast to my own. No sooner had we dissolved into little more than spinning atoms than, around us, the world was transformed into a flash of energy currents zipping and spinning in all directions, yet somehow forming a cohesive path for us to follow. We raced across the planet in the space of a single breath.
When we emerged, I gripped Armaeus tightly for a second, blinking at the transition. From the quiet enclosed confines of Justice Hall, we had transported ourselves into utter chaos. People crowded around us in rioting profusion, bodies wrapped in bright colors, many with heads covered, skin glistening from the touch of the sun and the heat of the day, despite the fact it was now full dark.
We were in a narrow alleyway filled to bursting with shops and articles for sale, fabrics and textiles, cups and bowls, along with metal statuary of every description, from giant elephants down to miniature sphinxes. The air was redolent with the smells of cooking food and the press of humanity. The noise was deafening. The Magician stood still, his golden-black eyes gleaming as he looked around the space. He remained dressed in a suit, but it was slightly l
onger in cut and fashioned in a deep, midnight-blue silk. With his long dark hair flowing over his shoulders, his burnished skin and high winged brows evoking his Egyptian heritage, he looked as if he had walked the alleyways of Khan el-Khalili his entire life.
I looked around with curiosity. I wasn’t a complete stranger to this souk, though this particular alley blended in along with all the rest. I had done many a deal in the most famous market of Cairo, one that dated back to an era even before the Magician was born. It was predominantly an area for ordinary people and ordinary transactions, but the arcane black market had long thrived here by hiding in plain sight, and this section of the souk was a favorite, especially its famous coffeehouse.
This wasn’t particularly good news, however.
“You think Fricker is in El Fishawi? That wouldn’t especially be great, if he ended up receiving the same message Nigel did, in the same way.” I grimaced, imagining the hunter enjoying the local specialty hibiscus tea as he burst into a bloody and glowing Rosetta stone.
“In this case, I think not,” Armaeus said. “If he’s here, he’s being hidden, but there is very little in this souk that can hide from me. I have walked it more times than I can count.”
He reached for my hand, and I took his quickly, the gesture less one of solidarity than necessity. There were too many people pressing close, hawking tourist-level trinkets, trying to catch our eye for the primary goal of picking our pockets. Most who were bold enough to approach sheared away when they encountered the unconscious energy of the Magician. I didn’t think Armaeus knew he was warding them off so obviously, it was merely who he was. That caused its own problem, though, which I picked up on within no more than a dozen steps.
“Exactly how recently was the last time you visited here?” I asked as I noted the slowly building entourage that had started shifting with us through the labyrinthine alleys of the souk. First a couple, then a few more, then easily a dozen men and women, their faces serious, unlike many of the other tourists and locals milling around, their gazes intent. They didn’t look at anything in particular, but with every shift of Armaeus down a new pathway, more followed. A ripple of energy snaked through the souk, and I could see men up ahead of us turn, either alerted by their senses or their cell phones to the Magician’s presence.