by Jenn Stark
Armaeus seemed to be walking with a purpose, and I wasn’t surprised when the tourist haven of El Fishawi came into view. While the Magician was not normally given to tourist haunts, it was different when said tourist haunt had been around for a good three hundred years. So I didn’t argue as he loosened his hold on my arm and reached down to grasp my hand. I also didn’t miss the fact that he was proclaiming for all the world to see, and in particular his fan club, that I was with him. Far from being reassuring, the move only made me think of Kreios’s words about Armaeus’s role on the Council. I didn’t want to be the Magician’s backup plan. I didn’t want to think about needing a backup plan for myself.
We stepped into the brightly lit interior of El Fishawi, and the Magician looked around with obvious pleasure. “It doesn’t change much. The owners come and go, but all the fixtures remain.”
No one greeted us, but Armaeus continued down the long, skinny restaurant aisles between tables. Those tables brimmed with tourists and locals alike, though I wasn’t sure I would necessarily know the difference between the two. However, as we got deeper into the building, a man emerged from a shadowy alcove and gestured us forward. He was dressed in a suit as elegant as the Magician’s, and his manner was aristocratic.
“Will he have seating for all our new friends?” I asked quietly.
Armaeus chuckled. “He should. He’s their leader.”
We stepped into another narrow corridor and emerged a few moments later into a private seating area, a world away from the hustling, bustling coffee shop. The walls were lined with richly colored tapestries that deadened the sound, though I assumed the heavy ripple of magic that raced along the walls helped that out as well.
A long table sat in the center of the room, flanked by chairs. The table was bare, no food or drink, but Armaeus moved toward it anyway, taking his position at its head and gesturing me to his right. The man in the silk suit moved into position to my right as well, and then the men and women in dark garb, their faces studiously blank, but their eyes alight with transcendent joy flowed in around us, taking every seat. Servers stepped into the room, bearing trays of drinks, from redolent teas to the more traditional lemon- and hibiscus-flavored drinks, both steaming and cool. I opted for a lemon, as did Armaeus, and I was not surprised to see the man in the suit choose the same.
“You’re not hungry?” he asked Armaeus in Egyptian, and Armaeus smiled and shook his head. The conversation had taken on the air of a ritual, one that it seemed these two men had performed many times before. I lifted my drink with my right hand, my left settled down beside me, and waited.
Armaeus reclined in his seat, casting a proprietary eye over the men and women assembled there. He glanced again to the man in the suit, who bowed slightly as if giving him permission to proceed. I wondered at the dynamic between these two. It wasn’t exactly that of equals, but it was clear the Magician held a tremendous level of respect for the man in the suit. And perhaps even more for the men and women who joined us.
“You have questions,” Armaeus murmured.
The man in the suit didn’t hesitate. “So what of the dead man’s revelations? You will seek out the Arcana Council’s Moon in her hiding place? You know who the Moon is? And where she’s been hiding?”
Armaeus took a long sip of his drink before responding. “We know only who the Moon was. At the dawn of the Council, that position was occupied, along with the Sun and the Star. The Sun hid itself quite convincingly for untold generations, while the Star has been lost to the mists of time. The Moon, it would seem, has taken a somewhat middle path, her creatures emerging in myth and legend, then disappearing again as quickly. To know she has buried herself in a city forgotten by time is not all that surprising. But it makes our job no less difficult. There are innumerable cities that could lay claim to that title.”
“Then you must go—and we will help you.”
“No,” the Magician said. “You must prepare. The Shadow Court is preparing to set itself against the Arcana Council, and take down all the Connecteds of the world in the process, save those it considers worthy of inclusion in its own order. The Council has worked long to forestall this war, to stamp out the Court, but we have succeeded only in lopping off the body. The head remains and the body regrows, until now it is stronger than ever.”
“We have fought snakes before,” the man said pridefully.
“You have,” Armaeus agreed. “But this snake has a venom that strikes at the heart of its victims. The power you have cultivated over time will mark you as outlaws and rogues when the masks fall away from those in power. It will be dangerous to show who you are to anyone but those in your innermost circles.”
“Such wars as these have come and gone over the centuries,” the man insisted. “We are ready.”
“I sense a difference this time,” Armaeus said. His voice had gone slightly soft, and his gaze was fixed on the far wall, as if he were lost in his own labyrinth of thought and calculation. “I see only the destruction and not the rebirth, and that is unusual.”
A lick of panic danced along my nerves as the man in the suit leaned forward.
“There is magic in this world that you have never accessed, magic we would gladly bend to your service.” This proclamation came not from the man, but from a woman halfway down the table, her dark eyes gleaming more black than gold. I’d seen Armaeus adopt that particular look as well, when his magic was particularly strong and on the verge of being unleashed. Were these his acolytes, I wondered? He’d said the suited man was their leader, but they were acting far more like an elite army dedicated to Armaeus than dutiful followers of their elegant host.
“And this is not the first time we have offered,” the man agreed. “We have asked to step in, to help many times over these past months. You know this.”
His words were gently chiding, unexpectedly so, and I blinked at him in surprise, but Armaeus’s face remained placid.
“To all things there is a proper time. Magic wrought too early is worse than no magic at all.”
“So long as it is not wrought too late,” the woman farther along the table said. She spoke with authority, but not anger. I got the feeling that, much like the Magician, this group prided itself on putting forth the appearance of a measured response. But also like the Magician, I suspected they could be pushed too far.
Armaeus nodded. “I pledge to you that you will know when it is your time to act, and you will know the degree to which such action is required. There will be no confusion in the final hour.”
Once again, this was taking on nearly biblical levels of gloom. I wasn’t a big fan. As it happened, I wasn’t the only one.
“What is it you’re not telling us?” came another question, this one from an older man whose luxurious black hair was shot through with strands of silver. “Are we preparing for a war or a wake?”
Armaeus smiled, and in that smile I saw the glint of resolve that also seemed a throwback to a Magician of a former time. A Magician who had destroyed artifacts and secreted them away rather than let them be perverted by the humankind he supposedly served.
“I will tell you this. I enter into no battles I do not expect to win, and I would never ask you to follow me on a fool’s gambit. Your magic has descended through you for centuries, and rarely have you been called upon to exercise it to such a degree. I wish you to be prepared.”
No Hall of Fame coach could have done more to excite the passion of his players with a speech like that. Everyone straightened, stopping just shy of offering high fives and fist bumps, and instead busily attended to their drinks with their right hands. Even I felt a wave of go-team fervor, and this wasn’t really my team. The suited man smiled with a very real expression of relief.
“We will be ready,” he agreed.
It was another half hour of idle conversation and lots of chilled drinks before Armaeus and I walked again through the streets of Khan el-Khalili. The crowds had dwindled some, vendors closing up shop, the shouts, sighs,
and press of humanity lessening as we made our way. I knew we had no specific destination in mind, because our ultimate target was halfway around the world and we could shift there with a moment’s thought. But Armaeus seemed to revel in the chaos of the declining crowd, drawing in deep breaths of the heavy aroma of heat, sweat, and perfume.
I shot him a sidelong glance. “You know you can get out more than you do. There literally is the whole world at your disposal to explore beyond Las Vegas. I know you’re a big fan of your fortress of solitude and all, but maybe you should take a break now and then.”
He chuckled. “As always, your comments are prescient, Miss Wilde. The Council’s base of operations has always been where magic is at its height. Yet now we see that the world has devolved into a dark labyrinth of power, where magic is hidden away in boardrooms and government chambers, not flaunted on the streets the way it is in Las Vegas, the way it was in Munich before and then Paris and even here in Cairo once upon a long-ago time. We are coming to understand that the concentration of the Council in any given place matters less in times like these.”
“So, what, you guys are going to start working remotely? We’re going to start Zoom Council meetings?” I pressed, and his smile was not at all rueful, which made me happier than I wanted to admit.
“I mean only that our strongholds might perhaps be more fluid than they have been before, and that we should not be afraid of change. We should play to win and not merely to protect the lead.” He held out a hand to me. “Shall we?”
I no longer knew exactly what he was asking, but I also didn’t care. “Always,” I said, taking his hand. “Always.”
15
The return to Las Vegas was unsettling for a couple of reasons. The speed with which the Magician whisked us out of Cairo’s market and back along the circuits to home wasn’t all that startling, I was used to that. But when Armaeus left me outside the office door to Justice Hall, I got the sense that something was off.
First, he left without another word, whispering away from me almost as soon as he’d ensured my safe arrival. Second, I felt out of sorts, like my internal clock had been set askew. I patted my pocket to make sure I still had the Moon’s class ring, then moved down to the doorway almost nervously, not sure of what I would find on the other side. Mrs. French, almost certainly. Possibly Nigel and Nikki, but otherwise? It had only been a few hours, after all.
The door didn’t open as I approached, which was another indication that something was a little off. I keyed into it with a touch of my hand, using the fingerprint recognition system Simon had installed at some point, but which I rarely needed given the keen sensitivity of Mrs. French. But nobody appeared on the other side of the door. The Hall was silent, the library apparently closed.
I frowned, suddenly uncertain.
“Mrs. French?” I called, only to hear an “Oh!” from deep within the library, as if I’d startled the head librarian nodding off at the stacks.
Mrs. French emerged from the main library a few minutes later, and I blinked to see that she was in a long gray house robe, a white cotton nightgown visible beneath its severe folds. Her gray hair, normally swept up in an efficient bun, was braided down her back, and she looked so unexpectedly small to me that my heart caught. I lifted my hands in dismay.
“What time is it?” I asked, thoroughly confused. “We weren’t in Cairo that long.”
“Oh, indeed you were, Justice Wilde,” Mrs. French said, her demeanor as cheerful as always. “It’s going on two a.m. If you would like me to ring up Nikki, I’m sure she’s up to no good in one of the local clubs. She seemed intent on showing Mr. Nigel a good time. Her words, I should say, not mine.”
“Two in the morning?” I blinked. That was another twelve hours lost in translation. Had the Magician and I gone somewhere else without me realizing it? Would he have done that to me willingly without telling me? It had been ten in the evening when we’d left Cairo, which should’ve equaled early afternoon in Vegas.
Armaeus? I reached out mentally, but there was no response. What had just happened here? Had the Magician tried some sort of test of my sensitivity, which I had clearly failed?
I didn’t know, but I couldn’t deny the growing pit in my stomach as to what it might mean. Something weird was going on with the Magician, as if he were a puppeteer with a few too many strings dangling and no more marionettes to move. I shook off my dismay as Mrs. French looked at me expectantly. “No, no. You don’t need to find them. I can. Have you heard anything from Sariah?”
“Oh! Well, yes, indeed. She called several hours ago. She has taken it upon herself to assist Dixie Quinn in some task, and she seemed quite delighted. She said you knew all about it, and advised me not to worry, so of course, I instantly worried. But Nikki and Mr. Friedman had already set off, and as Miss Pelter was also heading to the Flamingo, I thought it prudent to advise Mr. Kreios.”
“They were going to the Flamingo?” I asked. “Dixie and Sariah?”
“Yes—the whole lot of them. I thought it rather odd, but Mr. Kreios assured me he would keep a close eye on everyone. The Flamingo tends to attract some rather obscure players, I’m given to understand. It’s perhaps the darkest of the casinos on the Strip.”
I lifted my brows at her assessment. I couldn’t say I was surprised at the observation, or that I disagreed with it. The Flamingo had been built in the 1940s by one of the most notorious gangsters who had come to the man-made oasis that was Las Vegas, and it served as said gangster’s primary residence. But that wasn’t what disturbed me.
“Um…has anything else happened in the last twelve hours or so?” I asked. “Any other disturbances in the Force?”
It was a testament to Mrs. French’s familiarity with me that she didn’t even blink at the odd question.
“Indeed, we’ve got nearly two dozen requests for aid,” she confided. “Interestingly enough, they’ve come mostly from artifact hunters, pleas for help that were generalized, not necessarily directed to you, but just—”
“To come save them?” I asked, but she shook her head.
“Not even that coherent, I’m afraid. More pain, fear, and confusion. I’ve tallied them all for you. They’ve come in mostly on scraps of parchment, sent with expedience, not finesse. I figured given what Mr. Friedman said, you would want to know their locations. They’re from all over the globe.”
“Sites known as lost cities?” I asked, but again, confoundingly, she shook her head.
“Not lost in the traditional sense, though certainly each has its own shadowy district. But Nikki cross-referenced them with her contact at the House of Swords, and additional information came back almost immediately. Most of the sites are primary locations of the darker operations on the black market. Syndicates that we have barely begun to look into, I believe she said.”
Oh, great. “Any affiliation with the Shadow Court?” I asked, but Mrs. French merely lifted a hand and dropped it.
“We still know too little about that organization, I’m afraid. Even those members the Council managed to single out during their last attack have scattered far and wide. Nothing attaches them to these missives, but nothing doesn’t attach them either, if you see what I’m saying.”
I did, but it didn’t make me feel any better. “Where do you think I’d find Nikki now? Still at the Flamingo?”
Mrs. French sniffed with only cursory dismay. “Oh, I wouldn’t think so. She’s never in one place for too long, I’m given to understand. She was curious about the Sahara, wanting to see what the Sun was up to. I rather expect you’ll find her there.”
She was right.
Twenty minutes later, I entered the glittering main casino of the Sahara, walking into the wall of sound that was so familiar to any of the casinos along the Strip—the clattering yammer of the slot machines, the buzz of conversation, the music set behind the noise to give the feeling of both complete insulation and isolation. A quick scan of the energy in the room indicated that while there was plenty of
magic going on, it was decidedly lower level—the bubbling possibility of scoring a big prize, the knife-edged panic of making a wrong bet. But none of it spoke of the freewheeling loquacious style of Nikki Dawes or the Brit I suspected she had well into his cups by now. That meant I’d have to find her the old-fashioned way. I continued moving through the casino and followed the signs for the pool area.
Jackpot.
As I stepped outside, I heard Nikki’s bright, delighted laugh. I scanned the area, expecting to find her in the center of a crowd of the young, beautiful resort set of Vegas, embodying the irony of the old casino that had been made new again. To my surprise, however, only Nigel was dancing attendance on Nikki. And he was grinning at her like a loon.
Nikki saw me first.
“Dollface!” She waved me over with a lift of her enormous glass, a wildly orange-tinted concoction with a pineapple wedge stuck on the rim. “We want to know everything.”
Nigel turned as well, somewhat less steadily. He sobered up visibly as he caught sight of me. Not because he was on the job and I was some sort of team lead, but because of the same sixth sense that had always flipped on for him when a job was about to start. It was a feature of being an artifact hunter, with the need to get the jump on anyone else who might be after the same McGuffin you had targeted.
“You found him,” he said.
I nodded as I settled into a cabana chair next to them. A server appeared almost immediately with another giant glass of something fruity. I took it and handed it over to Nikki, then held up a finger.