“I seem to recall you also had issues with my methods.”
All the time that we were talking, I was exploring futures, trying to find an angle of attack on Sal Sarque. None of them were working. The best chance came from distracting him in some way, letting Anne get a shot on him before he could react, but Sal Sarque was too old and wily to drop his guard. For all his age, he was fast, and I couldn’t find any avenue that would draw his attention away from Anne reliably enough.
I was on the wrong track. Sal Sarque was the strongest link in the chain. What about the explosives themselves? I changed my focus, looking for futures in which the bomb failed.
“Well, that’s where the change of priorities comes in,” I told Richard. “The more time I’ve had to think about our last conversation, the more I’ve come to see your point. You have been the one bailing me out of trouble. And a lot of the time, it has been because I was insufficiently ruthless. So, as of a couple of days ago, I’ve started following your advice. So far it’s been working out.”
“Why fourth-in-command?”
“Well, I assume you, Morden, and Vihaela are numbers one through three. I wouldn’t want to make waves.”
“Did you just break into my home for a job interview?” Sal Sarque demanded.
“More or less,” I told him. There. It was possible for Sal Sarque to push that button and for the explosives to not go off. The future was a ghost, a zero percent chance, but it could happen if certain prerequisites were met. I started feeding it, the faint spark growing brighter.
“Why are we even talking to him?” Rachel said angrily. “He’s had enough chances.”
“She has a valid point,” Richard said.
I shrugged. “Things change. My attitudes have changed. So have my abilities. I suspect you’ve had long enough to figure that out for yourself by now.”
He’s getting antsy, Dark Anne told me.
Hold off, I said.
You keep this up, he’s going to push that button just for the hell of it.
I said hold off. Get ready for a strike, but don’t launch it.
“Unfortunately, trust is an issue,” Richard said. “As you just admitted to Sarque, you’ve been opposing me for a long time.”
“Not very effectively.”
“I hope you’re not trying to use incompetence as an excuse.”
“We could do it the old-fashioned way,” I said. “Trial by combat. Why not Rachel? You might find it interesting to see how your last two apprentices measure up.”
“Fascinating though that would be,” Richard said, “as I said, the issue is trust. I’m afraid I’ll need something more than words.”
All the time I’d been talking, I’d been applying pressure through the fateweaver, trying to force the future in which the detonation failed. It wasn’t easy—modern explosives are well designed—but any mechanical system has points of failure, and it only needs one link in the chain to break. All of a sudden, something gave and the future in which the explosives failed to go off sprang into possibility. Eyeballing it, I put it at around a five percent chance. I kept pushing.
“Fair enough,” I said. “How about I help you out with your current problem, then? I’ll get rid of Sarque, you give me probationary status.”
“No!” Rachel said.
“What makes you think we need the help?” Richard said.
Ten percent. “You did say the issue was trust.”
Richard studied me for a long moment. “Very well.”
I turned to Sal Sarque. “Sorry, Sarque. Well, actually, I’m not sorry at all. I’d say it was nothing personal, but it really is.”
Sal Sarque looked at me contemptuously. “Go ahead and try.”
Fifteen percent, twenty. “Before I do, there’s something I’ve been wanting to ask,” I said. “You remember those two Crusader black-ops types from a couple of years ago? Zilean and Lightbringer? They tried to kidnap and torture me, and they did kidnap and torture Anne. Flayed her alive trying to get her to talk.”
“So?”
“Was it you who gave the order?”
“Don’t answer him,” Solace said.
Sal Sarque didn’t bother to respond to her. “Why should I tell you?” he asked me.
Forty percent. The probability curve was speeding up as the electronics came closer to failure. “In three minutes, either you’ll be dead or I will be,” I said. “So why not?”
“Because you’re a piece of shit,” Sal Sarque said. “I’ve been fighting Dark mages my whole life, and I knew what you were the minute I saw you. You were always one of them. You want to know who gave the order? Fuck you, that’s who. You can die never knowing.”
Seventy percent. Now instead of feeding the future in which the explosives didn’t work, I was suppressing ones in which they did. “Oh well,” I said. “I guess I’ll just ask Levistus.”
“And you’re going to do what? Divine him to death?” Sarque gave a short, ugly laugh. “Enough talk.”
Eighty percent, eighty-five. I stood looking at Sarque, focusing on the fateweaver. It was easy now, like pushing a boulder that’s already started rolling. Ninety percent. Ninety-five. “You’re right,” I said. “That’s enough talk.” Ninety-eight, ninety-nine . . . one hundred. “Anne, the bomb’s disarmed. You can kill him now.”
Anne struck instantly. Black death flashed out in a howling wave.
Sarque pushed the button and nothing happened. He hesitated an instant.
It was too long. Sarque was strong, and I already knew from watching the futures that he could fight, but against someone like Anne there was no room for error. He threw up a shield of fire and force. Anne’s spell tore straight through it and stripped the clothes from his skin and the skin from his muscles, his body changing colours as layer after layer was torn away, flesh and veins and tendons dissolving into black dust.
It was over in less than a second. Where Sal Sarque had stood was an upright skeleton, only traces of flesh hanging off the bones. Black energy swirled around Anne’s hand as she held the skeleton up by sheer force of will, then she let her hand drop and the bones collapsed with a clatter. The skull bounced and rolled, coming to rest under a swivel chair, eye sockets staring up at the ceiling.
Richard, Rachel, Crystal, and Anne looked at the remains. Then, as one, they all turned to me. As they did, I reached out through the dreamstone to Meredith. Now.
In the shadows off to my right, Meredith began her spell.
The pattern in the control room had shifted. Before, it had been a triangle, with Sarque, Richard, and me as the three points. Now the three had become two. Richard and his three companions on one side, and me alone at the other. Solace cowered against the far wall, ignored by everyone.
A rush of adrenaline filled me. Everything I’d done for the past few days had been for this, to bring these people together in one place. Richard, studying me from the front of his group, calm and inscrutable; Rachel, her eyes glittering with hate; Anne, aloof and contemptuous but compelled to obey. For a moment I saw them not as people but as playing pieces, moving into the endgame.
“That other mage is still there,” Crystal told Richard.
“I am aware.”
Crystal nodded towards me. “Get rid of him?”
“I’m shocked that you’re suggesting going back on your word, Crystal,” I said. “Really.” I looked at Richard. “So?”
As I spoke, I reached out delicately with the dreamstone, but this time to Rachel. I brushed against her mind and had to steel myself not to pull away. Her thoughts were jagged, discordant, like walking on broken glass. But overlaid on her mind was something else, like a voice whispering in her ear.
. . . going to say yes. Meredith’s magic wasn’t quite a voice and wasn’t quite words. It was more like a stream of thoughts, shifting and flowing, and to Rachel, they would feel like her thoughts. Missed the chance. Should have killed him. Now it’s too late.