For the second time, I was left speechless. ‘Um …’ I said at last.
‘Oh good. The invitation will be delivered to your door in sixty seconds. Hopefully you’ll consider it important enough to get out of bed. Oh, and do pay attention to the dress code. It would be very embarrassing if you and your escort were turned away at the door. I’d offer to lend you something, but unlike you I don’t have the luxury of sleeping all morning. See you tonight.’ Lyle broke the connection before I could think of a comeback.
I listened to the dial tone, then hung up. If Council members were going to be at this ball, that made it an Event with a capital ‘E’. Everybody who was anybody in the mage world would be there. Lyle was serious, and that meant the Council was too.
Out of perverse curiosity, I lifted my watch and looked at the time, watching the seconds ticking off. Lyle had finished his call at 9.38 a.m. Exactly as the display ticked over to 9.39 a.m, there was a distant banging at my front door. I hate show-offs.
I pulled myself to my feet, wincing at the stiffness in my legs, and went downstairs. A teenager was standing outside my shop window, holding a white envelope in his hand. Apprentice employed as a gofer; some things don’t change. I unlocked the door, nodded at the ‘Alexander Verus?’ and took the envelope from him. As he disappeared up the street, I opened the envelope and took out the card inside.
It was the real thing. In flowery language and copperplate handwriting, the card stated that the High Council of the British Isles would be honoured if Alexander Verus, etc., etc., would present himself with an escort of his choosing, etc., etc. There was a footnote about the dress code in slightly pointed language that I couldn’t help wonder if Lyle had put in specifically to have a dig at me. Like there’s anything wrong with jeans and sweaters.
I went back upstairs and dropped into my chair, staring at the card while flipping it back and forth between my fingers. It was made of cream-coloured paper with black lettering, and embossed at the top in gold was the Council’s coat of arms. As I scanned it, I could detect the magical fingerprint that marked it as a genuine invitation. The only question was what I was going to do about it.
I don’t like the Council. I don’t like its ideas and I don’t like its people. The Council doesn’t even follow its own laws, much less the spirit behind them, and as far as they’re concerned, morals are whatever’s convenient at the time. They have absolutely no problem with throwing people to the wolves, including people who are supposed to be working for them.
On the other hand, if I just turned Lyle down, I’d be back where I’d started. After the events of last night, I was pretty sure that the Council’s plans for this Precursor relic were going to be stepped up, whatever they were. The members of the team detailed to investigate would know a lot more than I did. Maybe enough for me to figure out what Cinder and that woman were up to.
And I’d only be going to talk to them. I could still turn them down if I wanted.
Yeah, right.
The starting time on the invitation was 8 p.m GMT. That gave me about ten hours to decide what to wear, pick out my shoes, and make sure I wouldn’t be killed before the doors opened. With that settled, I picked up my phone again and dialled Luna’s number.
She picked up on the third ring. Luna gets up earlier than me, but then she doesn’t stay up till the early hours of the morning analysing weird magical artifacts. ‘Hello?’
‘Hi, Luna, it’s me.’
‘Hey, Alex.’ Luna’s answer was friendly, but there had been a tiny pause before she spoke.
‘Listen, can you do me a favour? Could you come around to my place some time today?’
‘Um …’
‘I know it’s short notice. I’ve found out something important about that cube of yours but I need you to run a test. Is that okay?’
‘Well …’ Luna hesitated, then her voice firmed. ‘Okay. I can come by now. About an hour?’
‘Great. See you then.’ I broke the connection and turned to look at the cube. I’d been up for a good four hours last night studying the thing. I still hadn’t figured out what it did, but I was starting to get a pretty good idea what it was.
Magic items are inherently difficult to create. By its nature, magic is tied to life, created by the exercise of a living, conscious will. Trying to make a permanent magic item out of an object is sort of like trying to make a permanent light source out of bits of wood. But mages are a persistent lot, and over the years they’ve worked out ways to get around the problem.
The simplest way is to use items which aren’t magical at all but which guide and direct raw magic in a specific form. These are called focuses, and they’re effectively tools built for a single purpose, like a hammer or a chisel. Energy channelled into them is shaped and directed in the same way that water follows the banks of a river, and given enough time they can even pick up an imprint of the personality of the user. They’ve no power of their own, but they’re useful in the right hands.
Another approach is to make one-shot items like the fog crystal I’d used the night before. In this case a mage casts a spell, then seals it in an item; typically you break the item to cast the spell. These are usually low-power effects, and their main function is to make schools of magic available to those who can’t access them normally. A skilled crafter can whip up a one-shot item in a couple of hours, and they do a brisk trade in the magical economy.
Sometimes, though, neither a focus or a one-shot will do it; you need something that’ll last and has power of its own. But to use magic, you have to be alive. The solution that some creative (and probably slightly crazy) mage came up with a long time ago is to make an item that is alive. The resulting creations are known as imbued items, and they can be extremely powerful and extremely dangerous.
Luna’s cube was an imbued item. It was too powerful to be a focus, and too complex to be a one-shot. It was complex enough that it even had protections against detection magic; there was a kind of null field around it that warded away active scans. I’d tried looking into the future to see what the consequences would be of forcing my way in, and decided quickly that I did not want to do it. This thing had a lot of energy, and it was quite capable of releasing it explosively if provoked. As yet, I hadn’t been able to communicate with it, and I wasn’t sure if there was any way to. Imbued items tend to be single-minded, and they usually don’t talk, making their own decisions based on whatever sensory input they have access to. I’d discovered the cube had a network of microscopic holes in its outer shell; that was what produced the sparkling effect when you looked into the depths. I had the feeling they were access points of some kind, and that the right signal of visible light might activate the cube, but any such signal would be extremely complex. Without more information, there was no way I could guess it.
One person, though, had been able to produce a response from the cube: Luna. I didn’t know why, but if she’d been able to get a reaction once, maybe she could do it again. At least, that was what I was hoping.
I checked my watch. Luna was due in forty-five minutes. I washed and shaved, then looked into the future to see what time she’d arrive. I paused, then looked again.
Luna wasn’t coming.
That was strange.
I looked a third time, then a fourth. As things stood, Luna wasn’t going to come to my door within the next hour, or any hour for that matter. Frowning, I pulled out my phone and called, but got her voicemail. I looked into the future, trying for a clue, and couldn’t see one. A thread of worry started to curl up from somewhere inside. Maybe she’d been in an accident?