‘Yeah, well, for some funny reason, it isn’t too easy for me to find an aide these days.’
All Council members – or almost all – have personal aides, who schedule their appointments, run messages and quite often carry out the actual negotiations while Council is in session. Aide positions are a major stepping stone in a political career, and they’re hotly sought after by mages who have ambitions to sit on the Council themselves someday.
No one was looking to become my aide. For one thing, being associated with the first Dark mage ever to sit upon the Light Council of Britain is not the kind of thing most Light mages want on their CV. For another, word had got out that this particular job wasn’t good for one’s health. Morden’s first couple of aides had died under mysterious circumstances, if being found burned to death with twenty broken bones counts as ‘mysterious’. Since I’d taken over, I’d had three aides myself. The first two had abruptly resigned their positions after receiving visits from the Crusaders – visits that had, presumably, spelled out what the consequences would be if they stuck around. The third had lasted a month. He’d quit when one of his family members had been kidnapped. Neither he nor the family member had been hurt, but ever since then, no one seemed particularly keen to take the position, and I couldn’t really blame them.
‘Maybe you aren’t looking in the right place,’ Variam said.
‘Vari …’
‘Look, you know Luna and I would have offered,’ Variam said. ‘But it’s a full-time job and we don’t have the time. I’ve got Keeper duties, and Luna’s running the shop. I mean, I guess she could work evenings or something, but …’
‘It wouldn’t work,’ Luna said. ‘I can take the odd day off, but not every day of the week. Anyway, I’m not sure I’d want to. You know how I feel about those guys. I might have passed my journeyman tests, but I’m not a real mage as far as they’re concerned.’
‘And those are all valid reasons, but that’s not why I haven’t asked,’ I said. ‘The way things are right now, becoming my aide is painting a target on your back. My last three aides didn’t quit out of hurt feelings. If they’d stuck around, odds are they’d have ended up dead.’
‘Sounds like you need someone tougher,’ Variam said.
I rolled my eyes. ‘Just come out and say it, Vari.’
Variam didn’t say it. He just looked pointedly at Anne.
It wasn’t the first time Variam had made the suggestion. He’d floated it around the time of aide number two, and voiced it more forcefully after the departure of number three. I hadn’t been comfortable with it then, and I wasn’t comfortable with it now for a host of complicated reasons. Anne could do the job, and do it welclass="underline" she’s quiet, but she sees more than she lets on and she’s very good at reading people. Equally important, she’s probably more dangerous than any of us in a one-on-one fight. And while she runs a clinic in her spare time, she doesn’t have much else to do, which was probably one of the reasons Variam was pushing this. I knew that both Vari and Luna were worried about how much time Anne was spending in the Hollow.
But I’d rather have Anne in the Hollow than dead. ‘I don’t see her jumping up and down asking for the job,’ I said.
‘I wouldn’t mind,’ Anne said.
The rest of us looked at her. ‘Are you sure?’ Luna asked.
‘Would it help prevent something like this happening again?’ Anne asked me.
‘Yes, but there’s a reason I haven’t asked.’ Actually there were three, but the first I didn’t want to say in front of Luna and Vari, and the second I didn’t want to say in front of anyone. ‘The Crusaders went after you once already. If you’re in the War Rooms every day, they’re going to get a lot of opportunities to reach you again, and sooner or later, they are going to try.’
‘You’re in the War Rooms every day too,’ Anne said.
‘That’s different. I’m a Council member now.’
‘Isn’t that bounty on you still open?’ Luna asked.
‘Yes, but they haven’t actually tried to drag me off the streets.’
‘They bribed a guy to kill you less than three hours ago,’ Variam said.
‘It wasn’t a serious assassination attempt.’
Variam, Anne and Luna all looked at me.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘Okay,’ Variam said. ‘I want you to stop a minute and think about what you just said.’
‘Let’s put it another way,’ Anne said. ‘If you did have an aide, would that make you safer?’
I hesitated. I wanted to say no. ‘Probably.’
‘Then I’ll do it.’
I opened my mouth to argue, but then saw the way Anne was looking at me and stopped. I knew I wasn’t going to win this argument.
‘Good,’ Variam said. ‘So what have you heard about Richard?’
‘Oh right.’ I put the other issues out of my head. ‘That. As far as the rest of the Council knows, he’s got his hands full. The Dark mages following him still aren’t happy with the division of loot from the Vault, and it doesn’t seem like that last round of doling-out settled them. Council intelligence claim they’re refusing to help any further until he shares the wealth.’
‘Thank God Dark mages suck so badly when it comes to working together,’ Variam said. ‘If they’d attacked while we were busy with the adepts …’
I nodded. Our biggest advantage in dealing with Richard and Morden had always been that they were usually too busy with other problems to focus on us. By last year, Richard had manoeuvred himself to the top of the heap of the Dark mages of Britain, enough so that he’d been able to lead a significant number of them in a coordinated attack on the Vault. But Dark mages are Dark mages, and with the raid done, his alliance had immediately started squabbling over the loot. There hadn’t been an outright revolt yet, but it was probably only a matter of time. ‘From what I’ve heard, the one currently throwing a spanner in the works is Onyx. With Morden in custody, he’s claiming he should be taking Morden’s place on the triumvirate, and he wants the same kind of authority Morden had.’
‘Is that going to work?’ Luna asked.
‘Hell no,’ I said. Onyx is Morden’s Chosen, and he’s just as powerful as his master, but nowhere near as smart. ‘And I seriously doubt he’ll get any other mages to follow him. But he controls Morden’s mansion, so as long as he’s refusing to cooperate, he can hold Richard up.’
‘Good news for us,’ Variam said. ‘They can keep on fighting each other.’
‘It might not be as good as you think,’ Luna said. ‘Something I’ve been noticing for a while … you know how we get plenty of adepts in the shop? Well, I’ve been talking to them, and I’ve been hearing something about an association.’
‘An association?’
‘As in, mutual defence,’ Luna said. ‘You join up, and we’ll protect you, that sort of thing. Except the last guy to come in was really definite that it had nothing to do with the Council. I pressed him, and he insisted. No Light mages involved, he said. I think he was hoping I’d join.’
‘I’m pretty sure the Council isn’t running anything like that,’ I said with a frown.
‘Which was what I thought,’ Luna said. ‘So if the Council isn’t running it, and there are no Light mages involved, who does that leave?’
‘You think it’s Richard,’ Anne said.
‘It makes sense, doesn’t it?’ Luna said. ‘One of the big things adepts are scared of is mages preying on them. If Richard promises them they’ll be safe from that …’
‘Then that would be a pretty good motivator to join his team,’ I said. ‘So what do they have to do to join this “association”?’
‘Nothing, according to him,’ Luna said. ‘But once you’ve got a bunch of people organised like that, it’s not so hard to point them at a target, is it?’