“For the record,” Laird said, “I don’t agree.”
“Go, Zapan.”
The roaring, thundering, broken noise came to an end, and the moments of silence that followed were almost worse, they were so raw.
“You’re doing this so easily.”
“Given excuse or predilection my heir may, too. These were three very different types of demon, from the three primary choirs. Can you see yourself, five years from now, defending yourself from this? If the circle hadn’t been here, and I was your enemy?”
“No. Not at all.”
“With time and training, we’ll hopefully develop that into a maybe. Maybe, in the right circumstances, you could defend yourself.”
“You’re neutering your own side?”
The old woman pressed thin lips together. “You’re on my side more than those things are. Sandra is, too, even if she loathes me. You’ll understand that too, in time.”
“I don’t understand my role. What do you want from me?”
“I’ll explain,” she said. “I believe that the ability to practice comes from demons. I believe the world’s attempts to balance itself are a response to this. A response to us. We practice, the spirits judge as a proxy for all of existence, and the spirits right the wrong. But much like a spinning top, the world is teetering out of balance, Alister. The jerks this way and that will get only more severe. Push, and the world pushes back.”
“Or you topple it,” Alister said. “The top tips over, and goes flying across the table, and it stops spinning altogether.”
The old woman nodded. “I can’t hope to fix things. The universe seeks to maintain its balance, but this makes it hard to change things. As I said, it pushes back. Sandra’s family has done what it has done for nearly five hundred years. The Behaims have done what they’ve done for three hundred. Crone Mara existed before the Algonquins. History has weight, and that much weight is difficult to move.”
“The leadership of Jacob’s Bell may be a movement,” Laird said. “Or an opportunity to bring it about. A brief window of time, where we can change the status quo.”
“But this remains difficult,” the old woman said. “Even fixing my own family is… I’m not equipped for it. Getting involved, it only exposes them to this. And I decided long ago that we need better foundations, if we’re to build something solid enough.”
“I’m not sure I get it.”
“A nudge, Alister,” the old woman said. “Timed right, in the right direction, in the right amount, as things teeter to one side, and the top may well spin faster, in the right direction.”
“You’ll learn to use the cards, and you’ll learn your chronomancy,” Laird said. “I’ll be doing the same. With luck, one of the two of us will be able to time things appropriately.”
“Doubling our chances?” Alister asked.
“I don’t think so,” Laird said. “The penchant of the Behaims, I’m sure you’ve heard, is to stubbornly pummel the opposition into submission, then while they’re off balance, hit them with the finishing blow. I do the pummeling…”
He left the sentence unfinished.
“Okay,” Alister said, clenching his fists. It helped – his hands were still shaking a bit from the visitors earlier. “Okay.”
“Things are going to get much messier before they get better,” the old woman said. “But it’s much easier to affect things with a nudge when they’re already moving.”
“We have a lot to do,” Laird said. “You’ll need to learn to protect yourself and protect others. You’ll also have to get things in position, and–”
“And the nudge?” Alister asked. “What sort of nudge am I giving?”
■
“Stay here,” he said.
Ainsley gave him a concerned look. The timeless armor only obeyed.
“Please, Ainsley,” Alister said.
She relented, nodding. She looked around, as if she didn’t quite trust that the timing was right. Her candle was in one hand, pins in the other. Weapons at the ready.
Her nervousness was contagious. He used his implement, sorting through the cards.
Two of cups. Connection.
Good enough.
Rose was sitting on the cot as Alister opened the door. He’d expected her to be wearing a hospital gown, but she still wore her normal clothes. She hadn’t been drugged. In the worst case scenario, they would have needed her alert and capable.
Her clothes, he noted, were very, very similar to the ones the old woman had worn, the first time he’d seen her.
But Rose wasn’t the old woman. The atmosphere was the same, the sense of power, even here, where she should have been powerless. But Rose was something and someone entirely different.
All the same, he had no doubt that she was ready, able, and capable of speaking a word, using a gesture, and summoning something. The difference, a difference, was that she wouldn’t.
He smirked a little. You could only be told so many times that you were brilliant, that everything rested on your shoulders, without getting a little bit full of oneself. It was a shield, a buffer. The alternative was to crumble. In this critical moment, he had to choose one or the other.
“They just let you walk in here?” she asked.
“Nudged the shift schedules a bit,” he said. “There is a bit of a gap, right now.”
“I was hoping one of you would come to talk to me,” she said.
“You didn’t care which?”
“I have things I’d like to say to Sandra, and things I could say to Johannes…”
He checked the cards.
“They’re not coming for a while yet. It looks like it’s down to me,” he said.
She nodded.
“I assume something you’d say to me?”
She nodded, a tight motion.
“This sounds crazy, but…”
He drew the little box out of his pocket, opening it.
There was no joy on her face, but he did manage to get a small expression of surprise out of her.
“I had arguments, I was willing to threaten, it was even a long shot, but…”
“But why?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Getting things in position,” he said. “The junior council is on our side. The Behaims are backing me, even if they aren’t happy. Your people are… mostly okay.”