‘Suppose that’s why they’ve been leaving us alone,’ one Keeper said.
‘Can we bring down the ritual by killing the ifrit?’ another asked.
Sonder shook his head. ‘All you’d do is kill the host.’
‘Sonder?’ Luna asked. ‘You said you’d been researching these ifrit generals? What did you learn?’
‘Not very much,’ Sonder said, scratching his head. ‘Just a lot of battle reports, and those don’t go into detail. We do have their names though – it was only the marids that were unnamed, not the ifrit. They translate from Old Arabic as Lightning-amid-the-Storm, the Sun That Brings Death, the Eternal Sand or the Endless Sands – I’m not sure which translation is right – and the Water of Life.’
‘Sound lovely,’ a Keeper said.
‘How powerful are they?’ Luna asked.
‘We’re not sure,’ Sonder said. ‘But Lightning-amid-the-Storm was supposed to be the weakest, and the Sun That Brings Death the strongest.’
‘Lightning-amidst-the-Storm is the one possessing Aether, I think,’ I said. ‘Sagash’s old apprentice.’
‘Is that anti-jinn weapon going to work on them?’ Luna asked.
‘It’ll certainly weaken them—’
‘I mean is it going to banish them?’ Luna interrupted.
Sonder hesitated. ‘That’s . . . unclear.’
‘Really not what you want to hear going into battle, Sonder,’ a Keeper commented.
‘Well, I’m sorry, but it’s true. It’s not as though we had the chance to test it.’
‘Bit of a moot point, isn’t it?’ another Keeper said. ‘Since the bloody thing got stolen.’
Lumen was standing on her own. Like Sonder, she wore Keeper battle armour; like Sonder, she looked uncomfortable in it. I walked over. ‘Lumen.’
Lumen looked at me in surprise. ‘Oh, Verus. Last time was . . . Syria, wasn’t it?’
‘Nimbus is counting on you pretty heavily for this,’ I said.
Lumen grimaced. ‘I wish he wasn’t.’
‘I’m guessing this wasn’t the original plan?’
Lumen shook her head. ‘They were supposed to set up a forward siege base with special equipment. They had a team of specialist mages, heavily protected.’ She sighed. ‘Unfortunately, they were so heavily protected that they were put in the rearguard. So they never made it in.’
‘And you’re the substitute,’ I said. ‘Can it work?’
‘I mean, it can.’ Lumen raised a hand and a pinpoint of light glowed at her finger. ‘All you need for something like this is control. I don’t have the strength for proper battle magic, but the accumulator handles all the buffering.’
‘So your spark of light turns into a giant laser beam,’ I said, looking at the glow. ‘Will it be enough?’
‘Oh, power’s not the problem. Give it enough time and it’ll take out the wards and the whole corner of the keep with it. It’s the warmup time I’m worried about.’
‘Where are you going to fire from?’
‘Nimbus said we shouldn’t decide on that until we were ready,’ Lumen said, ‘and for once I agree with him. Sonder and I will be moving around until we’re ready to take the shot. No, what I’m worried about is what happens when they home in on the accumulator. There’s supposed to be no way to trace the signal to us, and we’ll be running dark so we won’t ping on magesight. But I still don’t like it.’ She glanced over towards Tobias. ‘Excuse me.’
The meeting was breaking up. I found Luna and we left the ready room. ‘Anything else?’ I asked her.
‘Sonder says Anne’s ritual is going to take about twenty-eight hours from start,’ Luna said. ‘So about 6 a.m. tomorrow. But the veil will start thinning before that – she’ll be able to summon jinn more easily starting from about eight this evening and it’ll get worse through the night.’ Luna looked at me. ‘Oh, and something else. Sonder thinks that the wards on the keep are stabilising the isolation ward. They’re stopping everything in the shadow realm from going completely crazy.’
‘So if we blow it up . . .’
‘Yeah,’ Luna said. ‘They’d better be right that taking those wards down will let us gate out, because it sounds like we won’t have much time.’
Ji-yeong walked up. She looked fresh and well-rested, and had somehow found the time in the middle of an invasion to redo her make-up. ‘Hey, guys,’ she said. ‘What did I miss?’
Luna and I filled her in on the Council’s plan.
Ji-yeong considered. ‘Will it work?’
I had to think about it. ‘It’s not the worst plan I’ve ever heard,’ I admitted. ‘I don’t think much of Nimbus as a commander, but . . . once the accumulator is active then neither Anne nor Richard will have much time to react, and if they’re pinned down fighting then they might not be able to redeploy fast enough. And they’re right that the marid needs to defend those tombs. Those shadows are half its army, and if we occupy the place we can shut them down easily enough.’ I looked at Ji-yeong. ‘Right?’
Ji-yeong nodded. ‘But?’ Luna asked.
‘But there isn’t a backup plan if things go wrong,’ I said. ‘And in operations like this, something always goes wrong. If I were running this, I’d set some forces aside as a mobile reserve.’
‘Would they listen to you if you told them that?’
‘No.’
‘So what are we doing?’ Ji-yeong asked.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘There are three Council forces. We can go with one of the three, or we can strike off on our own. Attacking on our own is obviously stupid, and I don’t like going with Rain’s force to siege Richard either.’
‘He’s the one with that anti-jinn weapon,’ Luna said.
‘Yeah, but they’re not trying to take it; they’re just bottling him up. We go with them, best case, we sit around while the battle’s decided elsewhere.’ I looked between Luna and Ji-yeong. ‘That just leaves Landis’s force and the accumulator team. The accumulator can win the battle if it goes off, but again, if we go with them, we’ll just be sitting around.’
‘So you’re going with Landis,’ Luna said.
‘It’s dangerous, but it gives us the best chance to make a difference. And if the tombs are under threat, there’s a good chance Anne’s going to send everything she’s got to reinforce. That means Variam.’ I looked at Luna. ‘Maybe that good luck of yours can do something.’
‘I’ve played worse odds,’ Luna said with a nod.
I looked at Ji-yeong.
‘I’ll stick with you,’ she told me.
I nodded. ‘Zero hour is 10 a.m.’
It was a few minutes past nine. A group of men stood on the grass near the windmill, chatting and smoking. A sea breeze was blowing in from the cliffs, sending ripples across the millpond and making the sails of the windmill creak as they swung.
I’d spotted Landis and Nimbus standing on the other side of the windmill. They were talking – maybe arguing. I couldn’t get close enough to eavesdrop, but their body language was tense. For once Landis wasn’t smiling: his eyes were boring into the other mage.
Nimbus gave a final order with a chopping motion of his hand, and left. Landis stared after him for a moment, then turned and began walking slowly towards the men on the grass.
I intercepted him under the sails of the windmill. ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.
‘Director Nimbus has issued the personnel assignments for the attack,’ Landis said. His voice was quiet and he was looking past me at the men out in the open. ‘He’s reassigned men to the accumulator team.’
I followed Landis’s eyes. There were a little over twenty men on the grass, some sitting, some standing. They’d checked their gear and weapons and looked ready to go. ‘That’s the security contingent?’