Ji-yeong laughed.
I just looked at her.
Ji-yeong stopped smiling. ‘You’re serious?’
I fished out a new gate stone. It looked like a pebble of smooth glass carved with an insignia. ‘But the Senior Council doesn’t meet with outsiders,’ Ji-yeong said. ‘Especially Dark mages.’
‘They’ve been pushed a little out of their comfort zone lately,’ I said. ‘Once we’re inside, just follow my lead. I’ll let you know what to do.’
Ji-yeong and I stepped through into the bubble realm of Concordia. The gate closed behind us and there was silence.
Concordia is one of the oldest of all created worlds, and it’s been used by the Councils of the various magical nations for over a thousand years. The Concord was negotiated here, and it wasn’t the first major treaty to take this place’s name. Among mages, the name ‘Concordia’ carries the sound of power and history and decisions that shape the world. I’d never expected to see it in person.
We’d arrived in a circular antechamber. Huge slate-grey columns rose to a ceiling ringed with small windows that glowed with orange-yellow light. The floor was decorated with circular mosaics. Everything was absolutely silent. The air smelled sterile and clean.
A slender construct, mechanical-looking and copper-coloured, inclined its head toward us. Its face was a blank, curved plate with a cross-shaped glow of yellow light. ‘Welcome,’ it said in a melodious voice. ‘May I please have your names?’
‘Alex Verus,’ I told it.
The construct didn’t answer, but its head tilted towards Ji-yeong.
‘And guest,’ I added.
The construct bowed again. ‘Please follow me.’
The construct led us into a hallway, huge and spacious, light filtering down from windows far above. Arches to our left and right gave views onto a vast pillared hall, but everything was deserted. Ji-yeong and I followed the construct at a distance, the sounds of our footsteps echoing in the emptiness.
‘What are we doing here?’ Ji-yeong said. Her voice was barely above a whisper: something about this place made you want to keep quiet.
‘Richard Drakh told me yesterday that Anne Walker and that jinn were about to cause a national disaster,’ I said quietly. ‘He took it to the Council proposing a truce.’
‘Drakh’s meeting with the Council?’
‘As of yesterday, I’ve got a seat at the table. You’re here to give evidence as to what just happened in Sagash’s shadow realm. Just tell the truth and keep to the point. I’ll handle the rest.’
Ji-yeong muttered something under her breath. ‘I woke up this morning thinking it was going to be a boring day.’
The hallway ended in a set of double doors. The construct stopped and gestured forward with a bow. I pushed the doors open and walked through.
Beyond was Concordia’s main audience chamber. The room was huge and circular, divided into five equal-sized segments like a pie chart. The borders of the segments were marked by low walls, silver-grey and twelve inches high, and the tops of each wall glowed yellow, projecting an invisible vertical barrier. Those barriers protected against magical and physical attack, and were supposed to be completely impenetrable. The effect was to divide the room into five sections; people in different sections could talk to each other but were completely unable to harm them. The fact that this is their premier negotiation site probably says something about how mages tend to get on with one another.
At the narrow wedge of each segment were chairs and a low table, arranged in an arc so that the chairs of all five segments formed a ring. Four out of the five segments, including ours, were empty. The fifth was not.
The segment across and to our right was filled with people. Standing on the flanks, and guarding the doors at the back, were a dozen armed men. They were more heavily armed than normal Council security: their body armour was magically enhanced, and the assault rifles slung across their chests looked to have been upgraded. Half of them tracked us as we crossed the floor; the others were watching the exits. Looming over the men were four mantis golems, bulky silver-and-gold constructs that watched us from faceted eyes.
The golems and the security men were dangerous enough; four mantis golems and a dozen elite security were more combat power than most mages would ever see in one place in their whole lives. But compared to the six men and one woman around the chairs, they weren’t important at all.
There were three people standing, and four sitting. The ones standing were a square-faced mage in his fifties giving me a distasteful look, a long-faced, mournful-looking man with straw-coloured hair, and a much smaller and younger man who was avoiding my gaze completely. They were Nimbus, the Director of Operations of the Order of the Star; Maradok, Secretary to the Council from Council Intelligence; and Sonder, a Keeper auxiliary and time mage.
Sitting in the first and fourth chairs at the table were Talisid and Lyle. Both were mages I’d known for a long time; both had been my friends once, and both were my enemies now. Talisid gave me a glance before shifting his eyes to Ji-yeong; Lyle looked nervously away.
But it was the two people seated at the middle who really mattered. One was a man, bearded and barrel-chested and running to fat, the other a woman with a lined face and very straight grey-brown hair. Their bodies were opposites, but their eyes were the same, watchful and sharp. Their names were Druss and Alma, and together, they formed forty per cent of what was left of the Light Council, the governing body of the most powerful magical organisation in Britain. I kept walking until I reached the chairs twenty feet away from them, then I stopped. Ji-yeong shadowed me, staying a pace behind. I looked down across the forcefields at Druss and Alma. The last echoes of our footsteps faded into silence.
Alma spoke. ‘You’re late.’
I didn’t answer.
‘Do you have a reason?’ Alma asked.
‘Yes.’
Alma raised her eyebrows as if waiting for an explanation. I looked back at her calmly. The silence stretched out.
Druss broke it, rapping his thick fingers sharply on the table. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘since you’ve finally shown up, maybe you can tell us when Drakh’s going to grace us with his presence.’
I pulled out one of the chairs. It slid smoothly on the polished floor, and I sank into the soft leather. To my right, Ji-yeong followed my lead. ‘Oh, he’s here already,’ I said. ‘He’s just deciding when to make his entrance.’
‘Then,’ Alma said sharply, ‘perhaps you should tell your master to make it.’
‘He hasn’t been my master for a very long time,’ I told Alma, ‘and he’s not my master now. If you want to pass him a message, I’m sure you can find a way.’
No one else on the Council side seemed inclined to speak. Lyle, Talisid, Nimbus and Maradok are all important in their own ways, but Druss and Alma are in a totally different league. Ji-yeong was also staying quiet. Dark mages pretend sometimes that they’re above the Council, but any of the mages sitting opposite us could crush Ji-yeong with a word, and she clearly knew it.
Alma made a disgusted noise. ‘This is a waste of time.’ She glanced at Druss. ‘We should leave.’
‘You aren’t going to leave,’ I told her.
‘You’re giving us orders now, Verus?’
‘You came out here with two Senior Council, five other mages of varying seniority, four mantis golems, and a bunch of security,’ I said. ‘You wouldn’t have done that if you were planning to walk out.’
‘That what you think?’ Druss said.
‘What I think,’ I said, ‘is that as soon as Drakh got in touch with you last night, you called up Alaundo and Helikaon and every other diviner you keep on retainer. You told them to drop whatever they were doing and find out whether Drakh was telling the truth, right now. And after they got done being pissed off about being hauled out of bed, they did exactly that. Now, what they said when they got back to you, I don’t know, but just from the fact that you’re sitting here at this table, I can make a good guess.’