“Nice to know someone can see sense,” Brigadier Negley murmured.
Brigadier Brannan set a hand on the hilt of his sword. “If you don’t care for the way I think, sir, we can meet at a place of your choosing and you are welcome to try to make me change my views. Make sure you let someone know where you want your urn interred, though.”
Negley returned a stiff bow. “I am altogether at your service, sir.”
Doubting George decided it was a good time to lose his temper, or to seem to. He slammed the palm of his hand on the folding table behind which he sat. His brigadiers all jumped at the noise. “That will be quite enough of that,” he growled. “What do you think you are, a pack of northern nobles? They’ve got the blue blood and the blue shirts, and as far as I’m concerned they’re welcome to them. You both know perfectly well that dueling is forbidden in this army, and for good reason, too. We’ve got ourselves a job to do. By the gods, we’re going to do it. Do I make myself plain?”
“Yes, sir,” Brigadier Brannan said. Brigadier Negley nodded as stiffly as he’d bowed.
“Good.” George hoped he could let it rest there. “If we have traitors in the neighborhood, what do we need to do?”
“We’d better let General Guildenstern know,” Absalom the Bear declared.
“I’ve already done that,” George said.
Absalom nodded. “Does he believe you?”
That was indeed the right question to ask. “I don’t know yet,” George replied. His smile was dry. “I have my doubts.”
All four brigadiers chuckled. They took a certain amount of pride in serving under a man who had the sort of a reputation that had won him a nickname like Doubting George. George didn’t want anyone serving under him who didn’t take that sort of pride. He’d weeded out a few officers who didn’t measure up. But he’d done it quietly, so as not to touch off doubts in anyone else.
Brigadier Brannan asked, “Have you checked with our mages, to see what they think?”
That was another good question. George thought so, at any rate. But before he could answer it, Negley snapped his fingers and said, “The mages will tell you they don’t know. That’s all they’re good for.”
“Well, not quite,” George said, though he’d been disappointed in the quality of the sorcerers who served King Avram a good many times.
Brannan’s smile showed sharp teeth as he nodded to Negley. “I presume the sorcerers aren’t much use in the flower trade, eh?” he asked with exquisite, sardonic politeness. Beneath Negley’s swarthy hide, he turned red.
Before he could snap back, before Brannan could take it any further, George said, “I’ve already told you once, that will be quite enough of that.” He’d enjoyed Brigadier Brannan’s gibe, too, but not enough to want to watch his subordinates quarrel among themselves. “We’d do better turning all our tempers against the traitors, don’t you think?”
None of the brigadiers had the nerve to say no. Absalom the Bear said, “Mages are good for something every now and again. You never can tell.”
“That’s true-you never can.” Doubting George raised his voice. “Colonel Andy!”
“Sir?” His aide-de-camp bustled into the meeting. All four brigadiers gave him matching fishy stares. He didn’t have so much rank as any of them, but he had-or they thought he had-more influence with George, so they resented him.
“Fetch me Colonel Albertus, if you’d be so kind,” George said. Colonel Andy nodded, saluted, and bustled away to get the mage. He was very good at looking busy, even when he wasn’t.
“Albertus.” Brigadier Negley sniffed. “Calls himself the Great, like a circus mountebank. Great compared to what, is what I want to know.”
He kept on fuming and muttering insults till the tent flap opened and Colonel Albertus strode into the pavilion. Then, most abruptly, Negley fell silent. Insulting a mage to his face was risky business.
But the brigadier had had a point. When Albertus the Great bowed to George and asked, “How may I serve you, your Excellency?” in deep, vibrant tones, he sounded like a circus mountebank. And he looked like one, too. He wore his gray beard very long, and trained it to a point. His eyes flashed. His posture was very erect. His hands twitched, as if he were about to pull a goldpiece from Doubting George’s ear.
George didn’t want a goldpiece. He was after something more precious still, and more elusive: the truth. “By your magecraft, Colonel, have you noted any signs that Count Thraxton’s men are nearby in numbers greater than they ought to be? You and your fellow sorcerers, I mean.”
“Yes, of course.” Even Albertus’ frown was theatrical. “Sir, I am able to give no certain answer, much as I should like to. The northerners have set so many masking spells on the landscape, my colleagues and I are hard pressed to see anything at all.”
“Why would they do that, if they didn’t have something to hide?” Brigadier Brannan asked.
“Why? I can think of several reasons,” Albertus said. “One, obviously, is to conceal their forces. But another would be to conceal that which is not there, to use magic to deceive and slow us where warriors cannot.”
“Are they such sneaky demons as that?” Brigadier Rinaldo asked.
“Do we dare think they aren’t?” Absalom the Bear said before anyone else could answer. George had to give Rinaldo credit: he very visibly thought about that before at last shaking his head.
To Colonel Albertus, the so-called Great, George said, “Can you tell whether the enemy is masking emptiness or building up his forces behind all those screening spells?”
“Maybe,” Albertus said-an answer Doubting George accepted as basically honest, if nothing else. The mage went on, “If the masking spells are laid on with enough skill and force, they will hide whatever lies behind them, whether that be nothing or a great deal. That is their function, after all.”
“Well, so it is,” George said. “But your function, Colonel, is to pierce that magic, no matter how skilfully and forcefully the traitors use it.”
“In theory, no doubt, that is true,” Albertus replied.
“If the theory’s not worth anything, Colonel, why aren’t you carrying a pike instead of your wand there?” Brigadier Absalom demanded. His manners were altogether unpolished, but he was the man George relied upon when the going got heavy.
Albertus the Great, however, looked at him as if he’d just found him on the sole of his boot. He stroked his splendid, gleaming beard and said, “I assure you, sir, we of the mystical profession are doing everything within our power to aid in King Avram’s just fight to keep Detina a single kingdom.”
That within our power was, of course, the rub. King Geoffrey’s mages were on the whole better than the ones who’d stayed loyal to Avram, even if Albertus had a more impressive beard than any of them. George said, “Colonel, we urgently need to know what, if anything, is behind those masking spells. You and your fellow mages are to attempt to learn that. You are to do whatever becomes necessary in order to learn it. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, sir!” Albertus saluted as crisply as any soldier could have-or perhaps as crisply as an actor impersonating a soldier might have done up on the stage. His about-face also held some of that theatrical quality. He stalked out of Lieutenant General George’s pavilion.
After he was gone, Brigadier Brannan said, “It would probably be a good idea to nab some northern prisoners, too, sir, to find out what they say. Anybody who counts on mages and nothing else dooms himself to disappointment.”
“I’m already doing it, Brigadier,” George said, and Brannan grinned at him. George went on, “If we could rely on our mages, we’d’ve long since won this war.” He held up a hand before any of his fractious subordinates could speak. “I’m not done, gentlemen. If the traitors could rely on their mages, they’d’ve long since won the war.”