But since October, our investigations had become harder. We’d taken all the low-hanging fruit, and the closer we drew to Richard’s real secrets, the more we risked revealing ourselves. Talisid started sending us further afield, chasing rumours with no guarantee of safety or success. Some of the leads we pursued turned out to have nothing to do with Richard at all, while others turned out to be dangerous.
The mission we’d just returned from had been the second kind. Talisid had sent us to Idlib, a contested city within Syria. He’d told us that there was a lightly guarded warehouse in the eastern district containing a shipment of goods intended for Richard’s mansion. Talisid had been right about where the goods were headed. He hadn’t been right about much else.
“How did it go?” I repeated. “Badly.”
“Is everyone—?”
“Alive, yes,” I said. “Healthy, no. We need to have a talk about your definition of ‘lightly guarded.’”
“The militia—”
“The militia weren’t the problem,” I said. “Although there were a lot more of them than you said there would be. The problem was the ice elemental.”
“What kind?”
“The kind that’s seven feet tall, made of solid ice, and can freeze things from thirty feet away. I didn’t stick around to classify it.”
“You said there wasn’t going to be any magical security,” Luna cut in.
“Did you get a look at the shipment?” Talisid asked.
“Is that all you care about?” Luna demanded. “What, it’s okay if we get killed, just as long as—”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Well, that’s the way it sounded!”
I held up a hand. Luna’s gaze flicked to me, and she shut up. She still looked pissed off, though, and I didn’t blame her. “Talisid,” I said. “This is the second time in a row.”
“I know. I’m sorry. All of the information we have indicated that this militia group was entirely mundane.”
“And it didn’t occur to you to wonder how a mundane group would be selling—?” I checked myself, took a breath. “Forget it.”
There was a moment’s pause. Over on the sofa, Variam was listening in. Anne was still working on Variam’s arm, the green light of her magic casting a soft glow. “You weren’t able to get close enough, then,” Talisid said.
“Oh, we got close enough,” I said. “To some empty crates. Whatever that shipment was, it’s gone. Your intel was wrong about that too.”
“Empty?”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure they—?”
“Yes, I’m sure they were empty, and no, they weren’t anywhere else in the warehouse. We checked. For as long as we could, anyway, until that elemental pulled its Mr. Freeze act. Whoever gave you those timings, they screwed up.”
“I see. Would it be feasible for your team to go back and do another sweep?”
I stared at Talisid, then took a breath and counted to five in my head. “No,” I said, once I was sure I could keep my voice calm. “It would not.”
“All right,” Talisid said. “I’m going to need to make some calls. I’ll get in touch with you when I know more.”
“Fine.”
“Until then.” Talisid paused. “I know there were setbacks, but well done on returning safely. We’ll talk tomorrow.” Talisid’s image winked out and the lights around the edge of the communicator went dark.
“Arsehole,” Variam muttered.
“There,” Anne said. The green light around her hands faded and she let go of Variam’s arm. She hadn’t even glanced at Talisid throughout the whole conversation. “Try moving.”
Variam worked his arm, flexing his fingers, then nodded. “Feels good.”
“Do we need to keep him warm?” Luna asked.
Anne shook her head. “No, you could get it frozen again and it wouldn’t make any difference. Though I’d rather you didn’t.” She glanced at me. “You didn’t tell him about the papers.”
“No,” I said. I walked to the armchair, then picked up some of the papers lying scattered over the table. There were a dozen or so sheets, grubby with dirt and damp and cracked at the edges from where the ice blast had grazed them. Variam had managed to keep hold of them during the fight.
“Next time, leave the papers and just get out,” Luna said.
“Will you stop whining?” Variam said. “We’re alive, aren’t we?”
Luna scowled. “Can you read them?” Anne asked.
“In Arabic?” I said dryly. “No.” The papers had notes scribbled across them in a right-to-left scrawl. It could be battle plans, shipping manifestos, a history of Richard’s dealings with the group . . . or someone’s laundry list, for all we knew. But there was a reason we’d picked the things up: three of the pages were rubbings, not writings. They were crude and it was hard to figure out where they’d been taken from, but if I’d had to guess, I’d have said that the pictures and text they showed looked old. More like carvings.
“Are they from what was in those crates?” Luna asked.
“Or from something else,” I said. “We’re going to need a translator.” Who not only spoke whichever dialect of Arabic this was written in, but also knew enough about Middle Eastern magical history to be able to identify the content. This wasn’t going to be quick.
“Are you going to go back if Talisid asks?” Anne asked. Despite her spell, she didn’t look tired. Life magic healing tends to drain the caster, but Anne’s very good at what she does.
“No,” I said.
“What’s up with Talisid, anyway?” Luna asked. “When we did jobs for him before, this kind of thing didn’t . . .”
“Well, it’s because of what Morden’s doing, isn’t it?” Variam said. “Talisid wants us to dig up some dirt.”
Luna frowned. “I thought the Council didn’t buy that Morden’s working for Richard.”
“They don’t,” Variam said. “They’ve got him down as ‘potential associate’ and that’s it. If Talisid could prove that Richard’s behind him, though . . .”
“I think you’re right,” I said. “Talisid still won’t tell me exactly who he works for, but I’m pretty sure he’s with the Guardian faction. And Richard’s reputation still carries. If they could link Richard with Morden it’d scare a lot of people off.”
“Yeah, well, he hasn’t done much of a job of it so far, has he?” Variam said. “And doesn’t sound like his faction’s winning.”
“Mm,” I said. I wasn’t sure how to feel about that.
Politics in the Light Council are complicated. There are seven primary factions: Guardians, Crusaders, Isolationists, Directors, Centrists, Weissians, and the Unity Bloc. They’re closer to social cliques than to the political parties of Westminster or Congress, but the stakes are just as high and the consequences for mistakes are a lot more deadly.
Most of the issues the Council argue over are transient, changing from month to month. But there are some questions that don’t go away, and one of the biggest is the issue of how to treat Dark mages. At one extreme are the Crusaders: they’re the most militant of all the factions and think the Light Council should be actively fighting against Dark mages, going to war if necessary. They hate Dark mages and anyone who’s associated with them, including me. Which is ironic, given that my feelings towards Dark mages aren’t any more positive than theirs, but the Crusaders don’t care. As far as they’re concerned, if you were trained by a Dark mage, you don’t get any second chances.
Less extreme than the Crusaders are the Guardians. Like the Crusaders, they’re opposed to Dark mages, but their philosophy is basically defensive rather than aggressive. While the Crusaders want to go out and take the fight to the Dark mages, the Guardians just want to hold things together. They’d rather do the minimum to prevent Dark mages from hurting other people, then leave them to fight among themselves (something Dark mages tend to do quite enthusiastically). And opposing both the Guardians and the Crusaders is the Unity Bloc. The Unitarians want the Light and Dark factions to unite, bringing Dark mages into the Council and involving them in the political process. It’s not a new idea, more of a cyclical one, and it’s been attempted and abandoned many times before.