Peter Dickinson - Angel Isle

“Hear that, Syndic? No magic in Larg? Wasn’t in our briefing.”

“Fleet equipped to counter any magical activity they may meet, wasn’t it. Covers the point, I suppose?”

“Right, Pashgahr. How long before the boats are off, as of now?”

“We got it down to seventeen minutes forty in drill practice, General.”

“You take over the operations side then. I’ll spin things out here.”

“Very good, sir. I suggest, for the look of the thing, you get the Syndics to ask a question or two. Burdag is sound—he’s got a big holding in Gas Avionics in his sister’s name.”

“Good point. Time the bastards earned their keep instead of acting like we’re laying on a firework display for their amusement. All set? Interpreter?”

“I am ready, sir. I must apologize—”

“You can cut that out. Ask these people to tell us more about themselves and what proof they have of the authority they are claiming.”

“Everyone get all that?” muttered Ribek. “They’re playing into our hands. We’ve just got to get the timing right.”

“Find an excuse for Benayu to get me outside and disappear me,” said Saranja. “I’ll take Rocky, and if he keeps us invisible we can scout around and keep an eye on things.”

“We’ll need you back here when the moment comes.”

“Bennay, my brooch, please,” said Maja.

“Very good, my lady.”

He unpinned the brooch, placed it briefly between his palms and showed it to her before he pinned it back on. There were only two horses on it now.

The interpreter, a lanky, anxious young man in an ill-fitting uniform, turned toward them. He too didn’t look like a Sheep-face, but someone they might well have met at a way station on an Imperial Highway. Ribek nodded when he’d finished telling them some of what the general had said.

“As you wish,” he answered. “Would you begin, Lady Kzuva?”

Maja rose stiffly, stood leaning with both hands on her cane, and spoke directly to the group of Syndics. There was a pale-faced middle-aged woman among them that she liked the look of.

“I am the hereditary Landholder of Kzuva,” she said, “which is a large estate toward the north of the Empire and carries with it various offices and titles in the Imperial Household, and also considerable magical powers. I use these only when I must, as just now. I am not, of course, a professional magician. I have better things to do with my time, so I employ a woman for that purpose. Some of the renegades you have on board should at least have heard of me.”

She sat down and waited while the others introduced themselves in the roles they had talked about on Angel Isle. Ribek claimed to have inherited one particular magical power, but had never used more than a small part of it to maintain a regular supply of water through his millwheels. Striclan said he didn’t have any, as it was a condition of his job as Under-secretary in Magdep.

“I can do a bit of magic,” Saranja explained. “Not just ordinary hedge magic—better than that. There’s a lot of people like me in the Empire. Some of us could be serious professional magicians if we wanted, but we don’t use it much. It isn’t just that the Watchers cracked down on it, though there was that, of course, but even without them we don’t. As Lady Kzuva says, it gets in the way. I’ll show you the sort of thing.”

She drew her saber and sliced the air in front of her. One of the empty chairs at the central table fell neatly in two.

“That sort of thing runs in a lot of old military families,” she added. “Everyone in my regiment can do it, but we’re a picked regiment. You probably came across a bit of it around Tarshu.”

Maja saw some of the soldiers glancing anxiously toward the Syndics. That must have been a good guess of Benayu’s. Of course the Watchers would have given their troops magically enhanced weapons to fight the fantastical armory of the Pirates, and of course (from what she now knew of them) the generals wouldn’t have told the people back home about everything they were up against.

“And finally,” said Ribek, in exactly the same tone as he’d used to introduce everyone else, “this is Sponge. He and the other creatures who have come with us represent the animals of the Empire. Sponge here will speak for them.”

“Speak?” queried the interpreter before translating.

“I speak for animals,” said Sponge. His voice wasn’t the one Maja had forced into his throat in that other universe, but fully articulate, low in the register, each word separate from its neighbors with a slight snarl at the end. A couple of the Syndics clapped. Though others had frowned at them, Maja for the first time felt a little sympathy for General Olbog. The fate of the Empire might depend upon this meeting and here they were treating it as a show put on for their amusement.

“Animals do not want you in our places,” Sponge went on. “You do not understand our places, our humans, our animals. Now I tell you this. We too have magic. I use magic to speak to you. Watchers sent dragon against us. I fought it. I became big. I grew wings. I flew. I fought dragon, killed it. It wounded me. See.”

He turned to display the new-healed scar in his flank.

“Now think,” he went on. “You come to Empire. Humans use their magic. Fight you. We use our magic. Fight you. Not just big strong biters, tearers. One ant—little, little magic. How many ants in Empire? Millions of millions. Think. Ants, maggots, cockroaches, rats, mice in your food stores, lice, bugs in your bedding, snakes in your path, mosquitoes, wasps, ticks on your flesh, birds, bats watching what you do, where you go, millions of millions of us, all fight you alongside humans. You fight us? How? Think.”

General Olbog spoke, his rage by now barely under control. His words had the shape of a question, followed by a brief order to the interpreter.

“ Where are our bloody magicians? Why didn’t they tell us any of this? Don’t translate that.”

“May we please proceed,” said Ribek smoothly. “I have not finished answering your questions. Let me do that, and then you can discuss what I’ve told you among yourselves before I try to answer any further questions that may arise. You asked for proof of the authority under which we claim to act. We have come in haste, in view of the imminent attack on Larg, and there hasn’t been time to obtain writs with the Emperor’s seal from Talagh—the Imperial bureaucracy is notoriously slow to move. However, the President-designate of the Grand Council has said that she will make herself available, if needed. She carries the Emperor’s seal of office, in the form of a ring. To put your minds at rest, it is very powerfully protected from any form of magical tampering or duplication, as well as plain theft. Only the President or President-designate can wear it. Captain Saranja will act as an escort. Ready, Captain?”

Saranja stretched her right arm out in front of her and opened her fist, palm down. For a fraction of an instant a small silver object started to fall, but in the rest of that instant it seemed to catch fire and explode, and in the next the blaze gathered itself into a great scarlet and golden shape, Rocky in all his splendor, winged and caparisoned, pawing gently at the deck with one front hoof as if eager for action. Effortlessly Saranja swung herself into the saddle, drew her saber, saluted Maja, the Syndics and General Olbog in that order, and disappeared.

“The President-designate will be with us shortly,” said Ribek as easily as if they had just witnessed some everyday event. “You will need your own magicians to authenticate the seal. You may have been wondering why they weren’t present. The answer is that we took them into our temporary protection to avoid the possibility of a magical conflict, which would have been a very risky undertaking not only for the participants but also for anyone who happened to be present. Lady Kzuva, if you would be so kind.”