Burned (2 page)

Sonder was looking around the living room. ‘This brings back memories.’

‘Thanks for coming,’ Anne said.

‘Like I promised,’ Sonder said. ‘You guys still play Settlers?’

‘We’ve had a bit less time to spare for that stuff lately,’ I said.

‘You going to take a seat?’ Variam asked.

‘Oh, sure.’ Sonder took a step forward, taking a final glance around as he did, and paused. ‘Uh, what’s with the fox?’

Hermes was sitting by the doorpost to my bedroom, ears pricked up and tail curled around his forepaws. He’d sat watching as everyone else arrived, and now he returned Sonder’s gaze blandly. ‘Why don’t you ask him?’ I said.

Sonder gave me a puzzled look.

‘His name’s Hermes and he lives here,’ I said. ‘Look, we’re a little pushed for time. Is it okay if we save the recaps for later?’

‘Oh. Okay.’

A chime came from the desk. Luna twisted around. ‘Talisid?’

I nodded and went over to pick up the communicator focus. Sonder took a seat a little way away from the others as I walked back, set the disc down on the coffee table in the middle of everyone and activated it.

Blue light flickered, materialising into the figure of Talisid. He scanned left and right, looking at everyone’s faces, pausing very briefly at the sight of Sonder before turning back to the others. The only one he didn’t register was Hermes, outside the radius of the focus’s visual field. ‘You’re all here. Good.’

‘Can you talk freely?’ I asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Then,’ I said, ‘let’s hear it from the beginning.’

‘The Council met this afternoon,’ Talisid said. ‘It was a closed session of the Senior Council only. There were two items on the agenda, and the proposal for your execution was one of them. Levistus was the author. The vote was three to one.’

The Light Council is the decision-making body of the Light mages of Britain. It has thirteen members: six non-voting, known as the Junior Council, and seven voting, known as the Senior Council. Beneath them is a sprawling organisation and bureaucracy (of which Talisid’s a member) but it’s those seven members of the Senior Council who call the shots.

The knowledge that the Senior Council had authorised this sent a chill through me. Within Britain, the Senior Council have nearly absolute power. There are few laws that restrict them, and there’s no higher authority to appeal to. If they wanted me dead …

‘What charge?’ Sonder asked.

‘Conspiracy and sedition against the Light Council.’

‘
What
conspiracy?’ Luna said.

‘The resolution doesn’t specify.’

‘They have to show some kind of evidence,’ Variam said. ‘Don’t they?’

‘No, they don’t,’ I said. ‘Keepers do, because they answer to the Senior Council. The Senior Council doesn’t answer to anyone.’ I looked at Sonder to see if he’d disagree. He didn’t.

‘That’s all it takes?’ Luna said, incredulous. ‘Three votes?’

‘There were only four present.’

‘How is this even possible?’ I said. I managed to keep my voice steady, but it wasn’t easy. ‘It’s the middle of December. The Council’s supposed to be in recess.’

‘Which is undoubtedly the reason this is happening now,’ Talisid said. ‘Levistus called an emergency session at exactly the time at which those Senior Council members most likely to oppose him were out of the country. By contrast, his two closest supporters were both attending. Four is enough for a quorum.’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘So if they’ve passed the resolution, why aren’t Keepers kicking my door down right now?’

‘They can’t,’ Sonder said.

Everyone turned to look at Sonder. ‘They didn’t have full attendance,’ Sonder explained. ‘The Council can pass resolutions with a quorum of four, but not emergency resolutions.’

‘Sonder’s correct,’ Talisid said. ‘Any resolution passed with less than full Senior Council attendance has a one-week delay before it goes into effect. It’s a safety measure designed to prevent quorum abuses.’

‘A
safety
measure?’ Luna said. ‘So what, we get a week to live instead?’

‘How is this even possible?’ Variam said. ‘The Council can’t just pass death sentences like that. There has to be a trial or something.’

‘I think we just had it,’ I said.

‘This is bullshit,’ Variam said. ‘I was there for Cerulean’s trial in the spring. It took them two months to even schedule it, and he wasn’t even there!’

‘Cerulean was a Keeper,’ Sonder said. ‘Well, is a Keeper … I mean, they haven’t actually formally expelled him, and … anyway. They can’t pass sentence on a Light mage without a trial, but…’

‘But I’m not a Light mage,’ I finished. ‘What’s the exact definition of a Light mage as far as this goes?’

‘You have to either be recognised by the Council, or you have to have an official Council position,’ Sonder said. ‘Like being a Keeper.’

‘You’re kind of a Keeper,’ Luna said.

‘I’m a Keeper
auxiliary
,’ I said. ‘I’m guessing that doesn’t count.’

‘I’m afraid it doesn’t,’ Talisid said.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘So that’s me. What about Luna, Variam and Anne? Why are they caught in this?’

‘The resolution applies to you and to your dependents,’ Talisid said. ‘That has a very specific meaning in Council law. A dependent is anyone for whom you’ve taken sole responsibility. Luna falls into that category due to being your apprentice. Anne and Variam also, since you sponsored them for the apprentice programme.’

‘But I
didn’t
sponsor them for the apprentice programme! I just—’

‘I know,’ Talisid said. ‘Unfortunately, it seems you did so well enough that the Council was convinced.’

I felt an ugly sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach. When I’d first met Anne and Variam, they’d been in the Light apprentice programme, sponsored by the rakshasa Jagadev. After Jagadev kicked them out, I’d invited Anne and Variam to live with me, and generally tried to give the impression to the mages who ran the apprentice programme that I’d taken over their sponsorship. It had worked – even though they technically weren’t allowed to be there any more, no one had challenged me over it. I’d kept them in the apprentice programme.

And by doing so, I might just have killed them.

‘Can’t we challenge that?’ Sonder said. ‘If they were never officially sponsored…’

‘It would be difficult,’ Talisid said. ‘They were de facto sponsorship members for long enough to be officially recognised.’

‘But they were never actually signed in, right?’ Sonder said. ‘If we made the Council admit that they never officially went through the ceremony—’

‘Then it would just be me and Alex getting executed instead?’ Luna asked.

‘That wasn’t what I meant,’ Sonder said hurriedly. ‘I just, um…’

‘Really?’ Luna said. Her voice was icy. ‘Then what
did
you mean?’

‘I’m afraid it’s a moot point,’ Talisid said before Sonder could reply. ‘Any legal challenge would take far too long. Much more than a week.’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Important question. You said Anne, Luna and Vari’s names are on this resolution. Are they listed as
being
my dependents, or are they listed
independently
of whether they’re my dependents?’

Talisid’s image reached for a piece of paper. ‘The first,’ Talisid said after a moment’s pause. ‘The exact wording is “and his dependents, to whit.”’

‘Then if they weren’t my dependents, they wouldn’t be covered by the resolution. Yes?’

Talisid looked troubled. ‘Yes. However, I’d feel happier if you were working against the resolution itself.’

‘What are you getting at?’ Variam asked me.

‘Contingency plans. Okay, Talisid. How do we get out of this?’

‘The resolution was passed by the Senior Council,’ Talisid said. ‘It can be overturned by the Senior Council.’

‘How?’

‘The purpose of the week’s delay is to allow for opposing votes,’ Talisid said. ‘If an absent Council member sends in his vote during that time, the vote is treated as if it had been made at the meeting itself.’

‘And the vote was three to one,’ I said. ‘So if the three Senior Council who weren’t there vote against it …?’

‘It would only take two. Council resolutions require a majority vote.’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘What are the options?’

‘The four members of the Senior Council present were Levistus, Alma, Sal Sarque and Bahamus,’ Talisid said. ‘That leaves three yet to vote: Spire, Druss the Red and Undaaris. Druss should be the easiest to convince: if Levistus wants to destroy you, Druss will probably vote the other way for no other reason than to oppose him.’

‘And the other two?’

‘Unclear. Both are swing voters not aligned with either Levistus or Druss.’

‘So we’ll have to convince them?’

‘Most likely.’

‘Can you arrange a meeting?’

‘Wait,’ Sonder said. ‘They’re Senior Council. You can’t just walk up and—’

‘No guarantees, but yes, probably,’ Talisid said. ‘In this context, a refusal will simply be a fast way of saying no.’

Sonder turned to stare. ‘How soon?’ I asked.

‘Both are out of the country, but they’re scheduled to return before Monday. I should have something for you by tomorrow.’

‘Is there anything else we can do?’

‘At present, no,’ Talisid said. ‘Ah, one other thing. While we are pursuing the political angle, I would counsel against taking any … extreme … measures in an attempt to resolve the problem independently. It would complicate any potential solution.’

‘We’ll keep that in mind.’

‘Until tomorrow, then.’ Talisid paused, looking around the circle. ‘For now, just hold on. I promise I’ll do everything I can.’

I nodded. Talisid’s image winked out and the communicator went dark.

‘Everything he can,’ Variam muttered. ‘Believe that when I see it.’

‘He’s not going to screw us, is he?’ Luna asked.

‘Wait, what?’ Sonder said. ‘Why would he screw you?’

‘I know we’ve had our disagreements with Talisid,’ I said. ‘But he’s never actually betrayed us or lied to us.’

‘That we know about,’ Luna pointed out.

‘If he really wanted to screw us over, he wouldn’t have made this call at all,’ I said. ‘He could have just waited. It’s not like I have many other friends on the Council to give me the news.’

‘Getting the news early doesn’t help much if we can’t do anything about it,’ Variam said.

‘He’s given us time.’

‘Yeah, but is it actually going to help?’ Luna asked. ‘This whole getting votes thing – is it going to work?’

‘Sonder?’ I said. ‘You’re the expert on Council politics.’

‘I’m not really an expert. I wasn’t even back in the country until…’

‘You know more than the rest of us,’ I said. ‘Does what he said match up with what you know?’

‘I guess,’ Sonder said reluctantly. Sonder is on the political track for the Light mages, and he’s become one of the Council’s rising stars. He’d spent last autumn and winter in Washington, making contacts with the North American Council, and now he had some sort of position with the Keeper bureaucracy. ‘I mean, yes, Druss and Levistus are enemies, everyone knows that. It’s the whole Isolationist-Director thing. Spire’s supposed to mostly represent independents. Undaaris kind of goes all over the place.’

‘So they’re swing votes, like he said.’

‘Pretty much.’

‘But we only need one of them?’ Luna said.

‘Not exactly,’ I said. ‘You heard what Talisid said. Any of those three can send in their votes after the meeting. He didn’t say which way. If one of them votes
for
Levistus’s proposal…’

‘Then we’re screwed,’ Variam said. He looked grim. ‘What are the odds like?’

‘We need two out of three to vote in our favour,’ I said. ‘Three very powerful, very important mages who probably have a lot of things they’d rather be doing than helping us. And if
any
of them votes against us, then it’s over. And I’m pretty sure Levistus has got a lot more ways of buying votes than we do.’

Silence fell. I didn’t look around or raise my head. I knew what I had to do, but I didn’t want to say it.

‘Okay,’ Sonder said. ‘Well, I guess we should consider the obvious.’

‘Which is?’ Luna asked.

‘Talking to Levistus,’ Sonder said.

We all turned to stare at him.

‘Look, he obviously wants something. Couldn’t we find out what it is?’

‘Uh,’ Luna said. ‘I think Levistus just made it pretty clear what he wants.’

‘No, all he did was pass a proposal,’ Sonder said. ‘Look, Council mages do this all the time. It’s a negotiating tactic. It’s just meant to force you to go to the table and work out a compromise.’

‘Sonder,’ I said, ‘do you know why Levistus is doing this?’

‘Well … I assume it’s something to do with what happened three years ago, right? With the fateweaver and Belthas…’

‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s about what happened
this
year. With White Rose.’

‘But Levistus wasn’t involved with White Rose,’ Sonder said.

We all looked at Sonder.

Sonder looked around. ‘Was he?’

‘I had a meeting with Levistus during the White Rose affair,’ I said. ‘Just before the indictment against Vihaela was issued. You were in Washington at the time. Levistus gave me a choice. Either I backed off White Rose, stopped going after them, or he’d destroy me. That was how he put it. And not just me, but all of my allies and friends as well. That’s what this is about. And the fateweaver and Belthas too, but mostly it’s White Rose. Levistus tried to make me follow his orders. I said no. People like him, they don’t forget something like that. He’s been storing it up, waiting. Now the bill’s come due.’

‘Translation: he wants us all dead.’ Luna said.

‘Okay, maybe we can do some kind of legal challenge,’ Sonder said. ‘I could go to the Conclave and—’

‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding,’ Variam said. ‘You think they’re going to overturn a Council resolution? In a
week
?’

‘It’s not impossible…’

‘Conclave is in recess until the new year,’ Variam said. ‘And even if it wasn’t, they don’t have the authority.’

‘There’ve been cases where they’ve vetoed a Council decision,’ Sonder said.