Collision: The Alliance Series Book Three (11 page)

“True,” said Raj. “Also, let’s face it, she’s the only supervisor at Central who actually gets things done. The others are scared of the council and knee-deep in paperwork.”

“I’m pretty sure she repels paperwork,” said Kay. “That, or has a secret army who does it all for her.”

“There’s a theory in Office Twelve that she’s a cyborg.” Iriel’s eye rotated again.

I snorted. “Nah, she can’t be. Her sister works at the training complex and she seems normal enough.”

“True,” said Raj. “I’m kinda worried about Earth in general, since we left. If we’re going to find Central overrun by griffins.”

“Or unicorns,” I added.

“Yeah,” said Kay. “There aren’t enough staff in Earth’s Alliance in general to deal with all the crap that went down yesterday. Complaints Division people are going to be run off their feet.”

“Guess it comes with being low-magic,” said Iriel.

“I’m striking that place off my holiday list,” said Raj. “Do you reckon she’ll send us back there?”

“Probably,” said Kay. “If this magical disturbance is still happening.”

As it turned out, however, no new disasters had made the news, though the Alliance was dealing with the aftermath of yesterday and catching various offworld creatures which had got loose. The Complaints Division was overrun by people yelling about their offworld tech malfunctioning. And a worldwide videoconference between all the Earth’s Alliance councils was in place on the fourth floor, which meant telling the council what we’d heard on Vey-Xanetha would have to wait.

“I expect a report from each of you,” said Ms Weston, dismissing us from her office. “This may be an isolated incident, but we can’t count on that. I’ve already spoken to the council about giving us an easier way to access Vey-Xanetha if this happens again. The long route through the Passages isn’t a safe method of travel.”

Yeah.
We were lucky not to have been attacked in the time it took us to cross the Passages. Kay had remarked that it was a pity we couldn’t travel using Valeria’s hover-tech. The material the Passages were made of stopped most technology, or it interfered with the magic too much to risk using it.

Back to Office Fifteen. Markos was at a standing desk, sorting through heaps of paperwork.

“Enjoy your adventure?” he asked me, as I laid the report files down on the desk. Raj and Iriel took up seats as far away from Markos as possible.

I flipped over the page. “I’ve had better. The big-ass three-headed bird spoiled the view.”

“Yeah, and we didn’t get to meet any gods,” added Kay. “What a letdown.” He turned to the new pages and started filling out the forms. “Best get this over with. I doubt anyone ever reads this crap, but I can check on the other information they have in the archives when I file it.”

“Speaking of,” said Raj, “what’s the boss looking for in there? Didn’t she rearrange the whole place the other week?”

“Thirty-year-old records,” said Markos, “and even I can’t find them.”

“Hmm.” Kay frowned at the papers. “Thirty years old?”

“No idea,” said Markos. “I think she’s trying out for a council position and wants to read up on certain key developments.”

“She’d be better at the job than half the council,” said Kay. “Let’s face it, she practically runs the place when they’re offworld, which is every other week, these days.”

I’d never spoken to Earth’s council, but half of them weren’t even
on
Earth at the moment. I’d ask Kay about it later. He’d spoken to them more than the rest of us, after all. Visiting Vey-Xanetha had reminded me how little I knew about magic—how little anyone did—and now I remembered I hadn’t had a thorough look in the archives yet. Mostly because the archives had been out of bounds while Markos had been rearranging them.

“How long have you been Ambassadors?” I asked Raj and Iriel, out of curiosity.

“Year and a half,” said Raj. “And in that time I’ve been arrested seven times and had to be bailed out by the Alliance twice. It’s not an easy job, but there are perks.”

“Arrested?” I glanced at Iriel, who shook her head.

“He keeps losing his Alliance ID. If you’re on a hostile world, it’s the only thing between you and grim death. I offered to superglue it to his forehead.”

“Not all of us have it implanted in their
eyeball,”
said Raj. “And no, I’m not asking for an upgrade. The staff at the Klathican Embassy hate me, they’d probably give me a chalder vox’s eyes instead.”

“That’s a thing?” I said.

“Some people have more money than sense,” said Raj. “Which, by the way, is another perk–offworld currency. Have you been to Valeria yet?”

“Yeah, I’ve been on the hover bike track.”

“Of course you have,” said Raj. “I’m surrounded by lunatics.”

“Okay, Mr Safety Inspector.” Iriel’s fake eye rolled around again, making me dizzy to watch. “What about the griffin incident on your first mission?”

“Did you have to remind me?” Raj groaned. In response to my quizzical look, he said, “My first mission was on Alvienne. Long story short, a griffin got into the Passages and caused havoc. They’d already caught it so the questioning was supposed to be straightforward, but the griffin escaped in the middle of interrogating the suspects.”

“And he ran screaming,” said Iriel.

“Thanks,” said Raj.

I grinned. “Nice. So why did you sign up as an Ambassador? Griffins aren’t in the job description?”

“With the Alliance, there’s always a risk,” said Raj. “And as a magic-wielder, even more so. We get access to places no one else does.”

“A magic-wielder,” I said. “But you’re from Earth?”

“Yeah, I’m one in a million.” He shrugged. “Not as much as Iriel, though. I want to know how your parents met. A Klathican and a Zanthan walk into a bar…”

“Very funny,” said Iriel. “They met at the Klathican Embassy, I think. I’m half Klathican,” she added in explanation, “and they tend to stick to their own world. They wanted dibs on what’s left of Zanthar when it’s fully buried under the sea… that’ll be interesting.”

“It’s high-magic, right?” I asked. I’d helped some Zanthans move out of the problematic areas before, because the Alliance restricted immigration.

“Yeah, and stable, for a wonder. Would have been a different story if the Zanthan natives hadn’t won the first continental war.”

I didn’t know their history, but I knew how easily a high-magic world could be swept up in conflict.

“So you knew you were a magic-wielder… when?”

For most Earth magic-wielders, they didn’t know until they went offworld. For me, I couldn’t remember ever
not
feeling its presence when I went into the Passages.

“Since I was about five,” said Iriel. “I moved to Klathica when I was quite young, but I got a lot of grief when I joined the Alliance.”

“So you decided to come and pester us on Earth,” said Raj. “I knew someone in the Alliance, that’s how I got in, but I sure as hell didn’t know about the whole magic deal until then.”

“How did that happen?” I asked, curious.

“I accidentally electrocuted someone. They were fine,” he added hastily. “But I got arrested. Happened on Klathica, so I had a crap-ton of security mechas on my back.”

“Security mechas?”

“Their scary-as-hell security guards. They make that eyeball look like a fluffy kitten.”

I giggled at Iriel’s expression.

A minute later, Kay stood. “I’m going to the archives. I’ll see what else they have on Vey-Xanetha. Just in case.”

“I’ll go, too,” I said quickly.

Once in the elevator, he said, “Did you feel the magic level change? At all?”

I shook my head. “No. And not since we got back, either. Not since… last night. But I didn’t really notice under the magic burn.”

His jaw tensed a little at the mention of magic burn. “It stopped early this morning,” he said. “But on Vey-Xanetha–I can’t think of anything at all. Any solution to whatever happened there. If even
they
don’t know, then I don’t see what we can do.”

“It’s weird. I wish I’d tried to use magic there. I’m sure it would have worked, but… something feels off. Like it shouldn’t be disturbed.”

“Yeah, I got that vibe,” he said. “I think we ought to see a demonstration of what they actually use magic for over there. What their summoners do.”

“Talk to the gods?” I said. “Wow. Guess you can’t do that with an earpiece. I’m surprised they didn’t start acting up with the magic level rose.”

“They’re portable,” he said. “I’d guess your brother tested them first.”

I smiled. “Yeah. That’ll explain how he almost blew a hole in the wall the other week. Like the Chameleons. Do you still have yours, by any chance?”

He shook his head. “The battery ran out. I had to return it to the tech team. I can only amplify sources if I’m touching them.”

“Still,” I said. “Must be pretty handy.” Maybe I was reading too much into it, but Kay didn’t talk about magic to anyone else the way he did to me. Sure, there were only a handful of people who knew he could become invisible, but I kind of liked that I was the only person with whom he voluntarily discussed the subject.

“Yeah. I wish I knew
why
it works like this. Earth has nothing on magic-related abilities, and most other worlds keep the information under wraps. There’s literally nothing on amplifiers in the archives here.”

“So… when did you decide you wanted to understand?” I’d been wondering that for a while. “When we first met, you didn’t use magic. You hated it, actually.”

I’m not interested in magic-wielders
had been his exact words. Of course, that was before the Campbells and Skyla had forced him to use the ability he’d probably hated for years, or at least since the wyvern incident. While I’d grown wary of magic, he’d started actively looking for information.

“I don’t trust it,” he said. “But knowledge is an advantage. It’s dangerous to have this kind of ability and not know anything about the limits. I’d bet there are people who
do
understand magic out there, on some worlds.”

“Like… Enzar’s Royals,” I said. “Yeah. They wanted to use me as a weapon. And Nell told me I had the choice. I get to decide what to do with it. I used it for years without knowing.”

Kay shook his head. “Ada, you never tried to hurt anyone. You’re not…”

“A monster? I know.”
But
what
am I?
I might know how dangerous magic was now, but I
did
want to know more. Maybe it could help us solve the problem in Vey-Xanetha. Or maybe I just wanted an excuse to hang out with Kay. I decided not to examine that notion too closely.
Get a grip, Ada.

The lift stopped at the top floor, and we walked out into the archives. Rows of dusty shelves covered the entire floor. At some point soon, I’d probably have the joyless task of rearranging things in here. Admin was usually in charge of updating files.

“Would it be under ‘Vey-Xanetha’?” I wondered aloud, scanning a list on the side of a bookcase.

“Yeah, if there’s anything at all,” said Kay, leading the way down the nearest aisle. “I’ve been in here a few times. They don’t have a
lot
on magic, but it’s always worth checking.”

“So you’ve read everything on magic sources?” I asked in an undertone, though the dusty air was quiet.

“Everything here,” he said. “But Earth’s behind the other allied worlds when it comes to that kind of thing.”

And high-magic worlds guarded their secrets well. I’d thought I knew everything about magic back when I’d assumed I was mageblood, but now it felt like re-learning a whole identity. No other Royals had escaped Enzar. I had nobody else to learn an example from. Nell had no magic, and avoided talking about our homeworld if she could help it.

“Yeah,” I said. “Wonder what happened to that griffin?”

“Simon messaged me. New York’s Alliance caught it. Half the world’s Alliances have been here in London today, talking to the council. Simon’s stuck here until they clear the path he normally uses to get back to New York. Assuming nothing else happens, we’re heading to the Blind Wyvern. You should come and join us.”

“Oh,” I said, looking at him sideways. “Sure.” I’d been there a couple of times with Jeth and the tech team, but Kay never stopped by longer than to say hi, before going back to playing darts with the off-duty guards and Ambassadors. At first I wondered if I was somehow too uncool to fit in with the Alliance’s elite crowd—though he and my brother didn’t exactly get along—but I’d been in the Alliance long enough now to notice how people reacted to the name
Walker.
When curiosity finally got the best of me, I’d asked a couple of the guards what they knew about Kay’s father. “Scarier than Ms Weston,” one of them had said. I hadn’t quite got the nerve to ask Kay himself, but if I carried that kind of reputation around with me, I’d make more of an effort to be sociable with everyone, too.

Still. He’d actually asked me to spend time with him. That had to count for something, right?