Icestorm

by Theresa Dahlheim

  “Speak aloud,” Hamid said suddenly, and while some of the younger sorcerers looked surprised, none of the elders did.

  “This isn’t the time to be less than thorough,” Natayl said. “We can’t allow anyone to simply refuse to talk to us.”

  “We’ll actually get more out of them by leaving them alone,” Contare said. “Especially in certain neighborhoods.”

  “Such as Medean neighborhoods,” Serafina pointed out. “Leave them alone. I’ll send my own magi to talk to my people there, so that you’ll have no excuse to bother them. In fact, I’ll even do that if we do vote to open the gates.” She turned toward Oran. “If that helps you make up your mind.”

  Tabitha counted in her head. Serafina and Lasfe wanted the gates opened. Contare, Josselin, and Pascin wanted the gates closed without a lockdown. Natayl, Malaya, and Hamid wanted a full lockdown to put the city under Circle Law. Oran had not decided. They needed five votes for one of the three choices before the session could end. “This could take forever,” she sent to Graegor.

  “But at least while they’re debating, the gates are closed and there’s no lockdown, just as Contare wants,” he pointed out. “If this lasts long enough, maybe our magi will find the rogues before any decision needs to be made.”

  No, she definitely could not tell him that she favored the lockdown. “I hope so.”

  “We won’t get anywhere if we let your magi shield your people,” Natayl was saying to Serafina.

  “You won’t get anywhere even if I let you interrogate every single one of my people,” Serafina retorted, “because they don’t have the answers. They aren’t the problem.”

  “We still haven’t precisely defined who is the problem,” Oran reminded them.

  Malaya’s shrill cackle filled the Hall again. “Look no further.” She gestured toward Contare with a dramatic flourish.

  Tabitha saw both Pascin and Lasfe roll their eyes, and she imagined both Natayl and Contare were doing the same, while Josselin said, “You’re hilarious.”

  “He closed the gates,” Malaya said, her high, furious voice ringing off the walls. “He made a lockdown necessary but won’t do it. All this after his apprentice walked into the rogues’ trap and then let them escape!”

  Graegor could not fully hide from Tabitha the shame he felt at Malaya’s words, even after Contare stated, very firmly, “Graegor acted no differently than I would have in his place.”

  “Yes, so it’s not him, it’s you,” Malaya spat. “It’s the disasters that always follow you. It’s the reason some of us wish you’d never come back.”

  Tabitha was shocked by Malaya’s nasty words, and more so by her vehemence. The fact that no one else seemed surprised was almost more shocking. After only a brief pause, Contare said, “Oran asks that we clearly define which people, magi or otherwise, are rogues. I think the reasonable limit here is anyone who had knowledge of the modifications to the fox-den.”

  As both Oran and Serafina started to reply to this, Tabitha felt Graegor’s mind brush against hers. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “She said she wished he had never come back. She hates him. How could anyone hate him?”

  “She hates everyone. She’s probably said that to him a thousand times.”

  Once she thought about what she knew of Malaya, Tabitha decided that Graegor had to be right. Clearly, everyone in the Eighth Circle was long accustomed to the Tolander sorceress’s venom. “I wonder what she meant by ‘disasters’ following him.”

  “I don’t know.” Graegor was trying to bury his sense of shame under amusement. “I thought the disasters were following me. It’s a relief to know it was him all along.”

  She did not think it was particularly funny. “Do you know what she meant by ‘never come back’? Never come back from where?”

  “Telgardia.” As usual, she only had to wait a moment for him to recite the whole story. “The last Torchanes king, Zacharei, was a good friend of his. When Zacharei and his family were murdered, Contare spent seven years protecting Augustin, the sole surviving son. He only came back to Maze Island after Augustin was killed in battle.”

  She thought she remembered that name. “Augustin is your ancestor?”

  “Yes. He had a son just before he died. But his wife didn’t want to continue the fight to regain the throne.”

  And therefore, Graegor had grown up common, not royal. That did not bother Tabitha, not really. He was still her Telgard prince. “It would be hard for a mother to put her baby into the middle of a war.”

  He did not answer. “Graegor?”

  “I’m sorry. Contare needed something.”

  “What?”

  “About when the permits were issued.”

  “What permits?”

  “The construction permits for the other two fox-dens. The ones that were rigged like the Crane room.”

  “Why does it matter when they were issued?” These details always seemed trivial to her.

  “It’s just that we can’t find one for the Crane room, even though we did find them for the others. Lasfe’s magi say that none of the pending permits in their office are for the Crane room, and Varrhon and Lobunat have been searching all night through the records in case it was misfiled. But—nothing.”

  “If the Cranes did not obtain a permit …” Now she thought she understood. “That means they must have made all those changes to the fox-den in secret.” That seemed extremely unlikely. “None of the neighbors saw anything going on at that house?”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time a group of neighbors protected each other from the permit process. For Contare’s sake I hope none of them knew exactly what the Cranes were doing. He’s already really upset that the Cranes are involved with the rogues. He’s known the family for generations.”

  Her mind felt the scratch of Natayl’s, and she barely suppressed a cringe. “Pay attention, girl.” She had no idea how he knew she had been sending to Graegor. Had she moved? Had she dared to smile?

  And how had he noticed anything about her while he himself was talking? “The halfway measures in effect now will let those rumors spread and grow,” he was saying. “Under Circle Law, the rumors will stop.”

  “But right now, people feel free to talk,” Josselin argued. “More talking means more mistakes. It’s hard to behave normally when you’re hiding murderers in your basement.”

  “Whether the people are behaving normally or not, we are going to find murderers hiding in basements,” Natayl retorted. “Full lockdown clears the streets for a fast and efficient search.”

  “Full lockdown punishes innocent people by confining them to their homes.”

  “For how long? A few days? No one will starve. No one will freeze.”

  “For how long exactly?” Oran asked. “Under Circle Law, all two thousand magi on the island will be ordered to assist the city watch. How long will it take to search every building in the city?” When no one answered, his voice grew sharper. “You haven’t done the math?”

  “You could do it yourself,” Pascin grumbled.

  “Indulge me.”

  Tabitha thought this was reasonable, since Pascin was the Minister of the Watch and he had a perfect memory for numbers. But the Adelard sorcerer sighed heavily before beginning a crisp recitation. “We have one-four-three-three magi who aren’t in the city watch, two-five-nine city watch officers, and four-one-one city guardsmen who are magi. The one-eight-three-seven city guardsmen who are not magi will assist. That totals three-nine-four-zero, which rounds to nine-eight-five teams of four, two of whom in each team should be magi. Suppose that it takes a quarter-hour for a team to search through an average building, including any hidden passages or rooms. One-zero-zero-four-one-six buildings at a quarter-hour each means two-five-one-zero-four team-hours. Divide that by seven-eight-zero teams to make just over thirty-two hours per team, which is two sixteen-hour shifts. The remaining two-zero-five teams would be needed for patrolling as well as ongoing coordination of the other
s.”

  “Well under two days,” Natayl nodded.

  “Add a day to organize the task,” Pascin went on. “Add another day for difficulties we can’t anticipate. Add another day or two to allow the magi and the guardsmen to eat and sleep.”

  “Can we subtract a day since we’ll be helping?” Natayl asked.

  “No.”

  “Can we add a day for incompetence?” Malaya put in.

  “Five days at most,” Natayl spoke impatiently over Malaya. “That’s hardly onerous.”

  “It’s also not effective,” Pascin replied dryly. “We don’t know what the attackers look like. They’re less likely to hide in basements and more likely to hide in plain sight.”

  “We have a sketch of the maga who set up the attack.”

  “Not a good one. However, with one-four-three-three magi, we can sweep the city without a lockdown, without the city watch, without invading every home, without confronting illegal activity to which we’ve always turned a blind eye, and therefore without turning the population against us. We can do it in seven days.” Pascin scowled at Natayl. “We’ve already begun.”

  Tabitha knew that the Adelard sorcerer was the smartest man alive, possibly the smartest man who had ever lived. But God, that nose. She had seen portraits of him from earlier years, and he had been rather handsome then. He had not aged as well as Contare and Oran had. He had not even aged as well as Natayl had.

  Natayl started to speak, but Oran quickly held up his hand. “Wait.” He looked hard at Pascin. “What have you ‘already begun’?”

  “Now that we’ve nearly exhausted the direct leads, we need indirect leads,” Pascin explained. “To find those, we’ll ask the magi who have extended sight to look for certain patterns of movement in the streets, and the magi who have extended hearing to listen for particular words and phrases in conversations. Magi without those two talents would then investigate anything suspicious, and if necessary, bring in the city watch.”

  “Where have you placed the magi you have right now?”

  “In the neighborhoods where our direct leads disappeared. With more magi, we can blanket the entire city.”

  “How long does it take to train a magus to properly observe and record crowd behavior?”

  “Obviously that depends on the magus.”

  Oran thought about that for a moment, his head slightly tilted again. The Kroldon badge on his robe was a red fang, the masculine aspect, on a sea-blue circle. The feminine inversion looked like a drop of blood. Tabitha suddenly wondered if the rumors of human sacrifice in Kroldon were true.

  “I never got a clear answer,” Oran said finally, “to my question of how my magi should react to resistance. If they are to investigate suspicious behavior, I need to know how far they should push.”

  “No threats, physical, verbal, or magical,” Pascin said firmly, and ignored several grunts of disapproval from around the Table. “By backing off, they will create different ripples in the crowd pattern, and other magi can follow those. The guardsmen would only be brought in to make arrests.”

  “I don’t see how you can tell that any particular ‘ripples’ are caused by rogue magi,” Oran said, “any more than anyone can tell that any particular magi are doing any particular things at any particular time in this city. There’s too much magic happening all at once. There are too many other ‘ripples’ that will intersect the patterns you’re studying.”

  Hamid murmured, “This seems unnecessarily complicated,” and Natayl barked a laugh.

  “Complicated, but not unnecessary,” Pascin said. “The patterns do stand out, and they will tell us something.”

  “But what if they don’t?” Oran asked. “What if, after all that, we don’t find the rogues?”

  Now Pascin shrugged. “We’ll keep the gates closed until we do.”

  “Indefinitely?”

  “Until we find the attackers.”

  Oran muttered something that was probably a curse, and added, “Throw me a bone.”

  “If you want to vote their way, stop having heartburn over it and do it,” Malaya grumbled, though with her high voice, it sounded more like a warble.

  Oran looked at her, and his expression changed from annoyance to consideration. “Why do you want the lockdown?”

  “How many times must I repeat it?”

  “Not that. That’s just the rabid noise everyone expects from you.”

  Malaya scowled, turned up her tiny nose at him, and sat back in her chair. Oran watched her for a moment more, and then he, too, sat back in his chair. No one spoke right away, and again, many faces grew distracted.

  Tabitha sent to Graegor, “What happened?”

  “Nothing, I think,” he answered at once, which meant Contare was not speaking to him.

  “Why does Malaya want the lockdown?”

  “Maybe she doesn’t. Maybe she just wants us to think she does.”

  “Speak aloud,” Hamid raised his voice to say a second time, and there was some slight movement around the Table as the sorcerers broke off their telepathic conversations. Tabitha flexed the muscles of her knees, back, and shoulders so that she could remain motionless.

  Natayl made a frustrated noise in his throat, then said, “People are going to be angry no matter what. Closing the gates without imposing a lockdown means we have to listen to them complaining.”

  “I’m sorry if that’s too much for your delicate ears,” Josselin said sarcastically.

  “And I’m sorry if a lockdown is too much for your delicate sensibilities,” Natayl returned, just as sarcastically. “I know you’d prefer to use a powder puff, but this requires a hammer. One heavy blow will give us results and will be over too fast for any grumbling to come to a boil.”

  “And,” Hamid said, “it’s really long past time to, as Pascin put it, ‘confront illegal activity’. We shouldn’t be ignoring it. Our successors deserve to be handed a clean slate.”

  “That means taking official notice of all the fox-dens, all the bolt-holes, all the thaumat’argent stashes,” Josselin warned. “Are we ready to do that? More will sprout, but in different places, places that may escape our notice. Or, rather, the notice of the Ninth.”

  “It’s worth it,” Hamid said decisively, and by Arundel’s expression, he agreed with his master on this point, at least. “We’ve been lazy. There are unsafe neighborhoods in this city now because our touch has been too light. There are street gangs and slave smugglers. Guardsmen are accepting bribes to look the other way.” Pascin stirred, but Hamid added, “You know it’s true, Pascin. We shouldn’t be tolerating any of it.”

  “Or certain behavior from certain Academy students,” Serafina said, not quite under her breath.

  “Climbing buildings isn’t illegal,” Josselin said between clenched teeth.

  “No, it’s not,” Hamid agreed. “Serafina, don’t whine about nuisances when I’m talking about actual crimes. Robberies. Rapes.”

  “Murder,” Natayl muttered.

  Contare said, “We don’t need anything as disruptive or heavy-handed as a lockdown in order to solve or prevent crimes.”

  “But we do need it to answer this attack,” Hamid insisted. “Most of the city has heard by now that the strongest of the Ninth was almost killed. Without an appropriately ruthless response from us, other rogues, other criminals, will be emboldened.”

  The strongest. He means Graegor. That Graegor had the most raw power of them all had always been an obvious fact to Tabitha, and her lips began to turn in a smile of pride before she caught herself. She happened to be looking in Arundel’s direction, though, and she saw his frown before he smoothed it from his dark face. She wished she could have seen Ferogin’s expression too.

  “We don’t need to be ruthless,” Contare answered Hamid. “I agree that we need to address the rise in general crime, but not with our response to this specific crime.”

  “But for this specific crime,” Oran said, “I’ve decided our response should be Circle Law.”r />
  Everyone looked at him. He let the silence envelop them for a moment before he explained. “Natayl is right. A lockdown is the fastest way to find the attackers, even if we don’t know what they look like. Our magi can identify other magi, which the attackers are likely to be.” Then he looked to his left, at Hamid. “Hamid is also right. We’ve been lazy, and we’ve let crime spread. The lockdown will give us the opportunity to uncover it and punish it.” Finally he looked to his right, at Malaya. “Malaya is also right. It’s too late to pretend this didn’t happen. Assassination attempts carry consequences.”

  Tabitha was glad that Oran was siding with Natayl, but she was careful to keep that to herself, since she could feel Graegor’s agitation. She wondered if Contare, Pascin, or Josselin would try to change Oran’s mind, but they all remained silent. They knew even better than she did that once the Kroldon sorcerer made a decision, it was made.

  Serafina was the first to speak after Oran. “The South is united,” she said, looking at Malaya, Oran, and Hamid. Then she looked at Josselin and Contare. “Don’t read too much into this, but I’ll unite the West, strictly as the lesser of two evils. I withdraw my request for the gates to be opened, with the stipulation that while they’re closed, only Medean magi will carry out your plan in Medean neighborhoods.”

  “You can’t—” Natayl started to protest.

  But Serafina talked over him. “I’m not asking you. I’m not agreeing to your plan.” She looked at Contare again. “Well?”

  Tabitha found herself perversely pleased as Natayl settled back, stewing. Despite the swing in the vote, she found it very gratifying to watch someone thwart Natayl.

  “Are there enough Medean magi?” Contare asked her.

  “I don’t know how many is ‘enough’.” She looked at Pascin. “I have two hundred sixty-six.”

  “It depends on how many neighborhoods you consider ‘Medean’,” he said carefully, “and how large they are.”

  “‘Neighborhood’ is a vague designation,” Serafina agreed, speaking just as carefully. “I would rather err on the conservative side.”

  “In case we need more,” Contare asked, “are there magi from another race that you would consider?”