Red Queen

by Jolie Jaquinta

  Chapter 9

  Mage Talk

  With a faint whisper and shimmer a figure appeared next to Lilly right after Jack had left. She had long hair, straight and straw blonde. High cheekbones offset ice blue eyes in a face as young as Lilly's. The deep black of her garments offset her pale skin, but standing next to Lilly made it evident it was just very pale, not colorless. She wore a sour expression and held a glittering knife in her hands.

  “You do know that he would be very cross if he knew you had been standing there the whole time”, said Lilly. She knew Bianca wouldn't care how Jack felt. But it was wise to be aware of how he felt since it would affect his reactions should he have worked out she was watching him invisibly.

  “I nearly thought you were going to tell him I was here, when he mentioned you, me and Jesca”, Bianca said.

  “It didn't seem pertinent”, said Lilly.

  Bianca sheathed her knife. “I could have killed him”, she said.

  “Yes”, said Lilly. “Most likely. You had the element of surprise and were ready. And he appears to be most off his guard when he is with me. I can't see what it would accomplish. He would just be brought back.”

  “He is a distraction. We have more important things to worry about than his loyalty or an animated sword.”

  Lilly turned and looked at all the projects set up across the chamber. “We have a great many things to worry about. It is not clear to me what their relative importance is.” Nearly everything Lilly was tasked with was 'urgent'. All for good reason. Many of them were interrelated in complex ways. She assumed that many more were interrelated in as yet unknown ways. It was like the New Magic had given them the alphabet, and they were just learning to spell words. But what they needed was to participate in an eloquent nuanced debate that determined the fate of the world.

  Bianca strode over to a group of tables. “If the Ævatar project was complete, it would be trivial to challenge and defeat the remaining gods.”

  “The remaining gods do not appear to be causing many problems for us right now”, said Lilly. She had been told that they were employing a technique called 'crisis management'. Which basically meant solving whatever calamity was on top of them right now. Not very efficient. But in absence of more time and a better understanding it was the best they could do.

  “But if we have the power to defeat them, then these republicans could just as easily be swept aside”, said Bianca.

  “The problem with those fighting for the old Republic of Romitu is not one of military might. When they strike it has not been hard to field our conventional army in response. We do not know their base of operations, their command structure, or their mode of operation. We would have nothing to sortie an Ævatar out to fight against even if we could activate one and control it.”

  “Are you afraid?” asked Bianca.

  “I am wary”, said Lilly. She pulled up a diagram from the table. “According to what we can decipher in the Book of Creation, an Ævatar is a construct with an extremely powerful Animus, but very susceptible to an outside Will. The book implies, but does not explain, that this creates a large vacuum in the Soul dimension.” Lilly pulled another diagram from the table, and then another one resembling it from her heart. “I was birthed without a Soul in order to operate an Ævatar. But since Mistress Angelika died and granted me her Soul, I can no longer operate one. The only other soulless person we have tracked down is not psychologically suitable.” She pulled up a last diagram that resembled, in structure, the soulless version of her.

  “But”, said Bianca, adding traceries to the last diagram, “we can constrain his Will, and shape it to our direction, then his lack of backbone will not matter. We will force his Will, which will guide the Ævatar's Animus. It's an extra level of indirection, but it gets us what we need.”

  Lilly looked over at the table she had been at earlier. “Then the research into the Mackheath artifact and Jack is pertinent to your approach. It deepens our understanding of Will manipulation to a set goal. If we were able to recover the original it would advance us considerably in that regard. Perforce, it must precede your plan.”

  Bianca tapped the table. “It could have some bearing. But with what we know we can proceed experimentally.”

  “It is not ethical”, said Lilly, flatly.

  “Is that a problem?” asked Bianca, raising a pale eyebrow.

  “I have been advised by both Mistress Angelika and Jack, that acting ethically is usually the best option, strategically”, said Lilly. Bianca snorted. It was an old argument. The concept of ethics confused Lilly. It just wasn't part of her upbringing and it all seemed rather arbitrary. The council she received was that such things are important to others, and it is worth understanding, so that you do not offend them and are better positioned to elicit cooperation. Bianca's upbringing taught her to disdain them, and instead get people's cooperation by using actions deemed unethical as an advantageous lever.

  “Tactically, I think there is more reliable progress to be made further mastering the implications in the Biblica Hexapla than in the Book of Creation” Lilly continued.

  “How so?” asked Bianca, inclining her head.

  “The Six Books were devised by people, and written by people for use by people. From an earlier age, granted, but otherwise like unto us. With the same abilities and limitations. We are not entirely sure of the provenance of the Book of Creation. The prevalent theory is that it was written by the Grey Elves as notes on their creation of the world. It is written in an unknown arcane script using a Hydragyranium based ink. It is only because the majority of it is in diagrams, and because the hallucinations induced by the fixated Mercury ink that we have any understanding of it at all.” If the Six Books gave them an alphabet, the Book of Creation was a dizzying constellation of gyrating cobwebs.

  Bianca looked unconvinced. “The Six Books were written by our equals, the Book of Creation by our betters. Strategically we will advance further if we focus our efforts on understanding the greater work.”

  “Each registered Mage has a copy of the Biblica Hexapla on their shelf. No one has gone insane from reading it. There is a single copy of the Book of Creation locked in a vault. We have both seen it and know the dangers in even being near it. It took months for the nightmares to stop. Our needs are not yet great enough to risk mastering that. Not while there is plenty we have yet to realize contained in the Six Books.”

  “And what of when we do need what's in the greater book? Do we start then?” Bianca said sarcastically. “Then it will be too late.”

  Lilly shrugged. “We have more work to do than we have people to do it. I am not offering an opinion on what work we should do first. I am just making observations.” Lilly was just happy to do what she was told. Where there was a strict dependency or clear gains she could make a simple analysis and that lead to clear priorities. But she did not understand why people made the decisions they made and was ill equipped to argue her interpretations.

  Bianca nodded and paced up and down. “I think I need to talk to my Mother” she said.

  “Isn't she... busy”, said Lilly, hesitantly. Bianca's mother was one of the senior mages in the Academy. But there was a crisis that only she could manage, and that occupied her full time.

  Bianca waved her hand. “She can be interrupted.”

  Lilly looked to a far table. “I wish we could solve the problem she is containing.”

  Bianca fingered her knife. “I wish she would let me solve it.”

  “I think she would prefer a solution that returned both her and your... her husband to productive duty.” Lilly moved to the far table, and brought up a few more diagrams. They twisted and contorted in an active, distorting way. The transitions were not smooth, like many of the others she had reviewed. Disruption erupted in complex fits and starts. In single spots, or in multiple cascades across the view. The disruption was dampened, from a single point that moved around, quelling the eruptions as it passed. You could see the conflict between
the two forces drawn out in the glowing spider webs.

  Bianca jerked her head back at the first table. “Another application of the Mackheath research?”

  Lilly shook her head. “Moss's will is not a simple, static thing. Like any non-constructed person, it interacts in a complicated way with the Soul and Animus. The force manipulating it could be countered by fixing the Will to a prerecorded value, but it would not be the normal Moss. Just a version of him monomaniacally fixed on what his goal was at the time.”

  “Seems to work for you and the Spymaster”, said Bianca.

  Lilly shrugged. “We've known nothing else. Moss, like your Mother, has been one of our chief strategists. It is his broad focus that is invaluable. We would lose that with such a solution.”

  “And yet all he does is garden”, sighed Bianca. She patted her knife again.