Ribek squeezed her hand twice in quick succession, waited and squeezed again—the signal for “Ready?” She squeezed once—“Yes.” He let go of her hand and they were visible. The man talking to the gadget broke off, stared, and gave a shout. Everyone turned back to the room. There was a moment of astonished stillness. The men at the tables started to rise, somebody shouted an order, eyes turned toward the wall with the doors in it, expressions varied from baffled astonishment to equally baffled indignation, then several of the soldiers by the window made as if to rush at the intruders.
Maja gripped her cane at the center and held it horizontally in front of her in a gesture Benayu had taught her on Angel Isle. A pulse of yellow light traveled rapidly along it, creating an invisible barrier across the room. Every movement beyond it froze.
“Forgive the intrusion,” said Ribek. “Do any of you speak Imperial…? Yes?”
A young man at one of the desks had thawed into movement. He didn’t look like a Sheep-face. Perhaps, like Striclan, he was the child of parents whom the Pirates had bought or snatched from the Empire.
“I speak both languages, er, sir,” he said, “but I’m in Intelligence. There are professional interpreters aboard for the landings.”
“Please bring one of them to mind…. Excellent. Lady Kzuva…”
Maja clicked her fingers and a man appeared out of nowhere. His eyes were rheumy with sleep and he was wearing only his underclothes.
“Perhaps you’d better go and get dressed,” said Ribek. Maja clicked her fingers again. The man vanished.
“While we are waiting,” he went on, “would you apologize to the Syndics and officers for our intrusion and their temporary immobility, and tell them that Lady Kzuva will release them on condition that they will then listen to what we have to say.”
The man blinked and stared at Maja and spoke to the group by the big window. He was obviously saying a good bit more than Ribek had told him. Maja heard Lady Kzuva’s name, and guessed he was explaining who she was, and adding that to judge by their dress the other intruders were also fairly important people.
“You can lower the cane now,” said Chanad’s voice in her head.
Maja did so, and the magic-stilled movements completed themselves. The men who’d been rushing to confront the intruders pulled up short. A dozen voices spoke together. A man shouted an order and the voices were silent. He turned to the interpreter and spoke again in a steady, level voice full of controlled outrage.
He was short, stocky and muscular, bald, with a pale, square, flattish face and pale blue eyes. Another Sheep-face. The creases in his uniform trousers and the pleats on the pockets of his close-fitting jacket were as straight and sharp as ironing could make them. There were two broad gold bars on his epaulettes. He was a formidable presence. The inner Maja would have been terrified of him, but Lady Kzuva studied him with interest. She didn’t like him much, but she recognized him as an equal.
“Supreme General Olbog asks who you are and why you are here,” said the intelligence officer. “He would also like to know what has become of the men who were guarding the doors.”
“The guards are elsewhere and unharmed,” said Ribek, pausing between sentences for translation. “We don’t want anyone hurt. There has been more than enough of that around Tarshu. We will introduce ourselves individually later. For the moment I will say that we are a delegation from various major interests in the Empire, and we are here in the first place to persuade you to call off your assault on Larg, or, failing that, to prevent it; and in the second place to negotiate with the Syndics and your military command on a process leading up to your complete withdrawal from the Empire. To clarify matters, I should add that the so-called Watchers have ceased to exist. The magicians you have aboard will probably have reported a major eruption of magical activity yesterday, some distance up the coast, off Barda. That was caused by our destruction of the Watchers.”
The final sentence was followed by a hush of astonishment. Several voices spoke together, all asking what sounded like much the same question. General Olbog remained expressionless, but turned to the intelligence officer and nodded to him to translate.
“The Watchers are destroyed? You did it?”
“We, at the instigation of the late President of the Grand Magical Council, who was recently returned from a long absence and on the verge of death…. Please wait for me to finish before you ask more questions.
“The first magical outburst was our destruction of the Watchers, the second the passing away of both the late President and the Guardian of Larg. Ah, your official interpreter is now dressed and ready. Shall we pause to allow him to collect his wits?”
General Olbog nodded and gestured. The soldiers moved smartly up to one end of the window and the Syndics drifted to the other. Maja’s hip was starting to ache with standing, but as she was turning to beckon to Benayu Ribek laid his hand on her arm.
“He’s going to be busy,” he muttered. “Chair? Right.”
The two groups by the window were keeping their voices down, but by the time Ribek had fetched a chair from the central table and helped her to sit snatches of what they were saying were whispering in Maja’s mind.
“Now we’ve seen it all. I’d like to see bloody Olbog match that.”
“Think they’re what they say they are?”
“The old lady’s pretty impressive.”
“I really fancy the soldier lass.”
“Just conjuring tricks.”
“Have you still got a connection on that, Lieutenant?”
“Yessir.”
“Don’t let on. I’ll call you in a minute. Come over here with a couple of documents.”
“Will do, sir.”
“And find out what the hell’s happening with our tame magicians. Supposed to have one here, weren’t we?”
“Will do, sir.”
“What’s with the menagerie? We’re not children.”
“My dad’s a bug-hunter. He’d give his soul for that moth.”
“Prevent the landing, the fellow said. D’you think they could really do that?”
“One in the eye for bloody Olbog. Hope he tries it.”
“It’ll take more than conjuring tricks.”
“Bring me the abort file, will you, Lieutenant.”
“Yessir.”
“Must say, I’d like to see our weapons in action after what we’ve paid for them.”
“I wouldn’t mind seeing a couple of dragons—not too close, mind. Something to tell the kids.”
“Right, Lieutenant. Look over my shoulder. I’m showing you stuff in the file, right. You’re through to Attack Comm?”
“Yessir.”
“Tell them Code Nine Jiddi Nine. Immediate action. Got it? Yes, Pashgahr?”
“We are still moving faster than the air cover is able to. Troops will be landing without air cover.”
“Weren’t you listening? The Guardian of Larg has passed away. That means Larg must be without whatever defenses it may have had. Check, Intelligence?”
“Nothing on a Guardian as such in the files, sir. Speculation by the agent reporting lack of magical activity within and around Larg that some powerful force must be maintaining the situation.”
“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.”
Maja beckoned. Benayu appeared at her shoulder, knelt, took three apples out of his belt-pouch and placed them on the floor in front of her and stood back.
Maja touched each of the apples in turn with the tip of her cane. Instantly they shriveled and vanished, leaving nothing but three small brown seeds on the floor. Rapidly these sprouted and became three slim stems, each with a single bud at the top. As they continued to grow, a pair of twigs appeared on either side of each stem a little below the bud. These lengthened into drooping branches with a few leaves sprouting from the ends.
When the saplings were about as tall as a man, Maja touched them again with her cane. They stopped growing and swelled. The buds became heads, the side branches arms and the leaves fingers, and three not-quite-human figures stood before them. One was naked to the waist, revealing a well-built muscular body with a tiger-skin draped across his shoulders. The head of the tiger was the living head of the man. The second was a woman robed from head to foot in shimmering black. Only her silver face and hands were visible. Th
e third was a head taller than anyone in the room, but grotesquely thin. His eyes were three times the size of human eyes, vivid yellow, and had slits for pupils.
The Lady Kzuva part of Maja smiled at the sheer vulgarity of this attempt to impress the barbarians, then shook her head, still smiling, because it wasn’t, after all, much different from what they themselves had been doing. The frivolous Syndics were right. It had been a show put on for their amusement. But still, the fate of the Empire depended on it. The shadow of a memory flickered in her mind. When she’d needed a new magician and interviewed applicants…Yes…The silver woman had looked almost human then, but that robe…she would be able to confirm that she was the real Lady Kzuva.
“Please give them a moment to recover,” said Ribek. “It is an unnerving experience for any magician to be so mastered. And I should tell you that it would not have been done so easily if they had not been seriously weakened by being too long at sea, far from the sources of—”
He broke off abruptly and turned. Rocky had reappeared on their right and now stood waiting for his riders to dismount before he settled his wings. Saranja twisted down, neatly avoiding Chanad in the rear saddle, turned urgently to Maja, touched the hilt of her saber by way of salute and said, “My lady, the landing has started. We saw thirty or more boats laden with men, setting out for the shore.”
She turned to help Chanad dismount.
Maja swung round, ignoring the pang from her hip.
“Is this true, General Olbog?”
The General made a pacifying gesture with his hands and started to speak slowly and evenly, as if reasoning with a child. Striclan’s voice spoke in Maja’s mind.
“He is telling the interpreter to take it slowly. He is saying that it is an administrative error, and that the landing will now have to take place, but as soon as the soldiers are ashore they will be ordered to proceed no further.”
“Nonsense, General,” Maja snapped. “We heard you give the order with your own lips. Do you think we would have been so stupid as to come here and rely solely on your own interpreter, without the means to understand directly what you were saying? With your permission, Madam President-designate?”
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