Guardian Glass

by Christopher Nuttall

  “You’re not going alone,” Aylia said, firmly. “I’m definitely coming with you.”

  My heart went out to her – she was volunteering to share a prison cell with me if we were caught – but I couldn’t allow her to come with me. It would ruin her life permanently if we were caught – along with her chance to apply for Guardianship – but what if she was working for the enemy, or her father? If she came with me, she would have plenty of chances to sound the alarm and see us both caught and disgraced. I couldn’t take the risk.

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. She looked rebellious, but I remained firm. “I need you to stay in the house and not go anywhere.”

  “I don’t have anywhere to go,” Aylia said. “Glass…”

  I reflected that Varsha would probably be quite happy to take her out clubbing somewhere, but we couldn’t allow her to leave. She didn’t have a cell phone with her – I had checked that when I had brought her into my house for the first time – and without one, would be unable to send a warning message to anyone. The wards would prevent her from sending a message by magic. She was as isolated as she could be without transfiguring her into something helpless and immobile.

  “You’ll be fine,” I said. I knew how she felt – if she felt something real at all – but I didn’t dare take her with me. It wasn’t something that she could handle. I considered, just briefly, calling Cowboy and begging for help, but the bastard would have gloated over it. Besides, if we were caught, he’d just be dragged down with me. “I have plenty of books in my library. Read them and enjoy. I’ll even test you on them afterwards.”

  Aylia snorted. “Thank you,” she said. I think she meant to sound disdainful, but she actually sounded worried. “What do I do if you don’t return?”

  “I’ll be back,” I said, as dramatically as I could. Aylia snorted again. I wasn’t going to admit it, yet, but I’d already recorded a message for the Guardians. If I didn’t return – and, although I didn’t want to admit it, it was a possibility – they would take steps to deal with the situation. Wilkinson and our superiors wouldn’t be happy, but they’d see the urgency and work to prevent a catastrophe. Aylia herself would be offered Guardian training – once she’d passed a truth test – and I had no doubt she’d pass. “You’ll be fine.”

  “Hah,” Aylia said, and leaned forward. She caught me and pulled me forward. There was a brief moment when our lips touched, a kiss promising everything, all in its proper time. I felt my arms enfold her and her body quivering against mine. It would have been easy to push matters further, but there was no time. It was already twilight. “Glass…”

  “I know,” I said. Her face was streaked with tears. I was tempted, so very tempted, to drop everything and take her to bed, but duty called. Everyone else would laugh, but duty is a harsh mistress for us. There’s no one else who can pick up the slack if we dropped it. “I’ll be back, I promise.”

  I left her there and walked out to the teleport pad, taking a moment to manipulate the wards as I did so. It probably wasn’t necessary, but out of long habit I had waited until I was alone before I started to work on them. The wards were configured for me personally and, in theory, no one would be able to alter them without my consent, even on the inside. Given enough time, someone like Cowboy would be able to take down the wards, but that would still take him hours, perhaps weeks. I felt my mind mesh with the wards and I made a handful of alterations. Aylia would be unable to leave, or call outside, for several days. If I died, the wards would remain in place, but switch their allegiance to Varsha. The house would belong to her, along with my handful of possessions. Aylia, however, would be able to stay there as long as she liked.

  I wonder who’s doing who the favour, I thought, absently. I was delaying myself and knew it. I might have put on a confident face for Aylia, but I knew just how dangerous this was likely to prove. I hesitated, confronting my doubts, and then stepped forward onto the teleport pad. A second later, I was elsewhere…

  Maxwell lived on the outskirts of Washington, in a house that looked as if it had been built for a Duke, or perhaps a Prince. The business-political class in Washington have a habit of building or buying the largest mansions they can, just to show off their wealth and power to everyone beneath them. I rather doubted that Maxwell fell into the same income brackets as his neighbours, but no one would probably have made a fuss. They wouldn’t have wanted to make an enemy of a magician lightly; besides, most of them probably used his services at one time or another. The onrushing dusk fell around me and I muttered a handful of charms under my breath. The shadows would conceal me from almost everyone. A second charm, a far more complex one, would make it much harder for any technical system to detect my presence.

  Like most magicians, Maxwell had built a wall surrounding his property, but it was low and easy to scale. A crack team of Special Forces would have been over the wall and into the garden in microseconds – it took me a couple of minutes to find a place I could scramble over and get into the garden – but they would have run smack into the wards. I found a convenient place to perch and opened my sixth sense, feeling for the wards. I knew they were waiting for me.

  There, I thought. The first ward seemed translucent to my senses, but then…it wasn’t particularly dangerous. Even a dark sorcerer like Maxwell knew better than to kill anyone without very good cause, particularly in such a wealthy neighbourhood. The first ward did nothing, but urge anyone who didn’t have legitimate business to leave, or perhaps to run for their lives as if the devil himself was after them. I could feel it pushing at me, creating a tingle of chilling apprehension that threatened to blossom into outright panic and flight, but I dismissed it. It could be beaten with nothing more than an act of will. It wouldn’t even notice that it had failed.

  I smiled to myself. One of Vincent Faye’s many fortunes had come from producing magical devices that could project similar wards for just about anyone, magical or mundane. They were very popular, particularly the ones intended to drive away door-to-door salesmen; they worked better than aggressive signs or loudly-barking dogs. If I understood Maxwell’s ward correctly – and I couldn’t see anything contradicting me – he wouldn’t have bothered to rig it with any alarms. People passing too close on the outside of the wall would feel the effects. It was the inner wards that would be more dangerous.

  It took me a moment to discern the second ward and when I did, I smiled. Maxwell clearly wasn’t taking any more chances with his security. The second ward was configured to freeze anyone who touched it in a moment where time didn’t pass, rendering escape impossible. The poor victim wouldn’t have a second to realise that something had gone wrong before he found himself a prisoner, or dead. I was impressed by the level of power he had in place, backing the ward, but it was easy to sidestep once I knew what I was dealing with. I took a breath, pulled a tiny hint of magic around me, and stepped through the ward. That trap had been intended for street thugs and professional thieves, I realised, not for magical enemies. It was too brute force, hardly subtle enough to trap a real enemy.

  Interesting, I thought, and peered ahead of me. It seemed safest to flit through the woodland he’d put in at one side of his estate, but any experienced magician would know better. There could be anything lurking in the shadows, waiting for the sun to set fully before it came out and started to hunt. Maxwell was just crazy enough to have formed an alliance with a supernatural creature – or a pack of supernatural creatures – and offer them food in exchange for guard duties. The lawn was open and exposed, but it was the safest way to the house. I scanned it quickly with my senses and saw nothing, apart from an obscene garden gnome. It caught my eye and I checked it, finding nothing.

  I studied the lawn one final time and then started to walk across it, relying on a small charm to keep from triggering any land mines or other unpleasant surprises. I couldn’t see Maxwell deciding to outfit his lawn with land mines, but if he were really determined to keep out intruders, it would have been the way to go.
No one would question his decision, not here; the police were probably paid ‘bonuses’ by the residents to take the right side in any disagreement. I’d heard truly unpleasant rumours from some of the richer families and, so far, there had been no official investigation.

  The lawn felt soft and very welcoming under my feet. It felt so soft that I was tempted to take off my shoes and walk with my bare feet, and indeed I was halfway towards doing so when I caught myself. I’d been wishing I had brought Aylia so we could have romped on the lawn and what did that have to do with searching the house? The flash of alarm I’d felt caused me to step back. I’d been concentrating so hard on magical traps that I’d missed the greatest danger of all. The entire damned lawn was seeded with Faerie grass!

  Shit, I thought. Faerie grass may not actually have anything to do with the Faerie, but it was found near all of their Mounds, apart from the one in New York. The unwary, those who wander into the groves without taking precautions, find themselves reduced to childhood; mentally, then physically. If I’d kept breathing in the fumes much longer, I would have started to wander rather than continue my mission…and Maxwell would have had me. It took everything I had, but I managed to summon enough magic to clear the air around me, barely. Maxwell’s trap had almost caught me.

  I marked it down as a lesson and continued forward, watching carefully for other surprises. The third ward rose up in front of me just at the edge of the lawn and I studied it carefully. Maxwell’s sense of humour had struck again, I realised; the third ward had been placed perfectly, where someone trying to escape the Faerie grass would have blundered right into it. It was also tied to some very dangerous magical spells. I couldn’t quite fathom what would happen if I triggered the ward, but I was sure that it would be something unpleasant. Anyone who made it this far would be a dangerous enemy.

  It took me more magic to clear my mind enough to concentrate on the ward, but there was little choice. The Faerie grass had reduced my ability to focus on my magic; the fumes had actually melted part of my ego. All magic-users had a very strong sense of self – those who didn’t tended to die very quickly, often spectacularly – as it was central to carrying out the more complex spells. It explained, I suspected, why so many magic-users ended up so full of themselves. They lost the ability to draw the distinction between what they wanted and what they had a right to have.

  Clever, I thought, as I studied the ward. It was simple, too simple, and I checked again and again until I located the second set of spells backing up the first. If I had stepped through the first set, the second set would have caught me and triggered the ward. I studied it carefully, taking my time, until I was sure that I could neutralise both sets…and then stepped forward. Nothing sprang out to try to kill me, so I relaxed slightly. It was nearly a fatal mistake. The fourth and final ward was right in front of me.

  I froze. The difference between this ward and the others was that it was linked to Maxwell personally. Very few magic-users would risk placing their defences in someone else’s hands – the Circle did, but then, the Circle had a full-time Warden – which accounted for the relative simplicity of the wards. Faye’s defences had included wards created by most of the wizards who worked for him, all linked into the house defences, even if they weren’t all linked to him personally. Maxwell wasn’t his own Warden. If he had been, he would never have been able to leave his house.

  I’d checked, but we had no idea where he was. He might have been inside – although the house was dark and silent – or he might have been on the other side of the world. It was just another risk I would have to take, although Maxwell wasn’t a fully-trained combat sorcerer. Deprived of his wards, I should be able to take him, but the final ward was going to be a killer.

  I could have broken it with ease, except that would have set off all kinds of alarms and unpleasant surprises. I couldn’t trick it completely. I had to convince it that nothing was wrong, even as I stepped through it. Think of it as a person humming a tune. The slightest discordant note would set off the alarm. I stepped closer, pulling my own magic around me, and stepped into the ward. A moment later, I was through…and nothing seemed to be sounding the alarm.

  A Warden would never have let me get away with that, but Maxwell wasn’t a Warden. A Warden would have sensed the bump in the ward as I slipped through, but the spells governing the ward hadn’t picked up on it at all. No one would have risked creating a new magical intelligence, not when humans were so cheap. I took a moment to catch my breath and then turned my attention to the side door. After everything I’d already done, it was easy to pick the lock, although I checked to ensure that there were no mechanical alarm systems waiting for the unwary. The best defences are those that share magical and mundane systems.

  And then I was inside the house.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “Yes,” I said, "it is morally justifiable so long as our object is to take no articles save those which are used for an illegal purpose.”

  “Exactly. Since it is morally justifiable, I have only to consider the question of personal risk. Surely a gentleman should not lay much stress upon this, when a lady is in most desperate need of his help?”

  -Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson

  It was as dark and silent as the grave.

  I reached out with my senses and carefully probed around me. It was unlikely that Maxwell would have set any more wards inside the house, but if he were a paranoid son of a bitch – and he was – he probably had rigged other traps for the unwary. He would have known that his wards weren’t perfect against any really determined opponent and, if he weren’t in the house, he would have known that his enemies might take the opportunity and try to rob him. Anything that was really important would almost certainly be booby-trapped.

  One of the advantages of Guardian training is a near-perfect memory. I had studied the plans of Maxwell’s house – we’d recovered them from the builders after Maxwell first came to our attention – and I knew exactly where to go. Ideally, I would have had an entire team of searchers, but it was just me, so I’d have to check the most likely places to hide a child first. If Maxwell had taken some care, he could have hidden her in a pocket dimension or somewhere else I wouldn’t have a hope of finding her, but I suspected that he wouldn’t have bothered. If, of course, he had the child in the first place. I had to remind myself that that hadn’t been proven at all, yet. The second objective, confirming that the Pixie Dust had come from Maxwell, would take longer. I fixed my position in my head, muttered a charm under my breath, and smiled as my night vision suddenly improved a thousand-fold. It was like walking in the middle of an old black and white movie, with only hints of colour, but I could see perfectly. I would have to force myself to remember that no one else could see me, unless they were using the same spell.

  I smiled and slipped off down the corridor. It was easy to remember some of the more unusual aspects of my training now, including the lecture we’d had from one of the world’s more famous thieves. He hadn’t been a greedy bastard, or someone trying to feed his starving family, but someone who’d done it for the thrill of outwitting the most capable security systems on Earth. He’d finally tried to burgle the Circle and had been caught by the wards, although – despite lacking magic himself – he had managed to get through half of them before he’d been caught. It had been a salutary lesson to us all.

  “Confidence is everything in every activity,” he’d said. “If you try to sneak around, convinced that you have no right to be there, you will be caught. I have escaped from policemen who should have caught me three times…because I fitted in and looked like I belonged. If you walk around as if you own the place, policemen will hesitate before confronting you. If you look like a crook, they will quite happily have the handcuffs on before you can protest your innocence. Confidence is everything.”

  I’d taken his point. Most criminals made mistakes because they were terrified of being caught. I wasn’t so concerned myself. Now I was through the wards, I c
ould probably bring them crashing down from the inside, or even outfight Maxwell in a magical duel. I pushed my confidence down just enough to prevent me from becoming overconfident and strode down the corridor. The carpet seemed to soak up the noise of my footsteps, leaving me surrounded by a curtain of uneasy silence.

  The magic level spiked suddenly and I froze, prepared to fight or retreat, but it merely swept over my concealing glamour and vanished in the distance. I relaxed and smiled to myself. It was little more than a probing field, hunting for anything that didn’t belong, and it was easy to fool. The problem with wards is that they’re not that clever. Make them too sensitive and they’ll scream at the slightest hint of a problem; make them too discriminating and someone who works out the key will be able to slip through without any trouble at all. The Pentagon had once set up a ward where everyone who carried a Pentagon ID was allowed through without question. The ward had been fooled when someone had had their ID stolen and used by an intelligence agent. He hadn’t even been told that it was that important, so it had gone unreported for a weekend. Too late.