by G. D. Penman
“I will be restored to my former glory once you are defeated.” His stiff upper lip tremored.
Sully smirked. “That isn’t how it works though, is it? I had a long time to think about all the things you told me to mess with my head while I was waiting for your interrogator to come back and I’ve realized why I don’t give a shit. They weren’t me—those other Sullys that you wiped out of existence—I’m me. And you’re you. If some other bigwig wishes all of this away while you are out here instead of in your magic library of eternal boredom, you’re going to blink out of existence too. Sure, there might be somebody wearing your face and name tag, wandering around doing paperwork in the world after the wish, but it won’t be you anymore. You’ll be dead and gone.”
“I—”
Sully cut him off before he could start. “Why don’t you sleep on it? I realize that betraying the Empire that has done nothing but use you for your whole life is a big decision. We can talk in the morning.”
She tossed her stool back into a corner full of bric-a-brac and strolled back out to find a tent. She’d already spent more time back in Gormlaith’s house than she had ever planned to in this lifetime and now that she wasn’t feeling so vulnerable, she was a little concerned that the next of her mother’s opinions was going to be met with her blowing the walls off of the place.
November 15, 2015
The redcoats attacked just before the gray thing that could be called dawn. Sully was stirred from a dream of beaks grinding on bones by a whistle going up from the sentries. It started to the north of the camp, then the next sentry picked it up at a slightly higher pitch, then the next, then the next, so that by the time it got back to the first one it felt like they were encircled by one long continuous harmony. Sully was up and into her new boots so fast that it scared the Magus opposite her awake too. She had just enough time to snap “Raid!” before the artillery started to rain down on them. A huge serpent made from crackling green lightning crashed down into the camp, making anyone its sparks discharged into start retching until a Magus caught it in a glowing sphere and launched it straight up into the sky to illuminate the battlefield.
More spells were raining down, but now that the American forces were roused, veils and screens were being conjured up to catch the worst of them. Sully realized that she didn’t have an assigned position on the perimeter line a moment before she ran toward it. The Magi had torn up a trench of the sodden earth and thrown it straight at the charging British before ducking down inside. The soldiers without magic slipped into that trench with a comfort that came from a great deal of practice. Sully wondered how many of those trenches had been ripped out of the turf of upstate New Amsterdam before this troop had shipped out. Their Gatling guns started to chatter, a steady percussion underneath the more dramatic overtures of the spells being flung back and forth.
Sully spun on the spot, letting her ears do the heavy lifting of understanding the battle in progress. There was gunfire all around and the roar of magic along with it. The British were attacking them on all sides, giving them no way out. They obviously planned to crush the expeditionary force in one blow. Sully grinned. Being underestimated was always a treat.
Most of the Magi were still close to the center of the camp, preparing spells too complex to risk interruption, so Sully left them and Ogden to their own devices and started to return fire on the artillery positions. It was easy enough to follow the angles of attack back from where they impacted on the translucent dome above her and suddenly out there in the dark expanse beyond the lights of camp there was light as her white fire lanced down, shattering defenses and blinding the enemy casters as they tried to adjust their aim. Sully was far from thorough, but she didn’t have to kill or blind every one of them. She had an army for that. All that she needed to do was buy enough time for the Magi to do something spectacular.
With the element of surprise lost, redcoats began traveling by magic right into the middle of camp, appearing amidst the tents with tiny thunderclaps that led Sully straight to them. The ones that she caught by surprise went down with just a single spell, but the lucky few who appeared facing her had a chance. One went for a saber, which ended his chances pretty abruptly as a dart of flame went right through his gut. The next one actually got a spell off. A crackling purple dart that Sully caught in a spellfire-wreathed hand and flung right back at him, turning him into a lichen.
One appeared inside a tent. That one had enough time to snap up some defenses before Sully arrived, and then things got interesting. Sully’s first blast was deflected and the flaming whip that followed it up got entangled in some sort of arcane squid that the redcoat called out of thin air. Dispelling her own magic and snapping its strange glassy tentacles with little blasts of ice, Sully ducked behind the questionable cover of another tent and prepared her vengeance. White fire snapped out in a line, parallel to the ground, and whatever shields the redcoat had wrapped around himself didn’t do much more than contain his liquid remains once the fire had passed through them. She gave that gory puddle a contemptuous salute before the next round of thunderclaps sent her off again.
Sully was efficient in her brutality. She husbanded her strength, but even as she paced herself, it became clear that the well of her strength was going to run dry long before the British reinforcements stopped coming. She whistled once, shrill, in between casting vicious little darts of roiling black smoke to choke the redcoats who crossed her path.
She could feel Mol Kalath nearby. It was flying with the other demons and snatching spells out of the sky to add to its mass. This was like a feast for the magic-starved demons and they were gorging happily as they protected the camp from the worst of the bombardment. Mol Kalath swooped low over Sully and she raised her hand and let its tail feathers discharge raw magic back into her depleted reserves. She blew her demon a kiss before engulfing a trio of unlucky redcoats in a torrent of flames. She could get used to this.
A cluster of the redcoats had managed to pull together within the camp, near to the latrines. Fewer than ten of them, as far as Sully could make out through the opaque shields they had thrown up. They started to bombard the perimeter at a steady pace. Sully could almost hear the regular beat of the drum from basic training, the steady pacing of suppressing fire.
Since the fighting had started, there had been a regular staccato of gunfire, but now it ground to a halt as the soldiers took cover. Mud slumped into the trenches, burying men alive. The rush of water carried the noxious spells out to touch the few who still had the wherewithal to crawl away.
Flashes of light. First irregular, then a strobing nightmare that made it look like the world was moving in slow motion. One after another, the layers of the redcoats’ shields were stripped away by the lashes of white fire coiling out of Sully’s hands, but there were too many of them. The redcoats didn’t even slow their bombardment. Sully threw shields up to intercept their spells. Again, she was too slow to catch them all. Once the perimeter was gone, the redcoats out there in the swamp could sweep in. The Magi would never have a chance to cast whatever monstrosity they were concocting.
Sully opened her mouth to cast once more, the Inferno on the tip of her tongue. Then she paused. She didn’t have to win this war alone. Her whistle didn’t reach Mol Kalath up in the clouds, but there were plenty of demons who were closer. The one who landed bodily on the redcoat’s shields and absorbed them with a gulp looked like the misbegotten issue of a hairless bear and a crocodile, with a moth’s dusty wings hammering away on its back trying to keep something so impossibly huge in the air. When the demon took off, the redcoats only had time to catch a glimpse of Sully’s grin before a whip of flame tore through their ranks at waist height. The bisected corpses toppled to the ground, bloodless and cauterized. Sully cackled. This was what war was meant to be. This was glorious.
Reserves nearly spent again, Sully reached out to draw in more magic from the air, only to find it missing, alre
ady consumed by the great tangle of magic in the middle of camp. The Magi’s spells cascaded out across the battlefield, each one hitting the next and sending it on with more force than the last, like dominoes of raw power. A mist rose up from the swamp and clung to the British, soaking into their uniforms, seeping into their gear. Lightning rushed out across the field, leaping from redcoat to redcoat and leaving everyone in that uniform who hadn’t shielded themselves blackened and dead. Those that had shielded themselves had it worse. Those the lightning clung to and danced over. If they moved, it shocked them, and if any of their allies came too close, it leapt out to strike them down. Sully was impressed by the cruelty of it.
Silence fell over the battlefield, the mists muffling any sound so that all the cheers and chatter from her soldiers seemed to be coming from another room. Sully staggered to the nearest trench and started dispelling what she could of the damage until her magic ran dry and she had to snatch up a shovel to help pull the last of the buried gunners out. It was tiring work and the stump at the end of her left arm started to ache as she used it to lever the shovel. The Magi were celebrating behind her and Ogden was amongst them, whooping at their victory. Sully kept working until she was certain that the still-buried men were dead and beyond rescue.
The mist took half an hour to die down after that. Then the regular soldiers that had survived the trenches climbed back down into them, waded through the mud, and came up on the far side with grim expressions on their faces and bayonets screwed to their guns. It didn’t take them long to finish off any redcoats that were left standing. They were back to camp in time for breakfast, but most of them looked like they had lost their appetites.
Mol Kalath fluttered down to land beside Sully where she stood staring out into the swamps. It had doubled in size overnight. “THEY FIELDED ONLY FIVE OF THE ONES YOU CALL MAGI. MY KIN MADE A MEAL OF THEM BEFORE I COULD INTERVENE.”
Sully shrugged. “Good job, Magus eaters, I guess?”
Mol Kalath cocked its head to one side. “YOU APPROVE?”
“I wouldn’t have eaten them, personally. But they’d have been just as dead if I’d done it my way.”
It blinked all of its eyes at her and cooed. “YOU LOOK WELL, SHADOW-TWIN.”
“I’m feeling more like myself again.” Sully grinned, then slowly the smile slipped off her face and her brows drew down. Mol Kalath leaned in a little closer then jerked back in alarm when Sully bellowed, “Sentries, sound off!”
The whistles went off again, one after the other, and Sully felt the hairs on the back of her neck standing up. She grabbed at Mol Kalath and whispered, “Did you feel that?”
“WHAT?”
“The circle.”
She yelled again. “Sound off!”
This time she watched Mol Kalath. Watched its feathers shiver as it felt the circle being drawn around it with sound.
She pointed to the nearest edge of camp and snapped, “Try it.”
Mol Kalath took flight and Sully yelled to her sentries once more. “Sound off and keep it going!”
She ran beneath the demon as it flew, until she was close enough to the nearest sentry to see the perplexed look on his face and the blood oozing from the wound on his cheek. Her demon hit the invisible barrier above them and flapped frantically to right itself. Sully grinned. “That’ll do, sentries. Good job!”
She caught Mol Kalath on a buffeting cloud and eased it to the ground. It lay there, the deep rumble of its laughter rolling out through the churned mud below it. “A CIRCLE MADE OF SOUND.”
“A circle we can’t see!”
She crashed into Ogden as she rushed into the map tent and sent the far bigger man staggering back. “I’ve solved it.”
He was flustered for a moment, but then he drifted over to watch as she re-centered the maps on the Americas. She patted the pockets of her uniform absentmindedly then held out her hand without looking back. “Phone.”
Ogden pursed his scarred lips under the bandana but handed his prized cell phone over without complaint. She dialed rapidly, then put it on speaker and set it down on the table.
On the ninth ring, Raavi answered. “Hello, this is Doctor Sharma.”
“Holy shit, is that how you answer the phone when you don’t know it’s me?”
“Sully, my dear? How are you? The last that I heard, you were missing and presumed dead.”
“Sorry to disappoint, I’m still breathing, despite the best efforts of practically everyone I meet.”
He let out a little snort. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this call?”
“Uh, I actually just need you to turn on the radio and shut up for a few minutes.”
“You really are a horrendous bitch, you know that?”
She smiled. “It’s come up before, yes.”
There was a loud clunk as he dropped the phone, but a moment later there was a crackle of static that resolved itself into a series of numbers, being read out in a cultured English accent. Now that she knew what she was listening to, Sully could recognize the monotone voice of a Magus. As the numbers were read out, Sully found the corresponding co-ordinates on the map and marked it with a spot of spellfire. With each number, she added another spot and before five minutes were out, those dots were getting close enough that the spellfire was licking out to join them together. Anyone could see that it made a circle that surrounded a good portion of the Americas, but only someone who knew about the abductions and the stocks would know the significance of the circle’s position. Ogden let out a groan when he saw it, which prompted Raavi to pick up his phone. “What the hell was that, Sully? Was that a man? Have you switched teams on me? Am I playing you tunes to set the mood?”
“Shut up, Raavi. I just solved your stupid number station.”
“Oh! Oh! Tell me. I can be the coolest kid on all my conspiracy theory websites. That’s like being the least cool kid everywhere else. I could be on the coolness spectrum!”
“Probably classified information.”
“That’s even better! You have to tell me. I helped you, Sully. You owe me for turning on the radio and shutting up. You know how much I hate shutting up.”
“Thanks for your help, Raavi. I’ll catch you later.”
“No. Sully, no. Don’t hang up on me you absolute bi—”
She handed the phone back to a bemused Ogden. “Friend of yours?”
“Yeah, he is, actually.” Sully’s smile was so genuine that Ogden was taken aback.
“We need to call Pratt. He is going to need to get a technologist to help shut down those radio signals. I remember something from the navy. Some sort of blocker or jammer that they used when we were fighting the Mongols in the forests. The tech is out there, he just needs to get it up and running before the Fae grab anyone else.”
She paused. “Can you get me another phone? I’ve got another quick call to make while you talk to his Highness.”
In less than a minute: “Hey, darlin’.”
Sully smiled softly. “You answer every call like that? Do I need to get jealous?”
“I think your claim’s safe. Just don’t have many callers.” Marie should have laughed. Deep and rich as butter. It should have run right down the back of Sully’s neck and made her purr. Instead, she could picture Marie sitting hunched over on her parents’ sofa, face pinched, trying to be positive for Sully. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this call?”
“Never had a girl to write home to when I was off to war the last time. Guess I’m making up for lost time.”
“I ain’t too proud to admit I was worrying about you. Never thought I’d see you in the arms of another woman again. Especially not some naked angel with pointy teeth and tiny tits.”
Sully chuckled. “You know you’re the only girl for me.”
There was a long pause. “Well, darlin’, just for my peace of mind . . . You killed her, right?�
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“Nothing left but ashes.”
“That’s what I like to hear.” There was a gentle huff of breath on the other end of the line. Maybe a sigh. “How’s that war going, darlin’? You coming home to me soon?”
“Soon as I can. Listen, there are some things I need to tell you in case I don’t get a chance later. Your mother, I’ll do what I can to get her back. She isn’t the only one who’s been taken and I don’t think the chances are good of her coming back in one piece. I need you to be ready for that.”
Marie wasn’t crying when she whispered, “All right.”
Sully took a deep breath. “If something goes wrong, if I’m too hurt to get back to you right away, talk to Ceejay at the Bureau. He’ll help you get out before Pratt remembers about you. He’ll get you somewhere safe.”
“That ain’t going to happen, darlin’.”
“Of course not. But just in case, there’s some money in a safe in the bedroom. The combination is your birthday. That will see you set up somewhere, give you a month or two to find your feet.”
“I ain’t going to need it, darlin’.”
“Of course not. But it makes me feel better to know you’d be taken care of.”
Marie’s voice grew softer. “You’re the one who’s got to take care of me. Money and plans ain’t going to help none if you don’t come back in one piece.”
