Rain stepped forward. Tall and dark-skinned, he had a calm, measured way of speaking. He’d been my and Caldera’s boss back when I’d been working in the Keepers. ‘Our force will be acting as a sieging unit in this operation.’ He gestured and the blue arrow moved towards the red blotch of Richard’s forces, then moved to encircle it. ‘We’ll establish a perimeter around Drakh’s forces and set up wards and an interdiction field. No one gets in, no one gets out.’ He glanced around at the Keepers and at me. ‘I know several of you have recent combat experience against Drakh’s cabal. Once we’re done here, I’d appreciate anything you can tell me.’

  ‘Sieging the keep itself, however, is not an option,’ Nimbus said. ‘The perimeter is too large and its wards would defeat any kind of interdiction field. This is where you men come in. Captain Landis, you will take your force and attack the building upon the stack off the island’s northern face.’

  The castle was built upon a tall rocky island, with cliffs dropping into the sea. To the island’s north was a stack – a pillar of rock – separated from the castle by a stone bridge. Upon the stack was a huge forbidding-looking structure made up out of the same yellowish stone as the rest of the castle. Ji-yeong had called it the tombs.

  ‘According to our intelligence, the building upon that stack contains the spawning infrastructure for the shadow constructs that we’ve been fighting since we got here,’ Nimbus said. ‘Destroying their regeneration source will eliminate the shadows and thus remove half of the marid’s army.’ Nimbus looked around. ‘It is an attack the marid cannot afford to ignore, and it will respond accordingly.’

  ‘Respond as in, in person?’ a Keeper asked.

  ‘No, that shouldn’t be possible,’ Sonder said. He pointed, and a small glowing white symbol appeared at the centre of the keep in between the four diamonds. ‘She— I mean, the marid was able to attack us last night because the ritual hadn’t been started. Now that it’s been set in motion, it needs constant supervision.’

  ‘As such, we expect the marid to deploy its jinn against the attack to the north,’ Nimbus said. ‘Divinations have confirmed that we can expect our attack to be answered by ifrit-possessed mages as well as jann.’ He looked at Landis. ‘Your task will be to press the attack sufficiently to draw in the ifrit, and either destroy them or keep them engaged so that they cannot redeploy. Once this has been accomplished, you will send the signal to the accumulator team. The code word is “trident”.’ Blue arrows stabbed against the red on the northern island. Nimbus pointed at the map and a thin beam of light extended from one of the castle towers. It pierced through the keep and touched the nearest of the four diamonds, and with a flash the whole corner of the keep disappeared. Nimbus stepped back. ‘Any questions?’

  ‘So who has the honour of using the focus?’ Landis asked.

  Nimbus nodded to one side. ‘Mage Lumen will use the accumulator’s reserves to launch a directed-energy attack.’

  Directed-energy attack? Luna asked.

  Lumen’s a light mage, I said. She was a small woman with neat brown hair in a pageboy cut, and didn’t look especially happy to be here. She’ll launch an attack spell and the accumulator will supercharge it. Basically it’ll be a giant laser cannon. Hang on a sec. I held up a hand. ‘Director Nimbus?’

  Nimbus looked at me, thin-lipped. ‘Yes, Verus?’

  Several other Keepers stopped talking and turned to watch. ‘What happens when the accumulator gets attacked?’ I asked.

  ‘The purpose of the diversionary attack on the northern island is to ensure that the marid has no available forces to spare.’

  ‘And what if it does?’

  ‘An attack on the accumulator is not a concern,’ Nimbus said stiffly.

  The Keepers watching Nimbus didn’t look away. Their expressions clearly indicated that they were waiting for a better answer.

  Nimbus gave an irritated sigh. ‘Sonder?’

  ‘We’re using an experimental apparatus to transfer the energy flow from the accumulator through a specially modified gateway,’ Sonder said. ‘I’ll be monitoring the situation at the accumulator through a video link. As soon as it looks as though the accumulator’s under threat, I’ll give Lumen the signal to fire. So anyone watching will sense the energy build-up in the accumulator, but they won’t know where the attack’s going to come from until it’s too late. We won’t activate the focus until it’s time to fire, and the video link will be non-magical, so there’ll be nothing visible on magesight to warn them.’

  ‘Understood?’ Nimbus said, paused for only a second, then nodded. ‘Good. Auxiliaries Sonder and Lumen and Captain Rain will remain here to answer any further questions. Captain Landis, I need to discuss assignments of your men.’

  11

  The briefing broke up. Nimbus disappeared off with Landis, while most of the Keepers had gathered around Sonder. Tobias had walked over to Talisid’s projection and was questioning him about timings.

  Could you follow all that? Luna asked.

  It’s simple enough, I said. Scorpion tactics. Pincers hold; tail strikes. I reached forward and closed my thumb and forefinger in the air. Rain’s force pins down Richard. I did the same with my other hand. Landis’s force pins down Anne. I arced a finger over the top. Accumulator fires.

  Oh. Why didn’t they just explain it like that?

  I noticed that Rain wasn’t occupied and walked over. ‘Captain Rain.’

  Rain had been frowning down at a tablet; now he glanced at me. ‘Verus,’ he said in his deep voice. ‘Been a while.’

  ‘Glad you’re not under orders to arrest me any more,’ I said. I’d always rather liked Rain. ‘How’s it look?’

  Rain hesitated and I saw futures flicker as he decided how honest to be. ‘Not great,’ he admitted.

  The tablet held a list of names, with separate columns for killed and wounded. ‘How many did you lose last night?’

  ‘Counting all serious casualties . . . a hundred and three.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘We were supposed to be bringing over five hundred, with as many more in reserve.’ Rain didn’t let anything show on his face, but his voice was grim. ‘Right now, we’ve got maybe two hundred and forty effectives. We’re missing half our main force and all of our reserves and we’ve barely scratched them.’

  So they’d been able to bring about three hundred and fifty into the shadow realm last night. And they’d lost almost a third of them already. ‘How were you hurt so badly?’ I asked. ‘Anne?’

  Rain gave a nod. ‘She’d hit from the flanks, then fade away as soon as we brought mages to bear. Used those jann and shadows as distractions. She couldn’t stop our main force but she damn near bled us dry before Nimbus gave the order to fall back.’

  I glanced towards the door where Nimbus had left. ‘Surprised he was so confident.’

  Rain hesitated again, and through the futures I could see him caught between worry and discretion. He shook his head as he made his decision. ‘He’s not,’ Rain said, lowering his voice. ‘He spent half the night arguing with the Council. Wanted to hold position until they could bring in reinforcements. He’s only doing this attack under direct orders.’ Rain’s eyes flicked in the direction of Talisid’s projection, still talking with Tobias. ‘Your friend there’s watching to make sure Nimbus does as he’s told.’

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘That’s . . . not good.’

  ‘No shit,’ Rain said. ‘Listen, Verus, I know this woman’s your girlfriend, but . . . we’re going to need you for this one.’ His dark eyes bored into mine. ‘You with us?’

  I was silent for a moment. ‘It’s not my girlfriend making the decisions any more,’ I said at last. Anne would never have fought as Rain described; Dark Anne would have gone in swinging, and Light Anne wouldn’t have attacked at all. ‘I’ll do all I can.’

  Rain gave me a nod and went back to his tablet.

  It was strange, but Council politics felt simpler these days. It was as though I’d only started to really understand the Council after I’d been kicked off it. Maybe you can’t see an organisation clearly until you’ve looked at it from both inside and out.

  Luna had joined the Keepers around Sonder. I moved over to listen in. ‘. . . would have taken part in the ritual,’ Sonder was saying. ‘Each of them would have invested one of the focus crystals to reinforce the overall structure. They were doing that through the early hours of the morning.’

  ‘Suppose that’s why they’ve been leaving us alone,’ one Keeper said.

  ‘Can we bring down the ritual by killing the ifrit?’ another asked.

  Sonder shook his head. ‘All you’d do is kill the host.’

  ‘Sonder?’ Luna asked. ‘You said you’d been researching these ifrit generals? What did you learn?’

  ‘Not very much,’ Sonder said, scratching his head. ‘Just a lot of battle reports, and those don’t go into detail. We do have their names though – it was only the marids that were unnamed, not the ifrit. They translate from Old Arabic as Lightning-amid-the-Storm, the Sun That Brings Death, the Eternal Sand or the Endless Sands – I’m not sure which translation is right – and the Water of Life.’

  ‘Sound lovely,’ a Keeper said.

  ‘How powerful are they?’ Luna asked.

  ‘We’re not sure,’ Sonder said. ‘But Lightning-amid-the-Storm was supposed to be the weakest, and the Sun That Brings Death the strongest.’

  ‘Lightning-amidst-the-Storm is the one possessing Aether, I think,’ I said. ‘Sagash’s old apprentice.’

  ‘Is that anti-jinn weapon going to work on them?’ Luna asked.

  ‘It’ll certainly weaken them—’

  ‘I mean is it going to banish them?’ Luna interrupted.

  Sonder hesitated. ‘That’s . . . unclear.’

  ‘Really not what you want to hear going into battle, Sonder,’ a Keeper commented.

  ‘Well, I’m sorry, but it’s true. It’s not as though we had the chance to test it.’

  ‘Bit of a moot point, isn’t it?’ another Keeper said. ‘Since the bloody thing got stolen.’

  Lumen was standing on her own. Like Sonder, she wore Keeper battle armour; like Sonder, she looked uncomfortable in it. I walked over. ‘Lumen.’

  Lumen looked at me in surprise. ‘Oh, Verus. Last time was . . . Syria, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Nimbus is counting on you pretty heavily for this,’ I said.

  Lumen grimaced. ‘I wish he wasn’t.’

  ‘I’m guessing this wasn’t the original plan?’

  Lumen shook her head. ‘They were supposed to set up a forward siege base with special equipment. They had a team of specialist mages, heavily protected.’ She sighed. ‘Unfortunately, they were so heavily protected that they were put in the rearguard. So they never made it in.’

  ‘And you’re the substitute,’ I said. ‘Can it work?’

  ‘I mean, it can.’ Lumen raised a hand and a pinpoint of light glowed at her finger. ‘All you need for something like this is control. I don’t have the strength for proper battle magic, but the accumulator handles all the buffering.’

  ‘So your spark of light turns into a giant laser beam,’ I said, looking at the glow. ‘Will it be enough?’

  ‘Oh, power’s not the problem. Give it enough time and it’ll take out the wards and the whole corner of the keep with it. It’s the warmup time I’m worried about.’

  ‘Where are you going to fire from?’

  ‘Nimbus said we shouldn’t decide on that until we were ready,’ Lumen said, ‘and for once I agree with him. Sonder and I will be moving around until we’re ready to take the shot. No, what I’m worried about is what happens when they home in on the accumulator. There’s supposed to be no way to trace the signal to us, and we’ll be running dark so we won’t ping on magesight. But I still don’t like it.’ She glanced over towards Tobias. ‘Excuse me.’

  The meeting was breaking up. I found Luna and we left the ready room. ‘Anything else?’ I asked her.

  ‘Sonder says Anne’s ritual is going to take about twenty-eight hours from start,’ Luna said. ‘So about 6 a.m. tomorrow. But the veil will start thinning before that – she’ll be able to summon jinn more easily starting from about eight this evening and it’ll get worse through the night.’ Luna looked at me. ‘Oh, and something else. Sonder thinks that the wards on the keep are stabilising the isolation ward. They’re stopping everything in the shadow realm from going completely crazy.’

  ‘So if we blow it up . . .’

  ‘Yeah,’ Luna said. ‘They’d better be right that taking those wards down will let us gate out, because it sounds like we won’t have much time.’

  Ji-yeong walked up. She looked fresh and well-rested, and had somehow found the time in the middle of an invasion to redo her make-up. ‘Hey, guys,’ she said. ‘What did I miss?’

  Luna and I filled her in on the Council’s plan.

  Ji-yeong considered. ‘Will it work?’

  I had to think about it. ‘It’s not the worst plan I’ve ever heard,’ I admitted. ‘I don’t think much of Nimbus as a commander, but . . . once the accumulator is active then neither Anne nor Richard will have much time to react, and if they’re pinned down fighting then they might not be able to redeploy fast enough. And they’re right that the marid needs to defend those tombs. Those shadows are half its army, and if we occupy the place we can shut them down easily enough.’ I looked at Ji-yeong. ‘Right?’

  Ji-yeong nodded. ‘But?’ Luna asked.

  ‘But there isn’t a backup plan if things go wrong,’ I said. ‘And in operations like this, something always goes wrong. If I were running this, I’d set some forces aside as a mobile reserve.’

  ‘Would they listen to you if you told them that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So what are we doing?’ Ji-yeong asked.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘There are three Council forces. We can go with one of the three, or we can strike off on our own. Attacking on our own is obviously stupid, and I don’t like going with Rain’s force to siege Richard either.’

  ‘He’s the one with that anti-jinn weapon,’ Luna said.

  ‘Yeah, but they’re not trying to take it; they’re just bottling him up. We go with them, best case, we sit around while the battle’s decided elsewhere.’ I looked between Luna and Ji-yeong. ‘That just leaves Landis’s force and the accumulator team. The accumulator can win the battle if it goes off, but again, if we go with them, we’ll just be sitting around.’

  ‘So you’re going with Landis,’ Luna said.

  ‘It’s dangerous, but it gives us the best chance to make a difference. And if the tombs are under threat, there’s a good chance Anne’s going to send everything she’s got to reinforce. That means Variam.’ I looked at Luna. ‘Maybe that good luck of yours can do something.’

  ‘I’ve played worse odds,’ Luna said with a nod.

  I looked at Ji-yeong.

  ‘I’ll stick with you,’ she told me.

  I nodded. ‘Zero hour is 10 a.m.’

  It was a few minutes past nine. A group of men stood on the grass near the windmill, chatting and smoking. A sea breeze was blowing in from the cliffs, sending ripples across the millpond and making the sails of the windmill creak as they swung.

  I’d spotted Landis and Nimbus standing on the other side of the windmill. They were talking – maybe arguing. I couldn’t get close enough to eavesdrop, but their body language was tense. For once Landis wasn’t smiling: his eyes were boring into the other mage.

  Nimbus gave a final order with a chopping motion of his hand, and left. Landis stared after him for a moment, then turned and began walking slowly towards the men on the grass.

  I intercepted him under the sails of the windmill. ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

  ‘Director Nimbus has issued the personnel assignments for the attack,’ Landis said. His voice was quiet and he was looking past me at the men out in the open. ‘He’s reassigned men to the accumulator team.’

  I followed Landis’s eyes. There were a little over twenty men on the grass, some sitting, some standing. They’d checked their gear and weapons and looked ready to go. ‘That’s the security contingent?’

  ‘That,’ Landis said, ‘is the force that will be guarding the accumulator while it charges.’

  I frowned. ‘No mages?’

  ‘No,’ Landis said, his voice clipped. ‘I need to brief them. If you’ll excuse me.’ He brushed past.

  I watched him go, still frowning. That wasn’t very many men for such an important job. I recognised several of the men and many were veterans, but even so . . .

  Actually, I recognised a lot of the men. Sergeant Little, who I’d met in that bubble realm in Syria. Nowy and Peterson and Lisowski from my old team that I’d led in the early months of the war. Two others that I recognised. In fact, I recognised the whole group. I’d seen them recently. Desert sands . . . where had it been?

  Hyperborea. It was the same team that had been sent with Avenor and Saffron into Hyperborea. Saffron had ordered them to arrest me, and they’d refused to fire.

  I remembered what Sonder had said at the briefing. They were setting up a focus that would transport energy from the accumulator through a gateway. While the enemies homed in on the accumulator, Sonder and Lumen would be watching through a video link from far away.

  I stood dead still for five seconds, then whirled and headed after Nimbus.

  I slammed the door to the ready room open with a crash.

  Nimbus started. He was alone in the room but for Sonder and Lumen, and looked like he’d been giving orders. ‘Verus? What do you think you’re—?’

  I slammed the door behind me and stalked towards Nimbus. His eyes went wide and he took a step back, magic coming up around his hands. ‘You’re leaving twenty-three men to guard the windmill?’ I asked.

  ‘Your point?’ Nimbus snapped.

  ‘I ran into one of those ifrit hosts last night,’ I said tightly. ‘I had Luna and Ji-yeong with me. Three experienced combat mages, and all of us together could barely scrape a draw. And according to Sonder, that one was the runt of the litter. Twenty-three Council security is not even close to enough to hold the windmill against something like that.’