Chapter 13 – Involvement

Serena Duvall ignored her scry-com’s chime. No, she was focused on locking down the last corner of House Janry’s new estate in Faerie. Spatial stabilization was the task that consumed the most of her time — no one else had the talent or the vis reserves to do it. Everyone needed her to do it, since every mage habitation in the portal worlds needed to be adjusted back to something similar to Earth.

The native space of the portal worlds made casting difficult. And odd. Fine under some circumstances but not for daily life. More pragmatically, it interfered with her delicate teleportation enchantments — and nobody who was anybody would go without her network. Too useful. The sheer demand for them overwhelmed her apprentices, few of them that she had.

House Duvall had a ten-year backlog at this point.

The most important part of the spatial tuning was preventing the corruption of humans. Corruption into other things, like the fae and with shifters. Portal worlds were fantastic, for mana. Less fantastic, for living. Given a few generations, the portal worlds would twist mages into something else — unless she twisted it first.

It was better than the other supernaturals. Some couldn’t even enter other portal worlds without losing their talents. Or dying. Mages could cast no matter the portal world — living there was another matter.

One last shove locked the space into alignment. She pulled in her vis and sent a trickle through the scry-com — not without reservations. There had been so many interruptions of late, and she was getting tired of it. Her work was wearing enough without people whining at her. Wanting her to hold their hands and clean up after their messes ⁠— she’d gotten tired of that two hundred years ago with her own children.

“What?” She snapped, just knowing that, whoever was calling, she wasn’t getting home on time. That she’d be running short of sleep — again.

“We’ve had another sighting of Callum Wells,” the voice on the other end said. One of the BSE people.

“So you didn’t catch him, then,” she said.

“Technically, we didn’t even see him. It’s just that he freed two mundanes we were holding as witnesses, and the techniques match his operation.”

“So why are you calling me then?”

“There may be some residue of what he was doing left about. We still don’t know how he manages to slip past wards and since he’s a space mage we need an expert analysis.”

Duvall growled. She didn’t want to have to deal with these things — but no one else qualified. And she wanted Wells caught, too. If there were a bunch of spatial mages somewhere, they were a threat to her House — and a monumental waste of talent! If it was just Wells, he was clearly competent enough to be of use — if he was finally brought to heel.

“He also sabotaged the teleporter and feeder portal,” the man continued. “So we need replacements.”

“Then submit a request for them!” Duvall snapped. She was the one who approved emergency replacements, and the process existed for a reason — no chance she was going back to being hounded in person by the others. Not to mention half of GAR.

“Yes, Archmage,” he said.

“Well?” She demanded when he didn’t continue. Her patience was wearing thin. “Where is this?”

“Miami, Archmage.”

“Fine,” she said, and dropped the scry-com’s construct. Her vis pulsed outward, and she tied into House Janry’s teleport pad. Even she couldn’t transport herself directly to a target location without some kind of anchor — so she’d made sure there were anchors all over the place.

She popped into one of the GAR facilities and sent out another pulse, locating the teleportation switchboards and moving herself there. She had an encyclopedic knowledge of all the anchor locations — it was her network, after all. Far better than the original, now. That had just been a long hallway with plaques labeling the destinations.

Duvall ignored the operators, searching for the Tampa anchor in the wall of them at the back. Then she linked in and transferred herself. Such was impossible for most, needing to link their vis in through their tattoos. Archmages could do better, of course.

The moment she was in Tampa she teleported up and out, riding her flight focus through the night, south and east. Space stretched around her, making her journey shorter as she soared through the skies. She had been to every anchor location — and space mages always knew where they had been. One of the first things she taught.

She could see the residue of a large fae working when she neared the city. Probably from the King of Miami. It had left a mess, as usual — fae magic didn’t have the structure or control of real magic. One reason she didn’t like Faerie, even if all the other houses did.

Duvall punched through the remnant spatial distortion and landed down at the GAR office. Some shifter dregs moved to intercept her, but when they saw her Archmage emblem, they stopped — as they should. She ignored them and transported herself inside, not even needing to worry about the wards. They were down.

The most powerful mage on site besides herself was in the maintenance room, and he jumped when she appeared. Showed he wasn’t paying attention — he should have noticed her vis from active sensing. It was some BSE person, but not one of the ones she recognized.

“Well?”

“Archmage Duvall, thank you for coming. As you can see there is damage to multiple sections of the teleportation framework, and we think he delivered something with his spatial magic. There’s water residue so we’ve asked Grand Magus⁠—”

“Out!” Duvall pointed to the door. She was tired of the man’s yammering on about things she could see with her own eyes — things that didn’t matter. Besides, if they wanted her to find out something about Wells’ magic, she needed to have no others obscuring it.

There was no point in using active senses — they’d just drown out whatever residue was left. Passive sensing was the only way. Duvall redirected some of her vis from her shell into her body, then directed a trickle into her own mind, the surroundings billowing into existence in her head. She stopped at ten feet, since there was little point in going further. There was too much information, and it was a dangerous and vis-hungry thing.

Such internal reflection was limited to Archmages ⁠— and was one of the criteria to become such. For Archmages, the entirety of their vis and the metabolization was in the shell, with any vis inside their body being structured completely for reinforcement or augmentation. For any other mage, feeding vis inward would cause a loop, as the vis tried to drain into itself. Like a hole in a dam, locking their entire power into themselves. It took a powerful healing mage to interrupt the process — and not incidentally, it took total vis externalization to protect against healing. Another thing only Archmages could do ⁠— more shell than flesh.

She traced the faint echoes of vis, easily noticing the remnants of spatial vis — of course. They were faded and distorted, pulled in a direction. Her kinesis focus plucked a fragment of metal from the ground and she frowned at the tiniest hint of a lingering enchantment. Mundane metal couldn’t handle much, but she had read the reports. Something to clean up his vis.

The framework remnants were oddly fragile. She would say it was crude yet fine —accurate, but sloppy. Too much power, and barely enough. Woven gossamer instead of a properly solid framework. He was working through finesse tools, but she had no idea why. They were useful for close work, but had no range or real power — maybe to hide his normal magical signature.

Not that she needed his normal threads to see his style. Clearly not someone she had trained. She’d never stand for such terrible spellwork. Terrible, but it obviously worked well enough. Even if it was underpowered.

A teleportation framework — yes. Inside that, some dense mass that might indicate expanded space. Might. It wasn’t how she would go about it, clearly. Yet — she did recognize some of the shapes and features. With the fragments of metal strewn over the room it was clear what had been done.

It was appalling — a transgression of everything spatial magic was. The reason she restricted expanded spatial spaces to the portal worlds was their danger if they were disrupted — danger to everyone. Turning the precision and wonder of expanding space into a crude tool of disruption was absolutely unconscionable.

He definitely needed to be found — for everyone’s safety. She would certainly recognize his magic if she ran across it again, but she couldn’t even connect the teleport to the other end — too degraded. Deliberately.

“One is always mystified by the harbinger of the cycle.” The voice made her jump, because she hadn’t sensed another mage enter the room. But there he was, the spooky bastard — Huitzilin.

“Archmage Wizzy,” she said, not bothering to keep the disapproval from her voice. He insisted that everyone call him by that ridiculous nickname unless they could pronounce his real name properly. Which nobody could.

“Archmage Duvall,” he returned, in his weird accent that he refused to change.

“I didn’t know they called you to analyze the water magic,” she said.

“They did not.” Huitzilin seemed smug. “I came to see if the sparks and smoldering I heard of were beginning to catch or not.”

“Speak plainly!” She didn’t have time for his nonsense.

“The thorn in your paw,” Huitzilin said. “The Wells issue. One is merely curious about their provenance and their role.” He tilted his head slightly, and a shadow slipped through the doorway to take its place where it belonged. His shadow, which whispered to him in a sibilant language nobody else living understood.

It wasn’t something a mage should have. Something a mage should do. But that was just Huitzilin — creepy. And strange. Too close to the fae, even if he predated them. Predated everyone, if he could be believed. They found him when the first mages reached the new world, already there, already old.

“Well, he’s a damn nuisance.” Duvall brushed past him. Of them all, Huitzilin didn’t maintain a proper shell ⁠— now called a sphere of authority by young jumped-up mages far too impressed with themselves. Not that he was any less powerful or dangerous. He just didn’t come from a proper background, and it was bizarre to see someone with an Archmage pin with no vis aura.

“One suspects he is long overdue,” Huitzilin said. Duvall whirled on him.

“Are you supporting him?” She gathered the vis within her sphere. Space magic might well not be able to harm directly, but there were many indirect methods to deal with someone. Even another Archmage.

“One has never met the man. Perhaps one should, but he has not yet passed within one’s sight.” Duvall scowled, but figured he was telling the truth. Of them all, Huitzilin was the least political. Never showed up to meetings. Didn’t even have a House.

“Then go back to guarding your temple,” she said, and left. The teleport enchantments would have to be replaced entirely. The sabotage was very targeted — he’d known where to look.

Aside from the transport array and the ward nexus, there were traces of Wells’ vis in one other place — the cells. That was just a simple teleport residue, even if it was in Wells’ bizarre style. Duvall turned to the man who had been shadowing her. From a safe distance.

“Who was in here?”

“A pair of mundanes who were witnesses to the fae disappearance Wells was implicated in,” he told her.

“Did they know anything?”

“No, they didn’t even see him.”

“Then why did he take them? Why did we even have them here?”

“It’s standard procedure for the Department of Acquisitions to⁠—”

“Oh, Constance,” Duvall said scornfully. “She’s not an Archmage. Why did she have them and not us?”

“The Department of Acquisitions⁠—”

“You know what, I don’t care. Find them again, figure out why he took them. Maybe he’ll come after them again.”

***

“The fae have them,” Jahn reported. “Some kind of obscuring working. All their names are gone from our paperwork, or rather, replaced, with Prospero and Sycorax.”

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“Fae,” Hargrave said in disgust. “Of course, we already knew Wells was working with the fae. Someone there, anyway. What did the King of Miami have to say?”

“Oh, he practically rubbed my nose in it. Miami is his territory, I already knew it had to be his intervention. But the mundanes were fae responsibility under the accords and so on. You know how much a stickler for rules they are when they want to be.” Jahn sighed, sorting through his notes.

“They won’t even admit they have them, not out loud, unless we can specifically name them and why they’re needed. Which of course we can’t now. And apparently there was some deal made. I sent some feelers out and a number of the other kings back him up, so, well. It’s a political thing now.”

“Mmm. At least we know he can be enticed out of whatever hidey-hole he has,” Hargrave pointed out. “We can use that. Perhaps not with those mundanes, if they are indeed that well protected, but there are others. Anyone he’s come in contact with.”

“That’s a little bit difficult. Most of the people we can confirm are either in Tanner, and under Scaletooth’s protection—”

“Damned dragonblooded.”