Chapter 7 – Fane

“Fane’s bad news, big man,” Lucy said.

They were sitting at the table, discussing things after Callum’s talk with Shahey. Lucy hadn’t made any comment while Callum was getting news from the dragonblooded, but she’d still been listening closely and heard it all. “A right bastard, in fact. I’ve heard rumors of some real bloody stuff out of the Fane household. Like, even Gayle was complaining about Fane’s people acting like complete jerks, and she’s a Hargrave!”

“Have to say I’m not really impressed by any of the mages I’ve run into,” Callum said dryly, then shook his head. “Well, that’s not entirely true. Some of them have seemed like fine people, but GAR actively enables abuse. Anyway,” he shrugged, not wanting to delve into the topic. “Guess we might as well see what Fane wants.”

“Sure that’s a good idea?” Lucy looked uncertain, and Callum chuckled. It was odd for her to be more cautious than him.

“Well, dealing with Fane directly is obviously a terrible idea. But I might be able to stall his subordinates or get some idea of what we’re up against. I operate in the dark so much it’d be nice to actually know what’s going on for a change. Problem is, how do I deal with him if he can kill me just by vis contact?”

“Hmm.” Lucy tapped her forefinger against her lips thoughtfully. “You know, we’re already transmitting through the drone. Could strap a speaker and mic to it, or just dump some A/V equipment through with a teleport, and control it from here.”

“How long would it take to set that up?” Callum asked, glad that Lucy had the expertise to just do that sort of thing. He could probably have thought of it and maybe even done it himself, but it would have been a serious chore. “No way we’re dealing with Fane’s people without that.”

“Not long. Pretty sure I know some comms stuff that’ll work out of the box.”

“Great.”

Researching and then going out to buy something appropriate didn’t take more than forty minutes, most of it travel time. The solution they settled on was basically just a high-powered walkie-talkie system, though once they had time Lucy wanted to build something more appropriate from scratch. For the moment, cheap and simple worked well enough.

“Alright, big man. Where’s that house?”

Callum hardly needed a map to find the way to the old pseudo-mansion off the town square. He knew Tanner like the back of his hand. He hadn’t ever navigated it with his perceptions, but it didn’t take much adjustment. It wasn’t very far, only a couple minutes of drone piloting to get within range.

There was a ward up around the building, though it was one of the less complex types like he’d seen with the vampires. He could pretty much breeze through that sort with no effort, counting six mages and fourteen normal folk inside the big house. It didn’t take a master of analysis to see that the normal types were servants to the mages, but that was the kind of thing he almost expected at this point. Since he couldn’t pick out Sen from bubbles alone, Callum simply teleported a walkie into the front room, with the volume cranked up.

“Well, Sen, you wanted to talk to me,” Callum said into the handset.

The startlement inside the house was gratifying. He was a little surprised they hadn’t sensed the teleport, but all the mages were in different rooms and he knew his magic was generally subtle. Active vis senses raked through the house, and bubbles flew through doors and even windows as the mages converged on the front room. He wished he could see their expressions.

“Callum Wells.” A voice came over the walkie, and while Callum couldn’t swear it was Sen’s, it probably was. “Show yourself.”

“I don’t think so,” Callum said, while Lucy shook her head at the sheer stupidity of the demand. “If you want to talk, we can do so this way. If you’d rather not talk, I wonder what the hell you’re doing in Tanner.”

“Very well,” Sen said after a moment, and two of the mage bubbles left, flying into the air and starting to circle out from the house. Looking for Callum. Apparently they didn’t even notice the drone sitting by the chimney of the house across the street. They swept with their vis senses but probably were not looking for the tiny signature of the portal anchor hiding behind a bunch of metal and plastic.

“Patriarch Fane graciously extends you the chance to join House Fane,” Sen said, almost sneering. “He has been favorably impressed by your expertise and is willing to offer you the shelter and protection of the most powerful House of all.”

“How generous,” Callum said dryly. “For what reason would I accept that offer?”

“You think you can hide from GAR and the BSE forever? You may have had some successes, but I nearly had you in France,” Sen said, voice waspish over the walkie. “It’s only a matter of time before someone catches up with you.”

“You were the one who attacked me in the café?” Callum asked, flexing his fingers as his body thrummed from a sudden burst of adrenaline.

“Like I said, I almost had you. Good as I am, I’m not an archmage or even a BSE agent,” Sen said. “The moment one of them finds you, you’re done. Unless you have someone like Archmage Fane protecting you.”

Callum was glad that the walkie was push to talk, because otherwise Sen would have heard the several choice words Callum had to say after the admission. The man clearly hadn’t been held to account for killing people, and he needed to be. Eventually. As much as Callum wanted to do something right then, that would sacrifice any opportunity to deal with the actual source of the issue.

Shahey’s advice about focusing on the source of the problem was more immediate than Callum had thought.

“That’s mostly threats,” he said instead, as Lucy shook her head. Whether at him or at Sen, Callum wasn’t sure. “Is there any carrot to go with the stick?”

“It’s House Fane,” Sen said, disbelief evident in his voice. “There is nothing you could possibly want that they cannot provide.” Callum bit back a choice reply. The more he thought about it, the more horrifying that statement was. There were all kinds of appetites that should never be indulged.

“So what happens if I decline?” Callum asked, doing his best to sound firm and in control. “Are you going to leave Tanner?”

“Why would we do that?” Sen asked, genuinely puzzled. “After everything we spent to establish a foothold here?”

“This guy is some kind of moron,” Callum said, making sure that the walkie wasn’t in transmit mode. “He actually thinks that I’d be fine with that? That I want to work for them?”

“I mean, House Fane is kind of big and powerful,” Lucy said. “Probably a lot of people would be glad to work with them, but nobody that I’d get along with.”

“Gotta give him an answer of some sort. A stall.” Callum considered, running through a few half-baked ideas, then pressed the talk button. “I need some time to think about it. And I want to meet with Archmage Fane directly.”

“What makes you think he’ll meet with you?” Sen scoffed.

“He went to this much trouble. GAR knows who I am and what I can do. Surely he can take the time to take the teleport network here.”

“I suppose I can inform him you wish an audience.”

“Not at House Fane,” Callum warned. “If not here, some neutral place. I’ll return in a week to hear your answer.” He would have liked to punctuate his ultimatum with retrieving the walkie, but mage bubbles prevented that. Instead, all he could do was ignore Sen’s protests about propriety. So long as Sen didn’t reject things outright – and Callum was certain he didn’t have the authority – it was good enough.

“A week, huh?” Lucy raised her eyebrows at him.

“It’ll give us some time to plan. And find out more about Fane.” Callum leaned back in his chair. “There’s no way I’m prepared to do anything right now. If Sen’s the one who blew up the café in France then I can’t let that go, but I’ve got to worry about what would happen with Tanner if I did that.”

“Shahey can probably take care of it,” Lucy pointed out. “Still kinda weird that you’ve got a dragonblooded consulting you.”

“It is,” Callum agreed. “But I can understand why, in this case. It’s aimed at me, and Shahey sees an opportunity to get past his limitations. I bet you that he could deal with Fane if he really wanted to, but from what he told me, that level of involvement would violate their own rules.”

“Yeah?” Lucy’s eyes lit up. “You never did tell me about the conversation you had with him.”

“Sure, I’ll fill you in later,” Callum said, keeping his senses on the mages in the house. “Once we finish up here. Then we’ve got to figure out what we can do in a week.”

“You could have asked for two weeks, at least,” Lucy said with a faux pout. “But yeah, a week isn’t that much time. We’ll have to burn the midnight oil on this one.”

“I suppose I should tell Chester, too,” Callum said unhappily. “Moving against Fane – if and how we do so – is not a minor thing. I did promise to keep him informed.”

“I don’t think he’d object much, big man.” Lucy considered. “Actually, he might. Things have got to be strained as is, if you make some major moves on House Fane that could cause some real inter-House violence to happen.”

Callum winced. That was beyond what he really wanted to be responsible for, but at the same time he could hardly avoid it. If he started holding the people who were genuinely responsible for the atrocities of GAR to account, it would shake things up. No matter who they were.

All that sort of calculation made it tedious and uncomfortable to keep people informed of what he was doing. For all the vulnerabilities of being off as a lone agent, one of the benefits was that he could just do as he liked. He still could, in fact. Neither Shahey nor Chester had the authority or capacity to stop him.

Still, it would be an annoyance if they had arguments about what he should or shouldn’t do. Callum mistrusted that kind of thing, even if they couldn’t technically stop him. It was far too easy to reason for or against any course of action, and he was pretty sure both of them could speak circles around him if they tried. He’d have to be careful to try and spot the line between giving him advice and trying to control his actions.

“Once they cool down we can move the drone, but for now we might as well figure out what we’re going be doing this next week. That’s not much time to figure out a way to deal with the worst case scenario.”

“You mean Fane himself showing up?”

“Bingo.” Callum rubbed at his forehead. “If he’s as dangerous as Shahey says, then I can’t really do anything near him. I’m not going to let Tanner become some statistic for a mysterious gas leak on the evening news or whatever, but it’s hardly going to help if he just looks in my direction and I fall over dead.”

“So you’re going to try and kill him? Just like that?” Lucy looked uneasy.

“No, not just like that. We’ve got a week. I want you to find out everything you can — follow up those rumors. I very much doubt that he’s going to leave Tanner be anyway, but we need to know whether or not he should be killed. Then we need to figure out how to deal with everything. If we can deal with Fane himself, we can manage anything short of that.”

“Is this how you do it every time, big man?” Lucy asked, staring at him with a slight widening of her eyes.

“Not exactly, but it’s the same idea. Try to figure out and prepare for every possibility. Or at the very least for the worst case scenario.” Actually he hadn’t had nearly as much time as he would have liked for anything that he’d done so far, but he’d at least prepared somewhat.

“Right, well then. I’ll see what I can dig up — you know I don’t have my old connections anymore, big man. There might be a few back doors but if they’re smart they’ll have trapped ‘em.”

“It might be worth considering what you could do if you had physical access,” Callum suggested. “We could try sneaking a portal anchor or even a drone onto the premises. If there’s people coming and going all the time there’s only so much they can do for security.”

“Those are some big brass balls, big man. I like it. Yeah, we can see about that. What else?”

“Well, offhand, how the hell would you kill an Archmage?”

“Uh. I sure don’t know,” Lucy replied. “You just want to know what they’ve got going for them in general? So they’ve got their shields, for one. They’ve all got homebonds, I’m pretty sure. Enchanted clothing. Focuses of all kinds, probably super fancy stuff. You’d have to get past all that.”

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“So a single, overwhelming strike, one that can overcome their magical defenses, and doesn’t give them time to recall.” Callum smiled wryly. “And doesn’t level Tanner in the bargain.”

“Right.” Lucy tapped her laptop thoughtfully. “Sounds like we need to have a big brainstorming session. I’m not sure I have a good feel for how you do this stuff yet, big man. I dunno how much use I’m going to be.”

“Hey, you thought up those tiles,” Callum pointed out. They were still waiting for them to be finished, but the glass cutter had sent some initial photos and they looked pretty good. “Not to mention the drones and walkie-talkies. I’m sure once we get into it you’ll be fine.” If nothing else, having someone to simply bounce ideas off of would be a help. He knew that working solo he’d missed obvious things more than once.

They started hashing out ideas while Callum kept an eye on the mages in Tanner. They had missed the drone arriving, because they weren’t looking for it, but they’d be hypervigilant while they thought he was still around. Anyone who paid attention wouldn’t miss a drone flying around. He could just recall it through the anchor, but that would give things away.

Lucy had reminded him, during one of their talks, that just because one person in GAR knew something it didn’t mean everyone in GAR would know. Bureaucracies were generally terrible about distributing important information. One full of politics like GAR might be even worse. It was clear that everyone important knew that Callum had gone in and wrecked a BSE outpost in the Deep Wilds, but it wasn’t likely every grunt had it in the forefront of their minds. So even if he’d revealed the portal anchor trick once, it was still a good idea to keep it concealed.

He actually had to turn off the portal after a while, since people were still stirred up and the mana flow through the anchor would start to get noticeable. It wasn’t until the next day that he reconnected and had Lucy fly it back to Shahey’s gym.

“I have doubts Fane would come himself,” the dragonblooded said once Callum had filled him in. “But it’s good to know. I’ll see about organizing some sort of impromptu town fair or the like to keep everyone away from the area.”