Magdalene jerked. She didn’t cringe; she just jerked toward them, like an alarmed cobra, with her hood flaring open.
Gaston hurled Adam at her. They’d found him hiding in one of the side rooms under a desk. The receptionist flew a few feet, slid across the marble, hit the couch, and lay still, pretending to be unconscious.
The air in the room suddenly grew heavy. Magdalene’s face seemed to glow, as if shimmering ribbons of light slid under her skin.
“You don’t want to do this,” she said, her voice quiet but somehow reaching deeply into his mind. Her eyes, luminescent with crystalline aquamarine, peered into him. “Let’s all calm down.”
Fascinating eyes, Kaldar decided. She was screwing with his mind. He really ought to kill her.
Somewhere far away, Audrey said, “Gaston, give me Adam’s gun.”
Gunshots barked in unison, one after another, marble shattered, and suddenly the room returned to normal, and Magdalene clutched at her leg. Her hand came away red.
“Next one will go in your stomach,” Audrey said.
“You stupid piece of shit,” Magdalene spat.
Audrey raised the gun. “One more word, and I will shoot you again, then pistol-whip your face until it looks like hamburger.”
“Go ahead! Shoot me, you stupid bitch.” Magdalene fell into the nearest chair. “Shoot me!”
Kaldar reached into his jacket and pulled out the Eyes of Karuman. Magdalene’s gaze fastened on it.
“George.”
The boy walked over to him.
“How do I use this?” Hopefully George would catch on to his bluff, and the next thing out of his mouth wouldn’t be, “I already told you that you can’t use them because you don’t have the right magic.”
“It shouldn’t be too hard,” George said. “Of course, we could accidentally fry her mind.”
Magdalene went pale.
Smart kid. “We’ll just have to take that risk. Most women, when faced with five angry, blood-smeared people who forced their way into their rooms, would take a moment to consider their position. Obviously, this one is too foolish.” Kaldar raised the emitter. “Look into the light, Magdalene.”
“Fine.” Magdalene slouched in her chair. “What do you want?”
“We had the emitter. Why expose us?”
She sighed. “Because I want Yonker dead. Those merchant pig fuckers actually forbade—forbade!—us to settle it. I can’t even put a price on his head because it would be ‘bad for business.’ I’ve been wanting to kill him for three years now. And then you morons came along. If you took Yonker’s gadget, and he found out, one of two things would happen. Either you killed him or he killed you, in which case the Mirror would come knocking on his door, looking for revenge. Either way, he’d stop breathing in the end, and I’d win. But now you fucked it all up.”
“You’re an evil woman,” George said.
“What do you know of evil, you stupid puppy?” Magdalene turned her gaze on him. “You think this is evil? Give me two weeks with Yonker’s toy, and I could make you rape your own mother, and you’d enjoy it.”
“Kaldar, if you kill her, please don’t shoot her in the head,” George said, his face cold, as if carved from a glacier. “Raising a body with a shattered brain requires more magic, and I think we can use her corpse to make sure her relatives will get run out of town.”
Now that’s interesting. Kaldar studied George. He had had no idea the kid had that kind of calculated cruelty in him. He was willing to bet it wasn’t genuine, but it was hellishly convincing.
“You can’t do that,” she sneered.
“I can,” George told her. “That’s what I do. Would you like me to stab Adam through the heart and demonstrate?”
“No!” Adam squirmed behind the couch. “Mother!”
Everyone had a lever. Kaldar laughed. “And the little Moonflower opens his big mouth. It’s over, Magdalene.”
Magdalene’s face drooped in defeat.
“The invitation,” Kaldar ordered.
“In the black box in the safe,” she said.
Audrey handed the gun to Gaston, crossed the room to the steel door, and put her hand against it. Green magic shimmered around her. The locks clicked open.
“I have it,” Audrey said.
“What are you going to do now?” Magdalene glared at Kaldar.
“Now we walk away.”
“What?”
He shrugged. “What’s the point of killing you? I may have to use you again.”
She actually shook with rage. “If you ever come here again . . .”
“If I ever do, you will welcome me in a civil manner and do whatever is requested of you,” Kaldar let the crisp tones of Adrianglian high society slip into his voice. “You will not warn de Braose. You will not seek revenge. Or the Mirror will replace you with someone more agreeable. I could slit your throat right now, kill your son, bury your bodies in an unmarked grave, and tomorrow a new soothsayer would walk through these doors and take your place. Your people won’t care who they work for as long as their bills are paid.”
Magdalene stared at him, mute.
“Let me put things in perspective for you: I can level this entire building with a single blast of my flash. I could’ve simply ordered you to hand the invitation over, but I’ve chosen to play by the rules out of respect. You broke the rules, Magdalene. You tried to engineer the death of a Mirror agent and a blueblood peer. That’s an act of war against Adrianglia. True, we’re on the other side of the continent, but we have a long reach. Think about that for a moment.”
Magdalene Moonflower turned as white as the marble floor she was standing on.
“Consider it a learning experience. Next time I won’t be in the mood to give you a lesson.” Kaldar turned and walked out.
They had reached the parking lot before George said, “Kaldar?”
“Mhhm?”
“You’re not really a blueblood or a peer of the realm.”
“True.” He popped open the vehicle’s door.
“Also, you can’t flash hard enough to level the building,” Jack said.
“True again.”
“So you lied?” George asked.
“Of course he lied, George,” Audrey said.
Kaldar grinned. “But Magdalene doesn’t know that, does she? Now pile into the car. Quickly now. We have less than twenty hours to get to Morell de Braose’s castle and make ourselves presentable. The rest of the Hand can’t be far behind.”
The kids and Gaston climbed into the backseat.
“What if she warns de Braose?” George asked.
“And be the laughingstock of the entire western Edge, while risking the Mirror’s wrath?” Kaldar shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“Just out of curiosity, how are you planning on getting in?” Audrey asked, sliding into the front passenger seat. “To get into the auction, we need three things: an invitation, a pedigree, and money. We have the invitation, and we can fake the money, but you can’t just show up and claim to be a blueblood noble. Morell will smell a fake in an instant.”
“I’ve got it covered.” Kaldar steered the car out of the parking lot.
She heaved a sigh. “Next you’ll be claiming you’re a lost heir to a blueblood fortune.”
“I don’t need to claim anything.” He grinned. “I have the two wards of the Marshal of the Southern Provinces in the backseat.”
In the rearview mirror, the two boys blinked like two baby owls.
“Do you boys still remember your etiquette lessons?”
George recovered first. “We’ll manage.”
THERE were times in life when nothing was better than a hot, soapy shower, Audrey reflected, stepping out of the shower onto a soft white towel. After the meeting with Magdalene, it was decided that it was best to take off immediately, and so all of them, bloody and exhausted, piled into the wyvern’s cabin. Three hours later, the wyvern touched down in the Edge near the small town of Valley View in southern Oregon. Ling and the nameless cat were released into the night to forage for themselves, the wyvern was watered, and everybody agreed that they desperately needed hot showers and beds.