A woman was standing behind one of the desks, her face pale and spotted with blood, holding up a focus item like a holy symbol. It was a force magic focus, and it was generating a transparent cylindrical barrier a few feet in radius. Three jann tore at the barrier with their claws. Pressed up behind the woman, a young man was shouting into a communication focus. “—need help now! This is an emergency! We need Keepers here now!”
A female voice spoke from the communicator, calm and unemotional. “No Keepers are available to respond at this time. We recommend you withdraw from your present location and await instructions.”
“There isn’t any time! We need—!” The man heard a gasp from the woman behind him and whirled. He saw me with Anne at my back and brought up something in his other hand.
Anne reacted instantly. Green-black death tore through the barrier as though it were tissue paper, stripped the life and flesh from the bodies of the man and woman, and smashed their remains through the bay window and sent them falling into darkness towards the lawn below.
I wanted to tell Anne that killing them hadn’t been necessary, but stopped. She wouldn’t care and we didn’t have time. “Lifesight readings?” I asked instead.
“Few more on the second and third floors,” Anne said, looking upwards at the ceiling and frowning. “No sign of Levistus or Barrayar.”
“Hmm.” I strode over to the nearest desk and glanced quickly through the papers, searching in both the present and future. “This isn’t well guarded enough.” A thought struck me. “What can you see down below?”
“You mean the basement? I don’t think there’s . . .” Anne’s eyes widened. “Oh. It’s shrouded. How’d you know?”
“It’s how the Council builds. Let’s go back down. And please stop your jann from going up through the house killing Levistus’s maids and cooks.”
Anne shrugged.
—
It took us a couple of minutes to find the hidden entrance down to the basement, and another minute to disarm the traps and descend the stairs. Long enough for the defenders to get organised.
The wood-panelled staircase went down a long way before opening up into a wide chamber. It was an entrance hall, but while the one on the ground floor had been sized for a house, this one was sized for a palace. A white-and-black stone floor stretched out to the size of a tennis court, engraved with geometric patterns, and wrought iron staircases wound up to a gallery running around the walls at half the height of the ceiling. Doors at the far end led into what must be the heart of Levistus’s operations.
The hallway was crowded with people, and all of them were waiting for us. More security guards were stationed up on the gallery and down on the ground floor, crouched behind bulletproof barriers. Unlike the men above, they were carrying submachine guns. Behind and between the barriers were icecats, graceful and low to the ground, panther-like constructs with wisps of cold rising from their claws.
The next group were the adepts and staff members, and it was clear they weren’t here by choice. They were wearing outfits more suited to an office than to a battle, and wielding a highly uneven collection of weapons. They were shooting uneasy glances around them, and seemed unsure whether to huddle together for protection or to scatter.
And finally there were the mages. There were three, standing at the very back of the formation, evenly spaced across the hall. One was a man I’d never seen before, tall and slim with a refined cast to his features: he watched us both with an expression of boredom. The second was Barrayar. He was wearing his expensive business suit and looked as if he’d just been interrupted from work and was very irritated about it.
But it was the third mage who caught my attention. She was round-faced and heavyset, her arms and legs thick with fat and muscle. Unlike the first two, her face was blank as she watched me. To my magesight, the pale brown of earth magic glowed around her.
I hadn’t expected Caldera. I’d expected her to have gone with Talisid’s hit team; how she’d ended up here instead I didn’t know. The last two times I fought Caldera, I’d been able to disengage and avoid her. There’d be no avoiding her this time.
“Okay,” I said to Anne. “This is what I’d call well guarded.”
Anne and I had come to a stop only a couple of feet from the doorway. A half cylinder of force magic barred us from going any farther, running from floor to ceiling. It didn’t block sound—I could hear the breathing and the shuffle of feet of the crowd facing us—but it would take significant power for any intruders to break through. Assuming they had the chance. There was an antipersonnel mine buried in the floor right beneath our feet, and I knew from glancing at the futures that Barrayar was holding the detonator in one hand.
But Barrayar obviously didn’t know everything that I could do, or he would have pressed the button already. As soon as I’d detected the explosive, I’d started to work on it with the fateweaver, picking out the futures in which it failed. Behind us, the jann started to sidle into the room, staring at the security guards with hungry eyes.
“Verus,” Barrayar said coldly. “You’ve gone too far this time.”
“Hello, Barrayar,” I said. “So, that exchange that was supposed to happen today? I didn’t like the delegation you sent very much. Thought about sending a strongly worded letter, but figured I might as well tell you in person.”
“You know, Talisid had one job,” Barrayar said. “I should have known he’d fuck it up. Did he tip you off, or was he just that incompetent?”
“Do you care?”
“I suppose I don’t.”
“Hey,” Anne interrupted. “You two going to kiss, or shall we kick this off?”
Beneath our feet, the mine’s electronics failed. It was easier than the ones in Sal Sarque’s fortress had been: Levistus hadn’t kept this one well maintained. Probably he’d never seriously expected to need it. “You know, I really thought your boss would be here,” I told Barrayar. “What’s he doing, watching on camera?”
“Whatever you’re hoping to achieve, it won’t work,” Barrayar said. “I’ll give you and Miss Walker one chance. Turn around and leave.”
“Hey, Barrayar,” Anne called. “Just curious. Was it you who signed off on that order for Lightbringer and Zilean to torture me?”
Barrayar looked back at Anne with raised eyebrows. “Is that why you’re here?”
“No, I’m going to kill you anyway. It’ll just make it a bit more satisfying.”
Without changing expression, Barrayar pushed the button on the detonator. The faint click was loud in the silence. There was a moment’s expectant pause.
I spoke into the vacuum. “Now you can kick off.”
Black energy stabbed from Anne, meeting the force barrier with a crack of black lightning. The barrier flickered and died. The jann charged, flowing past and around Anne in a black wave as Levistus’s forces opened fire.
Light and sound hammered the entrance hall, a dozen battles and duels breaking out across the room. Fleeting images caught in my memory, fractions of a greater whole. An icecat and a jann hit each other in midair and tumbled to the floor in a whirl of claws and teeth. Fire stabbed down from the gallery on the left, grim men almost invisible behind their weapons, jann falling as they tried to close the distance. Cutting blades of air and force flew the length of the room to shatter against Anne’s shield. More jann poured down the stairs, throwing themselves into the meat grinder, drones dying for their queen.