We ignored it as we meshed our spells together, directing the ward network to draw more and more power from the demon, then consume the wild magic pervading the air. The mansion shook — I heard the sound of crumbling masonry as the spells holding the building together started to fail — but we barely noticed. We were so practiced at working together we had no trouble doing three things at once: drawing energy from the demon, channelling it into an ever-expanding spell and preparing our escape. The wards shattered — the demon screamed, a sound that burned my very soul — and we teleported out, materialising outside the mansion gates. I barely caught a glimpse of the mansion one final time before it exploded. I thought I saw the demon within the fireball, inhuman eyes burning down at me and then vanishing. The air seemed to grow lighter. The demon was gone.
“Well,” Void said, as the birds started to sing again. “We did dismantle the wards. And everything else as well.”
I couldn’t help myself. I laughed.
After a moment, the others joined me.
Chapter Two
Uncle Mago was not a very nice man.
It was true that, as our father’s younger brother, he had become our guardian when the family took us from our father’s lair. It was also true he’d had as little to do with us as humanly possible. We were raised by servants who didn’t — couldn’t — teach us any of the family magics, let alone share the secrets passed down from generation to generation of the family bloodline. Bastard children were treated as trueborn members of House Barca, but not us. I suspected quite a few of our elders and so-called betters had argued for our destruction, when they found out what our father had done. They certainly didn’t feel any obligation to treat us as our father’s heirs.
He sat behind his desk, hands resting on his ample belly, and listened as Void and I gave our report. He was unusually fat for a magician and ugly too, despite enough magic to give himself the looks of a demigod. Short dark hair hung in ringlets around a puffy face, beady dark eyes studying us as we talked. His robes — the finest money and good breeding could buy — failed to hide his figure. It was not nice of us to make fun of his weight, even though it was clear proof he was a lazy bastard, but we disliked him. How could we not? He was the gatekeeper standing between us and family acceptance.
It was hard to keep my face composed as he stared at us. We were grown adults. We shouldn’t be forced to stand respectfully in front of his desk, as if we were naughty boys in need of a thrashing. My nails dug into my palms as I held my hands behind my back, forcing myself to resist the urge to tell him how I really felt. We told ourselves otherwise, when we talked about it, but we feared he’d never give us the acceptance we sought. The family was happy to use us, just not to acknowledge us.
“And so we sealed off the ruins and left them isolated,” I finished. There’d be hordes of looters descending on the pile of debris, if I was any judge, searching the remains in hopes of locating magical items or rare and valuable books. Our wards would hopefully keep them from stealing anything, at least long enough for our uncle to arrange for the remains to be searched and secured. We’d been cautioned not to do it ourselves. “The mission was completed successfully.”
Uncle Mago’s face went an interesting colour. “We wanted the mansion intact!”
I opened my mouth to say something I’d probably regret, but Void spoke first. “Then perhaps you should have mentioned it, when you were giving us our marching orders,” he said, in reasonable tones that dripped poison. “You merely wished the mansion’s wards to be dismantled.”
“Which doesn’t require you to destroy the entire mansion, does it?” Uncle Mago glared at him. I could feel his wards flickering and flaring around the chamber. “What were you thinking?”
“I dare say the owner of the mansion wanted his secrets to die with him,” Void said, sardonically. “What sort of idiot uses his own wards to keep his home intact, unless he wants it to collapse when he dies?”
“It lasted beyond his death,” Uncle Mago snapped. “Or it would be rubble before you even arrived!”
I gritted my teeth. None of us liked our uncle, like I’d said, but Void actively hated him. He’d been in line for an apprenticeship with one of the most brilliant magicians of our generation, before our uncle had… convinced… the magician to withdraw his acceptance and take a trueborn member of House Barca instead. It had been all we could do to convince Void not to challenge Uncle Mago to a duel, or simply take him down like a rabid dog or maddened necromancer. I had no doubt Void could take him — the simple fact Uncle Mago never met us outside his wards was clear proof he feared us, even if he’d never admit it — but it would have made us all outlaws. I figured there were quite a few elders who wanted us to kill our uncle and run. They’d get rid of the four of us and our uncle in a single moment.
“There was a demon in there, waiting for us,” I said, before the threat of open violence turned to reality. “A demon none of us knew to expect. We were very lucky we didn’t blunder into the circle before realising what was waiting for us.”
“Yes.” Void’s tone didn’t harden. “Why didn’t your… sources… tell us what to expect?”
“They didn’t know,” Uncle Mago said. “How could they?”
“They were quick to demand the mansion,” Void countered. “Didn’t they know what to expect?”
“They had very little contact with the former owner,” Uncle Mago said. “I don’t think they knew very much about what he was doing, alone in his lair.”
I snorted. He was still careful not to mention the man by name. I’d done some research, while waiting for him to condescend to see us, but drawn a blank. The sudden collapse of the empire and the rise of the new kingdoms had rendered all the records useless, when they weren’t actively being destroyed. Every newly-crowned king and sword-waving warlord had a pedigree — now — that stretched all the way back to the time of legends, never mind that half of them were put together from fragments and the other half were made up of whole cloth. I was pretty sure most of the fragments were entirely fictional too. They’d just lasted long enough for them to become taken for truth.
Void leaned forward. “And did these people truly inherit the mansion, or were they hoping to lay claim to it after the owner’s death? Were you hoping you’d be able to take the mansion for yourself?”
Uncle Mago’s eyes flashed murder. “Are you daring to imply that I wanted the mansion for myself?”
“Well,” Void said. “You told us nothing about who wanted it done. You told us nothing about what awaited us… and really, anyone who wanted to inherit a mansion should have at least a rough idea what sort of experiments were conducted within the wards, particularly if they might wind up getting the blame for them. And you have access to a highly-skilled team” — he made a show of puffing out his chest in a manner calculated to get on our uncle’s nerves — “that could do the job, without asking too many questions. It isn’t exactly impossible you’d wanted us to do the mission for you.”
I kept my face carefully blank. Magicians had been spying on each other since the very first days of organised magic. The layers upon layers of protections surrounding the family mansion and grounds — and the rest of our properties — weren’t there because we felt safe, but because we knew we had enemies constantly trying to worm scrying spells through our wards. It was true even at school. We’d spied on our enemies and they’d spied on us and constantly sharpened our protective spells on each other… by the gods, there was even a private but widely known reward for anyone at Whitehall who managed to steal the final exam papers from the grandmaster’s office. The idea of Uncle Mago sending us to snatch a mansion from a dead man — and his relatives — wasn’t that far-fetched. The Empire was gone. No one knew how the new world would develop, in the months and years to come.