It would have been bad enough if the imbued items released into the wild had been a random collection, but they hadn’t been. Despite their drawbacks, imbued items pack a hell of a punch, and while the Council might be bureaucratic, they’re not in the habit of letting resources go to waste. If the best use they could come up with for an imbued item was to leave it gathering dust in the Vault … well, that should tell you something. According to the Council, Morden’s team had taken away 127 imbued items from the Vault, and I suspected the real number might be slightly higher. That had been eight months ago. Since then, we’d recovered thirty-eight. The Splinter Crown would make it thirty-nine.
Having over a hundred of the most dangerous imbued items in the country go missing at once had caused complete chaos. Not all of them had resurfaced – in fact, most of them hadn’t, probably because the Dark mages were keeping safe hold of them – but all too many had, and the ones that had resurfaced had tended to be the most destructive, controlling and just plain evil out of the whole set. It was coming to the point that I was starting to think that Richard or Morden had deliberately let the most dangerous items fall into the hands of the kinds of people who would misuse them. The Splinter Crown hadn’t been the worst of them by a long shot, and since the start of the year the casualty rates for normals injured or killed from magical causes had tripled. For now, the police were managing to cover up the worst of it (mostly by calling injuries ‘accidents’ and deaths ‘missing persons’), but I knew the Directors were afraid that if this went on for much longer, it was going to start leaking into the public eye. It wasn’t just normals who were being hurt either – the casualty rate for Council security had gone through the roof, and they’d had to take in as many new recruits in the last six months as they usually did in three years. And that wasn’t counting the activities of those Dark mages who did know what they were doing with their new items, nor the ongoing problems with the adept community.
All in all, the Council had been in more or less permanent crisis mode since autumn, with no sign of things calming down any time soon. Which was why, instead of eyeing me, the adepts and mages I passed in the corridors were caught up in their own worries. A few years ago, I might have appreciated it, but I’d learned enough since then to realise that at least in this case, the Council’s problems were also everyone else’s problems, and if not they were going to get that way.
Of course, none of that was stopping certain members on the Council from doing their best to get rid of me. I guess some things don’t change.
I passed through the Belfry and into one of the anterooms leading to the Star Chamber. A little over half a dozen mages were scattered around the room, talking in booths, and unlike the mages I’d passed on the way in, they did turn to stare. These were the aides of the Council members meeting in the room beyond, and if I hadn’t known already, their reactions would have been a big hint that I wasn’t expected. You can make a good guess at the number of Council members in a meeting by the number of aides outside: in this case there were eight, suggesting that most of the Junior and Senior Councilmen were present, but not all.
The corridor behind was dominated by the two huge eight-foot, six-limbed golems flanking the door at the end. These were gythka, the personal guards of the Light Council, and their gold eyes watched me expressionlessly as I approached. There was a man between them, the sergeant-at-arms, and he didn’t look happy to see me. ‘Evening, James,’ I said. ‘I see you got the late shift.’
James looked uncomfortable. ‘Uh, yes. Councillor Verus, I don’t think—’
‘That I’m welcome here? Let me guess, a certain someone hinted that they’d rather not be disturbed by any guests, me in particular.’
‘That’s not … I mean, could you … ?’
‘No, I’m afraid I can’t.’ I came to a stop in front of James. ‘This is a meeting of the Junior and Senior Councils, yes? Not Senior only?’
‘Yes …’
‘Then as a member of the Junior Council, I request and require entry.’ I nodded at the mantis golems. ‘You’re noticing they’re not moving to block me? Pretty sure you know what that means.’
James looked as if he’d rather be anywhere else, and I knew why. Whichever side he took, he knew he was about to get in the middle of a quarrel between Council mages. ‘This isn’t your call,’ I told him. ‘Now do the job that you’re legally required to do, and open that door.’
James unlocked the wooden door and stepped out of my way. He didn’t announce me, and I couldn’t really blame him. I walked in, hearing the door swing shut behind me.
If the War Rooms are the centre of power of the Light Council, the Star Chamber is its heart. It’s named after an old court of law from English history famous for its vast powers and lack of accountability. Maybe the Light mages who named it didn’t know the associations of the name … on the other hand, maybe they did. From this room, generations of Light mages had sat and ruled, issuing the resolutions that spread to touch the lives of every mage in the British Isles and beyond. I’d never thought I’d be one of them.
For such an important room, the Star Chamber looks weirdly ordinary. Windows along one wall look out onto an illusory landscape of fields and sky, and a fresco of constellations is set into the ceiling. The room is dominated by a long mahogany table surrounded by comfortable chairs. Right now, eleven of those chairs were occupied: one by the secretary, four by members of the Junior Council and the remaining six by members of the Senior Council, the voting members of the Light Council and the most powerful mages in Britain.
‘What’s he doing here?’ Sal Sarque snapped. He was dark-skinned and dark-eyed, and his grizzled white hair was cut short enough to reveal an old scar running the length of his scalp. His normal expression was a scowl, and he was wearing one now, his eyebrows lowered as he stared at me.
‘Apologies for being late,’ I said pleasantly as I crossed the room. ‘It seems that, by some oversight, I wasn’t informed of the meeting.’ I pulled out a chair and sat next to one of the other Junior Council members, sensing her shift away slightly as I did. ‘Don’t let me interrupt.’
‘You weren’t informed because you weren’t invited,’ Sal Sarque said, biting off his words.
I sat back, meeting Sal Sarque’s gaze. ‘Seems to me what you were discussing is rather relevant to my interests.’
Sal Sarque and I had rubbed each other the wrong way pretty much on sight. He’s the leader of the Crusaders, the most militant faction within the Council. They hate Dark mages in general and Morden in particular, so given that I was taught by a Dark mage and appointed by Morden, we were never going to get along. Events last autumn had only made things worse.