Dark Anne shrugged.
‘You remember the first time we met?’ I said. ‘You told me that if there was one thing the two of you agreed on, it was that you weren’t going to be a slave again. You told me you wanted to be the one in charge, the one who made the decisions. You told me you wanted to be queen.’ I gestured to the room around us. ‘How’s that working out for you?’
Anne said nothing, and I turned and left. I could feel the jinn’s presence, drawing closer. It wouldn’t take it much longer to find me.
I opened a door in one of the black-glass walls and stepped out of Anne’s Elsewhere, back into my own dreams.
10
I woke up next morning in a good mood. The morning sun lit the castle and glittered off the sea, the air smelt fresh and clean, and the waves made a soothing sound on the rocks below. Everything seemed bright and clear.
I really shouldn’t have been so happy. Anne was possessed, Variam was a prisoner, the marid was planning an apocalypse and I had maybe a day to live. But I was in a good mood all the same, and it was because of the conversations I’d had last night. I’d been carrying around an enormous amount of pent-up stress, and it had been a relief to let it out. Even getting to tell Anne that she was an idiot had made me feel better. In a weird way, it had been the most honest conversation we’d ever had.
Nothing had really changed, and all the horrible things due to happen today were still going to happen. But there’s really only so long you can keep on feeling miserable about stuff. Eventually you just have to accept that this is the new normal and that’s how things are. And I’d already decided I wasn’t going to waste my last day moping.
I got up, stretched, worked the kinks out of my muscles while enjoying the view from the window, then went downstairs to wash my hands and face in the pond. There was a new sentry outside the windmill; I chatted with him, asked if the night had been quiet (it had), then once I’d freshened up I headed for the barracks.
The barracks was busy with morning bustle. I got a few hellos as I waited in line for breakfast. Once I had a moment, I reached out through the dreamstone. November?
November’s reply came instantly. Oh, Mr Verus. I’m glad to hear from you, I was becoming a little worried.
November’s physical shell was back in our world, in a south London flat, but I could talk to him as easily as if he were right next to me. Dreamstones are handy like that. So what’s been happening with the Council?
A constant stream of rather frantic communications, November said. With the tail-end of Nimbus’s force not making it into the shadow realm and the reserves being cut off, the Council were somewhat concerned. They demanded reports, but since the mages they were demanding them from were under attack at the time, they had some trouble getting an accurate picture. Still, things apparently quieted down after the first hour, and since then they’ve been in more or less constant contact with Landis and Nimbus and their seconds for, well, the entire night as far as I can tell. I’ve never seen the Keeper net so active.
I’d got close enough to the front of the line to see that the cook – it was Jamie again – had done a fry-up. The soldier ahead of me scooped bacon, fried tomatoes and mushrooms onto his plate. The smell reminded me that I was very hungry. Active with what?
The Council’s first priority has been trying to re-establish a gate link, November said. However, the teams working overnight have confirmed that the isolation ward has, as expected, caused a divergence of various universal constants within the shadow realm.
Mm-hm. Wait a sec, I’m getting breakfast.
I loaded up my plate. My stomach growled at the smell and I headed towards the folding tables set up in the middle of the room. You were saying?
This divergence is cause for some concern.
Right. I sat down and ate a forkful of eggs and bacon. It tasted amazing. Didn’t you say that messing with these universal constants could cause us all to explode or something?
Oh no, nothing like that.
I poured myself some orange juice from a jug on the table. Landis clearly believed in treating his men well. Well, that’s good.
It would just cause your bodies to stop functioning.
I paused with the glass halfway to my lips. What?
Well, the biggest area of concern was the dielectric constant. It governs the vacuum-electric permittivity of free space, which is fundamental to biochemistry.
November? Layman’s terms please.
Ah . . . November said. Changing this constant to any significant degree would cause virtually all biological processes within the shadow realm to stop working.
Which would kill everyone.
Yes.
I see. I took a sip of orange juice. Given that I’m still talking to you, can we safely assume that this hasn’t happened?
Well, so far.
So far?
The Council teams within the shadow realm have been conducting experiments, and apparently the results have differed in such a way as to lead them to believe that the shadow realm’s physical constants are continuing to diverge from baseline at an accelerating rate.
Wonderful, I said. Any good news?
Well, so far the most pronounced changes appear to have been to the speed of light and to the gravitational constant, which should have relatively little effect at human scale, November said. And divinations suggest that the shadow realm is unlikely to become entirely uninhabitable in the near future.
I really don’t like how many qualifiers you put on that last sentence. Okay, so this makes the Council’s attempts to establish a gate a bit more urgent. How well are they doing?
Not very, November said. Standard gate spells were rather designed under the assumption that the universal constants of physics would remain, well, constant. They’re attempting to compensate but even after that they’ll still have to defeat the regular gate wards. From what I’m overhearing, I’m afraid they don’t sound very confident.
So no reinforcements and no exit strategy, I said. Just as well my expectations weren’t high. Anything else I ought to know?
I understand that the Council have authorised a battle plan, which they’ve passed to Director Nimbus. I imagine you’ll hear about it quite soon.
I’ll be in touch.
I broke the connection to see Luna weaving through the crowd. She looked as though she’d been up for a while, and walking alongside her was a Keeper called Tobias. ‘Alex,’ Luna called.
I gave her a wave. ‘Had some breakfast?’ I asked once I’d swallowed.
‘Verus,’ Tobias said agreeably as he ambled up. He was a tall, strongly built Keeper from the Order of the Shield with dark hair that he for some reason hid behind a large Stetson hat. I’d never got an explanation for the hat. ‘Briefing in twenty minutes in the ready room.’
‘I’ll be there.’
Tobias headed off on some other errand. ‘So?’ Luna said. ‘Learn anything last night?’