Chapter 31 #3
Peter, shooting Martinelli a look he hoped would communicate “stay alert,” walked back and took Beatrix’s hand. He needed a plan to get Martinelli the leaves while their captor was distracted. No, actually—a plan to get Martinelli over to him and Beatrix so they could jump without delay.
Someone banged on the door. Shit. If it was Morse—
“Martinelli,” he hissed as Red Coat cast a spell to drop the shielding. “Martinelli!”
But his friend was staring at the door in horror, obviously thinking along the same lines about who was on the other side.
It opened. Not Morse—Whitaker. “Come out,” he ordered Red Coat.
Peter’s heart flipped. Yes, do that.
“I can’t. Morse said—”
“Morse,” Whitaker muttered with almost as much bile as Peter felt. He slammed the door shut. “Fine. Put the spell back up, if that matters.”
As Red Coat complied, Peter finally caught Martinelli’s attention with his increasingly frantic come-here signals. Martinelli got to his feet and walked softly toward him, eyes on the two men, clearly trying not to draw their attention.
“We have to begin early.” Whitaker’s words, though quiet, were perfectly audible.
“What? Why?”
“Schedule’s changed. He’s speaking in fifteen minutes.”
“It was supposed to be tomorrow!”
“I know,” Whitaker hissed. “That’s what I meant when I said the schedule changed. Morse could return in time—we need to get ready.”
Peter, taking his eyes off Martinelli for a moment to look at the men, saw Red Coat scowl at the general. “Dad—”
“We’ve fixed the problem. All you have to do is set up, Sam.”
Peter, knowing that Whitaker meant setting up the transmitter to detonate the weapon, could barely think over the pounding of his heart. Martinelli had stopped a couple yards shy of Beatrix’s cot, the expression on his face showing that he understood, too.
“Fine,” Red Coat—Whitaker’s son—muttered. “Bring it here.”
Peter jumped up and towed Martinelli to Beatrix as Sam Whitaker dropped the shielding to let his father out. “I have reds,” he whispered. “Quick—”
Sam Whitaker barked another spell. The next instant, Martinelli was blasted backward, landing with such force on his cot that he fell through it.
“I told you to stay on your side of the room!” The wizard stalked toward Martinelli, who’d stumbled to his feet. “Ic raedend té, ic oferswīte té, ic fortrede té!”
Peter had enough years of Anglo Saxon in school to instantly recognize most of the words—I control you, I overpower you.
The other verb escaped him, but it was obvious what the enchantment itself must be.
The marionette spell. He repeated it in his head, trying to figure it out: Ic raedend té, ic oferswīte té, ic for-something té.
Forewyrcend? No, that was a noun, not a verb …
He shook his head to clear it and gripped Beatrix’s hand. As satisfying as it would be to use that spell and hoist Sam Whitaker with his own petard, he was missing a key word and needed a different plan.
Peter slipped his hand into his pocket, palming a red as Whitaker wiggled his fingers at the stock-still Martinelli.
Surely there were attack spells that could target a specific person, but he didn’t know any of them.
Still: If he cast a shield-wall just right, he could trap Whitaker on the far side of the room.
Whitaker would either need a bit of time to pull it down, or he’d remove his own shielding on the room, teleport out and come in the front door.
Either way, they’d be gone before he could get his hands on them.
But for the moment, Whitaker was standing between him and Martinelli—on the wrong side.
“Come on,” the wizard snarled and Martinelli jerked forward, walking with an unnatural gait to the center of the room.
Whitaker lay down a demarcation stone, then another and another. With a jolt of horror, Peter realized Whitaker was making a circle around Martinelli. Martinelli was the fuel. He was the wizard they were using to set the weapon off.
Focus! Peter stretched out his hand, waiting for Whitaker to get to the right side. Almost … almost …
The door flew open. In marched the elder Whitaker—and Morse, levitating the transmitter.
Peter jerked his arm down, heart spasming. He couldn’t cast the barrier unless all three of them ended up on the right side of Martinelli. Even then, would the strategy work? Morse was too fast, too frightfully good at what he did.
And besides, now the transmitter was here—right here. Beatrix would want him to do something about it. He just didn’t know what that could be.
The transmitter was shielded. Morse was shielded. Nothing he could think to cast would have an immediate effect, and in the meantime, Morse would overpower him.
Morse murmured something so softly Peter couldn’t make it out. General Whitaker’s answer was louder: “James left the summit fifteen minutes ago. Back in Washington. All clear.”
Vice President James Draden, his mind supplied. As if that mattered. Focus, damn it!
“What about the stone?” the general asked.
“Handled.”
“Yes, but how close to the complex did you get it?”
“Inside the shielding.”
General Whitaker looked impressed. “Still within the five-mile range, though? You’re sure?”
“Yes,” Morse said. He slipped his hand into a pocket, pulled out a handheld radio and switched it on. Static crackled. He adjusted it, and a reporter’s voice broke in.
“—the Canadian prime minister was met with sustained catcalls and booing. He walked out without finishing his speech yesterday. Today we learned that the entire Canadian contingent has left the Americas Summit. President Abbott hopes he can ease tensions by speaking a day earlier than planned. He’s expected at any moment.
You can hear the crowd around me in the Detroit Convention Center surging to their seats as—”
Morse turned the volume down, the reporter’s voice flattening into a buzz of mostly inaudible words. Was this the event?
General Whitaker chuckled. “Nice of them to all walk out in a huff. Good work.”
Were they planning to detonate the weapon in Detroit?
Morse, turning, said to Whitaker’s son: “I’ll finish that. Watch them.”
Sam Whitaker looked up from the demarcation stones he was arranging around the transmitter. “Those two? I just gave her another dose. And I certainly don’t need to babysit him. He can’t do diddlysquat.”
Morse’s gaze shifted to Peter. Peter stared back, feeling as if the world—or possibly his heart—had come to a halt. Morse would know. Somehow, he always knew.
Just then, the sounds from the radio changed. People were cheering. People who had no idea they were about to die in a plot by Draden’s team to make it appear that Canada had attacked—with a weapon Draden would say he, Peter, had given them after fleeing there.
“The president of the United States, ladies and gentlemen!” someone at the summit said into a microphone, loud enough to hear with the volume cranked down.
Morse turned back to Sam Whitaker. “Fine. Finish.”
Peter thought of and discarded half a dozen insufficient strategies as Morse drew the ear rune on Martinelli’s forehead, neck and palms and Sam Whitaker laid down the final stones.
Morse examined the set up. He raised his arms over the transmitter. He was starting the spellwork that would kill Martinelli, the president, so many people—
Fortrede. To tread—to tread utterly upon something.
The word in the marionette spell could be fortrede.
Peter gripped Beatrix’s hand, aimed his palm at Morse and muttered, “Ic raedend té, ic oferswīte té, ic—”
Morse jerked his head around, eyes blazing, hand outstretched.
“—fortrede té!” Peter bit out, finishing the incantation.
No spell came from Morse’s hand. The man stood with his mouth half open—frozen in place.
“What?” General Whitaker took a step toward Morse. “What is it?”
Peter hissed the spell at Whitaker’s son and used his last red on Whitaker. Then he pushed Beatrix on her cot toward the tableau of immobile men. He removed the two wizards’ coats, grabbed a fistful of leaves, took Beatrix’s hand again and cast at the transmitter.
When it exploded, he fell to his knees beside her, gasping with relief, pressing his forehead to hers. “We did it,” he whispered. “We did it.”
Now they had to get out. The thought had just occurred to him—dampening his euphoria—when he caught sight of the solution hanging from Sam Whitaker’s belt.
A can opener. The device that could make a hole in the barrier around the complex so they could teleport out.
Peter unhooked it, hardly daring to believe his luck.
A few minutes later, after pocketing all the wizards’ leaves and searching the three men for hidden communication devices or anything else that could conceivably aid escape, he cast shield-spell walls around them that reached nearly to the ceiling—just enough to let air in.
He still didn’t know how he could get them arrested, but he had to try.
It was either that or kill them, and he couldn’t bring himself to become the murderer Morse had made him out to be.
He dragged Martinelli and Beatrix into the hallway, anxious to teleport away, but stopped cold as Martinelli made a sound halfway between a grunt and a yell.
Peter glanced around, afraid his friend had seen someone—Draden surely had more confederates.
His eyes fell on the room beside the one they’d just escaped.
He had a sudden, electrifying thought.
“There?” he asked, grabbing Martinelli’s arm. “You want me to go in there?”
“Mhhmmmmm!”
He turned the handle. The door creaked open.
Inside stood a chair, a long table and—he almost laughed out loud.
Screens displaying the feed from the tele-vision cameras in the room next door.
Film canisters lying about, all with dates neatly written on them.
Whirring equipment that, when he pushed a few buttons, ejected more film. And a portable machine to play them.
He pushed the canisters and playback machine into a pile, then cast a spell so they would follow him out. Who’s going to believe me, Martinelli had asked. Now they had an answer.
Everybody. If they played their cards right: Everybody.