Chapter 5 #3
Malachy sat back and steepled his fingers.
Rune Borges had brought more than tales of his own valor back from the continent.
The Ferromancer’s bark was worse than his bite, but now the idiot had a platform to spout his thinly veiled social Darwinism.
Evidently Rune’s delusions of self-grandeur were infectious.
Yet the metal mage was too thick headed for this level of nuance. Someone else, someone more persuasive, had to be orchestrating this Protean Society. Was Rune, like Julian Morro, another smokescreen for Ari Razaq?
“Loads of mages oppose the Covenant, Mal. The secrecy mandate is the single worst thing to happen to our kind. Imagine what it would be like if we didn’t have to hide.
You could traverse everywhere, run your business out in the open.
Imagine what it’d be like if we were in charge like we oughta be. ”
He sipped whiskey, his mind buzzing. “Have the Proteans acted out on their viewpoints?”
“No,” she said, and he heard the unspoken words: Not yet.
The Tribunal will be thrilled about this, he thought, and no doubt make it another problem for me to solve.
“When’s their next meeting?”
She perked up. “Last Thursday of the month.”
“I’ll be there.”
“Brilliant. I’ve got loads of reading I can give you—”
“Spare me the recruitment pitch. I’m going for curiosity, not conversion.”
“Suit yourself. What else do you want to know?”
What he most wanted to know, he was least able to ask: had demons been sighted in London?
“Has anything… peculiar happened while I was gone? Anything unexplainable, or out of the ordinary?”
Her pale brows furrowed. “Aye, now that I think of it. Several people said they spotted you around town, even though you’ve been locked in the Tribunal’s dungeon for ages. One night, I could’ve sworn I’d seen you myself.”
Had someone been skulking around London wearing his face? Perhaps a Lumomancer like Julian Morro had illusioned themselves in Malachy’s likeness to impersonate him. For what purpose?
Whoever they were, Malachy would skin his own illusioned face off them.
“Did you get a look at the bastard’s eyes?” A Lumomancer could only illusion what they had seen before—often lacking the birthmarks, scars, or tattoos of the one they were impersonating—but they could never illusion their eyes. A Lumomancer could wear Malachy’s face but not his eye color.
“No, it was too dark," she said. "Odder things have happened, actually. A few people reported seeing a lioness outside the club. Before you ask, these people were all relatively sober.”
He blinked. “A lioness.”
“The oddest thing, though, is what happened to Ari at the last Protean Society meeting. He sensed, I dunno, a presence. Then the air got so thick around him that he felt like a bug trapped in amber. He was stuck like that for a few seconds or minutes, he wasn’t sure. When he came to, he was alone.”
Malachy’s heart beat a quickening rhythm against his ribs. Ghose. It had to be. But why would the time demon eavesdrop on a meeting of mage supremacists?
A memory chilled Malachy. Ghose, while still the Master Chronomancer, had once peered through the veil of time and glimpsed a possible future like the Proteans envisioned, where mages ruled and humans served.
Ghose’s obsession with bringing this possibility to fruition had driven him to unspeakable acts.
Like the acts the Proteans were no doubt prepared to commit.
Was Ari Razaq a co-conspirator with Ghose?
“And you trust Razaq told you the truth about this encounter?” Malachy pressed.
“I trust Ari with my life.”
“Right. I want to know immediately if something like that happens again. O’Leary mentioned you had more information on Razaq for me.”
Reluctantly, she handed him a thin file. “This is what we’ve been able to find on him.”
The pages contained scant details beyond Razaq’s impressive war record with the Egyptian Expeditionary Force. Malachy flicked through the brief file again, then lanced Sloane with a sharp look. “This is all we’ve got on him? Nothing existed of your boyfriend before the Great War?”
He arched an eyebrow at her shrug. Is it because she doesn’t know, or because she doesn’t want me to know?
Malachy examined the photo of Ari Razaq attached to his sterling military record.
The harsh cut of his starched uniform and the manicured lines of his dark mustache could not harden the soft wistfulness of his features.
A scholar in a costume, not a soldier. And not Sloane’s usual type.
Her late husband had been a brute of a man, as likely to leave a love bite on her neck as strangulation marks.
Bruises she would shrug off with, ‘Oh, Peter just doesn’t know his own strength. ’
After her husband had died in the war and her baby in the influenza epidemic, Sloane had embraced the flapper lifestyle.
She had become like a butterfly flitting between meaningless flings, drunk or strung out on uppers and flirting relentlessly with every bloke in the club.
And now, within a few weeks, she had gone from decrying monogamy to embracing it.
The enigmatic Razaq was well-connected enough to hide his past and persuasive enough to convince Sloane to abandon her myriad affairs. A dangerous combination.
“Razaq served in the Egyptian Forces during the war. He's from Egypt?”
Sloane shifted in the chair. “His father was an Egyptologist.”
Another non-answer. Malachy would need someone other than Sloane to wade through Razaq’s past for information.
“What do you really know about Razaq before you met?”
She rolled her eyes. “If I wanted your advice about my love life, Mal, I’d ask.”
“That’s a roundabout way of saying you have no fuckin’ clue.”
“Since when are you the romance expert?” she snapped. “A decade I’ve known you, and I’ve never seen you with the same lass twice.”
They exchanged mutually obstinate looks. She was the first to glance away.
“I know Ari's heart. That’s enough for me.”
What she didn’t say about Razaq told Malachy everything he needed to know. By her evasiveness when pressed, Razaq had pulled the wool over his spymaster’s eyes. She was a compromised agent.
“Fuck who you want, but mind the pillow talk with Razaq. I don’t trust him. His gang is spying on Madam Kalandra. Don’t help them spy on us.”
“Fuck who I want? Seriously, Mal?” Angry red flooded her freckled cheeks. “After everything, you doubt my loyalty to you? You’re like the older brother I never asked for. Come the fuck off it.”
“Very well.” He held up his hands. Sloane had always reminded him of his younger sister Róisin, quick-tempered but loyal. Until now. He watched the Umbramancer storm off, pouring himself yet another glass of whiskey, weary of the parade of disasters through his office.