“Did you learn anything at the conference before it fell apart?” Sam asked me.
“Some, that we’re a lot more organized here in Westport than most other places,” I said. “But the most interesting thing I learned was from the Fae.”
Oriel and I told them about the theory of an Unseelie faction trying to take over the world.
Sam first rolled his eyes, then sighed. “For all that is holy, why would anyone want to be in charge of this asylum?”
Oriel chuckled. “Probably because they’re too damned stupid to understand how much work it would be. Trying to get ten humans or Fae to cooperate is almost impossible, let alone cajole eight billion of them to stop trying to bash each other’s heads in.”
“If it wasn’t for the short-term pain,” I said, “I’d almost welcome seeing the Church try to run the world. Like babysitting a herd of cats.”
I gave Frankie a call, and to my relief, she said she had brought my suitcase back from D.C., so Oriel drove me over to her to get it. I had been to her house before but never inside. She invited us in and offered us a glass of wine.
“Tell me all about it,” she said, settling into an overstuffed chair in her den.
So, I told her about breaking the Knights’ witch ring and the airstrikes, and our escape through Virginia until we entered the mounds. I didn’t tell her about the underworld. I felt I had been entrusted with something special, something that humans shouldn’t know about. But even if I had been willing, I knew that words were inadequate to describe what I had seen.
“Your breaking that ring was critical,” Frankie said. “Without communication with those inside the resort, the Air Force would never have launched their strikes.”
“Well, what’s the next step?” I asked.
“At the moment, things are quiet. We’re cooperating with the Federal government, and the governor and mayor are cooperating with the Church, at least in public. All legal restrictions on magic users are on hold. So, we have a standoff.”
All of the effort, all of the deaths, and we hadn’t gained an inch.
Two weeks after I got back from D.C., I was awakened by someone banging on my apartment door. I opened my eyes and saw through my window that it was a typical Oregon cloudy day, but it was light outside. A check of my alarm clock showed that it was much too early for visitors. I had worked the previous night and hit the sack only five hours before.
Another round of banging—not a polite knock—propelled me out of bed. I grabbed a t-shirt and warmup pants and I pulled them on, then grabbed my dagger, and peered through the peephole in my door.
The person doing the banging was Oriel, which alarmed me at first. His urgency sent all kinds of thoughts through my head. He was hurt, or someone was chasing him, or … I dissolved the ward and opened the door.
He had company—Tiana, Roisin, Lizzy’s father Bob, and Reginn. That was totally unexpected.
I offered to make tea or coffee, and everyone voted for tea. I stumbled into the kitchen and put the teapot on the stove, then pulled down every mug I owned. Entertaining at home wasn’t something I did very often.
Once I served everyone and sat down, I asked, “And to what do I owe this pleasure?”
Oriel chuckled. The others looked so serious that I braced myself for news of a major disaster.
“We’ve located the Heart of the World,” Tiana said. The Knights have it in England.”
“Great,” I said, taking a sip of my tea and burning my mouth. “How much do they want for it?”
The joke fell flat, simply earning me some quizzical looks.
I tried again. “So, we just have to waltz in and take it from them?”
“I doubt it will be that easy,” Tiana said. “We have no idea how much the Knights know about the stone, or if they know how to use it, but it’s a potent weapon.”
“One that could devastate whole cities,” Roisin said.
Oriel leaned forward. “And we have the same problem as we did at the resort in Virginia. The Fae are powerful, but we can’t shield the way mages do. We would rather acquire the stone quietly.”
“You mean steal it.”
They all smiled at me like adults did at a slow learner who finally figured out how to tie her shoes.
“I don’t think it’s going to be as easy as lifting a couple of comm devices from St. Tobias,” I said.
“No,” Rosin responded, “it won’t be. It will require careful planning.”
At Roisin’s request, Sam called a meeting of the Otherworld Council. We met with the Fae in Rosie’s back room on Sunday afternoon.
Roisin told the story of the Heart and the Fae’s theory as to what the Knights were doing with it. Then she talked about the Unseelie conspiracy to use the Knights to conquer first the Seelie, then humanity.
“We’ve found where the Knights are keeping the Heart,” she said after her introduction. “One of our spies actually saw it. To our knowledge, the rogue Fae aren’t aware of its location, but that could change at any time.”
“Even with all the resources the Fae can muster, we don’t see a way to get into their fortress and capture the Heart,” Tiana said. “Even if they have an incomplete understanding of the Heart, a mage wielding it could destroy an army. But if we can infiltrate and steal the gem, then we can end this whole mess. Put an end to the Fae insurrection, shut down the Knights, and return the Universal Church to its original mission.”
“What do you need us to do?” Franklin Jones asked.
“We need some unique skills and abilities that we don’t have. We need mages, and we need technological help. We can infiltrate the Church, but we can’t masquerade as Knights,” Tiana said. “We can glamour ourselves, but our magic is different, and we can’t disguise that. We also need a certain type of thief.”
Everyone turned and looked at me. So much for worrying about my reputation.
Roisin spoke up. “We need your way of thinking in helping us to plan this. We don’t think the way humans do, and I’m afraid we might get only one chance to pull this off. As time passes, either one of the Knights or one of the rogue Fae will learn how to use the Heart for more than simply disrupting the ley lines. If someone can actually harness the power of the artifact, then they will become unstoppable. The woman who created it challenged a goddess. I don’t want to rely on Danu to step in and save us again.”
“One of the rogue Fae stealing the artifact before we can get to it is our worst-case scenario,” Reginn said in his rumbling voice. “For now, at least, the incompetent Knights control the gem. We need to take possession of it before they lose it.”
I sat in on a lot of the planning meetings, most of which were held out at the Academy, but I mostly listened. Over the following week, the plan evolved. It was intricate and involved a lot of moving parts.
I walked into the meeting room at the Academy one morning and discovered a giant map of the world covering the wall. Then I realized it wasn’t a paper map but a virtual map in four dimensions. Totally disorienting. I approached it and found it was better close up because my mind stopped trying to force the image into three dimensions.
Shortly after I arrived, a Fae male who I didn’t recognize stood up in front of the map.
“I am Micah, sent by the Seelie Court to coordinate our efforts to retrieve the Heart of the World and return it to its proper place. Today, I want to acquaint you all with the high-level battle plan. We have moved most of our forces into position and set the date for our offensive.” That date was three weeks away.
He spent the next three hours showing us, in mind-deadening detail, where and when thousands of Fae warriors and their human allies would attack the Knights Magica and Universal Church. As he spoke, parts of the map lit up, bright arrows moved from place to place, and areas changed from Church red to Fae green. It was all very impressive, but I wondered if he had ever been involved in a war before. My history lessons were full of unexpected events and decimated armies whose leaders were confident of victory.
About the time he finally pounded my attention into unconsciousness, he said, “At that time, when our enemy is busy and distracted, the special group we are training here in Westport will launch their assault on Sarum.”
I raised my hand, and he nodded in my direction.
“Assault? I thought we were supposed to conduct a covert operation.”
“Oh, well, yes. I simply used the word assault in a figurative sense. Well, any other questions?”
I should have known to keep my mouth shut, but, “Yes. Do you have the detailed plan as to how we’re supposed to conduct that operation?”
He scowled at me. “Those in charge of the final operation will provide the details to those who need to know.” His tone told me that he wasn’t accustomed to answering stupid questions from little girls. I shut up.
As the meeting was breaking up, Michaela walked up and muttered, “No plan of battle survives first contact with the enemy?”
“Helmuth van Moltke, Prussian general,” I replied. “Eighteen hundred to eighteen ninety-one.”
“You’re rather well-read for a bartender who never finished high school,” she said with a smirk.
“Just something I picked up at the bar on Trivial Pursuit nights.”
I did have input on the makeup of my team. Early on, I figured out that Ian McGregor and I were central to the actual theft. The Fae wanted us to infiltrate the Knights and then work our way into the fortress they had built at Sarum, a village near Salisbury and Stonehenge in southwest England. A major ley line—running directly from the Well of Magic—passed through there.
Although we had captured swords from the Knights, neither Ian nor I were comfortable with them, especially their weaker magic. I helped Oriel to forge new swords for us and Josh in the shape of the Knights’ swords, using the Hunters’ spells.
Once we had the swords, we went out to the sword club and worked with Gilles to become proficient with the unfamiliar weapons. Josh was a novice, but he was strong and athletic, and he picked up the basics pretty fast. Considering that in a real fight he would probably use his flame-sword spell, I figured he was good enough to stand up to scrutiny.