slowly, so much more slowly than it once would have. Age, she spat silently. Pah!
In her pouch she had four vials of a precious restorative she could use in an emergency. Difficult to make, dangerous to use, it would restore her strength for a time, but when it ran out, she might well collapse for a week.
She leaned against the wall. Not yet, she thought. I may still have need of it, but not yet.
She straightened at last and made her way to the cell where Anton was being held: the same cell previously occupied by Verdsmitt. The neat symmetry of that, considering what she intended, was not lost on Mother Northwind.
The Outsider boy jumped up from the narrow cot as she came in. “You!” he said. “Brenna told me what you did. You stole my thoughts. You… Brenna calls it rape!”
“Did it feel like rape?” Mother Northwind said tartly. “It’s not like you struggled. I was in and out of you as quick as you were in and out of that tavern maid in Wavehaven.”
Anton turned bright red. “Brenna told me what you want to do to me next. She overheard Falk talking to you about it. I-I’ll kill you if you try it.”
Ah! thought Mother Northwind. So that’s what precipitated all this.
“Proud words for someone in an eight-by-ten cell,” Mother Northwind said. “And I assure you, I’m harder to kill than I look. You’d do that with your bare hands, would you? Grab me and…?” She paused, letting that sink in, then made a dismissive gesture, as if she were brushing away an annoying insect. “Well, don’t go filling your drawers, boy. I’m not here to twist your mind.”
Anton’s eyes narrowed. “Even though Falk wants you to?”
“My interests and Lord Falk’s are not always in perfect alignment,” Mother Northwind said.
“You’re after something different than him,” Anton said slowly. “Brenna told me… the men on the dogsled were taking us to you, but Falk’s men killed them. That means he didn’t know you had us. And that means we were being taken to you, not him, and probably not here. So why did you want us?”
“Oh, you’re a clever one, aren’t you?” Mother Northwind cooed. “Smart and pretty. No wonder Brenna’s so hot to let you under her skirt.”
Anton blushed again. “I don’t… we haven’t…”
“You do,” Mother Northwind said. “And given half a chance, you will. I’ve watched too many rounds of the boygirl dance to be fooled by claims of innocence, boy.”
“What do you want from me?” Anton exploded.
“I need you to disrupt Lord Falk’s plans in favor of my own, of course,” Mother Northwind said. “And help me lay contingency plans against the possibility he succeeds at what he’s trying to do.”
“Bring down the Anomaly… the Great Barrier?”
Impressed again, Mother Northwind nodded. “Exactly. Falk’s plan, in case you haven’t figure it out yet, is to seize the Kingship, which means control of the Keys, and then bring the Great Barrier down and launch his army into the outside world. His magically armed army. He wants to return to the long-gone days when everyone bowed to the MageLords, and through them to the King-him.”
“Can he do that?”
“Yes,” Mother Northwind said, though since she’d been in Tagaza’s mind, she doubted it. But no need to tell Anton that. “He can. But he won’t. Because I have a different plan. I, too, wish to destroy the Great Barrier, and the Lesser, too-but I will do it by destroying magic. Destroy magic, and you destroy the power of the MageLords… and the Evrenfels that will then face the Outside world will be one where the Commoners hold sway, ready to take its place in whatever community of nations has grown up outside the Barrier over the centuries.”
“More like a bear pit than a community,” Anton muttered.
“Perhaps. Nevertheless, it is time we rejoined it.” Mother Northwind studied the boy. He had a head on his shoulders, and a cynical view of the world rare in one so young… but from what she had gleaned of his rough upbringing, perhaps that was to be expected. It should serve him well now, in any event. “Falk’s plan is to send you over the Barrier again to ‘soften the battle space.’ He wants you to tell your people there’s no such thing as magic, that this is a peaceable kingdom that only wants to play nice with everyone. All lies, but you won’t know that.”
“But you just told me,” Anton said.
Mother Northwind sighed. “But you won’t know that if I twist your mind to absolute loyalty to Lord Falk, which is what he’s requested.”
Anton swallowed. “Ah. Of course. But you’re not going to do that. .. are you?”
Mother Northwind smiled. “No. I like the idea of you flying home, just as Falk plans… but then telling the truth of what you’ve found here, so that your people are prepared for the moment when I, not Falk, bring down the Barrier, and the Commoners take the government. Then you can fly back and tell me about it, so I can make even better plans for the immediate aftermath of the Barrier’s collapse.”
Anton studied her. “There’s nothing I would like better than to fly back over the Anomaly,” he said. “But without compulsion… what makes you think I’ll come back?”
“Brenna,” Mother Northwind said succinctly.
Anton said nothing. Then, “All right.”
“Good,” Mother Northwind said. “Then let’s talk specifics.” She smiled, amused as she remembered her conversation with Verdsmitt. “Tell me,” she said, “how good an actor are you?”
The next day Anton faced Falk in his office, and hoped the answer to Mother Northwind’s question was, “good enough.”
Falk studied him. “Do you remember me, boy?” he said.
Anton did his best to look puzzled. “Of course, my lord. You saved my life. How could I forget the warm welcome you provided when I turned up so unexpectedly on your doorstep?”
“And yet you fled my manor.”
Mother Northwind had told Anton that she would tell Falk she had altered his memories of that event, so that he no longer remembered Brenna’s sabotage of the mageservants or her warning to him about what Falk intended for him. “Here’s what you say…” she told him, and now, a dutiful actor repeating his lines, he said, “I must apologize, my lord. I did not secure the tie-down ropes as well as I could, and I was anxious for you to see the airship fully inflated and ready to go when you returned to the manor, so I thought I should fill the envelope to make sure it had no leaks. Brenna and I were both quite horrified when the ropes let go. And, of course, with no fuel for the propeller engine, after that we were at the mercy of the wind and weather.” He smiled. “And yet somehow you found us and rescued us from those ruffians. So I am doubly grateful to you, my lord. I hope there is something I can do to show my gratitude.”
He kept his smile, though inside he felt sick. That sounded like a lie. It must have!
But Falk smiled. “As a matter of fact, my lad, there is. Here’s what I want you to do…”
It was all exactly as Mother Northwind had said. Falk wanted him to make the airship fly once more, but this time to take it over the Barrier, back to the Outside.
“No doubt your return will cause a sensation,” Falk said.
It surely will, Anton thought, remembering the crowd of people, even if most of them thought he and the Professor were suicidal lunatics, who had gathered for their launch. He hoped, given the difficulty of arranging transportation to and from the town, that the reporters who had covered their departure would still be waiting, for a while longer, at least, to see if they returned. If they were, he would definitely have a story to tell them… but not the one Falk was feeding him now.
Falk wanted him to tell the Outside that all he had found were scattered, peaceful villages, cut off long ago by the mysterious appearance of the Anomaly. He was to say that the Anomaly had been a great subject of study for the people of Evrenfels for centuries, and at last they had found a way to bring it down. He was to say that they posed no threat to anyone, and only wanted peace, trade, and exchange of knowledge.
“Best not to say anything about ‘magic’ or ‘MageLords,’ ” Falk said. “A little too out-of-the-ordinary for the Outside world. We’ll let that knowledge out carefully, perhaps with a demonstration of how our magic can be used to help your people… as it has helped us. .. build a better society.”
Anton kept an expression of intense, excited interest on his face, and boiled inside. From the stories of the Minik and what he had heard from Mother Northwind and Brenna, he knew exactly what kind of society the MageLords had built with their unique abilities: one of absolute privilege for a few, who held the power of life and death over the many.
