again, I expect?”
“I expect I will,” Falk said in a low, dangerous voice. “The question is, will someone sabotage my next attempt as well? I doubt I will get a third.”
“Sabotage?” Mother Northwind raised her head and one eyebrow. “You suspect someone of sabotage?”
“Indeed I do,” Falk spat. “You!”
“Me?” Mother Northwind’s wizened face was the picture of innocence. “I have done everything in my power to help you achieve your goal for twenty years, Lord Falk. I’m hurt you would accuse me of doing otherwise now.” She cocked her head to one side. “Why on Earth would you suspect me?
“You examined the boy to ensure he would go through with it. You said he would.”
“I said he was committed to doing so,” Mother Northwind said. “But I could not foresee that at the last moment he would change his mind. I know soft mages have a reputation for being fortune-tellers, but you know as well as I that the future is a book we can only read one page at a time.”
Falk grunted. It was true; not even the most powerful mage could foretell the future. But he wasn’t satisfied yet. “And then there is the matter of the dogsleds.”
“The dogsleds?” Mother Northwind paused in her knitting and gave him a look obviously intended to make him feel slightly ridiculous; much to his annoyance, it did. “Do tell.”
“The dogsleds,” Falk grated, “that brought Brenna and Anton south after the airship came down on the shores of the Great Lake.”
“Oh,” Mother Northwind said. “What about them?” She began tucking her knitting away in the small wicker basket overflowing with multicolored yarn at her feet.
“Brenna says they belonged to you,” Falk said softly. “She says you want her for your own purposes, not mine.”
If Mother Northwind were surprised, she gave no sign of it, tucking her knitting needles into the basket and then closing its lid. “And what purpose could I possibly have that is not yours?” she said as she straightened. “Have I not helped you every step of the way? Brenna is frightened and lashing out in any way she can. She hopes to divide us.” She spread her hands. “What possible use could I have for Brenna beyond the one we have both agreed to: to capture the Keys and with their help bring down the Barrier?”
“ Do you wish to bring down the Barrier?” Falk said. “Or have you had some other purpose in mind all along?”
“What other purpose could that be?” Mother Northwind said. “Power? I’m too old to be interested in power, Lord Falk. I wouldn’t live long enough to do anything with it.” She went over the fireplace and pulled a tasseled rope hanging beside it. “If we are going to have a long chat, Lord Falk, I simply must have my tea.”
Falk grimaced, but said nothing.
“I want the Barriers down, Lord Falk. I wouldn’t have worked twenty years to achieve just that if I did not. And when the Barrier comes down, the MageLords will emerge,” Mother Northwind continued. “How can it be otherwise? I do not care if you rule the whole world, Lord Falk… as long as the Barrier falls. And you alone know the way to make that happen. If I turn against you, the Barrier will not fall, and what would I then have been wasting my fading energies on for so long?”
“Tagaza worked at my side even longer,” Falk growled. “He turned against me at the end. And he paid the price.”
Mother Northwind’s face took on an expression of false horror. “Is that a threat, Lord Falk?”
“Your powers are great, Mother Northwind,” Falk said. “But they are soft. You must touch me to use them against me. Whereas I can summon power in an instant that will flay you to your bones. It is more than a threat, it is a promise. If I become convinced you have acted against me, you will die.”
A servant entered, the same girl who had been sweeping in the corner when Falk first came in. She brought with her, on a polished wooden tray, a silver pot from which wafted the pungent scent of herbal tea. “Thank you, Pilea,” Mother Northwind said. She patted the girl on her hand. “You’re a good girl.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” The girl curtsied, turned, and walked past Falk on her way to the door.
Only luck saved him. On the corner of the mantelpiece stood a glass vase, surface shiny and bright as a mirror. In that surface, Falk caught, out of the corner of his eye, a hint of movement, enough to make him turn his head-which was just enough to bring into his peripheral vision the sight of the girl lunging at him with a dagger.
The dagger should have gone into his back. Instead, as he lurched to the side, it sliced along his right flank, laying a strip of fiery pain against his skin. As his doublet turned red, he roared and lashed out with his fist, but the girl moved faster than he would have thought possible and came back at him with the knife, though she was just enough off-balance that he managed to jerk his head out of the way as the blade lashed the air beneath his chin. Grabbing her wrist, he pulled her hard across his body with all his strength, flinging her away from him. She almost flew across the room, her head made a horrible crunching noise against the edge of a marble-topped table, and she fell to the carpeted floor, twitched, and lay still, blood pooling beneath her shattered skull.
Falk spun back toward Mother Northwind, seizing power from the MageFurnace as he turned, forming a spell in his mind. He released the spell. A wall of sun-bright blue flame slammed furniture to kindling against the far wall, crushed the plaster into dust, and blew out the far windows in glittering blizzards of glass. But of Mother Northwind there was no sign.
Falk strode to the gaping window openings and peered out, but no mangled body lay on the gravel path beneath or on the bushes below, and dust obscured his view a moment later as the facade collapsed, roaring, from the eastern wall.
Falk turned away. Perhaps the blast had reduced the old woman to nothing more than red mist, scattering now on the winds… But he wouldn’t have wanted to lay money on it.
Hand to his bleeding side, Falk went to the door and flung it open. Servants were running away from Mother Northwind’s quarters and guards were running toward it, but Mother Northwind had vanished without a trace.
Bellowing orders at the approaching guards, Falk stalked away from the shattered room. If she lived, Mother Northwind could not leave the Palace grounds. He would find her. And then he would take great pleasure in personally crushing the life from her wizened old frame.
Mother Northwind had known from the moment Lord Falk entered the room that their alliance was at an end. Somehow, he had had a hint of the truth about who had sabotaged his attempt to seize the Keys. She could think of only one way that would have happened, and as they talked, he confirmed it. Brenna, the little fool. Youth, she thought bitterly. You can’t trust them to act wisely. An older Heir would have kept her counsel once she realized Falk intended to kill her, would have realized that Mother Northwind had told her the truth and her own survival depended on doing what Mother Northwind told her.
But Brenna, little more than a child, had let her anger get the best of her and risked her own life-and now Mother Northwind’s, too.
Well. Perhaps it was for the best. Mother Northwind had known that sooner or later this moment would come. She sparred with Falk, buying time, then reached up and pulled the rope to summon Pilea. She had long since primed all of the Commoners who served her here. Much like Falk could direct the mageservants in his manor, she could direct her human servants. All it took was a touch. She had issued her initial instructions as Pilea had left the room. When she returned, she would be bringing more than tea.
Pilea arrived, and set down the tea. Mother Northwind patted the maid’s hand and twisted, just a little. It took very little energy.
It would take a great deal more for her to do what she needed to do next, and so she sat absolutely still, summoning her inner resources-and waited.
Pilea walked past Falk, then with sudden, lightning speed, spun, drew the dagger she had procured after Mother Northwind had sent her out of the room the first time, and thrust it at Falk, her aim as expert as a trained assassin.
Somehow, Falk dodged the fatal blow, but he also took his eyes off Mother Northwind, and in that instant, she released the energy she had summoned… and vanished.
Even a soft mage had some hard magic to call on, and Mother Northwind had more than most, though unlike mages of Falk’s caliber she could only apply it, as with her soft magic, by touch. But that was all right, because this magic was being applied to herself.
She wasn’t truly invisible. Rather, she had changed the air close to her body so that the light from objects
