Dubois sighed impatiently. 'Tower MacNeil, like most Quality households, has
security spells to show up such things. The Families take their security very
seriously. The shapechange won't register because the spell will have finished
its work long before you get there. After you return, with your mission
successfully completed, we'll give you your own faces back.'
'And if we don't succeed?' said Hawk.
Dubois smiled coldly. 'You screw up in Tower MacNeil, Hawk, and you won't be
coming back. Now, stop holding things up, and let the sorcerer get to work on
you. We're running out of time.'
Hawk and Fisher looked at each other, and then sat down on the chairs Wulfgang
indicated. The sorcerer smiled reassuringly and ran his hands through a series
of practiced gestures, muttering under his breath as he did so. A gradual
feeling of pressure filled the room, and Hawk's skin crawled as static moved in
his hair. The pressure peaked uncomfortably, and then vanished as the sorcerer
made a final, decisive gesture. Hawk waited a moment, and then looked down at
his hands. They still looked the same to him. He looked across at Fisher, and
she looked the same too. He looked back at the sorcerer Wulfgang, who was
staring dumbfounded at the two Guards.
'Why isn't anything happening?' demanded Dubois.
'I don't know!' snapped Wulfgang. 'I can't understand it; the spell just seemed
to slide off them.' A sudden thought struck him, and he glared at Hawk. 'Are you
still carrying your suppressor stone?'
'No, he isn't,' said Dubois. 'And don't ask what happened to it. That's
confidential.'
Wulfgang frowned thoughtfully. 'There's nothing wrong with the spell, they're
not shielded, so what… ? Wait a minute. Have you two ever been exposed to Wild
Magic?'
'What's that got to do with anything?' said Dubois.
'There's a big difference between the High Magic that most sorcerers use, and
the much rarer Wild Magic,' said Wulfgang patiently. 'High Magic manipulates
aspects of the real world; Wild Magic changes reality itself. So if your people
have been exposed to Wild Magic…'
'We have,' said Hawk. 'We were up North when the Blue Moon rose.'
Dubois and Wulfgang stared at the two Guards almost respectfully. 'You were
there, during the long night?' said Dubois.
'We were there,' said Fisher. 'And no, we don't want to talk about it.'
'That's why my spell won't work on them,' said Wulfgang. 'If they were exposed
to the Blue Moon's influence, it'll take more than a simple shapechange spell to
affect them. I'm sorry, Commander. There's nothing I can do.'
Dubois sighed. 'I might have known you two were going to be trouble. All right.
Thank you, Wulfgang. That will be all. The wardrobe mistress should have arrived
by now; perhaps you'd be good enough to ask her to step in here on your way out.
And Wulfgang, remember: This meeting never took place. You were never here.'
'Of course,' said the sorcerer. He bowed politely to Hawk and Fisher, and waited
patiently for Dubois to unlock the door so he could leave. Dubois locked the
door again after he'd gone.
'While we're waiting,' said Hawk, 'there's a few things I'd like to get clear.
In particular, why Fenris chose Tower MacNeil as his hiding place. Surely among
so many Quality he'd be bound to give himself away sooner or later.'
Dubois pursed his lips. 'We have reason to believe Fenris may be of the
Quality,' he said carefully. 'So he'd have no problem passing himself off as a
distant MacNeil cousin.'
'Why the hell would one of the Quality want to act as a spy?' said Hawk. 'Most
spies work strictly for cash, or occasionally political gain. If there's one
thing the Quality aren't short of, it's money, and most of them don't give a
damn about politics. So what happened to turn Fenris into an agent for a foreign
power?'
'If we knew that, we'd know who he was,' said Dubois.
'Can you at least tell us something about the information he's stolen?' said
Fisher. 'That might help when it comes to identifying him.'
'I can't tell you anything,' said Dubois flatly. 'That's being handled on a
strictly need-to-know basis. Even I haven't been told. But it must be pretty
damned important to have got everyone running round in circles like this. You
wouldn't believe the pressure that's been coming down from Above. Let me put it
this way: Under no circumstances is the spy Fenris to be allowed to escape from
Tower MacNeil. If he tries, you're to stop him, whatever it takes.'
'You mean kill him?' said Fisher.
'Whatever it takes,' said Dubois.
Hawk smiled sourly. 'In other words, it's up to us whether or not we kill a
member of the Quality. But if anything goes wrong afterwards, everyone will
swear blind we were never given any such order. Right?'
'Got it in one,' said Dubois. 'You have a natural gift for politics, Hawk.'
They sat in silence for a while, each thinking their own separate thoughts.
There was a knock at the door. Dubois went over and quietly asked who it was. On
getting a satisfactory answer, he unlocked the door. But he still stood well
back as it opened, one hand resting on his sword till he saw the newcomer was
alone. The wardrobe mistress bustled in, in a hurry as usual. Mistress Melanie
was tall and scrawny, with a sharp-boned face and a wild frizz of dark curly
hair barely restrained by a leather headband. She was one of those people who
had so much nervous energy she made everyone else feel tired just looking at
her.
'Are they ready?' she said sharply to Dubois, not even bothering to look at Hawk
and Fisher.
Dubois nodded briskly. 'The shapechange didn't take.
We'll have to rely on standard disguise techniques. Do what you can with them.'
Mistress Melanie made a short tutting sound and glared at the two Guards. 'As if
we weren't already running behind schedule. All right. Follow me and don't
dawdle.'
And with that, she disappeared back out the door while her words were still
ringing on the air. Hawk and Fisher hurried after her.
A short footrace later, they ended up in the wardrobe department. Hawk had never
been there before and looked around with interest. Hundreds of costumes hung in
neat rows on wire hangers—everything from the latest Quality fashions to a
filthy ragpicker's outfit. A great deal of the Guard's work had to be done
undercover; inevitable in a city like Haven, where no one shared confidences
unless they had to and absolutely no one spoke to the authorities. Unless there
was money in it. Half the Guard's annual budget went to information-gathering, a
fact which never failed to infuriate the more penny-pinching members of the
Council.
