Extermination (Daniel Black Book 3) Page 6

  “Obscure energies, eh? Would this be one of the sorts that you can stop with a sheet of metal?” He asked.

  I considered that. Did he mean radio waves, or alpha particles, or what?

  I shook my head. “No, it takes several feet of dense material to stop it reliably. Stone and metal both work, and metal is actually a bit better, but a thin sheet will actually make it worse.”

  “How can a thin layer of protection make an attack worse? Unless the metal actually attracts it?”

  “Imagine an incredibly tiny ray of energy, with so much power behind it that it will burn right through a person and leave an invisibly small path of destroyed flesh in its wake. If one of these rays hits a sheet of metal it gets broken into multiple rays, each of which is weaker but still powerful enough to penetrate a human body. So instead of one line of damaged tissue you get several of them.”

  The alpha and beta particles would be a lot easier to stop than that, of course. But I had a feeling that a damaged enchantment would spew out a lot of really energetic particles, and I wasn’t enough of an expert to figure out exactly what form they’d take. We might get beta particles and gamma rays, or it might be something more like cosmic rays. Better safe than sorry.

  “I see. Then we’ll have to prepare a suitable vault for this purpose. I understand the need for proper caution, but I’m sure you realize that we’ll need to have physical possession of our power source.”

  I nodded. “Yes, I expected that. I just don’t have it with me. I intentionally made it big enough to be inconvenient to carry around, just to make it harder to steal. After all the problems Mara caused I want to think very carefully about security measures.”

  He sighed. “Yes. Mara. How did you discover her true nature, anyway?”

  I grimaced. “We were having a rather delicate conversation when she suddenly decided she needed to kill me.”

  He winced. “That sounds unpleasant. You must have excellent defenses, though. The reports I’ve heard about her battle at the temple were quite concerning.”

  “Yeah, she’s a tough one,” I admitted. “I’m lucky Elin was there, actually. She came to my defense, and I think Mara didn’t want to kill her for whatever reason. It threw her off balance long enough for me to overcome my surprise and regain the initiative, and then she decided to retreat instead of fighting it out.”

  “I suppose she isn’t likely to be back.”

  “No, she was here for the veil anchor,” I told him. “She actually tried to convince me to sit out the battle, but you can see how that turned out. By now she’s probably off to another city.”

  “Good. We have enough problems in Kozalin as it is. What about her supposed brother, Carl? Do you know what happened to him?”

  “I saw him helping Mara at the temple,” I told him. “I guess he must have been an enemy agent, but I never had the chance to learn any details. I was busy trying to stop Mara at the time, and then I had the undead to deal with.”

  It was a busy night,” Steelbinder agreed. “Speaking of which, I’d better see what those fools are up to before they cause another disaster.”

  Chapter 4

  Brand returned in triumph after a long day of fighting, and the double victory went a long way towards restoring the morale of Kozalin’s citizens. Not that they invited me to the victory celebration, or even the council of war they held the next day. I wouldn’t even have known about it if not for the fact that Captain Rain kept a sergeant posted at the war room most of the day to collect information about the city’s military situation.

  Being a former programmer I was used to being frozen out of the decision making. Management is a political game that I’ve never had much stomach for, and the men who do are relentless about excluding anyone who can’t compete with them in their field. I wasn’t sure if it was worth fighting that battle or not, since I didn’t really have any interest in local politics anyway. If they wanted to ignore me that just gave me time to strengthen my position more.

  The situation did, however, focus my attention on the fact that I needed more reliable sources of information. I couldn’t afford to be caught by surprise if the locals turned on me, and to avoid that I needed to know what was happening in the city. To solve that problem I turned to the people I knew had skills in that direction.

  Gronir had been a poacher before Fimbulwinter fell. Daria had been a thief, and was sneaky enough to steal from her own lord and get away with it. Cerise might seem like a brawler at first glance, but I often noticed her displaying the skills of a professional spy. It wasn’t perfect, but it was what I had to work with.

  I explained what I was looking for after the staff meeting one afternoon, after asking Avilla to make sure all the servants were too busy elsewhere to eavesdrop.

  “I know we’re not going to have spies in the prince’s secret meetings, or anything crazy like that,” I explained. “But we need to know what’s happening in the city. The mood of the people, the morale of the soldiers, that kind of thing. If there’s a major issue that the people are talking about I want to know, so I can decide whether to get involved. If the split between the prince and the Conclave gets worse, or someone starts agitating against us, I need to hear about it before things come to blows.”

  Cerise was grinning and nodding along. “Yes, I get the picture. Just a basic information gathering network, right? I’d already started on that, but I don’t have time to do it all myself.”

  “I suppose this is what you meant when you told me I could be a thief in your service, milord?” Daria said.

  “Agent,” Cerise corrected. “Stealing comes up once in a while, but mostly it’s just talking to people. Or killing them, but being wolfen will give you a big advantage there. Actually, I think we could bring in the whole pack on this. They have better senses than humans, and they aren’t going to get beaten up in a bar fight or knifed in a dark alley.”

  “It’d be good to have something to do, if we’re not going to fight the ape men,” Gronir allowed. “I don’t want the men getting bored. But we don’t rightly know much about spying.”

  Cerise waved off his concern. “All they need to do is go drinking in the right taverns and keep their ears open. I can organize that at first, until you and Daria get the hang of it. Daria, have you found any of the local fences yet?”

  Daria looked a little shamefaced at that. “Um, yes. Fayvel Roth’s shipping concern deals in a lot of different goods, and he doesn’t ask questions about where things came from. But I swear I haven’t been stealing from you, milord. I just, um, picked up a few things on the trip to Kozalin.”

  “I’m not worried about it, Daria. I trust you.”

  She seemed a bit taken aback at that, but Cerise gave me a knowing grin.

  “Yeah, we know you aren’t stupid Daria. So, want me to run this for you, Daniel?”

  “That would be a huge relief, if you feel comfortable managing this kind of thing,” I told her.

  “Awesome. I haven’t actually done it a lot, but I know the theory and it’s one of the things my magic is good at. Can I use the wolfen, and maybe some of Corinna’s girls now and then?”

  “Sure,” I agreed. “Just remember we need the wolfen for other things too. We’ve got work parties going out to gather lumber a lot, and I don’t want them crossing the river without a couple of wolfen along to check for ambushes. Although now that I think about it, Corinna’s dryads could probably handle that too.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking,” she agreed. “Split the scouting work between the two groups, so they have time for drinking and information gathering on the side. If we start pairing them up for work I bet the shortage of wolfen girls will stop being a problem, too.”

  Gronir mumbled something indecipherable. Daria smiled tolerantly. “Probably so.”

  “One last thing,” Cerise went on. “Can we recruit agents when a good chance comes up? I think we can get a lot of people on our side with just a few bits of help here and there. Heal a few pe
ople, promise them a place on the island if the city falls, things like that.”

  I shrugged. “Sure, as long as it doesn’t take a lot of my time. Just be careful not to attract attention doing it.”

  That launched Cerise on a detailed explanation of how to go about recruiting informants without getting caught at it, and by the time she was done I was convinced that she knew a lot more than I did about the subject. So I left it in her hands, and turned my attention to other things.

  I’d been wanting to have a real planning meeting with my girls, but we were all so busy it was hard to find the time. Especially since there were topics I wanted to touch on that I didn’t want aired in front of the rest of my staff. My chance finally came the next evening, after the coven’s nightly spellcasting session.

  Avilla and Cerise had a long list of magical wards in their respective grimoires, all of them designed to be cast by a coven. We’d begun erecting some basic protections against scrying and long-range curses during the snowstorm, but we had a long way to go before any of us would really feel that the island was secure. It was certainly a fun project to work on, though. The blending of power that was central to coven magic was a heady experience, exhilarating and intimate and often quite arousing. Casting wards didn’t call for as close a merging as the ritual that created the coven bond in the first place, but sharing emotions with four sexy women who all wanted me would have sorely tested my self-control if it wasn’t so exhausting. I could certainly see why coven members tended to be so promiscuous with each other. I’d been tempted to work out a magical solution to the fatigue issue a time or two, and I knew Tina and the witches would be game.

  But our Elin wasn’t ready for anything adventurous yet.

  So instead we were all lounging about in the master bedroom while we recuperated a bit. Cerise and Avilla were snuggled up together on my bed, with their clothes on the floor and a blanket hiding whatever sneaky mischief they might be getting up to with each other. Tina had draped herself across the foot of the bed, while Elin perched in one of the chairs of the little sitting area and I claimed the other.

  “I can’t believe how fast these wards are going up,” Cerise was saying. “Two days for comprehensive curse barriers? That normally takes months. I’m loving this endless power thing.”

  “Glad to hear it,” I chuckled. “Are the new amulets working out for everyone?”

  After the attack on the city I’d finally gotten serious about equipping my coven, and the amulets were the first step of that. Each of them acted as a self-contained power source, with an automatic healing enchantment and a substantial energy battery the wearer could draw on if she needed to cast something big in a hurry. Not that they were likely to need that anytime soon, since the output of the power source was more than enough to run any normal level of spellcasting. But it was good to prepare for the future.

  The healing effect had been a lot more troublesome than I’d first expected, because none of my girls were human. Each amulet had to be tuned to the specific biology of the wearer in order to work properly, and getting them to handle things like pregnancy and shapeshifting gracefully had taken some serious thought. A targeted healing spell was one thing, but there were a lot of ways an always-on healing field could have undesirable side effects. Fortunately my flesh sorcery had been up to the task.

  “I love it,” Avilla said. “Yesterday I just fell asleep when we finished our work. Now I can feel the fatigue melting away.”

  “Mine is helping me hold my shape, just like you hoped,” Elin told me. “I can feel it activating to restore my proper features whenever I start to change. The control interface is a bit complex, but I believe I can master it easily enough.”

  “Control interface?” Cerise asked. “Mine just lets me turn the healing field and mana feed off and on. What does yours need controls for?”

  “In theory I can designate what shape I wish the amulet to consider normal,” Elin explained. “It’s quite an impressive enchantment, especially since it operates entirely via intent control.”

  Cerise whistled appreciatively. “Intent control? That’s some serious wizardry there.”

  “Metamagic sorcery,” I explained. “I’m cheating shamelessly. If I had to figure out how to make that work on my own it would have taken years.”

  “It’s not just the sorcery thing,” Tina objected. “You’re scary smart too. Anyway, mine feels really nice. I can’t do much with the magic, but I think it’s good for the baby.”

  I didn’t ask how she knew. The stupendously buxom former maid didn’t know a thing about magic, but I could see that the divine blessings Bast had laid on her were being fed by her amulet now. The ancient goddess had been very grateful to Tina for agreeing to be the mother of her rebirth, and her magic was surprisingly clever about adapting to opportunities.

  My own flesh magic had made Tina a catgirl, but that had been a relatively simple transformation. Some cosmetic changes, a few biological enhancements like improved senses, and a little magical boost to some of her physical abilities. Bast’s magic was working deeper changes on her, gradually turning her into a rather formidable supernatural being. She was probably going to end up with physical abilities on a par with Cerise at this rate, and there was no telling what other powers she might manifest. I think Avilla was already a little jealous of the way she could step into a ritual and instinctively weave her part of the magic without having any idea what she was doing.

  I would have been more worried about the whole thing, except that so far Bast had been relentlessly benevolent in all of her dealings with us. She’d been effectively dead for several centuries, and if I hadn’t playfully tried out that catgirl transformation on Tina a week ago she could easily have stayed that way. I wasn’t sure what kind of existence ‘dead’ gods led, but considering the depth of her gratitude I suspected it was pretty bad.

  “So what are we going to tackle next?” Cerise asked. “I’m thinking spirit wards, so the Conclave can’t send ghosts to spy on us.”

  “I don’t know, kitten,” Avilla said. “That’s important, but I want to get some blessings and banes up soon. Especially if we’re going to keep bringing in more people. Is that going to be the plan, Daniel?”

  “That’s actually something I’ve been wanting to talk to all of you about,” I told her. “We’ve been running flat out for weeks now, just trying to get into a position where we’re safe enough that we can take time to stop and catch our breath. I think we’ve finally reached that point, though. So now it’s time to take stock, and put some thought into deciding where we want to go from here.”

  “What do you mean?” Tina asked, puzzled.

  “I mean we need to figure out how big we want this place to get, and what we want it to be like. I promised Hecate I’d create a refuge where she could send people who need help, but there are a lot of ways to do that. Do we just want to create an impregnable fortress to live in, or are we building a city? Do we want closer ties with Kozalin, or are we going to work towards being independent? Are we going to go out and actively try to save people, or just hide behind our walls and avoid danger as much as we can? That kind of thing.”

  “You’re asking us?” Elin said, surprised.

  I shrugged. “I know men don’t usually ask women for advice about that kind of thing here, but frankly I think that’s stupid. I’m sure you all have ideas to contribute.”

  “Not me,” Tina disagreed. “I know I don’t have a head for things like that. I just want a safe place to raise our children.”

  “Children, huh? How many were you planning to have?” I asked.

  “Oh, at least two or three litters,” she said lightly.

  “Litters?” I choked.

  The girls all giggled at that.

  “Well, I am half cat now,” Tina pointed out. “Who knows how that will work?”

  Elin looked her over thoughtfully. “Probably not like that. If you were going to have litters of children you’d have… um, other change
s. Cats can, ah, nurse more than two kittens at a time.”

  “Oh! You’re so smart, Elin. I never would have thought of that,” Tina replied.

  “Well, do keep in mind that she isn’t the only one,” Avilla added. “I want a big family of my own as soon as it’s safe. I’ve got it all planned out. First a son, so the other children will all have a big brother to look out for them. Then twin girls, and another boy, and-”

  Cerise put a hand over her mouth. “I don’t think Daniel needs to hear the whole plan right now, honeydew. But if we really want to make this place safe we’re going to need a lot more manpower, and I don’t know how we’re going to get it. Like Captain Rain said, we really need another two or three hundred soldiers armed with your new weapons to defend the island properly. I really wish we could get some magical backup too, but I can’t see a good way to do it. We don’t have years to spend training them.”

  “Mother Hestia said we’ll have hearth witches showing up,” Avilla pointed out. “That’s a start.”

  Cerise nodded. “Yes, but you really need two or three different specialties to make decent teams. Murder witches would be great, but apparently I’m the last one.”

  “Unless you’re going to haunt Hel’s battlefields looking for spirits to bind,” Avilla joked.

  Cerise got a thoughtful look. “You know, that might not be a bad idea. Hel has gotten her hands on a lot of us over the years, and she’s probably going to be sending them to fight the Aesir. But I doubt she’s going to spend the power to make fresh bodies for them once they fall in battle, and even dragging them all back to Hades is probably too much work when she’s busy running a war. There could be a lot of ghosts floating around where I can call them up. Familiar spirits aren’t as good as living witches, but there are other options.”