Killstop merely snorted and turned her focus elsewhere; Stormsword smiled affectionately at me, and I knew I’d picked the right side in that little battle.
It was the twenty-ninth of Illost, one of the months that had thirty days. In three days, on the second of Mortifost, the final month of the year, we would have another full moon and another Gathering to attend – and sure enough, on the Master Clock, the little symbol of the full moon had been showing there on the cog marked ‘Mortifost 2’, just wheeling into view when we’d visited. The contraption was comprised of what must have been a million moving parts, and was the size of a house. The engine at its core was a series of sealed glass tubes standing there like statues for all to gawp at, twenty feet or more in height, the coloured waters inside moving from fluid to vapour and back again in precisely-controlled intervals, heated by spellbound plates underneath, fire-runes glowing to my sorcerer’s-eye. In the very middle was a centrifuge in which the different liquids were spun and separated, a beautiful example of the discipline called ferromancy, one of the trickiest wizardries. The huge clock-face on the outside of the building, facing down into the central district of Hightown, had hands not only for seconds and minutes and hours, but for days and months and years too. You could see at a glance that this year was three hundred and sixty-eight days long, could see which months were what length and why.
I’d always been of the opinion that thirteen months made most sense, following the moon cycles more closely, like in the Tales From The Dark Side. The undead-apocalypse story-books set in the fictional world of Nirvanos that I’d read as a child were clearly written in an attempt to normalise the world we lived in for Mundian children – they certainly toned down the horror while keeping everything deliciously grim. (Jaid managed to get through them all last year – Jaroan was still halfway, but stubbornly continued to insist he was still reading them whenever I tried to move his current one back to the shelf.) The way I understood it, the system they used in the books would only need correcting by slightly lengthening Yearsend…
Or why not ten (almost forty-day) months? The highborn, magister types loved the number ten for whatever reason. However, witnessing the fabled Master Clock, I had to admit that whoever had invented the damned thing was clearly several orders of magnitude more intelligent than me, and probably had at least one good reason, if not a hundred, for the whole twelve-month, twenty-four hour setup. Not that the Chronoministers would allow any changes to come from secular sources, anyway – the sect of Chraunost’s priests who actually approved of the Master Clock went completely overboard in their devotion, a pair of them dressed in severe robes and expressions at every access point to dissuade touching.
The best part of the tour, according to my sister at least, was getting to see the device’s special Yearsend hand. It was decorated in the green and gold colours of the holiday, crawling its way towards the last five days of the year that fell into no month, ‘Yearsend 1’ through ‘5’ rolling around into view. Yearsend, the festival period famous the world-over, a holiday that would see everyone in the city, native and tourist alike, take to the streets for the carnivals and entertainment in defiance of the winter’s chill.
Only a few more weeks away now.
A few more weeks of pointlessness.
Other than defeating the two dark archmages during the whole twin arch-wizard fiasco, we’d achieved little. Me and Em had stopped a fire – well, Flood Boy and Em had stopped a fire – and we’d caught a few lame-ass inkatra-fuelled criminals mid-crime. We tagged along when Doomspeaker disrupted a cult of Vaylech breeding an army of giant bugs in the Hilltown sewers, but the critters and craven priests didn’t even put up a thirty-second fight. I did manage to claim a decent prize from Zakimel’s messenger for taking a crate of cursed items out of the hands of some idiotic merchants. Killstop helped Glancefall and Spiritwhisper take down Rainlost, a wizard infamous in Rivertown, which was probably the most momentous event of the month since Zadhal – as far as the general citizenry were concerned, at least. (The criers hadn’t breathed a word about twin arch-wizards, of course.)
And – other than that – our metaphorical hands were empty.
Nighteye – traceless. I seemed to be the only one who still harboured hopes he would return to us, and even when I espoused my view I said it with a sour taste in my mouth, knowing I was hoping against hope itself. Yune hadn’t answered my prayers. Mortiforn’s creepy ‘Mr. Owl’ claimed to know nothing when I took a planar jaunt to his daydream world. Zel hadn’t found a single lead, and had apparently been blocked from viewing Nighteye’s home troubles by the interaction of the two powerful arch-diviners who’d been visiting. If she weren’t my bound eldritch I’d have questioned whether she was just doing the same as Tanra, trying to stop me doing something I’d later regret, but I had her swear by her name and she still claimed to be in the dark.
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Dreamlaughter – less than traceless. Less than a ghost, a fiction of imagining. For all we knew, we’d never even seen her in her true form – what exactly were we even supposed to be looking for? Yet it was six times now that she’d intruded on our operations – she’d clearly taken our disruption of her ghost-illusion on Ekenrock Road personally. Either that, or she’d just been waiting for someone like us to come along, provide her with a challenge. Whatever the explanation, she’d started making our lives hellish with as great a regularity as she could manage. In the midst of a fruitless afternoon spent with Irimar wandering South Lowtown – ostensibly helping him search for Duskdown, but really doing little more than offering an ear for the arch-diviner’s worries – I was suddenly deluged in puppies falling from the sky. One night Em had been thrown into what appeared to be a huge, horizon-to-horizon bath while flying over Hilltown.
Fortunately, we both had abilities or assistance enabling us to escape Dreamlaughter’s range when she struck our perceptions with these stupid images. Unfortunately, she’d only been lulling us into a false sense of security. In the midst of the fire we extinguished in south-west Sticktown, we both put ourselves in danger to rescue people who simply weren’t there; and whilst the danger was mild at worst, considering our abilities, it meant she was changing the nature of the game. It was nothing more than a warning.
She hadn’t touched us for a week but we were going into a heretic situation today or tomorrow. Would she leave us unmolested through that ordeal?
And then there was this latest attack last night. The reason we’d been summoned today. Not an attack on us – not directly. She’d made it political.
In spite of all our disappointments with the kidnapped druid and the wayward enchantress – or perhaps because of them – I was really looking forward to Yearsend. All this would be over by then – the upcoming heretic attack, this business with the politicians… hopefully Dream, too, and if there were still no signs of Nighteye by then, even I would give up hope…
Yearsend was a form of escape, in those few sweet hours I reserved for just hanging out with the twins: instead of gaming we often went shopping nowadays, an activity newly opened up to us by the fact my purse was in fact rather full at the moment. I’d already bought presents for Orstrum and Xantaire and Xastur, and a small candy present for Morsus that Orstrum would take to his grave – a gift Xastur had suggested, all out of nowhere. Them aside, I had a few things in mind for the twins. (They were already aware No Eldritch Mounts was a hard rule I wouldn’t bend on.) For Em, I’d eyed over a dozen gifts, and I was on the verge of splurging my cash by just getting everything I’d spotted, rather than forcing myself to choose between a first-edition Magister’s Handbook with some hilariously-outdated rules, awesome decorative phoenix-style wings of real dragonscale, a miniature working replica of the Master Clock that had so enraptured her, a cookbook called Too Hot To Handle… perhaps I’d skip that one…
The door opened abruptly – ushered in by a guard, Spiritwhisper entered the room, wide-eyed behind his mask.
“A-alright, chaps,” he stammered, trying to look nonchalant. His gaze took in me and Em, then lingered a little longer on Tanra.
“I know, right,” I said with a grin.
The arch-enchanter seemed to relax his tense stance a little, nodded to me. “Man, why’d we have to come here? You seen the way they look at you? You should hear what they’re thinkin’… or not, you know?”
“I just hope they aren’t going to drag us over the coals,” Stormsword said. “Do you have any idea of what they want with us, Bor?”
He shook his head. “I’m not gonna do a deep search. Probberly trip a dozen wards… if they got any sense, anyway. But no one I’ve met is actually thinking of what’s goin’ on with us. Don’t think they’re high-up enough to know why we’re here.”
I nodded my agreement.
“What’s going on out there?” Killstop muttered, sounding frustrated.
“They can’t see us till the others arrive.” Stormsword, whose voice fitted-in nicely with our opulent surroundings, seemed less ill-at-ease than the arch-diviner. “I do wonder what is keeping Timesnatcher, though.”
“I don’t mean that – I mean – out there –“ the young seeress gestured at the window “– with the waywatchers…”
“What about the waywatchers?” Stormsword blurted, standing up straight.
“Those are the magister-guards with the funny shoulder-pads?” I asked.
Stormsword nodded at the same time Killstop shook her head.
“I don’t know what’s happening with them.” The diviner’s words were almost so quiet I couldn’t make them out. “If I knew what was happening, I…”
“I don’t think it’s worth troubling yourself over,” Lovebright said, leaning forwards in her chair. “Try to relax. I’m more worried about what the First Lady’s going to say to us!”
I happened to agree with Jo.
Killstop let out a shuddering breath. “I just don’t like waiting. Waiting, and eyes. Eurgh.”
“And yeah, you’re right, Storm,” the enchantress continued, as though Killstop hadn’t said anything. “Where the Hells is our great leader, and his mount?”
Killstop sniggered – it took the rest of us a moment longer to realise Lovebright was referring to Neko sitting astride Irimar’s shoulders, back on that afternoon when we’d first met the gnome. It was a pretty bad joke, but we all laughed along anyway. She was trying, bless her. It was endearing, the way she could be so painfully awkward sometimes.
It was five more minutes before Jo, Bor and Tanra seemed to perceive almost simultaneously that the others were arriving – and it was five more minutes after the arch-diviner and arch-druid arrived, well past one o’ clock, that the envoy finally ‘collected’ us.
* * *