Maki stared at nothing, slumped deep in the armchair. One hand held a ceramic bowl while the other used chopsticks to grope for the noodles and pushed them towards his face. He chewed mechanically.

"What do you think?" Tayunti asked Bauma in a low voice, the two women huddled close together across the room from the currently dislocated translocator.

"I don't know," She sighed at her partner. “I'm beginning to get very worried. I don't think he's making it up." She bit her lip.

"Even that... Wizard?" It was what Maki had called the figure in the black robes. It wasn't exactly a nonsense term, but it wasn't really fashionable any more.

"That's what worries me the most. You know the kind of people who go in for all that olde worlde shit as well as I do."

Tayunti hushed ever quieter, like the black spectre was haunting the shop. "The societies? You told me they were jokes. Self-important old men wearing their great-grandfather's robes and pretending they know something everyone else doesn't. That's what you said."

Bauma raised a quiet finger of objection. "I said most of them were like that. The Cabal of the Luminous Truth shares space with a daycare for goodness sake."

Tayunti's eyes flashed. "And the others?"

Bauma kissed her teeth. "They are more." She pressed her hand to her forehead, the weight of her burdens showing suddenly. "Or at least they are better at pretending they are."

“What could they possibly want with Maki?”

“Nothing, probably. But the package he’s moving for his mystery client? There are still working Hierarchy relics to be found and the societies have always had their eyes on those. But it could be anything else. Maybe the stars just weren’t right for Maki. Maybe a bloody transataumancer ordained it.”

“So what can we do to help?”

Tough question, Tayunti. They had already done a lot - taking him in when he had shown up on their doorstep, listening to his disjointed story before giving him a sleeping draught and bundling him into their spare bed. He was looking a little better from the snooze, less like he was a mannequin from a clothing line designed for scarecrows. They both turned towards him, watched him carefully place his bowl of breakfast noodles to one side and stand.

“Bauma. Do you have:” and he counted backwards along his fingers. “Crushed carnelian; black chalk; bismuth crystals. Coffee?”

“You know I do, Maki.”

He nodded. “Coffee first, then the rest. I’ll need to pop back to my office as well, grab my notes.”

“What are you planning?” asked Tayunti, stepping over to block the door in case he should try and make another run for it.

“Do either of you know how a beacon actually works? No, I didn’t think so. It’s not really important, but to put it in terms you might be able to understand…” It took a lot of momentum to ignore the rapidly narrowing eyes of the two women, but Maki had it. “I should be able to reverse the ‘polarity’ of the beacon’s magic. So instead of using it to send something to a specific location, I can send myself to its current location. So, coffee?”

Bauma flicked a trailing sash of her sabisas over her shoulder in such a way to convey profound disapproval of both Maki’s patronising tone and his plan. She moved over to the shop’s coffee machine, which was at once one of the most technologically complicated things in the shop as well as its steadiest earner. The sound of steaming water and gurgling pipes mainly drowned out her mutterings.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Tayunti ventured. “There was a reason you came to stay with us last night.”

“Yes and no. I don’t think it’s a good idea. But I’ve been wracking my brain all morning and it is the best I can come up with. Nothing’s changed since last night except now I know I have to get rid of the package sitting in my office. I’m already a day late and I’ve heard people like that prefer punctuality.”

He looked mournfully at Tayunti.

“It’s not going to fix itself.”

She hesitated, but only for a moment. “Crushed carnelian, black chalk and bismuth crystals?”

Maki smiled. “And coffee.”

***

The preparations actually went very smoothly. After drinking his coffee far too quickly, Maki doored himself back to his office and quickly snatched up the various notes he had made. To his very great surprise, everything was as he had left it. He tried to avoid looking at the package that was the cause of all his problems but like a jilted lover at an office party there was a magnetic pull on his gaze. It was untouched and unharmed and still managed to glower back at him, wronged by his inattention, his little ‘portings on the side.

Back at the apothecary’s shop, things progressed quickly. Tayunti and Bauma might not have known very much about translocating but they were both first-class alchemists and knew how to work together. And more importantly, they knew how to do what they were told accurately and thoughtfully. It helped that Bauma’s usual clientele were not the sort who came round early on a Luntday morning, so the bone-clatters of a customer were few and far between.

They measured out the reagents according to Maki’s instructions, scribbled out answers to the exoteric calculations that were needed and drew out larger versions of the shapes he sketched in the black chalk.

By midday Maki was satisfied with their effort, stork-stepping through the shapes drawn onto the floor and scuffing out and correcting whatever small errors he noticed.

“This should do.” He added a few glyphs at the intersection of two triangles. “The trick.”

“What’s the plan for when you arrive… wherever you arrive?” Bauma asked.

Maki nodded. He had been expecting that question and had thus formulated what he considered to be a fool proof plan. “Step one: Grab the beacon. Step two: Run away. Any questions?”

The ashen expressions that the ladies shared did not inspire great confidence.

Tayunti wandered around the shop counter and reached beneath, pulling up a polished wooden club. “Would you like?”

Maki’s eyebrows shot up. Somehow, he doubted if he would have been so surprised to see Bauma hefting the weapon, the woman would have loved to bash around some unruly customers. But in Tayunti’s hands it looked so out of place that it took a moment before Maki remembered to shake his head. “No, thank you. I don’t want your… club? Using a weapon would be in violation of step two of the plan. And I’m going to stick to the plan.”

He flicked his wrists, his sleeves already rolled up. At the gesture, the chalks line began to glow a deeper black - a phenomenon the scientists of the world always resented. Especially when Maki would leave a glowing sigil in the university physics lab with a sticky note just reading: Explain this one, Science.

The magic was building, shaped by the arcane forms and directed by the combination of Maki’s will and the reagents, it was an invisible presence. It pulsed and as the spell moved towards its crescendo, it created brief visual distortions in the air, like dribbles of water down a pane of glass.

He closed his eyes, feeling the pull of the otherwhere beginning to tear at his substance. He had no notion of what to expect, where he would go or what he would see. Nothing leaked back through the fluctuating link with the beacon, nothing except a lingering sense of… dampness. He wavered, mentally and physically. He wasn’t really a brave man - it was just that currently his fears were running a race, and his fear of Mr. Q Unknown had a very good head start.

“Wish me luck,” he muttered to his friends, before releasing the structural hold on his physical body. Maki shattered into thousands, hundreds of thousands of shimmering shards, that fluttered as moths, a spherical flock that then dispersed into nothing in a silent explosion.

***

There was a fleeting sensation of being everywhere at once, which was mostly incredibly dull given the sheer vastness and frankly lazy efforts of the empty black gulfs of space. But quickly, as much as time had meaning in the interstices of reality, the beacon began to assert its magitational pull on Maki’s essence and he was pieced together in a shimmering swirl of fish-like flickers, coalescing into a vaguely humanoid spark. He glowed for a moment, his fractured form bleeding light until he was abruptly whole once more. He staggered, cut free from the magic propping him in place, his hands windmilling as he found his balance.

He was in utter darkness and for a moment he wondered if the spell had gone awry, transporting him to some underground deposit of carnelian. He could hear the steady drip of water and the air was stale and earthy, the scent of stone. But then his eyes began to adjust and it became apparent that he was probably not in some primeval subterranean cave, not unless there were some very enterprising plumbers about. Rusty pipework and cracked concrete summed up the decor, with hints of colonising fungi and moss. Balé on the plateau was the nice part of the city, but even it had its dingy and disused quarters. They were built down mostly, into the rock of the flat-topped mountain - ventures that hadn’t succeeded or ruins that had been converted into modern spaces and then converted again into memorials to the vagaries of economics.

There was an old metal door across from him that was hiding the main source of the light - the space between the door and frame glowing dim white-blue. If Maki knew anything about magic, and his webpage loudly proclaimed that he did, then he was fairly confident in recognising the hallmarks of a magelight. It was the cardinal rule of magic, its hard limit on any would-be Dark Lord - no casting without a caster. Which meant that there was someone waiting for him behind that door.

It probably also explained why the reverse homing spell hadn’t put him right on top of the beacon - the magelight’s magic distorting his spell. Knowing his luck, the mystery guest was probably looking straight at the gemstone.

The distance between fact and fiction suddenly became readily apparent to Maki. The heroes of all those movies and video games he consumed didn’t need to think about what they were doing - the course of action presented itself and was taken in one swift, graceful movement. In the battle on the rooftop of a speeding train, Maki realised he would be the guy who turns to look when the hero abruptly drops flat.

He didn’t want to think about what was waiting for him through the door, for it just meant that he started to catalogue all the interesting ways in which he could be murdered. The possibility he considered to currently have highest probability was being shot in the face and left to rot in an abandoned basement. Not even the alchemists would know where to begin looking for him.

So he tried to feign at being a hero, creeping towards the door. He didn’t have many choices, in the plainest sense of the word - the room he had appeared in only had one exit. It wasn’t locked, and for a rusty metal door set in a troglodytes’ haven, it swung open fairly quietly. Maki nipped through, crouched low in what he assumed was good sneaking technique. The next room was much bigger and active in all the ways a decaying building could be. Pipes dripped and concrete flaked, vermin rustled and made themselves visible by trying to hide. There was graffiti on the wall, which meant that for a time at least, the basement had served as a hidey hole for one gang or another.

A motionless point of light hung in the centre of the room, sending stark shadows leaping back from every protrusion, an explosion frozen in the umbral realm. The true source of the light was beneath, crouched in the muck with their back to Maki. Even though they were just a silhouette to him, there was no doubt in his mind that it was the same figure that had accosted him in the Professor’s office.

They were fiddling with something on the ground, but Maki couldn’t make it out around their body. It had to be the beacon. But what was he to do? There was a lot of fancy magic a person could learn that would have been useful in this scenario - a conjuror might summon binding tentacles from a cephalopod dimension; a necromancer could raise the dead spirit of the building in some vengeful blood-from-the-walls manner. A certain annoying kind of evoker could just start flinging fireballs. But Maki had been called to the noble and peaceful art of translocating.

In the comics he would just have teleported in a puff of smoke, grabbed the beacon and then bamfed away in another puff of smoke. But comics always left out the important bits; like re-orientating himself after the first jump so he didn’t transport himself into the middle of a wall or the very long seconds it took to actually perform the magic.

Maki was, he was discovering, not entirely equipped for the job.

And, a lot louder than he thought he was.

The wizard snapped their neck round and Maki’s heart did a little somersault. Not only because he was instantly spotted, but also because as the wizard’s head turned, their waist twisted around as well, and the object in their left hand came into view.

It was one of the most recognisable shapes in all the world, as simple as a child folding down their last two fingers and pointing. Maki’s hands moved without needing instruction - palms out, lifting above his head.

“Please…” he whispered, trying to find the wizard’s eyes, to share in that common humanity but also knowing that they must have looked Chioté in the eyes when they had shot her.

The black figure moved like they had been choreographed, smoothly standing and turning. The gun remained by their side, but it remained threatening nonetheless. Weapons like that were not common in Balé, plateau or root, and it was the first one Maki had ever seen in real life. The magic light gilded its edges and the barrel was extended.

Not a silencer, Maki manically corrected, a suppressor.

“You again. Dr. Engazi.”

They took a step towards him and Maki shrank back, turning his head away. It was mildly gratifying that at least his killer would know his name, but it would be a cold comfort when the bullet drilled into his vitals.

Why couldn’t he stop looking at it? It was just an artfully shaped piece of metal. It wasn’t as if there weren’t nine hundred and nine spells that could do worse things to him than a gun. Maybe it was just that anyone could pick it up and instantly become deadly, whereas a spell always needed a well-trained caster.

The wizard obviously picked up on the object of his obsessions, for they glanced at the weapon as if noticing it for the first time. They snorted and without ceremony tossed it to the floor.

“What are you doing here, Dr. Engazi?”

Without the lethal threat of the gun hanging over him, Maki found himself relaxing slightly. His hands lowered and he straightened up. It was only when the relief almost caused a grin that he belatedly remembered the circumstances of their last meeting.

“The bea- the gemstone.” he muttered. The thought of lying didn’t even enter his mind - the devious part of Maki still had his hands up.

The wizard was physically taken aback, literally taking a half step away from him, like his words had been flecked in vomit. They reached into a pocket and withdrew the beacon.

“All that for this piece of…” they weighed it in their hand. “Trash?”

“Please, this is between you and my client. I don’t want to be involved.”

“Your client?”

Maki had never been on very sure footing - not since waking up with a blinding headache and the firm conviction that gemstones were going to change the world somehow, or at least that the Professor was convinced that was the case. But even that rickety, cobbled together platform of beliefs was beginning to shudder in the face of the wizard’s confusion.

It collapsed completely when they began to laugh.

“Unbelievable…”

The wizard looked at him silently for a long moment and Maki debated making a move. Unfortunately for the aspects of him proposing the motion, they did not bring a single viable plan to the table, so they were unanimously defeated. He stood frozen, annoyed at his own passivity.

But something about him clearly met with the wizard’s approval, for they reached up to their hood and mask, pulling them away to reveal that they were in fact she under the robes. Jekh, if Maki was any judge, her skin unlined and golden brown, her hair glossy and black, pinned up behind her head.

It was not a turn of events that Maki had been expecting and he had no reply ready. Instead he got stuck into that glitchy, half-buffered video look of being about to speak without actually ever saying anything.

“Dr. Engazi. There is more at stake here than your professional reputation. Far more.” She tossed the beacon at him and Maki clapped seal-like for it, managing to miss it entirely.

“But the killer.” For even in such trying circumstances, Maki’s monumental intellect had teased out that the wizard was unlikely to have been the murderer. “They took my beacon…”

The wizard nodded and took a step aside, gesturing at the discarded gun and a small pile of what looked like clothes. “And then they brought it to this abandoned location and dumped it, along with the murder weapon and other incriminating items. Hidden amongst the disposed forever.”

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Something about that filtered into the confused fog that constituted Maki’s brain in that moment. “They took Chioté’s notes though. They aren’t here.”

“Exactly. They threw away what was not needed and kept only what was important. Your involvement is a complete accident.” She folded her arms across her chest. Her Old Republic nose did not help with Maki’s impression that she was looking down at him. “A victim of the mere coincidence of your beacon being a gemstone.”

Keeping his gaze on the wizard, he bent his knees and retrieved the length of carnelian. He had got what he had come for, at least. But getting it had not led him down the path to understanding as he had thought it would. Worse, suddenly he was back where he started. His friend was dead and he had no idea why.

“Who did this?”

“We don’t know,” she finally muttered and for the first time, Maki thought he saw a hint of humanity in the woman’s expression. In the harsh glare of the magelight she lowered her eyes and frowned. Then, as subtle as a change in the lighting, the wizard was back.

“Would you like to help us find out?”

***

She took him to her car, which was a minor surprise. There weren’t too many of those on the topside of Balé, not with the hassle of getting them up onto the plateau in the first place. There were the lifts of course, and the two winding ramps, but most people preferred to take the traditional route - walking onto one of the wide circular platforms set at the base of the mountain and being teleported as part of a crowd by a gang of ‘portists working in harmony. Once up on the plateau public transport took over. And bicycles. Great shoals of bicycles dragged behind the placid slow-moving buses. The streets of Balé had been designed when twisted, narrow alleys and huge pedestrian plazas were in vogue.

It was a nice car though, foreign of course. Balé did have its own attempt at a local car industry, a vanity project started the last time the city had made a push for independence. It still hobbled along, subsidised to the bone, but the vehicles they put out were more useful as a punchline on the comedy circuit than as transportation. Ironically, the people most likely to be seen in a Nommo Classic were the affluent city Councilors, trying to look Of The People.

The wizard’s car had air-conditioning, and soft leather seats. It was comforting enough to lull Maki into a false confidence. He had asked the wizard her name.

“Kulit Mozir,” she had answered with finality. Not a huge amount of openings to work with as conversations went. So he tried another, something that had bothered him since finding out she didn’t want to kill him.

“How did you find that basement?”

She glanced at him, weighing him up on some rather unfairly weighted scales. “I followed the Scent of Murder.” Well, that was a kind of magic he had never heard of and probably made her the best kind of wizard. A necromancer.

And that had been the end to any of his questions - not for a lack of effort, for Maki was blithely wordy when he found a captive audience. It was just that there was something very tortoise-like about Kulit - not at all in her physicality, but in the essence of stoic silence, of patience. The ability to appear as if she did not understand nor care about the words coming out of his mouth.

Maki eventually took the hint and settled in to see where they were headed. It was then he noticed Kulit’s hands gripping the steering wheel. They were scaled, a mottled amber.

There were a number of creatures in the world that combined human features with scales and none of them were ones Maki wanted to be sharing an enclosed space with. Ketu and Nüwa and Lamia, oh my. Their relations with humans had all been punctuated by someone dislocating their jaw and choking down a torso. Unconsciously, Maki puffed himself up and stuck out his elbows, trying to look as unswallowable as possible.

Then Kulit reached to twist a knob on the dashboard and her sleeve pulled far enough up her wrist so that Maki could see that they were not her hands, but tightly-fitted gloves. Obviously.

The silence from that point onwards was mainly his own work.

They drove into one of the nicer districts of stately pale buildings, each one stamped with the logo of whichever department or corporation owned the insides. It quickly became apparent where they were heading, as like many students too young to have any good sense, Maki had once come to gawk at the self-proclaimed champions of magic.

“Oh shit, you really are one of them, aren’t you?”

Kulit just gave him a Look and pulled the car into the parking area next to the building. She turned off the engine and twisted in her seat.

“Is this going to be a problem, Dr. Engazi?”

“Oh what? That you are part of a secret shadowy league, with its own dark and twisted agenda. And not just any society, no, but the secret society. The one people think rig elections and silence dissenters with maze spells. Nah, we’re cool.”

Kulit pressed the fingertips of one hand between the knuckles of the other. “You shouldn’t believe everything you read on the internet. My order-”

Maki interrupted. “The Bloody Ancient and Exalted Order of the Secret Word!”

“My order,” Kulit continued, “merely wants to safeguard a legacy of human ingenuity against the short-sighted forces of technological ‘progress’.”

“Sure, and the President just ran for office to help the poor. Did you read that off a press release?”

“Fine! Think what you wish. Can you at least accept that in this instance, we want the same thing?”

Maki had to think about that one. There really was no telling what a magical society could want. He had no cognates but the wild rumours that abounded about them. “I’m not convinced yet. Let me talk to someone in charge and I’ll make up my mind.”

Kulit smirked and nodded, clicking open her door and getting out as she spoke. Maki hurried to keep up.

“It just so happens I was going to report to one of the Braided Circle. Does that satisfy you?”

He swallowed. Like all magic enthusiasts of a certain age, the secret societies had once fascinated Maki, and the Order of the Secret Word was the most fascinating of them all. The claims of being the repository of ancient and forgotten knowledge, the layers upon layers of membership and nested secrecy, the central mystical goal. Reading about them was like living in a thriller novel.

“That’s the top level.” He pronounced, remembering days of comparing societies with his friends, a top trumps game of which had the best heraldry or the coolest titles for its ranks. He trotted after Kulit’s brisk pace up the stairs. “I mean, they run the show?”

“Yes.”

His palms were sweaty. Why were his palms sweaty? The last time that had happened he had thought he was going to get shot. Yes, the societies were meant to be strict magical meritocracies, so the most adept and powerful of mages were in charge, but surely that was just an old-fashioned boast? These days being able to hold your own in a magical duel was for the movies and military special forces. It was so distracting a claim though, that Maki hardly noticed the interior of the lodge.

Kulit did not hang about, moving with purpose down corridors and up steps. There were few enough people about, and not one of them was chanting or wearing a cowled robe. They didn’t even give Maki a second look, which considering he was penetrating their deepest levels of secrecy, he thought was rather blasé of them.

“Dr. Maki Engazi. Dr. Yorub Jonil, current Snakehead of the Braided Circle.” Kulit gestured to a small, rotund man with a great white smile and a smokestack tower of grey hair.

“Vice-Chancellor?” blurted Maki.

The Vice-Chancellor of Balé University flipped his wrists down, like Maki had just complimented him on his new shoes.

“But… you hate the magical departments of the University? You’re always threatening our funding.”

Dr. Jonil had the look of an uncle who knew far too many stories of youthful parental indiscretions.

“And how many times have I been successful in that, Dr. Engazi? Maki? Yes, you will be Maki and I will be Yorub. So?”

“Well…” Now that he mentioned it, the loud speeches that the Vice-Chancellor always seemed to be making around budget time never appeared to have much of an effect. The twinkle in Yorub’s eye was annoyingly knowing.

“You begin to see, don’t you? An obnoxious voice is very easy to dismiss and the cause they carry with them so often gets tossed out at the same time. I provide a very weak standard to rally around for those who wish to diminish the importance of a magical education. A small role, but one I enjoy playing.”

“You lead the Secret Word?” It was hard for Maki to believe. He had never had much interaction with the Vice-Chancellor, nodded across the room in a few faculty parties, but he had seen him on the TV enough times. The man was a minor celebrity in the way that academics hoped to be, having written some successful books on the history of science - his most audacious claim being that the Hierarchy owed most of its hegemonic power not to its magical dominance but its technical achievements. “I didn’t even know you had studied magic.”

“My first degree was in Astrology actually.” Yorub smiled and took Maki’s hand, patting it gently as he tugged him into a well-appointed study. It was a measure of Maki’s discombobulation that he did not immediately move over to look at the titles of the books on the shelves, as was his normal practice upon meeting a new place.

“And lead is much too strong a word. The Snakehead is appointed according to portents and omens to ensure impartiality and we are only there to guide and structure the Braided Circle. Like the chair of any mundane committee really.”

“And the Dragon?” Maki could not resist the question. It wasn’t as if he really believed in the existence of a hidden grandmaster, but what kind of nerd would he be if he didn’t at least ask?

Yorub sighed with a warm-hearted weariness. “Oh, if we had a ringot for every time we were asked that question. No, Dragon is a myth. We do not feel the requirement to have a completely secret ruling cabal and then an even more secret leader on top of that. We do not operate at that level of absurdity.”

Maki shrugged and dropped down onto one of the pillows on the floor. With a creak, Yorub lowered himself down opposite him. He looked for the wizard and found her prowling tiger-like behind him. She might as well have had ‘bodyguard’ stencilled onto her forehead for all her earlier tact. Maki actually found it a bit thrilling, that the societies had their own brand of magical enforcers and that she was one of them. That probably said a lot about his sexual orientation.

“I suppose you will want to know what’s going on,” Yorub said.

“I want to know why someone would kill the Professor,” Maki replied, setting his gaze to stern. “And why a society supposedly concerned with a decent magical education is so interested in her death.”

Yorub glanced over his shoulder, presumably to give Kulit the order to disintegrate the insolent fool and Maki twitched, but was relieved to see the old man sigh and link his fingers across his generous belly. “What did Professor Hounsol tell you about her latest research?”

Maki waved his hand vaguely. “She was wittering about an unusual effect she had noticed in the crystals she had used to store memories. Something about a degeneration, or instability?”

“It was much more than that. She’d noticed that effect some months ago - that gemstones and crystals used to store magical information suffered a structural instability. The magic lattice itself was not affected, which probably explains why the anomaly was not detected until now. Or perhaps Chioté was just smarter than everyone else.”

“I don’t understand why noticing a minor quirk of spellwork would get her killed?”

Yorub shook two fingers. “That was just the beginning of her research, Maki. What Chioté discovered was that the magic laced into the gemstones was feeding off its structure. At the tiniest scale, the gemstone was fuelling the magic.”

Now that was like a litre of Angel Sweat applied directly to Maki’s brain. He sat upright and his eyes glazed, the intellectual edge of his personality wedging itself to the front of his thoughts.

“But…”

Yorub’s voice was insistent though. “She was on the cusp of something truly revolutionary. Evolutionary. We believe she was close to designing an arcane generator fuelled by gemstones.”

“Casting without a caster,” Maki whispered.

“Yes,” Yorub urged. “You’ve imagined the possibilities, we all have. With a source beyond our frail bodies we will be able to construct grand magical projects, the likes of which could scarce be dreamed of, even in the days of the Hierarchy. No longer will magic be the province of the educated and the privileged - everyone will be free to benefit from its bounty.”

Maki’s mouth fell open as he tried to process the sheer enormity of Chioté’s discovery. While his brain was thus occupied, his mouth continued the conversation. “I’ll be out of a job,” he muttered, which made Kulit choke from behind his back. The Vice-Chancellor just grinned, teeth uncommonly bright.

“No no no. You will just have to evolve to fit a new landscape! Most people who use a computer have no idea how it works - the machines and programs are created by expert technicians. This will be the role of the magician in the future. Artisanal craftspeople for an unlimited power.”

“A power you wanted for yourselves.”

For the nominal head of a secret society, Yorub had the good grace to look offended, but Maki jabbed an accusing finger toward him before he could get his blame-shifting motors started.

“Don’t treat me like an idiot. I know the Professor wasn’t just handing over all her findings to you. She thought people like you were a bunch of ass-backwards hermits. Which means that you were watching her, snooping where you had no business snooping. So don’t tell me you’re looking for her killer out of the kindness of your hearts. You want her research back.”

Yorub made a small noise in the back of his throat and his lips pursed together. Maki recalled that no one knew where he was and that a very well trained enforcer was waiting over his shoulder. The Vice-Chancellor gave said bodyguard another long look before returning his gaze to Maki. “It is true. We desperately want to get our hands on Professor Hounsol’s research. I cannot believe that whoever has it now has anyone’s but their own best interests at heart.” He steepled his fingers in front of his chin. “Do you know why we are called the Order of the Secret Wo-”

“Kamula,” Maki interrupted, to Yorub’s great chagrin. “Everyone knows the word is Kamula. There are fourteen year olds posting on forums who write essays about it. The internet. You should check it out.”

“Yes, well. Kamula. That is what we are for, what we have always ever been for. And Kamula belongs to everyone, can only belong to everyone. We, the Braided Circle, believe that Chioté’s generator may be a great step towards it.”

Maki had to remember who he was dealing with, which meant taking his natural scepticism and keeping it warm under his arse for a time.

Kamula.

It had its technological reflection. That was called the Singularity - the point beyond which it was pointless to speculate on the powers our machines might have for they would have progressed past human capabilities. Designed without human designers.

Kamula was something like that. It was the older sibling, born in an age when magicians were probing at the limits of their powers, working in concert to construct vast, reality-shaping rituals. It was meant to be the ultimate fusing of humankind and magic, the point where there would be no difference between the two. Where thought and will and casting were one. Apotheosis.

There were legends of a handful of individuals making that leap: Clever Owu and the Divided Queen, a couple from Haepon and the other western countries. Even one, Prester Layne, the Wild Mage, from what became the March Federations, a region of the world hardly known for magical excellence.

It had long since been quietly wheeled into a cluttered corner of the lore along with the faery courts and the Elixir of Life, occasionally to be dusted off and examined by historians and anthropologists. Microchips and microscopes would lead to the transcendence of humanity, not rituals and henges.

Except in the halls of secret powers, it seemed.

“We would not keep this to ourselves. We could not.”

Maki licked his teeth under his lips. He couldn’t know whether or not the Vice-Chancellor was telling the truth - they were called secret societies for good reason. There were numerous theories of their codes and creeds but while there was enough to corroborate his story about being a benign organisation, there was also a swathe that painted the Order as the bastard offspring of a psychopath and a megalomaniac.

But something in Yorub’s little speech spoke to him in the language of Chioté. There was no doubt in Maki’s mind that if she had been able to crack the secret of the arcane generator that she would have put the schematics up on her blog the next day. There was no self-aggrandizement to be found in her personality, only the glory of discovery and the never-ending awe at the world’s majesty. He had never quite understood her, not really, never been able to not care what others thought like she could.

What he did know was that she would not have stood for her discovery being hidden away. Maki didn’t care about Kamula, firstly because he didn’t accept the logic of its arguments and secondly because Kamula didn’t keep the electricity running. But he did care about his friend, and what being a friend meant. It wasn’t his strongest skill, for there were no rulebooks, or step-by-step guides to download, only the vague fog in his mind that was telling him that Chioté’s legacy mattered, that it was an obligation that bridged the desert to the Land of the Dead.

It was a very awkward feeling for Maki, being motivated by another’s cause. At first he thought he just really needed to burp.

Then a mobile buzzed and Kulit quickly excused herself to take a call. Much as if he had actually burped, the magic of the moment was broken.

“You were watching her then?” he asked, dropping the conversation back down to earth as fast as a poorly designed satellite.

Yorub grimaced, then nodded. “We were. We observe a few such people - keeping an eye on their research, in case we need to guide them in the right direction. The Professor may have refused our invitation to join, but as much as an outsider could be, she was one of us.” He sighed, but waved himself through the regret. “We used the traditional techniques, scrying and the like. We were fairly certain that Professor Hounsol was aware of us watching. It seemed to amuse her more than anything. But lately it became apparent we were not the only one to have our eyes on the Professor. We watched a local private eye placing bugs around her office.”

“What?” Maki sat upright on the floor. He had been in that bloody office! Said things! About non-fictional people! People he may or may not have drawn pay cheques from!

“We were naïve.” And the guilt was not hidden on Yorub’s face. Snakehead he may have been, but the Vice-Chancellor was a man who opened his heart wide to people and suffered for it. “We did not believe that someone would go so far…” His voice trailed away.

“Do the police know about this guy?”

“When Kulit searched the office after your… meeting, she found that the bugs had been removed. We presume that the Professor’s computer was trashed not only to destroy her notes but also to remove any trace of the spyware they might have loaded onto her machine.”

“In other words, no, you’re keeping that one to yourself.”

“Shall we speak more of keeping facts out of police hands, Dr. Engazi, or would that be too much like the heron calling the stork spindly-legged?”

A mild but fair rebuke, given the carnelian weighing down his pocket. It still made Maki flush red, an unpleasant cocktail of embarrassment and anger. He swallowed it down.

Any retort - and he had been working on a good one, something involving giving head like a snake - was cut short by Kulit striding into the room. She held her mobile up as if it signified something other than Kulit’s poor taste in phone cases.

“That was Ceza. She was able to track down the account which paid the PI.”

Arcs of electricity practically sizzled off the bodyguard, she was so energised. Maki wasn’t wearing rubber boots but he had never been happy with ignorance. He raised his golf club into the thunderhead.

“Ceza?”

A gorgon would have called the look Kulit gave him a little spine-chilling, but she answered the question. “One of our Third Circle sisters. She works in the Financial Crimes Enforcement Bureau and I had her looking into our PI’s bank accounts. We’ve got a name, Snakehead.”

“Good work! Let’s hear it.”

The mention of the Order’s penetration of Balé’s civic structure was so casual that Maki almost accepted it without question. Then the weight of it dragged his jaw down. Unfortunately for him, his quiet finger waggle trying to raise a Point of Contention did not attract much notice.

“The person who paid the PI is one Opal Le’Thosa. The money came out of a secondary account which Ceza couldn’t track back any further. Any payments into that came from anonymous accounts from the Federations.”

Even Maki knew that was a financial brick wall. The March Federations had made a name for themselves with their lax banking regulations, low tax rates and client secrecy provisions. If there was a name in their systems, it was hidden in a vault that didn’t even open when the Horeshi government flexed its hegemonic muscles. For a minute he had really thought they had them.

“But,” Kulit continued, “She has a primary account. Which every month gets paid a salary by the Nommo Motor Company.”

“Nommo?” Maki and Yorub said together, their disbelief harmonising rather nicely.

“Vice-President of Marketing is what it says online. Does rather well for someone working for a failing company.”

“You have to get to Nommo, Kulit,” Yorub ordered, his hand grasping at his chin, rubbing and tugging with his agitation. “You must find those notes!”

“Nommo?” Maki was still stuck on that little titbit. Of all the organisations he would have pegged as being behind a murderous conspiracy, Nommo wasn’t even doing the catering for the committee drawing up the shortlist.

“I’ll head out now. The offices should still be empty.”

Maki was up on his feet in a flash, mouth moving while his brain was still floating up through his lungs. “I’ll come with you.”

The two Wordites both raised a single eyebrow, flicking their expressions to an italic angle. Finally he had the chance to think about what he was asking for and was rather surprised to find that his brain was in full support.

“You want to get to Nommo fast, right? There’s no one faster.”

Yorub and Kulit shared a silent communication and then the bodyguard gave a sharp nod.

“Very well. Show me what you can do.”