Chrishangers!

A Decade of Writing

Christopher G. Nuttall

http://www.chrishanger.net
http://chrishanger.wordpress.com/
http://www.facebook.com/ChristopherGNuttall

Cover By Tan Ho Sim
https://www.artstation.com/alientan

All Comments Welcome!

Contents

A Note on Prior Publication
Foreword, by Pete Buck
Introduction
Hasdrubal’s Tale (Schooled in Magic)
Alassa’s Tale (Schooled in Magic)
The Right Thing To Do (Schooled in Magic)
A Little Knowledge (Schooled In Magic)
The Man Behind The Curtain (Schooled in Magic)
The Second Battle of Dorking (Stand Alone)
A Strategic Analysis of European Defence and Security Policy Immediately Prior to the EU-Russia War (The Fall of Night)
When The King Enjoys His Own Again (Alternate History)
The Kaiserin of the Seas (Alternate History)
Drang nach Osten (Alternate History)
Sealion Fails (Alternate History)
A Woman’s Place is Out in Space (Ark Royal)
Life During Wartime (Ark Royal)
Afterword
How To Follow
Appendix: Complete Bibliography (Up To Late 2022)

	A Note on Prior Publication

Alassa’s Tale – first published as a stand-alone novella by Twilight Times Books, 2018

The Kaiserin of the Seas – first published in To Slip The Surly Bonds by Theogony Books, 2019

Drang nach Osten (Drive to the East)  -  first published in Trouble in the Wind by Theogony Books, 2019

Life During Wartime - first published in The Dogs of God by Theogony Books, 2020
	
Foreword, by Pete Buck
In May 2012, almost exactly 10 years ago, Chris Nuttall first got in touch with Alison and me at Elsewhen Press. He submitted an alternate history/fantasy novel called The Royal Sorceress. In his submission email he said, “I have been writing since 2004, but have not yet been successful in publishing professionally. However, I have posted four books to Amazon Kindle and reviews have been generally positive.” We read the book, loved it and published it four months later – it was the first book in a series that has been our second-best selling series. 
Soon after that, he sent us the manuscript for Bookworm, which was the first in a series that has been our best-selling series. In November 2012, Chris and his wife Aisha were passing through London and we met them for lunch. It was the first time we had met in person, up until then we had only communicated with Chris by email. We all got on famously, obviously we already knew that we had much in common with Chris, but it was nice to also meet Aisha, a doctor who has always been very supportive of Chris even though she is not a particular fan of SFF. At that meal, our working relationship with Chris and our friendship with them both, was well and truly cemented. After lunch, Chris and Aisha were heading off to scour the second-hand bookshops in the Charing Cross Road (Chris is an insatiable reader, especially of history books, as well as SFF) before heading out to Heathrow to fly home; but first, he took the time to post on Facebook: “Just had my first working lunch with my publisher”.
Since then, we have published a total of 14 books and a short story by Chris. By anyone else’s measure, that alone would be a creditable output over 10 years. But Chris is one of (if not the) most prolific authors around, and I have now lost count of the number of other books he has written and published (some himself, others by a variety of publishers in the US) across fantasy, science fiction and alternate history. Over the years, his writing has become more confident, not to mention even easier to edit. By his own admission, he will typically write up to 10,000 words in a day – this might sound like an exaggeration, but it is not. What’s more, he is very good at concentrating and staying focussed when he’s working: despite progressing multiple series at the same time, he is able to keep them all separate in his mind as he writes – to paraphrase the late lamented Harold Ramis, ‘he never crosses the streams’.
Through his online presence on his blog and social media, Chris has successfully developed a very strong relationship with his readers, a substantial loyal core of whom will devour each new book as soon as it is published. That loyalty has been well-earned by delivering consistently exciting, well-paced and well-written adventures, with believable and relatable characters. He is especially good at developing female protagonists such that their gender is never a barrier to the unfolding story, and who appeal to readers of all persuasions. Most of all, he writes characters about whom the reader truly cares: I well remember, on first reading the manuscript for one of the Bookworm series, sobbing when one of the supporting characters died. It is always easy to empathise with Chris’ characters. 
A few years ago, Chris and Aisha returned to Chris’s hometown of Edinburgh to set up a home with an ever-expanding library and room for a family. They now have two delightful young sons, and a growing collection of Lego models. We dropped by to see them recently on our way to a convention in Glasgow. Chris mentioned that he was going to publish a collection of fantasy, science fiction and alternate history stories to celebrate having been a professional author for 10 years. I made a mental note to keep a look out for it, as it sounded exciting. He then asked me to write this introduction and I was lost for words (which is not a common occurrence, as anyone who knows me will agree!) I can’t wait to read this collection of stories as, I’m sure, do all of Chris’ fans. 
Chris’ oeuvre deserves our respect as well as our gratitude; his contribution to Speculative Fiction so far, in just the first 10 years of being published, is more significant than many other great SFF authors achieve in a lifetime. Chris has been an important part of the success and growth of our independent press, and a rôle model for many of our other authors, especially the younger ones. I like to think that we have helped, in part, to further his career as a bestselling SFF author. We are honoured to have been Chris’ first publisher, and we look forward to publishing more of his novels in future.
Peter Buck
Co-founder, Elsewhen Press
	Introduction
I owe it all to my wife.
Well, not all of it, but much of it.  My wife really has been amazingly supportive, right from the start.  She encouraged me, she introduced me to new places (she insisted we should live together in Malaysia for a few years, which gave me new insights) and, most importantly of all, supported me during the dark months between losing my job and my first successful self-published book.  The Empire’s Corps took off and I never looked back.  She had faith in me when I was starting to lose it in myself.  And she was right.
But I’d better start at the beginning.
My childhood was filled with books.  I learnt to read at a very young age and developed rapidly, devouring my way through teenage and adult books even though I had yet to become a teenager myself.  I was probably one of the library’s most regular visitors and I still remember, to my embarrassment, the librarian calling my mother to ask if I was really allowed to borrow an adult book.  (Tom Clancy’s Clear and Present Danger.)  She said yes.
I was somewhere on the autistic spectrum, although autism was far less well understood in those years and while I clearly had a learning disability of some kind, it was hard to identify because I was a reader.  It wasn’t until I was eleven that they decided I had a rare form of dyslexia and sent me to a boarding school of horrors, an experience that shaped me in ways I choose not to discuss.  Books were my only consolation and I spent as much time as I could reading, allowing my imagination to roam free.  I wasn’t much of a writer at the time, because my handwriting was terrible – it didn’t really get any better until I was allowed to use a computer – but I made up universes in my head that blended together a dozen worlds in crossovers that would, in the real world, break one or all of the universes.
My family did not own a television and I never became obsessed with watching.  I preferred my own imagination to TV adoptions, because I could do so much more in my mind.  I got into Doctor Who though reading the New Adventure books and found myself disappointed, much later, when I actually watched the series on TV. Even when I did get into TV shows – Star Trek and The X-Files – I was never inclined to put the television version ahead of the printed word.
It was not just fiction.  History – real history – could be just as exciting as any fictional story, all the more so as plot twists didn’t have to be foreshadowed or even plausible.  I read widely, starting with the Second World War and then running in all directions, gaining a sense of the ebb and flow of global affairs and, more importantly for my later work, an understanding of what was possible at the time.  Many seemingly-absurd decisions, I have come to realise, appeared rather more sensible at the time; it is only in hindsight, after the ‘inevitable’ disaster, that the decisions seem absurd.
I never studied history in school, beyond a few minor and boring points.  I think that’s why I like it so much.
By the time I left boarding school, I was inclined to agree with Adrian Mole (with whom I identified a bit too much, although we had little in common) that my teenage years were nothing but misery.  This was a mistake.  My next school was far better and university better still.  I kept reading, of course, but I also came out of my shell; I made friends, including some who shared my interests, and found newer interests, adding alternate history and modern affairs to my reading lists.  There were ups and downs, of course, but generally things were getting better for me.  It seemed obvious that I would go into librarianship and I graduated with a degree in the field, after being assured graduates got jobs very quickly.  
I rapidly discovered this was a lie.  There weren’t that many decent librarian jobs and the few that were advertised demanded far more experience than I had.  My former boss had been in the job longer than I’d been alive.  It took me years to get even a basic part-time librarian job, then move up to full-time, and it rapidly became clear there was little hope of rising higher.  Once again, I took solace in books …
And then I read a book that made me think I can do better.
I won’t name it, because my opinion has changed over the years.  What I will say is that the good guys won through sheer luck, while the bad guys winning – as they should have – would have made for a more interesting story.  I started to sketch out a novel, working out the high points and then filling in the details.  Slowly, piece by piece, I put together a reasonably coherent story.  And, miracle of miracles, I completed it.  I was sure it was going to be a hit.
It wasn’t.
Someone – Jerry Pournelle, although it is sometimes also credited to Eric Flint – once said a writer must write around a million words before he comes up with something decent.  Whoever said it was right.  Looking back at the first book I wrote, I cringe.  What was I thinking?  I got so much wrong, alas, that any publishers who looked at it probably died laughing.  The basic plot still holds good, and there are times when I want to look at it again and redo it, but the writing itself is terrible.  Luckily for me, at that point I had the writing bug.  I was determined to become an author.
I kept going, trying to get traditionally published. I wrote an alien invasion novel.  I wrote a cross-dimensional and cross-time novel.  I wrote a trilogy in which modern-day (2007) Britain was transported back in time to the Second World War, and started another in which World War Three broke out in 2020, which seemed – at the time – nicely distant in the future.  I developed a universe of cross-time wars that never took off, but helped teach me lessons for the future The Empire’s Corps universe.  And along the way, I developed a small following.  There were people who were willing to assist me, to point out errors and offer suggestions.  I owe them too.
Writing kept me alive, I think, when I suffered a mental breakdown.  It was a time when staying alive seemed pointless, when I felt I was running a gauntlet everywhere I turned.  My workplace had turned toxic, at least to me, and my life seemed over.  It was almost a relief when I got fired.  At least I wouldn’t have to go back there any longer.
My wife suggested I move to Malaysia and concentrate on my writing.  It took her a lot of arguing to convince me to do it.  I didn’t want to be a burden, and yet I feared that was exactly what I’d be.  Yes, there were jobs in Malaysia I could do, but I had no idea how I’d cope.  She insisted, and I did as she urged.  I moved shortly before my thirtieth birthday, which I celebrated with her family, and then started to write while she worked.  The very first book I wrote in Malaysia was First Strike.
I’d been putting up books on Amazon as they’d been rejected by publishers, and getting a little money from them, but nothing really took off until The Empire’s Corps.  I’d written it earlier, but with my obsession with getting a traditional publishing deal made it impossible to self-publish until the manuscripts were read and rejected.  The Empire’s Corps took off like a rocket.  It was such a success that I hastily wrote the sequel – No Worse Enemy – and kick-started an entire universe.
It was not the only major success in 2012.  I submitted a novel – The Royal Sorceress – to the newborn Elsewhen Press and, to my astonishment, they accepted it.  It was my first real contact with a professional publisher and, as Pete told you in the foreword, we are still friends today.  I wrote many other books for them over the next few years.
Many of my most popular novel series were started during that period.  I developed Ark Royal, Schooled in Magic, The Zero Enigma and several others, most of which gave birth to quite a few sequels.  I went through my backlist and had some of the older books edited and others mined for ideas I could reuse.  The Angel in the Whirlwind books I published with 47North are a redevelopment of an earlier series, one that never got off the ground.  I also did my best to build up a social media presence for promotion and suchlike, although I preferred writing to promotion.  I do answer emails sent to me, but it can take a long time to reply.
It’s been a decade.  Looking back, I can see mistakes I made, mistakes I needed to learn from before I could progress as an author.  I can see wrong turnings, some of which can be fixed and others that need to be learnt from and then abandoned.  I learnt how to take criticism and, just as importantly, how to tell the difference between good/legitimate criticism and criticism that is actively unhelpful, if not malicious.  (Hint; criticism that refuses to accept the book’s premise, or consists of insults aimed at the author, is illegitimate and can be safely ignored.  Illegitimi non carborundum.)
It still astonishes me when I get invited to conventions and people want to meet me, or people treat me as an authority.  It doesn’t feel quite real.
I don’t know how long I can keep writing.  I had a very nasty health scare in 2018 and came close to death.  I was lucky to return to work and luckier still my publishers were very understanding.  I have notebooks filled with story concepts and entire plots I fear, sometimes, I may never be able to turn into actual novels.  But I intend to keep going as long as I can.  
Some of the works in this collection are being republished, with some additional commentary from me.  Others are new, written specifically.  A handful aren’t precisely stories – you’ll see them when you get there.  If you like them, or you think any can be expanded, please feel free to let me know.  And please – please – leave a review.
To conclude, I have an observation to make.
I get asked, time and time again, what is the secret of becoming a successful writer.  And I don’t really have an answer.  (If I did, I’d charge five pounds to everyone who wants it and become a multimillionaire.)   Every author is different.  What works for me might not work for you.  I am both a plotter and a pantser; I know writers who write dozens of pages of plot and writers who just sit down to write, developing the story as they go along.
What I can say is this.  Becoming a writer requires developing your writing muscles.  You need to practice.  You need to work at it, to push yourself to complete a certain number of words every day.  Start small.  Don’t try the big ideas, not at first.  (I knew someone who outlined a novel series that was more complex than Game of Thrones, with a fantastically detailed background; he never wrote a single word of the first novel.)  Develop a realistic idea of your strengths and weaknesses, and grow a thick skin.  The most helpful criticism often stings.  Just learn to write through practice, then keep going.  Good luck!
And try not to get involved in internet drama.  It never helps.
Christopher G. Nuttall
Edinburgh, 2022.
PS – I’ve done my best to fix formatting problems, as the documents were compiled in many different styles, but issues may remain.  Please let me know if you spot anything that needs to be addressed.
PPS – And if you like this collection, please review.

	Hasdrubal’s Tale (Schooled in Magic)
Introduction
When I started writing Schooled in Magic, I only had a vague idea of the backstories of some of the more major characters.  I knew Void would turn out to be a well-intentioned extremist, and I had a good idea he would be Grandmaster Hasdrubal’s brother, but much of the detail of their early lives existed only as vague notes, if that.  The only thing I knew beyond the bare fact they were brothers was that they’d done something stupid, as young men, and both of them had been scarred by it.  The exact details didn’t come to my mind until I needed to devise an explanation for the lack of magical twins, at which point I decided there had been four half-brothers, the result of magical experimentation, and the incident that had scarred the two survivors also killed two others.  Bit by bit, the rest of the details emerged into the light.
There are some discrepancies between Grandmaster Hasdrubal’s recounting and Void’s vague explanation from earlier in the books, but neither of them really want to admit to their flaws ...
Chronologically speaking, Hasdrubal’s Tale takes place before Void’s Tale, just over a century before Schooled in Magic itself.

Prologue
My dear Emily,
I don’t know when you’ll read this letter, or indeed if you ever will.
My brothers and I bound ourselves, when we decided it was us against the world, with a Tontine Curse.  The oath, rooted so deeply within our shared blood that nothing short of death could break it, ensured we could not share our secrets with anyone unless we all agreed to share.  There were no loopholes, save one.  If one of us were to die, the dead man’s opinion would no longer need to be taken into account.  We felt, at the time, that the last of us could decide how much, if any, of our story could be shared with the wider world.
In hindsight, that was a mistake.  My brother– my sole surviving brother, who I can only call by his moniker - and I disagree on many things, yet we are still bound by the tontine.  I cannot talk to others, even you, without his permission and I know such permission will not be forthcoming.  I attempted to discuss the matter with him, when you entered our lives, and he was firmly of the opinion sleeping dogs should be left to lie.  I am one of the most powerful magicians in the world, with some of the others working under me, and yet my ability to evade the tontine is very limited.  It took me years to come up with an evasion and I know, even as I write, that it may not work.  You may simply never see this letter, or he will find it first and destroy it before you ever know it exists.  The odds of you seeing it before matters come to a head are very low.
The spells woven into this parchment, Emily, are tied to the family bloodline.  The letter will remain hidden from sight, once I seal the scroll, until there is only one of us left.  It may slip through the tontine if I am the one to die, as I will be dead at the time and the curse won’t survive me.  If it isn’t me who dies, I will speak to you in person and destroy this letter.  It might not be easier, but it will be better.
It is not easy to write these words.  I am loathe to confess my own failings, and my role in the disaster that got my brothers killed, but you have to know.  You have to be warned before it is too late.  And yet, I don’t know if you’ll ever see this letter.  If you don’t …
Let me start at the beginning, to give you some context.  Our father - Hiram of House Barca –liked to consider himself a researcher.  He was a very powerful sorcerer with a complete lack of scruples, when it came to digging into the roots of magic.  House Barca regarded him with a degree of wariness.  He’d made a number of breakthroughs, even as a young student, but those discoveries had always been made at a price.  He was repeatedly suspended as a student for testing potions and charms on other students and, afterwards, there were persistent rumours of horrific experiments conducted in his private lair.  The family tried not to look too closely.  As you might expect, they wanted to reap the rewards without getting blood on their hands – literally.
It is difficult to tell what our father had in mind when he conceived us.  The majority of his research notes didn’t survive (or so we were told; I have always wondered if they vanished into the family archives) and what little fell into our hands were a combination of spell fragments and insane ravings, none of which made any real sense.  We only have a rough outline of what happened.  My father collected four common-born women, all with magic, and convinced them to bear his children, then step out of their lives.  I like to think he paid them well, for their services, but the truth is I don’t know.  They must have been desperate to agree.  Even then, newborn magicians were being offered the chance to go to school or marry into magical families.  They should have had other options, if he gave them a choice.
The family’s theory was that my father believed magical twins – or quadruplets, in this case –would share their magic, perhaps even their souls.  He might have been right.  Twins are far from uncommon amongst mundanes, but almost unknown amongst magicians.  He certainly went to a lot of trouble to ensure the four women conceived at the same time – the exact details have been lost to time, which is probably for the best – and gave birth within minutes of each other.  Quite what happened to the mothers after that I don’t know, but I fear the worst.  None of them ever came forward to make contact with us.
This time, it looked as though my father had really gone too far.  The family was not pleased to be presented with four new heirs, so alike they even suspected glamours before realising the truth.  Nor were they willing to tolerate my father crossing the line so badly it was quite possible outside forces would become involved.  My father was ordered to surrender the children to the family, then present himself before the council for a full inquest.  He did the former, but not the latter.  Instead of showing up to the inquest, he walked away into the shadows and vanished, cutting his ties so completely we could never be sure if he was alive or dead.  He was never seen again, at least not by us.
We were raised by our family, but always on the edge.  They didn’t know quite what to make of us.  I suspect some of the more wary councillors would have advocated for our deaths if they hadn’t known the entire family would turn on them.  We grew up alone, with no one else to rely on, as we came into our magic.  Is it any surprise, therefore, that we formed a tight-knit group?  We had no one else.  There were no playdates with outsiders, no hint of future marriage arrangements, nothing.  The family did its best to pretend we simply didn’t exist.  I’m still surprised they allowed us to go to Whitehall.  I think they would have blocked it if they hadn’t been so keen to get rid of us.  They wanted us to go to school and never come back.
Adulthood didn’t make it any easier.  We were brilliant magicians.  Really, we were.  There are few amongst your peers who come close to our potential, back in those days.  The family should have been proud of us, but instead they eyed us like monsters that would turn on them at any moment.  They didn’t trust us and yet they wanted to make use of us.  They dangled the prospect of full acceptance in front of our eyes, giving us jobs to do that – they assured us – would eventually lead to us being acknowledged as what we were, Sons of House Barca.  In hindsight, I doubt they had any intention of keeping their word.  Our history and our nature set their teeth on edge.  There were very few of them who could even stand to be in our presence for long.  We really were uncannily alike,
You wouldn’t believe it, having seen us now, but it was true.  We were practically identical.  If you didn’t see us together, you would believe there was only one of us.  We were tall, with dark hair and angular faces and black eyes and muscular bodies …. we knew we were handsome, our bodies brimming with magic and potential.  And yet … our family didn’t want us.  We knew it, even if we didn’t want to admit it.  
And so our resentment grew.
It all came to a head, eventually.  Of course it did.

And it all started in a house of horrors.
Chapter One

“It feels like a storm,” Void said.  “Doesn’t it?”
I nodded, stiffly, as I stood at the gates and peered towards the distant mansion.  My uncle’s message had been surprisingly urgent, for a man who so lazy there were whispered suggestions he’d married a pregnant women.  It was cruel of us to laugh, I suppose, but Uncle Mago of House Barca was the man who constantly dangled the promise of family acceptance in front of us, if we did one last thing – and then a second last thing – for him.  The family regarded us as deniable assets.  I wondered, sometimes, if they thought they were fooling anyone.
“The wards are clearly going haywire,” I agreed.  Hamilcar and Himilco – our other brothers – were walking the edge of the grounds, prodding the defences to look for weak points we could use to break into the mansion.  “And there’s wild magic spilling everywhere.”
Void glanced at me.  “Do you think they’re betting there’s enough wild magic in this place to kill us?”
“I hope not,” I said.  There were no birds flying through the air, no small animals scurrying through the brambles.  That wasn’t a good sign.  Animals tended to be smarter than humans where wild magic was involved.  “I really do.”
I felt my heart sink as my eyes ran over the grounds and the distant mansion.  It would have looked good in its time, I was sure, but now it was a wreck.  The wild magic animated the flower beds and distant bushes, turning them into ravenous entities that were clearly on the verge of uprooting themselves and setting out to wreak havoc on the countryside; the mansion itself was drenched in magic, the wards slowly decaying into a haze of magic that might easily destroy the mansion.  They had to be taken down, Uncle Mago had said, before the entire structure collapsed into rubble.  Personally, I suspected he was renting us out to the White Council and its Mediators.  I’d checked the records, such as they were, and House Barca didn’t seem to have any interests in the region.
Unless our father is involved, somehow, I thought.  We didn’t remember the bastard who’d sired us, then left us to the family’s tender mercies.  We’d spent long nights using spells to try and track him down, although we didn’t know if we wanted to hug or hit him, only to draw a complete blank.  Is this one of his labs?
Hamilcar and Himilco returned, wands in hand.  “No weak points,” Hamilcar said.  He was our wardcrafting expert, although we were all pretty good.  Our tutors had wondered if we were taking each other’s exams at school, on the grounds our unique nature made it difficult for anticheating charms to work.  “We’ll have to go through the gates.”
“There’ll be something nasty on the path,” Void cautioned.  “We’ll have to be careful.”
I nodded as we inched to the gates, our magic fusing together into a single unit, as if we were a single person with multiple bodies.  I wondered, sometimes, if it was that that scared the family.  We were an unstoppable team.  We’d fought duels in which we’d been heavily outnumbered and still emerged victorious, simply because we worked together so well.  If we’d taken on the might of the family … we moved as one, knocking the gates open and running up the path.  It was deceptively still until we were halfway to the mansion, where upon the ground shifted underneath us and Hamilcar and Himilco fell into a pit.  We reacted at once – as one – casting spells to levitate the fallers out of the pit while the others hopped over and landed neatly on the far side.  The ground shifted, trying to hurl us into the pit again, but we kept moving.  There were charms woven into the wards to keep us from flying – a simple precaution, even in those days – but they weren’t designed to keep us from levitating.  We pin-wheeled over the path and landed safely, staffs raised in anticipation of a second threat.  The ground heaved, the bushes tearing themselves from their beds and hurtling towards us like monsters from the Blighted Lands.  I thought I heard them scream as we blasted them with fire and wind spells, the former setting them ablaze while the latter hurled the burning branches against the far wall.  The damage to the garden didn’t matter.  There was so much wild magic in the air that it would have to be torn down, the ground cleansed before the garden was regrown from scratch.  
Void laughed.  “I think we’re not welcome.”
I heard my brothers chuckle as we pressed through the inner wards.  The owner – dead now, according to our uncle – had been paranoid, incredibly so.  His wards were a virtual spider web of traps, each countered spell triggering another.  Freeze spells tried to stop us in our tracks, change spells tried to turn us into toads, levitation spells tried to send us flying over the wards … we countered them all, covering each other perfectly.  I saw a fireball shoot at Void’s back and deflected it into a change spell coming at me; he caught a paralysis spell aimed at me and shot it at a stone statue, which stopped dead and then shattered into a thousand pieces of debris.  I hoped the statues hadn’t been human once, before they’d trespassed in a sorcerer’s domain.  If they were, the spells had lasted so long they’d become permanent.
The door loomed up in front of us, brimming with spells.   I threw myself forward, drawing the spells onto my wards and deflecting them into the air.  A wave of focused magic descended on me, threatening to crush my strongest protections.  It would have been suicide, if my brothers hadn’t been at my side.  I took the hit, starving death off long enough for them to undo the defences and tear the spells to pieces.  The doors crashed open.  I stumbled forward, blinking hard as we swept into the lobby.  Silence fell, like a physical blow.  I looked around warily.  The lobby was disturbingly still, brightly lit even though there was no visible light source.  I didn’t like it.
“Interesting,” Void said.  “The charms felt as if they were directed by a living mind.”
Hamilcar scowled.  “The sorcerer is dead, remember?”
“Is that true?”  Void kept turning his head from side to side, as if he expected to be attacked at any moment.  “Did you see the body?”
“That fat oaf wouldn’t dare to lie to us,” Himilco muttered.  “The sorcerer is dead.  His wards are lingering.  That’s all there is to it.”
I wasn’t so sure.  The lobby was … weird.  It looked like a normal aristocratic lobby, with a marble floor and marble stairs and marble statues and paintings – edged by marble, of course – and yet, there was a faint sense we were being watched pervading the air.  It felt as if something was waiting to happen.  I reached out with my senses, tracing the magic running through the mansion.  The files insisted the mansion had originally been built by the magicless aristocracy and then been sold to the owner, but I had my doubts.  The building was perfectly tuned for magic, allowing it to be turned into a warded stronghold with very little effort.  It was odd.
Perhaps they thought there’d be a magician in the family, sooner or later, I thought.  Or maybe something else is going on.
My eyes narrowed.  Uncle Mago was too lazy to lie and yet, it was quite possible someone had lied to him.  Had we been sent on a suicide run?  We were powerful, and as a team we’d bested magicians far greater than ourselves, but there were a handful of sorcerers who were practically one-man armies.  They could fight necromancers in single combat and win.  There weren’t many of them, but …
“If he did lie to us, we’d boil him alive until his blubber ran like water,” Hamilcar said.  None of us particularly liked our uncle – he smiled too much, concealing his distaste for us behind a mask he was too lazy to maintain – but Hamilcar loathed him.  I knew why, although I was forbidden to tell.  “He wouldn’t dare.”
“We have to find the wardstone,” I told them, flatly.  There was no point in hanging around the lobby.  The wardstone would be at the heart of the building.  “Let’s go.”
The sense we were being watched grew stronger as we inched across the lobby, following the threats of magic as they led us down the corridor.  The marble décor never changed.  Long rows of portraits glared from the walls, their eyes seeming to follow us as we walked past them.  I wondered, idly, if they were the sorcerer’s ancestors or if he’d just inherited them from the previous owners.  There were legal precedents for fictional relationships that everyone took seriously, even though everyone also knew they simply didn’t exist.  Or maybe they were just part of the defences …
Void hissed a warning as the corridor twisted.  I cursed, snapping out a pair of protective spells.  The trap would have caught us if we hadn’t shared a bond.  The labyrinth spell was an impressive piece of work, warping the corridor into an endless circle that would hold any normal intruder prisoner until he starved to death … to us, the distortion was obvious.  We reacted as one, three of us shooting more spells into the walls to keep them from twisting while Void attacked the spell directly.  The entire building seemed to shake – I guessed a pocket dimension had collapsed – as the spell snapped out of existence.  I was morbidly impressed.  A sorcerer who’d set up a pocket dimension without a nexus point was clearly a very powerful and dangerous sorcerer indeed.
The paintings came to life a second later, ghostly figures floating towards us.  I heard Hamilcar curse as a painting sliced at him with a translucent knife, a knife that proved to be real when it mattered.  The sheer power involved in making the knife real, if only for a few seconds … by the gods, I hoped it meant we were dealing with the work of a dead Lone Power.  All the other possibilities were worse.  I threw a fireball at the ghost of a snooty aristocrat – the man was short, yet he still somehow managed to look down his nose at me – and cursed as it passed through and splashed against the far wall.  Dispersal charms didn’t work either.  Void stepped forward, casting a wave of fire that swept the walls and consumed the painting frames.  The ghosts vanished with their paintings.
“Some people just like to be clever,” Void said.  “They’d have got us if they’d just kept the paintings out of sight.”
I nodded as we hurried down the corridor, ducking, dodging or destroying the mansion’s defences.  The statues came to life – again – and attacked us; powerful lights flickered and flared, voices whispering in our ears, speaking to our doubts and insecurities even as they promised us the world.  We jumped into the air as the floor dropped from beneath our feet, drawing on all of our reserves to avoid a plunge into a second pit.  The corridor thinned, the walls closing so sharply we had force them open … it would have been impossible, again, if we weren’t such a well-practiced team.  A wave of illusions rushed towards me – my worst fears come to life – and broke against our shared will as I drew on my brothers for support.  I could always rely on them.  We were family.
The marble vanished, replaced by black walls glowing with eerie light.  I led the way into the final chamber, darkness pulsing around me like a living thing.  It was impossible to convince myself, now, that the defences were merely following orders.  I could feel the threads of magic pulsing through the darkness, leading us onwards … they were connected to something, something intelligent.  Did the sorcerer have a wife?  A child?  A partner?  Perhaps even someone who’d broken into the mansion, before us, and taken control for himself?  It wasn’t impossible …
… And then the darkness parted, revealing the nightmare at the heart of the mansion.
It stood in a circle, so disconcertingly human that it was hard to look at it directly.  My brain refused to acknowledge its presence.  It wore the form of a tall naked man, inhumanly perfect.  Too perfect.  It was impossible to believe it was human.  It’s perfect face was so proud and haughty that it put my family in the shade.  My legs wobbled as it met my eyes.  It was like staring at a dragon, at a creature that knew, beyond all doubt, it was an apex predator.  It was almost hypnotic.  I had to bite my lips to keep from stumbling across the circle.  If I broke it …
“A demon?”  Void sounded astonished.  We’d never seen a demon before.  Technically, we weren’t supposed to know about them either.  If we hadn’t been sneaking into the restricted parts of the school library since our first year, we wouldn’t have known anything.  The tales of DemonMasters were so ancient it was impossible to say what had grown in the telling.  “He used a demon to power his wards?”
“He was a little man with a great fear,” the demon said.  Its voice, sickeningly sweet, seemed to reach my mind without going through my ears.  It made my skin crawl.  “And so he brought me out of the darkness to protect him.”
I stepped back, allowing Void and Hamilcar to examine the wards surrounding the circle.  It looked absurdly fragile, little more than a line on the stone floor, but as long as it remained unbroken – if the restricted texts were telling the truth – the demon couldn’t escape.  I forced myself to recall what I’d read about the nature of demons, about how they would take advantage of the slightest loophole to harm or even kill the fool who summoned them.  They were bound never to lie, the books insisted, but that didn’t make them trustworthy.  The best way to lie was to tell the truth in a manner that ensured you’d never be believed.  My family was very good at it.
“You commanded the defences,” Void said, picking apart the charms.  “He must have been sure he could control you.”
“He was a fool,” the demon said.  It regarded us with polite interest, but I could see the malice behind its smile.  No human bore that much malevolence towards anyone.  “He got what he wanted.”
I saw it in a sudden flash of insight.  The wards had started to collapse after the caster’s death.  It was only a matter of time before the mansion collapsed too, the rubble breaking the circle and freeing the demon.  The spells would release enough wild magic to feed the demon, allowing it to remain on the mortal plane long enough to do some real damage.  I shuddered.  The crazy madman had either planned it that way – perhaps he hated the world around him and wanted to make it pay – or he just hadn’t thought it through.  I cursed him under my breath.  How the hell were we supposed to stop a demon?  I wasn’t sure it was even possible.  A necromancer would be preferable.
The demon smirked.  I shuddered.  It could read my thoughts.  It knew I knew what it had done.  It knew there was nothing I could do about it.  There was no way to banish the demon without breaking the circle and no way to break the circle without freeing it.  It would be gone before we could work out a way to trap it … I cursed the dead sorcerer as I looked around, trying to find a way to reinforce the circle before it was too late.  We needed specialised supplies and there were none.  We hadn’t known to bring them …
Void laughed and cast a pair of spells into the ward network, taking control.  “We don’t have to banish you,” he said, as he snapped orders to the rest of us.  “We can use you instead.”
I saw it as we hurried to take our places.  The ward network drew on the demon’s power.  The sorcerer hadn’t been a complete idiot.  The demon was powering the wards that were keeping it prisoner, effectively pinning itself.  It had the same problem we had.  It couldn’t free itself without tearing apart the wards and it couldn’t do that without falling back into the darkness.  It needed the circle to come apart on its own …
“Perhaps we could make a bargain,” the demon said.  I thought I heard a hint of desperation in its voice.  Had we scared it?  Or was it playing with us, as a cat might play with a mouse?  “There is much I could offer you.”
We ignored it as we meshed our spells together, directing the ward network to draw more and more power from the demon, then consume the wild magic pervading the air.  The mansion shook – I heard the sound of crumbling masonry as the spells holding the building together started to fail – but we barely noticed.  We were so practiced at working together we had no trouble doing three things at once: drawing energy from the demon, channelling it into an ever-expanding spell and preparing our escape.  The wards shattered – the demon screamed, a sound that burned my very soul – and we teleported out, materialising outside the mansion gates.  I barely caught a glimpse of the mansion one final time before it exploded.  I thought I saw the demon within the fireball, inhuman eyes burning down at me and then vanishing.  The air seemed to grow lighter.  The demon was gone.
“Well,” Void said, as the birds started to sing again.  “We did dismantle the wards.  And everything else as well.”
I couldn’t help myself.  I laughed.
After a moment, the others joined me.

Chapter Two

Uncle Mago was not a very nice man.
It was true that, as our father’s younger brother, he had become our guardian when the family took us from our father’s lair.  It was also true he’d had as little to do with us as humanly possible.  We were raised by servants who didn’t – couldn’t – teach us any of the family magics, let alone share the secrets passed down from generation to generation of the family bloodline.  Bastard children were treated as trueborn members of House Barca, but not us.  I suspected quite a few of our elders and so-called betters had argued for our destruction, when they found out what our father had done.  They certainly didn’t feel any obligation to treat us as our father’s heirs.
He sat behind his desk, hands resting on his ample belly, and listened as Void and I gave our report.  He was unusually fat for a magician and ugly too, despite enough magic to give himself the looks of a demigod.  Short dark hair hung in ringlets around a puffy face, beady dark eyes studying us as we talked.  His robes – the finest money and good breeding could buy – failed to hide his figure.  It was not nice of us to make fun of his weight, even though it was clear proof he was a lazy bastard, but we disliked him.  How could we not?  He was the gatekeeper standing between us and family acceptance.
It was hard to keep my face composed as he stared at us.  We were grown adults.  We shouldn’t be forced to stand respectfully in front of his desk, as if we were naughty boys in need of a thrashing.  My nails dug into my palms as I held my hands behind my back, forcing myself to resist the urge to tell him how I really felt.  We told ourselves otherwise, when we talked about it, but we feared he’d never give us the acceptance we sought.  The family was happy to use us, just not to acknowledge us.
“And so we sealed off the ruins and left them isolated,” I finished.  There’d be hordes of looters descending on the pile of debris, if I was any judge, searching the remains in hopes of locating magical items or rare and valuable books.  Our wards would hopefully keep them from stealing anything, at least long enough for our uncle to arrange for the remains to be searched and secured.  We’d been cautioned not to do it ourselves.  “The mission was completed successfully.”
Uncle Mago’s face went an interesting colour.  “We wanted the mansion intact!”
I opened my mouth to say something I’d probably regret, but Void spoke first.  “Then perhaps you should have mentioned it, when you were giving us our marching orders,” he said, in reasonable tones that dripped poison.  “You merely wished the mansion’s wards to be dismantled.”
“Which doesn’t require you to destroy the entire mansion, does it?”  Uncle Mago glared at him.  I could feel his wards flickering and flaring around the chamber.  “What were you thinking?”
“I dare say the owner of the mansion wanted his secrets to die with him,” Void said, sardonically.  “What sort of idiot uses his own wards to keep his home intact, unless he wants it to collapse when he dies?”
“It lasted beyond his death,” Uncle Mago snapped.  “Or it would be rubble before you even arrived!”
I gritted my teeth.  None of us liked our uncle, like I’d said, but Void actively hated him.  He’d been in line for an apprenticeship with one of the most brilliant magicians of our generation, before our uncle had … convinced … the magician to withdraw his acceptance and take a trueborn member of House Barca instead.  It had been all we could do to convince Void not to challenge Uncle Mago to a duel, or simply take him down like a rabid dog or maddened necromancer.  I had no doubt Void could take him – the simple fact Uncle Mago never met us outside his wards was clear proof he feared us, even if he’d never admit it – but it would have made us all outlaws.  I figured there were quite a few elders who wanted us to kill our uncle and run.  They’d get rid of the four of us and our uncle in a single moment.
“There was a demon in there, waiting for us,” I said, before the threat of open violence turned to reality.  “A demon none of us knew to expect.  We were very lucky we didn’t blunder into the circle before realising what was waiting for us.”
“Yes.”  Void’s tone didn’t harden.  “Why didn’t your … sources … tell us what to expect?”
“They didn’t know,” Uncle Mago said.  “How could they?”
“They were quick to demand the mansion,” Void countered.  “Didn’t they know what to expect?”
“They had very little contact with the former owner,” Uncle Mago said.  “I don’t think they knew very much about what he was doing, alone in his lair.”
I snorted.  He was still careful not to mention the man by name.  I’d done some research, while waiting for him to condescend to see us, but drawn a blank.  The sudden collapse of the empire and the rise of the new kingdoms had rendered all the records useless, when they weren’t actively being destroyed.  Every newly-crowned king and sword-waving warlord had a pedigree – now – that stretched all the way back to the time of legends, never mind that half of them were put together from fragments and the other half were made up of whole cloth.  I was pretty sure most of the fragments were entirely fictional too.  They’d just lasted long enough for them to become taken for truth.  
Void leaned forward.  “And did these people truly inherit the mansion, or were they hoping to lay claim to it after the owner’s death?  Were you hoping you’d be able to take the mansion for yourself?”
Uncle Mago’s eyes flashed murder.  “Are you daring to imply that I wanted the mansion for myself?”
“Well,” Void said.  “You told us nothing about who wanted it done.  You told us nothing about what awaited us … and really, anyone who wanted to inherit a mansion should have at least a rough idea what sort of experiments were conducted within the wards, particularly if they might wind up getting the blame for them.  And you have access to a highly-skilled team” – he made a show of puffing out his chest in a manner calculated to get on our uncle’s nerves – “that could do the job, without asking too many questions.  It isn’t exactly impossible you’d wanted us to do the mission for you.”
I kept my face carefully blank.  Magicians had been spying on each other since the very first days of organised magic.  The layers upon layers of protections surrounding the family mansion and grounds – and the rest of our properties – weren’t there because we felt safe, but because we knew we had enemies constantly trying to worm scrying spells through our wards.  It was true even at school.  We’d spied on our enemies and they’d spied on us and constantly sharpened our protective spells on each other … by the gods, there was even a private but widely known reward for anyone at Whitehall who managed to steal the final exam papers from the grandmaster’s office.  The idea of Uncle Mago sending us to snatch a mansion from a dead man – and his relatives – wasn’t that far-fetched.  The Empire was gone.  No one knew how the new world would develop, in the months and years to come.
And the family might wind up ruling its own little kingdom, I reflected.  The Empire had kept a check on over-ambitious magicians, preventing them from stepping out of line.  They’d tried to keep a balance of power and … and that was gone now.  I doubted King Alexis of Zangaria or any of his peers would put up more than token resistance if the family decided it wanted their kingdom.  It’s astonishing how cooperative people become if you threaten to turn them into rabbits and set their own dogs on them.
“I do not choose to listen to such assertions,” Uncle Mago said, composing himself with a very visible effort.  I feared it boded ill for the future.  “Nor will the family, if you bring it to them.”
I shrugged.  Void might be right … but we’d never be able to prove it.  The family council had decided to leave us in the hands of our guardian, rather than treat us as the adults we were.  Uncle Mago had probably covered his tracks very well … and even if he hadn’t, the family council might quietly approve of his plans.  If nothing else, they’d wanted to search the mansion before they handed it over to the dead man’s peers.  Who knew what a sorcerer who’d kept himself to himself for decades might have hidden away in his lair?
“I’m sure they would have forgiven you, if your little scheme worked,” Void said.  “But alas!  It failed.”
“And now I have to go explain to my allies that their relative’s mansion is a pile of rubble,” Uncle Mago said.  “Do you think they’ll pay the fee?”
“They damn well should,” I said, sharply.  “There was a demon in the mansion.  A demon, and enough traps to kill anyone who wasn’t extremely wary and capable.  If that monster had broken free, and it would have if they’d blundered into the trap, it would have been extremely difficult to banish it back to the darkness.  And then they’d be blamed for the outcome.”
“If they survived,” Void put in.
“If,” I agreed.  “They should be extremely grateful that they don’t have to worry about a rampaging demon.  Or an overgrown garden infested with wild magic.  They can take possession of the rubble, clean it up and start building another mansion.  Or even abandon it to the wild.”
Uncle Mago scowled.  “Do you think that’ll impress them?”
“I’m sure you can make it clear they came this close” – I held my hand up, my thumb and forefinger so close together they were practically touching – “to utter disaster.  They owe us.”
“Yes,” Void agreed.  “Or should I say, you owe us.”
Uncle Mago snorted.  “I will speak to my contacts,” he said.  “And then determine the bounty.”
“You mean you’ll speak to yourself,” Void said.  “Why don’t you just pay yourself too?”
I nudged him.  He was probably right – Uncle Mago had sent us on the mission for the family, not for his unnamed sources – but there was no proof.  And even if we had the proof, the family wouldn’t give a damn.  They’d lost the chance to search the mansion, but they hadn’t accidentally released a demon.  Or been caught trying to steal someone’s patrimony before they even knew they had it.  I made a mental note to look into the matter a little further.  It might be interesting to discover who had really owned the mansion.
Right now, property belongs to whoever has the strength to take and keep it, I reflected sourly.  Law and order lay in ruins, lost with the empire that had once ruled us all.  If a powerful magician wants something, he can take it and no one can say no.
It was a depressing thought.  A man alone was a man vulnerable.  It was important in this day and age to belong to a family, to have powerful patrons protecting you from the world in exchange for your support.  I knew of freemen surrendering to the inevitable and becoming serfs, giving up their independence and freedom for a little safety; I’d watched minor noblemen bend the knee to kings and princes, swearing fealty in exchange for protection from their enemies.  The four of us were powerful, yet even we couldn’t be sure of being safe if the family kicked us out.  Uncle Mago had us over a barrel and we knew it.
“I will contact you,” Uncle Mago said.  “Until then, you can wait in your house.”
I felt a hot flash of anger.  The house wasn’t a bad place to live, certainly when compared to school dorms or peasant shacks, but it wasn’t in the mansion.  We should have had an entire suite to ourselves, as our father’s sons.  We should have been welcomed to adulthood and invited to take places on the council, rather than dumped in an isolated house on the edge of the ground.  It was a very clear hint we weren’t welcome.  Even the lowest of servants got to sleep in the house.  
“Oh, we can, can we?”  Void met his eyes.  “And the Gathering?”
I leaned forward, trying to quash the spurt of hope in my heart.  The Gathering was an assembly of the entire family, a ceremony when every adult member reaffirmed our commitment to the family name and pledged eternal loyalty to our brethren.  Children weren’t invited, save for the ones on the cusp of maturity.  They were presented to the family and hailed, from that moment on, as adults.  Uncle Mago should have presented us years ago …
… But he hadn’t.
Uncle Mago let out a heavy sigh.  “I discussed the matter with the council,” he said.  I laid a quiet bet with myself the council would be astonished to hear it.  “They said no.”
Void’s magic flared.  “If not now, then when?”
“That’s a matter for the council to decide,” Uncle Mago said.  It was hard to take him seriously.  He sat in a heavily warded mansion, protected by a web of charms that would daunt even a Lone Power, and yet he was reluctant to say it out loud.  “They are still concerned about you …”
I spoke, quickly.  “We are twenty-five years old,” I said.  “We earned the highest marks at Whitehall, completed our apprenticeships—” I ignored Void’s growl  “—in record time and, since then, have carried out an entire string of missions for you and the family.  We have faced dark wizards, we have probed the remains of ruined cities, we have even gone deep into the Blighted Lands to examine debris left behind by the war.  We are the family’s foremost agents, with a record unsurpassed since the days of legend.  What must we do?”
Uncle Mago hesitated.  “Your father …”
“Our father has nothing to do with this,” I said, feeling the old pain welling up.  If our father had stood with us, or raised us, our lives would have been very different.  “Last year, the family welcomed children – adults – who barely graduated school, including one who came within a hair’s breadth of being expelled for feeding someone a love potion.  Why not us?”
My magic pulsed, demanding release.  It wasn’t fair.  Traditionally, children were recognised as adults when they left school.  We’d been out of school for nearly four years and we were still considered children.  It was silly.  Anyone else, anywhere else, would see us as grown men, powerful enough to impose their will on the world.  I wondered, not for the first time, if we shouldn’t just leave.  The world was changing, the map being redrawn with every passing day.  We could find a castle and take it for ourselves, or even take possession of a kingdom or a barony or …
We didn’t want power.  Not that sort of power.  We wanted acceptance.
“The family is gravely concerned about you,” Uncle Mago said.  “The circumstances of your … conceptions and births were worrying, as you know, and the twists in your magic equally so.  We don’t know what to make of you and …”
“And you have given us the cold shoulder since we were children,” Void snapped.  “We didn’t ask to be born!”
“I will continue to raise the issue with the council,” Uncle Mago said.  “Until then, you need to convince them that their fears are groundless and that they have no reason to worry about you.  I know it seems unfair, but …”
I scowled.  “What sort of proof would they accept?”
Uncle Mago said nothing.  I doubted he had an answer.  Strange magics were always worrying, at least until they were properly understood.  The council didn’t know how our father had planned our birth, or linked us together at a very primal level, or even … they’d thought, from what I’d heard later, that we might even come into our magic as children.  It was lucky we hadn’t.  We’d have killed ourselves if the council hadn’t killed us – executed us – first.
“You’re never going to do it, are you?”  Void’s voice chilled me to the bone.  He’d given up hope.  “The family will never accept us.”
“Acceptance takes time,” Uncle Mago said.  I thought I heard a flicker of doubt – or fear – in his voice.  “And you have to work towards it.”
“And how long should we keep working,” Void demanded, “when we have no idea what will be enough?  You have seen us as adult magicians, doing your dirty work, for years!  What more do you want?”
I saw Uncle Mago flinch.  “It takes time …”
“How long?”  Void’s magic flared.  “How long do you think you can keep us dangling on the edge of a string, begging for favours …?”
“We took you in,” Uncle Mago said.  “And we gave you everything.”
“And yet you kept us at arm’s length,” Void said.  “What does it take?”
He turned and left, closing the door behind him.  Uncle Mago looked at me.
“Your brother is upset,” he said, as if I couldn’t see it for myself.  “And that is part of the reason the family is reluctant to accept you …”
“He’s right to be upset,” I said, tartly.  It really wasn’t fair.  We’d done so much and it wasn’t enough.  “How much more do you want us to do?”
And on that note, I swung around and left the room myself.  

Chapter Three

Under other circumstances, our house would have been a marvel.
It rested just inside the estate’s walls, within the grounds and yet far enough from the mansion for us to be unobserved.  The brick walls were strengthened by our spells, keeping out prying eyes; there were bedrooms for each of us, a potions lab, a spellchamber and a large kitchen, stocked with produce from right across the countryside.  The servants refused to clean our chambers, but we didn’t mind.  The servants weren’t loyal to us.  If we’d chosen to live there, we would have been very happy with it.  But we hadn’t and we weren’t.
“Uncle Mago has made it clear,” Void said, after recounting the entire meeting to Hamilcar and Himilco.  “We will not be invited to the Gathering, now or ever, unless we convince the council they have to take us seriously.  We are good enough to carry out tasks for them—” he’d spent some time expounding on his theory about the true purpose of our last mission  “—but not to be counted as part of the family.  What are we going to do?”
“We could be childish,” Hamilcar suggested.  “Legally, they still have to treat us as children.”
“Maybe so, but we are adults,” I pointed out.  Children were supposed to be seen and never heard.  “Do you want to be treated as a child for the rest of your life?”
“Aunt Hilda was treated as a child,” Himilco reminded us. 
“Aunt Hilda was touched in the head,” Void countered.  “She was teetering on the brink of insanity for years.  She didn’t know who she was … she couldn’t even go to the toilet without help, let alone wash and dress herself.  Her magic was skewed, dangerous to herself and everyone else.  I ask you, are we anything like that?”
“And Aunt Hilda died under suspicious circumstances,” Hamilcar added.  “Might we?”
I grimaced.  I could see the family’s point, when they’d quietly decided Aunt Hilda could never be regarded as an adult.  She’d been mentally disabled, to the point that – if she’d grown up anywhere else – she would have been hidden away in the attic or exposed to the elements long ago.  Instead, the family had tried to cure her.  One of their attempts had gone wrong and she’d died.  Or so I’d been told.  We weren’t the only ones who suspected she’d quietly been killed before her magic, constantly sparking dangerously, got someone else killed.
“They can’t treat us like that,” Himilco said.
“They do treat us as children,” Void said.  “How many things can’t we do, because we are not considered legal adults?”
“We can go,” Hamilcar said.  “Pack up our stuff and leave.”
“And go where?”  I asked the question, but everyone was thinking it.  “Where can we go?”
“Where can we go, without the family name?”  Void met my eyes.  “They want us to leave.  They want us to abandon the family.”
“You don’t know that,” Himilco said.
“I do.”  Void sounded very certain.  “They can’t kick us out without the council’s agreement, and they can’t get that agreement unless we give them good cause.  The councillors might not like us – they fear us – but we are our father’s trueborn sons and if they try to kick us our without a very good reason there’ll be a revolt in the ranks.  Too many councillors will worry it’ll set a precedent that could be used against them, a few years down the line.  No, they can’t kick us out.  But they can make us miserable until we leave of our own accord.”
I feared he was right.  The family council was doing everything it could to make it clear we weren’t welcome.  They’d done everything short of sending minstrels to our door … not, I supposed, that they’d find anyone willing to do the job for any amount of money.  Minstrels, heralds and messengers were very unpopular, particularly the ones who brought bad news or caterwauled their way across the world.  We’d be quite within our legal rights to change them into birds, permanently.  It would certainly improve their singing.
“Right,” Hamilcar said.  “And you want to stay with people who don’t want you? Want us?”
“We are family,” Void snapped.  “We are children of House Barca, just like everyone else who will be presented at the Gathering.  By what right do they tell us we don’t belong?  By what right do they deprive us of our birthright?  It should be ours.  They should raise us up in pride, for all we have done for them!  And instead, they want us to go?
“It’s not going to change.  They’ll keep us dangling on a string, constantly holding out the promise of acceptance, without ever granting it to us.  We’ll be children for the rest of our lives, constantly denied the rights of adulthood … you know they blocked my apprenticeship and would have blocked yours” – he nodded to Hamilcar – “if we hadn’t obscured the plan until the deal was done.  They won’t change.  They won’t accept us, unless we make it impossible for them not to accept us.”
“We can just walk away,” Hamilcar said.  “And have done with it.”
“And let them win?”  Void looked from face to face.  “Why should we?”
I had no answer.  I was angry too.  We all were.  The urge to do something – anything – to force the council to acknowledge us was overwhelming.  It would be easy to go, but we wouldn’t have the family name or access to family resources … I doubted, somehow, they’d start screaming for our return the moment they ran into trouble.  We were useful tools – no doubt about it – but hardly unique.  There was no shortage of sorcerers willing to serve as deniable assets, in exchange for money and support.  They’d have fewer problems with obeying the family too.
Perhaps we should have walked away, but we couldn’t let it go.
“I take it you have a plan,” I said.  “What do you intend to do?  Pick a fight with a necromancer?”
“We could take a necromancer,” Himilco said.  “They have the power, we have the skill.”
“And that wouldn’t end badly at all,” Void said, with heavy sarcasm.  “The last sorcerer who took down a necromancer?  They accused him of being a necromancer himself.”
“They didn’t understand how he’d done it,” I reminded him.  “There was a certain amount of luck involved.”
We brainstormed back and forth for hours, coming up with an entire stream of ideas that were impossible, crazy or both.  We could try to clear the Blighted Lands of necromancers and claim them for ourselves, but there was no way we could kill them all.  Killing one would push us to the limit, perhaps even beyond.  We could sail into the ocean, see if there really was a continent on the far side of the world, yet we knew that no one who’d ever gone beyond the western horizon had ever been seen again.  We argued over challenging a king for his kingdom, then debated the merits of setting up our own country, and then argued about the possibilities for simply walking into the Gathering and demanding respect and acknowledgement.   None of the ideas seemed very workable.  They certainly didn’t have any real prospect of convincing the family to accept us.
My heart sank as we sat back in our chairs.  There was nothing.  The hard truth was that there was nothing we could do with any guarantee of success, nothing that would convince the family to overlook our unfortunate birth.  Our frustration hung in the air like a shroud, shared amongst us … perhaps it would be better to just leave.  It would be easier to get respect as wandering sorcerers, rather than legal children.
“There’s one other possibility,” Void said.  “But it will be incredibly dangerous.” 
I felt the flicker of concern running through the air.  Of all of us, Void was the one most inclined to push the limits as far as they would go.  He was willing to take risks that would daunt normal men, even powerful sorcerers.  Anything he considered incredibly dangerous was likely to be terrifying beyond words.  And yet, he was also the most capable of thinking outside the box.  His apprenticeship had been … unusual.  His master had been a jack-of-all-trades and master-of-few.
Hamilcar cleared his throat.  “What do you have in mind?”
“We need something that will make it impossible for the family to refuse to acknowledge us,” Void said.  “We need a bargaining chip they simply cannot turn down.”
“We know that,” Hamilcar said.  “What do we have?”
“Nothing,” Himilco said.  “Nothing unique …”
“Not so,” Void said.  “We have an … insight … no one else has.”
I leaned forward.  “Get to the point.”
“We forced a demon to consume itself,” Void said, flatly.  “I suggest we convert one into a power source.”
“What?”  It was all I could do to speak.  “Are you mad?”
“That didn’t work out too well for the last guy,” Hamilcar pointed out.  “The demon he summoned nearly broke free.”
Himilco nodded.  “Making a bargain with a demon is a bad idea,” he agreed.  “We’d wind up dead.  Or worse.”
I frowned.  It was madness.  Demons simply could not be trusted.  The books we’d read had had hundreds of warnings, horror stories about the dangers of dealing with demons.  No matter what you did, no matter how smart you were, trying to outwit a demon was incredibly dangerous.  If you were lucky, you were killed very quickly; if you weren’t, the demon would lead you steadily towards the disaster, dropping a breadcrumb trail of knowledge and power that led right over a cliff.  
Demons could not be trusted.  Ever.
“I’m not talking about making a deal with a demon,” Void said, firmly.  “I’m talking about using it as a source of power.  We summon the demon and drain its power, using what remains of it to summon another demon, perhaps even open a permanent nexus point.”
My heart skipped a beat.  No one understood how nexus points – sources of near-infinite magic – really worked.  No one knew where the power came from, or what happened when the nexus point remained untapped.  But one thing everyone knew was that, if you controlled a nexus point, you had enough power at your disposal to shake the world.  You could erect the crudest of wards and yet keep them up against an army of sorcerers, just by drawing on the nexus point; you could build entire castles of raw magic, structures that literally could not exist without the nexus point.  I’d heard stories of castles in the clouds or giant towers, reaching up to infinity; I’d seen Whitehall and Rose Red and Heart’s Eye, places shaped and maintained by nexus points.  If we could tap into such power, even on a small scale, we’d have it made.  The family would have to acknowledge us, if they wanted to partake in our bounty.
Himilco chuckled.  “They couldn’t turn us down …”
“If it works,” Hamilcar said.  His voice was hopeful, but he knew – we all knew – that it wouldn’t be easy.  “Can we make it work?”
Void outlined his concept.  I listened carefully, feeling a flicker of admiration.  He didn’t think small.  No one else could do it – no ritualists matched us, when it came to working as a team – but we could.  The ritual would be incredibly complex – and we’d need things we couldn’t obtain easily – yet we could do it.  We talked for hours, working our way through the plan and questioning every detail.  It wasn’t easy – everything had to be checked and rechecked while bearing in mind it was purely theoretical – but it could be done.
“Theory is no substitute for practice,” Hamilcar said, echoing my own thoughts.  “We need a certain amount of magic to trigger the spell and … we’re not going to get it.”
Himilco nodded.  “Not unless we’re willing to risk necromancy.”
“We were designed to channel vast amounts of magic,” Void said, stubbornly.  “We can do it.”
“No one can,” Himilco said.  He tapped the table, warningly.  “And even if we did, we’d have to kill someone.”
“Uncle Mago,” Hamilcar said, darkly.  “No one would miss him.”
“The family would notice if we took him,” Himilco pointed out.  “We are talking about sacrificing – about murdering – someone.  That’s what we’re doing.  And it will taint the ritual.”
My mind raced.  Himilco was right.  There was no way to get so much power without necromancy and no way to use necromancy without driving ourselves mad.  And even if we took the risk, we’d have killed someone for power.  The long-term effects of such an act might be disastrous.  We were talking about the wildest of magics, the most dangerous … the arts no one would touch with a broomstick, if they had any other choice. Void’s concept was an elegant one, yet we couldn’t make the jump from theory to practice.  Or could we …?
“There’s another way to do it,” I said, slowly.  “We find a wild magic shrine and use the tainted magic as a power source.”
Void grinned at me.  “Like we used the wild magic to force the demon to destroy itself?”
“In a manner of speaking,” I said.  I took the parchment and started drawing out ward diagrams.  Hamilcar looked unimpressed by my sketches but made sure to neaten up my concepts.  “There are hundreds of places with high magic levels, places no one dares go unless they want to die.  We go to one of them and use it as a power source.”
“And then use it to drag a demon out of the darkness,” Void finished.  He took the parchment and added a few changes of his own.  We knew what had gone wrong, back at the mansion.  We had no intention of making the same mistakes.  If the wards started to fray, the demon would be shoved back into the darkness before it was too late.  “It should work.”
“Yeah,” Himilco said.  His voice was flat.  “There’s just one problem.”
“What?”  Void scowled, as one does when a brilliant theory is threatened with a hefty dose of reality.  “What is the problem?”
“We need a sacrifice,” Himilco said.  His voice was cold.  “What are you prepared to offer, to have the demon come to us?”
“Shit,” I muttered.  “What do we offer?”
“Uncle Mago?”  Hamilcar snorted as we glowered at him.  “Like I said, no one would miss him.”
“It has to be something of value,” Himilco said.  “Personal value.  And how much value do we see in him?”
I winced.  “None,” I said.  It was cruel, but true.  “None of us would piss on him if he was on fire.”
“We might,” Himilco said.  “But pissing on someone isn’t exactly a sign of respect.”
“We need something of value,” Hamilcar said.  “What?”
We exchanged glances.  All we had, all we really had, was each other.  There was no way we could use one of us as a sacrifice and yet, what else did we have?  The traditional virgin sacrifice would be a monumentally bad idea, if we wanted to ensure our rite was untainted by murder.  And …
“There isn’t much that’s ours,” Hamilcar said.  “The house?  The books?  The mansion?  They all belong to the family.”
“True,” Void said.  “We could offer up a portion of our souls?”
I shuddered.  I wasn’t the only one.  Soul magic was as dangerous as necromancy, often more so.  The idea of splitting a soul was abhorrent.  There were horror stories that suggested anyone who tried wound up insane or worse, a monster in human form.  Or dead.  I believed them.  The soul was the thing that separated us from the animals, even if we were turned into animals, and giving up even a part of it would be disastrous.  We wouldn’t know what we’d lost until it was too late, and if the horror stories were to be believed we might not notice or care.
“No,” I said, firmly.  “Bad idea.  Really bad idea.”
“There’s another possibility,” Himilco said, slowly.  He spoke slowly, as if every word was gold.  “We give up our name.”
“Our name?”  Void sounded unconvinced.  “You are aware, are you not, that we’re trying to get the family to acknowledge us?”
“Yes,” Himilco said.  “We need something to tempt a demon.  And it has to be something important.  And if we are gambling for such stakes, we should try to offer something that will either take us to the very highest levels or sending us plunging down into the darkness.”
We exchanged glances, then agreed.
“We need to move fast,” Void said.  He clapped his hands and stood.  “Get some sleep.  We’ll set out in the morning, before they find something else for us to do.  They’ll probably be glad to see us go.”
I cocked an eyebrow.  “Where do you want to go?”
“Whitehall,” Void said.  “Or near Whitehall.  There are quite a few places we can use that aren’t monitored regularly.  They’ll notice us eventually, but it will be too late.”
He looked at me.  “You are still friendly with Old Stinky, aren’t you?”
“Professor Bodoh,” I corrected.  His breath might be unpleasant – he needed to brush his teeth, then wash his mouth out with potion – but he was a charmsmith of no small repute.  I’d been one of his favourites, back when I’d been a student.  Void had been lucky his skill in magic was enough to make the professor overlook his cheek.  “And yes, we do talk.”
“Good,” Void said.  “Here’s what I want you to do …”
Should we have thought better of it?  Yes, we should.  It was foolish of us to risk so much for so little.  But we were young and hurting and supremely confident in our power and skill.  We could handle anything, we told ourselves.  We were proud…
… And we all know what pride goes before, don’t we?
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