anything?
• • •
Max looked out onto the city of Bath as he waited for Rupert, the former Sorcerer of Mercia. The gargoyle was next to him, its paws on the windowsill, the soul chain around its neck clunking against the wood. Max scanned the rooftops and streets, his eyes drawn to the various statues he knew so well and the buildings reflected in the Nether. The trees were swaying in the cold January wind and innocents had their scarves wrapped tight as they hurried from place to place. They had been without protection for over a fortnight now—longer if he included the time since the Bath Chapter had been destroyed—and it wouldn’t be long before the Fae-touched of Aquae Sulis began to suspect that they weren’t being policed as tightly as usual.
“Not sure about this,” the gargoyle’s gravelly voice echoed in the empty room. “A Chapter should be in the Nether. Not Mundanus.”
They were on the top floor of Cambridge House, in the centre of the city. There was a lift, which helped, as it was six stories up, and lots of windows. Aside from an old desk lamp and a waste-paper basket, the huge room was empty. It was a long way from the large building reflected into the Nether with a portcullis, towers, and cloisters that he’d been trained in. That was a bizarre building, created from anchors in several mundane properties, and used to be filled with people. He’d never heard of a Chapter in Mundanus, but everything was different now.
Max leaned against the window frame to take the weight off his aching leg. The damp winter weather seemed to make the old wounds grumble as much as the gargoyle. “The Sorcerer of Albion thinks this is the way forwards. ‘Evolution,’ he called it.”
“Evolution? My stone arse. He hasn’t got a clue about what he’s doing. Hang on. ‘Sorcerer of Albion’? When did Rupert start calling himself that?”
“Three days ago.”
“Not true, though, is it?” The gargoyle fixed its stone eyes on Max. “He’s the last official Sorcerer of the Heptarchy, but there’s another sorcerer in Albion.”
The “other sorcerer” was more than that; she was a woman capable of wielding a hybrid magic, somehow merging Fae and sorcerous arts. Rupert still doubted that such a combination was even possible. There was no doubting that she had murdered six Sorcerers, all of the staff in their Chapters, and dozens of Arbiters across the country. As far as Max knew, the only Arbiters left were the most corrupt in England: the Camden Chapter, Kingdom of Essex. He’d watched one of their Arbiters, Faulkner, drink tea whilst an innocent was being Charmed and kidnapped mere metres away. They were a Chapter in name only.
Max thought it likely that the mysterious Sorceress had another Chapter in her pocket somewhere, or some Arbiters left over from another, ready to do her bidding and kill anyone close to springing her plans early. Surely by now her plan had almost reached fruition; she had succeeded in destroying the Chapters that protected innocents across the country, and had murdered the Sorcerers that presided over them, too.
They didn’t even know what the ultimate plan was; they had a theory that the Sorceress was the sister of the former Sorcerer of Essex and that was all. Why she had killed so many was beyond him. The gargoyle had suggested it was for power. The power to do what?
All was not lost, Max reminded himself. Despite the Sorceress’s best efforts, he and the gargoyle had managed to save Rupert, but not his home or the Arbiters and staff in the Chapters under his control throughout Mercia. There had been three, the largest one in Oxford, with minor Chapters in Cirencester and Cheltenham. The Sorceress thought Rupert was dead, which was the only advantage they had. As the gargoyle had pointed out several times over the past two weeks, it wasn’t much of an advantage at all.
The gargoyle made a noise somewhere between a groan and despondent whine, resting its head on the windowsill. With Max’s soul housed inside it, he assumed it was feeling the weight of their situation. The only survivor from Ekstrand’s household was his librarian, Petra. While she was an incredibly capable woman, she still wasn’t over the Sorcerer’s death. There was Rupert—a homeless Sorcerer in hiding—himself, and the gargoyle.
Max was the only Arbiter left with any sense of duty, the only one who still wanted to protect the innocents from the Fae and their puppets.
“And