The McKenzie Files Book 3: The Unlikely General

  Chapter 1: I get that trying to kill me is a cultural thing for you, but at least use tasteless poison

  “I miss trolls,” said one Ascendancy guardsman to another, eyeing the city walls a few hundred yards distant with professional dread. It was called Lotsk- they’d been encamped within intimidation distance of it for three or four days.

  “You miss ten-foot high psychotic killing machines that eat people?” His comrade replied, more than a little surprised.

  “Yeah. The war before this we had a troll battalion,” the first guardsman replied.

  “What, when we were fighting for Duke whatsisname against those southern types?”

  “Yeah, last year. Before all this,” the guardsman indicated the force behind him with a shake of his spear.

  “Oh yeah. That. We woke up one morning and killed them: they might’ve been all small but they were trolls. Seemed sensible – they might’ve got all big again and then where would we have been, eh? Don’t remember you complaining at the time,” the second guardsman told him.

  “In rett-ro-speck, though, they was useful. Going in behind the troll battalion was dead easy – everyone who wasn’t a troll’d already been killed,” number 1 said, slightly wistfully.

  “Going in front of them wasn’t exactly a bloody picnic though, was it?” Number 2 muttered.

  “Yeah, but we never pulled that duty,” number 1 reminded him.

  “Only ‘cos the sarge knew the captain’s wife and threatened to tell her about that thing with the two slave girls,” number 2 said.

  “Three slave girls,” a guardsman in the next rank corrected him.

  “Three? Seriously?” The second guardsman turned around to look at the man behind, who nodded at him. “Greedy, I call that. Bloody officers.”

  “Face front, Harrick!” Their eagle-eyed sergeant shouted. “And actually it was only two.”

  Harrick turned to face front again. “Still. Lucky bastard,” he said.

  “That’s officering for you. Fringe benefits,” the first guard said. “Anyway, my point is trolls was proper useful for sending in first. Now the likes of us have to do it.”

  Harrick shrugged. “What, stand here looking dangerous? It’s not like actually gotta do anythin’, is it? It’ll be fine.”

  The first guard snorted. “Do me a favour.”

  “Yeah, yeah, point taken Vurn – but we’ve been, what, three months with the Colonel and we haven’t had an actual stand-up fight yet,” Harrick pointed out. “Just ‘sigh hops’, innit?”

  “Sigh what?”

  “Officer talk for puttin’ the shits up someone by camping us outside the city gates and making us, like sharpen swords and that,” Harrick explained sagaciously. “I heard the Colonel’s elf mage talking about it when I pulled guard duty on her tent. And it’s just fine by me, because it means we, my friend, do not have to put ourselves at risk of arrows, swords, spears, battle magic and all the other occupational hazards what we would normally face. Quiet day for us, I reckon.”

  “FIRST BATTALION! FORWARD MARCH!” Came an order from somewhere off to the left, which was duly echoed down from officers to sergeants. The guardsmen started forward.

  “You ‘ad to go and say it, didn’t you?” Vurn grumbled to Harrick.

  Harrick sighed. “Yeah - shoulda known better.”

  In Lotsk, the advance of the Ascendancy forces had not gone unnoticed.

  Lotsk was ruled by a man called Count Truthful, the most recent in a long line of Count Truthfuls. Some had lived up to the hereditary moniker more than others. The current incumbent - a pale, narrow-eyed man of middle years and towering self-belief - could make a solid claim to ‘blunt’, but given that he often told his courtiers ‘the common people love me!’ that was about as close as he was going to get to ‘Truthful’.

  The common people, for their part, universally loathed his capricious judgements, his penchant for harrassing maidservants, his tax collectors, his heavy-handed city guards and pretty much everything else about him.

  Truthful had been advised several months ago that the rumours of trouble to the west could no longer be ignored, and had done precisely nothing. When the trouble finally had a name attached to it - the Ascendancy - and concrete reports of distant towns and cities falling before their might had arrived, he had continued to do precisely nothing beyond blustering. Three months ago the neighbouring city-state - spineless cretins! - had capitulated to an Ascendancy army, and so he’d shouted at someone to muster a militia and levied a tax to pay for it.

  Thus, seeing the Ascendancy ‘army’ advancing towards his city, Truthful wasn’t overly concerned. He had three thousand men in his militia, and high walls. There couldn’t be more than a thousand men moving toward him. A small mounted group, bearing a white flag of truce, was already at the gates.

  He turned to Lord Pragmatic, whom he’d appointed Commander of the Militia because his great-grandfather had once held the post. Pragmatic was a rotund, red-faced man. A brisk march across a parade ground would probably give him a heart attack.

  “Well, this should be over quickly,” Truthful told him.

  In his defence, as it turned out he wasn’t wrong.

  “We have a three-to-one advantage in numbers, my Lord,” Pragmatic replied, nodding sagely as if his military experience stretched further back than Truthful’s last-minute muster. “In my experience, that is sufficient to guarantee victory.”

  “I think once we’ve dealt with the Ascendants we’ll take a little trip to Paryv,” Truthful mused. Paryv had surrendered to them. He was about to beat them. So...he ought to be able to do the same to Paryv, it stood to reason. He’d always quite liked Count Sagacity’s castle, after all – and his youngest daughter was a spirited, pretty little thing. To the victor the spoils and all that.

  Truthful’s daydreams of victory and conquest were interrupted by a knock on the door.

  “What is it?” Pragmatic asked.

  Captain Brevicz walked into the room, with an apologetic look on his face.

  “Well?”

  “They’ve halted their advance, sir. There is an Ascendancy colonel at the gates requesting a parley,” Brevicz reported.

  Truthful snorted. “Some trick, I’ll wager.”

  “He says he is happy to come within the walls alone and unarmed,” Brevicz added.

  Truthful looked at Pragmatic, who shrugged.

  “Very well. Take him under guard and bring him to the audience room. We shall see what he has to say for himself,” Truthful ordered.

  A few minutes later, the colonel was led past the assembled courtiers of Lotsk to where Truthful waited behind his desk. Truthful had a dozen of his guards in attendance, the colonel’s hands had been tied, and he was escorted by six more guards, but the man didn’t seem overly concerned.

  Truthful had expected someone in the scaled armour of the Ascendancy, but the colonel wore no armour – instead he wore black trousers and shirt, with a long black overgarment that was somewhere between a jerkin and a cloak – travel stained and clouded with the dust of a high summer campaign. He had mid-length black hair tied back from his face, and was handsome enough that many of the ladies of the court were regarding him with interested expressions. He fixed Truthful with a steady, calm look as he approached.

  The escorting guards held out a pair of spears to stop the colonel, who gave each man an appraising look then said ‘whatever’ very quietly, under his breath.

  “You this True Fool then?” The colonel asked, in perfect Royslavan, but with an unfamiliar accent.

  “You are addressing a noble!” Brevicz snapped.

  “Oh yeah, forgot. You this Count True Fool then?” The colonel repeated his question.

  Truthful scowled. “I am. It is pronounced Truthful.”

  “Yeah, I figured.” The colonel yawned. “Here’s the deal. Stand down your armed forces, pile all your weapons out front of the city gates, relinquish your position and fuck off somewhere else. If you do, nobody gets hurt. If you don’t, it all kicks off. Is that wine?”

  Truthful blinked. “I beg your pardon!” He barked, outraged.

  The colonel pointed towards the bottle on Truthful’s desk. “That. Wine. Is it.”

  “I will not be addressed so in my own hall!” Truthful blustered.

  The colonel sighed. “Whatevs. Seriously, is it wine? I’m kinda parched, it’s hot out. Isn’t there like polite rules for this sort of meeting? The Sag-Ass City guy had wine and a plate of little cakey things all ready. Nice fella, really nice people all round, actually.”

  “Polite rules, sir, include introductions. You have the advantage of me,” Truthful fired back.

  “You don’t know the half of it, mate,” The colonel said, with another wistful look at the wine. “But of course, where are my manners. I’m Colonel Thursday, commanding the 3rd regiment of the Ascendancy forces in Royslava. This is a bit fuckin’ much, by the way. I came in here unarmed in good faith.” The colonel held up his bound wrists.

  “You shall remain bound, sir, until your attitude improves,” Truthful told him.

  “Judgy,” the Colonel pointed out. “Seriously. Cakes. You’re really not scoring many points, they were much more welcoming over there. That’s why they still have a castle and, y’know, heads.”

  “I find your threats meaningless, and I have little need to score points with you, Colonel. Your forces are outnumbered three to one,” Truthful scoffed.

  “Yeah yeah, I ran the numbers too. Really not caring. So, are you surrendering or not?” Thursday asked.

  “No, I am not,” Truthful answered, pale with anger. “I strongly suggest you surrender. Despite your lamentable lack of manners, your human officers will be treated as gentlemen and may keep their blades if they swear their parole before their gods.”

  “Human officers?” Thursday asked, with a raised eyebrow.

  Truthful nodded. “We will not suffer your drow to live,” he said.

  “Wow,” Thursday said. “Honestly it’s like you’re ticking off all the boxes labelled ‘things that will make Colonel T feel better about causing my grisly death’ on purpose.” He nodded at the paperwork on Truthful’s desk. “Have you literally got a list you’re working your way down?”

  “By the gods, sir, were you not here under a flag of truce I would have you whipped! Whipped, I say! Whipped!” Truthful barked.

  “Um, yeah, I heard you the first time you pompously snarled it,” Thursday told him with raised eyebrows and an expression of disgust, pulling back as if in surprise. “Also, mate: say, don’t spray. Fuck’s sake.” He wiped his face with the back of his hands.

  “Get him out of my sight!” The Count commanded.

  One of the guards reached forward to grab Thursday by the shoulder, but stopped as the colonel raised his arms and casually snapped the ropes with as much difficulty as brushing a spiderweb aside.

  His bonds fell to the floor.

  “I was hoping you’d say that,” the Colonel said. He took two steps forward, and Truthful took two back, keeping the desk between them. All the guardsmen levelled their spears at the stranger.

  Thursday picked up the wine bottle from the desk and took a swig, then winced.

  “Water. Figures,” the man sniffed, turned and left, keeping the bottle. The Lotsk city guards fell in behind him, but decided to a) let him find the exit himself without any shoving and b) not make a big deal about the bottle.

  In the crowd beside the city gates, a young man pushed to the front to watch the foreigner leave the city. The man upended his bottle and poured it’s contents out onto the ground as he left. The young man watched, then melted back into the crowd and away.

  Four hours later, the same young man ran the dragon banner of the Ascendancy up a castle flagpole, next to the otter banner of Lotsk. Truthful’s body was dangling beside it.

  - o O o -

  McKenzie clinked glasses with Major Zelaz in a pub in downtown Lotsk. Outside, the city state was celebrating it’s very first Independence Day. McKenzie was drinking the local vodka – Zelaz preferred wine.

  “Congratulations, Colonel,” Zelaz said. He had an urbane, cultured tone which perfectly suited his appearance: he was tall and handsome, and immaculately turned out in a far less shabby version of the same black uniform McKenzie was (vaguely – he didn’t like the jacket, so didn’t bother with it) wearing.

  He was also a drow – his eyes were red, his skin grey, and his long hair a bright silvery-white.

  “To another bloodless victory,” Zelaz said, and downed his wine.

  “For a given value of ‘bloodless’,” McKenzie said, and knocked back his vodka: then winced, coughed and said ‘ew ew ew!’ repeatedly, before spitting it all onto the floor.

  “Oh for fuck’s sake, Zel,” he said, wiping his mouth. “I get that trying to kill me is a cultural thing for you, but at least use tasteless poison!”

  “Sorry, Colonel,” Zel apologised, producing a blindingly white cloth from a pocket and offering it to his superior officer. “I honestly thought you would smell it before you drank it.”

  “What the hell was it?” McKenzie asked, taking the cloth. He raised it to his face to wipe his mouth, but then stopped and handed it back.

  Zelaz took it carefully between thumb and finger, draped it over a dagger, and then held it over the candle in the middle of their table. It went up with a suspicious blue flame.

  “A little something I picked up from a specialist in Paryv,” he answered, letting the poisoned cloth pass without comment, although he carefully wiped his thumb and forefinger with another, less pristine cloth he pulled from another pocket before sheathing his dagger.

  “Well I hope you got it at a discount,” McKenzie said, signalling the waitress. “He won’t have had much repeat custom for that, literally nobody is going to actually swallow it.”

  “Oh, it’s very popular,” Zelaz corrected him. “His products have killed countless thousands.”

  The waitress rocked up – like the vast majority of Royslavans, she was blonde-haired and blue-eyed. “What’ll it be, gents?”

  “Literally anything this total tosser hasn’t been near,” McKenzie said, pointing to Zelaz.

  “Great, and will the total tosser be having anything?” She turned to Zelaz with a smile.

  “Another bottle of this delightful white,” Zelaz said, then eyed the waitress’s curvy figure and smiled. “Unless you would recommend anything a little more...fuller-bodied?”

  “I may very well be able to provide the perfect thing,” she told him, her smile turning a little sultry. “I’ll be right back.”

  McKenzie rolled his eyes. “How the fuck do you consistently get away with that?” He asked Zelaz. “I’d just get a slap in the face, and rightly so. Jesus.”

  Zelaz indicated his face and self with a little flourish. “It’s easy, you just have to be unspeakably handsome and charming like yours truly. You should try it some time.”

  McKenzie grunted. “I’ve had more than enough slaps in the face to last a lifetime, thanks.” Then he fixed Zelaz with a suspicious look. “Countless thousands of people, right?”

  “Ah…” Zelaz said, his expression turning uncertain. “Well, there may have been some...unintended deaths involved.”

  “It’s rat poison, isn’t it?” McKenzie asked flatly.

  Zelaz seemed to be on the verge of protesting this, but then abandoned the notion. “Um, yes.”

  “I hate you so much right now,” McKenzie told Zelaz.

  “It was somewhat lacking in finesse,” Zelaz admitted. “I have insulted you, Colonel – my sincere apologies.”

  McKenzie snorted out a laugh. “Yeah, use the good stuff next time,” he told Zelaz.

  “I shall be sure to do so,” Zelaz assured him, then frowned. “Will you ever tell me how you do it?”

  “Do what?” McKenzie asked.

  “Well, basically, ‘not dying’,” Zelaz told him.

  McKenzie dug into his shirt and produced a dull, bronze medallion. It was entirely unremarkable, and not even particularly decorative – just a few runes, crudely beaten into the metal disc. “Lucky charm,” he said. “I like you, Zel, so do me a favour: don’t ever try to take this from me.”

  Zelaz peered at it. McKenzie put it back under his shirt.

  “I shall not,” the drow promised. “I’m glad you have it: it means I’m able to remain true to time-honoured drow traditions without killing a man I admire.”

  “Don’t tell him that, he’ll be unbearable if he starts to think people admire him,” a woman’s voice said. “Even more unbearable than normal, rather.”

  “Nice to see you too Danna,” McKenzie greeted her, somewhat sourly.

  Zelaz rose from his seat. “Mistress mage,” he said, with a graceful bow.

  “Major Zelaz,” Danandra nodded back, then took note of the waitress, returning with drinks and a decidedly ‘oi, hands off my cute drow!’ expression. “I see you’re about to have company. I trust I need not remind you to be careful?”

  “I shall be the very soul of gentlemanly behaviour,” Zelaz assured her.

  “I don’t doubt you will, I was more referring to not killing any random barmaids you happen to bed tonight because you’ve been careless with your hobby of poisoning your friend,” Danandra told him flatly.

  “Oh, I am always extremely cautious,” Zelaz said. “I would be genuinely distraught were any poison of mine to ever actually hurt anyone.”

  “God you’re weird,” McKenzie told him, with a shake of his head.

  “Have you heard from your sister?” Danandra asked Zelaz.

  Zelaz nodded. “I received a message this morning. She enquires after her dear friend’s health.”

  “You can tell Briztaz I’m not dead and I hope she isn’t too,” Danandra told him with what was, for her, a staggering level of warmth.

  “She will be quite touched, I’m sure,” Zelaz said. “My niece also sends her regards to her favourite very scary elf lady.”

  Danandra actually, for a moment, almost smiled – but then brought herself under control and hurriedly cued up a decent scowl. “Tell the insufferable little brat that I hope she still has nightmares about me,” she said.

  Zelaz smiled. “My sister says she looks forward to them every night,” he said.

  Danandra huffed. “Well, I shall leave you to your diversions – I trust you’ll have a sufficiently entertaining night.”

  Zelaz looked from the waitress to Danandra. “A pleasant night I do not doubt, if not the perfection one might hope to find with a more refined companion,” he said.

  McKenzie was pretty sure he was speaking drow, or at least elvish: the blank look on the waitress’s face told him as such. McKenzie heard and spoke every language as if it was english, to the point where he sometimes didn’t even know a different language was even being used.

  “One might think that a man such as yourself would have found a perfect companion – you have looked in a great many places, after all, statistically speaking you should have met with success by now,” Danandra replied, with an arch look.

  Zelaz merely smiled. “Perhaps I have,” he said.

  “And yet your search continues,” Danandra told him, eyeing the waitress.

  “Practice makes perfect,” Zelaz shrugged.

  “Anything for your...friend?” The waitress asked, looking at Danandra with an undisguised expression of disapprobation. This exchange had probably been impenetrable to her, and McKenzie suspected Zelaz thought he hadn’t understood, either. The guy was a mate, but he hadn’t told him everything about himself.

  The waitress’s attitude did not escape Danandra, who directed a frosty glare at the woman that could have put out a bonfire. The waitress shrank back, disapproval replaced by sudden fear.

  “No – I have business with the Colonel,” Danandra said curtly.

  “Oh, good!” The waitress said, all smiles again.

  “You, up,” Danandra told McKenzie. “We’ve got things to discuss that we can’t talk about in front of the help.”

  She shot a look at Zelaz, who merely smiled.

  “You’d think she was the one in charge,” McKenzie remarked to Zelaz, as he got up.

  “She is, isn’t she?” Zelaz asked, with a performative look of confusion.

  “I’m certainly the brains of the operation,” Danandra told him tartly, turning and leaving without waiting to see if McKenzie followed.

  McKenzie snagged a tankard of ale from the waitress’s tray. “She’s probably not wrong,” he said to Zelaz before following Danandra, then over his shoulder: “Home by eleven and no funny business young man!”

  “You’re not my real dad!” Zelaz called back. They both laughed.

  He caught up Danandra in the street outside.

  “Your bromance with Briztaz’s good-for-nothing brother is still going strong, then,” she noted, with a sniff.

  “Where’d you learn that word?” He asked.

  “Obviously from you,” she said. “He’s not to be trusted, you know. How many times has he tried to kill you, now?”

  “Properly? Only the once. That was purely down to parental pressure and he was really sorry about it, seriously he was moping for days, the soft twat,” McKenzie answered.

  “So the repeated attempts to end your life in order to usurp your position are what, exactly?” Danandra asked.

  “Oh, that? That’s just our thing,” McKenzie told her. “Everyone in his family tries to kill me at least once, Briztaz did and Pharoza will too when she grows up, probably.”

  Zelaz was, indeed, brother to Briztaz – the drow woman who had tried to kill McKenzie (and his girlfriend, at the time, but that was over now – Shaveen had gone back to being a top-level thief in the Vyrinios guild and after a few dates and a little more hammock time it had amicably fizzled out) but had ended up being an unlikely ally in the mission to destroy the troll obelisk (technically speaking to rescue her daughter, but whatever).

  This had not been the end of it, strangely. Something that might even possibly be described as friendship had sprung up between the drow woman and Danandra, of all people. Briztaz had a daughter, Pharoza: by all accounts she’d taken a shine to her mother’s prickly, acerbic friend, for God knew what reason. McKenzie was vaguely aware that some diplomatic stuff had been happening between progressive-minded drow and progressive-minded elves, to which Danna and Briztaz had been fairly central: during this time they’d evidently bonded, in whatever way two examples of extremely self-confident and outwardly unfriendly elvenkind could bond.

  Briztaz’s father was certainly not progressive: but his son was, and like his sister before him, he had defied the family patriarch and come up out of the dark to live on the surface. In this he was not alone: increasing numbers of drow were choosing to do so, and many of them had ended up in McKenzie’s little bit of the Ascendancy’s faceless legions of evil. Zelaz was the guy in charge of them – McKenzie was finding he liked the guy, despite all the poisoning: he was just having trouble letting go of the old drow ways, one of which was rampant Machiavellian scheming and poisoning your way to the top.

  Danandra rolled her eyes at ‘just our thing’. “He’s still not to be trusted,” Danandra said. “He’s an unreliable, irritating, smug, preening...handsome asshole,” she scoffed.

  McKenzie took a swig of ale, then frowned. “Danna...have you got a thing for Briz’s brother?”

  “I have not!” She nearly hissed at him, so virulently that two Ascendancy guardsmen they passed in the street actually recoiled in shock.

  “It’d be fine if you did,” McKenzie told her, holding his hands up in mock surrender. “You and Tally Ho broke it off, and that was a while ago. You’re a free agent. You wouldn’t even have to work for it, Zel’s a total man-slag: go chase the waitress away and have some fun.”

  “Ugh, must you be so crude?” She said, pushing her glasses up her nose.

  “Zel and Danandra sitting in a tree, p-o-i-s-o-n-i-n-g,” McKenzie said, in a little singsong voice.

  “Apparently you must,” Danandra sighed. “McKenzie: please listen. I didn’t want to end things with Talius, it was necessary and it still stings: so please could we not talk about this?”

  McKenzie would, in the past, have carried on with a nice little bout of Danna-needling that would have been very entertaining. Sharinta (given that it was her turn – Cally would have shushed him) would probably have joined in, and Danandra would have thrown a very amusing strop.

  But he was trying to be less of a twat. Danandra, after all, spoke to him with maybe ten to fifteen percent less scorn and sarcasm, these days, which he recognised as an adaptation she had made because despite her cold exterior and even colder interior, she had admitted him to the very select group of people she could tolerate: friends, in the non-Danna worldview.

  So instead of the possibly-slightly-racially-insensitive ‘I thought you liked exploring grey areas’ quip he was working on, he aborted it and simply said: “Okay, we won’t then, sorry.”

  Danandra shot him a quick smile of thanks: a rarity for the woman who’d enthusiastically made ‘resting bitch face’ into an art form.

  “Why’d you come and grab me?” He asked her.

  “We have what you refer to as a ‘conference call’, remember?” She said.

  “No, I do not remember,” McKenzie answered.

  “And that is why I ventured into a smelly bar to ‘grab’ you,” Danna answered.

  “Fair comment,” he said, with a shrug.

  The Ascendancy force under McKenzie’s command – about a thousand men and drow, mostly mercenaries – were camped outside the city walls. The men on patrol recognised him and waved him past with a cheery ‘back already, sir! Major Zelaz drunk you under the table already?’ which McKenzie laughed at. He was popular with his men: they were paid well and, so far, hadn’t suffered a single casualty – this was enough to ensure him a place close to their hearts, for as long as such conditions continued to prevail, at any rate.

  They made their way through the camp, skirting fires and groups of off-duty soldiers drinking or singing badly, to what Danandra referred to as ‘the command post’ and McKenzie just called ‘the big tent’ – a big black canvas yurtlike thing that they both had a ‘room’ in, or at the very least a wedge-shaped subsection.

  McKenzie noted a thin figure hovering around by the entrance. “Bollocks. This dickhead again,” he muttered.

  “Play your part,” Danandra hissed a reminder at him.

  The thin figure was a man of middle years, with a shaved head and a long nose that gave him the appearance, to McKenzie, of a vaguely malevolant Pinocchio. He always wore a skull-hugging cap made of shimmering metallic green and silver scales, a cloak decorated with the same, and intricate green and red eye makeup which was applied and re-applied as necessary by one of his three minions, who all dressed and acted the same. His name was Brother Ississiffitus, which McKenzie refused to call him, mostly because he couldn’t pronounce it, but also because he thought the man was an utter pain in the arse. He just called him:

  “Hissy Fit,” McKenzie said. “Your tent’s over that way.” He pointed in a random direction.

  “Revered and respected Colonel,” Hissy Fit replied, with a florid bow. “I was disappointed to not find you at today’s service of thanksgiving for our latest victory.”

  “Were you though?” McKenzie asked him wryly, tilting his head to one side.

  Danandra shot him A Look. “This is playing your part?”

  “Yes, this is me playing a part,” he muttered back. “If I wasn’t I’d just hit the creepy little fucker.”

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  “Our lady of the wings holds you in great favour, Colonel,” the priest told him. “It is unwise to court her ire with acts of unfaithfulness.”

  There was a fire in front of the big tent: it wasn’t a cold night, but McKenzie made a show of holding his hands out to it, alternating the tankard back and forth so he could warm them. “Hissikins, man, come on. You know I wouldn’t cult-cheat on our lady. She’s the only threatening sense of impending pure evil about to sweep across the world in a wave of despair and destruction that really matters to me, those other evil spirits I entered into the service of, they were one-night things only.”

  “I would not be so quick to mockery, Colonel, were I you,” Hissy Fit said warningly.

  “I do take the piss a lot, it’s true,” McKenzie said. He saluted the man across the fire with the tankard of ale, took a drink and then offered it to him. “Want a drink? I’m reasonably sure Zelaz hasn’t added in any extra flavourings.”

  “Why do you persist in this sham? Seek out her avatar and surrender yourself to her service,” Hissy Fit advised.

  “Is it my destiny?” McKenzie asked him disingenuously.

  Hissy Fit glowered at him. “Her radiant glory is not lightly refused,” he said.

  “Ooh, I think that’s a new one,” McKenzie said, then turned to Danandra. “Is that a new one? Have I radiantly refused her light and glory before?”

  “Don’t drag me into this, please Colonel,” Danandra said, from where she was waiting by the tent flap. “I don’t suffer from the same compunction to annoy the church as you.”

  “Your mage is as wise as she is comely,” Hissy Fit said, with a little bow to Danandra.

  “On the other hand, if you refer to me as ‘comely’ again, priest, I will tear that ugly cloak into strips, weave them together into a rope, and then strangle you with it,” Danandra informed him, with a glare, before ducking inside the tent leaving a cloud of low-grade anger behind her.

  Hissy Fit’s eyes, beneath all the shiny makeup, went momentarily wide.

  “Ouch. Comely? Seriously mate what were you thinking?” McKenzie asked him. “I think you just pissed on your chips if you were hopin’ to ask her out.”

  McKenzie finished the last of the ale and tossed the wooden tankard onto the fire.

  “This attitude will do you no good,” Hissy Fit said. “You are chosen. Embrace it. Embrace her.”

  McKenzie looked up to check Danandra was definitely gone.

  “Then tell her to stop flirting and give up the goods,” he told the priest.

  “One does not speak so of a goddess,” Hissy Fit, well, hissed.

  “Jury’s out on whether she’s that or not,” McKenzie said, then leaned forward, closer to the priest. “And I’ll speak about anyone and anything in any way I want. Don’t like it? Stop me.”

  “You may possess that trinket, but you are no immortal to so comport yourself,” Hissy Fit told him, with a dark look.

  “Ooh, been payin’ attention to my jewelry choices, have we?” McKenzie asked, eyebrows raised. “Good – you know what power it gives the wearer, so maybe watch your fucking tone with me?”

  Hissy Fit took a step back.

  McKenzie sniffed. “Your guv seems to think I’m immortal enough to negotiate with as an equal. I’ve told her what I want from her if she wants to take things up a notch: in the meantime this was the last city on her eastern flank that hadn’t signed a treaty with her, and now they have. The route eastwards is open. If that isn’t ‘glorious service’, I don’t know what is.”

  “Hardly glorious,” Hissy Fit said. “You have talked, you have threatened, you have supplied arms to pathetic malcontents and undermined nobles – but you have not fought. You have struck down no enemies in her name, nor dragged slaves and captives before her.”

  McKenzie twisted his mouth and gave a nod of acceptance. “I know: if it’s any consolation I’m bored shitless,” he said. “I’m gasping for a decent fight. But a big stack of bodies never achieved a single fuckin’ thing apart from guaranteeing that there’d be another one along soon, stinking even worse.”

  He pulled out a knife from under his jacket and started cleaning under one nail with the tip. Hissy Fit eyed it, but was silent.

  “Do you take requests?” McKenzie asked him.

  “What do you mean?” Hissy Fit asked.

  “Prayers,” McKenzie clarified. “Not something I ever done much of, but it’s your thing, right? So, next time you go down on your knees before her, remind her that she knows what my price is. Get back to me when she’s ready to pay. Until then, um, fuck you I suppose?”

  He turned from the fire and followed Danandra into the tent, not waiting to see if Hissy Fit followed him or – preferably – pissed off out of it. As he entered, he felt a sussuration of magic: the tent came with a privacy charm – a gift from the Archmage that he was very careful to never touch.

  Danandra was lighting lamps inside the big tent’s main chamber.

  “Go on, then, give me a bollocking for annoying the priesthood again,” he told her heavily.

  She snorted. “Just can’t find it in myself,” she said. “He is an annoying little piss-stain on the hem of the world.”

  “Ooh that was nasty,” McKenzie complimented her. “Great insult.”

  “You’re going to steal it, aren’t you?” She asked him.

  “One hundred percent,” McKenzie confirmed. “Nobody does scorn quite like you, Danna.”

  “Thank you,” she said – genuinely pleased, it seemed.

  “Oh – he’s noticed the medallion,” he added.

  “I’m not surprised, you’ve hardly been discreet with it,” she said. “You wave it around in front of people like a two-copper floozy flashing her arse at horny sailors.”

  McKenzie gave a bark of laughter. “And I’m the crude one? Ha! Anyway I thought the whole point was to get people to notice it?”

  “The point, McKenzie, was to get people to think it was your closely guarded secret, and that they had been very clever to notice it and thus report it to their superiors: ‘hey, I’ve determined the source of his invulnerability, he has the legendary long-lost Medallion of Supana’ – but I’ll be honest, I never held out much hope for that: it required subtlety, and…” She looked at him expectantly.

  “I don’t so subtle,” he supplied, with a grin.

  “Precisely,” she said.

  McKenzie, of course, did not possess the legendary long-lost Medallion of Supana in any way, shape or form: what he had was an entirely normal bit of tatty bronze bling that Danandra had taught him – at great peril to the surrounding area, which was a whole thing now – to channel a bit of quintessence into, so it would appear mysteriously magical to anyone trained to look for that sort of jiggery-pokery. It was a cover story, pure and simple – designed to deflect any suspicion as to why he could shrug off magic, blades and his friend’s repeated poisonings.

  If anyone looked deeper – to find out who this ‘Thursday’ was – well, if they made enquiries in Vyrinios, they might learn that the new head of the Assassin’s Guild had suddenly fled westwards: the medallion had been stolen from a client, an unforgivable sin within the Guild.

  “We’re late,” Danandra said, sitting down on a folding camp chair in front of a small chest. “Are you ready?”

  McKenzie sat down and nodded. “Are you?” He asked, slightly apprehensively.

  Danandra shot him an exasperated look. “That was one time,” she said, defensively.

  “And only one forest,” he said.

  “It was barely a clump of trees,” Danandra said, with a shake of her head.

  “Pile of ash, by the time you were done with it,” McKenzie noted.

  “I know what I’m doing now,” she said. “Ready?”

  “OK, do the thing,” he said.

  Danandra took a breath and held it, then opened the chest – it was a plain thing, not ornate or fancy, and locked with (apparently) a simple key. There was nothing so obvious as a crystal ball inside, or treasure, or scrolls. Instead, there was a tiny carving of a round table, ringed by equally tiny chairs, and set with little silver glasses and jugs. Miniature copies of paintings were stuck to the walls of the chest, and little glowing magical orbs bathed the inside of the chest in a pleasant warm light. Three of the chairs were occupied, in all cases by blonde women: they looked up as Danandra opened the lid.

  “I told you we were late,” she said to McKenzie.

  “No we’re not, we’re just stupidly early for the next meeting,” McKenzie said.

  “Don’t distract me,” Danandra told him.

  She held her arms in front of her, over the chest, with her hands open as if each one held a door handle – then she turned them gently.

  The ground immediately started to shake, making the tent poles vibrate and a jug of water in the corner of the main chamber fall onto it’s side and spill it’s contents over a fur rug. The temperature rose by several degrees, and the tent became suddenly much darker. McKenzie felt a building surge of magic, well beyond what he thought of as a 1.0 on the Danandra do-not-fuck-with scale.

  “McKenzie!” Danandra nearly yelped.

  “Yep, on it!” McKenzie almost yelped back, taking her hands in his.

  A torrent of magical energy suddenly flowed into him, sending sparks up his arm. The ground stilled, and the light and temperature in the tent returned to normal.

  Danandra breathed out in sudden relief, and then did something McKenzie had never – until very recently – seen her do: she cried.

  It was one tear and one sob – more of a hiss than an expression of pain or sadness. She covered it up within milliseconds, blinking the tear away.

  “This is on me,” he said. “If you hadn’t had to pull out all the stops against the obel-”

  “No,” she said, in a rough rasp.

  “We’ll get you through it,” McKenzie told her. “Whatever you nee-”

  “I said no,” Danandra hissed at him.

  McKenzie shut up.

  She took another breath, steadied herself, and then with McKenzie’s hands held ready to grab hers if needed, she repeated the gesture.

  This time, when she turned her hands, they were grasping a pair of marble door handles. She twisted and pulled – McKenzie felt another pulse of magical power, but this time it was far less threatening an uncontrolled – and the doors the handles were attached to opened onto a room lined with pictures and magical orbs, with a round table in the centre, set with silver jugs of water and silver goblets. McKenzie found himself following Danandra as she opened the doors and walked in.

  McKenzie looked up. Above, far distant, he could see a huge arch of black: a fold of the tent, seeming now like a massive rib of rock in an enormous cave. Two towering figures were sat just below it: his own body and Danandra’s, currently on pause, or in a trance, or however this whole setup of the Archmage’s worked.

  Three of the chairs were occupied.

  Sitting primly in the first was Xixaxa, the Archmage of Melindron. She was a neat, controlled woman – you couldn’t put an age on her, although the actual number could only meaningfully be measured in centuries. Even in the meeting-chest, where like everyone else she wasn’t actually physically present, to McKenzie’s sort-of-reliable magical sense she radiated a solid 10 on the D-scale: sometimes he felt like he needed a pair of shades to be able to look directly at her.

  Sitting next to her was Cally, cleric of Arctan and one half of the Callena/Sharinta sister act: two siblings who only occupied physical space in the universe on a timeshare basis. Tall, bronze-blonde and blue-eyed, she was wearing fur-trimmed blue robes and her shield pendant, the symbol of her faith. There was a scroll on the table before her.

  On the other side of the Archmage was Ellie, who presented as an almost excruciatingly pretty and cute elfmaid, with shining golden hair that required precisely zero attention from a stylist to fall in pleasingly soft curls over her shoulders, and wore one of her habitual flower-print dresses. She was...well, nobody had really got round to labelling her yet. Recovering ex-troll? Recently elfified petite badass? Something like that, anyway.

  One thing she definitely wasn’t was Leni. Not only was she the physical antithesis of her former self, she had figuratively and literally killed her former self, plunging a poison-tipped ballista bolt into her own chest so that Violentia would die. McKenzie had really, really hated Leni – only Danandra exceeded his depth of feeling on that particular matter – but they had both decided that Ellie-with-a-little-heart-above-the-i was very definitely a different person, had very definitely done in the troll they both detested at what she very definitely thought was the cost of her own life, and therefore got a clean slate even if she was annoyingly perky and overly enthusiastic.

  She sprang up from her chair at the sight of Danandra and came rushing around the table to hug her. “Danna, are you okay? It looked like you nearly exploded again.”

  Danandra merely nodded.

  “Patience, Lady Danandra,” Xixaxa intoned – she was the sort of woman who could ‘intone’ really well without making it seem pretentious: when you were the most magically powerful being in the entire world, everything you said carried a lot of weight. “You will master this: your control will return, it will simply take determination and dedication, neither of which you lack.”

  “I wish I shared your confidence in me, Your Wisdom,” Danandra replied.

  McKenzie looked down at the floor, suddenly uncomfortable, because what he’d tried to tell her earlier was quite true: he did blame himself for Danandra’s current state.

  About a year ago, he’d led Danandra and Leni into the very centre of Trollheim. The mission to destroy the troll’s obelisk had required careful planning, flawless execution and a healthy dose of ruthlessness: although the first two McKenzie had been able to outsource, the last one had been all him: he’d told himself that it needed doing and it’d all work out okay.

  It very much hadn’t.

  He’d lost his free will to the obelisk’s influence and very nearly ruined the whole thing, betraying his friends – only an intervention from a whole other plane of existence had saved him. Christine had arranged for Narra, the elven-wolf-princess about whom it was very safe to say McKenzie had unresolved feelings, to talk him down. It had worked: he came to his senses, did what was needed to stay focused – but he had, inevitably, hit fuck it and made a classic McKenzie decision.

  In this case it was to abandon any pretence that the mission was one of infiltration, and steer a burning airship directly into the centre of the troll city with the intention of ramming the obelisk. The trolls had been very much ready for this, the Posh Elf Titanic had succeeded only in ramming the ground, and they’d found themselves with a huge fight to win. They’d won, but Ellie had very nearly given her own life and Danandra...was different.

  McKenzie’s magical sixth-sense gave him a general idea of how powerful a mage was: but he was also learning that all magic types also had their own style. The Archmage’s magic had always seemed, to McKenzie, to be function-over-form: completely efficient and nothing wasted. Talius’s had been precisely controlled, like a robot arm at work, each movement always exactly the same.

  Pre-Trollheim, Danandra’s magic had been powerful – she was the benchmark he used for magical power, 1.0 on the D-Scale - and her execution of it had been nearly effortless: nothing she ever did was quite the same twice, her magic always had an artistic flair.

  Post-Trollheim, Danandra’s magic was even more powerful: but she’d lost any semblence of being able to control it. Gone was the effortless style, now she had only two choices with regard to magic: don’t use it, or cut loose with a staggering amount of destructive power. Now she never, ever attempted to do any magic without McKenzie present: if it got away from her (and it always did) then he could absorb it before she destroyed breakable things like buildings, forests and possibly-innocent bystanders.

  She wasn’t the sharing type, and McKenzie wasn’t the empathic type, but even he could tell that this was causing her untold misery. Magic was Danandra’s entire life, not just a profession or a calling, it was what she was. She loved it – maybe a little too much, in fact, although she’d been working towards taking a more intellectual and less, ahem, visceral delight in it, and had met with success.

  Now, though, it was effectively forbidden to her. She’d overextended herself in Trollheim, pushed past limits that she should have respected, and something within her had torn.

  Xixaxa claimed to have seen this before. She’d been working with Danandra to help her regain her control: but he always had to be present, to contain the spontaneous explosions of overpowered magic that were the (fairly constant) result of her trying to do the simplest spell. So where he went, she went.

  And as if that wasn’t enough, the final casualty of the fight in Trollheim had been Danna’s relationship with Talius. Things had been going extremely well between them: they’d even moved in together. All that was over, now: doing any magic around Danandra – even just being magical near her - risked setting her off, and like her, Talius’s life was his art. Their relationship hadn’t survived the strain. The fact that she habitually spent as much time as she possibly could with or near McKenzie (or more accurately the safety-catch that was his quintessence) probably hadn’t helped, even if Talius had known the real reason for her shunning his company and seeking out McKenzie’s.

  McKenzie sighed: all his fault, really. Danna hadn’t said it, but he was sure she thought it.

  He was nudged out of gloomy thoughts by Ellie giving him a hug, which he returned with only minimal grumpiness.

  “Hey McKenzie,” she said.

  “Els,” he greeted her. “How’s tricks?”

  “Eh, it’s fine,” she said. “Briz said to say hi and ask after her, and I quote, ‘idiot useless brother who seems to have forgotten the art of writing’.”

  “You can tell her Zelaz is alive and well and unfortunately still being Zelaz,” McKenzie told her, as they disengaged and went to take seats.

  Noting that the size of the table was more than a little excessive for only five people, Xixaxa made a very slight pinching gesture, and it shrank to a circumference better suited to a smaller meeting. Greetings were exchanged all round.

  “Xixxy, Cally,” McKenzie greeted the cleric.

  “Lord McKenzie,” Xixaxa inclined her head.

  “Um, hello McKenzie,” Cally said to him, looking more than a little uncomfortable. He wondered if she shared his conviction that Danandra’s current plight was his fault.

  Everyone sat down. Xixaxa kicked off the meeting with the universal code for letting someone know they were late without saying to their face that they were late.

  “As we were just telling Lady Elleniralla,” she said, Lady Callena’s latest diplomatic mission has been a success. The Edgelands Republic and the Southern Isles have agreed to join the coalition against the Ascendancy, should they venture any further east.”

  “Nicely diplomatised,” McKenzie told Cally, then tried to recall a map that Danandra occasionally insisted he look at. “I’m surprised they even knew the Ascendancy was a thing, aren’t they, like, way east?”

  “Not both of them, no,” Cally replied.

  McKenzie frowned. “Which one isn’t?”

  Danandra sighed. “Take a wild guess,” she advised him.

  McKenzie thought about it for a moment. Southern Isles. Right. “They could be east as well as south,” he said defensively.

  “Well then what do you think they’d be called?” Danandra asked him, with a raised eyebrow.

  “The...Eastern Isles that happen to be a bit Southern aswell but we only wanted the two words in the name so we stuck with just Southern Isles?” He hazarded as he scrabbled for any answer apart from ‘the South-Eastern Isles, dumbass’ that he could almost hear Danandra’s voice shouting from the back of his mind.

  “The South-Eastern Isles, dumbass,” Danandra said, closing the loop. “Which they aren’t, so…”

  “You are right in that both nations are far distant from the lands controlled by the Ascendancy,” Xixaxa intervened, although Ellie was laughing. “We are fortunate in two things: the Ascendancy has made no secret that their ambitions are global, and Lady Callena is an exceptional diplomat: it is her work that brings the east it’s unity.”

  “Her Wisdom exaggerates my gifts,” Cally said.

  “I do not,” Xixaxa said, in mild reproof. “Your sister may excel at bending people to her will: but you are no less capable, Callena. Where she manipulates, though, you appeal instead to logic, altruism and the spark of the divine that lives within us all. Simply put, people do the right thing when you ask them.”

  Cally blushed slightly. “I am honoured to be so thought of by the Archmage,” she said.

  “She’s not wrong, Cally, you’re so good it’s almost painful. Your shining example makes us all better people, please knock it the fuck off, I happen to enjoy being an arsehole,” McKenzie joked.

  “Which is just as well, really,” Danandra remarked.

  “Thanks for the validation, Danna,” McKenzie shot back.

  “I’m not all that good, McKenzie,” Cally said, looking down.

  “Oops, sorry – forgot. Yes, you are just as much ‘the fun sister’ as Shar, I will not make that mistake again,” McKenzie told her.

  “No, it’s not that, I-” Cally started to say, but then looked sideways at Xixaxa, and fell silent.

  “Lady Elleniralla, how goes your work?” Xixaxa asked.

  “Oh! It’s going...surprisingly well. I’ve been allowed apartments inside the drow city with Brizzles, and we’re meeting with the elders tomorrow,” Ellie reported.

  “Brizzles?” McKenzie asked. “I don’t know Frowny-Face well, but I seriously doubt she’d sit still for ‘Brizzles’.”

  “We’re besties now!” Ellie objected, aiming for ‘outraged’ but missing badly and hitting ‘adorably angry kitten’ instead. “Although okay yes that one didn’t go down well. She’s okay with Briz, though.”

  “When you’ve negotiated access,” Cally said, “you’ll need this.”

  She pushed the scroll past Xixaxa and over to Ellie, who unwrapped it and then grinned delightedly (and delightfully – it lit up the room). “Yay! Treasure map!” Then she frowned. “Wait can I take this out of here?”

  “Place it in your pocket, and it will be there when you awake in Zar-Zeng,” Xixaxa said.

  “I love this dress, but it does not have pockets,” Ellie said, sadly.

  “Look down,” Xixaxa advised – McKenzie felt a minor flare of her power.

  Ellie did so, pulling her chair back a little so she could look at her dress. “Ooh, pockets!” She exclaimed, and tucked the scroll into one. “I knew this style would look fine with pockets. Dress designers seem to have this blind spot when it comes to being able to carry stuff in garments.”

  “Only the male ones,” Danandra noted.

  “Use the map to find the artifact,” Xixaxa told her. “I know I need not caution you to remain vigilant – not all drow are as open-minded as Briztaz, her brother and others of their generation. The old guard still hate, distrust and revile all outsiders.”

  “Yeah there are some extremely creepy old guys here,” Ellie nodded, with a look of distaste.

  “Speaking of which, how’s your bow-training going?” McKenzie asked.

  For anyone else, this question would refer to archery practice. In Ellie’s case, it meant something a little different.

  “Not great,” she admitted. “He’s...set in his ways.”

  “He’s set in the way of being a twangy prick,” McKenzie replied. “Chuck the annoying fucker onto a fire and let his soul descend down to incel hell, be done with it.”

  “What’s ‘incel hell’?” Ellie asked, with a frown.

  “I dunno, probably an eternity of what you’re trying to do to him,” McKenzie shrugged. “It won’t take.”

  “Everyone can become a better person,” Ellie insisted – and McKenzie had to admit that she was living proof of that.

  “Lord McKenzie, Lady Danandra,” Xixaxa interrupted. “How goes the Ascendancy campaign in the west?”

  “That? Oh, we’re done: Roy’s Lava is now officially one hundred percent scaler-friendly,” he said. “Didn’t even have to fire a single arrow or swing a single sword.”

  “Almost too easy,” Danandra said. “The Royslavan city states were almost all corrupt, stagnated and their feudal system was a nightmare of privilege and oppression: fertile ground for revolutions.”

  “Paryv was alright,” McKenzie objected.

  “You’re only saying that because a pretty noble girl spent an entire evening flirting with you and plying you with cake and wine,” Danandra told him. “It was enough to make my skin crawl.”

  McKenzie smiled. “It was really nice cake,” he said, then frowned. “Turned out she was just after an ‘introduction’ to Zelaz, though – as if she couldn’t just walk up to him and say ‘hi, I’m pretty, wanna have some fun?’ like literally every other woman he flutters his eyelashes at.”

  “Why?” Ellie asked. “Briz says that he’s stupid and ugly, like, a lot.”

  “Never seen him do a crossword or anything, but the ugly part, definitely not,” McKenzie informed her.

  “Ooh,” Ellie said. “Briz has a hot brother? How hot are we talking here?”

  “Danandra, you want to field that one?” McKenzie asked.

  Danandra exhaled hard. “Briztaz is correct, he’s stupid and ugly. I have no idea why so many women seem to find him irresistible, the only thing about him that makes sense to me is his need to make McKenzie shut up by poisoning him.”

  “He’s tried to poison you?” Ellie gasped.

  “Is he a risk?” Cally asked.

  “Nah, he’s just going through a few things,” McKenzie said. “It was more of a chemically-assisted cry for help. These day’s it’s just a running joke we have.”

  “Where is this Zelaz right now?” Xixaxa asked. “Could he be watching you, and reporting to our enemies?”

  Danandra snorted. “He is very much otherwise occupied right now, you may rest assured,” she said. “He’s loyal to McKenzie, for all that he’s an irritant and a terrible example of an elven being.”

  “Ah,” Ellie said. “So it’s like that.” McKenzie snorted a laugh.

  “Just no,” Danandra told her. “All the no.”

  Ellie made a zipping gesture in front of her lips, something she’d copied from McKenzie. “As you will, Danna,” she said.

  “And has our common enemy reached out to you again?” Xixaxa asked McKenzie.

  McKenzie opened his mouth to reply, paused, and then simply said. “No.”

  “It is essential that she does,” Xixaxa told him. “The entire reason behind the Royslavan campaign is to prove your usefulness to her.”

  “I like to think that these days I’ve got a solid idea of my strengths and weaknesses, and because one of those strengths is being okay with who I am, I do not mind admitting that everything we’ve achieved out west really just proves Danandra’s usefulness, not mine,” he said.

  Danandra nodded in acceptance of that. “You are entirely correct, I have worked extremely hard,” she said.

  “A fact we are all more than aware of, Lady Danandra, and it is noble in Lord McKenzie to acknowledge this and begrudge you not the recognition you are due – but our goal is to embed him in the Ascendancy leadership, at the side of the lady herself,” Xixaxa reminded them all.

  “I pushed a bit tonight,” McKenzie said, forcing himself into a tone of admission. “The scaler priest bothered me again – I told him that I was ready to move up in the ranks. Hopefully I’ll get another dream, um, maybe she’s been waiting to see if I managed to turn all of Royslava.”

  He twisted his lips uncomfortably and looked down.

  “I’m sure it’ll work, McKenzie,” Ellie said encouragingly, taking his moment of dejection for doubt.

  “Um...yeah,” he answered.

  It wasn’t doubt: he was lying – and although McKenzie had a long list of moral failings, lying to his friends didn’t sit well with him.

  With everyone brought up to speed, the meeting wound up fairly quickly, and they all went their separate ways. Danandra closed the crate and took herself off to her section of the tent with a murmured goodnight: she was never in the best of moods in normal circumstances – in the aftermath of nearly blowing up with magic she could no longer control, she was positively withdrawn.

  McKenzie checked that guards had been set and that all seemed well in the camp, before returning to the tend and his own bed. He got his phone out and looked at it.

  No Signal, the screen said, which was a lie. It had signal, via whatever weird confluence of imperfectly copied magic and quintessence made it somehow work on this world. What it didn’t have – at least any more - was access to any network or number – apart from one.

  McKenzie brought the contact up: Buzz.

  Come on Phil, he typed. At least tell me Narra’s okay.

  He tapped send, waited for a few moments. The phone pinged softly with a reply.

  I’m not talking to you until you stop this, and I’m definitely not going to tell you anything about Anna, the reply read. What you’re doing is wrong.

  It was along the same lines as the last hundred or so replies. McKenzie was definitely not in Buzz’s good books any more. He typed back the same sort of reply he’d made a hundred or so times, too.

  This is an undercover thing, he said. I’m trying to get close enough to her that I can kill her.

  Like I told you, I know that. She doesn’t deserve it, Buzz replied. She’s innocent.

  Nobody’s innocent. It has to be done, McKenzie sent back.

  That’s the Archmage talking. I can’t ever believe I thought you were cool, came the reply.

  Another: You’re just an assassin after all.

  McKenzie reminded himself that the mysterious contact that used to supply him with warnings and predictions had turned out to be a teenage boy on Earth. Evidently a teenager with access to some sort of magic or might-aswell-be-magic, but a teenager nonetheless.

  Fine, be like that, McKenzie typed. If you decide to stop being a judgy little gatekeepy prick, tell Narra that I

  He stopped. Deleted it, then scowled at the screen for several moments before locking the phone and putting it under his pillow.

  Sleep was, fortunately, not very long in coming. Un-fortunately, McKenzie’s dreams, or lack thereof, were interrupted once again by Russell – this had become a very regular occurrence.

  She was heralded, as usual, by formless darkness, a faint reptilian smell, and the brush of leathery wings.

  Still you do not serve me, immortal, the sibilant voice hissed.

  Totes do, Russell, McKenzie replied. I’m in your fucking army, remember?

  And have you brought me victory this day? Tell me of it, impress me with your deeds.

  Come on, Russ-Russ – you know I’m not going to bend over like that when we haven’t even had one date. You want a face to face, you know what it’ll cost you.

  You think highly of yourself, immortal, Russell said, with a hissing laugh.

  One of my many vices, McKenzie responded.

  I have thought on your price, the voice said. Long have I pondered it. Even an immortal cannot slay a god.

  That wasn’t an option anyway, Russ, McKenzie replied. I was really clear about that. You remember the whole thing about the curse that kinda got remixed by the Archmage?

  There is a legendary blade, thought lost...I know where it may be found.

  Clearly you haven’t understood the assignment, McKenzie said, with a sigh. You forgot the part where I can’t kill the prick. I asked you to think outside the box, did that not translate or something?

  Russell laughed, then: oh, the capabilities of this blade are far greater than merely killing...

  She left it at that – silence descended.

  Russ, you’re such a fucking tease, McKenzie said, breaking it.

  You will address me with respect, immortal, the voice reprimanded him sharply. You are a demon – I am a goddess.

  That’s what your annoying priest keeps saying. Honestly he’s like a stuck record. Wish he’d shut the fuck up. Not bein’ funny Russell, but you seem to attract the weirdest types as followers, I’m seriously worried as to the company I’d be keeping if I do decide to take you up on your job offer at any point.

  Come and tell me his name: I shall punish him for his impertinence, the voice promised.

  I can’t pronounce it anyway, McKenzie replied, with an invisible shrug. So – give me details: where can I find the stabby thing of doom? I’ll go and stick it in the white prick’s face. You want him dealt with as much as I do.

  This blade will send him from whence he cannot return.

  Okay, so he’ll be looking at eternal life in solitary. He’ll go even crazier than he already is. Nasty – I like it.

  McKenzie would have grinned, if he currently had a mouth or even a body.

  I can tell you where to find this weapon, but the knowledge comes with a price. It is time for you to embrace your destiny in my service. Accept my invitation, immortal.

  Russell’s presence receded, leaving McKenzie to the privacy of his own dreams.

  He actually slept really well, after that, waking up refreshed and ready to, well, he was actually planning to go back into Lotsk and have a drink: there were no more Royslavan city-states to suborn, so he was kind of at a loose end. Danandra was already awake, reading a book in the main chamber.

  “The priest is outside, says he has a message of the highest importance. His under-priests are with him,” Danandra informed him.

  “Well,” McKenzie said, as he drew the tent flap aside, “at least I get to tell him to fuck off. You wanna go get breakfast in Lotsk, afterwards?”

  “Yes – and then I want to go and examine Truthful’s library. He reportedly owned a rare work by Kniethaart,” Danandra said.

  “Good luck with that, I’ll be in the pub,” McKenzie told her.

  They stepped outside. Flanked by a couple of guards, Hissy Fit and this three minions were indeed waiting outside.

  He wasn’t wearing his usual expression of supercilious superiority: instead he looked very pale. He was wearing neither robes or shiny hat, and his makeup was missing, too. He was, in fact, visibly shaking.

  “You done some bad acid or something, Hissy?” McKenzie asked him. “You look like shit.”

  Hissy gave vent to a whimper. One of his minions gave him a meaningful nudge.

  “I beg pardon, dread immortal, for any insult I gave. I was not worthy to speak so to one of her Chosen. I have sinned,” he confessed.

  One of his minions produced a knife from beneath her robes and handed it to him. The guards immediately drew their swords: McKenzie waved them away. “Chill, lads, it’s fine.”

  “I have sinned,” Hissy repeated, looking at the knife in his hand.

  “Hiss, you’re an annoying prick, but that’s not a sin,” McKenzie told him, with an eye roll. “Pick yourself up, fuck off, and go get your head straight. Then fuck off some more, for all I care – but you don’t gotta gut yourself just because you’ve been acting like a fuckin’ bellend.”

  “That was not her command,” Hissy informed him, as he knelt. “It is your desire that I...shut the fuck up: she has commanded that I do so.”

  And with that, Hissy Fit opened his mouth, grabbed his tongue and then sliced through it with the knife. There was a spray of blood, and then a gargling scream from the cleric.

  “Jesus Hissy, what the fuck?” McKenzie exclaimed. Danandra’s eyes went wide, although she betrayed no other sign of surprise. The two guards swore, but the three underpriests merely watched as their former boss knelt on the ground, screaming through the hands he’d clamped over his mouth, with blood dripping down his chin. Two or so inches of his tongue had landed in the dust at McKenzie’s feet: it twitched slightly.

  The female priest stepped forward, picked up her knife, cleaned it on Hissy Fit’s tunic and then put it away under her robes. Her hand came out again holding a golden tube: a scroll case, ornately decorated with tiny dragons.

  “Dread Chosen,” she said. “Our Lady of the Wings invites you and your companions to join her in Dragonsdark, where you will be honoured for your great victory in these lands. Accept your destiny and take your rightful place by her side. She offers this as a surety of her intentions.”

  McKenzie took the golden case and opened it up. There was – unsurprisingly - a scroll inside, marked with a few lines and an official-looking seal, a pair of wings wrapped around a heart. He glanced at it, and then passed it to Danandra.

  “Let all who read this be instructed: I shall suffer no delay or impediment to my Chosen. Open every gate, clear every road, let nothing keep him from doing my will – and it comes with the lady’s own seal,” she said.

  “A passport,” McKenzie said.

  “There’s more – directions, it looks like,” she peered at the scroll, adjusting her glasses.

  There was something else in the tube. McKenzie tipped it out into his hand: a tiny wooden carving, crudely done – he suspected by one of the three priests, or perhaps it was Hissy Fit himself. It was, though, unmistakably a dagger.

  He pocketed it while Danandra was still looking at the scroll.

  Zelaz came running over, buttoning up his jacket as he did so.

  “I heard shouting,” he said. “What has transpired, Thursday?”

  “Pack up your travel poisons, Zel,” McKenzie told him. “We’re going on a road trip.”