A Life Less Ordinary (25 page)

A round later, Robin was restored to human form. “As I was saying,” she said, as if she hadn’t spent time as a button, “tampering with the weather is not wise. Are you sure that you would know what you were doing? I doubt it.”

The discussion wore on, as did the game. I spent a turn frozen solid after missing a chance to pick up a card; Sparks spent three turns as a button after Robin, working with Linux, managed to deliver a real smack down. I guessed that she had wanted revenge, although it seemed that being transfigured so briefly did no real harm. If it did, no one except extreme gamblers like Cardonel would have played.

I listened as Linux and Sparks outlined their problems. Their masters were reluctant to experiment further than they should, even the Rationalists. I couldn’t understand why – after all, even the Thirteen didn’t control the magical world. Robin seemed more inclined to be conservative, but her master treated her badly and no one seemed to care. I started to understand their point – the senior magicians were keeping the younger ones down – yet I rather understood why. It hadn’t been
that
long since I’d nearly killed myself trying to use magic to sort books.

The game finally ended with Sparks as the winner. “There are places where I could have you all as my toys for a few hours,” she said, with an evil leer. I flushed. One of the places where the magical and mundane worlds interacted – largely unknown to the mundane world – was the BDSM community. There were people with the strangest perversions out there, including men who wanted to be transformed into bras and panties. After learning that, I’d made Master Revels swear that none of the clothes that had been passed down to me had started lives as men and women. The thought had just made me feel sick. “You should consider yourselves lucky that all I want is a glass of something strong.

“As you wish, mistress,” Cardonel said, with a wink. He waved a hand in the air and an unmarked bottle floated over to the table, along with four glasses. The liquid in the bottle was clear, flowing almost like water. Cardonel poured it out and passed me a glass. I sniffed it carefully. Whatever it was, it was not water. It smelled more like very strong wine. “My friends, I give you the future.”

I sipped carefully. It tasted better than it smelled. The others drank theirs in one gulp and then prepared to leave for their own homes. Sparks winked at me when no one else was looking, knowing that I intended to stay a while longer. If Linux or Robin noticed, they gave no sign.

“I don’t understand,” I said, when the three of them had gone. The question had been bubbling in my mind since Linux had started talking. “What’s holding researchers back from exploring the deeper nature of the magical world?”

Cardonel blinked at me. “The Thirteen,” he said, flatly. My eyes opened wide. “They don’t want anyone exploring the deeper secrets of magic. That might undermine their power, you see.”

He leaned forward. “Your master, the one who took you in and gave you a home,” he added. There was something in his voice I didn’t like. His reluctance to speak his name out loud was worrying. Master Revels might hear if his name was spoken. “Your master, Dizzy, isn’t their policeman. He’s their
enforcer
.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

I stared at him, all lust gone.

“He’s their
enforcer
?” I repeated, shaken. I didn’t know what to think. “What do you mean?”

“Your master is the Thirteen’s enforcer,” Cardonel said, calmly. He seemed unfazed by my puzzlement. “He enforces their laws on everyone else, the remainder of the magical world. What do you
think
he does for a living?”

I hesitated, unwilling to say anything. I still didn’t know what to think. Master Revels had presented himself as a form of policeman, all the while admitting that policing the magical world – where might made right – was an impossible job. He’d certainly been willing to do whatever it took to return the lost and transfigured girls to their homes...and throw a paedophile in jail while he was at it, yet he hadn’t been able to do anything about the slaves. I wasn’t sure that he had even
wanted
to do anything about the slaves.

Cardonel pushed forward, putting one hand on my leg. Normally, I would have wondered if I should allow him to continue advancing towards me, or if I should back off and make it clear that I wasn’t interested in sexual intercourse. Now...I was too busy thinking about the latest rebellion. It made a great deal of sense, but then...a policeman would probably look like an enforcer to a person at the bottom of the heap.

“The Thirteen are the closest thing the magical world has to a government,” Cardonel said. “They’re the ones with the clout, the agreements with the Great Powers and the Dragons, the ones with the power to get things done. What do they do with it? They do nothing with it, but maintain things as they already are - where they are comfortable. They think that maintaining the status quo is everything.”

I frowned. “I was with him when he defeated a person who was threatening the mundane world,” I said. He was so close now. Part of me wanted to surrender to him; the remainder kept warning me that part of the attraction was magical, rather than genuine attraction. Cardonel was glamorous because he was partly magical. The fact he couldn’t help it didn’t make it any easier to bear. “I don’t think that he is a bad person.”

Cardonel shrugged. “I don’t know that he
is
a bad person,” he said, flatly. “I just know that he works to enforce the status quo and stamp on anything new. What do you think keeps the Rationalists from performing their more interesting experiments? The Thirteen do. They send their enforcer around to shut them down whenever they start planning a new experiment. Who do you think prevents open contact between the magical and mundane worlds? The Thirteen prevent it because maintaining their own covert links between the magical and mundane worlds allows them to profit in both worlds.”

He touched his ears. “Who do you think condemns half-breeds like myself from joining society?”

I swallowed. I knew that Master Revels seemed to maintain an unthinking prejudice towards Cardonel and half-elves in general, although I saw no basis for it. The elves might have been unpleasant stuck-up bastards, but their children weren’t their parents. It hadn’t occurred to me that there were other half-breed children out there – dwarfs and goblins were roughly humanoid, after all – yet it made a certain kind of sense. The magical world’s senior members certainly seemed to exclude them from any serious position. I had to remind myself that I actually knew very little.

He sat back and stood up, pacing the small apartment. “They’ve been running things for a very long time,” he said. “The Thirteen invite newcomers, strong and powerful magicians, to try for a space on their council. It helps ensure that potentially dangerous newcomers are either co-opted or neutralised. They’re quite happy to rig the contests if the newcomers allow them to do it, just to keep them from reaching heights they could use to threaten the Thirteen.”

I frowned. “How can they control the Great Powers?”

“They don’t,” Cardonel admitted. “They seem to have made deals with most of the movers and shakers among the Great Powers. That gives them a surprising amount of power, more than you would expect, and allows them unanticipated advantages. Do you know that the Thirteen are the only ones who are allowed any precognitive visions?”

“No,” I said. That actually made sense. I’d never been able to figure out how we’d known about the missing children – or that their disappearance had a magical connection – but if the Thirteen had access to a source of knowledge about the future, they’d know that their kidnapper was risking revealing the existence of the magical world. “How do they do that?”

A second question occurred to me, but I held it to myself for the moment.

“They made deals with the Great Powers,” Cardonel said, tightly. He sounded as if he didn’t want to talk about it, yet felt as if he had no choice. “The older Great Powers are not...as linked to the present day as we are. As I understand it, they’re dislocated within the time vortex and can catch glimpses of the future or the past, which they can relay to the Thirteen. They don’t do anything for free, Dizzy. The slaves you and I freed, once they had been worked to death, would have been sent to the altars and sacrificed to the Great Powers.”

He stopped pacing backwards and forwards and turned to look at me. “Do you understand what is at stake?” he asked. “The Thirteen control the magical world.”

The comment puzzled me. “Tell me something,” I said. “How do you know all this?”

Cardonel tapped his ears. “My ears are far sharper than they look, my dear,” he said, with a thoroughly lecherous grin. “I hear everything.”

I scowled at him. “And the truth is...what?” I demanded. “I don’t think that the Thirteen meet in dark bar rooms or discuss their plots while sitting in a smoke-filled chamber.”

Cardonel smiled, rather wanly. “We’ve been putting it together for a long time,” he said. He leaned forward, staring into my eyes. “There’s a...group of people who have been working towards making a far better world for ourselves. They believe that they can convince the Thirteen to move away from their rule and start opening up the possibilities for newcomers. I’m part of that group.”

I blinked. I hadn’t expected a bald-faced confession, although I doubted that he could have hidden it from me. “You want to overthrow them,” I said, in shock. “Why?”

Cardonel grinned. “Why did you want to free those slaves?”

I remembered the feelings that had driven me onwards, the conviction that slavery was morally wrong and enslaving people who had done nothing to deserve it was unacceptable. In hindsight, I suspected that Master Revels agreed more than he wanted to admit, at least to me. He hadn’t quibbled with my reasoning, even as he caned me for risking both my life and his career.

“Because I believed that it had to be done,” I said. “I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself otherwise.”

“Exactly,” Cardonel said. “And now you understand why I feel that the Thirteen need to be curbed, if not overthrown.”

I found myself caught in a mental trap. I knew nothing about the Thirteen; I certainly didn’t know how much of what Cardonel was telling me was actually true. I could ask my master, but that would risk exposing Cardonel and his conspiracy...and if the Thirteen was truly evil, where did my loyalties lie? I wanted to learn more, yet I suspected that Cardonel would eventually ask me to swear to keep it to myself...it wasn’t the evening I had planned when I had asked Sparks to help with contraception!

Cardonel took my silence for a wish to know more and kept talking, telling me about various enforcement missions Master Revels and his predecessors had carried out over the years. A group that had intended to join the Second World War and use magic to win a victory had been destroyed, its members scattered to the ends of the Earth, leaving behind nothing but rumours about an occult connection. Another group, one that had intended to conduct unauthorised worship of various gods, had been mercilessly destroyed. The children from a marriage between two of the most powerful – and unaffiliated – magicians of their day had been taken away from their parents and sent to live with various other magicians, for no apparent reason. The parents themselves had been banished into another dimension and lost forever.

I listened, unsure of what to think. Part of me wanted to believe him; part of me knew that I had no real reason to distrust Master Revels. He’d been the one who had taken me in and taught me...and started to groom me to be his successor, when I knew almost nothing about the job. I knew I needed to find out more, yet...

“Enough,” I said, finally. I didn’t want to reveal just how confused I was. “Why are you telling me all this now?”

“I wanted you to understand,” Cardonel said. “You’re not in a very good position and you could use a friend or two.”

He smiled at me. His inhuman face seemed to light up and I felt my heart melt. I pulled him towards me and kissed him as hard as I could, feeling – after a moment – his tongue slipping into my mouth. There was an oddly familiar taste to him, the taste of cold iron. I almost smiled. No wonder the elves disliked their half-breeds when they tasted of the one thing that could destroy them, even if it only had power outside their private dimension. My hands went around his back, feeling oddly-constructed bones – he didn’t seem to have a spine – and I gasped as his hands went to work on me. They felt weirdly inhuman, both perfectly sensitive and yet demanding.

I pushed him down and climbed on top of him, kissing him deeply as his hands slipped down my back and into my pants. I shivered as they slipped inside my panties and started to work on my bum, wincing slightly as I felt his fingers stroking the scars left on my bottom. I rolled off him as he pushed me over and started to undo my shirt, revealing my breasts, and then shuddered in delight as his mouth started to work on my nipples. It was suddenly very hard to undress without tearing anything.

The sight of his body shocked me, even though it was growing harder and harder to think clearly as his fingers worked their magic on me. It was strange, almost like a plastic mannequin, without chest or facial hair. Curiously, I reached up and ran my hand over his chest, feeling – instead of a ribcage – a tiny lattice of bird-like bones. Naked, Cardonel seemed oddly vulnerable; I could have thrown a punch and broken through into his chest. He leaned down and I felt his cool skin brushing against mine as our lips met again, and again. A moment later, I leaned back as I felt him enter me, pushing deep inside my body. I cried out...

I could feel magic spinning around us as Cardonel started to thrust inside me. The entire room seemed to be lit up with eerie blue light, shimmering through our bodies and flaring out into the room. His form seemed to dissolve in my eyes, revealing nothing but a haze of magic. I felt him pushing deeper and deeper into me, harder and harder, and I felt myself start to lose control. My magic was brushing against his and driving us both wild. I pulled him close, feeling his arms wrapped tight around me, and the last remnants of my control vanished. There was a final flare of magic and delight and we both lay still.