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Waldroup indicated the other man and said, “Ernest Waldroup, my brother and the chief bishop of the Atlanta kirk.” Seeing no threats in the newcomers, I dropped the blended scan and tucked the sheathed walking-stick sword through my belt, drawing on the prime amulet of its hilt to steady myself. The kogatana went beside the longsword.

The new elder was mostly Caucasian and seemed to share not a single genetic or ethnic trait with Shamus except for the bald head, but after the end of the world and the deaths of nearly six billion humans, ethnic traits had become pretty intertwined as men and women formed alliances for survival. Families often looked nothing alike. Or too much alike, which was another kind of problem entirely.

The elders inspected the tableau of the shop: Rupert and me, armed and silent, the pile of weapons on the counter; and Audric holding a velvet-cloaked stranger at knifepoint. Ernest seemed amused at the scene, and Shamus was grinning ear to ear. I suppose I was high entertainment in Mineral City. It made me want to wring Jones' neck.

The new elder, a chief in the largest kirk on the Atlantic seaboard, could be construed as an additional threat to my security in Mineral City, but he merely nodded to me as he looked Cheran over. He said, “You mages wear the most gosh-awful clothes a man ever did see.” I converted a laugh at Cheran's reaction into an unconvincing cough. Elder Ernest poked Cheran in the side with his walking stick as if Audric, holding a knife to the mage's throat, didn't exist. “You got a visa, pretty boy?”

Audric didn't budge. Silently, I set the Apache Tear on the counter. Cheran saw the movement and glanced at me as his thoughts flooded into my mind. Rage. Fury. Visions of disemboweling Audric. And deeper, muddy thoughts I couldn't follow, thoughts his temper obscured as he tried to control it. Thoughts he didn't want me to see.

But the anger was real. Fury at the
mule
holding the knife. Wrath that he had been embarrassed in front of the locals on his first independent mission. Hatred at the gay men. Rage directed at me because it was all my fault. I wanted to say
Bite me.
Instead, I blew out a resigned breath. “Let him go,” I said to Audric. “Yes, Elders Waldroup, he's a neomage and he has a visa.”
More's the pity.
Without one, he'd be quickly dispatched; not to jail, but dispatched as in dead. Unlicensed mages were killed on sight.

Not happy, but unable to do anything about it, Audric stepped away, and Cheran shook himself to settle his cloak. I could smell his blood from the nick under his arm as anger made his pulse race faster. He executed a mage-fast martial-art move as he turned, which positioned him neatly to pick up his weapons. Before bowing to the Elders Waldroup, he chose the small gun, which he stuck in his waistband. It was a good defensive ploy, but a terrible one for making friends. The town officials backed up fast.

Too angry now to notice their reactions, the visiting mage went through his intro again, and held out the GPS bracelet and the visa as required by international law. But I had to wonder at his tactics. I didn't know much about consulate etiquette, but picking up a gun didn't seem real conducive to achieving peace and harmony between races. Cheran Jones was either sloppy or devious. Or he wasn't a visiting consulate at all. My blood chilled at the thought. Was he an imposter? What was he? That was part of what I couldn't read in his mind and I didn't like it. Not at all.

Shamus, stooped and irascible as ever, recovered quickly and winked at me. Though he couldn't exactly be called a good buddy, he was more than fair where I was concerned. He watched as his brother inspected the visa and read the purpose of the visit on the metal disc. Shamus said to me, “That says he's a teacher. What is he here to teach?”

“I am to be Thorn St. Croix's instructor in swordplay, diplomatic protocol for humans and seraphs, media relations, and whatever else I discover she needs to know as a mage living in this town. She is thought to be woefully lacking in the necessary skills and diplomatic procedure. And she won't be stuck in a backwater like this for long,” Cheran said, his lip curling. “She needs schooling.”

“Backwater? Humph.”

At the tone, Jones' face and thoughts cleared of anger and he seemed to realize he had made a mistake. I read, clear as a seraph-bell, that he was here on probation. After all, how much trouble could a quick-tempered man make in an unimportant place like Mineral City? But this was his last chance to make good.

“Manners ain't a problem for our Thorn. She's been doing all right without your help the last decade or so,” Shamus said. “Miz Thorn, you willing to take responsibility for anything else stupid he does?” I could have hugged the old man. Rupert chuckled under his breath. Cheran's mind went coldly quiet.

“I'll take care of him,” I said, following the mage's thoughts.

The baker's brother added, “And get him into some decent clothes, not this girly rag he's got on.” Elder Ernest jerked on the emerald velvet cloak, released the visa, and hobbled to the door, rudely turning his back on the visitor.

Shamus followed, saying, “Some orthodox factions are difficult enough these days without another catamite prancing around. Your pardon, Rupert, Audric.”

Cheran drew himself up and I gleaned from his mind that this time it was honest insult. “I'm not a catamite, you—”

“Careful there, son,” Waldroup said over his shoulder as he opened the door into the cold. “You got to teach all that diplomatic stuff to our town mage. You don't want to be deported from a
backwater posting
following a diplomatic incident before you get it all taught.” Chuckling, the two elders shuffled out and closed the door.

“Our town mage
?
”
Cheran repeated softly, obviously surprised. He'd been painstakingly prepped for this mission, tutored to deal with recalcitrant humans and instructed on how to pull my butt out of almost any fire. He had expected to find me in danger and up to my armpits in diplomatic troubles, but nothing was going like he'd expected. I wasn't what he'd expected. And that fact affected his secondary mission. I caught that before it disappeared beneath other thoughts.

He studied me closely. “What's ‘our town mage' supposed to mean?” When no one answered, he looked from my hand to the Apache Tear, still on the counter. His mind went quickly blank as he envisioned a candle flame, one of the first mind-clearing meditation techniques taught to a neomage child. It was the last clear thought I got from him. Below that it was all a cloudy muddle, shadowed by the flame. As a hint, it was pretty direct. I picked up the obsidian and looped it around my neck. His thoughts died away.

When we all continued to stare, silent and assessing, he said, “Our town mage, huh? Fine. I'm adaptable. What's wrong with my clothes? They were made according to the cut and style of the official neomage emissary to Atlanta. They're modest and suitable to this miserable cold, and yet still have a certain flair.” He flipped the hem of the cloak in example.

“The elders didn't kill him, so it looks like we have to keep him,” Rupert said, deliberately boorish, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning over a glass display cabinet. “But you do have to get him properly dressed. That hat has to go. Even
I
wouldn't wear it, and I'm pretty gutsy with my wardrobe.” That was an understatement. Rupert was a fashion queen.

Cheran reached up and touched his hat, running his hand along the foot-long feather regretfully. “I can leave the hat. And the cloak. What else?”

“I can find you some suitable clothes. Something wool. Maybe a mustard brown tweed coat and a bowler hat in that green that Miz Abernathy came up with.”

“Mustard brown tweed? A bowler?” Cheran turned faintly pale at the description of local clothing.

Rupert grinned happily. Audric was smiling, undoubtedly at the mental image of Cheran Jones in local garb, and was picking his fingernails with the gigantic knife. No one could look equally amused and deadly like my champards. Far too casually Audric said, “Ernest Waldroup, Atlanta's elder, came in today's train. Did you not see him en route?”

Cheran said, “I traveled on the train by private coach, as befits a fully licensed mage, the same way I'll return to civili—to Enclave,” he corrected, “when this assignment is over.”

Audric looked at me, pointedly. I pressed my lips into a thin line. It was clear that Cheran Jones wouldn't fit seamlessly into the life of the town. I had the feeling that the mage wouldn't fit in anywhere outside of Enclave, and getting him deported before he accomplished his secondary, covert mission, was high on my to-do list at the moment. Silently, I thanked the senior elders for the idea. Yet, part of me, admittedly a small part, hoped that Cheran was really here to teach me. There was a lot I needed to learn about the visa I wore. Like how to use the darn thing as more than an elaborate megaphone.

It was clear Cheran was finally getting a clue what to expect from this assignment and the culture shock was intense. I was about to make it worse. “Where is the coach now?”

“I left orders that it be stored behind the consulate and my bags be deposited by the bellman in an appropriate suite—” He stopped abruptly as if a frightening possibility had just penetrated his mind.

“Mineral City…doesn't have a consulate,” Rupert said with wicked delight.

The mage stared at me, dread warring with suspicion in his gaze. “He's joking.”

I shook my head. “No consulate.”

He recovered quickly, I'll give him that. “As Mineral Town is deficient in that regard, it would be appropriate for you to put me up. I'll stay here. Your servant and mule can care for both of us without undue difficulty.”

Audric's mouth narrowed. I knew he had endured the last insult. Before he could bonk the mage on the head with a brawny fist or stick him through with the fingernail blade, I said, “It's Mineral City. And you can get a room in the hotel across the street and down the next block, or you can ask Miz Essie if you can rent a room. She sometimes takes boarders.”

Rupert said, “Essie has three guest rooms with a bath down the hall, and serves two meals a day. Oatmeal for breakfast and a mystery meat stew for supper. You take your turn at cleaning the communal toilet and change your own sheets.”

The look on Cheran's face was priceless. It was suddenly occurring to the unexpected visitor that he might have been sent to the backside of a hellhole with insufficient recon. “Down the hall,” he repeated.

My friends looked at one another and grinned happily. Sometimes the best weapon is the tongue. “The mattress is only twenty-four years old,” Audric said.

“Clean sheets once a month,” Rupert added.

“Whether they need washing or not,” Audric said.

“Once a month,” Cheran repeated faintly. “A communal toilet. Not here?”

I shook my head no and tried to ignore the gleeful expressions on my champards' faces. “No guest room,” Rupert said. “Just a loft my mistrend has no intention of sharing with anyone.”

“And who will be paying for this five-star service?” he asked.

“Beats me,” I said, feeling almost sorry for him. “I was never given a diplomatic stipend. And if the Enclave didn't send funds with you, you'll need to hop a train back south or figure out how to pay your way.”

A dozen thoughts crossed his face in an instant. I had only a moment to recognize surprise, cunning, and, lastly, horror. “Tears of Taharial,” he swore softly. “I'm in hell.”

My champards thought that was hilarious. The bad part was, it might be true.

B
ecause I didn't want the mage in my loft upstairs, I bought him takeout from the Chinese place down the street and led him to the workroom behind the shop. Unconsciously, Cheran moved mage-fast when he entered the workroom, eyes darting to the far corners, as if for possible threat. His speed made my heart ache with something akin to loneliness. I didn't want to look too closely at that emotion. Fortunately, he grimaced at the food and that restored my antipathy to him.

He set the ridiculous hat and cloak to the side and we perched in ugly, mismatched, but really comfortable cast-off chairs, paper plates on makeshift tables Rupert had knocked together out of discarded lumber years ago, the gas logs turned on high to heat the frozen room. In an uncomfortable silence, we ate heaping portions of three mostly vegetarian dishes with chopsticks.

The fare wasn't up to a visiting mage's palette. He'd probably expected state dinners or something. I hid a smile as he inspected a chunk of meat. Even with a mage's increased need for calories and protein, I don't eat meat. It tends to disagree with my digestion. Eggs—costly in midwinter, in a mini ice age—and dairy provide some of my protein, but the bulk of it comes from soy and other beans, which I didn't try to foist off on him. The town citizens eat a lot of pork year-round, and I figured the nibblets in the fried rice were chopped, spiced pork, which should have made him happy from a strictly caloric viewpoint. It didn't. Fortunately, we ate in silence and he didn't complain.

However, he did seem to like the Dancing Bear Brew, which he complimented by drinking three. The Appalachian Mountains are famous for guns, quilts, pottery, and especially beer, and are infamous for moonshine, not that I had any on hand or even knew where to purchase it. Kirk elders tend to punish hard drinkers by branding. I had enough scars without adding to them.

When the meal was finished, he sighed and relaxed in the padded wingback chair. Cheran Jones, like most mages, was smaller than an average human, standing a little more than five feet and less than a hundred twenty pounds. He should have looked innocent and childlike in the big chair. He didn't. There was something calculating about him, and it set my teeth on edge.

I'm a bit shy of five feet and haven't weighed myself in years. My size usually doesn't bother me, but in the presence of the mage, I really wished I was bigger. Which meant that, on some level, I was afraid of him. Being afraid ticked me off.

I'd have been a lot more afraid if he had been a stone mage instead of a metal mage and whatever else he was, the parts of himself he had kept hidden when I searched through his mind. A stone mage would have felt the pull of the special amethyst kept in metal boxes in the stockroom.

I had a moment of discomfort. I hadn't thought about the possibility that the stone could charge the metal. If it had, then a metal mage might be able to sense the power so close by, even power so drained. And Cheran was awfully close to the metal boxes.
Stupid
to have put him so close to that much power. I wondered what else I was overlooking about my unwanted visitor. But Cheran hadn't looked toward the stockroom even once.

The amethyst hidden there had broken off from the wheels belonging to the cherub, Holy Amethyst, and though the living ship had been healed, or repaired, or whatever had been done to it to make it whole, the pieces had been left to me. They were bound to me on a psychic level, and just the thought of the large purple crystals sent a soft crooning into my mind. I was really glad the stones were in the stockroom down the hall, the distance adding more protection from the mage before me.

“Tell me about the Dragon,” Cheran said.

“So much for segues,” I said, fear making me snarky. “Thanks for the meal. It was tasty. You're welcome, it was my pleasure. The weather's awfully nasty out. Indeed it is. I'm so glad we're cozied up here by the fire.”

“Cozied. You and me.” His lips twitched. He laced his fingers across his chest.

“It means sitting with ease and comfort.”

“I'm familiar with the term. But I've never ‘cozied
'
with a consulate general on such sort acquaintance. In fact I can't say as I've
ever
cozied with a consulate general.”

“Fine. So let's toss the fine points of manners out the window and be frank. I don't like you. You don't like me, this town, this assignment, or much of anything at the moment. This is the first time you've been on a mission alone, and the last time you were let out of Enclave, you screwed up something important.”

Cheran's eyelid twitched the tiniest bit. Bull's-eye.

I plowed on. “I'm betting the reason you were charged with this one has to do with the secondary clandestine mission you carry in the back of your thoughts. How's that for frank?”

Cheran tilted his head in a “Good for you” gesture, but he didn't reply.

“What about the Dragon?” I almost snarled.

“That I can talk about.” Cheran slouched deeper in the chair and tucked one foot under the opposite thigh, looking relaxed. As befitted a self-styled fashionista, he looked elegant in the black, well-tailored suit, even while sprawling out comfortably. Suits costing more than I make in a month can have that effect on a man. “I know you're aware that there was a major battle in the heavens a few weeks ago.”

I nodded.

“It's come to the attention of the Enclaves that you know more about it than the rest of us. I'd like to hear your story.”

“Is this an official request?” I asked, meaning,
Is my butt in the wringer?

“It could be someday, but isn't now.”

“Audric,” I said, without raising my voice. My champard stuck his head around the corner so fast I knew he had been listening, keeping tabs on me. And so did my guest.
Good
. “In your official capacity as my champard, I require your legal counsel.”

Cheran rolled his eyes and sat up in the chair. “Fine. Everything you say here today is off the record. It was never spoken and will not result in legalities.”

“This is acceptable,” Audric said, invading the emissary's space and seating himself on a tall stool. Cheran ignored him. The man claiming to be here to teach me diplomatic etiquette needed a serious lesson in common manners. I was tempted to teach him one, but I already knew he was faster and a better swordsman than I. The tutorial could wait for another time. Like when I had the drop on him again.

“Tell me what happened,” he said to me. “The Dragon started to break his chains and then was halted. How and why?”

I had wondered when someone would find a way to blame me for the Dragon's partial freedom and I was pretty sure Cheran was here to prove that the Dragon's escape attempt was my fault. Which it was and wasn't.

Dragons are Major Darkness. In the hierarchy of evil, they rank right up there beneath the chief bad guy—if such really existed—the beast called the Lord of the Dark, the Great Red Dragon, or Satan, a name never spoken aloud for fear it might call him. He hadn't been seen in the Last War, but then neither had the Most High God. Smart people didn't mention that. Fools who did sometimes died on the spot.

Some theologians label Dragons
satanels
. According to scripture, they had been chief angels or seraphs in heaven until they followed Lucifer's lead and rebelled against the Most High. The First Battle recorded in the Revelation of John between the ArchSeraph Michael and the followers of the Light, and the Great Red Dragon and his followers—the Powers and Principalities of the Dark—was near mythic. In it, the Red Dragon and a third of those who had followed him had been swept away. They had landed on Earth back before humans started to keep written records, and continued the fight.

The battleground of Earth got a lot more bloody in the Last War between the Dark and Light, which took place a little over a hundred years ago. Some scholars say there were twenty Dragons rechained back then. Some say a hundred. But everyone agreed they were bad business, impossible to kill, and almost as difficult to imprison. The total followers of Darkness, counting spawn, still number in the hundreds of thousands, if not the low millions. Not that there's any kind of intel to back that up.

I opened a beer and studied the label. On it was a big bear, standing on a hind leg in the midst of a jig, a foaming mug in his paw and a big grin on his face. “The binding of a Dragon sometimes requires blood,” I said. Cheran nodded. I turned the beer, inspecting the bottle, putting my thoughts together.

I could have told the story with all the dramatic wiles at a mage's beck and call. Instead I said baldly, “In the campaign of the Last Battle, a key skirmish was fought here in the mountains. The ArchSeraph's lieutenant, Zadkiel, was losing to a Dragon, and was nearly drained unto emptiness”—the correct wording for the deathlike state suffered by an immortal being. “Several of his winged warriors had already been drained to husks.

“Benaiah Stanhope, the several-times-great-grandfather of my partner, Rupert Stanhope, and my ex-husband, Lucas, went underground with the winged warriors and gave his life saving Zadkiel. His blood coated the chain that bound the beast. The locals called him Mole Man.”

Cheran made a little rolling motion with his hand to indicate I should continue. I put down the beer and locked eyes with the slouching, elegant, bored mage. “The Dragon's second in command took over his territory when the Dragon was bound, and spent the following century creating new beasts and gathering power. You saw some of his handiwork on SNN a couple of weeks back when the skirmish in Mineral City was filmed by a news crew and went out live.”

Cheran nodded, his expression steady. “Spawn, of course. But some of the beasts were like nothing we'd ever seen before,” he said, finally sounding like the emissary he purported to be. “The light was bad and they moved faster than the camera could follow, but they looked like they were composed of body parts of various creatures.”

My eyes went hot and dry, my throat ached. “Dragonets. They were hard as heck to destroy. The Darkness who made them was called Forcas,” I said. “The attack you saw, I think, had a threefold purpose. It was a trial, an assessment, to test its handiwork in battle. And it sent them into town to get the blood of Mole Man's progeny. And it hoped to free its master.” It also came to get me, but I didn't say that. “Forcas had somehow acquired a link from the chain that bound the Dragon with Benaiah Stanhope's blood. Using that, it made a counterconjure, an anticonjure,” I clarified, “and was using the blood of Stanhope progeny to empower it.”

The air burned my dry throat and I put a hand to the swath of ugly white scar tissue there. My throat had been ripped away in the fight and been regenerated by the application of kylen blood. I had survived, but the disfigurement wasn't pretty. Not that I was complaining. So many had died in the battles that followed.

Audric popped the top from a cold beer and passed it to me. I drank several sips, the moisture softening my dry throat. “A succubus queen had laid eggs in the Trine and a few of us went underground to wipe out the nest. We were too late, but we did manage to free a Watcher, Barak, one allied with the Light.”

Cheran twitched slightly before his face hardened, hiding his reaction. A man with lesser self-control might have sat up straight in his chair, kicking over the table, making a mess.

Watchers were seraphs who had left heaven willingly and acquired sublunary bodies in order to mate with human women. Their pre-historical sin had left them without the ability to transmogrify or to return to heaven. Some had been grievously punished. Many, like Barak, had allied with the Light, while others joined the Dark.

Bluntly, I added, “And we also freed the seraph Zadkiel and his cherub.”

Cheran wasn't able to disguise his reaction to that. Shock widened his pupils. I was pretty sure he had stopped breathing. My own eyes went hard and dry.

Only a few local humans, the Administration of the ArchSeraph, and I knew that a seraph and his cherub had been trapped in a lair of Darkness. No one else even grasped that the capture of a Major Prince of the Light was possible, and I didn't know what it might mean in the ongoing war. Over the last century, a list had been compiled of seraphs missing from Regions of Light. How many more were in the clutches of Darkness? And why hadn't the seraphs gone to rescue them? Questions I had no answers for, and the AAS certainly wasn't going to enlighten
me
.

I watched Cheran, who was once again giving nothing away. “We made it back to the surface,” I said, my voice painfully hoarse, my eyes dry as bone. “I was injured. The seraph Raziel joined us battling Forcas at the opening to the hellhole on the Trine. The combat in the heavens took place at the same time as ours. I'm pretty sure it was all tied to the Dragon being set free. I felt something coming.” I blinked, looking at Audric, whom I had left in the town with battles of his own, and who had nearly died following my orders.

“With the combined assets of a cherub's wheels and seraphic help, we drained Forcas to a husk. In the heavens, even with multiple winged warriors, they were losing to the Dragon. It was getting free. To stop it, the humans with me went back into the hellhole carrying a shoulder-mounted weapon with a bunker-busting nuclear warhead, something new and lightweight the US Army and mages developed. They used it to help close up the entrance and stop the Dragon. They didn't come back out.”

Audric said, “Only the deaths of two brave human males, multiple beings of Light, the use of a nuclear warhead, and my mistrend's valiant warfare prevented the Dragon's freedom. That warfare resulted in Thorn's grave physical injury and the appreciation of the Council of the Seraphim.”

Cheran looked at my cheek, and at the whiter expanse of scar tissue on my throat, curiosity finally showing on his face. “We heard that humans died saving you,” Cheran said.