Fallen Magic

It wasn’t easy, Ben was learning, to arrange to meet Lord Blackthorn. He wasn’t prepared to entrust something like this to a letter, and if he wasn’t clear about how important it was, a message could just be thrown out by a secretary before even reaching him.

So he had to go to Lord Blackthorn’s office and speak to someone who could get him an appointment. Which was easier said than done: Lord Blackthorn had three offices. One in Parliament, one in the Ministry for Intelligence and one in the Magicians’ Building – and all of them in Ryk.

There was no Electra to teleport him there this time, and he couldn’t take the time to travel the long way, so he resigned himself to paying the Portal toll and then walking through the capital city. The Magicians’ Building was the only one that allowed the public to enter without specific permission, so that was the one he went to a week after his last visit to the City, as soon as he could find a time when he could escape work while the Magicians’ Building was open.

The ground floor of the building was thronged with people: those seeking appointments with one of the five Royal Magicians, those here to report magical incidents or register newly-invented spells and enchantments or hire out their services to anyone in need of a magician, and a small horde of workers frantically working their way through the long queues and running to fetch the right papers.

Ben didn’t like crowds, and the thought of plunging into this one was not a pleasant one. But he had no choice, so he stepped inside and immediately regretted not looking around beforehand. It was hard to tell which of the dozens of desks belonged to Lord Blackthorn’s secretary, and by the time he’d spent a minute figuring it out he’d been barged into three times and sworn at twice.

He fought his way through the crowd to the relevant queue. It was shorter than he’d expected, with only half a dozen people in it. Perhaps most were too scared of him to want to meet him. Ben would have been under normal circumstances.

The noise of a hundred conversations was deafening, and the enchanted light was unreasonably bright. Ben stared fixedly at the coat of the man in front of him, who was smartly-dressed but leant on a heavy black cane.

“Excuse me, sir – “ A harried-looking young worker squeezed through the gap between them and darted off towards the neighbouring desk.

The queue moved forwards slowly; it took five minutes before the old woman who appeared to be Lord Blackthorn’s secretary (or, more likely, one of his secretaries) reached the man in front of Ben.

“I’d like to make an appointment for next Tuesday,” the man said in an upper-class accent.

“I don’t make appointments for Lord Blackthorn. If – “

“What kind of a policy is that? I need to speak to him!”

Ben agreed with the sentiment, though not with the aggressive tone. He couldn’t let himself be trapped in bureaucracy – he only had a week to get this meeting, and the sooner the better.

“If you tell me your business with him and your contact details, I will pass that along to Lord Blackthorn, and he will be in touch if he decides your request is worth his time,” the woman explained with a long-suffering air.

“Of course my request is worth his bloody time! Do you know who I am?”

“No,” the secretary said, “because you haven’t told me.”

“I’m Piers starry Grainger, founder and owner of Enchanted Materials Trading, and I could make Lord Blackthorn a fortune!”

“Lord Blackthorn,” said the secretary coldly, “already has a fortune. Could I take your contact details?”

The man stared at her for a long moment, but eventually fired an address at her and stalked away without another word.

Ben stepped forwards. “Benjamin Roberts,” he said. “Lawyer, of Roberts and Bryant, Silver Street, Crelt.”

“If you’re representing someone who wants to bring a case against Lord Blackthorn, you’ve come to the wrong place.”

Oh. Yes, that would be the natural reaction to someone introducing themselves as a lawyer. He felt like a fool. “No – “ he said, “no, I’m not. I need to speak with Lord Blackthorn about an urgent personal matter.”

The secretary raised a sceptical eyebrow. “An urgent personal matter,” she repeated.

She might as well have said what they both knew she was thinking: what personal business could someone like him possibly have with Lord Blackthorn? He would have quite happily agreed with her until a few days ago. Stars, he wished he still could.

“He’ll know what I mean,” Ben said. There wasn’t a chance he was going into detail about it here in public, and presumably the Minister for Intelligence was smart enough to notice that the man wanting to talk to him about an urgent personal matter had the same surname as his son’s isolated friend and realise what that meant.

“Is that so,” the secretary said. “Well, I have made a note of the matter, and will pass it on to him as soon as I can.”

“Thank you,” said Ben, and fled the building.

“How was work?” asked Louise as they sat down for dinner.

Ben shrugged. “Same old, same old. Met with a few clients, prepared for the hearing tomorrow. You?”

He wasn’t lying to his wife. Thanks to the wonders of the Portal Network, he’d been back in his office by lunchtime, and had done all of those things this afternoon. And the fact he’d also discussed the financial situation with Simon again didn’t make much of a difference, either.

Still, though, there was no denying that he was keeping secrets from the woman he loved, the woman he’d vowed to spend his whole life with. And he didn’t like it one bit.

Nor did he like why he kept the secrets nonetheless, beyond having given his word to Tallulah. He knew how Louise would react if he told her, and he didn’t want to hear her say those things.

Lost in those thoughts, he was only half-listening to Louise’s complaint about her boss’s latest unreasonable demands. He overworked her, and she was wearing herself thin trying to meet his unrealistic expectations only to have more work piled atop the heap.

It was the stress that was doing it. That combined with having a daughter Fall… she wasn’t coping well, but she would recover.

There was a knock at the door.

“Expecting anyone?” Ben asked.

“No,” said Louise. “Are you?”

Was he imagining the edge to her voice? “No. Probably a salesman. I’ll tell them to go away.” He pushed his chair back, marched through the dining room and hallway to the door, and opened it.

“Mr Roberts?” said the man standing on the other side. He didn’t look like a salesman; in fact he didn’t look like much of anything really. His features were plain and unremarkable save for his narrow grey eyes, his clothes were well-tailored but not particularly expensive, he had a slight accent that Ben couldn’t quite place.

“Yes,” said Ben, confused. “How can I help you?”

“You asked to meet with me, did you not?”

Oh. Oh. Stars. He was here. The Black Raven was here on their doorstep. He’d expected at least a day’s warning, and to be expected to travel to Ryk again, not… this.

Once the initial shock had faded another horrified thought hit him: Louise couldn’t know he was here. She couldn’t find out what he’d been keeping from her. That scene was never going to be a pretty one, and Lord Blackthorn was the last person he wanted to bear witness to it.

He was just about to ask whether they could go elsewhere, teleport if they had to, when it became too late.

“Good evening, sir,” said Louise, her professional mask slipping into place as she stepped down the hallway towards Ben. “Are you here to discuss business with my husband?”

“You could say that, yes,” replied the Black Raven.

“Sorry for not warning you,” Ben added. “I didn’t expect him to come so soon.”

“You said it was urgent.”

He had. Ben felt a pang of guilt at taking a whole week to arrange this meeting when Lord Blackthorn, who was holding down two of the most important jobs in the country simultaneously, arrived only hours after he’d got the message.

“Well, do come in, then! We were just eating, but you’re welcome to join us, there’s plenty of stew left!”

Louise’s welcoming charm seemed to have no effect. It was all Ben could do not to cringe. His wife’s cooking was good, but hardly anything special, and the thought of Lord Blackthorn helping himself to a portion was absurd.

“I would prefer to get straight to business. Do you have a suitably private room?”

“Yes,” Louise continued, unabashed, “the study is free at the moment.”

It had been free for three weeks. When they’d first moved in it had seemed essential to have a study so that either of them could work when at home, but their jobs both demanded long enough hours that they’d never needed it. In the end Tallulah was the one who’d worked there.

“May I have your permission to cast additional privacy wards?” Lord Blackthorn asked. “They are strictly temporary and will have no effect on your existing network.”

Louise shot Ben a startled look. That was going to make the explanation even more difficult.

“Of course,” said Ben, continuing the polite pretence that they had an existing ward network to affect. He wasn’t entirely comfortable with Lord Blackthorn setting up wards in his home, but if that was the price of this conversation then he’d pay it a hundred times over for Tallulah.

“I’ll just show you to the study, then,” said Louise, doing an admirable job of maintaining her composure. “Can I offer you a drink, Mr… I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”

Ben waited for Lord Blackthorn to tell her and quite possibly destroy his marriage, but all he said was “Good. I will decline your drinks.”

It wasn’t far to the study, but it felt like a mile. Louise made a couple more attempts at starting conversation, which the Black Raven efficiently shut down. Eventually they reached the study door and she was left with no choice but to show them in and leave.

Lord Blackthorn snapped his fingers the instant the door closed behind them. A stick of chalk flew out from a pocket towards the corner of the study and began to trace an outline of the room. Ben bit back a protest; he’d said it would be temporary, after all.

There was only one chair in the study, and Ben didn’t quite know whether to take it or offer it to his guest. He wanted to sit down and have the reassuring wood against his back, but Lord Blackthorn might take offence at that, and he knew the consequences of offending a man like that.

So he hovered awkwardly as the chalk finished its circuit of the room and twisted itself sideways to outline the doorframe as well. It darted upwards with unnatural speed, and before Ben knew it a complex symbol was being written on the door: it seemed to consist of a large circle, divided into a dozen regions and with many smaller circles intersecting them all.

Finally the chalk flew back into Lord Blackthorn’s hand. He took one step towards the door, placed his palm in the centre of the circle, and nodded once. “Your wife doesn’t know who I am,” he said, turning to face Ben. “You didn’t tell her.”

Ben blinked. He didn’t particularly want to discuss that of all things, but he didn’t dare refuse. “No,” he said, “I didn’t.”

“Do sit down, by the way. I prefer to stand.”

Ben pulled the chair out from the desk, turned it around and sat gratefully down.

“Why not?”

Ben barely even knew the answer to that himself, never mind how to explain it to this man. “Tallulah asked me not to tell her about… the incident,” he said after a moment. “And I keep my promises.”

“She’s not close with her mother, then?”

Ben had always thought Tallulah was closer with Louise than him, but that only went to show how little time he’d spent with either of them in the past few years. “Not since her Fall,” he said, hating the feeling of saying the word Fall out loud.

“What do you know about this new incident?”

“Everything Tallulah does.”

“She told you her theory about the reason behind it?”

“No,” Ben admitted. “Your son did.”

Lord Blackthorn began to pace back and forth. “That is most out of character for him,” he said. “He knows how to keep secrets and the importance of doing so.”

Ben assumed the silence that followed meant he was waiting for an answer despite not having asked a question. “I can’t speak to your son’s character. I’ve only met him once. But I know what he told me.”

The Black Raven nodded slowly. “What was your impression of his relationship with your daughter?”

Ben closed his eyes in thought for a second. “They’re very close,” he said. “I could tell he cares a lot about her. I don’t exactly know how she feels, but I imagine similarly.”

“And do you approve of this friendship?”

Ben was no politician or spymaster, but he could still clearly see that question was a trap. Admitting he didn’t meant criticising Lord Blackthorn’s son and by extension him, and lying that he did would be easily seen through.

Thankfully there was another answer that was no less true. “I forfeited my right to have an opinion on my daughter’s friends when I let her Fall without even noticing.”

Wait – no – Edward Blackthorn was also Malaina – it was only too easy to interpret his words as accusing Lord Blackthorn of being a bad father when he’d only wanted to accuse himself –

“What do you plan to do about Roberts and Bryant’s financial situation?”

Ben was glad he was sitting down, because otherwise his legs might have given way. Not only from that complete change of topic but from wondering how in stars’ names Lord Blackthorn knew that – he’d only figured it out himself a week ago – there was no way he had a spy in the law firm… was there?

“How do you know about that?” he asked once he trusted himself to speak again.

“I always have my sources,” said Lord Blackthorn with a mysterious smile. “I ask because you are in need of a large amount of money. And I happen to possess a large amount of money.”

Ben froze.

Even if it hadn’t been Lord Blackthorn speaking, he’d have been wary. Offers like that never came without a heavy cost. And in this case, he had a terrible suspicion of what that cost might be. “No price is worth my daughter’s freedom,” he said icily, almost forgetting to be afraid.

“You misunderstand me. I want to buy your services.”

“You… want to hire Roberts and Bryant as your lawyers…” Ben said disbelievingly. “Why? Why not Greenwood, or Silvers, or one of the other big firms?”

“Those firms are motivated above all by profit,” Lord Blackthorn said. “Valuable information entrusted to them in confidence may often… find its way into the wrong hands. I cannot trust them. What I want is a firm that needs me as much as I need them.”

Or considerably more, Ben mentally added. He and Simon were competent lawyers, but what they could offer Lord Blackthorn wasn’t even close to the money he could offer them.

But. It was Lord Blackthorn. There was a grim irony in how he rejected the big firms for being motivated by profit and then tried to motivate Ben with a large sum of money. He had no illusions about the… ethical compromises that would be necessary to work for the Black Raven.

Especially when this wasn’t about the business. It wasn’t about money.

“Tallulah,” he said.

“Yes,” Lord Blackthorn agreed.

“Is that your price? You save my daughter and gain me as your lawyer?” He had to force out each bitter word.

There was no right choice there.

“No,” said Lord Blackthorn sharply. “I will not let her be imprisoned or declared unstable, regardless of whether you take my offer. You have my word on that.”

Ben was almost too numb from the emotional whirlwind of this conversation to feel relief. Tallulah would be safe. He had Lord Blackthorn’s word.

But what was the word of the infamous politician and spymaster, of all people, really worth?

“Thank you,” he said, because the only option was to pretend he believed him, regardless. “Do you… need a decision now, or…”

If he needed a decision now, he wouldn’t be getting one. Ben wasn’t going to do anything with this offer until his daughter was safe, and even then he couldn’t make this big a decision without consulting Simon.

Lord Blackthorn shook his head. “Take as long as you need, ask as many questions as you need.”

Questions. Yes. He needed more information. “Exactly… how much money are we talking here?”

“How much do you need?”

Ben cursed himself for not paying enough attention when Simon showed him the numbers. There wasn’t even a hope of being able to calculate a reasonable estimate of how much additional money the business needed. “I… I’d need to check some figures, and consult with my partner – “

“Of course. Be aware that I have a good approximation of your operating costs, and I will know if your number deviates too far from that approximation.”

By which he meant don’t try to take more money than you need. Not that he had any need to be concerned: Ben was nowhere near foolish enough to try conning Lord Blackthorn even if he didn’t have a strong moral code.

“Would it be a one-time payment or…”

“Per month. With additional fees for work done on my behalf, and for any inconveniences that may result.”

Ben blinked a few times. That was an even better offer than he’d originally imagined: not just keeping Roberts and Bryant alive, but setting it up for a prosperous future. “Our other clients…” he said. “Forgive me, but I don’t want to abandon them.”

“There is no exclusivity clause. I may occasionally require you to prioritise my cases, but that would fall under the inconveniences I mentioned earlier.”

This seemed too good to be true, which meant it probably was. “What… sort of cases would we be working on?” Ben asked.

“I should have been more clear about that from the start. I intend to hire Roberts and Bryant as lawyers to the Blackthorn family, as any lord is entitled to hire tradespeople. That means your clients will be me, my son, my niece and my sister-in-law. You will not work on any Intelligence-related matters, the Ministry has its own legal team. You may be required to defend me in my capacity as a Royal Magician. There is a likelihood that you will be working on cases involving the rights and privileges of my family, on cases involving Malaina, and possibly on certain discreet matters involving my niece.”

No Intelligence work. Nothing about defending his actions in brutally putting down protests or riots, his methods of information-gathering, the dreadful things rumour said he did. Part of him started to seriously consider this opportunity for the first time, even as the voice of his ethics professor recited something about denying responsibility just because he wouldn’t be personally involved in it.

Then he processed what Lord Blackthorn had said. “With respect, you’re asking for specialist knowledge in many different areas of law. Roberts and Bryant simply doesn’t have that.”

“No, but I’m sure you have the ability to learn. Especially since I can provide whatever texts you would need to accomplish that.”

He had an answer for everything.

Ben was still deeply uneasy about this, but he couldn’t turn down the chance to save the business. “No further questions,” he said. “Though I expect my business partner will have many when I speak to him. Is there a more efficient way to reach you than your secretary in the Magicians’ Building?”

Lord Blackthorn nodded and handed him a scrap of parchment on which an address was written. “Letters sent to this address will reach me. Or perhaps I will visit you at your office; teleportation means it is scarcely an inconvenience for me to travel there.”

“I would prefer,” Ben managed, “if you visited the office rather than my home in future.”

“Understood. Is there anything else?”

“You swear you’ll save Tallulah?”

“On my son’s life,” Lord Blackthorn replied, and there was no room for doubt in his words. Then he clapped his hands, and the chalk dust flew away from the walls and the door and into the scrap-paper basket under the desk. “I hope to hear from you soon.”

He turned on the spot and vanished.

Ben was fairly sure he’d teleported, but he still stood in silence for several seconds and then touched the air where Lord Blackthorn had stood. Nothing there. He was gone.

It struck him suddenly that a magician could teleport to any location they had previously visited, and that the house had no ward network. Lord Blackthorn could effortlessly break into their house any time he wanted.

And it also struck him that he had to explain to Louise who their guest was and why he had vanished.