Chapter 17

Minerva woke with the pounding headache of one who had been struck with a stunning spell, amplified by the sensation of her mouth being fuzzy and covered with moss. She opened her eyes, groaned as the light stabbed into her irises, and then closed it. She put her hand above her mouth with some effort, feeling that the feeling of mossiness was merely the scum of a long, restless sleep. She smacked her lips, coughed, then rolled to the side, then rolled back again. When she was finally able to sit up, she found she was in a cell.

Not particularly unexpected.

Sitting across from the bars was something unexpected.

Captain Cordwine, looking rather cross, his arms tucked across his chest, his brow furrowed, his mustache bristling.

Minerva had expected any number of guards. Fae. Other students. Her professors. But the Captain? She swung herself upwards, smacked her lips, and then croaked. “Good morning, Captain.”

“It’s evening,” he said, shaking his head from side to side. “You bloody stupid girl. What were you thinking!” He sprang to his feet, then began to pace, back and forth, back and forth. “Parliament’s all in knots about this. Not this! They don’t know about this. This as in this!” He gestured off in a vague direction that Minerva guessed had an equal chance of being the east, to the Soviet Union, or west, to the equally colossal United States of America.

“Which one?” she asked.

“Both!” he exclaimed, turning to face her.

Minerva realized her question - which had been which great country he was blustering about - also could be read as asking about which of the Parliaments was discussing. The magical? The mundane? Both. Hurm. Minerva leaned back against the stone walls of her cell. She frowned slightly.

“Why you?” she asked.

“I volunteered, I wanted to ask you why!” Cordwine glowered at her. “How could you be so inexpressibly stupid?”

“Someone had to do something,” Minerva said, her voice a grumble. A soft one.

“Not that, you-” Cordwine rubbed his palm against his face, then stepped to the bars. “How could you be so foolish as to not bloody well ask me? This blood curse business? No proper place in war, none at all. And what do they think they’re even going to be managing with it? Kill a few thousand Russians? Pfah!” he laughed. “The cat’s well and truly out of the bag now.”

Minerva nodded. “They’re panicking,” she said.

“And so were you, it seems,” Cordwine grumbled.

“Where’s-”

Minerva’s question was cut off by a clank and a crash from the end of the corridor. Cordwine turned, and looked rather grim as a fae woman stepped forward. Minerva was in such a state that she barely registered the woman’s nude form as she bowed to Cordwine.

“Master Cordwine, I have done as you requested. The word is in. The vote was not.” She bowed again as Cordwine let out an explosive sigh of relief.

“Oh thank Christ,” he said, turning to face Minerva. “And now, your silly little adventure was all for nothing anyway!”

“The vote?” Minerva asked.

“The War Ministry brought the issue to Parliament - oh, in a cloaked phrase or so, yes, but they did bring it. And they voted no. See?” He clicked his heels behind himself and glowered down at her. His mustache grew even more bristly. “The system works!”

“Are you done?” Minerva asked. She stood up, and she leaned against the bar, her hands pressed to the cold iron bars.

“Hurmph,” Cordwine grumped.

“Would you have helped me?” she asked, her voice bitter.

“Oh without a doubt!” Cordwine said, cheerfully. “Sometimes an order’s no good, you have to do your recognizance. We’re not Germans, after all!”

Minerva chuckled, her voice still bitter. “I’m beginning to see why you’re assigned here and not to the actual, ah, scouts? Fighting scouts?”

Cordwine laughed. “Ah, maybe so!” He frowned, then. “Bugger. You’re going to Wakefield’s and that’s that. It’s a poor reward for being right, but you need to also do the job too, not just flare out halfway.” He turned and started to walk away. “Don’t let the Knockers bother you too much, eh?”

Then he was gone.

Minerva thumped her head against the bars. She closed her eyes and felt her knees trembling. She had been running on so much adrenaline that she wasn’t ... entirely sure how sound her plan had actually been. She was too sleepy and confused now to get any of her thoughts to order straight. Instead, the words tumbled around and around and around inside of her head, bouncing off one another like ping pong balls. Azrielnacht, blood curse, Russia, America, Magic, Mundane...

The only hint that she had that she was not alone in the cell block was when a purring croon emerged from the darkness to her left.

“He’s wrong.”

Her blood ran cold. Minerva turned and saw that her cell was empty - but when she pressed her cheek against a bar, peeking through, she could just barely see a pair of pale arms, thrust from between two of the bars in the next cell over.

“Cecilia?” Minerva whispered.

“Mmmhmmm,” the vampiress said. “I will say, for all that you have merely taken me from one cell to another, at the very least-”

“What do you mean he’s wrong?” Minerva asked, her heart in her throat.

“I mean what I say. He’s wrong. Blood magic is gathering. Not in London, though. The wind is wrong for it.” She smacked her lips. The faint sniffing sound that came to the air was more like a hound scenting the air than a woman. “Ah, yes. Of course. The numbers are too small for this kind of Working. They’re making up with the old powers.”

Minerva’s brow furrowed. Her eyes widened. “Stonehenge?” She whispered.

“That’s the place.” Cecilia’s voice sounded like she was grinning. “We have a day and change, at the rate of this power growth.” Sniff sniff. “Maybe less.”

Minerva grabbed the bars. She started to shake them. “Merlin!” she shouted. “Merlin!”

“He won’t come,” Cecilia said, her voice bitter. “I know his type.”

“Merlin you backwards aging git!” Minerva shouted at the top of her longs - her voice echoing off the cold, cold stone. She leaned her head forward, pressing it against the bars. “We have to stop them. We ... we have to stop the bloody idiots. Merlin! Merlin!” Her voice echoed back at her. Taunting.

Cecilia chuckled. Her arms pulled out of sight - she was drawing away from the bars. The faint squeak of her long, limber body reaching the bed, made Minerva’s heart skip a beat, despite everything. “I screamed like this. And I screamed and screamed and screamed, I screamed until I became mad, then screamed till I became sane, and they never came. They never came at all.”

Minerva started to pace back and forth. She closed her eyes, whispering softly. “A wand is just a tool. A wand. Is just. A tool.”

“Hmm?”

Minerva turned back to her cot. It was simple enough - four metal bars, hung from a hinge with canvas stretched between them, connected to the wall by a chain. Minerva leaped up and dropped her weight onto the cot. She sprang up and down, frantically.

“What are you- little girl, what are you doing!?” Cecilia cried out as the cot snapped and crashed away from the wall, spilling Minerva onto her back, the ground aching against her spine. She clenched her teeth, fiercely, then grabbed onto one of the metal poles. She cast her eyes around, frowning as she did so. There had to be ... ah, there! She knelt by a bit of stone that jutted from the wall - an aged piece of masonry that had become almost razor sharp over time. She held the pole against it and shoved, drawing a thin white scrape along the iron. She clenched her teeth as she wriggled the pole left, right, swung it around - and as she worked it, the stone scraped and screeched.

“What are you doing in there?” Cecilia asked.

Minerva stood, holding the finished rod in her arm. Too long and too thick for a wand, covered in incredibly crude runes compared to what she had practiced in her runes class. She didn’t care. It was just a focus. A tool. She closed her eyes, and thought back to everything she had ever learned - about symbolic magic, about the linkages between a seeming of a place, the actuality behind it...

Of words.

And of the first lesson she had learned on her broom.

She held her ‘wand’ up and hissed. “Mene. Mene.”

She felt the magic flicker and flare. But it was weak. So weak. She wondered if it did more than disturb the air in Merlin’s office. Minerva scowled. She wasn’t just some child with a stick here. She had been taught how to focus her will and make it manifest - and she knew it would produce results. And so, she drove her will against the sputtering weakness of this makeshift wand ... and learned why modern wands were made the way they were, with the care they were lavished with.

The tip glowed. Not the glow of a flare or firefly, not the clean sparkle of magic or the dull shine of radium; it was nearly molten. Like the filament of a lightbulb, glowing with heat as it resisted the electricity flowing through it.

Minerva forced more will, her hand tightening.

Metal hissed and sputtered. Red droplets of molten iron dripped to the floor as Minerva’s will and her own arm seemed to meet on a head on collision - her elbow ached, her bones jarred, she felt as if she was trying to speak fire through her throat. She clenched her teeth and then forced out more words, more power.

“Tekel. Upharsin!”

The wand dropped to the ground and splashed as it struck. Hissing. Smoking. She dropped to her knees and ducked her head forward. Then, only then, did she let tears stream down her cheeks as she gasped and started to swear as loudly as she could in Yiddish. She ducked her head forward - while Cecelia shouted to her.

“What was that!? I’ve never heard that magic before in my life. Or ... have I...” She sounded troubled.

Minerva clutched her hand to her chest and did not dare look at it. But she did smile, then, as the door to the cells clanged open with the same ear-rending crash as before. Merlin strode to her cell door, looking coldly furious. Minerva grinned up at him - a smile of pain and triumph.

“Speak,” he said. “If you will be dramatic about this, at least do it here, without destroying my favorite tapestry.”

“Heh,” Minerva said. It was not a sound of mirth. “Listen to Ceceilia.” She jerked her head to the side.

“What is happening?” Cecelia asked.

“A glowing hand appeared in my office,” Merlin said, his voice firm. “And it wrote upon the wall the words mene, mene, tekel upharsin. You have been judged ... and found wanting.”

“Ahhh,” Cecelia said. “Not nearly vicious enough, wizard.” She thrust her arms out of her bars as Minerva peered out. “As for your information, the spell the Germans stole from the Kabbalah and perverted for their own ends? It is being enacted. Slowly. But it is being drawn forth. I can smell it on the wind. The smell of death unlike anything else in the world, Merlin.”

Merlin’s face went ashen, before he covered it with his hand. “No,” he said, quietly.

“Let me out,” Minerva said.

“It’s too late,” Merlin said, dropping his hand from his face. As he spoke, he waved his hand and the bars melted into the floor. “It is all far too late.”

Cecilia stepped from the cell. She stooped, helping Minerva to her feet. Minerva leaned against her, feeling the raw, steel-hard strength of her. It made the pain feel a mite better. She and Ceceilia followed after Merlin as he walked like a dead man - waving his hand to open a secret door here, to level a staircase there. They emerged into Merlin’s office.

The office itself was ... arresting. Minerva, who’s hand had moved from a fierce stinging pain to a dull, throbbing ache, took a few seconds to look around the whole office, almost dizzy with its strangeness. There was a clock with three faces, mounted upon each of the sides, each showing a different set of numerals, each with arms at different locations. There was a crystal set on a gold filigree stand on his desk, which itself was covered with unfinished papers. The crystal glowed faintly. There was a cat, sleeping without a care, in the middle of the air - and upon a second glance, Minerva saw the cat had a small unicorn horn. And there, of course, were the words in foot high capitals, seared into a tapestry and still smoking: MENE, MENE, TEKEL UPHARSIN.

Merlin ignored all of this to head to a cabinet beside his desk, which he opened, took forth a bottle, and poured himself a shot of some brown fluid. He knocked it back, hissed, then took his seat with a grunt. Minerva noticed the cabinet was not just a place to stash spirits: It also had several narrow wands. One of them was clearly Kat’s heavy trench want - sitting at the bottom of the pile.

Minerva frowned at him.

“Hold out your hand,” he said.

Minerva did so.

Merlin used his wand, though he did not speak. The tip glowed and the burn that scarred along her palm shrank, shrank, shrank and was gone. She wriggled her fingers, closed her hand, opening it again, then nodded to him. “Now,” she said. “We have to stop them.”

“This kind of working cannot be stopped,” Merlin said, his voice soft. “Not without...”

“Without what?” Minerva asked. She stepped closer to the desk. “Merlin, if they’re targeting the Soviet Union-”

“I am aware of the consequences,” Merlin said, lifting his head up. “But this kind of working is potent. Very potent. There are only a few spells, only a few ... sacrifices ... that are powerful enough to stop it once it has begun. Only ... only...” He trailed off.

“What are you talking about?” Minerva asked.

“Magic draws its power from the willworker,” Cecilia said, hissing. “But it can be drawn from elsewhere. They are many willworkers, using Stonehenge’s reservoirs of power. Any willworker disrupting it would take power of equal measure. It’d kill you.”

Merlin looked grim. Grave.

“I’m ... afraid she’s right,” Merlin said.

Minerva felt cold. She opened her mouth. Then closed it. Merlin picked up his crystal. He twiddled it between his fingers, a nervous tick as he considered. “Such death. Such destruction. And it would be only the beginning. The curse could never kill every wizard in the Soviet Union. They only hope to ... to kill enough that the British will remain dominant.” The crystal sparkled as he shook his head slowly.

Minerva gulped.

Someone would have to die.

The choice was so clear. She could do nothing. She could let ... hundreds of thousands die. Maybe millions. No, not maybe. She could see the endless fields of the dead from the Great War, repeated - expanded and amplified by twenty years of Europe’s simmering hatred and technological advancement. Millions dead. Millions.

Or she could die.

Merlin breathed out a slow sigh. “If ... someone were brave enough, with their sacrifice...”

He was looking pointedly at her. Minerva clenched her hands. She lifted her chin, her eyes half closed. It was the only way to ... to...

Her brow furrowed.

She frowned.

“We shouldn’t have to sacrifice anyone, Merlin,” she said, her voice soft.

The crystal paused in its glittering. His fingers had stopped twirling it.

Minerva scowled and then thrust her hand out - no magic, just main force. The crystal went flying, hitting the carpeted floor, as papers went skidding up from the desk. They tumbled end over end as Minerva leaned forward, grabbing onto the shocked Merlin and hauling him forward. He was more surprised than he was manhandled - but Minerva found adrenaline, anger and surprise were enough. He skidded belly first along the desk as she held him close and glared at him. Overhead, the cat yowled awake then shimmered into non-existance, flickering away like a flame going out.

“You wanted me to die to stop this?”

“I-I-” Merlin stammered. “It has to be done! We can’t let them-”

“Tell me, Merlin!” Minerva shoved him back down, stepping back, her arms trembling. “Were you always such a coward? You were going to give them the wand! You were going to do everything Ars Magicka asked of you - and then to stop them, you ... you would kill me! You would let me die, just to ... to ... to what!?”

Merlin panted. He pushed himself back upright, looking frazzled ... and yes, angry. The kind of furious anger of an animal backed into a track.

“We have no choice!” he said. “They’re not just some madmen criminals, they’re not some Frenchmen-” Cecilia snorted. “-they’re our people, our government! We can’t just-”

He cut himself off.

“Can’t just what?” Minerva asked, her voice quiet.

“ ... ah, yes,” Cecilia siad, chuckling. “The other way to end a Working of any magnitude. It’s the simplest method.” Her fangs glinted. “You kill the wizard.”

“You can’t!” Merlin exclaimed. “It would be chaos, and you’d die just the same. You’ll be hunted by every policeman in England, the army, the air force, all of them will want your head. There’s two members of the War Office there, and as many officers of the law that they could talk into coming along. You can’t.”

Minerva arched an eyebrow. “Can’t I?” she asked.

Merlin shook his head. “If you go, it won’t just be you or I who suffers the consequences. It overturn everything Britain has tried to make in the past four centuries - the rule of law! Order! Stability!”

Minerva turned. She rolled her shoulders. She started for the door.

Merlin aimed his wand at her. He flicked the tip and the door closed. His voice was deadly serious.

“Golding, don’t you get it. If you do this, you’ll be starting a civil war - between ... between Ars Magica and everyone who thinks like you. Every communist and anarchist in the woodwork, they’ll all see this as a cause célèbre! A bloody cassus beli too! You will destroy everything to save yourself!?”

Minerva turned to face him. “Are you going to stop me?” she growled.

“ ... yes,” Merlin whispered.

“Then do it,” Minerva said, glaring at him. Tensed. Ready to dodge.

Merlin flicked his wand. He didn’t need to speak - but Minerva had been taught by Melissa Stevenson. She rolled forward as the spell whipped out. Crackling chains of red fire swept out - one slamming into the door and splintering it, the other wrapping around Cecilia, who hissed in irritation.

Minerva scrambled to her feet and dashed towards the liquor cabinet. She flung it open with such force that its contents spilled onto the floor, her wand, Kat’s wand, Gina’s wands all tumbling out onto the plush carpet. She grabbed blindly for one and struck out.

“Kemb Drit Micelnes!”

Her wand flicked up, and the floor between Merlin’s desk and hers humped upwards into a crenelated wall. Merlin made a cupping gesture with his hand, then thrust his wand. The bricks of the wall turned to glass, then the glass turned to hissing steam, bursting and boiling away with such force that it flung Minerva back against the wall. She slammed home, then crashed to her knees.