Paranoid Mage - cChapter 13: Compromised

The footage was equal parts horrifying, sickening, and infuriating. Gayle had only caught a few glimpses before needing to turn away, fighting the gorge that rose in her throat despite the healing vis that constantly saturated her body. It was bad enough that anyone had done that kind of thing, leaving behind half-rotted bodies that had died of neglect or torture, but for a healer to do such a thing made her almost ashamed of her aspect. Gayle would never be anything like Fane.

“I am so glad I never actually met Archmage Fane,” Gayle said out loud.

“Indeed,” agreed her father.

Her entire family was gathered in the drawing room, which was not to say the entire Hargrave family. It was Gayle, her mother and her father, and her grandmother and archmage grandfather. Under the circumstances the House itself was fairly busy and they couldn’t afford to stop what they were doing to chew over news together, even momentous news like the missive that had gone out about Fane’s basement laboratory.

Gayle herself was not really used to being included in such meetings. She was, after all, only barely a full mage. Even that was a little bit hazy, thanks to how she’d been transferred into BSE, and nobody knew where Grand Magus Taisen was to clarify her position. But she’d found that as one of the only healers not affiliated with House Fane, and certainly the only healer in House Hargrave, she’d taken on new importance. Which was both daunting and uplifting, since people actually listening to her cut both ways.

“Honor is apparently not a concept that Fane ever learned,” her grandfather said. “There is a difference between destroying the enemy and whatever that was.”

“Do we really think Constance sent it, though?” Her mom frowned. “That girl wouldn’t even share candy when she was a kid. I can’t imagine her sending something like that out unless she was paid for it.”

“It’s likely it was Wells’ organization.” The Archmage shrugged. “Or maybe him personally, but either way, he was the one who removed Fane.” The ice in his glass clinked as he took a sip of whiskey. “That’s certain,” he concluded, punctuating his words with the click of his glass on the table. Gayle and her mother just had tea, for all the healing in the world couldn’t make her like the taste of alcohol, but all the men – and grandmother – had something harder.

It felt a little odd to be discussing such matters of import just sitting on the sofas with drinks, but she wasn’t sure how else they would do it. The quiet, informal meetings were, as she remembered from when she was very small, how the real decisions were made. Though she wasn’t quite sure how much she could add.

She almost voiced the thought that maybe Callum had targeted Fane because of her. She didn’t think of herself as having an ego, but Callum had seemed genuinely regretful about what had happened to her and how much Fane threatened her. Or maybe it was a message. When they had argued about how appropriate Callum’s actions were, and what GAR should do about things, she had no idea what had been going on in House Fane. If the Guild of Arcane Regulation wasn’t able to prevent something like Fane’s butchery, it was obvious that some kind of reform was necessary.

That wasn’t really her call, though. Her responsibility was House Hargrave, and that was enough for her. More than enough, even, since she’d suddenly gotten the responsibility of healing everyone who needed it within the House, which was far more than she’d thought.

There had been sudden skirmishes, not in the portal worlds but on the actual House borders. So far her House hadn’t suffered any deaths, but some people had come back with severe burns or even severed limbs, blood loss stopped only by force magic caps and bandages. It made her glad she wasn’t out there on the front lines.

“We should condemn it,” Gayle said, drawing eyes. “I know that some of the Houses won’t care, especially with what’s going on now, but if we want sympathy from the younger mages or some of the more ascetic Houses, this is perfect. We’re against Fane anyway and it’s not like we’re doing any of that stuff.”

“It’s not much of a risk,” her mother agreed.

“Also, though,” Gayle said, then hesitated. Actually advocating House policy was new to her, but she was determined to do the best job that she could. Even if some of what she’d settled on was unconventional. “I think we should take the opportunity to do some mundane outreach,” she said after a moment.

“Mundane outreach?” Grandma Jeannie questioned. Gayle flushed, but gamely held up the books she’d gotten.

“I was going over all this mundane literature on medicine and anatomy and such. I swear I learned more just from going through textbooks – publicly available mundane texts – than the last year at the Academy. GAR uses stuff based on it, and Grand Magus Taisen has no problems taking advantage of that kind of knowledge. We should, too.” Seeing that she had their attention, though not outright agreement, she continued on.

“Have you seen new phones and new computers?” The House computer for GAR communications was ancient by comparison. It even used a dial-up modem, which apparently was already outdated. “I think we’d benefit from working with mundane experts and businesses. Reserve enchantments for things only enchantments can do.”

“Now that would take some selling,” her father said, though he didn’t, himself, look upset.

“Mister Wells said he only had a mundane education,” Gayle pressed. “If that’s true, imagine what other mages could do if they had a full breadth of mundane knowledge! It’s not like it’s even hard to get. Like when I looked up clotting and neurology. All it took was going to a library!”

“Hmm. It might not be a bad idea,” grandfather mused. Gayle almost rolled her eyes, but didn’t. Grandfather doted on her perhaps a little too much. “We can set forth some new guidelines on how to interact with the mundane world, and use that as a wedge against GAR. The Houses that stay in the Portal Worlds won’t care anyway.”

It wasn’t quite the chain of logic she had followed, but it was good enough. No House changed in a day, and even just slightly more mixing with the mundane world would be nice. She had to admit to herself she really wanted to get more books like the one Callum had given her, and that was difficult from inside House Hargrave.

She was sure there was another piece of logic behind the decision as well. One which nobody admitted: that they didn’t want to make targets of themselves. If Callum could kill or banish one Archmage, perhaps he could remove others.

Perhaps anyone could.

***

The report of an anti-materiel rifle firing a .50 round was deafening, expensive, and satisfying.

The rounds cost a ridiculous amount of money, up to nearly one hundred dollars each for the explosive-incendiary types. Callum didn’t want to practice too much with the rifle just due to the costs, but he had to try it out a little bit. Not to get a feel for the thing, since he wouldn’t be firing it himself, but to see how it interacted with his portals and spatial senses.

He had no illusions about being a sniper or any kind of crack shot. Spatial senses and portals were his tools, and while they made up for a lack of actual prowess they didn’t nullify the physical properties of guns. He could measure a perfect straight line between two points in his spatial sphere, that was perfectly fine, but guns didn’t shoot perfect straight lines.

At point blank range it was pretty much irrelevant, but that was also close enough for a supernatural to notice and react to his portal. Mages had shields, and the others had superior reaction speed. Opening a portal two, three, or even five hundred yards away from the target were each a completely different scenario.

It didn’t really matter how powerful the bullet was, it still obeyed gravity and was pushed by wind. Maybe he’d be able to compensate for such things with enchantments eventually, but for now he had to work within the limitations of physics. Which meant that he wasn’t actually nearly as good a shot from any distance past about a hundred yards.

One way to fix it at a medium distance was actually to shoot straight down from above. That presented a smaller target than someone’s center of mass, true, but he could think less about where to aim his portal. It wasn’t until he got out to the longer ranges that effectively landing a shot with anything less powerful than the .50 rifle was basically impossible, even with his advantages. He wouldn’t really want to risk even the big rifle at his full range.

On the other hand, he could accurately target one to two hundred yard shots with the .50 rifle, which was a hell of an accomplishment under most circumstances. In the cold wind, fingers numbed half by temperature and half by the kick of rifle, he had doubts he’d be able to hit the broad side of a barn. Without his portals he could basically only hit the opposite side of the quarry he’d chosen for practice, far beyond where Lucy’s targets were set up.

“You make that look easy, big man,” Lucy said, very carefully unloading her own rifle.

“Well, I’m cheating. You’ll probably be a better normal shot than I am in a couple weeks,” he told her. She wasn’t exactly a natural at it, but she’d gone at it with determination despite her hands shaking from anxiety and adrenaline after emptying her first magazine.

“Cheating or not, this is harder than it looks,” Lucy said, getting a bottle of water from the cooler. She still preferred soda, but the realization that she’d no longer have access to healing magic on a regular basis meant she had to actually start thinking about her teeth and general health. Something that made her grumpy at times.

“You’re doing better than I did when I started out,” Callum encouraged her, only bending the truth a little. “It just takes time and practice.”

“Boo.” Lucy pouted for a moment before she started packing things away. Not that he couldn’t just sweep everything into the cave, but it would be treating her like a child to just do everything for her. Neither of them wanted that.

After spending several weeks much further south, the Texas cold was rather shocking. Worse, it didn’t even come with snow, which was the main selling point of winter weather. At least they could retreat to the bunker basement, even if it wasn’t exactly a full house, and the Texas trailer wasn’t really that bad. Though the cave-cache was slowly taking over a number of the functions of a normal residence.

“You know, it’s worth thinking about maybe expanding the cave,” Callum mused to Lucy as they sat in the bunker basement and ignored the sound of a generator overhead. Soon as everything was done he’d break out his magic generator and they’d be properly independent. “Or finding a new, larger one. Given how big my perception is, we could fit multiple vehicles and basically an alternate everything.”

“Long as we don’t live there,” Lucy said. “I know I spent most of my time in a basement before anyway, but I think I’d go crazy if I couldn’t see the sky at least sometimes.”

“I don’t think we could really have a full cave house unless we could find a trustworthy earth mage,” Callum said. “And I can’t imagine we’ll have that anytime soon. Besides, I don’t want to live in a hole in the ground either. Storage space is for things, not people.”

“Glad we’re on the same page there,” Lucy said. “Though I guess it’s weird that the bunker doesn’t feel like it can hold up against something like a shifter or a fae.”

“The idea is that if someone actually threatens us, we go after them first,” Callum said. “I mean, it’s what I got the gun for, but actually getting at one of the big time supernaturals is something else entirely. I don’t think we can pull our teleport swap trick again, unfortunately. Which is a shame, because I bet it’d work better against a shifter or a vamp. Or even a fae, but I don’t know about that given their weird magic.”

“Fae magic is just bull,” Lucy agreed.

Callum had to agree. He hadn’t encountered much of it, but what he had seen was completely arbitrary. At least it consistently required mana from Faerie, so dumping a fae into Portal World Five would be perfect if he could swing it. But if regular fae elites could pretty much jump back out of his portals, he was sure a king could do worse. Maybe even take control of it somehow, thanks to how weird fae magic was.

“Hopefully it’s not enough bull to stop a bullet,” he said, tapping one of the oversized incendiary-explosive rounds that he’d gotten for that purpose. Normally it’d be way above overkill for a person, but if fae were supernaturally tough it’d probably do its job. A corite bullet would be better, but the ones he had probably wouldn’t kill unless he could hit the head or the heart, and maybe not even then. They weren’t really all that large, and the purity wasn’t really that high.

“That was awful,” Lucy groaned. “You need to sharpen your wordplay skills.”

“Yeah it was,” Callum agreed. “I knew you’d hate it.”

“That’s not something to be proud of!” Lucy protested.

Callum opened a portal back to the Texas house. He had a drone anchor parked there to replace the teleportation pad, which was slated to be recycled because it wasn’t useful anymore. The small portal anchors were far superior and the teleport enchantment needed to be altered if Lucy was going to be able to operate it. The bare bones version he had made just wasn’t something she could manipulate.

They were still working on how to hook it up to the tiles. There was an entire section in the basement dedicated to it, because anything that was integrated into the tiles was something Lucy could control. The issue was they didn’t quite have anything that could integrate the metal teleport core into the glass tiles, so they’d have to go visit a metal shop soon.

Despite the pile of things he had to do and the looming task of determining a plan of dealing with the monsters still lurking in GAR, Callum was feeling fairly relaxed. He felt like he actually had time to just sit and talk and cuddle with Lucy in the bunker basement. Had time to see the house actually completed.

He only saw mages when he visited Alpha Chester, the ones set on him as observers and spies, and even then it was at a distance. The riskiest, most stressful thing he’d done was comb through House Fane’s stuff, and they had been far too preoccupied to even notice the little drone perched on top of a roof decoration. But relaxed as he was, he was still vigilant enough to notice when one of his portal anchors started charging of its own accord.

Callum wasn’t aware of saying anything, but apparently he said something because Lucy turned away from the tiles setup she was tinkering with to stare at him. She asked a question but he was far too busy wrestling with the portal focus to explain, hurling spatial attack forms at it after a moment of frozen surprise. That forced the forming thread to collapse, preventing it from actually creating a portal, but it didn’t solve the problem.

“I need you to break this,” he said, teleporting the anchor over to the table in front of Lucy. He could have done it himself, but it was easier to spend all his attention making sure the portal anchor didn’t fully activate, and that none of the others were doing the same thing. To her credit, Lucy didn’t even ask questions, just grabbed her hammer and screwdriver from next to the tiles and plied them against the anchor.

It didn’t take much to deform the little bit of metal enough to disrupt the enchantment. Once it was broken, the intrusion stopped but Callum didn’t relax. He had no idea how such a thing could happen, and until he knew for sure he had to assume all of his anchors were suspect. For the moment he pulled all the anchors out of his cave cache – three pairs total, including the one that Lucy had just destroyed – to examine.

“The heck was that for?” Lucy asked, placing the bent and destroyed anchor next to the others on the table.

“Someone hacked my portal anchor I think?” Callum hazarded, heart still pounding. The anchor in question was paired with the drone that he had used to surveil House Fane, which was in a way a relief. That one had definitely been in enemy territory, and could have been compromised, though a close sweep showed no foreign vis. It had to be something on the House Fane side, which he didn’t understand but it at least explained why such an intrusion hadn’t happened before.

“We need to figure out a way to completely depower these things without destroying them, just so we can make them safe on our end. There’s no way we can just leave them as they are.”

“Whoah there, slow down,” Lucy said drawing out the last two words. “Are you sure they can even do that?” She added, reaching out to find Callum’s hand and squeezing it as she spoke. “Gotta be Duvall. If anyone can do that, it’s the Archmage. But she’s been around a while without this happening.”

“Yeah, I know.” Callum scowled at the portal anchors lined up on the table, feeling nauseous. “I’ve gotten lazy. I haven’t been making sure to clean up every single teleport with the drone, because they already knew that we were doing stuff.”

“You think that they could open the portal because of, what, traces you left? How would that work?”

Callum blinked, then realized that while he knew nothing about proper magery, at least he could sense magic. Most mages didn’t really seem to even notice the traces they left, so of course Lucy wouldn’t know about it. He took a moment to explain about how vis got stuck in ambient mana, and how he had cleaned it up, while he got up and paced to burn off some nervous energy.

“I figure that they found some of that residue and exploited it,” Callum concluded. “It’s that or any set of portals is vulnerable to being opened this way, but if that were true, they would have found me after I rescued you. There was probably enough magic getting flung around there to hide things, but at the Fane household? Nah, some of the buildings were practically dead.”

“So we disconnect them like with the tiles? Or put them somewhere it doesn’t matter?” Lucy suggested. “Like, just put a bunch of them at the bottom of the ocean and have only one leading back?”

“Something like that, yes,” Callum agreed, and took a deep breath. “No matter how we go about it we need more bane material. I’ll have to be careful, but we definitely need to put our portal network somewhere inaccessible. Until then we’ll have to be very careful and rather less mobile.”

“And we’ll have to recycle this,” Lucy said, holding up the dented portal anchor.

“And we’ll have to recycle that,” Callum agreed.

***

“I don’t care what you think,” Serena Duvall said coldly, staring at the visitor in the receiving room of her main House complex. It was austere compared to some of the Houses, but each chair was well made and matched, each painting by one of her own House. The man sitting in one of those chairs was out of place – his unctuous tone, his garish canary-yellow suit, his very presence. She did not like having her carefully-arranged day interrupted any more than she liked having her carefully-chosen furniture abused by uninvited guests. “House Duvall is not involved in Wells’ actions. We have declared him heretic! Surely you see why, if he’s subverting my network to this extent!”

House Duvall was perched high in the mountain-sized tree that towered over the portal to Earth, taking up the entirety of a limb ten miles across and fifty miles long. Not that it was densely occupied, but she’d wanted to future-proof her claim. She didn’t trust Faerie, she didn’t like the Night Lands, and she didn’t like the mana density of Earth, so the Deep Wilds it was.

Her position forced mages to make the trek to her, though flying up to House Duvall’s limb was hardly onerous for any competent mage. Let alone an Archmage like Corrilon. Yet he still seemed somewhat out of breath, though she couldn’t fathom how.

“Nevertheless, it was the network that was used to remove Archmage Fane. We still haven’t found⁠—”

“Would you ban doors if an enemy walked through one?” Duvall snapped. “We have safety features, but nothing is safe if you let some ignorant criminal walk up to it and pervert it into a trap!”

“Be that as it may,” Archmage Corrilon said doggedly, which fit his lined and wrinkled face that reminded Duvall of a grizzled mastiff. “Be that as it may, it is hard to trust your network, considering what it has been used for. Wells has demonstrated a number of heretofore unseen abilities with spatial magic, and you can’t convince any of us that you’re unable to do the same thing.”

“I have dedicated my craft to useful and constructive applications of spatial magic,” Duvall said. “We have always known that portals and teleports were an enormous strategic advantage. That’s why I built the network. Just because Wells is better at using it for combat potential than you, that’s no reason to suspect me.”

She had already known some of what Wells was doing — though the specific applications were strange. Breacher portals were one of her oldest collaborations with the Guild of Enchanting. But using them at the size Wells did required a very sharply focused vis sense — which he clearly wasn’t using. His method of accelerating matter was a very spatially focused version of telekinesis — effective in a very coarse way, but it didn’t compare to the real thing.

It was obvious his ability to slip through wards and probably his ability to use the tiny portals came from his extensive use of ultrafine vis. Her best guess was that he had a specialized tool that let him use it more effectively than the ones from the Guild of Enchanting — making its origin a mystery. Someone had to be backing him, somehow, and it was really damn infuriating that it was leading her fellow Archmages to question her.

“If we can’t verify your network is safe, how can we use it? You must turn it over so we can—”

“So that’s what this is about,” Duvall said scornfully. She should have known that was the first target the others would go after. Her transport network made her all but untouchable — because it was hers. GAR owned the land, the pads, the screening enchantments, but every single core was purchased with House Duvall money.

Duvall knew she was no good at fighting — she didn’t like it and spatial wasn’t actually any good at it, Wells’ exploitation aside. But that was fine. She just enabled those who could fight. So she had other kinds of power, and the more simple-minded Archmages hated that they couldn’t just dominate her with their combat prowess.

“I am not giving up my life’s work because you can’t find a single heretic mage,” Duvall told Corrilon.

“We must insist that you submit the teleportation network to be verified and controlled properly. Now that we know what can be done with it, we cannot allow you to hold such a potential weapon over the heads of everyone in GAR.” Corrilon’s voice was reasonable — unlike his words. No wonder he’d been selected to talk to her. Most people started yelling much more quickly.

“That will not happen,” Duvall said flatly. “If you’re so worried about what will happen if you use the network, don’t use it.”

“That’s not reasonable, Archmage Duvall,” said Archmage Corrilon. “Too many people and goods move through the teleportation network every day to simply stop using it.”

“I wasn’t offering you a choice,” Duvall said, rising.

Below her personal house, in the living wood of the tree, there were storage rooms filled with her projects — and a certain number of personal spatial devices. She didn’t use any spatial expansion herself — she knew how dangerous it was. A pulse of vis gave her enough of a line to travel down herself, and a brief glance around the rigidly ordered rows found the portal frame she wanted.

It was one of her better designs, a portable folding model that could be deployed or stowed with a few twists. Her friends at the Guild of Enchanting had enjoyed the challenge — even if nobody else needed such portals. Not even the BSE, since they already had larger models.

She deployed one half in a matter of a few seconds, setting it up on an immaculately swept floor facing a number of storage bins and returning above to where Corrilon was still waiting before he could grow impatient. He blinked at the wooden case in her hand, but she ignored his confusion — Corrilon was just a mouthpiece. One of the least inspired water mages she’d seen, despite his power.

Another vis pulse let her find the anchor for the teleport between House Duvall and GAR Europe. She latched onto the core and used it to open a portal. Mostly to speed up the process of getting Corrilon out of her hair.

“Go on,” she said, shooing him through the portal and following herself.

“Archmage Duvall, what are you doing?” Duvall spared him a glance. Even his jowls reminded her of a dog. An absurd caricature of a dog in an absurd yellow outfit. Utterly ridiculous – and not worth her time.

“It should be obvious,” she said, twisting the handles on the portal frame as the wood clicked out into a tall frame. “If you will only use my network if you can take it from me, you will not use my network.” She cast out another vis pulse, locating all the cores stored at the switchboard behind the operators.

Not all of them were hers, actually — even she had to permanently sell some to Houses or GAR or the BSE. The teleports between GAR buildings, the private House transports, the portal world stations. The barest bones. Everything else, all the hundreds of locations — those were hers. So she took them back.

Though the portable frame she could see the racks that were designed to hold cores, so she began teleporting them through into her basement. They were all numbered, and she had all the documentation of which core number went to which destination, so while returning them would be tedious, it would merely be the work of an afternoon for some dedicated people.

If she returned them.

A lot of people would capitulate simply from the interruption of their normal habits, but Duvall wasn’t certain she should return things to what they were before. Shutting down the GAR network was not a whim or caprice — she’d long considering the implications if she needed to use that card. Perhaps she’d let the network grow too large, and be used too easily.

It was her power, but now she realized that it was a power that was taken for granted — and she did not like what was hers being taken. Power that was never exercised was impotent. Given a few days or weeks of trying to work without her contribution to magekind, all the accusations and power-grabs would dry up. Or grow more blatant, but she was prepared for that.

“You cannot⁠—” Corrilon began, but she reached out for the teleportation core to the American GAR offices, ignoring his words and the stares of the switchboard operations who suddenly had no enchantments to switch.

“My network, my rules.” She told him. For all his kindly charm and raw power, he was completely unimaginative and spineless, exactly the kind of person she disliked the most. “If you care to revise your accusations, you know where House Duvall is.”

She left Corrilon behind as she repeated the process twice more for America and China — though China was truncated since Fane held sway there. Over a thousand teleport cores. Then she returned to the House and sent messages to each of her apprentices. Most were already at House Duvall — a necessary step, for their own safety. Those that were on loan to BSE were told to return.

One of them came with news.

“Did you see what was sent out to everyone about Fane, Archmage?” Young Cormac asked, shoving a small electronic device far too close to her face. “It says Constance sent it, but who knows if that’s true.”

“It probably isn’t,” Duvall said, after she had pushed the device away and saw what it contained. Constance didn’t have the imagination. Which left only Wells — and that meant there might be a trail. “Keep the defenses up,” she decided abruptly. “I’m going out. If anyone wants to complain have them leave a note.”

“Yes, Archmage,” Cormac said, and Duvall went over to her personal teleportation nexus. There were connections to each of the portal worlds, a few of her allied Houses, and the Guild of Enchanting. It was that last she energized and stepped through.

The Guild of Enchanting headquarters was located in Faerie, so of course it was improbably picturesque. Everything in Faerie was. They couldn’t just have a river or a mountain or a tree — it had to be a perfect ribbon of blue, a heart-stopping snowcapped peak, or some mossy elder titan. There was a reason Houses competed for space on Faerie, but Duvall mistrusted a landscape so disproportionately beautiful.

She ignored the jewel-like birds flitting around enormous gleaming blossoms and marched through the receiving room to where a servant stood by the door. Some half-sized fae, which didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous — the Guild of Enchanting took their security seriously. Duvall’s Archmage pin was enough for the servant, though, and he opened the door for her to step into the main part of the Guild.

Grand Magus Rossi himself met her a few scant minutes later, which she hadn’t asked for but wouldn’t turn down. It would make things easier for her. And faster. Time was of the essence.

“Welcome, Archmage Duvall,” Rossi began but Duvall held up a hand.

“I’m in a hurry, Grand Magus,” she said. “I need to borrow one of your finesse scribers and lenses.”

“Why, certainly,” Rossi said, startled. “What for, may I ask?”

“Since GAR seems to be too incompetent to trace Wells, I’m going to do it myself,” she said bluntly. “He uses finesse threads, and those just break when I try to handle them, so I need one of your scribers.”

“Of course,” Rossi said, making a sign to one of the servants in the corner of the room. “We’re interested in locating Wells ourselves. We’ve taken some steps ourselves — employing mundane detectives to find where he may have manufactured his enchantment blanks. But that is a rather slow and tedious process.”

“If I locate him, I’ll let you know,” Duvall said insincerely. She would actually have to get her own mages first, since she wasn’t going to take him into custody herself. He was dangerous. But she would be able to lock down his use of vis — if she could get close enough.

When the servant returned with a cart bearing the items she’d asked for, she plucked them up with her telekinesis focus and bid Rossi an abbreviated farewell. The man was competent enough, but far too impressed with the sound of his own voice. She also didn’t like the subtle remonstrance about taking Well’s enchanting work first.

She grimaced at the pointlessly elaborate halls of GAR China as she made her way to the House Fane teleporter — one of the ones she had not confiscated. She simply energized it and went through without any hesitation or even concern. Without Archmage Fane there was nobody of any standing to even protest. She ignored the challenge of one of the savages House Fane had masquerading as mages and went outside, hauling the equipment with her as she flew into the air.

Finding Wells’ traces among the business of a House was not going to be easy, but she knew the area that he was in thanks to the video. Her foci carried her to Archmage Fane’s old building, with all its useless frilly roof things, where she deployed the enchanting lens. It was specially designed to help a mage focus on small and subtle pieces of vis, like those generated by a finesse scriber — and actually doing most of the work to screen out the traces of other mages. Duvall had already seen what Wells’ portal anchor structure looked like, so she had a clear idea what to look for.

It still wasn’t easy. Wells’ anchor was very small and he’d shown he could easily put it inside walls or in other cubbies, so she had to use a combination of close range passive perception and the lens to track down where it might have been. Under the circumstances she was prepared to spend all day at it, considering how many Houses she’d cancelled work for.

Fortunately for her she found the traces after only an hour of scrutinizing the outside of the building, tracking it down to just above the surface of a roof. Whatever he was using to hold his portal anchors wasn’t very large, but it was still offset far enough that he had to be using something. Once she had it located and had the lens locked in, she channeled her vis into the scriber.

Normally she didn’t bother using scribers. They didn’t help with her greatest labor, locking down the space around House territory in the portal worlds, but she was still familiar with them. The finesse ones were always uncomfortable, squeezing her vis into smaller channels without guiding them into any particular framework. Uncomfortable — but necessary.

She focused on the lingering traces of Well’s threads, some of which went straight downward and through the wards. The scriber could get maybe two feet, and the lens five, and her passive perceptions reasonably ten, so it wasn’t like she couldn’t get through the wards. It was just that she couldn’t do so with enough facility to do anything useful.

It wasn’t like she needed to, though. The patterns of the portal anchor were right there, for once not blurred like most of Wells’ workings. Few people cast spells up on top of the roof. Nor was there one of his distortion enchantments — to his detriment.

Duvall filtered her vis into the echoes left by his threads and started carefully pulling and prying, amplifying the resonance and connecting with the other half of the portal anchor. Only her best students could duplicate that sort of touch — a few frankly better than her. But none of them could do everything she could. Once the framework stabilized she energized her homebond ring, spinning out a portal there as well. She’d need help.

“Have Magus Geoffrey bring his squad,” she told the shifter stationed by her homebond anchor. He snapped to attention and rushed off to do her bidding, returning only a minute later with Geoffrey in tow. Her chief of security had a number of burly mages and shifters, which should be more than sufficient if she could neutralize Wells’ spatial magic.

“Be ready to subdue one mage,” she said as they flew out of the portal to hover in the air next to her. Geoffrey nodded, and she started to pry open the anchor.

At least, she tried. It went fine for a minute or so, as she strengthened the connection, then suddenly the link tried to destabilize. Duvall frowned at it, fighting with the threads through the intermediary of the scriber. It should have been easy enough to open a portal and secure a foothold on the other side — but somehow Wells was ready for her. She had no idea how or why he was primed to break the enchantment form in the anchor on such short notice, and cursed him under her breath as she worked.

“Heretic whoreson,” she muttered. “Manarotted dudspawn.” Despite everything, she was managing to get the structure closer and closer to stability — then it suddenly went dead. The link snapped and vanished. Wells had actually destroyed the anchor.

“Damnation!” Duvall shouted, Geoffrey and her squad moving to surround her protectively — and uselessly. She could have had him. In fact, she almost did, but somehow he’d noticed almost immediately. For him to be forced to destroy his own portal anchor was at least a distant consolation prize. He couldn’t have too many, and it showed he was definitely afraid of her.

Wells wasn’t perfect, or unshakeable. He was like any other mage — he made mistakes. There would be another time he didn’t obfuscate his portal anchors.

She’d get him next time.