Alien Arcana (Starship's Mage Book 4) (21 page)

“I could
feel
the attack spells forming,” the younger man said. “And I managed to…shove it away somehow. I think it’s the only reason we survived.”

“And no one could have predicted that,” the King said grimly. “Not even someone with
all
of the information. Ten light-seconds… They had a Rune of Power, didn’t they?”

“Without question,” Damien told him. “It had the right flavor of power. So, either I just killed a mystery Rune Wright we didn’t know about or…”

“You just put down a rogue Hand we didn’t know about,” Alexander said. “You did what you had to do, Damien. I don’t doubt that. Please tell me you found
something
. This is going to be an…ugly kettle of fish regardless.”

“Our attacker ended up thoroughly vaporized, so not as much as I’d like. A commissioning seal calling the ship
Keeper of Oaths
and not much else.” Damien sighed. “The seal was made with gold from Mars. The ship had our best tech. It had to have been built here, in Sol.”

“Damn. I was hoping…”

“My lord, do you know
anything
about these Keepers? If they truly are a Royal Order, surely we must know something?”

“I know nothing,” Alexander said. “I’ve had people look, but…”

“But what?”

“I asked my
fucking Hands
to look,” the King snarled. “The people I trust
above all others
—but if
one
of you has betrayed me,
who the fuck do I trust
?”

“My liege…” Damien swallowed. “My liege, you
have
to trust us. We know there was one problem—but we also know they’re
dead
. No one escaped that ship.

“I need resources and authority,” he continued. “But if that ship was built in Sol, we can find her. If we can find where she was built, we can find who
had
her built. I will find you answers, my King. That is what you have Hands for.”

Alexander held his breath for a long moment before exhaling in a massive sigh.

“And would you trust another Hand at your back with a gun right now, Damien?”

“None of my siblings-in-service would need a gun, my King,” he said softly. “I wouldn’t trust
anyone
behind me right now. Not until we’re at the bottom of this.”

“You are my Hand,” the Mage-King of Mars finally answered him. “I charge you to follow this rabbit hole. Find who has betrayed us, find this Royal Order of the Keepers of Secrets and Oaths, find this Winton if you can.

“If you need ships, Marines, auditors, bureaucrats, ask. Any resource at my command is at yours. Even in Sol, I do not see all, but if there is a snake in the Mountain, I charge you to bring them to heel.”

The relaxed setting robbed Alexander’s word of not one gram of intensity, and Damien bowed his head.

“You speak for Mars,” the Hand said quietly, “and I will obey.”

Despite his many responsibilities, Damien knew that the Mage-King made time to have dinner with his children at least three times a week. He hadn’t been a
regular
attendee when he’d been on Mars—the dinners were probably the only quiet private time the King
got
—but he’d been one of the few people who
were
invited.

Tonight, both Damien and Chancellor Malcolm Gregory had joined the Alexanders for dinner. Gregory was an immensely fat man, his hair long lost to premature balding, with a perpetually befuddled smile. He was a mundane, with no magic whatsoever, and occasionally actually succeeded in convincing people he was an overweight, lovable idiot.

Gregory was certainly overweight, and was kind-hearted enough to qualify as lovable—but he was also possibly the smartest man Damien had ever met, a ruthless negotiator and businessman who had dedicated his life to the Protectorate.

“I don’t see why I have to wait until I’m fifteen to get a Rune,” Kiera asked. Her tone was more questioning than whiny, which Damien suspected meant she was on her best behavior.

“Because it
hurts
,” Des told his sister dryly. “And however bad you think it hurts, you’re underestimating it.”

“Try period cramps sometime, dear brother,” the girl said sweetly, causing her sibling to choke on his drink and glare at her. Damien managed to conceal his own choking
somewhat
more discreetly.

“You had those
twice
, my dear,” their father reminded her in an indulgent voice. “And the only reason you had them
twice
is because you were too embarrassed to
tell
me or Dr. Sair the first time.

“That said,” he continued, “both you and Des are right, but it’s not
only
a question of pain tolerance. The first reason, though I will freely admit it’s the weakest, is because I said so. The second is that, to date, no one
has
received a Rune of Power before fifteen, and I am not using my only daughter as a guinea pig.

“There are concerns around significant physical growth after the inlay,” the King reminded her. “It is
also
a huge responsibility, Kiera. Those Runes make us
extremely
powerful, which comes with similarly sized responsibility. Every man and woman alive who bears one of those Runes, from myself and your brother to your Aunt Jane, to Damien and every other one of my Hands, has sworn their life to the service of the Protectorate.

“While getting the Rune doesn’t require you to make that oath, it is a step along that path,” he continued. “An utterly irreversible one. So, yes, my dear Kie, you are going to wait until you are fifteen, and I will repeat my explanation as often as you need me to. Because it’s important.”

Kiera sighed but nodded her acceptance of her father’s explanation.

“Does it really hurt that bad?” she asked Damien. “Dad’s were
years
ago, and well, who trusts their brother?”

“The four I did here on Mars were done under a local anesthetic,” he said carefully. “Those were…uncomfortable. Painful, but…well, I did my first one without anesthetic. There’s no comparison. That was
excruciating
.”

She stared at him in horror. For various reasons,
that
part of the story had never come out before.

“Why?” she asked. “Wasn’t that…well, stupid?”

“Rushed,” Damien said dryly, with a glance at Desmond Alexander to be sure he was okay with the story being told. The Mage-King made a go-ahead gesture, and the Hand considered how best to tell the story.

“We were being chased by a crime lord with a stolen cruiser,” he told the Alexander siblings. Des was leaning in with interest as well—and so was Gregory, for that matter. “
Azure Gauntlet
. Now, Alaura Stealey was on her way with an entire
squadron
of cruisers, but
I
didn’t know that. We didn’t have
any
guns on our ship, just the amplifier I’d built.”

He shrugged.

“I had access to Shelly Monroe’s Rune,” he said quietly. More specifically, he’d had access to Hand Shelly Monroe’s
forearm skin
, cut from her body after she’d been killed. “Being a Wright, I could see how it had to be changed for me, but I couldn’t risk getting it even slightly wrong, so I didn’t use any anesthetic.

“It worked. Mikhail Azure is dead and I’m still here. I’d do the same thing again in the same place, though I
now
know I could use a local anesthetic without problems,” he finished with a grin.

It wasn’t a pleasant memory, though not entirely due to the remembered sensation of cutting his own flesh with magic. He’d taken out the cruiser, but not before Azure had launched its missiles at the jump freighter. Without Stealey’s arrival, he’d have died despite everything he and the rest of the ship’s crew had done.

Kiera leaned toward him, her expression intent as she seemed to realize that she could ask
him
all of the questions about the Runes she might not be comfortable asking her father or trust her brother’s answers.

“How does the silver work?” she asked. “I mean, it can’t be just silver; that would…well, that wouldn’t work.”

“It’s mixed with a polymer base,” he explained. “That makes it flexible enough to move with your skin and tough enough to survive anything that doesn’t completely
remove
your skin. Um. And some things that will.”

Everyone around the table shivered, including Damien. He didn’t know what
they
were envisaging, but he had memories of some of the burns he’d acquired on Ardennes.

Answering the Princess’s questions was probably the easiest part of his job so far.

#

Several hours later, the quiet family dinner was a fond memory as Damien found himself the guest of honor at one of the Olympus Court’s irregular formal receptions. While the Mage-King’s court had avoided many of the pitfalls of royal courts of the past—the courtiers were all
employed
, if nothing else—and its ceremony was minimal, this still required him to chat and smile at people he barely knew by job description.

“We don’t even need the slave saying ‘you too are mortal’,” he murmured to Gregory—his escort and political minder for the evening. “We can just make anyone who’s too successful attend one of these receptions.”

“Be nice, my lord Hand,” the man second in charge of the entire Protectorate murmured back. “His Majesty doesn’t like these affairs much more than you do, so they’re rare—and they make a huge opportunity for new connections.

“By the time the evening is done, at least three new long-term romantic relationships, one political marriage and two multi-billion business deals will have been set in motion.
And
they get to honor a bona fide hero, who stopped a near–civil war. It’s a win all around.”

“Do I get a cut of the business deals?” Damien muttered, to a chuckle from the Chancellor.

“The couples might name babies after you,” he replied. “But after the whole Antonius affair, there’ll probably be enough babies named Damien on Sherwood and Míngliàng for the whole Protectorate.”

Damien concealed a wince as the next individual came up. Spotting the same golden hand hanging on the newcomer’s chest, he straightened to attention and gave the tall, heavily built man a crisp salute.

“Montgomery,” the stranger rumbled, offering his hand. “Hans Lomond. It’s good to meet you at last.”

It took the younger Hand a moment to get past being almost star-struck. The graying, still powerfully built man he was shaking hands with was the longest-serving Hand alive. It had been
Hans Lomond
who’d hunted down the men who’d murdered and flayed Shelly Monroe, beginning the sad story that had ended with her forearm skin and its inlaid rune in a store in Darkport. Lomond was a living legend.

“My Lord Lomond,” he replied, “it’s good to meet
you
. I am honored.”

“I was here on business, but it never hurts to pass up a chance to remind the rest of the Protectorate that we’re the ones who deal with the dirty messes they create when they mess up policy,” Lomond said grimly. “Good work at Antonius. Bit of a softer touch than I tend to find necessary, but it seems to have worked out this time.”

“A harsher touch would have started a civil war,” Damien said quietly. “It’s always better to find the right nail, even when you
are
a hammer.”

The older Hand chuckled.

“Alaura was always a soft touch,” he pointed out. “It worked for her, most of the time, but, well, there’s a reason she had cybernetics and I don’t.”

Alaura Stealey had taken a grenade to the stomach when a negotiation had gone sideways. Lomond wouldn’t have had that problem, as he generally didn’t
bother
to negotiate. The old Hand was a legend—but so was Stealey, and Damien opened his mouth to defend his mentor.

“And yet her record speaks for itself,” Gregory interrupted, cutting off Damien’s reaction. “I believe Stealey is currently credited with stopping no less than
eight
rebellions with no further loss of life.”

“She was good,” Lomond admitted. “Most of us don’t have tongues quite so silver, and it’s naïve to think we aren’t sent on missions that match our talents!”

“Indeed,” Gregory allowed. “His Majesty’s Hands include both hammers and…more complex tools.”

Lomond chuckled again.

“And we know which one I am and which Stealey was,” he allowed. “I’ll leave you to the rest of the crowd,” he told Damien with a jerk of his head at the line behind him, “but if you need to run your current problem past older, if not necessarily
wiser
, heads, look me up. I’m on planet for at least another week or two.”

“Thank you, my lord,” Damien said, inclining his head. As Lomond walked away, heading for the snack table, the younger Hand glanced over at the Chancellor. “And thank
you
, my lord,” he murmured as the next guest approached. “I might have said something rash without your intervention.”

“Lomond wouldn’t have taken it as badly as you might fear, but we must show unity in public,” Gregory murmured back. “Appearances are power, after all.”

#

This wasn’t the first formal reception Damien had attended at Olympus Mons, though it was the first that had been for
him
, and he’d known roughly what to expect. He was still flagging by the time the line of several hundred officials, officers, and bureaucrats had made its way past.

At the very end of the reception line was a small black woman, only a few centimeters taller than Damien himself, wearing a tight-fitting dress with the golden hand of her office dangling, somewhat distractingly, into her cleavage.

He took her hand and bowed over it.

“My lady, I didn’t realize we had quite so many Hands on Mars,” he admitted. He searched his memories, trying to establish
which
Hand this was. She wasn’t significantly older than he and likely wasn’t Martian-born—her ethnicity wasn’t
nearly
mixed enough for her to be one of the products of even the less-vicious programs the Eugenicists had implemented on the general population—which meant she had to be…

“Charlotte, my lord Montgomery,” she introduced herself. “Charlotte Ndosi.”

That made her the
second
most recent Hand and the woman who’d apprenticed with Alaura Stealey while he’d been studying on Mars.

“A pleasure to meet you,” he murmured.

“Likewise. Alaura spoke of your…adventures, on occasion,” Ndosi told him with a smile. “And to answer your question: three Hands on Mars is a little unusual, but there’s usually two of us floating around. We…” She shrugged. “We burn out, frankly. And His Majesty appears
damned
good at picking it up and ordering us home for a while.”

“What
I
burnt out on is apparently on everyone’s lips,” Damien replied. “But you seem to have been…quieter in your affairs than I.”

She smiled and chuckled softly.

“Most of us, with a few exceptions”—she nodded toward where Lomond was holding court with a pair of Navy officers—“
try
to avoid our situations exploding into outright shooting. Negotiate, compromise, find the middle ground.” She shrugged. “Of course, there are
always
assholes, but when an interstellar corp tries to strong-arm a planetary government and gets cut off at the knees by a Hand, no one wants it to make news.

“Too much compromise gets a little toxic, though, and you’ve got to sit back and grab some fresh air, or your compromises start getting
too
pragmatic,” she observed. “I’ve been here a month, and I’m here until His Majesty sends me out again, which he has thankfully started making noises toward.”