A door slammed. Martinelli came running. “Hey! What do you think you’re doing?”
“None of your business,” Morse said repressively.
“Yes, it is! This idiot can’t afford to take another Vow without risking immediate brain damage. He took ten in school—ten!”
Peter, heart swooping, tried not to look as if he was filled with wild hope. “Surely—surely justonemore isn’t so?—”
“Which of us wrote his dissertation on Vows, you or me?”
Peter managed a frown. “You.”
“Which of us saw men sent todementiawards because they thought nothing of taking multiple Vows?”
“You.”
“Exactly!” Martinelli shoved him out of the demarcation circle. “Don’t even think about it.”
“Hewilltake a Vow,” Morse said.
Martinelli fixed him with a look that Peter doubted he would use if he knew half of what Morse had done. “Oh? He will, will he?” Martinelli stepped between them. “You want to tell your boss that we can’t finish the job because the best weapons developer the Pentagram ever had is now unable to put on his clothes or write his own name?”
Martinelli was holding one hand open behind his back. Peter pressed two of his leaves into it, then said with feigned irritation: “All right. Allright. Can I cast a different spell, Martinelli? May I please have your permission for that?”
“Sure, boss. Knock yourself out.”
“Listen,” Peter said to Morse, “I’ll prove I can still cast. And then …” He tried to think of what he could say to keep Beatrix out of jail on a false attempted murder charge. “I’ll live up to the promises I made in the contract I signed, butonlyif the vice president lives up to his. Do we have a deal?”
Morse considered him through those dark glasses. Seconds ticked by, hideously. Then: “Levitate your cot.”
“Right.” He had to force himself not to look at Martinelli. “Sure.” He took his time assuming the position, concealing the leaf in his fist—a less common spellcasting grip but one that suited his purposes. Sucking in a breath, he bellowed,“Ahebban!”
The cot leapt up as if jerked on a string, hitting a respectable seven-or-so feet. He turned toward Morse, stuffing his hands in his pockets, heart making a racket in his ears. “See?”
Morse crossed his arms but did not argue the point.
Knowing he was pushing his luck, Peter said, “I’d like the contract the vice president signed, please. He’s got mine—I want his.”
“No.” Morse lowered the cot to the ground and fixed Peter with that blank, unsettling stare. “Keep your promise. Or else.” And he strode out.
Peter sank into one of the chairs set up beside a table.Or else.How was he supposed to produce a blast as big as they wanted?
But Morse wasn’t rushing off to kill Beatrix. That alone was a miracle.
“Eat,” Martinelli said, spooning scrambled eggs onto a plate, and under the cover of that clatter he whispered, “Sorry, I was in the bathroom.”
Peter had the sudden urge to laugh—he couldn’t believe Martinelli’s crazy gambit hadworked. He clasped his friend’s arm, the only way he could communicate what he owed him while the cameras looked on.
“So,” he said after he’d wolfed down two helpings and was dishing himself thirds, “I hear we’re expected to produce a five-mile blast radius.”
“Those are the marching orders, yes.”
“Our record, if I recall, was a quarter-mile,” he said, not mentioning, of course, the test he wasn’t supposed to know about that the magiocracy ran behind his back with a typic as fuel.
Martinelli downed the dregs of his coffee. “Your recollection is the same as mine.”
“Did you have more luck after I left?”
“Well …” Martinelli caught his eye, face studiously neutral. “The answer’s no, with one exception.”
