A horrible possibility made Peter’s heart lurch. “Yes?” he whispered.
“That particular blast radius was 4.9 miles.”
He stared at Martinelli, waiting for details—dreading them. Could that be the explosion set off by Miss Draden with his own life force?
“Seemed like a routine test. Same time in the morning as always, same number of chimps—we were just trying out a variant rune pattern.Boom.Then—an instant later—it ka-boomedagain like it had gotten a second wind.”
Exactly as it would have if, by some terrible chance, Beatrix had managed to put his payload stone outside the blast radius for the Pentagram’s stone but close enough that they assumed it was theirs all along.
In fact: She’d known where they usually dropped the stone—she’d been there dreamside. Little wonder if she ended up nearby when she went in real life.
“So … the variant runes worked?” he said, trying for casual.
“Nope. Whitaker insisted on another test within the hour, but that was back to the usual radius.” Martinelli shook his head. “I have no earthly idea what happened.”
“When was this? Do you remember?”
“Oh, sure. January 26.”
Peter suppressed a bitter laugh. Of course. Ofcourse.Goddamnit!
Four-point-nine miles of destruction stretching out every direction from the epicenter. Too horrific to contemplate. And now Whitaker and Draden, knowing it was possible, wouldn’t accept anything less.
“It just so happened that I’d given my two-week notice when I got in that morning, right before the test,” Martinelli said. “I was getting ready to go home at the end of the day and they wouldn’t let me leave. Thankseverso much, fellows,” he added, voice raised, glaring at the nearest camera.
Peter stared down at his empty plate. His bad decisions had set all this in motion. It was such a relief that he hadn’t gotten Martinelli killed, but what actually had occurred was horrible enough.
Somehow, he had to free Martinelli from this prison. Both of them, preferably, but at least Martinelli.
“Anyway,” his friend said, shrugging, “I haven’t managed anything above a quarter mile since then. In fact, lately I can’t even do that. Down to three hundred fifty-ish yards instead of four-forty. I figured the foundational spellwork was fading, but reapplication didn’t help. And I haven’t the foggiest idea why,” he said, again raising his voice and looking at a camera, “despite stupid accusations that I’m ‘doing it on purpose.’ Show some sense! Don’t you think I want to finish and get out?”
Peter sipped his coffee, now lukewarm. He knew why the blast radius shrunk. He’d carefully layered spells on the Pentagram’s transmitter so its destructive power would hold for a while but eventually weaken, and he’d falsified the blueprints so anyone re-upping the spellwork would get the same results.
He was surprised that Draden’s people were doing the tests with chimpanzees instead of humans—they would definitely get more than three hundred yards, otherwise, and they clearly had no problem killing. But he supposed they understood that a typic would just proportionally increase the underlying explosion they could get from chimps. Why go through the hassle of snatching prisoners and disposing of bodies?
His stomach gave a nasty flop as he considered that at some point, they probably tried detonating the weapon with a pair of typics, a trio, perhaps even a larger group. But there was a cap on every fuel source after which more of it made no difference. Apparently, the limit on humans was one.
“Anyway,” Martinelli said, “any bright ideas about what to do?”
“I’d better take a look,” he said heavily. “Where is it?”
Martinelli snapped his fingers toward the camera. “Ho, there! Overseers! Might we possibly have the transmitter so we can do the work you kidnapped us for?”
Peter swallowed the snort this produced. Only Martinelli could make him want to laugh at a time like this.
The door opened. A different wizard this time, wearing a red coat and levitating the transmitter. He set it carefully on the floor. The clickof the door shutting as the man left was rapidly followed by the sound of heavy locks sliding into place and the murmur of spells.
Peter stared at the device he’d thought he’d never see again. He now knew exactly how to make it produce the blast Draden demanded—how to keep the vice president’s men from carrying out their threat against Beatrix. And he no longer could avoid the question his mind had been skittering around since he first realized what they wanted him for: Who would authorize murder, kidnapping and forced labor for a huge explosion they had no intention of setting off?
Draden meant to use this weapon. That much was clear. He wanted destruction in the blink of an eye that the world had never seen before. But why? To demonstrate strength in an unpopulated area—or to kill an unspeakable number of people?
Peter had no idea. But the longer he failed to accomplish what Draden wanted, the higher the likelihood that Beatrixwould pay the price. Maybe an arrest on false charges. Maybe something even worse.
He crouched beside the transmitter, skin crawling, mind made up. He would delay as long as he could. Then he would rework the blueprints to give the magiocracy their quarter-mile back.
He didn’t want to think about what he might be willing to do after that.
In the end,the only halfway plausible strategy they came up with was Ella catching her father at breakfast and trying to glean some clue to Peter’s whereabouts.
