“Is that you, Othman?” cried the old woman in the glass. “See what cowards these men are! They are bold enough to bow and scrape to foreigners, but they would rather flee than look poor old Mak Genggang in the eye. You may tell your master from me that he has ground his face in the earth for nothing, Othman. All the broadsides in the world will not affright the witches of Janda Baik!”
•••
THISis a pretty pickle!” exclaimed Edgeworth.
Zacharias picked up the shewstone. The woman’s face had vanished, and the glass was cloudy again, showing only the fleeting images produced by atmospheric magic. But traces of Mak Genggang’s spell still lingered, stinging his fingers.
It had been potent magic that had allowed the witch to enter the shewstone though she had not been summoned, all the more as she was working her spells in Janda Baik. It was possible in theory to cast any enchantment from afar, but it required considerable skill—more than Zacharias would have expected from the type of village witch Sultan Ahmad had described to them. But it was clear neither the sultan nor Edgeworth had told him the whole story.
“What can have possessed you to spring that hag upon the sultan?” Edgeworth continued. “With a little effort we might have made a valuable friend for England, but now you have sent him off in high dudgeon, and the work to cultivate him is all to do again!”
Vexed as Zacharias was, he was almost tempted to laugh. He had not expected an apology, but still it seemed extraordinary that Edgeworth should be reproachinghimfor springing unwelcome surprises upon his guests.
“I did not summon the witch,” said Zacharias. “She inserted herself into the proceedings.”
“Oh, indeed!” said Edgeworth. “I was always told that the Sorcerer Royal’s quarters and possessions were hedged about with wards, but I am a mere layperson and cannot claim to know anything about the matter.”
“The shewstone is warded,” said Zacharias, holding it up to the light. “But the dimensions within it belong to anyone who can master the spaces between the worlds. A shewstone must be open to any influence that is capable of entering it, or it could not perform its ordinary functions. It says much of this witch that she was capable of penetrating it, however. Sultan Ahmad has good reason to be anxious.”
“Nor is he the only one,” said Edgeworth. He seemed to have a great deal more to say, but he cut himself off and exhaled, striving to govern his irritation. After a moment he said, with a tolerable appearance of complaisance:
“Come, Wythe, cannot we arrive at a suitable agreement? TheGovernment longs to consolidate our power in the Indian Ocean, for if we do not, like as not Boney will pip us to the post. We cannot afford to offer Janda Baik either men or ships, but if there were some means of placing the sultan in our debt—some knockdown spell, say, which would put paid to these harridans—the Government would be very much obliged, and I am sure it would show its gratitude in a fitting fashion.”
Zacharias said he should be sorry to disoblige the Government, but he was sure it would not depend upon him for any knockdown spell. “It would, you know, be rather like making war against these witches. The Government will recognise how impossible it is for thaumaturgy to involve itself in anything of that sort. The Government will not have forgotten our treaty with the Frenchsorcieres.”
It was Sir Stephen who had negotiated the entente between France’ssorcieresand English thaumaturgy at the beginning of the war. Both sides appreciated the profound devastation that would be wreaked by a magical war, and neither wished to provoke it. Fairy commonly scorned to take notice of mortal skirmishes, but a fairy never lived who could resist adding its hexes to a magical scrimmage, andthatwas a result no one could desire.
Thaumaturgy benefited from the treaty, for it enabled English magicians to avoid testing their declining powers against the French, who had given no sign of suffering from any lack of magic. But it also suited the Frenchsorcieres: they were as froward and jealous of their independence as any illusion of magicians, and they had no desire to be ordered about by their government as though they were no better than the military. They had agreed with the Society that no magician would advance the political aims of either nation by magic, so long as the war continued.
“Any use of military magics to assist the sultan risks breaching our agreement, and provoking France’ssorcieres,” continued Zacharias. “Ineed not tell you, sir, that we are already sufficiently embattled, not to court the addition of magic to Bonaparte’s arsenal.”
He and Edgeworth had both been pretending that neither of them was as annoyed with the other as they really were—Zacharias with rather more success, for his life had been such as to cultivate his ability to feign complaisance even when he was angriest. For all the privileges Sir Stephen’s patronage had lent him, Zacharias could not often afford the liberty of honest emotion.
Neither his colour nor his birth was such as to render such habits of self-control necessary for Edgeworth, however, and his composure began to fray at the edges.
“And I suppose we have no magic to frighten Boney with!” he snapped. “We are a laughingstock—a nation of hundreds of enchanters, and nothing to enchant with!”
Zacharias’s face went stiff. This was what he had feared all along, that the Society’s weakness should be revealed to the Government. In a moment he had recovered his equanimity, but not quickly enough. Edgeworth had seen his look of alarm, and said:
“Oh yes, I know of our want of resource, and what is worse, I am not the only man in Government who suspects it. I need not tell you what that is likely to mean for the Society. You know the Government has never liked magicians above half: they are expensive creatures to keep, and they hardly pay for the keeping. Your arrogance may have served in the old days, when thaumaturgy had the power to justify its independence. Now, however—!”
He paused and took a turn around the room, his forehead creased with worry.
“I ought not to tell you—it is as much as my position is worth—but I am a friend to magic, little though magic may believe it,” said Edgeworth. He seemed to arrive at a decision, and continued, with more assurance:
“To own the truth, I brought the sultan to you in hope that you might put it in my power to do the Society a favour. The Government has grown doubtful of the utility of continuing to support the Society—the Society benefits, as you know, from various emoluments, and has not paid a penny in rent in hundreds of years. You cannot conceive what anxious attention the Government gives every farthing in these difficult times, and the Treasury has been pushing for a removal of the Society’s privileges for an age.
“Now, I do not know how the laity got wind of the Society’s difficulties—Inever breathed a word of them—but there are those within the Government who have a notion that it may no longer be such a risk to offend Britain’s magicians. It is proposed that we require a Fellow of the Society to demonstrate the measurement of atmospheric magic levels at the Spring Ball, when everyone who is anyone will be in attendance, and the results could not be concealed. If what the Government suspects is proved—if English magic is shown to be no more than a bogey to frighten children with—why, then, it will feel at liberty to do what it can to make savings.
“And you may trust that that will be done,” concluded Edgeworth. “So long as thaumaturgy clings to its famous independence, and refuses to lift a finger for King and country. I ought not to have told you even so much, but I wished you to understand why it is vital that the Society oblige the Government for once, even if it never did before.”
He looked at Zacharias with unfeigned earnestness—but it was, thought Zacharias, no great surprise that Edgeworth should be earnest, since in his view the Society’s good was bound up with his own advantage.
Zacharias could not agree. It was the Sorcerer Royal’s duty above all to serve his country, and that overrode any other obligation, including any he owed to the Society. Even if it might help the Society’s position for Zacharias to attack Janda Baik’s witches on theGovernment’s behalf, it could not be thought of, when weighed against the risk of provoking the French.
If Zacharias agreed to one harebrained scheme proposed by the Government, founded on what was very like blackmail, it would be only the first of many. And his compliance would not address the root of English thaumaturgy’s difficulties: its want of magic.
It was clear what he must do. His dismay fell away. He said:
