Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 112089 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 560(@200wpm)___ 448(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112089 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 560(@200wpm)___ 448(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Sebastian put up his hand. “Yes. Exactly. Those things all lend weight to your perceived power. I made a show of being interested in your power, but then I disappeared. I didn’t openly ally with you. That’ll hopefully send the right message to the mages who aren’t interested in my type of politics. Those mages are the ones you need to ally with.”
“Which is all well and good, but you hinted that you were Graves in that…session with the enemy mage,” I reminded him.
“Hinted, yes.” Nessa shrugged. “I’m the only one he recognized. Maybe they’ll think you stole me from Graves. If anything, it’ll make you notorious.”
“And that’s a good thing?” Austin asked guardedly.
“It is a thing, at any rate,” Ulric muttered.
“Jessie is violent in a way mages don’t understand,” Sebastian said. “That’s a very good thing. Then there’s the way she has shifters as backup instead of mercenaries. Shifters terrify mages. All in all, she’s a mage’s worst nightmare—and we need all of them to know it. They’ll fear her, but some of them will also flock to her power. That’s what we want.”
“After her reputation is forged,” Nessa said, once again tag-teaming with Sebastian, “we’ll let her out into the wild. We’ll have her meet various mages and see how those meetings go. I have every expectation that they won’t go as planned, but that’s fine. We’ll figure it out.”
“From there,” Sebastian said, “we’ll start assessing those mages as allies. That’s about when I’ll finally reveal myself as her partner. Not before. As we said, we don’t want to taint her reputation with mine. She’s violent and unpredictable, but she has morals. Elliot Graves doesn’t. The idea is for her to win people over that I could otherwise never get to. Then, with them and the shifters and hopefully gargoyles, we cut down the Guild and restructure it into a fair and just organization that helps mages instead of extorting them.”
I ran my hand down my face. “Okay…let’s hit the short-term plans.”
“Sure.” Nessa gave a thumbs-up. “Switching gears.”
“First question…” Sebastian spread his hands. “Why on earth would we turn a dangerous mage loose?”
He didn’t look at Austin, but it was clear he was speaking to him.
“Well, here’s the situation,” Sebastian continued. “No matter what we do here, Momar will see it as an act of war. He’ll send more people to collect Jessie for questioning and then end or use her. Pretty much the same as before, except with a lot more hostility. Based on the mage’s answers, it seems the shifters will just be collateral damage.”
“For the moment,” Nessa said.
“We’re only talking about the moment, Captain, keep up.” His lips quirked, almost a smile. “The original plan was that the mage would make it back to his bosses in a state that would make them extremely nervous. They’d wonder what kind of power this new mage has. She didn’t outright kill him, but she messed him up in a way they haven’t seen before.”
“It won’t be enough to get Momar directly involved,” Niamh said from the corner. “They won’t want to admit they failed in collecting her, and also that she had such an effect on their grunt. They’ll send a team to collect her next time.”
Sebastian and Nessa turned their heads in unison to look at Niamh in the back.
“Well…yes,” Sebastian finally said. “Correct.”
“And why do we want them to send a team?” Austin asked.
“Yeah, if he never makes it back, they won’t know to send anyone else,” Ulric said.
“They’re not stupid,” Niamh replied. “These types of things have a shelf life. It’ll take time for them to be sure he isn’t returning, yes, but they’ll figure it out eventually. If he doesn’t make it back, they’ll consider him dead. Next time, they’ll send in a team to try to kidnap her. If they succeed, they’ll just add a few questions to those they were already planning to ask. Like did you kill our man? The weird mage and his gal pal are just trying to pinpoint the timing so we can be ready for them.”
“Really?” Nessa put up her hands and turned to face Niamh. “His gal pal? I don’t get my own nickname?”
“I wouldn’t offer her that challenge, if I were you,” Jasper said out of the side of his mouth.
“Right,” Sebastian said. “They would come anyway. These are the low-level bosses in Momar’s organization we’re dealing with. They are like the supervisors in a huge corporation where Momar is the CEO. Unlike the higher-level management, who take time to prepare, these tend to react hard and fast if something spooks them. I have no idea why. Regardless, all that taken into account, we could expect them in a couple of weeks or so. Between two and four, really.”
“And if we send him back, we can expect they will come almost immediately,” I said. “They’ll be compelled, thanks to Ivy House.”