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"Private security is in the middle of a metaphysical arms race right now," Maripier said, her best professional smile firmly in place. "Warding spells have become more complex and sophisticated, but criminals have become more creative, better at finding and exploiting undiscovered weaknesses every day. Technology integrates ever more seamlessly with magic, opening up new opportunities for both defense and attack."
PK could deliver that whole speech in his sleep, but sometimes the clients just liked to hear it in French. So he let her charm them while he took a discreet look around the gallery.
The wards were quiet, just visible to his inner sight. They were an off-the-shelf variant of Pascal's Triangle, clean, mathematically precise lines of power laid over every wall. PK recognized the work.
There were no wards on the pedestals scattered about the gallery, only mundane lighting – no spells that would interfere with the artwork. PK walked closer to one of the pieces, pale marble carved in abstract curves. If Brendan, who was a null, looked at it, he'd just see an unremarkable lump of stone. But anyone with the least sensitivity to magic would be affected by the spell bound to it, would see the suggestion of who or what they longed for most in the smooth, polished lines of marble. PK scowled at the glimpse of a familiar smile and turned away.
It was a subtle spell, delicate as perfume, but PK still thought it was a cheap trick.
"You've clearly invested a lot in your security," Maripier was saying. "But even the best company can only protect you against the attacks that they expect. You need independent testing to find their blind spots, the loopholes they missed, so you can plug those holes before someone else exploits them."
The gallery owners frowned at each other. "But how can you guarantee that you will find these -- holes? How can you guarantee that you are better than the company that we hired in the first place?"
"Certainly, du Montaigne is a well-regarded company," Maripier said. PK could see the owners' tiny flinch of recognition at the name. Maripier acknowledged it with the barest hint of a smirk. "But they tend to cut corners with less high profile clients."
"And," PK said, "I only hire the best thieves."
*
They left the gallery with a signed contract.
PK glanced over at Maripier, eyebrows raised.
"We'll be in and out in ten minutes," she said.
"If your boyfriend doesn't stop for bagels," PK agreed, and she laughed.
In the early night of winter, Old Montreal glowed with magic: the fairy lights in the bare tree branches, the wards over all the storefronts, the little charms of protection against sabotage and weather damage on sewer grates and traffic lights. Under it all, like music in a distant room, was the feeling of the City itself, power so vast and deep it was barely a whisper at the edge of human consciousness.
It made the glossy black car that pulled up in front of them at the corner feel like a dead spot, so heavily shielded it was like it almost didn't exist.
PK didn't need to see the star-crowned fleur-de-lis on the license plate to know it was a Council car.
The rear window rolled down and an old white man smiled at him. His face was long and bony, thinning grey hair swept back from his temples, and his smile made PK think of sharks. "Mr. Subban, can I offer you a ride?"
A cold thread of unease slid down PK's spine. "No thanks, I'm good," he said.
The man's smile got wider but not friendlier. "I insist."
PK hesitated.
"You can give us a ride to the office," Maripier said and stepped past PK to open the car door. She met PK's eyes for a second, and she looked as unhappy as he felt about the whole situation.
"Shit," PK muttered under his breath.
The car was bigger on the inside. PK and Maripier sat down facing the old man and his -- bodyguard? Personal assistant? BFF for all he knew, a younger guy who returned PK's gaze with a flat, blank stare.
They were both wearing dark suits, but the old guy's suit was sharper, better tailored.
The car door closed, and all of the magic outside was cut off, even the sense of the City. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Maripier try to suppress a shudder at the feeling.
"I didn't catch your name," PK said. He smiled, going for friendly and professional, but it felt strained.
"Corbeau," the old man said.
PK looked at the other guy, who didn't say anything. Okay then.
Corbeau smoothed his hand over his lap, and a plain manila folder appeared. He opened it and scanned the contents. "You have a most interesting business model, Mr. Subban. There are certainly many private security consultants, but I believe very few break into their clients' facilities to demonstrate the weakness of their security measures."
PK's smile felt more genuine at that. "Well, just writing a report isn't as much fun."
"Mmmm." Corbeau turned a page. "None of you are accredited by the Council."
PK bit back his first reply, settled for a neutral, "No."
"It's not illegal for unaccredited people to practice in Montreal," Maripier said.
"Of course not. Merely an observation, my dear," Corbeau said. "In fact, the Council wishes to hire your firm."
PK's eyebrows shot up and he couldn't help sharing a quick, uncertain look with Maripier.
"You're saying the Council of Mages wants us to test their security protocols," PK said carefully. "That seems..."
He trailed off. Fake or like a set-up was probably a little aggressive.
"I'm not sure we're qualified for that," Maripier said, more diplomatically. "Wouldn't one of the accredited firms be a better choice?"
"Well, we certainly don't expect you to succeed," Corbeau said with a dry, papery laugh. "But as you always say, a true outside perspective is invaluable when it comes to this kind of thing."
"Right, sure, but...you guys are a civic institution , don't you have to do some kind of request for proposals or bids or whatever, before you just go handing out contracts?" In the back of a car, PK didn't say.
Corbeau's mouth flattened, a brief flicker of irritation. "I'm sure you understand that the sensitive nature of this work precludes the usual public bidding process."
The whole thing stank of politics, and PK had no interest in getting dragged into whatever internal shitshow the Council had going on. "I'm sorry, but we are completely booked. We are not accepting any new clients at this time."
"The Council could more than reimburse you for the cost of canceling some of those contracts. To say nothing of the future income that our endorsement would bring."
PK shook his head. "That's not how I run my business."
Corbeau made a thoughtful noise. He closed the folder he was holding and tapped his index finger against it. It changed color, from beige to grey, and the Council Police's emblem appeared on the front. Corbeau opened it leisurely.
"Are you still in contact with your former business partner, Mr. Price?" he asked without looking up.
PK went still. "Not really," he said.
"So you are unaware that he has been performing, hm, aboriginal rituals in the city?"
Something cold and sick lodged in the pit of PK's stomach. He could hear Maripier's tiny, shocked intake of breath.
Corbeau looked up from the file. "Which is a violation of any number of laws going back to the Royal Proclamation of 1763. Tribal mysteries must remain on tribal lands."
PK didn't say anything.
"Of course, we don't burn people for that anymore," Corbeau said, with that papery laugh again, ha ha ha. "Although I've heard it said that being stripped of your magic is worse than burning. In any event, it is still something the Councils and federal and tribal governments take quite seriously."
Corbeau paused, presumably to let it all sink in.
"Of course," he said, slowly, consideringly, "it's not the Council's only priority. Any investigation of Mr. Price's activities might be neglected in light of a more pressing concern."
PK was clenching his fist so hard his nails dug into his palm. He forced himself to open his hand, place it palm down on his knee. He took a deep, slow breath. "Something like vulnerabilities in the Council's security protocols."
"Exactly. Why, if they were significant enough, this whole file might just disappear--" He held the grey folder up and snapped his wrist, and it vanished. "--Lost in a bureaucratic mix-up."
PK snorted. "Fine."
The car slowed, pulled over in front of their office.
"So you agree?" Corbeau asked.
"Yes, I'll do it," PK said. He didn't look at Maripier.
"Excellent." Corbeau glanced at his silent colleague and lifted his chin in PK's direction.
The other guy pulled a thick file out of a briefcase and handed it over. PK could feel the buzz of a confidential access spell on the file.
"I think you'll find all the information you need in there," Corbeau said. "Keyed to you, of course. I look forward to a productive professional relationship, Mr. Subban. Ms. Morin."
The car door swung open, and PK was happy to take that cue.
They watched the car drive away. Maripier spat onto the pavement and made a gesture; PK could see the little spark as the curse bounced harmlessly off the car's shields.
The car disappeared around a corner.
Maripier looked at PK. "Even if Carey did what they say, they wouldn't…"
"There's something wrong with the City," PK said.
Maripier's sucked in a sharp breath. "You can feel it too?" she asked.
PK's stomach clenched. He hadn't realized how much he'd been hoping Maripier would tell him he was being ridiculous. PK's connection to the City wasn't as strong as Maripier's, and he'd been telling himself that the thin, sour note in the City's power, that faint sense of wrongness, was just his imagination.
Maripier frowned suddenly. "Whatever it is, it's not Carey's fault."
"I know! But of the Council is looking for someone to blame, Carey is a good choice."
Maripier couldn't argue with that. "Are you going to tell him? That we're doing this?"
PK looked down, shook his head. "He's not-- He never really liked the breaking and entering part of this. He doesn't need to know."
Maripier snorted, but all she said was, "Staff meeting tomorrow?"
*
PK stopped for Timbits on the way in the next morning, because he was a good boss.
He was still the first one there. The rest of his team straggled in in pretty much the order he'd met them.
Maripier strode through the door in a swirl of cold air and perfume and the snap of high heels. Brandon trailed in after her, clutching a cup of coffee and yawning.
Maripier had been a junior reporter for some morning show, but she got fired for hexing the producer who had been sexually harassing the interns. Boils might have been involved, details were sketchy.
PK found out about that later. The first time he saw the two of them was out of the corner of his eye outside of jewelry store. PK had been looking at watches that were way outside his price range, even for a birthday gift. He saw Maripier straighten the lapel of Brandon's suit, and then, so delicate he almost missed it, hook a curse into the wool. Brandon kissed her, his hand light on the small of her back, and walked into the store.
PK followed. He caught up with him at the counter.
"Hey, man!" PK said, and Brandon gave him a puzzled look.
PK pulled power into his fingertips, reached out and touched Brandon's suit where Maripier had. The curse stung his fingers, dissipated before PK could get a feel for its intent.
Brandon stiffened, his face going wary. So he had known the curse was there.
PK gave him his best flirtatious smile. "You want to talk about this--" he tugged at Brandon's lapel "--outside?"
Brandon narrowed his eyes, then smirked back, just as flirty. "Absolutely."
And that was that.
They hired Maripier because a good curse can get through a lot of wards, clinging like a burr to an unsuspecting mark. They were so small and focused that generic wards ignored them, but they could make someone clumsy or sleepy or blind to a specific person, at just the right time.
Brandon had no magic. He wasn't a true null, but he, like a large chunk of the population, he was blind and deaf to the power that Carey and PK and Maripier could manipulate. He was happy to pick a pocket or punch someone if the situation called for it, though, and sometimes someone with no power at all was a useful, plausibly deniable distraction.
Brendan was a true null. He couldn't see illusions, he couldn't be cursed, he walked through wards like they weren't there. He couldn't be healed, either, but it didn't make him less of a mouthy smartass, no many how many split lips he had to live through.
They found Brendan because an insurance company had hired them to consult on a string of robberies where none of the wards had been broken or tampered with. The insurance company thought it was an inside job, because the wards had been done by the same company at three of the four shops. PK and Carey thought differently.
It was easy to figure out where their guy would try next, and they were ready.
Their null turned out to be some dumb kid. His expression got increasingly baffled as he tried to pick the lock Carey had warded, until PK took pity on him.
"Pricey spelled the tumblers," he said.
Brendan yelped and dropped his lockpicks. PK stepped out of his entirely mundane hiding place.
"The tumblers won't turn unless the key has the right counterspell," PK said helpfully. "The spell works on them, not you, so it doesn't matter that you're a null."
Brendan eyed him for a moment. Then he turned and ran. Carey tripped him and sat on him, and they made him a job offer.
(Look, the insurance company hadn't hired them to catch the thief, only figure out how he'd done it, and they'd been dicks anyway. PK and Carey pretended Brendan had been working for them the whole time. They showed the insurance guys how a random anonymous null could have done it, and Carey showed them how to prevent that problem in the future. Brendan looked deeply pained at that part, but didn't complain.)
Carey was the one who found Alex.
Alex had broken open a storm drain to rescue a kitten in front of Carey's apartment. The fact that the concrete above the drain had been warded hadn't slowed him down at all. He had an affinity for stone and metal and concrete, and he still had a lot of the modern Russian system in his magic, with its emphasis on clean lines, simplicity, and raw power. (He had the occasional intricate flourish, too, a hand-me-down of Orthodox folk magic.)
The city mages had been very upset by that, and the city police very suspicious, but Carey charmed them out of it, and brought Alex in like a stray kitten himself.
PK was the only one that Carey told about the kitten; he just told everyone else that Alex had gotten in trouble for the destruction of public property.
PK watched them all settle down around the table in their little conference room, the usual amount of cheerful insults and petty squabbling over the chair without the broken armrest and the last Timbit. It made his chest feel weirdly tight.
"Okay," he said loudly, and they quieted down. "I've got good news and bad news. The good news is that we got the Avignon contract, because Maripier is a charming motherfucker when she wants to be."
There was a small, only half-mocking round of applause. Maripier inclined her head graciously.
PK cleared his throat. "The bad news is, I accepted a contract with the Council."
Brandon didn't react, so PK figured Maripier had already told him. Gally looked confused, Alex looked shocked.
PK smoothed his hand over the file Corbeau had given him. "They want someone to steal a small historical artifact. There's no real value or power in it, it's more -- symbolic, just to prove it can be done, that their security isn't sufficient."
"So we've been hired to make one half of the Council of Mages look like idiots," Brandon said dryly.
PK made a face. "Yeah, basically. Look, you don't have to do it if you don't want to. None of you have to. This isn't the kind of thing we usually get involved in, and if it's too political--"
"Who did they threaten you with?" Brandon asked. Maybe Maripier didn't tell him everything.
"Carey," PK said, his throat suddenly tight.
Brandon snorted. "Figures," he said.
"You don't have to--"
"Yes, we do," Alex said.
"Duh," Brendan said.
PK glanced at Maripier. She raised her eyebrows in a much more graceful expression of duh.
PK's chest squeezed tighter. "Thanks, guys," he said gruffly.
"So what's the plan?" Brandon asked, and PK cleared his throat and opened the file.
*
PK met Carey in college. PK had gone to McGill with the vague intention of transferring to the Ecole de Sorcellerie de Montreal when he learned enough French.
But then he met Carey.
PK was best with defensive magic -- shields and wards. He was good at creating them, but he was even better at breaking them, at worming his way through or under or around.
Carey was the best purely defensive mage PK had ever met. He followed the rituals and patterns that good Canadian kids learned in school, but his shields and wards were beautiful, more creative than the standard Canadian spells, and almost impenetrable.
Almost.
PK will never forget the look on Carey's face when he found the weak spot in Carey's shield and sent a thread of magic through to change the color of the badge on Carey's chest, their very first lab together.
Carey was a junior, but PK had tested out of basic shield-breaking.
In PK's opinion, they were friends from that point onwards. He knew Carey thought of him more as a deeply irritating challenge for the rest of that semester, but he'd like to think that Carey came around eventually.
When Carey graduated, PK dropped out to join Carey's security consulting start-up.
PK always liked the chance to tell other people what they were doing wrong and how they could fix, but he missed the challenge of trying to solve a problem that didn't want to be solved.
He missed the challenge of pitting his skills against Carey's, of trying to break through the best shields and wards Carey could create, not just around himself, but around PK's coffee, his art supplies, the dining hall entrance.
One of their clients listened to everything they had to say, paid them their fee, and then did absolutely nothing to fix the holes they'd identified.
"I bet they'd fix them if we walked in there and cleared out their cash register," PK said, scowling at the clearly inadequate wards.
Carey snorted. Then he looked at PK. PK looked back.
That service went on their website the next day.
(His dad would kill him if ever actually became a thief, and his mom would reanimate his corpse just to tell him how disappointed she was, but PK had always like ward-breaking better than ward-building.)
*
In the end, it went about as well as PK was expecting. For all their diplomatic words about not being qualified, the Council's security was exactly what PK was expecting: traditional and unimaginative, unprepared for anything outside the standard Quebecois rituals.
The wards on the outside of the Pointe-à-Callière were strong, grounded in bedrock to shunt off any attempt to break them with sheer power. The structure of the spell was elaborate and intricate, a Gothic architecture of power too complex to unravel.
Unless you had someone with an affinity for stone-bending, who could convince old, old stone ruins beneath the building to part, to split the ward like a woman lifting the hem of her skirt.
"Good job, Chucky," PK whispered, and the three of them crept into the lowest level of the museum. The museum had been built over the ruins of the original French settlement of Montreal, and traces of its old magic still lingered in the exposed brick.
PK spun a notice-me-not spell around them. The trick with shielding Brendan was not to attach anything to him, because nothing would take. But as long as he stayed with PK and Alex, the attention diverting spell would cover him, too.
It wouldn't work on a security camera, because a camera had no attention to divert. But the Council hadn't bothered with any non-magical security.
The security guards they passed all wore amulets of St. Lucy, for true-seeing, but they required the guards to look directly at an illusion to see through it. PK's spell slipped ahead of them to whisper, Look down the other hall, check the far door, did you hear something at the window? so quiet and faint it felt reasonable, natural to act on their suggestion.
And PK, Alex, and Brendan walked by in silence.
Individual doors were warded, but not the walls, or conveniently, the air ducts. When they got to the right office, PK and Alex boosted Brendan up into the ceiling. Brendan scrambled through the duct into the office while PK muffled the sound of it.
PK could feel the power bound into the door. It would be like trying to grab a lightning bolt for him or Alex, but Brendan--
The door swung open and Brendan grinned at them. "Well?"
The ward moved with the door. They had bound it to the door itself, not the doorframe. Which meant Alex and PK could walk right in.
"Stay here," PK said. "Keep the door shut so no one notices, but be ready to open it in a hurry if we need to haul ass."
Brendan nodded, and PK and Alex moved further into the vault, searching for the piece they needed. Artifacts and relics lined the walls, each on its own square marble pedestal. There was so much ambient magic in the air it was almost blinding.
"Here," Alex said.
PK checked the number and description on the label against the one from Corbeau's file. 16th century cooking pot or cauldron. It was a battered cast iron thing, small and unimpressive. It was wrapped in so many layers of protective spells that PK couldn't actually see them all. Shielding to keep things out, shielding to keep things in, some protective illusion.
There was a tattle-tale spell threaded around it, too, linked to the crystal in the pedestal that was powering the whole mess. If they took it off the pedestal, broke the physical contact with the crystal, it would set off all the wards.
"We need to take the crystal, too," PK said. "Can you grab it?"
"Yes," Alex said, his focus already turning inwards.
PK wrapped his own shield around the pot, to smother any power surge they might accidentally trip.
Alex reached into the marble. The stone gave like soft butter around his hand, until his palm was directly under the crystal, then he lifted his hand out of the pedestal. He lifted the pot with it, the crystal still pressed against it.
He gave PK a delighted smile.
"Don't get cocky," PK said, but he grinned back.
Alex turned the pot over carefully, still pressing the crystal to its surface. PK wrapped the whole thing securely in a silk cloth and put it in the messenger bag slung across his back.
"Okay, let's go," PK said. "You two, out the way we came in, get the van started."
Alex and Brendan turned left, back towards the basement, and PK headed towards the front entrance.
The wards prevented any kind of psychic link to the outside, but they didn't affect radio signals at all.
PK waited at the far edge of the entrance hall, cloaked in the suggestion of a potted plant and hey, did something over there just move?
"We're out," Brendan said in his ear. "And Prusty and Maripier are just getting started."
After another minute, PK could hear them from where he stood, not actually words, just the rhythm and tone of voice. Maripier was screaming in French, furious and shrill, and Brandon was yelling back in English.
The security guards at the front desk heard it, too. They looked at each other, then at the glass doors of the entrance. Maripier and Brandon were visible now, standing in the middle of the sidewalk, having an entirely mundane lovers' spat.
The wards weren't meant to keep people in. It was, in fact, illegal to set wards that trapped people inside a structure -- a fire hazard. But even wrapped in protective silk and PK's shields, carrying this much raw power out through the wards would disturb them enough to alert the guards.
What they needed was another excuse for the wards to light up.
The guards rolled their eyes, and one of them got up to deal with it. He unlocked one of the heavy glass doors and pushed it open.
"Is there a problem?" he yelled.
Maripier glared at him over Brandon's shoulder. "Ouais," she snarled, and then launched into a torrent of French that PK couldn't follow.
The other guard was watching with great interest from his desk, so PK's notice-me-not spell had almost no work to do as he walked around the edge of the entrance hall.
Brandon was interjecting a couple of half-hearted babes and it's not like that into Maripier's rant. She shook her finger at him, not quite a hex gesture, and he backed up a few steps.
PK reached the open door. "I'm ready when you are," he said under his breath.
A heartbeat later, Brandon's phone beeped with an incoming message. Brandon ignored it. Or appeared to.
"Look," Brandon said. "I don't know how many times I can say it -- I didn't know she was your sister."
Maripier let out a scream of rage and flung a curse at him. Brandon and the security guard ducked away and the curse hit the wards in front of the door, just as PK stepped through.
The wards went crazy, energy flaring up and bleeding into the visible spectrum.
"You crazy bitch!" Brandon yelled.
"Ma'am!" the security guard shouted, no longer amused. "I will call the police if you do not calm down and move along."
"Call them!" Maripier yelled back. "I don't care!"
In the chaos of the shouting and the flickering ward lights, PK made his way along the side of the building and down Place d'Youville, quiet as a ghost, to where the van was waiting.
PK hopped into the back, and Brendan drove away at a sedate and unremarkable pace.
*
They all regrouped at PK's house. They looked at the silk-wrapped bundle on the kitchen table, and no one wanted to celebrate. The job still felt wrong, somehow.
Everyone stayed over. It was late by the time they all get back, but really, that was just an excuse not to separate.
PK dreamed about Montreal.
The City did not like strangers. It did not embrace anyone whose magic didn't have a Quebecois accent, didn't flow through the Quebecois ritual. But it never felt the way it did in his dream, malevolent and hateful.
The streets were empty, but something watched him in his dream, and wanted his suffering, his death.
PK woke up when the fire alarm went off.
He stumbled downstairs in the grey light of dawn, following the smell of smoke.
The pot had burned through PK's shield and almost all of the Council's spells. It was pouring out so much raw power that it was superheating the air around it. It had reduced the silk to ash, and was making the kitchen table smolder under it.
Alex and Brendan were there first. Alex had turned his hands to stone and he scooped the pot off the table. Brendan poured a glass of water over the burnt spot. The crystal that had fed the Council's spells was dead, all of its stored power used up.
Alex's eyes widened as he held it. PK was already moving. He pressed his palms together, gathering power with a chant that matched the rhythm of his steps, his heartbeat. He pulled his hands apart and the power spread between them, thick and soft. He wrapped it around the pot in Alex's hands, a shield against heat and power. He lifted it out of Alex's grip, and Alex winced, shook his hands out.
The Council's illusion spell finally dissolved under the onslaught of power and the pot wavered and turned into a rock a little bigger than a grapefruit.
"Shit," PK said. He turned it over slowly. It looked like a geode, rough grey surface with a crack that revealed a red crystal heart. "Oh, shit."
His shield was already unraveling and he fed more power into it to stabilize it.
"Is that..." Alex started.
"Yes," Maripier said. She sounded appalled.
PK sat down at the table, still holding the stone.
His attention was already narrowing down to the shield and the flood of power the stone was putting out. There was no way he could hold it back indefinitely and he really did not want to find out what would happen if he didn't.
They were going to need someone way better at shielding. "Call Carey."
*
PK lost track of time, trying to hold back that energy.
Then suddenly, warm hands cupped his, and he felt the brush of a familiar magic against his.
He looked up. Carey was sitting across the table from him, frowning with concentration.
Carey wove his magic through PK's shield, strengthening it, and PK felt the strain of holding it ease up. Carey pulled back and built over it, layer upon layer of magic. He chanted under his breath as he worked, almost inaudible.
PK always built his shields on the idea of rock, impenetrable, immovable. Carey built on rock, but he layered it with woven willow, with the heat capacity of the ocean.
"Okay, let go," Carey said.
PK stopped holding his shield. The stone's power blasted through it, hit Carey's, and was absorbed. Not blocked, but drawn into Carey's working.
"You're holding it with its own power," PK said. He was too tired to be amazed, and besides it was Carey -- he always expected miracles from Carey.
For a moment, they just sat like that, PK's hands wrapped around the stone, Carey's hands wrapped around PK's.
Then Carey said, "I can't believe you stole the City's fucking heartstone."
"I didn't know it was a heartstone when I stole it!" PK said. Carey's face darkened and PK added, "It's just the one! There's like two more, right?"
"One is still too many! And what do you mean, you didn't know?"
"The Council guy who hired us didn't tell us it what it was."
"The Council," Carey said flatly. "Why would you take their money?"
"It doesn't matter, could we just--"
"He did it because the Council said you'd violated the Proclamation," Maripier said.
PK jumped, and realized everyone else had crammed into the kitchen. Carey dropped PK's hands. PK was irrationally disappointed.
Carey stared at him. "And you believed them? You believed I'd do that?"
"You have before!"
"One time!" Carey snarled back, and it was there between them, the knowledge of what Carey had done, had risked to save PK's life, when PK got careless.
"Can't we just give it back to the Council?" Brendan asked.
Carey looked at Brendan, and PK took a deep breath.
"No," Maripier said. "Stealing a meaningless relic for show is one thing, stealing a heartstone is, is--"
"Practically treason," Carey said.
Everyone was silent. Then PK said, "They know it was us. Even if they can't track it, they know where I live."
"Why are you all so afraid of the Council?" Brendan asked. "It's not like they can just arrest you, or make you disappear, right?"
PK glanced at Carey, at Maripier. Even Alex bit his lip and looked at his feet.
"What do you think the Council does?" PK asked.
"They make sure people don't use black magic in their city," Brendan said.
"Which is what?" Maripier said.
"Um, magic based on unwilling or non-consensual sacrifice," Brendan said, like someone reciting from an almost-forgotten textbook. "Death magic, blood magic, that kind of stuff."
"And why is that bad?" PK said.
"Because....murder?" Brendan said.
"Because evil magic like that corrupts the soul of the City. And when the City is corrupted, it corrupts the people who live in it, makes them more vulnerable to violence and hate and anger," Carey said.
"Which makes the Council sound like the good guys here," Brendan said.
"A hundred years ago, it would have been foreign magic, too," PK said.
"What?"
"It's why none of us will ever be accredited by the Council. Because Alex learned magic in Russia, and I learned it from my parents who are immigrants, because Carey is First Nations and Maripier doesn't do the right kind of magic for a woman, because curses are too close to witchcraft."
"But why?" Brendan said.
Carey shrugged. "Because foreign magic does change the soul of a City, the way immigrants always change a place. They don't corrupt it, but some people don't see the difference."
"So fuck the Council," PK said. "I'm not picking the side of anyone who thinks I might be evil, just because my magic doesn't feel the same as theirs."
"Oh," Brendan said.
"Also, they probably think you should be burned at the stake for being a null," Alex added.
"Then yeah, definitely fuck them."
PK laughed. On sill of the kitchen window, a tiny ceramic rooster suddenly flapped its wings and crowed, and PK stopped laughing.
"They're here," he said.
"How close?" Carey asked.
"End of the block."
Everyone moved. PK grabbed his bag and shoved the heartstone in it.
"I'm parked out back," Carey said.
Alex and Brendan had gone out the front already. PK swallowed and nodded, and followed Carey.
He looked back over his shoulder when Carey started the car, and saw Alex kneeling by the side of the road, saw a wall of asphalt rear up behind them, glittering with Maripier's curses, and then Carey was driving them away.
PK closed his eyes and concentrated on the image of them driving, building it up in his mind, every little detail, from the feel of road under them to the smell of Carey's car. And then he breathed power into the image and let it go on straight when they turned.
"You know what it means that the heartstone is unstable," Carey said.
PK opened his eyes. "It's already corrupted."
"The Council was probably trying to purify it. That's why it was in the vault in the Museum instead of buried under the settlement."
"But why--" PK stopped. He heard Corbeau's dry laugh in his mind again. "Because then you can blame the corruption on the people who stole it. Who have ideally died a fiery death from the unstable heartstone and can't explain that they're just contractors."
Carey nodded. "We can't let them get their hands on it."
"Right," PK said.
"So we'll have to purify it ourselves."
"Um, what?"
Carey gave him a look. Carey seemed exceptionally calm and together about all this.
"How are we going to do that if the entire Council couldn't?" PK asked. He would like to think he sounded calm and collected, too.
Carey tapped his fingers on the steering wheel and was quiet. Which meant he didn't have a plan. Great.
Then Carey turned south. "The river," he said.
"We're going to throw the stone in the St. Lawrence?"
"Yeah, that would work," Carey said.
"Um, isn't that going to corrupt the River?" PK asked.
"The City has a soul because it's made out of people. Human lives and human magic made it, millions of lives over hundreds of years. But that means that human magic can corrupt it. The River can't be corrupted the same way, because it's -- it's the River no matter what. It doesn't matter if a million people live here, or none."
"Oh," PK said.
"Plus, I'm going to ask real nice."
They parked the car, and went down to the River. Carey found a flat grassy spot that looked out over the St. Lawrence.
PK looked back over his shoulder. He could feel power gathering back there like storm clouds. "Hey, you've got this purification thing, right?"
"Yeah," Carey said vaguely, already focused on the ritual.
"Okay, good," PK said.
PK took a deep breath, reached down inside himself and scraped together enough energy to put up a shield between them and Council mages coming towards them.
Corbeau was in front. He stopped when PK's shield flickered to life. Even at a distance he looked angry.
He said something, pointed at PK, and then drew his hand down like he was pulling something out of the air.
Lightning cracked down out of the clear blue sky and slammed into PK's shield.
PK gasped. The shield wavered but held.
Corbeau gestured again and the force of the next lightning bolt drove PK to his knees.
The mage standing next to Corbeau had something in his hand, something tiny and black that PK couldn't make out. He blew across it and it leaped from his hand, flowing into the shape of a huge wolf.
The wolf charged towards them.
PK couldn't hold the shield against a lightning bolt and a physical manifestation.
"C'mon, Carey," he breathed, but he didn't dare turn around, or interrupt Carey's focus.
The wolf leapt and Corbeau gestured, and PK dropped the shield. He put a tiny thread of power into the air to create a different path of least resistance for the lightning.
It hit the wolf dead on, destroying it.
"Ha!" PK said.
He was pretty sure he didn't have enough power left to raise the shield again, but man, that was worth it.
Corbeau reached up again, and from behind PK there was a sound of a splash.
Then the river exploded in a huge shower of steam and mud.
It knocked PK flat, driving all the air out of his lungs. And then he could feel the River, washing over him, not physically, but in his mind.
It didn't feel like the City. The City was vast, but somehow familiar, understandable. The River was incomprehensible.
Hello, little brother, he heard.
Hello, he said, and then he drowned.
*
He woke up eventually.
Carey was laying next to him, soaking wet, one arm flung over his face.
"Did it work?" PK asked, sitting up.
"Feels like it," Carey said.
PK thought about it. The City did feel better, less raw, somehow. "Good."
Power shivered on the edge of his awareness, and he looked back over his shoulder. Corbeau and his friends were still standing. PK reached for the last dregs of power, but nothing came.
It didn't seem fair.
Corbeau raised his hand again. PK braced himself, but instead of lighting, gleaming silver cords appeared in his fist instead. They wrapped around his wrist, then his chest, then his legs. The same thing was happening to the other mages with him.
Corbeau shouted, struggling against the cords.
Another group of mages came down the grassy bank, led by an elderly white woman in a black pantsuit, her hair like a pouf of dandelion fluff around her head. She stopped and examined Corbeau.
"Elise--" he started, his voice deep and poisonous.
Elise made a dismissive gesture and the silver ribbon slid over his mouth, silencing him. The cords pulled tight, and the mages wrapped in them went rigid, trapped and immobile.
She said something to the other mages, and they bustled into action, levitating their prisoners back towards the road.
Elise turned and surveyed the rest of the scene. Her gaze settled on PK and Carey, and she started picking her way towards them through the spatters of mud.
"Well," she said.
PK didn't get up.
"I'm pleased to see my assessment of your talents was not wrong."
PK exchanged a blank look with Carey.
"I recommended you to Corbeau, of course, but with assumption that you would succeed. He presumed the opposite. Drawing on the power of the River like that, of any sacred place, is not, hm, traditional," she said. "Not our tradition, in any event."
Carey shrugged, wary, cautious.
"Nonetheless, no other source of power could have purified the City, so I am grateful for your nontraditional methods."
One of her assistants hurried up. "Madame Couture--"
"Yes, yes, I am coming." She held out her hand and a plain ivory business card appeared between her fingers. "The Council needs more innovative methods, if we want to truly protect the City. We must change. We cannot be as hidebound and uncreative as we have been in the past."
"Um," PK said.
Carey elbowed him, and he managed to reach out and take the card. "Is this a job offer?" he blurted out.
In his defense, it had been a long day.
Elise Couture smiled at him. "Yes," she said, and walked away.
"Huh," Carey said.
PK turned the card over in his hands, just plain, smooth cardstock, with her contact information on it. He shook his head and tucked it carefully away, a tiny shield around it to protect it from his wet clothes.
Then he flopped down on his back. "Just like old times, eh?"
Carey's mouth quirked.
"Thanks," PK said, "for--"
"Do you know why I quit?" Carey asked.
PK froze. "You never liked the non-defensive stuff, the breaking and entering."
Carey shook his head. "I liked it too much. I was afraid that if we kept doing that, I'd get bored, I'd want more than those tame little exercises. I'd want to start stealing for real. And the temptation wasn't worth it."
"Oh. Do you miss it?" PK asked.
"All the time."
"This wouldn't be boring," PK said carefully. He touched his pocket where he put the card, suddenly really thinking about it. "If she means it, if they really want to change...This would be worth it."
"You would be worth it," Carey said. "If you had ever asked, or argued."
PK's heart stuttered. "Oh."
Carey smiled, faint and wry. "The job wasn't the only thing I missed."
"Oh," PK said. "So. You want a job?"
Carey laughed and shook his head, and kissed him.