Unexpectedly, Madame Cardui stood on tiptoe to kiss him gently on the cheek. ‘I need to see you in my office, Alan,’ she whispered. ‘Door on your right – I’ll join you in a moment.’
You learned a little every day, Fogarty thought. An office in the palace upstairs and now an office off the Situation Room. A remarkable woman by any measure. Sometimes he got luckier than he’d any right to ask for. All he needed now was time to enjoy it.
He looked around. Madame Cardui’s office was small, but remarkably well-appointed. She had a desk and one of those expensive new-fangled chairs that moulded itself to your bottom and squeezed it every so often to remind you you were still alive. A biological storage unit oozed and bubbled in a cauldron in the corner. A spell-driven food butler stood ready in case she wanted a snack. There was even a reproducing chair for visitors, lurking on the floor ready to clone itself indefinitely depending on how many visitors there were – you could tell its talent from the creepy black material that covered it.
But the thing that caught his attention was the miniaturised view globe sunk into the desk. That was a levitator for sure, hence state-of-the-art. It had to be linked with the view globes in the Situation Room, but there wasn’t a wire or cable in sight. Little gizmos like that were always hideously expensive, but the taxpayers were probably paying for it.
He was reaching for the reproducing chair when Madame Cardui bustled in and closed the door carefully. She pressed a thumb on the built-in spell cone and the leathery smell of privacy enchantments filled the room. Well-oiled locks slid into place.
‘I thought it best we talk on our own, dahling,’ she told him as she walked across the room. ‘The Generals are fine men in their way, but you can never be sure how they’ll interpret the concept of loyalty. And with so much bustle, you never know who might listen in. Besides, I suspect Hairstreak has a spy eye in there despite our sweeps.’
‘Trust nobody,’ Fogarty growled. The chair had sensed his singularity and inhibited its tendency to reproduce. He parked his bottom with a scowl. The surface felt dank and unappealing, an effect he suspected was deliberate. Cynthia was exactly like himself. She did nothing to encourage visitors to outstay their welcome. ‘What’s happening?’ he asked.
She walked across the room to take her own seat. ‘There’s something I want you to look at…’ She set both hands on her desk and the globe levitated to eye level. As it began to glow, she said, ‘Pull your chair over, Alan: this isn’t awfully easy to see, even close up.’
Fogarty set his jaw and pulled the chair across. He leaned forward. A scene began to form as the globe heated and suddenly he was staring into a scorched wasteland of barren rocks and smoky fume.
‘You haven’t managed to get a spy eye into Hael?’ he asked, using the Realm pronunciation. If she had, he was impressed.
But Madame Cardui was shaking her head. ‘No, deeah. That’s not Hael. It’s a segment of the desert to the east of Yammeth Cretch. Fumaroles… gas vents… lava flows… boiling mud springs – they tell me it’s the most volcanically active area on the face of the planet. Nobody lives there except a few nomadic Trinians and even they find life hard going. The Nighters look on it as a protection for that flank of their city – try to march men across that and you’d lose nine-tenths of them before you met a single enemy. But look…’
After a moment, Fogarty asked, ‘What am I looking for?’
Madame Cardui’s slim hand floated forward to point. ‘See that ridge? There’s a break – some sort of opening, quite a large one, deeah, except that it’s partly hidden by the dust that’s venting. The view varies, but keep your eye on… here, just here. It’ll clear in a moment, then you should catch a glimpse…’
‘Can’t you get a close-up?’ Fogarty asked. ‘Zoom the lens or whatever it is you do here?’
Madame Cardui shook her head again. ‘We don’t actually have a spy eye in the desert – there’s so much sulphur venting that any moisture turns to acid. The eyes are moist, of course, so it eats through their spell coating in a matter of hours. Simply isn’t worth installing them. And for what, usually? A few wandering Trinians? No, the eye you’re looking through is on the eastern gate of Yammeth City. It’s normally turned on the city itself: there are a few spell factories in that quarter we like to keep an eye on, forgive the bad pun. But one of them blew up last week – some sort of industrial accident involving sprites, I believe. In any case, the energy discharge turned the eye around. No damage, just turned it so it was looking out across the desert. What with everything that’s been going on, we didn’t get round to sending an agent to correct it. Then earlier today, a monitor noticed this -’
‘Noticed what?’ Fogarty asked.
‘Just keep watching where my – there, see the dust is clearing. Watch there. There’s a break in the ridge. When you see it, look through it.’
Fogarty watched. The dust plume did seem to be thinning a little, but he still couldn’t see the break in the ridge. And then suddenly he could. For scarcely more than a second he was glimpsing what seemed to be a plain covered in black dots. The trouble was, you couldn’t work out the perspective. You didn’t know if you were looking at ants or armoured cars.
‘Did you see that?’ Madame Cardui asked.
‘Think so. Not sure.’
‘What do you think it is?
Fogarty shrugged. ‘I don’t know. What do you think it is?’
‘I think it’s Beleth,’ Madame Cardui said.