“If you want to keep this going, then make another move.” Briggs’ eyes seemed to be glowing, so murderously intense were they. “We will play, and we will make you pay. And in doing so, we will show every goddamn Great Family with a Sage that we are in the game, that we CAN make them pay, and having a Sage does not mean they can act against us as they please!

“Go ahead, DuPont!” his dire rumble shook Eustace’s bones. “Use your money. Exert your influence. Go find some mutual support among your peers. Make some dastardly plan. Build an alliance to put down the new rabble. Strike a deal with some devils to keep your hands clean. Go to bed dreaming happily of uncounted commoners dying for daring to infringe on the desires of you and your Family.

“We are In The Game. There will be a price to pay for everything and anything you and your peers try to do to us. It may be blatant.” His smile was all square-toothed, gleaming white, and nothing friendly about it, like looking down a bone-crunching machine. “It may be subtle.” His scorn rose in searing disdain. “But there will be an answer, and you will like it even less than what you are doing to us, because you are forcing us to do so!

“Now get out of my sight before I tear you limb from limb for what you are planning to do to us. You have bigger concerns than dying here.”

Eustace the Fourth swallowed and backed away, even managing to nod his head politely to the outraged brute in armor who was clearly restraining himself from tearing the patriarch apart.

---

The circle of KIA men parted to let the DuPont go, hostile eyes following him as he retreated to the nervous group of bodyguards waiting for him out there. Briggs’ glowering stare followed them as they hastily withdrew to the protection of a limousine parked nearby, and pulled away quickly and smoothly.

The men all had plenty of experience seeing and feeling Briggs in the middle of a combat state, all ready to kill, but seeing him ready to go off on a human instead of something monstrous was a new experience for most of them, given how genial he was most of the time. They didn’t need to know just how angry he was, because he was radiating it like a towering hill of wrath.

------

“Gah!”

Cameron Dow’s brandy went sloshing out of his hand as he saw Sama Rantha waiting there in a chair on the balcony. The way the light faded as it fell upon the scars on the side of her face were disquieting at the best of times, let alone in his supposedly-secure villa.

Sama held an artfully curved talon of a fingernail up to her lips, and Cameron clamped down on his surprise. He looked sadly at his drink, but hurriedly closed the door behind him and moved over to a chair opposite the woman on the deck, who was obviously not dressed to be here on vacation.

“Paloma Beach, Cam?” Sama asked, without raising her eyes from the file she was reading through.

“I’m, ah, teaching my kids how to surf,” he admitted, and she glanced up at him knowingly. “Yes, yes, the waves are as friendly now as they were then, and the beach security is top notch. I’ve got a good Water mage helping out, too,” he sighed. “I, uh, gather something important has brought you here...?”

“The Dow Family has always had a bit of a status problem compared to the DuPonts.”

Cameron felt his mouth go dry at that remark, and promptly helped moisturize it. “Yes, well, they are a Great Family...” he trailed off quietly, and all the recent rumors rose in his mind as her eyes dropped to the file again, and she slowly shook her head.

He swallowed despite himself. “Well, the most recent Sage DuPont has passed on a bit early. How unfortunate,” he tested her politely.

“It couldn’t happen to a kinder, gentler viper,” she agreed with another nod, and he snorted despite himself.

She closed the paper file with a snap like a tome slamming shut. He stared at it, making out the words on the tab.

Bophal.

His complexion paled just a little bit, and he didn’t move his eyes from the folder as she laid it on the table, and with a finger flick sent it all the way across to him. He slapped his hand down on it, hard, because there was enough force in it to knock his seat over if he didn’t.

She’d pulled that trick on him before, too.

“Sum it up for me, Sama. I’m on vacation and not thinking properly right now.” He downed the rest of his brandy for emphasis.

“Eustace DuPont the Third paid, eh, donated heavily to, the Black Curia through fifth and sixth parties to target Bophal. He provided much of the intelligence they needed to hit the Union Corundum plant there. The plant’s destruction and ruin of its workforce and the surrounding city paved the way for the DuPonts’ investments with another of the local Families of India, the Anjaesilim, to expand their chemical production there, a business that has remained profitable for them for the last forty years.”

Cameron’s eyes finally dropped to the folder. “The legal responsibilities for the disaster have been settled, although it took thirty years,” he told her slowly. India’s legal systems were infamously staid and slow to resolve anything, with a side effect of private vengeance often being meted out by wealthy parties in a far timelier manner.

“That’s true. But the financial disasters suffered by the primary investors were not small, and I believe led to the collapse of three Families, and the ascension of the Anjaesilim to Great Family. As well, I believe the immediate death tally was nine thousand people, with another four thousand over the next ten years from various causes, with lingering deaths to this day?”

“We didn’t have any responsibility for the event, but yes, there are... significant ongoing and residual costs, even after Corundum paid out. I have had to deal with some aggrieved families that wanted to hold us responsible after we bought out the property some years ago,” Cameron confirmed.

“Sage DuPont did the job so well, not even the Black Curia was aware that it had been used. It was his crowning achievement, the biggest legacy he has left his family. Only he and Ghostly Vapors Sage Anjaesilim knew the truth of the matter.”

Cameron stared at the file, wondering if he dared to open it. “And now the DuPonts have lost their Sage, while I know of at least six Families that would swear blood feuds against them and the Anjaesilim were they to find out about this.”

“A few other details that might be of interest.” Cameron winced at her words, seriously contemplating if he should get up and leave, and finding it impossible to do so.

Another file hit the table and was pushed over to him. “Governor Blichard is DuPont’s man.”

Cameron’s face fell. The man had been stymieing Dow’s expansion plans in Brazil for most of a decade, despite all forms of persuasion and goodwill. “Well. Doesn’t that explain a great many things...”

“Jalusa Sorestroz has been feeding the DuPonts information for years. She was recruited in Harvard.”

Cameron’s face twisted sharply. He watched as Sama lifted a bottle out of somewhere, leaned forward, and poured him a golden glass full.

Her Dagger drifted out from behind her, touched the glass, and frosted it for him considerately. He ignored the startling sight as he considered the drink with an empty gaze.

Jalusa was his preferred lawyer, he’d employed her for years. The plans and ideas he’d had over the years, seen through, co-opted, failed, anticipated...

Leaked.

He reached out and poured the entire drink down. It burned, but he was a Mage, and despite the incredible flare and kick of it, he held on even as his head started swimming.

“Your sister-in-law’s husband Carl has been an occasional DuPont informer over the years, too.”

He stared at the glass in his grip, and then a thousand miniature windblades cut it into sparkling sand in an instant.

His wife and her sister talked all the time. Who knew what she had revealed over the years, just by where he was taking his family, or if she mentioned where he was going out of town? Just knowing where he was going meant knowing something was going on, secret meetings that weren’t so secret...

“You’re quite the intelligent person, Sama. I’m sorry if I’ve not mentioned that before, but you rather frighten me, and I didn’t want you to know there was something else about you I found intimidating,” he admitted in a dry, resigned voice, not looking at her as glittering dust fell from his hand. “In your estimation, should I be on the Family Council?”

“Yes.”

That was it, not even a moment’s consideration. He really did value her opinion highly. If she thought he belonged there, he probably did.

“And yet, knowing that you loathe lying, knowing that you are manipulating me, and knowing that this was done to me... I also know that my family will blame me for these matters escaping my attention, not judging me by what might have happened had my trust not been so misplaced, or my in-laws not who they are.”

“Life sucks, Cam,” she replied with a completely unsympathetic voice. Her complete blasé heartlessness about life’s shit was one of the things he found most reliable about her.

“Does Maria’s sister know this?” he asked, in an almost perfunctory tone.

“Read out how much it costs to send their children to the schools they did, and I believe the question answers itself.”

Cameron Dow laughed bitterly, shaking his head. Scholarships, he and his wife had been told... “Ah, supporting the family by sacrificing my career to do so, just not the family I thought I was.” He lifted his stare to her gloriously unsympathetic gaze, just as hard and cold as ever. “Is this a recruitment meeting?” he asked lazily.

“No. The governor, your lawyer, and your sister-in-law’s family were just random facts I came across. They were convenient things to use, because the DuPonts recently ran an operation against us. Then they had the temerity to go and confront my Fuzzy and demand their prick of a Sage back, as if the rotting maggot was still alive.”

He stared at her for a long moment. She would never say it, but it was as plain to him that she had murdered the bastard as if it was written on the wall. “It seems,” he said thoughtfully, “that neither of us like the DuPonts too much right now, Sama.”

“Such fine and upstanding citizens that they are.”

“Do you wish me to inform my Family of this matter?” he asked blandly.

“I would much rather prefer to see Cameron Dow on the Dow Family Council. I’m thinking that the way to do that is for him to take care of these matters personally, and with some style.”

“My chances of breaking through to Archmage decrease by the day,” he shook his head sadly. He would need to be an out-and-out genius to make the Council without being an Archmage, and given his record, they would not want him on it, even if he were.

Given the treachery around him, their instincts had actually been correct!

“I have no insights, no way forward, and the Family is unwilling to spend the funds needed to assure me of such an advancement at this stage of the game, especially given my track record.” He lifted his eyes back to her. “Some of these matters I can deal with, and even do so personally. I might even have methods to deal with the governor. But the Family will not elevate me to the Council so easily.”

“So you want some advice, and some help.”

His smile was almost a rictus at how cold and cruel her gaze was. “You came to use me, and now I am going to offer you everything so that you do. Truly the Golden Hag,” he sighed, and still there wasn’t the faintest hint of regret or guilt in her eyes. “If your help will get me to the Family Council after all that has been done here, I am your man forever, Sama Rantha.”

There was no hint of gloating, nor even of satisfaction. Her gaze sharpened, as if she had just found a sword she was going to whet to a razor edge. He felt a cold thrill go through him at the realization that he had just become a weapon in her hand, and this was a woman who knew how to use weapons...