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“No,” Mircea said stubbornly. “This is a vampire plot.”
“We don’t know that!”
“It’s too intricate for anything else.”
“But…wait,” I said, my head starting to hurt again. Which was what usually happened when politics were brought up. “Jonathan is with the Black Circle. He’s a dark mage.”
“And we are fighting the Black Circle.”
“Yes, but…the Black Circle has always been involved in the slave trade with Faerie. And wasn’t that the assumption we were going on—that someone is trying to control the smuggling trade now that Geminus is out of the picture? Why not them? It would be a lot easier to bring things through for the war if they controlled most of the portals.”
“Yes, but Dory,” Radu said gently, “it’s a question of ability, not of desire.”
“Come again?”
“The Black Circle can’t manage the sort of communications shutdown we saw last night,” Marlowe said bluntly. “No mage can.”
Mircea nodded. “Telephones, computers, that sort of thing—yes. Merely activating the more powerful wards would take care of that. And if not, there are spells. But no spell can shut down a vampire’s ability to communicate with other vampires.”
“No spell you know of.”
“No spell at all,” Marlowe said flatly. “There are limits to magic, as with everything else, and we know what those limits are. We have lived with the mages—and fought them—for centuries. We know what they can do and what they can’t, and they cannot do what Radu described last night!”
’Du nodded. “I don’t pretend to be all that powerful, but I am second-level. And I was, er, motivated. Yet I could not reach anyone.”
“You reached me.”
“Yes, once you came inside the sphere of whatever influence was being exerted. But not before that. You didn’t hear me outside.”
“No.”
“And yet, believe me, I was screaming my head off.”
“That bring us to the question,” Marlowe said grimly. “Who the hell is working with Jonathan?”
“A senior master?” Radu offered, looking at his brother.
“It would have to be someone more powerful than Radu in order to block him,” Mircea agreed. “Someone with significant mental abilities.”
But Marlowe didn’t seem to like that idea. “There are only a handful of masters in the world capable of that kind of demonstration.”
“That we know of—”
“And I do not relish approaching them and accusing them of treason! Not at any time, but particularly not now.”
“It would not serve to strengthen the alliance,” Mircea said drily.
“That’s why you wanted Ray gone,” I said, catching up. “You’re worried about Cheung.”
“Not Lord Cheung himself, no. His gifts lie in other areas. But his lady—”
“I thought he and Ming-de didn’t get along,” Radu said, talking about the head of the East Asian Court.
“That is the story,” Mircea said wryly. “But it could have been manufactured. And Ming-de is a powerful mentalist. I was selected to go to her court as our ambassador over a dispute some years ago, because she had managed to influence everyone else we had sent.”
“Ray isn’t a spy,” I told them. “Cheung has been trying to kill him!”
“And perhaps now he is trying to use him.”
