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“Yes, about that,” Mircea said, accepting a refill from Sal. “The Lord Protector called me this afternoon to ask about you.”
“How kind of him.” I stabbed a tomato with my fork.
Something that wasn’t a smile lifted the corner of Mircea’s mouth. “He assured me that Mage Richardson acted completely without his knowledge or consent, out of a spirit of revenge.”
“So what’s his excuse for the last month?”
“He asked me to convey his personal regrets to you . . . and to arrange another meeting as soon as possible.”
I smiled. I’d been waiting for a chance to use one of Pritkin’s more colorful swear words. And if ever there was a moment . . .
Mircea’s lips quirked. “That is what I thought you’d say. Which is why I agreed to the meeting on your behalf.”
“What?”
“Tradition states that the new Pythia’s reign does not officially begin until she is confirmed at a ceremony by the Lord Protector of the Circle,” he said mildly.
“I don’t care about tradition!”
“But the magical community does. To be accepted as Pythia, you need the legitimacy such a ceremony would provide.”
“That wasn’t your view this morning!”
“It was, in fact. But that meeting was deemed inadvisable because of safety concerns. Kit had heard rumors that there might be trouble.”
“Something you might have shared with me.”
Mircea raised one of those expressive brows. “Would you really have chosen to miss such an opportunity?”
“I don’t know. But it would have been nice to have the choice!”
“I will keep that in mind.”
Sure he would. When he ran out of handcuffs. “I’m still not meeting with the Circle,” I told him flatly. “And I don’t need or want their blessing. Feel free to quote me.”
“The Senate will guarantee your safety.”
“You can’t. You can’t trust anything they tell you!”
“We don’t. Which is why we have set the meeting to take place during the reception for the visiting consuls.” Mircea paused, and for the first time that night his eyes glinted with the usual fire. “All six of them.”
“Six?” Alphonse choked on his whiskey while the rest of us just stared.
“The first convocation of six consuls in history is meeting in two days’ time,” Mircea confirmed. His voice was steady, but there was definite color in his cheeks. It took a lot to make a first-level master lose control, even to that degree. But news like that would just about do it. The Consul might even have blinked.
“You work fast,” I said. “This morning you could only get two.”
“It seems that today’s tragedy convinced the senates that this war is unlike any we have seen.”
“And scared ’em shitless,” Alphonse guessed. “Not that they’ll admit it.”
Mircea smiled slightly. “They have had a shock—something unusual for them. Their courts are also built on or near ley lines.”
“They’re afraid that what happened once can happen again,” I reasoned.
He didn’t look too concerned. “There is always a chance, of course. But the lines have been in use for millennia and there has never been a similar catastrophe. Our best guess at the moment is that it was a tragic accident.”
“An accident that just happened to take place over MAGIC?”
