Death of an Adept

Before Zoller could summon any reply, she returned her basilisk glare to the first victim of her anger.

"Hoping to make a name for yourself, were you, Mr. Fen-ton? It's a dangerous thing to have ideas above your station. Ambition is no bad thing, but you shouldn't have allowed yourself to forget that failure has its price."

The man Fenton flinched away from her gaze, almost on the brink of tears, his brow beaded with cold sweat.

"Give me another chance," he begged in a strangled voice. "I swear it won't happen again!"

"Indeed it will not!"

Angela transferred her attention to Klaus Richter, who was standing against the door behind the men, arms folded across his chest, as if to place himself at one remove from the proceedings.

"You're the one who recruited this nitwit," she pointed out acidly. "Are you prepared to overlook his insubordination?"

Richter shook his head minutely, his blue gaze hard as steel.

"You may do with him as you wish," he stated flatly.

This bald disavowal drew a strangled whimper from the principal culprit. Angela ignored it.

"The two of you, get out of my sight!" she told Fenton's companions.

As Richter stood aside to permit their hasty retreat, Angela turned to Fenton himself with a thin, cold smile.

"So, Mr. Fenton, what are we going to do with you?" she asked. "I dislike wasting resources, so I'm not going to have you killed - yet," she informed him. "It's just possible that you may be able to redeem yourself. That will be for Mr. Raeburn to decide, when he returns. But until then, I don't want to look at your stupid face. Krankauer, take him somewhere and put him on ice for now," she said over her shoulder to the larger of her two attendants.

Fenton blanched at these words, knees visibly trembling as he made a broken attempt to plead for mercy, but Krankauer and his partner turned deaf ears as they came to take him away, as did Angela. When the door had closed behind them, she shifted her acid gaze to the waiting Richter.

"And what's your excuse? I thought your people were supposed to be good."

Richter shrugged, refusing to be intimidated. "Most of them are. Every so often one encounters disappointment."

"Disappointment? That's hardly an adequate word for this fiasco. Having planted the Hand of Glory, the least the silly fools could have done was to retrieve it before letting themselves be driven off!"

"I agree," Richter said mildly.

"Well, this mess is yours, so you can clean it up," Angela replied, somewhat deflated. "Find out what's become of the Hand, and try and get it back - preferably before Mr. Raeburn emerges from his retreat. What he's going to say when he learns that all his preparations have been wasted, I leave to your speculation."

She sat fuming behind the desk for several minutes after Richter had left. It had been Raeburn's plan to seal his pact with Soulis at the next dark of the moon, now three days hence. To that end, he had absented himself the day before for a three-day period of fasting and preparation. Another time, Angela might have taken spiteful pleasure in knowing that Raeburn was squandering his energies to no good purpose. On this occasion, she sent for Barclay.

"I need to get in touch with Francis," she informed him when he arrived. "After last night's disaster, the reasons should be obvious. Do you know where he is?"

Barclay shook his head. "No, ma'am, I don't. Last I saw of him was when he had me let him off at the railway station. Where he was planning to go from there, he didn't say."

Angela tapped her foot in vexed frustration, biting back a comment inappropriate in front of an underling. "This really is too much," she muttered darkly. "Being circumspect is one thing, but this is verging on paranoia!"

When Barclay made no comment, she rose and began pacing the carpet with an impetuosity born of growing anger.

"If you can't tell me where Francis is," she flung over her shoulder, "maybe you can explain what he thought he was doing when he ordered Richter's people to go in after the Lov-ats. For pity's sake, that wretched artist is a Huntsman. It would have been dangerous enough if the attempt had succeeded. As matters stand at the moment, we're going to have Sinclair and company hounding us with every breath we take, and us with nothing to show for it!"

Barclay said nothing, and after a moment, Angela sighed and returned to the desk. Learning both hands against it, she considered her options until Raeburn should return.

"All right," she murmured. "I'll make yet another attempt at damage control. See if you can find him. He needs to be aware that we won't be going forward on the twenty-second."

After a beat, Barclay said quietly, "Do you care about him, Miz Fitzgerald?"

The question brought her up short. After the briefest of hesitations, she shook her head emphatically.

"Don't be impertinent."

Barclay shrugged. "He does take risks, Miz Fitzgerald," he said. "But Mr. Raeburn thinks the rewards will be worth the risks."