Skulduggery was waiting beyond the steady stream of mages, wearing a black three-piece, black shirt, red tie, with a red band on his black hat.
“You look like a gangster,” she said, joining him.
“Good afternoon to you, too.”
“Should I have dressed up? We get to see China so rarely these days that I feel I should have dressed up, maybe worn a hat of my own.”
Skulduggery shrugged. “When in doubt, wear a hat, that’s what I always say.”
“You do always say that.”
A young woman approached, well dressed, her fingers swiping a tablet screen. She tapped it off and held it by her side as she reached them. “Arbiters,” she said, “please follow me. The Supreme Mage is waiting.”
“Lead on,” said Skulduggery, and they followed her from the foyer. “You’re the new Administrator, are you?”
She glanced back. “I am. My name is Cerise.”
“The Irish Sanctuary has not had the best of luck with Administrators,” Valkyrie said. “They’re like drummers in Spinal Tap, you know?”
“Spinal Tap, Detective Cain?”
“There’s a high turnover is what I mean. You sure you want this job?”
“I have been a student of the Supreme Mage since I was sixteen years old,” Cerise responded. “It is an honour to serve her now.”
“But to handle the day-to-day running of the whole High Sanctuary …”
“The High Sanctuary is run by mages more talented and resourceful than I,” Cerise said. “All I have to do is run them.”
Valkyrie didn’t say anything, but she thought that was a pretty good answer.
Cerise led them to a set of double doors – solid and plain – and she bowed again as they passed her. The chamber was small. There was a table at its centre with six chairs round it, four of which were occupied.
China Sorrows sat on the far side of the table, her posture perfect, her head up, her blue eyes unfocused.
“Detective Pleasant, Detective Cain, welcome,” Aloysius Vespers said as soon as they entered. The English Grand Mage came over and shook their hands. He was one of the only sorcerers Valkyrie knew who wore actual robes, like a wizard in a movie. His white hair was long and his beard was braided. He had small teeth. “Please,” he said, indicating the chairs, “sit.”
The chairs were sturdy and hard. No padding. This was a chamber for doing business and making decisions, not for idle conversation and time-wasting.
The American Grand Mage, Gavin Praetor, poured them each a glass of water. He slid one to Valkyrie, started to slide the other to Skulduggery, then must have realised Skulduggery didn’t drink, because he picked up the glass and took a sip from it himself without missing a beat.
“Should we begin?” Sturmun Drang said. “We are all busy, are we not? And time is not on our side.”
“It never is,” said China, blinking her way out of the Whispering and disconnecting from the city around her. “Skulduggery. Valkyrie. Thank you for coming.”
“It’s so hard getting an appointment to see you,” Skulduggery replied, “so, when you call, we’re all too happy to oblige. I assume you want to talk about the problem in the City Guard.”
China waved her hand. “I’m meeting with Commander Hoc later today to discuss the fate of Yonder and his little friends, but I definitely see jail time in their future. That is not why I called you here, however.”
She tapped the table and the wooden surface flickered, and small screens came to life beneath the grain. The screens showed a photograph of the American president, Martin Flanery, walking across the White House lawn, deep in conversation with a slight man in an ill-fitting suit. “The man next to the president is Bertram Wilkes, Flanery’s personal aide. Grand Mage Praetor?”
“A little under six months ago,” Praetor said, “Wilkes disappeared. The official line is that he resigned due to the workload, and planned to travel extensively in order to recharge his batteries. He has not, as far as we know, been seen since three days before he left his job, but that has been difficult to ascertain due to the fact that he has no family and, apparently, no friends to note his absence. It is our belief, however, that Wilkes was a mage, and we believe he was murdered.”
Skulduggery shifted ever so slightly in his seat. “Go on.”
Praetor tapped the table, and a black-and-white photograph appeared of a group of friends smiling for the camera. “We retrieved this from a woman we believe Detective Cain interviewed last year in San Francisco.”
Valkyrie recognised a few of the faces – Richard Melior, Savant Vega, Azzedine Smoke and a friend of Temper’s, Tessa somebody. Four others, too – one of them being Bertram Wilkes with radically different hair.
“We don’t know his actual name,” said Vespers. “All we know is this Wilkes persona which, as you can imagine, is a well-executed forgery. But, judging by the company he kept, it is not far-fetched to conclude that he may well be associated with Abyssinia.”
“So you think Abyssinia sent him in undercover to the White House,” Skulduggery said. “Why?”
“We don’t know,” China responded. “But we believe that the American president had him killed.”
“You think Flanery knows about sorcerers?” Valkyrie asked.
“We do.”
“So how bad is this situation?”
“We have had worse scenarios,” said Drang. “World leaders, law-enforcement officials, media organisations – they have all learned of our existence and we either find a way to guarantee their silence or we resort to more extreme measures to keep our secret.”
Valkyrie frowned. “What do you mean, ‘more extreme’?”
“Now is not the time,” said China.
“How extreme have we gone?”
China sighed. “Lengths,” she said. “Sanctuaries have gone to lengths to preserve our anonymity. We may have to go to lengths again here, as Flanery is not the most stable of mortal leaders.”
“Whether Flanery knows about us or not,” Skulduggery said, “we’ve got to find out why Abyssinia felt the need to send a spy into the Oval Office. Do we know anything at all about Bertram Wilkes?”
“The only lead we have is this person,” China said, her fingernail tapping the table. A new photograph appeared. A tall man leaving a house, his dark hair shot through with grey. “We’ve identified him as Oberon Guile, an American sorcerer who has just completed a three-year sentence in Ironpoint Gaol for robbery. That is, roughly, the sum total of the information we have about him.”
“This is Bertram Wilkes’s house that Mr Guile is leaving,” said Praetor. “We’ve been watching it for months and Mr Guile is the only person we’ve seen, coming or going. This photograph was taken three days ago, and we’ve been keeping discreet tabs on him since then in the hope that he leads us to something more concrete. But our feeling now is that we must act.”
“Which is where we come in,” Skulduggery said.
“I am fully aware that, as Arbiters, you do not work for me,” China responded, “but I would greatly appreciate it if you would make