“I’m going to see what’s wrong with Pestilence,” the man beside me said.
“No, don’t!” I cried out as he moved toward the door. “It might be a trap!”
“Familiars can’t harm people,” the man said. He opened the crystal door.
The orange familiar lunged for him. I cried out, but the man didn’t react. He went down on one knee and took the creature’s elongated muzzle in one hand. A ripple went through the familiar, a full-body shudder that shook the man’s hand. Then the familiar collapsed.
Now the man cried out. He rolled the familiar onto its back and pressed a hand against its bony chest. Another, more violent shudder ran through the thing, but other than that, it didn’t move.
Someone beside me shouted and pushed forward to the door. The other two familiars had fallen and now lay motionless on the sidewalk. One of them had fallen halfway into the gutter. Two women hurried to their side. One of the women was crying.
All around me, people took out their phones. Some scrolled through the displays, while others texted or made phone calls. A few took pictures of the dead familiars and were scolded by their neighbors. Judy and I looked at each other. “I’m calling my father,” Judy said. “What are the odds that three familiars mysteriously died just here and nowhere else?”
“And died just as the invaders are attacking?” I said.
My phone rang. “It was Sheffield,” Malcolm said. “In northern England. The oracle wasn’t the only one that knew about it, because the Wardens were there almost as soon as the attack began. They kept it from becoming a total disaster, but more than two thousand people were killed.”
I closed my eyes and tried to remain calm. “And it looks like the others? A fast-acting illness?”
“No,” Malcolm said. “It looks like biological warfare. And that’s how it’s being reported.”
“Terrorism,” I said. “If the invaders wanted panic, they’ve got it.” I couldn’t imagine anything more terrifying to the average person than the possibility of a biological attack that could strike anywhere, at any time.
“We have to stop them permanently soon,” Malcolm said in a low voice as if there were people nearby he didn’t want overhearing this conversation. “The world’s governments can’t not take notice of this, and they’re going to react. Badly, from our perspective.”
“Malcolm, something else happened.” I quickly described what had happened to the familiars.
“That can’t be a coincidence,” Malcolm said.
“Judy’s calling her father—actually, hang on,” I said. Judy was waving at me frantically.
“It’s happening everywhere,” she said. “There are reports coming in from all over. Familiars just dropping dead. Father is communicating with other Nicollien leaders around the country and they report the same thing.”
“But is it an attack?”
“Father thinks so. There’s nothing else that could kill all the familiars, all at the same time—not even Ambrosites could work that kind of magic. He believes it was meant to be a distraction from the latest attack on the node in Sheffield—you know it was Sheffield?”
“Yes. Hang on.” I told Malcolm what Judy had said, and added, “If it was meant to weaken the Nicolliens in Sheffield, it wouldn’t work. There aren’t any familiars left in Great Britain.”
“It’s possible it was intended as a more global distraction,” Malcolm said. “If we hadn’t had the Pattern and the oracle’s warning, we would have been dealing with the familiars’ deaths when the attack in Sheffield happened, and the invaders would have destroyed the city and the Bridgerton Node.”
“But now it seems there might be no more familiars. What will the Nicolliens do?”
“Adapt. I know, it sounds harsh, but there is no alternative. Building up another cadre of familiars would take years, and we don’t have years. And maybe this is what we’ve needed all along—to remove the primary source of friction between the factions. Removal of the familiars by a third party, instead of the Ambrosites demanding it or the Nicolliens doing it grudgingly, might be the best option.”
“You don’t really think this will make the factions get along, do you?”
Malcolm sighed. “No. But your optimism is infectious.”
I laughed, and quieted myself before I could draw more than a few irritated stares. “I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Do you know if there are any similarities between the Bridgerton Node and the others?”
“No. Lucia will investigate, and if there’s anything, she’ll announce it. I have to go, love. I’ll see you tonight.”
I hung up and put my phone away. More Wardens were on the street, just standing around doing nothing—but as I thought that, I realized the familiars’ bodies had sagged like deflated basketballs, and patches of bright blue goo showed on their skin. Some of those Wardens were no doubt paper magi, skilled at illusions and more than capable of concealing what had happened there on the sidewalk. And the others would dispose of the bodies. Not that that took much doing, since the bodies of dead invaders, which is what the familiars really were, broke down quickly once they were destroyed.
“All right, form a line again,” I said, drawing the attention of the dozen or so people staring at their phones. “Your auguries might be even more important now, and you can’t help the familiars or the people in Sheffield by standing around doing nothing.” Taking up space in my store was what I wanted to say, but the Nicolliens looked devastated enough I didn’t want to be harsh with them.
Half of them left without auguries. I thought, from observing them, they were ones who’d left their familiars at home and either wanted to check on them or had gotten word that they, too, were destroyed. We finished the rest of the auguries in glum silence, me speaking only to tell someone how much their augury would cost. By noon, the store was empty, and so was the street outside. Just a couple of blue blotches showed where the familiars’ bodies had lain, and I assumed those were hidden by illusion.
“This is awful,” Judy said. “Everyone’s reporting their familiars dead. One hundred percent fatality. The Nicolliens won’t recover from this.”
“And it won’t even prompt the Ambrosites to make common cause with them, want to bet?” I stood in front of the crystal door and admired the rainbows. They calmed me.
“I wouldn’t take that bet.” Judy headed for the break room. “Let’s eat before some other disaster strikes.”
But nothing happened. I refrained from looking at any news feeds, afraid to learn the extent of the disaster at Sheffield or what the news thought was the cause of all that death. Bioterrorism, Malcolm had said, and I could see how that would be a compelling explanation. The press would go nuts trying to find similarities between the three incidents they knew about. Probably about as nuts as the Wardens were going as they tried to work out why the invaders had chosen those targets. The named Neutralities were obvious, but why the other two nodes? I had no ideas, other than my feeling that the oracle knew more than it was saying.
Inspired, I slipped into the oracle’s space about ten minutes until two, when a few Ambrosites had lined up outside. The oracle paid me no attention. “I have a question,” I said, “and I don’t know if you’ll answer it, but…do you know why the invaders chose the targets they did? I mean, it seems obvious that they wanted to destroy the Fountain and the Labyrinth, and us, of course, but why the other three? Or were they just a distraction? Because if they were—if they were meant to conceal the invaders’ interest in the named Neutralities—it didn’t work.”