“Okay. How likely do you think that is?”
“I no longer know what to expect from them. There were three other simultaneous attacks when they destroyed the Athenaeum. Not cities, but pinpoint attacks on Neutralities in Istanbul, Hong Kong, and outside Scranton. The invaders have changed their tactics again, and I wish I knew why.”
“It’s like they don’t care anymore about preserving our world.”
“It—what did you say?” Lucia’s voice went sharp.
“Um…that they don’t care about preserving our world?”
“Why would you think they ever cared about that?”
Stammering, I said, “It was something that invader told me, about wanting to basically farm us. It made it sound like they wanted cooperation. But this is more like total destruction.”
“It is. Damn. I’ll call you later.” She hung up.
I lowered my phone slowly. “The attack hit more than the named Neutralities,” I told Judy and Claude, and related what Lucia had said.
“There has to be some pattern to it,” Judy said. “Something those Neutralities all have in common.”
“I don’t know if that’s true,” I said. “What if they’re just trying to throw the Wardens off-balance? If the real targets are the named Neutralities, and the other attacks are to draw Warden resources away from protecting them—”
“That makes sense, I guess.” Judy let out a deep breath. “Only two left. It’s terrifying. Makes me wonder what happens if—” Her mouth snapped shut, and she looked away from us.
“That is true,” Claude said. “If they are all destroyed, what does that mean? What if the named Neutralities are guardians in a literal sense?”
I nodded. “The Wardens need to stop them before we find that out.”
It was late afternoon, and I was dusting shelves, before Lucia called again. “You were right,” she said. “That’s how their tactics have changed. The invaders have given up on the possibility of convincing humans to cooperate, and they’re going for total destruction.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “I thought that was always the plan. That the cooperation thing was a lie they told the Mercy.”
“The lie was that they would give power to some humans to make them co-equal with the intelligent invaders.” Lucia spoke rapidly, like the words were spilling out of her. “It was always optimal for them to take our world without having to fight for it. Wasted resources and all that. That’s been their strategy for over seven hundred years. But now, maybe because of the destruction of their human allies, maybe for some totally different reason, they’ve settled on breaking humanity. Starting with its defenders.”
“So there is a pattern to their attacks. There must be. They choose their targets according to what will best defeat the Wardens.”
“Smart girl. Yes. We’ve gone back to our original efforts to analyze the attacks with this new information in mind.”
“But the named Neutralities are separate from that pattern.”
“What makes you say that?”
“It’s just what the oracle has been saying all along, that they’re the guardians. I really do think it means that literally. There’s something about the named Neutralities that makes them fundamentally important, not just as a distraction to the Wardens.”
“You might be right. We’ll keep that in mind. Until then, Henry’s on his way over again. We need Abernathy’s more than ever, now that the Athenaeum is gone. Damn Darius Wallach. I need him too, and—” Lucia’s voice was hoarse. She cleared her throat and said, “Stay safe, Davies,” and hung up.
I put my phone away and went back to dusting. It still confused me, the difference between the invaders wanting our cooperation and the invaders wanting our destruction. They needed our magic, and I could understand them wanting it given, if not willingly, then at least without a huge fight. But if they destroyed us, didn’t that make our magic inaccessible to them? I wished I understood better what it meant.
Claude was reading in the break room when I finished. It was an ordinary book, not an augury, he’d taken off the shelves. “You want to stay with me and Malcolm?” I asked. “Until we figure out what to do?”
“I do not wish to intrude.”
“It’s a big house, and I like having guests.”
He shrugged. “Very well. I must make calls, and I think, me, that you and I and Samudra should talk. Samudra will need to know how the wards were thwarted, so that he may perhaps stop it happening at the Sanctuary.”
“Do you know what happened to the wards?”
Claude closed the book over one large knobby finger and pursed his lips in thought. “I told you how the Athenaeum’s heart is—was—protected by an impenetrable ward. It appeared to me that they used that impenetrability to their advantage. Their advance force bore similarly unbreakable wards that were…in harmony, perhaps? It is as if their wards confused those on the heart into thinking they were the same, and thus allowed them to pass through.” He shook his head ruefully. “We should perhaps be grateful the intelligent invaders were in no position to direct their stupider cousins, all these years.”
I thought about what Lucia had said about their intent, what I had guessed, and said, “I think there were a lot of things we took for granted all those years.”
Dave Henry came in just before closing and apologized for his lateness. “Traffic,” he said, handing over an augury slip. I opened it and read What is the pattern to the invaders’ attacks?
“I hope the oracle can help with this,” I said. I folded it into my pocket and walked into the oracle’s space—and into the reddish glow of a dying star. My heart sank.
“Are you sure?” I said. “This would make such a difference. I wish I could at least tell Lucia why you won’t answer. Is it that there really is no pattern? Or is searching for a pattern the wrong approach?”
I felt the oracle’s presence an instant before I thought, The guardians fall. Four are gone, two remain.
“Does that mean it’s the named Neutralities that matter? Or—I don’t know what you mean.”
Seal the cracks.
An idea occurred to me. I hurried back to where Dave waited, grabbed the pen beside the ledger, and scribbled out Lucia’s question. “Ask something else,” I urged, thrusting the paper and pen at him. “Ask ‘How do we seal the cracks?’”
“What about the other augury?”
“The oracle refuses to answer. Hurry, try that question. I can’t ask for an augury for myself, so you’ll have to do it.” I was about fifty percent sure the oracle would reject the question on the grounds that I’d given it to Dave, but fifty percent was good enough for me to take the chance.
Dave wrote the question and handed the slip to me. “Thanks,” I said, and hurried back into the oracle.
The light was clear and blue-tinted, and I breathed out in relief. “I don’t know why this didn’t occur to me before,” I said as I paced the aisles looking for the augury. “You keep talking about cracks, and it’s past time we figured out what it meant.”