Wiz wasn’t sure how much either of them was lying for the other’s benefit.
The late-rising winter sun was just a dull glow through the fog and low-hanging clouds, but already the programmers’ workroom was full. Jerry was still in a coma, but Danny was hard at work at his desk. June was sitting in the corner with Ian more or less asleep in her lap. Malkin was in another corner, very ostentatiously touching up the edges of a double-edged dagger with a bit of fine-grained stone. Beside her lay a swordbelt with a cup-hiked rapier. Moira was off attending to what she delicately referred to as “dragon business.”
“Anything?” Wiz asked as he strode into the room.
Danny didn’t take his eyes off the screens. “Not much. Mostly it just confirms what we knew last night. I’ve got a little more on how this spell works, but boy is it peculiar. I wish Jerry was here, this is more his kind of thing.” He turned to face his friend. “Do you want to take a crack at it?”
“Not right now. I’ve got some other stuff to do.”
Malkin tested the dagger’s edge against her thumbnail, paring off a nearly transparent scraping. “Like what?”
“Like a little scouting expedition. The one thing we do know is that the Enemy seems to be headquartered at the City of Night. The other thing we know is we need to know a lot more about him. So I intend to go poking around and see what I find.”
“What you are likely to find, Sparrow, is more trouble than you can handle.”
Wiz turned and saw Bal-Simba standing in the doorway. “This enemy is dangerous enough on our ground,” he continued as he came into the room. “He is likely to be far more dangerous on ground he has made his own.”
The big wizard settled into his over-sized chair. “I met Moira in the corridor,” he said by way of explanation.
“She said she believed you had formed a plan last night and begged me to discover it.”
“It’s kinda hard to get any sleep when you’re sharing a small bedroom with a dragon,” Wiz said.
“And it is not wise to plan great matters when you are fatigued,” Bal-Simba responded. ‘This idea of yours does not seem to have much to recommend it”
“Relax. I’m not going to take this character on alone. All I’m going to do is get the lay of the land so we’ll have a better idea what we’re dealing with.”
Bal-Simba raised an eyebrow and said nothing.
“Look, you said it yourself. The Council won’t move until we know more. We’re likely to find out more by scouting this guy than sitting around here. I’ve been in those tunnels more than anyone else. Once when I rescued Moira from the Dark League, then when I was kidnapped back there and then when we went back to lay Bale-Zur.”
“We didn’t go into the tunnels that time,” Danny said. Wiz glared at him.
“Anyway, the point is, I’m the logical one to scout it out because I know that place.”
Bal-Simba’s skeptical silence reminded Wiz just how untrue the last bit was. Wiz had seen only a tiny fraction of that giant maze and, being the kind who loses his car in a supermarket parking lot, he couldn’t remember much of anything about the layout.
“At some point we’re going to have to scout, and now’s the best time. Besides, we can’t just react. We’ve got to act and information is the only thing that will get the Council off dead center. Besides,” he added after a brief pause, “Moira doesn’t have time to waste.”
For a long while Bal-Simba said nothing. Then he sighed. “If I could forbid you I would. But we both know I cannot and giving commands which you cannot enforce is unbecoming of a leader. So go if you must, and we will contrive without you.”
Malkin stood up and jammed her dagger home in its sheath. “You’ll have to contrive without me as well.”
Wiz shook his head. “Sorry, this is a one-man show.”
“I have a stake in this,” Malkin said, jerking her head back toward the room where Jerry lay. “Besides I’ve got a feeling you’re going to need the best thief you can get.”