“If our luck’s in,” McKenzie said, “then nobody will rumble us or give us any other sort of shit on the voyage there. But – big but – no plan survives contact with the enemy and to be brutally honest most of mine don’t survive contact with my friends. If we get a fan/faeces interface incident, we might have to go off-piste a bit.”

At this, he received blank stares from not only Leni but the Archmage, too.

“For someone who can speak every known language and every unknown one, too, you certainly come out with a lot of impenetrable gibberish, McKenzie,” Leni told him.

“If things go wrong, we might have to improvise,” he amended his final sentence, with a dark glare for the diminutive pseudo-elfmaid.

“Are you looking for an excuse to shove everybody out the door at the first convenient opportunity and just ram the target with an airship, by any chance, McKenzie?” Leni asked.

McKenzie paused, because that was exactly what he was hoping to achieve since the plan had started to include being slapped by Leni.

“That,” he said in response, “is an entirely unfounded accusation and I take exception to it in the strongest, most pissed off terms.”

“That’s a yes, then,” Leni sighed.

“If you encounter any serious complications,” Xixaxa put in, “then it may be advisable to abort the mission. If you keep your cover intact, you may, after all, be able to try again.”

“Pfft,” Leni chimed in. “It’s going to literally be a pleasure cruise. Getting there isn’t what I’m worried about. What could go wrong?”

- o O o -

Looking at Awks was still a confusing experience for McKenzie.

He didn’t trust the quintessence as far as he could throw it – because when he did throw it at anything in any quantity he often ended up weakened and never had any idea exactly what was going to happen. So far he’d accidentally created one new species of plant and two new species of insects, for example: one of which was wasps, which even he had to admit was a bit bloody-minded. He’d nearly brought a cave down around his head with it, and then there was that time he’d nearly exploded a large wadge of New York while not even being on the same planet. Thankfully only an equal area of forest had ended up being destroyed, but he doubted that the squirrel population felt as relieved about it.

The magical sixth sense it came with, though, was a lot more reliable and he was starting to not just be able to tell how powerful any given mage was on his McKenzie patented 0 to 10 do-not-fuck-with scale, but to get a sense of the quality of their magic, too. Danandra was not only powerful, but her magic carried a sense of artistic flair about it. Talius was on a par with her for power, but he was all precision and science. The Archmage, of course, was way past a 10 on the scale to the point where it was sometimes difficult for McKenzie to look at her directly – but she was absolutely and completely 100% efficient, too, everything perfectly balanced and judged.

Awks was just a mess to his sense, though. She had so many point-sources of magic on her that McKenzie couldn’t even count them – rings, bracelets, necklaces, earrings, arm-rings, stuff that must be in the pockets of her robe, her books – even her spectacles radiated magic. So even though she seemed pretty powerful – or potentially powerful, he supposed, as apparently she was still a student – he had no handle on exactly how much, or what her personal magic vibe was like. She was nothing much to look at – short, although not as short as Leni. Pretty in the same way as any of the elfmaids on board were, blonde, quiet, studious-looking. Hopefully she was also knowledgeable.

“Um, hello,” she said in a quiet, uncertain way. “Lady Elleniralla said you had some questions about magic for me, Master McKenzie?”

“Hmmphh ummphh hmm ummmph!” Frowny-face said.

Awks looked at the bed in alarm.

“Just, um, ignore that,” McKenzie said quickly, trying to be nice and calm and welcoming, none of which really came naturally to him, a fact he was normally 100% okay with. “You know how I’m Lady Ellenilara’s bodyguard, right? Well, can’t go into too much detail, but-”

He paused, and looked at Leni. “How much detail did you go into?” He asked her.

“None whatsoever,” Leni replied, with only the barest frosting of her giddy elfmaid persona, managing to add a silent ‘unlike you’ to the end.

“Got three things I want you to take a look at. Let’s start with these,” he said, holding his arm out towards the pair of magical charms they’d confiscated from Frowny-face. “Can you tell me what these are?”

Shaveen had left the two charms on top of a chest, the brooch still attached to the scrap of leather that McKenzie had torn off in the fight. Awks walked over, took one look at them, and started to open her mouth to give, it seemed, a quick answer – then stopped and began flicking through her books, looking from page to chest then to another page, seemingly at random.

McKenzie and Leni stood behind her. Thanks to the affinity he’d copypasta’ed from Cally he could just about read some of the words – one page seemed to have to do with fireballs, another with shielding spells, yet another with magical poisons. Then Awks went directly to the back of the book, ran her finger down the index until she found ‘Ethereal spirits, noble and common, definition of’, and then opened that page, read for a moment, and closed the book.

“This brooch,” she said, “is probably a glamour. I’m mostly sure of that. A glamour is a type of charm that-”

“I know what it means in general terms,” McKenzie interrupted her.

For a micro-pico-second he thought he was about to receive yet another glare from yet another woman today, but she stopped herself.

“Sorry, Awks – I mean Salis-, um, Sally,” McKenzie apologised. “Go on.”

“A glamour is a disguise – some are fairly cosmetic, this one was a bit more powerful than that. It would have been able to change a person’s appearance very dramatically, and it was very well wrought. It was expensive work, I would guess,” Awks explained.

“Was?” McKenzie asked.

“Yes – something, I’m not sure what, has damaged it. Sometimes the magic can leak out of a damaged magical object, but this...this has just been drained. Only the traces of the enchantment remain – that is why I am only mostly sure,” Awks added, slightly apologetically.

“Figures,” McKenzie grunted.

“Well done, Saliseralla,” Leni said warmly to her young friend, shooting a glare at McKenzie.

“Yeah, well done and thanks and all that,” McKenzie added quickly. “What about the bracelet?”

Awks repeated her search through her books – this time going from teleportation to love potions to transformation of base metals to fundamentals of astronomy across three different books. She flipped the bracelet over with a careful finger, walked around the chest, peering closely at it, then said ‘hmm’ and opened her book again at inter-mage courtesies before closing it.

“Of this, I am less certain,” she said. “Magical items are my speciality, or I want them to be once I graduate, but this is like nothing I have ever studied. It is very powerful, that is a certainty. It has elements of shield magic to it, but not in any way that would protect against physical or magical force, and whatever it is protecting against, only the wearer would receive any benefit – it has no area of effect at all. There is something of the mind about it...I feel that part of it’s design is to do with...thoughts.”

McKenzie stared at the bracelet. “So it…” He started to say, then stopped. “Why would a whole bunch of drows need their thoughts protecting?”

Awks gave vent to a gasp. “Drow?” She asked, going wide eyed. “There are drow aboard?”

Frowny-face gave vent to a muffled but bitter laugh from the bed.

Leni sighed. “Don’t worry, Saliseralla. Just give me a moment and I’ll explain everything, but there’s something I need to do first.”

She walked briskly up to McKenzie and delivered him a stinging slap across the face.

“Ow! What the fuck, Leni?” McKenzie protested, his hand going up to his cheek.

Awks gasped. Leni glared up at McKenzie. “Get your mental shit together and have another go at why you think they’d have a need for that particular thing, Wednesday.”

McKenzie blinked and thought. “Ohhhhh”, he said.

“There we go,” Leni nodded. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

McKenzie just rubbed his jaw and glared. Leni turned back to Awks.

“Saliseralla, what I‘m about to show you might frighten you, but I want you to know that Wednesday and I are here to help. There is something suspicious going on aboard this ship – and yes, we might all be in danger – but if we all keep our composure and work together we’ll have the best chance of dealing with it successfully,” Leni said, putting her hand on the girl’s shoulder and giving it a supportive squeeze.

Awks looked very unsure of herself, but nodded. Leni led her over to the bed and pulled the curtains open. Behind them, of course, was the glowering Frowny-face.

Awks gasped again. “There is a drow aboard! Lady Elleniralla, we need to tell the captain immediately!”

“Yeah, no can do,” McKenzie told her. “Those two bits of magical kit you identified, all of the officers have got those, so it’s pretty much a certainty that all of them are drows. If you go running to the captain with this the first thing he’ll do is pull out a knife and sli-”

“Wednesday!” Leni hissed at him, as Awks’ expression grew more and more horrified.

“What?” He asked. “She deserves to know what’s going on.”

“Yes, but why don’t I do the talking?” Leni said with a meaningful look at him.

McKenzie muttered a ‘fuck’s sake’ under his breath, but fell silent.

“Wednesday might be blunt, but he’s probably right. We have to assume that this ship is controlled by drow. What do you know about them?” Leni asked.

“Well, we all know about the evils of the drow race, Lady Elleniralla,” Awks told her, confused.

“Yes dear, but...it makes sense to get everyone’s perspectives on this, and you are a scholar, after all. I’m not as learned as you,” Leni said, which, McKenzie had to admit, was a damn sight better than saying ‘yeah but I’m a fake elf so don’t actually know jack shit about it’.

“The noble house of drow turned against the rest of us early in our history,” Awks answered. “They practiced the darkest of magics and engaged in the most evil of acts. The story of how they interfered with the cleansing of elven souls may very well be apocryphal, but there is no doubt that they are chaotic, evil and not to be trusted.”

Frowny-face snorted in contempt.

McKenzie, meanwhile, was still parsing the previous sentence. “Apocryphal?” He asked, confused. “Is that some kinda weird magic?”

Leni sighed again. “In your case, apparently yes,” she told him. She retrieved the bracelet from the chest and offered it to Awks. “Here, I think you should put this on. If I’m right about what’s going on here, you’ll need it.”

Awks looked at the bracelet with suspicion, but took it from Leni and added it to the varied selection of bracelets she already wore. There was no attendant magical flash or even a minor flare of power, but a few moments later Awks blinked.

“You are correct, this will be very useful. I’ll see if I can make more,” she said, in a businesslike tone that was markedly different from the trepidation she’d shown up until that point.

McKenzie looked at her. “Wow, you can do that?”

“Perhaps. I’ll need to study it further – while it is on my wrist. Removing it would be unwise in the extreme.” Then Awks looked up at Leni, McKenzie and the drow, and some of her previous nervousness returned. “I mean, um, that would be useful, would it not? I understand that something odd is going on, I just thought that maybe it would help?”

“It would,” Leni nodded. “Thank you, Saliseralla. I’m really glad we’ve got your help.”

McKenzie grinned. “Yeah, welcome to the Anti-Drows Society. So far it’s us three and a suspiciously agile maid.”

“Which reminds me,” Leni said, drawing the curtains on Frowny-face once again. “Secrecy is paramount – the fewer people that know about this, the better – at least for now. We need to work out what we’re dealing with before we do anything else or tell anyone else, and that includes random women you happen to be in a hammock with, Wednesday, are we clear on that?”

McKenzie was about to direct a scathing reply back at her, but then stopped. They did, after all, really need to get to their destination. Nothing should be allowed to interfere with that, it was why they were here.

“You’re...right,” he said. “I’m really sorry, Leni.”

Leni directed a narrow-eyed look at him. “Well that’s suspicious.”

“What is?”

“You. Apologising,” she answered. “Before now, quite literally, you brought down the wrath of a vengeful god on us and never apologised: you barely acknowledged it might warrant acknowledgement, if I remember right.”

“But...you’re right. We need to keep this very secret. We get Shaveen back in here before she can tell anyone else, we stay in this room, and we keep a really low profile until we get where we’re going. That’s the most important thing,” McKenzie replied earnestly.

“Why?” Leni asked.

“We have to get there,” McKenzie told her, then repeated: “It’s the most important thing,” in a dogged tone.

“I want you to know that I’m deeply conflicted about this, but, well,” Leni said, and slapped him again.

“Ouch!” McKenzie yelped.

“Um, are you going to be doing that often, Lady Elleniralla?” Awks asked. “I’d appreciate some warning, if so.”

“Why now?” Leni asked McKenzie.

McKenzie glared at her, but then comprehension came flooding back: “Whoa. Fuck. Totally lost the plot there. Okay, point taken, I’m back in the room – but I owe you for those slaps.”

Leni did not appear to be reassured. “I need you to listen to me, Wednesday, and do what I say – because if you can’t then we are in serious trouble,” she said.

She threw a backwards glance at Awks, then took McKenzie by the arm to lead him across the cabin to the far wall.

“Get your hand off me, Leni,” McKenzie growled.

“Please listen,” Leni hissed in a forceful whisper, although she did release his arm. “If I can’t keep you thinking straight then all of this was for nothing, because the plan will not work without you. You are the only one that can do what needs doing, but unfortunately you are also the only one we can’t slap a magic bracelet on to keep on task.”

“Yeah, well, the other version of slapping seems to be working just fine,” McKenzie grumbled.

“For now, but as much as I derive an almost divine sense of satisfaction from whacking you around the face every five minutes, I don’t think that’s a long-term solution, do you?” Leni asked.

“Probs not,” McKenzie allowed.

“We’re getting closer to the target every second – the influence is only going to get more and more pervasive. I hate to say it, McKenzie, but we are not ready for this. We did not bargain on the crew of the ship being a hostile force – I think at this point we need to take control of the ship and turn it around, before-” She stopped.

“Before what?” McKenzie asked.

“Before we can’t anymore,” Leni said. “Because soon you won’t care about what you need to do when this ship touches down for the last time. All you’ll be able to think about is getting to the Obelisk.”