Chapter 11

“Tom?” asked Mariko, tilting her head inquisitively.

Heida straightened up, coughing into her hand as she pocketed her phone. “Oh, sorry,” she said, pointing at Kowalski. “The big one looked like somebody I went to school with. It’s uncanny.”

“Huh? Me?” Kowalski’s face flushed for absolutely no good reason. He really was a bundle of nerves. “I-I think I’d remember you.”

Still, it was a smooth fib. I’ll have to be careful with this one. She’d lie to my face without blinking.

Damn it all, why did that make her more enticing? I seriously needed to give my taste in women a good talking to. I supposed it came from growing up around devils.

Mr. Maki introduced us in turn, and Heida raised her eyebrow at my name. She stayed quiet, thankfully. Henrik returned the favor, identifying her as Wizard Corpswoman Heida… well, he said the last part awfully fast, but I was pretty sure it was Bryndísardóttir. At least she’d been honest about her name.

“So now that we’ve gotten the formalities out of the way,” said Henrik, gesturing towards the office building behind us, “let’s show you your new home away from home.”

Mr. Maki and Henrik led the way, leaving us younger wizards to bring up the rear. I didn’t look right at Heida, since I wanted a bit to think up an excuse for giving her the false name. I noticed that Mariko still kept a tight grip on her right wrist.

I leaned in and whispered in her ear. “Having a bad day?” Her long-sleeved uniform covered up some ghastly scars from an encounter with the Holy Brotherhood, the source of her tremors.

Mariko shook her head. “I am a bit nervous, but the pain is not bad. You are kind to worry, though.”

I nodded, turning to check on the other lady present. Heida seemed amused with me, which was good. Most of the human girls I knew were sticklers for the truth, which didn’t seem to be her problem at all.

I couldn’t claim to have seen much of the human realms outside of the school and some military bases, so I didn’t have much to compare the small office to. There was a long counter at the front, separated from the waiting area by a door that Henrik opened for us with a plastic card. It made me think of a butcher shop from back home, with a system for being assigned a ticket number before being helped. The back office was a few desks with phones, computers, and other mundane materials.

“This doesn’t seem especially military,” I said.

“That’s because it isn’t,” replied Henrik. “The real Wizard Corps bases are in Reykjavik and on the southern coast. We’re here as public relations.”

“Public relations?” asked Kowalski, awkwardly working his way through the narrow space between the desks.

“You might have noticed that we enjoy certain privileges in the Wizards Corps,” said Mr. Maki, having the same issue as Kowalski. “We want to let the people see where their tax dollars go, so areas that are seen as lower risk will have wizards help out where they’re needed.”

Mariko’s eyes lit up. “Like what we used to do on Saturdays back at the school.”

“Exactly. There are dozens of these little Wizard Corps Outreach Offices around the world,” said Mr. Maki. He frowned as he checked his watch. “Where is everyone else, Henrik? Are they already out on assignment? I count six desks and only two of you.”

The wiry man scratched nervously at his whitening goatee. “A lot’s changed since the fall of England. It’s down to me and Heida these days; everyone with combat experience was redeployed to red zones.”

“Ara,” said Mariko in surprise. “You must be terribly busy.”

“That is one way of putting it,” said Heida. “That reminds me. Henrik, I got a service request earlier. Top priority, though I’d bet it’s a false alarm.”

“Oh, is that why you wouldn’t look up from your phone? I thought you were just glued to it like always.” The older wizard’s harsh tone made Kowalski flinch nervously, but Heida didn’t so much as blink.

“Yes, sir. Permission to take the cadets out to deal with it? You can catch up with your friend.”

The Icelandic man nodded.

“Mind your superior officer, cadets,” said Mr. Maki.

Heida waved us towards a back door that opened up into an alley. A row of four white, unassuming vans waited for us.

Once we were out of earshot, her stiff posture relaxed. “Can you believe that man?” Her pitch deepened as she imitated his voice. “‘Heida, you are to prioritize service requests immediately. They will be routed to your phone.’ And then he goes, ‘Heida, how dare you look at your phone when a service request comes in?’”

“He sounds a little… inconsistent,” said Mariko, her lips twisting into a wry smile. “I can see why he is friends with Mr. Maki.”

That earned her a laugh from Heida. The blonde woman wrapped her arm around Mariko’s shoulder. “I bet you have some dirt on the Divine Blade. We’ll trade stories when we aren’t on the clock.”

“What are we doing on the clock?” I asked.

“Have you ever seen a Sverðhvalur?”

“Seen it? I can’t even pronounce it,” said Kowalski, beating me to the punch.

“Neither has anybody else, but you’ll understand soon,” she replied, swinging open the van’s back door. “I hope you weren’t expecting to be warm this morning. Or dry, for that matter.”

I let out a forlorn sigh.

“See, Soren gets it,” said Heida, flashing me a wry smile.

***********

“Yeah, that’s where I saw it.” The aged fisherman cut the fishing boat’s motor and pointed a finger towards a floating buoy. We could just make it out in the faint light of the rising sun. “Big as a house, with a fin as tall as two of the blond boy put together.”

“Hm,” said Heida. “Was anyone else out with you?”

“No, ma’am,” he said. He patted the boat’s dashboard affectionately. The fiberglass vessel was just large enough to seat the five of us, with most of the space on the deck taken up by machines for casting driftnets. “Patrik had to take his wife to the hospital. He’s my son-in-law you see, it’s his third.”

“Sir, why did you not go with him?” asked Mariko. “It is your grandchild.”

The older man barked a harsh laugh. “It’s his third. Been there, done that. ‘Sides, I’ve got rent to pay.”

Mariko frowned, but nodded without further comment. She went back to rubbing her upper arms. Even the magically-enhanced wool couldn’t protect us from the biting chill out on the harbor.

“You’re sure you didn’t simply see the buoy itself?” I asked. “In the dark, it’s about the right shape.” I could have said it more gently, but I was bloody cold.

The fisherman stiffened. “I know a Sverðhvalur when I see one, boy. You’d call it a sword whale in English. Great, evil beasts, white as bone with horrible, blank eyes. Like the devil had designed a killer whale. My grandfather told me about them, and his grandfather told him.”

“The Horde wishes they had anything that dangerous for their navy,” I said. “W— they’ve got sea serpents, but they’re just mosasaurs and plesiosaurs. As in, marine reptiles. They like this frigid climate even less than I do, which is just saying something. I’m sure it was the buoy in the dark.”

Anger flashed in the old man’s eyes. “You disrespectful little—”

Heida stepped in between us. “Please excuse the cadet. It’s his first day, and he doesn’t have any idea what he’s talking about. He should go and watch for the monster, just in case it comes back.”

I caught the rebuke in her tone, so I went to the back of the vessel, looking for something I knew damn well wasn’t there. Not that I can see much; it’s nearly lunchtime and the sun’s barely waking up.

“How’re you so sure, Magpie?” asked Kowalski, leaning against the metal railing next to me. “Mrs. Perera always said that there’s a lot we don’t know about the exotic creatures the Horde brought with them from the other world. Maybe there are some Sverth… Svorth… sword whales with them?”

“Mrs. Perera was also a terrorist who hadn’t been in the field in more than a decade,” I said. “I’d take anything she taught us with a boatload of salt.” Mind you, I’d been in the same ‘social club’ as her, but Kowalski didn’t know that.

“You have a point there,” he conceded. “Still, if devils and magic are real, who’s to say there isn’t something to those other legends?”

“Because as far as we can tell, this whole world was completely mundane until the Horde came,” I replied. “If there were enormous sword whales out there that could cut open shipping vessels, there’d be some hard proof.”

“That is rather closed-minded of you,” chided Mariko, coming up behind. She still shivered and rubbed her arms, especially her wounded right one. “There are hundreds of years of stories about these monsters. There might be something to them.”

I bit my tongue. I supposed it was reasonable enough from their perspective; they didn’t have the same insider information I did. I knew what was fantastical in this world, and it all had come through a portal in Alaska in 2030.

Changing the subject, I waved at the choppy water. “What exactly are we supposed to do if this supposed creature does come for us? We aren’t exactly in a position to fight it off.”

Mariko’s eyes widened. “Then I hope you are right to be closedminded.”

“You’d be surprised how often it’s the best policy,” I said.

I felt a sharp pain in my ear as Hedia gave a tug. “Soren’s right, but he doesn’t have to let the civilians know that he’s right.” Her voice was just above a whisper.

“Wait, he is?” asked Kowalski.

“Don’t sound so surprised,” I grumbled as Heida let me go.

“I’ve been on this assignment for a year,” said Heida. “Nothing from the Horde has ever been seen north of Scotland. However, when England got ransacked, people up here got jumpy, and they started reportings things that weren’t there. Trolls on a farm, giant birds in the sky, UFOs, you name it. Today it just happens to be out in the harbor.”

Mariko’s eyes lit up. “So we are here to reassure people.”

“Exactly.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder at the fisherman. “He’ll go back home and tell his daughter that her husband can go fishing with him again because the Sverðhvalur isn’t in the harbor anymore. The Wizard Corps did their job and scared it off.” She grunted in annoyance as her cool, blue eyes settled back on me. “Except because Mr. Smartmouth over here challenged him, we’re going to have to spend more time humoring him.”

I stifled a curse. “How do you usually resolve things?”

“I claim to see it in the distance and fire some spells at it,” she said, golden sparks dancing around her fingers. “I call my magical affinity Lightshow for a reason. I can be extremely convincing.”

“I imagine you can,” I said, rubbing the spots she’d left behind out of my vision.

Mariko rubbed her bad hand. “Wait, you lie to them and let them keep thinking there are monsters around? That will make them more worried!”

Heida shrugged. “He already believes in those sea monsters. They pay my salary with their taxes; they might as well get a show.”

I peered over the tall woman’s shoulder at our patron. He had turned his attention to the horizon, turning this way at that. He nearly jumped out of his seat at a distant splash. “Sverðhvalur!”

We rushed to the port side of the boat, which turned out to be a mistake as it listed dangerously. “Kowalski, go to the other side!”

“R-right,” he said. He followed my order, but Buddy emerged from his shadow, taking his place. He was in a thin, lanky form with an overly long neck so he could see further.

Mariko pointed at a floating seabird. “You do not need to worry, sir. It was a puffin landing.”

The old man chuckled. “Well, that’s a…” He trailed off when he caught sight of the shadowy monster Kowalski left in his wait. “What in God’s name is that?”

“He’s a spell,” I said, not wanting to get bogged down in the details. “Kowalski, you were just about to send him looking for the Sveroth-valur, weren’t you?”

“Your accent is awful,” muttered Heida.

Everyone’s a critic.

Kowalski hesitated a moment, and Buddy bared his jagged, black teeth at me. “Er, is that a good idea? I don’t know if Buddy would enjoy that.”

“I don’t see why he wouldn’t,” I said, subtly stepping so Mariko was between me and the magical apparition. It wasn’t like I was using a woman as a shield… not that a devil like me would hesitate to do that. She had simply calmed Buddy down at the school before.

Stop focusing on that unworthy feeling and explain yourself before he pounces! “Buddy, you don’t feel hot or cold, do you? If you did, you’d be shivering like the rest of us. Worse, since you’re nude. And you don’t have to breathe, right?”

Buddy’s eyes narrowed into glowing, white slits.

“Uh, you’re right, Magpie, but I’m not sure he likes where this is going,” said Kowalski.

“Why shouldn’t he want to go underwater, where there are lots of squid and fish to hunt? Nobody’s going to complain, and he gets to be on his own. No humans telling him what to do and when. All he has to do is tell us if he sees a white monster-whale.”

For perhaps the first time, Buddy looked on me with something besides hate or irritation. There was excitement in those white orbs. His shadowy form shifted into something like an angular octopus, and he jumped into the water without so much as a splash.

“That’s peculiar. I know he has weight. He bloody well almost crushed me during our War Game.”

“I don’t know much more about him than you do, Soren,” replied Kowalski.

I considered pressing him further, but the fisherman finally seemed less jumpy, and I saw no reason to spoil that.

“Nice save,” whispered Heida into my ear. “I thought the old man was going to have a heart attack.”

“Buddy has that effect on people,” I said. “What now?”

“Now we get paid to whale-watch,” replied Heida.