The Almighty Dominance (by Sunshine) novel Chapter 756

The recording glass hummed once, the way it does when a voice comes in loud, and the sound carried all the way down the table.

“Do you want to die?”

Minister Penn’s face went white, then red, and he put both hands flat on the wood to stop them shaking.

“How dare you,” he said. “How dare you threaten me. In this hall. I am the Minister of Magic.”

“Then let me ask you a better one.” Alex hadn’t sat down.

“Three hundred Red Tower magicians came to a private dinner two nights ago to kill me, my chairwoman, nine White Tower elders in their eighties and two hundreds our guests,” Alex said.

He leaned in slightly.

“So I want to hear you say it clearly, Minister, because the glass is running. Are you standing with them?”

“I stand with justice—”

"We are on the side of justice. We never strike first. You have to pick a side, because if you stand with them, you stand against us—and you need to understand what being our enemy truly means."

Penn straightened his coat. He had prepared this part.

"I stand for justice," he said. "Just look at the results. Did anyone from the White Tower actually die?"

“What?”

“Nobody died.” Penn was warming to it now, one hand up. “Three hundred Red Tower magicians came to your celebration. You had just defeated the Black Tower — the whole country was celebrating with you. They put fire in the sky above your banquet hall for forty minutes. It was a display.”

Somebody down the table made a small sound.

“A firework display,” Penn said. “In your honour.”

…

Alex looked at him for three full seconds.

“In my honour.”

“And here is my proof, and it is very simple.” Penn spread both hands, appealing to the room now, to the towers, to the glass. “Nobody in that building died. Nobody in that building was hurt. Not one guest. Not one elder. Not a scratch, not a burn, not a single injury among forty people.”

“That’s because we prepared.”

“No.” Penn’s voice went up. “That is because the Red Tower never intended to harm anybody. If three hundred battle magicians had wanted your guests dead, your guests would be dead. They were playing. And you—”

He pointed down the length of the table.

“You attacked them for real. You took two hundred and seventy-five buildings in one night. So the fault is not theirs, White Tower. The fault is yours. And you will return everything to the Red Tower.”

“My fault?” Alex laughed.

Not politely. It came up out of him and filled that four-hundred-year-old room and bounced off the glass and came back down, and it went on long enough that Vail looked at the table.

“I’m sorry,” Alex said. “I want to be sure I have it. Three hundred men set fire to kill us—”

“Alexander—”

“Because my roof held, it’s my fault.” He wiped his eye. “Minister, do you know what you’ve just told every magician in this country? You’ve told them that as long as they fail, it wasn’t a crime.”

Penn’s mouth opened and stayed open.

Alex turned to the man beside him.

“Elias. We’re leaving.”

…

Elias White stood up out of his chair with his hat in his hand, eighty-one years old, and nine White elders stood up behind him without a word.

“Stop.” Penn was on his feet. “Sit down. If the White Tower refuses to hear the United State of Magic, then the White Tower makes an enemy of this entire country. Every tower. Every state. Do you understand what I am saying to you?”

“You’re a minister,” Alex said. “Don’t confuse yourself with a country.”

“I represent this country!”

Penn had nineteen months left in his post. He had a house he’d stopped being able to afford four years ago and a state pension that would cover about half of it, and at four o’clock that morning a man from Ferrowgate had sat in a curtained room and put a number on the table that solved every one of those problems at once.

It is remarkable how much justice a tired man can find in nineteen months.

“No, you don’t,” Alex said. “Right now you represent the Red Tower and your own pocket, and everybody at this table can see which is heavier.”

“You—”

“If you want to use the power of your office against me, use it.” Alex was already walking. “But understand something first. I am not a child you can send to his room. I don’t take orders here.”

He stopped at the end of the table.

“Come and take it, if you can.”

…

“Remember this,” Penn called after him. “This country and every tower in this hall will become your enemy!”

“So be it.” Alex turned around at the door.

He didn’t look at Penn. He looked past him, along the table, at Blue and Green and Yellow and Brown, one at a time, and every one of them met his eyes because it would have been worse not to.

“Go on and ask them,” he said. “That’s your right.”

He put his hat on.

“The White Tower has never moved against any of you. We have never taken a coin from you, never sent a man to your gate, never said one word about you in public. That doesn’t change today.”

A beat.

“But if any of you comes for us — we won’t be polite about it.”

Then he walked out, and nine old people in white walked out behind him, and the doors closed on a room that did not say anything for some time.

They were all still doing their jobs.

The same man came to your door on the first of the month. Same face, same complaint about your stairs, same tea. He renewed your flame-charm the same way his father had renewed your father’s. The forge on the corner never lost an hour. The bakery oven never went cold twice.

The building he walked out of that morning was white instead of red. His coat was white. The receipt he handed you had a different name at the top.

That was the entire change.

It was as if a company had rebranded overnight — new sign, new colour, same staff, same customers, same routes, same work — and the only thing that had actually moved was where the money went at the end of the month.

It used to go up to the head of the Red Tower.

Now it went up to the head of the White.

…

In a private room above a restaurant on the north side of the city, three men sat down together where nobody could see them.

The Minister of Magic. The chairman of Ferrowgate. And what was left of the Red Tower.

“I’ve decided,” Penn said.

He had a glass in his hand and he’d had two already, and the window behind him was open onto a warm night and a street full of people who had spent the day laughing at his newspapers.

“There will be an alliance. Every remaining tower, together, for one purpose — to end the White Tower. I have spoken to all four privately and all four have agreed in principle.” He turned the glass. “They are only asking about the payment.”

“How much?” Kessler said.

“A great deal.”

“I’ll prepare the money.” Kessler didn’t even blink. “All of it.”

Nobody in that room mentioned that Ferrowgate had been signed away on a wager two weeks ago and legally belonged to Beatrix Hargrove.

Penn laughed until he had to put the glass down.

“Good,” he said. “Good. And when the White Tower is finished, gentlemen — don’t forget about mine.”

They drank on it. All three of them went home happy.

…

It was well past midnight when Minister Penn came down the back steps to his carriage.

Two guards at the kerb. A driver up front with the lamps already lit and the horses shifting their feet in the quiet, and the street empty in both directions the way that street is always empty at that hour.

One of the guards opened the door for him. Penn got in, still smiling, still thinking about the number.

The door closed.

And a blade came out of the dark inside the carriage and laid itself against the side of his neck.

“How dare you,” a voice said, “try to destroy the White Tower.”