Kate Daniels 02 - Magic Burns

bucks a couple of mercs will bag the harpy with no fuss and even give your kid a pretty tail feather for his hat, right?”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œSuppose you don’t have three hundred bucks. Or suppose the job is code 12, too nasty for the Guild to take it. You still have a harpy and you want her gone. So you call the Order, because you heard they don’t charge that much. They ask you to come to their Chapter, where a nice knight talks to you, gets your income assessed and tells you good news: they’re charging you fifty bucks because they’ve determined that’s all you can afford. Kismet.”
    The clerk eyed me. “What’s the catch?”
    â€œThe catch is, they give you a piece of paper to sign, your plea to the Order. And there in big letters it says that you authorize the Order to remove any threat to humanity that arises in connection with this case.”
    The Order of Merciful Aid had chosen its name well. They provided merciful aid, usually on the edge of the blade or by the burn of a bullet. Trouble was, sometimes you got more aid than you wanted.
    â€œLet’s say you sign the plea. The knights come out and observe the harpy. At the same time, you notice that every time you see the damn thing, your elderly senile aunt disappears. So you watch the old lady and sure enough, the magic wave hits and she turns into a harpy. You tell the knights you want to call the whole thing off—you love your aunt and she does no harm sitting in that tree anyway. The knights tell you that five percent of harpies carry a deadly disease on their claws and they’ve determined her to be a danger to humanity. You get angry, you yell, you call the cops, but the cops tell you it’s all legal, there is nothing they can do, and besides the Order is part of the law enforcement anyway. You promise to lock your aunt up. You try a bribe. You point to your kids and explain how much they love the old lady. You cry. You beg. But nothing helps.” I drained my glass. “And that’s what it’s like working for the Order.”
    The clerk poured himself a shot and tossed it down his throat. “Did that really happen?”
    â€œYep.”
    â€œDid they kill the old lady?”
    â€œYep.”
    â€œJesus.”
    â€œIf your nephew thinks he can do that, tell him to apply to the Academy. He’s at a good age for it. It’s hard physically and the academic load is pretty big, but if he has the will, he’ll make it.”
    â€œHow do you know?”
    I swiped my stack off the counter. “Back when I was a kid, my guardian enrolled me. He was a knight-diviner.”
    â€œNo shit. How long did you last?”
    â€œTwo years. Did well on everything except mental conditioning. I’ve got authority issues.” I waved at the clerk and took my paperwork to one of the tables in the gloom.
    Truth was, I didn’t do well. I did great. Tested right off the power-scale. Got certified as an electrum-level squire. But I hated it. The Order required absolute dedication, and I already had a cause. I wanted to kill the most powerful man in the world, and that kind of desire leaves little room for anything else. I dropped out and went to work for the Mercenary Guild. It broke Greg’s heart.
    Greg had been a great guardian, fanatical in his determination to protect me. For Greg, the Order was a place of safety. If my target found out I existed, he’d kill me, and neither Greg nor I had enough power to resist him. Not yet anyway. Had I joined the Order, every last knight would protect me against this threat. But it wasn’t worth it, so I parted ways with the Order and never looked back.
    And then Greg was murdered. To find his killer, I went to the Order and maneuvered myself into their investigation. I found the murderer and killed him. It was a grisly, nasty affair, now called the Red Point Stalker case. In the process my Academy record came to light and the Order decided they wanted me back. They weren’t subtle about it, either. They made up a job—a liaison between themselves and the Mercenary Guild—promised me Greg’s office, his files, authority to handle minor cases, and a steady paycheck. I took it. Part of it was guilt: I had shunned Greg after dropping out of the Academy. Part of it was common sense: I had mortgages on both my father’s house, near Savannah, and on Greg’s place here in Atlanta. To give up