Free Burned by Benedict Jacka

that’s what you’re asking.’
    ‘There’s good news and bad,’ Talisid said. ‘Good news first. Druss the Red has voted against Levistus’s proposal.’
    ‘Your work?’
    ‘I’d like to take credit, but no.’
    ‘I guess I’ll send him a thank you note if I live out the week. What’s the bad news?’
    ‘Spire has declined to meet with you. Officially, he’s retiring to his family residence over the Christmas season and is unavailable for comment. Unofficially, I’ve been led to understand that he is staying neutral. He won’t support you, but neither will he vote against you.’
    ‘Three to two. So it all comes down to the last vote.’
    ‘To Undaaris, yes.’
    ‘Has he replied?’ I said. I knew what Talisid was going to say, but conversations go a lot smoother when you don’t pre-empt the other guy.
    ‘Undaaris has agreed to meet you,’ Talisid said. ‘I believe he spent a good part of yesterday making up his mind. He hasn’t made any commitments, but I would consider his agreement to meet a positive sign.’
    ‘So I’m going to have to convince him to vote in my favour,’ I said. ‘And whatever I tell him, it’s going to have to be more convincing than whatever arguments Levistus has made already.’
    ‘Or might make in the future, yes.’
    ‘Any suggestions for what I could trade him?’
    ‘How familiar are you with Senior Council politics?’
    ‘Not very.’
    ‘Out of the seven members of the Senior Council, Bahamus and Sal Sarque are affiliated with the Guardians,’ Talisid said. ‘Levistus and Alma are strongly associated with the Directors. Traditionally, those two pairs have tended to disagree, but Levistus has recently taken a strong stance opposing further Dark encroachment. In doing so, he’s won over Sarque. Bahamus and Sarque are divided on this issue, and Druss opposes Levistus in almost all areas, but still, that gives Levistus a reasonably consistent voting advantage of three to two. Spire and Undaaris are the swing votes. Spire leans neutral and independent. Undaaris is a Centrist.’
    ‘I thought Levistus had the support of the Centrists.’
    ‘Up to a point,’ Talisid said. ‘Many of the Centrists are coming round to the Unity Bloc’s way of thinking. They’re generally opposed to hostile action against Dark mages, and they’ve been disagreeing with Levistus and Sarque’s more aggressive stance. Undaaris isn’t going to want to upset his own faction.’
    ‘If he was that keen on not upsetting them, wouldn’t he have voted against the proposal already?’
    ‘A year ago he probably would have, but over the past few months Undaaris has been accused of being overly soft on Dark mages and their violations of the Concord. The Crusaders are pressuring him to show strength.’
    I should probably point out here that if you’re finding this confusing, it’s not just you. Council politics are complicated as hell – Light mages grow up with it, but I’m not a Light mage. One of the big issues that divides the Council is the question of how they should treat Dark mages. The Unity Bloc are the closest you can get to a ‘pro-Dark’ faction. The Centrists mostly just want to maintain the status quo, though they can be swayed. The Guardians are opposed to Dark mages, but they do so reactively; they try to protect anyone who might get hurt by Dark mages, but they don’t advocate attacks unless provoked. Talisid is a member of the Guardian faction, and while we’ve had our disagreements, I’ve found his beliefs fairly compatible with mine.
    But the mention of the Crusaders worried me. The Crusaders are the most aggressively anti-Dark of all the Light factions, and the most militant. They also have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to rogues; as far as they’re concerned, once a Dark mage, always a Dark mage. In the past, I’d mostly been off their radar – too small-time for them to care about – but the Crusaders had been utterly furious about Morden being