With unerring aim, he poured himself a half-glass, and then did the same for me. Amused, I brought it to my hand with a touch of Zeben’s TK, while he took up his and took a bracing drink.

“There is no one else on the planet who is listening to you or watching you now, Mr. President,” I told him evenly. “You don’t have to watch your words for fear of your minders keeping tabs on you. Only you and I will know what is discussed here, and you may tell them whatever you wish after the fact.”

He grimaced, his eyes flicking to the hidden room, where the Bishop was trying to get his magic through to listen to me, and failing utterly. “The recorders?” he asked professionally.

“Currently relaying empty air and static, indeterminate background noises. The sound of our voices is reaching you and I, no one else.”

He looked at his glass as it started to hum in his hand to the Chord, echoing off against his own magic to do so. “Ah, is this what it means to be the Worldsinger, my lady?” he asked seriously, studying the effect. “Even my own Stars seem to be calling out to you...”

“They are,” I assured him, and he grimaced, just a little, and took another drink, for which I forgave him.

“Well, then, let us skip past the many banal pleasantries we could soothe one another with in our pursuit of vanity, and get right to business, now that I need not talk your ear off and go around and around with you.” His dark eyes regarded me seriously. “What do you wish of me? To tell the truth, your request for a meeting was a great surprise to everyone, including the Church.” The finger he flicked towards the listening room was not complimentary. “Be that as it may, I was instructed in no uncertain terms to deny you whatever you wished to do.” He looked almost surprised to have admitted that, glancing at his drink once in astonishment.

“The Song around me is infused with Truth, Mr. President.” His whole body jerked just at the touch of the power in the Word. “It will be uncomfortable for you to lie to me, and naturally you will know if I am lying to you.”

“I see.” He took another deep breath, looking me up and down for the fourth time, once again revising his image of me. I knew he appreciated the sight, his culture expected him to display it, and I didn’t hold it against him. “Well, then, what has prompted your visit to my fair country?” he asked reasonably.

“I wish to assault, close down, and destroy the Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon that are empowering the Mexican Death Zone.”

He almost dropped his drink, just barely catching it in time. For ten long seconds he just stared at me; then he threw back the rest of his glass, swallowed hard, and immediately poured himself another as I sipped at mine.

“Mother of the Savior,” he murmured, after taking some more liquid courage. “That was not what I was expecting.”

“Something religious, I imagine, strongly hinted at by your minder?” I asked coolly, flicking my eyes that way. His smile was warm, but his eyes were cold as he just barely tilted his glass in acknowledgement. “The Church of Light is the one that uses violence and lies to suppress and destroy other faiths, Mr. President. That is not how Heaven works.”

“I see.” He wanted to be skeptical, but there was too much Truth in the air. “I cannot shake the feeling that this is, in the end, a matter of religion, however.”

“Oh, it very much will be. I am certain that you know, between the two of them, which one will be better for the country, but that does not mean it will be better for you and your fellow elected officials.” Brutal honesty there about the graft money and bribes that were the true meat and drink of politicians here, and in most countries dominated by the Church of Light. “In that light, I believe you will not be surprised that we can muster the votes in the Congress of the Union to get the motion to finally destroy the Death Zone passed. Thus, the main impediment is you, and your minders in the Synod.”

He actually blanched as I said that word. “So, you are aware.” He did not sound surprised. “This action would seem to be something that the Church of Light would back with everything, but I’ve a feeling that they will instead oppose it all they can, simply because you are involved.”

I nodded once. “The existence of the Death Zone legitimizes their existence in Mexico. Remove it, and they have no reason to hold the power and authority that they do. Basically, the threat that they would NOT restrain the Death Zone has kept them at the heart of power in this country for over a century.

“You will probably not be surprised that a similar situation exists in Egypt, Mr. President.”

“I am not,” he agreed, swirling his drink once before taking another sip. “Is that why you wish to do this? To strike another blow against the Church?”

“That is a concern because the Church has made it a concern of mine,” I confessed, taking a sip of my own. “In truth, I would do this whether the Church was here or not. This is all in preparation for the Endgame, before the Netherlords and the Lords of Light finally get fed up with their games and pawns, and take to the field personally.”

His color drained a little at my words, and he looked away, in the direction of the Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon. “The Death Zone...”

“-is right now one of the places the Netherlords will manifest at. I think you can guess what will happen to the Church-serving populace of the city if that happens.”

He grit his teeth, picturing the likely sight, of dark clouds swallowing the city, and unlimited numbers of Undead and Shades sweeping over everything, butchering everyone living within.

“Likewise, if the Lords of Light come here, you are not one of those who is going to be spared, as you are a Dark Mage. Your Curse Magic will not be accepted, as it ties you to the Underworld, and you and every other Dark Mage will be slaughtered out of hand by them as impure and unworthy.”

His eyes closed, and he slumped slightly as the Truth reverberated in his bones. His Curse Element was probably twitching in fear at hearing what I was saying.

“So, you want to destroy the Death Zone by destroying the Pyramids and the ancient Ahaw who guard them, keeping the Netherlords from manifesting here, and keeping the Lords of Light from being drawn here to stop them.”

“That is the long and short of it, yes. The fact that doing so will put a thumb in the eye of the Synod and destroy the Church’s reason for being in Mexico is a welcome and delicious side dish to the main course.

“I am attempting to save the world, Mr. President. This needs to happen for us to have any chance at all of surviving when the interloping Realm Lords finally decide to make their move.”

He was quiet for a long moment, breaking this down in regards to himself and his position. He was Brown, almost to Purple, but not quite. He could be brought back, he was just in a ruthlessly uncompromising position of servitude to heartless arseholes of the highest order.

But then, spite is a powerful emotion.

“Tell me how this is good for me, Healer Fae,” he finally rasped.

“If you do nothing, you are a dead man. Neither side will take you.” He nodded slowly, realistic enough to accept both such incredibly powerful beings didn’t have to take ants like him. “If you do this, you will save the city and yourself, and your only problem will be with the Synod and the Church.

“If you are worried about being re-elected, you need not. You will lose the cities the Church controls, but the countryside will be yours... and you are going to make yourself a legend if and when we win, especially if you do it in the face of the Church’s opposition.

“I will be absolutely happy to let you take all the public credit for our victory... if you fight for the force.

“Your predecessors were all pawns and servants of the Church, Mr. President. I think it is time for a President to be famous on his merits, and your name to tower over your country as the man who finally managed to do what the Church could not... and so prove how useless they truly have been to Mexico.”

His hand tightened on his glass. “I would be fighting to live, would I not?” he managed to laugh, his eyes hard. “They are a terrible foe, Healer Fae.”

“You do know they’ve attempted to assassinate me nearly a dozen times, right?” I replied evenly. My eyes might have been glowing with Wrath by the way he was staring, so I closed them demurely.

“What I want is the right to recruit from your national army. I, and I alone, will dictate who gets to join my efforts. You will supply them, house them, and pay them.

“I will train them and raise them into the deadliest undead-slaying force that this world has ever seen. We will fall upon the Death Zone and grind it down, sending Teotihuacán to the dustbin of history.

“Then I will take that army across the Atlantic, and start on Egypt’s Pyramids, and every crusading mage from across the world worthy of joining me will come there as we drive our way into the Valley of Kings and shut them down forever, one by one.”

His hand trembled around his drink again. The glory of my words called to him with all the dreams of the youth he’d left behind long ago. The siren song of a truly higher cause, rather than the endless games of power and grasping for benefits of the mighty in this world, the lies behind the smiles and the boots of the Sages and Families upon the throat of his country and the politicians who were only mouthpieces for their wills.

“How should I go about this, then?” he finally asked. “The Church will use many means to thwart what you want to happen?”

“I presume the Bishop was mostly concerned with allowing any appearance of the Church of Heaven here in the capital, especially anything resembling a great cathedral,” I said lightly, and watched him nod slowly. “The motion to allow such an edifice to be built is already being presented in the Chamber of Deputies. The Deputies there are preparing to wage a very public and determined battle to allow a temple worthy of the name to be built.”

“And that is not your goal at all,” he mused slowly, smiling slightly. “It is but a great distraction that will still throw more dirt on the name of the Church...”

I raised my glass to him. “And you can assure the Bishop that you just talked around and around in mindless support of my proposal, and you will veto it, if it ever comes to pass Congress.

“I think we can make it rage back and forth between the chambers for some time, and the Undead Hunters will be on the way and in force before they realize what has happened.”

“Can you conceal your movements from their observers? They have fanatics everywhere, even among my best men,” he said, his face looking as if he was chewing glass.

“Our influence comes from the bottom up, and is also remarkable in how far it has penetrated. Rest assured, the reassignment of soldiers will be going through channels right under their noses, or completely outside their control. We’ve been setting this up for years, Mr. President.”

He managed to chuckle at my words. “I should be very frightened at hearing how an outlander has penetrated my country, but I suppose that I am but one more example of exactly how such a thing has been done, and I would be calling the kettle quite... black, as it were.”

I just lifted an eyebrow at the allusion to my skin. “Better than yet another smug set of gringos thinking they know how to run the world, Mr. President?”

“Far more honest and much easier on the eyes, Healer Fae,” he chuckled, and gestured at my drink as he reached for the bottle. “Let us toast on this, and let me practice the lies I will heap upon His Grace the eavesdropper and dog of the Synod.”

I held out my glass with a raised eyebrow, allowed it to be filled, and tunked them with him crisply. We both threw back the shots without much effort, and if it was warm as it went down, I wasn’t too worried. My resistance to poisons was astronomical at this point, a flat-out immunity without some massive magic backing them, and even then, my Alchemical resistance was basically impassable.