Bound

chapter 14

Everything changes. Pick any constant about your life and wait long enough, and it’ll be different. We all know that, but for some reason, it’s a hard lesson to remember. I suppose it’s because to do anything, we have to assume that things won’t change—you can’t make plans without assuming a certain degree of permanence. And for the most part, that assumption turns out to be true. Until it isn’t.

But one of the things I’ve noticed as I’ve grown older is that while everything changes, the change usually isn’t obvious. Sometimes that’s because the change is so slow and gradual. A pair of shoes wears out, a person ages, the tree outside your window grows; every day it’s different, but in such tiny increments that you never notice. But sometimes you don’t notice not because the change is slow, but because it’s invisible. All too often, the really big changes—the kind that go through our lives like a tornado and throw everything upside down—happen where we can’t see them. Somewhere far out in the ocean, the sea breezes meet, and the breezes turn into eddies, and the eddies into gusts, and the gusts build into a storm that whirls faster and faster into a roaring hurricane. The satellites watching from space see it and piece it together, but to the people on the ground living under a blue and cloudless sky, it seems like nothing’s happening. Until it’s too late.

Now that I look back on it, that had been what had happened over Christmas. The seeds had been sown when I’d rejected Levistus’s threat during the business with White Rose the winter before. After that battle was over I’d gone home, and in time I’d forgotten about it, but Levistus hadn’t forgotten. He’d planned and waited and finally later that year, when the time was right, he’d made his move and had me sentenced to death. To me it had seemed as though nothing was happening, but things were happening, just not where I could see. And so I’d gone about my business in blissful ignorance, until one Saturday evening Talisid called me and everything fell apart.

As it turned out, the same thing had been happening this year as well. Now that I look back on the whole thing, I can see the clues I missed, but that’s how it works with hindsight. When you know what’s relevant and what you can ignore, then everything is obvious, but it’s not so obvious when you’re caught up in surviving from day to day. At least until life reaches out and smacks you over the head.

| | | | | | | | |

“But that’s a matter for another time,” Morden said, “For now, a different task.”

I looked at Morden, instantly wary. It was late October, only a week after my conversation with Luna. Luna was still working away on the shop, Variam was still training for his journeyman tests, Anne was still avoiding everyone and spending too much time alone in the Hollow, and I was still working for Morden. We were at the end of a workday and my mind immediately flashed back to how he’d given me the last “job.” It had been in a similar manner to this. “What kind of job?”

“Tomorrow night, you and Anne Walker will be accompanying some of my associates on a little expedition,” Morden said. “I’d suggest you come prepared. There’ll be opposition.”

“What kind of opposition?”

“The kind you get at the Council War Rooms.”

I stopped dead. We were walking along the street away from one of the War Rooms’ entrances, and Morden slowed slightly, giving me an inquiring look. “Wait,” I said, hurrying to catch up. “What was that?”

“We’re going to launch an attack on the Council,” Morden said. “Or you will, at any rate. I’m afraid I won’t be personally accompanying you, but I have every confidence in your success.”

I stared at Morden, trying to figure out what to say. The Dark mage navigated around a pedestrian, nodding to the man as he was given space. “I don’t understand,” I said once we were out of earshot again.

“It’s not complicated,” Morden said. “We’re launching an attack on the Council. The ones participating in said attack are the mages who work for me. You are a mage who works for me, therefore you will be participating. Which part of this chain of causation is giving you difficulty?”

“This is . . .”

“I hope you’re not going to say that this is morally objectionable,” Morden said.

“I was going to say ‘insane.’”

“Oh?”

“Did I hear you right?” I said. Normally I watched my words more carefully around Morden, but my guard was down. “Did you seriously just tell me to attack the War Rooms?”

“Isn’t it exactly what the Council have been expecting me to do?”

“Which is exactly why it’s insane!”

“You worry too much, Verus.”

“You told me back in the summer that they were just paranoid!”

“Actually, what I said was that the War Rooms would be equally safe regardless of any new security measures,” Morden said. “A subtle but important difference. And a judgement I’d still agree with. I’ve seen no sign that anything they’ve done will make any difference.”

“Not the slightest . . .” I stared at Morden, lost for words.

“Was there anything else?” Morden asked.

“Have you gone completely nuts?” I demanded. “Has being made a Council member made you as delusional as they are? You think you can just give any order, no matter how crazy, and it’ll happen?”

“I can understand that this must be something of a surprise, but please remain civil.”

I struggled to control myself. Morden watched with an expression of mild interest. “Then do you mind telling me,” I said at last, “exactly how you are planning to carry this out?”

“I’m afraid the details are being kept a secret for the time being,” Morden said. “Operational security. I’m sure you understand.”

“You have to be planning to attack the place from range,” I said. “Right? There’s no way you could be mounting a manned assault—”

“Oh no, it’s manned,” Morden said. “We’re doing this the old-fashioned way. And please do stop saying ‘you.’ As I explained, you’ll be coming.”

“But that’s insane,” I said. “Literally insane. As in, you can’t be a rational person and expect that to work. The Council has bound elementals. Mantis golems. Devourers. Every kind of spell ward and attack ward you can think of. And those are just the things I know about. There’ll be other kinds of guardian constructs and creatures that I’ve never even heard of because they keep them an absolute secret. They’ve been working on fortifying that place for hundreds of years. Dark mages have attacked it I don’t know how many times, and they’ve always failed. The Council literally have more security and fortification measures at the War Rooms than at every other facility in Britain put together. And that’s in times of peace. With all those rumours going around, they’ll have made it even stronger. Attacking the War Rooms is suicide.”

Morden kept walking, listening patiently. “Are you finished?”

“. . . Yes.”

“Your reservations are noted,” Morden said. “Your orders stand. Oh, and since you and she seemed to work so well together last time, you’ll be under Vihaela’s orders again.”

I just stared at Morden. “Of course,” I said at last when I could speak. “Why not? So is Richard going to be coming along too, just to make it a party?”

“There’s really no point in having subordinates if you do everything yourself,” Morden said. “Vihaela will be in tactical command. If you have no further questions, I suggest you go prepare.”

I stopped walking again, and this time Morden didn’t pause to let me catch up. He disappeared around a corner ahead, leaving me alone.

| | | | | | | | |

The first thing I did was to tell Luna and Vari. Anne was in the Hollow and out of contact, so Luna went to relay the news. Which left me free to figure out what the hell I was supposed to do.

I was staying in the Hollow at the moment—we were in the process of putting together a more permanent set of living arrangements, but it was taking time—but for some reason, I didn’t want to go back there. The Hollow is peaceful, but I don’t find it so good for thinking. I wanted to stay in London. And so I wandered, letting my feet find their own path while my mind searched for a way out.

In the end, the place my feet took me to was Suicide Bridge, the high red arch at the very peak of the hill that rises between Archway and Highgate. As you’d guess from the name, the bridge is a favourite spot for those intending to take a hands-on approach to the question of their life expectancy, and with an eighty-foot drop to the dual carriageway below, it does the job pretty well. Successive local governments have increased the height of the fence and put up anti-climbing spikes, but if there’s one thing you can count on, it’s that someone who’s sufficiently dedicated to getting themselves killed will find a way to do it.

Looking at those railings sent my thoughts back to last January, and my own suicide attempt. Oh, I hadn’t thought of it that way at the time, but if I was being honest, that was what it had been; a way to escape my problems. It hadn’t worked. If anything, it had . . . well, I suppose it hadn’t exactly made things worse, but God knows it hadn’t made things any better. And now I was back in London, and back with another impossible problem to solve.

I rested my elbows on the railing, staring out over the city. The view from Suicide Bridge is impressive, particularly to the south—it’s downhill all the way to the river, meaning that you can look out over all of London. The sun was sinking to the west, painting the sky in purple and violet, and its light glinted off the skyscrapers in the distance, reflecting off the windows of the towers of Liverpool Street and the cluster of Canary Wharf and the Shard. Directly below, the lights of cars shone in the dusk, red on the left side and pale white on the right, two bus lanes and four car lanes carrying a steady stream of traffic up and down the hill. Each of those cars and buses was filled with people, each with their own life and struggles and hopes, and probably not a single one was paying the slightest attention to the tall, stooping figure leaning on the fence above. The city’s a busy place, and if you wait for people to notice your problems, you’ll be waiting a long time. You want to fix your life, you have to do it yourself.

What was I going to do?

A few years ago—maybe as recently as one year ago—my solution to this problem would have been to run. Get as far away from Richard and Morden and the Council as I could, and wait for things all to blow over. The events of this January had shown me the drawbacks with that plan. Running and hiding only works if you don’t have anything you’re willing to fight for. Or in my case, anyone.

Obeying Morden and taking part in the attack sounded like an equally terrible idea. Everything about Morden’s plan screamed trap. I didn’t know whether it was Morden’s trap, the Council’s trap, or both, but if I just marched off to attack the War Rooms, I’d be a mouse between two grinding gears. The only question was which would crush me first.

So what if I turned on Morden before he could do the same to me? I had Talisid’s communicator in my pocket. I could be in touch with him in five minutes. This was exactly the kind of tip-off he’d been hoping for—in fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the whole reason he’d cultivated a relationship with me in the first place. If I did that, what would happen?

Well, the first thing that would happen would be that Morden’s attack would fail. I mean, based off all the evidence I could see, it would almost certainly fail anyway, but my intervention would push the chances from slim down to none. At least this way I’d get something out of it. The Dark mages would either have to abort their attack, or be killed or captured.

But Richard and Morden wouldn’t be killed or captured. They wouldn’t be there. And once they figured out that they’d been betrayed . . .

I shivered at the thought of what would happen then. Morden and Richard would have to know that it was me, and even if they didn’t, the first thing they’d do would be to get the information out of me, one way or another. If I was lucky, they’d have a mind mage pull it out of my skull. If I was unlucky they’d just hand me over to Vihaela, in which case I was pretty sure I’d tell them everything they wanted to know in short order. I had no illusions about my ability to resist the kind of torture Vihaela could administer.

But if I didn’t tip anyone off, then the Council would be after me instead. I could claim that I hadn’t known about the attack, but the Council wouldn’t care. A direct attack on the War Rooms would rouse the Council into a fury and the first thing they’d do would be to find targets to vent their rage on, which would probably mean arresting Morden and every one of his associates. After which point, the consequences for Anne and me would be pretty much the same, only with a slightly lower chance of torture and a significantly higher chance of being mentally violated, which would continue until they confirmed that yes, I’d known about the attack in advance, whereupon I’d promptly be executed for treason.

Both choices sucked. I needed a third option.

Maybe I was looking at this the wrong way. What if Morden was lying from start to finish? He hadn’t made the slightest effort to reassure me—in fact, looking back on it, he’d practically dared me to resist. Maybe there was no attack, and the whole thing was a test. I’d go tip off Talisid, the Council would go onto high alert, and tomorrow evening would come and the War Rooms would be left completely alone. I’d be discredited, the Crusaders and Guardians would be seen as overreacting to a phantom threat, and the Council as a whole would be that much more likely to ignore any future warnings. Meanwhile, I’d wake up the next morning to Morden and Vihaela politely inquiring if I had any idea why the Council had suddenly gone on red alert last night.

Looked at from that angle, it all sounded horribly plausible. But was I really that important to Morden that it was worth going to so much trouble just to trap me? And why would he even need to trap me? Morden already knew I was working against my will; if he wanted to have me imprisoned and tortured, he didn’t need an excuse.

Or then again, maybe this was all a test, and he was waiting to see what I was going to do. In which case there was probably someone watching me right now . . .

I hissed out a breath and paced along the bridge. The sun had set, the light was fading from the sky, and as far as I could tell I was alone. I felt as though I was guessing in the dark, and if I guessed wrong then the consequences would be awful, except there was no way to know which was right and which was wrong. Maybe I could try path-walking, looking to see what would happen if I waited until tomorrow night and did nothing. But that could take hours: any information I got would be fragmentary, and it would eat into my window for tipping Talisid off. Still, it was the best plan I could think of.

Unless . . .

A dark thought swam up from the depths of my mind. The War Rooms were impregnable; everyone knew that. There was no way Morden could touch them. Except . . . what if he could? I already knew that Richard had abilities I couldn’t match, maybe ones I’d never even heard of. Maybe he did have some secret plan that actually could take down the nerve centre of the British Council.

In which case, did I really want to stop him?

I thought about Anne, and what had been done to her by the Crusaders. About the attacks by Levistus’s men on me last year, and how I’d been forced to flee the country just to survive. The winter before that, a Council Keeper had tried to assassinate me over White Rose; the year before that they’d expelled Anne from the apprentice program and left her to die; the year before that they’d stood by and deliberately stayed their hand as the Nightstalkers had done their best to assassinate me. Most of all, I remembered what the consequences had been . . . or at least the consequences for them. Nothing. They could outlaw me and break their own treaties and even sponsor outright assassinations and kidnappings, and somehow they never paid any price.

Maybe it was time they did.

Standing up there in the twilight, looking at the lights of London as the city lit up for the coming night, I had a sudden feeling of power. For once, I knew what was coming and the Council didn’t. All I had to do was stay my hand and watch them fall. I’d spent so long struggling against the Council, feeling helpless and hunted. Now for the first time it felt as though I might be able to hurt them. And I liked it.

Maybe this is how Dark mages feel all the time.

That thought came as a jolt, and with it my castle of dark thoughts crumbled away. All of a sudden I felt foolish. I wasn’t some sort of avenging angel—I was just a pawn for Morden to sacrifice. And even if his plan did have some chance of bringing down the Council, why would I want to replace them with Richard of all people? Hadn’t I learnt anything?

No. I shook my head. If I was going to survive this, I had to think. Right now, I didn’t know enough, so the first step was to learn more. I turned and walked away off the bridge without looking back.

| | | | | | | | |

“So what did you find?” Luna asked.

“Nothing good,” I said.

It was later that night and we were in the Hollow, sitting in a loose circle of four. I was on a packing crate; Luna and Vari were sharing our log bench, while Anne was a little farther away, arms wrapped around herself and dark eyes watching. Our tents and storage were a little way back; there were plans under way for a proper building, but we were still having trouble with the logistics. The sky above was filled with brilliant stars and nebulae, and set low on the ground, three sphere lamps provided light. Electricity wasn’t an option in the shadow realm and was likely to stay that way, so we’d been forced to fall back on magical illumination. I’d spent much of the evening gathering what information I could find. Now we had to decide what to do with it.

“I’ve looked into all the futures I can easily reach where I just sit around and wait,” I said. “There are some variations, but generally speaking, someone working for Morden or the Council comes looking for me. It’s too far away to get any details of the conversation, but it’s a safe bet they aren’t there to discuss the weather. Second point: I’ve tried contacting—or at least hypothetically contacting—all the Dark mages I know who are connected to Richard in some way. Cinder, Deleo, Onyx, and all the others. Deleo and Onyx aren’t going to talk to me, but I get the vibe that they’re busy. The only one I could get in touch with was Cinder, and he pretty much confirmed that something was going down.”

“So it’s not a bluff,” Anne said quietly.

“Not unless Morden is planning the biggest practical joke of all time.”

“So he’s really going to do it?” Variam said. He was frowning. “He’s going to attack the War Rooms?”

“Slow down,” I said. “We know he’s going to do something. He could be attacking some other place, or going after the Council of another country, or maybe raiding somewhere that has nothing to do with the Council at all.”

“But why?” Luna asked.

“We don’t even know why he’d attack the War Rooms, much less somewhere else,” I said. “So your guess is as good as mine. The one thing I’m willing to bet on is that he’s not telling the whole truth.”

“Maybe not,” Variam said. “Landis was telling me just a few days ago about some adepts the Keepers picked up who were telling some crazy story about how Richard was going to lead an army of them to take down the Council. Everyone was just laughing, but . . .”

“Maybe tomorrow they won’t be laughing,” Luna said.

“Even an army of adepts wouldn’t do it,” I said. “The War Rooms are a fortress. Numbers aren’t going to mean shit.”

“It seems weird, though,” Luna said. “Why do it at all?”

“Because he wants to take down the Council and set himself up as Dark Lord Look-How-Scary-I-Am,” Variam said. “Seems pretty obvious to me.”

“But that isn’t what he’s been doing so far,” Luna said. “Morden’s been worming his way in to the Council all the years we’ve known him. And it’s working. Why would he mess up a good thing?”

“Because this was what he was planning from the start?” Variam said.

Luna rolled her eyes. “You sound like those Guardians. ‘Oh, you can’t trust Dark mages; they all want to take over the world.’”

“It’s possible that Morden’s political position is worse than we know,” I said. “Everyone knows the Council hate him. Maybe they’ve managed to manoeuvre him to where this is his best option.”

“Do you really think that’s true?” Anne asked.

“No,” I admitted. “Honestly, I’m with Luna. For years now, Morden’s done the softly-softly approach. He always stays at arm’s length from anything that’s too risky. This feels out of character.”

“Unless there’s something he knows that we don’t,” Luna said.

“Which I’m pretty sure there is,” I said. “But right now, we have to decide what to do, and I can only really see two choices. Option one: we tip off the Council. Warn them that the info might be wrong, but that it’s a threat. If nothing happens, well, they’ll live. But if Morden does go through with the attack, it’ll be huge.”

“Doesn’t sound so bad,” Variam said.

“Yeah, except there’s a catch,” I said. “If we do that, and we don’t show up to the attack, then we might as well be hanging up a big sign saying, ‘HEY EVERYONE, WE BETRAYED YOU.’ On the other hand, if we do show up, then when the Council comes down on Morden like a ton of bricks, we’ll have the Council shooting at us from one side and Richard’s lot shooting at us from the other.”

“I don’t really like option one,” Anne said. “What’s option two?”

“We play along,” I said. “We join Morden and take part in the job—whatever the hell it is—and do as we’re told, on the theory that the consequences for us can’t possibly be any worse than what he’ll do if he catches us selling him out.”

“So we’d be hoping he succeeds,” Anne said.

“And if he doesn’t,” I said, “then we’ll have to find a way to get the hell out before Morden’s goons decide we’re being insufficiently loyal and shoot us in the back.”

“Except you just said that if he’s going after the War Rooms, then he’s not going to succeed,” Variam said.

“Option two is counting very heavily on the assumption that it won’t be the War Rooms.”

“And if it is?”

“Then either the Council kills us in the attack, or we get hunted down and executed for treason afterwards.”

“That sounds even worse than option one,” Luna said.

“I said I had two options,” I said. “I didn’t say they were good ones.”

“There’s got to be something we can do.”

“We could hope that Morden’s actually just taking us off on a treasure hunt or something, and attacking the Council is just an elaborate disinformation plan,” I said. “But I really don’t think we’re that lucky. As far as I can tell, tipping off the Council or going along and obeying are the only half-viable choices.”

“I can think of another,” Luna said. “You tip off the Council and then we all go take a holiday and stop answering our phones for the next week. Morden goes ahead with his attack and gets his arse kicked. We watch from a really long way away and eat popcorn. The Council can’t do anything because we warned them, and Morden can’t do anything because he’s too busy being dead.”

Variam tilted his head. “That sounds pretty good.”

“Yeah, there’s kind of a problem with that,” I said. “In Luna’s plan, one way or another, Morden ends up gone. Either executed by the Council, or on the run. Either way, he’s not going to have his Council position anymore.”

“So?” Variam said.

I just waited for them to figure it out. “The death sentence,” Anne said quietly.

“How does . . . ?” Variam began, then stopped.

“Morden attacks the War Rooms, he goes,” I said. “Morden goes, Anne and I aren’t his aides anymore. Which means the death sentence on us both goes live. Which puts us right back where we were in January.”

“Well, shit,” Luna said.

We sat in silence for a minute or two.

“Okay,” Variam said at last. “Then in that case, I guess I’m voting for the tip-off plan.”

“Sorry, Vari,” I said. “You don’t get a vote.”

“Why not?”

“Because you aren’t going.”

“If you attack the War Rooms without telling the Council, they’re going to rake me over the coals,” Variam said.

“True, I’ll admit you do have some stake in this, but if things go wrong, you’ll be facing an investigation or a reprimand. We are going to be facing either an execution or instant death. I kind of think our issues trump yours.”

Luna looked at Anne. “What do you think?”

We all looked at Anne, who sat there in silence. The glow of the sphere lamps sank into the hair on either side of her face, leaving her features in shadow. “I think . . .” she said at last, “. . . go ahead and tip them off.”

“You actually want to help the Council?” Luna asked.

“No.”

“Then why—?”

“I’m hoping Richard really does have some sort of secret weapon,” Anne said. “And that he uses it, and he and the Council wipe each other out.” She looked up at me, and there was anger on her face. “I can’t do anything about the Council, but maybe Richard can.”

Both Luna and Variam just stared, taken aback. “That’s . . .” I said slowly, “. . . maybe not the best reason to be making a decision.”

“Maybe not,” Anne said. “But it’s not as though anything we do is going to make a difference.”

There was an awkward silence. I looked at Anne, and felt uneasy. She’d been in bad shape since September, and she didn’t seem to be getting better. Three times in the past fortnight, I’d tried to talk to her about things, and she’d turned me away every time. She’d started finding excuses to put off our training sessions, and when I’d called her a few days ago to schedule a new one, she’d turned me down that time too. I didn’t want to force the issue, but I couldn’t think of any way to—

“Alex?” Luna said. “What do you think?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said. “I’m leaning the same way as Anne, but for different reasons. The way I see it, if we stay silent, it burns our bridges with the Council. No matter what Morden’s planning, if he carries out any sort of attack and we don’t tell them, then we can give up on any chance of ever getting rid of outlaw status.”

“You’re not an outlaw now,” Variam said.

“Because of Morden,” I said. “Which means we’ll be tied to him for the rest of our lives.”

“Yeah, but if we do tip off the Council, then it screws things up with Morden,” Luna said.

“I’m not a hundred percent sure it will,” I said. “The more I think about it, the more it feels as though Morden was almost daring me to tell someone. There’ll still be a price, but honestly, I think if he was going to have me tortured to death for something like this, he’d have done it already. Besides . . .”

“Besides what?” Variam asked.

“Staying quiet and doing nothing is basically the same as helping out Richard,” I said. “Maybe tipping off the Council is going to help in the long run, and maybe it won’t, but at least this way I’ll be fighting back against Richard and Morden somehow. I suppose that’s not the most amazing reason either, but . . .”

“No, I’m fine with that,” Variam said with a shrug. “Screw those guys.”

“Works for me,” Luna said.

I laughed. “So we all end up at the same place, but for different reasons.” I looked around at the other three, and wondered suddenly how many times we’d done this by now. Talking over the latest problem, sharing ideas, trying to come up with a solution. We’d always managed until now, right?

A quiet voice spoke inside my head. Or maybe this time, not all of you are going to come back.

That killed my laughter. The four of us sat in silence under the stars.

| | | | | | | | |

It was close to midnight when I finally got in touch with Talisid. Talisid’s paranoia can be annoying at times, but at least it does mean he keeps his communicator close to hand. Given what we were about to be talking about, it would have been really annoying to have to go around to his house and bang on the door.

The first half of the conversation went more or less as I’d predicted. First Talisid asked if I was sure, then he asked if I’d told anyone else, then he wanted an exhaustive recap of every single word that Morden had said. Once I was done, he wanted to go through it all again.

As I went through it for the second time, though, I started to notice something odd. Talisid was clearly paying attention, but he didn’t seem particularly shocked or offbalance. “Go over again exactly how many mages he suggested he was bringing,” Talisid said.

“I told you, he didn’t give numbers,” I said. “He just said the mages who worked for him.”

“But he also said Vihaela would be leading the attack,” Talisid said. “That implies that Richard’s other subordinates would be coming as well. Do you know which ones?”

“No. Look, Talisid, don’t take this the wrong way, but you really aren’t acting as surprised as you should be.”

“We’ve been concerned about this possibility for some time.”

“Yeah, in the abstract,” I said. “But given that I just told you it’s happening tomorrow night—as in less than twenty-four hours away—you don’t seem all that panicked. Shouldn’t you be running to tell the Council?”

“At the moment, I’m more concerned with verification.”

I stood silently, thinking. It didn’t take long to put the pieces together. “You knew already, didn’t you?”

Talisid hesitated for just an instant, which was all the answer I needed. “You know I can’t discuss—” Talisid began.

“Talisid,” I said wearily.

“We’ve had reports,” Talisid said. “From various sources, but they all mention the War Rooms, and they all give the time as tomorrow night. The Senior Council is in closed session to discuss it now.”

“They didn’t invite Morden? I’m shocked.”

“But you are the only person to have heard it from Morden directly,” Talisid said. “Until now, we didn’t have any substantive evidence against him. If you can testify to what you’ve heard, then it may be enough to tie Morden to the attack and bring him down once and for all.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t get too ahead of yourselves. We still don’t know if it’s the War Rooms he’s attacking.”

“I assure you, that concern has been raised.”

“So are you going to tell them?”

“Yes,” Talisid said. “However . . .”

“However?”

“I can’t speak for them,” Talisid said. “But I would prepare yourself for the possibility that you may be asked to join Morden’s attack regardless.”

“Fuck that.”

“If you don’t, it could tip him off—”

“If I do, I’ll have the Council shooting me from one side and Morden’s lot shooting me from the other. No way in hell.”

“The Council will be very grateful.”

I told Talisid exactly what the Council could do with their gratitude.

“Verus,” Talisid said. He sounded slightly shocked.

“You seriously think that after everything they’ve done to me, I’m going to do the Council favours?” I said. “Answer is no.”

Talisid was silent for a second. “What if I could offer you something in exchange?”

“Like what?”

“The lifting of your death sentence.”

That shut me up.

“I can’t promise anything,” Talisid said. “However . . . given the circumstances, I think they would be willing to consider it.”

“Are they really that scared?” I asked. “Enough that they’re willing to overrule a resolution just to have me as an inside man?”

“As I said, I can’t promise anything,” Talisid said. “But it’s a realistic possibility.”

I thought fast. My first instinct was to take the deal. But another voice spoke up: if they’re willing to give this much, maybe you could get more. “I want the death sentence revoked,” I said. “Both for me and for Anne. And I don’t want it to be conditional on the accuracy of my information, either. Everything I’ve told you has been in good faith, but I’ve got no guarantee that Morden was telling the truth. Even if the attack doesn’t go through, the sentence is still gone.”

“That may be difficult to sell.”

“Deal with it. Oh, and one more thing. If I’m going to be testifying against Morden, I also want a full pardon for anything I do during the attack tomorrow, as well as retroactively for all the time I’ve been working as Morden’s aide. Take it or leave it.”

Talisid was silent. “Well,” he said at last. “They won’t be happy, but I’ll see what I can do. I’ll contact the Council immediately and I’ll call you back as soon as I hear anything.”

“I’ll be waiting.”