Chosen

Chapter 8

By the time Anne and I cleared the area the sirens had converged behind us. We took a looping course around, heading back towards Camden Town as more and more emergency vehicles arrived. My phone was under half a ton of rubble in my bedroom but Anne had managed to keep hold of hers, and as we walked back through the empty streets the first thing we did was check what had happened to Luna and Variam. Anne’s first call didn’t get an answer, nor her second, nor her fifth, but as we crossed Chalk Farm her phone beeped. Anne read the message and gave a sigh of relief. “They’re okay.”

“Both of them?”

“Both of them.”

I relaxed a little. Putting Anne in danger had been bad enough. If Luna and Vari had been hurt . . . “Can you call them?”

Anne shook her head. “They’re busy with the police. It . . . didn’t sound like they were going to get away soon.”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “Bomb going off in Central London. Right.” Now I was going to have the antiterror divisions of the Metropolitan Police and MI5 crawling over my flat. This was going to be a major headache.

“Is it going to be a problem?”

“I can probably call in some favours and get it settled, but I’m going to have to stay away from the shop for a while. Getting dragged into a police station with Will’s lot out there would be bad.” I nodded at a side street. “This way.”

We crossed the street. “Will Luna and Vari be okay?” Anne asked.

“Believe it or not, I’ve actually drilled Luna on this.” My contingency plans had been for something more along the lines of a fireball than a high explosive, but still. “She knows what to do, and she and Vari haven’t done anything illegal lately as far as I know. They should be fine.”

“Okay. That’s good.” Anne looked around. “Ah, where are we going?”

“I’ve done enough running around in bare feet for one night,” I said. “I’m going to get some shoes.”

The Morrisons supermarket in Camden Town is a huge white building sandwiched between railway lines, and it’s so big it has its own roundabout and bus stops. By the time we got there the sky was lightening in the east, and I spent a few seconds checking for watchers before we slipped onto the grounds and to the outbuilding beyond the car park. The door to the outbuilding was locked; I took a key from a hidden location behind a ventilator and let us in.

The inside was dark and filled with the hum of machinery. I led Anne through the pipes and generators to a locker in the corner of the room labelled HAZARDOUS WASTE DO NOT TOUCH. It had a combination lock, which I opened and handed to Anne. “Hang on to this a sec.”

Anne watched curiously as I pulled out a big gym bag. “You hide that here?”

“Nobody comes here except the maintenance guys,” I said, unzipping the bag. I pulled out a pair of shoes and some socks and started putting them on.

“What’s inside?”

“Shoes, a coat, two full changes of clothes, shaving kit, and a towel,” I said, tying my laces. “Plus loose cash, a prepaid credit card, a knife, a multitool, spare keys, a first-aid kit, a phone, rope, cleaning supplies . . .”

“Why do you have all of this here and not at your flat?”

“In case I can’t go to my flat.” I grabbed the knife, phone, and cash, slung the bag back into the locker, and relocked it. “Let’s go before this place starts waking up.”

“An annuller?” Anne said in puzzlement, looking at the white arch.

We were in the old gym in Islington. It’s Council property, and I’d managed to talk my way past the sleepy watchman on the door and up to the duelling hall. The azimuth focuses at either end of the duelling pistes were old, but the annuller was new; they’d installed it recently. “Yeah,” I said, putting my fingers to the arch. This one was made out of what felt like carbon rather than stone; it must be one of the new models.

“You’re worried about a spell?” Anne asked.

“Not exactly.” The material was different but the design was familiar, and it took me only a few seconds to confirm that I knew how to work it. I focused my will into the item, letting it charge. “Something that’s been bugging me for a while is how those guys keep finding me. It’s been years since I’ve been to that casino, but they seemed to know exactly where I was.”

Anne thought about it. “Do you think they followed you?”

I shook my head. “I think it’s something to do with that Chinese kid, Lee. Remember what he said on the train? He knew you were in the living room.”

“That’s true.” Anne frowned. “And he couldn’t have seen me through the windows . . . Do you think that’s the kind of magic he can use? Some sort of seeking?”

“That’s my guess. He was the first one to show up back on Friday night. I think Will’s using him to find me.”

The annuller hummed briefly and then came to life, a pale silvery glow hanging in the archway. “You too,” I told Anne.

Anne nodded and moved next to me. We stepped through the archway at the same time and there was a silvery flash, followed by a moment of vertigo that passed quickly. Looking around, I saw that the archway was dark again.

Anne shivered slightly. “That always feels weird. Like I’m in the wrong place.”

“I know what you mean.” There were some chairs along the wall, and I dropped into one with a sigh. “Well, if it was a standard tracer that should have broken it.” All of a sudden I felt completely exhausted. I’d had only a few hours of sleep and I’d been running on adrenaline ever since the attack. Now the aftereffects had set in and I just wanted to collapse.

“I could wake you up,” Anne offered.

“Thanks, but no. I’d just have to pay for it later.” I looked at her. “Thanks for what you did tonight. I’m not sure I would have made it on my own.”

Anne smiled and we sat for a little while in silence. The gym was quiet and empty, and from outside the morning sun was sending shafts of sunlight through the windows above, motes of dust hanging visible in the air. All around us the rumble of traffic and voices was starting to grow to a gentle swell, the steady rustle of London waking up for another summer’s day. It felt peaceful and calm. “Can you talk to me about something?” I said. “Otherwise I’m going to fall asleep here.”

“Well, I was going to ask,” Anne said. “Are we safe here?”

“Right,” I said with a sigh. “That.” Nothing like the prospect of violent death to keep you awake. “It depends on whether the annuller broke their tracking ability. If it did, they’ll have to figure out a new way to pick us up.”

“Actually, what I meant was whether you know we’re safe here,” Anne said. “With your magic.”

“I’ve been looking nonstop since we left the train,” I said. “I haven’t seen any sign of them finding us here but that doesn’t mean they can’t find us, it just means they’re not doing it right now. If some of them were hurt in that crash they’ve probably pulled back to regroup.”

“Do you think they’re okay?”

I shook my head. “Anne, I swear, only you would worry about something like that.”

Anne was silent. “I’m not sure,” I said. “I think they got off the carriage before it hit.”

“What if they didn’t?”

“I don’t know.”

“Alex?” Anne said. She was looking at me with those odd reddish eyes of hers. “What you said on the train, about killing someone? Did you mean it?”

I looked off into the corner of the gym. “Yes.”

Anne sat quietly. I knew she was deciding what to ask next and the question I was afraid of was how many. Somehow I knew that no matter how I answered, it wouldn’t lead to anything good.

“You feel like you’re on the same side as people like Will, don’t you?” Anne said.

I looked at Anne in surprise, then nodded. “Pretty much. You know what’s really screwed up about all this? If Will’s lot had just come into my shop asking for help defending themselves against Dark mages, I’d probably have said yes.” I sighed. “And Will might be trying to kill me, but a lot of what he’s saying is right. Mages do treat adepts badly. And if I were his age and in his position, I’m not a hundred percent sure I’d be doing anything different.”

“What about now?”

I shrugged. “When you’re twenty you’re all about action. You want to change things. If you make it to thirty you learn about consequences. Will’s lot haven’t learnt that yet. But then the reason they’re after me is because of the crap I did when I was twenty . . .” I raked my hand through my hair. “Damn it. I don’t know what to do.”

“There has to be some way,” Anne said.

“Right now I don’t know what it is,” I said. “Will’s lot might be stupid and they might not care about consequences, but that doesn’t make them less dangerous; it makes them more dangerous. And as long as they’re together I don’t think I can beat them.”

“You’re not on your own, though,” Anne said. “You’ve got me and Luna and Vari.”

“So Vari should burn them to death?” I said. “Luna should curse them and have a bullet bounce into their head? Is that what you mean?”

Anne looked away. “No.”

I looked at Anne curiously. “Other people really matter to you, don’t they?”

Anne was silent. “You know, Will was willing to kill you back there,” I said. “He would have tried to get around you, but if you’d made him choose between shooting you and letting me get away, he would have shot you.”

“I know.”

“But you still don’t want to hurt him.”

Anne stayed quiet for a little longer this time. “Do you know what I see when I look at someone?”

I shook my head.

“Everything,” Anne said. “Their movements, their nerves, the play of their muscles and skin . . . It’s like a tapestry of green light, layer on layer. Every part connects to every other part and everything works together. Even when it’s hurt it works to repair itself.” Anne’s voice was quiet, and she was watching me as she spoke; I knew she was trying to make me understand. “That’s all I do, when I use my magic. Your body wants to heal; I just give it a little help. Watching it rebuilding, growing . . . It’s beautiful. I can’t imagine ever wanting to hurt it. I know what Will and his friends were trying to do. But . . . even then, I don’t want them hurt.”

I was silent. “You don’t want to hurt them either, do you?” Anne said. “That’s why you’re trying to talk to them.”

“We don’t always get what we want.”

“But there are other ways,” Anne said. “You might find something in Richard’s mansion, or in Deleo’s memories. You’re not going to try to kill them. Are you?”

I hesitated. Anne was looking right at me, those odd reddish eyes searching mine, and I felt trapped. I wanted to say no, but somewhere inside me a darker, more cynical voice was warning me not to make promises I might not be able to keep . . . “No,” I said.

I felt Anne relax. We sat quietly for a while, watching the sunlight move across the wall.

By the time I was sure Will’s lot weren’t pursuing, it was too late to go back to sleep, and I wouldn’t have felt safe doing it anyway. A quick check confirmed that the police were still swarming over my shop, so I told Anne to meet up with Variam and Luna. “Do you want me to come with you?” Anne asked. We were a couple of streets away from my shop, near Camden Market.

I shook my head. “You’ve risked your life for me once today already. Besides, the more people we have, the more chance one of us is going to set something off.”

Anne nodded, then to my surprise gave me a quick hug. I flinched slightly—it had been so long since anyone had done that, it took me a second to realise what she was doing. “Be careful,” she told me, then turned and walked away.

I watched her go, then shook my head and went to get ready for my return to Richard’s mansion.

Preparation is important for a diviner, and if I have to go somewhere dangerous I always make sure I’ve got as much leverage as possible. With my flat occupied by the police I couldn’t access my items there, so I had to go scrounging. By the time I’d begged, borrowed, and traded for enough magic items to make me feel reasonably safe, it was past noon.

The one item I hesitated over was my mist cloak. It’s the most effective form of stealth I have, but it was also back in the safe room in my flat. I might be able to get it out without the police stopping me, but then again I might not. What decided me against it in the end was that I’d be with Caldera—for various reasons I’d much rather the Keepers didn’t find out that I own that particular item. I picked up a last few bits and pieces and dialled Caldera’s number.

Caldera didn’t sound happy. “What kept you?”

“Sorry,” I said. “Long night.”

“I left you two messages, didn’t you get them? Never mind, just get over here. We’re on our way to the park near yours with the grounding circle. You know the place?”

“I’ll be there.”

The park near my shop is about a ten-minute walk away. Even though it’s in the middle of Camden it always seems to be deserted, maybe because of the construction vehicles parked around it. As a result of some geographical oddities it has an unusually low level of background magic, which is handy if you want to study something or use a tricky spell. It’s not widely used, but I’m far from the only one who knows about it and this wasn’t the first time I’d met another mage there.

Caldera was under the trees at the far end, and she wasn’t alone. I crossed the park, ducked under the branches, then looked between her and the person she’d brought along. “This is a bad idea.”

Sonder was standing next to Caldera, wearing the kind of get-up city dwellers buy from camping stores when they want to go hiking. “What?” he said.

“Why is he here?” I asked Caldera.

“Because he’s a time mage,” Caldera said, glancing between us. She was wearing old workman’s clothes, patched and mended from long use, as well as a webbing belt with sealed pouches. “You’ve worked together before, right?”

“I thought this was supposed to be a quick in-and-out.”

“We know the place is empty,” Caldera said. “I need to know if anyone’s been using it, and that means timesight.”

“Timesight only shows you one location at one time,” I said. “Scanning the whole mansion is going to take hours.”

“Then we better get started, hadn’t we?”

I looked around reluctantly. Sonder looked a little offended, but that wasn’t why I was feeling uneasy. All my instincts told me that visiting Richard’s mansion was dangerous. Trying to do a full search, like it was some sort of crime scene . . .

But I’d given my word and it wasn’t enough to make me back out, at least not yet. “All right.”

Caldera raised a hand, weaving a spell under the cover of the trees. A pale brown light sprang up next to the tree trunk, growing and widening until it steadied into a vertical oval. Shapes appeared in the oval, the colours changing from pale brown to green and grey and then sharpening and becoming clear, forming an image of earth and grass and trees. For a moment it was only an image, as if seen through a window, then the window was gone and we were looking through a gateway. A cool breeze blew through, ruffling my hair; the place we were going was a few degrees colder than the summer heat of the park.

I led the way. Sonder followed and Caldera came last, letting the gateway vanish behind her.

You can tell a lot about a mage by where they live.

Apprentices usually live with their masters. Sometimes they’ll have a flat or shared rooms, but it’s still generally the master who arranges it. They’re not really expected to be responsible for themselves; it’s their master who provides for them, and in return they’re expected to do as they’re told.

Once an apprentice graduates to journeyman status, things change. Now they’re free to do as they like, and usually one of the first things they do is get themselves a place of their own. Mages rarely have to worry about money and it’s easy for them to buy themselves a house, as long as they don’t go for anything extravagant. Of course, lots of them do want something extravagant, and it’s common for established mages to own a mansion. Some of it is about status—my house is more ostentatious than yours—but there’s a practical element too. Some of the things mages get up to require a fair amount of space, and if you’re trying to perform a large-scale ritual then there are a lot of benefits to being able to stage it in your own home rather than an unsecured area.

The next thing to sort out is location. Light mages like to place their mansions in the hearts of big cities or in attractive and well-populated areas of the countryside near towns and main roads. It makes it easy for guests to get there, and it makes it easy to get hold of servants and catering staff to entertain the guests. A mage who chooses an easily accessible location is making a statement; he’s saying that he’s willing to entertain visitors (though probably only select visitors). Other mages go for a compromise, choosing to live in the suburbs or in slightly more removed areas of the country. You can still reach them easily enough but they’ve got a little more privacy.

And some mages don’t want to live near anyone else at all.

Richard’s mansion was the last type. It was in a remote corner of Wales, hidden away amidst forest and rolling hills. The mansion itself was an oblong with two jutting wings but with no car park, no driveway, and no roads. Rail lines didn’t go anywhere near the place and there wasn’t so much as a gravel path leading to the front door.

It’s very rare to build a house in a place so isolated, and there are only a few reasons anyone would want to do it. It can be because you don’t want visitors. It can be because you don’t want anyone getting in. And it can be because you don’t want anyone getting out.

I stood in the shade at the edge of the tree cover, looking across at the mansion. When I’d last seen the grounds they’d been cleared, but now they were wild and overgrown; the old plots had been reclaimed by the forest around us, wildflowers and bushes a tangled riot in what had once been an ordered garden. The lawn was now a meadow, and behind the mansion green hills rose up into the blue sky. It would have been beautiful if I hadn’t known what the place had been used for.

“Anything?” Caldera said from behind me.

“I wasn’t looking,” I said. It’s a weird feeling, seeing something that was once the centre of your life. For a moment the old memories flooded back; my last glimpse of the mansion, lit windows against the black night, snatched over my shoulder as I fled. I’d sworn never to come back—or if I did, it would have been to destroy the place. In the end I never did return . . . not physically, at least. For a long time I saw it every night in my dreams.

But emotions fade, and as I looked at the mansion I realised to my surprise that most of the old hate and fear was gone. For all that it represented, for all the danger that might still be inside, it was just a building—steeped in history, ancient and dangerous, but for now at least, deserted.

“When you’re ready,” Caldera said.

I shook off the memories. Time to focus. “The grounds are clear. Let’s move up.”

We picked our way through the overgrown trails, brushing through the grass. Birds sang from the nearby trees and the air smelt of pollen and of summer. Richard’s mansion grew larger as we approached; despite its age the building didn’t look weatherbeaten or damaged, and apart from a little roughening around the edges it looked just as it had when I’d lived here. The walls could have been mistaken for brickwork but weren’t. Despite its sprawl, the mansion only had two storeys. “I thought it’d be bigger,” Sonder said.

“Most of it’s underground,” I said absently, scanning ahead. “That’s funny.”

“What’s funny?” Caldera said.

“There are wards.”

Caldera looked at me in surprise. “After ten years?”

I shook my head. “No, the old gate and scrying wards are gone. But there’s a trigger there.” I pointed at the front door. “It’s not locked, but if you walk through you’ll set off a silent alarm.”

Caldera frowned at it. “I can’t see anything.”

“It’s not designed to be visible,” I said. There are ways of shrouding or inverting wards that make them difficult to detect. This one was hard to spot, but the design was familiar. In fact it was very familiar . . . “Wait a minute,” I said, my heart sinking. “Let me check something.”

Sonder and Caldera waited for me. “Deleo,” I said after a moment. “Great.”

“She’s here?” Sonder said in alarm.

I nodded at the door. “If we set that thing off she will be. It’s designed to alert her.”

“What’s her response time?” Caldera asked.

“Fast. Minutes.”

“I thought this place was deserted?” Sonder said.

“I think we might just have found out why it’s deserted,” I said. The futures of Deleo gating in were chaotic and unpredictable, but I was pretty sure I didn’t want a closer look. I had the feeling that if she found us here she’d kill first and ask questions later.

“Can you disarm it?” Sonder asked.

I nodded. “It’ll take a while, but yeah.” I studied it with narrowed eyes. “Doing it safely is going to be slow but we can probably—”

“Yeah, let’s speed this up,” Caldera said. She pointed at a section of wall to the right. “Is that bit warded?”

“Uh,” I said. “No.”

Caldera walked up through the bushes and placed both hands flat against the stone wall. Brownish light flared and the stone melted and flowed. The section of wall in front of her thinned and vanished, becoming an archway, the stone that had occupied the empty space moving to buttress the gap. The stone stopped flowing, Caldera took her hands away, and the light faded. Where there had been a blank wall was a reinforced arch, leading into darkness. “There,” Caldera said. “We clear?”

“I guess that’s a faster way to do it,” I said, walking up to the gap and taking a glance through. “Clear.”

Caldera summoned up a light and the three of us walked in.

The inside of the mansion hadn’t aged as gracefully as the outside. Dust covered everything and bits of furniture had been overturned. “You two stick together,” Caldera said. “I’m going to take a look around.”

I gave her an exasperated look. “Do the words ‘safety precautions’ mean anything to you?”

“Yeah, people keep telling me something about that,” Caldera said. “Be right back.”

“Just don’t go below the ground floor,” I called after her as she left. Her footsteps faded away and I shook my head. “And people tell me I take risks.”

Sonder didn’t answer. He played the light of his torch around the hallway, the glow flicking over dusty paintings. “Well, this is your party,” I told him. “Where do you want to start?”

“Is there any kind of meeting room?” Sonder asked. “Somewhere people would assemble?”

I nodded down the hall. “That way.”

The rooms on the ground floor of the mansion were the kitchens, storerooms, dining room, and servants’ quarters. The room we entered had once been a living room, but as I walked in I slowed and stopped. The light from our torches showed broken chairs, and drawers and shelves had been emptied, their contents strewn over the floor. The sofa in the centre had been cut in half, a huge section of the middle missing and the stuffing spilling out.

“Was it . . . always like this?” Sonder said, staring at the sofa.

I shook my head. “No.” This was the room where Shireen, Rachel, Tobruk, and I had all gathered with Richard that first night, and where we’d kept meeting in the months afterward. “What happened here?”

“Wait a minute,” Sonder said, frowning. His eyes became distant.

I stood in silence, looking around. While we’d been Richard’s apprentices this had been a kind of briefing room; it was where he’d given us our assignments and where we’d gathered to talk in our free time. My eyes drifted to Richard’s old armchair; unlike the rest of the furniture it hadn’t been touched and I unconsciously stepped away from it. The fireplace was dark and cold.

Sonder stayed in his trance for a long time, fifteen minutes at least. When he finally looked up at me, he looked uneasy. “It was Deleo.”

“She trashed the place?”

Sonder shook his head. “No. Three other men did. They were here five months ago. I think they were looking for something.”

“Looking for what?”

“I don’t know,” Sonder said, looking around. “I don’t think they got the chance to find it. Deleo walked in that door and she . . . killed them. All of them.”

I looked around the empty room. There was dust but no bones. “What happened to the bodies?”

Sonder pointed at the dust at my feet.

“Oh.” I stepped aside. “Right.” I’d thought there was something familiar about the way that sofa had been destroyed. Rachel had grown a lot more powerful in the years since I’d left, and she seemed to specialise in disintegration. “Did they have any kind of magic?”

“Not enough,” Sonder said.

We stood in the empty, dead room, the beams of our torches the only light. “You don’t think Deleo’s still living here, do you?” Sonder asked.

I shook my head. “Nobody’s living here. I shouldn’t have to tell you that.”

“Then why’s Deleo still coming?”

“From the sound of it she only shows up if someone trips the burglar alarm,” I said. “I think she’s just guarding this place. All she cares about is making sure no one else touches it.”

“But . . .” Sonder looked around. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“What doesn’t?”

“Doing it like this!” Sonder said. “There wasn’t a warning anywhere or anything like that. The front door wasn’t even locked! We could have just walked in without knowing any better and she would have tried to kill us!”

“From the sound of it that’s exactly what she’s been doing.”

“But why doesn’t she do it the normal way?” Sonder said. “No one even knows that this is her house! She could have . . . I don’t know, registered it with the Council or something.”

“She is letting people know that this is her house.”

“They can’t spread the message if they’re all dead!”

I shrugged. “She probably lets a few go. Or maybe she just assumes that if enough people go missing then sooner or later the others will take the hint.”

Sonder shook his head. “That’s insane.”

I looked at Sonder for a moment. “If you want to be a scholar,” I said at last, “you have to learn not to see things so simply.”

“What do you mean?”

“Deleo and Dark mages seem insane to you because you’re judging them by your standards,” I said. “You’re assuming they have the same goals you do. What makes you so sure Deleo wants to warn people off peacefully?”

Sonder looked at me, puzzled. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that if you’re the kind of person who likes to take out your frustrations on other people, then occasionally having to murder some burglars is less of a drawback and more a perk of the job.”

Sonder stared at me in revulsion. “Are you serious?”

I sighed. “I’m not saying that’s why she does it, I’m saying it might be. The point is that Deleo doesn’t live in your world. What you said about registering with the Council? To Dark mages that’d be a joke. They only respect authority if it’s backed up by force. Registering might actually attract them—they’d figure that if she was trying to get the protection of Light mages, then she couldn’t handle it herself. And it would mostly be other Dark mages she’d be worried about.”

“You’re telling me they’d listen to people being murdered, but they wouldn’t read a sign on the door?”

“Yes! Dark mages are different from you, don’t you get that? They don’t follow rules and they don’t do as they’re told! If you set a boundary the first thing they’ll do is push it to see if you’ll do anything. What Deleo is doing is a normal way to send a message in Dark society, and if you don’t understand that then you shouldn’t be here.”

Sonder and I stared at each other for a moment, then Sonder looked away. “I’m not here because of you.” He sounded defensive. “I’ve been doing Council work for the Keepers since last year.”

“I know.”

“I know what I’m doing,” Sonder said. “It’s not like I’m an apprentice anymore. They keep saying—” He stopped and went on. “It’s not like it’s all new to me. I see things that most people never do. Crimes, secrets . . . They think it’s hidden, but it’s not.”

“But they don’t quite take you seriously, no matter how much you know, do they? Trust me, I know all about that.”

Sonder stood in silence for a moment. “How could you ever join people like this?” he said at last.

I knew Sonder wasn’t talking about Light mages anymore. “People change, Sonder,” I said. “I know you see a lot, and I know you see things that others can’t. But you’ve always been detached from it. Keepers like Caldera don’t need you to be involved, they just need you to be good with your magic.”

“I do get involved.”

“Because of other people,” I said. “The main way you use your timesight is to help everyone else out. You’re not the one who causes the problem—you’re the one who gets called in after someone else causes a problem.” I looked at Sonder. “In a lot of ways you’re an example of what’s best about Light mages. But it makes it hard for you to understand people like me and Deleo. When you really and truly screw things up—when you look around and realise that your life’s a disaster and it’s nobody’s fault but your own—then it makes you ask some hard questions. You look into the mirror and you realise you don’t much like the person looking back at you. And you start figuring out how to change that.” I shrugged. “Or you stop looking into mirrors . . . You’ve never had to do that. You’ve never had to really stop and question your beliefs, because they’ve worked. It’s not a bad thing. Just . . . remember that it’s not that way for everyone else.”

Sonder didn’t answer. “What else did you see?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Come on, Sonder,” I said. “Our magic types aren’t that far apart. You were looking back for the last time I was here, weren’t you?”

Sonder’s not a good liar. He hesitated just long enough to make it very obvious what the answer was. “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I was going to ask you to do it anyway. Did you see any trace of Catherine?”

“No,” Sonder admitted.

“But the wards are down.”

“They’re down now,” Sonder said. “They’re not down then. Anything past about nine years just blanks out. And it’s at the edge of my range anyway.”

I nodded, hiding my disappointment. I hadn’t really been expecting it to be that easy but it had been worth a try. “I guess we keep looking.”

Caldera came back a few minutes later. “Anything?” I asked as she walked in.

“Waste of time,” Caldera said. “This place hasn’t been used in years.”

“Deleo was here,” Sonder said. “She killed three men who tried to loot this room five months ago.”

“Dark-style home defence, huh?” Caldera glanced at the ruined sofa. “A couple of the other rooms have been trashed too.”

“Should I check them?” Sonder asked.

Caldera shook her head. “No, it’s Richard I want. Deleo’s only important if she can lead us to him.”

“So we’re going?” I said.

Caldera raised an eyebrow. “In a hurry to leave?”

“I’m in a hurry not to run into Deleo.”

“So watch for her.”

“I’ve been watching for her nonstop since we gated in,” I said. “You know the best way of making sure we don’t run into her? Not sticking around any longer than we have to.”

“I’m a Keeper, Verus,” Caldera said. “If we ran scared every time we had to deal with a Dark mage, we wouldn’t be much good at our jobs.” She looked at Sonder. “Can you follow where Deleo went?”

“I don’t think she came in the front door,” Sonder said.

“She wouldn’t have to,” I said. “She knows the whole mansion and there are no gate wards. She can gate into any part she likes.”

“Then let’s check the basement,” Caldera said.

I sighed and started towards the doorway. “I knew you were going to say that.”

“It’s warded,” I said.

We were at the end of the main hallway on the ground floor. The entrance to the lower levels was a simple arch in the wall, and the glow from Caldera’s light illuminated stone steps leading down into shadow. “It’s another alarm ward, right?” Sonder said, concentrating on the archway. “It looks the same as the first.”

“It is.”

“Right,” Caldera said, walking to the wall. “Same again, then.”

“Don’t!” I said sharply. “It’s a trap.”

Caldera frowned at me. “I can’t see anything.”

“The alarm ward is just a cover,” I said. “It’s meant to make you think that you can get past it the same way you did the first. The real defence is there.” I pointed down into the darkness. “Anything that goes down there is going to summon a nocturne.”

“What the hell is that?”

“Darkness elemental. They hunt by sound. You don’t want to meet one.”

“So what’s the trigger?” Caldera said. “How do we get around it?”

“If there’s a limit to the trigger area, I can’t find it,” I said. I’d been looking through potential futures and I couldn’t find a single one where we went down there without fighting the thing. “And it’s sensitive. It’s not just set to living things, objects are going to trigger it too.”

“There has to be some way to avoid it, right?” Sonder said. “Maybe a password?”

“I’m not sure there is.”

“Really?”

“Look, I’ve seen a lot of magical defences and they usually have a pattern. They’re designed to let the right people in and keep the wrong people out. This one isn’t made that way. It’s the kind of ward you set up if you don’t want to let anybody in. Even Deleo would have trouble disarming this without setting it off first.”

“Why would she do that?” Sonder asked.

“If she wasn’t coming down here either,” I said. “This trap is the equivalent of filling a room with poison gas and then sealing it from the outside. You don’t do it if you’re planning to use it.” I looked at Caldera. “Deleo hasn’t been using this mansion. The only reason she comes here is if someone trips the burglar alarm, so she can reset the wards.”

“You mean that’s what she’s been doing until now,” Caldera countered. “She could have set this ward up to last for ten years and be planning to disarm it when Richard came back.”

“Which we’ve seen absolutely no evidence for.”

Caldera looked down the steps with narrowed eyes. “If we took this thing on, could we beat it?”

I looked at Caldera in disbelief. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Well?”

“I have no idea! Combats are way too chaotic to see more than a few seconds ahead. I can tell the thing’s going to go out of its way to try and kill you, isn’t that enough?”

“Why her?” Sonder asked.

“Because she makes the most noise.”

“So make an educated guess,” Caldera said. She folded her arms and looked at me. “Can we get past this thing?”

It’s times like this that remind me just how big a gap there is between elemental mages and diviners. For me, combat is dangerous. A bullet or a blade will kill me as fast as anyone else and the best way to avoid that is not to be in a fight in the first place. I have to be afraid of physical threats, or I wouldn’t survive. For mages like Caldera it’s different. The shields and defensive spells of elemental mages aren’t invulnerable but they’re damn close, and the kinds of weapons that would kill an unarmoured human—guns, knives, grenades—don’t do much to an elemental mage except piss them off. Bringing them down in a straight fight takes the kind of firepower that the average person is simply not going to be carrying around, which means that when an elemental mage looks at an ordinary human being, they know that barring something unexpected they’ve got nothing to fear from them. It gives them a very different mindset from someone like me.

I looked at Caldera, sizing her up. Heavyset and overweight, she didn’t look like most people’s idea of an action heroine. But I’d been watching her on the way here and I’d noticed that she didn’t move like someone who was unhealthy, and also that she hadn’t gotten out of breath once. There might be a lot of fat on her but I had the feeling there was a lot of muscle too, and the way she acted gave me the impression that she knew how to take care of herself. A sparring match with her would be interesting.

“Well?” Caldera said.

“Probably,” I said reluctantly. I really didn’t want to encourage Caldera but I also didn’t want to lie. “Nocturnes don’t have the power of true elementals. But I can’t guarantee that the fight won’t tip Deleo off too. And I don’t care how good you are, you couldn’t take her and a nocturne at the same time.”

Caldera looked away. “Look, don’t you think it’s time to get out of here?” I said. “Maybe you’re right about Richard and maybe you’re not, but this place has been empty for years. If there’s anything to find, it’s not here.”

Caldera hesitated and, looking ahead, I could tell she was at last seriously thinking about it. I would have liked to know more, but I’d already spent too long focusing on the futures of us fighting the nocturne and I needed to get back to watching for danger. I sent my senses branching out ahead through the futures of us waiting where we were now, looking for any shift in the status quo.

And with a jolt I found it. We weren’t alone in the mansion anymore. There were people here—familiar people, heading straight for us. “We have to go,” I said. “Now!”

Sonder and Caldera looked at me in surprise. “Why?” Sonder asked.

“Because there’s a bunch of people coming here to kill me, and they’re going to do it unless we get out of here right now!”

Sonder’s eyes widened. “Wait, it’s—?”

“Yes!”

“How do—?” Caldera started to ask.

“Because I’ve seen them!” I was frantically mapping out escape routes and it didn’t look good. They were directly between us and the front entrance—they must have come in the same way we did—and they were closing in fast. We’d have to get around them or go over.

Caldera frowned at me. “Why do they want to kill you?”

“Because of something I did ten years ago—I’ll tell you the story, but not here!”

“Wait,” Caldera said. “I’m not moving unless you tell me more than that.”

I wanted to scream. “Are you trying to get us—”

I’d been searching as fast as I could through the futures and in that instant I realised two things. First, using the annuller hadn’t worked. In all of the futures in which I shifted my position, the path of the incoming group adjusted to match me. They knew exactly where I was and trying to hide wasn’t going to help. Second, they were moving faster than we were. Even if I could get Caldera and Sonder moving, they would be on us before we could get out of the mansion. “Too late,” I said, looking down the corridor. A moment later Will appeared around the corner.