Forged

chapter 12

The control centre under Levistus’s mansion was a wide, one-storey room, filled with desks and chairs. Computer equipment and magical focuses split the desktop space between them. The floor was polished and squeaked under my shoes, a grid of lights shone from above, and the hum of machinery was a steady noise in the background.

The room was empty, but it didn’t feel deserted. Someone had been here only minutes ago. I had the feeling I knew who.

The MP7 was back in my hands, the dispel focus back in my pocket. I channelled a steady thread of power into the focus, letting it recharge as I strode down between the desks. Banks of security monitors displayed CCTV images of the mansion, the swimming pool, the gate room. A projection focus sat dark and inactive, but I could sense a fading charge. A moment’s study told me that it had been set to view the entrance hall in the basement. Someone had stood here watching the battle. I could almost smell Levistus’s scent, trace his footprints.

A space magic signature at the back of the room caught my attention. I moved closer.

There was a freestanding gate against the back wall, a dark wood arch seven feet tall carved in intricate patterns. Like the projection focus, it held a fading magical residue. It had been deactivated, but it was locked, not burned out. A quick search revealed a password and a small override focus hidden in the wall. I said the password, touched the focus, and felt the gate stir to life. I’d only need to channel a little energy and I could step through. It would lead me into . . .

I frowned. A ruin? Why would Levistus have a permanent gate to an empty ruin?

I focused with my magesight, checking futures. As I studied the lines of the gate spell, I noticed inconsistencies. This wasn’t the destination that the gate had been originally set to. It had been altered recently, and the changes concealed. A misdirection.

There was no way to tell where the gate had originally led, but the gate focus had been used for a very long time to go to the same place over and over again, and the focus “remembered” that destination, just as a book will fall open to a frequently read page. I reached out with the fateweaver to see if there was any chance that the gate would slip back to its original target. There was, but it was a very, very small chance.

A moment’s work with the fateweaver and it was a one hundred percent chance. I touched the gate and channelled. Energy flowed; the lines of the spell shifted, and the archway darkened into a masked portal.

I knew as soon as I stepped through that I’d found Levistus’s shadow realm.

Columns of crystal and frosted glass spiralled to a pale blue ceiling, circular walls framing a large rounded room. Pedestals and standing shelves held magic items of all kinds, radiating dozens of overlapping magical auras. The shadow realm felt small, probably reaching barely further than the walls of the room.

Levistus was bent over a desk, concentrating on something. As I stepped through he whirled, with an expression as close to shock as I’d ever seen on his face.

It had been six years since I first met Levistus, and he’d changed very little. Thinning white hair, odd colourless eyes set in a face smoothed to stillness. “You!” he said. “How did . . . ?”

“Your gate protections aren’t as good as you think,” I told him.

Levistus’s expression calmed, returning to the masklike, impassive look that I remembered from all those Council meetings. “So I see,” he said. “I take it Caldera is dead?”

“Do you care?”

“I had imagined you might.”

I began walking, circling Levistus. He turned to face me as I moved. “You know, I was expecting you to be there for the big fight,” I told him. “Not that I’m complaining. If I’d had to deal with you throwing mental attacks at the same time as I fought that mantis golem, I might actually have been in trouble.”

“A leader’s role is to direct, not fight in the trenches,” Levistus said. “A lesson your time on the Council apparently failed to teach you.”

“Well, when it comes to staying off the front lines, you’re certainly the expert. And you’re right. Maybe if I’d spent less time leading raids and more time building up political power, the way you did, I wouldn’t be here now. But then again, leading from the front teaches you things. Like how to win a battle.”

“Win?” Levistus said. “You believe you’ve won?”

I’d circled half the room, passing focuses and weapons and scrying items. I’d drifted closer as I moved: I’d started maybe fifty feet away from Levistus, and now the distance was down to more like forty. “Not yet.”

Levistus didn’t answer.

“I assume you know why I’m here.”

“Yes, Verus, I know precisely why you are here,” Levistus said. “Once a Dark mage, always a Dark mage. Crude, destructive, and ultimately predictable.”

“Yeah, that was what you thought back when you picked me to be your disposable diviner to get the fateweaver for you,” I said. “Has it ever occurred to you that the whole reason I was drawn into Council politics was because of you? If you hadn’t spent so long trying to destroy me, I wouldn’t have become the person I am right now. It’s funny, but in a way, you kind of created me.”

“I had no part in creating you,” Levistus said sharply. “Your path was set by your master a long time ago.”

I gave a slight smile. “Touched a nerve? I hope so, Levistus, because I really want to make sure you understand just how much of this is your own fault. Don’t get me wrong: the fact that I’m going to kill you in a few minutes is one hundred percent my decision, but you had so many chances to stop this. Back when we first met in Canary Wharf, do you have any idea just how little I cared about Light politics? Yes, I didn’t like the Council, but I really didn’t give two shits about who was on the Council. You were the one who changed that. First you tried to use me to steal the fateweaver, then you tried to have me assassinated when I got involved with Belthas, then you pointed the Nightstalkers in my direction the year after . . . I don’t think a year’s gone by when you haven’t tried to murder me or someone I care about. You know the worst thing? How pointless it all was. At any time, all you had to do was walk away. You could have stopped it after that failed death sentence; you could have stopped it after I was raised to the Council. Even right up until this week, I was still willing to call a truce. But you just couldn’t let it go.”

Levistus’s eyes flashed. I’d sat at the same table as him for scores of Council meetings, maybe hundreds, but I think this was the first time I’d ever seen him openly angry. “You think this is some sort of grudge?” Even furious, Levistus’s voice was tight and controlled. “Your arrogance is beyond belief. I sought your removal because I recognised from the very beginning that your influence upon the Council would be a purely destructive one. Bahamus and Druss were both foolish enough to believe that you could be manipulated. I was not. You care nothing for order, nothing for stability. Your only concern is for yourself. Your presence on the Council was an insult to everything it stands for.”

“And what does it stand for?” I asked. “See, that’s the thing about Light mages like you and Caldera and Talisid. You love to talk about these high-minded ideals that the Council supposedly stands for, and you think that makes you so much better than Dark mages. But you never seem to feel any particular need to act better than Dark mages. You love to talk about how evil your enemies are, but when you’re the ones doing the destroying or lying or killing, you never seem to have a problem with it.”

Levistus looked at me in contempt. “Like most Dark mages, you have the intellectual development of a child.”

“Yeah, well, children can still see the obvious,” I said. “You want to lecture me about only caring about myself? How many lives have you destroyed to get to where you are now, Levistus? Oh, I’m sure you don’t kill them personally. You just sit in your comfortable chair and sign orders with your fountain pen. Have you ever bothered to count? I don’t think you have. They’re just numbers on a page.”

“Your feelings are irrelevant,” Levistus said. “As are your infantile ethics.”

“You know the other thing about people like you?” I said. “You get cocky. You order people’s deaths, and because you’re not the one who has to get your hands dirty, you avoid the consequences. After a while, you stop thinking about consequences at all. You figure you’re untouchable, and for the most part, you’re right. And so when you finally go too far, it takes you a long time to notice. You know what it was in your case, that knocked down the whole house of cards? It was when you and Sal Sarque ordered for Anne to be captured and tortured two years ago. Back then, I doubt either of you gave it a second thought. But it gave Anne the push to pick up the jinn, and if you follow that chain of events all the way through, it ends up with Anne killing Sal Sarque in his island fortress a month back.”

I’d closed the distance to thirty feet. A few more steps and I’d be in range to rush him. “You really do not see it, do you?” Levistus said. “Sal Sarque’s death at your hands demonstrates precisely why you and Mage Walker needed to be removed.”

“Anne killed Sarque because of what you did.”

“She killed Sarque because she valued her self-preservation over the good of the country,” Levistus said. “As do you. Consider, Verus. Let us say that you succeed, that you and Mage Walker manage to overthrow the Council, kill enough of them to cause their resistance to collapse. Will it be worth it? When historians look back, what do you think their judgement will be? Are your lives worth more than this country?”

I was silent.

“You never even considered it,” Levistus said. “And that is why you are unfit to wield power.”

“Did you expect us to lie down and die?”

“Of course not. If you valued the good of the country over yourself, you would have. But you do not, and you did not, and instead you chose the vicious and destructive path you follow now.”

I stared into Levistus’s colourless eyes for a moment. “You know, people like you are always talking about sacrifices and the greater good,” I said. “But there’s a funny thing I’ve noticed. No matter how many people get sacrificed, you’re never one of them.”

Levistus looked back at me indifferently. “And?”

“I think maybe it’s your turn.”

I started my lunge on the last word, but Levistus was ready. Ice flashed across the room, running from wall to wall and from floor to ceiling.

I came to a stop. The wall of ice split the room in half, with me on one side and Levistus on the other. It was transparent, and nearly a foot thick. I know what ice mages are capable of, and even the strongest of them can’t throw up walls that big that fast. Levistus must have had some item or trick.

“I’d heard rumours that you were an elementalist as well as a mind mage,” I said. “Should have guessed ice would be your style.”

“The key words,” Levistus said, “are as well.”

Mental force struck me like a hammer. It wasn’t anything like the domination attempts I’d faced from Crystal and Abithriax: this was a brute-force attack designed to stun the target, crush their mind and leave them unconscious. But just as Levistus had anticipated my move, I’d anticipated his. I’d been channelling my power through the mind shield I carried, and Levistus’s attack ran into my mental defences.

Levistus struck again and again. The ice was no barrier to him, and he hammered my defences with blows of psychic force. It felt like a boxer pounding against my guard, fists slamming into my brain. But I’d had years of practice at defending myself against psychic combat, and the focus was the best I’d been able to find. Waves of hostile energy crashed against my mind, breaking against the fortress of my will.

I forced myself to ignore the mental blows and focused on the ice wall. It was thick and strong, but it was real ice, with the weaknesses that came with it. I focused on vulnerable points, using the fateweaver to amplify them, then I lifted my MP7, clicked it to single-shot, and began firing, slowly and deliberately, one bullet per second. The flat report of the gun echoed in the chamber, my divination guiding each bullet as it slammed into the ice.

“If you expect to shoot through—” Levistus began.

My fifth bullet hit, and there was a rumbling crunch. Cracks spiderwebbed through the wall and Levistus stopped talking.

I fired a sixth bullet, and a seventh.

Levistus made a gesture and the air next to him shimmered. A humanoid figure took form, visible only to my magesight, floating just above and beside him, sculpted out of lines of vapour. It was an air elemental like Starbreeze, but where Starbreeze’s face was expressive and ever-changing, this one’s face was blank.

“It took me some time to replace Thirteen,” Levistus said. “The changes proved more complex than predicted. Still, I suppose this is as good a time as any for a field test. I think you’ll find it quite effective at its purpose.”

I kept firing. Eight shots, nine. There was another rumble and a section of wall five feet up cracked and fell.

Levistus twitched his hand.

The elemental soared up, quick as lightning, darting through the hole I’d made, then curving down. Those eerie blank eyes were locked on my face as it dove towards me. Air elementals don’t need to strike or buffet their targets; they can turn a living being to air and scatter them across a thousand miles. This one wasn’t intending to do that—some limitation of whatever Levistus had done to enslave it, maybe. It was going to try to flow straight down my throat and asphyxiate me. Just as fatal.

I’d pulled the wand from my belt the instant the elemental began moving. As it went into its dive, I fired.

Red light flashed out, carrying the scent of ozone. The elemental tried to dodge aside, but somehow, despite its speed, the beam caught it in the head. In my magesight I saw the beam tear through the core of animating magic within the creature and burn through the other end. The elemental wisped into vapour, destroyed in an instant.

Weakness rippled through me, and I lowered the wand, meeting Levistus’s eyes. “Not effective enough,” I told him.

Levistus’s face twisted in anger, but I was already firing. The final bullet sent a shock wave along the ice wall’s major fracture and split it open. With a keening crash, a whole section of the ice wall from floor to ceiling collapsed.

Levistus tried to throw up a smaller wall of ice to block the hole. I broke into a run, firing from the hip, twisting the futures as I did. The bullets intercepted the ice as it formed, shattered it before the structure could take shape, and then I was through, with nothing between me and Levistus but empty floor.

Levistus snapped a command word. From one of the pedestals, something metal unfurled and leapt towards me. I dived and rolled, catching a glimpse of the thing as it flew overhead: a black metal chain, hooked and barbed and glowing with red light. Instead of falling, the thing arrested its forward motion, then reversed course, accelerating back towards me.

In the moment’s breathing space I dropped the MP7 and drew my dispel focus. As the chain enveloped me, I stepped in and struck. The chain was some sort of enormously powerful focus item, animated with a simple governing intelligence, and it was shielded against dispel magic. The fateweaver found a chink in the protections, and the dispel attack caused the focus spells to go wild and fail. Metal barbs lashed my back, but they were already lifeless and falling away. The chain clattered to the floor.

The seconds it had taken me to deal with the chain had given Levistus the chance to open the range. His shield was up, a translucent barrier of crystalline light, and a nimbus of blue energy glowed around him. Ice shards materialised behind and above his shoulders, hovering in the air and pointing towards my heart.

The ice shards flew at me as though fired from a gun. I leapt to one side and they shattered on the floor and against the pedestal behind. Before I’d even landed, more were materialising and Levistus was firing again, with still more after that. It wasn’t a single attack but a barrage, like a machine gun that never ran out of bullets.

I dodged, ducking and twisting under the rain of ice. The shards were thin slivers of blue energy, needle-sharp, and in the futures I saw them spear through my flesh as though it were paper. Levistus’s control was tight, directed by his iron will, but there were too many of the shards for him to focus on them all, and in that gap the fateweaver did its work, opening up safe paths through the deadly rain.

The room flashed blue, the light illuminating Levistus’s face. I didn’t watch his eyes; all my attention was on the lines of the futures, thread-thin paths of safety forking through a sea of death. An ice sliver took a few hairs off my head; another brushed my sleeve. Cold seeped into me but my armour seemed to pulse with life, holding back the chill.

Levistus was getting closer. I’d started thirty feet away; now the distance was closer to twenty. Every now and again there’d be a gap in the barrage, and I’d use the opportunity to take a step forward. Step by step, Levistus drew nearer.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see strain on Levistus’s face, mixed with concentration. He backed away, giving ground. The barrage of ice didn’t slow: shard after shard materialised and flashed out towards me, but as each attack came out, I marked it and plotted a new course so that it would miss. My path formed a zigzag, cutting back and forth but always turning towards Levistus.

Levistus came up against the wall. He tried to escape to the right and I moved to block him. Barely ten feet separated us now. The barrage intensified, growing wilder, faster, but all that did was open up more chinks for the fateweaver. The sound was a constant roar, the keening crash of ice shards striking the floor and walls, the scuff of footsteps.

A final step and I was within arm’s reach. Levistus was right in front of me, close enough to touch. His shield shimmered, a glowing barrier. I was so close now that the shield was an obstacle against the rain of shards, and I moved to use it as cover, placing it between me and Levistus each time a new icicle materialised. The paths of safety were wider now, and I was able to turn my attention away from keeping myself alive, and towards Levistus.

Levistus’s shield shone, reflecting the image of the knife in my hand. The blade glanced off the steel-hard planes, but with each strike I was probing for a weakness. Levistus was spending most of his energy on defence now; only the occasional ice shard made it around the shield to slash down. I dodged them all, searching, seeking.

Levistus tried to reinforce his shield, change his attack pattern to drive me back. The futures shifted and for an instant there was a crack in his defences.

The fateweaver drove into that crack like a wedge. The future I needed opened up, one tiny possibility amid thousands, and my divination found it.

Levistus’s shield shattered as I drove my knife through it point-first, the edge gleaming. Shards of frozen magic spun in the air as I rammed the blade into Levistus’s gut. My impact slammed him up against the wall. I saw the shock in Levistus’s eyes, felt his clothes as I gripped them with my free hand, then I twisted the knife, pulled it out, and drove it between his ribs and into his heart.

Levistus and I stared into each other’s eyes from inches away. The shock in his eyes became pain, then that familiar look of surprise that you only see on dying men. I felt Levistus shudder, warm blood oozing over my fingers, slick on the knife handle. Then those odd colourless eyes seemed to fade and the life went out of them. Levistus slid down the wall. I let him down slowly, then let him crumple to the floor.

I looked down at Levistus’s body. His face was expressionless again, blank in death as it had been in life. There was blood on his clothes, the wall, my hands.

Mechanically I wiped the knife on Levistus’s robes and sheathed it, then straightened and looked around. The shadow realm seemed suddenly very empty, half-real without its owner. Some of the pedestals and shelves had been destroyed in the battle; others were intact, their contents radiating magic.

There were enough treasures here to make any normal man rich for a hundred lifetimes, but I could sense active spells in the background, and I didn’t know what I might have triggered or what might be coming. My body was still hyped from the adrenaline but I could feel exhaustion creeping up on me. I needed to finish and get out.

I took a few things. A crystal vial, seemingly fragile, with something glowing inside. A headband of beaten copper, dull and tarnished, worked into the shape of a crown of feathers. Finally, there was a long, spear-like weapon, suspended in some kind of containment field. The haft was black, and though it had been a long time, I thought I recognised it as a Russian design called a sovnya. Both it and the copper headband were imbued items, and possibly the vial too. I held them cautiously at arm’s length, keeping a neutral mental posture, carefully not attempting to claim them, but even so I could feel them stir and uncoil as they reacted to my presence.

I gated out and through a series of staging points, jumping from continent to continent.

Night had long since fallen by the time I got back to the Hollow, and as the gate closed behind me, it was all I could do not to collapse. The aftershock of the combat was starting to hit, and I wanted to run away and fall asleep and throw up. I dumped the imbued items and my weapons, then stripped off my armour and fell into bed. I was asleep in seconds. Dimly, I was afraid of what dreams would come, but if I had any, I was too far gone to remember.

—

There’s a very specific feeling when you wake up in the morning with something hanging over you. It makes your stomach and heart sink, a mixture of anxiety over what you did and worry over what’s going to happen next. When you’re young, you get it for things like an overdue library book, or a fight with another child. As you get older, you outgrow worries like that, but you don’t outgrow the feeling at all—you just get it for different reasons. For some people, it’ll be fear of a bad grade, or an angry manager. For others, it’s money, or the police.

But I’m fairly sure no one else woke up that particular morning wondering what was going to happen now that they’d just assassinated one of the leading politicians in the country. It was so extreme that I had trouble grasping it. There are lots of people who’ll tell you how to handle a bad breakup, or losing your job. There isn’t much advice out there on how to deal with killing a government minister and their entire personal staff.

I dressed, cleaned my teeth, and shaved. The imbued items I’d stolen last night sat around the room, their presence oppressive. I didn’t want to eat with them watching me, so I took some fruit and a protein bar out of the cottage and ate my breakfast sitting on a fallen tree in the Hollow’s morning sun. After the chaos and ugliness of last night, it was a relief to look at the sunlight and feel the wind.

Karyos arrived just as I was finishing up. The hamadryad seemed to glide through the undergrowth without brushing it, almost as if the plants bent aside to let her pass. “We have a visitor.”

I paused, holding the remains of my apple. “Outside?”

Karyos nodded. “He has disturbed the sensors but has not attempted entry. I believe he is waiting for a response.”

“Anyone you know?”

“No.”

I looked quickly through the futures to see who I’d find if I stepped out of the Hollow and to its mirrored location in the Chilterns. My eyebrows rose. “Huh.”

“Do you recognise him?”

“Yes,” I said. “He’s a Light mage, and very powerful. I don’t think he’s an enemy though.” Or at least he hadn’t been before last night.

“Will you receive him?”

I thought about it for a second and then nodded.

—

The gateway at the Hollow’s entry point opened and Landis stepped through.

Landis is tall and rangy, with sandy-coloured hair and an abrupt way of moving. He spends half his time acting oblivious and the other half acting like a lunatic, but I’ve learned over the years that he’s more observant than he looks.

Landis is one of the most dangerous battle-mages I know. He’s not well-known outside of the Order of the Shield, but he’s as experienced and powerful as any elemental mage I’ve ever met, and even with the fateweaver, I wouldn’t like to take him on. Which was a problem, because as a member of the Order of the Shield, he had a duty to at least arrest me, and more likely kill me on sight. Inviting him in was a risk, but right now both my instincts and my divination were telling me that he was here to talk.

“Ah, Verus!” Landis said. “So good of you to see me on such short notice. I imagine you must have a busy schedule these days.”

“That’s one way to put it,” I said. “Why are you here?”

Landis looked from left to right at the forests of the Hollow, smiling. “This really is a wonderful shadow realm. ‘A thing of beauty is a joy for ever,’ as they say. I must remember to visit more often once this is all over.”

“It’s very pretty, yes,” I said wearily. “Landis, I don’t mean to be rude, but I just killed around a dozen people last night. I’m not really in the mood for discussing aesthetics.”

“Yes, I know. I find it’s important to centre oneself at such times.”

I looked at Landis. He looked back at me pleasantly.

“Would you like to take a walk?” I asked.

“Of course.”

We began to stroll through the woods of the Hollow, the path winding gently between trees and through clearings. “I imagine you’re wondering whose side I’m on,” Landis said.

“You’re a Keeper of the Order of the Shield,” I told Landis. “You answer to the Council, which means at any time they could order you to go kill me, and you’d be forced to do exactly that. Don’t get me wrong; I appreciate all you’ve done for us. But it seems to me it’s going to be very hard for us to stay friends.”

Landis nodded. “Quite understandable. Have you noticed that virtually no Keepers from the Order of the Shield have been sent after you?”

That caught me off guard. I thought for a second, going through names. “There have been a couple.”

“Ares and McCole. Both have extensive ties to Council Intelligence.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll bite. Why haven’t the Order of the Shield been sent after me?”

“Because senior members of the Order of the Shield—notably myself—have politely but firmly communicated to the Council that we view pursuing you as counterproductive.”

I looked at Landis with a frown. He looked back at me with eyebrows raised. We continued to walk through the woods of the Hollow.

“You’ve been protecting me,” I said.

“Effectively.”

“Why?”

“For years now, some among us have recognised that Levistus was more dangerous to the Council than Richard Drakh could ever be. Drakh struck at the Council from outside; Levistus was rotting it from within. Worst of all, Levistus had displayed a disturbing ability to suborn or blackmail others to his will. In another ten years, he would have been a dictator.”

“Probably less,” I said. “But back up. You’re telling me you and your friends in the Order of the Shield knew about all this all along?”

“Yes.”

“And what were you planning to do about it?”

“Our hope had been that your conflict with Levistus would present some opportunity to weaken his political position.”

“Wonderful,” I said. “So you, some of the most competent and dangerous battle-mages on the entire Council, have been sitting around all this time doing . . . nothing. You couldn’t have gotten rid of him yourself?”

“Being a Light mage has a price, Verus,” Landis said. “Yes, we could have removed Levistus directly. But doing so would in all probability have started a civil war. The Keeper Orders have many privileges, but in exchange for those privileges, we must accept certain limitations on our freedom of action.”

“Limitations,” I said bitterly. “Yeah, that’s a nice way to put it. You know how many people died last night because you didn’t feel like you had enough ‘freedom of action’?”

“Forty-eight confirmed dead and four missing, the last I checked,” Landis said. “Twenty-eight security personnel, eleven Council employees and functionaries, nine members of Levistus’s personal staff, and four mages. I knew six of them personally. Lorenz was the one I was best acquainted with, after Caldera, of course. An ex-member of the Order of the Shield, liked to play the flute. Affected boredom much of the time, though it was something of a pose. Quite a talented air mage, but he did have some rather careless personal habits and fell in with Levistus as a result. Married, though he and his wife had been separated for years. I hope the news doesn’t hit her too badly. From the autopsy, I assume he was killed by Anne, though the bullet wound was presumably your work. Then there was Casper. An adept, only in his mid-twenties, if I recall. I used to talk to him during court appointments at the War Rooms. He always struck me as quite idealistic. Genuinely believed in the Council, though some of the things he saw as liaison to Levistus were beginning to make him uncomfortable. He might have found a different position quite soon if those jann hadn’t torn out his throat. Then there was Christina, whose body they found on the front lawn. She didn’t work for Levistus at all, she simply was unlucky enough to be there on an errand at the time of your attack. I believe she was engaged to be married this coming spring . . . did you want me to go on?”

“Please don’t,” I said. What Landis had just said was probably going to stick in my memory for years. It’s bad enough when the people you kill are faceless strangers. Knowing their names makes it so much worse.

“And then of course there’s Caldera, who you know very well. We actually roomed together for a little while; I don’t know if she ever told you. I’d been a journeyman for a good few years but they passed that law requiring members of the Order of the Shield to meet the same qualifications as the Order of the Star, so she and I ended up in the same class. She was always rather disappointed that I didn’t have what she considered a proper appreciation for high-quality beverages, but she did her best to educate me all the same, and I was introduced to quite a few fascinating drinking establishments as a result.” Landis paused. “I advised her to accompany Talisid’s force. She refused. She was quite certain you’d find some way to evade them, and she wanted to be ready when you did. She always did have excellent instincts for fieldwork, but they didn’t bring her much happiness.”

I was silent.

“You aren’t the only person who’s had to make hard choices, Verus,” Landis said. “I’ve been a Keeper for quite some time, and I’ve made a great many decisions that have led directly or indirectly to people’s deaths. Believe me, I am fully aware of their consequences.”

We walked for another minute or so without speaking. “All right,” I said. “Assuming I accept everything you’re telling me, I don’t think you came here just to thank me for taking care of your business. What is it you want?”

Landis nodded. “I want you to stop assassinating Council members.”

“You’re not the only one.”

“By burning away the dead wood, the forest fire allows new growth,” Landis said. “However, at a certain point, that fire must stop. I have now specified the point at which it must stop.”

I looked sidelong at Landis. His manner was pleasant and there was no threat in his words, but I knew that if I replied with or what? I wouldn’t like the answer.

“It’s all very well to say ‘stop,’” I said. “But as you may or may not be aware, the entire reason I’m fighting this private war is that the Council refuses to call it quits.”

“I may be able to exercise some small influence in that regard. At the very least, I suspect when you next call, they’ll be more inclined to take you seriously.”

“Yes, because I just killed one of them. Backing down now is the absolute worst thing I can do. What I’ve done is bad enough, that would make it be all for nothing!”

“All you have to do is make the same request as before. Who knows? Maybe this time they’ll listen.”

I thought for a second. My instincts were telling me to say no. I finally had the Council on the ropes and I didn’t want to back off.

But making an enemy of Landis was a bad idea. He was Variam’s master, and his word carried a lot of weight in the Order of the Shield. If he was telling the truth, then he was the only reason I didn’t have a whole extra Keeper Order to deal with.

And then there was the personal side. Landis had done me some very big favours over the years. He had taken a chance on Variam when nobody else would, and he’d backed me up in some scary fights. I owed him a lot.

“All right,” I said. “Because it’s you, I’ll try it. But I can’t promise it’ll work.”

“Good show!” Landis said cheerfully. He clapped me on my shoulder hard enough to rock me sideways. “I won’t keep you any longer, then. Do feel free to contact the Council at your earliest convenience.”

—

I escorted Landis out of the Hollow. The portal closed behind him and I was left alone.

With Landis gone, I felt at a loss. I thought about getting in touch with November or Variam and catching up on the news, but it felt like the wrong thing to do. Council communications would be in chaos right now, and I really couldn’t see any point in eavesdropping. I probably knew more about what was going to happen next than they did.

In the end, I couldn’t come up with anything better than my original plan. I left formal meeting requests with the Council via two different sources. Usually I’d have just called Talisid, but either he was still stuck in that deep shadow realm or he wasn’t answering his phone.

I heard back from the Council within the hour. Apparently I finally had their attention. As afternoon came, I prepared for what I hoped would be the last time I’d ever have to speak to them.