Marked

3

‘So how did that even work?’ Variam asked.

We were sitting in the Hollow, a shadow realm linked to the Chilterns. It’s a small forested island, floating in a multicoloured sky, and right now, it’s our home. The stars were out, pinpoints of brilliant light shining down from above, and we were gathered around our camp-site, a circle of chairs in a clearing with dim sphere lights glowing in the darkness. The scents of grass and summer leaves were all around, and there was the occasional rustle of some creature moving in the undergrowth.

‘Remember that business with White Rose?’ I said. ‘When Vihaela joined up with Richard, she brought along a whole lot of blackmail material from the White Rose vault. My guess is that’s how she was able to partner up with Richard and Morden as equals.’

‘I remember now,’ Luna said. She was dressed more formally than she once would have, in a nice blouse and a skirt; she’d come straight from work. ‘That was how Morden got his seat on the Council.’

I nodded. ‘And I did some sniffing around and heard some rumours that Undaaris might just be one of those mages with some awkward little secrets in the White Rose vault. So I had a chat with him over the winter and dropped some hints. His reaction pretty much confirmed it.’

‘But we don’t have any of that stuff,’ Variam said. Like Luna, he was in his business clothes. He’d been in Keeper HQ all day, and had been the last to hear the news. ‘What, they think Morden just shares that kind of thing around?’

‘That’s exactly what they think,’ I said. ‘Remember, they think Anne and I signed up with Morden willingly. The way they see it, I was Morden’s aide, so I was on his side. So it’s really not a big step for them to assume I’d have access to his files.’ I shrugged. ‘As long as they’re going to assume the worst of us, we might as well take advantage.’

‘You can’t open that data focus.’

‘Undaaris doesn’t know that. But I guess it had been long enough since our last chat that he was starting to wonder if maybe I didn’t really have anything after all. So when Levistus came to him, he probably figured that this might be a way to get rid of the problem.’

‘Jesus.’ Variam sat back in his chair. ‘It was all a bluff?’

‘I raised; he folded,’ I said. ‘It’s not as bad as you think. There’s really no way for Undaaris to be sure that I don’t have access. I mean, what’s he going to do, ask Morden himself?’

‘It still doesn’t seem that great a position though,’ Luna said. ‘I mean, from what you say, Levistus has three votes on the Council pretty much locked up. All he needs is for one more person to change their mind.’

‘There are rules against resubmissions.’ I shrugged. ‘But basically, yeah, I’m hanging by a thread. What else is new?’

‘So what’s the plan?’ Variam asked.

The four of us had been meeting like this for a long time. Somehow or other, Variam, Luna, Anne and I had become a team, and at some point, without ever actually saying it out loud, we’d just started taking for granted that if there was a problem, we’d get together to deal with it. Two years ago, we would have been meeting in my Camden flat; one year ago, it would have been Arachne’s cave. But my flat had been burned down, and while Arachne’s cave was the closest thing I had left to a family home, it was less and less safe for me to visit. The Hollow was the first place we’d had for a long time that was safe. Shadow realms are hard to break into, and we’d done a lot of work to make this one even more so. It didn’t have the amenities of a house in the city, but it was worth the trade-off. It’s hard to explain just how big a relief it is to be able to go to sleep without worrying that someone will break in and kill you before you wake up.

‘Actually, I was hoping to get some ideas from you guys,’ I said. ‘I’ve got some long-term stuff going with Arachne, but as far as dealing with the Council goes, I’m holding my own, but not much more. I’m open to suggestions.’

The three of them looked at each other, but this time, neither Variam nor Luna spoke up. ‘What about Spire?’ Anne asked.

Unlike the other two, Anne had already been in the Hollow when I arrived. She spends the most time in it out of any of the four of us, and I sometimes think she seems more comfortable here than she does in London. She hadn’t said much until now, but then she usually doesn’t. ‘The seventh member of the Council,’ Anne said. ‘You said he’s supposed to represent independents.’

‘He’s also a recluse,’ I said. ‘Doesn’t show up most of the time, and usually abstains when he does.’

‘But if you could get him on your side, you’d have the numbers in your favour,’ Luna said.

‘Well, it’s worth a try. Though I’ve got the feeling that everyone else on the Council must have already tried the same thing.’

‘I’ve got a question,’ Variam said. ‘How come you didn’t know about this meeting until so late?’

‘Because they were keeping it from me.’

‘Yeah,’ Variam said. ‘But to call the meeting, they had to call every other member of the Council. And then all of them would have called their aides. And the guards, and the clerks, and everyone else.’

‘What are you getting at?’

‘You don’t think maybe you should have someone to help you with this stuff?’

I sighed. We’d had this discussion before. ‘It’s not as simple as that.’

‘Actually, it kind of is,’ Variam said. ‘If you’d had an aide the way all the other Council members do, you might have heard a bit earlier.’

‘Yeah, well, for some funny reason, it isn’t too easy for me to find an aide these days.’

All Council members – or almost all – have personal aides, who schedule their appointments, run messages and quite often carry out the actual negotiations while Council is in session. Aide positions are a major stepping stone in a political career, and they’re hotly sought after by mages who have ambitions to sit on the Council themselves someday.

No one was looking to become my aide. For one thing, being associated with the first Dark mage ever to sit upon the Light Council of Britain is not the kind of thing most Light mages want on their CV. For another, word had got out that this particular job wasn’t good for one’s health. Morden’s first couple of aides had died under mysterious circumstances, if being found burned to death with twenty broken bones counts as ‘mysterious’. Since I’d taken over, I’d had three aides myself. The first two had abruptly resigned their positions after receiving visits from the Crusaders – visits that had, presumably, spelled out what the consequences would be if they stuck around. The third had lasted a month. He’d quit when one of his family members had been kidnapped. Neither he nor the family member had been hurt, but ever since then, no one seemed particularly keen to take the position, and I couldn’t really blame them.

‘Maybe you aren’t looking in the right place,’ Variam said.

‘Vari …’

‘Look, you know Luna and I would have offered,’ Variam said. ‘But it’s a full-time job and we don’t have the time. I’ve got Keeper duties, and Luna’s running the shop. I mean, I guess she could work evenings or something, but …’

‘It wouldn’t work,’ Luna said. ‘I can take the odd day off, but not every day of the week. Anyway, I’m not sure I’d want to. You know how I feel about those guys. I might have passed my journeyman tests, but I’m not a real mage as far as they’re concerned.’

‘And those are all valid reasons, but that’s not why I haven’t asked,’ I said. ‘The way things are right now, becoming my aide is painting a target on your back. My last three aides didn’t quit out of hurt feelings. If they’d stuck around, odds are they’d have ended up dead.’

‘Sounds like you need someone tougher,’ Variam said.

I rolled my eyes. ‘Just come out and say it, Vari.’

Variam didn’t say it. He just looked pointedly at Anne.

It wasn’t the first time Variam had made the suggestion. He’d floated it around the time of aide number two, and voiced it more forcefully after the departure of number three. I hadn’t been comfortable with it then, and I wasn’t comfortable with it now for a host of complicated reasons. Anne could do the job, and do it well: she’s quiet, but she sees more than she lets on and she’s very good at reading people. Equally important, she’s probably more dangerous than any of us in a one-on-one fight. And while she runs a clinic in her spare time, she doesn’t have much else to do, which was probably one of the reasons Variam was pushing this. I knew that both Vari and Luna were worried about how much time Anne was spending in the Hollow.

But I’d rather have Anne in the Hollow than dead. ‘I don’t see her jumping up and down asking for the job,’ I said.

‘I wouldn’t mind,’ Anne said.

The rest of us looked at her. ‘Are you sure?’ Luna asked.

‘Would it help prevent something like this happening again?’ Anne asked me.

‘Yes, but there’s a reason I haven’t asked.’ Actually there were three, but the first I didn’t want to say in front of Luna and Vari, and the second I didn’t want to say in front of anyone. ‘The Crusaders went after you once already. If you’re in the War Rooms every day, they’re going to get a lot of opportunities to reach you again, and sooner or later, they are going to try.’

‘You’re in the War Rooms every day too,’ Anne said.

‘That’s different. I’m a Council member now.’

‘Isn’t that bounty on you still open?’ Luna asked.

‘Yes, but they haven’t actually tried to drag me off the streets.’

‘They bribed a guy to kill you less than three hours ago,’ Variam said.

‘It wasn’t a serious assassination attempt.’

Variam, Anne and Luna all looked at me.

‘What?’ I asked.

‘Okay,’ Variam said. ‘I want you to stop a minute and think about what you just said.’

‘Let’s put it another way,’ Anne said. ‘If you did have an aide, would that make you safer?’

I hesitated. I wanted to say no. ‘Probably.’

‘Then I’ll do it.’

I opened my mouth to argue, but then saw the way Anne was looking at me and stopped. I knew I wasn’t going to win this argument.

‘Good,’ Variam said. ‘So what have you heard about Richard?’

‘Oh right.’ I put the other issues out of my head. ‘That. As far as the rest of the Council knows, he’s got his hands full. The Dark mages following him still aren’t happy with the division of loot from the Vault, and it doesn’t seem like that last round of doling-out settled them. Council intelligence claim they’re refusing to help any further until he shares the wealth.’

‘Thank God Dark mages suck so badly when it comes to working together,’ Variam said. ‘If they’d attacked while we were busy with the adepts …’

I nodded. Our biggest advantage in dealing with Richard and Morden had always been that they were usually too busy with other problems to focus on us. By last year, Richard had manoeuvred himself to the top of the heap of the Dark mages of Britain, enough so that he’d been able to lead a significant number of them in a coordinated attack on the Vault. But Dark mages are Dark mages, and with the raid done, his alliance had immediately started squabbling over the loot. There hadn’t been an outright revolt yet, but it was probably only a matter of time. ‘From what I’ve heard, the one currently throwing a spanner in the works is Onyx. With Morden in custody, he’s claiming he should be taking Morden’s place on the triumvirate, and he wants the same kind of authority Morden had.’

‘Is that going to work?’ Luna asked.

‘Hell no,’ I said. Onyx is Morden’s Chosen, and he’s just as powerful as his master, but nowhere near as smart. ‘And I seriously doubt he’ll get any other mages to follow him. But he controls Morden’s mansion, so as long as he’s refusing to cooperate, he can hold Richard up.’

‘Good news for us,’ Variam said. ‘They can keep on fighting each other.’

‘It might not be as good as you think,’ Luna said. ‘Something I’ve been noticing for a while … you know how we get plenty of adepts in the shop? Well, I’ve been talking to them, and I’ve been hearing something about an association.’

‘An association?’

‘As in, mutual defence,’ Luna said. ‘You join up, and we’ll protect you, that sort of thing. Except the last guy to come in was really definite that it had nothing to do with the Council. I pressed him, and he insisted. No Light mages involved, he said. I think he was hoping I’d join.’

‘I’m pretty sure the Council isn’t running anything like that,’ I said with a frown.

‘Which was what I thought,’ Luna said. ‘So if the Council isn’t running it, and there are no Light mages involved, who does that leave?’

‘You think it’s Richard,’ Anne said.

‘It makes sense, doesn’t it?’ Luna said. ‘One of the big things adepts are scared of is mages preying on them. If Richard promises them they’ll be safe from that …’

‘Then that would be a pretty good motivator to join his team,’ I said. ‘So what do they have to do to join this “association”?’

‘Nothing, according to him,’ Luna said. ‘But once you’ve got a bunch of people organised like that, it’s not so hard to point them at a target, is it?’

Variam was frowning as well, and I didn’t blame him. I didn’t like the sound of this. ‘The next time this person tries to talk you into joining, you think you can find out more?’

Luna nodded. ‘I’ll give it a try.’

We spoke for a while longer, then as the hour drew late, first Variam and then Luna said their goodbyes and gated back to Earth. Tomorrow was a work day, and they both had an early start. At last only Anne and I were left, sitting under the stars.

‘I checked on Karyos,’ Anne said. ‘I was worried she was growing too slowly, but I think it’s because she’s in sync with the tree. She seems in good health.’

‘That’s good,’ I said absently. ‘Are you sure about this aide thing?’

‘I think I can do it,’ Anne said. ‘Unless there’s something you weren’t saying with the others around.’

‘It’s not that.’

Anne looked at me.

I sighed inwardly. It’s hard to hide things from Anne. ‘Okay, I guess it is that. I’m worried about the jinn. And about you.’

‘This again?’ Anne said. ‘You guys tested me for weeks. Honestly, for a while back there I was feeling like a lab rat. And every single one of those tests came up negative. I’m not possessed by something.’

‘None of the tests were able to find anything,’ I said. ‘But not finding anything doesn’t mean there’s nothing there. Something drove off a whole Crusader strike team and ate the ones that didn’t run fast enough, and then on top of that it apparently managed to do a perfect disappearing act as well.’

‘But it’s been eight months! If whatever-it-was did that perfect a disappearing act, don’t you think that sounds as though it really has disappeared? I broke it out of its prison, it went on a rampage, then it escaped.’

‘But I don’t think they can escape,’ I said. ‘Arachne was very clear about that. The jinn trapped in those items were trapped for ever. Their old bodies are gone. The only way they can affect the world is by bonding to a human.’

‘Well, it doesn’t feel like it’s bonded to me,’ Anne said with a shrug. ‘And I don’t really want to just sit around for ever in the Hollow on the off-chance that something might happen if I don’t.’

I sat thinking for a moment. ‘Let me talk to Dr Shirland,’ I said at last.

Anne looked at me questioningly. ‘You don’t need my permission.’

‘I do if I want to ask her about anything that concerns you,’ I said. ‘Otherwise she’ll just tell me it’s confidential. I want you to give her a call and clear me for it.’

‘So you can do what? Vet me again?’

‘I just want to be on the safe side.’

Anne didn’t look happy. ‘All right,’ she said at last. ‘But if she doesn’t give you a hard reason to rule me out then you’ll take me on as your aide. Promise?’

I hesitated, then nodded. ‘Okay.’

I’d built a small cottage on the Hollow’s east side. Okay, ‘built’ is an exaggeration – it was more like the magical equivalent of a prefab – but it was comfortable, and it was nice to be able to leave my stuff out without locking everything up behind layers of security. The temperature of the Hollow was comfortably warm as I undressed for bed.

I used to have trouble sleeping. I had insomnia as a child, and learning to use my magic made it worse. Divination tends to encourage a state of hyper-vigilance – you’re always watching and looking ahead, whether for opportunities or for danger. The more practised you become with it, the easier it gets to keep doing it in the back of your mind, but that same habit also makes it really hard to relax. Back when I lived in Camden, it was common for me to take an hour or two to fall asleep every night.

But I don’t have trouble sleeping now, and the reason for that was lying next to my futon. It looked like a shard of amethyst, glinting deep purple in the light, and it was called a dreamstone.

Dreamstones are rare and obscure items, and most mages have never even heard of them. They allow the user to manipulate Elsewhere, that strange half-real place somewhere between thoughts and dreams. Exactly how they allow you to manipulate it is another question, and one whose answer I was still working out. I thought about taking hold of the dreamstone, then decided against it. Working magic through it without physical contact was slightly harder, but I was trying to push myself. I lay down on the futon and closed my eyes, channelling a thread of magic through the stone, and immediately I felt my mind starting to slip away, leaving my body behind. My last thought was that I’d forgotten to switch off the light.

I was floating in a sea of blacks and greys, currents of darkness flowing around me. There was no up or down, and nothing to see, but I formed a shape in my mind, a sense of someone’s presence, and felt a sense of direction. I didn’t move exactly – there wasn’t anything to move through – but I could feel a shift, my environment rearranging itself. A door took shape ahead of me, and I stepped through.

I came down into brilliant sunlight. I was standing amid white stone columns, berry bushes growing around smooth flagstones. Beyond and below, green trees formed a canopy running down a hillside, stopping at a beach beyond which was a bright blue ocean. Above me, white clouds floated in a clear sky. There was a fenced platform on an overlook just ahead, with a view down to the bay. On it was a table with two chairs, one of which was occupied. ‘Hey, you,’ I said as I walked over.

‘Hello, Alex,’ Arachne said with a smile. In the real world Arachne is a spider the size of a minivan, but here she took the form of a woman, middle-aged with dark eyes, lines creasing her olive skin and black hair braided in an elaborate style. Clear gems hung on her forehead and she wore a simple white gown. The first few times that I’d met Arachne here she’d been in her spider form, but lately, I’d found her wearing this shape instead. I hadn’t asked why, but I had my suspicions – I’ve always had the feeling that Arachne might share more with the myth than just her name. In any case, her appearance was entirely up to her: this was a dreamshard, something less than Elsewhere but more than a dream, and everything here was shaped by Arachne’s mind.

‘I was expecting you earlier,’ Arachne said. ‘Busy day?’

‘You could say that,’ I said, and told her the details.

Arachne listened to the story. Birds flew overhead, their cries carried on the wind. ‘I imagine you didn’t try to use the crown?’ she asked once I was finished.

‘Do you think I should have?’

‘No,’ Arachne said. ‘I doubt it would have served you, and if it had, you would have come to regret it.’

With a sigh, I sat back in the chair. Absent-mindedly I reached out to the table and created a glass of iced water, lifting it to take a sip. It was the perfect temperature. ‘It feels like I’m not making fast enough progress,’ I said. ‘The whole reason I got into this to begin with was in the hope of finding an item that was a good match. But most of them are the kind I want to throw as far as I can and run in the opposite direction.’

‘We always knew that the odds were long ones,’ Arachne said. ‘As you said, any item that the Council could easily use wouldn’t have been locked up.’

There had been more than one reason that I’d been out in Deptford this evening hunting down the Splinter Crown. Months ago, I’d volunteered to head the Vault recovery project, and ever since then, I’d been on raid after raid, tracking down the imbued items that I’d indirectly helped to steal. When the Council had questioned me as to why I was doing it, I’d told them that I wanted to protect the people caught in the crossfire. They probably thought I was just trying to prove something. Actually, both reasons were true, but there was a third one that I didn’t think they’d guessed: I was also doing it in the hope of finding an item for myself.

Last year, I’d been forced to face something that had been nagging at me for a long time: as a diviner, I’m simply not a match for the heavyweights of the magical world. In the past I’d mostly stayed off the radar of the really scary people, and when that hadn’t worked, my solution had been to run and hide. These days, that was becoming less of an option. ‘Run and hide’ doesn’t work so well when you have people you care about, and over time I’d managed to accumulate a worryingly large number of enemies. It was Arachne who’d made me see the writing on the wall. If I didn’t do something to push myself into a higher weight class, then sooner or later – and probably not very much later – I was going to end up dead.

The dreamstone had been floated as a way to solve that. Bonding with imbued items and manipulating Elsewhere have a fair bit of overlap, and the dreamstone gave me the ability to use Elsewhere more effectively; with practice, I ought to be able to use those same techniques to make use of the kinds of imbued item that other people couldn’t. By going on these retrieval missions, I ought to be able to find an item that I could make use of myself. Or that had been the plan.

‘It’s not about easy or hard,’ I said. ‘I don’t feel as though I’m getting anywhere at all.’

‘Don’t undersell yourself,’ Arachne said. ‘You can travel between Elsewhere, dreams and dreamshards at will now, and you can shape your environment in all three. Your defences against possession have grown to the point where I think even a mind mage would struggle to influence you. If you’d picked up that crown, you’d have been in no real danger.’

‘None of which gets me closer to what I need,’ I said. ‘Okay, so imbued items can’t possess me. But I can’t possess them either. I’ve tried twice now – first the sword, then the brooch in April. I can talk to them, more or less, but I can’t change what they want. And if what they want is to go on a murdering spree, or set up a slave empire, then we just end up with a stalemate. I can’t dominate them; they can’t dominate me.’ I looked gloomily down at the table. ‘Maybe I should have taken the other dreamstone.’

‘You shouldn’t.’

‘You said it was better for exercising control,’ I said, taking a drink from the glass. ‘Seems like right now that’s what I need.’

‘No, it isn’t,’ Arachne said firmly. The second dreamstone had been a twin to the one lying by my sleeping body right now. Anne and I had brought it together out of the deep shadow realm, but we’d had to give it up to Richard. I didn’t know what use he’d put it to. ‘I doubt you’d have even been able to make it accept you. It’s a matter of personality, not what you feel you need, and you simply don’t have enough of a desire to dominate and control.’

‘Then what do you think I should be doing?’

Arachne studied me, and when she spoke, her voice was sober. ‘For one thing, I wouldn’t be in so much of a rush.’

I started to speak, but Arachne raised a hand to forestall me. ‘Listen, Alex. Power always has a price. I warned you, at the beginning, that to choose this course of action was to pursue the most difficult path. For you to reach the point where you can personally challenge mages like Richard and Levistus will take more than hard work. You will have to make sacrifices. Significant ones. So do not be in too great a hurry to find an imbued item to bond with. It will happen, and when it does, you will find yourself wishing to go back to where you are now.’

‘That sounds … foreboding,’ I said slowly. ‘Are you telling me this is a bad idea?’

‘No,’ Arachne said. ‘But I also believe that from now, most of your choices are likely to be hard ones. I will help you while I can, but in the end the decisions will be your own.’

I sat thinking for a minute. ‘Are you worried that something’s going to happen?’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘That’s the second time you’ve said something like that,’ I said. ‘About helping me as long as you can. It sounds as though you think there’s a time coming up where that won’t be true any longer.’

‘I did say that, didn’t I?’ Arachne murmured. ‘No one can see all things. But the world is not as friendly to my kind as it once was. Be prepared.’

I looked at Arachne with a frown. ‘What can I do to help?’

‘For now, practise with the dreamstone,’ Arachne said. ‘I think a time will come very soon where your skill with Elsewhere may be all that keeps you alive. Until then, stay close to your friends.’

Anne was already gone by the time I woke the next morning. I shaved, dressed, ate breakfast under the multi-coloured sky of the Hollow, then gated to London.

Dr Shirland lives in a small terraced house tucked away down a one-way street in Brondesbury. I rang the bell and was let in. She looked much the same as she had when I’d first met her – curly hair, round glasses, kindly expression – and her tomcat was sleeping on the same chair. I stroked the cat, accepted a cup of tea and sat, watching the woman over my teacup.

Ruth Shirland is a mind mage and a consulting psychologist, though she spends more time as the latter than the former. She has connections into magical society, but for the most part she seems quite content to live in her little house, seeing patients. To Council mages, it would seem a bizarre way to live. They’d ask her why she was working a psychologist’s job for pocket change when she could make ten times as much in the magical world, and if she told them she didn’t use her magic when working as a psychologist, they probably either wouldn’t believe her or would decide that she was an idiot.

The truth is that independent mages like Dr Shirland are actually more common than Light mages and Dark mages put together. By becoming a Light or a Dark mage, you’re taking sides in a war. It’s true that the vast majority don’t fight on the front lines, and most of the time there aren’t any front lines to fight on in the first place, but the simple fact is, by signing up with either Light or Dark, you’re cutting your own life expectancy. Most Dark mages die violently, often at the hands of other Dark mages, and it’s not a lifestyle to choose if you’re hoping to live long enough to have grandchildren. Becoming a Light mage is safer, but it comes with its own consequences – the Council offers privilege and power, but in exchange you have to spend a lot of time saying the right things to the right people, often the kind of people that you don’t like very much.

Faced with those options, it’s not that surprising that most mages choose neither of the above. They don’t join the Council, but they don’t follow the Dark way either. They obey the Concord, at least enough to stay out of trouble, but for the most part they don’t bother the Council and the Council doesn’t bother them. Sometimes they use their abilities to make their way in the world – enchanters charming people out of their money, chance mages scamming casinos – but just as often they don’t, or at least not much. They just lead normal lives, staying off the radar of Light and Dark mages alike, going about their day-to-day business in peace. It was pretty much how I’d lived once, and sitting here and looking at Dr Shirland, I found myself – well, not missing it exactly, but feeling a little envious. Maybe sitting in cosy living rooms with cups of tea would get boring if I was doing nothing else. But being able to go back to it when you wanted, without having to absent-mindedly check the futures every five minutes to make sure that no one was going to take the opportunity to blow up the house with you inside it … that would be nice.

‘So,’ Dr Shirland said once we were both settled. ‘I understand you’re here about Anne?’

‘That’s right.’

‘I have to admit, I’m not entirely clear what you’re asking,’ Dr Shirland said. ‘Anne gave me the impression that it was some issue of her mental fitness.’

‘Not exactly,’ I said. ‘When you were looking at Anne in October, did she tell you the whole story?’

‘I didn’t press her for details, but yes, much of it came out.’ Dr Shirland pressed her lips together. ‘Especially about those two “Light” mages, Zilean and Lightbringer.’

‘It’s what happened after that that I’m worried about. When those two confronted Anne, she picked up an item that triggered something. That was the last I saw or heard. When I got there a few minutes later, they were gone and Anne was unconscious. She says she doesn’t remember anything about what happened in between.’

‘I’m still not clear on what you’re asking,’ Dr Shirland said. ‘If you want to know whether she was telling the truth, then the answer is yes. Her memories go as far as taking the ring, but no further.’

‘I want to know whether we can expect anything else to happen,’ I said. It was a risk, telling all this to Dr Shirland – several of the events we were touching on would land us in serious trouble if she repeated them to the Council – but in the years since I’d met the mind mage, I’d never heard of her breaking her clients’ confidentiality. ‘The creature in that ring was a bound jinn. Now, I’ve had experience with exactly one creature like that before. It granted five wishes to anyone who picked it up, and when it was done it ate them. So what I’m asking is whether there’s a risk of anything like that happening to Anne. Is that thing still around somewhere? Is it hiding in her head? And if it is, what can I do about it?’

Dr Shirland nodded. ‘In that case, one of those questions I can answer definitely. There is no jinn, or any similar creature, hiding inside Anne’s head. I’ve touched her mind on several occasions since October, and such entities leave an extremely obvious psychic footprint. There is absolutely no way that a jinn, especially a powerful one, could be concealing itself within her mind. It’d be like trying to hide an elephant in your living room.’

‘Okay, so that’s good news. Then if that thing didn’t move into her head, what do you think did happen?’

‘Here, unfortunately, I don’t have any definite answers,’ Dr Shirland said. ‘While I’m familiar with possessing entities in general, I know very little about jinn. Very few mages do nowadays. The most I can do is make some educated guesses.’ She set her teacup down on the table and looked at me. ‘The memories that Anne does have are absolutely consistent with possession. When she took up that ring, she was desperate and emotionally vulnerable, and the jinn – if that’s what it was – was able to take control. She might even have been willing to cooperate, at least at first: her situation was certainly bad enough. For those few minutes, the jinn would have had complete control of her body and actions. It might even have had access to her magic as well as its own.’

‘But by the time I got there, Anne was unconscious on the floor,’ I said. ‘So what changed? I mean, that thing would have been trapped in there for God only knows how long. Why would it just pull back into its item and leave her alone?’

‘I suspect it didn’t have a choice,’ Dr Shirland said. ‘True possession is extremely difficult. To keep it up over the long term, the entity must confront and displace the host, and in that contest the host has a significant advantage. The entity is only likely to succeed if the disparity in mental strength is very great, such as an unusually strong entity pitted against a host who is unusually weak-willed. The longer the host allows the entity to remain, and the more use they make of its powers, the more vulnerable they become, but if they resist from the beginning, the odds are in their favour.’

‘What if they don’t resist from the beginning?’

‘Taking permanent control of a host is not a subtle process,’ Dr Shirland said. ‘Once she let the creature in, Anne would have quickly realised that it had no intention of leaving. I suspect there was a short, fierce struggle for control, which it lost. The psychic shock left Anne unconscious.’

‘So that’s it?’ I said. So far, this wasn’t anywhere near as bad as I’d feared. My guess had been that Anne had tried to make a wish to get rid of the Crusaders and backed out halfway through. ‘This thing’s gone?’

‘It could be that after possessing Anne, the creature was forced back into its prison. In that case, once the item was removed from physical contact with Anne, it would lose any ability to affect her. In which case she’s in no danger from it at all.’ Dr Shirland paused. ‘This is one possibility.’

Something about her tone of voice made me look up sharply. ‘What’s the other?’

‘Anne is certainly not weak-willed,’ Dr Shirland said. ‘I do not think a jinn, no matter how powerful, would be able to take control of her if she resisted. But there is a part of Anne that might not want to resist.’

‘I know,’ I said flatly. ‘I’ve met her. Do you think that was what happened?’

‘It would certainly have had an effect,’ Dr Shirland said. ‘How much of one is harder to say. That part of Anne’s mind is closed to me.’

‘So if that other Anne wanted to let the jinn in, could it?’

‘Now we’re entering the realm of guesswork. In theory, it should be impossible for an entity to exercise that kind of control without some sort of direct or sympathetic link. I assume the ring is no longer in her possession.’

‘Richard took it, as far as I know. So as long as she doesn’t pick it up again, she’s fine?’

‘In theory.’

I paused. ‘Could the other Anne make her do that?’

‘You’ve put your finger on the problem,’ Dr Shirland said. ‘It’s quite possible that Anne’s shadow self might maintain a contract with the jinn, regardless of her conscious desires. As long as that internal conflict remains unresolved, Anne will be vulnerable.’

‘Then how can we fix that?’

‘Now you’re starting to ask the really difficult questions,’ Dr Shirland said. ‘How much do you know about Anne’s shadow?’

‘It’s an alternate personality from when she was captured by Sagash,’ I said. I’d spoken to that other Anne just once, several years ago. Back then we’d been on the same side, but the experience had left me wary. ‘More ruthless, less empathic. She couldn’t do what she needed to survive, so she created someone who could.’

Dr Shirland looked at me, her head slightly tilted. ‘Is that how you see it? Anne created an alternate personality?’

‘Well …’ I said. ‘Yes.’

‘Then what do you think she created that personality from?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Imagine I ask you to create a personality that can do something you can’t,’ Dr Shirland said. ‘Composing an orchestral symphony, say. How would you do it?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Could you do it?’

‘Probably not.’

‘Of course you can’t,’ Dr Shirland said. ‘Because you don’t have the skills or knowledge. Changing your own personality won’t help.’

I looked at Dr Shirland. She looked back at me, her eyes mild and steady, and suddenly I felt uneasy. ‘What are you getting at?’

‘You can’t create a personality. You can only use what’s already there.’

‘But I’ve met that other person,’ I said. ‘What you call her shadow. She’s completely different from the real Anne.’

‘In what ways?’

‘Anne’s a nice person,’ I said. ‘She’s gentle and she’s kind. That other Anne … I only met her once, but I got a pretty definite sense of her personality. I wouldn’t say she was outright cruel, but she’s more self-centred than the real Anne and a lot more aggressive. Plus her goals are different. Anne just wants a peaceful life. The other one wants power.’

‘That’s a fairly accurate summary of the differences,’ Dr Shirland said. ‘But you keep saying “the real Anne”. They’re both real.’

‘Then if Anne didn’t create that other self,’ I said, ‘where did it come from?’

‘Anne had a difficult childhood,’ Dr Shirland said. ‘She was limited in the types of behaviour she could express. The traits she was free to develop are the ones you’ve identified as her natural personality. Soft-spoken, gentle, nurturing. Her more aggressive impulses were suppressed.’

‘Does she even have that many aggressive impulses?’

‘Everyone has aggressive impulses,’ Dr Shirland said. ‘They’re a fundamental part of the human condition. If you meet someone who seems not to have any, they’re either channelling them somewhere else or keeping them suppressed. Usually, in the latter case, it ends up turning inward and manifesting as depression. With Anne, things unfolded somewhat differently.’

‘Because of what happened with Sagash.’

Dr Shirland nodded. ‘Anne had always thought of herself as a healer, someone who used her magic to grow and nurture. When Sagash forced her to use her powers for death, it traumatised her, which was of course exactly what Sagash intended. His goal was to break her and reshape her to his desires. So Anne escaped to the only place she could find, to Elsewhere. In there, she created a place of safety, somewhere where there was no conflict or violence.’

‘Well, what’s wrong with that?’ I said. ‘I mean, it worked, didn’t it?’

‘It worked against Sagash because she could wall him out. What she could not do was wall herself out. Because when she excluded anything destructive or aggressive from her inner world, she also excluded part of herself.’

‘Is that what that other Anne is, then?’ I said. ‘Anne’s evil side?’

‘She’s the aspects of Anne’s personality that Anne is unable or unwilling to accept,’ Dr Shirland said. ‘And those aspects aren’t all negative by any means. She’s more direct and willing to state her own desires, better capable of defending herself. Unfortunately, Anne hasn’t made any progress towards coming to terms with that, and in fact she’s continued to shunt off impulses and emotions to that personality in the ensuing years. In the long run, the state of affairs isn’t sustainable. She’ll have to resolve it or risk a complete breakdown.’

‘Resolve it how?’

‘Eventually?’ Dr Shirland said. ‘She has to integrate the two sides of her self. Become one person, not two.’

‘How?’

‘That’s another very complex question to answer,’ Dr Shirland said. ‘It’s also not your problem. This is in Anne’s hands, not yours, and it won’t be any kind of quick or simple process. It’ll take years.’

‘Then if I can’t do anything to help, why are you even telling me all this?’

‘So you can better understand her, for one thing,’ Dr Shirland said. ‘But it also relates to your initial question. As long as she doesn’t come into contact with that jinn again, I can’t see any reason why the events of last autumn should disqualify her from a position as an aide. I’d also say that from a purely psychological standpoint, having some outside stimulus would be good for her. She’s been a little too isolated lately and I don’t think leaving her alone with the contents of her own head for company is a good thing.’

Walking back to the park I use for gating, I found myself replaying the conversation in my head, which in turn led me to thinking about Anne.

I’d told Dr Shirland that I’d come to see her because I was worried about the jinn. And that was true – I had been worried. Richard had as good as told me last year that manipulating Anne into picking that thing up had been his plan from the beginning, and I didn’t think that he was done with her, not by a long shot. Quite frankly, I was surprised he’d left her alone. I’d been expecting him to show up at Anne’s door with another of his offers, with a heavy degree of coercion thrown in. He hadn’t, and I didn’t know why – maybe Variam was right and he really was busy, maybe he was just biding his time – but until I had solid evidence to the contrary, I was staying on my guard. We had defences in place to give us some early warning, and if he or anyone else went after Anne, we’d know about it. So it wasn’t as though this meeting had been a pretence.

But while I hadn’t been lying, I also hadn’t been telling the whole truth. The reason I’d been so reluctant to appoint Anne as my aide wasn’t the jinn, and it wasn’t the potential threat from anti-Dark elements on the Council either, though that was getting closer. It was about me.

I’d known Anne for around five years now. I’d been introduced to her via Luna, and to begin with, that was how I’d seen her – as Luna’s classmate, just another apprentice, with a nicer-than-usual manner and a more-annoying-than-usual friend (Vari). Gradually, over the years, I’d stopped seeing her as an apprentice and started seeing her as a mage in her own right. But somewhere along the line, something else had changed too, and without quite noticing it, I’d found myself more and more attracted to her.

And my reaction to that had been to try as hard as I could to pretend it didn’t exist.

If you’re wondering why … well, that’s an easy question to ask and a hard one to answer. To begin with, I suppose there was the age difference. When I first met Anne, I was twenty-eight and she was twenty – not the biggest of age gaps, but enough to put her in the ‘child/student’ box in my mind. But time had passed, and Anne was no longer twenty, or a student, or (by any possible definition) a child.

A bigger reason was my own past experience, or to be more honest, my lack of it. I spent my teens and my early twenties learning about magic and not very much else. I picked up a lot of skills in the process – combat, manipulation, mental discipline – but one thing I didn’t get much practice with was romance, and spending so much of my formative time around Dark mages really didn’t help. The simple truth is that I’m a lot more comfortable dealing with a woman who wants to kill me than one who wants to kiss me, and yes, I know how screwed-up that sounds. It’s not that I want people to try to kill me, it’s just that I grew up with the predator–prey game, and I know how it works. When it comes to stuff like this, I don’t. What was I even supposed to be doing? Should I talk to Anne? For all I knew, approaching Anne was exactly the worst thing to do. I didn’t really know how she felt about me, and having that conversation could destroy the relationship we had. I liked having Anne as a friend. Was it worth risking that, just in the hope of turning it into something more? I probably could have used my divination to figure out an answer, but I’ve always been uncomfortable with using my magic on my friends in that way. It feels like spying, and to be honest, it pretty much is.

And then there was the other reason.

The room was brown, the walls padded and soundproofed. A metal table rested in the centre, and on it was a mass of torn and bleeding flesh. Skin had been ripped and peeled away, hanging from hooks and wires, to leave skin and muscle bare to the harsh light. The body moved, twisting, and the eyes opened, looking out at me. Those were Anne’s eyes in that ruined face, filled with agony, and they stared at me mutely. My stomach clenched and I wanted to vomit, wanted to look away, but all I could do was stare, hoping that if I kept looking I’d realise it wasn’t true, that I wasn’t seeing what was in front of me …

I pushed the memory away. That had happened last September. The Crusaders had managed to catch Anne, and when she didn’t tell them what they wanted to hear, they’d tortured her. And since life mages are resistant to pain, they hadn’t just tortured her, they’d tried to maim and flay her body so badly that even she wouldn’t be able to withstand it.

Anne had lived, but it had been horribly close, and for weeks afterwards I’d woken up sweating thinking about how close. If we’d been even a couple of hours later, Anne would have died. If Luna and Variam hadn’t reacted so fast, if Sonder hadn’t helped, if Anne had been just a little bit less resilient, then she’d be gone, and our group would be three instead of four. Anne had been traumatised and it had probably been a big factor in her choice to pick up that item in the Vault the following month.

And the reason all of that happened had been to do with me. Oh, it hadn’t been directly my fault. But the reason the Crusaders had gone after Anne had been to get information about Morden, and the reason they’d done that had been because they’d tried and failed to do the same to me, and because Anne had been seen with Morden and me on my first day as Morden’s aide, she’d been marked down as an associate. I wasn’t any less of a target nowadays – if anything, things were worse. The Crusaders wouldn’t be likely to try kidnapping a Council member, but aides were another story.

So for Anne to become my aide – or for that matter, for her to be close to me in any way at all – would make it that much more likely that the same thing would happen again. I’ve never lived a safe life and I’ve always accepted that, but it’s one thing to know that there’s a good chance you’re going to die a violent death, and it’s something else to know that it might be someone else doing the dying in your place.

And that was the biggest reason I’d never had this conversation with Anne. Because if I did, I could imagine it going two ways. In the first scenario, she’d tell me, ‘Well, I kind of like you, but not in that way, and even if I did, you’re just not worth it.’ Which would be painful, to put it mildly. The second scenario was much worse. In that, she’d tell me that it was her choice, not mine, and that she was stronger than me, if anything, so she had more right to be worrying about me. And I wouldn’t be able to argue about that, because it was true.

I suppose some of you might be rolling your eyes at this point. If you are … well, then it’s a fair bet that you’ve never been in this position yourself. It’s easy to say ‘oh, it’s their choice’ when you don’t have anything at stake. But if you know – not guess, know – that there’s a good chance that doing something could cause someone you deeply care for to die a horrible death, would you still do it? If that doesn’t make you hesitate, then either you don’t care about them as much as you think you do, or (more likely) you’re kidding yourself. The simple fact was that Anne would probably have a considerably higher life expectancy if she stayed away from me, and that was not a small thing to get past.

But then, if I wasn’t around, that would open up new dangers. Because Richard was interested in Anne too. He’d been willing to go up against the Crusaders to protect her, and though I couldn’t prove it, I was pretty sure that many of the events leading up to Anne coming into contact with that jinn were of his doing. I didn’t know how central Anne was to his plans – maybe the Vault assault would have happened the same way anyway, and having this happen to Anne had just been an extra bonus – but I didn’t think he was likely to leave her alone. Most of the protection that Anne and Luna and Variam and I did have came from staying together. If we split up, we’d be in one kind of danger. But if I stayed around Anne, kept associating with her, then she’d just be in danger in a different way.

I sighed and shook my head. I was going around in circles and I wasn’t getting anywhere. Maybe things would work themselves out, and in any case, I should be able to put it off a little longer. Shouldn’t I?