Marked

7

As things turned out, I didn’t have to wait long – Cinder got back to me within forty-eight hours. The message he relayed from Onyx was short, specifying only a time and a place. Once he’d said his piece, Cinder broke contact. He’d done his part; now I was on my own.

I reported back to Talisid, who passed my information on to Bahamus. They were happy enough to authorise the meeting. They were not happy about the level of authority I wanted.

‘I’m sorry, Verus,’ Talisid said, ‘but we really can’t authorise anything like that.’ We were talking through an audio-only link, so I couldn’t see Talisid’s face, but I could imagine his expression.

‘You can, and you’d better,’ I said shortly.

‘We’ll need to see any provisional agreement before we can authorise it.’

‘How are you expecting this to work?’ I said. ‘You think I’m going to go meet Onyx, he tells me his requests, I tell him yours, then I go back to you and you suggest changes to the deal, then I go back and meet him again, and we repeat that cycle three or four times until we’ve got an agreement everyone is happy with? Is that your plan?’

‘Is there something wrong with that?’

‘Is there—? Are you serious?’

‘What exactly is the problem?’ Talisid asked. He had an annoyingly patient tone of voice that I’d become familiar with.

I took a breath. Losing my temper wasn’t going to accomplish anything, no matter how frustrating the Council can be. To be fair, Talisid’s idea was reasonable … if you were dealing with a Light mage. Anne would have understood without me having to explain. ‘The number one rule when you’re dealing with Dark mages is that you have to negotiate from a position of strength,’ I said. ‘The worst thing you can do is make them think you’re weak. If I don’t have the authority to settle terms, then in their eyes, that automatically makes me weak. And by implication, that makes you weak.’

‘I don’t follow.’

‘A Dark mage who’s serious about negotiating a deal goes there in person. If he does send a proxy, he’ll send one with the authority to close. If he doesn’t, other Dark mages are going to see that as timid at best and a deliberate waste of their time at worst. If they decide to express their displeasure about that, guess who’s the most obvious target for them to vent their feelings on?’

‘Perhaps if you present it more diplomatically …’

‘Onyx is a thug,’ I said flatly. ‘He’s powerful, brutal and short-tempered. When you’re dealing with people like that, you present your offer and you do it fast.’

‘Well, I’ll discuss it with Bahamus,’ Talisid said. ‘But I don’t think he’ll be able to commit to anything that permanent. Remember, you’re negotiating in the entire Council’s name.’

‘Then tell Bahamus he can bloody well go do it himself.’

‘Verus …’

‘I’m not kidding,’ I said. ‘This is already really dicey. I’m trying to negotiate something between Morden, the entire Council and Onyx. That is way too many people who don’t trust each other. The best result that I can realistically hope for is to come back from Morden’s mansion with a take-it-or-leave-it offer from Onyx that you probably won’t like very much. A prolonged negotiation is not an option. Even if Onyx is willing to be that patient – which he won’t be – it’s a guarantee that news is going to leak. At which point you can say bye-bye to any chance of catching Richard.’

Talisid was silent, and I knew I’d got through. ‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘I’ll tell him, but I can already tell you, he isn’t going to like it.’

Talisid was right – Bahamus didn’t like it – but I didn’t back down, and in the end he had to give in. By the time the date of the meeting with Onyx rolled around, I had his agreement that I had full authority to negotiate with the Dark mage. Or so he said, anyway.

In reality, I knew there was nothing stopping Bahamus from backing out, and I figured that there was at least a fifty-fifty chance that he’d try to argue with any terms I came back with. If that happened, the deal was doomed, but oh well. At least by then, I’d be out of range. Now I just needed to make sure I survived the meeting.

‘You look pretty well armed,’ Anne said.

‘Yeah, well,’ I said. We were in the Hollow, and I was finishing my preparations. I was wearing my armour, the plate-and-mesh following the lines of my body, and I could feel the imbued item’s presence, watchful and protective. A webbing belt held a short-sword on my left side and a gun on my right, along with a host of pouches. Normally I go to an effort to hide my gear, but I wasn’t bothering this time, and that let me bring a larger arsenal than usual. The dreamstone was there, along with condensers, force-walls, glitterdust, life rings, flares, explosive, antitoxin, a revivify, salves and generally more tools than I was ever likely to use. That wasn’t counting the coat I was wearing over my armour, or the vest beneath it. ‘This is one of those situations where the time for subtlety has been and gone.’

‘I thought you liked to keep your weapons hidden,’ Anne said. She was sitting on my bed with her arms curled around her legs, and she’d been watching me gear up with apparent interest.

‘That’s because I like to avoid escalating things,’ I said. I checked my gun, made sure that it was loaded and that the safety was on, then tucked a spare magazine into a pouch. I thought about adding a second, then decided it was overkill, even for this. If you’re ever in a situation where you need more than one reload, you’re in more trouble than a handgun can help with. ‘The idea is, if you don’t look like you’re armed, then someone is more likely to shout at you to stop rather than just trying to kill you on sight. Onyx is already at the point where he’s trying to kill me on sight.’

‘Do you think all that stuff is really going to help?’

‘Probably not,’ I admitted. ‘If things go bad, odds are I’m going to be dead inside thirty seconds. Probably more like ten.’

‘Then why bother?’

‘For the cases where we don’t get into an all-out fight with Onyx but we do run into some other kind of trouble. Besides, it sends the message that I’m taking him seriously. There’s a chance that might help.’

I finished checking my gear and headed out. ‘You know, you could stand to be wearing a little more yourself,’ I told Anne as I started channelling through my gate stone.

‘This is what I’m used to,’ Anne said. For this meeting she’d gone back to her old outfit of jeans, running shoes and a light jacket. They had some magical reinforcement, enough to be better than nothing, but not by much.

‘You really need to get some proper armour,’ I told her. ‘I know those things you’re wearing have been treated, but there’s only so much you can do with fabric. Even a knife thrust would probably go through.’

‘If someone’s close enough to do that, I’m not really worried.’

‘And if they just shoot you?’ I said. ‘That hasn’t worked out too well in the past.’

‘I’m quite a lot tougher now than I was then,’ Anne said. ‘Armour’s a good idea for you because you can’t afford to take any serious hits. I can.’

‘If someone gets a head shot, it won’t matter how tough you are.’

‘Same for you,’ Anne pointed out. ‘Besides, armour slows you down.’

‘I think you just undervalue armour because your own abilities ignore it.’

‘I’ve also seen it be more of a hindrance than a help. Whenever I see someone wearing a big clunky suit, I know that if I get in close, they’re not going to be able to move fast enough to get away.’

‘That’s exactly what I’m saying. You see the cases where armour doesn’t save someone, but you don’t see the ones where it would …’

We kept going as I opened the gate to our first staging point and from there to another. It was an old argument that we’d had several times. Ever since Anne had been targeted last year, I’d been trying to convince her to wear something more protective, and she’d been refusing. To be fair, she did have a point. Like most life mages, Anne is incredibly resilient, and any injury that doesn’t kill her instantly is basically nothing more than an inconvenience. Unfortunately, battle mages have lots of ways of killing you instantly, and while a set of armour probably isn’t going to do much if they manage to land a direct hit, it can make the difference. I think Anne just likes being able to move as freely as possible, which, to be honest, is how I used to do things as well. If I was being really honest I might have considered that my pressuring her on this subject might be an indication of an increased tendency to worry about her, but that was a topic I was trying to avoid thinking about. In any case, it was brought to an end as we gated from the second staging point to where we were meeting Variam and Luna.

All mages use staging points – empty, out-of-the-way places that you use in order to avoid gating directly from one destination to another. It’s possible, if difficult, to trace one gate, but tracing a series of them is usually impractical. I have a dozen gate stones linked to staging points these days, and I rotate them on a daily basis and replace them on a monthly one.

Unfortunately, gate stones are useless for going anywhere you haven’t been already. Morden’s mansion was a place I’d visited before, but it wasn’t exactly practical for me to set up a gate stone for there, and given how secret this meeting was supposed to be, I sure as hell wasn’t going to ask around to see if someone else had one. Luckily, while I can’t use gate magic myself, I have friends who can.

‘Took you long enough,’ Variam said as we walked in and let the gate close behind us.

‘Oh hush,’ Luna said. ‘You guys ready?’

‘As we’ll ever be,’ I said. The staging point was a clearing in a forestry area, pine needles covering the ground. The occasional bird chirped from above, but only rarely; coniferous woods are sparsely inhabited, which makes them ideal for my purposes. ‘You good to go?’

‘Yeah, except for one thing,’ Variam said, looking at Anne. ‘Why are you here?’

‘Vari …’ Anne said.

‘I’m serious. Alex was saying there’s a good chance Onyx is going to try to kill him on sight.’

‘I said he might,’ I said. ‘I don’t think it’s likely. I’ve taken what precautions I can, and I’ve spent a long time path-walking. Everything I can see indicates that we’re not walking into a trap.’

‘Except you’ve also said that path-walking isn’t reliable at long range or against psychopaths,’ Variam pointed out.

‘If he was intending to just kill me, I don’t think—’

‘Vari,’ Anne interrupted. ‘Are you going to open a gate, or am I going to have to ask someone else?’

‘I don’t like it,’ Variam said.

‘You don’t have to. Now could you please help?’

Variam scowled but turned away and started work on a gate. ‘He’s not happy,’ Luna murmured just loud enough for me to hear.

‘Yeah, well, I don’t blame him,’ I said. Variam has always been protective of Anne. He’s eased off over the years as she’s become clearly more capable of taking care of herself, but he still gets jumpy about watching her go into danger. It’s not just concern for her safety – Variam has his own worries about Anne, ones that he’s shared with me but not (as far as I know) with Anne or Luna. ‘This is a long way off safe.’

‘I thought you said you had a trump card.’

‘I have, but we’re walking into a Dark mage’s mansion. If Onyx decides “screw it” and cuts loose, this is going to get ugly.’

‘Yeah, I can guess. Why did you agree to do this again?’

I was spared having to come up with an answer to that by Variam’s gate spell completing. An orange-red halo of fire faded into an oval portal, linking our woodland with another. I followed Anne and Vari through.

The gate closed behind us and I turned to Variam. ‘Thanks for the lift,’ I said. ‘I’ll call you when—’

‘We’re staying,’ Variam said flatly. ‘You get into trouble, you call us for backup. Okay?’

Luna and Vari were both looking at me, and it was clear they’d agreed on this beforehand. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’

Anne and I walked away down the hillside. ‘You know, if things go wrong,’ Anne said once we were out of earshot, ‘I really doubt they’ll be able to get to us in time.’

‘I doubt they will either,’ I said. Both Anne and I were carrying beacons that Variam could use to home in on us and open a gate to our location. Variam’s pretty good with gate magic, and he could probably get the portal open in maybe two minutes. Unfortunately, if you have someone like Onyx trying to kill you, two minutes is about one minute and fifty-nine seconds longer than you can afford to wait.

‘You didn’t explain to Vari exactly what your “trump card” was, did you?’ Anne asked. ‘Because I don’t think he’d have let it go without mentioning it if you had.’

‘I didn’t think either of them would react too well,’ I admitted. I could feel the weight of the vest between my armour and coat.

‘You think?’ Anne asked dryly.

We walked a little further in silence. It was a clear summer day, and the woods were beautiful in the morning light. Sunbeams slanted down between the leaves, painting dappled patterns on the grass and undergrowth, and birds sang from above. The wind rustled through the trees above us, but beneath the shelter of the branches, the air was warm and still. The Welsh countryside is one of the few good memories I have from my time with Richard. I’d been a city boy growing up, and my stay in Richard’s mansion had been the first time I’d ever been able to just wander off into the woods alone any time I’d wanted, and I’d liked it. It hadn’t been a coincidence that my old safe house had been in Wales.

‘Any more weird dreams?’ I asked after a while.

‘No,’ Anne said. ‘You?’

‘No. Last chance to back out and let me do this solo.’

‘That’s not going to happen.’

‘I knew you’d say that. Okay, we’re getting close. Mental only from now on.’

Anne nodded.

As far as the mansions of Dark mages go, Morden’s is one of the nicer ones. It’s set amid trees and rolling hills, the landscape hiding the full spread of the buildings. There’s even an access road and a gravel area set aside for parking. The previous times I’d seen the place it had been empty, but this time I saw that outside the front entrance were several flashy-looking sports cars. Apparently Onyx had been making some changes. Anne and I walked straight up the front drive: I rang the bell and waited.

A minute passed, then two. Did they even hear us? Anne asked.

Oh, they heard.

Footsteps approached from behind the door. I saw Anne shift her gaze slightly, staring at the walls, and I knew that she was counting the people beyond them. To her senses the living creatures within the mansion would appear as patterns of glowing green light, visible through the bricks and stone.

The handle turned and the door scraped open to reveal a boy of maybe twenty, his hair close-shaven, dressed in combats with a leather jerkin and an oversized gun in a holster at his waist. His stance was arrogant and he stared down his nose at us from the top of the porch. ‘Well?’

‘You know who we are and what we want,’ I said shortly. I could already tell that this kid was going to try to play games and I wasn’t in the mood. ‘Take us inside.’

The kid looked me up and down. ‘You armed?’

I took a breath. I was wearing combat armour with a gun on one side and a sword on the other, and this guy asked if I was armed. ‘What do you think?’

The kid nodded at the front porch. ‘Drop your weapons.’

‘What?’

‘Something wrong with your ears?’ the kid said. ‘You want to get in, that’s the deal.’

I turned to look at Anne. She looked back at me. I turned back to the kid, drawing my 1911 in one smooth motion. He’d just started to jerk backwards when I fired.

The bullet kicked up a splinter from the floor at his feet. The kid began to reach for his own gun and froze as he realised that I’d already sighted on his head. ‘Listen closely,’ I told the boy. ‘You may work for Onyx, but that doesn’t mean you can get away with the same shit. Now run back to whoever you report to and tell him we’re on our way.’

The boy hesitated, stared down the gun’s barrel, then backed off and disappeared. Was that necessary? Anne asked telepathically.

I holstered my gun. If we let someone like that push us around, Onyx would probably kill us on general principle. You watch. He’ll be back.

The kid reappeared in less than two minutes, glowering. ‘This way,’ he told us. ‘Follow me and don’t run off.’

What does he think he’s going to do if we try? Anne asked in amusement.

I let the kid lead us into the mansion, and as I did I directed a message back in the direction from which we’d come. Vari. We’re in.

There was a moment’s resistance – I always find it harder to contact Variam than Anne – then I heard Variam’s voice in my head. It was a little blurry, with underechoes – Vari seems to have trouble focusing his thoughts into a single message. Got it. Tell us if things go wrong.

The kid – I’d learned from looking ahead that his name was Trey – led us through the mansion’s corridors. What do you see? I asked Anne.

Well, we’re not alone, Anne said. Despite everything, I had to admit that having Anne by my side made me feel a lot better. There aren’t many people I’d rather have with me if trouble starts. I’ve picked up fifteen others so far.

Any you recognise?

Just Onyx, Anne said. I don’t think I’ve met any of the others. But they seem young.

Spread out?

Right ahead in a group.

Guess they’re waiting for us, I said. Well, game time. We came to a door; Trey opened it without knocking and led us into the room beyond.

It had been a long time since I’d visited Morden’s mansion, but when I had I’d done a pretty thorough mapping and the layout hadn’t changed. The room we were walking into had originally been Morden’s ballroom, a wide room along the mansion’s west side with parquet flooring and chandeliers above. Onyx, though, had done some redecorating.

Chairs and side tables had been pushed up against the walls, leaving most of the floor clear. Many were knocked over or broken: the ones that were whole were cluttered with rubbish and half-eaten meals. The parquet floor itself was cracked and burned, and there was a splintered crater in one corner that looked like it had been made by a hand grenade. One of the chandeliers had been shredded, and the lights from the remaining ones mixed with the daylight through the windows.

The people that Anne had sensed were scattered around the edges of the room, and they were not the most attractive-looking crowd. Lots of visible weapons, not much attention to personal hygiene. One had what looked like an AK-47 propped up against his chair; another was cleaning his nails with a flick knife. Ages ranged from teens to thirties, but as Anne had said, they skewed young. Taken as a whole, they had an undisciplined, wolfish look; all were watching us as we walked in, and I didn’t like the looks in their eyes.

Out of all the people in the room, only two didn’t turn to face us. One was the only girl in the room, a thin dark-haired figure near the back wall. She was sweeping up some debris with a dustpan and brush and kept her head down. Something about her body language told me she was trying not to attract attention.

The second was one I recognised instantly: Pyre. He looked younger than his age, with short, tousled blond hair. There was a long dining table at the centre of the room, and he was sitting near our end of it, leaning back in his chair and playing with a lighter, apparently absorbed in the flame as he clicked it on and off with long white fingers. He was good-looking, in a boyish, almost feminine way; he might have looked delicate if I hadn’t known more about him. I didn’t know if he recognised me; we’d never come face to face, and it was possible that he’d never figured out that I’d been involved in that business a few years ago. I hoped not.

And then there was Onyx, sprawled in a high-backed chair at the end of the table so that he was facing the door. He hadn’t changed much since I’d last seen him; he never does, really. Same whip-like, slender build; same dangerous stillness. The only difference I could see was a bit of gold jewellery to offset the black of his clothes. He watched us from beneath lowered brows as we drew closer, and his eyes were opaque.

Trey peeled off as we entered, withdrawing to one side. I kept going, stopping in front of Onyx’s table. Half my attention was on Onyx and Pyre, the other half on the futures, and I could sense the possibilities of violence, not close, but not far away either.

Onyx didn’t speak, watching us with his flat, deadly eyes. The silence dragged out. ‘Well,’ I said at last. ‘You seem to be doing well for yourself.’

‘You wanted to talk,’ Onyx said.

‘Great, let’s skip the pleasantries,’ I said. I nodded at the people around us. ‘I’ve got an offer to make. It’s confidential.’

‘So?’ Onyx said.

‘As in, you might not want an audience.’

‘What’s the matter, Verus?’ Onyx said. ‘Feeling shy?’

Several of the guys leaning against the walls laughed. They weren’t nice laughs. ‘I don’t think you’re going to want this spread around,’ I said.

Onyx withdrew his feet from the table and placed them on the floor, leaning forward slightly. The laughs from the audience cut off abruptly. ‘I don’t care what you think,’ he said softly into the silence.

I stood still for a moment. Every one of my instincts was telling me that discussing something like this in front of this kind of a crowd was a really bad idea, but arguing seemed worse. ‘The Council want to make a deal,’ I said.

‘Of course they want to make a deal,’ Onyx said. ‘That’s all they ever want to do, talk and make deals. Just like you.’ He tilted his head. ‘So what are you offering?’

‘Help,’ I said. ‘Items. There’s a lot on the table. Question is if you’re willing to work with them.’

‘Yeah?’ Onyx said. ‘That’s funny. Because I think the question is why I shouldn’t just kill you right now and have what’s left thrown out of my mansion to show the Council exactly what I think of cowardly little shits like you.’

There was a rustle of movement around the room. I didn’t turn to look. ‘Because if you try,’ I said, ‘you won’t have a mansion, or any followers. And maybe not a life either.’ Without taking my eyes off Onyx, I undid the button on my coat and opened it.

I felt the people against the walls stop moving. Beneath my coat and over my armour I was wearing a vest with a series of long rectangular blocks hanging off it that were connected with electrical wire. I don’t know how many of them could identify plastic explosives, but they recognised what the set-up meant, and all of a sudden no one seemed very keen on getting close. Pyre looked up from his lighter and paused.

‘You think a bomb’s going to scare me?’ Onyx said.

‘I think it might make you think twice.’

Onyx gave a single contemptuous glance at my vest. ‘You didn’t bring enough.’

‘To get through your shields?’ I said. ‘No, but enough to kill everyone else in this room. Oh, and by the way? This isn’t a conventional explosive. You might survive it. Maybe. But I guarantee you, once it’s done, you’ll need a new place to live, because neither you nor anyone else is going to be using this mansion ever again.’

‘That’s your plan?’ Onyx said.

‘That’s about half of it,’ I said. ‘But honestly? It’s also just meant as a kind of general “fuck you”. If you’re going to pull the same shit you tried back in the Vault, then this time you’re going to pay for it.’

Onyx rose to his feet in a smooth, graceful motion. He walked around the table, holding my gaze. ‘Know what, Verus?’ he said. ‘I don’t think you’ve got the balls.’

I unfolded my left hand and saw Onyx’s eyes flick down to the detonator that had been concealed within my fingers. I’d taken it out before we’d even stepped through the front door. ‘Come try me, you little shit,’ I said calmly and clearly.

I’d known from the beginning that the big danger of this plan was the possibility of Onyx calling my bluff. There are a lot of people like Onyx in the Dark world, and it’s a very bad idea to assume that they’re stupid. They might not be book-smart, but they have an instinctive understanding of brinkmanship and how to use the threat of force to get what they want. Trying to bluff someone like that is dangerous – they can sense immediately when someone is too scared to go through with their threat. Besides, in terms of simple destructive power, Onyx was right: I wasn’t carrying enough explosives to get through his shields.

Which was why I wasn’t bluffing at all. I hadn’t loaded this vest with high explosive. If I had, with Anne next to me, I would have been too reluctant to pull the trigger, and Onyx would have smelled that fear like a wolf sniffing out prey. So instead, I’d loaded the vest with the most lethal chemical weapon I could find. Anne would survive it just fine, and I probably would as well, providing Anne could treat me fast enough. The other people in the room … not so much. Even Onyx might not make it if he didn’t see the danger and adjust his shields before the stuff touched his skin. I still didn’t give us good odds of both making it out, but we could do it, and if he tried what he was thinking of doing right now, then I was going to push this button and take my chances.

Maybe that came through in my expression. I think it did; I wasn’t trying to hide my intentions and Onyx sensed it. ‘Get out,’ Onyx said. He kept his eyes on me, but the message wasn’t for us.

The crowd obeyed. They didn’t quite break into a run – they moved just slowly enough that they could pretend that they weren’t being chased – but they didn’t dawdle either. Only Pyre and Onyx didn’t move. The door slammed and the four of us were alone in the room.

Onyx lowered one hand and leaned back on the table. ‘Okay, Verus. Talk fast.’

Okay, so far so good. ‘You and the Council have a mutual enemy,’ I said. ‘They want to make a deal.’

‘Yeah?’ Onyx said. ‘Who?’

‘Richard Drakh.’

The half-sneer vanished from Onyx’s face and he stared at me blankly. Seconds ticked away.

‘Well?’ I said when Onyx didn’t answer.

‘This some trick?’ Onyx asked at last.

‘No.’

‘You trying to push something?’ Onyx took a threatening step forward. ‘If you’re lying again—’

‘No!’ I snapped. ‘If I didn’t mean it, you think I’d come here?’

‘So why?’

‘Because while the Council might hate you, they hate Richard a lot more,’ I said. ‘That raid on the Vault was a step too far and now he’s at the top of the Council’s hit list. Enough that they’re even willing to make a deal with you.’

Onyx gave me that blank stare again.

‘It’s a trick,’ Pyre said, speaking for the first time. His voice was quite at odds with his appearance; deep and masculine.

‘How would it be a trick?’ I said.

‘You want us to do your dirty work,’ Pyre said.

‘You mean, get rid of Richard yourself?’ I said, and shrugged. ‘That would be nice, but realistically speaking, I think we both know that’s not going to happen. If you could do that, you’d have done it already.’

‘Then what do you want?’ Onyx demanded.

‘They want a time and a place,’ I said. ‘Find Richard. They’ll do the rest.’

‘They,’ Onyx said. ‘You won’t be anywhere near, huh?’ The sneer seemed half-hearted; I had the feeling he was thinking.

‘He’s lying,’ Pyre said.

‘Shut up,’ Onyx said absently. He walked across the room, began to wander back, turned on me abruptly. ‘How much?’

‘An imbued item,’ I said. ‘Or amnesty for something, if you want, so long as it’s not too heinous.’

Onyx laughed. ‘Gonna have to do better than that.’ He walked back to his chair, dropped into it, then looked at me with an unpleasant smile. ‘I want all of them.’

‘All of what?’

‘The imbued items from the Vault,’ Onyx said. ‘The ones you’ve got back, and the ones Drakh still has.’

I stared at Onyx for five seconds – just long enough to check the futures – then shook my head. ‘You’re delusional,’ I said. I glanced at Anne. ‘Time to go.’ I turned and started towards the exit.

Anne followed instantly, the picture of obedience … at least on the surface. In my head, she sounded less certain. Is this a good idea?

Trust me.

Pyre’s watching us. He’s thinking about it.

I know.

I reached out and took hold of the door handle, and Onyx’s voice sounded from behind me. ‘Okay, okay. I’m just fucking with you.’

I turned to see that Onyx was grinning. Pyre wasn’t. ‘You ready to be serious?’ I asked.

‘Let’s say ten,’ Onyx said. ‘Five from Drakh’s, five from your stores.’

‘The entire contents of this mansion and the people in it aren’t worth ten imbued items,’ I said. ‘Two.’

‘From your vaults?’

‘Onyx, I’m only talking about the ones in our vaults,’ I said. ‘Because you and I both know that you’ll steal anything you can get your hands on from Richard’s stores, no matter what we agree on.’

Onyx didn’t bother to deny it. ‘Seven, then.’

I relaxed very slightly. There was no violence in the futures any more. Maybe Onyx would keep his word and maybe he wouldn’t – actually, I was fairly sure he wouldn’t – but you don’t bargain with someone you’re planning to kill. We argued back and forth, Onyx alternating between haggling and threatening. Pyre said nothing, watching us with his blue eyes.

Being a diviner is all about preparation. Whenever I go to a meeting like this, I gear up first – for every one hour I spend talking to mages I don’t trust, I spend five to ten hours planning for contingencies and getting hold of the right gear. Admittedly, this meeting had been more extreme than usual, but the basic situation was the same. When you’re a diviner, pretty much every mage you meet has the potential to kill you in a straight fight, which is why you don’t give them one.

But the thing about preparation is that you usually don’t end up using it. Every now and again, when I go to one of these meetings, all hell breaks loose, and when that happens, my preparation and skill are the only things keeping me alive. But for every one meeting that goes like that, there are ten more where nothing in particular happens. It probably doesn’t seem that way if you listen to me tell you about it, but that’s because if everything goes to plan, there’s nothing to tell. And most of the time, meetings do go like that. It’s just that the ones that don’t are the ones that get you killed.

In the end, the meeting with Onyx turned out to be one of the uneventful ones. Despite our past history and despite his threats, we finished up our negotiations, said our goodbyes and left on as good terms as could realistically be expected. And half an hour after arriving, Anne and I were walking back out through the front door.

I can’t believe that worked, Anne said.

Please don’t jinx it, I said. Anyone following?

Just that boy, but he didn’t get too close. Onyx and Pyre stayed in the ballroom. I think we’re clear.

Yeah, well, keep scanning just in case. I switched mental frequencies. Vari? We’re out. Be ready to gate.

There was a moment’s pause, then I heard Variam’s voice in my head. Got it. Ready to go as soon as you are.

There’s always a rush of relief after a successful operation. We didn’t completely relax until we were past the second staging point, but once we did, you could feel the tension go out like flowing water. By the time we arrived back at the Hollow, the others were laughing and cracking jokes.

‘So what’s the plan?’ Vari asked me.

‘I go back to somewhere where there’s a phone signal and give Talisid the news,’ I said. ‘And probably hear him complain about what I had to promise Onyx.’

‘He’d better not after all this,’ Luna said.

‘You can come along and tell him that if you want,’ I said with a grin.

Luna shook his head. ‘Nah. Vari’s got his Keeper thing and I said I’d come along.’

‘Keeper thing?’ I asked Variam.

‘Drinks and stuff,’ Variam said. ‘They said I could bring a guest.’

‘Oh, don’t be so modest,’ Luna said. She looked at Anne and me. ‘It’s the Carpenter Club. It’s only supposed to be for Keepers with at least three years’ service. It’s Vari’s first invite.’

I looked at Variam with interest. ‘Sounds like they’re impressed with you.’

Variam shrugged uncomfortably.

‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to go too,’ Anne said. She gave me a slight smile. ‘Fun though it sounds to hear Talisid second-guess everything we did in the mansion, I’ve probably got about fifty patients waiting. I couldn’t really get the message out that I’d be away.’

I nodded, fighting off a twinge of disappointment. ‘I’ll let you know how it goes.’

I waited until everyone was gone before taking off the vest. It had definitely been the right choice, but I still didn’t want to have to explain it to Variam, and especially not to Luna. After divesting myself of my heavier items, I returned to London to call Talisid.

Talisid, as predicted, was not happy. ‘The amnesty is one thing,’ he told me. ‘That’s to be expected. But handing over so many imbued items is really not acceptable.’

‘It’s not “so many”: it’s four. As of yesterday, there are eighty-five imbued items from the Vault lists still missing. I don’t really think that pushing it up to eighty-seven is going to make that much difference.’

Talisid paused. ‘Why not eighty-nine?’

‘Half in advance, half on completion,’ I said. ‘Onyx is fully expecting you to stiff him on the deal, by the way. And he’s also demanding proof that Morden’s actually on board with this.’

‘Why would he even care?’

‘Why, were you hoping you could cut Morden out of the deal completely?’ I asked. ‘For whatever reason, Onyx won’t move without hearing from him. You’ll have to figure out how.’

‘I suppose that’s possible,’ Talisid said. ‘Do you think it’s some kind of trick?’

‘Honestly, I think keeping Morden in the loop is probably a good thing,’ I said. ‘He’s probably smart enough to catch Richard, assuming he wants to. Onyx isn’t.’

‘All he needs to do is feed us a time and a place.’

‘I doubt it’ll be that easy, and even it if is, Onyx would find some way to screw it up.’

‘The Keepers are confident that they can handle Richard if they can reliably locate him.’

‘I suppose.’ I frowned. ‘Have you brought them in on this?’

‘We’re approaching the stage where we’re going to need them.’

‘I thought the idea was to keep this need-to-know.’

‘They do need to know. We can’t exactly expect them to cooperate in a major assault without some advance warning.’

‘So how much “advance warning” did you give them?’

‘It’s mostly in terms of hypotheticals at the moment,’ Talisid said. ‘But we’ve briefed the mission leader and told him to start assembling his squad.’

‘Mm.’

‘Well, I’d better report to Bahamus,’ Talisid said. ‘Good job, by the way.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘See you.’

The communicator cut off and I sat down, frowning as I stared at the focus. All of a sudden I was feeling uneasy. How many people had Talisid told?

According to him, it was just the mission leader. But the mission leader would probably have told his assistant. And it wasn’t just Talisid. There was Bahamus, and Maradok. Figure that each of them had probably told one other person too. And those were just the bits of the operation I knew about. Talisid hadn’t brought up the Keepers until I’d pressed him, which meant there could be others. Actually, it meant there probably were others.

There’s a saying that the chances of a secret leaking is proportional not to the number of people who know, but to the square of the number of people who know. By my count that number was now way too high. And the Keepers are filled with people who hate Dark mages, which by their reckoning includes me. There was a very good chance that word had already leaked to Sal Sarque and the Crusaders.

What would the Crusaders do if they heard rumours of me having secret negotiations with Morden’s cabal? They’d want to know more, and judging by their past behaviour, they’d probably go about it violently. In fact, the last time something like this had happened, their approach had been ‘kidnap/torture it out of them’.

I checked the futures. No immediate threat. It’s pretty hard to catch a diviner unless you have some way of getting around their precognition. The Crusaders nearly managed it last year, but since then I’d been more careful.

But then, the last time, they hadn’t gone after me, had they? They’d gone after Anne. And now that Anne was my aide, that gave them a double reason to think that she might know something. I checked to see if Anne was answering her phone … she wasn’t, which didn’t necessarily mean anything, but it was worrying enough for me to investigate further. What if I gated to her flat … ?

It’s scary how life can go from zero to a hundred so fast. I sat looking at that future for exactly two seconds before jumping to my feet so quickly I knocked over my chair. I fumbled out my gate stone and started channelling while also pulling out my phone and typing the alarm code, trying to juggle both tasks at once. I saw the sending bar fill and light up, the ‘delivered’ notification appearing below. That code would bring Variam and Luna running at full speed, no questions asked, but I didn’t know how long it would take them to notice, and right now every second could mean the difference between life and death. I poured power into the gate stone, gambling that it would still function. The air shimmered, then flickered as the gate began to materialise faster than was safe, the spell hanging on a knife edge between completion and catastrophic failure; I snatched half-glimpsed threads out of the futures, changing the frequency of the channelled spell without checking to see what would happen, and it wavered and settled. A portal appeared in mid-air and I jumped through.

I came down into the living room of a small flat in Ealing, decorated in blues and greens. There were plants on the window-sill, a sofa along the wall and three men all in the same room with me. Two had already turned towards the gate; one raised a gun.

Like I said, being a diviner is all about preparation. The three men around me were alert and ready, but I’d known that I was about to arrive in the middle of them and they hadn’t. The gunman hadn’t been ready to fire, and as I lunged he hesitated an instant before pulling the trigger. Too long. The bang was loud in the small room; the bullet went high and I hit him below the breastbone, then used my stun focus as he doubled over.

Air magic surged behind me and something slammed into my side, sending me spinning. I came up with my knife in one hand as the second man swung some kind of weapon; I blocked and slashed the wrist to send it bouncing to the floor. Another spell nearly hit me and I slid sideways to use my attacker as a shield. A fourth man had appeared from somewhere or other and for a few seconds it was a whirl of steel and magic, my blade against clubs and spells. It was three against one but the living room was cramped and they had to worry about hitting each other while I could go all out. Fleeting images: the mage at the back, face drawn and eyes set as he tried to line up a spell on me; sweat dripping down the brow of the nearest man as he swung a baton; the couch overturned, the cushions a trip hazard. Seconds stretched into an endless moment.

The third man tried to grab for the gun on the floor and I stabbed him in the back. He staggered and went to his knees; in the second that I was distracted a baton came down on my shoulder. My armour took the blow but I stumbled, the knife twisting out of my hand. A second blow cracked across my arm and I turned the motion into a roll, pulling out a pouch and dumping the contents into my hands in a single practised motion, and as the baton-wielder stepped in to aim the blow that would crack my skull, I threw glitterdust in his face. He yelled, dropping his weapon as he grabbed at his eyes, the sparkling motes clinging to the cornea, blinding him. I hit him low, and he dropped.

All of a sudden the only ones still up were me and the mage. He had a shield active, a bubble of hardened air. I know all about fighting air mages. I tried to rush him, pulling out my dispel focus, but a blast of wind drove me back against the couch. I tripped and rolled to my feet, scooping up the gun as I did and levelling it.

For a moment there was a pause, the two of us facing each other across the overturned couch. The air mage was slim and dark-skinned, hands up in a defensive stance; he wasn’t wearing armour but I could sense the auras of defensive magic beneath the shield. I had the gun aimed but I knew a shot wouldn’t get through; it was tempting to drop it and go for something else but the air mage was focusing on it in a way that suggested he saw it as a threat. The other three men weren’t getting up: the one I’d stunned was still out of it, the guy I’d stabbed was crawling for the door and the third guy was groaning and clawing at his eyes. Seconds ticked by. I ran through attack patterns in the futures, trying to see a way through for a killing strike. Dangerous. I could get through – maybe – but not without exposing myself as well. I needed an edge—

Magic pulsed from elsewhere in the flat, something powerful. Not air magic. All of a sudden I remembered why I was here. Anne!

‘John!’ the air mage yelled. ‘Caliburn! Get in here!’

I tried to dart for the door, but a wind wall drove me back. Anne! I called. Where are you?

There was an instant’s pause before the answer. In the bedroom and doing just fine, thanks for asking.

I hesitated an instant, my concentration split. What’s going on?

Just do me a favour and stay out of range. Oh, you might want to hold on to something. The connection cut off abruptly. I took one look at the futures and dived behind the sofa.

There was a pulse of magic from the next room over, like the first but ten times as powerful. It was a type I didn’t recognise – similar to Anne’s life magic but with strands of something else woven in, something dark and hungry, and it hit my senses like a hammer. The room went black as a light-eating wave of darkness swept outwards and then in again, there and gone in a flash.

I staggered to my feet. I felt disorientated; like most diviners my magesight is sensitive, and a spell this powerful is like a fire alarm going off in your ear. Luckily the air mage didn’t look any better. I tried to rush him, but apparently he’d had enough. A whirlwind drove me back and the air mage reached the window in two bounding leaps, then jumped through it in a crash of splintering glass. Shards glanced off his shield as he soared up into the street and out of view.

I didn’t try to chase the mage – he was long gone and in any case, I didn’t care. I darted out into the small hallway and into Anne’s bedroom.

And there was Anne, alone. She was wearing the same clothes that she’d worn to Morden’s mansion, and they showed no signs of wounds or damage. She whirled to face me as I came through the door, her hands coming up. ‘Alex? What are you doing here?’

‘Rescuing you, or at least I thought I was.’ I was scanning for threats. There was movement at the edge of my range but I couldn’t sense anyone coming closer. Maybe they were hanging back until they figured out what was going on … worth a try. I pulled out a gate stone and started casting.

‘Where are they?’ Anne asked.

‘The guys in the living room?’ The gate was forming fast, but I wasn’t sure if it’d be fast enough. ‘They should be out of it.’

‘The ones in here.’

I paused, looked at Anne. She was looking around as if confused. ‘What do you mean, the ones in here?’

‘There were three,’ Anne said. She looked puzzled. ‘I was going to trigger the barrier and send a signal to you and Luna and Vari, but—’

Air magic flared from somewhere out in the street. I heard a crack of thunder and the house shivered. ‘Talk later,’ I said. ‘Running now. Where’s that air mage?’

‘Flying out at the front,’ Anne said. She was recovering, her focus coming back. She glanced up at the ceiling. ‘Now he’s circling over. I think he’s aiming for the window.’

‘How long?’

‘Maybe fifteen seconds …’

‘Got it,’ I said with satisfaction. The air shimmered and formed into a portal. ‘Go!’

Anne darted through. There was another clap of thunder and the window fractured, cracks running through the glass. Too slow. I gave a mental middle finger to the air mage and was just about to jump through when something caught my eye.

There were fewer signs of struggle here in the bedroom: whatever had happened, it had apparently been too fast to leave much of a mess. The laundry basket near the door had been kicked over, the clothes left in a pile, but the bed itself was still neat and untouched. There was no sign that anyone else had been here at all … except for one thing.

As with the living room, Anne had decorated her bedroom with potted plants. I’d noticed them the last time I’d been here: there had been a cluster of violets, and a white flower of some kind I didn’t recognise, all growing and healthy. The pots were still there, but they were empty of anything except earth.

A cold feeling went through my stomach. I didn’t know what I was looking at, and I didn’t have time to stop and think. I jumped through the gate and let it close behind me.