Risen

Epilogue

The bell above the door goes ding-ding.

‘I don’t sell spellbooks,’ I tell the guy at the counter. There are two others in the shop already: a teenage girl in a BTS T-shirt and the guy I’m talking to. The new arrival makes three, which is the busiest it’s been all morning. Slow day.

‘I mean, it doesn’t have to be a book,’ the guy tells me. He’s got messy hair and looks like a student. ‘You could send me something I could read on my phone.’

‘So you’re asking for an ebook with spells.’ The new girl’s Ji-yeong. I wasn’t expecting her today. She gives me a nod and goes to sit in the Emporium’s only chair.

‘Yeah. Do you have one?’

‘No.’

‘But I mean, adepts have to write stuff down,’ the guy says. ‘I mean, sometimes they try a spell and it works and sometimes they try one and it doesn’t, so they’d keep records, right?’

‘That’s . . . not really how it works.’

‘I mean, I’d keep records. Like, I do that with my phone. The way I used to do it was that whenever I thought of something important, I’d stop and type it into a notes file. But then after I got my new phone I started doing video logs instead, so, and this was something I was thinking, if you wanted a really good record of your spells, you should video it. Because that way you’d get the movements too. You know, no one ever seems to think of stuff like that. I was thinking about that just yesterday.’

I want to sigh and scrub my hands over my eyes. This never used to happen to Alex. After he said ‘no’ a couple of times they’d go away. Is it because I’m shorter? Because I’m a girl? Do I just look less intimidating?

‘Then you could share it,’ the guy is saying. ‘I’ve been thinking that could work really well. Because, you know, that’s how it works these days, right? You have to be putting yourself out there. I’ve been reading that social media guy, you know, the one who shares all the political stuff? Well, he was saying something about that and I saw it and I thought . . .’

Maybe it’s how I’m dressed? Arachne did always say people see your clothes before they see the rest of you. Maybe I should wear something scarier-looking. What about that dress she made me for the Tiger’s Palace, the ‘evil queen from Snow White’ one? Though that’s a bit much if you’re going to be behind a counter all day . . .

‘. . . so that’d make sense, right?’

Crap, I wasn’t listening. ‘So . . . you’re talking about some kind of record of the things you say and do to use magic.’

‘Yeah, that’s right.’

‘So something with spells in it that acts like a book.’

The guy looks pleased. ‘Right.’

‘Right,’ I say. ‘I don’t sell spellbooks.’

It takes way too long to get him out the door. After that, the BTS girl comes up to buy a crystal ball. Once she’s gone and I’m alone with Ji-yeong, I sigh, close my eyes, and lean my head against the wall.

‘That was a complete waste of time,’ Ji-yeong says.

‘Thank you, Captain Obvious.’

‘Why do you even listen to boys like that?’

‘Politeness, I suppose.’

‘They don’t seem important enough to be polite to,’ Ji-yeong says. ‘Actually, I don’t know why you’re running a shop at all.’

I don’t feel like answering that. I open my eyes and push off the wall.

‘I mean, there are easier ways to earn money.’

I don’t feel like answering that either.

‘And if you really wanted to keep it open, you could just hire someone.’

‘Why are you still in London anyway?’ I ask her. You have to push back with Ji-yeong or she’ll just keep going until you do. I don’t know whether it’s a Dark mage thing or whether it’s just her, but she seems really forward. ‘The first week, you said you were going back to Seoul.’

Ji-yeong looks away.

‘Then you showed up again right after.’

‘I’ve been thinking,’ Ji-yeong says. She’s looking out the window at a woman wheeling a pram down the other side of the street.

‘About what?’

‘Things,’ Ji-yeong said. She turns back to me. ‘Do you know if Landis is married?’

I give her a look. ‘Seriously?’

The bell goes ding-ding again, and three people come in one after the other. The first two are tourists, and they head over to the window displays. The third one’s something different.

‘Uh . . .’ the boy says. He’s in his late teens, light brown skin, sweating under a ski jacket. ‘Can you help me?’

‘Depends on the help,’ I tell him. The tourists are looking at the ritual daggers. Ji-yeong takes out her phone and starts reading.

‘You were . . .’ The boy glances around and lowers his voice. ‘You were at that battle, right?’

‘Not something I can really talk about.’

‘Right, okay, it’s just . . . There was a friend of mine, I think he might have been there.’

Oh. I don’t ask which side he was on. The Council don’t recruit that young. ‘He was with the association?’

The boy nods.

‘You sure he was one of the ones who went in?’

‘I think so.’

‘All right.’ I take the pad on the counter and write a name and number. ‘Call this guy and give him your friend’s name. The Council have been trying to put together a record of everyone who was there.’

The boy starts to reach for the pad, then stops. ‘He’s Council?’

I tear off the square of paper and hold it up. ‘It’s them or nothing.’

He hesitates, then takes it. I make sure my curse doesn’t reach his fingers. He turns away.

‘Hey,’ I say, and wait for him to look back. I don’t really want to say it, but I feel like I should warn him. ‘If it’s been this long and you still haven’t heard from him . . . well, just bear in mind it might not be good news.’

A shadow passes over the boy’s face. ‘I wish I’d been there.’

‘No,’ I tell him. ‘You don’t.’

He leaves, but the memories don’t. Black tarpaulin bags, six feet long and lined up on the stone. Fear and gunfire in the castle haze. And the thing I brought home with me, the little white and blue cylinder waiting upstairs . . .

The tourists come up to the counter and I shake it off, pushing away the darkness. I bag up their shopping, hear the bell go ding-ding, and watch them walk out of the shop into the morning sun.

Ji-yeong looks up from her phone. ‘So is he?’

‘Oh, come on! Really?’

She looks at me expectantly.

‘How would I even know something like that? I’m not a diviner.’

‘You were apprentice to a diviner.’

‘What’s that got to do with it?’

‘Apprentices are mostly like their masters.’ Ji-yeong says it like it’s something obvious. ‘Diviners like knowing things, so you’re probably like that too.’

‘You were apprentice to a paranoid murder-happy death mage with delusions of living for ever.’

‘So?’

I sigh and look away. Ji-yeong keeps waiting.

‘No,’ I tell her. ‘He’s not.’

Ji-yeong nods.

I’m thinking of what else to say when I notice someone’s standing outside the door. She’s heavy, a little like Caldera but with less muscle, and her name’s Saffron. She’s looking at me through the glass.

This day is just getting better and better.

The woman pushes open the door with a ding-ding, waits for it to shut behind her, then flips the sign from OPEN to CLOSED. ‘Morning, Vesta.’

‘Morning,’ I tell Saffron. If she’s not calling me ‘Mage’, I’m not calling her ‘Keeper’.

Saffron looks down at Ji-yeong. ‘How about you give us a few minutes?’

Ji-yeong looks up at her.

The friendliness slides off Saffron’s face. ‘Something wrong with your ears?’

I look at the two of them – the heavyset Keeper staring down at the Dark apprentice – and all of a sudden I’m annoyed. ‘She’s staying,’ I tell Saffron.

‘This is confidential.’

‘What, asking me the same questions again?’ I walk around the counter and over to Saffron, skirts whisking around my feet. I stop before coming into range of my curse – just – and fold my arms. ‘I was polite the first time, I was polite the second time, but now this is getting insulting.’

‘It’s just routine follow-up,’ Saffron says. She’s wearing her police poker face, but I’ve got the feeling she wants to lean away.

‘It is not,’ I tell her. ‘I know how short-handed you guys are. Variam was pulled off sick leave to take cases from your order. So don’t tell me that you coming here three times in three weeks is routine.’

Saffron stares at me for a few seconds. I don’t back down, and it’s Saffron who turns away. She walks around the shelves and herb rack, then leans on the counter and takes out a stick of gum. ‘They’ve done more auguries.’ She unwraps the gum and pushes it into her mouth. ‘Came out the same. Drakh is dead. Verus is dead. Anne Walker is alive.’

‘Okay?’

‘Tracking spells,’ Saffron said. She chews on her gum, then pushes it into her cheek. ‘No reading on Drakh, no reading on Verus, no reading on Walker.’

‘Which is what you expect from someone who can do a life shroud,’ I say. ‘Look, if you’re expecting me to help you find her, forget it. The deal was she got a full pardon.’

‘She’s not the problem,’ Saffron says. ‘Drakh is. Yeah, the auguries, but he’s blocked divinations before. How do we know he’s not doing it again? The Council wants a body. Something they can hold up and say: look, he’s dead, war’s over.’

‘Yeah, well, they’re going to have to get used to disappointment.’

‘You know what happened in that shadow realm?’

‘I know two different mages sensed Alex and Richard fighting in the keep right at the end,’ I tell her. ‘A death mage and a space mage, wasn’t it?’

‘How’d you hear that?’

I’m getting annoyed again. I don’t know whether Saffron does it on purpose or whether Keepers are just like this. ‘Oh, I don’t know, because I was there? Where were you, by the way? Don’t remember seeing you on the front lines.’

Saffron narrows her eyes a bit. Guess that one got through. ‘Anyway, where was I?’ I say. ‘Oh right. Now both of those sightings were right before the last Council mages got out. And according to Compass, by that point the whole place was on the edge of falling apart.’

‘Anne Walker made it out.’

‘Well, it doesn’t sound like anyone else did, does it?’

‘That’s not proof.’

‘Look, I don’t know what the Council thinks it’s going to get here,’ I tell her. ‘But if it’s really Drakh you’re worried about, then for what it’s worth, I’m pretty sure he’s dead.’

Saffron stares at me, chewing away at her gum. ‘All right,’ she says, and pushes herself off the counter. ‘We’re going to need you to sign a statement.’

‘I already signed a bloody statement. I’m not doing another because you can’t be bothered to dig the old one out of your filing cabinet.’

I expect Saffron to keep pushing but she doesn’t. ‘Thanks for your time,’ she tells me. She walks down the length of the shop, past me and Ji-yeong.

Ji-yeong and I watch her go.

Saffron puts her hand on the door handle, then suddenly looks back. ‘Where’s Verus?’

For a moment I feel a weird sensation, like a featherlight brush across my thoughts. But I know that trick and I don’t let my concentration slip. I keep my thoughts in the present, taking in the shop around me, the sight of Saffron at the door. I look straight at her and think very clearly. Try and read my mind again, and we’ll see how well my magic works on you.

Saffron flinches and the moment’s gone. I give her a smile. ‘I’m sorry. Did you say something?’

‘No,’ Saffron says flatly. She looks from me to Ji-yeong. ‘You two watch yourself.’ The bell goes ding-ding and she’s gone.

We watch her walk away up the road. Only when she’s out of sight do I sigh and let my shoulders slump.

‘She’s scared of you,’ Ji-yeong says.

‘Funny way of showing it.’ I look at the sign; it’s still on CLOSED and when I think about flipping it to OPEN something in me rebels. ‘I think I’m closing up for the day.’ Saying it makes me feel a bit guilty, but it is my shop.

Ji-yeong nods. ‘Thanks,’ she says as she gets up.

‘For what?’

‘I would have had to go if she’d pushed it,’ Ji-yeong says with a shrug. ‘They don’t want me here.’

I’m not sure what to say to that. Ji-yeong opens the door.

‘Wait,’ I tell her.

Ji-yeong pauses. ‘If you’re still figuring things out,’ I say, ‘and you want someone to talk to, you can come to me. Okay?’

Ji-yeong thinks about it for a second, then nods. ‘Okay.’ The door closes behind her.

I watch her walk away in the opposite direction from Saffron, and shake my head. ‘Weird girl,’ I say to myself, then turn the lock on the door.

I climb the stairs to the flat. There’s a text on my phone from Vari; it must have come in while I was with Saffron. He’s been pulled in for a double shift and won’t be done until midnight.

I still haven’t really talked with Vari since the battle. I mean, not properly. He’s not hurt – the marid kept its promise – and the Council doesn’t seem to be blaming him for anything. But he hasn’t been dealing with it all that well. He tells me he’s being given these extra shifts, but I’m starting to get the feeling he’s just trying to stay busy so he doesn’t have time to think. It’s what I used to do.

We haven’t talked about the deal I made either.

The monkey’s paw is sitting at the back of the drawer. I could point to it with my eyes closed, and thinking about it brings a complicated mix of feelings, like a knot I can’t untie. Was I wrong to say yes? Could I have done anything else? What happens when it goes through with its side of the bargain? Can I really just sit there and watch someone walk away with it?

I shake it off and open my laptop. Half a dozen new emails. Two are from adepts about that network. I thought someone else was supposed to be setting it up but they’re acting like they’re waiting for me. A report from November, three pages long. Another question for the Emporium account. A message from a guy who claims he used to sell to Alex – he’s got some new stock and wants to know if I’m interested. I’ll have to check whether he’s telling the truth.

The flat feels lonely. I use it, but I don’t sleep here. It’s not really a home.

There’s plenty of work but I don’t feel like it. I wish Ji-yeong had hung around. She’s strange, but I can talk to her.

I could call Chalice. She sent me a message last week saying we should catch up, but I’m kind of suspicious. Chalice has been getting involved with the Council – it’s sounding like she’s going to be one of the new aides. Problem is, a couple of things she’s said make me think she wants me as her aide. Right now, most Light mages have forgotten about me, but if I start showing up at the War Rooms then pretty soon everyone’s going to remember that I was Alex’s apprentice. And once they remember that, it won’t take long before they start thinking I’m trying to follow in his footsteps. I saw where that got Alex. No thanks.

Still don’t want to sit down at that desk.

I shouldn’t be complaining. It was only seven years ago I walked into this shop for the first time. Back then I had no money, a rented flat, and a curse I couldn’t control. I didn’t know anything about magic and I was about two bad days away from suicide. Now I’m an independent mage with a shop and a home of my own. I’ve got more than I ever dreamed of.

But none of it’s worth anything without people to share it with.

You know what? I open the desk drawer and pull out my box of gate stones. They’re labelled with little tags, and I rummage for the one I need. World’s not going to end if I take a half day off.

I come down in a forest clearing, stepping onto grass. Autumn leaves litter the earth, yellow and brown and gold. It’s early afternoon – the time difference from London is a couple of hours – and the sky is a clear bright blue.

I let the gate close and set off; there’s no track but I know where to go. I’ve changed into jeans and walking shoes, and fallen leaves crunch under my soles. I find myself relaxing as I walk. I’ve always lived in cities, but I like how peaceful the countryside is. When I’m in London, I can always hear traffic and voices, but out here the only sound is the wind. It’s nice.

It only takes a few minutes for the house to appear. There’s a path running through the trees, flagstones laid out like stepping-stones in a grassy river, and the path runs right by the building. It’s a log house with a peaked roof, raised a foot or so off the ground. There are windows on the walls with flowers in window boxes, and a veranda with a couple of chairs. I cross the path and climb the steps. ‘Hey, lazy,’ I tell the fox lying in front of the door. ‘Shouldn’t you be out hunting?’

Hermes flicks his tail at the sound of my voice. He’s sprawled on his side on the wooden decking, and he lifts one paw and twists his head to look at me upside down.

‘You’re just stealing from her, aren’t you?’ I say. ‘Anyone home?’

Hermes blinks. I step over him, pulling in my curse to keep it out of his fur, and knock on the door. A voice calls ‘Come in!’ and I push it open.

The door opens into a combination kitchen/living/dining room. Inside, a young woman is rolling pastry on the table. She’s wearing an apron over a T-shirt and jeans, and there’s flour on her arms. ‘Your fox is getting fat,’ I tell her, closing the door behind me.

‘He keeps eating my pastries,’ Anne says with a smile. ‘Want one?’

You’d never think to look at her that a month ago Anne was one of the most feared and wanted mages in the British Isles. All you’d see would be a tall, slender girl with long black hair and red-brown eyes. Beautiful, maybe; scary, no. You can’t even sense any magic. I know she uses some kind of life shroud, but I can’t see it, though my magesight’s awful so that might just be me.

Technically I’m not breaking the law by visiting like this, but it’s not something I share around. Yes, officially Anne’s been pardoned and taken off the wanted list. But the Council lost a lot of people in that war. As long as they have no idea where she is, it’s easy for them to let it go, but once that changes . . .

I hop up to sit on the table. ‘What’s in them?’

‘Apricot,’ Anne says. She puts aside the rolling pin and starts cutting the dough into strips.

‘I liked the apple ones.’

‘Come on, give apricot a try.’

‘Fine,’ I sigh. They’ll probably be good; I just prefer things I know. ‘Ji-yeong’s hanging around the shop again.’

Anne puts the cutter aside and takes two of the dough strips. ‘Mm-hm?’

‘It doesn’t bother you, does it? I mean, she was Sagash’s apprentice.’

‘Well, so was I.’ Anne starts plaiting the strips together. She makes it look easy, but the one time I tried I made a horrible mess. ‘Though it was a bit more voluntary on her part. But given what I did to her master, I think we can call it even.’

Anne’s a very different person these days, and to be honest I’m still figuring out how to treat her. On the one hand, she’s easier to get on with. I always liked the old Anne, but whenever you talked to her, there was this reserve, this sense she was holding herself back. Nowadays she’s a lot more relaxed. And funnier. I can talk to her about things where the conversation would have stalled before.

On the other hand, she’s also a lot scarier. Like I said, she doesn’t look scary, but somehow I’m very sure that if anyone ever really threatens her she’ll kill them without a second thought. It’s like the safety catches that normal people have just aren’t there. I suppose some people would say the same about Alex, but I never felt with Alex that he’d turn that on me. With Anne, I’m not so sure.

‘Pass the apricots?’ Anne asks.

‘Where—? Oh.’ There’s a small bowl at my end of the table with apricot halves, washed and cored. Anne turns towards me and holds out her hand. I reach out—

It’s the way she’s standing that does it. All of a sudden, it’s a month ago. We’re in the shop, shadows stretching across the floor, and Anne’s in that exact same pose, except she’s wearing a black skater dress and above her palm a mass of black wires is spinning faster and faster. She’s staring at me with those dark eyes and—

—the moment’s gone. I’m quite still, the bowl of apricots half-extended, looking down at Anne’s hand. And suddenly I’m very aware that we’re on our own in a cabin in the woods with no one who knows where I am and no one close enough to hear a scream.

‘You know I wouldn’t,’ Anne says quietly. She’s looking at me and I know she’s read my body language.

I take a breath and hand over the bowl. Our fingers don’t quite touch. ‘I know,’ I tell her. But it’s forced, and when Anne turns back to her dough, there’s a tension in the air.

Most people think Anne did what she did because she was under that marid’s control. I’m one of maybe four people who know better. Oh, the marid had an influence, and it got bigger and bigger until by the final battle it really was possessing her. But the people she killed before that? All the marid did was give her a push. And I’m not completely sure she even needed the push.

I know it was only part of her. But that part’s still there, and the woman standing next to me folding strings of dough around sliced apricots is still basically the same person who went into Jagadev’s fortress and Levistus’s mansion and killed every living thing that got in her way.

I shake it off and start complaining to Anne about the shifts Vari’s working and how I hardly get to see him any more. Anne listens and makes sympathetic noises and we move on to talk about other things, and the tension fades until I’ve almost forgotten it happened.

The pastries are lined up on their tray and Anne’s about to put it in the oven when I stretch and glance around. ‘All right,’ I say. ‘Where’s . . . ?’

‘That way,’ Anne says, pointing. ‘Along the path, then turn off onto the track.’

‘Didn’t even need to ask,’ I say with a grin. I look up; that curved spear of Alex’s is mounted above the fireplace. ‘Are you still keeping that?’

‘You never know.’

I nod and hop off the table. ‘Back in a bit.’

‘Luna?’

I pause halfway to the door. Looking back, I see that Anne hasn’t lifted the tray. She’s staring down at the pastries, and this time when she speaks, she doesn’t raise her eyes. ‘You used to say on your bad days, it felt like you weren’t bearing a curse, you were a curse. That you made everything worse for everyone you’d ever known, just by being alive.’

I nod.

There’s something brittle in Anne’s words. ‘How did you deal with it?’

It’s something I used to think about a lot, and what happened with the monkey’s paw has made me dig it up again. It’s not easy to say, but I speak honestly and hope it’ll help. ‘I suppose the biggest thing . . . you have to get used to the idea that you’re not a good person. Maybe not an awful one either, but . . . You have to accept that what you’ve done, what you’re going to do, there’s a lot of bad in there. You just hope there’ll be enough good to balance it out.’

Anne stares down a moment longer, then nods, the movement jerky and sharp. She picks up the tray and walks to the oven, her usual grace returning step by step.

I follow Anne’s directions and turn off the path about fifty yards upslope. Trees close in around me. I’ve only been walking a minute when I see a flash of white through the foliage, and when I pause I hear the scuff and rustle of movement. Old habits take over and I soften my footsteps, creeping closer as stealthily as I can.

The trees open up into a clearing, and I lean out from behind a trunk.

Alex is there, wielding a staff. His shirt is off, back and shoulders pale in the dappled sunlight, and he’s moving through some kind of martial arts form, the movements smooth and steady. Leaves crunch beneath his feet, and the staff makes a soft whoosh as it sweeps through the air.

‘Well, look who’s back.’ Alex’s face is turned away and he doesn’t stop his movements, but it sounds like he’s smiling. ‘Shop too much for you?’

‘You have no idea.’ There’s a fallen tree to one side of the clearing and I walk over to sit down. ‘How did you get customers to take no for an answer? Because I swear they don’t listen to a word I say.’

‘Pretty sure I asked myself that a few times.’

I complain for a while. It’s kind of selfish, but after a day behind the counter it’s nice to moan a bit. Alex listens, still working through his staff form.

‘. . . and then the other customer turns to me with this expectant look, like it’s my job to explain why it happened! It’s like he thinks Richard was supposed to follow his plan and the fact that he didn’t is my fault!’

‘Welcome to being a teacher.’ Alex turns towards me; he keeps his eyes up as he brings the staff around in a parry, but I swear he’s got an amused look.

‘I’m not a teacher!’

‘You’re the only person they can ask about this stuff.’ The parry becomes a strike. ‘Works out the same.’

‘Oh, glad you’re getting a laugh out of it,’ I tell him sourly. ‘You didn’t hear this guy. He was doing a play-by-play of the war like he was a football commentator. Except he got like two-thirds of the things wrong, and he expected me to tell him why Richard and Morden did them. I’d say he was my dumbest customer of the week, except yesterday was Monday!’

‘See?’ Alex draws back into a guard. ‘You’re a shop proprietor, you’re a teacher –’ He crouches and sweeps at ankle height. ‘– and now you’re becoming an expert on London magical society.’ Back to guard. ‘Look at all the things you’re learning.’

‘If you tell me this is all part of my education, I am going to throw something at you.’

‘It’s all part of your education.’

I throw a stick. Alex pivots smoothly and it glances off the staff with a clack. ‘Cheat,’ I tell him.

Alex lowers the staff and walks over. As he gets closer, I see his skin is dry. ‘Still not sweating?’ I ask.

‘I should be,’ Alex says as he sits. ‘Anne says the sweat glands work, but they’re not triggering for some reason. Maybe this body just doesn’t produce as much heat.’

Alex looks stranger up close. It’s not his shape so much – his body’s leaner and harder, and the lack of body hair is kind of odd, but none of that looks super-unnatural. It’s the colour that’s the problem. Alex’s skin looks like white marble, only a little darker than the fateweaver. I used to be fairer than Alex, but now when I sit next to him I look like I’ve been tanning in a sunbed.

I still don’t know exactly what Anne did. Both she and Alex tried to explain it, but Anne was really vague, and Alex wasn’t in much of a condition to take notes given that he was, you know, dying at the time. As far as I understand it, Anne couldn’t heal Alex because the fateweaver was transforming his heart, and she couldn’t reverse the transformation because it was too advanced. So she went the other way. She supercharged it, getting the fateweaver to transmute all of Alex’s body until his body and the fateweaver were the same thing.

Alex claims she wouldn’t have been able to do it on her own, that the fateweaver pushed it to work because it was the only way for it to stay alive. It’s weird to think about. I never realised that Anne could do anything like that, but that’s what life magic does, right? Dominion over all living creatures. Though even so, I get the feeling this was right at her limit. Anne’s had to put a ton of work into Alex’s body to get it this far, and apparently she’s still working out the kinks.

‘Oh, right, Saffron dropped by,’ I say. ‘The Council still think you’re dead, but they’ve got her sniffing around anyway. I think they’ve got their suspicions.’

Alex nods.

‘Can you keep blocking their auguries? I know that fate magic’s powerful, but . . .’

‘I’m not blocking their auguries.’

‘Then who is?’

‘No one.’

I frown at him. ‘Their auguries say you’re dead.’

Alex just looks at me.

‘Okay,’ I tell him. ‘I don’t get it.’

‘How do you think tracking and divination spells find someone?’

‘Depends on the type of magic, doesn’t it?’

Alex nods, then walks over to where his shirt and top hang from a branch. ‘Most tracking spells are living family,’ he says, slipping on his shirt. ‘Life or death type. They look for your biological signature.’

‘And yours would have changed,’ I realise. ‘So Anne doesn’t need to shroud you.’ I think for a second. ‘That wouldn’t fool divination though. Are you using that trick from Helikaon?’

‘No, my optasia isn’t good enough.’ Alex finishes doing up his buttons and walks back over. ‘But even auguries have to look for something. And for mages, one of the standard things they search for is your magical signature.’

‘Okay?’

Alex reaches into his pocket and takes out a small plaque. It’s metal mounted on leather, coloured silver and gold. ‘Remember this?’

‘Your Keeper signet?’

Alex nods. ‘They personalise them to your magical signature. Like cutting a key from a blank. Once they’ve been set, they won’t work for anyone else.’

‘Okay.’

‘Mine doesn’t work any more.’

‘Really?’

‘My magic’s changed.’ Alex sits back down on the tree trunk. ‘For one thing, the fateweaver’s integrated with me. It doesn’t feel like I’m using it any more; it’s just part of who I am. But my divination’s changed as well. Weaker. My precognition is fine, but it’s harder to path-walk, especially long range. Can’t focus on it the way I used to.’

‘Does that bother you?’ I ask curiously.

‘Weirdly, no.’ Alex leans back on the tree, resting on his hands. ‘It would have once, but I suppose I’m . . . just less interested in the far future? The present seems more important.’

‘Huh.’

‘So you can see why their auguries aren’t showing me up as alive.’

‘Yeah,’ I say. If Alex has a different body and a different magic type, what are they going to search for? But still . . . ‘You can’t hide in the forest for ever.’

‘I know.’

‘Are you ever going to come back?’

‘I don’t think we can.’

‘Ever?’

‘Never’s a long time,’ Alex says. ‘But the fact is, with Richard and Morden gone, we might be the two most hated mages in the British Isles.’

‘Not by everyone,’ I say. ‘People are still figuring out what to think, but from bits and pieces that I’m hearing, most of the adepts and independents out there aren’t blaming you. And the fact that you were the one who finally negotiated that surrender is getting a lot of notice. I think another six months and people are going to be seeing you as a hero.’

‘Maybe some of them,’ Alex says. ‘But think about how many people lost friends or relatives because of what we did. We go back, and even if the Council stick strictly to the terms of that truce – and that’s a big if – we’ll be getting assassination attempts for the rest of our lives. Any place we go will be a potential war zone; any cause we join will be suspect because we’re associated with it.’ He shakes his head. ‘I can’t see any path where it’s a good idea for us to go back. And even in the ones where it’s the least bad option, we’d have to wait years. No, I think we’re going to be in exile for a long time.’

I sigh. ‘I suppose you’re right.’

I wait while Alex gathers up his things and puts on his top. ‘There’s one other reason,’ he says as he picks up his staff.

‘What?’

Alex starts walking, keeping to a slow pace, and I fall in beside him. ‘Those moves I was working through?’ he tells me as we walk. ‘It’s the staff form of a martial art called carë.’ He pronounces it kah-reh. ‘Its last living practitioner died around two thousand years ago. There are no records left of the style.’

I look at Alex with a frown, waiting for him to go on. He doesn’t. ‘Then how—?’

‘I remember it,’ Alex says simply.

I stare at him for a second, then I get it.

‘The fateweaver,’ Alex says with a nod. ‘Other things too. I’ve been having dreams. Battles I was never part of, cities I’ve never seen. They’re patchy, like memories from when you’re very young.’

‘You’re remembering things the fateweaver saw.’

‘When I realised that, I started thinking,’ Alex says. ‘And I kept coming back to that conversation we had. The night in Sagash’s shadow realm, before the battle. You remember what you told me, about how I’d changed?’

I nod.

‘Well, I kept turning it over,’ Alex says. We’re coming up to the path; he stops and leans against a tree. ‘And the more I thought about it, the more I had to admit that you were right. Now, some of it I could put down to Anne and the Council and losing my hand, but when I thought back, the point at which I really started acting differently was when I took up the fateweaver.’ Alex looks at me. ‘Imbued items are made for a purpose. My mist cloak was built to hide its wearer. The sovnya was made to kill magical creatures. My armour’s meant to protect. The fateweaver? It was made as a tool for generals. To win battles.’

‘But it was you making those decisions, not the fateweaver.’

‘Oh, I made the decisions,’ Alex says. ‘But after you’ve decided what to do, you still have to figure out how to do it. And if you’ve got an imbued item that’s really good at solving problems one particular way . . . well, don’t you think it’s a funny coincidence that right after I bond to an imbued item built for war, I start facing and killing my enemies on the battlefield? And less than a month after that, I’m commanding an army?’

I look at him.

Alex shakes his head. ‘Don’t worry, it’s not going to take me over. The fateweaver was made as a tool. It’s not bloodthirsty like the sovnya. But . . .’ He looks past me, into the distance. ‘Between the two of us, I think Anne might be the less dangerous one now. If I ended up taking power again, I’d still care about right and wrong, but there’d be nothing to soften the edge any more. Justice without mercy.’

‘So what, you’re staying away just to be on the safe side?’

Alex grins, and all of a sudden he looks like he did in the old days, back when his biggest worries were me and his shop. ‘Probably best not to take the risk.’

We walk out onto the path, and I think about asking Alex the question that I’ve been wanting to ask, the one that’s been hovering at the back of my mind. Was it worth it? The people we lost – Sonder, Arachne, Caldera, Ilmarin, all of those soldiers and adepts who fought and died. Did it count for anything?

But I know it’s unfair. Every one of us who fought in that war played a part in how things turned out. Alex was at the centre, but he wasn’t behind it. And most of the ones who were behind it are dead or gone. Maybe we’ve earned some rest.

Instead, as the house comes into view, I ask the important thing. ‘Alex? Are you happy?’

Up ahead, the door opens. Anne steps out and turns to wave.

Alex waves back, and as he does his face softens in a smile. It’s not the kind of smile he had when we first met; it’s fuller, purer. He looks down at me to answer, but I already know what he’s going to say. ‘Yes.’

Looking at his face, I’m not worried any more. I’m glad I came today.

The war is over, but our stories are just beginning. The afternoon sun shines down out of a clear sky.

We walk together down the hill, to where Anne and Hermes are waiting.