Veiled

Chapter 2

Ever since I broke away from Richard, my life’s tended to go in cycles. There are short bursts of chaos and danger, then there are longer periods where things are relatively calm. The month that followed that conversation with Caldera was one of the calmer ones.

Just because things were calm didn’t mean they were safe. Richard was still out there, along with all my other enemies. But there were no more missions, and beyond a couple of brief check-ins, Talisid didn’t contact us again. I took advantage of the breather to search for someone who could read those notes that Variam had brought back. None of the people I asked could do it themselves, but one acquaintance claimed to have a friend due to return to the country soon who’d be able to help. While I waited for that I kept sniffing around, but as January turned into February with no further movement on Richard’s end, it began to look as though my old master had put his operations on temporary hold.

Richard’s sudden inactivity probably had something to do with events in the political world. Morden’s proposal was edging closer to a Council vote, and as it gained attention, old arguments were raised. The anti-Dark side dug up every crime and atrocity the Dark mages of Britain had committed over the past hundred years, while the pro-alliance side accused them of witch-hunting and pointed to everything the Council had done wrong over the same period. Neither side had any shortage of material to draw upon, and as the date drew closer, the arguments became increasingly nasty. For most members of magical society the events in the Council were way over their heads, but you didn’t have to know much about mage politics to see that battle lines were being drawn.

In the meantime, I kept looking for a teacher for Luna. I didn’t make any instant progress, which was more or less what I’d expected. Chance mages are underrepresented on the Council, and the one or two I found who seemed as though they might be a good fit weren’t taking new students. I put out some feelers, let my contacts know that I was looking for a chance teacher, payment negotiable, and kept looking.

But mostly, the thing keeping me busy was my new job with Caldera.

“This is so utterly stupid,” I told Caldera.

Caldera didn’t look up from her screen. We were in her office, and she’d been typing for the past ten minutes.

I leant back in my chair in disgust. “We could have caught this guy two days ago. We knew where he was and where he was going to be. Now he’s God knows where and we’ve got zero chance of finding him.”

“We didn’t have authorisation for an arrest.”

“You mean ‘don’t.’ We still don’t have authorisation, despite the fact that we asked the day before yesterday, and again yesterday, and again today, which your higher-ups still haven’t gotten around to answering, which would have taken them all of ten seconds—”

“Would you stop whining?”

“How can you be so calm about this?”

The subject of our conversation was a Dark mage who went by the name of Torvald. He’d drawn Council attention by shooting up an adept bar—according to the reports, Torvald had been given the brush-off by some girl he’d had his eye on, and while he was still smarting from that, an adept had made the mistake of hitting on the same girl and succeeding where Torvald had failed. Torvald, who clearly did not handle rejection well, had expressed his unhappiness with this turn of events by applying lightning bolts to the adept, the girl, the bar, and several other people in the vicinity. The casualty count at the end of the evening had been six injured (two seriously) and most of the bar—luckily Torvald left before the police and fire brigade showed up, or there probably would have been fatalities. Caldera had been out in Shepherd’s Bush on another call, so she’d sent me to handle things instead.

Given that Torvald had displayed all the discretion and subtlety of a stampeding elephant, tracing him hadn’t been hard. It had taken me an hour to learn his name, a day to track him down. I’d called it in to Caldera, she’d reported it to her captain, we’d been told to wait for authorisation before taking further action . . . and we’d sat around for forty-eight hours without hearing anything.

During which time Torvald had figured out that he was being traced, and promptly vanished.

“We know what the guy did,” I said. “We know where he lives. Or where he lived, anyway, God knows where he is now. What was the point of following this up if we weren’t going to do anything about it?”

“He didn’t break the Concord.”

“Oh, bullshit. Maybe he didn’t hurt any mages, but this was a blatant breach of the secrecy-of-magic clause. Besides, even if he didn’t break the Concord he must have broken half a dozen national laws.”

“Probably.”

“Did you tell them that?”

“No, I turned in a blank report. What do you think?”

“Then why haven’t they authorised us to do anything about it?”

Caldera sighed and finally looked up at me. “How am I supposed to know?”

“Well, give me your best guess.”

“The fight got reported as a bar brawl that started an electrical fire,” Caldera said. “The police threw out the supernatural stuff, and the only witnesses who believed what they were seeing were adepts and sensitives. Fourth clause of the Concord is only gross violations of secrecy; this doesn’t qualify. Without that there isn’t enough to justify a raid, especially when we don’t know anything about his master or potential allies.”

“This is such bullshit. So what—the guy lies low for a while, then goes right back to doing the same thing?”

Caldera didn’t answer. “Okay, this?” I said. “This is why people don’t trust the Keepers. Those adepts at the bar, how do you think they’re going to see this? They just saw one of their friends get fried right in front of them. When Torvald shows up again two or three months later and no one’s doing anything about it, what do you think their takeaway message is going to be?”

“And what do you think we should be doing?” Caldera said. “Kick Torvald’s door down, and go in shooting? Start a fight with whoever’s there, maybe end up with a few dead bodies? Is that your plan?”

“I didn’t say—”

“Really? ’Cause that’s what it sounded like. What did you think was going to happen if we got the go order? You thought Torvald would come along quietly?”

“. . . No.”

“So what? You want to see dead bodies that much?”

“I’m not looking for a fight. It’s just . . . I don’t like being able to do something about it and doing nothing.”

“No.” Caldera pointed at me. “You don’t get it. You’re not the one who makes that decision.”

I was silent. Caldera gave an irritated shake of her head and went back to her typing. “You know, if you want to be an auxiliary, you’re going to have to shift that attitude.”

“I thought the reason I was probationary was because I was a murder suspect.”

“No, that’s the reason the other Keepers have a problem with you.”

I paused at that. “Wait. Does that mean you actually trust me?”

“Didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t not say it either.”

“Let’s just say I’m not worried about you going psycho on us,” Caldera said. “But it takes a bit more than that.”

“Like?”

“You have to be part of a team,” Caldera said, looking up at me. “You’re still thinking of this as a solo act. That’s not how it works. When you’re on call, you’re part of something bigger than you, and that means you’re not in charge anymore. If head office says no, you listen to them and you drop it. You don’t pretend you didn’t hear them, and you definitely don’t go and do what they specifically told you not to do and then pretend it was all just a misunderstanding.”

“You’re still pissed about that thing at the Tiger’s Palace last year, aren’t you?”

“I know you can handle the practical side of the job,” Caldera said. “That’s not the issue. You’re on probation because I want to see if you can follow orders.”

“I haven’t broken any of your rules,” I said. “Which you should already know, given that you’ve been checking up on me.”

“That just means you haven’t done it where I can see.”

“Are you always this paranoid?”

“It’s called taking precautions. Look, just keep doing what you’ve been doing this last month and you’ll be fine. You done with your report?”

I shrugged. “Can’t exactly finish it, but it’s up to date.”

“Let’s knock off, then. You coming to Red’s?”

“Yeah. Let me pick up my stuff and I’ll meet you there.”

There were some perks to working with the Keepers.

I wasn’t a Keeper auxiliary, so I didn’t get the full package. I didn’t get a Keeper signet, or even the limited version that auxiliaries carry, and I didn’t get one of the access keys that would have let me gate in and out through the wards around the Westminster station. But I got paid, and I had a temporary access card that got me past the front desk, and it did give me a bit more status in dealing with Council personnel.

More interestingly from my point of view, it opened up a few doors I hadn’t known about beforehand. It turned out that when they weren’t on the job, Keepers were still human beings, and they had hobbies like everyone else. Shouldn’t have come as a surprise, I guess, but it’s always easy to forget that members of an institution do actually have personal lives. And one of the centres for those hobbies was Red’s.

The best way I can think of to describe Red’s is that it’s kind of like the magical version of a mixed martial arts gym. When I say “mixed,” I’m not talking about the bare-handed fights you see on TV, I mean really mixed. It’s also got a highly restricted guest list, and that list doesn’t extend to ex–Dark diviners with dubious reputations. It does extend to Keepers, though, and the more martially inclined ones hold practice sessions there on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. This was the third time Caldera had brought me along.

By the time we’d arrived and changed, things were in full swing. There wasn’t a guest teacher this time, meaning that everyone was broken up into small groups, and even though I’d seen it before, I still paused to watch. The group on the left side of the gym was practising elemental magic, shields and lances of fire and wind slamming into each other in controlled explosions. They were keeping a check on their power level, but I could still feel the heat in the air from the flame bursts. Another group was practising with rubber knives and staffs, while a third group was standing facing each other in pairs; it didn’t look as though they were doing anything, but I could feel traces of mind magic. Caldera headed off to join the weapons group, and I was left on my own.

I took a few minutes to check what sort of reception I’d get if I just walked up and introduced myself. Divining how a conversation will go is difficult; predicting the first line or two of the exchange is hard enough, and reliably calling it any further than that is virtually impossible unless the guy you’re talking to already has made up his mind about what he’s going to say. Human interactions are close to the absolute worst things to try to predict with divination—they’re too unpredictable, dependent on sudden decisions and random chance. But there are ways around it, and one of the more effective ones is not to try to predict exactly what someone will say, but to look at the general shape of the possible replies—they might vary, but from where they’re clustered, you can get a sense of what kind of reception you’re going to get. It’s a good way to figure out if somebody likes you or not.

From looking at the futures in which I approached the mages here, I was pretty sure the general answer was “not.” It’s not really a surprise. Keepers tend to lean towards the Guardian side of the political spectrum, and they aren’t the most trusting of people. As far as they’re concerned, once a Dark mage, always a Dark mage. I suppose they’ve got reasons to see it that way, but it’s hard not to get frustrated about it sometimes.

In this case, as far as receptions went, about half the Keepers in the room were going to be guarded, and most of the rest would be anywhere from unfriendly to downright hostile. They’d also noticed me—they weren’t being obvious about it, but I knew I was being watched. Following Caldera was an option, but if I kept doing that it would seem as though I were hiding behind her. Instead I approached one of the few other Keepers I knew, a mage called Haken. “Oh, hey, Verus,” Haken said. “Ready for me to kick your arse again?”

“You wish,” I said with a grin. “Give me a sec to warm up and I’ll join you.”

Haken was the same guy who’d been in Caldera’s office that first day—tall and fit, with blond hair, blue eyes, and an easygoing manner. He was also one of the few Keepers who didn’t seem to have a problem with me, and I’d liked him immediately. I picked up a focus weapon and squared off against him.

Despite our banter, the fight wasn’t very serious. Haken’s a fire mage, and while fire magic is very good at hurting things, it’s hard to use nonlethally. Fire magic has a natural tendency towards aggression and destruction, which means that fire mages tend to go one of two ways: either they learn a lot of self-control, or they’re the kind of people you really don’t want to spend time with. Haken was the self-controlled type. Although the sword of carved flame in his hands looked dangerous, the fire was tightly focused and didn’t expel much heat, and none of his strikes came close to touching my skin. I returned the favour by being careful to pull my blows. When you’re dealing with someone who’s considerate enough to restrain themselves from hurting you, it’s a good idea not to provoke them.

I was absorbed enough in the fight that I didn’t notice anything else was happening until a burst of laughter broke my concentration. I stepped back, lowering my sword, and looked left to see that the other groups had merged, congregating into a loose circle. At some point while I’d been busy with Haken they’d switched to one-on-one sparring while the others watched. Right now most of the group were calling out comments; whatever had just happened, it had obviously been good entertainment.

Caldera was in the middle of the circle in her white gi. Opposite her was a stocky Keeper with close-cropped hair that I knew vaguely. His name was Slate, and right now he was hunched over and scowling. “Sorry,” Caldera said. She was trying not to grin, and not doing a very good job of it. “Slipped.”

“Bullshit,” Slate said.

“Hey,” one of the men sitting around the edges called out. “Not like you were using those anyway!”

There was another burst of laughter, and Slate’s scowl got uglier. “Come on,” Caldera said. “Let’s go again.”

“Fuck that.”

“Wussing out already?”

“You know what?” Slate jerked his head in my direction. “You want to do shit like that, why don’t you try it on your friend?”

The laughter died away at that. Heads turned in my direction. Caldera gave me a glance, then shrugged. “Fine with me.”

All of a sudden everyone was looking at me. There were still a few Keepers grinning, but most of them looked expectant.

I hesitated. I really wasn’t sure I wanted to take on Caldera—doing it alone might have been fun, but having her mop the floor with me in front of an audience didn’t appeal. Unfortunately, that same audience was waiting for my answer, and from the looks in their eyes I knew I was on trial. They wouldn’t pressure me into it if I said no, but the Keepers already thought I was morally suspect. Backing down now would also make them think I was a wimp. Not a good combination.

“You know, we could—” Haken began.

“It’s fine,” I said. I was going to have to make an impression sooner or later. “Here.” I handed Haken my focus sword and walked forward.

The Keepers sitting on the ground scooted aside to let me in, and the laughter and conversation died away. All of a sudden everyone was looking very interested. I came to a stop about fifteen feet from Caldera. “Don’t want a weapon?” Caldera asked.

I shrugged. “You haven’t got one.”

Caldera raised an eyebrow. She didn’t say the obvious, namely that she didn’t need any.

We faced each other in the middle of the circle. Caldera was wearing a worn and dirty white gi with a red belt: she wasn’t carrying any tools or weapons, but given her magic type, that really didn’t make much difference. There was a mirror on the wall behind her, and in the reflection I could see myself, tall and long-limbed and wearing a black gi of my own. Thinking about it, it hadn’t been the smartest of clothing choices—having Caldera in white and me in black looked altogether too symbolic. Oh well.

Caldera bowed, and I did the same. Then she stepped back into a fighting stance and I put everything else out of my mind.

It’s hard for a nondiviner to understand what it’s like to use divination in a fight. I’ve tried to explain it a few times, but usually I can tell the other guy doesn’t get it—the abilities divination gives you are just so weird, so alien. Standing on the floor of the gym, I could see Caldera standing opposite, one foot back and hands ready. Her stance was a generic one, rather than one that identified with any particular martial art. From her posture, I could tell that she was taking this moderately seriously.

Layered on top of that was the additional sense of my magesight. I could see the spells of Caldera’s earth magic hanging around her limbs and body, solid and heavy, reinforcing her movements and keeping her braced against the floor. Other spells showed in my peripheral vision: the protective and sensory spells of all the other Keepers, the wards around the gym. All of this was what any mage would see, and it was a lot, enough that you could spend minutes analysing it all.

But on top of all that, I had another sense—my diviner’s sight—and it multiplied what I could see a million times over. Instead of just seeing the picture before me in three dimensions, I saw it in four, all the possible futures of every single person in front of me. To me, Caldera’s actions seemed to branch a dozen different ways, ghostly movements taking her back or forward or sideways, aggressive or defensive, depending on chance and whim and her responses to my own actions. And every one of those futures branched into a dozen more, and every one of those into a dozen more, hundreds and thousands of futures shifting and changing, winking out to be replaced by new ones as paths were closed off, never to become real.

For a normal person, the problem in a fight is lack of information. Diviners have the opposite problem: they have too much information. Even interacting with another person in a stable, predictable environment gives you more possibilities than you could explore in a lifetime. In something as chaotic as a fight, it’s a thousand times worse. Novice diviners usually go catatonic the first few times they’re thrown into a stressful situation: they get overloaded by trying to process the sensory input from all the possible futures at once. If you stick with it though, a diviner can actually be quite an effective fighter, in an unconventional sort of way. We aren’t any stronger or faster than regular folk, but all that information gives us an awful lot of leverage.

The futures ahead of me shifted. Now the next few seconds were all going to play out the same way; Caldera was going to close in and attack. By the time she moved I’d seen the punch and made up my mind about how to block, and I barely noticed as her fist glanced off my forearm. Caldera specialises in reinforcement magic, and the spells sheathing her arms and hands were strengthening effects, boosting her power and durability. She can punch through concrete with her bare hands, and a full-power blow would shatter my skull. But for now she was just probing, and it was easy for me to deflect the strikes, keeping a safe distance.

A minute passed, two. Neither of us was going at anywhere near full strength, so we weren’t getting tired. I made a few casual counterstrikes which Caldera brushed aside, but I wasn’t seriously trying to hit her. As seconds ticked by with neither of us landing a blow, Caldera grew more aggressive. She closed the range, aiming for a body strike. I didn’t really want to escalate things, but I wasn’t going to stand there and be a punching bag. Caldera’s attack left her head open, so as she moved in for her attack I hit her open-palm in the forehead. The impact rocked her back and pushed the two of us apart again.

I heard a murmur but didn’t look around. Surprise flashed across Caldera’s face, followed by annoyance. I hadn’t hurt her but she hadn’t been expecting to be hit like that. She came in again, and this time when she attacked, she put a bit of force behind it. I blocked and countered, striking back when I could. Caldera’s fighting style was solid and workmanlike, straight punches with the odd elbow or knee. She wasn’t fast, but there was little wasted motion and she didn’t give any easy openings.

But when you can see the future, it changes things a lot. Caldera might be skilled, but she had a human body like everyone else, and she couldn’t make an attack without leaving herself open at the same time. In a normal fight against an equally skilled opponent it’s very difficult to execute a proper counterblow, since you need to start it the instant they begin the attack, but I could see the moves coming a second or two in advance. Doesn’t sound like much, but in a fight that’s a long time. I hit Caldera in the shoulder, head, breast, and head again. Caldera kept going, shrugging off another punch, and I put a snap kick into her stomach, using the impact to push myself off and keep the range open.

Caldera recovered and stared at me, eyes narrowed. From around, I could hear the murmurs from the crowd—I’d hit her maybe a dozen times, while she’d yet to land a punch. It probably looked as though I were winning, but appearances are deceptive. Just as with most of my fights with elemental mages, I could hit Caldera, but I couldn’t hurt her. My hands were already stinging from the impacts on her skin, while I knew she wasn’t so much as bruised. I was a wasp fighting a bear—I could sting and dodge, but one solid blow and I’d be crushed.

Caldera kept coming, speeding up. Now she was going all-out, and with each move I was getting a second or less to react. I kept hitting her back, but she’d obviously figured out that I couldn’t hurt her and had decided to just ignore it. Sweat dripped down my forehead, and my arms and legs were starting to burn with fatigue. A spark of fear was starting to grow in my gut, the feeling you get when you’re up against an enemy you can’t defeat. Intellectually I knew this was just a sparring match and Caldera wasn’t actually trying to kill me, but my instincts weren’t listening.

A block and a grab sent me backpedalling into the circle of watchers; Keepers jumped to their feet and scrambled away as Caldera and I went through them. Caldera kept pressing me, then abruptly switched tactics and just charged. I hit her once on the way in, but I didn’t manage to open the range in time and she tackled me.

It felt like being kicked by a horse. I hit the floor with her on top of me, driving the breath from my lungs. I couldn’t get up or away in time, and for an instant panic took over. There were weapons where we’d fallen; without looking I caught one up and brought it under Caldera’s chin with one quick slash.

Caldera scrambled back, coming up to her feet. Her eyes were wide, and she brought one hand up to touch her throat. I lay on the floor, breathing hard.

The Keepers came around, slowing to a leisurely pace as they saw the fight was over. “She took him down,” one of them said.

“Yeah, and he cut her throat,” someone else replied.

A few others were talking but I didn’t listen. I looked down at the weapon in my hand. It was a training knife with a rubber blade; Caldera’s group had been working with them earlier and when she’d tackled me we’d fallen into the middle of them. My fingers were still wrapped around the plastic handle and with an effort I made myself get up. The Keepers were still talking, but a good half of them were watching me. On a few faces I could see considering looks.

“Thanks for the match,” I said to Caldera. I set the knife down and walked out without waiting for an answer.

I changed quickly, avoiding the rest of the Keepers, and headed outside. By the time I was out in the street and in the cold air I’d calmed down a little. Now that I could think clearly again I knew that what I’d just done had not been a smart move. The Keepers already suspected me of murder—going for a killing attack like that would not have made a good impression.

Why had I gone for that knife? The rubber blade had been harmless, but the move I’d used it for had not been, and I’d never even made the conscious decision to do it. I’d acted on instinct, and by the time I’d had the chance to think, it had all been over. Would I have acted like that a year ago? I was pretty sure I wouldn’t, and I had a nasty feeling that I knew what had changed. Even though it had been ten months since I’d seen Richard, just knowing that he was out there was enough to put me on edge, quicker to feel threatened, quicker to strike back.

I’d been nervous about how Caldera was going to react, but when she finally appeared, gym bag slung over one shoulder, she didn’t seem particularly bothered. She was on her phone and held up a hand to me as she approached. “Uh-huh,” she was saying into the phone. “Yeah, but I’m off duty.”

I leant against the wall, waiting for her to finish. “Okay,” Caldera was saying. “No . . . Well, too bad, ’cause unless it’s an emergency . . . Yeah . . . You okay with that? . . . Fine, you can check in with him later. Okay.” She rang off and looked at me. “Got a job.”

“Torvald?”

Caldera shook her head. “Some kind of magical fight on the DLR. It got called in through the Met and the liaisons flagged it.”

“So they want us to do what, find out what it was?”

“Apart from the ‘us’ part.”

“Come again?”

“I’m off duty as of three hours ago,” Caldera said. “You can have this one.”

“Seriously?”

“You want to be an auxiliary, you’re going to have start doing solo jobs. Can’t always be there looking over your shoulder.” Caldera glanced at me. “You can handle it?”

“I guess.”

“Central’ll forward you the report.” Caldera yawned. “I’m off. Have fun.”

“Uh . . .”

“What?”

“About what happened in the gym?”

“What about it?”

I hesitated. Caldera looked surprised. “That bothering you? Don’t worry about it.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Best match I’ve had in weeks.” Caldera grinned. “You won’t get me with the same trick next time, though. I won’t go easy on you.”

“Then I guess I won’t either.”

“Promises, promises.” Caldera gave me a wave as she walked off. “Have a good one!”

I watched Caldera walk away, then shook my head and turned away with a smile. At least there was one person who wasn’t bothered.

The message that arrived a few minutes later directed me to Pudding Mill Lane station, on the Docklands Light Railway. It wasn’t a quick journey, and I had plenty of time to read through the incident report on my phone. Apparently a woman had made a 999 call claiming to have seen some kind of firefight on the station platform. The British Transport Police had shown up, found nothing, concluded that it had been a wind-up, and buggered off. Which was the end of the story as far as the authorities went, but the Keepers have listening posts in the police, and the report had raised enough flags to warrant sending someone over . . . though apparently not quite enough flags to send anyone important. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do when I got there, but I supposed I’d just have to find out.

The Docklands Light Railway (aka the DLR) is one of the more unique ways to get around London, a raised railway crowded with small driverless red-and-blue trains that link up all the places in East London where absolutely no other lines go. It has four branches, winding and intertwining, and it can take you anywhere from Lewisham in the south to Stratford in the north or all the way eastwards towards Woolwich. I was on the northern branch, heading towards Stratford. Pudding Mill Lane was the last station before the Stratford terminus, and when the train arrived no one got off apart from me.

DLR stations are very lonely compared to the Underground. The DLR was designed with automation in mind, and just as the trains don’t have drivers, the stations have the absolute bare minimum of staff. This one had none at all, and there were no passengers either. The station was a single-platform design with rails on either side, and all around was blackness. Pudding Mill Lane was right in the middle of what had once been the Olympic Park, the great centre for the London Olympics. For a few weeks the square mile in which I was standing had been the busiest place in London, but now it was a giant construction site, a jungle of concrete and fencing and metal scaffolds, abandoned and empty. Beyond the railway to both east and west, the land dropped away into half-constructed buildings, lying silent and unused. The old running track had been torn up and now was a giant heap of dark earth, filling the air with the scent of mud and water. According to the plans, this place was going to be turned into housing eventually, but there wasn’t anyone living there now. Scattered towers rose up all around, and to one side I could see the skyscrapers of the Stratford skyline, an oval-shaped tower looming over us with a ring of rainbow neon glowing at the top, colours shifting from blue to purple to green. To the northeast, the Olympic stadium was a squat shadow in the darkness. Cars rushed along a main road to the east, but they were half a mile away and nothing else was moving. Despite being in the middle of the largest city in the British Isles, I was completely alone.

I looked around in the darkness, already starting to shiver. It had rained while I’d been on the train, and puddles were scattered around the platform; not enough to flood the place, but enough that the wind blowing off the stone was freezing cold. I looked around and tried to figure out what to do. Okay, so I was a Keeper—sort of—and I was investigating a crime scene. What was I supposed to do?

I’d come here with vague plans of finding witnesses, but as I looked around it became clear that that wasn’t going to work. In the few minutes I’d been standing at the station I hadn’t seen another living soul, and if there were any construction workers still on site I couldn’t see them. Instead I focused on my magesight, trying to sense magic. Stone beneath me, cold and immobile, chill air whistling around, the silent menace of the electrical rails and wires. Nothing powerful enough to tell me anything. Spells can leave residue, but it takes repetition and time—one-off magical events have to be extraordinarily powerful to stick around. Nothing like that here.

I walked up and down the platform, trying different angles, hoping to get lucky. I didn’t. Another passenger arrived and waited on the platform as I walked up and down it. A train arrived. She got on; one other person got off. I kept searching. The wind got colder, and so did I.

My nose and ears were starting to go numb. Times like this make me wish I were a fire or an ice mage. I took out my phone and called Caldera; it rang for what felt like much too long before Caldera picked up. “Hey.”

“Hi,” I said. “Look, seeing as this is my first solo job and all, mind giving me some pointers?”

“Just a sec,” Caldera said. There was a lot of noise in the background, voices and glasses clinking. Wherever Caldera was, it sounded warm, comfortable, and a much nicer place to be than here. “Didn’t catch that, say again?”

I took a breath, restraining the urge to hate her. “What the hell am I supposed to be doing here?”

“You’re at the station?”

“It’s cold, wet, and empty, and there’s sod-all to find.”

“Magesight?”

“Comes up blank. Look, you know about this stuff. What do you do when you’re sent out somewhere where there’s nothing to see?”

“You got the report, didn’t you?”

A train pulled up at the platform in a swell of light and noise. The doors opened with a hiss and I edged closer, hoping the air from inside would be a little warmer. It didn’t help much. “It just says ‘investigate.’”

“Hey, you’re a diviner. You’re supposed to be good at this.”

“Oh, sure.” The doors shut and the train pulled away, accelerating into the darkness. I walked after it, heading up the platform. “I’ll use my divination and look into the future. Hey, you know what, I’m seeing the future right now. If I stand here and wait, then in three minutes a train’s going to come. And after that, another train’s going to come. Here, I’ll let you guess what’s going to happen afterwards. I’ll give you a hint—there’s a train.”

“Hey, can you hear that?”

“What?”

“It’s the sound of me playing the world’s tiniest violin.”

“Yeah, laugh it up, you’re not the one freezing your balls off. Why didn’t they send a time mage?”

“You know how many incidents we get called out to per day?” Caldera asked. “Have a guess. Then have a guess how many time mages we’ve got on retainer.”

I was silent. “Here’s another question,” Caldera said. “You think you’re the first guy who’s noticed that some of the jobs we get sent on probably aren’t going to accomplish much?”

“No.”

“You have to search an empty station,” Caldera said. “Given what usually happens when you’re around, you ought to be happy.”

“It’s still a shit job.”

“This is not even close to what our really shit jobs look like. Now, are you going to do the work or are you going to keep being a whiny little bitch?”

I sighed. “Fine.”

“Because I’m not running out there to hold your hand.”

“I get it.”

“Besides, I’ve got a pint waiting for me and it’s nice and warm in here.”

“I hate you so much.”

“Sucks to be you. Later.” Caldera hung up. I glared at my phone and shoved it into my pocket. Another gust of freezing wind swept across the platform; the air was damp and even without my magic, my London upbringing was telling me it was going to rain again soon.

I had another try at finding a witness, but after fifteen minutes of searching I was forced to give up. The closest guy I could find was one lonely security guard still on duty at the construction site, bundled up in a booth with a space heater. He was several minutes away, had no line of sight to the platform, and from his body language didn’t seem to be interested in anything except trying not to freeze. It was theoretically possible that some other construction workers had been on site when whatever-it-was had happened, but if they had they hadn’t called 999, and I had absolutely no idea how I would find the right individuals out of an indeterminate-but-almost-certainly-large number of construction workers who (a) had gone home for the night, (b) would probably be disinclined to talk to me, and (c) were unlikely to have seen anything useful in the first place.

In the end I was forced to fall back on my divination, which was ironic given that I’d just been complaining at Caldera about how useless it was. But while divination isn’t really designed for CSI work, there are a few tricks you can pull which kind of do the same thing. In particular, it’s good for searching. If you’ve already decided to search an area, you skim through the possible futures of yourself doing the search and look for ones in which you find something. It’s not all that reliable, mainly because it’s hard to tell the difference at a casual glance between “future in which you find something useful” and “future in which you find something that looks useful but turns out on closer inspection to be irrelevant or worthless.” But it beats turning over rocks with your bare hands.

I was right on the edge of calling it off when something caught my attention. The wind had grown even colder, my ears had gone numb, and the first spots of a new rain shower had started to fall. I was towards the north end of the platform, and most of the futures I could see led to nothing but damp and frustration—but beyond the platform was a future that was different. The end of the platform was fenced off with a big sign on the gate reading Danger: High Voltage—No Admittance Beyond This Point. I pushed the gate open and walked down the ramp between the sets of railway lines, tufts of scrubby grass growing between piled gravel.

The thing (whatever it was) was lying in the midst of the damp stones. It was small and spherical, about the size and shape of a marble. But it had a trace of magic—just a tiny, tiny trace—and now that I was closer I could sense something from it. A weak one-shot, or a very weak focus. If my magesight hadn’t been better than most mages’, I’d never have noticed it.

I picked the thing up—it felt like a marble too—then straightened and looked around. Spitting rain was falling onto the railway lines around me, the drops briefly visible in the orange glow of the station lights. If there was anything else here, I couldn’t find it.

To my right the rails were vibrating: another train was coming. I walked back up onto the platform. This time, when the train pulled up, I got on.

Back home, I took a hot shower, then once I was warm again I sat down at my desk and studied my new find. It seemed to be a glass marble, a little bigger than my thumbnail, pale green and translucent. Under the desk lamp I could see little white flecks floating inside. Now that I had the chance to study it, it was definitely a focus. It didn’t have any energy stored—what I’d sensed was the residue of its previous uses. The magic felt universal rather than living or elemental, but it was pretty generic. It didn’t seem closely tied to any of the magic types.

I ran it through a few basic tests but came up blank. It didn’t respond to any standard command words, which given that it didn’t have any energy storage was exactly what you’d expect. It was tougher than glass, but not indestructible. My best guess was that it was designed to respond to some sort of magical input, but channelling into it didn’t do anything. Maybe it needed a type of magic I didn’t have.

I thought about calling it in but decided against it. I’d show the thing to Caldera when she got back on Monday. With that settled, I left the focus on my desk and went to bed.