Veiled

Chapter 8

It was half an hour later.

Blue light flashed from the roofs of the police vehicles, reflected back from car windows and the fronts of the houses. The lights were out of sync, creating a weird strobing effect that made the shadows dance back and forth. Although the police were here, they weren’t going into the house: the Keeper liaisons had done their job and the figures in the black uniforms and yellow hi-vis jackets were holding a perimeter and putting up crime-scene tape at either end of the road. People were leaning out of windows and watching from doors, peering at the house where we’d fought our battle, but there was nothing to see. Plastic screens had gone up at the door and windows and all the activity was taking place inside.

“What day is it?” the woman standing over me asked.

“Saturday,” I said. I was sitting in the open boot of a car. A mobile command centre had arrived, Keepers and other Council personnel were bustling around, and it all looked very official.

“What’s the nearest tube station?”

“Uxbridge.”

“How old are you?”

“You don’t know how old I am, so I could answer that question any way I liked, so long as I didn’t lie too blatantly. I get it, you’re checking to see if I have a concussion. How about if I tell you how old you are, will that prove I can think straight?”

She didn’t take me up on the offer. “How are you feeling?”

“Beaten up, but I’ve had worse.”

“Nausea, headaches, problems with your balance?”

“Not yet, but shining that light in my eyes isn’t helping.”

The woman clicked the light off. “Make sure you see a doctor before you go home.”

The rush from the battle had worn off, and I was utterly exhausted. My arms and legs were heavy, and I could feel all the bruises and scrapes I’d taken fighting the icecats. All I wanted to do was sit there. “Sure.”

The woman left. I looked down, examining the forearm of my armour. Both of the icecats had raked my arms and I could see light score marks on the mesh, but the claws hadn’t penetrated to the skin. My armour had probably saved my life. The icecats might not have been able to kill me on their own, but if I’d been carrying those wounds when I went up against the golem, it would have slowed me down enough to make the difference.

I felt a presence to my left. “Looks like you got off easy.”

I looked up. It was a man, medium height and heavyset. The flickering blue light showed brown hair and a sour expression. A Keeper, one I’d met before . . . What was his name? Oh yeah, Slate. The one who’d goaded Caldera into that fight with me at Red’s a couple of nights ago. Just what I need.

“So the kid’s gone,” Slate said when I didn’t respond. “Only witness, from our case, and you lost him. Fucked it up right and proper, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, it’s not as if Caldera called you guys for backup as soon as we found out who the kid really was.” I was tired, bruised, still working through the aftereffects of an adrenaline rush, and not in the mood to be diplomatic. “Oh wait, she did. You know what? Maybe if you’d pulled your finger out of your fat arse and come to help, your witness’d still be here.”

I’d expected Slate to lose his temper, but he just looked at me with a twist of his mouth, as though I were something a dog had produced from its rear end. “Don’t see any blood.”

“And?”

“Kid got taken,” Slate said. “Caldera got hurt. You look like you got off pretty okay.” He studied me. “So what were you doing while Caldera was dealing with the golem?”

“Busy.”

“With what?”

“With one of the icecats.”

“That’s convenient.”

I didn’t answer. “How about you run through that fight for me,” Slate said.

“How about I don’t?”

“I wasn’t asking.”

“Well, that’s great, because I’m not answering, so I guess we’re all happy, aren’t we?”

“You think you’re pretty special, don’t you?” Slate said. “Rules don’t apply to you, right?”

I just stared him. “Don’t think that card you’ve got makes you a Keeper,” Slate said. “You’re not even an auxiliary. I could arrest you and take you down to the station right now and no one’d look twice.” He leant in close, eyes staring into mine. “What happened in that house?”

I looked up at Slate. I could have looked down on him if I stood up, but I didn’t. “Let’s get something straight,” I said. “Taking crap from Caldera is one thing. But I’m not going to fold to every Council mage who strolls up. You want to be my supervisor, you can go ahead and fight Caldera over it. But you might want to bear in mind that the last time you tried duelling her she kicked your balls up your arsehole, so if I were you I’d think twice before going back for a rematch.”

I saw Slate flush. That one had finally managed to piss him off. “You can—” he began, then stopped as a hand fell on his shoulder.

Slate turned. Haken was standing there. “Captain wants you,” Haken said. He was watching Slate steadily.

Slate narrowed his eyes. I saw futures of him choosing to stand and argue; they flickered and disappeared. He gave me an ugly look and left.

Haken watched Slate go. “I know he’s an arsehole,” Haken said once Slate was out of earshot, “but you don’t need to pick a fight.”

“He picked the fight. I just fought back.”

“Slate’s . . . he’s got some history with Dark mages. I know how he acts, but he’s got his reasons.”

“And I just nearly got my head hacked off trying to keep Caldera and your witness alive.” I felt bitter, and the fatigue was making it worse. “I can deal with taking shit from Keepers when I deserve it. But taking shit from you guys when I’m risking my life to help you is pretty hard.”

Haken sighed. “World doesn’t always work the way we want it to, Verus.” Haken was maybe in his midthirties, but all of a sudden, in the flashing police lights, he looked much older and very tired. “Just have to live with it.”

“Isn’t that the truth.”

“They’ve run the maker’s marks on that golem,” Haken said. “It’s part of a set of three that were reported stolen a few years ago. We didn’t know White Rose had got them till now.”

“You think they were the ones behind it?”

Haken looked surprised. “Who else would it have been?”

I shrugged.

“That kid was from there, right? And he was meeting Rayfield?”

I remembered that last glimpse I’d had of Leo, shooting a terrified glance back at me before disappearing out into the street. I wondered if any of us were ever going to see him again.

Haken took my silence as agreement. “I know we don’t have enough for a warrant yet, but we’re going to be going for one tomorrow. Could use you, if you can make it. Caldera’ll probably still be out.”

“I’ll check with her. Do you know what happened?”

“About . . . ?”

“Caldera called for backup,” I said. “Before the fight started. More than long enough for other Keepers to gate.”

“Yeah, I heard.” Haken frowned. “That shouldn’t have happened.”

“Her communicator went dead during the fight.” I turned my head to look up at Haken. “Thought those things were supposed to be fail-safe?”

“That’s what they told me too. Best guess, it was a glitch. I know these things are supposed to be good, but they’re still new tech. We’ve had trouble with them before.”

“Pretty crappy reason to get killed.”

“Yeah, I’m not arguing. Look, I’ll see if I can track down whatever the problem was, okay? I’m guessing someone screwed up, but at least we can stop it happening again.”

“Thanks.”

Haken turned to leave. “Oh,” I said. “Haken?”

“Yeah?”

“When Caldera made that call, did she talk to you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Caldera told me a couple of weeks ago that you were her primary contact for cross-case work.” I kept my voice casual, but I didn’t take my eyes off Haken. “Aren’t messages like that supposed to go through you?”

“Usually, yeah, but I was out on the Rayfield case. Would have done if it hadn’t been for everything else, but I didn’t get the call.”

I nodded. Haken walked away.

Chatter and voices washed around me from the police and the Council personnel. The people at the police tape and the windows were still there, taking photos and watching. From inside the house, I felt a gate spell. I couldn’t see through the screens, but I knew they were transporting the remains of the golem away.

So much movement, so much activity. In a way it was all because of me, and yet everyone was ignoring me. It was good, I supposed—safer that way—but it felt weirdly isolating. I pushed myself up, holding the side of the car until the wave of dizziness passed, and headed for the ambulance that Caldera had been moved into.

I heard the sound of laughter as I drew closer. Walking around the back, looking into the brightly lit interior, I saw Caldera lying on one of the stretchers. She hadn’t been bandaged, but her hands were clasped over her stomach and she was smiling. Landis was sitting on a chair by the stretcher, long arms and legs sprawled out like an ungainly spider, and he was in the middle of a story. “So then the fellow gets indignant and tells me, ‘I don’t know what you mean, I haven’t anything like that in my family tree.’ Well, as I’m sure you know, I wasn’t going to stand for that. I got up and told him—”

“Hey, Verus,” Caldera said, glancing up at me. “Thank God you’re here—maybe you can shut him up. Nothing I do seems to work.”

“You wound me, dear lady.” Landis clasped a hand to his chest. “Can I not ask for a token of your favour?”

“Oh, bugger off,” Caldera said, but she was laughing. “I swear, you’re lucky I’m not allowed to get out of this bed . . .”

I had to grin. There’s a weird rush from making it through a combat. When you come out of one alone, then it doesn’t last, but when you have friends around it turns into something happier. A celebration, I guess. You’re alive, your friends are alive, and all of a sudden you’re intensely aware of it. “Let me guess,” I told Landis. “You’re on duty to make sure she doesn’t try to run off for another round?”

“A fearsome duty, ’tis true, but needs must, eh? You hear that, my girl? Bed rest, that’s the ticket.”

“Oh, you wish.”

“Well, well, one can hope. Ah, Verus, Vari and I had no joy, I’m afraid. Gave the place a good old search and quarter, but the boy’s vanished into the ether.”

I nodded. It wasn’t really a surprise. “Thanks for showing up so fast.”

“A bit of a sticky situation, eh? No need to worry, happens to the best of us. I remember this time out in Guernsey when—”

“Okay,” Caldera interrupted, “before you start another of your endless stories, how did you show up so fast?”

“Oh, just a friendly request from your new junior.” Landis leant back against the wall, nodding at me. “He mentioned you two might have a spot of bother, so I had Vari toodle over and take a look at the place so he could open us a gate. Better safe than sorry, eh?”

Caldera gave Landis a sceptical look. “Weren’t you on standby for the Rayfield case?”

“And wasn’t it fortunate that it turned out to be related? Happy endings for all!”

“Lucky for some.” Caldera glanced at me. “They have any idea who those people were?”

“Leo was connected to White Rose.” I looked at Landis, keeping my expression carefully neutral. “They seem to be the obvious suspects.”

“Yes,” Landis said, drawing out the word. “They do, don’t they?” He jumped to his feet. “Well, I’ll leave you in Verus’s safe hands. If you see Vari, let him know he can take off for the night, eh?”

“I’ll tell him.”

Landis hopped out of the ambulance, and I took his seat with a sigh. Caldera cocked an eye at me. “You all right?”

“I should be asking you that.” I nodded at Caldera’s side. “How bad was it?”

“Oh, you know life mages. Always make it sound worse than it is.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Not quite sure that’s true.”

“Yeah, well, they’re going to keep me out for at least a day. You okay to go to the War Rooms as my stand-in?”

I nodded. “I’ll be there.”

“Good.” Caldera paused. “Sorry for giving you a hard time in there.”

I looked at Caldera in surprise. “About the kid,” Caldera said. “Wasn’t your fault. Just pissed off at myself.”

“For what?”

“Don’t like not being strong enough to do the job,” Caldera was silent for a second. “Don’t like losing people, either.”

“Neither do I.”

Caldera glanced up at me. “Why’d you go back?”

“When?”

“Middle of that fight, after the second icecat went for you and the kid. After you were done with that, you went straight for the golem.”

“Yeah.”

“Wasn’t Leo out the door by then?”

“I thought you were too busy with the golem to notice stuff like that.”

“I’ve been in enough fights to know what’s going on around me.” Caldera looked at me, eyebrows raised. “Don’t dodge the question. You could have gone after the kid. Why didn’t you?”

“There was a force mage covering the door,” I said. “At least one other guy too. If I’d gone after Leo, it would have meant going one-on-one with a force mage in an open street. I couldn’t have won that. The best I could have managed would have been to get away in one piece, and they probably would have got Leo anyway. And I knew the golem was going to kill you if I left you. I figured that two on one, we had a chance to beat it. It was a choice between losing two people, and giving up one person to have a decent chance of saving the other. I picked the battle I thought we could win.”

Caldera snorted and closed her eyes. “Always the pragmatist.”

A man I didn’t know stuck his head around the corner. “Hey,” he said. “We’re heading back. You riding along?”

I shook my head. “It’s just her.”

The man disappeared. I got up, started to leave, then paused. “Caldera?”

“Yeah.”

“That was half the reason. The other half . . . I’d rather you stayed alive.”

Caldera looked back at me for a long moment, then nodded. I climbed out of the ambulance and went to find Vari and go home.

As Vari and I walked out of my downstairs storeroom, there was a clatter of footsteps from upstairs. Luna poked her head out from around the banister, and she seemed to relax as she saw us both. “You’re okay?”

“We’re okay,” I said, wearily starting up the stairs. “Looks like you’re getting better at sensing gates.”

Luna had an endless stream of questions, and I used the excuse of making tea to let Variam do most of the talking. When it came to the fight in the safe house though, I had to tell the story, sitting in the armchair with legs crossed, a tiny trail of steam rising up from the mug in front of me.

“You’re so lucky,” Luna said disconsolately when I finished.

“I just had an eight-foot golem try to redecorate the room with my internal organs,” I said. “Lucky is not the word I would choose.”

“Can I come with you tomorrow?”

“It’s a police investigation. They don’t run ‘Bring Your Daughter to Work Day.’”

“Yeah, well, I spent the day on Theory of Magic makeup classes,” Luna said. “At least you got to do something fun.”

Even I have trouble believing Luna sometimes. “Luna, I swear, by the time you’re thirty, either you’re going to have more combat experience than any other girl in the British Isles, or you’re going to be dead. And no, I don’t know which.”

“Okay,” Variam said, “you’re not going to like hearing this, but I’m going to say it. Your new magic teacher, this Chalice? Maybe this whole thing was a setup.”

Luna frowned. “How?”

“She was the one who sent him to Uxbridge, right?”

“That doesn’t prove anything.”

“Yeah, well, she’s a Dark mage, and the first place she sends you, you nearly get your head chopped off. You don’t think that’s a funny coincidence?”

“Just because—”

I raised my hand and Luna subsided. “I did think about it,” I said to Variam. “When Chalice was doing that spell, I didn’t sense any magic. Could mean that I just didn’t spot it, but it could mean she wasn’t doing anything at all—she just knew the address already. That’s what you were thinking of, right?”

Variam nodded, but I kept going before he could answer. “But there’s a problem. Remember what I told you about the icecats? They went after Leo. Same for that force mage. Caldera and I weren’t the primary target. Leo was.”

Variam frowned. “Okay.”

“So if Chalice was behind the attack, why send me to Uxbridge at all?” I said. “We’d never have found the place in time without her help. If she wanted Leo dead, all she had to do was go there herself. And if she didn’t want Leo dead but she was behind the attack, why was Leo the target?”

“Maybe they didn’t agree—”

I shook my head. “What Chalice did helped us get to Leo. Whoever was behind the attack, their objective was to get rid of Leo. Most logical conclusion: they’re different people. Don’t make things more complicated than they have to be.”

Variam didn’t look a hundred percent convinced, but he shut up. “So does that mean you trust her?” Luna asked.

“No,” I said. “Just because she’s not on their side doesn’t mean she’s on our side. But I think there’s more going on than she’s telling us.”

“So if she wasn’t behind the attack tonight, who was?” Variam asked.

“The Keepers think it’s White Rose,” I said.

“Who?”

“No clue,” I said. I was starting to realise just how out of my depth I was on this case. I needed to talk to someone who was more up to speed on Council politics, and soon. “But whoever they are, I’m not buying that it’s nothing to do with the Council. You know what mantis golems are used for.”

“They’re Council bodyguards,” Luna said.

“They said these ones were reported stolen?” Variam said.

“Bullshit,” I said. “That’s like a Challenger tank getting stolen from the British Army. The army doesn’t lose battle tanks, the RAF doesn’t lose jet fighters, and the Council sure as hell doesn’t lose mantis golems. Whoever went after us tonight, they’re in close with the Council.”

Luna started to say something, but I held up a hand. “There’s something else. Leo was holed up in that house for two days or close to it. We find him, and he gets attacked less than half an hour afterwards. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. I looked into the futures while I was waiting for Caldera. There wasn’t any danger, not as long as we stayed outside. Maybe those guys were looking for Leo, but I don’t think they would have found him on their own. I think something we did brought them there.”

“Could have been tracking you,” Variam suggested.

“There’s a simpler explanation. Between going into that house and the attack starting, we did exactly one thing that could have given our position away. Caldera used her com disc to get in touch with her order. And she activated a locator beacon.”

Variam frowned. “Wait,” Luna said. “I thought you said those communicator things were supposed to be untraceable? And no one could intercept them?”

“He’s not saying they were traced,” Variam said. He was watching me, his voice flat. “You’re saying you got set up.”

“Wait,” Luna said, her eyes going wide. “You’re saying the Keepers want to kill you? You managed to piss them off that much already?”

“If the Order of the Star really wanted to kill us, we’d already be dead,” I said. “I told you, the target was Leo.”

“What happened to him, anyway?”

“We couldn’t find him,” Variam said. He didn’t take his eyes off me. “You think someone in the Order of the Star’s a traitor.”

“I hate to sound cynical, but it’s probably more than one,” I said. “You know how many factions there are on the Council—they’ve all got their agents and their areas of influence. Leo was connected to the Rayfield case, and Haken already told me that half a dozen factions are interested. One of those factions must have not wanted Leo brought in.”

“Do you think they wanted to kill him first?” Luna said.

“More likely they kidnapped him.”

“Who was it?” Variam said.

“That I don’t know.”

“You said there was an ice mage and a force mage,” Luna said. “You could try that . . .”

“Doubt it’ll help,” I said. “Whoever’s behind this probably isn’t the kind to do their own dirty work. No, what we really need to figure out is what Leo knew that was enough of a threat for them to move like this.”

“He was a witness,” Variam said. “If he’d made it, first thing they’d have done would have been pull him in for an interview . . .”

“. . . and find out what he saw,” I finished. “But we do know what he saw, because of Caldera. He saw the guy the rest of the Order of the Star’s been looking for. Rayfield.”

Luna’s eyebrows had been gradually climbing higher and higher, and at this point she put up her hands. “Ugh, God. This is so confusing. I have no idea what’s going on anymore.”

“Maybe if you actually went to your politics classes,” Variam said, “instead of bunking off to go duelling.”

“Oh, like you’re some sort of—”

“Luna, Vari! Not now!”

Luna and Variam shut up. I pulled over the notepad that Chalice had used earlier in the evening, flipped to a new page, and began sketching. “It’s not as complicated as you think. Here.” I turned the pad around; I’d drawn an equilateral triangle with the three corners marked and labelled. “There are three factions that we need to worry about. First is White Rose.” I tapped my pencil to the first of the three corners. “Whoever they are, they’re the ones who sent Leo to that meeting with Rayfield two nights ago. As far as we know, they haven’t done anything else, but if Caldera’s that careful around them then they’re not anyone we want to mess with.”

Variam looked down at the diagram and then up at me. “You’re explaining this by drawing it in a triangle.”

“And . . . ?”

Variam shook his head. “You are such a geek sometimes.”

I moved my pencil to the second corner. “Next faction is our mysterious group who were behind the attack tonight. We know they’ve got ties to the Council and some way of getting supposedly secure data from the Keepers. They also wanted Leo silenced, so I think it’s a safe bet they’ve got some kind of investment in the Rayfield case. Either they don’t want the truth getting out, or they want to learn it first.”

“The Keepers think those people and White Rose are the same people,” Luna said. “Right?”

“Right, which I’m not buying.” I touched the tip of the pencil to the last corner, labelled with a name and a question mark. “And finally, we’ve got our dark horse. The ones who hired Chamois. That’s where this whole thing started. Chamois crashed the meeting between Rayfield and Leo at Pudding Mill Lane, he either killed Rayfield or made him disappear thoroughly enough that no one’s found him, and the focus got lost in the fight.” I tapped my pencil on the question mark. “This is the key to the whole thing, I’m sure of it. If we can figure out who Chamois is working for, and why he attacked Rayfield, we’ll understand what’s really going on.”

“Okay . . .” Luna said. “So how do we do that?”

“That’s the problem,” I said. “I have no idea. So we’ll have to work on the two groups where we do have something to go on.” I moved my pencil to the other two points. “I’ll go talk to Caldera tomorrow, find out what she knows about White Rose. What I can’t ask about is this Council group. I’ve got my suspicions, but if I go poking around it could lead to really bad things. You guys are apprentices though. Especially you, Vari—I think Landis might know a bit he’s not telling.”

Vari nodded. “I want to try talking to Chalice,” Luna said.

“In the middle of this?”

“Well, since someone won’t let me come along on their important official Keeper stuff, there’s not much else I can do, is there? Besides, none of the guys you’re talking about would know anything about what’s happening on the Dark side of the fence. And we already know she wants to talk to me.”

I sighed. “All right, but I want you to take Anne along for backup. We don’t have any good reason yet to believe that Chalice is a danger, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t.”

“Oh well.” Variam yawned and stretched. “I’m off home. Sounds like tomorrow’ll be interesting.”

The next morning was overcast, white cloud filling the sky all the way to the horizon. It had rained during the night, and the weather forecast promised more to come. Luna had stayed over, and we had breakfast together and discussed plans before I went off to see Caldera.

Caldera lives in Hackney, in a seedy-looking area with a lot of council estates. It’s not quite a dump, but it’s not high-class, either, and I doubt you’d find many other mages living there. Caldera has a flat on the second floor of a converted house; I got inside, climbed the stairs, and knocked.

There was a pause. The door and walls around the flat were warded, and I could feel the latent energy waiting to be used. Then they shifted slightly, and all of a sudden the configuration was less threatening. Caldera opened the door and looked me up and down. “Oh, it’s you.”

Caldera was wearing a baggy T-shirt, tracksuit bottoms, and slippers. It was the first time I’d seen her dressed in something that you couldn’t do heavy manual labour in. “Hi, invalid,” I said, and held up a package. “I brought grapes.”

“Okay, you can stay.”

I handed her the bag and walked in. I’ve only been to Caldera’s flat a couple of times, but I quite like it. It’s messy and comfortable, filled with old bottles and coffee mugs, the kind of place where you feel as though you’re allowed to put your feet up. “Going for the casual look?”

“I’m on sick leave,” Caldera said in distaste. “Can you believe they wanted to keep me in the bloody hospital?”

“Yes. Yes, I can.”

“Oh, and by the way, if you want to get inside, you’re supposed to ring the bell and wait for me to buzz you into the building. Not knock on my door.”

“Sorry.” I dropped into one of the armchairs and grinned at her. “Every time I see a security setup that bad I just have to go through it. I’m doing you a favour, really.”

“You’re a pain in my arse is what you are.”

“You feeling better?”

“Course I’m better. Only reason I’m here is because Rain made it an order.”

I made a noncommittal sort of noise. I’d been watching Caldera since I came in and she didn’t seem to be in pain. Still, as she went to get a bowl and a drink from the kitchen, her movements were more sluggish than usual, and it wasn’t until she returned and dropped into the sofa that I saw her shoulders relax. Caldera’s tough, but whatever healing she’d received had obviously taken a lot out of her. I had the feeling Anne could have done a better job but decided not to say that out loud.

“So the indictment’s set for this afternoon,” Caldera said. “I want you at the War Rooms at noon, okay?”

“What time?”

“Could be any time. Might want to bring something to read.”

“Sounds great. Who’s the indictment for, Chamois?”

“White Rose.”

I blinked. “Seriously?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” I said. “Remember Torvald? We put in a request about him the beginning of last week and they still haven’t got back to us. Chamois tries to kill me on CCTV two days ago and there’s no movement on that either. This attack happens less than twelve hours ago, and there’s a Council indictment already.”

“Yeah,” Caldera said dryly. “Kind of a difference there.”

“Look, I haven’t pushed you on who these White Rose people are,” I said. “But if I’m going to an indictment in your place, you don’t think maybe you ought to fill me in?”

Caldera sighed. “Get me a beer from the shelf.”

I looked back at Caldera for a second, then got up, fetched the bottle that she was pointing to, and brought her a glass. Caldera twisted off the cap bare-handed, poured out half of the bottle, waited for the foam to subside, poured out the other half, and took a drink. I sat and waited.

“I guess you do need to know,” Caldera said at last. “But get something clear. This does not get spread around. I know you like to chat with your friends and those magical creatures of yours, but you get caught discussing this, I’m not going to bat for you.”

I nodded.

“All right,” Caldera said. “Let’s start at the beginning. The baseline law for mages is the Concord. Under that are the national laws.”

“Okay,” I said. The Concord is the international set of laws that all mages are required to follow. They’re pretty useless if you’re not a mage yourself, but breaking them is still a fairly big deal, as long as the victim is someone the Council cares about. Underneath that there are the national laws, passed as resolutions by the ruling Councils of each magical nation, and those vary from country to country. They aren’t allowed to conflict with the Concord, and the penalties for breaking them are a lot less serious, but it’s still a good idea to know what they are.

“Now, a bunch of those laws regulate how mages are allowed to deal with other humans,” Caldera said. “There’s the prohibition on slavery, and the laws against harming normals and sensitives and adepts.”

“Uh, yeah, in theory. I’m not sure how much they actually get followed.”

“Light mages and independents follow them most of the time.”

“When it suits them.”

“I said most of the time. Yes, those laws get broken. Yes, we don’t always catch the ones who do it. But the fact that they follow those laws is the big difference between Light mages and Dark ones. How many Light slave traders do you know?”

“Maybe they don’t do it publicly, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.”

“And do you know for a fact any Light mages who do it? With evidence?”

“You aren’t seriously telling me you don’t believe it ever happens.”

“I’m not a moron, all right?” Caldera said. “Of course it happens. But the laws are there, and they do have an effect. It’s like the speed limit. Yes, everyone knows people break it, but if they get caught breaking it there are consequences. And so they don’t push it too far. You get me?”

I wasn’t particularly happy with having slavery and murder equated with breaking the speed limit, but I knew arguing about it wasn’t going to accomplish much. “I get you.”

“So, if you want to be a Light mage, especially if you want to work with the Council, you have to follow the national laws. You have to play nice. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“A certain fraction of Light mages are not nice.”

“You don’t say.”

“They want to be part of the Council and have all the perks. They also want to get to do all the same kinds of things that Dark mages get to do. They have a problem. White Rose is an organisation that specialises in solving that problem.”

“So White Rose provides a nice discreet brothel service?”

“Okay,” Caldera said. “When I told you they were a brothel, that’s not the whole story. The kind of guys who go to White Rose . . . if they wanted sex they’d just hit up an escort agency. White Rose does the kind of stuff you can’t ask for out in the open.”

I was starting to see where this was going, and I didn’t like it. “You mean kids like Leo.”

“Kids, heavy-duty sadism, snuff scenes. The workers are slaves, obviously. Then you start bringing magic into it. Let’s say you’re a client of White Rose. There’s some new pop singer you’ve got your eye on, you see her in her music videos. You decide you want a piece of that. White Rose is happy to help. They’ll find one of their slaves with a good physical resemblance, maybe get themselves a new one if it’s a special order. Then they’ll get to work. Flesh-sculpting or glamours to make her look the part, mental control to make her act the part. They soften them up first, then do most of the heavy lifting with mind magic. By the time they’re done, the girl thinks she is that person. They can put in other bits too. Make her in love with you, switch her programming so she has to do whatever you tell her, set it up so she goes for your fetish. Whatever you like.”

“Jesus,” I said in revulsion. “I knew Dark mages did stuff like that, but . . . They make a business out of this?”

“Yeah, and their business is booming. They don’t just sell to mages either: they’ve got a whole regular client base. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you how much they make off those custom orders.”

“I don’t think I want to. The Council knows about this?”

“Yeah.”

“Then why—?”

“First, White Rose isn’t staffed by Light mages. They’re all Dark or independent. And they’re careful never to break the Concord. Their slaves are all normals or sensitives, never mages. They even steer clear of adepts.”

“Screw the Concord. That’s not just violating the national laws, that’s breaking them over your knee and stamping on the bits. Did you just say it was like—?”

“Second,” Caldera said, cutting me off, “most of White Rose’s clients are normals with a lot of money. But a few of them are Light mages who don’t pay in money. Guess what they pay with instead.”

“They’d . . . oh, fuck. White Rose wouldn’t want money from them, would they? They could get that anywhere. From the Light mages they’d want influence.”

“And they get it,” Caldera said. “A whole ton of blackmail material.” Her face was unreadable. “This is the fourth time I know about that we’ve tried to get an indictment against White Rose. The last three times the answer was no. They’ve got too much dirt on Council mages.”

“And that’s what I’m going into the middle of,” I said, realising suddenly how this was going to affect me. “Do you think it’s going to be different this time?”

“Maybe. For all the fucked-up stuff that they do, this is the first time White Rose has attacked a Keeper. They’ve crossed a line.”

“Assuming it was them.”

Caldera looked sharply at me. “Do you have evidence that it was someone else? Something you’re not telling me?”

“No, I just saw the same things you did. You don’t think it’s a funny coincidence that that strike team showed up right after you called in our location on your communicator? Which stopped working as soon as we needed it?”

“What exactly are you suggesting?”

“You said it. White Rose has influence on the Council.”

“Don’t.”

“And the Keepers work for the Council—”

Caldera made a short motion, cutting me off. “I said don’t.”

“Are you seriously going to stick your head in the sand about this?”

“Shut up,” Caldera said. She was leaning forward on the sofa, staring at me, and her eyes were hard. “Get something clear—you are not a Keeper. You do not get to make accusations like that. Talk like that outside this room where other people can hear and you are going to get a fucking bridge dropped on you. You don’t understand Keepers and you don’t know how much shit you can get into doing this. I’ve gone to bat for you before, but I’m not jumping off a cliff just because you can’t keep your mouth shut.”

I drew back, slightly shocked. Caldera held my gaze for a few seconds more, then leant back again.

The silence stretched out. I knew it was supposed to be my place to say something, to keep things moving, but I felt jarred, out of place. “You know where the War Rooms are, right?” Caldera said once the pause had gotten long enough to become awkward.

“Yeah.”

“You’ll probably be with Haken.”

“Okay.”

“You got a number for him?”

“Not yet.”

“I’ll get you one.”

Caldera took out her phone. I sat uncomfortably as she typed. From outside, I could hear the cars and the motorbikes on the main road, the sounds of their engines echoing through the brick and glass.

We talked a little longer, but it felt forced and our rapport was gone. When I said that I needed to go, Caldera didn’t argue. I felt my shoulders relax slightly as I came out onto the Hackney street.

As I walked, I puzzled over what had just gone wrong. It wasn’t the first fight I’d had with Caldera but it bothered me in a way the others hadn’t. Mostly it was the unexpectedness. All the previous times that Caldera had been pissed off at me, it had been a direct consequence of something I’d done, and usually something I’d known full well she wouldn’t be happy about. This was the first time we’d had a fight and I didn’t know why.

It occurred to me that Caldera and I might have very different assumptions about loyalty. Amongst Dark mages, betrayal is an occupational hazard, something that comes with the lifestyle. It’s like having one of your co-workers change jobs—you know it’s going to happen sooner or later. Apprentices talking to each other about their masters’ plans, journeymen discussing whether the leader of their cabal is going to sell them out once the job is over . . . That kind of thing isn’t a betrayal of trust, it’s just good sense. It’s not a big deal.

Maybe for Keepers, it was a big deal. They had an actual organisation, an ethos. Maybe there was a code, a way you were and weren’t allowed to talk about it. Except . . . that hadn’t been how Landis had reacted. I’d been pretty sure he’d understood what I’d been getting at last night, and he’d agreed with me, or at least hadn’t told me to keep quiet.

So maybe it wasn’t the Keepers. Maybe it was just Caldera. Now that I thought about it, I’d never really thought about her as a person. To me she’d always been a representative of her organisation, Keeper Number One. I wondered what her membership in the Order of the Star really meant to her, and what she thought of when she saw her other Keepers. Did she fit in? Or in her own way, was she an outsider too?

I shook my head. Whatever the reason, I needed to know more, and I wasn’t going to get it from Caldera. I took out my gate stone and started looking for somewhere secluded.

Once I was back in my flat, I dug out my synchronous focus, programmed in a code, then channelled through it and waited. After only half a minute, it chimed and lit up. A figure appeared at the centre of the disc, carved from blue light.

“Hey, Talisid,” I said.

“Verus,” Talisid said. “I wondered when you’d call.”

“Isn’t acting all-knowing supposed to be the diviner’s job?”

“You’re not as unpredictable as you think.” I heard Talisid sigh slightly. “Go on, then. Ask your question.”

“Given your contacts, I’m pretty sure you already know what Caldera and I have been doing,” I said. “I just asked her about how our case connects to White Rose. She didn’t react well. Can you fill me in?”

“You don’t ask much, do you?”

“It’s just information,” I said.

Most exchanges in magical society come down to trading favours. Cash is handy, and so are magic items, but all too often they just don’t go far enough. Help from another mage, though . . . that’s always useful. Over the past year, I’d done a lot of jobs for Talisid. They’d been for us as much as for him, but we’d still been helping him, and we hadn’t asked for much in return. I didn’t say You owe me, but Talisid understood exactly what I meant.

“All right,” Talisid said. “How much did Caldera tell you about White Rose?”

“That they’re an organisation that provides dark and highly illegal sexual services to mages, and they have a whole load of blackmail material on the Council.”

“Strictly true, but a little misleading,” Talisid said. “If White Rose directly blackmailed its clients, they’d have been destroyed long ago. They’re more careful than that. They keep their client list absolutely confidential, and more importantly, that list is known to be confidential. However, they also make it known that should their organisation be seriously harmed, then that list would be released.”

“So it’s what—mutually assured destruction?”

“Yes. The number of Council mages who use White Rose’s . . . services . . . is relatively small. But still large enough to cause a great deal of trouble. And the Council, as you may have noticed, dislikes trouble.”

“So they just let them get away with it.”

“Yes. In the same way that you, as an ex–Dark mage, support the torture, murder, and abuse that Dark mages perpetuate.”

“. . . What?”

“Don’t make the mistake of thinking that the Council is monolithic.” There was a slight edge to Talisid’s voice. “The Guardians and the Keepers would love nothing more than to see White Rose eradicated. But Marannis, the Dark mage who runs White Rose, has no political ambitions. If he were using White Rose to expand his power base, he would be a strategic threat. But instead it seems he is quite content to preserve the status quo, which brings him into de facto alliance with the Centrists and Isolationists. As a result, White Rose has existed long enough for it to become . . . part of the landscape. A benign cancer. We have limited political capital, and making a concerted push to destroy White Rose would cause significant internal conflict in the Council. So for the past years our policy has been one of containment. Well, Vihaela’s arrival on the scene could have changed that given time, but . . .”

I nodded, filing away the references to “our” and “we” to my mental dossier on Talisid and his position, and making a note to find out who Vihaela was. “Okay.”

“So I hope you understand exactly how large a can of worms you opened when you and Caldera reported White Rose’s name to the Keepers last night. You see, for all the crimes Marannis has committed in his time leading White Rose, the one thing he has been very careful to do is never break the Concord. Now all of a sudden, the Keepers have evidence linking White Rose not only with Rayfield’s disappearance—or murder, as the case may be—but an attack on you and Caldera.”

I still wasn’t sure that it was actually White Rose that had been behind that attack, but I got the point. “How does the Rayfield case fit in?”

“Rayfield is—or was—apprentice to Nirvathis, who is attempting to secure a seat on the Junior Council. I assume you know this?”

“Yeah.”

“What you may not know is that Nirvathis is an empty suit,” Talisid said. “He was chosen by certain Light faction members to be a puppet. And the main controller of that puppet is your old acquaintance, Levistus.”

“Shit.”

“Yes. Levistus hopes to use this to secure himself a place on the Senior Council this coming year.”

“Goddamn it,” I said. “So that brings the whole thing with Morden in, too.”

“Actually, at a conservative estimate, I would guess that by now around fifty percent of the active political population of the Light Council is involved in this affair of yours at one remove or another.”

“And I’m in the middle of it.”

“Yes.” Talisid paused. “Verus . . . I haven’t said anything about your choice to work more closely with the Keepers. I understand that in some ways it was a logical decision. However, given the direction things are taking, it might be advisable to reconsider.”

“Right. Wouldn’t want your prospective mole with Richard to associate himself too visibly with the other side, would we?”

“I understand that—”

“I’m not going back to Richard.” My voice was flat. “Not as a double agent, not as a triple agent, not for you, and not for anyone else either. It’s not going to happen. Ever. Understand that.”

“Becoming involved in a conflict between Council factions will not help that goal in any way.”

“I’ll take that under advisement.” I looked at the clock: it was past eleven. I needed to get moving. “I have to go.”

Talisid paused again, and futures of him trying to persuade me further flickered briefly before vanishing. “All right. Good luck.”

I cut the connection and prepared quickly for my trip, checking my phone as I did. There was a message from Luna: she’d arranged an appointment with Chalice for this afternoon. It was an e-mail rather than a voice mail, which I suspected she’d done so that it would be harder for me to tell her not to do it. I was still uneasy about sending her off to meet Chalice, but she had Anne, and I had too many other things on my plate already. I sent her a short message and put it out of my mind. Time to visit the War Rooms.