Alex Verus 5: Hidden Read online

  “Yeah.”

  Another pause.

  “How are things working out with the shop?” my father asked.

  “Oh, fine. Business as usual.” I paused. “I’m taking a few days off because a friend of mine got partially abducted by some people who probably want to hurt or kill her, so we’re trying to track her down before they do.”

  My father twisted around to look at me. I looked back.

  “Are you . . . Could you say that again?”

  “Friend abducted, trying to find her.”

  “Isn’t that a job for the police?”

  “We’re working with a . . .” I tried to think of how to describe Caldera in nonmagical terms. “With a branch of the police. Not sure how long we’ll have their support, though.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “They might pull their people off the case.” Of which the odds were two in three and climbing, assuming we were weighing the suspects equally. “If they do we’ll have to finish things on our own.”

  My father was silent for a little while. “You’re planning to take matters into your own hands.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Will there be trouble?”

  “Possibly.” Probably.

  “I’d thought . . .” My father paused. “The last time, you said you were trying to put this sort of thing behind you.”

  “Yeah, well, it turns out trying to put the past behind you doesn’t work too well when the past doesn’t cooperate.”

  “I’m . . . I have to say, I’m not comfortable with you doing this.” My father clasped his hands, elbows resting on knees. “It sounds too close to what you were doing with that man you were involved with, Richard.”

  I felt a flare of anger. How do parents always know how to get under your skin? “It’s nothing to do with Richard,” I said levelly. “I’m trying to help someone.”

  “You ought to leave it to the authorities.”

  “The authorities are overworked, their freedom of action is limited, and they don’t care very much about this person in the first place.”

  “I know these situations are frustrating, but breaking the law just makes things worse, even if you are trying to help. These rules are in place for a reason. There’s no guarantee that trying to interfere will make things any better, and even if you do, you’re setting a bad precedent.”

  “How can you believe this with what you teach?” I asked. I pointed down through the flagstones, towards the lecture hall. “European history is one very long study in conflict, violence, and rule-breaking.”

  “Haven’t we advanced beyond that? There’s no excuse for resolving our disagreements with violence anymore.”

  “What exactly do you think the police and military do?”

  “Look,” my father said. “We’ve had this discussion before. I’m just worried that you’re working up to something.”

  “Mostly just what I told you,” I said. “Well, plus last year a bunch of teenagers tried to assassinate me so I killed them all, but that’s not important right now.”

  My father frowned. “You’re not serious.”

  I sighed. “I was kidding.” No, I wasn’t.

  “I think that joke’s in rather poor taste.”

  I looked at my father with a hopeless feeling. What was I doing here? I couldn’t talk to him about my life, what I’d done to survive. Out of morbid curiosity, I looked to see what his reaction would be if I did tell him the truth about last year, and almost immediately wished I hadn’t. Shock, disbelief, horror. It’d leave him devastated.

  “Sorry,” I said. Another awkward silence.

  “I . . . know things haven’t always been easy for you,” my father said. “I’ve always regretted not being there when you were younger. And I know we’ve had our disagreements. Is there, well . . . anything you’d like to tell me?”

  I looked back at him. Anything I’d like to tell you . . . how about that everything you taught me was wrong? Your pacifism didn’t help when I was getting bullied for years on end. Didn’t help when my mother divorced you and got custody. If you hadn’t been so weak, maybe I wouldn’t have jumped at the first offer that let me think I could be strong . . .

  “No,” I said. “I’m fine.”

  “All right.”

  My phone vibrated. Looking into the future in which I checked it, I saw that it was Caldera. News. “I’d better go,” I said, standing.

  My father rose with me. “Ah. You know, you’re welcome to visit for dinner sometime.”

  A whole evening of this? The thought made me flinch. “Yeah,” I said. “I’ll be in touch.”

  “Well, good-bye.” My father paused. “Be careful.”

  “I will.” At least that was close to true.

  My father walked back to the Institute, and I watched him go. To my eyes, he looked thin and frail. As he reached the doors I shook my head and turned away, heading north with long strides, taking out my phone and dialling a number.

  Caldera answered on the second ring. “Alex?”

  “It’s me.”

  “We’ve got an address for one of Sagash’s apprentices.” Caldera’s voice was curt. “Meet there as soon as possible. Be ready for trouble.”

  “I’ll be there in forty minutes.”

  Caldera hung up and I dropped my phone back into my pocket. I was still pissed off, and I knew why. It had been my father’s implication that I was going back to how I’d been with Richard. It was too close to what Sonder had said, and the unfairness of it made me angry. It was so black-and-white, their world. Either you were a sheep or you were a wolf. You didn’t use violence or you were a thug. Nothing in between.

  Well, screw them both. I wasn’t going to be like my father, but I wasn’t going to be like Richard either. I was going to help Anne no matter what they thought.

  | | | | | | | | |

  “Are they going to stand there all day or what?” Variam asked.

  We were on a council estate in Tufnell Park. My divination magic had found us an empty flat with a good view, and we were inside the cramped upper bedroom, looking out the window. The interior of the flat was dusty and cold, with old magazines scattered across the floor; whoever lived here hadn’t been home for a long time. Through the window we could see a courtyard of pebble-set concrete, with more flats rising opposite. Caldera and Sonder were on the upper walkway fifty feet across, heads bent over the door of flat number 229. According to Caldera, that flat was the residence of one Darren Smith, Sagash’s apprentice. The sky was overcast and grey, and wind whined past outside.

  “Maybe they’re knocking on the door and saying they have a warrant,” I said.

  “Then shouldn’t we be over there?”

  “Caldera wants us around for backup,” I said. And to keep an eye on us. “Sonder doesn’t want us around at all. I guess this is the compromise.”

  Opposite, the door opened and Caldera walked inside. Sonder started to follow, but Caldera made a gesture and Sonder hung back. “Four of us for one Dark apprentice who isn’t even there,” Variam muttered. “This is such a waste of time.” He gave me a look. “Why are you wearing that armour anyway?”

  “Not everyone gets to have your fancy elemental shields, you know.” The armour I was wearing was an imbued item Arachne had made for me: a close-woven mesh with reinforcing plates. It’s black and grey and not particularly bulky, but it’s still not the best thing to wear for blending into a crowd, which was why I’d covered it with a greatcoat. I could feel its presence, protective and watchful, but it matched my movements so well that it was easy to forget it was there. “And if there was one thing I learnt last year, it was that it’s a lot better to have armour and not need it than to need it and not have it.”

  Variam fell silent and I went back to looking into the future, searching for the telltale signs of c
ombat. I’d already confirmed that no one was in the flat, but a common trick mages use is to set up silent alarms in places they want protected. The intruder breaks in and has just enough time to relax before a prepared and pissed-off mage gates in on top of them.

  If something like that did happen, then Caldera and Sonder’s chances would be a lot better if they had advance warning, which from this distance was a lot harder for me to give. Yet despite that, Sonder still didn’t want me around, which bothered me more than I liked to admit.

  Minutes passed. Sonder had followed Caldera into the flat and shut the door behind them. With no direct physical or visual link I couldn’t easily path-walk to their location, so I switched my focus to the futures of the communication channel, trusting Caldera to stay in touch. If anything happened she should be able to send me a message.

  Probably.

  It wasn’t a good sign that I was saying probably about something like that.

  “Did you turn up anything?” I asked Variam.

  “If I had, you think I’d be here?”

  We sat in silence a little while longer. “Why do you care so much about protecting Anne?” I said at last.

  Variam shot me a look. “This really the time?”

  “Maybe not, but I’ve asked you that question a few times now and you always find some reason not to answer.”

  Variam didn’t reply. “You said something last year which stuck in my head,” I said. “You said taking care of Anne was your job. I know the two of you grew up together. But the way you act towards her . . .” I looked at Variam. “Has it got something to do with Sagash? Is that why you’re so convinced it’s him? I know you don’t want to talk about it but if there’s any way it could help . . . now might be the time.”

  Variam stood for a minute in silence. I didn’t disturb him, watching the futures flicking back and forth: I knew he was making his decision. Slowly the futures firmed and settled. “If I tell you this, you can’t tell anyone else,” Variam said at last. “Not Luna, not Arachne, definitely not Anne. No one.” He stared at me. “You got it?”

  I nodded.

  “Swear.”

  “I won’t tell anyone else without your permission. You have my word.”

  “When Anne got taken by Sagash that first time, I went looking for her,” Variam said. “You know how hard it is to find someone when you don’t have anywhere to start?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I didn’t know anything. Didn’t know where to look, didn’t know what to ask. Took months before I even figured out how the Light and Dark thing worked. I tried adepts, independents, the Council. They didn’t know, they didn’t care.” Variam looked up through the window towards the light behind the clouds. “Then one day I heard something. About a creature that could answer any question you asked it. The Fire Dragon.”

  I looked at Variam sharply.

  “You know what it’s like, meeting a dragon?” Variam was still staring out at the sky. “It was . . . light. Blackness. Flame. I . . . saw a movie about astronomy once, back in school. There were pictures of the sun, solar flares. You saw them and they looked like little flickers of fire, except each one was bigger than the planet. That was what it felt like. Like you were trying to see something on a scale you just didn’t work on. I don’t know where we were or how long it lasted, but when I was done I was just back again.”

  “What did it tell you?” I asked quietly.

  “It didn’t talk. It was more like . . . visions. I saw what I’d come to ask, and I saw the answers. Other things, too . . .” Variam trailed off for a second, then shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. But some of it was about Anne, and that bit I did understand. I saw Sagash, and I knew she was with him. And I knew if I didn’t get her away, then something would happen to her.”

  “Something?”

  “Sagash wasn’t going to kill her. She was going to be turned into something. She’d stop being who she was, and become something else. It felt like she was . . . falling into darkness. She’d still be there, but I got the feeling it might be better if she wasn’t.” Variam looked at me. “You get what it means? That would happen if she stayed with Sagash. It didn’t say which time. As long as he’s still out there . . .”

  “Does Anne know?”

  Variam shook his head again. “I thought about telling her, but . . . I never knew how it was going to happen, you know? I mean, back when I met you and Luna, I thought maybe you’d be the ones who’d pull her back to Sagash.”

  I snorted.

  “Yeah, you can laugh, but it might have been. How’re you supposed to stop something when you don’t know how it’ll happen? I even thought about going after Sagash, but it’s dumb. Just because he won’t kill Anne doesn’t mean he won’t kill me.”

  “Did you think about asking her?”

  “No,” Variam said. “Because that vision I got? I was never sure whether it was something that happened to her or something she decided.”

  Variam fell silent again, and this time he didn’t go on. The vision Variam was talking about sounded vague, but I didn’t think that was his fault. I met a dragon once too—or at least I think I did—and trying to remember it gives me the same weird disjointed feeling, like you’re trying to visualise something that doesn’t work in human terms. There are stories of mages going searching for dragons as Variam had, looking for secrets or wisdom or prophecy. Sometimes they can be found, sometimes not, but I’ve never heard of them being wrong. If Variam had received that vision, it was worrying.

  But I couldn’t see anything useful to do about it, and if we couldn’t find Anne, then it didn’t matter anyway. I went back to searching the futures and saw a strengthening branch of forks heading our way. “They’re coming out,” I said.

  Opposite to us, the door to Darren’s flat opened and Sonder and Caldera emerged, locking it behind them. They headed our way along the walkway, disappearing from sight. I walked into the hall of “our” flat and opened the door to let them in, shivering briefly in the gust of cold air. “Anything?” I asked once we were all inside.

  “Ask him,” Caldera said with a nod to Sonder. Her manner had been different since we’d met at the flats, though I couldn’t put my finger on exactly how.

  Variam looked at Sonder. “So?”

  “It’s his flat, but there’s nothing about Anne,” Sonder said.

  “Then what was the point of coming here?”

  “He still uses it. There might be—”

  “What’s going on?” I murmured to Caldera.

  “Shh,” Caldera said. She was watching Sonder.

  I frowned. For some reason Caldera wasn’t taking command, as though she were waiting for something.

  “Then we should be going there,” Variam was saying.

  “It’s not Sagash, all right?” Sonder said in annoyance.

  “Sonder,” I said slowly. “If it’s not Sagash, and you’re sure it’s not Sagash, what are we doing here? I thought you were sure it was Crystal.”

  “It is Crystal!”

  “Then why are we searching this flat?” Something wasn’t adding up. “What’s Crystal got to do with Sagash’s apprentices?”

  “She’s still the most likely one to be behind this,” Sonder argued. “You know how good she was at using people; maybe she was the one who got them to do it. It would fit with everything—”

  “Fuck Crystal,” Variam said. “I don’t think you care about finding Anne at all.”

  “Well, I haven’t seen you doing—”

  The argument started up again, along predictable lines. Usually this was the point at which Caldera would step in, but glancing at her I saw she was still just watching. She still seemed to be waiting—

  I stopped as my brain caught up with something I’d heard. “Wait,” I said to Sonder. “What did you just say?”

  Sonder bro
ke off arguing with Variam. “What?”

  “About Crystal being behind it.”

  “I said that if it was Sagash’s apprentices, maybe it was Crystal who got them to do it in the first place.”

  “No,” I said slowly. “You said, ‘Maybe she was the one who got them to do it.’”

  “Yeah, if it really was them,” Sonder said. He looked annoyed. “I don’t think it was, I’m just saying that even if that was true, it still might have been her.”

  I stared at Sonder. “You didn’t say ‘if.’”

  Variam was looking at me curiously. “Yes, I did,” Sonder said.

  “Why did you come here in the first place?” I asked Sonder. “You’re supposed to be in charge, not Caldera. If you were really so sure that Sagash’s apprentices had nothing to do with this, you shouldn’t have been wasting time using your timesight on that flat.”

  “Well—” Sonder hesitated. “I didn’t think so. You did.”

  I looked at Sonder for a long moment, flicking through futures. Divination isn’t much use in normal conversations—too many ways for things to go. But if you know the right questions to ask . . .

  “It was them, wasn’t it?” I said. “The ones who took Anne were Sagash’s two apprentices, Darren and Sam. You’ve known since last night. When you listened to their conversations after they’d met Luna, you found out that they were the ones who did it. You’ve been keeping it from us.”

  Variam had been looking at me; now he turned to stare at Sonder. There was a silent question in his eyes.

  Lying well takes practice. An amateur can pull off a lie as long as no one’s looking for it, but as soon as they get cross-questioned they go to pieces. A professional, on the other hand, can manage interrogation just fine—they submerge themselves in the lie so well that they actually believe it themselves. There are subtle signs which you can look for, but a good liar never makes it obvious.

  Sonder wasn’t a good liar.

  Variam’s face darkened. Orange-red light sprang up at his hands, licking outwards. “You cowardly little—” he began, his voice soft as he took a step towards Sonder. Sonder flinched back.