Veiled Page 17

  “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 an
d 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.”