Alex Verus 5: Hidden Read online

  Darren’s eyes narrowed. The other boy—Sam Taylor, if Caldera’s info was right—put an arm across to hold Darren back. I couldn’t get a good look at him, but he looked smaller and slighter than Darren, and he had a faint Manchester accent. “We’re a bit busy. Can this wait?”

  “Busy with what?”

  Neither boy answered. “You said busy,” Ji-yeong said. Her speech was slightly accented, more formal than Sam’s or Darren’s. “Busy with what?”

  “None of your fucking business,” Darren told her.

  Ji-yeong looked at Sam, ignoring Darren. “You’re looking for something?”

  Darren started to answer, and again Sam held him back. “Trying to get the fox,” Sam said. “It was in the castle again.”

  “The fox?”

  “Yeah.”

  Ji-yeong cocked her head. “That was why you sent all those shadows to the main gate half an hour ago?”

  Uh-oh. Getting out of here might be a little harder than getting in.

  Sam and Darren didn’t answer. “Sending all eight of your shadows to guard the gate,” Ji-yeong said. “You must really want that fox. It’s funny. Didn’t you have that one guarding the gate already?”

  “You going to get out of the way?” Sam was giving Ji-yeong a hard look. There was no trace of friendliness in his voice anymore.

  “Okay,” Ji-yeong said, smiling suddenly. “Maybe I’ll go talk to Sagash.”

  Both Darren and Sam stopped. “About what?” Sam said.

  Ji-yeong shrugged. “Nothing.”

  Darren took a threatening step forward. “What are you telling him?”

  “What’s the problem?” Ji-yeong said. “You’ve got nothing to hide, right?” The smile didn’t leave her face, but suddenly her right hand was resting on the hilt of one of her swords.

  “Okay, okay.” Sam stepped between them, arms out. “Look, let’s talk about this. Ji—” His voice lowered and I lost the rest of the sentence.

  Damn, just when it was getting interesting. The trouble with divination-as-eavesdropping is that it’s got a very limited range. I wanted to sneak closer but I couldn’t risk it; living magic is very good at detecting people, and with three different mages the chances were too good that one would spot me. Instead I looked through the futures in which I approached, trying to pick through the ones in which I was noticed to the ones in which I caught a few words.

  “—listening to her?” Ji-yeong was saying.

  Sam answered, but he was turned away from me and I couldn’t hear what he was saying. “No, she isn’t,” Ji-yeong said.

  “So what?” Darren said. He still sounded angry.

  “So, she’s using you?”

  Sam answered again, and Ji-yeong said something I couldn’t quite catch; Darren had moved in front of her. Will you get out of the way? I adjusted the futures I was watching, cycling through angles.

  “—taking the blame,” Ji-yeong was saying.

  “So get off your arse and help,” Darren said.

  “Look, let’s go back to the keep,” Sam said. “We can—” He moved forward and again I lost the thread of the conversation. This time Ji-yeong let him pass and Sam headed for the northern exit, still talking. Darren and Ji-yeong followed, eyeing each other like a pair of wary dogs. The three of them disappeared through the archway and were gone.

  I straightened up from where I’d been crouched, frowning as I tried to put the subtext of that conversation together. Secrets, Sagash, a fox . . . Apparently Darren and Sam had been hiding what they were doing from Ji-yeong. Maybe the House of Sagash wasn’t as united as it looked.

  One very definite impression I was picking up from watching Sagash’s apprentices was that they were a step below Anne in terms of power. They might be ruthless, but they weren’t as skilled or experienced, and I suspected Sagash’s isolation might be a reason for that. He wasn’t as connected as Morden, and he hadn’t found apprentices as dangerous as Onyx. Maybe that was why he’d resorted to kidnapping the first time round . . . though this lot seemed to be here willingly.

  I didn’t want to run into the three apprentices accidentally so I trailed them at a distance, using divination to track their passing while staying well outside their detection range. After only a few minutes they crossed a drawbridge over a lower courtyard and disappeared into a set of halls. Looming over the halls was the dark shape of the keep, and it didn’t take long to confirm that that was where they were going. Sagash was probably there.

  A bigger worry was whether Anne was there. But I hadn’t heard anything about her being captured, and until I did I’d stick with the plan. I turned around and started working my way towards the castle’s edge. The high buildings of the castle made it hard to see the sun, but assigning that direction as west put the cliff to the south. The keep was south-central, relatively close to the exit. If I were Anne, I would have tried to put myself as far from the keep as I could. I began heading east, hoping to curve around the keep towards the north.

  As I walked, I looked into the futures of what would happen if I yelled for Anne. I cycled through a variety of calls, eventually settling on “Hey, Anne, it’s Alex, could you come out, please?” To begin with I saw futures of movement from the direction of the keep, but as I put more distance and stone walls between Sagash’s apprentices and me, the chance of detection decreased until I could shout as loudly as I wanted.

  While I walked, the back of my mind was turning over what I’d overheard. Ji-yeong had mentioned telling Sagash, and it had been a threat. What if Sagash didn’t know anything about the attack on Anne at all?

  If that was true, then not only would it explain why Sagash had denied knowing about it, it would also fit with how crude the attack had been. Darren and Sam had caught Anne totally by surprise, yet they’d still botched the job and let her get away. Not the kind of performance you’d expect from a Dark master mage, but exactly the kind of performance you’d expect from a pair of ruthless but inexperienced apprentices.

  But if they weren’t doing it on Sagash’s orders, why had they targeted Anne? From what Variam had said, it didn’t sound as though Anne had even met these three, much less given them a reason to go after her. And if they’d just been looking for a victim, why pick her? Had they chosen her at random? That felt like too much of a coincidence.

  I was still missing something.

  I wound my way through halls and across courtyards, up and down staircases, futures spreading through possible paths before me like spiderwebs. The castle had a strange brooding feel to it, hushed and watchful. It didn’t feel threatening, not exactly—it was more secretive, as though you could live in this place for years without ever really understanding it. I could hear the sea from over the walls and the wind around the towers, but after a while it just became background noise and the castle felt silent. Sagash’s apprentices were long gone and the only living things I could see were the white birds that soared over the castle towers and perched on the rooftops.

  As I travelled I passed all kinds of strange constructions. A crane occupied one tower, a chain trailing from its tip down and down to a circle of grass far below. Other sets of rooms were filled with weird ancient machinery made out of black iron. There was even a railway, running along the outside of the castle’s northeast wall, with a horrifying drop to the rocks far below. I path-walked along the railway line and it curved around the castle’s northeast corner before ending as inexplicably as it had started. Sagash hadn’t built this place, of that I was sure. His life and Anne’s were just one more story out of hundreds, stretching back in time.

  I’d been at it for more than two hours now and it was getting dark. The sun had disappeared below the western walls, and the sky was turning a dusky purple. I’d come to a section of high walls and narrow walkways; endless drops stretched down into darkness and the golden light of sunset cast long shadows on the walls. The w
ind had dropped with the coming dusk, and the castle felt empty and lonely, as though I were the only person left alive in a silent world. In the still air, my voice carried farther, and for the thousandth time I sent my future selves path-walking in different directions, calling for Anne. There was no response, but just as I was about to cut the spell I sensed something from the route through the lower archway. Someone there . . . I tried again, focusing on it this time, then started walking, matching my future self’s path. As I drew closer to the archway, I could hear a strange creaking sound.

  The archway led into a small grassy area, enclosed on three sides. Grey-tinted walls rose up to the left and right, but up ahead the ground dropped away to a beautiful view of the ocean. The sun was setting beneath the clouds, its light reflecting off the waves in a long rippling beam. I was right on the edge of the cliff, and looking out at the sea it was as if the water stretched out to infinity.

  In the centre of the grassy space was a windmill. It was made of stone and wood, with eight long canvas sails, and they were turning very slowly in the gentle breeze. The rotating sails made the rhythmic creak . . . creak . . . creak . . . that I’d heard before, mixing with the sound of waves on the rocks far below. Next to the windmill was a pool ringed with rushes, and white birds were perched beside it, dipping their beaks into the fresh water.

  I walked towards the windmill, my footsteps quiet on the grass. The birds took flight as I approached, circling up into the warm air. I halted a little way from the windmill, looking up at the stone windows. “Anne?” I called quietly. My voice cracked, and I had to swallow and try again. “Anne, it’s Alex. I’m down here.”

  There was a moment’s pause, then a face appeared in one of the open windows. It was Anne, and at the sight of her something tense inside me relaxed at last as a warm feeling of relief went through my body. It had been worth it.

  Anne’s face was in shadow and I couldn’t read her expression as she stared down at me. “Alex?”

  “Mind if I come in?” I said. “You look like you’ve got fewer patients this time.”

  Anne stood for a second, then disappeared. I heard running footsteps, then the door swung open and Anne stepped out into the evening light. She was staring, and I knew she was using her lifesight, checking to see whether it was really me. “It is you,” she said. “I didn’t believe— How did . . . ?”

  All the time I’d been searching for Anne I’d only looked for her presence, the sound of her voice, because that was the quickest way to identify her through the futures. I hadn’t bothered to check for what she’d looked like. Now that I thought about it, I should have been expecting it. She’d been attacked while she was sleeping, after all.

  Anne was wearing a long T-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts. The T-shirt had once been bright pink but had faded with age, and there were holes along the seams. On the front was a picture of the Disney cast of Winnie the Pooh, all sharing a hug and waving, with Sweet Dreams written underneath the picture in cutesy lettering, decorated with yellow stars. I stared at it for a second, then burst out laughing.

  Anne looked at me in confusion, then she figured it out and her expression changed to exasperation. She folded her arms, covering up the Sweet Dreams and shifting her bare feet on the stone steps. I kept laughing and she spoke loudly enough for me to hear over it. “Are you finished?”

  I shook my head. Somehow it felt like the most hilarious thing I’d ever seen. I think it was relief more than anything else—I’d been so wound up that now I just couldn’t stop laughing. “That—” I managed. “That T-shirt.”

  “What about my T-shirt?”

  I looked at Anne. She didn’t look particularly embarrassed about being caught in her sleepwear—she just looked annoyed, and the expression on her face made me double over and crack up again.

  “Could you please stop doing that?” Anne said over my laughter.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, wiping my eyes. “It’s just— It looks like a nightie for a little girl.”

  “I was asleep. What did you think I’d be wearing?”

  “Honestly? Never thought about it.” I still had the urge to keep laughing.

  “Look, I’m sorry if it doesn’t look nice, but I didn’t know I was going to be kidnapped when I was choosing what to wear to bed. It’s not like—”

  I closed the distance to Anne in two quick strides and put my arms around her. Pressed against me, she felt light and underweight, as though she’d been starved. “Alex?” Anne said in surprise.

  “I’m glad you’re okay,” I said quietly.

  I’d expected Anne to pull away but she didn’t move. We stood there for a little while, the sails of the windmill gliding steadily by over our heads as the rays of the setting sun fell all around. From above the birds looked down curiously, watching from their perches upon the high walls.

  | | | | | | | | |

  “So what happened?” I asked Anne a little while later.

  The interior of the windmill was roomy, with high ceilings and ancient iron machinery. Square windows looked out onto the ocean, and the beams of the setting sun painted gold light onto the stone walls. Anne was curled up like a mouse in a nest of old sacks she’d made for herself. I’d given her my greatcoat; she was tall enough that it fit, even if it was a little baggy. There wasn’t anything I could do about her bare feet, but she’d tucked them into her sack-bed for now. I’d finished telling Anne the shortened version of my side of the story, and now I wanted to hear hers.

  “I don’t remember much of it,” Anne said in her soft voice. “After I finished talking to you that night I went home, made dinner, washed up, and went to bed. Then the next thing I knew my head was spinning, all my nerves were screaming, and I was being hit with lightning.”

  “You played dead?”

  “It was all I could think to do. I didn’t know what was going on, but he wasn’t trying to kill me. So I stopped moving and waited for him to get close.”

  “He thought you were knocked out?”

  “I nearly was,” Anne admitted. “But . . . I can take a lot more than most people think I can. I’ve been shot and stabbed and a lot worse, and it hurts, but I can fix it. Once I had the chance to brace myself, that electric spell wasn’t too bad.”

  I raised my eyebrows at that. I’ve never been hit by a really powerful electric shock so I don’t know what it feels like, but I had to wonder what kind of things Anne was comparing it to if a full-power lightning spell “wasn’t too bad.” “So you stunned him and jumped through the gate?”

  “I didn’t mean to. I wanted to get out the door, but when I saw it was locked I knew I wouldn’t be able to get it open in time.” Anne was briefly silent. “I knew where I was the instant I stepped through, but by then it was too late. I just ran for the bridge.”

  “Why not the woods?”

  “Because I tried that the first time I ran away. It doesn’t work; there isn’t enough forest before you hit the boundary. I went into the castle instead, then those Dark mages came through behind me.”

  “They’re Sagash’s apprentices.”

  Anne nodded. “I thought they were. The first place they checked was the forest. It gave me enough time to get into the castle and I lost them in the courtyards.”

  “You did a pretty good job,” I said. “I don’t think many mages would have lasted this long here.”

  Anne didn’t smile. “It’s not my first time.”

  “Well,” I said, “you’re the expert. What’s the best way out?”

  “The main gate. But I don’t have a key.”

  I held up the fluted rod I’d taken from Darren. “You mean one of these?”

  “That’s it.”

  “One slight problem,” I said. “Darren and Sam stuck a squad of eight of those shadows on top of the platform.” I’d taken a few minutes to confirm it after breaking away from the three apprent
ices, and Ji-yeong had been telling the truth. “Don’t suppose you know a way to deal with those things?”

  Anne shook her head; she looked weary. “They’re not alive, my magic can’t touch them. It was why I could never get away. There are too many and they don’t get tired or give up.”

  Anne’s head was down. “Well, it might not be that bad,” I said, trying to sound cheerful. “From what I overheard, I think Sagash only lets his apprentices play with four of them each. If they’ve got their shadows there, they haven’t got them out here looking for us.”

  Anne didn’t answer. “Any other ways out?” I asked.

  “Maybe.” Anne shook her head. “Yeah. I don’t know exactly . . . Somewhere.” Her eyes drifted closed for half a second, then she pulled herself awake again. “What was that?”

  I frowned. “Are you okay?”

  “. . . Little tired.”

  “Have you slept since you got here?”

  “They’ve been looking for me,” Anne said. “They searched here the first night. If I’m asleep . . .” She trailed off.

  “You’ve been awake for three days?”

  “I can go longer than this if I have to.” Anne sounded defensive.

  “That doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.” I looked at Anne, and this time I noticed the little signs I’d missed; her eyes were slightly dulled, her movements not as quick or as sure. She must have been running on adrenaline since she’d heard me, and now it had worn off. I made a quick decision. “Get some sleep and I’ll keep watch. I can use the time to scout ahead.”

  Anne put up a token protest but it didn’t last long. She curled up in the nest of sacks like a dormouse, and when I next looked she was fast asleep.

  I leant back against the wall with a sigh. Well, that’s step one. Now we just need to get out. I looked through the futures in which I sat still, watching to see if anyone would come. Apart from the futures in which Anne woke, nothing disturbed us. For now at least, we were alone.

  I looked over at Anne and saw that she was shivering slightly. I walked quietly across the floor and tucked my coat more closely around her. She settled into it with a sighing sound and her shivering slowed. I looked down at her and had to smile. Asleep, Anne looked very young and delicate. It was good to know she was safe.