Veiled Page 2

  “You’re sure they—?”

  “Yes, I’m sure they were empty, and no, they weren’t anywhere else in the warehouse. We checked. For as long as we could, anyway, until that elemental pulled its Mr. Freeze act. Whoever gave you those timings, they screwed up.”

  “I see. Would it be feasible for your team to go back and do another sweep?”

  I stared at Talisid, then took a breath and counted to five in my head. “No,” I said, once I was sure I could keep my voice calm. “It would not.”

  “All right,” Talisid said. “I’m going to need to make some calls. I’ll get in touch with you when I know more.”

  “Fine.”

  “Until then.” Talisid paused. “I know there were setbacks, but well done on returning safely. We’ll talk tomorrow.” Talisid’s image winked out and the lights around the edge of the communicator went dark.

  “Arsehole,” Variam muttered.

  “There,” Anne said. The green light around her hands faded and she let go of Variam’s arm. She hadn’t even glanced at Talisid throughout the whole conversation. “Try moving.”

  Variam worked his arm, flexing his fingers, then nodded. “Feels good.”

  “Do we need to keep him warm?” Luna asked.

  Anne shook her head. “No, you could get it frozen again and it wouldn’t make any difference. Though I’d rather you didn’t.” She glanced at me. “You didn’t tell him about the papers.”

  “No,” I said. I walked to the armchair, then picked up some of the papers lying scattered over the table. There were a dozen or so sheets, grubby with dirt and damp and cracked at the edges from where the ice blast had grazed them. Variam had managed to keep hold of them during the fight.

  “Next time, leave the papers and just get out,” Luna said.

  “Will you stop whining?” Variam said. “We’re alive, aren’t we?”

  Luna scowled. “Can you read them?” Anne asked.

  “In Arabic?” I said dryly. “No.” The papers had notes scribbled across them in a right-to-left scrawl. It could be battle plans, shipping manifestos, a history of Richard’s dealings with the group . . . or someone’s laundry list, for all we knew. But there was a reason we’d picked the things up: three of the pages were rubbings, not writings. They were crude and it was hard to figure out where they’d been taken from, but if I’d had to guess, I’d have said that the pictures and text they showed looked old. More like carvings.

  “Are they from what was in those crates?” Luna asked.

  “Or from something else,” I said. “We’re going to need a translator.” Who not only spoke whichever dialect of Arabic this was written in, but also knew enough about Middle Eastern magical history to be able to identify the content. This wasn’t going to be quick.

  “Are you going to go back if Talisid asks?” Anne asked. Despite her spell, she didn’t look tired. Life magic healing tends to drain the caster, but Anne’s very good at what she does.

  “No,” I said.

  “What’s up with Talisid, anyway?” Luna asked. “When we did jobs for him before, this kind of thing didn’t . . .”

  “Well, it’s because of what Morden’s doing, isn’t it?” Variam said. “Talisid wants us to dig up some dirt.”

  Luna frowned. “I thought the Council didn’t buy that Morden’s working for Richard.”

  “They don’t,” Variam said. “They’ve got him down as ‘potential associate’ and that’s it. If Talisid could prove that Richard’s behind him, though . . .”

  “I think you’re right,” I said. “Talisid still won’t tell me exactly who he works for, but I’m pretty sure he’s with the Guardian faction. And Richard’s reputation still carries. If they could link Richard with Morden it’d scare a lot of people off.”

  “Yeah, well, he hasn’t done much of a job of it so far, has he?” Variam said. “And doesn’t sound like his faction’s winning.”

  “Mm,” I said. I wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

  Politics in the Light Council are complicated. There are seven primary factions: Guardians, Crusaders, Isolationists, Directors, Centrists, Weissians, and the Unity Bloc. They’re closer to social cliques than to the political parties of Westminster or Congress, but the stakes are just as high and the consequences for mistakes are a lot more deadly.

  Most of the issues the Council argue over are transient, changing from month to month. But there are some questions that don’t go away, and one of the biggest is the issue of how to treat Dark mages. At one extreme are the Crusaders: they’re the most militant of all the factions and think the Light Council should be actively fighting against Dark mages, going to war if necessary. They hate Dark mages and anyone who’s associated with them, including me. Which is ironic, given that my feelings towards Dark mages aren’t any more positive than theirs, but the Crusaders don’t care. As far as they’re concerned, if you were trained by a Dark mage, you don’t get any second chances.

  Less extreme than the Crusaders are the Guardians. Like the Crusaders, they’re opposed to Dark mages, but their philosophy is basically defensive rather than aggressive. While the Crusaders want to go out and take the fight to the Dark mages, the Guardians just want to hold things together. They’d rather do the minimum to prevent Dark mages from hurting other people, then leave them to fight among themselves (something Dark mages tend to do quite enthusiastically). And opposing both the Guardians and the Crusaders is the Unity Bloc. The Unitarians want the Light and Dark factions to unite, bringing Dark mages into the Council and involving them in the political process. It’s not a new idea, more of a cyclical one, and it’s been attempted and abandoned many times before.

  If it had been just the Unity Bloc versus the Guardians and Crusaders, the Unity Bloc wouldn’t have a chance. But increasingly the Unity Bloc was coming into favour with the Centrists, and the Centrists had more members than the Guardians and the Crusaders put together. And now Morden was making a push not only to get Dark mages recognised, but to get a Dark seat on the Light Council itself. It hadn’t yet come to an open contest, but if things kept going the way they had been, that was where it was headed.

  Morden’s actions had given Talisid a second reason to be interested in Richard. As far as most Light mages knew, Talisid was just a mid-level Council functionary, but for several years now I’d been pretty sure that he was one of the Guardian faction’s black-ops guys. The Guardians did not want Morden on the Council, and if Talisid could prove that Richard was up to something and link him to Morden, that would kill Morden’s proposal stone dead. Unfortunately for Talisid, he hadn’t found anything. Unfortunately for us, that had caused him to take increasing risks with our missions in the hope that we’d find him something he could use. But while we’d found out plenty about Richard’s activities, we hadn’t found anything much that we could do about it, to the point where it had become almost like checking the weather forecast. Yes, that tornado’s moving in your direction, and yes, it’s going to be a bad one, and isn’t it going to suck if it decides to hit your house?

  “Okay,” Luna said. She’d had long enough to calm down, now. “If no one else is going to say it, I will. Should we still be working for Talisid?”

  “He can still get us in with the Council,” Variam said.

  “Not really,” Luna said. “Hardly anyone knows about what we’re doing. It’s all under-the-table stuff.”

  “Yeah, and it’s going to stay that way,” I said. “Talisid still hasn’t given up on getting me to go spy on Richard as a double agent.”

  “Which is frigging insane, by the way,” Variam said.

  “No kidding,” I said. Talisid hadn’t tried to sell it to me again, but I knew he hadn’t forgotten about it. “But as long as he thinks he can use us as plants, he’s not going to want us to get any recognition. He wants to stop Richard. Keeping us alive is an optional extra.”

>   “But that’s going to screw us over, isn’t it?” Luna said. “People are talking about Morden’s new proposal. I see it in my classes. All the Light mages who’ve got an axe to grind with the Dark ones, they’re all coming out of the woodwork. They’re going to be looking for someone to take it out on, and we’re right in the crosshairs. Well, I guess Vari isn’t, but . . .”

  “Yeah, it’s not that easy, you know,” Variam said. “Just because I’m a Keeper apprentice doesn’t mean they don’t give me shit over Sagash and Jagadev.”

  “They’re still not going to go after you. But they might go after Alex.”

  “The Council’s never liked me,” I said. “That’s nothing new.”

  “We know Richard’s going to make a move sooner or later, right?” Luna said. “If that happens and the Council are after us as well, we’re going to be totally and utterly screwed.”

  “Thanks, Luna, I figured that out already.” I still had no idea how we were ever going to stand up to Richard. He was one of the most feared mages in the country. And the Council was the most powerful faction in the country. The thought of trying to fight either of them was insane. Fighting both at once . . .

  “Is there anything we could do to stop that?” Anne said. Anne tends to be the quietest one in our discussions—quiet enough that it’s easy to forget she’s there—but she pays attention.

  “Okay, what if we just go public with the whole thing?” Variam said. “We take everything we’ve figured out about Richard and shout it as loud as we can. People’ll listen.”

  “We’ll also be painting a giant target on our backs,” I said. “You seriously think Richard and Morden are going to take that lying down?”

  “Um,” Anne said. “I don’t really like that plan.”

  “Nobody likes that plan,” Luna said.

  “I don’t mind a fight,” Variam said.

  “That’s because you’re an idiot.”

  “Oh, stop being—”

  “Guys,” I said. “Not helping.”

  “Fine,” Variam said. “You just want to hurt Morden and Richard? We take what we’ve found and leak it anonymously.”

  “No,” I said. “First, we haven’t found out anything important enough to make any real impact. Unless we have solid proof that Morden’s working with Richard, it’ll just be another rumour. Second, it won’t stay anonymous for long. They’ll figure out where it came from. And third, it doesn’t actually do anything to make it less likely that we’ll end up fighting both Richard and the Council.”

  “It’s not as though Richard can afford to focus on us, either,” Variam said. “His big problems are going to be other Dark mages. They’re not going to be happy taking orders from him.”

  I nodded. “But he’s going to get around to us eventually.”

  “Okay,” Luna said, “so if we can’t do anything about Richard, what about the Council?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, the reason they won’t go after Vari is that he joined the Keepers, right?” Luna said. “Talisid can get us work, but he won’t get us what Vari has. So why don’t you join the Keepers too?”

  Anne, Variam, and I are all quite different people from who we were three years ago, but out of the four of us, it’s probably Luna who’s changed the most. When I first met Luna she was lonely and depressed, smiling rarely and laughing not at all. Nowadays when you look at her the first thing you notice is her confidence. Being an adept in mage society isn’t easy, but Luna’s managed to take that and turn it into a strength; it gives her a different perspective and she’s often the one to come up with ideas that don’t occur to the rest of us.

  Anne, Variam, and I all turned to stare at Luna. “What?” Luna said.

  “The Council are—” Anne began, and stopped. She’d been about to say our enemies. The Council haven’t given me many reasons to like them; the treatment Anne’s received from them has been worse. “They’re not our friends.”

  “Yeah, no shit,” Luna said. “I don’t like them either, but we might as well use them.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Keepers recruit from apprentices or from Light mages. No way in hell they’d take me.”

  “Well . . .” Variam said. “Kind of.”

  Luna looked at him.

  “You couldn’t actually be a Keeper,” Variam said. “Not without spending years and years. But you could be sanctioned.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Means you count as an auxiliary and they can recruit you for jobs. Some of those guys spend as much time in the station as the Keepers do . . . well, it’s halfway there, I guess. It doesn’t make you a member of the club, but it’s next best.”

  “Which order, though?”

  “Probably Order of the Star. Order of the Shield only takes battle-mages and the Order of the Cloak spend all their time dealing with normals.”

  “I dunno, that could work if—”

  “Hey,” I interrupted. “Can you two stop talking as though I’ve agreed to this?”

  “You’ve basically told us that sooner or later, we’re going to be fighting Richard,” Luna said. “If you’re tied in with the Council, that’ll make it harder for him, right?”

  “That doesn’t matter. The Council don’t like me either. Have you forgotten about Levistus?”

  “If Levistus wants to get us, then if we’re split off from the Council without any friends in the Keepers, that’ll make it easier,” Luna said. “Not harder.”

  I didn’t like the idea. It was true that what Luna and Variam were suggesting wasn’t actually all that big a step. I’d helped the Council out with investigations and police work before—if I was being honest, becoming a sanctioned auxiliary would just be a way of recognising what I’d effectively been doing anyway. But it did mean making the relationship official, and while it might not have been a big step in reality, it felt like one to me.

  What it really came down to was the simple fact that I don’t like the Council. Maybe not all of them are bad—and I’ll admit, I know a lot more of the better ones than I used to—but I’ve got too many old grudges to forget easily. Every single time in my life that I’ve really needed help, the Council have left me in the lurch, and more than once they’ve been the reason I needed help in the first place.

  “Look,” Luna said when I didn’t answer. “We’ve been at this for how long now? Six months? Maybe a bit more. And all we’ve really been doing is just reacting to what Richard’s done. Okay, we’ve been finding out what we can, but basically he does stuff, and we spy on it. We’re not going to win anything this way.”

  “I know that,” I said. “But we’re the underdogs here. You know the kind of resources Richard can draw on. We can’t move against him directly.”

  “So doesn’t that mean we need some more friends, then?” Variam said with a frown. “Otherwise, what happens when he gets around to us?”

  “I still don’t want to deal with the Keepers.”

  “That was what I said,” Variam pointed out. “You told me to join them anyway. Remember?”

  That brought me up short. When I’d first met Variam a couple of years back, he’d been just as hostile towards the Keepers as I was. More, actually. But I’d managed to persuade him otherwise with . . .

  . . . with pretty much the same arguments Luna and Variam were using now.

  Luna and Variam were looking at me. I looked at Anne. So did Luna and Vari.

  “Um,” Anne said. She looked a little troubled. “It’s not really my decision.”

  “What do you think though?” Luna said.

  “I . . .” Anne looked at me, hesitated. I didn’t say anything. Somehow I was hoping Anne would give me a reason to say no.

  “I don’t trust the Keepers,” Anne said at last. I felt my heart lift slightly, but Anne kept going. “Especiall
y the Order of the Star. So I wouldn’t blame you if you said no. But . . . it’s worked for Vari. And they don’t hate you as badly as they do me. If it could keep you and Luna alive . . . maybe it’s worth it.”

  “We still don’t know that they’d say yes,” I said.

  “So you’ll try it?” Luna said.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t say you wouldn’t, either.”

  I rolled my eyes, then paused. All three of them were looking at me. “What?”

  “So?” Luna said.

  “Slow down,” I said. “Even if I did agree—which I haven’t—we’ve got no place to start. It’s not like I can show up and ask for an application form.”

  “That’s easy,” Luna said. “Just go to Caldera. You’ve worked with her enough times already, right?”

  “We’re not exactly best friends.”

  “Yeah, but she doesn’t hate you or anything,” Variam said. “Actually she kind of likes you.”

  “And all you have to do is ask,” Luna said. “I mean, what do you lose if she says no?”

  I tried to think of a good answer to that and didn’t have one. All of them were still watching me and I felt weirdly trapped.

  “So are you—?” Luna began.

  “All right! I’ll ask.”

  | | | | | | | | |

  Which was how, one week later, I found myself standing outside Keeper headquarters in Westminster.

  The main Keeper HQ for all of Britain is just south of Victoria Street, in one of the little off-roads. That particular area of London has always felt to me as though it’s so full of history that it becomes commonplace—you can’t cross the street without passing something historical or architecturally significant. The actual headquarters is one of those big grand Victorian buildings, with pillars and carvings on the front, as well as statues of some goddess or other and a few of the more photogenic predatory animals.

  Like a lot of old London buildings, the inside of Keeper HQ is a lot less impressive than the outside. The walls are covered in flaking paint that’s a similar colour to coffee mould, and the stairs and floors use that particularly horrible type of linoleum that got popular in the mid-twentieth century and for some reason has never quite gone away. I checked in at reception and got told to wait. There were half a dozen other people sitting on the chairs against the wall, and none of them seemed especially happy to be there. I sat down and crossed my legs.