Alex Verus 5: Hidden Page 2

  Up until last summer, my life had been going pretty well. I’d taken in a pair of young mages named Anne and Variam, and between them, Luna, and a Light mage named Sonder, I’d had something close to a real social life for the first time in ten years. I’d started to believe that I might have finally gotten away from my past.

  I was wrong. In August, a group of adepts calling themselves the Nightstalkers showed up, looking for revenge for one of the uglier things I’d done while I’d been Richard’s apprentice. They couldn’t find Richard, but they found me all right and would have killed me if my friends hadn’t come to help. In the aftermath I’d told Luna, Sonder, Anne, and Variam why the Nightstalkers were after me and what I’d done for them to hate me so much.

  Luna had taken it surprisingly well. She’d read between the lines and figured out most of the story before I’d even told it to her, and had decided that her loyalties lay with me. Variam, prickly but fiercely honourable, had chosen the same way. But Anne and Sonder had been less sure, and while they were still making up their minds I’d led the Nightstalkers, young and inexperienced and painfully idealistic, into a trap in which nearly all of them had been killed. I hadn’t had much choice, but that didn’t make me feel any better about it.

  Both Anne and Sonder cut off contact with me when they found out. I’d had a short and painful conversation with Anne in which she’d made it clear that she thought what I’d done was unforgivable, and from the brief attempts I’d made since then to talk to Sonder I was pretty sure he felt the same way. A part of me agreed with them.

  Keeping my past a secret hadn’t done me any favours that time. In fact, it had probably made things worse.

  “He’s my father,” I told Luna.

  “Really?”

  “What’s with that tone of voice? I do have parents.”

  “Uh . . . you never talk about them.”

  “Yeah, there’s a reason for that. After they split up I didn’t see my dad for a long time, and when I did it was after my time with Richard.” I hadn’t been in good shape back then. I’d spent most of the previous year as a prisoner in Richard’s mansion, getting periodic visits from one of Richard’s other apprentices. “I told him bits of the story, skipped over the magic parts, but I did tell him what I did to Tobruk.” Namely, that I’d killed the evil little bastard.

  “Okay.”

  “My dad’s a pacifist,” I said. “He doesn’t believe in violence.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Why is that so hard to believe?”

  “Well, you’re, um . . .”

  I gave Luna a narrow look. “What?”

  “. . . I’m not finishing that sentence. So the conversation didn’t go well?”

  “My dad’s a political science professor who thinks violence is a sign of barbarism. I told him to his face that I’d committed premeditated murder and didn’t regret it.” With hindsight that had been a spectacularly bad idea, but I hadn’t been in much of a condition to think it through. “How do you think the conversation went?”

  “Badly?”

  We’d made our way off the university campus and back out onto the London streets, heading north towards Euston Road. “Do you talk to him much?” Luna asked.

  “Last time was a couple of years ago.”

  “Does he know that you’re . . . ?”

  “A mage? No. He thinks I got involved with criminals and that Richard was some sort of mob boss. I suppose if I worked at it I might be able to convince him that Richard was a Dark mage, but I don’t think that’d be much of an improvement.” And if I told him what I’d done to those adepts last year . . .

  “How about if I went and talked to him?” Luna suggested.

  “No.”

  “I could—”

  “No. This is one area I do not want you messing around in.” I looked at her. “Clear?”

  I saw Luna’s eyebrows go up and she shot me a quick glance. “Clear,” she said after a moment.

  We walked in silence for a few minutes. I waited to see if Luna would push her luck, but she stayed quiet. We worked our way through the London back streets, the traffic a steady noise in the background. “So,” I said at last. “How about you tell me why you’re really here?”

  “What?”

  “You’re working up to asking me for something.”

  Luna made a face. “Yes, it’s that obvious,” I said. “Let’s hear it.”

  “If it’s a bad time—”

  “Luna . . .”

  “Okay, okay,” Luna said. “Have you heard anything from Anne? As in lately.”

  I looked at her curiously. “No.”

  “You sent her that message.”

  “And I got a very polite nonanswer.” It had been my third try. Give Anne credit, she does at least answer her mail. “Would have thought you’d be in closer touch than me.”

  Luna sounded like she was choosing her words carefully. “Do you think you could invite her to move back in?”

  I looked at Luna in surprise, about to ask if she was serious. The look on her face told me she was. “I know things didn’t end all that well,” Luna continued hurriedly, “but it was nine months ago. She might have cooled off, right?”

  “Why are you asking about this now?”

  “Well, it’d be safer, wouldn’t it? I mean, that was why you invited them to stay.”

  Back when I’d first met Anne and Variam, they’d been staying with a rakshasa named Jagadev. Rakshasas are powerful tigerlike shapeshifters from the Indian subcontinent—mages don’t trust them and vice versa, both with good reason. Jagadev had kicked them out shortly afterwards, leaving them as apprentices without a master, which in magical society is a lot like skinny-dipping in a shark tank. Anne and Variam’s only real protection had been their membership in the Light apprentice program, a kind of magical university. Trouble is, you’re not allowed into the program unless you’re a Light or independent apprentice in good standing, which Anne and Vari weren’t. To fix that I’d invited them to move in with me, effectively taking Jagadev’s place as their sponsor, up until last summer when they’d both moved out. In Vari’s case he’d become a Light apprentice for real, signing up with a Light Keeper. Anne hadn’t.

  “Back then they didn’t have anywhere else to go,” I said. “It’s different now. Vari’s got a master, and Anne’s got that place down in Honor Oak.”

  “But she doesn’t have anyone sponsoring her.”

  “Yeah.” We crossed the street, heading north. “But at least she’s still in the apprentice program.”

  Luna hesitated.

  I looked at Luna. “What?”

  “So, about that . . .”

  “Please don’t tell me she left.”

  “Uh . . . technically, no,” Luna said. “It was more like ‘got expelled.’”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me. When?”

  “The announcement was yesterday.”

  “Why now?” I said. “She and Vari joined up what, two years ago? Did some teacher get vindictive or something?”

  “No,” Luna said. “They’re saying she attacked another student.”

  I stared at Luna. “Anne attacked another student?”

  “Yeah,” Luna said. “You remember Natasha?”

  “Oh,” I said. “Okay . . .” Natasha was a Light apprentice I’d met the year before last. She’d thrown a tantrum over Luna knocking her out of a tournament, to the point of shooting her in the back with a spell which might have killed Luna if Anne hadn’t been there to heal her. I hadn’t been able to do anything to Natasha officially—her master was too well connected and she’d gotten away with only a slap on the wrist—but I’d met Natasha’s master afterwards and explained very clearly what would happen to her apprentice if she did anything like that again. Apparently the lesson had stuck because Natasha’s master
had kept her away from Luna ever since. If Anne had gone after Natasha, odds were Natasha had done something to deserve it.

  But still . . . “Are you sure it was Anne who started it?” I asked. “Natasha didn’t attack her first?”

  “I don’t think she got the chance. She went straight down and started screaming. They had to sedate her to shut her up and she hasn’t been back since.”

  I gave Luna a slightly disbelieving look, but she didn’t look like she was exaggerating. She didn’t look particularly upset, either, but there was a tinge of worry there as well—no matter how good her reasons for disliking Natasha, she knew this was serious.

  “Has the expulsion gone through, or is it hanging?”

  “They fast-tracked it. Natasha’s master isn’t pushing her own charges yet, though.”

  “She couldn’t, not easily. Would bring up too many awkward questions about why her apprentice wasn’t expelled for doing the same thing to you in Fountain Reach.” I thought for a second, then shook my head. “Won’t help with the expulsion, though. That’ll be from the program directors.”

  “So?” Luna said. “What do you think?”

  “Having Anne move back in? It won’t fly. Might have helped if we’d done it a month ago, but it won’t be enough to get her reinstated.”

  “Oh, screw getting reinstated, most of those classes are a waste of time anyway. I’m worried about her. Being on your own as an apprentice is a really bad idea, right? Isn’t that what you keep telling me?”

  “Preaching to the choir.”

  “She could end up as a slave to a Dark mage or worse. Right?”

  Which was exactly what had happened to Anne a few years ago. It was something we had in common. “It’s possible, yes.”

  “So?”

  “What do you mean, ‘so’?” I looked at Luna. “Yes, you’re right. Being a mage or an adept on your own at Anne’s age is a really bad idea, especially when the apprentice grapevine makes sure everyone knows about it. So why are you telling all this to me? You should be talking to her.”

  “I did.”

  “And?”

  Luna didn’t look happy. “Let me guess,” I said. “She said no, so now you’re coming to me?”

  “Well . . . yeah. Could you ask her?”

  The flip side of Luna’s new self-confidence is that it’s made her a lot less shy about asking for what she wants. “She’s made it pretty clear that she doesn’t want to talk to me, and even if she did I don’t think moving back is high on her to-do list.”

  “It doesn’t hurt to ask.”

  “Is that your new motto for dealing with mages, or something?”

  Luna came to a halt in the middle of the pavement, forcing me to stop and turn to her. “Look, I’m worried. She’s my best friend, even if I hardly see her nowadays. I know you two don’t get on anymore and I haven’t said anything, but . . . can’t you give it a try? It’s not as though you lose anything if she says no, right?”

  Traffic went by in the street, and pedestrians changed their course to avoid us. Luna gave me a pleading look, and all of a sudden my objections felt a lot weaker. I still didn’t want to do it, but it wasn’t as though Luna were really asking for much . . . and she wasn’t wrong about the danger Anne might be in. “All right,” I said.

  “Tonight?”

  “Fine. Tonight.”

  | | | | | | | | |

  I parted company from Luna and headed south. With her out of sight it only took a couple of minutes for my thoughts to skip away from her and Anne and go back to circling the uncomfortable subject of my father.

  It was probably just as well that Luna had shown up. Without her to give me a push, I might have ended up skulking outside that hall for hours. I’d been telling Luna the truth—my father had been utterly horrified at what I’d done to Tobruk (and to several others, for that matter). The bit I hadn’t told her was that even though I couldn’t see any remotely realistic way in which I could ever change my father’s mind, I’d kept on trying anyway. I’d seen my father maybe a dozen times over the past ten years, and every time the meeting had ended up devolving into the same bitter argument. He couldn’t see how violence was ever the right choice, and I couldn’t see how that attitude could ever make sense—we always said the same things and reacted the same way, as though we were acting out the script for a play we both knew by heart, with tiny variations that ultimately didn’t make any difference. Even now, as I walked through the London streets, I found myself running through the arguments with my father for the thousandth time, debating the points and imagining the counterarguments he’d make so that I could respond to them.

  On a rational level I knew it didn’t make sense. The fights with my father never achieved anything—all they did was make me strung out and depressed—yet somehow I kept having them. It was as though I needed to prove something to him, make him admit that I was right and he was wrong. It’d never happen, and I knew it would never happen, but still I carried on doing it. About the only thing that could pull my mind away from it was work.

  Luckily, I had a meeting scheduled for exactly that.

  | | | | | | | | |

  I met Talisid in the Holborn restaurant we usually use for our discussions, an Italian place close enough to the station to be convenient and spacious enough to be private. Talisid greeted me, courteous as always, a middle-aged man an inch or two under average height, with a balding head and greying hair. At first glance he looks so bland that he could be part of the furniture, but a closer look might suggest a little more. I’ve known him for two years and I trust him more than anyone else on the Council, which isn’t saying much. We ordered and got down to business.

  “We’ve heard back from the Americans,” Talisid said once we’d finished with chitchat. “They’re offering to drop the issue in exchange for more information on Richard.”

  “I already told them I don’t have any more information on Richard. Am I going to have to have this conversation with every country’s Keepers?”

  “Just the two, so far,” Talisid murmured.

  The leader of the pack of adepts who’d come after me last year had been an American citizen named Will. After what had happened to him the American Council had started making noises, and since Talisid owed me a couple of favours I’d asked him for help. For the last few months Talisid had been acting as my go-between, as well as advisor on the kind of points of law you really don’t want to ask about in public. The really screwed-up part is that under mage law, what I’d done to Will and the Nightstalkers had been perfectly legal. There’s a reason adepts don’t like the Council much.

  I twirled my butter knife absently. “How bad an idea would it be to tell them to get lost?”

  “They’re not going to try to extradite you, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Talisid said. “But if you’re ever planning to set foot in North America, it might be a better idea to clean this up now rather than later.”

  “Fine,” I said with a sigh. “Tell them—again—that I’ve no idea where Richard is or what he’s been up to, but I could fill in their files about the rest of those adepts. Maybe they’ll trade for that.”

  “It’s possible. There might be a more direct approach.”

  I eyed Talisid. “Such as?”

  “The American Council are as interested in the reports concerning Richard as we are,” Talisid said. “If you could confirm or deny them . . .”

  I sighed. “Not this again.”

  “You are uniquely qualified to investigate the issue.”

  “Investigate what? A bunch of rumours?”

  “Those same rumours have persisted for almost a year,” Talisid said. “In my experience that tends to indicate an active source. Besides—”

  “Is there any actual proof?”

  “No,” Talisid said after a very slight pause.

  “I�
�m not keen on poking around asking questions on the Dark side of the fence just so the Council can feel better about themselves. I’m not exactly popular there, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  “I would have thought it concerns you rather directly as well.”

  “Richard’s gone,” I said. It came out more harshly than I’d intended. I’d had a dream last year in which Richard had definitely not been gone, and it had shaken me more than I was willing to admit. But months had passed and nothing had happened, and eventually I’d been able to make myself believe that it really had only been a dream. The only reason I hadn’t managed to put it out of my mind completely was that everyone else kept bringing it up.

  Talisid opened his mouth and I raised my hand to cut him off. “You’ve asked me to do this what, three times now? The answer’s still no.”

  Talisid paused again, studying me, and I felt the futures swirl. “As you wish,” he said at last.

  Food arrived and occupied us for some minutes. “Have you been following the political developments?” Talisid asked.

  “Which ones?”

  “The movement to include Dark mages on the Council has picked up again. The main one pushing for it appears to be your old friend Morden.”

  “He’s not my friend, and no, I hadn’t heard. Doesn’t this come up every few years?”

  “This time may be different—the unity bloc has been gaining influence. I was wondering if you’d heard anything.”

  “That kind of stuff’s above my pay grade.”

  “Would you be interested in changing that?”

  I shot Talisid a look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “The faction I represent has reasons to be concerned with the current state of affairs. A better-developed intelligence network would be useful.”

  “And you want me to do what, play James Bond?” I said in amusement. “I think most of the agents in those stories had a really short life expectancy.”

  “It’s a little less dramatic than that,” Talisid said with a slight smile. “It’s information we need, not commando raids. We simply never know as much as we’d like to. It’s more for the future than right now—there’s nothing that needs immediate attention. Just something to think about.”