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  As I did I realised it had been a long time since I’d heard any movement. The house was quiet-really quiet. I stopped and listened but couldn’t hear any activity at all.

  The corridor I’d reached felt much older than the outer parts of the house. The furniture was dark and shabby, there were cracks in the plaster, and a fine layer of dust covered the tables.

  And suddenly my precognition flared.

  My divination magic might have been dulled, but my reactions weren’t. In a flash I was hidden in a doorway, the hood of my mist cloak concealing my face, fading into the background against the shadows of the dimly lit corridor.

  The house was silent. I held myself perfectly still. Only my eyes moved, flicking up and down the length of the corridor. I couldn’t see or sense anything. But my magic was telling me that something very, very bad was going to happen if I moved even an inch from where I was standing now. One minute passed, two minutes, five. My feet itched but I didn’t let myself move. I scanned for enemies using every trick I knew and came up blank.

  And all of a sudden the threat was gone. I checked and rechecked the futures and found nothing. I held still another five minutes, then moved quickly and quietly away down the corridor, holding my breath until I was safely out of sight.

  Although I kept a tight grip on it, I was shaken. I hadn’t been able to make out what the danger was but I was absolutely sure that something would have happened to me if I’d moved. Usually my magic shows me the outcome of bad choices in gruesome detail. I’ve always thought it’s one of the nastiest bits of being a diviner but now I was finding that knowing something was after you without knowing what was actually worse.

  As I moved I tried to figure out just what the hell had happened there. I’d sensed danger in the short-term future but the immediate future had shown nothing but an empty corridor. If something had been about to attack me, why hadn’t I seen any trace of it?

  I didn’t know, but I wasn’t staying around to find out. I reached an intersection and scanned ahead. I still didn’t know which was the way out but I wasn’t looking for that anymore: All I was focused on was evading the invisible threat behind me. One of the routes gave me a stirring of unease and I took the other, moving as fast as I could. I was concentrating on scanning for the whatever-it-was rather than looking for rooms or people, and so I didn’t notice that I’d made my way back to the duelling hall until I came through the doorway.

  The hall wasn’t empty this time. There was a young man standing by one of the tables, going through the papers. He was tall and thin, dressed in black with a whiplike quickness to his movements. It had been eight months since I’d seen him but I remembered him very well. His name was Onyx, and the last time we’d met he’d been trying to kill me.

  As I stopped in the doorway Onyx’s head snapped up towards me. For a second we stared at each other.

  Onyx cast a spell and I leapt back as blades of force slashed in an X pattern through the space I’d been in a second ago. Another blade hissed over my head as I rolled left into the corridor, coming to my feet in a run.

  There was a wall between Onyx and me now, and I sprinted down the corridor before he could regain a line of sight. Looking ahead I saw that he wasn’t chasing me, he was going to-

  Crap! I threw myself flat, skidding on the carpet, and as I did splinters and plaster exploded all around me as Onyx sent a lethal spray of force blades tearing through the building. They were at waist height and he’d fired them straight from the duelling hall, cutting across the corridor and through the wall on both sides.

  As he did, a bolt of agony went through my head, a mental shriek of pain and fury. It was so powerful it blanked my thoughts for an instant, making my vision grey out.

  When I came to I was curled on the floor, my hands over my ears. I staggered to my feet and kept moving, trying to shake off the fuzziness inside my head. My hearing was still working and I could hear distant shouts from ahead of me, and I knew that we’d stirred up trouble, but the noise was enough to orient me and suddenly I knew more or less where I was going. I couldn’t sense Onyx or the other presence anymore, and I kept moving. As I reached the corridor leading to the outer rooms, a group of people went hurrying past. I waited in the shadows for them to get out of sight, then slipped into the room from which I’d entered and dropped out the window.

  As I left the walls of the mansion my vision of the futures ahead of me cleared, and my heart lifted as I could see properly again. I ran out across the garden under the starlight, my feet quiet on the grass. Looking back through the cold night air I could see the windows of Fountain Reach lit up. Distant shouts echoed through the walls, but I couldn’t hear any sounds of battle.

  I made it out of the garden and started back up the forested slope in the darkness. I could have activated my gate stone, but I wanted to put a safe distance between me and any pursuers before I did anything to reveal my presence. As I scanned ahead through the futures, though, I saw that I wasn’t alone in the woods. Someone was ahead of me in the same vantage point I’d used earlier. Maybe they’d had the same idea as me.

  I was tempted to just bug out, but I’d had time to recover from my scare. Now that my magic was working properly again I had my confidence back. I altered course towards the person above, and as I did I thought about Onyx.

  Onyx is the Chosen of a powerful Dark mage named Morden. Morden was one of the two major players competing for the fateweaver back in April; he coerced me and a small cabal of Dark mages to go get it for him and sent Onyx along to ensure our cooperation. It turned out that Onyx’s idea of cooperation involved him leaving with the fateweaver and everyone else not leaving at all. I got hold of the fateweaver before Onyx did and we had a frank exchange of views.

  It ended up with Onyx on the floor and bleeding, barely escaping with his life. Unfortunately I’d only won because of the fateweaver, and the price tag on those powers turned out to be a hell of a lot higher than I was willing to pay. The fateweaver was gone but Onyx was still around, and that was bad news because Onyx was one of the deadliest battle-mages I’d ever had the misfortune to run up against. I wondered if he held a grudge against me for humiliating him like that. I had the feeling the answer was a definite yes.

  The person waiting at the viewpoint near the top of the hill was a girl, nineteen or so. She was just a shadow in the darkness, but by looking into the futures in which I switched on my light I recognised her as one of Morden’s slaves. I had to think for a minute before I remembered her name: Lisa. I hadn’t really expected to see her again. Slaves to Dark mages have a high turnover rate. I let myself fade into the shadows and waited.

  Onyx arrived five minutes later. He was obviously trying to be quiet but I had the impression he didn’t spend much time in the woods and it wasn’t hard to hear him coming. Unlike me his magic didn’t give him any way to see in the dark and he’d resorted to some kind of black-light spell that cast a murky glow. I felt Lisa go tense as she saw him.

  “Who did you see?” Onyx said as he walked up into the clearing.

  “N-nobody.”

  “Verus was in there.” Onyx was young, but his voice was flat and cold and sent a chill down my spine. “When did he go in?”

  “I don’t know-”

  The blow didn’t look powerful but it was augmented with force and took Lisa off her feet. Onyx had already turned away and was staring down at Fountain Reach. There was a sort of casual indifference to the whole thing. Onyx had been annoyed and Lisa had been in front of him, so he’d hit her. He didn’t care whether it had been her fault and in fact he seemed already to have forgotten that she was there. Lisa stayed on the ground for a while, cringing, then pulled herself upright.

  Onyx shook his head and turned away. The darkness shrouded his face but his body language looked frustrated. Magic flared around him as he opened a black gateway; he stepped through and Lisa hurried through after him without needing to be told. The gateway closed and I was left alone on the hillside.


  I watched thoughtfully for a moment, then turned to make my way home.

  * * *

  “

  But what was Onyx doing there?” Sonder asked an hour and a half later.

  Arachne’s cave is wide and oval-shaped, hidden under Hampstead Heath and hollowed out of stone that’s been worn smooth by the passage of hundreds of years. Clothes cover the furniture and every inch of the walls, turning the cave into a riot of green and blue and yellow and red. There are small changing rooms to one side and at the far end a tunnel leads down into darkness.

  Sonder was sitting on the edge of one of the chairs, his clothes rumpled from a day spent indoors. He has messy black hair, a pair of glasses, and a way of peering at whatever he’s reading that makes it look like he’s completely oblivious to everything else, which is usually true. He’s twenty-one but looks like a first-year university student. He still had his arms full of papers, and the reports he’d been reading were spread out over a pile of coats on the table in front of him. He pushed his glasses up automatically as he waited for my answer.

  “I don’t know,” I said from my sofa. I was more tired than I should have been; the escape from Fountain Reach had taken a lot out of me and I obviously hadn’t fully recovered from Anne’s spell yet. “But I’m pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to be there either.”

  “Do you think it’s him?” Luna called. She was hidden behind the curtain of one of the changing rooms. “Him and Morden, I mean.”

  “They’re vicious enough,” I said. “But it seems like an odd thing for him to do.”

  “Onyx?” I could feel Luna shudder. “He’d do anything.”

  “Anything Morden tells him to. Don’t forget that.”

  “We know they take slaves,” Luna said. “Like that girl Lisa. Maybe that’s where the apprentices are going.”

  “There’s no way Morden would take that kind of risk,” I said. “The reason he got involved in the hunt for the fateweaver was because he wanted to become Council representative of the Dark mages. If he kept them as slaves it’d get out sooner or later, and as soon as that happened he’d lose any chance he ever had of getting that position.”

  “But what if-Oh, Arachne, could you have a look?”

  “Of course, dear,” Arachne said from her perch in the corner. She was working on something in vivid green. “Come right out.”

  Arachne is a weaver, the best I know, and everything in her lair is her own work. She’s been making clothes since before I was born-probably since before my great-great-grandparents were born. She trades the clothes to mages and adepts in return for services and information, but honestly, I think she’d be just as happy to give them away. Arachne’s a maker, and for her creating is its own reward.

  She’s also a giant spider, which bothers most people, although these days I hardly notice. Arachne had been working on the cloth in front of her with her four front legs, but now she turned her eight opaque eyes upwards as Luna stepped out from behind the curtain wearing a rose-coloured dress with a square neckline and ruffles. “What do you think?” Luna said doubtfully.

  Sonder looked up as soon as Luna started to come out, and now he stared. “Um,” he said at last. “It’s, uh, good. Really good.”

  “Definitely not,” Arachne said firmly, clicking her mandibles. “Not for where you’re going. We’ll save that one for the summer.”

  Luna disappeared behind the curtain. “What did you and Luna turn up?” I asked Sonder.

  Sonder was still staring after Luna. “Sonder!” I said more loudly.

  Sonder jumped. “What?”

  “The disappearances,” I said. “You know, what you and Luna were looking at all day?”

  “Right,” Sonder said. “Okay.” He pushed his glasses up and started going through his papers again. “Where did you want to start?”

  “With the victims,” I said. From the changing room came the rustle of clothes, and from the corner the quick flick-flick-flick of Arachne’s needle. “Who were they?”

  “Well, um,” Sonder said. “The first is Caroline Montroyd. She was apprenticed to an air mage in London but she lived with her parents in Watford. She left her master’s sanctum one night and never came home. Her parents called the police, but they didn’t find anything and the police think she ran away. She’d been having arguments with her father and mother and talking about leaving, and at first everyone thought that was what had happened, but. .”

  “But it’s a bit of a coincidence,” I said with a nod. “Go on.”

  “The second one’s name is Chaven,” Sonder said. He was beginning to focus again now. “Force mage, supposed to be a really good duellist, was actually one of the favourites for the White Stone. He’d mostly dropped out of university but he was still staying in the halls of residence for London Metropolitan. We don’t know for sure when he disappeared. The doorman said he saw him go in one night, and he didn’t show up for classes the next day. No one saw him leave.

  “Then there’s Ness,” Sonder said, and he looked suddenly uncomfortable. “Vanessa, I mean. I. . actually know her. She used to come to one of the classes I was teaching. Well, not really teaching, but the mage who was supposed to be doing it wasn’t there, and. . um. Anyway. She lived alone in a flat. She made it home one night and no one ever saw her again.”

  “Then how the hell did she vanish?” I said in annoyance. “Did someone kick the door down or what?”

  “Nothing like that,” Sonder said. “The door was locked. Nothing was broken. Although. . Well, I was talking to the neighbours and the woman from the flat next door said she thought Ness had had a visitor after midnight. She heard a bell and voices.”

  “What kind of voices?”

  “She didn’t remember.”

  “Okay. So what did you see?”

  Sonder is a time mage. It’s got a few similarities to my own style of magic, but the things he can do with it are very different. For one thing, he can actually affect space and time directly, although it’s not what he specialises in. What Sonder is really good at is history: looking back and seeing what happened. You’d think that would make solving mysteries pretty easy and it does, at least when you’re dealing with normals. But in the magical world the abilities of time mages are well known and other mages take precautions against them.

  “I couldn’t find Caroline,” Sonder said. “I traced her into the Underground but then there were the crowds and the interference, and. . Anyway. Chaven was a bit easier. I got a look at the halls, and he was definitely there in his room with some friends. Then he went to bed, and. . nothing. Greyed out. Someone used a shroud effect over that temporal area. The same with Ness. I traced it and the whole route back to the entrance was concealed.”

  Shrouds are magical items that block scrying, especially the temporal kind that Sonder does. They’re not cheap and they’re generally only used by people who are very serious about keeping their activities a secret. I thought for a minute. “What about cameras?”

  “Which ones?”

  “Halls of residence have security cameras,” I said. “So do most blocks of flats. And they store the records. If you saw the shroud effect, then you can narrow down what time you need to be looking at.”

  “Yes, but they wouldn’t have let me look at them.” Sonder looked uncomfortable. “I wasn’t even supposed to be there.”

  “But Talisid will know people who could look at them.”

  “Wouldn’t they have tried them already?”

  “Mages tend to assume magic’s the solution to everything,” I said with a smile. I’d fallen into that trap this afternoon. “It’s worth a try.”

  Sonder thought about it, then nodded. “Okay.” He paused. “Alex? What’s going on here? I mean. . apprentices going missing like this? And someone trying to kill Anne? Why would anyone want to do all this?”

  “I don’t know,” I said slowly. “And that’s the problem. I think if we understood why all this is happening, we’d be most of the way
there. People don’t do things just because. Someone has a damn good reason for disappearing all these apprentices and shooting Anne and blaming me. If we can figure out the reason, we’ll know how to stop it.”

  “Oh,” Sonder said. “What do you think’s happened to them? Ness and the others.”

  I looked at Sonder for a moment. “Best guess?”

  Sonder nodded.

  “They’re all dead.”

  Sonder flinched. “But-”

  “You know what’s going to happen to anyone caught doing this,” I said quietly. “So if I were doing it, I’d do everything I could to make sure that didn’t happen. Like tying off loose ends.”

  There was the rustle of a curtain and Sonder and I looked up as Luna stepped out again. She’d changed into a yellow-and-white dress with a vertical design that made me think of a flower. She looked more confident this time and as we watched she gave a little twirl. “What do you think?”

  “It looks amazing,” Sonder said. He was staring again.

  “No,” Arachne said.

  “But I like this one,” Luna said.

  “Of course you do,” Arachne said. “But it’s all wrong for where you’re going. Here.” She shook out the outfit she’d been working on, making it shimmer in the light, and held it out to Luna with two of her legs. “Try this.”

  Luna looked disappointed but disappeared behind the curtain again. “Now,” Arachne said. She’d been listening quietly as Sonder and I spoke, working on the dress, and now that it was finished she turned her full attention to me. “I think Sonder-Alex, have you lost weight?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Arachne gave me a quick up-and-down glance, did the spider equivalent of rolling her eyes, and pulled out a pile of dark cloth. “I think Sonder asked the right question,” she said as she started modifying it. “Why was Onyx there?”

  “Because he’s involved, I guess,” I said. “Though I can’t figure out how Fountain Reach fits into it.”

  “It seems to me there’s a simple explanation for both,” Arachne said. “What if Onyx was there for exactly the same reason as you?”