Favours

by Benedict Jacka

  “Not directly connected to the break-in.”

  “Come on, that’s bullshit.”

  “Yeah, it is,” Rain says. “But that only matters if we can prove it’s bullshit, and we can’t.”

  “We’ve got the scan of the body.”

  “Done by a Dark apprentice who isn’t cleared for Keeper ops.”

  “Someone found and hired Freeman.”

  “Haken takes responsibility for that.”

  “Why? How would he even know what was in those papers? This whole thing stinks!”

  Rain sighs and leans back in his chair. “Look, Caldera. I’ve already got two messages from the Council asking for a formal status report on this case. By tomorrow morning, there’ll be more. If I tell them I’m keeping it open, I am going to need something really solid. What you’ve got here . . . it’s not enough. What am I going to do, get an indictment for every force mage in Britain? I’m getting pressured to close this case, and honestly? I don’t see a good reason not to.”

  “How about a dead body in a hotel room?”

  “That case’ll stay open,” Rain says. “And it’s yours if you want it. But I’m not going to piss off half the Council without good reason. What they care about are the White Rose papers, and that’s over.”

  Caldera looks at Rain angrily.

  Rain softens his voice. “Look, you did a good job, all right? I told you to be quick, and you delivered. Both offenders and a confession in under forty-eight hours. And just a feeling, but I don’t think many Council mages are going to be too upset about those documents getting turned to ash. You and Sonder are getting a commendation for this.”

  “Yeah?” Caldera says. “This feel like a win to you?”

  Rain looks at her steadily. “You take what you can get.”

  Caldera gets up and yanks open the door, striding out towards where my past self is waiting. I let my timesight drop.

  It’s making sense now. What the Council want more than anything is for this whole mess to just go away, and that’s exactly what Haken’s giving them. But why would he take the blame? Even if he gets a good deal, he’s going to have to leave the Keepers. What could be worth that?

  Luna said that all I care about is my career. It’s not true, but it does matter to me, and if Haken’s been a Keeper this long, it must matter to him as well. I think about everything that happened over the last two days. Why would Haken sacrifice himself?

  No, like Caldera said, that’s the wrong question. The right question is: why would Haken change his story?

  Well, what happened between yesterday afternoon and now?

  David Freeman got killed, that’s what happened. Maybe that’s why Haken changed his story? Because now there’s no-one left who could tell a different one?

  But that doesn’t explain who’s behind it . . .

  Then something occurs to me and I go over my memories, thinking about that anti-timesight block in the hotel. Could it be the same? I’m going to have to go back to check, but I’ve got the feeling I already know what I’m going to find. It fits too neatly.

  That still leaves the question of what I’m going to do about it.

  Rain still hasn’t come back to his office. I hesitate for a second, then use my timesight again.

  I skim back further this time, searching for mentions of my name, just as I did in Anne’s flat. And yeah, that didn’t work out so well, but . . . screw it. If I’m going to be putting my neck on the line, I want to know what they really think of me.

  I find it pretty much exactly where I’m expecting. It’s yesterday morning, just before I walk into the entrance hall in Keeper HQ. Rain and Caldera are talking again, this time in the morning sun.

  “. . . you’ll be working with him,” Rain’s saying.

  Caldera doesn’t look happy. “Can’t we get someone else?”

  “No, we can’t,” Rain says bluntly. “Drift is busy, I can’t pull Abeyance off her case without people asking questions, and you know what the waiting list is like. You’re bloody lucky you’re getting a timesight specialist at all.”

  Caldera is silent.

  “Look,” Rain says. “I haven’t asked what the issue is between you and Sonder. But if it’s going to have a bearing here, then I think I’d better hear it.”

  Caldera shrugs. “You’re on the job, you want someone who’ll have your back, you know? Not the kind who’s always the first one out the door. ”

  “So he’s a bit of a weasel. It’s not like you only work with battle-mages. What’s the real reason?”

  Caldera blows out a breath, looks out the window, then looks straight at Rain. “I don’t trust him,” she says. “He’s a silver-spoon type who’s just looking to climb the ladder. He doesn’t care about the job and he doesn’t care about us. Push comes to shove, he’ll always look out for number one.”

  “You could say the same about most of our time mages,” Rain says. “Far as they’re concerned, it’s just a paycheque. They’re not real police.” The intercom buzzes and Rain listens to it for a second before pressing a button, answering, and looking back at Caldera. “He’s here.”

  Caldera nods and rises.

  “Oh, and Caldera?” Rain says with a slight smile. “Try and be diplomatic. No matter what kind of spoon he has in his mouth.”

  Caldera snorts and leaves.

  I let the timesight spell fall again, and I’m alone in the office once more. I stand there for a minute, staring at Rain’s empty chair, then walk out. When the man outside asks what I wanted to see Rain about, I tell him it can wait.

  ∞

  The journey back to West Drayton takes a lot longer without anyone to give me a lift. I’ve got plenty of time to think, and my mind keeps going back to those timesight conversations. Specifically, the ones with my name in them.

  The more I think about them, the angrier I get. I worked hard to get where I am now. Really hard. In Washington, I was doing full shifts plus overtime five days a week, and sometimes weekends too. And I’m not just an empty chair – I pretty much solved this case on my own. I was the one who did the most to find Anne last year. I’ve even been in a few battles. There are time mages who’ve been signed on with the Keepers for two, three times as many years as me without ever doing as much as I have.

  So why does everyone keep acting as though I don’t matter?

  I don’t come up with any kind of answer, and it makes me more and more upset. Luckily, my timesight works just fine when I’m angry. I talk my way past the police and take a second, closer look at the murder scene. The body’s gone, but I’m not here to look at the body; I want a closer look at that temporal shroud from last night. I spend a while studying it.

  Yes. It’s not an exact match. But if you did overcharge a shroud like that, then that’s exactly how you’d expect it to look.

  I’ve got my answer.

  But what am I going to do with it?

  ∞

  I wander down to the Novotel’s lobby and sit on one of the sofas, lost in thought. The odd guest is still coming in and out – airport hotels are always busy. None of them give me a second look, and the receptionists ignore me too. It’s as though I don’t exist.

  I like using my timesight. What I don’t enjoy is deciding what to do afterwards. Figuring out exactly which bits of information to share, and who you should share them with, is this really specific skill, and if I’m being honest, I don’t think I’m very good at it. The past is nice and certain. Once you start telling it to other people, things can get really complicated really quickly.

  The knowledge I’m carrying around in my head right now feels heavy, like an actual physical weight. Even thinking about it feels dangerous, as though someone might notice if I do it too long. There’s a man walking across the lobby floor towards the doors, and I imagine that he’s a Council agent. It feels more plausible than it ought to. How would I know?

  The man pushes open the glass doors and disappears into the car park. I sigh and lean back on th
e sofa. I wish I had someone to talk to. Someone who’s good at this stuff, who knows how the Keepers work but who isn’t with the Council . . .

  Well, come to think of it, I suppose I do know someone like that. Alex.

  But I don’t want to go to Alex. I would have, once. When I first met him I thought he was really cool. He was a universal mage with time-related magic that was mostly only good for information, just like me . . . except he’d somehow figured out how to make other mages actually take him seriously. And he didn’t look down on me the way most battle-mages did. I wanted to be like him.

  I can’t remember exactly when that started to change, but I think the big turning point was what happened with those adepts. Alex got badly hurt and would have been killed if Luna hadn’t saved him. All of a sudden, his way of doing things didn’t seem like such a great idea any more, especially once I heard what he’d done to make those adepts want him dead. And the way he ended up solving it . . . I’m a bit more used to that kind of thing after the stuff I’ve seen working in Washington, but at the time it was pretty horrifying.

  So that made me start to re-evaluate things. And once I went back and thought about all those adventures I’d been on with Luna and Alex, I couldn’t help but notice that pretty much all of them had involved people getting violently murdered. I started wondering, if I stayed around Alex, how long it would take before someone showed up trying to murder me.

  And then there was the issue with the Council. The Council don’t like Dark mages, and Alex used to be a Dark mage – actually, depending on how you look at it, he kind of still is. If you hang around with people like that, then a lot of Light mages are going to associate you with them. It might not be fair, but it’s how things work, and if you want to make a career in the Council, then you have to pay attention to this stuff.

  No, I don’t want to go to Alex.

  But that still leaves me with the same question. What am I going to do?

  ∞

  It’s late afternoon when I get to the War Rooms. There’s a slow but steady stream of people leaving the complex, walking away from the legislative and administrative wings towards the surface exits and the gate rooms. I head up the tunnels and across the Belfry, casual chatter drifting on the climate-controlled air.

  Barrayar is waiting for me in the conservatory. Like last time, he’s alone. “Mage Sonder,” he says. “I hope this is important.”

  “I’d say it is.”

  Barrayar nods. “I have a meeting with Councillor Sal Sarque in twenty minutes. I can give you until then.”

  “That’s okay, this shouldn’t take long,” I say. “Caldera and I solved the break-in. The culprits were Keeper Haken and an adept called David Freeman.”

  “I see.”

  “We found David Freeman dead this morning,” I say. “He was killed last night. By a force blade.” I look at Barrayar. “Isn’t that your magic type?”

  I rehearsed this conversation half a dozen times on the way here. Most of those times, this was the point at which I imagined Barrayar getting nasty. I’m expecting him to glare, to ask what I’m implying, to threaten me . . .

  But for all the reaction Barrayar shows, I could be reading him the weather report. “Did you discover anything else?”

  Okay, maybe I need to keep pushing. “As a matter of fact, I did,” I tell him. “The murder was shrouded. A really powerful shroud. Now, I’ve been thinking about that, and there’s something I keep wondering. Why would you go to the effort of sending out a mage with a custom shroud if you’d already used a regular one for the break-in? A Council shroud was good enough for the first crime, so why not the second?” I pause, then answer my own question. “Well, one really good reason would be if you’d just learned that the time mage Rain had put on the case could see through standard Council shrouds. Funny coincidence that that happened right after our conversation yesterday, isn’t it?”

  “That’s certainly one way to look at it.”

  Barrayar’s expression is blank, and I feel a stab of uncertainty. I’d been so sure I was right, but looking at him, my arguments suddenly feel weak and unconvincing. What if I got this wrong? I could still back down. Say I made a mistake and—

  No. I shake off the doubts. I know I didn’t make a mistake. “You know what’s not a coincidence?” I say, putting an edge into my voice. “What’s really interesting? The signature of the shroud from the murder scene matches the one you’re wearing right now.”

  Barrayar’s expression doesn’t change, but somehow, the temperature in the conservatory seems to drop. Just for a moment, I feel the hairs on my neck rise.

  Then Barrayar turns away and begins walking down the path, his pace slow and casual. I stare after him, then when he doesn’t turn around, I follow.

  “Identification of a shroud from its temporal signature is notoriously unreliable,” Barrayar says conversationally. He still doesn’t sound angry.

  “I’m good at what I do.”

  “So I see. However, there are other time mages – older, more experienced mages – who will testify that in their considered and professional opinion, the two signatures are not provably similar.”

  “They are the same.”

  “I see,” Barrayar says with a nod. We round a planter; the entrances and exits to the conservatory are out of sight. “Have you told anyone else?”

  “No, I—”

  I stop dead. Barrayar turns to face me.

  A chill goes down my spine as I suddenly realise that the two of us are completely alone. There was a security man at the entrance, but . . . no, he was there on Barrayar’s orders, wasn’t he? He’ll be working for Levistus. My thoughts feel slow and sluggish and all of a sudden I’ve got the sick feeling in my stomach that you get when you realise that you’ve made a really terrible mistake. Barrayar’s very close. If he goes for me the only thing I’ve got that might stop him quickly enough is a slowing field, but if I fumble the spell even a little bit—

  And then Barrayar smiles slightly and the moment’s gone. He turns and begins examining one of the rhododendrons. “You’re not in danger, Sonder,” he says without looking at me.

  I’m not so sure about that. Barrayar starts walking again and this time when I follow, it’s at a more wary distance. I’m keeping that slowing field ready for if he makes any sudden movements.

  “I should probably tell you that I’ve left a message—” I begin.

  “To be opened in the event of your death or disappearance?” Barrayar says. He almost sounds amused. “No, you haven’t.”

  How does he know?

  “I told you, you’re not in danger,” Barrayar says over his shoulder. “You’re a Light mage, and an extremely talented one. An asset to the Council, in fact. No-one has any desire to see you harmed. Though I’d suggest you be more careful with your accusations if you want things to stay that way.”

  “Okay,” I say. I’m having trouble processing his words; my brain’s still catching up from making the jump from ‘safe’ to ‘oh god I’m going to die’ and back to ‘safe’ again.

  “Now,” Barrayar says. “If you were planning on an indictment, you’d have already gone to Rain. You haven’t, and that means you have something else in mind. Let’s hear it.”

  I open my mouth and hesitate. I’ve rehearsed this answer too, but this isn’t going the way I planned and I change tack. “What’s going to happen to Haken?”

  I half expect Barrayar to say that it’s none of my business, but again he surprises me. “Keeper Haken is taking early retirement from the Order of the Star,” Barrayar says. “After some personal leave, he’ll be going back the way you came, taking up a position in Washington. Councillor Levistus has need of someone to represent his personal interests in dealing with the Light Council of America. The benefits are quite generous. In a few years, when things have quieted down, he’ll be free to return to London.”

  I give Barrayar a sceptical look.

  “What did you think we were going to do, d
rop him in a pool of piranha fish?” Barrayar asks. “We’re not Dark mages. We offer retirement plans.”

  “That adept didn’t get much of a retirement plan.”

  Barrayar speaks calmly and clearly. “You signed David Freeman’s death warrant when you identified him to Keeper Caldera yesterday.”

  That makes me jerk. “I didn’t—”

  “What did you think the consequences were going to be, Sonder?” Barrayar asks. “A slap on the wrist? A fine? It is an extremely bad idea to become a liability in this line of work.”

  I feel a chill. Barrayar doesn’t turn towards me, but once again I’m very conscious of the distance between us.

  “But I don’t think you came here because of Keeper Haken,” Barrayar says. “What do you want?”

  I’m torn. Looking at Barrayar, hearing his quiet, deadly confidence, the speech I’d rehearsed sounds very feeble. I think of the body in that hotel room and feel a wave of revulsion. Something tells me to just walk away.

  But walk away to who?

  “I’m not planning to tell Rain and Caldera,” I say. It’s an effort to say it. “Like you said. These things are unreliable.” Which is true, as far as it goes . . . shroud identifications are unreliable, or at least people think they are, which works out to pretty much the same thing. If it came down to it, I don’t know if I could actually convince a judge.

  It’s still a lie.

  Barrayar is watching, as if waiting to see if I’m going ask for something. “I’m not looking for some sort of bribe,” I say sharply.

  “Then why?”

  “Because I actually agree with what you said,” I tell him. “The Council does need to be strong right now, and the last thing we need is another messy political crisis. It’d drag on for months, and the whole time Morden would be worming his way in.” I try to look at Barrayar, but can’t quite make myself meet his eyes. “The best thing is for this to get settled quickly and quietly. Even if it does mean . . . overlooking some things.”

  “I see.”

  “Just don’t get the wrong idea,” I tell him. I’m not sure what I mean by that, but he doesn’t ask.

  We’ve finished a circuit of the conservatory and Barrayar halts by the door. “Well,” Barrayar says. “I do need to get to my meeting. Should I expect anything further from you on this matter?”