“You know nothing about Anne.”
“I know enough,” I said. “And what I don’t know is definitely not worth the price you’d charge for it. So no, Jagadev. I’m not making a deal. You’re going to die right here in this room. All I’m really interested in is whether you have any last words.”
“Last words?” Jagadev said. He paused, and his voice became harsh, deadly. “Then take these for your last words, mage. I may die here, but before the year is out, you and your underling will follow me. I have killed countless members of your kind, yet the number who will die at the hands of your lover will dwarf that. And you will be the one who enables it. Her name will be remembered in infamy, and yours alongside.”
I stood looking back at Jagadev for a moment before raising my voice. “Vari! We’re done.”
Footsteps sounded and Variam appeared, carrying something slung over one arm. He ignored me, looking straight at Jagadev. “You do not say another word about anyone in my family,” he told Jagadev. “Understand?”
Jagadev looked at Variam contemptuously. The green-black energy of the spell was still swirling. I wondered how much longer it would take to kill him.
“I just want to know one thing,” Variam said. “Why?”
“Why you?” Jagadev sounded almost amused. “Are you truly so ignorant?”
“I know why me. Alex told me that part. I just want to know why you did all this shit. How is it worth it? How could it ever be worth it?”
“You would not be able to understand.”
“Understand what?” Variam demanded. “You could have gone anywhere, done anything. Instead you spend two hundred years killing people who’d never even heard of you?”
“Oh, your brother had heard of me,” Jagadev said. “At least by the time—”
Variam’s hand snapped up again, and this time I didn’t stop him.
Fire bloomed like a miniature sun. The noise was somewhere between a thump and a roar, and a wash of heat hit my face. I’d thrown up my hands to protect my eyes, and even with my armour, I could feel the skin scorching. A nauseating smell of burnt hair and flesh filled the room.
I lowered my hand to see that Jagadev was gone. A semicircular depression had been burnt in the wall, the stone charred black. The remains of the rakshasa’s body mixed with cooling lava in a charred mass on the floor below.
“Well,” I said. “You did warn him.”
Variam didn’t reply. We stood looking at the remains in silence.
Movement stirred in the futures. I looked ahead and one glance told me what I needed to know. “Come on. We’ve taken too long.”
“Yeah.” Variam tore his eyes away from Jagadev’s corpse and started to turn towards the door.
“Not that way.”
Variam halted. “More of Jagadev’s?”
“Not Jagadev’s,” I said. “The same guys I ran into outside.” There were more of the soldiers, and this time there were adepts and mages with them. “Chinese Council.”
“Shit,” Variam said. “I don’t want to have to talk my way past those guys.”
“If I’m standing next to you, I don’t think they’ll give you the chance.” The Councils of the various magical nations aren’t always on the best of terms, but they do share information. I headed towards the tapestry. “Let’s take the back door.”
“How are these guys even here?” Variam asked as I pulled aside the silk hangings to reveal a smooth wall.
“Either we tripped some sensor, or Jagadev called them in.” I ran my hand across the wall, my fingers finding a depression; I pushed and with a click a crack appeared in the stone. I shoved it open, the smooth marble rotating to reveal a dark opening.
“He would, wouldn’t he?” Variam was still carrying that bundle of fabric over his left arm, but with his right he sent orange-red flames flying over my shoulder, their light illuminating a rocky tunnel.
“Close it behind us,” I said, stepping through. Variam followed and with a click the light from the room behind was cut off, along with the stench of burning meat. “Yeah, probably. Just a final ‘screw you’ to whoever killed him. Oh, and he’s rigged this place to self-destruct.”
“Wait, what?”
“We’ve got time,” I said. I’d noticed the spell during our conversation. Someone, probably Anne, had interfered with the triggering mechanism, but it had been delayed, not stopped. “Twenty minutes at least.”
“What is it, a bomb?”
“Some sort of dimensional gate that’ll turn this mountain inside out and drop the contents into God knows where.”
“Okay, let’s not stick around to find out.” Variam stepped around a patch of fallen rubble in the tunnel. “How far do these gate wards go?”
“Not to the edge of the mountain,” I said. The wards over Jagadev’s palace were strong, but no ward has unlimited range. “We keep going another few minutes, they’ll have weakened to the point where we can . . . oh, for the love of God.”
“Now what?”
“Someone’s coming down the corridor towards us. Come on.”
I sped up my pace, searching through the futures ahead. Variam hurried to follow me, his shorter legs taking three steps to my two. Orange-red light from his flames flickered on the wall, casting dancing shadows. “More Council?”
“I wish,” I said. “Rachel.”
“Seriously? That crazy bitch again?” I heard a clatter as Variam stumbled over a stone before catching himself. “Can we get into deep falloff for the wards before she gets to us?”
“Yes.”
There was a pause. “Can we get that far and finish a gate before she—?”
“No.”
“Can we find—?”
“No.”
“We could—”
“Terrain favours her too much.”
“It’s really annoying when you do that.”
“We don’t have time for a fight,” I said. “There’s a dip in the ward coverage in about a hundred feet. If you start a gate there, I’ll hold her off long enough for you to finish.”
“You sure—?”
“Yes.”
A hundred feet along, the corridor bent right. The wards were still clearly detectable to my magesight, but I could sense the fluctuations that betrayed the underlying weakness around this patch of tunnel. Variam started casting, shooting me a look that said, You’d better be right about this.
Ahead, the futures shifted. Rachel had broken into a run. “She’ll be here in thirty seconds,” I said. “Keep the gate going and don’t get distracted by disintegrate spells or cave-ins.”
“Yes, Mum. Shouldn’t you be worrying about her?”
I walked forward, picked my spot, and waited.
Sea-green light bloomed, illuminating a human shape. The footsteps changed, slowing from a rapid beat to a steady, relentless clack-clack-clack. The light brightened, intensifying at Rachel’s hands and revealing her face.
Rachel had not done well since we last met. The domino mask hid her upper face, but not the lines of tension along her face and jaw. Her clothes were dirty and torn, and the hatred in her eyes as her gaze met mine was like a physical blow. Before, I thought that Rachel had hated me about as much as a person possibly could. I’d been wrong.
Energy swirled around Rachel’s hands as she stalked forwards. She wasn’t stopping or slowing, and I felt a twinge of déjà vu. Trapped in a tunnel with a more powerful mage ahead . . .
No. I shook the memory away. Not more powerful anymore. I drew my gun, the barrel coming up to line on Rachel’s head.
Rachel reacted instantly. A sea-green ray flashed out.
I dodged the moment the future firmed, but even so I barely made it. The ray threaded the gap between my arm and body, then struck the rock behind and disintegrated a load-bearing section of the tunnel wall.
I was already sprinting away from Rachel as the ceiling collapsed with a deafening rumble and boom. Stones bounced around my ankles, but the whole thing was over in seconds and I slowed to a walk, a cloud of dust making my coat billow around me and ruffling my hair.
Variam was still forming his gate spell, one eyebrow raised. “Don’t get distracted by cave-ins, huh?”
I could hear rumbling sounds as Rachel fired more disintegrate spells from the other side. It wouldn’t do her any good; more of the mountain would collapse to fill in any holes she made. “Let’s get out of here.”
Variam’s gate completed and an orange-red portal formed. We stepped through and left the Himalayas behind.
chapter 2
The gate winked out behind us. We’d come down in a wilderness region in the middle of the night, dead flat and deserted. Scrubby bushes came up to ankle height with gravel and rocks in between, all illuminated in moonlight out of a clear sky. The landscape stretched away to every side with no sign of life or variation.
“Where are we?” I asked, shivering slightly. The air felt cool after the tunnels.
“Mojave Desert,” Variam said. He was already working on the next gate, orange-red light glowing about his hands as he frowned in concentration. “We being followed?”
“No . . . yes,” I said. It’s hard to follow a gate, but not impossible, especially if you’re motivated.
“Deleo? No, don’t bother answering, of course it’s bloody Deleo. How long?”
“Three to four minutes. Honestly, I’m impressed she made it through the cave-in.”
“Impressed, right,” Variam said sourly. “You’d better hope I get this gate first try.”
I patted Variam on the shoulder. “I have faith in you.”
Variam rolled his eyes. “So, I know the list of people who want to kill you is pretty damn long. But is it me, or does Deleo suddenly want to kill you even more?”
“It’s not you.”
“I was kind of hoping Richard would’ve got rid of her and saved us the trouble.”
“Would have been nice, but no,” I said. “Don’t actually know how things went between them, but from what I’ve heard, she hasn’t been seen with him since. So either she’s been fired and she’s blaming me, or Richard’s sent her as a last chance to prove herself.”
“Does it actually make much difference?”
“No.”
Variam’s gate opened and we stepped through into another stretch of nighttime wilderness. It looked similar to the last except for fewer rocks, more sand, and cacti casting long shadows in the moonlight. “Now where?” I asked.
“Mexico,” Variam said. “Sonoran Desert.” He was already at work on gate number three. “So, look. I’m kind of noticing that whenever we go on any sort of mission these days, there’s a good fifty-fifty chance that Deleo shows up.”
“Yes.”
“Doesn’t seem like she’s going to stop.”
“Probably not.”
“You considered making her stop?” Variam asked. “I mean, given the body count you’ve been racking up, I know I’m supposed to be telling you to cut back, but what if next time she follows us, we pick out a good spot and . . . ?” He took one hand away from his spell to draw a finger across his neck.
I sighed, letting my breath puff out into the air. It was a little warmer here. “It’s not that simple.”
“Is this because you guys were apprentices together?”
“It’s not that,” I said. I’d been close to Rachel once, but there was precious little of that left. “She’s got a jinn of her own.”
Variam gave me a frown. “Seriously?”
“Meant to tell you earlier, got distracted,” I said. “But yeah, it was back when we were apprentices. Actually, I’m pretty sure it was at the exact point where she stopped being an apprentice.”
The gate opened and dazzling light made me blink before Variam quickly muted the glow, shielding the oval with a veil of magic.
We stepped through into bright daylight. A high sun was beating down from a cloudless sky, and the air was hot and dry. We were standing on a small tumble of rocks in the middle of huge dunes of golden sand. I turned to Variam. “Seriously?”
“What?” Variam said.
“We’re in . . .” I paused. “Saudi Arabia? The Arabian Desert?”
“What’s the problem?”
“What is it with you and deserts?”
“I like deserts.”
I rolled my eyes. “Anyway, the long and the short of it is that the bonding ritual screwed up and it’s one of the reasons she’s so crazy. I’m pretty sure she can’t use the jinn’s powers in any kind of consistent way. But they’re always there as an option, and even when they’re not, she’s got a really good track record of seeing through my bluffs. I don’t want to go toe-to-toe with her if I can avoid it.”
“So the plan is—what? Wait for her to get bored and give up?”
“No,” I said. “I’ve got someone on call who might be able to help. If not . . . she’s my problem. I’ll fix it.”
We stood in the baking heat for a few seconds. The air felt like a furnace, and the glare from the sun made me want to shield my eyes. “You going to be okay?” I asked Variam.
“No angry voice mails,” Variam said. “As long as I get back in the next quarter hour, I’m fine.”
“That wasn’t really what I meant.”
“Yeah, I know.” Variam glanced at me, then looked down, scraping his toe along the rocks. “I’m not sure.” He paused. “You think what he said was true?”
It was a measure of how worried Variam must be that he was asking something like that. “I think he was saying whatever he thought would make us unhappiest.”
“Doesn’t mean he was wrong.”
“‘The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.’”
Variam looked askance at me. “If you’re trying to make me feel better, you’re doing a really shitty job.”
“Jagadev did precious little good and a lot of evil,” I said. “But what he did to Anne might end up being worse than everything else put together. Richard and Morden handed Anne that jinn, but Jagadev and Sagash put her on the path that led there.”
“And now Jagadev’s dead, we know where she’s going next.”
I nodded. “It’s going to be hard to stop her.”
“It’s not her going after Sagash I’m worried about.”
* * *
—
I waited for Variam to gate back to England, then took out a gate stone for a journey of my own. Once I was in an area with mobile coverage, I took out a phone and dialled. It rang for a while before there was a click and a rumbling voice answered. “Yeah.”
“It’s me,” I said.
“So?”
“I ran into her again. Had to disengage.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“She’s not giving me much notice.”
“You a diviner or not?”
When Variam had asked why I didn’t get rid of Rachel, I told him the truth, but not the whole truth. The mage on the other end of the line was called Cinder, and he had reasons of his own for wanting Rachel alive. “Last time we spoke, you wanted me to find Deleo,” I said. “Have her come after me while you were there, so that she’d have to deal with you first.”
“And?”
“I’m not sure how well that’s going to work.”
“We had a deal.”
“We still do, but I’m warning you, she has really gone off the deep end. If you get in between the two of us, I don’t think it’s going to end the way you’re hoping.”
“My problem, not yours.” There was a note of finality in Cinder’s voice. “You going to do it?”
I sighed. “I’ll do it.”
Cinder hung up, and I lowered the phone with a grimace. Rachel wasn’t my biggest problem—she wasn’t even in the top five—but she was an extra complication I really didn’t need. I wasn’t sure I could afford to deal with her on top of everything else.
But Cinder was one of the very few allies I had left, and that meant I’d have to figure out some way to keep him happy. And on the subject of problems, I had another phone call coming up, one that was going to be a lot more unpleasant than the last. Time to get ready.
* * *
—
I staked out the forest clearing that I’d chosen for the conversation, taking the necessary precautions. It was hard to remember that once upon a time I’d been able to call someone up without taking an hour to make sure I wouldn’t be traced or killed in the process. Once I was done I took out my communicator, did a last double check through the futures, and channelled through it. “Hello, hello,” I said into the focus. “Testing, one two three.”
There was a pause, then a familiar voice sounded through the communicator. “Hello, Mage Verus,” Talisid said. “Yes, I can hear you perfectly well.”
I couldn’t see Talisid—the focus was audio only—but I could imagine him, dressed neatly in a business suit, balding and serious-looking. I’d known Talisid for a long time and, for most of that time, we’d been on the same side. That wasn’t true anymore.
“Hi, Talisid,” I said. “Listen, I know it’s been a while, and I’d love to stop and chat, but I don’t think it’s the best time to catch up. So could you put your bosses on?”
“That won’t be necessary.”
“Please don’t take this personally, but I’d rather not go through an intermediary on this one.”
“I’m acting as the Council’s representative in this matter.”
“For God’s sake, Talisid,” I said. “Every single one of the Senior Council is sitting there listening to this conversation live right now. Can you stop wasting my time and just put them on?”
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