Forged

by Benedict Jacka

  “Yes,” said Luna flatly.

  “You hear anything, you let us know,” Saffron said. “The Council won’t wait forever.”

  “Okay.”

  Footsteps sounded through the speakers, and across the street, I saw Saffron and Avenor open the door and walk out, leaving Luna alone. Through the speakers, I heard Luna exhale. She stood behind the counter for nearly a minute, then walked to the door, flipped the sign from CLOSED to OPEN, and went back to minding the shop.

  I stayed crouched by the window, checking the futures. Once I was absolutely sure that Saffron and Avenor weren’t coming back, I took up the rifle lying beside me, returned it to its case, snapped the case closed, and stowed it in its hiding place under the floorboards.

  Afternoon turned into evening, and the shadows lengthened on the floor. A steady stream of customers flowed in and out of the Arcana Emporium: teenagers, adults, tourists, locals, and some who didn’t fall into any obvious category. Luna dealt with them all, selling items, giving advice, and fielding questions, while I watched from above.

  Looking down on Luna, I couldn’t help but think how once upon a time, that had been me. Right now she was listening to a pair of women in cut-off shorts, one with a bundle of posters, the other with a pair of plastic bags, who were asking her whether magic was really just another way of having faith in Jesus. I tried to imagine what it would be like to be back in her shoes, opening the shop at nine o’clock every day, and couldn’t. My memories of that time had an unreal quality these days, like I was remembering someone else’s life instead of my own.

  It was nearly seven when Luna finished with the last customer and followed them to the door to flip the sign back to CLOSED. She stretched and yawned, did a circuit of the shop, then took out a broom and spent five minutes sweeping the floor. Once she was done she sat down at the counter and opened the ledger.

  The sun had disappeared behind the rooftops, and the sky was turning a dusky blue. I looked down across the street and through the shop window at Luna. She was focusing on the ledger, making notes with a pen. I saw her reach up to brush a strand of hair behind her ear, and as she did I felt a stab of loneliness so sharp that it was like a physical pain. I didn’t want to be up here, spying on someone who was supposed to be my friend. I wanted to be down there talking to her. When the Council had outlawed me, they hadn’t just taken away my position, they’d taken away my connections. I missed being able to drop in on Luna or Variam for a visit. I missed Arachne and the safety of her lair. I missed having regular, normal interactions, and I missed Anne most of all.

  I let out a breath and tried to steady myself. It took a while.

  By the time I was calm again, the sun was setting. Luna was still down in the shop, working away. This was taking longer than I’d expected—my best guess had been that her visitor should have arrived by now—but divination’s never reliable when it comes to free will. Still, the futures were converging and it shouldn’t take more than another ten minutes. I was glad that Avenor and Saffron hadn’t stuck around. This was going to be risky enough already.

  The futures settled, and I felt a stir of gate magic from somewhere behind the shop. About thirty seconds later, there was the sound through the speakers of the shop’s inner door opening. Luna’s head snapped up and she went still.

  “Surprise!” Anne said. “Is this a bad time?”

  Anne had changed a lot in the last few weeks. Her hair had grown to fall almost to the small of her back, and in place of her old clothes she wore a jet-black skater dress with an off-shoulder design that left most of her arms and legs bare. The biggest change, though, was in how she moved. The old Anne had been tall and striking, but she’d downplayed both, hanging back and staying quiet. Now, she walked onto the shop floor as if she owned it.

  Luna’s head moved to track Anne as she passed, but her hands stayed on the counter. “Love what you’ve done with the place,” Anne said, glancing around. “Not sure exactly what you changed, but it really feels different from when Alex was running it, you know?”

  “I wasn’t expecting you,” Luna said.

  “Yeah, well, you know how it is,” Anne said. “Or actually, I guess you don’t, since you never had the whole fugitive experience, but you can probably imagine I don’t pre-book much of a social calendar, right? So how’s it going? Still working nine to five?”

  “Mostly.”

  Anne shook her head, her hair swaying with the motion. “I don’t know why you stick at it. Selling crystal balls to fat women who want to win the lottery? You’re not an apprentice anymore, you don’t have to keep minding the till.”

  “I’m not minding the till,” Luna said. “This place is mine now.”

  “God knows why you’d want it.” Anne pulled out a chair from against the wall and dropped into it, studying Luna critically. “You do look good though.”

  “Thanks,” Luna said. “So what have you been up to?”

  “Oh, you know,” Anne said. “Council wants me, Richard wants me. It’s kind of dull, really. They chase me, I run away, they chase me, I run away, I get bored of running and murder them all, they scrape up more guys to chase me again. Same old same old.”

  “Are they chasing you right now?”

  Anne shrugged. “Maybe? I don’t really keep track.”

  The answer to that was yes. A Council team was trying to track Anne at this very moment, and they would have succeeded by now if I hadn’t intervened, using the fateweaver to scatter the threads of their spell. Neither Luna nor Anne would have been in immediate danger, but it would have given the Council a reason to investigate Luna more closely.

  Luna wasn’t looking happy at all. “Could you maybe not lead them straight to my shop?”

  “Hey, I have to find you somewhere. Not like you’d come visit if I’d sent you an invitation.”

  “I would have, actually.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes,” Luna said. “You were my best friend. Remember?”

  “Aww!” Anne smiled. “Of course I do. Nice to know you do as well.”

  “Look,” Luna said. “I would like to talk to you. But knowing that a Keeper team might show up at any minute is not exactly making me feel relaxed here.”

  Anne waved a hand. “Fine, fine, I’ll get to the point. What if I told you there was a way you wouldn’t have to worry about the Council breathing down your neck?”

  “How?”

  “Same way that I don’t.”

  “You don’t have to worry about the Council because you’ve got a bonded jinn.”

  Anne smiled. She raised her eyebrows.

  Luna paused. “You’re not serious.”

  “You remember those talks we used to have?” Anne asked. “You always said you wanted to do something. Make a difference.”

  “And you said you didn’t,” Luna said. “That you just wanted to be left alone.”

  “Yeah, well, that was then, this is now. So what do you think? Ready to shake things up a bit?”

  “Anne,” Luna said. “I’m not in your league. I never was. You were ten times stronger than I was before you got that jinn. You and Vari and Alex can get away with things like thumbing your noses at the Council and daring them to do something about it. I can’t. That mage status I have, the one you’re putting at risk by being here now? That’s the only reason the Council haven’t just pulled me off the street already. I know the Council treated you like a bottom-rank mage, but that was still better than how they treated me. You really don’t understand how little it takes for them to come down on me.”

  “So stop worrying about them coming down on you,” Anne said. “Make them afraid that you’ll be the one coming after them.”

  “You want me to bond to your jinn as well.”

  “Not mine. But there are others.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because
like you said, we were best friends,” Anne said. “I’d like to think we still could be. And when it comes to jinn, you’ve got some firsthand experience.”

  Luna was still for a second. “You’re talking about the monkey’s paw.”

  Anne rose to her feet and began strolling around the room. She didn’t answer, not straightaway.

  “You’re hoping I’ll get it for you, aren’t you?” Luna said. “Wait. Is that why you came here? Were you hoping it’d just show up on the shelves?”

  “I was kind of wondering,” Anne said. She trailed a finger along one of the shelves, disappearing from my view for a few seconds before coming back into sight. “I mean, that was the way it worked back when Alex was running the place, right? Just sort of pop into existence when the right person came along?”

  “Yeah, well, it’s not popping.”

  “There are other jinn,” Anne said with a shrug. “It’s you I really care about.”

  “So what’s the idea?” Luna asked. “Us two, each with a jinn, going on a rampage?”

  “Hey, you were the one saying about how the Council treats you,” Anne said. “You told me enough times how they’d look down their noses at you for being an adept. Why not make them have to look up to you for a change?”

  “Yeah, for how long?” Luna asked. “Because you’re right, I do know a bit about jinn. As in, I know what happens to the people who make a contract with one. You remember what the monkey’s paw does once its bearers run out of wishes?”

  “Those other bearers didn’t have me.”

  “They probably all told themselves that too,” Luna said. “But fine. Forget all that for a second. Let’s say it works. We get our jinn, set ourselves up as the big bad witch-queens of the British Isles. Is that the plan?”

  “More or less.”

  Luna nodded. “Then what?”

  “Then we deal with the people who want to take us down. Like the Council, and Richard, and—”

  “I mean after that,” Luna interrupted. “Then what?”

  For the first time in the conversation, Anne looked honestly puzzled. “Does it matter?”

  I heard Luna sigh slightly. “I suppose to you it doesn’t.”

  “So?”

  “I’ll admit it’s tempting,” Luna said. “And it would be one thing if it was just you. But I’m having trouble getting past the jinn.”

  There was a note in Luna’s voice which it took me a second to recognise, then suddenly I understood. Luna had already made up her mind. Now she was trying to figure out how to get Anne to take no for an answer.

  “The jinn is the reason I can do all this,” Anne said impatiently. “Look, stop getting hung up on that part, okay? I know what I’m doing.”

  “That’s what Martin told me,” Luna said. “As in, those exact words. Usually with some comment about how dumb everyone else was to be scared of wishes when all you had to do was word them right. And he kept being cocky right up to the point where he made the wrong wish and went crazy. I was there, okay? I watched him screaming his lungs out, trying to rip out his own eyeballs. So don’t just brush me off when I have issues with this.”

  “He was making wishes,” Anne said. “I don’t have to.” She opened up one hand; dark threads spun and coiled above her palm. “When you really bond with a jinn, you don’t need all that anymore. We act as one.”

  “So what does the jinn get out of it?”

  “Look, I don’t have time to play twenty questions. Are you in or not?”

  “I’m . . . going to have to think about it.”

  Anne’s back was to me so I couldn’t see her face, but all of a sudden, there was a dangerous note in her voice. “You’ll think about it?” She dropped her hand, but the dark threads didn’t disappear; they spun faster, growing. “This isn’t a telemarketing call.”

  Uh-oh. I took one glance at the futures and stood up, making the movement big and noticeable. Reaching out with the fateweaver, I picked out a strand.

  Anne paused. She turned her head slightly, then stopped. The dark threads twining around her shrank and disappeared. “Fine,” she said to Luna. “I’ll be in touch.” She walked past the counter and left. The door shut with a loud click.

  Through the glass, I saw Luna’s shoulders slump, the tension going out of her.

  * * *

  —

  I was waiting on the roof of the Arcana Emporium when Anne’s head poked up above the wall. “There you are!” she said. She looked cheerful; the flash of temper she’d shown down in the shop was gone. “I was wondering if you were going to stick around.”

  “You were wondering if I’d stick around?” I said. “I’ve been trying to catch up with you for weeks. You are not an easy person to find these days.”

  “What can I say? I’m a popular girl.” Anne sprang lightly up the last few rungs of the ladder and alighted on the roof. She looked around appreciatively. The Camden skyline stretched out around us, chimneys and TV aerials rising up like saplings over hills of tiles and brick. The sky was a dusky purple, a couple of faint stars struggling to make it through the city’s light pollution. “This brings back memories. So does she know you’re spying on her?”

  “You’re not the only one who’s popular in the wrong places,” I said. “If Luna doesn’t see me, she doesn’t have to lie when the Keepers ask where I am.”

  “Still holding her hand, huh? Don’t remember you doing that with me.” Anne stretched and turned along the line of the rooftops. “Come on then, let’s take a walk.”

  I fell into step beside Anne, crossing over the dividing wall to the next building. “Actually, I’m pretty sure I did exactly that when you got attacked at Archway,” I said. “Or when you got kidnapped from your flat in Honor Oak. Or when you got kidnapped again a few years later. Or when—”

  “Okay, okay, fine,” Anne said, waving a hand. “Is this your way of saying I owe you?”

  “Not exactly,” I said. “But I do have a request. A while ago, you said you had a list.”

  “Working my way down, one name at a time,” Anne said. “Why, you want someone put on there? I might do it if you ask nicely.”

  “More like a rearrangement. I’m guessing right now Sagash is next?”

  “Got it in one.”

  I nodded. “Could you move him down to number two?”

  “Who’s number one?”

  “Levistus.”

  “Well, well.” Anne looked at me appraisingly. “So you’re finally done playing nice.”

  “Playing nice has not done me much good over the last few years.”

  “Took you long enough to figure that out.” Anne stopped on the roof of an apartment building and drummed her fingers on a ventilator for a second before shrugging. “All right.”

  That was easy, I thought. No, too easy. Which means . . . “You haven’t figured out how you’re going to get into Sagash’s shadow realm, have you?”

  Anne gave me an unreadable look.

  “Funny, I thought that jinn of yours could do anything.” I raised my eyebrows. “Maybe it’s limited by having to act through you? So it’s great at close-range effects, but more abstract stuff like gates—”

  “It is great at close-range effects,” Anne said, her tone clearly indicating that she didn’t like the way the conversation was going. “Want a demonstration?”

  I raised a hand, palm towards her. “Anyway, I imagine Levistus wasn’t all that far down your list in the first place. He and Barrayar spent more than enough time trying to nail us when you were my aide, and I’ve always had the feeling that he had a hand in that interrogation order.”

  “I already said yes, you can stop selling. So what’s the plan?”

  I didn’t have one, but I didn’t want to admit that. “Not here,” I said. “You have somewhere more secure we could talk?”

  �
�Yeah, the place you used to meet me,” Anne said with a grin. “If it’s not broke . . .”

  Of course she’d want to go there. “Works for me. I’ll find you in a couple of days.”

  We stood in the twilight for a few seconds, facing one another. Anne watched me with a secretive smile, her reddish eyes dark in the reflected light, the wind from the streets making her hair drift slightly. I wondered what she’d say if I asked her to stay with me, and had to force myself not to look into the future to find out. I wasn’t sure I trusted myself with the answer.

  “Well, got to go.” Anne stepped back and the moment was broken. “Catch you later!” She turned and vanished into the night.

  I stood there for a minute after she’d gone. Half of me was disappointed, half relieved, and I didn’t know which half was smarter. I hadn’t realised how badly I’d missed hearing her voice.

  Threatening futures loomed and I sighed and pushed the thoughts aside. The Council were hunting me yet again, and they were using those new-model tracking spells that had proven so annoyingly effective. If I wanted to give them the slip, it’d take me the rest of the evening.

  But I had other things I wanted to be doing. Anne’s sales pitch to Luna and the hints she’d dropped about other jinn were bothering me, and she’d agreed to my offer too easily. She was up to something, and I needed to know what.

  * * *

  —

  The flat in St. John’s Wood had that blandly tasteful look you only find in the parts of London that are ridiculously expensive. The building security gave me little trouble; the security on the flat itself gave me even less. Once I was inside I took a glance around. There were more papers than the last time I’d been here, as well as a lot more magical auras, but fewer computers and electronics. It had also gotten even messier, if that were possible. The only chair was stacked with overflowing folders, so I gave up and just sat on the bed.

  It was a little over an hour before I heard the rattle of the door, which gave me more than enough time to sort through the futures of the Council hunter team and nudge them in the direction I wanted. There was a click and light flooded in from the hallway, then there were footsteps, and the room lit up as a mage in his twenties walked in.