Taken av-3

by Benedict Jacka

  “Hey, Sonder,” I said. “Been reading your report.”

  “Alex!” Sonder said. “So Talisid did ask you to help? And you said yes?”

  Sonder is a time mage, and it was him I’d been thinking of when I’d sketched out that plan to Talisid. It had been a surprise to find that Talisid had recruited him already, but thinking it over, maybe I should have expected it. Sonder may be young, but he’s talented. He helped me out during the business with the fateweaver and again in the autumn against Belthas, and both times he made a real difference. But the real reason I like Sonder doesn’t have anything to do with how good he is at seeing into the past-it’s because he can be trusted. “Better we don’t talk about it over the phone,” I said. “Listen, I’m going to be another few hours getting up to speed on this report. Let’s meet up tomorrow at nine and we’ll put our heads together.”

  “Okay. Is Luna coming?”

  “Yes, Luna’s coming.”

  “Okay! See you then.”

  I shook my head and ended the call, smiling to myself. As I did, I noticed I had a message. It had arrived earlier, but I’d been absorbed in the report and hadn’t noticed. I opened it.

  What you’re looking for is in Fountain Reach.

  There was nothing else. Frowning, I checked the sender. It was an e-mail address from a free provider. The prefix on the address was a random string of letters and numbers.

  Who had sent it?

  Fountain Reach was the place Crystal had told me about this morning, but this seemed like a pretty weird way for her to entice me to take the job. Besides, we hadn’t exactly parted on good terms.

  What you’re looking for. . What I was looking for was the source of the disappearances. And within a few hours of starting to look, I had someone sending me an anonymous tip. How convenient.

  It was a hell of a lot too convenient. This was way too easy. Maybe Talisid’s right and I’m just cynical but I couldn’t honestly believe that someone would just hand me the solution like that. It had to be a trick or a trap of some kind.

  More worrying was the speed. Talisid had met me only hours ago and already someone seemed to know that I was involved. Had someone been spying on our meeting? Between the two of us Talisid and I should have been able to spot someone following us. . maybe. Mages have a lot of ways of finding out information. But if their intelligence network was so good, why were they wasting it on such a clumsy trap?

  I puzzled over it for an hour but couldn’t find any answers. Outside the light faded from the sky, evening turning into a cold winter’s night. I fixed myself some dinner and tried to finish off the report, but my mind kept drifting back to the message. I caught myself wondering how long it would take to make the journey to Fountain Reach, and pushed the thought firmly away. I had enough to worry about without going looking for trouble. But the idea nagged at me all the same.

  I’d been vaguely expecting Luna back and had been keeping an eye on the possible futures all evening. When I saw that the bell was going to ring I put the folder down in relief, then I checked a second time and stopped. There was a girl about to arrive at my door-but it wasn’t Luna.

  I sat frowning for a moment, then locked the folder away in a drawer. I tucked a few items into my pockets and went downstairs.

  My shop feels eerie after dark. The street is a quiet one, and while the background hum of the city never stops, the nearby shops empty out completely after closing hours. Inside the shelves stood silent, their contents making strange shapes in the darkness. The front of the shop was cast in a yellow glow from the streetlights, and their light passed through the windows to fall upon the wands in their display cases and glint off the metal blades in the shadows against the wall. Under the shop counter is a hidden shelf. I reached in and took out a narrow-bladed dagger, then stood alone in the darkness and waited.

  Five minutes passed.

  From out in the street came the throaty growl of a car engine. It grew louder and there was the crunching of tyres as it pulled in, then the engine died away to a purr and stopped. A car door opened and shut and footsteps approached, coming to a halt just outside. A moment later, from back in the hall, the bell rang.

  I waited twenty seconds-about long enough for someone to stop whatever they were doing and come downstairs-then opened the door.

  The girl standing outside was Anne. She’d changed clothes since the lesson and was wearing a long-sleeved pullover and thin trousers, both in shades of grey and brown that faded into the night. They looked good on her, but again I got that odd feeling that she was trying to blend into the background. “Good evening, Mr. Verus.”

  “Just Alex is fine,” I said. Behind Anne was the car she’d arrived in. It was a sedan, big and sleek, and its lines gleamed silver in the streetlights with a winged B ornament at the front of the hood. There was a man behind the wheel. It was hard to make him out in the darkness, but I had an impression of a hunched figure and two unfriendly eyes. “Did you want Luna?”

  “Ah. . no. Thank you.” Anne hesitated. “I’m here to give you an invitation.”

  I blinked. “To what?”

  “Tiger’s Palace,” Anne said. “There’s a gathering tomorrow evening at eight o’clock.”

  I’d never heard of Tiger’s Palace. “Who’s inviting me?”

  “Lord Jagadev,” Anne said. “He owns the club.”

  “Okay,” I was still a little puzzled. “What sort of gathering?”

  “Other mages are going to be there,” Anne said. “I don’t think it’s for a special occasion.”

  Neither the place nor the name rang any bells, but that wasn’t surprising. I’m pretty much an outsider to mage society, and I don’t get invited to many parties. Which raised an obvious question. “Look,” I said. “I don’t mean to be rude. But why is this ‘Lord Jagadev’ inviting me?”

  “I don’t actually know,” Anne said. She sounded honest. “He gave me a list of people to invite but he didn’t tell me why.”

  “Do you always do what he tells you?”

  Something flickered across Anne’s face and she seemed to draw back a little. “What answer should I give him?”

  I looked at Anne for a long moment. I couldn’t sense any deception from her but my instincts were telling me something strange was going on. Mage parties are dangerous at the best of times. If I showed up, there was no telling what I’d be getting into.

  On the other hand mage parties are also a mine of information and I hate missing opportunities to find things out. Besides, one of the things I’ve learnt over the past year is that if trouble’s on its way it’s a lot better to go do something about it than to sit around and wait. “Tell him I’ll be there,” I said.

  “I will.”

  We stood in silence for a moment. “Do you want to come inside?” I said suddenly. As soon as the words were out I wanted to kick myself. It was a really inappropriate question to ask another mage’s apprentice, especially a girl three-quarters my age.

  “I’m sorry,” Anne said. “There’s another invitation I have to deliver in Archway.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Uh, have a safe trip.”

  “See you tomorrow.” Anne gave a small smile and walked back to the car. As she did I caught a flash of movement from the front seat; the man inside was putting away something that looked like a phone. Anne climbed in, the door snicked shut, and the engine started up with a growl that made me think of a big animal. I watched the car roll smoothly down the street, signal at the T junction, and pull away out of sight.

  I closed and locked the door. Thoughtfully I took the dagger from where I’d been holding it behind the door and returned it to its sheath before going back up to my study.

  Inviting Anne in had been a weird thing to do and as I climbed the stairs I wondered why I’d done it. I remembered the last image, Anne climbing into the dark car while that hunched shape waited behind the wheel, and felt a stir of disquiet.

  My street was dark and still again, and the shop was
empty. The distant thump, thump, thump of club music drifted over the rooftops, but there was no movement outside. I stood flipping the sheathed dagger absentmindedly between my fingers, frowning at nothing. Outside my window, lights shone from the blocks of flats across the canal.

  I felt uneasy. I live alone and I should be used to the quiet of my part of Camden after sunset. But tonight something about the silence had me on edge.

  It wasn’t as if anything that had just happened was all that extraordinary. I do get invited to mage social events sometimes. Not often, but it happens. And sending an apprentice out to deliver invitations in person wasn’t unusual. . okay, it was unusual, but it wasn’t unheard of. It must have just felt strange to me because I’d been off the social circuit so long.

  I told myself that, but the uneasy feeling didn’t go away.

  I don’t get these feelings often and when I do I’ve learnt to pay attention to them. I did a scan of the immediate futures, looking for danger, and found nothing. I spread my search further, looking for anything that might threaten or attack me.

  Still nothing.

  I tried half a dozen more ways of looking for danger and came up blank every time. Finally I tried something different. I looked into the future to see what would happen if I sat in my bedroom and did absolutely nothing.

  One uneventful hour, two uneventful hours, four uneventful hours-then activity. In the early hours of the morning people were going to come to my door. Not ordinary people-mages. They’d want to talk to me, and they were. .

  I frowned. They were Council Keepers.

  That was strange.

  Keepers are the primary enforcement arm of the Council, kind of a mix between police and an internal affairs division. There are a lot of reasons for Keepers to come looking for a mage and very few of them are good. As I looked into the future the encounter didn’t look hostile, but it didn’t look friendly either. I wished I could see exactly what they were saying, but as I tried to focus on the distant strands the images blurred and shifted. It’s hard to predict something as fluid as conversation. I can do it easily if it’s only a few seconds ahead, but trying to do it a few hours ahead is almost impossible. I tried to focus on a single strand and pin it down.

  The Keepers were asking me questions. They were suspicious. I tried to hear what the questions were about or why they were asking them, but couldn’t pick up any details.

  I shifted my focus to the beginning of the conversation. That was better. Now the Keepers were saying the same things in each future with only minor differences, the things they’d decided to say before my answers took them in other directions. I suddenly realised what the scene reminded me of: two police officers interviewing a suspect.

  I strained my mental lens to its limit, trying to get the exact words. By concentrating and piecing together bits from parallel futures, I was just able to make out fragments.

  “-where were-”

  “-did you do-”

  “-any contact. . after-”

  I shook my head in frustration. Useless. In every one of the futures, my future self seemed to ask the same questions. I focused on the answers the Keepers gave in return.

  “-enquiries-”

  “-was here-”

  “-last. . see her alive-”

  I stopped dead. The futures I’d traced so carefully shattered, fading into darkness.

  I stood motionless for ten seconds, then ran for the door.

  chapter 3

  As I ran down the street I skimmed through futures and searched the traffic, then changed direction to cut left down an alley that led into Camden Road. I ran straight out between parked cars into the middle of the main road. Horns blared as cars screeched to a halt.

  A man wound down his window behind me and started shouting. His accent was so thick I couldn’t actually understand what he was saying, but he didn’t sound happy. I pulled open the door of the black cab in front of me with the yellow TAXI light above its window. “Archway,” I said before the driver could open his mouth. “I’ll pay you double if you get us there in five minutes. Triple if you make it in less.”

  “All right, mate,” the driver said comfortably. “Not a problem.”

  The taxi pulled around the car in front of us, the angry driver still shouting from his window, and we accelerated away north.

  * * *

  No one knows the London streets better than a London cabbie. At this hour with the crowds and traffic it would have taken me at least ten minutes to make the drive from Camden to Archway. The cabbie did it in less than half that.

  Archway is an odd place even by London standards. A network of concrete shops surround the Underground station, out of which rises the squat ugly brown shape of Archway Tower. Two roads fork away northwest: On one is the sprawl of the Whittington Hospital while the other passes under Suicide Bridge. “There you go, mate,” the cabbie said as we reached the station. “Which street?”

  I stared out the window, concentrating. We were at the junction around the old Archway Tavern, the ancient building forming an island amidst the A-roads. I looked up the hill to see the high arch of Suicide Bridge, marking the boundary between inner and outer London. I pointed to the right of the bridge, northeast. “That way.”

  As soon as we left the main road the streets narrowed and emptied. Cars were parked everywhere, making it hard for the cab to move, and minutes passed with agonising slowness as I scanned through futures, watching myself explore different directions in an expanding web.

  A tangle of futures flashed; combat, danger. “Stop!” I opened the door before the taxi had stopped moving and shoved a handful of notes at the driver. “Keep the change.”

  The taxi had brought me to a housing estate. A long three-storey block of flats loomed above, walkways running along the top two floors with doors at regular intervals. An old decayed children’s playground was laid out in the courtyard in front, the swings rusted and the animal figures vandalised. The base of the block of flats was shadowed, blending into a small cramped garden. High walls shut off the view to the street and only a handful of lights shone in the darkness. It wasn’t late but the place had a dead feel to it. I moved at a fast walk, heading farther in. Behind, I heard the rumble of the taxi’s engine fade away into the noise of the city.

  From the shadows at the base of the flats ahead came a sharp metallic clack.

  I broke into a run. The sound came again, twice, echoing around the brick walls: clack-clack. I passed under the building, reached the pillars that were blocking my view, and looked around the edge.

  The housing estate was a big long construction of dark brick. There were two ways in: a pair of double doors leading into a stairwell, and a small lift. To one side was the car park; to the other was a fenced-off area of trees and grass. A single fluorescent light was mounted on the wall, casting a flickering glow over the scene in front of me.

  Three men were standing near the wall. They wore dark clothes and ski masks and carried handguns fitted with the unmistakable long metal cylinders of sound suppressors. Two had their attention fixed on the person by the lift, while the third faced the other way, his gun pointed downwards in both hands as he scanned for movement. I was out of his line of sight, but not by much.

  Anne was next to the lift, slumped against the wall, and as I watched she slid down to crumple onto her side. “Check her,” the man in the middle said. He had a gruff voice and sounded English.

  “Gone,” the one closest to Anne said. He still had his gun pointed more or less towards her.

  “Make sure.”

  “Three in the body. She’s gone.”

  “Make sure.”

  “Fuck that,” the shooter said. “You heard the guy, I’m not getting that close.”

  The red digital number above the lift had been changing from 2, to 1, to G. Now the doors grated open as a mechanical female voice recited, “Ground floor.” The two men’s guns were pointed into the lift before the doors had finished moving, but it w
as empty. White light shone from inside.

  The man at the middle looked away from the lift to the shooter. “I said make sure.”

  The other man shrugged, then levelled his gun at Anne from less than ten feet away and started pulling the trigger.

  I was already moving, but I wasn’t fast enough. By the time I’d gotten the little marble out of my pocket the gun had gone clack three more times. The suppressor muffled the shot so that the loudest noise was the metallic sound of the action cycling and the thud of bullets chewing through flesh. The man shot Anne a final time as I threw the marble, and the man watching their backs had only time to flinch before it shattered against the wall.

  The marble was a one-shot-effectively a single spell with an activation trigger. This particular one was a condenser spell, and as the crystal shell holding the magic in stasis broke, mist rushed out to blanket the area in fog. The cloud was only about forty feet across and it wouldn’t last long, but for a minute or two anyone in that area was blind.

  Except me. As I plunged into the cloud I flicked through the futures ahead of me, and by seeing the ones in which I ran into the men I knew where they were. The one at the back was the most alert and so I bypassed him, staying outside his field of vision. The man in the middle who’d been giving the orders was turned away, his gun blindly searching for threats, and it was simple to put two punches into the spot just below his floating ribs. He staggered, turning towards me and spreading his legs into a shooting stance, and I kicked him hard in the crotch and brought my fist up into his face. He went down.

  I kept moving, getting to where the shooter had been standing over Anne, but he’d moved. I could hear his voice somewhere off to my right, calling to the man at the back. For the moment the men were confused, scrambling to figure out who was attacking them, but it wouldn’t last. Anne was lying huddled and still at my feet and to my right was the glow from the lift, filtering through the mist.