Alex Verus Novels, Books 1-4 (9780698175952)

by Jacka, Benedict

  All three of them looked back at me, puzzled. “All of the disappearances that have happened so far had something in common,” I said. “The apprentice was always on their own when they vanished. Anne, are you sharing a room with anyone?”

  “Ah . . .” Anne said. “I was supposed to be, but—”

  “You are now. Luna, you’re moving in with her.”

  “I think we were supposed to be assigned rooms,” Anne began.

  “Just find one that no one’s using and take it. If anyone gives you any trouble, tell them it’s on my orders and for them to come to me, but odds are they won’t.”

  “Wait a minute,” Variam said. “We don’t need—”

  “You aren’t going to be keeping an eye on her all the time, Variam,” I said. “Not unless you’re going to follow her into the bathroom.”

  Variam scowled. “What about you?” I asked him.

  “What?”

  “Are you sharing a room?”

  “Why do you care?”

  “If you’re not,” I said mildly, “then I think you should start.”

  Variam looked me up and down. “Are you in charge of us?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re not our master,” Variam said. “Is there some Council rule that we have to do what you say?”

  I hesitated. “No, but—”

  “Okay, then we’re going,” Variam said. He glanced at Anne. “Come on.” He turned and walked away. Anne gave us both an apologetic look and followed.

  I watched the two of them disappear down the corridor. “You know, that guy is beginning to get on my nerves.”

  “You think he gets on your nerves?” Luna said. “I have to take classes with him.”

  “I’m starting to sympathise.” I shook my head. “Who was that apprentice Anne was talking to?”

  “In the dining hall?” Luna shrugged. “I don’t know her name. The younger apprentices really like Anne. They tell her everything.” Luna looked at me. “You aren’t sure what to do, are you?”

  I always have trouble hiding things from Luna. “I think we’re in the right place,” I said. “But we still don’t know what to look for.”

  “Are you sure there’s anything here?”

  “No, but it’s my best guess. Everyone’s been pointing me to Fountain Reach. I don’t know what’s going on but I know there’s something.” I gave Luna a glance. “I want you to keep an eye on Anne. Stay with her if you can and if you can’t then make sure she’s not alone. Someone tried to kill her only a couple of days ago and I don’t want to give them an easy shot.”

  “I will. You think she’s in danger here? In the middle of everyone?”

  I looked around at the walls of the mansion for a moment before answering. “Yeah, I think she is.”

  * * *

  I was sick of getting lost and so I spent the time until dinner exploring the mansion, keeping to the populated parts and trying to build up a mental map. The more I explored the weirder the layout seemed and I made a note to find out what the story was behind this place. It felt as though it had been designed to be hard to navigate. There were plenty of mages around, some of whom I knew, but I avoided them.

  After dinner I went looking for Luna and Anne’s new room. I found it quickly and turning in to the corridor I saw the door open with their voices coming from inside. Luna was laughing—not something she used to do, but a sound I hear from her more often these days. I slowed, and as I did I saw that Variam was about to arrive from the other end of the corridor. I stepped back behind a corner and watching with my divination I saw Variam turn in to Luna and Anne’s room. Luna and Anne’s voices fell silent. Variam said something, his tone harsh and accusing; Luna answered. Variam gave her an angry reply; Luna gave him one back. Anne tried to intervene and Variam told her to be quiet.

  I kept my distance. Footsteps sounded and Luna emerged from the room, turning towards me. She was walking fast and sounded angry. “Problems?” I said as she walked past.

  Luna jumped and whirled. When she saw it was me she sighed. “Don’t scare me like that.”

  “I told you not to go off alone,” I said.

  Luna covered her eyes. “Crap. Sorry, sorry. Variam just pissed me off . . .”

  With my mage’s sight I could see the silver mist of Luna’s curse writhing around her, tendrils curling outward like angry snakes. Luna’s curse is tied to her emotions; she can control it fairly well when she’s calm but it’s a really bad idea to be around when she’s upset. “Well, might as well take advantage of it,” I said. “Come on.”

  “Where are we going?” Luna asked as she fell into step a few paces to my side.

  “When I get annoyed I find a workout helps,” I said. “Let’s see if it’s the same with you.”

  * * *

  The hall was much smaller than the one in which Crystal had read out the matchups, but it was just barely big enough for a set of azimuth duelling focuses, and it was empty except for us. “What’s this place?” Luna asked.

  “Practice room,” I said. “Tomorrow you’re going to be fighting in the tournament and you’re going to need a weapon.” As I spoke I reached into my coat and took out the wand Arachne had given me that afternoon. “I talked to Arachne and she came up with a design that she thought would fit.” I held it out to Luna. “This is for you.”

  Luna looked at the wand curiously as I held it out to her by the tip. With its pearly colour and tapered design, it looked more like a decoration than a weapon. “Really?” Luna said. Hesitantly she reached out and took it by the handle. “Thanks.”

  As soon as Luna took it I stepped back. To my sight Luna’s curse had been curling lazily around her, the silver mist pulsing softly. She’d pulled it back to take the wand from my hand, keeping the lethal stuff away from my skin, but she couldn’t stop it from soaking into the item as soon as she touched it.

  Luna’s curse works on objects as well as people, although nowhere near as strongly. Usually I can tell if something belongs to Luna by looking for the silver aura. As her curse touched the focus, though, something different happened. Instead of sticking to it the mist was drawn in, being absorbed. “It’s attuned to you,” I said. “It draws in your curse and uses it.”

  “Okay,” Luna said. She was holding the thing by the handle but still looked a little puzzled. “What does it, um, do?”

  I was about to tell Luna to try it and see when I remembered Arachne’s warning. “Wait a sec.” I walked out of the room and into the corridor, then put my back to the wall and leant into the doorway so that the only part of me visible from inside the room was my head. “Try it now.”

  “Uh,” Luna said. “Okay. So I’m supposed to—”

  Luna’s curse poured into the focus and it activated. A thin tendril of mist snaked from the tip, extending to ten or twenty feet long. All of a sudden Luna wasn’t holding a wand but a whip, the thong made from the silver mist of her curse. To anyone who couldn’t see Luna’s curse it wouldn’t have looked like anything at all, but I could see the whip curling around her. “Hey,” Luna said curiously. “It’s doing something, isn’t it?” She lifted the handle to look at it, turning it back and forth.

  The whip slashed outward, zigzagging across the room, its length amplifying the small movements of the handle. I ducked behind the door frame as the end of the tendril lashed into the corridor. “Okay, it’s working!” I shouted through the doorway. “Turn it off!”

  I felt the effect shut down and peeked my head cautiously around the corner. Luna was standing at the centre of what looked like a spiderweb of silvery lines. Glowing trails of invisible silver mist traced lines along the floor, walls, and ceiling. Luna was looking at the handle with new interest. “Invisible whip,” she said. “Cool.”

  “Arachne based the design off an Austr
alian stock whip,” I said, walking back out. “The long handle’s for balance, but since the whip’s weightless it doesn’t take any strength to use.” I glanced around at the glowing lines on the walls. “On the downside, the whip’s weightless and doesn’t take any strength to use. We’re going to have to work on your aim.”

  “It feels . . .” Luna said, frowning down at the focus. “Strange. Not in a bad way. Natural, I guess. Like it fits.”

  “Arachne designed it for you,” I said. “The thong of the whip is formed from your curse. If you hit someone with this whip it’s as if you’d touched them. It’s just as subtle and just as lethal.” I locked my eyes on Luna. “This is a weapon, not a toy. You can use it on an azimuth piste safely. But never use it anywhere else unless you’re intending to kill whoever you point it at. I’m trusting you with this. Don’t make me regret it.”

  Luna nodded. “I understand.”

  “Good.” I walked to the end of the azimuth piste and activated the shield. “Let’s give you some practice.”

  I worked with Luna late into the night, and she picked up the basics of attack and defence very fast. Both the whip and her curse seemed eager to do their job, striking out at targets and protecting her in return. The problem was control—the whip didn’t want to hit just one target, it wanted to hit everything, and only the azimuth shields kept me safe. By midnight we were both exhausted. I dropped Luna off at her room and checked that Anne was there before saying good night. I wanted to sleep, but this was a good chance to get a look at the deeper parts of Fountain Reach.

  * * *

  The outer rooms of the mansion were busy despite the late hour. Apprentices were still up and chatting in each other’s rooms, excited about their first night at the tournament, while their masters talked over drinks in the lounges. I prowled the corridors, a silent shadow in my mist cloak. My cloak doesn’t make me invisible—good light or movement makes it possible for a watcher to spot me, and both together make it almost certain. But when I combine it with my divination magic, watching for the areas where people will look and avoiding them, there’s not much that can find me if I don’t want to be found.

  As I went deeper, the background noise died away. It seemed most of the guests had been housed around the edges of the building, and as I walked the halls I could see why. There was something oppressive about the inner mansion—the ceilings felt too low, the architecture too alien. Most houses are designed as places to live and they’re meant to be comfortable for the people who use them. Fountain Reach didn’t feel like that. It was as though it had grown for its own reasons; the people inside were just trespassers. All around I could sense the thrum of the wards, limiting my vision, and it felt as though the mansion were looking for me.

  Turning in to a corridor I heard a muffled voice from ahead of me. The corridor was old and crooked, the floor age-darkened wood. Animal heads were mounted on the wall, gazing down with dead eyes: deer, leopard, buffalo. I stood still and listened. The voice came again: a woman. It was coming from a door a little farther down. I moved forward, placing my feet softly on the bare planks.

  As I drew closer I recognised the voice as Crystal’s. She was arguing with someone, but for some reason I couldn’t hear the other half of the conversation. “. . . take some time,” Crystal was saying.

  A pause, then Crystal spoke again. “The end of the tournament, obviously.” Another pause. “That’s impossible. You’ll just have to wait.”

  It sounded like she was on the phone with someone. I sized up the corridor and decided to take the risk of getting in close. A stag’s head was mounted above the door, antlers reaching almost to the ceiling, glass eyes staring at the opposite wall. I put my ear to the door and listened.

  “No,” Crystal said sharply. The door looked like it had been well crafted, but it was warped from long neglect and there were gaps between the planks that let sound through. “Absolutely not.”

  Silence, then Crystal again. “I don’t care. It’s too risky.”

  Something was odd: I could make out Crystal’s voice clearly but I couldn’t hear anything else. If she was on a phone or speaking into a headset I should be able to hear something, even just a buzz. I looked into the future in which I opened the door to peek inside.

  The room within was a bedroom that looked like it had been abandoned for years. A four-poster bed was piled with dust, the hangings moth-eaten. Old and darkened pictures hung on the wall and Crystal was standing in front of one of them. The angle caught her in profile, showing off the beauty of her features and making her gold hair shine against the murky background. She was frowning, though, and she wasn’t talking into a phone or headset. She seemed to be talking to the wall.

  “The whole point of this plan was so we didn’t have to keep picking at random,” Crystal said. “There’s virtually no chance we’d get someone who’d meet—”

  Crystal cut off. Looking again into the immediate future, I saw she was staring at one of the pictures. “Then wait,” she said abruptly. “We’ve been preparing for months and you’d risk it all for this?”

  There was no answer but Crystal threw up her hands. She was acting as if there were someone right there talking to her. “I don’t care! It’s too dangerous.”

  I tried to figure out what was going on. Mind mages can communicate by telepathy but that didn’t explain why Crystal was saying her half of the conversation out loud. She was speaking as though to someone in the same room. I tried looking into the future and focusing with my mage’s sight, searching for someone cloaked or invisible, but all I could make out was the background noise of the wards.

  Crystal had gone still all of a sudden. When she spoke, her voice was quiet. “Are you threatening me?”

  Silence. I couldn’t hear any movement; we were alone in this part of the mansion. “Remember our agreement,” Crystal said. A pause, then she let out a long breath. “All right. But this is going to be the only one. Understand?” Whatever answer she got seemed to satisfy her. Footsteps sounded from the room, heading for the door.

  Even forewarned, it was a near thing. I made it to the next door and slipped inside just as Crystal stepped out into the corridor. Holding the door shut, using my divination magic to watch Crystal, I saw her turn away and head down the corridor without a backward glance. The clack of her heels on the wooden floor grew quieter and quieter until there was silence.

  I gave it three minutes just to be safe, then stepped out, looking after where Crystal had gone. I hadn’t checked to see what her exact reaction would have been if she’d discovered me there but I was pretty sure it wouldn’t have been positive. She’d been careless, letting me eavesdrop like that. Probably she’d assumed that no one would be able to sneak up on her without her sensing their thoughts, and to be fair, most of the time she’d be right. But it’s never a good idea to rely too much on your magic, no matter how powerful it is. My mist cloak had kept me hidden and given me some interesting little snippets into the bargain. It seemed like Crystal had been making a deal with someone. But who?

  I entered the room in which Crystal had been talking and gave it a quick once-over. Like all the inner rooms of Fountain Reach it was windowless: The only illumination was the glow of the electric lights. I couldn’t sense any signs of life, in either the present or the future. It looked as though the room had been dead for years.

  Crystal seemed to have been talking to one of the pictures, and I took a closer look. It was an old portrait done in oils, its gilt frame dusty. It showed a man in his late middle years, thin and stooped with sunken, commanding eyes. I studied the picture but found no magical aura, no special devices. The painting had no name or signature either. The man looked out of the portrait with a fixed stare, his gaze following me.

  I searched a little longer but found nothing. Tired and weary, I finally retraced my steps to my room. I hung up my mist cloak, set a few basic safe
ty measures, and was asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow.

  chapter 9

  It was cold, and the roof was made of bones. The carpet was soft under my bare feet but the ceiling above was ragged and gleamed pale in the shadows. The corridors were hushed, and the halls were silent as a tomb.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” Anne said from next to me.

  I looked at Anne. Her face was pale and her eyes haunted. “What are you afraid of?”

  Anne shook her head. “He knows you’ve come.”

  A sound made me turn. A brown-skinned girl was standing there; she looked familiar, and wore a look of terrible grief. Slowly she turned and began walking away. “Wait!” I shouted. “Don’t!”

  She vanished into the darkness. I ran after her and found myself alone. A door stood before me; it looked smaller and older than the others. I pulled it open.

  My feet came down with a squish in mud. Inside I saw tall hedges, only a few feet away, with gaps between them that led into darkness. There should have been a night sky above but there wasn’t. I could feel the walls around me. Ahead, the entrances stood alone and empty.

  Looking into the darkness, I felt a wave of terror. There was something inside, something horrible, and if I went inside I would meet it face to face. I backed away, but the door and walls were the same. Everything was hidden. I was already inside and something was watching.

  I spun, fighting back panic, trying to see where to go. The wall shook with a banging noise. “Alex!” it shouted at me. “Alex!”