Alex Verus Novels, Books 1-4 (9780698175952)

by Jacka, Benedict

  “Funny how you always time your jokes for when I’m too busy to go after you.”

  “Oh, come on,” Luna said with a grin. “Your face was hilarious.”

  “I’m getting a vision,” I said. “It’s my mystical diviner’s powers. I foresee myself suddenly assigning you many more shifts at the shop.”

  “No, you won’t,” Luna said with perfect confidence.

  “Oh, really?”

  “You’re not going to make me do it on my own,” Luna said. “The only reason you keep the shop is so you can run the counter yourself.”

  I blinked and looked at her. “How do you figure that?”

  When I first met Luna she was twenty-one. She’s twenty-three now, a blue-eyed, fair-skinned, wavy-haired half-English-half-Italian girl whose life’s been trending steadily upwards over the past two years despite occasional interludes of danger and violence. Luna’s always been fit, but lately she’s turned into quite an athlete—she was introduced to azimuth duelling last winter and took to it like a duck to water, and she’s been practising hard ever since. “Well, it’s not like you do it for the money,” Luna said. Her hair was damp, the water darkening it from its usual light brown, and as she spoke she started untangling it with the aid of a hairbrush.

  “It makes a profit.”

  “Not much.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I used to get your stock, remember?” Luna said. Before Luna had been my apprentice she’d worked for me part time, searching for magical items. I’d bought them from her and divided them up; the weaker ones I put up for sale in the restricted section, and the dangerous ones I kept for myself. “You hardly ever sell the expensive stuff.”

  “Have you been going through my records?”

  “You don’t have any proper ones; I checked. Anyway, if you cared that much about it you’d keep regular hours.”

  “I have regular hours.”

  “Unless something comes up.”

  “Stuff does keep coming up.”

  “But you could hire an assistant,” Luna said. “If you really wanted to dump the work on someone else you could have done it by now.”

  “Well, yeah.” For years I’ve had vague plans for getting someone to help run the place, but I’ve always put it off. For one thing there aren’t many people I’d trust with the job, but even if I could find someone I’m not sure I’d do it. The people in the magical community whom I feel closest to aren’t the established mages but the have-nots—apprentices, adepts, lesser talents, and all the other small-time practitioners out there—and those are the people that my shop lets me meet.

  Luna finished brushing her hair and started tying it back in a ponytail. “So who are Anne and Vari seeing this time?”

  “Her name’s Dr. Shirland,” I said. “Mind mage. She’s an independent.”

  “If she’s a mind mage, how’s she going to teach Anne and Vari?”

  “She’s not, but she might know someone who will. From what I’ve heard she’s supposed to be some kind of consultant. I’m hoping she can get Anne and Vari an interview with a life or fire mage who could teach them.”

  “Oh, like that guy they met in the spring?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Let’s hope it goes a bit better than that. Last thing we need is another . . .” A future ahead of us caught my attention and I stopped, concentrating.

  Luna tilted her head. “What is it?”

  “Someone’s coming,” I said. The pattern was different from a regular customer; as I focused on the future in which she walked through the door I saw the flicker of auras. “A mage.”

  Luna had been sitting on the counter; now she hopped off, suddenly alert. “Trouble?”

  “Don’t think so.” I was already looking for the flash and chaos of combat and couldn’t see it. “Get your focus just in case.”

  Luna vanished. I walked forward and flipped the sign in the window from OPEN to CLOSED before returning to my desk to quickly check the weapons underneath. As Luna reappeared I stood behind the counter and waited. A few seconds later the bell rang and the door swung open.

  I’d been watching the woman as she’d walked down the street, and by the time she stepped in I’d had the chance to take a good look at her. She was big and hefty-looking, with brown hair and a round, pleasant face, and she wore a wide-cut suit. “Hi,” she said, looking from Luna to me. “Verus, right?”

  “That’s me,” I said. And you’re Keeper Caldera.

  “Keeper Caldera. Good to meet you.” Caldera walked forward to shake my hand. “Mind if we have a word?”

  Keepers are the enforcement arm of the Light Council, a mixture of soldiers, police, and internal investigators. Most mages are wary of them, and for good reason; if a Keeper wants to talk to you, it’s usually bad news. “Depends on the word.”

  “You’re not under investigation,” Caldera said. “I’d just like to ask a few questions about something I’m working on.”

  I hesitated. I wasn’t keen on talking to a Keeper, but if I brushed Caldera off she’d probably just come back again. “All right,” I said reluctantly. “Not here though.” I’m still wary about having other mages around my shop and I didn’t really want customers looking through the window and seeing us.

  “Fine by me,” Caldera said. “Tell you what, there’s a really nice pub just around the corner. I’ll buy you a pint.”

  “Uh . . .” Okay, that wasn’t standard Keeper procedure as far as I knew. “I guess that works. Let me close up and I’ll meet you outside.”

  * * *

  Caldera’s definition of “around the corner” turned out to be on the optimistic side, and it took us twenty minutes to make our way through the busy Camden streets. Luna kept pace with me, staying half a step behind to keep me out of the radius of her curse; Caldera hadn’t specifically invited her but I’d signalled for her to come, and apart from a glance Caldera hadn’t objected. I kept an eye out the whole way, scanning for danger; it wasn’t that Caldera had done anything particularly suspicious, but my past experiences with Keepers have generally been less than positive. Nothing pinged; if I was in danger, it wasn’t the immediate kind.

  The pub Caldera had picked for us looked like it had been built some time around the Iron Age: an old, crooked building with irregular floors and low ceilings, filled with nooks and crannies. It obviously hadn’t been designed for tall people, and I had to duck as I followed Caldera down the stairs into the stone cellar. “Right,” Caldera said as she led us past the patrons and to a secluded corner. “What are you having?”

  “Just a Coke, please,” Luna said.

  “Seriously?”

  “I don’t drink.”

  “Fair enough. You?”

  “Whatever they’ve got on tap,” I said.

  Caldera winced. “Okay, look. I’ll get you something good.” She headed to the bar.

  “Is she really a Keeper?” Luna asked once Caldera was gone.

  “Oh yeah,” I said, looking around the drawings and photos on the grubby paint-on-brick walls. I’d already looked into the future in which I asked Caldera, and I’d seen her show me her Keeper’s signet with its distinctive magical fingerprint. “Though it’s the first time I’ve had one ask me out to the pub.”

  “Here we go,” Caldera announced, returning with a drink in either hand. She set them down in front of us and dropped into a corner seat with a contented sigh.

  I took a dubious look at the contents of the pint glass she’d pushed in front of me. “What is it?”

  “Porter,” Caldera said. “Try it.”

  I checked to make sure it wasn’t going to poison me or anything, then took a sip. I raised my eyebrows. “Huh.”

  “Like it?”

  “Tastes . . . interesting.” I took another drink. It had a fruity flavour, with an odd aftertaste.

&nbs
p; “Pretty good, right?” Caldera said. “Notice how it turns into a roasted coffee flavour after the raisin start? Not many pubs in London sell this stuff. They only brew it in London, bottle-conditioned—have to pour it out carefully to leave the yeast sediment in the bottom.”

  “Hm. I’ll have to try it again next time.”

  “There we go. Done some good today.”

  I gave Caldera an amused look. “Not that I’m questioning your expertise on beer, but wasn’t there something you wanted to ask?”

  “Right.” Caldera glanced at Luna. “You’re okay with her sitting in on this, right?”

  “Luna’s my apprentice,” I said. “You can tell her anything you’d tell me.”

  Luna gave me a quick, warm look. “All right,” Caldera said, looking straight at me. “It’s to do with your old master, Richard Drakh.”

  I felt my muscles tense. My past with Richard was the one thing I did not want to talk about with Luna, or anyone else for that matter. “What’s happened?”

  “There are rumours going around,” Caldera said, watching me carefully. “That he’s coming back.”

  The old half-healed, never-healed memories flashed through my mind, fear and helplessness and pain. I shut them out with an effort of will, keeping my voice steady. “There are always rumours.”

  “It’s been ten years.”

  “So?”

  “So they didn’t start from nowhere, did they?” Caldera said. “The powers-that-be want to know what’s going on.”

  “Because they don’t have any hard evidence?”

  “Can’t say.”

  Caldera’s poker face wasn’t bad, but I’m pretty good at reading people and I knew the answer to my question was yes. The Council didn’t have any proof that Richard was back—this was just a fishing expedition. A bit of the tension went out of my muscles. Luna watched the two of us from over her Coke, her eyes filled with curiosity. “You’re hoping I might know something,” I said. “Because I used to be Richard’s apprentice. Right?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “I haven’t seen him in more than ten years.” I met Caldera’s eyes. “I’m guessing you looked up my background before coming here?”

  Caldera’s expression didn’t change. “Heard the story.”

  “Then you know why I stayed away,” I said. “I haven’t heard anything about him. Not when I left, and not after I left. And you know what? I’m fine with that.”

  Caldera held my gaze for a second. “All right,” she said after a pause. “What about his Chosen, then? Deleo. Does she know something?”

  I looked away. “Deleo and I aren’t exactly friends.”

  “You were in contact with her last year, right?”

  “Briefly.”

  “Learn anything?”

  “Yeah.” I turned back to Caldera. “I learnt that Deleo’s crazier than a sack of rabid weasels. You want to interview her, go right ahead, but I’m not going to be standing next to you when you do it.”

  Caldera made a pacifying gesture. “All right. Look, we don’t have many people to ask, okay? Not like Dark mages are going to cooperate with a Keeper.”

  “They don’t cooperate with anyone. And I’m a rogue, remember? You think they’re going to trust me?” I shook my head. “What are you expecting to turn up?”

  “Okay,” Caldera said. “Here’s how it is. I wasn’t around back when Richard was active, but from what I heard he had a lot of people running scared. Some of the Guardian types thought he had a plan, was working on something big with the Dark mages, I don’t know. Then all of a sudden, right when he was at the top of his game, he disappeared. Rumour was he’d gone somewhere, but he never showed up and neither did those two apprentices of his. After a few years the guys on the case filed all three of them as missing-presumed-dead and forgot about it.”

  “Those two apprentices” had been Tobruk and Shireen. Deleo and I had been numbers three and four. “If they’d known Richard they wouldn’t have filed him as ‘presumed’ anything.”

  “So where do you think he went?”

  I shrugged.

  “I thought diviners knew everything.”

  “Richard disappeared in the summer ten years ago,” I said. Come to think of it, it was ten years almost to the day. It had been August then, and it was August now. “By the time he vanished . . . Well, let’s just say he and I weren’t on the best of terms.”

  “You have to have some clue,” Caldera said. She was leaning forward, hands clasped, frank and persuasive. “Come on. You’re not seriously telling me you didn’t know anything.”

  “You don’t know what Richard was like,” I said quietly. I held Caldera’s eyes, allowing a little of the memories to show through, letting her see I was telling the truth. “Those mages were right to be scared of him. You think he told me his plans? I lived in his mansion for two years, and by the end of it the biggest thing I’d learnt about him was how much I didn’t know. Anything you saw of him, it was because he wanted you to see it.”

  “You’re a diviner, right? You never took a look to see?”

  “That’s not how it works,” I said, and shook my head. “I’m sorry, Caldera. I don’t have what you’re looking for. I don’t know what Richard’s plans were. As far as I know, no one did.”

  A silence fell over the table. Caldera drew back and I could tell she was disappointed. My phone chimed and I glanced at it. “I’d better go.”

  Caldera held out a card. “If you think of anything or if anything happens, give me a call, okay?”

  I hesitated, then slipped it into my pocket. “Thanks for the drink.”

  * * *

  “Who was that message from?” Luna asked once we were back out on the streets.

  “Anne,” I said. “She says they’ve finished, but she’s not going to be back until late.” I frowned. Something about the message had sounded a little off. I glanced through the futures in which I called Anne and Variam, just to make sure they were all right. Well, they were answering their phones . . .

  I snapped back to the present to realise Luna had asked me something about Caldera. “Not sure,” I said. “Listen, I think I’m going to go pay a visit to our mind mage consultant. You go back to the shop and meet up with Vari.”

  “Can’t I come?”

  “Next time. Anyway, I’m taking you out tonight, remember? Go get ready.”

  Luna had been about to keep on pushing, but that diverted her. “Where are we going?”

  “It’s a surprise.”

  “What kind of surprise?”

  “An educational surprise.”

  Luna gave me a suspicious look. “It’ll be fun,” I said. “Wear something nice.”

  “Like what, battle armour?”

  “I’ll leave that up to your judgement. Remember, seven o’clock. Don’t be late.”

  * * *

  The quickest route from Camden to Brondesbury is the overground line, which was once called the Silverlink Metro but now goes by the unimaginative name of the London Overground. I watched the rooftops and gardens of north-central London go by, then got off and walked to where Anne and Variam had met Dr. Ruth Shirland.

  Dr. Shirland lived in a terraced house in a small closed-in street. It was a residential area and solidly middle class, the kind of place where you’re paying a lot more for the location than for the building. It’s not the kind of place you’d expect a mage to live, but I’ve seen stranger choices. I rang the bell and waited.

  Dr. Shirland opened the door. She was about sixty years old, short and delicate looking, with grey curly hair, small round glasses, and the kind of wrinkles you get from smiling a lot. “Oh, hello,” she said. “Alex Verus, isn’t it? Come right in.”

  “Thanks.”

  I was escorted into a small and cosy sitting room with a modest number of chairs and a
lot of bookshelves. I accepted tea, refused biscuits, and was inspected by a fat black-and-white tomcat who sniffed my hand, permitted himself to be stroked, then curled up on an armchair clearly reserved for his exclusive use. “Thanks for seeing me,” I said.

  “It’s no trouble,” Dr. Shirland said. “Though I do have a patient in an hour.”

  “A patient?”

  “I’m a consulting psychologist,” Dr. Shirland said. “I see mages, but I have a regular practice as well.”

  “Yeah, I imagine being able to read thoughts would make psychology easier. Are you reading mine now?”

  Dr. Shirland raised an eyebrow. “Would you believe me if I told you I wasn’t?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Why not?”

  “Call it a precaution,” I said. “Besides, in my experience most mages can never resist using their powers.”

  “Would you include yourself in that category?”

  “I can’t read thoughts.”

  “But you can see what someone’s going to say.”

  “But you can look inside someone’s head even if it’s something they’re not going to say.”

  “It’s actually more complicated than that,” Dr. Shirland said, “but most people aren’t concerned with technical details. I imagine they don’t draw much distinction between your being able to predict some of the things they do and all of the things they do?”

  “Not generally.”

  “Being psychically naked before another is quite a frightening concept,” Dr. Shirland said. “Once that line is crossed, it makes very little difference how far one goes. The breach of privacy is just as extreme either way.”

  I thought about it and gave a slight smile. “I suppose that’s a fair point.”

  Dr. Shirland sipped her tea. I sat back in the armchair. From the other chair, the cat opened an eye to take a look at me and then went to sleep.

  “I understand you’ve taken on the role of sponsor for Anne and Variam?” Dr. Shirland said.