Alex Verus Novels, Books 1-4 (9780698175952)

by Jacka, Benedict

  At the bottom of the slope was a pond. There was a willow tree leaning over it, and under the willow was a girl, fifteen or sixteen years old and dressed neatly in blue and white. She was sitting cross-legged by the pond, looking down at the water with her face set in concentration. I was standing in plain view, but she didn’t seem to notice me. Hesitantly I moved, then when she didn’t react I came closer.

  The girl was Rachel, but it took me a moment before I was sure that it was really her; she looked very different from the woman she would grow into. In Richard’s mansion Rachel had been pretty but elusive, rarely showing what she was thinking. When I’d met her again last year, that ambivalence had hardened into a diamond mask that showed nothing of what might be behind it. But here, as she stared down at the water, there was an openness which I’d only seen hints of when we’d first met, something soft and unformed.

  Rachel’s eyes were still fixed on the pond, and as she stared at it the surface rippled. She extended a hand, soft blue light starting to flicker at her palm, and as she did a droplet of water rose from the pond’s surface to hover at her fingertips. The light brightened and another droplet rose, then another, a thin stream of water flowing upwards to gather in a floating orb. Carefully Rachel raised her hand and the orb rose with it, wobbling as it did, droplets breaking off to hover for a few moments before melding together again. Rachel’s movements were slow and careful, and there was a strange dreamlike look to her eyes, as though she were seeing something wonderful and far away.

  There was a rustle of leaves. Rachel started, the light winked out, and the orb of water fell back into the pond with a splash. She scrambled to to her feet.

  The girl who’d just brushed her way through the willow fronds was a younger version of Shireen. She was wearing a T-shirt and jeans, scuffed and dirty, and she was looking at Rachel with satisfaction. “So it was you,” she said.

  Rachel took a step back. “How did you get in here?”

  “Climbed over the wall,” Shireen said. “Come on, I just want to talk.”

  “How long were you watching?”

  “Long enough.” Rachel drew back and Shireen raised a hand. “It’s okay, it’s okay. Hey, you want to see something?”

  Orange light flared at Shireen’s hand and a flame caught in the air above her fingers, clearer and brighter than Rachel’s spell. Rachel had been backing away, but as she saw the magic she halted, staring. “Cool, huh?” Shireen said.

  Slowly Rachel came closer, until the two of them stood face to face under the willow tree. “How do you . . . ?” she asked, gazing at the light as if fascinated.

  “Do it?” Shireen said. “Same as you.”

  “How do you make it so strong?” Rachel said. She hadn’t taken her eyes away.

  Shireen shrugged. “I don’t know, it’s always been like that.” She closed her hand and the spell winked out. “Do your parents know?”

  Rachel hesitated, then shook her head. “I’m keeping it secret from mine,” Shireen said.

  “What is this?” Rachel asked. “How can we use it? What are we?”

  “Don’t know,” Shireen said again. She grinned. “But it’ll be fun finding out, right?”

  Rachel looked back at Shireen, then gave a little smile. “I’m Shireen,” Shireen said. “You?”

  “Rachel.”

  The scene blurred and shifted. I had a last glimpse of the two of them standing together by the water’s edge, then—

  * * *

  We were indoors, in a roomy bedroom with a high ceiling. The furnishings were new and well kept but anonymous, the sort you’d get at a good boarding school or hotel. Tall windows let in lots of light, giving a view out onto a row of houses. In the distance the hum of cars rose and fell.

  Rachel was lying on the bed reading. She was wearing what looked like a uniform—white blouse with a dark green skirt—and there was a green pullover slung over the back of a chair. She was older now, close to the age she’d been when we’d first met, and she looked more sure of herself, her movements more confident. Muffled footsteps sounded on the carpet outside and the door swung open. Rachel spoke in annoyance, not raising her eyes. “You’re supposed to knock.”

  Shireen shut the door behind her. “Nice to see you too.”

  Rachel looked in surprise and her face lit up. “You’re here! Wait, how did—?”

  “Caught an early train.” Shireen wasn’t wearing a uniform and compared to Rachel she looked scruffy, but she moved with the same energy she’d always had. She dropped into a chair, glancing around. “Wow, you get nice rooms.”

  “This is the best one,” Rachel said. “Haven’t you got school?”

  “Forget about that—this is important. You remember what we were talking about back in the summer?”

  Rachel sat up, alert. “You’ve found a teacher?”

  “He found me,” Shireen said. “His name’s Richard Drakh and he’s looking for apprentices. I wasn’t sure at first but I did some asking around and this guy’s the real deal. He’s really powerful. People are careful around him.”

  “So what does he want?”

  “Heh,” Shireen said. “He asked me something like that. He’s offering me an apprenticeship. And he’s got more than one place.” Shireen raised her eyebrows. “Interested?”

  “He’s offering me one too?”

  “Well, kind of.”

  Rachel sat back with a frown. “I just said that I knew someone else who’d be interested and asked whether he had other places,” Shireen said. “He said yes. I think he wants you.”

  “If he wants me, why didn’t he ask me?”

  “Maybe he doesn’t know about you yet. Come on, Rach, who cares who was first?”

  I’d been looking between the two girls as they talked. As Shireen spoke I turned back to Rachel—and jerked back, throat constricting as I tried to scream. Something was standing behind her: a spindly shape, tall and slender and utterly inhuman, its features a blur of shadow. Its head reached nearly to the ceiling and it was holding still.

  And just as suddenly it was gone. I stood in the centre of the room, looking wildly from side to side, heart hammering. The room was empty except for me and the two girls.

  “. . . going to be a full-time gig,” Shireen was saying. Neither she nor Rachel had shown any reaction; they were talking as though nothing had happened. “He’s going to show me his place on Saturday. If I say yes—if we say yes—we’re going to move in. It’s going to be magic lessons, introductions, the whole thing. Everything we need.”

  “What about school?”

  “Who cares about school?”

  “The university applications—”

  “Forget that. This is like getting an offer from Oxford and Cambridge and Harvard all at once. It’s our big chance.”

  Rachel got up and walked to the window, the book still hanging from one hand, and I followed her to peer out. Nothing. There was no trace of whatever that thing had been, but my heart was still pounding. I knew I’d seen it. “What’s wrong?” Shireen asked.

  Rachel turned back with a frown. “I don’t want to leave.”

  Shireen looked at her in surprise. “Why not?”

  “Because things are good here,” Rachel said. “The other girls do what I want.”

  Shireen rolled her eyes. “That’s because they’re scared of you. You’re a big fish in a small pond.”

  “Well, what’s wrong with that?”

  “Look, what you’re doing here is kid stuff,” Shireen said. “Okay, so you’re queen of your dorm—”

  “House.”

  Shireen waved a hand. “Whatever. It doesn’t get you anything. And next year you’re going to uni and things are going to change. It’s not going to be so easy to push people around.”

  Rachel shrugged. “What are they going to do about it?”

 
; “It’s not what they’ll do,” Shireen said. “It’s who might notice.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Shireen glanced at the window. “Look, the more I learn about this stuff, the more I get the feeling we’re not that safe. If Richard Drakh could find us, someone else could too.”

  An uneasy expression flickered across Rachel’s face. “Like who?”

  “I don’t know,” Shireen said. “But I’ve heard stories. Sometimes magic-users around our age just . . . go missing. And no one seems that keen on talking about where.”

  Shireen and Rachel stayed silent for a moment. The sun had gone behind a cloud, and the light on the houses outside was muted. “Look,” Shireen said. “You’ve been wanting your magic to be stronger, right? This guy can teach us.”

  Rachel sighed. “Fine, I’ll listen to him. But he’s going to have to be really convincing.”

  * * *

  The shift was quicker this time, and in only an instant I was in another bedroom, this one expensive-looking and cluttered with clothes. I recognised it as being like my room in Richard’s mansion but the layout was different, and it took me a moment to realise that it was one of the girls’ rooms, either Shireen’s or Rachel’s.

  The door slammed open and Shireen stormed through in midsentence. “—self-righteous assholes!” The door banged off the wall and Shireen kicked it before turning on Rachel, who’d been following behind. “Can you believe this? What century do these guys think they’re in?”

  Rachel shrugged and shut the door. “They act like we’re pretty little dolls on a shelf,” Shireen said, pacing up and down. “And they expect us to be grateful. ‘Oh yes, sir, I’m a good little girl.’ Never any respect. We just don’t matter.”

  “I told you,” Rachel said. “Back home we were special. Now we’re just two more apprentices.”

  Shireen flung herself into a chair, brooding. “I bet they’d act different if we were boys. They pay attention to Tobruk.”

  “Do you think—” Rachel began.

  There was a tentative knock on the door. “What?” Shireen shouted.

  The door cracked open and a nervous-looking face appeared in the gap. “Get us something to eat,” Shireen said.

  The face hesitated. I vaguely remembered him: Zander, one of the easily forgotten, often-changing servant population of Richard’s mansion. “Uh—” Zander said.

  “Did I stutter?” Shireen said. “You want me to tell Richard you’re not doing your job?”

  Zander paled and vanished. The door clicked shut and the sound of his hurrying footsteps faded away. Shireen shook her head. “Even the servants are taking the piss now.”

  Rachel hadn’t paid attention to Zander; she was looking thoughtful. “Do you think this was what Richard meant?”

  “The whole power thing?” Shireen said. She drummed her fingers. “Maybe he’s right. It’s the only way we’re ever going to change anything, isn’t it?”

  “It’s the only way they’re ever going to respect us.”

  “Fine,” Shireen said. “Let’s teach them some respect.”

  As she spoke the words Shireen faded, and so did Rachel. The clothes vanished and the windows darkened, layers of dust covering the furniture and bed. I was alone in an empty room.

  A hand tapped me on the shoulder and I spun with a yelp. Shireen gave me a quizzical look. “What’s wrong?”

  “Don’t scare me like that,” I muttered. The room around us looked decayed and abandoned, as though it had been deserted for years.

  “Who did you think I was?”

  “A minute ago,” I said. “I thought I saw . . .”

  “Saw what?”

  “Never mind.” I looked at Shireen. “So that was the way it happened? Richard came to you and you went to Rachel?”

  “I could always talk Rachel into things.” Shireen walked over to inspect the chair where her younger self had been sitting. It was worn and faded now, with holes in the fabric. “She’d argue but she’d go along with it in the end.”

  “You were stupid.”

  “We were teenagers,” Shireen said. “Anyway, it’s not like you can talk.”

  “Oh, I haven’t got anything to be proud of either,” I said with a sigh. “My reasons for signing up were much dumber than yours . . . What were you talking about at the end?”

  “When?”

  “About respect. Changing things.”

  “We always figured we were going to do something special with our magic,” Shireen said. “Like in the movies, when the heroine gets her powers, you know? She always ends up fighting a bunch of bad guys and saving the world.”

  “Saving the world?”

  “I’m not saying we went out to do charity work,” Shireen said. “But we saw a lot of mage society while we were with Richard and we didn’t much like the way it treated women. Too many apprentice girls getting stepped on and way too many female slaves.”

  I looked at Shireen for a moment. “If you had a problem with slaves,” I said at last, “maybe you should have tried doing something about the ones in your basement.”

  Shireen didn’t meet my eyes and there was an awkward silence. “Sorry,” she said at last.

  I kept gazing at Shireen. For a moment I felt the old rage starting to rise, then with an effort of will I shook it off. “Forget it.”

  “You said something like that to me back then,” Shireen said at last. “That time I came to your cell. Remember?”

  I looked at her curiously. “So you were listening? I was never sure . . .”

  “I didn’t want to,” Shireen said. “I went upstairs and tried to forget about it. But it was like . . . a seed, I guess. All the next few weeks I’d be in the middle of doing something and I’d start thinking about you and Catherine. It wouldn’t stop bugging me.”

  “Well, I’m sorry if thinking about what was happening to the two of us was making your life less convenient.”

  “You can really be a dick sometimes,” Shireen said. “But you know what? That was kind of why it worked. I didn’t like you and you didn’t like me, and so you were the one person who told me the truth.”

  I looked at the empty space where Rachel had stood. “Do you think this is how it works for all Dark mages? Just drifting, going a little further each day? Then one day you look around and realise what you’re turning into . . .”

  “It was for me,” Shireen said simply.

  “What happened when you want back to the mansion, Shireen?”

  Shireen went still.

  “The last I saw you, it was at the abandoned block,” I said. “You said you were going back to find Rachel and Catherine, and I watched you walk away and I never saw you again. What happened after that?”

  Shireen was silent for a moment. “When I left the mansion I was looking for you,” she said at last. “But I didn’t know what I was going to do when I found you. I didn’t know if I wanted to fight you or talk to you or bring you back or . . . The one thing I was sure of was that we were out of time. Either it was going to be Tobruk, or . . .” She stopped, frowning.

  “Or what?”

  “You have to go.” Shireen turned on me. “Now!”

  I looked around in confusion. The room was empty. “Go where?”

  “Out of Elsewhere. You’re in danger. You have to wake up.” The lines of the room around us began to blur and dissolve, the colours fading into each other. Shireen advanced until she was right in front of me, staring up at me. “Wake up!” The colours blurred into grey and we were falling, my stomach lurching as we dropped. I couldn’t see Shireen or anything else but I could hear her voice shouting at me. “Wake up! Wake—!”

  * * *

  “—up! Alex, wake up!”

  I came awake with a start. My room was dark and a slim figure was leaning over me, shaking me. “Huh?” I sat up, sha
king my head. “What?”

  “Will’s friends, the adepts, they’re back.” Anne’s voice was low and urgent. “They’re here.”

  My precognition was nagging at me, warning of danger. The clock by my bed said 3:17 and the city outside was quiet. From the direction of the living room I could hear movement; Luna and Variam were up. I was still disoriented from waking and couldn’t process it all. “Where?”

  “I don’t know—” Anne looked back over her shoulder. “They’ve gone.”

  “Gone where?” The warning of danger was getting louder and louder. Something was coming for us but I couldn’t see what. Nobody was going to come through the door, but . . .

  “I can’t see, they’re out of my range. They came onto the roof and they were doing something, then they started running.”

  “On the—?” Suddenly the visions of the future ahead snapped into focus and my eyes went wide. “Oh shit.” I lunged off the bed, grabbing Anne. She made a startled noise as I dived for the side of the room, shoving her under the desk before rolling in myself.

  There was a roar and what felt like a blow to every part of my body at once. The floor bucked and settled, and a vibration went through the building as what felt like a landslide hit all around us with a thundering crash. Dust filled the air.

  I tried to roll back out from under the desk and scraped against something jagged; there was rubble piled across the floor. I scrambled out on my hands and knees and felt a breeze: looking up, I saw sky. Half the roof of my flat was gone.

  It had been some kind of explosive, and from the mess it must have gone off right above my bed. Where my bed and table had been was a pile of rubble, forming a slope up to the hole in the roof. The wall onto the street had survived but half the interior wall was gone, including the door through to the living room. Anne struggled out from underneath the desk, coughing, and I helped her up. “Can you move?”

  Anne shook her head; she hadn’t had the second’s warning I had and she looked dazed. “I’m okay.”

  I looked around to see that the doorway to my living room was a pile of shattered bricks and plaster. We were sitting ducks in here, and the only way out was up. I started climbing. “Come on.”