Alex Verus Novels, Books 1-4 (9780698175952)

by Jacka, Benedict

  But she didn’t trust me. Not anymore.

  I let my arm drop and stepped away. Anne walked past me onto the landing. For a moment she hesitated and I saw the futures flicker as if she wanted to say something, and then she bowed her head and started down the stairs. I watched her go until she disappeared below the landing. The sound of her footsteps crossing the floor drifted up from below, then the shop door closed and I was alone.

  * * *

  With everyone gone my flat felt empty, and I wandered aimlessly through the rooms. My bedroom was still missing a roof; the rubble had been cleared but I hadn’t arranged for repairs. I needed to start the work of rebuilding my flat but I couldn’t muster the energy. The living room had been emptied of furniture and I couldn’t help but remember it as it had been, full of games and talk and laughter. It felt like a long time ago, and now the room seemed gloomy and bare.

  I fixed myself a meal in the kitchen. It seemed to take a long time and when I was done it tasted bland. I couldn’t help comparing it to Anne’s cooking. I washed up and went back to the living room. I had work I should be doing, but I couldn’t make myself care. The conversations with Lee and with Anne kept going round and round in my head and my flat felt lonely and depressing. At last I gave up and headed to Hampstead Heath.

  * * *

  Ifound Arachne in her cave, sitting at rest. For once she wasn’t working on any clothes and she greeted me as if it were just another day. Walking into her cavern didn’t exactly make me feel happy, but at least the empty feeling didn’t get any worse.

  “Well, the armour worked perfectly,” I said after we’d finished with the small talk. I felt listless but didn’t want to show it. “I think it’s accepted me, too.” I looked at Arachne. “Did you know it was going to . . . ?”

  “Imbued items make their own choice,” Arachne said. “But I knew what it was looking for. You aren’t wearing it?”

  “I’ve gotten a bit edgy about these things lately.”

  “The armour will be safe,” Arachne said. “I designed it with that in mind. It’ll grow with you too, as long as you spend enough time with it.” She tilted her head at me. “But that isn’t what’s bothering you.”

  I was silent. “Anne’s gone,” I said finally. “I’m not sure she’s ever coming back.” I told Arachne the story, not leaving anything out.

  Arachne sat thoughtfully for a little while once I was finished. “With regard to the adepts,” she said at last, “how do you feel about what you’ve done?”

  “How do I feel?” I sighed. “Right now . . . Mostly, just empty. I feel like to do what I did to Will and the Nightstalkers, I had to kill a bit of myself. All these years I’ve tried to prove to myself that I’m not the same person as I was back then, and it’s like it was all for nothing. I wish it had ended some other way but it’s not like I’ve got anyone else to blame, is it? And . . . I don’t want to admit it, but there’s a part of me that doesn’t regret it one bit. That thinks that they hurt me, they tried to kill me, they deserved everything they got. And then there’s a bit of me that’s afraid feeling that way means that I really am a monster. That I can kill a bunch of kids and be glad they’re dead.” I was silent for a moment. “I’ve driven Anne away and probably Sonder too. They’re probably the two most good mages I know, and they’re both gone. What does that say about me?”

  “You’re afraid of becoming like Richard,” Arachne said. “That you’re following his path, just as Tobruk and Rachel were.”

  I smiled slightly. “You always get right to the heart of it, don’t you?”

  “I am a little older than you, you know.” Arachne’s opaque eyes studied me. “Would you like some advice?”

  I nodded.

  “Well then.” Arachne settled back into a more comfortable position, rearranging her eight legs. “First, though it may be little consolation at this moment, I don’t believe there was very much else you could have done. As soon as these adepts made the decision to pursue you, someone’s death was inevitable; the only question was whose. I don’t think there were any truly good solutions to this problem. Only bad and less bad.”

  “I keep thinking about what Anne said, whether there was some other way. Knockout magic, some sort of trick . . .”

  “Perhaps. But perhaps not. And even if you could have disarmed them, what would you have done afterwards? It’s not as though you could have kept them prisoner. You aren’t invincible, Alex. They nearly killed you once, and the longer you hesitated the better the chance they would have finished the job. And personally, I prefer having you alive.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Second.” Arachne lifted a leg. “Because you did genuinely try to resolve this peacefully, and because you resorted to lethal force only at the last extreme of defending your own life, I think you will eventually be able to live with what you’ve done. You’ll never be happy about it and you will feel the weight of it for a long, long time but you will survive, as you have survived before.”

  I was silent. “Third,” Arachne said. “It seems to me that much of the reason for your unhappiness is not just because of how you see your actions, but how you believe they are seen by others. Particularly by your friends.”

  I nodded.

  “In which case you can take some consolation in knowing that the worst is over. You’ve shown Anne and Variam and Luna and Sonder the darkest side of your nature and what you are most ashamed of in your past. No matter how painful it may have been they know the worst of you now, and they can come to terms with it themselves. If they choose to accept you, knowing what they do, then your friendship will be stronger for it, and nothing else you do is likely to test it for a long time.”

  “If.”

  “If,” Arachne agreed. “But that decision is theirs, not yours.”

  I nodded again. “Fourth,” Arachne said. “As I’m sure you know, the news of how you dealt with the Nightstalkers will spread. It may seem to you as though your sins are being paraded but, once the excitement has died away, you may find that the effect on your reputation has been helpful.”

  “Helpful?”

  “You know how magical society works, Alex,” Arachne said soberly. “Being known as a ruthless, dangerous man willing to kill those who threaten him has its benefits. After seeing what happened to the Nightstalkers, anyone else thinking of coming after you is going to hesitate.”

  “Or they’ll just bring more firepower.”

  “Perhaps—but this should at least scare away the little fish, and I don’t think you’ll be similarly challenged for some time. And it might work to Luna’s benefit too. You’ve told me before about your worries that the further she goes with her training, the more problems she’ll face for being an adept. Well, after this story spreads, I think it’s considerably less likely that anyone will choose to make an issue of it.”

  “So—what? If I’m a killer, I might as well enjoy the perks of the job?”

  “Fifth,” Arachne said, “and most important. You’re afraid of becoming like Richard.”

  I sat up and nodded.

  “In which case I would suggest that the very fact that you are afraid of that is good evidence that you are not like Richard. As long as you are afraid of becoming like him, as long as you consciously choose not to be like him, then you never truly will. It is our choices that define us. Richard understood that. He could suggest and he could tempt, but he knew the final decision was always yours.”

  “And the things I’ve done?”

  “Not everything you’ve done has been dark, Alex.” Arachne lifted her legs, as though ticking points off. “You chose to help Luna in the hunt for the fateweaver, when you could have hidden yourself away and been safe. You saved me at the risk of your own life when confronting Belthas. You protected Anne and Variam when they were in danger at Fountain Reach. Even in dealing with the Nightstalkers you were acting in your frien
ds’ interests. You took the risks and the responsibility upon yourself. If you’ve done things to be ashamed of, you’ve done things to be proud of as well.”

  “Do you think it balances out?”

  “Would I have stayed with you all this time if I didn’t?” Spiders can’t really smile, but Arachne sounded as if that was what she was doing. “Although . . . if it concerns you so much, why not do something about it?”

  I looked at Arachne curiously. “Like what?”

  “If you’re worried that your good deeds are outweighed by your bad ones, why not do more of them? You’ve spent a long time trying not to be like Richard. Perhaps it’s time you started considering what sort of person you do want to be.” Arachne rose. “Think it over.”

  * * *

  That evening found me back home, sketching the first notes and plans for what would eventually be a new set of blueprints for my flat. I wasn’t going to simply rebuild it—the Nightstalkers’ little demolition exercise had done a good job of exposing the weaknesses in my home defences and I had several upgrades in mind. A flicker in the futures caught my attention, and a moment later I heard the sound of the shop door being unlocked below. I looked up, then went downstairs.

  Luna and Variam were just switching on the lights in the shop. “Vari?” I said in surprise. He was dressed in a hand-me-down set of formal robes that almost fit him but not quite. In a weird sort of way he looked like the mage equivalent of someone who’d just come home from the office. “I thought you were in Scotland?”

  “I was,” Variam said cheerfully. “Knocked off early. I can gate now, remember?”

  “Haven’t you moved out?”

  “Well, yeah, but I can still visit, right?”

  “We figured you could use some company,” Luna said. “Unless you want to be left alone?”

  I looked between the two of them and smiled. “Come on up.”

  They came up, and the three of us spent the evening together. We all had stories to tell: Variam of his first few days as a Light apprentice, and Luna of what had happened while I was gone. We cooked dinner together, and after Luna and Variam had caused the expected culinary disaster we spent another half hour deciding where to order takeaway. It wasn’t the same, but it wasn’t so bad.

  * * *

  Idreamed that night.

  I saw Rachel—or perhaps I was Rachel. She was walking across a grassy ridge in the starlight, and in some strange way I both watched her from outside and at the same time felt and moved as she did. The sky was clear with no moon and the only light was from the stars, yet I recognised the silhouette of Richard’s mansion, a black shadow in the darkness. The sight filled me with a strange mix of emotions, familiar and alien: fear, anticipation, a distant sadness. As Rachel neared the front door she spoke a word and the door swung open, for she’d crafted these wards and they obeyed her commands.

  Through the corridor, down the stairs, and into the darkness, a sphere of sea-green light forming to light the way. The glow backlit Rachel’s face strangely; she wore no mask this time, and in the greenish light her features were beautiful but cold, with little trace of feeling or warmth. Through the chapel, and now Rachel’s path curved to skirt a patch of floor. To me it looked the same as any other but to Rachel’s eyes it was the place in which Shireen had died, and a trace of her blood still stained the stone. Just for a moment I felt another presence in the ancient shrine, and I thought I heard an echo of footsteps behind us.

  Through the corridors and the laboratory, past the cells and through the labyrinth. The signs of the battle still scarred the benches but the bodies were gone. Maybe the dust and ashes in the corners might have been a part of them once but no one would be able to tell, not anymore. Still Rachel walked on, her feet picking out the paths as though she’d walked them a hundred times before, until at last she came to the room at the very end of the labyrinth, the final one to have been completed all those years ago.

  The room was smooth and circular, pillars supporting the ceiling, all illuminated in the green light of Rachel’s spell. At the centre of the room was a wide dais. Three black hemispheres protruded from the stone, forming a triangle. Rachel stopped a little way from the dais and waited.

  Time passed. Rachel waited, paced. Twice she looked towards the exit, as though on the verge of leaving, but each time she stayed. Suddenly she snapped her head around and an instant later I felt what she did: a slow surge of magical power, growing stronger.

  With a faint hiss black energy erupted from the dais, dark lightning crackling to join the three hemispheres in a triangle. At the centre of the triangle the air darkened, a black oval appearing in midair. Rachel stood stiff, as though paralysed. The black oval grew, stretched. For a moment it was almost transparent and there was the hint of something visible on the other side, then a man was stepping through, alighting on the dais. His feet touched the stone and the black lightning snapped off, the portal vanishing into nothingness. The man was ordinary-looking in every way; but for his entrance no one would have looked at him twice.

  Rachel moved first, bowing her head. A complex mixture of emotions flickered across her face and were gone. “Master.”

  “Deleo,” Richard said with a smile. “It’s good to be back.”

  And I woke with a gasp, heart pounding in my chest.