by Jasmine Walt
I was powerless to help anyone. Not my family. No one from Enzar, either. And now the Alliance was on full alert. And they might suspect me of murder, too.
I just wished I knew more about the Alliance’s Law Division. I’d broken no overly serious laws, not that they’d seen. I’d trespassed in the Passages, used magic, and brought others into it. That was all. I’d pretend I’d been curious for a glimpse of another world. People had got away with that with a slap on the wrist. Or a night in here. Nell said even some of the Academy kids sneaked into the Passages for a laugh when they weren’t yet at that level. Okay, so the timing wasn’t perfect. But they had no grounds on which to convict me. If Alber and Skyla had got away, they wouldn’t even know about the bloodrock.
But there was a tight feeling in my chest. I flexed my wrists, half-expecting to find burn marks from the handcuffs. I wondered how many people they arrested for using magic. It wasn’t technically a crime—but in the Passages, it was illegal, of course.
You’re going to hurt yourself. I clenched my fists as Walker’s words replayed in my head. Condescending dickhead. Did I know magic was dangerous? Of course I did. The idiot who’d been firing his Taser in the Passages had done more damage than I had. When I recovered the magic that lived under my skin, I’d be out of here.
I hoped.
I must have fallen asleep, because I jerked awake when someone turned the key in the lock. I sat up, wincing as the bruises all over my body made themselves known. I’d struck the wall pretty hard in the street. Plus, my knees had taken a beating when I’d fallen onto the pavement. I was pretty sure nothing was broken. My eyes stung a little, but I didn’t dare remove the lenses.
I tensed up as the door inched open. A woman came into the room. Japanese, probably about ten years older than me, a badge saying, “Medical Division” pinned to her shirt. She carried a clipboard, and when she met my eyes, her expression wasn’t unkind.
“I just need to check you over,” she said. “I’m Saki.”
I gritted my teeth together, but she was surprisingly gentle when she gave me a once-over. I kept my eye on the unguarded door. When she moved to my left arm, I prepared to run. And then she pulled out a syringe.
“I’m going to take a blood sample…”
No. I stuck out an elbow. Saki let out a squeak of surprise as it connected with her chin, but I was already at the door, opening it–
Crash. Stars winked before my eyes as a sharp object caught me on the skull. Ouch! She’d hit me with the clipboard. My hands scrabbled at the door, but Saki twisted my arm behind my back so hard, and so unexpectedly, I yelped aloud. Running footsteps sounded, and guards came into the room, surrounding me. Hands held mine behind my back, while several others restrained me.
“Get the cuffs!” one of them shouted.
And just like that, I was cuffed again. My hands locked behind my back—and my ankles too to add insult to injury. The energy drain was so intense, I slumped onto the bed, feeling like the life was being sucked from my body. I couldn’t sit up, even when they surrounded me. Someone stuck a syringe in my arm. I managed one last kick, but missed. My legs felt like lead.
“Get…the hell away…from me,” I whispered, as the world faded away.
8
Kay
I paced by the window, which looked out over the car park, the Thames and the glittering skyscrapers beyond, waiting for Ms Weston to call me into her office. Each of us had a mandatory meeting with the new boss. And I felt like the universe had literally kicked me in the face.
“What the hell happened to you?” asked Markos, cantering past with a cup of coffee in each hand.
“Lost a fight with a door,” I said absently, then cursed myself for the stupid lie.
“Looks like it kicked you,” Markos commented.
Crap. Was it really that obvious? On the drive back from Central, the blood on my face had freaked out a few people, who’d probably assumed I was a murderer coming back from burying his latest victims. But I’d been too out of it last night to look at the damage. Not like it was the first time I’d been in a fight.
Now, I glanced at my reflection in the window. Dark circles under my eyes—nothing new there—and the unmistakable, bruise-coloured imprint of a boot across the bridge of my nose. Damn. No getting around this one.
“By the way, you’re up next. Good luck.”
Okay. Time to face the new boss. Hope this one lasts longer than a day, I couldn’t help thinking morbidly, as I headed to her office. They’d already removed the sign with Mr Clark’s name from the door. I knocked, wondering if it wasn’t the tiniest bit unnerving to occupy the room where someone had been murdered not long before.
One glance at Ms Weston told me she wasn’t the type of person to get unnerved at such things. She had the manner of a severe schoolteacher, and her appearance was as impeccable as her desk, some achievement in itself, given what a state it had been in when Mr Clark had been here. I guessed the police, or the Law Division, had taken everything away.
“You’re Kay Walker.” She studied me, indicating I take a seat. “And you started working here recently?”
“Just two days ago.”
She said nothing for a few long moments. I was pretty sure her intense stare was focused on the boot-shaped mark on my face. But she hadn’t commented on my name, which was a surprise.
“I can imagine it’s been quite eventful for you,” she said. “Your supervisor murdered, and you’ve already made your first arrest.”
“Is the girl still here?”
Ms Weston’s eyes narrowed at the question. “She is in the holding cells. I am planning to question her myself, and then we will decide the next step. Can I have your exact account of what happened?”
She didn’t look away once as I recounted the patrol last night, including the wyvern, and the other trespasser.
“The girl has accomplices,” Ms Weston said. “She talked to you?”
“Not really. She was mostly trying to break free.”
“Yes, I gathered she put up quite the fight.” Oh, she was staring at the footprint, all right. I only hoped Aric had kept his mouth shut about our tiny disagreement.
I didn’t say any of this to Ms Weston, who continued to watch me. I could tell she was the type who stared until you backed down. When I still didn’t look away, Ms Weston finally spoke again. “You showed initiative, I’ll give you that. But the situation…it should not have happened. The wyvern’s attack made what should have been a straightforward arrest into a more complicated scenario. I’m going to need you to fill out these forms.” She slammed a stack of papers on the desk. “We need a full account from the person who made the arrest. I’m going to talk to your comrades who were patrolling that night, and to the girl, too. But first, I want you to talk to her.”
What? “I thought you planned to interrogate her.”
“I plan to try different questioning tactics. It may be that she responds better to you, seeing as you showed her…mercy.”
Aric said something to her. Interrogation hadn’t been on the job application, either. Okay, so one of the primary tasks of an Ambassador was effective communication with people from offworld. But interrogating her?
“Sure, I’ll talk to her,” I said. “I don’t think she’ll be inclined to give up information, though.”
“You say you think she has instinctual magic?”
“I can’t think of any other way she could have done what she did. Not without, I don’t know, a talisman or something. A source.”
“You think she’s from offworld.”
“Perhaps.” It bothered me how difficult it had been to tell, considering I could usually discern someone’s homeworld at a glance, or at least if they were from one of the allied worlds. She was a mystery.
“Haven’t you seen her yet?” I couldn’t help asking.
“She has been sedated for most of the morning. She attacked the nurse who went in to check on her injuries.”
I couldn’t say I was surprised. “And you think she’d be willing to have a civilised conversation?”
Her eyes narrowed, registering the touch of sarcasm. “I want to see what you can do, Kay. These are hardly ideal circumstances, but I was intrigued to meet the youngest Walker.”
That was the first time she’d acknowledged my name. And I had the odd sense that she’d done it on purpose. To get a reaction, maybe.
“Then I hope I’m not a disappointment,” I said.
“I hope not, Kay. Take those.” She tapped the pile of papers. “Bring them back to me as soon as you can. Also, this.” She stacked another file on top. “Return it to the archives.”
“Okay,” I said, taking the stack of papers. The Law Division was single-handedly responsible for the destruction of the rainforest, apparently. “When should I speak to the girl?”
“I will send for you when I receive word that she’s woken up,” said Ms Weston, with a dismissive wave.
That went well, I thought, leaving the room. And if there was one thing I hated, it was tedious paperwork.
“What’s all that?” Markos asked, raising his eyebrows at the stack of papers as I set them down on the desk.
“Our new boss decided I have to file a report on last night,” I said. “Or about a hundred of them.”
“She did? Good luck with that. I’m up to my neck in old files.” Papers were scattered all over the standing desk he worked at, too. Central preferred reports to be handwritten, firstly because handwriting was hard to fake, and secondly due to the frequency of technological meltdowns inevitable in a place which had so much contact with magic.
“Have you spoken to her?”
“I have. She didn’t laugh at my jokes.”
“I can’t imagine why,” I said. “Can’t say I know what to think of her. Except I don’t think she accepts any bullshit.”
“Yeah, I got that impression,” said Markos, tapping a pen on the desk. “She scared the hell out of Lenny.”
“Do the police still think he killed Mr Clark?”
“They’ve handed the case over to the Law Division,” said Markos. “I don’t think any of us are under suspicion anymore. Not now that girl’s been caught.”
“You think she’s a killer?” I put down the papers, frowning. However hard she’d fought, she hadn’t drawn her weapons. She’d been desperate, but not enough to use magic above first level, though if she really did have an internal magic source, she’d certainly been capable of it. Even more so with all the level two shots flying around the Passages then. Third level killed in a heartbeat. She could have done it at any point before the cuffs touched her. But she hadn’t.
“I don’t know. I never met the girl. Looks like she gave you a rough time, though.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’ll live. I think she was aiming for Aric.” Judging by the guilty look on her face, I’d say so, anyway.
“Bad luck.”
“Ms Weston said I have to go and talk to her. She didn’t say that to you too, did she?”
“No. Is it because you arrested her?”
“I’ve no idea. I doubt she’ll tell me a thing. Most prisoners aren’t inclined to disclose information.”
“Perhaps she thinks you can charm the girl,” the centaur said. “Or perhaps she thinks it’ll be a laugh.”
“I doubt that,” I said, shook my head, and turned back to the files.
After going over the story yet again, I switched to autopilot and began thinking about how odd it all was. Was the girl really linked to the killer? If not, then who was she? And this questioning… it felt like a test. More like she wanted to find out about me than the prisoner. I didn’t care for that at all.
I turned over the last page, and a file fell onto the desk. It was the one Ms Weston had told me to return to the archives–and I recognised it as the same file I’d fetched for Mr Clark. The bloodrock research he’d been reading the day he’d died.
I opened the file. “PROPERTIES OF BLOODROCK” read the page’s header. Below, a standard list for logging offworld substances. I’d seen them before, as it was required to fill out one of these files for everything brought to Earth from offworld. The Alliance were sticklers for keeping paperwork up to date. This particular file was twenty-five years old. And the name of who’d logged the information leaped out like a neon sign.
LAWRENCE WALKER.
I held the paper carefully, willing my hands to stay steady. A creeping feeling crawled up my spine, and I glanced over my shoulder. No one else was here, as Markos had left the office to hand the papers he’d been filling in back to Ms Weston. Calm down, Kay. This didn’t mean anything. My father was one of the eminent members of the Alliance, for God’s sake, even if he’d left Earth years ago. His name was probably on half the files in the archives. Like Markos had said.
Shaking off the momentary unease, I carried on reading.
“SUBSTANCE: POWDERED BLOODROCK (EARTH NAME). ORIGIN WORLD: UNKNOWN. THIS SAMPLE IS FROM ENZAR (L2D63-9), REGISTERED UNSTABLE).”
The word ‘unstable’ was crossed out, replaced with ‘DANGEROUS’.
Enzar. I frowned at the page. That was one world I knew next to nothing about. The Alliance had cut itself off from the Enzarian Empire after a war between those with magic and those without had begun to drag in other nearby worlds, too. It was too dangerous to interfere in full-scale magical warfare. But the nature of that warfare remained a mystery, at least to me. The Alliance hadn’t posted a single notice about it since the declaration of noninterference. Twenty years ago.
Perhaps something had happened to merit a cover-up. It wasn’t uncommon, as far as dangerous offworld substances were concerned—hell, the Alliance worked hard to make sure this kind of information didn’t fall into the wrong hands.
I checked the time on my communicator, tempted to make for the fifth floor and the archives—but Ms Weston had said I had to talk to the prisoner. Yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was important.
Later, I told myself, turning back to the file and flipping over the page. It listed the qualities of this bloodrock substance: negligible on Earth, but on high-magic worlds, it could function as a substitute for virtually anything magic-related.
Jesus, I thought. No wonder it was listed as rare and unstable. In conjunction with other magic-based substances, it could act as an energy source. It could destroy whole universes—even knock the entire Balance out of sync.
Why in the Multiverse would the head of admin search out this?
I continued to read. “As the whereabouts and extent of this source are unknown, bloodrock is to be treated with caution and samples are not to be removed from storage.”
Had Ms Weston read this file? It didn’t seem like something a novice should be allowed access to. The Academy sure hadn’t covered offworld magic-based energy sources. The Alliance was understandably paranoid people would get stupid ideas. Even well-meaning scientists looking to save the planet. You couldn’t carry an unknown substance from one world to another and expect it to function the same. I could just picture idiotic teenagers getting hold of this bloodrock and using it to make fireworks or something. Not hard to imagine, because I’d been one of those idiotic teenagers, and hadn’t even known I was a magic-wielder until I’d first set foot in the Passages.
And this is why we don’t teach you about magic, kids. It was unbelievable how many people on Earth still believed in the inaccurate versions of magic popularised by TV and the media, even with the Alliance out in the open the past thirty years. Outside the Alliance and the Academies worldwide, knowledge of magic was minimal, and other worlds guarded their own secrets well enough that I could only imagine what was possible in high-magic worlds. It wasn’t like there was an official guide to magic, even an unauthorised one. The Alliance prized confidentiality above everything else.
Natural magic-wielders rarely surfaced independently. Yet it was possible. In the Alliance, magic-wielders who made Ambassador were often the first picked
for missions. I’d prefer to keep it under wraps until then. If Aric kept his stupid mouth shut. Though I never intended to use magic again, I could at least use it to my advantage.
There was one page left in the file, and it was almost blank. Apart from a handwritten scrawl in the corner.
Recognition grabbed me. I knew that handwriting, though I couldn’t read the words—it was just a meaningless string of letters and numbers. But it brought back the reminder that even though he’d been on a distant world locked in stasis for the past five years, my father’s presence still lingered over my shoulder like a goddamned Cethraxian shadow-monster.
I flipped over the page, focusing on calming my breathing. No one had seen this. I never should have opened the file in the first place. It didn’t tell me anything useful. It sure as hell didn’t explain why Mr Clark had been murdered.
I closed the file, suddenly tired beyond belief. Focus. Time to get my head back in the present. I checked all the forms were in the right order—again—and looked up to see a woman glaring at me across the office. I hadn’t met her before, but her badge told me she was called Saki, and she was one of the Alliance’s nurses.
“You’re Kay Walker, right?”
“Yes…” Why did she keep looking at me like I’d drowned a kitten in front of her?
“You arrested the prisoner?”
“I did, yeah.”
“She attacked me.” Oh. “You might have warned me. Your report only said potentially dangerous. She could have killed me.”
“You seem okay.” Wrong thing to say. Her eyes flashed. Well, she didn’t have a freaking footprint across her face, did she?
“Potentially dangerous? She made for the door as soon as her handcuffs came off. I thought she was injured.”
“What?” I blinked at her. “She’s a prisoner. I’d be surprised if she didn’t make an attempt to get out, given the opportunity.”