Taken

by Benedict Jacka

  Arachne is a weaver, the best I know, and everything in her lair is her own work. She’s been making clothes since before I was born—probably since before my great-great-grandparents were born. She trades the clothes to mages and adepts in return for services and information, but honestly, I think she’d be just as happy to give them away. Arachne’s a maker, and for her creating is its own reward.

  She’s also a giant spider, which bothers most people, although these days I hardly notice. Arachne had been working on the cloth in front of her with her four front legs, but now she turned her eight opaque eyes upwards as Luna stepped out from behind the curtain wearing a rose-coloured dress with a square neckline and ruffles. “What do you think?” Luna said doubtfully.

  Sonder looked up as soon as Luna started to come out, and now he stared. “Um,” he said at last. “It’s, uh, good. Really good.”

  “Definitely not,” Arachne said firmly, clicking her mandibles. “Not for where you’re going. We’ll save that one for the summer.”

  Luna disappeared behind the curtain. “What did you and Luna turn up?” I asked Sonder.

  Sonder was still staring after Luna. “Sonder!” I said more loudly.

  Sonder jumped. “What?”

  “The disappearances,” I said. “You know, what you and Luna were looking at all day?”

  “Right,” Sonder said. “Okay.” He pushed his glasses up and started going through his papers again. “Where did you want to start?”

  “With the victims,” I said. From the changing room came the rustle of clothes, and from the corner the quick flick-flick-flick of Arachne’s needle. “Who were they?”

  “Well, um,” Sonder said. “The first is Caroline Montroyd. She was apprenticed to an air mage in London but she lived with her parents in Watford. She left her master’s sanctum one night and never came home. Her parents called the police, but they didn’t find anything and the police think she ran away. She’d been having arguments with her father and mother and talking about leaving, and at first everyone thought that was what had happened, but . . .”

  “But it’s a bit of a coincidence,” I said with a nod. “Go on.”

  “The second one’s name is Chaven,” Sonder said. He was beginning to focus again now. “Force mage, supposed to be a really good duellist, was actually one of the favourites for the White Stone. He’d mostly dropped out of university but he was still staying in the halls of residence for London Metropolitan. We don’t know for sure when he disappeared. The doorman said he saw him go in one night, and he didn’t show up for classes the next day. No one saw him leave.

  “Then there’s Ness,” Sonder said, and he looked suddenly uncomfortable. “Vanessa, I mean. I . . . actually know her. She used to come to one of the classes I was teaching. Well, not really teaching, but the mage who was supposed to be doing it wasn’t there, and . . . um. Anyway. She lived alone in a flat. She made it home one night and no one ever saw her again.”

  “Then how the hell did she vanish?” I said in annoyance. “Did someone kick the door down or what?”

  “Nothing like that,” Sonder said. “The door was locked. Nothing was broken. Although . . . Well, I was talking to the neighbours and the woman from the flat next door said she thought Ness had had a visitor after midnight. She heard a bell and voices.”

  “What kind of voices?”

  “She didn’t remember.”

  “Okay. So what did you see?”

  Sonder is a time mage. It’s got a few similarities to my own style of magic, but the things he can do with it are very different. For one thing, he can actually affect space and time directly, although it’s not what he specialises in. What Sonder is really good at is history: looking back and seeing what happened. You’d think that would make solving mysteries pretty easy and it does, at least when you’re dealing with normals. But in the magical world the abilities of time mages are well known and other mages take precautions against them.

  “I couldn’t find Caroline,” Sonder said. “I traced her into the Underground but then there were the crowds and the interference, and . . . Anyway. Chaven was a bit easier. I got a look at the halls, and he was definitely there in his room with some friends. Then he went to bed, and . . . nothing. Greyed out. Someone used a shroud effect over that temporal area. The same with Ness. I traced it and the whole route back to the entrance was concealed.”

  Shrouds are magical items that block scrying, especially the temporal kind that Sonder does. They’re not cheap and they’re generally only used by people who are very serious about keeping their activities a secret. I thought for a minute. “What about cameras?”

  “Which ones?”

  “Halls of residence have security cameras,” I said. “So do most blocks of flats. And they store the records. If you saw the shroud effect, then you can narrow down what time you need to be looking at.”

  “Yes, but they wouldn’t have let me look at them.” Sonder looked uncomfortable. “I wasn’t even supposed to be there.”

  “But Talisid will know people who could look at them.”

  “Wouldn’t they have tried them already?”

  “Mages tend to assume magic’s the solution to everything,” I said with a smile. I’d fallen into that trap this afternoon. “It’s worth a try.”

  Sonder thought about it, then nodded. “Okay.” He paused. “Alex? What’s going on here? I mean . . . apprentices going missing like this? And someone trying to kill Anne? Why would anyone want to do all this?”

  “I don’t know,” I said slowly. “And that’s the problem. I think if we understood why all this is happening, we’d be most of the way there. People don’t do things just because. Someone has a damn good reason for disappearing all these apprentices and shooting Anne and blaming me. If we can figure out the reason, we’ll know how to stop it.”

  “Oh,” Sonder said. “What do you think’s happened to them? Ness and the others.”

  I looked at Sonder for a moment. “Best guess?”

  Sonder nodded.

  “They’re all dead.”

  Sonder flinched. “But—”

  “You know what’s going to happen to anyone caught doing this,” I said quietly. “So if I were doing it, I’d do everything I could to make sure that didn’t happen. Like tying off loose ends.”

  There was the rustle of a curtain and Sonder and I looked up as Luna stepped out again. She’d changed into a yellow-and-white dress with a vertical design that made me think of a flower. She looked more confident this time and as we watched she gave a little twirl. “What do you think?”

  “It looks amazing,” Sonder said. He was staring again.

  “No,” Arachne said.

  “But I like this one,” Luna said.

  “Of course you do,” Arachne said. “But it’s all wrong for where you’re going. Here.” She shook out the outfit she’d been working on, making it shimmer in the light, and held it out to Luna with two of her legs. “Try this.”

  Luna looked disappointed but disappeared behind the curtain again. “Now,” Arachne said. She’d been listening quietly as Sonder and I spoke, working on the dress, and now that it was finished she turned her full attention to me. “I think Sonder—Alex, have you lost weight?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Arachne gave me a quick up-and-down glance, did the spider equivalent of rolling her eyes, and pulled out a pile of dark cloth. “I think Sonder asked the right question,” she said as she started modifying it. “Why was Onyx there?”

  “Because he’s involved, I guess,” I said. “Though I can’t figure out how Fountain Reach fits into it.”

  “It seems to me there’s a simple explanation for both,” Arachne said. “What if Onyx was there for exactly the same reason as you?”

  I started to answer, then st
opped. “That . . . would explain a lot. He looked like he was searching around.”

  “And obviously wasn’t expecting the meeting any more than you were.”

  “And if Morden or Onyx got the same tip-off I did, Onyx is the guy Morden would send . . .”

  “Which suggests he wants to find out what’s happening,” Arachne finished. “You should be able to take advantage of that.”

  Sonder had been looking back and forth between us. “Umm . . .”

  “Oh, something I wanted to ask.” I pulled a folded paper from my pocket. “Arachne, could you do me a favour?”

  “Of course.”

  “Could you make me something?”

  Arachne took the paper with two of her legs and she unfolded it delicately, reading with half of her eyes and working with the others. “Hmm. Interesting.”

  I glanced at Luna’s changing room. “I know it’s not easy—”

  “Oh, I’d be happy to. I’ve been turning over some ideas along those lines myself. Drop by tomorrow and I’ll see what I have ready. Well then.” She held out the black clothes to me with two of her legs. “Try it on.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “You didn’t even think about it, did you?” Arachne said. “Honestly, if I weren’t here I think you’d show up in shorts and a T-shirt.”

  “I don’t wear shorts,” I said over my shoulder as I headed to the changing room, pulling the curtain shut behind me. “By the way, do you know this guy who’s hosting the party tonight?”

  “Yes, and he’s not a ‘guy.’ He’s a rakshasa.”

  I’d been holding up the outfit to get its shape, but at that I looked up with a frown. “Really?” Sonder said from outside, sounding interested. “I thought since the treaty they all stayed in India?”

  “Jagadev is older than the treaty,” Arachne said. “Very old and very powerful. Why he came to these shores I do not know, but I first heard of his presence in this city back in the days of your empire. He sides neither with the Council nor with any of the Dark factions. The Tiger’s Palace is his domain and within it his word is law.”

  “Have you ever met him?” Sonder asked.

  “Once.”

  Sonder fell silent, which was a surprise. I’d expected him to keep asking questions but something in Arachne’s manner must have made him think twice. “Alex?” Luna said from the next room over. “Why was Anne delivering invitations for him?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said, putting the shirt on.

  “Isn’t that the kind of thing apprentices do for their masters?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Arachne? Do you know if Jagadev takes human apprentices?”

  “There are rumours,” Arachne said. “But I always had the impression that Jagadev’s feelings towards humans were . . . not warm. Especially mages.”

  I had a sudden flashback to Natasha’s words at the gym. I shook it off—just because a creature looks like a monster doesn’t mean it is one—but it left me with an uneasy feeling. “Come on, Alex,” Arachne said, interrupting my thoughts. “You’ve had more than enough time to try them on.”

  I wanted to tell Arachne she hadn’t complained about Luna taking three times as long but held my tongue. I came out at exactly the same time Luna did.

  The outfit Arachne had made for me was plainer than usual: coal-coloured trousers and a top, with a long jet-black coat. On the whole I liked it. It was light and flexible, and if I got into trouble it would allow me to move fast.

  If my clothes were understated, Luna’s were the opposite. She wore a narrow dress cut in such a way that she seemed to be wearing nothing else, the cloth following the lines of her body and emphasising her shape. The dress was a vivid emerald green, shimmering in the light. It was beautiful and eye-catching but there was something disturbing about the colour. It made me think of poison, like a venomous snake.

  “Wow,” Sonder said. He was staring again. “You look . . .”

  “Perfect,” Arachne said.

  Luna looked uncomfortable. “I feel like the evil queen in Snow White.”

  “Where you’re going that’s exactly how you want to look.” Arachne scuttled forward and peered down at me nearsightedly with her eight eyes, then settled back. “You’ll do too.”

  Luna gave me a glance, then a curious look. “Hey, did you lose weight all of a sudden?”

  “I said I don’t want to talk about it. Arachne, you keep talking about ‘where we’re going.’ What are we getting into?”

  “Tiger’s Palace?” Sonder said in surprise. “Haven’t you ever been?”

  “I’m not exactly high up on the social circuit, Sonder.”

  “Um,” Sonder said, hesitantly. “But it’s not—I mean—”

  “What Sonder is trying to say,” Arachne said, “is that given the reputation of Tiger’s Palace, most people would expect you to fit right in.”

  “What reputation?”

  Arachne made a clicking noise, her equivalent of a sigh. “You really should get out more. Tiger’s Palace is a . . . meeting point, a place of exchange. There are no entry requirements but it’s not a place for the vulnerable or the careless.” Arachne glanced at Luna. “Apprentices don’t typically go. If you do, make very sure not to look like prey.”

  Luna and I looked at each other for a second, then I turned back. “Sonder—”

  “I know,” Sonder said resignedly. “You want me to go research. I can do other things too, you know.”

  “You haven’t got anything to prove,” I said with a smile. “But if someone’s targeting me—and it looks as if they are—then going there together will make you a target as well.”

  “You’re still taking—” Sonder began, then stopped. “All right. Be careful.”

  “Good luck, both of you,” Arachne said. “And Sonder is right. The information you’re looking for may be there or it may not, but either way I suspect the people there won’t react favourably to nosing around.”

  * * *

  “No ribbon this time?” I asked Luna as we walked up the polished stone of the exit tunnel.

  Luna shook her head. The last time we’d gone together to a party like this Arachne had made her a one-shot that absorbed and neutralised Luna’s curse, making her able to touch people without fear of hurting them, just for a little while.

  “She’d do it if you asked,” I said.

  “I know,” Luna said. “But . . . I know it’s hard for her to make those.”

  “Is that the only reason?”

  Luna walked in silence for a little while. “I don’t want to get too used to it,” she said at last.

  I nodded. “I think that’s the right choice.”

  Luna looked sharply at me. “Items can be taken away,” I said. “You don’t want to get too dependent on them. The only things that are really yours are your magic and your mind and your body.”

  We reached the entrance and Luna hung back as I activated the trigger to make the earth ahead of us part with a rumbling sound. Arachne’s lair is on Hampstead Heath, hidden beneath a ravine in the deep woods where few people go. It had turned into a clear, cold night, bright stars shining down out of a winter sky, and both of us shivered as we came out into the open. The entrance to the lair closed behind us and we turned our feet towards the Tiger’s Palace.

  chapter 6

  The Soho street was noisy, music from a dozen bars blending together into a confusing racket. Neon lights flashed through the shadows, making the dark stone and brickwork flicker red-blue-green. People appeared and disappeared in groups, emerging from doorways and vanishing into the gloom. Buildings went up and up into the darkness, fading into an orange sky, but the lights and crowds couldn’t hide the chill of the winter air.

  Luna and I were sheltering in a doorway, looking at the building
opposite. It was blacked out, dark except for a neon sign blinking on the roof, and I looked at it for a moment before glancing sideways at Luna. Her face was lit up by the sign above, flickering from red to blue. “Think this is the place?”

  “It’s the right number,” Luna said.

  I looked into the future, searching for the consequences of us entering that building. “So Anne’s . . .” Luna said. “I mean, the guy we’re meeting. He’s a rakshasa?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s a rakshasa?”

  “Creatures from India,” I said. “Or maybe they were before India and the Indians just gave them the name. In their true form they’re supposed to look like a cross between a human and a tiger.” I paused. “Oh, and their hands are supposed to be backwards.”

  “Backwards?”

  “Reversed. The palms are where the backs should be.”

  Luna thought about that for a second, then grimaced. “Creepy.” She held up a hand before I could speak. “I know. Don’t judge by appearances, right?”

  “Well . . . maybe just this once it wouldn’t be a bad idea.” I leant against the cold stone, studying the building opposite. “I don’t know much about rakshasas, but none of what I’ve heard is good. They were supposed to be . . . I guess the word would be malevolent. They loved power, especially over thinking creatures. They ruled India once, if the stories are true. They lived in palaces built by their slaves, lords of everything they could see.”

  “But that might not be true,” Luna said. “I mean, the apprentices say stuff like that about all magical creatures. Even Arachne. I’ve heard them. And he’s looking after Anne, right?”

  “I admit I’m very curious as to what two apprentices like Anne and Variam would be doing with a rakshasa.”

  “Maybe there are things he can teach them.”

  “Oh, there would be,” I said. “Rakshasas are powerful. The old stories say they were partly divine, not fully bound by the laws of the physical world. I don’t know if it’s true but everyone agrees they’re master shapeshifters. They can change their appearance and form, give themselves abilities that shouldn’t be possible.”