Alex Verus 5: Hidden

by Benedict Jacka

  I swallowed quietly. Well, you’re always telling Luna not to judge by appearances, right?

  Sagash turned to face me as I approached, and it was just as well I’d had advance warning or I would have flinched. Up close his face looked even worse; the flesh was stretched over the skull, and pinpoints of yellow light glowed from sunken eye sockets. “Sagash,” I said. I managed to keep my voice steady, but it was a near thing. “I’m glad I caught you.” Let’s not get into the question of who’s caught whom . . .

  Sagash stared at me. I’d thought of a dozen lies and half truths, but as I looked into his eyes I abandoned them all. There was something inhuman about Sagash, and my instincts told me that the tricks which had worked on Meredith and Ordith wouldn’t work on him. “I wonder if you might be able to help me,” I said. “I’m interested in the whereabouts of an apprentice called Anne Walker.”

  Sagash studied me for a moment before speaking. His voice had a grating, rasping sound, like a piece of sandpaper working on a particularly stubborn lump of wood. “You are misinformed.”

  “I was under the impression she used to be your apprentice?”

  “No longer.” Sagash still hadn’t asked my name. I suspected he didn’t care.

  “But I assume you keep tabs on her.”

  “I neither know her present status, nor care.”

  “Ah, my mistake,” I said. “My apologies. You don’t make any claim on her, then?”

  Sagash’s yellow-pinpoint eyes focused on me and I had to force myself to hold my ground. “Your activities are not my concern,” he rasped. “The girl’s life is of no interest to me. Do with her as you wish.” He turned to face me, one bony hand hanging at his side; he held no weapon, but the threat was clear. “You have your answer. Leave.”

  I looked—very quickly—at the consequences of staying, then bowed slightly and withdrew. Sagash watched me go, then turned back to overlook the club floor. As I turned away there was a chime in my ear and I heard Luna’s voice again. “Found them.”

  “The apprentices?” I said very quietly. There were people close enough to overhear.

  “They’re in the far corner. Listen, I’m going to try something. Back in a sec.”

  “Wait, what are you—” The communicator cut off, and I swore under my breath. What did she mean, “try something”?

  Looking into the futures, I could sense something happening around the entrance to Jagadev’s throne room, and I changed direction to head towards it. As I did I ran over what Sagash had told me. Now that it was too late, I wished I’d questioned Anne more thoroughly about her time with him; it would have made it a lot easier to figure out whether Sagash was lying. My divination magic hadn’t been much use—if someone isn’t going to tell you something, then looking into the futures of questioning them won’t help. He might be lying . . . but why? If it really had been Sagash who’d been behind Anne’s disappearance, he hadn’t broken any laws. What did he have to gain from hiding it?

  The far right end of the balcony terminated in a wide doorway. Some of Jagadev’s men had been stationed outside, but I couldn’t see any trace of Jagadev himself; he must be in the rooms beyond. I couldn’t see Caldera but I could see Sonder; he’d been approached by a girl in her twenties and was talking to her. “Caldera,” I murmured, letting a pillar conceal me. “Where are you?”

  There was a pause before Caldera answered, and when she did her voice was muffled. “Not a good time.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “Jagadev let you in to see him but he’s keeping you waiting, and he made Sonder wait outside?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Know if you’ll be done soon? It’s just that Sonder—”

  “Look, whatever this is, take care of it on your own, all right? Kind of busy here.”

  “No problem,” I said. “Alex out.” I walked out from behind the pillar and towards where Sonder was standing.

  After you’ve spent a while in certain types of environments you get a nose for trouble. I didn’t know the girl Sonder was talking to, and I didn’t know the boy hanging back in the shadows, but I recognised the way they were standing and that was all I needed to be sure about what was going to happen. In the time I’d been talking to Caldera, Sonder had been drawn a few steps away from the entrance to Jagadev’s throne room, and he looked on the point of following the girl. “Please?” she was saying. “There’s no one else I can ask.”

  “How far is he?” Sonder asked. He was hesitating, but I knew he was close to being convinced.

  “Just in the next room,” the girl said. She was petite and wiry, with a birdlike way of moving, and she looked very appealing as she gazed up at Sonder. “Isn’t there anything you can do? I don’t have much, but if there’s anything I can offer you, I—”

  “Leave,” I told the girl, doing my best imitation of Avis.

  The girl turned, taken aback. “I don’t—What do you mean?”

  “This is not something you want to involve yourself in,” I said, making my voice harsh. “Take your partner and get lost.”

  The girl looked back at me for a second, then her face changed and she straightened. All of a sudden she looked a lot less vulnerable. She gave me a disgusted glance and walked away without a word. In my peripheral vision, I saw the boy slip something back into his pocket and disappear from view.

  Sonder had watched the whole thing in confusion; now as I turned back to him he drew back suspiciously. “Who are you?”

  I shook my head and switched to my normal voice. “Sonder, if fooling you is this easy, you really shouldn’t be hanging out at Dark audiences.”

  Sonder stared. “Alex?”

  I took a step away. “Come on. Those two might decide to come back, and if they do they’ll bring company.”

  Sonder didn’t follow. “What are you doing here? We didn’t invite you!”

  “‘Why thank you, Alex,’” I said to the open air. “‘You’re welcome, Sonder.’”

  “I didn’t need your help!”

  “Another three minutes,” I told Sonder, “and you would have been challenged to a duel. Traditional, not azimuth.”

  “For what?”

  “Making a move on someone’s girlfriend, breaking a social taboo, stealing something that just would have happened to turn up in your pocket . . . whatever they decided to set you up for. Are you coming or not?”

  “No!” Sonder glared at me. “You’re not in charge and we’ve got work to do.”

  I let out a breath. I hadn’t really expected Sonder to be happy to see me, but this was starting to wear on my nerves and I’d already seen that Meredith was looking for me. “Suit yourself.” I turned and walked away. Sonder didn’t follow.

  Meredith found me less than two minutes later, and from the way she was looking at me I knew this conversation was going to go less smoothly than the last one. “Morden says he doesn’t know anything about that girl,” she said without preamble.

  “Really.”

  “I think he’s telling the truth,” Meredith said. Her eyes were narrowed as she watched me. “You were lying to me. You weren’t trying to help at all.”

  “Lying and pretending to care about someone? What kind of terrible person would do that?” I leant closer towards Meredith and dropped the pretence, letting her see the coldness in my eyes. “You set me up to be killed. Did you think I forgot?”

  Meredith backed away; she looked afraid, but there was anger underneath it. Without saying a word she spun and marched away. She’d lost her usual grace and her movements were spiky and quick.

  I watched her go. Meredith doesn’t have much combat magic, but it’s a big mistake to think that that means she can’t be dangerous. It was probably a good time to start thinking about leaving. There was a chime and Luna spoke into my ear. “Well, that didn’t work.”

  I started towards the balcony. “W
hat didn’t?”

  “I found Sagash’s apprentices. Two of them, anyway.”

  I leant over the balcony and scanned the crowd below. “Two guys by the long table on the far right?”

  “That’s them.”

  The two mages I was looking at were too far away for me to get a good view, but it looked as though one was blond-haired and white, and the other West Indian or African. Both wore masks, and they were talking quietly, standing close together at an angle where they could watch each other’s backs. “Huh,” I said. “You know, they look awfully like those descriptions Sonder gave us.”

  “Yep.”

  “You were talking to them, right? Did you get anything?”

  “Kind of. I challenged the blond one to a duel.”

  “You did what?”

  “Relax, he turned me down. Anyway, it was only a first-blood thing.”

  “‘First blood’ means something a bit different here. What were you thinking?”

  “Well, Sonder got a look at the magic those two were using, right? I figured if he said yes, Sonder could watch and we could check to see if it was really them.”

  “That . . .” I paused. “. . . could work, actually.”

  “I know, right? Anyway, I tried calling him a coward, but that didn’t draw him out either, so—”

  “What?” A passing mage gave me a curious look and I glared at him, then hurriedly turned away.

  “I said he turned me down; calm down already. It’s kind of a pity, I’ve never had a match against a Dark apprentice.”

  “You’re out of your mind. Never mind. I’ll come down and we can—”

  I was facing out over the main club floor, directly above Morden’s group, and at this point I caught sight of Meredith. She was talking to Onyx, and as I watched she pointed up to the balcony in the direction of the spot we’d last been talking. Onyx turned his head towards me and I ducked back out of sight. “Uh-oh.”

  “Uh-oh, what?”

  “Change of plan,” I said. Going down to floor level would mean passing Onyx and walking out into the open, neither of which struck me as a good idea just now. “Get Sonder.”

  “What for?”

  “I’m guessing you asked those apprentices a bunch of leading questions? Odds are as soon as you were out of earshot they started trying to figure out how much you knew. If you can get Sonder there—”

  “—then he can look back to see what they said! Let’s do it.”

  Looking into the future, I knew that Onyx was heading in my direction. I moved towards the wall and behind the cover of a pillar. “Sonder,” I said. “You there?”

  “What?” Sonder said after a pause. He sounded harassed, as though he’d been in the middle of another conversation.

  “Got a job for you. Mind helping Luna out with something?”

  “Luna— She’s here?”

  “Bingo,” Luna said over the link. “Meet me at the foot of the stairs, okay?”

  “What were you thinking, bringing her here?” Sonder said. “You’re her master, you’re supposed to look after her!”

  From the other side of the pillar, I heard quick footsteps as Onyx strode past. Onyx is Morden’s Chosen, slim and deadly; he’s an extremely powerful and specialised battle-mage and he hates my guts. The one bright side (from my point of view) is that he’s so specialised a battle-mage that he’s very bad at anything that doesn’t directly involve hurting or killing things, meaning that while he’s very dangerous in a fight, he’s remarkably bad at spotting anyone hiding from him. “Excuse me?” Luna said in annoyance. “I’m older than you are.”

  “You’re still only an apprentice. You shouldn’t be here!”

  “Since when did you get to—”

  Another chime sounded in my ear. “Hold, please,” I said as I emerged from behind the pillar and headed in the opposite direction from Onyx. I switched circuits. “Hello?”

  Sonder and Luna’s voices cut out and Caldera’s voice sounded in my ear. She sounded pissed. “Verus, what are you playing at?”

  “You know, this isn’t a great time,” I said, taking a glance around. I couldn’t see Meredith but I knew Onyx was coming back for another pass. “Can I call you back?”

  “I told you not to go inside!”

  “Technically I was inside already.”

  “You bloody well knew what I meant!”

  “Well, here’s the thing. As you made clear to Variam earlier today, you Keepers have a strict chain of command, and I’m not in it.”

  Caldera started swearing. Onyx was heading back towards me and I slipped into a side room. “I am going to kill you,” Caldera said once she was coherent again.

  “You might have to get in line,” I said. The communicator chimed again. “Hold, please.”

  “No! Where are—”

  I switched channels. “Receiving,” I said, then stepped back into the shadows behind a wall hanging.

  “Alex?” Variam said into my ear. “Think we might have a problem.”

  Onyx appeared in my view through the doorway. He looked as pissed off as Caldera had sounded. He turned his head from side to side, searching, then whirled and headed back the way he’d come. “Someone’s just arrived at the front,” Variam said. “His getup looks really similar to what you’re wearing. Like, really similar.”

  “Oh, come on,” I muttered. “Now?”

  “You made sure the real Avis wasn’t coming tonight, right?”

  “I did! Everyone told me he never shows up to these things!”

  “Yeah, well, unless he’s got an identical twin you might want to qualify that, because someone who looks exactly like him just walked in the front door.”

  “Okay.” I started walking towards the stairs, trying not to make it too obvious that I was hurrying. “I think it’s time to leave.”

  “I’ll get to the evac point. Call when you’re a minute out.”

  I switched channels again and came in the middle of Sonder and Luna arguing. “—risky,” Sonder was saying. “What if they see?”

  “You said they can’t tell if you’re using timesight.”

  “They might notice that I’m—”

  “Luna, start closing,” I said. “Five minutes, then we’re leaving, back entrance.”

  “Got it. By the way, we just ducked Onyx. Seemed like he was looking for someone, know who it might be?”

  “Very funny.” Looking ahead, I saw that Caldera was just about to come around the corner ahead of me. “Oh, great.”

  “They’re still standing where they were,” Sonder objected. “How are we going to—?”

  “Do I have to think of everything?” Luna said. “Alex, I’ll meet you at the door in five.”

  “Got it. Alex out.”

  Caldera came striding around the corner and fixed me with a look of death. Obviously Sonder had told her what I was wearing. “You!”

  “Keeper,” I said formally. “Is there something I can help you with?”

  Caldera had been about to start swearing at me again, but my tone brought her up short. Looking from side to side, she saw that two Dark mages were within earshot and both were watching with undisguised interest. “Mage,” she said through clenched teeth. “Would you mind if we spoke privately?”

  “I’m afraid I was just leaving,” I said. “How was your meeting with Lord Jagadev?”

  “Screw Jagadev!”

  In the futures in which I went to the balcony edge and looked over, I could see Onyx talking to Meredith. He looked even angrier if anything, and she didn’t look happy either. He made a cutting motion with his hand; Meredith pointed again in the direction of the balcony. Onyx turned and stormed off towards the stairs. “I doubt you’re his type.”

  Caldera took a deep breath, obviously getting herself under control. The futures shifted and
I glanced ahead; yet another person I didn’t want to talk to was heading my way. “I recommend you locate your assistant,” I said. “I think he might need assistance himself.”

  “What? What have you done now?”

  From behind Caldera someone cleared his throat. Caldera turned to see Morden standing behind her. “Keeper,” Morden said. “If it’s not too much trouble, would it be possible for me to speak with Avis?”

  Morden put just the tiniest accent on Avis—enough to let me know that he knew who I was, not quite enough to make it obvious to Caldera. Caldera knew I wasn’t Avis, but she didn’t know that Morden knew I wasn’t Avis . . . this was getting confusing. Caldera gave me a last warning glance, which I returned blandly. “We are going to talk later,” Caldera said to Morden. “Don’t go anywhere.”

  Morden bowed slightly. “I look forward to it.”

  Caldera walked off around the left-hand curve of the balcony. She was heading in Sagash’s direction, and I had to fight off the impulse to eavesdrop. Watching those two bounce off each other would be interesting, as long as I was at a safe distance. “Can I assume you’re here to support my proposal?” Morden asked.

  Was that why the real Avis was breaking his usual habits and showing up? I really should have done more digging on what Morden was up to. “Not in a million years,” I said. I didn’t bother disguising my voice; trying to play those kinds of games with someone like Morden is a waste of time. “What do you want?”

  “I believe that’s my line.”

  Onyx had come up to the balcony again. Luckily this time he’d turned the wrong way, but he’d be back. “I’m a little short on time,” I said. “Could we hurry this up?”

  “You know, Verus, you should learn to be more polite,” Morden said with a smile. “Someone might take offence.”

  I looked at Morden. His smile didn’t waver, and I felt a brief chill. Morden doesn’t look dangerous, but he’s very powerful, and if he decided to make a serious attempt to get rid of me I don’t think my life would be worth much. He wouldn’t even have to do anything himself; all he’d have to do would be to point Onyx in my direction. He hadn’t—yet—but I started mentally planning out escape routes, and this time I kept my mouth shut.