Alex Verus 5: Hidden

by Benedict Jacka

  “Let’s just say I’m a side of Anne that doesn’t get out much. Figures the one chance we’d get to talk would be now, but better late than never.”

  “How long has Anne been using Elsewhere?”

  “She started during her time with Sagash.” Not-Anne walked towards the windows, approaching me at an angle, shoes clicking on the black glass. “An escape, really. He controlled everything in the real world so she built herself a refuge.” She came to a stop by one of the windows, looking out over the endless view. “It’s not just a backdrop. It’s all detailed, every bit. It’s quite beautiful, you know.”

  Something in not-Anne’s voice made me glance up with a frown. She was staring out at the distant forests, and there was a strange expression in her eyes—not hostile, but not happy, either. “Have you been there?”

  “I used to.” She stared out for a second longer, then shook her head and turned towards me. “Has Vari told you about what Anne’s home life was like back when they were both in school?”

  “No. Wait, so Anne knew about Elsewhere last year? When I was using it with Deleo? She didn’t—”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, Anne doesn’t talk about herself much.”

  I looked around the tower room of black glass and at the girl in front of me, eyebrows raised. “No kidding. She didn’t tell Vari?”

  “No. Now shut up a second and listen. Anne spent a lot of her time as a kid having to take care of everyone else. Cooking, cleaning, nursing them when they were sick, that kind of stuff. She’s always been good at noticing things—she’d see when people needed help, and when her magic developed it was the same thing but stronger. She could look at everyone and see how healthy they were, whether they were hurt, what their bodies needed. And she could fix it, or try to. But here’s the thing—Anne doesn’t actually want to do that all the time. Oh, don’t get me wrong; she likes helping people and she wants to get married and have kids someday, not that there’s much chance of that ever happening, but she doesn’t want to be nurturing and mothering to every single person she meets for the rest of her life. Things like that clinic? She doesn’t do it because she wants to, she does it because she feels like she has to. Because she can heal people, so if she just leaves them alone, it’s her fault, right? But it’s a bottomless pit. Doesn’t matter how many you treat, there’s always another one. And you know what really gets annoying? Half the time they’re not even all that grateful. The better you do your job, the more you fix people’s problems, the more they take it for granted. They think it’s just the way things are supposed to be.” Not-Anne stared at me. “Do you know what it feels like to always take care of everyone and get treated like crap for it? It gets to you. Especially when you’ve got those gossip circles whispering behind your back.”

  I looked back at not-Anne. “So what do you want to do about it?”

  “Hmph.” Not-Anne looked back out the window. “It’s not like I get the choice. She’s too dutiful.” She paused. “Or she used to be.”

  “Before what? Before Sagash? Anne keeps dancing around it but she won’t tell me. It’s obviously really damn important but she can’t make herself talk about it. You’re here because you want me to understand, right?”

  “Anne doesn’t talk about it,” not-Anne said, “because she really, really doesn’t want anyone to know what happened in those nine months.”

  “I was a Dark apprentice! Does she really think it’s going to be something I’ve never heard before?” I narrowed my eyes at not-Anne. “She’s not just afraid, is she? She’s ashamed of something.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Ashamed of what? What did Sagash do to her? Did he . . . ?”

  Not-Anne looked at me curiously, tilting her head. “Did he what? Wait, are you asking if Sagash sexually abused her or something?”

  I hesitated.

  “Oh, for God’s sake.” Not-Anne rolled her eyes in disgust. “Use your brain. Anne is a life mage, she can paralyse anyone who touches her. Do you seriously think we need to worry about getting raped?”

  “It’s not something I like to talk about, all right?”

  “Yeah, well, Sagash doesn’t care,” not-Anne said. “He’s about as asexual as it gets and those bits of him withered years ago. I don’t think he’s got any physical desires left. He’s not human enough.”

  “So what does he care about?”

  “Power and longevity. He wants to live here forever and be king of his little world. Trouble is, you need subjects to be a king. Another twenty years and he’ll probably go all-the-way crazy and disappear into here with his shadows and never come out, but for now he’s still sane enough to get people to do what he says. And if they don’t do what he says, he makes them.”

  “And that was what he did to Anne?”

  “That was what he did to Anne. He wanted an apprentice-assassin. Someone who’d go out of the shadow realm, bring him whoever or whatever he wanted for his experiments, and kill anyone who pissed him off. He started training Anne, and when she said no he hurt her till she said yes. Death magic has lots of spells for affecting living bodies, and Sagash knows exactly how far he can go before they get lethal. No chance of the subject dying. Though they might want to. What he wanted Anne to do wasn’t so bad, to begin with. Spell practice, education—used her as a maid, too, when he had guests around. He didn’t need to, it was just to show her off: look how powerful I am, I’ve got a life mage waiting the table. She was still a slave, but it could have been worse.

  “So then it got worse. After Anne had picked up the basics he started putting her through combat training. He’d match her up against other Dark apprentices, have them duel until one couldn’t fight anymore. Anne tried surrendering—didn’t work. The apprentice tore her apart and she got a torture session with Sagash for embarrassing him. After that, she fought. She wasn’t much good, but she was powerful. You know how life magic works—it only takes a touch.

  “But there was a problem. See, Anne was dangerous in a duel, but Sagash didn’t want a duellist. He wanted an assassin, someone who’d kill for him, and Anne wouldn’t kill. He threatened her, but that was Anne’s line in the sand. She’d given up as much as she was going to and she said no. So obviously he tortured her, but she’d been learning from those fights and she’d figured out how to mute her pain receptors. Sagash could kill her but he couldn’t hurt her. She told Sagash that she’d rather die than become someone like that.”

  Not-Anne stopped talking. She looked out at the distant forests, and an unpleasant memory came to my mind. That night when I’d met Anne outside her flat . . . She hadn’t said it in those words, but that had been the subtext, hadn’t it? Given the choice of taking my help or living in danger, she’d picked danger. Better to die than become someone like Sagash . . . or me?

  I shook my head hard, trying to forget that last thought. “What happened?”

  “Anne made a mistake,” not-Anne said simply. “She thought Sagash needed her alive. But the way he saw it, he didn’t need her at all. He was going to live forever. Sure, he’d invested time in her, but he could always get another. He only wanted her for his Chosen, and if she wasn’t willing to kill she wasn’t any use to him. So he called her bluff. He put her up against a Dark mercenary in the arena. A kid, really, one of those child soldiers. Sagash must have fed him some story or other, promised him a reward, because he didn’t talk, he just went for Anne and tried to kill her. Anne tried to disable him, but Sagash had given the kid a set of wards. Not against lethal attacks, just nonlethal ones. That was when Anne realised that Sagash meant it. She’d said she’d rather die—well, that was the choice he was giving her. Either she fought back and killed the guy, or she was going to die right there. No more life, no more growing up, no chance for a happily ever after somewhere down the line.”

  “What did she do?” I asked quietly, even though I knew the answer.

  “
You know, most people never really think about how magic works.” Not-Anne leant back against the window’s edge, elbows propped against the sill, watching me casually. “Your magic’s a reflection of your personality, right? Well, that goes both ways. If your magic’s good at something, that says something about what kind of person you are. Life magic’s really good at healing. And it’s really good at killing.” She tilted her head. “Do you know just how tired you can get of taking care of everyone all the time?”

  I didn’t answer. “Anne got hold of that kid and ripped the life right out of him,” not-Anne said calmly. “Took a few tries, but she didn’t give up. And looking down at his body afterwards . . . In a way, that was where I was born.”

  I stared at not-Anne as she leant against the window, the light from outside falling across the scarlet dress. Despite everything she’d been saying, she looked relaxed. I didn’t know what to say.

  “So, that night she stayed up thinking about killing herself,” not-Anne said. Her voice was so normal it was disturbing. “Obviously she didn’t. I mean, staying alive was why she’d done it in the first place, it’d kind of defeat the point, right? Things settled down, she recovered a bit, convinced herself she’d never do it again. Then Sagash brought in another kid. Same story, different guy. Second time was easier. Third was easier than the second, fourth was easier than the third. After a while Sagash stopped bringing them in. Either he was running out or he figured Anne had learnt her lesson.”

  “How many?” I asked quietly.

  Not-Anne shrugged. “Enough.”

  I looked at her in silence.

  “Anyway, eventually Vari showed up and they broke out. Hurt Sagash but didn’t kill him, more’s the pity, and they got back to London and lived happily ever after . . . except they didn’t. Anne couldn’t accept what she’d done—couldn’t accept me. Oh, she’d been fine with it when she needed me, but once she was safe, well, she didn’t want me around anymore, did she? So she tried to pretend the whole thing never happened. She avoided fighting and duelling, anything that could raise the wrong kind of questions, and put on the pacifist act instead. After all, the only ones who’d been there had been Sagash and the guys she’d been fighting, and since all except Sagash were dead, well, there wasn’t anyone to argue, was there? Except me. So she shut me away.” Not-Anne gestured around her at the black-glass walls. “In here. Where she can forget about me and all the ugly little secrets that don’t belong in her perfect world. But she can’t get rid of me—I’m part of her and she still needs me. When things get really dangerous she’ll bring me out, long enough to keep her alive. She just won’t admit it.”

  I remembered the one time I’d seen Anne use her abilities to kill. I hadn’t understood what I’d seen in her eyes, not then. “Okay,” I said. “You brought me here to tell me all this. Why? What do you want?”

  “Why do you think?”

  “Because you want to be in charge?”

  Not-Anne rolled her eyes again. “Jesus, you’re paranoid. Okay, fine, maybe I’d appreciate it if she’d treat me a little better. But there’s kind of a more pressing issue, don’t you think?”

  “You mean getting out of this castle.”

  “Ding ding, we have a winner! I might have been born here, but I’m not keen on staying for the rest of my life, which isn’t going to be very long at this rate. I’m part of Anne, remember. She dies, I die. Plus no matter how much of a bitch she can be, I don’t actually hate her that much. I want her out of here, and that means she needs to sort out her issues fast, probably within the next twenty-four hours, because somehow I don’t think the Sagash Psycho Club is going to wait around while she takes her time about it. She needs to stop fighting me or she’s not going to make it out.”

  I looked at not-Anne with raised eyebrows. “And you think I’m going to be able to do this in twenty-four hours when literally every other person she’s ever met hasn’t been able to do it in five years.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re not my first choice either, but it’s not like we’re exactly swimming in options. Pity you didn’t make a move on her last night, would probably have made her open up a bit. You could have spun her the ‘this might be our last night alive’ line.”

  I gave not-Anne an irritated look. “That would have been manipulative, sleazy, and extremely stupid given that we’re in a castle of people trying to kill us.”

  “Oh, don’t be such a prude. She knows you think she looks hot after last year.”

  “She’s eight years younger than me.”

  “So? Emotionally she’s probably more mature than you are. Though that’s not saying much.”

  I sighed. “You’re a lot less nice than the real Anne, you know that?”

  “Yeah, well, next time you’re talking to her remember she thinks all this stuff, she just doesn’t say it. Point is, ever since escaping to London she’s been trying to play the good girl and it isn’t working. That’s why the Light mages don’t like her—they can see she’s hiding something. So we’ve got this stupid situation where she’s too dangerous for the Light mages and not dangerous enough for the Dark ones. She needs to stop pretending.”

  “Look, I’m not a psychoanalyst. Shouldn’t you get an actual professional?”

  “Right, after you wake up you can go shopping around the castle and find one, maybe have her sit down on a couch for a chat. Oh wait.” Not-Anne glared at me. “We do not have time. You want to drag Anne to a shrink, do it later. Right now you need to do whatever it takes to make her fight her way out of here.”

  “Anne does know how to fight. I’ve seen—”

  “No, you haven’t. Against Vitus, maybe, and that was only because I was driving. The rest of the time she holds back. If she’d been serious, she’d have killed both those apprentices in her bedroom and we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

  “And then she would have been breaking the Concord.”

  “Fuck the Concord. Every Dark mage in the country breaks it, why shouldn’t she?” I started to answer and not-Anne waved her hand. “Fine, whatever. I don’t care about long-term solutions, all right? Get Anne out of here and you can do whatever the hell you want.”

  “That bit we’re agreed on.” I studied not-Anne. “Does Variam know about you?”

  “He’s got his suspicions.” Not-Anne glanced out the window. “Let’s wrap this up.”

  “One more thing,” I said. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m getting the impression your priorities are a bit different from Anne’s. Are you sure you want to get away from this castle as badly as she does?”

  “Oh, please. Sagash has got the right idea about some things, I’ll give you that, but we’re just furniture to him. Anne and I might not always agree, but one thing we know is that we’re not going to be a slave again. You think I want to be his tool until he uses me up? I want to be the one that everyone else is afraid of, who makes the decisions about who lives or dies and makes everyone shut up when she walks in the room. I don’t want to be Chosen, I want to be queen.”

  I looked back at not-Anne for a long moment, feeling a chill. I’d heard that speech before, or something very like it. “It might be better for you and for Anne,” I said quietly, “if you don’t get what you want.”

  Not-Anne shrugged. “Not like I’ll ever get the chance.” She pushed herself off the window’s edge. “Time’s up.”

  “Why? What’s going to happen?”

  “You ask too many questions, you know that?” Not-Anne walked away, deeper into the shadows of the tower. Only her voice echoed around me as she faded from sight. “Just keep her alive. There’s more hanging on it than you know.”

  I started to answer, but she was gone. The room I was in was empty, and as I looked around I saw that the room was darker, the light fading. I started back towards the place I’d entered from; the lights above me began to dim and go out one by one, and I broke
into a jog. I was alone in the tower, the glass corridors silent but for the sound of my feet. The door I’d entered by was at the end of the corridor, clearly visible in the shadows. I pulled it open, and as I did the last lights went out and I was left in darkness. I stepped through and back into my dreams, the doorway disappearing behind me as everything began to fragment and become fuzzy. Sleep came.

  | | | | | | | | |

  I woke up slowly. I didn’t feel rested, but my neck and back were stiff and aching and I was too uncomfortable to go back to sleep. As I realised where I was, I remembered that I shouldn’t be going back to sleep. In a moment I was fully awake and scanning for danger.

  I was propped up against the wall, alone. Anne was gone; with her magic-enhanced physiology she’d recovered from the exertions of three days in the time it had taken me to recover from one. Looking into the futures in which I went down the stairs, I saw that she was in the room below. There were no signs of battle or danger.

  Now that I was awake, I was uncomfortably aware of just how big a risk I’d taken falling asleep like that. Still, it had paid off, and both of us were rested—we’d need it for the day ahead. I pulled myself to my feet, wincing at the pain in my muscles. Sleeping in armour is really not comfortable.

  The window on the north side of the room looked down onto the grass and the pool of water. From the grey-blue sky I knew that the sun had risen, but the bulk of the castle was blocking its rays and no direct sunlight was touching the grassy enclave. White birds—doves, maybe—were gathered at the rushes by the edge of the pool, dipping their heads to sip fresh water. It was a peaceful scene and I stood in the shadow of the window’s edge, watching idly while I scouted through the futures ahead.

  A stir of movement from the north side of the courtyard caught my eye; there was something in the shadow of a crumbling archway. Just enough reflected light came through for me to make out a small long-bodied animal, about the size and shape of a cat but with a pointed face and a thick bushy tail. Red fox. This shadow realm really must be old if it had its own predators.