Veiled

by Benedict Jacka

  The van came to a halt. Haken was speaking into his sleeve, giving quiet instructions to the security men in the other two vans. I could picture what would be going on inside: guns being loaded, equipment double-checked.

  I waited.

  “Go,” Haken said.

  The van doors opened and we streamed out into artificial light. We were in a subterranean parking garage near the White Rose facility in Bank, the other two vans parked on either side of ours, lined up in military precision. The security detail were heading up the ramp. At the top, one of the men was talking to the tollbooth attendant, who was trying to reply and stare at us at the same time. We walked past, up onto the street, and around the corner.

  We got a lot less attention than I’d expected. I think it was the lack of fuss. No one ran or shouted; we just moved at a brisk walk, and while the odd passerby turned to stare, the looks they gave us were puzzled ones, as if they weren’t quite sure what was going on. As we moved down the street Haken made hand signals. Coatl split off with four men, Lizbeth and Abeyance with two more. The rest of us turned the corner and headed straight down the alleyway.

  Old buildings loomed over us, orange and brown in the artificial light, and unmarked doors passed by to either side. We were in detection range now. I hadn’t seen any cameras on the White Rose house, but it was just a matter of time before they figured out we were there. Haken signalled; Slate and Trask accelerated and I quickened my pace to keep up. Slate reached the door first and banged on it.

  There was a moment’s silence, then with a rattle a small slot opened at eye level and I saw the outlines of a face. “What?”

  “Hey, mate,” Slate said. “I’m Keeper Slate of the Order of the Star. You’ve got a count of ten to open this door before I break it.”

  The eyes in the face saw us and widened. The viewing window rattled shut and I heard a muffled shout. “Hey, Mr. Seer,” Slate said over his shoulder. “Anyone going to get hurt when I smash this down?”

  I checked. “No.”

  “Pity.” Slate lifted a hand and black energy lashed out.

  Death magic blends kinetic and negative energy, and it’s well suited to combat. Slate’s magic was heavier on the kinetic side; the first blast buckled the door, the second smashed it off its hinges. Two Council security men moved in, guns up and ready. Slate and Trask were third and fourth, and I went in behind. The inside looked liked a converted townhouse, with a central hall and doors leading off, and already the men inside were reacting to the attack, shouting and converging. Guards came bursting out into the hall and ran down the stairs from the floors above. The men from White Rose guarding this building were outnumbered, but they were armed and they had the advantage of the choke point.

  It didn’t make any difference.

  It’s easy to forget just how powerful mages are. Slate took the first two down before I could even react, black rays sending them stumbling to their knees. One on the upper landing, quicker or dumber than the others, managed to get a handgun up and start firing down into the crowded hallway, bang bang bang. Trask already had a shield up, blue energy smooth and polished, the bullets making white flashes as they bounced away. The man got off four shots before Trask sent a hydroblast up the stairs; it caught the guy in the chest, smashing him up into the wall, sending him sprawling limp on the landing.

  And just that fast, the battle was over. Four men were down, none of them ours. One of the Council security was advancing on a man at the end of the hall, his submachine gun up and levelled. “Down on the floor!” he was shouting. “Drop the gun, down on the floor!” The White Rose man looked pale and scared; he dropped his gun and backed away, hands up. The Council security man grabbed him and shoved him down.

  The Council security started restraining the men on the ground, while more came through the front door. Haken stepped through behind them and looked down at the prone figures before glancing at Slate. “Minimum force?”

  “They’re alive, aren’t they?” Slate said. He headed towards the kitchen at the end of the hall. Shouts and calls were echoing down from the floors above. “Hey,” I said to the Council security about to start up the stairs. “There’s a guy about to come down shooting.”

  The security man glanced at me, then stepped down, sighting on the top of the stairs. Someone stepped up next to me and I looked left to see the illusionist, Cerulean. His eyes were slightly narrowed, and he waved a hand towards the security man.

  The security man lowered his gun and stepped aside. We waited a couple of seconds, then there was the sound of running footsteps and a round-faced guy with a gun appeared on the landing.

  Cerulean looked at him. Round Face’s eyes went wide and he screamed. He clapped his hands to his face, bashing himself with the side of the gun in the process, and staggered sideways, tripping over the body of the one Trask had stunned. He went down and kept screaming.

  “Clear ground!” someone shouted from the back of the hall. Haken reappeared, skirting around the Council security and the men on the floor. “Verus—” he began, but the screaming from the landing above drowned out his voice. He frowned.

  I shook my head and gestured upwards.

  Haken looked up, then down at Cerulean, and spoke loudly enough to be heard over the screams. “Could you please shut that off?”

  Cerulean shrugged. “It’s not an exact science.”

  I stared at Cerulean. I couldn’t see any active spell, but illusion magic specialises in invisibility and it’s notoriously difficult to detect. Illusionists usually manipulate light, but against weaker-willed opponents they can plant phantasms directly inside their targets’ heads. I used my magesight, searching through the frequencies: for a moment I thought I saw something, twisting blue-purple wires linking Cerulean to the man up on the landing, then Cerulean glanced at me and the wires vanished. From above, the screaming cut off abruptly, to be replaced with sobs.

  “You two, you’re with with Slate and Trask,” Haken said into the sudden quiet. “Full search, bottom to top. Check every room.”

  Cerulean nodded. “Okay,” I said.

  Haken headed back towards the end of the hall. I knew Slate and Trask were coming. Cerulean looked at the stairs, then gestured slightly to me, as if to say after you.

  I looked back at Cerulean’s expression, polite and indifferent, then as Slate and Trask reappeared I headed upstairs. I could feel Cerulean right behind me.

  | | | | | | | | |

  We cleared the rest of the building, and the remaining White Rose personnel surrendered without a fight. The clients in the process of using White Rose’s facilities were slightly more troublesome, and I got shouted at and threatened by a few men in various states of undress, but once they saw the guns and warrant cards they shut up. Cerulean and Slate told each of them in turn not to use their mobile phones, but funnily enough none of them seemed all that keen to get in touch with their friends and family. The girls (and the one boy) didn’t give any trouble—they’d obviously learnt when not to put up a fight. There were no traps, and more to the point, no mages.

  The top floor attic hadn’t been converted into individual bedrooms. It was a studio, with some desks over to one side, but the main point of interest was the arch mounted against the far wall. I’d been using my magesight, searching for wards, and I recognised the thing instantly. Gate magic focus, and . . . password locked? Interesting. The only other person with me was one of the Council security men, and he was helpfully staying just outside the door. I focused on the archway, eyes narrowed. Cracking the password took about a minute. After that, I started path-walking to see what would happen if I stepped through.

  I’d been at it for ten minutes when I heard footsteps from behind. Lizbeth and Abeyance’s futures intersected with mine, breaking the path-walk. I stirred and looked around just as the two of them came in. “Is that what I think it is?” Abeyance said as she saw the arch. />
  “Gate focus to White Rose’s base,” I said.

  “Perfect.” Abeyance stood against the wall and narrowed her eyes.

  “Anything downstairs?” I asked.

  “Several hundred scenes of illicit sex. Per day.”

  “That must have been fun to watch.”

  “I’ve seen it before.”

  “I always wondered how that worked,” I said. “So when you go into some random bedroom and use your timesight . . . ?”

  “Yes. That’s exactly how it works.” She shrugged. “You stop paying attention after a while.”

  “You two done perving?” Lizbeth said. “How about you get us something useful?”

  Abeyance gave Lizbeth an unemotional look and turned to the archway, concentrating. “Your raid worked, didn’t it?” I said.

  “Are you stupid?” Lizbeth said. “Did you look at those girls? They’re not even underage. No flesh work, no kids—we haven’t got shit. Probably can’t even make a slavery charge stick.”

  “The mage clients aren’t going to be somewhere like this,” I said. “They’ll have the incriminating stuff in their main base.”

  Lizbeth gave me a withering look. “Well, that’s not much fucking help, is it?”

  I shrugged. “You could go through the arch.”

  Lizbeth glared at me. Abeyance ignored us both. There was an uncomfortable silence.

  It was broken by the sounds of the other Keepers climbing the stairs. “. . . not getting anything,” Trask was saying in his deep voice. “Could sweat the others.”

  “No,” Haken said. “They won’t have anything useful.” He appeared in the doorway, took one look at the archway, then turned to me. “What’ll happen if we go through that?”

  “It’ll take us right into the middle of White Rose’s base,” I said. “That’ll start a fight, no two ways about it.”

  “So we do it fast,” Slate said.

  “They know we’re coming.”

  Slate eyed me. “You have something to do with that?”

  “White Rose aren’t stupid,” I said. “There are silent alarms spread out through this building. The guys here aren’t meant up to stand up to a Keeper raid; they’re an ablative screen. Same way you guys use your security men.”

  “Any chance we can do it peacefully?” Haken asked.

  “We step through that gate, they’re going to shoot first and ask questions later. And if you try to talk them down, you might not live long enough to do it. They’ve got a barbican setup. Crossfire, wards, the works.”

  “So how about you go first?” Slate said. “They’re your kind, right?”

  I gave Slate a look. He grinned and looked at Haken. “So we doing it?”

  Haken shook his head. “No.” He threw me a phone; I caught it one-handed. “From one of the guys downstairs. Get me the password.”

  I nodded, thumbed the display to reveal the unlock screen, and started working through the numbers. Slate looked at me, then at Haken. “Seriously?” he said in disbelief. “You’re still trying to talk to her?”

  “We are trying,” Haken said, “to do this peacefully.”

  “Hey, Haken,” Slate said. “You might have missed it so here’s a newsflash for you: Dark mages don’t go peacefully. This is a fucking waste of time.”

  Haken looked levelly at Slate. “Go down and help Coatl.”

  Slate gave us a disgusted look and stalked off. “Well, this is the place,” Abeyance said. “Vihaela’s used this gate. At least once in the past week, maybe more.”

  “Good,” Haken said. “Keep looking for anything else with her. Verus?”

  I’d found the passcode and had been scanning the past calls and the messages. “Code is 1535,” I said, tossing the phone back to Haken. “Look for the contact listed as B. It’s not Vihaela, but he’s got access.”

  “Uh,” Lizbeth said. “Not to point out the obvious, but how’s calling her going to help?”

  Haken didn’t look up from the phone. “Is there a problem?”

  “Yeah, the fact that these guys haven’t turned up shit and we’ve got nothing on Vihaela. You think she’s going to just roll up?”

  “If she doesn’t,” Haken said absently, “she’ll be disobeying the Council.”

  “Oh yeah, that’ll scare her.”

  Haken looked up at Lizbeth. “I want you and Trask up here. Set up a defence in case anyone comes through that gate. Verus, you’re on early warning. I want to know at least two minutes before anyone steps through.” He looked between the three of us. “If you make contact, you notify me immediately. You are not to attack first under any circumstances. Clear?”

  Trask nodded. “Fine by me,” I said.

  Haken looked at Lizbeth. “Clear?”

  “Your funeral,” Lizbeth said.

  Haken turned and left. “This is the most fucked-up operation I’ve ever seen,” Lizbeth said. “Can you believe this?”

  “Mm,” I said. I was trying to see if I could eavesdrop on Haken’s call, but he wasn’t making it yet—he was just heading downstairs. Maybe if I followed farther . . . no, he was going to gate away first. Is he on to me? Worrying thought . . .

  “Hey!” Lizbeth told me. “You awake?”

  “I can watch for trouble, or I can talk to you,” I said. “Which would you prefer?”

  Lizbeth glowered at me, then crossed her arms and looked away. Trask still hadn’t spoken, and Abeyance was still lost in the trance of her timesight. I looked between the three mages and inwardly sighed.

  | | | | | | | | |

  Twenty minutes passed, then forty. The noise level from below diminished as the Council security cleared out the building. A team arrived and set up on the landing, weapons ready. I wanted to go down and find out more, but I was too concerned about the possibility of what Haken had said. It sounded as though he was inviting Vihaela here to talk. By now she’d have to know what had happened here. Would she really leave her fortified base to walk into the middle of a Keeper team like this?

  If I were Vihaela and I wanted to talk, I’d do it remotely. If I wanted to fight, I’d just blow up the building. There was no scenario I could think of in which Vihaela’s best option was to come walking through that gate, yet that was what Haken had set me to watch for. I checked future after future, looking for alternate lines of attack: a gate to a different part of the building, a triggered explosive, a toxin or gas. Nothing pinged. Maybe Haken was talking to Vihaela right now . . .

  Something shifted in the futures, a ghostly possibility, there and gone again. I stopped, searched, lost the strand, found it again. Movement, lots of movement. A person . . .

  My eyes went wide and I looked up. “Trask! Get Haken. Vihaela’s coming.”

  Trask put a hand to his ear and started speaking, his voice low and urgent. Lizbeth snapped out orders to the security men on the landing and all of a sudden the room was full of movement. Footsteps came running up the landing. Cerulean was first in; he must have been very close. Haken and Slate followed. Within a minute the small attic was crowded with people. Slate and Trask were at the front, Lizbeth and Haken a step behind. Abeyance had made herself scarce. Half a dozen Council security took up positions covering the gate, kneeling with their submachine guns ready. They weren’t about to fire . . . yet, but between them and the mages, there was enough firepower trained on that gate to kill anyone. Vihaela wasn’t going to step through into that, was she?

  “Verus?” Haken said.

  “She’s coming,” I said. “Two men with her. They’re not going to shoot first.”

  “Good,” Haken said. “Everyone hold fire.”

  Seconds ticked by. The room was silent but for the sound of breathing. Council security shifted position, adjusting their guns. Ahead of me, I saw Lizbeth flex her fingers, eager. I took a step back. Cerulean was in the corner,
arms folded. There was a lot of power in this room, and it was pointed away from me. So why was I suddenly so nervous?

  The gate lit up in my magesight. I heard half a dozen men draw breaths as the surface of the arch darkened and went black, forming a lightless plane. An instant later, Vihaela stepped through.

  chapter 12

  There’s a saying that military life is long periods of boredom punctuated by brief moments of terror. As soon as Vihaela stepped through that gate, things started happening very fast.

  Vihaela was dressed in brown and black, similar to her image in the Keeper records—actually, exactly like her image in the Keeper records. She stopped abruptly at the sight of all the people facing her. Two figures in suits stepped out behind her, brushing past on either side. They looked like men, but their blank expressions and the solid lines of their futures marked them as constructs.

  The futures went crazy. All of a sudden dozens of new possibilities started unfolding, combat and confrontation and magic and violence all blending together, overwhelming me with information. It was too much and for a second I froze. “Mage Vihaela,” Haken began. “Under the authority—”

  Danger, pain, death. There was a threat, and it was directed at me. Instinct broke my paralysis. “Haken!” I snapped. “Trouble!”

  “—of the—” Haken stopped.

  Green-black light bloomed around Vihaela’s hands, tendrils materialising out of the air. In an instant they’d formed into snakelike shapes with skull faces, rearing back like scorpion tails, ready to strike. The two constructs reached up under their coats, their movements perfectly synchronised, pulling out handguns.