Veiled

by Benedict Jacka

  Caldera was fighting to the left; to the right, Variam and Luna were taking on one of the constructs. Vari was holding it at bay with a wall of fire while Luna struck with her whip, the silver mist of her curse lashing eagerly into the construct’s body. I was in a tiny oasis of calm at the centre of the circle, everything happening at once. “Just Haken, he’s at the house—uh, there are two more mages at least, Vihaela and Cerulean. Cerulean is working for White Rose, he’s somewhere around invisible—to your left!”

  Landis gestured and one of the White Rose men who’d been in the middle of drawing a gun suddenly screamed and dropped it. The gun hit the grass with a hiss, glowing with heat. “Cerulean, eh?” Landis said. “Never did trust the bugger. Be a good chap and spot for me, will you?”

  I looked through the futures, saw gunfire. “Group at the bottom of the hill, your one o’clock. They’re aiming for Vari.”

  Landis lifted a hand and a glowing ball of dark red energy formed above one finger. He frowned down at the people below who were sighting on Variam. “Should have taken the hint, boys.” The glowing spark flew downhill, disappearing into the night.

  Fire bloomed, followed by a clap of thunder. For an instant everyone on the hillside was illuminated in fiery red, then a wave of hot air rolled over, making me stagger. The three men who’d been about to open fire were gone. In their place was a circle of scorched and glowing earth, shapeless masses burning at the centre.

  The men still standing broke and ran. To the right, the construct Vari and Luna had been fighting tried to leap; Luna sent a pulse of some kind through her whip, flashing into the doglike body. The construct staggered and collapsed, its animating spell misfiring as Luna’s curse set it against itself. Vari burned away its head with an incineration spell. “Boss!” he called at Landis. “They’re running!”

  “Let them go,” Landis said. “This was just the small fry. Verus?”

  “They’re gone,” I said, scanning the futures. “Can’t sense any mages or adepts. They must be back at the estate.”

  “Yeah, and now they know we’re here,” Caldera said, walking up, glancing down at the last scattered men fleeing into the trees. Behind her, the third construct was broken on the grass. I hadn’t even noticed her take it down. “Get behind me. The guys coming in aren’t going to be so happy to see you.”

  “What do you—?” I saw what was going to happen. “Jesus. When you said you were bringing company, you weren’t kidding, were you?”

  “What, you thought I was going to come charging in on my own? That hero shit is for rookies.” Caldera glanced sideways. “Landis . . . ?”

  Landis made a reassuring gesture. “I’m here in a purely supporting role, my dear. You’re the senior.”

  “Thanks.” Caldera turned back towards the slope. “Here?”

  “Here,” I said. “Five seconds.”

  Caldera nodded.

  Another gate opened up on the hillside, followed by another. Council security men came through, two by two, guns levelled. Torches shone on our faces, and I squinted against the glare. “I’m Keeper Caldera,” Caldera said, arms folded. “These guys are with me. Point those things somewhere else.”

  The Council security glanced at each other, then lowered their guns. “Clear!” one of them called back through the gate.

  The next one through was Slate. “You’d better have—” he started to say to Caldera, then he saw me and his face darkened. “You!”

  “Okay, look,” I said. “I can explain.”

  “You can do it in a cell. You, you.” He gestured to the security men. “Arrest him.”

  “Belay that order,” Caldera said.

  “Do it!”

  “If you touch him,” Caldera told the two security men calmly, “then I will shove whichever body part you use to do it up your own arse.”

  The two security men looked at Caldera, looked at Slate, and clearly and visibly decided not to get involved. “Caldera,” Slate snarled. “What the fuck?”

  “Verus is my second,” Caldera said. “Not yours.”

  People were still coming through the gate. There were a good fifteen security men with us now, but most had taken one glance at what was going on and hurried past to set up a perimeter. No Council auxiliary wants to get in the middle of a mage fight. “This is my case,” Slate said.

  “No, the raid in Bank was your case. You don’t have seniority here.”

  Slate glanced at Landis, who made a very small gesture to indicate that he wasn’t involved. “Look, maybe I can—” I began.

  “Shut up,” Caldera and Slate told me at exactly the same time.

  I blinked, and did. “Cerulean fingered him for Haken being MIA,” Slate said.

  “Yeah, well, some new stuff’s come to light,” Caldera said. She jerked her head back towards the distant building. “Like the fact that Haken’s in there. You want to argue jurisdiction, or you want to get him out before Vihaela gets to work on him?”

  Slate gave Caldera a hard look. His eyes flicked to me and back to Caldera, and I felt the futures settle. “He doesn’t leave my sight,” Slate said. “And I’ve got tactical command, not you. Got it?”

  Caldera nodded. “Fine.”

  Trask had appeared behind Slate, who turned to him. “Get on the com to Rain,” Slate said. “Tell him we want more backup, as much as he can scare up.” Slate raised his voice, addressing the crowd. “All right, ladies! Lock and load, we’ve got work to do!”

  “Thanks,” I told Caldera quietly.

  “Don’t thank me yet,” Caldera said, her voice dry. “Slate would have had you safe at HQ. Now you’re going to be leading the charge.”

  “You going to tell them about Cerulean?”

  “You do not want to make it your word against a Keeper’s.” Caldera looked around then headed towards Slate, giving me a last comment over her shoulder. “Don’t screw this up.”

  All around us, men were organising, sorting into teams. “That was fun,” Luna said, walking over from where she’d been talking to Variam. Her eyes were bright and there was a spring in her step. “Thought you’d forgotten about us.”

  “Just keep your head down and stick with Vari and Landis,” I said. “You’re still not supposed to be here. And be—”

  “Be careful, I know,” Luna said, rolling her eyes. “Look who’s talking.”

  “That pulse trick you used against that construct,” I said curiously. I’d never seen Luna use that move before. “Where did that come from?”

  “Oh.” Luna shrugged. “Chalice showed me. Worked pretty well, right?”

  I looked at Luna. “Yeah, it did.”

  “Hey!” Slate shouted. “Verus! I said where I can see you!”

  I sighed and gave Luna a nod. “Stay safe.” I walked to join Slate’s group.

  Slate was with Trask and Caldera, and he was giving orders to a group of Council security. “. . . through the gap,” he was saying. “Once we’ve made the breach, I want two men on point. Stay in cover range for when things go wrong.” He beckoned to me and started walking. “Let’s go, fortune-teller. You’re finding us a way in.”

  “It’s Verus, not ‘fortune-teller.’ You’re not waiting for backup?”

  “If you and Caldera are right,” Slate gave a sharp glance, “then we don’t have time. And to make sure, you’re going at the front.”

  I sighed. “Fine. Then stay quiet and let me work.” I searched through the futures, picking out points of entry. White Rose’s base loomed up in the futures and the present, growing closer each second.

  | | | | | | | | |

  Keepers can move fast when they want to. It took the whole assault force less than five minutes to make it across the grounds and to the White Rose estate. To no one’s surprise, by the time we got there, the defending forces were alerted and ready for us.

  When y
ou’re doing recon, five minutes isn’t much time. With half an hour, I could probably have found a way to get in safely. With an hour, I might have slipped in a couple of other people too. Getting the whole assault force in subtly and cleanly was not going to happen, no matter how long I had.

  Fortunately, “subtle” wasn’t on Slate’s priority list. The front doors of the White Rose estate were bound in metal, reinforced and warded. But the reinforcement didn’t extend to the entire building, and my divination found the weak points in the walls. The elemental mages did the rest.

  At which point things got busy.

  | | | | | | | | |

  “Pull back!” Slate shouted into his communicator. “Stay in cover!”

  I was lying flat behind a low rise in the ground. I could just make out the edges of the right wing of the White Rose estate, but not the central block, which was just as well because that was where the fire was coming from. A low-pitched, hollow duh-duh-duh sound echoed from the roof, repeated and overlapping, mixing with the distant sounds of bullets sinking into earth. The man who’d been hit in the first volley had stopped screaming: treated or dead, I couldn’t tell which. Slate shoved the disc away and glared at me. “Why didn’t you tell us about this?”

  “I told you those things on the roof looked like bunkers,” I said absently. Most of my attention was on counting the sources of fire. There were only three that I could see, but that was enough to make it a bad idea to stick your head up.

  “You didn’t tell us they had machine guns!”

  “You didn’t give me a chance to check.”

  “Fuck it.” Slate lifted himself up to squint out over the rise at the estate. “Let’s just—”

  “Get down,” I said calmly.

  Slate might have been obnoxious, but he wasn’t stupid. He ducked instantly. A bullet whipped overhead with an angry whizzing sound.

  “Slate!” Trask called from twenty feet away. The big man was pressed up behind a tree. “Flanking team’s bogged down. Trap field.”

  Slate swore.

  “Landis is circling,” I said, still not lifting my head. “Once he gets to the top of the hill, he can melt those bunkers right off the rooftop.”

  “That’ll take too long.” I felt the futures shift as Slate came to a decision. “Trask, put up a fog cloud, then get Caldera and the front team. We’re going in.”

  I didn’t hear Trask’s answer, but I felt the signature of water magic. A moment later the air grew cool, strands of mist forming out of the night, spreading and thickening to become a fog. Within seconds everything more than a few feet away had disappeared into the cloud. It was the same spell my condensers used, but much more powerful: the cloud was already more than fifty feet wide and it wasn’t slowing down.

  I felt a hand on my arm and glanced up to see Slate. His eyes glittered. “Let’s move, seer boy,” he said. “You’re with me.”

  Briefly it occurred to me that if Slate wanted to take a shot at me, now would be the perfect time to do it. Oh well, I’ve already had two Keepers try to backstab me this evening. Lightning doesn’t strike three times in the same place, right? I took a deep breath, then stood up and ran for the building.

  It caught Slate off guard—I think he’d been expecting to have to drag me. I left him behind, outdistancing him in the mist, and suddenly I was running alone. The mist cloud blocked sight and muffled sound, and for a brief moment it didn’t seem as though I was in a battle at all. The sounds of gunfire were faint and distant, and there was no one close enough to threaten me. It was almost peaceful.

  Then somewhere above, the machine gunners shifted fire, and in a scattering of the futures ahead of me I saw myself torn apart. Okay, not so peaceful. I slowed to a jog, twisting sideways, sensing the bullets snap past. Behind me I heard someone lose their breath in a gasp, followed by a thud. And then all of a sudden the walls of the White Rose estate were looming up, flower beds under my feet. I’d made it through the gauntlet of fire, and I was too close for the gunners on the roof to reach me. There was a blackened hole in the outer wall where one of Landis’s fireballs had struck; I could still feel heat radiating from the stone. I went through . . .

  . . . and came out of the mist into a plain wooden corridor, face to face with two men in shirts and jeans. Both were carrying guns but they weren’t aiming them at me, and before they could react I pointed at them. “What are you doing? Why aren’t you with Vihaela?”

  Confusion is the ally of the prepared. The two men paused, looking at each other. I didn’t give them time to react. “Order is to pull back to the upper floor. Move!”

  “But they told us—” one of the men began.

  Slate came out of the mist behind me, black energy hovering at his hands. I dived for cover. The men hesitated—first mistake—and levelled their guns at Slate—second mistake. They didn’t get the chance for a third. Black lightning cracked and I heard the thump of bodies hitting the floor.

  I got to my feet and glanced at what was left of the two men. Slate hadn’t used nonlethal spells this time. “Which way?” Slate demanded.

  “Working on it.” My future selves were moving through the mansion, running and dodging and dying.

  Caldera and Trask came through behind us, trailed a moment later by two more Council security men. No more followed; the rest of the team had been lost to fog or gunfire. They spread out, securing the corridor. Caldera covered one side, while Trask set up on the corner to the right.

  I kept flicking through the futures ahead. With the interference from Slate and the fighting, it was slow going. Right side was going to run us into trouble. Left seemed clearer. Upstairs was clearer still. Now where was Haken . . . ?

  “Well?” Slate said.

  “Shh,” I said absently. I’d just caught a trace of Cerulean. So he’s still here. No Vihaela, though. Maybe if I looked for her first . . .

  Gunfire sounded to the right, followed by a scream. I heard the rushing sound of a water blast and the firing cut off abruptly. “Get on with it!” Slate snarled.

  “You rush a diviner, you get crappy divinations,” I said without opening my eyes. Left route wasn’t working out. There was a small oasis of calm on the first floor and I split my perceptions, pushing myself to track multiple paths at once. Was that it?

  Another burst of gunfire came from the right, and Slate and Trask’s response fragmented my path-walk. There. I’d only had a glimpse but I was sure it was him. “Found him,” I said. “First floor. This way.” I walked across the corridor and pulled open a door: it led into a small staircase, winding upwards.

  Slate didn’t hesitate. “Caldera, Trask!” he shouted. “Moving out!” Then he hurried after me.

  The sounds of fighting died away as we jogged up the stairs. The battle was still going on outside, and there were a lot of enemies all around us, but Trask’s fog spell had spread enough confusion that most of the White Rose defenders hadn’t yet figured out that they had intruders. From above I could still hear the staccato beat of the machine guns, but as we reached the first floor there was a tremor and a thud, and one of the guns stopped firing. Probably Landis’s work. I hoped Luna was staying with him and hadn’t done anything crazy.

  The first floor of the White Rose estate was more comfortably furnished, and I had a brief impression of rugs on the floor and mirrors on the walls. The path I’d planned out splintered into combat around the next corner, and I changed plans on the fly. There was a door two steps away, with a bolt on the outside. “In here,” I said quietly over my shoulder to the others, pulled the door open, shut it behind them once they were in, then held a finger to my lips when Caldera tried to talk. She, Slate, and Trask were the only ones still with me; we’d lost the security men somewhere along the way. We stayed quiet, and a moment later, I heard footsteps go running past outside.

  The room we’d entered was a bedroom, decorated in pink and w
hite. A muted yellow light cast a soft glow, illuminating a hanging mobile. Stuffed animals were piled on an armchair, and a small table held a reading lamp and a notebook with loopy writing on the cover that read My Diary. The bed was frilly and fluffy, with more stuffed animals propped up against the headboard, and a small girl was sitting up in it. She was dressed in a white nightie and couldn’t have been more than nine years old. “Are you my daddy?” she asked me.

  I stared at her. Her eyes were blue, without any sign of fright, or worry . . . or anything. I looked into the futures and felt a chill. The girl’s futures were solid lines, reacting to our input without any initiative or variation. Just like a construct.

  “I’ve been good,” the girl said.

  I felt my skin crawl. I turned and headed for the other side of the room, where a connecting door was half hidden by a wardrobe.

  “Jesus,” Slate said. He was staring at the girl.

  “Are you my daddy?” the girl asked.

  “Guys,” I said, not looking at the bed. “Come on.”

  Slate was staring at the girl, but Trask and Caldera followed me. “Door’s locked,” I said. A muffled shout sounded from somewhere off to the left, followed by gunfire. “Keep it quiet.”

  Trask nodded, and I stepped out of the way. The big man put a hand to the door handle: there was a blue glow and the handle, the locking mechanism, and a six-inch circle of door puffed into dust. Trask pushed it open. “Slate,” I said over my shoulder. Slate tore his gaze away from the girl and followed. The girl watched us go with dead eyes.

  The next room was panelled in stone, with a medieval theme. A fire burned in a fireplace, and oil lanterns were mounted on the walls. At the centre was what looked like an old-fashioned version of a medical examination bench. A side table held a tray of gleaming metal implements that could have been dentists’ tools, if you didn’t look too closely. I was glad Luna wasn’t here to ask questions. None of us spoke; we moved through and out.