Alex Verus Novels, Books 1-4 (9780698175952) (107 page)

chapter
1

T
he night was warm and still. Through the open windows of my flat a gentle breeze blew, faint scents carrying on the air: tarmac, burnt rubber, the distant smell of a barbecue. The street outside was filled with the steady whisper of traffic, voices rising briefly above the background noise before fading into it again, and from two blocks over came the rhythmic thump of club music. A helicopter was prowling the skies above, tracking the wail of police sirens, and from time to time it would pass overhead in a clatter of rotors.

Inside, my flat was peaceful. Flies moved in lazy arcs under the light, and birds and animals looked quietly down from the pictures on the walls. The coffee table had been moved to the centre of the room; it was covered with cardboard hexes and wooden playing pieces, and four out of the five of us were sitting around it. Sonder and I were on chairs, Luna was sitting cross-legged on a beanbag, and Variam was at one end of the sofa, scowling down at his cards. At the other end of the sofa and a little way from the game was Anne, curled up with her legs tucked under her.

“Uh, Variam?” Sonder said. Sonder has messy black hair and glasses, and always seems to have a permanent air of scruffiness about him, as though he's just slept in his clothes. “Your turn.”

Variam picked up the dice and threw them without looking. “Seven.”

Luna stretched to see. “That's an
eight
, you idiot.”

Sonder perked up. “Awesome! Five ore, two grain.”

Variam ignored them both. “We should be practising,” he told me.

“You've been practising for weeks,” I said, waiting for Sonder to finish scooping cards before taking my own.

“It's better than just sitting here.”

“Are you done?” Sonder asked Variam.

Variam nodded, and Sonder picked up the dice. “We could do more combat drills,” Variam said as Sonder made his roll.

“You don't
need
more combat drills.”

“She does,” Variam said, pointing at Anne.

Luna looked at Variam in annoyance. “Your appointment tomorrow's for a consultation, not a battle,” I said before Luna could start an argument. “She just wants to find out a bit about you. I'll be surprised if she even asks you to cast a spell.”

Sonder hesitated, looking between us. “We might need to show her what we can do,” Variam said.

“Variam, she's a little old lady,” I said. “She lives in a terraced house in Brondesbury. She is not going to want you to show her how well you can incinerate things.”

Variam sat back with an aggravated look. “Um,” Sonder said. “I'll get a city and a development card.” He pushed the dice over to Luna. “Your turn.”

Luna waited for Sonder to withdraw his hand before picking up the dice and rolling them. To my mage's sight Luna's curse appeared as a silvery aura, twining around her limbs and body like living mist. Silver tendrils played over the dice as they bounced, and disappeared once the dice came to rest. “Seven,” Luna said with satisfaction. “Let's see, I think the robber can go”—she picked up the black piece and traced a circle with it over the board—“there.” She set it down in the middle of Variam's settlements and held out a hand, fingers extended. “Gimme.”

Variam woke up. “What?”

“Card, please.”

“Why are you going for me?
They're
going to win!”

“Annoying you is more fun. Card, please.”

Variam scowled and held his cards out with poor grace. Luna took her time over picking one, making Variam's scowl deepen before she plucked one out. The silver mist of her curse pulled in close to her fingers as she did. Luna's curse brings bad luck, and it's quite lethal; even a strand of that mist is dangerous, and skin-to-skin contact is deadly. Once upon a time Luna would never have been able to get so close to another person without putting them at risk, but she's been training to control her curse for nearly a year and a half now and it's paid off. The silver mist was layered in near to her skin, bright and dense, and only a few faint traces had spread to the playing pieces, leaving them bathed in tiny silver auras. The auras around the items weren't a problem; her curse doesn't do much to objects. Living creatures are another story.

The dice came around to me, and after the resources had been counted out I looked at my hand. The first to ten points would win, and I had eight. Glancing into the future in which I turned over the top development card, I saw that it was a victory point. “Settlement,” I said, placing the wooden playing piece down on the map, then rose to my feet. “I'm getting a drink; you guys want something?”

“Could I have some water?” Sonder asked.

“I kind of want a drink, but I'm not sure what,” Luna said.

“I think there's some of the cordial left that I made yesterday,” Anne said in her soft voice. “The elderflower and lime?”

Luna perked up. “Oh, that was nice.”

I walked into the kitchen, took the bottle out of the fridge, and was just filling a glass when I felt the presence behind me. I held out the drink without looking, and it was taken from my hand after a moment's pause. “Thank you,” Anne said.

Anne is tall and slim, only an inch or so shorter than me, with black hair that brushes her shoulders and reddish-brown eyes. She looks striking, but she's got a quiet, unobtrusive manner that tends not to draw attention. “What's up?” I asked, filling another glass.

“You could have won that game, couldn't you?” Anne said.

I turned with a smile. “Guess I need a better poker face.”

Back in the living room I could hear raised voices: Variam and Luna had started arguing again. “Were you letting them win?” Anne asked curiously.

“To win I'd have needed Luna or Vari to trade me their cards,” I said. “Probably could have convinced them, but I'd have had to lie.”

“You don't think it's worth it?”

“I've done enough shady stuff,” I said. “I'd rather stay friends unless I've got a really good reason not to.”

Anne gave a smile, but it faded quickly. She glanced back over her shoulder, up at the cupboards. “Something wrong?” I said.

“There's someone outside.”

I straightened, suddenly alert. “Where?”

Anne is a life mage, and a powerful one. Most people think “life mage” means “healer,” and they're half right, but life magic is far more than that—it gives control over every aspect of a living creature, healing or harming with a touch. Life mages can sense life, “seeing” living creatures, and Anne's particularly good at it. Her accuracy is amazing; she can learn more in a minute just by looking at you than a doctor could work out in twenty-four hours with a full hospital's worth of equipment. I've never been able to figure out exactly how she does it, though she's tried to explain it a couple of times. She just seems to read a person's body in the same way that you or I can read the expression on someone's face.

On a practical note, this makes Anne really, really good at spotting people—she can notice them through walls, floors, and even solid rock if she feels like it, and if she's ever met them she can recognise them with perfect accuracy. “He was down on the street,” Anne said. “I didn't pay any attention at first, but . . . he moved away and came up to the rooftop. It looked like he was trying to watch us.”

“Who is he?”

“I've never met him before,” Anne said. “He's about eighteen years old, not very big or strong but he's healthy, and he's on his own.” She pointed up through the wall at a slight angle. “About seventy feet that way.”

“No one's after you or Vari at the moment, are they?”

“Not that I know about,” Anne said simply.

There was a reason I was asking. Anne and Variam are what you might call very advanced apprentices; they aren't mages but they're experienced enough that they probably should be. Four years ago they got involved with a Dark mage called Sagash. The official story (at least, the story the Council believes) is that Anne and Variam entered Sagash's service as apprentices before leaving nine months later. What actually happened was that Sagash kidnapped Anne and tortured her until she did what she was told. Variam went looking for her, and when he tracked her down there was an almighty battle. Their next stop was a rakshasa named Jagadev, who arranged for their entry into the Light apprentice program and took them into his household right up until last winter, when Anne got arrested by the Council on suspicion of being an accessory to murder. In the aftermath Jagadev kicked them out and I let them move into my flat. When you have a history like that you attract a lot of attention, and in the time I'd known Anne and Variam they'd been hunted by assassins, constructs, a pair of Council Keepers, and two different Dark mages, just for starters. It's not that they look for trouble but it does seem to follow them around.

Of course, Anne and Variam aren't the only ones with a bad reputation. The Council thinks I was trained as a Dark apprentice too—the difference is, in my case they're
right
, and if our mystery guest wasn't after Anne or Variam there was a good chance he was after me. But while we'd been talking I'd had the time to confirm he was there and I'd gathered enough information to decide that he wasn't any immediate threat. My abilities aren't as good as Anne's at analysing living creatures but they're much better for sensing danger, and I'd already decided I could handle this on my own. “I'll go have a chat,” I told Anne.

Anne hesitated, glancing back at the living room. “I'll be okay,” I said. “When Vari and Luna finish arguing and Sonder wins on his next turn, tell them I'll be back in five minutes.”

Anne looked concerned, but nodded. “Be careful.”

* * *

T
he roof of my flat has a great view. It's not especially high, but it's right in the middle of the densest part of Camden. Brickwork and bridges and parapets and aerials and chimneys reach up all around, surrounding you in a sea of buildings, as though you're looking out over a horizon made from the cityscape. It was a clear night and a few fuzzy stars shone down from above, struggling against the light pollution, while to the left a crescent moon was rising. The scent of food drifted on the warm air: Indian from the restaurants at the end of the street, Italian from the one a block over, barbecue from the gardens near the canal. I moved into a chimney's shadow and let the darkness cover me.

The guy trying to spy on us was three rooftops over, and as I got a closer look I mentally changed his designation from “guy” to “kid.” I could have sneaked up on him without too much trouble, but as I looked into the future I saw that he was going to come my way before long. I settled down to wait.

A few minutes passed. The helicopter that had been buzzing around the council estate to the south passed overhead again, the discordant clatter of the rotors drowning out everything else until it lost interest and flew away north, its lights blinking white-green-red in the night. A pack of teenagers in hoodies swaggered down the street below us, shouting drunkenly; there was the tinkling crash of a bottle breaking, followed by a scuffle and a yell. Once the street was quiet again the kid left the cover of his rooftop and crept towards my hiding place.

Divination magic works by sensing probabilities. To me, potential futures appear as lines of light against the darkness; the brighter and more vivid, the more likely. By glancing over the futures in which I stepped out into the kid's line of sight I could watch him despite the objects between us, and as I did I kept an eye on the futures of the kid's actions. Most of them showed a sudden flurry of movement as he saw me, while in a few he continued to move steadily, unaware. I saw that the futures in which he stayed unaware of me were the ones in which I moved left around the chimney and I did just that, matching my actions to the futures in which I was undetected. I hardly had to pay attention to do it; I've had so much practice at using my divination for stealth that it's become automatic. The kid passed by, oblivious, and walked onto the roof of my flat.

I'd had time to do a fairly thorough scan of the rooftops around us, flicking through the futures in which I went searching in different directions, and I was pretty sure the kid was alone. As I watched, he moved to the ladder leading down to my balcony and crouched, peering over the edge. I rose silently from behind the chimney and walked quietly up behind, stopping ten feet away. “Looking for someone?” I said to his back.

The kid jumped, trying to leap up, spin around, and look in every direction all at once. He nearly fell over the edge, and as he saw me he scrambled to reach into his jacket, fumbling out a weapon. It was a short combat knife, about the length of his hand, and he promptly dropped it with a clatter. He bent down to grab it, nearly fell off the roof again, and finally got it pointing in my direction, breathing fast.

I watched the whole thing with an expression of mild interest. “Finished?”

The kid didn't answer, staring at me with wide eyes. “So I'm guessing you're looking for me?” I said.

Silence. The kid was Chinese, though looking through the futures I could tell he spoke with a London accent; I pegged him as British-born. He was small and wiry, and looked quick. “You know,” I said, “if you're just going to stand there staring, this is going to be a really one-sided conversation.”

Yet more silence. I opened my mouth to make a snarky comment and stopped as I suddenly recognised the emotion in the kid's eyes. He was terrified—not just jumpy, but scared out of his wits. And the person he was terrified of was me.

I'm really not used to people being afraid of me. Don't get me wrong, a lot of mages get uneasy around diviners, but it's because they think you might dig out their secrets—they know a diviner's no physical threat. And while secrets can be as deadly as any other weapon in the magical world, fear is an instinctual thing. When you know you can beat someone up it's a lot harder to be scared of them.