Alex Verus Novels, Books 1-4 (9780698175952) (21 page)

When I woke again, morning sunlight was streaming through the window. It took me a moment to recognise the noise that had pulled me awake; it had been the sound of my letterbox. I went downstairs in my underwear and discovered that a small package had been dropped through the front door. I took it upstairs, scanning and opening it as I went, and unwrapped a roll of tissue to reveal a stylised stone key—a gate stone. It didn’t come with a note, but I already knew where it would lead.

I went back upstairs and checked the news. A footnote on the news sites mentioned that the British Museum was closed due to a fire. The Council has excellent connections with the British government. I went to make my preparations.

Choosing your equipment for a meeting with other mages is a tricky business. It’s a fine line between being prepared for trouble and being seen
as
the trouble. Visible weapons were obviously out. I really wanted to take my mist cloak, but given I’d been wearing it when I’d run from the Council reinforcements on Friday night, that wasn’t an option either.
I was fairly sure that between my cloak and the confusion, none of the Council mages had managed to get a good look at my face. If they had, this trip was going to be eventful. In the end, I picked out a nondescript set of casual clothes with relatively few tools or weapons, hoping to appear as low-key as possible.

Once I was done, I hung the
CLOSED
notice on the door, checked my wards, checked to see if my phone had any messages from Luna (it didn’t), then went into the back room and activated the gate stone. A shimmering portal opened in the air and I stepped through. I could have walked to the museum in twenty minutes, but if I did that I’d have to explain how I knew where the gate stone was going to lead. Right now I was in the Council’s good books, if only because they needed me, but I didn’t think it would take much to change that.

I came down onto a polished white floor, my feet echoing around a wide room. I was back in the British Museum’s Great Court. The area I’d stepped into was marked off by ropes, and a chime rang in the air as I emerged.

The Great Court was mostly empty. The information desks and shops were deserted and most of the people I could see looked like Council security. A man dressed in brown and grey had been talking to two guards stationed at the entrance; now he finished up and walked over to me.

“Morning,” the man said once he was close enough. He was in his middle years, with iron-grey hair and a tough, competent manner. Although I’d seen him for only a few seconds, I recognised him. He’d been the one in command of the reinforcements, the one who’d shouted at Cinder to stop. I kept my expression relaxed and was relieved to see no recognition in his eyes. “Alexander Verus,” I said. “I’m looking for the leader of the investigation team.”

As I said my name, the man nodded. “You’ve found him. Griff Blackstone.” He offered his hand and I shook it. “Good to see you. Been asking for a diviner for weeks.”

Griff led me towards the Reading Room and the curving staircase up. Now that I had a chance to count, I could see
there were at least a dozen Council guards around the Great Court, stationed at the doors and corners. There were no traces of Friday’s battle; the floor and stairs were neat and flawless. Earth and matter mages can repair stone so well you’d never know it had been damaged. “Tight security,” I said as we ascended the stairs.

“Need it. You heard about the attack?”

I looked at Griff inquiringly, which he seemed to take as a no. “Some team, Friday night. Broke through the barrier and set off the relic guardian. Hell of a mess.”

“How many were there?”

“Three, maybe four. Wish we’d gotten a good look at them.”

Glad you didn’t
. “Are we clear for civilians?”

Griff nodded as we reached the top of the stairs. “Museum’s closed until further notice. Everyone you’ll meet’s been cleared.” The restaurant at the top of the stairs had been converted into a temporary headquarters, and a dozen or so mages were gathered there: the investigation team. They all stopped to watch as we walked in, and I could tell they knew who I was even before Griff introduced me.

Other mages have an odd attitude towards diviners. By the standards of, say, elemental mages, diviners are complete wimps. We can’t gate, we can’t attack, we can’t shield, and when it comes to physical action our magic is about as useful as a bicycle in a trampolining contest. But we can see anywhere and learn anything and there’s no secret we can’t uncover if we try hard enough. So when an elemental mage looks at a diviner, the elemental mage knows he could take him in a straight fight with no more effort than it would take to tie his shoes. On the other hand, the elemental mage
also
knows that the diviner could find out every one of his most dirty and embarrassing secrets and, should he feel like it, post copies of them to everyone the elemental mage has ever met. It creates a mixture of uneasiness and contempt that doesn’t encourage warm feelings. There’s a reason most of my friends aren’t mages.

So as I was introduced to the team I wasn’t expecting a
big welcome, and I didn’t get one; polite neutrality was the order of the day. But just because I wasn’t making friends didn’t mean I wasn’t paying attention. It was the defences I was interested in, and from what I could see they’d been beefed up heavily. There were overlapping wards over the entire museum, both alarms and transportation locks. The roped-off area I’d gated into was probably one of only two or three spots still accessible.

Once the investigation team and I had finished pretending to be friendly, Griff led me into the museum, passing more guards on the way. The landing above held four guards instead of two, and the barrier had been strengthened now—it was an opaque wall blocking the top of the stairs. “Barrier’s pass-coded,” Griff said as we walked up the stairs. “Pretty much the only thing that went right for us. The mages who mounted the raid couldn’t get round the alarm. Had to set it off as they went in.”

“Uhhuh,” I said, studying the ward. The password had been changed and I made a mental note to spend sixty seconds or so and recrack it before I left. It’s funny, really. Even when people go specifically looking for a diviner, they still never seem to grasp what we can do.

The room inside was the same. The statue was still at the centre, the stone man looking forward imperiously with his hand extended, and I gave it a narrow look. If you’re going to build something that sets a lightning elemental on anyone who touches it wrong, you could at least have the decency to put up a warning sign or something. This time, though, there was company.

Another mage was examining the statue on his knees, a teenager in scuffed brown clothes. He had a mop of untidy black hair and a pair of glasses that he kept pushing up the bridge of his nose, only for them to fall back down again a second later. “Sonder,” Griff said, and the young man jumped to his feet, startled. “Diviner’s here. Show him around.” He turned to me. “You good?”

I nodded. “I’ll get to work.”

“Sonder’ll get you whatever you need. Tell me if you get
anywhere. We could use a break.” Griff turned and walked back down the stairs, vanishing through the black wall of the barrier without a ripple.

Sonder scrambled to his feet. “Um, hi. Oh, you’re the diviner?”

“That’s me,” I said, looking around.

“I’m David. Everyone calls me Sonder, though.” Sonder started to extend his hand, then hesitated and stopped. “You’re here to look at it too? Oh—!” I had walked up to the statue, and Sonder hovered anxiously, not quite willing to pull me away. “Don’t put anything in the left hand!”

“Relax,” I said as I examined the statue. “I wasn’t planning to.”

“Oh good. The defence systems are really heavy. I mean, I haven’t actually seen them personally, but still.”

I gave a brief glance through the futures of my interacting with the statue and found that nothing had changed. Every future in which I put something in the statue’s hand led to the lightning elemental materialising in the middle of the room and trying to kill us. I took a look at the statue’s hands. While the left one was empty, the right one clasped an unmarked wand. I pointed to it. “This is what everyone’s here for?”

Sonder nodded. “That’s the fateweaver. It’s just a representation, though, the real thing is inside.”

“Uhhuh. Sonder? Maybe you could help me with something.”

“Really?” Sonder sounded surprised, but pulled himself together quickly. “Well, okay. I mean, yes. If I can.”

“Everyone keeps talking about getting inside this thing,” I said. “How?”

“Oh, right.” Sonder seemed to relax. “Well you see, the statue is the focal point for a Mobius spell. It’s one of the techniques that was lost during the postwar period, but one of the Alicaern manuscripts has a good description. A Mobius spell takes the section of space it enchants and gives it a half twist to bring it out of phase with reality. The ends of the enclosed space collapse inwards and join with each
other to form a spatial bubble. Now, obviously, the natural result of that would be that the bubble would drift away, and of course once that happens there’s no way to reestablish a link, so you need a focus to anchor it to our physical universe. Once it’s been set up, there’s no way to find the bubble from anywhere in the universe except via the focus. We’ve actually discovered Mobius focuses before, but this is the first time…”

As Sonder kept talking, I watched him out of the corner of my eye. Now I took a closer look, I could see he was actually twenty or so; he just looked younger. He didn’t look like an apprentice, though—I pegged him as a new journeyman, still fresh out from under a master’s supervision. The ones outside had been less green. But were they tough enough?

There’s a reason Dark mages are feared. It’s not because their magic is any more powerful than its less evil counterpart; it’s because of the people who use it. Life as a Dark mage is savage and brutal, an endless war for status and power with shifting alliances and betrayals. The infighting is the reason Dark mages can’t unite; they’re actually far more dangerous to each other than anyone else, though it’s hard to remember that when one of them’s after you.

But the same infighting that weakens Dark mages as a group is also what makes them so deadly as individuals. Dark mages who survive to adulthood are the toughest and most ruthless people in the world. Light mages, on the other hand, live in a society where getting places is mostly about political skill, and most of the mages I’d met in the restaurant would have gotten on the team through having the right connections. Don’t get me wrong, politics among Light mages can be rough, but they play by rules. Dark mages don’t.

If Deleo, Cinder, and Khazad decided they really wanted to get in here, I knew who I’d put my money on.

“…so while there’s no way to test it, in theory there’s no actual reason why the gateway aspect of the focus would decay over time,” Sonder was saying. He paused, seeming to realise that I’d been quiet. “Um, Mr. Verus?”

“Just Alex is fine,” I said. “So what you’re saying is that this statue is the only door in, and it’s locked.”

Sonder hesitated. “Well, I suppose you could put it like that.”

“If it’s locked, what’s the key?”

“Well, that’s what the team’s been working on. The senior members are pretty sure it just needs the right type of key item placed into the statue’s hand. Unfortunately, um, there have been a few issues fabricating one.”

“Hm.” I gave Sonder a look. “Exactly how many times have they tried?”

“Uh…” Sonder scratched his head. “I’m not actually sure. I wasn’t allowed here until a few days ago.”

“And how come there isn’t anyone else around?”

“Ah, well…there were more when I arrived, but after they told me to try to figure out a way to get it open, they left. They told me to keep them up to date.”

“Ah,” I said. In other words, no one had the faintest clue how to open the thing. That was why Lyle had approached me on Friday—it was because the investigation team had tried literally
everything
else. I wondered how many times they’d set the lightning elemental off, and how many people had been killed or wounded before the mages had wised up and started keeping their distance. That was why everyone else was on the other side of the museum: they didn’t want to be in range if we became the next ones to trip the switch.

“You studied under an academic mage, right?” I asked Sonder. “What did you specialise in? Magical theory?”

Sonder blinked. “History, actually.”

“Do you know who this is a statue of?”

Sonder paused. “You really want to know?”

I nodded and Sonder seemed to light up. “Wow. That’s…You know, you’re the first one who’s ever asked me that.”

“Let me guess,” I said, as I walked around the statue, studying it. “The mages on the team just wanted to know if you could open it.”

“Yes. I mean…Um, well…” Sonder cleared his throat, a little self-conscious. “Well, uh, the robes are in the Late
Precursor style, and the design is very similar to the surviving pieces of postwar sculpture. The others think it’s just a statue but”—Sonder pushed his glasses up, warming to his theme—“the very first thing I did was look through our records. Well, there wasn’t anything from the postwar period, but when I looked through our records of the Dark Wars I found it straightaway. His name was Abithriax, and he was a general in the Light armies.” Sonder pointed to the wand clasped in the statue’s hand. “You see, the fateweavers weren’t just weapons, they were also symbols of rank. Now, according to the records, Abithriax was killed in the closing months of the Dark Wars, just a few years before this must have been built. So I don’t think this relic was just built to store the fateweaver, I think it was built as a tomb.”

I frowned. “A general’s tomb…” I looked at the statue, proud and commanding. Somehow it felt right. “So you think they buried him with his weapon?”

Sonder nodded. “I think so. There aren’t any records I can find to confirm it though.”

“No, I think you might be right.” I stood thinking for a little while. “Sonder, can you do me a favour? Keep researching this. I’m not sure if it’ll help us get in, but it might be important once we do.”