Alex Verus Novels, Books 1-4 (9780698175952) (9 page)

T
he caverns were cold and still, and footsteps echoed in the distance. In the centre of the room was a stone bier, and laid out upon it was a body dressed in the white gown of a sacrifice. Her red hair was the only colour in the darkness, and her eyes were closed.

I tried to run to the girl lying on the stone, but my limbs felt heavy and slow. I didn’t dare call out for fear of being heard. When at last I reached her, my hands seemed shadowy. I couldn’t tell if it was her skin that was cold, or my own.

Then suddenly I realised that the footsteps had stopped. I froze, listening. When the laugh came it was right behind me, and I felt a surge of terror as the flames began.

I came awake with a gasp, my heart hammering in my chest. I lifted my head and winced as pain stabbed from my neck. I opened my eyes a crack, closed them again at the gritty feeling, and as I came fully awake realised I was slumped over my desk. The grey light of an overcast morning was coming in through the window, making me squint and starting up the beginnings of a headache.

I don’t sleep well. I never did, even as a child, but the
things that happened in Richard’s mansion made it worse. Usually the nightmares are pain and fear, but it had been a long time since I’d remembered Shireen. Seeing her again, even in a dream, made my heart clench. Watching someone die is bad, but knowing that they have to be dead yet never being sure is worse. Instead of one clean cut it allows you to keep a tiny sliver of hope that fades only gradually, bit by bit, as the years slip by. It’s cruel.

I tucked my head into my hands and breathed steadily, letting my heartbeat slow. As I did, I ran through my mental exercises, pushing the memories away. I’d just finished when the phone rang. The screen read
Caller ID Unknown
. I let the phone ring eleven times, then on the twelfth hit the Talk button and put the phone to my ear. “Lyle, you have thirty seconds to explain what’s so important you needed to wake me up.”

“Alex? It’s Lyle.”

“Gosh, Lyle, thanks. There’s no way I could have figured that out on my own by, oh I don’t know, seeing the future.”

“There’s no reason to be so rude.”

“Reason number one: because I hate you. I’d add more, but you’ve only got fifteen seconds left.”

“There’s something we need you—”

“Heard it.” I leant back.

“We’d be prepared to—”

“Heard that too. Five seconds.”

“Wait! It’s urgent that you—”

“Bye, Lyle. Don’t call back.”

“There was an organised attack on the Precursor relic last night,” Lyle said, his voice crisp. “The Council met for an emergency session this morning.”

All of a sudden I was wide awake. Adrenaline will do that to you. “Okay,” I said at last, once it was clear Lyle was waiting for a response.

“The Council has decided secrecy is no longer a issue.”

“Okay.”

“This brings us to you. You understand?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, at least you’ve finally got a civil tongue in your head,” Lyle said dryly. “I’m glad you’ve grasped the gravity of the situation.”

Gravity was an understatement. If the Council thought I was part of Cinder’s group, I was
dead
. I waited, heart in my throat.

“So, I’m offering you the same job as before.”

I stared at the phone for five seconds. “You’re what?”

“The leader of the investigation team would like to employ your services,” Lyle said. “We’ll work out the details later.”

I closed my eyes and silently let out the breath I’d been holding. Lyle wasn’t calling about last night. Well, he was, but not the way I’d been afraid of. “Look,” I said after a moment’s pause. “I said already—”

“Your problem was that the job wasn’t official, correct?”

“…Yeah.”

“There’s a ball tonight at Canary Wharf,” Lyle said. “You’re invited. Council members will be attending, including the member directly responsible for the investigation team. He’ll speak with you personally.” His voice was dry. “Official enough for you?”

For the second time, I was left speechless. “Um…” I said at last.

“Oh good. The invitation will be delivered to your door in sixty seconds. Hopefully you’ll consider it important enough to get out of bed. Oh, and
do
pay attention to the dress code. It would be very embarrassing if you and your escort were turned away at the door. I’d offer to lend you something, but unlike you I don’t have the luxury of sleeping all morning. See you tonight.” Lyle broke the connection before I could think of a comeback.

I listened to the dial tone, then hung up. If Council members were going to be at this ball, that made it an Event with a capital
E
. Everybody who was anybody in the mage world would be there. Lyle was serious, and that meant the Council was too.

Out of perverse curiosity, I lifted my watch and looked
at the time, watching the seconds ticking off. Lyle had finished his call at 9:38. Exactly as the display ticked over to 9:39, there was a distant banging at my front door. I hate show-offs.

I pulled myself to my feet, wincing at the stiffness in my legs, and went downstairs. A teenager was standing outside my shop window, holding a white envelope in his hand. Apprentice employed as a gofer; some things don’t change. I unlocked the door, nodded at the “Alexander Verus?” and took the envelope from him. As he disappeared up the street, I opened the envelope and took out the card inside.

It was the real thing. In flowery language and copperplate handwriting, the card stated that the High Council of the British Isles would be honoured if Alexander Verus, et cetera, et cetera, would present himself with an escort of his choosing, et cetera, et cetera. There was a footnote about the dress code in slightly pointed language that I couldn’t help but wonder if Lyle had put in specifically to have a dig at me. Like there’s anything wrong with jeans and sweaters.

I went back upstairs and dropped into my chair, staring at the card while flipping it back and forth between my fingers. It was made of cream-coloured paper with black lettering, and embossed at the top in gold was the Council’s coat of arms. As I scanned it, I could detect the magical fingerprint that marked it as a genuine invitation. The only question was what I was going to do about it.

I don’t like the Council. I don’t like its ideas, and I don’t like its people. The Council doesn’t even follow its own laws, much less the spirit behind them, and as far as they’re concerned, morals are whatever’s convenient at the time. They have absolutely no problem with throwing people to the wolves, including people who are supposed to be working for them.

On the other hand, if I just turned Lyle down, I’d be back where I’d started. After the events of last night, I was pretty sure that the Council’s plans for this Precursor relic were going to be stepped up, whatever they were. The members of the team detailed to investigate would know a lot more
than I did. Maybe enough for me to figure out what Cinder and that woman were up to.

And I’d only be going to talk to them. I could still turn them down if I wanted.

Yeah, right.

The starting time on the invitation was eight P.M. GMT. That gave me about ten hours to decide what to wear, pick out my shoes, and make sure I wouldn’t be killed before the doors opened. With that settled, I picked up my phone again and dialled Luna’s number.

She picked up on the third ring. Luna gets up earlier than me, but then she doesn’t stay up till the early hours of the morning analysing weird magical artifacts. “Hello?”

“Hi, Luna, it’s me.”

“Hey, Alex.” Luna’s answer was friendly, but there had been a tiny pause before she spoke.

“Listen, can you do me a favour? Could you come around to my place sometime today?”

“Um…”

“I know it’s short notice. I’ve found out something important about that cube of yours but I need you to run a test. Is that okay?”

“Well…” Luna hesitated, then her voice firmed. “Okay. I can come by now. About an hour?”

“Great. See you then.” I broke the connection and turned to look at the cube. I’d been up for a good four hours last night studying the thing. I still hadn’t figured out what it did, but I was starting to get a pretty good idea what it
was
.

Magic items are inherently difficult to create. By its nature, magic is tied to life, created by the exercise of a living, conscious will. Trying to make a permanent magic item out of an object is sort of like trying to make a permanent light source out of bits of wood. But mages are a persistent lot, and over the years they’ve worked out ways to get around the problem.

The simplest way is to use items which aren’t magical at all, but which guide and direct raw magic in a specific form. These are called focuses, and they’re effectively tools built
for a single purpose, like a hammer or a chisel. Energy channelled into them is shaped and directed in the same way that water follows the banks of a river, and given enough time they can even pick up an imprint of the personality of the user. They’ve no power of their own, but they’re useful in the right hands.

Another approach is to make one-shot items like the fog crystal I’d used the night before. In this case a mage casts a spell, then seals it in an item; typically you break the item to cast the spell. These are usually low-power effects, and their main function is to make schools of magic available to those who can’t access them normally. A skilled crafter can whip up a one-shot item in a couple of hours, and they do a brisk trade in the magical economy.

Sometimes, though, neither a focus or a one-shot will do it; you need something that’ll last
and
has power of its own. But to use magic, you have to be alive. The solution that some creative (and probably slightly crazy) mage came up with a long time ago is to make an item that
is
alive. The resulting creations are known as imbued items, and they can be extremely powerful and extremely dangerous.

Luna’s cube was an imbued item. It was too powerful to be a focus, and too complex to be a one-shot. It was complex enough that it even had protections against detection magic; there was a kind of null field around it that warded away active scans. I’d tried looking into the future to see what the consequences would be of forcing my way in, and decided quickly that I did not want to do it. This thing had a lot of energy, and it was quite capable of releasing it explosively if provoked. As yet, I hadn’t been able to communicate with it, and I wasn’t sure if there was any way to. Imbued items tend to be single-minded, and they usually don’t talk, making their own decisions based on whatever sensory input they have access to. I’d discovered that the cube had a network of microscopic holes in its outer shell; that was what produced the sparkling effect when you looked into the depths. I had the feeling they were access points of some kind, and that the right signal of visible light might activate
the cube, but any such signal would be extremely complex. Without more information, there was no way I could guess it.

One person, though,
had
been able to produce a response from the cube: Luna. I didn’t know why, but if she’d been able to get a reaction once, maybe she could do it again. At least, that was what I was hoping.

I checked my watch. Luna was due in forty-five minutes. I washed and shaved, then looked into the future to see what time she’d arrive. I paused, then looked again.

Luna wasn’t coming.

That was strange.

I looked a third time, then a fourth. As things stood, Luna wasn’t going to come to my door within the next hour, or any hour for that matter. Frowning, I pulled out my phone and called, but got her voice mail. I looked into the future, trying for a clue, and couldn’t see one. A thread of worry started to curl up from somewhere inside. Maybe she’d been in an accident?

No, that didn’t make sense. The one good thing about Luna’s curse is that it makes her nearly immune to accidents.

But it doesn’t make her immune to things done on purpose…

A new, unwelcome thought intruded. Maybe Luna wasn’t coming because she didn’t want to. The more I thought about that, the more likely it sounded. Occam’s razor states that the simplest explanation is usually correct. The simplest explanation for Luna’s not showing up was that she didn’t want to see me. God knows I’ve had enough people flake on me before. I got up and paced, tense and nervous, glancing at my watch. Twenty minutes. Did Luna need my help? Or did she want to stay away?

Give a problem like this to an engineer, and he’ll give you an answer straight away:
insufficient data
. But in life, you have to make calls on insufficient data all the time. I forgot about my magic and listened to my instincts.

My instincts told me Luna wouldn’t have flaked after promising to come.

She was in trouble.

In two strides I was at my desk. I went through the drawers in a clatter, shoving handfuls of items into my pockets, snatched my cloak from the wardrobe, then ran downstairs and out the door. As I hurried down my street I pulled out my phone and dialled Luna’s number. It didn’t work. I swore and tried again. This time it rang. One ring, two rings, three rings…“Come on, come on,” I muttered as I hurried along.

There was a click. “Hello?”

“Luna, it’s Alex. Where are you?”

“Um, five minutes away. What’s wrong?”

“Luna, this is important.” I tried to keep my voice calm. “I need to know where you are
exactly
.”

“Uh…” I heard Luna stop and turn around. “I don’t know the name of the street. It’s the one off Camden Market with that glass building on the corner.”

Luna was only a short walk away. But if she wasn’t going to arrive…I felt a chill. That meant that whatever was going to stop her was there with her right now. “Turn around! Go back into the market!”

“What?”

“Back into the market, or the shops. Anywhere where there’s lots of people.”

“But your house is the other way.”

“I know! Luna, please, just trust me. Do it now!”

There was a moment’s silence. I’d broken into a run, and I was quickly covering the distance. Then I heard Luna’s voice. “All right…”