Veiled (8 page)

Without looking directly at the guy I studied him through the futures. He was a little taller than average, dressed warmly in a woollen cap and a long coat. Most of his face was hidden behind a beard and dark glasses. As I watched, he started strolling down the stairs towards me, still talking into his phone.
“Allons, ma chérie, ne sois pas comme ça. Tu sais que ce n'est pas elle. Je viens de . . .”

He still wasn't looking in my direction. From his body language it didn't even look as though he'd noticed I was there, but my instincts were starting to sound a warning.
“Allez,”
he said.
“Allez, allez, allez. Ce n'est pas ce que j'ai dit. Non, tu sais . . . Je n'ai pas dit ca. Allez . . .”

The two of us were alone in the station entrance. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, reflecting off the white tiles of the walls. The man was halfway down the stairs; his course would take him behind me and out onto the long path heading through the construction site to the main road. Something in my precognition was trying to catch my attention, and I looked into the short-term futures of what would happen when he—

Oh shit.

All of a sudden I realised just how isolated we were. There were no staff in the station, no passengers on the platform, and the next train was still four minutes away. The construction site around us was deserted. There were still security cameras . . .

. . . and how much help were they yesterday?
I was on my own. Casually I shifted position, my right hand drifting to my belt. I didn't turn around and the man disappeared out of my field of vision. He was still talking.
“Tu sais que je n'ai pas . . . je n'étais—”

I held very still, counting off the seconds. Four. Three.

Now he was right behind me.
“Je n'étais même pas là . . .”

Two. One . . .

“Pourquoi de vrais—”
Magic flared behind me and I heard a whisper of movement, soft and quick.

I was already twisting. Something slid past me and hit the door with a
thunk
. At the same time my hand came up in a flash of metal, stabbing upwards.

He was quick, very quick. The knife hit home but he was already jumping back and a shield flickered into existence as the blow landed. He came down in a fighting stance, a translucent blade that hadn't been there a second ago held in his right hand and pointing straight at me. He started to cast another spell, and before he could finish I lunged.

The man dropped the spell and struck, meeting my attack with his own. I hooked his blade and kept going, slamming him into the wall and forcing his knife hand out of position while I stabbed at his gut, one-two-three. The third blow sank home but as it did another spell blew me back, solid air striking like a hammer. I was thrown back to the steps, tripped, looked up to see him moving in a blur of motion, disappearing around the corner before I could react.

I scrambled to my feet. I could feel the signature of his spells moving out of the station towards the construction site. Air magic, soft and grey and whisper-quick. That spell he'd used to throw me away had been a wind blast, and that blade had been hardened air. I looked right to see that the door I'd been standing in front of had a narrow diamond-shaped hole, almost too thin to see. If I hadn't moved that would have been my back.

I looked at my knife to see a trace of blood, but only a trace. He'd been using an air shield. I didn't think he was seriously hurt, but—

My divination warned me first, my magesight second. Energy twined around the corridor where I was standing and I bolted up the stairs, putting distance between me and the centre of the spell. As I cleared the stairs and came down on the platform I felt a sudden tug of wind pulling me back and my ears popped as I heard a hollow
whump
from behind. I darted behind a pillar and held still.

Silence. I strained my ears, trying to make out some sound. Wind swirling around the platform, traffic on the main road to the east. I couldn't hear the guy's footsteps.
What had that spell been? Whatever it was, it wasn't friendly to human bodies. My best guess was some kind of implosion effect.
Air mage, has to be.
Too many spells to be an adept.

Movement in the futures. There was no sound, but looking into what would happen if I stepped out, I could sense the air mage coming back. He was floating, not walking, hovering a few inches above the ground at the foot of the steps. The air blade was still in his right hand, and as I watched he began to glide up the stairs, eyes searching left and right.

Not good.
The platform had cover, but not enough.
Maybe I can hide . . .
The pillar I had ducked behind was more of a girder, really, holding up the roof over the platform. I held very still.

The air mage reached the top of the stairs, looking left and right. He was maybe twenty feet from where I was standing. I held my breath.

Silence.

The other man was standing quite still. The futures flickered, uncertain. In some of them he found me, in others he didn't. I couldn't see what I needed to do to shake him. He began walking down the platform.

I edged very carefully to the left, keeping the pillar between us. The wind had dropped and the air was still. I made it around and the air mage was walking away down the platform.
Hasn't seen me yet . . .
I drew in a soft breath and let it out.

The air mage's head snapped around.

Shit.

He cleared the benches in one jump, seeming to hang in the air, eyes locking onto me. I leapt back behind the pillar as a spray of something almost invisible and very lethal flashed down the platform towards me. I needed time. I grabbed a forcewall from my pocket, flicked the gold discs out to the platform edges, and said the command word just as another spell came flying at me.

The discs ignited, throwing up an invisible barrier, and the spell bounced off; it had been some sort of whirlwind. I backed out into the open, looking at the mage through the forcewall. “Can we talk about this?”

He threw another spell. Fragments of hardened air slammed into the forcewall, dissolving back into gas as soon as they struck. The forcewall didn't budge. “Okay, so you're not the chatty type,” I said. “That's fine, we can work something out. So why exactly are you trying to kill me? I'm guessing it's got something to do with what happened last night?”

No answer. I couldn't see the guy's eyes behind the dark glasses, but the rest of his face was expressionless. Usually when someone attacks you, they want to talk, either to justify themselves or to convince you to give up. When they're silent and blank-faced, it's a bad sign. It means they've already written you off and they're not going to waste time talking to a dead man.

The air mage fired off another useless spell at the forcewall, then stopped. His head tilted up as he looked at where the forcewall met the platform roof and I knew he was studying the spell with his magesight. Forcewalls transfer energy into whatever they're anchored to when they're attacked, which makes them very hard to blast through. Air magic isn't much good at blasting through stuff. It's much better at moving things around.

Unfortunately the forcewall only went as far as the platform edge.

Magic curved around the mage as he floated into the air. He flew out over the train tracks and right around the wall.

Shit!
I was already moving, jumping off the other edge down onto the tracks, putting the concrete bulk of the platform between us. I'd been hoping that the guy would chase after me, fly low over the platform where he'd have trouble manoeuvring, but instead he flew straight up, coming all the way over the platform roof to arc down on top of where I was hiding. I had to scramble back onto the platform to look for cover.

The mage did an attack run, sweeping past. Bullets of hardened air threw up chips of concrete as I darted behind the advertising boards at the platform centre. The shots tracked me as I moved, tearing through the flimsy plastic of the boards, punching holes in the posters from Transport for London announcing that
Being Careful Won't Hurt You
and urging everyone to
Report Anything Suspicious to Our Staff or the Police
. The boards went dark as the lights behind them fizzled and died, and the air mage soared up into the sky again, disappearing from my sight.

This was bad. As long as this guy stayed airborne I couldn't touch him. Running was useless; it was too far to the main road. I glanced up at the indicator. Three minutes until the next northbound train. Could I hold out that long?

The air mage did another flyby. The first attack was a hail of daggers made of hardened air, the second a whirlwind that would have picked me up and thrown me out onto the tracks. Next was a wind blast like a solid punch, and after that was another implosion spell, shattering more of the poster boards and sending a hollow boom echoing out over the construction site. I ducked and dodged, jumping behind the platform, using the forcewall as a barrier, pulling every trick I could think of to shake him. I was holding him off, but I wasn't stopping him. Magic doesn't run off some sort of limited resource, and while casting spells takes energy, it's no more tiring than any other demanding skill—apprentices might exhaust themselves after a dozen or so spells, but a journeyman or master mage won't. Which means that you can't make a mage run out of magic. As long as they want you dead badly enough, they can just sit there and keep casting the same spell at you over and over again until you roll over and die.

And just as I was thinking that, my luck ran out.

The air mage had fallen into a pattern, aiming spells at the same points on the platform. He started to cast another dagger burst, and I began to jump down behind the platform edge . . . and in midcast he changed target, placing the centre of the burst right above where I'd been about to take cover.

You don't have much margin for error when you're dodging spells. I tried to get to the stairwell before the detonation.

I didn't make it.

There was a
bang
that hurt my ears, and something hit me in the side and back, sending me flying. I hit the stairs and rolled down, scraping to a halt on the landing, pain stabbing from a dozen places. I couldn't see my attacker but
I knew he was coming and I fumbled for an item in my pocket. On the second try my hand closed over a small sphere—one of my condensers—and I threw it at the top of the stairs. My head was still spinning and the throw went long, hitting the pillar behind and shattering. Mist rushed out, cloaking the platform and the top of the steps in fog.

I struggled to my feet. Pain lanced from my side; I put my hand to it and felt wetness. Another spell in the futures, but no danger; it was going to miss. A moment later I heard the
boom
of another implosion spell and felt the whack of wind as air rushed by. The mist swirled slightly.

I could feel a faint rumble through the concrete: the train was coming. I crouched on one knee, waiting. Above, I saw the glow of lights through the mist. No more attacks, not yet, but if— He was waiting for me to move. I held my breath, keeping very still.

The rumbling grew louder and with a whine of metal the train pulled up by the platform. I still couldn't see it, or him, but I knew where he was: up and to the left, waiting for me to show myself. The train doors opened with a hiss. I looked to see when they would close, counted down.
Nine . . . eight . . . seven . . .

Now.

I ran up the stairs. The air mage detected me, waited for me to clear the top of the stairwell, fired. I checked just as he cast his spell, fire stabbing my side, heard the hiss of projectiles slashing through the mist ahead of me.
Three seconds.
I ran right, the mist parting to reveal a blue-and-red carriage, curious faces peering out; the doors were just beginning to close and I jumped through. They met behind me with a
thud
, and with a jolt of acceleration the train started to move.

All of a sudden I found myself in the middle of a scattered crowd of people, all staring. “Excuse me,” I said to the nearest guy, a black man in a peaked cap. He got out of my way, and I began moving forward to the front of the carriage. As I did, I glanced back over my shoulder through the train windows. The mist cloud was a grey patch, fading away on the platform behind. I couldn't see my attacker.

“Are you all right?” a woman said. She was on one of
the seats at the front, twisted around to look. I wondered briefly how I looked to everyone else, and that made me remember my wound. I touched it with my left hand again and drew in my breath. Looking down, I saw blood smeared over my fingers and palm.

“Oh, shit,” the woman said. “You want me to call an ambulance?”

“Might not be the best idea.” Now that I was out of combat, my side was really hurting. I didn't think it was going to kill me, but it was deep.
Not good.

“I'm calling 999,” the woman announced. She pulled out a phone and started tapping.

There was a
thump
from above, echoing through the carriage. It was hollow, and heavy. It was, in fact, exactly the kind of noise a grown man would make when landing on the roof of a train.

Shit.

The passengers in the train looked upwards. They looked confused rather than worried; I had the feeling that wasn't going to last. “Hello?” the woman was saying. “Ambulance.”

I held still, scanning futures. The people around were making it harder, their actions tangling with my own. What was this guy going to do, smash his way through the windows?

“Hello? Yeah. There's a man here, I think he's hurt . . . I mean, yeah, he's definitely hurt . . . what? Marie Gilman . . . Yeah, my number's, wait a sec . . .”

I couldn't see any futures in which the air mage broke in, but it was looking like he wouldn't have to. Up ahead, the lights of the shopping centres were getting brighter and I could see what looked like a platform. The next station was barely a minute away. And it was the terminus, which would mean everyone would be getting out . . .