* * *
—
I spent the afternoon scouting out Heron Tower and path-walking to test its defences. There was good news and bad news.
The good news was that I was pretty sure I could break in. The bad news was that as I’d suspected, this wasn’t going to be a one-man job. If I wanted to have any reasonable chance of this succeeding, I’d need help. And that was a problem, because while I knew a lot of people capable of supplying that help, there were good reasons that I didn’t want to ask them.
The natural choice for a job like this was Luna. Luna isn’t the best combat mage, but her chance magic is excellent for stealth operations. Just as important, I knew her, trusted her, and we knew how to work together. The problem was that while I was pretty sure we could get into the data centre without being detected, leaving would be another story. There was a very good chance that I was going to end up shooting my way out, along with anyone I brought with me. And if I did that with Luna, it was only a matter of time until the news got back to the Council. At that point, Luna would become an outlaw, just like me. The life as a shopkeeper and independent mage that she’d so carefully built would be destroyed. I couldn’t do that to her.
Going to Variam brought the same issues. He’d be worse at the stealth parts of the job, better at the combat ones, but again, it would only take one person recognising him for his career as a Keeper to be over. In fact, pretty much anyone with any kind of relationship with the Council was out for the same reasons, which ruled out all Light mages and most independents.
There was the option of Anne. She was more than powerful enough and couldn’t care less about getting into trouble with the Council, given that she was on their most-wanted list already. Unfortunately, she was on that list for very good reasons, the main one being that she was possessed by a human-hating, enormously powerful, and probably insane jinn. On top of that, Dark Anne was the one currently running things, and she was violent, impulsive, and unreliable. I didn’t want to trust her with something like this unless I had no other choice.
So I needed someone who was either a Dark mage or the next thing to it, but who could be depended on to perform a difficult and dangerous job. And it had to be someone I knew well enough to trust.
Put like that, I could only really think of one person who fit.
* * *
—
And that’s pretty much all of it,” I finished.
I was standing in a small park near to the old Arcana Emporium. Back in the old days, before my shop had been burned down, I’d used it as a gating point. Thick trees and bushes blocked out line of sight to the buildings all around, and provided some shade from the late afternoon sun.
The man standing in front of me was big and heavily muscled, as tall as me but with the build of a heavyweight boxer. His arms were folded, the muscle outlines visible through his sleeves, and he was staring past my shoulder, apparently deep in thought. He’d listened to my entire story without saying a word.
“So?” I prompted when Cinder didn’t speak.
Cinder looked up at me with a frown, then went back to studying the grass on the small hillock over my shoulder.
“Are you in?” I asked eventually.
“Thinking,” Cinder said in his rumbling voice.
A minute went by.
“Is this going to take a while?” I asked when Cinder still didn’t talk. “Because I could give you some time. You know, go for a walk, get some tea . . .”
Cinder didn’t answer.
“Learn a new language . . . work out the issues with general relativity . . .”
“You going to shut up?”
I stayed quiet.
“All right,” Cinder said at last.
“All right?”
Cinder nodded.
“Any questions?”
“No.”
“You don’t even want to hear the plan?”
“You’re about to tell me.”
“Well . . . yes.”
“So?”
I sighed. “You know, you’re much less fun to explain things to than Luna.”
Cinder just looked at me.
“Fine,” I said, handing Cinder a tablet. “You can see the blueprints for Heron Tower there. Levistus’s data centre is on the two floors in that top block, highlighted in red.”
Cinder took the tablet and zoomed in, studying the map. “Getting in is easy,” I said. “Getting in without the bomb going off is hard. The blast won’t threaten you but it’ll destroy the records I’m there to get. Unfortunately, whoever set up the security measures for the place was thorough. There are a lot of redundant and overlapping triggers.” I’d spent a good two hours path-walking, trying to figure out a way to disarm the alarm systems, and I hadn’t found one. Any attempt to disarm it piecemeal just caused another trigger to activate instead, and the frustrating thing was that I often couldn’t tell why my attempts were failing. Though I wasn’t sure, I suspected that Levistus might have put in security measures specifically to mess with diviners. “Opening the doors triggers the bomb, cutting through the walls triggers the bomb, gating inside triggers the bomb, and trying to interfere with any of those triggers also triggers the bomb. There’s a chance that if I get close I might be able to figure out a way through, but I don’t want to bet on it.”
“So?”
“There’s one weakness I can find,” I said. “Levistus didn’t want to use heavy ward coverage, because that would have made his spy station too obvious to magesight. So he’s had to rely on technological defences, mostly sensors and alarms. They need power.” I nodded at the tablet. “The main electrical switchboards are in the mechanical levels in the basement. The backup power is on the roof. If we cut the power at both locations, that should open up a way into the data centre.”
Cinder raised an eyebrow at me. “Should?”
“I haven’t been able to test it,” I admitted.
“If it doesn’t work?”
“Then I’ll improvise,” I said. “If it helps, I’d like for you to handle the basement while I take the roof. That means that any nasty surprises are going to be landing on me, not you.”
Cinder grunted and turned his attention back to the map. “What’s their backup?”
“Backup is going to be Levistus’s personal response team,” I said. “The leader is Levistus’s personal aide, a mage called Barrayar. Force mage, pretty dangerous. There’s also a small hit squad that I haven’t met. They look like either low-grade mages or adepts, but they seem like combat specialists. One teleporter, one force blaster, and one who uses hand-to-hand attacks. Once an alarm is triggered, they’ll gate in within minutes.”
“Keepers?”
“That’s the good news. Levistus’s alarms are set to alert him, not the Council, and he isn’t going to call for Council reinforcements as long as he has any other alternative. Given the contents of that data centre, the last thing he wants to do is draw attention.”
“Exit?”
“From the basement, you’ll be able to gate out anytime you want,” I said. “The upper levels are more difficult due to the gate wards.”
“Bringing that elemental?”
“That’s the plan.”
“All right.” Cinder tossed the tablet back to me. “I do this, you find me Del.”
“Okay. I can’t guarantee she’ll cooperate, but—”
“No,” Cinder said. “You find her, and you make sure I get a chance to talk to her.”
I grimaced. I didn’t like it, but it wasn’t like I hadn’t seen this coming. “All right.”
* * *
—
It was late that night before I was able to empty my pockets onto my desk, sit down on my chair, and start unlacing my shoes in preparation for bed. Outside my window, the stars of the Hollow were glowing in the purple-and-gree
n nebulae of the shadow realm’s night sky. It was beautiful, but I felt tired and unhappy.
The plan I’d worked out for the attack on Heron Tower was sketchy, with a lot of places where things could go wrong. If this had been the old days and if the participants had been my old group—me, Luna, Vari, Anne—I never would have okayed it. But now I had the fateweaver, and Cinder. We might or might not get the data, but I was pretty sure we’d be able to make it out in one piece.
But it wasn’t the plans for tomorrow that were bothering me. Instead, my mind kept wanting to go back to my memories of last night, and that brief split-second where I’d looked into Symmaris’s eyes. I hadn’t known Symmaris well, but I had known her, known her name and quite a few other things about her, right up until the point where my bullet had blown the brains out of her skull and turned her from a living, breathing person into a corpse. It hadn’t been the first time Symmaris had been involved in an attempt to kill me, and judging from what I knew of her, she’d probably deserved it, along with the rest of the mages on that team.
So why was it bothering me?
Because it wasn’t really about Symmaris, it was about all the other people before her. Symmaris wasn’t the first person I’d killed, or the second, or the twentieth. She was just the most recent addition to a whole pile of bodies. And tomorrow, I was going into battle against Levistus’s men, and they’d be trying to kill me, and to stop them I’d have to kill them first, and one by one, the pile would keep getting higher. And worst of all, I couldn’t see any way it was likely to stop. There’d always be some new enemy or some old one. How long before I got so tired of it that letting one of them kill me first would start to seem like an easy way out?
In the past, what had held me together had been my friends. When I’d brushed up against the darkness, Anne and Luna and Vari had grounded me, given me something to hold on to. Now I was drifting.
And if I succeeded at everything, if I somehow managed to bring Anne back from her possession, would she still want me? Back in the early days, my relationship with Anne had nearly ended because I killed one person. How would she react to what I’d become now?
I sighed and lay down on my bed. I’d stripped off my clothes while I was thinking, and now I switched off the light and lay on my back, staring up at the ceiling. I remembered a conversation I’d had with a Dark mage, back when I was still an apprentice. He was an older man who’d been a battle-mage for a long time before retiring, and he’d told me something that had stuck with me. He’d said that a lot of the people he’d known back in the life had died not when they threw themselves into danger, but after. They’d been able to stay ahead of their enemies while they’d been going all out; it had been afterwards, when they’d tried to slow down, that it had caught up with them.
I couldn’t afford to do that. I had to be ruthless.
But how much of myself was I going to lose?
My artificial arm felt cold against my side. I put it out of my mind and forced myself to sleep.
* * *
—
I was in the middle of a dream when I became aware of someone seeking me. The dream was vague, confused, a memory of sitting on the high grassy fields of the Heath with Anne, but as I rose to my feet I saw that I was alone. I readied myself, aware of a presence coming closer.
A door opened in the air just up ahead, white-and-blue crystal. It swung open to reveal a figure behind. “Hey, Alex,” Luna said. “Got a minute?”
I shook off the sleep-mist and walked forward, letting the dream weaken and fade. By the time I reached the door and stepped through, the scenery behind me had faded to black. The door swung shut with a click.
We were standing in a palace of crystal and silver, the colours a mixture of pale blues and whites. The hallway I’d stepped into looked almost as though it had been sculpted from glowing ice. Floating staircases curved away up to landings with high arched doors on the level above.
“I was wondering if you’d call,” I said, looking at Luna. Luna was wearing a white dress with sky-blue slashes, and heeled shoes that rang on the glass-like floor. “You look good.”
“It’s Elsewhere,” Luna pointed out. “I can look however I want. And you picked a hell of a time to disappear on me.”
“Yeah, sorry. I’m not really the safest person to be around right now.”
“Is this about those Keepers?”
“They’re still checking on you,” I said.
“Those two, Avenor and Saffron?” Luna shook her head. “Don’t worry about it. They’d have given up a week ago if they weren’t so desperate.”
“Mm.”
“Stop worrying, I know what I’m doing. Come on, I need to talk to you.”
I wasn’t as comfortable as Luna about shrugging off a Keeper investigation, but she turned and started walking, and I followed. We started up one of the staircases towards the balcony above. “Anne came to see me,” Luna said.
“I know.”
“You know—of course you do. You couldn’t have stopped by?”
“Every time those Keepers talk to you, Saffron’s reading your surface thoughts and Avenor’s watching your body language,” I said. “The less you have to lie to them, the safer you’ll be.”
“I was there for the raid on Onyx’s mansion and for your trip to Sal Sarque’s fortress,” Luna said. “Did they figure that out?”
“No,” I admitted.
“Yeah, because I didn’t let them. Come on, Alex, give me some credit. I’m not a little girl anymore.”
“You’re really not, are you?” I said. I looked sideways at Luna as we walked along the balcony and through the arch. She looked confident and poised, and I remembered the first time I’d brought her into Elsewhere, where I’d been the one to step into her dream. She’d come a long way since then. It was a pleasant thought. Even if this doesn’t work out, I’ll be leaving something behind.
“What are you smiling about?” Luna asked.
“Oh, nothing. You were saying?”
“Right,” Luna said. “Anne. What exactly is your plan with her?”
We’d come through into a long hall with railed galleries running around the edge. A swimming pool rippled in the centre of the hall, and fires burnt in fireplaces at floor level, giving an interesting flame-and-ice contrast, red against blue. “The Council’s the priority, then Richard,” I said. “As long as they’re out there, Anne and I have a reason to work together. Once they’re gone . . . well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
Luna nodded as if that had been what she’d expected to hear. “I’m not sure you’re going to have that long. When I was speaking to Anne . . . you were watching that?”
“Yeah.”
“Figures. Alex, she really scared me. I’ve met Dark mages out to kill me and Light ones out to kidnap me, and she frightened me more than any of them. I’d rather be back in Onyx’s mansion dodging fireblasts than spend another ten minutes alone in a room with her.”
“Why?” I said slowly. “What are you afraid she’ll do?”
“I don’t know,” Luna said. She fell silent and we walked a few steps, her shoes tapping on the gallery floor. “It felt like a recruitment pitch. I think she’s trying to get a bunch more jinn-bonded mages, with her as the boss.”
I frowned, thinking. “I’ve been learning some things about jinn.” I told Luna what I’d heard from Sonder. “Maybe that’s her plan. She wants hosts for those four ifrit.”
“And then what?”
“God knows.”
“Do you think the jinn’s making the decisions?” Luna asked. “Is she that far gone?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “The jinn might be nudging her, but she’s still the one in control. For now, at least.”
“Yeah, that was the feeling I got too,” Luna said. “But I don’t think that’s the good news you se
em to think it is.”
“Why not?”
Luna was silent for a few seconds before answering. “Why do you think Anne fell in love with you?”
I looked at her in surprise. “Is this really the time?”
“There’s somewhere I’m going with this.”
“Fine . . . Because she trusted me, I guess. And because I was smart enough and good-looking enough and got on with her well enough and all the rest. But I always had the feeling that the biggest reason was that she’d spent most of her life having everyone pull back from her and be afraid of her, and I didn’t.”
Luna made a face. “I was afraid you were going to say something like that.”
I looked at her in annoyance.
“Argh.” Luna ran a hand through her hair. “I’m not good at explaining these things. Look, Anne and I have spent a lot of time together. Visiting at the apprentice programme, meeting at the shop, watching anime in the evenings. She might have liked you the most, but I’m pretty sure I understood her the most, better than anyone except maybe Vari. Now, I can’t remember when it was that you told me about her dark side, but I do remember it wasn’t actually much of a surprise.”
“Okay . . .”
“What do you think were the things you did that made the biggest impression on her?”
I shrugged. “The whole business with Fountain Reach, I guess. And then what happened with Sagash.”
“Right.”
I waited. We’d done a full circuit around the walkway. I stopped, leaning on the railing, and looked at Luna. She looked back at me.
“What are you getting at?” I asked.
“None of those things involved you trusting her.”
“Well . . . maybe not.”
“Okay, Alex, harsh truth time, okay? Anne didn’t fall in love with you because you trusted her. And it wasn’t because you’re tall and fit and good-looking and owned your own house, though that helped. She fell in love with you because you were stronger than her.”
I gave Luna a disbelieving look. “That doesn’t make sense.”
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