by Alix Hadden
"Because this sort of thing doesn't happen," Kir said, frustrated.
Ali shrugged, one-shouldered. "Apparently it does. Look, I have to get on. At least I've got an explanation for how long I've been down here -- all this broken crap." She blinked. "Oh hey. How did you get in?"
"Back gate," Kir said. "Better go out the same way. You'll need to lock it again at some point, but maybe not until after I've gone, in case someone sees you letting me out?"
"Would it matter?" Ali asked.
"Well, not if you're happy answering questions about what exactly you were doing down here with your friend in order to break all these damn mugs," Kir said.
Ali rolled her eyes. "You know, I do tell 'em that we're just friends, right? Also, lesbian."
Kir shrugged. "I don't care. Just making an observation." It was mostly true. He could have done without the eyebrows-raised from Ali's colleagues whenever he came in the cafe, but there wasn't much point complaining about it.
"If they actually believed me they'd be all over you themselves," Ali said. "So you should probably thank me for being apparently so unconvincing." She sighed. "Never mind you needing to get laid. I need to get laid. So I can tell them about it and they might actually believe me that I'm not interested in you."
"Anyway," said Kir. "Back gate it is. Good luck explaining things to Patience."
Ali pulled a face. "Honestly, I almost think she'd be justified in docking my wages. Okay. See you soon."
Kir texted Matt as he was walking back to the bus stop, and was surprised to hear back from him almost immediately. Matt wasn't great at replying to texts; hadn't been back when he and Kir were going out for a while two or three years ago, hadn't been any time since when they were cheerfully friends again. The relationship had never been that big of a deal, for either of them; being involved with another mage had serious advantages, but not enough to outweigh the fact that Matt and Kir just weren't that well suited.
Not too bad -- yourself?
Kir wondered what exactly to say.
Actually there's been some weird stuff going on down here. Wondered if you'd been seeing anything similar up your way. Maybe we could meet up for a drink?
Again Matt's response was almost immediate.
All quiet up here but sure, would be great to see you. Short notice I know but I could do tonight?
Kir checked his watch, and contemplated his upcoming deadline. He'd been meaning to do some work tonight, but...he could go home now, get changed out of climbing gear, get a couple of solid hours in, and be out to meet Matt for 8.
8pm? I can get the orange line up to Highbury these days no problem.
He got a thumbs-up in return, then the name of a pub they both knew round the corner from Highbury & Islington station.
Right. Time to get home and get his head down for a proper work session.
It went surprisingly well, to the point that Kir felt quite pleased with himself by the time he was at New Cross station and jumping on the Overground. The climbing session had obviously shaken something loose in his head, because when he'd gotten back home and sat down at his laptop, the solution to his current coding problem had suddenly been self-evident. A couple of hours and that section of the project was wrapped up, ready to commit to the server and to point his current employers at.
Well, either the climbing had shaken something loose, or it was the bit where he'd been running across town in terror that Ali was in serious trouble. His mood curdled a little, and he stared out of the train window as it rolled slowly past the Den, Millwall's football stadium. What the hell was going on with that shit? Twice in a week just wasn't reasonable. And it sounded like Matt wasn't seeing anything similar, although he'd be able to check properly when they could talk face-to-face. Could it be Ali who was doing something? Could someone be doing something to Ali? He grimaced. Either way, they needed to stop it from happening again.
But the idea that it might be deliberate, that was particularly worrying. Surely it couldn't be? There weren't many mages in town. There weren't many mages at all. Kir couldn't believe that anyone they knew would be deliberately trying to hurt Ali. But surely a mage with the ability to start creating semi-independent beings out of the ground couldn't have stayed under the radar for any length of time. New mages usually showed up in one of three ways: an existing mage spotted them on the street (a mage, to another mage, was lit up like a torch, in a way that had nothing to do with actual vision); they found one of the hints that you could get to by judicious use of Google, and contacted a particular email address (a genuine blessing of modern technology; it turned out that in general, these days, people who suddenly found themselves acquiring weird paranormal powers went straight to the internet to look for help); or by another mage finding them right next to some very obvious accidental display of ability, looking horrified or elated or both.
Right next to being the important point. If a brand new mage had somehow managed to produce that thing Ali had found in the alleyway, they should have been right there, right where Ali and Kir would have seen them. Sure, they might have run away; but then there was the incident in the cafe. Ali couldn't possibly have missed a new mage coming into the cafe. And the ground floor of the cafe was about as far away as anyone could be and be responsible for that happening in the basement.
But that didn't just hold for a new mage. Ali couldn't have missed an old mage, either, even if there was one she didn't know, someone who wasn't normally based in London. There couldn't have been anyone in the cafe who was directly responsible for that.
Which left some kind of spontaneous development. Being satisfied that no one was deliberately attacking Ali should have felt reassuring to Kir; and to an extent, fair enough, it was. But it wasn't like spontaneously generated magical events were tremendously reassuring either. Not least because they were so rare, and here were two, in quick succession, very close to one another. There had to be a cause. It was just that Kir didn't have the least idea what it could be.
He realised he'd chewed his thumbnail down to the quick only when it began to hurt. He scowled at himself and took it away from his mouth. There would be a solution to this. They'd find a solution. And they'd fix it, and then they could forget about it.
The train pulled into Highbury and Islington, and he made his way to the exit. It was rush hour, and the station was heaving; the pub was, too, but Matt was there already and had gotten them a table. He already had a pint in front of him; Kir waved at him from across the room and went to the bar to fetch his own.
"How's it going, then?" Kir asked once he sat down.
The pub was crowded, but the noise levels made it more private than it would be if it was less busy. The table Matt had found was tucked into a corner, and there was no one close enough to them to overhear above the hubbub of voices.
Matt nodded. "Not so bad, not so bad."
Matt was short, white, and a bit tubby, and tended to the scruffy. When they'd first met, when Kir was a new mage, just over a decade previously, it hadn't occurred to Kir to find him attractive. It had been in the pub one evening, a while later, in the middle of a wide-ranging conversation in which they discovered that they had a surprising amount in common, that Kir realised he'd developed a raging crush. He had Matt down as straight for a while, so hadn't done anything about it; then when he realised his mistake, they'd been involved for a few months. It hadn't quite worked out, for no reason Kir was ever able to put his finger on. They were good friends, they had plenty to talk about, the sex was good...but it wasn't going to last. Kir had always had the faint sinking feeling that it was in some way his fault. Something he hadn't known he was doing, some way in which he wasn't quite doing it right... Matt hadn't said that, mind, when they split up. Neither of them had thrown blame around, and the whole thing had been amicable enough -- which was just as well. There weren't enough mages in London that Kir could handle not talking to one of them because of the aftermath of a relationship. Indeed, that idea had nearly put him o
ff the whole thing even once he had realised that Matt was into guys. Still. They'd gotten away with it, and they were still friends. Success all round. Kir sighed.
"What's the problem, then?" Matt asked. "You seemed pretty keen to catch up; I assume there's something you needed to discuss in person?"
"Yeah," Kir said. "Pretty weird, actually." He described the two occurrences, the alleyway, and the café basement. "So -- I mean, obviously it's magic. But no one nearby who could have been responsible, and we've no idea why it's happening. Or what's happening, really, come to that."
Matt nodded slowly, brought his pint to his lips, then put it down again without drinking. "So -- what are you after?"
"Well. I guess I just wondered if you'd seen anything similar on your patch? Or heard anything from any of the other North London folks?"
Matt shook his head. "Not a thing. All tremendously quiet round here, in fact. And I haven't heard anything from anyone else, though in all honesty I haven't spoken to anyone in a week or two."
"Would you mind checking in with them for me? I'd do it myself, but you know them better than me, and anyway, I don't want to turn this into a big thing."
"I guess, sure, if you like," Matt said. "But if there were mud-creatures leaping out of the ground all over the place I'd expect someone to have gotten in touch, right?"
"Yeah," Kir agreed. "Even so."
Matt shrugged agreement. "Do you want a hand, then, or would you rather you and Ali just dealt with it on your own?" he asked.
Kir pulled a face. "I guess, so, yes. Unless it turns out to be -- oh, I dunno. I feel like we ought to be able to sort it out. But if it had been happening all over the place, well, that would be something different, wouldn't it? But if it hasn't been happening up here, and Ali's going to check in with Priya, ask about West London..."
"Huh, Priya," Matt said, scowling.
Kir looked across at him curiously. "I thought you and Priya got on okay?"
"So did I. But then I asked her for a bit of help, and she nearly bit my head off."
"She didn't help?" Kir asked. That didn't sound like Priya; she could be a bit abrupt, sure, but she'd always been helpful to him.
"Oh, she helped, but she was bloody rude about it. It was my project, and it's none of her business what I choose to do."
"What, she tried to stop you from doing something?"
"I know, it's well out of order, right? It's my business what I try out, that's always been the way we manage things."
Matt was right; mages were aggressively independent as a rule, and what little social structure there was reflected that. But that still didn't sound like the Priya that Kir knew.
"Just because she thinks she's stronger than the rest of us."
"Well, she is, a bit," Kir pointed out reasonably. Matt didn't seem to be listening, still scowling down into his pint. "Well. Anyway. Maybe she was having a bad day, or something?"
"Yes, well. All I'm saying is, if you're asking her for help, maybe you'd better watch out that she doesn't try and set herself up to take over, or something."
The conversation seemed to have taken a bit of a wrong turn.
"Right. Um. So," Kir said, trying to get things back on track. "If it's not a mage, because we'd have seen them, and it's not London-wide -- or nation-wide, which Ali suggested and which gave me the heebie-jeebies, I guess it's somehow localised to our patch."
Which meant it was their problem, unless they couldn't manage it, whatever bee Matt had in his bonnet about Priya. But that was absurd. Of course they'd be able to manage it. Whatever it was.
"And just spontaneous," Matt said. "Weird."
"Yeah, exactly. But -- I mean, what on earth could be causing something like that to happen spontaneously? Not even just in exactly the same place. If it was that alleyway twice, that would be one thing. But the cafe's nowhere near the alleyway. And I'm a bit worried about Ali, too."
"What, that it's to do with her?" Matt raised his eyebrows.
"Well, it seems to be happening to her. But it can't be someone who has it in for her, so...I don't know. It just seems weird. I can't imagine that Ali's doing anything to attract it, right?" Kir snorted. "I'm making it sound like there's some kind of weird malevolent entity after Ali, which is clearly absurd."
"Maybe it's just temporary," Matt suggested. "Maybe if you just leave it alone it'll go away."
"Not sure I should rely on that," Kir said ruefully.
"What's that thing? Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence..."
"Three times is enemy action. Yeah, you're right, maybe I'll just leave it for now. Hard not to think about it, though."
Matt sat back, and took a deep drink of his beer. "Doesn't sound like you've got anything much to go on if you do think about it. So..." He shrugged. "Don't waste your energy, maybe?"
"I guess," Kir said, a little doubtfully. Matt didn't seem to be taking this all that seriously. But then, he couldn't expect Matt to be as bothered as he was. Matt hadn't been there, hadn't seen the things flailing at them. Hadn't had the experience of nearly running himself down entirely trying to deal with it. And Kir didn't really want to go any further into that, either.
"Either that or you're finally seeing evidence of that whole 'London as life force' theory," Matt said, grinning.
"The what?"
"Didn't you ever hear about that? It's an old theory, really old. I ran across it in some old books; used to be quite popular among London mages. Some idea that London itself has a life-force. A power source, of sorts."
"That sounds dubiously close to seeing Londoners as a power source," Kir said. "I mean, London's got plenty of green matter around, that works fine as a power source, right? No need to go looking for anything else."
"Mm. This was more in the nature of the ground itself," Matt said. "Londoners -- well, the old mages weren't any more enthusiastic about that idea than we were. I don't think they meant that." He shrugged. "I'm not sure they meant anything, really. It wasn't anything that had any kind of proof attached to it. But then, at the time, they had much less of an idea of where they were getting their power than we did."
"Like we have any real idea now," Kir scoffed.
Matt wasn't really paying attention. He was looking down at the table, tracing a pattern with his finger in the spilt beer. "It does -- reading it, sometimes, though, it does seem like maybe they had more of it, back then. More power."
"You sound like one of the old folks," Kir said. "Where did all the power go, all that stuff. I don't believe them. It's like the mage version of 'the good old days' idea. The 'good old days' when everything was lovely and there was no crime or young people were polite to their elders or whatever hobby-horse is being exercised, if you actually look at the data, they didn't exist. It's just rose-tinted spectacles. It's the same with mages. The power's exactly where it always was. People just want to think that the world is going downhill."
Matt nodded, slowly. "Yeah, I suppose so. Maybe you're right." He stood up. "I'm going to the bar -- want another beer?"
"So, any gossip to report? You seeing anyone at the moment?" Matt asked when he came back, placing the beer in front of Kir.
"Not since Becky," Kir said. It still felt a little odd, talking to Matt about his relationships.
"You guys split up, what, over a year ago now?" Matt made a sympathetic noise. "Mundanes, man. Just makes it harder."
Kir kind of hated the word 'mundane', but Matt was right that Becky not knowing about magery had been a problem. Maybe the biggest problem they'd had. Although really it was him not finding a way to talk about it that had been the real problem. He didn't want to discuss the details of that with Matt, though. Or at all.
He shrugged. "I think I just can't be bothered right now."
"I hear you," Matt said. "We ought to stick to mages, huh?"
"It's a small dating pool," Kir said. He hesitated. "There was this guy at my climbing wall, I think he might have been coming onto me a bit? But -- yeah. Whole b
unch of stuff I wouldn't be able to talk to him about, right? Not worth it."
Matt nodded, and leant into Kir to nudge him a little. "Never mind, eh?"
For a moment, Kir wondered if Matt was flirting with him. But it couldn't be. It hadn't worked out. They both knew it.
The rest of the evening went well. It always did, hanging out with Matt. And, sitting on the Overground afterwards, Kir decided that Matt was right. Twice was just coincidence. If this wasn't happening anywhere else, if it had only happened twice to Ali; leave it for now, and see if it just went away by itself. He had other things to think about.
CHAPTER FOUR
Somewhere around 4am the next morning, Kir woke up and couldn't get back to sleep. After thirty minutes of staring at the ceiling, he gave up, got up, and downed several mugs of coffee while working on his current project. The next section was looking tougher than the last one. By 9, he'd done a good morning's work already, and took himself off to the climbing wall. Zach wasn't there. Kir kind of hated himself for even thinking of the question, and more so for being disappointed in the answer. He took it out in a punishing conditioning session on the fingerboard followed by tackling the problem that had defeated him the day before. He got through it easily this time, which cheered him up enormously. He had, he told himself firmly, forgotten all about Zach.
The whole business of the mud-monsters was nagging at him, though. After he had got to the point of exhaustion on the climbing wall, he stood in the shower, contemplating what to do with the day. He could use another couple of hours on the work project, but it was still only mid-morning. There was a magery problem he'd been working on for a while, but ideally he wanted Ali to help him out with the next stage of it, and she would be working right now.
At the cafe. Where the second version of whatever-it-was had been. Well; he ought to let her know what had happened with Matt, even if the answer was 'not a lot', and he wanted to know whether she'd been in touch with Priya. And they did really good cookies there. If Ali had a break coming, they could have a chat. If not, he had his laptop in his bag, and he could do a bit more work while he waited for her. That was a plan, then.
