And in the moment’s pause where the three of them were staring open-mouthed at the creature in front of them, I sprinted past and down the stairs as fast as my legs could carry me.
I’ve been involved in a good few combats over the course of my life, and pretty much all of them have either started or ended with me running away. There is a reason for this. Mages can inconvenience, immobilise, hurt, injure, stab, slice, burn, bend, fold, spindle and mutilate you in a variety of creative ways, but pretty much all of them require that they know where you are. If you can stay out of sight it’s hard for them to know where you are, and if you can move faster than they can it’s hard for them to keep you in sight. So if you lead a lifestyle that brings you into frequent contact with unfriendly mages, and you have plans for your life that don’t involve getting turned into a small pile of charcoal, it’s a good idea to learn to run fast. To run fast you need training, fitness and, most of all, motivation.
I had three Dark mages and an angry guardian elemental behind me. I had motivation in spades.
As I tore down the stairs, I heard a shout from the woman, followed by a hollow boom and a red-black flash as at least two of the Dark mages took a shot at the elemental. A second later the stairs flashed white and there was a crack of thunder as the elemental took a shot back. I didn’t know whether I’d been spotted and I didn’t hang around to find out. I made it back the way I came into the Great Court and to the top of the staircase with a speed that an Olympic sprinter would have had trouble beating.
The Great Court showed no signs of battle; the three Dark mages had probably bypassed the doors and gated in. The good news was that there were no security guards.
The bad news was that the Council reinforcements had just turned up.
There were five of them, just entering through the front doors. The battle mages of the Council are more of a police force than anything else, but you still don’t want to mess with them. This group were shielded, armed and ready for trouble.
But they didn’t have advance warning and I did. As I reached the top of the staircase I pulled the crystal marble from my pocket and threw it to shatter at the foot of the stairs. Silvery vapour surged out, filling the Great Court with an obscuring mist, and the mages disappeared from view in an instant. I sprinted down into the mist, relying on my magic to avoid a fall.
If I’d been lucky, that would have been it. I could have passed them in the mist and left them to fight it out behind me. But their leader was fast, already throwing up shields, shouting orders, and I knew I’d never make it through the door. I made a snap decision, jinked right, ran across the Great Court into the West Wing and just made it into the doorway before one of the other mages evaporated the mist to nothingness with a surge of air magic.
I’d been forewarned in time to freeze in the shadow of the door, my mist cloak gathered around me. The mages were clustered around the main entrance, defensive spells glowing around them. ‘Where’d he go?’ the leader snapped. He was a tough-looking man in his middle years with iron-grey hair.
‘Can’t see him,’ another mage said, scanning the court. ‘Didn’t feel a gate.’
‘He couldn’t have made one that fast …’
‘We don’t know that,’ the leader said. ‘Ward the door; we need to push up.’
With care and persistence, you can track down even someone in a mist cloak. I knew the mages of the response team would be able to find me given enough time. I also knew they weren’t going to get it.
The air mage who’d blown away the mist heard the sound of running footsteps first and called a warning to the others. The response team swung their attention to the top of the staircase just as the three Dark mages appeared at a dead run. Even at this distance I could see that Cinder and Khazad’s clothes were smoking. The leader of the Council mages started to shout something up at them, and the ensuing conversation would have been very interesting if the elemental hadn’t followed them out a second later.
Elementals are living, sapient manifestations of the building blocks of our universe. They’re not usually all that smart, although calling them stupid isn’t quite right either – ‘limited’ is a better word. Either way, one thing they’re not is weak. Take Starbreeze – she isn’t particularly powerful as elementals go, but she could still transform you into air without breaking a sweat. She could also, should she feel like it, scatter that air across so many thousands of cubic miles of atmosphere that your body would be in every time zone at once. With that in mind, you can see why mages avoid picking fights with even lesser elementals.
The elemental hovering at the top of the stairs was definitely not a lesser one.
Standing upright it would have been maybe twelve feet tall, a rough humanoid shape with two arms, two legs, a body and what could have been a head, every part of it crackling blue-white electricity. It didn’t walk so much as fly, blazing a jagged path through the air to light up the Great Court with dazzling light, staring with brilliant eyes down upon the mages facing it. Ah, I thought. ‘Lightning man’. So that was what she meant.
The leader of the Light mages shouted something, but no one was listening to him any more. About five of the Light and Dark mages hit the elemental at the same time, fire and wind and earth slamming into it as one. The elemental hit back, and a lightning storm blazed outward from the top of the stairs, bolts slamming off shields to crackle down into the floor.
By this point I was running again. For a diviner like me, a two-sided battle is more than dangerous enough. A three-sided battle isn’t even worth thinking about. By my count there were now four sides: the Dark trio, the Council reinforcements, the elemental and me. My curiosity wanted to stick around and see who won, but it was outvoted.
The only problem was that the free-for-all I was running away from just happened to be right between me and the exit. I sprinted past the Rosetta Stone and Assyria, took a right at the Nereid Monument and ducked into a corner in the Greeks and Lycians displays. Pulling out my glass rod, I channelled a thread of magic and whispered urgently. ‘Starbreeze, friend to the air and – no, wait. Lady of the wind, dancer of, friend to, um … oh, hell with it, Starbreeze, it’s Alex Verus, and I need you right now. Get me out of here!’
There was a crash from the direction of the Great Court and the air lit up white. I’d picked the furthest corner I could find, but from the way the floor vibrated, it wasn’t far enough. ‘Starbreeze! Come on! Where are you?’
Running footsteps echoed from where I’d come. I scanned, then snapped a quick look around the corner. Running through the gallery which held the Nereid Monument were two figures in dark clothes: Cinder and the woman. I ducked back and swore under my breath. ‘Why do these people keep following me?’
‘Who?’ Starbreeze said in interest.
I jumped and spun to see Starbreeze hovering right next to my face, the transparent lines of her face almost invisible in the darkness. Starbreeze giggled. ‘Scared you!’ She pointed brightly back towards the Great Court. ‘Lightning man!’
‘Yeah, I noticed. Let’s get out of here!’
‘Stay and watch?’
Around the corner, the sound of approaching footsteps had stopped. Dimly I heard Cinder’s voice, muttering, ‘—someone there.’
‘Khazad?’ the woman’s voice muttered back.
Why can’t they find their own place to hide? ‘Let’s not,’ I urged. ‘Look!’ I rummaged through my pocket and came up with a silvered earring. ‘Here, Starbreeze. Starbreeze!’
Starbreeze was floating five feet up in the air, gazing absently in the direction of the battle. She gave a look down at the earring, then shook her head and went back to staring at the wall happily. ‘Lightning’s pretty.’
‘Starbreeze, come on!’
Starbreeze shook her head. ‘Uh-uh.’
Over Starbreeze’s voice, I could just hear Cinder talking. ‘—not Khazad.’
‘Burn the room he’s in.’
‘Can’t tell which room.’
‘Burn them all, then.’
As I heard those last words my precognition screamed. I went from a standing start to a dead run in one second flat, sprinting out through the exit on the right.
There was a whoompf! and a wave of heat washed over me, followed by the wail of smoke alarms. I turned back to see that the gallery I’d been standing in was a cloud of ash and smoke. The edge of the blast had missed me by maybe ten feet.
As I watched the sprinkler system came on, water hissing as it struck the molten glass of the display case, Starbreeze came zipping out of the smoke. ‘That hurt!’ Her voice rippled, upset, and her form was shaky, specks of ash fluttering as she moved.
‘Then let’s go! Get us out of here!’
Starbreeze swept down and around me, turned me into air, and whisked me up and out of sight. I had one fleeting glimpse of Cinder and the woman emerging from the smoke, then we were moving at Starbreeze’s full speed, and let me tell you, full speed for Starbreeze is fast. The museum blurred and before I had time to take a breath we were outside and soaring upwards, the dome of the British Museum turning into a speck beneath us as we vanished into the night.
I had plenty to think about on the trip back. Whatever that statue was, it was valuable enough that the three Dark mages had been willing to take heavy risks to be the first to activate it. They’d tried to pick the lock and failed. It was obvious now why they’d wanted a diviner so badly: with my help, they wouldn’t have set off that trap. Now they’d botched their first attempt, the security on the museum would be doubled. That meant they’d either have to quit, or come after me again. Somehow none of them struck me as the quitting type.
Thinking about them made me think again about the woman. Something about her kept nagging at my memory. I was sure I’d met her, but I couldn’t remember where.
By the time I managed to convince Starbreeze to take me home, the adrenaline rush from the battle had worn off and I was dead tired. Starbreeze dropped me off on my roof and swirled away as I climbed wearily down to my flat. I’d made some new enemies, given the Council further cause to dislike me, and nearly got killed twice. Not a great day’s work.
But it hadn’t been for nothing. I’ve always believed in the power of knowledge. Any problem can be solved if you understand it well enough, and somewhere in what I’d learnt today was the key to this whole mess. I just needed to figure it out.
Once I was back in my bedroom all I wanted was to sleep, but I had more work to do. I hung my mist cloak in the wardrobe, giving it a pat and watching as its colours rippled slightly at the touch of my hand. Then I fetched the cube from where I’d left it and set it down on my desk. Cinder had been willing to kill me for this, which meant I needed to know what it did. It was going to be a long night.
4
The 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 an 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 a.m. Exactly as the display ticked over to 9.39 a.m, 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, etc., etc., would present himself with an escort of his choosing, etc., etc. There was a footnote about the dress code in slightly pointed language that I couldn’t help 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.
Fated: An Alex Verus Novel Page 6
