Taken

by Benedict Jacka

  Yes. I would. As I decided that, the memory loosened a little. It wasn’t any easier, but facing it, understanding it, made it bearable. I stayed there for another few minutes, then once I was calm again I tapped a stored number on my phone.

  The phone rang once and was picked up on the second ring. “Alex?”

  It was Luna’s voice, anxious and hopeful, and hearing it pulled me the rest of the way back to the world of the living. Suddenly I was awake again. “It’s me.”

  “You’re okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  I heard Luna sigh in relief. “It’s him, he’s okay,” she called to someone else, then came back to the receiver. “Where have you been?”

  “Long story.”

  “I called last night and I thought you were just asleep. Then I met Sonder this morning and he hadn’t heard anything either! We’ve been worried sick.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I got held up.”

  “Don’t scare me like that. I was afraid you’d been kidnapped again or something.”

  “No, I—Wait, what do you mean ‘again’?”

  “You know, like with Morden.”

  “That happened once.”

  “And the time with Belthas.”

  “I got caught that time because I was going after you.”

  “No you weren’t. Anyway, what about—”

  There was the sound of someone else clearing their throat. “Oh, right,” Luna said. “Where are you?”

  “Wales.”

  “Wales?”

  “Wales.”

  “Why are you in Wales?”

  “Three men tried to kill Anne last night. There was a fight and we evac’d to the safe house. Has anyone come after you or Sonder?”

  “Tried to kill—? No, no one’s come after us. Alex, what have you been doing?”

  “Good.” The weariness in my limbs wasn’t going away and I realised Anne had been right. I didn’t have the strength to use a gate stone yet. “Listen, I’m going to be laid up for a few hours. I want you to work with Sonder on those reports. Get as familiar with the information as you can.”

  “Are you going to be here?”

  “No, I’m going to be following up on something else. Have you got any classes today?”

  “Just one. It finishes at five.”

  “Good. When you’re done go to Arachne’s and ask her to fit you a dress. Ask her to find me something too while you’re at it. I’ll meet you there, but I might be late.”

  “You’re finally getting a better wardrobe?”

  “No, we’re going to a party.”

  “Oh,” Luna said. “Something really dangerous.”

  “As long as I don’t have to arm-wrestle you to make you go this time. Now put Sonder on, I need to ask him something.”

  “Say please.”

  “Just do it.”

  “Sonder!” Luna called. “Alex wants to talk to you. He says he’s got a date tonight and wants some advice on what to wear.”

  I rolled my eyes. When Luna took the formal oath of apprenticeship, she swore to obey me “without question.” Luna’s way of getting around this has been to follow orders to the letter but add some creative misinterpretation. I heard the clunking of the phone being put down and picked up, then Sonder’s voice. “Um, hello?”

  “Ignore Luna,” I said. “Listen, I need you to do me a favour.”

  “Oh,” Sonder said. “Okay. Sure.”

  “Three assassins tried to kill me and Anne last night in Archway. I’ll send you the address. I need you to look around and find out whatever you can about those men. One’s dead but two got away and I need to find them. There’ll be police lines so it might be difficult to get in, but do what you can.”

  There was a moment’s silence. “Do you think there’s a connection?” Sonder said at last. “I mean . . . right after you were asked to do the—the other job. It’s a bit of a coincidence.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It is.”

  “Do you think it’s the same person?”

  I frowned. “I don’t know. What I really want to know is what linked them to me.”

  “That’s why you want me to find out about those men?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, I’ll try. And I’ll take Luna through the files.”

  “Thanks. See you tonight.”

  * * *

  I found Anne in the kitchen washing up. There was a stack of plates on the dish rack, and I could see from the empty cupboard that she hadn’t been exaggerating about how much she’d eaten. I guess every kind of magic has its quirks. I sat at the table, not letting myself show how much of a relief it was to get off my feet—I could feel my strength returning but slower than I was used to. “Okay,” I said. “So who do you know who wants you dead?”

  Anne turned to me, face troubled. She was drying her hands with a towel and it would have been a peaceful domestic scene but for the bloodstains on her clothes. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve tried to think of anyone but I can’t.”

  “Offended any Dark mages lately? Made any new enemies?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “What about that girl from duelling class?”

  Anne looked surprised. “Natasha? She’s just a bit nervous about me and Vari.”

  I thought it had seemed a bit more serious than that but kept my feelings to myself. Besides, I couldn’t really see an apprentice sending gunmen. “Well, someone wants to get rid of you,” I said. “And they weren’t kidding around. Those men were no joke.”

  “I know,” Anne said. She looked at me. “Thank you. Not just for coming to help. For afterwards.”

  I nodded.

  “But . . .” Anne hesitated. “How did you know?”

  “I’m a diviner,” I said. “It’s what I do.”

  As I said it, though, something nagged at my memory. When I’d told Sonder about the attack, he’d leapt to the conclusion that it had been aimed at me. It hadn’t been, not directly: Anne had been the gunmen’s target and they hadn’t attacked me until I’d intervened. But maybe Sonder had been on to something. “You know,” I said slowly, “you might not have been the only target last night.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You were meant to be the victim.” I looked at Anne. “I was meant to be the suspect.”

  Anne looked puzzled, but it fit. If her assassination had gone as planned, I would have been the last mage to see her alive. The Council Keepers would have come asking questions. Everyone knew I’d been responsible for the deaths of two Light mages already. Having yet another vanish so soon after meeting me . . .

  It probably wouldn’t have been enough to get me arrested, not on its own. But I’ve got enemies on the Council, enemies who’d be more than willing to overlook the holes in the case and maybe fiddle a bit of evidence to help things along. Even if the charge didn’t stick, it would have made it a lot harder for me to go snooping around.

  I tried to explain that to Anne in my halting way but didn’t do a good job. “They wouldn’t have blamed you, though, would they?” she asked.

  “Maybe,” I said. “It’d be less effort than sending those gunmen.”

  “But you didn’t do anything wrong.”

  I looked at Anne, watching me seriously out of those odd reddish eyes, and couldn’t help but laugh. But it gave me an idea. “Have you called anyone yet to tell them you’re okay?”

  A shadow passed over Anne’s face. “No.”

  Now why not? I thought curiously. You obviously thought about it. But you didn’t call Variam and you didn’t call this Lord Jagadev, whoever he is.

  What was the story with Anne? There was no way she should still be an apprentice with the amount of power she’d displayed
last night. And her lack of fear or panic was telling. She was used to danger, even if she didn’t look it. She was a weird mixture altogether—grave and wary and oddly naive underneath it all.

  I wanted to keep asking questions but held back. Some instinct told me that pressing Anne for information now would make her shy away. So instead I helped her with the dishes and wondered if there was anything edible left in the house. As it turned out, there was.

  * * *

  The building was an old farmhouse at the very end of a Welsh valley. I’d rented it a few months back during one of my more paranoid moments, as a getaway in case someone attacked my London home. As a place to live it’s a joke—it’s fifteen miles from the nearest village, there aren’t any phone lines, and it floods every spring. But if all you want is somewhere to hide, it’s a good deal.

  On Anne’s advice I rested for several hours before trying to travel, and I spent the time talking to her. I sensed she was uncomfortable with talking about herself and her powers, so I didn’t ask. Instead I settled for getting the details of how she’d been attacked last night.

  It had been done very simply. While on her way to Archway Anne had received a text message, supposedly from Jagadev, directing her to go to a different address and send the car away once she arrived. Anne had obeyed. She’d noticed the men but hadn’t spotted the guns, and as she pressed the button to call the lift they’d shot her in the back.

  Anne hadn’t recognised any of the men, and neither had I. They hadn’t been carrying magic, which along with the guns suggested they were normals. But they hadn’t been fazed by my mist effect either, and from the few words they’d exchanged over Anne’s body they’d known getting too close to her could be dangerous, and that made me think they were at least clued in to the magical world. Maybe ex–Council security, or some Dark mage’s private army. Either way, I’d know more once Sonder had had a chance to investigate.

  It was two o’clock when we left the house. I locked it behind us, then slid the key under the door—I didn’t need it to get back in. “Are you sure you don’t want to catch a train or something?” Anne asked.

  “There are some things I need to get done,” I said, and gave Anne a glance. “Besides, I think you might attract a bit of attention.”

  Anne looked embarrassed. She’d gotten the blood off her skin and out of her hair and had even had a try at washing her clothes, but they still looked exactly as you’d expect clothes to look if their wearer had been shot repeatedly in the chest. “I couldn’t find anything else to wear.”

  “Yeah, I didn’t stock the place very well.” I started walking towards the river, picking my way through patches of grass. “Let’s get going.”

  The end of the valley was cold and had a desolate look. Thistles sprouted between the rocks and grass, patches of nettles grew around the outbuildings, and there were bramble thickets under the bare trees. But the air was clear and the hills rose green around us and the place had its own kind of quiet beauty, even if few would come to see it.

  The gate stone I’d used to bring us here had been made out of a rock from the bank of the river I was standing beside now. Gate stones have a lot of drawbacks, but the biggest is that they’re always one-way. They can only take you to a single location, set when you create the stone. So if you want to travel around using gate stones you have to take a selection with you—which means you risk losing them if anything goes wrong.

  The gate stone I’d used was keyed to the kitchen of the farmhouse behind us. I’ve also got gate stones for the ravine outside Arachne’s lair, the Great Court of the British Museum, a mountaintop in Scotland, and a fairly random selection of other places, none of which I’d brought with me today. I’d brought the gate stone to my shop, though, and it was this one I took out now. “Ready?” I asked Anne.

  Anne nodded and stepped up next to me. She seemed to be watching me closely for some reason but I couldn’t see why, so I shrugged it off and spoke the activation words. Again the air shimmered and formed into a translucent oval, and again it shifted colour to a leaf green as Anne’s fingers closed over mine and she channelled her power into my spell. Anne’s magic worked much more easily with gate stones than mine did, but that wasn’t surprising—even if it can affect only living things, life magic can still change the physical world.

  We came down into the little back room of my shop and the air went from winter in Wales to room temperature in London. “Will you be okay making it home on your own?” I asked as I led Anne to the back door.

  Anne nodded. “There’s somewhere safe I can go.”

  “Good.” I looked at Anne. “Can you do me a favour? Could you stay hidden until tonight?”

  “I . . . suppose,” Anne said hesitantly. “Why?”

  “If I’m right, someone was trying to get rid of both of us,” I said. “If I show up at the party without you, they may think you’re dead after all. Maybe I can get them to tip their hand.”

  Anne thought about it, then nodded. “All right.”

  We both stood in the doorway, and I realised with a feeling of surprise that I liked this strange girl. “Be careful,” I said.

  “I will.” Anne smiled. “See you tonight.”

  I watched Anne go, then went inside.

  * * *

  I had a few hours before I needed to get ready for the party, and I’d already decided what to do with them. I was going to Fountain Reach.

  Given that I’d been sure only the previous day that the message pointing me to Fountain Reach had been a trap, you’re probably wondering why I’d changed my mind. It’s a fair question, and to be honest I wasn’t quite sure myself. I just had the vague feeling that I needed to do something, keep searching and looking around. With hindsight, I think the attack on Anne and me had made me suspect someone was moving against us, and I wanted to try to turn something up before they made their next move.

  I made my preparations, choosing my equipment more carefully than I had for my hurried departure last night. I kept the gate stone for my shop; it would be useless for getting there but would speed up the journey back. A second gate stone keyed to Fountain Reach would have allowed me to travel back and forth at will, but I didn’t have one. I took another pair of condensers as well as a handful of extra items picked with an eye towards trickery and concealment. Finally I took my mist cloak from my wardrobe. When it comes to stealth my mist cloak is far and away the best item I own, and I’d already decided that stealth was exactly what was needed.

  As well as my mist cloak, there’s something else I always used to bring with me on these sort of trips: a thin glass rod, designed to call an air elemental named Starbreeze. Starbreeze is scatterbrained and ridiculously unreliable, and she forgets anything you tell her almost before you’ve said it, but she can turn a person to air and carry them faster than a bullet. If I’d been able to call her, she could have whisked me across the length of England and dropped me next to Fountain Reach in the time it takes most people to check their e-mail.

  Unfortunately I don’t have the caller anymore. I blew it up in the autumn getting away from a bunch of enemies, and I haven’t managed to contact Starbreeze since. I worry sometimes that I never will: Starbreeze might wonder eventually why I’m not talking to her and come looking for me to find out, but Starbreeze is immortal. It might take her ten or twenty years to even notice.

  So in the absence of gates or elementals, I took the train.

  * * *

  The directions I’d found placed Crystal’s family home in the Cotswolds, between Oxford and Gloucester. I got off at the nearest station and took a taxi most of the way before walking the final stretch on foot. I crested a rise and found myself looking across a small valley at Fountain Reach.

  My first thought was that it was the weirdest-looking house I’d ever seen. Mages like unusual homes and I’ve seen some strange ones in my time, but thi
s was the strangest. It looked as if it had been grown rather than built, extra wings and storeys added on one at a time, each in a different architectural style. The windows were irregular and didn’t match, changing in height and design, and there were too many chimneys and too many gables. The mansion was blockier and more cubical than it should have been, rather than the extended oblong common to most country houses. The inner rooms must have had no natural light at all.

  The mansion was isolated, but not terribly so. The hillside cut off the view of the nearby town and rail line but the sounds of activity drifted up through the trees. The slopes were forested and I left the access road to angle upwards through the woods and look down on Fountain Reach from above. The gardens were extensive and looked carefully tended, beautiful flowerbeds mixing with copses of exotic trees. Birds pecked on the lawn, their calls echoing through the leaves, and the winter sun was dipping in the western sky, casting a yellowish light over the scene and giving a perfect view across the countryside below.

  It looked about as unsinister a place as could be imagined, enough to make me feel a bit foolish. I half-expected a coach to show up and a bunch of European tourists to go wandering across the lawn with their cameras or something.

  But I was here and I might as well do the job I’d come for. I found a good vantage point beneath an ash tree and crouched down, concentrating on the futures of me exploring the mansion below.

  The technique is called path-walking, and it was the same one I’d used the night before. Basically, instead of looking forward into your various futures, you isolate just one future and follow it through the choices ahead. I’d tried it during the train journey in an attempt to speed up any search of Fountain Reach but hadn’t had much luck. Hopefully it’d be easier now that I was closer.

  To my surprise it wasn’t. I could trace out the futures down to the mansion but as soon as I entered the images became narrowed, fuzzy. I kept trying for ten minutes before giving up with a frown.

  I’d seen this effect before. You got it when attempting to use divination magic within an area that had been warded against scrying—heavily warded against scrying. As I focused on the mansion with my mage’s sight I realised that the walls were layered with overlapping shields of magical protection, so thick that from my position I couldn’t see through them at all. They were messy, uneven, but extremely powerful.