Alex Verus 5: Hidden

by Benedict Jacka

  “Hm.” I started to lift my water glass, then stopped. “Wait a second. Is this what you’ve been planning all along?”

  “How do you mean?”

  I stared at Talisid, glass in hand, as things suddenly fell into place. “This is what you’ve been working up to, isn’t it? I always wondered why someone as high up as you would be keeping up a relationship with an ex–Dark diviner. You’ve been hoping I’ll sign on with you. Have you been testing me all this time? Was that what all those jobs were about?”

  Talisid raised a hand. “Slow down.”

  “Bit late for that.” I was running over my past encounters with Talisid, making connections. “So which is it?”

  “While your conclusion is . . . not exactly incorrect, you have things slightly out of order.” Talisid didn’t look particularly surprised, and I realised that he must have been anticipating the way the conversation was going to go. “I originally approached you because your position and abilities were favourably placed to help us. On the basis of that performance I approached you again, and so on. I didn’t involve you in past events in order to make you this offer. I’m making you this offer because of your performance in past events.”

  “And what exactly is the offer?”

  “Verus, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. I said that we needed information, and that was what I meant.” Talisid watched me mildly. “You aren’t under any obligation to undertake tasks that you don’t want to. Isn’t that exactly the basis on which we’ve worked before?”

  The difference is that I’d be an employee instead of a freelancer. But I didn’t say that out loud, because as usual, Talisid was being reasonable. I had worked for him enough times by now, and he had dealt honestly with me each time. Looked at that way, it wasn’t really that big a step.

  Except . . . it would mean joining the Council. “I appreciate the offer,” I said with an effort. “But I don’t think I’d make a very good Light mage.”

  “Why?”

  Because I used to be a Dark mage and half the Council hates me for it. Because the Council left me to die when I needed them most and I hate them for it. Because I think the Council are treacherous weasels. And because I don’t think I’ve got any right to call myself a servant of light, even if most of the Council don’t deserve that title either . . .

  “Verus?” Talisid said when I stared past him without answering.

  “Let’s just say I don’t think we’d get on,” I said at last.

  “I’m aware of your history.” Talisid’s voice was gentle, and I looked at him in surprise. The sympathy in his eyes might be fake, but if it was it was a convincing fake. “But what’s done is done. I think you could have a future with the Council. I won’t press you, but the offer is open. When you have the time, think it over.” Talisid paid the bill and walked out towards the exit, leaving me sitting at the table staring after him.

  | | | | | | | | |

  I took the Tube from Holborn, changing at Liverpool Street and again at Whitechapel to take the London Overground south over the river. It was a long journey, and it gave me plenty of time to think.

  Talisid’s offer had come as more of a shock than it really should have. I’d been working for him for two years, on and off, and if I’d been paying attention I would have noticed the way things had been heading a while ago. Probably the reason I hadn’t picked up on it was that it had simply never occurred to me that anyone on the Council would actually want me on their side.

  The more I thought about it, the more tempting it sounded. Talisid wouldn’t be able to snap his fingers and put me into the Council’s inner circle, but he could do a lot towards getting me accepted. And being a Light mage, even a probationary one, would make my life easier in a hundred little ways. I’d have a stronger legal footing in case of any disputes, which would make it that much less likely that anyone would challenge me in the first place, and it would really help with Luna’s education. I’d be able to get her into restricted classes in the apprentice program, maybe even find her a Light chance mage as a specialist instructor.

  But . . . there were reasons to hesitate, too. There’s a reason I fell out with the Council: I don’t agree with half their policies and I don’t trust them to keep to the other half. I also have a small but significant number of enemies on the Council, including a nasty piece of work named Levistus, and getting closer to them wouldn’t do any favours to my life expectancy. Most of all, though, I wasn’t sure how well the Light mages of the Council would like me. Going from Dark to independent is one thing; going from Dark to Light is something else. Talisid might be able to get me in the door, but he wouldn’t be able to hide the fact that I was the ex-apprentice of a particularly notorious Dark mage, with a worryingly high body count of my own. Now, there are altogether too many Light mages who couldn’t care less about body counts, but the fact that a couple of the deaths attributed to my name were Light mages would probably make even them think twice. And ironically enough, the Light mages whose good opinion I’d most value and whose respect I’d most want to earn would be exactly the ones least likely to trust me.

  Maybe staying outside the fold as an independent was better.

  But was that wisdom talking, or fear?

  chapter 2

  Anne lives in Honor Oak, a mostly forgotten part of South London with an abundance of hills. Pricewise it’s not as expensive as the inner city, but nothing in London is exactly cheap and I was pretty sure the only reason Anne could afford to live there was because Sonder had set her up in Council-owned property. (The Council is not known for its spontaneous generosity but it owns a lot of buildings it doesn’t use, and given the amount of stuff it’s responsible for, a lot gets by under its radar.) Anne’s place is near the top of a hill, by the side of a gateway leading down into a wooded area. It was after working hours, but as I looked ahead I was surprised to see a small crowd.

  Anne’s flat was on the first floor of a converted building, and there was a line of people outside her door. As I studied them from a distance I realised that they were queued up (more or less) and waiting to go inside. Now that I thought about it, I remembered Luna had told me something about Anne running a clinic out of her flat. Luna had made it sound small-scale, though. By my count there were a good fifteen people there.

  There wasn’t any danger, but it did pose a problem. Anne had never explicitly told me to stay away, but I knew that her current feelings towards me were ambivalent at best. Getting her to talk to me was not going to be easy, and having a crowd waiting outside would more or less guarantee a response of not-now-I’m-busy. No obvious solution presented itself, so I found a nearby spot to observe from.

  The people outside Anne’s flat were a mixed bag: male and female, white and Asian, short and tall. The youngest was a babe in arms while the oldest looked to be fifty or so. Most were working class, a smaller fraction were middle class, and there were two or three that I was pretty sure were addicts. The different members of the queue were very obviously uncomfortable with each other, and there was the sort of low-grade tension in the air that you get in job centres and NHS waiting rooms. From within the flat I could just make out Anne’s soft voice, along with the sound of the man she was talking to.

  I sat on the landing above Anne’s flat and waited. Twenty minutes passed, then forty. Every now and then Anne would finish with one person and admit a new one, or a new arrival would show up at the back of the queue. The queue seemed to be getting longer rather than shorter, which didn’t bode well for the “wait for her to finish” plan. I toyed with a few ideas to speed things up; the plan involving a smoke bomb and the fire alarm was tempting, but I had the feeling Anne wouldn’t appreciate it. In the absence of anything else to do, I fell back on my short-range eavesdropping to see what Anne was up to; it’s not as reliable as other methods of magical surveillance, but it’s virtually impossible to detect. (Yes, it’s spying. I’m a diviner, i
t’s what I do.)

  Just as Luna had said, Anne was running a clinic, and she was getting a really big variety of patients. Some were what you’d expect, like the woman with flu or the man with backache. Some were odd, like the guy claiming he’d been bitten by his cat. And some were depressing, like the girl who’d cut her wrists and now was afraid someone would see it. Anne asked, gently, why she’d done it. After some probing, the girl revealed it was because her boyfriend had been threatening her. Anne asked if she’d considered leaving; the girl said she couldn’t, she loved him. The conversation more or less hit a dead end from there.

  Watching Anne’s technique for treatment was interesting. She hardly used any active magic at all; she’d just do a quick check-over, then recommend a remedy. She’d make a show of doing a physical examination, but I was pretty sure what she was really relying on was her lifesight. It’s one of the signature abilities of life mages, letting them “see” someone’s physiology and the workings of their body just by looking at them, and it makes diagnosis really easy, not to mention being great for spotting people. Lifesight’s probably the weakest spell Anne knows, but in magic, as with many other things, the most powerful techniques aren’t necessarily the most useful. In theory Anne could just cure anybody who walked in, healing their wounds and rebuilding their bodies, but doing so would exhaust her quickly—healing spells consume a lot of physical energy, as well as being really hard to pass off as coincidence. By using her abilities to diagnose people and then recommending a nonmagical treatment, she could help them a lot more efficiently and without any risk of being revealed as a mage. It was a smart way to handle it.

  As I kept watching, though, I started to notice something odd in how the patients reacted to Anne. Anne didn’t seem to be charging money, she was attentive and polite to everyone who came through the door, and she was faster and more accurate than any doctor. Her patients ought to have been grateful, and some were . . . but a surprising number weren’t. Many had a kind of entitled attitude; they didn’t seem to acknowledge anything that Anne was doing for them, they just treated it as their due. Others would argue when they didn’t get the diagnosis they wanted. Strangest of all, though, were the ones who seemed weirdly uncomfortable in Anne’s presence. They’d ask for her help but with reluctance, as though even being near her made them uneasy. And it wasn’t just one or two; it was something like every third person through the door.

  After I’d been watching for somewhere over an hour, I heard a commotion. A new guy had arrived at the end of the line; apparently he hadn’t been pleased by the length of the queue, because he’d started shoving his way to the front. The people already in the queue—some of whom had been waiting for over an hour—objected. The shouting and swearing grew steadily louder until the new arrival barged into Anne’s flat. I listened to the raised voices for a few seconds before rising to my feet and slipping downstairs past the crowd, homing in on the noise.

  The room inside Anne’s flat was sparsely furnished, obviously meant for public access rather than her own use, but there were touches of her personality all the same: green-upholstered chairs, potted plants by the window. Two doors led inwards, both closed. The crowd had spilled a few feet inside but were hanging around the door, apparently unwilling to get any closer.

  The reason for their reluctance was standing in the middle of the room, shouting at Anne. He was a big guy, powerfully built with a scarred and shaven head. There was a spider’s web tattooed on the side of his neck, and ACAB was spelt out across the knuckles of his right fist in blue India ink. His speech was a little hard to decipher but he seemed to want something, and Anne was standing right in front of him.

  Anne is tall and slim, with black hair and reddish brown eyes. She’s got a quiet way of speaking and moving which tends to make her blend into the background, although it wasn’t working very well this time. Some people seem to find her looks off-putting, though I’ve never really understood why.

  Anne is one of the few people I know who could make a legitimate claim to having had a worse childhood than either Luna or me—about five years ago, while she was still in school, she was kidnapped by a Dark mage named Sagash who wanted to mould her into his apprentice. With Variam’s help she managed to get away, but it took most of a year, and Anne’s never told either Luna or me exactly what happened in those nine months. She gave me a quick glance with no sign of surprise as I walked in; she’d seen me coming. “Hi,” I said.

  “—can I?” the man was demanding in a loud voice. “I’m what this government’s made me, aren’t I? My dad sent me to reform when I was a kid, and they treated me like a criminal. Well, now they’ve got what they—”

  “Need a hand?” I asked.

  Anne held a hand up and turned halfway between Tattoo Guy and me, speaking with her soft voice. “Not a good time.”

  “I’d go through the public and the police like they were nothing. They wouldn’t know what hit them. They’re vermin, they’re nothing to me. They wouldn’t know what—”

  “Do you mind?” I asked the man.

  Tattoo Guy glared at me. “Who the fuck are you?”

  “Friend of a friend. Sorry, do I know you?”

  I watched as the guy’s brain switched gears. It was a slow process, and I saw the possible futures branch out before me. He could bluster, he could back down, he could kick off a fight. I was kind of hoping he’d choose the last one. Tattoo Guy was big and nasty, but my standards of “nasty” are seriously skewed compared to normal people, and as far as serious threats went he didn’t even make it onto my radar. I’d had a stressful day and the prospect of taking it out on someone was more attractive than it should have been.

  “Alex!” Anne said.

  I gave her a sideways glance. “What’s up?”

  “Please don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “You know what.” Anne looked slightly frustrated. “I appreciate the help, but I’m fine.”

  Tattoo Guy had been looking between us in confusion; now his expression changed to something uglier and I felt the futures shift. With me, Anne, and the crowd in the door all watching him, he would have to be seriously stupid to start something, but stupid and aggressive people are in absolutely no danger of extinction and Tattoo Guy was proving a fine example of the breed. “Hey! I’m fucking talking to you!”

  “I’m sorry,” Anne told him. “I don’t keep any drugs here. If you sit down I can—”

  “Shut the fuck up!” Tattoo Guy took a step forward, leaning over Anne. He didn’t have much of a height advantage to lean with, but his bulk made up for it. “Don’t bullshit me. They all lied and I fucking made them pay for it, yeah?” He started to take another step forward, and as he did he reached out for Anne. “I—”

  As the man’s hand reached out my fingers twitched. I wanted to step in and I could see the sequence of moves with crystal clarity: I’d block his arm, he’d grab me, I’d shrug him off, he’d have all the excuse he needed to swing at me, and I’d have all the excuse I needed to drop him. He might be strong, but I was quicker and better trained and could predict his every move. There was only one way it could end . . .

  . . . and Anne had just specifically told me not to do that. Anne knows what I can do, and that was why she’d said don’t. She wasn’t in any danger—up close she’s far more deadly than me. If I stepped in, I wouldn’t be doing it for her sake; I’d be acting out of pride, trying to prove something.

  I held my ground. The man grabbed Anne, thick fingers going all the way around her upper arm. “I’m not fucking telling you again.”

  Anne held the man’s gaze and all of a sudden she looked subtly different. Most people flinch when they’re grabbed, but Anne didn’t. She stared up at the man without reacting; it didn’t even look as though she was breathing. “I don’t have what you’re looking for,” she said clearly. “Let me go, please.”

  I saw
the man hesitate. Somewhere in his toxin-fogged brain, the message was probably trying to get through that Anne wasn’t acting very victimlike. But if someone’s dumb enough to start a fight in front of a crowd, then it usually takes clearly overwhelming force to make them back down, and Anne doesn’t look dangerous. He reached for her neck.

  Something flickered in Anne’s eyes.

  Divination magic can look forward in time, but not back. When someone’s making a choice, then if you’re quick you can get a glimpse of what they’re choosing between. For a fraction of a second, as Anne raised her hand, I saw a spread of possibilities open up, fleeting images jumping out from the branches: a subtle spell, stillness and quiet, a slumping body, someone screaming their lungs out, more talking—wait, back up, what was that last—?

  —and gone. Anne’s fingers touched the man’s wrist and green light glowed, there and gone in an instant. The spell was complex, one I hadn’t seen before.

  The man staggered and stopped. The aggression went out of his eyes and all of a sudden he just looked confused.

  “Please sit down,” Anne said. Her voice was still polite, and the man obeyed, collapsing into one of the chairs as though his limbs were very heavy. Anne turned to me. “I’m a little busy.”

  I looked back at Anne—what had I seen for a second there?—then shook it off. Maybe I’d imagined it. “Is this your way of asking me to come back some other day?”

  “Yes.” Anne looked at me steadily. “I’m sorry. This isn’t a good time.”

  I paused, then nodded. I left through the crowd, pushing my way past. Behind me, I heard Anne start to shoo them out.

  | | | | | | | | |

  Beside the building that held Anne’s flat was what looked from the outside like allotments or a small park, sealed off behind an iron fence and a locked gate. It wasn’t signposted but my phone labelled it as the Garthorne Road Nature Reserve.