Veiled

by Benedict Jacka

  I came up, suddenly sick with the conviction that I’d just made a really horrible mistake. Luna had dropped her own sword and her hand was pressed to the side of her neck, and for a moment my stomach lurched . . . and then she took her hand away. The skin was reddened but unbroken.

  I closed my eyes for a second, taking a breath. Too close.

  “Wow,” Luna said. Her eyes were a little wide. “That was intense.”

  I didn’t answer. Checking, I couldn’t see any of that lethal grey aura clinging to me; we’d both pulled our attacks at the very last instant. “We’re done for today. Meet me up on the roof.”

  | | | | | | | | |

  “This isn’t working,” I told Luna twenty minutes later.

  The roof of the gym was cold but not freezing, the air carrying just enough of a chill to numb the tips of your ears and nose. The gym was set a little back from the street, meaning that while we couldn’t see any cars or roads, we did get an interesting view of the buildings around us. TV aerials and chimneys rose from the gravelled roofs like some weird kind of urban forest, and a couple of roof gardens sprouted up to our left, greenery against brick and concrete. A hundred feet away, a couple of young men in suits were talking animatedly on a balcony, and off to the other side a cat was washing itself on a balustrade. The breeze ruffled my hair, carrying with it the scent of car exhaust; over the buildings to the south the afternoon sun glanced off the skyscrapers of the inner city, and high above, wispy clouds hung in a clear blue sky. Just another London winter day.

  “Wait a sec,” Luna said. “We’re not going to have the ‘this is why it’s dangerous for you to learn martial arts’ conversation again, are we? Because you agreed—”

  “It’s not that. I don’t think these lessons I’m giving you are doing enough.”

  That made Luna pause. The breeze blew her hair across her face and she brushed it back absently. “But I like them.”

  “You like the parts that are dangerous,” I said dryly. “That was about a tenth of a second away from being a really nasty accident.”

  “I can control it better—”

  I shook my head. “Your control’s good. Not perfect, but good. The problem’s me, not you. For a while now all of the exercises I’ve been giving you have been hands-off. I’m not teaching you how to use your magic, I’m just sticking you with some sort of problem and making you figure out a solution.”

  “I thought that was the only way we could do it?” Luna said. “It’s not like you can learn to use chance magic.”

  “And that’s the issue. You’ve gotten good at directing your curse, but it’s been a long time now since we’ve made any real breakthroughs. If chance magic were an academic subject, I’d be qualified to teach it up to high school. You need a professor.”

  Luna hesitated. “So am I still your apprentice?”

  I looked at her in surprise. “Of course.”

  “Oh.” Luna relaxed a little. “Okay.”

  “Wait, was that what you thought this was about?”

  “Well, I was wondering . . .”

  “I’m not kicking you out or anything. We just have to find you a part-time teacher, is all. You’re still my apprentice, and you’ll stay that way until you decide to leave or until you pass your journeyman tests. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Luna said with a smile. “So are you going to find a chance mage?”

  “Try to, anyway. But we can ask.”

  We started walking back towards the stairs. “This isn’t going to be like when you were trying to find Anne and Vari a master, is it?” Luna asked.

  “Let’s hope things go a little more smoothly this time.”

  “So you’re getting a new job, and I’m getting a new teacher.”

  “Pretty much.” I pulled the door open for Luna, then followed her through. “Should be an interesting few weeks.”

  chapter 2

  Ever since I broke away from Richard, my life’s tended to go in cycles. There are short bursts of chaos and danger, then there are longer periods where things are relatively calm. The month that followed that conversation with Caldera was one of the calmer ones.

  Just because things were calm didn’t mean they were safe. Richard was still out there, along with all my other enemies. But there were no more missions, and beyond a couple of brief check-ins, Talisid didn’t contact us again. I took advantage of the breather to search for someone who could read those notes that Variam had brought back. None of the people I asked could do it themselves, but one acquaintance claimed to have a friend due to return to the country soon who’d be able to help. While I waited for that I kept sniffing around, but as January turned into February with no further movement on Richard’s end, it began to look as though my old master had put his operations on temporary hold.

  Richard’s sudden inactivity probably had something to do with events in the political world. Morden’s proposal was edging closer to a Council vote, and as it gained attention, old arguments were raised. The anti-Dark side dug up every crime and atrocity the Dark mages of Britain had committed over the past hundred years, while the pro-alliance side accused them of witch-hunting and pointed to everything the Council had done wrong over the same period. Neither side had any shortage of material to draw upon, and as the date drew closer, the arguments became increasingly nasty. For most members of magical society the events in the Council were way over their heads, but you didn’t have to know much about mage politics to see that battle lines were being drawn.

  In the meantime, I kept looking for a teacher for Luna. I didn’t make any instant progress, which was more or less what I’d expected. Chance mages are underrepresented on the Council, and the one or two I found who seemed as though they might be a good fit weren’t taking new students. I put out some feelers, let my contacts know that I was looking for a chance teacher, payment negotiable, and kept looking.

  But mostly, the thing keeping me busy was my new job with Caldera.

  | | | | | | | | |

  “This is so utterly stupid,” I told Caldera.

  Caldera didn’t look up from her screen. We were in her office, and she’d been typing for the past ten minutes.

  I leant back in my chair in disgust. “We could have caught this guy two days ago. We knew where he was and where he was going to be. Now he’s God knows where and we’ve got zero chance of finding him.”

  “We didn’t have authorisation for an arrest.”

  “You mean ‘don’t.’ We still don’t have authorisation, despite the fact that we asked the day before yesterday, and again yesterday, and again today, which your higher-ups still haven’t gotten around to answering, which would have taken them all of ten seconds—”

  “Would you stop whining?”

  “How can you be so calm about this?”

  The subject of our conversation was a Dark mage who went by the name of Torvald. He’d drawn Council attention by shooting up an adept bar—according to the reports, Torvald had been given the brush-off by some girl he’d had his eye on, and while he was still smarting from that, an adept had made the mistake of hitting on the same girl and succeeding where Torvald had failed. Torvald, who clearly did not handle rejection well, had expressed his unhappiness with this turn of events by applying lightning bolts to the adept, the girl, the bar, and several other people in the vicinity. The casualty count at the end of the evening had been six injured (two seriously) and most of the bar—luckily Torvald left before the police and fire brigade showed up, or there probably would have been fatalities. Caldera had been out in Shepherd’s Bush on another call, so she’d sent me to handle things instead.

  Given that Torvald had displayed all the discretion and subtlety of a stampeding elephant, tracing him hadn’t been hard. It had taken me an hour to learn his name, a day to track him down. I’d called it in to Caldera, she’d reported it to her captain, we’d been told to wa
it for authorisation before taking further action . . . and we’d sat around for forty-eight hours without hearing anything.

  During which time Torvald had figured out that he was being traced, and promptly vanished.

  “We know what the guy did,” I said. “We know where he lives. Or where he lived, anyway, God knows where he is now. What was the point of following this up if we weren’t going to do anything about it?”

  “He didn’t break the Concord.”

  “Oh, bullshit. Maybe he didn’t hurt any mages, but this was a blatant breach of the secrecy-of-magic clause. Besides, even if he didn’t break the Concord he must have broken half a dozen national laws.”

  “Probably.”

  “Did you tell them that?”

  “No, I turned in a blank report. What do you think?”

  “Then why haven’t they authorised us to do anything about it?”

  Caldera sighed and finally looked up at me. “How am I supposed to know?”

  “Well, give me your best guess.”

  “The fight got reported as a bar brawl that started an electrical fire,” Caldera said. “The police threw out the supernatural stuff, and the only witnesses who believed what they were seeing were adepts and sensitives. Fourth clause of the Concord is only gross violations of secrecy; this doesn’t qualify. Without that there isn’t enough to justify a raid, especially when we don’t know anything about his master or potential allies.”

  “This is such bullshit. So what—the guy lies low for a while, then goes right back to doing the same thing?”

  Caldera didn’t answer. “Okay, this?” I said. “This is why people don’t trust the Keepers. Those adepts at the bar, how do you think they’re going to see this? They just saw one of their friends get fried right in front of them. When Torvald shows up again two or three months later and no one’s doing anything about it, what do you think their takeaway message is going to be?”

  “And what do you think we should be doing?” Caldera said. “Kick Torvald’s door down, and go in shooting? Start a fight with whoever’s there, maybe end up with a few dead bodies? Is that your plan?”

  “I didn’t say—”

  “Really? ’Cause that’s what it sounded like. What did you think was going to happen if we got the go order? You thought Torvald would come along quietly?”

  “. . . No.”

  “So what? You want to see dead bodies that much?”

  “I’m not looking for a fight. It’s just . . . I don’t like being able to do something about it and doing nothing.”

  “No.” Caldera pointed at me. “You don’t get it. You’re not the one who makes that decision.”

  I was silent. Caldera gave an irritated shake of her head and went back to her typing. “You know, if you want to be an auxiliary, you’re going to have to shift that attitude.”

  “I thought the reason I was probationary was because I was a murder suspect.”

  “No, that’s the reason the other Keepers have a problem with you.”

  I paused at that. “Wait. Does that mean you actually trust me?”

  “Didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t not say it either.”

  “Let’s just say I’m not worried about you going psycho on us,” Caldera said. “But it takes a bit more than that.”

  “Like?”

  “You have to be part of a team,” Caldera said, looking up at me. “You’re still thinking of this as a solo act. That’s not how it works. When you’re on call, you’re part of something bigger than you, and that means you’re not in charge anymore. If head office says no, you listen to them and you drop it. You don’t pretend you didn’t hear them, and you definitely don’t go and do what they specifically told you not to do and then pretend it was all just a misunderstanding.”

  “You’re still pissed about that thing at the Tiger’s Palace last year, aren’t you?”

  “I know you can handle the practical side of the job,” Caldera said. “That’s not the issue. You’re on probation because I want to see if you can follow orders.”

  “I haven’t broken any of your rules,” I said. “Which you should already know, given that you’ve been checking up on me.”

  “That just means you haven’t done it where I can see.”

  “Are you always this paranoid?”

  “It’s called taking precautions. Look, just keep doing what you’ve been doing this last month and you’ll be fine. You done with your report?”

  I shrugged. “Can’t exactly finish it, but it’s up to date.”

  “Let’s knock off, then. You coming to Red’s?”

  “Yeah. Let me pick up my stuff and I’ll meet you there.”

  | | | | | | | | |

  There were some perks to working with the Keepers.

  I wasn’t a Keeper auxiliary, so I didn’t get the full package. I didn’t get a Keeper signet, or even the limited version that auxiliaries carry, and I didn’t get one of the access keys that would have let me gate in and out through the wards around the Westminster station. But I got paid, and I had a temporary access card that got me past the front desk, and it did give me a bit more status in dealing with Council personnel.

  More interestingly from my point of view, it opened up a few doors I hadn’t known about beforehand. It turned out that when they weren’t on the job, Keepers were still human beings, and they had hobbies like everyone else. Shouldn’t have come as a surprise, I guess, but it’s always easy to forget that members of an institution do actually have personal lives. And one of the centres for those hobbies was Red’s.

  The best way I can think of to describe Red’s is that it’s kind of like the magical version of a mixed martial arts gym. When I say “mixed,” I’m not talking about the bare-handed fights you see on TV, I mean really mixed. It’s also got a highly restricted guest list, and that list doesn’t extend to ex–Dark diviners with dubious reputations. It does extend to Keepers, though, and the more martially inclined ones hold practice sessions there on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. This was the third time Caldera had brought me along.

  By the time we’d arrived and changed, things were in full swing. There wasn’t a guest teacher this time, meaning that everyone was broken up into small groups, and even though I’d seen it before, I still paused to watch. The group on the left side of the gym was practising elemental magic, shields and lances of fire and wind slamming into each other in controlled explosions. They were keeping a check on their power level, but I could still feel the heat in the air from the flame bursts. Another group was practising with rubber knives and staffs, while a third group was standing facing each other in pairs; it didn’t look as though they were doing anything, but I could feel traces of mind magic. Caldera headed off to join the weapons group, and I was left on my own.

  I took a few minutes to check what sort of reception I’d get if I just walked up and introduced myself. Divining how a conversation will go is difficult; predicting the first line or two of the exchange is hard enough, and reliably calling it any further than that is virtually impossible unless the guy you’re talking to already has made up his mind about what he’s going to say. Human interactions are close to the absolute worst things to try to predict with divination—they’re too unpredictable, dependent on sudden decisions and random chance. But there are ways around it, and one of the more effective ones is not to try to predict exactly what someone will say, but to look at the general shape of the possible replies—they might vary, but from where they’re clustered, you can get a sense of what kind of reception you’re going to get. It’s a good way to figure out if somebody likes you or not.

  From looking at the futures in which I approached the mages here, I was pretty sure the general answer was “not.” It’s not really a surprise. Keepers tend to lean towards the Guardian side of the political spectrum, and they aren’t the most t
rusting of people. As far as they’re concerned, once a Dark mage, always a Dark mage. I suppose they’ve got reasons to see it that way, but it’s hard not to get frustrated about it sometimes.

  In this case, as far as receptions went, about half the Keepers in the room were going to be guarded, and most of the rest would be anywhere from unfriendly to downright hostile. They’d also noticed me—they weren’t being obvious about it, but I knew I was being watched. Following Caldera was an option, but if I kept doing that it would seem as though I were hiding behind her. Instead I approached one of the few other Keepers I knew, a mage called Haken. “Oh, hey, Verus,” Haken said. “Ready for me to kick your arse again?”

  “You wish,” I said with a grin. “Give me a sec to warm up and I’ll join you.”

  Haken was the same guy who’d been in Caldera’s office that first day—tall and fit, with blond hair, blue eyes, and an easygoing manner. He was also one of the few Keepers who didn’t seem to have a problem with me, and I’d liked him immediately. I picked up a focus weapon and squared off against him.

  Despite our banter, the fight wasn’t very serious. Haken’s a fire mage, and while fire magic is very good at hurting things, it’s hard to use nonlethally. Fire magic has a natural tendency towards aggression and destruction, which means that fire mages tend to go one of two ways: either they learn a lot of self-control, or they’re the kind of people you really don’t want to spend time with. Haken was the self-controlled type. Although the sword of carved flame in his hands looked dangerous, the fire was tightly focused and didn’t expel much heat, and none of his strikes came close to touching my skin. I returned the favour by being careful to pull my blows. When you’re dealing with someone who’s considerate enough to restrain themselves from hurting you, it’s a good idea not to provoke them.

  I was absorbed enough in the fight that I didn’t notice anything else was happening until a burst of laughter broke my concentration. I stepped back, lowering my sword, and looked left to see that the other groups had merged, congregating into a loose circle. At some point while I’d been busy with Haken they’d switched to one-on-one sparring while the others watched. Right now most of the group were calling out comments; whatever had just happened, it had obviously been good entertainment.