Veiled

by Benedict Jacka

  Caldera was in the middle of the circle in her white gi. Opposite her was a stocky Keeper with close-cropped hair that I knew vaguely. His name was Slate, and right now he was hunched over and scowling. “Sorry,” Caldera said. She was trying not to grin, and not doing a very good job of it. “Slipped.”

  “Bullshit,” Slate said.

  “Hey,” one of the men sitting around the edges called out. “Not like you were using those anyway!”

  There was another burst of laughter, and Slate’s scowl got uglier. “Come on,” Caldera said. “Let’s go again.”

  “Fuck that.”

  “Wussing out already?”

  “You know what?” Slate jerked his head in my direction. “You want to do shit like that, why don’t you try it on your friend?”

  The laughter died away at that. Heads turned in my direction. Caldera gave me a glance, then shrugged. “Fine with me.”

  All of a sudden everyone was looking at me. There were still a few Keepers grinning, but most of them looked expectant.

  I hesitated. I really wasn’t sure I wanted to take on Caldera—doing it alone might have been fun, but having her mop the floor with me in front of an audience didn’t appeal. Unfortunately, that same audience was waiting for my answer, and from the looks in their eyes I knew I was on trial. They wouldn’t pressure me into it if I said no, but the Keepers already thought I was morally suspect. Backing down now would also make them think I was a wimp. Not a good combination.

  “You know, we could—” Haken began.

  “It’s fine,” I said. I was going to have to make an impression sooner or later. “Here.” I handed Haken my focus sword and walked forward.

  The Keepers sitting on the ground scooted aside to let me in, and the laughter and conversation died away. All of a sudden everyone was looking very interested. I came to a stop about fifteen feet from Caldera. “Don’t want a weapon?” Caldera asked.

  I shrugged. “You haven’t got one.”

  Caldera raised an eyebrow. She didn’t say the obvious, namely that she didn’t need any.

  We faced each other in the middle of the circle. Caldera was wearing a worn and dirty white gi with a red belt: she wasn’t carrying any tools or weapons, but given her magic type, that really didn’t make much difference. There was a mirror on the wall behind her, and in the reflection I could see myself, tall and long-limbed and wearing a black gi of my own. Thinking about it, it hadn’t been the smartest of clothing choices—having Caldera in white and me in black looked altogether too symbolic. Oh well.

  Caldera bowed, and I did the same. Then she stepped back into a fighting stance and I put everything else out of my mind.

  It’s hard for a nondiviner to understand what it’s like to use divination in a fight. I’ve tried to explain it a few times, but usually I can tell the other guy doesn’t get it—the abilities divination gives you are just so weird, so alien. Standing on the floor of the gym, I could see Caldera standing opposite, one foot back and hands ready. Her stance was a generic one, rather than one that identified with any particular martial art. From her posture, I could tell that she was taking this moderately seriously.

  Layered on top of that was the additional sense of my magesight. I could see the spells of Caldera’s earth magic hanging around her limbs and body, solid and heavy, reinforcing her movements and keeping her braced against the floor. Other spells showed in my peripheral vision: the protective and sensory spells of all the other Keepers, the wards around the gym. All of this was what any mage would see, and it was a lot, enough that you could spend minutes analysing it all.

  But on top of all that, I had another sense—my diviner’s sight—and it multiplied what I could see a million times over. Instead of just seeing the picture before me in three dimensions, I saw it in four, all the possible futures of every single person in front of me. To me, Caldera’s actions seemed to branch a dozen different ways, ghostly movements taking her back or forward or sideways, aggressive or defensive, depending on chance and whim and her responses to my own actions. And every one of those futures branched into a dozen more, and every one of those into a dozen more, hundreds and thousands of futures shifting and changing, winking out to be replaced by new ones as paths were closed off, never to become real.

  For a normal person, the problem in a fight is lack of information. Diviners have the opposite problem: they have too much information. Even interacting with another person in a stable, predictable environment gives you more possibilities than you could explore in a lifetime. In something as chaotic as a fight, it’s a thousand times worse. Novice diviners usually go catatonic the first few times they’re thrown into a stressful situation: they get overloaded by trying to process the sensory input from all the possible futures at once. If you stick with it though, a diviner can actually be quite an effective fighter, in an unconventional sort of way. We aren’t any stronger or faster than regular folk, but all that information gives us an awful lot of leverage.

  The futures ahead of me shifted. Now the next few seconds were all going to play out the same way; Caldera was going to close in and attack. By the time she moved I’d seen the punch and made up my mind about how to block, and I barely noticed as her fist glanced off my forearm. Caldera specialises in reinforcement magic, and the spells sheathing her arms and hands were strengthening effects, boosting her power and durability. She can punch through concrete with her bare hands, and a full-power blow would shatter my skull. But for now she was just probing, and it was easy for me to deflect the strikes, keeping a safe distance.

  A minute passed, two. Neither of us was going at anywhere near full strength, so we weren’t getting tired. I made a few casual counterstrikes which Caldera brushed aside, but I wasn’t seriously trying to hit her. As seconds ticked by with neither of us landing a blow, Caldera grew more aggressive. She closed the range, aiming for a body strike. I didn’t really want to escalate things, but I wasn’t going to stand there and be a punching bag. Caldera’s attack left her head open, so as she moved in for her attack I hit her open-palm in the forehead. The impact rocked her back and pushed the two of us apart again.

  I heard a murmur but didn’t look around. Surprise flashed across Caldera’s face, followed by annoyance. I hadn’t hurt her but she hadn’t been expecting to be hit like that. She came in again, and this time when she attacked, she put a bit of force behind it. I blocked and countered, striking back when I could. Caldera’s fighting style was solid and workmanlike, straight punches with the odd elbow or knee. She wasn’t fast, but there was little wasted motion and she didn’t give any easy openings.

  But when you can see the future, it changes things a lot. Caldera might be skilled, but she had a human body like everyone else, and she couldn’t make an attack without leaving herself open at the same time. In a normal fight against an equally skilled opponent it’s very difficult to execute a proper counterblow, since you need to start it the instant they begin the attack, but I could see the moves coming a second or two in advance. Doesn’t sound like much, but in a fight that’s a long time. I hit Caldera in the shoulder, head, breast, and head again. Caldera kept going, shrugging off another punch, and I put a snap kick into her stomach, using the impact to push myself off and keep the range open.

  Caldera recovered and stared at me, eyes narrowed. From around, I could hear the murmurs from the crowd—I’d hit her maybe a dozen times, while she’d yet to land a punch. It probably looked as though I were winning, but appearances are deceptive. Just as with most of my fights with elemental mages, I could hit Caldera, but I couldn’t hurt her. My hands were already stinging from the impacts on her skin, while I knew she wasn’t so much as bruised. I was a wasp fighting a bear—I could sting and dodge, but one solid blow and I’d be crushed.

  Caldera kept coming, speeding up. Now she was going all-out, and with each move I was getting a second or less to react. I kept hitting her back,
but she’d obviously figured out that I couldn’t hurt her and had decided to just ignore it. Sweat dripped down my forehead, and my arms and legs were starting to burn with fatigue. A spark of fear was starting to grow in my gut, the feeling you get when you’re up against an enemy you can’t defeat. Intellectually I knew this was just a sparring match and Caldera wasn’t actually trying to kill me, but my instincts weren’t listening.

  A block and a grab sent me backpedalling into the circle of watchers; Keepers jumped to their feet and scrambled away as Caldera and I went through them. Caldera kept pressing me, then abruptly switched tactics and just charged. I hit her once on the way in, but I didn’t manage to open the range in time and she tackled me.

  It felt like being kicked by a horse. I hit the floor with her on top of me, driving the breath from my lungs. I couldn’t get up or away in time, and for an instant panic took over. There were weapons where we’d fallen; without looking I caught one up and brought it under Caldera’s chin with one quick slash.

  Caldera scrambled back, coming up to her feet. Her eyes were wide, and she brought one hand up to touch her throat. I lay on the floor, breathing hard.

  The Keepers came around, slowing to a leisurely pace as they saw the fight was over. “She took him down,” one of them said.

  “Yeah, and he cut her throat,” someone else replied.

  A few others were talking but I didn’t listen. I looked down at the weapon in my hand. It was a training knife with a rubber blade; Caldera’s group had been working with them earlier and when she’d tackled me we’d fallen into the middle of them. My fingers were still wrapped around the plastic handle and with an effort I made myself get up. The Keepers were still talking, but a good half of them were watching me. On a few faces I could see considering looks.

  “Thanks for the match,” I said to Caldera. I set the knife down and walked out without waiting for an answer.

  | | | | | | | | |

  I changed quickly, avoiding the rest of the Keepers, and headed outside. By the time I was out in the street and in the cold air I’d calmed down a little. Now that I could think clearly again I knew that what I’d just done had not been a smart move. The Keepers already suspected me of murder—going for a killing attack like that would not have made a good impression.

  Why had I gone for that knife? The rubber blade had been harmless, but the move I’d used it for had not been, and I’d never even made the conscious decision to do it. I’d acted on instinct, and by the time I’d had the chance to think, it had all been over. Would I have acted like that a year ago? I was pretty sure I wouldn’t, and I had a nasty feeling that I knew what had changed. Even though it had been ten months since I’d seen Richard, just knowing that he was out there was enough to put me on edge, quicker to feel threatened, quicker to strike back.

  I’d been nervous about how Caldera was going to react, but when she finally appeared, gym bag slung over one shoulder, she didn’t seem particularly bothered. She was on her phone and held up a hand to me as she approached. “Uh-huh,” she was saying into the phone. “Yeah, but I’m off duty.”

  I leant against the wall, waiting for her to finish. “Okay,” Caldera was saying. “No . . . Well, too bad, ’cause unless it’s an emergency . . . Yeah . . . You okay with that? . . . Fine, you can check in with him later. Okay.” She rang off and looked at me. “Got a job.”

  “Torvald?”

  Caldera shook her head. “Some kind of magical fight on the DLR. It got called in through the Met and the liaisons flagged it.”

  “So they want us to do what, find out what it was?”

  “Apart from the ‘us’ part.”

  “Come again?”

  “I’m off duty as of three hours ago,” Caldera said. “You can have this one.”

  “Seriously?”

  “You want to be an auxiliary, you’re going to have start doing solo jobs. Can’t always be there looking over your shoulder.” Caldera glanced at me. “You can handle it?”

  “I guess.”

  “Central’ll forward you the report.” Caldera yawned. “I’m off. Have fun.”

  “Uh . . .”

  “What?”

  “About what happened in the gym?”

  “What about it?”

  I hesitated. Caldera looked surprised. “That bothering you? Don’t worry about it.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “Best match I’ve had in weeks.” Caldera grinned. “You won’t get me with the same trick next time, though. I won’t go easy on you.”

  “Then I guess I won’t either.”

  “Promises, promises.” Caldera gave me a wave as she walked off. “Have a good one!”

  I watched Caldera walk away, then shook my head and turned away with a smile. At least there was one person who wasn’t bothered.

  | | | | | | | | |

  The message that arrived a few minutes later directed me to Pudding Mill Lane station, on the Docklands Light Railway. It wasn’t a quick journey, and I had plenty of time to read through the incident report on my phone. Apparently a woman had made a 999 call claiming to have seen some kind of firefight on the station platform. The British Transport Police had shown up, found nothing, concluded that it had been a wind-up, and buggered off. Which was the end of the story as far as the authorities went, but the Keepers have listening posts in the police, and the report had raised enough flags to warrant sending someone over . . . though apparently not quite enough flags to send anyone important. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do when I got there, but I supposed I’d just have to find out.

  The Docklands Light Railway (aka the DLR) is one of the more unique ways to get around London, a raised railway crowded with small driverless red-and-blue trains that link up all the places in East London where absolutely no other lines go. It has four branches, winding and intertwining, and it can take you anywhere from Lewisham in the south to Stratford in the north or all the way eastwards towards Woolwich. I was on the northern branch, heading towards Stratford. Pudding Mill Lane was the last station before the Stratford terminus, and when the train arrived no one got off apart from me.

  DLR stations are very lonely compared to the Underground. The DLR was designed with automation in mind, and just as the trains don’t have drivers, the stations have the absolute bare minimum of staff. This one had none at all, and there were no passengers either. The station was a single-platform design with rails on either side, and all around was blackness. Pudding Mill Lane was right in the middle of what had once been the Olympic Park, the great centre for the London Olympics. For a few weeks the square mile in which I was standing had been the busiest place in London, but now it was a giant construction site, a jungle of concrete and fencing and metal scaffolds, abandoned and empty. Beyond the railway to both east and west, the land dropped away into half-constructed buildings, lying silent and unused. The old running track had been torn up and now was a giant heap of dark earth, filling the air with the scent of mud and water. According to the plans, this place was going to be turned into housing eventually, but there wasn’t anyone living there now. Scattered towers rose up all around, and to one side I could see the skyscrapers of the Stratford skyline, an oval-shaped tower looming over us with a ring of rainbow neon glowing at the top, colours shifting from blue to purple to green. To the northeast, the Olympic stadium was a squat shadow in the darkness. Cars rushed along a main road to the east, but they were half a mile away and nothing else was moving. Despite being in the middle of the largest city in the British Isles, I was completely alone.

  I looked around in the darkness, already starting to shiver. It had rained while I’d been on the train, and puddles were scattered around the platform; not enough to flood the place, but enough that the wind blowing off the stone was freezing cold. I looked around and tried to figure out what to do. Okay, so I was a Keeper—sort of—and I was investigating a crime scene. Wh
at was I supposed to do?

  I’d come here with vague plans of finding witnesses, but as I looked around it became clear that that wasn’t going to work. In the few minutes I’d been standing at the station I hadn’t seen another living soul, and if there were any construction workers still on site I couldn’t see them. Instead I focused on my magesight, trying to sense magic. Stone beneath me, cold and immobile, chill air whistling around, the silent menace of the electrical rails and wires. Nothing powerful enough to tell me anything. Spells can leave residue, but it takes repetition and time—one-off magical events have to be extraordinarily powerful to stick around. Nothing like that here.

  I walked up and down the platform, trying different angles, hoping to get lucky. I didn’t. Another passenger arrived and waited on the platform as I walked up and down it. A train arrived. She got on; one other person got off. I kept searching. The wind got colder, and so did I.

  My nose and ears were starting to go numb. Times like this make me wish I were a fire or an ice mage. I took out my phone and called Caldera; it rang for what felt like much too long before Caldera picked up. “Hey.”

  “Hi,” I said. “Look, seeing as this is my first solo job and all, mind giving me some pointers?”

  “Just a sec,” Caldera said. There was a lot of noise in the background, voices and glasses clinking. Wherever Caldera was, it sounded warm, comfortable, and a much nicer place to be than here. “Didn’t catch that, say again?”

  I took a breath, restraining the urge to hate her. “What the hell am I supposed to be doing here?”

  “You’re at the station?”

  “It’s cold, wet, and empty, and there’s sod-all to find.”

  “Magesight?”