Veiled

by Benedict Jacka

  The man dropped the spell and struck, meeting my attack with his own. I hooked his blade and kept going, slamming him into the wall and forcing his knife hand out of position while I stabbed at his gut, one-two-three. The third blow sank home but as it did another spell blew me back, solid air striking like a hammer. I was thrown back to the steps, tripped, looked up to see him moving in a blur of motion, disappearing around the corner before I could react.

  I scrambled to my feet. I could feel the signature of his spells moving out of the station towards the construction site. Air magic, soft and grey and whisper-quick. That spell he’d used to throw me away had been a wind blast, and that blade had been hardened air. I looked right to see that the door I’d been standing in front of had a narrow diamond-shaped hole, almost too thin to see. If I hadn’t moved that would have been my back.

  I looked at my knife to see a trace of blood, but only a trace. He’d been using an air shield. I didn’t think he was seriously hurt, but—

  My divination warned me first, my magesight second. Energy twined around the corridor where I was standing and I bolted up the stairs, putting distance between me and the centre of the spell. As I cleared the stairs and came down on the platform I felt a sudden tug of wind pulling me back and my ears popped as I heard a hollow whump from behind. I darted behind a pillar and held still.

  Silence. I strained my ears, trying to make out some sound. Wind swirling around the platform, traffic on the main road to the east. I couldn’t hear the guy’s footsteps. What had that spell been? Whatever it was, it wasn’t friendly to human bodies. My best guess was some kind of implosion effect. Air mage, has to be. Too many spells to be an adept.

  Movement in the futures. There was no sound, but looking into what would happen if I stepped out, I could sense the air mage coming back. He was floating, not walking, hovering a few inches above the ground at the foot of the steps. The air blade was still in his right hand, and as I watched he began to glide up the stairs, eyes searching left and right.

  Not good. The platform had cover, but not enough. Maybe I can hide . . . The pillar I had ducked behind was more of a girder, really, holding up the roof over the platform. I held very still.

  The air mage reached the top of the stairs, looking left and right. He was maybe twenty feet from where I was standing. I held my breath.

  Silence.

  The other man was standing quite still. The futures flickered, uncertain. In some of them he found me, in others he didn’t. I couldn’t see what I needed to do to shake him. He began walking down the platform.

  I edged very carefully to the left, keeping the pillar between us. The wind had dropped and the air was still. I made it around and the air mage was walking away down the platform. Hasn’t seen me yet . . . I drew in a soft breath and let it out.

  The air mage’s head snapped around.

  Shit.

  He cleared the benches in one jump, seeming to hang in the air, eyes locking onto me. I leapt back behind the pillar as a spray of something almost invisible and very lethal flashed down the platform towards me. I needed time. I grabbed a forcewall from my pocket, flicked the gold discs out to the platform edges, and said the command word just as another spell came flying at me.

  The discs ignited, throwing up an invisible barrier, and the spell bounced off; it had been some sort of whirlwind. I backed out into the open, looking at the mage through the forcewall. “Can we talk about this?”

  He threw another spell. Fragments of hardened air slammed into the forcewall, dissolving back into gas as soon as they struck. The forcewall didn’t budge. “Okay, so you’re not the chatty type,” I said. “That’s fine, we can work something out. So why exactly are you trying to kill me? I’m guessing it’s got something to do with what happened last night?”

  No answer. I couldn’t see the guy’s eyes behind the dark glasses, but the rest of his face was expressionless. Usually when someone attacks you, they want to talk, either to justify themselves or to convince you to give up. When they’re silent and blank-faced, it’s a bad sign. It means they’ve already written you off and they’re not going to waste time talking to a dead man.

  The air mage fired off another useless spell at the forcewall, then stopped. His head tilted up as he looked at where the forcewall met the platform roof and I knew he was studying the spell with his magesight. Forcewalls transfer energy into whatever they’re anchored to when they’re attacked, which makes them very hard to blast through. Air magic isn’t much good at blasting through stuff. It’s much better at moving things around.

  Unfortunately the forcewall only went as far as the platform edge.

  Magic curved around the mage as he floated into the air. He flew out over the train tracks and right around the wall.

  Shit! I was already moving, jumping off the other edge down onto the tracks, putting the concrete bulk of the platform between us. I’d been hoping that the guy would chase after me, fly low over the platform where he’d have trouble manoeuvring, but instead he flew straight up, coming all the way over the platform roof to arc down on top of where I was hiding. I had to scramble back onto the platform to look for cover.

  The mage did an attack run, sweeping past. Bullets of hardened air threw up chips of concrete as I darted behind the advertising boards at the platform centre. The shots tracked me as I moved, tearing through the flimsy plastic of the boards, punching holes in the posters from Transport for London announcing that Being Careful Won’t Hurt You and urging everyone to Report Anything Suspicious to Our Staff or the Police. The boards went dark as the lights behind them fizzled and died, and the air mage soared up into the sky again, disappearing from my sight.

  This was bad. As long as this guy stayed airborne I couldn’t touch him. Running was useless; it was too far to the main road. I glanced up at the indicator. Three minutes until the next northbound train. Could I hold out that long?

  The air mage did another flyby. The first attack was a hail of daggers made of hardened air, the second a whirlwind that would have picked me up and thrown me out onto the tracks. Next was a wind blast like a solid punch, and after that was another implosion spell, shattering more of the poster boards and sending a hollow boom echoing out over the construction site. I ducked and dodged, jumping behind the platform, using the forcewall as a barrier, pulling every trick I could think of to shake him. I was holding him off, but I wasn’t stopping him. Magic doesn’t run off some sort of limited resource, and while casting spells takes energy, it’s no more tiring than any other demanding skill—apprentices might exhaust themselves after a dozen or so spells, but a journeyman or master mage won’t. Which means that you can’t make a mage run out of magic. As long as they want you dead badly enough, they can just sit there and keep casting the same spell at you over and over again until you roll over and die.

  And just as I was thinking that, my luck ran out.

  The air mage had fallen into a pattern, aiming spells at the same points on the platform. He started to cast another dagger burst, and I began to jump down behind the platform edge . . . and in midcast he changed target, placing the centre of the burst right above where I’d been about to take cover.

  You don’t have much margin for error when you’re dodging spells. I tried to get to the stairwell before the detonation.

  I didn’t make it.

  There was a bang that hurt my ears, and something hit me in the side and back, sending me flying. I hit the stairs and rolled down, scraping to a halt on the landing, pain stabbing from a dozen places. I couldn’t see my attacker but I knew he was coming and I fumbled for an item in my pocket. On the second try my hand closed over a small sphere—one of my condensers—and I threw it at the top of the stairs. My head was still spinning and the throw went long, hitting the pillar behind and shattering. Mist rushed out, cloaking the platform and the top of the steps in fog.

  I struggled to my feet. P
ain lanced from my side; I put my hand to it and felt wetness. Another spell in the futures, but no danger; it was going to miss. A moment later I heard the boom of another implosion spell and felt the whack of wind as air rushed by. The mist swirled slightly.

  I could feel a faint rumble through the concrete: the train was coming. I crouched on one knee, waiting. Above, I saw the glow of lights through the mist. No more attacks, not yet, but if— He was waiting for me to move. I held my breath, keeping very still.

  The rumbling grew louder and with a whine of metal the train pulled up by the platform. I still couldn’t see it, or him, but I knew where he was: up and to the left, waiting for me to show myself. The train doors opened with a hiss. I looked to see when they would close, counted down. Nine . . . eight . . . seven . . .

  Now.

  I ran up the stairs. The air mage detected me, waited for me to clear the top of the stairwell, fired. I checked just as he cast his spell, fire stabbing my side, heard the hiss of projectiles slashing through the mist ahead of me. Three seconds. I ran right, the mist parting to reveal a blue-and-red carriage, curious faces peering out; the doors were just beginning to close and I jumped through. They met behind me with a thud, and with a jolt of acceleration the train started to move.

  All of a sudden I found myself in the middle of a scattered crowd of people, all staring. “Excuse me,” I said to the nearest guy, a black man in a peaked cap. He got out of my way, and I began moving forward to the front of the carriage. As I did, I glanced back over my shoulder through the train windows. The mist cloud was a grey patch, fading away on the platform behind. I couldn’t see my attacker.

  “Are you all right?” a woman said. She was on one of the seats at the front, twisted around to look. I wondered briefly how I looked to everyone else, and that made me remember my wound. I touched it with my left hand again and drew in my breath. Looking down, I saw blood smeared over my fingers and palm.

  “Oh, shit,” the woman said. “You want me to call an ambulance?”

  “Might not be the best idea.” Now that I was out of combat, my side was really hurting. I didn’t think it was going to kill me, but it was deep. Not good.

  “I’m calling 999,” the woman announced. She pulled out a phone and started tapping.

  There was a thump from above, echoing through the carriage. It was hollow, and heavy. It was, in fact, exactly the kind of noise a grown man would make when landing on the roof of a train.

  Shit.

  The passengers in the train looked upwards. They looked confused rather than worried; I had the feeling that wasn’t going to last. “Hello?” the woman was saying. “Ambulance.”

  I held still, scanning futures. The people around were making it harder, their actions tangling with my own. What was this guy going to do, smash his way through the windows?

  “Hello? Yeah. There’s a man here, I think he’s hurt . . . I mean, yeah, he’s definitely hurt . . . what? Marie Gilman . . . Yeah, my number’s, wait a sec . . .”

  I couldn’t see any futures in which the air mage broke in, but it was looking like he wouldn’t have to. Up ahead, the lights of the shopping centres were getting brighter and I could see what looked like a platform. The next station was barely a minute away. And it was the terminus, which would mean everyone would be getting out . . .

  “No, the DLR,” the woman was saying. “What? Hang on, I’ll check. How old are you?”

  It took me a second to realise the woman was talking to me. “What?”

  “I think about thirty?” she said into the phone. “Oh. Okay . . . Do you have any existing medical conditions?”

  I stared at her.

  “They want to know if you’ve got any existing medical conditions,” the woman said. “Oh, she was asking if you’ve got any chest pain?”

  “No, I have a pain in my side, because someone just stabbed me through it. And you might want to forget that call and get out of here, because the man who did the stabbing is probably on the roof of this train.”

  “What?”

  The train was pulling into Stratford and the doors would be opening in twenty seconds. Stratford’s not Pudding Mill Lane: the station was well lit, skyscrapers rose up around us, and another train was waiting to go on the other side of the platform. We were still at the edge of the station, but there would be staff farther in—the closer I could get to the main floor of the station, the more pressure there’d be for this guy to back off. Why was he even after me? The only explanation I could think of was that he wanted that focus I’d picked up last night. Maybe he’s planning to take it off my corpse.

  The train stopped with a hiss. The passengers got off, filing out through the doors, heading for the stairs down. I followed them, hands in my pockets, head down. My side was hurting badly, but I didn’t let it show and I didn’t look up. It’s hard to pick one person out of a crowd, especially from the back. All I needed was for this guy to hesitate for a few seconds and I’d make it out. I scanned through the futures—he wouldn’t be aggressive enough to attack me right in the middle of a bunch of commuters, right?

  Right?

  Oh, fuck!

  I jumped out of the way as a blade hissed past. The air mage was right on top of me. I’d lost my knife somewhere back in the last fight; I fumbled for another weapon but he was already aiming another spell and I dived for cover behind the struts at the centre of the platform. There was another boom, deafeningly loud and very close; the shock wave made me stagger as something seemed to punch my back.

  Shouts and curses echoed from all around. We’d been right at the only exit and suddenly people were scattering, some running away, others standing and staring and trying to figure out what was going on. It would have been the perfect cover, except that the air mage was already there, stalking around to block my way out, another air blade low and by his side. He could see me and I backed up, keeping the platform struts between us. “What the hell is wrong with you?” I shouted at him. “Just go away!”

  He didn’t answer, and I felt a trace of fear. Usually I deal with battle-mages by outmanoeuvring them, using my divination to avoid their attacks and putting distance between us. But air mages are the skirmishers of the elementalists, fast and light and agile. They aren’t as strong in a stand-up fight as a fire or earth mage, but they have more than enough power to crush someone like me.

  The air mage tried to circle around and I dodged again, keeping cover between us. If I couldn’t outrun this guy, I’d have to outthink him. Was he after that focus? I glanced through futures in which I tested it. With the chaos going on around it was hard to be sure, but I thought it was getting his attention. Maybe he’d seen the auras of the items I was carrying—

  “Oi!” a new voice shouted. “You!”

  The air mage stopped and turned. It was the woman from the train. She was standing behind the air mage in the mouth of the exit tunnel, but instead of running she’d stopped and was pointing at the air mage and glaring. She still had her mobile phone to her ear. “You back off!”

  We both stared at her. I think we’d both forgotten that the bystanders were even around. “You’re the one who stabbed him, aren’t you?” the woman said. “Well, I’ve called the police, so you better back off!”

  I looked at the woman in disbelief. “Are you crazy?” I shouted. “Get out of here!”

  “Yeah, you’re welcome,” the woman said. She actually sounded offended. “Not like I’m helping you or anything. Now you”—she turned back to the air mage—“you going to beat it, or do I have to get serious?”

  The air mage studied her for a second. Other people had turned to watch too, and for an instant everything was still. Then the mage flicked one hand and air struck out in a hammer blow. It smashed into the woman with the distinctive crack of breaking bones and threw her twenty feet down the tunnel, sending her rolling over and over to lie still.

 
Someone screamed and suddenly the platform was chaos, people running, dodging, getting out of the way. The air mage started advancing towards me again, glass crunching under his boots. “That,” I said tightly, “was not necessary.”

  The mage didn’t answer. He was still studying me from behind his glasses, and the air blade was by his side again. He’d obviously figured out that I was hurt, and he was intending to get in close to finish the job.

  There. To my right, people were running onto the train at the platform. Behind me I could sense a man in an orange TFL vest staring down at the activity, and he was next to the train’s control panel. DLR trains don’t have drivers, but they do have a manual override. All of a sudden I had a plan. “You know what, screw it,” I said. “This isn’t worth dying for.” I pulled a pouch from my pocket.

  The air mage paused, studying me. The pouch was the one I use for my condensers, padded to stop them from breaking. There was one left, still inside, a marble-shaped item about the same size and shape as the focus I’d found last night. I let him get a brief look at it, and then from behind me I sensed the TFL man hit the button and I moved.

  The air mage’s hand came up and another spell flashed down the platform. He’d been expecting me to run for the train, but I hadn’t; I’d thrown the pouch into the train, and the shards of hardened air crossed paths with it midflight. It landed on the train floor and skidded, just as the doors closed behind it with a thump. With a whine of electrics the train started to move.

  The air mage looked between me and the train. “Now what?” I said. I had to speak loudly over the rumble of wheels. “You can get me, or you can go after that focus. But you stay to finish me and that focus’ll be gone by the time you catch up.” I stepped back. “Which is it going to be?”