Bound

chapter 6

MARCH

You know, I thought as I looked at the three men glowering at me, with hindsight, I really should have seen this coming.

It had seemed like such an easy job. I’d received an order from Rain’s office telling me to deliver an item to the Vault, the high-security location where the Council stores all of its most dangerous and valuable items, the ones they really don’t want Dark mages (or Light mages they don’t like) to get their hands on. The order hadn’t come directly from Rain—which, again with hindsight, should have been a tip-off—but it had been the first job the Keepers had given me this year and I’d been hoping that, if I made myself useful enough, they might start trusting me a little. On top of that, the person I was supposed to be doing the handoff to was Caldera, and I still wanted to talk to her about what had happened over Christmas.

So I’d gone down to the quartermaster’s, signed some papers, sat patiently through a lecture on security, and finally I’d been issued a small package, about the size of a paperback book. I’d been told several times that I absolutely must not open it, or try to open it, or even think about trying to open it, and I’d followed my orders. I hadn’t even tried looking into the futures in which I did any of those things (which in my opinion showed a really impressive degree of forbearance on my part), and now as I looked across the concrete floor at the three men waiting for me, I was quite sure that it all had been a waste of time.

We were in the tunnels beneath Old Street Roundabout. I’d taken the stairs down, watching the wide arches at the roundabout’s centre disappear behind the railings to leave only a narrowing patch of cloud-covered sky, before that in turn had vanished too. I’d followed the other pedestrians along the underpass until I’d found the steel door set into the tiled wall. The door had been locked but had opened to my Keeper signet, and I’d closed it behind me and taken the spiral stairs down, hearing the rumble of the traffic overhead. The spiral stairs had led into a wide, open area with a concrete floor, a low ceiling, a rather out-of-place tiled mosaic around the walls, and three heavily muscled goons in the centre of the room. I didn’t think they were here for a friendly conversation.

It wasn’t like I hadn’t had warning. Jarnaff had been trying for weeks to get me to tell him Morden’s plans, and at our last encounter he’d as good as told me that if I didn’t cooperate they were going to get the information out of me the hard way. I’d already suspected that Jarnaff knew something about what had happened to Morden’s last two aides, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d been the one to give the orders. Oh, there’d be no direct link—Light mages are too careful for that—but it’s an open secret that a lot of Keepers have Crusader sympathies, and somehow I didn’t think it was a coincidence that these guys just happened to be waiting for me right after I received orders through official Keeper channels.

“Hi there, guys,” I said.

The three goons stared at me and I gave an inward sigh. “You know,” I said, “I’m on official Keeper business here.”

The central goon spat on the floor. “You’re no Keeper.”

“Yeah, I’m starting to figure that out,” I said. “Do you mind?”

“Fucking Dark mages,” the goon said. “Think you can get away with anything.”

I am getting really tired of being called that. “I’m not a Dark mage,” I said, holding my temper.

“Bullshit,” the goon on the right said.

“You work for fucking Morden,” the central goon said. “You murder kids. You’re a piece of shit.”

I hesitated for just a second, responses going through my head. I wanted to argue, justify myself, but . . . No. I remembered what Arachne had once told me about my reputation. If you have it, use it. I walked forward, closing the distance to the central man, stopping only a few feet away to stare up into his eyes. “Then if you really believe all that,” I said softly, “why are you standing in my way?”

The goon hesitated. He’d been about to advance on me, and now that I’d preempted him, he wasn’t sure what to do. But he was bigger and stronger than I am, and like a lot of big, strong, stupid people, his fallback plan when things didn’t go his way was to grab the problem and overpower it. He reached out to do just that.

I slid under the goon’s arm and hit him low and viciously. His eyes bulged and he stumbled to the ground. The second one started towards me but I turned on him, staring, and he checked, looking at his friends. “Don’t even think about it,” I said, my voice hard.

“Come on!” the third goon called. “He’s only a diviner!”

I snapped my head around to stare at him, and he took an involuntary step back. “You’re right,” I said. “I’m a diviner. Now here’s a question for you: if I thought any of you was the slightest possible threat to me, would I still be here?”

Goon #3 hesitated, and I saw the futures flicker as he tried to figure out what to do. I already knew what he could do, and what his friends could do as well. I knew that he had a knuckleduster in his pocket, just as I knew that his partner was carrying a club. I also knew that all three had no combat magic, or none that would make a difference. In all practical terms they were no stronger than mundane normals, which meant that their chances against me in any kind of fight were close to zero. It should have been reassuring, but if anything, it pissed me off. Apparently the Crusaders still weren’t taking me seriously. Well, they’ll learn.

Goon #1 struggled to his feet. His movements were awkward, and he was still clutching his groin, but his face was dark with rage. “Come on!” he snarled. With his words, the wavering futures of Goons #2 and #3 steadied, and now every possible outcome led to violence. They spread out, surrounding me, and then Goon #1 lunged.

Divination isn’t great at predicting people’s movements. Even if you can pick the general course of action that someone will follow, it’s still hard to know how they’re going to do it. Looking more than a few minutes ahead into a conversation is close to impossible unless you have some kind of workaround, and a really chaotic environment like a fight is even worse. To divination magic, a battle is an impenetrable wall; anything on the other side is completely invisible. All you can see is what’ll happen in the next few seconds.

But in combat, a lead of a few seconds is huge. Most people who die in battle die through being caught by surprise. Either they’re looking in the wrong place, or they don’t understand what they’re looking at, or they make a move that they didn’t know was the wrong one until too late. When you can see which futures are the bad ones, then combat is suddenly much less dangerous. It doesn’t make you invincible—if your enemy is too tough or too fast then seeing his moves before he makes them isn’t enough, and if they have enough numbers on their side, then they can pull you down no matter how good you are. But if you’re fighting an enemy without those sorts of advantages, divination is pretty hard to beat.

The three goons weren’t that fast, they weren’t that tough, and there weren’t that many of them. They’d already lost; they just didn’t know it yet.

I let the first man go past, sliding aside as he grasped at the empty air, and came around facing Goon #3. He’d pulled out his knuckleduster but hesitated, reluctant to attack me head-on. My movement had put Goon #2 at my back, and I could see the futures only moments away in which his club would crack across my skull. I held still, giving him a clear target, then as he started his swing, I kicked back and out. The force of his momentum drove his knee onto my foot and I heard a snap, followed by a scream of pain.

Goon #3 looked down behind me, his eyes wide, and by the time he looked back I was on him. He flung his hands up, which blocked his view of my hands, and I was already aiming low. Stomach and groin, then as he doubled over I caught his head and slammed my knee into his face. He went down and I turned to face the first man.

Goon #1 had recovered from his failed rush and was coming at me again. He hesitated just briefly upon seeing that the other two were down, but his blood was up and with a roar he charged straight at me, arms wide to grab and crush.

I threw glitterdust in his eyes, and that was that.

After I’d retrieved the club and used it to deal with the blinded one, I dusted myself off and looked around. Goon #1 was unconscious, #3 was stirring and moaning, and #2 was trying and failing to drag himself away across the floor with his broken leg. He looked up at me with terrified eyes, and I shook my head. “You boys took the wrong job.”

“You know what they say,” a voice said from the other end of the chamber. “You get what you pay for.”

I looked up to see that two more men had entered. They were far enough away that I couldn’t get a clear look at them, but both were wearing masks that hid their upper face, which pretty much ruled out any possibility that they were here on legitimate business. “How many of you idiots are there?” I said in annoyance.

The two men advanced. “Look,” I said. “I’m getting tired of this. How about you just walk away, and we can . . .”

And then I stopped.

I’d had a chance to look into the short-term futures. Unlike Goons #1 to #3, these two did have magic backing them. They were battle-mages, and they were a lot stronger than me.

I’d been wrong. The Crusaders were taking me seriously. They’d laid a trap, one designed especially to catch a diviner: throw a weak enemy at me, one I’d be confident I could beat, and use that as a screen to hide the real threat. I felt a nasty sensation in my stomach as I realised that I’d been overconfident. Winning wasn’t on the cards anymore. Escaping was.

I took a step back, scanning. There were two exits from the chamber, one ahead and one behind. Of the two men facing me, the closer one was dark-skinned and strong, and from the futures of combat, I could tell that he was some sort of light-force hybrid, able to create weapons and shields of hardened energy. The second man, the one who’d been doing the talking, was smaller, and he was a lightning mage. He was hanging back, keeping the second man between him and me.

The two of them came to a stop about forty feet away. “Going to come quietly?” the lightning mage said. He had a London accent.

“Going to introduce yourself first?” I said. Only a little of my attention was on the conversation. If I ran straight back, the big guy would throw up a barrier to block the exit. What if I tried a sneak attack? No, they were waiting for that . . .

“We just want a chat,” the lightning mage said.

“Uh-huh,” I said. “From what I heard, your chats with Morden’s last couple of aides didn’t go so well for them.”

“Dunno what you mean.”

“You have mind mages on staff,” I said quietly. “Why use torture?”

The lightning mage shrugged. “Fight fire with fire.”

“How many times do you think you can try this before people start noticing?” I said. “No one is going to believe that this is just a coincidence.”

“No, no, Verus,” the lightning mage said. “You’ve got it all wrong. You see, you’re about to be abducted by some Dark mages who’re after that package you’re carrying.”

“Abducted by Dark mages who just happened to be inside the Vault?”

“The Vault?” The lightning mage smiled. “Who said anything about the Vault? When they check the records, they’ll find your signet was never used on the door.”

I felt a chill. If they had connections in the Keepers, it wouldn’t be hard for them to falsify the records. For that matter, if I suddenly disappeared, would anyone in the Keepers even think it was an abduction at all? Or would they assume I’d run off with the package I was carrying? The only reason anyone had known about what had happened to Morden’s last aide was that he’d been allowed to be found. I remembered the condition of his body—broken fingers and burned alive—and felt a flicker of fear. Both the mages were staring at me, and I recognised the expression in their eyes. As far as they were concerned, I was just another Dark mage.

“Time’s up, Verus,” the lightning mage said. “You going to make this easy?”

“Fuck you,” I said quietly.

The lightning mage’s smile didn’t change. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

Light flared, crisp and sharp. I was already dodging right, and the ball flashed past with a smell of sulphur. My hand came out of my pocket holding a small marble, and I flung it at my attacker.

The other man put out a hand and a glowing shield appeared in midair. The marble struck the shield and shattered, and mist rushed out, hiding both the mages in a sphere of fog. I sprinted back, aiming for the exit, but I only made it halfway before the air in the tunnel mouth shimmered and another force barrier appeared, blocking my path. A second ball of lightning arrowed in and I swerved and turned on my attackers as the dark-skinned man came striding out of the fog.

I went for him, my knife in one hand and my stun focus in the other. Swords of light appeared in the man’s hands; the blade of each was a plane of glowing force, sharp enough to take off my arm, and I twisted and weaved, trying to find a way past the flashing blades. I fought not just in the present but in the future, trying every weapon I could think of to get past the big man’s defence. Glitterdust and stuns and dispels all struck at him, ghostly and unrealised, and all failed.

Ball lightning slashed at me and I had to jump back. The force mage lowered his blades and advanced, light glowing from the swords. The lightning mage was behind him, still keeping his distance. They were watching me, careful but not cautious, and I knew that they were confident that they were winning. I backed up, giving ground.

Energy crackled around the lightning mage’s hands, pulsed from the force swords. I kept moving backwards. The exit was behind me, but without looking I knew that the barrier was still there; the force mage was holding the spell as he fought me. Can’t outfight these guys. I needed an edge, but what? The chamber was bare, concrete and empty. There were pillars scattered around, but hiding behind them wouldn’t help. The force mage would just trap me with walls and I’d be cornered.

Pain flashed in my futures and I jumped left, placing the force mage between me and the spell. The lightning mage aborted his attack, letting the energy crackle away, and the two of them kept advancing. The lightning blast would have stunned and paralysed me . . .

. . . but it wouldn’t have killed me, and suddenly I was paying very close attention. They want me alive. The force mage had never tried to cut me in half with those swords, only hold me off. I needed to be in one piece for interrogation—but how were they going to do that? A memory jumped out at me: back when I’d been talking, I’d looked very briefly at the futures in which I’d agreed to go quietly, and I’d caught a fleeting image of a syringe . . .

It fit, and all of a sudden I had a plan. I broke right, sprinting for the pillar.

The lightning mage tracked me, and in the futures I saw the ball lightning leap out to intersect my path. I could see a future in which I dodged it cleanly, but I rejected it, looked for a future of a grazing hit. I saw the flash reflected from the tiles as the spell was loosed behind me and I tried to pick out just the right moment to drop. Got to make it look good. It was going to be close—

The spell hit just as I was starting my roll, spidering across my back and shoulder. Pain shot through my body and my limbs twitched and jerked. The roll turned into a fall and I slammed into the concrete, tumbling. I hit the pillar and lay still.

“Better not have killed him,” the force mage said, speaking for the first time. He had a deep, rumbling voice.

“He’s fine,” the lightning mage said dismissively. “Go check.”

Footsteps drew closer. I kept my eyes closed, breathing slowly, steadily. I still felt sick, the electric shock filling me with nausea and numbing my muscles, and the stink of sulphur filled my nostrils. I heard the force mage step to within arm’s reach and I could feel the presence of the blades, only inches away, and every instinct urged me to block, to defend myself. I held absolutely still, blind and helpless.

Something hard and narrow poked my arm roughly. It didn’t pierce the flesh; the force mage must have blunted the tip. “Still breathing,” the deep voice said.

“All right,” the lightning mage said. “Let’s hurry this up.”

I felt the spell dissipate and heard the rustle of clothing as the force mage reached into a pocket. The big man was standing right over me, holding a syringe in his right hand, and as I watched he slid the cap off the needle, tapped the side of the glass, then bent down.

As soon as I’d glimpsed that syringe, I’d guessed that it held some sort of knockout drug. Electricity can’t render someone unconscious, not reliably, but there are plenty of anaesthetics that’ll put someone under pretty fast if you inject them in the right place. Shock spells to take the target down, then a drug to make them unconscious for transport. The force mage took hold of my wrist, turning it so that the inside was facing up, and brought the syringe in for the injection. For a brief second, all of his attention was focused on getting that needle into the vein.

My hand closed over his. The force mage jerked back, but I’d been ready and used the movement to stab the needle into his wrist. My thumb came down on the plunger, and I saw his eyes widen as he felt the contents of the syringe go in.

“Surprise,” I told him.

He lashed out, but I was already rolling away and the force blade cut the concrete where I’d been lying. I ducked behind the pillar, letting another lightning blast soak into the stone, and circled around to face them.

The force mage was still up, but he was starting to stagger and I knew that the stress of combat would be making his blood pump faster, carrying the drug to his heart and brain. His eyes slipped as they tried to focus on me, and the sword in his hand blurred and steadied. “Block it!” the lightning mage snapped at him. “Block it!”

I turned and sprinted for the tunnel, but even drugged and dazed, the force mage wasn’t out of the fight. A wall of opaque light appeared; in a flash I saw the future in which I tried to smash through fail, and instead I broke right, feeling another lightning ball scorch past my head, and as I turned I was drawing the hidden knife from under my coat. I flipped it to hold the blade between finger and thumb, took a second to aim, then hurled it at the force mage as hard as I could.

Throwing a knife at someone with the aim of killing them is a complete waste of time. Just throwing a blade into a stationary target is hard enough—doing the same thing against someone who’s fighting back is basically impossible. I’m one of the best combat throwers I know, and even I can’t do it consistently. If you really insist on using a thrown weapon, you’re better off with a dart or a javelin, or you could just take a hint from military history and use a gun like everybody else.

There’s one thing that knife throwing is good for, though. It’s really distracting for the guy on the receiving end.

The force mage flinched and reflexively threw up a shield. If he’d been at full strength he could have done that while holding up the barrier at the same time, but he wasn’t. The knife hit the shield and clattered to the floor, the barrier behind me vanished, and before either mage could react I was gone.

| | | | | | | | |

I sprinted up the stairs, out through the locked door, and back out into the tunnels beneath the roundabout. Someone, probably the lightning mage, was trying to gate out to cut me off, but he’d picked the tunnels to my north and I ran south instead. It took about three minutes for the mage to gate in and search the area, and by the time he figured out that he was looking in the wrong place I was long gone.

I stopped running after about half a mile and settled into a fast walk, scanning ahead through every future that I could find. Nothing showed and I kept walking south until I reached Liverpool Street, losing myself in the crowd of Londoners. I bought myself a bottle of water from a coffee shop and sat down, feeling the blood rushing in my veins. I looked down at my hands and watched them tremble. It took them a long time to stop shaking.

Once I was sure I was safe I retraced my steps back to Old Street. I found a vantage point near the roundabout and thoroughly explored all the possible futures in which I went back down into the tunnels. There was no sign of either mage, but then, I hadn’t expected there to be. Now that the attack had failed they’d withdrawn and cut their losses, waiting for the next time.

And so, once I was absolutely sure that they were gone, I went back.

| | | | | | | | |

“You took your sweet time,” Caldera said.

“I suppose I did,” I said.

The entrance to the Vault had none of the beauty of the Belfry. It was a big, rectangular room, with metal walls and fluorescent lights. A thick sheet of armoured glass ran across the middle, with airlock-style doors and security booths from which guards could watch people as they entered and left. Caldera and I were in one of the booths, standing on opposite sides of a table.

“You got it?” Caldera asked.

I held up the package.

Caldera took it and turned it over in her hands with a frown. Caldera is an earth mage with thick arms and legs, broad and heavy and tough. We’d been fairly close until three months ago. “You sit on it, or what?”

“Something like that.”

Caldera looked sharply at me. “You open it?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“Christ. Yes, I’m sure.”

Caldera grunted and slid a form across the table. “Fill in the box and sign.”

I scribbled with the pen. Caldera took the form back and started filling it in with a look of concentration.

I was left standing. A couple of security guards were talking thirty feet away, but I couldn’t hear them through the armoured glass. The only noise was the scratch of pen on paper.

“You want to talk about it?” I asked.

Caldera didn’t look up. “About what?”

“You know what.”

Caldera got to the bottom of the page, flipped it over, and kept writing. She didn’t answer.

“The last time we talked?” I said. “You know, on Boxing Day?”

“I don’t really have time for this, all right?” Caldera said. She spun the form around and handed me the pen. “Sign and date.”

I did. Caldera took the form back and started towards the door at the other end of the booth. I followed, only for Caldera to turn and block me. “Where are you going?”

“Uh, with you.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I’m supposed to put this in the Vault.”

“Your orders are to deliver it to the Vault,” Caldera said. “You can go now.”

“Oh, come on,” I said in exasperation.

“What did you expect?” Caldera said. “A guided tour?”

“Would have been nice,” I said. The Vault is supposed to be the highest-security facility that the Council has, next to the War Rooms themselves, and I was curious about the defences. According to rumour, they’re guarded by everything from laser trip wires to bound elementals. I have no idea what’s behind that security, but it’s supposed to contain everything that the Council absolutely can’t afford to lose. According to rumour there are whole rooms of magical items in there, numbered and sealed away and gathering dust. The fateweaver is there too, or at least the statue that’s the door to its resting place, or so I’d been told. I didn’t really have any legitimate reason to look at the place, but quite frankly, I felt that I’d earned it. “Isn’t guarding the Vault supposed to be a Keeper duty?”

“And here I am guarding it.”

I reached into my pocket and held up my own Keeper signet.

“Funny thing,” Caldera said. “The Council don’t seem too keen on you poking around inside their top-end security.” She looked at me. “Almost like they don’t trust you.”

“Seem to remember you telling me not too long ago that you did trust me.”

“Yeah, well,” Caldera said. “Things change.”

“Look, I’m sorry about Boxing Day, okay? I was on the run and I was scared. I was just trying to stay alive.”

“Sure,” Caldera said. Her eyes were flint. Apology not accepted.

I felt a flash of anger. I could understand Caldera holding a grudge—last Boxing Day I’d hit her with insults, several punches, and a Sainsbury’s truck, in that order—but only because she’d been trying to arrest me at the time. If I’d gone along quietly, then I would have been dead within the week, but she thought she was the one with a reason to hold a grudge? I took a breath and let it out, forcing myself to calm. “Can you do one thing for me?” I said once I could make my voice level. “Check the entry records for the Old Street entrance.”

“For when?”

“Say an hour ago.”

Caldera frowned at me, then left the security booth, heading towards the far end. She opened a steel door and disappeared inside. She was gone a long time, and when she reappeared and walked back across to open the door her frown had deepened. “What’s going on?”

“Was hoping you could tell me.”

“There’s no record of your signet being used to access the top door,” Caldera said. “And when I tried to check the video feed, there’s a problem with the cameras. What are you playing at?”

“Nothing.”

“Is this another one of your stunts where you break into somewhere to show off?”

“No.”

“I’m serious, okay? If you’ve been tampering with the security systems then you need to tell me right the hell now. No one is in a mood to screw around and—”

“I said no,” I said in annoyance. “Go check up on it, since I know that’s what you’re going to do anyway. I only just got in the damn facility.”

Caldera stared at me. “Fine,” she said at last.

I left. The guards buzzed me out, and when I was almost at the exit I turned to look back. Caldera was still staring at me, and as I looked back at her I felt a sudden flash of unease. Those two mages who’d tried to abduct me had as good as admitted that they’d had Keeper help. Just for a moment, I imagined Caldera standing in a security room, arms folded, watching the fight on a TV screen.

I pushed the image away. Caldera might hold a grudge, but she’d always been straight. She wouldn’t betray me like that.

Would she?

I turned and walked into the tunnel, but the unease didn’t go away.