Forged

chapter 4

I warned you this could happen,” Klara said.

“I know.”

It was the next day and I was sitting in my cottage in the Hollow. I’d taken off my shirt, and Klara was bent over my right arm, her eyes studying it intently. Klara is a German life mage, thin and unsmiling. I didn’t really know her well enough to trust her, but with Anne gone, Klara was the best I was going to get.

“If we had amputated immediately, you would have only lost a hand,” Klara said. Her fingers pressed lightly on the not-quite-flesh where the fateweaver had replaced my skin, a faint green light spreading from the fingertips. “Now, you will lose the forearm as well. Continue to wait, and it will be the shoulder.”

“Is that still what you’re recommending?”

Klara sighed and sat back, the light at her hand fading. “No. The item has tied into your pattern and nervous system. I do not know if it could be safely removed, not without a better understanding of its workings.”

“What about the stiffness?”

“Your elbow cartilage is being converted.” Klara nodded down at my right elbow. “The item has finished transmuting your radius and ulna and is spreading to the humerus. I expect within another day or so the process will be completed and your elbow will return to full functionality.”

“So it’s fine?”

“Apart from the fact that it’s replacing your arm one part at a time, yes. I would not consider that ‘fine.’”

“Fair point,” I said, getting to my feet. “How fast is it spreading?”

“At exactly the same rate as before.”

“So that spell you tried didn’t help.”

Klara shook her head. “No effect whatsoever. At this point, the only treatments I can think of carry the risk of so much potential damage that I am hesitant even to try.”

I pulled my shirt over my head and tucked it in. “Well, I appreciate the help.”

“I don’t know why you’re thanking me. I have done nothing.” Klara looked at me. “Once again, I recommend that you seek treatment at a dedicated facility. I believe it would still be possible to remove this item with further study.”

“I understand, but that’s not an option.”

“Is being dead an option?”

I paused. “How long?”

“Half a year at the maximum. Probably no more than three months.” Klara nodded at my arm. “The item is overwriting your pattern incrementally, replacing your skin, flesh, bones, and nerves with synthetic material. You are extremely lucky that these materials have so far proven compatible with your physiology. For now at least, your body and your new arm are functioning in symbiosis. The problems will come once it finishes with your arm and starts on your torso.”

“So you think it’ll keep going.”

“There are some indications of negative feedback,” Klara said. “I think it may not spread to replace your entire body. But it will almost certainly spread through your shoulder to your head and chest.”

“What happens if it starts replacing my brain?”

“That is an excellent question. It is also irrelevant.”

“Why?”

“The item has successfully transmuted your arm,” Klara said. “Somehow, your body has managed to integrate these changes into your physiology. However, the more of your body that is replaced, the greater the strain. Your transmuted arm is fully functional, and will remain so. For various reasons, I can predict almost certainly that the same will not be true for your internal organs.”

“So you’re saying . . .”

“Your right lung will be transmuted, followed by your heart,” Klara said. “This will cause them both to shut down. The process is permanent, and once started, irreversible. Your only chance of survival is to have the growth halted before that happens.”

“Which would mean losing access to the fateweaver.”

“Yes. In fact, you should be doing that anyway. I strongly suspect that use of that item’s powers is accelerating the material’s spread.”

“Those powers are the only reason I’m still alive,” I said. “I understand what you’re saying, but right now, I need them.”

“Yes, well, the thing that’s keeping you alive is also killing you,” Klara said. “You will have to choose.”

Once Klara was gone, I sat at my desk for some time, staring down at my new arm. Klara hadn’t told me anything that I hadn’t already suspected. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much I could do about it. I needed the fateweaver, and that was that.

I hoped I’d be able to finish things before the clock ran out. At the fateweaver’s current rate of spread, I should have at least a month. One way or another, that ought to be enough.

—

And have you seen Verus since then?” the Keeper asked.

“I already told you I haven’t,” Luna said.

“Has he contacted you in any way? Items, letters, e-mail?”

“No.”

“Have you contacted him?”

“No.”

“Did he leave you any instructions to contact you?”

“No.”

It was late afternoon on the same day. Morden hadn’t contacted me—I wasn’t expecting to hear from him until the following morning—so I’d been free to spend the day focusing on the Council. It was just as well I had.

The Council were hunting me in several ways. The first and the most basic was by using divination and tracking spells to pinpoint my location directly, at which point they’d send a team to capture or kill me. I’d used a combination of anti-surveillance measures and the fateweaver’s magic to screw up their tracking spells, but with each failure, they were improving. I’d had to spend a good couple of hours today just on blocking their attempts, and it was rapidly approaching the point where avoiding them was going to prevent me from doing anything else. I’d have to do something about it soon.

But while the Council was doing that, they were also hunting me the old-fashioned way. Ever since I’d gone on the run, Keepers had been staking out my old haunts and questioning my known associates. One name was at the top of their list.

“Seems a bit strange,” one of the Keepers said. “You were his apprentice for what, five years?”

“Three,” Luna said.

“And he hasn’t got in touch?”

“No.”

“What, you don’t get on?”

Luna shrugged.

“Answer the question,” the other Keeper said.

“Like I said, I haven’t seen him.”

I was crouched in the window of a first-floor flat across the street from the Arcana Emporium. From my position, I could look down across the street through the shop windows to see the backs of the two Keepers questioning Luna. Luna was behind the counter, my view of her head blocked by the ceiling, but I could see enough to read her body language. No one else was in the shop: the Keepers had flashed badges and shooed all the customers out. A couple were lingering outside, shooting curious looks through the glass.

I was listening in on the conversation through a small speaker unit resting on the floor. The speaker was connected wirelessly to a pair of microphones hidden in the shop. I’d installed them after the Keepers had made their first visit. This was their fourth.

“Where do you think Verus might be right now?” the first Keeper said. Her name was Saffron and she was a mind mage.

“I don’t know,” Luna said.

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“I’ve already told you,” Luna said. “It was before he was outlawed, here at this shop.”

“You haven’t seen him since then?”

“No.”

Mind magic isn’t a lie detector. A mind mage can read surface thoughts without being obvious about it, but to search memories they have to break through their target’s mental defences first. Officially, Saffron wasn’t allowed to do either of those things to Luna without formally charging her with a crime. Unofficially, I was quite sure she’d been reading Luna’s thoughts since the first visit. I’m quite familiar with mind magic, and I’d made sure to teach Luna as much as I could, which meant that, right now, Luna was carefully schooling her thoughts to make sure Saffron could learn nothing useful whatsoever.

Of course, at any point Saffron and her partner Avenor could just decide screw it and drag Luna off to a cell to rip out the contents of her head by brute force. So far, they hadn’t, mainly because they had no evidence linking her to me, but it wouldn’t take much to change their minds.

“Verus is facing the death penalty,” Avenor said. “Once we catch him, he’ll be interrogated. Fully interrogated. Anyone who helped him, they’re getting the same sentence. You understand?”

“Yes,” said Luna flatly.

“You hear anything, you let us know,” Saffron said. “The Council won’t wait forever.”

“Okay.”

Footsteps sounded through the speakers, and across the street, I saw Saffron and Avenor open the door and walk out, leaving Luna alone. Through the speakers, I heard Luna exhale. She stood behind the counter for nearly a minute, then walked to the door, flipped the sign from CLOSED to OPEN, and went back to minding the shop.

I stayed crouched by the window, checking the futures. Once I was absolutely sure that Saffron and Avenor weren’t coming back, I took up the rifle lying beside me, returned it to its case, snapped the case closed, and stowed it in its hiding place under the floorboards.

Afternoon turned into evening, and the shadows lengthened on the floor. A steady stream of customers flowed in and out of the Arcana Emporium: teenagers, adults, tourists, locals, and some who didn’t fall into any obvious category. Luna dealt with them all, selling items, giving advice, and fielding questions, while I watched from above.

Looking down on Luna, I couldn’t help but think how once upon a time, that had been me. Right now she was listening to a pair of women in cut-off shorts, one with a bundle of posters, the other with a pair of plastic bags, who were asking her whether magic was really just another way of having faith in Jesus. I tried to imagine what it would be like to be back in her shoes, opening the shop at nine o’clock every day, and couldn’t. My memories of that time had an unreal quality these days, like I was remembering someone else’s life instead of my own.

It was nearly seven when Luna finished with the last customer and followed them to the door to flip the sign back to CLOSED. She stretched and yawned, did a circuit of the shop, then took out a broom and spent five minutes sweeping the floor. Once she was done she sat down at the counter and opened the ledger.

The sun had disappeared behind the rooftops, and the sky was turning a dusky blue. I looked down across the street and through the shop window at Luna. She was focusing on the ledger, making notes with a pen. I saw her reach up to brush a strand of hair behind her ear, and as she did I felt a stab of loneliness so sharp that it was like a physical pain. I didn’t want to be up here, spying on someone who was supposed to be my friend. I wanted to be down there talking to her. When the Council had outlawed me, they hadn’t just taken away my position, they’d taken away my connections. I missed being able to drop in on Luna or Variam for a visit. I missed Arachne and the safety of her lair. I missed having regular, normal interactions, and I missed Anne most of all.

I let out a breath and tried to steady myself. It took a while.

By the time I was calm again, the sun was setting. Luna was still down in the shop, working away. This was taking longer than I’d expected—my best guess had been that her visitor should have arrived by now—but divination’s never reliable when it comes to free will. Still, the futures were converging and it shouldn’t take more than another ten minutes. I was glad that Avenor and Saffron hadn’t stuck around. This was going to be risky enough already.

The futures settled, and I felt a stir of gate magic from somewhere behind the shop. About thirty seconds later, there was the sound through the speakers of the shop’s inner door opening. Luna’s head snapped up and she went still.

“Surprise!” Anne said. “Is this a bad time?”

Anne had changed a lot in the last few weeks. Her hair had grown to fall almost to the small of her back, and in place of her old clothes she wore a jet-black skater dress with an off-shoulder design that left most of her arms and legs bare. The biggest change, though, was in how she moved. The old Anne had been tall and striking, but she’d downplayed both, hanging back and staying quiet. Now, she walked onto the shop floor as if she owned it.

Luna’s head moved to track Anne as she passed, but her hands stayed on the counter. “Love what you’ve done with the place,” Anne said, glancing around. “Not sure exactly what you changed, but it really feels different from when Alex was running it, you know?”

“I wasn’t expecting you,” Luna said.

“Yeah, well, you know how it is,” Anne said. “Or actually, I guess you don’t, since you never had the whole fugitive experience, but you can probably imagine I don’t pre-book much of a social calendar, right? So how’s it going? Still working nine to five?”

“Mostly.”

Anne shook her head, her hair swaying with the motion. “I don’t know why you stick at it. Selling crystal balls to fat women who want to win the lottery? You’re not an apprentice anymore, you don’t have to keep minding the till.”

“I’m not minding the till,” Luna said. “This place is mine now.”

“God knows why you’d want it.” Anne pulled out a chair from against the wall and dropped into it, studying Luna critically. “You do look good though.”

“Thanks,” Luna said. “So what have you been up to?”

“Oh, you know,” Anne said. “Council wants me, Richard wants me. It’s kind of dull, really. They chase me, I run away, they chase me, I run away, I get bored of running and murder them all, they scrape up more guys to chase me again. Same old same old.”

“Are they chasing you right now?”

Anne shrugged. “Maybe? I don’t really keep track.”

The answer to that was yes. A Council team was trying to track Anne at this very moment, and they would have succeeded by now if I hadn’t intervened, using the fateweaver to scatter the threads of their spell. Neither Luna nor Anne would have been in immediate danger, but it would have given the Council a reason to investigate Luna more closely.

Luna wasn’t looking happy at all. “Could you maybe not lead them straight to my shop?”

“Hey, I have to find you somewhere. Not like you’d come visit if I’d sent you an invitation.”

“I would have, actually.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” Luna said. “You were my best friend. Remember?”

“Aww!” Anne smiled. “Of course I do. Nice to know you do as well.”

“Look,” Luna said. “I would like to talk to you. But knowing that a Keeper team might show up at any minute is not exactly making me feel relaxed here.”

Anne waved a hand. “Fine, fine, I’ll get to the point. What if I told you there was a way you wouldn’t have to worry about the Council breathing down your neck?”

“How?”

“Same way that I don’t.”

“You don’t have to worry about the Council because you’ve got a bonded jinn.”

Anne smiled. She raised her eyebrows.

Luna paused. “You’re not serious.”

“You remember those talks we used to have?” Anne asked. “You always said you wanted to do something. Make a difference.”

“And you said you didn’t,” Luna said. “That you just wanted to be left alone.”

“Yeah, well, that was then, this is now. So what do you think? Ready to shake things up a bit?”

“Anne,” Luna said. “I’m not in your league. I never was. You were ten times stronger than I was before you got that jinn. You and Vari and Alex can get away with things like thumbing your noses at the Council and daring them to do something about it. I can’t. That mage status I have, the one you’re putting at risk by being here now? That’s the only reason the Council haven’t just pulled me off the street already. I know the Council treated you like a bottom-rank mage, but that was still better than how they treated me. You really don’t understand how little it takes for them to come down on me.”

“So stop worrying about them coming down on you,” Anne said. “Make them afraid that you’ll be the one coming after them.”

“You want me to bond to your jinn as well.”

“Not mine. But there are others.”

“Why me?”

“Because like you said, we were best friends,” Anne said. “I’d like to think we still could be. And when it comes to jinn, you’ve got some firsthand experience.”

Luna was still for a second. “You’re talking about the monkey’s paw.”

Anne rose to her feet and began strolling around the room. She didn’t answer, not straightaway.

“You’re hoping I’ll get it for you, aren’t you?” Luna said. “Wait. Is that why you came here? Were you hoping it’d just show up on the shelves?”

“I was kind of wondering,” Anne said. She trailed a finger along one of the shelves, disappearing from my view for a few seconds before coming back into sight. “I mean, that was the way it worked back when Alex was running the place, right? Just sort of pop into existence when the right person came along?”

“Yeah, well, it’s not popping.”

“There are other jinn,” Anne said with a shrug. “It’s you I really care about.”

“So what’s the idea?” Luna asked. “Us two, each with a jinn, going on a rampage?”

“Hey, you were the one saying about how the Council treats you,” Anne said. “You told me enough times how they’d look down their noses at you for being an adept. Why not make them have to look up to you for a change?”

“Yeah, for how long?” Luna asked. “Because you’re right, I do know a bit about jinn. As in, I know what happens to the people who make a contract with one. You remember what the monkey’s paw does once its bearers run out of wishes?”

“Those other bearers didn’t have me.”

“They probably all told themselves that too,” Luna said. “But fine. Forget all that for a second. Let’s say it works. We get our jinn, set ourselves up as the big bad witch-queens of the British Isles. Is that the plan?”

“More or less.”

Luna nodded. “Then what?”

“Then we deal with the people who want to take us down. Like the Council, and Richard, and—”

“I mean after that,” Luna interrupted. “Then what?”

For the first time in the conversation, Anne looked honestly puzzled. “Does it matter?”

I heard Luna sigh slightly. “I suppose to you it doesn’t.”

“So?”

“I’ll admit it’s tempting,” Luna said. “And it would be one thing if it was just you. But I’m having trouble getting past the jinn.”

There was a note in Luna’s voice which it took me a second to recognise, then suddenly I understood. Luna had already made up her mind. Now she was trying to figure out how to get Anne to take no for an answer.

“The jinn is the reason I can do all this,” Anne said impatiently. “Look, stop getting hung up on that part, okay? I know what I’m doing.”

“That’s what Martin told me,” Luna said. “As in, those exact words. Usually with some comment about how dumb everyone else was to be scared of wishes when all you had to do was word them right. And he kept being cocky right up to the point where he made the wrong wish and went crazy. I was there, okay? I watched him screaming his lungs out, trying to rip out his own eyeballs. So don’t just brush me off when I have issues with this.”

“He was making wishes,” Anne said. “I don’t have to.” She opened up one hand; dark threads spun and coiled above her palm. “When you really bond with a jinn, you don’t need all that anymore. We act as one.”

“So what does the jinn get out of it?”

“Look, I don’t have time to play twenty questions. Are you in or not?”

“I’m . . . going to have to think about it.”

Anne’s back was to me so I couldn’t see her face, but all of a sudden, there was a dangerous note in her voice. “You’ll think about it?” She dropped her hand, but the dark threads didn’t disappear; they spun faster, growing. “This isn’t a telemarketing call.”

Uh-oh. I took one glance at the futures and stood up, making the movement big and noticeable. Reaching out with the fateweaver, I picked out a strand.

Anne paused. She turned her head slightly, then stopped. The dark threads twining around her shrank and disappeared. “Fine,” she said to Luna. “I’ll be in touch.” She walked past the counter and left. The door shut with a loud click.

Through the glass, I saw Luna’s shoulders slump, the tension going out of her.

—

I was waiting on the roof of the Arcana Emporium when Anne’s head poked up above the wall. “There you are!” she said. She looked cheerful; the flash of temper she’d shown down in the shop was gone. “I was wondering if you were going to stick around.”

“You were wondering if I’d stick around?” I said. “I’ve been trying to catch up with you for weeks. You are not an easy person to find these days.”

“What can I say? I’m a popular girl.” Anne sprang lightly up the last few rungs of the ladder and alighted on the roof. She looked around appreciatively. The Camden skyline stretched out around us, chimneys and TV aerials rising up like saplings over hills of tiles and brick. The sky was a dusky purple, a couple of faint stars struggling to make it through the city’s light pollution. “This brings back memories. So does she know you’re spying on her?”

“You’re not the only one who’s popular in the wrong places,” I said. “If Luna doesn’t see me, she doesn’t have to lie when the Keepers ask where I am.”

“Still holding her hand, huh? Don’t remember you doing that with me.” Anne stretched and turned along the line of the rooftops. “Come on then, let’s take a walk.”

I fell into step beside Anne, crossing over the dividing wall to the next building. “Actually, I’m pretty sure I did exactly that when you got attacked at Archway,” I said. “Or when you got kidnapped from your flat in Honor Oak. Or when you got kidnapped again a few years later. Or when—”

“Okay, okay, fine,” Anne said, waving a hand. “Is this your way of saying I owe you?”

“Not exactly,” I said. “But I do have a request. A while ago, you said you had a list.”

“Working my way down, one name at a time,” Anne said. “Why, you want someone put on there? I might do it if you ask nicely.”

“More like a rearrangement. I’m guessing right now Sagash is next?”

“Got it in one.”

I nodded. “Could you move him down to number two?”

“Who’s number one?”

“Levistus.”

“Well, well.” Anne looked at me appraisingly. “So you’re finally done playing nice.”

“Playing nice has not done me much good over the last few years.”

“Took you long enough to figure that out.” Anne stopped on the roof of an apartment building and drummed her fingers on a ventilator for a second before shrugging. “All right.”

That was easy, I thought. No, too easy. Which means . . . “You haven’t figured out how you’re going to get into Sagash’s shadow realm, have you?”

Anne gave me an unreadable look.

“Funny, I thought that jinn of yours could do anything.” I raised my eyebrows. “Maybe it’s limited by having to act through you? So it’s great at close-range effects, but more abstract stuff like gates—”

“It is great at close-range effects,” Anne said, her tone clearly indicating that she didn’t like the way the conversation was going. “Want a demonstration?”

I raised a hand, palm towards her. “Anyway, I imagine Levistus wasn’t all that far down your list in the first place. He and Barrayar spent more than enough time trying to nail us when you were my aide, and I’ve always had the feeling that he had a hand in that interrogation order.”

“I already said yes, you can stop selling. So what’s the plan?”

I didn’t have one, but I didn’t want to admit that. “Not here,” I said. “You have somewhere more secure we could talk?”

“Yeah, the place you used to meet me,” Anne said with a grin. “If it’s not broke . . .”

Of course she’d want to go there. “Works for me. I’ll find you in a couple of days.”

We stood in the twilight for a few seconds, facing one another. Anne watched me with a secretive smile, her reddish eyes dark in the reflected light, the wind from the streets making her hair drift slightly. I wondered what she’d say if I asked her to stay with me, and had to force myself not to look into the future to find out. I wasn’t sure I trusted myself with the answer.

“Well, got to go.” Anne stepped back and the moment was broken. “Catch you later!” She turned and vanished into the night.

I stood there for a minute after she’d gone. Half of me was disappointed, half relieved, and I didn’t know which half was smarter. I hadn’t realised how badly I’d missed hearing her voice.

Threatening futures loomed and I sighed and pushed the thoughts aside. The Council were hunting me yet again, and they were using those new-model tracking spells that had proven so annoyingly effective. If I wanted to give them the slip, it’d take me the rest of the evening.

But I had other things I wanted to be doing. Anne’s sales pitch to Luna and the hints she’d dropped about other jinn were bothering me, and she’d agreed to my offer too easily. She was up to something, and I needed to know what.

—

The flat in St. John’s Wood had that blandly tasteful look you only find in the parts of London that are ridiculously expensive. The building security gave me little trouble; the security on the flat itself gave me even less. Once I was inside I took a glance around. There were more papers than the last time I’d been here, as well as a lot more magical auras, but fewer computers and electronics. It had also gotten even messier, if that were possible. The only chair was stacked with overflowing folders, so I gave up and just sat on the bed.

It was a little over an hour before I heard the rattle of the door, which gave me more than enough time to sort through the futures of the Council hunter team and nudge them in the direction I wanted. There was a click and light flooded in from the hallway, then there were footsteps, and the room lit up as a mage in his twenties walked in.

Sonder was dressed as if he’d just come from the office, and his head was buried in a sheaf of papers. The combination of smart clothing and messy hair made him look like a programmer at a big tech company, or maybe a political aide. He hadn’t changed much since I’d last seen him, but then I’d been through a lot more lately than he had.

It was tempting to wait and see how long it would take for him to notice me, but I was on a clock. “Hi, Sonder.”

Sonder jumped, scattering papers, and whirled. One hand started to come up, then he recognised me and froze.

“Nice to see you too,” I said. “Okay, so I’ve got good news and bad news. Bad news—that slow-time field you’re thinking of using, or that stasis field? You wouldn’t get it off fast enough. Good news is I’m not here for a fight.”

From looking at the futures, I could sense Sonder’s thoughts racing. Slowly they calmed down and the possibilities of a fight vanished. “How did you get in?” Sonder asked cautiously.

“Your security sucks,” I said. “So, how are things with the Council? I imagine after what happened to Sal Sarque they must have a bunch of openings.”

I saw Sonder flinch slightly at the reminder. “It’s . . . going well.”

I sighed. “Oh, relax, Sonder. I’ve never lifted a finger against you in all the years we’ve known each other and I’ve got no intention of starting now. Not unless you try to arrest me or something equally stupid.”

Sonder grimaced slightly. “Not much chance of that.” He sat down, a little of the tension going out of him. “So are you . . . ah . . .”

“Doing well as an outlaw?” I finished. “Can’t complain.”

“Um. Good.”

I looked at Sonder.

“I mean, not good,” he said hastily. “It’s good that, well . . .”

“Okay, you know what, let’s skip the small talk,” I said. “I’d like to quiz you about a research subject.”

“Which subject?”

“Project Catalyst.”

Sonder paused for just a second too long. “What?”

“After Morden did his raid on the Vault two years ago, the Council issued an order to investigate the imbued items that were stolen. You were one of the project leads and did most of the item reports, which I was reading the same day you delivered them, so can you not play dumb, please?”

“You know all this was top secret,” Sonder said.

“Sonder, let me explain something to you,” I said. “Right now, there is a team of Council Keepers hunting me. The longer I stay in one place, the better the chances that they’ll track me there. When they do, there will be a fight. Once the dust settles, any survivors will be in an extremely bad mood, and when they discover that you and I were in this room, they will have questions. These questions will be uncomfortable and potentially highly embarrassing for both you and any allies you happen to have on the Council. So I would suggest that it is very much in your interest not to dick me around.”

“Okay, okay,” Sonder said hurriedly. “I get what you’re saying, but Project Catalyst was huge. You can’t expect me to remember all of the details.”

“I don’t need to know about all the items, just one. Suleiman’s Ring.”

“Well, I can remember that, but . . . look, there was a reason that thing ended up in the Vault. No one’s going to go running experiments on a ring with a jinn.”

“I know, I read your report. I’m not interested in what the ring can do. I want to know about the jinn inside it. Specifically, its history.”

“Oh. Well, that’s easy.” Sonder seemed to relax a little bit. These days Sonder was a politician, but he’d started his career as a historian, and this was his home ground. “It’s the marid sultan. It’s just referred to as the sultan in the records, because it was unnamed . . . you know about that?”

I shook my head.

“It was what they did with all the marids. Apparently the binding ritual for the jinn used their true names. They wanted to stop them from breaking free, so after they finished, they made sure that the marids’ names would be lost permanently . . .”

I nodded, listening with half an ear while I monitored the futures. The Keeper team hunting me was narrowing down my location. I could stall them with the fateweaver, but not for long.

“. . . and that was why they think it was in that bubble realm,” Sonder said. “After what happened to the last mage who tried to use it, well . . .”

“Okay, you don’t know the marid’s name,” I said. “Is there anything you do know about it? History, personality, goals?”

“Its goals were the defeat of the Council, I think,” Sonder said. “The war went on a very long time. By the end the jinn had been fighting a losing battle for years.”

“And the rest?”

“Well, most of the historical data we have from back then are official Council records,” Sonder said. “They’re focused on the progress of the war and Council resolutions. As far as the individual marids go, there are some tactical analyses, but . . .”

“Tactical analyses?”

“The sultan was served by four ifrit generals,” Sonder said. “They each had different types of elemental control, sounded a lot like elemental mages, actually. Apparently they had some way of amplifying the sultan’s power. It was only after the Council launched a strike specifically targeting them that they were able to defeat the sultan afterwards.”

“So did they bind them into items too?”

Sonder shook his head. “No, they discussed that but rejected it. Too many worries that anyone who got hold of one of the generals could use it to free the sultan. They were banished instead.”

“They didn’t just kill them?”

“Well, they couldn’t.”

“Why not?”

Sonder looked at me in surprise. “Jinn can’t be killed. You didn’t know?”

I shook my head.

“It’s because they’re partly divine.” Sonder settled back into his chair; he was in his element now. “I mean, ‘divine’ is the wrong word, there’s nothing sacred about them, but the people who wrote about them back then were a lot less rational about these things. A better model is that jinn exist in two different states. They have a physical form that exists inside space-time, and a nonphysical form that exists outside it. That was how the binding ritual could work. It just remapped their nonphysical state from one body to another.”

I frowned as I thought about that. “It was that easy?”

“Well, it took a lot of research to develop.”

“I didn’t mean easy to do. What effect did it have on the jinn?”

“Well, they were still around. And they could still grant wishes.”

“I mean in terms of what it was like for them.”

“Oh.” Sonder shrugged. “I don’t think anybody knows.”

Arachne had told me that the binding process had harmed the jinn, filling them with hatred or driving them to madness. She hadn’t explained why. “You said the jinn’s nonphysical states existed outside space-time,” I said. “So it was their physical forms that tethered them to our conception of time and space. Right?”

“Well, yes, in layman’s terms.”

“So switching their physical forms . . . would that mean that while they were in between the two, their consciousness wouldn’t have a temporal anchor? So they wouldn’t experience time in the same way as us at all?”

“Probably,” Sonder said. “I mean, you’re talking about the infinity point hypothesis, right?”

“The what?”

“You know, from Schulte?”

The futures shifted, and I paused to look at the change. The Keeper team hunting me had managed to get a first-stage fix on my signature. They’d have to do a second pass to narrow down my location, but just gating wouldn’t be enough to throw them off anymore. I had maybe five or six minutes.

“Alex?”

“Sorry. I’m not very familiar with his work.”

“Well, you know how all of those attempts for mages to transfer their consciousness into external housings never seem to work, right?” Sonder said. “And it’s not just here, pretty much every Light Council across the globe has a history of trying it. Golems, simulacra, clones, they never seem to take. Either the mind doesn’t jump, or they come out insane. Anyway, Schulte’s hypothesis was that it’s our physical body that allows our consciousness to experience time in a sequential way. Without a physical tether, our consciousness still exists, but it doesn’t occupy any position in space-time. The problem with all of those transference rituals was that no matter how they were designed, there was an infinitesimally small period during the jump where the transferring consciousness wasn’t tethered to their new body or their old body. Everyone else would perceive that moment as only a tiny fraction of a second, but without an anchor, the transferring consciousness could theoretically experience it as any length of time.”

A chill went through me. “You mean they could experience something that felt like thousands of years? With no sensory input or feedback?”

Sonder nodded. “Hence the insanity. That’s the theory anyway. It’s why nobody tries transferring their mind into a golem anymore.”

“So the same thing could have happened to those jinn.”

“Well, it would explain why they were so uncooperative.”

I was thinking about what the jinn in the monkey’s paw had said. Between body and seal, we were outside. A blink of an eye and a thousand years. What would it be like, to be shut out from the world in total sensory deprivation for a thousand years? Jinn wouldn’t experience it the same way as humans, but it couldn’t be good.

How would you survive something like that? You could do mental exercises, training your magical abilities in the way I’d trained in those long months when I was a prisoner in Richard’s mansion. Or you could focus on something, some goal or ideal, something greater than yourself to give you something to cling to during the endless years. The marid within the monkey’s paw had chosen the binding law of the contract. The sultan marid . . . what would it have chosen?

At the time of its binding, it had been leading its species in a war against mages. That would have been its goal.

Eternal war. I shivered.

“What is it?” Sonder asked. “You keep spacing out.”

“Little distracted. Sorry.” I rose to my feet, checking the futures. Only a minute or so left. “Sonder? One last thing. The jinn that weren’t bound into items. Can they still be summoned?”

Sonder nodded. “By the higher-order jinn, yes. That’s how jinn-possession subjects can pull off summoning rituals so easily.”

“So could the sultan resummon any other jinn of lesser rank than him? Including those ifrit?”

“I hope not.” Sonder looked worried. “It’s bad enough dealing with one of them.”

“Yeah,” I said. The futures clicked. Somewhere in a Council facility, the Keepers hunting me had just learned my exact location. “Well, time to go. Thanks for the help.”

Sonder tensed, probably wondering what I was going to do. I gave him a nod and walked out.

I shut the door of the flat behind me and started down the stairs. Mentally, I was cataloguing futures, calculating the Keeper team’s next move. Right now, they’d be cross-referencing my location with GPS data and their own records and learning that I was at Sonder’s flat. Next, they’d ping Sonder’s locator and confirm that he was there as well. From that point they had two choices. They could decide that Sonder was now an additional suspect and needed to be brought in. In that case, they’d call in more reinforcements, deploy teams to surround the area, get ready to move in with maximum force.

The other possibility was that they’d decide that Sonder was innocent and that I was an intruder, in which case the first thing they’d do would be to contact him directly. When he told them that I’d just left, they’d be faced with a dilemma. They could pull the trigger, gate in, and scramble to try to catch me before I got away, but they’d have little chance of catching me and they knew it. That just left them with one last option for tracking me before I got out of range . . .

From above me, I heard Sonder’s door, followed by the sound of feet hurriedly descending the stairs.

I sighed inwardly. They could get Sonder to slow me down. Sometimes knowing the future isn’t much fun.

Sonder came racing around the last flight of steps and caught himself as he saw me standing at the bottom. “Is there a problem?” I asked.

“Uh . . . ,” Sonder said.

I looked at him, eyebrows raised.

Sonder had just started to open his mouth to speak when there was a shift in the futures and he paused, the movement so slight that you wouldn’t have noticed unless you were watching for it. It wasn’t a long pause. Just long enough for someone speaking into his ear over a concealed link to suggest a cover story. “Don’t use the front door,” Sonder said. “The Council are monitoring it.”

“I have to go out somewhere.”

“You can go through the courtyard.” He hesitated for just an instant. “There’s a back way. I’ll show you.”

I looked up at Sonder. He shifted uncomfortably, and I felt a flash of disappointment. It wasn’t the fact that Sonder had gone along with the Keepers—I’d always known his loyalty was to the Council. It was that he’d done it so damn fast. “Okay, but hurry up.”

Sonder led me the other way along an internal corridor, where a pair of double doors led outside. Or not exactly outside; high walls rose up all around us. Sonder had called it a “courtyard,” but it was more of an internal park, with flats rising up in a rectangle on four sides, and a neatly tended stretch of grass and trees criss-crossed by stone paths. It was a gated community and looked very exclusive and cosy. “So how’s the war been going?” I asked.

“Pretty well.”

“You mean apart from Sal Sarque and his entire retinue getting killed?”

“Drakh took losses too,” Sonder said. “And we destroyed their base in that shadow realm they were using to launch attacks.”

Sonder sounded distracted, as you’d expect from someone trying to follow two conversations at once. “Everyone seems to think you’re losing,” I told him.

“We’re not losing,” Sonder said quickly. “The war’s in a stalemate due to . . .”

I listened with half an ear. The Keeper team were getting ready to gate in at multiple locations. Multiple simultaneous locations—how were they managing that? There should be too much variation in the gate timings for—ah. They had a space mage. In fact, it was someone I’d met a while ago. Her name was Symmaris, and she’d provided the transport for a Keeper hit team who’d burned down my old shop. They were planning to have her open several gates at once and surround me.

“. . . which is why they’re making a mistake,” Sonder finished.

“Uh-huh,” I said. Sonder was leading me diagonally across the courtyard. The Keepers were planning to launch their attack once I got out into the street, but they were still setting it up, and if I forced them to move early they’d have to go with their emergency plan, which was to gate right into the courtyard. I changed my focus to look at Sonder. They were probably talking to him through an earpiece—yup, earpiece communicator. I carry a dispel focus that looks like a long silver needle. Without breaking stride, I slid it out of my pocket, brought it up to just behind and to one side of Sonder’s ear, and discharged it in the air.

There was a faint, tinny shriek as the communicator overloaded, and Sonder yelped, putting a hand to his head. He backed away from me, eyes flicking down to my hand and up again. “What are you . . . ?”

“Shh,” I said, returning the focus to my pocket and watching the futures intently. They were swirling as the Keepers tried to figure out what to do. I pushed delicately with the fateweaver. Not too hard, we don’t want to tip them off . . . there. I turned around and started walking back across the courtyard.

“What are you doing?” Sonder called.

“I’m going this way.”

“The way out’s—”

“No, I’ve got a good feeling about this way.”

The futures flickered briefly as Sonder considered his options. I kept an eye on them while I paid most of my attention to the futures of the Keeper team. Let’s see, visual angle is there, firing angle is there. I stopped, changed direction, walked ten paces, and stopped.

Sonder came up behind me cautiously. “Um . . . what are you doing?”

“Do you know what’s special about this spot?” I asked Sonder.

“. . . No?”

I pointed at the pathway ahead, where it curved towards the doorway that we’d come out of. “That point is midway between where I was when you met me at the foot of the stairs, and where I was when we turned around. If you were searching for someone you suspected of doubling back, it’s where you’d start. Of course, it’s not very good from a tactical perspective, because anyone could come up behind you.” I turned and pointed to the left, where a grassy bed near the wall of the flats was lined with flowers. “If you wanted a good tactical position, you’d take that spot, right in front of the flowerbed. It’s at the centre of the wall so it gives you a view straight down the courtyard, and it’s between the windows of the ground-floor flat, so your back isn’t exposed. If you were a Keeper and you had to pick a landing spot, that’s where you’d go.”

Sonder looked confused and alarmed at the same time. The mention of Keepers must have clued him in that something was wrong, but he was still two steps behind. “. . . Okay.”

The futures had settled, the Keeper leader in charge of the team had given his orders, and Symmaris was forming her gateway. Space mages are very efficient at gateways. “But that’s not where I’m standing. What’s special about this spot?”

“I’m not sure,” Sonder said.

“This spot is special because it’s fifteen degrees offset from the plane of a gateway appearing at that spot there,” I said, pointing at the flower bed. “Symmaris likes to create her gates so that they’re rotated seventy-five degrees clockwise. She can’t make the angle any more extreme than that without compromising the spell, but it means that if anyone’s standing right there in front of the gate, she won’t be facing them. She’s paranoid that way. Do you understand?”

“Not really,” Sonder said uneasily. “Look, I think we should get moving—”

Sonder stopped as space magic pulsed from the spot I’d been pointing at. With a shimmer, the air darkened and transformed, forming a gateway between the courtyard and somewhere else.

I’d already turned away. Using my coat to hide my movements, I drew my pistol and fired.

The bullet reached the gateway just as the gate portal had finished forming, and entered and exited the gate five and a half feet off ground level at an angle of fifteen degrees from the plane of the gate. I had just a fraction of a second to see Symmaris on the other side of the gate, standing in a Keeper briefing room, her hands raised as she focused on her spell, and her eyes came to rest on me and began to widen just as the bullet hit her in the middle of the forehead.

Symmaris’s head snapped back and the gate winked out. The security man who had been about to jump through never made it. The echoes of the shot rebounded around the walls and died away, and the courtyard was quiet once again.

“Hey!” Sonder shouted. “What are you . . . ?”

I returned the pistol to its concealed holster and turned back to Sonder. “You really should pay more attention to these things.”

Sonder looked on edge, ready to fight or flee. The funny thing was, I was pretty sure he didn’t understand what had just happened. From his angle, he would have seen the gate open, caught a glimpse of Council security, then nothing. Sonder’s never been very decisive; he can react when threatened, but when there’s no clear course of action, he tends to hesitate. I used to be the same.

Up above, lights were coming on in the flats, and people were peering out of the windows to see what the noise was. Sonder looked from me to where the gateway had been. “We’re done here,” I told Sonder.

Sonder hesitated. A future wavered into existence of him trying to trap me in a stasis bubble.

I looked at him and shook my head.

Sonder looked back at me and the future vanished. I turned and walked away.

Two minutes later, three more gates opened up and a Keeper assault force came storming in to find Sonder standing alone in an empty courtyard. I was long gone.