Alex Verus 5: Hidden (11 page)

“I don’t owe you anything.”

“Please.”

“You know what?” I said. “I’ll make you a deal. I’m interested in Anne Walker’s location. Morden knows where she is. Find out, and I’ll tell you why that Keeper’s here and what she wants. And what you need to do to stay away from her.”

Meredith gave me an uncertain look, then hurried away. I leant on the balcony railing, watching Caldera and Sonder approach. As I did, the communicator chimed and I heard Luna’s voice in my ear. “Alex? I can’t see you.”

I was turned away from the others on the balcony, but I kept my voice very quiet. “I’m on the balcony. What’s your status?”

Caldera was approaching the stairs up to the balcony at a steady pace. There was a clear path between her and the stairs, and the Dark mages didn’t exactly block her way . . . but they didn’t move aside, either. Everyone was watching the two of them, and there was a kind of lazy tension in the air, a pack of wolves studying a wolfhound. Caldera’s face was stone, and almost against my will I felt a flash of admiration. The Order of the Star goes after mages who violate the Concord, and no matter how you interpret that, Dark mages are right at the top of their suspect list. Caldera was quite literally walking into a crowd of people whom she hunted for a living, and if those people decided to turn the tables and hunt
her
, she wouldn’t have a hope in hell of making it out alive. But there was no fear on Caldera’s face or in the way she moved, and the Dark mages stood still, letting her pass. Predators are drawn to weakness, and Caldera wasn’t showing any.

Sonder was another matter. He was half a step behind Caldera, and as the two of them approached I saw eyes drift away from the heavier woman and lock onto him instead. Sonder’s head was up and he was putting on a brave face, but his movements were too quick, too nervous. He looked like a new fish on the prison yard. Without Caldera, I put his life expectancy here at about twenty minutes.

“I’ve been talking to the apprentices,” Luna said into my ear. “Most of them are talking about Morden and that proposal—you know, Dark mages and the Council—but I found out something else. Sagash has apprentices, and they’re here.”

“Good,” I said quietly. Beneath me, I saw Meredith appear from the direction of the stairs and move towards Morden’s little crowd. Caldera and Sonder entered where she’d left, disappearing from my view.

“I think I can find them. I can go after them, or I could try Morden’s—”

“Go after the apprentices. I’ll deal with Morden.”

“Got it.”

From behind me I heard footsteps and I knew Caldera and Sonder were at my back. I stayed facing away, leaning on the balcony rail and tracking them in my future sight. Only after they’d passed by did I turn my head slightly to look. The two of them were moving around the semicircular balcony, heading for the room at the far end. Jagadev would be within.

I was torn. I badly wanted to talk to Sagash: I hadn’t spotted him yet, but if his apprentices were here he probably was too. On the other hand, looking for him meant leaving Sonder and Caldera on their own, and I could already see two or three Dark mages drifting after them. Caldera should be able to take care of herself, but I wasn’t so sure about Sonder . . .

Sonder and Caldera vanished behind a pillar and I shook my head and turned away. They were adults; they’d have to handle themselves. The only place I hadn’t checked yet was the far side of the balcony, and I headed along it. Down on the club floor I could see that Meredith was talking to one of the mages around Morden. I needed to hurry.

Sagash was at the very end of the balcony, and he was alone. None of the other mages had approached him, and even from a distance I could see why. Being a Dark mage comes with a certain automatic intimidation factor—you don’t get far in Dark society without being ruthless, and even the ones who
haven’t
reached their current position over a pile of bodies are not to be messed with—but still, most of them practise a certain minimum level of subtlety. Fear is useful, but sometimes you just want to blend in.

Apparently Sagash was of the opinion that blending in was for wimps.

He was taller than me, and skeletally thin. The flesh of his hands and neck was withered, stretched tight over clearly visible tendons and bones, and the fingers grasping the balcony railing looked like claws. His lips were pulled slightly back over his mouth, showing his teeth in an endless mirthless grin, and his skin was yellowed and pale. A black cap covered his skull, and dark robes hung from his bony shoulders. He looked like a cross between a famine survivor and an animated skeleton, but his thin limbs gave no impression of weakness; there was a kind of unnatural immobility about him, coiled and ready for action. I’m not going to say he was the
most
terrifying-looking human being I’ve ever seen, but I’d have trouble coming up with a better candidate on short notice.

I swallowed quietly.
Well, you’re always telling Luna not to judge by appearances, right?

Sagash turned to face me as I approached, and it was just as well I’d had advance warning or I would have flinched. Up close his face looked even worse; the flesh was stretched over the skull, and pinpoints of yellow light glowed from sunken eye sockets. “Sagash,” I said. I managed to keep my voice steady, but it was a near thing. “I’m glad I caught you.”
Let’s not get into the question of who’s caught whom . . .

Sagash stared at me. I’d thought of a dozen lies and half truths, but as I looked into his eyes I abandoned them all. There was something inhuman about Sagash, and my instincts told me that the tricks which had worked on Meredith and Ordith wouldn’t work on him. “I wonder if you might be able to help me,” I said. “I’m interested in the whereabouts of an apprentice called Anne Walker.”

Sagash studied me for a moment before speaking. His voice had a grating, rasping sound, like a piece of sandpaper working on a particularly stubborn lump of wood. “You are misinformed.”

“I was under the impression she used to be your apprentice?”

“No longer.” Sagash still hadn’t asked my name. I suspected he didn’t care.

“But I assume you keep tabs on her.”

“I neither know her present status, nor care.”

“Ah, my mistake,” I said. “My apologies. You don’t make any claim on her, then?”

Sagash’s yellow-pinpoint eyes focused on me and I had to force myself to hold my ground. “Your activities are not my concern,” he rasped. “The girl’s life is of no interest to me. Do with her as you wish.” He turned to face me, one bony hand hanging at his side; he held no weapon, but the threat was clear. “You have your answer. Leave.”

I looked—very quickly—at the consequences of staying, then bowed slightly and withdrew. Sagash watched me go, then turned back to overlook the club floor. As I turned away there was a chime in my ear and I heard Luna’s voice again. “Found them.”

“The apprentices?” I said very quietly. There were people close enough to overhear.

“They’re in the far corner. Listen, I’m going to try something. Back in a sec.”

“Wait, what are you—” The communicator cut off, and I swore under my breath. What did she mean, “try something”?

Looking into the futures, I could sense something happening around the entrance to Jagadev’s throne room, and I changed direction to head towards it. As I did I ran over what Sagash had told me. Now that it was too late, I wished I’d questioned Anne more thoroughly about her time with him; it would have made it a lot easier to figure out whether Sagash was lying. My divination magic hadn’t been much use—if someone isn’t going to tell you something, then looking into the futures of questioning them won’t help. He might be lying . . . but why? If it really had been Sagash who’d been behind Anne’s disappearance, he hadn’t broken any laws. What did he have to gain from hiding it?

The far right end of the balcony terminated in a wide doorway. Some of Jagadev’s men had been stationed outside, but I couldn’t see any trace of Jagadev himself; he must be in the rooms beyond. I couldn’t see Caldera but I could see Sonder; he’d been approached by a girl in her twenties and was talking to her. “Caldera,” I murmured, letting a pillar conceal me. “Where are you?”

There was a pause before Caldera answered, and when she did her voice was muffled. “Not a good time.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “Jagadev let you in to see him but he’s keeping you waiting, and he made Sonder wait outside?”

“Yeah.”

“Know if you’ll be done soon? It’s just that Sonder—”

“Look, whatever this is, take care of it on your own, all right? Kind of busy here.”

“No problem,” I said. “Alex out.” I walked out from behind the pillar and towards where Sonder was standing.

After you’ve spent a while in certain types of environments you get a nose for trouble. I didn’t know the girl Sonder was talking to, and I didn’t know the boy hanging back in the shadows, but I recognised the way they were standing and that was all I needed to be sure about what was going to happen. In the time I’d been talking to Caldera, Sonder had been drawn a few steps away from the entrance to Jagadev’s throne room, and he looked on the point of following the girl. “Please?” she was saying. “There’s no one else I can ask.”

“How far is he?” Sonder asked. He was hesitating, but I knew he was close to being convinced.

“Just in the next room,” the girl said. She was petite and wiry, with a birdlike way of moving, and she looked very appealing as she gazed up at Sonder. “Isn’t there anything you can do? I don’t have much, but if there’s anything I can offer you, I—”

“Leave,” I told the girl, doing my best imitation of Avis.

The girl turned, taken aback. “I don’t—What do you mean?”

“This is not something you want to involve yourself in,” I said, making my voice harsh. “Take your partner and get lost.”

The girl looked back at me for a second, then her face changed and she straightened. All of a sudden she looked a lot less vulnerable. She gave me a disgusted glance and walked away without a word. In my peripheral vision, I saw the boy slip something back into his pocket and disappear from view.

Sonder had watched the whole thing in confusion; now as I turned back to him he drew back suspiciously. “Who are you?”

I shook my head and switched to my normal voice. “Sonder, if fooling you is this easy, you
really
shouldn’t be hanging out at Dark audiences.”

Sonder stared.
“Alex?”

I took a step away. “Come on. Those two might decide to come back, and if they do they’ll bring company.”

Sonder didn’t follow. “What are you doing here? We didn’t invite you!”

“‘Why thank you, Alex,’” I said to the open air. “‘You’re welcome, Sonder.’”

“I didn’t need your help!”

“Another three minutes,” I told Sonder, “and you would have been challenged to a duel. Traditional, not azimuth.”

“For
what
?”

“Making a move on someone’s girlfriend, breaking a social taboo, stealing something that just would have happened to turn up in your pocket . . . whatever they decided to set you up for. Are you coming or not?”

“No!” Sonder glared at me. “You’re not in charge and we’ve got work to do.”

I let out a breath. I hadn’t really expected Sonder to be happy to see me, but this was starting to wear on my nerves and I’d already seen that Meredith was looking for me. “Suit yourself.” I turned and walked away. Sonder didn’t follow.

Meredith found me less than two minutes later, and from the way she was looking at me I knew this conversation was going to go less smoothly than the last one. “Morden says he doesn’t know anything about that girl,” she said without preamble.

“Really.”

“I think he’s telling the truth,” Meredith said. Her eyes were narrowed as she watched me. “You were lying to me. You weren’t trying to help at all.”

“Lying and pretending to care about someone? What kind of terrible person would do that?” I leant closer towards Meredith and dropped the pretence, letting her see the coldness in my eyes. “You set me up to be killed. Did you think I forgot?”

Meredith backed away; she looked afraid, but there was anger underneath it. Without saying a word she spun and marched away. She’d lost her usual grace and her movements were spiky and quick.

I watched her go. Meredith doesn’t have much combat magic, but it’s a big mistake to think that that means she can’t be dangerous. It was probably a good time to start thinking about leaving. There was a chime and Luna spoke into my ear. “Well, that didn’t work.”

I started towards the balcony. “What didn’t?”

“I found Sagash’s apprentices. Two of them, anyway.”

I leant over the balcony and scanned the crowd below. “Two guys by the long table on the far right?”

“That’s them.”

The two mages I was looking at were too far away for me to get a good view, but it looked as though one was blond-haired and white, and the other West Indian or African. Both wore masks, and they were talking quietly, standing close together at an angle where they could watch each other’s backs. “Huh,” I said. “You know, they look awfully like those descriptions Sonder gave us.”

“Yep.”

“You were talking to them, right? Did you get anything?”

“Kind of. I challenged the blond one to a duel.”

“You did
what
?”

“Relax, he turned me down. Anyway, it was only a first-blood thing.”

“‘First blood’ means something a bit different here. What were you thinking?”

“Well, Sonder got a look at the magic those two were using, right? I figured if he said yes, Sonder could watch and we could check to see if it was really them.”

“That . . .” I paused. “. . . could work, actually.”

“I know, right? Anyway, I tried calling him a coward, but that didn’t draw him out either, so—”

“What?”
A passing mage gave me a curious look and I glared at him, then hurriedly turned away.

“I
said
he turned me down; calm down already. It’s kind of a pity, I’ve never had a match against a Dark apprentice.”

“You’re out of your mind. Never mind. I’ll come down and we can—”