Alex Verus 5: Hidden (14 page)

My anger vanished and I looked at Sonder. He was glaring at me; he’d obviously been working himself up to this. “Okay,” I said, holding quite still. “Now we’re getting to it. What exactly is your problem with me?”

“What do you think?”

“I think I can guess, but why don’t you tell me?”

“Remember back when we went after Belthas?” Sonder said. “Two years ago with that Dark mage, Cinder? Up on the mountain, we were trying to find a way in to Belthas past his security men.”

I paused. “Okay.”

“Then before that. When we went to that factory, and that man followed us there?”

This wasn’t how I’d expected the conversation to go—I’d been expecting a repeat of the argument with Anne. “Yeah . . .”

“And before
that
. When Griff tried to get the fateweaver. Remember that?”

“Are you going somewhere with—?”

“I’m not finished. Those three men that tried to kill Anne, while we were investigating those disappearances running up to the White Stone? Remember them?”

“
Yes
, I remember them. What are you getting at?”

“Why don’t you tell me what they’ve all got in common?”

“I don’t know. What have they got in common?”

“They’re all dead.”

Sonder was glaring at me. “What’s your point?” I said.

“You know last year, when I found out you’d killed all those adepts?” Sonder said. “It really shook me up. I couldn’t believe you’d do something like that. And then I started going back and thinking about it, and you know what hit me?
It wasn’t anything new.
Every time you’ve gotten into something like this, every time someone goes after you, they end up dead. You killed those adepts because
that’s what you do
.”

“Okay, wait a second.” I was starting to get angry again. “Pretty much every single one of those guys you just listed was trying to kill me at the time. What exactly do you think I should have done?”

“That’s what you said back on the mountain. You said it was self-defence, that there was no other way. You made it sound really convincing, but that’s always your line, isn’t it? It’s never your fault.”

“I don’t care whose fault it is,” I said tightly. “It’s about surviving.”

“Well, you know what?” Sonder said. “There are lots of Light mages around in Britain who’ve survived pretty well. And you know what they haven’t done? They haven’t killed anyone. Most people don’t; that’s why we have laws against murder! It’s just
you
who can’t seem to go a whole year without killing someone. Maybe it’s not about surviving or self-defence, or because there’s no other way. Maybe it’s you.”

I rocked back slightly, feeling a stab of fear. “I see,” I said, once I’d gotten myself just barely under control. “And you’ve felt this way for how long?”

“It’s not just me,” Sonder said. “People in the Council are talking about you. The longer Luna stays with you, the harder it’ll be for her to find anyone else. If you really want to help her, you should find her another teacher.”

I looked back at Sonder and counted silently to ten, forcing myself back to calm. “Thank you for your honesty,” I said at last, my voice cold. “Allow me to retort. I’m quite sure you’re right—your friends on the Council don’t kill, not personally. They have people to do that for them. But the orders they pass down cause more deaths than I ever will. I would also note that you didn’t seem terribly bothered about my methods when it was
your
life on the line. Remember that little episode with Griff? If I hadn’t dealt with him and Onyx, exactly what do you think your chances would have been of getting out of that bubble alive?”

“You didn’t have to kill him! You could have found some other way!”

“It’s easy to say there’s another way when you’re not the one who has to find it.” Sonder started to answer and I spoke over him, my voice hard. “Shut up, Sonder. You had your say, now it’s my turn. I’d also like to point out that while you might not like the way I do things, the times in the past that you or Anne or Luna
have
been in trouble I’ve done a pretty good job of helping them. So you might want to ask yourself what’s more important to you: helping Anne, or your issues with me?”

Sonder stared at me. I turned to leave.

“Anne thinks the same thing, you know,” Sonder said just as I was turning the handle. I didn’t answer, and I banged the door behind me exactly as Luna had.

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I
went home, but I had trouble concentrating. Sonder’s words kept going around my head; I was angry at how unfair he was being, and afraid that he might be right. It was distracting me from trying to find Anne . . . not that there was much I could do in the first place, and
that
wasn’t making me feel any better either.

Novices and adepts think a diviner can find out anything, and I usually let them believe it—a slightly exaggerated reputation never hurts—but it just doesn’t work that way. Most “finding” uses of divination come down to a very long string of if-then conditions. You come up with an avenue of investigation, then you test it. If you don’t have anywhere to start, then divination just amounts to wild guessing, with about the same odds of success . . . and that was a problem because time was running out. I used to know an independent mage who specialised in missing-persons cases, and he told me about something he called the seventy-two-hour rule: if you don’t find someone within seventy-two hours, then odds are you won’t find them at all. Anne had been missing for nearly sixty.

I needed to do something, but I wasn’t sure what. Until Caldera got back in touch, there wasn’t much I could do to help with the search.

Every few minutes I found my thoughts drifting back to Sonder, coming up with more things to say, justifications, arguments. Then I found it blending into my feelings about Anne, imagining that I was arguing with her instead. I wanted to talk to one of them or both of them, try to explain, work something out. But Anne wasn’t there and Sonder wouldn’t listen, and I knew it was a stupid thing to do anyway. Anne and Sonder weren’t the problem, not really. The problem was . . .

My heart sank as I realised where the train of thought was heading.
Yeah. That’s who I actually need to talk to, isn’t it?

I looked into the future to see whether Caldera was going to call soon, half-hoping for an excuse to stay home. She wasn’t and I set out.

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F
or the second time in four days, I was back at the Institute of Education.

I was in the basement atrium, standing against one of the pillars. The lecture had just ended and students were streaming out, shouting and talking and checking their phones. None of them paid any attention to me. I searched their faces as they went past, boys and girls all with their school bags and middle-class clothes. They looked so
young
, and there was something dismaying about the thought. I was only ten years older than they were, less for the mature students, but it felt as though I had nothing in common with them at all.

Watching the sea of students—children—pulled my thoughts away, associations from point to point. Crowds of teenagers, faces, classrooms. It reminded me of childhood, and they weren’t good memories. Things were never really good at home when I was young, even before the divorce, and they were worse at school. I’d been an introverted kid, intelligent and sensitive and socially clumsy. Bad combination if you go to a British state school. I once read an article which made the argument that modern Western schools have a good deal in common with modern prisons, and I’ve always thought it was pretty accurate. With both schools and prisons, the ones running the system have a very simple set of priorities for their inmates: they want them to stay on the premises, they want them to stay healthy and watered and fed, and they want them not to be gratuitously violent in a way that’ll draw public attention. Beyond that, they don’t really care. There are plenty of teachers who do their best to help, but they’re swimming upstream and most of the time the kids end up creating their own society. It’s ruthless and cruel, and it is not fun to be at the bottom of it.

When my magic started developing, it only made things worse. Universal magic is the hardest of all the families for humans to use—it’s too abstract, too alien. When you’re a novice diviner your power comes in flashes; sometimes you just catch a glimpse of possibilities and sometimes you see
all
of them, every future at once, crashing into your mind like an ocean trying to fill a water bowl. It didn’t send me crazy, not quite, but I wasn’t exactly stable either and the fact that I had no idea what was happening to me didn’t help. Maybe if I’d had someone to talk to I might have tried to explain it, but there wasn’t anyone left by then, not really. My dad had lost custody, I didn’t get on with my mother, and my near-psychotic episodes had cut off the few friendships I’d had.

So I learnt to control my power. I learnt to focus my mind, block out the futures I didn’t want to see,
direct
my perception instead of taking in everything. I learnt to select futures, search out along those not-quite-visible strands of possibility, shut them off when it was too much and I needed time to recover. And I did it alone, because I had to. And it worked.

It didn’t make me any happier. My crude ability to see the future didn’t make me any friends—the opposite, if anything. I had knowledge, but there wasn’t anything I could
do
with it. I was left just as isolated, hating the people who’d ostracised me. Until one cold autumn day when Richard had stepped onto the schoolyard where I was standing, promising me everything I’d secretly wanted if I’d follow him and call him master. And I’d said yes.

Movement from inside the hall broke me out of my reverie. Nearly all of the students had disappeared up the stairs; only a few stragglers were left, one or two of them giving me curious glances now that I was the only person standing still in the atrium. A buzz of conversation from inside grew louder, then tailed off. A man appeared at the doors, white-haired, lecture notes tucked under one arm. He spotted me two steps into the room and came to a stop.

“Hey, Dad,” I said.

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T
he inner courtyard of the Institute of Education was cold. It had been a long winter—we’d had flurries of snow as recently as a couple of weeks ago, even though it was April. My father and I sat on one of the benches, the cold of the wood creeping through my clothes. Students passed by in ones and twos, coats closed against the chill wind.

“I didn’t know you’d moved here,” I said.

“Here?” My father looked at me, confused.

“The Institute.”

“What? Oh, no, I’m still at UCL.”

I found myself watching my father out of the corner of my eye. His hair seemed a little thinner and the lines on his face deeper since the last time I’d seen him, his posture a little more stooped. Did he look older, or was I just noticing it now? His voice sounded frail, and watching him gave me a strange feeling. For mages, age isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s the opposite—white hair is a sign that they’ve lived long enough to be dangerous. My father didn’t look dangerous. He looked apologetic.

“Teaching?” I said.

“Yes, the usual courses. This is just a part of the spring schedule. Eight lectures.”

“Cool.”

We sat in silence. A few more students walked by.

“So, congratulations on making professor,” I said.

“Thank you. I mean, it’s not confirmed yet, but . . .”

“Yeah.”

Another pause.

“How are things working out with the shop?” my father asked.

“Oh, fine. Business as usual.” I paused. “I’m taking a few days off because a friend of mine got partially abducted by some people who probably want to hurt or kill her, so we’re trying to track her down before they do.”

My father twisted around to look at me. I looked back.

“Are you . . . Could you say that again?”

“Friend abducted, trying to find her.”

“Isn’t that a job for the police?”

“We’re working with a . . .” I tried to think of how to describe Caldera in nonmagical terms. “With a branch of the police. Not sure how long we’ll have their support, though.”

“How do you mean?”

“They might pull their people off the case.” Of which the odds were two in three and climbing, assuming we were weighing the suspects equally. “If they do we’ll have to finish things on our own.”

My father was silent for a little while. “You’re planning to take matters into your own hands.”

I didn’t answer.

“Will there be trouble?”

“Possibly.”
Probably.

“I’d thought . . .” My father paused. “The last time, you said you were trying to put this sort of thing behind you.”

“Yeah, well, it turns out trying to put the past behind you doesn’t work too well when the past doesn’t cooperate.”

“I’m . . . I have to say, I’m not comfortable with you doing this.” My father clasped his hands, elbows resting on knees. “It sounds too close to what you were doing with that man you were involved with, Richard.”

I felt a flare of anger. How do parents always know how to get under your skin? “It’s nothing to do with Richard,” I said levelly. “I’m trying to help someone.”

“You ought to leave it to the authorities.”

“The authorities are overworked, their freedom of action is limited, and they don’t care very much about this person in the first place.”

“I know these situations are frustrating, but breaking the law just makes things worse, even if you
are
trying to help. These rules are in place for a reason. There’s no guarantee that trying to interfere will make things any better, and even if you do, you’re setting a bad precedent.”

“How can you believe this with what you teach?” I asked. I pointed down through the flagstones, towards the lecture hall. “European history is one very long study in conflict, violence, and rule-breaking.”

“Haven’t we advanced beyond that? There’s no excuse for resolving our disagreements with violence anymore.”