Alex Verus 5: Hidden (30 page)

I’ve seen a lot of duels, but most have been the nonlethal kind favoured by the Light Council. A Light azimuth duel usually takes the best part of five minutes, counting breaks. Death duels are much faster.

I’d been expecting Crystal to try and dominate Anne, but the spell she hit her with was a blast of pure mental force. I felt the backwash from all the way up on the balcony, and it was stronger than the attack she’d used at the windmill—a lot stronger. My mental defences are better than most, but all of a sudden I wasn’t so sure that rematch would have been a good idea. If I’d been the one to step into that circle, I might not have come out again.

But I wasn’t the one in that circle, Anne was. And Anne . . .

It’s strange, the ways you see people. I’d known that life mages can act as assassins, but I’d never thought of Anne that way. It wasn’t how she’d first come across, and first impressions are hard to shift—no matter how many times people had told me Anne was dangerous, she hadn’t
felt
dangerous, at least not to me. Even when she’d flat-out told me what she’d done, I’d never really been able to connect the words with the image I had of her. Shy, gentle, slightly awkward; a healer, not a fighter.

Anne came off her starting position like a sprinter, heading straight for Crystal. She didn’t move like a duellist but like a runner, eyes locked on her target. Crystal’s spell hit before Anne had taken her second step, and Anne stumbled briefly but kept going. It wasn’t that the attack was weak; it was that she didn’t care. The only thing she was paying attention to was closing the distance.

Crystal took a step back, eyes going wide in alarm. Her hand came up and I felt the surge of another spell, then Anne was slamming into Crystal, rocking them back. There was a blur of movement, magic and green light, and all of a sudden Crystal was falling. She hit the floor with Anne above her, Anne’s hand coming down to rest on Crystal’s body, over her heart.

Crystal looked up, obviously dazed. Her eyes focused on Anne and she froze. Anne was crouched over Crystal, her right hand resting with fingers spread over Crystal’s chest, between her breasts and a little to the left. Green light glowed at Anne’s fingers; it was a soft colour, the shade of new leaves in spring, but I knew what the spell did and from the expression in Crystal’s eyes she did too.

Time stretched out. After the brief flurry of activity the chamber was silent again. Anne was motionless, the spell hanging ready at her hand. The only movement I could see was the rapid rise and fall of Crystal’s chest, and she was holding very still. I looked into the futures and saw them fork. In one, Anne stood up and let the spell drop. In the other . . .

Then that second future winked out. Anne stood up, letting the spell vanish from her fingers. She looked up at Sagash. “No,” she said, her voice carrying clearly in the silence. Her posture and stance had changed; she was the Anne I knew again. “I’m not going to be like you.”

I held my breath.

Sagash looked down at her from his perch on the balcony. The two of them locked eyes. “Disappointing,” Sagash said at last, his rasping voice echoing.

Anne didn’t reply and again the silence stretched out. “Well,” I said brightly. “Good match, glad I was here to see it. The two of us really should leave and let you get back to work.”
Anne, please don’t say anything to piss him off, please don’t say anything to piss him off . . .

Anne stayed quiet. Sagash regarded her for a moment, then spoke in his rasping voice. “I think not.”

Oh shit.

“You said that the winner would have your favour . . .” I started to say. Even before the words were out of my mouth I knew it wasn’t going to help.

“And their life,” Sagash rasped. “The conditions for victory, however, were the death of the other party.” He looked down at Anne and Crystal. “It appears we have two losers, not one.”

There was a rustle of movement from around the chamber, barely audible, as the shadows shifted their position. “You wanted to see how Anne’s skills had developed,” I said. “You’ve got your data, right?” Scan the futures . . . no, there was no way talking was going to work, not now. I aimed my thoughts at Crystal.
Hey, Crystal! Wake up!

“Indeed.”

“There’s nothing stopping you from letting Anne go. It’s not as if she came here because she wanted to.”
Hey! I’m
talking
to you, you psychotic bitch. I know you can hear me, you eavesdrop on everyone else—

Crystal’s voice spoke into my head. She sounded shaken, but lucid.
I heard you the first time.

“Do not play games with me,” Sagash rasped. “You are obviously well aware of what Anne did the last time she visited my realm. Until now, I did not consider her a high enough priority to be worth pursuing. If she simply presents herself, however . . . No. I believe Anne will be remaining.”

Last chance,
I thought towards Crystal.
Do you want to get out or not?
“As a matter of fact, I don’t know the details,” I said. “What did Anne do to offend you so badly?”

If you’re making the same offer—
Crystal began.

Yes, and before you ask, I know I was your enemy five minutes ago. You’re cold-blooded enough to switch sides that fast, you know it and I know it, so let’s not waste time. Yes or no?

“Anne remains my legal apprentice,” Sagash rasped. “As her master, I both expect and require—”

Sagash kept talking, but I wasn’t paying attention. I looked at him, pretending to listen, all of my thoughts focused on Crystal.
I don’t think you’re in much of a position to promise anything,
Crystal replied.

I’m in a better position than you. Sagash is going to kick me out, but you and Anne are about to become permanent residents. You want to get out of here, I want Anne out of here. For the next five minutes we’ve got a common enemy—you wait and it’s going to be just you on your own. Either you make a break for it, or you stay and take your chances with Sagash. Pick!

An instant’s pause.
Very well,
Crystal said. She’d recovered and her voice was steady again.
I presume you have some sort of plan.

Depends what I’ve got to work with. Now, I
know
you’ve prepared some sort of escape route where you abandon everyone else and keep yourself alive, because that’s what you do. I’m going to guess it involves those two idiot apprentices?

I can control them briefly.

Good. I’ll distract Sagash. Talk to Anne, get her on side.

Silence. I suddenly realised that Sagash had finished speaking—what had he just said? “I can understand why you would have reason to be upset”—blatant lie, but whatever—“but revenge seems a rather unprofitable way to resolve this.”

“Revenge is irrelevant.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Anne start slightly, look down at Crystal, then back up. “Maybe some sort of compensation—”

“No,” Sagash rasped. “She is a liability. I see now that I was in error to have taken her in. A mistake I will now correct.”

“There is one other thing you might want to consider,” I said.
Crystal, we’re running out of time, get on with it!
“My old master has expressed an . . . interest in Anne.”

“Your master does not rule here.”

“But you could—”

“Enough,” Sagash rasped, his voice final. “I am willing to allow you safe passage, Verus. That can be revoked.”

There appears to be a problem,
Crystal said calmly into my head.

Fix it!

Anne refuses to believe me when I tell her this is your idea. Apparently she doesn’t trust me.
Crystal’s voice was ironic.
I can’t imagine why.

“I see,” I said, and bowed my head slightly to Sagash. “Very well.” I turned away and looked down at Anne. “Anne? Do as she says.”

Anne’s eyes widened slightly.
Do it,
I thought.

Four of the shadows started to move towards Anne, acting on Sagash’s unspoken orders. An instant later Darren started to walk in the same direction. Sam gave him a puzzled look.

Anne’s head came up sharply; she’d caught something in his body language. Sagash gave Darren a dismissive look. “Stay.”

Crystal’s voice spoke into my head.
Three seconds.

I shifted slightly, slipping one hand into a pocket at an angle Sagash couldn’t see. Darren was still heading towards Anne and so were the shadows. Sagash started to say something to Crystal, saw that Darren hadn’t stopped, looked at him in annoyance. “You are not—”

Now,
Crystal voiced.

Everything happened at once.

The first two shadows reached Anne, claws extending. As they did, Darren blasted them with two bolts of death magic, one after the other at point-blank range. The spells were constructions of kinetic energy, giant wide-finned darts designed to tear through constructs, and they did just that. The shadows disintegrated, the magical effect which animated them failing. Sagash’s eyes went wide in sudden fury and his hand came up, darkness gathering just as I threw a condenser right at him.

Sagash saw my throw and switched focus instantly. Death mages like Sagash are combat specialists, and virtually every spell they can cast is designed to either protect them or kill someone else. They’re very good at what they do, and I had absolutely no chance against Sagash in any kind of fight. Nothing I had would so much as scratch him.

But Sagash didn’t know that.

Sagash’s first spell was a shield, a translucent bubble of black energy coming up around him. The condenser hit it and shattered, mist flooding out to cover him and a forty-foot sphere of the balcony in fog. Sagash’s second spell was a defensive one too, and so was the third, protective effects wrapping around his body and immunising him from anything that the fog might be carrying. And by the time he’d figured out that the fog wasn’t actually dangerous, I’d vaulted the railing and dropped to the floor below.

The shadows which had been going for Anne were crumpled heaps, dissolving into smoke. Sam was on his knees, clutching at his head, and Crystal’s eyes were locked onto him as she hurried towards the exit. Darren was moving ahead of the two women and covering them, his movements stiff and mechanical. All the other shadows, a dozen or more, stood silent and still; Sagash hadn’t yet given them new orders.

I ran for the exit. Darren reached it first and halted with a jerk. A spell flickered at his hand, wavering between the shadows and Crystal. “Anne,” Crystal said; she didn’t take her eyes away from Sam and her voice was tight with strain. “Get rid of him.”

Anne hesitated, and I felt a surge of death magic from behind. I had just time to dive left before the spell exploded between us.

The few times I’ve been hit with high-level battle magic I’ve never felt it. You usually don’t even know whether you’ve been hurt until afterwards; the amount of destructive power is so far out of human scale that your nervous system doesn’t know how to handle it. Your perception of time distorts, leaving blank spots in your memory. With hindsight, my best guess is that it was an area attack, some sort of blast or vortex.

The next thing I remember is scrambling to my feet. I felt as though I were farther to the left than I should have been, but the doorway in front was open. Anne was up and moving and the two of us ran for the exit; I caught a glimpse of a body to one side and then we were into the corridor and out of Sagash’s line of sight.

It wasn’t until the second corner that I realised someone was behind me. I turned, still dazed, fumbling for the sword at my belt—

—and Crystal gave me an irritated look as she brushed past. Dust and dirt caked her left side and there was a bloody scrape on her cheek, but she didn’t look seriously hurt.
Keep moving,
she said. We were out in one of the corridors—I hadn’t had a chance to map it but Anne was leading the way.

As we reached a corner a keening, whining sound went through me, so high-pitched it was on the edge of hearing. I could feel a trace of magic in it, but couldn’t tell what it was. “What was that?”

“Shadow call,” Anne said, at the same time that Crystal said, “A command to the constructs.”

“The gate—” Anne began.

“No.” I shook my head and pointed to an arrow-slit window in the corridor. “Look.”

Anne looked as though she’d rather be running, but Crystal moved to my side. The window gave a narrow view out of the south side of the castle towards the main gates and the bridge. For a moment all I could see was the skyline over the buildings, then I saw a dot against the clouds, rising up from the edge of the castle. Then another. Then . . .

That didn’t look like dots. It looked like a cloud. “Anne?” I said, not looking at her. “How many of these shadows does Sagash have exactly?”

Anne let out a breath. “That would be . . . all of them.”

“They’ll surround the keep and form a perimeter,” Crystal said. “I hope you weren’t planning to use the front door.”

“Incoming,” I said. The shadows from the duelling hall were moving. “That way.”

We hurried down a turning and to the right. In the futures spread out ahead of me, I could see the shadows moving through the corridors of the keep, their straight-line paths becoming a blur of combat when they intersected ours. I looked at Anne. “I can get us out through the tunnels if we can make it to the ground floor.”

“The main stairwell is trapped,” Crystal said.

“There’s a back staircase that way,” Anne said.

I glanced through the futures. No shadows, it looked clear . . . wait, someone was there.
Huh.
I gave a sudden wolfish smile. “That’ll work.”

A side door took us into a narrow stairwell. I got halfway down, paused for two seconds, holding my hand up for Crystal and Anne to wait behind me, then walked down onto the landing and turned. At the bottom of the stairs, just turning in from the main corridor, was Ji-yeong. She was on her feet, battered and limping, one sword sheathed and the other scabbard empty. She was just about to start up the stairs when she saw me.

I looked down at Ji-yeong.