Taken (11 page)

The person waiting at the viewpoint near the top of the hill was a girl, nineteen or so. She was just a shadow in the darkness, but by looking into the futures in which I switched on my light I recognised her as one of Morden’s slaves. I had to think for a minute before I remembered her name: Lisa. I hadn’t really expected to see her again. Slaves to Dark mages have a high turnover rate. I let myself fade into the shadows and waited.

Onyx arrived five minutes later. He was obviously trying to be quiet but I had the impression he didn’t spend much time in the woods and it wasn’t hard to hear him coming. Unlike me his magic didn’t give him any way to see in the dark and he’d resorted to some kind of black-light spell that cast a murky glow. I felt Lisa go tense as she saw him.

“Who did you see?” Onyx said as he walked up into the clearing.

“N-nobody.”

“Verus was in there.” Onyx was young, but his voice was flat and cold and sent a chill down my spine. “When did he go in?”

“I don’t know—”

The blow didn’t look powerful but it was augmented with force and took Lisa off her feet. Onyx had already turned away and was staring down at Fountain Reach. There was a sort of casual indifference to the whole thing. Onyx had been annoyed and Lisa had been in front of him, so he’d hit her. He didn’t care whether it had been her fault and in fact he seemed already to have forgotten that she was there. Lisa stayed on the ground for a while, cringing, then pulled herself upright.

Onyx shook his head and turned away. The darkness shrouded his face but his body language looked frustrated. Magic flared around him as he opened a black gateway; he stepped through and Lisa hurried through after him without needing to be told. The gateway closed and I was left alone on the hillside.

I watched thoughtfully for a moment, then turned to make my way home.

*  *  *

“B
ut what was Onyx doing there?” Sonder asked an hour and a half later.

Arachne’s cave is wide and oval-shaped, hidden under Hampstead Heath and hollowed out of stone that’s been worn smooth by the passage of hundreds of years. Clothes cover the furniture and every inch of the walls, turning the cave into a riot of green and blue and yellow and red. There are small changing rooms to one side and at the far end a tunnel leads down into darkness.

Sonder was sitting on the edge of one of the chairs, his clothes rumpled from a day spent indoors. He has messy black hair, a pair of glasses, and a way of peering at whatever he’s reading that makes it look like he’s completely oblivious to everything else, which is usually true. He’s twenty-one but looks like a first-year university student. He still had his arms full of papers, and the reports he’d been reading were spread out over a pile of coats on the table in front of him. He pushed his glasses up automatically as he waited for my answer.

“I don’t know,” I said from my sofa. I was more tired than I should have been; the escape from Fountain Reach had taken a lot out of me and I obviously hadn’t fully recovered from Anne’s spell yet. “But I’m pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to be there either.”

“Do you think it’s him?” Luna called. She was hidden behind the curtain of one of the changing rooms. “Him and Morden, I mean.”

“They’re vicious enough,” I said. “But it seems like an odd thing for him to do.”

“Onyx?” I could feel Luna shudder. “He’d do
anything
.”

“Anything Morden tells him to. Don’t forget that.”

“We know they take slaves,” Luna said. “Like that girl Lisa. Maybe that’s where the apprentices are going.”

“There’s no way Morden would take that kind of risk,” I said. “The reason he got involved in the hunt for the fateweaver was because he wanted to become Council representative of the Dark mages. If he kept them as slaves it’d get out sooner or later, and as soon as that happened he’d lose any chance he ever had of getting that position.”

“But what if—Oh, Arachne, could you have a look?”

“Of course, dear,” Arachne said from her perch in the corner. She was working on something in vivid green. “Come right out.”

Arachne is a weaver, the best I know, and everything in her lair is her own work. She’s been making clothes since before I was born—probably since before my great-great-grandparents were born. She trades the clothes to mages and adepts in return for services and information, but honestly, I think she’d be just as happy to give them away. Arachne’s a maker, and for her creating is its own reward.

She’s also a giant spider, which bothers most people, although these days I hardly notice. Arachne had been working on the cloth in front of her with her four front legs, but now she turned her eight opaque eyes upwards as Luna stepped out from behind the curtain wearing a rose-coloured dress with a square neckline and ruffles. “What do you think?” Luna said doubtfully.

Sonder looked up as soon as Luna started to come out, and now he stared. “Um,” he said at last. “It’s, uh, good. Really good.”

“Definitely not,” Arachne said firmly, clicking her mandibles. “Not for where you’re going. We’ll save that one for the summer.”

Luna disappeared behind the curtain. “What did you and Luna turn up?” I asked Sonder.

Sonder was still staring after Luna.
“Sonder!”
I said more loudly.

Sonder jumped. “What?”

“The disappearances,” I said. “You know, what you and Luna were looking at all day?”

“Right,” Sonder said. “Okay.” He pushed his glasses up and started going through his papers again. “Where did you want to start?”

“With the victims,” I said. From the changing room came the rustle of clothes, and from the corner the quick
flick-flick-flick
of Arachne’s needle. “Who were they?”

“Well, um,” Sonder said. “The first is Caroline Montroyd. She was apprenticed to an air mage in London but she lived with her parents in Watford. She left her master’s sanctum one night and never came home. Her parents called the police, but they didn’t find anything and the police think she ran away. She’d been having arguments with her father and mother and talking about leaving, and at first everyone thought that was what had happened, but . . .”

“But it’s a bit of a coincidence,” I said with a nod. “Go on.”

“The second one’s name is Chaven,” Sonder said. He was beginning to focus again now. “Force mage, supposed to be a really good duellist, was actually one of the favourites for the White Stone. He’d mostly dropped out of university but he was still staying in the halls of residence for London Metropolitan. We don’t know for sure when he disappeared. The doorman said he saw him go in one night, and he didn’t show up for classes the next day. No one saw him leave.

“Then there’s Ness,” Sonder said, and he looked suddenly uncomfortable. “Vanessa, I mean. I . . . actually know her. She used to come to one of the classes I was teaching. Well, not really teaching, but the mage who was supposed to be doing it wasn’t there, and . . . um. Anyway. She lived alone in a flat. She made it home one night and no one ever saw her again.”

“Then how the hell did she vanish?” I said in annoyance. “Did someone kick the door down or what?”

“Nothing like that,” Sonder said. “The door was locked. Nothing was broken. Although . . . Well, I was talking to the neighbours and the woman from the flat next door said she thought Ness had had a visitor after midnight. She heard a bell and voices.”

“What kind of voices?”

“She didn’t remember.”

“Okay. So what did
you
see?”

Sonder is a time mage. It’s got a few similarities to my own style of magic, but the things he can do with it are very different. For one thing, he can actually affect space and time directly, although it’s not what he specialises in. What Sonder is really good at is
history
: looking back and seeing what happened. You’d think that would make solving mysteries pretty easy and it does, at least when you’re dealing with normals. But in the magical world the abilities of time mages are well known and other mages take precautions against them.

“I couldn’t find Caroline,” Sonder said. “I traced her into the Underground but then there were the crowds and the interference, and . . . Anyway. Chaven was a bit easier. I got a look at the halls, and he was definitely there in his room with some friends. Then he went to bed, and . . . nothing. Greyed out. Someone used a shroud effect over that temporal area. The same with Ness. I traced it and the whole route back to the entrance was concealed.”

Shrouds are magical items that block scrying, especially the temporal kind that Sonder does. They’re not cheap and they’re generally only used by people who are very serious about keeping their activities a secret. I thought for a minute. “What about cameras?”

“Which ones?”

“Halls of residence have security cameras,” I said. “So do most blocks of flats. And they store the records. If you saw the shroud effect, then you can narrow down what time you need to be looking at.”

“Yes, but they wouldn’t have let me look at them.” Sonder looked uncomfortable. “I wasn’t even supposed to be there.”

“But Talisid will know people who
could
look at them.”

“Wouldn’t they have tried them already?”

“Mages tend to assume magic’s the solution to everything,” I said with a smile. I’d fallen into that trap this afternoon. “It’s worth a try.”

Sonder thought about it, then nodded. “Okay.” He paused. “Alex? What’s going on here? I mean . . . apprentices going missing like this? And someone trying to kill Anne? Why would anyone want to
do
all this?”

“I don’t know,” I said slowly. “And that’s the problem. I think if we understood
why
all this is happening, we’d be most of the way there. People don’t do things just because. Someone has a damn good reason for disappearing all these apprentices and shooting Anne and blaming me. If we can figure out the reason, we’ll know how to stop it.”

“Oh,” Sonder said. “What do you think’s happened to them? Ness and the others.”

I looked at Sonder for a moment. “Best guess?”

Sonder nodded.

“They’re all dead.”

Sonder flinched. “But—”

“You know what’s going to happen to anyone caught doing this,” I said quietly. “So if I were doing it, I’d do everything I could to make sure that didn’t happen. Like tying off loose ends.”

There was the rustle of a curtain and Sonder and I looked up as Luna stepped out again. She’d changed into a yellow-and-white dress with a vertical design that made me think of a flower. She looked more confident this time and as we watched she gave a little twirl. “What do you think?”

“It looks amazing,” Sonder said. He was staring again.

“No,” Arachne said.

“But I like this one,” Luna said.

“Of course you do,” Arachne said. “But it’s all wrong for where you’re going. Here.” She shook out the outfit she’d been working on, making it shimmer in the light, and held it out to Luna with two of her legs. “Try this.”

Luna looked disappointed but disappeared behind the curtain again. “Now,” Arachne said. She’d been listening quietly as Sonder and I spoke, working on the dress, and now that it was finished she turned her full attention to me. “I think Sonder—Alex, have you lost weight?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Arachne gave me a quick up-and-down glance, did the spider equivalent of rolling her eyes, and pulled out a pile of dark cloth. “I think Sonder asked the right question,” she said as she started modifying it. “Why was Onyx there?”

“Because he’s involved, I guess,” I said. “Though I can’t figure out how Fountain Reach fits into it.”

“It seems to me there’s a simple explanation for both,” Arachne said. “What if Onyx was there for exactly the same reason as you?”

I started to answer, then stopped. “That . . . would explain a lot. He looked like he was searching around.”

“And obviously wasn’t expecting the meeting any more than you were.”

“And if Morden or Onyx got the same tip-off I did, Onyx is the guy Morden would send . . .”

“Which suggests he wants to find out what’s happening,” Arachne finished. “You should be able to take advantage of that.”

Sonder had been looking back and forth between us. “Umm . . .”

“Oh, something I wanted to ask.” I pulled a folded paper from my pocket. “Arachne, could you do me a favour?”

“Of course.”

“Could you make me something?”

Arachne took the paper with two of her legs and she unfolded it delicately, reading with half of her eyes and working with the others. “Hmm. Interesting.”

I glanced at Luna’s changing room. “I know it’s not easy—”

“Oh, I’d be happy to. I’ve been turning over some ideas along those lines myself. Drop by tomorrow and I’ll see what I have ready. Well then.” She held out the black clothes to me with two of her legs. “Try it on.”

“Oh, right.”

“You didn’t even think about it, did you?” Arachne said. “Honestly, if I weren’t here I think you’d show up in shorts and a T-shirt.”

“I don’t wear shorts,” I said over my shoulder as I headed to the changing room, pulling the curtain shut behind me. “By the way, do you know this guy who’s hosting the party tonight?”

“Yes, and he’s not a ‘guy.’ He’s a rakshasa.”

I’d been holding up the outfit to get its shape, but at that I looked up with a frown. “Really?” Sonder said from outside, sounding interested. “I thought since the treaty they all stayed in India?”

“Jagadev is older than the treaty,” Arachne said. “Very old and very powerful. Why he came to these shores I do not know, but I first heard of his presence in this city back in the days of your empire. He sides neither with the Council nor with any of the Dark factions. The Tiger’s Palace is his domain and within it his word is law.”

“Have you ever met him?” Sonder asked.

“Once.”

Sonder fell silent, which was a surprise. I’d expected him to keep asking questions but something in Arachne’s manner must have made him think twice. “Alex?” Luna said from the next room over. “Why was Anne delivering invitations for him?”

“I’m not sure,” I said, putting the shirt on.