Taken (27 page)

She was right where I’d expected, but someone else had gotten there first. I heard the murmur of voices from all the way down the hall and quietly moved closer.

As I got within earshot I realised the man with Crystal was Lyle. “I’m just not sure it’s possible,” he was saying, and he sounded troubled. “I mean, it was a worry before, but now . . .”

“Fountain Reach is the safest place these apprentices can possibly be.” Crystal’s voice was cool. “You tested the wards yourself.”

“Yes, but with this girl disappearing, what was her name—”

“Yasmin didn’t disappear in Fountain Reach. Wasn’t that what you told me?”

“Yes, but—”

“You reminded everyone to ensure that their apprentices didn’t leave the mansion. It’s hardly your fault if they chose to ignore you.”

“But Sarissa
had
told her.” Lyle sounded uneasy. “She kept saying Yasmin wouldn’t have left the grounds—”

“Lyle,” Crystal said. She moved closer, and through the futures I could see that she was resting a hand on his shoulder. “You worry too much.”

“I supported the nomination of Fountain Reach to the Council. If it turns out . . .” Lyle hesitated. “The Council wouldn’t be pleased.”

Crystal sighed and I heard her move away. “Is the Council all you think about?”

Lyle was silent. I was one door down from Lyle and Crystal’s room, my hand on the handle, ready to slip inside should they come out. They’d actually left the door to their room open, which seemed odd but made sense in a way. Between Lyle and Crystal, nothing thinking or feeling could get into the corridor without them noticing . . . unless that someone was wearing a mist cloak.

“Have you thought about that offer?” Lyle asked.

“Working for Levistus?”

“It’s an important position.”

“I’m sure it is.” There was faint distaste in Crystal’s voice.

“I could . . . make some recommendations. We could—”

“We could do what? Run the Council’s errands for them? Do all the work and take all the risk for a few crumbs of reward?” Crystal shook her head slightly. “I never understood your focus on the Council.”

“They’re the most powerful mages in the country.”

“I can think of a few Dark mages who might disagree.”

“Dark mages aren’t an institution. They’re just anarchy.”

“At least they provide some opportunity.” Crystal walked to the window and glanced back at Lyle. “Oh, stop thinking that. I haven’t turned to their side. But I’m not going to serve the Council either.”

“You could rise—”

“To the top of that old boys’ club?” Crystal’s voice was cool and precise. “After decades of bowing and scraping and cutting deals and begging for favours? Then once I’m old and grey
, I
could
rise? I think not.”

Lyle was silent. “I know what you want to ask,” Crystal said.

“Could we—?”

“No,” Crystal said. “Not as long as your first loyalty is to the Council.” She turned to Lyle. “But there are alternatives. You made me an offer, now let me make you one. What if I could offer you something better?”

Lyle sounded taken aback. “What do you mean?”

“A way to have what we want without depending on the Council.”

“How—”

Crystal shook her head. “Not now.” She walked past Lyle, towards the door. “I have a tournament to oversee. Think about it.”

I’d seen Crystal coming and was inside the room with the door drawn to by the time she stepped out into the corridor. She turned and left, heels clicking on the wooden floor. Lyle followed a minute later.

Once they were gone I stepped out again, looking after them quizzically. Lyle and Crystal . . . Well, it was interesting, but I couldn’t see how it was much use. Crystal’s words were much more suspicious though. Whatever Crystal’s “something better” was, I had a feeling it wasn’t anything good.

*  *  *

I
’m always reluctant to take off my mist cloak. Invisibility is such a safe feeling and it’s so tempting to stay there rather than make yourself vulnerable again. But it doesn’t make your problems go away—all it does is delay them. I hid the cloak and sat down.

There was something I’d been putting off and I couldn’t ignore it much longer. My formal reply to Onyx’s challenge was due in a few hours; I’d been avoiding thinking about it in the hope that it’d go away. It hadn’t, and I needed to figure out what to do.

My odds of winning a duel against someone like Onyx were basically zero. Duels are designed to be fair fights, and I’m very bad at fair fights. With no cover it would come down to strength against strength, and even the weakest elemental mage outclasses me several times over in terms of raw power. I might give Onyx a surprise or two but there was only one way it could end.

What if I went in expecting to lose? I couldn’t beat Onyx, but losing a duel wouldn’t kill me. It’d be humiliating and I wouldn’t enjoy it, but I’ve had worse.

But while losing a duel wouldn’t kill me, losing a duel to
Onyx
might. Traditional duels aren’t supposed to be fatal but more than a few mages have died from “accidents” in the ring. Onyx would never get away with it, not in front of so many witnesses, but that wouldn’t be much consolation to me. And I really didn’t feel like trusting my life to Onyx’s self-control.

I leant back with a sigh, staring at the ceiling. I hate dealing with this stuff. So much of mage politics involves these no-win situations. I’m much happier hanging out with Luna and Arachne or minding my shop.

How would I deal with this if I
were
in my shop? If some random guy walked in off the street and challenged me to a duel, what would I do?

I’d tell him to get lost. Then if he tried to start a fight anyway, I’d make sure it wasn’t a fair one.

Was there anything stopping me from just saying no? Now that I thought about it I didn’t think there was. By custom a mage is supposed to answer a challenge, but there aren’t any actual penalties for refusing. Traditional Light mages would see it as dishonourable, but the traditional Light mages don’t like me anyway.

The real danger was that I’d appear weak. But elemental mages
already
think diviners are weak, and it works to my advantage as often as not. Besides, I couldn’t see how declining the duel could do any more harm to my image than having Onyx publicly kick my ass.

I noticed that I was about to get a call. I took out my phone and hit the green button midway through the first ring. “Hey, Talisid.”

“Glad I caught you,” Talisid said. “There’s been a development.”

“What’s up?”

“Two Keepers have been sent to Fountain Reach. Avenor and Travis.”

I frowned. “What are they doing here?”

“They’re assigned to the apprentice investigation, so if they’re coming to you it’s a safe bet they’re following some lead.” Talisid paused. “It seems you’re starting to convince people that Fountain Reach may be the right place.”

“Well, I don’t know who convinced them but it wasn’t me.”

“You haven’t spoken to them?”

“No. When did they leave?”

“An hour or two ago. I’d expect them to be at Fountain Reach by now.”

“Um.” It bothered me for some reason. It sounded as though someone had tipped them off. But who?

“Have you made any progress?”

“Yes, but not over the phone. Talk to Sonder; he’s working on something from his end.”

“I will. Oh, and next time you go for a drive, make a little less mess, will you?”

“Yes, Talisid, the next time I have a bunch of unkillable construct assassins after me I’ll make it my number one priority to make sure you don’t have too much mess to clean up afterwards.”

“Glad to hear it.” Talisid sounded amused. “I’ll be in touch.”

I hung up and went to the duelling hall.

chapter 12

H
eads turned as I walked into the hall. Onyx was there and I didn’t see any point in waiting for him to find me first. I walked towards the end of the hall, past the groups of apprentices and the mages turning to look at me.

Onyx watched me as I approached, arms folded. “You challenged me,” I told him once I was close enough. I didn’t keep my voice down and I could feel the mages around me listening. “Here’s my answer. No.”

Onyx’s lip curled. “Not fighting?”

“I’m not fighting.”

“The charges?”

“There are no charges,” I said. “You have a problem, take it to the Council.”

I’d been expecting Onyx to rage or threaten. He didn’t do either. Instead he stared at me for a long moment before giving a very slight smile that didn’t reach his eyes. Then he walked out.

Luna was waiting on the other side of the crowd. “You’re okay?” she asked.

“I’m fine.”

“Was that it? You just had to say no?”

It wasn’t it. That smile worried me. If Onyx had been counting on my accepting the duel he should have reacted more. But that was my problem, not Luna’s, and I didn’t want to put anything else on her mind just now. “Pretty much,” I said. “When’s your match?”

“They’re going to announce it,” Luna said. She’d dressed in a black form-fitting outfit I’d never seen her wear before and she was spinning the whip handle between her fingers. To my mage’s sight her curse spun about her, agitated.

I looked around. “Where’s Variam?”

“What do you mean?”

“Isn’t he a bit late?”

Luna looked at me in surprise. “He’s not in the tournament.”

“He got knocked out?”

“He forfeited. He didn’t show up to last night’s match; I guess he was with you and Anne. I thought you knew?”

I remembered how Variam had appeared suddenly last night. As soon as he’d seen that Anne was missing he must have come after us, abandoning his match without hesitation. I was getting the feeling that I was starting to understand what Variam really cared about. “Did you tell Variam we were working for Talisid?” I asked Luna.

“What? No.”

“What about Anne?”

“No. Why?”

“I was wondering how he found out.”

“Well, it wasn’t from me. You
said
not to tell anyone.”

I nodded. I could only think of four people who knew that it was Talisid who’d come to talk to me that day at the duelling class: me, Luna, Sonder, and Talisid himself. And I was pretty sure none of them had told Variam.

But there was someone at that duelling class who could have found out that Talisid was there
without
being told. And now that I thought about it, that might explain the message too . . .

A chime sounded from the podium and conversation across the hall fell silent. More than half of the apprentices competing in the White Stone had been knocked out by now, but the number of spectators had gone up if anything. There’s a lot of prestige to these tournaments.

Crystal was standing on the podium. She’d tied up her gold hair in a professional-looking style and was dressed in yet another cream-coloured suit of a slightly different cut. I wondered if she had a rack of them somewhere. She was looking confident and as everyone turned to watch she gave them all a smile. “Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the second day of the White Stone. The third round will now begin. The first match is between”—Crystal’s eyes travelled up—“Gunther Elkins and Michael Antigua.”

Gunther was a tall, serious-looking boy with Germanic features and a blond ponytail, and he strode onto the piste to face Michael, who was a head shorter than him with light brown skin and dark hair and eyes. Two mages were standing at opposite ends of the hall behind the tuning-fork focuses, and as I watched they activated them. Thin walls of energy sprang to life along the edges of the piste and shield bubbles appeared around Gunther and Michael. Both were invisible to normal eyes and even to my mage’s sight they were faint and translucent. These were the conversion fields of an azimuth duel; they radiated no energy, but under the monitoring of a skilled operator they could react instantly to any attack that struck them. There was no ceremony; the formalities had been done yesterday. The arbitrator, a white-haired mage in ceremonial robes, glanced at Gunther. “Ready?”

Gunther nodded.

“Ready?” he said to Michael.

Michael nodded.

“Fight.”

Michael attacked, strikes of water magic hammering at Gunther’s shield. Gunther parried the first strike, and the second. As Michael began another attack, Gunther slammed a blade of air through Michael’s defences, so fast that Michael had no time to raise a shield of his own. I had just a glimpse of the razor-edged shard before it vanished in a flash of light, the conversion field disintegrating it an instant before it cut into Michael’s flesh. It wouldn’t have been fatal, but it would have hurt.

“Point, right,” the arbitrator announced. “One-zero. Places.”

Gunther and Michael returned to the starting lines. The first round had taken less than three seconds.

“Fight.”

The duel continued and it quickly became obvious that Gunther was both swifter and more skilled than his opponent. By the end the score was 3–0 and Gunther shook hands with a surly-looking Michael. I glanced down to see that Luna looked nervous.

“Victor Kraft and Oscar Poulson,” Crystal announced.

Both apprentices were using focus weapons this time. Victor wielded a longsword, which was sharp and dangerous-looking even without the trail of frost it left in his wake. Oscar held something more like a fencing épée. The épée was fast and so was Oscar, but not fast enough.

“Fay Wilder and Barbara Cartwright.”

Barbara was a plain-faced stocky girl. She carried no weapon but relied instead on touch spells. Fay had curly hair and a ready smile, and she was an illusionist. Barbara’s touch spells hit only phantoms of light and shadow, while Fay’s small dagger found its mark reliably.

“Anne and Variam are here,” I commented as Fay walked off the piste to be congratulated by a smiling man in expensive-looking clothes.

“How am I supposed to beat these guys?” Luna asked. She was biting her lip. “Did you see what she just did?”

“Relax.”

“I couldn’t even see where she was. How can—?”

“Relax,”
I said. “Focus on the one you
will
be fighting.”