Alex Verus 5: Hidden (21 page)

I didn’t answer. “Anne got hold of that kid and ripped the life right out of him,” not-Anne said calmly. “Took a few tries, but she didn’t give up. And looking down at his body afterwards . . . In a way, that was where I was born.”

I stared at not-Anne as she leant against the window, the light from outside falling across the scarlet dress. Despite everything she’d been saying, she looked relaxed. I didn’t know what to say.

“So, that night she stayed up thinking about killing herself,” not-Anne said. Her voice was so normal it was disturbing. “Obviously she didn’t. I mean, staying alive was why she’d done it in the first place, it’d kind of defeat the point, right? Things settled down, she recovered a bit, convinced herself she’d never do it again. Then Sagash brought in another kid. Same story, different guy. Second time was easier. Third was easier than the second, fourth was easier than the third. After a while Sagash stopped bringing them in. Either he was running out or he figured Anne had learnt her lesson.”

“How many?” I asked quietly.

Not-Anne shrugged. “Enough.”

I looked at her in silence.

“Anyway, eventually Vari showed up and they broke out. Hurt Sagash but didn’t kill him, more’s the pity, and they got back to London and lived happily ever after . . . except they didn’t. Anne couldn’t accept what she’d done—couldn’t accept
me
. Oh, she’d been fine with it when she
needed
me, but once she was safe, well, she didn’t want me around anymore, did she? So she tried to pretend the whole thing never happened. She avoided fighting and duelling, anything that could raise the wrong kind of questions, and put on the pacifist act instead. After all, the only ones who’d been there had been Sagash and the guys she’d been fighting, and since all except Sagash were
dead
, well, there wasn’t anyone to argue, was there? Except me. So she shut me away.” Not-Anne gestured around her at the black-glass walls. “In here. Where she can forget about me and all the ugly little secrets that don’t belong in her perfect world. But she can’t get rid of me—I’m part of her and she still needs me. When things get really dangerous she’ll bring me out, long enough to keep her alive. She just won’t admit it.”

I remembered the one time I’d seen Anne use her abilities to kill. I hadn’t understood what I’d seen in her eyes, not then. “Okay,” I said. “You brought me here to tell me all this. Why? What do you want?”

“Why do you think?”

“Because you want to be in charge?”

Not-Anne rolled her eyes again. “Jesus, you’re paranoid. Okay, fine,
maybe
I’d appreciate it if she’d treat me a little better. But there’s kind of a more pressing issue, don’t you think?”

“You mean getting out of this castle.”

“Ding ding, we have a winner! I might have been born here, but I’m not keen on staying for the rest of my life, which isn’t going to be very long at this rate. I’m part of Anne, remember. She dies, I die. Plus no matter how much of a bitch she can be, I don’t actually hate her
that
much. I want her out of here, and that means she needs to sort out her issues fast, probably within the next twenty-four hours, because somehow I don’t think the Sagash Psycho Club is going to wait around while she takes her time about it. She needs to stop fighting me or she’s not going to make it out.”

I looked at not-Anne with raised eyebrows. “And you think I’m going to be able to do this in twenty-four hours when literally every other person she’s ever met hasn’t been able to do it in five years.”

“Yeah, well, you’re not my first choice either, but it’s not like we’re exactly swimming in options. Pity you didn’t make a move on her last night, would probably have made her open up a bit. You could have spun her the ‘this might be our last night alive’ line.”

I gave not-Anne an irritated look. “That would have been manipulative, sleazy, and extremely stupid given that we’re in
a castle of people trying to kill us
.”

“Oh, don’t be such a prude. She knows you think she looks hot after last year.”

“She’s eight years younger than me.”

“So? Emotionally she’s probably more mature than you are. Though that’s not saying much.”

I sighed. “You’re a lot less nice than the real Anne, you know that?”

“Yeah, well, next time you’re talking to her remember she
thinks
all this stuff, she just doesn’t say it. Point is, ever since escaping to London she’s been trying to play the good girl and it isn’t working. That’s why the Light mages don’t like her—they can see she’s hiding something. So we’ve got this stupid situation where she’s too dangerous for the Light mages and not dangerous enough for the Dark ones. She needs to stop pretending.”

“Look, I’m not a psychoanalyst. Shouldn’t you get an actual professional?”

“Right, after you wake up you can go shopping around the castle and find one, maybe have her sit down on a couch for a chat.
Oh wait.
” Not-Anne glared at me. “
We do not have time.
You want to drag Anne to a shrink, do it later. Right now you need to do whatever it takes to make her fight her way out of here.”

“Anne
does
know how to fight. I’ve seen—”

“No, you haven’t. Against Vitus, maybe, and that was only because I was driving. The rest of the time she holds back. If she’d been serious, she’d have killed both those apprentices in her bedroom and we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

“And then she would have been breaking the Concord.”

“Fuck the Concord. Every Dark mage in the country breaks it, why shouldn’t she?” I started to answer and not-Anne waved her hand. “Fine, whatever. I don’t care about long-term solutions, all right? Get Anne out of here and you can do whatever the hell you want.”

“That bit we’re agreed on.” I studied not-Anne. “Does Variam know about you?”

“He’s got his suspicions.” Not-Anne glanced out the window. “Let’s wrap this up.”

“One more thing,” I said. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m getting the impression your priorities are a bit different from Anne’s. Are you sure you want to get away from this castle as badly as she does?”

“Oh, please. Sagash has got the right idea about some things, I’ll give you that, but we’re just furniture to him. Anne and I might not always agree, but one thing we know is that we’re not going to be a slave again. You think I want to be his tool until he uses me up? I want to be the one that everyone
else
is afraid of, who makes the decisions about who lives or dies and makes everyone shut up when she walks in the room. I don’t want to be Chosen, I want to be queen.”

I looked back at not-Anne for a long moment, feeling a chill. I’d heard that speech before, or something very like it. “It might be better for you and for Anne,” I said quietly, “if you don’t get what you want.”

Not-Anne shrugged. “Not like I’ll ever get the chance.” She pushed herself off the window’s edge. “Time’s up.”

“Why? What’s going to happen?”

“You ask too many questions, you know that?” Not-Anne walked away, deeper into the shadows of the tower. Only her voice echoed around me as she faded from sight. “Just keep her alive. There’s more hanging on it than you know.”

I started to answer, but she was gone. The room I was in was empty, and as I looked around I saw that the room was darker, the light fading. I started back towards the place I’d entered from; the lights above me began to dim and go out one by one, and I broke into a jog. I was alone in the tower, the glass corridors silent but for the sound of my feet. The door I’d entered by was at the end of the corridor, clearly visible in the shadows. I pulled it open, and as I did the last lights went out and I was left in darkness. I stepped through and back into my dreams, the doorway disappearing behind me as everything began to fragment and become fuzzy. Sleep came.

|  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |

I
woke up slowly. I didn’t feel rested, but my neck and back were stiff and aching and I was too uncomfortable to go back to sleep. As I realised where I was, I remembered that I
shouldn’t
be going back to sleep. In a moment I was fully awake and scanning for danger.

I was propped up against the wall, alone. Anne was gone; with her magic-enhanced physiology she’d recovered from the exertions of three days in the time it had taken me to recover from one. Looking into the futures in which I went down the stairs, I saw that she was in the room below. There were no signs of battle or danger.

Now that I was awake, I was uncomfortably aware of just how big a risk I’d taken falling asleep like that. Still, it had paid off, and both of us were rested—we’d need it for the day ahead. I pulled myself to my feet, wincing at the pain in my muscles. Sleeping in armour is really not comfortable.

The window on the north side of the room looked down onto the grass and the pool of water. From the grey-blue sky I knew that the sun had risen, but the bulk of the castle was blocking its rays and no direct sunlight was touching the grassy enclave. White birds—doves, maybe—were gathered at the rushes by the edge of the pool, dipping their heads to sip fresh water. It was a peaceful scene and I stood in the shadow of the window’s edge, watching idly while I scouted through the futures ahead.

A stir of movement from the north side of the courtyard caught my eye; there was something in the shadow of a crumbling archway. Just enough reflected light came through for me to make out a small long-bodied animal, about the size and shape of a cat but with a pointed face and a thick bushy tail. Red fox. This shadow realm really must be old if it had its own predators.

The fox crept closer, revealing a red coat with splashes of white and black on its underside. A low pile of rubble hid it from the birds by the pool. It came to the edge of the rubble and froze, head down, eyes locked onto the birds in a stalking posture. I watched with interest, taking care not to move and draw attention; I’ve always liked animals, especially predators. The fox was quite still, focused on the birds, and it looked hungry. The doves didn’t seem to have noticed it yet, but there wasn’t any more cover. As soon as it took another couple of steps it’d be seen.

The fox held still and I kept a casual eye on it, my attention still taken up with scouting us a way out. It didn’t look as though anyone was searching for us just yet, but I was still worried about the possibility of some kind of magical detection. The shroud over the place looked as though it would block most standard tracer spells, but my divination still worked, which meant other techniques might too. The shroud also wouldn’t rule out more mundane methods of searching, such as just sending out scouts. I already knew those shadows could fly—if I were Sagash’s apprentices, I’d be using them for aerial recon. They probably didn’t have enough of them to cover the entire castle, but . . .

The fox crouched to spring, and I looked at it curiously. It was still the best part of forty feet from the birds—

The fox leapt, vanished. There was a scuffle and explosion of wings and the doves were airborne, flapping frantically up and away. I’d been about to turn; now I looked down in surprise.
What just happened?

The fox was by the pool, its weight on one of the doves and its jaws locked tight. The bird was flapping feebly, trying to get away; the fox sank its teeth into the neck and twisted. There was a
crack
and the dove went still. The fox hoisted the bird up, looking quickly around, then trotted back towards where it had come, head tilted high so that the dove’s wings trailed on the grass. It covered the distance back to the archway and disappeared into the darkness. The surviving doves were still in the air, circling; the whole thing had taken less than twenty seconds. Nothing was left except a scattering of feathers by the pool.

Footsteps sounded from below and Anne appeared in the stairwell, looking past me out through the window. “Did you see that?” I said.

“The bird?” Anne asked. She was still wearing my greatcoat. “I felt it die, but . . .”

“Not the bird, the fox. Did you see it move?” I’d seen the fox jump, a short bound of a foot or two, then all of a sudden it had been coming down on the bird.

Anne frowned. “No. I think it’s the same one that was here two days ago. It was on the other side of a wall, but when I got closer it just disappeared.”

“Holy crap,” I said. “Blink fox.”

“What’s a blink fox?”

“Magic-bred species—some twentieth-century mages made them as spy familiars. They look like a red fox, but they’ve got human-level intelligence and they can do short-range teleports.”

“You mean it was looking for us?”

I shook my head. “No, it was hunting. If it was under a mage’s control it wouldn’t be that hungry . . . hmm.”

“Hmm, what?”

“I heard those two apprentices saying something about trying to catch a fox. Maybe we could strike a deal with it.”

Anne looked at me with raised eyebrows. “Seriously?”

“It’s been hiding out in this castle, probably longer than you. It’d know a lot about the place.”

“It probably belongs to those apprentices,” Anne said. “Can’t we just get out of here?”

“I guess.” I was reluctant—when I run into a new type of magical creature, my first instinct is to make friends with it, an old habit from my days as Richard’s apprentice where the magical creatures tended to be better company than the humans. But Anne was right; we were on a clock. “You said something yesterday about another way out?”

“There is, but . . . I’m not sure how useful it’s going to be.”

I made a go-ahead gesture and Anne crouched next to me. She drew one finger across the flagstones of the stone floor, tracing out lines. “These are the edges of the castle.” She seemed to have recovered from last night, at least physically—her movements were quick and her voice soft and clear again. “The outer walls are the lines of the stone, the bridge is here. Front gate.” Her finger drew back, tapped a marking a quarter of the way across. “Sagash’s keep.” She drew her finger back farther, placing it on a spot in what would be the north-centre of the castle, mirroring the keep’s position. “This is the other exit.”