Alex Verus Novels, Books 1-4 (9780698175952) (108 page)

Obviously this kid hadn't gotten that particular memo. He was practically paralysed, to the point where it looked like he could barely move. I wasn't worried about the knife—from what I could see he looked more likely to stab himself than anyone else. “Who sent you?” I said, my voice sharp and commanding. I didn't ask who he was—this guy was a pawn, not a king.

The tone of voice worked, and the kid mumbled an answer before he could stop himself. “Will.”

“You his apprentice?” I asked. The kid stared at me in obvious confusion and I cocked my head. He wasn't acting like a mage. “Adept, then?”

He started, and I nodded to myself. “Okay, what do you want to know?”

“Huh?”

I shrugged. “You came here to find something out, right? Let's hear it.”

The kid continued to stare at me. Apparently this hadn't been in the script. “Okay, look,” I said. “Could we speed this up? I've got company over, and don't take this personally, but you're not turning out to be the most fascinating conversation partner.”

“Are—” The kid's voice wavered and he swallowed. “You're Verus, aren't you?”

“Yes. I'm the big bad scary Verus.”

“What were you doing?” the kid said.

I stared at him for a second before answering slowly and carefully. “I was playing a board game.”

The kid hesitated. “So you've discovered my secret,” I said. “Congrats.” I nodded to the knife. “Now put that away. You obviously don't have a clue how to use it.”

By the way, just in case any of you are thinking about trying this at home, this is
not
how you're supposed to handle a nervous guy with a knife. If someone pulls a weapon on you, the correct response is to run—or if you can't manage that, to deck them before they get the chance to draw it. But I'd been looking into the futures in which I engaged the kid and it was woefully obvious that he had absolutely no idea how to use the thing. If I went for him it was three to one that he'd fall off the roof and probably stab himself in the process.

The kid started and looked down at the blade—he'd obviously forgotten he was holding it—but didn't lower the weapon. I sighed, suddenly running out of patience.
Oh, screw this.
I walked to one side. “Get out of here.”

The kid stared at me again. “Beat it,” I said, gesturing. I'd left the kid a clear path back where he came. “If your boss wants to spy on me, tell him to come do it himself.”

The kid looked from me to the empty darkness and began slowly moving away, trying to retreat and watch me at the same time. I took another look into the futures and saw how easy it would be to take him down. Lunge, grab, twist, and he'd be on the ground. The knife would be out of his hand and into mine, and then we could have a nice long chat about exactly who'd sent him here.

I didn't do it. I would have, once. A spy usually just means someone's being nosy, but it can also mean they're thinking about making a move on you, which means that it's fairly common for mages who realise they're being spied on to shoot first and ask questions later. On top of that, the kind of people I used to hang out with tended to assume that
not
reacting to a potential threat with immediate violence was a sign of weakness. It might be nothing, but why take the chance?

But here's the thing about living like a paranoid hermit: it sucks. It's impossible to explain just how
tired
you can get of violence—that weary feeling where you see someone who's looking for trouble and want to ask,
Do we really have to do this?
The more time I spent with Luna and Sonder and Variam and Anne, the more I realised that I liked not treating everyone I met as a potential threat. Going after the kid and interrogating him felt like stepping away from that, and I didn't want to do it. So I stood and watched as he edged around me. Once he had a clear line of retreat he turned and ran into the darkness. The sound of racing footsteps faded and I was alone.

Now that I look back, I wonder what would have happened if I'd done things differently. If I'd spoken or acted another way, could I have avoided the whole ugly mess? Or would it just have made things worse? Maybe someone else could have managed it. I don't know.

But at the time I had no idea what was coming. I just waited to make sure the kid was gone, then headed back down to my flat to tell Anne and the others the story.

* * *

I
woke the next morning to the pleasant feeling of light and warmth. From long habit, the first thing I did was scan the future for danger, looking for the telltale flashes of threats and violence. Absolutely nothing came up and I stayed relaxed, turning to get my head out of the light before opening my eyes. The sun was streaming into my bedroom, the rays lighting up my bed and carpet in brilliant colour, and glancing up through the window I could see a bright blue sky. It was going to be a clear summer's day.

My bedroom's a comfortable size, with two tall windows that let in the morning sun and give a view out onto the rooftops of Camden. The walls are white and bare except for a couple of pictures I inherited from the previous owner, and there's a long desk that's usually cluttered with whatever magic items I'm working on at the moment. A door leads into the living room. From under the door I could smell something tasty coming from the kitchen and I didn't even need to look to know that Anne was there.

I wasn't in a hurry so I just lay there in my bed, enjoying the sun and quiet while lazily looking through the futures ahead of me. Once I was completely awake I got up and took a few steps on the carpet in my bare feet, stretching my legs before dressing and opening the door.

The living room was neat and clean except for the corner with Variam's camp bed, which looked as though it had been converted into a nest for a medium-sized tornado. Variam has a ridiculous amount of energy and only sleeps about six hours a night, which usually means that by the time I'm up he's already left the house. I washed, shaved, and wandered into the kitchen, where Anne was making breakfast.

Since Anne and Variam had moved in last winter, my home had gone from a fairly lonely place to something more like a shared house. It had been eight months since Anne and Variam had arrived, and between seeing them and taking lessons from me Luna was spending so much time here that she might as well be living here too. We'd all had plenty of time to learn each other's quirks, and one of the first things we'd found out was everyone else's cooking styles. My cooking can be best described as functional. I'm one of those people who doesn't care much about food—I like it enough to appreciate it when it's done well but not enough to learn to get really good. The end result is edible, but I don't think there's much chance anyone's ever going to get excited about eating it.

Anne's a superb cook. She told us that she grew up doing the cooking for her house, and it shows—she can make a meal out of literally anything and it'll taste good. Luna isn't bad, but she's accident prone. The bad luck from her curse may not affect her, but it works just fine on everything else, and putting her in an environment filled with lit fires, sharp knives, and potentially poisonous substances is just a
really
bad idea. Her last attempt at oil frying is the reason I've got a CO
₂
extinguisher mounted on the wall. Variam is terrible. His dishes come in three flavours: scorched, charred, and burnt to a crisp. I have the suspicion that he makes it awful on purpose just so he doesn't get asked to do it again, but I can't prove it.

Anne met me with a smile and a plate of delicious fried stuff. “Anne, I love you,” I said as I took it from her.

Anne laughed. “You probably say that to any woman who feeds you.”

“I didn't say it to the last woman who used this kitchen before you and Luna.” I sat down at the table and started eating. It tasted as good as it smelt.

“Really?”

“Yeah,” I said between mouthfuls. “Turned out she was working for a guy who wanted to kill us. She helped catch me and Luna so he could have a try at murdering us both. Was one of my more spectacularly dysfunctional breakups.”

Anne paused and looked at me. “You're not joking, are you?”

“I'll tell you the story sometime,” I said. “Vari gone out?”

“He went for a run.” Anne took the remainder of the sausages, hash browns, and bacon from the pan and divided them in two. Half went on her plate and the other half in another pan, which she closed carefully.

I nodded at the pan. “For Vari?”

“Mm-hm.” Anne took her plate over and sat opposite me. She had just as much food as I did. Anne may be thin, but she eats a lot.

“It really annoys Luna that you're always so nice to him.”

“I know,” Anne said with a rueful look. “I keep telling her I don't mind.”

I laughed. “You never mind being nice to people.”

“Well . . . maybe sometimes,” Anne said with a quick smile. “Vari can be bad-tempered, but he's not a bully. He never tries to control anyone. And . . . he's a little nervous at the moment.”

I looked at Anne in surprise. “Why now?”

“He's worried we've been looking for a master for too long,” Anne said. “We're not really supposed to be in the apprentice program, are we? Vari thinks that the longer this goes on, the more chance someone will start paying attention to us.”

Well, that spoiled the fun a bit. I didn't answer, but Anne was watching me and I knew she could already tell from my reaction that Vari was right.

One of the reasons I'd invited Anne and Variam to stay with me last winter had been for their protection. They're not recognised members of magical society, but I am (just about), and the idea had been that I'd try to find them a master. Unfortunately that had proven a lot harder than I'd expected. It turns out that if you add up the number of novice mages in Britain looking for a master, and the number of qualified and respected Light or independent master mages looking for an apprentice, there are way more applicants than places. And Anne and Variam's record only made things worse—to most Light and independent mages, being associated with a Dark mage, a rakshasa, and a murder investigation is sort of the equivalent of being a illegal immigrant, a terrorist, and a registered sex offender all at once. By this point I'd been at it for more than half a year and it was starting to feel depressingly like job hunting, right down to the
we regret to inform you
rejection letters and the creeping sense of futility.

The one bit of good news was that Anne and Variam were still enrolled in the Light apprentice program, a kind of university structure where apprentices are taught in small classes, meaning that even if they don't have a master they still have opportunities for study. Problem is, you're not supposed to be allowed into the program unless you're sponsored. Jagadev had arranged for Anne and Variam's entry, and when the two of them had moved into my flat people had assumed I'd taken over their sponsorship, even though officially I hadn't. If I petitioned I
might
be able to manage it . . . but then again I might not, and whether or not it worked it would draw all the wrong kinds of attention. “Do you want to push harder?” I asked Anne.

“How?”

“You know why you've been turned down so much,” I said. “It's the whole history with Sagash and Jagadev.” I hesitated, choosing my words carefully. “There are mages who'd be less concerned by that.”

“Dark mages?” Anne said quietly.

“Not all of them,” I said. “It's just . . . Look, so far I've been pretty picky about the mages I've approached. If anything's made me even a little bit twitchy, I've steered clear. I could change that. It's not something I want to do, but . . . as things stand right now, you and Vari have absolutely no rights under mage law. Living with me gives you a little protection but not much, and it's not like I'm exactly short on enemies. I don't like the idea of you guys signing up with a mage I don't trust, but in the long run it might actually make you both safer.”

Anne had listened quietly as I spoke, watching me closely. As I finished my food, she thought for a second and shook her head. “No.”

“Not all of them are going to be bad. They're just ones I'm not sure about.”

“Then I don't want to go near them. I don't want to be apprenticed to a mage I don't trust. I'd rather have no master than a bad one.”

“It might take a while—”

“Then I'll wait,” Anne said. “I don't care how long it takes. I was Sagash's apprentice once and I'm not doing that again, not
ever
.” Her eyes were set and there was an anger there that brought me up short. “As long as there's any chance they could be like that, I'm never going with them.”

I leant back in surprise. “Okay. I guess we'll cross off that plan.”

Anne stared right through me, and for just a moment I wondered where I'd seen that expression of hers before. A memory flickered through my head: green light flashing off bones, a body falling . . .

Then Anne seemed to realise what she was doing and the moment was gone. “Um . . .” She brushed her hair back, turning her face away, suddenly embarrassed. “Sorry, I didn't mean . . . Is it okay us still staying here? I don't want to . . .”

“Oh, it's fine,” I said, though inwardly I was curious. What had triggered
that
? “Look, you guys have been here long enough to see how active a social life I usually have. It's nice having people to talk to.”

“You don't mind being so crowded?” Anne asked. “I mean, this flat's not that big.”

I shrugged. “I'm kind of the self-contained type. As long as you guys don't start sleeping in my bedroom I'm fine.” Though come to think of it, I always used to have trouble sleeping if anyone else was in the flat. For some reason Anne and Variam didn't trigger that reflex.