Alex Verus Novels, Books 1-4 (9780698175952) (16 page)

We did another circuit of the dance floor, passing close to the band. All four were women. They looked natural at first glance; only if you looked closely would you see the
slightly glazed look in their eyes. We turned back towards the crowd, and I saw the person I’d been waiting for. “Look over my shoulder,” I said as I turned. “Greek-looking guy in a dark blue suit with fancy trim. Talking to the man in red.”

“Mm—okay, I see him. Who is he?”

“Name’s Lyle. Major-league asshole. Tied in with the Council.”

“He’s the one who invited you?”

“Yup.”

We did another revolution. “Are you going to talk to him?” Luna asked eventually.

“He can wait.” Lyle was starting to send irritated glances in our direction. The music came to a halt, and I came apart from Luna with a smile and gave her a small bow. There was scattered clapping.

“That was…” Luna hesitated. She looked different somehow—flushed and wondering, alive in a way I’d never seen before. “I’ve never…”

“I know.” I took her arm and led her off the floor as a new dance started. I didn’t bother to hurry; I knew Lyle would come to us.

He materialised out of the crowd before we’d even reached it. “Ah, Alex,” Lyle said with a good imitation of surprise. “I’m glad I bumped into you.”

“Hey, Lyle. Thanks for the invitation.”

“Don’t mention it.” Lyle looked at Luna. “I don’t believe we’ve met?”

“I hope you’re not trying to steal her from me, Lyle,” I said with an easy smile, then glanced at Luna. “This is Lyle, an acquaintance of mine. We know each other very well.”

Lyle bowed to her. “An honour to meet you.” He straightened. “If it’s convenient, Alex, I’ve some things to discuss with you in private. Barrayar, perhaps you could show the lady around.”

A man who’d been waiting at Lyle’s side stepped forward. He looked like a functionary. “You’ll have to excuse me,” I said to Luna. “I’ll be right back.”

“That’s fine,” Luna said, and gave Lyle a smile. “Pleased to meet you.” Lyle gave another bow, then turned and started walking. I followed. Behind, I heard Barrayar starting to introduce himself.

“ ‘I’ll be right back’?” Lyle murmured once we were out of earshot. “Seems you still haven’t learnt not to make promises you can’t keep.”

“I wouldn’t get too cocky, Lyle.” Other men and couples glanced at us as we passed, first at Lyle, then with more curiosity at me. Lyle was a known quantity here; I was something new. “I only agreed to listen.”

“And you think you’ll be getting a better offer?”

I grinned lazily. “Oh, you’d be surprised just how many people are taking an interest in your relic lately.”

Lyle gave me a sharp look, then turned away.

Servants were moving through the crowd, white-clothed figures with their faces hidden behind opaque masks, offering food and drinks. We passed a crowd around the buffet table and climbed a small flight of stairs up to one of the exits from the hall. The exit led to a staircase, leading upwards and then doubling back. We went up two levels and came out into a smaller corridor, this one plain and undecorated. Windows on the left side looked down into the main hall, but the sounds were quieter up here, the music and conversation from below muffled. The corridor ended in a door, leading into an antechamber. As we walked in, I checked, staring at the figures ahead.

In front of the opposite door, facing us, were two creatures sculpted from silver and gold. They stood seven feet tall on triple-jointed legs and had two pairs of segmented arms carrying eight-foot-tall ceremonial glaives and devices of tapering metal the size of heavy guns. Their heads were turned towards us, and faceted golden eyes watched us silently as we entered. These were
gythka
, mantis golems, and their presence meant a Council member was here. Lyle hadn’t been kidding.

“Lyle Trahelis,” Lyle said as he walked up; he hadn’t stopped. He gestured in my direction. “He’s with me.” He
approached the door and paused, looking back at me. “Hurry up, Alex. We haven’t got all day.”

The mantis golems hadn’t moved an inch since we entered, and their eyes watched us, opaque and unreadable. Lyle stood negligently in the shadow of two of them. I knew he was showing off, and I couldn’t sense any danger, but I’ve lived on my wits too long to ever be comfortable about exposing myself. Even though I knew the guards weren’t going to touch me, the thought of passing beneath those shining blades made my skin crawl.

I took a breath and walked forward. One of the guards swivelled its head to watch. Up close it smelt of sweet oil and polished metal. I couldn’t see any joints in its body; it looked like an insect crafted in silver. Its future held no choices, a solid line instead of branching forks.
Gythka
are constructs with no will of their own, programmed to obey Council members absolutely. According to rumour, they’re almost indestructible. I’ve never seen the rumour tested. Lyle pushed open the door and we stepped inside.

The room within was dimly lit, with a high ceiling and a dozen widely spaced chairs. The entire left wall was a giant window, a transparent panel looking down onto the great hall. Below was the arena and the buffet table, and to one side I could see the dance floor and the band. It was an impressive view, perfectly placed to see and be seen by the people below…except that when I’d looked up from floor level, this spot had looked like a blank wall. The window was one-way glass. We could see the people below, but they couldn’t see us.

Five people were sitting in the room, but it was the man in the centre seat who caught my attention. He was in his fifties, with thinning white hair and eyes that faded into the shadows. I’d seen him in pictures before, but never in person, and it took me a moment to put a face to the name. This was Vaal Levistus, one of the members of the Council. He glanced up as we entered. “Mr. Verus. I’m glad you could come.” He gestured to the others. “Leave us.”

They obeyed in silence, giving me sidelong looks as they filed out. Lyle hesitated in the doorway. “Councillor?”

“Thank you, Lyle.”

Lyle shot a glance at me and closed the door. There was a smooth click and Levistus and I were alone. Although I could see down through the window into the main hall, with the door closed the room was suddenly silent. Soundproofed. People outside could neither see nor hear.

I’d been scanning ahead ever since I landed outside, looking into the future of what was going to happen to Luna and to me, and I’d found no sign of danger—at least, no immediate danger. But beyond that door, the future had broken up, forking into too many different paths, and now I knew why.

Divination can only predict what can be predicted. Some things are truly random, or so close that it makes no difference. You can’t predict the roll of a die, because there are so many thousands of things that can nudge it one way or another that by the time you could pick out a future it would have stopped rolling. Any really complex system has too much chaos to be easily predictable; it follows patterns, but not ones that can be reliably foreseen. But there’s another thing that can’t be predetermined—thought. Free will is one of the points at which divination magic breaks down. If a person hasn’t made a choice, then no magic can see beyond it. You can see probabilities, but they’re no more than guesses, wisps that fade as fast as they appear.

Looking into the future of what Levistus was going to do, I came up with so many answers I couldn’t begin to pick one, dozens of futures branching in every direction, ever shifting. Some looked peaceful; others didn’t. This was a dangerous man.

When I didn’t move, Levistus gestured to the chair on his right. “Sit.”

“What about her?”

Levistus looked up at me. “Who?”

I cleared my throat. “You asked for everyone to leave.” I nodded at an empty space about six feet behind where Levistus was sitting. “What about her?”

Levistus watched me for a long moment, his face showing
nothing, and for the second time in two minutes my skin crawled briefly. “Thirteen,” he said at last. “Visible.”

The air in the spot I’d looked at shimmered and took form. One moment it was empty; the next a wispy, transparent figure of a woman was standing there, its shape visible as thin lines in the gloom. It was an air elemental—but it wasn’t. Normal elementals have a primal feel to them, something timeless and alien. Except for her body of air, this one looked like a real woman. She was tall, with long legs and hair falling around her shoulders, and she was naked, her body clearly visible. She looked sensual, eerily beautiful, and I felt my body responding until I saw her eyes. They glowed a faint white, and they were utterly empty. She watched me blankly, arms by her sides, completely still.

“Interesting,” Levistus said. “How did you detect her?”

I
hadn’t
detected her. “Trade secrets.”

“Hm.” Levistus looked away. “Take a seat. Thirteen, to the corner.”

Silently, the air elemental glided to the corner of the room. I noticed that the place she had been standing would have put her right behind the chair Levistus had indicated for me, and felt a slight chill. Whatever she was, that creature scared me. She had been
totally
invisible, both to my eyes and to my mage’s sight. The only way I’d known she was there had been through the common elements in the futures ahead of us, and from my brief look, they hadn’t been pleasant ones.

I took the chair to the other side of Levistus, the one he hadn’t nodded to. As I did, I searched my memory for everything I knew about the man sitting next to me. Though not yet a senior member, Levistus was talked about as one of the more powerful members of the Council, and that put him in the political top ten of the entire country. If Lyle was one of his agents, he’d progressed even faster than I’d thought. Like most Council masters, Levistus was believed to use mind magic, but that could just as easily be rumour. Beyond that, his nature and goals were a mystery…but
nothing I’d heard suggested he was in the habit of employing outoffavour diviners.

The view below us was directly onto the sphere arena. Spheres is an old, old game amongst mages, and two players had just started a bout, their faces locked in concentration as their globes of light formed, moving inwards into the sphere, one set white, one set black. A crowd had gathered to watch, standing on the raised steps around the arena, talking to each other as they followed the movements. Both the lights in the sphere and the crowd moved in eerie silence, inaudible through the layer of glass.

“I believe you may be able to help me with a problem,” Levistus said. His voice was educated, detached, with no trace of emotion. His eyes didn’t rest on me as he spoke but looked down at the hall below, passing over the crowd. “I expect Lyle has told you the details.”

“Some of them,” I said. I could see the air elemental, Thirteen, out of the corner of my eye; she was still watching me.

“The relic contains a Precursor artifact. I want you to retrieve it.”

“Contains?” I managed to keep my voice only mildly curious.

“The relic is a storage device. The artifact is within.”

In the sphere below, the globes of light clashed, manoeuvring for position. One spun away, winking out as it left the sphere, and the crowd applauded silently. “I think,” I said, “if I’m going to be retrieving this item, I’d like to know a little more about it.”

“That is not your concern.”

“I’m sorry, Councillor,” I said. “I’m not going to take this job unless I know exactly what this thing does.”

Levistus turned to look at me. Up close, I could see that his eyes were colourless, a pale grey, revealing nothing. I held my breath, feeling my muscles tingling. The futures ahead of me flickered and changed.

Levistus opened his mouth and one future eclipsed the others, becoming real. “The artifact is an item known as a fateweaver,” he said. “It has the ability to alter chance and
outcomes. In appearance it is a wand of ivory, unmarked, approximately twelve inches long.”

“I’m sure you could lay hands on a dozen chance mages who could alter outcomes, Councillor.”

Levistus made an irritated brushing motion, as if to say he didn’t have time for flattery. It had been a long time since I’d spoken with a Council mage, but the conversation wasn’t going how I’d expected. High-level mages tend to be full of their own importance, expecting compliments and ceremony. Levistus was all business. It made him easier to talk to, but also more dangerous. “Fateweavers are spoken of in the histories. Commanders in the Dark Wars carried them, and there are references to their changing the course of entire battles. This is the first opportunity to see one recovered intact. It is essential it does not fall into the hands of a Dark mage.”

I nodded slowly, remembering. The Dark Wars had ended the Precursor civilisation. Records of that time were fragmentary, but it was well known that the weapons employed had been devastating. If this artifact was one of them, it was clear why everyone wanted it so badly.

Another burst of silent applause came from the crowd below. The globes were interlinked now. “I believe that answers your question,” Levistus said.

It didn’t, but it was clear that was all he was going to tell me. I didn’t want to push further so I switched to a safer subject. “What about payment?”

“You will have the favour of a member of the High Council.” Levistus turned to look at me with his grey eyes. “I would consider that payment enough.”

“I appreciate the offer, Councillor, but I’d prefer something more tangible.”

“The prospect of keeping this item out of Dark hands doesn’t appeal to you?”

Damn, this guy was good. He knew about my past, and he was using it. And he was right: if this thing really was a weapon from the Dark Wars, there was no way I’d want someone like Cinder in control of it.

But that didn’t mean I trusted the Council with it, either. And I had the sudden feeling that Levistus was testing me. He obviously knew I had no love for Dark mages or the Council. But he probably didn’t know whether I was an idealist or a cynic. Depending on how I answered…Seconds ticked away.

“I don’t think it’s my business whose hands it ends up in,” I said at last.