Burned (6 page)

I sighed.
Saw that coming.
‘Can I agree to owe you a favour?’

‘From the sounds of it, right now, you and Luna are about the worst credit risk possible.’

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Look, I’d happily pay you in cash, but you already turned that down. The deal was an alliance. Favour for favour.’

‘If you’re about to be removed from the country or worse, you won’t be in much of a position to pay that favour back.’

‘Fine. What are you angling for?’

Chalice studied me for a few seconds before answering. ‘I want to know what your old master is looking for, and what he plans to do with it.’

I stared at Chalice. She picked up her cup of chai and took a sip.

‘Are you serious?’ I said.

Chalice looked at me.

‘Why?’

‘Call it curiosity.’

‘Looking for what? And how do you even know about this?’

‘There are rumours that Drakh is in the process of assembling a retrieval team,’ Chalice said. ‘I don’t know what he’s attempting to retrieve, and I don’t know its purpose. I would like to know both of those things.’

‘This is absolutely the worst possible time for me to go and investigate something like this.’

Chalice shrugged.

‘There is no realistic way I’m going to be able to get that done in five days,’ I said. ‘Maybe not even fifty days. You’re talking about national-level intelligence. If I just try to waltz over there and find this out with no preparation, I’m going to get killed. The cost-benefit doesn’t add up.’

Chalice tapped her fingers. ‘You may have a point.’

I sat and waited. Chalice looked off into space, frowning slightly. Luna looked between the two of us. ‘How about this, then?’ Chalice said. ‘If the opportunity arises during the coming week to discover what I want to know, you’ll find it out and relay the information to me. Otherwise, you’ll owe me a favour.’

I looked at Chalice, trying not to let my surprise show. That was a much better deal. ‘That … seems fair.’

‘It’s agreed, then.’ Chalice drank the last of her tea and straightened. ‘Luna, I’ll meet you tomorrow at Barnet. Early would be best. Nine o’clock?’

Luna nodded. ‘Okay.’

‘Well.’ Chalice turned back to me. ‘I’ve got some preparations to make. Keep me up to date if anything develops.’

‘I will,’ I said. Chalice rose and left. She went to the counter to pay, then walked out into the street.

‘I wonder why she wants to know about that?’ Luna said with a frown.

I kept my eyes on where Chalice had disappeared. ‘Have you ever told Chalice anything about the missions we do for Talisid? About our group?’

‘No.’

‘Anything at all?’

‘I do know what “secret” means. What are you getting at?’

‘Out of all the Light and independent mages in Britain, our group probably knows more than anyone else about Richard and what he’s up to,’ I said. ‘It strikes me as a funny coincidence that Chalice would just happen to approach us.’

‘Everyone knows you used to be Richard’s apprentice,’ Luna said.

‘Yes. But if Chalice has looked – and she has – then she’d also know that I hate the guy.’

‘You think she knows what we’ve been doing?’

I frowned. ‘A better question is: why does she want to know more? Trying to poke into Richard’s business is playing with fire. I wonder why she’d take that risk …?’

‘You’re the one who keeps telling us that Dark mages are always plotting against each other,’ Luna said.

‘Yeah,’ I said. Inwardly, I was wondering something else. When I’d first met Chalice, she’d implied that the only reason she’d wanted this alliance was for the information I could give her as a diviner. I’d never been absolutely sure that she was telling the whole truth about that. Did she have some agenda of her own when it came to Richard? Maybe
that
had been the real reason she’d approached Luna …

‘Well,’ Luna said, ‘time’s ticking. Think it’s time to go knock on the Council’s front door and tell them I want a journeyman test.’

‘How do you do it?’

‘Formal request delivered by hand to the dean of the apprentice programme,’ Luna said. She grinned. ‘I found out where the guy lives. Want to come along?’

‘I think it’s best if I’m visibly involved with this as little as possible,’ I said.

That wiped the smile off Luna’s face. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Right.’ She paused. ‘You’re going to see those Council members, right?’

‘Trust me, I’m really not interested in committing suicide. I’m going to do everything I can to block this thing.’

Luna searched my face for a second, then nodded and got up. ‘Okay. Wish me luck.’

‘Don’t think that’s something you’re short of.’

Luna headed to Westminster, while I returned home. My shop’s closed on Sundays, and I was in no mood to open it anyway. I made some calls.

Getting through to Talisid took a while, and when I finally did, there wasn’t much news. He’d put out feelers to Spire and Undaaris and confirmed that both were supposed to be returning to the country by this evening, but neither had responded. He promised to get back to me as soon as they did. I cut the connection, not feeling much better.

Variam had better news. I looked into the futures in which I contacted him and found that he was already in the process of introducing Anne to Landis. It seemed as though it would go better without my interfering, so I decided to leave well enough alone. In the process of finding that out, I also noticed that someone was coming to call. A woman, and a mage … a stranger, though. I couldn’t sense any immediate danger, but there was no point being careless. I checked the defences and went downstairs to wait. The bell rang a minute later. I waited twenty seconds, then walked out into the shop and unlocked the front door.

The woman standing outside had European features and long black hair, and was wearing a black fur coat. She looked forty or so, slender, with slight crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes. ‘Mage Verus?’ she said as she saw me.

‘That’s me,’ I said. I didn’t take my eyes off her. She was standing with her feet together, slightly stiff. She looked nervous.

‘I have some important information for you,’ the woman said.

‘Okay.’

‘We should discuss it in private.’

‘Okay.’

The woman looked down and fumbled in her handbag. Her movements were nervous and jerky. She pulled out a small white card and handed it to me. ‘Here.’

I inspected the card without touching it. It was a business card for a nearby hotel. A room number was written on it in black pen. ‘What exactly is this?’ I asked.

‘It’s the—’

‘The St Pancras Hotel, yes, it says on the card. Why are you showing it to me?’

‘We’ve scheduled a meeting there for two o’clock.’

I stared at the woman.

‘Okay?’ the woman said. ‘Do you understand?’

‘What exactly is this important information that you need to share?’

‘We can’t discuss that here,’ the woman said. ‘I promise all of your questions will be answered at the meeting.’

‘Yeah, that’s not going to happen.’

‘But you need to—’

‘Lady, I have never seen you before. I have no reason to listen to you and no reason to trust you. If you think I’m going to come to your meeting, you’re in for a disappointment.’

‘But this is important!’

‘Then let’s hear it.’

‘I can’t—’

‘You can’t discuss that here,’ I said with a sigh. This was getting repetitive. ‘Who are you, again?’

‘I’m sorry,’ the woman said. ‘I don’t feel comfortable identifying myself to you.’

I looked at the woman in disbelief, then shook my head and started cycling through futures. People react differently to the sound of their own name than to someone else’s. It’s theoretically possible to brute-force these kind of problems by doing one syllable at a time, but it’s time-consuming and quite frankly it’s not worth the effort. It’s much faster to try your mental library of every name that might apply to the person first. One reaction jumped out almost immediately, but the name was unfamiliar. But I must have heard it somewhere if I could be saying it … where had it been? Oh, right. Last night.

Wait. Really?

‘I promise you, it’s absolutely essential that we have this discussion,’ the woman said. ‘If you—’

‘Symmaris,’ I said.

Symmaris jumped. ‘How did you—?’

I just looked at her with raised eyebrows. I always find it odd when I get these reactions. People come here because I’m a diviner, and then they’re surprised when I know more than they tell me. They never seem to think that divination could also work on them.

‘Before you do anything,’ Symmaris began, ‘I think you should be aware that I didn’t come here alone. And there are other people who know where I am. If I don’t return they’ll know why.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ I said. ‘What is
wrong
with you?’

‘I think that, given your reputation, some precautions aren’t excessive.’

‘And I think that after you sent a bunch of thugs to try and break my bones last night, you aren’t in any position to be lecturing me about precautions.’

‘What?’

I raised my eyebrows. ‘So you didn’t send Mr Wolf after me with a couple of goons?’

‘No.’

I looked at her.

‘Of course I didn’t,’ Symmaris said. ‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘Right,’ I said sceptically. I wasn’t feeling terribly well-disposed towards Symmaris right now. ‘So now that we’ve been properly introduced, how about you tell me what this message is.’

‘I told you, I’m not discussing it out here.’

I sighed. ‘Fine,’ I said after a moment. ‘You can come into the shop. Briefly.’

Symmaris drew back. ‘I’m not going into your home with you alone.’

‘For the love of God. Are you
serious
?’

‘You just told me you believe that I’m out to get you,’ Symmaris said. ‘Given that, I think I’m being very reasonable not to isolate myself with you.’

I stared at Symmaris in disbelief, then shook my head and began to close the door. ‘Wait!’ Symmaris said. ‘The meeting is going to be at the hotel!’

‘I’ve known you for less than ten minutes and you’re already annoying me. I really don’t figure on spending the afternoon with you.’

‘But you have to—!’

I shut the door in Symmaris’s face and walked back to the counter.

There was a knocking on the door. ‘Mage Verus!’ The voice was muffled.

I ignored her and checked the compartment below the counter. The 1911 was still there in its hiding place. I glanced through the futures. No immediate danger, but she didn’t seem to be going away …

Knock knock knock.
‘Mage Verus!’

‘Door’s open,’ I called.

Silence.

‘In or out, Symmaris.’ I dropped down on to the chair behind the counter and leaned back. ‘Your choice.’

There was a pause. I waited. Eventually, the door creaked open. Symmaris took a small step inside and looked around the shop, one hand on the door.

‘Close it behind you, will you?’ I said.

She didn’t move. ‘I should remind you that there are people who know exactly where I am.’

‘Let me get this straight,’ I said. ‘You seriously think I’m going to murder you? In broad daylight in the middle of Camden at eleven-thirty on a Sunday morning? If you’re this paranoid, why did you even come?’

‘I wouldn’t have had to if—’

‘Close the door, will you? There’s a draught.’

Symmaris hesitated, then – with obvious reluctance – closed the door behind her. She turned the handle a few times both before and after she did so, checking to see if it would lock. I rolled my eyes.

Symmaris walked forward. She was wearing an impractical-looking pair of high heels that made her sway slightly as she walked, and as she took each step, the tips of the heels clicked on my floor. I stayed sitting in the chair, leaning back against the wall. It was a bad posture for responding to attacks, but I’d already scanned the futures and I was pretty sure that wasn’t going to happen. People who are considering violence have a distinctive signature in their futures, and from Symmaris’s potential responses, I’d pegged her as the kind who ran away from danger rather than towards it.

Symmaris stopped some distance from the counter. ‘I tried calling your shop,’ she said. ‘It didn’t go through.’

‘I don’t keep the landline plugged in.’ Any number that Symmaris would likely have found would have been a fake one, but I didn’t see any need to inform her of that.

‘You could leave a mobile number.’

‘You’re under the mistaken impression that I
want
to be answering phone calls from random strangers.’

‘The number I found was from the Council list.’

‘I don’t want to be answering phone calls from the Council, either.’

‘You can’t just do that.’

‘I don’t see why not,’ I said. ‘People know where my shop is. If they can’t be bothered to make the trip to talk to me in person, then it probably wasn’t anything very important.’

‘Well, maybe if you’d been properly listed I wouldn’t have had to ask Redman to go talk to you!’

‘I notice that even you don’t call him “Wolf”,’ I said dryly. ‘But yes, I’m glad you brought up that subject. Why don’t you explain to me why you tried to get those nice young men to “send me a message” by breaking my bones?’

‘I didn’t,’ Symmaris insisted. ‘Yes, he was supposed to be delivering a message, but he was only supposed to talk to you. I
specifically
told him to talk. And I didn’t tell him anything about bringing anyone else.’

‘Well, congratulations.’ I leaned forward off the wall and clasped my hands in front of me on the desk. ‘You’ve got my attention.’

Symmaris looked at me, then away. She took a step closer to the shelves at the centre of the shop and started nervously fiddling with the crystal balls. ‘I know about Drakh’s operation,’ she said.

‘Oh God.’ I looked skywards. ‘Not you as well.’

‘I’m not going to ask what he’s looking for,’ Symmaris said quickly. ‘I don’t know anything about that.’

‘That makes two of us.’

‘And I’m not saying anything about … any decisions you might or might not have made about getting involved in that.’ Symmaris carefully didn’t look at me. She picked up one of the crystal balls, swapping it with its neighbour so that they were lined up in ascending order of size. She paused, then pushed it a tiny fraction back to bring it into line. ‘I understand it would be very difficult to say no.’