Cursed (4 page)

I’ve known Arachne for ten years. For me that’s a long time; for her, not so much. When I first met Arachne I was still apprentice to the Dark mage Richard Drakh. She didn’t trust me at first, and with hindsight I can’t really blame her. But if it hadn’t been for her I doubt I’d have survived, and over the years she’s become probably my closest friend, funny as it sounds. “Do you think I’m doing the right thing teaching Luna?”

“What an odd question.” Arachne didn’t look up from her work. “You’re hardly going to turn her out on her own.”

“Of course not. It’s …” I hesitated. “Am I teaching her
right
? She’s still pushing to get involved with other mages. I thought she’d ease off on that. I mean, she gets to meet people at the shop.”

“Not very often, from what you tell me.”

“She can’t afford to do it very often. With her curse …”

“Is that the real reason?”

I sighed and let my shoulders slump. “No. It’s that I don’t want her around other mages more than I can help it.” Even as I said it, I knew it was true, and it shocked me a little. The whole reason Luna had come to me in the first place was out of a hope that she could become part of the mage world. And yet I’d been trying to avoid it …

Arachne only nodded. “And she can tell. And you feel guilty for keeping her away.”

“I’d feel
more
guilty if I got her into trouble.” I looked up at Arachne. “I still don’t think she understands how dangerous mage politics can be. I was out tonight on a hunting mission. But tomorrow or next week or next year those same men might be my enemies. And if she’d been there …”

Arachne didn’t answer. “You think I’m trying too hard to protect her,” I said at last.

“I think what you’re really afraid of is that you’ll introduce her to something that’ll get her hurt or killed.”

I sometimes wonder whether Arachne can weave more than threads; whether she can see the connections between people, as well. She can seem to pay no attention, and yet strike right to the mark. “I’ve done it before,” I said.

“Yes,” Arachne said. “But it was her choice too.” She set down the dress and turned her eight eyes on me. “Alex, the trouble with you is that you’ve spent so long on your own you’ve forgotten how to live with someone else. The only way she’ll learn these things is by experience.”

“Yeah, well, I guess she’s getting that one way or another. She’s bringing some guy to the shop tomorrow.”

“Jealous?”

“No,” I said automatically.

Arachne just went back to her sewing. She doesn’t have any eyebrows to raise, but somehow she conveyed exactly what she thought of that.

I sat grumpily for a minute before remembering the other reason I’d come. “Oh. Something weird happened tonight.” I put Luna out of my mind and leant forward. “Talisid tracked down the barghest in Deptford, and he called me in to help. I met up with his team outside the lair, and we made it all the way in. But here’s the thing: it was dead. Someone had taken it out before we got there.”

“Strange.” Arachne picked up the dress she was working on in her front two legs and examined it, turning it around. It was turning into a narrow, vaguely Chinese-looking gown that reflected the light and sent it back with a pale green shimmer. She put the dress down at a different angle and returned to work. “Have you any idea who it was?”

I frowned. “No. And it’s a bit odd. I mean, sure, that creature was preying on people, but it’s not as if most mages would care. Not enough to risk a fight anyway. I mean, barghests have a pretty scary reputation. Why would anyone go after one when they could just wait and have the Council take care of it?”

“Was it an escapee?”

I nodded. “Yeah, Talisid and I were wondering that. If it was some mage’s fault that the thing was there, then it makes sense they’d want to clean it up quietly. But we couldn’t find any trace that it used to be someone’s property. Besides, if they really wanted to keep it quiet, they would have gated away the body—oh. And another thing. There were signs of a battle at the lair—fire and ice magic—but no freeze or scorch marks on the barghest.”

“What killed it, then?”

“Nothing. At least, nothing I could see.”

The
ftt-ftt-ftt
stopped. I looked up to see that Arachne was watching me, her needles still. “Elaborate.”

“Um …” I tried to think of what to say. “It was just … dead. Wolf form. No marks. I thought it might have been death magic but …”

Arachne didn’t answer. “Arachne?” I asked.

Arachne seemed to twitch, then returned to her sewing, the
ftt-ftt
starting up again. “I see.”

“Something wrong?”

“Perhaps.” Arachne paused. “If you could establish the cause of death, I would appreciate knowing.”

I hesitated a second before nodding. “Okay. I’ll see what I can dig up.”

Arachne went back to her work. She didn’t say anything further, and I didn’t ask. “How many of them do you think there are?” I said after a pause.

“Of which?”

“Magical creatures like that barghest. Living here in our world.”

“Few. Fewer each year.” Arachne continued to work, but there was something a little distant about her voice. “So many have been killed or enslaved. The survivors have hidden themselves in remote places or in other worlds. Perhaps what you saw today was the body of the last barghest.”

A
n hour later, walking back home through the darkness of the Heath, I found my thoughts going back to Arachne’s words. I’m so comfortable with Arachne that I forget other mages think of creatures like her as aliens at best and monsters at worst. This was the first time I’d gone on this sort of hunt, and I’d had a good reason—but that didn’t change the fact that the creature I’d been intending to kill was basically not that different from Arachne.

For the first time I wondered exactly how long magical creatures would still be around. As far back as mage histories go, they’ve always been there, but for a long time the number’s been decreasing, mostly because of expeditions like the one I’d been on today. Usually it’s only the dangerous ones that mages go after … but not always, and
dangerous
is pretty subjective. Now that I thought about it, the only magical creatures I’d seen over the past few months had been either working with mages or under their control. I hadn’t come across one in the wild for a long time. If things kept going the way they had been, then the only creatures left would be property, powerful enough to hide themselves, or dead. It would mean no more killings like the ones the barghest had been responsible for … but it would mean none of the gentler or more wondrous creatures, either.

I wasn’t sure how much I liked the idea, and I wasn’t so sure any more that I’d done the right thing by agreeing to help Talisid. I headed home to sleep and to see what the next day would bring.

I
t was a new day and it was raining.

My shop’s tucked away down a little side street in Camden, only a minute’s walk from the canal. The rail and road bridges that interlock the area make it tricky to find, but plenty of tourists still filter through. The sign above my door says
Arcana Emporium
, along with a description of the contents that’s technical enough to stop most people immediately thinking
magic shop
. A notice on the door lists my opening times as ten
A.M.
to five
P.M.
Mondays to Saturdays, and every now and again it’s actually right.

As far as I know, I’m the only mage in England who runs a shop. Most mages think it makes me eccentric or just plain stupid, and to be fair they’ve got a point. Money isn’t a big concern to most mages. Sure, they need it, but it isn’t the primary medium of exchange the way it is to regular folk, for the simple reason that most mages who know what they’re doing and are willing to put in the work can leverage their power into as much money as they’re realistically likely
to need. They aren’t all millionaires, not by a long shot, but they don’t generally have to worry about paying the rent either. So as a rule you can’t buy anything really valuable from a mage with cash, because cash isn’t scarce enough for them to value it.

The real currency of the magical economy is favours. Mages are specialists: A typical mage is great at one thing and poor to useless at everything else. If he’s faced with a problem that requires a different type of magic from the kind he can use, he can’t do anything about it—but he probably knows someone who can. And that mage might need someone
else’s
help a bit further down the line, and so on. Established mages have whole networks of friends and contacts to call on, and let me tell you, mages take those favours
seriously
. Failing to pay your debts in mage society is bad. We’re talking “sold to Dark mages as a slave” levels of bad. Of course it still happens if the guy in question thinks he can get away with it, but it’s rarely a good idea in the long term and at the higher levels a surprising number of things run on simple promises. They might not be as good as gold, but they can buy you a hell of a lot more. That was the basis on which I’d been working for Talisid last night. He hadn’t offered payment, and I hadn’t asked, but all of it was done on the understanding that the next time I asked him for help he’d give it to me, no questions asked.

Or maybe not. But life would be very boring if it was too predictable.

Anyway, to get back on topic, what this means is that anyone with enough magical items to set up a shop is generally powerful enough that they don’t have any reason to sell said items in the first place. They also tend to be leery (for good reason) of putting large stocks of highly valuable items in an easily accessible place. Or maybe they just think serving customers is beneath them. Who knows.

There’s a certain band of items, though, that you can
make a business out of selling—the stuff that’s just useful enough to be worth keeping but not powerful enough that a mage would bother to trade a service for, like old or weakened focuses, or the kind of one-shots that don’t do anything dramatic. Then there are rare components, which don’t do anything useful on their own but are really inconvenient to run short of right in the middle of a ritual. And finally there are things that aren’t magical at all, like crystal balls and tarot decks and herbs. They’re pretty much useless for anything except window dressing, but they’re good camouflage.

Put all of that together and you’ve got the contents of my shop. There’s a roped-off area in the back-right corner next to the door to the hall that contains the genuine magical items, or at least the weaker ones. Two shelf stands hold a collection of nonprecious and semiprecious stones, as well as figurines and materials, and a rack holds herbs, powders, and various types of incense that together make the whole shop smell vaguely like a herbalist’s. Staffs, rods, and blades of various types take up another corner, and you can get a good view out onto the street through a wide window, which was currently streaked with water from the steadily falling rain.

And lastly, you get the customers.

My clientele used to be strictly small fry. A tiny fraction who knew what they were doing, a slightly larger fraction who sort of knew what they were doing, and a whole lot whose knowledge of magic would fit on a Post-it note. After the business five months ago, things changed. My shop suddenly got popular, and adepts, apprentices, and even mages started coming along.

Trouble is, along with the influx of knowledgeable people, I’ve also picked up a whole lot of idiots. On a Saturday like today, I’m lucky if one customer in five knows enough to be trusted. The rest …

…well.

“H
i, I’m looking for some gaff coins?”

“You want the Magic Box, other side of Camden. Here’s one of their cards.”

“Oh. Which tricks have you got?”

“None of them. You’ve got the wrong shop.”

“So what do you sell?”

“…”

“Wait, this is supposed to be a
real
magic shop?”

“…”

“Oh my God, you’re serious! Ha-ha-ha!”

“…”

“Ha-ha … oh man, this is awesome. Okay, okay, I’m going.”