Veiled (21 page)

“Does that have anything to do with why she seems to get assigned the really dangerous jobs?”

“Not the really dangerous ones . . .” I kept looking at Haken and he raised a hand. “She volunteers, all right? I keep telling her to pass them up.”

“You said she doesn't play the game,” I said quietly. “Any chance she's made a few enemies in the Order of the Star? Some people who'd be happy to get rid of her?”

“No.” Haken shook his head. “Caldera's a good Keeper. The brass know that. They send her out, they know she'll do a good job. But to get up the ranks, you need to do more
than be good at your job. You need friends in higher places.” Haken paused. “You want to make a go of it in our Order, you might want to keep that in mind.”

I raised my eyebrows. “I'm not a Keeper.”

“Doesn't matter as much as you think,” Haken said. “The Council can always use people who know how to be discreet.”

I gave Haken a sharp look. He held my eyes for a couple of seconds, then shrugged and the moment was gone. “Just something to remember.”

“. . . Sure.”

Something moved in the futures. I looked to the right out across the Belfry and saw a blond woman approaching us over the polished floor, heels tapping on the stone. She was dressed smartly, and as she came within earshot she addressed us with an upper-class accent. “Keeper Haken? You're required in court.”

Haken nodded and put away his report. “See you when I get out.” Haken and the woman walked away towards the opposite doors. They didn't look back.

As they disappeared behind the columns I went back to scanning futures. With Haken gone I could look further—it's always easier when you don't have someone nearby cluttering things up. After a moment, I spotted someone relatively close. He was going to approach me this time, and his name was . . .
Huh. Where have I heard that before?

I sat for a few minutes, thinking. I didn't react as the figure crossed the floor towards me and halted at the alcove. “Mage Verus?” a voice said.

“Mm-hm.” I looked up with a frown. I'd already seen the man in my future sight: English features, nice suit, brown hair, neutral expression. He looked like a Council functionary, and I'd
definitely
seen him before. Where had it been . . . ?

“If you're not too busy, we'd like to speak to you concerning your investigation,” the man said. “My name is—”

“Barrayar.”

Barrayar didn't react visibly. He obviously knew what I was. “If you'd come with me?”

I rose and let Barrayar lead the way across the floor. He didn't speak, and I didn't either. Looking at Barrayar reminded me of . . . dancing? Music? Something involving the Council . . .

We reached the doors that Haken had disappeared through. The men guarding the position were Council security; they gave Barrayar a glance but didn't challenge him. We passed through into more corridors, branching left and right. There seemed to be fewer people around this time. Barrayar led me around a corner, towards a junction . . .

And suddenly I remembered where I'd met Barrayar before. I stopped dead. Barrayar paused, turned. “Is there a problem?”

I stared back at him for a second, then gave him a smile that didn't touch my eyes. “No,” I said. “No problem.” I kept walking.

We turned right at the T junction. I was searching through the futures in which I tried to open the doors we were passing, making myself a mental map of the place. The door on the right led into the back rooms of a courtroom, maybe the same one Haken was in. That could be useful. The one on the left led to an interview room. The one behind was some sort of cell. Next left was locked. Next right . . .

There you are.
Next question: how was Barrayar going to react to what I was about to do? He didn't look physically imposing—he was shorter than average and on the slim side—but I'd already checked out the futures in which I attacked the guy, and I knew he was faster than he looked.

But then, so am I. Barrayar halted at the door on the right. “If you'd just . . .”

I walked past without slowing. “Excuse me,” Barrayar said to my retreating back. “It's this way.”

“I know.”

Barrayar started to follow me. “Your meeting's in here.”

I pointed forward. “Tell your boss I'll be in the . . . conservatory? Whatever you call the room with the water feature and the plants.”

I kept walking. My back itched and I knew Barrayar was
staring at me. Watching the futures, I caught a few fleeting glimpses of action, there and gone too fast to see, then they cleared away and there was nothing. I reached the end of the corridor and turned the corner. Barrayar didn't follow.

You have to give the Council credit; they do build nice architecture. The conservatory was a large room with a high ceiling, structured as a kind of ceremonial garden. Small trees grew from carefully cultivated squares of earth, flowering bushes and shrubs grew up around raised sections of floor, and water bubbled up from a fountain into an indoor pool. There was enough greenery to provide concealment, and I had to scan through the futures to see whether I was alone in the room. I was, but I could tell that others were within earshot, close enough to hear a shout or scream. Good.

There was a stone bench by the pool and I took a seat. The only sound was the gentle splashing of the fountain. The air smelt sweet and flowery; there were rhododendrons and hydrangeas all around, blooming in red and violet. I breathed in and out slowly, forcing myself to relax. The things I said and did in the next few minutes were going to have very long-term consequences, and I needed to be calm.

Footsteps sounded from the direction of the hallway. I closed my eyes and kept them closed. The footsteps drew nearer, and I tracked their owner by sound and divination as he walked into the observatory, wound his way around the bushes, stepped up onto the rock garden, and came to a stop on the other side of the pool from me.

There was a silence. I didn't move.

The figure on the other side of the pool spoke. “Mage Verus.”

I opened my eyes. Standing opposite me was a man in his fifties, with thin white hair. He was dressed in Council ceremonial robes, understated but expensive, and he had his hands clasped behind his back. His most distinctive feature was his eyes: they were pale, almost colourless, and they were watching me steadily.

“Councillor Levistus,” I said. “I understand you wanted to see me.”

It's strange how one encounter can change your life. Before today I had met Levistus exactly once. It had been in Canary Wharf, for a private conversation that lasted hardly any time at all. I'd been in and out of his office in under twenty minutes, and since then, we'd never communicated in any way—no phone, no e-mail, no messages. It was as though we'd never met.

And yet, as a result of that one brief meeting, Levistus had become my worst and most dangerous enemy out of all the Light mages in Britain. That fifteen-minute conversation had led to an escalating series of attempts on my life, ranging from subtle betrayals and reassignments that left me exposed, all the way up to outright assassination attempts employing everything from other mages to bound elementals to (on one particularly memorable occasion) a rocket launcher. Directly and indirectly, Levistus has tried to get me killed more times than any person alive, and given that he's a junior member of the Light Council, there's absolutely nothing I can do to him in return.

On the other hand, while I can't do anything to Levistus, the same doesn't apply to his agents. An awful lot of the people who'd gone after me on Levistus's orders were now dead, including a Keeper named Griff, a Light mage named Belthas, and an enslaved air elemental named Thirteen, as well as various lower-level employees whose names I'd never learnt. At some point Levistus must have gotten the message, because he'd stopped sending assassins. That didn't mean his feelings had changed. In fact, I was pretty sure it had made him like me less.

“I believe I asked you to come to the interview room,” Levistus said. He had a measured, detached sort of voice. There was little variation in tone: his words were as expressionless as his face.

“Thanks, but I'm not walking into any more private interviews with you.”

Levistus raised his eyebrows slightly. “And you believe that out here you are safe?”

“It makes it a little less convenient for you to get an air
elemental to asphyxiate me. Did you bring one along this time?”

“I would have expected you to know the answer to that already.”

“I do. Just wondered whether you'd lie about it.”

Levistus tilted his head slightly, studying me. “If I decided to devote my full resources to destroying you, how long do you think you would survive?”

“That's actually quite an interesting question,” I said, raising a finger. “You
do
have a lot of resources, and I'm sure it's something you've done before. On the other hand, as I'm sure you've discovered, my particular type of magic is pretty good at dealing with this sort of problem. Personally, I'd put my chances of survival somewhere between thirty and forty percent. If you'd give me some more information about your plans, I'd be able to give you a more accurate estimate.”

“Interesting,” Levistus said. “So given that—by your own admission—your odds of survival would be less probable than the alternative, perhaps you could explain why you see fit to continue to antagonise me.”

“I suppose you'd prefer if I came to you humbly and offered to apologise.”

“It would be wise.”

I sighed, then straightened my back and looked Levistus right in the eyes. “And if I don't, what are you going to do about it? If you had a way to kill me off efficiently, you'd have done it already. The only reason you stopped sending assassins was because it wasn't working. So no, I'm not going to bow and scrape. Maybe it'd make you a tiny bit less likely to
carry on
trying to kill me, but quite frankly, given the amount of shit you've caused me, it isn't worth the effort. Does that answer your question?”

I'd expected Levistus to get angry. Instead he only nodded. “Do you know why you are here?”

“Why I'm here in this room? Why I'm here on Earth? Why—?”

“Why the Council is currently deciding whether to issue
an indictment against the members of White Rose,” Levistus said. “And why this situation has developed.”

I shrugged. “Mostly because an assassin-mage by the name of Chamois decided to keep an appointment at Pudding Mill Lane.”

“And do you know the name of his employer?”

I didn't answer.

“You know nothing of importance.” Levistus's voice was unemotional; it was a statement, not an insult. “Once again, you have managed to involve yourself in a long-term conflict of which you have absolutely no understanding.”

I spread my hands. “If you feel like educating me about the wider context, I'd be happy to benefit.”

“Morden's goal for years has been to gain a seat upon the Council.” Levistus watched me steadily. “As of this spring, a seat on the Junior Council will be open for reassignment. This is why Morden has timed his proposal as he has. Without Morden's involvement, the seat would be assigned to Nirvathis. At present, Morden lacks sufficient support to push his proposal through.”

And Nirvathis is your puppet.
Yeah, I could see why Levistus wouldn't want it to go to Morden. “Given our relationship, why exactly are you telling me this again?”

An expression of irritation flickered across Levistus's face. “This is common knowledge to anyone with an elementary understanding of Council politics. Please believe that I have an abundance of matters more pressing than providing you with remedial education.”

That stung, especially since I knew it was true. “Go on.”

“To push through his proposal, Morden needs to significantly change the political landscape of the Council,” Levistus said. “He has chosen to do so by targeting White Rose. If he succeeds in destroying or suborning them, he will gain significant influence. Enough to win him his seat.”

“Hold up,” I said. “How exactly would destroying White Rose get Morden anything?”

Levistus had the expression of a teacher dealing with a particularly slow-witted pupil. “White Rose's influence is
exercised through the information they possess. If Morden were to gain control of their records and databases, their influence would become his. He would become the most powerful Dark mage in the British Isles, in a position to begin taking over the Council from the inside.”

“Somehow I doubt it'd be quite as simple as that, but I get your point. So if you get on so well with White Rose, why don't you use all of your abundant power to have the indictment squashed?”

Levistus's lips thinned. “Unfortunately, certain mages within the Council have taken this opportunity to pursue their existing feuds with White Rose as an organisation.”

“Gosh,” I said dryly. “I can't imagine why some of the Light Council would have a problem with an organisation based around sex slavery.”

“This is not a laughing matter. If Morden achieves his goals, he will command more power than any Dark mage has had since the Gate Rune War.”

“This is all very interesting,” I said, “but I think there's something you've forgotten. You're right, I don't particularly like Morden. However, I also don't particularly like
you
. And since Mage Nirvathis is a friend of yours, it's a safe bet I'm not going to like him either. Why should I care whether the Council seat goes to a Light-aligned bastard or a Dark-aligned bastard?”

“I was under the impression that you claimed to oppose what Dark mages stood for.”

“Yeah, you tried that one last time.”