Alex Verus Novels, Books 1-4 (9780698175952) Read online

  Lyle’s not my friend anymore.

  Now he was standing next to me, brushing off the balustrade before leaning on it, making sure none of the dirt got on his jacket. The walkway ran alongside the canal, following the curve of the canal out of sight. The water was dark and broken by choppy waves. It was an overcast day, the sunlight shining only dimly through the grey cloud.

  “Well,” Lyle said eventually, “if you don’t want to chat, shall we get down to business?”

  “I don’t think we’ve got much to chat about, do you?”

  “The Council would like to employ your services.”

  I blinked at that. “You’re here officially?”

  “Not exactly. There was some…disagreement on how best to proceed. The Council couldn’t come to a full agreement—”

  “The Council can’t come to a full agreement on when to have dinner.”

  “—on the best course of action,” Lyle finished smoothly. “Consulting a diviner was considered as an interim measure.”

  “Consulting a diviner?” I asked, suddenly suspicious. The Council and I aren’t exactly on the best of terms. “Me specifically?”

  “As you know, the Council rarely requests—”

  “What about Alaundo? I thought he was their goto guy when they wanted a seer.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t discuss closed Council proceedings.”

  “Once you start going door to door, it isn’t closed proceedings anymore, is it? Come on, Lyle. I’m sure as hell not going to agree to anything unless I know why you’re here.”

  Lyle blew out an irritated breath. “Master Alaundo is currently on extended research.”

  “So he turned you down? What about Helikaon?”

  “He’s otherwise occupied.”

  “And that guy from the Netherlands? Dutch Jake or whatever he was called. I’m pretty sure he did divination work for—”

  “Alex,” Lyle said. “Don’t run through every diviner in the British Isles. I know the list as well as you do.”

  I grinned. “I’m the only one you can find, aren’t I? That’s why you’re coming here.” My eyes narrowed. “And the Council doesn’t even know. They wouldn’t have agreed to trust me with official business.”

  “I don’t appreciate threats,” Lyle said stiffly. “And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t use your abilities for these matters.”

  “You think I needed magic to figure that out?” Annoying Lyle was satisfying, but I knew it was risky to push him too far. “Okay. So what does the Council want so badly you’re willing to risk coming to me?”

  Lyle took a moment to straighten his tie. “I assume you’re aware of the Arrancar ruling?”

  I looked at him blankly.

  “It’s been common knowledge for months.”

  “Common knowledge to whom?”

  Lyle let out an irritated breath. “As a consequence of the Arrancar conclave, mages are required to report all significant archaeological discoveries of arcana to the Council. Recently, a new discovery was reported—”

  “Reported?”

  “—and subjected to a preliminary investigation. The investigation team have concluded quite definitely that it’s a Precursor relic.”

  I looked up at that. “Functional?”

  “Yes.”

  “What kind?”

  “They weren’t able to determine.”

  “It’s sealed? I’m surprised they didn’t just force it.”

  Lyle hesitated.

  “Oh,” I said, catching on. “They did try to force it. What happened?”

  “I’m afraid that’s confidential.”

  “A ward? Guardian?”

  “In any case, a new investigation team is being formed. It was…considered necessary for them to have access to the abilities of a diviner.”

  “And you want me on the team?”

  “Not exactly.” Lyle paused. “You’ll be an independent agent, reporting to me. I’ll pass on your recommendations to the investigators.”

  I frowned. “What?”

  Lyle cleared his throat. “Unfortunately it wouldn’t be feasible for you to join the team directly. The Council wouldn’t be able to clear you. But if you accept, I can promise I’ll tell you everything you need to know.”

  I turned away from Lyle, looking out over the canal. The rumble of an engine echoed around the brick walls from downstream, and a barge came into view, chugging along. It was painted yellow and red. The man at the tiller didn’t give us a glance as he passed. Lyle stayed quiet as the barge went by and disappeared around the bend of the canal. A breeze blew along the pathway, ruffling my hair.

  I still didn’t speak. Lyle coughed. A pair of seagulls flew overhead, after the barge, calling with loud, discordant voices: arrrh, arrrh. “Alex?” Lyle asked.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Not interested.”

  “If it’s a question of money…”

  “No, I just don’t like the deal.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it stinks.”

  “Look, you have to be realistic. There’s no way the Council would give you clearance to—”

  “If the Council doesn’t want to give me clearance, you shouldn’t be coming to me in the first place.” I turned to look at Lyle. “What’s your idea, they need the information badly enough that they won’t care about where you’re getting it? I think sooner or later they’d start asking questions, and you’d cut me loose to avoid the flak. I’m not interested in being your fall guy.”

  Lyle blew out a breath. “Why are you being so irrational about this? I’m giving you a chance to get back in the Council’s favour.” He glanced around at the concrete and grey skies. “Given the alternative…”

  “Well, since you bring it up, it just so happens that I’m not especially interested in getting back in the Council’s favour.”

  “That’s ridiculous. The Council represents all of the mages in the country.”

  “Yeah, all the mages. That’s the problem.”

  “This is about that business with Drakh, isn’t it?” Lyle said. He rolled his eyes. “Jesus, Alex, it was ten years ago. Get over it.”

  “It doesn’t matter when it was,” I said tightly. “The Council haven’t gotten better. They’ve gotten worse.”

  “We’ve had ten years of peace. That’s your idea of ‘worse’?”

  “The reason you’ve had peace is because you and the Council let the Dark mages do whatever they want.” I glared at Lyle. “You know what they do to the people in their power. Why don’t you ask them how good a deal they think it is?”

  “We’re not starting another war, Alex. The Council isn’t going anywhere, and neither are the mages that are a part of it, Light or Dark. You’re just going to have to accept that.”

  I took a breath and looked out over the canal, listening to the distant cries of the seagulls. When I spoke again my voice was steady. “The answer’s no. Find someone else.”

  Lyle made a disgusted noise. “I should have known.” He stepped away and gave me a look. “You’re living in the past. Grow up.”

  I watched Lyle walk off. He didn’t look back. Once he’d disappeared around the corner, I turned back to the canal.

  So long as magic has existed, there’s always been a split between the two paths: the Light mages, and the Dark. Sometimes they’ve existed in uneasy truce; sometimes there have been conflicts. The last and greatest was called the Gate Rune War, and it happened forty years before I was born. It was a faction of the Dark mages against almost all of the Light, and the prize to the winner was total dominion over the earth.

  The Light side won—sort of. They stopped the Dark mages and killed their leaders, but by the time it was over most of the Light battle-mages were dead as well. The Light survivors didn’t want to fight any more wars, and the surviving Dark mages were allowed to regroup. Years passed. The old warriors were replaced by a new generation of mages who thought that peace was the natural order of things.

  By t
he time I arrived on the scene, Council policy was live and let live. Dark mages were tolerated so long as they didn’t go after Light mages, and vice versa. There was a set of rules called the Concord that governed how mages could and couldn’t act towards each other. The Concord didn’t draw any distinction between Light and Dark, and there was a growing feeling that the division between Light and Dark was out of date. At the time, I thought it made a lot of sense. My own master, Richard Drakh, was a Dark mage, and I didn’t see why Light and Dark mages couldn’t get along.

  I changed my mind after I had my falling-out with Richard, but by then it was too late. That was when I discovered that while the Concord had all sorts of rules for how mages were allowed to treat each other, it didn’t have any rules at all for how they were allowed to treat their apprentices. After I escaped, I went to Lyle and the Council. They didn’t want to know. I was left alone, with an angry Dark mage after me.

  Even now if I close my eyes I can still remember that time, the horrible paralysing fear. It’s impossible to understand unless you’ve experienced it: the terror of being hunted by something crueller and stronger than you. I was barely out of my teens, hardly able to look after myself, much less go face to face with someone like Richard. Now I look back on it I can see that the Council was really just waiting for Richard to get rid of me and remove the whole embarrassing mess. Instead I survived.

  So you can see why I’m not the Council’s favourite person. And why I’ve no desire to get in their good books, either.

  I knew that Lyle was gone and wasn’t coming back, but I stayed where I was for another twenty minutes, watching the reflections in the dark water and waiting for the ugly memories to settle. When I was calm again I put Lyle and everything he stood for out of my mind and went home. I didn’t feel like doing any more work that day, so I left for the park, locking the shop behind me.

  London is an old city. Even visitors can feel it—the sense of history, the weight of thousands of years. To a sensitive it’s even stronger, like a physical presence embedded into the earth and stone. Over the centuries pockets have developed, little enclaves in the jungle of buildings, and the place I was going to is one of them.

  The park is about a ten-minute walk from my shop, tucked down a twisting backstreet that nobody ever uses. It’s overgrown to the point of being nearly invisible behind the fence and trees. There are construction vehicles parked outside—officially the park’s supposed to be closed for redevelopment, but somehow the work never seems to get done. There are buildings all around, but leaves and branches shelter you from watching eyes.

  I was sitting on a blanket with my back against a beech tree when I heard the faint rattle of a bicycle on the road outside. A moment later a girl appeared through the trees, ducking under the branches. I waved and she changed direction, walking across the grass towards me.

  A glance at Luna would show you a girl in her early twenties, with blue eyes, fair skin, and wavy light brown hair worn up in two bunches. She moves very carefully, always looking where she places her hands and feet, and often she seems as though her body’s there while her mind’s somewhere far away. She hardly ever smiles and I’ve never seen her laugh, but apart from that you could talk to her without noticing anything strange…at least to begin with.

  Luna’s one of those people who was born into the world of magic without ever really getting a choice. Adepts and even mages can choose to abandon their power if they want to, bury their talents in the sand and walk away, but for Luna it’s different. A few hundred years ago in Sicily, one of Luna’s ancestors made the mistake of upsetting a powerful strega. Backcountry witches have a reputation for being vicious, but this one was mean even by witch standards. Instead of just killing the man, she put a curse on him that would strike his youngest daughter, and his daughter’s daughter, and her daughter after that, following his children down and down through the generations until his descendants died out or the world ended, whichever came first.

  I don’t know how that long-dead witch managed to bind the curse so tightly to the family line, but she did a hell of a thorough job. She’s been dust and bones for centuries but the curse is just as strong as ever, and Luna’s the one in this generation who inherited it. Part of the reason the curse is so nasty is that it’s almost impossible to tell it’s there. Even a mage wouldn’t notice it unless he knew exactly what to look for. If I concentrate I can see it around Luna as a kind of silvery-grey mist, but I have only the vaguest idea how it does what it does.

  “Hey,” Luna said as she reached me, slinging her backpack off her shoulder. Instead of sitting on the blanket she picked a spot on the grass, a few yards away from me. “Are you all right?”

  “Sure. Why?”

  “You look as if something’s bothering you.”

  I shook my head in annoyance. I’d thought I’d concealed it better than that, but I always have trouble hiding things from Luna. “Unwelcome visitor. How’s things?”

  Luna hesitated. “Can you…?”

  “Let’s have a look at it.”

  Luna had been only waiting for me to ask; she unzipped her backpack and took out something wrapped in a cotton scarf. She leant forward to place it onto the edge of the blanket and unwrapped it, staying as far away as possible. The scarf fell away, Luna scooted back, and I leant forward in interest. Sitting in the folds of the scarf was what looked like a cube of red crystal.

  The thing was about three inches square and deep crimson, the colour of red stained glass. As I looked more closely, though, I saw it wasn’t transparent enough to be glass; I should have been able to see through it, but I couldn’t. Instead, if I looked closely, I could see what looked like tiny white sparks held in the cube’s depths. “Huh,” I said, sitting up. “Where’d you find it?”

  “It was in the attic of a house in Clapham West. But…” Luna paused. “There’s something strange. I went to the same house three weeks ago and didn’t find anything. But this time it was sitting on a shelf, right out in the open. And when I went to the owner, he couldn’t remember owning it. He let me have it for free.” Luna frowned. “I’ve been wondering if I just missed it, but I don’t see how. You can feel it, can’t you?”

  I nodded. The cube radiated the distinct sense of otherness that all magic items do. This one wasn’t flashy, but it was strong; someone sensitive like Luna couldn’t have walked by without noticing. “Did you touch it?”

  Luna nodded.

  “What happened?”

  “It glowed,” Luna said. “Just for a second, and—” She hesitated. “Well, I put it down, and it stopped. Then I wrapped it up and brought it here.”

  The cube wasn’t glowing now so I focused on it and concentrated. All mages can see into the magical spectrum to some degree, but as a diviner I’m a lot better at it than most. A mage’s sight isn’t really sight—it’s more like a sixth sense—but the easiest way to interpret it is visually. It gives a sense of what the magic is, where it came from, and what it can do. If you’re skilled enough you can pick up the thoughts the magic was shaped out of and the kind of personality that created it. On a good day I can read an item’s whole history just from looking at it.

  Today wasn’t one of those days. Not only could I not read the item’s aura, I couldn’t read any aura on it at all. Which made no sense, because there should have been at least one aura, namely Luna’s. To my eyes Luna glowed a clear silver, wisps of mist constantly drifting away and being renewed. A residue of it clung to everything she touched: her pack glowed silver, the scarf glowed silver, even the grass she was sitting on glowed silver, but the cube itself radiated nothing at all. The thing was like a black hole.

  Left to their own devices magic items give off an aura, and the more powerful the item, the more powerful that aura is. This was why I’d had Luna bring the thing out here; if I’d tried to examine the cube in my shop I’d have had a hundred other auras distracting me. The park is a natural oasis, a kind of grounding circle which keeps other energie
s out, allowing me to concentrate on just one thing at a time. It’s possible to design an item so as to minimise its signature, but no matter how carefully you design a one-shot or a focus, something’s going to be visible. The only way to mask a magical aura completely is to do it actively, which left only one thing this could be. I dropped my concentration and looked up at Luna. “You’ve found something special, all right.”

  “Do you know what it is?” Luna asked.

  I shook my head and thought for a moment. “What happened when you touched it?”

  “The sparks inside lit up and it glowed. Just for a second. Then it went dark again.” Luna seemed about to say something else, then stopped.

  “After that? Did it do anything else?”

  “Well…” Luna hesitated. “It might be nothing.”

  “Tell me.”

  “It felt like it was looking at me. Even after I put it away. I know that sounds weird.”

  I sat back against the tree, looking down at the cube. I didn’t like this at all. “Alex?” Luna asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “This is going to be trouble.”

  “Why?”

  I hesitated. I’d been teaching Luna about magic for a few months, but so far I’d avoided telling her much about the people who use it. I know Luna wants to be accepted into the magical world, and I also know there’s not much chance of it happening. Mage society is based on a hierarchy of power: the stronger your magic, the more status you have. Sensitives like Luna are second-class citizens at best.

  “Look, there’s a reason not many mages run shops,” I said at last. “They’ve never bought in to the whole idea of yours and mine. A mage sees a magic item, his first reaction is to take it. Now, a minor item you can keep out of sight, but something really powerful…that’s different. Any mage who finds out about this thing is going to be willing to take time off his schedule and track you down to take it, and he might not be gentle about how. Just owning a major item is dangerous.”

  Luna was quiet. “But you don’t do that,” she said at last.

  I sighed. “No.”