I walked around the room. Two windows at the back looked down onto the London street, and I stood for a moment looking at the traffic crawl across the road below. I started to sit before realising that the chair had been taken too, so I sat on Caldera’s desk and looked around. So now I’m a Keeper.
It didn’t feel like an achievement. It just felt lonely. I went looking for my stuff.
| | | | | | | | |
Back when Anne and Variam lived in my flat in Camden, Luna used to come over a lot, and one of the things they’d do was watch videos on my old laptop. Variam always wanted action movies, but since Luna and Anne outnumbered him they usually ended up watching animated shows about girls in Japanese high schools. The shows Luna picked tended to be upbeat with a lot of romance, but the ones Anne chose weren’t so cheerful, and more than once I remembered watching episodes where the other girls would bully the main character. They wouldn’t beat her up or confront her, but they’d do things like ignore her when she talked, spread rumours behind her back, and hide her stuff.
After I’d been a Keeper for a week, I knew exactly how the main characters in those shows had felt.
The first hint of how things were going to go came with Caldera. I spotted her on the second day, down at the end of a corridor, and she immediately turned the other way. Coatl, her new partner, was with her, and he looked at me and hesitated, but Caldera said something and he turned away as well with an apologetic look. By the time I caught up to where they’d been, they were gone.
Okay, I thought. I guess that answers the question about whether she’s still angry. I decided to give her some more time.
Except it wasn’t just Caldera. I’d never exactly been popular with the rest of the Order of the Star, but then I’d never expected to be. Keepers are cops, and cops tend to have an attitude of default suspicion towards outsiders. Still, I’d worked at it, and by last autumn I’d reached the point where I was accepted, if not liked.
I wasn’t accepted anymore. It had been Morden who’d appointed me as a Keeper, and now the rest of the Keepers hated my guts. Conversations would stop as I came near, and the Keepers would watch me in silence until I was out of earshot, at which point the conversations would start up again. When I tried talking to them, they’d tell me in so many words to go away. The e-mails I sent went unanswered, or I’d receive “out of office” replies from mages whom I’d seen in the building less than an hour ago.
It wasn’t even just the Keepers. The Council employs a whole bureaucracy of adepts and clued-in sensitives who work under the Light mages to do the lower-level work. I was a Keeper now, which meant that the admin personnel at HQ were supposed to do as I told them . . . in theory. In practice, every time I asked for something, there was some reason why it couldn’t be done. Getting my signet bonded took me the best part of a day. The quartermaster didn’t answer my calls: when I tried to call him he was out to lunch, when I came back after lunch he referred me to the issue desk, when I went to the issue desk they told me I’d have to get it authorised at the War Rooms, and so on. When I tried to get the contents of my old desk back, I was told they’d been sent to the evidence processing facility at Southampton. I gated there to be told that the records weren’t on file and they couldn’t help me. What if I went in and found it myself? No, you aren’t authorised to do that. The warden? He’s in a meeting. No, we don’t know when he’ll be back. Everyone I wanted to see was busy, and every question got the same blank-faced response. Even the post took two days to reach my desk.
When I’d joined the Keepers as an auxiliary, the way I’d made headway had been with work. It’s a lot harder to ignore someone if you’re doing a job with them, and so I waited for Rain to hand me some cases. I was a little nervous about handling an investigation without Caldera, but I’d been watching her work for more than a year, and I figured I’d give it my best shot. I waited to see what Rain would send me.
And waited.
When the call didn’t come, I went to Rain. He told me that before I could be assigned to a detail and put on the duty roster, it’d have to be cleared by one of the directors. I asked how long that would take and was told that he didn’t know. I asked if he could just set me some cases anyway, and he told me that he wasn’t authorised to do that. He told me he’d call me as soon as he heard anything.
I went back to my desk and stared at the phone. Rain didn’t call.
| | | | | | | | |
Variam walked into the office on a cold, rainy afternoon in February. “Jeez,” he said, looking at me. “You look like your dog just died.”
I looked up from the computer screen in surprise. “What are you doing here?”
“Landis has a meeting.” Variam came around and peered down at the computer screen. “Is that the procedure manual?”
“Procedure and tactics,” I said. It was the Order of the Star’s operations manual, containing their official doctrine for all possible situations.
“Any good?”
“Not really.”
“Then why are you reading it?”
“Because I’ve got nothing else to do and the Order of the Star is too paranoid to allow an internet connection.”
Variam sat down on the desk. He didn’t need to clear himself a space; it was nearly bare. “I thought you guys were supposed to be busy.”
In answer I turned my monitor towards Variam. “This is my e-mail.” I clicked a couple of filters. “These are all the e-mails this week personally addressed to me.”
Variam squinted at the blank white box on the screen. “Why isn’t it showing?”
“Because there isn’t anything to show.”
“Why not?”
“Because no one wants to bloody talk to me. Every single Keeper on the Order of the Star’s duty roster is overloaded with casework. They’re just apparently not overloaded enough to be willing to bring me in on it. I’ve asked them right to their faces if they need help, but they tell me no, they’re fine.”
“Why?”
I lifted my hands in the air. “Bloody-mindedness? Morden forced them to put me on the team, so now they’re going out of their way to keep me on the bench just to show him that he can’t tell them what to do?” I shook my head. “Back when I was younger, I thought it’d be great to be a Keeper. I didn’t think it’d be like this.”
Variam shrugged. “You get used to it.”
I looked curiously at Variam. “Was it like this when you joined?”
“Pretty much,” Variam said. “You know Light mages, they’re all about pedigree. Who you trained under, which school, how many years with the Council. They weren’t that impressed with mine.”
“What changed their mind?”
“Landis doesn’t care, and he’s the one who matters. And the Order of the Shield’s more easygoing that way. As long as you can pull your weight, they’re okay with it.”
“Maybe I should have tried to get a job there,” I muttered.
Variam frowned. “What’s up with you?”
“You mean apart from everything else?”
“Not that,” Variam said. “Back last year you were always working on something. Now you’re just sitting around.”
“I suppose.”
“Well, stop it,” Variam said. He sounded annoyed. “You and Anne have got this shit with Richard, Luna’s a basket case, and Morden’s planning God knows what. We need you doing something useful, not sitting on your arse.”
I looked at Variam, startled. Variam seemed about to say more, then paused, touched a hand to his ear, and said, “On my way,” to the empty air before looking back at me. “Landis wants me. Look, I’ll see if he can do anything. But come up with something, okay?”