“. . . Okay.”
Variam left. I stared after him, still a little nonplussed. I really wasn’t used to Variam telling me to get my shit together. He’d never acted like this back when he was living above my shop . . .
My shop, I thought. That’s it, isn’t it? Up until a month and a half ago, I’d spent the best part of each week running the Arcana Emporium, my little magic shop in Camden. It hadn’t been a big business and it didn’t make much money, but it had been one of the few places in Britain and Ireland where people who didn’t know much about the magical world could come to buy materials, get an item identified, or simply talk to someone who didn’t think they were crazy. For some of my customers, I might have been the first person they’d ever met who could hear their story and not think they were crazy. I’d taught newbies about magical society, introduced novices to potential teachers, and warned adepts of the people and places that they should stay away from. It hadn’t been glamorous, but it had meant something, and no matter how exasperating my customers had sometimes been, I knew I was making a difference.
Here with the Keepers, I wasn’t making a difference. I was an inconvenient and rather embarrassing addition to the roster, to be stuck on a shelf and forgotten about.
But Variam was right; I was wasting time. I got up and headed for the door. Time to visit an old friend.
| | | | | | | | |
I’d made it to Hampstead Heath and all the way to the little ravine, and was just about to call Arachne when I stopped. The entrance to Arachne’s lair is hidden in the roots of an oak tree, the tree stretching up above the earthen wall. I’d visited the spot so many times that I hardly noticed it, but something was different this time, and as I looked more closely I saw that the entrance had been damaged. Some of the roots had been cut, and others were missing. I stepped closer and traced a finger along where one of the roots ended abruptly. It had scarred over, but even so, the cut felt unnaturally smooth. Force blade?
I looked ahead and saw that Arachne was going to answer. Still, it gave me an uneasy feeling. I pressed the spot on the roots and leant in to talk.
| | | | | | | | |
“So what happened to your front door?” I asked Arachne.
“Some mages and I had a difference of opinion,” Arachne said. We’d spent a long time saying our hellos, and now I was settled comfortably on one of the sofas, with Arachne crouched in front of me, her front legs on either side of me so that she could look down at me with her eight eyes from only a few feet away. Just like smaller spiders, Arachne’s shortsighted, and for lengthy conversations she likes to be close enough to feel the vibrations of my movement and voice.
“What kind of difference of opinion?”
“They wanted to come in,” Arachne said. “I preferred that they stayed outside. I eventually brought them around to my point of view.”
“In other words, they tried to blast their way in and couldn’t?”
“More or less.”
I frowned. “Are you okay?”
“Perfectly,” Arachne said. “Oh, and I’m sorry about not answering the last time you called. I had to take a few security measures.”
“I’m just glad they worked,” I said. I’d tried to visit Arachne several times after getting back and received no answer. It wasn’t the first time that Arachne had disappeared, but it had still left me worried. It had been a relief when I’d looked ahead today and found she’d be home. “Were they from the Council?”
“They claimed to be,” Arachne said. It’s a little hard to tell with Arachne’s voice, but I thought I could detect a dry tone. “I declined to open the front door and view their identification.”
“Wait. Were they looking for me?” Over Christmas, I’d had a few people try an ambush here on the Heath. I’d seen it off without too much trouble, but it had bothered me. If people could connect me to Arachne . . .
“That may have been part of their motivations.”
“Arachne!” I sat up. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Well, for one thing, you weren’t in the best position to help.”
I stared at Arachne, and my expression must have been obvious, because she touched a foreleg gently to my shoulder. “It wasn’t because of you, Alex. Remember, I have a history too. A much longer one than yours.”
I made an unhappy noise. I really didn’t like the idea that Arachne might be in danger because of me.
“If they hadn’t come on that pretext, they would have come on another,” Arachne said firmly. “Now. Why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind?”
I looked around at the chamber we were sitting in. Arachne’s cavern is huge and it’s a riot of colour, dresses and furniture and cloth blending together into a giant chaotic rainbow. I’d had a lot of conversations with Arachne here over the years, some of them small ones and some of them big ones. This was going to be a big one.
“I need to decide what to do,” I said.
“Concerning the Keepers?”
“No,” I said slowly. I tried to figure out how to say it. “I mean, yes, I’ll have to deal with that. And Luna, and Rachel, and everything else. It’s just . . . Those are all important, but they’re reactive. I deal with them, but once I’ve dealt with them, then all that does is make the problem go away. It doesn’t make things any better.”
“And what would make things better?”
“That’s what I need to find out.” I looked up at Arachne. “Right now I’m fighting Levistus and Richard, and I’m losing. Part of it’s because they’ve got better cards than me, but that’s not all of it. It’s that they’ve got a plan. They’re always playing the long game, looking to next month, next year. Meanwhile I just wait around until some sort of crisis happens, then I scramble to fix it. It’s like they’re shooting holes in a boat, and I’m running up and down trying to plug the leaks. Sooner or later there’ll be too many holes, or one of the bullets will hit me, and that’ll be it.”
“So what do you need?”
“I need a win condition,” I said. “Something that’ll put me in a position where they have to react to me. You remember what you told me back at Christmas? You said I had three options.”
“Align yourself with a greater power,” Arachne said. “Become a greater power. Or die.”
I nodded.
“So?”
“Right now I’m being forced to align,” I said. “There are two factions who care enough to recruit me. Richard, and the Council. They both want me playing for their team.”
“Are you going to?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because both choices suck,” I said. “I already learnt my lesson about working for Richard. And long term, the Council are almost as bad. They’re letting me stay there for now, but it’s just a matter of time before they have another try at sticking the knife in.”
“And Talisid?”
“He wants me as an agent, but he’s not going to be able to do much when things go wrong.”
“You have some allies,” Arachne said.
“And I’ll keep finding more. But it’s not going to be enough.”
“So what conclusion have you reached?”
“I’m not going to lie down and die,” I said quietly. “That only leaves one choice. Make myself powerful enough to be on a level with people like Morden and Vihaela. But there’s a problem.”
“How to do it?”
“How to do it. Every mage in Britain wants more power, whether they’re Light or Dark. Hell, half the problems I’ve had over the last five years come down to some asshole wanting a bigger stick than the next guy. Levistus and Morden and Belthas and who knows who else. They all want it, and so do all the others, and that means that all the low-hanging fruit was picked a really long time ago. But if I don’t try to get the same thing that they want—and succeed at it, where they failed—then I’m screwed. And that’s bad news, because I don’t see how I can succeed. I know what I need, and I don’t think I can get it.” I leant back against the sofa, staring at the bolts of cloth.