It wasn’t like I hadn’t had warning. Jarnaff had been trying for weeks to get me to tell him Morden’s plans, and at our last encounter he’d as good as told me that if I didn’t cooperate they were going to get the information out of me the hard way. I’d already suspected that Jarnaff knew something about what had happened to Morden’s last two aides, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d been the one to give the orders. Oh, there’d be no direct link—Light mages are too careful for that—but it’s an open secret that a lot of Keepers have Crusader sympathies, and somehow I didn’t think it was a coincidence that these guys just happened to be waiting for me right after I received orders through official Keeper channels.
“Hi there, guys,” I said.
The three goons stared at me and I gave an inward sigh. “You know,” I said, “I’m on official Keeper business here.”
The central goon spat on the floor. “You’re no Keeper.”
“Yeah, I’m starting to figure that out,” I said. “Do you mind?”
“Fucking Dark mages,” the goon said. “Think you can get away with anything.”
I am getting really tired of being called that. “I’m not a Dark mage,” I said, holding my temper.
“Bullshit,” the goon on the right said.
“You work for fucking Morden,” the central goon said. “You murder kids. You’re a piece of shit.”
I hesitated for just a second, responses going through my head. I wanted to argue, justify myself, but . . . No. I remembered what Arachne had once told me about my reputation. If you have it, use it. I walked forward, closing the distance to the central man, stopping only a few feet away to stare up into his eyes. “Then if you really believe all that,” I said softly, “why are you standing in my way?”
The goon hesitated. He’d been about to advance on me, and now that I’d preempted him, he wasn’t sure what to do. But he was bigger and stronger than I am, and like a lot of big, strong, stupid people, his fallback plan when things didn’t go his way was to grab the problem and overpower it. He reached out to do just that.
I slid under the goon’s arm and hit him low and viciously. His eyes bulged and he stumbled to the ground. The second one started towards me but I turned on him, staring, and he checked, looking at his friends. “Don’t even think about it,” I said, my voice hard.
“Come on!” the third goon called. “He’s only a diviner!”
I snapped my head around to stare at him, and he took an involuntary step back. “You’re right,” I said. “I’m a diviner. Now here’s a question for you: if I thought any of you was the slightest possible threat to me, would I still be here?”
Goon #3 hesitated, and I saw the futures flicker as he tried to figure out what to do. I already knew what he could do, and what his friends could do as well. I knew that he had a knuckleduster in his pocket, just as I knew that his partner was carrying a club. I also knew that all three had no combat magic, or none that would make a difference. In all practical terms they were no stronger than mundane normals, which meant that their chances against me in any kind of fight were close to zero. It should have been reassuring, but if anything, it pissed me off. Apparently the Crusaders still weren’t taking me seriously. Well, they’ll learn.
Goon #1 struggled to his feet. His movements were awkward, and he was still clutching his groin, but his face was dark with rage. “Come on!” he snarled. With his words, the wavering futures of Goons #2 and #3 steadied, and now every possible outcome led to violence. They spread out, surrounding me, and then Goon #1 lunged.
Divination isn’t great at predicting people’s movements. Even if you can pick the general course of action that someone will follow, it’s still hard to know how they’re going to do it. Looking more than a few minutes ahead into a conversation is close to impossible unless you have some kind of workaround, and a really chaotic environment like a fight is even worse. To divination magic, a battle is an impenetrable wall; anything on the other side is completely invisible. All you can see is what’ll happen in the next few seconds.
But in combat, a lead of a few seconds is huge. Most people who die in battle die through being caught by surprise. Either they’re looking in the wrong place, or they don’t understand what they’re looking at, or they make a move that they didn’t know was the wrong one until too late. When you can see which futures are the bad ones, then combat is suddenly much less dangerous. It doesn’t make you invincible—if your enemy is too tough or too fast then seeing his moves before he makes them isn’t enough, and if they have enough numbers on their side, then they can pull you down no matter how good you are. But if you’re fighting an enemy without those sorts of advantages, divination is pretty hard to beat.
The three goons weren’t that fast, they weren’t that tough, and there weren’t that many of them. They’d already lost; they just didn’t know it yet.
I let the first man go past, sliding aside as he grasped at the empty air, and came around facing Goon #3. He’d pulled out his knuckleduster but hesitated, reluctant to attack me head-on. My movement had put Goon #2 at my back, and I could see the futures only moments away in which his club would crack across my skull. I held still, giving him a clear target, then as he started his swing, I kicked back and out. The force of his momentum drove his knee onto my foot and I heard a snap, followed by a scream of pain.
Goon #3 looked down behind me, his eyes wide, and by the time he looked back I was on him. He flung his hands up, which blocked his view of my hands, and I was already aiming low. Stomach and groin, then as he doubled over I caught his head and slammed my knee into his face. He went down and I turned to face the first man.
Goon #1 had recovered from his failed rush and was coming at me again. He hesitated just briefly upon seeing that the other two were down, but his blood was up and with a roar he charged straight at me, arms wide to grab and crush.
I threw glitterdust in his eyes, and that was that.
After I’d retrieved the club and used it to deal with the blinded one, I dusted myself off and looked around. Goon #1 was unconscious, #3 was stirring and moaning, and #2 was trying and failing to drag himself away across the floor with his broken leg. He looked up at me with terrified eyes, and I shook my head. “You boys took the wrong job.”
“You know what they say,” a voice said from the other end of the chamber. “You get what you pay for.”
I looked up to see that two more men had entered. They were far enough away that I couldn’t get a clear look at them, but both were wearing masks that hid their upper face, which pretty much ruled out any possibility that they were here on legitimate business. “How many of you idiots are there?” I said in annoyance.
The two men advanced. “Look,” I said. “I’m getting tired of this. How about you just walk away, and we can . . .”
And then I stopped.
I’d had a chance to look into the short-term futures. Unlike Goons #1 to #3, these two did have magic backing them. They were battle-mages, and they were a lot stronger than me.
I’d been wrong. The Crusaders were taking me seriously. They’d laid a trap, one designed especially to catch a diviner: throw a weak enemy at me, one I’d be confident I could beat, and use that as a screen to hide the real threat. I felt a nasty sensation in my stomach as I realised that I’d been overconfident. Winning wasn’t on the cards anymore. Escaping was.
I took a step back, scanning. There were two exits from the chamber, one ahead and one behind. Of the two men facing me, the closer one was dark-skinned and strong, and from the futures of combat, I could tell that he was some sort of light-force hybrid, able to create weapons and shields of hardened energy. The second man, the one who’d been doing the talking, was smaller, and he was a lightning mage. He was hanging back, keeping the second man between him and me.