He lashed out, but I was already rolling away and the force blade cut the concrete where I’d been lying. I ducked behind the pillar, letting another lightning blast soak into the stone, and circled around to face them.
The force mage was still up, but he was starting to stagger and I knew that the stress of combat would be making his blood pump faster, carrying the drug to his heart and brain. His eyes slipped as they tried to focus on me, and the sword in his hand blurred and steadied. “Block it!” the lightning mage snapped at him. “Block it!”
I turned and sprinted for the tunnel, but even drugged and dazed, the force mage wasn’t out of the fight. A wall of opaque light appeared; in a flash I saw the future in which I tried to smash through fail, and instead I broke right, feeling another lightning ball scorch past my head, and as I turned I was drawing the hidden knife from under my coat. I flipped it to hold the blade between finger and thumb, took a second to aim, then hurled it at the force mage as hard as I could.
Throwing a knife at someone with the aim of killing them is a complete waste of time. Just throwing a blade into a stationary target is hard enough—doing the same thing against someone who’s fighting back is basically impossible. I’m one of the best combat throwers I know, and even I can’t do it consistently. If you really insist on using a thrown weapon, you’re better off with a dart or a javelin, or you could just take a hint from military history and use a gun like everybody else.
There’s one thing that knife throwing is good for, though. It’s really distracting for the guy on the receiving end.
The force mage flinched and reflexively threw up a shield. If he’d been at full strength he could have done that while holding up the barrier at the same time, but he wasn’t. The knife hit the shield and clattered to the floor, the barrier behind me vanished, and before either mage could react I was gone.
| | | | | | | | |
I sprinted up the stairs, out through the locked door, and back out into the tunnels beneath the roundabout. Someone, probably the lightning mage, was trying to gate out to cut me off, but he’d picked the tunnels to my north and I ran south instead. It took about three minutes for the mage to gate in and search the area, and by the time he figured out that he was looking in the wrong place I was long gone.
I stopped running after about half a mile and settled into a fast walk, scanning ahead through every future that I could find. Nothing showed and I kept walking south until I reached Liverpool Street, losing myself in the crowd of Londoners. I bought myself a bottle of water from a coffee shop and sat down, feeling the blood rushing in my veins. I looked down at my hands and watched them tremble. It took them a long time to stop shaking.
Once I was sure I was safe I retraced my steps back to Old Street. I found a vantage point near the roundabout and thoroughly explored all the possible futures in which I went back down into the tunnels. There was no sign of either mage, but then, I hadn’t expected there to be. Now that the attack had failed they’d withdrawn and cut their losses, waiting for the next time.
And so, once I was absolutely sure that they were gone, I went back.
| | | | | | | | |
“You took your sweet time,” Caldera said.
“I suppose I did,” I said.
The entrance to the Vault had none of the beauty of the Belfry. It was a big, rectangular room, with metal walls and fluorescent lights. A thick sheet of armoured glass ran across the middle, with airlock-style doors and security booths from which guards could watch people as they entered and left. Caldera and I were in one of the booths, standing on opposite sides of a table.
“You got it?” Caldera asked.
I held up the package.
Caldera took it and turned it over in her hands with a frown. Caldera is an earth mage with thick arms and legs, broad and heavy and tough. We’d been fairly close until three months ago. “You sit on it, or what?”
“Something like that.”
Caldera looked sharply at me. “You open it?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Christ. Yes, I’m sure.”
Caldera grunted and slid a form across the table. “Fill in the box and sign.”
I scribbled with the pen. Caldera took the form back and started filling it in with a look of concentration.
I was left standing. A couple of security guards were talking thirty feet away, but I couldn’t hear them through the armoured glass. The only noise was the scratch of pen on paper.
“You want to talk about it?” I asked.
Caldera didn’t look up. “About what?”
“You know what.”
Caldera got to the bottom of the page, flipped it over, and kept writing. She didn’t answer.
“The last time we talked?” I said. “You know, on Boxing Day?”
“I don’t really have time for this, all right?” Caldera said. She spun the form around and handed me the pen. “Sign and date.”
I did. Caldera took the form back and started towards the door at the other end of the booth. I followed, only for Caldera to turn and block me. “Where are you going?”
“Uh, with you.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I’m supposed to put this in the Vault.”
“Your orders are to deliver it to the Vault,” Caldera said. “You can go now.”
“Oh, come on,” I said in exasperation.
“What did you expect?” Caldera said. “A guided tour?”
“Would have been nice,” I said. The Vault is supposed to be the highest-security facility that the Council has, next to the War Rooms themselves, and I was curious about the defences. According to rumour, they’re guarded by everything from laser trip wires to bound elementals. I have no idea what’s behind that security, but it’s supposed to contain everything that the Council absolutely can’t afford to lose. According to rumour there are whole rooms of magical items in there, numbered and sealed away and gathering dust. The fateweaver is there too, or at least the statue that’s the door to its resting place, or so I’d been told. I didn’t really have any legitimate reason to look at the place, but quite frankly, I felt that I’d earned it. “Isn’t guarding the Vault supposed to be a Keeper duty?”
“And here I am guarding it.”
I reached into my pocket and held up my own Keeper signet.
“Funny thing,” Caldera said. “The Council don’t seem too keen on you poking around inside their top-end security.” She looked at me. “Almost like they don’t trust you.”
“Seem to remember you telling me not too long ago that you did trust me.”
“Yeah, well,” Caldera said. “Things change.”
“Look, I’m sorry about Boxing Day, okay? I was on the run and I was scared. I was just trying to stay alive.”
“Sure,” Caldera said. Her eyes were flint. Apology not accepted.
I felt a flash of anger. I could understand Caldera holding a grudge—last Boxing Day I’d hit her with insults, several punches, and a Sainsbury’s truck, in that order—but only because she’d been trying to arrest me at the time. If I’d gone along quietly, then I would have been dead within the week, but she thought she was the one with a reason to hold a grudge? I took a breath and let it out, forcing myself to calm. “Can you do one thing for me?” I said once I could make my voice level. “Check the entry records for the Old Street entrance.”
“For when?”
“Say an hour ago.”
Caldera frowned at me, then left the security booth, heading towards the far end. She opened a steel door and disappeared inside. She was gone a long time, and when she reappeared and walked back across to open the door her frown had deepened. “What’s going on?”