I lunged.
The gun barked and a tiny, stinging pain flashed through my ear. Richard had aimed it precisely enough to just clip the skin. “Last warning, Alex,” Richard said. His eyes were cold and set. “I won’t kill you unless I have to, but you’d be amazed what a person can live through.”
I held still.
“Take care of her,” Richard said, and backed away. His eyes and the gun stayed locked on me until the night swallowed him.
I stared after Richard for a long time, then looked down at Anne. Something about those last words sent a chill through me. The unspoken message had been: until I come back.
A cold wind eddied across the hilltop, making me shiver. The starlight shone down from above, Anne’s face a pale shape against the grass.
chapter 18
It was two hours later.
Luna and I were sitting in Arachne’s cave. I’d patched up my wounds with a first-aid kit and the healing salve I carry, though it had been a poor job compared to what Anne could do. Arachne was gone. She’d listened to my story, examined Anne, then disappeared into the tunnels. The few words she’d said before leaving hadn’t been reassuring. Luna had arrived shortly after, by which time I’d been exhausted and only half-coherent from the aftereffects of the adrenaline rush. It had taken Luna a long time to get the story out of me.
“What happened at the War Rooms?” I asked at last.
Luna grimaced. “The Council aren’t saying. But I managed to get through to Landis and he filled me in. Short version: it was a disaster.”
“How?”
“Okay, so originally it was supposed to be a protest march, right? Whole lot of adepts all gathered outside the War Rooms with signs. Well, the Council knew it was coming and they’d cleared the area out. No TV crews, a damping field to mess with phone signals, police cordons on the outside, the works. Only it turned out the Council had underestimated the numbers, as in by a factor of ten. The Keepers and the security were jumpy; the crowd started getting angry. And then someone started shooting.”
“Who?”
“The Keepers are saying there were Dark mages hidden in the crowd, and the security men fired back. But that’s what they would say, isn’t it? Not like they’re going to admit to gunning down a crowd of innocent people.” Luna sighed. “I don’t know. The EM field messed up everyone’s phones, so there aren’t any recordings. Sonder and the time brigade are going over the place. Maybe they’ll figure it out.” Luna looked at me. “If they do find out it was the Council’s fault . . . you actually think they’ll admit it?”
“Probably not,” I said. And that’s what everyone else is going to think too. “How many ended up dead?”
“They’re still counting. At least a dozen.”
I winced. Relations between adepts and the Council had been bad enough already. Even if this had been a setup by Morden and Richard—which seemed likely—no one was going to be in the mood to listen.
Luna’s eyes had drifted over to Anne. Anne was lying on one of the sofas, her eyes closed and her breathing slow and regular. “Is she going to be okay?” Luna asked.
“Physically, she’s fine,” I said. “She woke up while Arachne was checking over her, but I don’t think she recognised us. Drank a little water, went back to sleep.”
Luna looked at me. “Physically she’s fine.”
I nodded.
“What about not physically?”
“She touched the relic that jinn was bound in,” I said. “I don’t know what happened after that. But I’ve got an ugly feeling that when she does wake up, we’re going to find out that she made some kind of contract.”
Luna looked alarmed. “You mean like the monkey’s paw? If she made a wish . . .”
I shook my head. “You didn’t see the way she was looking at Lightbringer and Zilean. If it were as simple as granting wishes, they’d both have been dead by the time I got there. But something drove off a full team of mages and gunmen.”
“You said you felt something when you were linked to Anne by the dreamstone,” Luna said. “Was that it?”
“I hope not,” I said. “Because if it was . . . it was a lot more powerful than me.”
We fell silent, looking at Anne’s sleeping figure. I didn’t give voice to what I was really afraid of. With some things, it’s a lot easier to invite them in than to get them out.
“Do you think this was what Morden was planning all along?” Luna asked. “Setting Anne up in that vault to make her desperate enough?”
“It wasn’t the only thing,” I said. “Those Dark mages looted practically everything in the Vault. God only knows what the consequences of that are going to be. But I’m pretty sure it was why he involved us.”
“I was just thinking,” Luna said. “Remember what Anne told us? About how Morden asked her to be his apprentice, all those years ago? Then when Richard came back, he didn’t go straight away to meet you, did he? I mean, he could have done it at any time, but he waited for months. Until Anne got taken into Sagash’s shadow realm.”
I nodded.
“Do you think that was why?” Luna asked. “I mean, when he made you two that offer . . . we thought it was because of you. What if it was the other way around? Anne was the one he really wanted, you were just there?” Luna looked at me. “It would mean they’ve been planning all this for years. All the time that we were spying on them, they were watching us . . .”
“There’s more,” I said. “Last year, when that kill order went out on me, you got out of it by passing your journeyman tests. Vari got out of it by transferring his apprenticeship to Landis. But when we tried to do the same with Anne, it was rejected. We never found out why that happened, did we?”
“But that was Levistus . . .”
“Levistus was responsible for the vote on me,” I said. “But we never found any evidence that he was behind what happened to Anne. Why would he care about her? And even if he did, why hide the evidence? And then Morden swoops in. And because Anne was under the same death sentence, he could put her under his protection as well . . .”
“And we never thought about it, because we thought it was just to keep a lever on you,” Luna finished. Her eyes were angry. “That bastard. All that time we were running around, he was pulling strings to make it worse!”
“Yeah, well, it’s not going to do him any good.” I couldn’t keep the savagery out of my voice. “After tonight, Morden is done.”
“He wasn’t there . . .”
“Onyx was,” I said. “And then there were those rumours that he was planning to attack the War Rooms. They worked in his favour before, because they drew the Council’s attention away from the Vault, but there’s no way in hell anyone’s going to believe that he didn’t have anything to do with this. The only reason Morden’s been able to stay on the Council this long is by keeping himself squeaky-clean, and now that’s over. If there isn’t a Keeper team on their way to arrest him already, there will be soon. I’ve done my last job as his aide.”
Luna frowned. “But what if he just makes the same threat? You work for him, or . . . ?”
“I’d love to see him try,” I said. “Last time, he held all the cards. He was the one holding off our execution order, and we had nothing on him. Now it’s the other way around. Not only is the execution order gone, but he ordered me to attack a Council facility. If he tries to pull that same shit again, then I can just go straight to the Keepers. They wouldn’t have done anything before, but now? He’ll be even more screwed than he is already. No.” I shook my head. “Anne and I are loose from him and away from the Council for good.”