“I promised her I’d give her space.” Anne thought for a second. “I think she’ll come around in a day or two. I’ll come back and try again.”
“Okay,” I said slowly. As I looked at her, I was struck by how sure of herself Anne looked. Dealing with these sorts of problems seemed to be natural to her, and I wondered just how many of Anne’s skills had been ones she’d learnt because she was forced to, not because she wanted to. Anne’s a skilled healer and combat mage, but maybe given a choice, she would have ended up spending her life dealing with things like this . . .
But Variam had other things on his mind. “Okay, fine, she’s got issues,” he said. “You two have got bigger problems. What are you going to do?”
“There isn’t much we can do,” I said.
“So what, you’re going to do what Morden says?”
There was a challenging note to Variam’s question. It pissed me off a little. “We don’t exactly have much choice.”
“I thought the idea was to work against Richard,” Variam said. “Not for him.”
“I’m not on Richard’s side,” I snapped. “But we can’t turn on him unless we’re damn sure we can make it stick.”
“And until then?” Variam said. “You’re going to work for a Dark mage?”
“We worked for Jagadev,” Anne said.
“That was different.”
“How?”
“He wasn’t the Dark representative on the bloody British Council, was he? Anyway, we didn’t have a choice.”
“Neither do we,” Anne said quietly.
I was silent. Jagadev (or Lord Jagadev, as he likes to be known) is a rakshasa, and one of the more influential magical creatures currently operating in the British Isles. After Anne and Variam broke away from the Dark mage who’d been holding them prisoner, they’d been alone, with no allies and few relatives, and Jagadev had taken them in. Although I’d never been able to prove it, I had circumstantial evidence that Jagadev was the reason that they had so few relatives. I hadn’t told Anne or Vari that particular detail, mostly because I was sure that if I did, Variam would immediately try to hunt Jagadev down and kill him, which would in all probability end in Vari’s death. When you’re a diviner, you have to face up to the fact that if you give out information, you’re responsible for the consequences.
But all that had been a long time ago, and no matter how I tried to justify it, I couldn’t help feeling uncomfortable about the fact that I still hadn’t told Anne and Vari what I knew. The awkward truth was that I’d been putting off dealing with it. I didn’t know what would happen when I opened that particular can of worms, and it was always easier to kick the can down the road.
While I’d been lost in my thoughts, Anne and Variam had been arguing. “Turning Morden down isn’t an option,” I said, interrupting Variam. “First, he’s made it clear that if we do, he’ll kill all our friends and family. Second, that appointment of Morden’s is the only thing keeping Levistus’s death sentence off our necks. So even if we took him on and somehow won—which we wouldn’t—then it’d just put us right back on the Council’s hit list.”
“Then what are you going to do?” Variam said.
Neither Anne nor I had an answer, and as the seconds ticked away, I felt the pressure of just how hopeless our situation was. The pizzas arrived, but Variam’s last question had killed the conversation and we ate in silence. Once we were done, we paid the bill and left. Vari headed back to Landis’s house in Edinburgh, and Anne and I headed back to Wales.
| | | | | | | | |
Both Anne and I had lost our old homes. Mine had been gutted by fire just before Christmas, while Anne’s had been repossessed when the Keepers had shown up to arrest her. For now I was staying in my safe house in Wales, and with nowhere else to go, Anne had stuck with me. My bank accounts were getting low—weeks on the run will do that to you—but I knew I could build them up again with a little time. Anne, on the other hand, was almost flat broke. Life mages have their own ways of making money, but they can’t do it as easily as diviners, particularly if they have scruples. For now, the house in Wales was the best we had, and if the Keepers knew we’d returned, they weren’t raiding it. At least, not yet.
Later that evening, I shut the front door behind me and walked out into the darkness. My little house in Wales is at the end of a deserted valley, and it’s far enough away from any towns that it’s the next thing to pitch-black. Only the tiniest trace of light filtered down from the overcast sky, leaving the valley a mass of shadows. The nearby river rushed and splashed, steady and reassuring, its babble drowning out the sound of my footsteps and those of the local wildlife. Anne was back inside making dinner, but I was alone in the cold and the dark.
I walked absently, hands in my pockets, picking my way along the path in the darkness. Variam’s question kept going through my head. What could we do? I took a breath and let it out, trying to let the silence of the empty landscape calm my thoughts. I needed to figure out an answer.
There are four basic responses to a threat. Fight, flee, deceive, submit. Fleeing was out. Anne and I had tried that, and Levistus and Barrayar had dragged us back. Morden had made it clear that he’d do the same thing. Anne and I could escape eventually—maybe Luna as well—but the price would be the lives of everyone we cared about. I wasn’t willing to make that trade.
Submitting was out as well. I’d decided a long time ago that I wasn’t going to become like Richard. Surrendering to him, letting him decide who I was and what I was going to be, would just be an uglier and slower form of dying. I still wouldn’t be me, at least not any of the parts of me that I really cared about. I could tell that Anne was still holding out the hope that working for Richard and Morden wouldn’t be so bad, but I didn’t believe it. Whatever they wanted us to do, I knew it was eventually going to lead to something horrible. The only question was when.
Fighting was, if not hopeless, then pretty close. Both Richard and Morden had enough power to crush me in any straight-up contest without breaking a sweat. But that assumed it was a straight-up contest. Like a lot of kids, I grew up with stories of heroes in shining armour who ride up to the bad guy and challenge him to a duel. I’m nothing like the heroes in the stories—I’d rather hide than go into battle, and most of my time in fights has been spent running away. But when it comes to combat, stealth and surprise are the great equalisers. Richard might be powerful, but Anne had already confirmed that he was still human. A knife through the ribs would see him dead enough. The trouble would be getting it there.
The final choice—deceive—seemed at first glance to be the best. Pretend to follow Morden’s and Richard’s orders, then bring them down from within. It was an obvious plan . . . and that was the problem. If it was obvious to me, then it had to be obvious to them as well. Morden and Richard knew we had absolutely no reason to be loyal. They had to have anticipated that we’d betray them, and while I didn’t know what they’d done to prepare for that, I knew that there’d be something.
So while flight and submission were out, fighting and deception were almost as bad, and I still didn’t have a plan. I remembered that last conversation I’d had with Arachne, back in December. Maybe I needed to look further afield.
I sighed. My feet had taken me far down the path, away from Anne, and I turned back towards the house, its windows the only light in the darkness. Tomorrow we would face Morden.
chapter 3
The War Rooms are the nerve centre of the Council, and the heart of Light power in Britain. They’re a vast tunnel network beneath London, rooms and hallways spiderwebbing outward for miles, bored through the clay and rock. There’s enough space for every Light mage of Britain to live down there, and from time to time I think they actually have, but nowadays it’s famous not as a fortress but as the Light Council’s seat of government. The Senior and Junior Councils are based there, and so is the great bureaucracy that administers all mage business in the country. Back when I was working with Caldera as a Keeper auxiliary I’d visit the place maybe once a month. Now I was a full Keeper, and Morden’s affiliate. I wondered what kind of reception I’d get.