There was someone else in the gym with me. I couldn’t see him, but I could hear impacts, blows thudding into a punchbag. They were rhythmic, steady; one, one-two, one-two, one-two-three. With the end of each combination, there would be a faint metallic clinking as the support chain swung back.
“Got a minute?” I said into the darkness.
The sounds of impact cut off. The punchbag swung for a second or two longer, creaking, then was still. Seconds ticked by. I could feel myself being watched, but didn’t move.
Cinder stepped out of the blackness. He was wearing shorts and a white sleeveless T-shirt, and looked younger than I remembered. Sweat glistened on his bare arms. He looked at me for a moment, then walked past me to the side of the room, disappearing back into the darkness. There was the squeak of a faucet, followed by the splash of running water.
“I’m guessing Kyle gave you an update,” I said to the shadows.
Cinder reappeared. Water dripped from his hair, and he had a towel slung around his neck. He studied me without comment.
“A while ago, we made me a deal,” I said. “You’d help me out, and in exchange, you wanted me to split Deleo away from Richard. You changed your mind about that?”
Cinder looked at me, then folded his arms. “No.”
I nodded. “I think I know how to do it.”
“When?”
“As soon as I get the opportunity,” I said. “Most likely, Richard’s next operation. If you can give me any notice, it’d be helpful.”
Cinder nodded.
“One other thing,” I said. “If what I’m planning works, Richard is not going to be happy with her. Personally, this doesn’t bother me very much. But if you still want to help her, she’ll probably need it.”
“Anything else?”
“No.”
Cinder turned to go.
“Wait,” I said.
Cinder paused, looked back at me.
“I’m not going to ask what happened between the two of you,” I said. “I figure it’s your business. But when you fought your way out of Richard’s shadow realm, Deleo stayed behind.”
“So?”
“So why do you still care about helping her?”
Cinder studied me for a moment. “You lost a hand,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“Kyle said it was your girlfriend,” Cinder said.
“Yeah.”
“You giving up on her?”
I looked back at Cinder, then gave a short laugh.
Cinder walked away, the darkness swallowing him up. I turned and walked back to the door. Guess we’ve got more in common than I thought.
The better you know someone, and the more history you have with them, the easier it is to find their dreams through Elsewhere. It had taken me a little while to reach Cinder. Finding my next target was easier.
The door opened up into a room with a high arched ceiling and painted white walls. It could have been a palace but the proportions were off, more like a scaled-up doll’s house. People were scattered throughout the room, talking amongst themselves; they wore fine clothes but there was something insubstantial about them. I walked through the crowd, listening with half an ear to the muffled voices, searching for the presence ahead.
At the end of the room was a dais with a gilded throne, and sitting on the throne was Rachel. She wore clothes of purple and gold, trimmed with white fur, and she sat leaning forward, her brows drawn down in a frown. She tapped her fingers on the throne as she stared down at the boy addressing her from in front of the dais. He was young and plainly dressed; something about him looked familiar and it took me a moment to place him. He looked like Zander, one of the slaves from Richard’s mansion, back when Rachel and I had been apprentices.
Rachel asked Zander something. Zander responded slowly, and Rachel snapped at him, her voice sharp. Others were watching from around the walls, dressed in courtiers’ outfits: they gestured with fans, pointed and laughed. The murmur of their words never grew quite loud enough to be understandable, but it was a distraction, drowning out what Zander was saying.
Rachel was growing angry. She pointed at Zander, giving him orders; Zander responded sluggishly, as if confused. Rachel rose to her feet, her face a mask of anger. A green ray stabbed out and Zander disintegrated into dust.
“There!” Rachel shouted. “You see?”
The audience giggled and laughed. No one seemed upset or shocked; they reacted like schoolchildren to a teacher they didn’t respect. Rachel screamed at them and they slipped away, turning and ducking into the crowd. I saw other faces I recognised, shifting and changing; Tobruk and Morden, Vihaela and Onyx. From all around, the murmur of conversation continued unabated. Some of the crowd were drinking; I saw a woman who looked like Crystal lower a goblet, a red stain around her lips.
Rachel had sat back down on her throne and was giving orders. A couple of servants nodded and listened with half an ear: they didn’t seem to be paying attention. I could see Rachel getting angrier and angrier. Apparently, even now, she wasn’t getting the respect she wanted.
She doesn’t seem very happy, I thought coldly. I watched Rachel a moment longer.
Then I blew her throne into a million pieces.
Rachel came tumbling out of the explosion, a shield of green light glowing around her, eyes snapping from side to side. Bits of throne came showering down. “Hey, Rachel,” I called, stepping out of the crowd and into plain view. “I’m back.”
A green ray flashed out at me. I bent it aside and it hit the figure who might have been Crystal. The phantom shape thinned and faded, the goblet shattering to splatter its contents on the floor. The watching audience pointed and laughed. Rachel fired another disintegrate spell, and again I bent it aside. A statue between the windows puffed into dust. “Not this time, Rachel,” I said.
“Don’t call me that!” Rachel shouted.
“Why?”
Rachel attacked again. It wasn’t even close. It was harder for me to change reality here in Rachel’s dreams than it would have been in Elsewhere, but I’d been practising for a long time and Rachel couldn’t hurt me. Of course, I couldn’t do anything to her either, but I was pretty sure she didn’t know that.
“So,” I said. I created a grey-blue sofa in the middle of the room and sat, leaning back against the cushions. “Want to guess why I’m here?”
“Get out,” Rachel said through clenched teeth.
“I’ll give you a hint. It’s to do with what happened at the Tiger’s Palace.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Don’t remember? Well, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. It probably didn’t make much of an impression on you.” I crossed my legs, settling back comfortably. “It was that evening last year. While we were waiting for the Council to kick in the door, we had a chat up there on the balcony.”
“I don’t care.”
“So anyway, I asked you why you hated me. Well, I got my answer, and you really didn’t hold back. You told me that I was a hypocrite, that I was just as power-hungry as any Dark mage, that I wanted the same things as you, I just wasn’t willing to pay the price for it. That I’d always known who Richard really was, and that the only reason I’d left was because I couldn’t handle taking orders. Remember?”
“Jesus,” Rachel said. “You’re justifying yourself in my dreams now?”
“Oh, Rachel, you’ve got it all wrong. I’m here to say thank you.”
Rachel stared.
“I had a talk with Shireen a few years ago, and she told me something that stuck with me,” I said. “Back when I was still Richard’s prisoner, right at the end, she came down to the dungeons to talk. She was having second thoughts by then—I guess she’d seen what you were turning into and it was making her nervous. Well, at that point I liked her about as much as you like me, so I really let her have it. Funny thing was, it turned out to be the most helpful thing I could have done. If we’d been friends, I would have tried to sugarcoat it and spare her feelings, but instead I was the one person in that mansion who told her the truth.”