“I have to go out somewhere.”
“You can go through the courtyard.” He hesitated for just an instant. “There’s a back way. I’ll show you.”
I looked up at Sonder. He shifted uncomfortably, and I felt a flash of disappointment. It wasn’t the fact that Sonder had gone along with the Keepers—I’d always known his loyalty was to the Council. It was that he’d done it so damn fast. “Okay, but hurry up.”
Sonder led me the other way along an internal corridor, where a pair of double doors led outside. Or not exactly outside; high walls rose up all around us. Sonder had called it a “courtyard,” but it was more of an internal park, with flats rising up in a rectangle on four sides, and a neatly tended stretch of grass and trees criss-crossed by stone paths. It was a gated community and looked very exclusive and cosy. “So how’s the war been going?” I asked.
“Pretty well.”
“You mean apart from Sal Sarque and his entire retinue getting killed?”
“Drakh took losses too,” Sonder said. “And we destroyed their base in that shadow realm they were using to launch attacks.”
Sonder sounded distracted, as you’d expect from someone trying to follow two conversations at once. “Everyone seems to think you’re losing,” I told him.
“We’re not losing,” Sonder said quickly. “The war’s in a stalemate due to . . .”
I listened with half an ear. The Keeper team were getting ready to gate in at multiple locations. Multiple simultaneous locations—how were they managing that? There should be too much variation in the gate timings for—ah. They had a space mage. In fact, it was someone I’d met a while ago. Her name was Symmaris, and she’d provided the transport for a Keeper hit team who’d burned down my old shop. They were planning to have her open several gates at once and surround me.
“. . . which is why they’re making a mistake,” Sonder finished.
“Uh-huh,” I said. Sonder was leading me diagonally across the courtyard. The Keepers were planning to launch their attack once I got out into the street, but they were still setting it up, and if I forced them to move early they’d have to go with their emergency plan, which was to gate right into the courtyard. I changed my focus to look at Sonder. They were probably talking to him through an earpiece—yup, earpiece communicator. I carry a dispel focus that looks like a long silver needle. Without breaking stride, I slid it out of my pocket, brought it up to just behind and to one side of Sonder’s ear, and discharged it in the air.
There was a faint, tinny shriek as the communicator overloaded, and Sonder yelped, putting a hand to his head. He backed away from me, eyes flicking down to my hand and up again. “What are you . . . ?”
“Shh,” I said, returning the focus to my pocket and watching the futures intently. They were swirling as the Keepers tried to figure out what to do. I pushed delicately with the fateweaver. Not too hard, we don’t want to tip them off . . . there. I turned around and started walking back across the courtyard.
“What are you doing?” Sonder called.
“I’m going this way.”
“The way out’s—”
“No, I’ve got a good feeling about this way.”
The futures flickered briefly as Sonder considered his options. I kept an eye on them while I paid most of my attention to the futures of the Keeper team. Let’s see, visual angle is there, firing angle is there. I stopped, changed direction, walked ten paces, and stopped.
Sonder came up behind me cautiously. “Um . . . what are you doing?”
“Do you know what’s special about this spot?” I asked Sonder.
“. . . No?”
I pointed at the pathway ahead, where it curved towards the doorway that we’d come out of. “That point is midway between where I was when you met me at the foot of the stairs, and where I was when we turned around. If you were searching for someone you suspected of doubling back, it’s where you’d start. Of course, it’s not very good from a tactical perspective, because anyone could come up behind you.” I turned and pointed to the left, where a grassy bed near the wall of the flats was lined with flowers. “If you wanted a good tactical position, you’d take that spot, right in front of the flowerbed. It’s at the centre of the wall so it gives you a view straight down the courtyard, and it’s between the windows of the ground-floor flat, so your back isn’t exposed. If you were a Keeper and you had to pick a landing spot, that’s where you’d go.”
Sonder looked confused and alarmed at the same time. The mention of Keepers must have clued him in that something was wrong, but he was still two steps behind. “. . . Okay.”
The futures had settled, the Keeper leader in charge of the team had given his orders, and Symmaris was forming her gateway. Space mages are very efficient at gateways. “But that’s not where I’m standing. What’s special about this spot?”
“I’m not sure,” Sonder said.
“This spot is special because it’s fifteen degrees offset from the plane of a gateway appearing at that spot there,” I said, pointing at the flower bed. “Symmaris likes to create her gates so that they’re rotated seventy-five degrees clockwise. She can’t make the angle any more extreme than that without compromising the spell, but it means that if anyone’s standing right there in front of the gate, she won’t be facing them. She’s paranoid that way. Do you understand?”
“Not really,” Sonder said uneasily. “Look, I think we should get moving—”
Sonder stopped as space magic pulsed from the spot I’d been pointing at. With a shimmer, the air darkened and transformed, forming a gateway between the courtyard and somewhere else.
I’d already turned away. Using my coat to hide my movements, I drew my pistol and fired.
The bullet reached the gateway just as the gate portal had finished forming, and entered and exited the gate five and a half feet off ground level at an angle of fifteen degrees from the plane of the gate. I had just a fraction of a second to see Symmaris on the other side of the gate, standing in a Keeper briefing room, her hands raised as she focused on her spell, and her eyes came to rest on me and began to widen just as the bullet hit her in the middle of the forehead.
Symmaris’s head snapped back and the gate winked out. The security man who had been about to jump through never made it. The echoes of the shot rebounded around the walls and died away, and the courtyard was quiet once again.
“Hey!” Sonder shouted. “What are you . . . ?”
I returned the pistol to its concealed holster and turned back to Sonder. “You really should pay more attention to these things.”
Sonder looked on edge, ready to fight or flee. The funny thing was, I was pretty sure he didn’t understand what had just happened. From his angle, he would have seen the gate open, caught a glimpse of Council security, then nothing. Sonder’s never been very decisive; he can react when threatened, but when there’s no clear course of action, he tends to hesitate. I used to be the same.
Up above, lights were coming on in the flats, and people were peering out of the windows to see what the noise was. Sonder looked from me to where the gateway had been. “We’re done here,” I told Sonder.
Sonder hesitated. A future wavered into existence of him trying to trap me in a stasis bubble.
I looked at him and shook my head.
Sonder looked back at me and the future vanished. I turned and walked away.