“Could be,” I said. “Though we could just duck under—”
Variam raised his hand and a burst of heat melted the ironwork to slag.
“—or that works too,” I finished. “You’re clear.”
Variam walked forward, kicking aside bits of cooling metal. I followed, scanning ahead for more dangers. “This would be easier if you’d let me take point.”
“Screw that,” Variam said, and I glanced sideways to see that his face was set. “You know what that bastard did. If she hasn’t killed him, I will.”
The door at the end of the corridor led into a wide circular room. In contrast to the corridor, the walls and floor were rough rock, with only a single smoothed path running through it. Variam stopped in the entrance. “This is another trap, isn’t it?”
“It was,” I said, pointing at the centre of the room. “See the residue there?”
“Earth magic, right? Some sort of ceiling collapse? Wait for people to get in, then drop the roof on them?”
“I thought of that too, but no. Looks more like a summon effect. I’d guess earth elemental. Similar result, but doesn’t require you to dig out the whole room afterwards. It was summoned there, but it doesn’t look like it had time to do much.”
“No reset?”
I shook my head.
We kept walking, following the smoothed path towards the door at the far end. “You planning to get in my way if we find him?” Variam asked.
“Jagadev?”
“Yeah.” Variam gave me a look that wasn’t entirely friendly. “That was why you sat on this for five years, right?”
“I didn’t want you going after him back then, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“You try and give me some speech about forgiveness and how revenge isn’t the way, I am going to punch you.”
“I’m not going to hold you back,” I said. “But I do want you to look before you leap. Remember that blade trap. Jagadev’s had a long time to figure out how to kill you both if you came here. I am not okay with you going on a suicide run.”
“You’re not the one who lost family here.” The next door had been left ajar, and Variam reached for it, talking over his shoulder as he did. “I know you technically didn’t lie to us”—the door swung open—“but . . . holy shit.”
Beyond the door was an entrance hall. Square pillars lined the hallway, making two rows down the length of the room, and a long, shallow pool stretched between them. The floor was white marble, the walls and columns were decorated in pale yellow, and the pool was lined a rich gold. More of the faux torches were mounted on the pillars, and their flickering glow was caught and reflected from the waters of the pool, casting a thousand sparkling points of light across the hallway. Doorways on both sides and at the end led deeper into the caves.
The entire room was littered with bodies. Men lay sprawled between the columns, spread out on the floor, and propped against the walls. One had fallen into the pool and his body floated face down, bobbing slightly. As I looked more closely, I saw that not all the bodies were human. Creatures of some kind were mixed in amongst them, man-sized but covered in brown fur. But all were very much dead.
When Variam didn’t move, I slipped past him, glancing from left to right as I moved through the bodies. The men had been geared for battle, armed and armoured. Some had been carrying guns, while others were bare-handed or wielding focus items. The furred humanoids had been using curved metal claws with a handle shaped to fit into the palms of their hands. Up close, they looked like a cross between humans and monkeys, with intelligent-looking faces and thin tails.
“She did all this?” Variam asked.
“This was their defensive strongpoint, I think,” I said, scanning the room. “The traps and the earth elemental were to slow attackers down. They would have gathered here to make their stand.”
“You mean to get slaughtered.”
“Or that.” Jagadev’s defences would have been enough to handle a life mage. A life mage augmented by a marid jinn was another story. Looking through the futures, I could see that the bodies weren’t yet cold. “Still some heat in them. I don’t think this happened more than twenty minutes ago.”
“Guess we might catch up,” Variam said. He still didn’t move. The sight of the massacre seemed to have cooled his temper.
It was more than a little disturbing to me as well. It’s one thing to know that someone’s capable of dealing out this kind of death, and another thing to walk through it. Every time I thought about what had happened here, I’d remember a quiet, shy girl with red-brown eyes, gentle and kind. As I looked at the bodies, that image wavered and warped. I didn’t want to think about her doing this.
“You know what the creatures are?” I asked Variam, trying to distract myself.
“Vanara,” Variam said. He sounded uneasy. “Why would she want to kill . . . ?”
“Looks like they were with Jagadev.”
“It feels wrong,” Variam said. “Why’d they be helping someone like him?”
“Jagadev had humans working for him,” I said. “Not much of a stretch to think he could get other creatures too.”
“Yeah.” Variam shook his head. “Yeah. We should move.”
We picked our way through the bodies. I stepped over a vanara’s legs, placed my feet to avoid stepping on a man’s outflung hand. “Jesus,” Variam muttered to himself. “I think I know some of these guys.”
“Jagadev probably brought them along when he left London,” I said. As I walked, I looked at where the defenders had fallen, trying to read the flow of the battle. It must have been fast. There were a couple of scorch marks on a column and a few bullet chips on the walls, but very few. Most had probably died without realising how outmatched they were.
There was one man at the far end of the hall a little apart from the others. He was Chinese, dressed in a white suit, with a pair of sunglasses covering his eyes. He was sprawled on his back, arms outstretched.
“That’s Kato,” Variam said, staring down at the body. “He was majordomo at the Tiger’s Palace.”
“Hmm,” I said. I crouched down, studying the corpse. Behind the sunglasses, Kato’s eyes were open, staring sightlessly at the ceiling. “I don’t think he died in the battle. Positioning’s too neat.” I glanced up at Variam. “Did he ever give you guys a reason not to like him? Especially Anne?”
“Few reasons, yeah. Why?”
“I think he might have gotten special treatment.”
Variam looked back at me with a frown, then shook his head again. “Come on.”
I followed Variam deeper into the mountain, leaving Kato’s body behind. The fight in the entrance hall must have broken any resistance, because there were no further signs of combat. If anyone had escaped from that room, they’d kept running. I couldn’t blame them.
I kept searching as we walked, mapping the tunnels and watching for any further traps, and as I did an old memory surfaced. Back when Variam and Anne had been living with me, I’d tried to find them both a master, and the search had taken me to Dr. Shirland, an elderly mind mage in a terraced house in Brondesbury. We’d sat and talked while a fat black-and-white cat watched sleepily from an armchair.
If I approached anyone to refer Anne as an apprentice, they’d ask whether she was dangerous. And I wouldn’t honestly be able to answer no.
Anne won’t even kill flies, I’d said. She might be powerful but she’s not dangerous. She’s innocent.
I don’t think she’s quite so innocent as you believe.
The massacre in the entrance hall floated before my eyes, and I shook my head, trying to make the image go away. It wasn’t like that was Anne, anyway. Or not just Anne.