“Back then they didn’t have anywhere else to go,” I said. “It’s different now. Vari’s got a master, and Anne’s got that place down in Honor Oak.”
“But she doesn’t have anyone sponsoring her.”
“Yeah.” We crossed the street, heading north. “But at least she’s still in the apprentice program.”
Luna hesitated.
I looked at Luna. “What?”
“So, about that . . .”
“Please don’t tell me she left.”
“Uh . . . technically, no,” Luna said. “It was more like ‘got expelled.’”
“You’ve got to be kidding me. When?”
“The announcement was yesterday.”
“Why now?” I said. “She and Vari joined up what, two years ago? Did some teacher get vindictive or something?”
“No,” Luna said. “They’re saying she attacked another student.”
I stared at Luna. “Anne attacked another student?”
“Yeah,” Luna said. “You remember Natasha?”
“Oh,” I said. “Okay . . .” Natasha was a Light apprentice I’d met the year before last. She’d thrown a tantrum over Luna knocking her out of a tournament, to the point of shooting her in the back with a spell which might have killed Luna if Anne hadn’t been there to heal her. I hadn’t been able to do anything to Natasha officially—her master was too well connected and she’d gotten away with only a slap on the wrist—but I’d met Natasha’s master afterwards and explained very clearly what would happen to her apprentice if she did anything like that again. Apparently the lesson had stuck because Natasha’s master had kept her away from Luna ever since. If Anne had gone after Natasha, odds were Natasha had done something to deserve it.
But still . . . “Are you sure it was Anne who started it?” I asked. “Natasha didn’t attack her first?”
“I don’t think she got the chance. She went straight down and started screaming. They had to sedate her to shut her up and she hasn’t been back since.”
I gave Luna a slightly disbelieving look, but she didn’t look like she was exaggerating. She didn’t look particularly upset, either, but there was a tinge of worry there as well—no matter how good her reasons for disliking Natasha, she knew this was serious.
“Has the expulsion gone through, or is it hanging?”
“They fast-tracked it. Natasha’s master isn’t pushing her own charges yet, though.”
“She couldn’t, not easily. Would bring up too many awkward questions about why her apprentice wasn’t expelled for doing the same thing to you in Fountain Reach.” I thought for a second, then shook my head. “Won’t help with the expulsion, though. That’ll be from the program directors.”
“So?” Luna said. “What do you think?”
“Having Anne move back in? It won’t fly. Might have helped if we’d done it a month ago, but it won’t be enough to get her reinstated.”
“Oh, screw getting reinstated, most of those classes are a waste of time anyway. I’m worried about her. Being on your own as an apprentice is a really bad idea, right? Isn’t that what you keep telling me?”
“Preaching to the choir.”
“She could end up as a slave to a Dark mage or worse. Right?”
Which was exactly what had happened to Anne a few years ago. It was something we had in common. “It’s possible, yes.”
“So?”
“What do you mean, ‘so’?” I looked at Luna. “Yes, you’re right. Being a mage or an adept on your own at Anne’s age is a really bad idea, especially when the apprentice grapevine makes sure everyone knows about it. So why are you telling all this to me? You should be talking to her.”
“I did.”
“And?”
Luna didn’t look happy. “Let me guess,” I said. “She said no, so now you’re coming to me?”
“Well . . . yeah. Could you ask her?”
The flip side of Luna’s new self-confidence is that it’s made her a lot less shy about asking for what she wants. “She’s made it pretty clear that she doesn’t want to talk to me, and even if she did I don’t think moving back is high on her to-do list.”
“It doesn’t hurt to ask.”
“Is that your new motto for dealing with mages, or something?”
Luna came to a halt in the middle of the pavement, forcing me to stop and turn to her. “Look, I’m worried. She’s my best friend, even if I hardly see her nowadays. I know you two don’t get on anymore and I haven’t said anything, but . . . can’t you give it a try? It’s not as though you lose anything if she says no, right?”
Traffic went by in the street, and pedestrians changed their course to avoid us. Luna gave me a pleading look, and all of a sudden my objections felt a lot weaker. I still didn’t want to do it, but it wasn’t as though Luna were really asking for much . . . and she wasn’t wrong about the danger Anne might be in. “All right,” I said.
“Tonight?”
“Fine. Tonight.”
I parted company from Luna and headed south. With her out of sight it only took a couple of minutes for my thoughts to skip away from her and Anne and go back to circling the uncomfortable subject of my father.
It was probably just as well that Luna had shown up. Without her to give me a push, I might have ended up skulking outside that hall for hours. I’d been telling Luna the truth—my father had been utterly horrified at what I’d done to Tobruk (and to several others, for that matter). The bit I hadn’t told her was that even though I couldn’t see any remotely realistic way in which I could ever change my father’s mind, I’d kept on trying anyway. I’d seen my father maybe a dozen times over the past ten years, and every time the meeting had ended up devolving into the same bitter argument. He couldn’t see how violence was ever the right choice, and I couldn’t see how that attitude could ever make sense—we always said the same things and reacted the same way, as though we were acting out the script for a play we both knew by heart, with tiny variations that ultimately didn’t make any difference. Even now, as I walked through the London streets, I found myself running through the arguments with my father for the thousandth time, debating the points and imagining the counterarguments he’d make so that I could respond to them.
On a rational level I knew it didn’t make sense. The fights with my father never achieved anything—all they did was make me strung out and depressed—yet somehow I kept having them. It was as though I needed to prove something to him, make him admit that I was right and he was wrong. It’d never happen, and I knew it would never happen, but still I carried on doing it. About the only thing that could pull my mind away from it was work.
Luckily, I had a meeting scheduled for exactly that.
I met Talisid in the Holborn restaurant we usually use for our discussions, an Italian place close enough to the station to be convenient and spacious enough to be private. Talisid greeted me, courteous as always, a middle-aged man an inch or two under average height, with a balding head and greying hair. At first glance he looks so bland that he could be part of the furniture, but a closer look might suggest a little more. I’ve known him for two years and I trust him more than anyone else on the Council, which isn’t saying much. We ordered and got down to business.
“We’ve heard back from the Americans,” Talisid said once we’d finished with chitchat. “They’re offering to drop the issue in exchange for more information on Richard.”
“I already told them I don’t have any more information on Richard. Am I going to have to have this conversation with every country’s Keepers?”