I pushed the memory away. That had happened last September. The Crusaders had managed to catch Anne, and when she didn’t tell them what they wanted to hear, they’d tortured her. And since life mages are resistant to pain, they hadn’t just tortured her, they’d tried to maim and flay her body so badly that even she wouldn’t be able to withstand it.
Anne had lived, but it had been horribly close, and for weeks afterwards I’d woken up sweating thinking about how close. If we’d been even a couple of hours later, Anne would have died. If Luna and Variam hadn’t reacted so fast, if Sonder hadn’t helped, if Anne had been just a little bit less resilient, then she’d be gone, and our group would be three instead of four. Anne had been traumatised and it had probably been a big factor in her choice to pick up that item in the Vault the following month.
And the reason all of that happened had been to do with me. Oh, it hadn’t been directly my fault. But the reason the Crusaders had gone after Anne had been to get information about Morden, and the reason they’d done that had been because they’d tried and failed to do the same to me, and because Anne had been seen with Morden and me on my first day as Morden’s aide, she’d been marked down as an associate. I wasn’t any less of a target nowadays – if anything, things were worse. The Crusaders wouldn’t be likely to try kidnapping a Council member, but aides were another story.
So for Anne to become my aide – or for that matter, for her to be close to me in any way at all – would make it that much more likely that the same thing would happen again. I’ve never lived a safe life and I’ve always accepted that, but it’s one thing to know that there’s a good chance you’re going to die a violent death, and it’s something else to know that it might be someone else doing the dying in your place.
And that was the biggest reason I’d never had this conversation with Anne. Because if I did, I could imagine it going two ways. In the first scenario, she’d tell me, ‘Well, I kind of like you, but not in that way, and even if I did, you’re just not worth it.’ Which would be painful, to put it mildly. The second scenario was much worse. In that, she’d tell me that it was her choice, not mine, and that she was stronger than me, if anything, so she had more right to be worrying about me. And I wouldn’t be able to argue about that, because it was true.
I suppose some of you might be rolling your eyes at this point. If you are … well, then it’s a fair bet that you’ve never been in this position yourself. It’s easy to say ‘oh, it’s their choice’ when you don’t have anything at stake. But if you know – not guess, know – that there’s a good chance that doing something could cause someone you deeply care for to die a horrible death, would you still do it? If that doesn’t make you hesitate, then either you don’t care about them as much as you think you do, or (more likely) you’re kidding yourself. The simple fact was that Anne would probably have a considerably higher life expectancy if she stayed away from me, and that was not a small thing to get past.
But then, if I wasn’t around, that would open up new dangers. Because Richard was interested in Anne too. He’d been willing to go up against the Crusaders to protect her, and though I couldn’t prove it, I was pretty sure that many of the events leading up to Anne coming into contact with that jinn were of his doing. I didn’t know how central Anne was to his plans – maybe the Vault assault would have happened the same way anyway, and having this happen to Anne had just been an extra bonus – but I didn’t think he was likely to leave her alone. Most of the protection that Anne and Luna and Variam and I did have came from staying together. If we split up, we’d be in one kind of danger. But if I stayed around Anne, kept associating with her, then she’d just be in danger in a different way.
I sighed and shook my head. I was going around in circles and I wasn’t getting anywhere. Maybe things would work themselves out, and in any case, I should be able to put it off a little longer. Shouldn’t I?
4
It was a month later.
‘Look, I get what you’re saying,’ Lucian said. ‘But things are different now.’
‘Different how?’ I asked. We were sitting on a bench on Hampstead Heath. The full power of the July sun was beating down on us out of a bright blue sky, and even the grass seemed to radiate heat. Crickets buzzed from the undergrowth, and the sounds of chatter and laughter drifted up to us from the people scattered across the hillside below.
‘You’re part of the Council,’ Lucian said. He was a curly-haired boy in his early twenties with a serious expression, and right now that expression was focused on me.
‘I’ve always worked for the Council, ever since you’ve known me,’ I said. Lucian had been a walk-in, one of the many adepts who entered my shop uninvited, hoping for help. Sometimes I was able to give them what they were looking for; sometimes I couldn’t, and usually that would be the end of it. But every now and again one of those walk-ins would turn into a relationship that lasted, and over the years, I’d built up quite a network of contacts. Lucian had been one of the ones who had stayed, and over time he’d become one of my major sources of information about what was happening in the adept world. ‘I’ve worked for other people too. That doesn’t mean I’ve given them your name. Anything you tell me, I keep to myself.’
‘I get that, but … Look, it was one thing when you were just an aide. And you said that you weren’t even doing that because you wanted to. I don’t know whether you were forced into it, or something …’
‘He was forced into it,’ Anne said quietly from the other side of me. ‘So was I.’
Anne had been officially appointed as my aide as of four weeks ago. Council aides are much more than personal assistants; if a Council member isn’t present, their aide is expected to be able to negotiate on their behalf, and a lot of business gets done between aides without their bosses ever meeting at all. Navigating the various factions and agendas is difficult work and I’d kept an eye on Anne during the first fortnight to make sure she could handle it. There had been some hiccups, but all in all, she’d adapted pretty well. Like me, Anne wasn’t brought up in the Light world, but her experiences with Dark mages had turned out to be quite applicable to the Council, and her habit of staying quiet and keeping her eyes and ears open had stood her in good stead.
One of the things that Anne had had to change had been her style of dress. Instead of her old jeans and jumpers, she’d switched to business suits, generally ones that showed off her figure. The one she was currently wearing was dark green, left her lower legs bare, and emphasised the narrowness of her waist, and Lucian had spent most of the first five minutes of our meeting sneaking glances while trying not to make it obvious. Between our work relationship and living at the Hollow, I was seeing Anne for hours at a time every day now. On one level it was nice, but at the back of my mind I couldn’t help feeling that the longer I let things go on like this, the sooner I was going to have to make a decision.
I realised that Lucian was talking and pulled my attention back to the present. ‘… on the Council,’ Lucian was saying. ‘You’re one of them. I mean, when they’re passing their laws to screw us over … you’re one of the ones doing it.’
‘I’m Junior Council, not Senior. I don’t get a vote.’
Lucian looked sceptical and I could tell he wasn’t convinced. To be fair, he had a point. Junior Council members might be non-voting, but I still had vastly more influence than Lucian did. ‘Look, I’m not asking you to betray anyone. We just want to know more about this association of Richard’s.’