The futures changed. There was gunfire, now. Time for step three. ‘Little,’ I said out loud, hearing the communicator in my ear chime. ‘Go.’
There was a rush of footsteps and the Council security came charging in. Caught between us and the reinforcements, the thralls hesitated before turning on the security men, but the Council security waded in with batons and tasers, focusing the thralls down one at a time.
The thralls on my side of the room ran for the fallen guns. I caught one before he could reach it, tripping him then cracking him over the skull as he tried to rise. ‘Ilmarin!’ I shouted, and the air mage threw out a hand; the other two pistols went flying up and over the mêlée, falling behind the Council security.
One more man tried to grab me from behind; I threw him over my shoulder and drove the stick into his stomach, and all of a sudden the fight was over. The last of the thralls were being wrestled to the ground and handcuffed by the security men. Not a shot had been fired. I strode across the room, heading for a small metal door on the north wall, dropping the stick and pulling out my stun focus. Chimaera appeared through the crowd, looking belligerent. ‘You need—’ he began.
‘Get out of the way,’ I snapped. I pointed to two men in line with the door. ‘You and you. Back off.’
The two security men obeyed. Chimaera didn’t. ‘You’re supposed to—’
The door was yanked open. On the other side was a woman with fat cheeks, dirty blonde hair and a gun held in both hands. ‘Get out!’ she screeched. ‘Get out or I’ll kill you all!’ She started firing without waiting for an answer.
Twelve bullets in the gun; ten steps to the woman. The first two shots went wild, then her eyes focused on me and she aimed for my chest. I sidestepped to make the next two miss, then reversed direction, letting the next three go past on the other side. Only five steps left, but the closer I came, the harder it was to dodge. The eighth shot breezed by my head, but the ninth would have taken me in the stomach and I had to spin; that threw my balance off and I had to halt my advance and dodge the other way to avoid the next two. I twisted sideways, jerked my head out of the way as another bullet barely missed my neck, then I was square on and the pistol was pointing right at my chest. The woman’s eyes never changed as she pulled the trigger.
The gun clicked as the hammer fell on an empty chamber. If the woman had been directing her own actions, she probably would have looked surprised. Instead she pulled the trigger again, and again: click click click went the gun and then my stun focus took her in the stomach and her eyes rolled up and she slumped to the floor.
I turned around to see Chimaera and at least half the security men staring at me. Some of the thralls were still struggling, but every member of the detachment not occupied with them seemed to be looking in my direction. Chimaera’s mouth was slightly open. ‘What are you all staring at?’ I said, picking up the empty gun.
Little rounded on the men. ‘All right, enough rubbernecking! Get them secured!’
‘Something’s coming,’ Saffron said. She’d taken so little part in the fight that at some point she’d actually found the time to get a stick of gum and start chewing.
‘I saw,’ I said. The futures were converging to a single track. ‘Little! We’ve got sixty seconds. Get as many of these people out as you can, then have your men fall back. Nothing more you can do here.’
Little nodded. Some of the younger men in his profession, the ones who have something to prove, will ignore warnings like that. The ones that survive to Little’s age don’t. ‘You heard the man. Move out!’
The security men fell back in good order, dragging thralls off the factory floor as I assembled in the centre of the floor with the other mages. ‘I assume that lethal force is back on the table,’ Ilmarin said.
‘Yeah, I think we’ve reached the gloves-off stage,’ I said. Now that I got a better look, I could see that the thralls had been running a mass-production operation with those headpieces. One person had been filing rods, another wiring caps together, another treating them with some sort of liquid and so on. A dozen completed models were piled in a cardboard box, though I couldn’t sense any magic. Probably they needed to be infused. I pointed up to the catwalks. ‘He’ll be coming from there.’
‘Finally,’ Chimaera muttered.
‘Saffron, focus on shielding,’ I said. ‘Ilmarin and Chimaera will handle offence.’ Saffron gave a nod, still chewing.
Footsteps sounded from above and a figure appeared on one of the catwalks, his shoes ringing on the rusted metal. He was no more than a boy really, twenty or twenty-one years old. His clothes looked to have been good quality once, but now they were dirtied and rumpled as though they’d been slept in. Resting around his brow was a thin silver crown set with black stones. ‘So,’ he announced from above us. ‘At last you’ve come to face me.’
‘Sorry about the wait,’ I said. ‘It’s been a busy month.’
‘You take me for a fool?’ the boy said. ‘You think I didn’t know about your spies? I bent them to my will and now they serve me!’
I sighed. ‘We didn’t send any spies, David.’
‘Don’t call me that!’ David snapped. ‘That person is gone. Now I am—’
‘Your name’s David Winslow, from Hackney,’ I said, interrupting him. ‘You developed adept abilities in secondary school, and while you were at the London Met you fell in with a couple of adept groups. Somehow or other, you got in touch with Morden’s people, and you were able to get your hands on that crown you’re wearing now. At which point you stopped being David Winslow, and became its latest thrall.’
‘I’m no thrall. But you’re about to be.’ David swept his arm across, gesturing to the room. ‘I’ll have you rebuild everything you’ve destroyed. Then you’ll become the first of my new servants.’
‘Do you ever wonder why you’re doing that?’ I said. ‘Why your entire life suddenly revolves around acquiring “servants”?’ I pointed to the crown on David’s head. ‘That thing is called the Splinter Crown and the Council have records on it going back hundreds of years. Every single time it’s allowed to possess a new bearer, the first thing it does is make him find a base of operations, then it starts capturing thralls. The thralls are used as slave labour to capture more thralls. Sometimes it takes a few weeks, sometimes a few months, but sooner or later the bearer ends up holed up in some fortress, trying to raise an army.’ I glanced from left to right. ‘Well, maybe not a fortress, but I guess this was the best you could find. Seriously, stop and think for a second. Before all this, you were a third-year studying English literature. You were living in a shared house and you had a girlfriend. Now you’re a slavemaster living in an ugly, decaying factory. Did you ever think about how that happened?’
I saw doubt flicker in David’s eyes for a moment, then his expression firmed. ‘You Council mages just want to control us. You can’t stand the thought of anyone else with power.’
‘How long are you going to keep wasting time with this guy?’ Saffron said.
‘I’m afraid I have to agree,’ Ilmarin said. ‘The item’s bonded at this point.’
‘Don’t ignore me!’ David shouted, and lifted a hand.
I felt a surge of power, something rolling down towards us, trying to crush and squeeze … and failing. Saffron stared up at the catwalk, chewing away on her gum. I could vaguely sense the domination effect, but it wasn’t reaching us.
‘Like I said,’ I told David. ‘We have records.’
David concentrated, and I saw sweat beading on his forehead. I felt the spell brush against my mind, and shrugged it off. The Splinter Crown was powerful, but I’ve had a good deal of practice at resisting mental attacks, and I was pretty sure I could handle this thing even if it were free to attack me at full strength. With Saffron shielding us, it had no chance at all.