Ji-yeong was in the far corner, in a chair which Luna had tucked in between the display cabinets at the front window and the side tables against the wall. A Sainsbury’s bag with some food was under her chair. I doubted we’d need it, but you never know.
Outside, the city was abuzz with the coming evening. Scattered water droplets hung on the shop window: showers had come and gone, but now the weather was dry again and the streets were filling with the fall of night. The hum of voices and traffic filtered in through the walls, and soon distant music would begin to play as the clubs opened. The sounds of a Friday evening in Camden, familiar as a pair of old shoes.
I checked the time. 7.10. Fifty minutes to zero hour.
My communicator chimed. Luna stopped and both she and Ji-yeong turned to look as I lifted the focus. ‘Receiving,’ I said.
‘Verus?’ Talisid sounded harassed. ‘I’ve double-checked. The ward team confirm that the gate and isolation wards on Sagash’s shadow realm have been bypassed.’
‘Right now? You’re sure?’
‘Yes, I’m sure. It would help if you could tell me why you consider this so important.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t.’
‘Wonderful. I assume you’ve checked in with Drakh?’
‘Text only,’ I said. I absolutely did not want a real-time conversation with Richard right now. Diviners can learn far too much that way. ‘His team will be entering at twenty-hundred, point C.’
‘Good. Now I have fifteen other things I need to be doing. Please don’t give me any more.’ Talisid broke the connection.
‘What was that about?’ Luna asked.
I returned the focus to my pocket. ‘Original plan was for the Council ward experts to bypass the wards on Sagash’s shadow realm at the last possible moment before zero hour. I convinced Talisid to do it an hour in advance. He wasn’t very happy about it.’
‘Mm,’ Luna said. She seemed distracted and I wasn’t sure she’d heard. She stared off into space, then went back to pacing. I checked the time again. 7.13.
Minutes ticked by. From a street or two over came the muffled sounds of cheering, swelling to a roar and then dying away. Luna’s footsteps echoed in the quiet shop. It was taking her five and a half steps to cross the floor each time. One, two, three, four, five, half-step and turn. One, two, three, four, five, half-step and turn.
‘Ugh.’ Luna shook her head and put both hands flat on the counter. ‘This is driving me crazy. It’s like before a big duelling match, you know? Except then, if I lost, I’d just go back and train harder and do better next time. It wasn’t the end of the world.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘The waiting for these kinds of things is hard. Funny thing is, what I was thinking of just then wasn’t the combat ops I went on as a Keeper. It was exams at school.’
‘You used to get that tense about exams?’
‘You didn’t?’
‘I mean, they’re just exams. It’s not like they really matter.’
‘Well, not compared to the kind of stuff we have to deal with these days,’ I said. ‘But when you’re a kid, you don’t have much variety of experience. If exams are the biggest test you’re facing, that’s what you worry about.’
‘Come on. You must have had stuff you cared about more than that.’
‘Well, sure,’ I said. ‘But that was the only thing I could do that adults seemed to care about. Pretty much the one single thing that my mother and father and teachers could all agree on was that I was supposed to do well at school.’ I shrugged. ‘Didn’t really have any friends, so I didn’t have much else to do.’
‘Don’t take this the wrong way,’ Luna said, ‘but that sounds really sad.’
‘Sounds normal to me,’ Ji-yeong said.
‘You too?’ Luna said.
‘Well, not the having no friends part,’ Ji-yeong said. ‘But when you’re in school, you don’t get much time to see friends anyway.’
‘You can see them after school.’
‘That’s when you sleep.’
‘You’ve got time to do more than work and sleep.’
‘Well, classes and study are about sixteen hours,’ Ji-yeong said. ‘Once you add on meals and travel, that doesn’t leave much.’
Luna stared at her. ‘Sixteen hours?’
‘I couldn’t believe it when I saw what your schedules are like over here,’ Ji-yeong said. ‘English children are really spoilt.’
‘I’m half-English,’ Luna said. ‘My father’s Italian.’
‘Close enough.’
‘No, it isn’t.’ Luna paused. ‘What time is it?’
‘7.19,’ I told her.
‘Oh, come on!’
All the time that Luna had been pacing, I’d been checking the futures. At exactly 8.00, the invasion would start. And it would succeed, at least to begin with. Both Council forces would deploy into the shadow realm without triggering the wards. I couldn’t see what Richard’s group would do, but as far as I could see, everything was unfolding according to plan.
Once everyone was inside the shadow realm, the futures blurred into a mess of uncertainty and branching possibilities. The invasion would set off alarms, and we could expect Anne’s forces to counterattack. But the whole point of invading like this at so many points was to overwhelm the defences with more threats than Anne could possibly handle. The Council would take losses, but with their numbers and with Richard’s forces on their side, they should be able to crush her in a matter of hours.
And at that point, they’d be in position to turn on Richard’s forces and crush them as well.
‘That sword looks kind of familiar,’ Ji-yeong told Luna.
‘It’s Alex’s,’ Luna said. She still sounded distracted.
‘Did he tell you where he got it?’
‘Okay,’ I interrupted. ‘I think it’s time.’
Ji-yeong and Luna looked at me as I took out my communicator and activated it. ‘Landis,’ a voice said after a moment.
‘It’s Verus,’ I said. ‘Go.’
‘Understood.’ Landis broke the connection.
‘What was that about?’ Luna asked.
I stood up, stretching slightly. ‘We’re going.’
Luna looked puzzled. ‘Going, as in . . . ?’
‘The invasion.’
Luna checked her phone. ‘It’s still—’
‘Change of plans.’
Both Luna and Ji-yeong looked confused now. ‘What’s going on?’ Luna asked.
‘Okay,’ I said. The futures were starting to shift, and I kept an eye on them as I talked. ‘Richard needs the Council to take out Anne. But once Anne’s been neutralised, his forces are going to be stuck in a warded shadow realm with a Council army. The Council is going to kill him at the first available opportunity. I know that, and if I can figure that out, so can Richard. Right?’
‘Okay,’ Luna said.
‘So imagine you’re Richard,’ I said. ‘You know the Council’s going to turn on you. The obvious way to deal with that is to backstab them first. Except the Council knows you know, so they’re also going to backstab you first. And the Council have a bigger army. If it comes down to Richard’s cabal versus the Council strike force in that shadow realm, Richard’s going to lose. So what do you do?’ I paused for a second, then went on. ‘You stop them from having the bigger army. The key is the isolation ward. Once that’s triggered, the Council won’t be able to bring in any more reinforcements. Their numbers won’t matter.’
‘But if he triggers the isolation ward once you’re all there, that’ll just make it worse for him,’ Luna said. ‘He won’t be able to get away.’
‘Which is why he isn’t going to wait that long. Richard’s going to sabotage the plan right at the beginning and trigger the isolation ward while the Council’s still moving that into the shadow realm. Let in a fraction, cut off the rest.’