‘Why a fraction?’ Luna asked.
‘Balancing act,’ I said. ‘He can’t beat Anne on his own. He’s planning to let in just enough Council mages to distract Anne’s forces and weaken them enough for him to finish them off, but not so many that they can beat him. It’s dangerous, but he’s been willing to take those chances before. And it’s exactly the kind of thing the Council wouldn’t see coming, because they’d never do anything so high risk.’
‘And you figured all this out by divining it?’ Ji-yeong asked.
‘Well, not exactly,’ I said. ‘My divination is telling me that the Council’s plan is going to work fine.’
‘What?’
‘The Council has diviners too. They’ll have told the Council the same thing.’
‘Then . . .’
‘Richard can project false futures. Make diviners see what he wants them to see. He’s fooled me with it before.’
‘So you can tell this one’s a fake?’ Luna asked.
‘Nope,’ I said.
The two of them stared at me.
‘Future looks one hundred per cent real,’ I said. ‘But Richard’s a master. If he was creating a false vision, that’s what I’d expect to see.’
‘So . . . you’re guessing?’
‘Pretty much,’ I said. ‘If I’m wrong, I just screwed everything up in a really major way and the Council are going to be very, very pissed off.’ I shrugged. ‘Let’s hope I’m not. Now stay quiet, I need to path-walk.’
Luna and Ji-yeong exchanged glances.
The shop was quiet, the streets outside busy with the bustle of a normal Camden evening. But elsewhere, I’d just kicked over an anthill. Landis was starting the gate spells that would send his team through into the shadow realm, and he’d have notified Nimbus to do the same. Nimbus would rage and order him to stop, and when Landis didn’t, Nimbus would call the Council and demand an explanation. And the Council would respond by calling . . .
My communicator pinged. Talisid. I picked up the focus, activated it and spoke into it, my voice clipped. ‘Richard’s betraying you. He’s going to let you start to gate your forces into the shadow realm, then trigger the isolation ward and cut you off. You have to go right now.’
‘Verus, what do you think—?’
‘No time. You have a few minutes. Don’t waste them.’
I broke the connection. There was silence for a few seconds, then the communicator pinged again. I didn’t answer.
Now it was a race. My actions had thrown the futures into chaos, and it wouldn’t take Richard long to realise something was wrong. Meanwhile, the Council would be arguing. Could they act faster than Richard?
Normally the answer would be no. But Richard had his own army to deploy, and he needed to maintain the optasia. And crucially, he was doing it alone. Richard’s cabal was powerful, but the biggest weakness of Dark mages is their lack of trust: if he didn’t watch his back then someone like Vihaela would put a knife in it. I was hoping that right now, he had too much to deal with.
The communicator pinged, then pinged twice more. I selected the person I needed to talk to and answered. ‘Verus.’
An aggravated voice spoke through the focus. ‘Verus, this is—’
‘Director Nimbus,’ I interrupted. ‘Yes, I know what I’m doing; yes, there is a good reason, and the reason is the one you just heard from Talisid. Richard is going to trigger the isolation ward and cut your force into bits. You have to launch the invasion right now.’
‘You don’t have—’
‘I do know that.’
‘The Council—’
‘The Council diviners are being fooled.’
‘You—’
‘My authority doesn’t matter. I’m the one who knows what’s going to happen.’
‘Stop interrupting me!’
‘Nimbus, I know you don’t like me,’ I said. ‘But you are about to make the most important decision of your career, and depending on which path you choose, you will go down in history in one of two ways. Down one path, you’ll be remembered as the visionary commander who sniffed out a trap and defeated Drakh when other Keepers couldn’t. Down the other, you’ll be remembered as a failure who hesitated at the crucial moment. Pick one.’
‘I need confirmation!’
‘Landis is opening his gate in three and a half minutes,’ I said. ‘Then you’re going to have to make your decision whether you’ve got confirmation or not.’ I hung up.
Luna and Ji-yeong were still watching, looking slightly nervous. ‘Um,’ Luna said. ‘Can we talk now?’
‘Not quite.’ I opened the door by the counter and went through into the back room.
Luna had kept some aspects of the Arcana Emporium the same – the back room on the ground floor had an enclave from the rest of the shop’s wards in order to allow for direct gate transit. I reached out through the dreamstone and the fateweaver, combining their powers. The dreamstone allowed me to step from here into Elsewhere; the fateweaver allowed me to exploit flaws in the castle’s defences. The Light mages working right now were creating large-scale breaches in the shadow realm’s wards to hold their gates open for an extended period. By slipping through chinks in the armour and causing the defences to weaken at opportune times, I could create a much smaller breach with a fraction of the effort.
At the same time, I was watching the futures. My divination was still telling me that the invasion was set to start at eight sharp, and with a thrill of satisfaction I knew I’d guessed right. Richard was hiding the truth from us, and he hadn’t figured out that we were onto him. Yet.
As I watched, the future seemed to quiver. I’d never seen anything like it before, and it was a strange sensation, as though reality was shaking loose. It made me dizzy to watch, and I had to look around to reassure myself that yes, I was still in the back room.
‘Alex?’ Luna asked.
‘I’m fine,’ I said absently. I was still forming the gate. I’d grown better with the dreamstone, and I’d discovered that with a little extra work I could compress the Elsewhere journey down to effectively nothing, placing the gate from here to Elsewhere and the gate from Elsewhere to the shadow realm right next to one another. After all these years, I could finally gate the way elemental mages could.
And then, just as I watched, the futures shattered, a screen breaking and crumbling to reveal new futures, real futures, that were a flurry of activity. I felt my spirits lift. I spend so much time looking into the future that having it taken away feels like fumbling around in the dark. Now the lights were on.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Gate into the shadow realm is in ninety seconds. Once we get through, things are going to get messy. Ji-yeong, we’re coming out in the same spot we left from. You know the area?’
‘I know it,’ Ji-yeong said. Hermes had appeared at Luna’s feet and was watching us, bright-eyed.
‘We’re going to need a way to get out of sight and escape pursuit quickly. You know a route that’ll do that?’
Ji-yeong hesitated. ‘I don’t know if—’
Hermes yipped.
We all looked down at him. Hermes looked up at me and blinked.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Fox has the point.’
My communicator pinged, then pinged again. I didn’t answer. Everything had been set in motion and the only question was which dominos would fall first.
And then the air shimmered and a portal opened in mid-air. It was messier than the neat ovals created by gate magic, but through it I could see the yellow stones of the castle and feel the warm sea breeze. The sky above was the dusky purple of twilight.
I jumped through. Hermes followed at my heels and Luna and Ji-yeong came through a second later.