The easy answer was time magic. Time mages can look back into the past of their current location, playing out the events before their eyes like a video recording. It’s a very useful ability, which naturally means that the supply of helpful time mages never meets the demand. I do know one time mage, a guy called Sonder, but we aren’t exactly friends anymore and I didn’t even think he was in London at the moment. That just left the mundane way. What would I do if I wanted to find out what had happened at a particular place and time and I wasn’t a mage?
The obvious answer was CCTV. London has the dubious distinction of being the most spied-upon city in the world, with more security cameras per person than anywhere else on the planet. I couldn’t remember if the station had had any cameras, but logic suggested that the answer was yes. I glanced at the clock to see that it was ten P.M. Trains would still be running.
Well, why not?
One of the drawbacks of being a diviner is not having access to the gate spell. Gate magic is one of the more useful tricks that mages have up their sleeves; it creates a portal between two points in space, allowing you to step from place to place instantly. You have to know the two places you’re gating between, but it’s still a really useful ability to have—it would have allowed me to get to Pudding Mill Lane station in about sixty seconds, using my mental image of the place from the night before. Unfortunately, gate magic is restricted to elementalists. There are a handful of non-elemental magic types that can use the spell (death and space being the most well known), but divination isn’t one of them.
If you can’t use gate spells, the next best thing is gate stones. They’re small, cheap items that can be used to produce a gate effect at will, and like most focuses they can be used by any mage. Only problem is, they’ll take you to the same place every time, namely the spot the focus was keyed to. Great for going home, not so good for outbound trips.
Which is why when I’m travelling around London, I usually just take the train like everybody else.
I stepped out onto the platform at Pudding Mill Lane, shivering in the cold air. Behind me, the doors of the train hissed shut and the carriages began to pull away from the station.
Now that I knew what I was looking for, it didn’t take me long to find it. There were two CCTV cameras on the platform, pointing in both directions, and . . . there. Perfect. A third camera just a little way past the platform, pointing at the gate with the No Admittance sign and looking right down on the spot where I’d found the focus last night.
I wanted to go through the gate and poke around, but despite the late hour there were a couple of other people on the platform: a man fiddling with his mobile phone and a woman carrying a bunch of Sainsbury’s bags. I didn’t want to do anything to draw attention while they were so close. Although now that I’d found the right camera, it occurred to me that I didn’t really know what to do next. How did you pull recordings off cameras? The Keepers would definitely have contacts at Transport for London, but I didn’t know whether they’d do something like that on my request.
From the departure boards I could see that trains were coming every ten minutes. As I watched, a southbound train pulled up at the platform in a rumble of light and noise, newly arrived from the terminus at Stratford. The woman with the Sainsbury’s bags got on. The man with the mobile phone didn’t. The doors shut with a hiss and the train pulled away, heading south towards the towers of Canary Wharf, leaving the two of us alone on the platform.
I tried to figure out how I’d go about getting the recordings. The camera had to be sending the data somewhere—maybe a local node? I walked down the stairwell in the centre of the platform, looking for some sort of office. No good. There was hardly any station beyond the platform, just a few locked doors. One was a lift, another a supply closet. The third was some sort of switch room. They were locked, but it was only a simple padlock. I could probably pick it . . . I looked up to see that the man was still up there on the platform, and annoyingly, he’d chosen to stand right near the top of the stairs. He was talking into his mobile in French, and ignoring me completely, but he’d have a perfect view of anything I did. Will you just get on your train and go away?
Maybe there was some other way I could get the recordings. If I . . .
Wait a second.
That man had been here when I’d arrived. He hadn’t boarded the northbound train that I’d taken to get here. And he hadn’t boarded the southbound train that had just left.
If he wasn’t waiting for a northbound train or a southbound train, what was he doing here?
Without looking directly at the guy I studied him through the futures. He was a little taller than average, dressed warmly in a woollen cap and a long coat. Most of his face was hidden behind a beard and dark glasses. As I watched, he started strolling down the stairs towards me, still talking into his phone. “Allons, ma chérie, ne sois pas comme ça. Tu sais que ce n’est pas elle. Je viens de . . .”
He still wasn’t looking in my direction. From his body language it didn’t even look as though he’d noticed I was there, but my instincts were starting to sound a warning. “Allez,” he said. “Allez, allez, allez. Ce n’est pas ce que j’ai dit. Non, tu sais . . . Je n’ai pas dit ca. Allez . . .”
The two of us were alone in the station entrance. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, reflecting off the white tiles of the walls. The man was halfway down the stairs; his course would take him behind me and out onto the long path heading through the construction site to the main road. Something in my precognition was trying to catch my attention, and I looked into the short-term futures of what would happen when he—
Oh shit.
All of a sudden I realised just how isolated we were. There were no staff in the station, no passengers on the platform, and the next train was still four minutes away. The construction site around us was deserted. There were still security cameras . . .
. . . and how much help were they yesterday? I was on my own. Casually I shifted position, my right hand drifting to my belt. I didn’t turn around and the man disappeared out of my field of vision. He was still talking. “Tu sais que je n’ai pas . . . je n’étais—”
I held very still, counting off the seconds. Four. Three.
Now he was right behind me. “Je n’étais même pas là . . .”
Two. One . . .
“Pourquoi de vrais—” Magic flared behind me and I heard a whisper of movement, soft and quick.
I was already twisting. Something slid past me and hit the door with a thunk. At the same time my hand came up in a flash of metal, stabbing upwards.
He was quick, very quick. The knife hit home but he was already jumping back and a shield flickered into existence as the blow landed. He came down in a fighting stance, a translucent blade that hadn’t been there a second ago held in his right hand and pointing straight at me. He started to cast another spell, and before he could finish I lunged.
The man dropped the spell and struck, meeting my attack with his own. I hooked his blade and kept going, slamming him into the wall and forcing his knife hand out of position while I stabbed at his gut, one-two-three. The third blow sank home but as it did another spell blew me back, solid air striking like a hammer. I was thrown back to the steps, tripped, looked up to see him moving in a blur of motion, disappearing around the corner before I could react.