Chalice shrugged. “It’s only fair.”
“I’m not going to sign any blank cheques,” I said. “There are things—a lot of things—that I won’t do. If you’re expecting me to . . .”
“No blank cheques,” Chalice said. “No oaths of obedience. You can always turn me down. But I want good faith. If I ask you to do something, and it’s something you would be willing to do for an ally, then you should be willing to do it for me. If you say no, and you don’t have a very good reason, then no more lessons.”
We sat in silence for a minute.
“What are you thinking?” Chalice asked.
“I’m thinking . . . it sounds like a fair offer.” I met Chalice’s eyes. “If I trust you.”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Chalice tilted her head. “How about I give you a little good-faith gesture? I’ll help you out with your current problem. Then if it checks out, maybe you’ll be a little better disposed for the next time.”
“How are you going to help me?”
Chalice smiled. “You’ve never worked with a real chance mage before, have you?”
“Why do you ask?”
“If you had, you wouldn’t have that tone of voice.” Chalice extended her hand. “For this trick, I’ll need a pen and paper.”
I looked back at her for a second, then walked over to the desk to get them. “Want a top hat too?” I said as I put them on the coffee table.
“Is this one of your British humour things?” Chalice pushed the pen and notepad over to me. “Now, are there any things you’re looking for at the moment? People, places, items?”
“You could say that.”
“Think about them and draw something.”
I raised my eyebrows. “What kind of something?”
“Whatever you like.”
I shrugged and decided to play along, taking the biro and beginning to draw. I’ve never been much of a sketch artist, but I’m good with patterns. I let the pen move across the paper as I thought about what I was looking for right now. Straightaway my mind went to the case with Caldera. Xiaofan’s three owners, and where they were now. The boy Caldera had seen on the camera footage. The assassin who’d wounded me, and who was still out there . . .
“Done?” Chalice asked.
“More or less.” I studied what I’d drawn for a moment—it looked like a sea, the shapes of creatures beneath the surface, with a sky above. Geometric shapes formed a border over the water.
“Now give it to me.”
I handed Chalice the notepad. She glanced at the picture, took up the pen and scribbled something on it, then stood up and reached for her coat. “There you go.”
“Wait, what?”
Chalice put her coat on, flipped her hair out, and began winding her scarf around her neck. “You were looking for something, weren’t you? That’s where you need to go.”
I looked at the pad. A two-digit number was written on top of the picture, followed by what looked like a street name and postcode. “An address?”
“Looks that way.”
“What’s there?”
Chalice finished with her scarf, then gave me a smile. “How should I know? You’re the one who picked it.” She walked to the door. “Send me a message once you’ve made up your mind. I’ll let myself out.” She disappeared down the stairs.
I stared after Chalice, listening to her go. When her footsteps faded away, I switched to the future in which I followed her, tracking her movements. She crossed the shop floor and let herself out into the street, shutting the door behind her, before walking away down the street.
So that was Luna’s potential teacher. I tried to figure out how I felt about her, and didn’t come up with any definite answers. She wasn’t telling me everything . . . on the other hand, I hadn’t been telling her everything, and it’s not like I’d expected more at a first meeting. I still didn’t completely trust her, but I didn’t know whether that was just natural suspicion.
I did know that I wasn’t a hundred percent comfortable with leaving Luna in her hands.
But Luna wasn’t a child anymore. I had a responsibility to protect her, but not to overprotect her. This was a decision I should be making with her.
I looked down at the pad Chalice had written on. She’d taken two of the lines I’d sketched, and turned them into the numbers of the street address, 34. If I squinted a bit and looked sideways, those lines I’d drawn did kind of look like a 3 and a 4.
That didn’t make any sense. I’d just been sketching. How could she turn that into an address that I didn’t even know?
But hadn’t that been exactly what Chalice had been getting at? That chance magic didn’t work by the same logic as divination? Maybe that was why I’d never managed to make any real breakthroughs with Luna . . .
I shook my head and stood up. No point thinking in circles. I walked to my computer, typed in the postcode, and hit Search.
A map result came up of a district in west London. The postcode was UB8, out in Uxbridge. I switched from map to satellite view and saw nothing but a street full of houses. I wanted to path-walk and see what I’d find, but I didn’t have an unobstructed route. If I could gate to that location it would have been easy, but I didn’t have a gate stone that went anywhere near. That just left car or train, and the cumulative uncertainty of that kind of transport would cut off any path-walking before I’d covered a fraction of the distance.
But I had time to spare, and my divination magic to warn me of danger, and Chalice’s visit had left me wide awake. The sounds of the Camden night were all around me, life and noise and activity, and I felt full of energy. Nothing makes me more curious than a mystery. I wanted to go and see what was there.
I grabbed my coat off the hanger . . .
. . . and . . .
. . . wait a minute. This was exactly what I’d done last night. I’d gone rushing off on my own to investigate, without my armour and without backup. It hadn’t turned out well.
Maybe I ought to do this the smart way. I laid my armour out on the bed, then started making phone calls.
I took the tube out west to Hillingdon, then caught a bus for the last leg. I think I’m possibly the only mage in London who uses public transport on a regular basis. Most use gate magic or get a bound creature to ferry them around, and the ones who don’t either get chauffeured or drive a car. Part of it’s paranoia—I’ve had a couple of bad experiences with taking cabs, and while the tube can be crowded and slow, being several hundred feet beneath the surface of the earth makes it much harder for someone to pull an assassination attempt in the middle of your commute. But if I’m being honest, the real reason’s something else. When you’re a mage, you live in a different world from normal people. Your lifestyle is different, your problems are different, you have a new set of hopes and fears and worries. And the longer you spend in magical society, the further away you get. If you put a sixty-year-old master mage in the same room as a twenty-year-old college student, they can’t hold a conversation with each other. Their lives are so far removed that they don’t have enough points of similarity to be able to meaningfully communicate.
Something about that bothers me. I’d have trouble putting my finger on exactly what it is, but I don’t like the idea of ending up like that. So I take public transport and go shopping in Sainsbury’s and skim the news on the internet. It’s part of the reason I run my shop too. I don’t know if it really accomplishes anything, but I do it all the same.
The address Chalice had given me was just off Uxbridge Road. I walked down the side streets, hearing the rush and noise of the main road fade away behind me. The sky had cleared a little, and a half moon shone down brightly through patches in the clouds. Stars twinkled above and to the east; we were far enough away from the centre of London that the constellations were a little easier to see. I came to a halt one street away and scanned ahead.