The address was a house, small and cheaply built, with a concrete drive for parking at the front. Red-brown peaked roof, two floors with no basement, square windows looking out onto a curving street. It was the kind of house you find all around the suburbs of London, duplicated a hundred times in this street and ten thousand times in this borough. More streets like this one wound away to the east and west, with a small park to the north. There were no real landmarks; a couple of small tower blocks rose up a mile away, but for the most part the area was flat and unremarkable.
In a way, places like this are the real London. When most people think of my city, they think of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, the London Eye, the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf and Liverpool Street, the parks around Buckingham Palace, and all the other tourist spots that show up on TV and in the movies. But if you marked all those places on a map, you’d find you’d dotted only a tiny little patch in the middle of a vast sprawl. London is huge, and most of it isn’t tall historic buildings; it’s streets like the one I was standing in now, row after row of suburban houses that all look pretty much the same. For most Londoners, these are the places that matter—the school around the corner where they spent their childhood, the council estate where their friends live, the high street where they go to work. The landmarks at the centre of London are where people go to visit, but streets like this are where they live.
I sensed Caldera coming a long time before I saw her; like me, she’d made the last part of the journey on foot, though she’d probably used a gate to shortcut the journey. I waited on the pavement for her to approach.
Caldera turned the corner onto my road, walked up, and looked at what I was wearing. “Expecting trouble?”
“Let’s just say I wanted to be prepared this time.” My armour is a full-body suit of coal-black mesh, moulded plates covering vital areas. It doesn’t exactly look like most people’s idea of what armour’s supposed to look like, but it sure as hell doesn’t look normal either.
“So,” Caldera said. “If you’re out in the open, I’m guessing we’re not in danger.”
“Not yet,” I said, and pointed around the corner. “Though if we go in there that might change a bit.”
“What’s inside?”
“First off, the house is warded,” I said. “Subtle, but it’s there. No attack spells or barriers to entry, but scrying spells won’t work and you can’t gate in or out. Standard privacy wards. Also, there’s someone inside.” I’d had plenty of time to explore the futures in which I broke in, and while they’d been chaotic, it hadn’t been hard to notice a pattern. “A kid, and he’s aggressive. If we just smash the door down and go charging in, he’s going to attack us.”
“With what?”
“A knife.”
Caldera shrugged.
“Yeah, I know, not exactly a threat to you. I think it’s a panic attack, not something calculated. He’s scared, and if he’s cornered, he’s going to fight.”
“Can we talk him down?”
“Not sure. But I don’t think he can hurt you, so it’s not like we lose anything for trying.”
Caldera nodded. “Okay, let’s do it. Stay behind me.”
We turned the corner and walked down the street, passing a scattering of parked cars. Out of habit, my eyes went left and right, checking the terrain. Electrical substation on the corner, leading to a small park and a council estate. Not much cover apart from that—nothing but rows of houses. Number 34 was a detached house with no car in the driveway and no lights in the windows. Streetlights cast it in a dim orange glow. Caldera walked up to the door and knocked.
Silence.
Caldera knocked again.
“He’s not going to answer,” I said.
Caldera looked at the route around to the back of the building. “He going to do a runner?”
I shook my head.
“All right.” Caldera took out a focus and channelled her magic into it. I watched with interest. After a second, the door rattled open and I followed Caldera in.
The inside of the house was dark and silent. I tapped Caldera on the shoulder and pointed upstairs. She nodded and we climbed to the top floor. The stairwell was cramped, a little too low for me and a little too narrow for Caldera.
There were three rooms on the top floor, and the house’s other occupant was hidden behind the middle one. I started to signal to Caldera but she was already moving in that direction; she’d probably sensed him through vibration. “Hello?” Caldera said, stopping in the doorway. “Anybody there?”
Silence.
“I’m Keeper Caldera of the Order of the Star. I’m with the Council. I’m not going to hurt you or arrest you. I just want to talk.”
More silence.
“Look, I know you’re in there. You don’t have to come out if you don’t want to. How about you tell me your name?”
The futures shifted, started building. “He’s going to make a break,” I murmured.
“Okay, how about you tell me what you’d like to do?” Caldera said. I saw her shift position slightly. Through the open doorway I could see a desk and the window. The boy was just on the other side of the door, only a few feet away. “We can just stay here if you want. You can—”
A shape bolted for the window, trying to pull it open. Caldera was on him in two strides. The shape turned on her, there was the flash of light off a blade, then they were struggling. I held back: if I went in, I’d only be in Caldera’s way. I heard a thud, fast breathing, then a clank and a pause. More struggling. Silence.
Caldera spoke. “Get the light.”
I flipped the switch. Yellow light flooded the room and I shielded my eyes.
As my eyes adjusted, I saw that Caldera was holding on to a boy dressed in ragged jeans and a sweater. He was young, no more than ten or eleven, and small and thin to the point of looking actively malnourished. His chest rose and fell with rapid breathing, and his eyes flicked back and forth, trapped. A knife lay on the carpet in front of him; I stepped forward and picked it up.
“Like I said, I’m not going to hurt you,” Caldera said. She was holding the boy by his wrists, and compared to him she looked like a giant. Even without her magic, she could probably have picked him up one-handed. “If I let you go, you going to stop trying to stab me?”
A pause, then the boy nodded.
“I didn’t hear you.”
“Yeah,” the boy said in a high voice.
“You going to tell me your name?”
“. . . Leo.”
Caldera let the boy go. He stepped back, watching us silently, rubbing his wrists. Futures in which he made another dash for it flickered and disappeared. Caldera pointed to the bed. “Sit down.”
It was an order, not a request, and the boy sat instantly. “There anyone else around?” Caldera asked.
The boy shook his head.
“You hurt? Hungry?”
Another head shake. He was watching the two of us very closely.
“Go check out the house,” Caldera told me.
I nodded and left the room. Behind me, I heard Caldera start questioning the kid.
The house was smalclass="underline" an open-plan living room and kitchen on the ground floor, a bedroom, spare room, and bathroom upstairs. There were basic furnishings, but no posters or paintings on the walls and no books or DVDs on the shelves. I hadn’t seen any personal items in the bedroom either. It was the sort of look a house has if it’s just been rented or sold.
I took a closer look at the knife I’d taken from the boy. Kitchen knife, black-handled. No blood on the blade. I opened one of the kitchen drawers and . . . yep, this was where it had come from. The kid had taken the knife upstairs. What had he been scared of?
Checking the cupboards, I found canned and long-life food. Judging by the date stamps, all had been here for some time. I used my magesight to study the wards and found a similar story. This place hadn’t been used in a while.
I went back upstairs to find Caldera and the boy talking quietly. To my surprise, Caldera wasn’t pressuring the kid—she was firm, but her voice was gentler than usual and she wasn’t pushing him too hard. I guess after seeing how Caldera had dealt with Anne and Xiaofan, I’d been expecting her to play the threatening cop, but she wasn’t, and the kid seemed to be responding. “No,” he said. “No one.”