“Jesus,” I said in revulsion. “I knew Dark mages did stuff like that, but . . . They make a business out of this?”
“Yeah, and their business is booming. They don’t just sell to mages either: they’ve got a whole regular client base. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you how much they make off those custom orders.”
“I don’t think I want to. The Council knows about this?”
“Yeah.”
“Then why—?”
“First, White Rose isn’t staffed by Light mages. They’re all Dark or independent. And they’re careful never to break the Concord. Their slaves are all normals or sensitives, never mages. They even steer clear of adepts.”
“Screw the Concord. That’s not just violating the national laws, that’s breaking them over your knee and stamping on the bits. Did you just say it was like—?”
“Second,” Caldera said, cutting me off, “most of White Rose’s clients are normals with a lot of money. But a few of them are Light mages who don’t pay in money. Guess what they pay with instead.”
“They’d . . . oh, fuck. White Rose wouldn’t want money from them, would they? They could get that anywhere. From the Light mages they’d want influence.”
“And they get it,” Caldera said. “A whole ton of blackmail material.” Her face was unreadable. “This is the fourth time I know about that we’ve tried to get an indictment against White Rose. The last three times the answer was no. They’ve got too much dirt on Council mages.”
“And that’s what I’m going into the middle of,” I said, realising suddenly how this was going to affect me. “Do you think it’s going to be different this time?”
“Maybe. For all the fucked-up stuff that they do, this is the first time White Rose has attacked a Keeper. They’ve crossed a line.”
“Assuming it was them.”
Caldera looked sharply at me. “Do you have evidence that it was someone else? Something you’re not telling me?”
“No, I just saw the same things you did. You don’t think it’s a funny coincidence that that strike team showed up right after you called in our location on your communicator? Which stopped working as soon as we needed it?”
“What exactly are you suggesting?”
“You said it. White Rose has influence on the Council.”
“Don’t.”
“And the Keepers work for the Council—”
Caldera made a short motion, cutting me off. “I said don’t.”
“Are you seriously going to stick your head in the sand about this?”
“Shut up,” Caldera said. She was leaning forward on the sofa, staring at me, and her eyes were hard. “Get something clear—you are not a Keeper. You do not get to make accusations like that. Talk like that outside this room where other people can hear and you are going to get a fucking bridge dropped on you. You don’t understand Keepers and you don’t know how much shit you can get into doing this. I’ve gone to bat for you before, but I’m not jumping off a cliff just because you can’t keep your mouth shut.”
I drew back, slightly shocked. Caldera held my gaze for a few seconds more, then leant back again.
The silence stretched out. I knew it was supposed to be my place to say something, to keep things moving, but I felt jarred, out of place. “You know where the War Rooms are, right?” Caldera said once the pause had gotten long enough to become awkward.
“Yeah.”
“You’ll probably be with Haken.”
“Okay.”
“You got a number for him?”
“Not yet.”
“I’ll get you one.”
Caldera took out her phone. I sat uncomfortably as she typed. From outside, I could hear the cars and the motorbikes on the main road, the sounds of their engines echoing through the brick and glass.
We talked a little longer, but it felt forced and our rapport was gone. When I said that I needed to go, Caldera didn’t argue. I felt my shoulders relax slightly as I came out onto the Hackney street.
As I walked, I puzzled over what had just gone wrong. It wasn’t the first fight I’d had with Caldera but it bothered me in a way the others hadn’t. Mostly it was the unexpectedness. All the previous times that Caldera had been pissed off at me, it had been a direct consequence of something I’d done, and usually something I’d known full well she wouldn’t be happy about. This was the first time we’d had a fight and I didn’t know why.
It occurred to me that Caldera and I might have very different assumptions about loyalty. Amongst Dark mages, betrayal is an occupational hazard, something that comes with the lifestyle. It’s like having one of your co-workers change jobs—you know it’s going to happen sooner or later. Apprentices talking to each other about their masters’ plans, journeymen discussing whether the leader of their cabal is going to sell them out once the job is over . . . That kind of thing isn’t a betrayal of trust, it’s just good sense. It’s not a big deal.
Maybe for Keepers, it was a big deal. They had an actual organisation, an ethos. Maybe there was a code, a way you were and weren’t allowed to talk about it. Except . . . that hadn’t been how Landis had reacted. I’d been pretty sure he’d understood what I’d been getting at last night, and he’d agreed with me, or at least hadn’t told me to keep quiet.
So maybe it wasn’t the Keepers. Maybe it was just Caldera. Now that I thought about it, I’d never really thought about her as a person. To me she’d always been a representative of her organisation, Keeper Number One. I wondered what her membership in the Order of the Star really meant to her, and what she thought of when she saw her other Keepers. Did she fit in? Or in her own way, was she an outsider too?
I shook my head. Whatever the reason, I needed to know more, and I wasn’t going to get it from Caldera. I took out my gate stone and started looking for somewhere secluded.
Once I was back in my flat, I dug out my synchronous focus, programmed in a code, then channelled through it and waited. After only half a minute, it chimed and lit up. A figure appeared at the centre of the disc, carved from blue light.
“Hey, Talisid,” I said.
“Verus,” Talisid said. “I wondered when you’d call.”
“Isn’t acting all-knowing supposed to be the diviner’s job?”
“You’re not as unpredictable as you think.” I heard Talisid sigh slightly. “Go on, then. Ask your question.”
“Given your contacts, I’m pretty sure you already know what Caldera and I have been doing,” I said. “I just asked her about how our case connects to White Rose. She didn’t react well. Can you fill me in?”
“You don’t ask much, do you?”
“It’s just information,” I said.
Most exchanges in magical society come down to trading favours. Cash is handy, and so are magic items, but all too often they just don’t go far enough. Help from another mage, though . . . that’s always useful. Over the past year, I’d done a lot of jobs for Talisid. They’d been for us as much as for him, but we’d still been helping him, and we hadn’t asked for much in return. I didn’t say You owe me, but Talisid understood exactly what I meant.
“All right,” Talisid said. “How much did Caldera tell you about White Rose?”
“That they’re an organisation that provides dark and highly illegal sexual services to mages, and they have a whole load of blackmail material on the Council.”
“Strictly true, but a little misleading,” Talisid said. “If White Rose directly blackmailed its clients, they’d have been destroyed long ago. They’re more careful than that. They keep their client list absolutely confidential, and more importantly, that list is known to be confidential. However, they also make it known that should their organisation be seriously harmed, then that list would be released.”