If I was going to do this, that was probably something I’d have to get over.
“Right,” Caldera said after we’d exchanged the how-are-you-how-have-you-beens. “So you want to be a sanctioned auxiliary.”
“That’s the idea.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s not a difficult question,” Caldera said. “Why do you want to join?”
“Excitement and glamour?”
Caldera gave me a look.
“Well, we’ve worked together a few times before and it’s more or less worked out, right? I just thought it was worth giving it a try.”
“Uh, yeah,” Caldera said. “The times we’ve worked together, you only did it because you needed the help.”
“Hey,” I said. “What about last April? Anne was the one in trouble, not me.”
“And you disobeyed every single order I gave you.”
“There were extenuating circumstances?”
Caldera gave me a flat look.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “I know there’s been some friction, but I was hoping to mend fences with the Council, and this seemed like a place to start. Besides, I’m a good diviner and I know you guys are shorthanded.”
“It’s not about whether you’re a good diviner,” Caldera said. “Working as a sanctioned auxiliary is different from being a freelancer. You need to pass a security screening.”
“Okay, how do I do that?”
“You don’t. They investigate you.”
“How long does it take?”
“Yours is finished.”
“That was fast.”
“I don’t think you quite understand,” Caldera said. “Council security screenings are current for two years. They didn’t do a security screening because you called me. They’d already screened you because they’d investigated you anyway.”
“What for?”
“Do you really need me to answer that?”
“I’m just curious about what I was being charged with.”
“Well, first on the list, you’re one of three people listed as being responsible for the destruction of the Nightstalker group the summer before last.”
That wiped the smile off my face. “All right,” I said. “As far as I know, it was the Nightstalkers who broke the law that time, not me.”
“And you and your associates were involved in the apprentice disappearances around the White Stone.”
“Oh, come on. I was working for the Council that time. It’s on file. And I was the one who found out what happened to those apprentices.”
“Then there was the break-in at—”
“Okay, look, I already explained how that one wasn’t my fault. And I offered to help, it wasn’t as though you were—”
“And,” Caldera continued, “the deaths of the mages Griff and Belthas three years ago.”
I shut up.
“Not going to justify yourself?” Caldera said.
“I didn’t kill either of them,” I said. I kept my voice level.
Caldera was watching me, apparently casually, and I noticed that her eyes stayed on me as I spoke. Cops tend to be very good at picking up on when people are lying to them, and I had the feeling Caldera had been paying close attention to how I answered that question. I hadn’t quite been lying. Technically I hadn’t killed either of them, in the same way that if someone comes after you and you lead them into a tiger pit, then from a certain point of view the ones who actually killed them were the tigers.
Unfortunately for me, both Griff and Belthas had been Light mages in good standing with the Council. The Council may turn a blind eye to infighting among Dark mages, and they really don’t care very much about what happens to adepts or Orphans, but that definitely does not apply when the victims are Council mages themselves. To make matters worse, Griff and Belthas had also been working for a Junior Council member named Levistus. Offing them (and messing up his plans in the process) had placed me firmly on his shit list. Levistus didn’t come after me personally—that’s not his style—but since then he’d taken the opportunity to bureaucratically screw me over in several ways, some of them quite lethal.
My past history with Levistus was one of the other reasons I wasn’t comfortable here. Logically, I knew that staying away from the Keepers wouldn’t actually make it any harder for Levistus to mess with me—if he really wanted to nail me, he could do it no matter where I was—but I still didn’t like the idea of being any closer to him than I had to.
But at the same time, I knew that Luna was right. For too long now we’d been just reacting to Richard, gathering up scraps of information and waiting for him to make a move. I didn’t know how we were going to beat him, but I knew we had to do something. Trying to make more friends amongst the Keepers was at least a place to start.
“Okay,” I said. “Cards on the table. Are you saying you don’t want me?”
“No,” Caldera said.
I paused. “No, you don’t want me, or no, you don’t not want me?”
“Do you know who makes the final decision on security screenings?” Caldera asked.
I shook my head.
“After that call last week, I wrote up your submission for auxiliary status and sent it off to personnel,” Caldera said. “They sent it to the Keepers in charge of your cases. Those Keepers have a dozen active cases already and didn’t have the time to go reopening yours, so they passed it to Rain. And Rain passed it down to me.”
I tried to follow all that. “So . . . ?”
Caldera looked at me. “So right now, there is exactly one person who’s been given the job of deciding whether to take you on or not. Me.”
“Oh. So is that a yes or a no?”
“So was that a yes or a no?” Luna asked.
We were in the Islington gym that we use for training. Luna was in her exercise clothes, white T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms, with a book balanced on her head. My clothes were similar to Luna’s, but instead of a book, I was holding a weapon: a simple but functional-looking katana.
“She didn’t say no,” I said. I stepped forward and aimed a two-handed blow at Luna’s head. The swing was at seventy percent speed, and my grip was angled so that the impact would be with the flat of the blade, not the edge. It wouldn’t break the skin, but it would hurt. Luna stepped back, spine straight and movements smooth to keep the book from falling, and I followed up, continuing to threaten her.
“So she said yes?” Luna asked. She adjusted her position on the mats slightly, keeping just enough distance that I had to move to come within strike range.
I made a couple more head-level strikes; Luna stayed out of range. “She didn’t actually say that either.”
“So what did she say?”
I began another step, then changed it into a low glide, striking at waist level. Luna was caught within the sweep and had to block cross-hand, the flat of the blade meeting her palm with a slap. The movement left me within striking distance and she had to block twice more before she could open the range again. “Making it onto the sanctioned list is out,” I said, glancing at the blade. The colour hadn’t changed. “At least right now.”
“That sounds like a no.”
“Kind of.” I closed into range again and began a series of attacks, measured and steady, switching targets from waist to shoulder to thigh, each strike flowing into the next one. Luna had to keep blocking, catching the blade against her hand each time. She couldn’t move too abruptly without making the book fall. “The deal she offered was a probationary membership. It means I’m not an auxiliary, but I’m allowed to be treated as one for a trial period, so long as she’s the one supervising.”