“We need you down at the station,” Haken said as soon as I picked up. “Briefing’s in forty-five minutes.”
“I’ll be there,” I told him, then put the phone down and looked at Luna. “We’re on.”
“It could be—”
“It’s not.”
“Yeah.” Luna sighed. “Wish I could come.”
“You know that’s not an option. Besides—”
“I know, I know. I’ll be ready.”
“Well, you never know,” I said as I got to my feet. “Maybe when you pass your journeyman tests you’ll end up joining the Keepers.”
Luna raised her eyebrows. “Yeah, right.”
“You’re the one who gave me the push into joining them.”
“I didn’t think it was going to turn out like this.”
“I think I would have been drawn into this one way or another.” I glanced at Luna. “You going to be okay on your end?”
“It’s not like we’ve got much to do, is it?” Luna said. “What if we don’t get the call?”
“Then it means everything’s been resolved in a nice peaceful compromise and all the participants have gone away happy.”
Luna gave me a sceptical look. “Do you think that’s going to happen?”
I slung my bag over my shoulder. “No.”
“I don’t like sitting around when you’re going out like this.”
“Don’t worry,” I said as I headed for the door. “I think you’ll be getting your share of excitement.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about.” Luna sighed again. “Good luck.”
I arrived at Keeper HQ, went through security, and was directed upstairs. The building was busy, people bustling around and running errands. As I climbed the stairs I tried to feel if there was something different, some note of anxiety or tension in the air, but I couldn’t sense it. The Keepers are a big organisation, and at office level it was business as usual.
I found the briefing room on the second floor, checked to see who was inside, and rolled my eyes. I was tempted to wait out in the corridor, but given the collection of magic types, it was a safe bet that someone was already tracking my movements. I took a breath and opened the door. The room was windowless and decorated in the same ugly cheap-looking fashion as the rest of Keeper HQ, with chairs, small tables, and a whiteboard, along with a battered-looking projection focus sitting on a stand. There were seven people in the room, and all of them turned to look at me as I walked in.
“You’re fucking kidding me,” one of the men said. It was Slate, my old friend from Red’s. “What’s he doing here?”
“Love you too, Slate.” I walked in and dropped into a chair next to Haken.
“No,” Slate said, addressing the room. “No way. We’re not taking him.”
“Slate,” Haken said wearily. “Not now, all right?”
Slate shut up, but the look on his face made it clear that this wasn’t over. “This is Mage Verus,” Haken said to the others.
“We know who he is,” one of the other men said.
“Good,” Haken said. “Then you know why he’s here.”
A woman on the other side of the room was looking me up and down. “You’re the one saying you fought a mantis golem?”
“Yes.”
“How come you’re still alive?”
“It wasn’t just a mantis golem,” I said. “And it wasn’t just me.”
“Aren’t you a diviner?” the woman said, and laughed. “What was it really, a crawler?”
“Tell you what,” I said. “How about you go find the cleanup team who spent Saturday night scraping mantis golem off the floor in Uxbridge? Tell them it was a crawler and see what they say.”
“Hey!” Haken said. He looked between me, Slate, the woman, and everyone else, glaring at all of us. “You all finished?”
I shut up. Slate and the woman didn’t exactly look submissive but they didn’t open their mouths either. “You have a problem with each other, deal with it on your own time,” Haken said. “We’ve got a job to do.”
No one argued. Haken started doing introductions. I paid attention.
Haken I knew, obviously, and it became clear as he went from person to person that he was the highest-ranking mage in the room . . . although maybe not by much. Slate I also knew, unfortunately, and the man who’d spoken up earlier was one I’d seen in Red’s but hadn’t put a name to, big and tough-looking, mixed race with dark brown skin. From his body language and seating position I had the feeling he was on Slate’s side. Haken introduced him as Trask.
The woman who’d been poking at me was called Lizbeth—I didn’t know why she wasn’t using a mage name, and I didn’t ask. She was in her late twenties, with blond hair in a bob cut and a glint in her eye that suggested she wasn’t done messing with me either. The other woman in the room was also the only other person besides me who wasn’t a Keeper. She was tall with long brown hair, well-dressed and good-looking in an understated way. Her name was Abeyance, and she was apparently a Keeper auxiliary and timesight specialist. She greeted me with professional reserve.
The last two men were also Keepers, but ones I hadn’t met before. One was fair-skinned and nondescript-looking, the other fat and Hispanic, and when Haken told me their names—Cerulean and Coatl—I was none the wiser. It wasn’t really a surprise; there aren’t all that many Keepers in Britain, but they keep to themselves and if you don’t move in their circles you usually only see one when something’s gone wrong. Slate had gone back to interrogating Abeyance about something or other, and Lizbeth was about to open her mouth again, when the door opened and the last man came in.
Keeper Rain was the captain of Caldera’s section. He was tall and slender, with very dark skin and hair cut so short that his head was nearly bare. I’d never spoken to Rain, though Caldera seemed to respect him. He wasn’t dressed in any way that particularly stood out—just a neat-looking business suit—but everyone turned to look as he stepped inside, and all conversation in the room cut off. “Good afternoon, people,” Rain said as he walked to the front of the room. He had a deep voice and a measured, deliberate way of speaking. “We’ve got a lot to cover and not much time, so I’ll get straight to it. The Council has authorised the interrogation of Mage Vihaela, the second-in-command of White Rose. You”—his eyes swept the group—“are going to bring her in for questioning.”
There was no audible reaction. I looked around to see that no one seemed particularly shocked. Obviously they’d seen it coming. “What’s the charge?” Slate asked Rain. He seemed to have forgotten about me.
“Suspicion of involvement in the Rayfield case,” Rain said. “Which as of today is being treated as a murder.”
“So we’re arresting her?”
“No,” Rain said. “The Council has decided not to issue a formal indictment.”
A murmur went up at that. “So what are we bringing her in for?” Lizbeth said. “Littering?”
“The Council believes that an indictment would risk escalating the conflict.” Rain didn’t show anything on his face, but somehow I got the impression he wasn’t happy. “Vihaela will be brought in, but she will not be formally charged.”
“Oh, this is bullshit,” Slate said.
“What, we’re supposed to say pretty please?” Lizbeth said. “What happens when she tells us to go fuck ourselves?”
“You may not have a formal indictment,” Rain said, “but you are acting under direct Council orders. That means if you encounter any resistance, you’ll be free to use necessary force.”
Both Slate and Lizbeth perked up at that. Rain noticed. “I said necessary force.” Rain didn’t raise his voice, but his gaze rested on the two of them. “You are not pulling in some two-bit adept, and you are going to have eyes on you for this one. You pull some cowboy shit, I will hang you out to dry. Understand?”
Slate and Lizbeth had stopped smiling. “Yeah,” Slate said.
“Lizbeth?”
“I got it,” Lizbeth said.
“The six of you,” Rain nodded to the Keepers, “will be the field team for this operation. You will have two auxiliaries attached to you for the duration, mages Abeyance and Verus. Abeyance is a time mage and Verus is a diviner. They’ll provide information support on the ground. Haken has field command. Slate, you’re his second. The seven of you report to Haken, and Haken reports to me.” He glanced around. “Any questions?”