“This is recon,” Haken said. “If you’re right, then I can’t trust the others on the team.” He looked at me. “I hope you haven’t discussed this with anyone else.”
I kept a straight face. “No.”
“Good.” I felt Haken look me up and down. “Is that really what you’re wearing?”
“You don’t like my clothes?”
“Thought you had a set of armour?”
Funny thing about lying—the less often you do it, the more effective it is when you do. “Golem damaged it,” I said. “Besides, we’re not there to fight, right?”
“I guess not,” Haken said. He took a breath and straightened. “All right.” He turned to one side, and a minute later light bloomed as a fiery disc appeared in midair. The glow backlit his face, casting it in red and black. The disc shifted, becoming a ring. From the back, the gate was opaque; I walked around it to see that it led into an empty building. Haken stepped through and I followed.
We gated through three more staging points, each one another building. The air felt different in each, and I had the suspicion we’d just taken some very brief overseas holidays. Gating through staging points is a standard mage trick—it makes it much harder to track them—but usually they’ll only use one or two. Four is getting to the point of paranoia. Haken really didn’t want to be followed.
The last gateway took us outside, into what felt like the country. My feet came down onto grass, leafy bushes blocking my sightlines. Haken stepped through behind and cut off the gate instantly; he’d muted the glow this time, presumably to make us harder to spot. The air was cold, and looking up, I could see a black and overcast sky. There was no light reflected off the clouds: wherever we were, we were a long way from any settlements. “What can you see?” Haken asked, his voice low.
“Give me a sec.” I had my eyes closed, path-walking, watching as my future selves spread out in every direction. No immediate danger. I searched further, creating a slowly spreading mental map. The darkness made it harder, but . . . there. Just to the left, over a small rise, was a giant building. Not just a house, a country estate. There were only a few scattered lights from the windows, but even from a glance I could tell it was busy. Spotting the estate let me orient myself. So if we went the other way . . . Ouch. Okay, I wasn’t doing that.
“Anything?” Haken said.
“We’re in the grounds of a big country estate. Can’t confirm it’s White Rose’s base, but given that they have electric fences around the outside, I’m going to guess it’s not anywhere friendly.”
Haken didn’t seem surprised. “Vihaela?”
“I’ll check.”
Haken nodded. Silence fell.
“So,” I said after a minute. “You didn’t tell me how you found this place.”
“That’s classified.”
“I get that. It just seems a little odd.”
Haken didn’t reply.
“I mean, we kind of went to a lot of trouble to storm that place in Bank. And we already knew that Vihaela was going to be in their main base. Seems like it would have been more efficient to come straight here.”
“Wasn’t an option.”
“Couldn’t you have just done whatever you did to find this place, except first?”
“Verus,” Haken said. “Not now, all right?”
Another brief silence. Off in the darkness, a nightbird called and went quiet. The wind blew, rustling the leaves of the trees.
“So,” I said, “was there a reason you only brought me?”
Still no answer.
“I mean, yes, this is supposed to be subtle. But if we’re trying to stay hidden, it would have made sense to bring along Cerulean.”
“You know exactly why I haven’t brought Cerulean.”
“Sure,” I agreed. “But it would have been useful, wouldn’t it? I mean, illusionists are handy guys to have around. They can show you things that aren’t really there, hide their spells so that no one else can see what you’re really doing. Oh, and they can turn invisible. He could be right here, and we wouldn’t have any way of knowing.”
Haken looked at me silently. “So did you know he was working for White Rose?” I said. “Or did it come as a surprise?”
“That hasn’t been confirmed.”
I sighed. “You know the most annoying thing about you Keepers? It’s that habit you have of shutting everyone out. This whole thing would have gone so much faster if you’d just been up front.”
“You think I’ve been lying to you?”
“No, I just think you’ve been leaving out some really relevant information.” I studied Haken. “But you didn’t know about Cerulean, did you? Must have been a nasty surprise. You’d been trying to resolve the whole thing with Vihaela peacefully, then for a few minutes you thought you’d killed her.”
“Yes,” Haken said, an edge to his voice. “That was a surprise. Somewhere you’re going with this?”
I shrugged. “Just making conversation.”
Haken looked at me. I looked back.
“Vihaela’s in there, by the way,” I said.
“. . . Good.”
“So, we clear to go back?”
“Not yet.”
“I think it’s about time.”
“First I want you to—”
“Maybe I didn’t make myself clear,” I said. “I’m about to take out a gate stone and use it to go home. Are you going to do anything to stop me?”
Haken hesitated. It was only a very tiny pause, but it was long enough. The futures in which he said something reassuring flickered and vanished. The silence stretched out.
“Well,” I said at last. “This is awkward.”
“Something you’re implying?” Haken asked. His voice was flat.
“It’s not easy to keep secrets from a diviner.”
“Sometimes you don’t get a choice.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “I’m sort of inclined to the philosophy that there’s always a choice. Just not necessarily one you like.”
“If you know so much,” Haken said, “what are you doing here?”
I shrugged. “Honestly? I wanted to see which way you’d jump.”
Haken didn’t answer. Still on the fence? Maybe I could find out a little more. “So, there’s something I’d like to know,” I said. “What happened to Leo?”
“I have no idea.”
I sighed. “Can we quit the bullshit?”
“I didn’t have anything to do with that.”
“Fine,” I said. “You weren’t the one sending those golems out. But you sure as hell had something to do with why Caldera didn’t get that backup until it was too late for it to matter. I’m guessing it was Levistus, or someone from his crew. He didn’t want the Council moving against White Rose, so he tried to cut things off at the source. Only he didn’t get there fast enough.” I studied Haken. “I’m guessing they gave Leo the interrogation treatment. What happened to him afterwards?”
Haken sighed, rubbing his forehead. “You have no idea how this works, do you? You think this stuff gets decided with a boardroom meeting?”
“So you had no idea what was going on? That’s your story?”
“Leo was in the way,” Haken said. “He hadn’t shown up, this whole confrontation between the Council and White Rose wouldn’t have happened. We could have headed things off.”
“Yeah, I imagine that would have suited Levistus just fine.”
“This isn’t about Levistus,” Haken said. “No one wants to start a war with White Rose, not with Morden running around. You think Levistus would have taken this big a risk if most of the Council weren’t on his side? Two-thirds of them just want this whole mess to go away. It’s only the nuts who want to pick a fight.”
“Interesting that you see it as picking a fight,” I said. “Some people might think that picking a fight is kind of your job. You know, that whole enforcing-the-laws thing?”
“You don’t try to enforce the laws against a group like White Rose,” Haken said, his voice hard. “That’s not how it works.”
“So what did we just do?”
“Oh, for—” Haken made a frustrated gesture. “You think this operation was meant to be a success? Capture Vihaela with that bunch of fuckups? All we were doing was sending a message. We clear out one of their buildings, take a few of their low-ranking people. They get a slap on the wrist; we go back to the negotiating table. That’s how the game works.”