I tilted my head. “I doubt it’s much of a game for the slaves.”
“Yeah, well.” Haken’s voice was harsh. “Shit happens.”
“Except this time it didn’t,” I said. “Looks to me like Vihaela’s changing the rules.”
“Well, if you’ve got any theories as to why, I’d love to hear them,” Haken said. “Because right now I have no fucking idea what White Rose is doing.”
“And that’s a problem, isn’t it? Because you’re not here to do an arrest, you’re here to negotiate with them.”
“More or less.” Haken looked at me. “I could still use your help.”
“Yeah . . .” I said. “We might have a problem with that. You see, I don’t really feel like helping White Rose or Levistus.”
“You’re working for the Council—”
“Oh, please.”
“Fine,” Haken said. “How much do you want? You help clean this up, a lot of people are going to be grateful.”
“And that was why Levistus asked you to bring me along?” I said. “So that I could help out?”
The futures flickered. Again, it was fast, but I was watching for it. “Pretty much,” Haken said.
“Ooh,” I said sympathetically. “Sorry, Haken. You’re not a good enough liar.” Who had asked for me to be brought here—Levistus or Vihaela? I looked through the futures in which I accused Haken of both. If I’d done it cold, it would never have worked, but Haken was off balance, thinking on his feet. It takes more time to think up a lie than to tell the truth, and it showed.
“This doesn’t—”
“Ah,” I said. “Vihaela. So that was what was in those calls you were making, huh? She gives you the coordinates, and tells you to bring me as part of the deal.” I raised my eyebrows. “I’ve got to say, as a negotiator, you don’t seem to be doing all that well.”
“She’s not going to do anything stupid,” Haken said.
“Uh-huh,” I said. “Let’s take stock, shall we? First, the White Rose plant amongst your Keepers tries to kill me during that fight with the double. When that doesn’t work, Vihaela tells you to bring me here, out in the middle of nowhere, where no one knows where either of us is, to a mage who specialises in torturing people for information. This isn’t setting off any flags to you?”
“That’s not going to happen,” Haken said sharply.
I shrugged. “Well, since we’re on the same team, I guess you won’t mind if I do a little solo recon.” I turned to leave.
“Verus,” Haken said.
I started walking. I didn’t look back. All my attention was on the futures ahead. They were shifting, changing . . .
“Verus,” Haken said. And I felt the futures settle.
I paused, turned. Haken was standing side-on with one arm raised. A dull red glow had gathered at his palm, casting him in an ominous crimson light. “Come on, Haken,” I said. “If you love someone, set them free.”
“Yeah, well the version I heard of that saying ends with ‘if they don’t come back, hunt them down and kill them.’” Haken gestured with his other hand. “Get back here.”
I looked down at the spell in Haken’s hand, then up at him. “I have to warn you, I think this is going to put a serious damper on our relationship.”
“Here. Now.”
I shrugged, took one step towards Haken, then burst into a sprint.
Haken snapped something, but I wasn’t listening. I was focused on the presence behind me, the same person who’d tried to kill me back in Bank and who’d been eavesdropping on us ever since we arrived. He was silent and invisible, undetectable by sight or by sound, but no matter how well you hide yourself in the present, it doesn’t hide the actions you’re going to take in the future. I dodged left and a gun fired, the bullets whipping away into the night. Bushes loomed ahead and the futures of the next few seconds forked. Haken had two spells ready: one to block me in, the other to kill. He had only a second—
A wall of fire roared up in front of me, thirty feet long and ten feet wide, dazzlingly bright. It was just barely far enough away that I’d have enough time to stop. I took a breath, clamped down on the animal instinct to shy away, and ran straight into the flames.
The heat rose—and stopped rising. Flames licked hungrily at my skin, but the heat was drawn away, sinking into the stone at my neck. It lasted only a second, and then I was through and into the bushes. The fire-hunger stone was pulsing with heat and magic, but I was alive and unburned. My eyes were swimming with white-purple spots and my night vision was gone, but my divination still worked and I picked out a path over the broken ground, ducking and swaying out of the way of the branches. From behind me I heard a shout and felt the wall of fire vanish. I kept running, coming out of the bushes to swerve into a copse of trees. I knew that I was slightly faster than the two mages behind me. I also knew that if I kept going, they’d inevitably catch me. Mages have a lot of ways to track people.
And so instead of continuing to run, I ducked behind a tree, reached into my pack, and pulled out my hole card.
Most people don’t really get how defences work. Every culture has a version of the Achilles myth, where someone’s immune to every form of harm except getting shot in the heel, or hit with a dart of mistletoe, or having their hair cut off, or being stabbed in the left butt-cheek with a tuning fork while balancing one-legged on an aardvark, or something similarly stupid. In every single story, some dick goes out of their way to make sure all these ridiculous conditions are satisfied, and the supposedly invulnerable guy dies as a result. If you ask most people what the moral of the story is, they’ll say, “No one’s invincible,” or “Everyone has a fatal flaw.”
In my opinion, the real moral of those stories is: if you have some special ability that protects you, make damn sure people don’t find out about it.
My reactive armour is really useful. Only problem: Haken had already gotten a look at it. He knew what it could do, and he’d already have figured out exactly how much extra power it would take to blast through it. Which was why, for this mission, I hadn’t taken my armour at all. Instead I’d taken something that Haken didn’t know about. The loose bundle I drew from my pack was soft cloth, coloured a neutral grey, long enough to fall to my ankles and with a hood to shield the head. I pulled the mist cloak around my shoulders, stepped back into the shadows, and held still.
My mist cloak was made for me by Arachne, and it’s very good at what it does. When wrapped around a wearer, it functions as adaptive camouflage, changing its colour to blend with whatever’s behind it—it’s not invisibility, but if you keep still and stay in the shadows it’s pretty close. More importantly, it blocks magical senses. Most magic types have some way of finding people who are trying to hide from them, and mist cloaks cause you to drop right off their radar. It’s very, very useful, and it’s saved my life more times than I can count.
It also nearly ended my life, or the next thing to it at any rate. The last time I used my mist cloak I made the mistake of wearing it too long, and bit by bit it started hiding me so well that no one would have been able to find me, ever. The thought of that still creeps me out, and I’m not sure what would have happened if Arachne hadn’t pulled me out of it. I’d checked and rechecked obsessively with my divination, and I was as sure as I could be that as long as I only used it for a little while, the same thing wasn’t going to happen again.
Probably. I pressed up against the tree and held still.
Running footsteps sounded and Haken came into view, red light glowing about his hands. He came to a halt, looking left and right, frowning, and I knew he was looking through the trees, trying to pick out my heat signature. I kept my breathing slow and steady, not letting myself move. Haken stood, listening, and I could guess his thoughts. He couldn’t hear me running, he couldn’t sense my body heat, so where was I?