“Yeah, and now they know we’re here,” Caldera said, walking up, glancing down at the last scattered men fleeing into the trees. Behind her, the third construct was broken on the grass. I hadn’t even noticed her take it down. “Get behind me. The guys coming in aren’t going to be so happy to see you.”
“What do you—?” I saw what was going to happen. “Jesus. When you said you were bringing company, you weren’t kidding, were you?”
“What, you thought I was going to come charging in on my own? That hero shit is for rookies.” Caldera glanced sideways. “Landis . . . ?”
Landis made a reassuring gesture. “I’m here in a purely supporting role, my dear. You’re the senior.”
“Thanks.” Caldera turned back towards the slope. “Here?”
“Here,” I said. “Five seconds.”
Caldera nodded.
Another gate opened up on the hillside, followed by another. Council security men came through, two by two, guns levelled. Torches shone on our faces, and I squinted against the glare. “I’m Keeper Caldera,” Caldera said, arms folded. “These guys are with me. Point those things somewhere else.”
The Council security glanced at each other, then lowered their guns. “Clear!” one of them called back through the gate.
The next one through was Slate. “You’d better have—” he started to say to Caldera, then he saw me and his face darkened. “You!”
“Okay, look,” I said. “I can explain.”
“You can do it in a cell. You, you.” He gestured to the security men. “Arrest him.”
“Belay that order,” Caldera said.
“Do it!”
“If you touch him,” Caldera told the two security men calmly, “then I will shove whichever body part you use to do it up your own arse.”
The two security men looked at Caldera, looked at Slate, and clearly and visibly decided not to get involved. “Caldera,” Slate snarled. “What the fuck?”
“Verus is my second,” Caldera said. “Not yours.”
People were still coming through the gate. There were a good fifteen security men with us now, but most had taken one glance at what was going on and hurried past to set up a perimeter. No Council auxiliary wants to get in the middle of a mage fight. “This is my case,” Slate said.
“No, the raid in Bank was your case. You don’t have seniority here.”
Slate glanced at Landis, who made a very small gesture to indicate that he wasn’t involved. “Look, maybe I can—” I began.
“Shut up,” Caldera and Slate told me at exactly the same time.
I blinked, and did. “Cerulean fingered him for Haken being MIA,” Slate said.
“Yeah, well, some new stuff’s come to light,” Caldera said. She jerked her head back towards the distant building. “Like the fact that Haken’s in there. You want to argue jurisdiction, or you want to get him out before Vihaela gets to work on him?”
Slate gave Caldera a hard look. His eyes flicked to me and back to Caldera, and I felt the futures settle. “He doesn’t leave my sight,” Slate said. “And I’ve got tactical command, not you. Got it?”
Caldera nodded. “Fine.”
Trask had appeared behind Slate, who turned to him. “Get on the com to Rain,” Slate said. “Tell him we want more backup, as much as he can scare up.” Slate raised his voice, addressing the crowd. “All right, ladies! Lock and load, we’ve got work to do!”
“Thanks,” I told Caldera quietly.
“Don’t thank me yet,” Caldera said, her voice dry. “Slate would have had you safe at HQ. Now you’re going to be leading the charge.”
“You going to tell them about Cerulean?”
“You do not want to make it your word against a Keeper’s.” Caldera looked around then headed towards Slate, giving me a last comment over her shoulder. “Don’t screw this up.”
All around us, men were organising, sorting into teams. “That was fun,” Luna said, walking over from where she’d been talking to Variam. Her eyes were bright and there was a spring in her step. “Thought you’d forgotten about us.”
“Just keep your head down and stick with Vari and Landis,” I said. “You’re still not supposed to be here. And be—”
“Be careful, I know,” Luna said, rolling her eyes. “Look who’s talking.”
“That pulse trick you used against that construct,” I said curiously. I’d never seen Luna use that move before. “Where did that come from?”
“Oh.” Luna shrugged. “Chalice showed me. Worked pretty well, right?”
I looked at Luna. “Yeah, it did.”
“Hey!” Slate shouted. “Verus! I said where I can see you!”
I sighed and gave Luna a nod. “Stay safe.” I walked to join Slate’s group.
Slate was with Trask and Caldera, and he was giving orders to a group of Council security. “. . . through the gap,” he was saying. “Once we’ve made the breach, I want two men on point. Stay in cover range for when things go wrong.” He beckoned to me and started walking. “Let’s go, fortune-teller. You’re finding us a way in.”
“It’s Verus, not ‘fortune-teller.’ You’re not waiting for backup?”
“If you and Caldera are right,” Slate gave a sharp glance, “then we don’t have time. And to make sure, you’re going at the front.”
I sighed. “Fine. Then stay quiet and let me work.” I searched through the futures, picking out points of entry. White Rose’s base loomed up in the futures and the present, growing closer each second.
Keepers can move fast when they want to. It took the whole assault force less than five minutes to make it across the grounds and to the White Rose estate. To no one’s surprise, by the time we got there, the defending forces were alerted and ready for us.
When you’re doing recon, five minutes isn’t much time. With half an hour, I could probably have found a way to get in safely. With an hour, I might have slipped in a couple of other people too. Getting the whole assault force in subtly and cleanly was not going to happen, no matter how long I had.
Fortunately, “subtle” wasn’t on Slate’s priority list. The front doors of the White Rose estate were bound in metal, reinforced and warded. But the reinforcement didn’t extend to the entire building, and my divination found the weak points in the walls. The elemental mages did the rest.
At which point things got busy.
“Pull back!” Slate shouted into his communicator. “Stay in cover!”
I was lying flat behind a low rise in the ground. I could just make out the edges of the right wing of the White Rose estate, but not the central block, which was just as well because that was where the fire was coming from. A low-pitched, hollow duh-duh-duh sound echoed from the roof, repeated and overlapping, mixing with the distant sounds of bullets sinking into earth. The man who’d been hit in the first volley had stopped screaming: treated or dead, I couldn’t tell which. Slate shoved the disc away and glared at me. “Why didn’t you tell us about this?”
“I told you those things on the roof looked like bunkers,” I said absently. Most of my attention was on counting the sources of fire. There were only three that I could see, but that was enough to make it a bad idea to stick your head up.
“You didn’t tell us they had machine guns!”
“You didn’t give me a chance to check.”
“Fuck it.” Slate lifted himself up to squint out over the rise at the estate. “Let’s just—”
“Get down,” I said calmly.
Slate might have been obnoxious, but he wasn’t stupid. He ducked instantly. A bullet whipped overhead with an angry whizzing sound.
“Slate!” Trask called from twenty feet away. The big man was pressed up behind a tree. “Flanking team’s bogged down. Trap field.”
Slate swore.
“Landis is circling,” I said, still not lifting my head. “Once he gets to the top of the hill, he can melt those bunkers right off the rooftop.”
“That’ll take too long.” I felt the futures shift as Slate came to a decision. “Trask, put up a fog cloud, then get Caldera and the front team. We’re going in.”
I didn’t hear Trask’s answer, but I felt the signature of water magic. A moment later the air grew cool, strands of mist forming out of the night, spreading and thickening to become a fog. Within seconds everything more than a few feet away had disappeared into the cloud. It was the same spell my condensers used, but much more powerfuclass="underline" the cloud was already more than fifty feet wide and it wasn’t slowing down.