I sighed. As an apprentice, I’d dreamed of power. I’d imagined that it would set me free, open up a world of endless possibilities. But now that I had it, it turned out that real power wasn’t something that you could just take and forget about. Real power mostly came from relationships, often with people and entities that you didn’t particularly like, and to keep it you had to spend so long developing and maintaining those relationships that you didn’t have time to do much else.

  There was nothing more to be done. I grasped the sovnya, glanced around and walked out.

  Karyos and Luna were waiting. Luna had one of my short-swords fastened to her belt, as well as the old duelling wand Arachne had made for her; her hair was tied back and she looked focused and set. Karyos was standing with her hands clasped in front of her, barefoot in the grass, her simple dress a sharp contrast against Luna’s battle armour. She wasn’t coming with us, and I hadn’t asked. This wasn’t her fight.

  I leant the sovnya against a tree before walking up to them. ‘We ready?’ I asked Luna.

  ‘Yup,’ Luna said. ‘Also, we’ve got another tagalong.’

  A black nose appeared from behind Luna’s legs, followed by a vulpine head. Hermes walked out, sat in the open and looked at me.

  ‘You want to come?’ I said in surprise.

  Hermes blinked.

  Well, come to think of it, Sagash’s shadow realm had been his home. ‘I guess that makes four,’ I said. ‘You guys head to the exit. I’ll catch up.’

  Luna nodded and headed for the gating point, Hermes trotting at her heels. I waited for her to get out of earshot, then turned to Karyos. ‘Thank you for your hospitality. I know we took the Hollow by right of conquest, but it’s your home.’

  ‘No thanks are necessary,’ Karyos said. ‘You have done much for me.’

  ‘I’ve spoken to Luna,’ I said. ‘If I don’t come back, she’s going to be your link to the outside world. I’ve left her most of my contacts. If there’s anything you need, she should be able to help, even if it’s just knowing where to go.’

  ‘I understand.’

  I gave the hamadryad a smile. ‘Goodbye, Karyos. I’m sorry we didn’t have longer. I didn’t have as much time with you as I had with Arachne, but I would have liked to.’

  ‘May I ask a favour?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘If you can . . . please bring Anne back,’ Karyos said. ‘I grew to know her over the long months in my cocoon. We never spoke, but I felt her touch, the weave of her magic. This current form . . . in a sense, she gave birth to me. I do not want the only words I ever have with her to be those we shared when she attacked us.’

  ‘That’s what I want as well.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Karyos bowed. ‘Until we speak again.’

  I took a last look at the beauty of the Hollow, then walked away.

  7

  The Arcana Emporium was quiet. Within the shop, the only noise was the tap of Luna’s shoes on the floor. The shelves and tables didn’t leave enough space to get up any kind of speed, but there was a little corridor in front of the counter where you could walk in a straight line for about twelve feet before having to turn around. I watched Luna pace to the far shelves, then back, then to the shelves again. Every ten minutes or so she’d realise what she was doing and you could see her consciously stop and lean against the counter, holding herself still. Within sixty seconds, she’d be pacing again.

  Ji-yeong was in the far corner, in a chair which Luna had tucked in between the display cabinets at the front window and the side tables against the wall. A Sainsbury’s bag with some food was under her chair. I doubted we’d need it, but you never know.

  Outside, the city was abuzz with the coming evening. Scattered water droplets hung on the shop window: showers had come and gone, but now the weather was dry again and the streets were filling with the fall of night. The hum of voices and traffic filtered in through the walls, and soon distant music would begin to play as the clubs opened. The sounds of a Friday evening in Camden, familiar as a pair of old shoes.

  I checked the time. 7.10. Fifty minutes to zero hour.

  My communicator chimed. Luna stopped and both she and Ji-yeong turned to look as I lifted the focus. ‘Receiving,’ I said.

  ‘Verus?’ Talisid sounded harassed. ‘I’ve double-checked. The ward team confirm that the gate and isolation wards on Sagash’s shadow realm have been bypassed.’

  ‘Right now? You’re sure?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure. It would help if you could tell me why you consider this so important.’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t.’

  ‘Wonderful. I assume you’ve checked in with Drakh?’

  ‘Text only,’ I said. I absolutely did not want a real-time conversation with Richard right now. Diviners can learn far too much that way. ‘His team will be entering at twenty-hundred, point C.’

  ‘Good. Now I have fifteen other things I need to be doing. Please don’t give me any more.’ Talisid broke the connection.

  ‘What was that about?’ Luna asked.

  I returned the focus to my pocket. ‘Original plan was for the Council ward experts to bypass the wards on Sagash’s shadow realm at the last possible moment before zero hour. I convinced Talisid to do it an hour in advance. He wasn’t very happy about it.’

  ‘Mm,’ Luna said. She seemed distracted and I wasn’t sure she’d heard. She stared off into space, then went back to pacing. I checked the time again. 7.13.

  Minutes ticked by. From a street or two over came the muffled sounds of cheering, swelling to a roar and then dying away. Luna’s footsteps echoed in the quiet shop. It was taking her five and a half steps to cross the floor each time. One, two, three, four, five, half-step and turn. One, two, three, four, five, half-step and turn.

  ‘Ugh.’ Luna shook her head and put both hands flat on the counter. ‘This is driving me crazy. It’s like before a big duelling match, you know? Except then, if I lost, I’d just go back and train harder and do better next time. It wasn’t the end of the world.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘The waiting for these kinds of things is hard. Funny thing is, what I was thinking of just then wasn’t the combat ops I went on as a Keeper. It was exams at school.’

  ‘You used to get that tense about exams?’

  ‘You didn’t?’

  ‘I mean, they’re just exams. It’s not like they really matter.’

  ‘Well, not compared to the kind of stuff we have to deal with these days,’ I said. ‘But when you’re a kid, you don’t have much variety of experience. If exams are the biggest test you’re facing, that’s what you worry about.’

  ‘Come on. You must have had stuff you cared about more than that.’

  ‘Well, sure,’ I said. ‘But that was the only thing I could do that adults seemed to care about. Pretty much the one single thing that my mother and father and teachers could all agree on was that I was supposed to do well at school.’ I shrugged. ‘Didn’t really have any friends, so I didn’t have much else to do.’

  ‘Don’t take this the wrong way,’ Luna said, ‘but that sounds really sad.’

  ‘Sounds normal to me,’ Ji-yeong said.

  ‘You too?’ Luna said.

  ‘Well, not the having no friends part,’ Ji-yeong said. ‘But when you’re in school, you don’t get much time to see friends anyway.’

  ‘You can see them after school.’

  ‘That’s when you sleep.’

  ‘You’ve got time to do more than work and sleep.’

  ‘Well, classes and study are about sixteen hours,’ Ji-yeong said. ‘Once you add on meals and travel, that doesn’t leave much.’

  Luna stared at her. ‘Sixteen hours?’

  ‘I couldn’t believe it when I saw what your schedules are like over here,’ Ji-yeong said. ‘English children are really spoilt.’

  ‘I’m half-English,’ Luna said. ‘My father’s Italian.’

  ‘Close enough.’

  ‘No, it isn’t.’ Luna paused. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘7.19,’ I told her.

  ‘Oh, come on!’

  All the time that Luna had been pacing, I’d been checking the futures. At exactly 8.00, the invasion would start. And it would succeed, at least to begin with. Both Council forces would deploy into the shadow realm without triggering the wards. I couldn’t see what Richard’s group would do, but as far as I could see, everything was unfolding according to plan.

  Once everyone was inside the shadow realm, the futures blurred into a mess of uncertainty and branching possibilities. The invasion would set off alarms, and we could expect Anne’s forces to counterattack. But the whole point of invading like this at so many points was to overwhelm the defences with more threats than Anne could possibly handle. The Council would take losses, but with their numbers and with Richard’s forces on their side, they should be able to crush her in a matter of hours.

  And at that point, they’d be in position to turn on Richard’s forces and crush them as well.

  ‘That sword looks kind of familiar,’ Ji-yeong told Luna.

  ‘It’s Alex’s,’ Luna said. She still sounded distracted.

  ‘Did he tell you where he got it?’

  ‘Okay,’ I interrupted. ‘I think it’s time.’

  Ji-yeong and Luna looked at me as I took out my communicator and activated it. ‘Landis,’ a voice said after a moment.

  ‘It’s Verus,’ I said. ‘Go.’

  ‘Understood.’ Landis broke the connection.

  ‘What was that about?’ Luna asked.

  I stood up, stretching slightly. ‘We’re going.’

  Luna looked puzzled. ‘Going, as in . . . ?’

  ‘The invasion.’

  Luna checked her phone. ‘It’s still—’

  ‘Change of plans.’

  Both Luna and Ji-yeong looked confused now. ‘What’s going on?’ Luna asked.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. The futures were starting to shift, and I kept an eye on them as I talked. ‘Richard needs the Council to take out Anne. But once Anne’s been neutralised, his forces are going to be stuck in a warded shadow realm with a Council army. The Council is going to kill him at the first available opportunity. I know that, and if I can figure that out, so can Richard. Right?’

  ‘Okay,’ Luna said.

  ‘So imagine you’re Richard,’ I said. ‘You know the Council’s going to turn on you. The obvious way to deal with that is to backstab them first. Except the Council knows you know, so they’re also going to backstab you first. And the Council have a bigger army. If it comes down to Richard’s cabal versus the Council strike force in that shadow realm, Richard’s going to lose. So what do you do?’ I paused for a second, then went on. ‘You stop them from having the bigger army. The key is the isolation ward. Once that’s triggered, the Council won’t be able to bring in any more reinforcements. Their numbers won’t matter.’

  ‘But if he triggers the isolation ward once you’re all there, that’ll just make it worse for him,’ Luna said. ‘He won’t be able to get away.’

  ‘Which is why he isn’t going to wait that long. Richard’s going to sabotage the plan right at the beginning and trigger the isolation ward while the Council’s still moving that into the shadow realm. Let in a fraction, cut off the rest.’

  ‘Why a fraction?’ Luna asked.

  ‘Balancing act,’ I said. ‘He can’t beat Anne on his own. He’s planning to let in just enough Council mages to distract Anne’s forces and weaken them enough for him to finish them off, but not so many that they can beat him. It’s dangerous, but he’s been willing to take those chances before. And it’s exactly the kind of thing the Council wouldn’t see coming, because they’d never do anything so high risk.’

  ‘And you figured all this out by divining it?’ Ji-yeong asked.

  ‘Well, not exactly,’ I said. ‘My divination is telling me that the Council’s plan is going to work fine.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The Council has diviners too. They’ll have told the Council the same thing.’

  ‘Then . . .’

  ‘Richard can project false futures. Make diviners see what he wants them to see. He’s fooled me with it before.’

  ‘So you can tell this one’s a fake?’ Luna asked.

  ‘Nope,’ I said.

  The two of them stared at me.

  ‘Future looks one hundred per cent real,’ I said. ‘But Richard’s a master. If he was creating a false vision, that’s what I’d expect to see.’

  ‘So . . . you’re guessing?’

  ‘Pretty much,’ I said. ‘If I’m wrong, I just screwed everything up in a really major way and the Council are going to be very, very pissed off.’ I shrugged. ‘Let’s hope I’m not. Now stay quiet, I need to path-walk.’

  Luna and Ji-yeong exchanged glances.

  The shop was quiet, the streets outside busy with the bustle of a normal Camden evening. But elsewhere, I’d just kicked over an anthill. Landis was starting the gate spells that would send his team through into the shadow realm, and he’d have notified Nimbus to do the same. Nimbus would rage and order him to stop, and when Landis didn’t, Nimbus would call the Council and demand an explanation. And the Council would respond by calling . . .

  My communicator pinged. Talisid. I picked up the focus, activated it and spoke into it, my voice clipped. ‘Richard’s betraying you. He’s going to let you start to gate your forces into the shadow realm, then trigger the isolation ward and cut you off. You have to go right now.’

  ‘Verus, what do you think—?’

  ‘No time. You have a few minutes. Don’t waste them.’

  I broke the connection. There was silence for a few seconds, then the communicator pinged again. I didn’t answer.

  Now it was a race. My actions had thrown the futures into chaos, and it wouldn’t take Richard long to realise something was wrong. Meanwhile, the Council would be arguing. Could they act faster than Richard?

  Normally the answer would be no. But Richard had his own army to deploy, and he needed to maintain the optasia. And crucially, he was doing it alone. Richard’s cabal was powerful, but the biggest weakness of Dark mages is their lack of trust: if he didn’t watch his back then someone like Vihaela would put a knife in it. I was hoping that right now, he had too much to deal with.

  The communicator pinged, then pinged twice more. I selected the person I needed to talk to and answered. ‘Verus.’

  An aggravated voice spoke through the focus. ‘Verus, this is—’

  ‘Director Nimbus,’ I interrupted. ‘Yes, I know what I’m doing; yes, there is a good reason, and the reason is the one you just heard from Talisid. Richard is going to trigger the isolation ward and cut your force into bits. You have to launch the invasion right now.’

  ‘You don’t have—’

  ‘I do know that.’

  ‘The Council—’

  ‘The Council diviners are being fooled.’

  ‘You—’

  ‘My authority doesn’t matter. I’m the one who knows what’s going to happen.’

  ‘Stop interrupting me!’

  ‘Nimbus, I know you don’t like me,’ I said. ‘But you are about to make the most important decision of your career, and depending on which path you choose, you will go down in history in one of two ways. Down one path, you’ll be remembered as the visionary commander who sniffed out a trap and defeated Drakh when other Keepers couldn’t. Down the other, you’ll be remembered as a failure who hesitated at the crucial moment. Pick one.’

  ‘I need confirmation!’

  ‘Landis is opening his gate in three and a half minutes,’ I said. ‘Then you’re going to have to make your decision whether you’ve got confirmation or not.’ I hung up.

  Luna and Ji-yeong were still watching, looking slightly nervous. ‘Um,’ Luna said. ‘Can we talk now?’

  ‘Not quite.’ I opened the door by the counter and went through into the back room.

  Luna had kept some aspects of the Arcana Emporium the same – the back room on the ground floor had an enclave from the rest of the shop’s wards in order to allow for direct gate transit. I reached out through the dreamstone and the fateweaver, combining their powers. The dreamstone allowed me to step from here into Elsewhere; the fateweaver allowed me to exploit flaws in the castle’s defences. The Light mages working right now were creating large-scale breaches in the shadow realm’s wards to hold their gates open for an extended period. By slipping through chinks in the armour and causing the defences to weaken at opportune times, I could create a much smaller breach with a fraction of the effort.

  At the same time, I was watching the futures. My divination was still telling me that the invasion was set to start at eight sharp, and with a thrill of satisfaction I knew I’d guessed right. Richard was hiding the truth from us, and he hadn’t figured out that we were onto him. Yet.

  As I watched, the future seemed to quiver. I’d never seen anything like it before, and it was a strange sensation, as though reality was shaking loose. It made me dizzy to watch, and I had to look around to reassure myself that yes, I was still in the back room.

  ‘Alex?’ Luna asked.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said absently. I was still forming the gate. I’d grown better with the dreamstone, and I’d discovered that with a little extra work I could compress the Elsewhere journey down to effectively nothing, placing the gate from here to Elsewhere and the gate from Elsewhere to the shadow realm right next to one another. After all these years, I could finally gate the way elemental mages could.

  And then, just as I watched, the futures shattered, a screen breaking and crumbling to reveal new futures, real futures, that were a flurry of activity. I felt my spirits lift. I spend so much time looking into the future that having it taken away feels like fumbling around in the dark. Now the lights were on.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Gate into the shadow realm is in ninety seconds. Once we get through, things are going to get messy. Ji-yeong, we’re coming out in the same spot we left from. You know the area?’

 

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