Caldera summoned up a light and the three of us walked in.
The inside of the mansion hadn’t aged as gracefully as the outside. Dust covered everything and bits of furniture had been overturned. “You two stick together,” Caldera said. “I’m going to take a look around.”
I gave her an exasperated look. “Do the words ‘safety precautions’ mean anything to you?”
“Yeah, people keep telling me something about that,” Caldera said. “Be right back.”
“Just don’t go below the ground floor,” I called after her as she left. Her footsteps faded away and I shook my head. “And people tell me I take risks.”
Sonder didn’t answer. He played the light of his torch around the hallway, the glow flicking over dusty paintings. “Well, this is your party,” I told him. “Where do you want to start?”
“Is there any kind of meeting room?” Sonder asked. “Somewhere people would assemble?”
I nodded down the hall. “That way.”
The rooms on the ground floor of the mansion were the kitchens, storerooms, dining room, and servants’ quarters. The room we entered had once been a living room, but as I walked in I slowed and stopped. The light from our torches showed broken chairs, and drawers and shelves had been emptied, their contents strewn over the floor. The sofa in the centre had been cut in half, a huge section of the middle missing and the stuffing spilling out.
“Was it . . . always like this?” Sonder said, staring at the sofa.
I shook my head. “No.” This was the room where Shireen, Rachel, Tobruk, and I had all gathered with Richard that first night, and where we’d kept meeting in the months afterward. “What happened here?”
“Wait a minute,” Sonder said, frowning. His eyes became distant.
I stood in silence, looking around. While we’d been Richard’s apprentices this had been a kind of briefing room; it was where he’d given us our assignments and where we’d gathered to talk in our free time. My eyes drifted to Richard’s old armchair; unlike the rest of the furniture it hadn’t been touched and I unconsciously stepped away from it. The fireplace was dark and cold.
Sonder stayed in his trance for a long time, fifteen minutes at least. When he finally looked up at me, he looked uneasy. “It was Deleo.”
“She trashed the place?”
Sonder shook his head. “No. Three other men did. They were here five months ago. I think they were looking for something.”
“Looking for what?”
“I don’t know,” Sonder said, looking around. “I don’t think they got the chance to find it. Deleo walked in that door and she . . . killed them. All of them.”
I looked around the empty room. There was dust but no bones. “What happened to the bodies?”
Sonder pointed at the dust at my feet.
“Oh.” I stepped aside. “Right.” I’d thought there was something familiar about the way that sofa had been destroyed. Rachel had grown a lot more powerful in the years since I’d left, and she seemed to specialise in disintegration. “Did they have any kind of magic?”
“Not enough,” Sonder said.
We stood in the empty, dead room, the beams of our torches the only light. “You don’t think Deleo’s still living here, do you?” Sonder asked.
I shook my head. “Nobody’s living here. I shouldn’t have to tell you that.”
“Then why’s Deleo still coming?”
“From the sound of it she only shows up if someone trips the burglar alarm,” I said. “I think she’s just guarding this place. All she cares about is making sure no one else touches it.”
“But . . .” Sonder looked around. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“What doesn’t?”
“Doing it like this!” Sonder said. “There wasn’t a warning anywhere or anything like that. The front door wasn’t even locked! We could have just walked in without knowing any better and she would have tried to kill us!”
“From the sound of it that’s exactly what she’s been doing.”
“But why doesn’t she do it the normal way?” Sonder said. “No one even knows that this is her house! She could have . . . I don’t know, registered it with the Council or something.”
“She is letting people know that this is her house.”
“They can’t spread the message if they’re all dead!”
I shrugged. “She probably lets a few go. Or maybe she just assumes that if enough people go missing then sooner or later the others will take the hint.”
Sonder shook his head. “That’s insane.”
I looked at Sonder for a moment. “If you want to be a scholar,” I said at last, “you have to learn not to see things so simply.”
“What do you mean?”
“Deleo and Dark mages seem insane to you because you’re judging them by your standards,” I said. “You’re assuming they have the same goals you do. What makes you so sure Deleo wants to warn people off peacefully?”
Sonder looked at me, puzzled. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that if you’re the kind of person who likes to take out your frustrations on other people, then occasionally having to murder some burglars is less of a drawback and more a perk of the job.”
Sonder stared at me in revulsion. “Are you serious?”
I sighed. “I’m not saying that’s why she does it, I’m saying it might be. The point is that Deleo doesn’t live in your world. What you said about registering with the Council? To Dark mages that’d be a joke. They only respect authority if it’s backed up by force. Registering might actually attract them—they’d figure that if she was trying to get the protection of Light mages, then she couldn’t handle it herself. And it would mostly be other Dark mages she’d be worried about.”
“You’re telling me they’d listen to people being murdered, but they wouldn’t read a sign on the door?”
“Yes! Dark mages are different from you, don’t you get that? They don’t follow rules and they don’t do as they’re told! If you set a boundary the first thing they’ll do is push it to see if you’ll do anything. What Deleo is doing is a normal way to send a message in Dark society, and if you don’t understand that then you shouldn’t be here.”
Sonder and I stared at each other for a moment, then Sonder looked away. “I’m not here because of you.” He sounded defensive. “I’ve been doing Council work for the Keepers since last year.”
“I know.”
“I know what I’m doing,” Sonder said. “It’s not like I’m an apprentice anymore. They keep saying—” He stopped and went on. “It’s not like it’s all new to me. I see things that most people never do. Crimes, secrets . . . They think it’s hidden, but it’s not.”
“But they don’t quite take you seriously, no matter how much you know, do they? Trust me, I know all about that.”
Sonder stood in silence for a moment. “How could you ever join people like this?” he said at last.
I knew Sonder wasn’t talking about Light mages anymore. “People change, Sonder,” I said. “I know you see a lot, and I know you see things that others can’t. But you’ve always been detached from it. Keepers like Caldera don’t need you to be involved, they just need you to be good with your magic.”
“I do get involved.”
“Because of other people,” I said. “The main way you use your timesight is to help everyone else out. You’re not the one who causes the problem—you’re the one who gets called in after someone else causes a problem.” I looked at Sonder. “In a lot of ways you’re an example of what’s best about Light mages. But it makes it hard for you to understand people like me and Deleo. When you really and truly screw things up—when you look around and realise that your life’s a disaster and it’s nobody’s fault but your own—then it makes you ask some hard questions. You look into the mirror and you realise you don’t much like the person looking back at you. And you start figuring out how to change that.” I shrugged. “Or you stop looking into mirrors . . . You’ve never had to do that. You’ve never had to really stop and question your beliefs, because they’ve worked. It’s not a bad thing. Just . . . remember that it’s not that way for everyone else.”