I nodded. There really is such a thing as a good or bad aura when it comes to places, and the factory had a bad one-dark, rotting, and cold. It wouldn’t do any harm on a visit but you wouldn’t want to live here.
The journey into the factory was uneventful, beyond Sonder tripping a few times. “This is it,” I told Sonder as the corridor opened out into the factory floor. There was still a space where the barghest’s body had been, but not much else.
Sonder nodded. His eyes had that abstracted look that I knew meant he was concentrating. He pushed his glasses up as he looked around. “What am I looking for?”
“The battle,” I said. “It-”
“Found it. Eighty-four hours ago … no, eighty-five. Thursday midnight.”
Sonder’s a time mage. It’s one of the most difficult of all types of magic to learn; while elemental mages learn their craft in months or years, mastering time magic takes decades. Sonder doesn’t know many tricks yet, but what he does, he does very well. “I need to know what happened here,” I said. “Details of the battle, lead-up, conversations-anything you can find.”
Sonder nodded. He still had that absent look and I knew he was seeing the past, not the present. He took a notebook from his pocket and began circling the room, pencil in hand, while I watched out of curiosity. I always find it interesting to see the way Sonder does things; the types of magic we use are so similar and yet so different. Then I shook it off and got back to work. Sonder was pretty much oblivious while he was doing this, which meant it was my job to watch out for him. Scanning ahead, I saw that nothing much was going to happen while we were in the room. Sonder would finish, we’d head out, and-
Fire, pain, darkness. My reflexes took over and I forced the vision away and I was back in the present again, staring at the blackened walls. What the hell? We’d been walking down the corridor by which we’d come in, then …
I looked again and understood. A bomb. Someone had booby-trapped our way out. In fact, they were doing it right now. There was another assassin, here in the factory, fewer than eighty feet away, and he was trying to kill us.
I snapped.
“Hey, Sonder,” I said, not taking my eyes off the corridor. “Need to take care of something. Back in five.”
Sonder didn’t answer. I snapped off my torch and walked into the darkness.
The man was dressed in dark clothes and he was crouched halfway up the corridor. He’d placed his torch on a nearby box where it illuminated a splash of the hallway. In the white light, I could see a backpack leaning against the wall and a gun resting on the floor where it could be quickly snatched up. He wore a knitted cap.
The land mine was already almost hidden. The man had tucked it behind a heating pipe and he was busy covering it with pieces of rubbish. It looked like a metal cylinder about the size and shape of a coffee can. Looking into the future, I could see that when it was tripped, it would hurl a bomb into the air to burst at about waist height. The explosion would throw a spray of metal balls in all directions, ricocheting off the walls and turning the corridor into a death zone.
I stood quietly in the shadows at the end of the corridor, watching as the man finished setting the mine. He’d already placed the trigger mechanism. I didn’t know whether it was a trip wire or some sort of beam but I knew that once he armed the mine, anything going down the corridor at a certain height would set it off.
I’m not all that proud of what I did next. All I have to say in my defence is that I had had enough. It was the fourth attack in two days and I was sick of it.
The man twisted the switch to arm the mine and there was a click. I picked up a length of wood, then stepped out and threw it down the corridor.
It took the stick just over one second to complete its flight. It took the man a quarter second to catch the movement, a half second more to snatch up his gun and see what was happening. And by the time he realised that the stick was on course to fly through the trigger area of the mine-the same mine he was next to-it was far too late.
Sonder was looking in my direction as I walked back into the room. “What was that?”
“What was what?”
“I thought I heard a bang.”
“Rats.”
“And something that sounded like a scream?”
“Big rats.”
Sonder looked at me. “Sonder, trust me,” I said. “You don’t want to know.” Violent death is a long way outside Sonder’s comfort zone. The same does not apply to me, which is not really a good thing. “We should go.”
Sonder’s not great at taking hints but he got the message. The two of us took the back way out, my divination magic picking the way through the obstacles. I didn’t know if the man I’d just killed had a partner and I didn’t plan on sticking around to find out. We negotiated our way through the council estate, and ten minutes saw us out in the sunlight again, on the main road.
“So how much did you find?” I asked once I was satisfied no one was going to be coming after us.
“A lot,” Sonder said, the distraction forgotten. “Want to know about the Dark mages first, or the ones fighting them?”
“The Dark mages.”
“Well, it was Cinder,” Sonder said as we turned onto another main road, heading towards a different Tube station. “And Deleo, just like you said. They hid on that gantry, waited for the barghest to show up, then stunned it.”
“Was there anyone else?”
“Just them.”
That was a relief. Cinder and Deleo were bad enough, and I still had nightmares about the last guy they’d partnered with. “It was over really fast,” Sonder said. “Then they went down and started working on the barghest.”
“What were they doing?”
Sonder frowned. “I don’t know. Some sort of ritual. They had a couple of focuses I’ve never seen before: like sort of dark purple metal spikes. But it took a long time. They kept stopping and starting.”
“Timing requirements?”
Sonder shook his head. “I don’t think so. I think they were … working it out as they went along? Like they weren’t really sure what they were doing.”
I hesitated. Something in that seemed off but I wasn’t sure exactly what.
“That was when the others showed up,” Sonder continued. “There was one mage and eight auxiliaries. I think the mage tried to talk to them. At least he said something, but Cinder and Deleo attacked him on sight. He was under a shroud so I couldn’t see much.”
“Huh,” I said. Shrouds are highly specialised items designed to block surveillance magic, rare and expensive. “So I guess you couldn’t see who it was.”
“Actually, I did,” Sonder said. I looked at him in surprise, and he shrugged. “It wasn’t that good a shroud.”
Sometimes I think Sonder doesn’t realise how talented he is. “Belthas?”
“Belthas. I just got bits and pieces from there. The auxiliaries opened fire and so did Belthas, and they drove Cinder back. Cinder dropped one of those focuses-the purple things-and one of the men ran to grab it but Deleo disintegrated him.” Sonder shivered slightly. “Literally. There was nothing left but dust. Cinder grabbed the focus and they fell back to the east doorway. Deleo held them off while Cinder opened a gate, and they got out.”
I frowned. “Wait. You mean Belthas was the only other mage?”
Sonder nodded. “And he still forced them back. He’s an ice mage and he’s really good. I think he would have been a match for them on his own.”
I remembered how calm Belthas had been at the prospect of facing the Dark cabal. If he was really that good, he had little to fear from anything short of an entire Dark kill team. It gave me another thing to think over as we turned into the station.
I spent the trip back quizzing Sonder about what else he’d learnt. There were no revelations but a few useful titbits. According to Sonder, the barghest had died either before the fight had started, or as a result of Cinder and Deleo getting interrupted midritual. Either way it was clear the ritual hadn’t been a success: the barghest might have had its magic drained, but neither Cinder or Deleo had profited from it. While that was probably a good thing, what I really wanted was some way to track them down. “You’re sure they didn’t gate in?” I asked for the second time.