Caldera fell back, on the defensive but unhurt. “No trucks this time,” she told me. She spread her hands wide. “Bring it.”
I hesitated for an instant. There was one thing I could do. Break past Caldera, use a forcewall to seal the corridor, and run. Come back for Anne later . . .
. . . there wouldn’t be a later. “It’s me you want, right?” I said. “Let Anne go and I’ll stay with you.”
Caldera gave me a pitying look. “Arrest warrant was for you both. And if I could only get one, orders were to make it her. But honestly? I’m looking forward to taking you down as well.”
I could hear footsteps from behind; we were nearly out of time. Desperately, I threw myself at Caldera.
But Caldera was stronger than me, and tougher than me, and I was running out of tricks. My blows kept landing, but they were hurting me more than her. Caldera barely even needed to block.
I kicked Caldera’s leg out, but the impact sent a jolt of pain through my knee and I didn’t get out of the way quite fast enough. Caldera’s punch hit my thigh like a hammer, making me stumble.
I jumped back, nearly falling. “You’re just making things worse for yourself, Alex,” Caldera said.
“Screw you.”
Caldera came at me like a bulldozer, slow and heavy and unstoppable. I blocked and dodged, but I was tired now, hurt. I ducked one blow and my leg gave way from underneath me. Before I could get out of the way, Caldera stamped on my ankle, making me gasp.
“Don’t get up,” Caldera told me.
I got up.
Caldera was waiting. She struck again, and this time, she finally managed a clean hit. The world flashed white, then red, then I was falling through darkness, thought and sensation fading away.
chapter 6
Pain.
I woke up slowly and unpleasantly. Lots of places hurt, but the worst was my head, jagged and sharp. I shifted and realised I was lying on a hard surface. I could hear voices around me, the murmur of conversation, someone giving orders. I tried to orient myself. This felt like Arachne’s cave . . .
Arachne.
I tried to sit up. The pain in my head became a white-hot spike and I vomited. Nausea and agony drowned out all thought for a while.
After some length of time my head and stomach stopped hurting enough for my mind to start working again. The voices were still talking, and now added to them I could hear rustling and thumps. I cracked open an eye, moving more cautiously this time. The light hurt, but no more so than everything else, and I looked around.
I was in Arachne’s lair, in one of the far corners. Council personnel were scattered throughout the cave, and it was their voices I’d heard. They were searching the place, shaking out clothing and pulling out cushions. As I watched, a security man dumped a bolt of cloth onto the floor with a thump, then started pushing at it with a boot. I wasn’t up to using my divination, but through my magesight I could sense spells.
I tried to shift position and realised that my hands were held behind my back. Cautiously I explored with my fingers and touched cold metal. Handcuffs. I lay still, trying to think of options. No good ones came to mind, and the pain in my head wasn’t making it any easier. All I could think of was my lockpicks, but I wasn’t sure I had them anymore: my pockets felt lighter than they should have been.
The men around the chamber were still working. There were a lot of them, but Arachne’s lair is a big place, and they apparently weren’t in any hurry. I tried again to sit up, and still failed, though at least I didn’t throw up this time. Footsteps approached from my blind side and I held still.
A pair of heavy boots came into my vision. “You awake?” Caldera said from what felt like a long way above.
I couldn’t have answered even if I’d wanted to. Caldera hauled me into a sitting position, propping my back against the wall. Another wave of nausea rolled over me, and I fought to keep myself from vomiting again. Once my vision cleared, I saw that Caldera was squatting down in front of me. She held one finger up, and pale brown light glowed from the tip.
“You see the light?” Caldera asked. She moved it from side to side; my eyes tracked it with difficulty. “Is it blurry? Doubled?”
Focusing on the light was too hard. I closed my eyes and tried to talk. “Why?”
“You’ve got a concussion,” Caldera said. “Don’t move your head around. We’ll get a life mage to look at you.”
I would have laughed if I could. I’ll get healed before I’m executed. How nice.
Caldera stayed squatting in front of me. All around, the search continued. “Who was it?” I said, not opening my eyes.
“Who was what?”
“Who signed the death warrant this time?”
“There’s no death warrant.”
I cracked my eyes open. Caldera was looking at me eye to eye. “What there is,” Caldera said, “is an indictment. For you to be held for questioning.”
“Levistus finally got his four votes?”
Caldera looked at me with something like pity. “It wasn’t four. It was seven.”
The last struggling hopes within me died. I wanted to believe that Caldera was lying, but I’d worked with her long enough to know she wasn’t. “What’s the charge?”
“The charge is,” Caldera said, “that you are responsible for the San Vittore attack. Eighteen counts of murder, three counts of treason, and one count of assisting in the escape of a mage prisoner. Plus assault, grievous harm, and destruction of Council property, but we can probably put that aside for now.”
I closed my eyes and rested my head against the wall. It was what I’d expected. Honestly, it was what I’d been expecting for a long time.
“Going to deny it?” Caldera said.
“Is there any point?”
“Could be. Because you didn’t actually do most of that stuff. Did you?”
I opened my eyes to look at Caldera. “You think I’m innocent now?”
“Oh, you’re guilty of some of it,” Caldera said. “But the murders and the prisoner escape? We both know who did that.”
I was silent. “You can stop lying, Alex,” Caldera said. “We know what really happened.”
“Because of you,” I said. “Right? You were the one to figure it out.”
Caldera just looked at me.
“How?”
“I told you,” Caldera said. “I know a bullshit story when I hear one. I knew you were lying at the inquest. Just didn’t know why.”
“And so you put Sonder on it.”
“Don’t blame this one on Sonder,” Caldera said. “He tried to duck out of it. I had to call in favours and go over his head. And in the meantime, I kept digging. Tried to figure out what really happened in San Vittore. I’ve been working that case for months on my own time. And I didn’t find shit. You know why?”
I wasn’t in the mood for this. “No.”
“I was looking for the wrong thing,” Caldera said. “For evidence of you colluding with Morden or Drakh, or some crime you’d done at the scene, or some backroom deal you didn’t want to come out. Came up empty every time, and I couldn’t figure out why. What was so important to you that you’d throw out all that smoke?”
I was silent.
“That day in the courtroom, I was about ready to give it up,” Caldera said. “And then I remembered that there was one thing I hadn’t looked into. I’d checked everything about you, but I hadn’t checked the person you went in with. And when I started thinking about that, I remembered what happened a few years ago, back before you became an auxiliary. When she got snatched by those Dark apprentices, you didn’t just look into it, did you? You chased them blind right into a shadow realm. And that made me wonder—maybe you weren’t doing this for yourself after all. Maybe you were protecting someone.”