“How long until he will be?”
“Three, four days.”
Too long. “Well,” I said. It was bad news, but there was nothing I could do. “Guess that’s that.”
“Hold on,” Kyle said. “I didn’t say no. Cinder can’t do it, but I can.”
“Cinder okay with that?”
“He’s not my mother.”
I hesitated. I’d fought both with and against Kyle. He was competent and resourceful, but he didn’t have the raw power that Cinder did.
“From the sound of it, you aren’t really in a position to turn people away.”
“If things go wrong, this is going to turn into a heavyweight fight,” I said. “You okay with that?”
“Well, maybe I can help make sure they don’t go wrong,” Kyle said. “You know any good ways into that mansion?”
“No.”
“I do.”
I glanced through the futures, but only briefly. Kyle was right about one thing: I needed all the help I could get. “All right,” I said. “You’re in.”
Kyle nodded.
“Guessing you’re not doing this just to get back at Onyx and Pyre.”
“Pretty much,” Kyle said. “I want a favour.”
“What kind of favour?”
“Let’s just say it’s something you should be able to handle,” Kyle said. “We pull this off, I want it done. Okay?”
I looked at Kyle for a long moment, scanning futures. “Agreed,” I said at last.
“Where are we meeting?”
“On-site,” I said. “I’ll stake out the place today. Meet me when you’re ready.”
I checked in with Luna and Variam, then took what steps I could to make myself hard to track, including using an annuller and overcharging my shroud. I’d managed to stay ahead of the Council so far—from what Caldera had said, it sounded like their number one priority was Anne—but it was only a matter of time before they turned their attention to me.
The area around Onyx’s mansion was forest and meadows, largely deserted. My gate landed me some distance off, and I walked ten minutes before the mansion’s roof and chimneys appeared over the hill ahead. I found a good vantage point in a copse of trees and settled down to wait.
It was the third time I’d been back to this mansion, and I hadn’t enjoyed any of my visits. The first time, it belonged to Morden; the second time, it had been taken over by Onyx. For whatever reason, when Morden had escaped last year, he hadn’t moved to reclaim his old home, and with Morden gone, the place belonged to Onyx by default.
Right now, there were two mages living at the mansion, Onyx and Pyre. Pyre was a fire mage with some nasty dating habits and he would be trouble, but the biggest problem was Onyx. Onyx was Morden’s Chosen, and he hated me for a variety of reasons, not least because when Morden was raised to the Junior Council, he hadn’t appointed Onyx as his aide but had picked me instead. I’d tangled with Onyx many times over the years and pretty much every time I’d come out ahead, it had been by outmaneuvering him. But outmaneuvering him on his home turf was going to be hard, and that was bad, because while Onyx wasn’t great on subtlety, he was an extremely deadly battle-mage. There were few mages who could beat him in a straight fight, and I wasn’t one of them.
I sensed Kyle coming in the second hour. He approached cautiously from behind; I waited for him to come into view and made a movement to catch his attention. The adept changed course and approached, dropping into a crouch near to me. “Good overlook,” he said, glancing out between the bushes.
Kyle was dressed in drab clothing that blended into the hillside, olive and dark brown. He carried no equipment; with his ability, he didn’t need to. I returned to studying the mansion.
“Any movement?” Kyle asked.
“Three going out, two coming back.” A collection of flashy cars were parked in the mansion’s driveway. “No sign of Onyx or Pyre.”
Kyle grunted. “They use gates anyway.” He glanced at me. “You hurt?”
I’d been lying in a position that didn’t require me to use my right arm. “Something like that.”
“You weren’t using that hand at the restaurant either.”
“That’s because it doesn’t work.”
“You’re doing an op like this with only one hand?”
“Yes.”
Kyle didn’t answer, but checking the futures, I saw that he was looking at me in a considering sort of way.
Minutes ticked past. Usually I like the quiet, but not today. My thoughts kept on wanting to go back to Anne and to what had happened between us, and each time I had to force away the memories. I still hadn’t really dealt with it, and I wasn’t sure if I could. The best I could do was focus on the job. If I concentrated on it, it was easier not to think.
Right now, though, my attempts at scouting out the mansion were being disrupted. To path-walk, you need your immediate future to be as stable as possible. Any kind of conflict or uncertainty makes it too hard to look ahead. It doesn’t need to be definite either—just the potential for it. Such as the possibility of someone aiming a gun at the back of your head.
“Can you stop that?” I said without turning to look.
“Not doing anything.”
“You’re thinking about it.”
“Yeah,” Kyle said, and I could feel his eyes on me. “I guess I am.”
I twisted around to see Kyle watching me with a calculating expression. “You thinking about getting some payback for all those years ago?” I said. “Revenge for your friends?”
Kyle didn’t take his eyes off me. “Pretty much.”
“Way I remember it, Cinder and Deleo killed most of them.”
“Back then there wasn’t anything I could do.”
“And now there is?” I asked. “Fine. Go for it.”
Kyle frowned.
“If you’re going to pull one of those guns out of nowhere and take a shot, then fucking get on with it and stop wasting my time.”
I felt the futures sharpen, violence flickering. “You think this is some sort of joke?” Kyle said.
“I’m about a million miles away from the kind of place where I’d be making jokes.”
“Will was my friend,” Kyle said. His voice was quiet and dangerous. “So were the others. Give me a reason not to make you pay for it.”
“You want a reason.” I leant forward and looked Kyle in the eyes, my voice steady. “In the last forty-eight hours, I have gone from the top of mage society to an outlaw. Ninety percent of what I own has been taken away from me. My oldest friend is gone and is never coming back. I’ve been mind-controlled and forced to beat the woman I love to a pulp. I watched her look at me with tears in her eyes and beg me to stop, and I was made to keep hitting her anyway. The last thing she did before being possessed herself was to cripple me. This relic is my only chance of saving her, but I’ve been promised, by a creature that knows the future, that if I take it, I’ll pay with my life. So tell me, Kyle. What are you thinking of doing to me that’s going to be worse than what’s happened already?”
It was the first time I’d seen Kyle at a loss for words. He opened his mouth, looked at me, then closed it again. I turned away and we went back to watching the mansion in silence.
Midafternoon found Luna, Variam, and me gathered in the Hollow.
“The Precursor gateway we’re after is in Onyx’s main storeroom,” I said, laying out a map on my desk. The map was hand drawn and wouldn’t win any art prizes, but it was accurate. I tapped a rectangular room towards the back of the ground floor. “Here. Luna’s seen it before. Vari, you haven’t, so I’ve sketched you a picture. It’s a statue of a guy in robes, grey stone, a good six feet tall. You’ll know it when you see it.”