But it wasn’t the plans for tomorrow that were bothering me. Instead, my mind kept wanting to go back to my memories of last night, and that brief split-second where I’d looked into Symmaris’s eyes. I hadn’t known Symmaris well, but I had known her, known her name and quite a few other things about her, right up until the point where my bullet had blown the brains out of her skull and turned her from a living, breathing person into a corpse. It hadn’t been the first time Symmaris had been involved in an attempt to kill me, and judging from what I knew of her, she’d probably deserved it, along with the rest of the mages on that team.
So why was it bothering me?
Because it wasn’t really about Symmaris, it was about all the other people before her. Symmaris wasn’t the first person I’d killed, or the second, or the twentieth. She was just the most recent addition to a whole pile of bodies. And tomorrow, I was going into battle against Levistus’s men, and they’d be trying to kill me, and to stop them I’d have to kill them first, and one by one, the pile would keep getting higher. And worst of all, I couldn’t see any way it was likely to stop. There’d always be some new enemy or some old one. How long before I got so tired of it that letting one of them kill me first would start to seem like an easy way out?
In the past, what had held me together had been my friends. When I’d brushed up against the darkness, Anne and Luna and Vari had grounded me, given me something to hold on to. Now I was drifting.
And if I succeeded at everything, if I somehow managed to bring Anne back from her possession, would she still want me? Back in the early days, my relationship with Anne had nearly ended because I killed one person. How would she react to what I’d become now?
I sighed and lay down on my bed. I’d stripped off my clothes while I was thinking, and now I switched off the light and lay on my back, staring up at the ceiling. I remembered a conversation I’d had with a Dark mage, back when I was still an apprentice. He was an older man who’d been a battle-mage for a long time before retiring, and he’d told me something that had stuck with me. He’d said that a lot of the people he’d known back in the life had died not when they threw themselves into danger, but after. They’d been able to stay ahead of their enemies while they’d been going all out; it had been afterwards, when they’d tried to slow down, that it had caught up with them.
I couldn’t afford to do that. I had to be ruthless.
But how much of myself was I going to lose?
My artificial arm felt cold against my side. I put it out of my mind and forced myself to sleep.
—
I was in the middle of a dream when I became aware of someone seeking me. The dream was vague, confused, a memory of sitting on the high grassy fields of the Heath with Anne, but as I rose to my feet I saw that I was alone. I readied myself, aware of a presence coming closer.
A door opened in the air just up ahead, white-and-blue crystal. It swung open to reveal a figure behind. “Hey, Alex,” Luna said. “Got a minute?”
I shook off the sleep-mist and walked forward, letting the dream weaken and fade. By the time I reached the door and stepped through, the scenery behind me had faded to black. The door swung shut with a click.
We were standing in a palace of crystal and silver, the colours a mixture of pale blues and whites. The hallway I’d stepped into looked almost as though it had been sculpted from glowing ice. Floating staircases curved away up to landings with high arched doors on the level above.
“I was wondering if you’d call,” I said, looking at Luna. Luna was wearing a white dress with sky-blue slashes, and heeled shoes that rang on the glass-like floor. “You look good.”
“It’s Elsewhere,” Luna pointed out. “I can look however I want. And you picked a hell of a time to disappear on me.”
“Yeah, sorry. I’m not really the safest person to be around right now.”
“Is this about those Keepers?”
“They’re still checking on you,” I said.
“Those two, Avenor and Saffron?” Luna shook her head. “Don’t worry about it. They’d have given up a week ago if they weren’t so desperate.”
“Mm.”
“Stop worrying, I know what I’m doing. Come on, I need to talk to you.”
I wasn’t as comfortable as Luna about shrugging off a Keeper investigation, but she turned and started walking, and I followed. We started up one of the staircases towards the balcony above. “Anne came to see me,” Luna said.
“I know.”
“You know—of course you do. You couldn’t have stopped by?”
“Every time those Keepers talk to you, Saffron’s reading your surface thoughts and Avenor’s watching your body language,” I said. “The less you have to lie to them, the safer you’ll be.”
“I was there for the raid on Onyx’s mansion and for your trip to Sal Sarque’s fortress,” Luna said. “Did they figure that out?”
“No,” I admitted.
“Yeah, because I didn’t let them. Come on, Alex, give me some credit. I’m not a little girl anymore.”
“You’re really not, are you?” I said. I looked sideways at Luna as we walked along the balcony and through the arch. She looked confident and poised, and I remembered the first time I’d brought her into Elsewhere, where I’d been the one to step into her dream. She’d come a long way since then. It was a pleasant thought. Even if this doesn’t work out, I’ll be leaving something behind.
“What are you smiling about?” Luna asked.
“Oh, nothing. You were saying?”
“Right,” Luna said. “Anne. What exactly is your plan with her?”
We’d come through into a long hall with railed galleries running around the edge. A swimming pool rippled in the centre of the hall, and fires burnt in fireplaces at floor level, giving an interesting flame-and-ice contrast, red against blue. “The Council’s the priority, then Richard,” I said. “As long as they’re out there, Anne and I have a reason to work together. Once they’re gone . . . well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
Luna nodded as if that had been what she’d expected to hear. “I’m not sure you’re going to have that long. When I was speaking to Anne . . . you were watching that?”
“Yeah.”
“Figures. Alex, she really scared me. I’ve met Dark mages out to kill me and Light ones out to kidnap me, and she frightened me more than any of them. I’d rather be back in Onyx’s mansion dodging fireblasts than spend another ten minutes alone in a room with her.”
“Why?” I said slowly. “What are you afraid she’ll do?”
“I don’t know,” Luna said. She fell silent and we walked a few steps, her shoes tapping on the gallery floor. “It felt like a recruitment pitch. I think she’s trying to get a bunch more jinn-bonded mages, with her as the boss.”
I frowned, thinking. “I’ve been learning some things about jinn.” I told Luna what I’d heard from Sonder. “Maybe that’s her plan. She wants hosts for those four ifrit.”
“And then what?”
“God knows.”
“Do you think the jinn’s making the decisions?” Luna asked. “Is she that far gone?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “The jinn might be nudging her, but she’s still the one in control. For now, at least.”
“Yeah, that was the feeling I got too,” Luna said. “But I don’t think that’s the good news you seem to think it is.”