“Leave,” I told the girl, doing my best imitation of Avis.
The girl turned, taken aback. “I don’t—What do you mean?”
“This is not something you want to involve yourself in,” I said, making my voice harsh. “Take your partner and get lost.”
The girl looked back at me for a second, then her face changed and she straightened. All of a sudden she looked a lot less vulnerable. She gave me a disgusted glance and walked away without a word. In my peripheral vision, I saw the boy slip something back into his pocket and disappear from view.
Sonder had watched the whole thing in confusion; now as I turned back to him he drew back suspiciously. “Who are you?”
I shook my head and switched to my normal voice. “Sonder, if fooling you is this easy, you really shouldn’t be hanging out at Dark audiences.”
Sonder stared. “Alex?”
I took a step away. “Come on. Those two might decide to come back, and if they do they’ll bring company.”
Sonder didn’t follow. “What are you doing here? We didn’t invite you!”
“‘Why thank you, Alex,’” I said to the open air. “‘You’re welcome, Sonder.’”
“I didn’t need your help!”
“Another three minutes,” I told Sonder, “and you would have been challenged to a duel. Traditional, not azimuth.”
“For what?”
“Making a move on someone’s girlfriend, breaking a social taboo, stealing something that just would have happened to turn up in your pocket . . . whatever they decided to set you up for. Are you coming or not?”
“No!” Sonder glared at me. “You’re not in charge and we’ve got work to do.”
I let out a breath. I hadn’t really expected Sonder to be happy to see me, but this was starting to wear on my nerves and I’d already seen that Meredith was looking for me. “Suit yourself.” I turned and walked away. Sonder didn’t follow.
Meredith found me less than two minutes later, and from the way she was looking at me I knew this conversation was going to go less smoothly than the last one. “Morden says he doesn’t know anything about that girl,” she said without preamble.
“Really.”
“I think he’s telling the truth,” Meredith said. Her eyes were narrowed as she watched me. “You were lying to me. You weren’t trying to help at all.”
“Lying and pretending to care about someone? What kind of terrible person would do that?” I leant closer towards Meredith and dropped the pretence, letting her see the coldness in my eyes. “You set me up to be killed. Did you think I forgot?”
Meredith backed away; she looked afraid, but there was anger underneath it. Without saying a word she spun and marched away. She’d lost her usual grace and her movements were spiky and quick.
I watched her go. Meredith doesn’t have much combat magic, but it’s a big mistake to think that that means she can’t be dangerous. It was probably a good time to start thinking about leaving. There was a chime and Luna spoke into my ear. “Well, that didn’t work.”
I started towards the balcony. “What didn’t?”
“I found Sagash’s apprentices. Two of them, anyway.”
I leant over the balcony and scanned the crowd below. “Two guys by the long table on the far right?”
“That’s them.”
The two mages I was looking at were too far away for me to get a good view, but it looked as though one was blond-haired and white, and the other West Indian or African. Both wore masks, and they were talking quietly, standing close together at an angle where they could watch each other’s backs. “Huh,” I said. “You know, they look awfully like those descriptions Sonder gave us.”
“Yep.”
“You were talking to them, right? Did you get anything?”
“Kind of. I challenged the blond one to a duel.”
“You did what?”
“Relax, he turned me down. Anyway, it was only a first-blood thing.”
“‘First blood’ means something a bit different here. What were you thinking?”
“Well, Sonder got a look at the magic those two were using, right? I figured if he said yes, Sonder could watch and we could check to see if it was really them.”
“That . . .” I paused. “. . . could work, actually.”
“I know, right? Anyway, I tried calling him a coward, but that didn’t draw him out either, so—”
“What?” A passing mage gave me a curious look and I glared at him, then hurriedly turned away.
“I said he turned me down; calm down already. It’s kind of a pity, I’ve never had a match against a Dark apprentice.”
“You’re out of your mind. Never mind. I’ll come down and we can—”
I was facing out over the main club floor, directly above Morden’s group, and at this point I caught sight of Meredith. She was talking to Onyx, and as I watched she pointed up to the balcony in the direction of the spot we’d last been talking. Onyx turned his head towards me and I ducked back out of sight. “Uh-oh.”
“Uh-oh, what?”
“Change of plan,” I said. Going down to floor level would mean passing Onyx and walking out into the open, neither of which struck me as a good idea just now. “Get Sonder.”
“What for?”
“I’m guessing you asked those apprentices a bunch of leading questions? Odds are as soon as you were out of earshot they started trying to figure out how much you knew. If you can get Sonder there—”
“—then he can look back to see what they said! Let’s do it.”
Looking into the future, I knew that Onyx was heading in my direction. I moved towards the wall and behind the cover of a pillar. “Sonder,” I said. “You there?”
“What?” Sonder said after a pause. He sounded harassed, as though he’d been in the middle of another conversation.
“Got a job for you. Mind helping Luna out with something?”
“Luna— She’s here?”
“Bingo,” Luna said over the link. “Meet me at the foot of the stairs, okay?”
“What were you thinking, bringing her here?” Sonder said. “You’re her master, you’re supposed to look after her!”
From the other side of the pillar, I heard quick footsteps as Onyx strode past. Onyx is Morden’s Chosen, slim and deadly; he’s an extremely powerful and specialised battle-mage and he hates my guts. The one bright side (from my point of view) is that he’s so specialised a battle-mage that he’s very bad at anything that doesn’t directly involve hurting or killing things, meaning that while he’s very dangerous in a fight, he’s remarkably bad at spotting anyone hiding from him. “Excuse me?” Luna said in annoyance. “I’m older than you are.”
“You’re still only an apprentice. You shouldn’t be here!”
“Since when did you get to—”
Another chime sounded in my ear. “Hold, please,” I said as I emerged from behind the pillar and headed in the opposite direction from Onyx. I switched circuits. “Hello?”
Sonder and Luna’s voices cut out and Caldera’s voice sounded in my ear. She sounded pissed. “Verus, what are you playing at?”
“You know, this isn’t a great time,” I said, taking a glance around. I couldn’t see Meredith but I knew Onyx was coming back for another pass. “Can I call you back?”
“I told you not to go inside!”
“Technically I was inside already.”
“You bloody well knew what I meant!”
“Well, here’s the thing. As you made clear to Variam earlier today, you Keepers have a strict chain of command, and I’m not in it.”
Caldera started swearing. Onyx was heading back towards me and I slipped into a side room. “I am going to kill you,” Caldera said once she was coherent again.
“You might have to get in line,” I said. The communicator chimed again. “Hold, please.”
“No! Where are—”
I switched channels. “Receiving,” I said, then stepped back into the shadows behind a wall hanging.
“Alex?” Variam said into my ear. “Think we might have a problem.”
Onyx appeared in my view through the doorway. He looked as pissed off as Caldera had sounded. He turned his head from side to side, searching, then whirled and headed back the way he’d come. “Someone’s just arrived at the front,” Variam said. “His getup looks really similar to what you’re wearing. Like, really similar.”