“I can heal any cuts faster than I get them,” Anne said. She was still wearing my coat, bare legs showing as she moved. “Do you want to try the back gate or the front?”
“Back. If there’s a password I might be able to hack it if I get a good look.”
“If you can’t?”
“Then we look for a backup plan,” I said. We left the windmill and began crossing the grass towards the entrance into the next courtyard. A few scattered feathers by the pool marked where the blink fox had made its kill. “If worst comes to worst we can go to ground and hope Luna and Vari and Arachne work out some way to get in touch, but that’s not . . .” I stopped walking.
Anne came to a halt and looked at me. “What is it?”
“I’m not sure.” I frowned, looking ahead. I’d scanned the futures from the top of the windmill only a few minutes ago and everything had looked clear, but for some reason something was catching at my attention, some sort of encounter. It looked as though it was in the immediate future, but that didn’t make sense—I would have seen that coming. “Hold on.”
Anne tilted her head, puzzled. I looked into the futures in which we waited where we were. There was someone coming. What the hell? I couldn’t see any immediate combat, but there was no way I should have missed something that blatant. It wasn’t the castle—the shrouds didn’t block divination magic. I couldn’t have been that careless . . . could I? “We’ve got company,” I said. “Back to the windmill, quick!”
Anne’s eyes went wide. We hurried back to the windmill and up the steps to the doorway, where I turned. That was better—now we had some cover. “Who is it?” Anne asked.
“Working on it.” I still couldn’t see any combat but that wasn’t much reassurance—just because the encounter didn’t start with violence didn’t mean it wouldn’t end that way, and we didn’t have any friends in this place that I knew of. I focused on a single future, narrowing it down to get a clearer vision. It was a man, coming closer. Not Sagash. Not his apprentices. That was strange—why was I standing like that? It was as though I were scared of something. It was a little tricky to focus on the image, but not too hard. There. It was—
Wait, that couldn’t be right.
Oh, Jesus.
Anne looked at me sharply. “Alex? Are you okay?”
I stood frozen, staring into space. All I could do was look at the futures over and over again, as if doing it would make them change.
“Alex,” Anne said, looking worried. She touched a hand to my shoulder. “Your heart rate just jumped. What’s wrong?”
My heart was hammering in my chest. I wasn’t imagining any of it, it was all real. Oh shit oh shit oh shit . . . I felt my hands starting to shake and turned on Anne. “Run. Now!”
Anne looked at me, puzzled. “What?”
“Get out of here.” I spoke as fast as I could, the words tumbling out of my mouth. “Someone’s coming, you can’t be here when he arrives. Get up to the top of the windmill, you can get away that way. Go!”
“Who’s coming?”
“There’s no time! Get out of here!”
“Then . . . why aren’t you running as well?”
I was too paralysed to come up with an answer. Anne looked at me, then when I didn’t reply she shook her head. “I’m staying.”
“No!”
“If it’s a person coming, I can defend myself better than you can.”
“I’m not asking!” Terror was making it hard for me to think clearly; I pointed up towards the ceiling. “Do as I say and get out of here, now!”
“You’re not my master, and I don’t think you’re thinking straight. Besides . . .” Something flickered in Anne’s eyes. “I’m tired of things happening to other people because of me. Whoever’s coming, it can’t be Sagash or his apprentices or you’d have said. Who is it?”
I stared at Anne, then slumped a little. “You win,” I said quietly. “Make sure you don’t regret it.”
Doubt showed in Anne’s eyes, and she looked at me with a frown. I think it wasn’t until then that she got a glimpse of just how afraid I really was. I turned towards the grassy space and we waited in silence.
I spend a lot of time running from things. It works, up to a point. Most of the time when you’re in danger, the one who’s threatening you isn’t after you, not personally. They just want something you have, or you’re in the way for some reason. Get away from them and stay away long enough, and things will change.
But sometimes what the other person wants isn’t a thing, or a piece of information, or some other short-term goal. Sometimes what they want is you. And when that happens, then all running does is put things off. It’ll delay them, but if they want you badly enough then eventually they’ll catch up again. Sooner or later you’ll have to face them—the most you can do is choose the time and the place.
Anne and I waited in the doorway, looking out across the pond towards the castle walls. To our left, the sails of the windmill kept turning, the rhythmic creaking sound echoing through stone and wood. The sun still hadn’t yet reached a high enough point in the sky to look down onto our little enclave, and the grass and water were left in shadow. There was a doorway in the castle wall, and from the courtyard beyond I heard footsteps. At my side I felt Anne turn her head, looking through the wall towards something only she could see.
The footsteps grew louder and I felt light-headed, grey spots sparkling before my eyes. Old words came back to my mind, Tobruk’s voice speaking to me from another time, vicious and cruel. He’s going to find you and he’s going to hurt you and you’re going to die. Make sure you stay alive till then, Alex. I want to see your face. I’d never really believed he was telling the truth.
The man who stepped out onto the grass was maybe forty or fifty, though few trying to guess his age would have bothered. Everything about him was ordinary: brown hair, brown eyes, average height, average build. Most people would have glanced over him without a second thought. I couldn’t have told you what he was wearing; just the sight of him was enough to freeze my blood. He stood in the shadow of the castle wall, looking straight towards me, and I held my breath.
“Alex,” Richard said. “It’s been a long time.”
Chapter 9
I first met Richard in my last year of school, only a few days before my eighteenth birthday. Within a month I’d left school, left home, and moved into Richard’s mansion, the last apprentice of four. Richard is very good at being persuasive.
We studied magic in Richard’s mansion and were sent on missions together, but the lessons that really stuck in my memory weren’t to do with magic or fieldwork, but ways of thinking. I’d always been clever, but for most of my life I’d never really used it for anything, at least nothing practical. I’d thought of intelligence as an academic thing, not something you used in the real world. Richard showed me differently. Seeing patterns and predicting them, analysing people’s behaviour, looking multiple steps ahead . . . always thinking, always planning, never standing still. The other three threw themselves into their magic, and in raw power they left me further behind every day, but the biggest thing I learnt from Richard was that the mind can be a more powerful weapon than any spell. There were a hundred little tricks I learnt from watching him, and I remembered them all. It didn’t take me long to decide that I was better than Richard was. I was still a teenager, and like most teenagers I was sure I was smarter than my teachers. Richard might be good at planning, but I was a diviner.