‘Well … kind of.’
‘Are you flexible enough for those?’
In answer, Anne lifted up her right knee, then wrapped her right hand behind the calf and pulled it up until her foot was above her head. She held her balance on one leg, looking at me with raised eyebrows and a ‘what you think of that?’ expression.
I nodded, bent forward to inspect her standing leg, then poked her hard in the thigh. Anne yelped and lost her balance, tumbling to the grass.
‘That’s why you don’t do high kicks,’ I told her.
‘You are such a jerk!’ Anne bounced up and swiped at me. I leaned back and let it breeze by, then stepped back. Anne took a step forward, realised I was already out of range and settled for glaring at me. ‘You could have just told me.’
‘This way’s faster.’
‘You’re not the one getting jabbed in the leg!’
‘Take that same pose again,’ I said. ‘I promise I won’t touch you this time.’
Anne gave me a suspicious look but obeyed, folding her leg upwards, wobbling slightly. ‘I’ll reach in slowly,’ I said. ‘Try to dodge.’
I bent forward, reaching for the same spot. Anne hopped away, started to fall and brought her other leg down fast. ‘Any time you take a foot off the ground, you lose balance,’ I said. ‘Keeping both feet low with good balance lets you move, and movement is what keeps you alive.’
‘So what do you do then?’ Anne said. ‘Just simple punches?’
‘Have you ever seen me do a complicated move in a fight?’
‘I haven’t exactly sat around to watch.’
‘One of my first self-defence teachers told me that I shouldn’t bother with any technique that I couldn’t learn in five minutes,’ I said. ‘Idea is, if you can make it work in five minutes, then practising will make it better. If you can’t make it work in five minutes, then you probably won’t be able to make it work in a high-stress situation. When your life’s at stake you want something that works every time. Simple is good.’
We worked for another half-hour before I called it a day. Anne wasn’t sweating (another one of those unfair life mage things) but her reactions were getting slow and it was obvious she was running out of energy. As soon as I let the pads drop, she did too.
‘So are we going back to the War Rooms?’ Anne asked once we’d both had the chance to catch our breath.
‘I don’t think it’s worth the effort,’ I said. ‘They’ll call if they really need us.’
Anne yawned. ‘They usually do, don’t they?’
I looked at Anne. She was lying on the grass with her hands behind her head, and didn’t seem in a hurry to leave. ‘Want to go somewhere?’
‘Where?’
I shrugged. ‘You’ve done your shift at the clinic, and I’ve cleaned out my in-tray. I’m sure the rest of the Council will want us available, but it won’t be for anything useful. So why don’t we have some fun for a change?’
Anne tilted her head to look up at me. ‘Okay.’
So we did.
It was a relief to spend some time doing something that didn’t involve political manoeuvring. I’d been on the Council for nine months now, and I’d become reasonably adept at playing the game, but one thing that I hadn’t anticipated back when I’d started was the degree to which it would wear me down. When I was in the War Rooms, there was no such thing as a casual conversation. Every sentence was studied for hidden meanings, every action taken as a message, and wherever you went, people were always watching. Even with the mages whom I considered allies, like Belthas and Druss, I had to be on guard, making sure that I stayed useful enough for them to keep me around. I had no friends in the War Rooms; there were allies of circumstance, and that was about it.
When you’re spending your days in that kind of environment, you need a safety valve, and for me, that had been my circle of friends: Anne and Variam, Luna and Arachne. No matter how bad things got, I knew that I could always find them and relax in their company, even if it was only for a little while. It probably isn’t a surprise that out of all of them, the one I’d come to rely on the most was Anne. We’d been spending a lot of time together recently, though in most cases it was dominated by work – there was always some new political problem or threat to talk about. But now, for a change, we had some time to ourselves. It was a strange feeling.
We went for lunch in La Rochelle, then visited Nara in Japan. I’d picked the countries semi-randomly for reasons of safety (if I didn’t know where I was going next, no one else would either) but as the day wore on and no signs of danger appeared, I began to relax. It’s not something I get to do very often these days.
‘They’re so cute,’ Anne said. We were under one of the trees in Nara Park, and Anne was stroking one of the deer. It was light brown and rather fat, and it was chewing its cud with a self-satisfied expression.
‘It doesn’t seem to care about us very much, does it?’ I asked. Nara’s a big tourist attraction, and the deer here get a lot of free food, which probably explained this one’s weight.
‘He’s got a full stomach and he’s feeling lazy,’ Anne said. She scratched the deer between the ears; it blinked at her. ‘I saw pictures of this place when I was younger and I really wanted to come here.’ She paused and looked at me. ‘Is that why you picked it?’
‘You might have mentioned it,’ I said. It had been a couple of months ago in Arachne’s cave; Anne had been talking to Luna and I’d been within earshot. ‘I wonder if the Hollow’s ecosystem would support deer.’
‘Not a whole herd of them,’ Anne said. ‘But a few would be fine.’ She looked at me. ‘Could we?’
‘It’s your home as well.’
Anne smiled. It’s not something she does often, and seeing it always gives me a warm feeling. ‘Then let’s.’
Evening found us back in London, on Hampstead Heath, in Pryors Field, one of the less well known parts of the park. It doesn’t have the views of Parliament Hill, but for that same reason it’s less crowded, and you can still look out south and west past the Royal Free Hospital and over London. In fairground season the place is crowded with tents and marquees, but right now that area was empty and the only other people sharing the field with us were dog walkers and a collection of students playing Frisbee. It had been a hot afternoon, and even with the coming dusk, the earth still held the warmth of the day’s sun. We lay back on the grass and watched the sky darken from blue to violet.
‘What do you think you’d have done if we’d never met?’ Anne asked.
‘That’s a funny question,’ I said. ‘You mean just you?’
‘All of us,’ Anne said. ‘Me, Luna and Vari. All your problems with Levistus started because you got drawn into that hunt for the fateweaver because of Luna, right? And then it was because of Vari and me that you had to deal with what happened at Fountain Reach and with Sagash. If you’d never met any of us, you’d never have got into any of that.’
‘I guess that’s true.’
‘So what would you have done instead?’ Anne asked. ‘Where would you be?’
I thought about it for a moment. ‘Probably running my shop.’
‘Do you think you’d still be on the Council?’
‘I think if Luna hadn’t pulled me into things, I’d have kept on running the Arcana Emporium and minding my own business.’
‘Do you wish things had stayed that way?’
I considered briefly. ‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, for one thing, I probably wouldn’t be alive,’ I said. ‘Remember the Nightstalkers? They wanted me dead for something that had happened way before I met you guys. And if you hadn’t been there, they probably would have managed it.’
‘I’d forgotten about that.’