Dr Shirland had made it clear that in the end, the only one who could solve this problem was Anne. If I kept pushing her, would it help? Or would it just make her resentful?
In the end what swung my decision was remembering what Luna had said. Anne was under enough pressure. Right now, what she needed more than anything was people on her side. ‘All right.’
‘You agree with me?’
‘I’m not sure how comfortable I am with it,’ I admitted. ‘But you know yourself better than I do. Just remember that if you ever want to talk about it, you can.’
It was dark enough that I couldn’t make out Anne’s face any more, but I could feel her relax. ‘Thank you.’
We lay there for a little while longer, watching the stars come out one by one in the dusky sky. Below us, the Frisbee match ended. The players gathered up their bags and clothes, laughing and calling to one another, and headed away eastwards towards Parliament Hill. ‘It’s easier like this,’ Anne said.
‘What is?’
‘Everything.’ Anne gazed up at the stars. ‘I wish all my days could be this way.’
The dog walkers and the rest of the people in the park had vanished. We stayed as the summer evening turned into night.
‘… and so that’s the current state of play,’ Talisid said.
I was sitting in a coffee shop, people all around me. It was evening in the West End and the place was bustling, the whirr of the coffee machines blending with the noise of the crowd. Talisid and I were talking through a communicator focus, audio only, and I was keeping my voice down just to be on the safe side, but honestly, I probably could have been as loud as I liked and it wouldn’t have made a difference. Most of the crowd wouldn’t have paid attention and the few that did would have just assumed I was using a hands-free. The air smelled pleasant, a mix of coffee beans and food from the bakery.
‘So let me get this straight,’ I said to Talisid. ‘They’re going ahead with the assault, but they don’t want me there. But they also want me to be on call during the operation. So I’m supposed to be close enough that I can come if I’m called, but not close enough that I’ll be there if I’m not.’
‘Yes,’ Talisid admitted.
‘Am I the only one noticing the problem with this?’
‘The two directives may have come from different people.’
I sighed. ‘Of course they did.’
‘I’m sorry about the way that this has unfolded,’ Talisid said. ‘I imagine you feel as though you’re being shut out. This operation was largely yours from the beginning.’
‘Oh, it’s what I expected,’ I said. ‘The Keepers were never going to want me on board.’ While I had some friends in the Order of the Shield, the biggest and most influential of the Keeper orders is the Order of the Star, and they’d hated me ever since their attempt to arrest me for treason. It had always struck me as backwards – shouldn’t I be the one holding a grudge against them? – but I guess they really don’t like being made to look foolish. ‘Just out of curiosity, if everything does go pear-shaped and they decide they need my help after all, how exactly do they expect me to get there in time?’
‘Presumably via gate.’
‘Firstly the Tiger’s Palace has wards; secondly the Keepers are going to set up an interdiction field; and thirdly there’s the little detail that I’m a diviner and can’t use gate magic.’
‘Gate stone?’
‘Sure, I’d really have a gate stone keyed to there. Look, just forget about it. I’ll figure something out.’
‘I could ask the Keepers in charge … Are you close enough to reach the area on foot?’
I glanced out the window. I was in the middle of Soho; the Tiger’s Palace was two blocks away. ‘Not really, no.’
‘I see … Hopefully things will go to plan.’
‘Which they won’t, because it’s the Tiger’s Palace,’ I said. The Tiger’s Palace is run by a rakshasa named Jagadev. He hates mages and humans in general, and it’s a good rule that anything associated with the place is going to be bad news. ‘Have they confirmed that Richard’s going to be there?’
‘Divinations have been unreliable,’ Talisid said. ‘But what human intelligence we’ve been able to gather has provided some support for Onyx’s claim.’
In other words, this whole thing was happening because of the deal I’d negotiated. Depending on how things went tonight, that could be anything from quite good to very bad. ‘Assuming Richard’s going to be there, how carefully are you hiding your preparations? Because I’m not sure how you’re expecting to go undetected moving in … how many men was it? A hundred?’
‘The Keepers are not willing to go in undermanned,’ Talisid said. ‘And I agree with them. We’ve yet to have a direct confrontation with Drakh’s cabal, and their full capabilities are still unknown. But yes, there’s a very high chance that we will be detected on approach, at which point we expect Drakh to attempt an escape.’
I was pretty sure that the Council had had a direct confrontation with Drakh’s cabal already, just last year at the Vault, and that it had gone decidedly in Richard’s favour, but I didn’t bring that up. ‘Keep me updated, please. If this is going to get messy, it’d be nice to have some warning.’
‘I’ll do what I can. Talisid out.’ The communicator clicked off.
I lowered the communicator and looked at the two girls on the other side of the table. ‘Did you catch all that?’
‘I got the gist,’ Luna said. ‘“Not close enough”?’
‘I don’t see the need to keep Talisid updated with every little detail,’ I said. ‘Besides, it’s not like he tells me everything.’
‘I think that was going a little further than not telling him everything,’ Anne said.
‘Oh, he’ll be fine,’ Luna said. ‘We ready to go?’
‘I think we’ll move about half an hour from now,’ I said. ‘We want to go in when the crowd’s busiest.’
‘You’d be a lot safer if I was with you,’ Anne said.
‘Not this again,’ Luna said.
‘I don’t like the idea of you two in there alone,’ Anne said. ‘Remember, I lived there.’
‘And that’s exactly why you can’t go in,’ I said. ‘Jagadev kicked you out under sentence of death.’
‘That didn’t stop you going back.’
‘We need someone on the outside as backup,’ Luna said.
‘If I’m outside and things go wrong fast enough I won’t be able to give you any backup,’ Anne said. ‘You know I can’t do anything at range. If someone shoots you and I’m not close …’
Luna started to argue, but I raised my hand and she stopped. ‘Richard may be there,’ I said.
‘He might not be,’ Anne said.
‘I don’t care,’ I said. ‘We know that Richard wants you, and we know he still has some kind of influence over that jinn. I don’t want you in the same room as him. End of discussion.’
Anne didn’t look happy, but she didn’t argue. We settled down to wait.
It was half an hour later when we paid our tab and headed out. We turned down two side streets before coming to a stop. ‘You ready?’ I asked Anne.
‘I suppose,’ Anne said. ‘You’ll tell me when anything goes wrong?’
I smiled slightly. ‘Don’t you mean if anything goes wrong?’
‘No.’
I glanced around. We were at the corner of two of the Soho back streets. Music and laughter spilled out of a bar with a flashing neon sign above, and on the other side was a pair of shops with tinted windows and ribbon curtains over the doors. There was enough light to make out the groups of people on the street, but not enough to see their faces. The air smelled of sweat and spilled alcohol. ‘You going to be okay?’