Caldera recovered and stared at me, eyes narrowed. From around, I could hear the murmurs from the crowd—I’d hit her maybe a dozen times, while she’d yet to land a punch. It probably looked as though I were winning, but appearances are deceptive. Just as with most of my fights with elemental mages, I could hit Caldera, but I couldn’t hurt her. My hands were already stinging from the impacts on her skin, while I knew she wasn’t so much as bruised. I was a wasp fighting a bear—I could sting and dodge, but one solid blow and I’d be crushed.
Caldera kept coming, speeding up. Now she was going all-out, and with each move I was getting a second or less to react. I kept hitting her back, but she’d obviously figured out that I couldn’t hurt her and had decided to just ignore it. Sweat dripped down my forehead, and my arms and legs were starting to burn with fatigue. A spark of fear was starting to grow in my gut, the feeling you get when you’re up against an enemy you can’t defeat. Intellectually I knew this was just a sparring match and Caldera wasn’t actually trying to kill me, but my instincts weren’t listening.
A block and a grab sent me backpedalling into the circle of watchers; Keepers jumped to their feet and scrambled away as Caldera and I went through them. Caldera kept pressing me, then abruptly switched tactics and just charged. I hit her once on the way in, but I didn’t manage to open the range in time and she tackled me.
It felt like being kicked by a horse. I hit the floor with her on top of me, driving the breath from my lungs. I couldn’t get up or away in time, and for an instant panic took over. There were weapons where we’d fallen; without looking I caught one up and brought it under Caldera’s chin with one quick slash.
Caldera scrambled back, coming up to her feet. Her eyes were wide, and she brought one hand up to touch her throat. I lay on the floor, breathing hard.
The Keepers came around, slowing to a leisurely pace as they saw the fight was over. “She took him down,” one of them said.
“Yeah, and he cut her throat,” someone else replied.
A few others were talking but I didn’t listen. I looked down at the weapon in my hand. It was a training knife with a rubber blade; Caldera’s group had been working with them earlier and when she’d tackled me we’d fallen into the middle of them. My fingers were still wrapped around the plastic handle and with an effort I made myself get up. The Keepers were still talking, but a good half of them were watching me. On a few faces I could see considering looks.
“Thanks for the match,” I said to Caldera. I set the knife down and walked out without waiting for an answer.
I changed quickly, avoiding the rest of the Keepers, and headed outside. By the time I was out in the street and in the cold air I’d calmed down a little. Now that I could think clearly again I knew that what I’d just done had not been a smart move. The Keepers already suspected me of murder—going for a killing attack like that would not have made a good impression.
Why had I gone for that knife? The rubber blade had been harmless, but the move I’d used it for had not been, and I’d never even made the conscious decision to do it. I’d acted on instinct, and by the time I’d had the chance to think, it had all been over. Would I have acted like that a year ago? I was pretty sure I wouldn’t, and I had a nasty feeling that I knew what had changed. Even though it had been ten months since I’d seen Richard, just knowing that he was out there was enough to put me on edge, quicker to feel threatened, quicker to strike back.
I’d been nervous about how Caldera was going to react, but when she finally appeared, gym bag slung over one shoulder, she didn’t seem particularly bothered. She was on her phone and held up a hand to me as she approached. “Uh-huh,” she was saying into the phone. “Yeah, but I’m off duty.”
I leant against the wall, waiting for her to finish. “Okay,” Caldera was saying. “No . . . Well, too bad, ’cause unless it’s an emergency . . . Yeah . . . You okay with that? . . . Fine, you can check in with him later. Okay.” She rang off and looked at me. “Got a job.”
“Torvald?”
Caldera shook her head. “Some kind of magical fight on the DLR. It got called in through the Met and the liaisons flagged it.”
“So they want us to do what, find out what it was?”
“Apart from the ‘us’ part.”
“Come again?”
“I’m off duty as of three hours ago,” Caldera said. “You can have this one.”
“Seriously?”
“You want to be an auxiliary, you’re going to have start doing solo jobs. Can’t always be there looking over your shoulder.” Caldera glanced at me. “You can handle it?”
“I guess.”
“Central’ll forward you the report.” Caldera yawned. “I’m off. Have fun.”
“Uh . . .”
“What?”
“About what happened in the gym?”
“What about it?”
I hesitated. Caldera looked surprised. “That bothering you? Don’t worry about it.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Best match I’ve had in weeks.” Caldera grinned. “You won’t get me with the same trick next time, though. I won’t go easy on you.”
“Then I guess I won’t either.”
“Promises, promises.” Caldera gave me a wave as she walked off. “Have a good one!”
I watched Caldera walk away, then shook my head and turned away with a smile. At least there was one person who wasn’t bothered.
The message that arrived a few minutes later directed me to Pudding Mill Lane station, on the Docklands Light Railway. It wasn’t a quick journey, and I had plenty of time to read through the incident report on my phone. Apparently a woman had made a 999 call claiming to have seen some kind of firefight on the station platform. The British Transport Police had shown up, found nothing, concluded that it had been a wind-up, and buggered off. Which was the end of the story as far as the authorities went, but the Keepers have listening posts in the police, and the report had raised enough flags to warrant sending someone over . . . though apparently not quite enough flags to send anyone important. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do when I got there, but I supposed I’d just have to find out.
The Docklands Light Railway (aka the DLR) is one of the more unique ways to get around London, a raised railway crowded with small driverless red-and-blue trains that link up all the places in East London where absolutely no other lines go. It has four branches, winding and intertwining, and it can take you anywhere from Lewisham in the south to Stratford in the north or all the way eastwards towards Woolwich. I was on the northern branch, heading towards Stratford. Pudding Mill Lane was the last station before the Stratford terminus, and when the train arrived no one got off apart from me.
DLR stations are very lonely compared to the Underground. The DLR was designed with automation in mind, and just as the trains don’t have drivers, the stations have the absolute bare minimum of staff. This one had none at all, and there were no passengers either. The station was a single-platform design with rails on either side, and all around was blackness. Pudding Mill Lane was right in the middle of what had once been the Olympic Park, the great centre for the London Olympics. For a few weeks the square mile in which I was standing had been the busiest place in London, but now it was a giant construction site, a jungle of concrete and fencing and metal scaffolds, abandoned and empty. Beyond the railway to both east and west, the land dropped away into half-constructed buildings, lying silent and unused. The old running track had been torn up and now was a giant heap of dark earth, filling the air with the scent of mud and water. According to the plans, this place was going to be turned into housing eventually, but there wasn’t anyone living there now. Scattered towers rose up all around, and to one side I could see the skyscrapers of the Stratford skyline, an oval-shaped tower looming over us with a ring of rainbow neon glowing at the top, colours shifting from blue to purple to green. To the northeast, the Olympic stadium was a squat shadow in the darkness. Cars rushed along a main road to the east, but they were half a mile away and nothing else was moving. Despite being in the middle of the largest city in the British Isles, I was completely alone.