“They know we’re coming.”
Slate eyed me. “You have something to do with that?”
“White Rose aren’t stupid,” I said. “There are silent alarms spread out through this building. The guys here aren’t meant up to stand up to a Keeper raid; they’re an ablative screen. Same way you guys use your security men.”
“Any chance we can do it peacefully?” Haken asked.
“We step through that gate, they’re going to shoot first and ask questions later. And if you try to talk them down, you might not live long enough to do it. They’ve got a barbican setup. Crossfire, wards, the works.”
“So how about you go first?” Slate said. “They’re your kind, right?”
I gave Slate a look. He grinned and looked at Haken. “So we doing it?”
Haken shook his head. “No.” He threw me a phone; I caught it one-handed. “From one of the guys downstairs. Get me the password.”
I nodded, thumbed the display to reveal the unlock screen, and started working through the numbers. Slate looked at me, then at Haken. “Seriously?” he said in disbelief. “You’re still trying to talk to her?”
“We are trying,” Haken said, “to do this peacefully.”
“Hey, Haken,” Slate said. “You might have missed it so here’s a newsflash for you: Dark mages don’t go peacefully. This is a fucking waste of time.”
Haken looked levelly at Slate. “Go down and help Coatl.”
Slate gave us a disgusted look and stalked off. “Well, this is the place,” Abeyance said. “Vihaela’s used this gate. At least once in the past week, maybe more.”
“Good,” Haken said. “Keep looking for anything else with her. Verus?”
I’d found the passcode and had been scanning the past calls and the messages. “Code is 1535,” I said, tossing the phone back to Haken. “Look for the contact listed as B. It’s not Vihaela, but he’s got access.”
“Uh,” Lizbeth said. “Not to point out the obvious, but how’s calling her going to help?”
Haken didn’t look up from the phone. “Is there a problem?”
“Yeah, the fact that these guys haven’t turned up shit and we’ve got nothing on Vihaela. You think she’s going to just roll up?”
“If she doesn’t,” Haken said absently, “she’ll be disobeying the Council.”
“Oh yeah, that’ll scare her.”
Haken looked up at Lizbeth. “I want you and Trask up here. Set up a defence in case anyone comes through that gate. Verus, you’re on early warning. I want to know at least two minutes before anyone steps through.” He looked between the three of us. “If you make contact, you notify me immediately. You are not to attack first under any circumstances. Clear?”
Trask nodded. “Fine by me,” I said.
Haken looked at Lizbeth. “Clear?”
“Your funeral,” Lizbeth said.
Haken turned and left. “This is the most fucked-up operation I’ve ever seen,” Lizbeth said. “Can you believe this?”
“Mm,” I said. I was trying to see if I could eavesdrop on Haken’s call, but he wasn’t making it yet—he was just heading downstairs. Maybe if I followed farther . . . no, he was going to gate away first. Is he on to me? Worrying thought . . .
“Hey!” Lizbeth told me. “You awake?”
“I can watch for trouble, or I can talk to you,” I said. “Which would you prefer?”
Lizbeth glowered at me, then crossed her arms and looked away. Trask still hadn’t spoken, and Abeyance was still lost in the trance of her timesight. I looked between the three mages and inwardly sighed.
Twenty minutes passed, then forty. The noise level from below diminished as the Council security cleared out the building. A team arrived and set up on the landing, weapons ready. I wanted to go down and find out more, but I was too concerned about the possibility of what Haken had said. It sounded as though he was inviting Vihaela here to talk. By now she’d have to know what had happened here. Would she really leave her fortified base to walk into the middle of a Keeper team like this?
If I were Vihaela and I wanted to talk, I’d do it remotely. If I wanted to fight, I’d just blow up the building. There was no scenario I could think of in which Vihaela’s best option was to come walking through that gate, yet that was what Haken had set me to watch for. I checked future after future, looking for alternate lines of attack: a gate to a different part of the building, a triggered explosive, a toxin or gas. Nothing pinged. Maybe Haken was talking to Vihaela right now . . .
Something shifted in the futures, a ghostly possibility, there and gone again. I stopped, searched, lost the strand, found it again. Movement, lots of movement. A person . . .
My eyes went wide and I looked up. “Trask! Get Haken. Vihaela’s coming.”
Trask put a hand to his ear and started speaking, his voice low and urgent. Lizbeth snapped out orders to the security men on the landing and all of a sudden the room was full of movement. Footsteps came running up the landing. Cerulean was first in; he must have been very close. Haken and Slate followed. Within a minute the small attic was crowded with people. Slate and Trask were at the front, Lizbeth and Haken a step behind. Abeyance had made herself scarce. Half a dozen Council security took up positions covering the gate, kneeling with their submachine guns ready. They weren’t about to fire . . . yet, but between them and the mages, there was enough firepower trained on that gate to kill anyone. Vihaela wasn’t going to step through into that, was she?
“Verus?” Haken said.
“She’s coming,” I said. “Two men with her. They’re not going to shoot first.”
“Good,” Haken said. “Everyone hold fire.”
Seconds ticked by. The room was silent but for the sound of breathing. Council security shifted position, adjusting their guns. Ahead of me, I saw Lizbeth flex her fingers, eager. I took a step back. Cerulean was in the corner, arms folded. There was a lot of power in this room, and it was pointed away from me. So why was I suddenly so nervous?
The gate lit up in my magesight. I heard half a dozen men draw breaths as the surface of the arch darkened and went black, forming a lightless plane. An instant later, Vihaela stepped through.
Chapter 12
There’s a saying that military life is long periods of boredom punctuated by brief moments of terror. As soon as Vihaela stepped through that gate, things started happening very fast.
Vihaela was dressed in brown and black, similar to her image in the Keeper records—actually, exactly like her image in the Keeper records. She stopped abruptly at the sight of all the people facing her. Two figures in suits stepped out behind her, brushing past on either side. They looked like men, but their blank expressions and the solid lines of their futures marked them as constructs.
The futures went crazy. All of a sudden dozens of new possibilities started unfolding, combat and confrontation and magic and violence all blending together, overwhelming me with information. It was too much and for a second I froze. “Mage Vihaela,” Haken began. “Under the authority—”
Danger, pain, death. There was a threat, and it was directed at me. Instinct broke my paralysis. “Haken!” I snapped. “Trouble!”
“—of the—” Haken stopped.
Green-black light bloomed around Vihaela’s hands, tendrils materialising out of the air. In an instant they’d formed into snakelike shapes with skull faces, rearing back like scorpion tails, ready to strike. The two constructs reached up under their coats, their movements perfectly synchronised, pulling out handguns.
“Gun!” someone shouted.
“Drop the—!”
Magical auras filled the room, overwhelming to my sight, air and fire and death and water. I couldn’t see the spell behind Vihaela’s green light; she took a step back, eyes going wide in fright, then the snakes lashed out with a piercing shriek, casting a hellish glow. Guns fired, deafening in the enclosed space. There was too much going on, and I could sense danger but it wasn’t matching up with the spells Vihaela was using. One of Vihaela’s snakes hit Slate; his shield was already up and the green light splintered into shards. A construct was in the middle of firing when an air blade severed its shoulder; I caught one fleeting glimpse of the arm pinwheeling, no blood from the wound, the fingers still tightening on the trigger to send a bullet into the floor. Then all of a sudden my precognition screamed, images of pain and death and blackness flashing in front of my eyes. Someone was about to kill me and I didn’t know who or how, but I could see the futures in which I lived and that was all I needed to know. I dived left, twisting; something tugged at my shoulder and I heard a splintering thud. I hit the floor hard, pain jolting through my side, and rolled left. I came up to my feet . . .