. . . and the battle was over. Vihaela and one of the security men were down. One of the constructs had been cut to pieces, its body parts scattered across the floor; the other was thrashing, headless, its remaining arm thumping erratically against the wall.
“Cease fire!” Haken shouted. “Cease fire!”
I looked left and right. The attic room hummed with magic, a dozen shields and protective spells brushing against each other. No one seemed to be paying attention to me. But someone had just nearly killed me. It hadn’t been Vihaela—I’d been watching her. The constructs had been in my field of vision.
That just left the people who were supposed to be on my side.
Whatever had caused the threat on my precognition, it wasn’t around anymore. Trask moved up to the thrashing construct and aimed a hand downward; there was the blue flash of a water spell. The construct went still and silence fell.
“No movement,” someone called.
“Rick, you okay?”
“Yeah,” a muffled voice said. It was one of the security men. “Just tripped.”
“Slate, Lizbeth,” Haken said. “Check her.”
Slate was staring at Vihaela’s still form. The Dark mage was lying facedown, crumpled against the wall. From a glance through the futures, I knew she wasn’t getting up.
“Slate!”
Slate started. “Yeah.” He and Lizbeth moved forward. Even though Vihaela looked out of it, the two of them treated her with wary caution. Lizbeth raised her hand, and I saw the grey flicker of a protection spell, then she cautiously kicked Vihaela’s ankle. Lizbeth frowned.
“Is she out?” Haken asked.
“Yeah, you could say that,” Lizbeth said. She straightened and looked at Haken. “She’s dead.”
“What?”
“As in, not alive.”
“Are you serious?” Haken demanded. “Check her pulse.”
“I don’t need to. Living people do this thing called breathing. You don’t believe me?” Lizbeth nodded at Slate. “Ask him.”
“Slate?” Haken said. There was a dangerous tone to his voice.
“Well, I didn’t fucking do it,” Slate said defensively.
“What are you getting in your deathsight?”
Slate hesitated.
“Jesus fucking Christ!” Haken spun around. “Which one of you did this?”
No one answered. The other mages in the room avoided meeting Haken’s gaze. Behind him, the bodies of Vihaela and the two constructs lay still and silent on the floor.
“I didn’t hit her that hard,” Slate said again.
Lizbeth passed a weary hand across her face. She was leaning against the wall. “Will you stop saying that?”
“Well, I didn’t.”
“Trask?” Haken said. “Give me something I can use.”
The security men had all been shooed away, and it was just the mages—me, Haken, Slate, Trask, Abeyance, Lizbeth, and Cerulean. Abeyance was using her timesight, Cerulean had faded into the background, Trask was kneeling over Vihaela’s body and examining her, and everyone else was arguing.
I listened with half an ear. I was less interested in the argument than in what I’d found in one of the walls: a pair of bullet holes. There was nothing especially remarkable about them . . . except for the fact that they were in the side wall, and Vihaela and her two constructs had been against the far wall. By my estimation, from the angle the bullets had entered, the only place they could have come from was the group of Council security and Keepers.
Which was highly relevant, since I was pretty sure those two bullets had been fired at me. I’ve been shot (well, seen my future self get shot) enough times to recognise it. That just left the question of who’d done the shooting . . .
“Nothing,” Trask said.
“What does that mean?” Haken said.
“Don’t have a cause of death.”
“Then what do you have?”
“Stomach bruising.” Trask pointed down, then moved his finger up. “And a shot to the leg.”
“She got shot?” Lizbeth looked hopeful. “It was their fault then . . .”
Trask was shaking his head. “Why not?” Haken asked.
“Muscle wound,” Trask said. “Missed the arteries.”
“What did you hit her with anyway?” Lizbeth said to Slate.
“It was just an enervation bolt.”
“Well, those are dangerous.”
“I know how to do my job, all right?” Slate said. “Was the same thing I hit those guys downstairs with, and they’re fine, aren’t they?”
“People have died from enervation spells . . .”
“She’s a fucking life mage,” Slate said. He gave Vihaela’s body an angry gesture that seemed to imply that her death had been a personal insult. “You have any idea how tough they are to kill? They’re like frigging cockroaches.”
Lizbeth shrugged. “Didn’t seem that tough to me.”
Haken put a hand over his eyes. “Abeyance?”
“I’m not getting much,” Abeyance said. She’d stayed out of the argument. “Best guess is the bullet was from a burst aimed at one of those constructs. What took her down was Slate and Lizbeth’s spells, but I can’t tell what killed her.”
“What do you mean, you can’t tell?” Haken said. “The more recent an event, the easier it is to timesight it, right? So why can’t you see?”
Abeyance shot Haken an annoyed glance. “There’s interference. A shroud maybe, or spell static. It’s not as though I have lifesight—I’m not going to be able to tell you the exact moment she went from alive to dead.”
I ran my fingers along the bullet holes, then turned around, crouching slightly and angling my head to look back along the line they’d come from. I tried to remember who’d been in that position. It hadn’t been Vihaela or the constructs. Hadn’t been Haken or Slate, either. Coatl had been downstairs. That left Trask, Abeyance, Cerulean, and the Council security.
More to the point, no one seemed to have noticed anything. No one had said anything about my dive sideways, or about any shots going in my direction. That meant that either they’d seen it and said nothing, or there hadn’t been anything to see. The first was technically possible, but seemed like an unreasonable risk. I didn’t believe that everyone on the Keeper team wanted to kill me, which leant me towards the second option. It was always possible that the shooter had just hung back and taken a shot while all eyes were turned on Vihaela, but even in the confusion, that seemed unnecessarily dangerous. With the number of magical senses around, there was too great a chance that someone would notice. The simplest explanation was that it had been done in such a way that no one had been able to see anything at all.
Assuming that logic was correct, it gave me one very obvious suspect. And if they were a traitor . . .
I looked at Vihaela’s body. Wait a second. Could that be it?
The others were still arguing. I crossed the room and knelt; Trask gave me a glance, then rose and stepped away. Vihaela was lying on her front, head turned towards me, eyes closed in death. Her face was drawn and still. I blanked my mind, put all thoughts of who Vihaela was out of my head, and simply looked at her.