Veiled (6 page)

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.

I looked around in the darkness, already starting to shiver. It had rained while I'd been on the train, and puddles were scattered around the platform; not enough to flood the place, but enough that the wind blowing off the stone was freezing cold. I looked around and tried to figure out what to do. Okay, so I was a Keeper—sort of—and I was investigating a crime scene. What was I supposed to do?

I'd come here with vague plans of finding witnesses, but as I looked around it became clear that that wasn't going to work. In the few minutes I'd been standing at the station I hadn't seen another living soul, and if there were any construction workers still on site I couldn't see them. Instead I focused on my magesight, trying to sense magic. Stone beneath me, cold and immobile, chill air whistling around, the silent menace of the electrical rails and wires. Nothing powerful enough to tell me anything. Spells can leave
residue, but it takes repetition and time—one-off magical events have to be extraordinarily powerful to stick around. Nothing like that here.

I walked up and down the platform, trying different angles, hoping to get lucky. I didn't. Another passenger arrived and waited on the platform as I walked up and down it. A train arrived. She got on; one other person got off. I kept searching. The wind got colder, and so did I.

My nose and ears were starting to go numb. Times like this make me wish I were a fire or an ice mage. I took out my phone and called Caldera; it rang for what felt like much too long before Caldera picked up. “Hey.”

“Hi,” I said. “Look, seeing as this is my first solo job and all, mind giving me some pointers?”

“Just a sec,” Caldera said. There was a lot of noise in the background, voices and glasses clinking. Wherever Caldera was, it sounded warm, comfortable, and a much nicer place to be than here. “Didn't catch that, say again?”

I took a breath, restraining the urge to hate her. “What the hell am I supposed to be doing here?”

“You're at the station?”

“It's cold, wet, and empty, and there's sod-all to find.”

“Magesight?”

“Comes up blank. Look, you know about this stuff. What do you do when you're sent out somewhere where there's nothing to see?”

“You got the report, didn't you?”

A train pulled up at the platform in a swell of light and noise. The doors opened with a hiss and I edged closer, hoping the air from inside would be a little warmer. It didn't help much. “It just says ‘investigate.'”

“Hey, you're a diviner. You're supposed to be good at this.”

“Oh, sure.” The doors shut and the train pulled away, accelerating into the darkness. I walked after it, heading up the platform. “I'll use my divination and look into the future. Hey, you know what, I'm seeing the future right now. If I stand here and wait, then in three minutes a train's going to come. And after that,
another
train's going to come. Here,
I'll let you guess what's going to happen afterwards. I'll give you a hint—there's a train.”

“Hey, can you hear that?”

“What?”

“It's the sound of me playing the world's tiniest violin.”

“Yeah, laugh it up, you're not the one freezing your balls off. Why didn't they send a time mage?”

“You know how many incidents we get called out to per day?” Caldera asked. “Have a guess. Then have a guess how many time mages we've got on retainer.”

I was silent. “Here's another question,” Caldera said. “You think you're the first guy who's noticed that some of the jobs we get sent on probably aren't going to accomplish much?”

“No.”

“You have to search an empty station,” Caldera said. “Given what usually happens when you're around, you ought to be happy.”

“It's still a shit job.”

“This is not even
close
to what our really shit jobs look like. Now, are you going to do the work or are you going to keep being a whiny little bitch?”

I sighed. “Fine.”

“Because I'm not running out there to hold your hand.”

“I get it.”

“Besides, I've got a pint waiting for me and it's nice and warm in here.”

“I hate you so much.”

“Sucks to be you. Later.” Caldera hung up. I glared at my phone and shoved it into my pocket. Another gust of freezing wind swept across the platform; the air was damp and even without my magic, my London upbringing was telling me it was going to rain again soon.

I had another try at finding a witness, but after fifteen minutes of searching I was forced to give up. The closest guy I could find was one lonely security guard still on duty at the construction site, bundled up in a booth with a space heater. He was several minutes away, had no line of sight to the platform, and from his body language didn't seem to be
interested in anything except trying not to freeze. It was theoretically possible that some other construction workers had been on site when whatever-it-was had happened, but if they had they hadn't called 999, and I had absolutely no idea how I would find the right individuals out of an indeterminate-but-almost-certainly-large number of construction workers who (a) had gone home for the night, (b) would probably be disinclined to talk to me, and (c) were unlikely to have seen anything useful in the first place.

In the end I was forced to fall back on my divination, which was ironic given that I'd just been complaining at Caldera about how useless it was. But while divination isn't really designed for CSI work, there are a few tricks you can pull which kind of do the same thing. In particular, it's good for searching. If you've already decided to search an area, you skim through the possible futures of yourself doing the search and look for ones in which you find something. It's not all that reliable, mainly because it's hard to tell the difference at a casual glance between “future in which you find something useful” and “future in which you find something that looks useful but turns out on closer inspection to be irrelevant or worthless.” But it beats turning over rocks with your bare hands.

I was right on the edge of calling it off when something caught my attention. The wind had grown even colder, my ears had gone numb, and the first spots of a new rain shower had started to fall. I was towards the north end of the platform, and most of the futures I could see led to nothing but damp and frustration—but beyond the platform was a future that was different. The end of the platform was fenced off with a big sign on the gate reading
Danger: High Voltage—No Admittance Beyond This Point
. I pushed the gate open and walked down the ramp between the sets of railway lines, tufts of scrubby grass growing between piled gravel.

The thing (whatever it was) was lying in the midst of the damp stones. It was small and spherical, about the size and shape of a marble. But it had a trace of magic—just a tiny, tiny trace—and now that I was closer I could sense something
from it. A weak one-shot, or a
very
weak focus. If my magesight hadn't been better than most mages', I'd never have noticed it.

I picked the thing up—it felt like a marble too—then straightened and looked around. Spitting rain was falling onto the railway lines around me, the drops briefly visible in the orange glow of the station lights. If there was anything else here, I couldn't find it.

To my right the rails were vibrating: another train was coming. I walked back up onto the platform. This time, when the train pulled up, I got on.

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B
ack home, I took a hot shower, then once I was warm again I sat down at my desk and studied my new find. It seemed to be a glass marble, a little bigger than my thumbnail, pale green and translucent. Under the desk lamp I could see little white flecks floating inside. Now that I had the chance to study it, it was definitely a focus. It didn't have any energy stored—what I'd sensed was the residue of its previous uses. The magic felt universal rather than living or elemental, but it was pretty generic. It didn't seem closely tied to any of the magic types.

I ran it through a few basic tests but came up blank. It didn't respond to any standard command words, which given that it didn't have any energy storage was exactly what you'd expect. It was tougher than glass, but not indestructible. My best guess was that it was designed to respond to some sort of magical input, but channelling into it didn't do anything. Maybe it needed a type of magic I didn't have.

I thought about calling it in but decided against it. I'd show the thing to Caldera when she got back on Monday. With that settled, I left the focus on my desk and went to bed.

“. . . a
nd unfortunately I don't think it's going to open up any time soon.”

“That's a pity,” I said. “No chance of that changing?”

“Right at the moment my schedule's fairly fixed, I'm afraid. I'm committed all the way through the spring.”

“Sorry to hear that. If anything does change and you have an opening . . . ?”

“Of course. I'll give you a call.”

“Thanks for your time.”

“Have a good day.”

The man on the other side of the video feed reached forward to his keyboard and the window closed. I leant back in my chair with a sigh. “Well, that was a waste of time.”

“I didn't like him anyway,” Luna said.

It was the next day and we were up in my living room. I was at my desk, Luna was sitting on the sofa, and we'd just finished a call with another prospective teacher. I'd had Luna around just on the off chance that the conversation might have gone well, but as it turned out she could have saved herself the trip.

“Is it me,” Luna said, “or are there not many chance mages
with the Council? Because every time I get a class on chance magic, it always seems to be some
other
mage telling us
about
chance magic. I'm starting to think I know more than the teachers.”

“You know magic types have a bias towards factions,” I said. “Death mages are more likely to be Dark, mind mages are more likely to be Light . . . well, chance mages tend to be independent or Dark. They might go through the apprentice program, but they don't stay there.”

“Yeah, can't imagine why. So have we run out yet?”

“Of the Council-approved ones, yeah.”

We'd been at the teacher-hunting game for a month, with no luck so far. Trying to find a magic teacher who matches your magic type
and
has the time and inclination to teach
and
is trustworthy is not easy. When I'd tried it with Anne and Variam, it had taken longer than this and I'd only managed a fifty percent success rate. “Guess it's time to go farther afield,” I said. “We could try looking abroad, start in America or Europe and work our way out. Only problem with that is that I don't really have any contacts over there.”

“Or . . . ?”

“Or we broaden our search by person instead of by country. So far I've been keeping it to Light mages and the reputable independents.” I tapped my fingers on the desk. “I know there are a whole lot more chance mages out there, but they don't advertise. And you don't know what you're getting . . .”

“Soooo . . .” Luna said. “Funny you should mention that.”

I looked at Luna. “What have you done this time?”

“What do you mean, ‘this time'?”

“Just give me the bad news.”

“For your information, I got an offer for a teacher already,” Luna said.

“Who?”

“Her name's Chalice.”

“She's a finder?”

“No, she said she's a chance mage. And she said she wanted to meet you.”

I frowned. “That's . . . strange.” Magical teachers who are thinking about taking on a new student usually want to interview the student. The only explanation I could think was that she wanted some sort of payment. Still, there was only one way to find out. “All right. How?”

“She gave me an e-mail address, asked me to give it to you. I'll forward it.”

“Okay. When was this?”

“Just this morning.” Luna paused. “By the way, there's one other thing . . .”

I'd been waiting for the other shoe to drop. “What other thing?”

“She's . . . not an independent.”

And if she were a Light mage, Luna would have told me already. “She's Dark.”

“Yeah,” Luna said. She was watching me carefully.

“How do you know?”

“She told me. She didn't keep it a secret or anything.”

“How did she get your contact details?”

“She said it was through the apprentice program,” Luna said, shrugging. “It was only my public mailbox.”

I was silent. “Is that a problem?” Luna asked.

“Yes.”

“You did just say we'd have to widen the search.”

“I said we
might
have to widen the search, and when I said ‘widen,' I didn't mean take anyone we could get. Let's try some independents before we get crazy.”

“I thought you
had
been trying most of the independents.”

“Then we'll find some others.”

“Okay,” Luna said. “But while we're doing that, it won't do any harm if we see how it goes, right?”

I looked at Luna. “Are you actually serious about this?”

Luna paused, then nodded.

“Luna, this isn't a good idea. She's a Dark mage.”

“Most of the people I hang out with are ex-Dark anyway.”

“Okay,” I said. “Bit of a difference here I don't think you're seeing. I was
originally
trained by a Dark mage, a really long
time ago, and in case you've forgotten, it didn't work out so well. And Anne and Vari's experience was worse.”

“It's not like the Council are so much better.”

“Maybe not, but they're safer.”

“They didn't feel much safer to me,” Luna said quietly.

That brought me up short. Luna officially became my apprentice two and a half years ago, but she got her feet wet in magical society the year before. And when I say “feet wet,” it was more like “someone trying to drown you.” Back then Luna had been a novice, inexperienced and vulnerable, and on two separate occasions she'd fallen into the hands of Light mages who had done a very good job of demonstrating to her that being a Light mage did not make you a nice person. Those sorts of experiences leave an impression.

But just because Light mages can be bastards, that doesn't make Dark ones any less dangerous. “I don't think you're thinking this all the way through,” I said. “You're twenty-four. In another year or two you're going to want to take your journeyman tests, and that means going to the Council. You already know how much grief you get for being my apprentice, and I'm only ex-Dark. If you've been studying under a Dark mage directly, it's going to be worse.”

“So the Council are going to be upset,” Luna said. “The Council are
always
upset. They're never happy and they're never going to like me, and you know what? I'm pretty much okay with that. I know doing this might be dangerous but . . . ever since I've been in the magical world, ever since I walked into your shop, I've been taking risks. And I kind of like it. I don't
want
to be a hundred percent safe. Besides . . . the last few years, it feels like it works. Okay, yeah, sometimes it goes wrong, but everything
good
that's happened to me, it's because I took the chance and did something that could have turned out badly, isn't it? I mean, that was the only reason I met you. If I hadn't decided to go for it, I'd be back at home alone, sleeping most of the day and trying to find a reason to get up every morning. And that's if I was lucky. So I don't know what'll happen, but . . . maybe it's worth it.”

I looked at Luna. She was sitting up straight, meeting my
gaze, and I felt a pang.
She's growing past the apprentice stage, isn't she?
How much longer before she'd be ready to strike out on her own? Two years? Less? I didn't know, but all of a sudden as I looked at her, I felt sure that Luna was past the halfway mark. The time ahead of her as my apprentice would be shorter than the time she'd spent already. It was a strange feeling, proud and melancholy at the same time.

And if she was going to be a journeyman soon . . . then maybe it was time to start treating her like one.

“I'll talk to her,” I said. “But I'm not promising anything.”

“Thanks.”

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O
nce Luna was gone I opened up and spent the rest of the day running the shop. My shop's called the Arcana Emporium, and it's in the back streets of Camden. As far as I know it's the only magic shop in Britain that sells actual magic (there are rumours of one in Ireland, but I've never gotten around to checking them out). The weather outside was cold, but I didn't have any shortage of customers.

I get two general categories of customers in my shop: the ones who have a clue (the minority), and the ones who don't (much more common). Generally speaking, the clueless ones aren't a big problem—all they want to do is browse around and poke things. They're just here for entertainment, and as long as they don't break anything, I don't really mind.

The ones who
are
a problem tend to be the ones at the far ends of the scepticism-to-credulity scale. First you get the sceptics, who are absolutely certain that magic isn't real and will explain this to you at length. This is generally irritating rather than dangerous, but still gets old fast, particularly since a large fraction of said group seem to believe that if you don't agree with them, then all that means is that you must not understand what they're saying. So they'll go back to the beginning and explain all over again about how all of this magic stuff is superstition and why no one in their right mind could
really
believe in it, while I try to explain in turn that yes, that's very interesting, but there are three
other customers waiting behind you and would you mind getting out of the way so I can talk to them instead?

At the other end of the scale you get the excessively credulous types, who believe in magic just fine, as well as everything else. Today's representatives of the latter group included a guy who'd come into possession of a vase that he wanted identified because he thought it was magical (it wasn't), another guy whose girlfriend had left him and who was convinced that it was for supernatural reasons (it wasn't), a woman who thought she was the reincarnation of Cleopatra and wanted to talk to me about her destiny (that one went downhill fast), and some bunch of lunatics calling themselves the Circle of the Serpent who wanted my help with initiation rites (don't ask).

In other words, a normal day. Hey, at least it isn't boring.

But mixed in with the ones who have no idea what they're talking about are the ones who do. And mixed in with
those
are the ones who might not know how the magical world works but have enough common sense to figure out that if they're going to be involved in it, then learning as much as they can is a really good idea.

“For the last time, I'm not checking up to see if your wife is cheating on you,” I said. “I'm not a private detective.”

The man left in a huff and I turned back to the person I'd been talking to before he'd butted in. The adept was shorter than average, with scruffy clothes and overly thick glasses, but the eyes behind the lenses were perceptive. “Kind of,” I told him. “I mean, the way the law is right now, it doesn't actually draw any distinction between Dark mages and Light mages anyway.”

“So what
is
the proposal going to do?”

“The big issue is Council membership,” I said. “Some mages want the Junior and Senior Council opened up to Dark mages, some don't. This proposal of Morden's is going further than that. If it goes through, there'll be one seat on the Junior Council that's
only
open to Dark mages.”

“But why?”

“Affirmative action, I suppose. If it's any consolation, it's
not going to affect you and your friends directly. It only applies to mages.”

“But it'll make a difference, won't it?” the adept said. “If there are Dark mages on the Council, then it's like saying that they're approving what they do.”

“Yeah.”

“So isn't that going to filter down? Like that thing that happened with that Dark mage, Torvald. The next time that happens they'll be even less likely to do anything, won't they? It'll just keep getting worse.”

I sighed. “You might be right.”

“So what are we supposed to do? It's not like the Council's going to listen to us.”

“I don't know. I wish I had some better answers for you, but I don't. And it's not as though the Council's going to listen to me, either.”

“But you're still a mage.”

“There is that. Look, how many are there in your circle?”

The adept (his name was Lucian) hesitated for a second before deciding to tell the truth. “Five.”

“So at least you're not on your own. Okay, I'm guessing there's something specific you're worried about, so why don't you give me a rundown on which of your friends you think are in danger and why. I can't promise anything, but I can probably give you some advice that'll make it more likely that if something goes wrong, it won't happen to you guys.”

We talked it over. It took a while because the conversation kept on being interrupted by other customers: a girl who wanted to sell a dagger focus, three people buying various mundane items, two different guys wanting to buy magic tricks, and a latent mage just starting to come into her power who'd gotten in touch with me via e-mail. I bought the dagger off the first, sold the next three the things they wanted, gave the two would-be magicians business cards from the box on the counter, and booked a time with the last girl for a longer chat.

“Anyway, that's the best advice I've got,” I said at last. “Look, you can give me a call if anything happens. Doubt
I'll be able to do anything directly, but I can give you some suggestions.”

“All right.” Lucian started to leave, then hesitated. “Thanks.”

“You're welcome.”

“No, I mean . . . Kath said I shouldn't come. She thought you were supposed to hate adepts.”

“I've heard that too.”