“You should not have come back,” Abithriax said.

  I struck again, my will pressing in on Abithriax, and I copied what he’d done to me, bearing down on him from all directions. I saw strain flicker on his face as he fought back, but he was losing ground. I pushed against his defences, trying to seize control of his thoughts—

  —it didn’t work. It was like trying to grab onto slippery ice. They slid away and Abithriax used the opportunity to push me out of his mind. We were even again.

  Without looking down, I could sense my clothes disintegrating. My body would be next: already the nails on my right hand were being eaten away. It didn’t hurt—it felt as though I was becoming lighter, on the verge of flying. I’d probably keep feeling that way right until I evaporated.

  This wasn’t working. I needed to do something different.

  Abithriax launched another attack. I fended him off, thinking fast. Abithriax was standing close. The last time we’d fought, I’d gone for his body . . . or what had looked like his body. But it hadn’t done anything, not really. The man standing before me was only a projection. The real Abithriax was inside the fateweaver.

  Abithriax tried the same trick again, withdrawing and then striking with a knife-edged blade of mental energy. This time I was ready and met it with a surge of my own, blocking it. It was painful but not lethal, and I realised that it was meant as a way to break down my defences. Abithriax was a mind mage, and that was how he was thinking. Victory by domination.

  I wasn’t going to beat him at his own game. I needed to fight like a Dark mage.

  I forced Abithriax back, but this time, instead of launching the same attack, I focused on him, straining to see. My senses felt impossibly sharp, and on some level that my magesight couldn’t usually reach, I became aware of another layer underpinning what my eyes were showing. Abithriax’s form was hollow, half real, but within the fateweaver there was something else. The fateweaver was a tightly woven mass of white, and wrapped around it was a spiderweb of green light, something alive that pulsed and thought.

  Experimentally, I pulled at it. Green strands stretched, tearing.

  Abithriax screamed. A shock wave of mental energy lashed out, shattering my attack and my shield. I felt Elsewhere flow in, engulfing me, and frantically I threw up my defences. After only a second I managed to stabilise, but this time I’d been hurt badly. Half of my clothes had been dissolved, along with all my remaining items; only the dreamstone was left, and the lethal wisps of light were starting to rise from my skin. The fingers on my right hand were gone and the palm was being eaten away.

  But Abithriax was hurt too. He was staggering as if drunk, and the wisps of light rising from the fateweaver had multiplied. Glaring at me balefully, he attacked again, but I’d taken his measure now and I knew that here in Elsewhere, my will was a match for his. I met his domination attempt and forced it back.

  Seconds ticked by. I could feel sweat on my brow, dissolving as soon as it beaded. Abithriax stared as if trying to bore a hole in me with his eyes. Both of us were past subtlety: it was will against will, each of us trying to overwhelm the other. I strained with everything I had, trying to break through to Abithriax’s core.

  And Abithriax began to give way. It was slow, very slow, but I could sense him losing ground. Instead of attacking, he was being forced to defend. I kept pressing and felt Abithriax slipping, bit by bit. I saw a flash of fear in his eyes: he redoubled his efforts but all it did was slow me down.

  My right hand dissolved into nothingness. With its connection to my body severed, it hadn’t been able to survive the corrosion. I felt its loss distantly, set it aside, kept going. Abithriax’s defence was feeling frantic now. “Wait,” his projection said.

  I looked Abithriax in the eyes and kept going.

  “Wait,” Abithriax said again. Again I could sense that image: a green web wrapped around the fateweaver’s white. Abithriax’s defences were an invisible barrier, but I was pressing inwards and he didn’t have much more ground to lose. In only a few more seconds I’d break through.

  In desperation, Abithriax tried the same trick he’d used before, recoiling to lash out, but I’d been anticipating it and was ready. As his defences fell back I surged in, and for an instant I could reach that green web.

  An instant was all I needed. One moment Abithriax was gathering his strength; the next his mind was ripped to pieces. His projection convulsed and disappeared, the green web fraying and coming apart. I tore the fragments from the fateweaver and scattered them.

  The patches of green light drifted, dimmed, faded.

  Abithriax was gone.

  I staggered, catching myself. Light was rising up from my body; my vision was whiter than it should have been and I knew I didn’t have much time. The wisps of light coming from the fateweaver had multiplied, and they were intensifying as I watched. The ends of the wand were glowing white, starting to dissolve. Reaching out with the dreamstone, I could sense the fateweaver’s presence. It was hurt, dying. It had been dependent on Abithriax, and now that he was gone, it wouldn’t survive.

  Unless it had a substitute. I tried to link with the item, using the dreamstone as a bridge. The fateweaver seemed to react, but weakly. It wasn’t stabilising. Abithriax had maintained some sort of mental link with the thing, but I wasn’t a mind mage. The fateweaver was glowing; the item was becoming ethereal, part of Elsewhere. I stared at it, then looked at where my right hand had been.

  There wasn’t time to think. I dropped the dreamstone, picked up the fateweaver in my left hand, and placed it against the stump of my right hand. As I did I focused my will, reshaping the fateweaver into a new form, one linked to me.

  Agony exploded in my arm. It felt as though I had a bar of molten metal fused to my wrist. I forced through the pain, disregarded it. Join with me, I told the fateweaver.

  The fateweaver latched on, merging into me like flowing water.

  Chaotic sensations flashed through my mind, insane and indescribable. I struggled to keep my sense of self, hold against the pressure. Gradually the tide slowed, eased.

  The wisps of light streaming up around me were so bright I could barely see. I felt light and airy, my feet nearly floating. I snatched up the dreamstone and channelled. A gate appeared, and I flew towards it.

  * * *

  I burst through the gateway like a diver landing in water. Sound and sensation hit like a hammer and I slammed into the floor of the bubble realm, the impact knocking the breath out of me. Behind me I felt the gate to Elsewhere wink out. I rolled onto my back and stared up at the ceiling, moving my limbs experimentally. They were all still there. More than that, the pain of my injuries was gone. I felt better than I had for days.

  I sat up, took a deep breath, and looked down at my right arm.

  The stump of my right wrist and the fateweaver were gone. In their place I had a new hand, white and pale as though sculpted from alabaster. Tendrils of white traced into my forearm, linking into my flesh. I flexed the fingers of the hand one by one, closed them into a fist, opened them again. The movements were sluggish, but they became smoother as I watched.

  The view my magesight gave me was . . . odd. The signature from my hand was still recognisably the fateweaver’s, but it had changed, less like an imbued item and more like a living creature. I couldn’t tell for sure, but through the dreamstone the fateweaver seemed stable. Actually, I didn’t need the dreamstone. I could sense the fateweaver, feel its presence in my thoughts.

  I got to my feet and stretched. I felt refreshed, as though I’d been given a whole new body. Maybe I had. Glancing down, I saw that most of my clothes had dissolved: my coat was gone and my shirt was hanging in tatters. My trousers, made of a heavier material, had fared a little better, but still looked like they’d been attacked by a swarm of moths. Everything in my pockets was gone: I had the dreamstone, and that was it.

  New hand, though. That counts for something.

  I could use the fateweaver as a hand. What about its powers?

  The last time I’d used the fateweaver, Abithriax had placed the knowledge of how it worked directly into my mind. The item granted the ability to determine future events, choosing what would and wouldn’t come to pass. But back then, Abithriax had been the one to actually use it. This time, I’d have to figure it out on my own.

  I looked into the futures, trying various approaches. It took me only seconds; the fateweaver’s magic felt very compatible with mine. From a quick glance, it didn’t seem as though I’d have to do very much—

  Wait. Why did a lot of my futures end in a black void?

  A tremor seemed to go through the bubble realm, and I thought I could sense a sound on the edge of hearing, something that made me think of something buckling. An image flashed through my head of water pressing against a ship’s hull. I didn’t understand what was going on. I was alone in this place, especially now that . . .

  “Oh crap,” I said out loud. This place had been made as a prison for Abithriax. And now he was gone.

  The creaking sound echoed through the bubble realm again, and I could swear I felt the ground shift. I snatched up my armour and the cube and started hurrying towards the exit. Looking through the futures, I felt a chill. The lines ending in a void were multiplying, and worse, they were completely independent of my actions. At any moment I could get wiped out of existence, and there was nothing I could do . . .

  . . . nothing I could do as a diviner. But I wasn’t just a diviner anymore.

  I could feel the futures branching, lines of light in the darkness. I picked one in which I was safe, except this time, instead of looking back along the line to match it with my actions, I reached for it. I felt the fateweaver stir and unfold, like a muscle contracting. I touched the line and felt the lights shift, the glows of the other possibilities winking out as their potential flowed into the path I’d chosen.

  There were no more branching futures, no possibilities of sudden death. The futures followed a clear, set path.

  I blinked. So easy? I slowed to a walk—no need to hurry—and studied my immediate futures. They weren’t a solid line, more like a flowing river. The water could follow many paths, but it was constrained by the banks. But up ahead I could sense the futures branching. Without my intervention, they were drifting apart again.

  As I walked, I kept working on the futures, and with each attempt I learned more about how the fateweaver functioned. It wasn’t choosing among options, exactly—more of a decree. I could decide on a future, and make it come to pass. It had limits though, which I didn’t fully understand but which I was pretty sure involved probability. The more unlikely the event I chose, the more effort the fateweaver had to expend. If I tried to force a future that was sufficiently improbable, or which was possible but not in the way I decreed, it would fail.

  Except that my own magic let me know exactly how probable every possible future was. The two types dovetailed perfectly. Divination showed the possibilities; fate let me choose among them.

  Right now, the possibilities in which the bubble realm collapsed were multiplying. It was becoming harder to hold to the future in which the bubble stayed together. I probably didn’t have more than a few minutes.

  The corridor opened into a small, featureless room. I held up the red cube. “Abithriax is dead,” I told it. “Ready for something new?”

  The cube seemed to consider, then glowed. A section of the wall shimmered and became a gateway. The last time I’d used it, it had led into a grassy meadow deep in the countryside. This time, the gate was masked by an opaque black screen.

  I knew what was waiting on the other side. I looked down, taking inventory. Cube, dreamstone, shoes and socks, tattered trousers, shredded T-shirt, a set of armour too badly injured to use. None would be of use in the coming fight.

  The bubble’s collapse was drawing near. I let the futures settle into one with ten seconds remaining, then stepped through the gate and back to Earth.

  chapter 12

  I came down onto a stone floor. Behind me, the gate winked out, and an instant later I felt something shift and tear. The statue didn’t break or shatter, but the life seemed to go out of it. No one was going to be using it as a gateway anymore.

  “Well, well,” a voice said. “Look who’s here.”

  I was back in the mansion storeroom. I turned and saw Onyx.

  And Pyre.

  And half a dozen other guys standing around them.

  And even more standing around them.

  The storeroom was packed, Onyx’s gang filling it to standing room only. They formed a semicircle around me, the closest no more than ten feet away. They ranged from teens to as old as their thirties, some showing tattoos and jewellery, hairstyles ranging from dreadlocks to shaven. They carried an assortment of weapons from handguns to knives to AK-47s to a hand grenade; one held a steel chain and another a sawn-off shotgun. Those with no visible weapons radiated magic instead: one had claws growing from his hands, and another was juggling a fireball. The looks on their faces were hungry, predators eyeing a meal.

  “Surprised?” Onyx said. The Dark mage was slender and whip-quick, dressed in black with gold flashes. He wore an unpleasant smile, and his eyes were cold. “We put in a sink ward. Guess you’re staying.”

  I finished my count. Seven adepts with one type or another of combat magic: four elemental, two living, and an illusionist. Seventeen normals, sensitives, or noncombat adepts, all armed. Onyx and Pyre. And one more. Pyre had Selene at his feet, one hand tangled in her hair.

  Pyre met my gaze and smiled. He was good-looking, with blue eyes and messy blond hair. “Hey, Verus.” He yanked on Selene’s hair, pulling her head back; she flinched but didn’t make a sound. “Found your little helper.”

  “Give me the fateweaver,” Onyx told me.

  I looked back at him silently.

  “I’m tired of your shit, Verus,” Onyx said. “Every time this happens you run away. Well, this time you’re in a room that’s warded and sealed. You aren’t gating and your elemental isn’t getting through the doors. So I’m only going to ask one more time. Give me that fateweaver.”

  “Don’t kill him yet,” Pyre said. “I want him to call Cinder’s boy. I knew he’d—”

  “Shut up,” Onyx said clearly, and Pyre did. Onyx didn’t take his eyes off me. “You’ve got five seconds.”

  I looked around and addressed the crowd. “Lay down your weapons and you can leave.”

  The room burst into laughter. The adepts and normals jeered, shouted insults. It was apparently the best joke they’d heard in a long time. Pyre was laughing too. Only three people stayed silent. Onyx, Selene, and me.

  As the laughter died away, Pyre’s eyes fell on my arm. “Hey, look at his hand. That’s it, isn’t it?”

  Onyx didn’t take his eyes off me. “Cut it off.”

  “Wait!” someone called, and one of the boys stepped out. It was Trey. His ear was bloody, and his expression as he looked at me was ugly. “I owe him.” He pulled out a machete, the blade nearly a foot and a half, gleaming in the light.

  I crouched and laid my armour down on the floor, folding it neatly and setting the cube on top of it. Trey stalked towards me. “You ripped out my rings, you piece of shit,” he told me. I could see the bloody marks on his right ear, and his fingers were bandaged where I’d bitten him. He bared his teeth, lifting the machete for a downward strike.

  I blocked, hit the weapon openhanded on the hilt. It flew out of Trey’s grip, making two complete circles before I caught it and turned the motion into a spin. Trey was still staring up when I slashed open his throat.

  “Kill him!” Pyre shouted.

  The room erupted, shouts and gunfire echoing in the confined space. I was already moving, darting away from the dying Trey and into the middle of the people surrounding me. The first one made the mistake of trying to stand and fire. I slashed his hand and kept moving.

  Relying on divination for fights is dangerous. You can look ahead, see immediate threats, but it’s chaotic: everything is changing and you can’t reliably see more than a few seconds ahead. With the fateweaver, everything was different. I could pick out a reasonably probable future and decide that this was what would happen. I didn’t need to keep checking to see what my opponents would do: I could choose what they’d do and pick a counter at my leisure.

  Three of Onyx’s gang surrounded me, two wielding a switchblade and a combat chain, and an adept using force-enhanced punches. The knifer came in for a grab, and I chose an angle of attack that would expose his arm, then pivoted into a cut that half severed his hand. He went down screaming; the adept tried for a blow that would have broken my spine, and I twisted away and stabbed on the reverse. My back was to him but I’d already decided exactly where he was going to be. The machete went through his stomach and he collapsed, pulling the weapon out of my hand as he fell.

  The guy with the combat chain advanced, links whirring in an arc. He was joined by another adept, this one bare-handed with death magic at his fingers. Behind I could see half a dozen more levelling guns and spells, but they were blocked by their allies. I analysed the incoming attack pattern in a fraction of a second, identified the point of greatest vulnerability, and manipulated the futures to ensure I’d be in a position to exploit it. The first two swings of the chain missed; I caught the third, pivoted to kick the death adept’s centre mass. He slammed against the statue, and I tangled the chain wielder with his own weapon, then tripped him to let him fall against me with the chain taut around his neck. Trey’s body was near my feet and I used the chain wielder as a shield while pulling Trey’s handgun from its holster. The death adept was just getting back to his feet when I shot him through the chest.