‘We have not been “dancing”, as you put it, for some time.’

  ‘So why come to me instead of your other mages?’ I said. ‘Hoping to keep your hands clean?’

  ‘Every mage going on tonight’s operation has exactly the same orders as you.’

  ‘You are taking this seriously.’

  ‘Our primary objective remains as discussed,’ Alma said. ‘Prevent the jinn from completing its ritual, and bind or banish it to ensure that it cannot try again. Our secondary objective is Drakh’s death.’

  ‘When and how?’

  ‘We don’t care.’

  ‘You’re not concerned about people finding out?’

  ‘Verus, you can shoot him in broad daylight in the middle of Trafalgar Square as far as I’m concerned. You can even hold up your Keeper signet and shout that you did it on Council orders, just as long as he’s dead.’

  ‘Well, that certainly simplifies things,’ I said. ‘So I take it you aren’t buying Drakh’s story?’

  ‘I trust Drakh’s story completely,’ Alma said. ‘All the parts of it that we can verify. Everything else is empty talk. And quite frankly, it doesn’t make a difference. Richard Drakh has declared war on the Light Council of Great Britain. He is the greatest challenge to our authority that we are likely to face this century. The war must be ended, and for that to happen, Drakh must die.’

  I glanced around. Talisid had withdrawn to the other side of the bridge and was studying his fingernails. A pair of middle-aged women were walking by, a chocolate Labrador panting happily between them.

  ‘Well?’ Alma said.

  ‘Two caveats,’ I said. ‘First, Drakh is going to be expecting this.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘He’ll have protection, and there’s a good chance he’ll move first,’ I said. ‘This will not be a surgical strike. It will be messy and there will be casualties.’

  Alma’s voice was cold. ‘Casualties are acceptable.’

  ‘Second, if I do this, you’re paying for results,’ I said. ‘As in, Drakh’s death. You don’t get to complain about who pulls the trigger.’

  ‘You expect to be paid for other people’s work?’

  ‘I’m a diviner, Alma,’ I said. ‘If I want someone dead, most of the time it’s just going to look like a very unfortunate accident.’

  ‘We found Levistus’s body stabbed through the heart with your bloody fingerprints on his robes.’

  ‘Yes, well, I already tried the subtle approach with you guys and you didn’t listen, so I decided to make the message a bit clearer the second time round. Given that we’re having this conversation, it apparently worked.’

  ‘Apparently,’ Alma said. ‘Are you in or out?’

  ‘In,’ I said. ‘Let’s talk price.’

  Alma snorted. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I think you’ll find my terms quite reasonable,’ I said. ‘First, I need some equipment. Standard Keeper issue. A bullet ward, a set of armour, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Arrange it with Talisid.’

  ‘I’m not finished. Second, I want a full pardon for Anne.’

  ‘The entire point of this operation is—’

  ‘To stop the jinn possessing her. If I can get it banished, I want Anne to go free of all charges.’

  ‘This is ridiculous.’ Alma sounded exasperated. ‘We’re trying to preserve the country, not the life of one criminal. Besides, banishing a possessing entity usually kills the host anyway.’

  ‘In which case, any charges against her won’t matter, will they?’

  I heard Alma sigh. I had the feeling she was pinching the bridge of her nose.

  ‘Look, Alma,’ I said. ‘You really aren’t giving up very much here. If I banish the jinn and Anne dies, then any charges against her are a moot point. If I banish the jinn and she lives, then she’s not a threat any more. Besides, given that she was under the jinn’s influence while she did the things she was charged with, I’d argue that she shouldn’t be held responsible.’

  ‘Of course you would,’ Alma said sarcastically. ‘Very well. But I want you to understand very clearly that our primary objective is to stop the jinn, not conduct a rescue. The Keeper teams will not compromise their mission in order to save your . . . companion.’

  ‘I’m not expecting them to. Oh, one more thing. The Council really needs to get back up to full strength, so I think my Junior Council place should be transferred to some other Dark mage. I’d like to retain the right to sit in on meetings, though. You can come up with a title to give me, whatever you think’s appropriate. “Minister without Portfolio” or something.’

  I felt Talisid start slightly. The communicator was silent. ‘What are you playing at, Verus?’ Alma said at last.

  ‘I’m planning ahead,’ I said. ‘It’s a habit I’ve been getting into lately. You see, once all this is over and the jinn’s gone and Richard’s dealt with, I think most of your Light mages are going to want to draw a line under this whole thing and go back to normal. Most of them. But there’ll be a few – not naming any names – who are going to see this as an opportunity to tie up loose ends.’

  ‘We have already made a truce with you.’

  ‘Which I’m perfectly happy with,’ I said. ‘But at some point I’m sure it’s going to occur to someone on the Senior Council that they could just pass a new resolution and overrule that truce. I mean, let’s be frank, you guys do have a bit of a track record of sentencing me to death while I’m not there. Consider this an extra safeguard.’

  I could feel Alma weighing her decision. ‘You ask for a great deal.’

  ‘Yeah, well, that’s the problem with downsizing, isn’t it? It gets awkward when you have to hire the same people back.’ I paused. ‘With hindsight, it would have saved everyone an awful lot of trouble if you’d just convinced Levistus to leave me alone.’

  ‘Levistus did not make a habit of taking advice,’ Alma said. I felt the futures settle. ‘All right, Verus. You’ll get what you ask for. But only if Drakh doesn’t leave that shadow realm alive.’

  ‘Fair enough. I imagine you won’t be taking part in the attack?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘In that case, I doubt we’ll be seeing much more of each other.’

  ‘No. We won’t.’

  I deactivated the focus and walked over to Talisid. ‘Did you get all that?’ I asked. ‘The armour’s for Luna; the bullet ward’s for me. We’ll need them for tonight.’

  ‘That shouldn’t be a problem.’

  ‘Good.’

  Talisid turned to go.

  ‘Oh, and Talisid?’

  Talisid looked back.

  ‘When I set that trap for your team in Hyperborea, I picked a deep shadow realm that would leave you all unavailable for a few hours,’ I said. ‘I could just as easily have picked one that would have erased you from existence. I chose not to. Call it professional courtesy.’ I paused. ‘Try anything like that again, and I won’t extend the same courtesy. It’s nothing personal. It’s just, well, I can’t keep letting people off with a warning. You understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ Talisid said. ‘I do.’ He gave me a nod. ‘Verus.’

  Talisid left. I watched him go.

  5

  I returned to the Hollow to find Karyos awake, sitting cross-legged in her clearing. ‘You slept late,’ I said as I walked over.

  ‘Recovering the memories was difficult.’

  Karyos was reborn less than a month ago, and she still doesn’t remember most of her past lives. If she needs to recall something, she uses a meditation ritual. I guess when you live as many lifetimes as a hamadryad, keeping track of all those memories is difficult.

  I sat down in front of Karyos. ‘To understand the ritual,’ Karyos began without preamble, ‘you must understand how jinn die.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Jinn are immortal,’ Karyos said. ‘They can take a body, but only as a vessel. As clothing. When their bodies were killed – back when they had them – the jinn’s essence, their soul and animating spirit, would drift, discorporated. In time, other jinn would give them form again by performing a ritual of rebirth. The elements of the world around them were sculpted into a body. The jinn would wake, and begin its new life.’

  When I’d asked Sonder about jinn, he’d told me about history and war. When Richard had brought it up, he’d talked about armies and power. Now I was getting a third perspective.

  ‘Jinn were connected to the elements of our world. They did not fear death – the word has no meaning for them. What they feared was something else. The void. If they were to lose their connection to our world, they would be cast into the space between. Somehow, mages learned of this. They came to believe that they had found the jinn’s weakness.’ Karyos was silent for a moment. ‘Suleiman’s ritual was designed to sever a jinn’s connection with our world. With that link gone, discorporation was no longer a drifting sleep. It was an eternal nightmare.’

  ‘And that was what happened to all of them,’ I said.

  ‘The lesser jinn were reduced,’ Karyos said. ‘Their thoughts and consciousness degraded until they were little but husks. Those creatures that attacked us two days ago . . . they were living beings once. Perhaps they might even have been among the ones I spoke to, when I was young. If they were, they did not recognise me. Nor I them.’ Karyos stared into the distance for a moment, lost in her memories. ‘The greater jinn retained their consciousness. After a fashion. The void contains . . . entities. They do not live or exist in time as we understand it. But they can affect those they touch.’

  ‘Well, that’s incredibly creepy,’ I said. ‘You think that marid was affected?’

  Karyos shrugged. ‘It wanted for the humans of this world to be made extinct even before being banished to the void. From your point of view, I’m not sure it makes much difference.’

  ‘Fair point.’

  ‘In the waning days of the war, the jinn attempted to revive those of their kin that had been banished,’ Karyos said. ‘Working together, they were able to modify the rebirth ritual. Instead of creating a new body, they learned how to summon a banished jinn into a human host. Unlike a normal contract, the host’s consent was not required.’

  ‘And that wasn’t enough to win them the war?’

  ‘The ritual was too slow, and by the time they had fully developed it, too many jinn had been bound. The problem lay in the amount of energy required to bring a conscious mind through the veil. Mindless and near-mindless creatures, such as jann, could be summoned easily, but greater jinn were far more difficult. The sultan and its generals came to believe that if the veil was weakened in a specific area, this problem could be solved.’

  ‘That’s the ritual that Richard’s talking about,’ I said. ‘So what, the sultan tried it back then and it didn’t work?’

  ‘The Council forces discovered the plan, and attacked and crushed the remaining jinn before the ritual’s completion.’

  ‘And now the same thing’s happening again,’ I said. I thought for a minute. ‘You said the ritual weakened the veil in an area. What sort of area? Like a shadow realm?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Karyos said. ‘It may be that the ritual would not work in our world. Perhaps a smaller, separated reality is necessary.’

  ‘Would explain why she went after Sagash’s shadow realm. Well, that and for personal reasons.’ I frowned. ‘Wait. The ritual affects an area?’

  Karyos nodded.

  ‘Richard said the ritual was supposed to affect Anne,’ I said. ‘It’d give her the ability to summon greater jinn fast.’

  ‘Effectively.’

  ‘It doesn’t modify Anne to act as some sort of conduit, or something like that?’

  Karyos shook her head. ‘I do not fully understand how the ritual works, but I’m quite sure that would be impossible. No living body would be able to withstand it. And even if it could, the effect would fall apart as soon as she moved. It would have to be anchored to an area.’

  I kept frowning.

  ‘Alex?’ Karyos asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said absently. When Richard had described the ritual at the meeting, he’d implied that the way it worked was by affecting Anne.

  It wasn’t a big difference in practical terms. Instead of making new jinn-bearers on the spot, Anne would have to knock them out and drag them back to her shadow realm first. It would make things harder, but not that much harder. But if it was such a minor detail, why had Richard lied about it? Had he been trying to make the ritual sound more dangerous than it really was to pressure the Council to take action?

  Or maybe Richard didn’t know everything. Maybe he’d just made a mistake.

  I considered both explanations. Neither felt quite right.

  Karyos was waiting patiently. ‘Can you think of any reason Richard would want us to think the ritual was designed to affect a person?’ I asked.

  Karyos shook her head. ‘I don’t understand how your master thinks.’

  ‘Yeah, not many do,’ I said. ‘All right. Thanks for the help. One last thing. Are you hoping the marid’s going to pull this off? I mean, mages haven’t given you many reasons to like them.’

  ‘Some have,’ Karyos said. ‘Besides, I do not believe the sultan’s plan will end happily. The jinn I knew and walked in the woods with, when I was younger . . . I saw nothing left of them in those summoned forms. All that I loved in them is gone.’

  I got in touch with Luna. What’s the news? Luna asked immediately.

  Richard’s lying about how the ritual works, the Council want me to assassinate him and I’ve learned a few things about divination and jinn. Oh, and I need you to report to the War Rooms to get issued a set of combat armour.

  I was hoping to hear something about Vari, but I guess I’ll take what I can get. You want to hear what I’ve found out?

  Yes, please.

  Okay, Luna said. So I’ve been listening in on the whisper network. Last few times Richard’s launched a big offensive, we’ve heard rumours a day or two in advance. Right?

  Ever since the start of the war, Richard’s biggest source of manpower had been his adepts. He had a network in place for passing out messages: orders would go down the pyramid from him, to his inner circle, to Arcadia-trained adepts, to other adepts. Eventually the messages would filter through to adepts who weren’t so loyal, or to ones who’d been having second thoughts about signing up for Richard’s ‘association’, and some of those people would be willing to talk, especially to a friendly shopkeeper who might have helped them in the past. Right, I said.

  So that’s not happening now, Luna said. The long-serving adepts, the ones who were trained in Arcadia and who’ve been with him from the beginning, they’re being mobilised for something, they don’t say what. Everyone else is being told to stand down. Word is there’ll be new orders issued after the weekend.

  The ritual deadline, I said, and frowned. If you were Richard and you were doing an operation like this, wouldn’t you want all the manpower you could get?

  Luna gave a telepathic shrug. He wants a smaller team? Something more agile?

  Maybe. I thought for a moment, then shook my head. I’m going to call November.

  November responded to my telepathic call instantly. Oh, Alex, I was hoping you’d call. There’s been no movement from Mage Walker or her jinn. My projections now place her within the shadow realm up until the time of the attack with over ninety per cent confidence.

  Can you give me the order of battle for the Council strike forces?

  November replied instantly, information flowing through the dreamstone far quicker than speech. The Council forces for tonight’s operation are composed of two strike teams and a reserve. The first strike team consists of five hundred and thirty-two mages, auxiliaries and Council security personnel. It is commanded by Director Nimbus, with Captain Rain as his second. The second strike team consists of one hundred and seventy-nine mages and Council security personnel, all cleared for front-line combat. It is commanded by Captain Landis, with Lieutenant Tobias as his second. The first and second strike teams are composed of Keepers from the Order of the Star and the Order of the Shield, respectively. The reserve is still being assigned but is currently somewhere between five and six hundred strong, and contains further members of the Order of the Star, some members of the Order of the Cloak, and other mages classified as secondary combatants. Director Nimbus has field command, with Captain Landis and Captain Rain as second- and third-in-command respectively, but both are subject to Senior Council members Druss, Bahamus and Alma, who will be directly overseeing the operation.

  Bloody hell, that’s a lot, I said. I’d never seen the Council deploy even half that many. On a related note, I’m not sure what it says about Council operational security that you could find all that out.

  November sounded smug. I am rather good at this.

  You know, back when I was planning these kinds of ops, I used to think they were secret. I shook my head. Tell me what you know about the ward defences on the shadow realm.

  The Council gained reasonably thorough information on the shadow realm’s wards during the abortive siege four years ago, and in the aftermath a team was tasked with drawing up an attack plan should it be necessary to assault the shadow realm more forcefully. This has been combined with information provided today by the Dark apprentice Yun Ji-yeong, and also with intelligence gathering over the past twenty-four hours in order to produce a reasonably complete picture. The gate wards across the shadow realm are of a standard design and—

  Forget the standard wards, I said. Ji-yeong said something about an isolation effect. What’s that?

  It seems that after his previous experiences, Sagash became increasingly security conscious, and he was particularly concerned about the threat of a large-scale invasion. Rather like the one that’s going to be launched today, in fact. Though probably not in the way he was expecting. Well, in any case, Sagash devoted considerable time and resources to installing an isolation ward, a large-scale defensive ward placed over the shadow realm as a whole. When activated, the isolation effect alters certain universal constants within the affected shadow realm, causing a dissimilarity between it and our world that makes it difficult if not impossible to link the two with gate magic.