Once Klara was gone, I sat at my desk for some time, staring down at my new arm. Klara hadn’t told me anything that I hadn’t already suspected. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much I could do about it. I needed the fateweaver, and that was that.
I hoped I’d be able to finish things before the clock ran out. At the fateweaver’s current rate of spread, I should have at least a month. One way or another, that ought to be enough.
* * *
—
And have you seen Verus since then?” the Keeper asked.
“I already told you I haven’t,” Luna said.
“Has he contacted you in any way? Items, letters, e-mail?”
“No.”
“Have you contacted him?”
“No.”
“Did he leave you any instructions to contact you?”
“No.”
It was late afternoon on the same day. Morden hadn’t contacted me—I wasn’t expecting to hear from him until the following morning—so I’d been free to spend the day focusing on the Council. It was just as well I had.
The Council were hunting me in several ways. The first and the most basic was by using divination and tracking spells to pinpoint my location directly, at which point they’d send a team to capture or kill me. I’d used a combination of anti-surveillance measures and the fateweaver’s magic to screw up their tracking spells, but with each failure, they were improving. I’d had to spend a good couple of hours today just on blocking their attempts, and it was rapidly approaching the point where avoiding them was going to prevent me from doing anything else. I’d have to do something about it soon.
But while the Council was doing that, they were also hunting me the old-fashioned way. Ever since I’d gone on the run, Keepers had been staking out my old haunts and questioning my known associates. One name was at the top of their list.
“Seems a bit strange,” one of the Keepers said. “You were his apprentice for what, five years?”
“Three,” Luna said.
“And he hasn’t got in touch?”
“No.”
“What, you don’t get on?”
Luna shrugged.
“Answer the question,” the other Keeper said.
“Like I said, I haven’t seen him.”
I was crouched in the window of a first-floor flat across the street from the Arcana Emporium. From my position, I could look down across the street through the shop windows to see the backs of the two Keepers questioning Luna. Luna was behind the counter, my view of her head blocked by the ceiling, but I could see enough to read her body language. No one else was in the shop: the Keepers had flashed badges and shooed all the customers out. A couple were lingering outside, shooting curious looks through the glass.
I was listening in on the conversation through a small speaker unit resting on the floor. The speaker was connected wirelessly to a pair of microphones hidden in the shop. I’d installed them after the Keepers had made their first visit. This was their fourth.
“Where do you think Verus might be right now?” the first Keeper said. Her name was Saffron and she was a mind mage.
“I don’t know,” Luna said.
“When was the last time you saw him?”
“I’ve already told you,” Luna said. “It was before he was outlawed, here at this shop.”
“You haven’t seen him since then?”
“No.”
Mind magic isn’t a lie detector. A mind mage can read surface thoughts without being obvious about it, but to search memories they have to break through their target’s mental defences first. Officially, Saffron wasn’t allowed to do either of those things to Luna without formally charging her with a crime. Unofficially, I was quite sure she’d been reading Luna’s thoughts since the first visit. I’m quite familiar with mind magic, and I’d made sure to teach Luna as much as I could, which meant that, right now, Luna was carefully schooling her thoughts to make sure Saffron could learn nothing useful whatsoever.
Of course, at any point Saffron and her partner Avenor could just decide screw it and drag Luna off to a cell to rip out the contents of her head by brute force. So far, they hadn’t, mainly because they had no evidence linking her to me, but it wouldn’t take much to change their minds.
“Verus is facing the death penalty,” Avenor said. “Once we catch him, he’ll be interrogated. Fully interrogated. Anyone who helped him, they’re getting the same sentence. You understand?”
“Yes,” said Luna flatly.
“You hear anything, you let us know,” Saffron said. “The Council won’t wait forever.”
“Okay.”
Footsteps sounded through the speakers, and across the street, I saw Saffron and Avenor open the door and walk out, leaving Luna alone. Through the speakers, I heard Luna exhale. She stood behind the counter for nearly a minute, then walked to the door, flipped the sign from CLOSED to OPEN, and went back to minding the shop.
I stayed crouched by the window, checking the futures. Once I was absolutely sure that Saffron and Avenor weren’t coming back, I took up the rifle lying beside me, returned it to its case, snapped the case closed, and stowed it in its hiding place under the floorboards.
Afternoon turned into evening, and the shadows lengthened on the floor. A steady stream of customers flowed in and out of the Arcana Emporium: teenagers, adults, tourists, locals, and some who didn’t fall into any obvious category. Luna dealt with them all, selling items, giving advice, and fielding questions, while I watched from above.
Looking down on Luna, I couldn’t help but think how once upon a time, that had been me. Right now she was listening to a pair of women in cut-off shorts, one with a bundle of posters, the other with a pair of plastic bags, who were asking her whether magic was really just another way of having faith in Jesus. I tried to imagine what it would be like to be back in her shoes, opening the shop at nine o’clock every day, and couldn’t. My memories of that time had an unreal quality these days, like I was remembering someone else’s life instead of my own.
It was nearly seven when Luna finished with the last customer and followed them to the door to flip the sign back to CLOSED. She stretched and yawned, did a circuit of the shop, then took out a broom and spent five minutes sweeping the floor. Once she was done she sat down at the counter and opened the ledger.
The sun had disappeared behind the rooftops, and the sky was turning a dusky blue. I looked down across the street and through the shop window at Luna. She was focusing on the ledger, making notes with a pen. I saw her reach up to brush a strand of hair behind her ear, and as she did I felt a stab of loneliness so sharp that it was like a physical pain. I didn’t want to be up here, spying on someone who was supposed to be my friend. I wanted to be down there talking to her. When the Council had outlawed me, they hadn’t just taken away my position, they’d taken away my connections. I missed being able to drop in on Luna or Variam for a visit. I missed Arachne and the safety of her lair. I missed having regular, normal interactions, and I missed Anne most of all.