Taken

them in without being noticed . . . but then, I didn’t need to.

The technique is the same one I use for watching people, slightly modified. First you need to be close enough that you can reach them in only a few seconds. Then you look into the immediate future in which you approach. As I concentrated, in every future I was stopped before getting all the way up to where Anne and Jagadev were talking, sometimes at the door and sometimes a little farther in. But in some of those futures I’d catch a snatch of conversation, and by putting those futures together I could get the gist of what they were saying. It’s a pretty crude method of eavesdropping—an air mage could just carry the words right to his ears—but it does have the advantage of being almost completely undetectable.

“. . . and what has been happening there?” Jagadev was saying.

“Just duelling classes,” Anne said.

“Which mages were present?”

“Today? I wasn’t there, so I couldn’t see, but . . . Lyle, I think, and an air mage I don’t know. And there was —”

Some people passed through the door, breaking my link and disrupting the futures in which I was watching them. I turned away and waited for them to pass. When they were gone, Anne was speaking again. “. . . nothing serious, really.”

“I did not ask if it was serious.”

“Well . . . there’s Natasha and her friend Yasmin. But it’s just talk.”

“What kind of talk?”

Anne sounded uncomfortable. “Little stuff. Talking about us to the mages, that kind of thing. It’s nothing important . . .”

“What else do your classes discuss?”

I frowned. Jagadev wanted to know about Anne’s classes? I kept listening and Jagadev kept asking Anne questions—the other apprentices, the teachers, everything. I pulled my vision back and looked at the rest of the room. This time, instead of looking to see how the people of Jagadev’s court acted towards him, I looked at how they acted towards Anne.

And to my surprise I got the very definite impression they were scared of her. It was subtle; they didn’t look at her directly or come too close. But the more I watched, the more sure I became that the people in that room were almost as afraid of Anne as they were of Jagadev. Maybe that outfit wasn’t for decoration, but to make sure she was noticed.

All the same, it was odd. I’d always heard that life mages were supposed to be dangerous, but it was hard to think of Anne as a threat. She seemed too—

“Alex? Alex!”

I jerked back to the present to realise that Luna was talking to me. She’d come up next to me while I was distracted, and she looked tense. “We’ve got trouble. Onyx just met someone and he’s coming this way.”

I looked into the future to see how far Onyx was . . . and saw the person he was with. “Oh shit. Luna, get out of here.”

“Where?”

“Anywhere these guys don’t see you! Move!”

Luna moved. I scanned quickly through the futures, looking for a way to avoid the men heading towards me, and realised it wouldn’t work. Giving Onyx the slip was one thing but the man with him had already spotted me. If I ran he wouldn’t pursue . . . but it would let him know I was afraid of him. I hesitated for an instant, then walked forward to meet them just as they turned the corner to come face to face with me.

Onyx was on the left and his face darkened as he saw me, but it was the man half a step ahead of him that I was watching. He was average height with jet-black hair and the good looks and confidence of a man in his prime. Physically he looked thirty, but I was pretty sure he wasn’t. “Ah, Verus,” Morden said. “I was hoping we’d have the chance to chat.”

Onyx didn’t move but I could sense that he was coiled to strike and I tensed, watching the futures. If he attacked this close I would have to move very fast. Morden glanced sideways. “Onyx, I’m afraid I’ll be late to our meeting with Jagadev. Why don’t you go ahead and give him my apologies?”

Onyx looked at Morden with narrowed eyes. “Today, please,” Morden said. Onyx gave me a last glare and obeyed. I moved slightly to keep him in sight as he stalked off.

“Well, then,” Morden said. “Why don’t we discuss how we can help each other?”

Everyone else who’d been standing nearby had scattered, which reinforced just how dangerous Morden was, not that I needed the reminder. The first time I met Morden he scared off three veteran Dark mages just by looking at them. The second time he subdued those same three Dark mages without breaking a sweat. He’s very powerful and very ambitious, and quite frankly he scares the hell out of me.

But if I’ve learnt one thing about dealing with Dark mages it’s that you don’t show fear. “Sounds great,” I said. “You can help by keeping yourself and your psychopathic Chosen as far away from me as you can.”

Morden sighed. “Yes, I rather expected we’d have to work through this.” He gestured along the balcony. “Shall we?”

“Shall we what?”

“Walk. Unless you’d prefer to include your apprentice in the conversation?”

I didn’t let myself glance towards where Luna was hidden. I began walking in the direction Morden had pointed. The Dark mage fell in beside me. “So let’s get this out of the way,” Morden said.

“You kidnapped me, lied to me, and tried to kill me.”

“I don’t remember you describing it as a kidnapping. In fact as I recall, you thanked me.”