Taken

“I go somewhere safe and call Sonder and Talisid and read them the message in this letter.”

“And if I call you and tell you it’s all clear?”

“Then I run like hell. Is this about that thing you had Sonder research for you?”

“Yes.” I handed Luna the envelope. “If everything goes to plan I’ll be back within an hour.”

“Why can’t I come?” Luna asked, accepting it. “I did last time.”

“If you open that letter you’ll know. Enjoy the coffee.”

*  *  *

Tiger’s Palace looked pretty much the same as when I’d last seen it. The shark-eyed bouncers let me pass, and the roar of music washed over me as I crossed the dance floor. I caught a glimpse of one of the kids who’d picked a fight with me and Luna. The instant he saw me his eyes went wide and he vanished into the crowd. I smiled to myself and walked up the stairs.

Jagadev’s throne room was filled with a smaller entourage than last time, and Jagadev wasn’t there. The Asian guy with sunglasses stopped me once again. If he was still bruised from the last visit, he didn’t show it. When I said I was here to see Jagadev, he gave a curt “Follow me” and led me farther in. The bead curtain parted to reveal a small maze of corridors. I passed a couple of heavies with badly concealed guns under their jackets who gave me unfriendly looks before Sunglasses stopped in front of a door. “Inside.”

I opened the door and walked in. It swung shut silently behind me.

Jagadev was there, and he was alone. The chamber was a dining room, wide and tall, with hangings of red and dark gold. Gold statuettes stood on tables, and curved swords and intricately woven tapestries hung on the walls. A fire blazed in the fireplace, its flickering light illuminating the long table at the centre, and at the middle of the table sat Jagadev. A meal was laid out before him but he sat with his clawed paws clasped and still. His dark eyes watched me opaquely as I approached the table and stopped.

Jagadev made a gesture towards the chair opposite him. “Sit.”

“Thanks.” I pulled out the chair. Jagadev’s plate was piled with some sort of meat I didn’t recognise and his glass was filled with red wine, but both seemed untouched.

“You wished to speak to me,” Jagadev said in his growling purr once I was seated.

“I did,” I said. “First, I’d like to thank you for the pointer towards Fountain Reach. It was very accurate, as I’m sure you know.”

I stopped. “Is that all?” Jagadev said.

“No,” I said. “I think I might have figured out who’s been trying to kill your ward Anne. I thought you might be interested.”

“Speak.”

“Thanks.” I settled back in the wooden chair. “It interested me because once I looked back on it the first thing I noticed was just how much bad stuff has been happening to Anne over the last week. First there were those assassins in Archway, then there were those constructs at the motorway cafe, then she got arrested by the Council and could easily have gotten executed, and then she nearly got killed off by Vitus. When you think about it it’s actually pretty surprising she’s still alive.”

Jagadev watched me silently. “So,” I said. “I looked at Anne and tried to figure out why someone would want her dead so badly. And I really couldn’t come up with a good explanation. Okay, Vitus was after her because she was an apprentice who was the right age. And the Council were after her because they thought she was Vitus’s accomplice. But the assassins and the constructs didn’t fit with that at all. So I tried to figure out who was behind those.

“The obvious person to blame was Crystal, because she was the one who kidnapped all the others. But if it was Crystal then she should have been trying to kidnap Anne, not kill her. And there was something else—the more I thought about it the more it seemed to me that neither of the attacks would have done Crystal or Vitus any favours. They wouldn’t have led us away from Fountain Reach—if anything they would have done the exact opposite. If I’d been killed in the middle of investigating that place it would just have convinced the next few investigators that I was on the right track. So whoever was behind it, they weren’t on Crystal and Vitus’s side. But they weren’t on Anne’s side either, because they were trying to kill her. And they weren’t on my side or Variam’s side, because they could have killed us too, and they weren’t on Morden or Onyx’s side, because those guys wanted me alive, at least until they found Vitus. In fact, it didn’t seem like they were on anyone’s side, which didn’t make any sense.

“So I decided I’d been going about this the wrong way. I threw out all my ideas and started from square one. And when I looked at it with a fresh eye the first thing that jumped out at me was that every time Anne had been in danger, your name seemed to crop up. That first time in Archway she’d gone there in your car with your driver. Same with the motorway services. Vitus trying to kill her wasn’t your doing . . . but it was your doing that she was in Fountain Reach in the first place. And that’s a bit odd, isn’t it? Anne doesn’t duel, so why send her to a duelling tournament when there’s someone out there kidnapping apprentices? Especially when you knew that Fountain Reach was the place those kidnappings were coming from? And finally there was the Council arresting her. It didn’t seem like that could be your fault . . . until I remembered that habit of yours of asking Anne about her classmates. The Keepers are probably going to decide that Crystal got that information out of Anne’s mind, but they’re not a hundred percent happy with that explanation and neither am I. Of course, if the information was getting passed on to Crystal by someone she told it to . . . well, then that would make Anne a perfect spy, wouldn’t it? She’d be Crystal’s accomplice without ever meeting her. But as long as she was alive, she’d be a link that could be traced back to you.”

I stopped and waited. The only sound was the crackle of the fire. “Are you accusing me of attempting to kill my own ward?” Jagadev asked.

“It doesn’t seem to make sense, does it?” I said. “After all, you pointed me towards Fountain Reach. It’s almost as if you wanted to get rid of everyone. Anne and Variam and me and Vitus and Crystal and Onyx . . . and a whole lot of random apprentices in England.”

Jagadev extended his hand to pick up his glass of wine and drank from it, his eyes not leaving mine. “Then there were those gunmen who went after Anne,” I said “I always had the feeling they were killed to stop them from talking about their employer, but it was interesting how they were killed, wasn’t it? Those weren’t gunshot wounds, more like claws. Almost like a big cat.”

Jagadev set the glass down. “Please come to the point.”