Risen (Alex Verus, #12)

by Benedict Jacka

“She didn’t look like a monster last time,” Ji-yeong said. “More like a victim.” “A lot of monsters start out that way.”

“Richard Drakh told me yesterday that Anne Walker and that jinn were about to cause a national disaster,” I said quietly. “He took it to the Council proposing a truce.” “Drakh’s meeting with the Council?” “As of yesterday, I’ve got a seat at the table. You’re here to give evidence as to what just happened in Sagash’s shadow realm. Just tell the truth and keep to the point. I’ll handle the rest.” Ji-yeong muttered something under her breath. “I woke up this morning thinking it was going to be a boring day.”

“Enough!” I shouted. I hadn’t really expected it to work. But for some reason, Richard, Vihaela, Alma, and Druss all stopped and looked at me. It caught me off guard but I plunged forward. “Everyone here shares some blame for this,” I said, my voice hard. “In fact, by my count, the only ones in this room who haven’t contributed one way or another to Anne’s current situation are Tenebrous and those four mantis golems.” “I didn’t—” Sonder began. “You provided the evidence that got her arrested. Now, we can sit around this table arguing over whose fault this is, or we can decide what to do.”

“And how do we know that you aren’t working with Drakh?” Alma said. “Alma, I’m going to be frank,” I said. “I don’t like you. You supported Levistus while he was alive, and you voted to sentence me to death, not once but over and over again. If you were to drop dead of a heart attack, I wouldn’t lose a moment’s sleep. But Richard is a far worse enemy to me than you will ever be. If I were in a room with you, Richard, and a gun with two bullets, I’d shoot Richard twice. Does that answer your question?” Alma looked back at me, stone-faced. Richard had been watching our exchange with an expression of mild interest. Druss looked amused. Vihaela just seemed to be enjoying the show.

Imbued items are dangerous. Wielding one is less like using a tool, and more like riding a very powerful, half-trained animal—you can influence the item, but it can influence you right back. Most mages will only use imbued items when they absolutely have to. Wielding two at once is much harder than using one—the items fight with both their wielder and each other, pulling in different directions. I’d been using three. It was only the dreamstone and Arachne’s training that let me do it. With my experience of Elsewhere, I could stabilise the links between myself and the items, riding the waves of their desires. The armour pushed me to be guarded and safe; the headband wanted to be high up and watchful and always on the move; the sovnya wanted to attack and kill. Instead of fighting the urges, I’d cycled between them, allowing each of the items free reign when the time was right, and playing them off against each other when it wasn’t. But keeping it up was a strain, and right now I felt like I’d been carrying heavy weights all day.

Klara, the life mage who’d studied me after I’d replaced my hand, had told me that the fateweaver was going to continue transmuting my body until one of three things happened: it reached a stable equilibrium, it reached my brain, or it reached my heart. She’d been fairly confident that the last one would happen first, probably within a few months. Right now, that estimate was looking very optimistic.

“And if I say no?” “I would prefer that you didn’t.” “Prefer,” Helikaon said cynically. “What happened to that nice mild-mannered apprentice I used to have?” “Turns out he was never all that nice.”

“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.”

“I think,” I said after a pause, “that if you and Dad had focused a bit less on why your ways of doing things were right, and focused a bit more on compromising with each other, then my life would have turned out a hell of a lot better.” My mother sighed and seemed to deflate. Suddenly she looked much older and much more tired. “I was young and full of fire. And stupid. I thought I could handle everything.” She studied the smouldering tip of her cigarette. “You think I haven’t had that same thought, many times? There is much time for regret, at my age.” She looked up, met my eyes. “Do you still hate me for it?” I took a moment to answer. “No,” I said at last. “I carried a lot of resentment for a long time, but . . . no. My life’s my own, and so are my choices. Anyway, I’ve seen what happens when people hold on to grudges. It doesn’t end well.”

“You’re hoping I’ll deal with your Richard problem,” I said. I didn’t bother to keep my voice down; there was far too much chaos for anyone to overhear. “I guarantee you that Richard is going to make his move before you do. When that happens, I’m going to need the Council forces to act on my direction, fast.” “There are certain issues of trust.” “Yes, because up until a few days ago, you and the rest of the Council were trying to kill me, so I killed a bunch of you first. Get over it. If you want this operation to have the slightest chance of working, you’re going to have put that aside.”

“I understand that Variam is likely to be on the opposing force,” Landis said. “I’d very much like to do something about it, but I’m afraid I’m going to be rather tied up with command responsibilities. I would take it as a personal favour if you and Miss Vesta could do what you can to get him out of there alive.”

I sighed. As an apprentice, I’d dreamed of power. I’d imagined that it would set me free, open up a world of endless possibilities. But now that I had it, it turned out that real power wasn’t something that you could just take and forget about. Real power mostly came from relationships, often with people and entities that you didn’t particularly like, and to keep it you had to spend so long developing and maintaining those relationships that you didn’t have time to do much else.

“May I ask a favour?” “Of course.” “If you can . . . please bring Anne back,” Karyos said. “I grew to know her over the long months in my cocoon. We never spoke, but I felt her touch, the weave of her magic. This current form . . . in a sense, she gave birth to me. I do not want the only words I ever have with her to be those we shared when she attacked us.” “That’s what I want as well.” “Thank you.” Karyos bowed. “Until we speak again.”

“It’s Verus,” I said. “Go.” “Understood.” Landis broke the connection. “What was that about?” Luna asked. I stood up, stretching slightly. “We’re going.” Luna looked puzzled. “Going, as in . . . ?” “The invasion.” Luna checked her phone. “It’s still—” “Change of plans.”

“Anything serious?” Ji-yeong shook her head. “No, you were lucky. Internal organs were out of the path of the current. It’ll regenerate with . . .” She tailed off, eyes widening. “What the hell?” “Oh, right,” I said. “It was like that when I got here.” Ji-yeong stared at my right arm. “What is it?” “A symbiotic imbued item. Don’t worry about it.” “That can’t be a graft. Is that . . . transmuted flesh?” “I said, don’t worry about it.” “If something had eaten my arm and was starting on my shoulder, I’d worry about it.”

“You remember when we went into that bubble realm in the British Museum?” Luna asked. “When we were going after the fateweaver the first time?” “Yeah.” “We ran into Cinder and Deleo,” Luna said. “They were caught in a trap and couldn’t get out. I thought we should just leave them. You didn’t. After they were gone, I asked you why you did it. You remember what you told me?” “If you can’t get another ally, next best thing is to give your enemy another enemy.” Luna nodded. “But when I kept asking, you gave me another answer. You remember?” “Honestly, no.” “You said there was another reason.” Luna was looking at me steadily. “You said whenever you kill someone, it gets a little bit easier to do it the next time. You said if you’re making the decision to do that, when you’re doing it deliberately, to be really sure you know what you’re doing. Because you’re going to have to live with it forever.”

“Two pillars. Not being Richard, and my friends. I’d been walking a tightrope between them. Figured I could keep my balance. Hadn’t thought of what I’d do when the rope ran out. Anne being lost broke . . . everything. Couldn’t leave her or she’d die. Vari too: he was never going to walk away. But couldn’t stop her either. Not as the person I was.” I paused. “Two pillars. Myself, all of you. Had to let one fall.”

“You’re not cold enough to keep this up,” Luna said. “Not long term.” “Luna,” I said, trying to make my voice gentle, “there isn’t going to be a long term.” Luna stiffened. “You—” I spoke over her. “The fateweaver’s spreading. Eventually it’ll reach my heart. And once that happens, my emotional health isn’t going to matter very much.”

“There is exactly one way you’re going to have a chance against that jinn,” I said. “And that’s to stop flying with one wing.” “No.” “Even your other half wouldn’t be able to do it on her own anymore.” Dark Anne’s face was set. “No.” “Come on, Anne!” I rose to my feet, started pacing. “What’s your endgame here? Even if we could get rid of the jinn with just the two of us—which we can’t—you seriously think you and your other self can keep on living with some supercharged magical version of multiple personality disorder?” “Worked so far.” “No,” I said. “It hasn’t. The whole damn reason the jinn could possess you in the first place was by wedging itself into the crack between the two of you. You were going to fall apart anyway, Dr. Shirland was pretty clear about that. The jinn just sped things up.”

“You,” the marid told me. “I should have known.” It turned towards Sonder and reached out, pale fingers resting delicately against his armour. Sonder was trembling, eyes wide with panic, struggling to move against the paralysis spell. “Worth keeping?” the marid mused. I tried to think of what to do. All I could think of was that last-resort idea I’d had about Arachne’s dress, but I was on the other side of a camera and— The marid killed Sonder then killed Lumen. Their bodies dropped, dead before they hit the ground. I stood frozen, trying to process what I’d seen. It had been so fast that it was over before I’d realised what was happening. There had been a flash of green light, something flickering into Anne from the bodies, and that was it.

Sonder and I had been friends once. I’d met him the same year I’d met Anne, and for a few months Sonder and Luna and Anne and Vari and I had formed a little group of five, meeting in my flat in the Camden evenings to laugh and talk and play board games. My friendship with Sonder hadn’t lasted, but it had never quite been forgotten, a lingering memory of happier times. And now he was dead, and the fact that he was dead at Anne’s hands made it so much worse. For the first time since we’d entered the shadow realm, I felt helpless. What was I supposed to do?

I looked between Rain and Landis. “To make this work, I need tactical command. The Keepers and soldiers in the attack have to be following my direct orders.” Rain snorted. “It’s not a joke,” I said. “Verus, there’s no way in hell Nimbus is giving you command,” Rain said. “Hate to break it to you.” “It’s not Nimbus’s support I need,” I said. “He might be director, but it’s the two of you that the Order of the Star and the Order of the Shield really trust. Being assigned command doesn’t matter a damn if the troops won’t listen. But the Keepers do listen to both of you.”

“Why should we trust you?” a Keeper asked. It was the big question. “Most of you have been fighting against Drakh for less than fifteen months,” I said. “He’s been my enemy for over fifteen years. I have far more reason to hate him than any of you will ever have. On top of that, I struck a bargain with Councillor Alma before coming here. My half of the deal was to make sure Drakh ended up dead. I intend to keep it.”

All of a sudden, my fear was gone, replaced by rage. I wasn’t afraid that the adepts would fire. I was sick of everything, sick of killing people and sick of this stupid pointless war, and I turned back to the kitchens and shouted at the top of my voice. “I DO NOT HAVE TIME FOR THIS SHIT!” I kept yelling, all of my anger and frustration boiling over. “Every one of the Council soldiers behind me would like nothing more than to just pull the trigger on you all and go home! I come out under a flag of truce to talk and you do this?” I pointed the sovnya down at the adept’s body; the white flag flapped, stained with his blood. “You are not heroes! You were not brought out here to fight for freedom, or justice! You were brought here as cannon fodder for a war you don’t understand! If you die here, you will not be remembered as martyrs for a noble cause! You’ll be remembered as a bunch of idiots too stupid to figure out that they’d already lost!”

At last Luna got to her feet. “I’ll tell them you’ll be there soon,” she said, then hesitated. “Alex? About whether you were right . . . I still don’t know. But for what it’s worth . . . these decisions, about who lives and who dies? I’m glad you’re the one making them, and not Nimbus or Talisid. And not me.”

I stopped a few feet away from Rain. “How the hell are you still alive?” Rain closed his eyes, resting his head against the stone. “Transmutation,” he said, his voice raspy. “Turn the broken bone into liquid, reshape it, turn it back.” “I didn’t even know water mages could do that.” “There’s a reason they don’t,” Rain said. “Have a guess what happens if you get it wrong.” “Well, glad you didn’t.”

Luna stepped up beside me, and as she did the silver mist of her curse brightened, glowing in my sight. “He may not have a future,” Luna said, her voice sharp and commanding. “But I do. You lived in the Arcana Emporium when Alex owned it. Well, now it’s passed to me. I’ll offer you the same deal. Leave Variam, return to the monkey’s paw and the Emporium. You can take your victims, so long as they’re willing. One per year, no more. Leave us in peace, keep to those terms, and I’ll let you use the shop for as long as it’s mine.”

“Alex,” Luna said. I paused. Luna was looking straight at me. “You said last night that if you didn’t come back, it might be for the best. Well, I didn’t say this then, but I’m saying it now. If there’s any way you can make it back from this—any way—you take it. You don’t give up; you fight to the end. You understand?” I nodded. “Promise me,” Luna said. There was a fierceness in her eyes. “I promise,” I told her.

The two Annes turned on me with identical looks of anger. They’re getting worse. I could feel the jinn drawing closer; we didn’t have long. “Settle this later,” I told them. “Your marid is coming and it’s not in a good mood. We are going to bind it and that means you two need to work together.” “No,” both Annes said in echo. “I wasn’t asking,” I told them. I pulled the ring from my pocket and held it up. “You do this, or I die and the two of you are enslaved forever.” “I can’t work with her—” “This is her fault—” “I SAID SHUT UP!” I shouted. “All of this insane crap started because the two of you couldn’t deal with each other! Now once that marid is gone you can do whatever the hell you like, but right now you ARE going to work together or I swear to God, before I die, the last thing I do will be to figure out which one of you helped least and put the other one in charge!”

“You do not get a vote on this,” I said. “William Shakespeare himself could not find the words to express how tired I am of the both of you. I have journeyed through war and blood and death to reach you here, and after all I have sacrificed I am not going to let you pick yourselves up and do the same stupid shit all over again.”

“Did you plan this from the beginning?” I asked. “Plan all this from the beginning?” Richard said, raising his eyebrows. “Alex, I’m flattered you believe I possess that level of foresight, but you and Anne between you have managed to create such utter chaos that my long-term plans were wrecked weeks ago. You personally have forced me to abandon my entire course of action and start from scratch no less than twice in the past twenty-four hours. I don’t know who could have possibly anticipated all of the absurd things you’ve ended up doing. I certainly didn’t.”

You built up that army of adepts with promises and honeyed words, and led them to their deaths while you walked away. You started a war between mages and adepts and a whole lot of regular people, most of whom had probably never even heard of you but who just happened to get caught in the crossfire. And if you want the best example, look at your own apprentices. We were supposed to be your legacy, weren’t we? The proof of your greatness. Well, take a look how we turned out. Tobruk, dead. Shireen, dead. Rachel, insane and dead. I’m the only one left, and I’m willing to risk my life to stop you. ‘By their fruits ye shall know them’, isn’t it? What does that say about you?” I looked straight at Richard. “You’re worse than a warlord. You’re a bad teacher.” Richard’s smile slipped. In the seventeen years I’d known him, it was the first time I’d seen him genuinely insulted.

“You’re only making this harder on yourself,” Richard told me. I saw his eyes flicker and knew he was calculating how to get close enough to cut my throat. Behind him, Arachne’s spell was working, repairing the damage to Anne’s mind, but it needed time. I saw Richard tense, about to move— Hermes blinked into existence right in front of me. Richard paused. Hermes crouched protectively in front of my body and gave a sharp, threatening bark.

Anne’s spell failed again. “Come on!” she shouted. “Why won’t it work?” It’s okay, I told her. I knew this was coming. I raised my artificial arm—the only one I could still lift—and stroked her cheek gently. I couldn’t see very well but I could just make out her face. Glad I got to see you one last time. Realisation flashed in Anne’s eyes, followed by fear. “No!” She stared down at me with a look of dawning helplessness. “You can’t do this! Not now!” I felt a cold nose poke against my left hand, and smiled slightly. Hermes. I did everything I set out to do, I told her. Now I get to die in the arms of the woman I love. Good way to go. The fateweaver was still holding me to a single future, but I was close enough now to make out the end. It was like riding a train to the end of the line. Beyond was an empty void, though it was white, not black. Had it always been that way? “There’s got to be something.” I couldn’t make out Anne’s face anymore, but I could hear her talking to herself, her voice quick and frantic. “Rebuild from another organ, no. Amputate . . . too late. Oxygen . . .” The shadow realm trembled and I heard the grinding crack of breaking stone, followed by a roar. The floor bucked and shook. You really should get out of here, I told Anne and Hermes. “Be quiet! It’s the fateweaver, I can’t heal you while it’s doing that. Have to make it part of the solution somehow . . .” You can’t save everyone this time. The end of the line was very close. But it’s okay. It doe...

Saffron puts her hand on the door handle, then suddenly looks back. “Where’s Verus?” For a moment I feel a weird sensation, like a feather-light brush across my thoughts. But I know that trick and I don’t let my concentration slip. I keep my thoughts in the present, taking in the shop around me, the sight of Saffron at the door. I look straight at her and think very clearly. Try and read my mind again, and we’ll see how well my magic works on you.

I still haven’t really talked with Vari since the battle. I mean, not properly. He’s not hurt—the marid kept its promise—and the Council doesn’t seem to be blaming him for anything. But he hasn’t been dealing with it all that well. He tells me he’s being given these extra shifts, but I’m starting to get the feeling he’s just trying to stay busy so he doesn’t have time to think. It’s what I used to do. We haven’t talked about the deal I made either.

I shouldn’t be complaining. It was only seven years ago I walked into this shop for the first time. Back then I had no money, a rented flat, and a curse I couldn’t control. I didn’t know anything about magic and I was about two bad days away from suicide. Now I’m an independent mage with a shop and a home of my own. I’ve got more than I ever dreamed of. But none of it’s worth anything without people to share it with.

Anne’s a very different person these days, and to be honest I’m still figuring out how to treat her. On the one hand, she’s easier to get on with. I always liked the old Anne, but whenever you talked to her, there was this reserve, this sense she was holding herself back. Nowadays she’s a lot more relaxed. And funnier. I can talk to her about things where the conversation would have stalled before. On the other hand, she’s also a lot scarier. Like I said, she doesn’t look scary, but somehow I’m very sure that if anyone ever really threatens her she’ll kill them without a second thought. It’s like the safety catches that normal people have just aren’t there. I suppose some people would say the same about Alex, but I never felt with Alex that he’d turn that on me. With Anne, I’m not so sure.

“You used to say on your bad days, it felt like you weren’t bearing a curse, you were a curse. That you made everything worse for everyone you’d ever known, just by being alive.” I nod. There’s something brittle in Anne’s words. “How did you deal with it?” It’s something I used to think about a lot, and what happened with the monkey’s paw has made me dig it up again. It’s not easy to say, but I speak honestly and hope it’ll help. “I suppose the biggest thing . . . you have to get used to the idea that you’re not a good person. Maybe not an awful one either, but . . . You have to accept that what you’ve done, what you’re going to do, there’s a lot of bad in there. You just hope there’ll be enough good to balance it out.”

Alex looks stranger up close. It’s not his shape so much—his body’s leaner and harder, and the lack of body hair is kind of odd, but none of that looks super unnatural. It’s the colour that’s the problem. Alex’s skin looks like white marble, only a little darker than the fateweaver. I used to be fairer than Alex, but now when I sit next to him I look like I’ve been tanning in a sun bed. I still don’t know exactly what Anne did. Both she and Alex tried to explain it, but Anne was really vague, and Alex wasn’t in much of a condition to take notes given that he was, you know, dying at the time. As far as I understand it, Anne couldn’t heal Alex because the fateweaver was transforming his heart, and she couldn’t reverse the transformation because it was too advanced. So she went the other way. She supercharged it, getting the fateweaver to transmute all of Alex’s body until his body and the fateweaver were the same thing. Alex claims she wouldn’t have been able to do it on her own, that the fateweaver pushed it to work because it was the only way for it to stay alive.

“You’re remembering things the fateweaver saw.” “When I realised that, I started thinking,” Alex says. “And I kept coming back to that conversation we had. The night in Sagash’s shadow realm, before the battle. You remember what you told me, about how I’d changed?” I nod. “Well, I kept turning it over,” Alex says. We’re coming up to the path; he stops and leans against a tree. “And the more I thought about it, the more I had to admit that you were right. Now, some of it I could put down to Anne and the Council and losing my hand, but when I thought back, the point at which I really started acting differently was when I took up the fateweaver.” Alex looks at me. “Imbued items are made for a purpose. My mist cloak was built to hide its wearer. The sovnya was made to kill magical creatures. My armour’s meant to protect. The fateweaver? It was made as a tool for generals. To win battles.” “But it was you making those decisions, not the fateweaver.” “Oh, I made the decisions,” Alex says. “But after you’ve decided what to do, you still have to figure out how to do it. And if you’ve got an imbued item that’s really good at solving problems one particular way . . . well, don’t you think it’s a funny coincidence that right after I bond to an imbued item built for war, I start facing and killing my enemies on the battlefield? And less than a month after that, I’m commanding an army?” I look at him. Alex shakes his head. “Don’t worry, it’s not going to take me over. The fateweaver wa...