Ordinary Miracles, page 28
“So why didn’t anyone spot him?”
“Because he’s – was – very clever, and used Cherekov to do his dirty work. They’d made sure we lost track of him so that Weaver could be alibied to within an inch of his life all the time, and then gave Cherekov a legitimate history so we would trust him.”
“He just didn’t count on Mike having a buried second Talent,” said Nadia. “None of us did, and now he’s got a third one… sheesh.” She shook her head.
“And he would have gotten away with it, if it wasn’t for you meddling kids,” added Anne. “James Greylock asked me to say that. He said that Michael would understand.”
I laughed, then stopped. I’d broken about twenty ribs at Somerby Court and although the bones were healed, the muscles and other squishy bits still objected to levity, like a Methodist grandmother being horrified by the thought that someone, somewhere, might actually be enjoying themselves.
“In the end it was quite simple – everything he did, including kidnapping Amy, were attempts at distraction, misdirection or to frighten you off,” said Anne.
“Which, of course, was never going to work with you load of bolshie buggers,” said Nadia. “I don’t think he wanted to hurt you, at least not at the start. He just wanted you to leave him alone to get on with what he wanted to do. Same reason he went for the colleges, I guess, though we’ll never know.” If that was a dig at me for failing to keep him alive I chose to ignore it.
“Which is especially ironic as we didn’t have a bloody clue what he was up to most of the time,” Clara replied.
She was different now, starting with a luminous purple Dragon tattoo that stretched the whole length of her left arm, its head on the back of her hand. On her insistence, and with Amy’s collusion, I had a much smaller, simpler one tattooed on my left forearm, which glows in the part of the spectrum that only mages can see whenever I call on the earth for power. And no, it isn’t bloody Octarine. Clara designed both of them herself.
As I said, when you get Clara, you get the Dragon. And once you’ve got the Dragon, you’ll never be rid of it. One day I’ll give it a name, and it won’t be Algernon or Jennifer.
The thing is, I still felt like me. I didn’t feel like a very powerful mage, someone who is known at a national level and who gets asked to go to places to do what he does. It’s a bit like when I got my driving licence – I was still me but I had this official skill. This felt the same, including the need to be bloody careful so I didn’t run into/set fire to/blow up anything I didn’t mean to.
Slater was still talking.
“We found the thing they’d been working on in the rubble of Somerby Court. It had been roughly repaired after the army base, but the collapse smashed it to fragments. Weaver was trying to use it on you when you fought, probably by drawing on all the power he’d managed to put into it. When he died, that power was released all in one go. That’s why the damage was so extensive and you got hurt so much.”
I nodded. “What’s going to happen to Ishka and the others?”
“Halsted has been made a DS in Special Operations. He, Ishka and Addison have become our permanent liaison contacts. The hard-light deaths will have verdicts of ‘unlawfully killed’ put against them at an inquest, naming Weaver and Cherekov but being vague about what caused the deaths, if you see what I mean.”
There was a silence, with wine and an easing of belts. “So what now?” I asked.
“Back to work,” said Nadia with a shrug. “Your little gang has got some big things to sort out.”
“Hardly my little gang,” I protested. I wasn’t in charge of us – nobody really was. Sam is scary strong; Clara has a Dragon on speed dial and Amy is now so clever that I think I should stick to finger painting.
Nadia bit down on a smile. “You lot have become a ‘laukote’, which literally means a ‘quartet’ – four mages of varied but significant abilities that work as a coherent and complementary group.”
“Not too sure about the coherent bit,” muttered Amy. I swear she didn’t glance at me, but…
“Anyway, if you aren’t careful you’ll end up like we did.” She gestured to the others.
“You a laukote? You only three.” Sam said sharply.
Anne Collister shifted in her chair slightly, and lifted her chin. “Do you remember the last full Triple Talent? Ellie Hart?”
“I’ve heard of her, of course, but…”
“She was my erdikide,” Anne went on quietly. Nadia gripped her hand. “When she died we stopped being laukote and became hirko, a trio.”
“In a group like this everyone becomes erdikide to everyone else, at some level or other,” said Richard. “I wondered if a three to one female–male ratio was just my bad luck, but it seems it’s always three to one and in the last ten recorded groups – you get one every twenty years or so – only one has been male heavy.”
“Any idea why?”
Richard looked at me and raised an eyebrow. “Because God is a feminist? Because one man is a match for any three women?” Nadia threw a roast potato at him. “Because dinosaurs had yellow toes and could hum the ‘Marseillaise’?”
“So you don’t know.”
“Not a fucking clue.” He stood up abruptly. “Excuse me for a moment.” He headed for the toilet.
“Ellie was his girlfriend,” said Anne softly. “They were living together and he was with her when she died. He stopped doing magic for nearly a year after that. It seemed to burn all the joy out of him.”
That led to an introspective silence, broken by the sound of the toilet flushing. “So what happens now?”
“Well,” said Nadia, “we’ve got a small problem.”
“What, another one?”
“Yes, but this time it’s not directly related to you.” She let that hang for a moment, obviously hoping that my curiosity would get the better of me. I took a mouthful of wine and let it, which is always a mistake.
“Okay, so what is it?”
“We have found several objects that seem to be entirely resistant to the effects of magic. We were wondering if you would like to look into it? When your studies allow, of course. You seem very well suited to it.”
Sam just sighed.
Martyn Carey, Ordinary Miracles
