Cold wind blew down the concrete halls, carrying the scents of stone and water. The rain had stopped at sunset, leaving the streets and walkways wet, but the air still carried its chill. Distant traffic and faraway voices blended into background noise, but here, in the heart of the city, I was alone.
I was standing on a concrete walkway. Lights along the walls cast glowing rings of orange that faded quickly into the sea of darkness all around. Lit windows looked down from the flats above and from the theatre complex across the water, but I couldn’t see a single living person. I glanced up and down the walkway one more time; when nothing moved, I kept going.
The structure around me was the Barbican, a huge sprawling complex of brown concrete in central London. It was the first time I’d visited the place, and it felt to me like a richer version of the council estates I’d grown up around. The tower blocks were the same, the rows of flats were the same, but it all looked cleaner and posher – there was even a handful of plants and trees, though all they really did was draw attention to how cold and sterile everything else was. Scattered living things, dwarfed by the thick stone barriers made to contain them, the essentia in the air muted and weak. It would be a terrible place to find a Well, but I wasn’t looking for a Well. I was looking for my father.
Twelve days ago, I’d been attacked in Covent Garden by a man calling himself Vermillion. He’d tried to stab me to death and nearly succeeded, but in doing so he’d also given me what I’d been searching for. Vermillion was a member of the Winged, the weird mysterious group who for most of the past year had been alternating between attacking me and trying to recruit me. According to them, my father had been a member. I wasn’t sure whether to believe it, but I was sure they held the key to finding him, and Vermillion’s attack had given me the leverage I’d needed to pressure one of their other members into handing over a letter from my father.
That had been three days ago. Two days ago, I’d sent a message to the email address the letter had given me. Two hours ago, I’d been told to come here.
But told by whom?
I slipped behind a concrete pillar, my back coming to rest against the cold stone. To my eyes, the essentia currents glimmered faintly as they drifted through the darkness, taking on tinges of colour as they passed through objects; reddish-brown as they moved through the concrete, pale blue as they moved through the fluorescent lights, a hint of green as they gathered around the leafless trees down on the courtyard below. It was beautiful, in a quiet peaceful way, but all it was really telling me was that there was no one with an active sigl nearby.
And even that wasn’t much help. If there was someone out there, they could just have their sigls turned off. Like me.
Middle of the Barbican, I repeated to myself. I’d rushed out of the door as soon as I’d seen those words on my screen; only now was I realising how ambiguous they were. I’d studied the orange-grey-green maps posted at the Barbican junctions, and, as far as I could see, this spot, around the southern side of the artificial lake, was as close as you could get to “middle”. But there was no sign of my father.
When you show up for a meeting and no one’s there, you start second-guessing yourself. What if my father had already been here and left? Maybe we’d both wandered around the Barbican, somehow missing each other? What if I’d got the time wrong, or the place, or . . .
A line from the letter floated to the surface of my thoughts. The spirit is served by demons that give gifts to those they favour.
I shivered, pushing the thought away. That letter had left me with a million questions, but now wasn’t the time. The message that had led me here . . . had it really been from my dad?
If it hadn’t, the best thing I could do right now was to stay hidden. But if it had, then my dad might be out there doing exactly the same thing. And if I was hiding and he was hiding, we were never going to find each other.
I hissed out a breath. Screw it. I’d been waiting for this chance for years. I wasn’t going to lose my nerve now!
I headed for the nearest stairwell and trotted down the steps until I came out at ground level, next to the dark stillness of the Barbican’s artificial lake. The breeze blowing off the water was cold. I walked out into the middle of the courtyard then stopped. A hundred windows looked down on me, blank and shadowed and faceless. Any of them could be holding someone watching me.
I took a deep breath and channelled.
Essentia stirred inside me, flowing through my body. In the early days channelling my personal essentia felt like trying to pick up water between my fingers. Nowadays it feels more like flexing a muscle, the essentia an extension of my own body, my nerves extending through the flows to brush the surface of whatever they touch. I lifted my right arm and sent essentia surging through my hand and into the sigl ring on my fourth finger.
Blue-white light erupted silently into the night. The sigl was weak, made years ago when I was still fumbling my way through shaping, but it was still bright enough to make me shield my eyes. To anyone looking out of their window, I’d look like a figure holding up a tiny star. Most people wouldn’t understand what they were seeing. A drucrafter would.
I held the sigl at full power for a slow count of five, then cut the flow. The light winked out, leaving spots dancing in my eyes. I jogged away across the courtyard, disappearing into the shadows beneath the walkways, then stopped.
Murmurs echoed, louder than before. I heard the scrape of a window opening, then another; questioning voices. A flicker of movement showed up on the walkway, though I couldn’t make out the figure behind it. The Barbican seemed to stir, turning towards the source of the disturbance.
Using a sigl in public, as I’d just done, is a bad idea. Drucraft isn’t something you’re supposed to advertise, and if the wrong person notices you doing it, it can mean trouble. But London’s a big place, and one weak sigl doesn’t draw that much attention, especially one that doesn’t actually do anything you couldn’t duplicate with a good torch. Most of the time, if I get caught using drucraft, all I have to do is hurry out of sight, and that’s going to be the end of it.
But that’s if the people watching don’t know who I am. For someone who did, and who knew what I could do, I’d just written “Stephen Oakwood is here” in letters of blue-white fire.
The Barbican came awake, scattered lights coming on, voices echoing around the courtyard. From down where I was hidden I heard the sounds of questions and answers. But as the minutes passed and nothing happened, they tapered off. One by one the voices ceased, until everything was quiet. The Barbican slept once again.
I stayed out of sight behind a concrete pillar, listening. Nothing came, and I clicked my tongue. Was I going to have to do something more obvious?
The scrape of a footstep sounded from nearby.
Instantly I was on full alert. You can tell a lot from a footstep. Normal footsteps are steady and rhythmic; the sound of someone with somewhere to go. This had been a single motion, followed by silence.
I stood very still, straining my ears. Nothing else came, and I focused on my sensing, reaching out. And this time, I felt something. It was faint – very faint – but beyond the currents of essentia drifting through the Barbican, the white-grey tendrils carrying with them echoes of water and concrete and earth and stone, was something else. Something . . .
– water, deep and crushing. Gold gleaming in the depths. Scales like mountains, rippling like the tide –
I wrenched myself away, the flood of images cutting off as if with a knife. I’d been about to stick my head out in the hope of seeing my father; instead I stayed where I was.
The corridor was silent for a while, then I heard quiet footsteps moving towards me, passing my hiding place without stopping. I reached out again with my sensing, more cautiously this time, and felt nothing – there was some kind of wispy essentia signature, but it was so faint that I might have imagined it, and as I watched it faded. The footsteps faded. I was alone once more.
I waited.
Doubts started to nag at me. Only minutes ago I’d been promising myself that I wouldn’t let this chance slip away. Why had I hesitated?
I shook my head; this was getting me nowhere. I stepped out around the pillar, out of cover. I was going to have to come up with—
“Stop.”
My head snapped around and I stopped dead.
“Stay where you are.”
The voice was coming from behind the pillars a little way down the corridor. I couldn’t see who was talking, but whoever he was, he was close. Without thinking, I took a step—
“I said stay,” the voice repeated. “One more step and I’m gone.”
I stopped.
“Good,” the voice said when I didn’t move. “Now. I’m going to ask you a question. Just one. Think carefully before you answer. Answer wrong, this conversation is over and you’ll never hear from me again. Take another step, this conversation is over and you’ll never hear from me again. You understand?”
It was a man’s voice, middle-aged, and in the time he took to finish speaking my hopes soared and plummeted, up and down like a rollercoaster. I desperately needed to know if it was my dad, and I couldn’t tell. It didn’t exactly sound like him . . . but it didn’t sound not like him, either. It had been so many years . . .
“You understand?” the voice repeated.
I swallowed, my mouth suddenly dry. “Yes.”
“Good,” the voice said. “Now. What was the number of the house where Stephen got his cat?”
I stared. “What?”
“You need me to repeat it?”
“What do you mean, ‘Stephen’?” I demanded.
“Answer the question.”
“. . . I can’t.”
“Don’t know?”
“No, I can’t, because there isn’t an answer. I didn’t get Hobbes from a house, it was from one of the ground-floor flats on that estate round the corner. I mean, I guess it had a number, but why would I care? It was just ‘the flat with the old sofa out front’.”
The voice didn’t answer.
“You there?” I asked. Subtly, I tried to crane my neck to catch a glimpse of whoever was talking, but all I could see was the concrete pillars. A few steps to the side would give me a clear line of sight, but . . .
“Yes,” the voice replied. “Stay here for a slow count of fifty. Then go up the stairs to the level directly above. Ring the bell for flat 117. You’ll be let in. Follow?”
“. . . Yes.”
“Repeat it back to me.”
“Stay here for a slow count of fifty, go up a level, ring flat 117,” I repeated. “Then what?”
“You’ll find out. Start counting.”
“Hello?”
Silence.
I started counting. I’ve had longer minutes in my life, but not by much.
As I counted, my thoughts raced. Who had I been talking to? It had to be whoever had sent me that email . . . which meant it had to be my dad.
Didn’t it?
I desperately wished I could identify him from the voice. But the voice had been maddeningly vague, close to my memories but not quite a perfect match. Were my memories wrong? Or was it someone imitating him? Or was he disguising his voice? Or . . . or . . . or . . .
Forty-eight. Forty-nine. Fifty. I darted forward.
There was no one behind the pillars. I looked from side to side, trying to figure out where my stalker had gone. There was a small, blue-painted door, but when I tried the handle it didn’t open.
I took the stairs up.
The first-floor level was silent, lights winking in the darkness; if I’d stirred the Barbican awake, it had gone back to sleep. I walked along the walkway, my feet echoing softly on the tiles, then pressed the button marked 117.
There was a pause, then a metallic buzz and the door clicked. I slipped inside.
Flat 117 was at the end of one of the corridors. The door was very slightly ajar, and as I pushed it, it swung open without resistance. The inside was dark.
I hesitated. I could make out a few pieces of furniture in the shadows; all else was black. I felt stretched, like a taut wire, ready to snap forward or back. Was this what I’d been waiting for, or was it a trap?
The door yawned before me, inviting me to step through and find out.
Resolve flared up in me and I set my teeth. I’m not backing out now. I stepped through and swung the door closed behind me. The lock resisted slightly, then clicked shut.
I swallowed, then spoke into the darkness. “Show yourself.” I could hear the tension in my voice.
For a moment everything was silent. Then there was the click of a switch and the room flashed into light. I blinked, squinting, as a man stepped out and turned towards me.
My father had my looks, matured and weathered. His jaw was a little squarer, his brow a touch heavier; still handsome, but in a more distinctively masculine way. He was a couple of inches taller than me and a little stronger, and brown eyes sparkled at me from beneath a head of wavy black hair. “Stephen,” he said with his lopsided smile. “It’s been a while.”
I think right up until that last second I’d still been wondering if it was really him, whether the whole thing had been some sort of insanely elaborate trick. But the sound of his voice, steady but warm, with the trace of his old East End accent, banished all that in an instant. My doubts turned to smoke and I flew into his arms.
My father staggered as I crashed into him, then laughed, hugging me tightly enough to make me lose my breath and then ruffling my hair the way he’d used to do when I was a little boy. “You okay,” he asked. “Not hurt?”
I shook my head, not trusting myself to speak.
“Were you followed? Anything we need to deal with right now?”
I shook my head again, then spoke. “No.” My voice wavered a bit and I had to swallow. “Nothing like that.”
“Good.” My father disentangled himself and pushed me back slightly to arm’s length. “Let me take a look at you.”
He studied me. I did the same to him, and as I did, I started to notice the differences that my first glance had missed. When we’d last met, he’d had a scattering of white hairs, mostly on his sideburns; now they’d spread upwards through his hair, which had left “jet black” and was teetering on the edge of “salt and pepper”. There were small wrinkles at the corners of his eyes that I didn’t remember. But his grip as he held my shoulders was just as strong, and the spark in his brown eyes was just as I remembered it.
“Good,” my father said again. “Good.” He was smiling, but a stranger probably wouldn’t have recognised the warmth in his eyes. Only I could tell how happy he was. “You have no idea what a relief it is to see you.”
“You think it’s a relief for you?” I said. My voice wobbled a little bit at the end. “I was afraid you were dead.”
My father laughed. “Not quite. Now, come on. Sit down and tell me what’s happened.”
With the rush of seeing my father again, I’d been blind to where we were. Now that I finally looked around, I saw that we were standing in a cramped, expensive-looking flat. Books and papers were piled on cheap white Ikea shelves, and two mustard-yellow sofas filled the living room behind. The sofas backed onto a floor-to-ceiling window, but the blinds had been pulled down so that no light would escape.
My father walked into the kitchen as I sat down on one of the sofas and tried to lean back. The sofa looked like one of those you see advertised on the Tube, but it was hard and uncomfortable. On the wall opposite was a painting of a naked woman with oversized lips lying in a bed of garishly coloured ivy. “Do you live here?” I asked my father doubtfully.
“God no,” my father called over from the kitchen. “Belongs to some fancy interior designer.”
“Oh,” I said, slightly relieved. “Are you renting it?”
“We’ve got a kind of timeshare,” my father said, walking back in with a couple of half-litre bottles. “He uses it while he’s in London, I use it while he’s in New York. I bring my own food, clean up after myself, make sure not to leave any sign I’ve used the place.” He grinned. “If he knew I existed, he’d probably think I was the perfect tenant.” He set down one of the bottles and pushed it over; it was a Coke. “Here. Used to be your favourite, right?”
“Actually, I haven’t drunk it in years.”
“Really?”
“Too expensive. And after I quit soft drinks for a couple of months, I found I wasn’t missing them.”
“I’ve missed a lot, haven’t I?” my father said. For a moment he looked melancholy, then seemed to shake it off. “All right, first things first. Here.” He pushed a card across the table. “Memorise that address, then destroy it. From now on, you want to contact me, use that. Don’t use your old email, it’s compromised. Create a new one and use it for this and nothing else. No names.”
The card was blank except for a handwritten address. “What do you mean, compromised?”
“As in, someone else can access it. They’ve been reading your mail for years.”
“Wait, what? But I just used it to send you—”
“Why do you think I gave you such a hard time downstairs?” my father said dryly. “Don’t worry, they haven’t got the manpower to search the whole Barbican.”
“There was someone else there,” I said slowly. “Before I met you. Was it . . .?”
“Someone trailing you?” my father asked. “No idea, but no reason to take the chance. Anyway, he didn’t follow you.”
“So we’re safe to talk?” I asked. I wasn’t sure exactly what “safe” meant in this context, but from the way my dad was acting, I figured it was best to follow his lead.
“For the rest of the night,” my father said, flashing a quick smile. “Hopefully long enough for us to catch up. Now, how about you tell me why you sent me that email? Obviously you must have got my letter, but why now?”
“Because I didn’t have your letter! I got hold of it on Monday and decoded it on Tuesday.”
“How come you only got hold of it on Monday?”
“Byron had it.”
My father’s expression darkened.
“You didn’t know?” I asked.
“I knew there was a chance he’d intercepted it,” my father said. “But . . . I also knew there was a chance he hadn’t. And that maybe things weren’t so bad, and you didn’t need me . . .” He sighed, and for a moment he looked old and tired, like someone weighed down by old choices and regrets. Then the next moment he was back to normal, the change so sudden that someone who didn’t know him might have missed it completely. “Well, I’m here now. Tell me what’s been happening.”
I almost wanted to laugh. “That’s . . . going to take a while.”
“We’ve got the time,” my father said, that smile of his flashing out again. “Come on. Start at the beginning.”
This time I did laugh. “The beginning? Well, about a year ago, I looked out of my window one morning and saw a strange car at the end of the road . . .”
I started from there, and kept on going. Meeting Lucella. The kidnap and escape. Tobias, the party, and Charles Ashford. What had happened to Hobbes. Becoming a locator and that long summer of work and training. Byron, and his house in Hampstead. The raid on the Well in Chancery Lane. Byron’s increasing interest in me; the attack by Mark. The way locating had become harder and harder, leading to me dipping my toe into shadow work, which had led in turn to that raid in Moor Park that had nearly got me killed. Calhoun Ashford and my new job as a bodyguard. The deadly ambush by Vermillion in Covent Garden. How I’d turned the tables on Mark, extorting him into stealing that letter from Byron and giving it to me.
It took a long time. My father stayed nearly silent; he asked a few small questions to clarify things, but for the most part he just let me talk. It was an old habit of his; ever since I could remember, whenever he asked me what I’d been doing, he’d always listened with that same close attention. I’ve never been the kind to overshare, but growing up, I’d always known that if I did share something with my dad, he’d listen. Only when I got to the fight at the theatre, when I’d been stabbed, did I see him react; I heard a faint crackle as his hand tightened on the plastic bottle before he controlled himself again.
By the time I’d finished, the bottle in front of me was empty, replaced by a glass; my father had fetched it from the kitchen while I’d been talking. His own drink was opened but untouched.
“. . . And from there it was just a matter of getting my old copy of the book from my aunt’s and cracking the code,” I said. “Then I emailed you, and . . . well, you know the rest.”
My father was silent.
I tilted my head. “Dad? Hello?”
My father didn’t react for a few seconds, then got up, walked around the coffee table, and put his hand on my shoulder. “Well done.”
I blinked, craning my neck to look up at him. “Why—?”
“I had no idea all this was happening,” my father said. “If I had, I’d have done something. But I hadn’t, and I didn’t, and you handled it all on your own, and you did a better job than anyone could have expected. I’m proud of you.”
A warm feeling spread through me. I put my other hand over my father’s and gave it a squeeze.
My father stayed there for a moment longer, then gave me a last affectionate shake and let go. “All right,” he said, returning to his side of the coffee table and dropping back down into the sofa, then giving me a piercing gaze. “We’ve got a lot to talk about.”
I nodded.
“First is Vermillion,” my father said. “He attacked you . . . what, two weeks ago? He’s the priority. Everything else can come second.”
“No.”
My father looked taken aback. “Stephen, he just nearly killed you. That wasn’t a joke.”
“You don’t have to tell me that,” I said testily. “And we can talk about Vermillion as much as you want, but we’re doing something else first.”
“What?”
“You’re going to tell me why you disappeared,” I said. “The whole story, this time. What happened with you and my mother, your history with the Winged, why you had to vanish, all of it. I’ve been in the dark for years now. I’ve had to piece everything together bit by bit, working on my own with nothing but scraps, and it’s been really hard. All those years, I wished over and over that I had you here to talk to. Well, now you’re finally here, and you’re going to tell me the things you should have told me from the start.” My voice started to rise, heat creeping into it. “No more sweeping things under the carpet, no more ‘when you’re older’. All of it. Now.”
My father took a deep breath. “Fair enough.” He looked at me. “Where do you want to start?”
“The Ashfords,” I said immediately.
My father nodded. He seemed to settle himself, as though deciding what to say, then began.