Veiled (19 page)

“What time?”

“Could be any time. Might want to bring something to read.”

“Sounds great. Who's the indictment for, Chamois?”

“White Rose.”

I blinked. “Seriously?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” I said. “Remember Torvald? We put in a request
about him the beginning of last week and they still haven't got back to us. Chamois tries to kill me on CCTV two days ago and there's no movement on that either. This attack happens less than twelve
hours
ago, and there's a Council indictment already.”

“Yeah,” Caldera said dryly. “Kind of a difference there.”

“Look, I haven't pushed you on who these White Rose people are,” I said. “But if I'm going to an indictment in your place, you don't think maybe you ought to fill me in?”

Caldera sighed. “Get me a beer from the shelf.”

I looked back at Caldera for a second, then got up, fetched the bottle that she was pointing to, and brought her a glass. Caldera twisted off the cap bare-handed, poured out half of the bottle, waited for the foam to subside, poured out the other half, and took a drink. I sat and waited.

“I guess you do need to know,” Caldera said at last. “But get something clear. This does
not
get spread around. I know you like to chat with your friends and those magical creatures of yours, but you get caught discussing this, I'm not going to bat for you.”

I nodded.

“All right,” Caldera said. “Let's start at the beginning. The baseline law for mages is the Concord. Under that are the national laws.”

“Okay,” I said. The Concord is the international set of laws that all mages are required to follow. They're pretty useless if you're not a mage yourself, but breaking them is still a fairly big deal, as long as the victim is someone the Council cares about. Underneath that there are the national laws, passed as resolutions by the ruling Councils of each magical nation, and those vary from country to country. They aren't allowed to conflict with the Concord, and the penalties for breaking them are a lot less serious, but it's still a good idea to know what they are.

“Now, a bunch of those laws regulate how mages are allowed to deal with other humans,” Caldera said. “There's the prohibition on slavery, and the laws against harming normals and sensitives and adepts.”

“Uh, yeah, in theory. I'm not sure how much they actually get followed.”

“Light mages and independents follow them most of the time.”

“When it suits them.”

“I said
most of the time
. Yes, those laws get broken. Yes, we don't always catch the ones who do it. But the fact that they follow those laws is the big difference between Light mages and Dark ones. How many Light slave traders do you know?”

“Maybe they don't do it publicly, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen.”

“And do you know for a fact any Light mages who do it? With evidence?”

“You aren't seriously telling me you don't believe it ever happens.”

“I'm not a moron, all right?” Caldera said. “Of course it happens. But the laws are there, and they do have an effect. It's like the speed limit. Yes, everyone knows people break it, but if they get
caught
breaking it there are consequences. And so they don't push it too far. You get me?”

I wasn't particularly happy with having slavery and murder equated with breaking the speed limit, but I knew arguing about it wasn't going to accomplish much. “I get you.”

“So, if you want to be a Light mage, especially if you want to work with the Council, you have to follow the national laws. You have to play nice. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“A certain fraction of Light mages are not nice.”

“You don't say.”

“They want to be part of the Council and have all the perks. They also want to get to do all the same kinds of things that Dark mages get to do. They have a problem. White Rose is an organisation that specialises in solving that problem.”

“So White Rose provides a nice discreet brothel service?”

“Okay,” Caldera said. “When I told you they were a brothel, that's not the whole story. The kind of guys who go
to White Rose . . . if they wanted sex they'd just hit up an escort agency. White Rose does the kind of stuff you can't ask for out in the open.”

I was starting to see where this was going, and I didn't like it. “You mean kids like Leo.”

“Kids, heavy-duty sadism, snuff scenes. The workers are slaves, obviously. Then you start bringing magic into it. Let's say you're a client of White Rose. There's some new pop singer you've got your eye on, you see her in her music videos. You decide you want a piece of that. White Rose is happy to help. They'll find one of their slaves with a good physical resemblance, maybe get themselves a new one if it's a special order. Then they'll get to work. Flesh-sculpting or glamours to make her look the part, mental control to make her act the part. They soften them up first, then do most of the heavy lifting with mind magic. By the time they're done, the girl thinks she
is
that person. They can put in other bits too. Make her in love with you, switch her programming so she has to do whatever you tell her, set it up so she goes for your fetish. Whatever you like.”

“Jesus,” I said in revulsion. “I knew Dark mages did stuff like that, but . . . They make a business out of this?”

“Yeah, and their business is booming. They don't just sell to mages either: they've got a whole regular client base. You wouldn't believe me if I told you how much they make off those custom orders.”

“I don't think I want to. The Council knows about this?”

“Yeah.”

“Then why—?”

“First, White Rose isn't staffed by Light mages. They're all Dark or independent. And they're careful never to break the Concord. Their slaves are all normals or sensitives, never mages. They even steer clear of adepts.”

“Screw the Concord. That's not just violating the national laws, that's breaking them over your knee and stamping on the bits. Did you just say it was like—?”

“Second,” Caldera said, cutting me off, “most of White Rose's clients are normals with a lot of money. But a few of
them are Light mages who don't pay in money. Guess what they pay with instead.”

“They'd . . . oh,
fuck
. White Rose wouldn't want money from them, would they? They could get that anywhere. From the Light mages they'd want influence.”

“And they get it,” Caldera said. “A whole ton of blackmail material.” Her face was unreadable. “This is the fourth time I know about that we've tried to get an indictment against White Rose. The last three times the answer was no. They've got too much dirt on Council mages.”

“And that's what I'm going into the middle of,” I said, realising suddenly how this was going to affect me. “Do you think it's going to be different this time?”

“Maybe. For all the fucked-up stuff that they do, this is the first time White Rose has attacked a Keeper. They've crossed a line.”

“Assuming it was them.”

Caldera looked sharply at me. “Do you have evidence that it was someone else? Something you're not telling me?”

“No, I just saw the same things you did. You don't think it's a funny coincidence that that strike team showed up right after you called in our location on your communicator? Which stopped working as soon as we needed it?”

“What exactly are you suggesting?”

“You said it. White Rose has influence on the Council.”

“Don't.”

“And the Keepers work for the Council—”

Caldera made a short motion, cutting me off. “I said
don't
.”

“Are you seriously going to stick your head in the sand about this?”

“Shut up,” Caldera said. She was leaning forward on the sofa, staring at me, and her eyes were hard. “Get something clear—you are not a Keeper. You do not get to make accusations like that. Talk like that outside this room where other people can hear and you are going to get a fucking bridge dropped on you. You don't understand Keepers and you don't know how much shit you can get into doing this. I've
gone to bat for you before, but I'm not jumping off a cliff just because you can't keep your mouth shut.”

I drew back, slightly shocked. Caldera held my gaze for a few seconds more, then leant back again.

The silence stretched out. I knew it was supposed to be my place to say something, to keep things moving, but I felt jarred, out of place. “You know where the War Rooms are, right?” Caldera said once the pause had gotten long enough to become awkward.

“Yeah.”

“You'll probably be with Haken.”

“Okay.”

“You got a number for him?”

“Not yet.”

“I'll get you one.”

Caldera took out her phone. I sat uncomfortably as she typed. From outside, I could hear the cars and the motorbikes on the main road, the sounds of their engines echoing through the brick and glass.

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W
e talked a little longer, but it felt forced and our rapport was gone. When I said that I needed to go, Caldera didn't argue. I felt my shoulders relax slightly as I came out onto the Hackney street.

As I walked, I puzzled over what had just gone wrong. It wasn't the first fight I'd had with Caldera but it bothered me in a way the others hadn't. Mostly it was the unexpectedness. All the previous times that Caldera had been pissed off at me, it had been a direct consequence of something I'd done, and usually something I'd known full well she wouldn't be happy about. This was the first time we'd had a fight and I didn't know why.

It occurred to me that Caldera and I might have very different assumptions about loyalty. Amongst Dark mages, betrayal is an occupational hazard, something that comes with the lifestyle. It's like having one of your co-workers change jobs—you know it's going to happen sooner or later.
Apprentices talking to each other about their masters' plans, journeymen discussing whether the leader of their cabal is going to sell them out once the job is over . . . That kind of thing isn't a betrayal of trust, it's just good sense. It's not a big deal.

Maybe for Keepers, it
was
a big deal. They had an actual organisation, an ethos. Maybe there was a code, a way you were and weren't allowed to talk about it. Except . . . that hadn't been how Landis had reacted. I'd been pretty sure he'd understood what I'd been getting at last night, and he'd agreed with me, or at least hadn't told me to keep quiet.

So maybe it wasn't the Keepers. Maybe it was just Caldera. Now that I thought about it, I'd never really thought about her as a person. To me she'd always been a representative of her organisation, Keeper Number One. I wondered what her membership in the Order of the Star really meant to her, and what she thought of when she saw her other Keepers. Did she fit in? Or in her own way, was she an outsider too?

I shook my head. Whatever the reason, I needed to know more, and I wasn't going to get it from Caldera. I took out my gate stone and started looking for somewhere secluded.

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O
nce I was back in my flat, I dug out my synchronous focus, programmed in a code, then channelled through it and waited. After only half a minute, it chimed and lit up. A figure appeared at the centre of the disc, carved from blue light.

“Hey, Talisid,” I said.

“Verus,” Talisid said. “I wondered when you'd call.”

“Isn't acting all-knowing supposed to be the diviner's job?”

“You're not as unpredictable as you think.” I heard Talisid sigh slightly. “Go on, then. Ask your question.”

“Given your contacts, I'm pretty sure you already know what Caldera and I have been doing,” I said. “I just asked her about how our case connects to White Rose. She didn't react well. Can you fill me in?”

“You don't ask much, do you?”

“It's just information,” I said.

Most exchanges in magical society come down to trading favours. Cash is handy, and so are magic items, but all too often they just don't go far enough. Help from another mage, though . . . that's always useful. Over the past year, I'd done a lot of jobs for Talisid. They'd been for us as much as for him, but we'd still been helping him, and we hadn't asked for much in return. I didn't say
You owe me
, but Talisid understood exactly what I meant.

“All right,” Talisid said. “How much did Caldera tell you about White Rose?”

“That they're an organisation that provides dark and highly illegal sexual services to mages, and they have a whole load of blackmail material on the Council.”

“Strictly true, but a little misleading,” Talisid said. “If White Rose directly blackmailed its clients, they'd have been destroyed long ago. They're more careful than that. They keep their client list absolutely confidential, and more importantly, that list is
known
to be confidential. However, they also make it known that should their organisation be seriously harmed, then that list would be released.”

“So it's what—mutually assured destruction?”

“Yes. The number of Council mages who use White Rose's . . . services . . . is relatively small. But still large enough to cause a great deal of trouble. And the Council, as you may have noticed, dislikes trouble.”

“So they just let them get away with it.”

“Yes. In the same way that you, as an ex–Dark mage, support the torture, murder, and abuse that Dark mages perpetuate.”

“. . . What?”

“Don't make the mistake of thinking that the Council is monolithic.” There was a slight edge to Talisid's voice. “The Guardians and the Keepers would love nothing more than to see White Rose eradicated. But Marannis, the Dark mage who runs White Rose, has no political ambitions. If he were using White Rose to expand his power base, he would be a
strategic threat. But instead it seems he is quite content to preserve the status quo, which brings him into de facto alliance with the Centrists and Isolationists. As a result, White Rose has existed long enough for it to become . . . part of the landscape. A benign cancer. We have limited political capital, and making a concerted push to destroy White Rose would cause significant internal conflict in the Council. So for the past years our policy has been one of containment. Well, Vihaela's arrival on the scene could have changed that given time, but . . .”