35 - A poisoned dream

"Dreams are dangerous. The vulnerable, sleeping mind is exposed to the Else.

It’s no coincidence that lucid dreaming is the strongest predictor for development of magical powers.

As the veil thins, the Else - and its denizens - seep ever more easily into our dreams.

Even as we sleep, we must be wary."

* Sage Vjereon, director of the Taerish academy of science, addressing the Imperial assembly

“We need a new base. We should rent an apartment in a different area, but ThauCon might be watching out for that,” Iketek says. “We don’t have good fake IDs yet, but if we go through an intermediary…”

Daravoi snorts. “Oh, shut up, rich girl. I told you, we can just squat in any empty building.”

Iketek wrinkles her nose in obvious distaste, but Daravoi huffs.

“Squatting never killed anyone,” he says. “Well. It killed plenty of people, in this freezing-cold city, but we can heat the house with magic, so we’ll be fine.”

“My mothers would be so mad. I love it!” I say, grinning. Occupying an abandoned house? That’s so criminal and disreputable.

Daravoi pinches his nose. “You’re even worse than her. You did crimes against existence that carry a death sentence, and still you sound like a twelve-year-old who goes shoplifting for fun.”

He looks at the two of us, as if he couldn’t decide who is worse at this whole street crime thing. “Whatever,” he says, “just follow me, ok? It’s not hard.”

Iketek looks like she wants to protest, but apparently, she can’t find any objection besides squatting is for poor criminals. Lost Stars, you’d think she’s the one who comes from a filthy rich family.

Daravoi leads us to a seedy neighborhood near the Old Docks. It’s not precisely abandoned - lights are on in some houses, there’s a working tube station, and a few sad basement bars.

But most buildings - old, concrete residential blocks built on the cheap - have whole levels with boarded-up windows, and snow piles on the roofs. Some buildings don’t have a single window lit.

Without maintenance, public parks became barren stretches of frozen mud, and the canals are encrusted with ice. The lightstrips on the ground are so poorly maintained, we have to walk using our tablets as torches.

Daravoi picks an ugly twenty-floor building next to a large canal. We walk past a bridge, which would connect this neighborhood to the much livelier one across the canal, but it’s blocked, with red warning signs on it. I have a vague memory that it was damaged by a storm, something like ten years ago – did the city give up fixing it?

“This one looks good,” Daravoi says, looking critically at the building. “There’s light in the first levels, so going in and out won’t be suspicious. But nothing above.”

“How are we going to get in?” I ask. “We could… levitate to a window?”

Daravoi rolls his eyes. “I can’t levitate above fifty centimeters, and you’d fall on your bony ass if you try even that,” he says. “There’s no need anyway. It’s an old building, I bet it has a code lock. We’ll give someone fifty credits for the code.”

We walk to the front door, and he’s right. There’s no ID scanner, only a small screen with a number keyboard.

“So, we’ll just wait here until someone goes through the door?” I ask. “That’s boring. And it’s cold.”

“There’s no reason to interact with the Mundanes, anyway” Iketek says. “That’s always a risk. Also, they won’t trust you because you’re Kalestran, they won’t trust Korentis because xe’s weird, and I hate talking to people. We’ll find the code by ourselves.”

I beam at her. “By ourselves? How? Are you some kind of hacker, too? That would be so cool!”

“You’re a mage, you know,” Iketek says. “And one with adequate affinity for the Path of Sight. Look into the past, or into the future, and see the code.”

“Can’t you, uh, do it?” I ask. I’m not confident using other Paths than Lies.

“I could,” Iketek says, “and while it’s not my specialty, I could probably use mind magic to fool the device, too. But you must practice your Sight. The cold will motivate you.”

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“Is this really the time for a test?” I ask, as my hands start to sweat.

“Better now than when ThauCon are following us,” she answers.

I can’t argue with that. So, slowly and carefully, I enter the Else.

There’s a strange feeling - like a chill wind tugging at my bones. The endless blue light swirls in the distance - no, in the depth. As if something vast were moving, deep into the Else.

For once, I don’t want to know what that is. I focus on the Here, painted in front of me like stained glass. I look at the keyboard, and it becomes the center of my world. A spiral of possibilities expands from it, possible sequences, different hands that touched or will touch or could have touched the keys.

I could probably look into the past and see a resident input the code. But seeing the future is easier for me, because like Lies, it’s all about possibilities. So, I look at my own hand, pale and small and carrying a hidden blue fire. Futures radiate from it, and some of them meet the keyboard, in a dizzying mess of interlocking possibilities.

Most of those futures, however, lead nowhere – a wrong code. It’s easy to find the only world that stands out, one where I pick the right code. It’s what I’m going to do in a minute, after all.

This doesn’t make sense, I’m looking at a future where I know the code because I learned it from this vision, part of me complains.

As soon as I think that, the vision shatters in a million pieces of glass, of eyes watching hands and splintering again in smaller eyes - this is why I should never try to think about what I’m doing, it ruins everything.

But it doesn’t matter, the vision lasted long enough for me to read the code. I press the keys in rapid succession, and the door opens. I grin. I can do some useful stuff! That would surprise my moms, even more than the fact I’m going to squat in an abandoned apartment with two magical criminals.

***

“This place is disgusting,” Iketek decrees, after an hour of setting up wards, burning away mold and thanking the Lost Stars running water still works.

“It’s not that bad,” I say. “I mean, the furniture is kind of disgusting, we should throw it into the depths of the Else or something. There’s a lot of spiders in the kitchen. And the wallpapers are atrocious. But on the other hand, we’re alive. We’re safe-ish here. And we have the book!”

Iketek gives a sigh, and seems to relax a little.

“Low standards,” she says, “but you have a point. We’re alive and safe. That’s a non-trivial success, given the circumstances.”

She flicks her wrist, and warm golden lights blossom in midair. We can all make Else-light safely, but hers has the nicest color. Also, if some of it shines through closed blinds, it looks closer to artificial light.

“We’ll have to buy decent bed-rolls at least,” Daravoi considers, “and I’ll try to make the living room, uh, livable.”

“We won’t stay here long,” Iketek says. “We’ll get proper IDs again. But we’ll definitey go shopping, I’m not going to sleep on this bare floor.”

“So,” I say, sitting in a spot on the floor that doesn’t look too filthy. “What’s the plan now? We know a professor took the Relic from the vault. Should we break into xir house?”

“Xe might have taken precautions,” Iketek says. “After all, xe knows you’re a thief, even if xe doesn’t know what you want. And we’re not even sure xe still has the relic, or what xe did with it. We must ascertain that, before we risk drawing suspicions.”

I feel a stab of guilt. Professor Kairim was nice to me.

But well, I’m not the one who decided mages can’t study magical stuff.

“Could you read xir mind?” I ask.

“I probably could, if we were in the same room. I could read xir memories, or force xem to answer my questions,” Iketek says. “But except when I make people do very simple actions, if I use my magic on them, they remember about it. I’m not good at erasing my traces. So, I have another idea.”

“As long as we don’t end up chased by ThauCon again,” Daravoi says, a hint of reproach in his voice.

“That won’t happen this time,” Iketek reassures him. “At worst, we’ll be chased by demons.”

“Good then… wait, what?” I ask. Demons sound bad.

Iketek waves her hand dismissively. “It’s unlikely, but not impossible. The Else is quite active, lately.”

“Can demons really…” I begin.

She puts a finger in front of her lips. “Hush,” she says. “You shouldn’t speak openly of… some things. Especially when they’re close. I’ll take you to the Thaumocracy fortress and tell you something more, maybe. But not now.”

“But you just did that! You mentioned d… those things five seconds ago!” Daravoi says, throwing up his arms.

“Well, I could hardly leave it as a surprise, so I had to say it” she says. “But an Incursion is an unlikely possibility, and there’s no need to discuss it any further. Anyway, my plan is to reach your professor in xir dreams - like when I initially reached you, Korentis. Most people are talkative in their own dreams, and I can use some mind magic to help, if necessary. Even mages usually forget Else-touched dreams, mundanes almost always do.”

Daravoi narrows his eyes. “A lot of almosts,” she says. “Xe’ll almost surely forget. You’ll almost surely not be eaten by… things.”

“Do you have a better plan?” Iketek asks, annoyed.

“Of course not,” he bursts out. “I’ve been useless since we began this job!”

“Hey, you’re not useless,” I say, “that’s my role! And like, for reals, I need you. You literally carried me while I was collapsing. And that’s twice now. And you’re the only one who actually gets this living-in-the-streets thing.”

The tension in his shoulder eases, and he looks mollified.

“It’s just… be careful, ok?” He says, sounding frustrated. “I don’t like waiting and hoping you’ll be fine.”

“Don’t worry about being useless,” Iketek says, grim. “Worry about the time when your magic will be needed. Prepare for it. Because it will happen. And when you need the Path of Ruin, you need it badly.”

***