I kept a straight face. “No.”

“Good.” I felt Haken look me up and down. “Is that really what you’re wearing?”

“You don’t like my clothes?”

“Thought you had a set of armour?”

Funny thing about lying—the less often you do it, the more effective it is when you do. “Golem damaged it,” I said. “Besides, we’re not there to fight, right?”

“I guess not,” Haken said. He took a breath and straightened. “All right.” He turned to one side, and a minute later light bloomed as a fiery disc appeared in midair. The glow backlit his face, casting it in red and black. The disc shifted, becoming a ring. From the back, the gate was opaque; I walked around it to see that it led into an empty building. Haken stepped through and I followed.

We gated through three more staging points, each one another building. The air felt different in each, and I had the suspicion we’d just taken some very brief overseas holidays. Gating through staging points is a standard mage trick—it makes it much harder to track them—but usually they’ll only use one or two. Four is getting to the point of paranoia. Haken really didn’t want to be followed.

The last gateway took us outside, into what felt like the country. My feet came down onto grass, leafy bushes blocking my sightlines. Haken stepped through behind and cut off the gate instantly; he’d muted the glow this time, presumably to make us harder to spot. The air was cold, and looking up, I could see a black and overcast sky. There was no light reflected off the clouds: wherever we were, we were a long way from any settlements. “What can you see?” Haken asked, his voice low.

“Give me a sec.” I had my eyes closed, path-walking, watching as my future selves spread out in every direction. No immediate danger. I searched further, creating a slowly spreading mental map. The darkness made it harder, but . . . there. Just to the left, over a small rise, was a giant building. Not just a house, a country estate. There were only a few scattered lights from the windows, but even from a glance I could tell it was busy. Spotting the estate let me orient myself. So if we went the other way . . . Ouch. Okay, I wasn’t doing that.

“Anything?” Haken said.

“We’re in the grounds of a big country estate. Can’t confirm it’s White Rose’s base, but given that they have electric fences around the outside, I’m going to guess it’s not anywhere friendly.”

Haken didn’t seem surprised. “Vihaela?”

“I’ll check.”

Haken nodded. Silence fell.

“So,” I said after a minute. “You didn’t tell me how you found this place.”

“That’s classified.”

“I get that. It just seems a little odd.”

Haken didn’t reply.

“I mean, we kind of went to a lot of trouble to storm that place in Bank. And we already knew that Vihaela was going to be in their main base. Seems like it would have been more efficient to come straight here.”