I turned to Caldera. “Was that really necessary?”

“She’s not a Keeper or an auxiliary,” Caldera said. “She’s not cleared for this information.”

“She just patched a giant bloody hole in my side. You don’t think that earns at least a thank-you?”

“A thank-you, yeah,” Caldera said. “Just leave it at that next time. You know there are Keeper-sanctioned healers.”

“Anne’s saved my life at least twice.”

“She’s also—” Caldera checked what she’d been about to say, shook her head. “Never mind. All right, I want you to go through exactly what happened last night. Don’t leave anything out.”

I still felt annoyed, but suppressed it. I sat down at the table with Caldera and started the debriefing. It took the best part of an hour, and by the time we were done I felt strung out.

“You were lucky,” Caldera said once I’d finished.

“Lucky would be not getting attacked by an assassin-mage in the first place,” I said. “Seriously, can you stop acting like this was my fault?”

“You still shouldn’t have gone back. If you suspected something—”

“Suspected what? There was no evidence that it was going to—”

“All right, all right,” Caldera said with a wave of her hand. “I’ll admit, you didn’t totally screw up.”

“Is that supposed to be a compliment?”

“Anyway, we’re officially assigned to the case. So you can consider yourself on the clock as of yesterday.”

“Do we get anyone else?”

“Rest of the Order are stretched thin right now,” Caldera said. “The ones who aren’t tied up with security ops are off looking for some missing Council guy. You get me.”

“One case, one Keeper?”

“It’s usually enough.” Caldera closed her notepad. “Okay, here’s how things stand. Liaisons are pulling the CCTV from Pudding Mill Lane and Stratford stations for the past seventy-two hours, so we should have that by the end of today. Next priority is this air mage. I’ve checked the watch list and there’s no one recently active who meets your description.”

“He was speaking in French,” I said. “At least, before he was trying to kill me.”

Caldera nodded. “We can try the French Council, but that’ll take time. Anyway, we’ll need a better description before we go to them. Once the CCTV footage gets in, we should have a photo.”

“Timesight?”

“The waiting list for time mages is a mile long,” Caldera said. “I’ve put in a request flagged as urgent, but don’t hold your breath.”

“Maybe we can get this air mage to try to kill you, too. That ought to bump it up the priority list.”

“Next up, this focus. You got it here?”

“It’s with Variam’s master,” I said. “Landis. You know the guy, right?”

“Yeah,” Caldera said, and sighed. “Fine, let’s see if he’s got anything.”

| | | | | | | | |

Gate magic makes travel so much easier. If I’d been on my own, getting up to Edinburgh would have meant either an overpriced rail ticket and hours on the train, or a path-finding exercise involving gate stones. With Caldera, we were there inside five minutes.