I frowned, but as I was about to say something Caldera called up from downstairs. “Hey, Verus! You coming or what?”

“Well, you’d best be off!” Landis said, and just that quickly his old manner was back again. “Tally ho and all that, eh? Good luck out there!”

chapter 5

I came downstairs to find Caldera and Variam talking on the ground floor. Neither seemed to have noticed my delay. “Wait,” Variam was saying. “So you guys were apprentices together?”

“Trainees.”

“Was he always . . . ?”

“Oh, yeah,” Caldera said. “You’re lucky you didn’t know him back in his tech phase. There was this time in our second year when we were living in the same house. Kitchen table kept wobbling so Landis shoved this metal saucer under one of the legs. Wasn’t until two weeks later we found out it was a land mine.” Caldera shook her head. “Crazy bastard. Good guy to have at your back in a fight, but . . .”

“Caldera?” I said. “Does Landis know much about politics?”

“God no,” Caldera said in surprise. “Knows his stuff when it comes to items, but don’t take anything he says too seriously.”

I frowned. “Hey, listen,” Variam said. “Can I help you guys out?”

“Haven’t you got work to do?” Caldera said.

“He’s on standby for that missing apprentice case,” Variam said, pointing up. “So all he does is mess around with his projects. He doesn’t need me here, I can gate back if anything comes up.”

“Sorry, Vari,” Caldera said. “If he’s on standby, you’re supposed to be with him.”

“Oh, come on . . .”

“Don’t give me that. You know the rules. We’re not running a daycare.”

Variam made a face and disappeared upstairs. “Well, that was a bust,” Caldera said. “Let’s head back to the station.”

“What do you mean?” I said. “We know a lot more.”

“Yeah, except none of it’s useful.”

“Yes, it is,” I said with a frown. “We know the focus has some kind of information on it, and it’s keyed to two different magic-users, probably mages. If we can find out who they are—”

“How? Get every mage in the country to try the thing and see if it works? This isn’t bloody Cinderella.”

“So what’s your take?”

“Your air assassin tried to commit a murder and broke the Concord in the process. That’s why we’re here. The focus only matters if it can lead us to him.”

“The focus is the reason that guy was after me,” I pointed out. “Otherwise he wouldn’t have broken off to chase a decoy. Whatever’s on there, it’s important.”

“Important to him doesn’t mean important to us. And yes, I know you’ve got that famous diviner curiosity, but given that the crime was your attempted murder, I would have thought you’d be a bit more focused. He might be getting ready to try to kill you again right now.”

“I thought about that,” I said. “I don’t think it’s likely. He only went after me to get to the focus, and he’d know that I’d have figured that out afterwards, which means he’d know the first thing I’d do once I got back would have been to take the focus to someone else or put it in a safe place. There’s no reason for me to be carrying the focus around on my person, so there’s no reason for him to take the risk of coming after me again.”