Benedict Jacka - Taken

“Is it okay to hit her with this?”

“The azimuth shield’s enough to take most of the punch out of a magical strike. Don’t go sitting on her, but a couple of hits won’t do her any harm.”

I became aware that the rest of the room had gone quiet, and looked up to see that everyone was waiting for us. Natasha was standing at one end of the azimuth piste. Unlike Luna, she wasn’t wielding a weapon. “Luna?” Lyle said. “Are you ready?”

Luna nodded. “Ready.” She walked out onto the piste. I saw Lyle concentrate, channelling his magic, and to my mage’s sight the two focuses lit up with power, energy extending from them to weave a shield around the two girls. Luna flinched and glanced back as the effect touched her, and I saw the silver mist of her curse flicker and twist, merging with the shield. Natasha just looked bored. Anne and the two boys had spaced themselves along the wall.

“Er,” Lyle said. “Let’s say first to three. Ready and. . go!”

Luna darted forward, sword raised, and blue light welled up around Natasha’s hands.

The bout was to three points. The score at the end was 3–0. Natasha and Luna fought two more bouts. The score at the end of each of those was 3–0, too.

It’s not that Luna’s clumsy or anything. And she’s no stranger to fighting; there are fully qualified mages who’ve seen less combat than Luna has. But all the fights Luna and I have been through have been the nasty, lethal, anything-goes kind, where you stab the other guy in the back before he does the same to you. A duel is very different. It’s not combat, it’s a sport, with rules and regulations and a referee. Winning a duel and surviving a combat are very different things, and being good at one doesn’t necessarily make you good at the other.

Luna’s opponent, Natasha, wasn’t especially strong or quick. But like all elemental mages she had the great advantage of range. While Luna had to run all the way up to Natasha to hit her, Natasha could just smack Luna off her feet with a water blast.

Which she did. Repeatedly.

When Lyle finally called the fight I waited at the table for Luna to get back. She was moving stiffly, but I could tell she was more angry than hurt. “Good job,” I said as she reached me.

Luna gave me a look.

“I’m serious.”

“That’s your idea of a good job?”

“Everyone loses their first duel,” I said. “What matters is you put up a fight.”

“Did you know I’d lose that badly?”

“I didn’t check.”

Natasha was talking and laughing with the boy with glasses, her hands moving in animation as she relived knocking Luna down. “All right,” Lyle called. “Charles and Variam, why don’t you go next?”

I looked at Luna. She was annoyed, obviously embarrassed about losing. . and yet she looked better than I’d ever seen her. When she’d first walked into my shop a year and a half ago, she’d been silent and detached, never showing her feelings. Apprentice training isn’t easy, but Luna was engaged now; she had a place in the world. “Come on,” I said. “We’ve got a job offer.”

I knew Lyle wouldn’t question my taking Luna out of the class, and he didn’t. As the door swung shut behind us, I got a look at the two boys, Charles and Variam, facing off against each other on the piste. From a glance into the future I knew this match was going to be a lot more eventful than the last one.

“Apprentices are going missing,” Talisid said.

The little room at the end of the hall had been fitted out as an office of sorts, with an old computer on a cramped desk. Faded photographs of sports teams were mounted on the walls, and a window looked out onto the London rooftops. Talisid was behind the desk while Luna sat quietly on a table in the opposite corner. She’d agreed to Talisid’s demand for secrecy and now was listening with her ears pricked up.

“Since when?” I said.

“You know there’s always been a certain washout rate in the apprentice program,” Talisid said. “Some give up. Some fail their tests. Some-not many, but more than we’d like-defect to the Dark. And some have something happen to them. That last one’s rare, thankfully. But a few weeks ago some mages noticed that there seemed to be more going missing than there should be. Well, we put someone on it, and we found a very disturbing pattern. Within the last three months we’ve had three apprentices vanish from the program. No sign that they quit or walked out or had an accident. They just disappeared.”

“Just apprentices? No adult mages?”

“We think so, but it’s hard to be sure. Journeymen and masters aren’t accountable for their movements in the way apprentices are.”

“Any pattern to the disappearances?”

“None that we can find.”

“Any suspects?”

“Well.” Talisid looked at me. “There’s the obvious, isn’t there?”

I was silent. Luna looked from Talisid to me. “Um. .?” she said after a moment.

“Dark mages,” I said. “They’ve been on a recruitment drive.” I looked at Talisid. “You think they’re headhunting.”

“Or Harvesting,” Talisid said.

There was a silence. “Even the Council wouldn’t stand for that,” I said at last.

“No,” Talisid said.

“It’d start another war.”

“Yes. But there’s no proof.”

We stood quietly for a moment before I shook my head. “Why the secrecy?”

Both Luna and Talisid looked at me. “It’s not enough,” I said. “Okay, this’ll cause trouble. But any mage who put in the work could learn it. In fact, it sounds like lots of them know about it already. And if they do, they can figure out the same things I just did. Why is it so important to keep this quiet?”

Talisid looked back at me for a moment. “If you wanted to find a missing apprentice,” he said at last, “how would you do it?”

“If I had the resources of the Council?” I thought about it and shrugged. “Locator spells and detective work. Then I’d get a time mage and ask him to scry back to the missing person’s last known location.”

Talisid nodded. “We’ve done all those things.”

“It didn’t work?”

“It didn’t work.”

“Shrouds?”

“Yes. And something else. In every case, the missing apprentice disappeared somewhere where they couldn’t be traced. No witnesses, no physical evidence. And once they vanished, they didn’t come back.” Talisid’s eyes were grim. “Every disappearance was neat. Too neat. If these were simple kidnappings, we should have picked up some trace by now. Another apprentice, a witness, something overheard. . by simple law of averages there should have been something . But we haven’t found a thing. It’s as if every missing apprentice has simply vanished into thin air.” Talisid shook his head slowly. “I don’t believe it’s luck. I think they’re receiving information from an inside source. Someone with close access to the Light apprentice program is providing information on where apprentices can be found and how they can be caught alone.”

The office was quiet. Outside, a flash of white showed against the rooftops; a tortoiseshell cat. It stalked out from behind a chimney stack, stretched lazily, braced itself on the edge of the roof, and jumped down out of sight to a balcony below.

“You don’t know whom to trust,” I said at last.

Talisid nodded.

“But you trust me?”

“You aren’t directly associated with the Council,” Talisid said. “Besides, I think it. . unlikely that you’d be responsible for something like this.” He looked steadily at me. “There is another issue. If we accuse someone without evidence, it will not only cause enormous discord but also put those responsible on their guard. We have to be sure and we have to have proof.”