An Instruction in Shadow (Inheritance of Magic, 2) - Softcover

Buch 2 von 3: Inheritance of Magic

Jacka, Benedict

 
9780593549865: An Instruction in Shadow (Inheritance of Magic, 2)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0593549864 ISBN 13: 9780593549865
Verlag: Ace Books, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

The ultra-rich control magic—the same way they control everything else—but Stephen Oakwood may just beat them at their own game in this exhilarating contemporary fantasy from the author of the Alex Verus novels.

Stephen Oakwood has emerged victorious against the schemes of his aristocratic family. Now he finally has the opportunity to do what he’s been wanting to do for a long time: track down his father.  

But doing so won’t be easy. Stephen’s not so isolated any more, but the contacts he’s making in the magical world—everyone from the corporation he works for to the mother he’s just beginning to reconnect with—all have agendas of their own. And now a new group is emerging from the shadows, calling themselves the Winged. Their leader, the mysterious Byron, promises that he can show Stephen how to find his father...but he wants something in return.

Following that trail will throw Stephen into greater danger than he’s ever faced before. To survive, he’ll need to use all of his tricks and sigls, and pick up some new ones. Only then will he be able to prevail against his enemies...and find out who’s really pulling the strings.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Benedict Jacka is the author of the Alex Verus novels, which began in 2012 with Fated and ended in 2021 with Risen.  He studied philosophy at Cambridge, taught English in China, and worked at everything from civil servant to bouncer before becoming a full-time writer. For information about his books, settings, and releases, check his website at BenedictJacka.co.uk or his Twitter at @BenedictJacka.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

It was wet, it was cold, and I was worried.

Misty rain was falling, too heavy for drizzle and too light to be a downpour. Where the yellow-white lights of the Olympic Park shone, you could see the raindrops slanting down against the darkness of the overcast sky. I was sheltering under a tree, and the wind was blowing gusts of rain in under the branches, sending cold droplets flying into my face.

It was a Saturday night in East London, and I was in Stratford, on a grassy bank above a road called Marshgate Lane. A small grove of trees grew next to a chain-link fence, and had there been any passersby, they might have wondered what was so special about this particular grove that I was choosing to spend my Saturday night here in the cold and rain. The answer was simple: beneath one of these trees was a Well.

Wells are gathering points for essentia, the raw energy used in drucraft. I'd become pretty good at judging their strength over the past six months, and I estimated this one as on the low end of D+. Which meant that Linford's, the corporation I worked for, would pay me £700 for it. But they'd only pay me that £700 if it was still there, and when I found this Well there'd been someone loitering, a boy in a thick hooded anorak. He'd retreated at my approach, but he'd lingered just a little too long afterwards before disappearing. Which was why I was out here, getting rained on, making sure that when the corp extraction team arrived, there'd be a Well here to get paid for.

The wind shifted, sending another gust of rain into my eyes. I shivered and edged around the tree, though there wasn't much point-my fleece and trousers were thoroughly damp by now. I checked the time to see that it was seventy minutes since I'd made the call. There's no telling how long it'll take a drucraft corp to respond to a Well alert; it can take hours, or days, and they won't tell you which.

I wished I could just go home. That's what I normally do when I call in a Well; corps don't pay you to stick around; they pay you to send them the coordinates and then get lost. But something about that boy had set off alarm bells. In theory, once you've claimed a Well and logged the data with the Registry, it's the property of whichever House or corporation you work for. But a certain significant fraction of Well hunters don't care about the Registry, or other people's property rights in general, and that was the reason I was lingering out here in the cold rain.

Still, it had been more than an hour, so maybe I was worrying over nothing. The Well was only a D+ . . . hardly enough to get a raider gang excited, especially not in this kind of horrible weather. None of the Ashfords would even get out of bed for something like this.

Thinking about the Ashfords was a mistake. It sent my thoughts back to what had happened this afternoon.


Five hours earlier.

I spotted her as soon as she came into view. She was wearing a dark purple blazer over a slim dress and was towing a small suitcase, the heels of her shoes clicking on the polished floor. There was a huge billboard behind her, and for a moment, as she walked by, her shape was silhouetted against the stylised dragon on the ad, purple against gold.

I followed her past the end of the railing. She turned towards the terminal exit, still towing her carry-on, and caught a glimpse of me out of the corner of her eye. She turned with a slight frown.

"Hi, Mum," I said.

My mother opened her mouth, still frowning, then recognition flashed in her eyes. She froze.

We stood there on the terminal concourse. People milled around us, greeting and embracing and chattering, then, once the talking was done, joining together in groups to flow out of the airport and go home. Only the two of us were still.

"What are you doing here?" my mother said at last. She looked shocked.

"I was waiting for you."

My mother looked around. Somewhat confused, I did the same; the terminal floor was crowded, but no one was paying us any attention. "You can't do this," my mother said. "You can't be here. If my father finds out-"

"He only told me to stay away from the house and not to try and murder Calhoun," I said. "He didn't say anything about seeing you."

". . . What?"

"He called me in for a talk after the raid," I explained.

My mother stared.

I'd never seen my mother in person, at least not that I could remember. All I'd had to go on for finding her had been some old pictures, and when I'd first seen her walking down the Arrivals corridor, I'd felt no flash of recognition; she'd just looked like a pretty forty-year-old woman in a skirt suit. The longer I talked to her, though, the more something started to stir. The small movements she made, the way she turned her head . . . there was a strange echo there, of the glimpses I'd catch of myself in a mirror out of the corner of my eye.

"I could tell you what happened," I offered when she still didn't speak.

"Not here," my mother said, seeming to come to a decision. She pulled out a card from an inside pocket, then hesitated, shook her head, took out a pen, and scribbled on the card. "Don't talk to anyone else until we've met. Okay?"

". . . Okay."

"I have to go," my mother said. Without waiting for an answer, she grabbed the handle of her suitcase and strode away, heels clicking. After fifty feet or so she looked back. I waved; she gazed at me for a second, then disappeared into the crowd.

The wind shifted, sending another gust of cold rain into my face and pulling me back to the present. I shook myself awake, huddling back under the tree and taking another glance around. The Olympic Park was just as empty as before.

Maybe it wasn't just the Well I was worried about. I'd walked out of Heathrow this afternoon feeling-well, not happy, but as though I'd accomplished something. And when I'd decided to spend the evening hunting for Wells, I'd thought of it as a victory lap.

But as the rush had faded, and the hours had passed by, I'd started to feel . . . what? Bothered? Uneasy?

Dissatisfied. It had left me dissatisfied.

When you spend a really long time looking forward to meeting someone, you build it up. You rehearse it in your mind, spin out fantasies of how it's going to play out. But when it actually happens, it never seems to go the way you've planned. Because of course, you've thought of all the things you're going to say, but not the things that the other person's going to say. And so it always goes in some direction you didn't expect.

I hadn't expected my mother to run at me and give me a hug. Still, I'd been hoping for something . . . well, more. I'd been replaying the conversation in my head, and the more I did, the more I couldn't help noticing that there hadn't really been any point at which my mother had seemed especially happy to see me. Or be around me at all.

The fact that she hadn't remembered that it was my birthday hadn't helped.

The more I thought about it, the more it bothered me. You'd have thought the weather would have been a distraction-waiting around in freezing rain might be a crappy way to spend an evening, but if there's one good thing you can say about it, it at least keeps you focused on the present-but it wasn't doing as much as I'd hoped. I was starting to get the vague, unsettling feeling that by meeting my mother I'd disturbed something that might have been better left alone.

I shook my head and tried to push the whole thing out of my mind. One hour and twenty minutes since I'd registered the Well. Maybe I should just go home. It wasn't as though there was any trace of . . .

. . . wait.

Between me and the stadium was a car park. Yellow-white lights reflected off the wet tarmac, and in their glow I could...

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Verlag
Ace Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2024
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593549864
ISBN 13 
9780593549865
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
322
Kontakt zum Hersteller
ACE
https://www.penguin.com/

Bachstelzenweg 10
Ibbenb?ren
49479
Deutschland

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