Veiled by Benedict Jacka

another spell, and before he could finish I lunged.
    The man dropped the spell and struck, meeting my attack with his own. I hooked his blade and kept going, slamming him into the wall and forcing his knife hand out of position while I stabbed at his gut, one-two-three. The third blow sank home but as it did another spell blew me back, solid air striking like a hammer. I was thrown back to the steps, tripped, looked up to see him moving in a blur of motion, disappearing around the corner before I could react.
    I scrambled to my feet. I could feel the signature of his spells moving out of the station towards the construction site. Air magic, soft and grey and whisper-quick. That spell he’d used to throw me away had been a wind blast, and that blade had been hardened air. I looked right to see that the door I’d been standing in front of had a narrow diamond-shaped hole, almost too thin to see. If I hadn’t moved that would have been my back.
    I looked at my knife to see a trace of blood, but only a trace. He’d been using an air shield. I didn’t think he was seriously hurt, but—
    My divination warned me first, my magesight second. Energy twined around the corridor where I was standing and I bolted up the stairs, putting distance between me and the centre of the spell. As I cleared the stairs and came down on the platform I felt a sudden tug of wind pulling me back and my ears popped as I heard a hollow
whump
from behind. I darted behind a pillar and held still.
    Silence. I strained my ears, trying to make out some sound. Wind swirling around the platform, traffic on the main road to the east. I couldn’t hear the guy’s footsteps.What had that spell been? Whatever it was, it wasn’t friendly to human bodies. My best guess was some kind of implosion effect.
Air mage, has to be.
Too many spells to be an adept.
    Movement in the futures. There was no sound, but looking into what would happen if I stepped out, I could sense the air mage coming back. He was floating, not walking, hovering a few inches above the ground at the foot of the steps. The air blade was still in his right hand, and as I watched he began to glide up the stairs, eyes searching left and right.
    Not good.
The platform had cover, but not enough.
Maybe I can hide . . .
The pillar I had ducked behind was more of a girder, really, holding up the roof over the platform. I held very still.
    The air mage reached the top of the stairs, looking left and right. He was maybe twenty feet from where I was standing. I held my breath.
    Silence.
    The other man was standing quite still. The futures flickered, uncertain. In some of them he found me, in others he didn’t. I couldn’t see what I needed to do to shake him. He began walking down the platform.
    I edged very carefully to the left, keeping the pillar between us. The wind had dropped and the air was still. I made it around and the air mage was walking away down the platform.
Hasn’t seen me yet . . .
I drew in a soft breath and let it out.
    The air mage’s head snapped around.
    Shit.
    He cleared the benches in one jump, seeming to hang in the air, eyes locking onto me. I leapt back behind the pillar as a spray of something almost invisible and very lethal flashed down the platform towards me. I needed time. I grabbed a forcewall from my pocket, flicked the gold discs out to the platform edges, and said the command word just as another spell came flying at me.
    The discs ignited, throwing up an invisible barrier, and the spell bounced off; it had been some sort of whirlwind. I backed out into the open, looking at the mage through the forcewall. “Can we talk about this?”
    He threw another spell. Fragments of hardened air slammed into the forcewall, dissolving back into gas as soon as they struck. The forcewall didn’t budge. “Okay, so you’re not the chatty type,” I said. “That’s fine, we can work something out. So