Enzo and Leo were kept in a small, dank, windowless cell. How they had gotten there, Enzo could not say — he had passed out shortly after crossing the portal. How long he stayed there, he could not say either. It might have been hours, days, weeks. Time was a blur. Slowly his body and mind recovered from the venom that had been injected into him.

Finally a gaoler came for them and led them to a small office room.

A man was seated at the table. He had a lean form, close-cropped blond hair, and sharp green eyes. His eyes looked familiar to Enzo…

“You endured quite an ordeal. Can I get you something to drink? Water, ale —?”

“Wine,” Leo said instantly.

The blond-haired man snapped his fingers at the gaoler and bid him to fetch drinks.

“I know you,” Enzo said, noticing the mask that lay before him. “I recognize your voice from the Musea. You’re Black Cabal.”

“Leo got the better of me that day in the Musea,” he said. “When you passed out, I departed the room, giving you time to recover. I should have anticipated a rescue operation. My name is Luka, by the way.”

Wine arrived. The gaoler set snifters before each of them. Leo and Enzo both drank greedily. It tasted like heaven on his lips, but as soon as he swallowed, he knew something was wrong. The wine had a queer aftertaste…

We’ve been poisoned, he thought wildly. Why would a Black Cabal remove his mask and reveal his identity, if he did not mean for us to survive the encounter?

“All I want to know,” he said, in his icy cold voice, “is your account of what happened. Begin with the day you met Cosimo. I will know if you’re lying.”

Leo and Enzo exchanged looks. If he knows what happened, how will he know we’re lying? thought Enzo. Still, he saw little profit in deception.

“Are we under arrest?” asked Leo.

“Under arrest, and pending execution… Unless you willingly comply with this interrogation.”

“After which, we'll be executed anyway?”

“Such a cynic, Leo. If you comply willingly, I will grant a death of your own choosing. Something swift — death by guillotine or the gallows, perhaps. Resist or deceive me, and you will suffer the agony of being burned alive or drawn and quartered.”

Leo and Enzo exchanged despairing looks.

With that, the two of them began chronicling the events of the past week, beginning with the scavenger hunt that had led to their first meeting with Cosimo, and the trail of clues that followed the cryptogram. Occasionally, Luka would interrupt to ask questions, but mostly he stayed silent, nodding his head as though he were aware (or at least not surprised) about what they were telling him.

When Enzo described the bodies they found in Ambrose’s winter palace, Luka put up a hand.

“Those were our men. Black Cabal men.”

“They weren’t wearing masks,” Leo said. “They were Black Cabal?”

“They were on a covert assignment hundreds of miles from Corinth. Did you think we wear our masks all day? When we sleep and shit?”

“That was my operating theory, yes.”

Luka did not seem amused. “Continue.”

It took less than a half hour to complete the tale. The entire time, Enzo left his wine untouched, even though he had a vicious thirst. When he was done giving his account, Luka took a long swig of his own snifter.

“Cosimo Medea has been under our surveillance for several years now,” he said. “He has a known obsession with deathtraps, and particularly with finding Ilhen’s Seventh, and he has the means to seek it.”

“But Ilhen’s Seventh was never a deathtrap,” Enzo said, recalling what Viraj had told him.

“No. A century ago Empress Violetta commissioned Ilhen Rimani — personally commissioned him — to help guard the spire against potential intrusion. He built a locked door — no one builds locked doors quite like Ilhen — and a key to go with it. At our instruction, the key was concealed. Ilhen crafted a trail of clues that would lead to it in case future generations determined there was a dire need of it.”

“A week ago, the cryptogram — the initial clue — was purloined from the Ducal Palace. When Viraj exposed the cryptogram to Cosimo and others, we knew we had to act swiftly and decisively. I had hoped I could win you to our cause, to turn you against Cosimo, to question him about what he knew and lead him astray.”

“And why would we do that?” asked Leo.

“Because, Leonardo Sforza, I have the authority to cancel your guild’s debt. That’s what he was offering, isn’t it? I would have offered you an easier path, if only you had permitted me. If only you hadn’t interceded, your apprentice Gianna would still be alive.”

Those words stung. Out of the corner of his eye, Enzo could see Leo gripping his snifter so tight his knuckles were white. Enzo was amazed the glass didn’t shatter.

“And so after the cryptogram was exposed,” said Enzo slowly, “the Black Cabal decided that they must solve it.”

Luka nodded. “We had to recover the key before someone else did — recover it, and destroy it. It was a calculated decision made by the Empress herself — and strongly encouraged by an emissary from the Ice Court. The Black Cabal was initially established with the purpose of concealing the necromancy attunement spire. We trace our history back to the day the Empress' Royal Navy made landfall on Corinth and discovered the wretched Diji and that evil attunement spire. We adopted their iconography — the symbol the Diji carved on the temple became our insignia.”

“That symbol is the Diji glyph for ‘death’,” said Enzo. “I can’t believe I never noticed it before…”

“It's easy to overlook the obvious. It was a clever ploy by the forebears of the Black Cabal. About once a century, Viraj concocts some elaborate ruse to lure adventurers in the spire… But heretofore we have never wavered or failed in our mission to hide the necromancy attunement spire. Do you still have the key?”

Enzo did. He took it out from his boot and slid it across the table. Luka accepted it, grinning.

“As it turns out, through your ordeal you have done the Empire a great service, albeit unwittingly. This key was the object of our quest. This now closes the chapter on Viraj’s latest ruse.”

“Very well,” Leo said, taking a last swig of his wine, apparently not suspicious of it. “So, will it be the guillotine or the gallows? Makes no matter to me.”

“Neither. Your fate is already sealed. Your drink was —”

“Poisoned,” said Enzo casually.

“Yes. But not with a fatal agent. With Lethos. Are you familiar?”

Enzo’s mind spun. Lethos? He dimly recalled Duke Ferdinand II telling them about it. “Yes… The memory potion. It… it wipes a person’s memory.”

“Everything you have told me — everything that has happened the past week, including this very meeting, will be soon forgotten.”

“So… we’re free?” said Leo. “You'll let us go?”

“I will. You have done a great service to the Empire, and so I will give you more than your lives. There is a clause in your contract with Cosimo stipulating that in the event of his death, that you must submit to the Immotalus truth serum and an interrogation. That clause will be waived.”

“You’re saying—”

“I am saying,” Luka said, holding up a silencing hand, “that the Pathfinder guild’s debt, in the eyes of the Empress Fortuna and Duke Ferdinand II, is hereby settled.”