When the carrier pigeons returned, Taryn returned them to their boxes, the boxes to the shelf. She added the remaining 117 gold coins to her sword fund; the jar on her desk filled with all the wealth she’d set aside over the years in case Vares ever changed his mind about allowing her to own real steel. Now it was more than enough to replace the wooden arsenal hooked and racked behind her; the long and short swords, broadswords and sabers, shields, spears, twin daggers, and two- and three- section staffs. Vares had crafted the first of her arsenal, the crudely whittled dagger he’d given her with the use of the room. It was an eyesore compared to the work of her own hands. She valued it above the others because with it he encouraged her interest in the martial arts and the mastery of her abilities; with it he trusted that she would never use her mastery against him. Yet he still refused to let her have any real weapons.

Unwilling to return to her investigation for fear of another beacon, Taryn spent the next few hours training and watching. She stood in the center of her training room and assembled the four mannequins around her. Sculpted wooden heads latched onto skeletal torsos, dressed in padded leather to protect the delicate vertebrae of the curved spines and fragile ribs. She’d built them that way so they wouldn’t be rigid blocks of wood. She wanted their movements to be as fluid and flexible as her own. The elbows, knees and ankles all connected over ball joints, so they could rotate as well as bend and Taryn held all the connections together while she warmed her muscles and cycled through her drills.

Each of them was a mirror on every side, showing her where her form could be perfected. When she moved them, she learned to command great power with the movement of a finger, a toe – a blink. When she sparred with them, their hard wooden limbs taught her to be brutal with her offensive maneuvers and quick with her defense.

She was in the middle of a sparring match – two short swords and a three-sectional staff pitted against her twin daggers – when the next beacon came. She had time to block and dodge two bruising cuts before the three-sectional caught her in the back. She froze all the mannequins and went to work.

Her morning watches were not as eventful as her evening watches; crime really did thrive under cover of dark. Neither were they as dangerous. In the dark, Taryn could use her power and no one understood how they had been thwarted or rescued. In the light of day, she had to be clever. Victims may lose their goods but the street runners rarely enjoyed their spoils for long, with Taryn leading nearby Guards with Echoed cries and telekinetic commotions. Absent the proximity of any yellowbacks or greybacks or whatever-color-backs of the whatever-sector Guards, the thieves made off but their victims were never harmed.

Today, she had to locate and lure a surgeon to save Eyan’s life when Sam the shoemaker decided to retaliate rather than run away with his life and fortune after Eyan ‘inexplicably’ tripped over his own feet in his escape.

There was also some sort of brawl between a court scribe by the name of Honeywell and a deluded individual. The Hollyn Guard could do nothing to rehabilitate the insane, but Taryn had no cells and she couldn’t get a firm grip on the assailant’s strange, discordant consciousness. If nothing else, she could trust the purplebacks to keep the poor man from hurting anyone else and hold him some place where she could find him again to try her hand at it.

Then there was the pretense.

Zerus was a clever young man. In his bid to escape, he’d run himself into a corner but was now speaking loudly so as to grab any passing attention. His eyes shot around his stronger and faster assailant, seeking a path to safety. He fumbled with his purse so that the coins spilled onto the ground and tried to dart away. But he didn’t know that his masked attacker was someone who envied the love he received from a woman they both cared for; someone intent on murder. He was caught and throttled and Taryn could do nothing to help him.

She held her breath as the greybacks moved painstakingly slow in response to the man’s shouting. He lay defeated on the ground and she watched as his attacker straddled him, pulled his dark locks to lift his head and brought the blade to his throat. She could not stop or throw the blade. Helping him that way would only end with him being accused of being a mutant and Taryn never made the same mistake twice.

Just as she considered her last resort option, Zerus used what was left of his strength to grab the bigger man’s wrist, and Taryn smiled, for now she could push. Not enough to save him from injury; he was far too beaten for that. But when the Guard finally arrived, Zerus had an uneven cut on the side of his neck and a story to tell. He thanked the Prince and Taryn went back to her training.

She’d begun her watches in her second year at the palace, as a way to show the LAAMP how readers could help fight crime in the city. They didn’t care, of course. But after witnessing the sheer volume of criminal activity that went unnoticed and unpunished in the city, Taryn hadn’t been able to stop. The gratitude wasn’t unwelcomed, either. A lot of the victims thanked their favorite Lorric for their good fortune but Taryn liked being appreciated, even if no one ever got her name right.

She subtly defended three women against their angry or drunk lovers. She did the same for children suffering under the might of bitter parents or caregivers and created enough noise for neighbors to notice. She was not so subtle against rapists and torturers; they would never admit to what she had stopped them from doing and their victims would not open themselves up to suspicion.

She went until her head began to buzz from the intensity of her overuse and she collapsed onto the floor, laying flat on her back as her breaths heaved, sweat clinging to every inch of her skin, heart racing as if she’d just run the Path of Kings. She would never be strong enough to watch the city alone – it was just too big. But one day, she reminded herself, there would be enough readers so that no cry for help went unanswered.

11:17.

She needed a bath. Possibly a nap. Definitely a meal. She closed her eyes and tried to remember what the palace kitchens were supposed to be preparing for the mid-day meal. She knew they always put out a spread of carved fruit and salads but she needed something heartier; some heavy starch and hot meat.

Suddenly she heard a wet, mashing noise; and opened her eyes to find Hunter on her snack cart. His face buried in the cold slices of breakfast ham while his paws trampled the toast. She rose to her feet and lifted him away; wrapped the leftovers in the white table cloth. “You had a heavy dinner last night,” she told him. “I don’t want you to get fat.”

He continued to beg even as she tidied up and left of the room, dancing between her legs as she rolled the cart out of the library, quitting only when she left the cold buffet with a passing servant and held him in her arms all the way to her bedroom. Then all he cared about was getting away from her.

When she emerged from her washroom, he was perched on the post of her bed again; smiling. Nervous, Taryn checked on her shoes, her dresses. She inspected her selections carefully and finally donned a green tunic with black trousers and boots she thought were safe. She brushed the loose tufts of hair along her hairline while they were damp, taming them with a couple of fingers of flaxseed gel. She unclipped the silver beads from her braids and made a tie of the strands near her temples to keep the tresses from falling into her face.

12:02.

She had taken too much time.

Taryn hurried to find Commander Kura’s flame. He stood in a patchy field watching his red-bearded partner, Commander Tomoya, sip a steaming dark liquid from a pewter mug while he raised an brown blur to his own mouth.

Taryn wrapped her words in Commander Kura’s own voice. ‘Sorry, I’m late.’

A moment’s hesitation was the only sign he gave to acknowledge that he’d heard her. Then he took his time, finishing his square of carrot cake before announcing to his partner, “Time for my daily prayers.”

“That’s the second time today,” his partner answered. “Should I be worried?”

Commander Kura hawked and spat a foaming glob of spittle into the dirt. “I’ll be back.”

He stared at the ground as he walked, always careful not to allow Taryn to have too much information from him about what he was up to. She saw his hands find the wooden railing of a stairway on the side of a grey building, watched him climb up to a crenellated rooftop, where the charred remains of a fire lay in a round brazier, a few wooden chairs scattered around, some broken, some overturned.

Taryn feared she may have been too late. He and his partner were two of the three Black Knights assigned to deal with whispered, rumored or confirmed reports of mutant presences in Larisport. If they were loitering around a defensive structure…

“Where the hells have you been?” Words carried in the stillness around him, so his had been a harsh whisper to the bowl of ash.

‘I lost track of time.’

“Then you need to come back tomorrow. I’m busy.” He began to turn away.

‘Please,’ she begged. ‘This is important.’

He hawked another wad over the battlements. “Two minutes.”

‘Three mutants entered the city yesterday,’ she explained. ‘I caught one in Pine Keep but I can’t find the other two.’

“And you think they’re here?”

Larisport was the only place her Survey ever failed. He knew that.

“Why the hells am I just hearing about this?” he hissed. “What’s the point of you invading my mind whenever it pleases you if I can’t know what I need to know, when I need to know it?”

‘I didn’t see them come in,’ she admitted. When Vares and his Arsenal returned it was all she’d been able to focus on. ‘At first I thought they might have left the city but I need to be sure. The one in Pine Keep was aided by group masquerading as a defunct investigating firm. They’re marked by the six-pointed star. Have you run into them before? Do you know why they might be smuggling mutants into the city?’

He shook his head. “The cockroach has worked some kind of deal with the Purists. The only reason I can think they’d want mutants is a Pentefest. They wouldn’t tolerate any Extremists.”

Taryn’s connection to Commander Kura’s mind was superficial. She’d only reached in to see and to hear, not to explore the deeper recesses of his mind. So when the image blurred and the sound muffled around his words, she didn’t immediately understand that the brief moment of censorship was a function of his subconscious activity bleeding into his conscious connection with her. There was something he wasn’t telling her.

‘Pentefest?’ The word was unfamiliar to Taryn. It sounded like some sort of festival but Taryn knew all the Lorric feast days and celebrations; none ever involved a mutant presence.

“They’re trying to rework the Lady’s Day; make mutants afraid instead. Twenty-five mutants go in, twenty-five corpses come out.”

‘You mean a mass purification ceremony.’ Taryn felt the energy twist in her and swallowed it down. He was not the one she needed to rage against. ‘And the people allow this? The city officials?’

“They aren’t preaching anything, or trying to convert anyone,” he answered. “Members come in from the counties, stay a short while and move on. They don’t engage the public and the cockroach keeps the authorities from investigating what they do on their compound.”

Before yesterday’s Pilgrimage, Taryn would have had a hard time believing something like a Pentefest would even be thought of in the city. If that’s what these imposters were luring mutants into the city for, she needed to find them.

“But you said these smugglers bore the Extremist mark.”

Taryn tried to rationalize why Purists and Extremists would be working together. Purists and Extremists were both of the Lorric faith. But while Purists believed that their five gods stood as one in the Lothor King against a dark Lady, Extremists believed there was a seventh god. This was the true dark god, who had corrupted the King’s beloved Lady and forced her to make his wicked children. This didn’t paint mutants in a flattering light but Extremists believed in showing mercy and kindness to mutants, for the Lady’s sake.

Then she remembered Dr. Seir’s mention of a new weapon, something more powerful than the Genesis. If this Extremist group believed the Purists could actually purge the darkness from mutants to make them human again… Taryn shook that thought from her mind. If Purists had a cure, the palace would know. The LAAMP would know. Taryn would know. Besides, Dr. Seir had said it was killing mutants, not curing them.

‘What if they aren’t working together?’ Taryn Echoed. ‘What if Kol has made a deal with both groups and he’s pitting them against each other for some nefarious purpose.’

“Then I can’t help you. My job is to capture mutants in Larisport. If you can’t point me in their direction then you’re wasting my time. Unless you know where I can find the cockroach responsible for this mess?”

As a Black Knight, Commander Kura did not have the authority to enforce middling laws. He couldn’t legally arrest the King of the Lane himself, but would have had to turn the crime lord over to the sector authorities; the same authorities Kol had been buying and controlling for over a decade. Commander Kura didn’t care. He would do whatever he could to put an end to the chaos and fear that prevailed in the city’s southeast sector because of the King of the Lane. That’s why Taryn had chosen him to be her eyes and ears in Larisport. But he didn’t always believe her when she said that Kol had found some way to hide himself from her Survey.

‘The smugglers asked Denan to meet them at an address in Larisport. Its the last place I knew the other two to be. Maybe you can find traces of them?’

Taryn counted a full minute before he said anything.

“1443 Notwen Lane?”

‘How do you know that?’

He took the stairs down from the roof, and Taryn saw half a dozen dark sheets arrayed across the lawn, covering long lumpy figures that had to have been human bodies. A pair of Privates with brown shields strapped to their backs carried a stretcher between them, bending to roll the lumps on, rising to deliver them into the back of a wagon already loaded with grey limbs sticking out from under bloody sheets. Taryn closed her eyes.

Too late.

The image was planted and it multiplied in her mind, from a few red splotches on a light covering to a cloud of red mist in the air, until her breaths grew frantic and the droplets coated her lungs and a taste like hot iron smothered her tongue. She tried to make it to her balcony, to clean air and the vibrant colors of the garden beneath but the ground was a sea raging beneath her feet. She pitched and rolled until she was on her hands and knees, a wet itch at the back of her throat signaling the rising bile.

It burned everything as it came out, the skin of her throat and the images in her mind. Leaving her weak and trembling on the floor. Taryn rolled onto her back and caught her breath; kept her mental eyes closed and listened.

“I’ve found your impostors,” came Commander Kura’s voice. “Now find my killers.”

Dead. That’s why Taryn hadn’t been able to locate them. Not because they’d been in collusion with the King of the Lane. On the contrary, if they had been killed so savagely within the bounds of his territory, they had to be enemies of his. They could have been allies of hers. The more she thought about it, the more likely it became that yesterday’s pair really had left the city, smuggled off to a secondary location before the killing. ‘I can only help you find mutants. Mutants were not responsible for this.’

“You tell me there are two mutants loose in my sector right after I find bodies – ”

‘The last time I saw them they were laughing over drinks. If they’re not among the dead, then they’ve already left the city.’ She couldn’t believe that they would turn and murder their rescuers and was sure that he didn’t either. All the criminal activity in Larisport had one source. There wasn’t a purse cut, a shop owner threatened, an apple nipped from a seller’s cart that couldn’t be traced back to the King of the Lane. ‘If there were bodies in Larisport, you know who’s responsible.’

Taryn watched his flame drift toward a cluster moving in the same direction. If she remembered the layout of the area correctly, they were flowing out of the building where the bodies had been found.

“Marshal Dubh, let’s go over it all one more time, shall we?” Commander Kura said. “You arrived on the scene…?”

“Its Staff Marshall, Commander,” a second voice said. Taryn chanced a blink and saw a pair of stripes on a brown sleeve, still bright and crisp like it was fresh from a quartermaster’s stores. “We’ve been over this twice already and your partner said I could go. My shift ended two hours ago.”

“Then there is nothing keeping you from going over it again,” Commander Kura said.

“It’ll be the last time,” Commander Tomoya promised. His had been among the flames moving with the others. “Kura here always comes away with new insight after communing with the gods.”

Taryn heard somebody sigh; she heard feet shuffling and soft noises of exertion as through a wall. The pungent odor of her own vomit overpowered anything she received from Commander Kura. She rolled away from it, opening her balcony doors and stumbling on weak legs towards the warm scents of summer.

“I was out making my rounds,” Staff Marshal Duhb said, “checking in on the patrols, when I heard –”

“Which way?” Commander Kura asked.

“What?”

“Were you moving east to west? South to east?”

“North. I was bearing north when I heard a loud commotion and came upon a small gathering of–”

“But was it true north or north along the Lane?”

“True. North.”

Staff Marshal Duhb’s attitude didn’t improve as the retelling continued but it didn’t worsen either. Black Knights didn’t fall anywhere within the Guard’s chain of command, neither did they answer to anyone who did. They answered directly to the LAAMP and any efforts on any Brownback’s part to hinder their investigation would lead to charges of obstruction. He wanted to keep his crisp new stripes so he endured all of Commander Kura’s interruptions, answered all of his unusual questions. He didn’t know that Taryn would use those obscure details to verify his account of the events.

It was the last hour of the third watch; a cool, windless night. The small crowd of spectators, twelve to fifteen of them; a tavern owner and a few of his patrons, a couple of shoe-less urchins who fled at the sight of the brownback, a crippled beggar who’d tried to hobble into the tavern in all the confusion.

Taryn set her Survey after them as Staff Marshal Dubh identified them. She used their memories to build a different scenario she could run through as the brownback spoke.

Staff Marshal Duhb interviewed them all before he ever tried to head inside. They’d been gathered around 1443 Notwen Lane, drawn by the commotion within. Loud thumps and crashes, angry shouts and breaking glass. Like a tavern brawl had gotten too serious. Or some poor, unfortunate souls found themselves in the grips of a demolition. But the tavern was two doors down, at 1447 Notwen Lane. 1443 was supposed to be a quiet jeweler’s workshop, which explained the windows too small and high to look or break into; the battlements and watcher’s post above.

There was as much light as can be expected in the dead of night. No one had looked to see the shape of the moon. They wondered if the establishment had any connection to the King of the Lane; if his thugs were in there trying to make it so. Then the commotion shifted. There were less crashes, less breaks, no shouts. Only screams. Shrill, terrified. Dying.

No, Staff Marshal Duhb’s courage had not been left at garrison. His sword and shield were not for show. But he didn’t receive his promotion by violating protocol and running blindly into danger on his own. It had taken fifteen minutes for the first of the runners to locate the roving patrols and lead them back. The commotion had been over for ten minutes by then.

Taryn halted the scenario just as Staff Marshal Duhb rammed the door off its hinges. She didn’t need to see the carnage as he described it. Didn’t need Commander Kura to walk through and show her all the places they’d recovered severed limbs; the drag marks of the broken men trying to crawl to safety.

“Our city’s defenders.” Commander Kura spat after he’d dismissed the marshal.

“Not everyone who does nothing is in thrall to Kol,” Commander Tomoya said. On principle, the Knights refused to call the crime lord the king of anything.

‘This is terrible, but it isn’t your problem,’ Taryn Echoed. Denan was not a killer. If these other mutants were recruited by the same league of impostors for the same purpose, then she couldn’t believe that they were capable of such savagery either. ‘Mutants don’t sneak into the city to kill its citizens.’

“What do you think, Moya?” he asked to his partner. “Two massacres in three days? It seems like a pattern to me.”

Taryn tightened her grip on the grainy stone of the balustrade. ‘This has happened before?’

“Gods, I hope not,” Commander Tomoya said. “The way these people were beaten and ripped apart… It has to be a berserker. Tell you the truth, I’m not looking forward to facing this thing, if this is what its capable of.”

No. A berserker active in her city? She would have seen it. Someone would have sent out a beacon, even if unintentionally. It would have burned itself into her mind unless… Unless the King of the Lane had been there. With his phantom, shielding all of their flames from her mind. ‘You should have told me when this happened the first time. I could have helped you stop this.’

A brownback with a black pentagon stitched onto her sleeves emerged from the building bearing a large clay model in her arms. She stepped gingerly over the threshold and into the street, leading the tableau into the back of a second waiting wagon before wiping a sweaty brow and taking deep, shaky breaths. Two more followed.

“Finally! The sculptors are done,” Tomoya announced. “Now we can go.”

“Not yet,” Commanded Kura said. The image of the red-bearded Knight tilted, as if Commander Kura had made a subtle nod and Taryn followed them; through the field where only three covered bodies lay, then up the wooden steps to the roof where whispered words would not fall on the ears of the brownbacks below. “We need to work this out.”

“What’s the problem?” Commander Tomoya asked after peering over the battlements to make sure they weren’t followed.

“We pulled twelve bodies from that mess,” Commander Kura said. “Eleven of them had a tattoo of a six-pointed star somewhere on their bodies and they were all beaten, crushed or torn apart. You said you knew the one who wasn’t.”

Commander Tomoya’s brow furrowed. He lifted dark eyes to his partner. “Is that what all your piety gets you? You think I’m a suspect? I don’t know if its the gods you hear or your own folly, but its wrong.”

‘He couldn’t have had anything to with this,’ Taryn put in. Regular Inquiries into the Black Knights stationed within the city were an unofficial part of her duties. She had to be sure that none had fallen in thrall to the King of the Lane.

“I’m just trying to get all the facts in order,” Commander Kura said. “There was one man in there who was attacked with weapons; he was covered in cuts and stab wounds. Arrows were still sticking out of his body. You said he was a friend of yours.”

“A long time ago. James and I grew up together. After we completed our studies, I went off to the Academy and he stayed behind to apprentice with a local cobbler. Four years later, I was placed on the Larisport Guard and he was looking to get started as a tanner or leather worker or some such. He asked my help with the lenders. They wouldn’t loan to him alone and I… We were seventeen. I was just getting started here and I didn’t… I couldn’t…” Commander Tomoya’s eyes glistened. He set his jaw and blinked several times and his voice carried a little extra weight when he continued. “He ended up borrowing from Kol. That was ten years ago.”

A loan from the King of the Lane came with exorbitant interest rates but they were good for ten years, no matter how large or small the sum. Most people paid him back before then. Those who didn’t… ‘Kol sent someone to collect.’

“Everyone knows he has a mutant in his ranks,” Commander Tomoya continued. “Now we know its berserker-capable. All these others were just… collateral damage.”

The guilt that he felt over his friend’s death was nothing compared to her own. When she first learned about Kol and his enterprises, she set out against him. This was before she knew better, before she knew much about anything. People just saw mutant power at work around the activities of his thugs. It didn’t matter that it was working against Kol’s interest. Rumor spread that he’d tamed a mutant into doing his bidding and the people of Larisport stopped resisting. Vares stayed angry at her for months after that.

Thinking back, that was probably where Kol got the idea to use a mutant to protect himself from her. A phantom to shield his mind. Now he’d found himself a berserker to be his enforcer. And he was letting them loose on the citizens of Larisport.

“If this was a berserker attack, then where’s the berserker?” Commander Kura challenged. “If the Marshal went in as soon as it was over, there should have been a varn berserker there.”

“No. He had to wait for back up, remember? They went in ten minutes after it was over. Plenty of time to slip out of a back door.”

‘Varn means catatonic. A berserker would not have been able to walk anywhere. Not unless they were led.’

Commander Tomoya seemed to realize this, as well. “Wait! Do you mean that someone else was here? To help the berserker get away?”

‘Give me a few minutes. If any of the witnesses saw something they didn’t want to report to the brownbacks, I’ll find it.’ Time passed differently at the speed of thought. A few minutes was more than enough time to gather and review hundreds of hours of memories. If there was a berserker roaming the streets, she could spare a few minutes to try to find it.

“I don’t think it was a berserker,” Commander Kura said. “Let’s step back a bit and look at all of the facts. Do you remember the mutant reported in Pine Keep yesterday?”

“You mean the one they lost?” Commander Tomoya scoffed. “I swear that is not happening here. When we find this dog, we’ll put it down.”

‘I don’t think I appreciate your partner’s sentiments.’ Berserkers don’t retain memories of their episodes. And chances are that this mutant didn’t even know what was happening. Even if they did, execution was not the answer.

“He was arrested at 1443 Notwen Fall,” Commander Kura said.

Commander Tomoya’s eyes narrowed; his brow folded into a large wrinkle as he scratched the chin under his beard. “You think he was headed here?”

“They say a group of masked men helped facilitate his escape,” Commander Kura said. “Men marked by the six-pointed star.”

‘They didn’t say that. I said that.’ Taryn knew the sector Knights shared information, but she was sure that she was the only one who knew about the league of impostors. If Commander Tomoya conferred with the Knights of Pine Keep, he might begin to wonder how Kura knew to make that connection. ‘You’re telling him too much,’ she warned.

Commander Tomoya’s brow furrowed even deeper. “Smuggling mutants into the city is illegal; any illegal activity in Larisport is Kol’s domain. Why would he turn on his own men?”

‘They couldn’t have been his men,’ Taryn realized. ‘Kolmen don’t brand themselves.’

“I think this was a rival gang,” Commander Kura explained. “Trying to take a piece of Kol’s empire. And they recruited mutants into the city to combat Kol’s own secret weapon. So we have one guy who owed him money, and a gang trying to steal from him; all dead. It looks like two stones to me.”

Tomoya nodded at this. “It does seem like something Kol would do; send James along to supervise the berserker to pay off his debt. The idiot. No one survives a berserker attack. Everyone knows that.”

“This was not a berserker attack,” Commander Kura said again. “Not a normal one, anyways. I think this guy, James, he was the attacker here.”

“Were we in the same room?” Commander Tomoya asked. “Did you see what I saw? James was a human and I’ve never heard of anyone mutating after sixteen. There is no way he could have done all of that.”

Commander Kura glanced down and reached into a pocket underneath his breastplate. His hand came out with a small corked phial. Clinging to the rounded bottom was a trace of a powder that was such a rich shade of blue.

“What is that?” Taryn and Tomoya asked together.

He gave it to Commander Tomoya for a closer study. Taryn Shadowed his mind so she could get a closer look herself.

“This sample was taken from one of the corpses at the last scene,” Commander Kura explained. “Your friend had traces of it in his nostrils and on his hands. From the two cases, it looks like this stuff made them unnaturally strong; unfeeling. So they could go on killing even with life threatening wounds of their own.”

Taryn clenched as the words flowed from her mind. ‘You think Kol has manufactured a drug that makes middlings into berserkers.’

Commander Tomoya concluded much the same.

“It’s just a theory.” Commander Kura let another wet missile loose. He aimed for the ashes in the brazier and missed, leaving a slime of spit drooling on the side of the bronze basin. “I just gather and interpret facts. Its not like I can read minds and get the truth. If mutant power were involved, then the whole building would be in pieces; not just the people.”

“But that makes this a human case,” Commander Tomoya said. “Are you trying to tell me that we have to turn this over to the Guard? The Guard he owns?”

“As far as any of the brownbacks know, this was a berserker. There is no reason for us to suggest to them otherwise. We can still investigate it.”

“But none of the arrests we make will hold. Argh!” Commander Tomoya kicked one of the chairs, sending it crashing into the battlements. “This is not what I joined the service for – to sit on my hands and pander to politics while the city crumbles.” He worked on two more chairs, uttering a sting of curses as he kicked and smashed them into firewood before Commander Kura warned him he was drawing suspicions and he forced himself to calm.

“Are you done?” Commander Kura asked. “Because one of us needs to ask around and see if any body painters recall doing any work for these smugglers. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find the next target in one piece. I’ll see about finding someone who can tell me more about this blue stuff.”

Taryn knew he was really making the request of her. That sending Tomoya off on a mission would leave him alone to speak freely was an added bonus.

‘I searched for them all night and morning. If their deaths was the reason I couldn’t find them, then there are no more in this city,’ she Echoed. They may have left some clues behind at one of the addresses she’d identified that morning but the urgency was gone. ‘Let me study the sample. I might know where that unusual blue coloring comes from.’ She could use Dr. Seir’s lab to try to figure out what the powder was composed of. Kol’s people may be shielded from her but if this is what she thought it was, then they were working with people she could read.

“One condition,” Commander Kura said. “Give up your prisoner.”

‘I’m not sure – ’

“You said you caught one in Pine Keep; you haven’t released him yet. I haven’t heard anything about an arrest, so you haven’t turned him over. I want him.”

Taryn had to remember that half-truths didn’t work with him. ‘I’m not done with him.’

“You, who boast of being able to acquire an entire year’s worth of information in minutes? If you haven’t gotten enough from him to stop this before it happened, then you aren’t going to get anything from him now.”

‘I don’t think he had anything to do with your cases. He hardly knew these impostors and they brought him here under false pretenses.’ Anything he knew about them would likely be a lie. Now that they were all either dead or fled the city, Taryn was hard pressed to justify keeping him much longer. Though she wasn’t sure his mental identity wasn’t a deception, she wasn’t sure that it was. If he really had been allied with the other two mutants and one of them had created the story in his mind, then it would soon crumble, or someone would come for him. Then she would know and be able to end her investigation into this league of impostors. Her power didn’t reach beyond the city walls and there were enough problems within that demanded her attention. ‘Will you let me have the sample to study?’

Commander Kura tucked the phial into the sleeve of his shirt, the sleeve into his gloves. “Just as soon as you’re ready to trade.”

Taryn considered it. The sooner she could get her hands on the sample, the sooner she could get her mind on the King of the Lane. Right now, she was aware of 525,362 people within the walls of the city. If bidden, she could identify the name and location of each of them and it was nothing to her. But none of them were Kol. He was able to move through her city outside of her Survey; orchestrate murder under the nose ofher Sentry. She would not find him that way.

Now he was testing a new drug and calling in debts. He must be ramping up to something and Taryn couldn’t shake the feeling that the timing was telling. But feelings were not enough to violate a Provident Ruling. She had to find something Vares could use to bring him to heel. And all it would cost her was Denan.

‘I have to go,’ she Echoed.

“And without a trade? Why am I not surprised?”

‘If the King of the Lane is calling in debts, there is someone I need to check on. I’ll check in with you again tomorrow.’

Taryn didn’t wait for him to agree. She cast her Sentry over the rest of Larisport in search of Orph, and by extension, Lena and little Jax. She breathed deeply when she found them.

At this time of the day, Orph could usually be found just waking from another night of trying to drink away his anxieties and depression. So she was surprised to find his flame in his workshop, paint splattered hands tearing a canvas from an easel.

‘Have you finally abandoned this delusion, then?’

His hands stilled. “I am not in the mood for you today, Dark One.”

That was her least favorite nickname. ‘Nor I you. I need to speak to your wife.’

“Look at this.” He straightened the canvas before him to show a painting of circle pieces, cut from different brightly-colored wholes and juxtapositioned together in an explosion of color. They looked like target and she imagined sending speeding missiles through their centers. Small, blue hand prints had been slapped across the surface. He swept an arm across the room behind him, showing her the small, blue hand and foot prints that ran from a stack of once blank canvases and ended near the middle of the workshop’s dry wooden flooring. “Look what he’s done to my art, my life’s work.”

Taryn saw more targets painted on canvases, slapped with blue streaks or prints; she didn’t see art. But she didn’t want to argue with him when he was in one of his moods. ‘Do I have your permission or not?’

“Uncultured swine!” He waved her away.

Just a floor below, Taryn found Lena, gently soothing a stuffy eyed toddler sitting in a small wooden tub, washing blue paint from his hands and face where he’d touched his tears.

‘Lena.’ Taryn used George’s voice here; powerful and protective.

“Why so sad, my little cherry lad?” Lena sang as she tickled her son. “Be of good cheer. Our Guardian is here!”

The boy gave a single laugh, showing off a mouthful of tiny teeth.

‘I just wanted to check in,’ Taryn explained. ‘Make sure you were alright.’

“We haven’t been approached by anyone, have we, Jaxie? No, we haven’t. No strange visitors, no strange watchers.”

Jax giggled when Lena touched her nose to his, then nuzzled his forehead and each of his cheeks.

‘That’s good.’ The second of Vogust was less than five weeks away, so they still had some time before they could expect to hear from Kol’s thugs. Taryn told Lena what she’d just learned, about how the King of the Lane was settling his debts. She had no happy words or singing tone to coat her reaction in sugar.

‘It isn’t confirmed yet, but it certainly smells like Kol,’ Taryn Echoed. ‘But there is some good news. I may have a potential patron for Orph, though it will take a few days for me to secure all the details. It will be a risky, since its outside the city but the King of the Lane doesn’t mean much outside of the city. You should be safe.’

“Should?” Lena asked. “You mean you won’t be able to know.”

Hence the risk. ‘I can get 67 gold to you in a crisis. I know its not enough but it’ll appease anyone who comes to collect.’

Lena wrapped her son in a towel and hugged him dry. “Orph will never accept it.”

‘I’m not offering it to him,’ Taryn Echoed.

“It’s too much to borrow.”

‘I’m not asking you to pay it back. How much is too much for your life? For Jax?’

Lena’s vision blurred with tears and she hugged her little boy to her chest so he wouldn’t see them. “Just promise me you’ll look after him. I don’t care what happens to me, but please, don’t let them get my boy.”

‘Nothing is going to happen to you. I promised to do everything within my power to help you,’ Taryn reminded her. ‘I always keep my promises.’

Taryn sighed back into herself. She was in desperate need of assurances herself. She’d been out long enough for the sun to scald and draw sweat from her skin.

Hunter lay on the balcony beside her, bathing in the afternoon sun.

“Do you think I can really do this?” she asked. “Keep them safe and keep my secret?” Her only contingency was bringing them into the palace. Kol wouldn’t follow them there any more than Vares would encroach on Larisport. Taryn was prepared to deal with the consequences of having her secret revealed. She just really hoped that there wouldn’t be any.

Hunter yawned at her.

“You’re a lot more understanding in my mind.” She reached a hand down to him, a familiar gesture he knew would mean petting and pampering and guaranteed purring. He stood, stretched, and glanced up at the balcony railing, gauging the leap he’d have to make, she guessed.

Then he turned around to lay down again to let his other side get some sun.

“I take it back then,” Taryn said. He understood her perfectly fine. He just preferred to be mean to her in the physical world.