Four days later, Taryn still hadn’t been invited to dine with the King. And with no formal statement from the palace to put the minds of the people at ease, the wild stories of what happened at Soren Manor continued to spread. Like a fire, it burned through the peaceful life Taryn had built in the city. Until she couldn’t walk the streets of Pine Keep without someone warding themselves against her, or turning to run the other way when they noticed her golden eyes darting in their direction. It was a good thing, then, that Vares was so wrapped up in the Countess’s recovery that he failed to notice that her anonymity was eroding. She just hoped it would only last long enough for the city to forget about her and find a new obsession.

She avoided doing anything that would cause her infamy to grow. Mama Kebar pulled her off the delivery circuit and gave her jobs in the kitchen to limit her interaction with anyone with impure motives. She stayed off the Prince’s Fall and had taken to the city’s narrow alleys and dark side roads to navigate her way to and from the bakery. She even donned a hooded cloak to conceal her face and opted to turn and run rather than defend herself when some afternoon drunk or bold zealot decided to test the truth of the stories.

It seemed to be working; her last incident had been two days ago.

So as she made her way to the bakery now, Taryn drew her hood back from her face. Not enough to be recognized from a distance but she had grown weary of hiding; of throwing her Sentry at every shadow that shifted at the corners of her eyes. She earned a few narrow-eyed stares and double-takes but no one bothered her. She walked a little taller.

Eventually, she noticed a pair of flames following closely behind her.

They kept themselves no more than a couple of blocks away from her, spaced out in the crowd so an untrained eye wouldn’t know that they were together. One of them always stopped every time that she did. When she turned out of their line of sight, both of them rushed forward until she was in the center of one of their vision. These were not the kind of hecklers who sought her out at the bakery or accosted her when they saw her in the streets. What did they want, then? Were they waiting for a chance to get her alone? To do her harm or intimidate her? Were they just curious?

There was an easy way to find out.

12:47.

She could read them in the few minutes it would take her to get to the bakery. Then she’d arrive early - or rather on time. Rai might be pleased enough to let her sample those kebabs she’d been experimenting with.

Taryn slowed her pace as she focused her mind into their flames. She didn’t want to stop completely for a thorough Inquiry and hoped she could discern their motives from a cursory observation of their most recent memories. At the pulse of one of the flames she managed to catch a glimpse of sparkling blue water sweeping onto a sandy shore before the image suddenly slipped from her mind. She was so stunned that she stopped in the street. The pair of flames stopped with her, each ducking to different sides of the street to hide themselves as she peered over her shoulder.

The minds of common citizens weren’t normally that well defended. She continued on her way and focused on the second man, sending her mind into the pulse of his mental flame as it continued on the road behind her, his friend following soon after. In his mind she saw a stretch of boats docked along a shoreline, a brilliant rainbow painted across a clear blue sky. And just like with his partner, her mind couldn’t hold on to the scene.

A quick Shadow showed her the subtle hand signals they gave each other and Taryn knew that these were not common citizens. Someone had taught them how to defend their minds. Someone had taught them to trail a target. Someone had sent them after her.

“The fun way it is,” Taryn said to herself.

There were too many flames around her. Taryn used her Sentry to identify several quiet alleys between her and the bakery. None of them were viable. They were all close enough to busy streets that someone would hear something, see something; and her infamy would spread. So she chose from the list of abandoned properties she’d gotten from Master Gedel.

Since she had to find new routes to travel between the bakery and the palace over the last few days, she’d taken the opportunity to investigate them all. Apart from the couple of displaced families taking advantage of the unused lands, the buildings harbored no sinister secrets. The closest one was a burned-out carpenter’s warehouse, though it was easily ten minutes out of her way and a twenty minute delay all told. Which meant no kebabs for her. That soured her mood.

The rusted wheels of the large sliding door screeched as she pushed the door open. They locked after two and a half feet of daylight spilled onto the dusty floor. Taryn slipped in and tried to pull the door closed again but the rusted wheels wouldn’t budge. She gave up after the weathered wood bore two splinters into her palms. She squatted beside the door and picked them out while she waited.

The first one through was a dark haired youth with skin the color of powdered cinnamon. She waited until his partner cleared the threshold. This one was a bit older, with a square-shaped head and pointed beard. They may not have been common citizens but they obviously weren’t professionals, since they thought nothing of following a target into an enclosed space without checking for dangers. She pounced on them in a flurry of fists and feet so swift they didn’t have a chance to give her much sport. In a few brief moments she watched their flames fade into the semi-permeable orbs of light that signified unconsciousness.

She dragged the sleeping forms into a corner and searched their pockets. She didn’t find a coin purse. She assumed that meant they hadn’t been hired to seek her out. She patted them down, in search of a passport - and froze when the youth’s sleeveless vest shifted. Beneath the low collar, she saw a six-pointed star tattooed onto his chest.

She found his partner’s mark behind his ear and hesitated a moment, unsure of how to proceed. Her Inquisition of the city’s body painters had revealed that fifty-six men and women had been inked with the six-pointed star. After three nauseating watch sessions, she and Commander Kura were able to confirm that only twenty-three of those faces were among the twenty-five bodies he’d found at the Larisport massacres. There were still thirty-three members of the league of impostors unaccounted for. Commander Kura was desperate to find them before the King of the Lane made them into corpses. And here Taryn the baker’s apprentice had found two of them. Worse, they’d been following her.

1:01.

She was already late. Still, it would take too much time to make arrangements with Commander Kura, to orchestrate a transfer so he could interrogate them. This way, at least she could get some answers.

Taryn settled herself before them and tried the youth’s mind first. It didn’t slip from her grip this time. Her Inquiry took her back to that sandy beach and she saw that it was actually one of several islands that made up Faulii’s mind-scape.

“I was napping!” Hunter growled. The fur around his eyes was bunched into angry wrinkles. “You aren’t even home for petting.”

“I’ve found two of the missing thirty-three,” she told him. “Or rather, they found me. We need to find out why.”

Hunter stretched, digging his front paws into the wet sand while his tail swished in the air. “How is it that people who claim to be servants of a mutant goddess have such open minds?”

His gaze was focused behind her. Even as she turned, Taryn knew what she would see: the subconscious manifestation of Faulii himself. He knelt beside a boat run aground on the shore, a six-pointed star painted in black on the white, canvas sail. He looked up and waved at her, dimples pressing into his cheeks as he smiled.

“It doesn’t look like he’ll be giving you too much trouble,” Hunter said. “What are you bothering me for?”

Because she had spent the last four days Surveying the entire city for people with that mark and had found none. Someone capable of fooling her Survey like that and slipping out of her Inquisitor when conscious should have a more well defended mind, even when unconscious. Yet there were no guards to halt her intrusion; no defenses to discourage her presence. Faulii’s mind-scape should not be this welcoming and it made her uneasy.

Dauntless, Hunter led the way, leaving massive paw prints in the sand as he stalked to Faulii’s subconscious self.

“Aloha, e ke hoa,” Faulii said in greeting.

He spread his arms wide and Taryn checked his hands for a weapon before she allowed him to hug her. When he planted a chaste kiss on her cheek, she understood that it was simply how people greeted each other in Owyhee, the coastal town he’d grown up in. She could remember watching the sun paint pink clouds across the sky when it rose over the mountains; orange when setting into the vast sea. The taste of spiced fish and nuts, raw in her mouth. The sound of water: lapping against the shore, crashing in waves, roaring in storms. Dozens of memories and a strong sense of home – all in one little kiss.

Perhaps his defensive training had not been very thorough, she thought. And that would explain why it was so easy to pull information from his mind.

No. Mental defenses were developed from the inside out. They were supposed to be stronger on the inside than they were on the outside, like a seed at the center of a crisp apple. But Faulii’s mind was like a hollow egg; tough to breach with no defensive measures within to speak of. She’d only ever seen that in minds where she’d imposed the defense herself, like when the LAAMP only gave her three days to train the Black Knights. She’d built a fairly powerful shell but it wasn’t anything a little clever thinking and dogged determination couldn’t dissolve. Once that happened, it was just air on the inside, or whatever defenses the Knights might have picked up naturally.

Yet, there were no other mutants in the city who could have imposed this defense.

Except Kol’s phantom.

Hunter lowered into a crouch. His tail twitched playfully but the darks of his eyes swallowed the golden-yellow irises in a threat.

Faulii flashed another dimpled smile. “Can I help you find something, nani?”

“I’m looking for information on the LIGHT.” Taryn pointed to the painted sail. “What can you tell me about them?”

“You want Kai island,” he said, nodding toward a landmass across the water. One end of the island was nothing but gray, rocky cliff. The other housed a single grass hut standing amidst a lush green land.

“Watch him,” she said quietly to Hunter. If Faulii tried something with her back turned, Hunter would make sure he regretted it. Her boots collected clods of wet sand as she stepped toward the water.

“Wait!” Faulii said. He made to follow after her but Hunter growled at him and he withdrew. “You won’t be able to swim across.”

Taryn stood where the water met the shore and peered into the blue. Something moved beneath the calm, clear surface. Down where the light of the sunless sky refused to go and the blue ran so deep that it turned black. Taryn got the sense that anything that fell into that darkness would not resurface.

She imagined the water’s surface solidifying into hard marble, and it was so. She imagined a path three feet wide, stretching from where the toes of her boots kissed the water to the grassy shore of Kai island. She tested the surface with a few taps of her foot and stepped out.

With her full weight on it, the solid surface cracked and she sprung back before she could be sucked into the dark depths. The crack stretched out across the length of the bridge and the whole thing crumbled into shards. They were swallowed into the deep and Taryn was certain she saw… something consume them.

“I guess he isn’t completely defenseless,” Hunter said.

“I tried to tell you: if you want to get there, you’ll have to sail.” Faulii slapped the hull and it rang with the sound of an empty chest. “Help me get this free, and I’ll take you.”

Taryn saw a trowel stuck in the sand in the shadow of the boat and realized he’d been trying to dig the beached vessel out. Taryn wasn’t in a digging mood. The few minutes she’d spent in his mind already were mere fractions of a second in the real world but she was not prepared for a lengthy deep read. She needed this done quickly.

So Taryn lifted the boat.

Mouth agape, Faulii watched it float through the air and turn toward the sea. Taryn released the vessel and it dropped into the water with a splash. She peered into the deep for signs of retaliation from the creature but all was still.

“At least I still have my abilities here,” she said. “But why couldn’t I do anything with the water?”

Hunter’s whiskers twitched as he sniffed at her boots. Then he licked the moisture from them and for the briefest moment, Taryn was a scared toddler; clinging to his father’s shoulders as he leaned over the front of a ship, lightning flashing across the gray sky overhead, turbulent waters below and no land in sight.

“They’re his memories,” Hunter said.

Which explained why she couldn’t manipulate it. All of his memories, all of his secrets, were right there for the taking – if she could face the massive creature lurking beneath the surface. Taryn smiled despite herself. No two mind-scapes were ever exactly the same. Each was a puzzle that required her to think cleverly in order to come up with it’s unique range of solutions. She enjoyed the challenge. She’d never come across a water-world before so this would be an adventure.

“Maybe even collar-worthy,” Hunter added. Taryn had half a mind to dive into the water, to see what the creature might do and how she would fare against it. “Maybe another time,” she said. If she tried now, she could be ejected from the mind-scape several times before she figured out a way to defeat Faulii’s defense. And that meant time lost in the real world.

Hunter shrugged and leapt from the shore to the boat. He landed on the edge of the vessel. Taryn threw Faulii in after him and made a final sweep of the sandy shore while he prepared the ship for their departure. She didn’t like to move on in an unfamiliar mind unless she knew she wasn’t leaving anything behind that could harm her later. She needn’t have worried. There was only sand all around and it took commands from her easily, turning to glass or swirling into a knee-high storm without resistance.

“What’s your interest in the LIGHT?” Faulii asked her when she’d finally joined them.

“You tell me,” Taryn answered carefully. One of the dangers of Inquiring an unconscious mind was that the consciousness was somewhere in his mind-scape – likely even merged with his subconscious. Faulii may remember this encounter as a dream so Taryn had to be very careful not to answer questions about herself. “Why did you leave your home in Owyhee to join up with anarchists in the palace city?”

Faulii cocked his head at her. “If you think the LIGHT are anarchists, then you have greatly misunderstood us.”

“Mutants are outlawed in the city,” she said. “Yet your organization is smuggling them in.”

“To help them,” he answered. “We help mutants reclaim their lives after they’ve been wronged by corrupt officials throughout the kingdom. We help them get real justice.”

“He really believes this,” Hunter put in. So, it wasn’t just the mutants they were smuggling that were being lied to, but the agents themselves.

Taryn needed to find out who was in charge of this farce; who the first lie had come from. “And following me?” she asked. “How does that serve justice?”

“That’s a simple recruiting mission,” Faulii said. “Word came down that there was someone in Pine Keep who might be a good fit for the organization: a golden-eyed baker’s apprentice who could take on a whole squad of the usurper’s Infantry. Me and Drell are going to test to see if its true.”

“Going to?” Hunter asked.

Taryn scratched behind his ear to silence him. If Faulii didn’t realize that he’d already been defeated, she was not going to be the one to tell him. There was a bigger issue to address, besides.

“Usurper?” she repeated. To the Extremists, the Lady was the mother of all humanity, not just mutants. That’s why they worshiped six gods, instead of the Traditional five. To them, mutants only existed because she had been corrupted by a seventh deity, the true Dark god. Therefore, mutants were not to be condemned, like the Purists believed, but redeemed. Even with all of that, Extremists did not reject the divinity of the Lothors.

“The Thousand Arm Warriors built this city, built that palace,” Faulii explained. “They sat the Seat of the Gods before anyone even knew what a Lothor was. The Lothors usurped their royalty from them and called themselves divine.”

Taryn didn’t need the history lesson. It had been over a thousand years since Vares the First defeated the Thousand Arm Warriors and only Keepers would still call the Lothors usurpers. But the Keeper faith was a service to the Maronai, and that royal line was gone. All but one.

A troubling picture began to take form in Taryn’s mind. What if this league of impostors was actually a secret Keeper sect under the Maron prince? A mutant powerful enough to slip through her Survey and teach his minions to do the same? What are the chances, then, of two phantoms operating within the city? What if he was the phantom shielding the King of the Lane?

“Watch yourself,” Hunter said before she could get further. “You’re forming an opinion of an entire organization based on a single member. Does that sound familiar?”

Taryn allowed her better sense to pull her from her panicked speculation. That was how the LAAMP regarded mutants; she had to stay true to the facts. Keepers and the Maronai valued mutant power over middling lives; and female mutants above all. For as much as Purists feared the rise of the Lady’s vessel, it was the entire hope of the Keeper faith. So a Maron prince was about as useful to them as a Lothor princess to a Purist. Keepers would not follow a prince and Marons were above colluding with middlings.

“Who gave you the order to test her?” Hunter asked Faulii.

When Faulii smiled this time it was with his hands folded over his chest and a scoff in his tone. “You ask a lot of questions.”

Taryn and Hunter shared a look. If Faulii’s subconscious manifestation became suspicious when questioned about his leaders, then that line of questioning was something he’d specifically been trained to defend against. He didn’t seem to have any issues discussing himself or the organization so she would keep her direct Inquiry there. She could mine the information she really wanted when they arrived at Kai island. “You have an obvious love for the sea. What pulled you away and into the city?”

Faulii grinned and the sky of his mind-scape filled itself with dark clouds that pelted them with slanted rain. The still waters churned into slapping waves that rocked the boat to and fro so that Taryn had to grab hold of something to maintain her balance. Staying low to the rocking deck, Hunter growled uneasily, his protracted claws gouging deep grooves in the wood as he fought to hang on.

“Maybe we should save all the Inquiries for the other island?” Hunter growled at her.

“Relax,” she told him. If Faulii didn’t seem surprised or worried, then they had no reason to be. “This storm isn’t defensive.”

“I grew up on the south end of Hameha County,” Faulii explained. “The old fishermen would always tell stories of wild encounters with strange creatures that lived around a small cluster of islands near the north. Lizards that could take the form of a man - or grow as big as an island! They guarded massive treasures by causing fierce storms and shipwrecks around their islands; all perfectly good reasons for a group of stupid kids to steal a boat.”

Knowing that the storm around her now was just a fragment of a memory being relived, Taryn could guess what happened next.

“We got turned around in the storm,” he said. “We ended up wrecked on a cove farther south than any of us had ever been. And there was something in the jungle. I never knew what. I never saw it. Only heard it growling from the bushes. We were stuck there for two days and every time it tried to get close to our camp, Darr was there, pushing it back.”

“You were saved by a mutant,” Taryn said. That was something she’d never heard from any of the Inquisition or conversations she’d had in seven years. Most of the people she’d encountered either had no personal experience with mutants or bad experiences. Or they were the mutants who had done the ill.

Faulii nodded and the storm calmed. “We almost didn’t invite him – not because of what he was. We didn’t know what he was before then. We didn’t know anything about him, except that he liked to keep to himself. We all thought he was quiet, but normal. Because of him, we were able to build small rafts with strips of sails and he kept us moving, even when the wind stopped and the stars faded. He could sense where other people were. It was the most thrilling thing I’d ever experienced.”

The sunless sky brightened and the sea no longer rocked the boat. Taryn and Hunter unclenched.

“So you don’t believe mutants are inherently evil?” Taryn asked cautiously. “You really do just want to help?”

“Darr saved my life. He saved all of our lives. He didn’t have to. No one asked him to. He just did. He was the bravest person I ever knew and they arrested him for it. That’s the real evil. They put him on an inhibitor regimen and he was never the same again.”

Taryn guessed that all of this had to have happened more than seven years ago. Dr. Seir’s domestic inhibitor didn’t poison mutants and it had been introduced the kingdom soon after their arrival at the palace. How old would Faulii had been? No more than nine or ten, surely. Old enough to form his own strong opinions about the matter. Opinions that would one day drive him away from home and into the arms of an organization that sought to repair the injustices he’d seen in his youth.

“Is that how you learned of the LIGHT, then?” Hunter asked. “They reached out to help your Darr?”

“Last year,” Faulii said. “He looked so happy when he left.”

“Where is he now?”

Faulii’s smile faded and he looked away from her. The sky turned dark again but there was no wind, no rain. Just a heavy cloud that felt like sadness and regret.

“You don’t know,” Hunter said.

“No one would tell me,” Faulii said quietly.

Setting aside his feelings on the Seat, Taryn found little cause to condemn him. Faulii was sympathetic to the mutant plight. Denan was a mutant worth saving. Both claimed that the LIGHT wanted to help mutants and both were naive enough to think that their innocence and sincerity would be enough. But neither was able to tell her how the impostors accomplished this, exactly. Or why they hid behind a defunct organization. And nothing she’d Inquired of them explained why the King of the Lane seemed determined to demolish them. She needed to find the mind behind the lies.

Taryn glanced across the water, to the small grass hut that was supposed to give her those answers. They were half-way between the islands and she thought she should be able to call a stronger wind into the sails to speed their progress. As soon as the thought left her, a bolt of lightning flashed down from the gray sky and struck the surface of the water to the rear of the vessel. It struck so close that the water exploded out and the force tipped the boat forward. When they had settled again, Taryn saw dozens of fish, floating lifeless on the surface.

“There is no need to feel threatened,” Taryn told Faulii. “I’m not a danger to you.”

“I know that,” he said. “I–”

Another bolt came down. This time it fell on Kai island and set the grass hut aflame.

“Stop this!” Hunter growled, baring his fangs. “You’re only hurting yourself.”

Faulii cowered against the side of the boat, shielding his head like a terrified child. Not from Hunter’s wrath but against the sound of thunder rumbling above, the flashes of lightning within the clouds that threatened to take him back to that unexplored cove.

Then the third bolt struck the tall mast of the ship and set the sail ablaze.

“Ahhh!” Faulii’s eyes rolled wildly in his sockets and he clutched his head.

The pole cracked as it burned and started to collapse. Taryn reached out and ripped it from its base; tossed it onto the sandy surface of the first island. She hovered over the boat and propelled it towards Kai island.

Hunter’s face was turned up, his ears following the sound of the thunder as his eyes searched the skies for the source of the lightning. “There!” That was the only warning he gave before he sprouted dark wings and launched himself into the clouds to catch the lightning, taking half her focus with him. The rest of her focused on keeping Faulii’s subconscious manifestation from being destroyed by whatever rogue part of his mind it was that was so determined to thwart her that it didn’t care what happened to him.

Faulii had felt pain when the lightning hit the mast, so Taryn was careful not to cause any damage to the hull as she beached the vessel. Then she landed on the deck to check on Faulii. He was pale and weak-kneed but it didn’t look like any permanent damage had been done.

The grass hut looked more like a flaming husk now. The pointed roof had all but burned out and the hungry flames were hastily making their way through the dry twigs that made up the round wall. Through the single opening, Taryn saw a stone well filled with water that gave off an eerie glow. A long pole leaned against it, with strings attached. A fishing rod, perhaps? Whatever it was, if it was the key to accessing Faulii’s memories without troubling the creature in the deep, then she had to do something to stop it crumbling into ruins.

“We need to put the fire out,” Taryn said. Her first thought was to use the water. But she had no command over the water in this mind-scape, nor could she risk conjuring her own. She turned to Faulii, slowly stumbling onto his feet, one hand still clutching at his head. “Have you ever seen a geyser?”

He shook his head.

“It happens when water gushes out from the earth. It forms a tall tower that rises into the air and falls on everything around it.” Taryn did her best to give as clear a description as possible. Then his mind might manifest it and save itself. “Like a waterfall in reverse!”

He didn’t seem to hear her. Thunder roared all around and he flinched. Lightning flashed through the sky and he fell to the deck again, moaning in agony.

“It’s too fast.” Hunter landed beside her and licked the smoldering sores on his paws. “Maybe he’ll stop attacking himself if we leave.”

“That might be best,” Taryn said. It didn’t look like Faulii could think past his pain to imagine much of anything.

Even then, bolts of lightning came down; five and ten and twenty at a time. They struck the surface of the water over and again. All around them, dead fish littered the surface of the sea, drawing the violent light. Each additional strike turned their lifeless bodies into charred, shriveled lumps. And Faulii screamed all the more.

“He isn’t doing this,” Taryn said. His defensive measures should not have increased once she’d set her mind to leave.

Still, the lightning struck in droves, falling like rain over all the surface of the sea. Until a thick cloud of vapor rose into the air and the subconscious manifestation of Faulii’s entire being started to convulse. That’s when Taryn knew that this was not a mind recklessly defending itself against an intruder.

Taryn conjured her training armor around her, hoping she wasn’t too late. She added the masked helm to conceal her identity and attached a pair of short swords to a belt at her waist. She also conjured a suit of armor around Faulii. His convulsions quieted.

He blinked up at her with big eyes, a green-tinted smile forming on his lips. “How did you–”

“Thank me later,” she said, and chained an anchor weight to his feet. She threw him into the water and he soon sank beneath the dark deep and out of sight.

“If his mind can’t tell the difference between itself and us, that creature might devour him,” Hunter warned.

“It won’t. His memories aren’t made up of just water; I think the fish have something to do with them, too. And this storm is destroying them. This isn’t a defense mechanism. Faulii’s mind is being attacked by another mutant!” Taryn conjured a net at Hunter’s feet. “I need you to get down there with him. Catch as many of them as you can. Hopefully, the net will keep them from being destroyed.”

“Fine,” Hunter agreed. “But if you change a single tuft of my coat into a scale, you will be waking up in an animal graveyard every day for the next year.”

Taryn wasn’t worried about him possibly drowning. “You should be more concerned about his actual defenses. That creature might think we’re responsible for this mess.”

“The day I let a meal get the better of me is the day I turn in my claws.” Hunter took the net in his teeth.

With that, he dived into the deep, dragging the net behind him. And Taryn launched herself into the air to search out the presence within. She didn’t know enough about lightning or cloud formations to confidently engage in a battle of wills for their control. What she did know was how mutants read.

Inside of Faulii’s mind, the attacker could move as fast as lightning. But out in the real world, they were probably as motionless as she was. It would only take her a fraction of a second to extract herself from Faulii’s mind and find his attacker. But time passed differently at the speed of thought. A fraction of a second in the real world could be an entire day in the mental. That was more than enough time for a competent reader to destroy Faulii’s mind-scape and disengage.

So Taryn envisioned herself becoming larger and larger. Until she was beyond the clouds, beyond the sky. Because she also knew that human minds were a limited universe. They had a border. And if she pulled herself out to that edge without pulling back into her own self, then she could see the whole massive universe. Then she would be able to see the string of light that tethered her mind to Faulii’s. And she could see the string that betrayed the presence of a second reader.

Taryn withdrew to that fragile threshold and the green-tinted image of the gray sky of Faulii’s mind-scape threatened to fade into her own image of Drell and the young man himself laid out on the dusty floor before her. She began to feel her feet folded beneath the weight of her body as she crouched; to hear the sound of wind whistling through the open door.

“We can’t go yet!”

Hunter’s words pulled the rest of herself back into focus. The whole span of the mind-scape was stretched out beneath her. From her perspective it was about the size of her hand but in it she saw islands on fire, waters rising as mist, and countless fish, all different colors and sizes, floating along the shrinking surface. Above her was a thin transparent film, like the surface of a bubble. On the other side of it was utter darkness, except for the one line of light that trailed far off into the distance.

Taryn made one hand stretch and engorge and conjured a sword into the other. She reached through the bubble to grab hold of the string and drew the weapon back to cut it, bracing herself for a fight.

As soon as her mental fingers closed around that mental string, though, the attack on Faulii’s mind ceased.

Taryn had crossed minds with dozens of mutants over the years and she’d always been able to emerge victorious. It had always been easy for her because inhibition stifled mutation and where she had never been inhibited, the mutants who came to make trouble in the city were almost always fresh off an inhibitor regimen. Only one mind had ever come close to overwhelming her own and she’d learned from him quickly enough that he was now in the palace’s cells and she had a deep appreciation for what a powerful reader could accomplish. Someone capable of such a savage attack against an unwitting middling was someone who would really test her mettle in a battle of wits and wills.

Yet, while she expected a charging bear she found… a mouse. Worse than a mouse, because even a mouse could be a little crafty. This mind was like a worm.

In that simple mental grip, Taryn immediately knew that Faulii’s attacker was an middle-aged man, nestled in the southwestern corner of Larisport. This man had a muscular build, three fingers on his right hand, and absolutely no inclination to contend with her, because he severed his connection to Faulii’s minds as soon as she got a hold of him. For a moment, she considered going after him. This encounter with Faulii had only given her more questions. His attacker would be one step closer to finally getting some answers.

But she needed to help Faulii.

Taryn tucked her sword away and shrank back to size.

Flames still leapt from the small hut so she conjured a wind to stir up the sand and smother the blaze. When the last bits of smoke and ash rose from the sandy spiral, she diffused the wind and entered the structure. Tiny granules of sand were embedded into the charred walls. She felt them against her skin as she ran her fingers over the blackened surface and smiled. As long as the structure remained, Faulii’s recovery would be quick. And as long as his subconscious manifestation was unharmed, he would recover completely. She moved to check the well and wash the soot from her hands – and heard a crack beneath her armored boots.

There, in the gray remains of the collapsed roof, was the fishing rod, snapped in two.

“Why do I sense failure?” Hunter dragged Faulii’s subconscious self by the scruff out of the water.

“He ran away.” Taryn went to help him drag Faulii onto the scorched shore. “I don’t think he was expecting a fight. As soon as I got a hold of him, his whole mind was laid bare for me.”

“And you didn’t take advantage of that?”

“I wasn’t expecting a retreat.” And with Faulii’s mind still aflame, she’d been unable to give chase.

Faulii coughed and gagged until slimy water spewed from his nostrils and finger-length fish from his mouth. Then he splayed himself on the sand and heaved out deep breaths.

“Please tell me you saved more memories than this,” Taryn said.

Hunter returned to the edge of the water. He dipped his muzzle in and jerked his head up. The net she’d given him flew from his jaw and into the air, filled with hundreds of colorful fish. Their scaly bodies flopped, one against another and their large eyes rolled on the sides of their heads. As the net fell open in the air, Taryn dissolved it away. The memories fell back into the water and Taryn could see their shiny bodies swimming just below the surface. So much of the water had evaporated that there was no deep for them to disappear into. “The big one is gone.”

“And we’ve lost the fishing rod,” Taryn said. Since Faulii had developed a mind-scape based on fishing and the sea, the rod must be crucial to fishing out the right memories.

“Alright, fish-boy,” Hunter growled. “Tell us who you work for.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He tried to sit up but Hunter rested a paw on his chest. It covered the bottom half of his neck and when the big cat’s claws eased out against his skin, the man went completely still.

“Someone just tried to destroy your mind,” Taryn said. “Probably the same person who sent you after me. I need to know everything you know about this so called LIGHT and how much they know about me.”

“I don’t know who you are and I don’t know any LIGHT,” he said. “I swear it,” he added after Hunter bared his fangs.

Hunter released him, then turned aside to Taryn. “What if the big fish was not a defensive measure but an important memory?” he said quietly.

Taryn hoped he was wrong. The water was shallow enough to wade through; too shallow to accommodate a memory of that size. It would take time for the water level to rise again. It would take time for Faulii to hunt down all the shriveled lumps and nurture them back into living memories. To live his entire life over and begin making sense of himself again. That could take several weeks. A few months, at the most. Taryn couldn’t wait that long.“What about your friends?” she asked. “Darr? Do you remember him? Do you remember being stranded on an island with anyone else?”

“I’m sorry.” Faulii sat up, shaking his head.

“Is there anyone you remember from your childhood?” she asked. “Did you move to the city alone?”

“Transporting their shared memories into his mind won’t make his memories return,” Hunter said. “The images may be there but the emotions won’t come through. It’ll be like a dream. You know that.”

“It would give his mind something to work from; maybe even speed his reconstruction,” Taryn said, though they both knew better. “Give me a name, Faulii. Anyone you grew up with.”

He scooted away from Hunter and rubbed the back of his head. A few of the dark lumps in the water began to glow as his mind worked. “Ka… Karaa?” he said uncertainly. “Benn… Drell?”

Drell! The bearded man laying on the floor next to Faulii. If Faulii had been attacked –

“Go!” Hunter said.

Taryn left Hunter behind and pulled her other half out of Faulii’s mind-scape. She cast it into Drell’s but she was already too late. All the water in Drell’s mind-scape had evaporated. The docks were smoking ashes littering a barren sandbar. The boats, just piles of charcoal scattered all around the tiny space. The air was thick with black smoke and there was nothing left to burn.

“Drell!”she called. She listened and searched up and down the coast for any signs of movement. Of light.

A charred hand thrust out from a heap of ash up ahead. Fingers twitching into the acrid air, the hand grabbed a fistful of scorched earth and pulled. Taryn raced to its side. The charred manifestation of Drell’s consciousness, buried beneath the crumbling ash heap, was trying to crawl towards a boot-sized pool of moisture that remained. He had no legs to propel him, only shriveled twigs that dragged behind him. A nasty gash had been torn through his self, from the top of his left shoulder to the center of his back. Viscous fluid poured out of the wound in glowing blue waves. It flowed from his back onto the grey sand around him and hardened into black slates, devoid of light. His memories and experiences, his hopes and fears; never to be recovered again.

Taryn ripped the tunic from his back and used it to sop up all the escaped fluid. She couldn’t tell how much he had already lost but she knew that if he lost too much more he would become permanently varn, a mindless husk with no memories or thoughts. She shoved the drenched cloth into the wound. Placing her hands on either side of the gash, she pushed the pieces of his self against each other. She conjured a needle and thread and knit them together, running the stitches through once and hardening the thread to steel. She created a second set of stitches, and a third, until the steel thread fused into his self and she was sure he wouldn’t come apart again.

Through it all, Drell continued to claw at the scorched earth, dragging the weight of his dwindled self. Driven by a base instinct because most everything else had been stripped away.

An attack of this scope did not happen accidentally. A newly mutated reader didn’t have the discipline to withstand the resistance of a dying mind to the point of decimating the entirety of it. A knowledgeable reader knew that there were cleaner and more efficient ways to keep someone from accessing their memories. No. She couldn’t believe this had been the work of an ally, trying to protect their secrets. The malice here had been deliberate. The mutant responsible knew what irreparable damage was being wrought and Taryn was determined to find him and make him answer for it.

On her way out, Taryn cast a fortified tower over Drell’s wasted mind-scape. She waited for it to assimilate, for a piece of him to find it and make it his own. But, of course, the man was hardly complete in himself. So she added a spire at its peak. If the three-fingered man came back to finish him off, the spire would catch any of his lightning bolts and throw them back.

Taryn returned to the shore of Faulii’s mind-scape, where his subconscious manifestation had risen to explore himself. Standing knee-high in the water, his head followed the passing fish closely before he shot forward to try to catch one by hand.

Hunter greeted her return by nuzzling her stomach and rubbing against her legs. “They’re not varn,” he said. “Eventually, he’ll figure out how to make another rod, and the both of them will live on to make more memories.”

“Drell isn’t going to be able to open his eyes for years,” Taryn said. “When he finally does, there is no guarantee that he’ll even remember who he is.”

“But he will wake up.”

Taryn knew what it was to wake with years of time lost. To hear stories of things she’d done. To know that other people possessed pieces of herself that she had no recollection of giving or living. It had been one of the worst experiences of her life and she knew it would be worse for Drell. He didn’t have the power to quiet the chaos of his own mind. He didn’t have her abilities to reach into nearby minds and take those pieces back. Even if only to exist as dreams in the corner of her mind. “We need to find the mutant responsible,” Taryn said.

“It won’t be hard to track down a three-fingered man,” Hunter said. “Someone in Larisport is sure to have seen him.”

“This man didn’t feel powerful enough to be a phantom, but he must work for the King of the Lane. If he knows enough to keep his mind from my Survey, he’ll know enough to keep his deformation hidden so I wouldn’t be able to find him through anyone else.”

“You’re jumping to conclusions again,” Hunter warned. “We’d agreed –”

“Ha!” Faulii exclaimed. He’d managed to catch a blue-grey fish in his hands and was dancing in triumph. Then he bent to bite the head off the squirming fish. Instead of slimy white flesh, a pink light oozed from the scales. Faulii chewed with his face lifted toward the sky, a serene smile settling on his lips as he relived the memory. The headless fish squirmed itself free of his grip. As soon as it hit the water, it’s head began to grow back.

“So we get to eat what we catch,” Hunter said, a savage grin stretching across his muzzle. “Please tell me we’re coming back here.”

Taryn gave him a curt nod. Of course they would be back. Once Faulii restored his mind, she’d need to know what the three-fingered man wanted to keep from her. And she’d have to check in during her watches, to be sure he hadn’t returned to finish the job. “A partnership between the Maron prince and the King of the Lane might be unlikely, but it’s the only thing that makes sense,” Taryn said.

Hunter rolled his eyes. “Because you want it to. You want a reason to go after Kol, without violating Viktor’s Providence but this is not it. Nothing here proves the Maron prince’s involvement. Nothing here proves treason. If you take this to the King now, the only thing you’ll accomplish is assuring him that you’ve been disobeying him all along. With everything else going on, now is not the time to test him.”

Taryn had all the proof she needed to know that there were at least two mutants in Larisport – the phantom she’d been chasing for the better part of a year and the reader who’d attacked Faulii’s mind and destroyed Drell’s. It wasn’t enough to connect them to the King of the Lane or point the finger at the Maron prince. That was all speculation on her part. But she couldn’t dissuade herself of the notion. “The LIGHT came to recruit me because of my infamy.”

“They’re interested in your martial skill. That doesn’t mean they’re plotting treason.”

“Why would a benevolent organization need people with martial skills? If all they want is justice for mutants who have been wronged by the monarchy, why approach someone who is rumored to have anti-Lothor leanings? I don’t think they would have come for me if I’d fought some useless thugs out of the bakery or helped the bluebacks defend the city against murderous mutants. They want me because I fought the King’s Infantry.” Of all the hecklers and harassers and reckless challengers, no one had cared how skilled she was in combat. They hated and feared her because she’d had the gall to stand against the King’s forces. That’s what had interested the impostors.

Hunter’s eyes darted as he tried to search for an argument against her logic. But his thoughts were her thoughts and she was too convinced to have any doubts for him to voice. “Don’t go to the King with this,” he warned her. “If you think someone is building an army of mutants in Larisport, you need to talk to Kura. And don’t you dare come back here without me,” he added. Then he was gone, back to his nap at the palace.

Taryn eased herself out of Faulii’s mind. When she reached the thin film that marked the border of his mental realm, the mind-scape was hardly bigger than the nail of her thumb. She built a defensive tower over it and watched the waters of Faulii’s mind soak into the structure. They changed the stones into shining scales; the archers into mer-people, with quivers filled with swordfish; the mounted troops into scaly warriors on the back of sharks, armed with tridents. It was still an egg of a defense but it was one that could strike back.

Back in the dusty warehouse, Taryn studied the minds of the two men before her. The glowing orb of Faulii’s mind assured her that he would wake in a couple days’ time. He’d be several fish shy of a barrel but he’d be competent. Drell, on the other hand, had no light; only thin tendrils of smoke and the faintest hope of a speck. In Dr. Seir’s memory of finding her floating unconscious on a plank, she hadn’t been that slack-jawed. She hadn’t seemed completely lifeless. If Drell was in a worse state than she had been, there was a very strong chance that his stupor would last longer than two years.

Taryn took a deep breath to quiet the rage that threatened to take her. Her Survey couldn’t find the mutant responsible. She didn’t know how to undo the damage done and she couldn’t enter Larisport to investigate. Taryn took another long breath and focused instead on what she could do. She cast her Survey into Larisport and found Commander Kura alone in a stable. He brushed a caramel-colored horse with one hand, stroked its thick neck with the other.

‘Commander Kura,’ she Echoed in his voice.

His gaze swept across the stable, too quickly for Taryn to make anything out.

‘You’re alone,’ she assured him. ‘You can speak freely. I wanted to talk to you about this rival gang. I think Kol might be using it to–’

“You don’t want to talk. You want to contradict me and dictate how I run my investigation. That can wait until tomorrow,” he said. “11:45; that’s the only time you’re allowed to bother me.”

‘But, this is important.’

“It’s always important! But I don’t spend my time waiting for you to reach out to me with an update or an assignment. I’ve got important things of my own to deal with. You’ve already used up your fifteen minutes. The rest of the day is mine,” he said. “The next time I have to tell you to leave me alone I won’t be so polite.”

Taryn frowned at the subtle threat. She cast her Sentry over Larisport. The sector’s brownbacks were running normal patrols. No one was frantic over another massacre. Another panel from Kol’s Twisted Tapestry hadn’t been unveiled. She wondered what could have happened in the last hour to put him in such a cold mood.

‘You’re right,’ she Echoed. ‘You’re not a soldier at my beck and call. But this… partnership doesn’t have to be one-sided. You don’t have to wait for me to reach out to you. If something is bothering you, you’re allowed to ask me for help.’

He said nothing as he laid a blanket over the horse’s back, then threw a saddle over it. He kept a hand on the beast as he moved around it and Taryn watched the horse’s shoulder muscle twitch as he looped and tightened all the straps.

She made her next thoughts Echo quietly in his mind. ‘You know, you’re one of the few people that I have little secrets from. I consider you a friend, Kura, and I’d like to help you, if I can.’

“You’re a mutant who knows about the Black Knights. You want to squash the bug as much as I do but your hands are tied. Obviously, you have some connection to the monarchy. Whether its beneficial or detrimental is yet to be determined. You’re helpful, sometimes. But I wouldn’t call that a friendship. Friends usually know what each other look like.”

Taryn smiled. ‘If that’s the only thing standing in the way, we can fix that.’

“Really?” he scoffed. “So what now? We meet to discuss our mutually disastrous love lives over tea?”

‘I’d need a lot more than tea,’ Taryn Echoed. ‘I didn’t know you had a sweetheart.’

“Do you think I’m an idiot? You can’t oppose the cockroach and care about anyone in Larisport.” He hugged the horse’s long face against his side and slipped a bridle over its head. “Luckily, he doesn’t care about senile old women who can’t remember their sons,” he added quietly.

Taryn thought carefully before she responded to the words he wouldn’t speak. She was confident in her ability to repair a mind damaged by a malicious mutant attack. All she really did was speed a mind in doing what it naturally did. That wouldn’t work with a mind deteriorating of its own volition. She’d read Dr. Moors’ theories on the matter but without confirmed proofs, she wouldn’t know if her efforts would do any good. ‘I’m sorry,’ she finally Echoed. ‘I can’t… I don’t know enough about why a mind deteriorates outside of mutant influence.’

He let out a long sigh and led his horse out of the stall and towards the stable door. “What do you need?”

Taryn considered the cost of putting this off another day. She would certainly be able to think more rationally if she let the matter rest a while.

“Give me something else to think about,” he added. “You mentioned something about the cockroach and his rivals?”

‘Yes, well, I think…” She stopped herself. If she came right out with it, he might not give her much to disprove it. Better she tell him what she knew to be true and see if he drew the same conclusion. “I think there’s something more to these massacres. The King of the Lane never shows his hand unless he is certain he can win. The smugglers stand over fifty members strong and I don’t believe Kol would take them in pieces over the course of a few weeks. He doesn’t make a move until he can completely destroy his enemies.’

“Well, if the others are already dead, that could explain why we can’t find them. The two dozen we did find could have been the last to go.”

‘Have you found the bodies of any of the others?’

“No.”

‘I’ve got two,’ she Echoed. ‘They’re still alive. And it seems like the rest of their allies might be as well.’

He stopped just short of the large doorway, where the midday sun painted the stable yard in golden light. “You can’t keep them to yourself. I need to question them.”

‘I wasn’t planning on keeping them,’ she assured him. ‘I can get them to you but they won’t provide much information. While I Inquired them, another mutant attacked their minds and tried to make them varn. I managed to stop it but their memories–’

“Wait a second. Isn’t it impossible to stop a mind going varn?”

‘It’s impossible to recover a varn mind. If I get into it in time, I can stop the process before its completed. It won’t work with a mind destroying itself,’ she added. ‘Maybe we should pick this up later.’ There was no use in this if he was distracted.

He dismissed the notion with an impatient wave of his hand. “So Kol could be sending his phantom after them, making them varn so they’d be easier to pin down and eliminate. That would explain why you can’t find them.”

The idea gave Taryn pause. She’d assumed that since they didn’t respond to her Survey, their minds must have been shielded. She never considered that there was nothing in their minds to respond. For a panicked moment, Taryn cast a Sentry over Larisport. This time she focused on the flames themselves, looking for a glowing orb that wasn’t only sleeping. Or a wisp of smoke rising from a dying ember. But that would signify a recovering mind. What would a fully varn mind look like to her Sentry? Would she even be able to see it?

“You still there?”

‘I am. It’s just… I hadn’t thought of that.’ The notion wrecked her own theory and weakened her suspicion. The attack on Faulii and Drell could have had nothing to do with keeping her from uncovering their secrets. They could have simply been two names on a list of targets that would have been struck whether she’d been involved or not. Regardless, it meant that someone was making people varn. She still had to stop them.

‘And the smugglers’ minds were shielded. They’d had some level of defensive training. Which means that they’d been working with a reader at some point.’

“Why don’t you just get to the point. I’m starting to draw attention just standing here.” He nodded in greeting to a pair of brownbacks entering the stable. Across the yard, an entire platoon of fresh-faced guards meandered in. They loitered about in clusters, probably awaiting the arrival of a Platoon Marshal with the day’s marching orders. Kura bent to grab one of the horse’s legs and made himself busy working a tool into it’s shod hoof.

‘These smugglers have been operating for at least the past year. The King of the Lane has a phantom and he’s been looking for me for years. The presence of other readers in Larisport couldn’t have escaped his notice.’

“You mean he only found them because he was looking for you,” he scoffed.

‘That’s one theory,’ Taryn Echoed. Weak as it was, it held some merit. But Kura wouldn’t see the fallacy in it. Despite his work as a Black Knight, he didn’t have a real understanding of mutant abilities.

“Maybe he thinks you’re running this gang and he’s raiding them to find you.” Kura finished cleaning out all the horse’s hooves and finally mounted. “If you’re game to use yourself as bait, we can end this. Two stones, and all.”

‘Take this seriously, please. I’m really worried.’

“You shouldn’t be. Since he isn’t killing these mutants we know he isn’t going to kill you,” he offered. “Not right away, at least.”

‘But what if he’s been trying to recruit me all along?’

“What makes you think that?” The words escaped through his lips in a hushed whisper as he led his horse through the crowded yard.

‘We still have two missing mutants,’ she Echoed. There were no mutants among the dead. She and Kura had confirmed that all the victims so far had been residing in Larisport for at least the last six months. Now, she could accept that the impostors were planning on moving the mutants to a secondary location in the middle of the night. But it didn’t make sense that the two mutants hadn’t been there for the attack. Denan was supposed to have arrived soon after midnight. The impostors would have waited for him before moving the others. In which case, they would not have had enough time to move the first two before the attacker arrived. Something else must have happened.

‘And I can’t find anyone who knows what happens to the mutants they’ve managed to bring in over the last year.’ Faulii hadn’t known what happened to his friend. Denan didn’t know how the LIGHT was going to help him. ‘The minds of the smugglers are shielded. Just like the minds of their leaders; just like the minds of the mutants they’re bringing in. Just like Kol’s.’

Kura crossed out of the stable yard and navigated through the gatehouse compound. Vibrant banners of the five companies stationed there hung proudly over their respective headquarters. They didn’t fool anyone. The reach of Kol’s arm stretched the full length of the Scholar’s Lane. That included those beautifully carved stone buildings decorated in polished brass embellishments.

“You think Kol is the mind behind these smugglers?” he said.

‘Every criminal act in Larisport has one source,’ Taryn Echoed. ‘These people had been operating for at least a year. And while they may have been able to slip through my daily Survey sweeps, there was no way they could escape a phantom’s notice. They had to have been working together from the start.’

Kura shook his head. “Kol may be depraved but he isn’t mad. Having one or two mutants ‘rumored’ to be in his employ can be overlooked. But to actively smuggle them in… People will think he’s building an army. Provident Ruling can’t protect him from that.”

‘But no one even knows the smugglers exist except me, you, and Tomoya. Anyone who does learn of them will think what we did; that they were only a rival gang.’ The Guard wouldn’t look into a rival gang because they’d trust Kol to handle it. The people of Larisport wouldn’t raise a fuss because Kol’s focus would be set against the interlopers and not towards harassing their families and businesses. ‘We only know about the mutant smuggling because some county blacksmith didn’t know the difference between Larisport and Pine Keep.’

“Well, he can’t be running them himself. He’d need a middleman for that. Do you really think there’s someone in this city he’d trust with such an incriminating secret?”

‘He doesn’t directly command his 4400 Kolmen.’ Finding the army of thugs at his disposal was an easy task. The higher she Surveyed up the hierarchy, the less easy it became. Taryn had been able to identify 62 lieutenants who were perhaps a couple of steps removed from the man himself. Vares had called her off before she’d been able to identify if there were any more than that or how many others they answered to.

“Fine. Let’s say you’re right. Keeping them in separate cells does make it easier for him to keep the game up. And it would explain why he’s taking them on piecemeal. He could look like he’s at war with them even while he reaps the harvest of the other cells. But massacring them defeats the purpose of the ruse. Leaving bodies behind is the fastest way to get the city’s attention. And he limits how many mutants he can get in the process. He’d be better off just attacking the recruiters and feigning defeat.”

‘Unless he’s done collecting.’

“So you think this is it? You think he’s ready to make his play for the city?”

She thought his sights were set a little higher than that. ‘The way these near varn attacks were done; one of these men won’t be able to recover for years. But the other will be fully functioning in as little as a few weeks to a few months. Assuming they don’t come back to try to finish him off…’

“It won’t matter that we’ll be able to uncover their plans because in a few months, it will have already played out,” Kura realized.

‘Hence my concern.’

“The Lady’s Day is in a month. I don’t know a lot of mutants but I’m hard pressed to think that any of them would be willing to be anywhere near the palace within the next couple of months. Let alone an entire army of them. It’s a death sentence.”

‘You can think of one.’

“The Maron prince?” Kura’s words drew the curious attention of a pair of nearby merchants. When their eyes lit on the Black Knight pentagon insignia stitched onto his left breast, they recognized his words as more than idle chatter. They gaped up at him, eyes wide with fear at the prospect of a greater evil being present to torment their lives. He nodded reassuringly as he passed them, then continued under his breath. “Gods damn it, child! If that’s what you wanted to say, you should have just come out and say it!”

‘Would you have believed me if I had?’

“Of course I wouldn’t have, but you wouldn’t have wasted so much of my time. Kol has granted the Purists an estate within Larisport. The Maron prince is at the top of their shit list. He can’t be allied with the both of them.”

‘Yet someone is luring mutants into the city–’

“Because Purists kill mutants. Maybe that’s the deal they have. He attacks the smugglers at the behest of the Purists and captures the mutants alive so they can be purified.”

‘But that’s a one sided arrangement. Kol gets nothing except an increased risk of violating a Provident Ruling and the personal attention of the Weapons of the King’s Arsenal. Meanwhile, someone has place a shield around his mind, and the minds of these smugglers. Someone is trying to make them varn. If Kol’s relationship with the Purists meant so much to him, he wouldn’t surround himself with so much mutant power. Even if he is doing this for the Purists, would you put it past him to keep some mutants to himself? The Maron’s involvement may be up for debate but the King of the Lane is building an army of mutants. Of that I am certain.’

She could almost feel his mind working to think up a reasonable theory to contradict her own. And she gave him time; a few minutes while she scavenged through the warehouse for enough pieces of usable wood to make a coffin fit for two. The longer he remained silent, the more sure she was. The more worried she became.

“You captured one of these mutants,” he finally said. “Why don’t you get serious about questioning him for what he knows?”

‘Denan isn’t a part of this.’

“Then release him into Larisport,” he said. “And we’ll see what happens to him.”

‘I can’t do that. Kol’s phantom or one of his readers will shield his mind and I won’t be able to ensure his safety.’

“I’ll be there.”

‘They could get you, too!’

“I am a Black Knight,” he reminded her. “I don’t become useless just because you can’t see or help me.”

Useful or not, he wasn’t prepared to face Kol’s phantom. He didn’t understand the kind of damage a phantom was capable of. Taryn wasn’t sure herself if her defensive shell would protect him from detection or invasion. And if she were right and this was the Maron prince, the same mutant she thought to be responsible for her own memory loss and two year fugue state, then he wouldn’t stand a chance without her.

“The Maron prince is wanted for the kidnap and murder of the King’s son,” Kura said. “Even if he isn’t responsible for Kol’s actions, his involvement is reason enough to investigate what Kol is up to just to be sure of that. If we can find proof of treason then, we can act. But first we’d need to be sure that this is the Maron prince. Denan can give us that surety and we can end this for once and all.”

Taryn couldn’t agree to it. ‘If we do this and it goes wrong, you would lose your mind and Denan could lose his life.’ And she’ll have been responsible for leaving another widow with unanswered questions; for three more fatherless children descending into distrust and rage.

“If this is ramping up to a Lady’s Day attack, we have less than five weeks to find the evidence and stop it. We don’t have time to be passive.”

‘We don’t have time to fumble through with a half-baked plan. Kol is able to keep his stranglehold on Larisport because he doesn’t move unless he knows exactly what he’s getting into and how to manipulate every situation to his benefit. He won’t be taken down by anything less than the same. We need more information. We need to find the person responsible for getting all of these mutants into the city and learn what they’re doing with them.’

“You can’t do that with your Survey blinded.”

‘My Survey may be useless, but your eyes aren’t,’ Taryn countered. ‘I can only learn what people are willing to tell me but you can actually walk the streets. You can see the places people have learned to avoid; listen to conversations they’re too afraid to pay attention to.’

“You’re asking me to do your job for you?”

Taryn almost reminded him that she didn’t wear a pentagon on her chest. She wasn’t the one being paid to patrol Larisport and apprehend mutants.

“What would I even be looking for?”

‘Start with a three-fingered man. He’s the one who tried to make these two varn. He was reading them from somewhere in Larisport’s southwestern corner. Maybe there’s a place there he’s comfortable delving into a deep read from. And a mutant army will eat more than a normal army. If these mutants are fresh off an inhibitor regimen, they’ll be training to near depletion. The constant secarin production requires a lot of energy.’ It was unlikely that they’d ever publicly eaten together. That would have drawn too much attention and given the game up much sooner. Taryn couldn’t abandon her watch over the rest of the city to sift through every mind in Larisport. Especially not now that she was losing her information reservoir. ‘If you can get me a list of specific parameters, I can take it from there.’

“What about your prisoner?” he asked. “What will you do with him?”

‘It’s been five days and nothing I’ve found implicates him in whatever’s happening. I’ll get him out of the city after I’ve transcribed all the information we’ve gathered. That could take a few days.’

“Days? What happened to your speed of thought?”

‘Transcribe; as in write it all down,’ Taryn Echoed. ‘Though I could have it transferred in a few seconds if I had another mind to move it all into. Are you volunteering?’

Taryn heard a low rumbling and knew he was growling his discontent.

‘I’ll release Denan as soon as I’m done. In the meantime, I need you to take these two. People are just starting to believe that the mutant threat has passed. Finding two nearly varn middlings will only revive the panic.’ Even if the bluebacks knew that Denan wasn’t a reader, they’d find a way to blame him for this. ‘I’ll make sure Faulii doesn’t wake up until morning and move them into Larisport so you can find them on patrol tonight. Do what you want with him but Drell will need a physician to keep him alive until he wakes in a few years.’

“You’re sure he’ll wake up?”

‘I’m sure his mind isn’t completely gone,’ Taryn Echoed.

“Fine,” he said. “But if I do this for you, then I’ll need you to start looking into this blue berserker maker. The cockroach has started testing it on the public and we’re sick of finding bodies.”

‘More massacres?’ That couldn’t be right. He’d said there had been no more massacres and her search had confirmed this.

“Not massacres,” he said. “But we’ve found individual victims scattered up and down the Lane. All of them with traces of the blue powder. It looks like this drug either kills those who partake, or makes them into berserkers. If he can perfect the formula in time, they could be a dangerous weapon in an assault against the palace.”

‘I can do that.’ Her own attempt at investigating the blue powder had ground to a halt. She’d been unable to identify the mental flame of a single person who’d seen it outside of Kura, Tomoya and the brownbacks who’d discovered it at the scenes with them. As long as Kol kept the secrets of the blue powder within the shielded minds of his closest followers, she couldn’t know anything until after he’d infected some poor debtor and unleashed them upon his enemies.

The only lead she did have came from the Countess’ garden. From her staff and servants, Taryn had been able to learn that the Countess had cultivated the garden several years ago, with the help of a gardener who had since retired to the counties. And all the times she’d sent them away for her secret meetings coincided with nights Vares had sneaked out of the palace after dinner, his mind hidden from her. If she was supplying Kol with the raw material for this new drug, only the Countess’s mind would know. The woman’s flame had grown to a healthy size after only two days at the palace. Taryn had even seen it moving around Vares’s suite that morning. But she couldn’t bring herself to Inquire the woman. And Vares and his Arsenal were not in a mind to hear any more hard truths.

Possibilities, Taryn corrected herself. Taryn didn’t know that it was all true.

‘I’ll need the victims’ faces,’ Taryn Echoed. Tracking random individuals was much easier than trying to track a secret organization whose only companions were likely each other.

“Faces?” he asked. “You… you want me to…desecrate them?”

‘Desecrate? What are you–’ When she understood, her mind filled with images of grotesque skin masks; pale faces flayed from bloody corpses. She choked back a gag and tried to think of lemon cakes with yellow frosting, beef stew stuffed into round trenchers; good things; pure things. ‘I meant your memory of those faces.’ Then she could search the minds of Larisport and piece together their final days. Hopefully, she’d be able to find out where the drugs were being distributed from and put an end to that leg of Kol’s operation before it found its feet.

“Oh,” he said, as if he didn’t know he’d nearly sent her into a nauseous fit. “I’m not sure I can remember them all but–”

The image from her Shadow went dark as Kura closed his eyes.

“Did you get them?” he asked when he’d opened them again.

‘I can’t read your thoughts, Kura. We’ll either have to schedule a Shadow tour of the bodies or…’

“I see,” he said. “You’re asking for access to my deeper mind.”

‘Your subconscious, yes. Five weeks is too short a time to distrust me,’ she Echoed when he didn’t say anything.

“Trust usually goes both ways. You’ve seen my face. You know where to find me.”

Despite what he believed, they had met before. As far as he knew, she’d first invaded his mind on a foggy morning three years ago; begging his help to rescue a young couple from a pack of drunk Kolmen. She was the only one who knew that he’d sat across from her two years prior; that he’d escorted her home to the palace and soon discovered that he’d trained under her for a few days before he became a fully-fledged Black Knight. But he wasn’t allowed to know all of that. And rather than hand him over to the King to do what needed doing, Taryn had decided to make him forget. ‘Have I ever steered you wrong?’

He sighed. “One day, this one-way street is going to come to a dead end.”

‘So… I have your permission, then?’ she Echoed. In five weeks, she wouldn’t be bound by her immunity. She wouldn’t be forced to keep secrets. They could have that tea and hopefully he’d come to think fondly about the things he didn’t know he knew.

“Just this once,” he said. “And only for this. Nothing else.”

‘Thank you.’ She’d get a hold of them later, when it wasn’t at the forefront of his mind and his mind-scape didn’t dissolve into a thick fog when she tried to look for it. ‘I’ll send Faulii and Drell your way later tonight.’

“Your abilities are a bit peculiar, aren’t they? I mean, you can travel through minds and have adventures. Build entire worlds. But you can’t read an immediate thought.”

‘I’ve been known to be quite perverse, actually. I’ll let you know if I find anything. You know how to reach me if you need to.’

“Wait! Do you still need a sample?” he asked, drawing the small phial from his sleeve.

‘Are you giving it to me?’

“Sure. I just need to find a way to get it to–”

The phial shot from his grip. He lifted his head, trying to follow it. The sun sent a shaft of bright light into his eyes and they both winced.

“–you,” Kura finished.

‘Sorry. I had to do it when no one else was looking.’ Taryn ran out of the warehouse and searched the eastern sky for it. She hoped if didn’t end up flying into a bird and shattering in the street. In a few seconds it was there, a glint against the pale blue sky. She willed it into her waiting hands.

‘I’ve got it,’ she Echoed. ‘Thank you for this. And for helping me.’

“Very peculiar, indeed.”