"Are you sure about this?" Lina hissed at him as he ushered her past the second floor barrier and up onto third.

  "N'inquiétez pas, mademoiselle," Mirk murmured at her, craning his neck to see down the length of the main corridor, past the common room and on down the hall to where that night's cluster of long-term patients were all soundly asleep. There were no aides doing their rounds, no nurses tending to the messy and tedious business of chamber pots and late suppers. It'd taken days of footwork and several subtle handfuls of coin to clear off the ward. Fortunately, all the patients left on the ward that night were low-borns, and so were the nurses and aides who'd been tasked with keeping vigil over them. With the notable exception of Richard.

  "Save the frog-talk for the bastard," Lina grumbled, shifting uncomfortably under her cloak, a borrowed one that was much finer than the red cloak she'd received from K'aekniv. Gray wool, lined with white fox fur. It was a piece from Catherine's wardrobe that the lady mage had only grudgingly parted with that afternoon. Though the reluctance had left her as soon as Orest had appeared with Dauid's horses and an offer to lend her one of his furs during that evening’s ride.

  Even if someone unexpected did encounter them out in the hall, no one would think Mirk could be guiding a washerwoman up to a commander's room underneath a cloak like that. Catherine and Lina were far from the same size, but that didn't matter. What mattered was that it wouldn't be out of place at all for Richard to have a noble lady visitor, nor would it be terribly out of character for Mirk to be leading a lady to him, as long as they walked fast. No one important from the Tenth was tending to patients overnight, just like on most nights, save for when one of the divisions packed with high-borns was expected back from a contract. Any passer-by was bound to be low-born and would know to look away and not ask questions at the sight of two high-borns ghosting about the halls.

  Mirk tugged on Lina’s elbow, leading her toward the common room. "Methinks it'd be better if you tried your hand at things first, mademoiselle."

  "What if he doesn't spill?" Lina asked as he hustled her around the common room table. "Smack him around?"

  "Euh...we'll see." He'd planned for that too. But he hadn't shared the details of that part with Lina, in the hope that things wouldn't come to that.

  The four other patients on the ward that night — a mage and three fighters, the mage regrowing his skin overnight after suffering magic burns over the entire top half of his body, and the three fighters men who'd been there for weeks, hearing voices and staring off into the middle distance for days at a time, unaccepting and unwanting of comfort — were all locked up tight in their rooms. Mirk had slipped them all a dose of sedative before heading downstairs to collect Lina just in case.

  Richard's room was at the very end of the hall, the same one they'd reinforced weeks ago to make sure that Percival didn't try to escape again. He'd been carted off by a cluster of officers last week, however, and Mirk hadn't heard a thing about him since. A troubling development, but at least that meant he’d had an especially secure and comfortable room to transfer Richard to that afternoon.

  Mirk paused before Richard’s door, to double-check that no one had followed them up onto the ward. And to catch his breath, and to summon his courage for the grim affair ahead of them both. Lina felt none of the same apprehension he did. Her frustration was a warm weight against his mental shielding, taut and trembling, the same as her arm underneath his hand. There was no sense in delaying things further. Mirk waved down the wards on the room and disengaged the locks, then pressed Lina inside.

  Richard was fast asleep, his arms and legs sprawled out across the whole of the room's oversized bed, just like he had been when Mirk had checked in on him fifteen minutes ago. It had made it easier to put Percival's old restraints on his limbs. Mirk had considered sedating him too, just to make sure that he wouldn't wake up while he was strapping him down, but the one Richard had been given that afternoon to keep him from trying to summon his magic hadn't yet worn off fully. If they couldn't wake him once Lina arrived, all Mirk’s frantic planning would have been for naught.

  He'd just waved the wards back into place and locked the door when Lina set in on her work, not needing any encouragement to cross to the room to Richard's bedside and give him a hard, open-handed smack across the face to wake him. Mirk cringed. "Euh...methinks it'd be better if you kept away from his head, Miss Lina," Mirk said as Richard coughed and struggled back to wakefulness. "He's still badly hurt there."

  "See if I give a damn," Lina spat. But she restrained herself, settling for taking hold of Richard’s hand and giving the mage a hard pinch on the thin flesh between his forefinger and thumb.

  Richard yelped, the sleep finally clearing from his eyes as he groaned and turned his head toward Lina. "Oy! Linnie!" he yelled, a gap-toothed smile spreading across his face. "Who brought you up? Money bag's got to be around here somewhere. Ben..."

  The mage moved to slap at his empty pockets, but came up short when he met resistance from the straps around his forearms. Mirk wasn't sure whether Lina had noticed it, but he'd heard the slip. Richard had made a mistake again in his bleariness, letting a word in his native tongue sneak in among his affected English high-born accent. Though it was only a small one, unnoticeable if one hadn't been listening closely and been very familiar with the way the French spoke. Another measure of focus returned to Richard's eyes as he tugged hard on the restraints.

  "I'm not here for your gold, you bastard," Lina hissed, giving him another hard pinch for good measure. Mirk didn’t sense an undue measure of malice in it. Lina had been raised harshly, with smacks and curses sprinkled in alongside genuine love, and didn’t see the harm in doling them out to the deserving herself.

  "Could have fooled me," Richard said, looking back and forth between Lina and the bonds on his limbs. "You want to do something different this time? I've never tri—"

  That time, Lina brought her fist down into Richard's exposed stomach. Not terribly hard, judging by the slackness in Lina's posture. The mage whimpered and tried to curl in on himself, like someone the size of K'aekniv had drove their fist down into him at full force. But he found himself stuck, completely vulnerable to Lina's whims. By the feel of Richard’s addled mind against his mental shields, Mirk couldn't tell whether the vulnerability terrified or excited him. "Wh-what do you—"

  "Information," Lina said, clawing at the clasp of her borrowed cloak and whipping it off so that she could subject Richard to the full force of her anger. Mirk cringed at how she let the fine garment fall to the floor without minding what it might land in, but held his tongue. "You lied to me."

  "I did?" Richard asked with a gulp.

  "This ain't Latin," she said, seizing on the high collar of the shirt Richard's subordinates had brought him, ripping it away so that she could jab a finger into the tattoo on its side. Richard whimpered, tears already leaking from the corners of his eyes. "It's French. C'est la vie," Lina recited, the words coming out strangled and backwards due to the force of her frustration.

  A nervous laugh trickled through Richard's clenched teeth. "N-no, no it's not, ho-honey biscuit, I swear, you must be reading the letters wrong, it's La—"

  The insinuation that she couldn't read threw Lina into a genuine rage, something much deeper and more wounded than the simmering resentment she felt over being lied to. Lina caught herself an instant before she could smack him across the face again, her rage driving her to punch him in the privates that time instead of the stomach. The mage howled and went pale, useless sparks of his white magic sputtering from his fingertips. "I'm not stupid, you yellow bastard!" Lina bellowed at him over his moaning. "C'est la vie! That's life! What've you got some frog words on your neck for, huh? Thought you were from Coventry."

  "I can explain!" Richard blurted out through his sobs. Mirk tore his eyes away from him just long enough to double-check the wards on the room, to lean his ear against the door. There weren't any sounds of movement from outside. Though the room's shadows seemed to inhale and shift inward at the first signs of Richard beginning to crack. Their uncanny motions reassured Mirk more than they worried him. He knew exactly what was going on with those. And knew that if anyone was eavesdropping out in the hall, they'd be managed. Even if he wasn't fond of their master's methods.

  "Then talk," Lina spat, one hand still raised as a reminder to Richard about what he had coming if he decided to lie again.

  "I...I didn't want to lie to you, honey biscuit, I promise," Richard gibbered. "I just didn't want you to get hurt! This is nasty business, all of it, and I can't remember every last—"

  "You'd better remember all of it," Lina threatened, clenching her fist. "Or the other frog's got ways to make you talk," she added, jerking her chin at Mirk still hanging back by the door.

  It was as good of an excuse as any for him to step in and try to quiet tempers a little. Mirk approached the bed, making it a point to leave his hands hanging free at his sides. The mage's eyes widened and he struggled harder against his restraints. "Oh fuck, no, you...you...I swear, I paid Jean-Luc back for that one time, I didn't want to scam him, that was..." he trailed off, torn between the dual threats posed by Mirk and Lina.

  Mirk didn't have the slightest idea what Richard was talking about. But he played along, raising his empty hands to emphasize that he wasn't a threat, accompanying the gesture with a press of reassurance against Richard's unshielded mind. Lowering his own shields far enough to do so let in a sliver of the agony Richard was in, pain completely incommensurate with the blows he'd been dealt so far. "Du calme, du calme," Mirk said. "I'm not here for my family. Or for Seigneur d'Aumont," Mirk hazarded, to gauge Richard's reaction. His head slumped to one side in relief.

  "We're here about the djinn," Lina said.

  Instantly, the tension returned to him. "Wh-what do you mean?"

  "You know that frog name," Lina said, sitting down on the edge of the bed. Richard was so spindly, and the bed so wide, that there was ample room for her, despite all of the mage's limbs being outspread and strapped down. "Tell us about it, and maybe I'll think about forgiving you."

  Mirk couldn't help but be impressed by Lina's perceptiveness. Despite Fatima's criticism, he could see why Lina was one of the madam's best spies. And her change in tack, from open hostility to a tinge of softness, one that wasn't matched by the anger still pulsing against Mirk’s mental shielding, also helped to ease the tension. Richard started babbling again straight away.

  "Right. All right. You have to know some of it, if you brought him here—"

  "I want you to tell it all. Right from the start."

  Richard complied with a gulp and a nod, his eyes still streaming. "I used to work for d'Aumont, back down in Rocamadour. Running slaves for him from the djinn home realm. I...I never had the money for the guilds, I did work in the underground stealing things for another lord's racket instead. Lock picking, breaking wards, that kind of thing. When the seigneur caught me trying to make off with one of his djinn, he hired me on to work for him instead of turning me over to the guilds. To make it so no one else could rob a djinn from him, and so that they couldn't make a run for it themselves either."

  The mage paused, eyeing the room's shadows. Mirk felt the mage reach reflexively for his magic, to search for unseen observers. But it still didn't respond to his commands, though more sparks danced among his outstretched fingertips that time than the last. If they'd waited another day to question Richard, their situation would have been much more difficult. Lina poked him in the side, that time gently, to bring his attention back to her. Richard still flinched like he'd been struck despite Lina's care. "You made their collars?"

  Swallowing hard, Richard nodded. "Me and the seigneur. Worst five months of my life. That cane..." the mage trailed off, a tremor starting along his outspread arms, like he wanted to brace himself against the memory.

  "So you know how to get them off, right?"

  Richard whipped his head back and forth in an adamant no. "He fucked with my head, he did. Wouldn't let me remember all the parts of the spell. Said I'd get paid back for it, but all I've gotten is work and grief and all this non—"

  "The frog fucked with your head?" Lina interrupted. "Or Ra—"

  "No!" Richard yelled, trying to hurl himself up off the bed, though the restraints brought him up short. Again, his eyes darted toward the more shadowy corners of the room. "Don't say it! He's always listening!"

  Lina frowned down at him, then turned her narrow-eyed scowl up at Mirk, looking for confirmation. All he could do was shrug. He wasn't entirely certain whether the rumors of a curse on Ravensdale's name were genuine or merely rumors the man himself had cultivated, but considering how even Genesis refused to call Ravensdale by his true name, Mirk suspected there had to be some truth behind the tales. "How'd he get mixed up in this?" Lina asked Richard, fixing her eyes back on his tear-streaked face.

  "Joined the crew down in Rocamadour, couple of years after me. Got kicked out of some scam the Rouzets were running, went to the next best thing. Said we should start our own thing, since there was no room to move up in France, what with the guilds being tighter down there than up here. There's the usual gangs, Black Banner and all, but nothing like the K'maneda."

  "So how'd it play out?"

  "Not too hard. Had to go up here first, to go dig up his uh...son daron," Richard said, sniffling hard. Though Lina hadn't struck him again, not once he'd begun to pour out all his secrets, some combination of the earlier blows and the stress of the situation was affecting Richard strongly. Or perhaps there was magic involved. Either way, the more he talked, the more distant and frightened his expression grew, eyes and nose both streaming. Lina drew a handkerchief out of the bodice of her dress and dabbed at the mess on his face as she once again looked to Mirk for explanation.

  "His father. Euh, not Richard's, but..."

  "What did you need the body for?" Lina asked.

  "Some magic...keep the other monster from stealing his slaves...he killed old Jackson, you know. The other one, won't say a word about him either. Starting to think...I chose the wrong monster..." Again, Richard's eyes sought out the shadows. Admittedly, he had just cause for alarm that time, though the shadows didn't loom any higher at his mumbled words.

  "Focus," Lina said, her voice even despite her simmering resentment. She reached out and took hold of Richard's chin, adjusting the set of his head, so that he couldn't look anywhere other than at her. "The spell."

  "I don't remember," Richard said, his tone desperate. "I only messed with the spell me and d'Aumont came up with just enough to keep him from crossing us back. And to make it easier to keep the brutes in line. I can remember those bits better...came up with it all on my own...but the rest, it's all messed up...putain de merde, he had that fuck Aeli do his head magic on me once we were in the clear...never been right since..."

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  "Aeli?" Mirk asked, looking across the bed at Lina.

  "The old head of the assassins," Lina said. "Your friend killed him last year without asking us."

  "I've tried every head mage in England," Richard said, his voice wavering and despondent as more tears leaked from his eyes. "None of 'em can get me right."

  "Methinks I might have something we can try," Mirk murmured, after spending a tense few seconds chewing at his lower lip. He'd been hoping it wouldn't come to this. But at the very least, his reason to go next door was less grim than the one he'd been anticipating.

  Lina's eyebrows shot up, some of her anger cleared away, both by curiosity and a growing sense of pity for Richard's pathetic state. "You think you're that good of a head mage?"

  Mirk shook his head. "I...one moment. Try to keep him calm, please."

  He returned to the door, lowering his shields and waiting until he felt Richard's panic and pain start to fade as Lina spoke to him at his bedside. He couldn't make out her words, but whatever she was doing, it was helping to calm him. As soon as Richard’s emotions dimmed to a manageable level, one that wouldn't draw any untoward attention if an empath happened to be passing through the ward, Mirk disengaged the wards and slipped back out into the hall. He went to the room beside Richard's, tapping at the door. Its wards were still firmly in place, and Mirk didn't feel right waving them back down without permission. A second later, they lowered as the door opened, just a crack.

  Samael. The boy seemed resigned to his fate, his expression cold and impassive. Though that could also mean he was trying to master his apprehension. Most Imperial angels were trained from a young age not to show when they were upset with their faces, but rather with their empathy. Samael's mind was still closed to him, though, and Mirk didn't yet know his habits well enough to be able to spot the difference.

  "He won't talk?" Samael asked. His feathers were lifted slightly, making Mirk think that he might be masking his fear rather than not feeling it at all.

  Mirk shook his head. "No. I haven't looked at his mind, but he's saying another angel has already, euh, done something to him."

  The boy's head tilted to one side as he slipped out into the hall. "Imanael said there was an Impure one in the City. But I haven't felt anyone."

  "He's dead."

  Samael's feathers settled, the tension going out of his wings and shoulders. "If he's dead and Impure, it won't be difficult to see."

  Mirk didn't know exactly what the young angel meant by impure. But he nodded and led him into the next room over nevertheless after taking a quick look around. There was still no sign of anyone stirring out on the ward. Though the shadows down the hall at the end nearer the common room were a bit blacker than normal.

  The instant Richard caught sight of Samael in the doorway, he flew into a fresh panic, pulling harder at his restraints and gibbering for mercy in French as he flailed his head from side to side, looking at anything but the young angel. Mirk hurried Samael into the room, fumbling through getting the wards and locks on the door engaged once more as fast as he could. Rather than being disturbed by Richard's reaction, Samael seemed bemused.

  "Humans are fragile," he said, his voice tinged with the same coldness that had stolen over him when he'd looked into Percival's mind. "But this one is glass."

  "Please, please," Richard begged, forcing himself back into something approaching English. "I'll tell you everything! Everything I remember! Just don't...not again...s’il vous pla?t, épargnez-moi..."

  Lina suddenly looked worried, her anger fading in the face of Samael looming across the bed from her. Mirk often forgot how imposing full-blood angels were to those unaccustomed to them. To Lina, Samael must have looked like a towering man in his prime rather than a young boy who was still showing the signs of poor eating and not enough sunlight. "You're going to break his mind?"

  Samael cringed at her words, his grimace and raised feathers betraying his youth to her in a way his size couldn't. "There is nothing to break," Samael said.

  Mirk stepped in to offer an explanation, before the two could misunderstand each other any more. "No, no. Methinks it'd be better if Comrade Samael only looked. I don't think there'd be any good in forcing things..."

  Before either Lina or Mirk could say anything more, Samael reached out and took hold of Richard's head, grasping his temples between his ring finger and thumb. Even if he was weakened, he had strength enough to manage a human as spindly as Richard with ease. "Be calm," Samael said as his eyes went distant and turned even colder.

  Richard's flailing and pleading faded before Samael could finish speaking the words. The young angel's expression hardened further, one corner of his mouth curling up in scorn. His mind was too thickly shielded, too distant for Mirk to sense whether or not the emotion was genuine. Or who it was directed at. "Yes...this is an Impure's work. Like a hammer, not a knife..."

  "What does he mean?" Lina hissed at Mirk, reaching to take hold of Richard's hand. The mage didn't respond to her touch.

  "It'll be fine," Mirk reassured her, trying not to let his own worry creep onto his face. There was something different about Samael then, compared to what he'd been like when rifling through Percival's mind. Both his distance and disdain had deepened. Mirk hoped it was the last angel's rough work that was drawing the disgust out of him, not whatever he saw inside Richard's head.

  "He didn't even take the spell out," Samael muttered. "Just fouled it. Wasteful...thinking only one step ahead..."

  "Can you see any of it?" Mirk asked. When the young angel didn't respond, Mirk resorted to tugging on the sleeve of his free arm.

  "Only parts. Give me paper. And charcoal."

  Mirk hurried to comply, digging through the pockets of his robes. He hadn't planned for this, hadn't brought his bag. But his forgetfulness might also be useful, for once. He'd been wearing that set for the last three days, and he never remembered to empty his pockets at night unless he was sure the robes were going to be missing in the morning. There had to be something to write with in them somewhere.

  But his search was cut short by a ledger made of mage parchment and a stick of charcoal appearing atop Richard's chest. Samael didn't question it, picking up the charcoal, and beginning to sketch the outlines of some sort of arcane diagram in the center of the topmost page. Lina shot Mirk an expectant look, her frown deepening. All Mirk could do was give a helpless shrug.

  "Better him than your friend," Lina muttered, her eyes tacking back to Samael. He wasn't watching what he was writing, still staring off into the middle-distance, his sneer of distaste deeping the longer he sketched. "Maybe."

  Mirk let the matter drop, left with nothing to do but wring his hands and wait for Samael to finish. The young angel filled five full pages, never once looking down at the parchment, not even to check his work. Though Mirk wasn't trained well in formal magic, the stuff of grimoires and spell circles, all of the figures Samael drew looked incomplete, somehow.

  Even magical figures that hadn't had potential drawn into them, or that had been left purposefully incomplete so that they wouldn't accidentally engage, had a certain balance to them, a certain artfulness. Samael's sketches looked more like what a mortal would scribble down if told to draw what they expected a magician's spell to look like. Once he was finished, Samael set the charcoal aside, taking Richard's head between both his hands, finally deigning to look down into his face.

  "He said that the magic's mucked up his head," Lina said, looking down into Richard's face along with the young angel. "Can you do anything to help?"

  "No," Samael said, without hesitation. "And there's no reason for you to care whether he suffers or not."

  Lina tensed, clutching Richard's hand more fiercely. "What do you mean by that?"

  Samael declined to answer her. "The blow made things worse. His magic will recover. But it will be less powerful than it was before. He doesn't have the force of will to compensate."

  "Is there anything I can do to help?" Mirk asked Samael, unable to stay silent in the face of Lina's torn expression. She didn't trust Samael's judgment, not entirely. But something in it swayed her conviction, the one she'd repeated again and again to Fatima and anyone who would listen, that Richard was a good man at heart, despite his checkered background and his inability to withstand pain and fear.

  "There is no life in this building worth trading for this one's." Samael frowned, his eyes narrowing, as if he was peering through a thick haze. "The last one had nothing but conviction. And the will to pursue it. It made his mind easy to break, but kept him living. The conviction fades, but the will remains. This one has no desire but comfort. And he lacks the will to push past pain to reach it. A better mind would have fared better under an Impure's smashing. Pathetic."

  Lina's grasp on Richard's hand weakened, but she didn't fully let go. Biting his lip, Mirk reached up and shook Samael by the shoulder. When that didn't work, he resorted to tugging on one of his feathers. A pin feather, half-grown and still tender. Blinking his eyes, Samael took his hands off the sides of Richard's head. Suddenly, the self-assured, contemptuous air was gone from him, replaced by a look of pain. Confusion. As his eyes wandered across the bed to Lina, he winced.

  "What?" Lina asked. "Think I'm another pathetic human, do you?"

  "I'm sorry, Mae...ah, comrade," the young angel mumbled, looking much more his age then, color rising on the sides of his neck. "It's hard for me to forget some things."

  Lina didn't feel appeased by this in the slightest. Samael took a different tack, as he tried to ease the aching out of his head by rubbing at his own temples this time. "If it makes it any better, he does care for you deeply. And your mind is much stronger than his."

  "Seems to be my lot in life to end up with boneheads," Lina muttered to herself.

  "A worthy mind stands alone," Samael said, without any enthusiasm. He pressed harder at the sides of his head, beginning to shiver. "That's what Lord Imanael always said. But his mind was a nightmare. I'd rather be with the unworthy."

  "You would be...well advised not to give weight to an Imperialist's definition of worthiness."

  All three of them jumped at the sudden voice from the far corner of the room, behind Samael. Mirk had forgotten all about the lurking shadows in all the half-said drama surrounding Richard's bedside. Genesis crossed the room to join them, lifting the pad of mage parchment off Richard's chest, though he took great care not to touch the mage otherwise. Neither Samael nor Lina seemed pleased by the commander's unannounced arrival.

  If Genesis noticed their discomfort, Samael's caution or the way Lina hunched over Richard's prone body, he didn't comment on it. Instead, he flipped through the diagrams Samael had pulled from Richard's head, pausing for a long time on the one scrawled over the third page, one that involved a combination of a six point star and some sort of crescent. "These are...incomplete."

  Samael nodded. "The Im...Aeli broke his memories of the spell. These are the only parts that were left behind."

  "It is an...adequate start," Genesis concluded, after studying the pages for a few more tense, silent minutes. "If I could have access to a collar...either from the djinn in the City or from the French slaver...it would be sufficient to understand the best technique for breaking them."

  "You're never going to get your hands on one of his djinn's collars," Lina said.

  Genesis nodded. "It would be inadvisable. Which leaves...the rest."

  Both of them shifted, their eyes falling on Mirk. He sighed, joining Samael in rubbing at his own forehead. Even though he couldn't feel either Samael or Genesis's emotions, and couldn't feel much from Richard, lost as he was in sleep, the tension in the room was still oppressive. "I'll do my best," Mirk said, after a moment. "Methinks I'll only need a little time to think of something. And maybe some help from you at the end, messire."

  Mirk winced at a flicker of pain from Richard. Whatever spell Samael had used to calm him seemed to be fading. His sleep had turned restless, his hand clenching around Lina's as he fidgeted against his restraints. "You better scram before he comes to," Lina said.

  For the first time, Genesis seemed to properly take stock of Richard strapped down on the bed. He frowned over it as he slid the pad of mage parchment into the breast pocket of his overcoat. "He is a...liability."

  "I can make him forget," Samael said. He looked sick at the thought of it, his hands dropping from the sides of his own head and balling into fists at his sides. "It'll make his mind even worse, though. But I'll be more careful than Aeli was."

  Genesis considered the young angel for a moment, then nodded. "If we are in agreement. The other remaining option would be...removal."

  Though Genesis didn't offer any further details, they all knew well enough what he meant by removal. Sighing, Lina nodded. "He's too much of a pushover to let him run around knowing. Mess his head again, whatever. I can deal with it."

  It took Samael much less time to make the mage forget than it had to force him to remember. And required only the touch of two fingers in the middle of the mage's forehead, which set Richard snoring away as if he'd been put into a deep and dreamless sleep. Expending the magic wore on Samael, however, made him hunch over on himself and made his winglight, already faint in the competing glow the magelight set in the center of the ceiling above them, dwindle to almost nothing. Mirk moved to support him, putting an arm around his midsection, though he was careful to shield his mind as best he could before he touched him. "Should I call Sharael?" Mirk asked him.

  Samael shook his head, drawing his wings in tight against his back, like a makeshift cloak. "Just put me back in the other room. I brought some apples. I...I just want to be alone."

  Although Mirk didn't question Lina on it, he could tell by the cold expression on her face, the way that she didn't budge from Richard's bedside, that she wanted the same."Methinks it'd be better if you left within the half hour, Miss Lina," Mirk said to her, as he helped Samael stumble toward the door. "I'll be waiting for you in the common room at the end of the hall. And please remember the cloak."

  Lina didn't have anything else to say to him. Nor did Samael, after he'd shuffled him out of the room and into the one next door, waving up its wards and locking the door for him, since all the young angel had eyes for was bed and the pile of quilts Mirk had brought him earlier in the night in anticipation of such a situation.

  Which left him only with Genesis. Who, for whatever reason, had decided to remain out in the hall instead of vanishing along with his pad full of notes off into the shadows.

  "I'm sorry if that didn't go the way you were expecting," Mirk said to him with a sigh, tucking his hands into the pockets in his sleeves. The better to keep himself from wringing them, as the commander stared off at the common room and the floor barrier beyond it.

  "There is...no reason to apologize. You did nothing."

  For some reason, the comment stung him rather than granting him relief. Mirk snuck a sideways glance at the door to Richard's room. The wards on it were impenetrable, even better than the ones on the room that he'd just tucked Samael away in. He couldn't pick up on any hint of what Richard and Lina were saying to one another, or what Lina was feeling, if Richard hadn't woken up. "I know that you can’t make everyone happy," Mirk said. "And I know that Richard has done terrible things to the other men and the djinn. I just find it hard to fault Lina for caring for him despite all that. And I feel even worse about Samael."

  Genesis weighed his words, picking at some invisible speck of lint on the sleeve of his overcoat as he thought. "Samael’s magic can be used in…several ways. There is no need for him to continue to do as he was taught. If that...is his free choice."

  The fact that they could agree at least on one thing made Mirk feel a little better as he headed down the hall toward the common room, toward its rickety chairs that had been hurled countless times into walls by unruly patients and its temperamental hotplate. A hot cup of tea sounded pleasant. And the measure of brandy he planned to pour in it sounded even better. "I know having someone with magic like his makes all of this easier, but..."

  "Freedom of choice is not a matter that can be compromised on," Genesis said. He matched his pace rather than racing ahead at his usual punishing rate, or hanging behind to continue pondering over his notes and what had just transpired. "I will...endeavor to not place him in such a position in the future."

  "If we hadn't had him, we might have needed to do something even worse to Richard."

  "Richard made his choice. He chose to deal in the traffic of djinn against their will. Thus...the consequences."

  "I know it's sentimental of me," Mirk said, going to the hot plate and twisting the knob on its side to activate its heating spell. The careworn device sputtered, throwing off a few sparks, then settled into a steady hum. "But I hate being so unforgiving."

  "This has not escaped my notice."

  As he waited for the hot plate to warm, he turned around to face Genesis once more. He was still keeping an eye on the floor barrier beyond the common room doors. But Mirk got the impression that he was watching him as well, somehow. With some sense that wasn't so obvious to the naked eye. "I'd invite you to have a cup of tea, messire, but methinks that'd be a bit too risky."

  Genesis nodded, once. "There is...activity on the second floor. No strong mages. Patients."

  "Are you planning on going out tonight yet? Or will you be up still once Lina's sent back?"

  "The spell requires…analysis. I have the necessary grimoires on hand," Genesis said by way of answer.

  "Like I said, I'll try to think of a way to find a djinn to help. Maybe I'll have thought of something by the time I get back..."

  "Ensure that no one makes note of you when you leave," Genesis said. Then he was off through the floor barrier — doubtlessly, rather than passing through down onto second, the commander used it as a way to slip off through the shadows and return to the safety of his quarters.

  Mirk sighed, turning back to the hotplate, rattling the kettle left beside it. At least half-empty. More than enough for a single cup of tea, especially one that was likely to be half brandy, considering his mood. He'd try his best to show restraint, but he didn't trust himself not to use a heavy hand. Not after that night’s nasty business.

  He didn't know who his heart hurt for more: Samael, too pained to bear the mild relief of the company of his sister, or Lina, caught in the position of caring for a man no one else saw the good in. Empathizing with both their situations was easy, though he didn't want to trouble anyone with his own worries. He could always pray on the matter, Mirk supposed, on how to better serve his friends, yet not serve them in the wrong way, the selfish one that had more to do with comforting himself with clasped hands and stroked hair instead of doing any practical good. As of late, praying over his troubles made him feel worse by the end than when he’d first started.

  God had given him His answer. He just refused to listen.