For a moment, everything was silent and still as Er-Izat bore up under the twisting mechanizations of Genesis's trap spell, refusing to dignify his distress with any sound of pain. Then Mirk rushed to his side, taking his arm and trying to comfort him, despite the harsh order he'd just issued. And that Er-Izat had obeyed, not because he’d been forced to by the magic in his collar, but due to some inner turmoil Mirk could only guess at. Just as the commander had spoken to Er-Izat in English, Mirk spoke back to Genesis in it, to be certain he understood. "Is there any way you can make things easier for him, messire? It looks so painful..."

  Genesis drew a step closer, watching the shadows work at the collar and Er-Izat's neck with a certain cold blankness that Mirk knew well by then. Genesis was moved by Er-Izat's suffering, but, much like the djinn himself, found refuge in restraint rather than putting his emotions on full display for all to see. Unlike K'aekniv, who was rubbing sheepishly at the back of his neck and struggling to find something more to do with himself now that his part in the plan was finished, his puffed-out feathers further betraying his discomfort. "The spell will be effective for...one hour. It is adequate time to gain the necessary information. The less you resist, the less it will...hurt. To a degree."

  "Why don't you lie down, monsieur?" Mirk said to Er-Izat, shifting back into French to speak with him. "The bedclothes have just been cleaned, I promise. And I'll do my best to explain what's going on."

  Er-Izat obeyed without comment, backing up until his knees hit the edge of K'aekniv's bed. Then he lay back onto the pair of deflated pillows that Mirk had snatched up to support his head and neck. The shadows weren't causing Er-Izat's skin to peel and blister like Am-Hazek's neck had under the force of the magic on the collars on Ravensdale's djinn, but they were pressing hard enough to bruise. Though it was hard to distinguish the bruising from the tendrils of darkness creeping between the collar and Er-Izat's neck. While Mirk was doing his best to make Er-Izat comfortable, Genesis extracted a ledger and a bit of charcoal from his overcoat pocket, scratching out notes on how the collar reacted to his shadows' prodding.

  "We didn't want to hurt you, monsieur," Mirk said. K'aekniv slapped on the translation charm pinned to his shirtfront, which Mirk had loaned him in anticipation of this situation. "These aren't thieves. They're my friends. We want to help."

  "Yes, seigneur," Er-Izat said through teeth gritted against the pain in his neck, his eyes flicking toward Genesis. Mirk was certain Er-Izat must have recognized him from the handful of balls Mirk and his family had bribed the commander into attending. Djinn rarely forgot a face, according to Am-Hazek. And Genesis’s was particularly distinctive.

  Er-Izat's sideways look didn't escape Genesis's notice. He made one of his odd backwards gestures, an upward tilt of his chin when a contrite duck of his head would have been better suited to the situation. "I am in your debt," he said, in English.

  Mirk was certain Er-Izat understood English, but he chose to keep speaking to him in French, just as the djinn continued to choose that language to speak in. He would have opted for djinn, if only he'd known more than a few jumbled, useless words of it. "That's his way of apologizing, monsieur. The commander feels very strongly about seeing that you and the other djinn no longer are kept in bondage. That's why we're doing all of this."

  Genesis’s trap spell snapped tight around Er-Izat's legs and midsection to keep him from bolting upright. Er-Izat's restraint crumpled, his greenish magic flickering in his eyes as a glimmer of gold magic circled around the collar underneath the coils of shadow. When he spoke, his voice was rougher, with none of the cool politeness and precision that usually colored his speech. "No! They’ve got my kin. I’m not trading my freedom for theirs."

  "Who does?" Mirk asked, putting a hand on his arm once more and projecting his concern to him, trying to soothe him.

  Er-Izat hesitated. But some combination of desperation and pain forced the words past his chapped lips as his body went slack once more, his deliberate politeness returning to him. "The Ra-Djinn. I became Li-Djinn so that they would not take anyone else from my kinship circle. They needed someone on the human realm to make sure the process went smoothly with the Am-Djinn. I was given to Seigneur d'Aumont with the promise I would keep the Am-Djinn from killing him. And keep his human competitors from doing the same."

  Mirk cast a wary look up at Genesis. The commander didn't offer him any guidance. He kept scratching away at his ledger, watching and listening in blank-faced silence. "We're more interested in freeing the Am-Djinn who've been enslaved here in the City than doing anything to Seigneur d'Aumont. How did they get here? Did you play some part in that?" Mirk asked.

  Letting out a raspy sigh, Er-Izat shook his head. His hands twitched at his sides, wanting to touch his collar in an attempt to grant himself some relief from all the magic working on him. But he managed to resist the impulse. "Too many Am-Djinn at once. I could not watch all of them while also watching Seigneur d'Aumont's human slaves. And the seigneur wished for me to guard him personally most times as well."

  "Did the Am-Djinn help themselves be taken?"

  Again, Er-Izat shook his head. "No. But they did not resist either. This is something I knew they would do. Am-Djinn always favor the risk of new pain over the pain they know."

  "They made a shit choice," K'aekniv said with a heavy sigh. He was pacing at the foot end of the bed, still searching for some way to make himself useful and coming up short. Though Mirk could tell from the half-angel's unguarded emotions that he felt bad about not being able to speak with him in French, he didn't have Easterners' vocal translator. And all K'aekniv knew in French was how to ask after wine and companionship. "Or maybe not. You’re a fighting djinn, yes? The one that bastard here has are all thinking djinn."

  "Yes," Er-Izat said, looking up at K'aekniv. He seemed less troubled by the half-angel’s presence than either Mirk’s or Genesis’s. Like there was some unspoken understanding between them, a matter of like recognizing like. Of knowing how things were supposed to go. "The Er-Djinn have always been warriors who serve whichever kinship line is in power."

  "Does that mean your collar is different than the ones on the rest of the djinn d'Aumont deals with?" Mirk asked him.

  "No. An Am-Djinn is more difficult to control than an Er-Djinn. What will bind them will bind me."

  "I...have noticed," Genesis said, pausing in his writing at a pointed clearing of Mirk's throat. Mirk mouthed the suggestion to try French rather than stubbornly sticking to English at the commander, to put Er-Izat more at ease. For once, Genesis complied, though his words were even more stilted and cold in French than they were in English. "You possess a...great deal of power. But have less precision in the control of your magic than the other djinn I have seen."

  "Yes, monsieur. The Er-Djinn have never been craft djinn. But I am the best at it among my kin. That is why my circle chose me to offer to the Ra-Djinn. A human would say I have mastered my magic better than the rest of my kin. But that is not true. I only favor a less direct way of fighting."

  "Why have the Ra-Djinn chosen to do all of this to the Am-Djinn?" Mirk asked. "Are they at war?"

  "In a sense, seigneur. The Am-Djinn have always been the strongest supporters of the hierarchy. And the largest threat, when they are angered."

  Er-Izat paused for a time to catch his breath. To master his pain. Much like Am-Hazek, Er-Izat appeared to be strongly affected by the touch of Genesis's chaotic magic, even if it wasn't deliberately trying to hurt him. His arms twitched constantly at his sides, as if he wanted nothing more than to claw the shadows away. Though Mirk also got the impression that having Genesis's magic crammed between Er-Izat's own and Seigneur d'Aumont's captured in the collar gave him more latitude to speak freely than he usually had. "I have heard rumors of what happened to the Am-Djinn that the Englishman stole. They are not being used in a way that suits their nature. They are dying."

  Genesis nodded. "There was once...more than fifty. Now twenty-two remain."

  Er-Izat winced. But not from the press of the magic coiling around his neck. Again, his polite mask slipped as he was overwhelmed with emotion, one Mirk could neither feel nor read well from his subdued expressions. "That’s more than the Ra-Djinn killed in a hundred years."

  "The...individual...who took them will not stop until they are all dead. He cannot be...reasoned with. This is why we have done this to you, against your will. We must free them."

  K'aekniv nodded, vigorously, as he stopped his pacing and leaned down to clap Er-Izat on the shoulders. Again, Mirk felt like there was some understanding between them, some common point of recognition. All of his own clinging at Er-Izat's arm hadn't comforted the djinn any. But K'aekniv's rough gesture was something Er-Izat recognized. And drew strength from, judging by how his twitching stilled and his expression smoothed. "They need to go home to their people," K'aekniv said. "You too. A man like you, holding doors and dressing some rich bastard like you're his mama? It's no good."

  Er-Izat sighed again, his gaze drifting up toward the ceiling. "They have my kin."

  "Then take them back!" K'aekniv insisted, shaking his shoulders.

  Er-Izat had no response for this. Other than to keep staring upward, his greenish magic circling constantly in his eyes.

  "Do you remember a certain djinn...by the name of Am-Gulat?" Genesis asked into the tense silence.

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  "Yes," Er-Izat said. "I am not surprised the Englishman took him. He is different from the rest of his kin. The Am-Djinn offered him to the Ra-Djinn instead of the Ra-Djinn taking him." Er-Izat paused, as if he was reluctant to speak his next piece aloud, even with Genesis's magic keeping his collar from picking up on his words. "He was a threat to the hierarchy. The same as Am-Hazek. But in a different way."

  "You knew Monsieur Am-Hazek?" Mirk asked. "Back when you were at home?"

  "The Ra-Djinn were very concerned about him," Er-Izat said. "Am-Hazek has always served nothing but himself. But he had no ambition, not when he lived among us. I sense that has changed now. That is why I cautioned master not to go alone to Madame Beaumont's. If the Ra-Djinn knew Am-Hazek has changed his mind...and that he still holds his own soul..." Er-Izat trailed off, brow furrowing.

  "An...important point," Genesis interjected. "Where is your soul?"

  "With master. In the left-hand gem on his cane." Er-Izat made himself focus again, meeting Genesis's eyes. "Master put the other djinn's souls in old human bottles. The same ones he keeps his liquor in. The souls of the djinn the Englishmen took should still be in them, since they were missing when the Am-Djinn were discovered to be gone. This is the one mistake master insists on. He won't waste even your flawed earthly gems on their souls."

  Genesis looked up from his ledger, his eyes narrowing. "You are...implying that if their collars are removed, their souls will return to them?"

  Er-Izat nodded, as much as the collar and the shadows allowed him to. "Yes. If I understand why you have done this to me correctly, you must have other vessels for their souls ready when you free them. A djinn whose soul is loose cannot use their magic well. This will take a great deal of preparation. An Am-Djinn's soul requires a vessel of very high quality for their magic to connect to it well."

  "Am-Hazek might be able to help," Mirk suggested. "He's very knowledgeable about all sorts of things. And he must have a vessel that works well for his own soul, considering."

  Er-Izat gave a curt, humorless laugh. "He stole his from the vault of his kinship circle when he ran. A story that became legend. And warning."

  "I had no idea he was so famous," Mirk murmured. It was hard for him to picture Am-Hazek, always clever, but also always polite and considerate, as some sort of cunning rogue, a man of infamy on his home realm.

  "As I said, seigneur. If the Ra-Djinn knew of what Am-Hazek was doing on this realm, I am sure they would have ordered me to kill him by now. And this is not a thing the djinn do to their own, not without very good reason. Am-Hazek and Am-Gulat are the two greatest threats to the hierarchy there is at present. The only ones who show either the desire or the power to reorder it."

  "And what about you, huh?" K'aekniv asked, giving up on pacing and sitting down on the edge of the bed, between Er-Izat and Genesis. "What do you think about all of this?"

  Er-Izat seemed disarmed by the question, but not overly surprised. He sighed once more, closing his eyes. "An Er-Djinn's opinion is not important, monsieur. The Er-Djinn have always served."

  "We all end up serving something," K'aekniv replied, shrugging his wings. "Even bastards like him," he added, gesturing at Genesis, who had picked up his notetaking once more. Though he paused to shoot K'aekniv a dark look at his words. "The big thing is getting to pick."

  Er-Izat was silent for a long time, the shadows hissing as they drifted lower on his body, pressing lightly against parts of him to check the way that the collar responded to their agitation of his magic. When he opened his eyes and spoke again, his voice was distant. Tired. "I’m no better than Am-Hazek and Am-Gulat. I’ve never served well. I...only want to fight no more and go home. Monsieurs. Seigneur."

  "Don't waste your fancy names on me," K'aekniv joked, cuffing Er-Izat in the shoulder. "For you? I'm just Niv. We'll do what we can for you too. You've taken too much shit from all these rich bastards already. Here and at home."

  "My kin," Er-Izat insisted. "I won't give up my kin."

  "This is...beyond what we can do," Genesis said. "However. I believe both Am-Hazek and Am-Gulat may be able to assist you, should they no longer be...constrained. If that is your choice. I will not force you to do anything more than this against your will."

  Er-Izat sighed. The shadows around him had begun to thin, letting his collar, constantly circling with Seigneur d'Aumont's golden magic, sink down closer to his skin. "I will think about it, monsieur. When the time comes, I know how to speak with them."

  Genesis nodded, slowly. Then he made an arcane gesture at the shadows and the ones around Er-Izat’s legs thinned further, releasing him from their grasp. Still, Er-Izat didn't seem to have the will to sit up.

  K'aekniv turned toward Genesis, his mingled sympathy and frustration shifting to alarm, the feel of his mind going focused, like before he threw himself into a fight. When he spoke, it was in his native tongue, one that neither Mirk nor Er-Izat understood. Though Mirk couldn't feel it, he saw the alarm mirrored in Er-Izat's expression, in the way his mouth drew into a tight line and his own greenish magic flared up in the depths of his dark eyes.

  Mirk reached out to him, clasping his arm and projecting a bit of reassurance. "No one is going to hurt you, monsieur," he said. Though he could feel as little from Genesis as he could from Er-Izat, there was a note of finality the commander’s his tone, conveying an impression that Genesis had made up his mind, that nothing K'aekniv had to say to him would get him to change his approach. And the shadows that trapped Er-Izat in the room were all fading away, unwrapping from around his bulky frame and creeping down off the walls, slinking back under the bed and behind the dresser.

  "You should, seigneur," Er-Izat said, glancing his way. "I can only be honest with you now because the collar isn't touching me. You have seen how it is. I have been trained to obey. And the collar makes it so that I must, even if I resist. If master should ask me..."

  "Then we will fight him as well," Genesis said, shifting back into French. Though he didn't offer to explain what he and K'aekniv had been arguing over, Mirk got the impression that K'aekniv shared the same concern as Er-Izat. "One who keeps slaves has made his choice. Thus...the consequences. It is merely a matter of...when he must face them."

  Mirk mulled this over, pulling his hand away from Er-Izat's arm before he could start fussing with his gambeson. "I don't think he'll give you any trouble, monsieur. From what my godmother told me, she plans on keeping his attention focused elsewhere. And...well. I don't mean to insult you any, Monsieur Er-Izat, but even though Seigneur d'Aumont is cunning, he has the same prejudices as the rest of us. As far as I can feel, you have done good work at being a proper servant in the seigneur's eyes. And the best servant is one that a lord doesn't ever need to think twice about. He becomes invisible, in a way. Taken entirely for granted."

  Er-Izat, rather than being offended, relaxed a little, a wry hint of a smile coming onto his face as the shadows began to release his collar. "A djinn would have a different opinion. But you may be right, seigneur. It troubles me that you noticed me. But..." His eyes shifted toward the walls of K'aekniv's room, their flaking and hopelessly stained plaster. "...I have noticed that you are different from the other human nobles."

  Sighing, Mirk got up from the bed, backing away lest his closeness to Er-Izat trigger some magic in his collar once the shadows fully released it. "I'm not as different as I should be. I'll walk you back to the Teleporters' hall."

  K'aekniv got up as well, going to his dresser and pulling out its topmost drawer. "You look too fancy to be walking around the City. Those Watch bastards will be looking harder now that it's late." He found what he was searching for — his overcoat, which, though it had been neatly folded and put away rather than left in a heap at his bedside, still smelled strongly of sweat and liquor and gunpowder. A fine dusting of the latter rose off it as K'aekniv tossed it over to Er-Izat, hitting the djinn square in the chest.

  Although the djinn's nose twitched, he didn't shove the overcoat away. "I cannot take this from you, Monsieur Niv."

  "Eh, it's nothing big. Winter's over now. And this bitch will just want me to get a new one for next year," K'aekniv added, with a pointed leer at Genesis, who missed the exchange entirely, focused as he was on carefully extracting the last of the shadows out from underneath Er-Izat's collar without causing him any more harm than he already had. "The holes in the back will be weird on you, but it's dark."

  Now that most of the shadows had receded, Mirk could see the full extent of the bruising they'd left on Er-Izat's neck. They almost looked like tattoos, dark and deliberate. "Attendez, messire," Mirk said to Genesis, reaching out to settle his hands on Er-Izat's neck, close to, but never touching the collar. It was difficult feeding his healing potential into Er-Izat with the collar and Genesis's magic in the way, but, as Mirk had expected, the djinn's magic responded even better to the touch of his own than either Am-Gulat's and Am-Hazek's had.

  Though he wasn't accustomed to the rhythms of Er-Izat's body and magic, the damp, earthy parts of it took hold of Mirk's magic easily, clinging to the order in it as a welcome balm to soothe away the marks Genesis’s chaos had left on his neck. Rather than directing his magic, Mirk let Er-Izat's potential do what it wanted with his own. A distant ringing filled Mirk's ears for a moment as the bruises on Er-Izat's neck faded away.

  Er-Izat's thick eyebrows twitched up in surprise. "You have healed djinn before, seigneur."

  Mirk nodded. "On a few occasions. How do you feel?"

  The djinn took advantage of his last moments of partial freedom to speak his mind once more. "Tired. But willing."

  As Mirk drew his hands away, Genesis called back the last of his shadows. He waited to check how the magic in Er-Izat's collar responded to being released before tucking his ledger and charcoal away — although the golden magic raced around the collar's edges a few times, it soon faded. And there was no lingering trace of alarm on Er-Izat's face as it settled back into its usual composure.

  "It is done," Genesis said. Then, stiffly, he performed a gesture that was unfamiliar to Mirk, something between a salute and a sweep of two fingers across his neck, like a knife, speaking something in a language that sounded even more unnatural coming out of him than either English or French.

  Again, a look of surprise flickered across Er-Izat's sharp features, though it was less pronounced than before. As he sat up, he returned the gesture to Genesis, replying in the same guttural, yet melodic language, full of odd hums and stops. Without saying anything further, Genesis sunk back into the shadows and vanished.

  "What did he say, monsieur?" Mirk asked Er-Izat.

  "He wished for my kin to have good dealings and fine linens," Er-Izat said. "A way of saying goodbye among the djinn. Only my grandmother was old enough to use that expression."

  K'aekniv snorted. "That's what you get when you learn to talk to people from books." He offered Er-Izat a hand as the djinn moved to get back to his feet. After a moment's hesitation, Er-Izat took it. Though Mirk got the impression that neither man leaned much on the other as Er-Izat rose off the edge of the bed. "Maybe I'll see you around, huh? Spit in your master's drink for me," K'aekniv concluded with a grin. Then he was barging back out into the hall, his wings catching on the doorframe as he went and ripping out clumps of loose feathers, calling out orders to the men of the Seventh who'd been stationed in nearby rooms in case something went wrong.

  Er-Izat busied himself with dusting off K'aekniv's overcoat before putting it on — it fit well across the shoulders and in the arms, hanging properly to his knees, but Er-Izat was less thick around the barrel of his chest and in the waist than the half-angel. "You have very strange friends, Seigneur d'Avignon," he said, as he flipped up the overcoat’s collar to hide the iron one around his neck.

  Mirk mustered up a smile and a helpless shrug for him as he gestured toward the door. "You may be right, Monsieur Er-Izat. After you, please. Just this one last time, I promise."

  Sighing, Er-Izat obeyed.