When Am-Gulat jerked the pointed end of his war hammer out of Ravensdale's head, half of his face came away with it. But the djinn wasn't finished. Am-Gulat flipped the hammer over in his hands and kept going. Though the bile rose thick in Mirk's throat, he forced himself to watch. He felt like he owed the djinn — all of them — that much. Someone needed to witness their rage, to make up for how many others had turned away from their suffering.

  Am-Gulat struck Ravensdale three more times with the flat head of his war hammer, stooping over to reach him when his body slumped to the ground. Samael was still watching too, Mirk noticed. But the boy wasn't sickened by it. From what Mirk could feel pressing against his mental shielding, Samael felt nothing but relief as Ravensdale was reduced to a faceless pile of meat.

  The shadows, unbidden, rose behind Am-Gulat. Two thick coils of darkness grabbed Ravensdale's body by its legs and dragged it back through the West Gate. Am-Gulat's killing trance was only broken when his war hammer bounced off the cobbles with a shower of black sparks rather than sinking into the remains of Ravensdale's face. The djinn glanced over his shoulder into the darkness, his confidence faltering for a single second before he shrugged it off and turned back around to face them.

  "Where are the other ones?" Am-Gulat asked no one in particular. "The teleporting mage and the one who steals magic now."

  Am-Hazek was the first to shake himself out of his daze. "I'm not certain," he said, switching into English that was just as flawless as his French. "I assumed you had already found them, wajinn ."

  "Casyn just left," Mirk added. "Though I don't know where he went. Wherever Percival is, methinks."

  Cursing under his breath in djinn, Am-Gulat stalked back and forth in front of the West Gate, flipping his hammer over again and again in his blood-flecked hands. "No. No, no. Half of them were already gone when we got to the prison. The thief must have stolen them too. He's hiding somewhere, I know it. I should have killed him first. I always knew he was smarter than the worm."

  Am-Gulat kicked at a body that was no longer there. Only then did he notice Samael and Sharael kneeling beside the gate. Samael had straightened back up onto his knees, his arms still chained behind his back. Sharael hadn't moved at all. Bracing himself for the worst, Mirk lowered his shields once more and sought out the spark of her presence, sifting through all of Am-Gulat's rage and Samael's relief in search of the steely ringing sound of her magic. It was there. Faint, but steady.

  "Where are the rest of the Am-Djinn?" Er-Izat asked, after brushing his hand over a patch sewn onto the side of his breeches. A translation charm. Mirk didn't know whether he always wore two, one on his sleeve and one near his waist, in case he needed to fight, or if he'd seen all of this coming and had prepared himself in advance.

  "With the winged one and his people," Am-Gulat said. "They are too weak to fight, and I felt drawn here. The thief must have drained them and left them behind. I refuse to let the worm take any more of my kin." He paused, looking back into the darkness looming beyond the West Gate. "Or his followers."

  Am-Hazek cleared his throat, looking very much like he wanted to put his sword away. But whoever had given him it hadn't loaned him a scabbard to go along with it. "I believe you may be correct, wajinn. Ra—"

  "Call me by my name, Am-Hazek. And I'll call you by yours."

  "Very well. As I was saying, you may be correct that this thieving mage was always a larger threat than the rest of them. I was watching him closely during this evening's dancing. Though he lacks magic of his own, he is very adept in using that of others. And he has the bearing of a man who takes command as a matter of course rather than one who must struggle to keep it."

  Mirk wasn't surprised by how correct Am-Hazek was in his assumptions. The djinn had watched the French noble mages at his godmother's side for decades. The difference between Ravensdale and Percival was evident in every gesture they made, every word they spoke. Ravensdale had been born a common man, had tricked and threatened his way into power, power he guarded jealously against the slightest encroachment.

  Percival was a born noble. There was no posturing in his authority, no puffery or fear of loss, even though his own magic had been stripped from him by the staff in Mirk's hands. Magic or not, noble blood still flowed through Percival's veins. Nobles expected lesser men to listen to them as a matter of course, without exception. They did not have to work themselves up to command. They simply gave orders and expected them to be followed, as inevitably as the sun rose in the east.

  As he stared down at Jean-Luc's staff clenched in his hands, Mirk wondered if this was the price he'd pay for keeping death away from Genesis. He'd stolen Percival's magic from him. But, if anything, it'd only made him even more of a threat. Robbing Percival of his magic magic had only led to the mage stripping it from countless others. The djinn included.

  Am-Gulat's voice cut into Mirk's guilty musings. "This is that idiot's work. That one we took with us instead of leaving him behind at the big house to be killed. Who made our collars."

  He was crouching beside Samael, poking at the chains that bound his arms with the head of his war hammer. Samael was as unafraid of Am-Gulat as he'd been of Genesis, though Mirk was sure the young angel must have been able to feel what Am-Gulat was becoming even better than Mirk could. There was something keeping the bulk of Am-Gulat's anger from reaching Mirk the longer he stood before the West Gate, something beyond the usual djinn self-restraint. Chaos.

  "The one you killed put them on me," Samael said to Am-Gulat. "I don't know who you're talking about. And your head has too much chaos in it for me to see him in your thoughts."

  "Richard did this?" Mirk asked, finally budging from where he'd been rooted to the cobbles, picking his way through the dead Watch guards scattered between them to Samael's side. "Euh...Hervé?"

  "It feels the same as the collars did," Am-Gulat confirmed, reaching out and touching the metal with one finger. It sparked angrily and the djinn hissed back at it, surprising himself. He clamped his hand over his mouth as he brooded over the chains, his war hammer still held tight in his free hand.

  "The other collars were magicked so that Gen couldn't break them with his magic," Mirk said. "But you should still be able to remove them, Mo...euh, Am-Gulat. Your magic isn't exactly the same."

  Am-Gulat didn't speak, but he did look up at him, an unspoken question lingering in his dark eyes that flickered red every so often, like dying embers.

  Mirk lowered his shields a fraction to confirm what he'd felt across the plaza when Am-Gulat had first appeared. Even during the hour or so Mirk had been away from him, Am-Gulat's magic had shifted to be more like that of Genesis. The multi-colored brilliance that had been in him before, the complex, shifting patchwork of elements, was dying. In its place was the staticky hissing of chaos that Mirk knew as well as the feel of his own magic.

  But there was still a difference in it. Am-Gulat's chaos felt wilder, less deliberate. More like a rampaging bull than a serpent coiled to strike, watching and waiting. And it was hot instead of cold. The remnants of his greatest elemental affinity still clinging to him, perhaps, the last of his fire magic burning brightly before the chaos snuffed it out. Maybe that warmth would remain with him even after his Destroyer magic had fully awakened.

  Mirk had always suspected that there had to be a hint of elemental magic in Genesis, something to keep him from being fully dragged into chaos and madness. If he had to guess what it was, it would be darkness. Am-Gulat's could be fire. But Mirk knew he was treading into unknown waters with that guess. Into a realm that only Genesis, who had lived with his destructive magic since he'd been a child, truly understood.

  Rather than argue the point with him, Am-Gulat decided to test Mirk's theory. He drew his war hammer back, carefully, and struck at the chains that bound Samael's hands behind him with the pointed end of its head, eyes narrowed in concentration. The instant metal struck metal, the chains crumbled away into dust, just like the collars of the djinn he'd freed in Madame Beaumont's ballroom had.

  "If that other one is a traitor and made these chains, we need to tell the others so that they can kill him," Am-Gulat said, rising back to his feet.

  "He might have been forced into it," Mirk said, rolling Jean-Luc's staff in his hands, his own worry clawing at his insides now that he couldn't feel Samael's relief. The instant the chains had fallen apart, the young angel had lifted his mental shielding. Even though Samael had to be exhausted, his ability to shield was so practiced, so absolute, that Mirk could no longer feel the slightest hint of his emotions.

  "I understand that you prefer to see the best in others, seigneur," Am-Hazek said from across the plaza, on the other side of the arc of dead Watch guards. "But we must be careful. There is too much at stake."

  "We should have killed him at the beginning," Am-Gulat said. The hiss had snuck into his words again. That time, he chose to ignore it, distracted by his own annoyance.

  Before any of them could continue the debate, they were interrupted by a distant bang, one that rattled the glass in the windows of the buildings nearest the West Gate. As one, they turned to look for its source, all of them with weapons raised. It was a fireball, arcing high above the City before being swallowed up into the starless night overhead.

  "Catherine said that they'd send a signal if something happened," Mirk said, his grip on Jean-Luc's staff growing loose. Though the fireball had faded, Mirk did his best to sort out where it'd come from. Not directly east, as it would have if the others had still been close to the barracks where the djinn had been imprisoned. But it hadn’t come from off to the south either, near the gate. The others were somewhere in between.

  "Then we must go," Am-Gulat said, already moving off down the long road that led into the heart of the City from the West Gate.

  "Do you know where you're going, Am-Gulat? Can you feel them?" There was a certain amused note to Am-Hazek's voice that stopped Am-Gulat mid-stride and put a frown back on his face.

  Mirk was struck by how different Am-Gulat was from the other djinn he'd met, and even the djinn who he had first helped heal in the infirmary months ago. While most of the other djinn seemed to value composure, thoughtfulness, Am-Gulat was a man of action who didn't seem to see any point in concealing his opinions. Mirk could see why he hadn't fit in with the other Am-Djinn. And despite the grave situation, it put a smile on Mirk's face as well.

  "There is no way to find them without going," Am-Gulat snapped back, summoning his resolve and tapping the head of his war hammer against one palm. "It is done."

  "What about Sharael?" Samael asked in a small voice, more to Mirk than at Am-Gulat's retreating back. "She...they hurt her."

  Mirk heard the unspoken words, even if he could no longer feel Samael's emotions. And I could do nothing to stop them.

  Tucking his grandfather's staff under his arm, Mirk crouched down beside Sharael's motionless body. Samael scrambled to help him turn her onto her back, folding one of her wings in against her back. The girl had a scowl on her face, even in unconsciousness. A deep piercing wound to her shoulder had spilled blood down her front, a slash to her leg had nearly torn her skirts in two, and there was a prominent bruise on her forehead. Not to mention the handfuls of feathers that had been ripped from her wings, streaking them red.

  "Methinks she'll be fine," Mirk said, though he got down on his knees and pressed the palm of one hand to her forehead to check. Her magic was a tight, bright core that had settled in her center, her heartbeat and breathing inhumanly slow to conserve energy as her body worked to heal itself. Sharael was still just a girl, but she was a full-blooded angel nevertheless. Nothing short of ripping her head from her body could keep it from regenerating.

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  But there were worse things that could happen to a young girl. Mirk let his magic drift down into her body, searching for signs of them. There were none. Shaking his head to clear it as he drew his shields back up, Mirk smiled at Samael. The boy had his wings drawn in tight around his shoulders, hugging himself against the pain of seeing his sister, who so often refused to yield even when she should have, reduced to such a state. "She's resting. That's how angels heal, non? Methinks it'd be best not to wake her, if we can avoid it. If she wakes up, I'm sure she won't want to rest again."

  "She needs to go to the infirmary," Samael insisted.

  "I'm afraid that may not be the wisest course of action, young sir," Am-Hazek said from off to their side. While Am-Gulat and Er-Izat had gone off ahead, Am-Hazek had hung back. But not for any lack of bravery, Mirk thought. He simply had more patience than the other two djinn, wasn't itching for a fight like Am-Gulat and not burdened with the obligation to throw himself into battle like Er-Izat was.

  "Why not?" Samael asked him, returning Am-Hazek's slight, reassuring smile with a frown.

  "All of the most vital parts of the City are near there, if I recall my earlier visits correctly. If Lord Percival has indeed taken control of the other djinn, I believe his first course of action will be to secure the armory and Glass Tower. The infirmary would also be useful to him."

  "All of the best healers will be at Fatima's anyway," Mirk said. "Once we meet with the others, we'll either find them or send you back there to get help."

  It was only a small lie. It wasn't that the best the infirmary had to offer had joined their cause. It was that his team and Sheila's, along with Eva, were the only healers in the K'maneda who would have any idea what to do with an angel. Or have the inclination to be bothered to heal one. Aside from Commander Emir, who'd stayed behind at the infirmary to keep up appearances and run the Twentieth's overnight shift.

  "Can't you do something?" Samael asked, fixing all of his worry on Mirk.

  Mirk shook his head, leaning across Sharael's motionless body to put a reassuring hand on Samael's shoulder, pressing a spark of the corresponding emotion along with the gesture. "I know you're worried. But Sharael's very strong. Methinks that it won't take her long to recover, even if no one uses healing magic to help her."

  "I suppose I deserve this," Samael muttered under his breath, shaking off Mirk's hand, climbing to his feet. He kept his body low, however, gently sliding his arms beneath his sister's hips and shoulders. It took all the strength he had left to lift her, but Samael managed it, face going pale from the strain.

  "Would you like help, young sir?" Am-Hazek asked him.

  Samael shook his head, then turned on his heel and staggered off in the direction the other two djinn had gone. "No. She's carried me enough times."

  Together, Am-Hazek and Mirk watched in silence for a moment as Samael stumbled off down the street, continually half tripping himself on the trailing hem of his robes his sister's wings. Then Am-Hazek laughed under his breath and started after him.

  "It's very interesting, seigneur. Considering what he did to those guards, I'd been expecting someone more...fierce."

  Mirk sighed. "Sharael is the fierce one. Samael's just..."

  Dead angels sprawled across his mind's eye, along with a coldly amused voice that echoed in the back of his head, taunting him over how pathetic he was. Samael wasn't projecting, not anymore. But the thoughts still lingered in Mirk's mind, reminding him of what his life could have been, if only his father hadn't been so gentle with him. "...Samael was only doing what he had to. It's not how he is, not really."

  "I hope you're right about that. I'd hate to see what an angel who enjoys killing is like."

  - - -

  They found K'aekniv and the others down the street from the dormitory the men of the Seventh lived and died in, huddled along the length of a narrow alleyway between a laundry and a smithy, silent and still in the dark. If Mirk's mind hadn't still been so tender from that night's prior events, they would have walked straight past them. It renewed the hot knot of worry in Mirk's stomach as he and the three djinn slid into the alleyway across from them, followed by Samael and Sharael.

  The fighters closest to the alleyway's mouth had drawn swords at their approach, but had been called off by anxious hisses to stop from the alley's depths. The rescued Am-Djinn, hurling their strained English at the fighters, who replied in equally broken English not to worry, that everything would be fine. Mirk wanted to escape into the dark to go look after the djinn, but decided it’d be better to face the bad news of what had happened to the other team first, then deal with the problem he stood a chance of being able to help with.

  "What happened, Niv?" Mirk asked him, as he lowered himself onto the damp, filth-streaked cobbles across from him. The alleys in the City of Glass were a good deal cleaner than those in the mage quarter, but nowhere near as immaculate as the main roads. Though Am-Gulat and Er-Izat thumped down on either side of him, Am-Hazek refused to sit, instead looming over them all in the dark, after having passed his borrowed sword back to its original owner and made way for Samael and Sharael. The angelic children needed to secret themselves away in the middle of the alley to conceal their winglight, which was three times brighter than K’aekniv’s.

  "Real shit," K'aekniv said, after letting out a long, tired sigh. All the men Mirk could see by the faint glow of his winglight had minor injuries, glancing cuts and bruises. Nothing severe enough for Mirk to be distracted by their pain, their aching clouded out of his mind by the remnants of the pain blocker Yule had given him.

  "How many djinn did you free in the end?" Am-Gulat asked.

  "Twenty, maybe. But they still have their collars on. That's why we needed to be quiet. The metal talks to itself, Ilyusha says."

  As soon as he'd sat down, Am-Gulat was on the move again, swinging his war hammer off his shoulder. "Keep talking. I will listen," he said, before vanishing into the gloom toward the rescued djinn.

  Mirk swallowed hard, bracing himself for the bad news. "Was Percival...?"

  "Already there," K'aekniv confirmed with a nod. "He fucked off with thirty or so djinn. I tried to fight him for them, but he's one of the smartest ones the rich bastards have. He'll come back for us with his people, I'm sure."

  "The children are safe. And Ravensdale is dead," Am-Hazek offered into the silence that fell among them, an attempt at providing them with some small glimmer of hope.

  K'aekniv reached one long arm across the alleyway, giving Am-Hazek a bracing smack of approval on the thigh, since he couldn't reach his shoulder. But even Mirk could tell K’aekniv’s good humor was half-hearted, a show so as not to demoralize his men and the small cluster of Fatima's ladies who'd gone with him. "Good! I should have killed that bitch twenty years ago. But we still have work to do."

  "I thought Ravensdale was the...euh...Comrade," Mirk said, trying to hunt up a better title for the head of the K'maneda and coming up short. He knew logically that comrade alone was right, but it still seemed odd to call the head of the organization by the same title as its lowest recruit.

  "He was, yes. But he was a shit Comrade. People only listened to him because he had the djinn and he was a bastard who'd kill anyone. Now that he's gone, the ones who were waiting for someone to kill him will come out to take everything."

  "Did you know this would happen?" Am-Hazek asked.

  Again, K'aekniv nodded. "But we didn't know he'd try that shit with the kids. Gen said he would, but the rest of us thought Jackson would go with what he knew to fight us. The djinn. We thought Gen was just being stupid because he hates Imanael more than anything."

  "Speak for yourself," Pavel said from beside K'aekniv, from underneath the cover of one of the half-angel's wings he’d huddled under to keep off the slow, cold rain that'd started to fall once more. "I told you all to listen to Gen."

  "We voted," K'aekniv countered, cuffing him with his wing. Not hard enough to hurt, but with enough force to send all the water that'd collected on his feathers raining down on Pavel. "It was you and him against the rest of us. Fair is fair."

  Mordecai, sitting on K'aekniv's other side, changed the subject before K'aekniv decided to soak him as well. "I did as much scouting as I could on our way here. Everything's a total mess over by the East Gate. Saw Lorenz running off toward the parade grounds with all the officers from the Fifth Infantry and the Third Mage."

  Mirk struggled to think hard, to put names with faces. The haze of the blockers was worse when he was sitting down, trying to pull him into a dream-filled doze. "Which one is Lorenz...?"

  "Second Infantry. That means Percy's probably got two divisions of infantry on his side, Lorenz's and Paul's, and all the big time mages. Third always liked Percy more than they did Jackson. Since Percy's a real nob and all. And the Eleventh is..."

  "Stupid bastards like us," K'aekniv finished for Mordecai. "Everyone who's anyone is in the Third. The Eleventh are the people they send out to get killed. That's why they put that piece of shit Richard in charge of it. Or whatever his real name is."

  "What happened to him?" Am-Hazek asked. Mirk could already sense from the anger rising up hot and thick off K'aekniv's outspread wings that it wasn't anything good.

  "He fucked off somewhere," K'aekniv said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Not to help, just to hide. The cowards always know when to run first."

  "I told you we should have killed him," Pavel grumbled from underneath his wing. That time, K'aekniv's wing didn't so much as twitch above his head.

  "As you appear to be the one in charge at the moment, Comrade K'aekniv, what do you think it would be in our best interest to do next?" Am-Hazek asked, with a reflexive half-bow of deference. From the opposite end of the alleyway, Mirk heard the tinkling of metal. And Samael hissing in pain. The others must have rescued only the worst-off of the djinn. Though their pain didn't reach Mirk as acutely as it must have Samael, it was still enough to make Mirk wince, as more and more flares of suffering sprung to life from where Am-Gulat was working in the dark to free his fellows.

  K'aekniv accepted a sip from the bottle winding its way among the men of the Seventh, then settled in to think, his face raised to the darkened sky. As if the rain could take the edge off the heat of his mingled frustration and anger. "It's not all shit. I saw Orest make it to the stables, but we lost him and his woman then. And Alice went back to Fatima's to tell the girls and the healers to come help. Maybe Gen will come with them, maybe he won't."

  "He seemed a little better when I left," Mirk said, to offer out his own paltry serving of hope to the weary men across from him.

  "Him, I'm not worried about. He comes when he comes. Don't worry about it. And Orest, he'll be fine. Those Cossacks are tough. I sent the rest of his people after him when we got back to this shithole." K'aekniv leaned forward and waved a giant palm in the direction of the darkened, ramshackle dormitory. "What I want to know about is North and that piece of shit S'kanyk, whichever one took over from T'akran. Should have killed all of them when we had the chance to."

  The men nearest K'aekniv nodded their agreement at his evaluation. But Am-Hazek was not assured. "I'm afraid my knowledge of the other K'maneda commanders is a bit lacking, Comrade K'aekniv."

  "Lorenz, Paul's officers, Casyn's people, and Percy's rich mages, they're all sure things," K'aekniv said, ticking the groups off on his fingers. "Maybe some of the Watch will go with them if they get scared. The auxiliaries and the Corps, they'll stay out of the way and wait for it to be over. We've just got us and the djinn. Maybe the Thirteenth if they're feeling hungry. But North and that bitch S'kanyk, they've both got seven or eight infantry battalions that will come when they say no matter what. Good fighters, men who've worked a lot of contracts. If they stay out, fine, we'll make it maybe. But if even one of them decides to go with Percy, we're fucked."

  "Methinks North won't go with Percival," Mirk said into the silence that followed. "I can't be sure, but if he asks Comrade Commander Emir for advice..."

  "And the Bavarians are fine," Ilya added, from where he sat on the other side of Pavel, helping to keep the Seer warm in the predawn chill.

  "Probably," K'aekniv admitted with a shrug, as he accepted the bottle again on its path up and down the alley. That time, he kept it for himself. "North is smart. If we look like we're doing good, he'll for sure stay out and wait to see what happens. And like you said, Mirgosha, if Emir is on our side, it'll help."

  "I'm sure of that," Mirk said. "Emir wanted to come with. But someone had to stay and distract Cyrus."

  "That leaves Kysr," Pavel said.

  "That was his name! Kysr. I always forget, because Gen says it some different way. He's a piece of shit." K'aekniv paused to drain what was left in the common bottle. "A S'kanyk is a S'kanyk, no matter what stupid click clack name he has."

  "If he's smart, he'll stay out of it too," Mordecai piped up.

  "Since when is a S'kanyk smart?" K'aekniv countered. Then it was Mordecai’s turn to get drenched as he the half-angel cuffed him with his wing.

  Mordecai deflated, huddling in on himself so that he became invisible in the gloom, with his dark hair and clothing. "Yeah. We should have killed him."

  "Too late now," Pavel said with a sigh.

  "You're right, Pasha. We should just get going and get it over with."

  Before K'aekniv could haul himself back to his feet, Mordecai cut him off, uncurling and grabbing hold of his wing. "Wait! We've got one more thing!"

  K'aekniv blinked owlishly down at the teleporting mage, rainwater rolling down his face. "Huh?"

  "The Irish! They're still through the transporter. Horsefucker put them on that contract out on the Rim. Sean gave us shit for leaving them high and dry."

  "They'll want to get Percival," Pavel said. "He's like Leto to them. They might not have helped if it was Jackson, but for Percival, I'm sure they will."

  "Don't need to See to see it," Ilya agreed.

  K'aekniv thought about it hard, squatting between the two smallest members of their team, his face screwed up in thought. "Maybe. But we'd have to fight by the Glass Tower to get anywhere with them. Can you get to them without going through the big transporter, Mordka?"

  Mordecai nodded. "I went with them yesterday morning to get them set up because we've traded on that realm for ages, remember? I know how to get there on my own."

  "Nu, davai," K'aekniv said, reaching out and grabbing Mordecai by the shoulder and pulling him to his feet as well as he rose. "You go see what you can do over there, I'll do the rest here. Don't fuck it up, eh? If you get it, Danny will kill me for sure."

  Grinning, Mordecai snapped a salute at K'aekniv and vanished with a bang. The half-angel stretched himself out, first his arms, then his wings, and last of all his neck, which let out a string of sharp pops. K'aekniv surveyed his men, thinking again, before giving Er-Izat's leg a nudge with the mud-caked toe of his boot. "You big djinn. You're good for fighting?"

  Er-Izat nodded. "This is how the Er-Djinn serve."

  "Good. With you, the little destroyer, and everyone else, maybe we can make something happen. Follow me and we'll work it out as we go. Walking's better for thinking than sitting in some shithole, yes?"

  The barest hint of a smile ghosted across Er-Izat's lips. "It is done."