Lady of Shadows

Book 2: The Empty Gods

by Breanna Teintze

Genres: Fantasy; Humorous Fantasy; Romantic Fantasy

Synopsis

'THRILLS THE READER WITH AN ENJOYABLE, BREAKNECK PLOT' GUARDIAN Death is simple. Dreams are dangerous. Life is . . . unexpected. Outlaw wizard Corcoran Gray expected death to be final, but life, and his loved ones, had other plans. A year after being resurrected and flung into a new body, he's still trying to come to terms with his situation - and his self - when the all-powerful Mages' Guild demands his help to stop a deadly plague. He's inclined to refuse the organisation that still wants him dead, until his partner Brix starts showing symptoms - to save her, Gray will do anything, even if it means working with his greatest enemies. But it quickly becomes clear that this is no normal plague. The situation is more complicated, and more lethal, than anyone has realised. Ancient dangers are stirring, and thousands of lives are at stake . . . In the gripping sequel to Lord of Secrets, Corcoran Gray returns to save his new life and everything he holds dear - he'll just need to battle mysterious plagues, magical monsters, and hellish necromancy first. 'TEINTZE SHOWS A RANGE OF SKILLS IN LADY OF SHADOWS BY MAKING A FANTASTICAL WHODUNIT, WITH TWISTS THAT KEEP YOU PULLING TOWARD THE FINALE' CHARLIE N. HOLMBERG, AUTHOR OF THE PAPER MAGICIAN 'LADY OF SHADOWS SHOWS AN UPWARD TRAJECTORY NOT ONLY FOR THE CHARACTER, BUT FOR THE EMPTY GODS SERIES AS A WHOLE' SCIFINOW 'GRAY IS THE KIND OF RELUCTANT HERO WIZARD WITH A HEART THAT I'D FOLLOW INTO THE APOCALYPSE AND LADY OF SHADOWS DELIVERS JUST THAT - AND MORE' KAI DOORE, AUTHOR OF THE PERFECT ASSASSIN

Release date: April 16, 2020

Publisher: Jo Fletcher Books

Print pages: 288

Sample

The ghosts had been following us for about an hour when we finally reached the lapidary’s house. There were at least two spectres vying for our attention, dodging from shadow to shadow as we moved through the twilight streets. There could have been more, or less; it’s hard to be sure about illusion magic at the best of times, and this wasn’t the best of times. I hadn’t slept in three days and was feeling about as coherent as your average dirt-witted farmer.

We had just reached the outskirts of Varriel’s alchemy works district, with its narrow houses, thousand fume-belching chimneys and reputation for black-market magic. No one had tried to rob us yet, but the ghosts meant that was about to change. In the royal city of Varriel it seemed even knifepoint thieves could buy a bit of cheap street conjuring.

‘Ignore them,’ I said, resisting the urge to turn and stare as a ghost flitted at the edge of my vision. ‘They just want to herd us down some blind alley to make the thievery more efficient. They aren’t really there.’

‘I know they’re not really there.’ Brix hunched her shoulders against the cool air, her hair gleaming in the half-light like a pale, fluffy halo. She had eyes the colour of copper, more freckles across her nose and jaw than I’d ever been able to accurately count and a limited store of patience. ‘I wish I wasn’t really here. Can we just get this over with?’

We stood in front of a green-shuttered house. It had a flying bird carved into the granite capstone above the door and a neat brass plate on the wall that read F. Jaliseth, Alchemical Lapidary. Brix leaned forwards and hammered on the door with a closed fist. ‘Hey! There’s customers out here with the smoke ghosts!’

‘With the cheap street illusions,’ I said.

She rolled her eyes and knocked again. ‘Open up!’

The door swung open to reveal a woman like an overgrown barn owl, blinking at us over the top of a pair of magnifying spectacles. She held a slender bronze carving tool and did not look best-pleased.

‘Get out of here!’ She advanced on us, holding the tool like a dagger. ‘Guild pigs!’

I twisted backwards, and the magic under my skin moved.

‘Neyar’s teeth, Jaliseth!’ I hated it when I could feel the spells written into my body. They were the entire reason Brix and I had spent two weeks on the road to get to this horrible soot-streaked city. I bit down on the disgust that rose in my throat. ‘You treat all your buyers this way?’

‘I craft within regulations.’ Jaliseth scowled uncertainly, first at Brix and then at me. ‘The Guild doesn’t have any reason to keep harassing me like this. It’s persecution. First you send your spies around, then these gods-damned smoke illusions to drive my customers away, and then—’

‘I’m not Guild,’ I interrupted. ‘I’m Corcoran Gray. Acarius’ grandson?’ This was always the worst part: convincing people who had known my old face that I was still myself. ‘The last time I saw you was five years ago. Acarius bought a wardstone, something shiny – malachite maybe. You slipped me a half dose of yavad when Acarius wasn’t looking and then we stayed up telling jokes and eating green apples. I threw up in your fireplace.’

Jaliseth lowered the chisel. ‘Gray?’

‘As I’ve been telling you. New face. I’m not used to it either.’ I pointed at Brix. ‘And this is my partner, who dislikes the Guild even more than I do. Can we come in?’

‘Holy saints.’ Jaliseth moved to one side, holding the door open wider while she scanned the street. ‘Get inside, both of you. Hurry.’

The house was small, just the room she led us into and a closed door that presumably led to another. Apart from the tiny hearth, every bit of wall space was crammed with stone-laden shelves. Crystals rubbed shoulders with pearly opal, undulating agate and blue-hearted geodes. The carvings were evenly split between things like the respectable row of tiny beryl house-saints and the unlawful cluster of polished, rune-carved sodalite flowers.

The little lapidary shut the door firmly behind us and ran a hand through her grey hair. ‘I don’t think they can get past the wards I’ve carved into the foundation stones.’

‘Who can’t?’ Brix said, eyeing the bolted door.

‘The Guild.’ Jaliseth shuffled over to one of the many shelves and began sorting through the stones on it. ‘At least, I think it’s them. There was a scandal about three months ago, downriver, after one of theirs was arrested for causing an accidental death. Made no end of stir, and they’ve been cracking down on all the ancillary magic businesses since to prove to the throne they’re still in charge, that the Charter is still important. They’ve been watching my place for weeks. Although I can’t understand how . . .’ She stopped and shook her head. ‘But that can wait until Gray explains himself. Is Acarius in town?’

‘No.’ We had left Acarius at the cabin in the mountains we shared with him and Brix’s sister, Anka. My grandfather thought this trip to Varriel was a fool’s errand, that I didn’t need outside help to solve my problems. But he wasn’t the one who had to live with them. I stuck my hands in my pockets. ‘Acarius does let me out of the house by myself occasionally.’

‘I heard about the trouble last year.’ Jaliseth eyed my face. ‘But I had no idea things were so . . . severe. What happened?’

Now that was a hell of a question. A year ago I’d nearly died killing the false god Jaern, and ended up inhabiting the custom-built body he had been using. It turns out the world doesn’t much notice when you kill a god – it’s only your own universe that shatters, and you’re left trying to patch the cracks with study, or work . . . or illegal alchemy.

‘Necromancy,’ I said.

Jaliseth examined me, from my feet to the crown of my head. ‘It’s not so bad,’ she offered. ‘You’re lucky. At least you’re lucky for me. I have use for a wizard tonight.’ She glanced at Brix. ‘And . . .?’

‘And this is Brix,’ I said. ‘Brix, Jaliseth.’

Brix nodded. ‘Hello.’

Jaliseth nodded back, then gave a dimpling smile. ‘Congratulations, my dear. I didn’t think this rascal would end up partnered.’

‘Gods,’ I said. ‘I am a dangerous criminal, wanted by the Guild on charges whose penalty, at a minimum, would involve the loss of my tongue. Cats who steal butter are rascals.’

Jaliseth ignored me and gestured to two low chairs beside the hearth. ‘Sit, if you please.’

‘Listen, I’d like to get this done quickly.’ I glanced at Brix, who was choosing a chair like we were there on a social call. I liked Jaliseth, but I didn’t want to stay long.

‘Why?’ Jaliseth put her tool down on a shelf between a piece of jade that was half-formed into the head and shoulders of a beautiful young man and a polished, dark wood bowl. ‘Does the Guild know you’re in town?’

‘Of course not, or I wouldn’t have walked straight up to your door. The Guild wouldn’t bother trying to scare me with smoke ghosts, they’d have hit me with a paralysis spell. I’m here to have something made. I need to buy a set of silencing stones.’ To my relief the words sounded relatively matter-of-fact. ‘As strong as you can make them.’

‘Simple enough,’ Jaliseth said. ‘And who are you silencing?’

‘Me.’ I forced the muscles in my jaw to unclench. ‘I talk in my sleep. It’s causing disturbances. Anyway, I thought you were in a hurry. Are you going to tell us why somebody’s running smoke illusions around your house?’

Jaliseth considered me for a moment before taking off her spectacles and placing them neatly beside the chisel. ‘I think I may be going mad,’ she said, quietly. ‘Please sit down, Gray. I’ll make you whatever wardstones you want. Just . . . hear me out.’

The hair on my arms lifted. I sat.

The lapidary’s hand rested on the chunk of quartz beside her, fingers moving absently over the stone. ‘I admit I was thinking of sending for Acarius. I don’t even know how to . . . you’d have to look at it. I’m an alchemist, not a wizard. I don’t dabble with incantations. I don’t like how toxic spells can be.’

‘Only if you don’t know what you’re doing,’ I said, but she lifted a hand.

‘So all you wizards say. All I know is that magic poisoning means your fingernails turn black and fall off, and that’s just for starters. But this—’ She reached inside the wooden bowl and pulled a chain and pendant out, and I went cold.

The pendant looked like a teardrop-shaped black gem in a tin setting, but I knew it wasn’t. It was a crystal vial of black liquid, with a purple spark at the centre that pulsed like a heartbeat. The vial hung from a ring-topped metal stopper, strung on a leather lace.

An almost identical pendant hung around my own neck, nestled between my breastbone and my shirt.

‘That’s your problem?’ I said.

‘It started with this.’ Jaliseth’s eyes lingered on the vial. ‘About two months ago, I became very ill. Magic toxicity, I think, in spite of all my precautions.’

‘You should have been able to sleep it off,’ I said. ‘It goes away on its own.’

Jaliseth shook her head. ‘That’s your sort of toxicity. When you snuff a spell you’re not in contact with the poison any more, but when I’m carving I’m touching runes all day, every day. It doesn’t hurt at first. And then you think it’s just a headache, just a lingering cough.’ She glanced at her shelves. ‘It took me too long to realise how sick I was. I went to Healers, to shrines . . . there’s no proper Ranara-temple in Varriel – it’s all Farran-worship here, thanks to the Guild and the king’s shrine – but I would have travelled to the nearest one and sacrificed as many doves as they wanted if it would have done any good. I couldn’t keep food down, couldn’t do anything. You can’t understand what it’s like to know you’re dying.’

Brix shot a quick look at me. Last year, I’d bled out in her arms.

‘It must have been enough to make you desperate,’ I said gravely.

‘And then at one of the saints-shrines by the river, I heard a rumour.’ Her brow furrowed. ‘A cure, offered by a potion-seller. Black-market, off record. He said he was only passing through Varriel for one night. His cure was supposed to heal anyone, as long as they could pay. I paid.’ Something in my face must have shown what I was thinking, because Jaliseth’s voice turned defensive. ‘I know how it sounds, but I was at the end of my wits. I was skin and bones, coughing up bits of my lungs. I would have tried anything. And besides, it worked. There was no recovery to speak of. He hung this amulet around my neck, said a few words, and that was it. One moment I was dying, and the next I was whole. He said as long as I kept wearing it, I’d stay well.’

‘You’re not wearing it now,’ Brix said.

‘No.’ Jaliseth looked down at the pendant, her thumb lingering on the metalwork. ‘I didn’t stay well. After a while I started to lose time. I still lose time, if I wear it. Hours go by and I can’t account for them. I find cuts and scrapes I don’t remember getting. I can tell I’ve been doing things – carvings, even. But I don’t remember it, any of it. The hours are just gone, as though someone snipped them out of my memory with scissors. And things are getting worse – shadows follow me on the street, there are strange smells in the neighbourhood, and . . .’ She paused. ‘I think someone has been watching the house. Interfering with my things. I wake up and my tools or furniture have been moved. Why would anyone do that?’

‘Wait,’ Brix said. ‘You think the Guild knows you have this necklace?’

Jaliseth shrugged. ‘I don’t know. The shadow illusions have been here for the last three days, but if it’s them I don’t know why they don’t just arrest me. I’ve known something is wrong for weeks. You don’t know what a relief it is to hear you say you saw the shadow illusions, too. I’ve been so afraid that I was growing more ill, imagining things.’ The lines in her face looked deeper than when I’d seen her last, her shoulders more stooped. ‘This whole business has got beyond me, Gray. I need to know what this thing is, where it came from – what it’s doing to me. This is wizard’s business. I don’t have anybody else to ask. And you’re a . . .’ She paused, probably searching for a diplomatic way to put it.

‘Talent,’ I suggested, and took the pendant out of her hand.

‘Indeed.’ She gave a taut smile. ‘So you do the divining, and I’ll get your wardstones ready. Is it a bargain? Do you really want the stones keyed to you? Plenty of perfectly normal people sleeptalk.’

‘Yes to both.’ I rifled through my pockets for a pencil. It wasn’t as though I really had a choice. I wasn’t normal, and my sleeptalk wasn’t harmless. The magic under my skin saw to that.

Jaliseth released her breath. ‘Thank the gods.’

‘If the Guild really is watching the house, it would be better to get this over with quickly,’ Brix said.

‘I have a set of wardstones that are mostly finished.’ Jaliseth moved to the shelf closest to the hearth and picked up two small, round grey stones, polished to a high sheen and covered in careful spirals of runes. ‘All I’ll have to do is add your name to them. I can do that while you’re divining.’

‘Then that’s settled.’ I knelt and began to scribe runic characters in a spiral on the wooden floor, trying to put everything else out of my mind. Divination is a particularly fickle incantation. It requires a lot of attention to avoid nasty hallucinations and uncontrolled expansions of the magic, and even if a divining spiral doesn’t go bad it can still taint your perceptions for hours. But there was nothing else for it. Jaliseth needed answers, and to tell the truth, so did I. The amulet I wore had been Jaern’s. The fact that a copy of it had turned up with a random Varriel potion-man did not bode well.

Jaliseth rustled through the stuff on her shelves, collecting a couple of chisels and several other tools I didn’t recognise.

Brix moved to stand behind me. ‘You want help?’

I shook my head. Difficult as the divining could be, sharing the toxicity from the magic would only ensure that both of us were rendered sick and useless. ‘Just pull me off the spiral if I begin to gibber.’

Brix frowned. She did not go back to her seat.

I counted the runes as I wrote, slipping into the quiet place in my mind where the magic is always not quite asleep, and soon the spiral was finished except for the focus at the centre. I dropped Jaliseth’s pendant into the middle, then pushed my sleeves up and added two strings of runes from the bases of my thumbs up to the insides of my elbows. It had to be a very precise line; only Jaern had known exactly which spells my body carried, and it had taken a lot of experimentation for me to find a blank piece of skin to scribe on.

I put the grease pencil back into my bag and let my thumbs overlap two painted characters. One by one, as I pronounced them, the characters in the spiral lit. The spell came together and swirled around my hands. My vision narrowed, darkness closing in until only the pendant was left. As I pronounced the last symbol, I saw the woman.

She was dead.

Cold. I was cold?

Focus.

No, she was cold, the dead woman, cold and breathless. She was stretched on her back in a coffin. Or, no, that wasn’t quite right. Nobody filled coffins with liquid, and this was sloppy with purple-black goo.

Focus, I said again, as much to myself as to the spell. Where?

People tend to think that divination is like dreaming, or the visions the Temples priestesses get while praying and drinking yavad. I’ve been stoned on yavad and I’ve had too many dreams, and divination isn’t like either. For one thing, it’s fast – you lose most of the real world in a breath, and then it’s just you and the vision. Pushing the vision in the direction of your query is more difficult than you’d think. Jaliseth had wanted me to ask where, but I kept getting distracted by who.

The dead woman was young, maybe in her early twenties, with black hair, high cheekbones and the kind of knobby fingers that go with scrubbing floors and splitting firewood. She looked peaceful. You might have thought she was asleep if it wasn’t for the blue cast to her lips.

And the cold. Gods, she was like ice.

There were other people moving around her, shadowy figures I couldn’t quite see. Scraps of chants floated in the air; prayers, maybe. A pendant like the one I was using for a focus rested on her chest, glowing dull red. The liquid she wasn’t quite floating in lapped at her tattooed chin.

You’re Tirnaal.

Her eyes snapped open, as though she’d heard me – which was impossible.

If her amulet was the same as the one I was scrying with, I was fairly certain I was seeing the past. It’s not unusual for divination to stray into memory, but history doesn’t interact with you. Yet here she was, the dead woman, staring right at me with bloodshot eyes.

Help me, she said.

Pain crept up my spine. I had written my spiral with shielding runes, but the toxicity inherent in magic could never be entirely avoided. I wouldn’t have long until this incantation sharpened into a migraine.

Who are you? I said.

Moyra. Stop this, the dead woman said. Make them stop this.

The sweet stench of rot pressing in around me, the cold, the claustrophobic stasis of the vision – surely I couldn’t be mistaken. Aren’t you dead?

Not dead. Kept. Her eyes wandered. Hurts.

The edges of the vision blurred. My own pain sharpened into spikes against the backs of my eyes. The magic was cracking.

This was worse than no answers at all, just the knowledge of someone’s suffering. Where are you?

She didn’t answer. Her pendant flared red, blinding.

My spine exploded in agony.

A heartbeat filled my ears, hammering with slow, heavy thuds, drowning out the vision. This wasn’t Moyra; someone else was trying to enter my divination spell. Brix wouldn’t have done anything so reckless, and Jaliseth was too afraid of magic poisoning to interfere. This consciousness was efficient, professional, and inserted itself like a knife into my mind, twisting, searching. I wrenched my attention around to focus on the heartbeat’s owner, but the vision wouldn’t extend far enough to allow me to see them. There was something in the way, too bright. I couldn’t quite find the person, just their outline, like watching someone through shadows.

The incantation radiated pain like an ember sheds heat. The toxicity of my spell was mingling with some other magic the interloper carried with them, poison boiling through my veins, speeding up my heart to the point it might burst. I had to get whoever this was off my spiral quickly or both of us could die.

Let go, I said, in case it was that simple.

The interloper’s mind shied away from mine. Not only did whoever it was not remove themselves, they were actually trying to pry into what I was seeing, pushing at my mind, aggressive. Could they really not feel it? Were they oblivious to the danger they were in?

Let go, or you’ll die.

The consciousness ignored me, busy forcing its way into my perceptions like a rat running through an attic, heart creaking with strain. I was going to have to pull myself off the spiral.

Breaking contact with the runes all at once would cut off the invader’s access to the vision, but it also meant losing my control of the spell. I had to hope that Brix would realize something was wrong and wipe out the spiral. Otherwise, I might not wake up for weeks, if I ever woke up. In a worst-case scenario, I’d stay unconscious until I starved to death. But if I didn’t—

Hells, I thought, annoyed. This is going to hurt.

I fell into the dark for a long time before I found my own throbbing heart, and the pain where my lungs should have been. Even then, when I opened my eyes, what I saw made no sense: there was nothing there.

I sat up and found myself in an entirely white room without walls, or a ceiling, or a floor – like I was hovering at the centre of a white orb. Such rooms don’t exist. Ergo, I was either inside someone’s illusion spell, or still stuck in my own divination. I didn’t think it was the divination, though – my arms were smeared with dried, itchy flecks of pigment, as if someone had wiped out my spell without taking the time to actually wash the paint off.

I was also naked.

‘Your spell doesn’t even have a floor,’ I said, in case I wasn’t hallucinating.

Holy saints, a voice said, from beyond the blazing white nothing, a voice I had never heard before.

Not that you can really hear or see when you’re inside an illusion. The sense-altering effect of the magic is part of why it’s useful for disorientating people. Illusions are the Guild’s bread and butter, the way they ‘handle’ prisoners for the king. Jaliseth had said the Guild was watching her, so I was probably in a normal cell in a Guildhouse’s stinking nether regions, awaiting a trial that would end with the removal of my tongue.

The question was how I had got there.

I pulled myself to my feet and kicked. My foot bounced off a spot in the air in front of me, like someone had made a jar of cold, elastic glass and plopped me inside it. The bounce caused a tiny jolt of pain. That meant that regardless of what I was seeing, in reality I was probably in a runic prison circle. Whoever had written it apparently didn’t know how to alter temperature, though. I was freezing.

‘You could have just searched my clothes for spells instead of taking them,’ I said. ‘Where am I? What happened?’

No answer. I kicked towards the spot again and watched my bare foot bounce, sorting through my own mind with growing panic. I’d had spells go wrong before, but never badly enough to make a blank in my head. Had Brix and Jaliseth been captured? I should have some memory of being picked up by the Guild, if that was who was holding me. I should know whether Brix and Jaliseth were safe. How had a divination spell caused this kind of damage?

‘Am I under arrest?’ I said, and waited until the silence got irritating. I kicked the edge of the spell again, hard.

‘Stop that.’ This was a voice I could hear with my ears, versus feeling it twang on the air like a lute string. Someone had pulled the illusion spell back a little. We were progressing. ‘Yes, you’re under arrest, if you’re awake enough to understand me.’

‘I make it a policy not to understand when I’m arrested,’ I said, ‘and I’m disinclined to cooperate unless I get some trousers. Who are you, where am I, and where are the women I was with?’

‘I’ll ask the questions.’ The voice sounded male, and exhausted. ‘You gave us enough problems that you’re lucky to be waking up at all.’

I glanced down at myself. They’d left me my amulet, but nothing else. Something was going on, and it was even more disturbing than a regular arrest would have been. I folded my arms, which didn’t help me feel less naked at all, and tried again. ‘Look, I’m tired, and cold, and you’ve proved to yourself that I don’t have any spells scribed on my skin, so can we just get me some trousers and get going? I’d rather not waste more time breaking the illusion.’

‘You’re not in a position to make demands,’ he said. ‘We’ll do it this way.’

At the moment, he had a point. I couldn’t cast unless I could break the illusion. Only a murderer throws spells into the dark. I turned in a slow circle. Visual illusions are fairly fragile, if the subject knows that they’re being fed one. ‘I’m not going to answer questions when I can’t see you,’ I said, hoping he’d answer and let me pinpoint his location.

‘You will when you get hungry enough.’ He was to my right.

‘You’re just going to leave me in a prison circle until I get peckish?’ I scanned the floor near the sound. He would have left himself a thin place in the spell, an easy way for him to see me. ‘I’m a little disappointed. Your predecessors threatened to break bones.’

‘Well,’ he said, dryly. ‘My predecessors wound up dead, so it would seem foolish to emulate them. What makes you think you’re in a prison circle?’

‘The way I can kick and connect with thin air.’ There. It was almost imperceptible, just a ripple of white on white, like the flicker of a candle flame seen through a window. I took a couple of steps towards the ripple, which grew into a narrow, dark line. I concentrated on it and forced my mind to accept that it was real, not the white room. Breaking illusions is uncomfortable, pulling your eyes out of focus, but it can be done if you’re stubborn. I managed to keep my attention steady until the line widened and I could see through it, like a tear in a curtain, to a tiny portion of a flagstone floor. A bitter, alchemical scent simmered into the air.

Footsteps scrabbled on stone. He was backing up. ‘What the hells are you doing?’

The illusion shattered and the white orb vanished. Instead, I stood in an entirely normal room with stone floors, a massive wooden workbench and several high, narrow windows spilling late daylight. Shelves and skinny tables lined the walls, stuffed with papers and clay jars of reagents. A Guild laboratory, then, which was a point in my favour. I had been expecting a cell.

I was still naked, though.

The speaker stood some six feet from me, looking disconcerted and a little annoyed. He was somewhere in his early thirties, with dark hair, a shadowy hint of a beard and eyes of an ambiguous light colour. A silver licence sigil gleamed on his left wrist. He was a Guild wizard, then, albeit without robes and the tell-tale curve in his upper spine that would have marked him as a scholar. That, and his tan, made me think he was a field officer or enforcer of some kind. He had the look of someone who would excel at arresting granny apothecaries for selling contraceptive philtres.

He blinked. ‘How—’

‘See?’ I pointed at the floor, where a twelve-foot circle of glowing greenish-gold runes had been painted around me by someone who evidently wasn’t thinking through the possibilities very well. ‘Prison circle. Can I have my clothes?’

‘We’re still examining them to find out how you’re running that damned persistent illusion.’ He swept his hand in an arc that encompassed my whole body. ‘If you were hoping to pretend to be someone else, there’s no point. I divined to locate you in the first place, and then again with your blood during the arrest.’

‘My blood?’ I said.

‘You were passed out on the floor of a shop when we found you,’ he said, impatient. ‘I could hardly confirm your identity any other way. The point is, you’re Corcoran Gray, and we know this isn’t what you really look like.’

I didn’t have time for this. ‘We at least know that I’m not the one with the nudity obsession and the piss-poor scribework. If you won’t tell me what happened, how about your name?’

‘Dace Craxen, not that that’s important,’ he said, watching me. ‘The women who were with you are under arrest, too, in case that makes a difference in how cooperative you’re prepared to be. You’ve been unconscious for two days. We wanted to move you out of the laboratory after we had examined you, but the younger woman insisted you shouldn’t be moved.’

I had been under for two days? If I got out of this alive, Brix was going to kill me. What in the hells had happened? I needed to understand, and quickly. ‘What am I being charged with?’

‘Nothing, at the moment, despite your deviant practices.’ Dace spoke with the kind of determined evenness that usually means someone is getting very annoyed. ‘The Guild needs information we believe you possess and there isn’t time to take you through a normal trial process.’

‘Deviant practices?’ If Brix and Jaliseth were stuck somewhere inside what I was beginning to fear was a large Guildhouse, then we were in serious trouble. There weren’t many options for me. My captors knew my name, which meant they knew what had happened last year. ‘Writing a better spiral than you qualifies as deviant?’

‘Gods and little saints.’ He pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘Are you still spell-shot, Master Gray, or are you always like this?’

‘Like what?’ What in the hells was I going to do? Once I got out of the prison circle I’d have to go out through the doors, since the windows were too high up to reach easily and I didn’t know where Brix was. That made the clothing issue even more pressing.

‘Answering direct questions with other, stupider questions,’ Dace said.

I brought my concentration back to him with difficulty. Whether I liked it or not, this self-righteous Guildie was all I had to work with. ‘I want to see the women who were arrested with me, and I want clothes.’

‘After you answer my questions.’

. . .