It was a warm night. The air was still, and it tasted clearer than usual. Rana leaned against the castle parapet. Exhaustion welled up at the base of her skull as she waited, though she ignored it as best as she could; there was no real point in trying to sleep—she understood now, what it meant to have nightmares.

From across the walls came footsteps.

“Hey,” said Farzaneh.

“Any news?” Rana asked. The words felt weak, coming from her throat.

“The other kiters found a boat,” Farzaneh rasped. She drew alongside and rested her arms upon a crenellation, frowning at the horizon. “A good one, left in a gorge to the north—must’ve been commissioned on the side. I asked Nadim to see if he could check some records, but it’s probably made its way to Magician ears by now.”

“Okay,” Rana said.

“Something about a tunnel, too,” Farzaneh added. “Uncharted, but you could ask the Weathermancers when they get around to it.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

It was near-useless news; she pressed a hand to her temple. Both the strength and trouble with her influence lay in its nature; it was safe, on the softer side—she didn’t like to go digging. The meeting with Cardainne was as far as she could allow; two years ago, Aliyah had gone digging, and she’d…it hadn’t led her anywhere good.

She stared turned her gaze north, over the sands and to the distant foothills. The pieces were all there, she was sure. She just couldn’t reach them.

“Really?” Farzaneh asked. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Yes,” Rana lied.

She was not. It was increasingly difficult to maintain a calm countenance at work, to act like her oldest friend had not likely been whisked away by a traitor—had become a traitor. Perhaps, even, was always a traitor, if the rumours about Saar-Salai were to be believed.

Rana turned to leave, sweeping her one last glance over the battlements. She froze. Some instinct made her reach out and pull Farzaneh down into a crouch.

“What—” Farzaneh began, and Rana shushed her.

What was a Sungrazer doing on the walls at this time of night?

The man strode hurriedly past, not fifty feet away. Rana held her breath—had they been seen? The man continued on his way without so much as a misstep. She exhaled softly.

“An outsider?” Farzaneh whispered. “They’re not allowed up here.”

What reason did the Sungrazer have to brazenly break such a rule? Rana wondered. The battlements were for sightseeing, really—occasional guards were posted, but the sky-shields rendered them wholly ceremonial. Forbidding outsiders from this particular place was one abitrary rule in a long set of them, restrictions and demarcations intended on keeping their kingdom pure and separate. There was no strategic reason, unless…

The man turned left, along a different branch of castle wall. There was a staircase at the end, and he seemed to be heading for it.

Guard’s ways. Was this Sungrazer sneaking out? Down the tower, and then…through a gate into the city proper, without having passed the eyes in the main hall? But everything they wanted was inside the castle—rumours and favours and the Library—or so she had gathered from court talk.

Should she find a Magician? Should she follow? She bit her lip as the Sungrazer descended into the guard’s tower.

“So is this any of your business, or…?” Farzaneh whispered.

Rana almost answered no. She seldom dug, for fear of what she might unearth. But Sungrazers were on the wrong side of the court, and there would be few Magicians up at this hour—though how any of them slept doing what they had done, she didn’t know. She had been the only one of seven to lift her head when it was all over, and she had been the only one because…because of Aliyah. Or so she assumed—the pieces were all there, in retrospect. She swallowed; the phantom taste of too-sweet tea nestled at the base of her tongue. Perhaps it would be wise to gain some extra easy favours in times like these.

“I will have to see,” she replied.

She rose from her crouch and wrapped her cloak tighter around her shoulders.

“Oh,” Farzaneh said, already backing away. “Good luck, then.”

Rana nodded her farewell, and began tailing the Sungrazer.

She pulled her runequill from her pocket and sketched a string of signs for silencing and concealment—not invisibility, she wasn’t nearly as good as that, but it would help some. She had to lag behind, but the Sungrazer was not overly difficult to follow; he was careless, and walked as if he knew exactly where he was going.

Through quieter streets, avoiding the market squares—eventually, they ended up at a dilapidated dock in the city outskirts. She peered out from behind a stack of crates as the man climbed onto a sand-skimmer and sailed out into the desert, where she could not follow.

She watched him go, shrinking into the distance. One piece of information blazed to the forefront of her mind: he was heading north.

+++

The sun-lamps burned low and red; it was so late that it had become early. Ilya drained the last dregs of his coffee and frowned as someone knocked at his door.

“Come in,” he said. And then, “you again?”

It was the cousin, huddled in a dark cloak and looking as if she had been up to no good. She strode in, and her heels did not click noisily this time. He raised a tired brow. Truly, he had thought she was the whispering court type—hardly one capable of sneaking about like a thief.

“Magician Cardainne,” she said with a conciliatory bow of her head. “I apologise for disturbing you at this hour.”

That was a bare-faced lie; he had been assigned night duty for the next week, and his office would have been the first along with light coming through the gaps of the doors. He wondered, with some amusement, whether she had been dismayed to find it so. But then, she could have easily walked further down to Mahin’s—perhaps she saw his overseeing of Karim as a perpetually exploitable connection.

Hmm. That could be a problem, if so.

“What do you want?” he asked.

She took a deep breath. “I witnessed a Sungrazer making unauthorised travels. He passed along the battlements and took a sand-skimmer to the foothills.”

“I see,” Ilya said, and felt the beginnings of a frown alighting upon his face. “I will make a note of it.”

The cousin hesitated visibly, and his annoyance spiked.

“What is it?” he asked.

No doubt she expected some pitiable act of charity on his behalf, as if prowling about in the dark deserved a handful of coin and a pat on the head—never mind how this was not even new information.

…Not that he need tell her that, of course.

“He’s still out there,” she said. “As in, right now. I came quickly, in case you wanted to check.”

Hm. He did not particularly wish to check, no. There was a tacit understanding among his fellows to allow the Sungrazers fraternise with those dirty creatures as they wished—while Saleh himself kept an eye upon the correspondence making its way to Cathay.

He flashed through various scenarios in his head: to apprehend the Sungrazer, or not; to fully mislead the cousin, or not. He glanced down at his work—largely cleared now but waiting to receive more of the same. He had been sitting since supper, and his legs could do with a stretch.

“Very well,” he said as pulled his cloak from the back of his chair. “Let us take a little stroll, shall we?”

The cousin hesitated once more, looking slightly alarmed. She had clearly not anticipated her own involvement; perhaps this would teach her not to disturb him at her leisure.

Ilya swept past her and out into the night-grey hall. He did not bother taking a sun-lamp; what moonlight washed over the flagstones was more than enough to see by. The cousin followed, her steps almost inaudible across the stone. Very good casting, for an employee of the Lower Library.

The skeleton of the castle lay empty at this hour. No doubt there were countless scribes of the cousin’s ilk burning their midnight oils, but the corridors through which Ilya strode were wholly silent. He could sense the cousin growing tense; if he were a kinder man, he would have spoken something to put her mind at ease. But he was not, and he had other considerations besides, and so he held his tongue.

Instead, he considered the cousin’s standing as he led the way up to the battlements. A taken-in Khan was a small fish, a small name. But one that chose to question…that was a different story. His very own apprentice had gotten farther than would have been expected of him, and the two shared blood ancestry. He cast his mind back to the faerie onslaught, to the rites. It was likely, too, that she harboured some grudge. A friend turned traitor, an unpleasant experience, a hunger for answers, the beginnings of a safely-made net of influence in one so young—this formed a certain picture, did it not?

Ilya had been trained in many methods of assessment, and he could say with certainty that Rana Khan was not a threat—at least, not presently. But the trouble with little sprouts such as these was the way they grew and grew, until one had the roots of an ironwood squeezing round one’s throat.

…Seventhborn Alhena had played her part, in that regard.

He emerged at the mouth of the staircase and stepped along the walls, heading northward. Behind him, Miss Khan followed.

What to do, he mused. What to do, indeed? It was certainly easier to squash sprouting things while they were still small and young. That was the simple answer, for they were already at the battlements. He cast a perfunctory glance over the edge.

It was a very long way down.

Ilya leaned himself against a north-facing crenellation. Above, the sky was ink-dark and pinpricked with stars, only faintly warped by the near-invisible shimmer of the sky-shields. He turned his gaze back to the cousin and made a gesture, very casual, to indicate she should rest alongside. She hesitated fractionally before obeying. Sensible girl.

“Tell me about this Sungrazer man,” he prompted.

She frowned. “What do you wish to know, Magician Cardainne? I followed at some distance; he wore a cloak to conceal himself.”

“You are certain he was a Sungrazer?” Ilya asked. “Not, perhaps, a Glister emissary happening to be of Cathayan descent? Or for that matter, a scion of a legacy family? It is difficult to discern facial features at a distance, and the paler skin with the darker hair is not unheard of, to be sure.”

At his mention of legacy families, he felt her gaze locking onto his own features. It irked him, though it should not; he knew he merely seemed an unusually pale Songian at first glance, same as her. It was only the eyes which gave him away…and one such as her had no cause to be looking him in the eye.

“I did recognise his face,” she said. “I don’t know his name, but I recall he was among the ones wearing red and gold.”

“You must be a busy lady,” he remarked. “Between your scribery and walking the court.”

She ducked her chin modestly. “I don’t go so far as to walk, Magician. I only listen.”

Ilya sighed inwardly. He had been correct in his thinking. Very correct. Ilya liked being correct. It was a shame, then, that in being correct there would be unpleasantness to follow.

Judging by her muffled footsteps, it was likely that Miss Khan was in current possession of a runequill. Not difficult, but not ideal, either—there was a reason he had worn his cloak. He leaned more heavily against the wall, raising one foot flat against it; it would look cursory to her eye, he knew. A spell for silencing formed in his palm.

“Ilya,” she said before he could cast.

The surprise, more than anything else, stilled his hand. Had he heard correctly? Such plain disrespect—

“Aren’t you going to ask me what I was doing when I saw the Sungrazer?”

Ah. Ilya hesitated.

It could be a bluff. It could have been a mere lover’s meeting beneath moonlight, or whatever young people did these days. But on the half-chance that she had been liaising with someone important, someone acting the safeguard…well, the implication was enough: if something happens to me, then you will not be the only one to know why.

She knew. How she had guessed, he could only assume—his cloak was heavy, and it was a warm night, after all.

“No,” he replied, a beat too late. He set his foot down from where it braced against the wall, the leverage no longer necessary. “I have no interest in your affairs.”

She averted her gaze. “Then my pardon, Magician Cardainne, but I must ready myself before dawn shift.”

“I have a different question,” he said.

“Yes?” she asked. There was perhaps the shadow of a tremor in the word, the first real fracture he had seen in her facade.

Ilya allowed himself a faint smile. “Miss Khan, how would you feel about becoming an apprenticeling?”

Confusion flickered across her face, then alarm.

“I’m sorry?” she asked, the tremor more evident now.

He gave a calm, easy shrug. “The apprentices have thinned out, following recent events. You are a promising young woman, are you not? Karim has spoken highly of you.”

All of these things were true, in a sense: Karim, though, had spoken as if someone were holding a knife to his throat. At the time, Ilya had found it amusing. Now, he found that detail of much more interest.

“I…I will have to think about it,” she stammered. “It is…an honour that you would say as such, esteemed Magician.”

She sounded a touch more apprehensive than he would have liked. Ah, well. She was a sensible girl, and people like her understood what it meant to refuse such generous offers. Given a guiding hand, she would learn to serve the kingdom well.

One could tread a little sprout back into the earth from whence it came, it was true. But many more might bloom in its place, to fill the spaces it had once occupied—and then they, too, would require dealing with. But if a certain sapling found itself possessing admirable, useful qualities…then perhaps it could be worked with. It was a known practice, for such saplings to be fed the right things and pruned just so, the roots tamed to serve better purposes.

“I anticipate your timely correspondence,” he said. “Goodnight, Miss Khan.”

“Goodnight,” she replied, and there was the hint of a conscious effort to still the tremor to her voice this time. It boded well for her prospects; apprenticelings needed to be adaptable, after all.

Ilya watched her go, then turned his gaze north. From the foothills there came a breeze and with it, a swift-approaching speck. A sand-skimmer, one might say. He considered it for a moment, then looked away.

He was not a kind man, he thought with no small amount of regret. But he could be very merciful, when it suited him.