The first two were Sonia and Gillian, of course, since Sonia had appeared to lead the group while Gillian had stood by her side. The others' roles were more ambiguous, but both of them had stood in stark, serious contrast with the other giddy spectators at Sonia's attempted interrogation.

Gillian sat before him, her wrists tied with ropes much like his had been only two days before. She looked disappointed, just like her mother had when she had seen the supposed bookbinder take her daughter away. Siles had already made a mental promise to himself not to let anything happen to her. She was much nicer than most rebels he had met, as was her mother. She would see the light of day again.

He couldn't say the same for the other three. Sonia was one of the rudest people he had ever met, as was the girl with soot on her face. The third was a man who he had already recognized as the former servant Brackson, though he didn't mention this aloud. People would talk if they knew that he paid attention to the castle servants. None of the magicians had noticed Brackson's disappearance, after all.

"Gillian is your name, correct?" Siles asked the girl.

She panicked, opening and shutting her mouth like a fish gasping at the air. She didn't manage to produce any sound.

Siles sighed. "Knowing your name won't help me hurt you or your little group, I would just like to know that I've got it right."

She finally shut her mouth completely and squinted at him, but nodded.

"Right. So Gillian, here's the deal. If you answer my questions honestly, you have a good chance of getting out of here alive and without any broken limbs. Do you understand?"

She nodded.

"Good. Now, how did your group find out about my..." Siles didn't know how to phrase his question without revealing that he truly did sympathize with the peasants' plight. He cleared his throat. "What led you to decide that I was the weak point in the current administration?"

It was really the only question he had. The moment Siles had arrested Brackson in Amery, he had realized exactly how Sonia had snuck through the castle to meet him. As a former servant, Brackson had to know the castle's every nook and cranny. He had probably told Sonia everything he knew.

Gillian stared at the floor, finding her voice for the first time. "I can't... I won't answer that. I'm sorry."

Siles looked back at the torture implements on the wall behind him. Most of them were unfamiliar to him, though he was sure the castle's actual torture specialist knew each of them intimately. Siles just couldn't risk allowing anyone else to hear what the rebels might know.

He wasn't going to torture Gillian; he had only started with her because he had hoped that she would give in from fear alone. He called out to the guard in the hall, "Replace this one with the brown-haired one."

"The wavy brown hair one or the straight brown hair one?" the guard asked as he led Gillian from the room.

"Wavy brown hair."

Sonia didn't look disappointed like her companion had; she looked pissed. Siles smiled as he plucked a knife from one of the shelves. He wouldn't mind this at all. "Miss Sonia. Your friend wouldn't talk, so I'm already in the mood for some bloodshed. I'll give you one chance to answer my question, and if you don't answer I'm going to cut off one of your fingers. Got it?"

Sonia glared back at him.

"Wonderful." Siles twirled the blade. "Here's your question. Of all of the magicians in the royal city, how did your little group decide to ask me for help?"

Sonia cocked her head. "I don't see why you would be so concerned if there wasn't an ounce of truth to the rumor. Was she right? Do you want to help us, in your heart of hearts?" From the smirk on her lips, Siles could tell she was only mocking him. She didn't believe the words she said.

Her logic was sound, however, so he responded seriously as a precaution. "Trust me, child. I wouldn't be threatening to cut your finger off if I wanted to help you. The only reason I ask is because rumors are a powerful force, one that I would like to nip in the bud."

Sonia shrugged. "You might just be confused. It can be difficult to acknowledge feelings of sympathy when you're surrounded by the opposite."

Siles found many aspects of his life confusing, but only those that involved August. He knew exactly how he wanted to help the peasants, and the plan didn't involve working with some haphazard rebellion.

And he had just realized something.

"You said she. You asked if 'she' was right. Who is she?"

Sonia pressed her lips together and stared stubbornly into the distance.

"You can't say I didn't warn you." Siles raised the knife and stepped behind Sonia's back, prying a finger loose from her clenched fists.

That particular knife was no good for cutting bone, which he would have known if he had known anything about torture. He tried to sever the finger in one go for the sake of his conscience, since Sonia still fell into the child category in his mind despite being on the latter half of the teenage scale. Instead, the knife stopped at the bone and Sonia's shriek made him jump, sending the blade clattering across the stone floor.

Siles swore under his breath as he retrieved it. He was lucky nobody was watching the wreck of an interrogation. When he turned back, Sonia had a film of tears over her eyes, but she maintained the same glare.

"Are you going to tell me now, or will I have to cut again?" Siles raised the bloodied knife.

A tear escaped the film to trickle down her cheek, but Sonia continued to glare. Siles paused. He still disliked her, of course. She played tricks with him and she represented the first rebellion to create real trouble in his decade-long career. But torture made his stomach writhe like battling snakes. He didn't want to do this, but he didn't trust anyone else to keep the rebels' secrets away from the other magicians.

Except August.

Siles looked at Sonia's tear-stained cheeks and immediately latched onto his newfound solution. He set the knife back on its shelf and left the torture chamber, restraining himself from running up the stairs so the dungeon guard wouldn't recognize his excitement. He knew how to get the answers he needed, and this way nobody would get hurt.

He should have thought of August earlier, but he had been making an active effort not to think about him. Every time he thought about August, confusion set in like a fog. He didn't understand August, he didn't understand their friendship, and he certainly didn't understand his own thoughts regarding the matter.

So instead of thinking about August, Siles kept his mind on Sonia as he brushed past the day guards to knock on August's door.

August opened the door within seconds, grinning as if Christmas had come agian. They hadn't seen each other since Siles' lapse of judgement two nights before, as Siles had left the day after to kidnap the rebels for questioning. "I recognized the way you knock," August said. "What is it? Anything exciting?"

Siles shook his head, shoving the memory of their embrace from his mind. I was just a hug. It was a friendly thing to do, nothing romantic. He didn't know why he kept thinking about it. He curtly explained his predicament, "I would like your help with interrogating the rebels."

August's smile faded. Siles felt like he had let him down, but no, it didn't matter. They ran a kingdom together and had professional duties. Not together. August ran the kingdom and Siles helped. Siles wished he could stop thinking. His life would be easier without a brain to clutter it with thought.

August didn't question his request, not initially at least. He followed him as they headed back to the dungeons, leaving the day guards behind. Once they had reached the end of the hall, he finally voiced the curiosity Siles had come to expect, "Why do you need help? Are the usual torture tactics not working?"

For some reason, Siles found his incompetence embarrassing now that he had to voice it aloud. He struggled to find the right words, "The thing is... well... I don't typically do the torturing. That's Veronica's job. I'm more of a quick kill get-it-over-with sort of guy."

"So you're too impatient for it?" August asked.

Siles scanned the empty hall for eavesdroppers and lowered his voice. "No, it makes me feel bad."

August smiled at him, a familiar warmth in his eyes. It was the kind of expression that made Siles wish he could hide behind his mask. "That's sweet of you," August said.

Siles scrambled for something else to talk about, something that would subdue his impulse to escape. "But anyway, this shouldn't take long. I only need to find out how they got their inside information on me, since I already know how their leader got into the castle," he explained.

"Their leader got into the castle? When?"

Siles paused at the top of the staircase to the dungeons. He hadn't considered how August would react to Sonia. He knew they had met and that he had used his powers to do something to her, but that was where his knowledge ended. "She was here recently. I believe you met her." Siles nodded to the guard outside the torture chamber and ushered August in.

Considering only a few minutes had passed since Siles had last seen her, Sonia looked considerably worse. Her face had adopted a ghostly pallor and each breath came as a gasp, but the puddle of blood beneath her was still a reasonable size. The pallor was just from the pain, Siles hoped. He didn't want her to die mid-interrogation. She stared at the ground when they entered the room.

"Are you willing to talk, now? Or will we have to resort to alternative methods?" Siles asked.

Sonia looked up with a snarl curling her lip, but it dropped the moment she saw August.

"Oh," August said. "You."

She attempted to shove her chair backwards, but it was bolted to the ground. "Stay away from me."

August shrugged apologetically. "Well, I don't need to touch you to read your mind. Just to search your memories." He walked around her, peering at the mess of blood behind her back, then glanced up at Siles with a baffled smile. "Did you give up on torturing her halfway through the finger?"

Siles scoffed. "No, I thought the knife would be sharp enough to go all the way through and it wasn't. Then I gave up."

Sonia had turned her head to watch August, but after his comment she looked back at Siles. "That wasn't intentional? Are you trying to mess with me? Is this some kind of torture mind game?"

August replied before Siles could attempt to answer. "No, he's just a sweetheart. He doesn't have the stomach for torture."

Siles winced. He had forgotten how little August cared about reputations. "I wouldn't call killing people for a living 'sweet'. So, miss Sonia. Do you want to tell us who your source is, or do you want the King to pry it from you?"

August spoke before Sonia could respond, "I can see her. It's the little servant girl. What's her name again? She's the one you saved a while back."

Horror flashed across Sonia's face as she realized August had read her mind, then confusion as she processed what he had said. "So you really are nice," she said, looking at Siles with a much softer expression than her usual glare.

Siles pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to think. He couldn't hurt Lucy, but she was clearly a threat to the castle's safety. He wished it had been some other servant, any other servant. He barely knew the other ones. "August, can you scare people? Could you make Lucy terrified to share any more castle secrets?"

"Lucy! Her name was on the tip of my tongue. And yes, I can do that." August paced back to the front of the room and smiled at Sonia. "I'm kind of proud of you, running a rebellion like this. It's nice to know that leadership runs in the family." Then he paused, as if listening to a voice nobody else could hear. "Someone named Gillian started the rebellion? Well then that's just disappointing."

Siles' heart dropped. He wouldn't be able to release Gillian back to her mother after all. August noticed his distress immediately, making Siles yearn for his mask once again. "Are you alright?" August asked him.

"Gillian's the nice one," Siles explained. There was no point acting stoic now that Sonia knew Lucy had told the truth.

"Oh. That's unfortunate." August stared at the puddle of blood in thought, then looked up with excitement. "I could pardon her. I could pardon all of them. I'd just have to fix their minds up so they don't start another rebellion."

Sonia looked more horrified by August's proposition than she had been by any of Siles' threats. "I would rather rot in this dungeon than let you mess with my mind," she growled.

"We can arrange for that," August said. He amended his statement after looking at Siles. "We will still extend the offer to your friends, of course."

They did extend the offer to her friends, though Siles should have expected that they would reject it. With the exception of Brackson, none of Sonia's companions even considered exchanging their capacity to rebel for their freedom. Brackson, the one Siles cared the least about, took the offer, and within seconds August had cleared his mind of rebellious thoughts and of his castle-servant knowledge. He walked free from his cell and straight up the stairs, set on a predetermined course back to Amery.

August moved on from the rebels after that. Siles was jealous of August's ability to ignore the things he could do nothing about. Even though Siles knew he had no legal option to help Gillian, the thought of the three girls, only children, growing old in the castle's damp dungeons made him feel sick. But August ignored the girls' glares as he passed their cell, stopping before the door to the torture chamber as if trying to recall something he had forgotten. Siles was so disappointed about failing to save Gillian that he forgot the same thing.

"Right!" August exclaimed. Both Siles and the guard jolted at the sudden sound. August knocked on the door of the torture chamber. "You should bring the girl in there to the infirmary."

The guard obliged, ducking into the dark room where Sonia looked especially pale in the candlelight. He untied her from the metal chair and supported her as they walked from the room. It wasn't until he reached the door that he paused, looking back and forth from August to Sonia as the gears turned slowly in his head.

"You two look very similar," he remarked.

"We're siblings," August explained. "Of course, she grew up with my birth parents, not in the royal city like myself."

The guard frowned. "Is she going to get special treatment, then?"

August scoffed. "No. But I imagine she'll die if she doesn't get that fixed." He motioned towards the trail of blood that had followed Sonia from the chamber.

The guard nodded. "Right. I'll get on that."

August and Siles followed them up from the dungeons, but split along different halls when they reached the top. The halls were especially maze-like at the ends of the castle, with some intersections splitting off in ten different directions. Siles remembered seeing August wandering with a map like a lost explorer when he had first earned his position on the Council. He hadn't helped him, of course. The Queen had occupied his time back then.

August moved confidently, now. He led the way back to the center of the castle, stopping at the intersection that led to the right towards the stairs to the southern quarters or to the left towards the twenty-foot arched door that served as the castle's main entrance to the outside.

August looked to the door and then to Siles. "Have you thought of another reason to leave the city?"

Siles squinted into the distance. "Unfortunately, I can't think of one."

August smiled and draped his arm over Siles' shoulders. So naturally, as they headed back to his quarters, he began to panic. August had done this before, back when they had only just met. It could be nothing more than a friendly gesture. Except much more had happened since then, which meant gestures meant much more now. Siles took a deep breath. His worst fear had returned, and he had run out of excuses to escape. Fortunately, he had planned for this. He mentally recited the explanation he had devised the night they had embraced, and looked up at August to speak.

The words didn't come. He didn't want to say anything. After the stress of the past week, August's affection was comforting. Siles couldn't help but notice how much calmer the world seemed with August by his side. He forced himself to stop reciting the speech he would never tell, to stop thinking about his reputation. He was comfortable like this, even if he told himself he shouldn't be. Other magicians would see, and the rumors would spread, but Siles had lived without friendship for ten years. He leaned into August. He didn't want to be lonely any more.