To be fair to her, Xan started earning her pay right from the get-go. When the first Bertie Boy stepped into the doorway, exposing his gloating leer, she cracked him in the nose with a left uppercut and let him fall back, dazed, into the arms of his pals behind him.

We weren’t going to do it their way. Weren’t going to go along quietly.

When they made sounds, trying to threaten and bluster, I silenced them, blanketing their faces in Zab’s power, letting them mouth noiseless protests; when they crowded forwards, trying to fill the doorway with their bodies and strike at us with their knives, I cast them back, crushing them against the far wall, watching them struggle pointlessly against my barriers.

“Careful, Feychilde,” Tanra said from behind me in a worried tone. “You’ll kill them. They can’t breathe like that.”

“Shame.” I whipped my head around to stare at her. “And you’re being too cautious. Call me Kas.” I turned back to regard the Bertie Boys. “You guys already know who I am, right?”

They gargled.

I stepped into the hall inside the door and removed my mask, showing them my face. “It’s a secret you’ll take to your graves, believe me…”

Even in their current fatal predicament, they seemed to cringe all the more now that they could see my expression.

“Kas!” Tanra barked.

I sighed, then cut off my shields, letting my prisoners fall groaning to the mucky carpet.

“Coming?” I asked, proceeding past them.

“Okay, but no more shielding through walls,” the seeress muttered. “You could end up pushing someone through a weak wall, bring the whole place down.” She caught my over-the-shoulder glance, and hissed: “I’m not joking.”

The building had four storeys above ground and included an extensive basement area, according to Tanra. Wyre used the whole thing for his business needs, and right now there seemed to be an unbelievable amount of Bertie Boys in the place, all of them wanting a piece of the action.

There was enough action to go around.

Xan took on a guy at least twice her weight – she dodged his clumsy attempt to grapple her and targeted his unfortunately-exposed anatomical area with a swift kick.

Tanra seemed to finally get in the mood. She actually chirped with pleasure as she delivered open-handed slap after open-handed slap, her speed granting each strike the force of a hammer-blow. Teeth flew from their mouths to bounce off the walls, pinging like stones flung from a sling.

I copied her, utilising the reflexes and strength of my satyr to manhandle them, tapping traces of the wraith-form where necessary… It was like fighting little children. I hurled one through a table, and managed to wedge the next head-first in some kind of waste-bin.

Daggers, and indeed all thoughts of resistance, were soon abandoned.

“I do hope you’re going to be good Boys from now on,” I said, bopping Mr. Waste-Bin-Head-Man on the waste-bin-head and following Tanra and Xan out of the room.

Stairs. More idiots, with knives.

More stairs. More idiots, with crossbows.

The last set of stairs. The worst of the idiots, with frostbolts, imps, and self-healing.

Non-lethal attacks left roughly half of them comatose, the remainder abandoned to sort out their broken bones once they recovered from their stupors.

“Through here.”

Tanra kept her mask on, so it was the frowning face of Killstop that Wyre Lulton saw first. Then the iron glare of Xantaire. Finally, Feychilde, unmasked.

We stepped into the room. It wasn’t large – just an office. Wyre was sitting there behind the desk, a rake-thin older man in ancient-looking leather armour; his hair was grey but his face was remarkably unmarked by age.

For now. This might age him.

Orven – there he was, the scraggly-bearded, scruffy-looking murderer, cringing behind his dad’s chair… Another half-dozen Bertie Boys were here too, standing to attention, crossbows readied, with nervous faces and nervous trigger-fingers – but I barely noticed them. I kept struggling to put the outermost shields down, the state I was in. Missiles didn’t worry me.

“Wyre Lulton.” I moved my eyes. “And Orven.”

“Feychilde,” Wyre grated. “Or should I say –“

“We can dispense with the usual barbs,” I demurred, my voice rolling across the space, easily drowning him out and then some. “Where are my brother and sister? We’ll discuss your punishment after.”

“You think I’d be stupid enough to bring ‘em here?” Wyre laughed. “If y’ could only see your face, Kastyr, my boy…”

Killstop tilted her head at him. “The twins are… hold that thought…”

She vanished, a streak of pinks and greens and oranges heading back out the door onto the landing.

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Wyre just shook his head. “You’ll never find ‘em. You –“

“Excuse me,” I thundered. “It’s rude to interrupt. You don’t understand. What we are. What a mistake you’ve made.”

He flinched, finally – then suddenly he lifted the end of a rope from his lap and started tugging on it frantically.

Summoning reinforcements? I wondered. Has he got anyone left?

“… safe at home,” Tanra finished as she came to a stop beside me again.

And I could breathe once more.

I felt the sudden stillness in my soul, a tranquillity born of salvation, peace and relaxation washing over me like a warm waterfall unstoppered somewhere over my head – but even then I sensed the way Xantaire next to me was only becoming more and more tense.

Tanra continued: “Wyre… dear gods, Wyre… what were you thinking? Keeping them in the basement? Do you really believe your cronies would’ve killed them when you sent the signal? – even if I hadn’t cut your rope?”

The crime-lord of Helbert’s Bend tugged some more on his rope-end, and reeled it in until he came to a neatly-sliced section of the cord. He stared at it in horror.

“Just so you know, the guys down there were so scared after they heard us moving upstairs, one of them actually started trying to knock out his mates, just so I wouldn’t punish him…”

“You were trying to kill them,” I cut in, speaking as straightforwardly as possible so that I didn’t make any mistakes. I was still trying to wrap my head around this. “After everything, everything I could do to you – you’re pulling on your rope? You’re trying to kill them.”

“I’m trying to kill them?” Wyre snarled. “What about me? What about me and mine, Feychilde? What about my boy’s heart?”

“Him,” Xan interrupted, pointing at Wyre’s ‘boy’. “I want that thing. That dog-lookin’ thing. Yeah. You. Don’t you look away from me! Don’t you dare! You…”

I had to put out my hand, take her by the shoulder to remind her charging across the room into their dagger-blades wouldn’t be strictly advisable. Not that she’d be in any danger – but Tanra would start to lecture us about almost crushing people to death against walls again, or making her catch projectiles with her bare hands, and that was just no fun at all.

Orven shrank down, hiding himself fully behind his father’s chair, and Wyre snapped: “Loose!”

Crossbow bolts sprang forwards about three or four feet, then spun off, clattering against the walls and furniture – one went cartwheeling back at a Bertie Boy’s head, and he was forced to duck.

Slowly, in dawning realisation of their impotence, they lowered their weapons. Xantaire laughed coldly, and shrugged my hand from her shoulder.

“I don’t get it,” I said. “Why did you bring it to this? Why escalate? My identity… my brother and sister…”

“What exactly doan you get about it?” The boss-man was leaning heavily on the table in front of him, unblinking eyes fixed on my face. Considering his situation, he was remarkably calm. “What, am I s’pposed to just sit ‘ere, waitin’ for you to turn up? I waited long enough, damn it! What I doan get is how you found out! Who tattled, eh? Who told you?”

I was looking at him quizzically. “Wait for me to turn up? I’m not a magister or a watchman – I’ve gone out of my way to avoid wrecking your operations, cos I know what it’d do to the streets… If you think it takes someone tattling to find out who runs things in Helbert’s Bend and where they’re based, you’re underestimating your repu…“

I halted as Killstop drew in her breath suddenly – I turned to look at her, and she took me by the arm.

“Kas – Kas, we need to leave. Stop wanting to be here. Please.”

There was something in her voice. Worse than warning.

“Then why aren’t you carrying me?” I muttered.

“Y-your shield will read it as ill-intent. Kas…”

I frowned. “Why do we need to leave, exactly?”

Even an arch-diviner couldn’t always control their automatic responses – I saw her eyes flicker to Wyre then straight back to me.

She’s hiding something.

“’E don’t know, boss,” one of the Bertie Boys whispered.

Wyre made a quick gesture using only his eyes, a glare that promised a painful death, falling squarely upon the whisperer.

My eyes followed his – then I realised.

“Oh – it’s you. Hadin Rovermun.”

I stared at the dishevelled thief – his eyes widened, and he looked left and right at his colleagues, as though there could be another Hadin Rovermun hiding somewhere in the crowd.

“M-me?”

“You – you’re the one who gave me this.” I raised my fingers to my cheek, the old curved scar of smooth-textured tissue, and laughed. “Gods – Hadin…”

It must’ve sounded threatening, because the unkempt man started quivering. “I – I don’t even remember! Pl-please! I didden wanna be here – please, let me go!”

He’s burnt his last bridge with Wyre, I realised, looking between the two of them as the boss shifted position slightly –

Then Wyre hurled a dagger from out of nowhere; it buried itself in the side of Hadin’s neck, and the man toppled, spraying blood and gurgling.

“Really, Killstop?” I murmured, not looking aside at her.

She truly must have been distracted by something going on here, I realised, even as I produced Avaelar in a flash of ostentatious green fire, pointing at the dying man.

Wyre and one of the other Bertie Boys tried to stab my sylph as he stepped out of the shield’s protections, but the massive bronze-skinned fey just gripped their wrists, reacting with oily precision. He gifted them some reproving looks, and when he released them they let him go about his business, retrieving Hadin and carrying him back into my barriers.

That was one whose ill-will had evaporated.

Does he really think I’d be upset over some old scar? I wondered as Avaelar removed the knife and started treating him. Memories of that part of my life were painful, but that was due to my parents dying… A little cut on the face? Was this what Tanra was worrying about?

These guys obviously thought we just sat there lounging around looking for things to do all day – if they realised how busy we were all the time, dealing with actual serious issues, they’d know we wouldn’t have time to fret over such minor trivialities.

“Leave, Bertie Boys,” I said quietly. “It’s only Orven and Wyre we want.”

“At last,” Xan growled.

The boss’s control over them had broken, and they virtually fell over themselves to get out of the room. I recognised a couple of them from the night Telrose Gaum almost burnt himself alive, the night Tanra got her powers, as they filed past me.

The shield let them through. They’d all had a change of heart, it seemed.

Wyre shouted at their retreating backs, then sat down, spent – now his age came upon him, warping his face, making sandpaper of his forehead – while Orven pranced from foot to foot in horror.

Then the no-longer-gurgling Hadin reached out a bloody hand for me – he wasn’t close enough to grab me, cradled as he was against my sylph’s huge chest, but he got my attention –

And everything stopped – not just slowed, stopped.

“Okay, Kas.”

I looked back to my other side, where Tanra was still holding onto my arm.

“What is it? What’s going on, Tanra?”

“I’ve looked through the options available to me. Unless I fight you, or bring help to do the same, I can’t stop you. You’re going to find out.”

“Find out? Find out what?”

She reached up, tipped back her mask; I could see the pallor of her skin. Her eyelids were lowered, and it was as though she moved a mountain, lifting her gaze to meet mine – then when she did, she instantly averted her face again.

“Are – are you okay?” I looked down at her hand gripping my forearm, then put my hand over hers. “Tell me.”

“He,” her eyes shifted uncontrollably to Wyre again, “he killed them, Kas.” The sound out of her throat was a dry whisper out of the void, smaller than the first pebble that starts an avalanche which has been waiting ten thousand years for the moment to arrive. “He killed your parents.”

* * *