The warehouse was huge, containing row upon row of shelves, housing glass vials in all different shapes and sizes; the place was well-lit by Spiritwhisper’s steady sunbeams, and less-so by Stormsword’s flickering silver ribbons. Ibbalat was scouring the shadows for our foe – a spell of his own making was shining in his eyes, a wane-leaf of his own procuring in his teeth; he was looking extremely keen and excited to be here.

The rest of us were being perhaps a tad less active.

“I shwear, it vosh a rat,” Em mumbled, teetering on the air.

“He’s not a rat,” Tanra hissed, “he’s a gnat. Tiny.”

“Tiny-tiny,” the drunken wizard mumbled on in a sing-song voice. “Teeny tiny rat…”

“Gnat,” I said, stifling my laughter as I cast about. I couldn’t see the dark-druid anywhere, or hear him, or smell him…

Em looked over at me like I’d slapped her.

“Come on Kash, admit it, you lurbe her. You think she shaved the shity – agaaain.”

It was a mixture of emotions – the alcohol made me want to titter incredulously, but I went cold inside, just a little, and did perhaps the stupidest thing possible in this situation – I glanced over at Tanra before replying.

“I think someone’s had a bit too much to –“

“Alvay shugging her – ‘oh look, I hit her in ze head again, vhat a mishtake’ –“ she managed to gasp mockingly without being sick, but not without hiccuping “– better give her a hug – you think she’sh attractive –”

“Of course I don’t,” I snapped, “have you seen you?”

“Uh oh,” Anathta said ominously, using the exact same intonation as Tanra had last night when Em overheard Ana calling her out.

“Sho she’sh not attractive.”

I glanced over at the seeress again, guiltily this time, sensing the frostiness emanating from that direction. Tanra’s hands were on her hips in mid-air, staring at me and being no help at all. Bor was looking back and forth between us.

“Of course she’s attractive, but it’s not like I’m attracted to –“

“Sho you admit it! You like her!”

“No, I’m just trying to be honest…”

“Why’re you tryin’ to do a stupid thing like that?” Bor asked, chortling.

“Yes, you! A shtupid thing, ishn’t it?” Em burst out, pointing accusatorily at the enchanter. “Putting your armsh round me on ze shtairsh!”

I looked between the two of them, the little trace of cold inside me suddenly becoming an icicle big enough to wound, sharp enough to scratch my heart.

“What stairs?” I asked.

“Before ze Gazzering!”

“Nah – that was nothin’ like that.” Spirit scowled. “An arm. Friendly, like.”

It sounded reasonable. He sounded reasonable. It was obvious that, given his powers, if he’d intended something more he could’ve done whatever he wanted to our minds – could’ve made Em forget…

But he wouldn’t. He was Bor. If he was dark, the whole world might as well be.

Still, I couldn’t help but get angry with him. Every time he elbowed me during fortify games came back to me in a single flash, a single re-experiencing.

“Well, why were you putting your arm around her?” I drifted closer to Em. “What was the point?”

“Hey, man, your missus ain’t wrong – why are you always tryin’ to get your arms all over mine?”

“Yours?” Tanra flared.

“I’m not!” I cried, incensed at the suggestion. “If you’d rather I leave her on the ground when she’s hurt –“

“I have a name,” the seeress snapped at me.

“A name I can’t use!” I gestured blankly at the shelves where a dark-druid probably wasn’t hiding anymore.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“Oh, hi, I’m Killstop,” she grated.

I understood. Now she was helping. We could argue with each other in front of them. That might work.

I opened my mouth to retort, but Bor cut me off:

“Look! See, somethin’ just passed between them then, did you see his eyes? Man, I don’t even need my powers… Come on – I don’t just mean in the heretic attack – it happened last week when that big critter was in the Greywater, didn’t it! Carryin’ her round again… And why are you always takin’ her aside, whisperin’ together?”

“And all ze… hic!… shecret little looksh…” Em said, glaring at me when she wasn’t blinking. I think she was running about ten seconds behind.

“Maybe I should just take a look,” Bor muttered, looking aside, “find out for myself.”

“You won’t do that,” Tanra said.

I felt my eyes widening in fear. If they found out what we knew – gods, the feeling of liberation… I could imagine it washing over me, releasing me from this self-imposed imprisonment even as it bound me to the inescapable consequences.

What exactly might happen, I wasn’t sure. If Em realised we were saying heretical things, would she kill us on the spot? I couldn’t imagine her killing me, but – Tanra? Honestly, I had no idea. Bor could be even more dangerous, if he was inclined to be… We couldn’t tell them that we had some notion of the Heretics’ aims – not without the irony of them wanting to kill us, for being potential killers…

Whoever came up with this system was truly stupid. Bad ideas needed bringing out into the open and confronting, especially the most persuasive bad ideas – that was just common wisdom, the only way for such things to be defeated, dispelled for good. Very bad ideas – like, oh, say, ‘kill everyone in Mund’ – definitely needed bringing out into the open.

The epiphany was there on the tip of my figurative tongue, but my ale-befuddled brain couldn’t quite grasp the ramifications.

Unless they’re right, and the Magisterium knows it… Death is the only answer?

No, that couldn’t be it.

I looked between Bor and Em, only now realising they were frozen. Ibb and Ana had wisely drifted away down another aisle while we argued and I hadn’t even noticed at the time, but I could tell from their shadows that they weren’t moving either.

I turned my gaze back to Tanra.

Was she going to drag me over the coals?

“Sorry, about that… You know as well as me there’s nothing between us, right? You’re hot, sure, but you’re a good friend, and you know you’re not the one for –“

“Kas.” She sighed. “Of course I know… But why didn’t I bring a druid? I should’ve been more careful. Even Kani might’ve been able to un-drunk the lot of you…”

“We’d have had to deal with this at some stage, sooner or later,” I pointed out. “They were always going to get suspicious. What’s our escape route look like?”

“Bor’s really tempted to look in our heads, you know,” she whispered, sounding frightened all of a sudden. “And he really isn’t the sort, trust me. I… I don’t know what to do. We don’t have to do much, we don’t need long, but if we’re going to head it off we have to do something…”

“If we play on their faith in us – if we just tell them, ‘look, there’s something we can’t tell you, but don’t you trust us to be doing the right thing?’… What happens then?”

She was shaking her head. “It’s the ‘please don’t tell anyone else’ that’s the worst –“

“Then we don’t say that!“

“It doesn’t work; it just goes wrong in different ways. Talking about any of this stuff, it only stops them trusting us, and it always – goes – wrong.”

“What does going wrong look like?”

“I don’t know exactly!” She folded her arms across her chest, twisted in the air. “Other diviners get involved at some point and the fabric just tears.”

“Then… we let it tear.”

“No,” she said, clearly suppressing a shudder. “No, we can’t –“

“Look – you showed me tonight, you and Duskdown. Your sight is a crutch, Tanra. If you can’t account for everything, you can’t account for anything. So, it goes wrong. You say every way we do it, it goes wrong. Well, let’s let it go wrong the right way. Do the right thing. Tell as much of the truth as we can without endangering them… and without endangering us.”

“But it will – we could both be killed for this!”

“Or maybe we end up with allies – think, Tanra! If Irimar knew what we knew –“

“It’s a fantasy, Kas. Our futures fall right off the scales. Revealing anything is like, like pouring a bottomless jug of water on our heads. Funny at first. Tolerable. But we’ll drown eventually. Our skulls will cave in. It won’t be so funny then.”

“Yearsend gifts! Would they believe it if we said we’d been collaborating on gifts?”

She stared at me like I was knee-high to her, barely even speaking Mundic.

“Well, what do you propose then?”

She laughed lightly. “Oh, that’s right. Haha, I didn’t see that! Thanks, Kas!”

“What?” I asked, baffled.

“There’s a distraction coming up, and if I play my cards right…”

“Distraction?”

“… We might buy a few weeks’ reprieve at least. We’re going to have to be more careful in future, though…”

“Wha…?”

“Let’s see,” she said, as though I had any idea what she was talking about.

Time resumed its normal flow – and Tanra slid through the air towards Bor, then brought her body up into a kneeling position, robes trailing down around her.

“Love of my life,” she intoned in a mock-sombre voice, “wilt thou take me to be thy bride? If thou seekst…” she sniggered “… a gesture of mine intent, take of me an eternity.” I heard her voice crack. “I-I am but a humble woman, yet all I ha-hath shall be thine shouldst thou consent to be my husb-ha-haaa…”

The ridiculousness of this startling turn of events broke the tension effortlessly; he grabbed her and hugged her, telling her to shut up and laughing along with her as her attempt at highborn-speech devolved into cackling; Em’s eyes were wide with shock and a growing sense of… embarrassment?

The sheer ease with which the seeress had flipped the argument on its head, using her lunacy to our advantage, was truly legendary. Em had gone from outraged to abashed in the space of seconds…

It was incredible. It was… scary.

I went to my girlfriend wearing my best grin, took her hands and –

“Could it be more of a midge?” I heard Ibbalat muttering to Anathta on one of the adjacent rows.

I’d forgotten all about the dark-druid. I only understood what Tanra meant as the villain we’d been pursuing took advantage of our non-archmage companions, transforming into some huge, hairy behemoth and knocking over several shelving units.

Thousands of glass vials exploded into shards. The whole stack collapsed and two aisles became one.

Ah yes. Distraction.