He had anticipated needing to bargain. He'd expected the men of the Watch to be clustered thick around the East Gate, just as they were most nights, ensuring that none of the low-born fighters stumbled out into the mage quarter in their drunkenness instead of going out the South Gate where they belonged. When Mirk slipped through the magical barrier at the end of the alleyway that connected the City of Glass to London, what he found waiting for him on the other side puzzled him so badly he thought he must have taken the wrong passage.

The plaza just within the gate was empty. Mirk stumbled forward a few steps, rubbing at the aching in his midsection that came along with being moved by magical means. Cautiously, he drifted over nearer the Watch station, peering past its open door, wondering if the men had decided to take refuge inside from the cold and damp. The lamps were lit. But the wedge of table Mirk could glimpse without venturing fully inside was unoccupied, a game of cards lying abandoned at its center.

He lowered his shields and searched for the missing men with his empathy. There was no pain, nor the peaceful, fuzzy feeling of anyone dozing just out of sight. But Mirk did feel the touch of a familiar, cold, staticky magic nearby. Sighing, he pulled his shields up and went back through the gate to the mage quarter without pursuing its source.

Am-Hazek was right where he'd left him in the next alley over, beside a closed apothecary. The djinn was watching something at the far end of the alley through the fog, though he didn't seem disturbed by whatever it was. Only curious. "Monsieur Am-Hazek," Mirk whispered to him, waving a hand to catch his attention. "Did you and Genesis have some sort of plan?"

"Pardon, seigneur?"

"All the Watch men are, euh, gone."

Am-Hazek laughed, shifting his hold on his box. Mirk wondered if that was part of whatever ruse he and Genesis were playing at. "No, we didn't have a prior arrangement. But I do believe you're correct in assuming that the commander has done something with them. I suggest we trust him for the time being. Personally, I'd much prefer walking through the gate to having to climb over the wall."

Mirk led Am-Hazek back to the gate, hugging himself against the cold and the inevitable sting of passing through the magical barrier between the City and the mage quarter once more. It wasn't quite as bad as a standard teleportation spell, but much stronger than the floor barriers in the infirmary. He should have guessed that Genesis would do something like this and spared himself the trouble by bringing Am-Hazek along with the first time through.

Am-Hazek looked uncomfortable as well, his face thrown into shadow by the dim light cast from the magelights above the gate, but his curiosity seemed stronger than his discomfort. At least for the moment. "The commander mentioned a lean-to...?" Am-Hazek asked into the unnatural silence.

"Over here," Mirk said, gesturing him toward the Watch station. The lean-to — more like a shack — was on its far side. A place for storing extra armor and equipment in the event of an attack on the City's walls, Genesis had told him that morning. It looked the same as it had when Mirk had passed by on his way to Madame Beaumont's a few hours ago, dark and padlocked. Mirk approached first, reaching out to tug on the lock. It fell open without any resistance.

"Messire?" Mirk hissed, tapping hesitantly on the door. It took him a moment to switch back to English. "Are you there?"

There was no response. But the staticky magic Mirk had felt earlier was more intense there, strong enough for Mirk to be able to feel it clear through his mental shielding. He tapped on the magelight around his wrist and pushed the door open.

All things considered, it wasn't as gruesome as Mirk had been expecting.

Late at night, there were upwards of two dozen Watch men stationed at every gate, half of them always in a state of coming or going to support the patrols tasked with roaming the City's taverns and backstreets in search of fights to break up. There were only two unconscious guardsmen stashed in the lean-to, propped up against its far wall, as motionless as the extra armor and polearms they were nestled among. They had no stab wounds, no limbs knocked akimbo by blows that had pushed joints out of line. There were only faint rings of bruises around their necks, ones Mirk wouldn't have spotted if he hadn't seen that handiwork before. On other low-level fighters and Watch men who dragged themselves into the infirmary before dawn with scrapes on their palms and goose-eggs on their heads and no idea what had caused them. He'd always had his suspicions about what had happened to the men, though most of the other healers were quick to dismiss them as nothing more than the usual drunks. But having it confirmed still made something in the middle of Mirk's chest ache.

Genesis was waiting for them in the lean-to, just as he'd promised he would be. In the dark. Beside a table that'd been cleared of its supplies, aside from a collection of thaumaturgical instruments Mirk didn't know the purpose of lined up precisely along its edge.

"Did you have to, Genesis?" Mirk asked, gesturing at the unconscious men. In his heart, he already knew the answer. But he had to raise the question nevertheless.

The commander nodded, once. "At all times...two men must remain at the gate. This is the first thing they are trained in. No means are adequate to remove them beyond a...direct application of force."

Am-Hazek sidestepped around Mirk and slipped inside the lean-to — he didn't seem very comfortable inside, but evidently preferred his odds there, in a cramped space suffused by Genesis's chaotic aura, than out on the street where any passer-by could spot him. "What must I do, Comrade Genesis?"

"I was unable to accommodate a chair. You'll have to lie on the table."

While Genesis and Am-Hazek got situated, Mirk went to check on the two Watch men. The rest of their team hadn't left their strongest defenders behind to watch the gate. A young man — boy, really — of fifteen at most, and another whose mustache and hair had gone white with age, though his face bore more scars than wrinkles. Mirk felt for their heartbeats and checked their breathing one after the other. Even and slow in both cases, and the bruises around their necks were superficial, doing no damage to the bones and tendons. He sensed very little magical potential in either of them. Just enough to make it difficult to lead a mortal life, Mirk guessed, but not enough to make a decent living as anything more than a laborer for a guild. Or as a Watch man in the K'maneda, if their past was too checkered or their personality too difficult for the guild mages to tolerate.

At least neither of them had gotten scraped or banged up, Mirk supposed. A small blessing.

When he turned back to face the table, Am-Hazek had laid down on it as instructed, keeping as much of his dignity about himself as he could by folding his coat and using it as a makeshift pillow, his hands clasped primly atop his stomach, just like the last time Mirk had healed him. Genesis was tending to his devices, twisting dials and setting levers as he arranged them in an odd, clockwork halo around Am-Hazek's head. "What do those all do?" Mirk asked him.

"Fatima requested...concrete measurements of his responses. As she could not attend, she provided me with these instead."

That surprised Mirk. "She made all those?"

"A specialty of hers." Genesis frowned, as he toggled a switch on one of the devices. A blue-tinted magelight illuminated on its side. "I am of the opinion that...exact measurements are less useful in this case, owing to the...variability in djinn magic. An observation of generalities would perhaps leave open more avenues for consideration."

Am-Hazek had no opinion of his own to offer on the matter. He was beginning to look pale, though his mastery over his expressions still held. Mirk couldn't tell if the remaining resonance between his magic and Am-Gulat's was paining Am-Hazek, or if he was hurting because Genesis's chaotic aura grew more intense the more annoyed he became at something. And it was clear to Mirk that all the devices were testing the commander's patience. Knowing that there were good odds of him not being able to understand any of Genesis's responses even if he kept questioning him, Mirk chose to focus on Am-Hazek instead, standing beside him and putting a reassuring hand on his arm, just for a moment. "How are you feeling, monsieur?"

"It's tolerable, seigneur," Am-Hazek replied. "Though the burning has begun."

With all the devices set up, Genesis turned his attention toward Am-Hazek as well. It was hard to make out his exact expression in the dim glow of the magelight around his wrist, but Mirk got the impression he was more fascinated by Am-Hazek than concerned with his well-being. The one thing Mirk could be certain of was that his eyes had gone black. Genesis lifted one hand, calling a coil of shadow around it.

Am-Hazek winced. There was a definite redness around Am-Hazek's neck now, though no blisters had erupted just yet.

Genesis frowned, calling more shadows to himself. "This is...unexpected. Djinn are uniformly ordered, correct?"

"Correct, comrade," Am-Hazek replied, his voice wavering a little on the second word.

"But the universal chaos precludes no possibilities entirely," Genesis said, mostly to himself.

"I'm afraid I couldn't say. Comrade."

"A question. Did you experience...difficulty in mimicking Am-Gulat's patterns? An...inability to be precise?"

It took a few moments for Am-Hazek to collect his thoughts, to remember and put them into words. "Yes. Am-Gulat is much younger than I am. Young djinn are less skilled at mastering all four elements in a balance that suits them. I suggested that it may be better for him to give his message to one of the other djinn and send him to the sewers in his place. But they all insisted that Am-Gulat got the opportunity to speak to you himself. He has survived the longest of all the djinn presently in the City. They are loyal to him."

"Why has he survived? In your opinion?"

"Temperament, perhaps," Am-Hazek said. But before he could continue, he had to pause and catch his breath, bite his lip. The blistering had begun.

Mirk lowered the shields around his mind, to better keep an eye on Am-Hazek’s magic and the odd, shifting core of his life's energy. The fiery part of him was being drawn up by something Mirk couldn't make out, pushed out of his control, wounding him in the process just as badly as the aftereffects of whatever spell he'd used to switch places with Am-Gulat. The unease caused by the presence of Genesis's chaotic potential wasn't helping. It was destabilizing Am-Hazek's mastery of his elements, drawing the fire out of his core to join the remnants of the spell on his neck. The last time this had happened, Mirk was sure it was just the spell working on him, not his own magic. "Or maybe he has learned to work around the magic in his collar by testing it constantly,” Am-Hazek concluded, his voice low and strained. “The others said his neck is almost always swollen."

"It’s meant to...repulse my magic. In a sense. Resist it. Can you still feel this?"

"...yes. Very clearly."

"Do you feel anything else?"

Am-Hazek closed his eyes as he thought. His hands were no longer clasped on his stomach. They were clenched at his sides, his knuckles as pale as his face above the angry red welts rising in a band around his neck. "I don't know. As I said, Am-Gulat's magic was very unsettled. I am surprised my own has remembered how to mimic his patterns for this long."

"It is...difficult to bind something that is always changing," Genesis said. He wasn't looking at Am-Hazek, not anymore. He was picking a few invisible specks of lint off the sleeve of his overcoat. "Even a mage who is skilled at binding magic would have limited success."

"That would be the basic principle, comrade." Am-Hazek swallowed hard. "Are you nearly through? I am feeling quite unwell."

Genesis scanned all the ticking, whirring devices around Am-Hazek's head. The blue magelight on the device closest to Am-Hazek's head winked out. "The devices have recorded what they need."

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Mirk set in on Am-Hazek straight away, helping him sit up as he reached for the djinn's neck. To give him the control granted by regaining his dignity, even if Genesis's magic was still unsettling him. The instant Mirk's fingers closed around his neck, he heard the odd ringing of Am-Hazek's magic as it rushed to meet him. Every time Mirk touched Am-Hazek's magic, it felt like healing him became easier. Like he was healing himself, somehow, his own element and orientation mirrored exactly by Am-Hazek's. In some ways, healing Am-Hazek was the opposite of healing Genesis. His was always resistant, needed arguing with, no matter how agreeable the commander himself was feeling. It took much less of his potential than Mirk expected to make the blisters around Am-Hazek's neck fade away, though his skin remained reddened.

"My thanks, seigneur," Am-Hazek said, after letting out a deep, relieved sigh.

"De rien, monsieur," Mirk replied, helping him swing his legs off the side of the table and stand.

He wanted to spirit Am-Hazek away from the lean-to and back through the gate as soon as possible. But now that his neck had been healed and he didn't have the examination looming over him, Am-Hazek's curiosity was drawn by all the devices Genesis was loading back into his overcoat, only after recording certain numbers and figures on a pad of paper with one of his strange self-filling quills. "Did you learn anything, comrade?" Am-Hazek asked him.

"More about Am-Gulat than the collars themselves. However, there may be a...conclusion to be drawn from that." Genesis paused, thinking. "I suspect that the original spell used to craft them involved a good deal of light magic. Ordered."

Am-Hazek and Mirk exchanged a look. Mirk thought he could see worry in it. Or maybe resignation. "Seigneur d'Aumont is an ordered light mage," Mirk said, voicing their concern for the benefit of Genesis, who was too preoccupied by Fatima’s devices to catch on to what they'd left unsaid.

"Then the logical next step would be to...investigate the exact signature of d'Aumont's magic," Genesis said.

"I'll see what I can do. Methinks maybe at the next meeting of the Circle...well, I'll do my best, in any case. It'd be better if you went now, monsieur," Mirk said to Am-Hazek. "I'll be sure to write you and Madame Beaumont right away once we find out anything more about the collars."

"Please do, seigneur." Am-Hazek paused, seeming to suddenly remember something. The box he'd brought with him, which he'd set down atop a crate near the door. "And do..."

Am-Hazek paused halfway to the door, his hand raised to seize the box, but stopping just short of it. He quickly backtracked away from the door, cramming himself into the furthest corner of the lean-to instead. "Comrade, I believe we—"

"I am aware," Genesis said, frowning. Suddenly his voice had taken on a hissing edge. "I told them to take Pavel with them. They didn't listen. Thus...the consequences."

Mirk felt the approaching Watch men before he could open his mouth to ask what was happening. His shields were still half-lowered, to keep a watchful mental eye on Am-Hazek until he was free of the City's magic. He heard the two men almost as soon as he felt them. Their magical potential was as slight as those of the two other guards still sleeping amidst the equipment. Though their emotions were fairly loud, once Mirk thought to look for them. Frustration. Anger. Fatigue.

The emotions helped Mirk make sense of their words through the thin wood of the lean-to, since they both spoke in that sing-song London accent he still had trouble understanding. "Fucking Bavarians, picking a fight with them Russians. And all officers too!"

"Fucking officers got less sense than a pisspot."

"Pisspot's at least good to piss in, innit?"

The two men shared a laugh as the door to the lean-to swung open. In the same instant, something across the plaza outside gave a terrible bang. Their heads snapped around instantly, their hands reaching for their swords. But they were looking in the wrong direction.

Mirk hadn't felt the magic Genesis used to cause the distraction. But he did feel the shadows he used to launch his attack, fat tendrils of it that curled past Mirk's ankles, their staticky potential hissing against Mirk's half-shielded mind like the snakes they resembled. Before either man knew what was happening, a coil had wrapped itself around each of their throats.

He should have drawn his shielding back up. But something inside Mirk demanded that he feel what happened to the pair as well as witnessing it. The men's terrified helplessness echoed in Mirk's mind, making him gag and clench at the sides of his head. It only lasted a few seconds, until they both slumped into unconsciousness, just like the last two Watch guardsmen who had previously interrupted Genesis's work. But a few seconds was enough.

The shadows lowered their limp bodies to the ground carefully. Mirk wondered if that was only because he and Am-Hazek were there to witness everything.

Mirk went to them on instinct, protesting the whole way, though he at least managed to keep his voice low. "Genesis! They were leaving! You didn't have to..."

To strangle them? To blindside them? To use such terribly strong magic on men who didn't stand a chance of fighting against it? Mirk had thought Genesis was more honorable than that. Though one of the men had a thick beard, their heartbeats were easy to find on their necks. Slow and steady, as if they were only sleeping. Mirk hoped they would think of what had happened to them as nothing but a bad dream once they woke up. Both for their own sake, and so that they wouldn't know who to blame for what had been done to them.

Genesis didn't answer him. But Am-Hazek did, as he joined him in the doorway, stooping down to grab one of the men under the arms and drag him properly inside the lean-to. "Such things often happen when one challenges the hierarchy, seigneur. It's a regrettable necessity that those who challenge it must never fight fair. In a fair fight, the hierarchy always wins."

Mirk bit back the rest of his protests, instead helping Am-Hazek by dragging the other unconscious man inside. He did his best to put him down in a comfortable place, making sure neither his legs nor his arms were bent at an uncomfortable angle that might pain him when he woke up. When he straightened up again, Am-Hazek had already finished, wiping his hands primly with a handkerchief before picking up his box and presenting it to Mirk.

"The rest of this evening's gratin. And half of the cake. Since madame already voiced her dislike of both of them, I thought they'd be better off with you. I mean you no offense, seigneur, but her observation that you're looking thin was not unfounded."

Glumly, Mirk took the box, bowing to Am-Hazek. He didn't feel like he deserved anything as nice as that gratin, even if Madame Beaumont thought it was only fit for the dogs. "Thank you, monsieur. You'd best be going. Please, take care on your way home."

Am-Hazek bowed in return. Mirk thought the djinn looked like he pitied him. And not just for his apparent thinness, which no one he met in the City ever saw fit to comment on. Though it might have been an illusion created by his own guilt. Am-Hazek's emotions were too well-hidden to be felt, the same as always. "I wish the same to you, seigneur. Comrade."

Genesis didn't reply to Am-Hazek. But he did follow him to the door, the better to keep track of him as he was swallowed up in the fog. Mumbling the closest things he could think of to curses, Mirk shooed Genesis back out into the street, shutting the door on the four unconscious men and pulling the padlock to, though he didn't snap it locked.

The commander remained near the lean-to instead of hurrying off like Mirk expected him to, until he caught sight of something through the fog with his inhuman senses and he finally turned to face Mirk. He'd run out of things to do by then to distract himself. He’d already pulled up the hood of his cloak so that his face was hidden and adjusted its front so no passer-by could see his fine suit, had peeked in the box to confirm that Am-Hazek had given him the leftovers and nothing else.

"You are...upset," Genesis said, staring down at him. The darkness had cleared from his eyes.

"Of course I'm upset! Those men were terrified! I...it's..."

"I am aware. But this is...what I am." Genesis paused, his brows pulled down in thought, one of his odd, defensive smiles that didn't have a trace of humor in it stuck on his face. "I cannot keep from...destroying things. It is only a matter of degree. I thought you were aware of that. I was incorrect. Apparently."

Mirk sighed, biting his lip as he tried to get a hold of himself, tried to think rationally. It was hard with the Watch men's terror fresh in his memory. "I just hate that we have to do this. That you have to do this. Methinks if it'd been left up to me, we'd have all ended up in jail."

"No. You are a noble. They would have...looked the other way. Or accepted a handful of gold to do so." Genesis considered things for a time as he started off along the road that led from the plaza in front of the East Gate inward toward the heart of the City. "Only if you were alone, however. I have...little doubt that they would have attempted to fight me if they had seen me. Or would have run and reported on my presence to their officers. Which would have resulted in a more...difficult situation."

Mirk hurried to keep up with him, the box clutched tight against his chest. He knew he had nothing worthwhile to say, nothing that could change the truth of what both Am-Hazek and Genesis had said. But he babbled on nevertheless. "I know things are different for me than they are for you. And it's not fair. Your magic's not all you are, messire. I...methinks I understand what you mean when you say you can't keep from destroying things, but there's more to you than that. You're kind, and careful, and you mean well, it's just...not fair. That people have to always hurt each other like this."

"Fairness...is not an essential quality of existence."

"I know," Mirk said with a heavy sigh, deflating, hugging the box for a lack of anything else to anchor himself to. "I wish things weren't this way. But wishes don't get any of us anywhere, non? Methinks you've said something like that before, anyway. I can't remember. I'm not clever like you are."

He was so lost in his own twisted, conflicting thoughts that he didn't notice Genesis moving. Not until he placed his hand carefully on Mirk's shoulder. "You are not stupid. You merely...have not been forced into this aspect of the world. You can leave at any time. You have no debt to any of us. You are always...free to do as you will."

Genesis's face had returned to its usual blankness. But the shadows had bunched up thick around him, as if it was taking all his concentration not to slip into them and vanish. Mirk tried to manage a smile as he released his death grip on the box and patted the back of Genesis's hand. "I won't let you do this alone, messire. And I want to help everyone, besides. Maybe I'm just better off staying in the parts of it I'm suited to rather than the, euh, rest of it."

The commander drew his hand away, looking off down the street ahead of them, his frown returning. "On this...we are agreed."

That time, Mirk sensed the men coming as soon as Genesis did. Not because he was paying better attention, but because K'aekniv was irrepressibly loud, both in his manners and his emotions. But he still felt the half-angel's amusement, mingled with twinges of pain and triumph, before he heard him ranting at someone else out in the street.

"And these people call me an idiot! Hah! All it takes to get any of those Bavarians going is making fun of whatever shit village they come from."

Another voice, equally low and marked by a painful wheeze, countered with a laugh. "The same trick works on half of us."

"It's not the same, Slavka! We all know our villages are shit. When you say the village is full of idiots, that's when things get hot with us. But these Bavarians, they all think they're from some palace. Like they're rich bastards, when they're really from the same shit we are."

"At least we don't drink that pine samogon shit. Them and the English are the same about that."

"Terrible! Five gold for half a bottle! Bastards deserved it for robbing us."

Genesis's frown grew deeper as the oncoming footsteps drew closer. K'aekniv's winglight set the fog aglow as he stumbled into view. He had his arm wrapped around Slava's shoulders, while the other burly fighter had a tight hold on K'aekniv's midsection. They were both bleeding and bruised, Slava hobbling along on one leg and clutching his ribs with his free hand, while K'aekniv was steadier on his feet, but had a chunk gouged out of his chest. And half of the feathers on K'aekniv's left-hand wing had been burnt off.

"Snegurochka!" K'aekniv called out, treating them to a grin that was missing one of its front teeth. "And Mirgosha too! You missed all the fun!"

A nerve in Genesis's forehead began to tick. "It was not part of the...agreement for you both to become intoxicated. You were to create a distraction."

"But the drinks were half price! They would have known some shit was going on if we said no."

"Lower...your voice."

"Mirgosha, will you be nice to us?" K'aekniv asked, turning his grin on him alone. "The teeth healers take forever. And I've got a girl to see this weekend."

"You're paying a girl to see you this weekend," Slava said.

"All the best things in life cost a little money. Yes? Mirgosha? He would know, he has more gold than God."

"I suppose this is the part I'm suited to, messire," Mirk said to Genesis, unable to keep from smiling. He hadn't forgotten about the terror of the men he'd likely be he healing as soon as the rest of their Watch patrol found them. But it was impossible to keep K'aekniv's tipsy good humor from coloring his own expressions, no matter how thick his mental shielding was.

"You are...better at understanding their nonsense than I am," Genesis said. He scowled at the rude gesture K'aekniv made at him in response, then stepped back into the shadows and vanished.

Laughing to himself, Mirk shifted the box Am-Hazek had given him to one hand, taking hold of K'aekniv's free arm and guiding him around in a wobbly circle, so that he was pointed back toward the infirmary. If this was his penance for what had happened that night, the four knocked-out guardsmen and all the men it must have taken to put K'aekniv and Slava in their present condition, the Lord was being charitable toward him for a change. "What happened, Niv? Are there others?"

"We were going to go easy on them! But, you see, it all started off with that bastard Johannes and his fucking cross-eyed cousin..."

Mirk didn’t listen to K’aekniv’s rambling explanation. But he did take in his emotions, his righteous indignation and satisfaction at giving a sound beating to people he thought deserved it. K’aekniv was a good judge of character, as long as he wasn’t trying to bed the person in question. That meant that everything was justified.

At least, that was what Mirk told himself to make the uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach hurt a little less.