Thaddeus leaned back onto the table and took another mouthful of the clover smoke. “I can’t take the risk. It’s already bad enough as it is. My work is on the edge of a precipice and I have no intention of creating more trouble for myself. Do you really want the Commission breathing down your neck?”

Selene winked at me, and I laughed.

“Depends who they send,” I said.

“This isn’t a joking matter, boy,” Thaddeus whispered. “I can’t give you the recipes.”

“You’re not exactly in a legal position yourself, you know,” Selene said. “That dead homunculus outside looks an awful lot like you, Emerald Sage. And last I heard, attempting to create homunculus clones is far worse than ranging outside of your Replicator’s parameters.”

“I have the licence,” Thaddeus growled. “It’s permitted.”

“Can I see it?” Selene asked innocently.

Thaddeus jerked back as if he’d been punched, and I nudged Selene’s ankle with my foot. She sank lower into her chair with a satisfied smirk on her face, and I caught Alexia’s wrist before she could start unfastening my trousers.

“I’m not here to threaten you, Thaddeus,” I said lightly. “But with your help, we could create the best companion farm in the Northern Realms. We’d profit enormously from your help, and you’d be well compensated for your trouble.”

“Risk-taking is a young man’s game,” Thaddeus muttered. “Not mine. Gods, I need more clover. And I need to get back to work. All this talk of Replicators is just reminding me of my research.”

Thaddeus clambered off the table, stumbled, and caught the back of Alexia’s chair. She didn’t have the time to balance herself and she pitched backward with a yelp. Her body crashed into Thaddeus’s half-sprawled form and drove him into the floor. A mewl of breathless agony slipped out of Thaddeus’s mouth as Alexia rolled off him in a fit of hysterical giggles.

“He sounds like a mouse,” Alexia tittered. “Like a baby mouse.”

I caught Alexia’s arm and helped her to her feet. “Thaddeus, you’re obviously having issues with your Replicator. Can I offer you the use of mine, instead? Jamin had it modified, and it can do quite some astonishing things, given the right recipes.”

Thaddeus pushed himself over onto his back and stared up at the ceiling for a long moment in silence. Alexia pressed herself to my side and almost distracted me as she kissed my neck. I pulled away from the touch of her soft, warm mouth to offer Thaddeus my hand.

“I wouldn’t mind a fresh pair of eyes,” Thaddeus admitted.

I hauled him to his feet. He spun on his heel for a moment, got his bearings, and then pointed to the hallway that led to the front door. Selene’s chair scraped as she got to her feet and joined us. Thaddeus muttered obscenities to himself as he halted in the main hallway and pressed his hands against the wall.

I took a moment to check with my homunculi outside. The perimeter was clear.

“What are you doing?” Alexia asked. “Are you trying to eat the wall?”

Thaddeus leaned in, pressed his ear to the smooth stone, and then touched a certain crack with his fingertips. A whirring series of clicks echoed through the hallway as the hidden door swung open on well-oiled hinges. A set of stairs stretched down into the darkness below. Thaddeus clapped his hands and started rubbing his palms together.

“Corridium nexus, hidden doorways,” Selene muttered to herself. “What’s next?”

“Come and see, Miss Commission Mage,” the old man retorted.

I ducked under the lintel of the hidden doorway and started down the staircase. The dark pressed in from all sides and I used my hands to keep my balance down the unevenly carved steps. My feet found the floor beneath the last step and a sudden glow illuminated the secret room.

I gaped around in astonishment.

A huge, floor-to-ceiling Replicator took up the entire back wall. Shadowy entrances to an underground tunnel system twisted away to our right, and I curbed my curiosity to focus on the machine. Fluid bubbled within the main chamber and machinery whirred pleasantly around it as I stepped closer. I heard a choked gasp behind me.

“It’s enormous!” Selene exclaimed.

Thaddeus stopped at a bench and re-packed his pipe with madman’s clover. “Yes, I’m rather proud of this old unit. Pity it doesn’t quite meet my expectations.”

I drifted closer and checked the Essence injectors. My own machine back home had a single Essence Core, but Thaddeus’s machine had three separate parts designed to flood the chamber with fuel. Everything was well-oiled, clean, and properly maintained.

“This can’t be legal,” Selene said. “Surely.”

“It isn’t, not quite,” Thaddeus said, “but it’s difficult to tell unless you’re an engineer. Damn thing hasn’t built anything sane in five years. I have to kill every homunculus that comes out of it, because they’re all, well…”

“Insane?” Alexia supplied.

Thaddeus ground his teeth and nodded. “Yes, rather insane. More clover?”

She shook her head. “I’ve had quite enough, thank you.”

He grunted. “Suit yourself.”

“They’re going insane because you’re trying to give them sentience,” I said. “Jamin used to talk about it. You don’t give a homunculi a thinking mind because they’re not suited to handle it.”

Thaddeus pointed to Alexia. “Some are. Looks like your uncle found a way to make it work. Bloody cocksure bastard, always running off into the shadows to find new ingredients. He knew his business, though, I’ll give him that.”

“How did you meet Jamin?” Alexia asked as she rubbed her eyes.

“Bastard kicked me in the balls over a woman and a drink once,” Thaddeus huffed. “Back in the Academy, of course, before he started off on his insane adventures all over.”

“The Mage Academy?” Alexia asked.

“Good to see the clove is wearing off,” Selene said with a smirk. “No, the Companion Academy. Where all the Kingdom-approved farmers go to learn their craft, and teach it to others.”

I examined the injector hoses and chuckled as I thought of Jamin as a young man. “So, my uncle kicked you in the balls? What then?”

“We became good friends,” Thaddeus said. “He has the luck of the devil, so Jamin does. Ran riot all over the Academy, challenging the teachers because he knew more than they did. He always figured there was more to companions than just bare utility. That got him expelled in the end, and the Gods may damn me if I didn’t follow the crazy snake out of there.”

“The Kingdom doesn’t seem to appreciate people with different ideas,” I said.

Selene flicked a tendril of hair from her cheek and shrugged. “They’re very set in their ways, and if anything threatens their authority, they take it rather personally.”

“Idiots,” Thaddeus snorted. “We found ourselves in and out of dungeons, little tasks, paid in coin or in favors by good people and unsavory scum-suckers. Until I decided I’d had enough and went back to the Academy. I graduated without your uncle to get me into trouble and from there I worked with the Division.” He grunted. “Wrote some books, made companions, and then got turfed out by a pack of newcomers to the Division.”

“New Companion Farmers for the King?” I asked.

“Something like that. They were idiots, didn’t appreciate my methods. I left them behind and moved out here. Jamin was in the area, so we worked together.” Thaddeus blew smoke from his pipe and muttered a curse. “Need to grow a stronger strain of this. Where was I?”

“Working with Jamin,” Selene said dryly.

Thaddeus snapped his withered fingers. “Yes. We made profits, and bought some old equipment from the Division. Jamin took his Replicator, and I took this one. We had our licenses, and the idea was simply to generate a steady flow of income. Plenty of coin to tickle our bedsheets with at night. Damn would’ve worked too, but your uncle decided he needed to go deeper into his rule-breaking.”

“You got cold feet and left him alone,” I said.

“Boy, I knew when to cut my losses. I retired and wrote books. Theses. Poetry. Philosophy. Anything I bloody well wanted to, because I could.” Thaddeus thumped his fist on the workbench and rattled a roll of knives beside him. “And before you bloody ask, yes, I did want to follow him into the fire. Gods know I would’ve, too. But he was going down a path I couldn’t pursue.”

“So you decided to continue to work within the bounds of the Kingdom,” Selene laughed. “With your little underground chamber and your illegal experimentation on homunculi.”

“Exactly,” Thaddeus said emphatically. “Where it’s fucking safe.”

“What’s your favorite work you’ve written?” Alexia asked. “Is there one?”

“My magnum opus,” Thaddeus said in an oddly quiet voice. “Homunculi Unbound. But it was taken.” He muttered another curse as his pipe went out. “Now look what you’ve done. At this rate I’ll be sober soon.”

“Gods forbid,” Selene muttered.

Thaddeus went silent, and I looked up from my examination of his Replicator. There was so much Jamin hadn’t told me. So much he’d simply decided to dump at my feet and run away from. I couldn’t blame the old Sage for deciding on safety over the thrill of danger.

But he’d just given me an idea for something that I could trade for his recipes.

“What if I found this treatise?” I asked him. “If I brought it back to you, would you give me what I want?”

“It’s lost,” Thaddeus snapped. “Burned. There’s no way of recovering it.”

Selene’s brow furrowed as she fixed her eyes on the old man. I saw the gesture and realized that she was reading Thaddeus’s aura. Something was off, and my gut told me that Thaddeus was lying. The old man had answered my question too quickly, too negatively.

I shifted the subject to confirm my suspicions. “But you still saw Jamin after he kept breaking the rules. You must have—I wouldn’t have met you otherwise.”

“Yes, yes, of course.” Thaddeus seized my change of topic greedily. “Jamin moved back to his father’s old manor house, of course, with his Replicator. Started churning out homunculi for the locals and making a rather tidy profit. He used to come and see me sometimes.”

“For advice?” Selene said.

“For the clover, actually,” Thaddeus chuckled. “We had a good time, Jamin and I. But he started coming less often, and I found out that he’d found a woman. Someone had gotten into his head, separated him from his work. Damn fool fell in love.”

“There’s nothing wrong with falling in love,” Alexia said.

“There is when your beloved dies before you can marry her,” Thaddeus retorted. He cast his eyes over the elf, dropped his pipe idly on the bench, and stalked forward. “In fact, you look a good deal like Jamin’s late woman, Alexia. A good deal like her, indeed.”

I stepped between Thaddeus and Alexia. “So, she died. What happened then?”

Thaddeus’s eyes shifted away from mine, and I knew for certain he was lying about the manuscript. These stories about my uncle were the perfect escape route for him.

“He became obsessed with breaking the wards around a Replicator,” Thaddeus told me. “He went straight to the only place that would get him to what he needed. I didn’t know he was dealing with the Underrealm. But he found it. He found out what he fucking wanted and he did it. He shattered the wards, and started doing business with Longhorn Martyn.”

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Thaddeus shuddered as he said the name.

Selene stepped forward and curiosity sparkled in her eyes. “How’d he do it?”

“Why are you so interested?” Thaddeus asked suspiciously. “Are you sure you trust her, boy?”

“Answer the question,” I told him. “She works for me, not the Commission.”

Thaddeus looked down at his unlit pipe and muttered yet another curse. “He was always dipping his fingers into the magic aspects of alchemy, rather than the science. Idiot didn’t know when to quit. The Underrealm was his biggest source of information. It had to be. No other way he could’ve found out how to reverse the Kingdom’s warding spells.”

“Where is the Underrealm?” Alexia butted in. “Underground?”

“Think of it as another world behind a veil.” Selene’s eyes didn’t move from Thaddeus as she spoke. “We were taught to avoid it in the Mage Academy, so, being a good student, I became very interested in it.” She chuckled darkly. “It’s where I first brushed shoulders with demonology and realized that the Academy had it all backwards.”

Thaddeus met her hard gaze with interest. ”Oho, so you found out how to get into the lands of the Shadow Lords. I can see why Caleb likes you, Miss Commission Mage. You’ve a rather varied skill set. And tell me, how did you find the price to cross over?”

“What price?” Alexia asked. “Isn’t it simply a door? Can’t you just unlock it with magic?”

“It requires sacrifice,” Selene answered evenly. “To satisfy the gatekeepers. I never attempted it myself, but I know the theory and I’ve banished more demons than most of the Kingdom Mages put together.”

“Why didn’t they keep you then?” Thaddeus said. “Seems like a waste of talent.”

“Because the Kingdom has their own warlocks and they don’t talk about them,” Selene said. “Once they caught wind of my studies, they decided to have me expelled for using a supposedly forbidden spell in a practice duel. After that, I was on my own.”

“Until they picked you up again and shafted you into the Commission to keep you out of trouble.” Thaddeus rubbed his brow tiredly and looked sidelong at Selene. “You’re damn lucky they did. The last thing you want to do is trifle with someone like Longhorn Martyn. Shadow Lords aren’t to be underestimated, under any circumstances.”

Alexia stared at Thaddeus. “You’ve met him, haven’t you?”

Thaddeus flinched as if he’d been hurled into an ice-cold river.

“Once,” he admitted. “Over Jamin’s shoulder, damn him to all the Hells.”

“Scrying crystal?” Selene asked.

“Yes. Fucking monster was staring at me with all of his teeth and just smiling at me like I was food on the banquet table. Some kind of delicious bloody apartief.” Thaddeus paced past his table and sat down on a chair. He ran his hands through his snowy hair and I saw a tremble take hold of him. “If Jamin has made a deal with Longhorn and promised him something, then the Shadow Lord will come to collect.”

“This is why I came to you,” I said. “Jamin left me with a debt. The price is one sentient blood-mage homunculus.”

Thaddeus stared at Alexia for a long moment. “Oh, Hells take it all. Her?! Longhorn probably emptied his coffers and called in favors to find the sentience ingredient, then.”

“Yeah. So I need the recipes for better soldiers. And, while I’m at it, I need the ingredient combination that makes a homunculus sentient. It’s the only way we can get Longhorn off our backs. We either give him what he wants or kill him.”

Thaddeus shivered again as the glazed look in his eyes finally faded. “And you want to know if I have the ingredients for sentience. That’s why you came here?”

“I know you don’t have it, because there’s a dead homunculus on your front lawn with his guts painting the grass. But you might know someone who does.”

“I need to clear that away. But as for your ingredient, Jamin has to have it. The snake must’ve gone deep into the Underrealm to find it, and made a lot of connections with the Shadow Lords. Maybe even more than just Longhorn Martyn. If your uncle is smart, boy, he’d be halfway across the fucking continent by now. I don’t blame him for leaving.”

“Even if he left all of this on Caleb?” Selene asked, disgusted.

The old man shook his head. “I assume you’ve spoken to Longhorn, or his people. There’s no way you would know about it otherwise. The Shadow Lord will come for his payment, and he’ll want interest besides. He might take you as his slave, make you kill your whole damn family with a rusted nail. I heard a story about that man.”

“It’s not going to happen,” I assured him.

“Longhorn Martyn is not to be trusted. The Commission is one thing, but now this?” Thaddeus shook his head, stood up suddenly, and pushed past Alexia to grab my tunic. “You need to get out of here, boy. You’re in deeper than you’ve ever been in anything your whole life, and you need to make the smart decision and run. Gods above, do you ever need to run.”

I caught hold of his wrist and met his eyes without flinching. “I don’t run, Thaddeus.”

“Then maybe you’re not as smart as your uncle after all,” Thaddeus spat. “I need more clover. And food. So much food. Gods, I’m hungry. I could eat a butcher’s fat wife right now and have her dogs for dessert.”

Thaddeus released my tunic, spun, and staggered on his way toward the stairs. He paused at the exit and leaned against the wall to catch his balance.

“Come upstairs if you’re hungry,” he said.

The old man’s bone-thin body vanished a moment later, and left the three of us standing in his laboratory. Alexia sagged tiredly against my chest again. I caught her under the arm as the effects of the clover properly wore off. Her stomach growled audibly and I couldn’t help but smile at the sound. Madman’s clover had a price to pay once the effects wore off.

“He’s lying to us about his book,” I said to Selene.

“Oh, you caught on to that.” She sighed in relief. “I wondered why you changed the subject.”

“Helped me prove it,” I said. “He took the bait and dove into the new topic. Which, apparently, turned out to be our issue with Longhorn.”

Selene rubbed her temples. “Your uncle’s certainly a colorful character.”

I smiled. “That’s putting it mildly. What did you see in Thaddeus’s aura?”

“He’s intelligent, resourceful, and afraid. Afraid of dying, most of all. He uses the clover to ease his fears. It was difficult to glean anything more than that from it.”

“Why is he making illegal homunculi if he’s afraid of dying?” Alexia asked as she pulled her head away from my chest. “Why’s he still doing it if it could get him killed?”

My mind raced back to the corpse slung over the front gate. “Because he doesn’t want to die of old age. He wants to replace himself, or find a way to transfer his soul into a functional, sentient clone. All of the advantages of a homunculus body with none of the weaknesses.”

Selene stared at me in astonishment. “That’s insane.”

“He was friends with my uncle,” I reminded her. “It doesn’t strike me as strange. Besides, didn’t you say you could imprison Longhorn’s essence in something? Couldn’t it be done with a human, too?”

“It’s technically possible, but a lot more dangerous, as you don’t have the advantage of another dimension into which to move a soul,” Selene said quietly. “There’s a dozen ways to mis-time the spell and simply scatter the spirit into ashes.”

“But you could do it?” I pressed her.

Selene didn’t meet my eye. “Perhaps.”

I laid a hand on her shoulder. She leaned over and brushed her face against my hand absentmindedly as she tried to fight off the unease in her expression. Alexia hugged her suddenly from the side.

“You’re the best person at magic I know,” Alexia said. “I know you can do it.”

“I’m the only person you know,” Selene said with a soft smile.

“Doesn’t mean you can’t do it,” I said. “Come on, let’s go up to Thaddeus. I think I finally have a business proposition for him that he won’t be able to turn down.”

We climbed the stairs and left Thaddeus’s gigantic Replicator behind. I led the women up into the hallway, checked with my homunculi in the stable, and confirmed that we were still alone in the house with the Sage. I stood to the side and let Alexia and Selene stroll out of the hidden entrance to the underground chamber. The living room bustled with activity as we stepped toward the table for refreshments. Two of Thaddeus’s maids cleared away the piles of books and stacked them as tidily as they could against the walls, while another laid out two fresh loaves of sourdough and a large cheese.

The Sage lit up a fresh pipe of madman’s clover and gestured to the food. “Make yourselves at home, troublemakers. It’s been a long time since I’ve had visitors.”

I dropped into a seat as Alexia dug into a loaf of bread.

“I have a proposition for you,” I told the Sage.

“I told you, I’m not interested,” he growled.

I spread my hands and softened my tone. “It’s obvious you’ve run into a wall with your projects, Thaddeus. You can’t create a sentient clone and transfer your consciousness into it. We both want the ingredient for sentience. But supposing you get it, how will you transfer your mind into a homunculus?”

The Sage stared at me for a long moment. “I’ll find a way.”

“I’m willing to lend you the use of my warlock to do it. But to find the ingredient we both need, I need your recipes for new homunculi. I understand you don’t want to give them to me, but this will ensure I find your magnum opus, and then I can bring it back to you.”

Fragrant smoke drifted from Thaddeus’s lips as he considered my point. Hope, doubt, and fear all warred in his eyes, and he shook his head to himself as he reached a decision. I had to push him further.

“I can’t—” he began.

“You’re the Emerald Sage,” I interjected. “Your knowledge on the building and furthering of homunculus knowledge is your life’s work. Transferral of consciousness would be an enormous breakthrough, but if you turn me away, you may well never achieve it.”

He hesitated, and I leaned forward on my elbows and locked eyes with him.

“Do you really want to die an old man? With nothing to show for your knowledge and experience except a pile of crazed clone corpses? Or do you want to take a risk and help me find the tools we need to achieve our goals?”

Smoke hissed free of the Sage’s nostrils as he growled a curse. “Gods, you’re too much like your uncle, boy. And as much as it pains me to say it, you’re right. I’m too old for such an endeavor. But if anyone has the cunning and the resources to do it—it’s you.”

I took a slice of bread from the silver platter as relief sluiced through me. I finally had some traction with the old man, but now came the difficult part. I needed to track down the thief responsible for stealing the Sage’s magnum opus.

“This adventurer that took your writing. What did he look like?” Selene asked.

Thaddeus piled cheese onto a slice of bread and gulped it down before answering. “Probably 6’3”, human, carried a pair of sabres. Wore expensive armor, all chainmail and gold lining. Had to be high up in a guild somewhere. He kicked my door down, roughed up two of my maids, and went straight for my desk. He knew it was here, he had to.”

“Did he tell you his name?” Alexia asked around a mouthful of cheese.

“What do you think?” Thaddeus said. “Of course not. He took my writing and he ran. I followed the bastard, gave him a few bolts in the back for his troubles. Hells, I even took a horse and went after him. But he gave me the slip and ran into an Eldritch Dungeon four miles west of here on the outer edge of the realms.”

Selene inhaled sharply. “Curkill Depths?”

“That’s the one,” the Sage muttered. “The work may as well be ashes, boy. You won’t survive any kind of raid in such a place. Even the best guilds avoid it like the plague.”

“It’s a strange place to escape into,” I said with a frown.

“I watched for a number of hours,” he said. “He didn’t return. The bastard is dead, and good riddance. There’s not a chance in a million that you’ll find my writing.”

“Those are the conditions I set,” I said firmly. “I’ll find it if it’s still in one piece.”

Selene touched my arm. “Master, I can’t support this. You’ll die down there.”

“It’s a quick incursion, in and out. It’s likely he didn’t make it very far. With the right homunculi and some quick thinking, it’s possible. Dangerous, sure, but I’ve dealt with dangerous before.”

Alexia gulped down yet another slice of bread and I bit back a chuckle. I hadn’t seen the homunculus eat like this before, but madman’s clover had some rather interesting effects once it went deeper into the system. Exceptional hunger was the most common one.

“So, can I offer you anything else before you depart on a suicidal endeavor?” Thaddeus asked. “If nothing else, boy, you and your friends here have made my day a colorful one. I’d be a boor not to extend to you all the courtesies of my house.”

The Yeoman Archer’s mental voice blazed into my head. Nine men on foot approaching house. Five heavily armed, wearing blue and gold colors.

Hide, I ordered immediately. Don’t be seen under any circumstances.

I leapt to my feet and cursed. Selene’s gaze shot to me, then turned to the front door.

“What is it?” she demanded.

“Commission officials,” I said. “We can’t be seen here. Thaddeus?”

Selene froze and her face turned bloodless at my words.

“Fuck all kinds of flying fucking pigs with spears and corks,” the Sage snarled as he gestured to the maids to clear the table. “Are you certain, boy? Do you know it’s them?”

“Who else do you think would come here? Did you dispose of that corpse?” I asked.

“Of course, lad, I’m not an idiot.”

Alexia jammed a last piece of bread into her mouth and reached for her daggers, but I caught her arm and shook my head. She relaxed at my touch. Selene scrambled out of her chair and sank back against the wall with wide-open eyes.

“So I take it they’re not as much of a joke as you made them out to be?” I said sharply.

She shook her head and set her mouth in a trembling line. “They are, I swear.”

“Yeah, well, if we don’t get moving, we’re going to be finding out for ourselves.” I whirled around to Thaddeus. “Your underground chamber. Can you keep us there and turn them away?”

The Sage sprinted past me with surprising agility. “Oh, Hells damn it all. Come, and bring your women with you.”

We sprinted for the hidden door just as a heavy fist smashed against the front door.

“Thaddeus de Monar!” a voice called. “I am Bradford Celvet, representative of the Companion Commission, and I request an audience!”

Alexia vanished into the dark passage without a word. Selene snatched up her cloak from the coathook by the door and then dove after the blood mage. Thaddeus caught my arm and leaned in close to whisper in my ear.

“Do not emerge until I’ve told you otherwise,” he muttered urgently. “Leave the tunnels alone and wait for my word. Do you understand me, boy? If they catch you with the blood mage, you’re done for. And so am I.”

“No promises,” I hissed back, “but I’ll follow your lead for now.”

“That’s good enough. Now fuck off!”

I stepped onto the stairs and barely missed having my arm caught in the hidden door. It clicked shut behind us, and I leaned back against the stone wall. My pulse pounded against my ears like a war drum, and I forced myself to take a long, deep breath.

The Commission were here.

We were outnumbered.

And I’d left our safety in the hands of a crazy, clover-addled old man.

I needed a plan.