The Library of the Abbey at Fountaincliffs was substantially less impressive than it sounded, but it was the largest room they had, and so it hosted all of the meetings.

The room was high and dim, and packed with rusty metal shelves, scavenged long ago. Those shelves were crammed with thousands of eroding books from Before. The Hunters' reports, and the monographs about the Gods, the stuff they actually used, were kept in a separate study room.

Rafferty had asked Gus why they didn't have any books about the Gods, since they had so many books about everything else. Surely they'd be more useful than the scraps of rules they'd managed to cobble together from experience. Gus said that the people from Before had eventually stopped writing much down, and kept that sort of information digitally. Digitally was a word that Gus used a lot, but that Rafferty never fully understood.

Most of the girls thought this place was creepy. Cody and some of the G Hall Hunters had been forced to clean it up once. A candlelit night spent amongst the crumbling past had freaked her right out, and she'd talked about little else for a week. Of course, it hadn't helped that Rigby had told her that if she handled any of the oldest books for too long, they would start to steal her memories for themselves, and she would forget who she was.

Dropped in the middle of the shelves was the biggest table in the building, and that was why they were all here. Just about any decision that needed to get made by more than three people was made at this table.

Rafferty walked in with Cody and Blaspheme, and sat down. Sheridan was already there, of course, and shot them a look that said exactly how she felt about the rest of J Hall's decision not to arrive early

Katrin was here, flanked by her B Hall cronies Brianna and Seth So were the overachievers from D Hall.

Max was sitting at the head of the table. He nodded to Rafferty's group as they entered. The Abbey's boss still hadn't said a word to her since she'd gotten back from the Breaks, so Rafferty still didn't know if she was in trouble for breaching protocol. She decided to take this invite as a good sign.

Jenn, another member of the Priory, was seated next to Max. Proctor and Nathan were sitting down, too. If four members of the leadership team were present, it meant this was serious.

And Becka was there, because Becka was always everywhere.

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Vincent entered with two other Roughcoats. The first, who was dark skinned and probably the youngest of the three, he introduced as Jason. The second, called Strikes, had rough stubble flecked with gray. Rafferty immediately thought they seemed more Roughcoat-like than Vincent.

Roughcoats were a dying breed. There were probably less than fifty of them now. Rafferty had worked with the soldiers in textured leather garb before. They rode their horses through the Ring and out into the Breaks, trying to keep the peace, and give aid where they could. In general, Rafferty liked them. Roughcoats tended to be brave, stoic, and not say too much.

Vincent stood as he spoke to the group.

Most of them, anyway.

"All right. Thank you for having us. I guess I'll just get started," he said. He was holding what looked like a stack of photographs in one hand.

"This is Eleanor," Vincent said.

He flipped over the first picture dramatically. Rafferty was at the far end of the table, so she thought maybe she just couldn't see well enough, but to her it just looked like an empty stretch of the Breaks.

"What am I looking at?" asked Max.

"I told you," Jason said to Vincent. "It's a picture of nothing. You're showing them a picture of nothing."

"But it shouldn't be a picture of nothing, and that's the point," Vincent said with incredible certainty.

"Who is Eleanor?" Max pressed.

"It's a communal fishing village on the north end of Gray Sand Lake. Lots of families use it. It's on one of our circuits," said Jason.

"Circuit B," Vincent said pointedly. "It's not much to look it, but it's a friendly place to hunker down when a big squall rolls in. And they'll serve you a nice piece of fish."

"And now it's gone," Strikes said.

"What do you mean gone?" asked Jenn.

"Not there anymore," Vincent said, gesturing to the picture. "There aren't even any ruins, apart from a tiny bit of the ice house."

"So you're saying somebody, what, blew it up?" asked Seth.

"There's no rubble," Sheridan pointed out.

"And I can't even imagine someone having enough explosives to level an entire village, or why they'd use them on a place like that," said Nathan. Nathan was the head of the Engineers. He was scribbling notes as he spoke. Rafferty wasn't sure how he could writing so much about a picture of nothing.

"Exactly, it's extremely wasteful. I'm telling you, Eleanor didn't deserve this," Vincent answered.

"Do we know if there were any people there when whatever happened happened?" asked Jenn.

"We're not sure," said Jason.

"Guess," said Max.

"It depends on the day. Maybe no one. Could be as many as twenty five," the Roughcoat said.

Beside Rafferty, Cody uttered an unhappy little squeak.

"What about a God? A big one. It could take out something that size," said Blaspheme.

"There'd be footprints," said Katrin. "Anything big enough to do that would leave footprints you couldn't miss."

Rafferty watched Blaspheme bristle at the older girl's correction.

"That's absolutely right," said Vincent. "Besides, we already know who did it, we just don't know how he did it."

"How do you know who did it?" asked Max. Rafferty thought Max was annoyed that they didn't choose to lead with that information. The boss was getting that impatient look she knew very well.

"Because he told us," said Vincent.

"In a manner of speaking," said Jason.

"On that tiny piece that's left of the ice house," said Strikes.

Vincent flipped another picture.

It showed a small section of wall, apparently all that was left of the fishing village. On it, someone had sketched a mark. It was a long skinny A, with an M tucked inside. To Rafferty, it had always looked like a grinning face with a mouthful of sharp teeth.

They had all seen the mark before, usually tattooed on some very rough men looking to do some very rough things.

All of those men served another man.

One who called himself Alex with Malice.