The infiltration had been a success. Viryl was wandering like a ghost in Dioryl's estate. The feeling was as surreal as it was exhilarating. He had witnessed the whole scene where those cutthroat bastards were finding excuses in front of their client because they couldn't catch their target, while he was right there, under their noses.

But his luck ran out there.

Dioryl had retrieved the keys to the greenhouse, and then he had slipped into a small door that opened onto the inner courtyard with Hammerless and Rustball. Viryl had tried to sneak in with them, but the three had entered in quick succession and closed the door behind them. They hadn't left him an inch of space.

Reopening it immediately was an unwise choice: they would have noticed, if they hadn't moved far enough away. Furthermore, Viryl didn't know if there were other servants besides the gatekeeper and where they were located. Maybe there was someone in that very room, ready to catch him red-handed as he entered.

Viryl then thought of going to free the kid, instead of sitting there waiting for Dioryl to dismiss the two knights. But there was a nasty surprise there too. On the glass, in a hidden spot, was stuck a paper seal with bizarre characters scribbled on it. Maybe it was nothing. Or maybe it was some esoteric devilry, a sort of alarm system ante litteram devised by the users of the arcane power. In any case, it was better not to take any risks before the knights of the Order of Libertas had gotten out of the way, or it would be a bitter mess.

Arms crossed, Viryl turned away from the glass wall and began to walk along the courtyard to pass the time. He looked up at the sky to observe the starry vault, then turned his eye, and noticed a reddish glimmer on a loggia on the first floor of the building. A cigarette. A beautiful woman in her thirties was smoking it, definitely wearing too skimpy clothes for the cold weather. For some reason he couldn’t quite understand, she reminded him of Darlah. But that didn’t matter, or at least Viryl tried not to make it matter. The woman had stepped out onto the balcony through a French window, which was now ajar and poorly guarded.

Just the ticket in Viryl needed.

*****

Anker had not been able to take anything else with him except his saber. A necessary precaution. If the knights of the Order of Libertas had carried out a search, he could not have all the explosive devices he usually hid in his belt found on him. In the end, the search had not taken place, but Anker was not clairvoyant and had had no way of foreseeing this.

But before he surrendered, he had hidden a single grain of Fuligine Stone in his left glove. An ephemeral trace. If they had found it on him, he could have shaken it off and justified himself by saying that it was a remnant of previous fights and that he had just not noticed.

The knights of the Order of Libertas would not have considered it a threat, because in fact it was not. With that crumb of Fuligine Stone, Anker could cast at most a couple of basic spells.

And as expected, they had left him in an area with no sympathionic coverage.

So Anker had one move, two at most, and then he would be out of resources.

He had to play them well.

First the knight broke the fake lock that held the chains to his wrists, then he considered his options.

The “reptilian vision” spell was a step he must take. It consumed little Fuligine Stone and was the only way he knew to peer into the darkness around him. So he cast it without hesitation.

He immediately noticed that in the cage next to his, there was someone sleeping. A thin girl with bob hair, wrapped in a rag. Coronice. They had managed to capture her. In the depths of the greenhouse, however, he saw nothing new. If the noises he heard were made by animals, they were not warm-blooded.

The next step was to free himself from the cage. Anker tried to pry it open, but it was impossible with his bare hands. He could try with his saber, but swinging it would reveal it, causing it to lose its invisibility, and there was no guarantee it would be of any use. The other option was to use magic. Casting the basic “pick lock” spell would require using up virtually all of the remaining Fuligine Stone.

Anker took a deep breath. His head was still throbbing, but the nausea had improved. His instincts told him that he was not in a safe place, and an attempt to escape could disrupt the false quiet that reigned in the greenhouse. Should he wait for Viryl?

No, he could handle it on his own.

Anker cast the spell and opened the cage door. He waited for a few seconds, listening for the slightest rustle. He heard nothing. Then he gingerly stepped out and reached for one of the glass plates embedded in the greenhouse frame, then punched it. A sharp pain shot through his knuckles, but the glass didn’t even crack. Tempered glass. With his steel balls and “compression and decompression waves” it would have been child’s play to break, but in the current conditions it was next to impossible to do so.

At this point the knight looked around, unsure of what to do. Did it make sense to help the raven girl, or was it better to leave her where he had found her? She was a disgusting murderer, this unquestionable fact Anker kept well in mind. And yet, thinking back to her fragile little white and wounded body, an uncontrollable and unspeakable need to wake her up and talk to her, to make her feel better and to face bad luck with her, made its way inside him.

To drown that regrettable desire in a semblance of rationality, Anker appealed to an observation Viryl had made a few hours earlier. The enemy of the enemy was his friend, and if Coronice had all her marbles in place, she would be his ally, at least until they could get to safety. For this reason, Anker returned to her, intending to wake her.

The knight noticed that a glass bottle fixed to the ceiling of the cage was dripping a clear liquid into an infusion tube and was being injected into the girl's left arm. They were drugging her again.

The drug was powerful, and Anker's first attempts to wake her failed miserably. Calling her, shaking the bars, pinching her shoulder as it rested against the grate: all to no avail. Anker realized that the only solution was to stop the infusion. He reached to his side and grabbed the scabbard of his saber, which materialized instantly. He pulled out the blade, inserted it into one of the cage's openings, and swung it until it severed the rubber tube hanging from the ceiling.

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After a few moments, Coronice let out a moan.

“Hey, how are you feeling?” Anker asked the girl, gripping the grate.

Coronice took a deep breath and looked around before deigning to answer: "Shitty. But fortunately a brave knight came to my rescue."

Ignoring her suggestive quip, Anker pointed to his arm: “You’re bleeding.”

“Oh…” the girl murmured absentmindedly, then pulled out the long steel needle that was stuck in a blue vein in her upper limb. She didn’t even bother to dab the wound, and began to study the piece of metal, as if it were a bizarre and unusual artifact.

As Coronice fiddled with the piece of rubber tubing connected to the needle, Anker asked a new question: “Do you have any idea where we are?”

"I just woke up, and I'm quite disoriented. The last thing I remember was sneaking into an abandoned shack in the old quarter of Meridania to get some much-needed rest. And you, Anker of the Black Moon? Do you have any idea where we are?" Coronice replied.

"No. I only know that we are on Dioryl's estate, in some kind of greenhouse," Anker said.

Coronice sat up, a worried expression on her face. “Oh no…” she groaned. “The dragon hatchling incubation terrarium.”

“Baby dragons?” Anker was already picturing a pack of bloodthirsty, half-formed beasts trying to bite him with tiny teeth as sharp as shards of glass.

"The baby dragons aren't a problem. They're tame unless disturbed, and only respond to Dioryl's commands. The greenhouse is the problem. We're stuck here until he decides to free us. He's gone to great lengths to make sure his pets can't escape until they're ready to live in the outside world," Coronice explained.

"I notices. It's made of very strong glass, but the situation doesn't seem so dire to me," Anker downplayed.

“Trust me, it is. I was the one who tested it. Even in my raptor form, I can’t scratch it. Plus, the lock on the terrarium door is too complex to pick. Not to mention… never mind.”

"Yes, but maybe using my magic..."

"Dioryl couldn't have been so reckless as not to factor in the fact that he was dealing with a knight. Are you really still capable of using magic?"

Anker fell silent and looked down. His tongue had been quicker than his brain to respond.

“As I thought,” Coronice concluded. Then she stood up on her still-shaky legs, and added, “Our best bet is to try to hide. When Dioryl arrives and finds the cages empty, he’ll start looking for us. We’ll wait until he’s deep into the greenhouse, go around behind him, and run. But, there’s that last thing to keep in mind…”

The low, tropical trees in the terrarium swayed darkly. Anker looked around. It would have been easy to hide in the ferns surrounding the entrance and then run. But that was Coronice’s plan; it had been from the beginning, before she was captured. Anker, however, had a different purpose. He was here to kill Dioryl. He didn’t mention that detail and let her continue.

"That bitch Neltunia has placed a Malsenial seal on the structure. It is to prevent any living being not blessed by Malsenial from trying to get outside. It is not a physical barrier, but it causes a state of prostration in those who pass through it. When we get out, we will need a few minutes to recover."

"Neltunia? That name is not new to me."

"Yes, Neltunia. I'll spare you the details. Just know that she's a healer, and a pain in the ass."

"Don't worry, I think I know who you're talking about. The Rat King mentioned her to us."

"Perfect. Then I would say that at this point my brave knight can free me from my prison," Coronice concluded, indicating the door of the cage.

Anker looked Coronice in the eyes with a slightly dazed expression. She waved her hand, inviting him to do something not very clear. Then the knight brandished his sabre and brought a mighty vertical slash down on the lock. There was a great clang of metal, but the edge of the blade did not even make a dent into the solid iron of the lock.

“So?” Coronice asked impatiently.

"So nothing. This is the best I can do. I don't know how to break it," Anker justified himself.

"How did you get out of your cage?"

“I had some Fuligine Stone hidden in my glove, but I'm out of it now.”

Coronice shook her head, disenchanted. “Well, it looks like I’m going to have to do it myself,” she realized, a touch of disappointment.

The girl took in her fingers the infusion needle that had been keeping her soporous a few minutes earlier, and bent its end ninety degrees. When she was satisfied with the makeshift tensor she had constructed, it was time to think about the lockpick.

“Anker, do you have any wire, a paper clip, a paper clip, or something?” Coronice asked hopefully.

Anker shook his head. There was indeed iron in the epaulets of his uniform, in the clasp of his belt, and in the bracer of his Symbjorm, but he had no desire to ruin any of it. It did not matter that after his walk in the sewers he was all covered in dirt and that his clothing was ready to be thrown away.

“Okay, it looks like I have no choice,” Coronice sighed. She took out the pin she had used to secure the black cloth she had wrapped her body in and began to manipulate it into the desired shape.

Once she had obtained the tensor and the lockpick, Coronice put the sheet over her shoulders and knelt in front of the cage's lock to pick it.

*****

The sober but richly decorated facade of Dioryl's palace offered Viryl numerous handholds to help his climb to the first floor. When Viryl reached the terrace, the woman had almost finished smoking her cigarette, and was absorbed in contemplating the starry horizon, her elbows resting on the marble balustrade.

Making sure he wasn't seen or made any noise, Viryl pushed open the French window and entered the villa. He found himself in what appeared to be the woman's bedroom.

It was a decidedly feminine, almost cloying environment, and the sweetish scent that permeated it reinforced that feeling. The walls were covered in pink wallpaper and the furniture was white and cream. Scattered around were flashy, colorful ornaments, like stuffed animals, rubbery trinkets to be inserted into unspeakable orifices, feathered masks. It looked like a whore's alcove. A shelf filled with numbered tomes with green edges, a desk covered in parchment paper and the white statue of a pagan goddess placed on a small altar created contrast with the rest of the furnishings.

Avoiding a thick, shaggy purple rug at the foot of the bed, a sure receptacle for footprints, Viryl reached the bedroom exit and slowly turned the doorknob. It didn't open. It was locked and the key wasn't in the lock.

Viryl cursed under his breath.

Did it make sense to stay there, or would it be better to go out and try to enter through another window?

The woman's coquettish face peeped out from behind the French window. It was too late to retreat now.

The woman closed the shutter, sat down at her desk, took out a pen, dipped it in the ink bottle, and began scribbling on a piece of parchment. If she was going to spend the rest of the night like this, there was no way he was going to get out of the room without breaking a few eggs, metaphorically speaking.

For now, however, Viryl thought it was more prudent to wait.

What was the woman writing? Viryl peered over her shoulder. It was some kind of sermon, using terms from an obscure liturgy. The name “Malsenial” stood out among the words in the text. Was she the healer the Rat King had spoken of?

Viryl stepped away from the woman and began pacing the room, unsure of what to do. While the idea of thinning out the enemy lines seemed sensible and was growing stronger in his mind, assassinating the woman could backfire, as it would mean losing the protection of the unnamed god. And it was a cruel, sneaky, and gratuitous move, and Viryl hadn’t sunk low enough to seriously consider it yet. But could he just stay locked up here and waste his time with that obscene priestess?

While Viryl was lost in thought, distant footsteps began to be heard outside the room, becoming more and more distinct. Then a knock, and Dioryl's voice: "Neltunia, are you busy? I would appreciate it if you came to serve our guests."

“Of course, Grand Master, I’m coming!” the woman replied, raising her head from her parchment.

Neltunia, the one Darlah had asked to find out from Dioryl where Coronice was. There might have been more details about her in Darlah's journal, but Viryl hadn't read it thoroughly and there certainly wasn't time to do so at the moment. Still, the elements he had gathered were enough to make him connect the dots. Neltunia had been a crucial pawn in weaving the web he and Anker had fallen into, and she was Dioryl's most trusted follower.

The woman stood up, grabbed the key that was hanging between her breasts on a gold chain, and went to open her room with a smile on her face, ready to welcome her guests.

In her haste, however, she left the door open.

Viryl breathed a sigh of relief. His infiltration could continue.