Moments after Stiletto hopscotched out of Strategos’ office, his secretary Mildred Rottingham walked in carrying a tumbler and a bottle of amber liquid. As Stiletto had, she closed the door and locked it. Wearing an old-fashioned blouse and skirt, a string of pearls, sensible shoes, wire-framed thick glasses, and with her silver hair in a neat bun, Strategos’ septuagenarian secretary was the very picture of a prim and proper little old lady.

The thick tumbler thumped on the Resolute Desk before Strategos. He caught a glimpse of the label on the bottle as Mrs. Rottingham unsealed it. He cocked an eyebrow.

“That’s a five-figure bottle of Scotch,” he marveled. “Is it my birthday?”

“Remember that cartel jefe you had me visit last year in Guadalajara?” Mrs. Rottingham asked. “The one who killed that lovely third-year student?”

Strategos frowned at the memory of the student’s mutilated body. “Mariana Ortega. How can I forget? She had a promising future ahead of her. A shame she ran afoul of that animal.”

“Animal though he might have been, he had a connoisseur’s palate.” Mrs. Rottingham splashed a healthy pour of Scotch into the tumbler. “I liberated this from him. He had no need of it by the time I left, may God rest his soul.

“God piss on his soul is more like it. My only regret is I couldn’t be there to witness justice being served.”

“Now, now,” she chided him primly. “Mind your tongue. We’re all the good Lord’s creatures.” She shot a dark look at the door Stiletto had hopped out of. “Though some people make me question it. Anyway, I’ve been saving this Scotch for a special occasion, but thought you might need it now after dealing with that woman.” The way she called Stiletto that woman made it sound like a curse word.

Leaving the open bottle on Strategos’ desk, Mrs. Rottingham took the seat Stiletto had vacated. Her hands rested in her lap and her feet were firmly planted on the floor. At least she has the decency to not put her feet on my desk, Strategos thought sourly.

He took an experimental sip of the Scotch. It tasted the way a rainbow looked.

“You were listening?” he asked Mrs. Rottingham.

“Of course. Though I wish I hadn’t. Stiletto’s scream nearly burst my eardrums. I’ll have to borrow Robert’s hearing aids. I wonder how she knew I eavesdrop on your conversations.”

“Stiletto is very good at what she does. Too good. A shame her objectives and mine are often at variance.” He took another sip, a bigger one this time. He felt the tension of grappling with Stiletto washing away. “What are your thoughts on what she said?”

“I think she’s up to something.”

Strategos snorted.

“That’s no great revelation. She’s always up to something. The question is whether Max Blackwood’s recruitment is simply Stiletto’s latest lark to amuse herself, or if there is something more sinister to it.”

“My instincts say the latter.”

“Mine too,” Strategos agreed. “And based on her evasiveness about Mr. Blackwood, whatever she has planned regarding him is harmful to the academy. Otherwise, she’d be more forthcoming, if only to get me off her back.”

Strategos drummed his long fingers on the desk.

“The best interests of the academy dictate that I derail whatever Stiletto has planned. The question is, how?”

“I’ll kill her.” Mrs. Rottingham said the words matter-of-factly, the way someone else might say I’ll grab Chinese for dinner tonight.

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“You’ve tried. Twice.” Strategos carefully kept a note of reproach out of his voice. Mrs. Rottingham’s unsuccessful attempts on Stiletto’s life were the only times she had failed him in the course of their long and mutually beneficial relationship.

“Third time’s the charm,” Mrs. Rottingham said with unabashed confidence.

“Mmmm,” he murmured noncommittally as he let his mind go blank. He felt his consciousness expand outward, like an infinitely long glowing highway was unfurling before him. It branched into a myriad of side streets and byways. Each branch, each subtle flicker and twist of luminous energy, represented a course of future action Mildred could take from this point forward. The glowing roadways of possibilities that shone brightly indicated near to absolute certainties—for example, the chance of Mildred leaving his office without tripping and falling was one hundred percent. By contrast, the dim and dark paths indicated everything from poor chances of success to definite failures. Strategos noted with the wry empathy of the long-married that Mildred would reject her husband Robert’s sexual advances later that evening.

But whenever Mildred’s potential paths ventured too close to the enigma that was Stiletto, they were devoured, sucked into a dark abyss, a void where his power’s illuminative guidance was completely snuffed out. It was a nearly impossible challenge to determine the likelihood of success of any endeavor in relation to the all-consuming black hole that represented Stiletto. Until recently, Stiletto had been the only person he’d ever encountered who was somehow resistant to Strategos’ predictive powers.

Even so, one thing was clear: if Mildred attempted to assassinate Stiletto again, the attempt would almost certainly fail. And be traced back to him.

“No bueno?” Mrs. Rottingham said, reading the look on Strategos’ face.

“No good,” he agreed, letting the probability map fade from his mind. “Even with the shadow Stiletto casts over my foresight, it’s clear that any overt action against her will expose my involvement. And then it would be open warfare between her and me. She has her allies, I mine. An open conflict would likely destroy the school. Perhaps quite literally. Bastion alone could demolish this castle and cast it into the sea. This cold war Stiletto and I have been waging is already bad enough.

“No,” Strategos decided. “Whatever we do vis-à-vis Stiletto and Mr. Blackwood, it needs to be more subtle.”

“If the Blackwood boy is Stiletto’s pawn, we should simply remove him from the board.”

Strategos blinked at what Mrs. Rottingham implied. Despite all the years he had known her, the depths of her ruthlessness still managed to occasionally surprise him. “Why is your go-to solution always to kill someone?”

The elderly woman shrugged. “When you’re a hammer, all you see is nails.”

“At least you’re self-aware enough to realize it. But you can forget about Mr. Blackwood being your latest nail in need of a good thumping. If we get into the habit of murdering problematic students, soon we would have no students.”

“We don’t know what convoluted scheme Stiletto is up to,” Mrs. Rottingham said. “But, knowing her, whatever it is will advance her own interests, the interests of the school be damned. And that scheme clearly involves Blackwood. You say eliminating her will open a can of worms. So let’s eliminate him instead. I’ll do it so it’s not traced back to you. Students have died while training here before. An accidental discharge on the gun range, or a slip and fall during parkour training won’t arouse suspicion. It’s the path of least resistance. Instead of trying to unravel a Gordian knot, it’s best to cut it.”

“I said no,” Strategos repeated firmly, his tumbler banging on the Resolute Desk to punctuate the sentiment. “You know how seriously I take the welfare of the students. While they are here, they are my wards. And I their guardian. I’d just as soon kill one as kill my own children. Mr. Blackwood is not to be harmed. Is that understood?”

“You have to report to the Board of Governors. I understand completely. You explicitly ordered me to leave the boy alone.”

Something about the way she said it gave Strategos pause.

“Damn it, Mildred, I mean it. This is not a ‘will no one rid me of this troublesome priest’ moment where I’m saying one thing for plausible deniability while hoping you do the opposite. I don’t want you to touch a hair on Mr. Blackwood’s head. Give me your word.”

Mrs. Rottingham sighed. “Fine. I give you my word. I won’t harm the boy. But what if it turns out that the welfare of Blackwood is diametrically opposed to the welfare of the rest of the students? What then?”

Strategos’ lips tightened grimly.

“We’ll burn that bridge when and if we come to it. In the meantime, here’s what we’re going to do about Mr. Blackwood . . . .”

As the headmaster gave Mrs. Rottingham instructions, he kept to himself the most troubling detail about Mr. Blackwood. He didn’t like hiding things from his number two. But, if Mrs. Rottingham knew, she would surely eliminate the boy regardless of Strategos’ instructions, operating under the supposition that it was easier to beg for forgiveness than for permission.

That troubling detail was this:

Whenever Strategos tried to use his Unreal predictive powers on Mr. Blackwood, they did not work. When it came to Mr. Blackwood, Strategos’ powers were nullified by an all-consuming black hole, similar to the mysterious one that shielded Stiletto.