Udrebam seemed to have grown colder, not warmer, as Chaths spent more time in its streets.

He’d long since given in and acquired local wear to shield him from the frigid air. Long since allowed himself to shiver openly, for what little heat the spasms brought to soak his muscles.

It seemed to make as much difference as piss on a bonfire. Little enough that even as the elements tortured him on his trek down a road, Chaths considered the merits of abandoning his newfound protection from them. Sticking by the principle he’d clung to in the first place and foregoing the petty comfort it would cost him.

No. He decided. This petty comfort is all that lets me go outside, by now.

The city was cramped around him, buildings cowering in the centre’s shadow. Seeming far more like the structures that had punctuated his childhood than the proud spires he’d seen from afar.

Odd, how that depresses me. Chaths thought. I keep telling myself those days are long in the past, yet everytime I see the slightest reminder, they’re back again. Chasing me like death.

The sobering thought lasted until he turned a final corner, glancing at his hastily scrawled map and studying the structure capping the street for confirmation. He made sure twice, then entered.

A woman greeted him in some variant of Paradisan that demanded more than fluency to grasp, rough and regional. Each syllable elusive. He just managed to understand enough to realise where he was headed, moving up groaning stairs atop a carpet of dust and grime.

Chaths knocked twice on the only door he found, then twice more when no answer came. He waited a half minute, his annoyance growing with each passing second. The moment it came to a boil, he made his way in wordless. Not remotely surprised by the sight waiting to greet him.

Rajah, second eldest Immortal of Jyptia, Hero of Skal-Hill, vanquisher of the Paradisan Death-Rattle and Explorer of Iilvari Ruins, was asleep.

He sat upright, eyes half open and entirely soundless in a way most men could only manage while conscious. Chaths knew his mentor too well to be fooled.

Doubtless he’d tell anyone who asked he was meditating. Doubtless they’d fail to see through the tiger shit and realise he was simply napping.

Chaths planted his foot against the Immortal’s chest, pushing and toppling him backwards. The storm of curses erupting from his mentor proved no less amusing than ever.

“Arse!” He cried, glaring up at Chaths with wide eyes and a furious face. “Why do you always wake me? Do you get some sick delight in it?”

“Not at all.” Chaths answered. “I merely want to make sure you remain sharp, you did tell me nine out of ten Immortals die to assassination, didn’t you?”

It was a lie. The only time he ever managed to draw an unmasked reaction from his mentor was by waking him. Doing so could have lit the man on fire and still been worth as much.

“I think I’d prefer to have my throat slit.” Rajah grumbled, standing up and glaring down at the filth caking him where he’d fallen onto the dirty floor.

“Do they even bother cleaning?” He muttered to himself. “It’s as if everything in this city is shit. Even the wine is shit. How do you make wine shit? It’s fucking wine!”

The mask was back up, jokes only reinforcing it. Chaths smiled at his mentor’s antics, but knew that the distance between them had been regained. He buried the cocktail of emotion that brought.

“I assume you’ve heard about what happened last night?” He asked.

Rajah paused while dusting himself down, licking dry lips and looking hesitantly up at Chaths. He was shorter than him, belying his power.

“Of course.” He said, quiet. “I knew about it long before the rumours reached this corner of the city. Woke up sensing what was going on and just about shit myself.”

The joke fell poorly, withering beneath the conversation’s weight.

“What do you think?” Chaths asked. “About everything, I mean. How…”

“How much danger am I in?”

He nodded, glad to be spared saying it outloud.

Rajah gave the question some thought, making his way to one corner of the room and taking a seat in the cleanest of its chairs.

“It’s difficult to say.” He shrugged. “If the target was Tamaias, everyone else is safe now. If it was Sieve organisers, I’m still not on the list.”

“And if it was Immortals?”

He stiffened, a genuine, reflexive action that all but confirmed Chaths’ suspicion.

“You’re scared.” He breathed, triumph giving way to horror a moment later. Rajah looked as though he might deny it for all of an instant, then sighed and nodded.

“I am.”

“Is it the God Hunter?”

That question drew a far less useful reaction, more irritated by half.

“Where did you hear that term?” Rajah demanded. Chaths didn’t blink in the face of his glare.

“I overheard it from you.”

“Listening with a glass to the wall?”

“Of course.”

That brought a weary smirk to the Immortal’s mouth, seeming to smooth out the lines of his face and take a dozen years of wear from them. His eyes grew distant and foggy with thought, fingers running absently through his own hair before he spoke again.

“I don’t think so.” Rajah admitted. “From what I’ve heard, the God Hunter has a specific means of killing. Silently, subtly. Decimating a city is neither of those things. Nor, from what I’ve heard, does the state of Tamaias’ body resemble those who died by the Hunter’s hand.”

Somehow that wore away at Chaths’ fear. He’d not worried for his mentor’s life before, Rajah was too big a person to die in a city like Udrebam. But at the hand of the God Hunter was a different matter.

“Besides, I have it on good information that the God Hunter is being pursued by a mystic so powerful that I’m unable to name him, lest I incur a volley of infuriating questions from you at his very mention.”

Chaths couldn’t help but grin at that.

“You’ll never let me forget the early days, will you?”

“Of course not. I’d be failing my duty as a mentor if I did, especially with some of your more egregious sins.”

Stolen novel; please report.

“What do you want from me?” Chaths groaned, seeing the conversation’s end from a mile away.

“An apology would be nice.” Rajah said, bouncing back altogether too quickly. “That priceless vase you shattered crawling through my window is still broken to this day, you know.”

“That’s only because of your idiotic principle against using magic for anything smaller in scale than a building.”

It was among the most frustrating things about his teacher. He was Rajah, a legendary figure. Counted among the twenty most powerful mystics in existence, standing almost of a level with the world’s Deities. And yet if a street urchin broke something he owned trying to rob his home, he’d insist on leaving it shattered when he could fix it with half a thought.

As his mind reached back to that chance encounter, Chaths felt his guts tighten. Eyes growing perilously close to tears. He opened his mouth to speak, barely trusting his voice after moments of gripping his composure. The words came out shaky and cracked.

“Thank you for taking me in back then.” He said, staring pointedly at the floor as he spoke. Somehow it was impossible to meet a man’s eye while expressing such forthright gratitude.

Rajah waited until Chaths looked back up at him to answer.

“There’s no need.” He said, all trace of humour gone from him. “Teaching you has been my pleasure.”

Chaths grinned at that, then laughed despite himself. He laughed harder at the confusion on Rajah’s face, let the Immortal wallow in it for a few moments before speaking again.

“Don’t call it a pleasure.” He said. “Whore houses are being called pleasure houses now, it sounds bizarre and sick.”

They shared a laugh at that, strained, but enough to burn away the tension. Chaths was glad. He wasn’t sure why he’d felt the need to revisit that night, but the humour was all that kept his memory from going further to the cold nights spent sleeping on streets beneath crumbling mortar.

Rora Kasta’s Jaxif Faction had been but a whisper back then, far from the near-continental force it had since sprouted to. He wondered for a second how different his life would have been had his birth come a decade later, when Jyptia’s streets were swept for young mystics to be taken in and trained officially.

Another look at his grinning mentor banished the train of thought.

Worse, Chaths decided, than how he’d ended up.

***

Crow had heard Astra speak of the way walking cleared fog from her mind, easing thought. He’d listened, for once, tried to move through the Crux while his brain whirred. Then stepped out into Udrebam when that failed, and walked longer still in the search of her lauded tranquility. Ever a slow one, it wasn’t until he’d exited the city’s centre that he came to realise he’d not find what he sought.

Half his mind was rife with musings about Unity, turning over every flickered expression and nebulous word the boy had shown hours before. Scouring all for details that might explain what was going on behind his eyes.

Such focus was a rarity for Crow, and it might have yielded results even with so great an enigma as the artificial. Were his attention aimed at it wholly.

The streets were haunting in their emptiness, smells and sounds of the city leaving its air lifeless and sterile as a Sieve stage. Only his own footsteps brought company in the monotony, and they soon became too constant for comfort.

It was a painful contrast to the wrathful cries that had ignited the stadium after Unity’s accident.

Accident.

In all the raging tides and howling winds of his thoughts, Crow scarcely noticed how solidly he’d clung to the belief that Unity’s killing had been unpurposeful. Unshakingly, even unreasoningly.

He dismissed that line of inquiry before suspicion could take root in him. Unity was many things, but the boy was not a killer. Crow didn’t imagine anyone who’d sacrifice their arm for a stranger was.

The mental storm didn’t cease, begetting Crow with every step he took. Seconds stretched to minutes, then neared almost half an hour in total. All without anything close to an answer.

When his thoughts halted, it was not by choice.

A voice reached Crow from behind, cool and calm yet undismissably powerful. Like deep waters churning underfoot.

Crow practically spun to meet the speaker, finding a tall man with skin nearer to a noble’s black than a common pale. Blue eyes seemingly drawn from Jaea locked onto him, entirely at odds with the otherwise Dewlzian appearance. Disconcerting in their intensity.

“Crow Tempora.” The man began. “I have been meaning to meet you for some time. Do you know who I am?”

He didn’t, but was desperate not to let the man know. Crow racked his mind for any trace of recognition, prying apart the stranger’s voice for a clue. He could glean nothing, save that he spoke almost identically to Gem.

“I don’t.” Crow admitted at last. “Sorry.”

The man didn’t seem at all annoyed, though nor was he amused. His face remained flat. Untouched by expression of any kind.

“I am not surprised.” He answered. “Kaiosyni has been placed at the forefront of this Sieve, as our announcer. I imagine you’ve spared little thought for the rest of our identities, considering.”

Kaiosyni? Crow thought. I haven’t a clue who that is, either. Is he trying to confuse me?

“I am Elijah Sorafin.” The man said. “Organiser of this year’s Sieve, and emissary of the Lady Rora Kasta of the Jaxif Faction. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, young phenom.”

Crow found himself unable to speak, faculties taken by the task of processing the ocean of information he’d just had dropped on his head. Sorafin said no more, waiting patiently.

At last he regained some semblance of thought, speaking with a pitiful tone.

“Begging your pardon sir, but what is it that you’ve come to talk to me about?”

That, at last, gave movement to Sorafin’s face. Albeit barely, and the smile flickering in the corner of his mouth was not the expression Crow would have chosen to inspire.

“You don’t need to be nervous.” Sorafin answered assuringly. “I’m here on personal business, not that of the Sieve. You are in no trouble.”

Crow’s relieved sigh almost smothered what the man said next.

“I’m here to offer you a position in the Jaxif Faction as a member of Rora Kasta’s Mystic Coterie.”

“A Coterie.” Crow echoed, stupidly. He remained silent, thinking again. Then spoke. Focusing on perhaps the stupidest thing he could have.

“I didn’t know the Jaxif Faction had Coteries.”

Another smile from Sorafin. It would have been relieving, were the man’s very presence not so heavy.

“They are a recent addition, yes. Though you won’t immediately be granted a position among their ranks. Lady Kasta keeps only the finest she can obtain, and no matter how gifted a mystic of your age is, you can’t hope to match power of that level.”

“What would I be doing then?” Crow asked.

“Training.” Sorafin said.

Crow felt something spark in his chest. A sudden, mad defiance.

This is a negotiation. He realised. For a contract. My contract. The sort Astra’s spent years practically rehearsing for.

Somehow it comforted him to put the situation in such simplistic, mundane terms. Encased his spine in iron.

“I can get training in the Gilasev Institute.” He countered. “Better than any you can offer, I’d wager.”

Sorafin said nothing for a moment, studying Crow with those blood-freezing eyes.

“Perhaps you misunderstand me. Do you know why you’re receiving this offer, child?”

“Because of my talent.” He answered. It had taken him long enough to accept how he measured up against other mystics of the world, but accept it he had.

“A close answer.” Sorafin said “But incomplete.”

Crow thought for seconds more, finding no alternative.

“It’s your eyes, boy.” Sorafin explained. “The Eye of Temporis. There’s only one other mystic in the world fortunate enough to be born with it, and until your appearance she’s been alone in that privilege for centuries.”

The pieces began clicking together in Crow’s mind.

“She’s the only other person alive who has my strain.” He echoed. “And she’s offering me a position where I can train… Under her?”

Sorafin nodded.

“That’s right. It’s an offer precious few have received.”

It was too much. The information was like tar in the mechanism of Crow’s mind.

A Deity couldn’t have offered to tutor him. It just didn’t happen.

“Would you like some time to think on the matter?” The Jyptian asked. It was like a drink of icy water after running a league.

“Yes!” Crow replied, as loud as he did quickly. Suddenly self conscious, he quietened himself and continued. “Yes please.”

The Jyptian nodded, apparently expecting it, and turned.

“Very well then. Though I would ask that you decide quickly. Good day, child.”

He was gone before Crow ‘s heart had settled, leaving him, once again, with nought but the emptied city for company.