Maggie waved us off to go to Command Tent, so I was dragged out into the camp of Imperial play-actors again. It’s not that I didn’t know these people were dangerous. I’d seen the reports and, even more, I could see the magic curled up inside most of them. Even one Mage could do incredible damage before being brought under control, much less dozens and dozens of them. But they still seemed so petty and unreal next to the memories of that dark prison, the screams of my team, and the way the Machine had pulled at the soul of my magic.

  Inside the Command tent was a huge oak table with at least a dozen chairs and a battle map of Westrion laid out. Drianthenes and another man sat, gesturing us forward as we entered. I blinked down at the map as I sat, pretending to be staring blankly with exhaustion, which was not hard to do, but truly studying it.

  I didn’t know what the pieces of the map meant, but there were six little red marbles that must have represented the murders (“sacrifices”) that they’d been doing over the past half year. They were positioned around Westrion in a huge semi-circle. The largest pieces were four bracelets, one set in Division Headquarters, one set in Southern Westrion where I thought we were now, one set in the Mage-dictatorship of Horasta, a suspected funder of the Heirs, and a final one set a bit randomly out on the North Crowning Mountains.

  “Appreciating our map, Izak?” Drianthenes asked. I jumped and tried to clear my face of guilt before looking up toward him. He tilted his head toward me in return, a knowing smile on his face.

  My fingers clenched on my lap. How much could he read of my thoughts and feelings? Why were they letting me see this much of their plans? There was a weight in my stomach, even through my exhausted hollowness.

  They did not intend to let me go.

  Drianthenes made a gesture to the man beside him, who then snapped his fingers. A black silk cover materialized and fell over the table, obscuring all the pieces without moving a single one. He’d done it without ritual, which meant that it was an ingrained spell and he must be a studied Conjuration Mage. I wondered if summoning a black silk cloth was useful in a number of situations or if there was some prestige in spending time and effort ingraining useless magic in this place. There were stories about that, of the old Empire. Magic was so divorced from the practical good of people’s lives that Mages wasted time, effort, and resources learning increasingly useless ingrained magic just to show that they had the luxury of wasting those resources. Adain had told me about it as one of his many beloved historical fun facts.

  “Izak,” Drianthenes said, steepling his fingers. I snapped my mind back to attention with real effort. I was too tired to focus easily. “We have some questions to ask you. It’s important that you answer us with as much detail as possible.”

  “Or what, you’ll torture me?” I asked. I crossed my arms, pretending that those words were bravery rather than an exhausted lack of filter. I didn’t truly want to hurt more, though at least I had some grim certainty that I could endure it. “It’s been tried.”

  Adaline made a small, surprised noise. “Did Theo? Would he really-?”

  “It wasn’t him, but he was there,” I said. I turned to her. Her face was in some expression of doe-eyed vulnerability that was certainly exaggerated, but likely had some level of real concern fueling it. The best masks always stole from real emotions, I knew that well enough. “He hadn’t recognized who I was yet.”

  I didn’t add the electrocution was brief, at least because I was keeping up my tough game.

  “Well, we certainly knew he was capable of dark things,” Drianthenes said solemnly, “even to his own family.”

  I snapped my head over and glared a moment, before taking a deep breath in. For some reason that made me angry, coming from him. What did he know of Theo, or the choices he was making? Drianthenes wasn’t in that cell. Drianthenes had almost certainly killed people, innocent people, by his own hand as magical sacrifices.

  Not Mages, Adaline had said. We aren’t cruel like Mages, Theo had said. These were the people who taught him that Mages were cruel.

  Trying to calm myself, I focused on my breathing. I’d learned from my last interrogation how much emotion could give away. When I opened my eyes, Drianthenes was looking at me with interest. It might not matter how blank I made my face, with him reading my feelings. I gritted my teeth.

  “Do you sympathize with your little brother, Izak?” Drianthenes asked. “What could he have possibly said to get you to do that?”

  “It wasn’t what he said,” I admitted, “it was his sincerity.”

  I eyed them all: Henri, Adaline, Drianthenes, Friedrich, and another, older man I hadn’t met yet with short cropped, dirty blond hair and a carefully trimmed beard. He was shockingly pale, studying me emotionlessly as a bored scholar.

  “You won’t be betraying the Mage Division by helping us, you know,” Drianthenes said. He leaned forward and caught my gaze again. His own eyes looked blue at first, but were truly a pale green. They seemed both open and cold all at once, like a fresh layer of snow welcoming you to take a step in. “The Mage Division hates the Hands of Humanity. We would be doing them a favor by wiping them out.”

  “I don’t know if it works like that,” I said. Giving the Cult information that the Division didn’t have, even if it was just about the Hands of Humanity, could probably have adverse effects. Even if I couldn’t think of any of those adverse effects in my current muggy state.

  “I don’t really know anything,” I said, shaking my head. “They didn’t tell us what was going on. Just that they hated magic and wanted to wipe it out, which isn’t a secret.”

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “I cannot believe Theo joined them!” Adaline burst out at that statement. “After every kindness I showed him, he would join people who would murder me!”

  “I’m so sorry, Adaline,” Drainthenes said. “That must be incredibly upsetting, I can’t imagine. But maybe there’s more to the story? What do you think, Izak?”

  I tried to force my breaths to be even and calm. I needed to think, but my head was cloudy. Part of me wanted to give in to Drianthenes’s gentle tone and Adaline’s concern, to play my part. Collapse, cry, confess my experiences like sins to the offered absolution of becoming a rescued victim.

  Another part of me was furious. Was I truly any less prisoner here than I was in my recent cell? What right did Drianthenes have, did even Adaline have, to speak to me with such familiarity?

  I glanced over at Adaline. That was a mistake.

  She was looking with her doe eyes at Drianthenes and Friedrich, who had put his hand around her arm in comfort. Every inch the victim in need of consoling. When she looked at me, her mouth drew tight and eyebrows drew together in a mix of concern and warning. Beyond all of that, her hands were tense, angry fists in her lap. Mask after mask after mask, I wondered if she even knew which one was real. It made me hurt for her, much more than any open display of sadness would.

  It made a strangely familiar prickle of danger tug at me, it whispered in my mind: play your role. Try to use your role for yourself, just like in the Division.

  I closed my eyes and took one deep breath in, held it, and let it out, counting through it slowly in my head like I had all the time in the world.

  “I’m not sure about the Hands, but that’s not really what Theo wants,” I said. “He doesn’t want to kill Mages. He wants to remove magic. That’s why they captured us. They were taking us away one by one, trying to take our magic, but they could only turn us into corpses. It upset him, but he thought it was necessary.”

  It was the truth and I tried to put that in my words, for the sake of Adaline and Drianthenes. Their emotional intensity ruled the room, and the others faded into the background. I didn’t want to tell them about the Machine and how it had succeeded with taking away magic, but that it left its victims brain-dead. I especially didn’t want to tell them about the Division defector Emry. More than loyalty to the Division, every bit of knowledge I held secret might be power in this tenuous position.

  Drianthenes narrowed his eyes. “And what if they could remove magic? What was their plan? Do they expect to go through every Mage removing magic one by one?”

  I shrugged, irritable despite myself. “I don’t know. I didn’t even think about it, I was too focused on surviving.”

  Friedrich’s eyes were shining with interest, and he was leaning over Adaline to get nearer to me as I spoke. He turned to his father. “Do you think they plan to-”

  Drianthenes raised a hand, and his son went quiet.

  “They were careful not to tell me anything,” I said. “I only know what I do from watching carefully, and from what Theo let slip.”

  “Theo didn’t tell you any more?” Drianthenes pressed. He put a hand on the table and also leaned forward. It seemed the entire room was bearing down on me.

  “I was busy trying to convince him to let me go,” I said. My voice cracked on the last word, in some bitter memory of Theo walking away as I begged in my cell. I cleared my throat. “I wasn’t in a position to interrogate him.”

  “Hmm.” Drianthenes leaned back in his chair again, putting his hands together, and the room shifted. Everyone’s eyes turned to him instead of me. “He mentioned nothing of us? He mentioned nothing of the Heirs, or of a ‘Cult’ as outsiders may call us?”

  “Briefly, but I didn’t even know you were involved until you broke into their compound.” Then I frowned, something catching at me. “They faked one of your sacrifices to capture us. It was an animal, but it had specific runes that no one else should know. So he’s told them something.”

  I felt Adaline go still beside me. Friedrich hissed, though he quieted with a look from his father. This was the heart of what they wanted to know, probably why they broke into that compound in the first place. No one was ever allowed to leave the Cult; that was how they kept their secrets. But Theo did.

  “Does he speak truth, Excellency?” The man next to Drianthenes asked.

  “He does, Jaccobius,” he said. “Adaline, Henri, take him back to Maggie. He’ll be under her care and responsibility. I need to speak with my council.”

  As Adaline pulled me by the elbow to leave, tension still in her stance, I held back. I turned to face Drianthenes with his advisor and his son. Drianthenes was already pulling away, having decided we were dismissed, and it took him a moment to notice me still standing there despite Adaline’s increasingly forceful pull.

  “Not everyone I was captured with is dead,” I said. “My friend, Mage Nalei, she’s still alive. Maybe not for much longer. Will you help me save her?”

  At this point I didn’t really care if the help I could get was from the Mage Division or from this Cult of Heirs or whatever. That’s why I let them take me so easily to begin with. Yes, if the Cult captured her it would be back to imprisonment, but at least Drianthenes didn’t seem interested in needlessly murdering Mages or putting them into comas. As long as I could get her out of the Hands alive, truly alive, we could figure out the rest.

  “If Nalei is alive, then maybe Sarai is as well,” Adaline added. Her grip was still tight on my arm, but she was no longer pulling me away.

  Drianthenes eyed us expressionlessly along with Jaccobius, only Friedrich watched with real concern. Henri was already at the exit, and I didn’t bother to turn around to mark his expression.

  “Sarai is dead, but we will do what we can to save Nalei,” Drianthenes said, “considering our other priorities. I will plan a rescue expedition with you into the Hands of Humanity, if you would like, but it is not my first concern.”

  I pressed my lips together. That was noncommittal. But I could feel the day weighing on me like a physical thing. “I’ll come back to you tomorrow.”

  “If you do, then you should know that my proper title is ‘Your Excellency’,” Drianthenes said. “If you want my help, then it would be more courteous to be polite.”

  I breathed in sharply. There was some reluctance in me that I didn’t fully understand; I’ve given up my pride before for worse reasons. It didn’t matter. I couldn’t fail Nalei, not like I’d failed Adain.

  “Your Excellency.” I bowed my head. When I looked up there was a small smile on Drianthenes’s face. Adaline tugged my arm again, and this time I followed her lead. I could feel Driathenes watch us as we walked away.

  Friedrich called a casual farewell after us. I bet his head was as empty as Adaline pretended hers was. No wonder Maggie thought this place would be better off in Adaline’s hands.

  “Oh, and one last thing before you go,” Drianthenes said. “Tell Maggie I want a full report on his injuries, and to initiate him.”

  Adaline nodded briefly at those ominous words. It seems I truly had gotten myself recruited into the Cult of Tyrants.