He arose in an abandoned cssroom. Ambient light was provided by candles arranged in a rough circle along its perimeter, and the it was otherwise devoid of furnishings.

  The cssroom Master Gregor had chosen had no windows to look out on, no need for curtains to block out the outside world. A brass chandelier still clung to the ceiling. Slender tines caught firelight, exposing tarnished bars and cobwebs to his eyes as he gnced this way and that, expecting to find….

  What exactly. He wasn’t quite sure.

  A door to his left opened onto a slice of the servant’s access, and Peter stepped through. He looked around at the ring of candles, found Lance standing near the center of the room, and approached him with a knowing smile on his face.

  “See. I told you. Just a hazing thing.” He said.

  “Where do you think they are?” Lance asked, his gaze returning to the candles, the long shadows pooling between them.

  “Probably just waiting outside somewhere. They’ll want you nervous, right?”

  “They’ve already succeeded—“

  Two figures arose from the shadows at opposite ends of the room. Another pair arose behind each of them. As they approached Lance and Peter, the details of their identities were made clearer. Master Gregor, together with Duardo and Emma, closed the distance from one side. To the other, Lord Aren. Behind the general were two Thorns, both of whom pointedly avoided looking in Lance’s direction.

  Lance froze. Nearby, Peter took a half step back toward the servant’s access.

  “Don’t be afraid.” Lord Aren made a warding gesture. His gaze shifted to Master Gregor. “You didn’t tell him?”

  “Tell me what?” Lance asked.

  Master Gregor shook his head. “Might be able ta block ‘em Wraiths watchin’ from the shadows, but who knows who’s got a trick fer gettin’ ‘round what ‘ese days. Didn’t want ta take any chances.

  “Watch it bucko!”

  Peter froze in mid-step. He was making slow progress toward the exit, a bad move given the Master of Thorns and his companions had seen him, knew who he was.

  “I-I don’t understand. We haven’t done anything. We’re not—“

  “Not what? Criminals? Rebels?” Lord Aren said.

  “What’s going on here?” Lance asked. “You told me not to tell anyone—“

  “Our position has changed. It occurred to us that you might fair better with a companion in which to confide. Especially given what we intend to ask of you.”

  “To ask…of me? I’m just a servant.”

  “That in’t entirely true.” Master Gregor said.

  “He can ‘ear ‘em.” Duardo said. “Same as the rest of us.”

  “Quiet Duardo.” Emma warned.

  “Listen. ‘S no safer pce fer ya ‘an in my furnaces.” Master Gregor said. “An’ I’d be gd to keep ya ‘ere f’it was up ta me. But it in’t. S’ his.”

  He cocked his chin in Lord Aren’s direction.

  “We’ve been working together for some time.” Lord Aren said. His gaze shifted from Lance to Peter. “How do you know the boy?”

  “I don’t! I mean…sorry, it’s just a…” he grimaced as his gaze fell on Lance. “We’re friends. But I don’t know anything about what he’s been up to. Or your, uh…stuff.”

  “Our stuff.” One of those Thorns chuckled. He turned to the other. “They always like this?”

  The other Thorn shrugged. “Some of the tougher ones get a little defiant. It makes no difference as long as they don’t try to attack.”

  “Why we chose a room wit’ nothin’ in it.” Master Gregor said. “Lessons learned an ‘at.”

  “Really, what’s this about?” Lance said, exchanging a look with Peter. Don’t piss them off, please. Just ride this out. Maybe we’ll get away with our skins.

  “This would be so much easier if the girl was here.” Lord Aren mumbled.

  “You mean Sami. You abducted her, didn’t you.” Lance said.

  “You know each other?”

  “Why the tone of surprise.” Peter mumbled. “Don’t your people know everything—“

  He cut off as he realized who he was talking to.

  “What did you do to her? Lothor told me…shit! Zente, Lothor.” He said, noting the bck as pitch shade of his shadow.

  “You haven’t taught him control?” Lord Aren said to Master Gregor.

  “What did you just say?” Peter’s gaze was on Lance, his eyebrows climbing into his hairline.

  “We’ll get to that. If you choose to work with us, you will receive training in these arts. Just the same, I believe Mistress Dina will be gd for it. Her department is far less unified than his.” Lord Aren gestured airily in Master Gregor’s direction.

  “And if I don’t you’ll have me killed.”

  A Thorn chuckled.

  “I am not without mercy.” Lord Aren said. “You will disappear, certainly, but I believe you will want to remain here for a time. Those gaps in your memory ought to be incentive enough. The dreams that feel so terribly familiar…have you not wondered why they should have a quality as if you have lived them before?”

  Peter stiffened.

  Shaking his head, Master Gregor sighed. “Might be best we get ta the point. All ‘is hedgin’s gonna make ‘em shit ‘ere pants, and I can’t handle the smell.”

  “Could you be serious for two seconds?” Emma growled, and smacked him upside the head.

  “Ouch!”

  “You deserved that.” She said cuttingly. “Do we even need him? He doesn’t look like much.”

  “He picked up on the old way faster ‘an I’ve e’er seen.” Duardo said. “’F anything we ‘an use ‘at kind of talent more ‘an you might think.”

  “He knew what he was doing before he showed up in our department, idiot.” She said. “He’s been doing magic longer than any of the other ones had.”

  “That might be true.” Lord Aren said. “Though not for near as long as you would like to think. Shortly before he entered your service, he started having a reaction to the spirit of shadow’s Dark Heart. I intervened, as I have done on the rare occasion I witness one of yours in such a state.

  “I believed he possessed a Gift of the Blood, a rare affinity for the spirits which, by birthright, made him more able to detect their voices, and their essences.”

  Duardo cocked his head to the side. “Is ‘at not wha’s goin’ on ‘ere?”

  “Not quite.” Lord Aren said. “Not entirely.”

  He may very well be a Seem, but that is not all he is. If I am correct, this boy’s birth marked the end of an era, the beginning of a transitional period as we crawl toward the next. We have not seen such times as these since the days when our Emperor was born.”

  Lance’s breath caught.

  “You can’t be serious.” Emma said into descending silence.

  “It is strange, isn’t it?” One of the Thorns said, stepping forward to join Lord Aren. “He was taken from Aranor, wasn’t he? Back when the Cross was having its troubles.”

  “He was the son of their leader.” Lord Aren said. “The one who was sin to make way for the current head.”

  “Then the Headsman…he’s his uncle?” the other whispered. “How in the Pits did he end up here?”

  A cold grin spread across Lord Aren’s cheeks. “I wish I knew.

  “Given the nature of his lineage, I doubt it was any great accident that he found his way to us. You would not have been made aware of what transpired in that day.”

  “We nearly went to war with the Ten Kingdoms, didn’t we? Is that not why Queen Meredith ordered the Wraith Core to infiltrate Aranor?”

  “Story for another time.” Lord Aren said. “The important thing is Hugo Silvanes sits at the heart of a web whose threads reach all the way across empire. Into the Free Lands, too. And his nephew, as it happens, cims he is one who sees.”

  “What now?” Emma asked.

  “This boy cims he can see the spirits. Not simply hear them, but see them as physical manifestations.”

  “I never said that.” Lance said, at st finding his words.

  “But you can see them.”

  “I don’t know that they’re physical anything, Lord Aren. All I know is they show up looking like common animals. A pair of foxes in the furnaces. A spider in the window by my bed. A goose in the shadows…don’t…just please don’t look at me like….” He sighed, defting under the hawkish gazes of everyone in the room. Everyone save Peter, who had backed himself up against a wall, and was now looking at the floor, avoiding all who stood around him.

  “There was a weasel, too.”

  “You know their names?”

  “Most of them.”

  “We should test him. Make sure he isn’t lying.” The Thorn who stood at Lord Aren’s side said. He looked uncomfortable, which was not something Lance was accustomed to from that unemotive cast.

  A curt nod from Lord Aren.

  The Thorn moved forward.

  Peter slid down the wall. He cupped his hands over his mouth, watched intently with worry in his eyes as his friend was set against this questioner, to undergo a trial of unknown character.

  The Thorn spread his hands, mumbled words neither Lance nor Peter could read in a nguage neither had learned to speak. Not in the way Lord Aren or Master Gregor spoke it.

  Before Lance’s eyes, several figures materialized to linger in those shadows. There was a bull, stamping its hoof against the tiles impatiently. There, too, a fox of a kind he did not recognize, who was far smaller than either of the others, and whose long and broad ears twitched as it settled onto its rump. There, very near where Peter sat, a peacock to remind of those burning others he had seen one night in a dream. Among them, it was the only creature not cast all in silhouette. Rather, the peacock was cast in light shades, its body white and glowing with silver light that reminded him so much of the moon on a clear night.

  He felt its pull on his soul, a peculiar feeling as if he should know this creature. Had met her before.

  Ambient, silver light filled the room, driving back the lower light of those candle fmes. It filled the space, an even, sourceless glow which pushed the shadows back to the corners of the room, denied them their hold.

  Lance’s gaze settled on each of those spirits the Thorn had called.

  The peacock strided forward on narrow legs, its short tail carving arcs in still air as it approached him.

  “How long it has been.” She cooed. “Since one of my own has so readily identified me. Go now, to your homes in that other pce. I will suffice for this.”

  The bull dipped at the shoulders, and vanished. The fox jogged through the closed servant’s access door. The light held in their absence.

  Quiet had descended over the gathered others. All of them were watching him now, though to see their expressions, their posture, they needed no more confirmation than this. Whatever test the Thorn had designed for him, it was useless now. Cast out along with every other pn he might have entertained to ensure Lance spoke true.

  “My words are for you and only you, child.” The peacock shifted form. Moulted feathers danced across the room. Her legs thickened, her back curved upward and her neck shrunk in on itself. In the stead of the elegant bird was an old woman, who was naked and cast in marble hues, her eyes a vacant white, matching a fall of curly hair which traveled over her shoulders and down her back.

  “I am the moon, child. And you are mine. I am first of a dying era, and st in these newborn times. Trust these men, for they cannot harm you as long as you wear my mantle in your soul. Trust their aims, if you do not trust the means. Find the way out. The way by which those who walk in shadow cannot follow.

  “They will know. If not the way, then the means to find the path. They will know.”

  She cupped his face in her hands, and her touch was warm. She guided his head down, to meet her eyes, and held him there as images fshed across his mind, forgotten things brought surging forth to remind him of dark tidings, of all that had transpired to bring him to this pce.

  She released him, and strode away. She paused to take Peter’s head in her hands, to meet his gaze, and then faded into the ether, to be seen and heard no longer.

  Lord Aren sank onto his knees. Peter stared bnkly forward. Master Gregor stepped back, and Duardo stepped forward to stabilize him.

  “What…what just happened?” he asked.

  “You didn’t call her.” Lord Aren asked the Thorn at his side. “Did you?”

  “N-no. I called for light to fill this space. That was all.” The Thorn who had performed the rite replied.

  “You see, then, why we must protect this boy. Why he matters.” Lord Aren said.

  Emma’s regard shifted from Master Gregor and Duardo to Lord Aren. “What do you need from us?”

  “To teach him control. To guide him.” Lord Aren said, accepting help from his Thorns to regain his feet. “Just that. Until he is ready, we will have to rely on the girl…Sami. We will have to rely on Sami to see our ends met.”

  “And she can do this?” Master Gregor said.

  “She’s not alone.” He said.

  “Lord Aren?” Lance asked.

  The soldier’s gaze nded on him.

  “Are there pces in this pace you can’t go?” he asked. “Pces that you can’t shadow walk into?”

  “Y-yes.” He said.

  “I think…I think there’s a way out of here. In one of those pces.”

  The Thorns exchanged a look.

  “I remember…remember when I was a kid—“

  “No.” Peter said. “Don’t. Please.”

  “It’s okay, Peter. It will be, I think.”

  “How could they have done this to us.” Peter whispered.

  How indeed.

  He remembered every vicious trespass against him, every harm he had endured before his twelfth birthday, before he looked into those lightning blue eyes and his childhood was lost to him.

  And going back further, he remembered Aranor. A brief but better life there than he had ever known here, a family who loved him. A brother and a sister. A father who he bore little resembnce to, and a mother whose features were much stronger in him. He remembered the uncle who had, by Lord Aren’s own reckoning, seen to his father’s death. Remembered the streets of a city a world away, and beyond that, vast desert, dunes and improbable cities. And a passage that led into a cliff, a waterfall come crashing from somewhere sheathed in darkness, and a strange arch which looked to have been poured out of a kettle and frozen in pce, a veil like an aurora rippling in its pearlescent frame.

  He had seen it but once, as his family was ushered along for what must have been days, ushered through cramped tunnels and away from a city on fire, whose streets teamed with ghosts and men and women cloaked in flowing robes who ran in terror for anywhere that might be safe. Ran away from death, ran away in desperation.

  “I will have my loyalists search for such a pce.” Lord Aren promised. “You focus on your training. Learning control. Without it, you cannot hope to do anything for us. Be that leading us out of this pce, or saving us from the hell it has become.”

  “I’ll do that.” He said. “Peter will, too.”

  “I-I will. I’ll do whatever you want. Just don’t…don’t kill me. Please don’t kill me.” Peter agreed.