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“The gods keep them around for ego,” Zara explained to me, “and as an enticement for the demons desperate enough for a power boost to risk coming to Earth.”

“Staking out gazelles at the watering hole,” Pritkin murmured.

The gray head nodded.“Something like that.A lot of the lesser sort can’t travel the hells or don’t dare with the war raging there.They prefer for their prey to come to them.”

“The demons who venture here desperate for power keep the idiot squad outside fed,” Butch Cut added.“Along with any humans who run afoul of their masters and get thrown over the wall.In return, the Mindless protect the gods who matter against attacks by resistance groups like the Circle.To get to the big shots, you have to wade through all that.”She hiked a thumb at the chaos behind us.

“In other words, humans are meat,” Zara said bitterly.“Kept to raise the next generation and keep this whole nightmare going.”

“The war party wanted to attack the gods while the demon wars were keeping them occupied,” Topknot added.“Trying to make this world too risky for them to bother with having it as their headquarters.”

“Sounds good to me,” Alphonse commented.

“Does it?”Zara snapped.“And what do you think will happen to these people, and all the rest like them, when there are no curbs on what the Mindless can do anymore?As soon as the gods who matter leave, those monsters will run amok, killing everything and everyone they find.But did the war party ever think aboutthat?”

“They want to go down fighting,” Æsubrand said, fingering his spear.“It’s understandable.”

“It’s folly!Getting people into safe zones before the damned gods move into the hells and leave us to the tender mercies of their idiots was the only way to survive!”

“There is no way to survive this,” he said, looking around, his face expressionless.“There is only death here.Can’t you smell it?”

“That’s the latrine,” Gray Curls said dryly.“Plumbing stopped working a while ago.They mostly use open trenches now.Probably why half this place has dysentery, but the gods don’t care.They can’t catch it—”

“So you’re saying we just walk in?”Purple Hair, who had been growing more and more restless at the history lesson, interrupted to ask Enid.“Act like we own the place?”

“No.We act like weservethe place,” said the woman who had spent her whole life doing exactly that.“Nobody pays any attention to servants.They often don’t look at us twice, any more than you would a chair or table.It’s just there to serve its function and requires no notice unless it’s malfunctioning.Otherwise, it may as well be invisible.

“Just like we will be.”

“Yeah, except they’re expecting us,” Alphonse pointed out.“And a lot of us don’t look like servants—”

“And what does a servant look like?”she challenged, eyes flashing.

They continued to argue, but I wasn’t listening anymore because Mircea was suddenly in my head.What just happened?he asked, sounding as shaken as I felt.

Possibly because we weren’t really all that separate even now.It was better than a minute ago; listening to the others had drawn me back into myself enough to tell that I had my own body and pair of eyes.But while I heard his words in my head, my lips moved at the same time that he spoke, as if they were my own.

I don’t know.

That is...unfortunate.I hoped you had done something—

Does that mean you didn’t?

No.Perhaps Mage Pritkin—

It wasn’t me, Pritkin’s voice echoed in my head as clearly as Mircea’s, despite him not having that gift.But I wasn’t sure that who originally owned a talent mattered anymore.

Then who was it?Mircea rasped.

Nobody—or all of us, depending on how you look at it.I was afraid that something like this might happen.

Afraid of what?I would like an explanation before we proceed any further!

As would I.That was Bodil.

Not now, I told her.

Yes, now.This doesn’t merely concern the three of you.We’re all at risk if the spell you share is beginning to run out of control.