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Pritkin, I hope you’re well concealed, I thought, and scowled at everybody.All of whom seemed to be waiting on me to make a decision.Yeah, like I knew what I was doing!

Only I did because we didn’t have to find Pritkin, who was damned clever when he wanted to be.We just had to get to Caleb, knock out a couple of guards, take their places, and then Pritkin would find us.And then we could slip into the mages’ sanctum together while Rosier was busy causing a distraction, and who would have thought the old bugger would prove useful, after all?

I informed the others of my plan and saw them brighten slightly.Probably because if Pritkin didn’t find us, it wasn’t their problem, and we still had a way out of this.And with Caleb, who had presumably been inside those tunnels more recently than they had.

Of course, he’d gotten caught, too, but I decided not to point that out.

“Okay, come on then, if you’re coming,” I said and started off again.

I didn’t stay in front for long as Alphonse passed me, those long legs eating up the ground.He was striding forward with the confidence of a guy who was much harder to kill than the rest of us, and that, plus his imposing size, allowed him to get closer to the main event than he probably should have.We followed in his wake, trying to walk like we knew where we were going, or at least I did.

“Want a wand?”Topknot asked, coming up alongside me.“I got a spare.”

“I don’t know how to use one of those.”

“Yeah.Like you didn’t know black magic,” she said and cackled.“Here, take it.”

“I can’t use it.”

“Take it anyway.You can poke it in someone’s eye.”

“Put it away!Mages don’t use those!”

“Suit yourself.”It disappeared back under the rags her avatar was wearing.“But if it comes to fighting, our cover’s already gonna be blown.”

Thanks for that, I thought blackly, but for a wonder, nobody immediately challenged us, and Caleb was just ahead and still in his cage.His prison was guarded and probably warded, and he still looked more like raw, human-shaped hamburger than the mage I knew, but I’d take it.The only problem was that, in my time, he’d been tall, black, broad, and confident, like a force of nature with the magic to back it up, but this man...

I wasn’t sure he could even stand.

Maybe Alphonse could carry him?And if he did, would his cloak cover two and make them look like just one mage?Because if so, maybe we could walk right out of here and—

Something rippled over my skin when we were maybe twenty yards from Caleb, interrupting my thoughts and causing me to flinch slightly, and Zara hissed.“Detection wards.”

So, not everybody was too drunk to think straight, I thought, staring around our group.But the skinwalker cloaks proved their worth; the illusion didn’t so much as waver.And we passed into the area around the side of the scaffold, which was ironically quieter than the raucous party just in front.

And much more sober with nobody stumbling around in here.These mages seemed pretty alert, with more than just the ones by the cage fingering sidearms or being circled by a bunch of animated weapons like an extra shield.That seemed overkill for one half-dead war mage, but what did I know?

Not much, I thought, pausing along with everyone else when the ground abruptly pushed up into a small hillock not far away.A cave-like opening appeared in the side of the small hill, causing a few scattered daisies to flop over the door and into the mouth of an ominous black oval.For a moment, nothing else happened.

And then a bunch of emaciated-looking war mages stumbled out.

One of whom I knew.

“Jonas,” I breathed, watching the one-time leader of the fearsome Silver Circle stagger into the light.

It must have been the first time he’d seen it in a while as he squinted about, blinded by the torchlight.Or perhaps that was because the Coke bottle glasses he usually wore were missing.And so was just about everything else, except for a heavy gag and heavier chains binding his wrists, as he’d been stripped down to his underwear, and what it revealed...

“Damn,” Zara said, her borrowed face looking stunned at the signs of abuse all over the skeletal frame, but it hit me somewhat differently.

Jonas had to be approaching two hundred and fifty, and even for a mage, that was old.Yet he was here, through everything, still leading his men.I felt my hands clench at my sides, my breathing speed up, and Zara’s hand clamped on my wrist hard enough to hurt.

“Don’t.”

It was a single word, but I knew what she meant.Go for Jonas, and we wouldn’t find Pritkin.We wouldn’t find anybody because Jonas was the one all the well-armed and very sober mages were waiting for.He was the reason they were fingering their weapons and looking like they were wondering how they got stuck with this duty.

What she didn’t understand was that Pritkin was going to go for all of them, Caleb, Jonas, and the string of equally abused mages behind him.No way did he leave them here, not to this fate, not a chance in all the hells that had ever existed.So we did something now, something big, and damn the odds, or he was going to do it for us and—

“’Ere, you lot,” a big, tough guy said, causing me to jump and Zara to make a slight sound, neither of us having noticed him until he was almost on top of us.“Wot you doin’ ‘ere?”