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He leans forward a bit more.

“Watch your mouth,” says Daja.

I’ll admit it. Between the laudanum and the Aqua Regia, my head is swimming just enough that even if she is the dog-pack alpha, I don’t care.

“No. It is all right,” says the Magistrate. “Go on, Mr. Pitts.”

“Mimir told you something out there and you ignored it. What did she say? ‘Don’t mess with these guys? Drive on?’”

“You think I engineered this catastrophe?”

“No. But I think getting caught makes you look weak and you’re not the kind of guy who does that without a reason.”

Daja starts to get up. The Aqua Regia already has her swaying.

“Get out,” she says.

“No, Daja. Please. Sit down. We are just playing a game,” says the Magistrate.

He looks at me.

“Are you finished? May I tell you my secret?”

“Sure. Tell me I’m wrong,” I say.

“I cannot,” he says. “That is my secret.”

Daja’s eye narrow.

“Magistrate . . . ?”

He turns to her.

“I am not saying that I allowed myself to be captured. What I am saying is that I ignored Mimir for a reason. Would you like to know what she told me?”

I pour more Aqua Regia.

“It’s your party.”

“Then here is my secret. Before our encounter, Mimir said to me ‘When it happens, you cannot trust him.’ I did not know what the it was that she referred to. However, what is more important is that I did not have to ask who she was talking about.”

For a second I think about killing both of them and running for the hills, but the Magistrate would have thought of that. A guy like him probably has this moment figured a hundred different ways. So, I sit there and enjoy my drink.

“I don’t understand,” says Daja. “Pitts helped. I was there. I don’t how we would have gotten you out any other way.”

“No. You do not. Because Mr. Pitts intervened. But what if there was a separate agenda beyond saving me? It was his idea to burn the cars and charge the armored vehicles, yes?”

“Yes.”

Now I lean forward. “Yeah. It was and I seem to remember Daja and me hauling your ass out of a burning building.”

He leans back.

“But would the building have burned if it were not for your suggestion to burn the cars?”

Daja looks at me.

“You’re saying he tried to kill you?”