Pernille Staffen was worried. And considering the general thrust of her career over the years, it took rather a lot for that to happen.

  She hadn't wanted the Commander role. She'd been extremely, delightfully, comfortably retired. Little house in Jewel Town. More grandchildren than she could easily name. Finally, the opportunity to catch up on her knitting. But then Cenorth had shit the bed, and the Mayor had, personally, asked her to come in and change the sheets.

  "How hard could it be?" her husband had said. "It's hardly like Cuckoo House is going to be like being back on the Wall, is it?" he’d said. "Might be nice to have something to get you out from under my feet for a couple of hours a day. And, to be honest, there's only so many fucking beanie hats one man can wear."

  How hard could it be?

  Well, it turned out pretty hard indeed.

  First, there had been all the fallout from Cenorth’s death to clear up. She had needed to ensure the Security Services weren’t left looking like absolute Soar-beating chumps. It had stuck in her craw to push the narrative that wanker was some sort of hero who’d gone down in the brave defense of peace, love and the Soarian way, but that was the deal she’d brokered to get Jana Lowe off everyone’s shit list.

  And she was pleased she’d done so. Staffen had always liked the man - had kept half an eye on his career over the years - although she suspected he might not realise it. He might be an arsehole, but he was an honest arsehole, and in a world of gaping, sweaty crap buckets, that made him the rarest of things to Pernille Staffen.

  Then, hot on the heels of that there’d been the Soar Museum debacle, which she was sure had added a whole host of new grey hairs to her reflection every morning. Nevertheless, Lowe had come through there again. And he’d royally pissed off Grackle Nuroon to the bargain. Big tick there.

  But then there was the nightmare of these last few days…

  Staffen lit her pipe as she flicked through the best info Cuckoo House had on the Black Knight. The pickings were slim.

  This twat was an old ghost story. One people whispered about in the dark rooms of power, half-believing, half-praying they never met the reality of it. He’d been a killer who had made a particular habit of targeting the great and the good of Soar—though ‘great’ was a subjective term, and ‘good’ was outright inaccurate. The victims had all been power players in one form or another. Bankers, council members, crime lords, the occasional overly ambitious military officer. Not the sort who left mourners, just empty suits whose deaths caused inconvenient shifts in power. Ones which a suspiciously well-connected number of people had made the most of . . .

  The Black Knight had been a problem for a while, a silent blade in the city’s underbelly, and more than a few people had suspected that the Mayor had been the one holding the purse strings. It would have made sense, she supposed. The Mayor had always been good at arrangements, and sometimes arrangements required knives rather than words. But no one had ever been able to pin it on him. And, from flicking through the Black Knight’s file, it looked like everyone and his Aunt Bessy had tried.

  Then the whole thing had come to a head in that disastrous operation Lowe had overseen, and his had been the head which had been the one to roll down the hill. Fucking Cenorth. If there was one thing Staffen hated, it was a boss who didn’t stand up for their people. Cenorth had as good as Classtrated Lowe himself. The Council rubberstamping his recommendation had been pretty much assured once he’d finished with his ‘evidence’.

  And, for whatever reason, that had been the end of the Black Knight.

  Well, at least it had been, until that night in the Vault.

  Staffen puffed away on her pipe in silence, before closing the file in disgust. There was nothing of interest in here. Nothing new, anyway.

  A knock on her door.

  "What?”

  "Sorry to interrupt, boss," Osbourne said. And to be fair to him, looking at his face, he really was very, very sorry. Or was at least scared to interrupt her musing.

  "Well, you have, so get the fuck on with it before I pull your nose off and use it for an ashtray"

  "It’s Inspector Lowe…"

  Staffen sighed. "Of course it fucking is. What’s that wanker done this time?"

  "We’re not sure. It’s just…"

  "Any more ellipses, and I’m going to use this pipe to complete a fucking radical colonoscopy. What is it?"

  "You know how you asked for a tracking cantrip to be installed on his Sending Stone?"

  "As I’m not yet suffering from senile delusions, yes. Yes, I do."

  "Well it appears he’s, somehow, turned it off. Well, at least someone has turned the tracking off.”

  Staffen sat still for a moment, swearing under her breath, before grabbing her coat and moving to the door. "Fuck it. That means either he’s going to do something stupid or someone is going to try something stupid on him. Neither fills me full of glee."

  She moved fast through Cuckoo House, cane tapping against the floor, the scent of her pipe smoke trailing behind her. Osbourne struggled to keep up, but he was a younger man, and she wasn’t about to slow down for the sake of his knees.

  "Where was the last ping?" she asked.

  "Somewhere near the Central Market," he replied, "About half a bell ago."

  "Half a bell? How long did it take you to find your balls and come and tell me. No, don’t answer that. So, do we have any idea where he might have gone now?"

  "Sorry boss. Either he’s gone somewhere that scrambles the signal, or he’s switched it off deliberately."

  "What do we have near the Market?"

  "We’ve got two agents covering the North side, but they’re on foot. We could deploy a unit from the nearest Portal Stone—"

  "No."

  Osbourne frowned. "No?"

  "Lowe’s a prick, but he’s a competent prick. If he worked out we’re tracking him and turned off his Sending Stone, it means he either doesn’t want us watching, or he’s already in the middle of something that doesn’t need a battalion of jackboots stomping through it."

  “But what if someone has turned it off for him . . .”

  Staffen paused, and then shook her head. “No. Let’s give Lowe some time to sort things out himself. That’s what I’d want you fuckers to do in this situation if it was me.”

  "So what do we do, Commander?"

  "We watch. We wait. And when he inevitably gets himself into deep enough shit that he does need us, we make sure we’re ready to pull him out."

  "Understood."

  Staffen took one last draw of her pipe before knocking the contents out onto a nearby table.

  "Oh, and get me the restricted file on the Black Knight. The one everyone thinks we don’t know about. The one from the Mayor’s private stash.

  Osbourne hesitated. He liked it when he got to get his hands really dirty, but - well - there was dirty and then there was dirty. "You think the Mayor might have a hand in this?"

  "I think the Mayor always has a hand in everything," Staffen said. "The question is whether he’s playing both sides, or just making sure he wins either way." She buttoned up her coat and turned toward the exit. "And find out where Lowe was last seen. I want discreet eyes on him before this turns into another mess."

  Osbourne nodded and jogged off, leaving Staffen standing at the edge of the corridor, the city stretching out beyond the high windows of Cuckoo House.

  “Good hunting, Lowe,” she whispered, and then went out into the night.

  ***

  The Mayor stared out of his window, enjoying the slow movement of Soar beneath him.

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  This was a nice office, he thought. Spacious. Elegant. An office people nodded approvingly at when they walked in. It was a space that whispered of control. Which, after all, was exactly as things should be. The thick rugs, the mahogany desk, the bookshelves filled with weighty tomes he’d never actually read but which suggested their owner was a man of depth and consequence. He enjoyed the projected illusion of being the repository for centuries of hard-earned wisdom. He was aware that people expected it from a man in his position, and he was more than happy to oblige.

  There was nothing so useful as being thought wise by fools.

  He had worked hard to get here. Done many, many things that may not sit at all comfortably on his conscience, but the trick of it all was making peace with necessary sins. They had not come all at once—that would have been a fool’s game and no matter what his detractors thought of him, they all agreed he was no fool. Nevertheless, slowly, over time, each negotiated compromise had been a single stone in a road paved straight to his current seat in City Hall.

  And now he had this view of the whole of Soar beneath him.

  A city of opportunity. A city of ambition. A city of cutthroats who liked to pretend they weren’t cutthroats. He had a particular fondness for those who fitted in to that last description.

  And a city, more than anything, of gods . . .

  A frown crossed his face as he thought of that. Yes. The fucking gods. The gods in Soar were the reason it was the greatest of cities. Not its wealth, not its trade, not the glittering towers or the sprawling underbelly. It was the gods which made the city great. And gods, as anyone with half a brain in the city knew, were a problem.

  The role of the Mayor in Soar was entirely straightforward—keep the gods happy. In practice, that meant ensuring they could do whatever they pleased with as few consequences as possible. It meant cleaning up after them, smoothing over the inevitable wreckage of their divine tantrums, and ensuring the mortal population didn’t start asking questions they had no right to ask. It meant keeping the bodies hidden. And there were always bodies.

  The fucking gods.

  And one god in particular. Arkola’s threat to destroy Soar was causing him no end of concern. Not quite as much as the death of Arven Morholt, to be sure, but it bothered him nonetheless. Those who provided him with information from within the Celestial Temple had been clear: the god did indeed intend to destroy Soar by the end of this newly breaking day if his property was not returned to him.

  Which was, by any measure, utterly terrifying. And yet…

  The Mayor watched Soar’s mana lights flicker out as the sun of a new day arose. By his reckoning, and he had thought long and hard about it, Arkola was bluffing. He could have destroyed the city six years ago if he had been so attached to that statute. That he had not was significant. Gods were many things, but they were not known for patience. That suggested Arkola wanted something more than simply vengeance. And it also suggested he was aware he was being reported on. Which was interesting.

  That meant negotiation was possible. That meant there were Priests who could be sold out for a favour. And a favour from a god . . . well, that was always worth having. And there would always be others within the Temple that were willing to sell their loyalty, if the price was high enough.

  All things being equal, he thought he might actually end up ahead of the game on this one. Especially if that blasted Inspector could actually recover the missing item.

  Of course, the surprising, and entirely unwelcome, reappearance of the Black Knight had somewhat thrown a rather large spanner into his wider gears. As, likewise, had the inopportune murder of Morholt. In the Mayor’s experience, Wardens of the Reserve who were so openly corruptible were rather thin on the ground. He suspected that the reemergence of the former probably had something to do with the latter. Which was irksome. Especially as he had thought that had all been dealt with. Once the usefulness from that quarter had ceased, he had seen to it personally. Permanently, he had thought. And well over a year ago.

  Yet here that figure was, back from whatever grave had failed to hold him, and causing an absurd amount of disruption. There were few things that truly made the Mayor nervous, but a vendetta left unfinished had the potential to make even his considerable confidence waver.

  But he would deal with it. The same way he always did.

  Something glinted on the rooftop opposite.

  The Mayor did not move, not at first. There was a certain animal instinct, deeply buried, that told men when they were being watched. He listened to it now, keeping his breathing even.

  The glint did not come again.

  Still, his hand drifted to the Sending Stone on his desk, and he pushed some mana into it.

  Seconds later, the door opened.

  Cairn entered, silent as ever, his bulk moving with surprising ease for a man of his Class. The Mayor did not look at him. He did not wish to take his eyes off the window.

  “Rooftop opposite,” he said quietly.

  Cairn nodded once and slipped back out.

  The Mayor watched the awakening city as he waited for the allclear. He thought about Arkola. About the Black Knight. About the Inspector currently dragging his way through the filth of Soar to retrieve something stolen from a god. He thought about the people who had tried to outmaneuver him over the years. About the men and women who had whispered in the dark, certain they possessed the upper hand.

  None of them had lasted.

  Not like he did.

  A minute passed. Then another. Cairn still hadn’t returned.

  Yes, it would all be fine, would it not? Arkola was bluffing, the Black Knight would vanish into history again and Lowe would recover the statue. And all would be well in Soar.

  Another flash. Perhaps a trick of the early morning light? Or perhaps something else.

  And he thought that right until the explosion ripped through his window.

  ***

  Hel had a long and complicated history with Suppression Totems.

  When you were one-on-oning a Level 70 Ragehorror, having a spare one of those bad boys in your pocket to slap down could be the difference between bleeding out in the mud and skipping home to fuck the prom queen. It was the only Skill, way back when, she had ever insisted Irek had to raise to Epic before she would let him join her squad, and it had saved their collective arses more times than anything else the Empath Nullifier had in his repertoire.

  But being on the receiving end of its power, though? That sucked the big one.

  Hel pulled on the ropes binding her arms and swore a blue streak up, down, left and right. The Black Knight had calibrated the Totem in this room to pull them all down to Level 8—which was proving to be the bugger to end all buggers. A slap in the face. A boot to the ribs. A shitty joke with her name as the punchline. Just a few days ago, she had been basking in the sheer delight of her newfound Level 50 Skills. Finally, she’d made the jump into the big leagues. The culmination of years of sweat and blood. And now she was back to where she’d been in kindergarten. Level fucking 8. Functionally, pathetically and frustratingly helpless.

  Of course, being kidnapped, tied up, and locked in a fucking tomb was pretty debasing too.

  She screamed and pushed all her available mana against the Totem’s enforced restrictions, shoving at the very edges of her ability like a caged animal. Nothing happened and there was a beat of silence.

  “Did it work?” Karolen asked from her side in the room.

  “Did what work?”

  “The eight millionth time you tried to break free. I was sure this time would be the ticket.”

  “Fuck off, Auditor.”

  “Would love to. If only there was a Level 50 uber-assassin around to help me escape. Oh, hang on, there is. But all she seems to be doing is screaming like a little bitch.”

  “Kay, cool it,” Arebella said. “This isn’t Hel’s fault.”

  “Well, technically…” Ortel began.

  “You can fuck off too!” Hel growled.

  Silence stretched. A pause for regret. None came.

  “We all heard him go out, right?” Arebella said eventually.

  “Yeah,” Hel said. “Him and that fucking weapon of his.”

  That gave them all pause for thought. That crossbow was, after all, the reason they were all here, was it not? Because when he pointed that thing at them, compliance was the only sane option.

  The Black Knight was packing a Mythic-enhanced custom crossbow clearly made for piercing . . . well, anything. Shields. Armor. Flesh—it didn’t apparently care. Hel worried even enchanted plate would fail against it, and could imagine the bolt searing through any barrier like it wasn’t even there. To hear the Black Knight tell it, the weapon was one that made even the strongest defensive Skills irrelevant. And more than that, it had something worked into its enchantment that made it react to movement in a way she didn’t like one bit. As a Wind Tyrant, she understood the mechanics of that, and she worried it could take down anything this side of an Avatar.

  And she had absolutely no intention of seeing whether Latham could tank a hit from that thing.

  “So, now would be the time for anyone to share if they have any more ideas of how we get out of this,”Arebella said.

  The complete and absolute absence of chat wasn’t reassuring.

  “As long as that Suppression Totem is running, I am afraid there is going to be nothing I have to offer,” Ortel said. “It is negating even the most basic of my Skills.”

  “You and me both,” Karolen added.

  Hel focused again and tried to push against the restriction. Tried to fight. But all she managed was a short, pathetic pulse of wind that barely even stirred the dust. It wasn’t even as much as she’d managed when the Black Knight had taken their image—probably to send to mock Lowe. She had no idea if the Inspector would notice the clue she’d woven into her hair, but it had been the best she could think to do at short notice.

  “Look, it’s going to be okay,” she said. “We all know Lowe. There’s literally nothing in Soar that’s going to stop him coming through those doors.”

  “Huh,” Arebella said.

  “What?”

  “You’re telling the truth. You really believe that,” Arebella said. “Even with my Skills squished down to Level 8, I can see you’re absolutely sincere in that statement.”

  “When it comes to your boyfriend, Bella, there are only two things that are certain. First, he’s going to have been beaten to a pulp, probably killed, at least once since you last saw him.”

  “Probably twice, in all fairness,” Karolen added.

  “Okay. Fair comment. And the second thing?”

  “Nothing in the world is going to stop him from swooping in here and saving us all. No bad guy, no god, and certainly no fucking Black Knight is going to be able to keep him away. You’ll see. Any minute now, Jana fucking Lowe is going to stumble through that door with a big dopey grin and make some sort of wisecrack.”

  Arebella looked around at the room in which they were captured. At the reinforced walls, the lack of windows, and the heavy doors bolted from the outside. She looked at the Suppression Totem humming steadily in the corner, leeching them of all their Skills. She looked at the restraints biting into their wrists, and the traps that had been left for anyone seeking to break in. At the careful, methodical planning that had gone into all of this.

  Her worry was that the Black Knight hadn’t just prepared for intruders. He would be welcoming them.

  Lowe would be coming to save them. That much she absolutely believed.

  And it terrified her.