“Then it’s a good thing we all know how to keep our mouths shut,” said Aoth. “Now, I’ve already committed the Brotherhood to this plan. Do the rest of you agree?”

The Chessentan mages exchanged glances, then murmured or nodded their support.

“I still don’t like it,” Medrash said. “But promise me a place among the hunters, and that you’ll lift the curse as soon as we catch the murderer, and I’m with you.”

“Done,” said Aoth. “Now let’s decide where to center the spell.”

“The ropemakers’ quarter,” Khouryn said. “It’s a poor district, with all the ills that go along with want, and a boy died a bloody, pointless death there just a few days back. If you want a place to stink of misery and anger, your work’s already halfway done.”

Aoth and Jet glided over the rookeries and the narrow streets and alleys snaking between them. Aoth was the only rider in the air. Griffons were magnificent beasts, useful for many purposes, but you couldn’t expect ordinary ones to circle endlessly without screeching to one another.

It likely didn’t matter that no one else was aloft. Clouds shrouded the moon, and few lights burned below. Even a dwarf like Khouryn couldn’t have seen much from such a height.

But with his fire-touched eyes, Aoth could. He could even see the taint he and his fellow mages had cast over a portion of the ropemakers’ precinct. It revealed itself as a slow seething inside the deepest shadows.

He wished they could have confined it to a smaller area. That would have made it easier to spot the Green Hand if the magic actually succeeded in drawing him in. It would also have reduced the number of innocents obliviously immersing themselves in filth.

But Aoth didn’t find it all that hard to disregard their plight. He’d done worse things in war. And as far as he was concerned, he was at war now-a war to save the Brotherhood from ruin.

A dark form skulked across a canted tenement rooftop. “There!” said Aoth.

“Where?” Aoth felt his psychic connection to Jet deepen as the familiar availed himself of vision even keener than his own. “Oh, right, I see him. But is that the Green Hand?”

“I don’t know. Fly lower.”

Crouched, clad in a voluminous robe and a hood that covered his entire head, the man below certainly looked like anyone’s notion of a fiend. But like most slums, the ropemakers’ precinct harbored a diversity of outlaws, and a masked man could lurk on a roof for a number of reasons. Aoth didn’t want to reveal his presence until he was sure he’d found his quarry.

The hooded man stalked to the edge of the roof and then crawled over it, clinging to the wall head down like an insect or lizard. He scuttled along the top tier of shuttered windows, seemingly peering through the cracks.

Aoth’s doubts fell away. A thief who could climb like that, whether by dint of skill or magic, would steal from wealthier folk than paupers in a tenement. The man below was here to kill. Come to think of it, it was in just such a setting that he’d committed the first murders in his string.

Jet perceived his master’s certainty. “I can peel him right off that wall.”

Aoth snorted. His steed could perform amazing maneuvers in flight, but the prospect of plunging into the narrow space between buildings, mere inches away from one of them, was enough to give any rider pause. “Just swoop low enough to give me a shot.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” But Jet did as he’d been instructed.

The hooded man dug his fingertips between the laths of a shutter like he meant to rip the barrier off its hinges. Aoth aimed his spear and considered whether to hurl frost or darts of light.

Then Jet went rigid and plummeted toward the street. His spread wings caught just enough air to keep Aoth from breaking bones when they crashed down. It was only then that Aoth spotted the arrow buried deep in the feathered part of the griffon’s flank, just behind the foreleg.

Aoth looked up just in time to see a second hooded figure, this one armed with a bow, step back from the edge of a roof and out of sight. The man on the wall was gone.

At that moment, Aoth hated himself for failing to spot the archer, even though no one had ever even speculated that the Green Hand might have an accomplice. “How bad is it?” He started to swing himself out of the saddle to take a better look.

“Stay where you are!” said Jet.

“You need-”

“Stay where you are!” The griffon ran and leaped. His wings lashing, he rose into the air.

Just high enough to thump down on a rooftop, where Aoth felt his exhaustion and fatigue almost as if they were his own. “Now you can see which way they went,” said Jet.

He was right. The Green Hand and his lookout were fleeing to the north, bounding like grasshoppers from building to building. “Will you be all right here?” asked Aoth.

“I won’t die on you. Get them!”

Aoth dismounted, yanked his bugle from the saddle, and blew it. Then he waited for what seemed forever, although he knew that in reality it only took a few heartbeats for Jhesrhi to answer his call.

She arrived flying on the wind, garments flapping, hair whirling around her, the gold runes on her black staff pulsing. When she spied Jet and the blood dripping down the shingles beneath him, her eyes widened in dismay.

“It’s nothing,” snarled the griffon. “Why does everyone think I’m so delicate?”

Aoth pointed with his spear. “There are two Green Hand killers, and they fled that way.”

Jhesrhi squinted. “I can’t see them.”

“Luckily, I still can. Just. We need to get after them.”

Jhesrhi lifted her staff in both hands and rattled off words of command. The wind howled and lifted Aoth in its embrace, and he and his lieutenant soared together.

It didn’t take him long to realize he didn’t like it. He loved flying on griffonback, but then he was in control and had something solid under his arse. Here, the unreasoning, instinctual part of his mind kept insisting he was going to fall. Of course even if he had, the magic bound in one of his tattoos would have enabled him to float down to a soft landing, but remembering that only helped a little.

Fortunately, he was too intent on the quarry for anxiety to claim much of a hold on him. He had to redirect Jhesrhi as the murderers veered this way and that. Meanwhile, she had to maintain the pursuit and also pick up their comrades hiding in the shadows of chimneys or in doorways and stairwells at street level.

Even for a mistress of elemental magic, it had to be taxing. But one by one, Khouryn, Balasar, Medrash, and Gaedynn bobbed or whirled up into the sky. Aoth found a bit of amusement in the fact that the dwarf and the smaller dragonborn looked even more uncomfortable than he was. The paladin, though, appeared so intent on righteous vengeance as to barely even notice he was flying, while the auburn-haired archer smirked as usual.

Gradually, they narrowed the killers’ lead. Gaedynn tried a couple of shots, but even he couldn’t hit a moving target in such difficult circumstances. Jhesrhi’s conjured wind was just too strong, as well as unpredictable from one moment to the next.

The murderers leaped onto the roof of a fair-sized but dilapidated box of a house at the edge of the city. They threw open a trapdoor, scurried through, and closed it behind them.

“Half through the top and half through the bottom!” yelled Khouryn.

“I agree!” Aoth replied.

Jhesrhi spoke to the wind. Aoth recognized one of the languages of Chaos, although he wasn’t fluent enough to understand all the words. Fortunately, the wind did. Khouryn and the two dragonborn hurtled toward the ground. Aoth, Jhesrhi, and Gaedynn flew onto the roof, and then the air stopped supporting them or fluttering their clothes.