I need to sit down and get it all onto paper. It’s going to be a long night, I suspect. I wonder if Achati could arrange a quiet night for me tomorrow… what’s this?

In the Master’s Room a sea of slaves covered the floor, their bodies fanning out from the doorway. The door slave had joined them. It was such a surreal sight he could not speak for a moment.

“Rise,” he ordered.

As one the group slowly got to its feet. He saw men and women he did not recognise. Some with robust clothing suited to outdoors work, others with what looked like food stains down their leather aprons.

“Why are you all here?” he asked.

The slaves exchanged glances, then their gazes locked on the door slave. The man hunched over as if their stares had weight.

“L-Lord Lorkin is… is… is…”

Dannyl felt his heart skip a beat, then start racing. Only something terrible warranted this amount of cowering.

“He is what? Dead?”

The man shook his head and relief rushed over Dannyl. “Then what?”

“G-gone.”

The man threw himself on the floor again, then the rest of the slaves followed suit. Irritated, Dannyl drew in a deep breath and made himself speak calmly.

“Gone where?”

“We don’t know,” the door slave said, his voice strangled. “But… he left… in his room.”

He left something in his room. Most likely a letter explaining why he’s gone. And for some reason the slaves think I’ll be angry. Has Lorkin taken it into his head to go home?

“Get up,” he ordered. “All of you. Go back to what you were doing. No. Wait.” The slaves had begun to scramble to their feet. I might need to question them. “Stay here. You,” he pointed to the door slave, “come with me.”

The man’s brown face went a pasty colour. He followed Dannyl silently through the Guild House to Lorkin’s rooms. Lamps had been lit around the main room, and one still burned in the bedroom.

“Lord Lorkin?” Dannyl called, not really expecting an answer. If Lorkin had told them he was leaving, he wasn’t likely to be here. Still, Dannyl walked across to the bedroom door and looked inside.

What he saw made his blood turn to ice.

A naked Sachakan woman lay there, twisted so that her head faced the ceiling but her back was turned toward him. Her eyes staring up at the ceiling blankly. The sheets about her were stained dark red. In places they still glistened wetly. He could see the wound in her back.

Spinning around, Dannyl fixed the door slave with a stern stare. “How did this happen?”

The man cringed. “I don’t know. Nobody knows. We heard noises. Voices. After they stopped we came to see.” His eyes slid to the corpse, then quickly away again.

Did Lorkin do this? Dannyl wanted to ask. But if the man says he doesn’t know what happened, he won’t know if Lorkin was responsible.

“Who is she?” Dannyl asked instead.

“Riva.”

“Is she one of the slaves of this house?”

“Y-yes.”

“Is anyone else missing?”

The man frowned, then his eyes widened. “Tyvara.”

“Another slave?”

“Yes. Like Riva. A serving slave.”

Dannyl considered the dead woman again. Had this Tyvara been involved in the murder somehow? Or had she suffered the same fate?

“Were Riva and Tyvara… friendly to each other?” Dannyl asked. “Has anyone seen them speaking?”

“I-I don’t know.” The man looked at the floor. “I will ask.”

“No,” Dannyl said. “Bring the slaves to me. Have them line up in the corridor outside and tell them not to speak.” The man hurried away. I suppose they’ve already had time to collude and think of good alibis or excuses. But they won’t be able to modify their story.

He would have to send a message to Ashaki Achati without delay. The slaves belonged to the king. Dannyl wasn’t sure if the murder of one of them would be of much concern. But Lorkin’s leaving was. Especially if he had been taken against his will. Especially if he’d murdered the slave.

Achati will no doubt question all the slaves himself. He’ll probably read their minds. It’s possible he’ll hide any information he doesn’t think I ought to hear. So I must find out everything I can before Achati arrives.

He straightened as a chill ran down his spine. Is it a coincidence that I was finally invited to the palace the night one of his slaves was murdered here?

Had Lorkin killed the slave? Surely not. But it certainly looked like it. Was it self-defence? I should check for evidence either way before the king’s men turn up. Moving into the room, he stared at the body. Aside from the wound, there was a line of red beaded blood along a shallow cut on her arm. Interesting. That looks like evidence of black magic. He forced himself to touch the skin of the woman’s thigh and search with his senses. Sure enough, the body had been drained of energy. Black magic had been used. The relief he felt was overwhelming. It can’t have been Lorkin.

Then why had Lorkin left? Was he a prisoner of a Sachakan black magician? Suddenly Dannyl felt ill.

When Sonea finds out… But would she have to yet? If he managed to track down Lorkin quickly there’d be no bad news to deliver, just a story with a happy ending. He hoped.

He had to find Lorkin, and fast. Sounds from the corridor told him the slaves had arrived for questioning. He sighed. It was going to be a long night. But not for the reasons he would have preferred.

Holding the soiled bandages in the air with magic, Sonea sent a flash of heat toward them. They burst into flame and quickly shrivelled into ash. The smell of burnt cloth, mixed with a sickly cooked meat scent, tainted the air. She let the ashes fall into a bucket kept in the room for the purpose, then heated a little scented oil in a dish with magic until the tangy smell covered the less pleasant ones. The clean-up from the last patient finished, she willed the door to the examination room open.

The man who stepped inside was middle-aged, short, and familiar. She felt her heart skip a beat as she recognised him.

“Cery!” she hissed. She cast a quick look around the room, even though she knew nobody was there but her. “What are you doing here?”

He shrugged and sat down in one of the chairs for patients and their families. “I tried your rooms in the Guild, but you weren’t there.”

“You could have come back tomorrow night,” she said. If he was recognised, and someone reported his visit back to the Guild, everyone would know she’d been associating with a Thief. Though that’s not against any rules now. But it would be seen as suspicious, so soon after she’d pushed to have the rule changed. If it looked as if she was using the hospice as a place to meet Thieves it could endanger all she had achieved here.

Ironically, he was in greater danger of being recognised at the hospice than at the Guild. Sonea doubted that any magicians other than Rothen would remember Cery after all these years, but some of the patients in the hospice might have had dealings with Cery, and they might tell one of the helpers or Healers who she was meeting.

“It’s too important to wait,” Cery told her.

He met her gaze levelly. His serious expression made him look so different to the young street urchin she had hung out with as a child. He looked haggard and sad, and she felt a fresh pang of sympathy. He was still grieving for his family. She drew in a deep breath and let it out again slowly and quietly.

“How are you getting on?”

His shoulders rose again. “Well enough. Keeping myself occupied finding a rogue magician in the city.”

She blinked, then couldn’t help smiling. “A rogue, eh?”

“Yes.”

Yes, that is too important to wait. She leaned back in her chair. “Go on then. Start from the beginning.”

He nodded. “Well, it all began when my lockmaker claimed the locks to my hideout were opened with magic.”