Ancita drew away from Victus. She didn’t move, but he felt it.

‘Well. Thank you for letting me know.’ She smoothed her skirts and erased all expression from her face. It was what she needed to do. What both of them needed to do. But it still hurt Victus to see it.

‘Is there anything more?’ she asked. ‘I should return to my duties.’

It was a good thing that she was so adept at masking her affection. It was a good thing that she could be so warm one moment and icy cold the next.

Victus shivered.

‘No, that is all, I —'

Behind them, the door to the study room was thrown open. The groan of the door’s hinge echoed through the hall — everyone looked at the boy who staggered in. ‘Damon! I knew you’d be in here!’ he called out.

Damon got up and left his materials at his desk as his friend waved him over. ‘Damon, you have to come see! The Gwerr are escorting a prisoner to the courthouse!’ The boy’s excitement exerted an irresistible tug on everyone in the room, not just Damon.

Victus and Ancita exchanged a look. The look was never a question of whether they should follow too; it was a look to acknowledge that they would do so.

No one remained behind in the room.

Indeed, by the time they were out near the main courtyard, it seemed to Victus that no one had stayed in any of the buildings. The yards between the old estates were teeming with people. The movement of the small crowd pulled everyone to the north-west of the grounds, over to where the courthouse and council chambers sat.

Among the stream, Victus spotted Samuel and the group of apprentices who were his one-time opponents. They were conspicuous for standing still among the public agitation. For a moment, Victus hesitated, and glanced back at Ancita — but he saw that she had moved well away from him now and into the throng of people, staying close to the other tutors. They were talking together as they went. He supposed she should be glad that they were including her. He stayed watching her one moment more — she didn’t look back at him.

He crossed the wide path, over to Samuel.

Samuel caught his eye as he approached and gave a little shake of his head. ‘They want to go see what all the fuss is about,’ he explained once Victus was close enough. ‘But the crowd is thick enough already. You would see naught anyway.’

Victus could see that the mood of the apprentices was indeed sullen, all crossed arms and grim faces. A few edged as far as they dared in the direction that the crowds went, craning their necks to see.

Then Samuel looked back over Victus’ shoulder, to the way he had come. ‘You’ve come from the study halls?’ Samuel asked.

‘Yes,’ Victus confirmed, and then, pretending that this question drew him not toward anxiety, quickly moved the conversation on, ‘I heard that the Gwerr are escorting a prisoner to the courthouse.’

A few of the apprentices shot a look at Samuel at learning this new bit of information. Victus supposed that if the Gwerr were there, then they might feel they had a right to witness the event, as a kind of observational training by proxy.

‘Is that so?’ Samuel said. ‘Well, in any case, I’ve already sent Aspen to take a look. One through the crowd can move faster than ten. She’ll let us know if we’re needed.’

Victus didn’t plan to just stand around, though. He didn’t want to miss what was happening any more than the apprentices did, but neither did he want to immediately undermine Samuel.

‘There must be an arrest every week,’ Victus mused, crossing his arms to help stay the desire to walk away. ‘I’ve never seen people react like this.’

‘You know how crowds go,’ Samuel growled. ‘A few interested people attract more interested people. The crowd itself becomes the spectacle in no time flat.’

‘I suppose.’

‘There’s Aspen,’ one of the apprentices said eagerly, racing forward to meet her and walk with her the last few metres to the group.

Aspen, Victus realised, was the name of the last apprentice standing in the earlier practice skirmish. She’s a little out of breath when she stops in front of Samuel and rakes her brown curls off her damp forehead. ‘Arrest in the Annex. Right in Azail’s hall.’

Victus frowned. He had grown up more than passing familiar with the Annex and the Nexed; he could almost picture the hall, having visited the Nexed’s base to see Magenta on more occasions than he could count. But he hadn’t much cause to go there since she left. He did know, though, that relationships with the Nexed were increasingly strained since the death of Tabitha.

‘I thought the Nexed kept to their own,’ the eager apprentice mused.

‘The Gwerr have typically worked with the Nexed for arrests,’ Victus offered. ‘They mostly end up self-presenting for processing at the holding cells well before we have to head over there ourselves. For someone to be marched in, if that’s in fact the case, then they must’ve resisted the arrest in some way.’

‘Maybe it wasn’t another Nexed,’ another apprentice suggested.

Aspen shook her head. ‘Some traveller.’

Victus was surprised. ‘Strode right into Azail’s hall — and did what?’

‘Don’t know,’ Aspen said. ‘Don’t think they did anything. They’re saying it was crimes from a long time ago.’

A sudden vortex opened up in the depths of Victus’ belly.

He cursed aloud.

Did Magenta say where she was going when they got back to town? He racked his memory. She had some plan she was telling him about, something to do with a darkness brewing in the coastlands. Something to do with the bat that attacked her. She was back to bring news of what she’d learned in the past five years to the council.

But when they’d parted ways, only he’d gone to the inner core.

She hadn’t gone with him toward the council chambers. She’d gone —

Home.

She must’ve.

To the Nexed.

And Victus hadn’t even thought to mention that Tabitha had passed.

Neither of them had brought up the things Magenta had done in the past. But Magenta would still be responsible for the properties she’d burned down and the money she’d stolen.

Why hadn’t he thought of any of this when he’d seen her? Was he really that distracted by Ancita? Magenta describing to him how she’d been attacked had only made him more eager to get to Ancita and check that she had made it back to town unharmed. He hadn’t even thought to protect his oldest friend first.

Was it too late?

He broke away from Samuel and the apprentices, not caring anymore that Samuel had commanded them to stay put, that the arrest had naught to do with any of them.

Samuel was right, though, that as one person it was easy to weave through the groups of people; Victus muttered apologies as he brushed by onlookers. He was a member of the Gwerr dressed in his uniform, so he knew what he looked like to run urgently through a crowd. But in that moment he didn’t care.

When he emerged onto the main path in front of the courthouse, he saw that the way was empty. People who had been standing near the front to see the guards pass by with their prisoner were now leaving. The news that it was all over now would travel back through the crowds until they all cleared out.

He’d missed them.

But he knew exactly where they’d have taken her.

He ran all the way along the front of the courthouse estate, parallel to its grand stone façade. Three sets of windows high, the estate housed the majority of the legal offices for civic matters in Bluddrayl, where they settled disputes and, in the central court itself, held trials to sentence prisoners.

Around the side of the main building, half-concealed by a run of large rose bushes, was a humbler building. Until prisoners were sentenced, they were held here. Ordinary windows had been fortified and decorated with spikes. The heavy iron and oak door bore the town’s seal and swung open with some resistance.

Inside, stairs led down, to the dark and the cold, to what was once the estate’s cellar and was now the court’s holding cells.

It took a few moments for Victus’ eyes to adjust to the darkness and resolve the light flickering at the end of the stairs. At the short landing, there was a guardpost, complete with a small desk and seat for the guard, and behind that the storage and shelves that would keep restraint devices, spare bedding, and prisoner’s personal items. Victus saw what he thought was Magenta’s travelling bag and clothes bundled in a pile, but no violin case. The prison ledger lay open on the desk before the seated guard.

The dense air smelled of burning tallow candles and the must of cleaning vinegar.

The guard blinked up at Victus a moment before he shot up to standing.

‘Victus Ironblade?’ He looked around like he’d missed some key information that would explain Victus’ presence. ‘Were you called for?’

Victus tried ignoring the direct question. ‘I’m here to see a prisoner.’

Victus leaned in to study the ledger, to check that Magenta’s name was indeed written there, but the guard instinctively pulled the book away, closer to him. ‘Which prisoner?’

He’d just have to take the chance. ‘Magenta Black.’

Victus kept an even gaze on the guard’s face. At first he seemed satisfied that Victus had named a prisoner correctly, and then something shifted. A moment of calculation or realisation that tugged his brow and narrowed his eyes. Victus wasn’t sure if his friendship with Magenta would be remembered. Evidently, it was. Still, the guard acted casually in his response, looking over the ledger. ‘I don’t think she’s been approved for visitors yet. Still being processed. She’s only just come in. So I can’t let you see her. Unless — did taskmaster Everard send you for some reason?’ The guard levelled his gaze on Victus.

‘Yes,’ Victus lied. ‘I’ve been sent to see her.’ The lie came easily, and then on its heels a hot wave of self-recrimination. But he didn’t have time to question it now.

‘Well sure then,’ the guard said, his tone skeptical. ‘She’s in the third cell on the right.’

As Victus turned to go, the guard added, ‘She’s been bound.’

Somehow, Victus kept on walking calmly around the corner and out of the guard’s sight.