“Wait!” he cried. “Please, Lord Morningstar, I beg you?—”
Gavriel turned away, his mouth set in harsh lines. He gestured curtly. The guards heaved, and then there was nothing beneath Alluin but swirling snow. The last thing he saw before the clouds engulfed him was Gavriel’s silhouette, the Rod of Penance extended over the void.
Then there was only grey mist, thunder rolling all around, and the certainty that wherever he was going, it was not a place from which he would ever return.
Chapter 1
Cathrynne
TWENTY YEARS LATER
The old man drew on his cigarette and squinted through the haze.
“Strange noises,” he said, tobacco-stained fingers gesturing to the house across the street. “Over there.”
Cathrynne Rowan gave an encouraging nod. “That’s what you said in the call, sir. Can you be more specific?”
He shrugged. “Sure, yes. Like thump. Very strange noises. All time of day and night.” His Sundland accent was thick as butter. Verra string nozzes.
Her partner, Mercy Blackthorn, shot Cathrynne a skeptical look and mouthed the words “feuding cats.”
Mercy was a strapping woman with a frizzy ginger mane and a dozen visible scars. Cathrynne was shorter and slightly built, with fair, chin-length hair and pale, creamy skin that gave her a fragile look. Men, in particular, tended to underestimate her.
Not that Cathrynne thought Josua Micarran was wasting their time on purpose. He seemed like a kind gentleman and had dressed up for them in a checkered suit that was probably the height of fashion forty years ago. A crumpled pack of Scholars poked out of the breast pocket. He had no shoes on, just black socks.
“Who lives over there?” Mercy asked.
Micarran exhaled twin plumes of smoke through his nose. “Mother, father. One boy. Six years.”
“Surname?”
“Nilsson.”
“Have you seen them recently?”
“Not for three days.” He looked the cyphers up and down, taking in the whips coiled at their belts, the ravens tattooed on their hands. “You help them. You are witches, yes?”
“Hmmm, more or less,” Mercy replied. “Thank you for reporting it, sir. We’ll go have a look.”
Lark Hill was a mellow neighborhood near Faraday College, mostly young families and student lodgers. Lately, it had seen an influx of migrants from Sundland. Cathrynne and Mercy seldom came out this way. Trouble was far more likely to arise in the rowdy student bars of Arioch’s Old Quarter.
They crossed the street and paused at the curb to study the house. It was a mirror image of Micarran’s. Yellow and white trim, well kept. The grass was shaggy and still damp from the morning rain.
“If anyone hurt that child,” Cathrynne said in a low voice, “they might run into a wall or two before I manage to arrest them.”
Mercy shot her a sidelong glance. “You don’t need another complaint. They already take up a whole drawer.”
Cathrynne snorted. “Felony won’t care.”
The head of the cyphers, Felicity Birch, tended to look the other way if someone deserved rough treatment. Cathrynne called her Sister Felony, though never to her face.
“One day you’ll go too far,” Mercy remarked placidly.
“I meant by accident. If they trip over a rug or something.”
Her partner’s eyes gleamed. “Yeah, that’d be a shame.”
It was no secret how Cathrynne Rowan felt about men who hit their wives and parents who beat their children. About a third of the calls involved some variety of those crimes. The rest were drunks and thieves, occasionally murderers. Cathrynne didn’t like them either, but they didn’t get under her skin in the same way.
