But that was impossible. Kadra was a former street rat, an orphan like her. And Kadraneverlied.
Rooted to the ground, she’d forgotten the farmer’s existence until he whispered, “Noceo.”
Kadra’s lookalike—Noceo—spared a glance at the floor, silver gaze passing through her to find the farmer. “Now, we can’t have that.”
The farmer crawled back. “I won’t tell anyone. Please spare me!”
“Shhhh.” Crouching, Noceo placed a finger over the farmer’s forehead. “You’re in luck.” His voice took on a tender timbre. “I was never here. You never saw me. You don’t even know who I am.”
Foreboding crawled through her as the farmer blinked. An eerie blankness settled on his face. Taking in his surroundings as though he were waking from a dream, he gaped at the wall of flame. And this too was familiar. Like a book on a hard-to-reach shelf or an overlooked corner that rarely saw a broom, something lurked in the periphery of her mind, screaming in warning. Telling her that there was something she had forgotten. Telling her who that voice in her memory had been.
I’ll see you soon, Death-Summoner.Fear bloomed cold at the base of her skull.
“We just killed a few of our own,” Dalvia said dully.
“Entirely necessary.” Noceo shrugged, and the easy elegance of the motion sent Sarai’s heart to her throat for how often she’d seen Kadra do the same. “You’ve done well.”
Tears slid from Dalvia’s eyes, all the more eerie for the lack of sobs accompanying them.
“Or not,” Noceo mused. “Get us out.”
Dalvia stuck the pin from her armilla into her thumb like she wished it was her heart. She pressed the blood into a strange rune, all sharp, curving edges and half circles unlike the angled double lines of Urdish runes. A portal split the air before her. The burning Grains Guild wagon disappeared in favor of a forest of snow-brushed evergreens.
She’s a Bridger. Sarai watched them enter with dawning horror.
Noceo caught the farmer’s gaze. “And you didn’t see this either.”
By the time the portal winked out of existence, the farmer was already staring at the blaze as if for the first time again. Seconds later, he was fleeing with the crowd.
I have to get out of here.A thousand questions boiled in Sarai’s head. She could barely voice half of them.
It could be a coincidence. What was it Telmar had said about True Illusionists? Magi with Errigalese parentage who could alter their features and mimic everything down to one’s voice and mannerisms. Perhaps among them was a man who’d wanted to look like Kadra.
It all rang flat.
Closing her eyes, she focused on the feeling of her perpetually shaking hands pressed against the farmer’s head. Flickers of pressure met her palms, and she grit her teeth, controlling her flow of magic to pull free of the memory.
The burning marketplace crumbled, replaced by the barn of the farmer’s memories. The swinging door to the altered memory lay stationary now. Both the door and its latch were different from the others lining both sides of the barn. Whatever Noceo had done to this man, it hadn’t wiped the truth from his head but blotted it over, the camouflage invisible to the mind but not to a Petitor.
Foreboding and recognition gripped her, a weak signpost in her head telling her to look deeper. She couldn’t glance in that direction or bringherself to speak what she had already put together. She needed to sit, to panic. She could do neither in front of Ythras.
Reaching for the memory he had wanted Materialized, she pulled it loose. Reality returned in a slow rush. The cramped cell, officers, Ythras’s mouth half open in a tirade over how long she was taking. It fell shut as a translucent landscape bloomed, playing out the farmer’s memory through his eyes.
Ythras backed away at the sight of the swarm, eyes growing huge. “Eastern fields!” He roared to his vigiles, who fled upstairs. “Take no chances! Burn them all down!”
She waited for them to depart before speaking. “Did lightning strike a market here some weeks ago?” Was that really her voice? Hoarse and ragged around the edges?
Ythras’s face darkened. “Yes, a few Guild magi. They’d escaped before I was informed. Five dead, but those are paltry numbers to the Tetrarchy.”
No, they aren’t.“Does the name Noceo mean anything to you?” She went motionless when the same fear bloomed on Ythras’s features as during Kadra’s questions yesterday. Something in her crumpled.
He swallowed. “As I indicated to the Magus Supreme, we only deal with the Clanlord of Clan Kader in one sense.”
Clanlord.A high-pitch ringing began in her ears, drowning out his next words.Clan Kader.Her pulse throbbed furiously at her temples.Ruler of the land’s underworld and drug maker.Mysteriously vanished.Mysteriously.A lightning strike supposed to have split their manor in two. Whitesleep across the country. Patches of memory she hadn’t been able to recall for months.
Goose bumps rippled across her skin. “Weonly deal with Noceo in one sense?” she repeated. “We?”
“This is none of your concern,” Ythras muttered. “The Tetrarchy’s never cared about the north, so we had to consider alternate—”
