Ilvan-Trai’s war room was ill-suited for an all-hands briefing. It was large enough—barely—to host the soldiers of the 238th, but comfort was out of the question. What little seating the room normally boasted had been dragged out into the hall to provide more space, but even then, the Auxilia soldiers were packed in tight.

  Some sat on the floor; others perched on what little furniture was bolted to the ground or too large to have been removed. Most were forced to stand, pressed shoulder to shoulder with relative strangers, their nervous conversation filling the room with an uneasy buzz.

  The 238th were still raw and unfamiliar; they were men who lived and died by the sword, soldiers who needed to trust one another implicitly, but had yet to form any bonds of camaraderie. Stressed, tired, and unbearably overheated in the tight confines, it was a wonder that none of them had come to blows.

  If it were up to Alarion, they would have held the briefing in the yard. But it was not up to Alarion. This matter required the utmost secrecy, and the war room had the strongest privacy wards in the keep—outside of Alarion’s office.

  Williams stood at the head of the chamber, speaking intently with an Ordinate about… something. Even as close as he was, Alarion only caught snippets of the conversation. They were arguing, the unfamiliar Ordinate pushing back against one of the Governor’s demands. Eventually, Williams seemed to get his way and the put-upon Ordinate heaved a heavy sigh before he pushed through the crowd of soldiers toward the door.

  Williams turned to Alarion. “We can get started now.”

  Alarion nodded and turned his attention to the rest of the room. “Everyone, quiet down!”

  A few heard him, and most of those who did complied, but their stilled voices were nothing more than a handful among the cacophony. Alarion drew a breath to try again, but Kali beat him to it.

  “Shut your whore mouths and listen up!” the Godborn boomed.

  That did the trick.

  “Thank you, Sergeant,” said Williams, bemused at the sudden ferocity. “And thank all of you for coming. First, I must apologize for missing your Formation. It was hardly my intent, but some duties supersede others.”

  Williams produced a fist-sized cube from the pocket of his dress uniform and pulsed mana into it. The device sprang to life, projecting a blurry image onto the wall behind them. The image flickered and adjusted, a crude magical analog to the technology behind ZEKE’s bracelet, but it eventually stabilized into a proper map of Ashad-Vitri.

  “This morning, I received new orders for the 238th directly from the desk of Imperator Seric.” Williams paused to let the ripple of excitement and distress pass through the crowd, then continued. “We have located the man known as Centre, and you have been tasked with arresting him.”

  This time, the response wasn’t so much a murmur as an outright wave of shock, fear, excitement, and anger. Kali stepped forward to quell it, but Williams waved him off, giving the crowd a few moments to work through the shock of his announcement before he continued.

  “Rather—through the tireless efforts of the Watch—we have learned where Centre will be, eight days from now.” Again, mana flowed into the cube, and the image behind him tightened, focusing in on a marked building in one of Ashad-Vitri’s upper neighborhoods. “The Ikeda Estates, in upper Ashad-Vitri.”

  Alarion was surprised when he recognized the name. Between his recovery, his lessons with Lily, and his general introversion, he’d spent little time getting to know Ashad-Vitri during his stay there. But the Ikeda Estates had been only blocks away from his villa in the merchant quarter, and they were distinctive.

  Most of Ashad-Vitri had been built in the modern regional style, using the pale volcanic rock so abundant in the province’s quarries. As much art as architecture, the organic style preferred smooth corners to rough edges, often subtly deviating from the intended floor plans to match the natural imperfections of the land on which it was built.

  The Ikeda Estates bucked that trend, though they did so by looking backward.

  With exposed lumber and straight, seamless walls, the Ikeda Estates were a callback to old Ashadi architecture, like that used on the Trinity Isles. Founded in Ashad-Mundi, the remains of the original Ikeda Inn had been painstakingly torn down and reconstructed in the new capital, with a larger compound built up around it in the subsequent years.

  As a meeting place for seditionists, it made good sense. The walled estate was private but not secluded; it was expensive enough to be warded, but not so costly that buying it out for an event would raise any eyebrows. The area wasn’t frequented by Vitrians, and it even held symbolic value. It was a perfect fit.

  Almost too perfect.

  “Is this a trap?”

  The question came from the back of the room, spoken with enough conviction to be heard over the murmurs of worry and excitement. Alarion sought its owner and was pleased to see a middle-aged man with dark hair and even darker eyes, with his hand half-raised to help Alarion put a name and face to the question.

  “It is something we have considered, Specialist Archer,” Alarion answered. It was something he had considered, even before Williams had given him a quick, private briefing. The Bones had shown considerable skill in deception on both the strategic and tactical levels. They’d held a conspiracy together for months or years without a leak, and they’d befuddled Vitrian attempts at subjugation by poisoning the water to hide the origin of their fiends. It would be foolish to overlook the possibility that this was yet another scheme.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Considered and rejected,” Williams emphasized. “This information comes from captured agents and is corroborated by both sources and by observation. Known seditionists have already arrived at the Ikeda Inn. If it is a trap, they are sacrificing significant assets to bait it.”

  The words did little to mollify the veteran soldier who looked ready to say more before Alarion caught his gaze and silenced him with a shake of his head. Williams wouldn’t be moved on the point, and even if he could be, it didn’t matter. If it were a trap, they’d need to trigger it.

  Then break it.

  “As I was saying,” Williams said, his attention on the map. “Our intelligence tells us that Centre and several of his top deputies plan to meet at the Ikeda Estates in eight days. We are not sure of the substance or regularity of this sort of meeting, only that it is happening. This is our opportunity, perhaps our only opportunity, to lop the head off this snake before it can strike again.”

  Williams made a slight adjustment to the cube, and it zoomed in yet further, focusing on the estate grounds and the nearby streets. This time, there were small red marks surrounding the estates, each marked with a squad designation.

  “After receiving these orders, I took the liberty of devising a simple organizational plan for this raid. Squads one and two-“

  “Why us?” someone asked, to Williams’ visible irritation.

  This time, the source was much easier to find. The disgustingly attractive young man was seated cross-legged at the front of the pack, his eyes more curious than anything else as they flicked between Williams, Alarion, and the map without rhyme or reason.

  This was another question Alarion had asked, and one he had firmly anticipated would be discussed at the briefing. He’d have certainly preferred it to arrive without interrupting the already on-edge Governor, but Prodigy’s file was full of documentation about his awkward social graces.

  One more thing he had in common with Alarion.

  “Several reasons-“

  “Which are?” the young man pressed, as if trying to skip ahead in a conversation he had already predicted.

  “I was getting to that,” Alarion scolded. Was this really what he was like? “First, it has to be the Auxilia.”

  “Why?”

  Williams fielded this question. “The articles of annexation stipulate the conditions under which Vitrian regulars are allowed to be deployed, namely: invasion, infestation, and rebellion. While I would—and have—argued that these seditionists qualify as the latter, the Curia disagrees. They view this as a policing action, and as such, the garrison is barred from interfering. Instead, they will secure all routes out of Ashad-Vitri.”

  It was Vitrian hypocrisy in action. They couldn’t storm a seditionist meeting, but they could, of course, place the city under martial law and arrest anyone attempting to leave.

  “The second reason is that we are already expected in Ashad-Vitri,” Alarion continued, running roughshod over the Ashadi boy’s attempts to argue the point. “Our first official duty is a show of arms at the Governor’s mansion. It has been on our public schedule for months.”

  “S-So the conspirators won’t know we are c-coming for them,” Bergman finished. Though entitled to stand up alongside Kali and Alarion, the demure scholar preferred to avoid the limelight. Alarion had forced him to take a promotion to corporal, but Bergman had no desire to lead, preferring to act as an advisor behind the scenes and a common soldier in the field.

  “Exactly,” Alarion agreed.

  What he left unsaid was the connection to Archer’s earlier question about a trap. It was certainly possible that the secret meeting coincided with their arrival by sheer serendipity, but Alarion was skeptical.

  “That’s two,” Prodigy observed. “Two is not several.”

  “It is enough,” retorted Alarion.

  There were other reasons, just none Alarion was interested in voicing. There was the political reason; it would be a coup for Williams and his benefactors if the martyrs were the ones to capture Centre, just as it would benefit others if they fumbled and let him escape.

  There was also the purely practical reason. Ashadi were expendable. If it were a trap, it was far better to lose an Auxilia unit—even an elite one—than to deal with the gnashing of teeth that would result if Vitrians started dying.

  “May I continue?” Williams asked, his voice dripping with venom.

  Both geniuses nodded, and Williams walked them through the plan without further interruption. It was simple and straightforward, but it would have to be. They were being set to task with minimal training, and though all of the 238th had seen combat in the past, few had done so together. They would be relying on the element of surprise—and overwhelming force—to make up for their critical lack of teamwork.

  “In short, expect no more than fifty hostiles. Some are likely to be Awakened, including Centre’s personal bodyguard, but none are expected to exceed high rank II. You will be provided with a Simu network for immediate communication. Master Sergeant Orphan will also have a direct line to the garrison, to inform them if you encounter resistance beyond what the 238th can engage.”

  In practice, that meant high rank III or above. Articles of Annexation or no, the Vitrians wouldn’t let a powerhouse run rampant in a provincial capital once it became clear the Auxilia were outmatched. It was however, small comfort. Any foe with that level of strength would tear through the martyrs long before help arrived. Depending on their skill set, even a low rank IV could be difficult for the garrison to contain, let alone defeat in anything approaching a timely manner.

  That was the nature of rank. Soldier for soldier, the Vitrian regulars outclassed the 238th, but bringing down someone truly strong with numbers alone was like sieging a city. It could be done—and it had been done plenty of times in the past—but it was never a quick thing.

  “Lastly, you will each be issued a rank II skill cuff, with non-commissioned officers receiving true suppression collars as well.”

  “We’re taking prisoners?” Archer blurted out from his space at the back wall. He shot Alarion an apologetic look, one that the youth was quick to wave away.

  Alarion understood the man’s confusion.

  Vitrian war doctrine was bloodthirsty. They accepted surrender when it was given, like any civilized nation, but they never offered quarter on the battlefield. The doctrine dated back to the System Wars and the Vitrian struggle for independence. They had lost two critical battles—and nearly the war itself—after foes took advantage of their honesty by offering the besieged Vitrian forces overly generous, and very much false, terms of surrender.

  In the wars and centuries that followed, the Vitrian position remained unshakable on the battlefield. They offered unconditional surrender, or no surrender at all.

  “This is a policing action,” Williams reiterated. “Not a war. These are criminals, not soldiers. You will detain and arrest them wherever possible. You will search them for weapons and watch them for signs of suicide.”

  Williams stressed each word as he spoke, placing more emphasis on this final point than on the details of their attack. This was what mattered. More than the possibility of a trap, more than the reasoning behind it. More than their very lives.

  “And you will bring Centre to us. Alive.”