The City loomed before them, dark and silent, and in the pit of his stomach, Mirk knew that something had gone terribly wrong.

  K'aekniv, Am-Gulat, and the others had rushed off through the South Gate together, the half-angel leading the way, his winglight casting an eerie glow on the damp cobbles and the shadowy side streets and the empty Watch post just inside the high stone arch of the gate. Am-Gulat was shoulder-to-shoulder beside him. Orest and Catherine brought up the rear, wand and sword already drawn.

  Mirk didn't bother to ask anyone why the Watch wasn't there that night, at the hour they usually had the most work to do, closing time for the taverns just within and beyond the gate. Ravensdale had gone before them, already bloodied and dragging two angelic children with him into the City's depths. The Watch guardsmen had either decided it'd be safer to hide and pretend they'd seen nothing, or Ravensdale had ordered them to march into their doom alongside them.

  Though he knew it was the wiser decision to send most of their forces off to retrieve the other djinn, Mirk wished that either K’aekniv or Fatima had been willing to assign a few spare fighters to their group. It was eerie being mostly alone in the City, which was usually teeming with people, even in the dead of night. The oppressive gloom wasn’t helping Mirk feel any better, especially since he knew Genesis wasn’t secreted away inside it. All of the mage lanterns that ringed the plaza had been extinguished. The magelight strung around Mirk’s wrist was all they had to navigate with. And while it might have been adequate for poking around his quarters at two in the morning, it was woefully inadequate for traversing the City.

  "Can you feel anything, seigneur?" Am-Hazek asked, his voice just above a whisper. One of the men from the Seventh had loaned Am-Hazek a sword, but Mirk could tell from the way he held it, like it was an adder that might strike him if he gripped its hilt too tightly, that he hadn't fought in a long time. Er-Izat had refused a similar offer. The Er-Djinn preferred to fight bare-handed.

  Mirk sighed, clutching Jean-Luc's staff tight in his hands as he allowed the walls around his mind to fade away. He'd been worried that taking the pain blocker from Yule might hinder him, might make it impossible for him to feel any emotion short of mortal fear or agony. He needn't have wasted time fretting over it. All the taverns and Supply Corps shops clustered near the South Gate had either been vacated just like the Watch guardpost, or Samael's horror was strong enough to drown out the subtler emotions of anyone hiding in the dark.

  "They're somewhere along the ring road," Mirk said, drawing his mental shielding back up a hair, striking a balance between still being able to feel Samael and not being overwhelmed by his terror. "Heading toward the West Gate."

  The West Gate of the City of Glass wasn't tethered to a particular endpoint. It had been used in the past, when the City roamed the German countryside rather than the English, as a secondary transporter connected to battlefields situated on Earth rather than on another realm, Genesis had told him. But there was nothing in its magic keeping it from leading to another realm. Like Heaven. Mirk didn't know if Ravensdale or any of his followers had the knowledge or potential to perform that feat. He was hoping they didn't.

  Though he was with two djinn, Mirk knew they wouldn't stand a chance against a single flight of Imperial angels. Mirk had seen his father and his men train, knew what they were capable of. And his father's flight had been made up of Imperial oddities, angels and half-angels who hadn't been ruthlessly drilled for hundreds of years like the flights that made up the larger, stronger Hosts of the Imperial vanguard. If they were forced to fight Imperial angels, Mirk knew none of them would survive long enough to even realize what was happening.

  "Can you feel who is with him, seigneur?" Am-Hazek asked, jolting Mirk out of his racing thoughts. He was turning his borrowed sword over and over in his grasp, gingerly. As if it hurt to touch it.

  Mirk shook his head. "Samael's too afraid. We'll only know once we see them."

  Er-Izat, for once, didn't ask permission. He struck out ahead of Mirk and Am-Hazek, unbuttoning his waistcoat and justacorps and rolling his shoulders as he walked. Am-Hazek didn't question this. Another djinn tradition, maybe, that an Er-Djinn should go before those who weren't naturally skilled at combat.

  There were no signs of life along the ring road, not even once they were a good half mile away from the South Gate. No streetlamps glowed alongside the road, no pinpricks of emotion or magic brushed against Mirk's mental shielding, he heard no whispers or frantic breathing. It was as if every K'maneda in the City had abandoned it all at once. And yet, there were no signs of a fight having taken place along their route either, no splashes of blood or scorch marks from wayward spells marred the cobbles. The other K’maneda must have been so terrified that they'd fled or followed without any resistance.

  "Can you feel anything, Monsieur Am-Hazek? Hear anything?" For a moment, Mirk was again struck by how little he knew of djinn magic and senses, whether they were as blind and deaf to the City as he felt, or if they had the same uncanny perceptiveness that Genesis did, capable of hearing heartbeats five streets over or smelling the reek of someone sweating away in their hiding place down in a cellar or up in an attic.

  The answer had to be somewhere in between. A frown wrinkled the djinn's forehead as he listened to the silence, continuing to restlessly flip his borrowed sword in his hand. Mirk felt the slightest tickle of unease against his mind. Not as strong as it would have been from a human, and only because their magic had mixed before, Mirk suspected. "I do not think we are alone, seigneur. But I suspect no one will help us either."

  "There's at least fifty of them," Er-Izat said from ahead of them, unprompted. He didn't look back at them either. "Bad quality boots."

  Am-Hazek offered him an explanation, in a low whisper, when none was forthcoming from Er-Izat. "The Er-Djinn are hunters as well as fighters, traditionally. Most kinship lines have two specialties."

  As they hurried along, Mirk tried to remember what the djinn had told him about what the Am-Djinn were best at. Strategists, planners. But those were mostly the same thing, Mirk supposed. And he also supposed now wasn't the time to be demanding answers from Am-Hazek.

  When the crossroad that led from the Glass Tower out to the West Gate, intersecting the outermost ring road on the way, was only a few hundred yards away, Er-Izat came to a sharp halt. None of them spoke, but Am-Hazek gripped his sword with more determination, and Mirk lowered his mental shielding and cast out his senses, allowing more of Samael's terror to reach him.

  Ravensdale and the children had to be just up ahead. Samael's fright had been so overwhelming at first that Mirk didn't think it could have gotten any stronger. Not unless he wielded it deliberately to disarm him, like a trained Imperial soldier would have. But it had grown as they’d drawn closer to him. That proof wasn't in the force of the emotion pounding against Mirk's temples, but in the nuance of it. The clarity.

  Mirk wasn't a telepath, but a strong enough empath could force other sensations along with their emotions if they were projecting hard, whether the projection was intentional or not. Sights. Smells. Memories. The harder Mirk concentrated, the more of them he was struck by, flashes of impressions from another life. A darkly amused voice murmuring at him that anger was the answer. His hair being ruffled in approval at the sight of an angel curled into a ball at his feet, bleeding from his ears, while Sharael gaped at him from the corner of a shadowy room. Her robes torn, her knuckles bloody and eyes wide.

  "He's casting a spell," Mirk heard Er-Izat say from ahead of them, distantly. "Ordered light."

  The words brought Mirk back to the present, somewhat, cleared away enough of the terror for him to try to focus. Those were the opposite of Ravensdale's orientation and element, as far as Mirk knew. He had to have stolen someone else's magic. That or Percival was still with him. Somehow, the thought of the mage being with Ravensdale made Mirk even more anxious. Ravensdale was brutal, but as every healer and fighter in the City said, at least in private, he was a coward. Percival was afraid of nothing in his righteousness.

  Beside him, Am-Hazek sighed. "We shall manage, Monsieur Er-Izat."

  Mirk held Jean-Luc's staff close to his chest, feeling for the odd, foreign presence within it. He could feel the staff's potential, but the presence was still distant. As if it was peacefully asleep, undisturbed by what its wielder was going through. Mirk wasn't sure if that was a good or ill omen of what awaited them beyond the pall of mist that had fallen over the street, illuminated from behind by a cold white glow.

  "I saw a spell some time ago," Mirk said, shifting his grip on the staff. Widening it to the fighting grip that Genesis and his father's men before him had drilled into him. "I don't know what it does, but...well. It might be the gate."

  Er-Izat chanced a glance over his shoulder, sizing up both of their stances. Without a master’s presence to check him any longer, he let his disapproval show in a slight frown. "How long has it been since either of you have fought?"

  Am-Hazek sighed once more. "With a blade? Not for decades."

  "Now and then," Mirk mumbled. "I can...well. You don't have to worry about me, Monsieur Er-Izat."

  Er-Izat turned back around, rolling his shoulders again. It wasn't good enough. Despite the evening chill and the damp, he stripped off his justacorps and waistcoat, deliberately folding them and setting them aside near an unlit lamp post. Then he advanced into the fog, swallowed up by it without a sound. After exchanging a worried glance, Mirk and Am-Hazek followed after him.

  "They're here! See? I told you they'd split up. You give that bastard Percy too much credit."

  One mystery was solved as they approached the West Gate. Mirk could only hear Casyn's voice through the fog; he couldn't see even a sliver of him past the wall of dented and rusting armor standing between them. Four dozen Watch guardsmen, clad in all the spare armor they could find on short notice, were arrayed in a tight arc before the gate. Ravensdale and Casyn must have ordered every fighting man they'd come across on the way to the West Gate, along with the patrols stationed at both it and the South Gate, to come to their defense.

  Mirk immediately knew there was something wrong with them. He'd seen countless men stare down death since he'd come to the infirmary. Each one did it in their own way, some with impossible rage, some with anguish, and even more with a long sigh of relief, with grateful tears welling in the corners of their eyes. All of the men before them, old and young alike, were emotionless. Mirk doubted it was because they were confident in their ability to stop them, or any faith in whatever cause Ravensdale was working at beyond the barrier of their bodies.

  It was a familiar expression. The same one that Samael took on when he moved into that other place in his mind, the one that was all coldness and logic even if it was where he went to manipulate the feelings of others. Though Mirk couldn't feel the magic the boy was using on them, Mirk was certain the men weren't there because they wanted to be. Samael had forced his will upon them. The fact that Samael still had enough empathic potential to spare to project so much fear while also controlling the minds of fifty men was evidence of the terrifying extent of his magic. And how well he'd been trained in combat empathy.

  When Mirk's own empathy had awakened as a boy, his father had tested him to see if he had the knack for it. He'd utterly failed. Which made their present situation that much worse. Mirk doubted the djinn had enough empathy to train in such a strange form of combat.

  "There's something wrong with them," Er-Izat said, lifting his voice so that Mirk and Am-Hazek could hear him, not caring if Ravensdale and Casyn did as well. "This isn't what humans look like when they're going to die. Magic?"

  The certainty in Er-Izat's voice made a chill run through Mirk before he mustered the will to reply. "Yes, magic. They're like puppets right now. I'll...I'll see what I can do. But I might not be able to do anything."

  Er-Izat nodded, but didn't hesitate. He had no mercy for the Watch men, despite the fact that they'd been pressed into service against their will. There was work to be done. And Er-Izat set to it with a sort of ruthless efficiency that Mirk had only ever seen before in the most hardened infantrymen.

  Mirk only watched the fight long enough to confirm his suspicions about whether or not the guardsmen were under Samael’s control. Watch guardsmen were used to handling drunken brawls in City alleys, and Mirk had seen enough of those by now to know how they usually went. The Watch fought dirty, went right for the neck and eyes and groin, wanting to inflict pain fast to get a tipsy fighter on the ground and convince him without words that it'd be pointless to try using his magic. The tools of their trade were knuckle dusters and truncheons, resorting to their swords only when there was no other choice, when a fighter did try his magic on them. The first guardsmen to face Er-Izat met him with drawn swords and the wide stances of men twice their height. Men who could launch themselves up into the air and fly away, if need be.

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  Samael was better at keeping minds in his thrall than making bodies fight the way they were best suited to. A small blessing that he hadn't advanced to that stage of his training before he and his sister had fled the Empire. Wincing at the sound of cracking bone as Er-Izat stepped around a sloppy thrust and brought his fist square into a guardsman's face, Mirk took a few fumbling steps backward and closed his eyes.

  Mirk knew he'd be more useful to them all with his empathy than he would be with jean-Luc's staff. He struggled to tune out the agony of Samael's fear and instead focus on the emotions he was using to control the guardsmen’s minds. An empath who was well-trained in combat empathy could hide the source of the emotions they were using to control others, could bury it under distractions and diversions. Mirk didn't doubt that Samael had been drilled hard. But he was a child, and he was terrified. That fear was the source of his control as much as it was what had driven him to force the Watch men into a wall between them and Ravensdale.

  It came to Mirk in a flash of images and feelings, horror that made his hair stand on end and put a metallic taste in his mouth. He saw a young angel sprawled on his back, in the center of a growing pool of blood. The boy had a sword in hand. A sword that he'd plunged deep into his own chest. The light was fading from his wings, just as his eyes lost the white film that came with using magic, his pupils wide and dark with fear and pain.

  A cloying, quiet voice in his mind. Hardened and merciless, despite its softness. Would you rather it was you lying there? Your sister? Finish it.

  In the vision, whimpering and moaning, the boy pulled the sword out of his chest. And plunged it down again, that time aiming for his own neck.

  Mirk blinked his eyes open before the blade could hit, before he could be drawn into the thrall of Samael's projection. Only once he had the ragged edges of his mental shielding back up did Mirk realize that he must have smacked himself in the side of the neck with his grandfather's staff to jolt himself out of the emotions and the memory that went along with them. Not too hard, but he'd have a bruise to remember that night by once things were over. Somehow, it made Mirk feel a little better about things.

  He spared the briefest glance he dared at the Watch guardsmen, to ensure that Er-Izat and Am-Hazek were still standing. Am-Hazek wasn't doing well, using his sword to parry blows but reluctant to return any, trying to use the flat side of it and his magic to stun the spelled guardsmen rather than leveling them with strikes that could end their lives. Er-Izat showed no such mercy. He'd gotten hit a few times, his shirt bloodied and ripped in places, but Mirk got the impression that the majority of the stains on it were from the guardsmen, not Er-Izat’s own injuries. He'd leveled at least a dozen of them with fists that shone with a dull green magic. Most of those men weren't moving, unlike those Am-Hazek had gotten the better of. Swallowing hard, Mirk lowered his mental shielding again, plunging back into the emotional maelstrom in front of the West Gate, into things felt rather than seen.

  Mirk only half-knew what he was doing. He hadn't been trained at all in combat empathy, but he'd had the essential elements explained to him. Just enough to hopefully disrupt the hold Samael had on the men's minds. Before letting himself be pulled under by his own feelings, his own memories, Mirk offered a silent prayer to the Holy Mother that Samael was young and frightened enough that his own instinctual efforts would be enough to spare the guardsmen Er-Izat's fists.

  Samael must have been drawing on memories of his own training to control the Watch men, his conviction that he needed to obey in order to avoid a worse fate. Mirk decided to counter it with his own memories of his father testing his empathy. To try to convince Samael, with feelings rather than words, that there was still a way out.

  It had been sunny that day, the ewe unaware that there was anything ahead of her besides an afternoon spent grazing on the lush summer bounty in the pasture off to the west of their manor. The ewe was a concession to him, a sop to his frivolousness, something to keep him from missing the Abbey's animals, their recalcitrant mule and the old cow who no longer gave any milk and the flock of geese that Mirk refused to let the brothers fatten up for Christmas. Now she'd serve a more productive purpose: if Mirk couldn't impose his will on an ewe, there was no hope of him ever doing the same to a human, not to mention a full-blooded angel.

  It won't hurt, his father reassured him, his hands on his shoulders, in the French that still sounded clumsy and strange in his mouth despite decades of speaking it with his mother and him. It won't even feel it. Animals do not have the minds to feel this.

  In the opinion of many angels, neither did humans. Ilae Lei had asked his father before they'd set out that afternoon why he was starting Mirk off with an animal, with such a trivial task. Ilae Lei thought his father was indulging him again, making things so easy that it was impossible for him to face the humiliating sting of failure. But Ilae Lei had never had a very charitable view of humans, despite living among them for over a century by then.

  Still, Mirk hesitated. His father's palm was warm on his forehead. Go on. Try. It won't feel anything.

  But it would. She would, Mirk realized, as he lowered the shields around his mind and let his empathy stretch out to the ewe. The ewe's mind was quiet, her concerns too fleeting and vague for someone like his father to feel. But Mirk felt them as he ordered her to lie down, to rest. A flash of hot, animal panic as his will pressed down on the ewe’s haunches and she collapsed into the grass. A desperate yearning for the fresh clump of clover that was just out of reach, the painful certainty that if she didn't eat it, if she didn't keep eating everything good she could find, that the lamb who curled up against her belly every night would die alone and cold.

  Mirk recoiled from the metallic tang of her fear with all the apologies he could project. A yelp of fear and hurt as instinctual as the ewe's bleat of alarm snuck past his lips as he stumbled back against his father's chest. He could feel the tears already welling up at the corners of his eyes, unbidden.

  He was weak. Pathetic. But he couldn't bear the burden of even that bare instant of panic he'd caused the ewe.

  He had been expecting to feel disappointment from his father, shame as he mumbled his excuses and swiped at his eyes with his shirtsleeve. Instead, he felt his father's worry wrap around him a second before his arms did, as immovable as iron, faintly warm with his magic. A distant echo of the same panic the ewe had felt over the uncertain fate of her lamb, only on a vast, intricate scale that his own small mind couldn't fully grasp.

  Let it go. You've done enough, he heard his father say, in his halting French. There was nothing but softness in his words. Softness that deepened as his affection and care washed over Mirk, his father pressing him close to his chest as he mumbled more words in an angelic that was so rapid he wouldn't have understood them, had his mind not been fully open.

  You have enough of Annette in you not to be a monster like the rest of us. Thank the Light Eternal...

  He'd been worried over nothing. He wasn't a failure. His weakness was, for once, something to be cherished rather than trained away.

  The feel of that relief, that love, was only strong enough to make Samael's concentration waver for a few seconds. But it was all the guardsmen needed. Mirk awoke to the sound of slurred curses and clanking armor and a fresh wave of fear, that time echoing in his unshielded mind at two dozen pitches that accompanied the low thrum of Samael's dread in a discordant crescendo.

  The Watch guardsmen who hadn't yet been leveled by Er-Izat ran the moment Samael's grip on their minds faltered. Er-Izat and Am-Hazek didn't pursue any of the men who stumbled off into the night in ones and twos, most of them still too disoriented and hurt to think to drag the injured off along with them. It didn't matter. As soon as it was clear to the two djinn that the magic that compelled the Watch men to stay had been broken, they both turned their attention to the group that'd been hiding behind them.

  Casyn, bouncing anxiously on the balls of his feet and reaching for his sword. Sharael lying motionless and bloodied on the cobbles at his feet, and Samael sitting beside her, his hands bound behind his back with a length of chain that sparked with dark magic. Ravensdale was a few paces away, finishing a summoning circle that he was drawing in front of the gate with a bowl full of clumpy, dark red paste after consulting a dogeared sheet of mage parchment one final time.

  "I was right! Just the two djinn and the nob," Casyn gibbered more to himself than Ravensdale, his sword rattling against his scabbard as he pulled it halfway free. As if trying to reassure himself that it wouldn't be needed, that he wouldn't actually have to fight Er-Izat or Am-Hazek, no matter how less impressive they both were than a whole horde of angry djinn.

  Ravensdale ignored Casyn, rising back to his feet and cramming both the bowl and the sheet of mage parchment into his pocket. "You'd better be worth this," he hissed at Samael as he stepped onto the outermost ring of the summoning circle and called to his magic. "Or I'll take the bitch after all. And you will watch."

  Samael said something back at him, but his voice was lost in the sudden groaning of the stone and iron arch above the West Gate. Whatever the summoning circle was doing to it was unnatural, not the sort of thing the City was made for. The gate didn't crackle and spit black sparks like the field transporter did when it activated, nor did reality seem to blur at the edges of the arch, like it did when the mages channeled the City's chaos up through the Glass Tower and used it to firm up one of the other gate's anchoring spells. Instead, the stones of the West Gate's arch rattled against one another, the iron glowing red hot as a ghostly set of white bars appeared across the gate. A second gate, one that wasn't Earthly in the slightest.

  "What do we do?" Er-Izat shouted back at Mirk.

  Mirk firmed up his grip on his grandfather's staff, stepping up to join the two djinn despite the fact that Samael's fear was screaming at him to run like the Watch guardsmen had. "I don't think there's anything we can do, monsieur."

  "Would it be better if we ran?" Am-Hazek asked, his head flicking to one side as he looked after the guardsmen, though his feet stayed planted where they were.

  "An Am-Djinn can run," Er-Izat said, his voice flat as he stripped off his bloodied shirt. Its shredded sleeves and bloodied front was more a hindrance than any protection by then. "An Er-Djinn must fight."

  Am-Hazek sighed, giving his loaned sword an experimental, but more focused swing than before. "Then it is done."

  Er-Izat cracked his neck, then nodded. "It is done."

  The light radiating from the summoning circle faded and the phantom bars across the West Gate solidified. Ravensdale looked up at them with his hands on his hips, whatever triumph he felt at his accomplishment lost beneath the cold press of Samael's dread. His voice was almost lost in the sound of the second gate swinging open as well. "If Percy fucked this, I'll kill him."

  Mirk couldn't hear Samael over the sound of the gate. But Mirk could see the desperation in his eyes, even if he couldn't hear the words he chose to beg Mirk to save him from who Ravensdale had summoned with his circle.

  A faint white light grew within the void the West Gate opened out into, and it was all Mirk could do to keep himself from running like Am-Hazek had suggested. Then a single pinprick of blue light joined the white, and the knot in his stomach loosened.

  Red followed. Then green, then all the colors Mirk could imagine, the pure white of the Light Eternal run through the prismatic magic of an angel who all the others spurned as wrong, different, strange. His godfather Aker stepped up to the threshold of the West Gate, his odd, segmented armor gleaming with the glow of another realm's setting sun, and surveyed the mayhem that'd been wrought on the other side of the gate with an appalled grimace.

  "Light Eternal, what a mess," Aker said into the silence that followed his arrival.

  Samael collapsed onto his front on the cobbles, weeping with relief so strong that Mirk found tears welling up in his own eyes. He loosened his grip on Jean-Luc's staff just long enough to swipe them away on his sleeve as he drew his shielding back up around his mind. Something in him knew he wouldn't see his godfather again for decades after this. Maybe even centuries. Mirk didn't want his last glimpse of him to be blurred with tears.

  Ravensdale was too assured of his own triumph to notice Samael's reaction. He bent in half at the waist, thumping his fist over his heart in an awkward attempt at the Imperial salute. "Lord Imanael," he said, as he lifted his head. "I have an offer for you."

  His olaein's weary frown deepened into a scowl. One that only the sight of him standing alongside Am-Hazek and Er-Izat behind Ravensdale was enough to lessen. It was replaced by another grimace as he locked eyes with Mirk. Despite having pulled his shields back up, Mirk could feel Aker's regret as clearly in that moment as if they'd been clasping hands.

  Aker’s voice was a whisper against Mirk's shields. Mikael would kill me for this. But he'd be proud of you.

  Then Aker stepped back from the threshold of the West Gate, calling one side of the second gate, gone pale and indistinct once more, into his hand with a flash of his prismatic magic.

  "For calling me by that name, you deserve whatever happens to you," Aker said to Ravensdale, flashing him a vicious, humorless grin before pulling the gate closed. Both he and the second gate vanished with the sound of distant, tinkling bells.

  "Wait! Wait, you didn't even..."

  The light on the other side of the West Gate died, leaving nothing behind but the City's usual shadows. Snarling in frustration, Ravensdale whirled around to face them. His displeasure only increased when, with a helpless shrug, Casyn shoved his sword back into its scabbard and vanished with the clap of a teleportation spell.

  "Fuck him. Fuck all of them," Ravensdale muttered, yanking back his sleeves. There were runes on both of his forearms, and he was too far away for Mirk to tell whether they were carved into his flesh or only written in blood. Ravensdale jerked his right arm upward and Samael bounced on the rain-slick cobblestones with a whimper of pain, the chains wrapped around his hands and arms sparking once more with dark-colored magic that was soon overpowered by the glow cast by Samael's winglight. The chains were drawing Samael's magic out of him just like the collars did out of Ravensdale's djinn, Mirk realized. Readying it for Ravensdale's use.

  Mirk looked first right at Er-Izat, then left at Am-Hazek. Both of them were standing firm. Though there was the beginnings of a smile on Am-Hazek's face that Mirk couldn't sense the meaning of.

  "Two djinn and a nob. You'll do well enough until Percy gets here with the other djinn," Ravensdale muttered at Samael, pulling hard on the magic rising off his wings, forming it with arcane gestures into a bolt of potential fit to level everything in front of him, both Mirk and the two djinn and the few guardsmen who still had the strength to cling to life, but not enough left to crawl away.

  Mirk felt it before he saw it — a disturbance in the shadows that filled the West Gate behind Ravensdale. A familiar, staticky hissing against his mind. But one that didn't carry with it the chill Mirk was accustomed to.

  "Three djinn, you useless, pathetic worm. John Jackson."

  Ravensdale whirled back around toward the West Gate. Then Am-Gulat lunged out of the shadows, bringing the pointed end of his war hammer down into Ravensdale's face before he could release his bolt of stolen magic.