The harbor district sprawled along Valdris's eastern edge, a mess of warehouses and taverns and brothels leaning against each other for support. Everywhere the smell of fish, tar, and human desperation hung thick as fog. This was where the Empire's wealth flowed in and out, where fortunes were made and lost on the turn of a tide, where the Church's influence weakened and rougher powers held sway.
Evander moved through its streets with his healer's robes traded for the plain clothes of a dockworker. The transformation had taken only minutes: a change of garments, a redistribution of posture, a subtle glamour that made his pale features appear weathered by sun and salt wind. Anyone looking at him now would see a laborer heading home after a long shift, not a necromancer hunting for a skeleton in a stolen hat.
The thread connecting him to Bones grew stronger as he approached the docks. He could sense his servant's presence, hidden in an alley between two warehouses, perfectly still, projecting nothing that might attract attention. Smart. Whatever had destroyed the Watcher spirit was dangerous enough that even Bones recognized the need for caution.
Evander slipped into the alley, pressing himself against grimy stone walls, and found Bones crouched behind a stack of rotting crates. The skeleton's glamour had shifted to something darker, less conspicuous: a beggar's rags instead of the laborer's clothes he had worn this morning. The brown cap was gone, replaced by a tattered hood that concealed his skull.
No hat at all. That was how Evander knew the situation was serious.
"Report," he breathed, barely audible even to himself. Bones would feel the command through their connection, would understand without the need for sound.
The skeleton's response came through gesture and impression, a language they had developed over fifteen years of partnership.
Followed the ship's crew to a tavern. Listened. Learned their commander's name.
"Who?"
Mira Vance. Senior Inquisitor. The Purifier.
Evander's blood, already cold, went colder.
The Purifier. He knew that name. Everyone in the underground knew that name. Mira Vance had risen through the Inquisition's ranks with terrifying speed, leaving a trail of destroyed covens and burned practitioners behind her. She had broken the Thornwood Circle in the north. Eliminated the Pale Hand syndicate that had operated in the capital for forty years. Killed the last known practitioner of soul binding in the western provinces, by herself.
And now she was here. In Valdris. With thirty veteran hunters at her command.
"What happened to the Watcher?"
She sensed it. Bones's gestures conveyed something like awe, and something like fear. Just... sensed it. Walking down the street, surrounded by her guards. Stopped. Turned. Looked right at where it was hiding. And then—
"And then?"
Light. Holy light. The spirit just... ceased. No struggle. No resistance. Gone.
Evander absorbed this with the cold calculation that had kept him alive for fifteen years. Most Inquisitors could sense death magic if it was active, if it was obvious. Detecting a Watcher spirit, bound and hidden and barely there at all, required something more. Something rare.
"She has the Sight," he said.
Bones nodded. The True Sight. Sees through glamours. Sees through wards. Sees the dead as clearly as the living.
A gift, or a curse, that appeared perhaps once in a generation. The ability to perceive death magic in all its forms, to see the invisible threads connecting necromancers to their servants, to look through the most careful disguises and observe the truth beneath.
If Mira Vance turned those eyes toward him, toward his clinic, toward any of his hidden sanctuaries...
"Did she see you?"
No. I was far enough away. Behind stone walls. But she knows something is here. She could feel it. All of it.
"All of it?"
Your network. The Watchers. The Masked. Everything. She stood there for a full minute, just... sensing. Like a hound catching a scent. She knows there's a necromancer in the city. She doesn't know who or where. But she's going to hunt.
Evander leaned against the alley wall. True Sight. A hunter who could see through every glamour, sense every thread of death magic. His plan to kill Bishop Marcos had relied on stealth, on misdirection, on the Inquisition's assumption that their targets were minor practitioners and desperate fools. A hunter with True Sight made all of that irrelevant. She would see through every disguise, sense every manipulation, track every thread of death magic to its source.
He could retreat. Pull back all his operations. Hide until the Inquisition ship left the harbor and its dangerous passenger returned to the Blessed Isles. Wait for safer times, for better opportunities, for a moment when Bishop Marcos wasn't protected by one of the most effective killers the Church had ever produced.
The thought lasted exactly three seconds.
Fifteen years. Fifteen years of patience. Fifteen years of watching his mother's murderers grow fat and old while he played the good doctor and pretended to be harmless. He was so close to watching Bishop Marcos die. So close to crossing another name off his list.
He would not retreat.
"Show me where she is."
Bones hesitated, a remarkable thing for an undead servant to do, then gestured toward the harbor proper. Three blocks. Warehouse fourteen. She's set up a command post. Her hunters are combing the district, looking for anything that might lead them to their target.
"To me."
To you. They don't know your name. Don't know your face. Don't know where you live. But they know you exist. And Mira Vance doesn't stop until she finds what she's looking for.
Evander smiled. It was not a pleasant expression.
"Then perhaps I should introduce myself."
Bones's skull somehow conveyed alarm. What?
"Not directly. Not obviously. But if she wants to hunt a necromancer, let her hunt one." Evander pushed away from the wall, his mind already spinning plans. "Just not me."
He moved through the harbor district with new purpose, Bones trailing behind him. The warehouse where Mira Vance had established her command post loomed at the end of a long pier, its walls reinforced with iron bands, its doors guarded by men in the silver-chased armor of the Inquisition elite. Evander didn't approach. He simply observed, cataloging positions and patrol patterns and faces.
"The Church's archives," he murmured, almost to himself. "Before the purges, this city had a dozen registered necromantic practitioners. Hedge witches, corpse speakers, spirit consulters. Most were killed in the Thornwood Cleansing a century ago, but records would remain. Names. Addresses. Family connections."
Bones understood immediately. You want to give her someone else to chase.
"I want to give her a trail. A convincing one. Someone plausible. Someone who looks like what she's hunting but isn't."
Who?
Evander considered. The ideal candidate would be someone with tangential connections to death magic, enough to justify Mira Vance's interest, not enough to withstand serious scrutiny. Someone expendable. Someone who wouldn't be missed.
"The Broker," he decided. "The information merchant in the Silk District. He's been selling secrets to too many different parties, playing everyone against everyone else. He has some death magic in his lineage, his grandmother was a corpse speaker before the purges. It's in the Church's records if anyone looks."
And when the Inquisition investigates?
"They'll find a man who knows too much about too many forbidden things. They'll find evidence of transactions with suspicious figures. They'll find a trail that leads nowhere useful but takes them weeks to unravel." Evander's smile widened. "And while they're chasing the Broker, I'll be dealing with Bishop Marcos."
Bones made a gesture that meant: Clever. Also ruthless.
"The Broker sold information that got good people killed. He gave the Inquisition the location of a family hiding a ghost speaker last year. Three children burned alongside their parents." Evander's voice went flat, cold. "He's been living on borrowed time. This just accelerates the repayment."
They retreated from the harbor as evening shadows lengthened, moving through back alleys and forgotten passages that Evander had mapped years ago. The weight of Mira Vance's presence lingered at the edge of his awareness, a constant pressure, like standing too close to a fire. He would need to be more careful than ever. His Watchers would need to maintain greater distance. His movements would need to seem more random, more innocent.
But he had survived fifteen years of hiding in the shadow of the Church. He had killed twelve high-ranking officials without leaving a trace. No zealot with special eyes was going to stop him now.
The safe house waited in the Merchant Quarter, a cramped apartment above a chandler's shop. Evander owned the building through three layers of false identities, used it only for emergencies, maintained no obvious connection to it. Inside, he found the supplies he had cached for exactly this situation: gold coins, forged documents, weapons both mundane and magical.
And a dead drop message that made his heart nearly stop.
The paper was folded three times, sealed with black wax impressed by a sigil he recognized. Old Gregor's mark. The words were few:
*The distraction is compromised. Inquisition moved on the warehouse before we could act. Someone talked. Someone close. Assume all plans burned. Going to ground. Will contact when safe.*
*G.*
Evander read the message twice, then held it over a candle flame and watched it turn to ash. The fire cast dancing shadows across his face, illuminating features that had gone rigid with anger.
Someone had betrayed them. Someone had told the Inquisition about Gregor's warehouse, about the dragon-fire powder, about the planned distraction that would have covered Bishop Marcos's death. That someone had connections close enough to know operational details, trusted enough to be included in planning.
Someone in his organization was a traitor.
The implications were ugly. If the traitor knew about the distraction, what else did they know? Did they know about his clinic? His residence? His true identity?
Did they know about his phylacteries?
Evander forced himself to breathe slowly, to think clearly, to resist the paranoid spiral pulling at him. Panic was death in this business. Only cold calculation survived.
"Bones."
The skeleton had been standing in the corner, still as furniture, waiting. He straightened at Evander's voice.
"I need you to deliver a message to the Council. Tell them we're implementing Protocol Seven. All operations suspended. All contacts quarantined. Everyone goes silent until I determine the source of this leak."
A pause. Then: Protocol Seven was designed for catastrophic compromise.
"This is catastrophic compromise. Someone talked, Bones. Someone close enough to know about Gregor's operation. That means our entire network might be exposed." Evander turned to face his oldest servant, his most trusted companion. "I need to know who. And I need to know before Mira Vance finds them first."
Because if the traitor talked to the Inquisition, truly talked, told them everything they knew, then the Purifier would have more than a scent to follow.
She would have a map straight to Evander's heart.
The skeleton departed through the window, vanishing into the gathering darkness. Evander remained, standing in the flickering candlelight, surrounded by emergency supplies and unanswered questions.
Somewhere in the city, an Inquisitor with True Sight was hunting for him. Somewhere in his own organization, a traitor waited to hand her what she needed.
And deep below, in a prison that had held for three centuries, the Death Gods stirred in their chains.
Their champion was growing stronger. And so were his enemies.
