The infection had spread to his lymph nodes.
Evander diagnosed this by touch alone, his cold fingers tracing the swollen tissue beneath the boy's jaw with the clinical precision of long practice. Nine years old, malnourished, wearing acolyte's vestments that had once been white but were now gray with grime and neglect. The physical symptoms were straightforward: fever, inflammation, the early stages of sepsis from an untreated wound.
The psychological symptoms were far more complex.
"What's your name?" Evander kept his voice neutral, the same tone he used for patients who flinched at sudden sounds.
"Thomas." The word emerged barely audible. "Thomas Aldric."
"And how did you receive this injury, Thomas?"
The boy's eyes moved in a pattern Evander had learned to recognize. Door first, checking it was closed. Window second, verifying no observers. Only then did he speak, his voice dropping to frequencies meant for secrets.
"The special sessions. At the Cathedral. After evening prayers."
Evander's hands continued their examination, cataloging symptoms while his mind cataloged implications. The bruising on the boy's arms showed the distinctive layering of wounds accumulated over months. The guardedness in his posture suggested conditioning through repeated trauma. The infected gash on his shoulder had been inflicted with something sharp and ritualistic.
"Tell me about these sessions."
The account emerged in fragments, each piece fitting into the next with sickening clarity. Systematic abuse, disguised as sacred instruction. Physical punishment escalating to something far worse. And at the center of it all, orchestrating every cruelty with the patience of a collector arranging specimens—
"Bishop Marcos." Thomas pronounced the name like a diagnosis. "He chooses which acolytes receive special training. He said I was blessed. He said I had potential."
The information landed like a blow to the sternum. Fifteen years of planning. Fifteen years of careful cultivation, building toward the death of the man who had read his mother's execution order. He had always known Marcos was cruel, corrupt, a hypocrite who collected the very texts he burned others for possessing.
He had not known about the children.
"How long has this been occurring?"
"Three months for me. But some of the older acolytes..." Thomas trailed off, his young face aging with knowledge no child should carry. "Some have been in the special sessions for years."
Evander completed his examination, applying antiseptic to the wound with movements that required no conscious thought. His hands performed medicine while his mind performed calculations. The Bishop's security. His daily movements. The network of protection that surrounded a man who had accumulated decades of Church authority.
None of it mattered anymore.
"You're not going back," Evander said. The words emerged harder than he intended, scalpels when the situation required sutures. He softened his tone with effort. "I have a safe room. You'll stay there until arrangements can be made."
"What kind of arrangements?"
"The kind that ensure Bishop Marcos faces consequences for what he's done."
Thomas looked up at him with eyes that had seen too much and hoped for too little. "People don't face consequences for hurting acolytes. We're supposed to be grateful for the attention."
"Then I'll have to change what people do." Evander guided the boy toward the hidden door behind his supply cabinet. "Can you walk? The passage is steep."
They descended together, Thomas leaning against Evander's cold shoulder for support. The hidden room beneath the clinic had sheltered ghost-touched children before, practitioners fleeing Inquisition attention, anyone who needed to disappear from a world that wanted them dead. It was small but secure, warded against detection, provisioned for extended stays.
Thomas collapsed onto the narrow cot almost immediately, exhaustion claiming him with the absoluteness of youth. Evander watched the boy sleep, studying the rise and fall of his chest, the way his hands curled protectively even in unconsciousness.
Another child broken by the Church's machinery.
The rage that filled him was not hot. It never had been, not since the day he'd knelt in his mother's ashes and made promises to a corpse that couldn't hear them. This rage was cold, systematic. A fever that lowered temperature instead of raising it. It spread through his thoughts like frost across glass, turning everything it touched into sharp-edged certainty.
He climbed back to the clinic's main room.
Old Gregor waited there, his glamour flickering with the effort of maintaining human appearance. The ancient skeleton had been listening. Of course he had. Gregor always listened.
"The boy's testimony changes our calculations." Gregor's voice carried the weight of centuries. "Marcos isn't just your mother's killer anymore. He's an active threat to children who are suffering right now, while we sit here refining plans."
"I'm aware."
"Are you? Because your fifteen-year plan was designed for surgical precision. One target, one death, minimal exposure." Gregor moved to the window, studying the street with empty eyes. "What that boy described requires a different approach. Evidence. Witnesses. Public exposure that can't be buried."
"And what happens to the children currently in those sessions while we gather evidence?"
Gregor was silent.
"Exactly." Evander began pacing, his mind engaging with the problem as it did with all problems, dissecting components, identifying leverage points, reconstructing the whole from examined parts. "We accelerate the timeline. Marcos dies sooner, but not before his crimes become public record. The testimony won't disappear if the testifier does."
"That requires documentation. Distribution networks that can't be intercepted. Protection for witnesses that the Church can't breach."
"Then we build those things."
"In weeks instead of months?"
"In days if necessary." Evander stopped at his desk, staring at papers that suddenly seemed irrelevant. "How many other children, Gregor? How many are in those sessions right now, waiting for someone to help them while I perfect my plans?"
"You can't save everyone, boy. That's not how the world works."
"No. But I can save the ones I know about." He turned to face his mentor. "Contact the underground network. The same people who sent Ilsa. Tell them we have evidence of Church corruption that goes beyond death magic persecution. Tell them we have a witness who's willing to testify, and we need to build protections strong enough to keep him alive long enough to do it."
"And Bishop Marcos?"
"Still dies. But now he dies knowing the world sees what he is. He dies watching everything he built rot around him." Evander's voice dropped to something barely above a whisper. "He dies understanding that the children he hurt are the ones who destroyed him."
Gregor studied him for a long moment, his glamoured face somehow conveying emotions that skulls shouldn't be able to express. Pride, perhaps. Or concern. Or something between the two.
"I'll make the contacts. But Evander, you need to be careful. This kind of exposure creates vulnerabilities. The more people who know about Thomas, the more chances for information to reach the wrong ears."
"I know."
"The Purifier is already investigating you. If she learns about the boy—"
"Then I'll deal with Mira Vance when the time comes." Evander moved toward the stairs that led to his war room below. "For now, focus on building the network we need. Every practitioner who's willing to help. Every contact who can spread testimony beyond the Church's ability to suppress."
"And if it's not enough?"
Evander paused at the top of the stairs, looking back at the mentor who had shaped him into what he had become.
"Then it's not enough. But I'd rather fail trying to help those children than succeed at a vengeance that leaves them suffering." He descended into darkness. "Some things matter more than careful plans."
Gregor watched him go, then turned toward the door.
The network would need to be contacted. Resources would need to be mobilized. A war that neither of them had anticipated was beginning, its contours still unclear.
And somewhere beneath the city, a necromancer who had spent fifteen years planning murder was discovering that some things demanded immediate action. That some debts came due all at once.
In the hidden room, Thomas Aldric slept, his testimony already the most dangerous document in the capital.
And in the halls of the Cathedral, Bishop Marcos continued his sacred duties, unaware that the children he had broken were about to break him in return.
Evander intended to cut the infection out. Whatever the cost.
