The information was three weeks old.
Evander realized this at the exact moment when the carriage door failed to open, when the expected servant's face was replaced by the gleaming tip of a blessed blade, when the pattern he had studied and memorized and relied upon revealed itself as a carefully constructed lie.
Bishop Marcos was not traveling to his country estate tonight. He had never intended to travel anywhere.
He had been waiting.
"Ash and bone," Evander breathed, throwing himself sideways as the blade sliced through the space his throat had occupied. He rolled across the cobblestones, gathering power even as his tactical mind cataloged the ambush's architecture.
Six soldiers emerging from the shadows of the alley. Four more blocking the street's far end. The carriage itself was a decoy, its windows darkened not by curtains but by wards that had masked the presence of the armed men within. And standing in the doorway of the building opposite, watching with the serene satisfaction of a collector observing a rare specimen—
Bishop Marcos.
He looked older than Evander remembered. Fifteen years had added weight to his frame and silver to his hair, though his eyes retained the same cold calculation that had pronounced sentence on a woman whose only crime was speaking to the dead. He wore ceremonial robes that gleamed in the lamplight, and around his neck hung the golden seal of his office, a symbol of authority that had once seemed absolute and now seemed merely absurd.
"Dr. Ashcroft." Marcos descended the building's steps with the unhurried confidence of a man who believed himself untouchable. "Or should I use your real name? I must confess, I didn't make the connection until recently. You've changed quite considerably since you were a child."
Evander's power crackled at his fingertips, death energy building toward release. The soldiers formed a closing ring, their blessed weapons ready, their formation suggesting long training in confronting practitioners. Standard Inquisition tactics, but these weren't Inquisition soldiers. These were the Bishop's personal guard, men whose loyalty had been purchased with gold and guaranteed with secrets.
Men who knew about the special sessions.
Men who participated in them.
"You've been expecting me," Evander said, his voice flat with the effort of suppressing rage that threatened to compromise his judgment.
"For quite some time, actually. Your network is less secure than you imagine, Doctor. Or perhaps more accurately, there are those within your network who serve interests other than yours." Marcos smiled, the expression carrying no warmth. "Did you really think you could infiltrate the book trade without attracting attention? Your approach was elegant, I'll grant you that. But elegance becomes vulnerability when your opponent knows your methodology."
The ring of soldiers tightened. Evander counted heartbeats, calculating distances and angles, searching for gaps in the formation that his power could exploit.
"The Broker," he said. "He warned you."
"The Broker sold me information, which is what brokers do. Your interest in certain rare texts. Your questions about my schedule. The network of dead eyes that watch my movements from shadows." Marcos's smile widened. "Did you think I wouldn't notice the corpses moving through my congregation? I've been studying death magic for decades, Doctor. I recognize its symptoms, even when others remain blind."
The admission confirmed what Gregor had suspected. Marcos wasn't just a hypocrite who collected forbidden knowledge. He was a practitioner himself, one who had hidden within the Church's structure for years, using his authority to eliminate rivals while accumulating power that no ordinary clergy could match.
"You burned my mother for ghost speaking," Evander said. "You pronounced sentence on a woman whose only gift was hearing the dead. And all the while, you were practicing the same arts you condemned her for."
"I burned a hedge witch who had no understanding of what she wielded. A woman who spoke to spirits without any comprehension of the forces she was invoking." Marcos descended the final step, approaching the ring of soldiers that separated him from his prey. "I, on the other hand, understand those forces perfectly. I've devoted my life to their study, to harnessing what others merely stumble upon."
"And the children? Do you understand what you've been doing to them?"
Something shifted in Marcos's expression, a flicker of uncertainty that vanished almost immediately. "Children? I'm afraid I don't—"
"Thomas Aldric. The special sessions. The rituals you perform after evening prayers." Evander let the words emerge cold and precise, each one aimed at the Bishop's composure. "Did you think I came here merely for revenge? I have testimony, Marcos. Documentation. Evidence that will survive even if I don't."
The soldiers exchanged glances. Marcos's smile had frozen on his face.
"The boy is in custody," the Bishop said, but his voice carried a note of doubt. "My people collected him from the Warren three days ago—"
"Your people collected a decoy. A street child with similar features, coached to play a role until the substitution was discovered." Evander felt satisfaction sharpen his words. "Thomas Aldric is somewhere your reach can never extend. His testimony is already being copied, distributed, prepared for revelation at a moment of my choosing."
"You're bluffing."
"Am I? How certain are you, Marcos? Certain enough to risk everything you've built? Certain enough to gamble your position, your authority, your life on the assumption that I came to kill you without preparing for failure?"
The soldiers' formation wavered. Men who had been recruited for violent competence were suddenly confronting the possibility that their employer's fall would drag them down with him. Loyalty purchased with gold evaporated quickly when the gold's source became a liability.
Marcos raised one hand, and the wavering stopped.
"Kill him."
Power erupted.
The soldiers charged, blessed blades cutting through the air. Evander released the death energy he had been gathering, shaping it into a barrier that deflected the first strikes while he retreated toward the alley's narrower confines. Fighting ten soldiers simultaneously was suicide. Channeling them into a space where only two could approach at once improved his odds marginally.
The first soldier to reach him died before his blade completed its arc. Evander's power wrapped around his heart and squeezed, stopping it with the efficiency of a closed fist. The body collapsed, and Evander stepped over it to meet the second attacker.
This one was faster, his blessed sword leaving burns where it grazed Evander's robes. The pain was distant, irrelevant, filed away for later. Evander caught the soldier's wrist as he overextended, twisted sharply, and redirected the blade into its wielder's throat.
Two down. Eight remaining. Marcos retreating toward the building's interior, where additional guards almost certainly waited.
The third soldier managed to land a strike across Evander's shoulder. Deep, painful, bleeding freely as holy energy prevented his power from accelerating the healing. He killed the man anyway, but the injury slowed him, made his movements less precise.
The fourth and fifth attacked together, coordinated strikes that forced him to choose between defense and offense. He chose defense, barely, taking shallow cuts to his forearm and side in exchange for maintaining his position at the alley's mouth.
The sixth soldier hesitated.
It was a small hesitation, barely perceptible, but Evander recognized it for what it was. This man was calculating odds, weighing loyalty against survival, making the same calculations that the practitioner in his sights was making with every heartbeat.
"You can walk away," Evander said, his voice carrying despite the chaos. "All of you can walk away. Your employer is finished. His crimes will be exposed, his protection will crumble, and everyone associated with him will fall when he does."
"Don't listen to him." Marcos's voice echoed from somewhere inside the building. "He's a necromancer. He's using death magic to manipulate your thoughts."
"I'm stating facts." Evander met the hesitating soldier's eyes. "Thomas Aldric will testify about what happens in the Bishop's special sessions. Other victims will come forward once they see someone brave enough to speak first. The Church itself will turn on Marcos to preserve its authority." He paused, letting the words settle. "You don't have to die for a man whose secrets are already dead."
The hesitation spread. One soldier lowered his weapon. Then another.
The sixth soldier, the one who had hesitated first, turned and walked away.
Three soldiers remained loyal. Three soldiers who were either too committed or too compromised to accept the offered mercy.
Evander killed them quickly, efficiently, with no more satisfaction than a surgeon felt excising a tumor. Each death reduced the Bishop's protection. Each body that fell brought the final confrontation closer.
But when he reached the building's interior, Marcos was gone.
A servant's passage, hidden behind a false wall. The Bishop had planned his escape as carefully as he had planned the ambush. Contingencies for contingencies, layers of protection that ensured his survival even when his soldiers failed.
Evander stood in the empty room, breathing heavily, his wounds leaking blood that pooled on the expensive carpet. The ambush had failed to kill him, but it had accomplished something almost as damaging.
Marcos knew he was coming. Marcos was prepared. Marcos had resources and knowledge and institutional support that made him far more dangerous than a single corrupt bishop should have been.
And somewhere in Evander's network, close enough to access operational details, there was a traitor selling information to the enemy.
He collected himself with effort, binding his wounds with strips torn from a curtain, suppressing the pain through sheer will. The Masked servants positioned nearby would have observed the confrontation, documented the survivors, tracked whatever they could of the Bishop's escape.
The intelligence gathered tonight would help him understand what had gone wrong. The mistakes he had made would become lessons for what came next.
And the next time he found Bishop Marcos, there would be no ambush waiting. No escape route that could save a man whose crimes had finally caught up with him.
Evander limped into the night, leaving bodies and blood behind.
The infection had proven more resistant than expected. But he was still the surgeon. And the operation was far from over.
