The route to the eastern quarter took them past Clement Street.
Evander paused at the corner, aware that every minute of delay increased the risk to Mira Vance, if she was still alive, if rescue was even possible, if the entire situation wasn't already beyond salvage. But Bones had stopped walking, his empty eye sockets fixed on a display in the haberdashery's window with an intensity that suggested the skeleton had forgotten how to move.
The emerald tricorn sat on a polished wooden head, its gold accents catching the lamplight.
"Master." Bones's voice emerged as barely more than a whisper. "It's even more magnificent than I remembered."
"We don't have time for this."
"We never have time. That's the fundamental nature of existence, insufficient time to appreciate the finer things." Bones hadn't moved, hadn't even turned his skull. "But some things are worth making time for. Some things represent the essence of what makes un-life worth un-living."
Evander felt the familiar tension between urgency and something he didn't want to examine too closely, because examining it might reveal how much he actually cared about the skeleton's strange fixation.
"The shop is closed."
"The lock appears to be quite simple. A basic tumbler mechanism, no magical protections whatsoever." Bones's tone carried the particular innocence of someone who was absolutely not suggesting anything improper. "It would be a shame if such inadequate security allowed the hat to fall into unworthy hands."
"You want me to break into a shop and steal a hat while an Inquisitor is potentially being tortured in an Inquisition facility."
"'Liberate' was the word I preferred. And the Inquisitor will still be in whatever condition she's in regardless of whether we spend thirty seconds addressing an urgent millinery situation." Bones finally turned to face his master, his posture conveying earnest appeal. "Master, I have asked for very little during our fifteen years of association. I have accepted the constant danger, the isolation, the fundamental existential horror of being dead but aware. I have never complained, never questioned, never wavered in my service."
"You complain constantly."
"About trivial matters. About sewers and inconvenient timing and the general unfairness of circumstances. But I have never asked for something that truly mattered to me." The skeleton's voice dropped, carrying something that might have been vulnerability if skeletons could be vulnerable. "That hat matters to me. I can't explain why. Perhaps it's some fragment of the person I was before death, some remnant of aesthetic sensibility that survived the transition. But when I see it, I feel something that I had forgotten I could feel."
Evander studied his companion, the skeleton who had been with him since before he fully understood what he was becoming. Advisor. Confidant. Friend, through circumstances that should have broken them both.
Bones had never asked for anything that truly mattered before.
Perhaps that was because nothing had truly mattered to him before.
"Thirty seconds."
"Master?" Surprise animated the skeleton's posture.
"Thirty seconds. I'll handle the lock. You acquire the hat. We leave immediately afterward and speak of this to no one." Evander moved toward the shop's entrance, his death-touched fingers already reaching for the simple mechanism that protected it. "Consider this payment for fifteen years of service that I've never properly acknowledged."
The lock yielded with barely a whisper of effort.
Bones moved through the darkened shop with reverence, his skeletal feet silent on the wooden floor, his attention fixed on the display that held his prize. He lifted the emerald tricorn with hands that were steadier than they had ever been, cradling it as though it were something infinitely precious.
The hat settled onto his skull with a soft sound that seemed almost like satisfaction.
"It fits," Bones breathed. "Of course it fits. It was always meant to fit."
Evander watched the skeleton adjust the tricorn's angle, tilting it to precisely the position that suggested confident distinction without crossing into arrogance. The emerald cloth caught the faint light filtering through the shop's windows, its gold accents winking in the dark.
"We need to go."
"Yes. Yes, we do." Bones turned toward the exit, his posture somehow transformed by the addition of new headwear. He moved with a different quality now, more assured, more present than Evander had ever seen him be. "Thank you, master. This is... I don't have words that seem adequate."
"You don't need words. You need to help me infiltrate an Inquisition facility."
"Of course. Immediately." Bones followed Evander into the night, his new hat cutting a striking silhouette against the lamplight. "Though I should mention that this emerald specimen makes me feel significantly more capable of facing challenging circumstances. The psychological benefits of proper headwear are vastly underappreciated."
They resumed their journey toward the eastern quarter, moving through streets that grew progressively more dangerous as they approached Inquisition territory. The warmth of the moment with the hat faded, replaced by the cold calculation that survival required.
But something had shifted between them. Something that Evander filed away for later examination, in circumstances that might allow for such self-indulgent reflection.
---
The eastern quarter facility announced itself through absence, a zone of silence where even the night sounds seemed reluctant to intrude.
Evander crouched on a rooftop overlooking the compound, extending his awareness to catalog the defenses that protected Cardinal Ashford's domain. The readings were troubling. The facility was wrapped in wards that exceeded standard Inquisition protocols, layers of protection that suggested someone was trying to hide something significant.
"Six external guards, rotating in pairs," Bones reported, his new emerald hat catching moonlight in ways that seemed almost inappropriate for a stealth mission. "Two stationed at the main entrance, two at the service entrance, two on mobile patrol. Inside, the energy signatures become more difficult to read. There's interference that resembles the suppression wards used in practitioner detention facilities."
"But more sophisticated."
"Significantly so. Whatever they're doing in there, they've invested considerable resources in ensuring no one can observe it from outside."
Evander processed this, adding it to his developing picture of the situation. The Watchers had reported that Mira Vance's team had entered through the main entrance approximately three hours ago. No one had emerged since. The facility's communication channels remained dark.
"I need to get inside without triggering the wards."
"The wards are designed to detect death magic. Any use of your abilities will announce your presence immediately." Bones made a gesture that approximated concern. "Breaking in without your powers seems... inadvisable."
"I won't be breaking in." Evander rose from his crouch, his mind settling on a plan that relied on something other than magic. "I'll be entering as a healer responding to a medical emergency."
"The facility doesn't have a medical emergency."
"It will."
---
The guard at the service entrance was young, barely more than a boy, with the uncertain bearing of someone who had recently completed training and wasn't yet comfortable with the authority his position supposedly granted.
Evander approached with the brisk efficiency of a man who belonged wherever he happened to be, his healer's bag clutched against his chest, his posture radiating professional concern.
"There's been an incident," he said, before the guard could challenge him. "The facility commander requested immediate medical assistance. I was told to enter through the service entrance to avoid disrupting operations."
"I wasn't informed of any medical emergency."
"Situations sometimes develop faster than communication protocols can accommodate." Evander allowed impatience to color his tone, the impatience of a professional whose time was being wasted by bureaucratic obstruction. "If you'd like to delay treatment while sending someone to verify my credentials, that's certainly your prerogative. But I should mention that delays in medical situations tend to result in outcomes that someone eventually has to explain to superiors."
The guard's uncertainty deepened, caught between the instinct to follow procedure and the fear of being blamed for consequences he couldn't predict.
"I could send word to Commander Ashford..."
"Commander Ashford is the one who requested my services. Disturbing him to confirm an arrangement he personally made seems unwise." Evander let his voice soften slightly, adopting the tone of someone offering helpful advice. "But the decision is yours. I'm merely the physician."
The guard hesitated for another moment, then stepped aside.
"Through there, sir. Take the first corridor to the left, then down the stairs to the processing level."
"Thank you." Evander moved past him, maintaining the brisk stride of a man with important work to do. "There may be additional personnel arriving shortly. Please ensure they're directed appropriately."
Inside the facility, the atmosphere changed immediately.
The wards pressed against Evander's awareness like hands trying to hold him down, suppression fields that would have rendered an ordinary practitioner helpless. He felt his connection to the death energy in the environment grow thin, tenuous, but not severed entirely. His abilities operated at reduced capacity, but they operated.
A weakness in the facility's defenses. The wards were calibrated for practitioners who drew power from external sources, not for someone who carried death energy in his blood as a fundamental aspect of his nature.
He filed the observation away and continued deeper into the facility.
The architecture told a story that confirmed his worst suspicions. This wasn't a standard Inquisition processing center. It was a research facility, designed for experimentation rather than interrogation. The corridors branched into laboratory spaces, examination rooms, chambers whose purposes Evander could only speculate about.
And everywhere, the evidence of suffering.
Bloodstains that cleaning hadn't entirely removed. Scratches on walls where desperate fingers had clawed for escape. The lingering psychic residue of pain and death, accumulated over months or years of systematic abuse.
Cardinal Ashford had built something monstrous here. Something that the official Church hierarchy either didn't know about or had chosen to ignore.
"Master." Bones's voice came through the communication link they maintained through their bond, reduced to barely audible whispers by the suppression fields. "I've located the Purifier. She's in a detention cell on the lower level, along with three members of her team. The fourth appears to be... no longer alive."
"Guards?"
"Two stationed outside her cell. Additional personnel in the adjacent laboratory. I count five, possibly six. They appear to be preparing some kind of procedure."
Evander felt cold settle into his bones. Not the familiar cold of his death-touched nature, but something sharper.
"What kind of procedure?"
"I can't determine specifics through the interference. But the equipment they're assembling resembles the arrays used for forced spirit binding. If I had to speculate, I would say they're planning to use her as a test subject for whatever technique destroyed our Watchers."
The information stripped Evander's choices down to their essentials.
He could retreat. Preserve himself. Accept that Mira Vance had become a casualty of investigations she shouldn't have pursued.
Or he could intervene, risk everything on the chance that saving her might provide allies and information worth the cost.
The healer in him made the decision before the strategist could object.
"I'm going to need a distraction."
"I suspected as much." Bones's voice carried something that might have been anticipation. "I've identified several chemical storage containers in the facility's west wing. The contents appear to be quite volatile."
"Create chaos. Enough to draw attention away from the detention area."
"With pleasure, master." A pause, then: "The new hat really does improve my confidence for this sort of thing."
Despite the suppression fields, the guards, and the entire weight of an Inquisition facility arrayed against him, Evander felt his mouth curve.
"Just don't get destroyed. I can't afford to lose any more assets tonight."
"I shall endeavor to remain intact." Another pause. "Though if the worst should happen, I want you to know that acquiring this emerald tricorn made the risk worthwhile."
The communication link fell silent as Bones moved to implement the distraction.
Evander checked his healer's bag, the legitimate instruments on top, the hidden compartment beneath, and moved toward the detention level.
The next hour would determine whether Mira Vance walked out of this facility alive.
