Whatever you do, we won’t hold it against you.

  Colte never described himself as fearless, even as his tolerance for the terrifying improved over the years. It was easier to be honest than back up his words with courage he didn’t have, so when Evalyn called him out for shivering hands, he could spit it back into her face. Who would want to hear that from the walking tank, anyway?

  His job demanded little manual labour, so as much as he was at a ripe old age where creaking joints and quivering limbs were commonplace, he couldn’t even convince himself that Father Time was behind his shaking hands.

  No, that was all fear. A kind of dread that he hadn’t felt since standing before death’s mirror-image, glimpsing into a world wider, more ancient, and far, far more twisted than even his had been until then. Fear that deadened his eyes and shattered his perception of ‘normal’.

  The world really was a chess game. He’d known himself to be a piece ever since Her Majesty had declared him one of hers, but none of it had ever been a metaphor. It took meeting a grandmaster to internalise that reality.

  It was pouring again in Trepedite. Maybe he’d settle for blaming the cold for his quivering hands.

  He cranked the heavy door handle and shifted the stubborn hinges with his shoulder. The same musty smell of ancient parchment stacked on wall-to-wall bookshelves; the same drone of quiet chatter and schemes discussed over glasses of liquor always a third full. The chandelier followed overhead, glass joints creaking with its gentle sway back and forth, left and right. Nobody batted an eye at the sound of his own heavy footsteps down the corridor—those eyes, shrouded in the shadow of their own brows, weren’t staring at him, but his heart pounded as though they did.

  His pace withered the closer he approached the library entrance. Three years. By now, he could recall it better than his own shoebox of an apartment, his eyes fluttering to where the Resonances were almost by instinct now, and he knew it’d be no different this time around. Especially this time.

  Her Majesty was dead. Time was running out, and it frankly mattered little how precious a lead Provenance might’ve been; his manpower was needed elsewhere. Like the last hurrah of a heist ending abruptly, he needed to take as much intelligence as his two arms could carry and run, consequences be damned.

  “Liam,” Reverence said, greeting him with a cordial smile from behind a pair of reading glasses before he cleared the doorway.

  “Afternoon,” Liam muttered, shutting the door behind him. “Footsteps again?”

  “Indeed,” Reverence said, shutting the cover on his book and turning to face him. The man’s poised shoulders sank in time with an exhale through his nose. “My deepest condolences. I imagine you bleed for your country right now.”

  Colte hung his head, unable to hide all his anxieties behind his cover story. He could try to act the part of a wizard cast aside by her Majesty, but he knew his heart wouldn’t be in it. “It’s still my home, even after all these years.”

  “Of course,” Reverence said. “I would not hold it against you if this were goodbye for a time.”

  “Thank you, Reverence,” Colte said, stepping forward into the library’s oval embrace. “You’ve been good to me.”

  “The world should not leave people wanting. But in the meantime, we will continue to do our best,” he said, rising to his feet and loosening his sleeve garters. His navy vest and pressed white shirt had stayed consistent for the three years Colte had known him. Only the accessories changed—a gold chain would sometimes turn into a pocket square, then into a brooch on holidays.

  “You might’ve guessed already, but we keep goodbyes short here.” He leant back on his desk, watching Colte stand by the doorway from afar in a spatial dynamic that made him feel smaller than he already felt. “Do you ask for something?”

  The candelabras flickered, shying away from Reverence’s question while anticipating Colte’s response. Denying it further would serve him no purpose, and escaping was easy enough. Three years spent familiarising himself with his surroundings meant he’d long since mapped every vent and air duct, every escape a cloud of ash could take advantage of.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  But before he said goodbye for what would hopefully be forever, his curiosity, or rather its morbid cousin, couldn’t bear to close a three-year chapter with more questions than answers. All the hit jobs he took had to have led to something of greater purpose, greater beyond destabilising regimes and inciting rebellions.

  “You said you believe we’ve all fallen down a misguided path,” Colte began, paraphrasing Reverence’s cryptic allusions to gods knew what. “All this…how is it supposed to put us down the right one?”

  “It isn’t,” Reverence said matter-of-factly. “Nothing can do that. Not anymore. We live in a garden of thorns we can’t eradicate. The best we can do is prune it. Make sure above all that no one plant dominates all others.”

  Said, ironically, with all the urgency of a botanist explaining correct horticulture. The business of a lineage that spanned centuries—a loose, enduring coalition of people strung together by the same thought process. Perhaps that was where Reverence’s demeanour originated from: holier-than-thou, but with the calm assurance that he could back it up. He and his ilk were above it all, negotiating which chess piece should fall, which should stand.

  “It is why Vesmos is, to date, our biggest failure…and Geverde’s alliance with Sidos our latest attempt at an antidote.”

  He’d seen for himself the organisation’s reach, the assets and connections they handled. Geverde’s strength would always be its own, but Colte could never deny that the very man in front of him might have had something to do with its fruition. The only question left in his head now was how much of history had men like Reverence ghostwritten? The books that surrounded him were the only place he could find his answer.

  Reverence wasn’t a man of sides, only benefit and detriment. Ally or adversary depended all on if their goals took similar paths, and with Provenance’s name appearing in step with Vesmos, perhaps playing into Geverde’s status as ‘antidote’ was what was needed of him.

  “I have business with Provenance. I originally came here hoping to find him.”

  Reverence raised an eyebrow but otherwise didn’t look altogether surprised. “On orders of the antlers?” he asked, hands sinking into his pockets as he stepped off the raised floor of his office space.

  “Not entirely,” Colte said. “But the antlers have him connected to Vesmos. Have for the last three years.”

  Reverence paced around the bookshelves of the grand library, massaging his chin with the hand that still held his reading glasses by their frames. His footsteps were measured and methodical; the planks below his feet resonated the sound more like solid concrete than plywood. Colte’s head spun around the little details, attention solely focused on the thinking man’s actions in the absence of his words.

  “A man of his calibre working with Vesmos…three years. It lines up too well, don’t you think?”

  The empire’s sudden turn towards a clandestine method of operation was still something that baffled Geverdian intelligence. It was ambitious to pin the blame on one man, but by how Reverence spoke of him, it seemed that one man was the only variable worthy of such blame.

  “Yet you said not entirely,” Reverence asked. “You had…personal reasons too?”

  Reverence might’ve declared he didn’t share Provenance’s philosophy, but news of the Spirit of Destruction’s return may well be what changes his tune. Ally or adversary; the choice was simple—share as little about Iris as possible.

  “Yes.”

  “Reason enough to spend three years here?” Reverence asked to which Colte simply nodded. That fact apparently carried enough weight to consider, and Reverence’s paces finally stopped, right before where the Tetrica Resonances were shelved.

  “I’m afraid you’ve wasted a few years of your life, my friend,” he said with a sigh. “You won’t find him here. Not anymore.”

  “I gathered,” Colte huffed, barely able to mask his frustration. “But is there anything at all I could work with?”

  Reverence delayed his answer, instead turning around to face the line of Resonances. One by one, he dragged them off the shelf and stacked them in his offhand, until an empty slot in the bookshelf was left behind, marked by thick imprints of dust.

  “Provenance was a determined individual, but somebody who spent his days thinking fireflies were fairies wasn’t useful to us. Our methods are indistinguishable, but his goal is Tetrica, and nothing else.”

  Reverence handed the stack of books to a stunned Colte, who hastily received them with both hands. Reverence never smiled during his act of charity: that alone told Colte that the man saw it as nothing more than a business proposition, an exchange in kind.

  “If he believes that he’s found Tetrica, however small a chance, I’m sure he’ll come looking. Maybe with these, you’ll understand how he thinks.”

  With half his mind still in shock, it was up to the other to produce a slurred show of gratitude. A “thank you” was about all he could muster. Reverence shook it away.

  “We are more useful to each other on good terms,” Reverence said. “Consider those an investment in our friendship.”

  Colte nodded. “Of course,” he muttered, one final, almost inconsequential question springing to mind. “And…in lieu of a business card…what do they call you and your…comrades?”

  Reverence shrugged. “Again, you might’ve guessed we don’t bother with such formalities, but…”

  He smiled, chuckled even for the first time in the three years Colte had known him. “As an inside joke, we tend to call each other match-fixers.”