Alarion felt oddly at ease being back in custody, as though a weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

  It had been months since he’d last seen the inside of a prison—since Williams had given him one final lease on life. He hadn’t realized at the time just how trapped—or how angry—he truly was. Alarion had good reason to strike Pierce, but that wasn’t the only reason he’d done it. His life had been hollow and full of guilt. Some part of him had wanted to be punished.

  Time and friendship had dulled the desire, but circumstances had replaced it with a feeling of inevitability. His life had been going too well, and if history had taught him anything, it was that nothing good ever lasted.

  Besides, he’d taken too many risks and told too many lies; one of them was bound to catch up with him eventually.

  The question was what, exactly, had done him in.

  The speech? Unlikely. Even if the empire viewed the speech as treasonous—which he doubted—they’d acted much too quickly. Though Williams had no direct control over the Watch, he had plenty of political power. Anyone brought into the Watch was intelligent enough to understand the risks of arresting the Martyr in the West for a speech—especially without Williams’s permission.

  Bergman’s stolen book was a possibility. Dimov had seen the same collection, and it was possible he’d given them a different count. Or perhaps they’d deciphered the books and realized one was obviously missing. Or Bergman had been spotted on his return to Shae-Yomag, and they’d drawn the obvious inferences from there.

  It was also possible that Bergman or Kali had ratted him out, but Alarion put the odds on par with the possibility that he was the long-lost heir to the Celesian Empire.

  No, their scheme with the Ordinate was always the likely failure point. She could have sold them out, or gossiped with the wrong person. Maybe Bergman was less clever at hiding the money than he thought, or perhaps a spy at Ilvan-Trai put pressure on the Ordinate.

  Maybe someone just made the same connections Lily had, but with less morality.

  The question wasn’t merely academic. What the Vitrians knew and how they knew it would drastically shift his leverage over the next several hours.

  Even though he was morbidly curious whether [Fated to Fight, Fated to Live, Fated to Lose] could prevent the certain death of an execution, Alarion knew it would never come to that. Ashad’s Grand Awakening had proven the value of [Shared Burden] a hundred times over, and he knew that even the inflexible laws of Vitria would bend in the face of such an asset.

  He had room to haggle. His life as he knew it was over, but threatening to withhold access to [Shared Burden] or worse yet, to kill himself, should be enough to get them to extend leniency to Kali and Bergman if either were implicated.

  It was small solace, but as Alarion passed through the gates of the infamous Istal Prison, he needed what comfort he could find.

  A fully Vitrian prison, the Istal complex had been constructed shortly after the annexation. Built on the outskirts of the ruined city of Ashad-Mundi, it had been hastily put together by Vitrian metal shapers to house hundreds of Awakened prisoners of war. As those prisoners were gradually deemed safe for release in the aftermath of the conflict, it was redesigned and expanded to include two more buildings: one for unawakened prisoners and the other, colloquially known as ‘The Steel Box’, for Ashad’s highest-risk criminals.

  A tiny part of Alarion was flattered when his escorts—joined now by two prison guards—guided him toward it.

  The Box certainly lived up to its name. Ringed by three layers of wired fences and more wards than Alarion could count—let alone decipher—the ‘building’ was a three-story stainless-steel cube dropped down in the middle of the desert that Ruin had made of the Old City.

  Their path ended at one featureless wall, and even jaded as he was, Alarion felt a certain spark of wonder as he watched the gate guard’s work. Over the course of a minute, the steel wall melted like snow in the summer heat. It trickled into pre-prepared grates that led to large tanks on either side of the newly formed doorway.

  Alarion was curious how they’d rebuild the door, but one of the most important rules when dealing with the Vitrian legal system was to shut your mouth.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  He hadn’t said so much as a word to his captors, or to Nessa, since his arrest. He hadn’t even needed ZEKE’s advice, though the machine was quick to remind him as they passed the threshold into the Box itself.

  “You are exercising your right as a subject to say nothing,” ZEKE reiterated through a whisper in his ear. “You wish to speak to a solicitor. They can ask you as many questions as they wish, but they are required to let you speak to a solicitor of your choosing within seven days.”

  Alarion nodded his acknowledgement. It was the third time the Steelborn had repeated the mantra—one Alarion already knew by heart from his own studies—but he couldn’t blame him. ZEKE was scared. Scared for Alarion, and perhaps even himself.

  The inside of the prison was surprisingly normal, given its unnatural exterior. The walls and ceiling were metal, but the floors were neatly tiled and obviously well-kept. This was not the centuries-old, dimly lit jail of Ilvan-Shad, but a modern facility run by professionals. Guards in dull blue uniforms nodded to his captors as they approached the first interior gate, and the pair ushered Alarion toward a small cage that opened and shut behind him with an electric buzz.

  “Do you have any weapons?” a clerk asked from the opposite side of a metal grate.

  “Uh… several,” Alarion answered, momentarily taken aback. It hadn’t even occurred to him they’d let him in through the outer perimeter without checking him for weapons. “Do I…”

  A slot slammed open on the side of the cage.

  “Everything in there, please,” the bored man replied.

  Even in his dress uniform, Alarion wore as much of his kit as he could get away with. Here, that meant a dozen blades, several rings, and his bracer—none of which he wanted to lose.

  “I have a storage power, can I summon-“

  The man shook his head. “The building is heavily warded.”

  “Some of this has sentimental value.”

  “If you are worried about theft, do not be,” the clerk replied with the exhaustion of a man who’d had the same conversation far too many times. “This is Istal, not some backwater jail.”

  “Mm,” Alarion conceded. He didn’t like it, but it wasn’t like he had a choice. When he was finished, a second slot opened up on the opposite side of the cage.

  “Put your arm through the gap, wrist up.” Alarion did as he was told and soon felt the telltale ring in his ear and the malaise of a skill cuff sapping his abilities. It was unpleasantly familiar, but he supposed he’d have to get used to it. “Okay, you are all set. Follow the green line on the floor to reunite with your escorts. Your valuables are tagged to the cuff and will be returned to you on its removal.”

  The cage shuddered around him as the opposite side popped open to reveal his quartet of escorts waiting up ahead. Or quintet, if he counted Nessa, who had followed them instead.

  “Something is weird,” she said as the prison guards inundated him with instructions on the many, many things he was not allowed to do. Sensing that the diatribe was important, she waited until the party resumed its march before continuing. “Everyone here feels way too lax.”

  Alarion nodded as he walked but said nothing.

  “Can I go on ahead?” she asked.

  Alarion said nothing, but a moment after she spoke, one guard did the same. “Your Thoughtborn will remain with you at all times.”

  Alarion’s head snapped toward the man who’d spoken as he asked, “You can hear her?”

  “Our observer in the security room can,” the guard replied, gesturing to a strange conical object at the end of the hall. “Your file says you cannot unsummon it, or we would have told you to do so already.”

  “Her,” Alarion corrected.

  The man made no reply as they navigated the confusing corridors. Alarion had become halfway decent at mental mapping over the years, but the prison taxed his abilities past their limits. They’d taken four left turns in quick succession but somehow ended up at a stairwell going down rather than where they’d started.

  Illusion or special trickery, it was hard to tell.

  The one sure thing was that they were going down. Though the prison looked like a cube on the surface, it was actually a rectangle, descending at least three times as deep as it was tall.

  Even for a prison built for solitary confinement, Alarion found it odd that they didn’t encounter a single other guard or prisoner during their descent. It was almost as strange as the descent itself. Why did they need to go so far into the depths for a confession? The men who’d come to collect Alarion were close to him in rank, if not in strength. Even if Alarion could have beaten them at the time, he stood no chance with a cuff around his wrist in the depths of a prison.

  He soon had his answer when they arrived at an otherwise innocuous door marked ‘Council Room -13-B’.

  “He is in there. You have an hour,” said one of the agents.

  Alarion blinked. “I am sorry… who?”

  “Your client,” the man replied with obvious irritation.

  “What?” Alarion raised his hands to shoulder level to forestall another angry snip as he clarified. “You have my word, I am not trying to be obtuse. I have no idea what you are talking about.”

  The watchmen exchanged a brief look before one plucked a notepad from his pocket. He flipped through it and said, “Six days ago, did you or did you not offer your Aegis to the seditionist leader, Centre?”

  “My Aegis?” Alarion scowled, the word tickling at the back of his mind. “No? What are you even…” He groaned as his racing mind made the connection. “Lifeline, right?”

  “Are you denying it? Or not?”

  “I was not giving him Aegis, I was trying to make sure a few angry Auxilia did not knife him to death while he was out of my sight.”

  “Did you or did you not say, quote, This man is the seditionist leader, Centre. He is unawakened and under my protection. I am placing him in your care, endquote.”

  “Protection! Not-“

  “A declaration of Aegis does not require-“

  “I am lost,” Nessa said, speaking over the agent’s technical explanation. “What did you do?”

  “Centre has demanded that I act as his lawyer.”