I started writing and Caldera went on. “The leader is named William Traviss and he’s eighteen years old,” she said. “Time adept who can use haste. British-born, moved to the States when he was nine following the death of his parents. Only other family was an older sister, and she disappeared soon after. He grew up in the United States and picked up a police record to go with it, juvie stuff mostly. At some point—we don’t know when—he started recruiting other adepts. His line was that adepts needed to stand up and protect themselves—we’re being oppressed by the evil magocracy, band together and throw off your shackles, that kind of thing. Once he’d gotten a core group together, he moved back here and they started operations.”

“What kind of operations?”

“Small stuff to start. Recruitment, throwing their weight around. Then they started messing with Dark mages, targeting their operations, mostly with a view to rescuing people. Their big splash was Bristol. A Dark mage named Locus was running a major slaving nexus out of the inner city, buying and selling sensitives and adepts. The Nightstalkers took him on and actually won. Didn’t kill him, but they messed him up pretty badly, and when he ran they broke all the slaves loose. They got a lot of converts from that.”

I closed my eyes briefly and looked away. And the lessons they’ll have taken away from that are that all Dark mages are evil, and that violence works. Great. “And since then?”

“Word is they’re looking for Richard.”

“You guys planning to do anything about all this?” Variam said.

“Like what?” Caldera said. “Get between Dark mages and a bunch of militant adepts?”

“Thought you were supposed to keep the peace?”

“In case you haven’t noticed, Dark mages aren’t exactly popular,” Caldera said. “Doesn’t matter if there’s a truce; no one’s that motivated to get in the way.”

Variam looked away in disgust. “Look, I’m not saying I like it,” Caldera said. “But the Keepers do what the Council says. And as long as these adepts stick to going after Dark mages the Council couldn’t give a shit. Some of them are probably cheering them on.”

“Yeah, that sounds about right,” I said. “Come on, Vari. It’s not like this is anything new.”

“Who are the others?” Luna asked.

“Second-in-command to William is Dhruv Chaudhury,” Caldera said. “He and William go back a way. He’s supposed to be the brains of the group, comes up with the ideas. Magnetism adept, can create magnetic monopoles. Next up is Kyle Summers. Supposed to be a space magic user—not a gater—but other than that we don’t have much on him. Seems to have some military background, though he’s not much older than the others.”