“Thank you, Magus,” he said.

“You are most welcome. There. Not so hard to be polite, is it? You may speak.”

“I apologize,” Malden said, his heart burning in his chest, “for my rudeness.”

“Quite all right. I believe you had a message for me. Say it now.”

Malden cleared his throat. “I’ve come to tell you that you are in danger. Anselm Vry, the bailiff of this city, is searching you out even now. He knows the crown has been stolen, and he intends to recover it regardless of who might be inconvenienced.”

“That’s all you came to say?”

Malden nodded. The sorcerer had not told him he could speak.

“Very good. It is ever so kind of you to come and tell me this. It shows good business sense as well. You were hired to perform a task and you were paid handsomely. I take it your coming here to offer me warning was all part of the service, hmm? You are acting out of pure altruism, and want nothing further as recompense. Surely you didn’t think this would earn you some more coin. After all, the gold I gave you already should last a lifetime for one of such humble aspirations of yourself. That is, if you haven’t already drank it all, or spent it on some shiny but worthless bauble. You may speak.”

Malden chose his words carefully. “I admit, Magus, that my intentions were not unalloyed with self-interest. Vry intends to torture anyone connected with the theft until they provide the crown’s location. I fear he has some way of discovering my involvement, and that he will put me to the ordeal. It had occurred to me that you might be able to offer me some protection from that fate. It would be in our mutual self-interest, as then I could not reveal—”

“You and I have no mutual interests of any sort,” Hazoth told him. “Tell me something—you may answer me this—do you know why I wear this veil?”

Malden lowered his eyes. He thought of Anselm Vry’s hedge wizard, and what came from peering into his shew-stone. “It is my understanding that magic is never free. That power comes from the demons a magician treats with. So as his power grows, his body is twisted and deformed to resemble the creatures of the pit. I assume you wear the veil to hide some disfigurement.” An eye out of place, a face turned the texture of tree bark, a beard of writhing flesh . . .

“Oh, very good! And yes, that is the reason for the tradition. I don’t suppose your brain is capable of understanding what happens when one siphons power through the flaws in the underpinnings of our fractured cosmos, but you have the gist down pat. Perhaps you will brace yourself to take a look at what is beneath my veil.”