The old Mazikin laughed, a quiet, hooting chuckle. His lips were cracked, and his skin was deeply weathered. His smile created a maze of wrinkles on his cheeks and brow. “Wait until you see what we do next,” he snarled.

Malachi flipped a serrated knife into his bandaged palm with a single deft movement, his expression betraying nothing, though I’m sure it must have hurt. “We have no intention of waiting. You’re going to tell us.”

“It doesn’t have to go this way.” The Mazikin inclined his head in my direction. “If you give us what we want.”

Next to me, Jim shifted restlessly. I gave him a sidelong glance, and he took a few steps back to lean against the wall, his face a bland mask.

Clarence was still staring at me, ignoring Malachi. “You haven’t called Sil yet. He waits for you. He’s getting tired of waiting.”

Malachi stepped in front of me. “He needs a lesson in patience, then.”

“Malachi,” I said softly. He stiffened, but then moved out of the way.

Clarence watched the exchange with amusement. “How things have changed. This girl with the hair is your master now?”

I shook my head before I remembered we didn’t owe him any answers. I wanted to apologize to Malachi but forced myself to save that for a private moment. “If we let you go tonight, Clarence, where would you run?”

His eye twitched, like I’d poked him with a needle. “I wouldn’t run. I’m yours to kill now.”

I took a few steps forward, close enough for me to smell the sweat and incense on his clothes and skin. “We’re not going to kill you,” I whispered.

He sat back a little, and his lips formed a tight line.

“You were counting on death, weren’t you?”

He didn’t answer.

I walked a slow circle around him and managed not to flinch when he stretched his neck toward me as I came near. “Do you miss your family, Clarence?”

He dropped his top teeth over his bottom lip while he stared at me, no doubt imagining the things he’d do if his hands were free.

“We could hold you here for a long time.”

“He could be like our pet,” Jim added, and then laughed to himself when everyone else responded with silence.

“We’d have to disable him,” Malachi added. “I could amputate his hands and feet if you like.”

Malachi’s cold, utterly sincere words reminded me that he had decades of experience interrogating Mazikin in the dark city. He always killed them in the end, but he’d tried to get information from them as well. It was probably out of desperation and fear that a Mazikin prisoner had told him that story about how killing a Mazikin liberated the soul of its victim. Better to die quickly than be held indefinitely at the mercy of the Captain of the Guard.