“I’d heard the Wardens were adept at coming to the point,” Aristedes said. “Should we start again at the beginning to give you another chance to get there?”

Butters gave the sorcerer a frosty smile and a small inclination of his head. “You and your crew are still here. That suggests competence. We approve of competence.”

Aristedes tilted his head to one side and was silent for a moment. “You’ve come to discuss a relationship of some kind?”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Butters replied. “I’m not a recruiter. This is a visit. A ground-level evaluation, if you will.”

I hated to leave the three of them standing in front of Aristedes and his knife, with nothing but Butters’s gaming accent and a few yards of grey cloth to protect them, but we hadn’t come here to face down Aristedes. We were here for Forthill. The hasty plan I’d sketched with Butters called for me to locate the father while they kept Aristedes’ attention.

Besides, those cloaks represented something that Aristedes would respect, if he had two brain cells to rub together. The Wardens of the White Council had never been regarded as friendly figures like your local traffic cop. People feared them—probably all the more so since the war with the Red Court. The Wardens were the guys who gave you one warning, way before you were anywhere close to crossing the line by breaking one of the Laws of Magic. The next time you saw them, they were probably there to cut off your head.

Whether they were more respected or more feared depended greatly on one’s point of view, but no one ever, ever took them lightly.

It felt right somehow that Butters was trading on their fearsome reputation. Maybe it felt right because that reputation was, like me, immaterial—but not unable to alter events. The ghost of the Wardens’ ferocity could do as much as I could to keep an eye on my companions. So I wished them luck within the silence of my thoughts and set out to accomplish my part of the plan.

I vanished and reappeared at ceiling level, being careful to stay out of any direct sunlight as it streamed through a few small windows high up on the walls. The ceiling wasn’t all that high compared to the area of the factory floor, and it took me several tries before I recognized the location of the gang’s camp in all that abandoned space. I willed myself over to it and found Forthill.

The priest was lying very still on the floor, curled into a half circle. I couldn’t see if he was breathing, and I couldn’t touch him to check for a pulse. I grimaced and knelt to thrust my hand into the matter of one of his feet. I felt the sharp, odd sensation of contact with living flesh, like when I’d touched both Morty and my apprentice, and not the sharp tingling of contact with something solid but inert. He was alive. It felt like my own heart had stopped beating and then lurched into gear again.