People like that aren’t stupid, but they don’t scare easily, either.

Fitz was terrified of Molly.

My stomach quivered in an unpleasant manner.

“No,” I told him. “I don’t work for her. I’m not a servitor.”

He frowned. “Then… you work for the ex-cop bi… uh, lady?”

“Kid,” I said, “you have no idea who you’re screwing around with. You pointed weapons at the wrong people. I know where you live now. They will, too.”

He went white. “No,” he said. “Look… you don’t know what it’s like here. Zero and the others, they can’t help it. He doesn’t let them do anything but what he wants.”

“Baldy, you mean?” I asked.

Fitz let out a strained, half-hysterical bark of laughter. “He calls himself Aristedes. He’s got power.”

“Power to push a bunch of kids around?”

“You don’t know,” Fitz said, speaking quietly. “He tells you to do something and… and you do it. It never even occurs to you to do anything else. And… and he moves so fast. I’m not… I think he might not even be human.”

“He’s human,” I said. “He’s just another asshole.”

A faint, weary spark of humor showed in Fitz’s face. Then he said, “If that’s true, then how does he do it?”

“He’s a sorcerer,” I said. “Middleweight talent with a cult to make him feel bigger. He’s got some form of kinetomancy I’m not familiar with, to move that fast. And some really minor mind mojo, if he’s got to pick kids to do his dirty work for him.”

“You make him sound like a small-time crook… like a car thief or something.”

“In the greater scheme, yeah,” I said. “He’s a petty crook. He’s Fagin.”

Fitz frowned. “From… from that Dickens book? Uh… Oliver Twist?”

I lifted my eyebrows. The kid had read. Serious readers weren’t common in the system. Those who did read mostly seemed to focus on, you know, kids’ books. Not many of them rolled around to Dickens unless they got unlucky in high school English. I would have been willing to bet that Fitz hadn’t made it past his freshman year of high school, at the very most.

He was someone who thought for himself, and he had at least a little bit of magical talent. That probably explained why he’d been put in charge of the other boys. Aside from his evident good sense, his company notwithstanding, the kid had some innate magical talent of his own. Fitz had probably been slowly learning to shake off whatever magic it was that Baldy—Aristedes—used on him. The bad guy operated in a cultleader mind-set. Anyone who wasn’t a slavish follower would be utilized as a handy lieutenant, until such time as they could be disposed of productively—or at least quietly.

I didn’t like Fitz’s chances at all.

“Something like that,” I said.

Fitz leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. “I didn’t want to hurt anyone,” he said. “I don’t even know any of those people. But he ordered it. And they were all going to do it. And I couldn’t let them just… just turn into murderers. They’re the only… They’re…”