Julia kept her pace brisk and her eyes fixed straight ahead. It should have been a short walk, ten minutes at most, but the street plan was so chaotic they had to stop at literally every corner to reorient themselves. They took turns snatching the map from each other and getting lost and having it snatched back. Only about one building in five had a number on it, and the numbers didn’t even seem to be in sequential order. It was a city built for wandering, which was all well and good unless you had urgent business at one very particular location.

Finally they stopped at a wooden door, painted brown, that was barely as tall as they were. It was an open question whether they were on the right street, but if nothing else the door had the right number on a little stone plaque above it. It had a tiny window set in it, which had been painted over. There was no knob.

Quentin put his hand on the warm stone wall next to it. He counted a rhythmic sequence under his breath, and a thick fabric of lines the deep orange of a heating filament flashed for a minute over the old stone.

“The wards on this place are ironclad,” he said. “If your fixer doesn’t live here, whoever does knows what they’re doing.”

Either they were about to improve their situation or significantly worsen it. There being no buzzer, Quentin knocked. The door didn’t resonate under his knuckles—there could have been a solid mile of rock behind it. But the window swung open promptly.

“Sì,” Darkness inside.

“We’d like to talk to your boss,” Quentin said.

The window shut immediately. He looked at Julia and shrugged. What else was he supposed to say? She looked back at him impassively from behind her black glasses. Quentin wanted to walk away. He wanted to go back, but there was no back to go to. The only way out was through. Onward and downward.

The street was silent. It was narrow, practically an alley, with buildings going up four stories on either side. Nothing happened. After five minutes Quentin muttered some words in Icelandic and held his palm an inch away from the door. He felt the wall around it, which was in the shade but still warm.

“Stand back,” he said.

Whoever made the wards knew what they were doing. But they didn’t know everything Quentin knew. He moved the heat from the wall, all of it, into the little glass window, which expanded, as glass will when it’s heated. The wards were good enough that the heat didn’t want to go, but Quentin had ways of encouraging it. When the glass couldn’t expand anymore it popped with a ping like a lightbulb. Warren’s students would have been impressed.

“Stronzo!” he called through the empty frame. “Facci parlare contuo direttore del cazzo!”