Maybe for Keepers, it was a big deal. They had an actual organisation, an ethos. Maybe there was a code, a way you were and weren’t allowed to talk about it. Except . . . that hadn’t been how Landis had reacted. I’d been pretty sure he’d understood what I’d been getting at last night, and he’d agreed with me, or at least hadn’t told me to keep quiet.

So maybe it wasn’t the Keepers. Maybe it was just Caldera. Now that I thought about it, I’d never really thought about her as a person. To me she’d always been a representative of her organisation, Keeper Number One. I wondered what her membership in the Order of the Star really meant to her, and what she thought of when she saw her other Keepers. Did she fit in? Or in her own way, was she an outsider too?

I shook my head. Whatever the reason, I needed to know more, and I wasn’t going to get it from Caldera. I took out my gate stone and started looking for somewhere secluded.

| | | | | | | | |

Once I was back in my flat, I dug out my synchronous focus, programmed in a code, then channelled through it and waited. After only half a minute, it chimed and lit up. A figure appeared at the centre of the disc, carved from blue light.

“Hey, Talisid,” I said.

“Verus,” Talisid said. “I wondered when you’d call.”

“Isn’t acting all-knowing supposed to be the diviner’s job?”

“You’re not as unpredictable as you think.” I heard Talisid sigh slightly. “Go on, then. Ask your question.”

“Given your contacts, I’m pretty sure you already know what Caldera and I have been doing,” I said. “I just asked her about how our case connects to White Rose. She didn’t react well. Can you fill me in?”

“You don’t ask much, do you?”

“It’s just information,” I said.

Most exchanges in magical society come down to trading favours. Cash is handy, and so are magic items, but all too often they just don’t go far enough. Help from another mage, though . . . that’s always useful. Over the past year, I’d done a lot of jobs for Talisid. They’d been for us as much as for him, but we’d still been helping him, and we hadn’t asked for much in return. I didn’t say You owe me, but Talisid understood exactly what I meant.

“All right,” Talisid said. “How much did Caldera tell you about White Rose?”

“That they’re an organisation that provides dark and highly illegal sexual services to mages, and they have a whole load of blackmail material on the Council.”

“Strictly true, but a little misleading,” Talisid said. “If White Rose directly blackmailed its clients, they’d have been destroyed long ago. They’re more careful than that. They keep their client list absolutely confidential, and more importantly, that list is known to be confidential. However, they also make it known that should their organisation be seriously harmed, then that list would be released.”