“So it’s what—mutually assured destruction?”

“Yes. The number of Council mages who use White Rose’s . . . services . . . is relatively small. But still large enough to cause a great deal of trouble. And the Council, as you may have noticed, dislikes trouble.”

“So they just let them get away with it.”

“Yes. In the same way that you, as an ex–Dark mage, support the torture, murder, and abuse that Dark mages perpetuate.”

“. . . What?”

“Don’t make the mistake of thinking that the Council is monolithic.” There was a slight edge to Talisid’s voice. “The Guardians and the Keepers would love nothing more than to see White Rose eradicated. But Marannis, the Dark mage who runs White Rose, has no political ambitions. If he were using White Rose to expand his power base, he would be a strategic threat. But instead it seems he is quite content to preserve the status quo, which brings him into de facto alliance with the Centrists and Isolationists. As a result, White Rose has existed long enough for it to become . . . part of the landscape. A benign cancer. We have limited political capital, and making a concerted push to destroy White Rose would cause significant internal conflict in the Council. So for the past years our policy has been one of containment. Well, Vihaela’s arrival on the scene could have changed that given time, but . . .”

I nodded, filing away the references to “our” and “we” to my mental dossier on Talisid and his position, and making a note to find out who Vihaela was. “Okay.”

“So I hope you understand exactly how large a can of worms you opened when you and Caldera reported White Rose’s name to the Keepers last night. You see, for all the crimes Marannis has committed in his time leading White Rose, the one thing he has been very careful to do is never break the Concord. Now all of a sudden, the Keepers have evidence linking White Rose not only with Rayfield’s disappearance—or murder, as the case may be—but an attack on you and Caldera.”

I still wasn’t sure that it was actually White Rose that had been behind that attack, but I got the point. “How does the Rayfield case fit in?”

“Rayfield is—or was—apprentice to Nirvathis, who is attempting to secure a seat on the Junior Council. I assume you know this?”

“Yeah.”

“What you may not know is that Nirvathis is an empty suit,” Talisid said. “He was chosen by certain Light faction members to be a puppet. And the main controller of that puppet is your old acquaintance, Levistus.”

“Shit.”

“Yes. Levistus hopes to use this to secure himself a place on the Senior Council this coming year.”

“Goddamn it,” I said. “So that brings the whole thing with Morden in, too.”

“Actually, at a conservative estimate, I would guess that by now around fifty percent of the active political population of the Light Council is involved in this affair of yours at one remove or another.”