“Don’t even start,” I told her. “However bad you think your day was, mine was worse.”

“Our day wasn’t that bad,” Anne said.

“Don’t tell him that!”

I smiled, then dropped into one of the sofas and shut my eyes with a sigh. I spend so much of my time looking ahead, watching for danger. Arachne’s cave is one of only a handful of places where I don’t have to do that. Behind the webs and the wards, I’m protected, and for once I can turn off my precognition and just relax. It’s good to have somewhere you feel safe, even if it’s only for a little while.

“So who wants to go first?” Variam said.

“Oh, go on,” Luna said. “I know you’ve been itching to tell us.”

“Alex?” Variam said. “You awake?”

“Just a little tired.” I opened my eyes. “I’m listening.”

Variam didn’t need any more encouragement. “Okay,” he began. He looked as though he’d just arrived, although he was wearing his street clothes: some masters keep their apprentices to a formal dress code, but Landis isn’t one of them. “We got a notice this morning that the Order of the Shield might be getting deployed, so we spent all day getting ready. First thing I did was look up the Order files on White Rose. Apparently the one from White Rose that the Council are thinking about going after is this woman called Vihaela.”

I searched back and remembered what Talisid told me. “The leader of White Rose is a guy called Marannis. Vihaela’s his second, right?”

“Kind of,” Variam said. “From what I heard it’s Vihaela who mostly runs everything. Some people are saying it looks like she’s going to take over. Anyway, she’s the one everyone’s scared of.”

“And she’s a Dark mage, right?” I said. I thought for a second and shook my head. “Don’t really know anything about her.”

“I do,” Anne said.

We all looked at her in surprise. “Not in a good way,” Anne said. “When mages want to tell horror stories about life mages, she’s one of the names they use.”

“Records have her listed as a death mage,” Variam said.

“They’re not as far apart as you’d think.”

“What kind of horror stories?” Luna asked.

“She’s a torturer,” Variam said. “The one who breaks down the White Rose slaves before they get handed over to the mind mages. If the reports are true, that was how she got into White Rose in the first place. Apparently even though she pretty much runs the organisation, she still deals with the new slaves herself. It’s hard to find out about her because there are hardly any witnesses. Most of the people she gets her hands on never get away, and the few the Council find are too afraid to talk. Even if they’re miles away, they’re so terrified of her coming after them that they don’t even want to say her name. The only full account we’ve got is from some girl who used to be one of the brothel slaves. She said that Vihaela ran White Rose on a points system. If you did something to make a customer unhappy, you lost points. At the end of the month, whoever had the lowest points got transferred to her lab. They didn’t come back.”