A woman on the other side of the room was looking me up and down. “You’re the one saying you fought a mantis golem?”

“Yes.”

“How come you’re still alive?”

“It wasn’t just a mantis golem,” I said. “And it wasn’t just me.”

“Aren’t you a diviner?” the woman said, and laughed. “What was it really, a crawler?”

“Tell you what,” I said. “How about you go find the cleanup team who spent Saturday night scraping mantis golem off the floor in Uxbridge? Tell them it was a crawler and see what they say.”

“Hey!” Haken said. He looked between me, Slate, the woman, and everyone else, glaring at all of us. “You all finished?”

I shut up. Slate and the woman didn’t exactly look submissive but they didn’t open their mouths either. “You have a problem with each other, deal with it on your own time,” Haken said. “We’ve got a job to do.”

No one argued. Haken started doing introductions. I paid attention.

Haken I knew, obviously, and it became clear as he went from person to person that he was the highest-ranking mage in the room . . . although maybe not by much. Slate I also knew, unfortunately, and the man who’d spoken up earlier was one I’d seen in Red’s but hadn’t put a name to, big and tough-looking, mixed race with dark brown skin. From his body language and seating position I had the feeling he was on Slate’s side. Haken introduced him as Trask.

The woman who’d been poking at me was called Lizbeth—I didn’t know why she wasn’t using a mage name, and I didn’t ask. She was in her late twenties, with blond hair in a bob cut and a glint in her eye that suggested she wasn’t done messing with me either. The other woman in the room was also the only other person besides me who wasn’t a Keeper. She was tall with long brown hair, well-dressed and good-looking in an understated way. Her name was Abeyance, and she was apparently a Keeper auxiliary and timesight specialist. She greeted me with professional reserve.

The last two men were also Keepers, but ones I hadn’t met before. One was fair-skinned and nondescript-looking, the other fat and Hispanic, and when Haken told me their names—Cerulean and Coatl—I was none the wiser. It wasn’t really a surprise; there aren’t all that many Keepers in Britain, but they keep to themselves and if you don’t move in their circles you usually only see one when something’s gone wrong. Slate had gone back to interrogating Abeyance about something or other, and Lizbeth was about to open her mouth again, when the door opened and the last man came in.

Keeper Rain was the captain of Caldera’s section. He was tall and slender, with very dark skin and hair cut so short that his head was nearly bare. I’d never spoken to Rain, though Caldera seemed to respect him. He wasn’t dressed in any way that particularly stood out—just a neat-looking business suit—but everyone turned to look as he stepped inside, and all conversation in the room cut off. “Good afternoon, people,” Rain said as he walked to the front of the room. He had a deep voice and a measured, deliberate way of speaking. “We’ve got a lot to cover and not much time, so I’ll get straight to it. The Council has authorised the interrogation of Mage Vihaela, the second-in-command of White Rose. You”—his eyes swept the group—“are going to bring her in for questioning.”