Slate and Trask went back into the fight, although by this point they didn’t have much to do. In the end, the battle was more one-sided than it had felt. White Rose’s power was in political influence, not in military strength, and their wards and defences weren’t anything like enough to hold off a full Keeper attack force. After half of the defenders had been killed or incapacitated, the rest started surrendering. By the time the Keepers finished rounding up their prisoners, they found a lot of foot soldiers and workers, a lot of slaves, and a scattering of mages and adepts. Vihaela, Cerulean, and Chamois weren’t amongst them.

I went looking for Luna and Variam once the fighting had stopped. They were out on the front lawn, a little way outside the ring of lights. Variam was resting against a tree and wrapping a bandage awkwardly around his arm one-handed. “Look, I can go get them,” Luna was saying.

“Nah,” Variam said. He glanced up as I approached. “Hey, Alex.”

“Hey,” I said. “Glad you both made it.” I nodded at Variam. “Gunshot?”

“He won’t go to the Keeper medics,” Luna complained.

“It’s not like it’s serious,” Variam said.

“You got shot! How is that ‘not serious’?”

“I’ll just go see Anne,” Variam said. “She’s better than the Keeper life mages anyway.”

“I know, but . . .” Luna looked away.

Variam grinned at her. “Upset?”

“Screw you.”

I sighed and dropped down onto the grass near to them. “Luna? You hurt?”

Luna shook her head, but didn’t turn around. I gave Variam a questioning look.

“We were with the security teams around the hill,” Variam said. “One of them caught a bullet from those machine guns right in the head. Splattered like ketchup.”

Luna twisted around to glare at him. “Vari!”

“What?”

“Can you not joke about it?”

“Hey, you were the one who wanted to get in on the battle.”

“Guys.” I raised a hand. “Enough, okay?”

Neither Luna nor Vari argued. We sat quietly for a little while. After you go through a battle the adrenaline rush keeps you going for a while, but once that’s gone you crash and all of a sudden it feels as though you can barely move. All I wanted to do was sit there.

As we watched, a group of people started to trickle out from the front of the White Rose estate, escorted by Council security. The oldest were in their early twenties; most were younger. The clothes they wore ranged from simple robes and nightgowns to outfits with implications I consciously didn’t think about. They moved in an aimless, straggling way, and kept stopping to stare around them, blinking at the lights as though they hadn’t been outside for years. Maybe they hadn’t.

“Those are the White Rose slaves, aren’t they?” Luna asked. “What’s going to happen to them?”

The Council security were trying to chivvy the slaves towards an open meadow to the south. It was slow going. “They’ll take them to the facility in Southampton,” Variam said. “See what they know.”