On the Dark side of the fence, Marannis found himself out in the cold. Vihaela had disappeared, the Council factions who’d lost influence were hungry for blood, and Marannis was the obvious scapegoat. He probably could have escaped if he’d been willing to cut his losses, but he hesitated too long. The Order of the Star raided his mansion while he was still trying to piece the White Rose organisation back together. Marannis was killed “resisting arrest.” Apparently someone on the Council had decided that they were tired of cleaning up White Rose’s mess.

With Marannis and Vihaela gone and their main base destroyed, White Rose disintegrated. The houses operated by White Rose were closed down and the slaves and enforcers taken into custody, and the last remaining mages involved in running the organisation slipped away.

And by the time I was finally released from Keeper HQ, everyone was far too busy with all the political chaos to pay any attention to me.

| | | | | | | | |

“I still don’t understand what Vihaela was doing,” Luna said.

It was a week after the battle and I was back in the War Rooms, sitting in the same alcove in the Belfry where Haken and I had waited to be summoned. Murmurs of conversation echoed across the polished floor, mages and their assistants speaking quietly as they walked. I’d been ordered to attend another hearing—a less important one this time—and I’d taken advantage of my newly acquired status as a Keeper employee to bring Luna along.

“You remember what we were saying about the three factions?” I said. There was no one very close to us, but I kept my voice down all the same. “White Rose, Levistus’s group on the Council, and whoever hired Chamois. Vihaela wasn’t on White Rose’s side.”

“But she was working for White Rose.”

“Yeah, well, once the Keepers started digging, they found some new information,” I said. “Turns out Vihaela was running the organisation a bit too well. Well enough that Marannis wasn’t necessary anymore.”

“So Marannis thought she was going to betray him?”

“He might have been right at that. I had a look at Vihaela’s history. Her bosses tend not to live very long.”

Luna thought about it for a second. “So he decided to get rid of her, but she found out and beat him to the punch.”

“That’s what the Keepers think,” I said. “We know that she sent Leo to deliver the focus. Well, my guess is that she also leaked the time and place of the meeting. That was how Chamois knew where to find them.”

“Why?”

“She was turning the Council against White Rose,” I said. Now that I had a bit of distance, I could recognise the tactic. Take two of your enemies and set them against each other. I’d used the same trick plenty of times myself but this was my first time on the receiving end. It was a new experience for me and I was discovering I didn’t like it very much. Maybe this was how it had felt for some of the people I’d gone up against. “Remember the rumour that the data focuses could be cracked? The only thing stopping the Council from moving against White Rose was the information they were holding. Once enough mages on the Council believed that all that blackmail material White Rose was holding on to was going to get out anyway . . . well, that was it. Kidnapping Haken just sped things up.”