“Give us information and shortcuts to the key people in this. Introductions, opening doors, favors, whatever it takes to achieve their cooperation. Because if we don’t step in and this continues like this, we might reach a point where Teacher just doesn’t have any legitimate opposition. You want this to end.”

“Seems reasonable,” Prancer said. “But I don’t know what I can give you.”

“Semiramis can help us with details from the past. Midas can help us with details in the present. You’re our insurance for the future,” Tattletale told him. “Keep your ear to the ground. You should have a sense of what to look for. Wedges, attacks from an angle that use communication and separate or disrupt people. You’re best networked among the low-level villains. Keep an eye on them, report to us.”

“I can do that. I’ll warn you I won’t betray their privacy.”

“Of course,” Tattletale answered with a smile.

Semiramis had been quiet for a minute. Now she was nodding, more to herself.

“What do you need?” she finally asked.

“Contact details for Egg and Engel,” Tattletale said. “If you were probing around the subject of the Teacher thing before you decided to pull back and focus on other things, any notes you have would help.”

“I’ll give you the contact details and look at what else I might have that I could give you.”

“Thank you,” Tattletale told her.

“Anything else?”

“Honestly? No. Back us up. Don’t slow us down. We’re all on the same side here. Heroes, villains, rogues.”

I really didn’t consider Semiramis a rogue, to use the archaic PRT term for those who pursued strictly neutral or business-oriented interests instead of fighting for the heroes or the villains. But Semiramis seemed to like the sentiment.

She wasn’t exactly smiling or jumping with joy, but she’d found out she was being stalked, she’d eaten human flesh however many times, she was having to deal with Tattletale, and she probably had the bad taste in her mouth that anyone got when motherfucking Teacher came up.

But we had her. Prancer was cooperating.

Which left Little Midas. Mr. blood and circuses. We looked his way.

“There’s no way I can help you without losing my place in things. I facilitate, grease the wheels, I don’t obstruct, demand, or use my position for leverage. I don’t show people my books or reveal the men behind the curtains.”

“You greased the wheels for mercenaries who attacked the Navigators. Navigators who were lured out with something very similar to the form of attack being used now,” Tattletale said. “Even if you told us only what you knew, called—”