Lassite was called toward the end of things. Like the others, he went without protest, head down and prepared to simply watch and listen.

“He wants you to be scared,” Niko told them. She knelt beside the weeping Talon, holding him as he cried. “He wants you to come back and tell me how scared you are. But he’s stupid like that. He doesn’t realize soldiers don’t get scared.”

Lassite was not a soldier, and he was scared. He was terrified, because he had been seeing this moment come for a long time.

It was the next step on the Spiral of Destiny. It was the next moment of the captain’s journey. He had to do it right.

He didn’t spare the garden any scrutiny, simply went to his knees in front of Last and waited.

“You are a Sessile priest,” Tubal Last said.

“I am.”

“They say that such mystics are incapable of lying.”

“We are.”

“That,” Tubal Last said conversationally, “certainly would be a useful rumor to spread, no matter whether it was true or not.”

“It is true,” Lassite said.

“Is it?” The pirate stooped and pressed a knife to Lassite’s throat.

It was a vibroknife, its edge a leaf-shaped flutter, its presence a whine in the air, which tasted of ozone and wasps.

Lassite knew how easily the knife could slide through the papery scales that covered his neck. There were so many timelines where it did so now, where everything went blank, and the Spiral of Destiny was never finished. He held his breath but still smelled Last’s perfume, an expensive, thick, musky scent that had been lavishly applied.

Tubal Last held out his other hand. In it a red gem glittered. “Tell me this stone is blue.”

“I cannot,” Lassite said.

“Though I will kill you where you kneel if you do not?” The knife touched so close to the neck vein that the slightest move forward would kill him. For a second, he was tempted to do just that, lean forward and into oblivion, escape all the hard steps that lay ahead. But it was worth it. It was surely worth it. Last’s thumb hovered over the button on the pommel.

“You could do anything,” Lassite said, “and I would still not be able to. That ability has been taken from me.”

“Taken?!” Tubal withdrew the knife. “Tell me how that was done.”

“It is an ancient ritual of my order and very secret.”

“Pah, that doesn’t matter to me. Tell me or die.”

“I cannot. While I lived through the ritual, I was drugged for part of the time, and unconscious for the rest. Obviously some sort of magic. Beyond that I cannot speak to it. Only a few among us are trained in the art of conducting it.”