The moment I surface from the teleportation pool, I’m hit by an intense wave of emotion. For a moment, I can’t even identify what it is or where it’s coming from, but my heart races and I pant for breath in reaction nonetheless. The deluge threatens to drown me and I stagger backwards a step.

  I reach out with my mind and throttle the Bonds tightly until barely a hint of the emotion is allowed through. Straightening, I sigh in relief.

  With them much reduced, I can now identify the emotions and where they’re coming from. Anger, fear, frustration, worry. And they’re all from beings close to me in proximity. Kalanthia, Ivor, and Noir. More worryingly, I still can’t feel a hint of those who I know to be missing. Reaching for River, the Bond dwindles into the insubstantiality of distance. Which means either they’ve got very far from me in a short space of time, or somehow the kidnappers are interfering with the Bonds. I’d like to say that the second isn’t a possibility since it’s a connection between my soul and theirs, but I can’t count on that.

  I need to speak to everyone who’s been involved.

  “Markus, are you well?” Sarran asks, his voice concerned.

  “I’m fine,” I tell him shortly, already starting to stride towards where Bastet, Ninja, and Lathani are waiting impatiently for me – they were first through. Sirocco and Fenrir should arrive shortly – in fact, they do before I even reach the others. “I need to speak to my companions,” I tell Sarran as Fenrir wades out of the pool, Sirocco perched on his shoulder, looking displeased by the trip. “Can you round up everyone who’s been involved with the search and bring them to…” I trail off, trying to consider where.

  “The courtyard, perhaps?” Sarran suggests.

  “Yes, good idea,” I agree. Given what I’m feeling from Kalanthia and the other two, forcing them to be inside with a whole load of humans probably isn’t the best of ideas. Focussing on my Bonds with Kalanthia, Ivor, Noir, and Aingeal, I call for them. I’m back, I tell them. Meet me in the courtyard?

  None of them gives me a verbal response, but the wave of relief mixed with annoyance at my delay tells me everything I need to know.

  Sarran parts from us at the door of the teleportation room and we head in different directions. I head straight for the outside and find my way through to the courtyard easily enough – it hasn’t been so long since I was here and I still remember the routes we took to get places.

  Outside, I start pacing. The calming draught might still be active, but it doesn’t stop me feeling agitated. Without it, I’d probably be unable to prevent myself from running straight into the forest and meeting everyone at the ambush site.

  My other companions aren’t much better. Ninja and Bastet have joined me in my pacing; Lathani is hopping from shadow to shadow, and Fenrir has a constant low hiss going on. This close to where our friends were taken, they’re yearning to go and search for the missing ones too. But logically I know that we should gather as much information as we can first.

  I look up at the sky – it’s late. The moon is beyond its zenith already. I suddenly feel a hint of guilt about waking up multiple people in the small hours, but push it away. My companions are probably getting further away by the minute – the sooner we begin searching, the better.

  Sighing, I force myself to come to a halt. Wearing a path in the pebbles isn’t going to help matters. Ninja and Bastet stop with me, looking up expectantly. Do they think I’ve had an idea or something? I drop my hand to their ears and rub, the motion soothing to all of us even as tension hums between us.

  “We’ll get them back,” I promise them, though part of me is wondering how I’m going to fulfil it.

  The shadows near the entrance to the courtyard shift, and melt into a spotted leopard. She looks ghost-like in the dark of night, but Lathani visibly perks up and bounds over to her, even less visible in the dark than her mother is. Feeling the relief from Lathani and seeing the way she butts insistently against Kalanthia, I suddenly wonder if she might have worried that something might happen to her mother before we managed to return. Paranoid such fears might be, I can’t help understanding them.

  Just as I step forward to greet her too, the sound of wing beats in the air has me look up. Ivor’s pale shape wheels across the sky. Noir is invisible until he crosses in front of the moon, his own almost soundless wings not revealing his presence in the way Ivor’s do.

  To complete our sorry band of non-kidnapped Bonded, Aingeal zips out from a nearby chimney and begins circling me. He’s the only one of the four who is even vaguely happy, but his dance doesn’t have its usual joy and the emotions I feel over our link include a sense of loss. From what he sends over, he seems to be lamenting that his enjoyment of various fires in the manor meant that he wasn’t with Happy when she was taken.

  I scratch Kalanthia under the chin; she hangs her head low, leaning into me. Her guilt is almost palpable.

  I should have been there, she murmurs to me, even her mental voice quiet.

  “Why weren’t you?” I clench my teeth and swallow – I hadn’t meant for it to come out like that. Maybe the calming draught is starting to wear off. Or my emotions are too overwhelming for the ‘blanket’ to muffle completely. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that, I’m just-”

  You’re right, Kalanthia interrupts sounding ashamed. I should have been there. She shifts a little away, turning her head so I can’t see her eyes. Several of your lizard-kin wished to visit the human settlement, searching for knowledge. I did not go with them; I didn’t wish to spend so much time around humans.

  “I can understand that,” I respond, sensing her pain – the situation seems to have caused her to release many of the barriers she usually puts between us. “I know you’ve had…a history with humans.”

  I did not need to enter the village! Kalanthia growls, lifting her head and turning it so she’s staring at me with her massive golden orbs. But I feel the agony beneath the apparent anger. I could have sought out prey and meditated close to the village just as well as here. If I had just accompanied them to and from it, I could have protected them!

  “Kalanthia…” I trail off. In some ways, she’s right. She’s a powerful Tier three beast and might easily have made the difference. On the other hand, perhaps she would have been taken too. Or killed if they had considered it too much risk to try. In addition, she’s not responsible for the decisions others have made. “They could have chosen not to go at all,” I point out. “Especially after the first scare.”

  I sense Kalanthia’s crushing guilt beginning to lighten a touch at my words, and I lean into her shoulder to show that I don’t hold her choices against her. “Anyway, you’re going to help us find them, right?”

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  Right, she agrees, baring her teeth ferociously as some of her guilt transforms into anger.

  She’s not the only one furious. Ivor sends a sense of outrage – and several rather gruesome images. If I’m interpreting them correctly, he wants to rip the kidnappers apart and eat their entrails while they’re still steaming for the crime of taking our companions from us. He claws at the ground clearly wishing it were those who have taken our companions.

  Noir sends agreement, accompanied by dark determination to prove ourselves to be the stronger foe so that none will try to steal from us again.

  “We’re definitely going to teach them a lesson,” I agree just as darkly as my companions. “And the one who gave the orders. But we have to find them first. So. What happened? And what have you learned since?”

  Between my companions, I piece together the various events. Since Kalanthia and the two alcaoris hatchlings were within reach of the Bond network, they heard about the attack as it happened; feelt the fear and shock of our companions in real time. It seems that I really did manage to be in River’s head at the moment of the attack – what Kalanthia and the other two received from the Bond was much the same.

  More informative is that shortly after they felt our companions fall unconscious, they also felt the Bonds become muffled.

  It was as they had been pulled into the ground – I could feel them still, but I could not hear them, Kalanthia explains. And, unlike with the earth, none of my magic could aid me. I could still tell they were alive, but nothing more, not even a direction. That has not changed since then.

  It’s concerning – and I can only hope that the interference won’t cause the ritual to fail since I’m increasingly convinced that we’ll need to use it.

  Finally, Sarran appears with multiple guards in tow, most of them looking rumpled and like they’ve been dragged out of bed. Striding at the front and looking grim is the guard captain I spoke with earlier today. He doesn’t look like he even went to sleep.

  “My lord,” he greets, bowing as he comes to a stop in front of me. The other guards do the same, their own mumbles and bows far less crisp. I couldn’t care less.

  “I want to see the site,” I demand immediately. “You can explain to me what you’ve found as we travel.”

  As expected, there’s no argument and we set off as quickly as we can. I chafe at the pace which seems slow to me, my frustration mounting. But the guards aren’t all Classers – in fact, it turns out that only two are: the captain and another guard who has been using his Skills to try to work out what happened. Fortunately, it seems that Kalanthia’s guilt was enough to make her willing to use her telepathy to communicate with the guard captain and tell him what they knew, though she apparently didn’t trust him enough to describe how the Bonds changed. Perhaps she didn’t feel it was relevant.

  It feels like it takes an eternity to reach the spot where my Bonded were kidnapped, but it probably only takes half an hour or so. As we walk, the guards update me about their discoveries – disappointingly few additions to what the initial report indicated.

  Some footprints in the area around, but none that have yielded a trail. Remnants of an alchemical agent which they roused the local Alchemist to identify as the magical equivalent of chloroform. No traces of bodies – I know that all of my Bonded are still alive, but the lack of blood or wounds from attackers just confirm that they subdued my companions before they could attack.

  And still no trail to follow. Even the guards sent off to visit the nearby villages have reported back that no caravan has been through.

  “We’re starting to wonder if they took a stealth airship, my lord, or a temporary teleportation circle,” the captain suggests. “Both options are expensive, but nothing about this operation has cut costs. Or possibly they have Skills of concealment sufficient to make them practically invisible to the average farmer. In the dark, even Classers might not spot them.”

  “Do you have any leads?” I ask in despair. Right now, my only consolation is that as long as Torrent thinks he can use them to get my cooperation, my Bonded should be safe enough.

  “The Alchemist is working on the soil from the bootprints we found. If we’re lucky, she’ll be able to identify the location of the boot they were made by.”

  “Is that really what you’d call a ‘lead’?” I ask incredulously.

  His expression gains a hint of apology.

  “We are emptying the well, my lord. If Lord Nicholas permits it, we can put out word into wider channels, but I do not have much hope for that either – these are very obviously skilled professionals. The chances that they will make an error at a moment when an informant might see are slim.”

  I don’t need to be able to read minds to see that he thinks this mid-night visit to the ambush site is doomed to disappointment, but he doesn’t try to dissuade me – he’s the guard captain, and I’m the lord’s heir.

  I know that it’s probably a long shot, but my magic seems to work a bit differently from some of the expectations here – I’d rather try and fail than not even try and miss something.

  I know when we’ve reached the location – the disrupted earth and turned over leaves are clear even in the moonlight. I investigate with my eyes, but don’t expect to see anything that the guards who have combed the area have missed. Sure enough, nothing jumps out at me.

  Moving to the centre of the clearing, I feed mana through my feet into the earth. Kalanthia has already used her magic to feel what she can, but it’s possible that my combination of different elements will be able to see something that she didn’t.

  Spreading my consciousness through the earth, I try to see both macro and micro. On a macro front, I feel the impressions of where the watchers must have stood, the footprints left by their boots – and the tingles of magic within those which seem to make them unnoticeable to others. But when I raise them to the awareness of those with me, I find out that Kalanthia has already identified them – those are where they sourced the soil samples for the Alchemist in the hopes that the lingering magic might make her task easier.

  On the micro scale, I notice fragments of magic-infused glass which don’t belong – remnants of the glass bombs that the attackers used to spread their soporific smoke among my companions to subdue them.

  I clench my fists, losing concentration as my fears are realised – I’m as useless as anyone else.

  Turning to the closest tree, I slam my balled-up fist into the trunk of the tree. There’s a loud crack and I watch in bemusement as the tree shakes violently. My knuckles sting very slightly; I value the pain for the absolution it offers. I only wish it was greater.

  As I’m looking around the clearing in despair, the light catches on the sword one of the guards is wearing, almost as if a ray of moonlight had speared straight for it. It sparks an idea. Earth-Shaping isn’t my only magical tool. What if there’s metal they missed?

  Concentrating, I try something I haven’t done before – combining Inspect with Metal-Shaping to search for that element specifically.

  At first, I feel the two Skills rebel. Unlike when I combined the three Inspects, Metal-Shaping isn’t even a Class Skill, and I sense the incompatibility of them. But I stubbornly keep going. I don’t want to actually combine them; I just want to use Inspect to spread my awareness with Metal-Shaping as the focus.

  Like two magnets with the same poles being pushed towards each other, the two Skills’ resistance increases as I focus, but I somehow know that this has to be possible.

  And then, as if one of those magnets has abruptly turned around, my wishes come together in a single pulse.

  Silver light that only I can see spreads out in a sphere around me. Abruptly, I become aware of every bit of metal around me for about three metres, no matter how small. The weapons my guards bear. The rings in the lacing of their trousers. The rivets in their armour. The rusty nail in the ground a metre and a half below me. The dagger in the canopy up above.

  Wait, the dagger in the canopy up above?

  Unable to believe my luck, I move back over to the tree I’ve just punched and, mentally apologising to it, give it another thump.

  The dagger finally falls out of the tree. I wince as the guard whose foot it’s just impaled to the ground gives a strangled scream.

  “Sorry!” I apologise and hurry over to heal him – I should have warned everyone to watch out for falling daggers, but I was a bit distracted by my discoveries. He’s not one of the Classers so there’s little resistance. A minute or so later, he’s healed with only a bit of blood in his boot as evidence anything happened, and I’m staring at the dagger.

  It’s clearly not something that’s been there for a while – there’s no trace of rust or other environmental damage. And if I squint, I see that there’s something engraved into its handle.

  Bingo.

  here!

  here!

  here!

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