I thought things weren't right when I heard knocks at the door before the break of day, and knew it for certain when I swung it open to reveal Sara on the other side. She didn't waste any time:

"There's been a murder in the Mage's Quarter. Here."

Gods bless her. I took the paper bag from her outstretched hand and chewed through the rolls she'd brought me as I dressed. My hands wandered over my old Guard uniform for a second, but I left it where it was. Civvies would do for whatever this was about. I wasn't a Guardsman anymore. If she was here this was something to do with our hunt. "Well?"

"The Archmage is dead."

I almost tripped myself up on the cobbles. "What?"

Sara nodded through a mouthful of bread. "Found a few hours ago in his chambers. Apparently they just thought the old geezer was sleeping in when he didn't turn up at breakfast, but they figured it out eventually when they went inside and found out he was missing a few things."

"Well don't keep me in suspense."

"Heart, lungs, stuff like that. They didn't have to look far to find them either."

"That bad?" In ten years of a guild and ten more of the Guard I'd seen people come to messy ends, blood didn't faze me anymore. All I could picture in my mind though was that disembodied hand the Blood Elf had displayed for the council. Sharp blades hidden under human skin. I could see the Mage's Tower in the distance, towering above the buildings of the city. When we got there the entrance to the Mage's Quarter was guarded by the white-clad figures of the Stormwind Guard, and I hesitated for a second as I realised I had nothing that would get me past them. Luckily one of us did.

"We're going through." Sara held up something that glinted gold in the early-morning sun that I couldn't see from behind. Whatever it was it worked though.

"Yes ma'am." They shifted aside as one and I walked through behind Sara as she hummed happily.

"Not bad huh?" She tossed it up and caught it, other hand reaching into her jerkin. She brought out another one and handed it to me, and I saw the golden dagger-and-cloak sigil of Stormwind Intelligence.

"You've met our sponsor then?" I asked.

Sara nodded and laughed. "You should have seen the look on Bramford's face when he got told! Thought he'd drop dead but no luck. Our man in high places seems nice though. He told me to give that shiny little thing to you, and get you up to the tower first thing. Am I not the most attentive of hirelings?"

"I'm practically bowled over by your willingness to serve. Did he fill you in?"

"Nah, said you'd do that."

Thanks, Vickers. "Eventually, when I get us all together." I looked up at the heart of the Stormwind Mage Organisation. One of the most powerful groups in the city, they owned the quarter of the city their headquarters sat on and they liked to display it. Instead of smooth cobbles like the rest of Stormwind we walked over grass that was a brilliant green, passing shops that catered to the esoteric needs of the mages and buildings that all had something otherworldly about them. Strange colours decorating the stonework in patterns that shifted as I watched, and smells I couldn't describe wafted from the shops and homes as we passed. I caught a couple of glances of empty houses as we passed by, doors unlocked and wide open. Even so in my five years in the Guard I'd never had reason to cross the bridge and come into this part of the city. No thief dared steal from a mage.

"You never thought about training as a spell-flinger, Elias?" Sara asked as we climbed the gentle hill towards the central square.

I shook my head. "Never had the talent." I liked things I could touch without them drifting away or turning into smoke, and armour I could feel and touch instead of strange half-visible smoke for protection. I liked weapons that worked all the time and not just when the stars were in the right part of the sky or the moon was in a certain phase. Some of the mage cadre in the Irregulars had called me knuckle-dragging and close-minded. I called them crazy, and crazy again. "We're here."

"And not the first either."

There had to be a dozen Guardsmen around the tower, and then a couple of dozen more mages milling around all looking towards the tower. From the outside it didn't look so big but I knew there were dozens more inside, and endless workshops and storehouses. I pinned the golden crest to my jacket as we approached the nearest guardsman. "SI:7. We're expected." I said.

The badge worked a magic I could handle; superior authority. The guardsman, a captain who until yesterday had outranked me and would have cheerfully told a civilian to sod off back to Old Town, saluted us both. "Yes sir, go right in."

"This job I like already," Sara whispered as we crossed the line of Guardsmen and mages, and walked into the dim heart of Stormwind tower.

I looked up at the masses of stairs and doorways, far bigger on the inside than the outside. Somewhere near the top was a dead man, with powers I couldn't have dreamed of, but killed by something I couldn't explain and had to hunt down anyway.

"Give it time."

"Morning." Aaron Vickers held out a hand and I shook it. At least he'd taken the blood-soaked glove off first. I looked into his eyes and they looked haggard and black. Looked like he'd been pulling an all-nighter.

It was a gruesome sight. The walls of the Archmage's chamber had been covered in bookshelves and tapestries, tables stacked high with equipment I couldn't recognise; tools that looked half-finished and glass containers that flowed in and out of each other. Now blood was splattered over all of it, and behind Vickers the Archmage lay in his bed at the centre of the room, spread-eagled and very dead. I could taste copper in the air and felt my stomach churn over as I tip-toed over broken glass and spatters of dried crimson…stuff… to stand next to him. Sara coughed and covered her mouth as the three of us stood over the bed that had contained the Archmage, and now only contained most of him. Something sharp had opened him from throat to pelvis. Ribs were broken and stuck up from the body, and the insides had been mashed and pummelled into an unrecognisable mess, where they hadn't been spilled out into the room. I took it back, I'd never seen anything like this. I wanted to find a quiet corner and vomit up the bread Sara had given me, but I could see my new boss/partner/uncertain-ally looking at me from the corner of my eye. I looked at the body until I was sure opening my mouth wouldn't make me hurl, and only then did I speak. "Poor bastard." I meant it.

"I don't have to tell you what we think happened," Aaron said. He was dressed in medical leathers, and was red up to his elbows. Other apothecaries stood well back and eyed us warily; he'd clearly been busy before we got here. "A wild animal might have done it, but the menagerie here says nothing was out of its cage last night. More than that, a mage-student is missing, and nobody quite remembers who."

Steel under skin. "There's one of them here, in Stormwind." I imagined I could feel a prickle on my back, and shivered.

"It gets worse. Our guest Taelan Lightweave is gone. The guards at the Keep report him as missing when they checked the embassy-quarters a few hours ago."

I could still picture him clearly, that smug smile and those cold green eyes. Sara coughed lightly and raised an eyebrow at me; who, but I waved it away; later, as Aaron slipped past me and I had to dodge aside to avoid getting blood all over my clothes. He stripped the leathers off as he moved out of the blood-covered room, but fished something from its pouch as he did so, pocketing it. I didn't get a chance to see what it was. "There'll be hell to pay for this," he said when he had gotten rid of the sodden garments to reveal the plain clothing underneath.

"I can imagine." I had met the Archmage a couple of times in the Guard, on ceremonial duties. I remembered a genial old man more at home in his own research than going along the pomp and circumstance his position demanded. For anyone to go out like that…I hoped he had been asleep when it came for him.

"Stormwind Keep is furious. The Crown will have to act. Will have to be seen to act. They'll send out the hounds, the Guard, everyone they've got, or else the mages will not be happy."

A huge loud mess that anything with half a brain, meat or metal, would hear coming a mile away. Damnit.

"How does this affect our mission?" Sara asked.

"We need you up and working as fast as humanely possible." Aaron looked directly into my eyes. "Get your team together, today if you can. SI:7 have a pile of gold nobody else knows about, I'm appropriating it. Anything, anyone you need to hire to get it done."

"Anyone?" I asked, and hoped.

"Anyone," he replied.

Yes! "Alright," I said, as casually as I could. I started down the stairs and cocked a finger back at Sara to follow. My mind raced as we descended, an idea that had been bouncing around since the shadow council had let me pick my own reward. I was convinced now, it could work. I cursed myself even for thinking it but with the old man's death and the fury that the Crown would throw up, the haste would work in my favour. Vickers wouldn't like it but by the time I told him he wouldn't have a choice.

"'Anyone'? What was all that about?" Sara whispered as we exited the tower back into the light, the sun now high over the sky and the crowd around the Mage Tower three times as large, Guardsmen and mages and just curious civilians who lived around the centre of magical learning in Stormwind.

"Tell you later, time to get to work," I said. I didn't bother writing it down, she'd remember it. "Take the tram to Ironforge. You're looking for two people. Ask at the inn there for Duran Copperweight. Tell him that I needs a helping hand. Tell him it'll be warmer than the last time." Whether the old dwarf would want to put himself in the firing line again I didn't know, but he'd at least hear me out.

No 'and he'll know what that means?' No complaining about travelling hundreds of miles of noisy badly-lit tramlines.I liked working with Sara. "Right," she said. "And the other?"

"Sonder Kolram. Check the Explorer's Hall. Failing that, take a ride down to the dig sites at Loch Modan." He would come, I was certain. Sonder had been my best friend in the days before I left the Irregulars. He would come to Stormwind if only to tell me what a horrible idea this whole thing was. From there I could convince the big sap onto the team without much trouble.

She nodded. If she had recognised the names she didn't show it. "Where do I stash 'em?"

"The Irregulars' hall. Give them a pair of rooms in the place we usually store visiting bigwigs, they'll like that."

"Bramford won't." Sara smiled.

I smiled back. "Screw Bramford, we're working above his head now."

"Yes sir!" She saluted, and skipped away into the crowd. Suddenly I was left alone on the outskirts of the mages quarters, looking towards the river. Two names I'd given her to track down and call on and the other two I'd kept for myself. I didn't look forward to going to either of them, but in the circumstances I couldn't just send a letter or a 'casted message, even if we had the time. In one case it wasn't possible, and in the other it wouldn't be right. One of them was right here in the city, may as well-

"You alright?" I turned to see Vickers approaching me in civilian clothes and not the bloody rags he'd been wearing over the Archmage's body. He'd even taken off his SI:7 sigil. I unpinned mine and tried to hand it to him, but he waved me off. "Keep it, it'll come in useful. Was that Sarah Whitgens running off just now?"

I remembered Sarah had said the two had met. "Yeah. Thanks for the badges." I tucked it into my jacket. "I asked her to go find half of our team."

"Only half?"

"I'm going to get the others now." It took me a second to realise my mistake, but too late to take the words back out of the air. Damn.

"Mind if I come along? I'd like to meet the people we'll be working with."

Shit. If I went to my first choice now he'd go ballistic. Alright, change of plans. Plenty of time and space to lose him between the first and second. "Will this badge get me a boat? Now?"

Vickers nodded. "To where?"

"Teldrassil."

From the bridge outside the Mage's Quarters to a ship floating on the water didn't even take a day, where some missions I had spent a week or more waiting for an open berth. I was still wondering how much pull SI:7 had when the merchant-ship welcomed us aboard with nothing more than a nod to my travelling companion, and without another word we set off, Stormwind receding over the horizon like a city sinking into the sea, and nothing ahead of us but the open waters between the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor.

"So I notice you did some checking up last night," Aaron said.

No sense in denying it. "I like to know who I'm working for, nothing else to it."

"Find anything interesting? I never get to see my own files."

"You'd be disappointed. Thanks to your records I know you exist and your last name may or may not begin with a 'V'." The sound of the wind moving across the sails, a noise like fingers running over rough paper was eclipsed for a second as Aaron laughed. A real laugh, not some polite chuckle at someone's poor attempt at humour. Finally he stopped and I got my chance: "So what's not in the records Aaron? Sarah knew a little, the Guards knew a little. If I'm working with you on this, throw me some rope." In case you try to trick us and I have to hang you with it later. "Give me one question."

There was silence on the boat, the only sound for a moment the wind and the sea and the creaking of the hull, and I knew I'd hit something even if I hadn't meant to. Finally he spoke. "Only the one?" I nodded. "Alright, if you'll answer one back."

"Deal. Why are you on this job? You specifically."

He didn't waste any time. "I was on the closure team on your northern expedition."

I tasted salt and an icy chill on the air as I sucked in breath involuntarily. I felt like there was something I should say to that but suddenly I couldn't find any of the words I knew.

He went on. "I was new blood back then, still wide-eyed and hot and bothered to serve the Alliance, I'm sure you know the type. In SI:7 they put you behind a desk for a year, then out in the field as gopher for another agent until they think you're ready to start going it alone. I got through all that somehow without really leaving the city. Then you came along."

I didn't remember it and I didn't want to.

"I don't know what they called it, Operation Iceheart or Frostblade or something stupid and heroic-sounding like that. But they gave it all to me, probably because nobody else really cared. They gave me your transcripts and files and notes from the de-briefings and told me to summarise it all in one page. You know what you went through, you-"

May as well tell him now and get it over with. "I don't remember it."

"-and. What?" It stopped him dead and he looked at me like he didn't understand what I had just said. Which I didn't really expect him to.

Suddenly the wooden seating on the deck felt incredibly uncomfortable, the clothes I wore soaked in salt that began to sting the second I started talking about it. "I don't remember it anymore. A few months after everything was over I thought over the whole thing. Then I had a mage dig around in my memories to seal it up. Everything before and after is fine, but not that mission, none of it." I watched as he realised what I was talking about and the expression on his face turned from confusion to just a little shock. "I remember how things felt. The cold, the dark. Some of the emotions I felt back then during the mission. I remember my friends and how I felt about them." The hate and fear and worry and terror. The darkness encroaching around us all. "But I don't remember why I felt that way." Like a gnomish picture-show with the visuals removed, and only the sounds remained. I thought of it as fog in my head, and I didn't look too closely at the things moving around in it.

Aaron stared at me like I was a madman. "That's incredibly illegal. And dangerous as hell."

I wasn't really interested in sitting down and justifying myself in detail. "Those documents you read? Our last reports?"

"Yeah?"

"We left out a lot. A whole hell of a lot." More than we swore we'd ever tell another living soul. "But we were supposed to be talking about you."

I watched as he visibly tore himself away from the previous subject, and wondered whether when his turn came we'd go back to it. He kept his end of the deal though. "After I read the whole debacle. The reports, the expedition, the…aftermath...I decided I didn't want to keep playing a different kind of taxman for the Crown. I asked for the next berth overseas to Kalimdor, and the next infiltration mission I could." He shrugged. "I found my niche there. I can keep things quiet, and simple, and relatively bloodless. When this came up the only other person with my qualifications deferred, so here I am."

There had to be more to it than that, but I just nodded. I wasn't sure whether I trusted the man entirely, not yet, and not someone who made their living in the shadows, but I knew he hadn't lied to me. Alright. "Thanks. I asked and you answered. Your turn then."

He sat there for a second again and I was wondering if he'd try and bring back my time in Northrend again. But he didn't, thank the Light. "Back in the meeting I noticed a certain…animosity…from one of my fellow conspirators. Directed mainly at you."

An easy one. "The Lady Ulane'sol and I have a history," I admitted.

"What? How? She's diplomatic, not military."

I smiled at the fact I finally knew something that he didn't. "Maybe it's hard to notice from high in the sky, but when you're a little closer to the ground you can see the fine details." I could see he understood but I went on anyway. "Kirei- Sorry, Lady Ulane'sol is a spymistress for Darnassus. A good one too, would have to be to escape you people."

Aaron's jaw worked a little and I wondered whether he was angry or embarrassed that a foreign power had had a spy walking through their capital's halls for decades right under SI:7's nose. "Oh?" was all he managed.

"Deception with her runs in the family. Most of the family, and that exception is where she and I cross paths. A daughter went and joined the priesthood, or whatever name elves have for it. She came over to Stormwind – to get away from her mother pretty much – and joined a guild. The Irregulars. She came in at the same time as me and when teams were formed we were in the same one."

"Even for Northrend?" Aaron asked.

"Even for Northrend," I responded as calmly as I could, stepping past the mist and memories.

"Is that why she dislikes you? Because you ended in going north with her kid? That wasn't exactly your fau-"

I see-sawed my hand in front of him. He was close but not quite there. "A little more than that. Sildri and I, we had the same profession and hobbies and ended up spending a lot of time together, in missions and outside 'em. We were close."

"Oh?"

"Really close."

"Oh? Oh." He coughed suddenly, caught off guard. I wondered whether it was something against a mixed-species couple or just embarrassment that he'd came a little closer to someone else's private life than he would have liked. "Well, that explains that I guess." He looked out over the ocean and narrowed his eyes. "I think we'll be paying a bit more attention to the woman the next time she comes to the city though, he said with feeling.

I laughed at that. "Want to do another round?"

Aaron shook his head. "No, one question was enough I think. Thank you though. I know SI:7 doesn't exactly have a great reputation with the guilds, I appreciate the chance to prove some of those stories wrong." He looked at me. I had probably helped spread a few of those stories. "I won't pretend I agree with your…extreme approach to your own memory, but if what happened was even worse than the things I read, I think I can understand it."

"That's all I ask," I replied.

"It's a big ocean, may as well get some rest on the way. Pretty soon I doubt we'll have the time." He walked off into the hold, and I listened until I couldn't hear his boots treading on the wooden boards. I looked back out across the ocean as the sun went down.

It had been more than a decade since I'd been to the Living City. More than a decade since I'd seen her. My fists clenched a little on the wooden railing at the half-memory of that last meeting, and I wondered what I'd do when we met face-to-face again. One part of me wondered whether there was anything I could do to turn us around and forget the whole idea, while another, much smaller but more insistent one, was wondering whether there was still time to patch those holes back up in the fabric we'd once shared. Either way I would find out tomorrow.