"SI:7, for one of your prisoners." I held up the golden badge and hoped for the best.

It worked. The guard just nodded once as if Stormwind Intelligence officers came to this part of the prison all of the time. For all I knew they did. He poised his quill over the giant logbook that lay on the wooden desk.

There was no point in lying. "Elias Conray, to transport Erinys Heartfield."

The quill stopped mid-descent. "Sir?"

I put on the bored and irritated air of an important man in a hurry who had suddenly found himself stopped by someone several dozen ranks lower than him. I'd seen Bramford do it enough times to be convincing. "Is there a problem...sergeant?"

It was like the man could see a hand coming up to rip those chevrons from his shoulder. "Nossir! It's just that we usually have several days' notice before…"

"These are special circumstances." Gods knew that was true enough.

The guard gave in to the golden badge. Sara was right, the power the thing gave was almost intoxicating. "Yessir, sorry sir, it's just orders are…" he caught my expression and gave up. "You'll have to wait for the transport team to go down and then bring the prisoner back up-"

"That's no problem, I'll meet them there." I caught the man's mouth opening and closing like a fish suddenly plucked out of the river, but I had already turned away. The entire place stank of sweat and stale water, what happened when you built a fortress out of stone and then simply left it to grow damp and mouldy, maybe washing the walls with soap and a mop every other month. The guards – poor bastards, prison guard duty was always a punishment detail – stood aside to let me past, and without a word the inch-thick steel bars swung closed behind me. I resisted the urge to look back and see if the duty-clerk was watching me, and strode into the heart of the stone complex.

I still remembered the way.


"What are you doing here Elias?"

"Something came up. Something that might help."

"You can't possibly be dumb enough to think that anything could help."

"Hear me out."

I don't know what I had expected. A wreck maybe, or a shadow. Instead I was looking through a window into the past. Like everyone on the outside had grown older, but inside the stone walls of the prison time had simply…stood still. In the Guard I'd caught and interrogated people in jail before and all of them had seemed to shrink after spending time inside this rotten place, like their sentences were somehow physical things that bore down on them and crushed them, but Erinys was the same as ever. Even slouched over with her arms resting on the cell door her head was still above mine, and though it was hidden in a badly-fitting and handed-down prison uniform the body underneath hadn't wasted away or gone soft at all. If she had been a foot or two shorter she would have looked ridiculous, a circus-freak strongman, but stretched out on her frame it looked perfectly natural. Even the face was the same, grey eyes staring out at me with an expression hovering somewhere between annoyance and neutrality. Even from behind bars she projected a predatory power. Little wonder the guard had waved off and walked away before we'd arrived at the corridor her cell was in. Some strange once-in-a-generation mix of breeding, upbringing, personality and luck had come together to make Erinys into what she was; seven feet of hard-headed and stubborn strength, a harshly beautiful system bred and trained to deliver a massive blade of steel into the enemy as fast and as hard as possible. The only difference from the woman I had known back then was the hair. Erinys had been proud of that hair; a gigantic raven-black sheaf of it that fell almost past her knees, and she had kept it in a huge ornate braid that no matter what we'd told her about grabbing hands and weak points she had absolutely refused to trim or shorten. Now it clung to her in unwashed clumps, loose and lanky with grease. She hadn't cut it though, and even before we started talking I knew I'd get what I came here for.

"We agreed this wasn't good for either of us, not after the last time," she said, as calmly as two colleagues talking as they met on the street, and not as if one of them was behind the bars of a cell in the prison's most deeply-buried wings.

The last time had been seven years ago and had ended in a screaming argument that ended with me thrown out of the prison. I didn't waste any time. "I've been offered a job. One with serious pull."

Her mouth twisted up into a half smile. "What did I keep telling you?"

I had to smile back. "I've not pushed my luck yet. But I'm not kidding about the job either Erinys. It's Alliance. A blank ticket during, a blank cheque after."

Her hands wrapped around the bars and she leaned back, letting her arms take her weight like she was trying to rip the door from its hinges. She was looking up at the ceiling though, and her eyes were closed. When we had been in the guild she had always done that when she was thinking, just stare up at the sky, and remove every distraction from her vision. Her hair hung straight down and I wondered how heavy it was. It looked like they hadn't let her clean it; it must have felt like a ball and chain attached to her scalp. She wouldn't give them the pleasure of asking them to cut it though, I knew her that well. "Tell me."

I talked fast. "The old team. Me, Sildri, Sonder, Duran. You."

Grey eyes pierced me right though. "That's five." She knew me well, too.

"Sara Whitgens. You'll like her."

"I'm sure I'd hate her. Who's our employer?"

Our, not the. I had her, she just didn't know it yet. "Aaron Vickers. He's-"

"He's SI:7."

You've got to be kidding. First Sara and now her. "You've been locked up in here for ten years, how the hell does everyone know who Aaron Vickers is except me?"

She smiled at that. "If he's related to Charod Vickers he's SI:7. I've met that last name before. It runs in the family." And both of us knew she wasn't going to say any more. Erinys didn't like to talk about her background. To anyone. I'd known her for years before Northrend and the Heartfield legacy was something even I didn't know.

I could hear the clatter of the guards as they brought the evil-looking restraining equipment down the corridor, chains clanking and jangling as they walked. Enough talk. "I want you."

She gave that twisted half-smile again. "Don't you have Sildri for that?"

Ouch. "On the team. Just let me do this much."

She sighed. "You can't think of asking for a pardon."

I hadn't. I felt rotten but it was a truth I had faced down before coming here. Even if the shadowy council would have agreed to it, strangely enough Erinys herself would never take it. Even if the case hadn't been open-and-shut. That pride had gotten her into trouble more than once. Had gotten her here. "Call it...restitution. Or penance, or whatever you want. I'm asking you to come out once more with the old team."

She stared me down. "What is this, Elias?"

"What do you mean?"

"You're too old to go looking for glory. You're old enough you should know better."

I tried to put every ounce of sincerity I felt into my voice as I answered. "I want to make things right."

"How, when you don't even remember what you did wrong?" she bit back.

The worst wounds don't hurt. They slide in through your body like a needle through water and all you feel is numb. "That's not fair-"

"You ran away from it. Us," she said without inflection, like she didn't care about my answer at all, and that's when I knew she was angry with me.

Like hearing Sildri in Darnassus, and the thought behind the two women's words was exactly the same; was I worth so little to you? "I wasn't like you."

"Evidently."

I could feel the argument coming on again, lurking underneath us and just waiting to erupt to the surface and make a repeat of the last time we'd met. I remembered something Sildri had said, long before the north had torn us apart. "We live with the choices we've made." I shouldn't have to tell you that. I sighed. "Wouldn't you like to see the stars again, one last time?"

She tapped her fingers on her cage's bars for a second in silence. "Fine," she said finally, as her common sense won out over her pride. "But only because you asked so nicely." I couldn't help it, I knew it would rise her hackles, but I smiled. "What's so funny?"

"I knew you'd agree," I said.

"Bullshit."

The argument slid back away into the depths, out of sight if not entirely banished. "Admit it, I had you from the start. And the other thing."

"What other thing?" she asked.

I smiled, a real one this time. "You didn't cut your hair." The sentence had been for life. If she had really accepted it Erinys would have gotten rid of that giant mess on her skull. Even if she would never admit it to anyone she had still held out a little hope.

She clapped once slowly, for effect. "Well done." She paused for a second, her fingers drumming a staccato beat on the steel bars. "Who else knows about this?"

"Sildri. I thought bringing you to the briefing would kind of inform everyone else."

A faux-wince. "She wasn't happy." Not a question.

"No, but she'll get over it."

"You're an old man Elias, you're-"

"Going to push my luck too far one day, yes I know." I stood aside as the men opened the door carefully, like the woman inside would leap out at them and claw their throats out given a single lapse of attention. I looked at Erinys and she just rolled her eyes in response.

The younger of the pair held up something that could have been used to muzzle dogs before castrating them. "Sir, if you could wait a moment while we-"

"That won't be necessary," I said smoothly, and without waiting for them to reply gently but forcefully pushed the two men away from the door, and let it swing open as Erinys stepped through it. She stood in the tiny corridor and stretched. I tried to resist a grin as the two guards stood there looking up in awe or fear, either at the fabric of the ill-fitting shirt as it stretched across her chest, or at the taut muscles of her arms as she cracked her knuckles. She towered over them.

"That was mean. They were just doing their jobs." I kept a hold on one of the chains purely for the look of the thing, but we walked through the corridors side-by-side. I wondered if this was how all of SI:7 saw the world; a simple series of obstacles to be clambered over or slid around. It would explain some of the shit they'd done in the past, certainly. Spend too much time treating other people as tools and maybe you forgot how to think of them as anything else.

She frowned. "Yeah, well. They should have chosen a different profession if they wanted to be liked."

"You're unbelievable."

"I don't think…Elias."

I stopped as she said my name, not banter but slow and deadly serious. I followed the direction of her gaze and saw what had stopped her instantly. I sighed inwardly. I had hoped for more time, at least for time enough to get her outside of the prison walls. Now I didn't know what was going to happen. I just had to hope he was as understanding as he'd shown on the boat to Darnassus.

There in the doorway that was the only thing between us and the light of the city outside the prison, Aaron Vickers stood, hands folded across his chest and the golden SI:7 badge gleaming on his jacket.

He didn't look happy.


"Have you lost your mind?"

He wasn't furious exactly. Maybe it would have better if he had been, or at least more satisfying. Instead just stood there with his arms crossed, looking at the two of us. I felt like I was back in school again and the teacher had just caught me doing something bad.

"I was wondering why you took off without me back in Darnassus, but I didn't expect anything like this. Do you have any idea how big a noise this will make?"

"How'd you find out?" I asked. I still had a hand on the chain on Erinys' wrist and it clanked as she shifted on her feet. I had hoped for a few more hours before he'd gotten back, at least enough time to get her out of the walls.

"A prison guard 'casted a message to SI:7 asking why one of our people was taking a prisoner outside the walls for interrogation, unannounced. I heard it when I got back and I won't tell you how. I repeat; do you know exactly how big a shit-storm you're stirring up?"

I did. I also didn't care. I didn't like the Crown and all the rest of the trappings the Stormwind royal house dressed itself in, but I tolerated it. I couldn't stand the people under them though, the dozen or more families that stood the next rung of the ladder down and owned everything the Crown didn't. Petty tyrants that sucked what they could from the city and only deigned to recognise that other people lived in it when they wanted something. They paid their taxes – grudgingly – and donated to whatever cause the Wrynns were currently focussed on, and in exchange were given power and licence, and they used it to the hilt. It had been the whims of the nobility that sent us north all those years ago, nobility that liked Old Town just fine the way it was, a sinkhole that kept the lower classes in their place and away from the noble quarters of the city. I knew the news I was taking Erinys out would eventually wind it's way up the city, to a certain pair of ears. Knew how big a shitstorm it would cause. Didn't care.

Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.

I didn't say any of that though. Somehow I think Aaron knew it all already. "Our employers said we needed the best, you said I could pick anyone for my team. I pick her."

Erinys eyes shifted between us like we were both characters in a play and she was a disinterested observer. Or like a cat watching two mice fight, knowing whatever the result it would be able to eat the winner. Aaron shook his head. I could see the anger still there, but submerged now under an icy calm I didn't need any training to recognise; Spy at Work. "This isn't like picking some random cellblock for punishment detail," he said. He looked up at Erinys and his voice was heavy with emphasis. "You were an example, Ms Heartfield. For you to be walking there in the fresh air again would trample on the authority of Stormwind."

"Of the nobility," she said, and I could hear the tight grip she was keeping on her voice.

He didn't sugar-coat it for her. "Is there any difference?"

Something had been bothering me about his words since he had started speaking. Since starting to work with the spy I'd been watching what I said and what he said back, and finally it had paid off as I realised something his choice of words was implying. "Wait, you asked if we knew how big a storm this will cause. How big a noise it will make." Aaron was silent and I went on in hope and a little triumph. "You didn't come here to stop us, did you?"

He deflated at that, just a little, and I knew I was right. "No, I didn't."

Somehow he sounded both tired and on-edge at the same time, and I suddenly knew it wasn't because he'd had to run to catch the boat. "What happened?"

"There's been another murder."

"Who?" I asked as Erinys looked between the two of us again. I could feel the tension there, the light outside was so close and regardless of her stoic pose I knew she wanted to be out in it.

"The Colonel of the Stormwind Guard."

I was about to ask are you kidding but I didn't bother. From the look in his eyes I knew he wasn't. "When?" First the most influential man in Stormwind's magical community and now the leader of its militia. It was going after authority, no question. The Alliance must be shitting themselves.

"An hour ago," Aaron said, and now I realised why he was so on-edge.

"An hour!?" Between my entering the prison and trying to get out, the thing had reached out and killed. Fast. Too fast.

"It's not like the Archmage, Conray, it didn't try to hide. It's left a trail of bodies going in and out, five dead and three more injured. The Guard have mobilised, they're already headed after it. Whitgens and the others are with them. A second team is gearing up and leaving within the hour. You're going to be with them."

"Both of us?" I asked.

"Yes," He replied, and looked up at Erinys. "The two of us will talk later," he said. "Don't make me regret this." He turned from her to me. "Either of you." He turned without waiting for us to acknowledge him. Conray, not Elias. I felt bad about it, I wouldn't deny it. But I'd known him for less than a week and regardless of what she had done Erinys was one of my oldest friends and comrades. Either he would get over it or he wouldn't.

"What have you gotten me into, exactly?" Erinys asked as we walked out of the stuffy damp stone of the prison and into the sea-breeze air of Stormwind, Aaron already gone somehow. She hesitated for a second on the far side of the door and took a deep breath, not speaking. Just drinking it in. "Thanks," she said, and we both knew that was all we'd say on the topic until this was over. I knew how deeply she meant it.

"I'll explain as we go," I said as we walked to the jetty to take the tiny boat away from the prison and back into the city proper. No time to go and get ready, no time to clean up and prepare. I hoped to the Light and all the gods of Azeroth that Sara would be packing some extra steel when we caught up with her. Horses were already on the other side of the moat waiting for us, and I felt just a little more guilt. Aaron must have left them for me and him, instead he'd walked home. If I could make it right with him, I decided, I would try. "For now all you need to know is, we're hunting something. Something we've never seen before."

She smiled and it was like the prison had shorn away from her in one fell swoop. The horse bucked and reared a little as she clambered up, and even with her hair still plastered to her back in ugly lumps and dressed in grey prison garb she radiated confidence. The smile wasn't like Sara's, mischievous and easy. When Erinys smiled there was something harder in it, something predatory. "Then let's go see it," she said.