The next morning found him a blubbering, snotty, weeping mess on the cold stone floor of the office of the Chief of the Wizards Council. This office—actually more of a Great Hall, replete with the stuffed heads of snarling beasts mounted on plaques and a godawful huge hearth and the stately banners of the Sacred 28 pureblood families and a proper throne—was part of the magically sealed and disguised interior of a fairly humble dry goods store called Widdershins.

Widdershins had never once in all its years been open for business—an oddity that would tend to provoke curiosity, what with its address on popular Crown Street and its bustlingly active neighbors. But Wizardry took pains to ensure people didn't stop and think about it. 'Oh look! A dry-goods shop that isn't open! Well, anyway…' was about as far as any Muggle took it. For the knowing, on the other hand, it was simply a matter of walking in (the door was never locked), closing your eyes, proclaiming the pass phrase (Ex tot historiis, unum posterum—'From many histories, one future'), and opening them to the anteroom of the council. Ry'd been crying too hard to see anything in the anteroom clearly, likewise the subsequent corridors he'd been led down. He'd been crying for hours.

Penthrift and the Oriental had had to treat with him at the burning as though he were a powder keg intent on hurling himself into the flames. They'd muscled him into a squalid alley from which, and over his objections, Penthrift had forcibly apparated with him into the chilly bowels of the Wizengamot—the safest place he could think of in a pinch.

It would be the first and last time he visited the spooky subterranean space, with its half-moon of steep, tiered chairs and its spare furnishing and witness box and gallery dim and dust-covered. Ry fell to his knees and wailed. Several of the Wizengamot jurors or parliament were there, chatting, remarking on him, keeping their distance. He didn't care. They didn't matter. He shuddered and shook and sobbed and moaned. He cursed and threw what he could find to throw and stomped around. He opened himself and let everything out, all of it, and Penthrift moved him from room to room, for it turned out there were many alcoves in the Wizengamot, none of which contained the Chief Warlock, whose whereabouts were unknown, which is what people were whispering about, since before vanishing he'd made a bloody great big show about obliviating an entire city, saying 'Scale isn't real,' an unobvious truth to which Ry could now attest, as he'd been freshly taught that the death of a single person could render an entire planet of them meaningless.

If Day had been there he'd have begged him—that's how unmoored he'd become from his previous self, he'd have sought the Dungeon Freak out—'Like you did with the owl, bring me back Mary.' And if Day'd refused he'd have thought it at him until he relented. But he was elsewhere, elsewhere.

It was a short jaunt across Crown Street once you'd climbed the long stairs up to the Wizengamot's covering enterprise (also a dry goods store, incidentally). Ry walked out into London, into a fresh summer's day, Widdershins just there, and he burst into tears—somehow he always had more, grief was liquifying him—because he kept entering new rooms in which Mary Potter was dead because the Muggles had burned her.

He was still crying when Lord Castlemore shifted on his throne and said, 'Are you in earnest, sir? Was it truly Miss Potter?'

Ry'd had scarce experience of Castlemore over the years. Really not since he was plain Oswyn Doddle, the boot-strapping social climber from Ravenclaw who'd relentlessly pursued his advantage ingratiating himself to the better families. The organizer of Bon von Steuffelkamp's annual holiday ball. Always ravenously hungry for the chance to do the powerful a favor. Doddle's / Castlemore's love life used to be a staple of tavern gossip. He'd been known to court, without shame, much older women—a fact Ry could never hold against him, the play being so blatant. Even one whimsically revised will would be all it took, and, as it happened, there'd evidently been several: now the lispy, sickly orphan of the Thames, notoriously the issue of a Muggle whore, was a landed gentleman, owned an estate in Wiltshire, kept a very large staff, and was nominally the most powerful man in Wizardry—though that was a riotous laugh so long as Nightless Day lived.

'Mrs,' Ry corrected. 'Mrs Mary Potter Oates. She'd wed.'

He couldn't bring himself to call Castlemore 'my Lord.' He might've managed with Doddle, but, for Ry, the baptism had been a bridge too far. What sort of wizard bent the knee to Sir Jesus?

'The Kentish Oateses?'

He found his grief could not abide Castlemore's picayune snobbery. It couldn't live next to it. He rubbed his nose and stood and said yes, the Kentish Oateses.

The Wizard Chief was slender, bald and whiskerless, had discomfortingly sparkly blue eyes. Put Ry in mind of a lagoon with an immortal sword entombed inside. He had big ears the lobes of which he kept futzing with, and a glistening red chubby-lipped mouth with too big of a tongue in it. His age could've been…he seemed ageless. Awkwardly young and robust from some angles, a frail pensioner from others.

'I daresay they shall be making a great to-do about this in the Wizengamot. If it transpires she was betrayed there will be upheave. Terrible upheave!'

He became aware that they weren't alone in the Hall. Someone behind him was writing, the scratch of the quill corresponding to their speech. 'What do you mean, betrayed?'

'My dear sir, of course you must know betrayal is the primary method of our undoing, anymore. My regime has made tremendous strides in safeguarding our travel and our communications and in quelling—before they arise—through deliberate engagements at the highest levels—the rampages of our past. Much harder to police, alas, are the treacheries that undo us from within. Such a crime would fall naturally under the Wizengamot's purview. Do you seek justice?'

'Revenge would do.'

An unchristian titter nearly escaped Castlemore's lips. 'In either case it's the Chief Warlock you must seek out. Only he can countenance your path or help you find it.'

'No one knows where he is,' Ry growled.

Now Castlemore did titter, very briefly. His slender hands lifted from his lap in a gesture of mischievous glee. 'Of course we know where he is! It is nearly midsummer. He is in the Shetlands! Were you not at Hogwarts with my Lord Day, sir? Did you not note his yearly pilgrimage?'

'I avoided him as much as possible—same as everyone else. What's midsummer in the Shetlands to Nightless Day?'

'It is the anniversary and locale of his birth, sir. But leave off talking to me about it. If you can brook no delay, leave off.'

The thing that controlled Ry shivered his legs, but he stayed it. Straightened himself. Thought: Here I have the attention of the Wizard Chief of Britain; his sole audience.

He said, 'The False Dawn. There was more to it than people think.'

Castlemore did patient indulging.

'It wasn't just Vandal and the Muggle Jones.'

How to say it? Which words? There were so many to choose from. And what did he want to say?

'Go on.'

Susurro and Day will be the end of us—that's what he wanted to say. They'd find a way, somehow, to finish everything off for everybody. They were too strong and too hateful of each other. But how could he say that to a stranger? How could he make plain what wasn't plain in the least?

'You see,' he said, 'I hitched a ride on a portkey with them once. With Ann and…'

'I'm sorry?'

'And the Freak, he, he cast off.'

'What do you mean? What are you saying?' Castlemore signaled to someone behind Ry. The scribbler, no doubt. But Ry had to go on. He felt he'd seized on the main thing.

'He cast off the portkey and looked at her in this way, this remarkable way…'

A person came to parcel him out of the great hall. A woman with a sweet, sweet scent and soft, fine hands.

Castlemore frowned. 'I'm sorry, deMille, very sorry indeed, for your loss and ours.'

He said to the woman, 'It's like he expected her to save him, and when she did it proved him right. But he could've died just then, so easily. He put his life in her hands.'

'Of course,' she said, guiding him out.

'We could've let him die. He chanced it. Because, I think, if it worked, if she saved him, it would mean, it would confirm…'

'What?' asked Ann. 'It would confirm what?'

Ry discovered her, coughed with surprise, felt fear rush all over him like a wind, and moments later was back on Crown, citizen of a land that'd seen his most important friend incinerated and his greatest adversaries empowered.

To Scotland, then.

୫

Kent was on the way, sort of. Anyway it wasn't terribly out of the way.

He and Sasha made the trip. He felt protective of her—didn't want her to find out there'd been a death in the family. He could gift sentiment to anything. Show him a boulder on the curve of a road. Any animal. A funny tree. He'd find a way to make them participants in his grief. They were Mary, or, they mourned her too. He drank, anointed Sasha with his tears, sung impromptu songs of loss, sought wisdom or solace—unsuccessfully—from the stars, and raised Kent a vestige of his former self. Asking after the whereabouts of the Oates family house at an inn whose habitues did not take well to his presence overall, a shabby little beggar trailed him out.

'Caladrius?' said the beggar. 'Are you Caladrius?'

'Caladrius isn't a person.'

'No I know. I know, it's just…' The beggar winked and grinned a grin that was gums only. 'So many of 'em about lately.'

So confident was Ry about this toothless fellow's true nature that he scrounged through his purse for a knut that got snatched up at once. 'What do you know of the Caladrius?' Ry asked the unfortunate wizard.

'Nuffink. Only there's loads of 'em in the Wren estate, they're right friendly, and we aren't s'posed to ask nuffink.'

It was one of those words you heard from dark niches in gloomy taverns. A word pedaled by the weak, the loser, the believer in conspiracies. It denoted some hidden agency, some occult practice. It meant anything and therefore nothing, and Ry couldn't care less about what 'they' were doing at the Wren estate.

At the Oates house he was greeted by a handful of distant relatives. None of them Potters he knew. Ry and Sasha reconnoitered the area, mostly agreeing about the spots Mary'd loved best. Where was the widower, William? He was told things but they didn't stay in his head. No one could explain the meaning or significance of his dear friend's death, and no one volunteered a guilty party outside of Misfortune, though the Muggles had been up in arms since the False Dawn.

He rode north for some days, thinking about loss and randomness and Merlin and ex tot historiis. Near Nottingham he lingered long enough to find the devout. They met when the moon was full by a creek next to a hovel on the outskirts—if so ramshackle and sad a place as Nottingham could be described as having any skirts at all. A blind witch asked Ry what the password was. He scoffed. 'There isn't a fucking password.'

She led him to the water, where a motley collection of Merlings were dunking their heads and putting their fingers in and intoning things. A jug was passed round. When the moon was at its highest many of them became animals—squirrels and ravens and cats—others started singing, all different songs it seemed and in the old dialect, yet somehow they matched up from time to time in a way that washed through him like light. It felt an ancient kind of rhythm, recovered from some fold in time. He sat next to the water, holding the jug, tears streaming down his face.

'My friends,' he said, 'I am a hot soul of the south, en route to the frigid north. Thank you for this heat. I shall carry it, and it shall carry me.'

When the night weakened around the coming day the blind one found him. 'There's nothing for you up there,' she scolded.

Ry nodded—then remembered she couldn't see. 'I know.'

She touched his face. 'You'll be gone in days.'

He awoke alone, no sign of the evening's festivities remaining. Trees spanned and waved easily above him, their leaves whispering. Breeze on his body. Dappled light swayed among the canopies. Birds.

He couldn't even remember when his drunk had started. He hoisted himself up on his elbows, vomited, looked for a good minute into the muddy creek, and realized Ann Susurro had played him for a fool. It was her fault, somehow.

Why not? Everything was someone's fault. It was her doing that he was here, in the middle of nowhere, on a ridiculous errand, instead of doing battle with her in London, instead of taking Mary's revenge into his own hands. What did he think, that Day would still be in Scotland a month after his birthday? That he wouldn't have some ingenious way of hopping rapidly about the country? He was an idiot, duped at a tender moment by someone much cleverer and more cunning than himself.

To London!

୫

Arrived silly from the saddle, sorer than he'd ever been in his life, definitely raving. Monsieur Hammerstein wrapped a shawl round his shoulders, set him by a fire and fed him stew. It was one of those absurdly cold London summers—either that or Ry was dying. He certainly didn't sound well, going on and on about the song of the creek people and laughing about the time he killed someone called Cedric. Monsieur Hammerstein believed him basically unthreaded. Too many nights on horseback, talking to the moon, unspooling. He was not at all surprised when the fever came on. No sign of a bubo, thank Merlin.

It was a terribly involving sickness that slithered up from a cold place in his bones and colonized him utterly. His teeth chattered, his brow throbbed, his gut rejected everything—it was a lot of work. Monsieur Hammerstein, a widower, attended him when he could. Ry didn't hallucinate exactly but for long stretches of time he couldn't be sure he was awake. Fracture, phlegm, a cold compress, numb fingers, wrong memories, too hot, not hot enough, a fouled pot, weakness, stiffness, an aching that moved around inside him, no flavor, too much salt, nothing right, dizzy, nauseous, sad, sleepless.

But he held his ground. As soon as he could stand for a minute without swooning, as soon as his skin could bear the weight of a garment without pain, he dressed in the best clothes he could find and set out.

Not strong enough to apparate, he walked to Crown Street, past filthy tenements and shitting horses, squawking hens and pigs sliding around in their own waste, sausage vendors and pick-pockets and rambling theocrats and pilloried drunks and heads on spikes and through the never-ending vagabond grime of London, suspicious the whole time that he was the fiercest, grimiest, worst of all. Didn't even hide his wand—wore it in the sheath on his hip. Let them come at him. Let them try. Let them cut his hair off looking for a mark they'd never find because he was the devil's mark, himself entire, all of Rybel, put here to murder Muggles who'd murder him, who'd been murdering him forever and would go on murdering him for so long as they drew breath. Let the bastards try.

There must have been an unholy gleam in his eye to walk for so long among them unchallenged. They parted before him like spiders, like ash around a wind.

He stepped into Widdershins. His plan was unformed until it wasn't: Call out Susurro. Don't be cute about it. Explain she was behind the False Dawn. The brains behind the thing that caused the panic that led to Mary's death. Be direct. He said, 'Ex tot historiis, unum posterum!'

He did it again, remembering to shut his eyes.

Opened them: the anteroom: a high-ceilinged rectangular stone job with tall windows paled by sourceless light. Several corridors leading off. A man suffering from extreme old age occupied a central desk, studying a large, illuminated volume through a magnifying glass that quivered in his hand. The magnified eye for a moment held Ry, who growled and stalked down a hall at random. He was following the voices. There were voices. One, mainly, punctuated by the responses of a crowd. It was a drafty corridor, somehow. Whither this goddamned wind, he thought. Whither the pale light against the cursed windows? Why was the world so confusing all the time?

He came out into the anteroom again. 'What?' he said, disbelievingly.

The old man pointed at one of the other halls.

'Fuck off!' said Ry—but he went there.

Got lost again. The volume of the voices rose and fell irrespective of any change in Ry's direction. The corridors kept intersecting and he kept making what he thought were good decisions. Torches flared from sconces. Portraits of snoozing witches and bored wizards. Suits of armor. No one helped him, or they disagreed. He started feeling dizzy again. Started worrying he wasn't awake. He wanted someone else's life, someone else's memories and capabilities and connections. He wanted to be young again, very young, to remember what it felt like to be brand new. He entered a giant scullery staffed by only a few little house elves. He could have cried in gratitude. They pointed him to a door he opened.

The door led into an abbreviated, dark, claustrophobic hallway that led out into the speaking pit of the Wizard's Council. Standing in the pit was Oswyn Doddle, Lord Castlemore. In a corner of the pit sat a secretary taking the minutes of the assembly meeting with a magical quill. Susurro? Not Susurro. The pit was surrounded on all sides (he assumed the side he was looking from, too) by a gallery of graduated seating, jam-packed with witches and wizards of no unifying description or etiquette. A rowdy group.

There was no question of his walking out into the pit. He stepped forward quietly, veiled in darkness, and observed that an identical hall existed behind Castlemore. He saw something there—or did he? It was a hole, an inkwell, space. For a vivid, unsettling moment, it seemed most likely, owing to the labyrinth he'd lately endured, that it was him he'd seen, sneaking forward in his own hall, the better to see and hear and get the lay of the land; that at one of those intersections back there he'd turned right and left, and was looking out now from and into both dark halls, thinking this exactly.

But then the words 'Caladrius' and 'Wren' hooked him and the reverie evaporated.

'My Lord Castlemore!' someone was bellowing from the gallery in an operatic basso profundo. 'I bring reports from East Anglia: the wizard healer Glorio Wren is curing Muggles of the sweating sickness!'

The assembly erupted. 'It is the Caladrian Order at work!' 'They'll be the death of us!' 'Cure a Muggle—burn a witch!' 'Wren must be stopped!'

Over the roar the basso profundo continued: 'They say he's curing whole houses, my Lord! The Duke of Norfolk's house, the Duchess of Sussex! Why, Sussex's house all came down with it and Glorio Wren cured every one!'

They gasped! Oh how they gasped. Ry fed off it—was reminded of his precious groan.

What do we see when something moves in darkness? Ry's eyes ticked again to the other hall. Something had stirred. A blemish of the dark, an imperfection in it.

A wand, just more than the tip, pricked the lens of shadow, pointed directly at Castlemore. It was the only one in the world Ry couldn't fail to recognize. It was the most famous wand in England. Its tip bulbed with silver magic.

The Chief of the Wizard's Council raised his arms, his eyes shimmering for a moment with what Ry could only describe as sudden change. 'Friends, friends, we must remain calm. My Lord Glorio Wren is no fool; he'd not jeopardize the safety of Wizardry for the sake of some sweaty Muggles! If it would please you I shall dispatch an owl at once—'

No, no, it would not please them. They told him so.

'An official, then, an official of this Assembly, to ascertain…'

Yes, well, conceivably that could suffice.

'And now let us move on to more pressing matters. My Lord the Chief Warlock assures me his preparations for the obliviation of London are nearly complete…'

Ry discreetly returned to the scullery, discreetly lifted up a house elf by the ears.

'The other hall, the one like this,' he said.

Wide-eyed with fear, the elf nodded gravely.

'Show me. Quick.'

He followed the old girl out of the scullery, down a corridor, through a broom closet, down another corridor, and into a cold storage filled with barrels, cheeses, and skinned animals dangling from hooks. She indicated a door, ajar, and took her leave directly.

A door, ajar.

Ry breathed deeply, tried to steady himself.

He had her.

She was controlling Castlemore. He'd spent a profitable year imperiusing a bear and it all clicked into place, all made sense. Exhausting work, the Imperius spell. She'd be tired coming out of that hall. Kill her? Right then? Explain later?

But he had to know why. What was she up to? Why cover for Glorio Wren? Why protect a wizard who was endangering them all by healing Muggles? 'Engagements at the highest levels' indeed.

He'd get it out of her. He'd blindly stumbled into leverage. Brindlesticks didn't work alone. Not even Susurro.

Ry felt himself smiling. He was going to win.

He'd gotten the drop on her. He was supposed to be in Scotland.

He'd tell her: I know what you're doing; I saw you do it. Meet me…

…at the Executioner's Tree in Waltham. Everyone knew it. It was private. And he could hide.

Meet me in two hours. But he'd be there in one. He'd say two hours but he'd go right out. He and Sasha. Apparate to Hammerstein's, rig up Sash's saddle and light out. He'd say two, but he'd get there right away. She'd come looking for blood and he'd be lying in wait. A stroke of genius.

He felt potent and healthy. He couldn't quite command his smile but was otherwise very strong.

The assembly was winding down.

You could always tell when something was winding down.

୫