Page 4 of The Unweaver

Died with his hands tied behind his back, Cora thought. Verek’s gang specialized in brutality. During the war the cutthroats had monopolized steel manufacturing. Verek’s Ferromancers lowered the metal’s melting temperature while his fellow Pyromancers kept the fires burning hot.

But nothing came in or out of London without passing through the Realmwalker. Mages and humans alike felt Malachy Bane’s stranglehold on transportation.

“How very inconvenient,” Teddy said. “Did you perchance acquire the Chronomancer’s Portal Key before his vague demise?”

When Horace shifted away. Teddy grabbed his arm, magic rippling from his fingers. Animancy wove patterns in the chaos of people’s innermost urges. A simple task, according to Teddy, as they all boiled down to three categories: eating, drinking, and fornicating.

The petty musings of flesh, he called it. But Cora knew how it haunted him, being privy to the secrets people kept hidden even from themselves.

“No using your magic on me, Animancer.” Horace jerked out of his grasp. “Even if we did find that Portal Key, you think we’d be handing it over to you? That key’s the only way to get to the Realmwalker.”

Cora shuddered, pulling her cloak tighter. The pieces slotted together into a full conspiracy. The dead Chronomancer had to be Moriarty, the Realmwalker’s second, the right hand of the devil himself. Verek’s thugs had done the killing and Mother’s pets were there to pick the bones clean.

Moriarty’s death was a torch tossed onto kindling dried with rivalry and cured with bloodshed. Forty pounds no longer seemed enough. No amount of money would matter if the Realmwalker killed her tonight.

As Bane expanded his Dublin smuggling empire, he had descended upon London like a dark reckoning and shoved out the competition, sometimes by unspeakably sinister means. Cora had communed with enough of Bane’s victims to know he wouldn’t make it quick or painless. One victim, after filching on a shipping contract, had been disemboweled. Slowly. Another victim, a business rival, had been dropped from ten stories through the Ritz Hotel’s glass atrium in a deafening crash. They’d found his teeth in the dining room.

In the mists on the Thames, the rattle of death grew louder.

“Is Bane aware of his Chronomancer’s untimely expiration yet?” Teddy’s light tone was coated in fear. He’d been on the receiving end of the Realmwalker’s wrath one too many times.

“You think we’d still be breathing if he did?” Horace said.

“Are you even the least bit cognizant ofwhere Bane is right now?” Teddy said with a bite of impatience. “I thought yourflaming overlord Verek was supposed to hit the Realmwalker tonight as well.”

Cora inhaled sharply. What web was Mother tangling them in? The gossamer threads of conspiracy glimmered between the gang bosses. She felt the sticky threads reaching out to ensnare her.

“That was the bloody plan,” Horace said. “We tried Bane’s office at his ritzy Emerald Club. Blasted the door open, we did, and it was just a sodding brick wall. Verek and me was in that office not but a day ago, arguing about that steel he refused to ship into Ireland. Bastard portal mage must’ve warded the door against uninvited guests.”

Teddy swore colorfully. “Did you try his personal abode?”

More money exchanged hands before Horace answered. “Got a report about where the Realmwalker’s house was tonight. Verek sent some blokes out to nab him. They said, sure enough, there it was—that Gothic house of his crammed betwixt two townhouses in Mayfair. When they got closer, it… disappeared.”

“Disappeared,” Teddy repeated in a flat voice.

“You know the stories, mate. That house of hismoves.”

Cora had heard the rumors. Supposedly, the Realmwalker’s house could only be found if it was seen and only seen if it was found. Traversing to a new location across London every night, the space-distorting Choromancer’s house was virtually unfindable.

“So, Bane is alive and his second is dead?” Teddy said. “My hearty congratulations, Horace, to you and your comrades on mucking this up so spectacularly. You’ve quite blown the truce to hell. Well done.”

Memories of the last gang war were fresh beneath Cora’s eyelids. Before the human’s Great War erupted across Europe, the London mages had been embroiled in their own bitter infighting. The longstanding conflict between gangs had beenlike a tripwire. A strand of hair could have triggered mass bloodshed.

Instead, several strands of hair, attached to the head of Malachy Bane, had catapulted the gangs into war, leaving dozens of mages, along with a pile of curious coppers and humans, dead in its wake.

The conspicuous carnage had drawn the wrathful Mage Tribunal to London like a noose to a hangman. The nebulous group of Master mages had survived since the medieval ages as the only semblance of magical law and order. The Tribunal enforced the Covenant, often lethally, ensuring mage secrecy across generations. Their message to the London bosses was clear: peace or death.

In the smoldering aftermath, parley was called. The hierarchy of gangs had been shaken up, but together they forged a reluctant truce and divided up territories. The top three gangs—under Mother, Verek, and Bane—took the lion’s share for themselves. Lesser gangs fought over their scraps.

The truce, like most compromises, had left everyone dissatisfied.

“Yeah, yeah, Teddy. Save your breath. That truce was bullshit anyway. Now pay up and bugger off. I’m freezing my bollocks off out here.” Horace swiped the remaining money and offered Teddy a hand torch. “You’ll need this in the tunnels, mate. Though you might not wanna see.”

The thug beat a hasty retreat. Teddy’s parting threat was lost to the night.

Horace passed within arm’s reach of Cora. She pressed against the crate, her lungs burning from a held breath. If he glanced over, he’d see the Unweaver, not Cora Walcott. Only one of them would take comfort in that.

When his footfalls retreated, she peeled away from the shadows and into the streetlamp’s spectral light. Teddy wasstaring at a door gaping open like a mouth into the bowels of darkness. Upwind of her, he didn’t sense Cora until she was beside him.

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