Inked

on your own and almost giving me a stroke?” Cyrus’s words were light, but his expression was anything but.
    “To be fair, you didn’t know about that until later.”
    “I had a front-row seat courtesy of our bond. And without knowing you planned to sic his own wards on him!”
    “About that bond thing—”
    Cyrus shook his head. “That’s not going to work. For once, we’re going to finish one argument before we start the next.”
    “Fine,” I said, giving him a look. “Although it should be pretty obvious that I couldn’t tell anyone my plans. Not even Sebastian. You know what wolf ears are, and Grayshadow was right there! He might have overheard.”
    “And if he hadn’t used the wards?” Cyrus demanded. “If he’d assumed he could beat you on his own? What then?”
    “He didn’t know my tat had run out of juice,” I pointed out. “And it had already hurt him once. He had no way of knowing that wouldn’t happen again.”
    “And you had no way of knowing if that would be enough to convince him! Or that you’d guessed right about what his wards would do. They could have fought with him!”
    “I took a calculated risk.”
    “Based on what ?”
    “Jamie’s knowledge of the maker, for one thing. Some of the surviving gang members were rounded up and questioned last night. They’d been trading Wilkinson Fey wine now and again in return for protection wards, so they thought nothing of taking him the wolf pelts. He initially refused to have anything to do with them, but after they knocked him around a little, he agreed to give them what they wanted: weapons. What they didn’t know was that he’d ensured that those weapons would only work against them.”
    “But if the interrogation was last night, you didn’t know any of that when you challenged!”
    “No, but I knew that a guy who’d had his only child killed by a gang wasn’t likely to bow to pressure from another one. And he had to know he’d be killed as soon as he did what they wanted. He’d seen the wolf pelts and therefore was in a position to identify the ones who had taken them. It was the same reason his daughter was killed six years ago. So if he was going to die anyway, I thought there was a good chance he’d like to take a few of the gang with him.”
    “A good chance?” Cyrus looked like he was swallowing something sour. “If you’d been wrong you’d be dead!”
    “If it had to be me or Sebastian, better that it was me,” I told him, struggling for calm. Arguing with Cyrus was usually fun, adding frisson to whatever we were doing. But not when he got on this subject.
    “Sebastian knew the risks when he assumed his position—”
    “As did I. I’m a war mage trained to do exactly this kind of thing.”
    “I think if other mages went around fighting duels to the death in front of the Council, I might have heard.”
    “Maybe not in front of the Council,” I agreed, “but just about everywhere else. And with the war on, it’s likely to happen again. Particularly with my new job.”
    Cyrus looked up from glaring at the rug. “What new job?”
    “Hargrove has stuck me with the worst group of trainees you’ve ever seen. They scare me. I may be in here for a while, considering I have zero incentive to get well.”
    “You love teaching.”
    “They blew up the gym, Cyrus! Within a day of arrival! And I’m supposed to have them combat ready in six months!”
    “Sounds like they already are.” He looked much cheerier suddenly. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that, in the Corps, teaching was considered one of the more dangerous activities. “But at least you weren’t fired. By the way, why weren’t you fired?”
    “The same reason Caleb and Jamie weren’t. Hargrove prefers to keep us around to torture.”
    He grinned. “I thought Sedgewick was the problem.”
    “He was, until he decided to autopsy a certain off-limits corpse. Caleb dropped by with the news a few minutes ago. Sebastian noticed the difference when the body was delivered and made it sound like it was going to cause a major diplomatic incident. In reality we don’t even know for certain who the Were was.”
    “That’s a politician for you.”
    “So we did a trade. My little lapse for Sedgewick’s.”
    “Sounds like things are looking up.”
    “Yeah. So about that bond—”
    “I have some news, too,” Cyrus said quickly. “I’ve talked Sebastian into putting together a group of vargulfs to act as informants and to keep an