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the Scarlet Spires, which is why Achamian had courted him over the past few weeks. This is what spies do: woo the slaves of their competitors.
    Geshrunni stared fiercely into his eyes, twisted his hand palm outward. “There’s a way for us to satisfy my suspicion,” the man said softly.
    “Three!” reverberated across mud brick and scuffed mahogany.
    Achamian winced, both because of the man’s powerful grip and because he knew the “way” Geshrunni referred to. Not like this.
    “Geshrunni, please. You’re drunk, my friend. What School would hazard the wrath of the Scarlet Spires?”
    Geshrunni shrugged. “The Mysunsai, maybe. Or the Imperial Saik. The Cishaurim. There are so many of your accursed kind. But if I had to wager, I would say the Mandate . I would say you’re a Mandate Schoolman.”
    Canny slave! How long had he known?
    The impossible words were there, poised in Achamian’s thought, words that could blind eyes and blister flesh. He leaves me no choice . There would be an uproar. Men would bellow, clutch their swords, but they would do nothing but scramble from his path. More than any people in the Three Seas, the Ainoni feared sorcery.
    No choice.
    But Geshrunni had already reached beneath his embroidered vest. His fist bunched beneath the fabric. He grimaced like a grinning jackal.
    Too late . . .
    “You look,” Geshrunni said with menacing ease, “like you have something to say.”
    The man withdrew his hand and produced the Chorae. He winked, then with terrifying abruptness, snapped the golden chain holding it about his neck. Achamian had sensed it from their first encounter, had actually used its unnerving murmur to identify Geshrunni’s vocation. Now Geshrunni would use it to identify him.
    “What’s this, now?” Achamian asked. A shudder of animal terror passed through his pinned arm.
    “I think you know, Akka. I think you know far better than I.”
    Chorae. Schoolmen called them Trinkets. Small names are often given to horrifying things. But for other men, those who followed the Thousand Temples in condemning sorcery as blasphemy, they were called Tears of God. But the God had no hand in their manufacture. Chorae were relics of the Ancient North, so valuable that only the marriage of heirs, murder, or the tribute of entire nations could purchase them. They were worth the price: Chorae rendered their bearers immune to sorcery and killed any sorcerer unfortunate enough to touch them.
    Effortlessly holding Achamian’s hand immobile, Geshrunni raised the Chorae between thumb and forefinger. It looked plain enough: a small sphere of iron, about the size of an olive but encased in the cursive script of the Nonmen. Achamian could feel it tug at his bowels, as though Geshrunni held an absence rather than a thing, a small pit in the very fabric of the world. His heart hammered in his ears. He thought of the knife sheathed beneath his tunic.
    “Four!” Raucous laughter.
    He struggled to free his captive hand. Futile.
    “Geshrunni . . .”
    “Every Captain of the Javreh is given one of these,” Geshrunni said, his tone at once reflective and proud. “But then, you already know this.”
    All this time, he’s been playing me for a fool! How could I’ve missed it?
    “Your masters are kind,” Achamian said, rivetted by the horror suspended above his palm.
    “Kind?” Geshrunni spat. “The Scarlet Spires are not kind . They’re ruthless. Cruel to those who oppose them.”
    And for the first time, Achamian glimpsed the torment animating the man, the anguish in his bright eyes. What’s happening here? He hazarded a question: “And to those who serve them?”
    “They do not discriminate.”
    They don’t know! Only Geshrunni . . .
    “Five!” pealed beneath the low ceilings.
    Achamian licked his lips. “What do you want, Geshrunni?”
    The warrior-slave looked down at Achamian’s trembling palm, then lowered the Trinket as though he were a child curious of what might happen. Simply