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them accidentally.
    “What of your apprentice?” William paused just before they left the courtyard, and Soren realized with a jolt he’d forgotten about the young sorcerer who’d attacked Mirabelle in concert with his mentor.
    The apprentice’s body lay crumpled on the ground, a small ball of wild magic hanging just above his head, and the sorcerer moved nervously, lifting a hand and flicking his fingers. The wild magic seemed to implode in on itself, and disappeared.
    “If you could get one of your guards to take him to his bed, I will see him after we speak to these other prisoners you are holding, and I have stripped Mirabelle of her power.” He spoke slowly, almost slurring.
    “That wasn’t part of the deal.” William lifted a hand and grasped the sorcerer’s arm. “Banish her, yes. Not strip her of her power.”
    “How do you think a sorcerer is banished?” The sorcerer looked down at the hand on his sleeve and seemed to gain a little more energy. William released him as if he’d been stung. “If she is left with her power, she can return to fight another day. That would not be good strategy, now would it?”
    “I made promises to her father . . .”
    “All of which you broke when you came to me. You understand that by aligning with you, I have broken agreements as well. So we are both now outside the law.”
    “I hadn’t thought . . . ” William’s words trailed, and Soren realized the men around them were listening as well, and William was aware of it.
    “Don’t let it trouble you over-much.” The sorcerer gave a low laugh. “It has worked out quite well for Eric the Bold and Nuen of Harness, being outside the law. Although one couldn’t say the same for their liege lords. Or those they’ve imposed themselves upon. I hear the king of Gaynor is not Eric’s willing patron.”
    William ran a hand over his face and said nothing. Soren decided he wasn’t the only one to hear a threat in the sorcerer’s words.
    They had reached the side of the castle, and the guard started down the stairs to the dungeon. Soren pressed himself against the wall as he followed them. He was glad of his precaution when the guard with the pitchfork hurried on their heels with the key, the hem of his cloak brushing Soren’s shins as he went by.
    The man struggled with the lock, and then pushed the door open, stepping back to let the guard carrying Mirabelle in first, William and the sorcerer right on his heels.
    A noise like the screech of a million rusty hinges, inhuman with pain, came from within the dungeon, going higher and higher, and then cut off abruptly.
    Soren forced himself to run down the rest of the stairs, uncaring of the guard standing in the doorway. He shoved the man aside, and with a cry he went down, pitchfork clattering beside him, and scrabbled out the way, pressing himself into a corner of the stairwell, facing the wall.
    Soren braced for monsters, for anything at all.
    Instead, William stood just within the doorway, staring down at a crumpled figure on the ground.
    Soren first thought it was Mirabelle, but then he saw her, lying on her side, dropped by the guard who’d carried her near the door to the cell. The guard was turned away, hanging onto the bars for support.
    The figure on the floor was the sorcerer, his hood thrown back, baring a sharp-featured, strong face and dark hair pulled back in a queue. His mouth was set in a rigor of death, and faint blue light glimmered here and there around him, and then winked out.
    From the way he lay, the sorcerer had arched his back as he died, his arms thrown wide.
    Soren’s mouth fell open. He remembered Mirabelle staying behind a few moments, remembered the flash of blue within the room before she’d closed and locked the door behind her.
    But whatever spell she’d cast, it had affected only the sorcerer. William and the guard were dazed and frightened, but seemingly unharmed.
    Mirabelle was another story. Even from where he stood, he could see