The ragged cheer that had echoed through the Khavron Pass was a ghost in his ears, a memory already turning sour. Victory had curdled into the cold, metallic taste of dread. They had not won. They had performed perfectly in a play written by the enemy. Sineus paced the length of the cramped root cellar, a cage of damp earth and rotting timbers just six steps long. The air was thick with the smell of cold dirt and mildew. A single tallow candle on an overturned crate threw long, dancing shadows that made the small space feel even more confined.
In his hand, he held the crumpled note. He had smoothed it out and folded it a dozen times, the paper growing soft and fragile. The perfect, sharp fold it once held, a line like a thread pulled taut just before it snaps, was gone. Now it was just a ruined thing.
Alessandro Volpe sat on a stack of empty potato sacks, methodically cleaning his rifle. He worked in the flickering light, his movements economical and precise. The soft scrape of an oiled rag on steel was the only sound in the cellar, a small, rhythmic noise that did little to break the oppressive silence. He did not offer comfort. He did not ask questions. He was simply present, a solid, grounding fact in a world that had begun to feel like a phantom’s dream. His presence was a choice, a silent statement that Sineus was no longer entirely alone.
Sineus stopped his pacing. He walked back to the crate and smoothed the note out one last time, his fingers tracing the elegant, archaic script. It was a scholar’s hand, confident and unnervingly precise. He closed his eyes, reaching out with his senses, trying to read the faint psychic residue left on the paper. There was no rage. No passion. Only a vast, chilling intellect, a mind that saw the world as a set of principles to be manipulated. A mind that saw a hundred of its own soldiers as a disposable resource, a price willingly paid to deliver a single, devastating message.
The full weight of it settled on him. Lucien Lacroix had not simply anticipated their ambush. He had orchestrated it. He had known they would get the intelligence, known they would choose the pass, known they would succeed. He had sacrificed a full company of men and a convoy of materiel just to confirm Sineus’s existence. To announce his own.
His gift, the ability to see and touch the Istopis, the memory-script of the world, was no longer a secret weapon. It was a beacon. Lacroix had not seen him with his eyes; he had detected his unique perception. He had felt Sineus looking at the world, and he had looked back.
— Find anything? — Alessandro’s voice was low, cutting through the silence without breaking it.
Sineus opened his eyes. He looked at the note, at the five simple words that had re-written the entire war. — Only what he wanted me to find.
A cold certainty washed over him, a feeling far worse than the terror of the ambush or the grief for their losses. His greatest strength was now his greatest vulnerability. Every time he used his sight to read the world, he was a man shouting his location in a dark forest. He was exposed. The advantage was gone.
He thought of the clean, cold snap of an excision, the feeling of a single, unwanted memory-thread breaking under the pressure of his will. This was the opposite of that. It felt as if Lacroix had not severed a thread, but attached one. A shimmering, invisible line that ran from the heart of the French war machine directly to him. He was no longer a surgeon. He was a specimen, pinned to a board.
— So, this Lacroix knows you, — Alessandro said, finally looking up from his work. He set the rifle stock on the dirt floor, his bandaged hand resting on the barrel. He was forcing the issue into the open, dragging the formless dread into the candlelight. — What does that change?
Sineus did not answer at first. He folded the note and tucked it into his coat. To say it aloud was to make it real, giving the fear a name and a shape that Alessandro could now see. It was a price, this sharing of a vulnerability he would have once borne in absolute silence.
— We’ve been hunted by your Lodge, — Alessandro pressed, his voice still quiet but with a hard edge. He was not being cruel; he was being practical. He was an inventor, and this was a new problem that needed to be defined before it could be solved. — We’ve been hunted by the French. What makes this one man different?
The question hung in the air. Sineus looked at the Italian, at the grime on his face and the weariness in his eyes. This was the man who had pulled him from the fire of his own past. This was the man who had accepted a bandage from him after the river raid. Theirs was an alliance no longer born of simple utility. It had been tested by blood and failure. It had earned a measure of trust.
— Because the others hunt the rogue agent, — Sineus said, his voice flat. The turn was made. The fear was given a voice. — He is hunting the man.
He saw the tactical calculations in Alessandro’s eyes shift. — He will use my past against me. My family’s history. The Lodge’s secrets. Things I’ve done. He’s not just hunting me, Alessandro. He’s reading me.
Alessandro stared at him for a long moment. The sounds of the cellar—the dripping water, the whisper of the candle flame—seemed to fall away. He processed it, not as a soldier, but as an engineer. He saw the design of the trap. He understood the terrible elegance of it.
Slowly, he leaned the rifle against the wall. He gave it a final, patting check, then turned his full attention to Sineus. The gesture was small, but it was everything. It was an acknowledgment that the problem was no longer about weapons or tactics. It was about the man in front of him. It was a move from a shared fight to a shared burden.
— Then we go where you have no past, — Alessandro said, his voice a low growl. It was not a solution, but it was a direction. A statement of intent.
Sineus shook his head. — There is no such place.
The weight of it was crushing. Every open thread of his life was now a potential snare. The debt he owed the Circle of the Golden Horde for the shipping manifests—a weakness Lacroix could exploit. The need to reach his ancestral estate, the Bielski Manor, to find whatever anchor might stabilize his power—a destination Lacroix could now anticipate. The memory of Pyotr, his mentor, falling with a smile on his face—a wound Lacroix could twist.
He was a man walking through a field of traps he himself had laid over a lifetime of duty.
The candle flame guttered, casting their long shadows against the damp stone. Outside, a cold wind rattled the loose boards over the cellar entrance, a lonely, searching sound.
They had to run. But where could they go that his own history would not be waiting?
