Tristis focused every ounce of effort into suppressing any reaction to the provocation. He'd been careless in Rastane's office, and he was determined not to repeat the same mistake here. Even as Virginie's eyes bore into him, looking for the slightest tell, he gave her nothing.

  A long moment passed and then Virginie sank back into her chair with a fake chuckle like she was trying to pass her words off as a joke. "Go back a couple of hundred years and that's what everyone was confessing to. Witchcraft. Today it's terrorism. Do you know why that changed, Tristis?"

  "Back then they were hunting witches. Today you're hunting terrorists."

  "That's right. Witchcraft never crosses anyone's mind in this room." Then Virginie added thoughtfully, "Do you think what you're here for today is about terrorism?"

  At this point he was sure now that she had nothing on him. All they knew was that he'd walked into Rastane's office. Anything could have been discussed in there. Rastane was a businessman, and most of his visitors came in on business.

  But it also confirmed his suspicions. The Gamorese government knew about magic and didn't want the public to know. That's why the spymaster was probing him with suggestive talk of witches and laughing it off. She couldn't tell him from a normal civilian.

  "You understand the point I'm making, don't you?" she said. "Whenever it feels like I'm holding back on you, it's because I'm taking special care not to prime you. It's a problem a lot of investigators have. They give away too much too quickly. It makes it hard to tell how much of the testimony is genuine. It's particularly a problem with children, don't you know? Untrained investigators can really mess up an investigation this way. But in my opinion most people never grow up. Adults can be just as suggestible."

  She was trying different angles to convince him that she knew more than she did. He just had to avoid giving anything away until she got tired of it.

  "I can't tell you what you want to know if you don't tell me what it is," he said.

  "I'm familiar with your father," she replied. "He's a good man. Can you imagine how he would feel if he were to find out that you've been to the Shark Tank nightclub?"

  "Leave him out of this," he snapped.

  "How much worse would he feel to learn that you'd met with Rastane?" she continued. "It would break his heart."

  "Are you going to tell him?"

  She let the question hang for a moment too long before answering. "We aren't in the business of stirring up family drama. We just want to know what you and Rastane spoke about. For example did he tell you about what happened to his collectors?"

  "What happened to his collectors?" he replied, feigning ignorance.

  She sighed. "Listen. You're a smart kid. You must be aware that sometimes we . . ." She waved her hand about in search of the right words. ". . . go a bit beyond what we're technically allowed to do. I like to think that it helps us keep the country safe. But the courts, they don't think like that. They insist that we follow the rules."

  "That's because the courts uphold the rule of law," he replied. "Even if it's inconvenient for you."

  She chuckled. "You used to study prelaw, didn't you? Until you dropped out. Not long after you first made contact with Rastane, I notice. Though I suppose the two events weren't necessarily connected. Your grades were already suffering, weren't they?"

  She was needling him, trying to get under this skin. First by bringing up his father and now his grades. He couldn't understand why she thought this would achieve anything.

  "You still haven't told me what you want from me," he said.

  "What I'm saying is," she replied, "we need a clean sheet for the courts. Rastane is too influential for us to remove him like we did his goons. We need to reconstruct all the evidence we have against him in a way that ticks all the legal processes. You understand what I mean, don't you?"

  "You want me to help you take down Rastane?"

  "You see, I wasn't the one who questioned his collectors. Someone else did the job, and they left me with two problems. First, it's evidence I can't use. You understand why. And second, I don't completely trust their testimony because, well, they were in a situation where they'd tell us anything we wanted to hear—whether or not it's true."

  "I thought you said you don't do torture," he said.

  "Weren't you paying attention? I just said I wasn't the one who questioned Rastane's men." She put on a smugly fake smile. "You're lucky I'm the one they called in tonight." She leaned forward. "So how about it? Did he tell you anything about his collectors?"

  It was such a clumsy ruse that he was offended she thought he'd fall for it. By confirming that Rastane knew about his collectors' encounter with magic, he would also be confessing to that knowledge himself. And then he'd end up in a cell next to those goons.

  Virginie was right about one thing though. He was lucky that she was the one they called in.

  It wasn't that she was bad at her job. Quite the opposite in fact. In his short time with Virginie, he'd come to understand how she'd risen all the way to deputy director in one of the most challenging jobs in the republic of Charais Gamor.

  The flow of her voice was lyrical, almost hypnotic. While she'd changed gears often in her attempts to fish from him, somehow she'd always managed to pull him along. This sort of technique must have worked well for her in the past.

  But it was her rise to the top that had become her very weakness. It happens to everyone who enters into management. The skills they'd honed in their jobs become dull from loss of practice.

  Thus the spymaster's refined technique was let down by the inartful way she'd structured her line of questioning. The attempt to shift the focus onto Rastane simply wasn't believable when it was clear from what had come before that Tristis was the one under the microscope.

  Had she been at the top of her game, fresh and sharp as a rising star. Had she been alert and not pulled out of bed after an already long day. And had he not had prior experience with tricky people like Rastane. Then it was quite possible he'd have fallen into one of her many traps.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  As for why they would call Virginie in despite all her disadvantages, he had a hunch. Magic would presumably be a highly classified topic. As well resourced as the intelligence community was, there wouldn't be many people they could risk letting in on such a world-changing secret. She must have been one of the only people in the know who also had extensive experience as an interrogator.

  "I don't understand why you think Rastane would tell me anything about his business," he said. "Or why I would want to know. It doesn't help me, and it certainly doesn't help him."

  His only goal here was to ensure that the DSI didn't consider him a person of interest. But there would always be a risk of that, so long as they had an open question about his link to Rastane. He decided that the best way to clear their suspicion was to remove this mystery.

  "You want to know what business I have with the man?" he said. "It's to do with a favor he did for a friend of mine. He got her sick mother back from Salomanta. In return he wanted help with a casino he's trying to get approved."

  "Must be a dear friend," she said.

  He felt himself blush.

  The spymaster stared at him for a moment that stretched uncomfortably long. It was tempting to fill the silence, but he didn't want to risk adding anything to fuel her interest.

  At last Virginie sighed and pushed her chair back. "I can't believe I got out of bed for this." The tone of her voice had completely changed, like she could no longer be bothered to put on a show. "Never do your job too well, kid. They come to you for every little thing that's out of the ordinary. And then they complain that you can't deliver when they've given you nothing to work with."

  He sat there in awkward silence.

  "The man's a bloody loan shark. Dozens of people see him every day. Out of all of them, I don't know why you're the one they decided to drag here. Because you dropped out of college shortly after you first met with him? They could have just taken a look at your grades. Because you flew to Ashba to visit an art gallery? I'd do that too if I had money to waste."

  "Can people stop talking about my grades?" he murmured.

  "You'd do well to learn from your father. Stay away from men like Rastane or you're going to catch more attention from people like me." Virginie rose to her feet. "I hate cold coffee. I'm going to pour a fresh cup. Would you like some?"

  Her eyes, her voice, her posture. Right now she just looked . . . tired.

  "I'd rather you just let me go," he said.

  She blinked at him like this was an option she hadn't considered. But she seemed to be giving it some thought—or as much thought as she could muster when coming down from caffeine.

  "All right," she said at last. "I'll order your release. But if you have any more dealings with Rastane and something interesting comes up, drop a line to this station, will you?"

  She picked up her briefcase and cup and then stopped. "If you do get in touch, don't mention my name. I don't want anything more to do with you. And we don't care about the deals you've done with him. Don't waste our time with casinos and medical loans and other nonsense like that. Got it? Oh, and we haven't actually tortured his goons, so don't go around telling people we did, okay?"

  "Should you really be telling me that?" he asked.

  "God, I hope they're listening." She turned to look at the cameras suspended in the corners of the room. "Did you know that our entire conversation has been recorded? This room never stops recording. I probably shouldn't be telling you that either. But what are they going to do? Give me less work? Stop waking me up in the middle of the night to interrogate stupid bloody kids?"

  He decided it best not to interject.

  "I'll find someone to take you back to your car. It's the least we can do after inconveniencing you."

  A different gendarmerie officer dropped Tristis back at the Shark Tank. His car was right where he left it.

  Out of an abundance of caution, he checked it for a tracking device. Nothing. At last he was in the clear. No more Rastane and no more DSI.

  He hopped into the driver's seat and pulled out his phone. Sent a series of messages to Kyra explaining where he'd been. And then he waited and collected his thoughts. He replayed the conversations with Rastane and Virginie in his mind, trying to learn from the experiences. He had to get better at dealing with these monsters if he was to measure up to his master's expectations.

  His phone pinged. Kyra had replied.

  Coordinates for the next dungeon. He plugged them into his GPS. It was in the middle of a forest plantation. He sighed. At least he'd brought his boots.

  There was little traffic to get in his way as he drove out of the city. This time there was no one tailing him when he turned onto the highway.

  When he reached the plantation, he parked at the side of the road and hiked the rest of the way. With the trees planted in neat rows, he could just run straight through until he spotted the telltale shimmering of a portal anchor. It hadn't been opened yet. He was the first one here.

  That's odd.

  There was no reception in a dungeon. When Kyra sent him the coordinates, she had to physically be in Concordia. Which meant she was already on her way here. And she usually planned the dungeons to be close by the last.

  He opened his phone to check in with her. That was when he noticed a message that he'd missed.

  "You'll be training on your own. We can't be seen together anymore."

  Had she misread his messages? He'd told her that the issues were all sorted.

  He started typing but then stopped. For a long time he just stared at the screen.

  His cheeks were wet with tears.

  It had been a long and exhausting night. He just wanted to see the team again. And now he'd been cut loose.

  He had such a cruel master.

  But she never did anything without a reason.

  Forest plantations had never been his favorite place. Everything about them felt unnatural. The well-ordered formation. The way every tree was the same. The strange absence of shrubbery. They were quieter at night than natural forests. Even the insects were drowsy.

  With his heightened hunter senses, he searched his surroundings. There were dozens of individual eyes watching him. Foxes. Raccoons. Owls. He could see them all in vibrant infravision. Listen to their breathing with his sensitive ears. Even their heartbeats if he concentrated.

  These senses were essential for survival in a dungeon, where danger could be waiting around the next corner. They helped him pick out other people's moods and anxieties. And here in this forest they identified a spy.

  The man had cleverly kept his distance, watching on him through night-vision binoculars. No one without experience of hunters could anticipate the difference in the keenness of their eyes. And anyone without knowledge of infravision would understandably feel assured of their concealment under the dark canopy of the forest.

  But ignorance doesn't change the reality. Tristis was a hunter, and with infravision his eyes could pick up the heat of living creatures in the darkest of darks. The man was no more hidden to him than a kestrel's plumes under the sun.

  It was only on appraising the man and being confronted with undeniable proof of his failure that Tristis realized his folly.

  Had he really believed himself to be in the clear just because he hadn't noticed anyone tailing him? The agents at the DSI were the best in the business.

  He could see it so clearly now. He hadn't outsmarted the DSI at all. They'd outsmarted him. The entire interrogation itself was a ruse, and the spymaster had lulled him into a false sense of security.

  The DSI had a hunter with appraisal. Though their level was too low to return a reading, a failed appraisal was enough to confirm his status as a hunter. Virginie never needed him to slip up at all. She'd had hold of his noose from the very beginning.

  As for why the spymaster had let him go—why she'd engineered this ruse in the first place—she must have guessed that there were others behind him. She wasn't satisfied with catching one rat. She wanted the entire nest.

  And he almost led her to them.

  Luckily his master was smarter than he was. From just a description over text messages, Kyra had realized what he had failed to see. She'd been right to cut him loose.

  As for why she'd given him these coordinates . . .

  He still had a role to play. And he was going to play it to the best of his ability. He reached out, opened up the portal, and stepped through.

  Let's see how Virginie copes with this.