“Here are our birdies,” mused Hryhorij, peering from behind a steel beam.

  Piam pressed two fio her lips, saying nothing. The magnifying lens of her artificial eye pierced the darkness, catg distant cars approag the stru site. A lone guard on the night shift jumped to his feet, hastily opehe gates, and then had to leap away to avoid being hit by the gate as the front vehicle accelerated and smashed it open.

  Pompous idiots. Piam calmly cluded, on the six-wheeler. If one knew where to look, one could glean information from anything, and the agents of the Iigation Bureau weren’t known for their xity. The civilian vehicle had a bulletproof alloy coating, and the fmes painted on its side, surrounded by golden shapes, revealed the newers as members of the Benguigui family, useful rats who beed from Houstad’s thriving industry in exge for keeping the underworld . For a long time, the Bureau had turned a blio their little business.

  A kihat might be withdrawn tonight.

  “Raffy boy,” Hryhorij stated the obvious, as a yawning man in a light-toned brown business suit stepped out of the middle car.

  Raffy Benguigui, Tony’s current eldest son, had lost his handsome looks. The skin around his eyes sagged, the ers of his lips turned downward despite his attempt at a ptuous smirk as he so send the guard away. Long years of uricted alcoholid narcotic addi had takeoll, staining his once yellowish skin. But he moved easily, unaided by any augments.

  A rger shape g to the man from behind, an Orais brute dressed in a studded leather biker suit that left his tattooed forearms exposed. His head was hidden by a helmet, and the man knuckle-walked on his four-fingered hands. Fiery streaks flew from between his knuckles, and Piam nodded, satisfied with the quality of the report. Tony’s enforcer, able to wield fmes thanks to his power. Arrived illegally, responsible for four assaults; his test victim is in the hospital, horribly burned.

  “The Benguiguis o be trimmed,” she stated. Tony Benguigui swore he had no idea about his goon’s whereabouts. A lie. Who knew how many others he had told?

  “Eighteen.” Hryhorij clicked his tongue, ting the number of guards who left the opulent vehicles. “And I don’t even know half of them.”

  “her do they,” Piam replied. Most of the rabble carried shotguns and automatic pistols. They formed a circle around the entrao the unfinished parking lot, standing guard as Raffy, the Orais, and two of his minions stole ihey don’t want them to see what’s going to happen. Your hunch was right.”

  The Iigation Bureau was on full alert in preparation for the Third’s arrival. Recovery was the official reason. Iy, the Dynast and ander Devourer wished to also civilize the Wolf Tribe. The best way to do this was to introduce their younger geions to the goods of civilization to stimute a gradual and trolble ge. The Bureau’s civil specialists had great expertise in introdug the Orais tribe into the nation’s life, and they were ready to repeat that feat, smoothing out the rough edges and misuandings that will iably arise between the locals and the Wolfkins.

  The field agents spread around the city, infiltrating every den, f every snitch to spill the beans. Sixteen would-be shooters, young fools hungry for fame, were arrested. Four were burned alive as examples, two were recruited, and the rest were sent to prison. Twenty cases of police corruption were reported and solved; the Bureau spared several idiots who now served as double agents, inf the agency of the families’ as. Terrorists tried to prepare bombings; there id spark in violent crime and the delivery of highly addictive drugs… Too many people thought that the massive event would distract the Bureau.

  Houstad had a long history of toleratiy crimes for the sake of preventing tragedies. Anti-mutant and anti-immigrant movements, bigots who stirred up troubles by rallying fools against the New Breeds, rowdy criminals, drug dealers, flesh trade—the head criminal syndicates reported it, and in exge, the mayor kept his eyes and ears closed to illegal traband and occasional snatched stru bids.

  But Hryhorij, P bless him, had spotted a curious pattern. The Benguigui family acted queer. Their thugs stumbled around, photographing the northern power pnt, streets, and evey’s hall. Rather than peddling soft drugs or harassing their debtors, they joined a guided tour of the pnt. , they discovered an unusual traband: two all-terrain vehicles pted with pure gold alloy and encrusted with gems, capable of achieving the speed of a high-powered rag car, despite their remarkable weight. And the st piece of the puzzle was at this stru site.

  The families cried and whio the mayor about Murzaliev stru, Sunbde Corporation, Ironwills Restoration, and Wintersong Renovation’s aggressive expansion into the Core Lands stru business. Usual methods didn’t work; Ice Fangs stomped out any attempts to intimidate their workers, and Ivar Murzaliev’s corporate security put those who dared damage the pany’s equipment straight into hospital beds. The message was clear: stay away.

  Hryhorij called Piam and shared his s, pointing out the stru site for a new shopping mall and how far behind schedule Tony’s workers were. Why should his family risk losing such a luxurious tract by missing the deadline? Piam piled a very long and messy list of facts gathered by her colleague into an orderly file and came to the same clusion. There was something in here—something so big that Tony was willing to risk losing tokens just to keep from showing it to anyone.

  “But right about what?” Hryhorij said. “There is nothing below; we checked everything. I don’t see any threats or traps. Is this some eborate misdire operation? Are we being had, and there is a huge traband shipment ing in somewhere else?”

  The two agents wore camoufge and positiohemselves in the middle of the unfinished first floor of the mall, at the far edge of the stru site. A few days earlier, they had gohrough the standard procedure of f identification and posing as stru workers. They searched for everything, ranging frs to experimental ons, and found nothing. Piam even began to doubt herself because the security was so x. Could it be that the family had nothing to hide and had simply gone senile from overdosing? Doubtful, siwo years ago Raffy had murdered his older sister and usurped her position in the family after she had briefly sunk into a drug-induced bliss. The Benguiguis were cutthroats and opportunists, easy to predict thanks to their gluttonous ambition.

  Until today, when shift supervisors suddenly announced a paid day off for all workers. Piam tacted the Provincial Army and received a detailed report about Benguiguis’ cars making their way here. Something was fishy, and the agent inteo learn what. She didn’t care about the so-called guard; four squads of the Provincial Army stood ready, not retly enlisted recruits, but veterans who had experience subduing hostile New Breeds. At a snap of her fingers, they would swoop in, ending aance.

  Maybe Hryhorij was right. Maybe the family knew of their presence. Perhaps it would be wiser to go in, guns bzing. But Piam favored a tip-of-the-needle approach to any situation, whivolved crippling hostile leadership and keeping the anization intact for the Bureau’s future use, rather than leaving a power vacuum that could lead to a bloodbath.

  She also trusted in Hryhorij. Messy, unrepresentative, and overly reliant on his intuition he may be, the burly man rarely made mistakes in unc crimes against the Recmation Army and the righteous Dynast.

  “Tony doesn’t have the mao pull it off,” Piam said. “We stick to the inal pn.”

  They pulled on the cowls of their gray camoufge suits, and a rumbling jolt passed over their skin as servomotors activated, filling the two agents with newfound strength. her of them was a New Breed; the brown-skinned Hryhorij enlisted in the Bureau from a ountain vilge in the west, and the wheat-skinned Piam was born in Houstad. But both had years of experience dealing with a dangerous opposition, their responses enhanced by the meical augments and drugs their suits ied into their bloodstreams.

  Quietly, the agents slipped out of the unfinished building and sighe troopers to stand by. Piam led her partner behind the currently empty workers’ barracks, keeping their distance from the hired thugs. There was not enough information to say if any of them had power, so there was no reason to risk dete. They proceeded to the barred entrance of an emerge corridor, where a locksmith on Piam’s wrist activated, bypassed the electrical system to disable the arm, and then burned a small, round hole in the door. A maniputor slipped in and pushed the bar aside. The two ageered cautiously, throwing o g Houstad.

  As expected, there was no presen the narrow corridor created to let the masses out in case a colpse buried the mairance. Hryhorij and Piam readied their standard ms and turheir suits’ souors to maximum, hearing distant footsteps heading toward the lowest level.

  The agents were familiar with the location; they had not only done a sweep with the portable sers but also worked to secure the western walls. Piam rolled her eyes at the instruments left in the hardened crete. Someone’s ass was going to be grilled tomorrow, but that was none of her business.

  Their quarry passed four levels and stopped at the very bottom of the unfinished parking lot. Raffy reached for a cigar, and his Orais bodyguard snapped his fingers, creating a ball of fme lingering in the air for his master to light his cigar. Then the Benguigui paced bad forth, tapping at his belt, and the agents g each other as his Normie minions pced fht bulbs around him to illumihe pce.

  This was weird. There was nothing but settled dust, rubble, instruments, and trash here. Gray dust had already dirtied Raffy’s pants to his knees; his loud kick sent ay against a wall, but there was no answer why he was here. Raffy wasn’t an errand boy; when he wasn’t wasting his time in brothels, drinking, partying, and overdosing s, he mercilessly iigated his brothers and sisters, seeking to subjugate the weakest and kill those above him to secure his position as Tony’s heir. Why was he here? A new kink of solitude? Madness.

  Piam calmly sent a sile to the soldiers, warning them to alert the headquarters and begiorm the moment unications were cut or jammed. No risk. She and Hryhorij led themselves in the unfinished elevator, each pressed tightly against the wall, and the optical camoufge adjusted the colors of their suits to make them indistinguishable from the gray walls.

  Then the sensors caught something. A ripping sound came from ay spa front of Raffy, apanied by a fairic surge in the air. A louder crack followed, and a thin finger protruded from the empty space. The finger moved down, biseg the spad leaving a faint blue light in its wake. The line reached the floor, then the finger disappeared into the blue, and then the line expanded, unleashing a billowing window ihe parking lot.

  Music, guttural singing, ughter, and g sounded from the opening. Bright lights fshed, quickly banishing the darkness. The other side was filled with a murky mist that even the agents’ leruggled to see through. Their suits detected a rapid rise in temperature as heat poured in, and the vapor trails carried traces of halluogeniarcotics. Raffy inhaled a full breath and grinned, maintaining perfeposure as his Normie bodyguards strapped on rebreathers.

  Figures danced in the mist: beautiful women, pletely naked except fold bracelets and jewelry. They leapt and pirouetted, nding gracefully and never breaking their dance - not even to g the criminals. Piam’s eyes saw burning braziers, incrusted with jade, standing in peared to be a gigantit. Soft carpets, richly trimmed with real gold, covered the floor.

  In the distance, shrouded ihickest mist, a figure sat on a throne posed of dozens of women. They weren’t stitched or fused together; these were living, breathing women doing their best to form the armrests, back, and base of the throne. Covered i and groaning from exertion, they tried their best to maintain a fortable seat for their cruel overload.

  “Raffy, my friend!” the figure boomed in a deep, pleasant baritone. “How’s life beeing you? Have you found my modest gifts to your liking?”

  “They are beautiful,” Raffy replied, his voice trembling. “A single door costs enough to buy a vil.”

  “Is it possible to do any less for your friends? Stick around, and mood things will iably follow!” Piam thought that she saincer briefly appear from the smoke, but it could’ve been her imagination. Irrelevant. She’ll review the recorded footage ter. “A new dawn fast approaches Houstad, my dear friend. Our alliance promises a bright future for us both.”

  “I am sure my father will appreciate it,” Raffy said.

  “Father? Raffy, let us not speak of Tony; let us speak of you. You are a shrewd man, so drop beating around the bush,” the speaker ughed ihe mists. “You want to be in charge. And why shouldn’t you? Yenius saw the potential in my offer; it is your diligehat delivered the required photos and intel, seg the wellbeing of your khaganate…”

  “Family,” Raffy interrupted him. “We prefer the word family.” The man walked around the spatial window, examining it from every angle. “Your words are pleasing to the ear, but you have made me wait, and I have the impression that you are fetting my father on purpose. How do I know you won’t be discarding me like him the moment I outlive my usefulness?”

  “Raffy, you are a smart man—the smartest man I’ve met tely.” Honeyed words flowed from ihe mists. “Discarding you? And who will repce you? Tony? Your father may believe you are expendable, which is why he sent you instead of ing himself, but is it not the fate of every father to fade into obscurity eventually? It would be foolish to sacrifice a rising star for a fading one. You know the locals; you uand what makes them tick. Why should I repce you? Why would Khatun not want you? My boy, we want you to rise and take the seat of this freak iy Hall. Just imagi: Raffy Benguigui, Taluqdar of Houstad. It has a lovely ring to it, does it not?” the voice softened. “Women, drugs, gold, resped authority could all be yours if you but reach out and take them.”

  “And rice would I have to pay for it?” Raffy asked carefully.

  “A little less than a bauble. A simple, paltry sip of airag to show resped devotion to our cause. No risks or dangers involved,” the deep voice purred from the other side of the spatial window. “You have already provided the images we requested—splendid pictures—the best photos ever. We will ask for more of the same, detailed photos of public squares, sewers, streets, and such. And if you drop in photos of the mayor’s office, we’ll be much obliged. We also dislike the freak.”

  “How much time do I have?” Raffy inquired. “And why do you evehese photos? Couldn’t you take them off the ?”

  “A month, no less, my friend. We have our own morsel to devour; an ignorant dolt had refused the Khatun’s generous offer of submission. The step is for our forces to reach the wall. It is a tedious, grueling, muask, so I leave it to Iron Lord. Let him py at ventional warfare,” the speaker chuckled, and his living throne groaned as the poor sves struggled to bear the immense weight. “As for your question, we need ret pictures; anything over two months old won’t do. We wouldn’t want to open a hole into a brick wall, am I right? And the trustworthiness of the information found o is overrated.”

  “The Third Army will be in Houstad,” the criminal warhe shrouded figure. “And I heard something about your people dying in the north…”

  “Sky Lord Khan had failed? Ha, that’s what you get when you a your own.” The swirling mists s elicited a booming ughter, and the throne shook. The sves’ eyes bulged from their efforts. “That’s what you get fn allies and living in solitude. You and I are different, Raffy. We are men of vision; we seek to rise high and thrive. Dying on a battlefield is such a bore. Decapitations are ing, my friend. We will show the people that they ’t rely on their precious armies, ws, or civilization to protect them. The ensuing chaos will cause the families’ leaders to meet in person to assess the situation. And if you, my wonderful, loyal, clever friend, take the helm, it’ll be grand.”

  Piam kept her cool, abs the information. These were the scum who attacked the Recmation Army’s territory. Their fate is sealed, their armies will be crushed, and their nds will know prosperity and peader the Dynast’s rule. But she didn’t let her loyalty training cloud her judgment. The he leader of those fat bastards knows it, and he doesn’t seem to care about losing a New Breed equal to a warlord. They also know about the Third, which means they know about the noble ander Ravager, the Dynast’s trusted sword, and the Tamer of Wilderness.

  She sent the recs to the soldiers outside, disregarding the possibility of dete, along with a striand to rey them to headquarters immediately and storm the pce.

  Sky Lord. Not Mad Hatter, as Warlord Janine had assumed. Sky Lord was a servant.

  A potential equal to the ander was leading the Horde… If Piam was right in her suspis, such a being ot be allowed to ehe Core Lands.

  “Agreed,” Raffy said and crumbled his cigar. “Tell me the details.”

  “Raffy’s lives, the rest die,” Piam ordered, and she and Hryhorij took aim and fired.