The glow of the pyramid fades. Lictor releases my wrist.

  I lick my lips. I touch my chest. There’s nothing there. The light is blue and bright. The air dry, odorless. Compared to the smell of blood, it’s quite nice.

  I blink. Lick my lips.

  “What?” I blurt out.

  “Hm?” Lictor says. He’s deep in thought, frowning, rubbing his head. Everything around his eyes is tense and his nose is wrinkled, so he looks more like a pig than ever.

  “I died.”

  Coming out of a Ride feels the same as always. There’s only an idle memory of the things that happened. Even the immeasurable depth of anger, frustration, and helplessness that I felt right at the end doesn’t reach me. The more pressing concern is that I’d like to have a cloak or put on another shirt as the hall is a bit cold.

  Lictor doesn’t react at first. He paces around in a tight circle, hand in his pocket. “Oh, too bad. I mean, good, actually. Grabbing an extra paid off.”

  The knowledge of what happened is sinking in and my cheeks flush with anger. “But we weren’t on a Ride! You said we weren’t!”

  He’s not listening. He’s biting the inside of his cheek, turning something over in his pocket. The Time Gem, I now know. “I need to check something,” he says and reaches toward the pyramid.

  I grab hold of his cloak and yank on it, pulling him away from the artifact. He makes a small choking noise as the cloak tightens around his neck.

  Lictor rubs his hand on his neck and turns to me. He looks surprised, confused by what happened.

  “How were we on a Ride?” I shout at him. I’m off-balance, running on instinct. Yet I know I can’t let him touch the pyramid.

  “Why? What do you mean?”

  “You lied to me! And how?”

  Lictor mumbles something in response and moves again toward the pyramid, but I push closer, squeezing between him and the artifact.

  I jab my finger at his chest. “I counted! We should have been back in the real world already!”

  It works surprisingly well. Lictor backpedals to keep me from pushing my face against his. “Wait, Folke, wait!”

  “You better have a good explanation.”

  “I’m sorry, please. I decided it would be prudent to have a chance to try everything out once, like it would be the real thing. Aren’t you happy I did?”

  I stop my hand mid-poke. I can’t really argue against that. “But how? When?”

  “Before I took you back to your village for a visit. I put you to sleep and thought I could bank one extra Ride.” He’s holding both palms up, speaking in a soothing tone. “Folke, I saved your life. Whatever happened, you now have a chance to do it right this time!”

  I breathe in. I wish there was time to make a plan, but there isn’t. I have to keep him talking for now. “We ran into a teratome. It… got me.”

  That seems to surprise him. He looks at his fingers, counting up. “Finna should know about it, Mandollel usually notices it in time, and even when he doesn’t, you manage to kill it. I didn’t consider it worth mentioning. What happened this time?”

  “We got unlucky, I guess.” I haven’t messed up that many shots in years. I open my palm to look at it and realize the extra thumbs are gone. They are gone!

  “You look happy about it. Starting to see it my way?”

  I hold back the grin and focus. “I guess so. I guess you are right. This time I’m certain we’ll get it!”

  Lictor pats my shoulder and smiles. “That’s the spirit. Avoid the thing this time. Remind Mandollel to be careful.”

  I grab his sleeve and start dragging him toward the door. “Yeah! Well, let’s get going!”

  “I need to sort out something too,” he says, trying to shake me off his sleeve. “Just go ahead. I’ll come right after you.”

  I grab on tighter. If he manages to touch the artifact, he’s unbeatable. Even Corum and Marek said there’s nothing anyone can do against a Janitor. At the moment he’s just a guy, but if he manages to touch the artifact, he’s War Janitor Lictor again. He’ll find out everything, foil every plan, win every fight. “Wait!”

  The smile freezes on his lips and he turns to me.

  I break out in a cold sweat. He can’t know what happened or who did it. Not for certain. There was the scuffle during the briefing and then at the last minute he noticed the Gem was missing from his pocket, but that should be everything he knows. My throat feels dry. “What is it that you’re trying to find out? Maybe I can help,” I croak.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  He looks at me for a moment. My throat keeps getting drier. “It’s not your problem, Folke. Rest for a while.”

  I spot movement at the corner of my eye and dodge to the side. Lictor’s hand snaps up and reaches for my head, but misses, the blue glow around it flashing into nothing. I use the backward step and bounce to gain momentum. I kick him squarely in the stomach, pushing into my heel through the kick, putting all of my weight behind it. It doesn’t feel like kicking a person. More like kicking a large sack filled to the brim with grain. He stumbles back a step, I stumble back two.

  “This is pointless,” he mutters, fingers moving and raising his palm at me.

  I dive diagonally toward him and the blast of air misses me. My clothes and hair whip around and dust gets kicked up into the air all the way to the edge of the hall. The whole hall thrums as the blast hits the wall. He can be a mage and a Janitor, but up close he can’t keep up with me. I sweep at his legs. He’s fortified somehow, so I put everything I have into the kick.

  Maybe his legs don’t feel the kick as hard as someone else’s would have, but they swing high into the air. His hands are spread wide, and he falls his whole height onto the floor, landing on his back. A normal person would have the wind knocked out of them and be out of the fight for sure, but he rolls to his side and starts to push himself up.

  I jump on top of him, pinning him down under me. He slumps down as I land on him and now I hear the familiar wheeze of someone having air pressed out of their lungs. “Lictor! Wait! Please!”

  “Get off me,” he pants.

  “I will, but listen to me. Promise?”

  He’s quiet, breathing and catching his breath. I can see one of his hands and it’s not casting anything at the moment. His other hand is pinned between his body and the floor, so I hope he can’t do anything with it either. Not without blowing himself up as well, and this is the real world. I have no way to really know that, but if this isn’t, then it doesn’t matter so much, anyway. Now that I had that thought, I’ll keep thinking about it for the next 24 hours.

  Rides are the worst. Almost as bad as teratomes.

  “Fine. I promise. You know I wouldn’t hurt you? You’re too important.”

  I’m not so certain, but I start to rise up. He’s right in that continuing the fight would be pointless. He’s a Janitor. He could kill me at any moment if he really wanted. I have my knife on my belt. Still crouched on top of him, maybe I could kill him too if I went for it in earnest. Mandollel did. Still, where would that leave me? This isn’t a Ride, and I’d have to explain a dead Janitor to everyone.

  I grab Lictor’s arm and help pull him up. He takes a big breath and wipes at the dusty bootprint on his overalls. “Everyone on this team is such a hassle,” he mutters.

  “I know about the conspiracy, or whatever it is. You’re trying—“

  An invisible force blasts into me, lifting me off my feet. I’m pinned on the wall, legs dangling above the ground.

  Lictor walks closer, one palm raised at me. He bites his lower lip. “Folke, this is too important. I honestly don’t like what we’re doing, but I have seen it. I have watched them kill people over and over again. Nothing even makes them hesitate. Nothing!”

  He keeps walking. Each step pushes me further up on the wall, the pressure increasing. I have to focus to be able to breathe as my lungs feel pressed flat.

  He closes his eyes and rubs his eyelids with his other hand. “Do you know how it feels to watch the same village burn dozens of times? It will happen everywhere. Killing them is the only way to be sure it won’t happen again.”

  “What won’t?” I manage to croak.

  “What?”

  The pressure diminishes a little, letting me talk more freely. “What won’t happen again? How can you be sure it won’t? You don’t even know why they are attacking!”

  He looks away at that, not facing my gaze. “We have tried so hard to find out. It’s out of my hands. This is over. I’m making sure you’re going on that mission and that the Gem won’t go with you. It’s us or them.”

  “It can be us and them! Just there, I considered killing you but didn’t! Maybe it would have solved my problem, but—”

  He snorts, interrupting me. “Only a kid can think like that. Besides, there are very few who can kill a Janitor.” He turns away, still holding his palm up.

  “I’ve done it.”

  That makes him stop. He turns back, looking incredulous. Hurt? “I don’t believe you.”

  “Maybe you can take blows and have your bubble against magic, but back there I could have wrapped my arms around your neck and squeezed until you stopped moving. I got close, that’s enough.”

  He pushes his palm toward me and the force crushes me to the wall. Air is pressed out from my mouth and nose as he walks closer. “You’ve been going on Rides without me? Strangling and leaving my corpses lying around the city?”

  “I was… trying…”

  He gets a hold of himself and pulls his hand away. The force disappears completely and I drop down. I try to lean on the wall, but my heels are pressed into it and I can’t. I stumble forward. Lictor takes a step back to keep the distance between us. I’m in no shape to start wrestling with him immediately, but I guess he believed me when I said I know how to kill him. As if I would. “I tried to find out the truth about the mission. My point is that killing you would be wrong! Even if killing all the Kertharians is infinitely worse.”

  He steps away one more step.

  “I can’t know what you’ve seen. Maybe postponing the problem for thirty years only delays the inevitable. But at least there’s a chance then to help them. The war faction is only interested in—“

  Lictor spins around and steps toward me. “The what is interested?”

  The intensity of his gaze makes me press my back against the wall. It’s almost like the earlier force has returned. “Lombarte and his people!” I can’t remember the Ponytail Guy’s whole name anymore, but Lictor probably knows about him. “They are planning to expand into Kerthar already. Making plans about building houses for their people.”

  I’m guessing, bluffing, but if Lictor doesn’t know about them, that means someone has kept him in the dark exactly like he has kept me.

  He sucks on his teeth, nostrils flaring right next to my face. “You have been busy, haven’t you?” he says after a while.

  “I went to the council chambers and talked to Marek and Corum. He’s playing you.”

  “He couldn’t. You don’t play a Janitor.“

  “He’s the archwizard! You think you’re smarter than him because you can try things multiple times?” I shiver as I remember Marek’s eyes and I let the shiver show. Maybe it’ll help sell the bluff.

  The hall is silent.

  Dust kicked up by Lictor’s blasts hangs in the air, settling slowly. Its smell thick, covering the ozone of the magic itself. Lictor stands up and I take a breath, finally. He puts one hand in his pocket and turns the Gem around in it, rubbing his chin with his other hand.

  I stay still, letting him think. If I move a muscle, it might nudge him in the wrong direction.

  He grunts and shakes his head. “No. Even if you’re right, it’s too risky. Us. Not them.”