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Corban’s direction.
    The head of an old man rolled out. It lolled before coming to rest faceup. The eyes were open with an unlikely mixture of fear and amazement.
    “That’s him?”
    “The keeper, yes,” the taller one said. The other, who looked far stronger, glanced at Corban.
    “He’s the last, then.”
    “The last that we know of. Besides the one you have in the dungeons.”
    “The vial. Where is the blood?”
    The guard hesitated. “The old man found him.”
    “Found who?”
    “The son of Elias. The keeper passed it to him, before we could get it.”
    “You’re saying a dead keeper’s son has the blood.”
    The guardsman nodded.
    Saric let out a slow, controlled breath. “You saw this.”
    “Yes.”
    The blood was rumored to be superior to the Chaos serum Saric had received. It would return the one who took it to the fully devolved state of chaotic man. A reawakening, to be precise, more complete than the one he was now experiencing. Whether it actually had such properties remained to be seen, but at least one thing now was certain: It existed.
    “You know where he will go?”
    “Yes, sir. We’ve had him under surveillance for years, since the death of his father.”
    “Find him. Get the blood. If I don’t have his head by day’s end tomorrow, I’ll have yours.”

Chapter Four
    R om thought the familiar sight of the narrow lane behind the houses on his block would calm the hammer of his heart. He expected the modest homes on Piera Street, with their cracked paint and old brick, to set right the axis of a world suddenly jarred askew.
    They didn’t.
    The slim houses with their straight sides and asphalt shingles seemed at strange odds to him, even against the mundane sounds of barking dogs and someone replacing the lid on a metal trash bin.
    He glanced back twice as he ran down the left side of the drive, then slowed near the outbuilding of the fourth house. The paint on the outbuilding had peeled to a nondescript gray, though the sill of the lone window was new and still almost white.
    Rom’s workshop, inherited from his father.
    His father, a simple artisan like him. Was what the old man said even possible, that his father had been one of these keepers?
    Not twenty feet away, he could see the back of the home he shared with his mother. Light shone through the kitchen window, which was cracked open. From inside came the sounds of dinner in progress: a spoon scraping the contents from a pot, that pot being set with a clatter in the sink below the window.
    No sign of the Citadel Guard.
    The familiar form of his mother, Anna, leaned over the sink. His fear began to abate at the sight of her making dinner as though it were any normal night, but it sailed again at the reality that he had just committed a capital offense.
    What would she say when he told her? Would she turn him in? She was obligated by Order to do so, but he didn’t think she would—not if she knew they would kill him. To disobey Order was a fearful thing, the courting of Hades. But to aid or introduce death to your own flesh and blood was equally fearful, akin to bringing death on oneself. It was a conflict of fears that the Order couldn’t resolve, no matter that assembly services preached obedience regularly.
    He glanced down at the muslin-wrapped box in his hand. It felt glued there, stuck tight in the clasp of fingers that had forgotten how to unclench. He had to get control of himself, to think.
    Rom rounded the small building, digging in his pocket for his key ring. He found it and quickly unlocked the shop. Flipped the light switch.
    No guardsmen waiting to kill him.
    He latched the door behind him and gazed at the trappings of his life, oddly irrelevant now in the face of crime: the distressed worktable in the center, the equally weathered workbench along the wall. The lathe, the bins of wood and metal scraps he’d salvaged from other projects and abandoned buildings. The workshop was just as he’d left it that morning,