Page 13 of Mud

“This is minutes before midnight, when all cells are closed for the night,” Cassie continued, pointing at the digital clock on the ribbon at the bottom of the screen, which showed the time as well as the number of inmates, the number of guards on duty, and the condition of the wards—214, 52, Green.

Cassie pressed a key on her keyboard, and the image zoomed in a bit. So many people—all two hundred of them seemed to be out in the lounge area, some hanging out together, some on their own.

“Where—”

My whisper got caught in my throat when I noticed the shape of him, the head full of dark hair.

The world could have stopped existing, and I wouldn’t have noticed.

Cassie zoomed in again without a word. I saw more—saw him sprawled on a bench, back against the edge of the table it was attached to, a plastic cup in his hand, while another man was hunched over his chest. His naked chest.

He was getting a tattoo right there on his pecs.

“What the…” I whispered again, unable to stop myself, and I leaned closer and closer, eyes so focused on his face that I didn’t even blink—until he moved, lightning fast, and his magic, black flames coming to life in an instant, exploded out of him.

Fast, too fast. So fast I was ready to believe that I’d made it all up, that no way did that really happen.

But it did. Because the guy who’d been hunched over him, tattooing something on his chest, fell back and slipped from his chair, landing on the floor on his ass.

Everybody around them laughed. They all laughed as he tried to get back on that chair—and most of all…him.

Taland was laughing his heart out as he watched the man he’d scared to death trying to sit up as quickly as he could. He laughed and sipped his drink and waved for the man to come close again, his lips moving, but I couldn’t hear a thing.

“Can we turn that up?” I asked Cassie, but she shook her head.

“We need special permission for audio.”

And the image was too grainy, and Taland too far away from the camera for me to be able to read his lips.

Because there was no way he waslaughing. No way he’d scared that man like that and was laughing about it.He’s not a bully, damn it!

But then again, what the hell did I really know about Taland Tivoux?

“He used magic,” I whispered, as if that made any difference when I couldseehim. The man continued to work on the tattoo, and Taland continued to look down at him with a smile on his face, and though I couldn’t see it with clarity, I saw it just fine in my mind’s eye.

He’d changed, Taland. His hair was longer, just as dark as always. And I couldn’t see his face, nor any part of him with clarity, but I could tell just by the way he sat half naked against that table, the ease with which he brought that cup to his lips and drank…

I could tell he was a different man altogether.

“Yes, well, they do that sometimes,” was Cassie’s reply.

“But how? They’re not allowed anchors in there.” That much I knew for a fact.

We as mages expel magic from everywhere in our bodies at once, and that’s dangerous, to say the least. Notonly do we open ourselves up to any kind of foreign magic, but it drains us completely of our energy, too. That’s why all Iridians use anchors, which help us concentrate our magic, release one stream of it at a time, and never use an ounce more than necessary. Without our anchors, magic could kill us easily—either because we released it all at once and our physical bodies collapsed, or because we accidentally attacked ourselves when we meant to attack another.

Taland knew all of this perfectly, which meant he had an anchor with him—a reincarnated raven’s feather. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to use his magic to scare that man like that.

“Oh, please,” Cassie said, pulling me out of my thoughts. “He’s tied to the Devil. He probably has plenty of feathers to use. Not big or strong enough for the sensors to catch, but plenty.”

The Devil.I’d heard of him, too. Some thought he controlled the entire Tomb from the inside, that hechoseto stay locked up where he was in control, that he could walk out of there any time he wanted. I had no clue what species he was, but he had to be a very powerful Iridian.

And the thought of Taland being involved with a guy like that in any way freaked me the hell out.

Another bigger guy came from behind him a little while later, put his hand on his shoulder, and whispered something in his ear.

Taland didn’t react. He didn’t stop smiling, either, though the picture was grainy enough to make me half-certain I was imagining it.

Fuck, I wanted to know what that guy said so badly.

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