Radeon heard the alchemical doors slam shut, one after another.
Men carrying cleaning tools peeled off down the hall and took rooms in sequence, disappearing inside each alchemic room.
He watched long enough to see the hierarchy without anyone needing to explain it.
The weakest in the group drew the worst of it. He was the one who scrubbed the longest, while the stronger ones found lighter work.
"Disappear," he said, activating the invisibility of his cloak.
Radeon probed the rooms until he found the one that mattered. The leader.
You could tell by how the others avoided his eyes.
He chose the room with the crippled cauldron. A ruined piece of work, cracked and cold, more scrap than tool.
There was nothing to clean in there, not really. Even Radeon was certain of that.
He pushed a thread of qi under the door seam and listened with it and felt the air.
The man sat on the floor, calm as if he owned the place, grinding herbs with practiced ease.
No hurry. No fear. When the pile was fine enough, he took out a strip of thin paper, packed the crushed herbs into it, rolled it tight, then struck a spark and lit the end.
His face eased into something almost soft, almost happy, as he drew in the smoke.
Radeon withdrew his qi and left the man to his own device.
He let Giovanni's visage sink back into his skin, then pulled Sail Knife over, layer by careful layer.
Joints stiffened. Breath rasped. Skin sagged along the jaw. Cheeks hollowed.
After he checked all eleven alchemic rooms, the weakest link made itself plain.
His face kept scrunching with effort and irritation. A boy, only a few years younger than Giovanni, cursing under his breath as if the words could scrape his luck clean.
Radeon opened the door and closed it. He did not try to keep it from creaking this time, but let the rust hum its tune.
The errand boy straightened from the cauldron with a rag in his hand. Alarm flashed across his face.
The door had opened, yet the room was empty. He stared at nothing, lips parting.
Then Radeon showed himself.
The boy's eyes went round. For a heartbeat he looked at Sail Knife like he was a ghost that had stepped out of the fumes. His mouth opened to call out.
Qi snapped from Radeon's fingers. Threads looped and tightened around the boy's throat.
No sound came. The boy clawed at his neck, nails scraping skin, panic turning him clumsy.
Radeon closed the distance and drove a fist into his jaw.
The boy went limp. Radeon caught him before he hit the floor, then hefted the small body and left him hanging from the huge cauldron's mouth.
Limbs tucked. Head tilted to one side, like he had simply slumped there in exhaustion after a long scrub.
Radeon stepped back and took stock of the place. Shelves. Jars. Bundles of dried leaves and roots.
He moved along the racks, plucking a small leaf from each bundle he passed.
Radeon rubbed them between his fingers until oil slicked his skin and the scents layered on his hands.
Bitter. Sweet. Sharp. He did not stop until one smell crawled up his nose and left him a little woozy.
'Sleeping agent or hallucinogen. Should buy me enough time,' he thought.
Radeon hauled the unconscious boy back from the cauldron's mouth and smeared the pulp across his face and nose. He rubbed it into the skin until the cheeks shone damp.
Then he pried the boy's hand open and put the herbs into his palm, balling it into a fist. He slid that hand into the boy's pocket and left it there.
Cause and proof in one neat bundle.
When he was done, he moved to the rear of the room. Past the shelves and the stink of dried roots.
Radeon was back at the metal trapdoor set into the floor, the one that sealed the blood pool below. Not in the same alchemic room, but on the same entry.
He had studied the pool before. He knew it ran on an array. Now he needed to investigate further, to make sure he did not miss a chance to take it all.
Radeon flicked his wrist and shot a needle into the ceiling. Thread followed.
He let his weight hang from it, boots off the ground, then sent another needle and thread down the crimson pool a probing finger.
He checked each corner first, tasting for traps, safety locks, alarm lines, anything that would make the whole cult go wild the moment he touched the wrong seam.
One corner, then the next. Nothing. No sting. No hidden bite.
Then he scanned the twelve nodes. He felt their make through the thread.
Simple. Mid-grade stone in the center, an output array to feed the effect.
There were no runes here, which meant there was nothing for him to alter at this point. The core would be elsewhere.
He was about to move when a door opened above.
A soft scrape, then the dull thud of it closing again.
Radeon moved fast, his hand already on the trapdoor that led back to the alchemic room.
He reached it, hand hovering, then paused and listened. Then he located the sound. It was on the room with a crippled cauldron.
"Oi, lend me your rug, will you. Mine's torn to rags. If not, help me tidy up. Don't wait for these knuckles to hit someone's face," a boy said, his tone frivolous, as if he were a superior.
"Here. Take it." A sharp slap cracked against the back of his neck. "Cheeky bastard. You talk like that again, we'll see whose fist sings louder," said the leader of the errand boys.
Radeon knew he could not linger. In the brief flash of his divine eyes, he had caught a hint of where the core sat, a faint shape under the blood.
But the gift only gave him three seconds at a time before the world snapped back to ordinary.
He took four needles and flicked his wrist. They hissed out and kissed the blood's surface without a splash, then dove in.
The red pool rippled. The needles tugged against their threads, and Radeon felt it, a hard point at the center.
He eased his qi through the lines, slow, patient, testing the resistance. He could not afford to trip an alarm down there.
If it screamed, he would have to erase a witness. Not one. Eleven. By then he would have to pay a price.
He would take the errand boy's place by the cauldron, wear the boy's skin like a mask.