The apprentice stood in the gap of the wall with his face gone almost paper white, and for a moment nobody in the corridor seemed able to breathe.
The small silver mark on his wrist caught the lantern light again, thin as a hair and bright as fresh metal. Fang stared at it, then at the boy's frightened expression, and felt the cold pressure in the passage deepen by a fraction.
Ren was the first to move.
He stepped forward, not quickly, but with the calm certainty that always made panic seem briefly embarrassed of itself. "Tell me exactly what you saw."
The apprentice swallowed hard. "There was a person," he said. "In the passage. I could not see the face clearly. The light behind them was strange, like it was being swallowed."
Pax's eyes narrowed. "That sounds delightfully ominous."
Silas took one look at the apprentice's wrist and looked as though he had aged another ten years. "Show me your arm."
The boy obeyed with shaking fingers.
