“I see your point,” Milo said, a little deflated and more than a little shaken by the recollection. “Yeah, there was nothing like that going on.”
Ambrose nodded, shifting his weight as he noticed the pronounced effect of the memory on Milo. He was silent, allowing the moment to pass as pedestrians skirted around where they stood in the little patch of murk.
“There are some bits in the Scriptures where they didn’t scare the pants off everyone,” Ambrose said slowly, choosing his words with obvious care. “But I think in each of those, they end up revealing themselves anyway at some point, and it is usually in the scary, smite-y sort of way.”
Milo cocked an eyebrow, one side of his mouth hitching up in a grin.
“Smite-y, eh?”
Ambrose chuckled and shook his head.
“Technical term for the biblically literate,” he announced archly before cutting a little bow. “We can start reading together if you’d like, and I can teach you all the necessary jargon.”
Milo laughed, shaking his head with one hand raised in warning.
“It took the threat of war crimes to get me into a church.” He snorted. “I don’t want to know what it would take to get me to pick up that book.”
Ambrose’s smile vanished, and he took the wizard by the arm.
“War crimes?” he growled, a primal noise of alarm. “What war crimes?”
Milo opened his mouth to answer but paused, his tongue still as his throat threatened to betray him with a little quiver of tension. He swallowed and cleared his throat before trying again.
“My little misdirection for Stalin’s army at Shatili sort of misfired,” Milo said, forcing a smile that was as false as it was uncomfortable. “I’m not absolutely sure, but I think I know what happened.”
He hated the lie even as it passed his teeth. Though he couldn’t provide more evidence than what he’d said to the general staff, he knew what had happened without a single doubt. Magic, which inherently defied science and other such shackles, was based on intuition and instinct. Those were as solid and real in such matters as any smoking gun or spoken confession.
The wizard knew what had happened in Shatili, and that was what made it so awful.
Ambrose waited, concern and dreadful anticipation etched into the scarred seams of his face.
“The Soviets were left psychically and spiritually vulnerable by Zlydzen’s magic,” Milo said, forcing his voice to remain level as his vision blurred at the edges. “The shades I’d prepared didn’t disrupt and frighten the soldiers, they possessed them and turned them against each other. It seems they killed each other to a man.”
Ambrose’s eyes widened, his whole body straightening as he drew in a sharp breath.
“How many?” he asked. His voice was gentle, but the look in his eyes burned into Milo like a condemning brand.
“Not exactly sure,” Milo admitted, unable to bear the look. He turned away. “Thousands, though the precise number is hard to tell because of the state of the bodies. It would take time to sort out which pieces belonged to who.”
“Mon Dieu,” Ambrose swore, then bowed his head.
Neither could find the heart to say anything for some time. Young, raucous voices sounded down the street. Milo couldn’t make out what they were being so rambunctious about, but he envied the abandon they possessed. He should still have such freeness of spirit, being hardly out of his teens as he was, but life and its horrors, both mundane and eldritch, had ground it out of him.
Instead, he stood in the dark with blood on his hands.
His morose reflections were interrupted by a heavy hand on his shoulder. He turned at the familiar grip and stared into Ambrose’s face.
“Listen to me,” the bodyguard said in a thick voice, his other hand clasping Milo’s other shoulder as they stood square with each other.
Milo struggled to meet the big man’s gaze, but he nodded to acknowledge he was listening.
“It isn’t your fault,” Ambrose said, the slightest tremor in his voice. “Do you hear me?”
He did hear, but he shook his head angrily. He made a half-hearted attempt to pull away from the huge hands holding him, but Ambrose held him fast.
“Milo, I mean it,” Ambrose hissed between grinding teeth as he gave him a small shake. “It. Isn’t. Your. Fault.”
Milo met the man’s gaze, his pale blue and Ambrose’s sparkling green eyes shining like gems beneath a sheen of tears.
“I set the trap,” the magus gasped, trying to straighten and pull away but once again failing. “Those shades were bound to the soul wells by my magic, using my blood. My blood, Simon. It doesn’t get much more responsible than that.”
Ambrose shook his head fiercely, sending glittering tears into his mustache.
“You didn’t know,” Ambrose insisted, eyes boring into Milo’s. “You couldn’t have known tha—”
“HEY! What are you two doing?”
The intrusion of a harsh young voice was like an electrical discharge, snapping between the two men with violent suddenness. Milo and Ambrose whirled to face the sound, the wizard’s hands adjusting to grip his cane as Ambrose sank into a fighting stance, fists raised, knees bent.
Approaching their little patch of darkness was a band of rangy and snarling youths dressed in some sort of uniform. Their hair was plastered with a greasy product and swept to one side, and though the style of their shirts varied, all bore a distinct shade of brown that was clearly intentional. They loped down the street like young wolves, eyes hungry and bright as their mouths cruelly sneered in obvious anticipation.
“I said,” called a tall teen at the head of the group as they came to
