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You nudge Dorian and he gets the message straight away, tucking his hands behind his back to weave together the strands of a glamour. The magister is still coming toward you, one slow step after another, but Dorian is quick—and, when it’s called for, subtle.

It’s only a few more steps before the man reaches you and, with a flourish, pulls the hat off Ashur’s head and the mask off his face. Panic surges, but you push down the adrenaline and turn to see that Ashur…

… looks nothing like himself, at least as far as you can judge from the little you’ve seen of his face between the mask and the hat. His eyes are a dark, intense brown; the bridge of his nose is broad and flat; his hairline sits strangely high on his forehead, as though an unskilled artist has drawn it.

“You see,” Ashur says, “I am no one of significance.” Even his voice is different—part of the glamour or is Ashur as skilled an actor as he is a mage? He speaks with the foreshortened syllables and flowing consonants of a Seheron native, the sound as natural as the voice he has used every other day you’ve known him.

• Turn to page 80.