A trickle of sweat formed somewhere at my hairline and drifted down my forehead. I held my gun in front of me, the arms just slack enough to accommodate the kick if I had to fire it. My father, who was a wiser man than I’d ever been, had told me when I was little more than a boy never to point a gun at a man unless I intended to use it.

I didn’t want to have to use it. Dead, Lyon wouldn’t actually do me any good. But if I had to-if I absolutely must-I’d splash the brains in that handsome Spanish gentleman blinking confusedly at me, against the stylish stone walls of his dormitory. And if that left me stranded in the Middle Ages, so be it. I couldn’t live in the twenty-first century and let Gwen be killed.

“Who are you?” Lyon asked, more in puzzled tiredness than in shock. “What are you doing in my room?” His dark eyes beneath the straight black eyebrows were staring above and to the side of me. Trying to see my magical aura with his second sight. More the fool he, as I had none.

“I’m George Martin,” I said. “Legionary third class.”

He frowned harder, bristling his luxuriant black mustache and glared down at my gun. “Why can’t I see your magic, boy? And why are you pointing that toy at me?”

“You can’t see my magic because I don’t have any,” I said. “I’m the archiver.” It all had to do with my foolishly answering an ad for a computer wizard, and their being so desperate for someone who actually would archive that they hadn’t checked my pattern. They assumed I was powerful enough to hide it. But I wasn’t about to explain it to Lyon, if he didn’t know it.

He made a sound of disgust. “The paper pusher?” he asked. “Bah. And you dare wake me?”

He had some reason for his outrage, as he was a captain of the Legion. Which meant that, since the commander had died last week in the Hell gate closing, he was one of the three leaders of the Legion. And I was as low a rank as one could be and still be called a legionary.

But I was long past paying attention to rank or propriety. You have to understand, Gwen Arcana, the world’s most beautiful witch, wasn’t my girlfriend. She wasn’t even a friend. Friendly acquaintance, perhaps, as she smiled at me as she walked past my vast, paper-choked office. And she would never expect me to rescue her. But she was…wondrous, with her thick red hair that fell to the middle of her back, her sparkling green eyes, her quick intelligence, her musical laughter. At twenty years old, she didn’t deserve to be left to the lack of mercy of a drunken centaur band. To be honest, no one did. But if it weren’t Gwen, I might not have summoned the courage to act.

“I need you,” I told Lyon ’s irate expression. “I need information from you, and your help.”

He waved his hand. Like that-without warning, my gun vanished from my hand. Damn. Of course I anticipated that and before he could move again, I’d reached into my shoulder holster and brought out the Glock. Small and deadly like a viper, it fit into my hand, filled with a sense of viciousness. I’d gotten it from the archives where it rested as evidence of a magical crime. It was spelled to stay with the person who said certain words over it.

Lyon must have seen the spell, because he didn’t even try. Instead he said, very slowly, as though speaking to a small child, “What will you get if you shoot? Do you think I don’t have life protection and healing spells.”

“Silver bullets,” I said. “And I know enough anatomy to know where your heart is.”

“But you know then you’ll be lost in eleventh-century Saxony.”

“Indeed. And isn’t that forbidden?”

“I’m one of the three principals. Who’ll punish me?”

And this was exactly what was wrong since the commander had bought his peace everlasting. “I will,” I said, between clenched teeth. “I will, right now, unless you agree to do what you must to help me find Gwen Arcana and get her back.”

He got out of bed, revealing that he was wearing an ankle-length nightshirt which billowed around hairy ankles and large feet. “But, my dear man, Gwen Arcana was taken by centaurs. We didn’t count on them when there was that supernatural outbreak in Italy. We counted on a dragon or an out of control saint. Instead, it was the damn centaurs and their ancient magic. Only the commander knew that type of magic. He’s dead. We haven’t recruited a replacement classical magician. Until we do-”

“Stop,” I yelled. He’d been edging toward me as he spoke in a soothing tone. “Stop, or I will shoot off your right hand.”

“How do you know I’m right-handed?”

I laughed. I couldn’t help myself. “How not? I’m the archiver.” I made my voice slow and thoughtful. “I know all about you, Captain Zaragoza.” I saw his minimal flinch, as he realized that I knew the reason he was in the Legion. He’d been tracked down and brought to ground by the magical authorities after a streak of animating recently deceased people who were then forced to make wills in his favor. I wondered how he’d feel about having other people know about it. “And you’re going to help me bring Commander Lars Oktober back, so we can figure out how to get Gwen.”

He looked at me, his dark eyes so wide open they appeared to be bulging. “You want to reanimate the commander?”

“No,” I said. “I’d do quite well with calling his shade.”

He grumbled something under his breath, then said, “And if we manage that, what do you think you can do? A ghost cannot wage magical war. And the girl was captured by centaurs, not ghosts.”

“And you’d just leave her behind…” I said. I’d heard the discussion between Lyon Zaragoza, Maria Alsas, and Pierre Grenoir, the three highest ranking captains in the Legion, and equally sharing command since the commander had died. I’d hate to say it, but though it was rumored the three of them couldn’t agree that the sun rose in the East, there had been no complaints about leaving Gwen behind after the lost skirmish against the centaurs.

Lyon shrugged, and in that moment I almost let fly with the Glock. Except being left behind in medieval Europe wouldn’t help her. “You do what you have to do. Should we have risked the life of other legionaries to save her when she was as good as lost?”

“And yet,” I said. “When I enter the records of past raids and past battles, time after time the Legion doesn’t leave one of its own behind, when it can save them. We don’t. There was the journey of a detachment across the parched deserts of Africa where the natural magic of the land didn’t allow the opening of magical portals. One by one they fell unconscious, victims to thirst, and had been dragged or carried by other legionaries scarcely less stricken than themselves, till they’d come upon a secret oasis and all been saved. And we’re not afraid of dying. In 1643, in the battle against the forces of hell, the Dutch detachment died, one by one and man by man, until the last one of them directed his power outward to kill all of the enemy and died from it.”

Lyon looked at me with the look a sane man might give a fool or a child. “Those are very pretty stories,” he said. “But the truth is, no one joins the Legion because he wants to. We are all rogues; we all have a past.”

He looked at me with the sort of look that meant surely I, also, had one. I wasn’t buying. I’d joined the Legion because I’d been determined to get a job during the computer job bust a few years ago. Somehow, in a way no one could explain, this had caused me to see the invisible sixteenth floor in the building. It hadn’t occurred anyone I wasn’t a magician until I’d had the job for two weeks.

So I stared at Lyon and said, simply, “We’re not going to leave Gwen with the centaurs.”

He sat back on his bed and looked at me. “It’s been two hours,” he said. “Since she was taken. She might be dead.”

“Or she might not,” I said. “We don’t leave her.”

He blinked. “Why won’t a spell take on you, Martin?” he asked.