“Have you seen this guy in action?” I asked. “Nicodemus Archleone is . . . He’s better than me. Smart, dangerous, ruthless, and experienced. All by himself, he’d be bad enough. I’ve never even seen him go to his bench. All the other Denarians whip out their Fallen buddies left and right, but Nicodemus, as far as I can tell, mostly uses his to chauffeur him around. I’ve got no idea what Anduriel can do, because Nick has never had to fall back on him.”

“Perhaps that’s because Nicodemus understands just as well as you do where true power comes from,” Kringle said.

I arched an eyebrow at that. “Knowledge,” I said. I thought about it, putting pieces together. “Wait. You’re telling me that he doesn’t use Anduriel in fights because Anduriel isn’t a fighter.”

“Any of the Fallen are absolutely deadly in battle,” Kringle said severely, “even hampered as they are. But the Master of Shadows doesn’t prefer to operate that way, no.”

Nicodemus’s control over the gang of superpowered lunatics was starting to make more sense now. “Master of Shadows. That’s an old, old phrase for a spy master.”

“Exactly,” Kringle said. “Nicodemus knows very nearly as much as I do. Anduriel has the potential to hear anything uttered within reach of any living being’s shadow, and sometimes to look out from it and see.”

My eyes widened and I looked down at my own shadow on the table.

“No,” Kringle said. “That’s why Mab remains here, to secure this conversation against Anduriel. But you must exercise extreme discretion for the duration of this scenario. There are places Anduriel cannot reach—your friend Carpenter’s home, for example, or your island, now that you have awakened it. And the Fallen must know to pay attention to a given shadow, or else it’s all just a haze of background noise—but you can safely assume that Anduriel will be listening very carefully to your shadow during this entire operation. Anything you say, Nicodemus will know. Even writing something down could be compromised.”

“Hell’s bells,” I said. If that was the case, communicating with my friends would just get them set up for a trap. Man, no wonder Nicodemus was always a few steps ahead of everyone else. “I’m . . . going to have to play the cards really damned close to my chest, then.”

“If I were you, I’d hold them about three inches behind my sternum, just to be sure,” Kringle said.

I swigged beer and drummed my fingers on the table. “Yeah,” I said. “Okay. Good to know. But it’s not enough. I need another advantage.”

“I never find having too many advantages any particular burden.”

“What would be perfect is a plant of my own,” I said.“Someone Nicodemus doesn’t see coming. But to work that angle, I’d have to know who he was getting together, someone he already planned to have in place.”

Kringle took on the air of a professor prompting a stumbling protégé. “How could you work with this theoretical person, without the ability to speak with him, to coordinate your efforts?”

“Hide it in plain sight,” I said, “disguised as something else. Code.”

“Interesting. Go on.”

“Uh . . . ,” I said. “He’d be taking his cues from me, so mostly he’d be the one asking me questions. Tell him to refer to me as ‘wizard’ just before he asks a question relating to the situation at hand. The first word of my response would be the answer. Then we could make the actual conversation sound like something else entirely. We play along until it’s time for me to make my move. Then I use the phrase ‘game over’ and we hit them.”

Kringle took a pull of his beer. “Not bad. Not perfect, but then, it never is.” He set his bottle aside and reached down into the sack by his foot. He rummaged for a moment and then produced a large envelope, which he offered to me.

I regarded it carefully. Gifts have an awful lot of baggage attached to them among the Fae, and both Kringle and I were members of the Winter Court. “I didn’t get you anything,” I said.

He waved his other hand negligently. “Consider it a belated holiday gift, free of obligation. That island is a tough delivery.”

“Prove it,” I said. “Say ‘ho, ho, ho.’”

“Ho, ho, ho,” he replied genially.

I grinned and took the envelope. I opened it and found a photo and a brief description inside.

“Who is this?”

“A covert operative, a mercenary,” Kringle replied. “One of the best.”

“I’ve never heard of him.”

He arched an eyebrow. “Because he’s covert?”

I bobbed my head a bit in admission of the point. “Why am I looking at his picture?”

“There are four operatives who could play one role Nicodemus needs filled in this venture,” he said. “Two of them are currently under contract elsewhere, and the third is presently detained. That leaves Nicodemus only one option, and I know he won’t exercise it until the last possible moment—and he’s not far away.”

“You think if I get to him first, I can hire him?”

“If I make the introduction and we establish your communication protocol under Mab’s aegis? Yes.”

“But if he’s a mercenary, he can by definition be bought. What’s to stop Nicodemus from outbidding me?”