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Briefly, he'd thought that perhaps the Vannies had finally made their big move when he got word that Crowe had been killed. That had certainly come as a surprise. Crowe and Bloodeye had been pushing Abbas Saqqaf for days, if not weeks at that point, so Morgunov had thought them wise enough to not get caught off guard by him. He'd even been in a weakened state, thanks to an earlier tussle with the Roberts.

But no. The wily, little Sunboy led them right into a group of reinforcements.

Non-Vanguard reinforcements, apparently. And they made enough of a difference that Crowe and his reaper had been unable to escape.

Bloodeye was the only one present for the battle, and his report was spotty, at best. Not that Morgunov necessarily blamed him for that. Battles were chaotic. Even with a reaper's help, it was often tough to keep track of everything that was going on.

But Bloodeye and his reaper, Arzil, both seemed fairly certain that it was not the Sunsmith who struck the killing blow. They said it was some new young buck named Darksteel.

So Morgunov decided to read the kid's file. Unsurprisingly, there wasn't much there.

But there wasn't nothing.

This little Darksteel fella, Hector Something-or-other, had interfered with Abolish operations twice before, making this the lucky third.

The first instance had been a thwarted coup in the kid's apparent homeland, which was one of those tiny spits of land on the other side of Lorent that barely anyone ever bothered thinking about. All in all, a nuisance of an operation that probably hadn't mattered that much, either way.

But the second instance? That had been when Abbas Saqqaf managed to capture Ivan. And now this Darksteel had been present for the slaying of Crowe, too?

Morgunov disliked coincidences.