If Michael wasn't fully awake then, he certainly was now. Fudge's casual admittance of seeing members of Ersatz made him fully alert.
"You're seeing them in New Sparta?" Michael asked, his eyebrows furrowed. "What exactly do they look like?"
"Oh, they're boring, Master. They always wear…"
Fudge perfectly described the assassins who kidnapped Lyra. He could still remember them as they peered along the battlements of their Stronghold, before Katarina turned them into nothing but corpses on the ground.
"Where? Where did you see these guys?!"
Fudge, still not understanding the gravity of the situation, shrugged cooly. "I don't know. They just appear and disappear around New Sparta randomly. I think they're using some kind of magic."
Michael turned silent, hundreds of thoughts coursing through his recently refreshed mind.
Platinum said that they have a Stronghold in New Sparta. That must be where they're disappearing off to.
