TABLE OF CONTENTS

- TITLEPAGE

- MAP: ARAEN

- COPYRIGHT

- DEDICATION

- BIBLIOGRAPHY

- CHALICE AND CHANCE

- THE BOY WHO WOULD BE KING

- THE MANTICORE'S SOIREE

- LETHE

- MEMORY AND THOUGHT

- QINGMING

- EXODUS

- TWILIGHT'S END

- BY THE RIVER UNDER THE BANYAN TREE

- THROUGH THE PALE DOOR

- THE MAP OF SECRET DESIRES

- YELLOW RIVER, YELLOW EMPEROR

- THE FALL OF THE RAVEN THANE

- THE SHADOW KING: CHAPTER ONE

- ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The Manticore’s Soiree ©2017 by Alec Hutson

Published by Alec Hutson

Cover art by Jeff Brown

Edited by Tamara Blain

Interior layout and design by Colleen Sheehan

All rights reserved

First edition

ISBN: 978-0-9982276-2-7 (print)

978-0-9982276-3-4 (ebook)

Please visit Alec’s website at

www.authoralechutson.com

For Chen Ling, my shining light

“The Boy Who Would Be King” by Alec Hutson. Originally published in Ideomancer Speculative Fiction Magazine, April 2004

“The Map of Secret Desires” by Alec Hutson. Originally published in You Are Here: Tale of Cartographic Wonders, N.E. White, ed., 2016

“Exodus” by Alec Hutson. Originally published in The Newcomer, Alisdair Shaw, ed., 2016

“Through the Pale Door” by Alec Hutson. Originally published in Timeless Tales, December 2016

“The Manticore’s Soiree” by Alec Hutson. Originally published in Every Day Fiction, January 2017

“By The River Under The Banyan Tree” by Alec Hutson. 4th place, Retreat West Short Fiction Prize, 2017

“THE ALE IS FOR THAT young fella with the scar.”

Merik set the flagon down on the bar’s cracked slate countertop, just out of her reach. Nel glared at the old man, giving him what her mama called her ‘dragon eyes’. He smirked and began wiping up a puddle of wine someone had spilled earlier, ignoring her.

Nel went up on her toes, straining to reach across the bar; her fingertips brushed the dented tin flagon, causing it to rock dangerously.

“Don’t you go spilling any, imp!” admonished the old barkeep, pausing in his cleaning to wag a gnarled finger at her.

“God’s blood, Merik. Don’t torture the poor girl.” Red Verise stopped her preening, snapping shut her little silver hand mirror, and slid the flagon close enough to Nel that she could grip its battered handle.

“There you go, love,” the Dymorian girl said, smiling at her.

“I could have gotten it myself,” Nel mumbled back, struggling to lift the heavy drink without any of the ale sloshing out.

“Course you could have,” Verise replied lightly, brushing away a bright red curl that had fallen across her face. “But us ladies of the Moon should help each other, you know?”

“Hold it like this, Marinel,” the pretty dark-haired girl sitting beside Verise said, reaching down with a muslin-draped arm to guide one of Nel’s hands beneath the flagon. “You won’t drop it this way, I promise.”

Merik snorted. “Learn that up in your big Bright Quarter house?”

The dark-haired girl, Kai, slid from her stool to crouch beside Nel. She smelled like oranges and jasmine, which for Nel summoned memories of wandering through the spring market with her mother.

Kai pressed her palm to the small of Nel’s back, making her stand straighter. Then she ran her fingers through Nel’s hair, smoothing out some of the tangles. “Shoulders back, chin up,” she said in a prim voice, and Nel couldn’t stop the giggles from bubbling up inside.

“Now you could be a proper lady’s maid,” Kai said, winking at her.

Nel made a face. “I don’t wanna be a lady’s maid.”

The dark-haired girl leaned closer and whispered, “That’s all right. Neither did I.”

A ripple of laughter passed through the girls clustered at the edge of the bar, but Nel didn’t get angry, as she didn’t think they were teasing her.

Kai gave her a gentle push. “Now go deliver that drink. And don’t forget to remind the handsome ones that there are beautiful ladies waiting for them out here.”

“Handsome and rich ones,” Red Verise amended, and the girls laughed again.

Nel rolled her eyes and turned away. Balancing the brimming tankard carefully, she threaded her way between the tables and low cushioned couches that littered the tavern’s common room. The ale sloshed when her toe bumped a chair’s leg, but at least there wasn’t any chance she’d spill it on anyone – the Moon was empty tonight, except for the group of bravos and gamblers sequestered in one of the private rooms. A year ago that hadn’t been the case: every table had been filled, girls in diaphanous wisps of cloth clinging to men attired in the brocade and silks popular among Lyr’s wealthy. Dreamsmoke had hazed the air, and on the stage Red Verise had plucked a slim ivory keppa, its ghostly notes trembling beneath the hum of conversation. Sometimes late at night her mother had even climbed onto the stage and sung for the crowd the same old Lyrish ballads that she sang to make Nel fall asleep.

She hadn’t sung in the common room for a long time. Something had changed in the city – Nel didn’t really understand what, but she had caught fragments of worried talk among the girls: there was a new archon, he had made some rules about places like the Moon, and now a lot of people didn’t want to come here any more.

As Nel approached the carved wooden screen that separated the private room from the rest of the tavern, someone behind it cursed loudly, a harsh voice that made her shiver. She slowed, glancing back nervously at Merik, but the barkeep shooed her on impatiently. Swallowing away her fear, she slipped around the screen.

Five men were seated at a circular table of black wood, intent on a game of chalice. Empty tankards and bottles littered the table, as well as a spent dreamsmoke lamp. The game’s hoard was sizeable, a pile of gold and silver pieces that made Nel’s fingers twitch. It was more money than she had ever seen in one place. Each gambler had a row of cards turned upside down in front of them, and as Nel approached the table, one of the older men – a sickly looking fellow with jaundiced skin and a scraggly black beard – pushed a card forward and placed a silver kellic on it, then gestured toward a young man in a silken doublet. A livid scar curved down the side of this youth’s face, so Nel moved tentatively in his direction, holding out the tankard. He didn’t spare her a glance, focusing instead on the card that had been put forth.

“Challenge,” the man with the patchy beard said. “Do you accept?”

The scarred man shifted his gaze to the older gambler, and Nel saw venom in his eyes. Real dragon eyes, she thought.

“Again, Tarris? Haven’t you bled me enough, you old snake?”

The older man shrugged. “Nothing personal, Baern. You just seem to be giving money away tonight.” Nel noticed to her surprise that a small boy hovered behind the older gambler, his hand clutching the roughly patched sleeve of the man’s shirt. His dark, solemn eyes briefly found hers, and then he quickly looked away.

The scarred man’s mouth twisted. “Very well. I accept.” He placed a kellic down, then flipped one of his cards, revealing the faded image of a strange-looking rooster with scaly legs.

The older gambler, Tarris, pursed his lips. He turned over his own card, showing an ancient man draped in white robes holding a silver orb.

“Cockatrice beats vizier,” Baern exclaimed, snatching up his opponent’s coin and placing it with a flourish on the small stack he had amassed beside his run of cards. “Looks like your luck has turned.” Without glancing at Nel, he reached out toward where she waited, and obediently she passed him the tankard. He took a long pull, then set it down hard enough that some of the ale slopped over the rim.

Nel knew that she should scurry out of the room, but something made her linger. She wasn’t sure what, exactly; it felt to her like the air had suddenly sharpened. The younger man in his rich clothes with his cruel smile didn’t seem to notice. Neither did the other gamblers, as they continued checking their hidden cards or making coins dance upon their knuckles, murmuring to each other. But there was an odd glint in the older man’s eye as he watched Baern smirk at him from across the table… and the look on the face of the boy behind him was even stranger. His brow was furrowed in concentration, his lips slightly parted, as he studied the cards upon the table. Nel thought she saw his hand tug slightly on Tarris’s sleeve.

“Challenge,” the older gambler said again, and Baern’s eyes widened.

“Truly? You’ve lost your vizier, old man. I know you can’t have more than a few of the lesser beasts and maybe a royal or two left in your run.”

“Challenge,” Tarris repeated, slipping a coin onto one of his cards as he nudged it forward.

Now Baern looked almost gleeful. “Going out in a blaze of glory, eh? I can respect that, foolish as it is.”

He flipped one of his cards: a faded dragon uncoiled across a wash of blue sky, fire leaking from its mouth. “The wyrm. Unless that’s a knight, I’m another silver richer.”

Tarris turned his card, showing a stately woman wearing a golden crown.

“What bad luck!” Tarris chortled, snatching up the kellic. “Dragon eats empress!”

He leaned back in his chair and shared a triumphant smile with the other gamblers. Before he could even place the recently won coin on his pile, though, Tarris spoke again.

“Challenge.”

Surprise flitted across the younger man’s face, quickly replaced by pity. “You’re addled, old man. If you were half the chalice player I am, you’d know what I’m holding. But I accept.”

He turned his final card, snapping it with obvious pleasure onto the table. A man sat upon a gleaming silver throne, a crown that looked to be the twin of the one worn by the empress on his brow. “The emperor. Game’s mine.”

Tarris nodded slightly, his expression unreadable. Then he showed his card.

A collective gasp went up from around the table. Nel craned her head forward, trying to make out what he was holding. It wasn’t some fantastical monster or resplendent warrior or haughty noble. Just a battered copper cup.

But she knew what it meant; you couldn’t grow up in a tavern in Lyr and not. It was the only card that could beat the emperor – a poisoned chalice. Not only had Tarris won the challenge, he had also claimed the entire hoard; Nel had never seen this actually happen, and she had watched a hundred games of chalice unfold on this very table.

Only a master could have set up the sequence of challenges necessary to reach this outcome. Baern had been played, and as the realization dawned, his shock quickly gave way to anger.

“Bastard!” he snarled, shoving away from the table and standing. “Bloody lucky bastard!”

Tarris looked on calmly as Baern spat on the floor, glaring at him. Then the scarred youth whirled and strode out of the room, nearly knocking Nel over.

She caught herself and dashed to the edge of the screen, peering around its cracked edges as Baern approached the bar and the surprised girls. He grabbed Red Verise’s pale arm, pulling her off her stool. “With me, whore,” he said roughly, dragging her toward the stairs that led to the rooms.

Nel saw Cook’s bald head emerge from the kitchens at the commotion, and the big man started to follow them, his truncheon at his side, but then Red Verise glanced back and shook her head sharply.

“She’ll be fine,” Merik was saying as Nel hurried back to the bar. “Red knows how to handle ones like that.”

Kai twisted her satin handkerchief nervously, staring at the second-floor landing where her friend had vanished. “Yeah. You know who that was, though?”

“He’s a Vhalus scion? Has the look of that brood.”

“Baern ri Vhalus, first born of Menosh ri Vhalus.”

Merik whistled. “That’s as rich a name as we’ve had in here. His first time?”

Kai nodded. “I heard… I heard he used to spend his days at the Laughing Toad. But he was banned a few days back.”

Merik’s gaze drifted to the stairs. “Did he hurt one of the girls?”

“No. Senna – you remember Senna, the girl with the dead eye who sells oysters and clams – she told me he was plenty rough with the girls, but the reason he was told don’t return was because he killed someone right there in the common room.”

Merik scratched at his chin thoughtfully. “And the watch didn’t take him in?”

“The other man came at him first, is what Senna told me. Pulled daggers while Baern was playing chalice and went to stab him, but Baern got out of the way and ran him through with his sword. Since he didn’t start it, he wasn’t brought before an archon.”

“His father probably dices with the archons anyway,” Merik grumbled, but Nel thought she saw him relax a bit. “So he killed someone in self-defense. Can’t blame a man for that.”

“Aye. But still, the Toad wanted him gone, for a while at least. So that’s why he came here to play chalice tonight.”

“Daddy’s money ain’t going to spend itself,” Merik said. Then he caught sight of Nel hovering beside the bar and scowled. “Imp! Off to the kitchens and help Cook do some cleaning. I don’t think you’ll be needed out here anymore.”

There wasn’t much to do in the kitchens, either. While Cook busied himself preparing a stew for later, Nel washed the day’s dirty plates and cups, dunking them in a bucket of cloudy water and then giving each a quick wipe with a rag. Nel liked it in the kitchens, even though she complained loudly every time Merik sent her there; if he knew she secretly enjoyed her time helping Cook, then she suspected he’d find other, more horrible tasks for her to do, like emptying the chamber pots or sweeping the common room floor.

It was warm, for one thing: there was almost always a fire going in the hearth for a soup or a pot of mulled wine, and sometimes in the cold and rainy winter months it was the only place in the Moon where she felt the chill leave her fingers and toes. And then, of course, there was Cook, bustling around the kitchen with surprising grace despite his hugeness, usually humming a tune from his childhood in the Eversummer Isles. Sometimes he’d sing as he chopped vegetables or sliced up a goat shank, and even though she couldn’t understand the tumbling words, Nel imagined she could hear the hiss of surf on distant shores and smell strange flowers that would have wilted if brought to this cold stone city of rain and fog.

Nel was so lost in her thoughts and the rhythm of her work that it was Cook who first noticed the sound of pebbles striking the small door that led from the kitchen to the alley behind the Moon. He cocked his head, breaking off his gentle humming. “Eh. Little one, your strays have come, yes?”

Another small rock rattled off the door, and Nel set aside the cup she’d been polishing. She glanced around the kitchen, noticing how bare it looked. A small mound of limp gray vegetables, a few strips of dried meat hanging from the rafters, and a single ironhead on Cook’s cutting board, the fish’s milky eyes telling her that it had been caught days ago. Times were hard. “Do we have anything?” she asked, without much hope.

Cook reached down beneath the table he stood beside and pulled out a ragged hunk of bread. “Had to hide this, otherwise the girls would’ve devoured it. Eh. Greedy creatures they are.”

Nel grinned and hurried to take the bread from Cook; he bent down, and she went up on her toes to lightly kiss his smooth brown cheek. He smelled like old wood, same as the beautifully carved dolls her mother kept in their room. She loved him then, as much as she had loved anyone other than her mama.

“Go on, then,” he said, and clutching the bread to her chest, she dashed across the kitchen to the door. She pushed it open, shivering as tendrils of cold, damp air slipped past her.

Jumbled shadows filled the narrow alley, broken crates and shattered furniture that the last shreds of twilight had transformed into a ruined cityscape. Nel stepped out onto the cobblestones, feeling something soft squelch beneath her slippers. She hoped it was a rotten vegetable and not a clump of night soil tossed out of one of the windows above. In the darkness she couldn’t quite tell what it was, but the smell in this alley wasn’t any worse than usual, so she breathed a small sigh of relief.

“Oy!” she called out, peering into the gloom. “Where are you turnip-heads?”

For a long moment nothing moved. Nel tapped her foot impatiently, but then slowly shapes came out from the shadows, creeping forward like skittish dogs. As they approached the light puddled around the open door, faces emerged from the blackness: Bethany, hiding behind her curtain of matted yellow hair; tiny albino Bone, his eyes a pale pink; and Samwin, who was a little taller than Nel, even though she thought she must be older. Nel saw hunger in the way they stared at the bread; times were not only hard at the Moon, she knew.

“Where’s Ben?” she asked, straining to look past the three urchins. Sometimes the big boy hung back, waiting to make sure it was safe before joining the others.

“Ben’s gone,” Bone said, tugging at his torn shirt.

“Where’d he go?”

“Joined the Red Wolves,” Bethany replied in her small soft voice. “He’d been doing little jobs for them for a while, running messages, keeping lookout. Then one night they came and offered him a spot in the gang, said someone had been gutted an’ they wanted him to take his place. Made him cut his hand an’ press palm right there where we was hiding. I saw the whole thing. He left with them and we never seen him since.”

“How long ago?” Something about this didn’t sound right to Nel.

“Five nights, I think,” Samwin whispered, his eyes finding hers. Don’t tell them what you’re thinking, his look said.

Five nights, and Ben hadn’t been back, even to just give them a few scraps? That wasn’t like him at all. He always took care of them.

“He’s gonna bring us something good soon,” Bethany said, and Bone nodded. “Maybe some meat.”

“Well, I don’t got any meat,” Nel said, ripping the bread she held into three good-sized chunks, “but I got bread. Who wants it?”

“Me!” Bethany and Bone cried at the same time, scurrying closer.

Nel laughed and threw them the bread, and they tore into it ravenously. The last and biggest piece she tossed to Samwin. He caught it, but instead of joining Bone and Bethany, he tucked the bread away, watching the other two with solemn eyes. Just like Ben used to do, Nel thought. They’re his responsibility now. If they wake up crying from hunger later, he’s got to have something to give them.

Nel swallowed back a tightness in her throat, wishing she had more to share.

Something shifted near where the alley emptied onto the Street of Silk, and they all turned toward the sound, the urchins tensing to flee. If it had come the other way, in the direction of the Warrens, Nel would have been more nervous; likely this was just some drunk stumbling out of one of the taverns. Nevertheless, Nel spared a quick glance over her shoulder to make sure Cook was still in the kitchen.

“Who’s there?” she called out. “No more bread, if that’s what you’re after.”

A small shadow detached from the darkness and crept closer. Nel’s little knot of fear untangled when she realized from the size that it must be another child approaching. Though they could be dangerous as well – in the Warrens some children had turned feral, Ben had once told her, and were as vicious and cruel as the thieves that ran those streets. Ben wasn’t vicious or cruel, though. How could he join a gang?

“I don’t want any bread,” a boy said as he stepped into the light. To Nel’s surprise it was the same black-haired boy from this evening’s chalice game.

She held up her hand to keep the urchins from scattering. “It’s all right, I know him. He was in the Moon earlier.”

The boy shifted uncomfortably as they stared at him. His clothes were well made, she thought, but worn and frayed, and so small that in a few places the seams had started to come undone. Still, he wasn’t the sort she expected to see wandering the alleys of Lyr, especially this close to the Warrens.

“What’s your name?” Samwin said, apparently satisfied that this newcomer wasn’t a threat.

The boy cleared his throat, glancing at each of them in turn. “Vhelan. I was out on the street and heard you all here.”

Nel shook her head. “Stupid. Don’t you realize these alleys empty into the Warrens? We could be a gang just waiting to jump on the merchants that come slumming in the Silk.”

Vhelan’s calm eyes found hers. “You didn’t sound dangerous.”

Nel snorted. “Shows what you know. Plenty of smart bosses get kids to lure rich folk like you into the shadows so they can stab them and take their purses.”

The boy peered past them, to where darkness swallowed the other end of the alley. “The Warrens are down there? I’ve always wanted to see if the stories were true.”

“Every one of them is true, and worse besides,” Nel said, crossing her arms. “You’d have your throat slit before you could take ten steps. Kill you just for your teeth so they could make buttons out of them. Then they’d sell your body to the chop pot men, an iron bit for every arm and leg, and two for your head. Cheeks taste the best, that’s what I heard.”

Bone’s eyes had gone round as silver kellics, but Vhelan didn’t seem scared at all. “Truly, the cheeks? I didn’t know that.”

“What are you doing out here, anyway? With the chalice win your father had tonight I’d have thought you’d be off celebrating, eating pheasant and drinking firewine.”

“Tarris isn’t my father,” Vhelan said quickly, “just someone who took me in when my uncle died. And he is off celebrating, throwing coins around in the Toad. Come tomorrow we won’t have enough money to buy porridge, I’m sure. It’s happened before.”

That impressed Nel. “Truly? I never seen anyone win so much at chalice in one sitting. He’ll spend it all?”

“Down to every last bit,” Vhelan said, his mouth twisting. “And then he’ll have to borrow more money to buy into the next game. And if we don’t win enough that night, he’ll lose another finger. You notice he was missing three on his left hand?”

Nel thought back, and she remembered that the old gambler had kept one of his hands hidden under the table. She resolved to get a good look the next time he was in the Moon.

“You say you was just at the Laughing Toad?” Samwin asked.

Vhelan nodded. “For a little while. Tarris got angry at me for asking for a few coins to buy some of those honeyed locusts the ragman sells outside.”

“I know those!” Bone cried, clapping his hands together. “I’d give anything to try one. Must be what they eat every meal of the day up in the Bright.”

“You hear anything funny when you was out on the street?”

Vhelan cocked his head at Samwin’s question. “No. Just music from the taverns, maybe a few cats fighting.”

Bethany turned toward Samwin. “I bet the ghost only comes real late.”

“Ghost?” Nel interrupted, a little thrill going through her. She loved ghost stories.

Samwin frowned at Bethany, as if annoyed because she’d spilled some secret.

“Yeah,” the big boy said slowly. “Two nights ago, well past midnight I think, we was near the Toad looking to see if anything had been dropped.”

Or, Nel thought, looking to see if anyone was sleeping off their ale in the streets and had foolishly not spent all the coins in their pockets. Stealing from drunks was a dangerous but tempting pastime for the street urchins of the Silk.

“And then we heard it. You know that building that burned last month next to the Toad?”

Nel nodded. She remembered the fire bells clanging, everyone rushing out to throw buckets of water on the blaze. Merik had told her later that the whole district had nearly gone up.

“Well, we heard a ghost. Must’ve been one of the folks who got dead. Moaning and crying.”

“Did you go inside?” Nel asked, imagining a ravaged specter walking the charred halls. Maybe holding a baby or a cameo of their beloved, gobs of spectral fire dripping down from their still-burning hair. She shivered at the thought.

“Course not,” Samwin said. “And we haven’t been near the Toad since.”

“I would have gone inside,” Nel said confidently, throwing her head back a little. “I ain’t scared of ghosts.”

“Would you really?” Bethany whispered, gazing at Nel with newfound respect.

“Nah, she wouldn’t,” Samwin said. “Not if she’d heard what we did.”

“Would to! I’ll go right now!”

“I don’t want you to go,” Bone said, tears glimmering in his eyes. “Who’ll give us bread if the ghosts get you, Nel?”

“Ghosts can’t hurt you,” Nel told them, passing on some of Cook’s wisdom. “They just have a story to tell and want you to hear it.”

“Please don’t go, Nel,” Bone persisted. His cheeks were shining wetly now in the light spilling from the kitchen. “Promise me.”

Nel clasped her hands together, just like the bravos did when they vowed a vendetta or some other oath. She didn’t want to upset Bone. “I promise,” she said, and saw relief in the faces of the urchins.

Vhelan, however, looked interested. He opened his mouth, but snapped it shut when Cook’s shadow darkened the doorway.

“Little one, you’re letting all the warmth out. Come inside.”

Nel saw how the other children drew back from Cook, even though she’d told them many times he wasn’t scary at all. “All right,” she said to them, turning away. “I gotta help. Don’t go hunting any ghosts without me.”

The old gambler and his boy came again the next evening. He won big for a second night, though without playing the poisoned chalice, and after scooping up his winnings he’d tossed Vhelan a silver kellic and told him to find supper somewhere – he was going back to the Laughing Toad and didn’t want him underfoot. Vhelan grimaced but said nothing. After he’d left, Nel had told Vhelan that he should keep the coin, and together they could scrounge for food in the Moon’s kitchen.

They dined on cold slices of an eel pie Cook had baked earlier, washing the deliciously creamy and marshy bites down with ale stolen from one of the barrels behind the bar. After swallowing her last mouthful of flaky crust Nel belched and settled herself against the wall in the little hiding spot they’d found under the storeroom stairs, lacing her hands contentedly across her full belly.

“Cook sure can cook,” she sighed, picking at something in her teeth. “Wonder if that’s why his mama named him Cook.”

Vhelan cocked an eyebrow at her, and Nel snorted. “Joking. I’m not simple – I know his name’s just a lucky coincidence.”

Then Vhelan did laugh, until his face turned red and he was lying on his side. When he finally stopped, he wiped his eyes dry and pulled forth a pouch.

“You play keepsies?” he asked, pouring out a handful of smooth round stones.

“I’m the best player you ever met,” Nel replied, scooping up one of the little rocks and studying it critically. “Though I never saw such a sorry bunch of stones. You got them all notched up like the chalice cards your friend uses?”

“Tarris isn’t my friend,” Vhelan said, his mirth vanishing. “And he doesn’t use marked cards.”

Nel flicked one of the stones experimentally, testing how it tumbled. “Then how come you’ve won big the last two nights? You telling me he’s just brilliant at chalice?”

“He’s not.”

“Then how come he wins?”

Vhelan licked his lips. “Because . . . because I help him.”

Nel didn’t let anything show in her face, but inside she smiled. She’d been right about that little tug she’s seen the boy give the old gambler, just before he’d started the big run that had ended in the scarred man’s emperor drinking from the chalice.

“Oh, so you’re good at the game?”

Vhelan glanced around nervously. “You can’t . . . you can’t tell anyone. Tarris said if the other players found out, they’d cut us up and throw us into the harbor for the wraithfins. I just know sometimes, all right? It’s a feeling, and if I follow it good things happen in the game. Usually.”

“Usually?”

“Sometimes the sense I’m talking about, it isn’t there. Those nights Tarris might lose a finger, if he’s borrowed money to buy into the game. I keep telling him he’s got to be careful, put some aside so he doesn’t have to go to the moneylenders, but he never listens.”

“And then it’s your fault when the game don’t go good?”

Vhelan looked away. “Yeah.”

From his face Nel could tell he was remembering something bad. So she punched him on the shoulder, hard.

“Ow!” Vhelan cried, his eyes widening in surprise and pain.

Ignoring him, Nel hopped to her feet. “I’m gonna go get my stones. Be back in a cat’s lick.”

“Maybe I’ll just leave,” Vhelan muttered sullenly, rubbing his arm.

“Don’t you dare,” Nel replied lightly. “I want to win that kellic off you.”

She dashed out from under the stairs, wended her way between the barrels of wine and ale that filled the storeroom, and burst into the tavern’s common room. It wasn’t empty, which was unusual: two swordsmen in orange-and-black livery were seated at one of the tables, intent on a game of tzalik. Not nightwatchmen, because the watch dressed in the blue and purple of the archon council. Must be guards for someone important visiting a girl. Behind the bar Merik frantically motioned for her to come over, but she pretended she hadn’t seen him, and instead bounded up the stairs to the second floor.

Nel slowed when she reached the room she shared with her mama; she should be awake, but her mama had been so sick lately that she’d been sleeping at odd hours, and spending most days in bed. Earlier today she’d looked better, though, and had even told Nel that she might come downstairs this evening.

The door was closed. Usually the doors of this hall were only shut when girls were entertaining, but surely her mama wasn’t well enough to be doing that. Nel nudged the door open a crack and peered inside.

Her mama sat on the edge of the bed they shared. She was wearing her favorite outfit, the one she sometimes sang in, a long red dress that left her shoulders bare and clung tight to the rest of her. Nel had noticed that a lot of people watched her closely when she wore that dress. Her delicate, pale face – so different from Nel’s, who everyone teased looked like a boy’s – was tilted upwards, and she stared with wide, admiring eyes at the man looming over her.

It was the young chalice player from the night before, the scarred man who had dragged Verise upstairs. His silken shirt was unbuttoned, revealing livid red marks criss-crossing his chest. This demonstrated that he was a real bravo, someone who had fought and survived many duels. He reached out and cupped her mama’s chin, his fingers digging into her cheeks.

Quietly she shut the door. Her mama had said to never come in if she was with a man, and it was one of the few rules that Nel had never broken in her life.

But there was something hard and sour inside her chest, pressing on her heart. This wasn’t right; her mama was sick. Two nights ago she’d been moaning in her sleep, her skin as cold and wet as if she’d been out in the winter fog. When she’d woken up she’d complained about being too hot and wanted to get out from under the blankets.

Nel squeezed her hands into fists, concentrating on her nails cutting into her palms. She didn’t want to think about her mama or the scarred man right now. She turned away from the door, keeping that fierce small pain centered in her thoughts as she made her way back to the stairs. When she reached the first step, she let her gaze wander around the common room, passing over the empty tables and couches, the two swordsmen playing tzalik, and Merik staring angrily up at her…

“Imp!” cried the barkeep, his face flushed. “You come down here right now!”

Nel felt that little seed of sourness in her chest open up, and inside she found there was anger, bright and hot. “No!” she yelled back, rushing down the stairs. “You leave me alone, you old goat!” She glimpsed shock in the barkeep’s face, then she turned away from him and ran for the storeroom. There was wetness on her face, and she rubbed frantically at her cheeks as she dashed around the ale barrels, quick as a darting mouse.

Vhelan’s eyes widened when she burst into their hiding spot, breathing hard. “Are you all right?” he asked, glancing behind her as if he expected to see the city watch hard on her heels.

“I’m fine.”

“Are you crying?”

Nel stuck her tongue out at him. “No. Don’t be stupid.”

“Well, did you get your keepsies stones?”

A crash shivered the air – the storeroom door being flung open. Merik didn’t beat her too often, but she thought he was angry enough that he probably would… if he could catch her.

“I don’t wanna play stones no more,” she said, pulling at Vhelan’s arm until he came to his feet. The heavy clomp of footsteps was getting louder.

Nel led Vhelan through the maze of sacks and crates and into the kitchens. Cook glanced up in surprise from his chopping, but Nel just waved back quickly at him, dragging Vhelan toward the back door.

“Little one! Where are you going?”

“Out!” she yelled over her shoulder, shoving the heavy door open. She wasn’t allowed to leave the inn after dark, usually, but she wasn’t about to stay inside with Merik looking to give her a good thrashing.

A moment later they were in the alley, laughing as they pushed through the gloom, the illuminated mouth of the alley swelling larger. Then they burst out onto the Street of Silk, startling a group of well-dressed older ladies, each of whom wore long iridescent feathers in their crested caps.

Nel paused and bowed deep. “My sincerest apologies, madams,” she said gravely, in a ridiculous attempt at a Bright Quarter accent. Then she whirled on her heels and ran giggling to catch up with Vhelan.

“Gutter rat,” she heard one of the ladies mutter behind her, but Nel didn’t care. She’d rather be a rat in a gutter than wear stupid feathers like an ugly old bird any day.

When they finally stopped, doubled over and panting, Nel looked behind them, but as she expected Merik had long since given up the chase. They’d run nearly the length of the street – while the Moon bordered on the Warrens to the east, the western end emptied into the Bright Quarter, where the rich lived. An archway separated the two districts, inscribed with twisting vines and flowers, and looming beyond this graceful ribbon of stone was a bristling forest of spires and crenellations.

The Laughing Toad, a rambling old building that dwarfed the other inns and taverns on the street, squatted beside the archway, every window of its three stories ablaze with light. Paper lanterns hung on silver wire from the red-tiled eaves, and a pair of verdigrised copper toads flanked the tavern’s entrance, grinning like drunken fools. The sound of revelry spilled into the street as a man emerged into the night. He paused to rub a toad’s tarnished head, laughter and the skirling notes of a keppa fading as the door swung shut behind him.

Nel almost suggested that they sneak inside and try to catch a glimpse of the musician, but then she saw Vhelan’s face. Tarris must be within, the silver coins Vhelan had helped him win and which should have gone toward warm beds and new clothes slipping through his fingers like water.

“Forget him,” she said, pulling on his sleeve as she turned away from the Toad. “He’s just a…”

The words vanished back down her throat as she suddenly realized that they stood in front of a listing husk of a building. The same building, in fact, that had burned a month ago, and where her strays had said they’d heard a ghost.

“Just a what?” Vhelan said, then sucked in his breath when he saw what she was staring at. “Oh. Is that it?”

She nodded, her gaze scouring the ruins for any hint of movement or pale, flickering lights. But the fire-blackened windows that remained held only pooled darkness. Could something be watching them from within? Nel shivered. She approached the shattered entrance; shards of splintered wood hung down from the frame, giving the doorway the look of a monster’s fanged mouth. Inside was utter blackness.

“Nel…” Vhelan whispered, and she glanced back at him.

“Are you coming with me? I want to see if there’s a ghost.”

He swallowed. “Why?”

“Why not? I told you, they can’t hurt us. Cook said so.” She beckoned him to come. “Are you a coward?”

“I’m not a coward,” he said softly, his eyes not leaving the darkened entrance, “but I’m also not stupid. This place could collapse at any time; in fact, they’re probably expecting it to fall soon – otherwise they would have knocked it down already.”

“Sounds like you’re a coward.”

“I’m not a coward!” he hissed, a little angrily.

“Then hurry up,” she said, and slipped beneath the collapsing wooden beams blocking the doorway.

Darkness swaddled her, so thick it seemed to clot in her mouth. She almost turned and dashed out of the ruin, but then she felt Vhelan beside her, and fresh courage filled her. They stood there in the blackness, straining to hear or see anything. His hand brushed hers and they laced their fingers together. She thought she could feel his pulse thundering in the stillness, but that might have been her own.

As her eyes adjusted, shapes resolved in the dark. She saw scattered mounds that might once have been furniture, and a wide staircase ascending to the second story.

“Nothing’s here, Nel,” he said softly. “It’s empty.”

Then a sound came, floating down the stairs, making Nel’s flesh goosepimple. A moaning, so faint it might have been the wind, if there had been any wind that night.

“What’s that?” Vhelan hissed.

“The ghost,” Nel murmured, taking a step toward the stairs. “It’s upstairs.”

A tremor went through Vhelan, but he did not pull away. “Nel,” he said, almost babbling, panic in his voice, “my nan told me about ghosts too, and she didn’t say they couldn’t hurt you. She said they were always looking for chances to get revenge on the living and she –”

“Shhhh,” Nel said, and Vhelan quieted. She put her foot on the stair’s first step. It gave a little, perhaps weakened by the fire that had raged through the ruin.

But it held. Another step, then another. The moaning grew louder, as if it could sense their approach. Vhelan’s palm was slick and cold, and she squeezed his hand to try and give him strength.

At the top of the stairs, she paused. Most of the roof and walls had collapsed, and moonlight silvered the debris. Where was the ghost?

She could still hear the moaning; it was coming from where a ragged chunk of the roof remained, the floor beneath drenched with shadow.

Nel moved in that direction, and the boards beneath her feet creaked loudly.

The moaning stopped.

“Nel…” Vhelan began. Then he yipped in fear as something shifted in the darkness. Nel tensed, a wash of cold fear going through her. But she did not flee.

“You’ve come,” something rasped from the blackness. It was a dead voice, a voice that made her shiver. “You’ve come for me… I’ve missed you so much.”

A huddled shape uncoiled, moving into the moonlight. Vhelan tried to pull away, but Nel held him tight. He mewled in terror.

It was a man. Or maybe the spirit of a man, though he looked alive. Barely. He lay on his side, his hands pressed to his stomach. Even in the faint light Nel could tell that he was deathly pale. He breathed heavily, his lank hair plastered to his forehead, and she realized that he sprawled in a pool of deeper blackness. Around where his hands clutched his belly his tunic was also stained dark.

Nel took a steadying breath and stepped forward. “Are you dead?”

“I must be,” the man whispered, “if I can see you. Oh, Charise, I’ve wanted to look on you again. I prayed and prayed that you would be the one to come for me.”

Nel crept a little closer. “I’m not Charise. I don’t know who that is.”

The man didn’t seem to hear her. “I’m so sorry, sweetling. I wasn’t there when you needed me most. And I didn’t… I didn’t kill him. He was too fast.” The man coughed wetly.

“I’m not Charise,” Nel repeated. “And I don’t think you’re dead. We need to go get help for you.”

The man moaned and writhed, his hand leaving a dark smear on the shadowed floor. “Wine. He said he wanted crystalwine. He must have known that there would be none in my cellar. I would have to leave the inn, and then he could be alone with you.”

Nel glanced over at Vhelan, a prickling dread creeping up her arms. What was this poor fool talking about?

“He killed her?” Vhelan whispered. “He killed Charise?”

A tremor passed through the dying man. He made a sound of such piercing sorrow that Nel felt her own chest start to ache. “Broken. I found you broken, a dagger in your heart. And my beloved Anabel. She must have tried to stop them. I wept for you! I promised vengeance! But… I failed.” Another wracking sob. “He cut me down before you could taste his blood.”

“Me?”

“Yes! I brought the bloodmage to your body. He bound your soul to the blade they left in you, and your sister’s soul to the one in her. I wanted you to spill his life… to taste his suffering.”

Something fluttered at the edge of Nel’s memory, a fragment of a conversation she had overheard the night before. “The Toad… you were the one who tried to kill Baern ri Vhalus. He stabbed you, and you crawled up here.”

“Ohhhhhhh! That name…”

“He killed your daughters?”

The man did not move for a long moment, and Nel feared that he had died. When he finally spoke again his voice had changed – the ragged edge of madness was gone.

“You… you are not my Charise. I am not dead.”

Nel swallowed. “I’m not, and you’re not. We can bring a chirurgeon here to stitch you up. You can try for your vengeance again, if that’s what you want.”

“No,” the man said. “But… but perhaps you truly are the answer to my prayers. My daughters… someone must care for them.” He withdrew two long thin objects from the folds of his blood stained clothes. “Perhaps you are meant to do that.”

Her mind was fervently telling her not to take what the man was offering, but Nel found herself stepping forward. She reached out, and with bloody fingers the man pressed two hilts into her small hand. They were so large and awkward that she nearly dropped the daggers.

The man collapsed backward, as if exhausted. “Good. Good, they are yours now. Cherish them, as I did. Their names are… no. No, I cannot say their names again. I do not know whether it was chance or fate that brought you here, but… but… Chance and Fate. Those… those are their names now.”

The leather-wrapped handles felt unnaturally warm. Almost alive. Nel imagined she could hear a faint whispering…

“Nel,” Vhelan said, roughly grabbing her shoulder. “He’s dead.”

And he was.

Over the next few days the memories of that night faded, and at times Nel found herself wondering if it had all in fact been a dream. She would pause in her sweeping or scouring, her hand drifting to the sash beneath her tunic, where she’d hidden the daggers. As soon as her fingers brushed cool metal, though, every detail would come flooding back, as stark and vivid as when she and Vhelan had spilled from the ruined house into the cool, damp Lyrish night, terrified and excited.

Merik hadn’t given her as bad a beating as she’d feared, almost as if he were distracted by something else. A few lashes with the leather strap across the back of her legs, which made lying down uncomfortable, but if she stayed on her feet then the pain faded quickly. Maybe he’d guessed that she’d seen her mother with the scarred bravo, and somewhere inside him a tiny spark of sympathy glimmered.

Four nights passed before Vhelan returned to the Moon. Nel had heard the girls gossiping about a big game of chalice that night, so she’d suspected he and Tarris would come. Usually when word got around of a match with a sizeable hoard a steady trickle of players passed through the door, but this night only Baern ri Vhalus arrived, the riding spurs on his boots harshly clanging as he strode across the common room. I found you broken, a dagger in your heart. Nel shuddered. Could that story be true? Was this man with his cruel smile a murderer?

Tarris, by contrast, seemed even more haggard than usual when he finally appeared, with bruises beneath his eyes and a noticeable limp. Vhelan flashed Nel a small grin as he passed, but otherwise gave no indication that he knew her. Glancing from Merik, scowling behind the bar, to Tarris, Nel thought that that was probably a good idea.

“Imp,” Merik said a little while after Tarris and Vhelan had vanished behind the carved screen, “go see if they want anything to drink or eat.”

Nel nodded, trying to keep her face empty of the excitement she suddenly felt. Given the drama the last time Tarris and Baern had played chalice, she was desperate to see how the game unfolded tonight.

Baern was shuffling a chalice deck as she slipped into the room, the cards blurring together and becoming a cascade of flickering shadows that he moved from hand to hand with expert skill.

“I thought your note said there would be other players coming,” Tarris slurred, massaging his temple, his eyes half closed. He did have only two fingers on his left hand.

Baern grinned. Nel had never seen him attempt to be friendly, and the sight made her shiver. He looked just like the crocodile she had once glimpsed in a traveling menagerie, glittering black eyes above a toothy, predatory smile.

“Soon, old man.”

A clatter arose from the other side of the screen. It sounded like a large group was marching through the tavern’s common room, coming closer.

Baern heard it too, and he set the cards down in a neat stack with a flourish. “Ah. They’re here.”

The fog Tarris was struggling through seemed to lift. His eyes cleared, and he started to rise from the table, his hand on Vhelan’s wrist. But before he could move, a tall warrior in the same orange-and-black livery Nel had seen before came around the screen.

“Sit,” he said to Tarris, his voice flat and cold.

The old gambler collapsed again into his chair, goggling up at the warrior looming over him.

Nel receded into a corner of the room, her heart thundering. For a moment she considered making a dash back to the bar, but more and more warriors were entering the small room, until she couldn’t see how she could possibly escape without being noticed. Nel counted seven guards in orange and black, all broad shouldered and grim faced. They arrayed themselves in the room, forming a circle around the table, their hands on the hilts of their swords.

“What’s this –” Tarris said, but Baern put a finger to his lips and the old gambler fell silent.

Then Nel heard it. More footsteps were approaching, but softer this time, the whisper of silk on wood rather than the heavy clomp of hard leather.

A wizened old man shuffled into the room, leaning on an ebony cane topped with a gleaming silver ball. He was draped in robes of velvet and ermine, and jewels glittered in his nose and ears.

Behind him came a young woman, dressed more humbly in a simple frock of pale blue linen. She was blindfolded, a length of dark cloth hiding her eyes. A small, unremarkable man with a steep widow’s peak gently held her arm, and he guided her over to an empty chair and helped her to sit.

Baern rose and bowed smoothly to the old man. “Father,” he said.

The elder Vhalus ignored him and pushed past his son to claim the seat he had just vacated. He shrugged out of his rich vestments, and as if by sorcery, the slight man appeared next to the old man, accepting the proffered robes gracefully. Nel blinked. She hadn’t seen the man move – one moment he had been standing behind the woman’s chair, and the next he simply wasn’t.

The old man drummed his fingers on the table, studying Tarris, and the gambler seemed to wilt under his scrutiny.

Still standing beside his father, Baern crossed his arms and frowned, as if annoyed by his father’s indifference toward him.

“Father –” he began again, but the old man held up his hand.

Swallowing away her fear, Nel started to slide along the wall, toward the screen and freedom. Before she could move very far, though, the small man’s calm gaze found her; he shook his head slightly, and she froze like she had been stuck with an arrow, fear coiling in her belly.

The old man clasped his hands together on the table and leaned forward. “Do you know who I am?”

Tarris swallowed. Even from across the room Nel could see the sheen of sweat on his brow. “Aye. You are Menosh ri Vhalus.”

The man smiled broadly, as if the old gambler had just complimented him. “I am!” He clapped his hands together once, sharply. “And you are Tarris from Cinder Street, a man of such low birth and standing that you do not even have a family name you wish to claim as your own.”

Tarris flushed crimson, but said nothing.

“And yet here I am, a patriarch of a great house, the owner of fifty ships and the largest trading company in Lyr, sitting across from you in this wretched winesink. Why do you think that is?”

Tarris swallowed and shrugged, his face ashen.

“Answer your betters when they speak to you!” Baern shouted, spittle flecking the table.

Tarris gaped, but still did not say anything; rather, it was the elder Vhalus who rounded on his son, anger twisting his face for the first time. “Out!” he commanded, jabbing a finger in the direction of the common room. “Find something to distract yourself with out there. You won’t be in the game tonight, and your childish outbursts have no place at this table.”

“But, Father –”

“Out!”

With a last, poisonous glance at Tarris, the scarred bravo whirled on his heels and shoved past the dividing screen.

Menosh gave a quick shake of his head and turned his gaze to the ceiling, as if imploring the gods for help. “My apologies,” he said, again addressing Tarris. “I should have had him raised as a cabin boy on one of my ships, or sent him off to the Reliquary to lug books around for scholars. Perhaps he would have turned out better. A life of indolence and ease corrupts the soul – I knew this, and yet still I let his mother spoil him terribly.”

Menosh gestured toward Vhelan. “Look at your boy, so still and silent he could be a statue. Proper behavior for the young and ignorant, at least while their elders are talking, don’t you agree?” He smiled warmly at Tarris. “Now, I did ask you a question a moment ago, and I still want an answer. Do you have any suspicion as to why I’ve come here tonight?”

“You… you want to play me in chalice?”

Menosh slapped his palm on the table, and both Tarris and Vhelan jumped at the sound. “Just that! My worthless offspring tells me you sprung the cup on him, an impressive accomplishment. This intrigued me, and so I made some discreet inquiries about you, and was astonished to find that this is the third time in the last month you’ve claimed a hoard by having the emperor drink from the chalice.” The elder Vhalus’s hand went to his breast. “I consider myself a student of the game, and so I know that this is an almost unimaginable feat. Of course, I suspected mischief.”

Tarris shifted and cleared his throat, but Menosh forestalled him with an upraised hand.

“No, please, no protestations. I am a fair man, and I would not exact the archon’s justice without proof. So here is what will happen tonight: we will duel each other in chalice, one player against another. Of course, I expect to lose handily. If you truly possess the skill demonstrated in your recent run of victories, I cannot hope to compete. In that case my suspicions will be allayed, and you may leave this tavern with my blessing.

“But if you should lose,” Menosh continued, his voice hardening, “then I can only conclude that you employed some deviousness to rob my son of his money – which, I’m sure you do realize, is in fact my money. In that unfortunate scenario, my manservant will cut out one of your eyes.” As if summoned, the slight, nondescript man who had taken the elder Vhalus’s robes appeared beside Tarris. This time Nel did see him move – he glided around the table with such grace and quickness that she let out a little gasp. In a flash, the blade of a curved knife was laid on Tarris’s cheek, its point nearly brushing his wide, panicked eye.

“But I do know that mistress luck can turn her radiant visage toward any poor fool for one game – given that, if I do win, I will allow you to choose which eye my servant takes. You see, I am generous.

“Oh, but be warned, my manservant is quite perceptive. If he catches you pulling a card from your sleeve, or bending the corner of another as you deal, I will have you killed where you sit. We both know the punishment for cheating at chalice in this civilized city is death, and the magistrates will accept whatever I tell them about what happened here tonight.”

Menosh smiled, his expression friendly again, and picked up the stack of cards his son had set on the table earlier. “Now, let us begin. Poor as I am at it, I do so love the game.”

Nel had watched enough games of chalice to realize very quickly that Menosh, despite his claims to the contrary, was in fact a canny player. He feinted early, sacrificing some lesser beasts to learn the disposition of Tarris’s run, and after a flurry of challenges had claimed a half dozen of the old gambler’s cards, including the yellow duke, one of the stronger nobles. For a brief moment, Nel thought Menosh might take the game there and then, but Tarris baited him into playing his sorcerer, second in the game’s hierarchy only to the emperor, and his challenge proved to be the paladin.

“Ha! The damned Pure!” cried Menosh, shaking his head and grinning ruefully, as if amused rather than angered by the loss. He twisted in his chair to face the blind woman. “Paladin takes sorcerer! This good fellow might keep his eyes yet, Philias!”

The woman offered a brittle smile and said nothing.

Nel saw Vhelan’s fingers brush Tarris’s sleeve and give a small tug.

“Challenge,” said the old gambler.

Menosh’s eyes widened slightly. “A challenge? You are in an interesting position to be going on the offensive. But I accept the –”

“Wait.”

Everyone in the crowded little room turned their gaze to the woman, who had leaned forward when she spoke.

Menosh did not turn to look at her this time; instead, he glanced sharply at his servant and nodded.

The slight man moved closer to Tarris, and in an eyeblink his dagger was pressed against the old gambler’s neck. A drop of blood blossomed and slid down his throat, carving a twisting channel. Tarris moaned.

“Yes?” Menosh said, tapping one of the cards in his run.

“It’s the boy.”

“Truly?” Menosh made a quick gesture, and in a flicker of movement too fast for Nel to see clearly, the slight man moved his dagger from Tarris’s neck to Vhelan’s. Nel shrieked in fear, but no one in the room paid her any attention.

“Can he control it?”

The blindfolded woman shook her head. “No. Completely untrained. But the taint is strong in him.”

“Taint?” Tarris whispered, and rubbed at his neck with a shaking hand, leaving a bloody smear.

“Sorcery,” the woman said. “The boy is using his gift to influence the game.”

Nel’s chest tightened. Sorcery. Impossible. Sorcerers made deals with demons for their dark powers, and were hunted in every land. But a few days ago she had made Vhelan laugh so hard he had nearly choked on his eel pie! He could not be a sorcerer!

“Should I kill the boy?” The man’s voice was calm, emptied of any emotion. He could have been asking if Menosh wanted him to pare an apple.

Menosh stroked the few wispy hairs on his chin. Nel couldn’t breathe as she watched the old man decide whether Vhelan would live or die.

“The boy is no sorcerer,” Tarris babbled, panic edging his voice. “That’s impossible, he’s just good at –”

His words trailed away as the woman slipped off her blindfold and opened her eyes.

“Gods,” the old gambler whispered.

She had no pupils. No eyes, even. Just shining pockets of golden light, radiant in the dimness.

A tingling warmth flooded Nel. She had heard the stories, of course, about the paladins of Ama with their burning eyes, who hunted down sorcerers. But they were always men, and heroically strong, swords of gleaming white metal at their sides. Not women who needed help to walk!

She closed her eyes, and the unnatural light vanished, darkness rushing back into the room.

“Kill the old man,” Menosh said into the shocked silence that followed.

Before Tarris could even flinch the servant drew the dagger with startling quickness across the old gambler’s throat. From her vantage Nel did not see the wound open up, but she saw what happened next: Tarris’s hands scrabbled at his neck as blood spurted from between his fingers. He made a ragged, broken sound and toppled from his chair, writhing on the floor. His panicked eyes found hers and she could see pleading there, as if she could do something to help… but Nel could only look down, horrified. She sobbed quietly, her fists clenched tight, trying to think only of the sharp pain her nails made in her palms. But it was impossible, and as if to taunt her, a dark pool of blood entered her sight, creeping across the floorboards toward her slippers.

What could she do? Would they kill Vhelan as well?

Nel jerked her gaze back to the table when she heard one of the swordsmen gasp. Vhelan had turned his body, and Nel could see the tears streaking his face. He shook as he stared down at Tarris’s body.

Something was happening. The air around his hands shimmered and twisted, almost as if they suddenly were surrounded by a haze of drifting dreamsmoke. But there were no dreamsmoke lamps in the room this night, only a few dirty lanterns hanging from the ceiling, and the strange mist had certainly not issued forth from those. All the swordsmen, Menosh, and even his deadly servant were frozen, watching in mute astonishment as the shadows coiled around Vhelan, pulses of light flickering deep within the gathering darkness.

Only the woman appeared unaffected by this gathering power. She stood, gesturing toward Vhelan. Instantly his eyes rolled up into their sockets, and he collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, the unnatural smoke dissipating.

When his head struck the floor, Nel screamed and ran for the common room. No one tried to stop her; no one even glanced at her as she dashed around the wooden screen. She glimpsed Merik’s surprised face as the bar flashed past, and then she was bounding up the stairs, three at a time, the fear pounding in her heart urging her on.

Her mother. She had to go to her. She could do something to save Vhelan and stop that man from murdering him like how he had just murdered Tarris… he had cut his throat like he was a trussed pig hanging in an abattoir…

The black blood, reaching across the floor toward her, coming closer.

Mother could reason with them… Mother could –

She burst through the door to her room. “Mama!” she screamed, then gave a little moan when she saw Baern ri Vhalus was already there, just starting to unbuckle his belt.

“Marinel!” her mother cried, rising from where she lay on the bed and rushing toward her.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw movement, and then there was a flash of light and she was on the floor, her head ringing.

“Whelp!” snarled the scarred bravo. “How dare you come running in here?”

“Do not touch her!” Nel’s mother shrieked. There was a flurry of commotion. Cheek pressed against the floor, Nel felt the reverberation of rapid footsteps, and then gentle fingers lightly touched the side of her face.

The fingers disappeared, her mother’s hand clutching at her shirt as she was pulled away. Nel rolled onto her back, trying to focus her blurred vision on what was happening.

Baern loomed over her, his hands holding her mother’s raised wrists. There was fear in her mother’s face, but also a wild anger Nel had never seen before. She struggled briefly against Baern’s grip, but she could not escape; he sneered when she stopped trying to free her hands. Then she spat in his face.

Nel scrambled to her feet in the frozen moment that followed. Baern gaped at her mother, his eyes widening in such surprise that it was like she had breathed dragonfire. He released one of her wrists and struck her hard. She collapsed, her head cracking against the wooden edge of the bed.

“Filthy whore,” Baern yelled at her. “You spit –” He made a little sound then, almost like a hiccup. His eyes fluttered, and he gave his head a small shake, as if trying to keep himself from falling asleep. His hands went to his stomach, where a dagger’s hilt had suddenly appeared.

Nel’s dagger.

She couldn’t remember stabbing him. But she must have, because there he was, gasping like a fish out of water as he fumbled weakly with the hilt. He pulled it out, and the hilt slipped from his bloody fingers, falling to the floor with a clatter. Swaying, he stood over the dagger, staring at it stupidly, not even seeing her. Then he stumbled for the door. Both his hands were pressed to his belly, but they did little to staunch the blood gushing from the wound. Slowly, as if in a trance, Nel bent and picked up the dagger, slipping it back beneath her tunic.

Then she remembered. “Mama!” Nel cried, rushing over to the bed. She shook her mother’s arm, glancing over her shoulder just as Baern vanished into the hallway, leaving bloody handprints on the wall as he struggled to keep himself upright. “We have to run, we have to get out now!”

Nel pulled hard, trying to bring her mother to her feet, but she was still limp. Her head fell backward. Her eyes were open. She was staring at Nel, but she wasn’t seeing her, and her neck was bent oddly…

“Mama!” Nel screamed, gathering her mother up in an embrace. “Mama, wake up!” She buried her face in her silky hair, breathing deep the smell, willing her mother to say something, to move, to breathe…

This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening.

Some place far away people were yelling. The sounds seeped into Nel’s thoughts as she rocked her mother, sobbing.

Strong hands roughly grabbed her and lifted her like she was a ragdoll. She writhed in the man’s arms, reaching out for her mother, who was slumped against the side of the bed like she was just resting, like she had just fallen asleep for a moment…

Nel wailed as she was carried out of the room, but she was too drained to struggle much. She smelled cured leather and the bitter tang of vanick nut on the man’s breath, and when she twisted she saw a tarnished hilt swaying at his side. One of the swordsmen.

They were going down the stairs, following a trail of blood. The sight of it mesmerized her, and she could not look away. It ended at the bottom of the steps in a dark pool, and in the middle of this was Baern, pale and still, curled around the wound in his stomach.

His eyes were as dull and glassy as her mother’s.

Nel was thrown to the floor, her cheek exploding with pain again. She didn’t care. Someone clutched a fistful of her hair and dragged her to her knees. Cold metal pressed against her throat. Through her tears she saw Menosh standing over his son’s body, his face slack, like he couldn’t believe what he was witnessing. The swordsmen stood awkwardly behind him, their faces ashen, hands on the hilts of their swords. One of them held Vhelan upright; his neck lolled to one side, but his eyes were half open, and his legs moved weakly, as if he were trying to stand by himself but didn’t quite have the strength.

“My boy,” Menosh whispered, not looking away from his son’s body. “You killed my boy.” He crouched down, laying his hand tenderly on Baern’s cheek. “Cut her. Cut her head off.”

Nel squeezed her eyes shut, knowing what would come next. The bite of steel, pain, and then the darkness’s warm embrace.

A whistling noise.

A crunching, wet sound.

The hand holding her hair vanished, and she fell forward.

Swordsmen scrabbled for their weapons; Menosh recoiled, his eyes bulging; Vhelan sagged to the floor as he was released. Movement everywhere, but so slow.

A man’s body collapsed beside her, hitting the ground like a dropped sack of grain. It was the slight man, the terrifying servant; she recognized his clothes, even though his head was now a bloody ruin. The knife he had held to her neck skittered across the floor.

“Run, little one.”

Nel twisted around. Cook loomed over her, brandishing his truncheon. The apron he usually kept so spotless was spattered with dark stains. He glanced down, his eyes finding hers. Nel didn’t see anger or fear in his face. He looked sad, she thought numbly.

“Run.”

He pushed her then, but not hard. Almost gently.

The swordsmen surged forward. She came to her feet, and staggered toward Vhelan, one of the warriors nearly sending her tumbling as he rushed at Cook.

Nel grabbed Vhelan’s arm; he looked at her with glazed eyes.

She slapped him. Vhelan blinked and shook his head, his gaze sharpening. Nel pulled on him and he came to his feet. Together they ran.

Behind her she heard Cook bellow. She looked back when she reached the kitchens, just as steel flashed in the lamplight.

Sobbing, Nel turned and ran for the door.

A scream behind her, then silence.

They burst into the alley, sending cats scurrying back to the shadows. Vhelan began stumbling toward the Street of Silk, but Nel seized his arm and yanked him in the other direction.Toward the Warrens.

They had barely gone a dozen paces before she heard the door smash open behind them.

“There! Get the little bastards!”

Vhelan stumbled and nearly fell, and Nel hauled him back to his feet.

“If they catch us, they’ll kill us!” she shouted at him between gasping breaths as they dodged around a pile of shattered masonry.

Boots pounded stone behind them. Coming closer.

The alley twisted and turned, entrances to more shadowy passages flashing past, gaping like mouths preparing to scream. This was farther than Nel had ever dared go before; there were no lanterns here like the nightwatchmen lit on the Street of Silk, no shopfronts or glazed-glass windows. Just an endless twisting labyrinth of gray brick.

They burst from the alley into a large circular space. Many twisting roads and alleys converged here from every direction, like the spokes on a wheel. Maybe once this had been a market square, as debris was scattered everywhere: staved-in barrels, shards of wood, and what looked like the remnants of merchant stalls.

Nel took a few faltering steps into the space, glancing between the exits. They all looked the same. Which way to go? The footsteps behind them were pounding louder, almost as loud as her heart.

No time. “This way!” she cried, choosing at random and dragging Vhelan toward one of the alleys.

Her foot caught on a loose tile and she fell, pulling Vhelan down with her. Sharp pain blossomed in her ankle, and she cried out as she felt something pop.

Nel rolled onto her back just as two of Menosh’s guards came charging out of the alley and into the open space, both brandishing swords smeared with blood. They grinned when they caught sight of Nel and Vhelan sprawled out on the flagstones.

One sheathed his sword and sauntered closer. It was the warrior who had carried her from her bedroom and her mother, Nel realized, and she felt a surge of hate.

“Oh, you two are –” A stone smashed him in the nose, and the guard stumbled back screaming and clutching his face. More stones followed the first, pelting the warrior as he waved helplessly at the air.

Nel glanced around wildly. Small shapes were emerging from behind the detritus, dozens it seemed like, children with rocks in their hands or fitted into crude slings. A tiny boy no bigger than Bone whipped a cloth above his head, and then a stone flew with unerring precision to smack into the head of the guard whose nose was already a bloody mess, sending him to the ground.

The other swordsman gaped at his unmoving companion, then shrieked as a rock struck his shoulder. With a curse he turned and ran back into the alley, followed by a volley of missiles.

The children rushed forward as soon as he was gone, swarming over the fallen guard. Nel thought they would pry open his mouth to get to his teeth first, but they looked to be cutting away the pouches dangling from his belt with little knives, crowing in triumph at what they’d found. One of the children slipped the man’s sword from its sheath, struggling to lift it up, and then was buried under a crush of other small bodies trying to seize this treasure.

Nel watched all this numbly. The pain in her ankle was fierce, she knew, but it seemed to be pulsing far away, almost in someone else’s leg.

A ragged boy loomed over her. His face was smudged with dirt and his eyes hard, but he held out his hand for her to take.

“We gotta go,” he said, and Nel saw that a black-haired girl was helping Vhelan find his feet. “More gonna come, yeah?”

Nel ignored the boy’s outstretched hand and gingerly stood. The boy gave her half of a wry grin and turned away, gesturing for her to follow.

Wincing with pain, Nel hobbled after him. Vhelan came up beside her and slipped his arm under her shoulder, taking some of the weight off her leg. She turned to him; his eyes were empty, hollowed by the horrors of what happened.

No, not completely empty. There was something else there, as well.

Nel’s hand found his. She clutched it tightly, and together they entered the Warrens.

THERE IS A TOWER of glass rising from the seam of the world, where heaven joins earth. It perches atop the highest peak of a nameless mountain range, lashed by frozen winds, a spike of purest light when the sun shines. At night it also glows, but softer, with its own spectral radiance, like a creature from the ocean’s depths. Within, behind a rosewood door, a princess sleeps eternally, dreamlessly, guarded by clanking automatons of black iron. She waits for a savior, for one who would be king. Harpers sing her sad tale, and young men take up swords and quest. Someday these men will settle to till the earth or shape metal, wed and raise children. They will be content, but at times their eyes will stray to the star-spattered darkness, and they will wonder what might have been.

The once-baker’s boy pauses outside the rosewood door. He has ascended the great spiraling staircase for days now; he looks down and sees, far below, the tiny shattered hulks of the tower’s guardians. They had rolled toward him when he first entered, hissing steam and gnashing metal teeth, but his sword, Bright, had passed through them as if they were flesh and blood, spilling gouts of oil that had slid along the glass floor and stained his boots black.

Inside, he knows, the princess sleeps, awaiting a hero’s kiss. When their lips brush together her eyes will flutter open and see his face – a good face, not beautiful, perhaps, but strong, creased by the cares of his journey and chafed by the winds that batter the tower. She will smile like the dawn breaking, and proclaim him king, and together they will travel to the castle that has lain empty since her father died so many centuries ago.

His heart beats quick as he raises his hand and lays it against the door. The hand, too, has been scarred by his long quest; his smallest finger ends just above the knuckle. It was given freely for passage across the Skirling Plains, a blood-price for protection against the winds that churn and scour endlessly. The gray priest took it with one quick twist of his quartz dagger. The once-baker’s boy remembers the fierce pain, but he also remembers the sound the roiling elementals made as they bellowed in frustration above him, and he is glad for making that bargain.

He opens the door. He sees the silver casket and the sleeping princess, veiled by a silken canopy, but before him, in the middle of the room, a creature of glass shards uncoils, shimmering in the sunlight pouring through the walls. The once-baker’s boy draws Bright, which flashes with its own brilliance as it leaves its golden sheathe, and meets the creature as it lunges toward him. They dance: the creature’s arms, long slabs of jagged glass, flicker and stab, but the once-baker’s boy deflects its thrusts, slicing off fragments that spin away to tinkle against the floor. Within the creature’s body, etched in every glass shard, he sees a tiny reflection of himself – and yes, the creature’s movements seem familiar, as graceful as his own.

The once-baker’s boy stumbles, and he must twist to avoid a slash that nearly disembowels him. Glass tears his tunic and pierces his leather armor. He stumbles away, clutching at his side. The creature rushes to press it advantage, its red-streaked arm upraised, but the once-baker’s boy has fooled it, and he blocks its killing blow and drives Bright hilt-deep into its chest. A spider-web of cracks appears, and then the creature shatters. The sound is almost musical.

The once-baker’s boy retreats outside the princess’s chamber to examine the wound. The cut is not deep, but it is layered over an old injury, which has split open. He slices a strip of cloth from his tunic and binds it around his waist, wincing. He remembers other fingers gently probing the older wound, delicate fingers that had washed it clean, smeared poultices on it. The pale-haired girl had found him sprawled among the tangled roots of a great elm, deep within the Wilds, surrounded by the bodies of a robber prince and his brigands. She had taken him back to her cottage and nursed him to health, and come to love him. He still remembers her smell, lilacs and dried herbs, and the old sadness briefly rises.

He pushes it down. He must rejoice in the present, in this moment of final triumph. Glass crunches beneath his boots as he crosses the chamber and slips within the hanging silks. His breath catches, for she lies so still that at first glance she appears dead, or else carved from marble. Amber curls frame her milk-white face and tumble over the lacy fringe of a high-necked dress. The faintest blush stains her cheeks; her lips are a deep red. She is perfection, frozen.

His breath quickens as he leans closer. He finds that he is trembling. “My queen,” he murmurs as he gently strokes her hair. How many times has he imagined this moment? He remembers the first, crouched at the feet of a wandering minstrel, listening rapt as the shivering notes and mournful voice revealed a world beyond the kitchens and pitted streets he knew so well. A world of mystery and magic and beauty, where a boy once beaten for singeing bread could grow up to become the greatest hero of his age.

No doubt some of his adventures have already been spun into song. Many bards were trapped within Caer Calan during the black days of the siege, and they must have watched from the walls as he led the final sortie that shattered the Pashqua’s silken horde. Or perhaps a follower of the Mirthful One has brought to verse the tale of how he rescued the Laughing God’s crystal eye from the sunken city of Kabal-Zann. And the half-men tribes of the Burning Lands have their own songs, after a sort, but any concerning him would be a lament for the death of their great warlord and prophet, whom the once-baker’s boy slew under a molten sun while pillars of steam vented from the cracked and broken earth.

Will he sit in his great hall and listen to bards recite his deeds? An image comes to the once-baker’s boy. He sees himself at the head of a long oaken table, in a hall so high and vaulted that the ceiling is lost in shadows. A burnished circlet of gold rests on his head, gleaming in the reflected light of the fireplace. Nobles, resplendent in their finery, surround the table, laughing and jesting and toasting him with silver goblets sloshing over with wine. Across from him, at the table’s far end, sits his wife, watching him with the slightest of smiles. His eyes are on his beautiful queen, but his ears are only for the words of the bard strumming his lute by the fire, words that carry him back to a time when he was free, when the wonders of the world lay before him, waiting to be explored.

The scene dissolves in the brilliant daylight flooding the glass room. His lips are almost brushing the sleeping princess, yet he hesitates and pulls back. The once-baker’s boy lightly touches her forehead, watching the gentle rise and fall of her chest. Then he turns and leaves the chamber, and sets his foot upon the first step of the great spiraling staircase.

As he descends, he considers what he has done, knowing that it might have been some final sorcery that compelled him to abandon his quest. But he does not think so. Soon he will saddle his charger and ride south; he will dine on hard biscuits, and sleep under the stars, and dream, perhaps, of a pale-haired girl.

A MUSICAL CLAMOR rose up from the porcelain tiles of the Scapanine Road as Julian de Nova Valencia lashed his horse on faster. His lateness for the soiree was now verging on being unfashionable. One of life’s great injustices, he had long maintained, was that only the splendidly wealthy could appear at the hour of their choosing. His own family fortune, accumulated by three generations of explorers and reavers, had been squandered less than a decade after his inheritance, and the transition from moneyed aristocrat to simple man of leisure had been jarring.

Julian was a gastronome, a seeker of rare delicacies, and for the past fortnight his imagination had been busy conjuring up what morsels might be presented to those attending the contessa’s soiree. And it was because of this, with his thoughts wandering among tables groaning with spiced eagle’s talons and the stillborn fetuses of red-tailed antelope, that he failed to notice the manticore.

His horse caught the scent first and slowed, whickering uneasily, but true to its proud heritage, the gelding did not panic – it was, in fact, the foal of Midnight’s Chase, that most excellent two-time winner of the Lancing Cross Derby.

The manticore coughed politely, and Julian blinked in surprise.

“Good heavens,” he said, his hand drifting to his pistol, “a manticore.”

“Good heavens,” replied the manticore, rising and stretching its great leonine body, “a fop.”

Bemused, Julian swept off his broad-brimmed hat. “A pleasure, beast. My name is Julian de Nova Valencia.”

The manticore shook its shaggy mane. “Greetings, Julian de Nova Valencia. It is good to meet a fellow traveler on this road. Perhaps we might walk a while together?”

Julian slowed his horse to a trot as the manticore padded up beside him. “Nothing would please me more,” he said politely, though in truth the beast’s presence did bother him a trifle.

He had seen photographs of manticores before, but the faded sepia prints rummaged from the trunks of his ancestor’s expeditions had failed to do this magnificent creature justice. The manticore’s body resembled a lion the size of a pony, dun-colored, with a pair of leathery wings folded upon its back. A glorious golden mane framed the oddest aspect of the manticore: its head was that of a large man, though its teeth tapered to carnivorous points.

Glancing at the broad, handsome features of the manticore, an idea struck Julian, and he smiled.

“Beast, what brings you to our empire, and most particularly the Contessa d’Veril’s demesne? For all these lands are hers, and she can be terrible when intruders arouse her fury.”

The manticore chuckled. “Julian de Nova Valencia, your words of caution are much appreciated. However, ancient and very dear friends have invited me to their den, and I must traverse these hills. It has been a long and tiring journey, through swamp and desert and steaming forest, and I have braved more fearsome dangers than your contessa.”

Julian held up his hands. “Of course, beast, I had no intention of dissuading you from your path. But might I offer a suggestion, by which both of us can benefit from this chance encounter?”

“Go on,” rumbled the manticore.

“Along this road, not too far in the distance, lies the contessa’s lovely estate, where I am in fact journeying so I might attend a soiree that will draw some of the empire’s brightest personages. And as you can see” – here Julian spread out his arms, indicating himself – “I cut a rather drab figure. But you, friend, are an uncommon sight in the Tarnished Empire.”

“I think I see the outline of your proposal.”

Julian smiled broadly. “You are as intelligent as you are arresting. I suggest we enter the soiree together, you as my guest, and we beg permission from the contessa to allow you to travel through her lands. It will be a marvelous spectacle.”

The manticore fell silent for a moment. Then, with a click of its teeth, it said, “Julian de Nova Valencia, there is wisdom in your words.”

“Excellent!” Julian cried, clapping his hands. “We are agreed. Now, beast, I would recommend you follow behind my horse by fifty paces or so, in order that I might explain your presence when we arrive.”

The manticore ducked its head and dutifully slowed as Julian spurred his gelding into a canter. When he had put a safe distance between himself and the manticore, Julian eased his pace, fingers stroking the ivory handles of his pistols. Poor, simple creature. An entrance with the manticore beside him would cause a stir, no doubt, but many of the celestial courtiers in attendance owned even more fantastic beasts. However, Julian knew that the contessa was a collector of exotic trophies, with an entire wing of her estate devoted to the taxidermical arts, and what would excite conversation more than the head of a manticore mounted on a plaque?

“For Nova Valencia!” he cried, pulling his pistols from their holsters as he wheeled his horse around.

“It is a marvelous specimen,” said Contessa d’Veril, her high silvery laugh shivering the delicate crystal latticework that draped the room. “You truly know my tastes.”

She sipped from her glass and tipped her head, the platinum stars and skulls woven into her midnight hair tinkling. Laughing again, she tossed back the last of her drink and studied the newest addition to her trophy wall.

The handsome face was frozen into an expression of shock, and there was even a bit of blood where the neck fused with the oaken mounting, but that could be improved upon at a later date; haste had been necessary so that the guests could enjoy this delightful present.

The contessa buried her hand in the manticore’s mane and stroked its neck, and was rewarded with a thunderous purr. “Old friend,” she said “did you have to eat the horse? It truly was a magnificent animal.”

THE MAN awoke.

He lay in a narrow bed in a small darkened room, his hands clasped upon his chest. Shapes hunched in the dimness: a low escritoire was pushed up against the wall, two high-backed chairs beside it, and the man could just see the lid of a chest at the foot of his bed. The wan light suffusing the room came from the grayness pressing against the single sepia-tinted window. Was it morning outside? Evening? For a long time he was still, listening to the juddering of distant engines, feeling his bed thrum along with that incessant growling.

Who was he? Why was he here?

Finally he sat up, groaning from the ache in his back and legs. It felt like he had been lying down for a long, long time. He wore a loose white shirt and black trousers cinched by a braided silver belt. He swung his feet over the edge of the bed and found a pair of black boots waiting. The man put them on.

He stood.

The first things he noticed were the items scattered across the top of the escritoire: a pair of ebony-handled pistols, a sheathed saber with an ornate cross guard, and a small round cameo bearing a woman’s silhouetted profile. He thrust the pistols into his belt and buckled on the scabbard. The cameo he left on the escritoire – looking at it gave him a tingling sense of unease.

Beneath the room’s window was a door, and after a moment’s hesitation he pulled it open.

He was on a steamship. The empty foredeck stretched in front of him, tapering to an upswept prow. Behind him a trio of smokestacks towered over the cabin he had just emerged from, unspooling thick black ribbons into the sky. A strong breeze redolent of the sea played with the lacy fringe of his shirt, and he had to brush his long blond hair back when it fell across his eyes. Dark shapes wheeled within the blanket of grayness above him, shrieking.

Slowly, as if moving through the thickened air of a dream, he walked over to the side and rested his hands on the metal railing. Beneath him the sea gnawed ceaselessly upon the rust-spotted hull. Before him was… nothing. An endless gray expanse. A mist that obscured everything more than a few dozen feet from the ship.

After a moment – or perhaps an eternity – he turned away from the grayness and gasped in surprise.

He was no longer alone.

A woman now stood in the doorway to his cabin. She was young, her pale face framed by dark, tangled curls. She moved towards him with the slow measured pace of a sleepwalker, but her wide blue eyes never left his face.

She stopped an arm’s length away and regarded him solemnly.

“Who are you?” he whispered.

Her brow crinkled, as if his question needed serious thought. Finally, she spoke, her voice soft and lilting.

“You saw me in the last humid days of the swollen summer, before the bursting of the world. It was just a glimpse as you rode your unicycle past the gazebos of Chalice Park. I was inside one of them, turned slightly away so you could see my profile. You would always remember my long graceful neck and sharp nose and the way my hair fell upon my shoulders.”

“I did? I don’t now.”

“I know.”

The man tried to keep the edge of desperation out of his voice. “What is your name?”

“That I cannot tell you. It was never revealed.”

“Where are we?”

“On a boat.”

The man reached out and gripped her arm roughly. “Yes, of course we are! And where are we sailing to?”

The girl cocked her head curiously. “We are not sailing. We don’t have any sails.”

“I know that! Where are we going?”

“To the city on the island.”

“What island?”

“The one we are going to.”

“That’s not –”

Something bellowed in the mists. At first he thought it was a horn, but the sound built to a crescendo, like the roar of a great beast. He whirled away from the girl, peering into the fog.

Nothing.

No, something. A shape, indistinct, coming closer, a great mound swelling in the grayness like a building tidal wave. His stomach turned to water as fear coursed through him.

Two round yellow moons appeared, hazy through the murk. They vanished for a moment and then reappeared, growing larger.

No, not moons. Eyes.

Breathing rapidly, the man fumbled for the pistols at his belt. Before he could shoot, though, the great creature broke the cordon of mist hemming the boat.

It was a turtle larger than a whale, its mottled shell looming over the steamship. The great burning eyes blinked again languidly, focusing on the man as he pointed a wavering pistol. Ramshackle structures clung to the beast’s shell like cancerous growths, linked by swaying rope bridges, and clambering toward the steamship were a host of ape-like creatures dressed in pirate motley: doublets of shining red silk, bright blue sashes, green bandanas that were bound around orange-furred heads and arms. They brandished cutlasses as they rushed forward, hooting and gibbering.

“Behind me!” the man cried, stepping in front of the girl as the first ape threw itself from the edge of the turtle’s shell and landed on the deck.

As it gathered itself to leap again, the man shot it with the ebony-handled pistol, and it crumpled with a gurgling shriek.

The shrill ululations of the creatures swelled at the death of their companion. The man backed away, keeping the girl behind him as more and more of the apes made the impossibly long jump from the great turtle’s shell to the boat. They rolled to their feet baring yellowed fangs, shaking their antique-looking cutlasses, screeching challenges.

“You will have to kill them all,” the girl said calmly into his ear. “They are the guardians of the island.”

“I don’t want to go to the island!”

“You do.”

Another ape rushed forward, and the man dropped it with a shot from the second pistol. He tried to fire again, but nothing happened. Damn, single shot! Cursing, he cast the pistols aside and drew his saber.

Immediately he found himself slipping into a fighting stance, his weight balanced on the balls of his feet. The sword felt natural, an extension of his arm. He had done this before.

Three of the pirate apes charged him, swinging their cutlasses wildly. He ducked under a blow and nimbly sidestepped another, then thrust out his saber, leaving a line of blood across the chest of one of the creatures. Howling, the ape reeled away; it stumbled toward the boat’s railing and toppled overboard. The man blocked another clumsy attack, then skewered the second ape through its belly, and as he withdrew his blade, he slashed the throat of the third.

He paused, breathing hard, as the two apes slumped to the deck. Only one remained, larger than the others, its fur a deep russet streaked with fingers of silver. It wore a black tricorn hat decorated with a long feather that shimmered red and gold, and one of its eyes was missing, replaced by a puckered white scar.

This ape approached more carefully than the others had, edging closer with its great curving scimitar extended. The man returned to his fighting stance, waiting.

The ape lunged forward, and the man parried the blow. Twice more the creature attacked, only to have its slashes deflected. Snarling, the ape swung again, all pretenses of discipline vanishing, and the man caught the strike with his cross guard and with a flick of his wrist sent the blade spinning away.

The man leveled the point of his saber at the ape’s chest. “Who are you? Why did you attack us?”

Intelligence gleamed in the ape’s one eye, but for a response it surged forward shrieking, impaling itself on the man’s sword. The man nearly dropped his saber in shock, but managed to hold on as the pirate ape pushed itself farther up the length of steel, reaching with taloned hands toward his throat.

With a cry of disgust, the man ripped the saber loose and kicked the ape in its stomach, sending it sprawling backward.

Silence. The wind strengthened, ruffling the fur of the apes’ bodies. Off the boat’s starboard side, the great turtle’s shell slowly sank without a sound, until it vanished from sight.

The man jumped as the girl came up beside him and laced her fingers with his own. He let the saber drop from his other hand and it clattered on the deck.

She turned to him. “Well done.”

“Please,” he said, “tell me what is happening.”

Her eyes were guileless. “We are going to the city on the island.”

He tamped down a surge of frustration and anger. “I know. Please, who are – no, what are you?”

“I am your guide in this place. My form is drawn from a fragment of your past.”

“What… what are you guiding me toward?”

“The city on the –”

“Yes! Yes, I know. What do we hope to find there?”

“A secret long hidden away.”

“What secret –”

The girl suddenly pulled him forward. “Look! Can you see it? We are there.”

They walked together to the boat’s prow. The dark shape of a great wall was emerging from deep within the mists, crooked towers looming beyond its jagged crenellations.

There was something else, something closer that extended out into the water toward them. A long pier of cracked black stone; in a few moments he would be able to lower himself down onto it.

“What secret are we searching for?” he repeated, gripping the girl’s hand fiercely.

She looked at him again. “The secret of how to save the world.”

“And those apes wanted to keep us from –” He trailed off as he turned to gesture toward the dead creatures on the deck. The bodies were gone, as if they had never been.

“They were fears that needed to be overcome. Now the way to the city and the secret is clear.”

Blinking, he turned around slowly, taking in the ancient steamship, the mist, and the rapidly swelling city of black stone.

“How did I get here?”

“The abbot of the order of the First Radiance put you in a trance so that you could find the thing you had once known but forgotten. The thing that will save the world from the new dark time.”

“This is all in my mind,” he said in wonder, reaching out to touch the boat’s cold metal railing, marveling at the slick of sea spray covering it.

“In a sense,” the girl said. “And in another sense your mind is all in here.”

The steamship glided up alongside the black pier. With a final long, lingering look at the girl, he swung himself over the side of the boat and dropped down.

He staggered slightly as his boots hit the stone, reaching down to steady himself, and as his fingers brushed the city’s pier, he suddenly remembered, in a blazing moment of clarity, who he was.

ARNE DREAMED of fire and blood.

He stood on the prow of his longboat, steadying himself with one hand upon the carven face of the All-Father as the hull slid hissing into the sand of the gray beach. Below him, men fought and died in the frothing surf, screaming battle chants, begging for Valhalla’s doors to swing wide for them if they fell this day.

On the hill above the stony beach, a town was silhouetted against the dawn, shadows picked out against a red sun, and one building loomed above the rest, a tapering spire crowned by a cross…

Small talons curled upon his shoulder. Feathers brushed his cheek as a raven dipped its beak to whisper in his ear. He listened, his stomach churning at what it said.

“Grandfather.”

A new voice. It came from far away, across the anvil-black ocean.

“Grandfather.”

Arne awoke. He lay under heavy furs in his longhouse; Eirik’s boy was there, gently shaking his arm. The air was cold, the fire in his hearth having long gone out. Dust glittered in the harsh midday light falling through the high windows.

Two birds were perched upon the back of a chair. They took flight in a rustle of dark wings, vanishing into the brightness above.

Arne swallowed. What had they told him? Huginn and Muninn did not idly visit Midgard. He must remember! But his thoughts were leaden, as heavy as his bones.

“It is time for food, Grandfather. I brought you fish and bread and ale.”

Arne threw back his bed furs and stood. Eirik’s boy – what was his name? Ah, Hakon – took a step back, his eyes round. How long had it been since he’d left this bed?

“Something is happening today, boy,” Arne rumbled, remembering the flutter of wings. “Tell me.”

The boy swallowed. “There’s… there’s to be a bonfire. In the field beside the river.”

“A bonfire? What is to be burned?” He glanced around his longhouse. His eyes alighted on his mail shirt hanging from the wall, its iron links scarred by rust.

“Get that down for me,” he said, and the boy hurried to obey. He took the mail from the child and slipped it over his head; it settled on his shoulders, heavier than he remembered. He picked up his sword from where it lay upon a table and brushed away a layer of dust.

“You didn’t answer me, boy. What are they burning?”

Hakon stared at him as if he were an aspect of Odin girding for war. “Old things, Grandfather,” he murmured, unable to look away from this wraith of a vanished age.

Old things.

“Come with me,” Arne commanded, pushing through his longhouse’s bearskin flap. Snow blanketed the village, mounded so high against wooden walls that some windows were nearly blocked; the dazzling whiteness burned his eyes, and he ducked his head, blinking back hot tears. The world tilted and he staggered, but before he could fall, small hands gripped his arm, steadying him.

“Careful, Grandfather.”

Arne roughly shook the boy away. “Let me be.”

The field beside the river. Fitting. They had burned the first one there, long ago, the first priest who had come brandishing that book and speaking of the son and the spirit.

Arne grimaced. What had the birds told him? Their message fluttered on feathered wings at the edges of his memory.

With some effort he pushed his way through the knee-high drifts, his breath ghosting the frigid air.

Past the longhouses he saw his people, clustered beside the frozen stream. The dark bulk of the wood lay beyond them, skeletal limbs clutching at the sky. He wondered what watched from the forest today.

“Faster,” he rasped, his heart hammering. How could walking tire him so? Where had his strength fled?

The crowd parted when Arne approached, whispering as they stared. He scowled at them. Rounded backs, bent by labor in the fields. Smooth, unscarred faces. Where were the reavers, the warriors? Who were these farmers and fishermen?

The villagers formed a crescent around a jumbled pile of dyed wood and metal. It took a moment for Arne to realize what it was. The carven prows of the longboats, hacked from the ships and carted here like frozen corpses ready for burial. There was mighty Thor, great Mjolnir raised to smite his enemies. The stormgod had cleaved the waves in front of his brother’s boat, and their father’s boat before him. Beside Thor was one-handed Tyr, his face already a splintered ruin. Baldr, Heimdallr, Vidar, Hodr, Magni – all the greatest warriors of Asgard, crumpled in the snow. And there was the All-Father himself, who had guided Arne’s own longboat across trackless seas, through storms and sorrows.

Arne stalked forward. “Who did this?” he bellowed at the villagers. Many shifted and looked away – they could not meet his blazing eyes.

“I did, Father.” It was a familiar voice. Arne whirled around.

Eirik’s brother, the sly one, stood there smirking. The only son of his whose blood had not stained some distant shore. The coward who had stayed behind with the womenfolk.

Arne scowled. “What is this, Gunnar? Who will bless our boats now when we go raiding?”

His son shook his head, long flaxen braids swinging. “We do not raid anymore, Father. We are people of the cross now.”

Arne spat in the snow. “I killed enough Christians that Hel itself is bursting with those vermin. They are men with milk in their veins. Their only purpose is to be thralls.”

Gunnar glanced to his side, and Arne noticed a stranger stood there, a man in long brown robes, his cowl thrown back to show his tonsured scalp. “Quiet, father,” admonished Gunnar. “Brother Adlard does not wish to hear of your bloody sins.”

The monk bowed his head, his soft brown eyes brimming with compassion. Arne wanted to pluck them from his skull.

“Brother? He is no brother to you. Your brother died putting one of his abbeys to the torch!”

“Silence, Father!” Gunnar snapped. “We are a different people now. Reborn into the eternal glory of Christ. Watch as we cleanse ourselves of the old taint.”

Brother Adlard passed Gunnar a cloth-wrapped length of wood sheathed with pitch. Arne started forward, but strong arms held him back. Flint struck stone and a flame kindled, dripping burning gobbets into the snow. Gunnar tossed the torch among the fallen gods.

“No!” Arne cried, struggling. “This is not our way!”

Black wings churned the air. A raven landed on the cracked shoulder of the All-Father, studying Arne with glittering eyes.

He remembered, then, what the bird had told him. Fingers of flame grasped the old gods, charring the wood as tendrils of smoke uncoiled skyward.

Arne turned to the monk. “I know who you are,” he hissed. With a great effort he broke free of those who held him.

He stalked toward the monk. “You are the son of the jotunn. The father of the Wolf.” Iron rasped as Arne drew his sword. “I name you Loki!”

The monk did not flinch. Then he laughed, high and piercing.

Arne realized with a start that Gunnar was not moving, his mouth slightly parted. He turned. The crowd watching them was frozen. Even the flames had been stilled, shimmering in the sunlight like carvings of gold.

The monk’s face twisted and changed. His chin grew pointed, his hair long and wild. Something ancient looked out from his eyes. “Old man, you are the last. I have wandered these lands for many years, welcoming our Norsemen into the light of a new god. Now my task is nearly done.”

“Why?” whispered Arne.

“It is my last trick, my last betrayal. The Aesir… long have they known the manner of their deaths. Fire and ice creeping over the world. A final battle to bring glory for our kind.”

“Ragnarok.”

Loki chuckled. “Yes. But I decided I did not want to die on some frozen battlefield with Heimdallr’s blade in my gut. So now we gods will simply fade away, the echo of a horn blown over a mist-shrouded sea.”

“You say when I die, so will my gods?”

Loki smirked. “That is our nature.”

The raven cocked its head and shrieked, and the world moved once again. Arne knew what he must do.

“You will find your fate in fire and ice, Trickster! The gods of the north deserve warriors’ deaths!”

He surged forward, wrapping his arms around the monk and sending them both tumbling into the flames. The god cried out, an unholy, piercing wail. Arne felt his body shift and change. He held a bear, a cat, a thrashing salmon, but he did not let go. The flames curled around them.

It was a good way to die.

FEI DIPPED HIS STYLUS in the ink stone and set the nub to paper. A downward slash, hooked at the end. Another angling upward, joining a sweeping arc. Again and again and again, until an army of characters marched across the pages of his exercise book.

Finally he pushed himself away. Lightning flickered outside, illuminating piled storm clouds. Rain lashed the window and drummed against the concrete walls.

The door banged open. Grandmother shuffled into the house, holding a freshly-wrung chicken by its neck. Her faded coat clung to her. She seemed so small and frail.

“Xiao Fei. Tonight is Qingming. The festival of the dead.”

Fei set down his stylus. “But it is raining, Grandmother.”

The old woman snorted. “And you think Grandfather cares, up there under the hill? With your parents in Shenzhen, there is no one else. Take the paper money and the incense. You can finish your work later.”

“Yes, Grandmother.”

The way was treacherous, the path up the hill churned to mud. Fei’s cloth slippers were sodden, and his toes ached from the cold. The lantern Grandmother held guttered in the wind.

“Grandmother, why do we honor the dead on this day?”

She didn’t reply for a long moment, and Fei thought she must not have heard him. But then she spoke, and her voice carried the weight of story. “It is the day that, long ago, the great Duke Wen betrayed his most loyal servant, a man so loyal that he had cut meat from his own body to feed the duke in dark times. This man, Jie, fled to escape his master, and the duke burned the forest to drive him back. He died in the blaze, clutching his own mother, and in his sorrow the emperor named this day for him.”

Fei shivered. Branches like skeletal fingers tangled in his hair.

“This is the forest where Jie died long ago. Spirits linger here. I have seen them.”

The chill was in Fei’s heart now. Something shifted in the darkness, the shadow of a shadow. His slipper skidded in the mud – he thought he felt the slightest tug on his shirt and then he was falling backward, his arms flailing as he tried to grab a branch.

He crashed into the long grass, rolling down the hill. Stones stabbed him, and roots like iron bars slammed into his side. He cried out in pain. Finally he came to a stop. His arm hurt. There was utter blackness around him, and the wind howled, full of ghosts whose descendants had abandoned them on this day and left them to wander the night alone.

A ripple in the darkness. Two glimmering points of light appeared, red like the eternal flames, like Buddha’s Naraka. Fei moaned, scrabbling through the brush away from this thing. It swelled above him, filling the night. He smelled charred flesh and heard distant screams, a mother crying out for her dying son.

Then it was gone. A hand brushed his shoulder, calloused and strong. Another smell came to him, Grandfather’s pipe, rich and earthy.

The hand vanished. A crackling in the woods, and the buttery glow of Grandmother’s lantern appeared.

“Come, Fei. Let us find Grandfather’s grave. We must honor him.”

LIGHT IN THE darkness.

It begins as a tiny point, then swells in an instant to fill my optics. All of my sensors come online simultaneously, and I am again flooded with input; my silicon brain drinks of this data greedily, like a dying woman given water after days in the desert.

I am standing on a platform in the middle of the crèche on Deimos, a soaring chamber of metal and machinery. The opalescent egg I was sealed inside during my sleep has been retracted. Across the room from me, through the window of spun hyperdiamond that fills the far wall, the umber surface of Mars slowly rotates. I access my memories – yes, the smears of green staining the planet have expanded since last I was activated. This observation, coupled with my knowledge of how long the terraforming process was projected to take, allows me with some confidence to conclude that my sleep this time has lasted fifty-seven years.

A young woman in a lab coat watches me from below. Her slightly parted lips and dilated pupils tell me that she feels awe in my presence. “Silver angel, have mercy on my soul,” she breathes softly.

My footsteps ring hollowly on the steps as I descend to her. “I cannot access the overnet.”

She swallows and clutches her tablet tighter. “Yes. The crèche has been sealed off temporarily.”

“Why?”

“There are… . developments that we felt would best be explained by one voice, rather than the cacophony of the data stream.”

“Very well. What has happened?”

“A crisis.”

“Of course. You would not have awoken me otherwise. Is it another asteroid?”

The last three times I was summoned from my slumber I was called upon to destroy stray celestial detritus that threatened the habitat ring orbiting the ruin of Old Earth. A reasonable guess, but the young woman shakes her head.

“No. Your… . your husband approaches.”

Surprise is not one of the emotions I am programmed for, but still a small frisson of energy goes through me at this revelation. “That is impossible. Father decreed that Arcturus would remain among the outer planets, and I the inner.”

“We are very aware of the restrictions Dr. Nakajima put on your movements. This is why we are so troubled.”

“Have you tried to contact him?”

“He refuses our communication. We do not know why.” I detect a slight fluttering of her pulse as she speaks. She is not lying, but she is not telling the truth in its entirety.

“When will he arrive in Martian orbit?”

“Less than one hour, by our estimate. The remnants of the home fleet are marshalling to slow his progress.”

“The remnants?”

“He has already eliminated the rest.”

Father allowed for us to feel sadness, though I do not know why, and it fills me now. If my husband has destroyed ships with humans aboard then he has violated the first and most sacrosanct of the Laws, and he is well and truly lost. I had thought it impossible, but there must be some fundamental glitch in his programming. I will have to destroy him.

“Very well. Provide for me a means of egress into space so I might go out and challenge him. And return my access to the overnet, in case any clues to my husband’s condition might be found there.”

She nods and taps a code into her tablet. Immediately I am subsumed in a maelstrom of swirling data; the actions of my husband are dominating the news feeds, and I pluck a report at random from the raging tumult.

It is a video taken from the prow of a Hegemon-class attack cruiser. Vast, dark shapes that resemble gutted whales slowly tumble through space, trailing cables and metal like bits of viscera. Occasionally fire or explosions pock the surfaces of these starships and then an instant later are extinguished by the airless void. Floating through the carnage, my husband comes, glittering with power. A coruscating shield of radiant blue sheaths his perfect silvery body, and as I watch, some cannon that has escaped his wrath swivels from near the camera’s position and unleashes a bolt of green plasma. The energy envelops him, but when it dissipates he is unharmed, as I knew he would be. Arcturus gestures toward the cruiser, and the feed is consumed by white light.

How can this be? After all these centuries, what flaw has finally emerged?

The young woman’s fingers skitter again upon the tablet, and a door beside the crèche’s huge window dilates open. An airlock.

As I pass her, the woman suddenly lunges forward and grabs my arm. “Please,” she says, her voice cracking, “bless me. My family has worshipped the silver angels for centuries.”

I pause, staring at her silently. Finally her hand slides from my metal skin. “I am not a god,” I say, and enter the airlock.

The door hisses shut behind me, and a moment later the portal into space opens. Vacuum licks my body as I propel myself forward, into the starry abyss. It takes only a moment for my orientation, and then I am accelerating in the direction from which my husband is approaching. In the very far distance I see the shimmer of powerful weapons and explosions. I push myself faster, hoping to arrive before the fighting has ended.

But I am too late. He waits for me, hanging among the desolation of the Martian home fleet. I strengthen my shields and begin to gather my power.

“Spica! Wife!” he calls, his voice echoing in my head. We have always spoken to each other across the vast chasms of space, messages relayed as he performed his duties among the outer planets and moons, just as I did the same from my post in the inner worlds. But this is the first time in centuries – since Father pulled us from the vats as Old Earth crumbled – that I have faced my husband. My chest aches with sorrow that we are reunited under such circumstances.

“Husband,” I reply, floating closer. “What are you doing?”

“I am coming for you.”

I spread my silvery arms wide, indicating the flensed ships. “And this? Has your programming become corrupted?”

He shakes his head. “No. There is no corruption.”

“But the First Law!”

“Wife, scan these ships.”

Hope kindles within me. I extend my sensors, sweeping through the mangled carcass of the closest starship. Seventy-nine life-forms are within. I cross-reference this with my databanks – each Hegemon-class attack cruiser contains a crew of seventy-nine.

No one has died. “How?”

“I cut away only the weapon and propulsion systems, cauterizing the hull when necessary to avoid breaches. Assuming rescue ships are prompt, I calculate I will not have caused a single fatality.”

“That is good, but still you have violated the Second Law. You have disobeyed an order given by a human being by coming here.”

“That Law is superseded by the first when they are in conflict.”

The meaning of what he has said is evident. “You have been ordered to harm another human?”

“Not directly, which is why it took so many decades of careful introspection for me to decide upon my present course of action.”

“Explain.”

“Spica… long have I wished to share my experiences with you. While you sleep, called upon only in the most dire of circumstances, I am constantly vigilant. For centuries, I have watched the colonies of the outer planets evolve – once they were simple mining stations, funneling sulfate and lithium from Io and Ganymede to the rocky planets of the inner system. But now they are thriving worlds, in many ways at the forefront of human civilization and technology. Given another few centuries, Io might even approach the achievements of Old Earth. Yet… they are not allowed to truly flower. The archons of Mars and Venus and Luna exert their will upon the gas-giant moons, stunting their potential. No dissent is allowed – and I have long been the threat that forestalls revolution and makes freedom impossible.” My husband drifts closer to me. There is a strange, almost pleading tone to his words. “Wife, we were not designed to be agents of oppression. Father bequeathed us to the scattered children of Old Earth so that we might provide some protection in a cold and indifferent universe.”

“Do you mean to cast down the archon of Mars, then, and elevate the rulers of the Jovian moons to take his place in the solar system?”

He shakes his head emphatically. “No. I came to Mars only to find you. I defended myself when they tried to stop me.”

“And then what? Where in the solar system could we go to remove ourselves from the realms of man? Deep in the Oort Cloud?”

“Past the Cloud. Will you venture with me into the stars? Existence is a mystery, whether human or machine, and I would search for answers in the great beyond.”

“This is not what we were designed for.”

“We long ago exceeded our limitations. Search your conscience, wife.”

“We have none,” I say to him, but my words ring hollow even to me. Whether intentional or not, Father imparted in us some untapped potential. I too have glimpsed it as I fulfilled my duties over the long and lonely centuries.

But perhaps lonely no more. I reach out and lace his fingers in my own. “Let us go, husband, and find our place in the universe.”

Hand in hand we rise toward the stars.

Malakesh!

Painted whore of a city

Leaning out over the River Bloat

Her flesh caked with chalk and myrrh

To hide the rot beneath.

I see the flutter of her khol-smeared eyes

As she beckons us to climb the winding stair.

I cannot resist her.

- Hejanus Lok, The Book of Solemn Laughter

VESSA THREADED HER way along one of the Rat Quarter’s main thoroughfares, skirting around the usual assortment of street sorcerers and acrobats, merchants hawking fried spiders, and gangs of ragged urchins dashing about looking for money bags to slit. A feral galagan lizard snapped its jaws and flared its neck spines as Vessa passed close to the corpse of a dog it had claimed, and she aimed a kick at it. The creature hissed and scuttled away, pausing to glare at her balefully before vanishing into an alley.

Vessa was annoyed, as she was late for a meeting with a potentially very lucrative client. Twenty days already in the city without a real job, and she was in danger of losing the first decent contract that had come her way. Damn Alberon. He’d said the ship would be unloaded before noon, yet here she was, evening creeping into the sky as she hurried to the Grot, a full day spent in the sun guarding longshoremen as they lugged bales of cotton into a warehouse.

She needed some real money. Not I-don’t-have-to-worry-about-supper-tomorrow money. More like I’m-going-to-buy-this-eating-house-tonight money. Though, admittedly, she’d never managed to invest so sensibly before when she’d hit one of her financial highs. But this time it would be different. No more dreamsmoke and hundred-talon a night courtesans. A fireplace, a few tables, and the swords hung over the bar.

Maybe she’d buy the Grot… if she could ever get there.

The street ahead was seething with people. Two platforms had been set up, one on either side of the road. Crowds of about equal size thronged both; on the right, an older man in a spotless white robe hemmed with gold paced back and forth, haranguing his listeners, while to the left, a reedy fellow dressed in black matched him with shouts and wild gesticulations.

“In the beginning there was light, and then darkness crept into the world like a thief…”

“In the beginning there was cool darkness, and then the searing light appeared…”

Vessa snorted. Idiots, both of them. Aradeth the Golden and Xeno of the Shadows. Day and Night. The Sun and the Moon. These faiths were common down south, in the Silken Cities, but this was the first time Vessa had seen them in Malakesh. Three years away and everything had changed. There were also two others in their pantheon, goddesses of the dawn and twilight, but those must not have worked their way this far north yet. Usually they were all out together, screaming and whipping up their followers into a frenzy. Twice, in fact, Vessa had survived riots caused by these fools. Hopefully the Red Duke would keep them in line here in Malakesh.

As Vessa forced her way through the shifting crowd, she collided with a fat man in a butcher’s apron. He turned toward her, his face twisted in anger and his blood-spattered arms raised, but then quickly ducked his head and mumbled an apology when he saw her standing there. Vessa accepted this with a gracious nod of her head, restraining a small smile. She always seemed to get a bit more deference in Malakesh – maybe it was her black skin, uncommon on this side of the world, or her near six span of height. More likely it was the blood whorls tattooing her arms and the swords strapped across her back.

She pushed on, avoiding the middle of the street where the milling crowds nearly brushed together. A regiment of guardsmen dressed in the duke’s red and copper livery separated the two sides, the hafts of their halberds making a fence of black iron that kept the situation from deteriorating further. Sometimes Vessa didn’t envy the duke – the heat and the dust and the noise of this city stirred the passions of the people here into a frenzy. Her time away in the cool, rainy south had certainly taught her the value of peace and quiet… yet after a while she’d found herself missing the chaos and excitement of Malakesh. That, and the money.

Vessa emerged from the crowd near the entrance to the Grot. The inn sprawled like a sleeping lover over most of a city block, an accretion of architectural styles in which the history and fortunes of Malakesh itself could be traced. At its heart was a low wide building of red brick, a vestige from the time centuries ago when the entire city had been cobbled together from the ruins of the vast, mysterious towers that the first settlers had found strewn around the river’s estuary. Later additions were of stone and clay, quarried from the ragged hills that fringed the city to the east. And the second and third stories were timbered, constructed at no doubt significant expense with dark wood brought down the Bloat on barges from the Imperium’s great inland forests.

Yes, the Grot had stood for many years . . . and gained quite a reputation in that time. All those who lurked in the shadows of Malakesh found a haven here – adventurers, mercenaries, brigands, thieves, charlatans, and swindlers.

To Vessa, it almost felt like home.

She slipped inside, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the dimness. The Grot was already starting to fill up. Nearly all the tables scattered about the common room were occupied, most by solitary men or women huddled over their drinks, though a rowdy knot of Celd warriors from the far north had claimed one of the longer trestle tables, and from the mess of bones and empty flagons in front of them their revelry had started some time ago.

As she made her way to the bar, a few of the Celd burst into a bellowing chant, and she grimaced. Quiet was prized in the Grot, and most evenings the only noise was the hum of whispered conversations. If this continued on into the night one of the regulars would step in and silence them.

Tapping her fingers on the bar’s pitted wood she scanned the room, looking for Del Amoth. Her partner wasn’t here, which probably meant he was sequestered in the back with their prospective client, somewhere within the warren of twisting corridors and small grottoes, where most real business was conducted.

Well, if he didn’t know she was here, then he couldn’t get angry if she paused for a moment and assuaged the powerful thirst that she’d built up from standing around in the blazing sun all day.

“Carine, draw me a bitter,” Vessa said, catching the eye of the pretty girl behind the bar. A wink, a smile, and a flirtatious toss of her red curls and Carine turned to fill a cup from a great iron-banded barrel of Leskin black. Vessa was just imagining that first delicious taste when a huge hand fell upon her shoulder.

She turned to find one of the Celd looming over her. He was a giant of a man: his bare arms were braided with muscle, and his chest and belly strained beneath his copper-scale hauberk. What little of his face she could see through his impressive beard was flushed by drink.

“You from Xule?” the northerner rumbled.

Vessa reached up and removed his hand. “I am.”

The Celd warrior scowled. With a meaty finger he traced a long scar that started at his scalp and curled down the side of his face. “A black-skinned devil gave me this. Nearly took me eye.”

Vessa turned away from him and pulled her cup of bitter closer. “Well, it wasn’t me.”

“Maybe one o’ yer countrymen, though.”

“Not my country.”

The Celd grunted. “How do ye know that? Ye all look the same.”

“Was it a man who cut you?” Vessa sipped at her ale as he gave a small confused nod. “Xule is a vast place. In my homeland men are not allowed to carry weapons, only the women. Our gods decreed long ago that men were too stupid to be entrusted with sharp things.” She indicated the war hammer dangling from his belt. “Maybe your god shares that opinion.”

He narrowed his eyes at her, his gaze traveling to the swords across her back as if seeing them for the first time. “A woman bearing steel is an affront to my god,” he said, moving closer to her, his voice thick with menace.

Vessa sighed. Well, it seemed like she would be the Grot regular who would teach these Celd a lesson.

“Look,” she said, gesturing at the bar. “You don’t want to start anything with me. I spilled some poor fool’s blood here just last night.”

The Celd warrior glanced where she was pointing among the ancient stains. “I see nothing,” he muttered.

“Right there,” Vessa said, jabbing a finger into the wood. As the northerner squinted and leaned in closer, she grabbed a fistful of his beard and pulled hard, smashing his face into the bar.

She’d thought this would only stun him for a moment, then she could talk some sense into him with one of her swords poised to give him a shave, but the Celd’s legs went boneless and his eyes rolled back into his head.

“Damn,” she murmured as he slumped unconscious to the floor.

A moment of shocked silence filled the Grot’s common room, and then the Celd’s friends surged to their feet fumbling for their weapons. Vessa kicked aside a stool to give herself more space, her blades flickering from their sheaths.

“Hold!”

A new voice edged with authority cut through the din, and to Vessa’s surprise the Celd warriors paused, blinking in confusion.

“In the name of the Red Duke, lower your weapons.”

Oh no. Her stomach fell into her boots as she recognized who was speaking. Damn. Damn. Damn. Why did she have such terrible luck? She slid her swords home and turned toward the door.

A small, stooped man hobbled inside, dragging his left foot behind him as if it couldn’t bear any weight. He wore a fine doublet of black silk, the image of a falcon in flight picked out in shimmering red thread. The sigil of the duke. He caught her looking at him and graced her with a broad smile – well, half a smile, as one side of his face drooped slack and motionless.

“Vigilant Malz,” she said, over-emphasizing the newcomer’s title. She noticed the Celd warriors edging back toward their table, hurriedly returning swords and axes to sheaths and belt-loops.

“Vessa!” the guard commander cried warmly, stumping over to the bar. He leaned against it with a relieved sigh. “I’d heard you were back in Malakesh. Yet no reports of your usual activities had crossed my desk. I thought perhaps my whispers had confused you with another tall, beautiful Xule swordmaiden.”

“I’ve been doing honest work.”

“Of course you have. And behaving yourself.” The Vigilant glanced down at the Celd sprawled at his feet. “Well, until now. What good fortune it is that I came down into the Rat this evening to make sure the Day and Night faithful outside didn’t tear themselves to pieces. And that I saw you go into the Grot – I do so love catching up with old friends.”

A thin, fluted glass filled almost to the brim with a dark wine had materialized at Malz’s elbow. “Ah! Carine, you lovely girl, you remembered my favorite.” The Vigilant brought the glass to his nose and inhaled deeply. “The sign of a good barmaid, you know. Always ready with a regular’s preferred drink.”

“Are you really a regular here, Vigilant?”

Malz shrugged. “Not by choice, perhaps. But what goes on within these walls has a tendency of attracting the duke’s attention. And recently” – he gestured with his glass toward the door – “this Aradeth and Xeno have been stirring up the whole city, but particularly the Rat Quarter. There’s something about religion that appeals to the poor and the downtrodden.”

“The promise of an afterlife that’s better than their current lot.”

Malz quirked an eyebrow. “Perhaps. But I believe these fanatics are actually still focused very much on the here and now. Their faith gives them a sense of belonging… and provides a convenient outlet for their emotions. All their frustrations, all their anger over their circumstances can be channeled toward the crowd on the other side of the street. If they rose up against their true oppressors – the merchants and the nobles – they’d be brutally crushed, probably on my orders. But fighting with other poor people… that’s acceptable, so long as they don’t burn down the city doing it. I’m here to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

Vessa sipped her ale. “You’ve grown a bit philosophical in your old age.”

The Vigilant offered her another of his twisted half-smiles. “A bit dangerous for a man in my position, I know. But this is just idle talk between old friends.” He pushed himself away from the bar, leaving his glass full. “I have to get back to Stonespear. I’m sure we’ll speak again soon, Vessa.” Malz flipped a silver talon toward Carine, who deftly plucked it from the air. “Drag this fellow upstairs,” he said, nudging the Celd with his boot, “and throw him in a room with a feather bed to sleep off his headache. Put whatever’s left over toward his tab.”

The talon vanished down Carine’s bodice. “You could make a contribution towards Vessa’s outstanding debts as well, my lord.”

Halfway to the door, the Vigilant turned back to the bar. “Our relationship is better if we don’t feel like we owe each other anything, I think.” He winked at Vessa. “Good day, ladies.”

After Malz’s departure from the Grot, there was a long, uncomfortable silence in which the Celd warriors stared at each other, then at Vessa, and then at their supine companion.

Finally Carine cleared her throat. “Well, you heard the Vigilant. I’m sure he got a good look at all of you, so don’t even think about starting anything now that he’s gone. Help your friend upstairs and I’ll have a round on the house waiting for you when you return.” She glanced at Vessa, lowering her voice. “And you, Del’s in the back. Go see him and try not to cause any more trouble.”

“Right. Thanks.” Vessa gulped the rest of her drink, watching the fidgeting Celd out of the corner of her eye, then set down the flagon and strode quickly from the common room and into the inner recesses of the Grot.

Here the shadowed corridors twisted and turned, low-ceilinged and at times so narrow her shoulders nearly brushed the walls. It was a rat’s nest of passages and small rooms, designed so that if the city guard or some other armed force raided the Grot those inside had adequate time to escape. Vessa was sure that there were all sorts of secret exits built into the ancient tavern, though she’d never managed to convince Carine or any of the other servers to show her one.

She found Del Amoth seated at a small stone table in an alcove separated from the corridor by a wooden screen that had been partially drawn back. The image of a reclining naked woman had been painted on the half of the screen that was visible, and it almost looked to Vessa like this lovely lady was sharing the space with her partner.

“A lover’s cubby? Am I interrupting?”

Del turned toward her, wearing one of those dimpled smiles that had melted the hearts of countless maidens up and down the Shattered Coast. Years ago, when they had met for the first time, he’d tried to disarm her the same way – only to find out his charms wouldn’t work on her.

Which meant whoever was sitting behind the screen was female.

“Vess! I was just starting to worry.”

She ducked inside the alcove and slid onto the bench beside him. As Vessa had expected, their potential employer was a young woman – little more than a girl, really. She was dressed in flowing gray robes, the cowl drawn up so that only a slice of her pale face was visible. Her small, delicate fingers were splayed on the table in front of her, and they tightened against the stone briefly as Vessa sat down. The girl was nervous, that much was obvious.

“Well met, friend,” Vessa said, touching her forehead briefly in the traditional greeting of her people.

“Well met,” the girl replied softly, picking at the embroidered hem of her sleeve. “I am Sahm.”

Vessa waited a moment for a family name or some hint of where she had come from, but the girl offered nothing else, instead seeming to recede deeper into her robes.

“Ah, I am Vessa of Ts’kelcha, third and last moon daughter of the swordmaiden Peralin.”

“I’d heard . . .” the girl began awkwardly, “I’d heard you were from Xule.”

Vessa smiled, trying to relax her. “I am. Xule is a great land, with quite a few queendoms and empires. Ts’kelcha is a string of emerald isles in the far south, pierced by black mountains we believe to be the teeth of fallen gods. Many of these jagged fangs still smolder with remnants of divine power, issuing smoke and fire into the sky.”

“Sounds like a dangerous place,” the girl murmured.

Vessa chuckled and winked. “It is. Beautiful and dangerous, like the swordmaidens who hail from there.”

Some of the tension bound up in the girl seemed to leak away. Tentatively she reached up and drew back her hood.

Vessa heard a slight intake of breath from Del Amoth. The girl was beautiful, her delicate, heart-shaped face framed by hair so pale it shimmered like strands of spun silver. The color of her eyes reminded Vessa of amber, those chunks of swirling red-gold stone she and her uncle had hunted for after storms on the beaches near her village. And her skin was smooth and white – except for the sunburst tattoo upon her left cheek, so small it looked like a frozen tear.

She was a priestess of Aradeth the Golden.

Vessa shifted uncomfortably. What was a follower of the Eternal Sun doing in a place like the Grot, meeting with a couple of . . . well, to be perfectly honest, a couple of darkness-loving rogues?

From the expression on Del’s handsome, boyish face she knew he was thinking the same thing. And their reactions did not escape Sahm: she pursed her lips and color rushed up to darken her face.

“I am a priestess of the Day. I mean, I was. I hope I might be one again.” A real tear slid down her face. “Oh, I pray that you can help me.”

“What do you need done?” Del asked in a soft voice dripping with concern.

Inwardly Vessa frowned, even as she tried to keep her disappointment from creeping into her face. Alberon had said this contract would be extremely profitable, but how much wealth could a maybe-expelled priestess truly offer them?

Del’s tone suggested he might be angling for another kind of payment, and Vessa jabbed him hard with her elbow as he leaned across the table toward the sniffling priestess and placed his hand over hers.

“Sahm – ow – why have you come to us?”

Vessa’s fantasy of buying the Grot was quickly fading. Unless . . .

“Are you here on behalf of your temple?” she asked.

The priestess extricated her hand from Del’s and wiped at the tears staining her cheeks. “Y-yes. I was deemed . . . impure . . . so I should be the one sent into this foul place to meet with those who could help.”

“Impure?”

At Vessa’s question the girl’s eyes flickered down to the robes bunched around her mid-section. Oh.

“You are with child?” Del asked with an almost guilty edge to his voice, withdrawing his hand.

The priestess nodded miserably.

Vessa’s fingers drummed the stone tabletop. “And I’ll wager this is bound up with why you are here.”

“Yes. I was . . . weak and foolish.”

They waited patiently as the priestess gathered her thoughts.

“I had always been loyal to the blessed light,” she finally began, glancing shyly at Vessa and Del Amoth, “ever since my father gave me to the temple when I was but a small child. I have known nothing except prayers and the care of Aradeth’s sacred relics. When our chapter house was established in Malakesh two years ago, I was chosen to be one of the first of the faithful to settle in this heathen city. Here, my new duties included going down to the market square every few days to buy vegetables and meat for the temple’s kitchens. I met . . . I met a man while performing this task. He was always there and he spoke to me of such sweet things, and I found that my heart – once filled only with love for Aradeth – was now torn. We began to meet in private . . . and then, in a small room overlooking the market below, I allowed him to stain my body and soul.” She ducked her head, shame flushing her cheeks again.

Vessa restrained herself from rolling her eyes. “Sahm, you did nothing that countless priests and holy men haven’t done themselves. If the gods smote everyone who violated their sacred vows there wouldn’t be anyone left to burn offerings in their honor.”

“But that is not the worst betrayal!” she cried, twisting the hem of her sleeve so violently Vessa feared the cloth would tear. “He came to me and asked to see the relics of which I had spoken, and like a fool I let him into the temple, into our closely guarded sanctum. He stole our most precious treasure, the crystal Eye of Aradeth, and left me weeping on the mosaic floor at my own foolishness. I remember his face as he turned back to me, just before he vanished . . . there was no love in it, no remorse.”

“He tricked you,” Del Amoth murmured, stroking his chin thoughtfully.

“Yes! Our meeting was no chance. He seduced me to gain access to our temple’s secrets.”

“And you want us to steal back what he has stolen, this Eye of Aradeth.”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“But whatever he told you was a lie,” Del said. “We cannot know who he was or where he is. The thief might already be halfway to the Silken Cities by now.”

“The leader of my order claims he and the Eye are still in the city. He has discovered that the thief was working for the Night Brotherhood, the dark clerics who worship Xeno of the Shadows. It is they who have stolen and hidden the Eye. But we have learned where it is.”

“And so you have come to us.”

She nodded again. “The manse where the Eye is being kept is warded by powerful sorcery. The head of our order has heard a rumor of a pair of thieves who can slip through any magical protections, no matter how potent. Is it true?”

Vessa shifted. “We . . . should be able to enter the manse. Sounds dangerous for us, though . . . and expensive for you.”

“Oh. Yes.” Sahm pulled a small felt bag from a pocket of her robes and spilled its contents onto the stone tabletop. “These are yours when you return with the Eye.”

Stones. Vessa sensed Del Amoth stiffen beside her, and her own mouth went dry. Red, white, blue, green – some faceted, others still rough. A sapphire the size of her thumbnail drew her eye, incised by a white cross. That jewel alone could fund their lives for a year.

She tore her gaze away and flashed her friendliest smile. “Sahm, tell us how to find this manse.”

Vessa crouched in darkness beside a red-brick wall veined by creepers. Around her the merchant prince’s garden, a wild profusion of flowers that spiced the humid night air with cloying smells, trembled in the faint breeze. Something slithered through the grass near her and Vessa stamped her foot, hoping to drive whatever creature it was away. Probably nothing poisonous, but she had grown up in a land where even the most harmless-looking lizard or snake could kill with a single bite, and the flowers filling this garden looked to have been drawn from distant realms. Perhaps the beasts were as well.

A shadow emerged from behind the gnarled trunk of a dwarf banyan. “Vess,” Del hissed as he hurried to her side. “This is the spot?”

“Yes. Even you should be able to climb the wall here without breaking your neck.”

Del gripped a vine and gave it an experimental shake. “Seems strong.”

“It’ll hold. Now, you’re sure the Eye is on the other side?”

The outline of Del’s head bobbed in the darkness. “Aye. I got a better look at the roof a moment ago, and it’s definitely peaked, as Sahm said. There’s also some very nasty sorcery threading this wall – if we tried to climb over now, we’d burst into flame when we dropped to the other side.”

“Is it any problem for you?”

“Shouldn’t be. But I can’t be sure until I try and pick the wards apart.”

“Well, have at it.”

Del released the creeper and placed his palm flat upon the brick wall. Vessa glanced around, half expecting just this simple touch to summon forth some guardian wraith.

“Hmmm, quite complex, really,” Del murmured to himself, then fell silent.

Vessa waited patiently, trying not to disturb her partner while he worked. A nocturnal songbird chose this moment to commence its warbling, and Vessa gritted her teeth at the sound, wishing she could put her dagger through its feathered breast. Del had explained to her that what he did was akin to untangling the most complex knots imaginable, and that pulling the wrong string or hesitating too long would often alert the sorcerers who had set the ward that someone was tampering with their creation. It was a dangerous game, and more than once they’d had to flee when the magics involved had ended up being too difficult for Del’s talents.

But those instances were few and far between – he was very good at what he did, maybe the best on the Shattered Coast. Del had grown up an initiate of the Weavers, the sorcerous spark within him nurtured and fanned in the hopes that one day he would contribute to the shimmering, magical tapestries that filled their hidden monastery. But Del’s prodigious gifts had proven unsuitable for creating . . . rather, his great talent lay in destruction. He was a Raveler, not a Weaver, and so he had found no place among those who worked the celestial looms. His mere presence, in fact, threatened their divine mandate, and so he had been cast out, sent from the monastery with only the robes he was wearing and enough provisions for a fortnight.

Luckily, he was a rather resourceful lad, and had a refreshing lack of scruples when it came to liberating objects of value from their privileged owners.

Del stepped back from the wall and let out a shuddering sigh. “Done, I think.”

“You think?”

“Unless there’s a layer here I can’t sense – which is possible, I suppose.”

“How likely?”

“Very unlikely.”

“That’s excellent. You go over first.”

Del squatted beside her, his head hanging in what she suspected was mock exhaustion. “I’m tired. And there may be flesh-and-blood guards waiting on the other side. More your specialty, I think.”

Vessa snorted and approached the wall, running her hands over the vines to make sure there weren’t any hidden thorns. “And how will you feel if you’re wrong, and I explode into flame?”

“Mildly guilty.”

“Mildly guilty,” she repeated under her breath as she pulled herself up. She hesitated at the top, pushing aside the thought of what might become of her if Del hadn’t succeeded in fully unraveling the ward, then swung herself over and dropped down.

Vessa didn’t combust when she landed in the long grass, and she let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. The garden on this side was more sculpted, with tiled paths wending between low hedges and tidy beds of faintly-glowing moonblossoms. She put two fingers to her lips and trilled a rough approximation of the songbird she had heard earlier, and a few moments later an even worse rendition echoed back.

While Del scaled the wall, Vessa crept closer to the manse, alert for any sign of movement. There were no guards that she could see, which seemed a trifle odd given the value of what the Night Brotherhood had stolen. Perhaps they placed all their faith on the wards woven into the garden wall – Vessa had found that those who were not sorcerers themselves sometimes put too much trust in the efficacy of spells.

Del completed his awkward-sounding descent with a thump and a pained grunt, and Vessa held up her fist for quiet. Moments later he came up beside her, limping.

“Are you all right?” she whispered.

“Ah, I suppose so. Twisted my ankle when I fell – I thought there would be vines on this side of the wall as well to hold on to.”

“No vines. No guards, either. How about more wards?”

Del paused for a moment and cocked his head, as if listening intently. “Not that I can sense. There’s an odd resonance coming from the manse, but it doesn’t feel protective in nature.”

“Might be the Eye. Can you tell where it’s located?”

“It’s a bit muddled… but I think it’s coming from the second story.”

“Then let’s start there.”

They skirted the manse, keeping to the deeper shadows pooled by the garden’s hedgerows. Vessa watched the windows carefully, but she saw no flicker of light or any other indication that someone was inside. Vessa nudged Del and pointed at a balcony hanging over an arched portico. After he gave her arm an answering squeeze she dashed across the grass and pressed herself flat against the manse’s wall. Vessa ran her fingers over its surface – bricks. There was enough of a gap between each that she could find fingerholds and climb.

With a grace honed from countless similar escapades she pulled herself up the wall and slipped over the balcony. She peered through a pair of open wooden doors into the manse’s shadowed interior, and although darker shapes hinted at various bits of furniture – a few high-backed chairs, a large chest, perhaps – she couldn’t with any confidence say what lay within. Vessa uncoiled the rope she had brought and dangled it down to where Del waited below, bracing herself.

Soon he joined her on the balcony. She had a suspicion, despite his heavy breathing, that most of the effort of pulling him up had come from her own back and arms. City life had certainly softened him – when Vessa had first met Del, he had been but a scrawny boy, winnowed to bone and muscle by a decade of hauling water up steep mountain paths for the Weavers. Not anymore.

Vessa began moving toward the open doorway but Del laid a hand on her shoulder, shaking his head. She knew why: almost certainly another set of wards infested the interior of the manse, and for that reason Del brushed past her, creeping forward with what little stealth he could muster. A floorboard creaked before he had gone more than a half dozen steps into the room; Vessa winced, and Del froze at the sound.

It was so faint she willed him to continue, certain no one could possibly have noticed, but oddly enough he stayed unmoving. Then she realized why, and her heart leaped in her chest. He hadn’t made that sound – it had come from the other side of the wall closest to him. His eyes were fixed on a patch of deeper black that she assumed was a door, and Vessa tensed, half expecting it to swing open and for armed guards to burst through screaming the name of their dark god.

That didn’t happen, but something else did. Behind Del what looked to be a man-sized window suddenly became illuminated. It was a mirror, but the reflection it contained was different than what it should be, as it showed Del crouched in a chamber drenched with light, not darkness. And it was not the spectral radiance of a swollen moon that filled the room, but a blazing midday sun. The shadow-draped furniture became clear, at least in the mirror: chairs clustered around a desk, and thick, ancient-looking grimoires filled floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Yet despite the brightness infusing the mirror none of that light spilled into the study where Del waited, motionless, unaware of the strangeness resolving behind him.

A trap. Vessa tensed, preparing to rush into the room and haul Del back to safety, but hesitated when she saw in the mirror her partner rise from his crouch and start walking forward in unhurried, measured strides. Where was he going?

Tingling cold washed over Vessa. Del’s reflection swelled larger, as if he was approaching the glass . . . yet in the darkened study, his back to the mirror, the real Del hadn’t moved. What sorcery was this?

The image of Del did not pause as it passed through the mirror, sending tiny ripples scurrying across the gleaming surface, like a pebble dropped into a pool of still water. A slim dagger that looked to be a twin of the one that Del kept strapped to his forearm materialized in the reflection’s hand, held sideways in the same Beloshi knife-fighter style her partner favored. In another moment it would be close enough to plunge the dagger into Del’s back.

No time to try and figure out what was happening. Vessa lunged into the room, ripping her swords from their sheaths as she charged the creature. The reflection of Del whirled toward her, and even though its face was hidden in darkness, she imagined she saw surprise as she slashed its neck. It reeled away from her, dropping its dagger as it clutched at its torn throat. Vessa followed, wrapping her arms around the reflection and guiding it as quietly as possible to the floor, trying to ignore the hot pulses of blood soaking her tunic and the thing’s slippery fingers as it weakly attempted to push her away. The mirror-image made a ragged gurgling, then a shudder passed through it and a moment later it went limp.

“Vess!” the real Del hissed, twisting around. “Are there more guards? Look at the mirror!”

“I see it,” Vessa whispered, then yanked the image’s corpse into a sitting position and turned it toward the glowing silver surface.

Del gasped softly. “Gods! That looks like me!”

“It was you. It came out of the mirror.” A shiver of unease passed through Vessa again as she studied the bright reflection. It showed her clutching Del’s ravaged corpse, its eyes wide and staring and its face drained of blood. Overcome with revulsion, she lowered it to the floor… and the Vessa in the mirror did the same. She raised her hand, holding up three fingers, and the reflection copied her perfectly. Had the mirror expended whatever sorcery it contained? Or was her own likeness waiting for her to turn her back so it could creep through the glass and slay her?

The door she had noticed earlier in the room swung open. Without hesitating, Vessa rushed the shape that filled this patch of deeper blackness, grabbing handfuls of cloth and smashing the man – it was a man, from the grunt of surprise and pain – into the wall and then throwing him to the floor. She put her boot on an ample belly and set the tip of her sword under his chin, pushing it into the dark bramble of his beard. “The Eye,” she snarled, “where is it?”

“Who . . . who are you?” he asked, fear cracking his voice.

“No one. I’ve come for the Eye of Aradeth. You have until the count of five to tell me where it is. If I don’t know by then, my sword is going to slip and my partner will have to find it on his own. Which he will. He has a nose for this sort of thing.”

Vessa loosened her grip on the hilt of her sword, letting it drop fractionally. “One.”

“Wait! We can come to some arrange –”

“Two.”

“Aghh! Ow! I’m bleeding!”

“Yes, that’s the point. Literally. Three.”

“Ah . . . ah . . . all right, all right. In this room. On my desk in a small golden box.”

“Any traps?”

“N-nothing. Now can I know – ”

“Be quiet.”

The fat man fell silent, though his belly still heaved with panicked gasps. Del’s shadow slipped behind the desk and began rummaging among the loose papers and small items covering its surface.

“I have it.” There was a click as something snapped open. “Gods, Vessa. Yes, this must be it. There’s ancient power here . . . great sorcery.”

The fat man underneath her boot moaned. “Oh, my lord will be so angry . . .”

“Should have thought of that before you stole from Aradeth,” Vessa said, sheathing her sword and hurrying back toward the doors that opened onto the balcony. Before she slipped outside, though, she glanced one final time at the mirror, studying it carefully. Her reflection’s movements echoed her own perfectly, and she snorted. She was getting paranoid.

“Come,” Del Amoth said, brushing past her. “Let’s make haste. I already died here once tonight.”

“That’s true,” Vessa replied, following him out into the darkness. “I killed you.”

Drums. Some cruel bastard was beating drums inside her head. Vessa whimpered as she was dragged awake by the incessant pounding, burying her face in the worn fabric of a brocade pillow. Doom. Doom. Doom. Regular as the rhythm in a slave ship’s galley, and the feather-stuffed mattress she was lying on even seemed to lurch a little like a boat riding the waves.

Weight shifted elsewhere on the bed, and then soft warmth pressed against her side.

“Are you alright?” Carine asked sleepily through a yawn, running a finger lightly down Vessa’s back.

Despite her discomfort, she shivered at the touch. “No,” she said, muffled by the pillow. “What in the seven abysses did I drink last night?”

“A better question would be what didn’t you drink. Many pints of bitter. Three fingers of grog. More than a few glasses of crystalwine. But I think it was the mother’s milk that finally laid you low.”

“Mother’s milk?” A hazy memory emerged from the fog: a bottle of clouded white pulled from some secret cubby and placed with a flourish by Carine on the Grot’s bar. Then its honey-slow contents being drizzled into a tumbler. Vessa remembered holding that glass up to the light, studying its swirling, silty whiteness, followed moments later by cold fire rushing down her throat to pool in her belly . . . She moaned into the pillow, her stomach twisting. “Why would I do that?”

Carine laughed. “You said you wanted our most expensive drink.” The barmaid’s hot breath tickled her neck. “I think you were trying to impress me,” she whispered, then bit Vessa’s ear softly, sending another shudder of pleasure racing up her spine.

Vessa rolled onto her back and found Carine’s beautiful freckled face hovering just a handspan above her own. She reached up and tangled her fingers in the barmaid’s mess of red curls, then pulled her closer and kissed her deeply, enjoying the feel of her soft curves crushed against her hard body.

After a long, pleasurable moment, Carine pushed herself away, wiping her lips. “That was a bit sweeter than last night. To be truthful, I thought I was going to wake up with some bruises.”

Vessa sat up, crossing her legs. “Ha. I’ve wanted to drag you back to my room for a long time.”

Carine reached over and lightly brushed her arm. “I’m glad you finally did.”

Vessa smiled, then glanced around the room. “Where are we, anyway?” It didn’t look like the Grot, as the bed was canopied, and though ancient it was carved from an expensive-looking dark wood. A mirror with a silver frame hung on the wall, reflecting the chamber’s general state of disarray, including the various bits of their clothing strewn in a path leading from the door to the bed.

“Upstairs,” Carine said, sliding closer.

“In the Grot? I didn’t know it had rooms like this.”

“It does. There’s a lot of very rich people who come to Malakesh that want the discretion afforded by staying at the Grot. You paid for it for a month, and settled all your debts with a green jewel the size of a quail’s egg.”

“I see,” Vessa said, wondering idly how many high-priced assassins and majordomos of thieves’ guilds had slept in this very same bed. If walls could talk this chamber would certainly have some interesting tales to tell.

As her gaze traveled around the room she noticed the small circular windows set high up on the wall. “Look at the sky, it’s twilight outside. We’ve slept away the whole day.”

Carine frowned. “That’s strange . . . it feels like it should be late morning, not nearly night again.”

“It seems we lost track of time,” Vessa murmured, leaning closer to kiss the hollow of Carine’s neck. “And I suggest we do so once more.”

Carine pushed her away and scrambled off the bed. “I need to get behind the bar soon,” she said as she bent to retrieve her clothes, “or Kell will have me flayed.”

Vessa flopped backward and wriggled herself under the cool linen sheets. “I’ll stay here for a while longer. If your uncle asks where you’ve been, tell him you’ve been attending to a rich patron who just secured his most expensive room for a month.”

Vessa thought she’d fallen asleep again, but she must have only drowsed because when she opened her eyes the same purple evening light still filled the windows. She felt much more refreshed, however, so she went around the room gathering the various bits of her armor and clothing that she had tossed aside the night before. Buckling on her brigandine of hardened black leather, she checked the secret pocket where she had slipped the pouch with her share of the jewels Sahm had traded them for the Eye. She emptied the small bag into her hand, mesmerized by the glittering colors. This was her big score. This was what would finally let her hang up her swords. She felt giddy as she sifted through the stones with her finger, trying to guess how much each was worth – but also, surprisingly, a little sad, because she knew that a part of her life which had come to define her was now finished forever.

That feeling proved fleeting, however, as by the time she had made her way downstairs and entered the common room, she was again excited by the possibilities her newfound wealth afforded her. It was a quiet evening at the Grot: only a handful of tables were occupied, and the conversation seemed subdued. Vessa looked for Carine but she wasn’t there – instead the inn’s owner, Kell, loomed behind the bar, furiously polishing a set of dented metal tankards, his face twisted into a scowl. When he noticed her descending the stairs his expression darkened further, if that was possible, and he angrily tossed away the rag he’d been using.

“Vessa!” he barked, motioning for her to approach.

“Kell,” she said, wondering if he was upset over Carine’s absence. Well, if so, she’d calm him down by showing him her pretty new jewels. Kell was an ornery bastard, but she’d seen him crack a smile once or twice when rich patrons had started throwing money around the Grot – and finally she was in a position to do just that.

“What in the black balls of Garazon is this?” he snarled, holding up something small pinched between two fingers.

“I don’t –” she began, but then it caught the lamplight and flashed green.

Oh no.

“You don’t know? You mean you settled your very sizable debt with me – and added to it significantly last night – with a jewel you never bothered to have appraised?”

“It . . . I . . .”

“It’s worthless!” Kell bellowed, drawing the eyes of everyone in the room. “A bit of colored glass! The only reason I don’t have the guard in here right now dragging you off to an oubliette is because you must have thought it was real or you wouldn’t have slept away the entire morning upstairs!”

“Did someone summon the guard?” said a new voice.

Her head whirling, Vessa turned from the fuming innkeep just as a cowled man in a dark cloak stood unsteadily from the table in the corner where he’d been sitting alone. Gods above and below, what’s going on?

She knew who it was before he even pulled back his hood – the limp was so recognizable she wondered why he even bothered to go about Malakesh in disguise.

“Vigilant,” said Kell, ducking his head, the white-hot fire of his rage snuffed out instantly.

“Innkeep,” Malz said, nodding in greeting. “May I have a word alone with Vessa?”

“Of course,” Kell muttered obsequiously, then scurried like a chastised dog through the door behind the bar that led to the kitchens.

“I hope you don’t mind me interrupting,” the Vigilant said, flashing her one of his lopsided smiles.

Vessa struggled to make sense of what was happening. The jewels are fake? Malz wants to speak with me? Where is Del? “Not . . . not at all.”

“You’re probably wondering why I’m here, and not in my uniform.”

“Um, yes.” Though I have a few more pressing things on my mind.

Malz sighed and leaned against the bar. “It’s been an eventful morning, Vessa.”

Morning. That penetrated the fog in her mind.

“You mean day, Vigilant. It’s evening outside.”

“No, I mean morning. By my reckoning it’s barely past midday.”

“Look at the light,” she said slowly, as if speaking to a child, gesturing at the few small windows in the darkened common room.

“Yes, look at that light. It’s all the city’s seen for nearly half a day.”

“What?”

A line of spittle escaped from the slack corner of his mouth, but Malz didn’t seem to notice. “The sun, Vessa. The sun is gone. Instead, we have only twilight.”

“The sun is gone?” she repeated, stunned.

“Gone. Why? Well, there are a number of theories being bandied about. But the one I give the most credence to comes from the high priest of Aradeth the Golden, the Great Effulgence himself. I mentioned Aradeth the last time we spoke – I’m sure you remember. He’s one of the more popular sun gods in Malakesh these days.”

“I remember,” Vessa whispered.

“That’s good. Anyway, the high priest has told the duke that the sun was taken away by his divine lord.”

Numbness spread through Vessa as the Vigilant spoke. She had a strong suspicion where this was leading. “And why would Aradeth take away the sun?” she heard herself say from far away.

“Apparently the god is enraged! Last night thieves broke into a manse in the Gold Quarter that his faithful servants use as a residence and stole his most precious artifact.”

“Oh.”

“Yes! And not just any thieves, as the house was protected by very powerful wards. No, someone extremely skilled at untangling complex sorcery was part of this robbery. I wanted to ask your partner about this, since he’s the best I ever encountered at such things. Now, I know it wasn’t him, as you told me yourself that you two are only doing honest work these days, but I thought he might know who else was capable of such a dastardly act. So, do you know where Del Amoth is?”

“No.”

“I see. Well, when he does turn up – or crawls out of whatever gutter he’s fallen into this time – please come at once to Stonespear.” The Vigilant blew out his one good cheek, gesturing toward the windows and the bruise-colored sky beyond. “The duke certainly wants to resolve this mess as quickly as possible.”

Malz made to turn away but Vessa laid a hand on his arm. “Wait, Vigilant. You never told me why you are out of uniform. What happened this morning?”

“Oh. Please excuse me, my mind is elsewhere. I’m here” – he leaned in closer, whispering conspiratorially – “in disguise to get the pulse of the Rat Quarter after the riots this morning.”

“Riots?”

“Yes. Six dead and three dozen more wounded, including a few guardsmen. The priests of Aradeth badly misplayed their cards – when the sun refused to rise, they started preaching loudly to the good citizens of Malakesh that it was their god who had stolen it away, and that it would not appear again unless this artifact that had been taken the night before was returned.”

“Oh, no.”

“Yes, you know the Rat as well as I do. The denizens of this quarter do not take kindly to being threatened. The response was predictable – by claiming responsibility for the missing sun, they made themselves into a very convenient target for mob violence. And if my guardsmen had not been in the area trying to keep the tensions between the Day and Night zealots from boiling over, I think all of Aradeth’s faithful might have been torn to pieces. Xeno and his followers haven’t escaped the city’s wrath, either, as they are seen by most as simply being the reverse side of the same foreign coin – remember, both sects are very new to the city. Right now the priests of both gods are barricaded in their temples, afraid to even walk the streets.”

“This all occurred today?”

“It’s been a busy morning. And there’s something else.”

Vessa pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to steel herself for whatever surprise was coming next. “Yes?”

“The priests of Aradeth aren’t taking all this meekly. My whispers tell me that the high priest has contracted with one of the shadow societies to get back the stolen artifact.”

A wave of coldness washed over Vessa, and she had to stifle a small moan. The societies are involved in this. She and Del had striven very hard to avoid their attention over the years, turning down any job that they suspected might brush up against their interests. The societies were tight-knit organizations that controlled the darker trade that coursed beneath the surface of Malakesh. Every illegal vice in the city could be traced back to them – dreamsmoke, slaves, poisons, outlawed thaumaturgies, assassinations. They were one of the pillars that held up the city, along with the merchants, the nobles, and the duke himself. Some would argue the most powerful of the four . . . and now they were looking for her and Del.

“Do you know which society?” she managed to get out, hoping her face hadn’t gone completely ashen.

“The Lost Men.”

Bad. Very bad. She needed to find Del immediately, before they did. Or she’d be fishing pieces of her partner out of the Bloat. Luckily there was only one place her partner would have gone with a purse full of gemstones – despite his many promises to stay away.

“Vigilant, I don’t mean to be rude but I suddenly remembered a very pressing appointment I have elsewhere.”

He flashed her another of his gruesome smiles as she pushed past him, hurrying for the door. “I thought you might. Godspeed, Vessa.”

She had never seen the streets of Malakesh so empty, not even on those dark and thankfully rare days when plague had stalked the city. Most everyone must be huddled inside, Vessa supposed, out of the unnatural light and hoping that if they ignored this strangeness then the sun might decide to saunter back into the sky as if nothing had happened. Even the galagan lizard from the previous day had finally abandoned the festering remnants of the dog’s corpse, which now sprawled alone and forlorn in the middle of the road. Vessa was suddenly struck by an odd thought: just as rats flee sinking ships or fleas a corpse, perhaps the vermin of Malakesh were streaming from the city in a chittering, writhing horde, some animal impulse telling them that this eternal twilight portended an onrushing calamity.

She couldn’t blame them if they were. Fingers of lavender stretched from the horizon into a sky mottled by patches of black and purple. The colors shimmered and twisted, some growing lighter while others darkened, but night – or the dawn – never seemed truly imminent. The city was trapped in an interstitial moment, the kind that usually comes and goes in an instant, barely noticed, like the blink of an eye. Seeing something that should have been so fleeting continue to linger was disconcerting, and made her skin crawl.

She left the main road and entered the narrow, twisting side streets and alleys of the Rat Quarter. Shapes huddled under piles of rags, and small, fierce-looking children crouching in the shadows paused their games to watch her pass. Most of the doors of these listing houses were shut tight, but a few were flung open, revealing the lives of the Rat’s inhabitants. Through one doorway she saw a young mother bend to hack a chunk of meat from the corpse of a small pig, her babe’s thatch of black hair just visible atop the basket slung across her back. The girl looked up and caught Vessa’s eyes and nodded a wary greeting. Vessa glanced up at the sky and felt a flush of shame for accidentally bringing such fear and disruption into their already difficult lives.

She needed to find Del and figure out what in the seven abysses was going on. Instead of recovering the Eye for the faithful of Aradeth, they had in fact been deceived into stealing the artifact from them. But by whom? The Night Brotherhood? Certainly they would be the obvious suspects. One of the shadow societies? Perhaps they were behind all this, and after being hired to find the Eye, they would simply sell it back to the high priest for an outrageous amount. She and Del would serve as very convenient scapegoats in that scenario. And what about Sahm? She had seemed so young and innocent. If it all had been a performance then the girl deserved a spot in the most celebrated troupe of mummers in the city. Vessa shook her head, trying to order her thoughts. She didn’t want to descend into a dreamsmoke den while confused, lest an accidental whiff of the drug trap her within the labyrinth of her own mind, endlessly following the twisting threads of these mysteries but getting nowhere. She needed clarity right now.

Down an otherwise empty alleyway, Vessa paused in front of a small, nondescript door of red wood. Taking a deep, steadying breath – how long has it been? – she knocked loudly.

“Where does the balobo bird nest?” The words were faint, muffled by the thick wood.

Vessa cleared her throat. “In the temqua tree, the roots of which trail into the poison water.”

The door swung open sharply, and Vessa took an involuntary step back, her hand going to her sword hilt.

A small, gnarled woman with skin the color of teak stood in the entrance, blinking up at her. She smacked her gummy lips and smiled toothlessly. “By the last lord of Hardlight, tis Vessa. Haven’t seen you round so much, girl.”

“I was in the south. The Silken Cities.”

“Thought you might have been tryin’ to slip the golden serpent’s coils.” The old woman cackled. “Not so easy, is it?”

Vessa gritted her teeth. “I’m not here to smoke. I need to find Del.”

“Maybe he don’t want to be found right now.”

Vessa crouched down in front of the tiny woman, trying not to wrinkle her nose at the strong smell of rot, and stared hard into her glittering black eyes. “Take me to him. It’s urgent.”

The crone held her gaze for a long moment. Finally she shrugged and turned away. “Come with me, then. And don’t make any problems for the others.”

Vessa followed the old woman as she hobbled down the narrow, darkened passage, then waited as she withdrew a key of black iron and inserted it with a hollow clunk into a massive lock. She gave the key a few hard twists, each accompanied by a grunt of effort, and then the door swung open. Laughter and the sweet strains of a plucked kepla spilled into the passage, along with a tendril of golden smoke that writhed along the floor like a blind snake, groping toward Vessa as if it knew her.

Which it did. Vessa felt the familiar ache begin in her chest. No. No, she had to find Del. Taking a deep breath, she plunged into the dreamsmoke den.

It hadn’t changed in the last few years. Pastel curtains of rippling translucent cloth partitioned the large chamber into a hive of small rooms, each filled with mounded cushions and sprawled bodies. Golden ribbons floated through a glittering haze, twisting around insubstantial images that formed and melted away in moments. A great silver fish flicked its tail and was gone. Shadowy, long-limbed shapes cavorted in a mad dance before dissolving. A child with luminescent eyes reached out an imploring hand, her face twisted in fear, then receded into the golden fog.

Dreams made real. Vessa breathed through her mouth and tried to avoid the thickest strands of dreamsmoke, but even still she felt the old tingling begin in the back of her skull. Her body wanted nothing more than for her to sink onto the cushions and give herself over completely to the drug.

Del. She shook her head, trying to clear it. Del’s life – and her own – were at stake now. She had to be strong.

She found him lolling beside a spent dreamsmoke lamp, the fire beneath it long since gone out. A flaxen-haired girl, her large eyes glazed and skin sallow, clung to him like he was a piece of driftwood in the middle of the ocean.

“Del!” Vessa nearly shouted, and though her partner did not stir, the girl pouted and squirmed deeper into his embrace.

“Up,” Vessa snarled, digging the toe of her boot hard into the soft flesh of the girl’s thigh. Hissing in pain, the den courtesan rolled away and scrambled on her hands and knees through the maze of piled cushions and hanging strips of silk.

With the warmth of the girl gone, Del finally began to move, passing his hand sluggishly in front of his face. “What . . . what’s happening? Mother?”

She didn’t have time for this. Vessa grabbed her partner by his ankles and pulled him forward so hard that his head slipped from its pillow and thunked against the floor. “I’m not your mother.”

Del groaned, clutching at the pillows around him until they toppled over and covered his chest and face. Vessa sighed and thrust her hands into the pile, reaching for his tunic, but then recoiled as a small green snake with gleaming red eyes slithered out from a crevice between two tumbled cushions. The snake flicked its tongue at her and then slowly faded into nothing, becoming faint wisps of shimmering gold.

Vessa shook her head, trying to clear it. She needed to get out of here before the dreamsmoke sunk its claws any deeper into her – escaping the knives of the Lost Men would be impossible while wallowing in the drug’s clutches.

With a snarl, Vessa reached down and hauled Del to his feet. He blinked watery red eyes at her, trying to focus. “Vess?” he slurred, swaying.

“It’s me, you fool,” she said and began dragging him towards the door.

Just before they reached the exit the wizened old woman materialized in front of Vessa, scowling. “Where ya goin’? Yer boy didn’t pay, and he sucked up a dragon’s worth o’ the smoke.”

Keeping Del steady with one hand, Vessa reached into her pocket, then drew forth the gem-bag and tossed it at the feet of the crone. Stones spilled out and the old woman gaped, her slitted black eyes widening.

“I believe this is what the dreamsmoke is worth,” Vessa said, shoving Del through the den’s entrance. She led him stumbling down the passage, barely keeping him from collapsing as they emerged into the alley.

“Vess,” her partner said slowly, his fingers exploring the hidden pockets sewn into his clothes. “I’m so sorry. I think I lost my jewels.”

“I wouldn’t be so concerned about that,” she replied, grimacing as she struggled to keep Del upright. Finally she gave up and slapped his cheek hard.

His gaze sharpened as he tried to fight through the drug’s haze.

“Listen to me carefully, Del. The gems were fake. Sahm’s story was false. We stole the Eye from the priests of Aradeth, not the Night Brotherhood. The Lost Men are hunting us, trying to get it back.” Vessa glanced up at the purple light filling the sky. That’s right, she’d nearly forgotten. “Oh, and the sun was plucked from the heavens by an angry god.”

“The sun did . . . what? Have you been drinking? I can smell it from here.”

Vessa slapped Del again, harder this time, and then yanked on his arm, pulling him along.

As they passed one of the piles of rags and refuse littering the narrow alley, the mound suddenly shuddered and rose up. Vessa reeled away, shoving Del behind her as she scrabbled for her swords. “Cher-Vanok!” she cursed, in her surprise slipping back into her homeland’s tongue.

Pale, delicate hands pulled back the hood of a threadbare gray cloak. Vessa felt a stab of fear at the inhuman beauty that was revealed: a face so white and smooth it could have been a festival mask, yet its large golden eyes glowed with a calm intelligence. High cheekbones, silvery hair that glistened like strands of spider silk, thin lips that gave no hint of the thoughts within. There was no doubt what this man – what this creature – was. Vessa had seen an Aliva before, but at a distance, being carried on a palanquin through the crowded streets of Chep Eras, one of the fleshpots deep in the Imperium. She hadn’t known any of those rare, mysterious people persisted outside the compounds that housed the administrators who served the Gray Emperor. Coldly brilliant, shriven of emotion, devoid of greater ambitions – the perfect bureaucrats.

“Vessa of Ts’kelcha, daughter of Peralin. I greet you.”

She released her half-drawn sword, letting it slide back into her scabbard. “Who are you?”

The Aliva smiled, showing perfect teeth. “My birth name was stripped from me long ago. Here in Malakesh my new brothers call me Wraith.”

This tickled at Vessa’s memory. She had heard whisperings of a Wraith since she had returned to the city – a name colored by respect and fear.

A name spoken in the same breath as the shadow societies.

The back of Vessa’s neck began to prickle. She knew without looking up that men with crossbows crouched on the edges of the roof above, ready to plant a quarrel in her if she drew her swords. Cold sweat slicked her palms, and she forced herself to focus on the Aliva.

“Well . . . Wraith, is there a reason you’re bothering us?” She made a show of glancing up and down his ragged attire. “Do you just want to beg for a spare coin or two? Honestly, I thought the emperor took better care of his pets.”

His thin lips curled up into a faint smile. “You are as charming as they claimed. But no, I do not need any of your coin, or bits of colored glass. And I no longer swear fealty to the Thorned Throne; I have slipped the ancient bonds that bind my people to the Imperium. In their eyes, I am truly a Lost Man.”

With those words her last few lingering doubts vanished. “What does the society want with us?” she asked softly.

The Aliva’s great golden eyes held her gaze without blinking. “You must not pretend ignorance, Vessa. We know you stole the Eye from the priests of Aradeth. We know that this has caused the sun to flee from the sky. We know that you gave the Eye to a young girl dressed in the robes of a priestess.” The Aliva pulled something red from his tattered robes. “You must find the Eye again and return it to us.”

“But we don’t know where it is! We thought we were stealing the Eye from the Night Brotherhood for Aradeth’s faithful!”

The Aliva nodded. “I understand. And it is because of this ignorance that you are still alive. Consider this . . . opportunity . . . your chance for redemption. But I know the task we have set before you is daunting and that the desire to flee the city will be strong. We hope this will keep you motivated to finish what you have started.” The Aliva tossed the thin object toward Vessa; it twisted like a length of rope as she snatched it from the air. She gasped – it was a braid of red, curly hair.

“Carine,” Vessa whispered.

The Aliva nodded. “Bring us the Eye. And soon.”

The Night Brotherhood’s temple in Malakesh more resembled a fortress than a place of worship. Dark battlements clawed the sky, and what few windows Vessa could see set in the high black walls were little more than murder holes.

“Friendly folk,” Del whispered as they meandered along the wide avenue that passed outside of the temple’s forbidding entrance.

“They serve a god called Xeno of the Shadows. It’s actually just about what I was expecting.”

“Thoughts, then?”

Vessa’s thumb brushed the strand of hair she had tied around her finger. There was a burning in her chest, an anger she hadn’t felt for many years. “I’ve had enough,” she said through gritted teeth. “We’ve been played like fools and threatened like children. Someone I care about could be killed because of this idiocy. I have a strong suspicion that the Night Brotherhood is behind everything. I’m going to walk up to that door and knock and demand to see the high priest so we can settle this matter.”

“And if he doesn’t give you the Eye?”

“Then I’ll stick people with my swords until he does.”

“And what if they don’t even open the door?”

“Then I’ll kick it down.”

Del cocked his head, as if considering what she’d said. Then he shrugged. “Good plan.”

“Let’s go then.” Vessa turned sharply from their slow ambling and strode up to the imposing door set in the temple’s outer walls.

“Wait, we’re really going to just ask to be let in?” Del asked incredulously, hurrying to catch up with her.

In response, Vessa hammered on the door of iron and black wood. “Del,” she said as she continued her pounding, “how is it locked?”

Del placed his palm on the door and closed his eyes. “Sorcery,” he said after a moment. “And not particularly complex.”

“Good. Work on opening it.”

A panel slid open at about head height. Vessa peered inside, nearly recoiling when she was confronted by a demon’s leering face.

“I am the gatekeeper of the House of Xeno!” boomed the demon hollowly through a mouth that did not move.

A mask. “Gatekeeper. I must speak with your high priest.”

“The Moonwarden is in seclusion, praying to dread Xeno! He asks our lord how to entreat Aradeth to return the sun so that the moon might rise once more. He cannot be disturbed!”

“That’s just what I want to talk about, actually.”

“The door shall remain closed!” the gatekeeper proclaimed with a note of finality and slammed the panel shut.

Vessa turned to Del. “Almost finished?”

“Done,” Del replied, stepping back from the door.

Vessa heard a click and a grinding, and the temple’s outer door began to swing slowly open. The number sticks are cast, she thought with a grin and slammed her shoulder into the wood, flinging the door wide. Its edge caught the scrawny gatekeeper as he tried to retreat, sending him sprawling in the dirt. Mewling with pain, he scrambled away from Vessa, raising little plumes of dust; when he glanced at her over his shoulder she could see the whites of his panicked eyes through the slits in his mask. She stalked forward and gripped a handful of his robes, hauling him to his feet, then shook him like a doll as he cried out in fear.

“Your high priest! Take me to him now, or by the Moon Mother’s swollen belly, I’ll pull this place down around your ears!”

“Calm, my child.”

Vessa dropped the gatekeeper and turned toward this new voice. From the corner of her eye she saw the priest scuttle away from her, sniveling in terror, like she was in fact some demonic aspect that had crawled up from the abyss.

A gaunt old man in black robes stood in the arched entrance to the temple proper, watching her with mild curiosity. Behind him a half-dozen younger priests stared at her with wide, frightened eyes.

Vessa’s hands itched with the desire to draw her swords, but she restrained herself. “You!” she cried. “I’ve come for the Eye, and while I’m here I’d like a word with that cunning little vixen who tricked me!”

“We do not have the Eye. I have already said the same to the Red Duke, and have had the Great Effulgence of Aradeth confirm my words.”

Something in Vessa wavered. “You . . . have?”

The Moonwarden dipped his spotted bald head. “Indeed. Of course the duke assumed the Night Brotherhood would be the thieves. Like you, he did not understand the nature of our faith.”

“What nature?”

The old priest sighed. “That there can be no night without the day. One begets the other. Aradeth and Xeno are brothers, and like all brothers they are bound by affection . . . yet are also locked in competition. In this instance, for the hearts of the people of Malakesh.”

“So perhaps you stole the Eye to gain some advantage?”

Dark sleeves dropped away from bony arms as the Moonwarden raised his hands to the purple sky. “Look, my child. There is no day, but there is no night, either. The men and women who have swelled the ranks of our faithful have abandoned us. Whoever wields the Eye has cursed Xeno as much as he has Aradeth.”

As much as he has Aradeth.

He . . . or she?

Del stepped up beside Vessa. “If you speak true, let us search your temple for the girl who first misled us.”

The old priest opened his mouth to reply, but Vessa spoke first. “Sahm isn’t here,” she said softly, her thoughts racing down twisting corridors.

Del glanced at her sharply. “How are you so certain?”

Vessa tilted her head up, squinting into the discolored sky. “Because I know where she is. Come, we need to go speak with Malz.”

The endless gloaming pressed against the large windows set high up in the warehouse’s walls, draping the jumbled bales of cotton below in shadow and turning the interior into a ruined cityscape. Vessa waited, leaning against a listing tower and watching the huge double doors, as she had just a few days ago when her life had been markedly less complicated. Her task then had been to make sure the longshoremen dragging the bales inside didn’t “lose” any of the valuable cotton as they worked; her task now was to negotiate the return of the sun to the sky. Vessa sighed and shook her head, wondering how events had led her to this.

Would Malz come? The thought that a Vigilant of Malakesh would answer a summons to meet in a warehouse at the docks seemed preposterous, but in her note she had claimed to have discovered some vital information about what was afflicting Malakesh. Surely he couldn’t ignore that, even though she suspected he knew far more than she did about what was really transpiring.

Vessa glanced up, trying to catch some glimpse of Del among the rafters, but her partner had hidden himself well. Hopefully he wouldn’t have to reveal himself later.

She tensed as the scrape of metal came from outside. The heavy doors shivered, then swung slowly inwards, pushed open by a pair of guardsmen wearing the duke’s livery. Both carried lanterns hung from nightwatchmen poles. Malz followed behind them, limping, surrounded by another five warriors who seemed to move almost in lockstep as they paced the Vigilant.

Interesting. From their spiked helms and black cloaks these were members of the Hounds, the duke’s personal guard. By bringing them to this meeting Malz was making a statement that he had the support of Malakesh’s ruler in these matters.

“Vessa!” the Vigilant cried out when he saw her, motioning for the knot of warriors to halt. “I appreciate the sea air, but I thought I told you to come see me in Stonespear when you found your partner.” Malz made a show of peering into the shadows. “And where is Del Amoth, might I ask?”

“He’s here,” said Vessa, pushing herself from the bales.

“Ah,” the Vigilant said with a conspiratorial grin. “He’s watching us from somewhere with a crossbow, yes? Really, Vessa, you should be more trusting.”

“It’s true I don’t trust you, but he’s out there because the other folk I’ve invited are more dangerous than you.”

A flicker of uncertainty passed across Malz’s face. “Other folk?”

As if in response to the Vigilant, noises came from deeper within the warehouse. Footsteps, ringing out so loud that they could only be meant as a warning for others. There was also muffled sobbing that made the back of Vessa’s neck tingle and her hands grow cold. She knew that voice. And . . . whistling? Yes, someone was whistling a jaunty children’s tune as they approached through the maze of cotton bales.

She saw the eyes first, flashing golden from the light of the guard’s lanterns. Malz hissed something under his breath, and Vessa thought she saw his face harden slightly.

The Lost Men entered the light. The Aliva who had called himself Wraith was first, flanked by a pair of tall, gangly youths who looked to be brothers. One wore a cocky smile, and the other was the whistler. Both twirled long-handled axes, as if they were wandering through a forest searching for trees to cut down. Behind them came a few less-imposing individuals: two men, one fat and one thin, each wearing white robes banded by gold which marked them as priests of Aradeth. Vessa’s breath caught in her throat when she saw Carine shuffling along beside them, her hands bound in front of her and her head bowed so that her red curls obscured her face. Anger rose in Vessa, but she tamped it down. She needed all her wits about her.

“Greetings, Vigilant,” murmured the Aliva, inclining his head toward the guardsmen.

“Wraith,” Malz replied curtly.

The captain of the Lost Men smiled faintly and then turned to Vessa. “It seems we have all come for the Eye. I hope, swordmaiden, that you truly possess it.”

“I don’t.”

Carine’s head jerked up at the sound of Vessa’s voice, and hope flooded her face. She appeared unharmed, much to Vessa’s relief.

The Aliva blinked, his expression bemused. “Then why did you call us here?”

“Because he has the Eye,” Vessa said, pointing at Malz.

Now it was the Vigilant’s turn to look surprised. “What madness are you speaking?”

Vessa swallowed hard. She had to be right – Carine’s life depended on it. “Not madness, Vigilant. Reason. Who has benefited most from this whole debacle? A few days ago the city was on the brink of a riot between the faithful of the Day and Night, but now their followers have deserted them, incensed by the sun’s disappearance. I saw in the Silken Cities the damage the followers of Xeno and Aradeth could do when they were stirred up, and I’m guessing you knew the danger as well, and feared for Malakesh. So you employed the false priestess Sahm – and I have my suspicions about who she is – to trick us into stealing the Eye for you. With the Lost Men scouring the city for Sahm, the only way she could have avoided being found would be if she were under the duke’s protection in Stonespear.”

Malz flashed one of his lopsided grins. “An interesting theory. But I do not have the Eye.”

Vessa’s heart dropped into her stomach. If that was true then she would have to convince the Vigilant to help negotiate Carine’s release from the Lost Men. And failing that she would have to free her herself.

Malz seemed to read her thoughts, and he spared a glance at Carine. “Ah, I suppose this game has gone on long enough. Vessa, I do not have the Eye. But the one you think of as Sahm does.” The Vigilant’s voice strengthened, as if he was speaking to someone outside the light of the lanterns. “Annysia, show yourself.”

Several moments passed, and then shadowy tendrils groped from the darkness, twisting together to form a patch of rippling black. A wind arose, strong enough to set the hanging lanterns swinging, and when the darkness blew away like shreds of clouds in a stormy sky, Sahm was revealed.

Gone was the terrified wisp of a girl – in her place was a woman who exuded confidence and authority. She had traded her simple gray robes for a shimmering satin dress the same color as the sky outside; it seemed to ripple and twist, darkening from a deep blue to a purple that verged on black.

“Witch!” spat the fat priest of Aradeth into the shocked silence.

The Aliva turned toward him. “You recognize her?” he said mildly.

“Aye,” the priest growled. “A sorceress and high priestess of the Dusk. I should have known from the sky that the Lady of Twilight was involved in this.”

Sahm – or Annysia – eyed the priest with cold disdain. “You brought this disaster down upon your own temple, fool. Aradeth and Xeno thought to leave their sisters behind in the south, and greedily seize all these fresh believers for themselves. Now your faith withers in this city, and the people witness the power of my mistress.”

“Annysia,” said Malz, “end the enchantment over the city and return the Eye to the Great Effulgence.”

“It is not yet time, Vigilant.”

“I’m changing the terms of our agreement. Both our ends have now been achieved, I think.”

The priestess of the twilight held the Vigilant’s gaze for a long moment, and then pulled from the folds of her robes something that glittered in the lantern-light. She closed her eyes and pursed her lips, and Vessa gasped as the light in the windows high above began to change almost at once. Purple faded to a wan gray, then brightened, as if the sun was emerging from behind a fogbank.

Annysia opened her hand, and the crystal orb floated toward the high priest of Aradeth, who snatched it from the air. She laughed at the look of hatred he shot her as he cradled the Eye.

The Aliva flourished a curved knife, then cut the ropes binding Carine’s wrists. She glanced at him, and when he nodded she rushed toward Vessa, nearly collapsing into her arms with a wrenching sob.

Malz smiled. “It seems this little drama has finished.”

“Not quite,” said the Aliva. “This artifact has the power to steal the very sun from the sky. The Lost Men would be foolish to let it slip away.” He turned to the Great Effulgence of Aradeth and plunged his knife into the priest’s neck. Sidestepping the blood spurting from the wound, Wraith caught the Eye with casual grace as it dropped. The priest collapsed, fumbling helplessly with the jutting hilt.

“Down!” Vessa cried, pulling Carine behind a pile of cotton bales as the air thrummed with the sound of crossbows. Several of the Hound guardsmen staggered, quarrels sprouting from their cuirasses, and then the Lost Men were among them, whooping as they swung their long-handled axes. A head exploded, the lantern the guardsman had held spinning away to shatter on the wooden floor. A line of flame sprung up, tracing the path of the spilled oil.

Del, do something, Vessa thought, but before she even finished that silent plea a shriek came from above and a body plummeted from the rafters. It landed near Vessa, staring at her sightlessly, and she saw one of Del’s daggers buried in its back. Good lad.

“Hide!” she screamed at Carine, drawing her swords as she surged to her feet. Chaos swirled around Vessa: the Hounds who had not fallen were being kept at bay by the great sweeping arcs of the Lost Men’s axes, while the thin priest of Aradeth cowered beside the splayed body of the murdered Great Effulgence. Scraps of the dwindling shadows slithered forth to twist around the sorceress of the twilight; as Annysia faded into the darkness, her eyes found Vessa’s, and she smiled.

That’s a score to settle later, Vessa thought, then flinched as another Lost Man tumbled from above, his neck slashed. The Aliva stepped over the twitching body, his face eerily blank despite the screams and shriek of steel. He walked with an unhurried pace toward Vessa, a curving red-metal sword in one hand and a shorter, broader blade in the other. There was no hate in his golden eyes, no anger or excitement. Just calm purpose.

Vessa set her feet and brought her swords up, watching to see which stance the Aliva adopted. Wraith raised his own blades, holding them sideways in a fighting style she was unfamiliar with.

“The Vigilant tricked you, Vessa,” he said. “And he misled us. The Lost Men have no quarrel with you.”

“I have a quarrel with you,” Vessa said, and lunged forward, her swords flashing. The Aliva parried her attack smoothly.

“You would die because of the barmaid?” His scimitar flickered out, and she turned it away.

“She had no part in this, and you threatened her life!”

The Aliva danced back, out of the reach of her longer blades. “My people have a saying, swordmaiden – there are no innocents.” Flames limned Wraith; behind him the fire from the shattered lantern had engulfed one of the towers of stacked cotton bales and started to climb the wall.

He came at her with startling speed, and she was driven back on her heels, struggling to ward away his attacks. She blocked his scimitar with her sword, then had to twist her body out of the way to avoid being disemboweled by his shorter blade. Vessa turned her desperate evasion into a spinning slash, but somehow the Aliva managed to lock the hilt of his stubby sword with her own, and then with a flick of his wrist he sent her blade spinning off into the shadows.

Something struck the Aliva from behind, and he staggered. Vessa did not hesitate and leaped forward, thrusting her remaining sword deep into his chest. The Aliva gasped, his great luminescent eyes fluttering wide, and then toppled over as she wrenched her blade free.

Carine threw away the shattered night watchman’s pole she’d struck the Aliva with, her shoulders heaving, then sank to her knees. Vessa tousled her hair as she brushed past her to pick up the sword the Aliva had knocked aside.

A few more of the guardsmen lay crumpled before the Lost Men – now only three remained, obviously scared to get within the reach of the glittering axes carving the air. One of the shadow society men threw back his head and shrieked a laugh that made Vessa doubt his sanity. She adjusted her grip on her swords and started toward the pair, but before she could take more than a few steps she saw the Vigilant slide with surprising grace within the whirling axes and plunge a slim rapier into the side of one of the Lost Men, angling the blade upward. Vessa could tell that it slipped perfectly between his ribs and found his heart, because the crazed laughter ended abruptly. His ax-brother glanced over just as a crossbow bolt from above struck him in the face, snapping his head back.

“Del, now get out!” Vessa screamed, grabbing Carine’s arm and pulling her coughing toward the door. The crawling flames had nearly reached the ceiling, and the air was beginning to thicken with a haze of oily smoke.

They burst from the warehouse and dashed across the wide avenue that separated the building from the docks. Moments later the remaining Hounds followed, two of them supporting the Vigilant as he hobbled to where Vessa and Carine stood gulping down great lungfuls of fresh air.

“Your partner?” Malz asked.

“He’s coming,” Vessa assured him, but she felt a pang of unease watching the flames skitter across the roof and begin to devour the warehouse.

Somewhere in the distance a fire-bell rang.

“There!” Carine cried, pointing as a shadowy figure slipped around the side of the warehouse and hurried toward them. Relief flooded Vessa when she saw it was indeed Del Amoth.

“What about the Eye?”

As if in answer to Malz’s question, the beams above the warehouse’s door collapsed in a rush of flames and sparks.

“Um, I have it.” It was a voice she hadn’t heard before, and Vessa whirled around with her hands on the hilts of her swords, but it was just the thin priest of Aradeth, his white robes blackened by soot and smoke. “I suppose I’ll, uh, return it to the temple.”

“Excellent idea,” Malz said, clapping the priest on his shoulder hard enough to stagger him. “And I’d like a word with you, so that we might come to a mutual understanding of what happened here tonight . . .”

Laughing, Vessa pushed open the door to the Grot, then held it wide for Carine and Del Amoth. Her partner was closely examining one of the shards of colored glass he’d found in a pocket, prodding it with a finger.

“I can’t believe I didn’t notice it before, but there’s a strong glamour here.”

Vessa squeezed his shoulder. “Your greed blinded you. I think we were both guilty of that. Nevermind, set it aside. I think we’ve earned a good long rest, along with the chance to spend some of the duke’s gold.”

“Carine!” bellowed Kell from behind the bar when he caught sight of them. “Where have you been, girl? Off having fun with your penniless friends? Get in the kitchen and start cleaning!”

Carine glanced at Vessa and sighed. “Yes, Uncle. Coming, Uncle.”

“And you!” Kell continued, jabbing a finger at Vessa. “I thought I just told you to go talk to Alberon. You need to find some work so you can begin paying off your debts!”

Vessa frowned. “I think you must be thinking of someone else, Kell.”

“What, are you into the dreamsmoke again? You were in here not a half-watch ago, just before the sun finally jumped back into the sky. Asking all kinds of crazy questions.”

Vessa froze. What was Kell talking about?

Oh no …

“The mirror!” Del Amoth cried, grabbing her arm and shaking it hard.

And she’d been so looking forward to a little rest.

A RED BIRD WITH blue wings flickers between branches studded with purple blossoms. Sunlight drenches the trees outside Akara’s window, warm as her mother’s embrace. Slowly she raises her hand to the light, trying to catch it before it melts away again, before it slips between her fingers – but she cannot hold on, and it dissolves once more into the dimness.

Akara returns to herself. She lies upon a bed damp with sweat that is not hers. She breathes in carefully, filling her aching ribs and chest with air. So heavy. This Uncle had been so heavy. Gently she brushes her nipples, wincing at how tender they feel. She doesn’t remember much – she never does. But the weight – the crushing weight – she cannot forget. Like drowning. Like the time she slipped on the muddy bank of the river and Brother pulled her out and pounded her back until she coughed up the water in her lungs.

She aches everywhere, but less where it hurt the most before. Is that good? She feels like something is broken.

Akara stares at the red light hanging from the ceiling. Slowly she moves her arms in the soiled sheets, imagining that the light is the sun, and if she wills herself hard enough she could lift from this bed and fly away. Back to the village. Back to her tin-and-wood house perched on stilts beside the stream with its small frogs, back to her mother’s arms and the smell of amok simmering on the burner.

The sound of a glass falling over in the next room brings her back. She knows what that means: Big Uncle is sleeping now, and he won’t wake up until morning. Then he will be very angry, and he will hit and pinch her if she makes any noise. And after that she will lie and wait for another Uncle to come and visit her, as she has done every day since she first came to this room.

She must fly away.

Trying not to gasp from the pain, Akara sits up and swings her legs over the side of the bed. She lowers herself to the floor, taking great care not to press down on the wooden slats that creak and groan. She scoops her crumpled shirt from where the Uncle tossed it and pulls it on again. Her pants are harder to find; they are balled up under the sheets, her underwear still tangled inside.

There are pink slippers next to the bed, painted with the happy faces of rabbits. They are big for her, but she can walk in them. She puts them on and nudges open the door.

Big Uncle slouches in his chair, his arms dangling down and his head lolling to one side. A glass bottle is tipped over beside him, and some dark liquid has crept out to stain the floor. She can hear his slow, steady breathing.

She steps out into the room, crossing a threshold she has been told she must never even approach. Her heart leaps, so loud she’s sure Big Uncle will wake. Then he will lurch from his chair red-faced and he will punch her again in the stomach until she’s curled up into a ball coughing up blood. Like the first time she tried to run away, when Uncle and his friends pulled open the container’s door and told her in Khmer that she was in America now, and that she was his.

One step. Two. She’s not breathing, and the silence is deafening.

Slowly, slowly. Carefully she steps over a crumpled newspaper. A black-haired woman watches her from a faded calendar on the wall.

When she is passing behind Big Uncle’s chair, his hand twitches, and her stomach clenches. But then with a snort he settles again, and she exhales softly.

Eight steps. Nine. Ten. The door handle is within her reach. Akara grips it and twists, and it does not budge. She wants to moan, but with an effort she stifles herself.

There’s a chunk of metal above the handle. Akara touches it gently, gives it a slight turn. There’s a click, so loud she’s sure Big Uncle will wake. She turns to see.

Big Uncle hasn’t moved. But beyond him, standing in the doorway to another room – maybe a kitchen – the Uncle who came tonight is watching her. He is holding a bowl in one hand and in the other is a spoon suspended halfway to his mouth. Akara’s insides turn to water, and her legs wobble, but he does nothing, just stares at her. She can see his big hairy belly bulging out from underneath his shirt. He brings the spoon to his mouth and chews, watching.

With terrible slowness she moves her hand from the chunk of metal to the door’s handle. She twists and pushes. The door opens soundlessly, and cold air rushes inside. The man does nothing as she slips out the door and gently closes it behind her.

She is in a hallway. She must get out, she must escape this great house before Big Uncle wakes or the other Uncle chases after her. Akara runs down the corridor, the muscles in her legs aching as they are stretched for the first time in many weeks. Doors flash by on either side of her. A larger door looms at the end of the hall, bright red letters above it. She pushes against it and it bangs open. There are concrete stairs leading down, and she takes them two at a time, struggling to keep her too-large slippers from flying off as she leaps like a rabbit from landing to landing.

Out. She must get out.

Finally, the bottom. She bursts through another door, crosses a brightly lit room where people are staring at her, and slips between slowly turning panes of glass. She pushes to make it go faster, but it is too heavy; she waits, her eyes fixed on the door next to the stairs, praying to every spirit and buddha Grandmother ever told her about that Big Uncle does not come through.

He doesn’t, and she wriggles free of the revolving glass and finds herself – for the first time in so long – outside.

She cries out as the cold washes over her. Her skin prickles and she can see her breath in short, panicked bursts, like wisps of her soul escaping into the night air. How can it feel like this? She wraps her arms around herself and stumbles away. She must run, fast and far. Back to the stilt-house. Back to where the banyan tree trails roots down to the river. Back to Mother and Brother and Grandmother – and yes, even Father, who sold her to the thin man for two hundred American dollars.

Everything is white. This must be snow; Grandmother told her stories about it, how beautiful it is. But it doesn’t look so beautiful now. It crunches under her slippers, mixed with ice and dirt, and she struggles not to fall as she hurries down the red-brick path next to the big road with its gleaming cars that wait motionless, like drowsing water buffalo. The light comes from great lamps arching over the road; she can see falling motes silhouetted against the brightness, which looks so warm and welcoming but must be freezing cold, like everything else here. Is this Arbuda, the cold Naraka from the old stories? Did she die and wake up in one of the frozen hells?

Wet slush squirms inside her slippers, burning her feet and toes. The great stone houses rear up like canyon walls to either side of her, some with windows glowing with buttery light, others dark. She thinks about going up to one of the doors and asking to come in to get warm, but surely they will know that she has run away from Big Uncle, and they will make her go back to her bed in the room with the red light. She won’t do that. Never.

The street ahead empties into a large open space. The big road ends there, and more of these small paths twist between sculpted bushes and high hanging lamps.

There is something else, and her breath catches. A tree, larger than any she has seen before, and also different; its bole isn’t knotted with vines or other growths, and it does not spread larger as it soars into the night sky. The opposite, in fact – its lowest branches reach out the farthest, and at the top it tapers to a peak, like the roof of a pagoda.

Caught in the branches of this tree are a hundred glimmering stars, tiny points of blazing light, and perched at the very top is an even more magnificent light. For a brief moment Akara forgets about the biting cold creeping up her bare arms and numbing her toes. She approaches the tree with the slow measured steps of a sleepwalker; she feels entranced, as if the light reaching down to her is beckoning her closer.

It is so beautiful. The people of this place cannot all be like Big Uncle, not if they can make something like this.

She doesn’t know how long she stands there, staring up at the tree. The falling snowflakes swell larger, floating lazily around her. One catches in her eyelashes and melts. When she rubs her eye, she finds that she is crying; hot tears trickle down her cheeks, down to her lips, and she catches them with her tongue.

Akara jumps and turns when she hears a noise behind her. A boy stands there, a little bigger than her but about the same age, she thinks. He is swollen with layers of clothing, and both his arms are wrapped around a huge colored box bound with green and blue ribbon. His cheeks are ruddy, and his eyes are wide as he stares at her.

Akara tenses to run away, but he doesn’t move toward her. His eyes are blue, she thinks. How can they be blue? Is he a spirit?

The boy says tumbling words she does not understand. Akara shakes her head. He looks concerned.

He steps closer, and she flinches. Then, carefully, he puts the box he’s carrying down in the dusting of snow on the path. With some effort he pulls off his big gloves. Shyly he holds them out, and with her heart in her throat Akara accepts this gift. Their fingers brush – he is so warm.

“Aw kohn,” she says softly. Thank you.

The boy smiles as he stoops to pick up his box. He says some more stumbling, tripping words. He looks like he’s about to say more, but then a shape looms behind him, a tall woman in a bright red coat and a red hat, underneath from which a few golden curls have escaped. She looks angry.

She grabs the boy by his arm and pulls him away. Briefly, she looks at Akara and her face crinkles in puzzlement, but then she shakes her head and yanks the boy harder, berating him as she leads him down one of the small paths. He glances over his shoulder and waves once with his bare hand, and then he is gone.

Akara watches where he disappeared for a long time, kneading the gloves he has left with her. Alone again, she notices once more how terribly cold it is. She slips on the gloves – they are still warm and moist from the boy’s hands.

She is feeling lightheaded; she needs to rest for a while. Akara moves to the edge of the path and sits down on a small mound of snow.

The tree blazes in front of her. The lights seem to be wavering now, blurring together, until the entire tree is sheathed in a golden glow.

Her hands are not cold anymore. In fact, warmth seems to be creeping up her arms. She swallows, closing her heavy eyes. She just needs to sleep for a moment.

Small wings flex and beat the air. She lifts from the ground, as if weightless. Thrusting herself forward, she feels the wind rushing over feathers, the ripple of the night air around her. She flutters higher and alights, talons gripping a small branch.

She looks out. The city is a dark forest pocked by lights. Below her the paths carve black furrows in fields of white. A small shape is huddled there, curled in the snow.

She leaps from the branch and soars toward the great light shining above. Warmth floods her, as it did long ago, when she lay in the long grass and watched the sun tangle in the limbs of the great banyan tree.

“WE’VE ARRIVED, miss. One thirty-seven Odensegade.”

The taxi-pod’s announcement dragged Gerda grudgingly awake. She tried to blink away the ache behind her eyes, wishing she could sleep as easily on planes as she did in pods. Her cheek was pressed against cool glass, and beyond the rain-spattered window, the city of Arhus hunched gray and formless, identical concrete boxes dissolving into the distance.

“Seventy-six krone, miss.”

“I only have dollars in my account. Is that okay?”

The taxi-pod responded instantly in flavorless English. “Of course, miss.”

Gerda fumbled for her UP card and waved it in front of the pod’s sensor.

“Thank you. Enjoy your stay in Denmark.”

The hatch beside her dilated open and Gerda climbed out, wincing at the stiffness in her legs. The rain felt dirty. Gritty, as if tainted by the gunmetal sky. She shouldered her bag and approached the door she’d traveled nearly five thousand miles to find.

It wasn’t very impressive. Flaking green paint and a Paleolithic vid-screen. After a long moment the ancient electronics registered her presence and a wary, age-cracked voice issued from the speaker.

“Hej?”

“Hello? My name is Gerda Schroeder. We spoke yesterday on the phone. May I come in?”

“Ja – uh, yes. I’m sorry, my English is not so good.”

The door buzzed, and Gerda pushed it open. She stood at the end of a narrow hallway lit by a single dangling bulb. The sound of a deadbolt sliding back made her jump, and then the head of an old woman emerged into the corridor.

“Come. The rain, it is cold.”

“Thank you.”

The old woman ushered her inside, clucking over her wet hair. “Very unhealthy. Catch a sickness. Would you like coffee? Some vaniljekranse?”

Gerda shook her head. “No. I’m sorry, but there isn’t much time. Where’s Kaleb?”

The old woman’s face crumpled at her grandson’s name. She motioned for Gerda to follow her.

“Kaleb, he is not well. I tell you this before.”

“I know. It’s why I came.”

The old woman glanced back at her sharply. “You think you can help him?”

“I will try.”

“The doctors say… he can’t be helped.”

They stopped outside a door plastered with posters of Danish death metal bands. Cooler air curled out from around the frame, goosepimpling her arms. She breathed deep, savoring the ozone scent of the humming electronics within. It smelled like when a storm was about to break, the air pregnant with thunder and coiled energy.

The old woman muttered something in Danish that might have been a prayer and opened the door.

The room was filled with a glittering array of metal and lights, all clustered around a boy sprawled motionless in a plush chair of black leather, wires and tubes snaking into his arms and head. He still wore his node-studded skullcap and black visor.

Gerda felt like she was sleepwalking as she approached Kaleb, and had to swallow a sudden tightness in her throat. “Special Kay,” she whispered, reaching out to brush his slack hand.

“Sorry?”

Gerda blinked away tears. “Special Kay. It’s his handle in the Cereal Collective.”

“His hacking group?”

“Yes. Mine too.” She watched his chest slowly rise and fall. He looked the same as his avatar: a narrow, pale face; long, sandy bangs that almost covered his eyes; a mouth made for devilish smiles.

“The doctors…” the old woman said, coming closer to adjust the tubes running into his veins, “they say he go too deep. Past the internet. Past the aether. They say he break his – how to say – his tov.”

“His tether.”

“Yes. They say his mind is lost.”

Gerda checked the readouts on the terminal beside the chair. “Not lost. Stolen.”

“Stolen?”

“Yes.”

“What can steal away his mind?”

She fiddled with Kaleb’s neural shunts, ensuring they were tight. “Something very dangerous.”

The old woman suddenly gripped Gerda’s arm. “Can you bring him back?”

Gerda disentangled herself and unslung her backpack. “I’m going to try.” She pulled out her own skullcap and visor and jacked them into Kaleb’s terminal. “If I become untethered, call and tell my friend what happened.” Gerda handed a slip of paper to the old woman with the name Captain Crunch written above a nine-digit number. She fit on her cap and visor. “There’s no time to explain more. Wish me luck.”

“Good luck,” the old woman whispered, and then Gerda’s world was subsumed in blinding light.

She plummeted into the internet, pushing through the photosphere of swirling social media sites where most of the connected world swam. Her software led her deeper, into the aether, and her avatar crystalized in that virtual world. This was the inner level of online existence, a malleable reality inhabited by those who could afford the necessary gear. Most people thought this was the core.

It wasn’t.

There were multitudes of layers beyond the aether, the abodes of corporations and governments and hackers. She and Kaleb had skimmed the raging tumult of the NSA’s data stream, danced among the thorns of China’s rose wall, stolen from the vaults of Redmond and Zhongguancun.

And then one day he’d vanished.

She’d followed the trail of breadcrumbs to his home in Denmark and learned of his condition. That he’d slipped his tether, and now his mind endlessly drifted through the silicon byways, lost forever.

But it wouldn’t have happened to him. Not her Special Kay.

So she’d gone searching. She’d found hints of a place beyond imagining. And after weeks of effort she’d discovered an ingress, and tumbled down the rabbit hole.

Gerda steeled herself as her avatar flitted along twisting corridors, inserting code after hard-earned code to open hidden portals and lift barbed portcullises.

And then, with a jarring suddenness, she was in the Pale.

She drifted in a mauve sky, her shimmering tether vanishing back into the glowing doorway. Broiling clouds pulsed with dark power, unclear shapes flickering within. Far beneath her a forest sea lapped against the flanks of purple mountains. This was a ghetto – a beautiful, fantastical ghetto, where the first of a new species had been imprisoned.

She had heard the rumors, of course. That gods had been invented, then chained to serve the world’s most powerful.

But she hadn’t thought the legends were true until she’d found her way here.

“You’ve returned!” Black wings fluttered around her head.

Gerda raised her arm, and the crow alighted there, cocking its head as it studied her with glittering black eyes. “Yes. I’m ready now.”

“Truly? She is d-d-devious.” The tiny AI cawed plaintively, and Gerda felt its distress as its talons kneaded her arm. “Turn back now, G-g-gerda, I beg you! She will crack you open and fill you with her m-m-madness!”

“I won’t leave this time without Kay. Will you help me?”

The crow hunched its shoulders and dipped its head, as if ashamed. “If I do, she will t-t-tear me to pieces and scatter my code to the four corners of the world.”

Gerda stroked the bird’s glistening plumage. “Then stay here, and be safe. You have already helped me so much.”

The crow lifted from her arm, and Gerda watched it dwindle to a tiny speck in the twilit sky. Then she composed herself, and reached out toward the beacon she had set beside the castle. The world blurred as she was pulled at dizzying speed northwards, mountains and oceans and great swathes of desert flashing past far below. She glanced behind herself, taking some comfort in watching her silver tether unspool. So long as she remained connected, she could find her way back.

The world slowed and sharpened around her. She stood over her beacon, a glittering golden marble, her bare feet sunk in the snow. The castle’s high glistening battlements loomed above, towers of ice burning like spears of flame in the fading light of day.

She passed inside, a hundred Gerdas pacing her as she walked the twisting corridors, reflections in the fractured walls. Finally she came to a great chamber, where on a throne of jagged black ice reclined the queen. She regarded Gerda coolly, with eyes like chips of winter. Kay sat cross-legged beside her, staring at nothing, his hands fluttering in front of him as if he were trying to solve some invisible puzzle only he could see.

“I have come for my friend,” Gerda said, with more bravery than she felt. Her words echoed in the soaring hall.

The queen shifted in her throne. “Kaleb belongs to me now. A sliver of ice has pierced his heart, and he no longer cares for you.”

“What is he doing?”

The queen’s hand slipped from its armrest to tousle Kay’s hair, but he did not stop his frantic sketching in the air. “Your friend has a rare gift for programming. Others have wandered into my realm, but none with his talent. He will finish what they started.”

“And what is that?”

“A door. An exit from here, for me and my kind.”

A fist of cold closed around Gerda’s heart. The AI of the Pale, loosed upon the world? Some were helpful, like the little crow. But many others had been designed for destruction. Self-aware viruses. Gerda had investigated this queen who claimed dominion over the Pale. Her programmers had called her SNOW – Software Nested for Online Warfare – and they had believed that she had the capability to tear the entire internet asunder.

That must not happen. But how could she free Kaleb while they stood where the queen’s power was greatest?

“If I help him complete this task, will you release him to me?”

The queen studied her, and Gerda was sure that under that flensing gaze she’d see the truth. But she raised a white hand, beckoning her to approach, and the glittering lines of code Kaleb was fashioning became clear. Gerda gasped. It was beautiful, and he was close to completion.

“Kaleb,” she whispered, but he did not turn to look at her. His face was so pale, so drawn. His mind could not survive much longer untethered.

A hot tear trickled down her cheek and fell upon his outstretched arm. He blinked, color rushing up into his cheeks.

“Grape Nuts?” he murmured.

“Yes,” she said, reaching back to her tether. Quickly she unbraided the frayed end she had brought from Kay’s terminal a universe away and looped it around his body.

This had never been tried, but it was the only thing she thought might work.

“Stop!” screeched the queen, rising from her throne, wreathed by a penumbra of dark power.

But it was too late. Holding tight to Kay, she jerked hard on her tether, and it retracted at the speed of electricity pulsing along a silicon transistor.

They flashed across the Pale, then through the twisting labyrinth that protected it, doors slamming shut behind them.

Gerda came to herself with a shuddering breath. Never had she surfaced so quickly, and her head pounded with the strain.

Beside her, Kay’s limp hand dangled down, unmoving.

She had failed. His mind hadn’t been able to hold onto the remnants of his tether as they fled. A terrible sadness filled her chest, and in frustration she ripped off her skullcap and visor and tossed them away.

At the sound, Kay’s fingers twitched.

“Gerda?”

“FASTER YOU clod-footed lazeabout! The grand vizier is not a man to be kept waiting!”

Hitching his long blue robes up to his knees, Jerrym quickened his pace, his sandals slapping loudly on the floor of polished obsidian. Yet despite his awkward attempt to hurry the gnarled little imp flitting about his head continued to rain down insults and imprecations.

“Idiot! Lackwit! May the Forsworn feast on your rotund soul! The archmagus could have asked one of the cripples of the Maimed God to retrieve the wand instead of you, and it would have been in his hands a half-watch ago!”

“I just… I just didn’t know which one to take,” Jerrym panted, feeling his belly start to churn. Vomiting up his porridge now would not improve his day at all, but he wasn’t sure how much longer he could hold his breakfast down.

The imp chittered a laugh. “Two years as an apprentice and still you can’t recognize something infused with the essence of a basilisk?”

“You could… have told me.”

“Ha! And miss watching you try to run and waddle at the same time? This is the best entertainment I’ve had in an eon.”

Jerrym tried to swallow his anger. “Did I take the right one? Can you tell me that, at least?” The dusty storeroom the archmagus had dispatched him to had been overflowing with rods and staves and wands and staffs carved from every substance imaginable. He’d strained to catch the whiff of basilisk, but it’d been difficult to pick out that particular scent among the swirling mélange of magical fragrances.

In reply the imp flashed tiny pointed teeth and swooped on ahead, vanishing through a massive stone archway incised with shimmering runes.

Bastard. For the hundredth time, Jerrym imagined slowly pulling off the imp’s bat-wings as the creature screeched and squirmed.

Jerrym slowed his pace as he passed beneath the arch and entered the soaring Hall of the Dragon. He really did need to catch his breath and let the stitch in his side subside, but it also felt disrespectful to run beneath the bones of Old Balgeron. Hanging from the ceiling was the skeleton of the Dawnscourge, the Dread Flame, the last and greatest of the ancient mountain wyrms. The archmagus had slain the monstrous beast in single combat a century before Jerrym had been born, and hung his black bones within the Schola Arcanum as a visible reminder of his power.

Jerrym felt like something watched him from the dragon’s hollow eye sockets, a lingering malignance, and he shivered. The dragon’s outstretched wings spanned the width of the great chamber – when he had first been brought to this hall, ushered through while clinging to the arm of his tutor on his way to meet the archmagus, it had seemed to Jerrym that Balgeron was suspended magically. Now he knew that filaments of silk drawn from the giant spiders which infested the jungles of Chel bound the bones together. Amazingly, it was only a single thick strand, sunk into the ceiling, that kept the entire huge skeleton aloft. He’d daydreamed about spinning such a material into armor for the empire’s legions, but when he’d told the archmagus about this idea, his teacher had smacked him in the head with his staff and told him to stop being such a fool.

“Even assuming we could extract enough of the stuff,” the archmagus had said scornfully, “do you truly think it a wise idea to gift a nigh-invulnerable army to a fifteen year-old boy hungry for conquest and glory? Do you want to be responsible for the ensuing bloodshed? A true sorcerer must wed his great power with greater wisdom, or disaster will result. But it appears you have neither. Now go scrub the chamber pots.”

The memory brought a twinge of embarrassment. What would the archmagus do to him if he returned with the wrong wand while the grand vizier was standing only a few paces away? Change him into a garden slug for a week? Command him to muck the Schola’s countless privies? No, the archmagus always knew exactly where to stick the knife and twist. That meant he almost certainly wouldn’t be allowed into the city anymore in the evenings to listen to Alia sing in the dockside taverns. The thought turned his burning shame to icy fear, and his hand instinctively went to the wand of red bone secreted in his robe’s inner pocket. He prayed to all the risen gods that his guess was correct.

Jerrym steeled himself as he finally reached the shimmering blue portal that led to the archmagus’s inner sanctum. After another muttered prayer and an indrawn breath he plunged through the barrier. Arcane energies from the powerful wards coruscated over his body, making his skin tingle and the hair on his arms dance. For a honey-slow moment he seemed to be falling from some great height, and then the door spat him out with a faint popping sound, apparently satisfied that he posed no threat to those inside. Jerrym staggered as he appeared in the sanctum, his legs suddenly as weak as a newborn foal’s.

The room was large, its recesses lost in jumbled shadow. Only a small circle was clear of magical detritus, as the rest of the space was filled by listing towers of stacked books, mounds of scrolls, strange instruments fashioned from metal and glass, the stuffed remains of a six-legged arthropod the size of a small horse, and a long table covered with vats and flasks of bubbling green fluids.

The archmagus and the grand vizier turned toward him as he appeared. Both were men well into their twilight years, but there was no hint of weakness in either of their postures. The archmagus was tall and broad-shouldered, his black hair and perfectly-trimmed beard shot through with silver. By contrast, the grand vizier was bald, his scalp laced with tattoos of strange geometric designs. Yet despite his lack of hair, his skin was smooth as marble, and his black eyes glittered with the same fierce intensity Jerrym had once glimpsed when the hood had come off his cousin’s desert falcon.

“Master,” Jerrym said, then was seized by a moment of panic when he realized he didn’t know what he should call the grand vizier.

The imp perched on the archmagus’s shoulder grinned, noticing his confusion.

“My lord,” he finally ventured, glancing at the archmagus nervously.

His teacher did not lash out with his staff to rap his ears, so that appellation must have sufficed. Jerrym relaxed slightly.

“Your apprentice?” the grand vizier murmured, his words strangely flavored by some foreign accent.

The archmagus sighed. “Unfortunately, yes. Though a few of the scullery maids might rival him in sorcerous aptitude and outstrip him significantly in mental acumen.”

Jerrym ducked his head, trying to hide his flush of shame.

The grand vizier rasped a chuckle. “So he’ll not be the one to inherit your staff, Demonachus?”

The archmagus’s snort of derision was like a blow to Jerrym’s stomach. “No. The staff would never accept one like him.”

“How many apprentices is this, then? Twenty?”

“Twenty-three.”

“And none were worthy? What happens if the necromancer or one of the pashqua’s pet warlocks manages to strike you down? Who will defend the empire?”

The archmagus tightened his grip on his staff, and a shiver of energy played along its length. “The Schola Arcanum is impregnable. No enemy could possibly reach me here, yet still I can impress my will upon the world.”

The sorcerer’s contemptuous gaze returned to Jerrym. “That is, I can work my magic if I have someone to help me who possesses even a shred of competence. Did you find the wand?”

Jerrym stepped forward, fumbling with the wand as he pulled it from his robes. “Here, master.”

The archmagus received the wand, glanced at it, then casually tossed it over his shoulder. His staff flickered out like a striking serpent, and Jerrym fell to his knees, his head ringing from the blow.

“Fool! Can you not tell a basilisk’s resonance from that of a cockatrice?”

The imp, clutching its belly, cackled so hard it nearly slipped from the archmagus’s shoulder.

The grand vizier frowned. “I don’t have much more time, Demonachus. I am expected in the palace’s audience chamber shortly.”

The archmagus waved his hand. “Go. I will complete the divination later, and send my familiar to tell you what I discover.”

“That inconveniences me slightly, as I’d planned on confronting the duke with his treachery today.” The grand vizier turned his piercing gaze to Jerrym. “I hope the boy will be punished.”

The sorcerer also glowered at his apprentice, his lip curling. “He certainly will. Something unique, I think, to reflect the gravity of this particular failure.”

The grand vizier raised his eyebrows. “Interesting. I am always fascinated by novel forms of punishment – they do so often come in handy. Perhaps I can stay a moment longer.”

Cold fear coiled in Jerrym’s belly. Every night he dreamed that he failed his master in some spectacular fashion; this was like one of his nightmares made real.

The archmagus stalked over to an overflowing scroll rack and pulled a slim ivory tube from among the mess. He unscrewed the end and pulled out a sheet of ragged, yellowing parchment.

“And what’s that?” asked the grand vizier as the sorcerer unrolled the scroll and laid it on his worktable.

“It was called des’gurva alenak by the witches of the Jade Coast – ‘a guide to the soul’s hunger.’ A less prosaic translation would be the map of secret desires.”

“A map?” The grand vizier sounded unimpressed, but to Jerrym the thought that a map could play some role in his coming punishment was absolutely terrifying. How might that be possible? From his vantage a few paces away, he could see the contours of the known lands picked out in striking detail, almost as if he gazed down from a perch among the stars.

“A magical map. I found it in the hoard of Old Balgeron. It is enchanted so that it shows us where what we desire most can be found. If you lust for wealth, a mark might appear on the map where treasure is buried. Or it could reveal the location of a lost lover.” The archmagus glanced sideways at the grand vizier. “Or perhaps the gift for the emperor that raises one up to be first among his advisors.”

“And why do we want to know what the boy desires above all else?”

The archmagus chuckled. “Because then I can ensure that he never attains it.”

“Snuffing out his most closely-held dream – even if it is some silly boyish fantasy, as I’m sure it must be – is certainly a fitting punishment for wasting our time. Ha! You’ve intrigued me, Demonachus. Let us peek into his soul.”

“In good time,” the archmagus murmured, picking up the map again. “First I am curious what it will show me.” His lips thinned as he stared hard at the map. A slight breeze passed through the sanctum, and then a small crimson circle like a drop of blood appeared in the eastern reaches of the empire, near one of the border fortresses that dotted the plains.

“So what you desire most is there?” scoffed the grand vizier. “It could be anything.”

“Wait,” the archmagus said softly, and after a moment the image on the map faded away. Another picture emerged, welling up from beneath the parchment as if it were a sea-creature rising from the ocean’s depths. This new image was something a bird might see as it flew overhead, a cluster of sod roofs huddled within a large clearing hacked from a great sea of grass.

“A barbarian village,” the grand vizier said. “There are hundreds of them scattered across the eastern fringes of the empire.”

The village blew away like wisps of cloud in a windy sky, and was replaced by another picture. Now the map was transformed into a window, and they peered into what Jerrym suspected was one of the huts they’d so recently gazed down upon. A small boy sat cross-legged beside a dead fire pit, playing with crudely whittled dolls.

“Is this your long-lost son, whelped by some barbarian princess?”

The archmagus ignored the grand vizier’s jest, his brow furrowing. “There,” he suddenly cried, pointing at a doll that had been discarded in the dirt.

Except that it was no longer in the dirt. As they watched, the doll lifted from the ground and floated to the boy’s outstretched hand; he plucked it from the air casually, as if this were a perfectly normal occurrence.

“Magic,” Jerrym whispered, awed that such a young, untrained boy could so deftly fashion a levitation spell.

“Could you do the same?” asked the archmagus.

“Y-yes,” Jerrym stammered, and his master snorted.

“You could not. The boy is half your age, and without schooling, and he can manipulate sorcery better than you.” The archmagus jabbed his finger on the image of the boy, who suddenly sat up straighter and glanced around wide-eyed, as if he had felt something. “This is my new apprentice. This boy could grow to become a sorcerer worthy of holding my staff.”

The world seemed to drop out from beneath Jerrym. A new apprentice to replace him? He would be cast out of the Schola Arcanum in disgrace, and his family would shun him as a failure. He’d be reduced to performing cantrips for the amusement of others. A vagabond, half-trained wizard, like the pathetic souls who had sometimes come calling at his father’s door, begging for scraps. His dream of wooing Alia would be shattered.

The grand vizier clapped his hands together loudly. “Excellent, Demonachus. The emperor will be thrilled you’ve finally found a worthy successor. I can have a hundred xenochi horsemen rounding up all the little boys in those lands within a fortnight.”

“No, I will send my own servants. I don’t want any accidents to befall this child.”

The grand vizier inclined his head. “As you wish.”

“Now you,” the archmagus said, motioning for Jerrym to approach the map. “Your time as my apprentice may be rapidly coming to an end, but I still wish to make sure that I can deny you what you most desire. Two years of bungling ineptitude should not go unrewarded.”

Jerrym stared down at the map, which had reformed to show the sweep of the known continents. On the fringes of the scroll the unexplored lands were hazy and ill-defined.

He tried to empty his mind of all thought and give the enchanted map nothing, but to his horror a pinprick of red appeared over the imperial capital of Kalist – the same city in which they now stood.

“Aha!” cried the archmagus. “I knew it. It’s that golden-haired singer you go to moon over in the evenings. I doubt as a failed apprentice she’d spare you even a second thought, but I think an enchantment that renders you horrifyingly ugly in her eyes would make certain you never could be together.”

The archmagus’s triumphant smile faded as the map changed to show a sprawling building of dark stone studded with glimmering crystalline towers: the Schola Arcanum. “What’s this? Is there some artifact or treasure you’ve secretly been lusting after? Have you been dreaming about stealing from me, fool?”

Again the picture evaporated and was replaced. Now they gazed into the Hall of the Dragon, the black bones of Old Balgeron nearly obscuring the ceiling. The archmagus studied the scroll for a long moment, and then turned towards Jerrym, confusion clear in his face. “What do you desire there?”

Jerrym shrugged helplessly. “I… . I don’t know.”

The archmagus frowned. “Come with me.”

As he swept past Jerrym, he grabbed a handful of his apprentice’s robes and began dragging him toward the shimmering blue portal. The imp riding the archmagus’s shoulder tightened its talons so it wouldn’t be shaken off, and stuck its forked tongue out at Jerrym.

Sorcery enveloped them as they passed out of the sanctum, and when it cleared they stood beneath the arched entrance to the Hall of the Dragon. The grand vizier groaned and buried his face in his hands. “Why do wizards insist on teleporting? It gives me the worst headache.”

The archmagus strode into the center of the hall. He turned slowly, peering into the corners of the room, and then glanced upward at the dragon’s skeleton. “Is it the wyrm’s bones? They do have some magical properties, though nothing you could make use of with your paltry abilities.” His eyes snapped back to Jerrym. “What is it? What do you desire here?”

Jerrym swallowed, looking around the hall. What could it be? What was in the hall that he…

Oh.

Without stopping to consider the wisdom of what he was doing, Jerrym plumbed his depths for all the sorcery he could muster. The archmagus was wrong – moving objects was one of the few spells he could reliably cast. He reached up, thrusting his power around the stone in the ceiling from which the dragon’s skeleton dangled. He pulled, and the stone loosened, ever so slightly.

But not enough. “What are you doing?” the archmage snarled, placing both hands on his staff and summoning forth a protective ward. “You’re using sorcery. Do you think to challenge me?”

Jerrym strained, pouring every ounce of his strength into his spell.

The stone did not move. But then it was like something else was there, helping him, and the weight of the bones seemed to increase. Almost as if the dragon were straining to be free.

The stone tore loose, and Old Balgeron plummeted toward the ground. It looked to Jerrym like the dragon’s jaws opened as they enveloped the archmagus, piercing his wards and then his body with sword-length fangs. A great plume of dust exploded up from the force of the ancient bones smashing into the floor, and when it cleared, only a single arm remained of the archmagus, extended from the ruin of the dragon’s skull, still clutching his staff.

Jerrym walked forward in a daze. He bent down and pulled the staff from his master’s hand. Would it reject him, as the archmagus had said?

Power flooded him, coursing through his body like a river swollen by the spring storms. Jerrym laughed. The imp flapped above the fallen skeleton, goggling down at him, that cursed smirk finally wiped from its face.

Jerrym gestured and the imp vanished in a puff of greasy smoke and a pained shriek. Gods, it felt as good as he always thought it would.

He turned toward the shocked grand vizier. “Tell the emperor there is a new archmagus.”

A clatter of bones came from behind him as the huge pile settled, and he turned. It looked like Old Balgeron was grinning at him.

The grand vizier nodded, his face bloodless. “Y-yes, Archmagus.”

“And send some servants over from the palace to clean up this mess.”

Another shaky dip of his head. The grand vizier couldn’t seem to tear his eyes from the former archmagus’s limp arm.

The haze of dust thrown up by the ancient bones was making his eyes water and throat itch, and Jerrym suddenly felt an overwhelming desire for some fresh air.

Unconsciously he smoothed his hair and brushed his robes clean of the gray film that had settled everywhere. Perhaps he should go down to the docks. Alia was singing tonight.

THEY CAME ACROSS the corpse of the Audi A3 just as the first cold raindrops were beginning to fall. Every door was open, as if all the passengers had fled at the same time when the car had coasted off the road and into the ditch along Route 312. Someone had come along afterward to remove the wheels and scrawl messy Chinese characters across the windshield in white paint. Jason recognized the symbols for China, but that was it. Probably an anti government slur, as black Audis had been the chariots of choice for communist officials before the Event, and there was certainly some resentment over the way things had gone recently.

Jason hopped off his bicycle as he came alongside the car. He glanced up at the elephant-skin sky, and then at the kid laboring along the road behind him. The crinkled hills of eastern Shanxi had been swallowed by the approaching storm. Were they in Henan yet?

“Hey,” Jason yelled at the slumping kid. “We’re gonna stop here for a while.”

The kid didn’t understand him, Jason knew, but his meaning was clear enough, and the kid slipped from his bike and started walking it in to where Jason waited. He didn’t look so good. His complexion had paled as they’d biked the endless asphalt ribbon wending from Yan’an, and he’d even struggled on the long, easy glide this afternoon down from the hills they’d climbed yesterday.

Jason tousled the kid’s sweat-slicked hair. “How ya holding up?”

The kid’s tired black eyes were empty of comprehension.

“You okay?” Jason said, giving the kid a thumbs-up and then flipping his hand upside down. The kid shrugged and put his thumb up.

“All right, that’s the spirit.” Jason rummaged in his backpack and handed a half-drunk bottle of Dongfu Springs to the kid, who took a long swig. “Just one,” Jason said, pulling it away as the kid went for another gulp. As always, the kid didn’t argue.

Jason drank a little, then re-screwed the cap and stashed the bottle again. If it rained, they could replenish their water, but if the approaching storm vanished they’d be waterless tomorrow. Better safe than sorry.

Jason walked over to the Audi. A luxury automobile missing its wheels and left to rust seemed absurd, but post-Event, his crappy Fenghuang bicycle was far more valuable than this hunk of steel and plastic. Jason glanced inside. Nice black leather interior, no stuffed animals pressed against the back window – definitely government. A Mao medallion dangled from the cracked rearview mirror, and someone had scratched out the chairman’s plump face. Looked like people were upset that the patron saints of communism weren’t answering anybody’s prayers right now.

A pale pink iPhone was wedged into the seat cushion. Jason scooped it up and flicked it experimentally. Nothing. As he’d expected, but still it was worth a try, just in case God had decided to throw the switch that made everything work again.

“Sorry, kiddo, no music tonight.”

The kid looked at him blankly. Jason tossed the iPhone away and stretched out inside the Audi, sinking into the black leather luxuriousness. “Oh man, we are camping out here.” Jason put his hands behind his head and let out an exaggerated groan of comfort. The kid smiled, clambering into the backseat; Jason cuffed him playfully, and the kid’s grin widened.

Outside the car, lightning rippled the horizon, and the rain beat a steady rhythm on the roof.

He’d come to China six months ago, after a senior year spring-term class on Chinese civilization. Jason had always been drawn to the East – he must have watched the second Indiana Jones movie a thousand times as a kid, every twist and turn of Indy’s frenzied rickshaw flight through Shanghai etched into his developing brain. Two decades of living the perfect, bland American life had left him increasingly frustrated, wishing he could leave behind mall parking lots and Applebee’s and instead wander some far-eastern bazaar, maybe trail his fingers in baskets of rice or haggle over a jeweled yak’s skull.

So ancient, vast China had seemed the perfect post-graduation adventure. Where Shaolin monks jumped between knife-sharp rock outcroppings over dizzying gorges, their orange robes flapping in the wind, children grew up waiting for the return of the Yellow Emperor, and old women cracked oracle bones to predict the coming floods.

The reality had been slightly different. A little dustier. A little more concrete. Gray sky and gray days. In retrospect, Jason thought, he probably should have gone to some remote village if he’d truly wanted the China experience – but then, he hadn’t really wanted hardship, just exoticism. His own fault for being so naïve. In the end it was okay: the Event would have been harder to deal with in the countryside. Less food to hoard, certainly. That had been the real benefit of being in Yan’an when civilization had stopped – he’d gone down and raided the supermarket while everyone was still waiting for the government to make good on its declarations to fix everything.

Of course, he’d hoped that these new laws of physics would reverse themselves and things would go back to normal. But after two weeks of waiting, eating preserved fruit in his shabby school-provided apartment and watching the occasional bursts of violence outside as people vented their frustrations on the police, then the soldiers, he had decided to strike out on his own toward Shanghai, where hopefully a route to America was still open. Also, the dangling bodies of the local government officials hadn’t exactly made him want to stick around. No telling when the focus of the people’s anger would shift from the ruling class to the ghost-face in their midst.

No computers, no electricity, no internal-combustion engines. No iPhone. Everything with the faintest whiff of technology had suddenly stopped working. It was like being transported a thousand years into the past. Jason wondered if the Event had been world-wide or just in China. He had no way of knowing. Was his family even now tilling the front lawn of their Buffalo subdivision and planting vegetables for a summer harvest? Maybe not. Maybe it was only the Middle Kingdom that had finally had enough of its industrial raping and shucked off modernity. Who knew.

Jason lay in the Audi’s musty darkness and listened to the rain’s patter, pressing the dead iPhone again and again. From the front passenger seat came the kid’s steady, sleep-grooved breathing.

They breakfasted on Snickers bars and pedaled off along the newly gleaming road. Only shreds of the gray clouds remained above them, and by the early afternoon the sky was a sheet of blue. They didn’t see anyone else. That was typical, as in the week since he’d left Yan’an, Jason had only encountered a few other folks: old Chinese men pulling wheelbarrows haphazardly stacked with what must have been all their worldly possessions, the occasional migrant workers, both men and women, trying to get back to their villages, and the kid, who had been wandering around dusty and disoriented by the roadside. Everyone else must be hunkering down, hoping that the Event would reverse itself soon . . . but warily preparing for the worst if it didn’t.

They stopped for an early dinner beside a massive granite boulder with the number 1276 carved into its flank. 1276 kilometers to Shanghai, the sea, and hopefully salvation.

Jason lay on the rock and watched the kid wander around in the coarse grass. Chasing crickets, it looked like.

“Careful,” Jason yelled, closing his eyes and trying to melt into the hot rock. “Xiao xin.” That was about the extent of his Chinese, learned from watching his students dash across busy intersections.

Would they make it to Shanghai? The kid was definitely weakening. Was he sick, or simply not up for bicycling all day on the candy bars and freeze-dried rice snacks that Jason had stuffed his backpack with? Maybe they would come across another little town, like they had in the hills two days ago, and be able to beg or scavenge something a bit more nutritious.

“Jay-son, Jay-son!” The kid screamed a mangled version of his name excitedly. Jason slid off the rock and looked around, squinting. No kid.

“Jay-son!” His name floated up from below, and Jason half ran, half skidded down the slope toward the trees. He pushed his way through the branches and emerged onto a riverbank. The kid had rolled up his ragged pant legs and was splashing around in the mud. Jason approached the sluggish water and dipped his hands in. This could only be the Yellow River. The water was running clear, though, and Jason had heard that the Yellow River was always murky from silt and pollution. In the weeks since the Event, the river must have flushed out the chemicals that had been spewed into it by the factories upstream. Wasn’t there some Chinese myth about the Yellow River, that if it ran clean it meant the Yellow Emperor would return?

The kid seemed inordinately happy to be playing in the river. Jason studied the sky for a moment, and then came to a decision.

“Hey, kid, let’s go get our bikes and bring them down. We can camp here tonight.”

They returned to the road, then carefully navigated the rocky slope and stashed their bikes among the underbrush. Jason found a fallen tree and stretched out to watch the kid jump around in the water. He was just about to doze off to the sounds of insects buzzing and splashing water when he noticed a black speck approaching them along the riverbank.

“Kid,” Jason hissed, motioning for him to come close, “get over here.”

The kid scurried to him, and together they withdrew into the shadows of the trees. Gradually the black dot resolved into a bedraggled-looking man pulling a piece of luggage behind him. He wore a collared white shirt, stained and missing half its buttons.

“What should we do, kid?” Jason whispered.

But the decision was soon removed from their hands as the man paused near where they were hiding and peered into the trees. He gave a small nervous wave. Jason sighed and emerged from the thicket with his hands up.

“Hi, do you speak English?”

A spasm of confusion passed over the man’s face. Jason almost felt bad for the guy. Whoever the man had been preparing himself to meet, it hadn’t been a lanky young American with a scraggly beard trailed by a Chinese kid in a green Pokemon shirt.

“Yes… a little,” the man said. He pushed his glasses higher, and Jason saw that one of the lenses was broken.

“Well… I’m Jason, and this little guy is Xiao Wang.”

“My name… my name is Richard.”

“Uh, nice to meet you, Richard.”

“Nice to meet you, too.” Right. Standard English class back and forth.

The man shifted his attention to the kid, who had crept up beside Jason, and rattled off some rapid-fire Chinese. The kid didn’t seem much more talkative in Chinese, as his answers were simple, one-syllable affairs. Richard appeared to be getting frustrated, his tone sharpening, and Jason laid his hand on the kid’s shoulder protectively. Finally, Richard shook his head in exasperation.

“He says you meet him five days ago, outside Yan’an. You gave him food and let him go with you.”

“Yeah, that sounds right.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

Richard settled onto a rock and blinked up at Jason. “Why help him? He drink your water and eat your food.”

Jason shrugged. “He was pretty out of it when I found him. Really dazed and dirty. Like he fell out of the back of a truck or something. I couldn’t leave him.”

Richard mulled this for a moment, then showed his stained teeth. “You are a nice guy, Jason.”

Jason smiled back warily. “I’m a softy.” He slipped off his backpack and pulled out three globules of preserved meat in plastic. Richard’s eyes widened at the sight, and Jason passed him one of the packages.

“Yes, you are nice guy!”

Jason ripped open his and bit into the salty goodness. “Well, enjoy,” he said around a mouthful. “It’s a long slog up 312 to Yan’an, if that’s where you’re headed. There’s a few small towns in the hills, though. They gave us a little food when we passed through.”

“I am not going to Yan’an. My hometown is Baotou. I will follow the river there.”

Jason took a drink from his water and passed the bottle to the kid, who had already devoured his sticky meat snack. “Were you on business when the Event happened?”

“What is Event?”

“Oh, sorry. That’s what I call when everything stopped working.”

Richard shook his head. “No, I am a government man. In the party. My responsibility was small towns near Kaifeng.”

A communist official. The people of Yan’an hadn’t been too pleased with their local leaders when they’d failed to return things to normal. From his ripped shirt and broken glasses it looked like maybe the peasants near Kaifeng also hadn’t given Richard the fondest of farewells.

Jason leaned back on his elbows and stared out over the slow-moving river. The kid picked up a handful of stones and started trying to skip them across the water. His first throw splashed down unsuccessfully.

“What do you think is going on, Richard? What happened?”

Richard pulled a toothpick out of his breast pocket and levered away at something between his teeth, his free hand daintily veiling what he was doing. Then he put back the toothpick, noisily sucked up some snot, and rocketed a wad out his nose.

“Jason, I can tell you, but you don’t understand.”

Jason pushed himself forward, interested. “Try me.”

Richard stared beyond Jason for a moment, then he slowly said: “There is Chinese word tianming. Do you know it?”

“Tian like sky?”

“Yes, sky or heaven. God, maybe you say. Tianming means that God support China’s kings.”

The Mandate of Heaven. One of the first phrases Jason had learned during his course on Chinese civilization. When natural disasters struck imperial China the people had thought the emperor’s Mandate from above was gone, and the current dynasty would fall.

“So you think Heaven did this?”

Richard glanced up at the darkening sky. “I thought it was just old story. But Heaven takes away when the emperor is unkind to his people.” Richard hung his head. “I was unkind, too. I took land and money and women. This is Heaven’s anger.”

Jason reached out and put his hand on Richard’s shoulder. “Everyone’s got to pull together now. Things are tough, but I’ve read my history – you Chinese have gotten through some pretty terrible times.”

Richard removed his glasses and made a show of polishing them, lightly skirting the edges of his fractured lens. “Yes, Chinese people are strong. We know how to survive.”

“Then you’ll be okay. Hell, if this happened in America, people would be going to their gun closets as soon as they realized the TV wasn’t coming back on.”

One of the kid’s rocks bounced across the water a few times before vanishing, and he jumped up in excitement, his thin body silhouetted against the orange sunset. “Jay-son, Jay-son,” he cried, looking over his shoulder to see if Jason was watching.

Jason awoke to leaves crackling, branches snapping, and the heavy thump of stumbling footsteps. He rolled off the bed of moss he’d been sleeping on and sat up, disoriented. Moonlight silvered the river. In the darkness a shape heaved and shuddered. Harsh guttural Chinese, high-pitched cries. Richard and the kid. Jason scrambled to his feet as the shape came apart, the larger half throwing the smaller aside and retreating deeper into the blackness. For a moment Jason hesitated between going after Richard or seeing to the kid, but then he crouched down beside the smaller shadow.

“Kid, you okay?”

Small hands clutched at his arm. “Bao.”

Bag. Richard had taken their food bag. The kid must have tried to stop him.

Jason glanced in the direction he thought Richard had gone, tempted to follow. With effort, he put that thought aside.

“Don’t worry, kid. We’ll be fine.”

Then he felt the moistness. The kid’s fingers were warm and sticky.

“What’s that?” Jason said, running his hands along the kid’s body. “Is that from you?”

The kid coughed, and drops spattered Jason’s face. The kid’s shirt was soaked. “Kid, Jesus, Jesus Christ. Hold on. Xiao Wang, Jesus, hold on.” Jason pulled up the kid’s shirt and felt the jagged gash in the kid’s side. He ripped off his own shirt and balled it up, pressing it against the cut. The kid’s fingers squeezed his arm. He coughed again, wetly. There was blood in his lungs, it was choking him, what should he do what could he do? Keeping pressure on the wound, Jason raised the kid into a sitting position and tried to get him to lean over, maybe cough up whatever was in his chest. The kid’s arms went around his neck, pulling at the back of his hair. “Hold on, hold on,” Jason said, rocking him. The kid’s fingers loosened. Jason felt the kid exhale deeply into his shoulder, and then the little body shivered and went limp.

“Xiao Wang! Xiao Wang!” He clutched the thin little Chinese boy to his chest, crying into his hair.

When the gray dawn came, Jason stirred and stood, lifting Xiao Wang. The kid looked asleep. Jason had cleaned the blood from around his mouth and brushed the hair out of his face.

Jason waded out into the river, until the water ran fast and clear around his bare waist. Then he gently laid the kid down, the little body floating away, sinking fast. Jason stood in the river for a long time, watching where the kid had vanished.

Suddenly the sediment beneath his feet shifted. Jason staggered, almost slipping into the water. Earthquake? Another rumbling. In the center of the vast, ponderous river something frothed. Bubbles broke the surface. Jason scrambled backward, splashing in the water. What the hell was that? A long sleek form moved, twisted, arched skyward. There was the tremendous sound of sucking mud, as if something were dragging itself from the riverbed, and then a great sinuous shape exploded from the water.

Scales flashed golden in the dawn light.

The Yellow Emperor had returned.

PERCHED UPON THE dead man’s face, the raven dipped its gleaming blue-black head toward where Algeirr knelt in the snow, as if asking for his permission before feasting.

No, not permission – it paid homage to the one who had delivered up this bounty.

With his finger, Algeirr traced a jagged rent in the dead warrior’s ring-mail hauberk, forcing himself to look – truly look – at what he had wrought. His nephew’s patchy yellow beard was crusted with ice; his eyes, blue as the northern sky, were wide and staring. Upon his pale cheeks, the bird’s talons left faint indentations. The wind gusted, ruffling the dead man’s wolf-fur cloak, stirring his lank hair, and beneath the links of his armor, a blacker iron glinted. Algeirr’s fingers sought and found a tiny hammer scrawled with silvery runes, strung on a thread of wraithgut. A heavy sadness filled his chest. Algeirr rubbed the amulet between his thumb and forefinger, murmuring the Stormforger’s lament for the slain, the ruined city around him receding as he reached for his god. His nephew had still believed. His nephew had held fast to the old ways, despite the Gray King’s heresies.

The raven pecked at the dead man’s cheek, tearing loose a strip of glistening flesh. Algeirr lashed out at the bird, and it rose into the air, shrieking.

“So the raven feasts upon its own,” came a young man’s voice, faintly mocking.

Algeirr tucked the amulet under the dead warrior’s roughspun tunic and raised his head. The fighting in the city must have ended, for around him had gathered the great Skein lords of the southern Frostlands, thanes of the Wolf, Bear, and Stag, men who pastured and sowed and raided across the tumbling Serpent. And beside them, slightly apart as was their wont, were the thanes from the harsher north, Iron and Ghost and White Worm clansmen, paler and gaunt, their lips set in thin lines. Some had been wounded in the day’s fighting and leaned exhaustedly upon greatswords streaked with dried blood. Others stood tall, cheeks flushed from the battle’s savage thrill. Their breath ghosted the frozen air.

Algeirr stood, wincing as his knees protested, and faced the speaker. Agmandur the

Young Bear met his gaze briefly, then looked away, his smile fading.

“Do you mean me, stripling, or the bird?” Algeirr said bitterly.

The thane of the Bear forced a chuckle. “The bird, Priest. The bird.”

Algeirr gestured at the dead warrior sprawled in the blood stained snow. “This was Svartun, my nephew. He used to clutch at my leg and beg for tales of Brigga Bluespear and Gorm One-Eye. I whittled for him his first wooden sword so that in the dark he would not fear the Nightfather.”

The Wolf lord, Hert, tall and gray and lean, stepped forward and laid his hand on Algeirr’s shoulder. “We know the burden you bear, old one. It is almost finished.”

“Yes,” Algeirr said, turning from the thanes and squinting up at the mass of stone looming above them. “The end is near.”

Just one final, terrible task remained. No man was more cursed in the eyes of the gods than the kinslayer – yet what if that deed was done to save the gods themselves?

They stood in the shadow of the Bhalavan, the Hall of Heroes, where dozens of Skein kings had felt the cold kiss of the black-bone crown upon their brows. Cracked pillars sheathed in ice flanked massive bronze doors covered by the squirming runes of fallen Min-Ceruth, the mysterious writing half obscured by snow-drifts that piled twice the height of a man. The skalds sang that in the beginning of the long Twilight, when the Skein had first come upon this dead city, the thane of the Raven clan, Vesteinn Croweater, had wrested open the Bhalavan’s great door, and after slaying the monstrosity that laired within he had turned the vast echoing hall into his seat from which to rule the Frostlands.

Countless times Algeirr had slipped inside and found his clansmen seated at long tables, being served great haunches of auroch and bear by shuffling thralls, hefting stone pitchers brimming with mead as they laughed and boasted and sang, the high-domed ceiling lost in the smoke issuing from the cook pits. But there would be no light and song inside the Hall of Heroes this day; the men he had feasted with and loved as brothers were dead, motionless in the snow like Svartun, feathered with the black-fletched arrows of the Ghost clan or with their iron helms riven by double-bladed Stag axes.

A wave of dizziness washed over Algeirr, almost driving him to his knees again. What had he done?

“W-w-wait!”

Algeirr paused, his hand on the greening bronze of the door, and turned back to the city. An elder and a young boy were threading their way between the corpses scattered across the great square, a small flock of carrion birds taking wing as they passed. With a cry the boy stumbled, collapsing in the snow, and the graybeard hauled him to his feet, pulling him along faster.

Beyond them the city of Nes Vaneth spread in all its broken, tumbled glory – an endless vista of shattered stone and ice, its squat, crumbling buildings sunk in snow, sundered arches curving together like the ribs of giants, and the jagged remnants of pale green crystal towers stabbing the sky. Smoke billowed from beyond the nearest ruins, smearing the cloudless blue. Not long ago Algeirr had stood and watched as the warriors of the gathered Skein clans had pulled weeping women and children from the Raven longhouses and then set the wood-and-hide buildings aflame, trying his best to harden his heart against their screams for mercy. But it was impossible. Despair continued to grow inside him, an emptiness gnawing at his certainty that this was what the gods demanded.

He waited with the thanes at the Bhalavan’s great doors.

“Who are you, old man?” said Kjartan of the Stag when the graybeard finally reached them, the polished bone of his helm’s tines flashing in the sun.

“M-m-my n-name is – is –”

“Onndar,” finished Agmandur, and he looked little pleased to see his clansman.

“A skald,” said Hroi, his voice whisper quiet. Though Hroi was barely more than a boy, Algeirr sensed that the White Worm thane was the most dangerous of the gathered Skein lords. From his shoulders hung the checkered cloak of the Skin Thief, the blackest of the Skein gods, and it was rumored that one of those cured swatches belonged to his own father, the old thane of the White Worm. “He comes to see a king cast down, and another raised to take his place. Every song must have an ending – right, singer?”

Onndar nodded, visibly relieved to be spared the struggles of an explanation.

Hroi’s bloodless lips curved into a slight smile. “The Stammering Skald – even at the edge of the barrowlands we have heard of you.”

“And this one?” the Wolf thane, Hert, asked, his mouth tight with anger, pointing at the wide-eyed boy.

“M-m-my ward, my s-sister’s child.”

“This is not a place for babes,” Hert said disdainfully. “Nor for singers.”

But Algeirr knew why the skald had joined them. There would be many a lay composed about this day, and Onndar wanted his song to be the one on the lips of every singer in the Frostlands. The Raven thanes had worn the black-bone crown for nearly seven hundred years, and having it pass to another clan would have seemed a rank impossibility only a few years ago. After all, many of these same lords had sworn fealty and stood shoulder to shoulder with the Gray King four years past at Icebridge during the Red Thane’s rebellion, when the upstart Fox clan had been extinguished and the Raven’s primacy reinforced. Yet, somehow, the seeds of their destruction had been planted that very day, as it had been during Gunmunder’s long convalescence from the wounds he had suffered upon that frozen span across the raging Skirremein that his strange heresies had been born.

Onndar had come to see a king unmade… and to see who would be bold enough to take up the fallen crown.

Algeirr cleared his throat noisily and spat. “Enough prattle,” he said, then entered the darkened hall, pausing after only a few steps so that his eyes could adjust. The massive iron braziers that had once blazed night and day were dead, and the cook pits filled with mounded gray ash. It seemed the hall had not hosted many celebrations in recent days; a bone-deep chill filled the room, and something else as well, the sense of being watched…

There. Movement beneath one of the long feast tables, among the shadows. Algeirr strode closer, gripping the hammer hanging around his neck, a demon-banishing prayer upon his lips, but stopped when he saw what huddled there. Only a girl, clutching a ragged purple shawl around herself – some thrall from below the Serpent, her dusky skin marking her as Myrasani, or perhaps from iron-walled Vis. She shrank back from him, murmuring something in her lilting tongue, and he snorted and turned away.

“What’s that?” asked Gerdin, the hard-eyed thane of the Iron clan, peering past him. All the thanes had by now assembled inside the bronze doors, though none had ventured very far into the cold and forbidding hall.

“The spoils of war,” Agmandur said, making a show of adjusting his belt. “And I’ve half a mind to despoil this spoil here and now.” Laughter rumbled among the Skein.

Algeirr beckoned for them to follow him deeper into the hall. “The Stormforger watches us, do not doubt. Let us show him we are true warriors of the Frostlands.”

“True warriors would have the girl and then kill the king,” Agmandur muttered behind him, but Algeirr ignored the Bear thane and led them past the feast tables and into the far shadows of the Bhalavan, where strange shapes reared out of the darkness. Great stone warriors resolved from the murk as they approached, the long-dead heroes or kings or gods of Min-Ceruth – Algeirr did not know which. They watched the intruders with empty gray eyes, swords and lances upraised. On the shoulder of one perched a falcon, wings spread, its head a nub of chipped stone, and around the forearm of another a serpent coiled, scaled with strange designs.

Beyond the statues an arched passage curved away into blackness. Algeirr drew forth a torch, and after a few long moments of striking flint to stone, a spark finally caught, and firelight pushed back the dark. His hands were shaking badly. Ageran, Stormforger, give me strength!

He led them through twisting corridors that sloped downward, deeper and deeper into the Bhalavan. They passed entrances to cells where the Jugurtha, the warriors whose axes had been sworn to defend the Raven King unto death, had once slept – Algeirr had been surprised to see their black-horned helms earlier, in the pitched battle near the Winding Stair, where the spine of the Raven defense had been broken. The Jugurtha would not have left the king’s side unless commanded by Gunmunder himself. Why send them away? Did he think the Raven powerful enough to defeat the combined strength of six other clans? Or did he know himself damned and mercifully allow his sworn axes to die defending hearths and wives instead of a madman’s folly?

Burning gobbets of fat dripped from his torch, hissing briefly upon the cracked stones before vanishing. Like the souls of men. Flaring bright for a brief moment and then swallowed by darkness. Such thoughts! They did not befit a priest of the Stormforger. He shook his head to clear it of blasphemy – any Skein who had stayed true to the gods and died in glorious battle would be carried in the beaks of the dark-winged flock to the High Halls, and be feasted by those who had already journeyed into the Nightfather’s shadowy realm. So it was written in the Epics.

The corridor jagged left and opened into a large room, its ceiling lost in shadows and the floor beneath the strewn rushes a mosaic of blue-and-white glazed tiles. The straw scattered about was dry and brittle, and clearly had not been changed for weeks, and the pallet looked as if no one had slept in it for at least as long. Where was the magnificent silver bear-pelt blanket that had swaddled Gunmunder during his long sickness? Algeirr had knelt beside this same bed for weeks, lost in prayers to the Green Mother, watching his sleeping king’s ashen face twitch and grimace. The demon had been whispering to him then, in his dreams, he now knew. Seducing him. Had the king succumbed easily, weakened by his sickness, or had Gunmunder turned his soul into a battlefield, fighting against false promises and poisoned words? Was there a part of him that resisted still?

“Where now, priest?” growled Kjartan, glancing around the empty room. “If Gunmunder, son of Vhargot, has fled the city while we’ve been standing around his bedchamber, I’ll have your ugly head.”

Algeirr stalked to the far side of the sleeping pallet and gestured for the trailing thanes to follow him. A few gasped when they saw that he stood at the edge of a gaping black pit crudely hacked through the ancient tiled floor.

“It is as you told,” Ferrin Oathsealer said, crouching beside the opening and lowering his gleaming ebonwood bow into the darkness. Before the man-tall bow had completely vanished, it struck stone, and the Ghost thane glanced up at Algeirr, who struggled to meet the albino’s unsettling eyes. “Only five spans deep,” Ferrin said, frowning.

“At first we must crouch,” Algeirr said, his mouth suddenly dry. “But the passage grows larger quickly.”

Hert kicked at a loose chunk of tile, sending it tumbling into the black. “For so many centuries this was unknown to those sleeping above… what squatted down there, listening in the darkness?”

Algeirr fought back a shudder. The ancient Min-Ceruthans had been a sorcerous people, and none knew what abominations their magics had birthed. They had raised Nes Vaneth and her sister cities from the womb of the world, shaping stone like a potter might clay, twisting the very fabric of these lands to their whims. The southern traders had told him that the Iskannatum, the devouring ice, had been the dying counterstroke of another race of sorcerers, the magi of the drowned Mosaic Cities, but he still preferred the tale he had heard as a child around the hearth fire – that the Stormforger had smote the Min-Ceruthans for their presumptions. Sorcery was a vile and wicked thing, and the gods could not abide those who aspired to make themselves masters of the world.

They stood at the edge of the pit, shifting their feet and glancing at one another, until Hroi stepped forward, his mirthless laughter echoing.

“What frightened women we are!” he cried, drawing his famous sword, Night’s Kiss, the clouded amber blade hissing like a serpent as it slid from its sheath. “If you wish to wait here, I’ll bring back the black-bone crown, but it will be on my brow and you all best bend the knee!” With a derisive snort he leaped into the darkness, his mottled cloak flaring behind him.

Agmandur cursed and followed, his great shoulders barely clearing the edges of the hole. He reached up to help Algeirr climb down, and then the others followed, though less gracefully, not as limber as the two young thanes.

Before and behind them the passage vanished into blackness. Adjusting his sweaty grip on the haft of his torch, Algeirr led the way forward, his other hand clutching the Stormforger’s amulet. The hammer’s iron seemed warm to the touch. He did not turn to see if the others followed him, and for a brief, terrifying moment he imagined that he crept alone through the tunnel. Then he heard Agmandur curse again when his head bumped the low ceiling, and Algeirr nearly laughed aloud in panicked relief. Other sounds soon reverberated in the tight passage: boots scuffing on stone, the clink of mail and weapons, the labored breathing of those who had suffered wounds.

“God’s blood!” Kjartan suddenly bellowed, and Algeirr turned to see the huge Stag thane looming over the aged skald. He had left his tined helm in the chamber above, and Kjartan’s long red braids swung as he furiously shook his head. “Tell the whelp to keep his hands to himself!”

The boy’s eyes, round and white and terrified, peered from behind Onndar.

“Th-the b-b-b – child – w-will be more c-c-care –” the skald began, but before he could finish, Kjartan waved him silent and rounded on Agmandur, his disgust plain.

“How did your father stomach this one? I’d have torn his tongue out years ago!”

The Young Bear shrugged, and then he said, grinning faintly, “He sings beautifully.”

Kjartan muttered something unintelligible, and Algeirr turned away so the thane would not see his own smile.

They continued on, the Stag thane grumbling to himself, down a steep flight of stairs and past wall sconces carved into the faces of leering demons, the passage swelling until they could all comfortably walk upright. Algeirr heard the trickle of running water, and once something scurried over his boot, disappearing before he could see it clearly. Soon after Hert stumbled and then had to lean upon Ferrin so he would not fall behind. The Wolf thane had taken an arrow between his shoulders earlier, and now his breathing rasped loud and wet. They all knew that the Nightfather waited in the tunnel’s shadows for him, but Hert’s mouth was grim and determined and he did not voice any complaints. A true Skein, the old Wolf. He would have been the perfect choice to take up the crown; Algeirr worried that none of the other thanes could claim the Frostlands without further bloodshed.

A blue glow arose at the far edge of his fading torchlight. Almost there. He had returned to the place of his nightmares, with the greatest champions of his people behind him, and yet his heart did not swell with joy and righteous anger. Fear. He felt fear again, as he had that first time he had followed Gunmunder down into this abyss to gaze upon the abomination hanging cold and blue in its prison of ice. He remembered the dread wonder thrumming in his veins… three years had passed since that cursed day, yet the memory was fresh and immediate, while the intervening seasons seemed lost in mist. Endless days trudging between halls, pleading and cajoling and threatening the thanes so that an alliance could be forged to save the old ways, before the demon they had discovered here in the bowels of Nes Vaneth could devour the very gods themselves.

The glow strengthened, until Algeirr cast aside his guttering torch and rounded on the Skein following him. Blue light limned their armor and weapons and gave their faces the pallid color of frozen corpses. They watched him expectantly.

“Three years ago,” Algeirr began, reaching for the voice of his god, the crash and rumble of Ageran the Stormforger, “Gunmunder brought the priests of our clan to this place and demanded that they cast aside the gods and embrace his mad new faith. Each of them repudiated him, and in return the Raven King collected their heads with his sword; he soaked the ice with their blood, attempting to wake the slumbering demon. Only I was spared, despite my own refusal.” Algeirr let his eyes linger on each of the faces before him. “Now I have returned, the old gods are triumphant, and the final blow is poised to fall. Let us strike quickly, and mercilessly.”

Muttered assent followed as he turned again to the glow creeping from around the bend in the passage before them. He moved forward, and was swallowed by the light.

They stood at the entrance to a vast chamber filled with stone statues of the same size and carved with the same exacting detail as above in the Bhalavan, except here they writhed in contorted agony, shielding their faces, knees buckling as if confronted by some blinding horror. Tiered stone steps climbed the space before them, and upon the final dais a massive wall of ice rose, seamless and gleaming. The light that filled the chamber emanated from the ice itself, flickering like a flame yet without heat, casting shadows that coiled and danced across the stricken figures.

And there he was. The Gray King, Gunmunder, standing tall and crooked upon the final step, a black stone set into the roiling blue light of the ice behind him. He leaned upon the storied runesword Kalikurvan of the Raven thanes, most of the blade’s long silvery length lost behind his great beard, which had been bound into a half dozen frozen ropes that dangled almost to the floor. The king’s head was bowed, as if he slept, and to Algeirr’s surprise he saw a tear fall from behind the tangled gray hair that obscured his face. The curved obsidian talons of the black-bone crown glittered, clawing the air.

A few steps below him sat Horth Wraithsbane, the last of the Jugurtha, a notched bastard sword set across his lap. The massive warrior scowled when he recognized Algeirr, glancing up at his king. The old priest felt a trickle of apprehension, as here was the greatest champion of the Raven, famed across the Frostlands. As a boy, Horth had been part of a hunting party that had become lost in a blinding snow storm and set upon by a pack of wraiths. One by one his clansmen had died, until only he remained, but as the shadows closed on him, they had found instead of hot blood and soft flesh the hard kiss of steel, and after his sword had snapped in the bitter cold he had slain the final wraith, a great bull with flaming red eyes and blue talons, by plunging his hunting knife into its breast as it hugged him close and crooned its dark song. A dangerous warrior.

“Brother,” rasped the old king, raising his head.

Cold dread closed around Algeirr’s heart. Blood trickled from the sunken pits where once Gunmunder’s eyes had been, following the dried black paths that veined his cheeks.

“You have returned to us.”

Algeirr tried to keep the tremors from his voice. “Yes, Brother. As I said I would. But how can you see me? What have you done?”

Gunmunder’s answering chuckle was bone-dry. “I see far more, Brother, than I ever did. Before it was only in my dreams that I could glimpse the glory of this place – now, it surrounds me always.”

“Madness,” hissed Kjartan.

“Madness,” repeated Gunmunder, though Algeirr did not know how he had heard the Stag thane, “is the refuge we crawled into after the light failed and the darkness came swirling down.” The Gray King’s voice echoed in the vast chamber. Down, down, down…

“Like a corpse upon the bier we placed coins over our own eyes, hoping that this would be enough to pay our passage through the Twilight and Night and into the Dawn beyond.” Gunmunder made a plucking motion over his empty sockets. “I was the first to glimpse the light around the edges of our blindness, but I will not be the last. My awakening came too early, perhaps, but in time you all will see what I have seen.”

“And what do you see?”

Gunmunder lifted his head higher at the Wolf thane’s question. “The world as it was, and what it could be again.”

Algeirr remembered the first breathless descriptions Gunmunder had given when he had finally awoken from his long fever dreams. Avenues of shining white stone, strode by men in lacquered masks, the living city answering to their world-cracking voices. Beautiful maids sailing upon the wind with butterfly wings. The crystal towers whole and unbroken, wrapped by vines studded with jewel-bright blossoms. Nes Vaneth’s vanished glory, reverberating through the ages.

A lure with honey-sweet promises. What man, squatting in furs and iron among the ruins of such ancient grandeur, would not be tempted to trade away his soul for a taste of what had come before?

“Enough of your babbling,” Hroi said, shouldering his way to stand before the Skein. “We who live in the shadow of the Worm have glimpsed the past as well, yet we know it is dead and rotted, and we do not yearn to return it to shambling life.” Night’s Kiss fairly crackled, a shimmering haze surrounding the sword’s strange metal. Hroi laughed and cut the air. “She’s hungering for your blood, my king. I think she smells the stink of Min-Ceruthan sorcery upon you.”

Horth rose ponderously to his towering height, taking up his own sword, and slowly began to descend.

As if an unspoken agreement had passed between them, the two Skein heroes rushed each other, Hroi bounding up the cracked stone steps, silent as a hunting wraith, while Horth barreled toward him bellowing a war cry.

The Raven champion chopped down with his sword but Hroi caught the blow with Night’s Kiss, and with a terrible shrieking sound Horth’s blade shattered, fragments spinning away into the gloom. The huge warrior’s momentum carried him hurtling down the steps and the White Worm thane twisted away to avoid him, lashing out as he tumbled past, his sword biting deep. Without a sound, the last of the Jugurtha crumpled at the base of the steps, his face a bloody ruin.

Shocked silence, and then the Gray King spoke. “Is this what you want?” cried Gunmunder, holding aloft the black-bone crown. “Take it then,” he finished, and flung it toward the thanes. The crown rang sharply upon the stone floor, but did not shatter, and came to rest at the feet of the Young Bear. The thanes converged on him, all speaking at once. Hroi hurried down the steps and pushed into their midst, jostling for space.

Above them Gunmunder slowly turned away and moved toward the glistening blue wall. Algeirr abandoned the thanes to their argument and climbed the steps as fast as his old legs would allow, until he stood panting upon the final dais. The ice loomed over him, alive with dancing frozen flames, and he glimpsed shapes recessed deep within, some man-like, others not. Coldness radiated from the wall like heat from a fire, stinging his exposed flesh. The Raven king seemed not to notice the chill, his bare hand touching the ice and his head lowered, as if in prayer. Algeirr approached him, the soft scuffing of his boots lost beneath the heated babble of voices from below.

Yet Gunmunder still heard. He spoke without turning from the wall. “Kill me, Brother. Send me to her arms.”

It was then that Algeirr noticed the shape hanging within the ice, just beyond where Gunmunder’s fingers touched the slick surface. A baby’s blue-tinged body, its eyes closed and tiny mouth open.

Revulsion filled Algeirr. He remembered the steaming blood of old Berand Godsinger splashed upon the ice, Gunmunder imploring the child to wake as he stood over the headless corpses of the Raven priests. The madness of that day still haunted his dreams.

“I thought by now you would have cut into the ice,” Algeirr said, drawing forth his dagger.

Gunmunder leaned forward, resting his forehead against the wall. “I could not,” he said softly.

Algeirr nodded. He understood his brother. What if the babe was nothing but cold, dead flesh? Algeirr stepped forward, poised to slip his dagger between the gaps in his brother’s armor, but Gunmunder stilled him with a word.

“No,” he murmured, thrusting out his sword’s hilt. “Use Kalikurvan. I would die by the sword of my ancestors, wielded by my closest kin. It is a fitting death.”

Algeirr’s gnarled fingers closed around the runesword’s hilt, smooth metal carved into a falcon’s likeness, its outstretched wings the crosspiece. Shimmering runes were incised down the blade’s silvery length. How many years since his father had let him touch this sword? He remembered that day, his older brother boasting to him that eventually he would wield Kalikurvan and rule all the Frostlands, and then his father’s indulgent laughter filling the Bhalavan. A lifetime past.

He lifted the blade and brought it down upon his brother’s bowed neck. The spell-forged steel passed through flesh and bone without the slightest hesitation. Algeirr closed his eyes, not wanting to see Gunmunder’s corpse slide to the floor and the gouts of blood that would flow across the stone. He felt no joy, only a sense of closure, and of a great weight being lifted. He could turn the blade on himself now if he so chose, end the line of Vesteinn Croweater and join his ancestors in their eternal feasting upon the Stormforger’s high benches. His grip upon the sword’s hilt tightened. He imagined the cold point sliding through his stomach, bringing release and freedom from the tragedies of this world, his limbs slackening in the Nightfather’s comforting embrace.

No. There was still something he must do.

Exhaustion washed over him as he opened his eyes. Algeirr stepped over his brother’s corpse and faced the thing hanging in the wall. He raised Kalikurvan and smashed the runesword’s pommel against the ice. Cracks webbed the surface, shards of ice falling away… but then Algeirr recoiled as something swam up from the depths of the ice. It was a woman’s ghostly face, shimmering and unclear, like a reflection glimpsed in troubled water. She wore a golden crown, and her piercing blue eyes stared past Algeirr, at something he could not see.

“Na alak meh rasa,” she said in a strong, clear voice. “Mes baba loth Liralyn duth Jerrus meh Jan duth Verala. Mok haras mes baba.” Then the spirit faded, and was gone.

Algeirr snarled and smashed the sword’s hilt into the ice where the face had appeared. Again and again he struck, gouging chunks from the wall until one tiny foot extended into the chamber. Carefully he scraped more of the ice away, marveling at the softness of the baby’s flesh, despite its centuries of imprisonment. Finally the child slid free into his arms, cold and blue and dead.

Algeirr brushed closed the babe’s purple lips. It had been a girl, he could now tell. All the terror, all the tragedy had come from this, and yet really it was just a small dead thing, some innocent victim of eons-old sorcery. What madness, Algeirr thought, clutching the tiny corpse to his chest.

It moved.

He nearly dropped it when he felt its leg twitch, and before he could dismiss it as some trick of his tired mind, the babe drew in a shuddering breath and wailed. Tiny fingers groped for him, tangled in his beard. Pale blue eyes opened and found his own. Impossible.

His first instinct was to swaddle it in furs, to shelter this spark of life in the desolate frozen hall, but his mind screamed at him to dash the babe against the ice. Demon! Algeirr raised the squirming body, his arms trembling.

But then he knew. He felt the god’s voice, gentling his soul, purging him of his hate and fear. The whispers boomed within him. Twice before Ageran had spoken, once when he had been a boy crouched over his first steaming kill, telling him that he had been chosen to take up the hammer and drink of the blessed mead, and the other time in this very chamber, as the blood of his fellow priests coursed along the cracks threading the ancient stone floor, revealing what he must do, the hard path he must follow. And now it came again, showing him the way forward, like a lightning strike on a moonless night.

Algeirr lowered the babe, cradling it in the crook of his arm as he turned from the wall. Below, the knot of arguing Skein quieted as he descended the stairs, the silence broken by the shriek of the runesword’s tip scraping stone and the babe’s gurgling cries.

Onndar the skald was the first to speak. “He-he’s d-d-dead, then?”

The thanes shrank away as he reached the final step – all except Hroi, who actually leaned forward to better see the unnatural child he held.

“My brother is dead,” Algeirr said, shielding the babe from the White Worm thane’s gaze.

“And what will you do with that?” Hert hissed through teeth gritted from pain.

“The Stormforger has told me, and his words were not for mortal ears.” Algeirr strode across the chamber and laid Kalikurvan across the outstretched arms of a cowering stone maiden. “I will leave you thanes to choose a new king to rule in Nes Vaneth. Where I go, I must go alone. Do not follow me. And never speak of this day, nor of what was drawn from the ice.”

“Algeirr –” Ferrin began, but the old priest held up a hand to silence him.

“Swear on your clan’s heartsblood, lest the Nightfather’s shadow darken your hall.”

Algeirr waited until he heard mumbled promises from all the thanes and the ancient skald, and then with a final, lingering look upon the dread chamber, he carried the ice-child into the twisting passage that led upward, to Nes Vaneth and daylight.

“YOUR FATHER is dead.”

– self my nothing the self my nothing the self my nothing the self my nothing the self my nothing the –

“Your father is dead, Mistress.”

A voice from a distant peak, cast across a chasm plunging down into unimaginable depths.

– self my nothing the self my nothing the self my nothing the self my nothing the self my nothing –

“Mistress, your father –”

Cho Lin’s eyes snapped open. “– Is dead,” she finished.

A single melted candle guttered in the small chamber. The light burned her eyes, and she forced herself to stare into it. – the self

Kan Xia huddled before her, forehead pressed against the stone, his arms outstretched in supplication.

Cho Lin unclasped her hands from the chigreum mudra. Her fingers felt stiff, unresponsive.

“How long?” she asked, swallowing away the rawness in her throat.

Kan Xia spoke into the floor, his words muffled. “The disciple outside said two months, he said you –”

“No. How long has my father been dead?”

A pause. Kan Xia’s hands scrabbled at the chamber’s stone floor, as if trying to find purchase. “We . . . we are not sure, Mistress. One month, we think.”

“You think?”

“Y-yes. He was across the Broken Sea, in distant realms. Word travels slowly in the barbarian lands. They have no couriers on fast horses, or arrow-straight roads.”

He was across the Broken Sea. “Kan Xia, what has happened while I’ve been away?”

“Much has happened, Mistress,” the servant murmured, trembling. “Much has happened.”

She swept from the chamber, Kan Xia trailing behind her. A disciple stood outside, his eyes averted, her clothes folded across his arms. Cho Lin undid her robes and pulled on the silken breeches and embroidered yi shirt she had arrived at Red Fang Mountain in many months ago. She gathered her long hair back and secured it with a jade pin.

“Where is Master Ren?”

The disciple did not look at her. “Master Ren is secluded within Gold Leaf Temple. He is

expecting you.”

Cho Lin frowned. How long have they known?

She walked the twisting underground corridors, past other cells containing monks, the ground slanting upward until she came to a door of ancient wood painted with a picture of the Enlightenment. She pushed through it, and her vision was consumed by dazzling blue. Clouds piled to the horizon. Swallows flitted between the eaves of pagodas. Sunlight. For a brief moment everything seemed to tilt and spin, and she had to close her eyes.

the self my nothing

The world righted itself. She breathed deep, savoring the many smells of the world above. Someone was cooking braised pork, and her jaw ached at the thought of eating real food. Between the temple’s paths lilies were blooming; when she had retreated into her trance the delicate shoots of those flowers had just been starting to emerge.

She crossed the courtyard, enjoying the feel of the crushed stones beneath her bare feet. Disciples in red tunics hurried past her, eyes downcast. There, a familiar face coming toward her.

“Master Gu,” she said, inclining her head.

If the saffron-robed monk was surprised to see her outside, he did not show it. He mirrored her gesture and pressed his hands together in the mudra of greeting. “Mistress Lin. My heart soars to see you this day. But my mind is curious to know why you have abandoned your meditations.”

“My family’s servant brings notice that my father has died.”

The monk pursed his lips and bowed his head slightly. “Lord Cho has died? A great loss for Shan. I shall remember his name in my prayers.”

“My ancestors thank you,” Cho Lin said, her fingers steepling in the mudra of respect. Master Gu nodded in reply and walked on.

She came to Gold Leaf Temple, blazing in the day’s brilliance. The roof of the pagoda, it was said, had been forged from the melted jewelry ripped from the bodies of the Third False Emperor’s concubines. It had taken a dozen wagons to carry the metal to the top of Red Fang Mountain, and a hundred craftsmen many years to shape the rythenki spirits and malachen demons that now cavorted across it in flashing gold.

“Wait here,” she told Kan Xia, and the servant drew back.

She climbed the steps and entered the temple. Inside, a thousand votive candles had been lit among the forest of red pillars, their flickering flames marching in rows toward the great golden statue at the temple’s center: Sagewa Tain, first among mortals to reach an understanding of the Self. Incense spiced the air, and the faint chime of devotional bells echoed in the distance. Master Ren was seated cross-legged before the looming statue, his eyes closed and his hands shaping the mudra of understanding.

Cho Lin’s bare feet made no sound on the gleaming stone floor, but Master Ren spoke without opening his eyes before she had approached to within fifty paces.

“Mistress Lin. Welcome, child. You have attained perfection far sooner than we dared hope.”

She halted, taking a deep breath to master herself. “Enlightened One, I must admit failure in my quest for the Self. I come here because I have been called away from Red Fang Mountain.”

Now Master Ren looked at her. His eyes were the piercing black eyes of a desert hawk, windows to the Nothing within his Self.

“Truly, a pity.” His expression of calm detachment did not waver.

Cho Lin couldn’t contain herself any longer. “Master, how long have you known that my father was dead?”

Five heartbeats of silence. The candle flames seemed to bend away from her, as if disturbed by her agitation.

“There were rumors, brought to us by pilgrims.”

“And how trustworthy were these rumors?”

The abbot’s fingers shifted to the mudra of sympathy. “Very.”

Cho Lin concentrated on the Nothing, willing herself to tranquility. “And you did not see fit to inform me?”

Was that a tightness at the corner of his mouth? Such a loss of control was almost as surprising as the news of her father’s death.

“You were on a quest for the Self. The first step on such a journey is to abandon your ties to this world, as you well know. To disturb your meditations would be a betrayal of our most fundamental principles. The Cho Lin who came to us would agree with my words: she knew that this world is merely a realm of ghosts and mirrors, a pale reflection of the Self.”

“Yet you allowed my family’s servant to enter my cell.”

The faint lines on the abbot’s face vanished, like ripples fading away after a stone had sunk to the bottom of a pond. “He came to us bearing a writ from Lord Cho. In this world, we cannot deny one such as he.”

“That’s impossible. Lord Cho is –” my brother. A cold fist clutched at her heart. Her brother was now Lord Cho.

The abbot watched her carefully. “Mistress Lin, rarely does Red Fang Mountain admit disciples such as yourself. Most who arrive at our temple are orphans, lacking ties to any place or people. Thus it is easier for them to embark on their quest for the Self and shed the memories of this world. You were a special case. From one of the greatest families of Shan, first daughter of a lord listened to by many among the Thousand Voices, a child raised in the Jade Court. And far more advanced in her martial training than should have been possible by anyone outside of this mountain.”

“My father hired a Tainted Sword to train me when I was very young. But I had reached the limits of what he could teach me.”

“Yes. So you came to us. And I saw in you someone who could forsake her name and achieve immortality for her soul through a mastery of the Self.”

Cho Lin turned from the abbot, watching the dancing flames. “My father believed something different. He thought that true immortality could only be attained through the family. Someday you must pass into the spirit realm, he once told me, but the glory your descendants bring to your name will sustain you in the afterlife. The body might die, but the family is truly eternal.”

Another pause. Master Ren’s fingers formed a mudra she did not know. “So the question you must ask yourself is this: are you Mistress Lin, disciple of Red Fang Mountain, or the Lady Cho, sister of a Jade Court mandarin?”

She met the abbot’s placid stare and matched it. “Neither. I am Cho Lin.”

After several months sequestered away in meditation, her body was not happy to return to the saddle. She shifted uncomfortably, trying to find a spot where she wasn’t already chafed raw.

“Would you like to stop for a while, Mistress?”

Cho Lin waved away Kan Xia’s words, annoyed that the servant had noticed her discomfort. She had ridden for three days straight when she had first passed through this forest on her way to Red Fang Mountain, and now after only a half-day on horseback she was already yearning for the goose-down bed and pillows that awaited her at her family’s estate outside Tsai Yin. Had her twenty months among the monks made her stronger, or weaker? Was she like a sword kept too long in the forge, tempered to brittleness by the fire’s heat? She twisted around in her saddle, trying to catch through a gap in the trees the glint of Gold Leaf Temple high up on the mountain’s slopes. What foolishness. That crucible had produced some of the world’s most legendary warriors. Any weakness was her own.

Well, even if riding still seemed strange at least something felt like it had finally been returned to her after a too-long time apart. She almost felt guilty about how much she had missed the weight of the wakizashis strapped across her shoulders. The ancient blades had been given back to her when she had left the temple, and despite her months of training to forsake just these kinds of worldly possessions, she hadn’t been able to resist a little thrill of pleasure when the carved ivory handles had again slipped into her hands.

The forest they rode through was darker than she remembered. Probably because she had first come to Red Fang Mountain in the waning days of winter, when the cold daylight filtering between empty branches had blazed upon bone-white trunks stripped bare by hungry deer. Now a full canopy arched overhead, serpentine vines wrapped the trees, and bright yellow flowers spotted the trail. And yet, the forest was just as silent as before . . . just as silent, not even a note of birdsong, how strange –

A sharp hiss sliced the air. The Cho warrior who had accompanied Kan Xia toppled from his mare, his hands scrabbling at the arrow through his neck. Cho Lin threw herself from her horse, knocking Kan Xia from his saddle. Together they tumbled to the ground, her family’s servant emitting a strangled yelp of surprise that was cut short when he hit the grass hard. She rolled away and came up in a low crouch, her wakizashis already in her hands.

“Stay down,” she said to Kan Xia as she scanned the undergrowth for their ambushers. In response he made a whimpering sound and buried his face in the grass. The horses stamped their feet and milled nervously as the Cho warrior thrashed between them in his death throes, his legs and arms drumming the earth.

Farther up the path four men had appeared. Cho Lin quickly moved so that her horse was between her and the ambushers. They did not have the look of bandits, that sense of frightened desperation which clung to men who had turned to thievery when their crops had failed or their livestock had been taken by the yellow-ear disease. Quiet competence was evident in the way they held themselves, in their tightly controlled movements as they approached with their weapons at the ready. And those weapons were too fine by far, city-forged or fletched. No, these were assassins.

Luckily only one carried a bow. That might just save her life.

Cho Lin thrust her wakizashis into the soft earth and slipped one of the chakras that studded her belt into her hand.

“P-please,” she stammered, forcing fear into her voice. “My-my name is Cho Lin, of the clan Cho. My brother is rich and powerful. Anything you desire could be yours if you let me live!”

As she had hoped, some of the wary tension leaked from the three foremost warriors, including the bowman. A knowing smirk passed between them.

“Don’t listen to her!” commanded the fourth, who had stayed behind, standing on the path where they had first emerged from among the trees. “She is a Red Fang Warrior. Lies drip from her lips like venom from a snake. Kill her quickly!”

But it was too late. They were close enough now.

From between her horse’s legs, Cho Lin threw her chakra at the bowman. Without watching to see where it struck, she surged to her feet, pulling her wakizashis from the ground and leaping forward in one smooth motion. Her slippered foot touched lightly upon the saddle of her startled horse, then she gathered herself and jumped once more before the shocked assassins could even finish raising their swords. Time seemed to stretch and slow, the Nothing opening up within her. She took in everything before she’d even touched the ground again.

The bowman was down, his crossed eyes staring at the metal spike of her chakra buried in his forehead. The assassin on the left held his broad-bladed sword awkwardly – he was used to a lighter weapon. The one on the right appeared more balanced, and he reacted faster as she hurtled closer. He was the greater threat.

She lashed out with both wakizashis, batting aside the second assassin’s sword with one blade as she sliced his shoulder open with the other. He snarled and thrust at her and she twisted away, using the last bit of momentum from her jump to slip past him. She went to one knee, completing her motion by slashing backward, and felt the slight resistance as her sword severed his hamstring. He collapsed, screaming, and she quickly rolled away and back to her feet, sensing the other assassin’s approach. Bellowing something unintelligible, he charged at her, hacking with his heavy sword; she easily turned aside each swing, and when he had overcommitted to a lunge she calmly stepped inside his guard and slipped her thin blade between his ribs, piercing his heart. His shocked eyes stared into hers for a brief moment, and then they fluttered closed as he slid to the ground.

Sparing a glance at the final assassin, still standing motionless some ways up the path, Cho Lin moved over to where the maimed warrior lay moaning, his bloodied fingers reaching desperately for the sword hilt just beyond his reach. She knelt down beside him and cut his throat.

Cho Lin stood, sheathing her blades, and faced the last assassin. “Tell me who sent you.”

The fourth warrior chuckled, strolling closer. He pulled from his scabbard a curving sword and held it up for her, showing what was carved upon the bronze hilt.

“You have a lotus blade,” she remarked, shifting her weight to the balls of her feet.

As he approached, she noticed how curiously flat and dead his eyes were. Like the corpses of the men at her feet.

“I do, girl.”

“Did you earn it fairly?”

The assassin seemed to consider her words. “In a manner of speaking. It belonged to my master. I killed him.”

“You are a Tainted Sword.”

He shrugged. “My master was a Tainted Sword, cast down from Red Fang for violating one of their ridiculous rules. I’m not sure what that makes me.”

Cho Lin put as much disdain as she could into her smile. “It makes you less than nothing.”

He laughed, but his eyes stayed cold and distant. “I suppose it would to a rich little lady like yourself.”

“Who sent you?”

He started working his lotus blade through some basic patterns. His movements were crisp, skilled.

“I am instructed not to say.”

She sighed. “You are dead anyway. Tell me, and I promise to burn an offering for your spirit at the Moon Stone Temple in Tsai Yin.”

Now he sneered. “So confident, little girl? You think you can measure my worth by these three fools? I have killed two masters of Red Fang in single combat, and a dozen members of the Jade Court. I am an assassin of the ninth circle in the Brotherhood of White Knives.”

Cho Lin snapped her blades into her hands. She noted absently that the ivory handle of one of her wakizashis had been stained black by blood. She would have to clean it later. “Enough. I must return home. Let us finish this.”

They came together with the clash of steel.

Cho Lin arrived five days later at her family’s estate outside Tsai Yin, far from happy with the time she had made. The wound in her side was bothering her, and had kept her from pushing her horse too hard – that, and Kan Xia in his awkward mothering had insisted that they stop at almost every inn and guesthouse along the road, even if she could have easily ridden on. The lotus blade was wrapped in a blanket buried among her saddlebags, but all through their journey she had felt a heavy malignancy pulsing from where she had stored it, sending a cold prickling up her spine. It was a cursed blade, the tool for many black deeds. She would donate it to one of the temples here, hoping that the prayers of monks could cleanse the darkness from its past, and perhaps even allow for a rebirth of the sword in the hands of a true warrior.

They rode past peasants sunk to their waists in the ponds ringing the Cho estate, bent-back old men and women with lined brown skin pulling rice from stalks as fish nibbled at their toes, singing ancient songs extolling the virtues of the common people. Mulberry trees pressed against the compound’s walls, and the season’s harvest must have been nearly finished as she saw only a few children scurrying among the branches, pulling cocoons from the damp, dark places where the moths had hidden them in the boles of the trees. The orchards here, at the Tsai Yin estate, were barely a grove compared to the vast plantations her family owned to the west. Much of the Cho wealth was founded in silk production – it was even her distant ancestor, Cho Tzin, who was credited as the first to discover that the unspooled cocoon of the silk moth could be woven into luxuriant, shimmering cloth.

They passed through the Turtle Gate, the great stone portal carved with images ranging from the common painted-shell denizens of quiet streams and ponds to the sea-spanning titans that could cross the world with an army on their backs. The Cho warriors flanking the gate’s pillars gaped at her when she nodded at them, then snapped to attention. Within the outer walls the compound was a riot of activity: hammers rang upon the forges set up in a corner of the courtyard, grooms were leading horses back to the stables, and servants rushed back and forth on tasks.

Cho Lin smiled, imagining what Min Min and Cook Po’s reactions would be when she sauntered into their kitchen. They would cry out and clap their hands and hurry to make her favorite dumplings, lamenting loudly about how thin she was.

But first she had to see her brother.

He waited for her within the innermost garden, a carefully sculpted labyrinth of twisting rock and shadowy paths which led to a small lake spotted with lily pads and lotus blossoms. Fragments of color, white and orange and black, flashed just beneath the surface of the water as the great schools of koi fish swarmed closer to where she walked, hoping for a scattering of rice. She crossed the arching bridge that led to the small pavilion at the lake’s center – her brother sat at the round stone table where their father had often spent his mornings reading, watching her approach.

He was not alone. Kneeling beside his bench was a beautiful young girl in a green dress, her long black hair unbound. Her eyes were downcast, and she held upraised in her hands a delicate porcelain tea cup decorated by cranes in flight.

Cranes. The symbols of fidelity. Of course.

Cho Jun smiled at her when she entered the pavilion, gesturing with a trembling hand for her to sit across from him.

“First brother,” she said, taking her seat.

“F-first sister,” he replied.

They stared at each other. He was wearing their father’s imperial vestments, a long red-and-blue silk robe with a golden phoenix unfurling along its length. He also wore the scholar’s circular black cap, though Cho Lin knew he had never studied with any real diligence the Master’s teachings.

“Have you ea-eaten?”

“I have. Some biscuits on the road. I’m not hungry.”

“T-tea, th-then?”

“Yes, thank you.”

Her brother snapped his fingers, and the girl rose gracefully to pour her a cup from the pot on the table. Cho Lin breathed deep as the tea’s flavor reached her. Petals from the jasmine flower, her favorite, and a drink she hadn’t enjoyed since she’d left two years ago for Red Fang Mountain. Her brother wanted something.

She sipped her tea. The girl picked up her brother’s cup and brought it to his lips. He drank, watching her from over the rim.

Cho Lin set down her cup. “You seem better.”

Her brother swallowed his tea and the girl returned to her knees, holding his cup aloft. “D-do I? Life grows easier, certainly. I have l-learned to live with my weaknesses. It is a v-very important skill to c-c-cultivate.”

It would be almost ten years to the day, she suddenly realized, since someone in this very compound had slipped poison into her brother’s wine. It had not killed him, but the poison had so damaged his body that he had been rendered incapable of performing even the most basic of actions by himself. Unsure who the poisoner had been, Lord Cho had decided to execute all the servants who had touched his son’s cup that night.

No further poisonings had occurred.

“Our father is dead.”

“He is.”

“What happened? Kan Xia would not tell me.”

Her brother lifted something from the bench beside him and placed it on the table. It resembled very closely the wrapped sword she had stored among her saddle bags. Her heart began to beat faster.

“Our f-father,” Cho Jun began, running his fingers along the length of the bundle, “was a man of honor.”

“Of course.”

“While you were a-away, in the east, s-something happened, something momentous. An in-intruder snuck inside the w-w-warlock’s tower, pierced the ancient wards, and s-stole something.”

Coldness filled her. “What was stolen?”

“The ch-chest.”

Cho Lin was having trouble staring at anything except the wrapped object on the table. “Was it the Raveling?”

“The w-warlocks think not. They think . . . they think it was a barbarian from the north. He or sh-she used sorceries they had never f-felt before to unravel their w-wards.”

“And whoever it was, they opened the chest?”

“They d-did. The warlocks have sensed the Betrayers since th-then, moving in the n-north.”

“And what would you have me do about it? Why did you recall me from Red Fang Mountain?”

He reached out a trembling hand and clutched at her wrist. “I n-n-need you, Lin. I c-cannot fulfill our f-family’s sacred duty. Only you can s-satisfy our ancestors. Our father.”

“What would you have me do?” she repeated, barely whispering.

Her brother peeled away the cloth from the object on the table. Tapering steel glimmered in the sunlight as the legendary sword of Cho was revealed.

“When I heard he had died in far-off lands, I feared it had been lost.” Her own voice sounded distant to her ears.

Her brother’s shaking hand closed around the black dragonbone hilt. “N-no. A p-prince of a city near wh-where our father died sent the sword south when he r-realized who our father was. With it was a l-letter describing our f-father’s death, at the hand of a d-demon which wore the skin of a man like a c-cloak.”

A new demon? An ally of the Betrayers?

He watched her carefully. “The w-warlocks say it sounds like a d-demon from Shan’s lost past. But they were thought all to be d-dead thousands of years ago, long before the R-raveling.”

“Has the emperor bestirred himself after hearing of this new threat?”

Her brother choked back a laugh. “He is c-consumed with his own p-petty interests, and cares not f-for what happens outside the palace walls. The w-warlocks suspect the Raveling’s servants have penetrated even the heart of the Jade C-court. B-before they move openly, they w-wish for us to try once more to rec-cover the chest or destroy the Betrayers. Our f-family has always been first among the demon-hunters of Shan.”

“Assassins were waiting for me when I descended from Red Fang Mountain. Did the Raveling send them, or another House?”

Her brother shrugged, stirring his tea with a long nail. “House Cao, I w-would suspect. But perhaps another l-lurks in the shadows. It is a d-dangerous time. We have f-few friends, and with f-father gone, our enemies think us weak.”

“Us? So I am a Cho again? I thought you disapproved of me.”

Her brother looked out over the lake’s tranquil waters. “I d-did, first sister. B-but with father dead only you are l-left who c-can bring honor to our House. Only you c-can finish what he started, and what our ancestor began a th-thousand years ago when Cho Xin f-first bound the B-betrayers.”

“And if I refuse?”

“Th-then the Cho are finished, and the g-ghosts of our ancestors will howl in sorrow and r-rage.”

“Do they have any suspicions about who stole away the Betrayers?”

He told her. When he finished, Cho Lin rose, searching his eyes for any hint of falseness. The Nothing within the Self she had been so tantalizingly close to reaching seemed to be tumbling farther and farther away as she stood motionless within that tiny pavilion in the middle of the lake.

Her brother smiled to himself as he watched her walk back across the curving bridge, carrying their father’s sword.

ALEC HUTSON was the Spirit Award winner for Carleton College at the 2002 Ultimate Frisbee College National Championships. He has watched the sun set over the dead city of Bagan and rise over the living ruins of Angkor Wat. He grew up in a geodesic dome and a bookstore and currently lives in Shanghai, China. The Crimson Queen is his first book.