Tag Archives: Gravestone Weaver

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At least they didn’t have to spend time looking around on this trip. Billie and Weaver disembarked from the caravan to find McGraw leaning idly against the wall of the station, chatting with the young woman in the Army uniform who stood watch. At their arrival, he straightened up, tipped his hat to her and ambled over to join them. The soldier watched him go with a faint smile before resuming her ostentatiously bored perusal of the sleepy town outside.

“Omnu’s balls, I swear I’ve got the knees of a man twice my age thanks to these fucking things,” Weaver growled, stretching and casting a dirty look back at the parked caravan. “I am not getting back in that damned contraption until this whole damn business is over with. Hell with it, I might just walk back to Tiraas afterward.”

“I fully support this plan,” Billie said solemnly.

“Top o’ the mornin’,” McGraw said, coming to a stop alongside them. “I don’t mean to alarm anyone, but you seem to have forgotten somebody.”

“Aye,” said Billie with a grin, “Joe’s of the opinion he can straighten out our bad reputation in the town. Whole idea sounded barmy t’me, but the Bishop seemed to think it had merit.”

“Idea?” McGraw asked, raising an eyebrow.

“He and the kid are tracking down a friend of Joe’s from Sarasio,” Weaver said disinterestedly. “An Imperial Surveyor. For once I agree with the pocket bomber here; bunch of wasted time. If Desolation was worth a damn, the Empire would’ve been active out here already, and bureaucracies do not move fast enough to be any use to us. But Darling thinks he can get some help to the place, maybe whip us up some support.”

“Well, the effort ain’t likely to hurt, I suppose,” McGraw mused, lifting his hat to scratch his head. “Long as it’s Darling handling the bureaucracy and not Joe. Not that the boy ain’t smart in his way, but if he doesn’t get over some o’ that naivete of his, somebody’s gonna stab him in the back. Again.”

“Tryin’ ta get results out o’ the Imperial Department of Red Tape should speed that process along,” Billie said cheerfully.

“This does complicate things a mite, though,” the old wizard continued. “I’m also close to tracking down an old friend who I reckon can help us out, but doing it’ll mean headin’ out into the Badlands. I’d thought we might be able to just move on from that to hittin’ Risk, but now it looks like we’ll have to backtrack again and pick up the Kid. I don’t like the thought to takin’ on Big K without his wands. He say when he expected to be back?”

“He’s gonna come tomorrow at the latest,” Billie reported. “Leavin’ Darling to finish up motivatin’ the Empire.”

“One day to get government action initiated,” McGraw said dryly. “Truly, that boy is the very soul of optimism.”

“Mm. You still wanna head out, then?” Weaver asked.

McGraw sighed heavily. “Yeah…we’d better. I’ve been sendin’ up smoke signals, so to speak. Little disruptions in the… Well, it’s technical; if you’re really curious I can go over it while we’re walkin’, since we won’t lack for time. The long and the short of it is if I fail to put in an appearance, my little attention-getters may be taken as a hostile move.”

“Then by all means, let’s not piss off anybody else around here who we’re not sent specifically to rough up. That means you,” Weaver added, pointing at Billie, “touch nothing, say nothing, and do nothing.”

“Honestly, the way you carry on,” she huffed. “Where I’m from, blowin’ up a bar is a constructive criticism on the drink menu.”

“Off we go, then!” McGraw said cheerfully, ambling off toward the far side of the station, which had a view of the desolate Badlands beyond the town.

“Now, refresh my memory,” Weaver said as they stepped out into the morning sunlight, “that girl you were talking to. Isn’t she the one who was on duty yesterday?”

“Yup, that’s her,” McGraw replied. “They don’t exactly keep a well-staffed garrison in this backwater.”

“Because it occurs to me,” Weaver mused, “that she didn’t so much as poke her nose out when the saloon exploded and then a mob very nearly started in on us. Maybe there’s a reason certain individuals get posted to the ass end of nowhere.”

“Now, as to that, allow me to direct your attention back over your shoulder for a moment,” McGraw said cheerfully. “You’ll notice a distinctive edifice rising from Terminus Station. The scrolltower office is part of the same complex as the Rail depot.”

“The word ‘complex’ is maybe givin’ this town a little too much credit,” Billie snickered, “but go on.”

“I’ll remind you that a bare few minutes after we were rounded up into custody,” McGraw continued, “a very official message came in for the Sheriff, apparently ordering him to let us all go. And I’ll add, as a point of general information, that while soldiers are trained to respond immediately to a crisis, Imperial Intelligence operatives are trained to observe and take action carefully, subtly, and only as needed. They are also the only people who don’t face prosecution for impersonating soldiers.”

“Exactly how did your conversation with that one go?” Weaver asked, frowning now.

“Oh, you know how it is,” McGraw said with a shrug. “Small talk. The weather, the economy, what’s trendy in Tiraas these days. Ain’t much point in pokin’ the bear, as a rule; if the Imps are keepin’ an eye on us… Well, so far they seem inclined to leave us at liberty, don’t they?”

“Well, well, well,” Billie drawled. “So it seems this little job the esteemed Mr. Darling has roped us into is even more fraught than he let on. ‘Scuze me while I shit me pants in shock.”

“If you need to go behind a bush,” Weaver sneered, “try to find one with a rattlesnake.”

“Y’know, Damian, the more I get t’know you, the more sense it makes the only creature that seems ta give a damn about you is an extra-dimensional death specter.”

McGraw raised his eyebrows, shifting his head to give Billie a warning look. She met it with a grin and a wink. Weaver just walked on in silence, his face suddenly an icy mask.

“I reckon this is enough distance,” the wizard said after a long few moments, glancing back. Desolation was receding behind them, still well in view but not close enough for any individuals to be more than ant-sized from this range. “A big part of the thrust of my information-gathering over the last couple days has been about the movements of elves in the region. That had to be phrased carefully; you may have heard that elves are not popular round these parts.”

“It was mentioned, yes,” said Weaver.

“Upside of that is people are more’n willing to gripe about any sighting of a pointy ear, provided I pitch my own interest as similar hostility,” McGraw continued. “It was a sure bet there’d been some; elves likely wouldn’t come near the town, knowing they aren’t liked, but there are always tribes passing by this close to the frontier, and nomadic people as a rule are allergic to bein’ told where they can and can’t go. I was bankin’ that between our old friend Khadizroth and the presence of the skull, some would be sniffin’ around here specifically.”

“And?” Billie prompted.

“News was good. Strong hints that one of the parties takin’ an interest in the area is an old friend of mine; she’s distinctive enough to create rumors. So I’ve been… Well, it’s a little hard to explain if you’re not a practitioner. Poking at the aether, I guess you could say. In such a manner that any practicing shaman close to Desolation would know I was stickin’ out feelers.”

“Feelers?” Weaver said dryly.

McGraw grinned. “More like a wet finger in the ear. Not harmful, but not fun. I wanted to make sure it wouldn’t be missed.”

“Yup,” the bard said, rolling his eyes. “I can see how someone might take that as hostile.”

“Just lettin’ you know what we may be walkin’ into,” McGraw said with a shrug. “I left a trail that’ll lead back to me, an’ to where we’re goin’. Expect to be met there. Hopefully it’ll be my old comrade, who in all likelihood will help us out, if she ain’t workin’ on Mr. K an’ his friends already.”

“Or it could just be pissed off random elves,” Weaver said, scowling.

“Could be,” McGraw allowed. “Worst case scenario is a fight, but that’s a relatively remote scenario. If it ain’t my friend, it’ll be an irate shaman wantin’ to know what the hell I think I’m up to. As a rule, if you give elves an explanation and it’s a good one, they’ll leave you alone. But that’s a rule, and individuals are exceptions. We’ll see.”

“Well, look at that,” Billie said brightly. “Turns out blowin’ up the saloon wasn’t the most reckless thing this group’s done!”

Weaver sighed dramatically. “I hate you. So much.”

“Which of us are you talkin’ to?”

“Yes!”

 

In their eerie, barren way, the Badlands were profoundly beautiful. In aggregation the terrain looked flat, stretching endlessly away till the mountains rose up to the north and east, and into the infinite distance everywhere else, but viewed up close there was complex depth in that flatness. It was a huge plain of stone, what had undoubtedly been a rock shelf at some point, but had been carved by ages of rain, wind and periodic flooding into the most fanciful shapes. The stone was wrought in rounded forms, twisted and flowing. Though the outcroppings rose to a nearly uniform height, there wasn’t enough space to navigate on the top of the formations, forcing travelers to walk through the rain-carved gulleys between them.

It didn’t make for easy hiking, to say the least. Plain as the Badlands might look up top, the floor of the formation was uneven and rarely flat. For once, Billie was the faster, her small size making her agile and efficient at moving through terrain where Weaver and McGraw, with their long legs, were at a disadvantage.

Still and all, the beauty couldn’t be denied. The twisting rivulets cut through the stone had a pleasing quality all their own, augmented by the multicolored layers they revealed. Countless eons of rock formation were laid bare, the history of the very land exposed by erosion; it was profound as well as aesthetic, to any who cared to contemplate it. The occasional small thorny bushes added further character, though ironically their angular, mostly bare branches looked even less organic than the flowing contours of the stones.

Beautiful it may have been, but not pleasant. It was scorchingly hot, and the rock walls on all sides provided little relief from the sun as it climbed overhead. Initially, there wasn’t a hint of life apart from themselves, but after they had been trekking more than an hour, a lone vulture appeared in the sky above.

It began following them.

“What the hell cold possibly be out here?” Weaver snarled.

“Hard to see from this angle, down among the rocks,” McGraw replied equably, picking his careful way along with the aid of his staff, “but there are a few interesting features in the landscape. Enough that the Badlands have always had a population of sorts. It’s like any other desert; life’s concentrated around the few little enclaves where it can live. Springs, mostly. Risk is one o’ those; we’re headin’ for another.”

“Care to offer a little more detail on our destination?” Billie asked, cheery as ever. They were all fortified against sunburn, heatstroke and excess loss of moisture by aid of charms provided by her and alchemical supplies purchased by McGraw, which made the hike merely arduous instead of potentially deadly. Still, the gnome was faring better than either of them; not even her good mood was diminished by the hostile landscape.

“It’s an old crater,” said McGraw. “No water source, so it’s not inhabited, but it’s served as a meeting place for ages. Elves, dwarves an’ more recently humans have all used it. They mostly all respect it, too. I’m no expert on what dwarves think, but to some o’ the plains tribes the spot’s considered sacred.”

“Great,” Weaver groused. “This is the place you directed attention to with a metaphysical poke in the ear?”

“Like I said,” McGraw replied, his tone mild despite being slightly out of breath, “it was a sure enough way to get their attention.”

“So’s an actual poke in the ear.”

The old wizard didn’t bother to reply to that.

“How can you navigate in this?” Weaver demanded a few minutes later. “There’s no possible way you can remember a path through these alleys.”

“Elves do,” McGraw said. “I cheat, of course. Simple waypoint spell, keeps my noise aimed at where we’re goin’.”

“It’s good to be a wizard,” Billie said philosophically. “Or to travel with one.”

“It’s true,” McGraw agreed.

“It’s especially good when your wizard can just teleport you places,” Weaver noted. “I am taking it on faith, here, that there’s an excellent reason we’re not doing that.”

“Yup,” said McGraw. “Droppin’ in unexpectedly on a bunch of elves ain’t exactly wise.”

“Especially after you’ve poked them in the ear, I’ll bet.”

“The approach gives ’em a chance to gain the upper hand. It’s easier in forests or plains, of course, but elves can stalk pretty much anything through pretty much any terrain. They know who I am an’ where we’re headed; lettin’ ’em spend the hike out there watching and listening to us is a show we mean no harm.”

“Um, excuse me,” said Billie, coming to a stop and turning to frown at him. “If you’ve riled these theoretical elves, is it a good idea to give ’em the upper hand?”

“Well, look at it this way,” said McGraw with a grin. “We’ll either get arrows in the back outta nowhere, or we won’t. If you think about it, that’s the case anywhere and everywhere, at all times.”

“Aye, that’s true enough,” she said with a shrug, and turned to resume hiking, apparently mollified. At the back of their little column, Weaver began cursing monotonously under his breath.

Fortunately their journey didn’t last long beyond that. Their emergence into the crater was quite sudden; they rounded a turn and there it was.

The depression wasn’t very deep, not much more than twice the general depth of the shallow ravines; it was most significant for its relative smoothness. Rather than standing formations, it had uneven ridges marching toward its bottom. They were conveniently sized to form seats, making a natural amphitheater of sorts; several had carvings, simple pictograms and a few lines of text in elvish. Aside from that, it was a plain and barren space, baked by the overhead sun without even the meager and intermittent shade of stone formations.

Slowly, the three stepped forward, and down onto the first shelf, peering around.

“Welp,” Weaver said at last, “here we are. Notably still by ourselves.”

“Give it a tick,” suggested Billie. “McGraw went an’ spoiled the surprise, tellin’ us they were watchin’. Now they gotta make us wait ta re-establish dominance.”

“You would think immortals would be above petty social games,” the bard grumbled.

“You sound like you never met one,” Billie said, grinning. “These marks look important, in an ancient artifact kinda way. If yer in such a crashin’ damn hurry, I s’pose I could blast a big hole outta—”

The shade increased, marginally, as the upper lip of the crater was suddenly lined with elves. There were scarcely a dozen; they perched upon the topmost layer of the rocks, which offered very little space even for such lithe individuals. These were plains elves, their buckskins dyed the color of rock dust, and every one was armed. Bows, staves and wands were all represented, all aimed at the three below.

Weaver and Billie both dropped into fighting crouches, reaching for their own weapons.

“Whoah, whoah, whoah!” McGraw exclaimed, holding up both hands and letting his staff fall into the crook of his elbow. “Let’s nobody go an’ do anything hasty! Weaver, hands away from those hot rods—you’d be full of arrows before you could think too hard about usin’ ’em.”

“Why is it every time she threatens to blow something up, I get blamed?” Weaver complained. He slowly raised his hands away from his wand belt, however.

“Well, ye sorta got one o’ those faces,” Billie commented. “Though mostly it’s yer personality.”

They fell silent as another shape appeared on the rocks, this one more visibly ominous. Directly above them an enormous black panther leaned forward from the lip of the narrow outcropping upon which it perched, glaring down at them through pitiless yellow eyes. Its paws, positioned on the very edge of the stone, flexed, unsheathing huge claws.

“Pretty sure that ain’t native,” Billie said.

And suddenly, without appearing to transition, it wasn’t a panther. An elvish woman knelt there on the edge, studying them dispassionately, a tomahawk dangling from her loose grip. She was dressed like her fellows, but stood out from them dramatically. For one thing, she had upward-pointing ears, marking her a wood elf and not kin to the plains hunters now ringing the crater. More noticeably, however, her hair was glossy black.

“Elias,” she said evenly. “I might have known.”

“You might’ve,” he agreed, tipping his hat to her. “In fact, I’d be plumb astonished if you didn’t. Mornin’, Raea! Been far too long, ain’t it?”

“I’m not sure,” she mused. “I only ever seem to see you when something truly aggravating is afoot.”

“Now, c’mon, that ain’t fair,” McGraw protested. “You can’t blame me for all a’ those incidents. Really, any of ’em but the first one.”

“Ah, yes, the curse of the adventurer,” she said gravely. “The more you appear to help in times of trouble, the more associated with trouble you become. The wandering profiteer becomes a celebrity, while the wandering hero becomes a symbol of bad luck.”

“I ‘spect you know a bit about that yourself,” McGraw said, grinning.

“Would you two like some privacy to catch up?” Weaver exclaimed. “Should we come back later?”

Raea shifted her gaze to focus on him. “A little patience would suit, traveler. It is you who trespass here. This ground is sacred to us—many of our forebears are buried here.”

“Bullshit,” he snapped.

The elf leaned back slightly, raising her eyebrows. “I beg your pardon?”

“No one is buried here,” Weaver retorted. “No one has died here, at least not in centuries. McGraw, are these really the best elves you could find? I can handle the inscrutable ineffable crap, but this one thinks she’s funny. That’s gonna get real old, real fast.”

McGraw sighed heavily. “You’ve got a real way with people, Gravestone.”

Suddenly, Raea grinned, and made a quick gesture with one hand. All around, the assembled elves lowered their weapons and straightened up, visibly relaxing, though their expressions did not appreciably alter.

“I’ve been wondering for some time if our paths would one day cross, Deathspeaker. Well met.”

“Uh huh,” he said skeptically, planting his fists on his hips.

“This is my ol’ friend Raea,” said McGraw. “I’m afraid I’m not personally acquainted with any of these other folk, but I reckon there’s time to rectify that. Raea, you apparently know Weaver. This is Billie Fallowstone.”

“The Tinker,” Raea said, nodding to the gnome. “Your reputation precedes you, as well.”

“Damn skippy!”

“She wasn’t kidding about blowing the place up,” said Weaver. “That’s just what she does. You see those little hands going into her pockets, run.”

“Oh, shove it, ye great lumbering canker.”

“You went out of your way to get my attention, Elias,” the elf said, returning her gaze to him. “What are you doing out here?”

“I suspect the same thing you are,” he replied. “How acquainted are you with a town called Risk?”

Raea only raised one eyebrow, but a stir ran through the other elves. The nearest shook his head, turned to her and said something curt in their language. She gave him a sidelong, unmistakeably irritated glance.

“Mr. K and his dwarves, yes,” she said to McGraw. “Risk is perched conveniently near several mineral veins. Elves also harvest the silver and turquoise and have competed with other miners in the past, but there are no tribes in the area currently.”

“No tribes?” Billie said, looking around at them. “What’re you lot, a flock? A herd? A gaggle?”

“A murder?” Weaver mumbled.

“We,” Raea said with a grim smile, “were drawn here by the miners, as I gather you were. They are not just mining. They delve with peculiar arcane arts—most unusual for dwarves. They go out of their way to destroy any sacred objects or traces of elven influence, which is also unusual, and not acceptable. These lands have few sites of major significance to the tribes, but they are riddled with smaller traces. Barrows, burials, altars to various spirits, charms left by young shaman on their first vision quests. Things any respectful traveler leaves alone—even the humans who used to mine this region seldom disturbed them. This…attempt to expunge any trace of us from the land is deeply disturbing. And then, too, there is the nature of this M. K and his personal aides.”

“What do you know about the fellow?” McGraw asked with deceptive mildness.

Raea shifted position, seating herself on the edge of the stone with one leg dangling, the other folded beneath her. “I have already delivered a patch of exposition, Elias. I believe it’s your turn.”

“Now, now,” he said placatingly, “allow a fella some dramatic pacing. C’mon, Raea, you know I wouldn’t pump you for info without offering what I know in kind. Fact, I think we may be able to help each other out here. Do you know what you’re dealing with?”

“The dragon Khadizroth,” she said, a scowl falling over her features, “who of all beings in this world should know better than to deface cultural artifacts. The mystery grows deeper and darker when one considers his…lieutenants. Not all are as unsettling as others, but he has a murderer tauhanwe among them, as well as a child of Vanislaas.”

McGraw and Weaver both straightened up in alarm; Billie frowned deeply.

“An incubus?” Weaver said, “Fuck. That’s just what nobody needs.”

“A succubus, in fact,” said Raea. “What do you know of this, Elias?”

“We know what he’s doing,” said McGraw. “Or at least, what he’s after. Why he would hire dwarves of all folk, much less destroy things sacred to elves, is beyond my imagination. They’re lookin’ for an artifact we have reason to believe is buried out here.”

“You do have some useful knowledge, then,” she said. “Tell me, does this have anything to do with the blinding of the visions? Every shaman I have spoken to in the last two months has managed to see nothing in the spirit realm but portents of the dragons, and of seething chaos.”

“Well, there’s dragon shit goin’ down in Tiraas,” said Billie, “but aye, the rest of it pertains to this business out here.”

“Khadizroth,” said McGraw, “is seeking the skull of Belosiphon the Black. If he finds it, he means to deliver it to Archpope Justinian.”

The elves went stone still; one cursed softly in their language. Raea stared down at McGraw in silence for a long moment.

Abruptly, the huge panther stood up and bounded down to the shelf on which they stood; despite her light landing, the size of the cat made an audible thump upon the stone.

“I think,” said Raea, again an elf, “we should talk in detail.”

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Sheriff Decker was a big man in every respect, and it was much more apparent when he was seated behind his desk in the shabby little office from which he worked than out in the street astride his horse. Taller than McGraw and wider across the shoulders than two Joes, he had a powerfully muscled frame that even his rather impressive beer gut didn’t manage to make look soft. Beyond the physical, his personality filled the room. The scowl on his dark Western face had nearly enough force to keep them bodily at a distance, and even sitting still, there was a latent energy about him, as if he might spring up and charge right over them at any moment.

“Well,” Decker said after a long, silent perusal of each of them in turn, “this here’s complicated, ain’t it? I do not like complicated. Me an’ complicated have a bit of a history. Complicated tends to show up for dinner whenever it likes, which ain’t to say I’m enthused to lay another place at the table.”

“Oh, gods, a frontier poet,” Weaver groaned.

“Under ordinarily, uncomplicated circumstances,” the Sheriff continued, ignoring him, “I would just throw everybody in cells an’ have done with it. In fact, it wouldn’t be a legal stretch to put you three as well as Coulter an’ his boys on a work detail to rebuild Whiskey Pete’s.”

“Whiskey Pete’s?” Billie chimed. “The sign just said ‘whiskey.’”

“Other half of the sign broke off in a storm last winter,” Decker said. “Which ain’t exactly germane to the issue. First off, I know damn well Coulter an’ company didn’t blow up the saloon, so all I got them for is drunk an’ disorderly. Or, as they think of it, Tuesday morning. There’s also the matter that I’d be depending on the goodwill of my actual culprits to even get you into cells, as I know enough of your various legends to understand Pete’s place is just a taste of the havoc you could cause if you took a notion to. Speaks well that you came quietly down to the office. Less well that you’re the culprits of a goddamn bombing.”

“Culprit,” Weaver said pointedly, “singular. The gnome threw the bomb.”

“It was not a bomb!” Billie protested. “It was pretty much a great big music box taken to its logical conclusion! Brilliant lil’ gadget, if I say so meself. Uses sound waves, modulated through an arcane spell matrix ta hit solid objects with the full potential energy o’ their vibrations instantaneously rather than over time, an’ phased not ta impact living organic matter. An’ I put shielding charms on us anyway, ‘cos I’m responsible.”

“Right,” said Weaver. “So. It was a fancy bomb.”

“Shut up,” said Decker without passion. They did so, immediately. “The further issue makin’ this matter complicated is what you four are doin’ in my town to begin with. McGraw sniffin’ around ain’t so terribly unusual—I can see one o’ your type passin’ through from time to time. Hell, I do see it, an’ they never stay long, thank the gods. But four?” He leaned slowly back in his chair, which creaked alarmingly under the strain. “Only two things bring four individuals like you together in one spot: something expensive, or something bad. Am I dealin’ with just one thing, here, or both?”

McGraw leaned against his staff, distancing himself slightly from the group and dividing a sardonic look among them. Weaver just rolled his eyes; Billie chewed thoughtfully on her lower lip.

“Beggin’ your pardon, Sheriff,” said Joe, “but the matter’s a little sensitive…”

“Do I honestly need to remind you knuckleheads that you just blew up a saloon?” Decker grated. “You are not in a position to make discretionary calls about what I do or do not need to know. Spill it.”

“What I mean is,” Joe said doggedly, “this is the kind of thing that could have repercussions if it got out. A certain amount of frankly justifiable panic, if you get my drift.”

“Boy, I am a lot less worried about me spillin’ the beans to a random passerby than the four of you. A secret’s lifespan diminishes with every person who knows it; if you can keep it under your hats I sure as hell can.”

“That’s a significant if,” Weaver commented.

“Weaver, shut up,” Joe said irritably. “All right, Sheriff, do you know who Belosiphon the Black was?”

“My mama told me the same fairy tales yours did, I reckon,” Decker said evenly. “The rest of this explanation ain’t gonna make me happy, is it.”

“We’ve got solid reason to believe his skull is buried somewhere in this region,” Joe continued. “It’s a piece o’ work that basically radiates chaos magic. If it’s unearthed… Well. That would be real ugly for everyone in the vicinity. We’re here to find the thing and get rid of it.”

“By unearthing it first, I suppose,” Decker said, his expression giving no hint what he thought of this claim. “Okay, two questions. How do you know this, and just how the hell do you plan to get rid of it?”

“First,” said Weaver, “oracular divinations.”

“Which is bard-speak for ‘bullshit,’” the Sheriff observed.

“That’s a gross oversimplification, but in a general sense, not totally wrong,” Weaver allowed. “In this cace, all the oracles. Every oracular resource in Tiraas has suddenly stopped answering any kinds of questions to rant about this. That’s the classic warning sign of a potentially world-ending crisis brewing.”

Decker sighed, dragging a hand over his broad face and disturbing his hat in the process. “Okay. All right. That leaves the second question.”

“We’re takin’ it to Arachne bloody Tellwyrn!” Billie chirped. “She’s gonna get rid of it.”

“I’m in the very strange position of bein’ inclined to believe you can actually do that,” said the Sheriff. “All right…fine. Dangerous chaos artifact, four overpowered assholes here to deal with it. Could be worse, I guess. What are your leads?”

“That’s what we were in the process of obtaining when Mr. Coulter and his friends came over to introduce themselves,” said Joe.

“Matter of fact,” McGraw chimed in, “I’ve been hearin’ rumors that I think are extremely applicable. Sheriff, what do you know about this Mr. K an’ his operation up north?”

“You’re askin’ me for information?” Decker said pointedly.

“Yes, sir,” McGraw replied, tipping his hat. “I, personally, who have not blown up any saloons, am keenly interested in this topic for the reasons previously mentioned. I’d take it as a kindness if you could put off deciding what to do with these three for just a moment to bring us all up to speed. Might improve the level of cooperation you get from ’em, as a bonus.”

“For the record, once again,” Weaver said, “two thirds of us haven’t blown up any saloons, either.”

“Aw, stuff it sideways, y’big wally.”

Decker heaved a soft sigh. “Well, I suppose I can spare the very few moments it takes to tell the very little that’s known. This ain’t a situation where the local law is in on details the populace don’t know, McGraw. After a day of snoopin’ around, you probably know as much as I do. The long an’ the short of it is, this Mr. K turned up…lessee…six or seven weeks ago, claims to run his own mining company. We’ve never heard of him ’round her, but he’s got stationery and everything. Made his headquarters in Risk, a town ’bout thirty miles to the northwest, in the Badlands. Deep in the Badlands.”

“What kind of town is this Risk?” Joe asked.

Decker gave him a very pointed look, but answered the question. “A small one. Never more’n a hundred souls in its heyday, which was back before the Narisian Treaty. Risk was abandoned till Mr. K moved his people in.”

“What people are these?” Weaver demanded.

“Here’s a wild idea,” the Sheriff shot back. “Shut your hole for a minute an’ you’ll find out. This conversation is a favor I’m doin’ you, Mr. Weaver, an’ you’ve given me damn little reason.” He held the bard’s stare for a long moment in silence; Weaver just blinked his eyes languidly, his expression bored and vaguely disdainful. Finally, Decker shook his head and continued. “The Big K Mining Company consists entirely of dwarves. Dunno much about ’em, not even which of the Five Kingdoms they hail from. They do their work an’ ain’t interested in socializing. Which is probably for the best; folks ’round here aren’t best pleased at the only new work in years goin’ straight to foreigners. In addition to the miners, Mr. K has a few lieutenants who are known to be fancy-dressed city folk with weapons. So far, they ain’t shot anybody, but I know three folk who’ve had it made abundantly plain to them that that isn’t due to any lack of willingness or capacity. Risk is basically closed to everyone but the Company at present.”

“Is that legal?” Joe asked, frowning.

Decker shrugged. “Mr. K bought up the land he’s livin’ on, an’ got all the appropriate permits from the provincial and Imperial governments for his mining operations. He’s entitled to his security. I can see how he might feel the need, given how unhappy everyone in the region is about him.”

“This Mr. K himself,” Joe said slowly. “What’s he like?”

“Secretive,” Decker said curtly. “An’ that’s the long an’ the short of it. Nobody sees him but his lieutenants. Is that sufficient, now? Are y’all satisfied with the quality of intelligence you’ve been provided? Cos we still have the topic of your arrest to discuss.”

“Yes, that’ll do,” Weaver said condescendingly. “Can’t complain about the information, scant though it is, even if the quality of delivery lacked a certain—”

“Omnu’s balls, do you never stop?” Billie exclaimed, slugging him in the thigh.

“Why, yes, Miss Fallowstone, I do stop,” Weaver retorted, stepping away from her. “For example, when I find myself considering throwing a bomb in a saloon, I’ve got this little inner voice that tells me ‘hey, this just might be a bad fucking idea!’”

“Quiet,” Decker said flatly. Once again, he was instantly obeyed. “That is quite a story you’ve told me. Quite a story. If you haven’t surmised it yourselves, the only reason I was willing to indulge you in that sidetrack about the mysterious Mr. K is because he fits neatly into it. Doesn’t he? And you apparently didn’t know that goin’ in.” He finally straightened back up, placing his hands on top of his desk and beginning to drum his thick fingers against the scarred wood. “None of which proves anything, of course. Way I see it, I’m lookin’ at two possibilities: either y’all are full of shit an’ tryin’ to save your own asses from the jail, or there’s a real problem brewing, you’re here to help, an’ you’re a much better choice to make that attempt than me or my deputy. Guess you might say I’m on the horns of a dilemma, here. Mr. Weaver, I see that you have just opened your mouth. Do you have somethin’ constructive to add, or are you about to get yourself punched in the teeth?”

Weaver raised his eyebrows, but closed his mouth. An amused smirk remained on his face.

“Who is it you’re working for?” the Sheriff asked them. “A group like this doesn’t just spontaneously come together. Didn’t even when adventurers like you were a respectable thing; I know somebody with means assembled this posse.”

“I’m…not sure it’d be proper to name names,” Joe said, frowning. “Nor that it wouldn’t. It wasn’t actually discussed…”

“How many times do I need to reiterate that you blew away your negotiating position along with the front wall of Whiskey Pete’s? I ask a question, boy, I expect a prompt answer.”

“We’re workin’ for the Universal Church,” McGraw said. “The man who assembled the intel that sent us here is highly placed there.”

“Well!” Decker grinned at them, slapping his palms down on the desk. “Finally, we’re gettin’ somewhere. That there is a trail I can follow. So, it seems the most feasible move from where I’m sittin’ would be to stick the bunch of you in a cell whilst I make inquiries. I get word back that you are, indeed, agents of the Church, then not only is my mind put greatly at ease regarding the outcome of this…skull business…but I got somebody I can bill for damages to my town. Worst case scenario, Mr. K’s been operating for weeks an’ the world ain’t ended, so you’ve most likely got time to cool your heels a spell. Unless you have anything further to add?”

“That sorta brings us back to an earlier point, doesn’t it, Sheriff?” Joe said quietly. He reached up and tucked his thumbs behind the lapels of his coat, pointedly keeping his hands far from his wands, but stared Decker in the eyes unflinchingly. “If we decide not to go into cells… That is pretty much that, ain’t it?”

Weaver, Billie and McGraw all shifted position, staring at him in surprise. Decker’s face remained impassive. A moment of silence fell, broken when the Sheriff drummed his fingers once more upon his desk.

“I believe I already had the badge discussion with you, Mr. Jenkins,” he said quietly. “The Empire’s a big thing, an’ I’m an exceeding small piece of it. It’s a connected thing, though, an’ I ain’t so insignificant that notice won’t be taken if I get shot up in my own office.”

“There’s a wide range between going into cells and shootin’ you, Sheriff,” Joe replied. “Lots of things could happen that result in neither. You could do a good many of ’em yourself and still remain in control of the situation.”

“I will do what I deem in the best interests of my town and my position,” Decker said evenly. “You strongly hinting that you’ve no intention of respecting the law is actively coloring my opinions.”

“Is what it is,” Joe said tersely. “I think we’re gonna go, now.”

“Oh,” Decker said in deadly calm. “Is that what you think.”

They stared at one another, neither wavering.

“Well, damn,” Billie said. “This would be the perfect time t’rip a giant fart, an’ I don’t ‘ave one on deck. Ain’t that always th’way?”

“The dialect in here could choke a dragon,” Weaver muttered.

The Sheriff opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, the door burst open and his deputy rushed in, brandishing a sheet of paper.

“Sheriff!”

“I am in the middle of somethin’, Slim,” Decker said sharply.

“Yeah, I know, but a scroll just came for you. Maddie brought it down from the telescroll office herself—it’s marked urgent. You better take a look.”

He stepped quickly around McGraw, who moved back to make room for him, and came around behind the desk to hand the telescroll to Decker. The Sheriff accepted it mutely, paused to give Joe one more warning look, then devoted his attention to the message.

He flicked his eyes across it once, then read it again more slowly. Then he looked up and stared at his guests, a frown slowly forming on his features. After reading the telescroll a third time, Sheriff Decker very carefully laid it face-down on the desk and folded his big hands on top of it.

“Well,” he said, scowling at them. “Well. That’s that. Guess you’re free to go.”

“Wait, we’re what?” Billie exclaimed. “Was that about us? What’s it say?”

“Allow me to enunciate,” Decker said, his expression growing truly dangerous. “I know how my dialect can be difficult for you highly educated city folk. You are free to get the hell out of my office. Posthaste.”

“Much obliged, Sheriff,” McGraw said respectfully, tipping his hat again. Pausing only to give the others a very significant look, he turned to head out.

Joe tipped his own hat. “Have a good one, gentlemen.” Decker glared at him.

Once outside, they continued on across the street, following McGraw.

“Where’re we goin’?” Billie asked.

“To a less occupied area,” the old wizard replied, “seein’ as how you three went out of your way to make yourselves as unwelcome as possible in town. I figure we’re better off grabbing a bit o’ privacy before we do anything.”

“Not to harp on it or anything,” said Weaver, “but once again, the gnome blew up the bar.”

“Oi, I will build you a new bar all of your own if ye’ll just drop it already!”

“You can’t tell from lookin’,” McGraw said, thumping his fist against a wall as he passed, “but a good third of Desolation’s abandoned. Construction like this, well… The windows break an’ the shingles come loose, but these houses’ll be here in a thousand years when dwarven archaeologists are diggin’ it all up. There’s ample space to tuck oneself away from pryin’ eyes. Here we go.”

He turned aside, ducking through a missing doorway into a small house that barely qualified as more than a cottage. It had no windows and the door was lying inside; the one open room had drifts of sand in all the corners and spiderwebs festooning the ceiling, but any furniture that had been there had been removed by its previous occupants. Or by someone since. It was dimmer than outside, and pleasantly cool in comparison with the street. Noon was fast approaching, and there was no cloud cover to speak of.

“So, about that last bit,” said Billie, clambering up onto the empty windowsill and seating herself, legs dangling, “what d’ye wanna bet Mr. Darling came through for us?”

“The Church can’t order an Imperial sheriff to back down,” said Weaver. “I know Darling works with the Empire, too, on some kind of council. Does he have the pull to do something like that?”

“Not legitimate pull,” Billie said, grinning, “but let’s be honest, how much o’ the shit that guy pulls d’ye think is in any way legitimate?”

“Timing’s wrong,” said McGraw, shaking his head. “Y’all only just got here. I’ve only been in town a day, which is not enough time for word to get back to Darling that you were about to be arrested. No, something else is brewin’.”

“Well, it was something good, anyway,” Joe said. “At least we have an ally.”

“Might be,” McGraw said, frowning. “Or… Remember this game of ‘he knows I know he knows’ that our employer is playin’ with the Archpope. Both of ’em have the goal of testing their pet adventurers against each other. Justinian’s got an interest in clearin’ a path for us to reach his people. Or, it could be an unknown party…almost anything, really. We’d best keep our eyes open. In any case, the Sheriff was right on one point: Mr. K having been around a few weeks and no disaster unfolding, we’ve got time to maneuver. For that matter, Mr. K’s been out here longer than the oracles have been actin’ up, if the timing we were told on both points is correct.”

“You can just say it,” Weaver said dryly. “His name’s Khadizroth.”

“That ain’t been definitively established,” McGraw warned. “But yeah, it’s a likelihood. I’ve managed to uncover a bit of info the Sheriff didn’t know: the composition of Mr. K’s personal group. He’s got three men and a woman workin’ for him, all well-dressed in suits and gowns. Two of the men,” he added significantly, “are elves.”

Weaver snorted, folding his arms. “Yup. That’s them.”

“Not that elves can’t wear anything they like,” Joe mused, rubbing his chin with a thumb, “but I’ve never actually seen one in a suit until… Yeah. Sounds like Vannae and the Jackal. What of the other two?”

“No idea,” McGraw said, shaking his head. “Though I’ve got a feeling we’ll find out when it’s good and too late, and not before. Meantime, as we do have a little leeway in our schedule, I suggest heading back to Tiraas for supplies and to check in with the Bishop. Once we head out into the Badlands, that’ll be it. I take it you found no sign of Mary?”

“Signs, yes,” said Weaver. “Mary, no. Moving on to a more immediate topic…” He turned to stare at Joe. “Kid, what the hell was that?”

“What?” Joe asked defensively.

“Wankstain McGee’s got a point, there, fer once,” said Billie. “That was just about as aggressive as I’ve ever seen ye, Joe. Hell’s bells, why’d you have to pick an Imperial sheriff to show yer claws to?”

“Why’d you have to blow up the saloon?” Joe asked irritably. Billie threw up her hands, letting out a despairing huff of breath.

“It’s a fair question,” McGraw said in a far milder tone. “Joe, if you’ve got some kind of beef with the Empire, I think it’s reasonable for us to want to know up front. Before we find ourselves dealing with any more lawmen.”

“Not…the Empire.” Joe turned his back to them, pacing over to the open doorway, and leaned out, glancing up and down the street. A stray dog was huddled in the shade of a low, broken wall some yards distant; there were no other living things within view.

“A name,” he said, turning back to them and folding his arms. “That’s what Darling promised me, from the Archpope’s oracles. I want the name of the man who tried to murder my friend Jenny and spooked her into leaving the world.”

“Leaving the world?” Weaver exclaimed, his eyebrows shooting up.

“That’s the Shifter we were telling you about,” McGraw said.

“Shifter, yeah,” said Joe. “She’s… Well, I don’t honestly understand what she is, I was always more interested in who. Jenny’s good people, some of the best I ever knew. But she’s some kind of a…a thing, traveling dimensions and existing in many at the same time. Well, she’s left this one. We had to go to the center of the Golden Sea to do it; there’s a major dimensional rift there. And the whole time, we were chased by a squadron of Imperial soldiers.”

“Go on,” Billie said quietly after a moment in which he paused to think.

“I’ll spare you the unnecessary details,” Joe continued. “We won; they died. I managed to have me a discussion with the squad’s leader before…well. Didn’t get the name of the person responsible, but I did learn the point of the thing was basically… They wanted to dissect her like some kind of scientific specimen. Study what made her tick, so they could try to figure out how gods work.”

“Holy shit,” Billie breathed.

“You killed an entire squad of Imperial soldiers?” Weaver asked quietly.

“One sergeant made it back out,” said Joe. “And that’s the kicker. I made sure she got back to civilization, and she would’ve reported in… And I’ve not heard one word about this since, which leads me to strongly suspect the project wasn’t legitimate or authorized. So… No, I don’t have a beef with the Empire, but I’ve been reminded just what kind of a thing it is. It’s a thing that has flaws which can be exploited. Most soldiers and lawmen, in my experience, are good, brave folks dedicated to doing the best they can, but some…aren’t. And behind every hundred or so soldiers, good or bad, is a powerful, well-fed man in an expensive suit, who may or may not be crooked as a rattlesnake with rickets.”

“I see,” McGraw murmured.

Joe nodded grimly. “Yeah. So, no, I do not trust government authority as much as I used to. And I definitely am not interested in being disarmed and placed in custody by anybody wearin’ a badge. If I commit a crime, I’m willin’ to face a magistrate, explain myself and accept whatever consequences come—provided those consequences are fair, and legal. Can’t assume they would be, is the problem.”

“Well,” said McGraw, “I guess we know where you stand, then.”

“No argument from me,” Weaver said, shrugging. “I’m not a fan of getting arrested either. And I doubt our Eserite boss will take exception to your views. All systems are corrupt, and all that.”

“I always thought that line sounded unnecessarily pessimistic,” Joe commented. “Some systems are corrupt, sure. That’s true anywhere. You can’t make assumptions about all of anything, though.”

“The rest of this discussion sounds like one we can have on the Rail,” Billie stated, hopping down from her perch. “C’mon, let’s haul ass back to Tiraas an’ report in. Maybe Darling’s got some more news for us. We’ve sure as hell got some for him.”

“I am so very sick of that damn Rail,” Weaver muttered.

“I’m gonna stay in town,” said McGraw. “I’m tryin’ to track down some old friends of mine who live in the area—the sort of folk who’re good to have on your side when you go wandering in the wilderness in search of hostiles. That’s a mite more involved than pickin’ up the local gossip, though. These aren’t the kinda people who keep convenient permanent addresses.”

“Typical,” Weaver said. “We get rattled around in a Rail can, and you laze around here drinking whiskey.”

“If it gives you some satisfaction to imagine that’s what I’m doin’,” McGraw said with a grin, “be sure to picture me puffin’ on a cigarillo. I don’t relax halfway. Anyhow, y’all had better move out. Try not to get lynched on your way back through town. And as a personal favor, if a mob does form, couldja refrain from blowing up any more buildings?”

“You know,” said Billie, “the more people tell me not to blow stuff up, the closer they come to being disappointed.”

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“This is the worst kind of town,” Weaver stated. “Big enough that finding McGraw—or anything else—will take some time and effort, small enough that no part of that will yield anything interesting.”

“Aye, that’s great,” Billie said. “Speak up, ye haven’t managed t’piss off everyone in the station yet.”

“Nobody’s paying us any attention, you half-wit,” he snorted.

Indeed, hardly anyone was around at all. A few people moved lethargically through the street outside the shade of the Rail station’s overhanging roof. A man behind the ticket booth appeared to be half-asleep; the lone Tiraan soldier on duty gave them a single disinterested look before getting back to her busy schedule of lounging on her staff, looking bored.

Terminus Station was by far the most interesting thing to be seen. As the three of them stepped away from the caravan, it eased forward from its stopping point next to the platform and onto a question mark-shaped loop, slowly circling about to face back the way it had come. There was a small gap in the Rail between the end of this and the point where it straightened out again; the caravan shuddered slightly as it passed over that, but moments later was heading back to Tiraas, gathering speed, and was out of sight in just a few more seconds. The station itself was small and almost entirely outdoors, consisting of a roof supported by pillars, with no walls except around a small section which contained the ticket office and doubtless a few other facilities. It wasn’t very clean, being lightly seasoned with windblown dust and dirt, but at least everything was in good repair.

Unlike everything else within view.

Desolation, a small to middling town, stretched out to all sides, occupying about a square mile of land, if that. It may or may not have seen better days, but it surely deserved them. The buildings were of local stone with timber framing and slate roofs, almost universally. The street running alongside the Rail station was paved, but badly in need of repair, and every cross-street in view was simply dirt. Stone was cracked and pitted on nearly every structure, roof tiles were missing or broken, a few window had cracked panes and one just across the street was even boarded over. Between this and the apparent somnolence of the few people out on the street, the town was a very portrait of hard luck.

Beyond the buildings, though, the view was quite impressive; Desolation stood at the meeting place of three landscapes. The Stalrange formed an uneven gray wall rising skyward to the west, close enough to be undimmed by the haze of distance; to the southeast stretched out the prairie that became the Golden Sea not much farther beyond. In the north, though, were the Badlands, a rolling terrain of fancifully-shaped stone outcroppings, worn smooth by aeons of erosion and broken jagged in enough spots to keep it interesting. Hardy weeds sprouted from any gap that provided them a foothold, waving in the wind, and twisted, scrawny bushes clung to the sides and even the tops of rock formations, brown and almost leafless.

“Welp,” Joe said, tucking his thumbs into the pockets of his duster, “when in a new town and lookin’ for information, step one is to find the nearest watering hole.”

He nodded across the street at the building with the boarded-up window. The un-boarded ones were wide, and sheltered beneath an awning that shielded a few rickety-looking rocking chairs from the mid-morning sun. The establishment’s only sign simply said “Whiskey.” Whether or not that was the place’s name, it made effective advertizing.

“Ah, good,” Weaver said with a sigh. “It’s been ages since I last got tetanus from a shot glass in a disgusting frontier hellhole. One more thing to scratch off my list for this trip.”

“How ’bout you let us handle the talking?” Joe suggested.

Whiskey, if that as indeed its name, was nothing if not scenic, at least from the outside. It had the obligatory swinging double doors, and even an old man apparently sound asleep in a rocking chair out front, his hat pulled down over his face. Its interior was dim, lit only by sunlight from the windows and a few candle-sized fairy lamps spaced along the walls. There were larger ones not currently in use; half of their smaller cousins were apparently broken. A man with an ostentatious waxed mustache stood behind the bar reading a newspaper, while a skinny teenage girl in an apron lounged against the far wall. She straightened up as they entered. Around a table in one back corner sat six men, in varying states of filth and shabbiness, playing poker, several half-empty bottles of whiskey sitting among their cards and small piles of pennies. They, too, paused and turned around to give the new arrivals a cold, silent inspection.

The three crossed the room to a table near the front windows and seated themselves.

“Good choice,” Weaver muttered. “Lots of folks here to pump for intel.”

“Ashner’s knickers, y’great grump, it’s barely past ten in the morning,” Billie said, rolling her eyes. “How many d’ye think’ll be loiterin’ in a bar? Most folk have better to do with their time than the likes of us.”

“Worth talkin’ to the waitress, at least,” Joe murmured. “They know more’n most about the comings and goings of any town.”

He fell silent as the young lady in question approached. She was no more than seventeen, and lean both in frame and with the slightly hollow-cheeked look of someone who didn’t eat well. Blonde hair was yanked back from her skull in an indifferent ponytail; her expression was, at best, wary, and at worst pondering whether it had an excuse to be hostile.

“What’ll it be?” she asked tersely.

“Shot o’ whiskey!” Billie chirped. “Like the sign says, aye?”

“Wasn’t someone just saying it’s barely past ten?” Weaver said, giving the gnome a scathing look. “Water.”

“And water for me,” Joe added politely, tipping his hat to the girl.

He got a very cold look in return. “Big spenders,” she said with a scowl, then turned and flounced off back to the bar.

“Seriously,” Weaver said to Billie, “pace yourself. I am not hauling your drunk ass all over this podunk town.”

“You are such a pain in the bum, Damian. If I get meself drunk on one shot o’ whiskey, I’ll ‘ave ta return ta the old country in disgrace.”

“You’re pocket-sized! A shot is like a bucket to you!”

“Oh, is that how it works? Damn, I’ve been doin’ it wrong this whole time.”

Joe sighed heavily. “Guys. Just be nice to the girl, please? That means no sexual harassment, Billie. And you.” He pointed accusingly at Weaver. “Just don’t talk to her at all.”

“Oh, mustn’t I?” the man deadpanned. “But how ever will I get over the loss of the scintillating conversation I’m sure that unwashed guttersnipe—”

“Shut,” Joe growled, “up.” Weaver grinned at him, but subsided.

The girl returned, bearing a tray and a disgruntled look.

“Thank you kindly, miss,” Joe said warmly before she could speak, placing a doubloon on her tray. Her eyes widened and the latent hostility in her expression diminished considerably. That was a great deal more than their drinks were worth.

It turned out she was honest. “That, uh, I… I’ll have to go back to the bar to get change for this, s-sir,” she said with an awkward attempt at formal courtesy.

“Don’t worry about that,” Joe said with a smile. “I’m sure you can find a use for the extra. My name’s Joe. What’s yours?”

“April,” she said warily, finally setting their glasses in front of them one by one. Billie immediately grabbed her shot and tossed it back in one go, under Weaver’s disapproving stare.

“April! That’s pretty. Maybe it comes from knowing a few elves back home, but I’ve always been partial to names that mean something,” Joe said. April’s smile was growing steadily more sincere, relaxed, and pleased; at the compliment, she actually blushed slightly, ducking her head. “Listen, I hate to pester you, but we’re lookin’ for a friend of ours who’s supposed to meet us in town. Older fellow, a Westerner, goes by McGraw. You wouldn’t happen to have seen him around?”

April’s eyes widened and she looked them over more carefully. “You know Longshot McGraw?”

“I gather that’s a yes, then?” Joe said with a grin.

She nodded, still staring at him. “Yeah, he’s in town. Came through here jus’ yesterday, askin’ fer the news. Used to be a reg’lar sight in Desolation, I hear tell, though he ain’t been through in a couple years. Not since I was too young to pay attention, I mean.”

“You wouldn’t happen to know where he’s holed up?”

April emitted a short, disbelieving laugh. “Not here. I ain’t heard, sorry. Not many boarding houses in town; we don’t get much in the way of travelers since the mining dried up. They even took us off the regular Rail stop roster,” she added bitterly.

“Sorry to hear that,” Joe said gravely. “Well, I’m sure we’ll run across him sooner or later. I gather Desolation’s had a bit o’ trouble lately?”

The girl’s expression had grown dour again, but this time she didn’t seem to direct the sentiment at him—at least, she continued talking animatedly. “Desolation ain’t had nothin’ but trouble the last ten years. You folks from Tiraas?”

“Oh, all over,” Joe said vaguely. “Sarasio, myself, over on the other side of the Golden Sea. Actually,” he added thoughtfully, glancing over at his companions, “it suddenly occurs to me I don’t actually know where you guys hail from.”

“Can’t think of a single reason you might need to,” Weaver said sardonically.

“I heard stories about Sarasio,” April said, nodding. “Almost as bad as here, I hear tell.”

“What happened to Desolation?” he asked quickly to avert a digression into that subject.

She twisted her lips into a sour little moue. “Elves happened, that’s what.”

Joe stared, taken aback. “Elves? What’d they do?”

“First it was the darklings,” she said, clutching her tray to her chest and scowling as she continued to chatter on. “Them an’ their damn treaty. Oh, I’m sure a load a’ free ore every year’s great for all them factories down in Tiraas an’ Calderaas, but this here’s mining country. You know what happens to mining country when some idjit drow suddenly floods the market with cheap metal? Prices crash, everything crashes, mines close, good folks are out o’ work… And then, then, as if that weren’t bad enough, the goddamn Cobalt Dawn come pourin’ outta the Golden Sea, raidin’ an’ killin’ an’ tryin’ to take over the whole damn province. Least the Army crushed those bastards like they deserved,” she added fiercely. “Only damn knife-ear I ever wanna see again’s one swingin’ from the gallows. Turquoise an’ coal are the only things keepin’ Upper Stalwar Province afloat anymore, an’ they ain’t enough to float everybody.”

“Turquoise and coal, huh,” he prompted, when she showed signs of trailing off.

“Yeah,” April continued, nodding again. “Apparently they don’t have turquoise down in Tar’naris, an’ the dwarves buy a lot o’ coal. They need it fer their machines. That’s not a real big trade, though—they used ta sell metals to the Empire, too, an’ they were hit almost as bad as us by the Narisian Treaty. Maybe worse—least we can grow food up here, an’ hunt some. Dunno what the dwarves eat, ‘less they buy it from us. Them hills’re lousy with good silver, copper, lead, even a few gold lodes closer to the mountains, an’ it all just sits in the ground, cos o’ them damn elves.”

“Well,” Joe said slowly, “now I feel bad for makin’ you recite all that. Sorry, miss, I hadn’t realized things were so rough ’round here.”

“Yeah, well, if you find your friend, you’d hear it all anyway,” she said. “He asked for the news, too. That’s all history, just what it’s like in Desolation these days. Now we got trouble with dwarves an’ Mister K, too, like we need any more damn trouble…”

Joe had to will himself not to stiffen or do anything abrupt to alarm her. Billie and Weaver both straightened up in their seats (she was standing on hers), staring at the waitress. “Mister K?” he asked in a deliberately mild tone. “And dwarves? Sorry, I thought it sounded like you got along pretty well with dwarves in these parts.”

“Till very recently, we did,” said said, bobbing her head again in that distinctive way she had. It was actually kind of cute. “It’s just insult on top of injury, is what it is. A new investor showed up from the capital, real secretive fellow, don’t like folks askin’ after his business. But he’s digging! Startin’ up a whole venture, up north. Makes his headquarters in Risk, bout thirty miles from here into the Badlands.”

“What’s he digging for?” Weaver demanded.

“Nobody knows!” April said in exasperation. “Cos big fancy Mister K don’t hire the hardworking folk who live here an’ desperately need the work. Oh, no, he contracts a whole company a’ dwarves to do his digging! There was like to’ve been a lynching, ‘cept it turns out he’s got this posse—”

Abruptly, she broke off, going pale and looking over their heads and across the table. Clutching the tray closer to her chest, April backed rapidly away, turning once she was out of reach to skitter back over to the bar, which she ducked behind.

Moving slowly and very deliberately, the three of them turned to face in the other direction.

The card players had abandoned their game, and now approached, coming to a stop less than six feet away. They arranged themselves in a rough line, faces coldly blank, some folding their arms, others keeping hands pointedly near holstered wands. In the center, a broad-shouldered man who stood half a head taller than any of his companions studied them slowly, each in turn, slowly chewing at something with a rolling motion of his jaw that made his greasy mustache undulate. After a long, silent moment, he turned his head to the side and spat a wad of tobacco onto the floor.

“You’re in our spot,” he said flatly.

“Didn’t see any names on it,” Joe replied, noting details. The smell of whiskey, reddened eyes and noses, a slight sway in a couple of them, even standing still. That was both good and bad. Drunk men tended to be more aggressive than they otherwise might, but they couldn’t shoot a wand or throw a punch nearly as straight as sober men.

“Well, I’m tellin’ you now,” the big man retorted, fixing his eyes on Joe’s. “Move it.”

“Let’s not do this, gentlemen,” Joe said calmly. “C’mon, let us buy you a round.”

“You hard of hearin’, boy?” the man thundered, sneering down at him. “Get yer fancy-dressed ass up outta my seat, an’ get the fuck outta my bar!”

“Watch your language,” Joe said coldly. “There are ladies present.”

“The fuck you just say to me?!”

“Omnu’s balls,” Weaver said dryly, “are you shambling inbreds drunk? As I was just mentioning to this degenerate little trouser goblin, it’s not even noon.”

“You asked for it, asshole,” the ringleader declared, taking a slightly unsteady step forward and raising his fists.

Two seconds later, he was stumbling backward with pinpoint holes burned through both his feet, his wands falling to the floor from his severed belt, and Joe was upright, weapons raised.

“Now then,” Joe said reasonably, as the burly man’s compatriots caught him. He sagged in their arms, looking stupefied and apparently uncertain why his feet weren’t working properly. “As I said, boys, let’s not go through this. It’s cliché an’ of no profit to anybody. Y’all just go back to your game, an’ your next round’s on me. Fair?”

The big man gaped at him, remarkably like an unwashed fish with an unflattering mustache. He finally got a semblance of balance, leaning against one of his friends. For just a moment, Joe dared to hope that would be the end of it.

“Get ’em!” another man roared, and the rest surged forward, fists upraised. Quite incidentally, they dropped their erstwhile leader to the ground in their rush to storm the table.

There were a few very uncertain seconds in which Joe was tested to his limits; he was out of his element at close range, especially with a bunch of larger individuals rushing him. The sound that Weaver produced from his flute threw all of them way off balance, however, allies and enemies alike, but while the five remaining local boys were sent reeling away, Joe managed to keep his feet. His innate sense of balance was giving him flawed information, so he ignored it, extrapolating from the numbers his eyes were feeding him. Not perfect, but it kept him upright and shooting despite the dizziness. It helped a great deal that, unlike his assailants, he was sober.

Weaver only held that note a few beats, blessedly, by which time Billie had managed to dig something out of her pockets.

Whatever it was sure made a lot of noise.

Two minutes later, they were the only ones still standing.

The brawl had moved into the street without observing such niceties as the door. When the last of the local drunks were laid out on the cracked pavement, it was among the fragments of stone and smoldering wood that had been the front wall of the saloon. One of the swinging doors had been flung clear across the road and now rested on the roof of the Rail station.

“Billie,” Joe said in exasperation, “that was an indoor, close quarters fight. What the h—what were you thinking, throwing explosives?”

“Says the kid who was shooting wands,” Weaver commented.

“Oi, how did I ever end up crewing with such complainers?” the gnome said cheerily. “It’s not like I didn’t throw shielding charms over all of us. C’mon, Joe, don’t argue with results, aye?”

“All the places I’ve been, all the things I’ve done,” Weaver said, “and I think that might just have been the dumbest fight I have ever been in. I mean, c’mon, I’ve been roughed up in nearly every town I visited, but this is the first one where I didn’t do anything to deserve it. If you morons wanted your asses kicked that badly, you could’ve just gone to the nearest Silver Legion barracks and ordered a sandwich.”

“I would advise against that,” Joe cautioned a semi-prone man who was reaching for a holstered wand. At the warning, the fellow cowered back from him, raising his hands in defeat.

“Look alive, chaps,” Billie said more quietly. “We seem to’ve put a dent in our popularity.”

More figures had come out to investigate the noise. An awful lot of them were carrying wands and staves, and at the sight of three out-of-towners standing over six felled locals and the ruins of the central watering hole, many were beginning to scowl and level weapons at the trio.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Joe said, raising his voice, “this is a mite awkward, but it ain’t exactly what it looks like.”

“Be honest, now,” Billie said merrily. “It’s pretty much what it looks like, innit?”

A sharp buzz rose near them, followed by a flicker of blue light that was scarcely visible under the bright morning sun, and McGraw abruptly materialized.

“Yup,” he said fatalistically. “Never fails. When I can’t find you three, all I gotta do is listen for explosions.”

“That’s not entirely fair,” Joe protested.

“It’s pretty fair,” Weaver disagreed.

“You!” the big man from earlier bellowed. He had limped out of the remains of the saloon and was clutching one of the support posts out front, which was currently listing slightly and no longer supporting anything. With his free hand, he pointed unsteadily at McGraw. “I shoulda known these assholes were with you!”

“You probably should’ve, yes,” McGraw commented. He subtly raised his voice, turning to address the gathering (and increasingly angry) crowd as much as the man. “Congratulations, Coulter. You managed to pick a fight with Gravestone Weaver, Tinker Billie and the Sarasio Kid. I’m pretty sure that makes you the dumbest son of a bitch on the frontier. The bards will sing of your legend for years to come.”

“Oh, I will make damn certain they do,” Weaver said, grinning unpleasantly.

At the introductions, the crowd’s tone changed; they began to pull back uncertainly, and most of the weapons present were suddenly pointed skyward or at the ground. Coulter, gaping at his erstwhile opponents, forgot to keep himself braced upright and tumbled face-first into the street. With a defeated groan, the post toppled onto his back.

Hoofbeats pounded the pavement and the crowd drew back further as a pair of riders approached at a quick canter, coming to a stop close enough that Joe and Weaver reflexively backed away from the horses. The man in the lead, astride a black mare, had a wand in his hand and a silver gryphon badge pinned to his vest.

“Damn it, McGraw,” he shouted, “what did I clearly tell you? Did I stutter? Do I need to put it in writing? What part of ‘don’t cause trouble’ was so goddamn difficult to understand?”

“Now, Sheriff, let’s not go jumpin’ to conclusions,” McGraw said reasonably. “I only just got here myself. These folk are friends o’ mine, and it ain’t in their nature to go pickin’ fights.”

“Ain’t that Coulter ass-up in the street, there?” the fellow behind the Sheriff said, lifting the brim of his hat to get a better look.

“Coulter started it!” April said shrilly from the gap where the front of the saloon had been. “Jus’ walked up an plumb took a swing, outta nowhere! When’re you gonna send him off to real prison, Sheriff? Every time you toss ‘im in that jail, he just comes back out meaner and dumber, an’ I don’t see you gettin’ yer butt pinched every day over it!”

“Well, that’s a story I’ve no trouble believing,” the sheriff growled. “You got anything to say for yourself, Coulter?”

The big fellow groaned, twitching feebly under the fallen post.

“He okay?” the younger man asked, glancing at Weaver. “Mebbe I oughta fetch Bones…”

“You do that, Slim,” the sheriff said grimly. “Have him meet us at the jail, because that is exactly where these idjits are goin’.”

“Great,” said Weaver. “We all done here, then? Can we go?”

“You just hold your horses,” the lawman ordered. “I’m perfectly willin’ to believe Coulter an’ his boys started this hoedown, especially with Miss Moseley there backin’ you up. But I also know these boys brawl with fists, not wands, and they ain’t even packin’ whatever ordnance did this. So unless someone comes forward to testify that wall drew on you first, you’re all comin’ down to the office for a chat.”

“Pardon me, Sheriff,” Joe said politely. “My name’s—”

“I know damn well who you are, boy, I got ears,” the sheriff retorted, staring down at him. “An’ I also know I’m not about to haul the four o’ you off anywhere you don’t choose to go. However, I think you are gonna choose to come along politely. Not because Saul Decker’s askin’ you to, but because of this.” He tapped his badge with the tip of his wand; Joe just barely suppressed a spontaneous lecture about wand safety. “This means if you refuse to respect the law in my town, you are instigatin’ a long-term shootin’ match with powers against which you will not prevail, an’ I think you all know it. Honestly, you morons, look around you.” He jerked his head in the direction of the smashed storefront. “Does this look like a town where folks can afford to fix shit like this? Are you proud of yourselves?”

Weaver just raised an eyebrow sardonically, but Joe had to gulp down a physical surge of guilt, and even Billie looked abashed.

Decker sighed and shook his head. “Sam, grab a couple volunteers and help the boys get safe to the jail. The rest of you, follow me. Now.”

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“But why dragons?” Merry demanded as they marched. “This is not what we’ve been training for! Damn it, if we’ve been busting all our butts for nothing…”

“You know, I think I had almost exactly this conversation with the Captain, only reversed,” Principia replied, glancing back at her. “Want to know what she said?”

Merry hesitated, then scowled. “That’s a trap, isn’t it.”

“There, see?” Prin said, grinning. “You’re learning. We’ll make a sly operator of you yet, Lang.”

“In all seriousness, though,” Farah piped up, “these orders…”

“Are orders,” Principia said firmly. “We can handle this assignment, and we will. Come on, ladies, we’ve dealt with orders specifically designed to break us. This is going to be more interesting than we’d like, yes, but it’s a real job, and it has a purpose. We’ll do it and do it well.”

“Sarge is right,” Ephanie added. “This is what Avei needs of us. Succeed or fail, there’s honor in the doing.”

“We will not consider ‘fail’ as a pertinent option,” Principia said. “All right, squad, pipe down. We’re approaching range of the Bishop, and I want her to see training and professionalism from us, and nothing else. Forward march, double time.”

They fell silent as ordered, falling smoothly into step. It was a little unusual to be quick-marching through the halls of the temple, but they were Legionnaires in uniform and it was the central bastion of Avei’s influence in Tiraas; no one attempted to interfere with them. The walk was relatively quick, anyway, and within another five minutes they had reached Bishop Shahai’s office.

It was one of the temple complex’s more idiosyncratic rooms, a small chamber four times as long as it was wide and lined with bookcases. Before a remodeling that resulted in the addition of a new wing to the temple, it had actually been a section of outdoor colonnade. Now, one wall—that which had previously been open—had panes of frosted glass between the remaining columns, giving a full view of the carpeted chamber and its numerous books. Those, too, were leftovers, entirely volumes of which multiple copies already existed in the temple’s library. Until Shahai came along, it had been a public space, its glass doors usually standing open and often serving as a spot for quiet reading, prayer or conversation. She had done nothing to make it her own, even to the point of making no objection to others being in the space. Shahai’s easygoing and humble attitude had already made her far more popular than her predecessor.

Not that the bar was set very high.

She was standing with her back to the entrance when Squad One marched in. Even from behind, she was a distinctive figure, slender and with long ears extending to either side of her pale blonde hair. There were few enough elves in the Sisterhood, and fewer still among the Universal Church’s personnel. The white robe of the Bishop’s office was similar to that worn by priestesses of Avei, though ankle-length rather than ending just below the knee, and with wide, billowing sleeves. Over that was the black tabard of her office with the Church’s silver ankh symbol, and over that she had belted on a sword in addition to the golden eagle pin at her shoulder. In contrast to Bishop Syrinx’s extravagant weapon, it was a plain leaf-bladed short sword doubtless straight from a Silver Legion armory.

“Squad One,” the Bishop said, turning to face them with a thoughtful expression. Nandi Shahai had eyes of a unique pale gray. The color itself was unusual among plains elves; its very light shade was a silver that verged on white under the right light. Those eyes flicked rapidly across them as they saluted. “Hm…five of you. That will make most ceremonial formations awkward… All right, Sergeant Locke, you are to position yourself as my personal aide. The rest of you will arrange yourselves as an honor guard. You know the requisite formations.”

It was not a question, but it required an answer anyway.

“Of course, your Grace,” Principia said crisply.

“You have a question, Private Elwick?” the Bishop asked mildly.

Casey blinked her eyes and glanced at Principia.

“Permission granted to speak freely,” Shahai said with a small smile.

Casey cleared her throat. “Ah, well… I don’t mean to question your decisions, your Grace. I was just wondering how important ceremonial formations are, considering what we’re to guard you against.”

“Your attitude is proper,” Shahai said approvingly. “However, it is also a highly pertinent question. If one dragon were to attack me, soldiers, there is precisely nothing you could do about it except die alongside me. We will be meeting, hopefully, four. This is not a military exercise and you will not think of it as such. It’s a different kind of battle entirely, and in diplomacy, a little pageantry goes a long way. For purposes of this assignment, squad, your bearing and conduct is more immediately germane to mission objectives than your skill in combat. You will keep this in mind and behave accordingly.”

“Yes, ma’am!” they chorused.

“And now Private Lang has a question,” the Bishop said, turning to her.

Merry quickly swallowed down a grimace. “Ah, well, case in point, ma’am. I was just surprised that you knew Elwick by name. And now me.”

“I assure you, ladies, I never enter a situation without knowing as many details and variables as can possibly be arranged,” Shahai said, folding her hands behind her back. “Almost everything about this situation is unknowable. It has no precedent, and while three of these dragons are known figures, they are not exactly familiar to any of us. Be assured, I have researched each of you as fully as the short span of time available to me allowed. Pertaining to that, and to your apparent inability to have a thought without expressing it on your face, you four will keep your helmets on when on duty. Locke, to further visually differentiate yourself from the rest of the squad, leave yours off. In fact, leave it here; I want you to keep a hand free.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I trust, further, that you do not lack facial control. Do you know what is expected of a personal aide?”

“I am familiar with the role, your Grace.”

“Good. I will have little in the way of papers to hold or errands to run; your primary role will be to be visually supportive. And as you are assuredly a practiced actor, I want you to convey the impression that we are old and familiar partners, if possible.”

“Yes, your Grace, I believe I can do that.”

“To that end, while I expect you to cultivate proper decorum, you may speak up and contribute to conversations when you deem it in the best interests of the Sisterhood and the mission. I am trusting both your sense and your loyalty, Locke. It is my opinion based on your records that this is warranted; if I prove mistaken, it will reflect on you in the High Commander’s eyes.”

“Understood, ma’am.”

“The rest of you, however,” Shahai continued, turning her head to address the remainder of the squad, “will keep fully in character as ceremonial guards at all times when we are at the Conclave embassy, among any dragons or their staff, or on duty pertinent to this mission. I want you to keep your eyes and ears open, and I will seek your opinions in private. In front of the dragons, though, you are scenery. Is that clear?”

“Yes, ma’am!” all four replied.

“If addressed by them,” the Bishop said, her stare growing more intent, “or approached at all, you will politely but firmly redirect their attention to me. Trust me, ladies, you do not want a dragon growing more interested in you. They have a tendency to get what they want, and that has a tendency to disrupt one’s life to an astonishing degree. Whatever else these dragons are up do, I cannot conceive that they have come to Tiraas without expecting to acquire some manner of female companionship.”

“I’m not excessively worried about anyone falling head over heels for me, your Grace,” Farah said with a grin.

“Well, there’s Avelea to consider,” Merry said reasonably. “I mean… Dang. Just look at her.”

Ephanie’s cheeks colored slightly behind her helmet, but she did not otherwise react.

“These are immortals,” Shahai said, unamused. “They have lived to see fashions and standards of beauty shift as often as you have seen the seasons change. You are young, healthy, self-confident and strong-willed; there is a universal attractiveness in that. You will do nothing to attract draconic attention to yourself; you will not encourage it if it exists, and will coldly deflect it should it persist. Is that fully understood?”

“Yes, ma’am!” they barked more stiffly.

“A question, your Grace, if I may?” Principia asked politely.

“Of course, Sergeant,” Shahai said, nodding at her.

“I don’t mean to presume; I’m simply trying to get on the same page so I can help with your plans rather than impeding them. By singling out the two elves as obviously dominant members of this delegation, what impression are you trying to send to the dragons?”

“None,” Shahai said, a very faint smile hovering around her mouth. “No impression. In fact, I intend to leave the matter as utterly vague as possible and set them to wondering which of the obvious possibilities is the correct one. Dragons are wise and clever in addition to being powerful; every moment they spend trying to find nonexistent meaning in minutia is a moment they are not spending maneuvering us as they wish.”

Principia permitted herself a smile. “I see. I think, Bishop Shahai, I am going to enjoy working with you.”

“That would, of course, be ideal,” the Bishop said calmly, “but never forget that we are here for duty, not enjoyment. All right, ladies, fall in; it’s time to go pay a visit.”

 

“That was fast,” Darling noted, leading the returning adventurers into the dining room with Price on their heels.

“Yeah, that’s the convenient thing about failure,” Weaver said sourly. “It has a tendency to happen so much faster than success.”

“No sign of Mary at all?”

“Sign, no,” said Billie, “but you were right. She’d been there; Tellwyrn had apparently spent enough time with her lately to grow tired of it. But she’s up an’ fluttered off, and we’ve no idea where to or why.”

“The Professor knows we’re looking, though,” Joe added, “and I think she’ll be helpful if she can. I mean, she’ll point Mary at us if she goes back to Last Rock before coming back here.”

“And,” Weaver added pointedly, “we reached an agreement with regard to the other matter. We now have a prearranged secure place to get rid of the skull. Assuming we can get our hands on the damn thing.”

“That’s one worry down, then,” Darling murmured.

“Where’s McGraw?” Joe asked.

“Got a little antsy, waiting around,” the Bishop replied with a grin. “He went off ahead to Desolation to have a look around.”

“You sent him where?” Joe exclaimed.

“C’mere, have a look,” Darling said, ushering them into the dining room. Flora and Fauna were present, both studying a large map unrolled on the long table. Darling led the group over to this and placed a finger on one labeled dot, the two elves shifting back to make room while the rest crowded around to see, Joe pausing only to tip his hat to the girls. “Desolation is the last stop on the Rail line in the Badlands.”

“I thought it went all the way to the Dwarnskolds,” Billie said. “Isn’t the kingdom of Rodvenheim less hostile t’the Empire than most o’ the rest?”

“Less hostile, yes,” said Darling, nodding while keeping his eyes on the map. “That doesn’t mean they don’t share the traditional dwarven interest in their privacy. The dwarves have a cultural imperative to discourage the kind of melting-pot phenomenon that’s been developing all over the Empire; all sorts of random people having access to their gates doesn’t serve their interests. All right, I actually have further point to make pertaining to that, but first I need to bring you guys up to speed—there’ve been developments in Tiraas while you were out today.”

“Anything good?” Billie asked.

“That remains to be seen,” Darling said, frowning and finally lifting his head to look at them. “Lord Vex briefed me; this is what I was called away for this morning. Today, four dragons landed outside the city.”

“Dragons?” Joe said, his eyebrows shooting upward. “Four?”

“One of each extant color,” the Bishop said, nodding. “They came to announce that the dragons of the Tiraan continent have banded together and formed a government. They are requesting formal recognition and the opening of diplomatic relations.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Weaver said, staring at him.

“The Empire is handling this as slowly as they can, of course,” Darling continued, “but one doesn’t generally say ‘no’ to a dragon. Saying ‘no’ to all the dragons isn’t even on the table. They’ve been granted the use of a small palace that used to belong to some noble, which is already being considered an embassy in all but name. Anyhow, concerning our business, this obviously changes the character of the prophecies.”

“I should damn well think so,” Billie said in awe. “I mean…dragons. The politics o’ this alone… Could that be the chaos the books were goin’ on about?”

Darling shook his head. “The word ‘chaos’ wasn’t used; from the context, it was pretty clearly referring to chaos as a magical phenomenon. And the dragons aren’t necessarily the direct cause of it, but perhaps simply a significant enough event to draw prophecies of their own. This is entirely without precedent in the history of the world. But no, they wouldn’t be dabbling with chaos themselves. As a race, they have better sense.”

“Belosiphon sure didn’t,” Weaver noted.

“As you of all people likely know,” Darling retorted, “it was other dragons who brought him down. That kind of cooperation was rare even then. This… The whole world is changing, right out from under us. I can’t honestly say I still know what I’m sending you into, my friends. I want to raise the prospect of calling this whole thing off, or at least calling a halt until we can find more information, or at least find Mary.”

“Well, now, hang on a tick,” Billie said reasonably. “Even if it’s just chaos… The skull o’ Belosiphon is still out there, aye? An’ if that’s in circulation, it needs to be taken out of it.”

“We also know the Archpope’s other team is active,” Joe added.

“We assumed both of those things,” Darling said, raising a finger. “Our assumptions may not still be valid. The situation is more unpredictable and likely more dangerous than we know.”

“That being the case,” said Weaver, “it sounds to me like McGraw had the right idea. An Eserite once told me if your only available options are probably mistakes, it’s always better to err actively than passively. This seems to me like a good idea to head to the Badlands, get a look around, see if we can find something out and report back. If there’s a chaos artifact loose anywhere in the region, there will damn well be signs of it.”

“I suppose it can’t hurt to look,” Darling said thoughtfully. “…and having said that, I really hope I haven’t just jinxed you. All right, I’m going to trust your judgment on this. Be careful. Kindly don’t attempt anything too assertive until we’ve got more data to work with.”

“If nothin’ else,” Joe noted, “we’ll wanna link up with McGraw, see what he has to say. If I remember my frontier stories, the Badlands are his old stomping ground. The place where he made his legend, in fact. He’s likely still got friends up there.”

“Sounds like a plan t’me!” Billie said cheerfully. “An’ if nothin’ comes of it, we can still come back.”

“More Rail rides,” Weaver grumbled. “Ah, hell with it, too much comfort just makes me soft.”

Darling sighed. “All right, well… Just keep in mind what you’re seeing here, yeah? Desolation is right on the edge of the Badlands; assuming the skull is in that area, it’s not gonna be sitting on a convenient pedestal in town. This is a large stretch of country, and its pretty much the geographic center of nowhere. Your nearest major outposts of civilization are Rodvenheim, Puna Dara and Veilgrad, and none of those are exactly cosmopolitan epicenters. They’re also more than three hundred miles away, each.”

“Are we lookin’ at the same map?” Joe asked, pointing. “Shaathvar is right there.”

“It’s right there across the most impassible mountains on the continent,” Weaver said scornfully. “To get to Shaathvar from the Badlands, you’d have to go back down to Veilgrad and follow the roads up through the Stalrange. There’s a limited number of usable passes.”

“Shaathvar is also the’world’s most ass-backward place with a population o’ more than twenty,” Billie added. “Talkin’ o cosmopolitan epicenters.”

“Before this veers any further off topic,” Darling said firmly, “my point was, if you go adventuring into the Badlands, that’s that. You won’t be getting any more resources or help until you either succeed or quit. So yes, head to Desolation, find McGraw, look around. Please don’t be in a hurry to go haring off. I want everyone to be damn sure of what they’re doing before committing to something like that.”

“Don’t you worry yer pretty li’l head about us, poppet,” Billie said, winking. “We’re professionals.”

“Please don’t call him pretty,” Flora said, grinning.

“He’s vain enough as it is,” Fauna agreed.

Darling gave them an irritated look. “Don’t you two have something to clean?”

“Nope.”

“Not really.”

“Something can be found, if your Grace wishes,” Price offered.

“No, no, let them stay and learn,” he said somewhat gruffly. “That’s what we keep ’em around for, after all. All right, let me clear this out of the way and then we’ll get you guys some dinner.”

“Best we set out as quick as possible,” Billie said, frowning. “Every moment we delay, Khadizroth an’ the Jackal are getting’ ahead of us. Those two arseholes cannot be allowed ta get their ‘ands on the skull.”

“Assuming,” Weaver said, “they’re actually after it…”

“Aye, which we’ll find out by goin’ up there, right?”

“It’s almost dark,” Darling noted. “The Rails aren’t going to running by the time you can get to a station. C’mon, guys, I’m sending you face-first into chaos, conflict and possible death. You can’t reasonably embark until tomorrow morning anyway. Let me offer a little hospitality first, all right?”

“I admit it wouldn’t be amiss,” Joe said, grinning ruefully. “Not that I don’t take your point, Billie, but he’s right. We ain’t walkin’ to Desolation, an’ the Rails only run after dark for Imperial personnel. Might as well spend the night resting up.”

“I’m down for whatever lets me get some sleep before I have to stuff myself into one of those tin-can slingshot piece of crap Rail monstrosities,” Weaver snorted. “Sure, fine, dinner. Thanks for the hospitality, and all. It’ll give us a little more time to plan, anyway.”

“Hooray!” Flora said, beaming. “We never get to have guests!”

 

Later, with no lights outside the window of the parlor except the dim glow of street lamps, the fairy lamps within had been turned down to better allow the fire in the hearth to illuminate the room. It made a pleasing effect, both dimly relaxing and cheery. Darling said in his usual chair, an untouched brandy in his hand, staring into the fire with a dour expression that seemed to defy its best efforts to be uplifting.

With no one left in the house but its occupants, Joe having moved into lodgings of his own following the hellgate crisis, it was still in the evenings, especially when everyone was involved in their own thoughts, as tonight.

“That was really neatly done,” Fauna commented, coming over to sit on the arm of the loveseat near Darling.

“The way you got them to insist on heading out to the Badlands themselves, and think it was their own idea.”

“Very impressive.”

“Don’t just admire,” he said softly, still watching the low flames. “Learn, and be able to reproduce the results.”

A brief quiet fell. The girls sat on either side, watching him without staring, letting the companionable silence stretch out. Finally, Darling sighed softly and leaned forward to set his brandy down on the low table.

“Everything I said to them was true,” he said. “The situation is changed to the point of unknowability, and the only certainty of what I’m sending them into is danger. It’d be one thing if I were still certain we’d find Justinian’s lackeys at work up there… I really don’t have a good feeling about this.”

“But you need boots on the ground,” Flora said. “Weaver was right.”

“For once,” Fauna added with a grin. “Typically, only when he’s quoting Eserites.”

“We’re not going to learn anything by sitting in the city,” Flora continued reasonably. “Justinian’s oracles are still freaking out, and it’s not like there’s intelligence here to be gathered about what’s happening there.”

“All true,” he said, nodding. “But even so, if they were a less capable group of people, I wouldn’t have sent them off like that. There are ethical considerations, girls, always. A little manipulation when it’s useful is one thing; sending good people to risk their lives while I sit in my comfortable warm house is walking a narrow line. On one side of that line is a short road to being exactly the kind of asshole the Thieves’ Guild exists to knock down a peg.” He drew in a long, deep breath and let it out slowly. “As it is… I can’t leave this where it stands. I have got to get them some backup, and some more data to work with. Joe still hasn’t forgiven me for this spring, and honestly I can’t find it in me to blame him. You take care of your people, girls, as much as you do yourself. More, even.”

“You take care of us,” Fauna said softly.

He gave her a small smile. “You’re family—that goes without saying. Other people, though. Anyone useful, or relevant, or just present. Manipulators—which we have to be—run the risk of starting to see everyone as pieces on a chessboard. Always keep your guard up against that. Once you start living that way, you become the enemy. For right now…” He drummed the fingers of both hands against the armrests of his chair. “Goddammit, I am stalled. I’ve got nothing else to give them. Is there any chance you two could find Mary?”

They exchanged a look, then grimaced in unison.

“We’ve…tried, actually,” said Flora.

“None of our own divinations so much as reveal that she even exists.”

“If she were dead or something, we’d be able to tell that.”

“She’s blocking us somehow.”

“Not really surprising. It’s an obvious precaution…”

“And the Crow doesn’t like people sniffing around her business.”

“Which is funny,” Flora added sourly, “since she sure does love to sniff everyone else’s.”

Darling rubbed his chin, again staring into the fire. “And that’s the worst possible area for Eserite backup… Dwarves hate thieves like you wouldn’t believe, the Guild presence in Puna Dara isn’t worth considering. Even if a trustworthy cell were nearby, thieves aren’t necessarily the best people for wilderness work.”

“Plus, they’re all three hundred miles away, or more.”

“But what about that other city, Veilgrad? That’s Imperial, isn’t it?”

“No good,” he said with a wry grin. “Veilgrad is having a werewolf problem at the moment.”

“Werewolves?” Fauna exclaimed, straightening up.

“In the hills around the city,” he said. “It’s come up in security council meetings. They’ve moved a battalion, a strike team and some Intelligence personnel into the city to help keep a lid on things, but as quietly as possible. The Empire doesn’t want word of that getting out. Lycanthropy is contagious enough and scary enough to really spark a panic whenever enough of them gather to form a proper pack.”

“Hm…” Flora stroked her own chin, an unconscious imitation of Darling’s habitual gesture. “Okay… If we can’t get help to them, what if we get them to help?”

“What, now?” he said, blinking at her.

“Well, I mean… Suppose they find Khadizorth and the Jackal and whoever else. It’s likely Justinian has more adventurers working for him, right? What if they could lead them into a trap? Like, in Veilgrad? If it’s full of werewolves and Imps…”

“That’s a trap for everyone,” Fauna pointed out.

“Natural hazards are a trap for whoever doesn’t know they’re there.”

“I like the brainstorming, Flora, but remember, that’s three hundred miles to the south,” Darling said. “Goading someone into a misstep is one thing. You can’t incite a person to chase you that far into that kind of trouble; that’s just giving them time to form a counter-plan.”

“What if…it is just a step, though,” Fauna said thoughtfully. “Remember how they described their fight with Khadizroth? This group knows their way around portal magic. If they could get an enemy through a door they didn’t realize led somewhere else…”

“Like, to Imperials and werewolves,” Flora said, grinning.

“Hm…I could sort of see that working, under the right circumstances,” Darling said, a faint smile growing on his own face. “Still pretty farfetched, but increasingly plausible. I’ll float the notion when they check in. For now, though, I’m still more concerned with finding them some kind of backup. And these dragons raise issues, too.”

“What kind of issues?” Fauna asked.

He sighed heavily. “As you know, we’ve been operating under the assumption that Khadizroth hasn’t spilled your secret to Justinian. He’s clearly working under duress and won’t want to hand the Archpope any useful ammunition. But… A mortal institution gets a dragon on a leash for basically the first time ever, and suddenly the dragons are banding together and demanding to be a presence? No. That is not a coincidence. They know something about Khadizroth’s situation. It’s immediately necessary for us to learn what, because that’ll tell us what they know about you, and what they may want to do about it. Dragons aren’t necessarily interested in headhunters…unless they are.”

“What do you mean, suddenly?” Flora muttered. “That was months ago.”

“Excuse me, I thought I was talking to a couple of elves. To creatures with eternity to plan, putting something this unprecedented together in only a few months is astonishing. Something’s lit a fire under them.”

“How do you know they haven’t been working up to this for years?” Fauna asked.

“Vex had word on that when he brought me up to speed,” Darling said seriously. “Apparently he’s had dragons on his mind a lot for the last few months; they all went off to Sifan and have been talking something over. He hasn’t been able to spy on them, not only because Queen Takamatsu would justifiably take offense at having her guests snooped on, but you just don’t spy on eighteen dragons. But it gives us a time frame for how long they’ve been working on this. Considering who it is, the fact that they put this together so fast…yeah, they know.” He sighed again. “But what do they know? What do they think about it?”

“And…what do we do about it?” Flora asked, frowning worriedly now.

“The coming days are going to be very revelatory, one way or another,” Darling said. “If things go well… Or at least, if they don’t go too badly… There’s a chance I can work this to our advantage. Khadizroth unquestionably brought his fate on himself with his behavior. The Conclave will want him out of the Church’s clutches, but they probably won’t be happy with him, either. Considering that…” He rubbed his chin again, this time with a faint smile playing on his lips. “We just might find allies of the most powerful kind.”

“Or enemies,” Fauna said softly.

Darling nodded, the firelight glinting in his eyes. “This is not going to be boring.”

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9 – 3

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“I dunno, it seems kinda perfect, dunnit?” Billie said cheerfully as they finally approached the gates of the University. “I mean, given what kind a’ school this is an’ who runs it, makes sense you’d have ta put yerself out t’get there. I’m a little disappointed there’s not a labyrinth or somethin’.”

“None of which counters my original point, which is that this is a gratuitous pain in the ass,” Weaver grumbled. “If anything, it proves the point.”

“Oh, c’mon, you just look for reasons to complain. You’ve gotta be used to this, right? You used ta live here!”

“No,” the bard said sourly, “because when I lived here, I damn well stayed on the campus for exactly this reason.”

“Aye, this reason an’ I’m sure the world’s crawlin’ with people who’d love ta put yer head on a pike.”

“Nobody does that, Fallowstone. When was the last time you ever saw a pike? Outside a museum, I mean.”

“We talkin’ polearms or fish?”

“You’re an idiot, you know that?”

Joe wisely kept out of their argument. He actually agreed with Billie’s point—the University’s difficult-to-reach position and the grueling path to it seemed totally appropriate, both for the institution itself and for Tellwyrn. Apart from his general desire not to involve himself in pointless bickering, though, he was a bit shorter of breath than he wanted to admit. Mid-afternoon in early autumn on the Great Plains was not the best time to be climbing mountains, however gentle the slope.

In fact, he was busy mulling over the implications of the fact that his two companions seemed to have plenty of energy to jabber away. Billie was no surprise; gnomes were known for their resilience and durability. Weaver, though, if his claims were true, had spent the last several years sitting in a library. He was barely even sweating. The man was dressed mostly in black.

No one was watching the University’s arched gates, but the campus was far from deserted. Weaver led them to the left, then right, up a wide flight of stairs and onto a gently wandering path bordered by a colonnaded hall on one side and a wide lawn on the other. A young dwarf woman was reading quietly in the shade of the building’s exterior, while three boys were kicking a much-battered leather ball around the lawn, watched by a small gaggle of fellow students.

All this came to an abrupt halt at the arrival of the three visitors.

A thin blond boy with sharp features gasped melodramatically, then began running around in circles like a beheaded chicken, waving his arms and shouting.

“It returns! Repent, sinners, for the beast walks among us once again! The ancient horror is unleashed! Flee for your pathetic lives!”

He suited the words with action, pelting away down the path into a stand of trees, flapping his arms overhead the whole way.

“Hey!” Billie said, grinning hugely and slugging Weaver just above the knee. “Ain’t that sweet, they remember you!”

“Afternoon, Mr. Weaver,” a dark-skinned human boy said mildly. “You remember Chase, of course.”

“Not particularly,” Weaver grunted. “As you were, kids, we’re just passing through.”

“I thought you quit,” said a drow woman with a green-dyed mohawk. Her tone was overtly unfriendly, quite unlike the drow Joe had met in Sarasio last year; he remembered Shaeine as politeness incarnate. Also, this one’s hairstyle was far from flattering, not that he was about to mention it.

“Well, if you thought at all, you’ve made some progress in my absence,” Weaver snorted, stalking off along the path.

“Yeah, sorry ’bout him,” Billie said, waving to the students. “He’s got this condition where he’s a ruddy asshole.”

“We know,” the drow replied flatly.

Joe tipped his hat to her politely in passing, which gained him nothing but a hostile stare, and picked up his pace slightly to catch up with the others.

Weaver, blessedly, had ceased his grousing as they traversed the campus. Billie was too busy staring avidly at everything they passed to try to rekindle their argument, and Joe did likewise. They were watched curiously by students as they passed, and greeted a few times, but no one attempted to interfere with them; the students mostly seemed an affable lot, if more diverse than any group of people Joe had thus far encountered. Humans predominated, of course, but there were representatives from every sentient species he knew of, including one lizardman. Or lizardwoman. It could be hard to tell from a distance.

The place had a weight and a presence that made it seem older than he knew it to be. Greenery was everywhere, a number of the towering trees looking positively ancient, but of course there were ways to grow trees quickly with the proper fae magic. For that matter, many of these species wouldn’t have grown unprompted at this altitude, anyway. Nothing was crumbling or in disrepair—in fact, after Sarasio and even Tiraas, the whole place was absolutely squeaky clean. Still, it looked aged, and he couldn’t put his finger on why. That bothered him a lot more than perhaps it should. Joe lived in a world of calculated variables; he was deeply uncomfortable with vague feelings. The only thing he knew of that gave him vague feelings was witchcraft.

The other thing that struck him about the campus, after they had crossed the entirety of it in less than ten minutes, was its size. When one pictured the mysterious University at Last Rock, perched atop the famous mountain and managed by the legendary Arachne Tellwyrn, the image that came to mind was grand, both in style and in scope. This place was less than half the size of Sarasio, if that.

Of course, that made sense, if every class was as small as the one which had visited his town. They had mentioned that they were the smallest class in the University’s recent history, but even so… Fewer than twenty students a year at a four-year school would make a student body of much less than a hundred individuals. There was only so much space they could possibly use. Indeed, even for its small size, the campus was rambling in design, with a lot of greenery and open spaces.

Weaver led them to the highest of the University’s terraces, which consisted of a broad lawn with buildings arranged around it: a tower surmounted by a huge telescope, a sprawling greenhouse complex, a long structure whose wide plate glass windows revealed a cafeteria within, and the final building perched on the northwest edge of the summit, which was apparently their destination. A bronze plaque set into its outer wall proclaimed it Helion Hall; in design, it rather reminded Joe of an Omnist temple, with its accents of golden marble and domed roof.

He didn’t get much chance to appreciate the décor within, which was similarly striking. Weaver set a sharp pace, and anyway, Joe was increasingly nervous about this meeting the closer they got to their destination.

“Does she know we’re coming?” he asked suddenly, straightening his bolo tie.

Weaver shot him a contemptuous look. “How would she possibly know we’re coming? We went straight to the Rail station from Darling’s. Do you remember a stop at a telescroll office?”

“I’d say there’s no need to snap, but look who I’m talkin’ to,” Billie said amiably. She didn’t seem at all out of sorts despite having to take three steps for each of theirs; at Weaver’s pace, she was actually jogging to keep up. “We’re visitin’ the greatest mage alive, aye? Who can say what she knows?”

“Who can say, indeed,” Weaver muttered. “And yet, he asks me.”

Their path took them up a flight of carpeted stairs and down a wide hall, braced by marble columns and with a long blue rug trimmed in gold running down its center. Weaver made a beeline for an open door about halfway down. He paused at the entrance only to rap his knuckles on the doorframe.

“Hey, Arachne! Busy?”

Joe crowded in after him, only belatedly making certain not to jostle Billie. He was usually more careful about that, considering he could easily kick her over. Well, if not for her impressive reflexes, but those were no excuse to be inconsiderate.

The office was longer than wide, mostly open in the center, and lined with shelves of books and other paraphernalia, as well as a number of clearly magical devices with which he was unfamiliar. Her desk sat along the far end, with broad windows behind.

She was exactly as he remembered, right down to her attire. Well, it wasn’t the same green and brown getup, but her since of style had clearly not varied. People who lived for millennia tended to be creatures of habit. She had been in the process of writing something; Joe noted her preference for old-fashioned parchment and a quill pen. Now, though, she had stilled her hand, peering inquisitively up at them. Those eyes, striking green behind her golden spectacles, had that piercing but not unfriendly aspect he remembered distinctly.

“Well,” Professor Tellwyrn said, raising an eyebrow at Weaver and then giving Joe a little smile, which made his heart thud in a way that reminded him uncomfortably of its recent stabbing. “This is several kinds of unexpected. What brings you back here, Damian? Hello, Joseph. Same goes; I suspect this is an interesting story.”

“Ma’am,” he said, belatedly whipping off his hat and nodding deeply. “Um, sorry to just drop in like this.”

“No bother,” she said mildly, pointedly looking down at Billie.

“Oh, uh, this is—”

“Billie Fallowstone, an’ right pleased to see ya again, Professor!” the gnome chimed, waving enthusiastically.  “I don’t suppose you even recall…”

“Yes, I remember you,” Tellwyrn said, still looking quizzically at them. “Come on in. Is this going to take long? Curious as this visit is, I do have a full schedule…”

“It shouldn’t,” Weaver said, ambling into the room and clearing space for the others. “We’re here on business, Arachne.”

“Whose business?” she asked, staring sharply at him.

“Well,” the bard said with a scowl, “Bishop Darling’s the one who sent us out, but assuming he’s not pulling our legs again, the matter goes well beyond him. We actually have a couple of things to ask you, the first of which is the whereabouts of a missing companion.”

“I highly doubt I have your missing companion,” Tellwyrn said dryly.

“Didn’t expect you would, ma’am,” Joe said, unconsciously turning his hat around and around in his hands. “But the Bishop was under the impression you knew her, and might know where she’d been last. Mary the Crow?”

Tellwyrn suddenly scowled. “Oh. Her. Yes, he’s not wrong in that.”

“Is she here?” Weaver asked.

The Professor finally tucked her quill back into its stand on the desktop. “I’m afraid you’re defeated by your own timing, Damian. In fact, Mary has been here off and on for the last month. This is one of the ‘off’ periods, and quite frankly I was relishing it.”

“Aye, she’s a mite difficult, isn’t she?” Billie said ruminatively.

“I’m a mite difficult,” Tellwyrn said with a scowl. “She is insufferable.”

Joe, who had not had that impression at all, kept his mouth firmly shut.

Weaver sighed heavily. “That’s just typical. Well…shit.”

“Language,” Joe said before he could think better of it. “You’re in a lady’s own office, for heaven’s sake.”

Weaver just turned back to Tellwyrn, jerking a thumb over his shoulder at Joe and making a face.

“Thank you, Joseph, but it has been a very long time since I needed anyone to defend me,” the elf said with a wry little smile.

“My apologies, ma’am.”

The smile grew slightly. “And I thought I asked you not to call me ‘ma’am.’”

“I…” He swallowed heavily, squeezing his hat. “…am regretfully unable to comply…Professor.”

Billie turned to give him a strange look, then peered closely at Tellwyrn.

The Professor herself smiled more broadly, nearly grinning at him outright, before transferring her gaze back to Weaver. “What do you need Mary for, exactly?”

“Well, that pertains to the other matter we came to speak to you about,” he replied. “We’re going off on a mission shortly, and it would be nice to have the Crow along. We expect significant opposition, not to mention the hazards of the thing itself.”

“I’m on tenterhooks,” Tellwyrn said, deadpan.

“Nothing too serious,” Weaver said, grinning and stuffing his hands in his pockets. “We’re just going to recover the skull of Belosiphon the Black. Mind if we bring it back here?”

Tellwyrn blinked once, slowly, then folded her hands on the desk. “I’m sorry, but could I possibly get that in writing? With signatures? I want something to show the next asshat who lectures me about how the Age of Adventures is over.”

“Ha ha, but seriously,” Weaver said. “We’ve no idea what to do with the fucking thing if we do manage to get our hands on it. The whole point is to keep it out of everyone else’s hands. The Church and the Empire can’t be trusted with something like this, and Darling doesn’t want to touch it with a ten-foot pole, which is far and away the most sensible thing he’s said in the whole time I’ve known him. I suggested you, Arachne, with apologies for intruding on your orderly little life.”

“Orderly little life,” she said flatly, reaching over to tap a finger on the document she had been writing. “This is a letter to a Shaathist lodge in the upper Wyrnrange, which has just contacted me to verify details on a correspondence they’ve been carrying on with one of my students. Apparently Chase Masterson has been trying to trade his classmate Natchua to the son of their lodge master as a wife. The asking price is two oxen and a stack of beaver pelts.”

“That is…possibly the most contemptible thing I’ve ever heard,” Joe said, stunned.

Tellwyrn rolled her eyes. “He’s not actually trying to do that. Natchua is a drow with the disposition of a hungover badger at the best of times; this is Chase’s idea of a joke. Of course she will probably try to slit his throat, and now I’ve got a bunch of offended Huntsmen to mollify, and it grates on my nerves that they’re legitimately the wronged party in this. Honestly, I’m running out of ways to punish that boy. He just doesn’t seem to care what anyone does to him. So, no, this is a refreshing change from these damn kids and that damn Crow. Yes, Damian, if you happen to get your hands on that skull I’ll take it off them; I can tuck it away between the planes like the others, and that’ll be that. How flattering that you would think of me.”

“Chase,” said Billie. “Wasn’t that the daft lollipop who went runnin’ across the yard like his bum was full o’ bees when we showed up?”

“Sounds about right,” Tellwyrn said, scowling. “Enough about him.”

“You brought him up,” Weaver pointed out.

“Anyway,” she said more loudly, “while taking a chaos artifact out of circulation is a worthwhile use of my time, I’m afraid I just can’t spare it right now, Damian. In addition to the University I have a rather involved side project, which is what Mary’s been doing here.”

“Oh?” he said. “Any idea when she’ll be back?”

“I don’t even know why she left,” Tellwyrn complained. “Not that I was looking that particular gift horse in the mouth. The woman is terminally unable to explain herself.”

“Completely unlike someone else I know,” Weaver said, grinning.

“Well, she’s a meddler, with her fingers in a dozen pies on a slow day,” the Professor continued. “The upside of that is she takes pains to keep tabs on her various projects. If something this urgent has come up and you’re already involved with the Crow, you can be assured she’ll turn up on her own. Probably sooner than later.”

“I’d hope so,” Billie said. “Hard ta guess what’s more important than the skull of a chaos dragon resurfacing.”

“If that’s actually what’s happened,” Joe pointed out. “The source of our orders has proven himself less than trustworthy, and his source is admittedly vague and confusing.”

“This is all sounding increasingly intriguing,” Tellwyrn said with a small smile. “If you lot don’t hush up I may be forced to evict you out of self-preservation. Much more of this and I’ll be feeling tempted to go haring off myself after adventure. Gods know I could use the change of pace.”

“Well, why not come along?” Joe heard himself say. “With Mary absent, we could sure use the backup! And it’d be great to spend some time with you. Get to know each other, all that.”

Billie was giving him that look again.

“More tempting than you know,” Tellwyrn said dryly. “But I have responsibilities. I’ll tell you what, Joseph: if this turns into a real crisis, which is more than probable considering what you’re mucking about with, come see me again and I’ll reconsider getting involved. After all, I do have to live on this planet. I have an interest in not letting it get demolished.”

“It’s a date, then,” Joe said, grinning. He had to physically repress the urge to smack himself in the face. Now Weaver was also looking at him askance.

Joe cleared his throat; to break the crushing (it seemed to him) silence which had descended, he grasped for the first topic of conversation he could think of. “So, while we’re all here anyway, how’re the gang? The freshmen. Ah, well, sophomores now, I guess. I’d be nice to catch up.”

“There, too, I’m afraid you’ve got bad timing,” Tellwyrn said with a lopsided smile that he couldn’t stop staring at. “They’re away on another trip.”

“Oh? Like Sarasio?”

“Like Sarasio but potentially worse,” she said. “Honestly it’s best not to go into it; sounds like you’ve got plenty to think about already.”

“Besides which,” Weaver said petulantly, “we do not have time for social calls or faffing around with college kids. We have a job, and time is a factor. Well, Arachne, sorry to interrupt your letter-writing; we’ll let you get back to it. Hopefully you’ll be hearing from us soon with an object of unspeakable horror in our possession.”

“Just don’t show it to any of the kids on your way through,” she said, shaking her head.

Weaver nodded curtly and turned to leave, Billie following with a final wave at Tellwyrn. Joe was the last to go, turning away reluctantly.

“Damian,” the Professor said quietly behind them, bringing the whole group to a halt. “I told you before you’d be welcome back here if you need to, and I won’t go back on that. But… If you’ve taken up adventuring again, and considering who you’ve apparently got handing you quests… Well, it’s not hard to figure out what he’s offering you, is it?”

“I know what I’m doing,” Weaver said coldly, his back still to her.

“I’m aware of that,” Tellwyrn replied, her tone calm. “And you also know of recent developments with regard to a certain god, his cult and his new paladin in this town?”

“Right.”

“Well, like I said, you’ve earned a place here and I’ll back you up. Just know that if you keep doing what I think you’re doing, you might make that too complicated to work out in practice.”

Weaver half-turned to look at her sidelong over his shoulder, then smiled. Oddly for him, the expression was calm and held real warmth.

“I do appreciate you looking out for me, Arachne,” he said in a much more gentle tone than his usual one. “Like I said, though. I do know what I’m doing. And if it’s a mistake… Well, there are mistakes that just have to be made. You know?”

“I do indeed,” she said gravely. “Safe travels, Damian.”

“As always,” he replied, nodding again, then turned back and strode out of the office, Billie on his heels.

“And if you find time between adventures, Joseph,” she added as Joe as about to go, “you can visit on your own. I bet the sophomores would be glad to see you again, too.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, grinning broadly. “I absolutely will. That’s a promise.”

“Good.” She gave him a warm smile, and it was all he could do to force himself backward. With a final wave, he ducked back out, only letting out the breath he’d been holding when he was in the hall again.

Weaver was already halfway to the stairs; Billie had waited for him, though. She gave him an unreadable look as he emerged, but fell into step beside him.

“Well, we’re likely to be stuck here for a little while, anyway,” Weaver was grousing up ahead. “The Rail platform in this bumfuck town doesn’t even have a dedicated telescroll tower, so we’ll have to go to the Imperial facility and pay to summon a caravan and redeem our return tickets. No telling how bloody long that’ll take…”

They ignored him, walking on in silence, Joe lost in his thoughts.

Billie didn’t stop him until they were out of the building—not coincidentally, out of the easy range of elvish hearing. She placed a hand on his leg; Joe paused, shaken out of his reverie, and looked quizzically down at her. The gnome’s expression was one of pure concern.

“Joe,” she said gently. “Honey. No.”

Joe flushed, hating his inability to stifle that reaction. It was totally involuntary; no other bodily process seemed to interfere with it. He’d checked.

“C’mon,” he said gruffly. “He’ll leave us behind.”

They set off back through the campus in silence.

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9 – 1

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The Imperial Guard were well familiar with Underminister Darouzheh, which undoubtedly saved his life when he burst in on the Emperor and Empress having a state lunch with the Sifanese ambassador. Indeed, the fact that he was well known around the Imperial Palace was the only reason he could have possibly been permitted to dash pell-mell through its halls the way he apparently had, to judge by his breathless state of near-collapse upon entering.

Instantly, five staves were pointing at him, humming audibly with conjured destruction waiting to be unleashed. More guards moved to cover the windows and doors in case of further intruders, while the currently present Hand of the Emperor placed himself between his liege and the intruder so rapidly he almost appeared to have teleported.

Darouzheh completely ignored all of this.

“Your Majesties,” he gasped, doubling over. His paunchy frame was clearly not designed for the kind of exertion he had just experienced. “Emergency! Dragons!”

With that, he slumped forward, panting so hard he could barely stand. The guards powered down and lowered their weapons, the nearest actually stepping over to gently brace the Underminister lest he collapse entirely. At a flick of the Empress’s fingers, a maid darted forward to pour a carafe of water, which she carried to the gasping bureaucrat.

Sharidan had risen to his feet, gently moving the Hand aside with a touch to his shoulder. Ambassador Fujimatsu finally set down his teacup, studying the scene with admirable calm.

“That,” Eleanora said flatly, “is an unacceptable combination of words.”

 

“Dragons,” Darling said, “and chaos.”

“That’s a bad combination of words,” McGraw noted.

“Don’t I know it,” the Bishop replied, his expression serious. “Unfortunately, that’s not the scary part.”

“How is that not the scary part?” Billie demanded. “Why is there always a scarier part?”

They sat in the comfortable downstairs parlor in the Bishop’s home, Darling in his customary seat at the head of the coffee table, the others around it. No one had yet commented on Mary’s absence from the group, but it was even more palpable than her presence. When she was there, she had a way of quietly deflecting attention from herself.

“This is all I’ve been getting out of the Archpope’s oracular resources for the last week,” Darling continued. “You probably know how it is with oracles—or you may not, Justinian does seem to have a good percentage of them squirreled away. It’s all ‘that from beyond which is not,’ and ‘the titans of two forms,’ and an innumerable throng of vague metaphors to that effect. These things are difficult to read at the best of times; it took me a solid day’s work to suss out the consistent themes. Dragons, and chaos.”

“I think I see what the scary part is,” Joe murmured. “Now, granted, all I know about oracles is from readin’, and most of what I’ve read I suspect is more fictional than it liked to pretend, but any event in which all the oracles shut down and refuse to talk about anything but a coming disaster…”

“Yes,” Darling said, nodding at him. “In fact, that’s more than just common sense. This is a recognized apocalyptic portent.”

“Never staved off an apocalypse,” Billie said thoughtfully. “Bet that’s a feather in the ol’ cap, an’ no mistake.”

“Sounds like a titanic pain in the ass even for those who survive it,” Weaver grunted. “Who else knows about this?”

“And now we come to the complicating factor,” Darling said with a sigh. “Obviously, Justinian knows. There are the other Bishops who have access to his oracles, too; I don’t know how frequently any of them make use of the resource, but if they’ve tried in the last week, they know. None of them have mentioned it to me. What the Empire does or does not know I can’t be sure. I passed the warning on to the Hand of the Emperor with whom I work, and was told that the matter had been foreseen a good long time ago and the Empire has resources in place.” He shrugged.

“Just who are these other Bishops?” Joe asked.

“Don’t worry about that,” Darling said, waving a hand. “Justinian’s the one who demands our attention.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Darling,” Joe replied very evenly, “but we are well past the point of that bein’ an acceptable answer.”

A momentary silence fell, Darling lifting his eyebrows in an expression of mild surprise. Standing by the door, Price shifted her head infinitesimally, focusing her attention on Joe.

“After that stunt you pulled this spring,” the Kid continued, staring at the Bishop, “I am just about done gettin’ the runaround from you. Pardon my pushiness, but when I ask for details, you provide details or I walk out.”

Weaver snorted softly. Billie raised an eyebrow, turning to regard the Bishop expectantly.

“Well,” Darling said with a slight smile. “Upon reflection, I really don’t have any counter to that, do I? Fair enough. Not that I think it’s any concern of yours and I am possibly risking clerical censure by sharing the details, but the Bishops of Avei, Shaath and Izara also have access to the Church’s hidden oracles.”

“That,” McGraw mused, “is a right peculiar assortment.”

“Bishop Syrinx has been off in Viridill on some Avenist business for the last few weeks,” Darling continued, “and I dismiss Varanus and Snowe from consideration because I’ve had indication several times before that both are fully behind his Holiness in whatever he chooses to do. Anyhow, this leads us back to the problem at hand, and what we intend to do about it.”

“Dragons and chaos,” Billie mused, kicking her legs idly. Sitting on the edge of the loveseat as she was, her feet didn’t nearly reach the floor. “Well, it does bring to mind an obvious answer, dunnit? Shame that’s almost certainly an ol’ wives’ tale.”

“Y’mean Belosiphon?” McGraw replied. “Or however you pronounce it.”

“You said it correctly,” Weaver said, rolling his eyes. “Which is kind of impressive when it comes to any dragon’s name. Tell me, Elias, does this ‘confused old man’ act usually succeed in deflecting suspicion?”

“Sorry, sonny,” McGraw said innocently, tugging his earlobe. “You’ll have to speak up, I’m a mite deaf on this side.”

“Yeah, well, point being,” Billie said with a grin, “we’re talkin’ about a legend from the time of the Elder Gods. You’re a bard, Damian, you know as well as I that any tale from that long ago’s not gonna have more’n a smidge of fact in its lineage.”

“Don’t use my first name,” Weaver growled.

“Yes, quite so,” Darling said, nodding seriously. “It’s inconceivable that there could really have been a chaos dragon, and the story is so old and from a time of such confusion that it’s just not sensible to give it any credence. So, imagine my surprise when I learned that the Church has specific records of Belosiphon, and knows roughly where his skull is buried.”

“Typical,” Joe muttered.

“Are you rubbin’ me ankles?” Billie demanded.

“I…have no idea,” Darling said, blinking.

Weaver shrugged. “Doesn’t particularly surprise me. One of the gods is chaos-tainted; why not a dragon? If anything, the odd thing is how no dragons since have ended up that way.”

“Nothin’ odd about that,” McGraw said. “Dragons tend to be wiser sorts than the average run of mortals, even before they’ve lived a few thousand years. Takes somebody exceptionally stupid to meddle with the powers of chaos.”

“Which is precisely the issue,” Darling said firmly. “Everytime a significant chaos artifact has surfaced, some imbecile made a good effort at seizing and using it. You being adventurers, I’m sure you know most of those stories, and how they ended. With the oracles giving warning, we can make two solid assumptions: at the intersection of ‘dragons’ and ‘chaos’ is Belosiphon the Black, and action has to be taken to prevent someone from meddling with his skull. It’s in the northernmost region of Upper Stalwar Province. That’s right about where the plains meet the desert in a particularly unappetizing little corner of flat scrubland, just below the foothills where the Dwarnskolds and the Stalrange intersect.”

“I’ve been there,” McGraw said, nodding. “The Badlands. Beautiful country, if you don’t have to live in it.”

“There’s actually a place called the Badlands?” Weaver said scornfully.

“Aye,” Billie replied with a grin. “After tryin’ to keep their butts alive in it, the residents were too worn out to think of anythin’ more poetic.”

“Here’s where it gets even more interesting,” Darling continued, his expression grim. “I’ve been rooting around in every official record I could find, both Church and Imperial. The actual location of Belosiphon’s skull is not known, merely the general region, but there are hints that more precise records do exist. It is worth mentioning, here, that I do not have access to all of Justinian’s hidden archives. Second, the Empire has almost no presence in the area. Third, this is mining country. Silver, copper, turquoise and coal. It was hit almost as hard as the dwarven kingdoms by the Narisian treaty and all those shipments of free Underworld ore, but people do still dig there. And prospect.”

“What better way to stumble across buried horrors,” Joe murmured, staring at the table.

“Justinian has not mentioned anything about it to me,” Darling continued, “nor I to him. He surely would have…unless this is to be another act in our ongoing cold war of misinformation.”

“And if he had the same idea you did,” McGraw said, frowning, “who better to send after something like this than adventurers?”

“Which means,” Weaver growled, “Khadizroth and the Jackal. And whoever else he’s rounded up.”

“Peachy!” Billie said, grinning psychotically and cracking her knuckles. “I have been just itchin’ fer another crack at those two assholes.”

“Not to be a wet blanket,” said Joe, “but we fought them to a bare stalemate last time, and that was with the aid of our most powerful member, who is not even here.”

A glum silence descended upon the room.

“Justinian’s silence on the matter does strongly indicate to me that he is going to use his adventurers,” Darling said gravely. “There are things he keeps from me, but he had to know I would discover what the oracles were doing. This is the only topic on which we remain mutually silent, both knowing that we both know what’s going on. So yes, what we are talking about here is sending you off to contend with the dragon and the assassin, not to mention whoever else—because I haven’t a clue who else he might have found—with the quest for an artifact of unspeakable danger as the backdrop and battlefield. I’ve gotta level with you, folks: this is above and beyond the call. If you don’t want to go, I’ll not hold you in violation of our agreement. I will still be at work getting your answers, though I’m afraid that has to wait until the oracles start speaking again.”

“Hell with that,” Billie snorted. “We’re in. Let’s skip the part where we all go ’round the table and agree—you all know damn well you all want your payback, fer a variety o’ reasons. But Joe’s got the right of it. We need to find Mary. Anybody got a clue where she is?”

“All I know,” Darling said, “is that another elf came here looking for her a few weeks back.”

“Who?” Joe asked.

“Nobody I knew,” Darling said with a shrug. “She was sent by Professor Tellwyrn, though. Elder Sheyann, I think her name was.”

“Tellwyrn?” Weaver said, narrowing his eyes.

“Did you say Sheyann?” Joe exclaimed.

“Ah, yes, I did,” Darling said, looking at him oddly. “Don’t tell me you know her.”

“Well, I don’t so much know her, but you don’t grow up in Sarasio without hearing the name. She’s the most senior of the Elders in the nearby grove.”

“Huh,” Darling mused. “Well. That gives us two places to start looking for Mary: Sarasio and Last Rock. Because, to be frank, we have a good bit of preparatory work to do before setting off on this particular adventure. Quite apart from the need to catch the Crow, there’s the question of what to do with the skull of Belosiphon itself. Pretty much the only certainty is that Justinian cannot be allowed to get his grabbers on it.”

“We could hand it over to the Empire?” Joe suggested.

“Assuming we can even handle something like that,” Weaver said. “Chaos is not healthy to be around.”

“Also,” Darling said firmly, “with all respect to his Majesty’s government, it is a government. I will sleep better it it does not get its hands on this slice of unimaginable destructive power. And I sure as hell don’t want the thing. I have to admit I’m against a wall here, my friends. This is outside the purview of either a thief or a priest. How do you dispose of a chaos artifact?”

“Destroy it,” said Joe.

“Very bad idea,” McGraw said emphatically. “You destroy a thing like that, and what you’re left with is pieces of said thing. Do your job well, reduce it to dust and smoke, and it disseminates into the air, the ground, the water, tainting the whole region for… Who knows? Centuries, millennia, maybe forever. Or you may get bigger pieces, which sure as the tides will get strewn to the four corners of the earth to work a thousand smaller mischiefs until some giftedly sinister idjit goes on an epic quest to gather ’em all up and ruin everyone’s day.”

“Okay,” Joe said slowly. “So, no destroying. That was my last idea. Sorry.”

“It’s simple enough,” said Weaver. “We’ll take it to Arachne.”

They all stared at him.

“Are you quintessentially outta your gourd?” Billie demanded. “Of all the people who does not need to get her hands on a chaos artifact—”

“I’m talking about the only person who probably should,” Weaver shot back. “Let’s face it, by any standard you could choose to apply, Arachne is a giant bitch.”

“Now, see here,” Joe began, scowling.

“For that reason,” Weaver continued loudly, “she doesn’t get nearly enough credit. Most of the world has no idea how many times she’s rescued it from the brink. With regard to chaos artifacts in particular, she’s already got two. Arachne Tellwyrn owns the Book of Chaos and the Mask of Calomnar. She’s got them both tucked away in a sealed pocket dimension where nobody can get at them and they can’t affect the mortal plane. In fact, she found the Book of Chaos twice, and made this particular setup after someone dug it up from its first hiding place. She has the sense not to meddle with chaos and the power to secure it. It’s simple. We take the skull to Arachne, and neither the Church nor the Empire nor anybody else will ever see the damn thing again.”

“Well,” McGraw mused, “that sounds like a workable solution, indeed, if you don’t pause to consider how irate the lady will be to have a thing like that dropped on her doorstep.”

“Omnu’s balls, we’re not gonna just drop it at the University,” Weaver said scathingly. “Arachne’s one of our leads in tracking down Mary anyway, right? So we go to Last Rock, ask if she’s seen the Crow and tell her what’s up so she knows to prepare a place for Belosiphon’s skull. She might even help retrieve it.”

“Tellwyrn is not going to cross the Church’s agents directly,” Darling said, frowning. “Her carefully protected neutrality wouldn’t survive that; she won’t risk her students’ safety by dragging the University into world politics. For that reason, we will tell her the whole situation, so she doesn’t accidentally stumble into that, blame us for tricking her and blast us all to ashes.”

“I like this plan,” Billie said brightly. “Anything that ends with me not gettin’ blasted to ash is aces in my book!”

“I’ll have to sit that stretch of it out,” McGraw said with a rueful grin. “I’m already on record as getting’ the ash treatment if I show my face in Last Rock.”

“What’d you do?” Joe said, frowning.

“Well, it’s a long—”

The old wizard broke off suddenly, grabbing his staff and half-rising. Joe bounded to his feet in the same moment. Price, by the door, suddenly zipped across the room to hover protectively over Darling’s shoulder.

“What?” the Bishop demanded, looking around at them. “What’s going on?”

“Someone has just teleported into the house, your Grace,” Price said in a low voice.

Weaver also got to his feet, scowling and placing a hand on his holstered wand. Billie stood up on the loveseat, tucking both hands into pouches at her belt.

There came a sharp knock at the closed door of the parlor.

Darling raised his eyebrows. “Come in?”

The door opened, and a young woman in Army uniform stepped in and saluted. Her insignia had a blue eye behind the standard Imperial gryphon, the mark of a Tiraan battlemage.

“Pardon the interruption, your Grace,” she said in a clipped tone. “Your presence is urgently requested at the Palace by Lord Vex.”

“What’s going on?” Darling demanded, rising.

The mage glanced briefly but pointedly around the group. “My orders are to teleport you to the Palace, your Grace,” she said in a level tone. “I’m sure you will be fully briefed once there.”

“Ominous,” Weaver said.

“Well, my friends, I guess we’ll have to continue this conversation later,” said Darling, stepping carefully around McGraw and toward the Army mage. “In fact, though… Given the time frame involved, please go ahead and pursue the avenue we were just discussing. We’ll regroup tomorrow, or whenever you get back, hopefully all with more information. All right, Lieutenant, I’m all yours. Let’s go see what’s so urgent, shall we?”

 

“We’re receiving up-to-the-minute reports via telescroll,” General Panissar said. “Based on their flight path, this gate seems the most probable point of arrival. They are unmistakably making for Tiraas.”

“What can you tell me about the path they have taken, General?” the Lady asked.

“Oddly meandering,” Panissar said with a frown. “We are tentatively not considering this an attack. Dragons can be upon you from miles away before you know they’re even in the province, if that’s what they want. These four have been gliding all the way from north of Calderaas, tracking back and forth as if to deliberately waste time. Lord Vex is of the opinion that they want to be seen, to give us time to prepare.”

“Lord Vex is correct,” she replied, nodding. Lady Asfaneh Shavayad was a stately woman in her middle years, and apparently the leading expert on dragons in the Imperial Diplomatic Corps. That was the only explanation Panissar had been given as to why she was in command of this operation. Standing calmly in the main gate to the fortified border town, which she had insisted would remain open, she glanced around at the assembled soldiers, clearly considering them even as she continued to speak. “This is their custom when approaching one another, as well. It is a sign that they come in peace, seeking to talk.”

“Odd that they’ve never wanted to talk before,” Panissar growled.

“Indeed,” said Lady Asfaneh. “This is unprecedented for several reasons. Dragons are famously solitary creatures, and when they do associate, they markedly prefer the company of those of their own color. Are you certain of your intelligence regarding this group’s composition?”

“As certain as I was the last time you asked,” he grunted, choosing not to react to the amused look she gave him. “Red, gold, green and blue, one of each.”

“Very well,” she said, folding her hands in front of her, still a picture of serenity. “We shall see soon enough what they want. Are the tower artillery emplacements positioned as I said?”

Panissar nodded, his own expression not lightening. “With all due respect, Lady Asfaneh, I do not see the wisdom in disarming ourselves with a threat of this magnitude approaching.”

“It is symbolic,” she said calmly. “In any case, your mag cannons would not be useful against dragons.”

“We’ve brought down a dragon before with a mag cannon.”

“I am very familiar with the accounts of that incident, General, and I’m sure you are aware that it was quite possibly the luckiest shot in all of recorded history. If this does come to violence, the strike teams will be our best hope by far.” She nodded at the six teams which had assembled in the avenue behind them. “The presence of these armed soldiers is a show of our strength; they will not begrudge us that, and in fact will likely respect it. Aiming our largest and most visibly powerful weapons at them, however, is a provocation. Keep them pointed at the sky and their operators visibly absent from the controls. We must hope that violence does not occur. No one has ever fought off four dragons.”

“You don’t need to tell me that,” he said quietly.

There came a faint buzzing noise, followed by a sharp pop, and an Army battlemage materialized beside them, saluting. “General Panissar! Newest report from Madouris on the dragons’ approach. ETA less than five minutes.”

“Thank you, soldier,” Panissar said, nodding to him. “Colonel Ontambe! Is the area cleared of civilians?”

“Evacuation just completed, sir,” the Colonel replied, saluting as he strode up to them. “The last of the town’s residents have been moved into the city. Only military and diplomatic personnel are left here.”

“Then we wait,” Lady Asfaneh whispered, eyes on the horizon to the north.

For all that it was possibly the tensest seconds of their lives, it was considerably less than five minutes. The assembled soldiers stiffened further, even Panissar drawing in a sharp breath, as the four massive forms suddenly appeared in the sky above the northern foothills, gliding around in a wide arc as if to survey the city from a distance as they passed.

“Well,” he murmured, eyes glued to the four titans, “I suppose they could be just passing by…”

This time, Lady Asfaneh didn’t even spare him a glance.

They were not just passing by. The dragons wheeled all the way around, pumping their wings as they descended to the flat ground on the outskirts of the border town. This was the widest stretch of highway in the region, close as it was to the gates of the city itself, but there was not room for even two of them to land side-by-side. They settled to the earth in a formation that nearly rivaled the fortress itself in size.

“Gods be good,” Colonel Ontambe whispered. “Four of them. One of each.”

“Report to rear command, soldier,” Panissar said quietly. “You’ll lead his Majesty’s army if I fall.”

Ontambe, he reflected as the man saluted and strode off, was too old and too seasoned a soldier to publicly lose composure like that, but considering the circumstances, he was inclined to be somewhat lenient.

It was all Panissar could do not to take a step backward as the four dragons approached them on foot. Beside him, Lady Asfaneh’s composure remained totally uncracked.

Fortunately, they shifted as they neared. They were still an impressive sight in their human-sized forms, and not merely because of the palpable aura of majesty that emanated from them. Panissar had never met a dragon before, but he’d been briefed on this effect and steeled himself against it; these creatures were powerful beings, nothing more, and did not deserve the awe he felt welling up in him. At least they were marginally less terrifying this way.

In the lead by half a step came the gold dragon, dressed in golden armor and with a two-handed sword as long as Panissar was tall slung on his back. The blue wore robes more elaborately decorated than what the ladies of the court wore to formal balls. His cobalt hair was as exquisitely coiffed, too, and his fingers glittered with jewelry. The other two were less over-the-top; the green dressed simply in wood elf fashion, with a blousy-sleeved green shirt and soft leather vest, trousers and moccasins. The red dragon looked like he belonged on the cover of one of the tawdry novels Marie pretended not to enjoy, with his improbably tight pants and ruffled shirt unlaced down to his navel, both black.

They came to a stop a few yards distant, and then to the General’s astonishment, all four bowed deeply.

“Good day,” said the gold dragon, straightening up. “We apologize for so abruptly intruding upon you, but there is a lack of standing traditions for making such an approach as this. I am Ampophrenon the Gold. With me are Zanzayed the Blue, Razzavinax the Red, and Varsinostro the Green. We most humbly request an audience with his Imperial Majesty Sharidan Julios Adolphus Tirasian.”

“Greetings, exalted ones, and welcome to Tiraas,” Lady Asfaneh replied, executing a deep and flawless curtsy. A half-second belatedly, Panissar bowed from the waist. “I am the Lady Asfaneh of House Shavayad, and it is my honor to be the Emperor’s servant in the diplomatic arts. With me is General Toman Panissar, who commands the Empire’s armies. What brings you to seek our Emperor’s ear?”

“We will discuss that with his Majesty,” Ampophrenon said, as calmly as ever.

The blue dragon cleared his throat. “Do you remember, Puff, when you asked me to warn you if you were being overbearing?”

The gold tightened his lips, half-turning to stare at his companion. “It was my assumption you would do so in private, Zanzayed.”

“Yes, and your proclivity for these assumptions is half the problem,” the blue said with a irrepressible smile. “Considering our aims here, it does these people good to see us as individuals with flaws. Such as, for example, a lack of social skills. Be nice to the Lady Shavayad, please. She can’t just bring four giant avatars of destruction into the Emperor’s presence without something to go on.”

“My companions speak truth,” Razzavinax added, smiling. Considering that he was a red dragon, he oddly seemed the most personable and at ease of the four. “Simply put, dear lady and honored general, we have come to announce the formation of our government.”

“Your…government?” Finally, Lady Asfaneh’s composure flickered for a moment.

“Indeed,” Ampophrenon said solemnly, returning the full weight of his attention to her. “No longer will we be as individuals, alone before the world. We stand together, as do your own races. We have come here, today, to be counted among the nations of the earth. The Conclave seeks now to open formal diplomatic relations with the Tiraan Empire.”

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“Behind you!”

“I saw it!”

Wandshots cracked through the falling snow; a katzil demon squawked in pain as it was cleaved out of the air. Weaver kept up his fire, taking fragments off the eaves of the building over which the creature had been trying to escape, and then it was lost to sight behind the structure.

Joe was the first around the corner; his boots skidded on the light dusting of snow dancing down the street. Between that and the sharp wind he might have lost his footing, but he was too in tune with his body and environs to overbalance. This was the first he’d seen of the snow actually reaching the ground and staying there; he factored it into his calculations without a conscious thought.

The demon raised its head and hissed at him, an orange glow rising within its mouth. His wandshot pierced its skull before it could spit fire at him, and the katzil flopped back to the ground, thrashed once, and fell still. Immediately, it began to disintegrate into foul-smelling charcoal.

Weaver arrived, wands up, and came a lot closer to slipping than Joe had. He caught himself on a lamppost, however, scowling at the remains of the demon. “Right, good. There’s that one dealt with. Have you seen…”

They both lifted their heads at the distinctive sound of Billie whooping. In the next second, a flare arced into the sky from the next street over. It was quickly caught and blown off-course by the winds, but fizzled out before it could land on anything and start a fire.

Joe and Weaver set off without a word.

They were slowed by an accumulation of trash in the middle of the alley down which they had to travel, but in less than a minute were stepping out the other side, to find two of their party standing back-to-back in the middle of the street. McGraw still held his staff in a wary position, peering around at the rooftops; Billie was sliding something long and metallic into one of her pouches. Five large clumps of charcoal lay in the street around them, crumbling and blowing away. The acrid stink of them was almost painful, even carried off by the wind as quickly as it was.

“There y’are,” the gnome said cheerfully. “Turns out we didn’t need the rescue, but glad to see ye nonetheless. Best not t’get separated.”

“Good thinking,” Joe agreed. “We had to chase after that bird-serpent thingy, though. No tellin’ what havoc it would cause, loose in the city.”

“Not that much,” McGraw said, resting the butt of his staff against the cobblestones and straightening up, apparently satisfied the danger was past. “Katzils rarely attack people unless ordered by a warlock. You can usually tell one’s in the area by scorched rooftops and a sudden absence of rats, cats and small dogs in the neighborhood. Those khankredahgs were a bigger priority,” he added, nodding toward one of his erstwhile targets, by now little more than a black smudge on the pavement. “They do attack people. You see any of those, take ’em out first.”

“Duly noted,” Joe said, nodding.

“You have missed one, nonetheless,” Mary announced, appearing beside them. They hadn’t even heard her approach in bird form this time, what with the shrieking wind, but none of them were startled by her comings and goings anymore. “Above that apartment complex to the west.”

“I just had a wild thought,” Weaver said. “Being that you’re by a wide margin the most powerful person here, it seems like you could be doing a lot more than recon.”

“The key to having power is to know how it is used,” Mary said, unperturbed as always. “I find the most potent way to influence the world is through information. For instance, rather than running around to a side street after the katzil, you can pass through the public house in the base of the building. It has entrances on both sides and is currently unlocked.”

They turned to look at the door toward which she nodded; only the sign labeling it “The Devil’s Deal” revealed it was a pub. The door was shut tight, the windows darkened, its silence in keeping with the crisis in the city, but still somehow even more eerie. Pubs were meant to be places of laughter and vitality.

“You sure?” McGraw asked uncertainly. “Looks buttoned up pretty tight from here,”

“I assure you,” the Crow replied, “I have observed the entrances in use. Time is short.” She ascended toward the roof of the building with a raspy caw, her dark little wings seeming to have no trouble in the wind.

“And there she goes, not through the pub,” Weaver muttered. “I have a personal rule against taking directions from people who don’t follow their own.”

“Obvious, innit?” Billie said cheerfully. “Somethin’ in the pub she wants us to see. If you think the Crow’s out to get us, by all means sit here an’ freeze. Me, I think it’s worth havin’ a look at.”

They started toward the pub’s closed door, McGraw muttering as they went. “I didn’t see a katzil head off in that direction. Reckon there actually is one?”

Joe made no reply. Billie was first to reach the door, but she stepped aside, allowing him to grasp the handle and pull it open.

There was a short entrance hall beyond the door, lined with pegs for coats and stands for heavy overboots, all depressingly empty at the moment. An inert fairy lamp in an old-fashioned wrought iron housing hung overhead, swaying in the breeze admitted by the open door.

They trooped through in single file, weapons at the ready. The hall made a sharp left into the public area, where the group came to an immediate stop.

It looked like it might be a cozy place to have a drink in better times; not large, and with a disproportionately huge hearth along one wall. In addition to the usual tables and benches there were battered old armchairs upholstered in cracked leather arranged in small clusters in the corners. As Mary had said, there was indeed another hall leading from the opposite side of the room, presumably toward the other street. The fireplace was dead and dark, as were the wall sconces. It was not at all dim, however, lit as it was by the glow of the seven alarmed clerics in Universal Church robes who stood huddled in the middle of the room.

The two groups stared at each other in surprise for a silent moment. The priests weren’t armed, at least not visibly, but the glow around them at least partially came from a divine shield covering their party.

“What are you doing out?” a middle-aged woman near the head of the group demanded finally. “There’s a curfew in place!”

“We’re officially deputized for the duration of the crisis,” Joe informed her, holding up the lapel of his coat, to which was pinned the pewter gryphon badge Bishop Darling had given him. “Could ask the same of you.”

“We answer to the Universal Church,” she replied, still studying him warily. “Deputized? How old are you?”

“Collectively, oldern’ the Empire,” Billie said cheerfully. “Look, we can yammer on about who’s entitled to be out, or we could address the more pressin’ matters at hand. There’s demons still on the loose in the street. What’re you doin’ huddled in a dark pub? Could use the help out there.”

An unreadable look made its rounds through the clerics. “We have our orders,” a younger man said cryptically. “If you’re on demon cleanup duty, don’t let us keep you.”

“Now, I might be mistaken,” McGraw drawled, “it wouldn’t be the first time. But ain’t that the insignia of that new summoner corps his Holiness is building? Seems like demons on the loose would be right up your alley.”

“I told you, our orders—” He cut off at a sharp gesture from the older woman.

“Never mind,” she said, speaking to her companions but keeping her eyes on the group standing by the doorway. “This position is clearly compromised anyway, we’ll fall back to the secondary rendezvous. You do what you like,” she added directly to McGraw, “but if you intend to help, keep out of our way.”

They filed rapidly out the other hall exit. In moments, they were gone, and the party stood, listening to the door bang shut behind them. The only sound in the room was the faint sound of wind from without; Weaver had neglected to properly close the door through which they’d come.

“That doesn’t make a lick of sense,” Joe muttered, frowning after the departed clerics. “Holy summoners, hiding in a bar when there’s demons loose in the city?”

“They were not all summoners, holy or otherwise,” Mary remarked. They whirled to find her perched nonchalantly on the edge of the bar. “Did you note the slight divide in their group? Three in one cluster, four in another. Of the four, only one was a priestess. They also included a mage, a witch and a diabolist.”

“…a strike team,” McGraw said, thunking the butt of his staff against the floor. “In the wrong uniform? Well, they’re used for discreet ops often enough.”

Joe’s eyes widened as the equation added up in his head. “…they don’t want the demons un-summoned. They summoned them!”

“Cor,” Billie muttered.

He whirled to look at the group. Billie was frowning in consternation, McGraw in thought. Mary was watching him with the faint smile he associated with a teacher waiting to see if a pupil would understand a lesson. Weaver’s face was uncharacteristically blank.

“We have to tell the Bishop about this,” Joe said urgently. “Which way did he go?”

Weaver heaved a deep sigh. “Kid, this is a pitying expression I’m wearing, in case you failed to interpret it.”

“I told you,” Billie said, scowling. “I said it. That fellow gaining new powers fair makes my hackles rise. Gods only know what he might do with ’em. Not what he told us he was gonna, that much you can bank on.”

Joe’s eyes darted back and forth. “…did you all know about this?”

“Suspected,” McGraw muttered. “Had an inkling. Ain’t exactly the kinda thing one asks one’s powerful employer, though. ‘Scuze me, your Grace, but would you happen to be up to anything especially villainous this evening?’”

Weaver just shrugged.

“We were sent out to, first, attempt to lure the Black Wreath into an ambush, and second, destroy any demons they had unleashed,” Mary said calmly, her eyes fixed on Joe’s. “Ask yourself, why would they unleash demons?”

“They…they’re…the Black Wreath,” he said lamely. “Demons are what they do.”

“You cannot afford to be so naïve, Joseph. The Wreath call up demons only to use them. When they find demons otherwise, they put them down. Aimless summons of uncontrolled demons are less likely to be the work of the Wreath…”

“Than an attempt to lure them out,” Billie finished. “Bloody fuckin’ hell, in the middle of the city!”

“Let me just point out,” Weaver said, “before anybody goes on the warpath, that that was a mixed group of Universal Church and Imperial personnel we just saw, who were probably responsible for the demons loose in this neighborhood, if your theory is correct. It may be satisfying to blame Darling, but even if he could organize something this big, he couldn’t enact it on his own. This must’ve been done at the highest level. Bet you anything he’s not the only Bishop playing a part here.”

“There are many forces at work tonight,” Mary said calmly. “Some at cross purposes, most with more than one agenda. Best not to act in haste.”

“Act?” Billie snorted. “As to that…what’re we s’posed ta do, then? Just go back to killin’ demons like nothin’ else is going on?”

“Few things in life are simple,” said McGraw, “but some things are. If there are demons on the loose in the city, no matter who did it or why, killing ’em is a good use of our time.”

“But is it the best use?” Mary asked with a smile. “Joseph, did you still want to know which way the Bishop went?”

Embras managed one step backward before the front door of the warehouse banged shut, then froze.

“Well,” he said with a sigh, “there we are, of course. The question becomes, then, which of you do I attempt to go through?”

Price raised an eyebrow.

The warlock held out one hand, palm-up. “Young lady, if you would be so kind as to step aside—”

A ball of shadow began to form in his palm, then abruptly exploded; Mogul staggered backward, clutching a burned hand and staring around himself at the piles of crates hemming them in. Several of those nearest were emitting a faint golden light through cracks where the boards did not fit together snugly.

“You’ll want to be careful of that, old fellow,” Sweet said cheerfully, strolling around the corner behind him. The two elves paced silently at his sides, their expressions curious. “Want to know what’s stored in this warehouse, a literal stone’s throw from the Dawnchapel? Why, whatever was lying around! Relics of just all kinds, sacred to a whole smorgasbord of gods, that had been cluttering up the temple where Justinian needed to make space for his own projects. Frankly I’ve not idea what most of ’em even do, but I’ve got a pretty good notion what’ll happen if somebody starts trying to throw around infernal magic in here.”

“Yep,” Embras said, taking two steps to the side and angling himself to keep all of them in view. He stuck his burned hand in one of his coat pockets, tilting his head forward so that the brim of his hat concealed his eyes. Only his grin was visible. “I’ve gotta hand it to you, Antonio, this was mighty fine work. Mighty fine work. How’d you manage to arrange all this? One professional to another.”

“Oh, but that’s the best part,” Sweet said, grinning in return and coming to a stop a few feet from him. “I didn’t arrange this! Nor the mess you encountered in the Dawnchapel. In fact, I did my damnedest to get you to come at me, but I guess that was a little too obvious to get a nibble. No, all this was just here; you just ran afoul of Justinian placing his new toys exactly where you were most likely to trip over ’em in the dark.”

“Well, that’s just irritating,” Embras remarked. “I believe I’m gonna write him a very sternly worded letter.”

“Tell you what I did arrange, though,” Sweet continued, his grin beginning to slowly fade. “You’ve already discovered the Shaathist blessing blocking shadow-jumping over the city, I’m sure. You probably deduced the presence of a lot of Huntsmen rounding up your fellows. Here’s what you don’t yet know: those Huntsmen will be herding the Wreath toward the Rail stations, which are right about now being inundated with the Imperial soldiers who were sent to Calderaas earlier in the day. The Third Silver Legion has been re-sorted into squads off site, one of which will accompany every unit of the Army, with shield-specialized priestesses at the front. No doubt a good few of your warlocks will still manage to use those syringes of theirs when they see what’s waiting for them, but enough of them will be pacified on sight that we stand to take plenty alive.”

“How did you manage that?” Embras asked mildly. “You’re talking about hundreds of people. Thousands, even. I don’t mind admitting I haven’t heard a peep about this, and I’ve got eyes and ears in places you wouldn’t believe.”

“Simple operational control, old man. All of those soldiers and Legionnaires were kept in the dark; they were ordered to respond to the crisis on the frontier, and when they got to Calderaas telescrolled orders sent them right back here. The Huntsmen have been sequestered on rooftops all afternoon, in parties constantly watching each other.”

“Hnh,” Mogul grunted. “At what cost? I do know that hellgate in Last Rock isn’t a feint. Are you really so obsessed with capturing me you let that thing stand open? My people weren’t behind it, nor was my Lady. There is no telling what’s gonna come boiling out.”

“Don’t you worry your pretty little head about that,” Darling said condescendingly. “That’s being taken care of. Worry about the here and now.”

Mogul finally lifted his head, meeting Darling’s eyes. “Take a good look at yourself, Bishop. The bards lie about a lot, but they tell a few solid truths. The man standing over a well-executed trap giving a soliloquy is seldom the hero of the piece.”

“You’re just stalling, now,” Sweet said, stepping forward. Behind him, Flora and Fauna moved to flank. Price held her position, watching with perfect poise. “Obsessed I may be, but I’m not the one with a foot in the snare.”

“Fair enough,” Embras agreed, adjusting his tie. “Well, relics or no relics, I do hope you’re not expecting me to stand here politely while you—”

“Oh, keep it in your pants,” Darling said scornfully. “I didn’t go to all this trouble to kill you. No, I don’t intend to capture you, either.”

“Oh? I confess to some curiosity. That would seem to exhaust all the likely ambitions you might have toward my person.”

“Remember who you’re dealing with,” Darling said grimly, taking slow steps forward. “I am, first and foremost, an Eserite. I brought you here, Embras, to take something from you. Something you’ll be hard pressed to do without. Something you will never get back, until you finally submit yourself to my will.”

He came to a stop finally, with barely a foot separating the two men. Mogul withheld comment, simply staring challengingly into Darling’s eyes.

Suddenly Sweet grinned and swiped his hand across the space between them. Embras reflexively twitched backward, disarranging his hat as the brim thumped against the crates behind him. Grinning madly, Darling held up his fist, with the tip of his thumb poking out from between two fingers.

“Got yer nose!”

Embras gaped at him.

“All right, that’s a wrap,” Sweet said cheerfully, turning around and swaggering back toward the path between the crates. “Pack it up, ladies, we’re out. Embras, old man, you’ll wanna take the first left on the path out the other side, it’ll lead you straight toward the administrative offices. Past the secretary’s desk is the manager’s, and past that is a cleaning closet. Sewer access is in there. You have a good evenin’, now!”

Price caught up as he reached the crates and they stepped out into the shadows side-by-side, leaving the lamp behind. Flora and Fauna, however, hadn’t moved. They were staring after their tutor with expressions very similar to Mogul’s.

“What. The. Hell.”

“Are you ever gonna actually fight this guy?” Fauna demanded shrilly.

“Look, if you just want somebody to play practical jokes with, we can find you a friend.”

“Hell with that, let’s find him a girlfriend. He’s clearly pent up.”

“All the way up to the skull!”

“Girls, girls,” Darling soothed, turning to grin at them. “Not in front of the mark, please. I know exactly what I’m doing, as always. Embras knows, too. Or he will once he’s had time to think it all over. He’s having a stressful night, poor fellow. We’ve got exactly what we came for, now it’s time to go. Chop chop, our guest has a stealthy exit to make. Respect the exit.”

He strolled off again into the shadows. With a last, wary glance at the completely nonplussed Embras Mogul, the girls finally followed him. There really wasn’t anything else for them to do.

“I swear,” Fauna muttered as they wound their way through the dark maze of crates back to the entrance, “if I don’t hear a full explanation of all the aimless running around we’ve done tonight, I’m gonna kill somebody.”

“That would carry a lot more weight if it wasn’t your response to everything,” Darling said cheerfully. “Thank you, Price.”

“Sir,” she said, pulling the door open and stepping aside to hold it while Darling strolled out into the windy streets.

He came to an immediate stop, the glowing tip of a wand inches from his face.

“Evenin’, Joe,” he said mildly. “Something on your mind?”

“Lemme see if I’ve got this straight,” Joe said, glaring at him. “You send all the troops away and have summoners call up demons in the city, creating a crisis only more summoners can fix. And then, when the Black Wreath shows up to help the civilians you’ve put in danger, you land on ’em with Huntsmen and whatever else. That about the shape of it?”

Darling held up a hand at his side; Flora and Fauna halted, having been about to dive past him at the Kid. Behind Joe, the rest of his party stood in a semicircle a good few yards back, dissociating themselves from him with distance.

“You have the aspect of someone who’s just made several assumptions,” Darling said, “and plans to make a few more.”

“I asked you a question.”

“Joe,” Flora warned.

“That’s about the shape of it, yes,” Darling said, nodding. He kept his eyes on Joe’s. “Minus a number of highly significant details.”

“That,” Joe said flatly, “is easily one of the more evil things I’ve ever heard of.” He shifted his grip subtly, the wand’s tip glowing a touch brighter; Flora and Fauna stepped forward once. “And you made me a part of it.”

“Did you see those crocodile-lookin’ things with the gorilla arms?” Darling asked. “Yes? Those are called khankredahgs. One of them killed Bishop Snowe’s servant in her own home a few weeks back. The same night the Wreath attacked us in my house, remember?”

“That has noth—”

“There’s something called the Rite of Silencing,” Darling pressed over him, “it’s what the Wreath does to members who try to betray the group. See, what they do is, they get the traitors in a pit that’s been made into a summoning circle. They’ve bound them beforehand, you see, so they can’t use any magic they possess. And then they call up khankredahgs in the pit with ’em, and the whole cell stands around above and watches them get eaten alive.”

He took a step forward, then another; Joe actually stepped back to avoid jabbing him in the eye with the wand, but did not lower his arm. “And not just the would-be traitor, either,” Darling went on, staring him down. “Anyone deemed close enough to them. Spouses, siblings, children. The exceptions are any children considered too young to be responsible. Those join the onlookers, and get to watch their families being torn apart. These are the people we’re talking about, Joe.”

“What they do has nothing to do with what we do about it,” Joe growled. “If we can’t be better than them, then what’s the point of fighting ’em?”

“I only wish I could tell you how close the Black Wreath was before tonight to overthrowing the Empire,” Darling said. At that Joe’s eyes widened and his hand wavered a fraction. “I can’t, though; the pertinent parts are actually Sealed to the Throne, and most of the rest is merely classified. But yes, Joe, we’ve been walking the knife’s edge for months now. The prospect of an Elilinist government coming to power is a real and extant one even still. This night’s work has broken the Wreath’s spine in Tiraas, but they are not dead, and Elilial certainly isn’t. They’ll be back. They’ll never stop. Have you ever given any thought to what life would be like in a country ruled by the Black Wreath?” He paused for a moment, giving Joe a chance to answer. He didn’t. “I have. And I, and others in the government, the Church and the cults, have had to consider what is appropriate, and what is necessary, to stop that from happening.”

“Appropriate?” Joe all but whispered.

Darling slowly lifted his hand and pushed aside the wand. Joe offered no resistance. “I won’t know for a few days exactly how many people were hurt or killed due to our scheme tonight,” he said quietly. “We’ll probably never have a full accounting of the damage. But this is something that was carefully considered at the highest level. The Emperor, the Empress, the Archpope. Myself, the head of Imperial Intelligence, others. Not one of us are going to sleep well for a good while, if ever. And someday, Joe, when you have had to make a brutally hard choice like that, then you will be in a position to make judgments about those who have. They probably won’t be correct judgments, but you’ll have earned the right to make ’em.” He pursed his lips, and shook his head. “Till then… Grow up.”

Darling turned and walked off up the street. Flora and Fauna paced after him, staring at Joe in passing as he slowly lowered his wand to point at the ground. Price brought up the rear, seeming totally unperturbed.

A small hand touched his leg just above the knee. He looked down to meet Billie’s eyes. She jerked her head significantly at the two elves, then very clearly mouthed “Not now.”

They listened, for a long moment, to the wind, and the sound of distant hunting horns.

“Welp,” McGraw said finally, “I guess we won.”

“What is victory?” Mary mused aloud. “And who are ‘we?’”

“Just in case you were wondering,” Weaver told her, “that inscrutable act of yours isn’t impressive. It’s just annoying.”

“I can live with that,” she said with a smile. “Annoying I may be, but I have achieved exactly what I set out to, tonight. I wonder who else can say the same?”

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The Dawnchapel held so much history and significance that its environs, a small canal-bordered district now filled with shrines and religious charity facilities, had taken on its name. Originally the center of Omnist worship in the city, it had been donated to the Universal Church upon its formation and served as the Church’s central offices until the Grand Cathedral was completed. More recently it had done duty as a training facility and residence for several branches of the Church’s personnel, and currently mostly housed Justinian’s holy summoner program.

It was a typical structure of Omnist design, its main sanctuary a sunken amphitheater housed within a huge circle of towering standing stones, of a golden hue totally unlike the granite on which Tiraas sat, imported all the way from the Dwarnskolds along the northern rim of the continent. Once open to the sun, its sides had long ago been filled in with a more drab, domestic stone, which was later carved into niches that now housed statues of the gods. Its open top had been transformed into a dome of glittering stained glass, one of the architectural treasures of the city. Behind the circular center rose a ziggurat, topped with a sun shrine which had been left as a monument sacred to Omnu in gratitude for the gift of the temple itself. Most of the offices, storage rooms and other chambers were either underground or inside the pyramid.

The circular temple sat on a square plot of land, forcing the furtive warlocks to cross a measure of open territory before they could reach its entrance. They went unchallenged, however, and apparently unnoticed; this part of the city was as eerily silent and empty tonight as the rest. Still, despite the lack of opposition, only Embras Mogul strolled apparently without unease.

Two khankredahgs and two katzils accompanied the party, which had to be momentarily soothed as they crossed onto holy ground. They had been warded and phased against it, of course, but this ground was holier than most, and the demons were not immune to the discomfort. There were two hethelaxi escorting the group, both of whom bore the transition without complaint. That was it for demon thralls, the more volatile sentient companions having been dismissed back to their plane rather than risk the outbursts that would result from bringing them here.

Even peering around for onlookers, they failed to observe the small, faintly luminous blue figure which circled overhead.

Mogul himself laid his hand upon the bronze latch of the temple’s heavy front door and paused for a moment.

“Warded?” Vanessa asked tersely. “Cracking it with any kind of subtlety will take too long… Of course, I gather you want to make a dramatic statement anyway?”

Mogul raised an eyebrow, then turned the latch. It clicked, and the door opened smoothly, its hinges not uttering a squeak.

“There’s overconfident,” Mogul said lightly, “and then there’s Justinian.”

He gestured two gray-robed warlocks to precede him inside, accompanied by one of the katzils and the female hethelax.

The sanctuary was not completely unguarded, but the outcry from within was brief.

“Who are—hel—”

The voice was silenced mid-shout. Mogul leaned around the doorframe, peering within just in time to see the shadows recede from a slumping figure in Universal Church robes, now unconscious. His attention, however, was fixed on the hethelax, who was frowning in puzzlement.

“Mavthrys?” he said quietly. “What is it?”

“It’s gone,” she replied, studying the interior of the sanctuary warily. “The sensation. Not quite un-consecrated, but… Something’s different.” Indeed, the katzil inside had grown noticeably calmer.

“Justinian’s using this place to train summoners,” said Bradshaw. “Obviously it’ll have some protections for demons now.”

“Omnu must be spinning in his grave,” Vanessa noted wryly, earning several chuckles from the warlocks still flanking the entrance outside.

They all tensed at the sudden, not-too-distant sound of a hunting horn.

“What the hell?” one of the cultists muttered.

“Huntsmen,” Embras said curtly, ducking through the doors. “They won’t hunt in the dens of their own allies. Everyone inside, now.”

As they darted into the temple, the spirit hawk above wheeled away, heading toward a different part of the city.

“This is so weird,” Billie muttered for the fourth time. “And I have done some weird shit in my time.”

“Yes, I believe I read of your exploits on the wall of a men’s bathhouse,” Weaver sneered, taking a moment from muttering to his companion.

The gnome shot him an irritated look, but uncharacteristically failed to riposte. They all had that reaction when they glanced at the figure beside him.

In the space between spaces (as Mary had called it), the world was grayed-out and wavering, as if they were seeing it from underwater. The distortion obscured finer details, but for the most part they could see the real world well enough. This one was more dimly lit than the physical Tiraas, but apart from being unable to read the street signs (which for some reason, apart from being blurred, were not in Tanglish when viewed form here), they could navigate perfectly well, and identify the figures of Darling and his two apprentices, and even the little black form of the Crow as she glided from lamp to lamp ahead of them.

None of them had been able to resist looking up at the sky, briefly but long enough to gather an impression of eyes and tentacles belonging to world-sized creatures at unimaginable distances, seen far more clearly than what was right in front of them. Mary had strongly advised against studying them in any detail. No one had felt any inclination to defy the order.

The weirdness accompanying them was far more immediately interesting to the group. She was wavery and washed-out just like the physical world, but here, they could see her. Little of the figure was distinct except that she was tall, a hair taller even than Weaver, garbed entirely in black, and had black wings. She carried a plain, ancient-looking scythe which was as crisply visible as they themselves were, unlike its owner. Weaver had stuck next to his companion, carrying on a whispered dialogue—or what was presumably a dialogue, as no one but he could hear her responses. The rest of the party had let them have their privacy, for a variety of reasons.

The winged figure subtly turned her head, and Joe realized he’d been caught staring. He cleared his throat awkwardly and tipped his hat to her. “Ah, your pardon, ma’am. I didn’t get the chance to thank you properly for the help a while back, in the old apartments. You likely saved me and my friend from a pair of slit throats. Very much obliged.”

The dark, silent harbinger of death waved at him with childlike enthusiasm. It was nearly impossible to distinguish in the pale blur where her face should be, but he was almost certain she was grinning.

“Oddly personable, ain’t she,” McGraw murmured, drawing next to him as Weaver and his friend fell back again, their heads together. “That’ll teach me to think I’m too old to be surprised by life.”

“Tell you what’s unsettling is that,” Billie remarked, stepping in front of them so they couldn’t miss seeing her and pointing ahead. Several yards in front of the group, Darling and the two elves were engaging a group of Black Wreath. Their demon companions were clearly, crisply visible, while the warlocks themselves appeared to glow with sullen, reddish auras. As per their orders, the party was hanging back, allowing the Eserites to handle things on their own until they were called for. In any case, it didn’t seem their help was needed. Darling was glowing brightly, and making very effective use of the chain of white light which now extended from his right hand. As they watched, it lashed out, seemingly with a mind of its own, snaring a katzil demon by its neck and holding the struggling creature in place. In the next moment, a golden circle appeared on the pavement beneath it, and the chain dragged the demon down through it, where it vanished.

“I’ve gotta say, something about that guy equipping himself with new skills and powers doesn’t fill me with a sense of serenity,” Billie mused, watching their patron closely.

“You don’t trust him?” Joe asked. She barked a sarcastic laugh.

“Ain’t exactly about trust,” McGraw noted.

Mary reappeared next to them with her customary suddenness and lack of fanfare. “One can always trust a creature to behave in consistency with its own essential nature. As things stand, Darling is extraordinarily unlikely to betray us.”

“As things stand?” Joe asked, frowning.

The Crow shrugged noncommittally. “Change is the one true constant. In any case, be ready. I believe we will not be called upon to carry out the planned ambush; it likely would have happened already, were it going to. That being the case, we’ll shortly need to return to the material plane and move on to general demon cleanup duty.”

“Fun,” Joe muttered.

“What, y’mean we don’t get to stay and hang out in this creepity-ass hellscape?” Billie said. “Drat. An’ here I was thinkin’ of investing in some real estate.”

Mary raised an eyebrow. “If you would really like to remain, I can—”

“Don’t even feckin’ say it!”

“Hold it, stop,” Sweet ordered. Fauna skidded to a halt on command, turning to scowl at him as a robed figure scampered away down the sidewalk before her.

“He’s escaping!”

“Him and all three of his friends!”

“Let ’em,” he said lightly, peering around at the nearby rooftops with some disappointment. “We were making a spectacle of ourselves, not seriously trying to collar the Wreath. That’s someone else’s job. You notice there are no signs of Church summoners here, despite the presence of the demons they let loose?”

“Everyone’s bugging out?” Fauna asked, frowning. “What’s going on?”

“Seems like ol’ Embras isn’t taking my bait,” Sweet lamented with a heavy sigh. “Ah, well, it was probably too much to hope that he’d do something so ham-fisted. It’s not really in an Elilinist’s nature, after all. Welp, that being the case, onward we go!”

“Go?” Flora asked as he abruptly turned and set off down a side street. “Where now?”

“You know, it would save us a lot of stumbling along asking annoying questions if you’d just explain the damn plan,” Fauna said caustically.

“Probably would,” he agreed, grinning back at them. “But adapting to circumstances as they unfold is all part of your education.”

“Veth’na alaue.”

“You watch it, potty mouth,” he said severely. “I know what that means.”

“Oh, you speak elvish now?” Fauna asked, raising her eyebrows.

“Just enough to cuss properly. It seemed immediately relevant to our relationship.” They both laughed. “Anyhow, just up this street is the bridge to Dawnchapel. We are going to a warehouse facility, uncharacteristically disguised behind the facade of an upscale apartment building so as not to offend the ritzy sensibilities of those who dwell in this very fashionable district. A fancy warehouse, but still a warehouse if you know what to look for, which makes it the perfect spot for what’s coming next.”

“I didn’t realize there were warehouses in Dawnchapel.”

“Just outside Dawnchapel,” he corrected, grinning up ahead into the night. “Along the avenue leading straight out from the less obvious exit from the Dawnchapel sanctuary itself.”

“I don’t know what to hope for,” Fauna muttered, “that this all plays out as you’re planning and we finally get to learn the point of it, or that it doesn’t and you have to eat crow.”

“Well, there was a mental image I could’ve done without,” Flora said, wincing.

“Not that Crow, you ninny. Oh, gods, now I’m seeing it too.”

“Don’t worry your pretty little heads,” he replied. “I know exactly what I’m doing.”

Before any of the obvious responses to that could be uttered, the clear tone of a hunting horn pierced the night.

“Now what?” Flora demanded. “What’s that about?”

“That,” said Sweet, picking up his pace, “is the signal that we are out of time for sightseeing. Step lively, girls, we need to get into position.”

The spectral bird lit on Hawkmaster Vjarst’s gloved hand, and he brought it forward to his face, gazing intently into its eyes. A moment passed in silence, then he nodded, stroking the spirit hawk’s head, and raised his arm. The bird took flight again, joining its brethren now circling above.

“The summoners have retreated to their safehouses,” he announced, turning to face the rest of the men assembled on the rooftop. “Warlocks in Wreath garb are attempting to put down the remaining demons. There is significant incidental damage in the affected areas. No human casualties that my eyes have seen.”

“And the Eserite?” Grandmaster Veisroi asked.

“His quarry has not bitten his lure, but gone to Dawnchapel as he predicted. Darling and his women are moving in that direction. They are now passing through a cluster of demons, and acquitting themselves well.”

“How close?”

“Close.”

Veisroi nodded. “Then all is arranged; it’s time.” The assembled Huntsmen tensed slightly in anticipation as he lifted the run-engraved hunting horn at his side to his lips.

The horn was one of the treasures of their faith, a relic given by the Wolf God himself to his mortal followers, according to legend. Its tone was deep and clear, resounding clearly across the entire city, without being painful to the ears of those standing right at hand.

At its sound, Brother Ingvar nocked the spell-wrapped arrow that had been specially prepared for this night to his bow, raised it, and fired straight upward. The missile burst into blue light as it climbed…and continued to climb, soaring upward to the clouds without beginning to descend toward the city. Similar blue streaks soared upward from rooftop posts all across Tiraas.

Where they touched the clouds, the city’s omnipresent damp cover darkened into ominous thunderheads in the space of seconds. Winds carrying the chill of the Stalrange picked up, roaring across the roofs of the city; Vjarst’s birds spiraled downward, each making brief contact with his runed glove and vanishing. Snow, unthinkable for the time of year, began to fall, whipped into furious eddies by the winds.

The very light changed, Tiraas’s fierce arcane glow taking on the pale tint of moonlight as the blessing of Shaath was laid across the city.

“Brother Andros,” Veisroi ordered, “the device.”

Andros produced the twisted thorn talisman they had previously confiscated from Elilial’s spy in their midst, closed his eyes in concentration, and twisted it. Even in the rising wind, the clicking of the metal thorns echoed among the stilled Huntsmen.

Absolutely nothing happened.

Andros opened his eyes, grinning with satisfaction. “All is as planned, Grandmaster. Until Shaath’s storm abates, shadow-jumping in Tiraas has been blocked.”

“Good,” said Veisroi, grinning in return. With his grizzled mane and beard whipped around him by the winds, he looked wild, fierce, just as a follower of Shaath ought. “Remember, men, your task is to destroy demons as you find them, but only harry the Wreath toward the Rail stations. Yes, I see your impatience, lads. I know you’ve been told this, but it bears repeating. A dead warlock may yield worthy trophies, but he cannot answer questions. We drive them into the trap, nothing more. And now…”

He raised the horn again, his chest swelling with a deeply indrawn breath, and let out a long blast, followed by three short ones, the horn’s notes cutting through the sound of the wind.

Four portal mages were now under medical supervision in the offices of Imperial Intelligence, recuperating from serious cases of mana fatigue from their day’s labors, but they had finished their task on time, as was expected of agents of the Silver Throne. Now, from dozens of rooftops all across the city, answering horns raised the call and spirit wolves burst into being, accompanying the hundreds of Huntsmen of Shaath gathered in Tiraas, nearly every one of them from across the Empire. They began bounding down form their perches, toward lower roofs and the streets, roaring and laughing at the prospect of worthy prey.

“And now,” Grandmaster Veisroi repeated, grinning savagely, “WE HUNT!”

The three of them hunkered down behind the decorative stone balustrade encircling the balcony on which they huddled, taking what shelter they could from the howling winds and snowflakes. Uncomfortable as it was, they weren’t as chilled as the weather made it seem they should be. The temperature had dropped notably in the last few minutes, but it was still early summer, despite Shaath’s touch upon the city.

Directly across the street stood the warehouse Sweet had indicated. It had tall, decorative windows in sculpted stone frames, shielded by iron bars which were wrought so as to be attractive as well as functional. Its huge door was similarly carved and even gilded in spots to emphasize its engraved reliefs. It was, in short, definitely a warehouse, but did not stand out excessively from the upscale townhouses which surrounded it, or the shrines and looming Dawnchapel temple just across the canal.

“More information is always better,” Sweet was saying. His normal, conversational tone didn’t carry more than a few feet away, thanks to the furious wind, but his words were plainly audible to the elven ears of his audience, who sat right on either side of him. “When running a con, you want to control as much as you can. What you know, what the mark knows, who they encounter… But the fact is, you can’t control the world, and shouldn’t try. There comes a point where you have to let go. Real mastery is in balancing those two things, arranging what you can control so that your mark does what you want him to, despite the plethora of options offered to him by the vast, chaotic world in which we live.”

“And you, of course, possess true mastery,” Fauna said solemnly. She grinned when Sweet flicked the pointed tip of her ear with a finger.

“In this case, it’s a simple matter of what I know that Embras doesn’t,” he said, “and what Justinian doesn’t know that I know. This part of the plan wasn’t shared with his Holiness, you see; he’d just have moved to protect his secrets. That would be inconvenient, after all the trouble I went to to track them down, and anyway, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to make use of it tonight.”

“What trouble did you go to?” Flora asked. “When did you find time to snoop out whatever it is Justinian was hiding from you on top of everything else you’ve got going on?”

“I asked Mary to do it,” he said frankly, grinning. “Now pay attention across the bridge, there, girls, you are about to see a demonstration of what I mean.” He shifted position, angling himself to get a good look down the street and across the canal bridge at the Dawnchapel. “When you know the board, the players, and the pieces…well, if you know them well enough, the rest is clockwork.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Embras said sharply as his people clustered together, peering nervously up through the glass dome at the storm-darkening sky. “It was a good move on Justinian’s part, but they’ll be hunting out there. This is probably the safest place in the city right now. Focus, folks, we’ve got a job to do.” He pointed quickly at the main door and a smaller one tucked into one of the stone walls. “Ignore the exterior entrances, we’re not about to be attacked from out there. That doorway, opposite the front, leads into the temple complex. Sishimir, get in there and shroud it; I don’t want us interrupted by the clerics still in residence. Vanessa, Ravi, Bradshaw, start a dark circle the whole width of the sanctuary. Tolimer, Ashley, shroud it as they go. You’re not enacting a full summons, just a preparatory thinning.”

“Nice,” said Vanessa approvingly. “And here I thought you just wanted to smash the place up.” She moved off toward the edge of the sanctuary, the rest of the warlocks shifting into place as directed, Sishimir ducking through the dark entrance hall to the temple complex beyond. The two hethelaxi took up positions flanking the main doors, waiting patiently, while the non-sentient demons stuck by their summoners.

“Now, Vanessa, that would be petty,” Embras said solemnly. “It’ll be so much more satisfying when the next amateur to reach across the planes in training tomorrow plunges this whole complex straight into Hell. Perhaps they’ll think with a bit more care next time someone suggests fooling around aimlessly with demons.”

“Ooh, sneaky and gratuitously mean-spirited. I like it!”

Everyone immediately stopped what they were doing, turning to face the succubus who had spoken.

“Not one of ours,” Ravi said crisply, extending a hand. A coil of pure shadow flexed outward, wrapping around the demon and securing her wings and arms to her sides; she bore this with good humor, tail waving languidly behind her. “Who are you with, girl? The summoner corps?”

“Justinian’s messing around with the children of Vanislaas, now?” Bradshaw murmured. “The man is completely out of control.”

“Why, hello, Kheshiri,” Mogul said mildly, tucking a hand into his pocket. “Of all the places I did not expect you to pop up, this is probably the one I expected the least. You already rid yourself of that idiot Shook? Impressive, even for you.”

“Rid myself of him?” Kheshiri said innocently. “Now why on earth would I want to do something like that? He’s the most fun I’ve had in years.”

“Change of plans,” Embras said, keeping his gaze fixed on the grinning succubus. It never paid to take your eyes off a succubus, especially one who was happy about something. “Vanessa, Tolimer, cover those doors. Sishimir, what’s taking so long in there?”

The gray-robed figure of Sishimir appeared in the darkened doorway, his posture oddly stiff and off-center. His cowled head lolled to one side.

“Everything’s okey-dokey back here, boss!” said a high-pitched singsong voice. “No need to go looking around for more enemies, no sirree!”

The assembled Wreath turned from Kheshiri to face him, several drawing up shadows around themselves.

Two figures stepped up on either side of Sishimir, a man in a cheap-looking suit and a taller one in brown Omnist style robes, complete with a hood that concealed his features.

“That is absolutely repellant,” the hooded one said disdainfully.

“Worse,” added the other, “it’s not even funny.”

“Bah!” Sishimir collapsed to the ground; immediately a pool of blood began to spread across the stone floor from his body. Behind him stood a grinning elf in a dapper pinstriped suit, dusting off his hands. “Nobody appreciates good comedy anymore.”

“I don’t know what the hell this is, but I do believe I lack the patience for it,” Embras announced. “Ladies and gentlemen, hex these assholes into a puddle.”

Kheshiri clicked her tongue chidingly, shaking her head.

A barrage of shadow blasts ripped across the sanctuary at the three men.

The robed man raised one hand, and every single spell flickered soundlessly out of existence a yard from them.

“What—”

Bradshaw was interrupted by a burst of light; the wandshot, fired from the waist, pierced Ravi through the midsection. She crumpled with a strangled scream, the shadow bindings holding Kheshiri dissolving instantly.

“Keep your grubby hands off my property, bitch,” Shook growled.

The robed figure raised his hands, finally lowering his hood to reveal elven features, glossy green hair, and glowing eyes like smooth-cut emeralds.

Khadizroth the Green curled his upper lip in a disdainful sneer.

“I do not like warlocks.”

“Almost wish I’d brought snacks,” Sweet mused as they watched the dome over the Dawnchapel flicker and pulse with the lights being discharged within.

“I wouldn’t turn down a mug of hot mead right now,” Flora muttered, her hands tucked under her arms.

“Hot anything,” Fauna agreed. “Hell, I’d drink hot water.”

“Oh, don’t be such wet blankets,” Sweet said airily, struggling not to shiver himself. “Where’s your sense of oh wait there he goes!”

He leaned forward, pointing. Sure enough, a figure in a white suit had emerged from the small side entrance to the temple’s sanctuary and headed toward the bridge at a dead run.

“Clockwork, I tell you,” Sweet said, grinning fiercely, his discomfort of a moment ago forgotten. “Confronted with an unwinnable fight when they weren’t expecting one, the cultists naturally huddle up and create an opportunity for their leader to escape. The rest of them are losses the Wreath can absorb; he simply can’t be allowed to fall into Justinian’s hands. And so, there he goes. But whatever shall our hero do now?”

Embras Mogul skidded to a stop at the bridge, glancing back at the Dawnchapel, then forward at the warehouse. He started moving again, purposefully.

“So many choices, so many direction to run,” Sweet narrated quietly, his avid gaze fixed on the fleeing warlock. “The Wreath’s first choice is always to vanish from trouble, but with their shadow-jumping blocked, his options are limited. But what’s this? Why, it’s a warehouse! And all warehouses in this city have convenient sewer access. Once down in that labyrinth, he’s as good as gone. As we can see, he is slowed up by the very impressive lock on those mighty doors.”

“Amateur,” Flora muttered, watching Mogul struggle with the latch. After a moment, he stepped back, aimed a hand at the lock and discharged a burst of shadow. With the snowy wind howling through the street, they couldn’t hear the eruption of magic or the clattering of pieces of lock and chain falling to the ground, but in the next moment, Mogul was tugging the doors open a crack and slipping through, pulling it carefully shut behind him.

“You weren’t going to ambush him there?” Fauna asked, frowning.

“What, out here in the street?” Darling stood up, brushing snow off his suit. “Where he could run in any direction? No, I believe I’ll ambush him in that building which I’ve prepared ahead of time to have no useable exits except the one I’ll be blocking.”

“One of these days your love of dramatic effect is going to get you in real trouble,” Flora predicted.

“Mm hm, it’s actually quite liberating, knowing in advance what your own undoing’ll be. The uncertainty can wear on you, otherwise. All right, girls, down we go. We’ve one last appointment to keep tonight.”

Embras strode purposely forward into the maze of crates stacked on the main warehouse floor, scowling in displeasure. This night had been an unmitigated disaster. He only hoped his comrades had had the sense to surrender once he was safely away. For now, he had to get to the offices of this complex and find the sewer access—there always was one—but in the back of his mind, he had already begun planning to retrieve as many of them as possible. It was a painful duty, having to prioritize among friends, but Bradshaw and Vanessa would have to be first…

He rounded a blind turn in the dim corridors made by the piled crates and slammed to a halt as light rose up in front of him.

The uniformed Butler set the lantern aside on a small crate pulled up apparently for that purpose, then folded her hands behind her back, assuming that parade rest position they always adopted when not actively working.

“Good evening, Master Mogul,” Price said serenely. “You are expected.”

Embras heaved a sigh. “Well, bollocks.”

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“Ah, perfect.” Mogul calmly adjusted his lapels as he stepped out of the shadows onto the latest rooftop. Carter landed beside him, for once without stumbling, and had to repress a moment of pride at how well he was adapting to shadow-jumping.

Their new perch was an especially narrow structure four stories tall, facing what had clearly once been a park before being piled with trash and the debris of preliminary deconstruction of some of the district’s buildings. The piles of rubbish were short, though, affording them a view of both the street leading to the bridge out of the empty district, and a side street which intersected it, down which a small party of people was now moving at a good clip.

“That’s them?” Carter asked, stepping up to the edge of the roof. He couldn’t see identifying details at this distance, but it pretty much had to be. The only other people around were Wreath warlocks, who were in hiding, and the four were clearly fleeing away from or toward something.

“Mm hm,” his guide murmured in reply, turning his back to the scene below.

“You called?” said a new voice from behind them. Carter embarrassed himself by jumping in surprise, then whirled to face the speaker. He might as well not have bothered; it was another figure shrouded in the gray anonymity of their ceremonial robes. Definitely male, possibly of a large build.

“There you are,” Mogul said, cheerful as ever, leaving Carter wondering by what mechanism he had called the man. “How’s it look out there?”

“You can see the Bishop and his servants nearing the square,” the warlock replied, nodding his hood in the direction of the street beyond. “There’s also activity just over the bridge. Looks like reinforcements coming to meet him.”

“All expected,” said Mogul. “What’d he bring?”

“His Butler, a pair of elves in…what I guess might be Eserite garb, or maybe they’re just stupid. Also two Huntsmen of Shaath.”

“That is interesting!” Mogul sounded delighted. He turned to look at Darling’s group and then at the bridge. Carter couldn’t see figures at that distance, but he wasn’t about to make assumptions regarding the warlocks’ capabilities. “Why, this is all shaping up marvelously. The timing is impeccable! The Lady smiles on us tonight. All right, you know the plan. Get started. Unleash the demons at both groups. Carefully, stagger the attacks so as to give them a sporting chance. If it isn’t too difficult to manage, do try to time it so that they meet up about as the demons run out.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” The robed figure put his hands together; there came a soft clicking noise, and he vanished in a swell of darkness.

“How many of those talismans do you have?” Carter asked.

“As many as we need, and a few extras to play with.”

“I must say that’s…oddly generous. That bit about giving them a sporting chance. These are your enemies, aren’t they?”

Mogul half-turned to give him a knowing smile. “And why waste a perfectly good enemy? I’m just getting to know this one. As soon as you kill the bastard you’re used to, you’ll find yourself hip-deep in an unknown quantity. Anyhow, I am taking the opportunity to…clean house a bit.” He turned back to watch the street. Darling’s party had slowed as they neared the square; suddenly there were flashes of fire and the white sparkle of wandshots from their vicinity. Infuriatingly, their path had taken them behind as shattered old clock tower, leaving Carter with no idea what was happening.

“The demons I’ve brought to this little hoedown are…troublesome sorts,” Mogul continued, idly gazing down on the street as if he could see the action. Nothing was visible except the odd flash of light. “Some of the more animalistic ones who just aren’t taking their training… Some sentients who seem determined to use the Wreath to scheme toward their own ends. Exactly the sort of thing we are on the mortal plane to put a stop to. Of course, we have our own methods, but when fortune gives me a squad of bloodthirsty Church enforcers, why waste the opportunity?”

“I see,” Carter said, frowning.

“Come now, Mr. Long, why do you imagine I really allowed Darling to finish his little obstacle course and get himself set up where he wanted to be? He needs to be in a position of strength if I’m to let him get out of this alive.”

“In that case…I’m afraid I don’t see,” Carter admitted.

Mogul laughed. “It’s all about expectations. As I told you earlier, I want to have a few words with Mr. Darling this evening, but following that, he can go home and do whatever it is Eserites do when not cutting purse strings. If I simply offered them the chance to leave unmolested, they would either suspect a trap and attack, or see it as a sign of weakness…and attack. If they’re going to attack anyway, I’d rather they be tired out mowing down the fodder first. Then we’ll have a nice, polite little stand-off and they can leave believing they forced us to a truce.”

“You’re that certain they’ll be so aggressive?”

“I am, as I said, cleaning house.” Mogul gave him a considering look. “I began this sequence of events by sending some of my less reliable members to visit the Church. Warlocks who, like the demons below, have been scheming on their own to amass personal power through the infernal arts, at the expense of their duties. Now, we attract all manner of miscellaneous oddballs and I’m quite indulgent of eccentricity in the ranks, but abuse of power is absolutely not to be tolerated. Ours is a sacred calling. So off went the ne’er-do-wells, and not a one came out alive. That’s what the servants of the Pantheon do when they catch someone who doesn’t bend knee to their power.”

“I’m not aware of Church personnel behaving that way, as a rule,” Carter said very carefully.

Mogul grinned bitterly. “I encourage you not to take my word for it. Look into the events of warlocks being killed by Bishops recently. They have floated the official story that the Wreath attacked them, and frankly I doubt there will be any contradicting evidence left intact. But have a long, deep look at the histories of the Bishops in question. Things may become more clear to you then.”

“This is all…absolutely byzantine,” Carter said, shaking his head.

“Demons are a responsibility, and an occasional means to an end,” Mogul replied. “They’re not the point of our faith; we serve the goddess of cunning. Who, through no fault of her own, was consigned to a dimension full of demons by her own family, and even still took it upon herself to defend the mortal world by disposing of the last hostile Elder Goddess. You don’t think it interesting that the only other deity who bothers to keep Scyllith away from our civilization is Themynra, who also is not of the Pantheon?”

Carter frowned, deep in thought. Below, Darling’s group moved out from behind cover, at a more cautious pace than before, but he barely saw them.

“Welp, looks like matters are coming to a head,” Mogul said cheerfully. “Come along, Mr. Long. Let’s go have us a chat.”

 

The third and final katzil demon rebounded off the wall against which Weaver’s wandshot had smashed it, emitting an aimless puff of flame from its mouth at the impact. The feathered serpent shook itself, barely staying aloft, and opened its fanged maw to direct another blast at them.

Joe fired a bolt of light straight down its throat. Soundlessly, the creature flopped to the pavement, where it immediately began to crumble to dust and charcoal, as the other two had.

“You seein’ what I’m seein’?” Joe asked, warily scanning the streets with his wands up.

“I see fucking demons!” Peepers practically wailed. She was trying to hide behind Darling, who had a throwing knife in each hand, but had let the two men with wands take the lead against the onslaught.

“Yeah,” said Weaver. “Small groups, one at a time. No warlocks, just demons. Not hitting hard enough to herd us away… We’re being softened up. Wonder what’ll be at the end after we mow down the disposables.”

“Hard to say what is and isn’t disposable with these guys,” Darling noted. “This whole thing started with them sending twelve trained spellcasters to their certain deaths. It’s odd that they’d do this now, when we’re close to the edge of the district. That’s not a smart place for the Wreath to set up a confrontation. Any ruckus kicked up in sight of the public will bring the Army down on them.”

“So, basically, we don’t know what the fuck is going on,” Weaver snorted. “Situation normal.”

“Standard procedures, then!” Darling proclaimed. “Forward! There’s a somewhat reasonable chance we’ll be having help soon.”

“Hate you so much,” Peepers growled.

“He’s right, to the extent that we can’t exactly stay here,” said Joe. “Exit’s just up ahead. How’s it look, Weaver?”

“Actually…” The bard tilted his head in that way he did when listening to his invisible friend, then smiled. “Well, fuck me running. Looks like Twinkletoes’s non-plan is actually working.”

 

“Stay back,” Price said in a clipped tone, simply striding forward, the clicking of her shoes on the pavement lost in the thunder of the charging demon’s footsteps.

“You can’t—”

“What can two little elves do about this?” The Butler gave Flora a sharp sidelong look before returning her attention forward as the baerzurg reached her.

She sidestepped neatly, allowing it to charge several steps past. Roaring in fury, the hulking, bronze-scaled brute rounded on her, striking out with a ham-sized fist. Price calmly stepped inside the swing of its arm, grasping it as it went past. Her hands looked absurdly tiny against its forearm, which was as thick as her waist. At that moment, however, there came a tiny golden flash as the creature stepped on the small holy charm she had dropped the second before. With a bellow of pain, it staggered into the impetus of its own punch.

The movement of its body momentarily hid the Butler from view; they didn’t see exactly how she did it. In the next second, however, the huge creature had been spun to the side, staggering back against the bridge’s railing. This came only just past its knees, and scarcely served to stop the baerzurg. It teetered at the edge, flailing with its arms.

Price took two running steps forward and vaulted, landing lightly with both feet against the demon’s massive chest.

Roaring, it toppled backward, grasping at her and just missing as she hopped lightly back down to the bridge’s surface. Behind her, the bellowing demon plunged into the canal. Price pause for a moment to straighten her tie.

“Whoah,” Fauna muttered.

An arrow whistled above their heads, and a second later there came a squawk of protest. A flying katzil demon dropped to the ground, a quivering shaft still embedded in its neck.

“We will create a path through these trash,” Andros growled, stalking past the two elves with Tholi and Ingvar flanking him. “Your agility will be needed against the warlocks when we near them. Stay behind us.”

Another arrow, fired by Ingvar, brought down a sshitherosz that spiraled upward, apparently seeking a higher vantage from which to strike. The next creature to charge forward was a grotesque abomination of tentacles and claws that looked like it would be more at home underwater. It faltered as an arrow from Andros’s bow, glowing gold, thudded into its upper chest. Then Price had darted forward and past it, reaching around to rip a small knife across the creature’s throat. Blue-green fluid sprayed forth and it dropped.

The next moment, Price had to dodge backward as a sinuous, crocodile-headed khankredahg snapped at her. She bounded onto the bridge’s rail, then back down, retreating from its powerful jaws. For being built like an elongated bulldog, it was awfully fast.

Tholi was there in moments, striking out with a hatchet. The beast paused, maw gaping open to hiss threateningly as the Huntsman and Butler moved to flank it.

“Hsst,” Flora said, joining Fauna on her side of the bridge. “Tell me you see it too.”

“One at a time, never enough to push us back,” Fauna replied, nodding. “Something’s up.”

“Let’s get behind the lines.”

“Remember the rules…”

“Oh, come on, we’re still elves.” Smirking, Flora switched to elvish. “If we can’t sneak past this lot without teleporting, we don’t deserve the name.”

Exchanging nods, they separated and dived over the bridge on both sides. In the next moment, while their companions pressed forward through a sequence of demonic attacks, they were clambering horizontally along its decorative stonework just below the level of its surface.

 

“There, and there,” Darling said, pointing at two side alleys. “Uglies coming out, attacking in both directions, but not trying to block the way. As a strategy, it’s so ineffective I have to assume it was meant to be.”

Even as he spoke, the latest khankredahg collapsed with a piteous groan, incidentally bearing down the young Huntsman who had charged forward, thrust his arm into its open mouth and driven a knife into its brain. The lad cursed at being dragged down, though he was free almost immediately as the demon began to disintegrate into ash.

“Good evening, your Grace,” Price intoned, striding forward. “I trust the results of tonight’s excursion have been to your satisfaction?”

“Ask me again when I’ve seen the results,” he said cheerfully. “Excellent timing, by the way, Price.”

“Yes, it was. If your Grace is seeking comfort in reminders of the familiar, I also have red hair.”

There came a scream from above, and a figure in a gray robe plunged from a second-floor window to hit the street with an unpleasant thump. A second behind, a slim figure in black leather dived down, landing nimbly beside him.

“Oh, don’t be such a baby,” Fauna told the groaning warlock. “You’re barely broken.”

“More summoners over here!” Flora reported, leaning out a window in the structure opposite. “They shadow-jumped away as I got here, though.”

“Oh?” Darling turned to her, raising an eyebrow. “It’s not like you to give warning of your approach.”

“I’m gonna let that pass because I’m really glad to see you’re okay,” she shot back. “And no, they were already in motion by the time I arrived. Whatever they were up to, it looks like their plan is still going forward.”

“Then it is time we were gone,” Andros rumbled. “These are the two gentlemen you mentioned?”

“Indeed,” Price replied.

He studied Joe and Weaver for a moment, flicked his gaze across Peepers and visibly dismissed her from consideration. “Very well. The force we now have assembled is sufficient to repel a considerably greater threat than we have faced thus far. While they are in retreat, we should do likewise.”

“But we have them on the run!” Tholi said, practically panting in eagerness. “Now is the time to press on and finish them off!”

“Listen to your superiors,” Ingvar snapped. “And to your scouts! The Wreath has planned this, all of it, and it’s gone as they intended. We are in a snare. It’s time to flee.”

“I quite agree,” said Darling, tousling Flora’s hair fondly as she rejoined the group. “C’mon, once across the bridge we’re—”

“Too late,” said Joe, raising both his wands.

The ten of them clustered together, unconsciously forming into a circle in the center of the square. Behind them was the bridge back to the lights of the city, before the desolation of the condemned neighborhood, but all around, there were suddenly shadows rising from nowhere. They appeared in windows, out of doors and alleys, on rooftops, some seeming to rise up from the very pavement. Surges of darkness swelled, then receded, leaving figures in gray robes standing where they had been. Some carried weapons, a mix of wands, staves and clearly ceremonial (to judge by their elaborate design) blades, quite a few accompanied by demons of various descriptions. In seconds, a dozen ringed them; in seconds more, their numbers doubled, and then continued to grow. The Wreath pressed forward, flanking them from behind, not quite cutting off escape but edging into their own path out of the district.

“Hmp,” Weaver muttered, “damn. I forgot to tell you so. Now I can’t say it.”

“These are pups that have cornered bears,” Andros snarled. “If they will not let us leave in peace, crush them.” Tholi growled in wordless agreement.

A final surge of shadows rose up from the street directly ahead, depositing two men in front of the group.

“Now, now,” Embras Mogul said reprovingly. “There you go, offering to solve a puzzle with a hammer. Honestly, how you get dressed in the morning without strangling your wife is beyond me.”

“Are you really still hanging out with these guys, Carter?” Peepers demanded.

“I’m just here to observe,” the journalist said, licking his lips nervously.

Ignoring a hissed warning from Flora, Darling stepped forward out of the circle. “Well, this has been a grand little chase, Embras, but we all have better places to be, don’t we?”

“Quite so.” Mogul stepped forward to meet him, placing each foot with a care that made him resemble more than ever a wading stork. “My people have suffered no end of abuse at your hands already, Antonio, and you’ve worn yours down with your ill-conceived antics.”

“Not to mention that I’ll have to spend my whole day on paperwork tomorrow if I’m party to shooting up a whole district, condemned or no,” Darling replied easily. “I just can’t spare the time. There’s a social event in the evening to which I’ve been looking forward for weeks.”

“Then it’s all too obvious how we handle this, isn’t it?”

They came to a stop less than a yard apart. The priest and warlock stared at one another, grim-faced.

“Indeed,” Darling said softly. “None of you interfere. This is personal.”

“Are you crazy?” Fauna shouted. Price held up a warning finger in front of her face.

“We settle it like gentlemen,” Mogul said, equally quiet.

“Man to man.”

“One on one.”

“To the death.”

There was a horrified silence. The Wreath stood motionless, robes fluttering in the faint night breeze, several of their demon companions shifting impatiently. Darling’s party held weapons at the ready, staring at the pair in disbelieving fascination. The light shifted, faltering, a cloud scudding across the moon and leaving them momentarily illuminated only by the distant glow of the city itself.

And then Mogul and Darling simultaneously burst into gales of laughter.

While the entire assembled crowd stared, utterly bemused, both men roared in mirth. Mogul slumped forward, bracing his hands against his knees; Darling reached out to steady himself against the other man’s shoulder.

“Fuck it,” Weaver said loudly after this had gone on for half a minute. “I say we shoot them both.”

“Oh, my stars and garters,” Mogul chortled, straightening up. “Thanks, old man, I needed that.”

“Hah, makes me wish we could do this more often! Price never lets me have any fun.”

“I admit I’m impressed! For a second there I really thought you were serious.”

“C’mon, Embras, how long have we been at this tonight? Give me credit for a sense of fun.”

“Yeah, I particularly enjoyed your little street-writing display.”

“Oh, you caught that! Better and better. It gets so tedious, running mental circles around people all the time. Sometimes I feel like nobody really gets me, y’know?”

“Tell me about it. Some days I’d trade it all for some intelligent conversation.”

“I hear that.”

“What the hell is going on?!” Peepers shrieked.

“Well, anyway, I’ve got cranky little ones to take home and put to bed,” said Darling, pointing a thumb over his shoulder at the group. “Are we just about done here?”

“Yeah, this seems like a good place to call it a night.” Mogul patted his shoulder, still grinning. “Good game, my man. Mr. Long!” He turned to beckon Carter forward. “I realize this has been more excitement than you planned on seeing. We’ll not detain you if you would rather head back into the city with these folk, but I encourage you to keep in mind what I said about the Church.”

“You’ve said a lot of things,” Carter replied warily, looking as confused and nonplussed as Darling’s allies.

“At the moment,” Mogul said, stepping back from Darling, “you’ve not done anything to earn the Archpope’s ire. Matters will be different if you decide to publish your story, though, and you can certainly expect these folk to lean on you about it one way or another. The Empire’s another matter. Lord Vex is too canny to disappear an inconvenient member of the press and set your entire profession yapping at his heels. Sometimes I kind of miss his predecessor.” The warlock grinned reminiscently. “I could make that guy chase his tail across the city and back, all from the comfort of my rocking chair.”

Carter stared at him, then at Darling, then glanced around, at the warlocks, the assembled mix of Huntsmen and Eserites, the demons. “I, um…”

“Careful,” Mogul cautioned. “You’re thinking with your emotions, remembering who your upbringing has taught you to trust. That’s fine and dandy for an opinion columnist, but if you decide to play the game on the level at which this story will place you, you’ll need to be more careful. Think in terms of whose interests align with yours, not who you happen to feel fondly toward.”

“That is excellent advice for a variety of situations,” Darling said, nodding. “Just keep in mind that telling the truth is the most valuable weapon in a good deceiver’s arsenal. You understand that better than most people, Carter.”

Long’s face grew blank as he clearly marshaled his expression through sheer will. “I…appreciate the reminder, Bishop Darling,” he said somewhat stiffly. “Mr. Mogul, do you think you can drop me off at the offices of the Imperial Herald?”

“Not within it or too close,” Mogul replied. “Your superiors very wisely keep their wards updated, and the whole place had a recent and thorough Pantheonic blessing. We can put you down in the neighborhood and keep watch till you’re safely home, though.”

“I would appreciate it.”

“Very well, then,” Mogul said, grinning widely. The expression he turned on the Bishop was subtly triumphant. “This has been just a barrel of laughs, but…time marches on.”

“Mm hm,” Darling replied mildly, his own face open and affable. “See you next time, Embras.”

With a final, mocking grin, Embras Mogul laid his hand on Carter’s shoulder and vanished in a heave of darkness. All around them, the rest of the Black Wreath followed suit, demons and robed cultists disappearing in a series of shadowy undulations, till in seconds, the small group were clustered alone in the deserted square.

“Either someone is going to explain to me right damn now what just happened or I will begin stabbing people at random,” Peepers threatened.

“You don’t have a knife,” Joe observed.

“I will improvise.”

“Simple mathematics,” Darling said, strolling back over to the group. “They had the numbers, but we have the power, pound for pound. After watching all of us in action, Mogul knew it. A real fight would have left the area in ruins and cost lives on both sides. Neither of us wanted that.”

“I did,” Tholi muttered sullenly. Ingvar rolled his eyes.

“There will be another time,” Andros rumbled. “Did you at least learn what you set out to, Antonio?”

Darling grimaced in annoyance. “We bloodied their noses, cost them some tame demons and I have a few more little pieces of the puzzle to slot into place. For all the general fuss and bother this evening has been, though… I can’t say we’ve gained as much ground as I would have liked. But we drew them out of hiding, got a sense of how much manpower they’ve got in the city, and faced them down. That’s not nothing.”

“It will be worth reporting in detail to his Holiness,” Andros said, nodding. “But I agree. We must make more progress, quickly.”

“I’ve a few more ideas to mull over,” Darling replied, then rolled his shoulders. “Well, anyhow! What say we haul ass out of this depressing dump? I don’t know about any of you, but right now I would kick a nun into the canal for a brandy.”

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6 – 30

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“Are you sure you should be confronting this guy?” Carter asked as they strode rapidly along the rooftop. “And no, I’m not making a tactical suggestion; this is in my professional capacity of looking for information.”

“Duly noted,” Mogul said with a grin. “I’m curious about the question, however. This chap and his various lackeys have attempted to spy on our interview and then assaulted and killed my personnel when confronted about it. While I happen to have a miscellaneous handful of warlocks and demon thralls in the area, this seems like an ideal opportunity to have a word with him.”

“But the djinn strongly advised you not to. I’m just puzzled that you’d ignore his advice after summoning him to ask for it.”

There came a pause in the conversation when they reached the edge of the building. The darkness swelled around them, and then they were stepping onto the next roof over, two stories up and thirty feet away across a broad street. Carter stumbled again, but less dramatically; he was growing more accustomed to the disorientation.

“Mr. Long,” the warlock said as they resumed walking, “I’ve just spent much of the afternoon making the case to you that the Black Wreath are not at all as you believe them to be. With that established, let me just emphasize that demons are every bit as dangerous as you’ve always been told, and worse. That is why the Wreath is important, because believe me, no one else who tries is adept at handling them without creating a mess. Making allowances for individual personalities, they are highly aggressive. Infernal magic has that effect on any form of life it corrupts. Now, djinn aren’t able to physically interact with the world, which doesn’t diminish their propensity to cause trouble; it only limits the methods by which they can do so.”

The roof along which they were walking wasn’t another flat top like the previous one; their path was a lip of stone along the edge of a steep incline shingled in ragged old slate tiles. They came to the corner, where the path was interrupted by a decorative finial, and Carter had to accept a hand to navigating his way over the smooth slope and back onto even ground on the other side. It was an apparently L-shaped structure, to judge by the long distance it stretched out on the side ahead. Embarrassing as it might be to be handed about like a lady in silks and slippers, Carter wasn’t too proud to admit he needed the assistance. Despite the excitement of this assignment, he was keenly aware of being out of his element. His avuncular suit and briefcase didn’t lend themselves to nocturnal rooftop shenanigans.

“Ali and I have a well-negotiated contract,” Mogul continued as they moved on again. “He doesn’t lie to me and answers direct queries with a minimum of obfuscation. But beyond the simple answers to my questions, in the realm of his personal opinions and asides? You’re damn right I ignore his advice. It’s calculated to trip me up, without exception. Either with the goal of weaseling out of our contract, or just to create general mayhem.”

“But…if he can’t lie…”

“And what did he say, exactly?” Mogul grinned and winked. “That I would learn humility? Come on, what does that mean? You have to be eternally on guard when negotiating with demons. Any demons, but particularly the crafty ones. Sshitherosz, djinn, Vanislaad, all the schemers. They’ll promise you your own doom in a frilly dress, and you’ll step right into it if you make the mistake of paying too much attention to the frills. The exact wording gets you every time.”

“That sounds…exhausting,” Carter mused.

“Warlocks and lawyers, Mr. Long,” Mogul said cheerfully. “Warlocks and lawyers. Ah, here we are. You may want to keep back, we’re about to have some company.”

They had come to the end of the building, where there was a small rooftop patio. Raised beds held sad-looking old dirt and the twisted skeletons of small shrubs. Mogul hopped down from their improvised walkway and positioned himself against the bannister looking over the square below, beckoning Carter over to join him.

In the next moment the shadows gathered and took shape in the lee of the overhanging roof, then receded, leaving two figures standing there. One, dressed in obscuring gray robes, was hunched over with an arm across its midsection, supported by the other, which was clearly some kind of demon. Armored plates covered its forehead and limbs.

“Ah, still breathing,” said Mogul. “I’m glad to see that.”

“I had to confiscate her potion belt,” noted the demon. “She may have already taken more than the safe dosage.”

“It hurts,” the robed figure rasped, her voice taut with pain. “Inside. Bricks landed on my back… Think I have ribs broken. And lower.”

“That’s bad,” Mogul said, frowning, “especially if you’ve been chugging potions on top of internal bleeding. You know better, Vanessa. Hrazthax, get her to a healer. You two are out of this evening’s events.”

“You sure you won’t need me here?” the demon asked.

Embras waved a hand. “She’s urgent, and by the time you got back this would all be over. Be careful, though. Speak to Ross on your way out and have him pass along the word: anyone with a Vanislaad thrall needs to send it away, and everybody watch for holy symbols popping up in surprising places. There’s a reaper on the loose.”

Hrazthax frowned heavily. “A reaper? A real one? Just on patrol, or… It’s not good if Vidius is taking an interest in this.”

“You let me worry about that,” Mogul said firmly. “Take Vanessa’s talisman and get her to help. And when you find Ross, tell him to get everyone organized; our quarry is heading to the intersection of 31st East Street and Alfarousi Avenue. Don’t impede them; get everyone set up and ready to spring at that location, on my command.”

“Got it,” said Hrazthax, nodding. “But what about—”

Vanessa groaned and slumped against him.

“Go.”

The hethelax nodded to Mogul once more and took something from Vanessa’s hand, which she relinquished without argument. There came a few soft clicks as he manipulated it one-handed, and then the shadows welled up again, swallowing them.

“Busy, busy,” Mogul said, straightening his lapels. “Ah, well. When things go the way I want them to, I have the damnedest time keeping myself entertained. Ironic, isn’t it? This way, if you please.”

One shadow-jump later, they were on yet another rooftop across the street, and heading toward…Carter didn’t know what. The district was like an island of quiet and darkness. On all sides, not too far distant, the lights of Tiraas blazed like a galaxy come to earth, and at this altitude the sounds of carriage traffic and periodic Rail caravans were audible, but immediately around them was desolation. He doubted he could have navigated this jumble of broken-down structures even with the streetlights working, but Embras seemed to know where he was going.

“What’s a reaper?” Carter asked, regretting having put his notebook away. Ah, well, he wasn’t great at writing while walking at the best of times, and would likely have broken his neck trying to do it while navigating rooftops.

“Grim reaper,” Mogul said as they moved, “soul harvester, valkyrie. You’ve surely heard of them under one name or another.”

It took the journalist a few seconds to gather his thoughts before he could reply.

“Well… I must say, this night is going to leave me without things not to believe in.”

Embras grinned at him. “Oh, they’re very real, but you can be forgiven for not knowing it. The Vidians don’t encourage people to ask about them, and really, nobody on the mortal plane is likely to interact with one at all unless they dabble in necromancy. It’s the reapers who usually get sent to shut that down. Oh, and Vidian exorcisms? All theater. If the death-priests want a spirit laid to rest, they put on a big show to make you think they’re being useful while a valkyrie quietly gets rid of it. Warlocks only need to know about them because they have the same authority over incubi and succubi—which, as you may know, are human souls who are not supposed to be on this plane.” He shook his head and chuckled. “Vlesni is going to wring every ounce of pathos out of this anecdote she possibly can. I hear tell getting sent back by a reaper is…uncomfortable.”

“Do you really think you can intercept your opponent if he’s got an invisible spirit working with him?” Carter asked, glancing around somewhat nervously.

“Intercept him? I’m going to do no such thing.” Mogul stopped at the edge of the current roof, one long leg raised with the foot propped on the low wall surrounding it, and grinned at him. “We’re meeting him at the end. The man’s going excessively out of his way to spell out a message. I really ought to let him finish it, don’t you think? That’s just good manners.”

“Where the hell are we going?” Weaver snarled. “And don’t feed me that bullshit about just wasting time. You keep insisting on taking specific routes!”

“Lang—“

“Child, I swear by Omnu’s hairy third testicle I will shoot you right in the fucking mouth.”

“Settle down, good gods,” Darling reproved. “And yes, Weaver, you’re right, we are heading for an intersection a few blocks up.”

“Great, well, you should know there are warlocks and demons moving parallel to us in the same direction. We’re either walking into an ambush or being escorted by a mobile one.”

“Okay, how do you know this stuff?” Peepers demanded. “Where are you getting intel?”

“He’s got a spirit companion,” Joe explained.

“I want one. You have any idea how valuable that would be in my line of work?”

“You wouldn’t get along,” Weaver grunted.

“Don’t even ask,” added Joe, “it just gives him an opportunity to be standoffish and coy about it. He loves that.”

“About how many?” Darling interrupted.

Weaver cocked his head as if listening for a moment before replying. “Nine warlocks. Six of them have companion demons of various kinds. No incubi or succubi. And…a guy in a white suit almost straight behind us on the rooftops. With Peepers’s friend.”

“He’s not my friend,” she said with a sigh. “Never was, probably sort of hates my guts now.”

“Shame,” Weaver said, grinning nastily. “He was cute. Ah, well, guess you’re destined to be an old maid.”

“Joe, please shoot him in the foot.”

“Maybe after we deal with the demons.”

“You’re not wrong,” said Darling, “we are heading somewhere. There’s a small square up ahead close to the bordering canal of this district. That street leads straight to one of the bridges out.”

“The ones you said not to go near because they’d be guarded?” Joe asked.

“Yup!” Darling didn’t slacken his pace in the slightest; none of them were having trouble keeping up, though Peepers was starting to look a little haggard. “But it’s been enough time, approximately. I hope. I chose this particular bridge to approach because it leads to the most direct route toward the main temple of Shaath.”

“And…that is relevant…why?” Peepers asked.

“This must all be part of that plan he doesn’t have,” said Weaver, rolling his eyes.

“The Wreath has both oracular and divinatory sources of information,” Darling said lightly. “Many warlocks can use enough arcane magic to scry, and there are demons who trade information for favors. Any plans we made could be found out and countered, heading up against what we were.”

“There are methods to block both of those,” Joe noted.

“Yes,” said Darling, nodding, “and when I have time to arrange a real campaign against the Wreath, with Church and Imperial support, you better believe I’ll be using them. On the fly like this, though, there’s a loophole that can be exploited: they can’t scry a plan that doesn’t exist.”

“Not having a plan doesn’t strike me as a great plan,” Peepers muttered.

“I know the board,” Darling said more quietly, “and I know the pieces. I set in motion the ones most likely to lead to the result I want. Plans are nice, kids, but sometimes they’re a luxury you can’t afford to count on. If you know what’s going on, and if you’re a little lucky, you can tell more or less how things are going to play out. Even arrange them the way you want, sometimes.”

The other three glanced at each other.

“This is not how I wanted to die,” Peepers sighed.

“Oh?” said Joe. “How did you?”

“Of sex-induced heart failure on top of a gigolo in my eighties, wearing a fortune in jewels and nothing else. And drunker than any woman has ever been.”

He flushed deeply and didn’t manage to form a reply. Weaver actually laughed.

“And,” Peepers said in a more subdued tone, “certain my little brother was going to be taken care of…”

“He’ll be fine,” said Darling soothingly. “We will be fine.”

“You are so full of it,” Weaver snorted.

“Yeah.” Darling glanced over his shoulder and winked. “Luckily I keep enough of it on hand to throw into my enemies’ eyes. It’s always worked so far.”

“Ew,” said Peepers, wrinkling her nose.

“I think that metaphor got away from you,” Joe added.

Weaver shrugged. “Eh, they can’t all be winners.”

“Oh, shut up, all of you. We’re almost there. Mouths shut, eyes open, and be ready to fight or flee.”

“Of course,” Andros rumbled to himself, staring across the canal at the darkened district up ahead. “What better place? I’m a fool for not thinking of it.”

“Holy shit, that all looks abandoned,” Flora marveled. “How long has it been like this?”

“Less than a week,” said Savvy. “It’s not going to be left this way long, but while it’s there… Yes, it really is an ideal venue.”

They had stopped in the shade of two warehouses flanking the road which became a bridge into the condemned district. The spirit wolf had come unerringly here, then halted, glaring ahead with his hackles raised. He growled quietly until Andros rested a hand on his head.

Ingvar and Tholi immediately set to prowling around, investigating, with Flora and Fauna following suit after a moment. The elves, after peering in every direction, nimbly shimmied up lamp posts and perched improbably atop the fairy lights, peering ahead into the district. The two Huntsmen kept their attention chiefly on the ground, tracking back and forth.

“Cities,” Tholi muttered disparagingly. “Nothing leaves tracks.”

“Not easy tracks,” Ingvar said in a more even tone. “And the rains wash away what little there is very quickly. These are not elk, Tholi; be sure you are not following the wrong kind of spoor. Look.”

He had crossed to the foot of the bridge and knelt, drawing his hunting knife and carefully scraping it across the pavement.

“Infernal magic isn’t useful for stable area-of-effect spells, unlike arcane wards,” Ingvar said, holding up the knife. “It is anchored to something physical. In this case, the paving stones.”

The tip, where he had dragged it against the ground, was now spotted with rust. Even as they all stared, the reddish stain crept up the blade another half an inch.

“Infernal wards cause rust?” Fauna asked, frowning down at them.

“The weapons of Huntsmen are blessed by the Mother,” said Andros, glaring over the bridge.
“They do not decay, nor suffer damage from the elements. Heat, cold, moisture… Such an effect is the result of magical corruption. They are here, and they have warded this bridge against intrusion.” He began to glow subtly.

“What mother?” Flora asked.

“Honestly,” said Savvy, pointing at the wolf. “Have you ever seen divine magic used for anything like that? Most of the Huntsmen’s arts are fae in nature. I really need to explain this? I was almost certain you two were elves.”

“I don’t like you out of uniform,” Fauna announced.

“Enough,” Andros growled. “What can you see from that vantage?”

“Movement,” Flora said, peering into the dark district. “Through windows and gaps in walls, mostly. There’s activity directly ahead, hidden behind things. People moving inside buildings.”

“Without lights,” said Ingvar, nocking an arrow to his bow. “That’ll be the Wreath. Once we go in there it will be increasingly hard to track our quarry. They won’t appreciate our presence.”

“Let them come,” Tholi said, grinning savagely. Behind him, Ingvar rolled his eyes. “I just hope the Eserite we’ve come to rescue isn’t dead. If he’s running around in there with warlocks and demons after him… Doesn’t look good, does it?”

“Darling would die swiftly in our wilds,” Andros said, “but we fare almost as poorly in his. The man is adaptable and this is his city. He chose to enter there. I will believe he has fallen when I’ve buried him. We proceed.”

“Agreed,” Savvy said crisply, deftly smoothing her hair back with both hands. She shrugged out of her coat, reversed it and swept it back on, and just like that the illusion vanished, leaving the immaculately attired Butler straightening her tie.

“Uh,” Fauna asked, “what was the point of that, then?”

“Camouflage,” Andros said, nodding approvingly. “There are few enough Butlers in the city that some know all their faces, and their masters. Best not to advertize that Bishop Darling has run into trouble.”

“Wait!” Flora said suddenly, straightening. “I see people coming into the square— It’s him! And the others!”

“And more coming out of hiding,” Fauna added. “In robes. With demons.”

“Then this is the time,” Andros declared, starting forward and raising his bow. The spirit wolf stalked at his side. “Ingvar, Tholi, strike down the demons. I will attend to any infernal arts used against us.”

“And the people?” Ingvar asked. “The warlocks?”

Before he had finished speaking, Price strode forward onto the bridge, gliding smoothly down its center. Flora and Fauna leaped from their perches, landing on either side of the Butler. The three of them walked without apparent hurry, but at a pace that devoured the distance between them and Darling.

“That,” said Andros with a grim smile as he stepped forward after them, “appears to be attended to.”

Teal staggered slightly upon materializing, but quickly caught her balance and straightened, self-consciously smoothing her coat.

“That’s a neat trick,” Sarriki noted, pausing as she slithered past with a tray of empty mugs, bound for the bar. “You shouldn’t be able to teleport into here. Are you even a wizard?”

“Not using arcane magic, no,” the bard said with a smile, holding up a waystone. “But the Crawl’s methods work just fine.”

The naga cocked her head to the side. “I thought you kids couldn’t afford to buy from Shamlin.”

“Shamlin has decided to return to the surface,” Teal explained. “As such, he was quite interested in Tiraan bank notes. Where’s Professor Ezzaniel?”

“Here,” he said from the second level of the bar. “And what are you up to, Miss Falconer? It is not generally wise to split up the party.”

Teal tilted her head back, staring mutely up at him for a moment. “It’s funny how you’re supposed to be evaluating our progress down here, yet you haven’t been around for any of it. You just sit here drinking and chatting with the other patrons.”

“Since you make such a point of my absence, what makes you think you know what I’ve been doing while not under your eyes?” Ezzaniel leaned one arm against the railing and smiled down at her.

Teal stared at him thoughtfully, then glanced at Sarriki, who chuckled and set about pulling herself up the steps.

“It’s not like you to nakedly evade a question like that, Professor,” she said quietly.

Ezzaniel raised an eyebrow. “I assure you, Miss Falconer, everything is attended to. Professor Tellwyrn has made appropriate arrangements for you to be graded fairly.”

“I don’t doubt she has. Where is Rowe?”

The Professor shrugged. “I don’t much wonder about him when he is not in front of me. He is entertaining company, but in a rather exhausting way. One does get tired of always keeping a hand on one’s purse strings.”

She turned from him and bounded up the stairs in two long leaps, then paused, glancing around. The Grim Visage was fairly quiet at the moment. A lone drow man was nursing a drink in the far corner; he nodded politely to her as her gaze fell on him. A small party of five goblins were conversing quietly next to the fireplace. Not far away, Sarriki was clearing dishes and trash off an empty table.

Teal squared her shoulders and strode past the naga, straight through the curtained doorway next to the bar.

She paused only momentarily in the kitchen beyond, quickly taking in its meager furnishings and stored food at a glance, then stepped across the floor to study the door opposite the exit. It was secured with multiple locks. Unlike most of the rusted, battered and apparently recycled equipment the students had seen in most parts of the Crawl, these looked new. Clean, strong, and highly effective. Teal didn’t need to start tampering with them to know there was magic at work, too. This door would not be opened by someone who wasn’t entitled.

“You know, you’re not supposed to be back here.”

She turned slowly to look at Sarriki, who stood framed in the doorway, her arms braced against it on both sides.

“My friends are going directly to Level 100,” she said quietly.

“Oh?” The naga smiled, a bland, languid expression. The light framing her wasn’t bright enough to make her features difficult to see, but it was sufficiently darker in the kitchen than in the bar that the contrast made for good dramatic effect. “Excellent. I had a feeling, you know. And I’ve just won a bet. If they manage to beat the boss, I’ll be absolutely rolling in it.”

“The going theory,” Teal went on, “is that the final boss of the Descent is the Naga Queen.”

“Interesting idea. My people mostly live far below, you realize. It’s rare that any of us climb to this level.”

“Mm hm. It would fit, though, wouldn’t it? She’s easily the most formidable personality in the Crawl… One possibly powerful enough the Professor Tellwyrn wouldn’t want to leave her running around at liberty.”

Sarriki shrugged. “Whatever. Your friends are hard-hitters; they have as good a chance as anyone. I’m fairly confident of my odds.”

“You have more at stake here than a bet, don’t you?” Teal asked softly.

The naga’s eyes hardened. “Little girl, it is seldom wise to stick your nose into other people’s business. Now, if you’re hungry, kindly come back out front and I’ll make you something. This area is not for patrons.”

“Where’s Rowe? It’s odd for him not to be around. With Melaxyna placing bounties on his head, it’s not exactly safe for him to leave, is it?”

“Child,” Sarriki said sharply, “I’m losing patience. There’ll be no fighting in here, but you’ll find there is a lot I can do to make your stay in the Visage and the Crawl unpleasant if you disrupt the peace in my bar. Now, for the last time, out.”

“Actually,” said Teal, stepping aside and pointing at the locked cellar door, “I need to get through here.”

Sarriki actually laughed, loudly. “Oh, you silly little thing. That is not going to happen.”

They were familiar with the drill by now, after making extensive use of Melaxyna’s portal and waystone. Immediately upon landing, the students unlinked arms, Fross zipping out from under Ruda’s hat, and fell into formation, weapons up, eying their new surroundings carefully.

It was definitely the Descent. The distinctive proportions of the room were right, and the staircase behind them was just like those they had seen dozens of times before. It was the contents of the room that made them all straighten, staring.

“Well,” Toby said after a moment, “I don’t know what I was expecting.”

The wall were covered with masterfully painted murals, all depicting in exquisite detail their adventures through the Crawl thus far. The scenes blended one into the next as they marched around the walls, but everything was familiar, if portrayed somewhat more dramatically than the events had actually occurred. Juniper laughing in delight as she hugged a capling, Trissiny standing at the foot of the throne with Melaxyna smirking down at her, the whole group in disarray and being chased by boars, Gabriel studying an invisible maze with an expression of intense thought while the others ostentatiously bickered around him, the group lined up facing a row of chessmen. The scenes continued, wrapping around the chamber and showing the details of every step of their journey through the Descent, though they did not portray anything from before or after that. Nothing of the Grim Visage, the complex of dream-inducing mists, Shamlin’s grotto or the Naga Queen’s shrine.

There were statues, too, nine of them. Towering marble depictions of the students lined an avenue straight toward the opposite end of the chamber, each over eight feet tall even without the plinths on which they stood. At the far end, rather than another staircase downward, there was a semicircular indentation in the wall, in which stood an even larger statue, this one of the Naga Queen.

Of the Queen herself, there was no sign.

“I kind of wish I had one of those lightcappers,” Juniper mused. “Remember, from Tiraas? I mean, just look at these portraits! Makes me feel kinda proud, y’know?”

“Maybe we can come back with one?” Gabriel suggested.

“Unlikely,” said Fross. “This was all arranged for us on this visit. I bet it’ll all be blank as soon as we leave.”

“Experience is by nature a transient thing,” Shaeine said quietly.

“Only one direction to go,” Trissiny said, stepping forward. Ruda fell into step right beside her, the others quickly following suit.

They came up short a moment later, before they’d gone ten feet, when the sound of clapping began to echo throughout the chamber. Slow, rhythmic, and coming from only a single pair of hands, it resounded sourcelessly from the stone on every side, leaving them peering around again, weapons raised.

He materialized then, fading from invisibility into view atop the Naga Queen’s statue, where he was perched on her stone shoulder. Rowe continued to applaud, smirking down at them.

“Well done, kids. Well done. I congratulate you on your highly improbable victory.”

“Son of a bitch,” Gabriel murmured, not noticing the sour look Trissiny shot him. “Teal was right.”

“I have a theory,” Teal said, drawing the snake flute from within her coat. “One I’ve been working on since we came here. A lot of the pieces to the puzzle were hard to find, but several of the more important ones fell into place for us just recently.”

Sarriki had fallen still, eyes fixed on the flute. Her expression was purely hungry. Teal raised the instrument toward her lips.

“Let’s see if we can come to an understanding, your Majesty.”

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