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“Nurdrakhaan,” the Archpope repeated, staring pensively at the ancient data screen affixed to Rector’s apparatus by a framework of commercially available brass fastenings. Currently it was displaying strings of text and numbers which conveyed raw data that the enchanter could evidently interpret, though Justinian understood only bits and snatches.

“That’s what I said,” Rector snapped, still testy from his morning’s excursion into the cold. He tended to wilt outdoors even when the weather was pleasant, hence his complete comfort with living underground for years on end. “Not a lot of data on those, rarely see ‘em on this plane, but size and configuration’s unmistakable. Nothing else makes an infernal signature like that. Apparently got banished back to Hell, too, that’s a first. Usually gotta just kill ‘em.”

“Demonology is not my field of specialty,” Justinian admitted, “but they are mostly magical, are they not? By description, they don’t seem very aerodynamic.”

“Aerodynamic,” Rector scoffed, still tapping rapidly at the screen. “Completely made of magic. Never mind flying, the square/cube law would kill those things just for existing if there was any mundane physics involved. So, no, they should not have been able to tangle with the chaos drake. Makes no sense. Obviously missing a lot of data here.” He irritably flicked the screen with the backs of his fingers. “But I don’t know why or how. This is a direct transcension interlink, it shouldn’t have blind spots like that.”

Justinian raised his head, inhaling slowly as he considered. “A chaos construct destroyed by infernomancy, with key details inexplicably obscured from magical oversight… An explanation presents itself, though it seems improbable.”

“Actually improbable in the mathematical sense, or just counter-intuitive?” Rector grumbled. “Go where the data leads. Data doesn’t respect your prejudices.”

“Point taken,” the Archpope replied with a small smile which Rector was not positioned to see. “I suppose, on further reflection, it does make a certain sense, in light of Antonio’s great research project. Hmm. Natchua…of House Leduc. An interesting choice, but then, the Dark Lady has always been fond of those who skillfully oppose her. We may be forced to adapt to this development, Rector. I would like you to adjust the final array plans to deal with the possibility of large-scale infernal interference.”

Rector let out a long hiss and finally took both his hands off the screen to clutch its edges in a knuckle-bleaching grip. “You told me to key it for divine and arcane effects. Adding another school of potential problems will increase its complexity exponentially!”

“I am sorry to lay it upon you, Rector, but this is now the situation. The final array cannot fail. Everything else can be worked around, but that…”

“Forget the difficulty, you do realize every extra layer of complication introduces more possible things that might go wrong?”

“I do. I must rely on your skill, as always.”

The enchanter heaved an exasperated sigh. “You want me to just go ahead and make adjustments for all four schools while I’m at it?”

“I fear that burden would be prohibitive. I cannot foresee the fae becoming a significant concern, but if the situation changes again I will give you as much advance warning as I am able. We must be prepared for infernal interference because it is now a significant prospect, but not a certainty. I do, after all, have leverage over Elilial, should she set herself against me. For now…” He paused, narrowing his eyes in thought. “…this development forces my hand. You are certain the construct summoning apparatus is stable?”

“I said it was, didn’t I? Completely solid, no significant errors. I even tweaked its efficiency to tighten up the core matrix, should work faster now.”

“Good. We will have to deploy it remotely. Please initiate the summons with all our remaining prepared shards simultaneously.”

Rector went completely still. For a protracted moment he was silent, still apparently staring at the device.

“All of them,” the enchanter repeated at last.

“Yes.”

“We only have the one Angelus Knight.”

“The necessary components to make more are secured and on their way here already. The timing will be awkward, but should suffice.”

“Components,” Rector repeated in a flat tone. “If we let all of them loose with only one Angelus, plus the three paladins and whatever intervened at Veilgrad… There’s going to be a lot of damage. A lot.”

Justinian paused, studying the back of the man’s head; Rector remained still in his seat as if arrested by the ideas he was considering.

Rector could be difficult to read, even for a veteran Izarite. At this point Justinian suspected Delilah was the only person who was truly adept at communicating with him, though Azradeh had made surprising inroads in her brief time here, for all that Rector affected to dislike her. The man was not as oblivious as he often appeared, and certainly the farthest thing from stupid. He had, however, always seemed rather narrow of focus, incurious about politics or anything occurring above his subterranean lair with its sprawling complex of workshops in which he was provided everything an enchanter could dream. To Rector, the projects he worked on were absorbing as intellectual exercises. He had never expressed an interest in what the Archpope actually did with his technology, even when the Throne’s retaliation through the interlink had blown up one of his original labs.

But that was before he’d been taken out into the world, seen a nearly headless corpse firsthand and been present when twelve willing souls sacrificed themselves to form a construct of which he had been the principal designer. Considering him now, it occurred to Justinian that Rector’s tense, annoyed demeanor since that morning’s events might arise from more than the inconvenience and cold.

“I’m afraid so,” Justinian answered, glancing back at the closed door to the chamber. Rector hadn’t overtly mentioned the events at the ruins that morning, the risk of which was exactly why he had not invited Delilah to be present for this conversation. Even Nassir was beginning to have questions; she would definitely not have been sanguine. “Everything we do here is toward a greater purpose, Rector. The great difficulty of our work is that it is the greatest purpose, an unprecedented elevation of the whole of humanity. In any complex endeavor there are costs to every benefit, and when one operates on this level… Well, as the saying goes, you can make a desert verdant, but it might empty an ocean. Some of our actions will have unforeseen consequences, and some will carry costs of which we are forewarned, and must choose to accept anyway.”

“And this.” Rector paused abruptly; knowing him, more likely for thought than emphasis. “This will be worth it?”

Justinian exhaled deeply. “I have calculated as best I can to ensure it is so. Life is unpredictable, Rector. I have erred in the past and others have suffered for it; that is a burden I would not wish upon anyone. That is why I have to continue on this course: to spare others having to do so, and to ensure that we meet our goal, and that everything will have been worth it. There are no guarantees, but I swear to you that everything I do is designed toward the greatest possible good, using information and resources to which no one else has access. If I believed anyone could do this task better, I would gladly step aside and let them.”

The enchanter was still for a few more moments, then finally, slowly, released his grip on the machine and returned his hands to their position over the touch screen, beginning once more to scroll through the data.

“Simultaneous deployment should be possible. The array isn’t set up for that, but the difference isn’t qualitative and it’ll be a…relatively minor adjustment. The power source is more than adequate, so…” He tapped a sigil in one corner of the screen and began poking and flicking at the resulting diagrams. “Mm, yeah, it’s more a software than a hardware issue. I can make most of the changes from right here, then go augment some of the conduits, lock in the necessary foci…should just take a few hours.”

“Thank you, Rector.” Anyone else Justinian would have patted on the shoulder, but the enchanter did not like to be touched. “I appreciate all you do.”

He didn’t answer, already fully absorbed again in his device.

Behind them, and behind the illusion of a closed door, the actual door to the room was pulled carefully shut as Azradeh, invisible under the same magical camouflage, eased back out into the hall. She retreated back toward her room, claws silent on the floor. She had only recently worked out how to do this; it was tricky, experimenting with the latent magic within her in moments when she was certain she would not be observed, but some judicious testing on Rector, Delilah, and Nassir had confirmed the stealth worked. Branwen was another matter; Azradeh didn’t want to risk trying to get too sneaky around an empath. But Branwen wasn’t here right now.

For now, she kept her secrets close. Every little advantage could be crucial, and based on what she’d just heard, the moment when they might was fast approaching.

Amazingly, the day just continued to get more interesting. Rasha fancied that she handled the arrival of several huge, glowing wolves which shifted into people rather well, being by that point somewhat inured to outlandish magical bullshit. Glowing wolf-people didn’t hold a candle to what the Archpope had just done right in front of her. At any rate, the Shadow Hunters (as they introduced themselves and she carefully avoided laughing—really, what a name) did, just as Eserion and then Rogrind had suggested, work for the provincial government. Rasha had somewhat ignored the details of political news outside the capital, but confronted with this it did not escape her that by fostering the reformist Shaathists the Duchess Madouri had, contrary to customary practice for nobles, inserted herself in a bold and direct way into cult politics. This was most relevant to Rasha’s concerns because it showed Madouri had aligned herself firmly against the Archpope. Firmly, and rather more aggressively than she would expect from an Imperial governor.

All of this danced about in the forefront of her mind when, scarcely an hour later, she found herself sitting down for tea with the Duchess in person.

The Shadow Hunters had decided to escort her and Rogrind straight to Madouris, since they were apparently a distance from their own headquarters that would have required magic to reach before the two bedraggled refugees began to succumb to the cold. There had followed a flurry of introductions and polite escalations, as Rogrind and Rasha between them had sufficient connections that dropping Trissiny’s name just proved the straw that broke the donkey’s back. The dwarf had ultimately vanished without so much as a farewell, not that she particularly missed him, and no sooner was Rasha herself bandaged, clean, and freshly attired than she was informed by Yancey, the Duchess’s Butler, that she had been invited to join the Lady for tea.

It was Lady, he diffidently made certain she knew in advance. The Duchess did not care for the more traditional epithet of “her Grace.”

“I can’t thank you enough for your generosity, my Lady,” she said, drawing on every scrap of the demure poise Glory had drilled into her.

“Pish tosh, I would be absolutely disgraced to do a whit less,” Ravana Madouri replied in an airy tone which belied the sharp focus of her eyes. “You are a personal friend of my own dear comrade Trissiny, and here I find you have been heinously mishandled on my own lands. I can at the very least see to your comfort and convenience. Consider it a matter of honor, if you wish, but rest assured this is no imposition.”

Whatever she might say, it was generous. Rasha was attired in a new dress—an expensive one in keeping with the latest trends in fashion, and which fit her. Not as perfectly as a properly tailored garment, but quite well. And that raised the question of just why such a thing was so readily on hand, as it certainly did not belong to the Duchess. It would not have fit her.

Rasha was deeply wary of this woman simply due to Trissiny’s description of her personality, but that description had largely omitted the physical and left her imagining the Duchess as some statuesque, imperious figure of impossible beauty and a downright draconic aura of power. To her surprise, Ravana Madouri was tiny. Unusually for Tiraan nobility, she was blonde, and shorter even than Rasha by a few inches. Not to mention just daintier in every proportion. Rasha herself was happy with her body as it had turned out, for all that Sister Eivery had tried to prepare her for disappointment as there were limits to what transformative alchemy could safely do. Far from being disappointed, she found that a tomboyish aesthetic rather suited her tastes, hence her shorter hairstyle. Still, she was not accustomed to being the the taller or more voluptuous of any two women, and yet…here they were.

The infamous Duchess was like a little doll. A tiny, pretty doll who gazed at Rasha with blue eyes like icicles sharpened to killing points. Meeting that dissecting gaze above that bland smile, she found herself believing every detail of Trissiny’s warnings about this woman.

“With regard to that,” she said aloud, “I do hope you don’t put too much blame on Rogrind. Given our history it feels odd to say that, but he actually is, to my amazement, an ally in this.”

“Quite so, quite so! Don’t worry, the situation was explained to my satisfaction. An unusual scenario, to be sure, but I, he, and I suspect you are all accustomed to, shall we say, extenuating circumstances?” She smiled again, then took a sip of her tea, eyes drilling into Rasha over the lip of the cup. “My people escorted Mr. Rogrind to the Svennish consulate here in Madouris. By this time I expect he is back in the capital; it would be standard procedure for them to have a portal mage on call. The gentleman’s account of your morning’s adventures was fascinating! Though somewhat incomplete, I must say.”

“Well,” Rasha murmured, “you know spies.”

“Of course.” Ravana’s smile was a shark’s. “Then, too, he appears to have been oddly incapacitated during part of the events in question. I understand you observed something of great interest?”

And there it was. The Duchess might even have been serious about that “matter of honor” business when it came to tending to Rasha herself, but a woman like that wouldn’t have only one motivation for anything she did. This was the meat of it.

“This is…difficult to talk about,” Rasha said, speaking carefully and thinking as rapidly as she could. Madouri would, of course, be an excellent ally, and already was politically aligned with her by default, but nothing she’d heard about the Duchess suggested she should or could be trusted. “For several reasons. I am entrusted with certain confidences, and also I’m afraid I understood relatively little of what the Archpope did there. High-level magical shenanigans are rather outside my wheelhouse.”

“So the Archpope was there,” Ravana mused. “Observed by you, without noting your presence?”

“It’s difficult to talk about,” Rasha repeated, affecting an abashed little smile.

The Duchess acknowledged that with a slight inclination of her head. “A pity. So much future trouble might have been avoided had you or Rogrind thought to slide a poisoned knife into his back.”

“Eserites don’t carry poisoned knives, my Lady.”

That had been a test, and the result was interesting. Ravana’s eyes shifted almost imperceptibly, crinkling with what looked like real humor. Of course, a person so self-possessed was more than capable of believably faking an emotion, but that wouldn’t be a likely choice of feigned feeling, given the innate rhythm of a conversation such as this.

“Oh?” she said aloud. “How surprising. I should think that would be stock in trade for a Guild agent.”

“The Guild doesn’t do assassinations, and poison is a poor choice of implement for the occasions when we find it necessary to dispense pain. It is more effective, pursuant to our goals, to see it inflicted by a conscious hand than some invisible agent. Also, in the Tiraan Empire, having any combination of poison and bladed weapons on one’s person at a time is considered evidence of murderous intent. A magistrate can impose a prison sentence for that alone.”

“A pity,” Ravana said with a soft sigh. “I’ve not found occasion to poison anyone, but I must say it seems too elegant a tool to be left in the drawer, as it were. Still, it does not do to criticize the experts at their own craft. I have been immensely satisfied with the Guild’s presence in my lands. It is my inclination to let them go about their business without interference from me.”

“It is unusual, my Lady,” Rasha said in the most carefully polite tone she had ever employed, “to meet an aristocrat who feels positively toward the Thieves’ Guild.”

“Do not mistake me, I rather doubt I would make a good Eserite myself. I believe in the importance of strong leadership and centralized power, you see. But I do highly regard the Guild’s approach to corruption. It must be excised without hesitation or mercy. Those who abuse the public for their own profit should receive not an iota of tolerance.”

Their eyes locked, and after a momentary pause, Rasha nodded once, slowly, in simple agreement. Ravana inclined her head again in response, and for just that second, the two shared a real mutual understanding. Not forgetting their respective places and agendas, of course, but it was a beginning.

Rasha decided to take a risk.

“You have a reputation, my Lady,” she said, allowing her delicate caution to relax just enough to meet the other woman’s gaze with open wariness, “for an interest in…unconventional assets, magical or otherwise.”

“I suppose I should be grateful that is the part of my reputation you’ve heard,” Ravana replied in a wry tone. “To be sure, I lack the magical expertise to understand exotic spellcraft, much less create it, but I do enjoy making myself at least aware of such…interesting assets. Especially if I can then employ specialists who are able to exercise them on my behalf.”

“A pragmatist.”

“Just so.”

“Especially when there is…corruption to be excised.”

This time, the Duchess’s answering smile was slow, and somehow icy and warm at the same time. It was a complex expression, one Rasha took as another gesture of camaraderie.

“Just so,” Ravana repeated softly.

Carefully, carefully. Obviously, she intended to tell Trissiny, and Glory, every detail she could recall save those Eserion had asked her specifically to withhold. Those exceptions were enough of a personal burden without adding the guilt of offloading the entire responsibility for this onto the shoulders of her paladin friend. Rasha was not at all sure whether Trissiny would choose to involve the likes of Ravana in what was unfolding between their growing alliance and Archpope Justinian; the Duchess was a potent asset, but not a notably reliable one.

But in the end…Rasha was not her subordinate. This was not Trissiny’s secret, and thus not her decision. And after the day she’d had, it seemed to her that unleashing a monster against her enemies would be a fine payback.

“Hypothetically,” she said aloud, setting her teacup down on the table between them and leaning back in her chair, “as someone with at least a layperson’s interest in obscure magical powers… What would you do if your enemy could deploy what is effectively an archdemon, except powered by divine rather than infernal energy?”

The Duchess’s expression changed not by a whit, and her answer was smooth and immediate. “Well, one is tempted to immediately resort to esoteric magical measures to undermine and neutralize such a foe. What can be created by intricate spellcraft is often best undone by more of the same. And then, of course, it becomes a game of perpetual one-upmanship between those in control of these opposing magical forces. I do quite enjoy such contests of wit, skill, and organizational aptitude, myself.”

“Forgive me if I presume, my Lady, but I perceive an implication in your response that you might act otherwise than according to what you describe as best practices.”

Ravana’s answering smile was downright vulpine. “Indeed. My very inclination toward games such as those obligates me to be mindful of occasions when it is most appropriate not to play them. The best tricks, as they say, are often simple tricks. Facing such an enemy, I would recall my Circles of Interaction and blast it with the most intense concentration of arcane magic it is humanly possible to accumulate and deploy.”

She set her cup down on the table with a solid clink, still holding Rasha’s gaze.

“And then, when the great weapon of the enemy was weakened and near death, I would personally stand upon its neck until I could watch the divine light fade from its eyes.”

“It’s,” Rasha said slowly, “that last bit, there…”

“Come now, I should think an Eserite of all people would understand. Sometimes, it is not enough to defeat one’s enemies. Sometimes, they must be taught fear.”

A shiver traveled up Rasha’s spine, a warning that she was treading in very dangerous waters indeed. It was not, however, a shiver of apprehension, but excitement. With it came the anticipatory prickle of vengeance beginning to take shape. Rasha might not be able to match any of these great powers in strength or even wits, but that did not make her anyone’s football to be kicked around. And what better ploy was there for a weaker player than to set the stronger against each other?

“I hope I am not taking up too much of your time, my Lady,” she said with a gracious nod of her head. “If you would be so kind as to indulge me, I would dearly like to discuss these matters with you further.”

“My dear Rasha,” the Duchess Madouri replied with a smile of pure kindness and warmth, “you are an honored guest here. My time is yours.”

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Rasha sat down on the end of the cot. There was plenty of room, its occupant being a dwarf; Rogrin’s shoulders both bulged over the sides but his feet didn’t come near the end. Then again, it was a conjured prop placed there by a literal god, so its properties were probably whatever they needed to be. That’d explain why it not only held up to a solid dwarf worth of weight plus hers, but remained completely stable on the uneven snow when she plunked down.

Thinking about nonsense like that was a welcome reprieve.

The Archpope, his surviving non-sacrificed lackeys, and his horrifying new creation did not linger. She paid enough attention to note that Rector was their teleportation specialist, and he wasn’t even a mage; apparently the equipment back at the Cathedral connected to his handheld device included a rapid transit function. Which itself was worth knowing, as to the best of Rasha’s awareness enchanted machines that could perform a teleportation were far beyond the current state of the art. At any rate, that seemed important enough that she managed to dully make a note of it despite the numb sensation that had settled over her after what she had just witnessed.

At any rate, in just a few more minutes, they were gone back whence they had come, which was a relief. She needed to think.

“Keystone souls,” Rasha whispered, then continued, her voice growing stronger as she worked through thoughts out loud, the process helping to regain her equilibrium. “So…he needs one of those per…Angelus. Imbued with the Pantheon’s power and then cut off from their attention? By the sound of it, any Pantheon priest who’s been personally excommunicated by their god. Okay. Okay, that’s…that’s good. That can’t be a common occurrence, so that puts a limit on how many of those things he can make, even beyond…” She trailed off and swallowed heavily. “Gods in pants. Uh, no offense.”

“None taken!”

“How many brainwashed soldiers could he possibly have?”

“The Holy Legion aren’t brainwashed,” Eserion said idly, now leaning one shoulder against the rock outcropping Schwartz had made last year, apparently perfectly at ease. “Just recruited and groomed with exacting care. That’s also significant, y’know. Justinian’s dabbled in real brainwashing, too—that’s what happened to those poor Tide bastards he threw at his problems with all the care of a man upending a bucket of crabs. No, I reckon his Angelus thingumajig requires willing and cognizant souls to power it.”

“But…not the keystone soul,” Rasha mumbled, frowning at nothing. “Lanora was dead, and even if she hadn’t been… I fancy I have a decent grasp of that woman’s flaws, and I can’t see her as the type to sacrifice herself for…something like that.”

“A good point,” the god agreed.

Rasha straightened up suddenly. “Wait a second… A divinely excommunicated priest, who doesn’t even need to be loyal? He’s already got Basra Syrinx squirreled away in that Cathedral! If this was their prototype attempt, why was it so important to come all the way out here in the snow and risk exposure, not to mention reversing time, just to get Lanora? That Rector guy made it sound like they were taking a lot of risks by doing it this way!”

“Mm, good point,” Eserion mused. “Good ol’ Basra sure doesn’t seem to be useful for much except raw materials for an appalling science experiment…at least, not to the likes of you or me. And yet, here we are. It’s almost as if Justinian’s the kinda guy who keeps multiple irons in multiple fires. He sure isn’t shy about making use of her particular brand of crazy.”

“Crap in a hat, after this I don’t even wanna imagine what kind of special plan he has for that woman,” Rasha muttered. She’d not had to deal with Syrinx directly, but between Trissiny’s personal stories and Glory’s collection of rumors the picture that emerged was frightening. “That’s probably gonna be a paladin-sized problem, whatever it is, anyway. Yeah, okay, I get why you wanted me to see this, it’s crucial intel. I can get Glory, Thorn…and Sweet. Between them, they know everybody. We’ve got a good chance of finding these keystone people before Justinian does, if we get the Guild and the Sisters and Imperial Intelligence on it.” She glanced down at Rogrind. “And Svennish intelligence, I guess. Thorn’s in good with them and I just heard the Archpope isn’t, so…” Rasha trailed off, frowning at a sudden thought. “Why’d you go to the trouble of knocking him out, then? Not like I’m this guy’s greatest fan but it seems like seeing this stuff for himself would’ve helped a lot.”

“Ah, well, you know how it is,” Eserion said with a cavalier grin. “He’ll have to be content with you catching him up after the fact, Intelligence types are used to patching together secondhand information. More to the point, such a perspicacious fella would immediately set about connecting the dots if I sleeped him now, instead of for the duration of my visit. So rather than ‘Eserion and Rasha are hiding something specific from me,’ he’ll be more inclined to think ‘Eserion is an asshole,’ which, y’know. Not incorrect.”

In that moment Rasha was abruptly reminded that while he might be the focus of her own religion, gods were dangerous creatures to be around.

“So there is more,” she said carefully. In different company this shift in mood might have her reaching surreptitiously for her throwing knives, but she’d already lost them, and realistically…what would be the point?

Eserion tipped her a singularly knowing wink. “Oh, very much so. I’ve been keeping an eye on you for a little while now, Rasha. Not that I arranged for you to be out here, exactly, but it was shaping up so conveniently I opted to just manage this situation rather than cutting it off. Sorry to put you out, and all that.”

“Yeah, well…I guess I can’t exactly complain. Thanks for helping me and Zafi out yesterday. That coulda been bad if you hadn’t stepped in.”

“Just don’t get used to it,” he advised. “Not that you aren’t a swell gal and all, and I have every confidence you’ll shape up to be one of the best of your generation, but you just can’t get in the habit of counting on the gods to step in and rescue you from danger. Nobody can, generally speaking, but that goes triple for Eserites.”

“Yeah, I’m well aware you expect us to fix our own shit. It’s one of the things I respect the most about Guild doctrine. So…what’s all this about, then? Why me?”

“Ah, ah!” Grinning, he held up a finger. “Now that, Rasha, is an important question, and it’s just not time for it yet. We’ve gotta address that one with all due seriousness, and that means we have to go through storytime first. These things have to be done in a certain order, as the bards tell us.”

“Fucking bards,” she muttered.

“They have some good points, though. For example, that everybody is the hero of their own story.”

Rasha shrugged. “Sure, everyone thinks they’re justified in whatever damn thing it is they’re doing, that’s not a groundbreaking insight. And it doesn’t mean they are justified, or that good intentions excuse anything.”

Eserion nodded, then took one step away from the rock slab and squatted on his heels in the snow. He continued to look perfectly comfortable in his partially-undone tuxedo, which of course was no surprise. His presence was probably the reason she also wasn’t cold, despite her lack of a warming charm and the fact that her half-dose of weather resistance potion had to be wearing off by now.

“Correct. But again, like I said, sometimes people have a point, even when it’s super uncomfortable for you to acknowledge that they might. That’s not the same thing as being right, or justified, but you will often find that a lot of folks who are antagonistic toward you aren’t as wrong, in an objective sense, as they probably seem to you. For example, let’s take his Holiness, Justinian.”

“Oh, I’m not gonna like the rest of this, am I?” she whispered.

Eserion grinned but did not pause. “Well, I did promise you storytime. Once upon a time, there was a wandering priest who came upon a great secret. A secret as ancient as divine magic itself, and so terrible that as a consequence of the nature of divine magic, anyone who learns it will be instantly struck dead, so that they can’t spread it around. But here’s the twist: he didn’t find this by accident. Because you see, those of us with a degree of control over the divine are able to shield people from that effect, at need. A certain deity with uncertain motivations led this man to this truth, opened his eyes to a terrible injustice that has been allowed to linger and determine the course of the world ever since.”

“You…what?” Rasha breathed. “What could…I don’t…”

“Easy,” the good said soothingly, giving her a smile far more gentle than his more customary rakish grin. “Don’t worry, Rasha, I’m not gonna dump that on you. I’m already laying enough of a burden on your head without painting a target on it as well. What you just saw was a hint, but it’s not close enough to the secret that you could figure it out unaided. You’re safe.”

“Well, now I kinda want to know.”

He regarded her solemnly. “Of course, you’re human. And I could tell you, and protect you. But you might not want to know after you did. Not all knowledge is useful, Rasha. Some of it’s only a burden.”

She nodded slowly. “And this story is about Justinian, right?”

“Ah!” He grinned again. “But that’s the second twist, Rasha. For you see, this isn’t actually a story, but two. This has happened a handful of times since the Elder Wars, and mostly nothing came of it, though occasionally it caused a mess. Elilial loves this trick; the upper echelons of the Black Wreath all know the secret, and it’s a big part of why they’re so dang cranky all the time. But this time, in this generation, this exact story has played out twice. A god with an agenda counter to the Pantheon’s led someone to the secret and protected them from the inevitable doom that followed. The stories diverge from there, however. The first, yes, was a young adventuring priest named Justinian Darnay—an educated man with, nonetheless, a head full of romantic notions about justice and valor that might better suit an Avenist than the Izarite he was. The second,” he grinned more broadly, and paused slightly for dramatic effect, to her vast irritation, “was a scrappy but charming street kid, name of Antonio Darling.”

Slowly, Rasha straightened up on the cot, only at that point becoming aware she’d allowed her posture to slouch. Glory would have been disappointed.

“Well…you had my attention already. Go on.”

“What matters to our twinned stories, what makes the fundamental difference between them, is the two disparate directions these two men went with this knowledge. Justinian began a methodical climb to power and is now engaged in trying to rearrange the world itself to fix that injustice. Darling… Didja know his great project as Bishop was to fund and direct the work of theological scholarship of this century? He set every young priest and clerk he could recruit to comb through every archived source of information known to exist, leveraging his own influence to get access even to the most hidden ones, about Elilial. Weeding out contradictions and unverified accounts, to assemble the definitive historical and psychological profile of the Dark Lady. The Nemitites were downright huffy it was an Eserite who did this. Interesting difference, though, right? Presented with the same revelation, one man sets out to fix it, while the other sets out to figure out what the fuck happened, and why.”

She frowned again. “Well… Different people are different, after all.”

“Ahh. But tell me, Rasha, does Sweet seem like the kinda guy who can look at a terrible injustice and not immediately want to pop open a tin of kickass on whoever did it? Remember, we’re talking about the man who was Boss of the Thieves’ Guild at one point.”

“Sweet is…uncomfortably comfortable with moral conflicts. According to Glory, he’s sorta notorious for playing all ends against the middle.”

“But he has a line he won’t cross, which you know specifically because Justinian crossed it. Sweet had been sticking close to the Archpope for the same reason he’s been stalking Elilial for years: trying to understand what was really happening, so he could figure out what to do about it. But Justinian went too far, and he broke away, hence the current state of religious politics in Tiraas.”

“Hm. I get the impression you’re leading somewhere with this.”

“Always. It’s about how and why both came upon the revelation, you see. Because they weren’t guided to it by the same god, or by the same agenda. Justinian was led by the nose along a prepared course meticulously calculated to guide him to certain conclusions—and then, crucially, offered aid and support in his campaign to right the great wrong. Antonio just had a piece of nonsense shoved in his face that was guaranteed to break his understanding of how the world works, and then cut loose to deal with that, without even the knowledge that he possessed forbidden information, much less that he’d been granted divine protection from it. All things considered, it’s only natural, the different ways these two reacted to the revelation.”

Rasha narrowed her eyes. “So you’re suggesting… Sweet doesn’t know everything Justinian knows. Or thinks he knows.”

“And there, we come to it.” With a sigh, Eserion leaned back, actually sitting down in the snow, from which position he gazed up at her with a purely weary expression. “You see, Rasha, I have been running…a con. You may have noticed some off-kilter behavior from the Guild and the Boss recently.”

“You bet your ass I have. You have any idea how much trouble it’s been, trying to keep this whole thing from blowing up?”

“Course I do,” he said, smirking unrepentantly. “I’m gonna tell you a secret, Rasha: I’m not the god who set Sweet on the course he’s on now, nor the one who protected him from the knowledge. He thinks I am, but I’m not. By the same token, I am not the renegade god currently doing the most to ensure Justinian’s schemes are thwarted before they’re completed. But he also thinks I am.” He grinned, the expression downright gleeful despite his posture of exhaustion. “It’s a fake out, see? After all, I’m Eserion the defiant, humbler of the mighty and bane of corrupt systems everywhere. Obviously I’d be the one to squirm out from under the influence Justinian’s using to keep the gods off his back, and set myself to cutting him down to size. He’ll be coming after me, not realizing what the real threat is. And Sweet won’t be able to clue him in, because he doesn’t know, either!”

“Wait! You don’t think Sweet would betray you to the Archpope, surely.”

There fell a pause of several seconds, over which Eserion’s grin faded.

“Well, there…we come to it. The heart of the issue. Because you see, Rasha, you don’t know everything Justinian knows. Sweet doesn’t know everything Justinian knows. And Justinian tolerates Sweet’s ongoing meddling and defiance because he firmly believes that once he’s able to bring Darling fully into the loop, to learn everything he knows and be able to protect him from divine retaliation for knowing it, Darling will side with him against the Pantheon. Against me.”

Rasha inhaled just as slowly to steady herself against the vertigo. “But…he’s wrong. I mean, he wouldn’t.”

“The thing is?” Eserion shrugged fatalistically. “The thing is…he might. Rasha, I am not saying I agree with Justinian’s take. But I’m also not saying the man is definitively the villain of this twisted-up multi-threaded story. What I am saying is that there’s an argument to be made for both sides. That a person who knows the whole picture could reasonably decide to side with Justinian, or against him. And Antonio Darling is a veteran of playing the angles, and navigating complex moral dilemmas. He could absolutely tip either way. The real, scary truth? I don’t honestly think I would blame him if he turned on me. I was never comfortable with the Pantheon’s choice; I argued hard against it at the time, and for correcting it before Elilial had her little tantrum and effectively locked us all on this course. But in the end, I’ve gone along with it. For eight thousand years, I have lived with what we did, and not tried to overthrow the system. The inherently…corrupt system.”

He hesitated before continuing.

“So now, finally, it’s time for the answer to your question: why you?”

“I’m suddenly very afraid I don’t wanna know,” she whispered.

His answering smile was sympathetic. “It didn’t have to be you, Rasha, I’ll level with you about that. You’re just the most suitable candidate who happened to wander too close to the core of these events and get tangled up in it. Two years ago you were nowhere on anyone’s list of relevant players, and are still barely in the notice of most of them. And that’s the very thing that makes you perfect. Because as much as I can relate to their perspectives and respect their ability to ponder the deep truths of the universe, I am tired of these Great Men with their Great Thoughts, their angst and compromise and complex agendas. And believe me, I include myself in that description. When it comes right down to it, if the world has to tip on somebody making a moral decision? I would always rather trust it to a woman who’s had to live with her boots on the ground in the world men like that have made, who’s fought and clawed and connived for everything she’s got, including her very identity.”

“…I am wearing a dress that cost more than my dad’s first boat, and I didn’t even pay for it myself.”

“And that dress is burned, torn, and stained with your own blood because you preferred to ride an explosion than quietly submit to somebody pushing you around. Life’s not about what is or isn’t handed to you, Rasha, but what you do with it.”

She shook her head, heard. “No, this is too much. I’m not some chosen one, okay? You want Trissiny.”

“The con is ongoing,” he said as if she hadn’t spoken, his eyes holding hers. “I’m still guiding these events to their necessary conclusion. A moment’s going to come when Antonio Darling has to make a choice; that much is part of the agendas of everyone else involved. My little contribution is you. When that moment happens, it’ll be under your eyes, Rasha. And I will make sure, in that moment, you have a knife in hand, and a window of opportunity to do what needs to be done.”

Rasha stared at him in horror. “You can’t mean— No, you’re not asking me to kill Sweet?”

He just stared up at her with the same expression. “Nope. I’m asking you to decide, when the moment comes, if that is the right thing to do. And then act on your decision.”

She bounded up off the cot hard enough to tip it over if it hadn’t been weighed down by an unconscious dwarf. “Fuck you! I don’t want this, you understand? This is… This is too much! I’m just a kid from Puna Vashtar, I can’t decide the fucking fate of the world!”

Her god just looked at her with sad eyes in a tired face.

Rasha took a step closer, brandishing a fist at him. “You can’t do this to me!”

“That’s right at the heart of the issue, you see,” he replied. “Gods are powerful beings, yes, but constrained ones. We are limited by our natures, by our aspects, even by the influence of our faithful. And this summer, dear ol’ Lil went and spilled the beans at Ninkabi about exactly how that can be used against us. The way to kill a god, Rasha, is to separate them from their aspect. Get them to act in a way contrary to the binding force that holds them to the world, or catch them doing it, and you can pry the consciousness loose from the power.

“But here’s the trick of it.” He had the temerity to wink at her again. “I believe I alluded to Justinian’s knack for evading the wrath of the gods, yeah? That’s why his personal presence was needed for rewinding time, which would otherwise set Vemnesthis on him in a heartbeat. He’s been fucking around with some real dark secrets, ancient stuff—specifically, the machinery of the Elder Gods that both they and we used to attain godhood in the first place. His schemes have come this far because he’s able to deflect our attention, make it so we can’t take an oppositional stance toward him.

“Unless our very godhood itself is in question. See?” Eserion grinned, looking both bitter and pleased with himself. “Like, for example, if the god of thieves and defiance starts directing his faith to do nonsensical and abusive things, coercing his high priest to mislead the Guild itself. Or forcing some poor apprentice who deserves better treatment into world-shaking shit that’s way above her pay grade. That is some very un-Eserite crap right there, Rasha. It all makes me just a little bit less me, or less the god I’ve become. And thus, a little less constrained. Most importantly, it’s enough to squirm out from under Justinian’s control.”

“But… Doesn’t that specifically make you vulnerable to being, y’know, killed?”

“Exactly!” He leaned forward, grinning more broadly still. “Exactly. And that is the con. Because he’s gonna have to deal with me, you see? Not only am I no longer under his thumb and a threat to him, I’ve made myself vulnerable in the process. It’s gonna be Justinian against me, in a struggle that could legitimately go either way, but which he has to win because if he doesn’t, I will personally wipe the floor with his ass at the moment when he’s the most vulnerable. But! The real beauty of it, Rasha, is that it’s all a distraction. It’s like I said: I’m not the god who backed Sweet. That one has made his own arrangements to shrug off Justinian’s control and set up the board to thwart him at that final moment. And as long as the Archpope is focused on me as the biggest threat, he’ll never see the real one coming.”

Rasha could only stare at him in silence for a few heartbeats before she finally shook her head. “I could blow the whistle on all this, you know. You’re so convinced Sweet might betray you—what makes you think I won’t just right right to him with this whole story? Hell, I could even go to Justinian. Bet that’d earn me a pretty cushy position in whatever world order he’s trying to set up.”

“Aside from the fact that you just saw how Justinian treats his most loyal followers?” The god smiled up at her, and it was no longer his wolfish grin, but a simple smile. Kind, and tired, and sad. “Nah. You could do all that, Rasha, but…I trust you. I picked you for a reason, you know. You’re a good kid.”

Rogrind sat bolt upright, unconsciousness fading right into perfect alertness as his training dictated.

They were in the same place. Except now, he was lying on a cot, at the foot of which sat Rasha, sipping from a steaming porcelain cup of tea and staring moodily into the distance. Despite the surrounding snow, it was pleasantly warm.

Without even looking over at him, Rasha wordlessly extended her arm, handing him a silver flask. In matching silence, Rogrind accepted it and unfastened the cap, raising it to sniff. His eyebrows lifted in surprise; that was good Svennish brandy. His personal favorite brand, in fact, the bouquet was quite distinctive. He did not, of course, take a drink.

“How embarrassing,” he said aloud, closely watching the young thief. She looked unharmed, but more dour than she’d been when he was last conscious. “I seem to have drifted off.”

“You missed some real shit,” Rasha said sourly. “No fault of yours. Eserion was here, knocked you right out. Apparently he wanted some one-on-one time with me.”

“Ah.” Well, a divine intervention could explain the cot, the drinks, the unnatural warmth around them…though it was not the only thing that might, and he was not one to take Eserites at their word.

“Some of that was personal, but you did miss important developments I better catch you up on,” she continued, finally turning to look at him. Her eyes looked downright hunted. “And you are not going to believe it, for the simple reason that you’re not a crazy person. He said that in order to demonstrate my veracity I should forewarn you that we’re about to be rescued by talking wolves. I don’t know what the hell that means, but by the sound of it I’m half hoping he was just fucking with me.”

“Ah, that sounds like Duchess Madouri’s new Wardens. Curious, though; last I was informed, they were all concentrated at the other end of the province. But then, I suppose their inherent fae magic would be quite an aid in both predicting events throughout Tiraan Province where their attention might be needed, and crossing overland faster than the mortal norm.”

Rasha stared at him. “Excuse me, the Duchess’s what.”

“You don’t keep up with the political news?” he said, keeping his tone deliberately mild. “That surprises me, Rasha, especially coming from a student of the esteemed Ms. Sharvineh.”

“I’m a girl of specific and limited interests,” she replied, shaking her head. “Well, okay then. While we wait for…that…you’ll probably want to hear about Justinian’s exciting new superweapon.”

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A god of the Pantheon made a pretty good host, even for surreptitious surveillance. In addition to shielding himself, Rasha, and Rogrind from detection by the Archpope’s party, Eserion ensured a comfortable temperature for them that somehow did not affect the surrounding snow, and even conjured a cozy little cot for the unconscious dwarf. By that point Rasha half expected him to provide snacks, which she did not mention due to her suspicion that if she did, he would, and that would just be a little too weird.

“You’re sure he’s okay?” she inquired, glancing again at Rogrind. By the rise and fall of his chest, he might just be peacefully asleep.

“Why, you suspect me of ill will toward the ol’ boy?” Eserion asked, tearing his eyes from the spectacle amid the ruins to grin at her.

“Well, I mean, he did sort of stalk, harass, and try to murder several Guild members, not to mention abducting, drugging and torturing Pick…”

“Never pad a rap sheet, Rasha,” the god chided. “Pick wasn’t tortured; they wanted intel and the Svennish are too professional to make that blunder. Anyway, all that’s settled, yeah?”

“I’m just…I dunno, surprised. The Guild itself is pretty big on force as a deterrent. I assumed that came from you.”

“There are people who just can’t be reasoned with,” Eserion said, his expression immediately growing solemn, almost glum. “People who cannot be redeemed and won’t improve. There are people in this world who are unsalvageable, intolerable, people with whom you can do nothing but destroy them before they can harm anyone else. As an Eserite you’re going to have to deal with a few of those people over the course of your life, Rasha, and as such you need to be aware that that is a tiny number of people. Nearly everyone is doing the best they can to do what they think is right, and when they fail, it’s just failure, not sin. Often well-meaning people have to be stopped, but there’s rarely a point in pursuing them after that.”

She frowned down at the sleeping dwarf again. “Well, okay, but…I mean, all the kidnapping…”

“Your dwarf friends saw shadowy abusers behaving violently and were willing to get violent themselves to shut that down.” He glanced at her again and winked. “Eserites of all people should respect that. Perspective’s a powerful thing, Rasha; if you can put yourself in someone’s shoes, you’ll be much better able to tell if you can find common cause with them. Do so, if they’re not too depraved to be worth it, which these guys aren’t. Thorn had the right idea on this. Ooh, eyes front, it’s about to get interesting again!”

The interlopers had not been idle while Rasha and Eserion got the unconscious dwarf settled. The twelve soldiers had positioned themselves in a ring encircling, oddly enough, not the Archpope or his companions but Lanora’s corpse. Though they carried battlestaves at the ready and all faced outward, eyes ceaselessly scanning the area for potential threats, to Rasha it appeared more like a ritual formation than a military one. All twelve were arranged in a perfect circle, spaced around it totally evenly, and though Eserion had been chattering to her at the time, she hadn’t missed Justinian and the officer apparently in charge of them, Nassir Ravoud, directing each to stand in their exact spots. Once placed, they stood immobile—not more still than military attention demanded, but not straying from their assigned places by so much as a toehold.

“This is entirely unsatisfactory,” the grouchy enchanter named Rector barked moments after Eserion’s warning. “These conditions— I need my equipment for the kind of certainty you’re talking about!”

“I will be able to guide the temporal transfer to a degree,” the Archpope told him patiently. “You need only initiate the basic rift, Rector. What is essential is the Angelus configuration. Is there any problem with the remote link to your equipment setup?”

“Wait, temporal transfer?” Rasha muttered while they continued to argue. “Rift? That sounds like time travel. There’s no way, even he would have Scions crawling up his ass…”

“Justinian’s got a way with gods,” Eserion said with a grim chuckle. “The Scions don’t respond to what Vemnesthis is prevented from noticing, see?”

“That’s…horrifying.”

“More for me’n for you, I bet. Hsst, this part’s important.”

“It should work, but this is not ideal,” Rector was saying in response to the Archpope’s last comment. “It’s not just remote interfacing with the machines, it’s translocating the entire ritual effect from the prepared chamber to…out here. You have any idea how much data has to be transferred for that to work? Even along a trascension interlink this is pushing it! And this is the prototype version! Makes way more sense to write this one off and start over with the next—”

“Rector,” Justinian interrupted, his voice still patient and gentle but now with a firmness that stifled all debate, “we cannot waste a keystone soul. It is not a common state of affairs for a soul to be imbued directly with divine power by the Pantheon, and then specifically cut off from its notice. I am gathering others, but none are yet in the vicinity of Tiraas, and events have made the need for a functioning Angelus Knight urgent. It is profoundly regrettable that we failed to secure Lanora in time to prevent this, but this is now the situation, and these the extraordinary measures we are forced to take to recover her. Can you do it? If it will not be possible, you must warn me before we make the attempt.”

Rector scowled at the inscrutable machine he was hunched over, and Rasha gaped at the scene.

“He can’t…surely he can’t bring her back from the dead?!”

“Oh, if only,” Eserion murmured. “No, I’m afraid it’s a lot worse than that, Rasha. Watch.”

“It…should work,” Rector said reluctantly. “I don’t like it. This is not tested. First attempts should always be in secured conditions, not in the field. If it goes wrong…”

“Will it?” Justinian asked, calm as ever.

The enchanter blew out a heavy huff of air. “I said it should work, didn’t I? It’s just not proper. It’s not safe procedure!”

“I have faith in you, Rector.”

“The tracks terminate over there, your Holiness,” Ravoud reported as he returned to the Archpope’s side from studying the mess left in the snow around the crash site. “Abruptly; I think they teleported out. Two of them, a dwarf and an elf.”

“An elf?!” Rasha exclaimed.

Eserion cackled and patted her on the back. “You’ve got small feet, and those slippers leave tracks that look like moccasin prints. Cos, y’know, nobody would be wearing shoes like that in the forest on purpose. Goes to show, a person can reason with perfect logic and still be dead-ass wrong without all the facts.”

“The Confederacy is too unstable yet and has no interest,” Justinian was musing to himself while Ravoud stood patiently by and Rector growled at his machine. “A dwarf and an elf who can teleport… Last Rock?” He frowned at Lanora’s body, then shook his head. “No. Neither Tellwyrn nor Yornhaldt would have done this. But…” Slowly, Justinian’s expression cleared, and then he actually smiled. “Trissiny. Avei chose well; that young woman is rapidly growing into her mother’s cunning.”

“I…suppose the second set could have been a half-elf,” Ravoud said, clearly dubous, “but they weren’t wearing Silver Legion boots, I would have recognized that.”

“Indeed. We shall have to add Svenheim to our roster of potentially hostile actors, Nassir.”

The soldier winced. “That would be trouble, your Holiness. The Church lacks influence in the Five Kingdoms.”

“Indeed, that is what makes it a clever move on her part.”

“I do not like how intelligent this guy is,” Rasha muttered. She hadn’t made that connection until Rogrind spelled it out, and she’d been standing in the middle of it, not looking at the aftermath. The god beside her just nodded.

Rector heaved another large, overdramatic sigh. “My fingers are cold. All right, I’ve made this secure as I can. Everything was already set up on the other end for the Angelus configuration, and initiating the temporal rift…well, it’s ready. Long as you’re just accessing the divine field’s battery bank, it hasn’t been long enough to make that any harder. I can’t do anything to make it all more ready.”

“Thank you, Rector.” Justinian nodded deeply to him, which he appeared not to notice. “Then we shall delay no longer.” The Archpope stepped forward from his position to the side of the circle, not crossing into it but changing his placement in a way Rasha recognized as symbolic. Spreading his hands at waist height, he addressed the assembled soldiers. “My faithful friends.”

None shifted from their assigned spots, but all twelve turned to face Justinian and dropped to one knee in the snow, not lowering their heads but gazing up at him raptly. Looking at their faces, Rasha felt an involuntary shiver that had nothing to do with the weather. Those expressions… It was as if they were staring at the source of all light and hope in the universe. She had rarely been in proximity to true fanaticism, but Glory had taken pains to bring her apprentices as guests to religious services where they could see it, and recognize it in the future. There was nothing more dangerous that came from the hearts of people, Glory had warned, and in this moment Rasha believed that. The Universal Church was supposed to be a simply administrative body, a facilitator of interfaith diplomacy between the Pantheon cults. For these men and women to so obviously regard the Archpope as an object of worship, Justinian had clearly twisted everything beyond all recognition. Even if he was successfully deposed, repairing what he’d done to the Church itself would be the work of years, if not generations.

“Each of you knows what comes next,” the Archpope addressed his devotees, his delivery a masterpiece of presentation: grave, solemn, yet kind. “Each of you has volunteered, unasked. What lies before you is not sacrifice, but ascension. And yet, it will be a change—a transition to something you cannot yet conceive. I would ask no one to embrace this except fully of their free will. If any of you would step back from this task now, this shall be the last moment to do so. There will be no recrimination, and no punishment. The task before you I cannot ask of you; it must be fully of your own volition. I would condemn none who choose to turn aside from this path.”

There was silence. Not one of them spoke, or even moved, merely gazed up at him in something very like rapture. Rasha had to tear her own eyes away from them in sheer, sick horror. Even not knowing yet what was about to happen, that little speech told her everything necessary. Faith was a powerful thing, able to uplift people, but if twisted, could utterly destroy them.

“Yeah,” Eserion said gently when she turned to stare helplessly at him, patting her shoulder once. “I know, hon.”

“We can’t just—”

“You gotta let people make their choices, Rasha. Even when those choices are obviously uninformed, or formed out of somebody’s deceit. None of us are qualified to control someone else’s life. Not even me, certainly not you.”

She clamped her lips shut miserably, suddenly sure she didn’t want to know what was coming next.

“I am humbled,” Justinian whispered, bowing his head before the silent soldiers kneeling in front of him. “As you have kept faith beyond what anyone could ask or expect, I swear your actions shall be honored as long as human memory persists. Even as you transcend the need for names of your own, the names you leave behind will be kept for eternity, that all who come after us will be reminded of the meaning of duty. Go forward, my dearest friends, with my gratitude, and the certainty that you are bringing salvation to the world.”

Ravoud, Rasha noted, didn’t look remotely comfortable with this, either. Wide-eyed and stiff beyond the demands of military bearing, he looked like a man on the verge of making a protest. But he didn’t, and when he turned his head to look at Justinian she saw something that, in a way, was even sadder than the blind fervor of his soldiers: simple, unconditional trust.

Rector was a living contrast to the mood, watching the Archpope with an impatient grimace. Justinian turned to him and nodded once, and with a soft exhalation, the enchanter placed his fingers in position upon the device he was carrying and began to move them in precise patterns.

The world around them grew lighter.

“Easy,” Eserion soothed, patting her on the shoulder again. “What you’re about to see isn’t gonna be comfortable but you’re in no danger. This part here is just a general surge of divine magic in the area. Hell, after the morning you’ve had, it might do you a world of good.”

It actually was sort of pleasant, incongruously with the scene thus far. Aside from a general lightening of the atmosphere, which looked odd due to how gentle it was and not glaring off the surrounding snow the way sunlight did, she felt a sense of imposed calm pushing against her mounting unease, plus a pleasant tingling replacing the sore spot at her shoulder where the destroyed warming charm had burned her. At the very edge of her hearing was a soft tone, reminiscent of both bells and flutes; Rasha couldn’t quite place what it sounded like, but it was soothing.

Justinian had closed his eyes and tilted his head back in a pose Rasha recognized as common among spellcasters focusing on something, and now the light suffusing the area brightened further around him, coalescing into a golden aura illuminating his body in particular. Except, unlike any divine aura she had personally seen, it seemed to solidify into constant, ever-shifting rays of discrete light beaming out from him in all directions, rather than a simple suffusing glow.

“Uh…” Rasha leaned away from a sunbeam that flashed past to her left.

“Relax, those wouldn’t hurt if they hitcha dead on,” Eserion assured her. “And they won’t, anyway. You’re not what this hoodoo is targeting.”

“That doesn’t look particularly targeted.”

“Just watch.”

Almost as soon as he spoke, a target did indeed emerge. More and more of the rays shifted forward, peppering the blood-stained snow in the middle of the circle, until they clustered to the point that a scintillating spotlight was focused on Lanora’s nearly-beheaded corpse.

“Target locked in,” Eserion murmured, watching intently. “Now comes the ‘temporal’ bit. This may start to get disorienting.”

“And yet you keep telling me to watch it.” Most people’s gods probably didn’t appreciate being sassed, but he chuckled.

It was at that point the ritual began to truly demand her attention, because Lanora twitched.

Not physically, the way a body would, Rasha realized; golden after-images were beginning to flicker around the corpse, suggesting at movements it was not actually making. At least, for the first few moments, before it quite abruptly sat up. In a single jerky motion the body heaved upright to a kneeling position, then passed through another series of blurry flashes before even those consolidated into a kind of reverse spray of light flashing into place around Lanora’s head.

This consolidated into the missing parts of her skull, formed out of golden light. The rest of her body had taken on a luminous quality, as if the solid matter were dissolving into energy even as energy flowed in to make up for what had been lost. She twitched and heaved again, jerking unnaturally upright into a hunched standing posture. Only when another reversed explosion flashed into place at the missing chunk of her side did Rasha’s appalled brain catch up with what she was seeing.

“He’s reversing what happened to her!”

“Think this is the cutoff point you were looking for,” Rector grunted, eyes fixed on his machine rather than the awesome spectacle in front of him. “Right? Right. Re-syncing.”

The light changed, no longer streaming directly from the Archpope but still lingering around Lanora’s upright body—and in fact, beginning to glow more brightly from it. Justinian’s eyes opened and he heaved a breath, not ostentatiously but enough to reveal the exertion of his performance, and his chest continued to rise more heavily as he stepped back from the circle, Rouvad hovering about him like a worried mother hen.

“Translocation’s working fine,” Rector reported tersely. “Whole system seems to be running, power’s sufficient to activate the ritual remotely, no significant throttling of energy or data across the connection. Everything’s within expected tolerances. This seems to be working.”

Justinian just nodded at him, which he didn’t see, eyes still fixed on his gadget. Rasha was barely paying attention to them, her gaze fixed on Lanora.

The body continued to change, color seeming to gradually leech from it as the glow intensified, as if its physical substance was dissolving to leave a person-shaped construct of Light behind. Now, as the glow intensified further, she actually began to rise off the ground. Her limbs shifted in an almost lifelike way, as though the woman’s intelligence were once again operating them. Now fully translucent and golden, Lanora ascended vertically, still in the center of the circle, until her feet dangled just above the heads of the onlooking soldiers. Spine arched, she leaned her head back to gaze at the sky, extending her arms behind her. Rasha couldn’t see her expression from that angle, but the pose could have indicated a sublime experience, or the furthest extreme of agony.

Staring at this, it took her an extra few seconds to notice the changing light was beginning to affect the twelve soldiers as well. More divine auras were slowly rising into existence around each of them, somewhat unevenly as if the energy affected every individual in a subtly different manner. Gradually, their own postures shifted; all had turned by that point to face Lanora’s transmuting body in the center, and one by one, military bearing began to yield to postures similar to hers. Heads back, arms going loose, spines slowly arching, their bodies clearly gripped by some extreme sensation, for good or for ill.

None of them made a sound. The scene was so chillingly silent that the distant, high-pitched chiming of divine magic at work seemed far louder than it was.

Rasha had to avert her eyes at the sudden explosion of pure golden light from the center of the circle, bursting with a sound like an enormous bell. A surge of wind and sheer kinetic force rushed outward, blasting snow in every direction—not the bloody snow, thankfully, that appeared to have dissolved along with Lanora’s corporeal form—and only Eserion’s hand against her back saved Rasha from being tipped over by the sudden impact.

When she could see again, Lanora was gone, and what had happened to her was beginning to take hold of the twelve soldiers. Slowly, they each rose off the ground, the colors and textures of their physical forms fading into constructs of translucent gold.

“Oh, no,” she whispered, “they’re not…”

Eserion made no reply, and no one else heard her.

The effect wasn’t as simple as it overtook the twelve sacrificial volunteers. Where Lanora had hovered there was now a single point of light, blazing like a second sunrise and connecting each of them with streamers of luminous energy. More such tendrils coiled and connected each of them around the circle, and across it, making a web of intricate rays. Not just direct beams connecting them, either; the more Rasha stared, the more she felt there was a pattern to them, something fiendishly complex, and yet, something it felt she should be able to grasp the purpose of, if she could only study it long enough. Narrowing her eyes in concentration, she glared against the throbbing pain that began to grow behind them…

A hand settled atop her head and Eserion forcibly turned her face away from the scene.

“It’s like an eclipse,” he advised. “Glance, then glance away. You don’t stare directly into that unless you wanna seriously hurt yourself.”

“But…it’s…what is…”

“Trust me, Rasha, that only seems like you should be able to parse it. You’re looking at sheer mathematics of a caliber that’d tie your brain in knots. Study the edges, get a broad impression, and don’t fixate. This is almost over, anyway.”

She tried to follow his advice, averting her gaze and glancing across various soldiers’ rising forms individually without trying to take in the whole scene, checking in on the Archpope and his two lackeys—none of whom were doing anything interesting, just watching the unfolding ritual like she was—then turning her head to take in the ritual with only her peripheral vision. That didn’t make much difference, but as long as she didn’t gaze too long at any one point or let her consciousness get sucked back into the intricate riddle of magic unfolding in the center, she could follow the progression of events.

By that point, what had befallen Lanora was in the final stages of affecting the twelve soldiers, and Rasha very much feared she knew what was next for them. Unlike Lanora, though, they were being pulled forward as they rose into the air—or more accurately, toward the center. The whole thing gave her the intuitive sense of a well-made sailor’s knot tightening in on itself to form a solid structure from loose coils of rope as the tension was pulled taut. Even without understanding what was happening, she could sense the momentum, feel the pull on her very soul as existence bent around them, the magical forces at work tugging everything into a single point of collapse.

Something was taking shape, something forged from thirteen mortal souls, crafted of impossibly intricate flows of magic.

Rasha finally had to look away entirely as all dissolved into Light. She could no longer make out any details with her eyes, nor could they stand to be directed at the intensity of luminous power that shone from the ritual circle. There was nothing now but the blaze of divine magic, so intense it felt warm on her cheek as she shifted her head away from it.

Then it faded, quickly at the end. The finality came not with another burst of power, but almost anticlimactically, the glow dissipating and the ringing in Rasha’s ears receding to a barely discernible tone at the faintest edge of hearing. Reluctantly, fearing what she would find, she turned back to see the result.

In the center of the disturbed snow, now cleansed of every trace of the twelve soldiers or Sister Lanora, including the sprawling bloodstain itself, there knelt a glowing…lump. Rasha blinked, unable to visually parse what she was seeing for a moment, until it shifted.

An arm emerged from amid the golden shell, bracing itself against the ground as if it had nearly toppled over. The luminous outer coating continued to crack and shift, reshuffling itself confusingly until the face emerged, along with the shape of a kneeling person within, and perspective snapped into place, finally letting her realize what she was seeing.

It was wings. Broad pinions wrought of sheer golden light, glowing gently and somehow distinct enough that she could pick out every single feather. They had been mostly wrapped around the kneeling form, obscuring its shape, but now flopped outward to spread across the snow in an ungainly manner. The figure lifted its head, and she realized its hair had also contributed to the glowing confusion. That, too, was golden, and not like simple blond hair: it seemed not only made of light, but subject to some force outside the norm, shifting slowly about as if in a soft breeze, or an ocean current.

The winged person had white skin, the color and texture of marble, so pure it resembled a moving statue more than skin. Its features were angular, androgynous, and it wore a robe of snowy white, over which was laid a suit of armor, golden and glowing as its wings and hair. Rasha saw the hilt of a sword buckled at its waist, also gold, but apparently actual gold, and not made of glowing energy.

Justinian paced forward, the soft crunch of snow under his careful steps incongruously loud in the stillness, and knelt before his creation, reaching out with both hands.

“Mnn,” Rector grunted, ruining the moment. “Looks like…success. All measurable values within their expected ranges based on the Vadrieny and Azradeh data and my extrapolations. We’ll have to do proper tests in a secured location, of course.”

The Archpope ignored him, gently taking the hands of the Angelus Knight, as he had called it.

“Rise, most honored servant of the Light.”

The Angelus fully lifted their head finally, opening their eyes. Within were pure, fathomless pools of the Light itself. It answered him in a voice like a choir, thirteen resonant souls speaking in unison.

“What is your command?”

“What?” Rasha echoed faintly, the single word sounding dumb even to herself. It was all she could come up with, though.

“Demigods are interesting critters, y’know,” Eserion commented, once again bracing a hand against her back to help keep her upright. Rasha didn’t ordinarily care for being touched by men she did not know very well, but his little pats and pushes had all been simply reassuring, and now she just felt grateful for the support. “They don’t follow…any established rules, see? Basically a god’s apex creation, something they make out of bits of themselves and usually some mortal they found especially worthy. They cause the most abominable fuckin’ trouble, which is why most of us haven’t done that in the longest time. For a good while, the only demigods were the daughters of Elilial.

“Then, well, the worst befell them. Only Vadrieny survived, stuck in the body of Teal Falconer… And just about the first thing that happened to the two of them was that they spent weeks in the Universal Church, being poked and prodded and studied by Justinian’s best and brightest minds. What he learned from that formed the basis of this little science project, along with some additional sources of info he’s scrounged up since, and a lot of really high-level magical understanding that was necessary to fold all that data into a useful form.”

“But what is it?”

“That,” Eserion said quietly as Justinian helped the Angelus to their feet, “is for all intents and purposes an archdemon, minus the demon part. Crafted from divine magic, and loyal only to him. And now that he knows it works, he can make as many as he wants.”

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Tendrils of shadow rose beneath her, twining together into a great twisted trunk and entangling her legs, and lifted Natchua straight up. She rose to a solid twenty feet in height, balanced perfectly in the tentacles’ grasp, until she judged that a sufficient altitude to do what she needed. Off to the south, beyond the range of human senses, she could see the necro-drake thrashing about and erratically charging in different directions as its new targets teased and tormented it from all sides. The green blotches of elven groves were barely visible to her in other directions—close enough the woodkin shaman would undoubtedly be aware of the large-scale infernomancy that was about to be performed on this spot. Hopefully they’d do as woodkin usually did: duck their heads and wait it out rather than taking action. The last thing she needed was nosy shamans disrupting her casting, to say nothing of what would happen if they appealed to the Confederacy and brought more of those damned Highguard.

Projecting steady streams of fire from her palms, Natchua quickly sketched out two huge spell circles, establishing only the basic boundaries to delineate their overall purpose, then paused to survey her work before getting down to refining the specific—rather elaborate—details this was going to need. For a moment, she considered a third, then thought better of it. Two should be plenty.

Next was supplies. In quick surges of shadow, she summoned from Leduc Manor the extra materials necessary for this that she hadn’t carried on her person: a selection of power crystals, enchanting dusts of three distinct grades, and finally, two bemused succubi.

“What the f— ” Melaxyna broke off and clapped a hand over her eyes. “Well, at least she’s not dead, I was more than half convinced…”

“What kind of bassackward nowhere is this supposed to be?” Kheshiri complained, peering about at the vacant prairie. “You never take me anywhere nice.”

Both demons fell silent as they caught sight of the sprawling circles burned into the ground to either side of their arrival point, the nearby stalks of tallgrass still smoking. In eerie unison, their expressions changed to a matching look of tremulous uncertainty as they recognized what she was about to do and basic pragmatism rebelled at the implications, while their Vanislaad attraction to carnage reveled in them.

“Have you finally lost your last vestiges of sense?” Melaxyna demanded. Kheshiri just began squealing and giggling. After that first moment of uncertainty, they seemed to have taken off in opposite directions, almost as if they’d planned it.

“Enough!” Natchua barked from atop her shadow-tendril perch. “I do not have time to argue; either you trust me or you don’t. I need those circles charged. You both understand the proper lines to augment with enchanting dust and the runic nexi where power crystals will need to be placed. Each of you pick a circle and get to work. Double-check with me if you have any questions, but otherwise no dawdling! We have one chance to save Veilgrad.”

Kheshiri instantly snapped her wings out, snatching up a bag of enchanting dust and swooping off to begin tracing glittering purple lines around the perimeter of one of the circles. Melaxyna hesitated for two full seconds, just long enough Natchua feared the succubus was about to rebel at this. But then she just shook her head, gathered up an armful of power crystals and launched herself at the other circle, muttering under her breath. Even Kheshiri wouldn’t have been able to make out any words at that distance, but Natchua of course heard her clearly.

“Hell with it, either I trust the little freak or everything’s twice-fucked anyway. She hasn’t ended the world yet.”

Natchua forbore comment outwardly, though she spared a moment to hope that remark didn’t prove prophetic. Then she resumed firing jets of flame into the ground, carefully avoiding both swooping succubi and searing the finer details of her summoning circles into place. The Wreath would hold the line for a while, but the clock was ticking.

Despite his dire commentary on their situation, Rogrind seemed in little hurry to remedy it. Of course, as he subsequently pointed out when she complained, they were a short walk from one of the province’s main highways, and with an iota of luck, could there flag down a lift to Tiraas. In the absolute worst case scenario, they’d have to walk to Madouris, which was closer; in nicer weather that would have been merely tiring and time-consuming. At present, it would be a very unpleasant slog through the thick snow, though Rogrind insisted he had enough of his resistance potions to tide them both over. Which did nothing to make the prospect appealing to Rasha, who was already not enjoying standing here in the snow while he fussed over the ruins of his carriage.

She understood his purpose, of course, for all that it was no concern of hers and thus annoying. A custom carriage outfitted by Svennish intelligence contained all sorts of goodies his agency wouldn’t want falling into the hands of anyone who might come to investigate this wreck. Already Rogrind had pried loose multiple concealed devices and made enough of them disappear to reveal he had potent bag-of-holding enchantments on multiple pockets. Including, she noticed with amusement, the vehicle registry plates. Undoubtedly those wouldn’t lead directly to the Svenheim embassy, but Imperial Intelligence would take one look at what had happened to this carriage and begin tracking everything as far as its substantial resources would allow.

“Oh, that’s real subtle,” she scoffed as Rogrind very carefully uncorked a vial from his apparently substantial alchemy kit and poured its contents over a console which had been hidden beneath the driver’s seat. Most of its dials were shattered anyway, but the thing itself must have been distinctive. At least before the metal had begun to dissolve under the potent acid with which he was now dousing it. “I’m more nobody’s gonna have any questions about that.”

“Obviously,” the dwarf replied without looking up, continuing to be unperturbed by her disapproval, “the best technique is to avoid notice entirely. When that fails, it can suffice to ensure that there remains nothing to notice. Alas, this is somewhat more labor-intensive, and less likely to succeed. In the business one must not expect the fates to align in one’s favor.”

“Can’t see, don’t see, won’t see,” she agreed. The dwarf sighed softly but said nothing, and Rasha gleefully filed that away. He didn’t like being reminded that the Thieves’ Guild’s work was very similar to his own. There was more amusement to be leveraged from that, surely. “While we’re standing around making small talk anyway, what are you still doing in Tiraas at all? I’d’ve figured you’d be reassigned as hell after your cover got blown last year.”

“An agent whose identity is not known has many uses,” he explained, still outwardly calm. “An agent whose identity is known in his country of operation has other, specific ones. In particular when one operates opposite skilled players like Quentin Vex, it is vastly useful to have obvious targets for him to follow around. There are no wins or losses in the great game, Rasha, merely changes upon the board. Hm.”

“Something wrong?” He’d stopped pouring, as a faint light had begun to flicker on one of the surviving pieces of the instrument panel he was destroying. Rogrind hesitated before continuing his work, quickly drizzling acid over that, too, and snuffing it out.

“No more wrong than we should expect, I think. Apparently we are being tracked by means of fae magic.”

“Hm,” she echoed, frowning. There were tradeoffs in fae versus arcane divination; fae tracking was all but impossible to deflect or evade, but so inherently imprecise that it was often not more useful than more vulnerable but specific arcane scrying. “Friend or foe?”

“Sadly, we would need an actual practitioner to determine that. The simple ability to detect fae attention via a passive enchantment is state of the art. By your leave, I believe we should adopt a cautious posture, in any case.”

“Leave granted.”

He took great care to re-cork the bottle which had contained acid and wipe it off on the surviving upholstery before stowing it away. Rasha would’ve just discarded the bottle on the grounds that any idiot would be able to discern what had happened here and one more piece of glass wouldn’t tell them anything, but then again, thieves and spies weren’t so similar that they had exactly the same training. Only when that was done did he produce a device made to look like a pocketwatch—a standard deception, Glory had over a dozen enchanted devices set in watch casings—and flipped it open.

Whatever it was, the information it contained instantly changed the dwarf’s mood.

“Hide,” he hissed, already turning and bolting. Rasha’s only instincts were trained enough to set her into motion before she bothered to ask questions. For a dwarf, Rogrind was amazingly agile, but she was still faster, and so managed to beat him to the shelter of one of the angled sheets of rock Schwartz had summoned out of the ground last year. Funny how things worked out; for all she knew, this was the second time she’d taken shelter behind this particular bulwark.

“What is it?” Rasha breathed once they were concealed. Rogrind still had his device out; she snuck a peek over his shoulder but couldn’t make heads or tails of the multiple tiny dials set into its face.

“We’re about to have company,” he whispered. “An arcane translocation signal just activated in this vicinity.”

“Scrying?”

“No such luck, this is for teleportation.”

“Shit,” she whispered. It might not be bad; Rasha’s friends would definitely be looking for her by now. Off the top of her head, though, she didn’t know of anyone in her inner circle who could teleport. Then again, Trissiny knew all sorts of wacky people, and Glory knew everyone. She looked at the very clear tracks the two of them had made through the snow right to their hiding spot and grimaced, noting Rogrind doing the same.

He pulled out another vial, drank half, and handed the rest to her. Rasha downed it without asking, and he immediately tugged her arm, beckoning her to follow. They set off to another position behind a large hunk of fallen masonry—this time leaving behind no traces in the snow. That was some good alchemy; thanks to Glory’s tutelage, Rasha had some idea what potions like that cost. It stood to reason an intelligence agent would have resources, but she hadn’t realized Svenheim made such heavy use of potions. That information was worth taking back to the Guild.

Even as they moved, a shrill whine like a very out-of-season mosquito began to resonate at the very edge of her hearing, growing steadily louder. No sooner had the pair ducked behind their new concealment than sparks of blue light began to flicker in the air over by the carriage’s wreck. It was but another second before a bright flash blazed across the ruins, and then over a dozen people materialized.

Rasha did not curse again, though she wanted to. These were not friendlies.

By far the majority were soldiers in crisp uniforms, with battlestaves at the ready; they instantly spread out, forming a perimeter around their landing zone and several detaching themselves from the formation to cover the wrecked carriage and the body of Sister Lanora. Rasha didn’t recognize those uniforms. They were white, vaguely resembling Silver Legion formal dress, but their insignia was a golden ankh over the breast. She’d thought the Holy Legionnaires only wore that ridiculously pompous armor, but one of the other parties present revealed the troops could not be anyone else.

Glory had insisted all her apprentices attend occasional services at the Universal Church, simply for the sake of being exposed to polite society. It was not the first time she had seen him, thus, but his presence here threw everything Rasha thought she understood into disarray. Archpope Justinian never left the safety of his power base in the Cathedral. And why would he? There, he was all but invulnerable, even against the countless factions and powerful individuals he had spent the last few years industriously antagonizing. Yet, there he was, his powerful build and patrician features unmistakable, behind a golden shield which had flashed into place around him the instant he’d arrived.

Rasha snuck a glance at Rogrind, who was staring at the new arrivals with the closed expression of an observant man determined to take in all possible data and reveal none in turn.

“Ugh!” shouted one of the other people with the Archpope, a stoop-shouldered individual bundled up as if against an Athan’Khar winter rather than a clear day in the Tira Valley. “These conditions are totally unacceptable!”

“Unfortunately, Rector, this is what we have to work with,” Justinian replied, his mellifluous voice utterly calm. “I apologize, but I must rely on your skill to overcome the inconvenience. This is the last place Lanora’s spirit existed upon the mortal plane, and distance from it makes the task more difficult. Seconds and inches are precious. Nassir, is that…?”

“Think so, your Holiness,” reported one of the soldiers, straightening from where he’d been kneeling at the very edge of the bloodstained patch of snow. The man’s face was hard, but Justinian’s grumpy companion took one look at the remains of Sister Lanora and was noisily sick into the nearest snowdrift. “No other bodies nearby, and she’s wearing Purist gear. Unfortunately her face is…gone.”

The Archpope, perhaps fittingly, was made of sterner stuff. His expression was deeply grave as he joined the soldier and gazed down at the body, but he did not flinch or avert his eyes. “What terrible damage. I don’t believe I have ever seen the like. It’s almost as if…”

“It looks like something triggered small explosions inside her body,” Nassir said, scowling deeply. “In the head, and look, there in the side. That wound would’ve been inflicted first. The head wound would be instantly lethal, so there’s no point in attacking again after that.”

“Have you seen such injuries before, Nassir?”

“Not in person, your Holiness. I’ve been briefed on the like, though, in the Army. Not sure anything I’ve heard of would’ve done it here, though. Some fairies are known to do nasty things like this, but nothing that lives this close to the capital. And of course, if you see unusually ugly wounds, infernomancy is always a suspicion…”

“There has been nothing of the kind done upon this spot in many years,” Justinian stated, raising his head to slowly direct his frown across the scenery. “At this range, I would sense it even under the Black Wreath’s concealment.”

The soldier nodded. “That leaves arcane attack spells. They exist. Very illegal, though. The Wizards’ Guild and the Salyrites both prohibit such craft.”

A moment of contemplative silence fell.

And then, a hand came to rest on Rasha’s shoulder, causing her to jump.

“Go on, say it,” breathed a new voice next to her. “Ask him.”

She just barely managed to stay silent, turning to gawk at the man who had appeared from nowhere between her and Rogrind: the waiter from the cafe who had warned her and Zafi of the Purist ambush. He was even still in his askew tuxedo, the cravat untied and hanging unevenly down his chest. Now, he was watching the scene unfolding before them with the wide-eyed eagerness of a child at a play.

Then she noticed that Rogrind had slumped, unconscious, to the ground, face-down in the snow.

“What of a Thieves’ Guild hedge mage?” Justinian asked, and the waiter began cackling aloud in sheer glee. Rasha frantically tried to shush him without adding to the noise herself.

“They…would be very hesitant to do such a thing, your Holiness,” the soldier named Nassir answered, his voice slowed with thought. Amazingly, neither he nor any of the others appeared to notice the gleeful hooting coming from Rasha’s hiding place. “The legal authorities would investigate any such thing, and possibly get Imperial Intelligence involved. Plus, if the Guild were feeling particularly cruel, they’d do something that would kill far more painfully and slowly. As deaths go, it doesn’t get much more merciful than the sudden loss of the entire brain. It’s not in their nature to risk official attention for something that gains them so little. Still,” he added pensively, “if I had to list mages who might know spellcraft like this, a back-alley Guild caster would top the list, even if they were hesitant to use it in practice. For example, this could be a vicious repurposing of a lock-breaking spell.”

“Oh, relax,” Rasha’s new companion chuckled, patting her on the head as the conversation over Lanora’s corpse continued. “They can’t hear or see us, I took care of that. Also your dwarf buddy here. Don’t worry about him, he’ll be fine; he’s just taking a nap. We’re about to see some shit that he really doesn’t need to, is all. You’ll have to convey my apologies when he wakes up.”

There were just too many questions; she settled on one almost at random. “Who the hell are you?!”

The man turned to meet her gaze, still wearing a cocky half-grin. And for just an instant, he let the veil slip, just by a fraction.

Weight and sheer power hammered at her consciousness as Rasha locked eyes with an intelligence as far beyond her own as the sun was beyond a candle. It was just for the barest fraction of a second, but it was enough to cause her to sit down hard in the snow.

Before them, Justinian raised his head suddenly like a hound catching a scent, and once more turned in a slow circle, studying his surroundings with a frown.

“Easy, there, Rasha,” Eserion said kindly, helping her back up. “I know you’ve had a pisser of a day already, but stay with me; you really need to see this next bit. Moments like this are rare, and you’ll almost never get forewarning of them, much less a front-row seat. We’re about to watch the world change right out from under us.”

One of the worst things about Natchua was that she was sometimes extremely right.

The Black Wreath didn’t fight; at most they laid ambushes. They contained, and that only after preparing the ground ahead of them to the best of their ability, luring their prey exactly where they wanted it before striking. Whether putting down loose demons, rogue warlocks, or their own traitors, it was simply not their way to engage in a frontal assault. Maybe, occasionally, the appearance of one after setting up the scene with the most exacting care, but actually fighting? Hurling themselves into the fray with spell and weapon and their own lifeblood on the line? It simply wasn’t done. It was not Elilial’s way.

Be foxes, not spiders.

The damnable thing was that their usual approach absolutely would not have worked here. The necro-drake was very much like a demon in how predictably it reacted, but there was a lot they could do about demons. Against this thing, their spells were simply not able to make a lasting impact. The mission wasn’t even to destroy or contain it, but only to keep it busy. There was nothing for it but to fight.

Embras Mogul wasn’t particularly surprised at how satisfying it was to simply let loose with all his destructive skill at an enemy, nor how the other survivors of his cult were clearly finding the same liberating vigor in it. After all they’d been through, it was only natural. He was rather surprised to find out that they were, in fact, pretty good at it.

They knew each other intuitively, with the intimacy of long cooperation and bonds forged in suffering. The Wreath moved in small groups, noting and reacting to one another so intuitively it felt like pure instinct. One trio would vanish as the necro-drake dived at them, and others would pummel it from multiple directions with shadowbolts, forcing the increasingly frustrated monster to whirl about and struggle to pick a target while under attack from all sides, only to be thwarted again when its chosen victims vanished into their own conjured darkness when it even tried to get close.

The poor thing was actually rather dumb. It never improved its strategy, just got progressively sloppier as going on and on without making any progress made it ever more angry.

It wasn’t as if they were making progress, either, but the difference was they were having fun. For once, the shoe was on the other foot: after a string of debacles and defeats, they were the cats tormenting the mouse and not the other way around. Embras kept an eye on the others every moment he could spare his attention from the necro-drake, watching for injury or signs of fatigue, but rather than growing tired, he saw his compatriots having more fun than he’d seen them have in years. Some, like Hiroshi, seemed to have fallen into a trancelike state of flow, concentrating in apparent serenity on their spells and tactics, while others were smiling, grinning with savage vindication as they did what no responsible warlocks ever allowed themselves to do: poured unrestrained destruction at their target.

It was, as Vanessa had said, cathartic. And he was a little afraid of what it might mean for the future, perhaps more than he was of the inept monstrosity trying to slaughter them all. It was going to be…a letdown, going back to their usual ways after this burst of sheer release. If they even could. Was there still a place for the Wreath as it was in the world? And if not, how big a mistake was it to tie their fates to Natchua of all bloody people?

Despite his misgivings, Mogul was having such a grand time shadow-jumping about and hammering the chaos best with infernal carnage that his immediate reaction to the sudden end of the exercise was a surge of pure disappointment. In the next moment, as he beheld the nature of that end, his emotional response felt more…complex.

The sound that echoed suddenly across the prairie brought stillness, as warlocks and necro-drake alike all stopped what they were doing and turned to stare. It was a terrible noise rarely heard on the mortal plane, and always a herald of catastrophe: a low sibilance that was like a hiss, if a hiss was a roar, a sound that was at once subtly slender and deafening.

The necro-drake’s bony face was unable to convey expression, but somehow, its body language as it turned to confront this new threat showed shock, even a hint of fear. It crouched, letting its wings fall to the sides, and lowered its head.

Embras Mogul, meanwhile, suddenly sat down in the tallgrass, laughing his head off.

Vanessa appeared next to him in a swell of shadow. “You know, I think we may have miscalculated, allying ourselves with that girl.”

“She doesn’t do anything halfway, does she?” Rupi added, coming to join them on foot. “Bloody hell, Embras. It’s like a…an infernal Tellwyrn.”

He just laughed. It was all too much.

They were adolescents; she’d made the summoning circles smaller on purpose, simply because full-sized adults would be too large to effectively grapple with the necro-drake the way she needed them to. All they had to do was pin the bastard down so she could step in and deliver the coup de grace. Behind their beaked heads, between their triple rows of crimson eyes and the flared directional fins, they wore collars of glowing crimson light, containing the runes which imbued them with the pact of summoning, restricting their behavior to that commanded by the warlock who had called them to this plane. Such bindings had never been placed on demons of this species before. They floated above her, eel-like bodies larger than a Rail caravan undulating sinuously as they awaited their mistress’s command.

It was with grim satisfaction that Natchua beheld the suddenly cowering necro-drake. Standing on the prairie beneath two captive nurdrakhaan, she pointed one finger at the monstrosity.

“Boys? Sic ‘im.”

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“Do you realize how infuriating all this is?”

“I can only imagine the depths of your inconvenience,” Rogrind said dryly.

“Oh, to be sure, you and your bullshit are not a positive addition to my day, but frankly? You’re just the icing on the cake,” Rasha informed him. “I am having the most frustrating week. Do you know how many times I’ve been chased, attacked, or abducted in just the last few days? This is ridiculous. I joined the Thieves’ Guild in large part so I would never have to feel helpless and put upon again. The damsel in distress bullshit is getting old fast.”

She expected either a glib retort or silence, depending on whether the dwarf was more inclined to play the freelance adventurer or hardened government agent at this moment. Not that it much mattered; Rasha herself was merely filling the air with an admittedly desultory attempt to deflect his attention while she searched for something she could use to leverage herself out of this new mess. Even so, she was surprised when Rogrind canted his head slightly as if giving her words serious consideration.

“The truth is,” he answered after a contemplative pause, “you are a diminutive specimen of your race, Miss Rasha. If you pursue a religion and career which consist mostly of entering combative situations with established powers, I’m afraid that inevitably means you will be on the back foot, physically speaking, for much of your life. Obviously, much the same is true of your mentor, Ms. Sharvineh, but she is adept at avoiding situations in which she is physically imperiled. That, of course, is the result of years of skilled effort bent toward establishing her secure position. Until you are able to establish such a bulwark, yourself…here you are.”

“Here I am,” Rasha repeated, now peering back at him closely. “Well, since we’re chatting, how would you have avoided getting nabbed, in my position?”

“First of all, don’t wander off by yourself.”

She winced. “Yeah, fair enough. Though in my defense, somebody was supposed to be watching my back. He took a break to get laid.”

“I wondered.” The dwarf’s face melted into an expression of pure disapproval. “How grievously unprofessional.”

“In his defense, it was with a dryad. And if you’d seen her—”

“I did see her, and while I take your point, I don’t consider that a mitigating circumstance. Sexual enticement is one of the oldest ploys in the book to distract an enemy agent; to fall prey to it from one’s own allies is a truly lamentable display. I expect that from newly enlisted soldiers, not field agents, or even established Guild thieves. In any case, aside from not committing rookie blunders, there are preparations you can make to ameliorate your physical vulnerability.”

“The martial arts, so I’ve been told.”

“Formal martial arts require a significant level of mastery to be useful in real-world situations. A Sun Style grandmaster could perhaps have disarmed me from your position, but few others. For practical purposes, the basic Eserite brawling techniques you’ve been taught should suffice for situations in which fighting would do you any good at all. No, by preparation, I mostly refer to equipment, and practice in using it. For example, the style of dress you seem to prefer provides ample fabric in which to conceal quite a variety of devices.” He gestured toward her heavy winter dress with the hand not currently holding a wand aimed at her heart.

Rasha idly lifted her left arm to inspect the sleeve—not the one in which her wand was hidden. “I suppose I could slip a knife in here…”

“Weapons are only the most basic of options,” said Rogrind. “Skilled foes will be prepared for them. Your resources would be better spent on unconventional applications of enchanting, or alchemy. One always has an advantage when one possesses tools and techniques for which the enemy is unprepared.”

Slowly, she lowered her arm, definitely not making the compulsive twitch of her right fingers toward her wand, as they wanted to. A thought had just descended into her awareness, bringing with it a note of embarrassment that she hadn’t made this observation immediately.

He hadn’t searched her.

Rasha was a member of a faction known for carrying concealed weapons—and he himself had just pointed out that she was dressed in a way which facilitated that. Rogrind was a veteran field agent, government trained. He knew better than this. And yet, not only had he failed to make even a cursory check for any such weapons on her person, he hadn’t even secured her hands before putting himself in a small moving box with her.

There was something going on here beyond the obvious.

They stared at each other in thoughtful silence for a long moment. The carriage passed through the busy city in eerie silence, its walls clearly charmed to cancel noise.

“You’re surprisingly free with the advice,” Rasha said at last, “considering I’m pretty sure you’re taking me out of the city to be murdered and hidden in a ditch somewhere. Wasted effort, isn’t it?”

“It’s not often, these days, I get the opportunity to speak as an old professional to a younger one,” he answered lightly. “And on that note, Rasha, a relevant piece of advice one of my early mentors gave me: if you are in a position to ask ‘is this the end,’ the answer is ‘not yet.’ A situation may be futile, but it only becomes hopeless when you decide that it is.”

“You’re…actually encouraging me to keep on fighting you?”

“After all we’ve been through?” One corner of his mouth twitched upward in a wry little partial smile. “I confess I would be disappointed if you did not.” The dwarf hesitated, his eyes flicking away from her toward the window separating the passenger compartment from the driver’s seat, where Sister Lanora would be partially visible from his perspective. Rasha nearly took advantage of his momentary distraction, but was forestalled by the fact that she didn’t actually have a plan yet, except maybe to tackle him. Which she had tried once before, to a dismal lack of effect, and then they hadn’t been in an enclosed space, nor he armed. The moment passed and he returned his focus to her face. “Sometimes, Rasha, the needs of the mission require us to accept…unwanted company. For a short while.”

Interesting.

She made no comment in reply, mulling. Was he hinting at something? There were enough little indications to indicate this whole situation was more than it appeared, but not enough yet to suggest what. Rasha, clearly, was still in a very dicey situation, and most likely a lethally dangerous one…but not exactly the one she’d thought.

She looked toward the side window of the carriage, noting the soldiers manning the guard post right outside as they passed through one of the city gates. Then she considered, for a second and a half, the hints Rogrind had dropped that his intentions were not as immediately murderous as he had first suggested, and inwardly steeled herself, deciding to take a risk.

Rasha exploded suddenly into motion, hurling her body with as much force as she could against the side of the carriage, grabbing and yanking the door handle.

“HELP! I’m being abducted!”

Rogrind did not move—didn’t even shift his wand hand to continue covering her, just watched in silence. The entire performance was utterly fruitless; the handled didn’t budge, the military police showed no indication they could see her through the windows or hear her shouting, nor her pounding on the door, and even her body-checking the vehicle itself didn’t make it rock by so much as an inch. Slowly due to the pace of traffic but still inexorably, the view outside changed to the walls of the bridge linking Tiraas to the mainland beyond.

This was the west gate, she noted; they were heading into Tiraan Province, not Vrandis. The domain of Trissiny’s Duchess friend, Ravana Madouri. That made absolutely no difference to Rasha inside this carriage, but it might become relevant if she managed to get out of it.

Slowly, Rasha drew back from the window and re-seated herself, folding her hands primly in her lap. “Worth a try.”

“Only naturally,” Rogrind said with a gracious nod of his head and the supreme confidence of one who knew his prisoner had no options.

Rasha had not really expected anything to come of that, in terms of getting out; her goal was to gather information, and she had just succeeded at that rather well.

His lack of reaction proved little, as he’d been aware before she moved that she wouldn’t succeed in escaping the carriage. But Rasha had just learned several interesting things about the carriage itself. One-way darkening of glass was a common charm, and in fact, the only charm she’d just detected which could be called common. The kind of silencing enchantments which could be laid upon windows with common enchanting dusts would bar noise from either side, but not the thumps of impacts directly on the windows themselves, yet the soldiers hadn’t even glanced over when she pounded on the glass. More telling was that the carriage hadn’t rocked in response to her sudden movement. Shock enchantments protected the wheels; it was a heavier-duty balancing charm than was standard that would prevent a vehicle from being shifted by sudden motion within. Rasha was small, but no carriage was that perfectly balanced without some extra enchantments. Then, there was the door itself; the lock hadn’t budged when she’d twisted the little knob. The lack of any further mechanism suggested it, too, was enchanted, and the kind of charm which would key it to a specific person’s touch was both definitely not standard and required its own power source.

This was a later-model Dawnco sedan, the sort of vehicle the Guild commonly used for getaway carriages, and not unlike those the Svennish agents had driven when chasing Rasha and her friends about last year. And it had been modified with serious extra enchantments, which told her two things.

First, this was not some piece Rogrind, a disavowed ex-agent, could have picked up from a dealer. Custom charm jobs were expensive, and charms of this nature drew eyes from the government if they noted them being applied. After last winter’s events, nobody in Tiraas who did this kind of work for the Guild would sell to a Sven for fear of blundering into the latent hostility between Eserites and the Kingdom of Svenheim. Which meant Rogrind’s story about being sacked was a lie. Fired government agents might be lucky to walk away with the contents of their pockets, not expensive major equipment like this. That led to the question of just what the hell the Svennish secret service wanted with her now. That issue with the divine disruptors was long put to bed, and from everything Rasha knew of the dwarves the most believable thing Rogrind had told her was that they would want nothing to do with Purists.

And second, all these extra enchantments needed extra power. Basic carriage design had been part of Rasha’s unconventional training—not to the extent of being able to fix enchanted carriages, but specifically with an eye toward finding hidden modifications in them. She had re-positioned herself in a different spot on the seat, and already noted the difference in vibration. This might be a stroke of luck; beneath the rear-facing passenger seat would be one of the standard spots…

With that, Rasha had a plan. A desperate one with a high chance of backfiring catastrophically, but with the alternative being to trust that this old enemy, who had abducted her in concert with a new enemy, wasn’t really as hostile as he appeared… It was time to roll the dice.

Not exactly time; there were a couple more ducks she needed to line in a row before she could make a move, and of course, that lining up proceeded with terrifying lack of speed while the carriage itself picked up its pace, carrying her ever further from the city, and witnesses.

Rasha did not miss the irony that they were following almost exactly the route of the last winter carriage ride she and Rogrind had taken out of the city: north from the bridge, on the main highway toward Madouris, which at this pace they would reach within the hour, at the absolute most. That had been in the dark of night during a blizzard, which (despite the reckless speed at which every vehicle in that chase had driven) had slowed them considerably. Now, they were making good time on a well-traveled road, which warned Rasha what to watch out for. Once Lanora turned off onto a side road with fewer prying eyes, the end was close.

But not, as Rogrind himself had just advised her, yet at hand.

She’d made a performance of shifting this way and that on the seat, brimming with nervous energy that kept her readjusting her position and sliding back and forth to peer out the windows on both sides. Rogrind watched her, but did not comment or try to interfere, merely keeping his wand trained on her. At one point Lanora, apparently catching sight of Rasha’s constant movement through her peripheral vision, had thumped on the window separating the driver and passenger compartments in annoyance, which Rasha only happened to notice because she was moving at the time and had it in her field of view, as the silencing enchantment covered that window as well. Neither she nor the dwarf acknowledged Lanora’s displeasure. The actual point of all the shifting about had been for her to examine the vibrations coming from under the bench. And bless the thin padding of Dawnco’s economy carriage seats, she’d done it within minutes. Rasha had identified the spot, slightly left of center and directly under the front passenger bench, where the vibrations were most perceptible: the likeliest position for the secondary power crystal keyed to the carriage’s various extra enchantments.

So she finally planted herself as far from it as possible, leaning against the right wall in a position that both maximized her distance and gave her a clear line of sight to the spot, which she’d landmarked by identifying one button in the pattern sewed into the seat cushions. Now there was nothing but to wait for an opportunity, and hope it didn’t come too late.

And since that was too great a risk, Rasha did the properly Eserite thing and set about creating her own damn opportunity.

“I can’t square this geniality with your whole mission of revenge,” she commented.

“Revenge. Is that what you think?” Rogrind raised an eyebrow.

“You pretty heavily implied it. Besides, if you have such a low opinion of Purists, why else would you be helping her? It’s not like you and I have any business, apart from you settling the score after I spanked you last year.”

“That is certainly one way to describe those events,” the dwarf said, smiling faintly. “Another would be that you were in the vicinity when someone actually competent foiled my mission.”

“Yeah, and I note you’re not going after any of them. Bullying, petty grievances, assisting religious fanatics you claim to dislike… I can’t decide which part is the worst reflection on you.”

“You are attempting to provoke an emotional reaction from me,” he said, still with that ironic little smile. “I don’t mind that as such, except that the effort is so halfhearted. One does hate to have a front row seat, as it were, for an inept performance of one’s craft.”

She didn’t need him actually agitated, just to look away for a second; even a relatively minor emotional upset would cause most people to shift their eyes momentarily, but she wasn’t dealing with most people here. Rasha glanced out the window herself and stiffened.

The moment was nearly here. They were turning off the main road onto…

“Well, well,” she said quietly, staring at the scene as best she could from this angle. “Doesn’t this take you back. This was your idea, I take it?”

Apparently the old fortress had been a landmark, an unused Enchanter Wars-era ruin left intact purely for its historicity. After the murderous schemes of Basra Syrinx had blown the whole thing up last winter, the Empire hadn’t even bothered to clean the grounds; the field was now littered with widespread outcroppings of fallen masonry, currently dusted with fresh snow. It made them look oddly serene, a contrast to Rasha’s memory of the violence through which this spectacle had been created. She even caught a glimpse of the angled sheets of rock Schwartz had summoned out of the very ground to shield them from the fallout. Only the wrecked carriages had been removed.

“Not as such,” the dwarf murmured, finally shifting his head to follow her gaze. “It does make for a conveniently isolated spot, though, positioned along this otherwise well-trafficked route. How history repeats itself, hmm?”

She’d started moving the instant his gaze was off her, letting the wand slide gently out of her sleeve rather than flicking it into her palm as she normally would; a slower motion was less likely to catch his eye. Rasha looked over at the button she’d identified, made an educated guess how far down the target would be, and fired.

Moment of distraction aside, Rogrind could not miss the soft hiss of a beam wand discharging at that proximity, much less the light. In a split second he was on top of her, trying to wrestle the weapon from her grip. He only failed because he’d mistaken her intent; the dwarf was much stronger than she, but in gripping her wrist and keeping the wand aimed away from himself and Lanora, he inadvertently kept it pushed in more or less the exact direction she wanted.

Rasha grunted and struggled against him in dreadful futility, managing only to twitch under his weight and muscle. Her shot had achieved nothing save a smoking hole in the upholstery. Now, in defiance of all wand safety, she clamped down on the clicker and kept up a continuous beam. Immediately the handle began to warm dangerously in her grip as she raked it this way and that across the general area of her target, able to move only in minute jerks and hoping that would be enough—

Her vision returned, fuzzy. She could hear nothing but a shrill whine deep in her own head, beyond which the world was silent. Had she actually been unconscious? Everything was so hazy. It was cold. Rasha was…face down? Weakly, she tried to rise…

A big hand grabbed her arm, hauled her upright; she was too dazed to protest. Then there came a stab of pain through the sensory fuzz. She managed to focus on the thing he tossed away as it fell to the snow: a fragment of wooden paneling from the carriage, one jagged end crimson where it had been lodged in…her. Oh, right, that was why her shoulder suddenly hurt. Good, good, her training whispered at the back of her head. Shoulder injuries could disable your arm, but rarely killed you, at least not immediately.

He—the dwarf, Rogrind, she focused on him now, noting his disheveled hair and burned suit—was hauling her bodily away; she stumbled, trying to keep up. What was… Oh, fire. There was burning wreckage. Blearily, Rasha looked back. The carriage was blown perfectly in half, both large pieces burning merrily and a wide spray of charred wood spread around the site. It sat in brown winter grass in the ditch by the road, the nearby snow blasted away by the explosion.

Well, that was one thing gone according to plan, anyway. Shoot the power crystal, disabling the carriage. It had been disabled a little harder than she’d hoped; that crystal must’ve been powering a lot more than the enchantments she’d identified to have had that much oomph in it. Made sense in hindsight, a spy agency vehicle would have all kinds of hidden tricks. Well, live and learn. Which she had, so far.

Suddenly the grip manhandling her shifted. Rasha blinked, trying to focus again on Rogrind as he pressed something against her lips. Glass? A bottle? No, a vial. With his other hand he gripped the back of her neck and made her tip her head up, pouring it into her mouth. Poison? No. She knew this flavor—sour, subtly fruity, tingling with contained magic. Healing potion.

Rasha’s vision and her mind began to clear, and the pain in her shoulder receded along with the shock. Also, the ringing dropped steadily in pitch, descending into a dull roar and then even that faded as her eardrums were mended. She became conscious of a different pain on her other shoulder—right about where her heating charm had been pinned. Ah, yeah, that would’ve burst from being that close to an arcane explosion, and healing potions didn’t work well on burns. Still, she was still alive, and now she could see, hear, and think.

Also, she was cold. Outside in the winter, with no heating charm or even a coat.

“Well, I have good news for you, Miss Rasha,” Rogrind said in a layered tone of aggressive joviality. “If you are so devoted to your freedom as to blow up vehicles while inside them, I can safely predict you will not be a prisoner often or for long.”

“I do what I can,” she said modestly, giving an experimental tug on her arm. His grip shifted not an inch; he was half-covered in soot, his hair and clothing charred and half his coat torn away, but other than that appeared unperturbed. Dwarves were inconveniently sturdy folk.

Something small bonked off the other side of Rasha’s head, and by sheer instinct she tried to catch it. Her cold-numbed fingers didn’t succeed in seizing the object, but she did note as it fell that it was another glass vial. She turned her head in the direction it had come from and met Sister Lanora’s burning gaze.

The Purist had her sword out; she was disheveled and not as badly burned, having been separated from the explosion by more layers of carriage, though blood dropped down half her face from where something had struck her on the temple. It made a perfect complement to her expression.

“I hope you’re proud of yourself, you little monster,” she hissed, bringing the sword up. “That was your last act of defiance.”

Rasha was suddenly yanked away, struggling to stay on her feet as Rogrind hauled her behind himself. “Ahem. This inconvenience aside, the terms of our agreement are met, Sister Lanora. We are in private, and you have the girl.”

“That is not a girl!”

“Whatever you say,” he grunted. “Before this proceeds any further, it is time for your end of the deal.”

“As soon as that pestilential brat is—”

“No.” Even without shouting, he projected his voice at a volume which cut her off neatly. It was a good trick, Glory had of course taught her apprentices that one early on. “You have already unilaterally modified our agreement once, and I have to say I am not best pleased with the results. The documents, Lanora. Now.”

The ex-priestess glared, her grip on the sword shifting, and for a second Rasha thought she might take a swing at the dwarf. Then she produced a wordless, feral snarl and stabbed the tip of the longsword into the frozen earth to free her hands, with which she snatched a bag hanging from her belt and began to rummage inside it. Even Rasha knew better than to treat bladed weapons that way; Trissiny would have… Well, that was the least of what Trissiny would be upset by, here, but it really said something about the Purists as a whole.

“Here,” Lanora snarled, hurling a leather-bound journal at the dwarf, which he neatly snatched from the air. “Take it and get out of the way!”

Saying nothing, he did so. Rogrind released Rasha, stepping aside and immediately opening the book, his eyes darting rapidly across its contents as he began to leaf through pages.

That left Rasha and Lanora facing one another with nothing between them but the chill of winter.

“I don’t think I’ll ever understand you,” Rasha admitted, taking a step back and tucking her chilled fingers into her sleeves. Her wand was lost, but she still had the knife in her other sleeve, right where she’d minutes ago suggested to Rogrind that she could one day start keeping one. “You had an actual message from a goddess. Do you know how many people have only dreamed of something like that? Who cares if it wasn’t what you wanted to hear? You could—”

“Shut up!” the woman shrieked. “Just shut it! I lost everything, do you understand that? I gave my life to Avei and she threw me away like so much trash. And for what?! To make some kind of point? All I have is this, boy. I can’t stick a sword in that bitch goddess—or even Trissiny Avelea, realistically. But at every step, your face has been there mocking me, and I can sure as hell do for you.”

“Well,” Rasha acknowledged, continuing to retreat as the former priestess kept pace, raising her sword. “I have to admit, I have no argument for that. Except to point out that you’re a moron. But then, you know that, don’t you?”

Lanora bared her teeth like a wolf about to pounce and raised the longsword over her head.

Rasha whipped her left arm forward, hurling the knife.

It went spinning away a full yard to Lanora’s right. Her fingers were almost numb from cold.

Lanora barked a mocking laugh and stepped forward, bringing the sword down. Mid-swing, there came another deafening boom from close by. The carriage was already done for; this time, what exploded was Lanora herself.

The left side of her midsection burst, spraying blood and viscera across the snow; she physically buckled as the core of her body was suddenly lacking a chunk of its structure. The sword tumbled to the ground, sinking beneath the snow, as its owner collapsed. She tried to press her hand over the wound, but the hole was bigger than her hand. Staring uncomprehendingly at the crimson stain spreading around her, Sister Lanora slumped fully to the ground.

“General Avelea sends her regrets,” Rogrind said dispassionately. Rasha turned her incredulous stare on the dwarf. He had tucked the black book under one arm and was now holding a… It resembled a wand, but heavier, an iron tube with a wooden handle and a clicker mechanism, now emitting smoke from its business end. Rogrind was already tipping a small vial of some powder into it, followed by a little metal ball. “She preferred an amicable resolution. Unfortunately, she is not here. And I like my loose ends neatly tied.”

He leveled the weapon. Lanora stared up at him in dull-eyed disbelief, and then the sound came again. It was thunderously loud, even more so at that proximity than a lightning wand. The Purist’s expression vanished along with her face and the greater part of her head.

Rasha averted her gaze, cringing, and wasn’t ashamed of it. The Guild inured one to violence, somewhat, but that…

Rogrind lowered his weapon with a sigh. “What a mess. If only I hadn’t lost my wand… Ah, well. You are a clever lass, Rasha; I trust I needn’t explain too much of this?”

“You…” She had to swallow and then clear her throat before she could speak properly. “Yeah, I guess after last winter, you did owe Trissiny a favor, huh?”

“Fortunately for us both, Trissiny Avelea is too intelligent to deal in such intransigent currencies as favors and debts,” he answered with a wan smile. “She presented herself at the Svennish embassy the day after our last visit to this spot, and rather than making complaints or demands, arranged for the Silver Legions on multiple continents to be armed and armored with Svennish steel. It all but singlehandedly resurrected our metalworking industry; a masterful exercise of soft power. My King has made his orders clear: what the Hand of Avei wants, she gets. In this case,” he held up the book, tucking his weapon back inside his coat now that the smoke had stopped, “documentation linking the Purists to the Universal Church.”

“You could have told me what you were doing, instead of scaring me half to death with this nonsense! Don’t you think I would have helped?”

“Rasha,” he said patiently, already fishing in his pockets again (what remained of them), “what part of our previous encounters do you think left me with the impression that you could be trusted to hold up your end of a sensitive operation? Not that you haven’t grown dramatically under Tamisin Sharvineh’s tutelage, but I could hardly take that risk. I do greatly regret involving you. Our arrangement was a hair’s breadth from completion on optimal terms—Lanora was about to be taken into protective custody in return for the documents, where she would have been safe, as the Archpope’s influence in the Five Kingdoms is minimal. But alas, you happened to cross her field of view as we were making the handoff, escorting three of her erstwhile companions evidently in custody. And then…” He grimaced. “She demanded your head for her compliance. That ridiculous woman was quite irrationally obsessed with you.”

“Yeah, she, uh, mentioned that.” Rasha glanced at the spreading stain that had been Lanora, then shuffled back; the blood was seeping rapidly through the snow and had nearly reached her own slippers. “Wouldn’t it have been easier to just take the book from her at that point?”

“Her bag of holding was spelled to open for no one else; it would take a skilled enchanter weeks to extract it. And a person in her mental state, while easily manipulated, is nearly impossible to coerce. Once a person has nothing left to motivate them but spite, they can’t be forced to do anything. Here.” He had found what he wanted in his pockets: another vial of liquid. The agent downed half of it with a grimace, and then stepped forward to hand the remainder to Rasha. “Potion of weather resistance. It’s no personal heating charm, but it will stave off hypothermia for a while.”

Rasha accepted without hesitation; her fingers were already so numb she could barely tip the liquid into her own mouth, but she managed, and immediately blessed warmth began to spread through her.

“She was a centimark from freedom,” the dwarf murmured, frowning down at the woman he’d just killed. “Protection for herself and any of her comrades we could find. It was a generous deal, and a better ending than she deserved. But she threw it away for a chance at petty vengeance, and now look. This is what vindictiveness gets you.”

“Revenge is a sucker’s game,” Rasha quoted, nodding.

“And now we are stranded in the woods, in midwinter, standing over a fresh corpse.”

“You’re awfully liberal with the complaints, for somebody whose fault all this is!”

“And who blew up the carriage?” he countered, then smiled and held up a hand to forestall her rebuttal. “This is how it goes sometimes, Rasha. We made the best decisions available with the information we had, and ended up needlessly at cross-purposes to our mutual detriment. Such is life. Now, let us put that aside and see what we can do about survival.”

“Yeah, I guess it’d be a shame if Trissiny didn’t get those documents, after you went to all this trouble.”

The spy nodded, his polite smile firmly in place. “Precisely.”

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“Don’t touch the equipment, obviously. The visual effects are harmless and not interactable unless you’re doing magic, so don’t do magic.” Rector paused, looking up from his instrument panel, a construction of modern enchanting parts and engineered dials and levers around a millennia-old Infinite Order data screen, and leveled an accusing finger at one particular member of his audience. “And for anybody who is a living incarnation of magic, that means don’t even think too hard about magic! No focused intent! Do not subjectivize any physical principles!”

Azradeh raised both of her clawed hands innocently. “C’mon, Rector, you know me better than that.”

A wrench bounced off the bridge of her nose. His aim had been steadily improving.

“I shall be the very soul of discretion and restraint,” she promised. “Demon’s honor.”

She didn’t push too hard; it was enough of a privilege to be allowed to observe this event, which was being held in one of the underground experimental chambers beneath the Church Azradeh had not seen before. She didn’t even know how many of these Justinian had authorized, but like the others, this one was a melange of enchanting and engineering equipment completely inscrutable to her built into and around various priceless relics of the Elder Gods. Azradeh had to wonder whether the Universal Church had always had what was probably the world’s largest collection of that old technology or it was all collected by Justinian for his purposes.

Currently, the equipment wasn’t even the most interesting thing present. In the air all around them swirled shapes and sigils of floating light, representing everything from mathematical equations to arcane sigils, rotating around the room in orderly patterns. Orderly, but fiendishly complex.

“Does anything look familiar to you?” the Archpope himself asked her quietly.

Azradeh turned to him, raising her eyebrows. “Is there a reason it should?”

“All right, fixed it,” Rector stated before he could reply. “Yeah… Good, good, piggybacked a translocation signal off the native displacement waves. Using the Golden Sea as a manifestation portal is never gonna be completely stable, but if you want distance, I got that at the cost of precision of placement. Should spit out the target a good distance out past the Great Plains instead of right on the frontier.”

“How much precision did it cost, Rector?” Justinian asked.

The enchanter shook his head irritably, still scowling at his instruments. “Dunno. This is frustratingly vague. Gotta stay at the controls, steer it in real time. Way too many variables to account for—this is just not proper engineering, gonna be at least somewhat intuitive. How much precision you need?”

The Archpope nodded gravely. “If the manifestation will be at a radius outside the Golden Sea, it must be along the southern half. The entire process will be wasted if the subject materializes inside the Dwarnskolds, or flies off over the Stormsea.”

“Doable, no problem,” Rector said brusquely.

“And it must not appear in the vicinity of Last Rock.”

Rector hesitated. “…shouldn’t be a problem. That’s prob’ly too close to the frontier anyway. Straight line from there down to Calderaas, more or less… Yeah, think I can keep it clear of that range.”

“And,” Justinian continued, noting the way Rector’s shoulders immediately tensed, “if possible, I would rather it did not emerge near Veilgrad.”

In the short pause which ensued, the enchanter actually took his hands off the controls to drum all his fingers on the panel. When he finally spoke, his voice was even tighter than usual. “How important is that?”

Justinian had found that dealing with Rector was quite unlike, say, Ravoud, who obeyed him with implicit trust even against his own better judgment. With Rector, he needed to explain his reasons as clearly and in as much detail as possible, as the enchanter would tend to disregard instructions for which he didn’t see the point.

“The entire point of this manifestation will be psychological. We must create shock, and horror. Apart from the benefits of spreading this widely, the people of Veilgrad have always been somewhat inured to that, and have grown especially so after the events of the last few years. In addition, Veilgrad has recently acquired new protectors of significant potency and as yet undetermined capabilities. I would not wish the creature to be dispatched before the paladins can be brought to face it.”

“Not much chance of anything but a paladin doing it,” Rector said, un-tensing slightly. “I will…see what I can do. Not promising anything. Aiming this at the southern half of the radius while avoiding the point in the center of that might be all the precision I can squeeze out of it. Upside is, Veilgrad’s one spot. Worst comes to worst it’s just straight unlikely it’ll pop out there as opposed to any other point.”

“Please do what you can, Rector,” the Archpope urged, nodding at his back. “I have faith in your abilities.”

The enchanter grunted, going back to work.

“So, uh,” Azradeh said quietly, edging up next to him, “aren’t those paladins doing politics at you right now? I’d’ve thought you’d put this on hold while dealing with that.”

“This is me dealing with that,” Justinian said, giving her a sidelong smile. “It’s called asymmetrical warfare; attack your enemy with whatever they can least anticipate and counter. The children did this by moving into an arena in which I have up till now decisively overmatched them. They’ll not expect an abrupt shift back into territory in which they are more comfortable.”

“Huh. Doesn’t that…just give them back the advantage?”

“Momentarily,” he agreed, returning his gaze to Rector’s form, still hunched over the controls and jabbing irritably at the screen. “In the moment after that, it will render all their efforts irrelevant.”

Azradeh idly reached up, letting one stream of symbols pass intangibly through her hand. The visible data swirling around the chamber was all focused upon a point in its center, a save ten yards away from Rector’s control station. There, an elaborate construction of magic and technology surrounded the object at the center of the entire effect, keeping it contained, but visible. Theoretically visible; it was difficult to look at directly. When stared at for a few seconds, the black sliver of bone began to waver, as if shifting color to something in a spectrum she could not ordinarily see.

“I appreciate how you’re always willing to explain things to me.”

Justinian smiled at her again. “Gladly. You were known to be quite the strategist in your previous life; I retain hope that thoughts in that vein may yet jar some memory to the surface. I only regret that I do not have more time to visit with you.”

“Nah, you’re busy, I get it.”

“Do you have to chatter back there?!” Rector exclaimed.

“Oops.” Grinning, Azradeh took a series of loud, stomping steps backward. “I’m withdrawing, Rector! Going back to the wall, out of your radius!”

“Do it quietly! I am trying to focus!”

Pressing her back against the wall, the archdemon raised her claws to frame her mouth and bellowed, “IS THIS FAR ENOUGH?”

He made a sound like a prematurely awakened bear and did not otherwise respond.

Behind him, Delilah slipped discreetly over to the Archpope’s side from where she had been hovering by the door.

“Has this personality clash become a problem?” Justinian asked her, softly enough that Rector could not overhear.

The priestess shook her head, answering in the same near-whisper. “I thought it would, at first, but… She’s very careful not to cross any of his hard lines. It took me a while to realize it, but he actually enjoys having excuses to shout and be grumpy at her. Throwing things at someone who can’t be harmed by it is something of a release. She actually may be good for him.”

“How intriguing,” Justinian said, smiling.

Several yards behind them all and out of anyone’s field of view, Azradeh stepped silently forward, reached out with one hand, and tapped a point in midair. Beneath the tip of her claw, a single fragment of incorporeal data, a paragraph-sized equation, froze in its orbit and adhered to her hand. She swiftly shifted it to a different orbit and then withdrew, leaving it to float off on its way.

Smiling aimlessly, Azradeh once more retreated and leaned against the wall again, humming.

“What is that noise!?” Rector exclaimed.

“Oh, not a fan of lullabies? I take requests!”

He had not hesitated in following Rizlith through the Conclave’s embassy, simply because it was so out of character for her to seek him out. The succubus was a presence Ampophrenon tolerated solely to maintain the peace with Razzavinax, a fact of which she was well aware, and wisely kept her distance from the gold dragon. Now, as she had begged his attention on an urgent matter, he let her lead him deep into one of the embassy’s sub-basements. Wordlessly, Rizlith opened a door Ampophrenon recognized and gestured him through with a deferential bow.

He gave her a nod of acknowledgment as he stepped in, and for a single instant when she started to close the door behind him he considered the possibility of some kind of trap—you could never lower your guard around a child of Vanislaas—but then again, with her errand complete it was just as likely she simply didn’t want to be shut in a room with a gold dragon.

Surveying the scene before him, Ampophrenon amended that supposition to conclude the succubus had probably not wanted to be shut in a room with any of what was going on here.

This was one of the “hoard rooms,” subterranean chambers below the embassy which they had enchanted to be far larger than their physical dimensions, so as to let the dragons have private spaces in which they could rest in their larger forms. None of them, of course, kept an actual hoard here, right under the noses of other dragons; that was a recipe for several kinds of disaster. But they were welcome sanctuaries, nonetheless. This particular cavernous chamber was the private residence Varsinostro the Green shared with his roommate.

Varsinostro himself lay stretched along the ground, half-curled in a protective posture with one arm, his tail, and the edge of his wing enfolding the diminutive figure he clutched against his side. Ampophrenon met the green’s eyes and bowed his head once upon entering his personal space, but thereafter focused his attention on the gibbering elf.

“Where is it, where is the light? It was calm it was so—no, no more. Stop! Stop!” Raash sobbed aloud, actually pounding his fists against the dragon’s armored hide, which of course had not the least effect. At least he wasn’t lashing out with magic. “It’s not dark or light, they’re so angry. It’s wrong! It’s wrong! Please, I can’t make them…” Burying his face against Varsinostro’s side, he heaved silently as he struggled to breathe.

“What has happened to him?” Ampophrenon asked quietly. “Our protections have failed, after all this time?” It had taken some trial and error to refine the magic through which they kept the mad spirits of Athan’Khar from driving the headhunter insane, but not even in his worst moments since coming to the Conclave had Raash been this bad. In fact, this was the worst Ampophrenon had seen him since the four dragons had originally rescued him from Athan’Khar after Khadizroth’s escapade in Viridill. Worse, possibly; then, the elf had been only babbling and incoherent. Now he appeared to be in pain.

“The protection stands,” Varsinostro answered, his voice soft even in the booming resonance granted it by his greater form. “It seems we crafted them to be…inadequate. It is the spirits which have changed; they are riled beyond anything we have seen since Raash came home with us.” With one huge claw, he very tenderly stroked the elf’s hair as he wept silently against the dragon’s hide. “I have been forced to intercede with brute power and prevent him from casting magic. Until this subsides, I can do nothing but stay with him and provide safety, and whatever comfort I may.” His expression was nearly as pained as Raash’s as he looked down at the maddened elf Varsinostro had taken the primary role in managing the headhunter’s condition, and the two had become quite close.

“Zanzayed has already departed for Viridill to check for activity in Athan’Khar itself,” said Razzavinax, who stood to the side in his smaller form. His own face was grave; despite the well-earned reputation red dragons carried, Razzavinax was a self-described people person and disliked seeing anyone suffer needlessly, especially the companion of a fellow dragon. “I’m afraid that may be a mockingjay hunt, though, Ampophrenon. This agitation is severe; it has taken all of Varsinostro’s focus to keep Raash from hurting himself, and my own familiarity with the Athan’Khar spirits is much lesser. Still…I strongly suspect they are reacting to an outside stimulus. This is…reminiscent of the agitations observed along the Viridill border during recorded major chaos events.”

Ampophrenon inhaled slowly, mastering his own alarm. “Then Zanzayed’s errand is worthwhile, even if it is only due diligence. If your suspicion is correct…”

“Even our strength means little against chaos,” Razzavinax agreed grimly. “Raash wasn’t with us during the disaster at Veilgrad, but we all remember how that set off the oracles at the time, and…”

“And this is different,” Varsinostro rumbled. “Sudden, and acute. I can only hope it passes as quickly as it has come on. If not…” Raash groaned and began cursing softly in agonized elvish; the dragon gently rested his chin atop the elf’s head.

“While we’re talking of due diligence,” said Razzavinax, “I think it would be a good idea for you to visit your paladin friend, Ampophrenon; Zanza says she might actually like you more than him, anyway. And then the other two. If there is a major chaos incident brewing, they’ll be needed front and center, and we can provide them quick transport to wherever it occurs.”

“Yes,” Ampophrenon said, narrowing his own eyes. “That raises an ominous prospect, however. The paladins are right now—”

“We know what they’re doing,” the red dragon said, his expression growing steely. “And who will be most inconvenienced if they succeed. In light of what is strongly suspected about his previous involvement in chaos events, isn’t that suggestive?”

“Let us be aware of possibilities without borrowing trouble,” Ampophrenon cautioned. “You are right, though, it is perilously suggestive. And should this suspicion be borne out, his decisive removal will become an urgent priority.”

“I’m glad to hear you say it,” Razzavinax replied, his mouth twisting with black humor. “I’m the wrong color to be safely making pronouncements like that toward the Universal Church or its figurehead. For my part, I’m going to go pull at my connections in the city. We need fresh information, and to be positioned as well as possible for whatever comes next. Varsinostro, I hate to leave you alone with this, but I think it would be a bad idea to have Rizlith in here. I’ll ask Maiyenn to come keep you two company, if you don’t object.”

“She would be welcome, if she is willing,” Varsinostro agreed softly. “Your lady has always had a gentle way with Raash.”

Red and gold nodded at him, and then Ampophrenon stepped forward, reaching out to lay a very soft touch against Raash’s shoulder where it emerged above the tip of Varsinostro’s wing.

“Courage, friend,” he murmured. “We will not desert you.”

Raash shifted his head so Ampophrenon could see one of his eyes, but his stare was unfocused and wild. It was unclear whether he could even see him.

Then the two dragons turned in unison and marched toward the door together. The sight of their grim expressions and purposeful stride would have been enough to make the world tremble, if it could see them.

Even after they had spread the population to well-constructed tents around the lodge’s grounds (well-made structures complete with modern heating charms that were almost like temporary houses, provided by Ravana’s generosity), it was still dense enough with lizardfolk refugees that relatively small incidents could create a stir felt by everyone present. The stir currently underway was not small. As such, Ingvar had been unsurprised when Ilriss, a young lizardwoman apprenticing as a shaman, had run to him frantically demanding his presence.

The Elder had made his semi-permanent home in the great hall of the lodge, with his belongings arranged around a simple pile of sleeping furs near the fire, no barriers or concessions to privacy added. Ingvar respected his dedication to making himself available to his people, and while the lizardfolk remained reluctant to discuss their religious rites, he had inferred that this accessibility was related to the fae ritual by which the Elder had divested himself of his very name.

Admirable as that was, it carried the downside that when something was wrong with the Elder, it spread panic. Now, Ingvar and Ilriss had to push their way through agitated lizardpeople as more received word and streamed into the great hall to spectate. The Shadow Hunters had also begun gathering, and were barely managing to keep order.

“He’s been like this ever since it started,” Ilriss fretted as she finally brought Ingvar to the Elder’s bedside. The old shaman lay on his back, eyes squeezed closed and his face contorted in a grimace of apparent pain; his entire body was tense, nearly arching off the furs, as if he were physically struggling with some weight despite his prone position. “It struck us all, but he…he…”

“The Elder has taken it upon himself,” interjected Fninn, the other junior shaman who most often accompanied the Elder, as Ilriss seemed about to succumb to her own worry. “Something has agitated our familiar spirits. Badly. They screamed in anger and fear, and… The Elder has gathered to himself all their voices, so the rest of us are not affected.”

“All fae spirits?” Ingvar demanded, now recognizing the reason for their alarm. Warnings like that usually heralded some world-altering disaster. He knew a bit about fairy warnings, himself. “Has anyone else felt…?”

He looked around at the onlookers, meeting Aspen’s eyes; she held up both hands. “Hey, don’t look at me. Maybe if Juniper was here…”

“I didn’t feel anything either!” chimed Zap, who as usual was flitting about Ingvar’s head in little bursts of nervous energy.

“I think…not all spirits,” said Ilriss, having regathered some of her poise. “Because of our mission, we are more closely attuned to…certain events.”

“The Elder asked for you, Brother Ingvar,” Fninn added.

“A spiritual disturbance, related to you…” Ingvar trailed off, eyes narrowing as his mind raced ahead.

“Sounds like we better warn that Duchess,” said Aspen.

Ingvar shook his head. “Lady Madouri left very specific instructions; she’s not to be informed of any developments like this unless they affect her personally and are critically important.”

“Huh?” The dryad blinked. “But that’s… I figured she’d be way more of a control freak than that.”

“This is about magic, not conventional operational security. The very reason the Elder gave up his name, and the People have moved in secret.” He met her eyes, keeping his head partially turned so he could still peripherally see the beleaguered shaman. “Recognition by and through spirits. Every conscious mind that’s aware of this is another risk factor. We need to be…careful.” Ingvar returned his full focus to the Elder, who despite having apparently asked for him now showed no sign of being aware of anything beyond his inner struggle. “All right. I want people who can blend in to get down to Madouris and Tiraas and see what they can dig up. November, Dimbi… Is Tholi here?”

“Young hunter,” the Elder suddenly rasped. Ingvar broke off and knelt beside him. The old lizardman lifted one hand into the air, his eyes still closed; Ingvar grasped it and his clawed fingers clutched him as if he were a lifeline. The shaman’s grip trembled with the tension wracking his entire body.

“I’m here,” Ingvar said quietly. “How can I help?”

“The guilty are there,” said the Elder, his voice taut with strain. “Something dark comes. Great and terrible… But not the great doom. A weapon to distract and befuddle. It is not time to address the guilty. The innocent…must be protected. They will come here, the dark and light alike. A soul at the heart of the doom, in need of protection. To these wilds of yours…”

His grip went slack and he grimaced, baring pointed teeth. Ingvar waited for a few moments, but apparently there was no more. Releasing the old shaman’s hand, he slowly stood back up.

“Thank you for the warning, Elder.”

“Uh, I don’t wanna be rude,” said Aspen, “but are you sure…?”

“I’ve learned the hard way to respect the messages of spirits and the shaman who convey them,” said Ingvar. “Very well, you all heard the Elder. Ilriss, Fninn, I trust you to look after him until…whatever this is calms down. Shadow Hunters, we have our own duty. Gear up and prepare to move out.”

“What are we moving out for?” November asked.

“For souls in need,” said Ingvar. “This is why we’re here. To keep watch over these lands.”

“This is a prayer room,” Rasha hissed. “In the Temple! Of! Avei! Do you have any idea the hell there’ll be to pay if you’re caught? And that’s just from the Sisters, never mind when Glory gets her claws into you!”

“Rasha,” Darius said solemnly through the crack in the door leading to the small chamber, “I understand fully. All the risks, and all the consequences. There are just some things that are worth it.”

“Are there?” she growled. “Are they?”

He released the door, still staring at her with his eyes wide and pleading, and held up both hands with his fingers spread in a vulgar squeezing motion. “But Rasha, did you see…?”

She heaved a sigh. “Yes, I saw them. They’re magnificent. The stuff about which legends are sung and odes composed. But, again, this is the Temple of goddamn Avei and that is a prayer room and you two—”

“I know what an imposition this is,” he intoned, then reached out and laid a hand on her shoulder. “Rasha, I didn’t want to play this card, but… If our situations were reversed, you know I’d do it for you.”

Rasha stared at him in silence for a moment. Then Juniper’s face appeared over his shoulder, the same earnest plea in her big brown eyes, and Rasha finally sighed again, even more heavily. “You would, wouldn’t you? Damn it, Darius. You’re such a…bro.”

“Always and forever,” he promised.

“That wasn’t a compliment.”

“I’ll make it up to you.” He was already edging back, the crack in the door slowly diminishing. “I owe you big for this, Rasha.”

“Too right you fucking do.”

“Thanks so much, Rasha,” Juniper added with a winsome smile. “You’re a good friend!”

“No reason you should be bored,” Darius chimed in the last second before he shut the door in her face. “You can go hang out with Zafi!”

Then it closed with a decisive click.

“Zafi is on duty,” Rasha informed the sigil of Avei carved into the wooden surface. “But then again, so are you, in theory.” She turned to look down at Sniff, who stood silently against the wall, peering up at her. “I dunno how you stand it.”

The bird-lizard-whatever made a soft croaking chirp deep in his throat.

“Well, the hell I’m gonna stand here for… Fuck, I give him five minutes, tops. Still not waiting outside. Hold down the fort, Sniff.”

Sniff raised his head crest in acknowledgment. Shaking her own head, Rasha turned and ambled down the hall.

Darius and Juniper were really pushing their luck; this was perilously close to the main sanctuary of the Temple, which was still roiling like a kicked beehive even with Trissiny’s big address concluded. Rasha was just another woman strolling through the furor, idly half-listening to conversations as she passed, many of which were about the Bishop announcement.

It was odd to find herself at loose ends like this. Thumbing the heating charm hidden under the fur-trimmed collar of her dress, Rasha made her unhurried way to the front doors of the temple and slipped out. The fresh winter air was just what she needed, at least with the charm active.

Imperial Square wasn’t a lot more quiet, between its normal traffic and ongoing agitation caused by the back-to-back paladins’ announcements. Rasha herself had been occupied being debriefed about the captured (and then rescued) Purists, but she likely wouldn’t have been inclined to watch politicians giving speeches anyway. No matter how important, and even with one of the politicians in question being a good friend. Somehow, knowing that Trissiny hated being a politician only further soured an arena of action in which Rasha had no inherent interest. With the Purists finally good and done for, she was looking forward to not having to think about any of this crap for a good long while. Just seeing the effect Trissiny, Toby, and Gabriel had had on the capital with three little press conferences was plenty satisfying to her.

Glory would be disappointed, of course, but Glory lived and breathed politics. Rasha appreciated the education in it she was getting, and didn’t deny the importance of understanding the forces that moved people, but she had already decided long since that she wasn’t going to follow in her mentor’s footsteps, at least not directly. Her own path wasn’t quite laid out, but she had time to consider it.

On the Temple’s front colonnade, she finally found a relatively clear space in which to breathe, all the way down at one end beneath the shadow of one massive column. Rasha wasn’t about to leave the Temple grounds; this was as far as she was willing to get from Darius, despite her frustration with both him and Glory’s insistence that she not go off alone. It was still a crowded public space; she could take two steps in several directions and reach out an arm to touch someone, and the babble of excited chatter washed over her from all sides. But it was a spot, clear and open, where she was in no immediate danger of being bumped into and knocked down. For a moment, she just paused there, people-watching.

A single point of pressure poked into the center of her back.

“Good afternoon, Miss Rasha. It has been some time.”

Rasha did not freeze, or panic. Among Glory’s more esoteric training programs had been teaching her to identify various implements being poked into her back; she knew the tip of a wand when it nestled between her vertebrae. She also knew how to act in such a situation. Rasha breathed in and out once, seizing calm like a shield, and then very slowly, giving no cause for a sudden reaction, turned her head just enough to see who was behind her.

As the proper technique for this maneuver dictated, he was standing close enough to her that his body concealed the wand from the numerous onlookers. She found herself looking at a square, bluff face, framed by red hair and a very neatly trimmed beard. Rasha had to pause and reinforce her carefully maintained calm facade. That was a face she had only recently stopped seeing in recurring nightmares.

“Rogrind. And here I thought I was done having to deal with your nonsense. I have moved on to fresh new nonsense, thank you very much.”

The dwarf smiled thinly. “After the catalog of insults and injuries for which you were directly or indirectly responsible? Only an Eserite could be so arrogant. I see your training is progressing well. Please walk forward, miss, at a steady pace, with your hands at your sides and not in or near your pockets.”

“You can’t be serious,” she said incredulously, glancing to one side. There were two Silver Legionnaires not eight feet away. “I don’t remember you being this sloppy. All I have to do is shout.”

The pressure against her back shifted as he adjusted the wand. “At this angle and at this range, a beam weapon of this caliber will sever your spinal cord and destroy most of your heart. Temple or no, there is not a healer alive who could help you then. Yes, I would receive a swift comeuppance; perhaps it would give you some comfort for your last thoughts to be of that.”

“That’s a bluff.”

“Call it, then. Do you know what happens to field agents whose identity is compromised in the course of creating a humiliating public debacle in a foreign capital? You have a great deal to lose, Rasha, including your life. I? Nothing. Walk forward, if you please.”

“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather just goad me into tackling you? C’mon, it’ll be like old times. We can go to jail, reminisce about—”

“That’s very droll, young lady, but my time is short, and thus, so is yours.” He physically pushed with the wand until she had to take a step.

So she did. Keeping her hands still, eyes darting about and mind racing, but moving. Complying, for now. Something would come up; there would be something she could use. There was always something. No situation was hopeless, for a properly prepared mind, and she wasn’t the fresh-off-the-boat kid she’d been when last she’d tangled with the dwarf.

Was he serious? It wasn’t impossible that he was that desperate, but it was also quite likely he was lying. That was the thing about professional spies. They were often both of those things.

“Well, anyway,” she said as they moved in lockstep through the crowd swirling in Imperial Square, keeping her voice even and at a volume he could hear without being loud enough to make him twitchy, “thank you.”

“For?”

“You didn’t misgender me. Or even start to. My own friends took a while to consistently remember.”

“Please. I am from a civilized country; Svenheim solved its Purist problem years ago.”

“Must be nice.”

“It is. I can see it has been an eventful year for you, but if I may say so, you appear to be flourishing.”

“Good of you to notice.”

She could barely hear his soft sigh over the hubbub of the surrounding crowd. “I fear it makes what comes next rather embarrassing, but surely you of all people will understand the exigencies which can force one to accept…unfavorable allies.”

That was nearly as alarming as the weapon pressed to her spine. He had guided her over to one edge of the Square, and in fact up the sidewalk of one of the main avenues opening onto it. Now, Rasha observed that their destination was a carriage, active and idling in wait.

And in the driver’s seat, another familiar but unwelcome face. Rasha looked up at the grin of savage triumph Sister Lanora wore, and let out a hissing sigh through her teeth.

“Fuck.”

It came from the Golden Sea, a living streak of smoke and shadow marring the sky. Shooting outward toward civilization like a missile, it seemed to take shape as it progressed, growing in size, developing visible features, and steadily leaving behind a trail of thick black mist that lingered on the air like an ink stain.

The thing soared over an elven grove, sending several shamans into an uncharacteristic panic as fae spirits screamed in horror at its passing, and for the first time spread its wings. They were skeletal, with none of the membrane between their long fingers that should serve to hold it aloft, had its flight been a matter of aerodynamics.

In fact, it was entirely skeletal, a fact which became more clear as it traveled and continued to form. Black bones were rough, jagged as if every one had been repeatedly broken and improperly healed, and fully exposed. In fact, though its shape suggested a skeleton, it looked more as if it were formed of shards of volcanic glass, haphazardly glued together. Color emerged from the swirling darkness of the thing’s being as its wings began to beat against the air, spraying swirls of inky smoke. Ligaments and tendons materialized, growing more like fungus than tissue to connect its shattered bones. They were purple, glossy as jewels and faintly luminous, what little could be seen of them through the haze of its body. Rather than flesh, the creature formed a steady outward bulk of vapor, a black mist which continued to billow out behind it with the speed of its passing, roiling and only partially obscuring its craggy inner workings.

Mountains rose up ahead, and at their base, a city of spires and terraces perched along a peninsular plateau which extended out over the surrounding plains. As the thing shot toward this landmark, it finally opened its eyes.

They were brightly colored, in a color that made no sense, that was painful to observe and not expressible in the spectrum of visible light. When they opened for the first time, a pulse burst out from the foul beast, flattening a stretch of tallgrass.

It shifted its trajectory, shooting upward with a powerful flap of its skeletal wings, and slowed as it soared higher… Only to descend upon Veilgrad from above, giving the unprepared city just enough time to see it coming.

Wings spread, it landed upon the cathedral, the impact collapsing part of the roof and sending its ancient stone spire tumbling to the streets below in pieces. The wings remained fully extended in an animalistic threat display as screams and alarm bells began to sound in all directions. Drawing its sinuous neck up and back, it opened its angular jaws and emitted a noise that was at once a roar, a hiss, and a scream, an unearthly sound which clawed at the mind as much as at the ears.

The chaos dragon howled its challenge to an unprepared world.

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“Miss Juniper! A moment, if you would?”

Juniper sighed and came to a stop. She’d barely made it into the alley. Ahead of her, the three Purists stopped also, clustering together like frightened sheep, a habit which in her opinion revealed a lot about their character when they didn’t have swords and a lot of backup; in any case, Sniff immediately circled around in front of them to bar their escape while the dryad turned to deal with whatever this fresh nuisance was.

She recognized the woman who approached from the broken gates, wearing a kind smile and a clearly expensive fur-trimmed winter gown. Also, she recognized the four younger people who had taken up a formation around their leader and were all staring at Juniper with much more visible unease. Or at least, one of them.

“Rasha,” she said, pointing at the young woman in question. “Which would make you… Glory, right? And Trissiny’s other friends.”

“Yep, that’s us,” said the only male in the group. “Trissiny’s other friends, that’s our identity.” The two other girls aside from Rasha both smacked him in the chest.

Juniper ignored that byplay, focusing on Glory, who had one of the most interesting scents she’d encountered on a human. Her sexuality was something avid, even fierce, and remarkably unconstrained; she didn’t seem to have an orientation so much as a hunger for new experiences. And yet, it was a controlled ferocity, smoothly integrated into the rest of her personality and harmonious in expression. It was strange. Most humans who smelled of that kind of sexual fervor were deviants of some sort, but this woman had firm self-control and a seemingly perfect serenity in her carnality. Actually, she smelled rather like an Izarite, except more… For once, Juniper found herself at a loss to define the extra element she was sensing. It was rather inspiring, really; she had long been of the opinion that humans in general needed to be more in touch with their sexual natures and less hung up about it.

The dryad couldn’t help feeling a bit sad at the awareness that what she was sensing meant this woman was probably more intellectually dangerous than any human she’d ever met. It was disappointing that the world had to be that way. People deserved better.

As always, she perceived these details without betraying any awareness, out of respect for everyone’s privacy. There wasn’t much of interest about the other four, anyway, save that Rasha smelled of fairly recent self-acceptance and the younger girl was going to be firmly bisexual when she finished grappling with a hangup about her attraction to women, something Juniper had noticed wasn’t uncommon in Tiraan teenagers. Glory replied before she had the opportunity to consider any of it in more detail.

“I am Glory, yes. Thank you for interceding in that…mess. Surprisingly, I think you created the least disastrous possible outcome.”

“Right, well…you’re welcome. Now, I gotta deliver three idiots to the Temple of Avei, so if you’ll ‘scuze me…”

Glory stepped forward, her four apprentices surging less smoothly to keep up their protective ring around her. “Wait, please. Before you go, there is some outstanding business regarding those three we need to settle.”

“I’m gonna give you the credit of assuming you know you’re not about to finish what your Boss tried to start,” Juniper warned. Rasha narrowed her eyes, but it was a pensive expression rather than a hostile one, as if Juniper were a puzzle she was trying to solve. The other three looked various degrees of nervous and angry at the implied threat, however.

“Please.” Glory shook her head. “Your action was the right one. To say nothing of the catastrophe that could have unfolded from those baggages being harmed by the Guild, Eserites of all people respect a show of force toward a noble cause. When we are the abusive parties forced to back down, we more than anyone should accept it as earned. No, I’m fully behind Trissiny on this matter—and thus, I infer, behind you. My intent is to help address the political situation here, not make it worse.”

Juniper glanced behind her at the open gateway. Somewhat to her surprise, no other thieves were emerging to involve themselves, though she’d be amazed if several weren’t lurking just on the other side of the wall to listen. Well, Glory was undoubtedly savvy enough to expect that, too, which meant she didn’t intend this to be a completely private conversation.

“What’s on your mind, then?”

Glory shifted her own eyes to the prisoners. “Just a simple question. How did you three get from the custody of the Church-aligned Huntsmen to that of the Church-opposed Thieves’ Guild in the space of one night?”

“W-we don’t answer to you,” the Purist with the most remaining spine (for whatever that was worth) stammered, trying to lift her chin. “We’re going back to the Sisterhood to be judged by our own—”

All Juniper had to do to silence her was turn and meet her eyes. She added some verbal encouragement anyway.

“Do you really think you’re in a position to get shirty, here? Give me any more backtalk and either Sniff’s gonna bite you, or I am.” Sniff obligingly hissed, spreading his wings and flattening down his head crest in a universal avian warning; two of the Purists squeaked in a manner any Avenist would have found shameful. “Answer the woman.”

After three seconds she began to be concerned she would have to back up that threat as the three just clustered together again; really, they were like traumatized pigeons. What had the thieves done to these women?

Fortunately, it didn’t come to that, as one of them burst out in a rush as if she needed to answer just to vent the building pressure.

“They just handed us over! We were separated from our sisters and, and herded here like sheep, we didn’t even know where we were going until—” She broke off and made a gulping noise.

“The Huntsmen did this?” Glory asked quietly. One of them, not the one who’d spoken, nodded jerkily. Juniper pondered whether she should find out their names. On reflection, she didn’t really want to; these women had been bullying assholes when they had power and were sniveling cowards now that they didn’t, and she preferred the comfortable distance of not thinking of them as individuals.

“Just Huntsmen?” the older girl who wasn’t Rasha piped up. “Not Church priests?” Juniper wondered whether the apprentice was speaking out of turn, but Glory just shifted to give her a nod of clear approval.

“The—yes,” the previous speaker said, nodding. “Huntsmen. We didn’t—we never actually saw any parsons. They never took us to the Cathedral.”

“Sisters,” Rasha murmured. “That’s right, Glory, there were more of them than this.”

“I see,” Glory said almost as softly, then raised her voice, turning back to Juniper. “Well! Thank you, that was what I needed to know. Now then, Juniper, please don’t take this amiss, but before you try to carry them off to the Temple of Avei I must critique your strategy.”

“Oh?” the dryad replied irritably.

Glory inclined her head with an apologetic smile that actually did ease the sting of criticism; Juniper had met grove Elders who didn’t have that degree of facial control. Yeah, this woman was not to be underestimated. “Do forgive the presumption, but this is, after all, an acknowledged area of Eserite expertise. You are planning to chivy three reluctant prisoners across a crowded city, using only your own two hands and an exotic animal helper, and relying on the power of fear to keep them under control. That, I’m afraid, simply will not work. Trust me, we employ fear as a matter of course, and are required to know both its uses and limitations. Fear makes people stupid, jumpy, and impulsive. At the first opportunity they will bolt in three directions and get lost in the crowds; in the best case scenario you will be able to secure two. That’s if the sight of you trying to bodily restrain a priestess of Avei doesn’t set the military police on your own head. I trust I needn’t explain the can of worms that would open?”

“You have a point,” Juniper said grudgingly, turning a sour stare on the quailing Avenists. “Well, that’s a big old nuisance.”

“We won’t be any trouble,” one said tremulously, “we only want—”

“Oh, shut up,” the dryad interrupted in disgust. “Do you really think anybody’s going to listen to you? I assume,” she added to Glory, “that you’re about to offer your own help in handling this.”

“But of course,” the Eserite replied with a warm smile. “Perhaps not in the way you’re thinking; more force isn’t the best solution here. Rasha! Would you be so good as to do the honors?”

“Gladly,” the younger woman replied, stepping forward with a grim stare fixed on the prisoners. “All right, you three, I am going to recite several obvious facts. If this seems at all belittling, you’ll just have to forgive me on the grounds that you have not presented yourselves as intellectually noteworthy thus far. Right now, nearly everyone wants you dead. To the Huntsmen and the Church, you are inconvenient witnesses who need to be silenced. Most of the Thieves’ Guild wants your asses in retaliation both for what you tried to do to me, and the humiliation they just suffered. No, that second part wasn’t your fault, but do you really think that’s going to matter?” She actually paused, planting her hands on her hips to give them a long, skeptical stare. “Most of those people back there have a very similar approach to life as yourselves. Do you imagine they’re going to try to start shit with a dryad when they could just take it out on you? You wouldn’t.”

All three of her fellow apprentices grinned, the older girl braying a derisive laugh.

“Furthermore,” Rasha continued her lecture, “no one else into whose hands you’re likely to fall will be able or willing to protect you. The Church and the Guild can both get at you in Imperial custody, one way or another. None of the other cults are going to want anything to do with you; they’ll likely send you right back to the Church, where you will be silenced as the inconvenient political leftovers that, to Justinian, you are. You could try to flee the city, I suppose, but do you really think you can escape either of those networks of influence? To say nothing of the Huntsmen, who—well, it’s right there in their name. No, ladies, the Sisterhood of Avei is your only hope. After the way you’ve been behaving, High Commander Rouvad is not going to be gentle with you, let’s not pretend otherwise. But she will be fair, and she will not under any circumstances hand you over to any rival power.

“So!” Rasha folded her arms and lifted her chin superciliously, managing to look down her nose at the three cowed priestesses despite being a head shorter than any of them. “You will go with Juniper to the Temple. Not because she is scary and powerful enough to tear you limb from limb if you don’t cooperate. No, you will go with her because she is scary and powerful enough to protect you from anybody who might try to snatch you off the street, as you just saw. She is your best chance of still being alive in an hour, and you should thank Avei at the earliest opportunity that she happened along. I have to say, I didn’t see that coming, either,” she added, giving Juniper a speculative look.

“Wow,” the dryad said, looking back with much the same expression. “Triss was not kidding, you’re one to watch.”

Rasha’s face broke into a pleased smile. It made her latent attractiveness, which seemed to be at least half cosmetics, suddenly blossom into real beauty. Juniper might have been sexually interested, not having had the opportunity to have sex with a trans person yet, but the girl smelled of burgeoning infatuation with someone not present and she didn’t want to risk damaging that. Just because she wasn’t inclined toward long-term romantic attachments herself didn’t mean she valued them less in those who cherished such bonds. Love was too important to treat lightly.

“Our sisters,” one of the three said in a very small voice. “The…others. They’re still…”

Glory’s shoulders shifted in a quiet sigh, and her expression, for a wonder, was sympathetic. “The prospects are not good. Right now, you need to accept the reality that there’s nothing you can do for them from your position. Your paladin, as well as the other two, are working as we speak to break through the Archpope’s corruption. It may already be too late to help your comrades, but if you want to have any hope of helping General Avelea penetrate the Church’s secrecy, go to Rouvad and tell her everything you know.”

She stared intently at them until all three had nodded in acknowledgment. One began to silently weep again, scrubbing tears from her eyes before they could freeze.

“And Juniper.” Glory stepped forward, looking up at the dryad, who found herself surprised to notice up close that she was notably taller. The woman had a presence that made her seem bigger, somehow. “This is not a criticism of your own abilities, but I’d like to send two of my apprentices with you.”

“To do what, exactly?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Not fight off attackers,” the Eserite replied with a grin. “In fact, if it comes to that, I must respectfully ask that you try not to involve my students. No, the Avenists, to their credit, are very particular about the procedures of justice. Rasha is a firsthand witness to the crimes of these three, and her testimony will be immediately useful to the High Commander.”

“They already have Zafi,” Rasha pointed out. “She was there, too.”

“But you were the intended victim,” Glory replied. “And the more witness corroboration, the better.”

“Oh, don’t even pretend you’re not dying to go see Zafi anyway,” the young man added, grinning broadly.

“And Darius,” Glory said, shooting him a look, “please accompany them. I would ordinarily come myself, for something as important as this,” she added to Juniper, “but politics are my area of expertise, and on that field there is a large battle about to unfold which demands all the attention it can be spared. I’m sure you will have your own business to return to afterward, and I’ll feel better if Rasha has someone to walk her home, given how frequently she has been the target of various ne’er-do-wells recently.”

“I am an excellent meatshield,” Dariues vowed, placing one hand over his heart and holding up the other. “Top marks in my class.”

“All the pastry he eats certainly helps,” his little sister added primly, poking him in the side.

“Sure,” Juniper said, a little bemused. “That all makes sense, and I guess some company I don’t automatically hate would be welcome.”

“Juniper…thank you.” Glory’s expression was solemn, almost grave. “For this, your intervention, the way you are supporting Trissiny. All of it. We owe you a lot.”

“You’re welcome,” she replied. “But nah, I don’t consider myself owed for anything. A person has to do what’s right. Don’t you think?”

“I very much do,” the older woman agreed with a pleased little smile. “It pains me more than you know that we must meet under such…annoying circumstances. You have my standing invitation to visit me at my home, at any time of your convenience. I would dearly love to show you proper hospitality. Not as thanks, if you’d rather not think of it that way! Simply because I want to. Entertaining guests is my great joy in life.”

She gazed up at Juniper, proud and serene, smiling warmly. The dryad tilted her head, studying Glory’s expression, taking in her scent, considering implications. Then, after several long seconds, she nodded and smiled in return.

“I don’t know when that will be convenient, but… Yeah, I’ll take you up on it. That’s very kind of you.”

They both nodded in unison, eyes fixed on one another, and Juniper was quite struck by the experience of being so in sync with someone she knew so little. The two women had just mutually decided and communicated, without any outward sign that any of the onlookers could have called flirtatious, that they would be making love at the earliest opportunity, and that both, despite being each more experienced than the average person, expected it to be a very memorable occasion indeed. Juniper found herself looking forward to that meeting almost as much to satisfy her curiosity as anything else. It was so strange to find such an instinctive harmony with a non-fae, non-Izarite, non-witch human, of all people. Glory didn’t seem one whit less dangerous to her, but… Trissiny trusted her. And respected her. That counted for a great deal. Plus, she was so intriguing.

“Until then,” Glory said, stepping back. “Tallie, Layla, I will need you back at the house; come, let’s not waste any more time. Rasha, don’t pout. I know you don’t need a minder, but with all that’s happening this is no time to take risks. You are a lightning rod for exactly the trouble that’s wracking this city. All of you, please be safe.”

“Don’t you worry, boss lady,” Darius promised. “I plan to live forever or die trying.”

Rasha rolled her eyes and started moving up the alley, which proved to be the impetus for both groups to separate. Glory retreated back into the Casino grounds with her two remaining apprentices, and the others herded their prisoners off toward the opening onto the street in the near distance ahead. The three Avenists were still subdued, but they seemed less panicky than previously, which Juniper had to think would help make this trip easier.

“So! I’m Darius, as you heard,” he said, falling into step alongside Juniper with an easy grin. “Lemme just apologize in advance for anything stupid I say; you’re my first dryad. Actually, I heard you were at Puna Dara that one time, but I didn’t see you. Pretty sure I’d have remembered that.”

“Yeah,” she said quietly, “I had…a lot on my mind that day. It wasn’t a good day.”

“Really wasn’t, was it,” he agreed, his own voice dropping. “That was… Well, it wasn’t boring, was it?”

She turned her head to study him thoughtfully as they walked. The young man put on a very convincing nonchalant expression and idly ambling gait, but she could tell from his scent alone that it was entirely an act. A really good act, something the Guild probably trained its apprentices to do. Outward attitude notwithstanding, he was terrified of her. And, of course, he desired her. Badly. The inner conflict was probably confusing enough that he preferred to bury himself in the pretense of feeling nothing. It was a complex tangle of scents and might have been tricky to puzzle out, but Juniper had encountered this exact reaction from numerous humans since coming to Last Rock. Fortunately, she knew a reliable way to put them at ease.

“Okay, then,” she decided with a smile, shifting closer to bump him very gently with her shoulder. “You, too, I guess. When the opportunity permits.”

“Uh…” Darius shot her a sidelong look, fear spiking in his scent. “Me, too…what, exactly?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll show you when we get there.”

Rasha snorted.

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“So he’s at least making an effort to keep all this on the level,” Grip explained as they strode rapidly up the sidewalk toward the Imperial Casino looming ahead. “Not gonna commence any proper beatdowns until there’s public confirmation, and that buys us some time while they get Rasha down there to ID her attackers. Hopefully more than some, if Glory’s got the sense to stall this.”

“Glory’s got no shortage of sense,” Sweet agreed. “Rasha’s no fool, either, and they’re both aware of the broader stakes, here. I don’t think Glory will go so far as to try to stymie Tricks outright, though.”

“Yeah, me either, but she really doesn’t need to. Better for us all if Tricks is persuaded to ease up on this, rather than making it a power struggle between him and…hell, anyone. Glory won’t make it any easier for him even if she doesn’t put her foot down.”

Sweet nodded. “So, you’re in the loop on this, Grip. Who else?”

“Pretty much goddamn everyone,” she said grimly. “He’s doing this in public, Sweet. Making a big fucking spectacle. Anybody working at the Guild itself knows, and everybody not actually on shift at the Casino’s come to gawk. At least, the ones who haven’t run to spread the word, and bring more rubberneckers home to see.”

“Shit,” he said with feeling. Grip nodded mutely. Neither felt a need to voice the obvious: the more people were there to watch Tricks put on the show he was arranging, the more pressure he was under not to back down. With effectively the entire local Guild looking on, it might not be possible to talk him down without posing an outright challenge to his leadership.

And the day had started so well, he reflected in resignation. Unless Sweet or someone else managed to come up with something extremely clever on the fly—or, as a dim part of him still dared to hope, Tricks was employing one of his classic fakeout schemes and not doing the damn fool thing he appeared to be doing—this could very well result in him having to topple the Guild’s leadership before lunch.

He didn’t know if it was better or worse that he stood a good chance of pulling it off. Webs and his faction were explicitly behind him, and he was reasonably sure Glory would lend her own influence if it came to a confrontation. Sweet, Webs, and Glory were the biggest players in Tiraas who dealt in networking and influence specifically, so that was as good as cinched. Grip famously disdained politics but her first instinct had been to come get him, which boded will for his support among the rank and file. Even Style, loyal as she was to Tricks, was recently questioning the Boss’s actions, and she had no reason to be negatively disposed toward Sweet. Yeah, he could almost certainly win that contest.

Damn it, he didn’t want to be Boss again. Quite apart from being personally done with the job, he was right now urgently needed in his role as Bishop. Even as they were dealing with this, the paladins were moving into position to launch their political attack on Justinian and upset the entire order of the Universal Church.

Sweet almost missed a step. How had he failed to put that together before now? Could Justinian have arranged this? He didn’t see how, but clearly something was up with Tricks and possibly the Big Guy himself. It was too perfectly timed to be a pure coincidence at the best of times, and where Justinian was concerned, coincidences never seemed to be just that.

“And speaking of rubberneckers,” Grip added after a dour pause, “does she really need to come?”

Sweet glanced back at Juniper, who managed to give him a smile despite being visibly somewhat out of breath due to their rapid pace.

He knew little about dryads, but it stood to reason that a tree spirit wouldn’t fare well moving at speed over a prolonged period. Some kind of metaphysical effect like that was the most probable explanation for her discomfort, as he had spent much of the previous night discovering that Juniper did not lack stamina or the capacity for physical exertion. She certainly wasn’t doing their discretion any favors, as even the jaded urbanites of Tiraas all had to stop and stare at her passing. The dryad was wearing a disguise ring that changed her coloring to a human normal, otherwise they’d be in deep trouble already, but even so, she was walking through the icy midwinter air in a short, elven-style dress with no sign she felt the cold. Moreover, striding along at her side was a hound-sized bird with a tail half again his length, which drew even more stares than her odd attire. Sniff, blessedly, was a well-trained specimen of whatever he was, sticking silently at his mistress’s side and not spooking or lashing out at the startled cries they passed, or the occasional child who unwisely tried to pet him.

“Don’t feel the need to push yourself if you’re having trouble keeping up, June,” he suggested with a kind smile.

“Oh, don’t worry about me!” Her voice was a bit breathless, but she smiled cheerily back and didn’t falter. “This is nothing. I should tell you about racing across half the Golden Sea sometime. That was a trial.”

“Right. Well, we are going to a fairly sensitive Thieves’ Guild…function. Most of the people there aren’t going to be really comfortable involving outsiders.”

“That’s okay,” she said brightly. “I’m with you!”

Sweet turned his eyes back forward, mulling. He didn’t know Juniper well, except in the purely physical sense. Obviously she wasn’t stupid; whatever else it might be, ULR was academically competitive. On the other hand, it wasn’t known for producing politically cunning graduates. There were institutions of higher learning which had that reputation, but Last Rock alumni were more known for being idiosyncratic. He simply didn’t have enough context to guess whether she was just a blithe fairy unfamiliar with human social nuances and failing to pick up the subtext here, or deliberately pretending to be.

Grip, as usual, favored an approach which sidestepped such dilemmas entirely.

“He means this is Thieves’ Guild business, and none of yours,” the enforcer snapped. “You should go back to wherever you came from. It doesn’t concern you.”

“This is about Church politics, though,” the dryad puffed, not slowing. “This whole thing Trissiny and the guys have been trying to straighten out all week, right? I’d better come keep an eye on it.”

Grip’s face settled into a calculatedly mulish stare she used on fools who needed a relatively gentle push out of the way rather than those who posed a significant threat, which warned Sweet that she didn’t appreciate what she was dealing with here. “Listen, you—”

“Grip,” he interrupted, “there’s an old joke about situations just such as this. Where does a dryad sleep?”

The enforcer hesitated, then scowled furiously and turned her own attention forward again, mutely leaving Juniper to trot along behind them. That was another thing neither of them needed to answer aloud:

Anywhere she wants.

This couldn’t be the first time Grip had come up against someone she could neither coerce nor intimidate, but it surely wasn’t a common experience for her. Nonetheless, the situation remained what it was. Sweet himself could possibly (probably, he figured) persuade Juniper to butt out and go about her business, but they simply didn’t have time to deal with the distraction.

So the two thieves and the dryad rushed into the Guild and the very heart of this fresh disaster.

It wasn’t happening deep in the shadowy bowels of the Guild proper, which was both good and bad. Tricks had assembled the thieves and his prisoners in an enclosed courtyard behind the Casino, a space occasionally used for events such as this but more commonly dedicated to receiving cargo for the kitchens. Doors opened on two sides into warehouses and larders, and a huge, sturdy wooden gate on the exterior wall faced a broad alley behind, wide enough to admit trucks and only not a street in its own right because all the buildings lining it faced the other way, with only their own rear delivery portals opening onto it.

This was good because it was a quasi-public space, open to the air in the only part of the district likely to be trafficked by people the Eserites respected—servants and teamsters, not the fancy rich who entered the Casino’s front doors. That suggested Tricks wasn’t planning to do anything which would result in a lot of screaming. It was bad because Tricks’s actions were neither logical nor in keeping with his own customary patterns, and if he was about to make a truly ugly spectacle, the ramifications could hurt the Guild’s perception in more eyes than those of the Sisters of Avei.

Sweet arrived in the nick of time, striding out of the storeroom entrance to find the loading area thronged on all sides with thieves, surrounding the spectacle of their Boss as he stared down three miserable-looking women in the vestments of the disbanded Purist sect. Their swords had been confiscated, obviously, but they’d been allowed to keep their uniforms on, chain mail and all.

Without hesitating, he pushed right through the onlookers to the unfolding drama in the center, where Boss Tricks was already in the process of grilling Rasha.

“Yes, I’m sure,” the apprentice was saying, her eyes on the three Avenists, expression clearly unhappy. “But Boss, I don’t want—”

“Then that’s all we need from you, Rasha,” Tricks said, gently and briefly patting her on the shoulder. It was one of those little touches that reminded Sweet his longtime friend and ally was still the man he’d always known, skilled at offering a bit of comfort where it was called for but mindful of Rasha’s history and how women in her position were often leery of being touched by men. “I’m sorry to have dragged you out here and especially for making you relive that bullshit, but absolute certainty was necessary. You’re welcome to stay if you want the satisfaction, but don’t feel any need.”

“Boss,” Rasha said more forcefully, causing Tricks’s attention to snap back to her face. “Am I or am I not the aggrieved party, here?”

Tricks blinked once, raising his eyebrows. “Well, of course. I didn’t think that was in question.”

“In that case, I believe I’m owed a say in what happens to them?”

The three priestesses clustered closer together; Sweet didn’t know what kind of night they must have had, but he saw none of the backbone he was accustomed to in Avenists. They were hollow-eyed, bedraggled, and at least one had clearly been weeping recently. Gods above, how bad had Tricks made this already? Was it too late to prevent the situation from getting even worse?

A stir went through the crowd at Rasha’s words, Eserites shifting closer in malicious anticipation of watching vengeance unfold even as the prisoners pressed into each other. Sweet came to a stop within two yards of the Boss; Tricks acknowledged him with a glance before again focusing on Rasha, and Sweet took the opportunity to take a quick visual census. Style, of course, loomed behind the Boss with her arms folded, wearing a leather-and-fur ensemble that looked almost Shaathist and a thunderous scowl. Glory herself had actually stirred from her nest for this and also stood at hand, right alongside her apprentice in a clear show of support. He noted her other three apprentices hovering in a knot in the crowd, alongside Jenell, to whose side Grip had just silently returned. Juniper had, fortunately, stopped just inside the courtyard to watch, behind the back row of thieves. Good; Sweet wasn’t worried about her being recognized, but that bird-thing of hers was going to start drawing attention the second somebody noticed it.

Webs was not in evidence, of course, it being his habit to deal with people only from his own secure ground. Thumper and Gimmick, however, were both across the courtyard in the front ranks; both looked right at Sweet and nodded once with significant expressions. He did not nod back, for the same reason he didn’t let out a sigh of sheer annoyance. Honestly, he understood that those two were specialists and not in political maneuvering, but they’d both been on multiple infiltration missions. Had absolutely everybody forgotten the value of basic discretion today?

Tricks was regarding Rasha solemnly, his jaw working as he mulled an answer with care before finally speaking.

“You’re not wrong, Rasha. I will definitely hear you out, and you’ll be accommodated if possible. But this, I’m afraid, goes beyond just you and them. This is a matter for the Guild as a whole. The one thing for which we can absolutely not show the slightest tolerance is the deliberate and knowing assault of one of our apprentices. For this, we require blood.”

An ugly growl stirred through the crowd, accompanied by several louder jeers and catcalls.

“Is blood more important than justice?” Rasha asked, her quiet tone a deliberate counterpoint to the growing intensity of the onlookers. Sweet noted, with approval, Glory’s secondhand techniques at work.

“We don’t deal in justice,” Tricks said with a sardonic little smile. “That’s Avenist business. I know you’ve been taught our doctrines on retribution, Rasha. When dealing with beasts like these, we employ pain, and fear. That’s all they can understand.”

“Yeah, no argument there,” Rasha said, turning to dispassionately regard the three beleaguered Purists. “They look plenty scared already, to me.”

“Not enough,” Tricks stated, his voice cold. “What’s your request, Rasha?”

“Avenist business, like you said,” the apprentice replied. “I want this to be done with, Boss. Roughing these up is going to cause no end of trouble, and just…look at them. Look at these dregs.” she shot the priestesses another look, filled with pure contempt. “They’re not worth it. The Guild shouldn’t be so much as inconvenienced over the likes of them. Send them back to the Temple of Avei. Let these assholes be Rouvad’s problem.”

Glory, now, laid a hand on Rasha’s shoulder, her face lighting up with approval and pride. Sweet was equally impressed; he hadn’t followed Rasha’s progress closely, but Glory had clearly taught the girl how to work a room. In the space of a few sentences, much of the tension had leeched from the crowd, and now a number of the watching thieves were nodding in agreement.

Not the Boss, however.

“I see your point,” he said, already shaking his head, “but on this, we can’t bend. It is an inviolable rule. They went after a Thieves’ Guild apprentice. There has to be punishment. There has to be fear. That fear is the only reason any apprentice of the Guild is left in peace long enough to be fully trained. If the bastards aren’t afraid to come after you…you’ll be cut down before you have a chance to fight back.”

“I also know the Guild’s codes on retribution, Boss,” Glory said, her smooth voice projecting over the stir in the watching crowd. “We retaliate only when it both brings satisfaction and serves a purpose. What purpose does this serve?”

“Seriously?” Tricks replied, shooting her an annoyed look. “I’m pretty sure that’s exactly the thing I just explained.”

“Not really,” she said, arching an eyebrow. “How does beating up these spread fear? They are already terrified witless. The Purists are simple bullies; there’s nothing to them but inner weakness and a pitiful desire to project it onto others. The work here is done, Boss. Going further would be nothing but a provocation against the Sisterhood of Avei, at exactly a moment when we need their support.”

“Ah, yes,” Tricks said, his voice soft but carrying. “Politics. The old bugaboo we can never quite get away from. But there’s a line, Glory. A point comes where principle has to win out. As long as I’m Boss, I’ll decide where the line is drawn, and I draw it at assholes attacking our apprentices.”

The muttering swelled again, once more accompanied by a few shouts. Rasha kept admirable composure, but the wide-eyed look she gave Glory revealed her growing nerves. Glory herself drew breath to continue, but Sweet could already tell that was futile; clever as she was with her tongue, Tricks was equally so, and a contest of verbal acuity was pointless when only one contestant had the authority to order an end to it.

“Where’d you get them, Tricks?” he asked, lightly but loudly.

Everyone turned to look at him, the Boss himself with a faint lowering of his eyebrows. At any other time, Sweet would have assumed it was strictly performative; Tricks was too good to reveal what he was feeling. But then, he could usually tell when Tricks was playing a game, unless he snuck up on him in one of those disguises he loved so much. Now, he had the unsettling feeling his old friend was exactly as close to the frayed end of his rope as he seemed.

“That’s in the category of business you don’t need to worry about, Sweet,” the Boss said brusquely.

“Cos the way I heard it, these were last seen being hustled away by the Huntsmen of Shaath. Right?” Sweet turned to Rasha, who nodded emphatically. “Specifically, the Orthodox faction that’s loyal to the Archpope. The Archpope who we’re within a hair’s breadth of proving set up the Purists in the first place to fuck with the Avenists. The Avenists who got this trouble dumped on them specifically for sharing our position with regard to Justinian’s fucked up shenanigans in the Church.”

“Sweet,” Tricks warned.

“And now I gotta wonder,” he pressed on, “how the hell you got them from Shaathist custody to yours in the space of one night. Did you actually kidnap three hostages out of a lodge, or the Cathedral itself? Because that’d be a feat so incredible I’m pretty goddamn sure nobody in this Guild has the capacity to pull it off.”

Nods from around the courtyard. Eserites did not deal in kidnappings, for both doctrinal and pragmatic reasons. Professional ethics aside, it was messy to steal anything that could think and fight back.

“And the other option,” Sweet pressed on, staring at Tricks unblinkingly, “is that they were given to you. By Justinian’s Huntsmen.”

Silence. The crowd seemed to hold their breath.

“Hey, you’ve gotta protect your sources, I know how it works,” Sweet said with deceptive lightness when Tricks just glared at him. “No worries, I know who else I can ask. Hey ladies! A moment of your time?”

He had actually turned and taken a step toward the captive priestesses when the Boss answered in a much sharper tone.

“Do you wanna be Boss, Sweet?”

At that, he had to stop and turn back to him.

“I’m not challenging you—”

“That is not what I asked you,” Tricks snapped. “Do you want to be Boss again? Because quite frankly, Sweet, I’m pretty sure I enjoy sitting in the big boy chair even less than you did. If you want the job, you just say the word any damn time. We’ll go invoke the Big Guy’s presence and get it done, and that’s a promise. But until you say the word, I am still Boss. I’m the one who has to keep the big secrets and handle the ugly shit nobody else wants to do. As long as that’s the case, you can either fall in line, or shut your mouth. Those are the options, Sweet.”

“This doesn’t need to be a whole thing, Tricks,” Sweet said, facing him fully and not breaking eye contact. “I wouldn’t’ve backed you for Boss in the first place if you hadn’t more than earned my trust. All I’m asking is some reassurance. Tell me there’s more going on here than I know. Tell me you’re not swiping at obvious, low-hanging bait dangled by an enemy of the Guild. Because it looks like you’re letting yourself fall for a brazen con, and I know you’re way too smart for that. Just let me know what else is up, that you’re not about to undo every bit of my work for the last half a year and plunge the Guild into an unwinnable fight for fucking nothing. Come on, Tricks, that’s not much to ask. Is it?”

Tricks stared back at him.

The silence stretched out, until someone else pushed forward into the center.

“Whoof, what a mess.”

Juniper was watching Antonio push forward into the unfolding confrontation, where the Boss of the Guild was grilling Trissiny’s friend Rasha about three miserable-looking priestesses huddled together in the center of the courtyard. She could barely see between the heads of the crowd anyway, even though she was taller than most human women. It was no great loss to turn and regard the person who’d suddenly spoken immediately to her left, and then she had to stare.

He was a scruffy-looking Tiraan man of indeterminate age, wearing (oddly enough) a tuxedo with the neck open and untied cravat hanging down his chest. Sniff flattened his crest, staring up at the man in clear unease. Juniper, for her part, didn’t recognize him, but she could perceive at a glance what he was. Given his presence here of all places, that pretty much told her which one.

“But don’t worry,” Eserion continued in the same low tone, giving her a wink, “I have a plan. Now, thing is, it’s a pretty bad plan. Countless steps, lots of moving parts, no end of people to manage. A whole big thing, know what I mean?”

“Trissiny says the best plans are simple plans,” she replied carefully. “She said any plan with more than three steps is a daydream.”

They were speaking quietly, but not whispering, and yet none of the thieves immediately around seemed to be aware of them. It was odd that no one had reacted to Sniff yet. In the middle of the courtyard, the well-dressed woman with Rasha had just interjected, but her voice wasn’t so loud as to drown out their soft conversation in the back.

“Thorn’s a smart cookie,” the god agreed with a pleased grin. “Not one of our best people by far, at least not yet, but she learned from some of the best. Knows her theory. Yeah, this whole business has me really stretching my legs; gotta run around putting out fires, make a million little corrections when shit starts to go belly up. You see how it is. That, now, is another example.”

He nodded toward the drama unfolding up ahead, where Antonio had just interrupted the conversation. Juniper was only following with half an ear, but it didn’t even take that to see the quickly ratcheting tension between the Bishop and the Boss.

“Case in point,” Eserion said more quietly, his expression sobering as he watched the unfolding argument. “That’s a confrontation that needs to happen. But not now, not yet. It gets impossible to keep the timing straight, y’know? Right now, what I need is to put a complete halt to this whole affair, slap a hard wall between Tricks and Sweet and get those damn Purists out of here.”

He turned back to her with an amiable grin.

“So! Can I ask a favor, June, honey?”

“I’m…still very much learning how to use fae magic,” she said carefully. “I’m just a novice. Last night was the first time I felt spirits actually tell me I should do something, but they did, so I stuck with Antonio like they said. Did you have something to do with that?”

“It’s my policy not to mess with Naiya’s little helpers,” he said, winking again. “Honestly, I never really find a reason to, anyway. So long as I’m not up to any bullshit I shouldn’t be, it usually turns out their nudgings line up with mine. That being the case! If you’re willing to do me a solid, how about you go put a stop to all this?”

A chilly silence had fallen; she glanced aside to see Antonio and the Boss locking eyes. Juniper nodded once to Eserion, then turned and pushed her way none too gently through the crowd. So heavy was the atmosphere in the courtyard that few of the discommoded thieves even protested beyond irritated mutters, though a couple cursed as they caught sight of Sniff pacing alongside her.

She stepped out into the center, her sudden appearance causing everyone to turn their gaze on her, and took off her disguise ring.

That prompted a general outcry; enough people knew the basics about dryads to recognize when her green hair and golden skin meant. Juniper had found that even among humans not inclined to get it, her recent preference for elven attire often helped them connect the dots for some reason. Thieves pressed back away from her and Sniff, many cursing or shouting. She could smell shock and fear suddenly rising. And, oddly enough, more than a handful of cases of arousal, interlaced with nuances of scent that her sexual senses parsed as belonging to people particularly attracted to the monstrous and dangerous. Actually, there were a lot more of those scattered around than she’d have expected from a crowd of the general public this size.

Eserites. Who knew?

She strode forward to plant herself in the middle of the space, equidistant between the three prisoners and the knot of Guild leadership who were now staring at her in dismay, and put on her sunniest smile.

“Hi! I’m Juniper!”

One of the Purists fainted.

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“Thank you,” Rasha said quietly enough not to interrupt the ongoing discussion as she accepted the mug of hot cocoa.

“Ma’am,” McGraw answered at the same volume, smiling and tugging the brim of his hat to her before turning to pick up another cup from the tray he’d set on the end table and offer it to Shahai.

Watching him, Rasha did not miss the inherent cleverness of the old man positioning himself as the de facto housemaid; it was a discreet but undeniably effective strategy for keeping himself in the good graces of the large group of dangerous women occupying the living room, nearly all of them Avenist and several of uncertain motivations.

Joe hadn’t employed any such strategy, but then…he was Joe. It was less likely to occur to him than to the more experienced old wizard, and anyway, Joe was probably the most inoffensive person in the room. He stood against the wall out of everyone’s way, listening with his arms folded and—unlike far too many teenage boys—reflecting his lack of anything to contribute by keeping his mouth shut and bothering no one. The only person in the safe house who even might be misandrist enough to take issue with Joe’s existence was, herself, subdued and seemed so depressed that even Rasha felt a grudging pity for her. Grudging, and very slight.

The woman in question found herself the center of attention at that moment as both McGraw and Shahai turned on her, with a mug of cocoa and a question, respectively.

The seats in the safe house’s small living room were mostly taken and Sister Magden, being the least favored person present, hadn’t managed to snag one. She was sitting on the other end table in a slouched posture with her head down, arms wrapped around her scabbarded sword as if clinging to it for comfort.

It was a couple of seconds before she responded to either of them, finally looking up at McGraw patiently holding out the steaming cup to her. Mutely, she shook her head, and he withdrew with a smooth bowing motion that made Rasha wonder if he’d ever been a waiter.

“Magden?” Shahai prompted.

“Sorry, I was…” Magden turned to the elf. “What did you say?”

“You told Rasha you were looking to get in contact with General Avelea,” Shahai repeated, showing no sign of impatience. She was one of those people who gave the impression that impatience was an entirely foreign concept to her. “What did you need her for?”

“Oh.” If anything, Magden’s shoulders slumped further. “I was… I sought to ask her personal intercession with Avei on behalf of Sister Lanora. I understand the point of a public punishment of that magnitude for political purposes, but I believe it was unfair. Lanora was—we were misguided, the goddess made that clear. But she was always a good priestess, who did what she believed right. I thought…she deserves another chance. At least, I did,” she added bitterly, her voice dropping to a bare whisper. “Apparently I didn’t know any of my sisters as well as I thought. I cannot believe women I trained and prayed alongside would try to do something so contemptible as what I saw tonight.”

Shay let out a loud, expressive snort, and Casey lightly swatted the back of her head.

“It might comfort you to know, Magden, that by far the majority of your erstwhile comrades have done exactly as the goddess commanded,” Shahai said gently. “About two thirds have already left the city alone or in small groups, departing for unrelated destinations. The Sisterhood lacks a comprehensive intelligence network, but Tiraas has only two publicly accessible gates and two Rail stations; it is not hard to watch the comings and goings. Plus, most of them abandoned their Purist gear in the section of the Temple barracks they’d taken over. Tabards, chainmail, bracers, and swords; the High Commander has set our quartermasters to examining them for hints as to their origins. We can dare to hope that those you saw tonight were the only ones engaged in such depravity, but I’m sure I needn’t caution you all not to hang too much trust on optimism.”

She swept her gaze around the room, receiving nods of acknowledgment.

“I believe I have the full picture now,” Shahai continued. “I must inform you all that I received a message from General Avelea herself just before Sergeant Elwick’s reached me. She has to travel to Veilgrad tonight on political business, and in fact will be taking Bishop Darling, who I understand has been an ally in this matter. That means that until tomorrow, we are effectively on our own. Right now our priority has to be locating the remaining Purists, and most especially Sister Lanora. Their whole order was clearly propped up by the Universal Church as a ploy to divide and damage the Sisterhood, and now that that has failed, those women and the knowledge they hold present a danger to the Archpope’s operational security. They are prime targets either for recruitment into his inner circle, or elimination. We must find and secure them.”

“Why?” Shay demanded. “We’re talkin’ about a bunch of morons whose entire shtick was dragging Avei’s name through the mud so they could have an excuse to bully people. Screw ‘em, I don’t see how this is worth stickin’ our necks out.”

Magden’s expression darkened further, but she didn’t look up from her steady examination of the carpet at her feet.

“First of all,” Shahai replied, turning a flat stare on Shay, “because Justinian has a long pattern of recruiting hopeless individuals and honing them into effective servants; every warm body we keep out of his coterie now is a better trained and better armed problem we won’t have to deal with later. And second, Shay, the Purists were dealt with by Avei. As of that declaration, those who have not gone on to commit further crimes are not wanted for any offense, and those who have should be duly tried and punished under the law. Leaving them to be brutally silenced in some back alley the way they tried to do with Rasha is not acceptable in either case.”

Shay looked less than convinced, but offered no further objection, just sprawling back into her armchair.

“There is also the reason Justinian will be motivated to secure or silence them: Lanora and possibly others possess materially useful intelligence which we need. Knowing that the Archpope is behind so much recent trouble is not the same as being able to prove it. If we can definitively link something to him, we will gather a great deal more support and the Empire can bring its resources to bear on him.”

“Why did you let Lanora out of your sight in the first place, then?” Rasha asked pointedly. “I mean, not you specifically, Sister Nandi, but…”

“I take your point, and it’s valid,” Shahai said, nodding to her. “Were the Sisterhood a governmental or solely military organization, she probably would have been held and interrogated. But it is first and foremost a faith, and lacks the legal authority to involuntarily detain an excommunicated individual within the Empire. I personally would have had her followed, at the very least, but evidently that did not occur to anyone at the time.” She pursed her lips in disapproval.

“How’re we gonna find ‘er, then?” Joe asked quietly.

Shahai nodded. “As Sister Magden has lost contact with her, we are forced to fall back on the measures you used to locate the Purists this evening. With apologies, Casey, I need to divide and direct your team.”

“Nandi, it’s me,” Casey said, grinning. “I’m not Locke, you don’t have to explain what a chain of command is every single time. What’re your orders?”

Shahai gave her an amused smile in response as she answered. “Bandi, Elias, I need you to attempt to locate Sister Lanora via magic. Do you believe you can do it?”

“I will try,” Sister Bandi said, bowing. “My magic is paltry, I warn you. I cannot predict the outcome of the attempt.”

“Worth a shot,” McGraw agreed. “I can do a bit with sympathetic principles… It’d help if we’ve got anything connected to her. Somethin’ of hers, ideally somethin’ she valued.”

Magden raised her head as everyone turned to look at her. Straightening, she fished in the neck of her robe and pulled out a small talisman, an Avenist golden eagle carved in a disc of ebony, hanging on a chain. “Lanora gave me this. She made it herself, years ago, and wore it for over a decade.”

“That’ll do,” McGraw said, both he and Bandi nodding. “That’ll do quite nicely. I do warn you, ma’am, any divine charm on it’s likely to be degraded by me doin’ arcane craft at it…”

“It is not blessed,” Magden said softly, rubbing her thumb across the sigil. “Just…special.”

“Excellent,” Shahai said crisply. “Sister Magden, I would like you to assist them as best you are able. I remind you that Lanora may be in danger if we cannot find her.”

“I’ll help in any way I can.”

“Good. Casey, please remain here to coordinate and supervise; make sure they have everything they need. Meanwhile, Shay, Joseph and I will escort Rasha and Private Medvidaar. First to an Imperial police station to file a report on the Purists’ attack this evening; it will be politically important for a record of their actions to be in government hands, and this will provide the Empire with a pretext to bring pressure to bear upon both the Church and the Huntsmen. After that we can conduct Rasha back to Tamisin Sharvineh’s house, and the Private to the Temple. I believe the five of us represent a group which would deter anyone willing to attempt an ambush in the city.”

“Why don’t we just keep Rasha here?” Shay suggested. “Y’know, where we can keep an eye on ‘er ourselves.”

“Why don’t we ask what Rasha thinks of all this?” Rasha countered, raising one eyebrow.

“There is that,” Shahai agreed. “We are certainly not going to coerce Rasha into anything. I do hope you agree with me on the importance of making a police report?”

“It’s never my first instinct,” Rasha conceded, “but it’d be interesting to be in a police station on the right side of the bars for once.”

“I’m sure,” Shahai replied, smiling. “As for the rest, I am not attempting to get rid of you; I simply think you will be safer at home. This safehouse’s only defense is its anonymity, and when we are working specifically against Church and Sisterhood personnel it may not even have that. By contrast, the Sharvineh mansion is a target I understand even the Svennish intelligence service did not dare assault.”

“No, it’s fine, I agree,” Rasha assured her, taking Zafi’s hand. “I’d really like to get home, anyhow. You sure Zafi will be all right back at the Temple?”

“Wherever the Purists are, they’re not there,” Zafi replied. “That’s the one place we know they’re not. Nobody’s gonna try to snatch a Legionnaire out of her own cohort. And when I’m not drilling with the squad I can stick near Sister Azelea.”

“I will also make an effort to keep an eye on you, Private,” Shahai promised, “at least until we are sure the immediate situation has been resolved. Does anyone have further questions? Good, then let us get to work. Time is short and growing shorter.”

“So…I understand the problem.” She stood in the center of the chamber, clawed hands on her hips and her wings neatly folded against her back so that they flowed behind her like a rigid cape of feathers, with their small claws rising above her shoulders. “The machine must be, in essence, rebuilt from scratch after the damage it suffered. The work takes time because it is a secret of the highest order, so no one is trusted to help you work on it. And also, no one knows how. Plus, it is made mostly of pieces which are rare and expensive, including many irreplaceable Elder God artifacts for which there can be no substitution. Even with the search ongoing, it might be years before enough have been gathered, and…possibly never. I understand.”

The underground space had at least been cleaned up over the last four months, and was no longer a charred wreckage of mechanical and enchanting parts. Now, the equipment arrayed around it and climbing all the walls encircling the broad summoning circle in which she stood was clearly in a half-built state, with incomplete metal structures bristling from the floor, unfastened wires trailing, copper and glass rods extending from various machines into empty air, and miscellaneous parts strewn about either loose or in crates.

She heaved a deep sigh, then grudgingly nodded. “I owe you an apology, then, Rector. I am sorry for implying you were deliberately stalling. The work you do must be very difficult.”

Azradeh turned when there was no response save the continuing soft clatter of a wrench on the inscrutable cabinet on which he was working, something that resembled a twelve-foot-tall grandfather clock with glowing parts and a face which depicted a swirling portal into some mysterious darkness.

“Rector?” she prompted. “Did you hear me? Please respond.”

“I’m not deaf!” the man abruptly shouted in exasperation, not looking up from what he was doing. In fact, it sounded like he was tightening bolts harder all of a sudden. “Omnu’s breath, woman, will you go away?! I am trying to work!”

Azradeh tilted her head, studying him curiously. Rector was an odd one, and truthfully rather annoying to deal with, but she felt no animosity toward him. Of the very few people with whom she had contact, only two treated her…in a word, normally. Colonel Ravoud and Delilah were both polite, but their tense bearing never let her forget that she was a creature capable of tearing them apart bare-handed, that her name was a byword for terror and destruction in their language. Branwen set off alarms in her head just by being in the room. Justinian himself, of course, was always kind and composed, but he was his own kettle of fish. Only Rector didn’t seem to care at all what she was. It made her like him, despite his congenital lack of even the most basic social skills.

“A cogent analysis, Azradeh, but there is another important factor which limits us further.”

She turned again, regarding the Archpope himself as he descended from the half-rebuilt control platform to join her on the summoning circle below.

“When we rescued you,” Justinian explained, leaning his head back to look up at the central point on the ceiling where a secondary energy nexus would be housed when the great machine was activated, “another being…intervened. Something extra-dimensional and extremely powerful. We must do considerable research to determine what effect this had, and plan for it before trying again. That alone is prohibitive.”

“I see,” she murmured. “Then there’s no telling when I can see my sisters again. Or if.”

Justinian laid one hand gently on her upper arm; he alone was unafraid to touch her. Well, Rector wasn’t afraid either, but he loudly disliked being touched at all, as she had discovered.

“What can be done can be repeated; it is simply a question of the difficulty and the cost. Sometimes, they are too great to attempt in practical terms. In this case, I refuse to accept that possibility unless it is forced upon us. We will rescue your sisters, if it can at all be done. I simply cannot predict when. I’m sorry, Azradeh.”

She shook her head. “Everyone is doing what they can. I feel like I could be doing more. Maybe I could help Rector?”

Head buried in his clock-like apparatus, Rector emitted a feral growl that echoed oddly.

“I certainly don’t understand how this thing works, but I can follow simple directions. You can’t tell me someone who can lift giant metal beams and cling to the ceiling wouldn’t be useful—”

“KEEP THE DAMN DEMON OUT OF HERE!” the enchanter bellowed. “NOTHING BUT INTERRUPTIONS! LET ME FOCUS!”

Delilah was already descending from the platform, giving them one of her pointed looks, the one which presaged a lecture about how much more difficult it would be for her to calm and re-focus Rector after this.

“Perhaps we have interrupted his work enough for the time being,” Justinian said discreetly.

Azradeh sighed. “Fair enough. I’ll see you later, Rector. Don’t forget to eat something, okay?”

With surprising accuracy, he hurled a brass-framed power crystal at her. Azradeh made no response, not even blinking as it bounced off her temple.

“I’m wearing him down,” she assured the Archpope while the two of them climbed the steps toward the control platform. As the passed, Delilah pressed a hand over her eyes.

“I am not sure that approach will work,” Justinian said delicately once they had passed out into the hall beyond. “There is a method to befriending people like Rector. Pressuring them is not part of it.”

“People like Rector, huh,” she mused. “So is there a name to what’s wrong with him?”

“Nothing is wrong with him,” he said without hesitation. “He is different, that’s all. But yes, we have at least a partial understanding of it. The dwarves have made a scientific study of this in recent decades, and elven tribes have traditional methods of raising such individuals. They appear to occur naturally in every race in small numbers. Most people, Azradeh, have minds that are made up in large part of people-related instincts, innate skills which enable us to recognize and interact with one another. Rector, and those like him, are born missing some or all of those aptitudes; they are replaced with other capacities. As you have doubtless observed, his talents lie elsewhere. We simply must extend more than the usual tolerance and understanding to help him make those skills useful to us all.”

“Hmmm. So they’re always gifted enchanters?”

“No, and no,” he replied, smiling. “They do tend to produce savants, but in various fields; enchanting happens to be Rector’s particular specialty. But even so, not the majority. Most are simply people, with a condition, and their own talents and abilities like anyone else.”

“I wonder if it’s really worth the effort of extra care, then, if they’re not mostly as useful as Rector…”

“Always, if only to avoid the judgment of how useful someone is. The effort is worth it, regardless of any singular result yielded. Making that effort to care for others is what determines that we are a society which does so, as opposed to one in which people are merely exploited for whatever utility can be wrought from them. The former always creates a stronger and more resilient social order than the latter.”

“Collective over individual utility,” she mused, nodding slowly. “I can see the logic. I wonder if they have similar ideas in Hell.”

“Our knowledge of that is secondhand at best,” the Archpope said gravely, “but indications are very much the opposite. Back to the present, I’m sorry about the sparring golem you were using. I was only just informed.”

“Oh. I guess I’m the one who should apologize,” she said, grimacing.

“Not in the least.” With one of his caring smiles, Justinian patted her again on the shoulder. They had arrived at her room; Azradeh hadn’t been going anywhere in particular, just following him, and now allowed him to gently usher her in while he continued speaking. “I’ll make arrangements to bring you another one as soon as I am back above, but…I fear the thing will happen again, eventually. Unfortunately, those things simply aren’t made to withstand strength like yours. I truly am sorry, Azradeh. It’s hard to provide means for you to exercise down here.”

“I’d really like the chance to fly,” she said, wandering over to her music player—a rare and expensive enchanted device, so she understood, and which she treasured—and lightly rested her claws atop it without reaching for one of the sound disks. “I feel that would help me…remember. I don’t suppose there’s any chance of me visiting the surface soon?”

It had been a desultory question with no real expectation behind it, but he gave her a pleased smile in response. “In fact, I finally have good news about that! You know the reasons we must maintain discretion, but I have been monitoring an ongoing situation which I think will provide exactly the pretext we need to let you stretch your wings above a bit. I am carefully nudging it in the proper direction; with a little bit of luck, I expect to be able to bring you up within the next few days.”

“Really?” She looked up at him, smiling in genuine anticipation.

“It is not set in stone yet,” he cautioned, “but I have committed to the plan. If it does not pan out, I will re-prioritize to put aside some other concerns and arrange an outing for you in the near future. I owe you that much, at the very least.” The Archpope’s eyes fell on her well-stocked bookcase, next to her reading desk, and he reached out to draw his fingertip through the light coating of dust on the spines of the theological histories on the top shelf. “Are you…not interested in reading about your family?”

“I’m interested,” she said, letting her own expression grow more pensive, “but…concerned about prejudicing myself. Nothing has brought up memory, not as an explicit recollection of something I could describe, but I do get flashes of feeling. A sense of familiarity about some things. I’m concerned about corrupting my perception, so to speak. If it’s going to come back to me, I’d like it to come before I start filling my head with other people’s ideas about what my sisters and I were like.”

“I do see the sense in that,” he said, his eyes falling on one of the volumes laid on the desk. “Ah, that’s right, you did ask for a copy of Branwen’s book. Have you finished already?”

Azradeh snorted. “In the sense that I read four chapters and now I’m finished with it, yes. What a bunch of absolute piffle. It’s all self-aggrandizing nonsense—anybody who already believes that stuff doesn’t need the encouragement, and anyone who does need it isn’t going to have their life changed by a book. The whole thing is nothing but selling people validation.”

“I suspect no one involved in the creation of this book would dispute that,” he said, his smile a touch wry. “It was a mechanism to improve Branwen’s public perception, and did its job quite well. Of course, I will continue to supply you with more reading material. Have you any specific requests?”

“Oh!” She looked up from her shelf of music disks, smiling. “That reminds me, could I get a newspaper subscription?”

The Archpope did not betray any emotional reaction, not by so much as a blink. “Newspaper?”

“Or several of them, ideally,” she went on, frowning at the disks. “Why are these out of order… Oh, that’s right, I re-shelved in a hurry after…anyway.” Azradeh set about sorting her music collection, speaking in a distracted tone. “Newspapers are mentioned in more recent books; it sounds like a great way for me to get up to speed on the modern world. Oh! Even better, what about some magazines? The books are great, but I like the idea of something more, how to put it… Ephemeral? Connected to the current moment in time. It sounds from what I read like magazines aren’t very well respected in literary circles. That sounds ideal.”

“That should be quite easy,” Justinian replied, smiling again. “Yes, I will have a selection brought for you immediately. Magazines are usually quite focused in their subject matter; you can pick those which most interest you and I will have them delivered regularly.”

“That’s fantastic, thanks!” Azradeh said brightly, giving him a smile as she slipped the last disk back into its place.

The conversation continued as usual and she showed no further reaction to betray the victory she had just won; revealing that she was even aware of a victory would have likely undone her efforts.

Azradeh might not have memories, but she still had instincts, and every one of them had screamed at her from the beginning that Archpope Justinian could not be trusted—and that further, revealing that she sensed this would place her in danger. This, finally, was hard confirmation. That his response to the idea of her receiving newspapers was anything other than the prompt “yes, of course” with which he had answered all her requests for entertainment and education showed he was invested in controlling her understanding of the world outside. And that meant both that she had zero chance of getting newspaper subscriptions, and that she must swiftly dispel any suspicion on his part that she sought to wriggle out from under his control.

Hence the magazines. They would reveal less about the current world, particularly a selection curated by Justinian himself, but they would reveal something, in little bits and pieces. And even better, he all but had to accede to the request in order to keep her distracted from the more dangerous subject of newspapers.

For now, Azradeh would continue slowly gather information and play along with whatever he was doing, certain only that his final goals were not what he was telling everyone. It might be that his true agenda was in her best interests after all, and if not, better that she be trusted and in a position to do something about it. Even if she hadn’t the recollection of her history, millennia of habit still cautioned her to keep her friends close and enemies closer, at least until she could tell the difference.

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“What did you do, Ravana?”

Not even a minute after materializing in her own mansion; they must have been waiting in ambush by the teleportation chamber. The young Duchess indulged in a half-second to scowl dourly at the far wall before putting on a polite smile and turning to face her accuser, deliberately ignoring Veilwin’s smirk.

“And hello to you, too, Teal. I trust you are having a pleasant day?”

Teal and Shaeine had both approached, accompanied by F’thaan pacing between them. At a single hand gesture from Shaeine, he laid down on the floor, lowering his head to rest on his front paws, and Ravana experienced a moment of weary envy. If only all her human subjects were so well-trained… But the pair before her demanded her full attention; the drow was serene as ever, the human decidedly less so.

“That’s great, Ravana, be glib with me,” Teal said, uncharacteristically acerbic for her. “What is it about my face right now that makes you think that’s going to smooth this over? Just answer the question.”

“I’m afraid I’ll need you to be considerably more specific, Teal.”

Teal stared, incredulous. “Is this a joke to you?”

“I believe I informed you that this would be a working vacation for me. Do you have any idea how many thing I have done since breakfast? Even narrowing the field to those which would upset you is surprisingly unhelpful.”

“Is that so surprising, really?” Shaeine murmured. Ravana and Teal both gave her long looks of pure annoyance, under which she just smiled beatifically.

Teal drew in a breath, turning the force of her glare back on Ravana. “I’m told there was a protest outside the gates of Falconer Industries this morning.”

“Ah, yes, I heard about that,” Ravana said in her blandest tone. “Well, people are legally allowed to protest on public property, so long as they remain peaceful. I trust that was the case?”

“Are we really going to do this?” Teal exclaimed. “You know what, fine, I’ll play. Yes, it was peaceful, at first. People marched in a circle shouting and carrying signs, and while we could have called in police because they were blocking the main entrance, Dad decided to just route deliveries through side gates since there was nothing to be gained by agitating people more. But then some more folks joined in, hours after it had started, and wouldn’t you know it? Within minutes they started throwing rocks, and the police had to step in.”

“What contemptible behavior,” Ravana said seriously. “I do hope no one was harmed.”

Teal stared at her, then shifted her focus. “Yancey, I am an avowed pacifist. If I grab your boss and start shaking her, you can be assured that’s all I’m going to do.”

The Butler gave her a shallow bow. “It is not my place to intercede in horseplay between friends, madam. I do respectfully ask that you remain mindful of the Duchess’s dignity while in mixed company.”

“Yes, well,” Ravana said, permitting some annoyance to enter her tone, “if we are quite finished, I have innumerable things still to do today, many of which you would not enjoy seeing. If you will excuse me?”

“I have always admired your optimism, Ravana,” Shaeine said placidly.

“Oh, I wasn’t finished with my little story,” Teal snapped. “You see, Ravana, just because my dad is a little absent-minded does not mean Falconer Industries is managed by fools. Mom was having the whole situation watched very carefully, and you know some interesting stuff she spotted? People with lightcappers on the rooftops all around, House Madouri guards forming up in actual phalanxes in the alleys nearby long before any rock-throwing started. That was my favorite part, as I’m sure you can imagine. You know what your problem is, Ravana?”

“I am incredulous that you think you know what my problem is, Teal,” she said coolly. “But please, do go on. This promises to be most amusing.”

“You seem to think,” Teal said in just as frosty a tone, “that everybody who doesn’t share your reptilian approach to life—which is to say, everybody—is dumber than you. And in truth? You’re pretty transparent. I am not a politically acute specimen, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that. If I spotted your little game, you had better assume anyone with an interest in local politics did.”

That comment nettled, though Ravana did not betray it by so much as a twitch. “Well, then. Since you believe you have all the answers, I must wonder why you came here demanding to know what I did?”

“The lightcaps were to discredit the protesters, correct?” Shaeine asked, her tone a mild as ever. “I gather we can expect to see them in tomorrow’s papers, accompanying articles decrying this disruptive violence. A clever move, Ravana, if rather nearsighted.”

Ravana frowned, opening her mouth to answer, but Teal had already pushed ahead.

“Omnu’s breath, Ravana, those are your people! You’ve built your entire image on how well you take care of your citizens. Is that all a lie, or have you actually twisted it around in your head to the point where corrupting a peaceful demonstration so you can unleash shock troopers on them is somehow in their own best interests? Because frankly, I’d believe either.”

“I do say you are awfully exercised about this,” Ravana retorted. “Everyone at that asinine protest was given full medical care and then allowed to go home unrestrained. If they acquired some bruises as a prelude to that remarkably gentle handling, what of it? May I remind you, Teal, that these people were specifically protesting your existence? This was not about any policy or action of FI; they were agitated to demand your removal from the city.”

“They were agitated,” Shaeine repeated with emphasis. “For once, Ravana, think beyond the enemy right in front of you. Falconer Industries and its founding family are perhaps the only people in this province more well thought of than yourself; was that not the core of your father’s venom toward them? Surely it would demand more than the revelation of an awkward family secret to incite even that much meager outrage.”

“Archdemon’s a hell of a family secret,” Veilwin commented. Ravana turned a baleful look upon her Court Wizard, who was guzzling from her acrid-smelling silver flask and looking unconvincingly innocent.

“Indeed, and that is another point,” Shaeine continued. “Vadrieny made herself an extremely visible presence at the crises in Sarasio, Veilgrad, and Ninkabi. In point of fact, the recent event is not even the first time she forcibly apprehended a criminal in Tiraas itself. The last one, furthermore, was a soldier in the Imperial Army. She also damaged the pavement then, as I recall,” the drow added, shooting her wife a sidelong look. Teal grimaced. “And yet, somehow, it is this which incites people to worry about her? Or more specifically, incites the papers to begin reporting on the story of Vadrieny rather than repressing it.”

“That’s not so hard to understand,” said Ravana. “The story hasn’t been in papers yet because both the Empire and the Universal Church have used their influence to silence it. Clearly, one has lapsed.”

“Not lapsed,” Teal said grimly. “A lapse would still not have blown up like this, and a more belated suppression effort would have ensued as soon as those papers hit the newsstands, long before anyone could organize a protest. This is a reversal; one of the factions suppressing the story suddenly started pushing it, instead. I suspect you know which.”

“I am not completely thoughtless, Teal,” Ravana retorted. “Shut up, Veilwin. I did not make a public statement of support for Ingvar’s faction and against the orthodox Shaathists without expecting retaliation from their primary backer. Not to mention that I’m currently harboring all three paladins while they maneuver to undercut his influence within their cults—influence which we must assume means he has been forewarned of their efforts. Justinian sniping at me was inevitable; I am only surprised he chose you as the method. Though with you also in your classmates’ camp, perhaps that only makes sense.”

“But consider this,” said Shaeine. “The events you describe are developments specifically of the last week. I doubt you were anywhere on the Archpope’s agenda prior to that, as to the best of my knowledge you, like most aristocrats, have kept out of religious politics.” She waited for Ravana’s terse nod of agreement before going on. “Justinian is a careful operator who clearly makes plans over the span of years. Given your political power, throwing your hat into the ring means he has no choice but to begin dealing with you, but even under urgency, a man like that will examine you and act carefully. You are being studied, Ravana. He will continued to probe at you to watch how you respond.”

“Yes,” Ravana said impatiently, crossing her arms, “and today he learned that meddling in my affairs will be swiftly thwarted. I am satisfied with the day’s work.”

“That is one thing he has learned, yes,” Shaeine said relentlessly. “You have also shown that you can be very easily goaded into reacting with force, and that you are willing to attack your own people to snuff out a perceived threat. That is the first major weakness you have revealed, as your people are your entire power base, given House Madouri’s unpopularity among the other nobility. Were I in the Archpope’s position, the lesson I would have taken from this day’s work is that you can be prodded into undermining yourself.”

Ravana hesitated, narrowing her eyes, then turned her gaze on the source of the soft grunt of amusement that came from her right.

“What’re you glarin’ at me for?” Veilwin asked sardonically, taking another swig from her flask. “Everything they’ve said is right.”

“This is not the kind of issue you’re going to resolve with exercises of force,” Teal stated, recapturing her attention. “Even you don’t have the wherewithal to trade body blows with the Universal Church and come out on top. And more importantly, you’d lose that contest because Justinian is too smart to engage in a conflict of attrition, even one he can win. Look, Ravana, you’re not wrong to come out of the gate swinging; I think Triss, Gabe, and Toby would really appreciate having another source of pressure applied to him.”

“But?” she prompted sardonically.

“But, it’s not enough to just thwart his first feeler, for exactly that reason. You need to turn it around on him.”

“For your edification, that was my first thought, as well. The reason for that drama at the gates of FI was so I could have my witch scan every person at that rally for hostile intent and cast a tracing spell that would lead me from the planted agents back to the bigger fish. I don’t yet know how successful the plan was, because I have only just this moment returned from attending to yet another crisis on the far end of my province, and as someone intercepted me with loud complaints right in my very teleportation chamber…”

“All right, fair enough,” Teal said with a dour ghost of a smile. “And that’s a good start, but still. You can see how tenuous it is, right? Espionage and magical supremacy; that’s another game very few people are equipped to play against Justinian, not even you. There’s a better means of creating a real win from this.”

“I am terribly apprehensive,” Ravana said, “but…intrigued. Let us hear your idea, then, Teal.”

“Well, Ravana,” Teal said, her little smile widening without growing significantly warmer, “you might say I’ve taken a page from your book.”

“Hm,” Ravana murmured, staring at her. “I begin to see what you mean. That is viscerally horrifying and I haven’t even learned why yet.” Even Shaeine smiled at that; Veilwin snorted so hard she nearly choked on her…seriously, what was in that flask? Varnish remover?

“All I mean is that I’ve taken steps to do what I think is necessary without waiting to consult with you. Consider this from the standpoint of the people demonstrating, Ravana. They’re not sheep, which I know is what you were thinking; manipulation aside, it is not the least bit unreasonable to be concerned about the presence of an archdemon among them. So I’m going to allay the public’s concerns. I have rented out a theater near the factory for tonight, and had fliers printed. They’ll be put up within the hour. We are going to have us an old-fashioned town hall meeting. The people of Madouris can come and voice their concerns, and I will address them, in person. And, if things stay calm enough, so will Vadrieny.”

Ravana stared at her, aghast.

“The extremely short notice works to our advantage,” Shaeine added. “We’ve notified papers to have reporters on site, the better to further control the story that you’ve planted in tomorrow’s editions. Relatively few others, however, will learn of this in time to attend, which should inhibit the formation of a mob. There is a limit to what can be arranged in a few hours. Certain interested parties will plant agents, of course, giving us another chance to check for any who slipped your net—or cross-reference names of individuals who appear at both events.”

“Teal,” Ravana said weakly, “what’s a way to put this gently… No, it turns out there’s not one. This is a terrible idea. You cannot reason with a mob! You can possibly reason with an individual, if you are very lucky in whom you meet, but a group? The bigger they are, the more irrational—”

“And the more predictable,” Teal interrupted. “You’re right, crowds are purely emotional, and that means that no, you can’t reason with them. But you can manipulate them. Ravana, what is it you think a bard does?”

“At this moment the greater question is to what extent you qualify as a bard!”

Teal’s eyes cut past Ravana’s shoulder to her Butler. “Yancey, I’m gonna bonk her.”

“Do please exercise due restraint, Mrs. Falconer.”

“Don’t you da—” Ravana was interrupted again, this time by Teal lightly bringing down a fist atop her skull, nowhere near hard enough to hurt.

“Consider yourself bonked,” Teal said severely, “and refrain from further personal attacks, if you please.”

“I do believe that transgressed both the letter and the spirit of principled pacifism.”

“You’re fine.”

“You have mussed my hair, you lamentable hooligan!” she complained, reaching up to smooth down her coif.

“And somehow, the House of Madouri will soldier on. Ravana, this has been the focus of my entire last semester. Spiteful commentary aside, you’re not without a point; I haven’t done much of a job of being a bard worthy of the name, hence why I have been studying this using every resource Last Rock has. How familiar are you with the career of Laressa of Anteraas?”

“Laressa?” Ravana wrinkled her nose. “A unique historical figure, to be sure. Without doubt the most interesting Hand of Avei, though not one of the more effective.”

Teal and Shaeine shared a very meaningful, very married look, and Ravana had to suppress the sudden urge to slap it off both their faces.

“Principle is less relevant here than strategy,” Shaeine said, turning back to her. “I presume you can agree on that point?”

“I’m sure you’re aware that is a very familiar perspective for me.”

Teal nodded, making a wry expression for which Ravana chose not to call her out. “Strategic pacifism is another matter. Honestly, I think you’d quite like it if you gave it a chance.”

She arched one supercilious eyebrow. “I will entertain any philosophy which brings results. I cannot help thinking it is signification that this one has not come notably to my attention before now.”

“Of course it’s significant,” Teal snorted. “You like to hurt people, Ravana. You do it even to the point of sabotaging your own interests.”

“You are saying I’m some sort of sadist?” Ravana exclaimed, offended and openly letting it show through her aristocratic facade of poise.

“Sadistic, no,” said Shaeine. “Not necessarily. Vindictive? Very much so, often to excess.”

“Whenever you feel you’ve been thwarted or defied,” said Teal, “you strike back. As hard as you can, with whatever you can grab. It’s a known pattern, Ravana—and more to the point, it’s an exploitable weakness. You’d better believe the Archpope has taken note of it. If you mean to tangle with him, you need to break with old patterns, and not just because some of your patterns are particularly disturbing.”

“And this brings us, somehow, to pacifism,” Ravana said skeptically.

“Strategic pacifism,” Teal emphasized. “Which, in practice, is a matter of weaving traps around your enemies until any violent action on their part will cost them support, make them enemies, and hamper their ability to move. The proper application of strategic pacifism means building a cage of matchsticks around your foes so that they’ll break the bars without realizing that cage was the only thing keeping them out of the pit you’ve dug at their feet.”

“Evocative,” Ravana admitted. “But…”

“When I say the word ‘pacifist’ you probably imagine the Omnist or Izarite desire for everyone to just get along. That’s the mistake a lot of people make; it’s the mistake I made and committed to for an embarrassingly long time. Proper, effective pacifism is more in the Vesker and Vidian mold, arranging the very world around you so that people slide into the grooves you’ve laid out for them without realizing what you did. Laressa of Anteraas was probably the most effective Hand of Avei who ever lived, and the very fact that you don’t realize that is the lion’s share of why; neither did the long list of people she thwarted without ever having to draw their blood. Don’t take my word for it, Ravana, read up on her. What I’m talking about is an arsenal of weapons you would find very effective, if you weren’t so enamored of the idea of sticking it to those who’ve offended you.”

“More immediately,” Shaeine added before Ravana could give voice to the skepticism still on her face, “this is very much the strategy which has just been used against you. A very careful trap was arranged, and you reacted to it with force. Are you truly arrogant enough to assume that a planner capable of executing such a thing would have failed to research your established habits and anticipate what you would probably do? In the days to come, the backlash you have just created will threaten your own rule, Ravana. Unless you allow us to neutralize it, and turn this into a victory.”

“That’s all…very well,” she said slowly. “Your philosophy hangs together nicely, Teal, but philosophy is a tool with starkly limited utility. It is results I respect, and… Teal, I must be brutally honest with you. I doubt your ability to control a crowd.”

“Don’t,” Teal said immediately, wearing a calm and self-confident smile. Shaeine took her hand, her eyes warm and proud as she regarded her wife. “This is what I’ve been training for, Ravana. All this semester I’ve done research projects for Tellwyrn’s class on Vesker heroes, taken Rafe’s elective on public speaking, put off every core class to fill my schedule with bardic studies. I can understand your wariness; I know I spent a lot of time daydreaming out loud like a moony-eyed farmgirl. But that was then. I am ready for this.”

“She is,” Shaeine agreed, her voice soft but firm. “I acknowledge that I am in no way unbiased regarding Teal, but my people are ruthlessly practical, as you have cause to know, Ravana. We do not encourage our loved ones to take unwise risks, even at the expense of their egos. A Narisian would rather have a living and hale spouse with hurt feelings than the reverse, and I still marvel that so many humans seem to feel otherwise. She is capable of controlling that crowd.”

“It’s a performance,” Teal added, still smiling. “That’s all. Regardless of our differing opinions about people, I am not naive enough to put my trust in something so irrational as a mob. You don’t reason with crowds, and you don’t take them for granted, you’re right about that. You pull their strings, push their buttons, and make them do as you command. It’s a matter of technique. With all due respect, Ravana, I am probably better at it than you.”

Ravana held her gaze for a long moment, then shifted to regard Shaeine. The drow just nodded to her once. Sighing softly, she glanced to the side at Veilwin, who had retreated to slouch against one wall, and now shrugged at her. She did not look back at Yancey; he only occasionally rendered advice, but only when explicitly asked, and never in front of others.

“Well,” the Duchess said at last, “the reality is that you have rented this space and commissioned the fliers. It is within your legal right to host a public event, per the Writ of Duties and, somewhat more pragmatically speaking, your material resources and status in the province. I could not stop you without resorting to unfriendly measures which would create consequences I think you know I am not willing to embrace. The deal is, in a word, done.” She twisted her lips bitterly in an expression that only obliquely hinted at a smile. “A page from my book indeed.”

“And that is the point of this exactly,” Teal said, leveling a finger at her. “Yes, I could very easily have just up and done this, like you did with your stunt outside my family’s factory this very morning. Instead, I am here, informing you of my actions, so you can plan around them, and I that I can ask you to cooperate with me. Surely you can see it’s insanity for us to constantly trip each other up when we have exactly the same enemy. Quite part from being stupid, that’s handing him a perfect weapon to turn against us.”

“Again, yes, philosophically you make a compelling case, but I am not sure I see the relevance. What is it you are asking of me, exactly? Just to stay out of your way? You’ve already seen to it I have little choice; this seems to be rubbing salt in the wound.”

Teal clapped a hand over her eyes, leaning her head back with a dramatic groan. Shaeine just sighed and shook her head. On the floor between their feet, F’thaan raised his head, looking up at his people in concern.

“I am going to slap you both!” Ravana exclaimed.

“I would welcome that,” Shaeine told her with a shallow bow and a benign smile that managed to suggest mockery without being overt enough to be called out; she was almost as good at that as a Butler. “It would be perhaps the first show of genuine emotion you have ever granted either of us. Which is not to say I would permit you to do it, of course.”

“Ravana…” Teal dragged her hand down her face. “Could you please, for just one moment, try to see the world through the eyes of someone who had been hugged once or twice as a child?”

“That does it! Veilwin, hex her!”

“Fuck off,” her employee snorted. “You are not rich enough to hire me to cast shit at an archdemon.”

“That was needlessly spiteful, my love,” Shaeine agreed with gentle reproach.

“You’re right, I apologize, Ravana, that was over the line. But you are just so frustrating!” Teal mimed a grabbing motion with both hands, as if throttling an imaginary Duchess. “Not everyone who contradicts your wishes is an enemy! Quite often, the opposite; I am trying to help you.”

“What we ask,” Shaeine said more smoothly, “is restraint. We want you to trust that we know what we are doing, and stay your hand while we make the attempt. This maneuver has been planned carefully; if it fails, the situation will not have markedly changed, and you can proceed as you were. But if it succeeds, it will change the landscape, to your benefit. Please have faith in Teal, Ravana. Watch, wait, and let her work.”

“And if this does work,” Teal added, “I want you to remember it. And don’t ever again stick your fingers unilaterally into Falconer business. Work with us, not around us. I promise everything will go much better with us working together than trying to one-up each other in some asinine game of checkers with Madouris as the board. The truth is, Ravana, I haven’t been a very good friend to you, or a particularly good ally. You deserve the credit for being the one to reach out. I’m trying to meet you halfway, but for that to work, you can’t just reach from atop your throne. Work with me.”

The Duchess hesitated, again glancing back and forth between them. “Faith…is not something which comes…naturally to me.”

“I know,” Teal said simply. “And more to the point, you have excellent reason for your general feeling that if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. But having excellent reasons doesn’t make it true, Ravana. Trust me, and let me handle this. Let it be the start of a better working relationship.”

“The consequences if you fail…”

“Are as I said,” Shaeine reminded her gently. “No worse than the situation as it stands now. She must prove herself at some point, and there may never be a better opportunity.”

Ravana’s thin shoulders shifted once in a soft sigh. “All right, Teal. Shaeine. All that being said, I suppose I cannot reasonably deny you. I’ll stay my hand, for now, and watch what you accomplish tonight. Tomorrow, when the results begin to take shape… We shall see. You deserve that much trust, at least.”

They both smiled at her.

“You will not regret this,” Teal promised.

“I very much fear I shan’t have time to. This has all been very profound and cathartic, but at this moment I have to receive reports on a dozen urgent matters, prepare myself to attend a politically crucial social event in Veilgrad this evening, and it seems there is also an unconfirmed but not inconsiderable possibility that the world is ending. I feel someone really ought to address that. Now then, if you will excuse me?”

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