weltschmerz (n.) the kind of feeling experienced by someone who believes that physical reality can never satisfy the demands of the mind; a deep sadness about the insufficiency of the world; a mood of weariness or sadness about life arising from the acute awareness of the world's demand for evil and suffering.

For the first time in a long time, she woke without screaming. It ought to have been a relief; it ought to have been a release. Her chest ought to have opened up, so that her heart could beat freely; her lungs ought to have relaxed, so that she could for the first time feel like she had breathed deep only pure air, no longer stained with the faintly bitter scent of sorrow.

And yet, the screams.

She bolted upwards. The atelier was shrouded in shadow, and someone was screaming. The ceiling was painted in charcoal strokes of gloom, and someone was screaming. The faintest specks of light, gleaned from the last fading glow of the wick of the candle on the mantle, were freckled across the frost-bit window, and someone was screaming.

Someone was screaming, who was not Ina.

The blankets tangled about her legs, so that she fell, rather than leapt, to her feet. She had not fallen asleep with the blankets drawn around her; she was not sure whether she had Eero or Zoran or Khalore to thank for this kindness, half-unnoticed as it was in her panic to reach whoever was in pain, whoever was suffering, whowever was screaming.

God, had she kept all the other Warriors in a state of panic like this? Or was she the only one whose heart bruised to hear someone shrieking so?

She was not sure which answer would hurt more.

When she stumbled out onto the street, there was no further sound but for the whisper of wind stirring gently through the brittle leaves of the plants on the balcony of the building next door. It was late enough that the whole place was dark, too early to benefit from the light of the stars or the moon overhead. Ina advanced slowly down the steps of the atelier, hesitantly peering into the shadows that crowded the mouth of the alleyway, where the streets of Kass gave way into the broader avenues and the edge of the river.

There – a shadow moved.

She said, "Zoran?"

She must have put on Khalore's shoes rather than her own, in her haste to make it out the door; they were a little too big, so that she made a little too much noise in them as she approached him.

He had been looking towards the river. The reflection of the candles of the municipal buildings along its shore had driven a long red wound through the still water, so that the river wept crimson onto its banks; he had seemed almost transfixed.

There was something strange and hollow in his eyes when he looked back towards her, the same look that had occupied his eyes on that awful morning in Aizsaule, when he had smashed the mirrors in his carpenters' workshop, when he had gouged open his own hands, when he had not recognised her and their thread had flickered through a thousand iterations of who they might have been to one another.

He said, "Allegra?"

Her mind spun, grappling for the correct response. They had learned litanies of previous Warriors, each xrafstar and each curse. Their successes, their failures. How would such litanies record her? Would they remember her as a Warrior, or for as a girl so paralysed with grief that she could only care for those capable of real heroism? Would they list Zoran's name with hers the way that Commandant always had done, Czarnecki-and-Nirari, or would her name follow Pekka's, like when the others chatted about them, like they were one another natural's accompanient?

Who was Allegra's natural twin?

She said, slowly, hesitantly, "Dimitar?"

Zoran tilted his head. It was a gesture most unlike him, so…. menacing did it seem. Dimitar had been a brute, and that brutishness seemed a most ill-fitting suit when Zoran wore it. He took a step towards her, and then he took a second step, and then he said, "where is Allegra?"

Ina held out a hand, though whether to keep him at bay or reassure him, she wasn't quite sure. Their thread had flared a crystalline blue, so pale and bright that it rather looked as though it had been woven from strips of the sky, and then darkened, as though rotting, quickly, to a gore-like red. This was not the indecision of that morning in Aizsaule; he was not lost. He was not confused.

He said, "Inanna," and his voice was hushed with a kind of conspiratorial kindness, as one might speak to a bird before snapping its neck. He said, "I understand why you did it," and he sounded honest, frank, one sinner confessing to another. He said, "but you're going to die, you're going to die, in pain, and slowly, and screaming. And it will be his fault."

Ina curled her fingers around the thread between them, sensing, more easily now, that frisson in the air which marked its path. It was not real – there was no chance of tripping up on it – but she could feel it. It was not real, but it was. It was to her. It was not real, but –

Where her fingers touched the thread, silver bloomed across it, the strangest of unfurling flowers.

Zoran said, "all his fault."

He lunged. She got her hands up in time, reflexes painfully honed – in that respect, then, Commandant had not been neglectful – but what did it matter that she had got her hands up in time, when he was so much taller and stronger than she was? She had been one of the weakest of the Warriors, ever since they were children; she had not been chosen for her strength. It was like a butterfly trying to hold back a hurricane.

His body weight bore down on hers; she was forced back, until she hit the stone surface of the wall, until her back was pressed against it, and his hands were tight around her throat, tight, so tight. She clawed at his face, pressing her fingers against his jaw, gouging at his eyes, any hint of gentility erased in an instant by the panic of death's spectre so near.

He had held her this tightly before. As children, as teenagers, as recently as the night before last. At night, and after a death march, and when they came back from visiting their families, as though in the space of a single week he had begun to fear that he would never get to see her again.

"Zoran."

She could barely whisper it; she could barely draw in enough breath to manage the first syllable, so that the name writhed and died on her tongue – zor-or-or.

She could not draw enough breath into her lungs to speak to him as she had spoken to Xynone Hanover, the day that she had killed him.

"Zoran, please."

His eyes were not blank, as she had expected them to be, as Pekka's had been – as Pjotr's had been – but wide, and focused, and awful, and…. and disbelieving. How long had he dreamed of this? How often had he thought of this while she lay against him, beside him, pressing her hand against his? Was this some ancient desire, finally realised?

The thread between them snapped tight, blood-red, screaming. Each of his fingertips was a tiny point of agony. Black spots drifting across her vision. She couldn't breathe.

No. No.

The first thought that crossed her mind was: he would not be able to live with himself if she let him kill her.

The second thought, surging forth, in defiance against the first: let him?!

No. No. No, please, no –

She dropped her hand, and twisted her fingers, and found again the thread – sensed it, by proximity alone, as one finds their way down the stairs of their childhood home in the dark. It was already pulled so tight, like a violin string, that for a moment she wondered if trying to snap it wouldn't be her best bet. But no – instead, focusing as much as she could even as every fibre of her body screamed for oxygen and blood, she shut her eyes, and ignored the pounding panic in her skull, and thought of Zoran. The first day she had met him. Her first day as a Warrior.

She had been kind to him; his transport had arrived late to the barracks, so late that there had been no dinner left, and she had ripped up her rations to give him half. He had been kind to her; she had screamed herself hoarse in her sleep, and woken to him kneeling beside her bed, looking quite serious, looking intent on helping in what little way he could.

Silver flickered around her fingers, strange titanium sparks, and faded again, just as quickly.

A dead girl whispered in her ear. "Why are you trying to speak sense to a man who's not here, Niari?"

She gasped in one last breath, which did not seem to draw in any air, and thought, desperately, of Avrova Vovk. Would that be enough? Would Dimitar spare a different Lover, a Lover who had never been loved, a Lover who had spared those around her the suffering that always came attached to consorting with a Lover?

Again, her fingers pressed tightly to the thread; but – what had she been thinking? Dimitar had never known Avrova; there was no thread to spun here, no string to recreate. There was too little air. She could not think. She could not remember. It wasn't fair. She was fighting. She was fighting as hard as she could, for both of them – for all of them.

This wasn't a hero's death. Wasn't she meant to be a Warrior? That was what her mother thought she was, what her siblings believed her to be, what Belle and Khalore and Ilja and Azula and – yes, even Kinga – needed her to be. For them. With them. All this time, how hard she had tried to give back the love which had been so unfairly heaped upon her, to love as others seemed to love her, even when only pain and suffering followed – how she had tried, to braid hair and bandage wounds and soothe to sleep – to earn the love she was shown, at every turn, without seeming to earn it at all, answered only with spite and anger and grief that she shared but could not show except in her dreams. Pekka, I promise.

But, oh, for a single second it was tempting to fall. The darkness yawned wide behind her, whispering nothing, promising nothing.

This was a sanctified act, was it not? To die at the hands of one you loved dearly, one who loved you? She could go like this, the thread wrapped around her fingers like a cat's cradle; she could go. The Szymanskas had always glorified it, and for a single moment, starved of air and blood, wavering on the edge of the darkness, Inanna Nirari thought that maybe she could see why. Was it a comfort, to look into such familiar eyes as you faded? Had it soothed Jaga thus, when her sister slipped the knife in?

Twined tightly around her fingers, the thread which bound Hierophant to Lover flickered white, for a single second white, a blank page, or the shinining halo of the moon, or the sheen of bone, and Zoran's hands loosened around her throat, and Ina could rip herself free, wrenching one of his thumbs with a sickening crunching sound as she wrestled herself free.

She shoved him back, and he fell, fell hard, as though waking from sleep-walking.

And as he looked up at her, eyes wide, she turned, and she ran.

He called after her, called for her, desperately, as she went. "Ina? Ina. Please, Ina, I'm sorry, Ina…!"

Militat omnis amans.

Somewhere in the middle of it all, Ina had begun to weep white tears, crystalline and opalescent. They burned where they fell, scoring deep black wounds into her hands as she wiped, desperately, at her face, trying to stem the tears, trying to stop the weeping which had possessed her like a strange, awful thing had crawled into her chest and taken up an awful, shuddering residence there. She did not succeed; she had raced through a narrow set of alleyways, too tangled to decipher exactly which direction she had gone in, and made it only a few hundred yards before she could go no further.

She fell to her knees, and for a split second, it was all that she could do to cry, and cry, and cry. It burned; it hurt. It felt like it should have. It felt right, that there should be such a physical manifestation of the turmoil twisting between her lungs. It felt like her heart had calcified. She had expected it to pound, to beat hard with the panic that still swelled in her veins, but no – no – no. It was an awful weight in her chest, heavy, unforgiving. Was this where the curse had taken up its home? Was this what the next Lover would need to harvest from her, to claim from Ina in desperate pursuit of their own suffering?

Why had she ever been permitted to take on this burden? Why had any of them? Why was it fair to turn her inside out like this, to drive Zoran out of his own mind and into mindless violence, to hollow Ilja out to a strange facade of himself, to strip Kinga of her humanity, to chase Khalore into wielding her own martyrdom as a weapon? How was any of this helping Irij? How?

This wasn't meant to be her story. This was all wrong. She was still trying to gasp in as much air as she could; she was still light-headed, the world swirling in impressionistic blurs around her. The cobbles under her knees, under her hands, didn't seem quite real. None of this seemed real. Maybe this story had never been hers; maybe this was one of her awful dreams, and she would wake, screaming, any moment.

If it was, where would she wake?

In this moment, Inanna could almost believe that this story had never been hers; for these long, fractured seconds, it seemed like this horrible, painful love belonged to someone else, someone in another skin and another life, a girl who would walk back out of the walled city and into the sunlight and live a long and happy life with the man that she loved. It was so far away, so utterly untenable, and in that moment Zoran seemed to her as much a stranger as she must have seemed to him. Maybe she had never loved him. Maybe she had spied him in the streets of Opona one warm autumn afternoon, and had spun this tale to keep her heart full, to craft the kind of friend she yearned for. Maybe he had another girl to make him laugh at night, her hair dark and her eyes liquid amber, a girl who did not wake screaming from nightmares, a girl whose smile concealed nothing beneath – maybe Ina had only ever imagined that she could be loved – that her love would ever be aught but a burden – that he would ever love her in return.

Maybe they had yet to meet.

Maybe she would walk out of this room and set eyes upon him for the first time, and tear apart her bread again, and smile at him while he accepted it, gingerly, and asked her earnestly for her name.

Maybe everything would be alright.

She sat back on her heels, and wiped desperately at her eyes again, wincing at the pain as the tears burned into her skin, like tiny drops of acid. Would it have disfigured her, these tears? Perhaps she would deserve it, she thought ruefully, for taking so much time for self-pity. Perhaps she would be glad for it, if it deterred the unwanted attention which had dogged her for so long. Perhaps she could even be smug, if it meant that Kinga no longer cornered the market on mutilation in the group.

She took a deep breath, and held it in her chest, trapping it there, keeping it caged, and then letting it slowly dissipate back into the air. Another, and then another. She was trying not to think about Zoran, but thinking about not thinking about Zoran was basically the same as thinking about Zoran.

Ah – there were the tears again. She would have smiled, if it didn't hurt so much.

She put her face into her hands. She didn't want to go back. Not yet. She just needed a moment. A moment for herself. That was all.

And, oh, she had tempted fate itself with that thought.

"You know," a voice said, somewhere above her. "We really need to stop meeting like this."

She was torn between groaning and laughing, and wound up going for a strange combination of the two which just sounded like another sob.

"Please don't make me kneel down, Inanna. These are new trousers."

It was the most familiar he had sounded for the last three weeks. That actually did make her laugh, although it came out all strangled, that the first moment of true recognition was in a moment of such vanity, such petty self-interest – but then, if someone had asked her six months ago the characteristics she attributed to Eero Hämäläinen, she would have said that he was tough and kind and vain. "Your concern is as touching as ever."

She looked up at him, and saw how his mouth tightened when he saw the black wounds on her face. He said, "you look like a girl in need of a nocturnal adventure."

She wondered if that was a euphemism. She wondered if she wanted it to be.

He offered his hand.

After a moment, she took it.

She had been dreaming about her father, before she heard the screaming.

She was a little resentful that she had been roused from that dream; it had been so long since she had conjured him without having the entire vision twist into a nightmare. He had seemed tired, but he had seemed happy, just as he had been, all through her childhood, deep crow's eyes radiating out from his kind eyes, his mouth creasing into a warm smile whenever he looked at her.

What did he think of her? What did he think of the woman she had become? Was this what he had hoped of, for his daughter? Was this worth his sacrifice?

This – her. Had she been worth it?

She knew he would recognise her, no matter how long it was, no matter how long his sentence, no matter how long their separation. She had made sure of it. She had kept her hair long, hadn't she? As it had been when he was taken from her. Like one of the dolls he had promised her, every Fall Day, for as long as she could remember. She had never cut it, not even when Commandant had threatened to fail her for it. He would never know his other children because of her. Did he regret it? She wanted to make sure that he would always know her. Stay beautiful. Like one of the dolls he had promised her, promised and promised and promised.

She could not even imagine cutting her hair. As though she were Olo, the Tower of the sixth generation, who had been undying so long as the continuity of his body remained continuous – so long as he remained whole. Undying, but not invulnerable. They said that, in his final moments, his body wracked with pain, mutilated almost beyond recognition, his lover had knelt over him with the sword of the cursemaker and he had cut a small lock of his hair and he had released him, at last, from his curse.

His lover had not been a xrafstar; his only curse had been to love one. But this act had been a warrior's way of loving. Militat omnis amans.

And when she had dreamed of her father, she had seen that he had the sword of the cursemaker resting across his knees. She knew that this was, without ever having seen it, the way that a dreamer recognises in a stranger's visage the soul of a friend, or a loved one, or themselves. This was, as in all things, abstract. The sword had looked rather like Ina's, engraved with the same elegant characters running into one another in a sinuous continuum of loops and lines and dashes, like something her mother might have had on a piece of embellished jewellery.

"Inanna," her father had said. He had been whole too, like the Olo in the stories. He had been unbroken. Not like the last time that she had seen him, bleeding and broken and wretched, screaming only for his eldest daughter, begging the guards not to hurt her anymore than they already had. "What are you going to wish for?"

It had been the oldest, most favourite question of the young candidates, when becoming a Warrior had still seemed so far away, so abstract, turning in the distance, just far away that they could only graze at the very edges of the idea. What will you wish for?

Ina had always known.

"For you, aba."

He shook his head. He was still smiling. They were sitting on the edge of the docks in Opona, watching the boats come in. Kaapo's little tri-sailed junk, red sails battened and battered, in turn, by the northerly wind, bobbed gently on the waves, the farthest of the fleet from shore. "No," he said, "what are you going to wish for?"

"For you," Ina repeated, "aba."

He had turned the sword over in his hands. Moss clung to his fingertips, and crawled along his wrists. He looked tired. What would their thread look like? Ina had wondered it before; now, the thought seized her again, as though by the throat. What would any of her familial bonds look like, made tenable thus? Would they all bear the glossy silver which bound her to Zoran? Or the more familiar deep tones of the other Warriors, the dark blues and greens which kept her tied so tightly to Khalore and Ilja? Perhaps it would be the forced bronze of Kinga.

No. Looking at her father, she knew that it would have been a pale green-blue, just like the water at their feet. It would have been.

It would be. It would.

She would ask for him back. She would wish for him. For her aba.

She would see then what colour their thread was. Whether he had forgiven her for what she had done to him, the suffering she had caused him, as she had dared to dream that he might.

Her thread with Hyacinth was a sapphire blue, and as delicate as an expensive bracelet – it was, Ina thought grimly, the thread that she had first glimpsed in the ocean, when they had swam to the shore of Illéa, when Hyacinth had sunk.

She had, quite without realising, watched the girl drown and done nothing. She hadn't realised until just this moment. She hadn't even realised that she had a thread with Hyacinth until just this moment. Of course, they had spent so much time in close proximity, pressed together in the strange crucible of the programme, but – but Hyacinth hadn't been Hyacinth for a very long time.

Eero had pretended that he needed Ina's help to carry her, and Inanna had been grateful for the pretense, and even more grateful that she did not have to return to the atelier to do so. Not yet – though, really, would Zoran have returned to the atelier, to stew in his own guilt, or would he be searching the city for her? She thought that she knew the answer. She knew that she knew the answer.

She knew Zor as she knew herself.

Eero did not ask her questions, only set the pace and led the way through the winding alleys that led all the way through Kass, pressing up close against the buildings, and gave way, eventually, into the cavernous underground tunnels that tangled every more expansively around the capital. Inanna did not ask him how he had managed to find them; this must be what he did with his day, while the others were off fighting and dying and infiltrating. She could have been helping, she thought bitterly, all this time, if he had allowed her, if he had trusted her as she had trusted him, for all the good that it had done her…

"How well do you know them? The tunnels?"

"Not as well as I'd like," Eero said, "not as well as he does. But it should be enough."

She was short enough that carrying Hyacinth between them was a discomfort, for the positioning rather than for the weight. "Enough for what?"

"We need to get her away from the city," he said, "just far enough."

Ina blanched. Apropos of nothing, visions that did not belong to her rose to her mind – scenarios that had only ever been described to her, recounted in a hushed tone by Pekka, as though he was pleading for her to understand, to do it for him if it was ever necessary – visions of Decebal and Esteban carrying Voski Grigoryan between them, surreptitiously, under the cover of the night, down to the river on those nights they thought she might burn up in her sleep and take them all with her. They would immerse her in the river, and watch the steam billow, and realise, each time, what small margins with which they operated. A little delay could have meant the death of two Warriors. Just a small slip. That would have been all that it took. Pekka had wanted her to know that.

She had promised to remember, and wondered why he had spoken so urgently, as though he would not be around to remind her.

The tunnels were dark, lit only by the sickly orange sheen of Hyacinth's eyes, where a miniscule ring of fever burned around her iris as though in her pupils dwelt an actual cache of hellfire. Eero seemed to know his path; that left it to Ina to watch her footing, to move as surely as possible over the uneven surface of the tunnels, to catch her breath and to keep at bay the thoughts that threatened to drown her.

A heart was a heavy burden.

They emerged somewhere in Tiamat, after trying two exits which seemed to have been blocked off by something above ground. After so long in the walled city, the wide open fields of this rural district seemed almost foreign; the soil was soft underfoot, and the air was fresh and forest-scented. The stars overhead were a veritable explosion of the cosmos; when Inanna tilted back her head, she almost lost her breath all over again at the sheer number of the stars scattered haphazardly across the inky dark sky. She could spot the constellations she and Zor had traced out together, only a few nights ago – the shape of a deer with magnificent, marvellous antlers, Zuen; the shape of a hammer, the Commandant; the shape of a man asleep on his desk, Zoran.

They eased Hyacinth down onto the soil, shrouded in the dark; when Eero indicated t hat they should retreat, Ina did so gladly, for it was all so ominous and morbid that she rather didn't want to risk the alternative. It only took a few long strides before Hyacinth had been lost to the gloom, though Ina kept her gaze fixed on the place where she had been, as though by sight alone she could protect her.

There was a little hill here, only a few feet tall; they climbed it, which gave them a good vantage point not only on Hyacinth but on the rest of their surroundings, what little they could see. They were on the crest of a far deeper valley, which sloped downwards into what might have been a small hamlet some miles away – certainly, she could see behemoth shadows which might have been abandoned barns, or perhaps enormous sleeping druj, if druj even slept. Beyond that, lost to shadow, would be the Wall. There was always a Wall. They were always caged in, in this place. Though they could see the sky – that, at least, was a consolation.

She said, softly, "will we be safe?"

"I don't know about you," he said. "But I will be."

She frowned.

"I've got you to look after me."

He might have smiled. In this dark, she couldn't quite see.

She said, "I'll try to live up to your expectations."

A hundred yards before them, Hyacinth had opened her eyes again. Ina could only tell as much because of those tiny rings of neon orange, glowing faintly in the gloom. Hyacinth's eyes were wide and unblinking. Ina said, "what's happening?"

"She's purging," Eero said, softly. "The curse – it's too much for her."

It wasn't just Hyacinth's eyes now – it was every vein in her body, beginning, gently, to glow, as though heated from within, as though instead of blood she had molten lava running through her arteries. It look painful; Hyacinth had started to shake and shudder with it, as though seizing, as though dwelling within a nightmare as the curse began to work its way through her body once more.

It was a faint glow, but in this darkness, it pierced utterly as brightly as a portable sun. Ina was suddenly, painfully, starkly aware of how exposed they were, sitting here on the grass, under an open sky, in the territory of a druj. She had not brought her sword; she did not think that Eero had brought his. Was this all a prelude to being ripped apart? Surely the beasts which lurked in the darkness would notice this blaze of red, only half-hidden in the grass?

Ina felt the shivering wave of frisson, the strange shudder of energy emanating from the seizuring girl, wash over her like a warm breeze. The thread which bound them twisted and turned in an invisible breeze. "Will she be okay?"

"She usually is."

"You've done this before?"

"A few times," he said. "Makes me feel helpful."

"I see," she said.

Hyacinth was stilling slowly, her shudders becoming less and less pronounced. Was that all? It wasn't so dire as she had imagined; it wasn't so dramatic as the stories of Voski had made it seem. Just that?

Had Hyacinth's curse been a gentle one, then? Inanna was torn between gratitude and deep, unkind envy.

Eero said, "are you okay?"

It had been a long time since someone had asked her that. No – Zoran had asked, when she had embraced him for the first time in six months, when she had seen Pekka for the first time since he had died, when her old friend had seemed the only solid thing in the whole world. He had asked. She had not answered.

She answered now, and managed not to cry, though she did not know how. Sheer exhaustion, perhaps. "I'm so fucking tired, Eero."

She leaned into him, and he put an arm around her shoulder, like it was the most natural of instincts, and she put her face into his shoulder and she still did not cry, she only breathed, deeply, gasped for air as though she was still being strangled, as though the darkness was still lurking somewhere behind her, whispering nothing, promising nothing.

Eero whispered nothing, promised nothing.

She said, "I can't do this. I wasn't meant to be a Warrior. I haven't helped, I've just made things worse, and we keep losing. We keep losing. I keep losing."

He didn't say anything. He let her speak.

"I'm trying to hold us together," she said. "We keep splintering. They blame me for… I don't know what they blame me for. I only ever did what they asked, and they resent me for it."

"They love you, Ina."

"They don't. They shouldn't. Only a fool –"

"Why shouldn't they?" She could tell he was still watching Hyacinth, burning his eyes watching her, focusing on her to give Ina the space to speak. "Are you calling me a fool? Calling my brother a fool? Poor Petja adores you."

"No," she said. "No. But I never understood why he would."

"I feel it would be uncouth for me to start a list."

She choked out a laugh and gently hit his chest. "Yes."

"Might make you feel better, though?"

She pulled away, trying to stifle the giggles which had bubbled in her chest, slightly hysterically, and he caught her by the wrist so that she could not really pull away, only lean back, and look at the stars again, and try to catch her breath, as though she had spent all of her air on keeping the tears at bay.

"Ina," he said. The only light here was the glow of Hyacinth's veins, slowly fading now, slowly darkening back to gloom; it stained his eyes more amber than brown. "Yours is the curse of the Lover. You must understand, these things – they are no more your fault than the tides are the fault of the moon."

"Your fault as well," she said, "no?"

He flinched. "You mean –"

"You told me," she said,. The last time they had spoken, she had almost hit him; he had spoken to her so callously, so cruelly. It was – it is – none of your business. That, too, had reminded her of the old Eero; he had spoken so in the aftermath of the lashing, though not to Ina. I think I'd rather swing, actually. He had given up his childhood and innocence for Ina and her father, and all this time she believed he had given his life as well.

No. Merely his humanity.

"You told me," she said, "that you hated being an adjunct of the World. That you would have done anything to get out, that you weren't really a person, that you killed to escape."

He didn't say anything. He just looked at her, very sadly.

"Did you lie to me?"

He said, "I imagine so. Quite frequently, I'd say."

"Don't fucking joke about it, Eero!"

The words exploded from her, suddenly. It took her by surprise; it seemed to shock him into silence for a split second.

Then –

"It's not the same," he said. "It's not the same thing –"

"How is it different?"

"You can't see the difference," he said, "between having a stranger crawl into your skull, and having your brother keep you alive at any cost?"

"He wouldn't want this."

"You don't know that."

"I know him."

"You love him," Eero said, "that's different."

Ina's mouth tightened. She swallowed back words crueller, more barbed, than she intended; she had never truly thought of herself as having a temper, but the anger rose in her abruptly.

It did not escape her notice that they were both using the present tense.

Somewhere to the north-west, there was a hissing sound – faint, very faint, too faint to bode danger but not so faint that it did not turn her pulse jagged. Excubitors, out at this time of night, or a monster lurking in the dark?

"I am trying," Eero said, "to get him back."

"Eggs," Ina said, "omelettes. Is that it? You're happy to strip him off his humanity, to reduce him to his curse – "

"You act like it's an inconvenience," Eero said. "You act like you don't want him back –"

"Of course I do," Ina said, "but that's not him."

"I'm working on it."

She shook her head. "No," she said, "no. I refuse to believe that."

"Ina –"

"You could let him be Pekka," she said, pleading. "You could give him his memories back. His personality. His name. Let him be himself. Influence as little as possible. I know you could."

His eyes were pleading, the amber darkening as Hyacinth's light faded, until they were just dark again, pupils blown wide. "Listen to me," he said. "Listen to me. I told you that I killed to be free. Didn't I?"

She said, "you did."

"So surely you can see," he said, "what I intend. What has to happen –"

"I have nine years left," she said, "just nine years left at most. I know it's selfish. But I don't want to wait. Not when he's there, not when he's walking around all empty, when he's looking through me, when – I have nine years left, Eero."

"Well," he said, "I don't."

Ina surprised herself with what she did next – she dropped her hand to his, and took it, gently. His skin was warmer than it usually was; she could feel the callouses on the palms of his hand, rope-worn, just like Pekka's. When she spoke, it was with kindness, deeply felt for the boy that she had known, her first love, her first husband. "How long?"

"I'd be surprised if I'm allowed to see this mission through."

He didn't look sick. Not like the other Warriors, when their times had come. He looked fine. He looked healthy.

He looked as though he had never inherited a curse at all.

They were most of the way back to the trapdoor, Hyacinth balanced carefully between them, when there was another hiss in the dark, higher pitched than before, and something rocketed through the dark to explode into green mist, not too far from them, only a few hundred yards from where they stood. Ina flinched, thinking they had been spotted, but no – there was no scream, no call followed, and the only sound which pierced the darkness then was the harsh crunch-and-crack of something dying in the distance.

It would be lightening soon. The night was almost spent. She had spent it in silence beside her dead love's dead brother, watching the light slowly fade from Hyacinth's veins. When they had gone to pick her up again, Inanna had seen that the grass around her limp form had been scorched black, and that for several metres in every direction, the grass had withered and died where it stood, blasted of all life by mere proximity. Ah. Not quite as flashy as Voski's curse, then, but certainly no less destructive.

She was starting to understanding why Hyacinth might have survived all this time, despite the world's best efforts.

They dropped back into the darkness of the tunnels; the shadows closed around them like an embrace. Her eyes had adjusted a little to the gloom, though that helped little once they were in the gloom. The dark was so complete and uncompromising that she knew immediately that something was wrong when she began to be able to see again – when she was able to see her own hand stretched in front of her.

"Get back," Ina hissed, and Eero obeyed, scrambling back silently into one of the many antechambers which split off from the main body of the tunnel. She silently prayed that whoever was coming after them would not try to come down this way, and for once, whatever gods existed in the realm above had decided to answer her prayer with some semblance of the relief.

The utter darkness of the tunnels had been broken by the pale yellow of a torch held aloft, painting the walls in gentle tones of buttercup and daisyhead, as a Scholar moved slowly into their view, his sapphire coat unmistakeable. Lorencio Suero had the strangest nocturnal hobbies, Ina decided.

Then she had to hold back another of those strange hysterical giggles which seemed to be swelling relentlessly in her chest these days when, only a few steps behind the general, none other than Khalore Angelo sloped into view, caring another torch in her hand, a leather bag slung over the shoulder of the arm that had been amputated. She was scanning the tunnels with open curiosity, moving as silently as only a Warrior could, and if she caught sight of Eero and Ina, then certainly she managed to hide that fact masterfully.

Khalore was saying, softly, "but would they really have any use for it?"

"I could not say for certain, Khalore," Lorencio was replying, "it rather strikes me as some kind of sick experimentation for experimentation's sake..."

They were coming in the opposite direction; that meant that they had been somewhere more central, which rather told Ina very little. It was, however, most beneficial – she suddenly imagined how funny it would be if they were going in the same direction, so that she and Eero had to creep along behind them, leaping into nooks and crannies anytime that Lorencio decided to turn around, like some bizarre game of Playground Wolf. No, she decided, better they pass like this – ships in the night, as far as the good General Suero would know – and she would interrogate Khalore later.

Hopefully their strange nocturnal outing had something to do with the Radiance, but even if it didn't, Ina rather imagined it would make for a good story.

They could trade tales of nocturnal adventures later.

She should have realised that, in the lights of the city, he would be able to see the bruises on her neck. Eero raised an eyebrow silently; those electric blue eyes traced slowly over her throat, and clearly recognised them for the handprints that they were.

"He didn't mean it." She sounded defensive, even to her own ears. "He didn't know what he was doing…."

"That's worse than if it was purposeful." He was cold again, the warmth and the pleading dissipated, as though it had belonged only to the wilds, to the safety of the night's gloom. "That's..."

He didn't need to say anything else. Ina heard the words that went unspoken.

Zoran was dangerous to them, without even wanting to be.

She stood on the threshold of the bedroom and noticed the razor on the bedside table. It had been Ghjuvan's; she had not realised that it had survived him. She did not know how it had ended up here. Perhaps it was some memento that Khalore had kept, to remind herself of her dead friend. Perhaps Ilja had borrowed it, on some lazy morning which didn't seem all that fateful, and had never got the chance to return it.

She picked it up. She flicked it open. It was sharp. Wickedly sharp, and so well-shined that, in its gleam, she could see her own reflection. She looked an absolute state – as grotesque as she had ever looked, with long black marks running down her face where her tears had scarred her, and long, thin bruises striped across her throat, dark purple and red and green, like a strange and awful art project.

She said, "in the old days, you would have… gone after him. Been protective."

Looked after me.

He was sitting in the chair by the window, staring out the window at nothing in particular. She had not realised how empty a gaze could be, until she saw it in a face that ought to have been familiar. The resemblance to a statue was overwhelming; it was as though he had never existed, had never been anything but this flesh-and-blood monument to his brother's hubris, to her grief, to their nation's strange and alien cruelty. How had she not seen it before?

How had she blinded herself, for so long, to the simple monstrosity of what Irij had done to them, in the name of patriotism?

She walked over to him slowly, and put her hand against the back of his neck, as though to rouse him, gently. This was how she had always done it – when he was at dinner, facing away from her, and she wanted his attention, or when she woke, her arms around him, and wanted to check if he was awake before her. He would always turn over slowly, sleepily, and throw an arm around her, and put his face against her collar, and say, I still love you.

She would laugh, secretly delighted that this had been his first instinct. I appreciate the reassurance.

I know what you're like.

He did not react.

She said, "Pjotr. Come downstairs with me."

He rose, silently, like an automaton. How smooth and precise his movements, devoid of the simple imperfections of humanity. It was uncanny. It made her skin crawl. She had to look away.

Downstairs, she set about cutting his hair with one of Khalore's knives. At this point, the Hanged Man had amassed a veritable arsenal, each stained with her own blood, but it was good – it was worth it, to have a blade which seemed to be capable of carving through anything at all, slicing through any material as smoothly as a knife would pierce water. Tiny golden locks, as precious to Ina as their colour, rained to the tiles below, a veritable halo of hair. She worked slowly, and methodically; he held perfectly still.

Eero had said he would go and look for Zoran. Ina had been glad. There was no telling what he might have done to himself – what he might do to himself – if he was not found. She hoped, for his sake, that Matthias had overwhelmed him with some vision, had steeped him in the exhausting press of the past and the future and anything that was not the present. Maybe she should have gone looking for him. Certainly, he would have done it for her.

But her throat still ached. It still hurt to draw in breath.

She had cut as close to the skin as she could with a knife; now, she damped her hands with oil, and ran it over his scalp, very gently, massaging it into the follicles and into his skin, as he had done for her before they had even realised in what form they would love one another. Long hair like hers had always been a curse in the programme; it had been a veritable military operation each time she had to wash it. Azula had always loved to braid it, after sparring was over for the evening, perching on the edge of the bed while Ina sat on the floor, reading one of her birthday books. Each one had been inscribed, on the front page, with a simple P.

Then the soap, which they did not have much of, but which lathered well between her fingers. She picked up the razor, and unfolded it carefully, as though afraid of feeding it her blood like Khalore did, and set it carefully against his skin. A thirty degree angle, she knew. In this, she was well practiced. And if he sensed that she was close enough to do damage, that she was a woman half-demented with grief holding a blade and a grudge, then he did not show it. He did not move, not even as a person ordinarily moved in the waver of human stillness. It was not trust which held him still; it was inhumanity.

Her hand movements were certain, and confident, and smooth. She made quick work of it; she was not sure if she would have preferred to make it a slower process, more ritualistic, more reverent. But it was what it was. Maybe if he had been cognisant, he would have told her not to. He would have joked that shaving his head had always been a punishment, that she always said that she liked his hair, that he was trying a new look.

Alas.

They didn't have any fresh water in the atelier with which she could rinse it off; instead, she dampened a cloth in the water they had gathered the morning previous, and ran it carefully over his head. His skin was as cold and as hard as marble.

Outside, the dawn had broken, shattering across the sky in a thousand rays of crimson and amber and gold. She was glad for it.

It had been a long night.

She wanted, more than anything, to crawl into bed and into his arms and for all of this to be over. It almost didn't matter that he was a stranger – he had Pekka's eyes, Pekka's face, Pekka's hands. Didn't that count for something? Shouldn't that matter? She could have counted the callouses; she could have named every freckle.

For the first time, Kinga's strange violent impulses made some kind of sense to her. It was a strange, terrible urge which rose in her, to destroy that which was so close to known and yet so far from familiar.

She stepped back. She set the razor on the counter.

He said, "Pekka…. was very lucky….to have you."

Ina said, very softly, "I was luckier."

"He looks good."

He looked more like Pekka, if that was what she meant.

"You managed to avoid scalping him," Kinga said, "that's more than Ghju ever managed."

She swung her legs into the bedroom, and dropped down from the window. She looked like the night had worn her a little roughly, though she was not so badly damaged as Ina was used to her looking after her patrols – only a few bruises and cuts. Not missing any limbs, or her remaining eye, or, it would seem, her tongue. Little mercies.

Ina straightened up from where she had been sitting at the edge of the bed. She could spot the precise moment that Kinga's eyes fell upon her wounds; even if the Moon had managed to hide the expression of disgust and concern that flitted across her face, Ina did not think she was quite so refined as to be able to keep the chain between them from shuddering and twisting and shaking with some repressed emotions.

She said, "who…?"

Ina smiled weakly, wanly. "Dimitar Hristov."

"Dimitar Hri – you mean the guy who's been dead for twenty years?"

"Twenty-one."

Kinga said, coldly, "where is he?"

"Eero's looking for him."

"Should I…?"

"I don't think," Ina said, "that it would help."

There was silence for a long moment. Ina could see it etched clearly on Kinga's face that she was not really all that surprised – that there was in her expression some sense of defeat, of acknowledgement, of familiarity. Maybe this was like teething problems; maybe it would be something that he grew out of. Had Matthias ever done this to Jaga? Inanna wasn't sure that she wanted to ask, that she wanted to believe that the curse of the Hierophant eventually drove out every loving impulse from the man in whose chest it burrowed its hooks –

"I am sorry," Kinga said.

Ina looked at her. "You weren't the one that tried to strangle me, Kinga."

She hadn't said it aloud before, but there it was. Zoran had tried to strangle her. He had strangled her. He just hadn't killed her.

Not for lack of trying.

"Not for that," Kinga said.

"For what, then?"

She exhaled, looking irritated and chastened – yes, Ina would demand specifics of her. "Not for…" She cut herself off, and said, "for me. I've been… searching for someone to follow. I've put myself at odds with you unnecessarily. I should have just followed you. Trusted you. You've got us this far, alive, together. I should have… trusted in that."

Ina could not stop the surge of panic which swelled in her heart. She was angry with Kinga – god knew she was angry with everyone right now, everyone who deserved it and a few who didn't – but the way that her fellow Warrior was speaking… it had such an awful, ringing sound of finality. "Why are you saying this now?"

Kinga said, "you know, I am capable of some self-reflection."

Ina laughed disbelievingly. "No," she said, "really. Tell the truth, Ki."

"Alright," Kinga revised defensively, "maybe I'm just capable of realising when you were right."

Ina thought of the sounds that had managed to escape the all-encompassing shroud of darkness over Tiamat, the unmistakeable noise of something dying, the shriek of the signal flare as it had exploded so near to her. "Did something happen tonight?"

"Things happen most nights," Kinga said. "In my experience."

Ina wasn't particularly sure that she wanted to be back on good terms with someone who was so utterly determined to be infuriating. "Kinga."

She gestured, rather helplessly, at Ina. Ina wasn't sure if she was trying to point at her face, or throat, or really all of her. Any, she thought, would have been a very fair reaction. "It looks like we both nearly died this evening," she said. "I'm not to keen to leave this world with as many loose ends as Ghju did."

She could have not known that these words were like acid in an open wound – no doubt they were spoken with what sincerity Kinga could afford, having loved Ghjuvan as she had – but Ina flinched anyway.

We're family. Families fight sometimes.

Comrades and friends. Not family.

She still dreamed of it, watching him die over and over again. Her brother. Why had she denied him the simple joy of reconciliation? Her poor, dead brother.

"We'll get over this," Ina said, a weak echo of another conversation. "I promise."

"I think we'll have to." Kinga looked at her. "You told me that we were bound together with chains, remember?"

Ina drew her legs up beneath her, hugging her knees. "Everyone else has threads, strings. You have… these horrible manacles. Like you're locked to us."

"Most people would see that as a sign of loyalty," Kinga told her, softly. "Steadfastness."

"It looks," Ina said. "Like duty."

"Yes," Kinga said. "You guys are my duty."

"We should be your friends."

"That seems a little picky, Nanna, if you don't mind me saying."

Ina rolled her eyes. "Aren't we?"

Kinga straightened up from where she had been leaning against the window, so that she could start to pull off her harness. She was so transparent, Ina thought, busying her hands, as though by distracting her mind she would not notice that her heart was speaking.

"You know," she said, "it was your boyfriend who told me." She sounded conversational, as though they were discussing what they ought to have for breakfast – which, really, was a rather pressing topic of conversation. They only had a few hours left that could charitably be called night. "That Swendish captains used to chain themselves to the masts in a storm so that they couldn't be tempted to save themselves. So that, no matter their cowardice, they would always do what they ought." The harness fell to the floorboards with a dull clunk. "Go down with the ship. Go down with the crew."

"You really do make us sound like such a chore."

"Yeah," Kinga said. She peeled off her jacket; there were thin streaks of ichor painting her arms, and the scaly patch over her ear had extended down to her cheekbone, curling around her zygomatic arch. "But a fun chore. Like walking the dog."

Ina smiled and shook her head, and was about to speak when the door leapt open and Khal burst across the threshold, still in her sapphire blue coat, saying, "Zoran's on the fucking futon and I am exhausted and I am not taking no for an answer."

Well, to be fair, Ina had never known her to do so. "You can sleep here," she said, "I was going to try and get a few hours before Ilja comes by."

Khal nodded. "Oh, good, because I have so much to tell you guys..."

Kinga added, "me too – but Ina distracted me with some nonsense about feelings..."

"Shut the fuck up," Ina said, "and get into bed before I change my mind."

Ina moved into the centre of the bed to make space for Khal. She didn't even have time to register how cold and empty the bed was without Zoran; there was a creak of springs on the left-hand side of the bed as Khal collapsed into the blankets, murmuring something softly about cursed libraries, and then, on her right, Kinga curling up, smelling faintly of ichor and soil. The three of them, huddled thus – it felt like home.

She could not say that it felt like the old days, because, in the old days, they had never been so desperate as to care for one another so much. And she did care about them, desperately; she would not have wept to Eero if it was not in the desperate hope that all of the love she had devoted to them over the past long months had not gone unappreciated.

Ina hoped that, tonight, she would not scream. She hoped that the night would be merciful. For once.

Tonight, of all nights.