Wir Sind Die Jäger

by izar ilunak

200 years ago, the Schreaves were banished to the cursed island of Illéa. The nation they had once terrorised with black magic rose from the ashes, determined to rid the world of the Schreaves' evil at any cost – even if that meant creating sorcerers of their own for a suicide mission to destroy them all. Simply put: Illéa has chosen a bad time to hold a Selection.

98. yūgen

sciamachy (n.) a battle against imaginary enemies; fighting your own shadow.

---

Evanne was contorting her arms to tie the sash of her dress, craning over her shoulder to make sure that the fabric was relatively straight. She looked at some risk of dislocating her arm entirely, so radical the angle at which she was working, and the chariot careening at full tilt through the streets of Gjoll. Silas said, with the faintly detached tone of one who knows too little of this realm to understand if his was a stupid question, "would this not constitute a task for a lady's chaperone?"

"Technically," Evanne said, teeth gritted, "I think you're correct."

This was an unfamiliar route to him, as all routes were: the royal family had always observed Fall Day at the chapel in Ganzir, the better to stay deeply within the protective shell of Wall Schreave. He had gone twenty-three years without ever departing palace grounds and now he was out in the world for the second time in two days. Silas said, "Where is Miss Yannis?"

Evie exhaled deeply. "You know how religious services bore her."

Belle, who had been examining her hair in the reflection accorded to them by the darkened window, gingerly touching the sides of her braid as though probing for a wound, said, "you could just ask, Evie."

"No, no, no, I nearly have it..."

Belle rolled her eyes. "Turn."

Evie lowered her arms and did so obediently. Belle leaned forward in her seat and tied the sash with a smooth efficiency, smoothing each tie with a long, smooth stroke before wrapping it in a neat bow. They were wearing similar dresses, long-sleeved and floor-length, tight over their waists and throats, in similar shades of gossamer grey; it seemed their chaperone had determined that there was little harm in letting them blend together a little more now. He could tell the difference between them now, after all.

When he phrased it like that, it didn't seem as important as it felt.

"I used to be able to put on a harness one-handed," Evie grumbled.

She had her prosthetic tucked under her leg, resting her residual limb after a night with so much time spent on her feet. She had expressed not a small amount of delight at the prospect of a morning spent sitting in a beautiful cathedral and listening to hymns. Belle had kindly agreed to sit next to her to jab her in the side with a hair pin if the day called for it.

Ever the watcher. She had offered to watch him, that night, when the time came. He had not decided yet whether or not to trust her. It was a kind of intimacy, was it not, to allow a person to watch – to spectate – as you changed so entirely in that greatest act of spiritual mutilation: from human to human-adjacent, person to druj, Silas to xrafstar.

Belle smiled. "None of us are as young as we used to be."

"You were never young, Eunbyeol." Evie shook her head mockingly. "You were born a sage."

"You wouldn't think that," Belle said, "if you'd known me young."

"In some past life, then."

Belle looked at Silas. She could not have known, of course, the significance of that statement – nor how wrong Evanne Chae found herself. Past lives were not inherited. They were pilfered, stolen as though shameful. They cracked open your skull and wormed inside and inhabited every axon and impulse until you died. Belle said, "in some past life."

Beside Evanne, Ilja Schovajsa's face was exaggeratedly neutral about it all, his skin almost as grey as the suit into which he had been pressed for the occasion. There was a flower stitched onto the pocket, over his heart: a single begonia blossom, standing out stark pink against the plain charcoal colour of the jacket. He must have been listening very closely indeed to wear an expression of such studied nonchalance. It was a dead giveaway that he was not so lost in his own thoughts as he would wish them to believe.

What would it take to get a reaction out of him?

They must have been coming close, for they were slowing, and the turns were coming far less abruptly. Silas adjusted his cuffs, and smoothed his hair, and dabbed at his mouth with a grey handkerchief, secretly relieved when it came away grey again. Better if Asenath did not worry about him today. For the best, he thought grimly, as the carriage juttered to a stop.

Ilja pushed open the door and jumped to the street. Silas gestured that the girls should exit before him. After affixing her prosthetic, Evie reached up and drew her veil over her face; the material Mirabelle had chosen for her was dense enough to obscure the worst of her wounds, which had been deemed uncouth for chapel. Belle's veil was comparatively delicate: even through the masque, Silas could see her eyes darting about rapidly as she took in the buzz-and-business of a cathedral on the morning of the Fall. He could not blame her: he had never seen this himself.

The black cathedral was one of the tallest buildings in all of Illéa; some said that it predated the Walls themselves, which had been purposefully built a mere ten metres taller to ensure that the church fell within the shadow of their protections. The chevet-apse was covered in a verdigris dome riddled with hook-marks where generations of soldiers had climbed about it; those familiar ebony statues sat and stood and hung from every horizontal surface, more gargoyle than portrait. The entire building was a tribute to the tagma thus: every one of the thirteen black spires, surmounted with a small sculpture to the curse it represented, had been designed with an alternating pattern of bricks whose edges stuck out at uneven intervals, allowing them to be used as handholds or hookholds. It was a most striking building, its aesthetic blunted somewhat by the omnipresence of the Walls which overshadowed it on every side, making it seem strangely small and diminished.

That didn't seem to matter to Evie or Belle. They had drawn in a breath apiece, and glanced at each other in silent communication, and then looked back at the church as though to give it a second assessment.

He followed them out onto the courtyard, and saw the daggered looks of the other covered Selected girls emerging from their own vehicles, aimed squarely at his friends. It was almost amusing, for one who understood Silas's insufferable nature as well as Silas himself did: did they really think his company such a prize? They understood so little of the prize for which they were actually competing, from which he was sparing them. He could not blame them for that. It had been kept from them.

So much had been kept from them.

Evie made a sound that might have been a laugh, at which Belle tched in disapproval. Silas said, "what are you thinking?"

Evie said, "your favouritism is showing."

He shook his head, and spoke in a deadpan. "The others would have bored me."

"Glad to hear that we are sufficiently entertaining," Evie said. He could hear her smile. Did she ever look otherwise?

"See that you continue to be," he said.

"You're fortunate you're so nice," Evie said, "or else you'd be utterly unbearable."

---

It was small consolation that the choir sang familiar hymns on the morning of the night that Silas stepped outside of himself.

They were so familiar that he did not have to listen to them; they were so familiar that he could afford to look straight forward at the stained glass mural of the Fall, and feign piety by thinking of the night that was to come. At his side, Asenath had bowed her head in reverence. She always bowed her head during songs in the cathedral, as though she wanted the notes to wash over her physically, as though she wanted the tune to ruffle her perfect hair. No one loved Fall Day as much as Asenath. No one else understood it so well.

As though she could tell what he was thinking, she moved her hand over to his hand, and she wrapped her fingers about his fingers. A gentle smile had formed at the corner of her lips. She was glad to see him so focused on worship this morning. It felt like approval. He was glad he did not have to tell her about what he had grown so distracted. She would be disappointed all over again but – and this was key – it would be done. It would not be the sort of thing that could be undone.

She returned her hand to its knot on her lap, and closed her eyes again. Silas stared at the mural. Trapped thus, the empire was forever falling in the glass. The enemy was forever rising in the glass. He had never learned which traitor was which; they blurred into a mass of unspoken societal grief, the last remnants of a world in which the druj did not, did not have to, exist.

He could identify only one. The first World had looked looked a little like Silas. A Silas raised in sunshine, maybe, all blonde and freckles and gold sword raised in unrighteous wrath. Had he introduced himself thus, when the axe had fallen? Shed his title, as he had shed his Kur uniform?

Call me the World, and fear me. Had it felt silly, the first time? Had it felt more right, over time?

The Schreaves had feared him well enough. They had fled him, clutching the Radiance close, incarnate in a child named Alliette – the first tithe, Silas thought, the first of so many. There was this single difference: her father had done it to her. Every other Radiance would be betrayed instead by a husband, or – he thought of his aunt Tziporah – or by a brother, if the day called for it, if their brother was weak enough. Had that first Illéan Radiance even realised what was happening to her? How much could a child grasp of infinity?

They had named a Wall for her, as though that could make up for a lifetime lost. They had named a Wall for Szymańska as well, whose betrayal had come a little slower than the others. Like an echo. Ignacja had echoed her way around these Walls, a reminder of love soured. Was it true that she had become the first druj? Sena had never told him. He thought she would have told him if it was true. She would have known how much it would delight him to learn that was the case; it would have appealed to the miserable, shrivelled romantic in him.

And it had always made sense to him, as a child, the way it had rhymed with the world as he knew it: Alliette the curse, and Szymańska the druj, and Schreave the kingdom. They appeared thus in every painting, the three ladies who would be walls and their hands spread wide as though offerant of benediction.

Three, always three.

Belle and Evanne were watching him. The choir had stopped singing. The cleric had begun to preach again about the end-of-days.

---

She had said nothing of it until they had arrived back at the palace and they had a moment alone – quasi-alone, Ilja drifting closely enough to see that they were speaking but not so close as to hear what they were saying, and the eyes on him, the constant eyes upon him, were quite nearly enough to make Silas want to tear his skin from his flesh – and she pulled him aside and spoke to him as she always spoke to him, straight to the point, blunt and practical and straight-forward in a manner Silas would never master.

She said, "you haven't changed your mind?"

He said, "I have not."

He could not.

She said, "come get me before you do it."

He nodded.

She said, "you don't have to."

He said, "of course I have to."

She raised an eyebrow.

She said, "have you told Evie?"

He said, "I have."

He could not.

She could tell he was lying.

She said again, "come get me."

He said again, "of course."

---

His mother had returned while they were out at the cathedral. She was in the blue drawing room, where they usually took breakfast; in her long green coat, her hands streaked in watcher-red, she stood out strongly among the pretty porcelain patterns of the wallpaper. This had always been his father's favourite of the personal quarters. Silas always found him here in the mornings, reading his newspapers, working his way through the letters submitted to the palace in pleas for clemency or aid or mercy. It had always seemed a constant, in a world so full of them. Silas's whole world had been the palace. He had known its every rhythm, its every pattern, the very heartbeat of its corridors and chambers.

Today, there was no sign of Aviram, and Kasimira was prettily dressed all in blood. Her maid sat silently at the dining table, her head on her arms. She looked as though she might have been asleep or ailing. She was not moving at all.

"Mama," Asenath said. Her voice was without recrimination; there was only the sympathetic tone of a job well done, an acknowledgement of an exhausting task at last completed. She crossed the floor to the couch on which their mother was sitting, leaning forward to rest on her knees, her swords resting against her legs like a beloved pet. "You're back."

"Yes, my darlings. How was the service?" She did not sound sorry to have missed it. She might have apprenticed to Priscus in her queenhood, and she might too have given her daughter over to his studies, but the mysticism of it all remained a bane to the woman who had been born Swietłana Chou. She was too much a soldier for all that, and that had never quite gone away. More in common, really, with Morozova, silently sentry at the door, than with her own beloved daughter.

"The same as ever," Asenath said with a sweet smile. She would never hold it against her beloved mother. They only worked so well together for their differences: light and dark, soft and sharp, poison and dagger. Silas had been raised a child of the walls and of two mothers in that sense. "Meditative."

"This year," Kasimira said amusedly, "of all years – you would have thought that they'd change it over a little. Made it a little more topical."

"Oh," Asenath said sweetly, "they couldn't do that. I don't think they've learned any of the other readings yet."

Kasimira smiled at Silas as though to tempt him closer – she had cracked a tooth, doing whatever it was that she had done, whatever she had to do to keep them safe – and said, "I suppose you're right. It's only been two hundred years."

Silas said, "did you do it?"

He was not even certain what it was.

Kasimira nodded. Beside her, clasping her mother's hand, Asenath scrutinised him. Was she reading something into his face that he did not mean to be readable? He had lingered at the doorway. That was his usual habit. He had not trained himself into expressiveness as had his sister. He was too much his mother's son for that. And he spoke the way he usually did. If Asenath looked at him like this, he hoped it was only for the day that was in it – the fact he knew she wanted to initiate Belle or Evie before the Fall was done – that she wore such an expression of watchful mistrust.

"I did," Kasimira said. She touched her sword with a reverence that Asenath usually reserved for the druj. "I took two."

Asenath looked away from Silas. He was glad of it. The way she had looked at him… it had made this feel too much a goodbye. He knew that if his sister sensed that, she would try to stop him. He knew that if it felt thus, then his own death would become inevitable. To say goodbye now would be to damn himself. Silas had never before considered himself superstitious, but this was surely superstition. If it always felt thus – like a necessity, like an imperative – then he thought that he could understand it a little better. So he stayed where he was, at the edge of the room, like he was already a ghost, and Asenath looked at their mother, and she said, excitement leaking into her voice, "you got both xrafstars?"

Kasimira shook her head, and reached into the pocket of her coat. It was the same garment she had worn as excubitor, before she had become a queen. It was of an older style, with wider sleeves and broader shoulders, tailored for a man's form. Women had always been permitted in the tagma, but Kasimira's generation had been one of the first permitted beyond the walls. The equipment had not been built for them. They had fallen in their swathes, and every fallen woman had been a reason not to send another.

Those had been the days when being an excubitor had still been an accolade, something to be won and defended, and to be passed over was reason enough for the kind of resentment harboured by Reiko Morozova, who skulked about the palace hurling poisoned glances at any tagma unfortunate enough to cross their path. It had not been a suicide mission, as it had become in the scant space of – had it really only been a year since Wall Alliette fell?

Kasimira reached into her pocket, and pulled out a grey handkerchief, marked with Aviram's cypher. Asenath accepted it from her mother when it was offered to her, and unwrapped it carefully, and could not manage to withhold her smile as she saw what it contained.

A tongue. A human tongue.

Another curse.

"Only one," she said. "The other was a mortal. Some uninitiated ally."

Asenath said, "very interesting. I'll have to think about who..."

Her eyes fell on Silas again. There was a realisation in her eyes, matching that dawning slowly across Silas's stupidly slow brain. Apprehension had slowed his mind; he was not himself. Not with the thought of the evening's trials ahead of him. But he and Sena were too much alike. Their thoughts ran along the same tracks. Parallel lines.

Who indeed?

Silas found himself thinking again of threes.

---

He did not go to see his father. That, of all things, would have seemed too much a farewell. He could not afford to jinx it all now. Time was running short, and if Asenath had found herself another curse then – then there was no telling when she would come for the girls. After all, she had a curse for both and either now, and the night of the Fall was only so long.

He could only slip Ilja's staring eyes so long.

So he found himself again in the corridor of the Selected, just after nine o'clock at night. The girls were both on one of the western hallways, dominated by an oil painting which depicted a frozen tableau of Ezer discovering the walls on Illéa for the first time after the Fall. It was a made-up story, of course, but the painting itself was beautiful. Ezer had never so much seemed a real person in Silas' eyes as in this portrait. Maybe it was the expression in his eyes, stranded halfway between hope and utter terror at the sight of such enormous Walls on an island otherwise utterly deserted of humanity.

There was a girl in a grey dress waiting for him, staring up at the painting.

He said, "you look like you're waiting for someone."

Evanne glanced at him, and smiled. She mustn't have been expecting him; her face was unbandaged, and her wounds laid bare to the air. He could see one of her teeth shining grey between the stitches in her cheek. Her lip was twisted back atop itself as though she were perpetually sneering – as though Silas himself had been a bad influence in these scarce few weeks. She still managed to look very pretty when she smiled like this.

"What a coincidence," she said, "running into you here."

Had Belle told her?

"Do you come here often?"

He said, "I try not to. All sorts of scoundrels running about this time of night."

She giggled. She was limping slightly as she stepped back; he joined her beneath the portrait, and stared up at it, not quite seeing it. His heart was as light as a balloon in his chest. She said, "you look nervous."

"Women scare me."

"It's not as funny as you think it is," Evanne said, "if it's true."

He smiled. He had sealed himself in the library, stationing Schovajsa at the doors, and then immediately slipped out the second door through his father's study, hoping desperately that, if the guard realised his duplicity for normal adolescent chicanery. That he had come straight to this hallway, of all places – yes, he thought wryly, he had rather laid the groundwork for a helpful misunderstanding.

Evie had clearly assumed the same. "I'll leave you in peace," she said with a smile.

Silas rolled his eyes. "Evanne."

"Your favouritism is showing again."

"She's helping me with a project."

"Another orrery?"

"I couldn't possibly say."

Evie said, "why are you looking at me like that?"

Silas had not realised that he was. He said, "you said something interesting to me last night. On the way back to the palace."

"Did I?"

"Probably wasn't so interesting to you," he said. "I asked about – when you were an excubitor. Why you were an excubitor. Why you kept doing it. Even after…" He shook his head. He hated how hesitant he was about this all. He hated how little he understood of speaking like this – to a friend, about the things that mattered. He pressed on: "You told me about your friends. And your leg. And your commander. And I didn't really – I wanted to understand why. Why you kept going. Why you joined the Selection." He smiled, slightly. "Why you put up with me."

Evanne said, "did I have a good answer?"

It sounded important to her. He was glad to answer as he suspected she wished him to: "you did."

"I don't remember."

Silas said, "you were quite drunk."

Evanne laughed. "That does sound right."

Belle's door creaked open; she glanced out warily, and straightened abruptly when she spotted the prince. The window of her room was open, and the night air had been scented with the faint legacy of begonia and zandik. She had already pulled on her coat. It was not one of her Selected garments, so far as he could tell; it looked like something she might have brought with her to the palace, made of a dull brown material that rather resembled burlap or jute. She was tucking something into her pocket; she looked as though she had been pacing since last he had seen her. She said, "is it time?"

"I think it should be."

The sky was just darkening; they would have the full cover of night, and a number of hours before Fall Day came to an end and the curses roared back to their full strengths with a vengeance. Less time again until Asenath came in search of them, but once initiation was underway… there would be nothing she could do. No matter how long it took, that would be that.

A decision made, a choice carried out. Consequences. It was nearly enough, he thought, to exhilarate.

Before he could stop her, Evie had planted a hand on her shoulder and pressed her twisted lips, very gently, to his cheek. She had to go up onto the tip of her toes to do so; he put a hand on her waist to steady her, knowing how fickle her prosthetic could be after so much time on her feet. He had not expected her lips to be so cool. He said, "you're my favourite."

"Don't let her hear you say that."

He smiled. She retreated into her room, and Silas gestured to Belle.

He did not think they needed any words. What really was there to say? They did not say much at all to one another after that. It was rather mechanical: down the stairs, and across the courtyard, and over to the doorway which led to the prisons. He lit a torch; she accepted it gratefully, the first and only sign that she might have been feeling the same kind of apprehension that coursed through his own bones. The flames danced across her face, staining her porcelain skin wine-and-umber.

Down the stairs, around and around, and if Belle thought anything at all about the strangeness of their mission, then she said nothing, and only followed him faithfully.

Was he leading her into something terrible? He was not his grandfather's apprentice, as his mother and daughter had been. He knew nothing of the cursemaker's craft. A little of the theory – nothing more. After all, these curses had been purposefully designed to survive, to transfer and to thrive and to keep existing, generation after generation, no matter what happened to their holders, no matter how much the world fell apart around them.

Consumption. That was at its core, always and only: the human urge to consume.

Akanksha was still lying on the ground, veritably unrecognisable beneath her mass of wounds. Silas accorded Belle the simple dignity of invisibility, avoiding glancing in her direction to permit her to react how she wished to the gory sight before them. To her credit, any such reaction was utterly silent; she stood there, and took it all in, and made not a single sound as Silas knelt beside her, and pried her mouth open, and slipped his fingers in between her teeth.

Right there – yes, as he had expected, lying right upon her tongue like a sacrament. A coin, one-sixth of an inch thick, an inch in diameter, whittled from the bone of a Radiance long lost to history. It stuck to his fingers; he pulled it from between her lips and wiped it gingerly upon his shirt. Bone drank in the moisture of a living; even thus, it clung to his skin. When he curled his fingers around it, he thought that maybe he could feel a heartbeat juddering beneath its surface.

"Is that it?" Belle said suspiciously. "That's… that's all?"

"You thought I was lying about the coin thing."

"I thought," Belle said, "that you were just shit at metaphors."

"You would not have been incorrect," Silas said. He hoped that he could not tell how deeply he was breathing. "Let's get this over with."

---

How many sins had been born in a night like this, a moon smouldering low in the sky and a man desperate to be better than he who had gone before?

He didn't mind the nights. He didn't mind the low lights. He didn't mind the foolish thoughts that had crept in since he had lain down, and he didn't mind the sinking anvil in his chest that it had all gone wrong. This was no initiation, he thought. This was self-delusion. There must have been more to the whole business. Could a man carve himself into godhood by will alone, desire alone, desperation alone?

Asenath would have said, gods make their own importance.

Priscus would have said, devils and gods are alike, really, when you think about it. If you think about it. Have you ever thought about it?

He could still see a little light creeping in under his eyelids; shapes and shadows still moved across that darkness painted across his eyes, playing out some well-worn of which he knew nothing. Belle was beside him, and very quiet. He wondered what she was thinking. He wondered what she thought of him. Was any part of her scared? It was so hard to tell, not just because she was Eunbyeol Seo and her face seemed ill-equipped to betray her, but because he was Silas Schreave and people were inclined to do things because they thought he wished for them to be done.

Kasimira had always called that his birthright. You, my beautiful boy, are all their fears personified. Then this was his birthright as well. He had to believe that it was so.

Could one bleed to death, bleeding only regret? It felt thus: like he was trying to will himself into unreality. Imagine, he thought, imagine if it was all just a story after all. How silly he would seem, if he had to sit up after an hour, and spit out unswallowed bone, and admit to Belle, sheepishly, that all of this had been some great, grand delusion of a great, grand, deluded family. What a sad, rotten world that would be: in which the druj alone were unreal, and the rest of them condemned to dull reality and the laws of physics as they knew them. The druj alone, and their predicament – that was all the fantasy that they could be allowed.

In all good faith and sentiment, he couldn't imagine how the people of Illéa had existed and kept existing after the Fall. How had they not died of grief? An entire world lost to them, concealed behind walls for eternity. Had there been any devastation of that kind seen before or since? Silas could understand that. He understood the anger that came with it. A universe forbidden. How had they survived it, for all those years? How had they resisted the urge to fight back?

Was existence in this caged kingdom truly all that better than the oblivion of bravery?

Yes, Ezer would have said. He would have said it feverishly. Yes, yes, yes. He knew oblivion better than his descendant; he had faced the Fall; he had lost the others. Priscus had always said that his curses were tied together in a manner which was more than tenable; that they were, in fact, thirteen parts of a whole, and inviolable in that sense, inseparable in that sense. Their holders were condemned to brotherhood. Ezer's brothers had waged war against him, and driven him from his lands, and sent the druj in his wake to ensure he could never return. Had it seemed like love in the moment? Militat omnis amans.

He opened his eyes, and stared up at the stone ceiling. Nothing. Silence and a stillness in his chest, as though his very heart had ceased in its beating in anticipation for what might follow.

He sat up, and he stood, and he said, "it's not –"

His voice echoed back to him endlessly. Belle was gone. He was alone.

No. He was not alone. The world found its shape around him; he saw it take form but gradually, every piece slotting into place as though it had expected to have more time to arrange itself. All the time, he felt spiders crawling over and under his skin, insects creeping about his nerves, burrowing deep between his arteries. Everything was fitting together now. He could see the seam between every part of the universe. He could see the stitches. He could see the thread pulling tightly around ragged edges, poorly pinked.

This is what the world had embroidered around him: he was standing in a small, underground chapel, shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers, adrift in a group of youths ragged with desperation. They were being addressed as he had been addressed that morning, by a man with the air of a preacher, with the manic urgency of one who feels the walls closing in about him, of one who senses the brink but sees it not and must feel for it with the toe of his boot. He looked at Silas as he spoke: "I shall only say to you this: you have lived your lives afraid of the dark things in the woods. Now I ask you to go out in the woods. You are the dark things."

To his right: a brutish youth, all fair hair and firm jaw, staring forward as though hypnotised or horrified.

To his left: a shorter girl, her face drawn into a mask of fear and her hair drawn into two long Dutch braids.

Dark things indeed.

They were children. Nothing more.

They had been made less.

The preacher said again, "now I ask you to go out into the woods."

The woods?

He had never seen the woods. He had only ever seen paintings: not so much like an orchard as one might expect. There had been a wildness to them, a tangle. The trees had pressed together so tightly, he hadn't been sure if light could – would – ever penetrate their shield. No sign of the sky. Dark things would have flourished there.

No. Here. The world had rearranged itself again. Of that there could be no doubt. Yes, dark things could live here. Dark things were born here.

It was a place untamed, more akin to the curses than the children who would inherit them. The forest was gloomy and deep, occupied more by sounds than by any living thing: somewhere in the distance, a red-freckled deer trotted across stone, and a wolf crept closely after it. There were no paths – any way through the woods was thickened with grass, sloe, blackthorn, nettles, chiaroscuro of thickets dappled golden-and-grey with the light that managed to penetrate the dense foliage was the kind of place where it seemed, if the moon was in the right stage of its cycle, that animals might speak to men. Beside him – Silas had not seen him, but he was here, kneeling beside the lake, speaking softly – the cursemaker said, "it won't be so bad. At first, perhaps; in the end, certainly."

"Then when?" Silas didn't recognise his own voice when he spoke.

"Moments," he said. His voice was deep and sonorous; it struck a chord in Silas' chest, somewhere deeper than his own heart lay. "Moments enough."

He looked at him.

"Silas," the cursemaker said, "you shouldn't have done this."

There was a silence between them. It stretched long. The recognition in his eyes made Silas feel small. Was he so obvious in his desperation?

Silas said, "someone had to."

He looked over his shoulder. They were encircled; there was a ragged ring of people around them, standing as silent as Belle, head bowed like Asenath. There were so many people, he thought, that they had to form three rings instead, standing in tiers, radiating outwards like the marks of an ancient tree.

Nearest to him: Kazati Alliette as she had been in her youth, a cloud of amber-brown curls haloing a triangular face marked with more grief than Silas could understand.

Nearer again: Akanksha Txori, small and dark-skinned, her long dark hair scraped back into a severe bun which did little to dim the brightness of her smile.

Right beside him, hand on his shoulder: someone for whom he had no name, more curse than person, all electric-blue eyes and star-white smile.

"You have no idea," the World said, "what kind of mistake you have just made."

Silas stared at it.

"The world is going to end," the World said. "The Illéans are going to be wiped from the face of the earth."

It smiled.

"Thank you," the World said. "Thank you for what you are about to do for us."

The sun was melting from its throne in the sky and he had the unerring sense, in some part of him that he could not reach, that nothing was going to be alright.

---

He felt like he had awoken into someone else's dream. Nothing hurt so much as he had expected it to; he had expected worse. This was no worse than his usual bouts. These were the aches of a week spent in bed, throwing up blood. He had survived those many a time, and this, too, was survivable.

The Fall, he thought. It was still, despite the dark, despite the shadows, the day of the Fall. The Radiance would lie dormant within him until they reached again the witching hour. It might wax, and it might wane, but it would be a shadow of itself. There was a very good chance, he thought grimly, that he was already dead, and just didn't realise it yet.

He pushed himself upwards. His bones protested this simple movement, and gave him up; he fell back to his elbows, still lying on the floor, and was only vaguely aware of the movement of skirts and Belle's hand on his shoulder and her whispered words. What was she saying?

He brushed her off. "Fine," he muttered, "fine."

How long had it been? For god's sake, the torch was still lit and hadn't burnt any; when he looked at Belle, he saw that her eyes had, imperceptibly, widened, but no more. None of the concern he might have, in his weakness, wished for. He almost laughed at himself for that. Wasn't this preferable?

She answered the question that he had not asked. "Twenty minutes," she said. "Maybe a little less – it's just after midnight – that can't be it, Silas, that can't be all…?"

"I told you," he said. "The coin is cool today."

He smiled at her, and then he bent over himself and he vomited onto the tiles. Black viscera and the twitching shape of dying insects hit the tiles with a dull splatter; Belle made a sound that would have been, out of anyone else's lungs, a yelp, and moved her skirts back a single inch to avoid the worst of the damage. Silas stared at it – there was a fly moving in the puddle of sick, with a bent-over wing, turning over and again as though deciding the best way to drown – and then looked away, and put his hands flat to the ground, and pushed himself upwards. He did not permit his body to refuse this time; he did not allow his bones to falter. He was the Radiance now. He was the inheritor of all for which the Schreave family had spent two centuries atoning.

At the very least, he could stand up on his own.

A wave of nausea rushed over himself as he strained. He felt somehow taller, and dizzy in that tallness, although he could clearly see that Belle still came to his collarbones, as she always had. This wasn't so bad; he could push it back, this wave of vertigo and the roil of his stomach with it. Silas could feel flies pressing against the line of his lips, beetles with snapping pincers rushing upwards in his throat from the very pit of his stomach. They surged forth, woven from the stray fragments of legerdemain that had fallen through the cracks of the world and now searched desperately for some kind of tangible expression. With some difficulty he set her teeth and swallowed them back again as though they were a mere wave of nausea. When he put her hand to his mouth, it came away black and bloody.

"Air," Belle said. She was staring at her hands, which were still knotted in her skirts. "You need air."

He nodded, unable to speak.

Not so bad, he thought. Survivable. The longer he could hold fast against this diminished hangover, the better he thought he could cope when the true force of the Radiance struck him like a meteor at the end of the Fall.

Air.

Belle was wise enough not to offer him her hand, but she went before him, as though they were walking through a minefield and she had to thread the correct path for him to follow. She pushed open the door of the chapel, and the wave of cool night air which rolled across him was like a new baptism: wonderful and fresh. He wished he could drink it in. And the starlight as well – the glow which spread across the lawn was a jewel-silver he had never before perceived in its true glory. It was a night of low moon, which meant that the stars dominated the sky. He had never before appreciated the diversity of the galaxy: the stars were not merely silver tonight, but gold and bronze and red and grey, embroidered carefully into place, stitched through the sky in a wondrous act of love and creation.

The seams of the world… they were everywhere. Did all druj perceive the world thus? They were not so clear to him as they had been during his dream, but if he squinted, he thought that he could see how every atom of every molecule fit together. It was like seeing the sand and the beach at the same time; like seeing the wood grain on a table clearly, at last, clearly.

Belle paused at the threshold between inside and outside. Silas followed her, relying on the doorframe to balance himself as his knees buckled – that was normal, he thought, had not Asenath always told him that he was a frail child? – and taking a deep breath of that rich, clean air, and stepped out into the garden. Belle was waiting for him; she drew him a little further from the courtyard entrance. He followed her.

He said, "how bad was it?"

Belle shook her head. Was she going to be honest with him? He watched her closely. It was helpful to have something to concentrate on, other than himself, other than the war ongoing between his heart and his spine as the curse settled into its place, nestled behind his fifth rib.

Belle said, "not bad."

He laughed. It still sounded like his own laugh. Inhumanity wasn't so unfamiliar, then. He hadn't even managed a dramatic initiation, the kind that everyone spoke about, the kind about which they would hand down stories for generations to come. Instead…

He had gone to sleep for twenty minutes. That was all. Did a little nap a god make?

Belle smiled. "You looked peaceful."

"It wasn't so bad," Silas said. "At first, perhaps; in the end, certainly. But overall..."

She said, "did you dream?"

She said it casually. He said, "I did."

"Good dreams?"

"I've had worse."

She paused. They had wandered the length of the grass, to stand at the edge of the copse of trees through which he had raced Belle and Evanne on horseback only a week ago. "Worse?" she said softly. It sounded like the start of a bad joke. If you thought that was bad….

Silas had always been able to smell the druj. Tagma stunk of it, but not naturally; it was layered atop them, like a strange cologne. The stone beast in the ballroom – before he had transformed – it, too, had borne the scent, but inculcated, inworn. Something natural. Something innate.

Belle had fallen still and silent. One look at her face, tightened around the eyes with an expression stranded between fear and apprehension, and Silas was searching the darkness around them for whatever had produced such an uncharacteristic air of fear from the otherwise fearless girl.

The figure which emerged from the shadows moved like a killer. It was in the strong lines of her shoulders, the watchful way she held her head, the gentle curl of her hands, which hung by her side with a nonchalance that belied those blood-letting eyes. She wore viscera like finery, matted in her hair, streaking from her lips like wine, streaked about her eyelashes like pomegranate tears. The curse in his bones spoke to the curse in hers. It resonated, rattling in his lungs like a cough. Did she sense it? Did she know that he was as she was?

So this – this was a xrafstar, in all of her savage glory.

She moved from the gloom, which had so eroded the edges of her face into an ardent ghostliness. Her bloodied face veritably glowed from the darkness, scoured with two deep dark gouges running from eye to lip. A sword of antiquity hung from her shoulder as might a carcass; it glinted dully in the light overspilling the palace windows. It was tarnished starlight, just the same as her wolf-gold eyes.

He stared at her.

For a moment, she stared back.

Was that hesitation in her eyes? He could not imagine that it was. She said, "Silas," in the way that only Asenath ever had – like she was apologising for something he did not and would never know. "You know what we are."

Yes. He knew.

"I want you to come with us."

She made it sound so simple. So effortlessly simple.

The curse in his chest stirred. "Belle," he said. He had never heard his voice waver like this before. It made him feel small. "Go back to the palace."

He did not dare look over his shoulder, but her shadow stayed where it was, stretched grotesquely long and thin across the lawn. Not even her hair seemed to stir. She may as well have been one of the black statues of Gjoll, here to observe only, without even the wherewithal to save herself.

Of all the times for her to show such bravery –

He wondered which of the curses this xrafstar held. Which of her ancestors had been immortalised in that awful stained glass mural? She looked as much the Empress or High Priestess as he could ever have imagined, some nightmarish version of either or both combined. As he watched, she curled one hand, as though pulling at strands of the air visible only to herself and the curse thrummed again in the cavern under his heart, a feeling as close to fright as ever he had sensed. She said, almost politely, "please," and he thought she might mean it. "Don't drag this out."

"You're making a mistake," he said, and was glad to hear his voice steady. For Belle's sake, at the very least. The cold sweat which had so soaked through him in his initiation was back again, on his neck and his back. He was shakier on his feet than he had realised, all the adrenaline and shock of the Radiance still rushing through his system. The end of the Fall was drawing near, and with it, the protective shroud it had accorded him for these long, rare hours. "You'll burn for this."

He watched the xrafstar move her hand again, as though she were plucking his heartstrings as effortlessly as the lines on a harp. He felt her movements echo in his chest.

Had her curse already returned?

"Someone will get hurt." She said it like he was a child carrying mere matches.

"Yes," he agreed.

She looked beyond him, as calm as the sky. "Belle."

"Leave her alone."

The xrafstar was unmoved. A shadow moved behind her, clad in a sapphire coat. Another? Dressed as a tagma, which meant that they had been infiltrated, which meant that... His mother had numbered three – no, four – amongst the enemy. Neither of these appeared to be the stone golem which had so threatened them at the ball, though when it came to the curses... one could never be certain. Nevertheless, that left at least one foe, hidden – lurking.

"Belle," said the xrafstar. "Where is Ilja?"

Silas had not expected the mere name of a servant to strike such unease into him. So they had done their research, and knew the guarding patterns. Silas found himself examining the woman-shaped druj before him, wondering whether he had ever glimpsed her before. The palace was not such an enormous world, and he had been contained within it all his life – if anyone would spot a stranger, see the shadows move when they ought not, it should have been him. It must have been him.

Why hadn't it been him?

"Ilja," Belle said. She must have known that Silas was stalling for time – she dragged out the sound reluctantly, still as soft-spoken as ever she had been. He knew, without looking over his shoulder, that her gaze would be fixed and unwavering, for it had never been otherwise. She was not a girl who wore her heart on her sleeve. Was she scared?

He said, "I'll warn you a single time more."

He managed to sound, even to his own ears, dangerous.

"Alright," the xrafstar said, unmoved. "Warn me."

The xrafstar reached up, almost lazily, and drew her sword – it whispered its unsheathe, an arc of sunlight in the midst of darkest night. The arrogance of the movement galled, so languidly did she proceed. It was, he thought, the motion of a woman who has determined that she does not even need her curse to accomplish her mission. The Radiance turned over in his chest. What did she know of the agonising legacy which had so preceded her ascension? He was a Schreave. This curse was akin to his own marrow, more a birthright than crown or kingdom. She should have feared him.

Why did she know not to fear him?

Bootfall behind him, and now Silas did turn. He caught sight of Belle – her face as white as ivory, her eyes black pits in the dark, her hands shaking, and he reached for her instinctively, as though he could still her fingers with the touch of his own – and of a charcoal-grey silhouette, which had glided through the darkness as a blade through smoke.

And now Schovajsa was behind them, and Silas found himself relaxing, such as he could with the Radiance inside him propping him up like so much firewood. Only a little time more. Time would return his strength to him – return? Gifted anew. It didn't matter. If Schovajsa was here, then Morozova would be shortly behind, and Evanne would find her way to them, and then the tagma's hooks would shriek their arrival.

He squeezed Belle's hand. He wasn't certain if he was trying to steady himself or her.

The Illéans had devoted their entire lives to destroying druj. What was two more?

His guard stared at the xrafstar. Shock had carved a nervous smile onto his face. But his blade was sharp. That was all they needed, so long as the Fall still reigned.

"Ilja," Silas said. He had never used his guard's first name before; it was a heavier word than he had imagined it. "The human druj have made themselves known." He sounded like his mother, enough so that it was a comfort. He was glad of that. It was a small consolation, but consolation nonetheless. He fought against the urge to search the darkness for the rest of the guards, keeping his eyes fixed upon the xrafstar. "Kindly leave them in large enough pieces for study; I think my sister would no doubt –"

Schovajsa said, "you're playing with your food, Nanna."

He was still smiling.

The xrafstar – Nanna – did not lower her sword. She wore an expression that suggested she was looking for an excuse to gut the prince. Belle's fingers were cold against his. The stars had still not emerged from behind the clouds. The figure in the sapphire coat behind Nanna had drifted closer again. Ilja was still standing behind him. He almost wanted to smile. Trapped like a rat. When had it been otherwise?

The night before, only the night before, only the night before. Belle and Evanne had seen to that.

No boots. No hooks. No screams, no lights, no beacons. He was standing on the edge of his own lawn, bathed in the light of his own home, speaking softly with his own guard, and he said, "leave Belle here."

Nanna's eyes were unnerving and unwavering.

"We're not going to leave our girl stranded," Ilja said. Silas watched their exchange play out in their shadows, splayed out upon the ground: Schovajsa put his hand onto Belle's shoulder. She flinched. She jerked her hand from Silas's. She turned her head. She did not look back at the palace. She did not look at Silas. She looked to the ground.

She looked to the ground, and said, "they won't hurt you, Silas."

When he turned to look at her, she was smiling sadly. This was one detail that he could not have perceived in her shadow, no matter how closely he observed it. Looking at her directly like this, she seemed no different than that morning – more tired, perhaps. Scared, certainly. It was still Eunbyeol Seo. It was still his friend.

He said, "Belle?"

It was a name she had given him only that morning. In the moment, it had felt like a gift.

"We won't hurt you," she said. "Please. Just come with us."

---

sehnsucht (n.) "the inconsolable longing in the human heart for we know not what".

---

She smoothed back his hair, her fingers tangling in it where the strands had become matted together by his blood. She kissed his forehead. She had never kissed him before. She had never got to kiss someone goodbye before. His skin was still warm. She didn't know why that was more unnerving than the alternative, but it was. It felt, she thought, like another trick. Like any second now, he would open those eyes again – brown, of course – and ask her why she had fallen for it. As though I'd leave you, Ina. As though I'd leave like all of the others.

She pulled the earrings from his ears, and the necklaces from around his throat, and the rings from his fingers. He had always been so vain. Pekka had never been so. Pekka had never seemed fully aware that other people could perceive him. Others had mistaken it for humility. Inanna had always recognised it for the cluelessness that it really was. Not like Eero. The day that he had learned the world saw him as attractive had been a dark day indeed. No one had been safe. Ina almost laughed to think of it again. She hadn't thought of it in years. Why would she? She had thought him dead. She had thought him dead for trying to help her.

He had always let her put flowers into his hair.

They had put him on the floor, and she had knelt beside him, the flagstones cool beneath her. She wasn't sure what she was meant to do next. There hadn't been enough left of Ghjuvan or Mielikki to mourn them properly; there had been a panic about curses and harvesting and legacy. Zoran and the Champions had kept her away from what had remained of Pekka. In the moment, she had mistaken it for mercy; now, she knew it had been subterfuge, a simple tactic to keep her at bay while they brought him to the World and mutilated him further.

Now she was frozen in place by the simple sight of a person who had become a corpse. It would have been harder, she thought, if not for the blood. It soaked his collar. He could not be mistaken for asleep. Not when he wore so much blood.

She had stained her own hands with it now, prying off his jewellery. Zoran was watching her. Would he mistake this for thievery? The thought was enough to drive a laugh from her. Yes, she thought. Call it a coping strategy. She would steal from him.

They were beautiful earrings. She would steal from him.

"Ina," Zoran said softly.

Gold, as well. She thought that they might have been real. So why not steal them?

Wasn't it time that she took something?

What were they meant to do with him? Leave him here? There was nothing to harvest, but the thought of it – god, but it rankled. She wanted to vomit up the very idea of it. Hyacinth had been laid out beside him, as gently as Khalore could manage with one arm, her braids lying over the wounds in her chest, her bloodied mouth carefully closed over a missing tongue. Were they meant to just… abandon them thus?

God, these were the moments that Ina was most useless to the cause. She felt it all too strongly. It burned in her chest like a coal. Every single thought had thorns. They needed Kinga, she thought, desperately: Kinga, who had gouged out her own sister's heart and then retired for tea in the garden.

But Kinga was not here. It had been Ina's fourth thought – fourth, she despaired – to leave Eero where he lay and sprint up the stairs in search of Pekka. She had not found Pekka. She had not found the Tower who wore his face either. She had found only an empty bed, and a window hanging open, and an excubitor's hook hanging orphaned from the sill where it had torn free of whatever wire had relied upon it.

Hope, then. Unless they had taken him, rather than kill him, but whatever rational part of Ina remained had reasoned thus: if they had taken him, then there would be a dark-haired corpse with a sword in her hand lying across the bed, having defended him to the end.

And there was not.

And Kinga was a fucking cockroach.

"Ina," Zoran said softly. That almost made her laugh as well. When had they exchanged places thus? When had she taken his role?

When he had strangled her?

Maybe she was wrong to mourn. Hadn't he said that living with the World in his head was utter agony? Yes, she thought, yes. He hadn't wanted to – she had wanted him to keep going. But he had said… he had told her how much it hurt. He hadn't wanted to. He hadn't wanted it.

This way, the universe had given him one day of freedom and then put him out of his misery. Maybe that was for the best. After all, hadn't he died smiling?

When she spoke, her voice did not sound like her own. "Yes?"

"What are we going to do?" Khalore asked. The light had seeped away more quickly than Inanna had realised; shadows were festering in the corners of the atelier. Ina's sword rested amongst them, glinting a promise to which she could put no words. "I mean… the plan..."

"What about it?" Ina straightened, and pushed back her hair, and stood. "Nothing has changed."

Zoran, glowering from his chair by the fireplace, stared at her and said nothing.

"We proceed," Ina said.

Khalore glanced at the bodies, and then at her sister. "But we were relying on the..."

"The Sun is lost." The words were bitter in her mouth. A failure. Another failure. "But the World isn't dead. Just one of his vessels. He'll find a way back to us." Her lips twisted at the thought. "Until that happens… we're expected at the palace. The Day is almost over."

Khalore glanced at Zoran beseechingly. It was most unlike her, this sudden fear. Didn't she trust in them? Didn't she understand the timeline upon which they were operating? "I mean..."

"Ina's right," Zoran said. "This is…" He glanced down. "We have to keep going."

She wondered why those words sounded so much like they had been torn from him. Did they trust her bloodlust so little? He cannot betray this cause anymore than you could betray your own heart.

Who would be proud of her now, to hear what her heart demanded of her?

---

Ragnar would have said that he had told her so. What a cunt he was, Kinga thought sourly, forcing foot in front of foot, and hoisting herself forwardsupwardsforwardsupwards, just keeping going, what a horrific, awful cunt. She would tell him that, when she saw him again. She wouldn't soften it. She would be biting. She hadn't bothered to write him any letters in her mind. He was alive. He would keep living. Long years ahead of him, long, happy years, and she was grateful for them, and she hated him for it. He had probably waited to grow a beard until she had left the country.

That bitch, at home, sitting pretty, while she was here…

What was she doing here?

Her ribs still hurt. She'd become so accustomed to the simple push-and-pull of her curse – get injured, succumb, and accept that the bandages she wore would have to be that little bit longer, wrap that little bit tighter, so that no one would see just how much of her body had blackened, how many scales and feathers she found herself prying from her skin as the night paled into morning. Now, this simple inconvenience – she had broken her rib the night before and it still hurt – was almost enough to drive her insane.

One foot in front of the other, and Pekka's weight heavy on her right side. It was still Pekka's weight, even if Pekka wasn't here anymore. Still his body, even if his mind belonged to another. It was just after six in the evening, and the sky had navied into loveliness. The stars would show shortly. She would feel her curse return then, soon, then. For the best. The part of her that she had always called her curse – the piece of herself that she had always assumed was external, inherited – it roiled. The Fall Day could only soften so much. Even now, she could feel something sleeping inside her, something clawed, something with hooks, something desperate to consume or be consumed. All day and all night, she could feel it turning within her; it was malignant. Sometimes she felt it straining against its prison of bone and sinew, aching to be free; it had a silent voice, like the big hush after a rainstorm, and when she closed her eyes she could see its face, tin-white, like arsenic, its big staring eyes.

It was she. She was it.

She hadn't outlived her end. Not yet. She would die when she ought. Are you sure it hasn't passed you by, Kingusia? She would keep the others safe. Hyacinth is dead and Eero is dead and how many more will die? She would keep both promises. Every promise she had made. I'm getting tired of funerals too, sir.

And she wanted to turn back. She wanted to wet her blade with the blood of she who would do harm to Sun or World, to Tower or Moon, to Ina or Zoran or Khalore or Ilja or Kane or Sanav. She hadn't want to do this. To run. Like a coward! She should have done her duty. First ranked, she thought bitterly, first in the rankings and a second-class excubitor in the tagma corps and this was all she had to show for it: a high and lonesome footfall and a dead man's arm around her shoulders and a rolling, simmering bitterness in her mind, overwhelming in her mind, choking in her mind.

She was tired.

When had she last slept a full night through? Ghjuvan, she thought, the night he had put his head on her chest and his arms around her waist, his coat over the both of them, and they had just, simply… slept. She'd known his shoulder blade like a poem. It had been strangely lovely, fucking someone she didn't expect to hurt her. Everyone who has ever loved you has thought about killing you, the World had said, and Kinga had known that he was wrong because Ghjuvan had told her so. He had lied to her, but it was nicer to believe him. He had been beautiful enough to whittle her down into the simple delusion of belief.

She had pried Pekka's body onto the roof, trusting on the strength of her harness to carry the both of them when the strength of her arms failed her. Eero's voice had chased her out. She had crawled across the tiles, slung the dead man down onto a back alley and dropped down after him, moving silently, moving with a juddery energy in her arms that almost had her dropping from four storeys high. Imagine if that was how it happened – cracking her skull open on the pavement, spilling her brains across the alleyway, gone before she could think I'm not finished.

Not today.

She landed safely. She looked one way, and then another. She hoisted Pekka's body up, so that he was sitting against the alley wall. She crouched beside him, and she scanned the skies.

She didn't know Kass as well as they had once known Aizsaule or Nav or Txori. She didn't have any hiding places.

She didn't have her swords.

And whoever had arrived to reap them would surely be able to track her along the rooftops. How long would Eero be able to hold her off? Would he even bother? He might have embraced his end, when it came for him. He might have chosen not to outlive his own duty.

She needed to move fast. The tunnels were her only hope and salvation, but the closest entrance would require fording the many squares and plazas which had filled up with revelers and worshippers. The Fall Festival was in full swing. Even Kinga Kaasik could not drag a dead body through the centre of that bustle and expect to emerge unscathed.

At the very least, people would have questions. Kane would have questions. She was worried that she was too tired to lie to him today. He would pry the truth from her. She wasn't beautiful enough for delusion.

They had been children once, she thought, looking down at Pekka's face. He was still so mutilated: his lip was pink-laced marble, and what little of his hair remained was formed of thick spikes of gold ore, and beneath the shirt in which Eero had wrapped him, Kinga could still see where his skin had been peeled back as though by some great grip, so that his flesh lay exposed, grey concrete like those staring open eyes. Children. Had either of them really understood what was lying before them, when they had started down this path all those years ago? He had simply wanted to protect Inanna. And she –

She could have escaped it. She hadn't been the Szymańska chosen from her generation. She had wanted this. She had fought for it.

Time to keep fighting.

She stood back, and stretched, cracking an ache in her back of which she had not been fully cognisant until it was gone, twisting her arms in readiness. There was a second entrance to the tunnels – further, but accessible through the back alleys. She'd drag him if she had to. She pulled off her jacket, and draped it about Pekka's shoulders, pulling at the hood to cover his shaven head – like the old days – and cast a long shadow across his twisted face.

She reached into her pocket and drew out her knife, the emerald jewel in her new wristband flashing. She had come to Illéa with nothing. The others had little trinkets and reminders of home and she – she had the others. This knife was as close to nostalgia as she came. It had been Ghjuvan's first. He had gifted it to Ilja when he joined the palace guard. Kinga had cut Rakel's throat with it.

The World had not been Pjotr. Pjotr had been the personality to emerge in the World's absence – growing like mould in the riddled gaps of a damaged mind that had once been a living Pekka. Where was he, then? Maybe he needed the World to animate him. Maybe he was just an aftereffect of two curses coming into contact, at the threshold between life and death. Maybe he was the fever dream of a dying brain, put now to rest in absence of life-support.

Or maybe he was just lost in himself.

She would find out. She ran her hands along his face and throat and chest until she found soft flesh in the place of hardened stone and ore, there, in the space between stomach and rib, a little to the left of centre. Then she swung back the knife and she drove it forward, burying it to its hilt. She had dreamed of this. Matthias had done this to his brother. She would have done it, if she'd been let. She thought Pekka would have been grateful for it. She found that, when you stabbed a person thus, it put your face very close to theirs. She found herself eye-to-eye with Pekka's strange, concrete gaze. She could see the grain of the stone which formed one cheekbone. She could see the tiny arteries of colour running through the marble of his lip.

No blood burst forth. There was not even the slightest sound but for the dull thud of her fist finding his sternum. This was not, she thought, the method for reviving a Tower. This was something Agata had done to her Sun, once before, when she needed to pull him back from his most destructive precipice. She had appealed to his mortality by threatening it; his humanity had reasserted itself only for the sweet song of agony. She had carved him out of himself.

The Sun had, at least, had the decency to bleed light all over his saviour and stabber and sister. Not like this. Not this nothing.

Kinga drew back her knife. The blade shrieked, like she was scraping it against open stone; it emerged from Pekka's flesh with a long white scar marring one silver face. She was tempted to go again. Even if it didn't make a difference, she thought, it would make her feel better. If she could not take an excubitor's head, or an excubitor's eye, or an excubitor's hand, then at the very least, she could –

Could she?

Before she could: "...are you… Ina?"

Her laugh choked her. "If you want."

His head still hung, like that of a marionette whose strings had been cut. He said, "...where… are we… going?"

"Underground. Tunnels. Can you walk?"

When he turned his head to look at her, she saw that he still had those horrible grey concrete eyes. She couldn't read them. She couldn't do anything but stare. Was this the World reasserting himself? God, but if he did, then it was only a matter of time before the Moon did the same. She ached for it.

He said it again, like he wanted her to give the right answer this time around. She had never heard a statue speak with a tone of such disappointed authority. Maybe, she thought, and the thought rose in her like a hysterical giggle, maybe there was more of Pekka left in him than she had assumed.

He said it again: "...where… are we… going?"

---

It was shocking, how suddenly the longing grasped him – like now, simply walking the broad boulevard back up to the palace, when the idea of taking a tram, a tram, seized him and quite refused to let go. Watching the world rattle by, he thought, and the steam rising slowly from the stacks, he remembered, and – he missed it. Those long trips out to Old Kur, stopping off at New Baryz to tithe to Frida and kiss her hands, and riding the train back into Opona with an unopened book balanced on his knee, a promise broken to himself. Irij had rushed past him, a gorgeous tableau. From where he had sat, there seemed to be no difference at all between Kur and Irij. From where he had sat, there had only been beauty.

This place had the potential to be beautiful, but merely that, solely that – the potential, and nothing more. The rot had gone too deep for aught else.

He would be glad to be rid of it.

Belle and Silas were ahead of him, just a little – ten strides length – speaking softly. He could see that they were speaking, but he could not hear them. Belle looked upset. She had furrowed her brow. She wasn't saying much. Neither of them were. The wind carried back only a few snippets of their conversation: come get me.

A soft reply: of course.

Morozova was waiting for them at the steps leading into the foyer. Her eyes flicked over them – Ilja tensed, as he had found himself tensing all day, unable to find his usual peace in the silent workings of his curse – and she said, at last, thoughtfully, "your highness, your mother has requested your presence."

"Of course," Silas said again.

He did not even bid Belle goodbye; he just took the steps two-at-a-time, and disappeared into the palace. Morozova flickered after him, a grey shadow.

Belle did not look at Ilja, but she slowed her pace enough that he could catch up with her. Catch up with her he did, but they said nothing, for the rest of the Selected were gathered tightly around them. Ilja walked with them just to the edge of the foyer, where their residential wing opened up into the usual tangle of hallways and staircases, and then feigned focus at the threshold as the Selected girls filed away towards their respective chambers, murmuring softly about the service, casting dirty looks at the unfortunate Evanne Chae. Belle seemed to have escaped the worst of the wrath. That matched with Ilja's memory of her. Hard to harbour resentment about a girl you don't remember most of the time.

He waited in this position until the Selected girls had fully disappeared from view, and then ducked around the marble column to dart out the side-door which led to the courtyard. Belle's room backed onto the gardens, her window near-obscured by a copse of trees which had been planted too close to the wall of the palace. It was dark enough that, once Ilja had shucked his coat, he imagined that he might have approached invisibility – though again, that thought was not as convincing without his curse resting at the root of his teeth. He had not realised how gradually he had come to rely so thoroughly upon that silent certainty which had so characterised his experience of the Chariot.

He hoped it came back soon. He wasn't sure if he could cope much longer without it. It was like walking on a tightrope for the whole day long.

He ducked behind the trees, his coat balled up beneath one arm, and flicked a small stone up at Belle's window; it took her just a moment to push open the panes, and put out a small, pale hand, into which Ilja could pass his coat. He hoisted himself up, then, and was irritated to find how much he struggled with such a simple athletic feat. What would Commandant have said? Life in the palace guard had made him soft. Kinga would never have let him forget it if she were here.

Nonetheless, he came through the window with a movement that could not quite be termed a tumble. As he straightened his shirt and brushed off his trousers, Belle kept her voice low: "couldn't you have made up some excuse to speak to me?"

"Like?"

She had nothing. She folded her arms, and looked irritated at that realisation. She was scared, Ilja thought, and then thought, no, no, that wasn't it, that wasn't all. She was… there was something deeper there. An uncertainty. She had torn away the skin on her bottom lip, so much had she worried at it. She was clutching something in her hand: a small amber brick, no larger than the palm of her hand, into which a single zandik flower had been suspended.

She still wasn't a xrafstar. That was shield enough. They would look past her in those first, most important, moments; the Warriors would have time to get her out, if it came to that.

He said, "when is he doing it? When is he taking the Radiance?"

She said, "he's going to come and get me. I'm going to… he wants me there. Just to help. Just to watch."

He was scared. Ilja hadn't realised that Silas Schreave had a heart with which to fear. It seemed as unnatural as any curse.

He said, "very well. We'll have to take him afterwards. Directly afterwards. Inanna's going to come over the southern wall, nearest the entrance to the chapel; I'll come from the palace. Just make sure he's under the sky, Belle, that's all we need from you. If his initiation overruns past two in the morning, then Kinga will provide us cover from above. Do you understand?"

Belle's lips parted, very slightly, but she said nothing.

She was holding onto that piece of amber like it was a lifeline.

"Belle," Ilja said, softly. She had been left on her own too long. Like Azula, like Kinga. They had lost a little of themselves to the pretence. Ilja had done his best to look out for them, but there was only so many opportunities. They couldn't afford to risk the mission. They were all Warriors, and equal in that status. Commandant wouldn't have sent someone on this mission if he had believed they would need to be minded and coddled and watched. "Belle, I know."

She shook her head. "You don't."

"Listen to me," he said. "Listen."

She was listening. She wanted to be convinced. He could see it. She wanted to be told how to reconcile these two duties.

Illéa should have never been, the World had said. This place should never have been permitted to exist.

"What's going to happen to this place," he said, "after we're gone…"

Belle's eyes darted back-and-forth between his, searching for mercy.

"We're going to save his life," Ilja said. He said it lamely. The words, even in his own mouth, seemed crippled. Save his life? Not even Ilja believed that. Certainly, the zealot in him would not permit him to wish for it: for all the similarities he had seen between Silas and Uriasz and Silas and Kinga, the resemblances he had drawn between the enemy prince and a chapel, the little observations he had accumulated like trinkets in these long hours of standing guard. Silas Schreave was a pacer. He cut himself, sometimes, with a dagger that had belonged to his grandfather. He could tell when Ilja was on the verge of saying something that he could not take back, something that had to be caged behind his teeth. He liked to be asked what was wrong only so he could snarl and refuse to answer and mope a bit longer. Ilja wasn't sure he had started to know him thus.

He was a devil, prince of devils, king of a devil-kingdom. He bled red.

Belle said, "what is going to happen to this place? After we're gone?"

Hadn't she realised? Hadn't they all realised?

Ilja had known it from the moment they had arrived here. From the day that the Tower had felled Wall Alliette. From the night that Kinga had first twisted into inhumanity and brought down an entire province. Repent. Atone. Salvation.

He said, "Irij and Illéa cannot co-exist, Belle."

She said, "they have done nothing to us, Ilja."

"I know it's hard to understand –"

"They don't even know we exist!"

Her voice had risen abruptly, jagged, frantic; outside, in the corridor, there was the muffled sound of voices and Ilja and Belle froze alike until the voices had moved away again, a door closing behind them to insulate the noise in some other girl's chambers.

Ilja said, his voice low and urgent, "do you know how many young girls they have fed to the Radiance?"

Belle's face was a mask of frozen unhappiness.

"Do you know how many women they have tortured to keep themselves safe?"

She was twisting her hands together; they were scarred, deeply scarred. Belle Seo was petrified of fire – always had been, always would be. "Schovajsa – "

"Do you know," he said, "how many generations suffered beneath their tyranny?"

"Our tyranny," she said. She bit out the words. It looked like a victory, when she pronounced it thus. "It was the Kur Empire. And we are Kur. And we have given generations of children over for torture of their own – "

"Because we must atone!" Ilja hadn't realised he had snapped the words until Belle had taken a step back out of surprise. Not fear; she was too focused for that. He had never seen her argue with such passion. "For our tyranny!"

There was a silence for a moment. It had started to rain outside.

She said, "what about…?"

She thought better of whatever she had been about to say. Her eyes darted again. And then: he could see the resolve settle down on her shoulders like a mantle. It was like a physical change coming over her. She nodded. Her eyes stilled. She threw him his coat.

"I'll make sure," she said, "that he's out in the open."

"Thank you," he said. This wasn't easy. She may not have been a xrafstar, but she was proving herself, undoubtedly, to be a Warrior. "I know this hasn't been easy, Belle."

She nodded. She went to the door, as though to let him out, and then seemed to think better of it, and veered back towards the window.

Ilja said, "Eunbyeol?"

She smiled slightly. He had never used her Nawia name before. Not to her face.

The words came from in a rush. They felt like a blasphemy. He was denying her a sacrament. A chance at a salvation all of her own. "Don't take the curse. Leave the Star where it is."

Her expression crumpled in confusion. "What? Why would you…?"

"We're nearly done," he said. "We're nearly done with all of this."

Her knuckles had turned white, so tightly did she grip the windowsill.

"Give yourself more time," Ilja said. "The others… we have eight years left to us if we're lucky. We'll be dead before thirty."

"Ilja," she said, but as before, she had no follow-up. She had nothing else to say. She just said his name: Ilja. She had always been so quiet. He had always assumed she just had nothing to say. He was starting to question that assumption.

"Tell your grandchildren about us," he said. He smiled. "Tell them how we atoned."

She nodded. She watched him as he climbed back out the window, and dropped down into the dew-drawn grass below. She said, "stay safe. I'll see you tonight."

He nodded. She didn't close the window behind him. She just watched, and watched, and watched, as he ran back towards the palace, the rain light enough on his back that he could almost pretend that it wasn't there at all.

---

Khalore pulled on the harness with great difficulty. Kinga made this seem so natural; she made it seem as easy as putting on a coat. But there were so many pieces, straps and buckles and her hands weren't working properly, her fingers were slipping off the components, and she could only think about poor Hyacinth and the way her dead eyes had stared. Ghjuvan had showed her how to put this on once. He had shown her how to use it, the most elementary application of its mechanisms. How to balance. How to move. How to release your hooks.

Zoran had to help her with the buckles, wrapping the straps tightly around her arm until she thought that he had cut off all blood flow entirely. She had to put a hand on her friend's shoulder to balance as he did so, practically wrenching her off her feet with every tug. Did he have to strangle her so?

As though he had sensed what she was thinking, he said, "don't want to risk getting this wrong now."

Ghjuvan hadn't worn his harness thus. He had always left his limbs free for fighting. But Khalore was already off-balance; she needed as much stability as she could get. Kinga had stolen four harnesses in all: one for Khalore, one for Ina, one for Zoran, and one for Ilja. They would have to pair up with the others once it came time to go. Azula and Belle and Silas and Pekka. Killing Hyacinth and Eero had evened their numbers. That was a horrible thought: Khalore didn't want to admit that such a horrible thing had made their lives even a little bit easier.

She helped Zoran's into his, then, and checked their hooks, and struggled with the gas canisters which hung from her hip for propellant. They were unwieldy and heavy, and with every step, the straps cut into her deeply, raising red welts on her skin even through the fabric of her Scholar's jacket. Who on earth could balance thus? Ghju had made it seem easy.

Khalore said, "what was the point of stealing that map if we're using these?"

Ina was pulling a coat over her harness to hide it; it wouldn't do to be spotted on the way to the palace. "Better to be prepared twice over than not at all."

Zoran was still saying so little. Khalore could count on her fingers the number of words he had uttered since returning to the horrific sight of Eero and Hyacinth so utterly mangled. He didn't say anything as they pulled up their hoods, or as they left the atelier for the final time, or as they started the long walk towards the tunnel entrance.

This was it, then, at long last.

Was this it?

Khalore went first. Landing in the tunnel was harder than ever before; she came perilously close to overbalancing, the gas canister tilting her precariously towards the dirt path which wound beneath the ground. Inanna came after her, as graceful as ever, her sword glinting gorgeously in the dim light. Zoran came ten strides afterwards, his boots hitting the ground long after Khalore had set off in the direction she and Lorencio had taken on their expedition into the cells.

It would be fine. It would all be fine.

There was a buzz in her fingertips, a familiar, friendly vibration. She said, "Ina, did you feel that?"

Ina said, "I see it."

Zoran said, "what is it?"

It couldn't be long until eleven o'clock at night. The Day was tilting towards its very own fall. If Kinga and the World were to be trusted – and Khalore trusted them both, implicitly, with all her heart – then their curses would seep back into them gradually as the night fell. They had only a few hours left to go until they were restored. They had only a few hours left to go in which to seize upon the Radiance without having themselves blown to kingdom come.

"The strings," Ina said, darkly. "They're… they're not back, but they're there. They're…"

She trailed off.

Zoran said, mutinously, "that's good."

Khalore hoped he was right.

They might have been walking straight into a trap. They might have been walking straight into a palace filled with xrafstar-killers and a devil prince who had just taken on all of the fiery power of the Radiance.

Or maybe this was it. Maybe this was all about to go right.

They emerged from the tunnel just on the wrong side of the Ganzir walls. It would have been funny, if Ina wasn't still wearing that terrible expression of grief which had so occupied her face for all those months after initiation. It would have been funny, if Zoran didn't look so hideously lost.

Khalore was not accustomed to doing the right thing. She was not used to finding the next steps. She was not meant to be a leader.

And yet.

She scrabbled at her hooks, and fired them at the Ganzir walls. These were the lower sister of the three Great Walls, the named walls manned by the tagma. This wall was only about fifteen feet tall, and patrolled by the grey-suited guards. Ilja was among their number. Khalore put a hand to her belt, in which she had tucked her screwdriver and her scalpel and the knife upon which she had cut herself at Ina's bakery all those long weeks ago. They were no more useful than any other weapon on this day, but they still reassured her. It was still nice to look down, and see her own blood staining blade and handle. It felt like a cold comfort, but that was better than nothing.

She fired her hook. It spiralled up into the air, a silver claw reaching up and grasping at the stars, and found purchase at the top of the wall. Kinga would have used her propellant, but that would always produce that obvious hiss sound, which would forewarn the guards of their approach.

Instead, she planted her boot against the wall, and wrapped her hand around her wires, and braced herself, and started to climb. It was harder with one arm than she could have imagined; she had to wrap the wire around her arm and legs with every advance upwards, so that it was all agonisingly slow. The wire bit into the flesh of her arm as the harness tightened agonisingly around her thighs and waist, holding her fast with every lurch upwards, even as she clutched and reached and gripped herself tightly to the wall to catch her breath, drinking in a deep breath of cold night air. Sweat dripped down her forehead. She kept climbing.

She had been the first to start climbing, but Zoran was the faster. The advantages, Khalore supposed, of working with two hands. He was at the top of the wall before her. He reached down to grab her hand, and pulled her up. She clambered onto the top of the wall, and Ina followed behind. Khalore's eyes darted about, searching for guards. They would be here somewhere. There was no way that they would leave the royals unguarded, tonight of all nights.

Ina rappelled down from the wall. Khalore searched again for a grey coat, and, finding none, followed her friend down. Zoran stayed where he was, frozen on the precipice of the wall. Khalore could sense his gaze burning into them both as they went.

They landed in the dark. It was colder than Khalore had expected. She pulled her jacket more tightly around her, though the harness impeded that simple gesture, and caused the fabric to bunch up here and there.

"How long do we have to wait?" Khalore hissed.

Inanna shook her head.

They moved quietly towards the courtyard, keeping close to the shadow-line of the trees. Their bootfalls were light and silent; Commandant had trained them well for this. For the first time in weeks, Khalore felt, truly, that she was at last in her element. This was what they had prepared for. This was what she had expected to find in Illéa.

Someone in a grey coat moved in front of them. Khalore unsheathed her scalpel, tucking it carefully into her hand, and gave Inanna a nod. Ina moved back into the darkness as Khalore moved forward. This wasn't a guard she recognised – a tall thin man with red hair and freckles, only a little older than Azula – and Khalore suspected that he was new to the job. Certainly, he didn't have the sense to monitor his blind spots.

Khalore would have felt sorry for him, if she couldn't already taste the Opona air. Home. Home, soon. They were nearly finished this. She had nearly finished her mission. Proven herself.

She was still here. She might have proven herself, without even… hadn't she expected self-immolation?

The night was cold, but this guard's blood was warm. It spilled over her hand. She ensured her first cut was deep enough to slice through his vocal chords. It wouldn't do, she thought, to have him scream now. They were so close. And it was quicker this way. Kinder.

She lowered him to the ground again. His eyes stared up at the stars. Just like Hyacinth's. Did he have brothers and sisters to mourn him too?

She kept moving forward. No other guards. She finished her sweep, looping around the lake quietly until she came to the door of the chapel. There was movement within, the soft interplay of voices. Belle, she thought, she recognised Belle's voice, and…

Were they beginning the initiation, or were they ending it?

Inanna gestured to her, and Khalore went to stand with her. She pressed her back to the wall, staring out at the lake, staring at the door of the chapel, staring at the spires of the palace and the lights of the rooms within. Inanna was sheathing and unsheathing her sword, testing the sharpness of its blade with the flat of her thumb, turning her heel in the dirt, grinding zandik blossoms underboot. She looked – she didn't look nervous. She looked angry.

Khalore couldn't blame her for that.

Twenty minutes passed. It was cold, but Khalore could not feel it. She knew it must be – the wind was stirring her hair – but the blood over her hands was warm. She was running her fingers over her hooks, testing their sharpness, pulling at the wire as though to test its elasticity.

Nearly there. She took a deep breath. Ina was staring into nothing again. The threads, Khalore hoped, the threads.

What if initiation failed? What if Belle came stumbling out with a dead Silas and a festering Radiance? What if she had let this entire plan slip? Any second now they might hear that awful hiss of the tagma in their arrival, and see the gleam of hooks and blades, and…

And then what?

She curled her fingers around her knife.

What indeed.

She was a Hanged Man. Time had become a gallows. She was tired of swinging.

The door of the chapel creaked open, torturously slow. Belle emerged first. In this dark, her eyes were an oil slick. She searched the shadows. The hunched-over figure of Silas Schreave emerged behind her, curled over himself. Khalore almost gasped to see him. He looked – he was a living skeleton. All the skin of his face had tightened around his skull; a patch of flesh seemed to have melted away over one cheekbone, so that his bone shone clearly through the dull light. Strips of skin hung from his jaw as though flayed. His eyes were sunken deeply into his face. Black pits, Khalore thought, and something aglow within. He looked like a devil.

At last, he resembled his nature.

Inanna had frozen beside her. Those golden eyes of hers slid over to the Hanged Man – Khalore hadn't realised she could look so cold.

Belle and Silas had moved into the gardens. They were speaking softly.

Now? Now? Now? Was this it?

So simple. Just step forward. Just take the Radiance. Take it.

Khalore gave Inanna a sharp, serious nod.

Her smile was a twisted grimace. For a split second, Khalore questioned their agreement that Inanna would be their ambassador. She was lost. She was angry. There was every chance that she would run the devil prince through with her sword, just so she could feel the adrenaline run through her veins.

There was no time to express any of that. Ina was stepping forward. The light caught her inky b lack hair. Little stars split along the individual strands. She was moving forward into the light, that terrible, warm, lovely, light, and she was calling to them, so simply. She made it seem so simple.

"Silas," she said, and the Radiance turned to look at her.

Khalore hadn't realised until now – she moved closer to get a closer look – that his eyes had darkened so. They glowed out of the dark like tiny embers, shining incandescent and scarlet in the dark.

Inanna smiled slightly. Khalore was smiling as well, she found, nervously smiling. At any moment, this was going to collapse around them. At any moment, the Radiance would snap his fingers and wipe them out entirely. This was what they had feared. This was what they were here to stop. This was what Illéa intended to use against the rest of the world.

Inanna said, "you know what we are."

Belle was staring at them. Khalore had never seen a person stand so still. She was staring at Inanna and Khalore like they were strangers to her. Like she was seeing them through fresh eyes for the first time. Like she was realising that she did not know what they were, and maybe never had.

Inanna had been the right choice. She managed to imbue her voice with a deep well of sympathy that Khalore knew she did not mean. "I want you to come with us."

"Belle." Khalore couldn't recall if she had ever heard the Schreave prince's voice before. It was deeper than she had expected. He had an accent. She hadn't expected that either. It was all consonants and sharpness, vowels clipped short, all the soft sounds excised from his words. "Go back to the palace."

Belle's head did not move, but her eyes flicked across to the Radiance. She did not obey. She remained where she was as though rooted. Her hands were shaking, almost imperceptibly.

"Please, don't drag this out." Inanna's voice was sweet. Khalore could see her focusing on the threads. Had her curse returned enough to make a difference? This would be so much easier, Khalore thought, if that was the case. If they could just… truss him up and force him into following them.

Until then, there was every risk that he would scream. She put a hand to her belt, and silently counted the steps between herself and the Radiance. She could sprint it, she thought. She could sprint it, if the night called for it.

His voice remained arrogant. The prick was smiling. "You're making a mistake. You'll burn for this."

His eyes were burning too. She believed him. They were going to burn.

Inanna frowned. Khalore did not think that anyone else would have noticed the micro-expression; only someone attuned to Inanna Nirari would have been able to tell how much it took her to hold herself together thus. She was practically vibrating with repressed rage and grief. Khalore almost pitied the fool prince, eyes and all.

Ina spoke past Silas, to Belle, as though she expected the girl to be able to convince him where the Lover had failed. It was a warning – keep your pet prince in check. "Someone will get hurt."

"Yes?" Silas seemed irritated to have had attention taken from him. On any other night, Khalore would have found that funny. Instead, she kept scanning the shadows. Fuck, she thought, fuck fuck fuck. What was the twist? Where was the nasty surprise which always found them?

She tilted her eyes towards the sky, towards the wall. Where was Zoran? Where was Kinga?

"Belle." Ina's voice was a quiet plea for co-operation.

Khalore hadn't realised that a Schreave could contain the kind of emotion that Silas Schreave expressed then: "leave her alone."

She found herself staring into Belle as though by sight alone could she discern the inner working's of her fellow Warrior's mind. What if she had betrayed them? What if she betrayed them now? Khalore found herself counting her blades. One. Silas. Two. Belle. Three. Whoever else stood in her way. Whoever else threatened her family. Whoever else stood between her and the Radiance.

"Belle." Ina must have known exactly what was going through her mind. A new urgency had filled her voice. Khalore couldn't blame her. The Khal of one year ago would have already made her move. But Lore was holding herself back. Wearing too many strings, she thought, all tied up with strings. "Where is Ilja?"

"Ilja," said Belle. She said it like a question. As though she'd never heard of him. Ilja?

Speak of the devil: Khalore could see Ilja now, or a figure that she hoped was Ilja, emerging from the palace courtyard, moving towards them with a haste that was most uncharacteristic. She hoped it was Ilja. It had to be Ilja.

Belle said, "Ilja."

Silas' voice spiked. "I'll warn you a single time more."

Fear, Khalore thought. They had struck real fear in his heart.

It was about time that he learned what that felt like.

Inanna had splintered. "Alright," she snarled. She unsheathed her sword in a terrible golden arc. She was clutching onto it with the kind of horrible tight grip that threatened to split her knuckles and draw blood. "Warn me."

The Chariot could not keep the relief from his face. He must have been as worried for them as Khalore had been. What had delayed him so? He didn't have Azula with him. He would have to go back for her. That was alright. They hadn't been detected yet. They had a little bit more time to work with. There was no sign of the tagma.

No sign of Kinga either. The curses hadn't returned. The Day was not at its conclusion. Not yet.

Silas turned. This seemed a cruelty: the expression of relief that broke over his face would have seemed heart-breaking on anyone else.

"Ilja," he said. Ilja. Ilja. Ilja. Khalore could not keep the smile from her face. Her breaths were coming fast and shallow. She inched closer to Ina, wrapping a hand around the Lover's harness as though to steady herself upon her comrade's strength, and then taking a step in front of her. Ina had her sword, yes, but she was less disposable. Khalore was here to take the hits. She was the Hanged Man, created to suffer. If the Radiance made a single move, then Khalore would be ready. Self-immolation. "The human druj have made themselves known. Kindly leave them in large enough pieces for study."

For–?

For study. Like they were things.

Like they were druj.

Why was she surprised? She had seen what they had done to sustain the Radiance. She had seen what they had done to Selected girls. She had seen, over and over again, their cruelty and their disdain for human life. She would hope, then, that extracting the Radiance from Silas Schreave would leave him alive. She would repay him some of the pain he and his rancid family had doled out over all these years.

Inanna had been wrong. Killing Nez had made Khalore feel better. She was starting to suspect that she'd developed a taste for it.

Ina looked like she was hoping to develop a taste of her own. Trust Ilja to come into this situation just to crack a joke: "you're playing with your food, Nanna."

He was turning a stretch of wire over in his hands. Ina's expression did not change. She still looked fucking feral.

Silas said, "Leave Belle here."

Did he really think this was a negotiation? Khalore found herself itching to have this over with. She tilted her head up again towards the sky in search of Kinga. Ilja was trying to assuage the prince, his voice as gentle and wheedling as Ina's had been sweet and persuasive. It was all the creepier for that: Khalore would have preferred anger and threats and open menace. "We're not going to leave our girl stranded."

The words burst from Belle, like she was trying to make it all better. She wanted it over with. Just like Khalore. "They won't hurt you, Silas. We won't hurt you. Please. Just come with us."

He stared at her. Those fiery eyes. Harder to read anything human into that gaze. Harder to feel bad. Belle seemed to shrink from it.

Was that Khalore's imagination, or was that a hiss overhead? Like a snake wreathed around the clouds. Like vengeance descending from the skies.

"Enough of this," she bit out. "Let's go."

Silas Schreave's eyes were burning into her. Ilja stepped forward and bound his wrists – did they expect that to make a difference, if the curse returned to him, if the Radiance surged to its full potential? – and pushed him forward, into Ina's waiting arms. It was clearer now that he had only barely been holding himself together, all this time: where Ina's skin touched his, it sloughed away like that of a shedding snake. His breath was coming fast and shallow and shaky; those burning eyes of his rolled back and forth manically. He hadn't been assessing them calculatedly, Khalore thought bitterly, he'd been trying to stay on his own feet without passing out.

"I'll go back and grab Zuzu," Ilja said.

Ina nodded. "You know where to rendezvous."

Ilja winked at Khal. "See you at muster."

Like home. So close to home.

This was it. This was the end. It should have felt like more. It should have felt like more.

Why didn't it feel like more?

---

blunda (v.) to cover your eyes to avoid facing a hard truth.

---

Speaking to Eunbyeol from behind their veils was equal parts distraction and delight; Evanne had not realised before this morning just how much she depended on a person's face to measure their reactions, how ill-at-ease she became if she wasn't able to watch a person's mouth and eyes as they spoke. Watching Eunbyeol waver behind the fabric was a strange diversion; it made her lips and eyes seem to somehow shimmer, as though her entire face was a mirage. And Evanne was glad for something to cover her face. She didn't mind the wounds – they would make for a beautiful scar and a story someday – but people tended to stare. It wasn't such a bad thing, if she could spare them from embarrassing themselves thus.

The other Selected girls had drifted away to their rooms gradually, in muted bad humour. Evanne supposed that it must be some source of frustration, to come and stay in a cold, callous palace, and be ignored by the prince, and be towed to-and-fro for public appearances without much prospect at all of success. Evanne rather suspected that the game had been won. The Selection was as good as over, if only Silas could admit it to himself. Maybe it was for the best that his sister was running things, she thought. Otherwise they would be at risk of going straight from the Selection to the grave and nothing in between.

Evanne said, "do you want to take a wander?" Despite the ache in her leg, she was itching for a bit of fresh air. The service had been as interminable as she had expected. Almost as bad as army chapel, she thought amusedly. She had, as expected, drifted off someplace around the third mention of brimstone; Eunbyeol had, as promised, roused her with an immaculately aimed hairpin. "We have a little bit of time left before dinner, and it's meant to rain later this evening..."

Eunbyeol said, "can we do it another time?"

Evie glanced at her, cocking an eyebrow and realising, belatedly, that Eunbyeol could not see that she had done so. "Sure," she said, with a smile. They had paused outside the doors to their respective rooms; the enormous portrait of Ezer's discovery of the Walls seemed to cast as real a shadow over them as Alliette and Szymańska and Schreave themselves. "Other plans?"

"Splitting headache," Eunbyeol said. She had reached up, and pulled her veil up over her hair, to expose her pale face. She did look a little out-of-sorts, Evanne thought, her face drawn and her skin pallored to a grayness to rival Silas' guard. "I blame the hellfire."

Evanne laughed. "Just make sure you get some fresh air today, okay?"

"I'll hang out my window for an hour or five," Eunbyeol said amusedly. "Wave to you if I see you passing."

"Can I get anything for you?"

"No, but thank you." Eunbyeol put an arm gently on Evanne's elbow, and tilted her head, and smiled. She really was very pretty. Evanne could see exactly why Asenath was going to choose her at the end of all of this. There was no finer candidate. "Couldn't have got through the service today without you."

"Right back at you." Evie smiled. "I'll collect you for breakfast in the morning, if you're feeling better?"

"Please."

She retreated into her room, crossing immediately to her window. Evie had to hide a smile. Her advice was so rarely taken, she mused, even when it was excellent advice.

She set off down the hallway. She wasn't used to being on her own anymore; she had become so accustomed to having someone at her side, be that Silas or Eunbyeol or Mirabelle or poor, exiled Tereza. The sound of her footsteps alone in such a grand hallway was a lonely, hollow sound by comparison. The whole of the palace seemed so deserted. The staff had been given a day of relief to go and enjoy the festival, and a castle without a set of maids or grooms or guards around every corner was a lonely one indeed. Pleasantly so: Evie found that she rather delighted in being able to let out a long, low, whistle and having it reflect back to her a thousandfold, bouncing off every corner and tile and artefact hanging on the walls. She could limp a little more openly, without fear of what anyone might think. She could leave her veil hanging over her face without anyone thinking her odd, delighting in the way it transformed the world into a flickering grey miasma and shielded her from the rain that had begun, ever so gently, to fall. And there were fewer cuffs on her movement: she could wander quite freely without concern about being chased back into her chambers on the Selected wing.

She chose the same path along which she and Eunbyeol had raced Silas all those weeks ago. The rain was not so heavy that it had become all churned with mud; the scent of petrichor lay dense and treacly upon the air. The footpath forged a valley between the enormous bloombanks of flowers for which Evanne had never learned the correct name, the fragrant yellow blossoms which were so ubiquitous in the palace. Priscus Schreave so often wore the powder and nectar of these flowers on his fingertips; Asenath Schreave wore it as a perfume, wreathing her wrists and painted through her hair; Silas Schreave used dried stalks as bookmarks and thought that no-one noticed.

The only other person she caught sight of on her long walk was Silas's personal guard, the grey man who knew Eunbyeol from home, who was trekking his way back to the palace through dew-stricken grass. She raised a hand in greeting; he did not see her. He had his coat slung over his arm and his face set into a grim, focused expression. Evanne couldn't blame him. It had been ever-so terrifying as an excubitor, that first realisation of how many lives depended upon the surety of her blade and boot; she could only imagine that it was three- or ten- or thousand-fold when it was a single person that you grew to know and care about, a person who would wear the crown of Illéa sooner rather than later. It was strangely magnifying: Evanne had found, in her time as a tagma, that she tended to feel much more responsibility the smaller a squad she was working with.

So she lowered her hand again, and watched the guard vanish back into the palace, and set back to her walk. She should have brought a cane, she thought wryly. Exercise was all well and good, but these last long nights had involved a tremendous amount of walking and standing and even clambering over the walls of Ganzir. It was nice; stretching her limbs and her muscles, even gently thus, was a reminder of how strong she had once been. She would have to build up her strength again after this Selection, she thought. It would be a waste to live otherwise.

She darted under the bough of a nearby tree as the rain fell a little heavier. The lake looking like it was boiling, so fast was the rain falling onto its glassy surface, churning up tiny dots of seethe. Her dress was clinging to her. It was a strangely lovely day.

How many more strangely lovely days were left? She could not help but wonder at what the future held. If she proceeded no further in the Selection – and she suspected, despite herself, that she would not – then would she be compelled to return to her bed-sit in Txori and leave this all behind? She hoped that Silas would want to stay in touch. She knew that Eunbyeol would. And a new queen would require a new guard, she mused. It was a comical thought, even to herself. She was inventing a place for herself. She so often did, and was rarely given a reason not to. It worked a wonder.

She nearly jumped out of her skin to hear a voice speak so close to her, husky and amused: "not exactly dressed for the weather, are we?"

She spun on her heel. There was an excubitor standing just across the path from her, smiling slightly. It took Evanne a moment to recognise her: Captain Hijikata's second, the one-eyed girl. Evie had only ever glimpsed her from afar, in motion, but she was very still now. She seemed to have appear from nowhere. Evanne had always considered herself the observant sort, but Lieutenant Kaasik had managed to ambush her.

She had slung off her green coat; she threw it around Evanne's shoulders now to shield her from the worst of the wind and the rain. It was the kind of casual sisterly gesture Evanne had grown to associate with Harriet and Shae in those long days lost.

The lieutenant was wearing her swords. She should not have been wearing her swords, given that it was a festival day. Evie tensed instinctively to see the sheen of the silver blades at her hip. She said, "is there something afoot?"

"Not at all." Lieutenant Kaasik smiled slightly. The rain was soaking through her shirt. She dressed like Captain Hijikata. Evie wondered if she had even borrowed those black braces. "Accept my apologies, Lady Obušek. I mistook you for Seo Eunbyeol."

A forgivable mistake: in the same dress, and veiled thus, and standing still, she could see how the error could happen. Evie peeled back her veil, and was gratified that the lieutenant's expression did not change a bit to glimpse her wounds. Soldiers understood one another. It was another reminder of how ill-suited Evanne might be to a permanent existence at court. "Are you a friend of Eunbyeol's?"

The lieutenant shifted her weight. Her boot twisted in the dirt. One arm rested on the pommel of her sword; the other hung by her side. She swayed, very slightly, even when she was doing nothing, and she was doing nothing now. "Not particularly."

Then, why…?

Lieutenant Kaasik said, "you were an excubitor, weren't you, Lady Obušek?"

Evanne nodded.

"May I ask you," Lieutenant Kaasik said, "to serve as excubitor again?"

Evanne searched her face for an explanation. "What are you talking about?"

Lieutenant Kaasik gestured that she should be followed back along the way that she had come, into the thicket of trees which took up the better part of the western Ganzir wall. It was the source of all the firewood of the palace, and the fireplaces of Ganzir were perpeutally ravenous, and so the forest waxed and waned the whole year long as the royal gardeners strained to replace each tree as it was felled. Evie picked her path carefully through the most clustered, cloistered part of the copse until she saw the matter for which Lieutenant Kaasik had drawn her away from the lake and away from any thought of the Selection.

He looked just as she remembered him: fractures had splintered across his skin, jagged and sharp, like cracks in stone. It split one eye, leaking the same gold as his hair had been – and his hair was no longer, for his head had been shaved. Forcibly? Fissures had juttered across his throat and down his chest, fracturing his collarbone into two thin fingers of stone. His eyes were not, however, gold, as she remembered them becoming in the moment before he had changed into his druj form, nor were they the blue of his humanity. They were grey and flat and blank, without iris or pupil. He was kneeling in the dirt, his head hanging, utterly still. His hands had been bound, though Evanne could not imagine that such restraint would matter much if he decided to explode with the same concussive force he had brought to the ballroom –

She was still calling it a he.

Kaasik did little to disabuse her of the habit. "He must be brought to the king," she was saying. "Those were the orders I was given."

"To the..." Evie swung on her. "Surely you should take it to the Schools. It's a human druj, lieutenant."

"It is." The lieutenant's black eyepatch served a similar role as the veil Eunbyeol had donned for the service; it made it impossible to read her face accurately. "And I suspect it is not alone."

"Not…?"

"He disguised himself as a Watcher, Chae. I will not trust the other corps with this matter until I am satisfied that we have rooted out the rest of his ilk, where-ever they might have burrowed."

Evanne said, "then why would you trust me?"

Kunegunda Kaasik smiled. Her arm was still slung over her sword. She looked horrifically casual, standing so close to a monster in human skin. She wouldn't have known, Evie thought, how much danger she was in. Evanne's face ached just to think about it. Her cheek agonised every time she looked at the thing-that-was-not-a-man.

The lieutenant said, "I don't trust you, Chae."

Evie could not help the smile which tugged at her lips. She had always trusted honest people more than those who would strain for deceitful tactfulness. "And the rest of your squad?"

Kaasik said again, reproachfully, "I don't trust you, Chae."

That was the kind of answer that Shae might have given. It was fair. It was more than fair.

Anything more than that would have seemed a lie.

Pjotr may as well have been dead for all he reacted to this conversation. Evanne could not help the way that she softened to look at him. Had it all been an act – his stuttering, and his gentleness, and his sweet eyes? She had to believe that it had been. Had to. She had killed many a druj in her time. They were not, as a rule, a merciful bunch.

But he had saved her. And she could not help but suspect that she was now being used as some kind of strange shield. Did Kaasik assume that, because the druj had spared her once, he might spare her again? Some version of salvation, she groused, trying to ignore the pain in her face. Some strange idea of mercy.

The lieutenant looped around the druj and wrenched him to his feet. "Lead on," she said, her voice cold, and lead on Evie did. Back up the path, back through the flowers, and was it Evanne's imagination or had the lieutenant disguised Pjotr, too, in the green cloak of an excubitor? They would resemble nothing more than three tagma trudging back up to the palace, Evie thought, tugging at the coat around her shoulders: not a most usual sight, but nothing at which an alarm would be raised.

As they came into the courtyard, the lieutenant's eyes darted about, dark and serious. The place was still empty, but for a few grey-suited guards here and there, who seemed ill-inclined to interrogate the movements of the tagma. Pjotr still moved like a Watcher, all long strides and shoulders set back.

Evie wondered why he didn't look more scared, in the company of two druj-killers.

Did he know something they didn't?

They came back through the Selected wing, Evie going first, Pjotr being prodded along behind her, the lieutenant backing up the rear. Ahead of them, footsteps: Evanne dived forward to push open her bedroom door, into which the lieutenant forced Pjotr with a sudden, savage force. It was nothing that they should have worried about: after a moment, the footsteps drew closer as the queen's maid moved along the adjacent corridor. She glanced down the hallway, catching sight of former and current excubitor; her eyes moved blindly across their faces, and then she turned, and she kept walking.

Kaasik ducked back into Evanne's room. The clock on her dresser suggested that it was just drawing close to nine at night; the world had darkened so rapidly, although the sun had slipped away some three hours previous.

The lieutenant was studying Pjotr's face. Evie wanted to scream at her not to stand so close, but her throat had closed up entirely. A druj shouldn't have been able to look tired. A druj shouldn't have been able to look lost. A druj shouldn't have been able to wear any human expression at all.

And yet there he sat, at the edge of her bed, looking vaguely pathetic.

"Keep it together," Kaasik was hissing. "Don't do anything stupid. Chae – can you keep watch for a moment?"

Evanne hesitated. Why did this all feel so much like a test? She nodded.

"Just for a moment," Kaasik said. "Just… I need a moment to think. I need to make sure he's not going to blow up at first sight of prince or king."

Evie nodded. Her mouth had dried. Of course. Pjotr had tried to kill Silas in the ballroom; he had killed dozens, trying to harm a single man. She couldn't take the risk that he would be put into a position to do anything similar. Why had Kaasik brought him into the palace? Didn't she realise that he could, at any moment, erupt into the true size of his druj form?

"Watch," Kaasik snapped, and even as the Selected hesitated at the threshold of the room, the soldier was giving a sharp nod, and the traditional salute, and backing out of her room to stand beneath the portrait, and stare up at Ezer's beautiful painted face, and wonder whether any of the previous kings of Illéa had dealt with human druj with human faces and a human stutter whenever he tried to speak.

She wondered.

When had being an excubitor become so complicated?

(She wasn't an excubitor)

When had they ceased to trust their comrades, as she had trusted in Gregory and Harriet and Shae?

(When Gregory and Harriet had died screaming and Shae had been driven mad by her own failures)

When had Silas Schreave learned to sneak up on her, exactly as Kunegunda Kaasik had done?

(He said, "you look like you're waiting for someone.")

Evanne glanced at him, and smiled. It was a brittle expression, but genuinely meant. She was glad to see him. She usually was. She was glad to see him, and she was always delighted to see how glad he was to see her. Even with a druj lurking behind her door. Even with a rogue excubitor hiding in her room with a sword drawn. Even with a secret weighing heavily on her tongue and her heart and behind her eyes.

She couldn't tell him. Shouldn't she tell him? He was prince, second only to the king. If anyone could be trusted, then surely…?

Beneath her door, she could see two shadows moving. Kaasik had drawn her sword, and moved close to the door. Pjotr had shrunk back.

The stone druj had disguised himself as a Watcher.

Who was to say that some other druj hadn't disguised themselves as an excubitor?

And when had she become so paranoid?

(Is it paranoia if they were really out to get you?)

"What a coincidence," she said. It was mechanical. "Running into you here - do you come here often?"

"I try not to." He was smiling. She liked his smile. It was a sharp expression. It didn't soften him at all. She was glad for that. A softening would have seemed like a betrayal of the man she knew. "All sorts of scoundrels running about this time of night."

Oh, he had no idea.

---

She had whiled away the day in a stupor. Strings cut, she thought dourly. She could not move without great effort; she could not even speak without breaking down a simple word into every individual action it demanded of her: open mouth, and vibrate vocal chords, and draw in air, and expel air, and move tongue, and move teeth. Everything had to be done by degrees, as though she was standing outside and lifting the limb of another, painstakingly contorting them into the simple shapes of humanity and life.

Asenath had put her to bed, and Lady Chou had come to see her immediately after returning from her mission. Making the world safer, Azula thought. Whittling down the dangers to the kingdom. To the Empire. To the Kur.

The energy had returned to her so slowly that she was not sure if it was merely delusion to believe that it was, in fact, coming back. But with the setting of the sun, so too did the worst of her aches and angst seem to wane. She was more able to move now. More able, but not entirely able. It was like finding her way through a pool packed with cotton wool. Feeling about for her footing in plain light.

Lady Chou had eliminated another xrafstar. One more gone. The world was one bit safer. Illéa had survived one more apocalypse thus. One death. So many saved. For one xrafstar. Azula couldn't remember which one. Maybe she had known her once, but she had traded that knowledge for another string. She had hung that string on Ilja, quite without him knowing about it. It had been a comfort, to think that she could draw on him when she wished to. It had been a comfort, before he had killed Nerezza Astaroth.

It was a comfort again now. She had forced herself from the drawing room, and she had forced herself down the stairs, and she had traced Ilja's path along the western wing of the palace, not entirely certain what she was going to do once she found him, not entirely sure if she could live with herself if she didn't manage to do what she must.

---

The first that Sanav knew of the emergency was the clamour in the armoury room – what amounted to an armoury room, which was really just the drawing room of the viceroy into whose walls the excubitors had hammered enough nails upon which they could hang their harnesses and swords and hooks.

Sanav had been resting on the camp bed he had been given in the mess-room – what amounted to a mess-room, which was really just the dining room of the viceroy onto whose floorboards the watchers had squeezed as many sleeping bags and camp beds and hammocks as could humanly fit. Sanav had been dozing in the corner, in that quiet lull between a finished dinner and further drinking. He was stirred from his half-sleep by the noise first, and then by his captain's voice, cutting through the air as surely as a scalpel. "Mahesar!"

Sanav flung himself to his feet and stumbled through the narrow hallway. There was already chaos in the weapons room: Sanav thought it likely that the entire population of the district's tagma had assembled there, all moving around one another, barking orders, a constant back-and-forth of information and reminders and warnings. It was not so overwhelming as it might once have been.

It was piteous, how few in number they were by now.

He had never seen his captain frantic. "The equipment," he was saying, tearing through the harnesses on the wall of the armoury as a scholar might rip through the pages of a well-known book. "The equipment, it's all – Mahesar, where is your harness?"

"My…?"

He was moving too slowly for the urgency in the captain's voice.

"It's here, it's –"

He lifted it from its rack. It hung limp from his hands: the leather strap which ought to have secured his chest had been sawed through by a jagged blade, and the bolts which kept the gas canister attached to the main mechanism had been pried back and spirited away. The buckle which attached the hooks to the other straps had been snapped off entirely, hanging twisted and serrated from the rest.

He stared at it. How…?

He had polished it only that morning. The captain insisted on carrying out equipment maintenance every day. He and Kinga had sharpened their hooks and tested their buckles and measured the amount of gas left in their canisters. Just that morning. Twelve hours ago. Less, even, than that. And Sanav had left it here. He had left it here.

He had been lulled into a sense of complacency. A false sense of safety behind the Walls, on the day of the Fall.

Kane hadn't been wearing his either; he had dropped it to the floorboards, as thoroughly rended as Sanav's, and stepped over it like it was nothing, and continued to search amongst the spares, that equipment which had once belonged to soldiers dead and fallen and crippled. He seemed blind and deaf with focus.

Sanav said, "Kaasik always wears hers." He said it to soothe himself, and in the hopes of soothing the captain. He had never seen the lieutenant without it. He wasn't sure he would recognise her without it, the extra lines and bunched clothing as much a part of her silhouette as her hair or her eyepatch. "So she'll still have a working set –"

Given the expression that flitted across his face, that was apparently what so concerned Hijikata. It was as close to fear as Sanav had ever seen his mentor.

"Sir, what's going on?"

"Human druj sighting." It was Åsmund Falk who said it, tersely, for the captain had already flung open the trapdoor beside the fireplace and disappeared down into the storerooms. Though Falk still wore watcher red, it seemed that the distinction mattered little these days; they were forming now as a single team, with a single purpose. "Two of them. In the palace."

Sanav's heart sank. "And Kinga?"

Maryam Yakhin said, "she crossed into Ganzir about an hour ago."

"Going in sword-first," General Suero said. "No doubt."

Sanav blanched. "What?"

Not even she was that suicidal. Had it been a coincidence? Did she have friends stationed in Ganzir? Some reason to be there on the day of the Fall, devoid of bloodshed?

Would she even have her swords with her?

Hijikata slammed the trapdoor shut behind him. "She's going to get herself killed."

Sanav moved quickly towards the adjacent wall, where he found his swords waiting for him in their sheathes. He tested them briefly, and – yes, they had been spared the sabotage. They were still blooding-sharp. He turned them in his hand, and slid them home at his hip.

Behind him, Hijikata swore.

"Lorencio –"

General Suero hefted a harness in his hands, looking relieved to find it functional. "Take this one – it's from my fighting days, so it's a little old-fashioned, but..."

"It'll hold?"

He nodded. "It'll hold."

The captain gestured. "Mahesar."

Sanav accepted it from the general gingerly. It was more unwieldy than he was used to – the straps were thicker, and wrapped most tightly around the torso rather than the limbs, as he was accustomed. The hooks were heavier, and of a subtly different shape – more crab-shaped than claw-like. He would need to move closer to the ground. His angles would need to be acute.

It would suffice. Sanav could waste no time. He wrenched it onto himself, hunched abruptly by the unfamiliar weight and pressure, unnerved each time he went to rack his reel and found his hand closing over thin air, for the actual trigger was set three inches further back – but it would do the job.

He could still fly.

"Captain…?"

"I have Rakel's," Kane said. "It's a little rusted, but..."

Åsmund Falk had the same habit as Kinga of wearing his harness everywhere; after a short conversation, he was therefore assigned the task of racing between as many provinces as possible to collect whatever equipment remained functional. The others would advance to the palace on horseback, because they didn't have the time to wait for Åsmund to return, and that idea was almost enough to send Sanav into a tailspin. They would be hurtling headfirst into danger, and preparing as they went.

They would be slaughtered.

He was about to follow Suero and Maryam downstairs, to the courtyard, where the Scholars were hastening to prepare the mounts, but was checked in his path by Kane's hand, vice-like, on his shoulder. "Roof," he said in a low growl.

"Sir?"

"We can't afford to wait," Kane said.

Sanav understood.

He had already lost two lieutenants. And he already owed Kunegunda Kaasik his life.

Sanav took the stairs to the roof two at a time. Kane was faster than him again. The viceroy's mansion, like the cathedral, had been built in full knowledge that it would be one of the tallest buildings in the kingdom; it had been built as a tool in the tagma's arsenal. There was a long concrete walkway running between the highest point of the mansion's three spires, from which excubitors could sprint, and fling themselves, and trust in their hooks to keep them up.

Trust.

He thought again of the destroyed equipment. He thought again of the threat. He thought again of the enormous stone druj.

Sanav said, "two human druj, sir? Two?"

Kane said, "that's what Morozova said."

Then they were multiplying. Multiplying, or lying hidden. He wasn't sure which prospect was more terrifying.

"Stay alive, Mahesar," Kane said. "Let's keep that king of ours alive, and let's bring her back in one piece."

The words had barely left Kane's mouth before he had leapt, and the wind had torn them from his teeth with a savagery Sanav had never seen before.

Sanav took a deep breath, and followed. There was always that first moment, after he had heard the hiss and clank of the hooks finding purchase, when he still seemed to fall. He was always afraid, for a split second, that the harness would fail, that he would just keep falling and falling and falling, like a star unmoored from its constellation. Then – a tightening around the thighs and biceps and waist – and he was pulled, so fast that all the air was ripped out of his lungs and the world dissipated into blurs of colours and impressions of sound around him. For a split second, at his apex, he would be weightless, hanging in the air as though born to it.

And then he would start to fall again

Always either falling or about to fall.