uitwaaien (v.) to take a brief break outside to clear one's head and forget one's problems.

The keeper, Aubert Abreo, was serving cups of tea in the courtyard of the chancellery; Ghjuvan Mannazzu could smell it from here, something spiced and rich. Kinga was sitting on a low wall encircling a patch of lilies, badly bloodied: it was on her hands, on her throat, around her mouth. She made no move to wipe it away, only accepted a mug from Abreo with a nod, and gave Ghjuvan a short look of acknowledgement as he approached. Unlike the other candidates he had glimpsed, during or after initiation, writhing and crying for their mothers, Kinga looked as relaxed as she ever did. She had one leg drawn up under her and her hands braced against the wall.

Her hair had fallen from her usual braid. It hung in long, blood-stained tendrils around a handsome, blood-stained face.

"Tea?" Abreo smiled broadly.

Ghjuvan regarded this friendliness with some wariness. "Sure."

A cup was poured; Ghjuvan remained standing, leaning against the wall of the chancellery as he took a sip. It was unmistakeably relaxing – he wondered if maybe it had been laced with something. One would never be able to tell as much, looking at Kinga, but it would make sense to give them something to keep them calm so soon after their initiation. Ghjuvan couldn't muster up too much indignation one way or another. He was certain that they were safe. This was the privilege of the Warrior: they were too useful to Irij, too instrumental to reclaiming the glory of their kingdom. Their days of expendability had come to a quiet end.

"You survived." Kinga's voice was soft.

"Did you expect otherwise?"

She shrugged. "Death, right? I figured..."

So had he. Ghjuvan had been certain he was walking into a quick, short death, but… he felt fine. The fresh air was reinvigorating and mollifying; it could not have been very late in the afternoon. How long had it been since they left the training centre – six hours? Less? And in that time, they had each been changed so utterly. His predecessor had been on the threshold of death at this point in the process, this time ten years ago.

All considered, they weren't doing too badly. What had the others got? He was, briefly, glad to have taken the Death card if it meant that Khalore and Myghal might have been spared the same. Khalore had always struck him as a Hanged Man or a Star; Myghal should have been the Sun. He would find out soon; Myghal had just been stirring back into consciousness as Ghjuvan was escorted out of the infirmary and into the sunshine.

"Well," Kinga said. "Now I wonder which one we lost. If it wasn't you..."

"It's times like these I miss Chrzanowski," Ghjuvan agreed. "Always nice to have an easy target for these kinds of conversation." He paused. "Maybe we're fine. Maybe everyone made it."

Abreo's hands had stilled upon his pot; Ghjuvan looked at him quickly. There was a sudden knot to his brow. From the look in his eye, he was clearly debating whether to speak – and from the way he pursed his lips, he had clearly decided that he ought to. "I'm afraid there was a casualty of the process."

Ghjuvan frowned. "A casualty?"

"The Tower's initiation was… complicated."

"The Tower," Kinga repeated. Of course, Ghjuvan thought – she had been the first to take her card and begin initiation. She wouldn't have known anyone else's designation. She wouldn't have known anyone else's curse. "Who got the Tower?"

The Tower. He had always hovered just below him in the class rankings; they had existed, less as friends, than as perennial rivals. If he had died, then – were Myghal and Khalore okay? Ghjuvan spoke, and in speaking, it was like he was hearing it for the first time; to say it aloud felt like making it real, speaking it into existence. "Pekka. Pekka Hämäläinen took the Tower."

Kinga paused. "Is that so?"

"Just after you..."

"The Tower," Kinga said. She did not sound like she was sitting next to him; she sounded like she was very far away. Her voice had taken on such a peculiar tinny quality. "The Tower. It's a shame. That would have suited him."

She looked down at her tea again, smiling slightly. Instructor Ermete Tofana and Orfeas Halkias were emerging from the cloisters now; Orfeas Halkias had his hat in his hand, and was gesturing emotively, saying something that obviously raised Instructor's hackles. Abreo rose as they approached; between the three of them, Ghjuvan thought, he could perceive no positive emotion. They all looked stressed. They all looked scared.

Instructor was saying, "what good is a keeper if he does not keep..."

Orfeas Halkias was saying, "the card means nothing, but you are missing the material also?"

And Aubert Abreo was saying, "perhaps Kloet's notes will shed some light on this matter. We should consult Czarnecki..."

Abreo's offer of tea was dismissed hastily. Czarnecki – of course. Zoran Czarnecki was the new Hierophant. The faster he could adapt to his new abilities, the smoother their mission in Illéa would run. Matthias Kloet must have left his predecessor some bit of advice. Ghjuvan's own predecessor, Oxana Korol, had done none such thing; she hadn't lived long enough to master her own abilities.

There was a steep learning curve in his future.

"Hey," Kinga said. Her voice was tight. "Mannazzu?"

Ghjuvan turned. Her shoulders were braced, as though she was leaning into the wind; there was an artery jumping in her throat, the race of her pulse apparent. "Yeah?"

Kinga smiled. Had her teeth always been that sharp? "Run."

He had never before seen a girl come apart at the seams, but such was Kinga Szymańska now, and not in any figurative sense: she shuddered from the marrow her bones, and her skin split over the heaving mass of black flesh which sheltered within. Every vein stood out on her skin, slowly staining black; her hair, hanging over her face, moved as though with a mind of its own, writhing like captive serpents into tight clumps of feathers. Her eyes were wide, strained and staring; they were still human, so very human, even as her lips stretched and her spine contorted and her fingers twisting.

She had clearly been trying to contain the thing within her; it had clearly not worked.

Abruptly, very abruptly, Ghjuvan realised that he was not looking at a girl coming apart at the seams, or at least he was no longer: Kinga was something else now, something Else, and the else-thing that had burst from her had a dripping, sharp maw and talons the length of Ghjuvan's forearm. It turned, snarling, limbs lashing – it was something that should never have existed; it was something that aligned with none of reality's laws.

Her eyes were still human, human and scared, even as they were slowly subsumed within the larger form of the beast.

Orfeas Halkias shouted, "restrain it!" and Instructor shouted back, "how?"

The thing swung; it had a skull-like jaw, bare bone with great jutting fangs. No discernable eyes, or nose; it was more like a misshapen heap of feathers and flesh and claws than any sort of animal with a cohesive shape. It advanced slowly, dragging itself across the cobbles, as though it was learning to walk for the first time – there was a hooked wing, like a bat, clinging to the wall of the chancellery; there was black ichor, dripping from that skull-jaw; there was great talons scraping slowly against the ground, and faster now, as it seemed to gather strength. Ghjuvan found himself utterly transfixed; he wouldn't have been able to move if he had wanted to. This was a curse – this was the curse. The Moon was the most physical of all, but it was not any worse than its sisters; what he saw before him was merely a tangible manifestation of the scourge which had settled within them all during initiation.

He couldn't have moved if he wanted. This was demon-work. This was Schreave dark magic. This was what awaited them on Illéa.

Instructor was shouting at him. Did they have weapons? Would weapons work? Jaga Szymańska had crushed modern armies with such a form; Dagmara Szymańska had destroyed whole cities.

Could you fight a thing like this? That maw…. He had survived initiation to die here?

No, he thought, no. He had earned the death card; he was determined to outlive all of his predecessors. To die, here, now, without even stepping foot out into the world as a Warrior….!

Instructor shouted, "Mannazzu, get back!"

Everything had slowed. He felt his heart, his lungs, his innards, seeming to drop in his chest – it was the same feeling as jumping off a cliff, he thought, that moment your body remembered it was in freefall and forgot that the ocean would break your fall; that moment, half-asleep, you felt yourself falling without ever leaving your bed. It was a falling away of the reality around him, an abrupt tensing of his every muscle in preparation for a landing that would never come, a sudden realisation of total impermanence.

Had he fallen? It was as though he had blinked, and the thing was gone – no, he thought, not gone, behind him. No, not behind him – he was in front of it. He was standing next to Instructor, a few metres away from where he had been only a micro-second again. Adrenaline did strange things to the body, he thought – maybe he had dived past the monster while Orfeas Halkias had distracted it. Maybe his body had carried him on instinct.

"Get back," Instructor said again, "get back…!"

Ghjuvan threw himself behind the corner of the building, just as the thing that had once been Kinga gathered its strength and launched itself into the sky. What an enormous monster it was: it cast a shadow across the whole of the chancellery as it rose and rose, a black stain on the sky, and faded slowly amongst the clouds. Gone – gone. Was that it? Ghjuvan had known the Moon Curse manifested in the same way for each of the Szymańscy xrafstars, knew that they lost their humanity over time but this abrupt loss of control… perhaps Kinga had been the weakest of them. Jaga had lasted ten years; Dagmara, six. Kinga?

Perhaps her curse had taken her over, even now. Would they go to Illea tomorrow, a team of nine? The two strongest Warriors, Ghjuvan thought, were gone in the first day – Pekka dead and Kinga lost.

What hope did the rest of them have?