kaiho (n.) a hopeless longing - an involuntary solitude in which one feels incompleteness and yearns for something unattainable or extremely difficult and tedious to attain

Kinga had lived in a house in Siarka once, where the beams and floorboards were made from an old ship's timbers. When there was a storm at sea, the timbers used to creak and groan, even though the air around the house was quite still, as the air so frequently was in Siarka. The house was very old, and those timbers hadn't been near the sea for a hundred years or more, but still they remembered. Still, they longed for their purpose. Still, they knew.

In the half-existing moment between waking and sleeping, she had always heard them sing. Krzysiek had the same dreams, once. Kinga had always wondered what that might mean, about their closeness, about their bond. Being of the Szymanscy… this was not something that you were born into, Krzysiek had said; it was something to which you were sentenced.

A clever little girl would have thought more deeply about these sentiments – but no one had ever accused Kinga of cleverness. She didn't think there was a risk of that happening any time soon.

Certainly not with the company she chose to keep.

Choice. Strange word for her to use. Most unlike her. Dishonest.

"Good morning." Schovajsa was reclined against the gate of Wall Szymanski, studying the ramparts with the expression of one who expects he might someday have to lay siege to them. He smiled when he saw her; that, at least, was some trace of the Ilja that he had been. She returned the expression, with a fraction of the warmth that he had offered her – but still, warm. "You're early."

"Were you expecting me to be late?"

He scuffed his heel across the ground, and watched the pebbles bounce across the cracks and divots formed in the street by generations of warfare and druj attacks. Kinga watched as well. When he spoke, it was drily. "Not every observation is a criticism, Kaasik."

"We had the same Commandant," she said. She kept her voice purposefully mild, knowing it would be more likely to irritate him – it was always difficult to get a good reaction out of Ilja. She ran a hand through her short hair, still surprising herself after all these months when she found that it did not end in a braid. "Didn't we?"

He straightened up, and started to walk; she fell into step next to him. The coat she had borrowed from Ghjuvan lay heavily on her shoulders; it was a thick material, something akin to leather or suede, and a light brown colour that she thought Inanna might have called faun. Inanna always insisted on specifics; she was a Warrior devoted to fine details. God knew they needed at least one of those – if only to balance out all of the other blunter instruments in their arsenal.

Schovajsa was waved through Aizsaule Gate without issue; Kinga had to fumble in her pockets for her papers, which were scrutinised by a glowering watcher in red. His commander, a few dozen metres away, was watching them closely; Kinga averted her face and fixed her gaze upon Schovajsa's shiny shoes as she took back her documents and followed her fellow Warrior through the gates to where he had two horses waiting. They were beautiful, Kinga mused, and clearly palace-bred – fine-featured, like thoroughbreds, with slender fetlocks and eyes that were delicate in their doe-like gentility. They were a far cry from the more brutish, thick-limbed beasts of burden to which the tagma were accustomed, but that much was to be expected.

Schovajsa had clambered onto the front bench of the cart, and held out a hand for Kinga to grasp and follow him up. Touching his skin – when had it got so grey? – reminded her of the last time she had grasped him: hand around throat, fingers digging deep, nails nearly drawing blood. She tensed her shoulders against the memories, and offered him something akin to a nod when he glanced at her quizzically. "Are we going far?"

"Not so far," Ilja responded, his tone jovial enough for a man with so little colour in his cheeks. "But why would we walk if we didn't have to?"

She couldn't argue with him there. She twisted in her seat to gaze back at the wall as Ilja rattled the reins and they set off – slowly, slowly, the wooden wheels of the cart protesting at the sudden motion. At the gate, the commander in red was still watching after them, something like curiosity flickering in his eyes. It was hard to identify him, cast as he was in the behemoth shadow of the enormous wall, but –

Kinga turned back in her seat again and wondered how recognisable she and Ghjuvan really were.

"How is life among the tagma?" They were not moving so quickly along the dirt path which approximated a road in this part of Vanth that Ilja could not speak relatively softly. "You must feel right at home."

"Life has never been easier." Kinga braced one boot against the front bow, feeling the thing within her turn over behind her ribs. "Konrad would be horrified."

"You're getting soft?" Ilja smiled. "Being a monster hunter is too boring for you?"

Kinga sighed exaggeratedly. They went over something in the road; she almost missed the sensation of her braid bouncing on her shoulder. "Sometimes I beat Ghju about the face just to feel alive again."

"I'm sure he loves that." He sounded rueful. "He's into weird things, our boy. You'd have to be a masochist, wouldn't you – to put up with Angelo for so long?"

Kinga chuckled under her breath.

"Funny," Ilja said, "I would have said something similar about you and Pekka, once upon a time."

She curled her fingers around the hem of her coat, and dug in her nails so that she left little crescent moons embedded into the fabric and her fingers came away white from the exertion. She was glad to find that they were still nails; she was glad to see that she still had fingers. "Funny," she echoed, unable to find more words. She was struggling with that of late. She and Ghju made for a quiet pair when they were put together; it didn't make for much conversational practice. "And the palace?"

"There are worse gigs." Ilja tightened his hands on the reins, and steered them carefully along the road, as the dirt path gave way to one of grass, simply tamped down in an approximation of a road. "Might be more tolerable without Morozova, but I can't ask for too much."

"I don't know," Kinga said, "if she hates Hijikata as much as you say, she must have impeccable taste."

"She hates me too, Kaasik."

She doubted that. "As I said."

It was a nice enough day, or it would be once the sun decided to rise; the moon was still set into the pale pink sky like a silver earring. They had left the sprawl of the first city behind, where it grew tight to the wall, like a fungus in the shade of an enormous tree. They were out into green fields now, broad and verdant; the path they followed in turn followed the curvature of the land, leading into soft descents and gentle ascents; it reminded Kinga of the movement of a small boat bobbing gently on the water; it reminded her of those she had sometimes seen in Opona Harbour, when she had passed it on a run. On those few occasions they had days off training, she had sometimes paused in her sprints to stand near the pier, and watch the fishermen reel in their nets, purposeful in their movements. She had never paused for too long; Inanna and Pekka were both from the docks. They would have been visiting their families, so she had never stopped long enough to be spotted.

"You look tired," Ilja said softly. "For such a soft life."

Kinga shrugged. She had spent the night following Ina's mysterious suitor across the district, until he had entered the watchmaker's shop on Četrdesmitais Street and stayed there long enough that Kinga was satisfied that he was either asleep or had tunnelled out. She wasn't going to put the latter past him – there were rumours from the Illéan-born cadets, demons though they were, that the king maintained pathways beneath the ground to allow him to traverse the districts safely without fear of druj attack. Kinga thought again of the tunnels in which she had woken, where the druj had been imprisoned. Maybe she should be more curious about these things. Maybe she shouldn't leave all the thinking to Zoran and Inanna.

And yet, things usually went better for everyone involved when she did.

"You know where we're headed?"

"I have an idea."

"That," Kinga said, softly, "is reassuring."

There were little farmsteads set into the meadows below, in little groups of three or four huddled together like elderly women under a lone umbrella. There were little copses here and there, like tiny facsimiles of the enormous forest through which the Warriors had travelled to reach Illéa. Sheep and cows grazed peaceably; the cart moved through the rustic countryside, a natural component of the rest. It reminded Kinga a little of the farmland in Old Kur where her grandmother Bogumiła had spent her twilight years tending to her favoured granddaughter. Jaga had always seemed like someone who should have been raised in a quaint little city with humpback bridges spanning delicate canals and slate tiles in jewel tones; instead, she had spent her childhood butchering deer and wringing the neck of peafowl. Maybe it had served her well, Kinga thought; maybe it had helped, when the time had come to despatch Dagmara as-was-her-duty. That was always how the older members of the family had referred to these aspects of their Warrior heritage: Jaga had died as-was-her-duty, and Kinga had become the Moon of Kur as-was-her-duty. Like it was a single word, a concept whose components could not be divided from one another. As-was-her-duty.

Funny. She had never chosen to question that much either.

She was starting to consider herself an exceptionally un-curious person, now that it came down to it.

The cart drew to a stop; Ilja jumped to his feet, the black of his shined shoes flashing ink-bright. He gestured to the cottages set into the valley below. This much land had been reclaimed from the druj, but their presence had left an unquestionable legacy: deep scores lashed into the ground where beasts had wrestled and fallen. Here and there, Kinga could see the unmistakeable shape of tagma boots, where they had twisted upon the soil as the excubitors had gone to their sworn duties and dealt with the nightmares-made-flesh. Here and there, Kinga thought she could see the distinctive shape of Kane's bootprint; he had a peculiar way of twisting on his heel, when he was working quickly, which opened up his blade for the whole range of his motion. Ghjuvan had caught Kinga trying to recreate it after dinner one night, her sword so much heavier in her hand than their captain ever made it look.

She wondered which of the druj had died on this ground – one of the taloned things, no doubt.

Ilja said, "I'll search the house, if you search the sheds. The granary, the hayshed..."

Kinga jumped onto the ground, testing the solidity of the land beneath her heel; she pulled off her coat, and slung it over the railing of the cart, testing the straps of the harness that she had worn beneath. She was not in her uniform, but in an outfit which approximated the clothes in which they had trained as cadets: trousers tight enough not to catch, a vest that bared her scarred arms. She adjusted her eyepatch. "When you say search..."

"Quietly," Ilja said, slightly darkly, "but if you have a sword handy..."

"I don't need a sword," Kinga said, smiling slightly. Even now, she could feel something sleeping inside her, something clawed, something with hooks, something desperate to consume or be consumed. It had taken her months to eat meat again, after initiation.

"Quietly."

"Whatever you say, Schovajsa."

"Kaasik..."

It almost sounded natural by now; she responded to it as if it was her own name, as though her heritage had been – could possibly be – so easily forgotten. She could remember Gehörtnicht asking her why she had chosen it; she could remember lying.

"Yeah?"

"I mean it." There was something odd about the way he said it; something strange about the way he held himself, like he thought he might fall apart if he moved without thinking it through.

She racked the cannons on her hip. "Aye," she said, and then, again, more slowly – "whatever you say, boss."

Hiss. She didn't even have time to wink, before she was being pulled – yanked off her feet, the harness tightening like a noose around her limbs, the solid ground abruptly disappearing from underneath her – into the air. The cities of Illéa had been designed with the hooks in mind; you could make your way around the whole of Aizsaule District without your foot ever touching the ground if you didn't want it to. Last night had been one example among many. They were a comfortable set of rooftops; a far cry from the relatively barren landscape across which she now traversed with her hooks. She had to latch onto a tree, and then swing low across the grass, low enough that if she had flipped just a little further back she knew that there was a good chance she might have snapped her neck. She alighted lightly upon the granary, and thought, not for the first time, that the only reason the excubitors would have to reject her would be if Hijikata knew how to hold a grudge.

She moved lightly across the roof of the shed, slowly, shifting her weight gradually so that she did not dislodge any of the tiles, keeping her centre of gravity low. There were some windows set into the second floor of the granary, covered over with wooden boards. The whole place looked abandoned: no smoke rose from the cottage chimney, and no animals wandered the fenced paddocks. Maybe the homesteaders had deserted the place when the druj had come. What was Ilja expecting, asking her if she had her sword? It was little Seo. The last time they had been paired, Kinga had put the other girl into a headlock in the first forty seconds of the spar.

Of course, she had probably had some help in getting to Illéa….

She twisted, and dropped; she caught herself on the lip of the granary roof. She twisted herself to plant a foot against the wooden board, testing it. As she had thought – flimsy, more akin to the plyboard used at home in Opona than the good thick oak Zoran now used for carpentry. She tensed her biceps, lifted herself, and swung back towards the window, planting both boots against it with a force that flexed the boards as though they were mere cloth. One more, and they were splintering; one more, and she was twisting through the window, rolling onto her shoulder and coming up into a crouch on the wooden floor within.

Her lone eye took a moment to adjust to the dark, for it was dark within; she barely had time to take in the blankets heaped in the corner in an approximation of a bed before there was a very dull whoosh and something very hard shattered over her neck and shoulder.

She stumbled; her right arm went up in automatic defence, even as she turned her face, eyepatch first – it wasn't like she could lose an eye twice – to scan for this new source of danger. She could feel blood, hot and wet, trickling down behind her ear; her assailant threw a punch, distinguishable in the dark only by its motion, and Kinga answered it with her forearm, sweeping up her limb force the stranger's arm outwards in an arc and opening them up for Kinga to plant her forehead directly into their face. She headbutted their nose, and felt cartilage give way; there was blood on her face now as well. She brought both of her hands up and planted them, hard, against the other person's chest, shoving them back to give herself a little bit of space in which to manoeuvre. The thing within herself bellowed for blood; she could barely keep it at bay, focusing as she was on the sheer physicality of the situation at hand.

She kicked; she had always favoured kicking. Krzysiek had always warned her that it could throw you off-balance, but Kinga had found that she could put force like no other behind them. Her boots found her attacker's knee, a sharp downward gesture that might have shattered the cap if the other girl had not twisted at just the right moment, so that Kinga's foot instead hooked around her knee and simply forced her into a kneel. And then another kick, intended for her stomach but finding her head; Kinga put all of her strength behind it, like she was kicking through the other girl.

The other girl's head rocked back, but her whole body followed the motion; she threw herself into the momentum, and twisted herself so that she came back to a standing position, and could throw herself at Kinga again.

That was strange, Kinga had time to think, because that was exactly how Konrad had taught them how to do it….

Her skin was splitting. She could feel it – along her back, along her shoulder blades, she could feel her flesh coming apart at the seams. She would unravel any moment now. She would unravel, and everything that had once been Kinga would be given over to the Moon of Kur, to the beast, to the curse. No, she thought, not when Ilja was in the house below, not when she had a job to do. If she fell apart now, they would just call Kane to deal with her, and she knew that this time he would not settle for simply taking an eye…

She reached out a hand, and caught her attacker by the throat this time. She had done this to Ilja, hadn't she? She had choked him. She had lifted him off his feet – she was doing that now – her hand tightening – she could have broken his neck – she might not have noticed if she had – she could do that now – couldn't she – with just a twist of her wrist – she knew she could – and now her nails were digging in deep –

Then, strangled through Kinga's tight grip, a familiar voice hissed forth – venom tinged with mirth. "I surrender."

I don't make the rules, Kinga.

Kinga's eyes narrowed. Rather than drop her quarry, her grip merely tightened over her opponent's neck –

And then there was a creak of a floorboard over her right shoulder, the sound of someone shifting their weight. She looked immediately, turning her head, but before she had even managed to focus her gaze upon this new figure in the dark there had been an explosion of light in front of her, akin to a star. Kinga threw up her arms, heedless of the fact that she had just dropped her fellow Kur on the ground as she screwed her eyes shut and twisted her head into her arms, straining to block out the intensity of the white light before her. The whole world seemed, for a split second, to distort and twist; Kinga's head pounded, like all the air in the world had been abruptly sucked away and she could feel the very molecules of her flesh vibrating. It was not hot – it was not fire – but the air around her was rippling with something awful and invisible and she could feel the skin on her bare arms sloughing away like something dead, the light itself boring deep within her flesh as though attempting to burn away the feathered thing within.

The light died. Slowly, the light died. Kinga drew in a shaking breath, waiting for the earth to reassert itself on its axis. She was on her knees. Quite without realising it, she had fallen to her knees. Both of her forearms were slick with blood; when she raised her right hand, she could see a sliver of white bone from where her flesh had been boiled away.

She looked up, just in time to see Ilja Schovajsa bringing a plate down, sharply, on the head of the new arrival.

She – for it was a she, a pale girl with brown hair not much older than Azula – crumpled alongside the shards of ceramics, and Kinga rose, very slowly, to her full height, staring at her fallen form as Ilja stared at her.

"Well," Kinga said, finally. "You can't say we weren't quiet."

"Well," Ilja said. "You probably should have brought your sword."