epibreren (v.) to occupy yourself with tasks that superficially appear important, but is really just meaningless busy-work to divert attention.

The Selected girl had gone down the stairs and she had never come back up again.

Ilja had watched her go down. He had waited for her to come back up.

They were eating their own now, he thought. Devils could not even be trusted with their own kind.

So they certainly could not be trusted with Azula and Belle.

He had kept sentry for some twenty hours, unmoving except for that which was necessary to show that he was still a living thing. Many changed positions at the position opposite him, seemingly without ever noticing that he had not been relieved for the duration of multiple shifts. He was an expert at anonymity by now; he could be, in a way, invisible for as long as he wanted to be. That was a kind of acting, he thought, that was a kind of fakery, a falsity of the kind that mattered here. It hadn't mattered in Irij. Not to anyone other than Ilja.

Ilja Schovajsa, the guard, was an entirely different person to Ilja Schovajsa, the Warrior. This was not a concept to which he attached much pathos or grief; it was a simple fact. The transformation had been a purposeful one; it had been practised. The Ilja who wrestled his way to stand, shoulder-to-shoulder, with his fellow grey-liveried guards in the beginning of each day was not the same as the Ilja who had started the day by shaving with a knife, needling Zoran about this-and-that, while Myghal and Ghjuvan covered the windows to produce a reflection. That was purposeful; an actor whose roles were the same time-after-time could not exactly consider themselves a master of their craft. He knew it unnerved the others somewhat, to see it happen in front of their very eyes. But Ilja wasn't sure he could help himself; he was merely reflecting those around him. It was like a drumbeat loud enough to force his heart into rhythm with it; it was like flinching at a loud noise along with the rest.

Simple enough, when all was said and done.

Reiko Morozova relieved him after said twenty hours, looking rather as though they were baffled by their own forgetfulness to have forgotten him for so long; they said nothing, only gestured that he should get some sleep and be ready for their next shift, some ten hours hence. The guardsmen had been briefed on the matter over a meagre lunch; the Selected were accompanying Asenath into Gjöll, to do good deeds among the most piteously wretched of the Aizsaule refugees, the most grievously wounded of the tagma survivors. They would need protection, Reiko had said; Princess Asenath was beloved but no one was that beloved. Ilja recognised it in their eyes. The other guardsmen spoke of druj, and ichor, and cannon defences, but Reiko Morozova was transparently less concerned with the monsters outside the walls than they were afraid of the people within.

He was most of the way down the hallway when the lieutenant called him back, looking rather as though they had remembered something at the last moment. Reiko Morozova was not usually a forgetful person, but Ilja had that effect on people sometimes – or amplified those tendencies in those already so inclined. "Schovajsa," they said, and Ilja stilled to hear the name. Anonymity could only ever go so far; a man could only be so invisible, so grey. "I want you to stay close in Gjöll."

He kept his voice suitably obsequious. "Something the matter, lieutenant?"

"Nothing," Reiko said, "nothing at all."

Their eyes were very cold. Ilja still couldn't decide what colour they were – close enough to the reflection of gold on oil to make him wonder if maybe they were related to Ina, somewhere down some tangled family line, somewhere deep in the shared history of their kingdoms. Descended from the same devils, perhaps. They were all Kur in the end, all Kur to the bone.

Strange to think, after a lifetime as a minority, a lifetime aware of the need for redemption wedged between his ribs. The Kur in Irij were watched for a reason: they alone could carry the curses, finely attuned as the dark magic was to the peculiar devilry which ran in their very veins. They were human weapons, with a long and storied history of being turned against the ordinary, innocent people of Irij. And here, in Illéa, they were all around, pressing close, squeezing the air from his lungs, flitting about as though ignorant of their very nature, the rot that went to the bone. He shuddered to think of it. Kane Hijikata as xrafstar. Reiko Morozova as xrafstar. Silas Schreave as xrafstar.

A hideous thought, if any was. It curdled the blood.

Repent. Atone. Salvation.

He was keenly aware of how heavy the lieutenant's gaze was upon him.

Finally, they said, "I'll be wrangling thirteen Selected girls, as well as the princess. It's only been a week since Aizsaule fell." Thirteen, Ilja mused, already so few and so unlucky. The Selected girl had gone down the stairs and she had never come back up again. Ilja had watched her go down. He had waited for her to come back up. "I could do with keeping our best fighters close."

Why, the commandant would have positively blushed.

"You sound as if you expect trouble."

Reiko said nothing, only raised an eyebrow. Ilja hastened to clarify.

"Won't the tagma be there?" His voice sounded like hers: deep and serious and unaccented. The rhythm was precisely the same; the cadence was identical. Like a reflection, he thought, and wondered if any of his reflections had ever been planning to murder him when his back was turned. He hoped not, but maybe it was the best end he could hope for – certainly the most handsome murderer he could imagine.

"Yes," they said. "That's the trouble."

The storm was brewing, deep in the sky. The clouds contained it for now; they would not contain it for long. Eero Hämäläinen was a pleasant, silent, golden ghost, moving somewhere in his shadow, saying nothing. He was a tough man to mirror, that Eero Hämäläinen. Ilja couldn't find a rhythm to hang his hook on. Was that just a legacy of his nature – would Pekka have been the same? – or was that some characteristic of the World's curse, festering within? Ilja did not ask, because Ilja suspected that he would receive no adequate answer. A convincing answer – oh, well, yes, perhaps a convincing answer. But adequate?

Usually they didn't say much on these scours – all the better to stay hidden from the last of the druj that stalked Aizsaule, or the tagma who hunted them. The druj were usually drawn to them nevertheless, and Eero's sword was usually called upon – or Ilja's, if Eero was feeling particularly lazy – and they were usually blackened with bruises and ichor by the time the dawn had crisped the edges of the wall, and a little friendlier for it, a little more relaxed in one another's company, even as the nights slipped by without result.

It had only been a week, Ilja reminded himself. There was still plenty of time to find him. He would be here. Somewhere.

It would have been easier if they had known where Ghjuvan had died – where his body might have been left, when his comrades fled. Or perhaps it wouldn't have made a difference: the pyres were enormous, and many, and sometimes they had dragged corpses from one neighbourhood to another where the burning was particularly good, the smoke particularly thick and low, where bodies were needed to feed the flames. They swept through piles of dead people, Ilja thought, ashes clinging to the bottom of his boots each night and tracking off slowly on his walk back to the palace. In Irij, such a fate was barbarism; they were a people of graves and tombs and interment. He had never expected such a small, petty difference to raise such a feeling of revulsion along his throat and shoulders, but standing here, and looking at the aftermath of the druj attack, he wondered he similar the tableau was to those in ages past, when the rebellion had first risen against the Kur Empire.

Had they been burned so?

Devils, the lot of them.

To burn a body completely, a furnace was needed; otherwise, while the hair and flesh and blood was incinerated, the bones would be left behind, brittle and bleached. It gave the whole of Aizsaule the most peculiar, funereal feeling, for the tagma had left the skeletons to the scavenging animals when they had completed their flee from the district – skulls, Ilja thought, skulls everywhere, and bones underfoot, snapping if he didn't close watch his step as he ought. The Illéan soldiers were, at least, usually meticulous about the dog-tags; there were only a few, glinting from the cinders, which suggested to Ilja that there had been no survivors from the unit left to memorialise the dead.

He was glad, at least, that Lore had that much to remember Ghju by.

To his right, a low voice, like the darkness itself had spoken: "Schovajsa."

Eero had paused over a particular pyre. Funny, those instincts of his, the secret esoteric knowledge he seemed to impart from the World without even seeming cognisant of it. Ilja suspected this was half-the-reason that Ina had suggested they be paired for the scouring. Ilja had been known to intuit much; as others soaked up information, so did he soak up instincts. He only needed to spend enough time with people to learn, as though by osmosis, many of the things they took for granted – it had been the reason that he had been assigned to infiltrate the palace, while Kinga had been relegated to the excubitors. One could afford to be dull there, he thought, dull or slow to adapt – as long as you knew how to kill.

Not so in the palace.

Ilja went to Eero, and stared at the body he had indicated. Mostly, kind of, not entirely, half-burnt. Not recognisable as human, certainly not. Not recognisable as Ghjuvan, certainly not. Just bones, half-assembled charcoal in place of flesh, the metal glint of a sword unused and a harness broken strapped over what had once been his chest. Was Eero certain? He never seemed otherwise, always, those blue eyes calm and assessing, always that smile relaxed and reassuring. Not smiling now, of course. Not now.

Eero said, "it is the Star."

Ilja cleared his throat, pushing back memories of childhood dormitories and swimming in the lake and arguing around a campfire in the forest. He said, "how do we harvest the curse?"

Ilja watched the World closely as he answered. He had been at his predecessor's side, quite consistently; it had been Ilja's instinct that the older Hämäläinen was their best chance at understanding, adapting, to the more mystical side of existence as a xrafstar. It was simpler for some – the Szymańscy family raised their children with the knowledge of claiming the Moon of Kur like other children were raised with nursery rhymes.

But retrieving the Star of Kur?

He looked to Eero for guidance. Funny how that happened, he thought, funny how immediate it had been, like he was wearing the shadow of another. He wouldn't have blamed Ina for trusting Eero for that alone – but no, there was something else, something more. The part of Ilja that had told him to claim Kolesnitsa as a hometown, to carry flowers with their blossoms facing downwards, to accept gifts with his left hand – it told him, now, to trust Eero. The Chariot, perhaps, carrying knowledge from generations past and generations that would be.

He didn't like it. Ilja Schovajsa was not, as a rule, a trusting man.

And yet, here and now, he looked to Eero for guidance. Eero was the World – a xrafstar, a Warrior, a Kur.

And perhaps, more importantly, most importantly – he, too, was looking for his salvation in a redemptive act. Retrieving the Radiance was as important to him as it was to Ilja.

Repent. Atone. Salvation.

Eero said, "take his teeth."