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

To be fair to her – and he did not think he had it in him to be unfair to her – she took the news like a soldier. Oh, her knees did buckle, and her mouth twisted and tightened and contorted in that awful masque of compressed, repressed grief, and her eyes glazed over with unshed tears, darting this way and that to avoid his gaze, and the gaze of his companion… but she was silent, silent for a long moment, and she stayed standing, and she did not scream or sob or shriek.

It would have been due to her, if she wanted it.

She just said – and her voice broke as she said it – "we tagma die in slow motion, don't we?"

It was true. Kane knew it was true. They said excubitors started bleeding out the moment they joined the corps; it was a matter of when, not if, they would succumb to their fates, to the druj, to the world outside the walls. If they didn't bleed out, then their minds would snap, inevitably fold over one too many times and break irreperably. He had felt the jagged edge of that sensation once, just once – his first time out, just a fourth class excubitor, newly graduated – and he remembered wondering if it was so easy to slip.

It had been easier for him, then, when it was so much harder for the others. You could fight what was known. You could dream of winning, when you knew what you were fighting against. The unknown was terrifying.

And this strange armoured druj – that, that was unknown.

And it had taken Rakel.

"I'm sorry," he said, and meant it, meant it mostly sincerely. Oktawia was sitting on a wooden chair, her head bowed over her knees, blonde hair shielding her face from observation. The kitchen they were standing in was small, small and yet cosy enough that it made Kane's words sound all the crueler for how hollow they were. Even he could hear that hollowness in them, how useless a sorry was in a moment of ruination like this. This was a home in growth, he thought, a safe place in the midst of its construction – a kitchen small enough that he could stand in the middle and touch either wall. There were two mugs, two plates, two forks and two knives. Rakel had left her jacket on the back of the door.

Oktawia had come to the door smiling.

She deserved better, didn't she? They all did. Kane had outlived all of his friends by now. Sanav and Kunegunda were living on borrowed time. It made it harder to keep going when that was the case. The more the druj infiltrated the kingdom – the less of a difference all these sacrifices meant – the harder it was to justify making them.

Oktawia still walked with a limp. She still couldn't use her left arm. It hadn't saved Rakel, had it? Her suffering seemed to have meant nothing at all – it had only invited more.

Kunegunda said nothing, but she stepped forward, and left something gently on the table. It was Rakel's pin – the one she had worn on her jacket to show her rank, second class excubitor in the Nav corps. She had been so excited when Kane had given it to her. It had meant so much to her. This makes me your lieutenant, right? You couldn't do this without me. I just want to hear you say it. Once. You couldn't do this without me. Please?

She might have been right. He wasn't particularly sure right now.

Oktawia curled her fingers around the pin, tightly, so tightly that its edges pierced her palm and let little droplets of blood fall onto the table before, and nodded, stiffly. "There's no reason to be sorry."

"Just promise me." Oktawia's voice was hoarse, choked by whatever she was holding herself back from saying. Would she blame him, if she could speak her mind? "You'll find it. The thing that..."

Her voice broke again. Kunegunda was staring at Kane.

"Promise me you'll kill it."

"I promise."

Oktawia's nod was jerky and mechanical. She stood; she was wearing an unbuttoned tunic, so quickly had she rushed to the door when they had knocked. She shook Kane's gloved hand, brusquely, and then leaned into his shoulder, pressing her face into his collar, saying nothing, only letting the tears escape. It was not really an embrace, but he wrapped a hand around her shoulder nonetheless, and said nothing, and let her cry. Oktawia was only a year younger than him; they had graduated just eighteen months apart. He had been so happy to see her retire. He had been so happy to see her stop bleeding, refuse to keep dying in slow motion.

Was this really worth it? He had ordered them after the druj in the moments after it appeared, without backup, without time to prepare, knowing that they were only a few days removed from Aizsaule, from Ghjuseppu. Had he sacrificed them? Had he sacrificed her? He had always been determined to never treat his people like pawns but –

They were playing a losing game. Everyone knew it. Everyone had seen it.

The stone golem had blotted out the rising sun, and Kane had felt, for the first time in almost ten years, that jagged edge of mind-ruining fear. How could they fight this? It would be like to trying to hold the sky itself at bay.

He was not a man who cried, but as they left Oktawia, and came out into the early afternoon sun, and took in the first deep breath of sage-scented air, warmed to intoxication by the sun overhead, Kane Hijikata leaned against the door and, for just a split second, he allowed himself to –

To panic.

Another deep breath. A gloved hand to his face. Another deep breath, rattling slightly, and maybe there was an unevenness, a hitch, that suggested a sob was not so impossible. A third deep breath, and then he stood again, and straightened his jacket with an impatient tug, and followed Kunegunda down the garden path, towards the street, where Sanav was waiting with their swords. That was always the mark of bad news – that was how Oktawia had known to sit down to hear what they had to say. When they appeared at your door without their weapons at their hips.

Kane said, "I didn't know you'd picked up her pin."

Kunegunda said, "I went back this morning."

Kane looked at her. She was already looking at him, like - like she was worried. Like she was concerned about him. She wasn't a girl who knew how to help in such situations, of course; Kane knew that she would look away just as quickly again, and then she did. If the problem couldn't be fought, Kunegunda Kaasik was clearly at an utter loss.

"I thought she deserved something," she said. "Some memento."

The image was not so incongruous as he might have thought – he could picture it, picture her searching the ruined battleground, scouring the cobbles for her friend.

There had been no sign of Rakel, except blood on the cobbles that might have been hers or might have belonged to any of the dozens of civilians that had died that night. No sign of her at all. For a few hours, that had inspired hope: hope that she had survived, that she had fallen somewhere and survived, as Torsten and Oktawia had, that she was sheltering somewhere until the storm was over and she could be found. Then, that had inspired despair: despair, because she was surely dead, and they did not even have a body to burn or a set of dog-tags to give to Oktawia. Nothing at all. Nothing to prove that Rakel had ever been a real person – who had fought, who had served, who had died for a reason.

Sanav had gone a little way up the road; the road rose out of the valley in which this little town nestled, Oktawia dwelling in a small cottage on its outskirts, and crested on a hill, where the sun could reach you more easily, and indeed Sanav looked to be drinking the light like it was ambrosia. He always looked younger in daytime; it always reminded Kane just how much of a child he was, in the way that mattered. It could have been him, just as easily as Rakel. It made little sense that it had not been.

In the light, Kinga looked so much worse. She seemed to be making a sport out of it – accumulating bruises and wounds like another girl might adorn her face with powders. There was no battle where she did not emerge bloodied and ruined. Kane had wanted to ask her about it, at the ball, but it had seemed a question impossible to pose without insulting her.

He had little fear of that now, so he asked: "have you no sense of self preservation at all, Kunegunda?"

"Surgically removed when I was a child."

"I mean it."

Her lips twisted. "I am," she said, and then seemed to think better of starting her sentence thus, and hastened to rephrase. "I know no other way of showing how hard I'm trying. How much I care."

"What do you mean?"

"This is what I'm good for," she said. "I need to show that I'm fighting. I need to show that I'm doing what I can. I need to wear it on me."

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

"Of course I do." The tone was conversational, light, but that eye – ah, he knew a gaze desperate for validation, for approval, for simple acknowledgement, when he saw it. How painful it must be, he thought, to bleed so, and to imagine that no one has noticed. "If I didn't – "

"And what if you didn't?"

She was not so chastened as he had imagined. "Well," she said, "I imagine that I would seem cruel to a stranger."

The more he knew her, the harder it was to accuse her – even if only in his mind – of cruelty. She had saved him. She must have tried to save Rakel as well. As she had tried to save Ghjuseppu. Her failure would weigh heavy on her but – well, Kane could have told her. It would be one of many.

But she would never lose count. This, he also could have told her. She would always be able to number them.

Kane could number his.

"I'm sorry," Sanav was saying, as they walked up the hill towards him. "Maybe I should have come with you – but I didn't want to start crying when it was meant to be –"

"It's understood, Mahesar. Don't worry about it."

"How did she - how is she?"

Heartbroken. There was no other word for it.

Kane accepted back his sword, silently determined not to again be parted from it. Sanav was looking drawn and tired, even moreso than his comrades, who had similarly gone without sleep the night before. He had pushed himself harder than they had, as though punishing himself, scouring the strange smoke-storm in search of the druj, the Watcher who had helped it – helped it? – or any survivors of its attack. As though in atonement.

Kane had not told him that atonement was not necessary.

Everyone found their own motivation.

They needed to return to Gjoll, and swiftly, but they did not alight with their hooks straight away. Instead, Kane indicated that they should walk along the path for a little longer, until they were closer to the Walls – the better to stretch their legs, to draw in some air, to try and undo whatever knots had formed in their chests. It was a grotesquely unbalanced group that wandered along the road thus, lopsided, keeling over where Rakel should have balanced them out. It was too quiet with just the three of them. Ghjuseppu would have said something; Rakel should have said something.

It fell to poor Sanav to say something.

"People are saying it was a human druj," he said.

"There's no such thing," Kunegunda said, immediately, her voice flinty.

"That's for General Suero to decide," Kane said. "If he says that's what it is –"

Kunegunda shook her head.

"You would disagree with the head of the Schools, Kaasik? I never took you for a scholar."

"Human and druj are antonyms."

"You're being pedantic."

"It is," she said, "an important distinction to make."

"For my conscience," Sanav said, "at least."

Perhaps he meant it as a joke, but those words hung in the air around them, heavy as lead, even as they entered into the shadow of Wall Szymańska.

"I believe you two know each other, don't you?"

The cobbles of the street were dusted with a light layer of faint grey grit, like the smoke which had risen over the city the night before had crystallised and fallen to the ground like so much strange residue. It ground under the boots of the excubitors as they moved, scratched out their path across the pavement. There was a long, jagged crack running across the street, from west-to-east, as though it had been snapped and folded up and then smoothed back out again.

At the centre of this faultline, a still-smoking trunk of stone, a strange monument of marble and granite, rose from the ground. It was still slowly crumbling into dust and dissipating into smoke, growing smaller and smaller with each passing second; while the watchers in their scarlet jacket assembled around it and stared openly, the blue-robed scholars hurried about, gathering what samples they could, scribbling notes and sketches, chivvying Sanav away from where he was standing so that they could mark out positions on the street.

The general and his one-armed assistant were standing a little further away, just outside the shadow of Wall Schreave; Kane conducted the introductions in a subdued voice.

Kunegunda frowned, even as she reached forward to shake the scholar Angelo's hand. "You seem familiar. Are you a friend of the widow?"

"Lodged with her after the fall."

"Ah. Ghju's friend."

"Yes. And you?"

"Wait – didn't Ghjuseppu tell you about his girlfriend?"

"Kane."

Kane did not give Kunegunda a moment to decide how she was going to react to his little jab; he just side-stepped her with a slight smile and moved ahead of the group to fall into step beside the general. Suero was on the move – Suero was always on the move when he found something interesting, when he had a task in which he could bury himself. He was several inches taller than Kane. It made it mildly frustrating to keep pace when he was lost in thought like this.

Kane said, "Kaasik says it disappeared."

"Kaasik is right." Lorencio was torn – Kane could see that he was torn. He had always been fond of Rakel; he clearly understood that Kane's team was shattered from losing her. And of all the superior officers Kane had ever encountered, Lorencio Suero was always the one he could rely on to simply… count lives. Whenever a plan was being put together, whenever the toll of a mission was being counted, Lorencio could be trusted on to count lives. Deaths, yes, he would count deaths – but lives, lives saved, lives ruined, lives irreperably thrown off their intended path…

And yet – he was a Scholar. He lived for his Studies. He lived for mystery.

And this, at last, was a mystery.

"Oroitz Txori has also disappeared."

Kane blinked. "Oroitz?"

"Åsmund Falk showed up at my door last night."

They fell silent as a small group of Watcher moved past them, towards the remnants of the golem in the corner of the street. Lorencio gave them a firm nod and an encouraging smile; Kane glowered silently at the interruption.

"Well?"

Lorencio kept a calm, casual smile on his face, but he said nothing until they had walked a little further; then, leaning against the wall of an abandoned library, he said, quite peaceably, "our friend Oroitz has been swallowed up by the court."

"Lorencio." Kane glanced in the direction they had come from, at the crowds of tagma milling about. Sanav was speaking with the general's assistant in that awkward, smile-y way that he had, either oblivious or purposefully ignorant of the dour way the girl was regarding him as she continued to scratch out a set of notes on the pad in her hand; Kunegunda was ignoring a second-class watcher's exasperated instructions to stay away from the smoking wreckage of the golem, and was prying pieces off it with her bare hands – much to the delight of the milieu of scholars who had been trying in vain to chip off any test material from the carcass of the druj. "What does that mean?"

"An off-the-books poaching expedition," Lorencio said. "Txori got mauled. Maryam said it was a winged druj."

Kane said nothing, but perhaps he was not hiding his expression so well as he might have hoped, if Lorencio's smile was any indication.

"I thought as much," Lorencio said. "In any case, he was taken to the castle, the princess took custody of him, and neither Falk nor Yakhin have seen him since."

"He might just be dead."

"With that kind of dazzling intellect, it's a wonder you didn't ever become a Scholar, Hijikata."

Kane rolled his eyes. "A Watcher goes missing in the palace – Asenath's pet Watcher goes misisng in the palace – and, within the hour, a Watcher is linked to a massive druj attack. Better?"

"Linked," Lorencio said, "tell me about that. Linked?"

"Euphrasie Bardin believes a Watcher let a druj into the palace – summoned it, somehow. One of the Selected was speaking to a Watcher right before it appeared, and he vanished."

Lorencio said, "we're just a few more creative interpretations away from a witch hunt, it would seem."

"Yeah," Kane said, "if you think that's bad – Sanav says the paqudus think it was a human druj."

"Perish the thought."

Kane paused. "It isn't."

Khalore Angelo had turned to look at them. Her empty sleeve had been folded up and pinned neatly; she was wearing her hair in a neat plaited bun, and had a screwdriver wedged into her belt. She was almost unrecognisable from the messy bakery attendant Kane could dimly recall encountering merely a few weeks ago - there was something sharper about her, something calculated. Had she changed so much in such little time?

They were measuring the weeks and days by attacks now; anything between them blurred into nothingness.

Kane said, softly, "it isn't. It can't be. Right?"

"We must examine all options."

"We need answers, Suero, not thought experiments."

"A Scholar can never promise answers, Hijikata. All we can do is guarantee that we will study the questions."

Kane shook his head. What a frustrating non-answer. That panic was rising in his chest again, though he pushed it back down, though he swallowed it. Staring at the strange stone carcass of the stone druj, he could not help but feel that they were trying to fight thin air, to fight their own shadows. "If you weren't my friend –"

"I am regularly thankful that I am." Lorencio smirked. "To think we were so excited about those tunnels this time last week."

Kane sighed. "We'll still find time for them. All expeditions have been cancelled, and I don't think Kunegunda or Sanav have sleep schedules anymore."

"Good. I was hoping I wouldn't have to ask."

Lorencio put a hand on Kane's shoulder.

"I was," he said, very sincerely, "sorry to hear about Rakel. She was a wonderful woman."

"She knew the risks. She knew what she was doing." Kane nodded. "It's appreciated, general. We'll miss – I'll miss her."

"This is the best way to grieve," Lorencio said. "This is the best way to remember her."

Kane remembered telling Kunegunda as much, before, when he needed her to focus her grief into something useful, something sharp. Something in that city killed him.

You don't have to tell me twice.

Kane, too, did not have to be told twice.

The golem had almost killed them then as well. It had been a constant, an awful constant, for all these long past months – since it had appeared at Mont, since it had smashed through Wall Alliette. It all came back to those two, strange druj. They knew that now.

You could fight what was known. You could dream of winning, when you knew what you were fighting against.

And druj could be killed.

Kane Hijikata knew that better than anyone.