ilinx (n.) the strange excitement of wanton destruction.

"The Commandant warned us that the enemy would be crafty. They would seek to divide us, to demoralise us, to destroy us. This slander is just another of their capricious tactics..."

"Girlfriend, though. Girlfriend?"

"The captain," Kinga said, her voice a delightful display of exaggerated bitterness, "has always hated me deeply."

Khalore laughed. She couldn't help it.

After a moment, Kinga laughed too.

After a morning spent with their respective masters – Khalore moving in Lorencio's shadow and awkwardly scrawling one-handed notes, Kinga looking suitably menacing whenever the captain said something ominous which required some visual punctuation – they had excused themselves to join their comrades at the meeting that the Hierophant had organised out of Eero's earshot, out of view of Nerezza Astaroth. Lorencio was still overseeing the removal of the Tower's golem remains; Kane was negotiating barracks space for the two soldiers that remained to him. Their absence, Khalore was certain, would not be noted.

They were cutting across the edge of the park now, if that was a term that could be fairly utilised for these enormous, verdant meadows; fields of heather stretched wide and purple before them, like a strange lavender quilt thrown lazily over the hills. If Khal squinted, she could just about spot the tiny dark dots in the valley below, which might have been Ilja or Zoran or Inanna, moving slowly to meet one another – spiders scurrying to their webs.

Kinga said, "let me know what they have to say."

"You aren't coming?"

"It would seem too suspicious. All of us together."

No – that tightwire look in her eye. Despite her show of camaraderie that morning, she hadn't forgiven them yet for doubting her. For backing her into a corner, and forcing her to... She was too much an animal to abide such treatment without biting back. Khalore had seen that same look in a mirror, many a time. More often, after losing her arm; less often, after joining the Schools. She had thought it lost from Kinga's eyes as well, once – when she had found an exorcism for the most violent of her instincts in the excubitors, when she had found an outlet for the most gentle of her tendencies in her friends. Now it was back. Would it return to Khalore's reflection as well?

Khalore said, "if it comes to a vote, what shall I say for you?"

"A vote?"

"On the World. The Tower. The whole bloody business."

Kinga had trailed her fingers very gently along the wavering bushels which lined the path down to the meeting place; abruptly, her fingers tightened and twisted, and she wrenched a set of stems from the ground, quite casually. "You think that is what this is about?"

"There is a good chance."

Kinga was shredding lavender between her fingers. "How many years does he have left? Eero?"

"Can't be many," Khalore said, "at this point."

"Right," Kinga said. "Not many. So."

She turned, and started to walk away, boots grinding and crunching the gravel underfoot as she began to climb the steps back towards civilisation.

Khalore arched her eyebrow. She wasn't quite certain whether her friend had intended this argument for or against the prospect. "Was that a fully formed thought, Kinga, or are you…?"

"He's him," Kinga said. Khalore could hear her irritation, the suggestion of an eyeroll in her words as the breeze carried them back to her. "Unfortunately. He's Eero. And Pekka's not Pekka. And he's the World, and he's dying, and then he won't be anything at all. But Pekka will be Pekka again. He'll be him. Unfortunately."

Khalore squinted. "Have you hit your head, Kinga?"

"He's thinking like a Szymański," Kinga said, with a laugh. "Is that such a crime?"

"Playing dice with death? With the curses?" Khalore frowned. "Well, I think Ina will outvote us."

"So don't give her a vote." Kinga threw the words over her shoulder, lazily. Like it was such an easy solution – so simple. "He doesn't belong to her, you know."

Khalore scoffed. "Who do any of us really belong to?"

Kinga shrugged, and kept walking. And, well – Khalore really didn't like to be ignored.

"Who do you belong to, then?"

Kinga paused, and turned, like the words had truly struck her. For a split second – yes, the way she tilted her head just slightly, the way those thick brows cut across her dark eye, the way her mouth twisted – Khalore truly was not certain of what name might drop from her lips. Kane, she thought, despite everything, despite Rakel, despite the blood under her nails. Kane. Or Eero? Or Konrad, or Ragnar or Ghjuvan, or –

But finally, Kinga said, "her name is Małgosia. She's still afraid of the dark, and of big dogs, which is forgiveable because she's seven years old. So she'll be fifteen or sixteen or seventeen by the time she..." A grimaced smile, broader when she caught sight of how horrified Khalore must have looked. In some strange way, Kinga delighted in being Szymańska. She delighted in being strange and different and awful. "And she looks like Jaga, and she's going to be as tall as Dagmara, but people say she has my… eye. "

Khalore said, "you do love to bring the mood down, don't you, Ki?"

Kinga smiled. "Stupid questions get stupid answers. Enjoy your lunch, Khal. Put my vote across fairly."

She put her hands into her pockets, and she kept going, until the green of her coat and melded into the phtalo sweep of the grassy hills and it was only the sheen of her inky hair against the undulating clouds of edelweiss, strung through with lavender, that could distinguish the Warrior from the nature surrounding her.

In contrast to the austere wit of Kinga's company, entering the copse Zoran had chosen for their gathering was – Khalore struggled to find a word other than warm. The day was slowly brightening; harebells, wild cranesbill, crocuses, shielded their meeting from view. The breeze rustling softly through their leaves bounced ineffectually off the back of her navy coat; she was keenly aware of how loud her boots crunched over the soil as she approached. Ilja was finding it amusing, though he couldn't have arrived very long before she had: he was still exchanging pleasantries with Zoran and Inanna, holding his hands behind his coat, looking exactly like the guard he was claiming to be.

Did they all wear their lies so confidently? Would Khalore ever be mistaken for a real Illéan – a real Scholar? The thought almost made her laugh. No, she thought, only a moron would ever commit such a drastic error of judgement.

"Afternoon," she said, "sorry if I'm late."

Ina glanced at her. Her eyes were ringed with red, the whites of her eyes streaked bloody with exhaustion and over crying. It dulled the gold of her eyes; it made Khalore realise how brown they could look, under the right lights, how normal. It was a tableau of cracked porcelain; Kinga's words echoed in Khalore's ears, cruelly relevant, cruelly relatable. We've all lost someone. I'm sorry to say that it isn't so special.

Khalore's own thoughts entangled with them, barbed wire in skin: I should have got him back. He shouldn't be dead. It's not really fair.

She tried not to think about it. Not when Ina looked like that. But it pounded at the base of her skull like a migraine. Impossible to forget, even if you could ignore it for a little bit.

"You weren't too far behind Schovajsa," Ina said.

"And I was exceptionally late," Ilja said. "So –"

Khalore cut him off. "Some of us have actual jobs involving actual work, Schovajsa."

"Wingmanning Belle is a considerable amount of work, Angelo."

"What," Ina said, feigning shock, "you're telling me our Eunbyeol isn't the most romantic of heroines?"

"Well," Ilja said, "she does seem to be doing better than the vast majority of Selected."

"There you go," Ina said, "we have confirmation – black magic is afoot."

Khalore glanced at Zoran, who was silent – who had not even glanced up to acknowledge her presence. He was standing at the edge of the clearing, scuffing out a scar in the shorn soil; when Ina was not speaking, she was watching him from the corner of her eye, clearly comfortable in her expectation that he would not catch her, so fixedly was he watching the weeds. Khalore watched Ina, and Ina watched Zoran, and it was only a moment before it became apparent that Ilja was watching Khalore, as he said, "well. Are we just gathered to appreciate the weather?"

"Not much to appreciate," Ina said. She was wrapped in a shawl; Khalore had imagined it to be a matter of safety and disguise rather than warmth, until she noted the repressed shiver running along the Lover's arms. Was it cold? She could not feel it. "Have you anything to report, Khal? Lorencio is still treating you kindly?"

"Yes," she said, "yes, of course."

"You say that like it should be obvious," said Ilja, arching an eyebrow. "Should we cease to expect devilry from the devils, Lore?"

"No," she said, automatically, immediately. "Of course not."

But even as she said it, she could hear in her own voice how hollow her protest sounded. Lorencio had made a delightful cup of tea for her that morning, and lent her a pen when she had scrabbled for one in a panic during the Scholarly meeting. He was Kur, like her. No more damned than she was, then.

No less.

"Ilja," Ina said, disapprovingly. Of course, Inanna cared more. She was closer to the ordinary Illéans, a closeness borne of her cover identity in the bakery, where she had slowly garnered enough information – enough knowledge – for the Warriors to begin to find their way in the world. She would have blinded herself to their heritage, purposefully or otherwise. But she was Kur, Khalore thought, just the same. Pekka had been Kur. Zoran still was. "Don't say such things."

"Then perhaps we should wait for Kinga," Ilja said, "and then – "

"Zoran gathered us for a reason," Khalore said, "didn't you, Zor?"

He looked up. Khalore found herself regretting that she had drawn his attention whatosever. Had his eyes always looked so hollow? She found herself desperately wishing that she could rewind the days so that everyone would look as they usually did, not this grotesque set of strangers wearing her friends' clothes, all their eyes some form of broken or angry or empty, even Ilja appearing familiar more from her expectation that he ought to be so. They had grown up together. Of course she ought to know what he looked like – it was that instinct, that she ought, rather than that she did, which struck her when she caught sight of him. Never mind that she forgot what he looked like, anytime her eyes slid away from him; never mind that she struggled to keep an image of his face in her mind. A dead man was more familiar than the man standing beside her. She could conjure a dead man's voice so much easier than the voice of the man who was speaking right now as he said, "I don't suppose we can expect good news."

"After this week," Ina said, "how bad could it be?"

Zoran's eyes flickered away.

Khal said, softly, "Zor. How bad could it be?"

He said, "it's Ghju."

He didn't need to say anything else; the name alone was almost a gut punch, spoken the way he spoke it now, like it was sharp. Like he relished it for that sharpness. Like he was punishing himself for uttering the name. For being in a position where he had to utter it. For knowing what he knew. Khalore was struggling to draw breath, like all the air had been drawn out of the room, ahead of what was sure to follow. She could not say why – she had this sense – of what –

Ina said, "what is?"

"I need to tell you," Zor said, and Khalore had that awful feeling that he was trying to excuse whatever would follow – to apologise for it, in some strange way, to convey how sorry he was that he had to tell them, while knowing that he had to – "About Ghjuvan. What happened."

He died. That was what happened. He had died. He was dead. Khalore found herself staring resolutely at Zoran, to avoid accidentally looking at Ina, accidentally communicating the resentment that still simmered whenever she considered that finality. He was gone. Gone where they would follow, eventually. So perhaps not gone. But dead, certainly dead, gone and dead and –

"Nez called him." Zoran's voice was an aural horror story. Khalore wanted him to stop. She didn't want him to say anything else. If he said anything else, then she would have to – "We were in the tunnels, and there was a druj, and Nez called him – "

"Zor?" Ina spoke softly. So softly. Dangerously softly. How could she speak so softly? Didn't she want to scream? Didn't she want to shriek? Khalore wanted to. Khalore found her mouth twisting into a smile, white and uncertain, with the effort of keeping back whatever horrible sound was caged within her. "What are you telling us?"

"Nez used him as a human shield."

Khalore was smiling. Wasn't that strange? For someone as angry as she was? She had forgotten to stop smiling, so now she was standing here, listening to Zoran – well, certainly hearing him, perhaps not listening, – and she was smiling.

"She's the reason he's dead," Zoran said.

Ina translated these words for him, adopting that same strange, hollow, tone of voice, like they were a single person cruelly split between two bodies, amputated by the other's mere existence.

"She killed him."

The world fell away.

Just like that.

Khalore was still smiling. She was in an oasis of utter calm. Still smiling.

Ilja's hand tightened over her shoulder – when had it landed there? – and he held her still – when had she started to move? – and he said something that didn't really sound like anything, words that didn't really have shape or meaning, some plea that might as well have gone unspoken for all the heed that Khalore paid it – that she could pay it.

"Schovajsa," she said. Was that her voice? It positively chilled the marrow. She would have, ordinarily, fought, but on this occasion – she could not. It was taking all her strength not to do something far more dire, something far more drastic. She did not trust herself not to do more damage than she ought. "You can let me go."

"You're going to kill her."

"Yes."

His fingers dug into her jacket. "Then you can't go alone."

Behind them, grief-stricken: "Ilja."

But he spoke to Khalore alone. "She's a threat to all of us now."

Khalore turned, and met Ilja's gaze. Like Ina's, they were, under this light, a warm brown, flecked through with the tiniest strands of green. She trusted him. Implicitly. When had she started to trust him so?

"She is."

"She's a threat," Ilja said, "to the mission."

"Yes."

Ina let out a sound that was somewhere between a sob and a shriek of pure frustration. No one was listening to her. Khalore could relate.

And Zoran –

Zoran wasn't looking at them. He was looking at Ina, expectantly, waiting. As though he thought she would join them. As though he was watching a play, long scripted, for which he had dressed the sets and organised the marks and perfected the lighting. As though he was watching the final domino, having already tipped over the very first.

Ina said, "we need to stop. We need to think about this. We need to –"

She was playing her role. She was doing what she thought she ought – what she had to do. If Khal and Iliusha were set on bloody vengeance, then Ina had to plead for even-minded reflection. Even if she didn't believe in it. Even if she didn't want it. Even if she knew that she would have done precisely the same if it happened to Pekka, if it happened to Zoran. She had to try to warn them. She had to play her part. She would have felt like she had let them fall blindly into tragedy if she didn't.

And if Ina was playing her role, then, certainly, Khal was playing hers.

"Warriors protect one another," Khalore said. "We love one another."

She pulled her knife from her belt. Ilja was staring at Zoran now, some silent plea Khalore could not interpret.

"I don't know how you love, Nanna," Khalore said. "But this – this is what I'm good for."