torschlusspanik (n.) "gate-shut panic"; the anxiety induced by the feeling that time is running out for you to act.

"Kaasik."

"Hmm?"

"You're stressing some of the boys in blue."

She paused. The captain smiled.

"Is that straight razor intended for someone in particular?"

Another flash of silver, as she drew the blade in a clear, clean line down the leather band she had wrapped around her knees. Farmers used whetstones to sharpen their knives, but in the mountains, a strop like this was preferred. It made for lighter packing; it made for a quicker escape.

"I was going to set up a little business for myself. Selling haircuts." She flipped the razor between her fingers, effortlessly quickly, and swiped again, slashing silver through the air. Easy as cutting a throat. "Would you like a discount?"

A gloved hand swiped through his wild cloud of dark hair. "Better men than you have tried."

She held her razor aloft for inspection. In its glossy reflection, she could see Lorencio directing a handful men into the tunnel openings, his sapphire coat glinting like a shard of the sky had been sewn into its panels. "Kenta doesn't count."

"I won't tell him that you said so."

His heel twisted in the dust as he crouched beside her. She pointedly did not look at him as he did so, focusing instead on tilting her razor slowly until it captured the little silhouettes in red clustered around the Nav Gate, conspiring quietly with the air of hunted animals. She didn't know their names, but she watched them nonetheless. Oroitz's people – the survivors of the attack in Mainyu. Her attack in Mainyu.

The captain spoke quietly, barely moving his lips. "Lorencio has ordered a curfew. Those gates won't open again after dusk. If we end up on the other side of that wall – I need someone with a head on their shoulders. Someone who isn't afraid of the dark."

Spoken like a man who intended to end up on the other side of that wall.

"And the tunnels?"

"They're readying the cannons. Anything that emerges under the cover of night will be torn to ribbons. No matter what kind of face they're wearing."

Sanav's whispers about human druj must have made their way around the garrison. There was a frisson of fear racing about the walls now, a tension that hadn't existed mere hours ago. It was in the way they shifted their weight, and cast uncertain glances around one another, as though fearful that they might find that a trusted comrade had unexpectedly grown fangs, or an extra eye, or a set of wings.

She folded her razor. It had been Ghjuvan's, but he had used it rarely, complaining bitterly of the difficulty of shaving oneself without a mirror. Instead, he would fling it at her, and find it greatly amusing to see her snatch it out of the air with only a moment's notice, without even looking in his direction, as though she was eternally, silently, attentive to him. And it had been a task to which she had been accustomed, well-practiced – though she had always told Ragnar he might look nicer with a beard. He had never listened. "I'm insulted you thought you had to warn me."

"Call it common courtesy."

"I'd never refer to you as common, sir." She tucked her razor into her pocket. "I'll get Mahesar out. If that's what you're worried about."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

"Make sure that you make it out as well. I'm getting tired," he said, "of funerals, Kunegunda."

She nodded.

"You're holding up okay?"

She was writing letters to the dead in her head, long missives addressed to carcasses. She said, "I'm doing great."

He looked enormously doubtful of this response, but only nodded, and stood, grinding red dust underfoot. He knew better than to ask. He knew what she needed. "We'll leave in forty minutes, then. Gather your equipment, but not much else – I'll meet you at the Aizsaule tunnel entrance."

She nodded. She thought, my Ghjuvan, I sharpened your knife for you. You know how bone tends to blunt it. Do you think I should cut my hair again?

The atelier was empty but for the thralls of the World, who lay so deep in their stupor that she imagined she might have been been able to transform into her curse-form without rousing them. Their peculiarly dead sleep made the atelier seem so much darker, so much quieter, than it ought. She withdrew the curtain which guarded Hyacinth from the rest of the room, and glanced down at her guardedly. The younger girl was pallid now, a thin sheen of sweat perpetually coating her skin, the strange red flush of her skin like half-cooked meat. The swelling on the side of her neck had grown, slowly, into a mass – a tumor – as though her flesh had been engorged by gout. Another was growing on the inside of her wrist; another, closer to her cheek, nestled between nose and eye. That could only be bad news. Spaced between them, at fairly even intervals, were the char-black wounds of the World's runes, carved into the skin in a vain attempt to slip some strings back onto the Sun.

She withdrew.

This whole place felt like a curse-fragment, as though dark magic had seeped into its very foundations. It was a pale echo of Siarkis, the way the grasslands would sing with the memory of its massacres when the wind turned across it at just the right angle, how the house would complain of its distance from the sea if only one knew how to listen to it. The atelier was an oasis of Irij in the middle of Illéa; it was strange and shrouded and steeped in the feeling of the xrafstar's powers. It was most unnerving; it called to the clawed thing within, which needed no excuse to surge forth and pry for the air, for the sun. She had lost too much too soon; it knocked her off-kilter. She was going to slip. She was going to let go. It was only a question of when, and who would be around when she did.

She still felt like she was probing the edges of a wound, checking where it hurt most profoundly. Did she still care for everyone she ought? Was there some fondness there, some love? What had the Lover taken from her? What threads had she tried to pull on?

What gave her the right?

She had left her swords upstairs the night before, still lost in whatever daze had settled over her after the attack on the Watchers in Mainyu, mechanically following a usual routine. She had gone to check on Khalore; she was glad that she had. Glad that she had put eyes on the younger Warrior, before all hell broke loose.

Where she had lain then, he lay now. In this cursed sleep, he was still, as still as a statue, more like something that had never been alive than something that had been and was no longer. She stood over him, and wondered if he needed to breathe. There were pillows scattered about; there were ropes. He could go quietly. He might have appreciated that, if he understood enough to appreciate it. He would have understood how rare it was.

She would have let the world break its own neck if it meant keeping him.

Keeping any of them.

It had done her no good.

"…are you…. Ina?"

She picked up her swords; she set her razor down on the little table by the door. Instead of answering, she simply said, "consider cutting your hair. You're a wanted man."

Dearest Jaga, she thought, as she went down the stairs, feeling rather as though each step pounded out a single word on a non-existent type-writer. You echo in every face around me – did you know that Inanna smiles as you did? Iliusha has your eyes; Eero brews the same tea. They don't need me. I don't want to go. Is it always so difficult, waiting to die?

They killed a druj on the way to the gate that noon. The sun had begun its slow descent towards the horizon once again, very slow, rolling gently along the perimeter of Wall Szymańska for several long moments so that a corner of the kingdom was awash in half-shadow, light filtered grey along its concrete edge. It dulled their swords, that light; it darkened them to a colour closer to slate than silver.

They were darkened again by ichor only a moment later.

The druj had been a small one, and peculiarly humanoid – morbidly pretty, clothed in a set of poisonously green scales. It had a mass of bony growths in the place of a face, and from its head dripped a bouquet of scarlet-stemmed hurricane lilies, and she had pinned it in place with her hooks while Sanav beheaded it.

He seemed calmer once he had done so, once he had picked up its mazard and tucked it under his arm – steadied by the reassurance that they could, in fact, be killed, and that the stone druj was the exception rather than the rule. An azure-coated Scholar accepted the head gingerly from him once they drew closer to the wall, and into the small square of amber light which had been constructed around the tunnel entrance. As good as his word, Hijikata was waiting there, his patented starch-white shirt practically glowing amongst the gloom in which he was otherwise garbed, awash as he was in the shadow of the Wall.

He said, "you're keen to get started, clearly."

She wondered if he noticed how strange it was, that the druj had found its way into the kingdom without setting off any of the alarms, without bells tolling out from any of the watchtowers spaced at intervals along the walls, without alerting any of the Scholars now set to patrol the walls and stand guard over whatever tunnel entrances they had managed to identify.

If he had, he made no mention of it. He said, "Lorencio reckons he can give us five hours. I want Kunegunda on point."

She agreed mutely, and accepted his torch when he offered it, stepping into the cavernous mouth of the tunnels. Lorencio's men had worked through many nights to create this entrance, so that a gentle slope admitted them into the tunnels beneath the walls, rather than requiring a drop down into their depths. Her boots crunched over the overturned gravel as she did so.

Sanav fell into step behind her, and Hijikata behind him, one gloved hand tracing the wall so that they never lost track of their route. She kept a good pace, keeping her torch slightly lower than she ought, so that the light washing up on the wall was checked by gloom rather than shining too far into the tunnels. It wouldn't be helpful to advertise their presence.

The tunnel walls were smooth-hewn stone, clearly carved – though by man, machine or magic, she could not hope to guess. They unfolded without end in sight; somewhere near their end, there was a sound which did not belong to any of the three of them, which shook the dirt ceiling above them and rattled the smooth stone walls. They paused, as one, and listened, as one, and then, deliberately, slowly, Hijikata said, "keep going."

Sanav drew in an awful, shaky breath. She could practically hear his heart juddering. His knuckles were white over his sword.

She kept going.

There was something hideous about moving so far below the earth, about knowing that there was so much earth hanging over their heads, prepared to collapse at any moment – trapping them in, hemming them tightly together. If she loosed her curse, she thought, there would be nowhere for her to go. Nowhere for them to go. Just here. Buried. Entombed alive.

There were worse fates.

She thought, dear Rakel, and then Hijikata spoke sharply behind her – "that's an hour."

She made a quiet sound of affirmation as she stepped carefully into Eero's bootprint and twisted her boot sharply, like she was grinding a spider dead underfoot, erasing any trace of the other Warrior's passage through these tunnels. It had been an amateur mistake. Was he unwell?

Sanav said, "we must be nearly half-way through."

Thereabouts. Her boot scuffed over a divot in the floor – she turned her torch downwards and found that there was a scar in the earth, a deep wound gouged there. Recently enough. The dirt was still curling over the edge of the torn stone. She turned her torch upwards again.

Something glowing in the distance. She drew her sword.

Sanav groaned. Hijikata said, "Kunegunda?"

She slid her foot forward slowly and smiled.

The druj attacked.

It was one of the red-robed figures that sometimes drifted about the town during an attack, malevolent and menacing and silent. The Scholars sometimes called them abbots, for the strange scarlet cloaks that they wore, which covered their entire bodies. Like the druj they had killed earlier, it was human enough to unnerve, druj enough to kill. Its ragged cloak warned of its advance; its ice-white eyes warned of its position. She spun her sword and slashed at it as it attacked, standing her ground, only twisting her boots to fortify her stance, as Sanav scrambled back behind her.

And then it reached for her, that cut-sliced-mutilated smile glowing bleach-bright-white in the shrouded dark of its ragged, smoking hood, those white slit-eyes staring and staring and staring, its strange skeletal fingers curling and uncurling with a dozen joints.

She spun her sword in her hand so that the blade lay along her forearm; she surged forward, pushing the blade flat against the druj's throat, forcing it back towards the wall of the tunnel, trying to use the narrow space to her advantage. With her other hand, she unsheathed her other sword, and drove it up towards its abdomen –

The druj shrieked. Sanav's canister of gas burst from the sheer awful sound; all of their hooks sang with it. It was nearly enough to drive her to her knees. It was nearly enough to split her head – to split her skin. That couldn't be allowed to happen. That could not happen. Not here. They couldn't be allowed to see.

She threw her whole weight against her sword. The druj was fragile; she could sense that, when she was so close to it like this. There was something surging beneath its cloak that might have been a heartbeat, though the liquid that poured from its wound now was ink-black and sludge-thick, putrified in whatever amounted to veins. Was it been afraid? Had it expected one monster to recognise another? They were made of the same stuff, weren't they? Xrafstar and druj. Dark magic and demon-craft. Cursework.

Who had it been?

She drew back and struck the druj's cloaked skull with the hilt of her sword, driving it down again and again until she was striking the stone wall beneath, her hands soaked in ichor, what was left of the druj slumping down to the ground in an oddly human manner, keeling over as though drunk – as though she hadn't just shattered its head, cut its heart out. As though it was merely sleeping.

"Kunegunda."

She wrenched her blade free, and stumbled back, swiping a hand across her face. Had the mask slipped? Had she shown herself?

"Mahesar. Check it."

Sanav obediently rushed to the druj to check it was dead.

Hijikata reached for her hands; she let him take them, her sword clattering to the ground. She had split her knuckles open against the tunnel walls; she was bleeding black. Would he be able to tell what was hers, what was the druj? If he could, he didn't mention it; he just turned her wrists gently to look at her palms, his gloves cold against her skin, and said, "nothing broken."

"Nothing broken," she echoed softly.

He met her gaze. He had very dark eyes. "You can leave some work for the rest of us."

She nodded.

Somewhere very far ahead of them, another light – warmer than the eyes of the druj, more inconsistent and flickering. It illuminated the blue sleeve, the bronzed face, of the Scholar carrying it, accompanied by his fellow academic and by a tall Watcher in red. They had advanced from another branch of the tunnels; they must have come from one of the other gates. "There you are. All quiet for us."

Their eyes fell upon the dead druj. Hijikata said, "not much trouble on our end either."

She thought, darling Thijs, I don't know how to start this letter. I think the good times are killing me.

They emerged into Tiamat, having traversed the whole of the Aizsaule district beneath the earth and having discovered no further druj in that time. This time, they did have to climb out of the tunnels; she accepted Kane's hand, and hauled Sanav out of the tunnels in turn. The other small team of tagma – Søren, Tevye, Åsmund – followed more slowly after them, looking keenly aware that, here in these druj infested lands, they were no longer the experts.

The excubitors were here for a reason.

Kane reached into his coat and withdrew his flare, carefully loading the correct pellet before he fired it into the air. Silver smoke arced into the air in a beautiful crescent, and exploded into a moon-silver cloud overhead, marking their position clearly to Lorencio's men, who would be watching from Wall Szymańska. They allowed the smoke to clear for a moment before Søren fired his signal as well, a pink explosion of mist against the grey clouds.

"Alright," Tevye said. "Let's seal it."

They hauled shut the trapdoor in the earth; Tevye kneeled on it to hold it down as he glued it shut with some strange caulk that the Schools had produced seemingly overnight. They wanted to isolate great stretches of the complexes to allow for a study of them, without fear of the druj, without fear of the unknown; to this end, they were cutting it off on one end.

Hopefully Eero wasn't still down there.

Once that was done, they could pause and rest for a while. As the tagma gathered about one another to drink water and speak softly, for fear of attracting the druj, she walked a little further into the long grass. They were a good distance from the Wall; they had emerged onto an abandoned farm, its fields permitted to go to seed. Wildflowers had taken over a wide swathe of meadow; to the east, there was a thick layer of mulch lying over the paddock where hay had gone unreaped and unharvested. There was a farmhouse here; when she climbed in through the window, she found that there was still cutlery on the table – tin, but shined brightly enough that it shone like silver. Someone had turned over the chair in their mad dash for escape. What had alerted them to their province's fall? Had they heard the bells, or had they seen the druj?

Or, like Rakel recalled, had they simply realised that the animals were scared?

She ascended the stairs. The floorboards sang a funeral madrigal beneath her boots; there was only one bedroom upstairs. The blanket over the smaller bed, tucked into the corner of the room, was littered with tiny white cat hairs. She wondered whether the animal had fled, or starved. Maybe it was living cosy in Kass with the rest of this family.

Ah, but the larger bed was soaked in blood.

Outside again, and there was little sign of druj-wrought carnage. Little sign of druj. The stables were empty, all stall doors hanging open and swinging in the gentle breeze. There was a lead-rope hanging from a hitching post where a horse had fought itself free, the metal clip clinking gently off the metal edge of the barn door. There were riding boots lined along the floor of the stable, three pairs in all – large, large, small.

She untied the rope, and wrapped it in a loop, and set it gently on the floor. There was little here to be learned. It was a shrine to carnage; there was a thousand like it, a thousand-thousand in its vein, all across this tiny kingdom. There was nothing special about this place. Nothing special about the people who had lived here.

Did anyone even remember them?

She had not expected the peal of the bells to carry so far over the land; she had genuinely not thought that they could hear in Tiamat the clanging of the warning in Kass. The sound was accompanied by a burst of blue powder over the walls – a halfway warning. Two-and-a-half hours to go. Two-and-a-half hours before they shut the gates.

When she returned to the group, Kane was pacing. "They should have been here already," Søren was saying, "with the horses. They should have arrived."

Sanav said, "something must have happened to them in Kass."

Kane said, "we can use the hooks. Time will be tight, but if we don't worry about wasting gas, if we build height early, then..."

She moved past the Watcher and the Scholars, until she was standing with the other excubitors. Then, very gently, she kicked Sanav's gas canister, where he had set it down during their break. It tipped over effortlessly, landing soundlessly in the grass, only the sound of boot on metal echoing dully back to them, again and again.

Empty.

Sanav said, nervously, "in the tunnels, it burst, when the druj…." He looked scared. He had the same expression Ragnar had worn the day that she had left for the Programme, the same expression Ilja had worn on the night they had sheltered briefly in an abandoned church outside Opona, the same expression that Zoran had worn the first time that Matthias had spoken for him. Scared, scared, scared, and yet fully, cruelly, aware that the real fear is yet to come. "I thought we were going to have the horses, I didn't even…"

Kane was doing the maths. She watched him closely as he did so, waiting for him to come to the answer she had already calculated.

Søren said, coolly, "we can leave him."

"He's a boy," Tevye said.

"Many were."

She said, "take mine."

"No," Sanav said immediately, "absolutely not."

She'd already racked open the clip, so that her canister dropped from its place on her hip; she caught it with three figners, and swung it over to him immediately. He caught it, looking mutinous. "Absolutely."

"Kinga."

"I'll be fine," she said.

The other tagma were watching her. She should probably look more scared.

"I'll be fine," she said again, but no – she could not even artificially put a waver into her voice. She was alone out here. There was only so much damage that could be done. Only so much that could be lost. "I've done it before."

Kane raised an eyebrow, and then – she almost smiled – yes, there was the understanding. She was meant to be from Mønt, and Mønt, too, had been a bloodbath. Survivors had trickled into the neighbouring provinces gradually; the last refugee had arrived eight days after the fall.

Safe to claim six, then.

"Søren," Kane said, "look after him for me."

She smiled, more out of discomfort than mirth. "Foisting off work, captain?"

"Leaving you to your own devices has historically been an unwise decision."

She stepped forward. "Kane, you don't actually –"

"Åsmund will stay back with you," Søren said abruptly. "Three will move much faster than four, and time is of the essence."

She glanced over at the Watcher. Åsmund didn't have any visible reaction to this suggestion; he had been silent all this time. He had nearly died the night before; she had nearly killed him. This kingdom was too damn small.

"I'll be back tomorrow," Sanav said, as she affixed her spare hooks to his harnesses, keeping back only what she might need to use as a weapon. The blue smoke was dissipating slowly over the walls; they were running out of time for even this plan to succeed. "With horses, with supplies, I promise –"

"Just stay alive," Kane said. He glanced at her, silently encouraging. "That's all we'll be doing."

She smiled, and thought, dear Krzysiek, are you dead yet? Me neither.

Yes, I'm as surprised as you are.

Yes, I'm coming home.

Yes, I made a promise.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Stay awake for me.

Wildflowers wavering. No name for them, only colours: purple, white, blues. Amongst them, darker silhouettes. Four in all. Did they think they were hiding? Did they think she hadn't heard them? Warriors huddled together tightly. Conspiring.

Without her.

Which meant it was about her.

Too far away to hear. But – the anger on their faces. She knew. She knew.

She had known that bastard would tell them eventually. But. She had hoped for more time. More warning. A chance to plan.

Back to the atelier. She was faster. She was stealthier. All her life had been spent thus: sneaking, stealing. As though in preparation. As though in training.

No World, no Devil, Sun and Tower both unconscious. No sign of Szymańska either, the bitch. Usually that would put her on edge. If she couldn't see Szymańska, Szymańska could see her. But, no – the place was empty. Easy to grab the money. Easy to grab her coat. Easy to grab whatever else they had left lying around. Nirari's sword. One of Angelo's strange rusted knives.

Weapons were good. They would be coming. They would be coming to kill her.

She left. Took the crowded path out into the town. Warriors wouldn't try anything here. They couldn't. Too many people. Too much of a scene. They needed to keep their covers. Whereas she… she didn't exist here. Not yet. She wasn't anyone. She could take what she wanted. It was simple: pushing past them. Disappearing again. Vanishing into the crowd. She didn't exist here. Nerezza Astaroth was no one. Not even a civilian.

Would it be enough to go south? Into a province they didn't care about? Start over somewhere in this barbaric, backwards place, steal enough for a quiet life? North? Into a province they had already destroyed?

She could go west. Towards the sea. Towards Irij. But the druj. How could she fight them? Fifty-fity odds were not good enough. Fifty-fifty would get her killed.

Instead: she went east. Towards the centre. Towards the palace. But the Schreaves. What could they guarantee her? Would fifty-fifty be good enough?

Kloet doesn't have the best history of keeping his pawns after he's moved them.

She was not in the habit of following the plans of others.

At each of the gates, she coaxed over a gold-garbed guardsman – they had a strange, Irij name that did not occur to her – and offered him a chunk money to let her through without her papers. One in two accepted her offer. Fifty-fifty. Over and over again. Sometimes the first one she spoke to; sometimes the second.

But they always let her through. Always. She kept going. Kept going. Kept going. Until she was there, in the inner circle. Until she was there, the palace rearing up ahead of her. Until she was there, a grey-suited guard staring down at her with ominous confusion.

"Silas," Nez said, "I want to speak to Silas Schreave."