Vinduhari, Bahuchara had called the slums surrounding the Sard Palace. Ruqaiya had thought, from afar, that the Sard Palace had looked decrepit, but this neighborhood was worse. Once-grand haveli and shops were literally crumbling on the streets they skulked through on their way to the palace, fallen walls and collapsed roofs making some of the streets unnavigable. What had once been the wealthy urban area where people from across the land came to trade and buy with the Radiant Citadel, or travel to Concordant lands, had fallen over the centuries into ruin.

But it wasn't abandoned. Light peeking out glassless windows from behind ramshackle wooden slats spoke of candles and diyas, and that meant people. Though the streets were empty–they hadn't seen a soul since entering the Vinduhari quarter–people clearly lived inside those husks, scraping together whatever they could for their evening meal. Little laughter and song peeked out of those windows with the light, but that there was any at all spoke to the resilience of the people who huddled together within the rotting buildings.

A string of paltry, faded flowers draped around the doorframe the two had paused beside. Ruqaiya didn't recognize the flower, but it was evident that great care had been taken to pierce each one in the center to string them together. Such care, such devotion, did not come from those who were hopeless. How could they have hope in this place of destitution and struggle? They would make good farmers, she thought. Seeds and hope were a farmer's main tools. Hope like stringing together flowers and hanging them over your doorframe.

They might not feel the miasma of evil the way that she did, but by the boarded up windows and the completely empty streets, Ruqaiya could tell that they knew about it. If Risen cultists had taken up in the Sard Palace at the center of this neighborhood, then more than one victim had been Reaped from these streets. What had been a hot point of vileness from the roof of Tipaluru Fort had become a fog permeating the area. Ghûls were haunting the alleys, hunting prey. Rats scurrying close against the walls were the only things moving, except for her and Bahuchara. They had reign over the night, and so unexpected, apparently, were the two of them pausing in a doorway that a large rat the color of Ganraala loam stopped a few steps from them and rose on its haunches to chitter at them like a scold before scampering away.

Even here, dim strings of colored paper lights stretched roof to roof as Chamakutsav approached. Cantiran deva, the Pradani called the moon, husband to the sun, Curiyan devi. An unlikely union. An impossible union. There must be a few mantriks in the neighborhood, capable of little else but easing sickness and healing simple wounds, and weaving small enchantments like this to bring light and color into their life. High above the woven strings of lights, the waning gibbous moon had begun the countdown to Pehli Sabah.

"What did the rat say to you?" Bahuchara whispered.

Even the whisper seemed startlingly loud to Ruqaiya in the quiet of the neighborhood. "What?"

"The rat," she pointed in the direction the rodent had scurried, toward the palace. "It was talking to you."

Ruqaiya gave the hijra the look her mother had given her a time or two. Too many times, really. "How would I know? Do you think I speak rat?"

She pushed out of the doorway and continued on to the palace, now only a few cross streets distant. Down the side street she had taken to avoid direct line of sight, she couldn't see the main gate, and only the peaks of the chhatri rose in sight above the crumbling rooflines.

Bahuchara slipped in beside her. "I thought ghazi could talk to animals. Chit chat with a chipmunk. Converse with a cow. Gossip with a griffon."

Ruqaiya shushed her. "We're getting close, keep it down." No sense warning anyone that they were coming, or drawing ghûls their way. "Some do. Not me. Not something I learned." Hard to learn anything when you're alone in the wilderness hunting undead. When anyone who might teach you is dead. The fiery-hands mudra Bahuchara had taught her earlier was the first thing she had learned to do since before the war. "Maybe it wasn't saying anything. It's just a rat."

"Are you sure?" Bahuchara tugged on her arm to slow her.

Ruqaiya jerked her arm free and looked around. "Look, there's another one. Why don't you just do a little dance and talk to it?"

The hijra's wide eyes narrowed to near closing. "You are entirely too free with your criticism."

They had been like this since leaving the palace, toying with each other. On the roof of Tipaluru Fort, they had formed a bond of common cause, and the surge of purpose that filled Ruqaiya had driven them forward. Down the steps, and back to the large hall where they found the others asleep, thankfully. Ruqaiya had slung on her now-dry leather vest and buckled up the straps as quietly and quickly as she could, then strapped on her belt and sword, and wrapped her pagri around her head. Bahuchara's only preparation seemed to be pulling a pair of elegant soft slippers onto her bare feet and returning an arch eyebrow at the derisive shake of Ruqaiya's head at her shoes.

Vikrim snorted a snore and rolled over onto his side. Ruqaiya hesitated, wanting to wake him up to come along. Going in search of Risen without him seemed unfair to him. And lonely. She'd probably forgive him for drawing her down this path, but not yet. She wanted to simmer a little longer. Turning to follow Bahuchara back to the door, she spied Laksha awake and watching her. The young woman under a velvet blanket next to the toddler flicked emotionless eyes to the hijra, who glanced fleetingly at her, then back to Ruqaiya, a long gaze that seemed fraught with meaning that she couldn't read. Ruqaiya waited for Laksha to say whatever it was that her eyes were failing to convey, and after an eternity of silence, she turned to go.

Bahuchara had led them swiftly through the sleep-silent fort, through rooms of uncertain purpose to the vast kitchens. Getting out of the fort wouldn't itself be a problem. There were likely several doors and gates piercing the walls surrounding the structure. It was what waited outside the gates that was the problem. Crescent Tigers, armed with swords and baghs and crossbows, surely still circled the fort. Lanterns and braziers and eldritch lamps would cast enough light for them to be easily spotted. Even her hunter's craft couldn't hide her in the wide open spaces just outside the walls.

Bahuchara didn't seem deterred or even hesitant. Her slippered feet made no sound on the cobbles outside the kitchens' door. Past crates of vegetables and barrels of oil and wine and half-emptied carts, a gate stood ajar in the wall. The land inside the walls was Gayakuta, and only the foolish would invade Gayakutan territory, even if it was just an embassy.

"Now what?" Ruqaiya had prompted the hijra. "We can't just walk out."

"Yes, we can," Bahuchara had assured her, smiling mischievously. "Stand there and don't move. When it's done, I need to be able to take your hand. And don't make a sound."

Sinuous and sultry, Bahuchara's dance had lasted only a handful of seconds, the mantra muttered low enough to not clear the walls. And when it was done, she was gone! And so was she!

"Iwa save me!" she had blurted, holding up hands that weren't there to eyes that weren't there, but could clearly see.

"Shush," Bahuchara's voice came from a few steps away.

Looking down, Ruqaiya was hit by a wave of vertigo, as if she were falling. Her body and legs were no longer there, and so logically, whatever had been holding her up was gone, so her eyes, her head, must fall to the ground. She had heaved panicked breaths of disorientation, until she felt an invisible hand fumble upon her invisible body and then grip her own hand.

"You could've warned me!" she had hissed.

"Whatever you do," Bahuchara had answered in her non-answering way, "don't let go. I can't see you either, and we don't want to get separated."

Walking while invisible was unsettling, and she had tried to keep her eyes forward as she clutched Bahuchara's hand for assurance. It must be what ghosts felt like all the time. Or could they see themselves? They had slipped through the ring of Crescent Tigers and other soldiers, in colors of blue and silver, with Ruqaiya holding her breath.

"Bhima's soldiers," Bahuchara told her once they had reached the safety of the surrounding neighborhood streets. "In league with Sameer, apparently."

They had sat in an alley until the enchantment had worn off. Even sitting was so vexing–not seeing where her hands were placed to support her, or where she put her feet–that Ruqaiya had closed her eyes. Blindness and darkness she knew how to operate in; invisibility would take some practice.

"You could have just left," Bahuchara's disembodied voice had come in the silence of their waiting. "You could have gotten outside Jharoda before the prarthana wore off."

The thought had crossed her mind more than once as they had threaded their way through the soldiers. She chewed it even then.

"Or did she go and I'm talking to empty air?" Bahuchara had chuckled grimly when Ruqaiya didn't answer. "She played me," she said to herself. "Well that's just great. Ruqaiya?"

It would be so easy. Just slip away through the streets and out of the city. Not her fight. Not her problem. She could be home by Pehli Sabah.

"Now I have to get back inside the fort." Ruqaiya had heard, but could not see, Bahuchara scrambling to get up off the ground. "Oh, Vikrim," she'd sighed, "what am I going to tell you…"

"I'm here," Ruqaiya had said at last. Plucked like a string.

Now they peered around the corner of a building at the open wide gateway into the walled Sard Palace compound. Whatever gates had once swung from those rusted hinges had long ago disintegrated or had been salvaged away. Even as they watched, a pair of fetid ghûls scuttled out and were quickly lost from sight in the streets.

"Should we…"

"No," Ruqaiya spat. "They'll just make more if we don't take them down."

She dashed then to the opening, pausing with her back to the gate post to peer inside. When she looked back, Bahuchara was hurrying to join her in a squatted down hunch.

"What are you doing?" Ruqaiya mouthed at the absurdity.

"I'm being stealthy," the hijra replied.

"I can still see you. Just because you squat doesn't mean no one can see you."

What had felt like a fog of wrong around the palace from the roof of Tipaluru Fort now had a core that she could feel pulling at her. Or stabbing at her, she wasn't sure which. Both. Somewhere in the left wing of the long building rising up so high that the chhatri were no longer visible from where she stood below. Like the gate, the great arched portal into the building stood doorless, at the top of a long, wide flight of stairs. A few rats scurried across the steps and among the overgrown brush and trees in the courtyard that must have once been elegant gardens.

"Somewhere over there," she pointed out for Bahuchara. "Follow me and don't squat."

Without waiting for Bahuchara's indignation, Ruqaiya hurried across the open space and up the stair, exposed all the while to any eyes who might be peering from the countless unlit balconies and arcades that fronted the structure. She stopped with her back against the outside wall, just beside the dark portal.

They didn't have a plan. They hadn't talked about a plan. Stay alive. Kill the Risen and any fiends. She and Vikrim never talked about plans; they just did what needed to be done. Bahuchara wasn't Vikrim.

"Look," she said to the hijra, who stood close beside her, "I'm gonna stab a lot of people. Whoever's in front of me or in my way or comes at me. They're not gonna want to be stabbed so they're gonna be stabbing, too. There's gonna be a lot of stabbing and a lot of blood. Got it?"

Bahuchara pressed her fingers and palms together then shook them out. "Got it." She rolled her head and neck in a circle. "Look," she said, "I'm going to do a lot of dancing." She pulled one arm in a shoulder stretch. "There's going to be a lot of fire, and a lot of lightning," she explained primly. She stretched the other shoulder and arm. "Don't get in my way."

Well, well, little hijra. Let the dance begin.

"I tried to warn you," a man's voice said as he came around the corner of the doorframe.

Ruqaiya grabbed him by the throat with one hand and spun him around to slam him back against the wall while her other hand snatched her katar and held it to his throat. Only then realizing he was completely naked. And hairy. Hair the color of Ganraala loam on his head and curled tightly on his arms and chest. Still, she kept the katar at his throat even as she averted her eyes.

"Rat," she hissed, bile rising inside her.

"Wererat," he croaked through his constricted throat.

"Vermin either way."

He was shorter than she, with beady, dark eyes. His brown skin was dull and dry, but he was muscled in a wiry way. A long pair of mustaches curled in tight circles to points by his twitching nose.

"I told you that rat was saying something to us," Bahuchara crowed. "Let him go."

Grudgingly, Ruqaiya released her grip, and the man coughed as he struggled to regain his breath. She didn't sheath the katar, though, but kept it at the ready.

"You could've just talked to us."

"Not without putting myself and my family at risk," he rasped, massaging his throat.

"And you're safe now?"

"No," he took a long, ragged breath. "But now I know you're not just two idiots who got lost in Vinduhari. I heard you talking just now. You might be able to get them out. Or you might get them killed."

"Who?"

"My family." His eyes both glared and pleaded. "My children."

Great. Children. Wererat children, but children.

"Tell me."

Rishar Nahida, of the Bakarni Mischief. She listened to the details but they didn't matter to her, though Bahuchara seemed enthralled by his story. Driven from their home in the Barkarni Temple when Bhima's grandfather Duleep Sathanam had burned it to the ground some twenty odd years ago, they had moved into the abandoned Sard Palace. No one bothered them, and they had an amicable if wary relationship with the people of Vinduhari. Rishar's Mischief had grown, he'd married, had seven pups, all now about six years old. And all abducted by the Risen cultists who had fled the destruction and had established a sanctum in the undercroft of the Sard Palace.

"They're in a wire cage," he told them, "with others. It's how they keep us compliant."

That "compliant" had a loaded meaning to it that Ruqaiya wasn't ready to pick at. She needed information, and Rishar supplied it–rough numbers, layout, positions. "There'll be three of us against…"

"Two," Rishar corrected her. "If they see me, they'll kill the others."

"Only if they kill us first," Ruqaiya swore.

"Yes," he nodded, "exactly." Rishar crouched down to all fours. "I can't take that risk."

"But you want us to take it," Ruqaiya said to the large rat that he became before scurrying away.

In her head, she visualized the layout Rishar had described as if he had drawn it for her. She eased out her talwar, both hands with blades now, and motioned with her head for them to proceed. The Sard Palace was an eerie husk of a once grand palace, lit only by the mostly-full moon shining through windows whose shutters were long gone. Little debris cluttered the dark marble floor worn smooth by the passage of thousands of feet over hundreds of years. Whatever had been left behind when the Concord Jewel stopped coming had long since been scavenged or disintegrated. Curiously, little dirt covered the floor, as if it had been carefully swept, like a threshold.

Rows of potbellied columns held up a stone dome high above the wide hall, lost in the darkness. Ruqaiya glanced down both long aisles stretching to either side, a series of rooms and galleries that Rishar had described as administrative spaces that he and his Mischief had made their home. She heard the chitter and scurry of rats in the darkness stretching out into the wings. They were watching her and Bahuchara. Likely Rishar was among them.

Bahuchara tugged at her elbow from behind to draw her attention to the pair of staircases towards the back of the hall, though she had already spotted them. Wide, marble steps lead both up and down from the facing staircases–deeper darkness above, the echo of light from below. And the echo of voices.

One voice, and then many. Call and response. They had come in the midst of a Risen service. Unregulated, random seeming, the Risen prayed and held their rites according to no schedule, as if in defiance of any divine order. Or perhaps that demonic disorder was part of their faith, of their deviant god. Either way, it was a perversion.

"It's not too late to go back," she turned to the wide-eyed Bahuchara as they stood at the top of steps descending down.

"We've come this far," she answered bravely, her chin high.

"I meant you," Ruqaiya clarified. "This is what I do."

"Then do it, ghazi. Let's do it."

Brave or foolish, heroic or reckless. She was grateful either way. She'd rather it were Vikrim behind her, she thought as she began the descent on whisper-quiet feet. And yet, she was beginning to think that Bahuchara was a bit more savage than she had initially thought. Perhaps, unlike her Gayakutan, the hijra wouldn't mind killing the devotees. Yes, she smiled grimly to herself. Bahuchara might even enjoy it as she did.

At a landing and turn of the stair, she crouched down to peer over the railing to the floor of the undercroft, kicking herself as she did for chiding Bahuchara earlier about crouching. She could almost hear the hijra clicking her tongue behind her. Hanging oil lamps cast flickering light on the dirt floor and shimmered off the wire cages in the wall to the left, just as Rishar had said. Huddled forms in the shadows of the cages remained largely still as she eyed the doors. Large locks hung from latches, no keys hanging in sight. They'd have to wait.

But they stirred. Slowly, a few rose and moved to the front, into the flickering light. They must have smelled her and Bahuchara with their were-ish noses. Dozens of young ones, clad in scraps of clothes, dirty from confinement, curious and uncertain. She and the hijra must have smelled like hope to them. Like fresh air. A fog of grief descended upon her mind, her head spun, and she fell back into the shadows on her behind. She couldn't breathe, was she breathing? Her hand jerked so quickly to her heart that she nicked her own cheek with the katar she still clasped.

She felt hands grab her face and Bahuchara was there, her dark eyes close to her own. The hijra was saying something to her, concern writ on her face, but the words didn't penetrate the fog.

"Tell them to hide," she managed to gasp. "Tell them to stay in the shadows."

And then Bahuchara was gone. Weapons still clutched, she crossed and pressed her arms against her chest, breathing, breathing, breathing, until she could breathe without trying. And then Bahuchara was back, kneeling in front of her.

"We have to move," the hijra urged her. "The children said…"

She didn't want to hear what the children said. She couldn't bear it. She pushed herself to her feet, avoiding looking their way, and banished the fog with her resolve. "Let's go."

Two doors into the sanctuary–what had once been two separate rooms but the Risen had knocked down the dividing wall between. They paused in the center of the long hall that connected the two doors, lit by oil lamps attached to the wall. From the shadowed corridors by the nearest door, they had glimpsed several devotees moving about.

"There's a lot of them," Bahuchara whispered.

"Are you sure you can manage it?"

"They might see me, since I have to see it, but yes."

Brave or foolish. "Stay as far back in the shadows as you can. Remember, the one in the purple sherwani."

Bahuchara merely nodded, both to Ruqaiya and to herself, before separating to go to one end of the hall by the door and disappear around the corner outside of it. Ruqaiaya wouldn't be able to see it happen but she would know when it did.

She slipped to the other door to wait, her back against the wall just outside it, and heard the words coming from within.

"...give you this death so that you may make new life in your image. Ereshkigal, Lord of the True Life, accept our offering and grant this being new purpose. Living is grief."

"Living is grief," a dozen voices echoed.

"Take away his pain."

"Take away…"

She blocked the voices out, realizing there was a victim inside about to be butchered in their foul rite and brought back in undeath. Ruqaiya turned her head to silently shout for the hijra to hurry when it happened.

Startled exclamations of wonderment interrupted the service, and the sounds of people shuffling and falling. Within the awestruck and bewildered murmuring, she heard one word repeated: Ereshkigal. She dared peek around the corner, and there the great god stood, across from her by the far wall. Twice again as tall as the acolytes, his great grey wings outstretched to either side, the fearsome demon clutched a bloodied, mangled body in one hand and stretched the other out toward the now-kneeling Risen members in malediction. Claws like that of an owl for feet led upward to bird-skin calves, turning finally to a flesh that seemed to sag from its once muscular shape. A pleated and sashed purple skirt hung from his waist, making his bloodless skin look grey. Wild tangled hair hung from a head most prominently marked by dead black eyes–the eyes of a ghûl.

"Come, my servants," the being intoned in a booming, low voice. "Come reap your reward for your devotion."

Fifteen or so grey and purple garbed men and women had fallen to their knees or prostrated themselves on the ground. Ruqaiya spied a naked man, a gnome, bound to a large stone altar in the middle of the room, still alive, she was grateful to see, though he gibbered in terror. And at the left of the crowd surrounding Bahuchara's illusion, the Celebrant in his purple sherwani knelt with his back to her. They all had their backs to her. Good.

Ruqaiya was no hijra, or unbound Taarik, or Mandala Yaksha, but the ghazi had learned a few tricks from the Sewangurak. Her weapons sheathed, she wove her unencumbered hands in a mudra around a bundle of sticks from her pouch, centering her eyes close to the Celebrant. The acolytes had mostly collapsed where they had stood when the illusion began–she had hoped that they would gather close to it, so she could catch them all, but she'd underestimated the dread and awe Ereshkigal elicited. She hoped Bahuchara could hold her prarthana long enough for her to complete her own.

She should never have thought it, for the image shuddered even as she did and collapsed suddenly into nothingness. From the shadow by the doorframe, she couldn't see around the far corner to see if Bahuchara was alright, nor could she spare her concentration on the sticks. Startlement again echoed from the room as the image vanished, and she'd only have a second to…

There!

Sudden shouts and cries of pain resounded through the large room as the spikes she'd called forth shot up from the floor, piercing many of the Risen where they knelt or lay prostrate. When she looked again, several had leapt up, clutching their wounds as each movement inflicted even more. A few had jumped back from the circle of spikes to safety, frantically looking around for their cause.

Now, Bahuchara, she shouted in her mind. Now!

Nothing happened. Another quick glance inside revealed that the Celebrant was injured. He was struggling to escape the circle of spikes, slashing his feet further with each step, but he was nearly free. Already, his hands were weaving, his fingers clenching and shaping a mudra. But Bahuchara might be in trouble. She could rush the Celebrant and catch him before he completed his prarthana, but Bahuchara…

With a growl of frustration, Ruqaiya abandoned the door and rushed down the hall, drawing her talwar with one hand and her katar with the other. They had been so close to ending them all. Blue light flashed around the corner as she neared, casting sparks, followed by a shriek and a thud. As she made the corner, she saw a grey robed woman convulsing on the ground, and Bahuchara was clutching a wound in her forearm that seeped blood through her fingers.

"Go!" the hijra shouted at her. "Go!"

Go, she did, then, racing into the hall with blades ready. Befuddled but angry and bloody Risen Reapers and Grievers in grey struggled to free themselves from her spikes, and the few that had not been caught in her circle spun to face her, daggers drawn. Behind them, the Celebrant, doubly outraged by the false illusion and the trap, wove his arms in a twisted incantation that she'd be unable to thwart until she'd dealt with the blades facing her, leaving her vulnerable to his dark work. Leaping around the table with the bound gnome, she wrought her righteous fury upon them, the talwar slicing and the katar jabbing, and blood soaked her face and arms, until she was spitting it back out of her mouth. Mindless of anything but clearing a path, she was shoved back against the sacrificial table and crashed to the ground by the force of a fiery blast that struck those still in her circle of spikes. The hijra had recovered and joined the battle!

The cries of the burning filled her ears, even as the back of her leather vest smoldered and steamed from the flames. She smelled burning flesh, and burning hair–some of it probably her own–and pushed herself up. Smoke billowed in the unvented hall, obscuring the two remaining Reapers, their grey garments further blurring them. Bahuchara's fire leapt from the dead to benches and crates and climbed up wooden shelving, casting flickering, eerie light and shadow across walls and columns bearing crudely painted images of white owls screeching in wing-spread attack until they seemed to come to life.

Coughing, tears slipping from her irritated eyes, Ruqaiya snatched up her fallen talwar before the others could fall upon her. She thought she spotted the glimmer of swords to her right, and ahead of her the Celebrant had risen from the explosion and was again weaving his prarthana. Beside her, the gnome strained and pulled at his ropes, arching his back to try to wrest free. The few seconds she took to slip her katar through to slice his ropes were enough for the Celebrant to crow his final incantation, and even as the gnome bolted off the table, she was struck.

The flesh above her right hip suddenly ripped apart as if by a jagged knife, a deep, ragged cut, though her leather vest itself was untouched by the Celebrant's curse. Ruqaiya fell to her knees, dropping her sword to press the leather against the wound, as blood oozed down her side.

"You dare profane this holy place!" the Celebrant raged at her as he stalked toward her through the swirling smoke. "You wretched infidels, despoiling out blessed rites!"

Again, he shaped his hands as she fought to rise, and a gash ripped open in her bare arm from an unseen blade. The katar fell from her hand, leaving her weaponless, as the two remaining Reapers emerged from the shadowy smoke.

"Bahuchara!" she cried out for the hijra.

And then she was there, leaping onto the sacrificial table by Ruqaiya in her slippered feet. The hijra danced with frenzy and power and fury in crooked, contorted steps and a clicking mantra that called forth a swirling wind of blades around the two Reapers. Bahuchara's lehenga spread wide as she spun, her arms wide, her head thrown back, her loose hair rippling outward, and the blades echoed her spin, a dance of a thousand cuts. Fanned flames rose higher into the smoky air, licking the ancient, brittle wooden beams high above.

Freed from threat by the Reapers, Ruqaiya launched herself at the Celebrant and tackled him to the ground, his head cracking against the stone. Her hands were the only weapons left to her, and she balled her fists and struck, pain burning at her side and in her arm. Blinded by smoke, blinded by fury, blinded by memories, she unleashed against his face, again, and again, and again, until bones broke and teeth shattered and blood flowed freely and she wasn't done, she would never be done.

Strong hands gripped her under the arms from behind and tried to pull her off, and she struggled against them. She wasn't done, he was still breathing.

"Ghazi, stop," Bahuchara's voice penetrated. "Ruqaiya," she pleaded, "stop. It's alright, Ruqaiya, you can stop."

Her vision coming into focus, she found Bahuchara kneeling beside her. So who was trying to pick her up off the unmoving Celebrant?

"We'll take care of it from here," a man said. A man with tightly curled hair the color of Ganraala loam on his forearms.

She shrugged herself out of Rishar's grasp and winced at her wounds as she rose from the moaning, bloodied man. Others were there in the room, smothering the fire with heavy blankets, men and women, some clothed, some naked like Rishar. Several rats scurried around the debris as well. His Mischief.

"The children…" she sputtered, her mind struggling to clear from the fog of battle. "They…"

"We have them," he assured her. "We owe you, ghazi." He snatched rope from the table and tied the Celebrant's hands together. "And you, hijra."

"Wait," she tried to stop him. "You can't let him live. Not after what…"

"Don't worry." He waved over another man, and together they lifted the bound Celebrant onto the table. Others climbed to sit or stand on the table around him. "He's not going to live. But I am certain he will not enjoy the time he has remaining."

Rishar twirled the sharp tip of one moustache from atop the table. Then he shrank and changed until the Ganraala-loam rat was all that was left of him. Around him, the others transformed as well, and mischief loomed.

Bahuchara grabbed Ruqaiya's uninjured arm to pull her away. "I don't think either of us wants to see this."

She didn't know how long the screaming lasted as she and Bahuchara ransacked the undercroft of the Sard Palace. A long time. Long enough for her once to feel a fleeting pity and then kick herself for it.

With Bahuchara's help, she'd unbuckled and peeled off her leather vest in a room that must have served as the Celebrant's living quarters. Papers covered the tottering desk whose chair she sat in, examining the wound in her side. Freed from the constraint of her vest, the wound gaped and bled freely, but not as bad as she had feared. Bahuchara used water from a basin and some clothes from a chest to clean the wound. They had wrapped a shirt around the slash in her arm.

"I don't know this dance," Bahuchara murmured, "we need to get back to Fazil."

"No," she forestalled the hijra. "No. Let me try."

Larin had tried to teach Ruqaiya the prarthana a few times in the Sewangurak camp, the Ahadi woman's thin, brown fingers moving slowly in the shapes as she sang her mantra in a soothing lilt. Ruqaiya had found the shapes awkward and had grimaced when Larin chuckled at her tone deaf singing. She knew the prarthana, but she had never been successful before. She closed her eyes and imagined herself with Larin and the others, before the war, when they had waged their own battle against the Risen, camping in the wilds of Ganraala, grateful to have lived one more day. She wished Larin were still alive to laugh at her harsh singing voice. Her mouth formed the chant, but it was a moment before any sound came from her lips as her hands echoed the shapes she saw in her memory.

Nothing at first, but then a coolness spread over the fire in her side as the inflamed flesh closed. She heard Bahuchara gasp at the sight but remained focused until she was sure it was done. Amazed even herself, she sung the mantra into her arm and pain faded. Bless you, Larin of Ahadi, she sent a prayer to Iwa. Thank you for teaching me to sing.

Exhaling a deep breath, she opened her eyes as Bahuchara began unraveling the bloodied shirt from her arm. Only then did she recall that the hijra had been wounded as well. She took Bahuchara's hand in her own and drew her arm towards her, letting the words rise again in her rustic voice as she shaped her fingers.

"It's not that bad." Bahuchara started to withdraw her arm.

"Hush," Ruqaiya cooed soothingly, as she extended her will upon the wound. When she was done, Ruqaiya washed the blood from the hijra's flawless arm with gentle sweeps of a moistened cloth.

"Your hands," Bahuchara pointed out.

Ruqaiya wiped the Celebrant's blood from her bruised and battered hands. They would have to heal on their own–she was done singing. The hijra was watching her, appraising her, looking at her hands, and she knew why. "Let's see what we can find," she said, tossing the bloodied clothes onto the Celebrant's palette.

Hoping to distract the hijra, she flipped open chest lids riffled through them. Personal items, clothes, a few coins and books. A box containing an assortment of pins, rings, and baubles that must have once belonged to their victims she dropped in disgust.

"You can be so gentle," Bahuchara said offhandedly, shuffling through the papers on the desk, "and yet you pummeled that man as if it were your reason for living."

"It is my reason for living," she shot harshly. "You know what they do."

"It's a noble reason," Bahucara mollified her. "It just felt, if you'll forgive me, it feels like it was personal."

There was a time once, when she was nine, that her mother was so angry at her that she had simply stood and stared at her with a blank look as she rubbed the flat palms of her hands together, as if struggling to not use them to slap her. Ten years older, and those hands would have flailed. But she had been a child, and didn't know better. Ruqaiya stood then before Bahuchura rasping her palms together with the same blank stare.

"Look," Bahuchara demurred and lifted some sheaves from the desk, turning away, "I didn't mean to pry."

"Good. Vikrim and me will be out of your hair as soon as we can." Your glorious hair. How does your hair still look like that after what we just went through?

"To hunt the Risen," Bahuchara muttered distractedly, fixated on one of the sheaves she held and dropping the others to the desk.

"Yes."

The hijra slumped into the chair, her eyes flickering across the page and widening with every word she read. She held the page out to Ruqaiya.

"What if you could go after the heart of the Risen?"

An hour later, the quiet of night still laying over the rest of Tipaluru Fort, Ruqaiya sat on the edge of a too-tall table with the others, wakened hastily upon her return with Bahuchara and a thankfully clothed Rishar Nahida. Rats, he had explained, knew ways in and out of every building in Jharoda, passages and tunnels long forgotten by those unfortunately limited to a single body form. Fazil had eyed Rishar warily, his own elven nose twitching at that of the wererat.

Vikrim scowled at the story Bahuchara told, and Ruqaiya avoided his eyes. That she had left the fort without him clearly rankled, but she was no longer angry with him. Her reckless escapade had created a sort of balance of mutual offense. In her mind, anyway. He didn't seem to be taking it the same way.

Deland rubbed sleepy eyes, pulling his cloak close around him. "I don't understand. He fought against Musa in the war. He helped destroy the Risen."

"They weren't destroyed," Ruqaiya sharply corrected him. "They just scattered and went into hiding."

"But Deland is right." Fazil let his gaze shift from Rishar. "Sameer and Firuzeh's armies fought together at Sherpatta. They were fighting against the Risen as much as they were fighting against Musa Tayyib."

"And against Nekuzam," Rishar muttered sourly from his seat outside their circle.

Bahuchara spun her head. "Firuzeh did not…"

"Bahuchara," Ruqaiya called her gently. "The letter."

With a dismissive shake of her head, the hijra shifted back to them. Clearly, Nekuzam had been beloved by all of Jharoda, if even the wererats mourned his death.

Laksha fiddled with the bundle of papers hanging from her belt as if wanting to scribble things down. "How does Sameer benefit…"

"I don't know," Bahuchara cut her off curtly.

"And what does Bendathi…"

"I don't know!" The hijra unfolded the letter. "It raises more questions than it answers. You read it."

Laksha took it from her extended hand and gave it a quick scan before reading it aloud for them all to hear.

To the Honorable Celebrant of the Divine Ereshkigal, Haritra Medtani of the Jharoda Temple.

Your efforts have not gone unnoticed by Our Lord Ereshkigal, who's dominion grows by the blood and souls of the Jharodans you convert to his cause. Plix has chittered your praise in the Dreaded One's ear, and should death take you, may you die grateful knowing that Ereshkigal's own mouth has spoken your name from his majestic throne.

All the more disastrous, then, that you report continued failure to seize Bendathi deva. Ereshkigal's wretched quasit may soon sing a different song, and then the Lord of Undeath may turn his dread eye upon you. Do not speak to me of your feeble efforts and failed attempts. No deva can evade summons, not even Bendathi in his high temple in the clouds. You have been given every boon the Dauntless Council can bestow, and yet you continue to disappoint me. For one who aspires to be the new Reeve of the Risen, you make a poor showing of your might.

The Tiger grows restless and stalks us. The deva we have ensnared are not enough for his purposes, and it would greatly raise your prospects were you the one to bring the deva to him in Qaragrah. Celebrant Umaden has failed to capture Ganraala devi and was instead captured and taken bound to Qaragarh, where he is sure to be interrogated by the Shuddh and executed (may he rise again in undeath). Ganraala Temple is lost, as is its powerful devi. We cannot afford such failure at this critical point or the Tiger will eat us. Do not fail me! Do not fail Our Lord!

Send word to me at once when you have seized Bendathi, and pray that you do so soon, or I will be forced to send a more competent Celebrant to govern the Jharodan flock.

In the name of He Who Frees Us,

Saya Sorgashi Zaban Awari, of the Dauntless Council

Everyone spoke at once in a babble of tongues when Laksha finished the letter. Ruqaiya did not add her voice to the cacophony, for she already knew what the letter had said and had already puzzled its meaning. She was troubled to find mention of herself in such a letter in Jharoda, for it had been she and Vikrim who had captured Celebrant Umaden, though she only now learned his name. She too had questions, but to one she had an answer, and she had made her decision.

"I'm going with you," she hollered over their voices. "I'm…" She faltered when Vikrim turned questioning eyes to her. She didn't dare speak for him; she didn't have that right.

He nodded his big head, contemplating, raking his tusks with his upper lip, and she held her breath. "We're going with you," he answered flatly. He was agreeing, but there was nothing of affirmation in his words.

She nodded back, her eyes flicking away, suddenly very interested in a buckle on her vest. They babbled on and she listened with half an ear as they teased and twisted every word of the letter. She felt small on the large table and pushed herself off, drifting deeper into their shared room. Against the wall, the toddler lay quietly on his back, clutching one edge of the silver-threaded blanket he'd managed to kick off of himself. Impossibly large, dark eyes met hers, innocent, curious. Squatting down, Ruqaiya pulled the blanket back over the child, tucking it tightly around him.

"We don't even know what we've just committed ourselves to," Vikrim's rumbling voice said from behind her.

"We're going to hunt the Tiger," she said as she stood upright and turned to look up at his face. "We're going to cut off its head."

He looked sad but resigned. His pointy ears drooped a bit and weariness slumped his broad shoulders. "Okay," he conceded with a frown. "Okay."