memento mori (phr.) "remember that you will die" – a reminder of mortality or the inevitable transformation of life into death, which can only be delayed and never truly avoided.

He pronounced it almost mournfully: "he made me fat, Nirari."

Inanna could not help the laugh which tore from her throat then, gracelessly; she nearly choked on her cocoa. They were sitting on the windowsill of the Kass recruitment office, a bland building with wicker seats and tables arranged on its porch more akin to a genteel café than a piece of an ongoing, hopeless war machine. The office did not see much use these days, with the kingdom relying on conscription to fill the numbers which had fallen, time and again, alongside their districts. It was tucked into a slightly quieter section of the merchants' quarter, just enough that they could hear one another speak, not so far that they could not still hear the laughter and music slipping around the corner from the plaza. "You aren't fat."

"Fatter," he said, stubbornly. "And what's with this hair?"

"I cut your hair!" Ina flicked her fork at him disapprovingly; a tiny glob of cream hit his cheek and slid, almost dramatically, down his cheek, like some kind of strange ivory tear. A grotesque, comical shadow of Avrova in her final moments, Inanna thought, even as Eero reached up, and swiped it from his jaw, and flicked it irritably onto the cobbles below.

"You disappoint me, Inanna."

The World would never have been so openly critical; the World would never have been so fastidious. Ina could not help but feel the same spectre of unfamiliarity of which Khalore had complained: this was the Eero she had known, but not the man she had lived with for these last, long weeks. More a stranger than the strange man who had imitated him. It was a hideous, curdled feeling, knotted in her chest.

"I'm sorry," she said, a little more primly than she meant, "to be disappointing."

He grinned at her. She relented.

"It doesn't matter."

"Only a pretty girl would think that."

He was on the verge of examining himself in the reflection on the back of his spoon; with a roll of her eyes, she took another sip of her cocoa and folded her legs beneath her. "Other than your cosmetic complaints," Ina said, "how are you feeling?"

"Hollow." He glanced at her. "How about you?"

"Me?"

"How are you feeling?"

She was tired – not simply from dancing, although they had done plenty. Truth be told, it was starting to feel like the only sensation she had ever experienced: this bone-deep, blood-thick tiredness, seeping into organ and limb alike. She thought she'd feel this way forever. Maybe this, she thought ruefully, was what being a Warrior felt like.

"Fine."

He cocked an eyebrow. "You still have the same tic you ever did."

She gingerly touched the edge of her mouth. "Still?"

Pekka had always known when she was lying. He had said that the corner of her lips twitched, just a little bit, and always had done, since she had first learned what lying was. She had engaged in it liberally for a few years – yes, Mr. Hämäläinen, my mother said I had to have dinner at your house tonight.

"You really haven't changed at all."

"I'm taller," she offered weakly.

He tilted his head, and assessed her critically. "Barely."

"You can't tell," Ina said, "because I'm sitting down."

"Did he end up tall?"

"Who?"

"Pekka."

She said, slowly, "I mean – you've seen him."

Eero was more curt with her than the World would ever have been. There was something close to irritation in his tone – she had forgotten what that might sound like in his voice. "I've seen what the curse made of him."

It was still Pekka. Pekka enough. Pekka, if you squinted. She had looked at him before they had left the atelier that day – him, or it, because he had again been reduced to an it, something without any life within it, not even the World's animation to let him sit up and look around and ask silly little questions. Are you Ina? He had looked more like the boy she had known thus, like she had caught him at the academy taking an illicit midday nap while the others finished their death marches, taking up half the space he needed in case she came into join him while he was asleep. In a single, sudden moment of utter clarity, it had struck her: yes, she could fall in love with him again. There was enough of Pekka there: it would be like trying to recompose a symphony after burning a brilliant composition. Perhaps it would not again be so brilliant. But it would be there. Composed. Forced from her, like a strike to the ribs and a sudden exhale of air.

"Yes," she said. "He ended up tall."

He nodded. She wondered what it must feel like to exist in such uncertain terms – his body taken from him, his brother first a stranger and then a corpse. Eero said, "you should have let Kinga kill him."

"You're the one who stopped her."

"Then someone should have stopped me. No one who loves him," Eero said. "Would want to see him like that."

"Aren't you happier?" Ina whispered. Her voice had dropped, quite without meaning it to. Better this way. Though they were secreted away in this space, one could never be too careful. "Aren't you – glad to be alive?"

"This isn't," Eero said, "Living."

The great cathedral in Gjoll looked nothing like the chapel in which Ilja had worshipped as a child. The bulk of the building had been carved from the same ebony-like black rock from which had been formed the statues which stalked each avenue and street, disturbingly life-like, distressingly wide-eyed. The floors were made of a fine polished white marble, shot through with deep red veins, which seemed to glow as though lit from below. It was nothing like the wood-on-wood construction in and upon which Ilja had spent so many long hours kneeling in childhood, rapt to Preacher's exhortations.

Repent. Atone. Salvation.

The stained glass window over the preacher's pit was, however, the same here as it was anywhere: the Fall at Siarka. The differences were subtle – after all, this was, at home, a moment of triumph for the downtrodden forces of Irij, the first victory of their turncoat Warriors with their stolen curses, the foundation of a kingdom and the exile of a tyrant. The depicted landscape upon which Ilja found himself gazing, however, was one of desolation: a good man driven to his knees by deceit and betrayal, his few followers fleeing the slaughter, the Warriors bearing down upon them with the frenzied wrath of mythological demons.

Ilja could pick out the First Chariot with ease: he was the fine-featured, red-haired boy near the rear of the pack, caught in profile as he turned, his visible eye aglow with the same bloodlust as his brethren. Ilja hadn't often thought about him – he was not someone to whom legends attached themselves, appearing in the myths only as a supporting character and a facilitator for whatever step of the story came next, necessarily next. He had served as watch as the World and the Tower stole the cursemaker's sword; he had found the Moon after her defection, and carried her back to Opona even as she bled black onto the road; he had given the druj their name, and announced the death of each of his generation as it passed, appearing at the clocktower each time to keen their departure like a banshee.

The stories didn't say what had happened to him in the end. How he had faded. Ilja had never wondered about that until now. It hadn't mattered. His death mattered little. Only how he had lived: dutifully.

Had Decebal faded similarly, with so little fanfare? Would Ilja?

There were few royals here: Aviram was still ailing, and Kasimira was still vanished on her mysterious task. He was seated in the pew behind Silas; Reiko, beside him, was seated behind Asenath, and looked little engaged in the preaching which had begun from the pit. Ilja wasn't sure if he should seem similarly disinterested. He couldn't help himself – this was a form of nostalgia he had not even realised that he could experience, but with every word, he became a little more aware of his own veins and the way they moved beneath his skin, jumping with each unsteady heartbeat.

Repent. Atone. Salvation.

Silas was similarly focused. Staring at the back of his head, Ilja wondered whether Belle had spoken true. Even from here, even without his curse, he could feel her eyes boring into him and Silas from the place of the Selection in the loft. Had she been correct? If that was the case – if Silas was to take the Radiance – would they be served better by letting him do so? By waiting? They knew too little about the thirteenth curse. The Star had proved stable enough without being moved directly to another person, but the Wheel, incarnate in Nez's staring yellow eye, was already becoming unstable. If they had to transport it back to Irij, maybe it was best that they contained in a person.

A human sacrifice. No different than the Warriors themselves. Had any xrafstar ever been otherwise?

A fitting fate for a would-be tyrant. A sorry end for a beautiful boy.

But then they would be stuck transporting a weapon of mass destruction in the form of a teenage boy, and as much as Ilja trusted in his comrades, he wasn't quite certain this seemed a flawless tactic. Perhaps, then, they should proceed as planned, and take whatever poor girl was currently dying beneath the castle. Beat the prince to it. Take it, and run, and be done with this whole horrific place.

And then?

The World had told him, and him alone. The World had told him what they needed the Radiance for, when they were out searching for what had remained of Ghjuvan. In the moment, the memory of his friend alive in his skull and in his hands, Ilja had been glad of it. In the moment, he would have cared out the slaughter himself. He would follow the World, as good a preacher as any, a path to salvation like no other.

Illéa should have never been, the World had said. This place should never have been permitted to exist.

They had been standing in a ruined square, with a building yawning open behind them, broken masonry bricks sticking up, jagged, like shattered teeth. Ilja had been choking on that awful smoke from those awful pyres, and wondering how the Illéans brought themselves to do it. In Irij, such a fate was barbarism; they were a people of graves and tombs and interment. He had never expected such a small, petty difference to raise such a feeling of revulsion along his throat and shoulders, and yet –

He looked up at the tableau of the Fall.

Had they burned so?

They would burn again.

"What will you wish for?"

"Wish?"

"Before the turnover." Eero speared a piece of cake as though it had personally offended him. "He likes you. He'll like you even better when you bring the Radiance back. You could ask him for anything."

Ina blanched. Her mind went blank – she panicked – and then she laughed. Such a simple question. So obvious. She had expected something more cryptic, some more convoluted thought exercise. This, she had decided on her very first day in the programme – no, before then. She had joined the programme for this. For this, she had given everything.

"I want my father back," she said. "I want him freed from prison."

Eero's shoulders curled. Was he remembering the strike he had taken for Zuen, that day in the square? Inanna had never been certain if it was for her sake or her father's that he had tackled the guard. Inanna had never known whether he had been sent to the Programme willingly, or cursed the Nirari name as he went. Her only memory from that time had been the agony, the screams, her ribbon wrapped around Pekka's fist like a bandage, Eero being dragged from their house by the men in black coats.

She had always imagined that he had not forgiven her. By the time she and Pekka turned up on the training grounds, the eighteenth generation had been about to undergo their selection, and Eero had spared her little time. She had imagined that it was resentment but –

"That's a good wish," he said. He sounded like he meant it. He nodded. He smiled. "Please give him my best when you see him."

She said, tentatively, "will you get one?"

"No more than Kinga's sword would."

Something in her heart tore a little bit. Had she just been terribly cruel? Had he been hoping that she would wish for him – for Pekka? She would. She might have. She couldn't. All of this – from the start – the very reason – it had been her father. Always, for her father. Pekka had known that. He had encouraged it. Used it to inspire her through training, when she was at her most exhausted, her most desperate, when her every fibre had wanted to quit and go home and sleep, just sleep.

And if I get through all of this, and I don't get picked?

Then I'll get him out for you.

He should have had a wish of his own. Why hadn't he had a wish of his own?

He said, "I know what you're thinking, Ina."

She looked at him. Something moved on the roof above them. She was glad she had dropped her voice.

He drew a finger along his throat, and smiled, ruefully. "Don't worry about us."

"It's a lifelong habit by now," she said. He laughed. That much was true. She had been following those two around from the time she could first walk. It was almost instinctual by now. The World must have known that, to feel so comfortable around her. She had followed him, too, out of sheer complacency. Sheer familiarity. "I don't know who I would be if I didn't."

"The feeling is mutual."

She nodded.

He said, "I'm sorry I wasn't here to look after you. Properly. That I wasn't..."

He paused.

She said, "you were. You did."

"No," he said, venomously. "He was."

She said, "where is he? The real World?"

"Probably back in Irij."

"He can still control you from there?"

God, but the idea was horrific. Would any curse become as powerful, if they clutched it to them for as long as the World had? Illéa was tangled enough with threads usually - the idea of seeing it all threatened to drown her, flailing.

She had so enjoyed the world as it existed on the day of the Fall: empty. For once, empty.

"Of course. I haven't encountered a limit to his power."

She said, "and is he on our side?"

Eero laughed. "What does that even mean, Ina?"

"I just can't shake this feeling," she said, "that something's going to pull the rug out from under us. After getting so close. After… all of this. And he – the World – he has not been honest with us, and that makes me not trust him, and that means I wonder if..."

She shook her head.

"If he's going to betray us. The mission."

"This is his mission, Ina. It always has been."

She looked up at Eero through her eyelashes. That should have felt like reassurance. It felt like a warning.

"You're only here because he willed it," Eero said. "You're only after the Radiance because he wants it. He cannot betray this cause anymore than you could betray your own heart."

She laughed, drily. "I feel like… that's not the impossibility you think it is."

"You've had a hard year," he said.

Why did those simple words drive her to the brink of tears? She demurred: "could have been harder."

She swiped at her eyes with her sleeve; it came away stained with black scab and brown powder, the stuff Eero had used to try to help her cover up the new scars. These scars. She was beginning to understand, in some small, inadequate way, why Kinga always showed up covered in bruises and wounds, why she had lost her eye and smiled, why she was so desperate to wear her blood on her sleeve, eschewing her heart. It felt like real, and tenable – a physical demonstration of commitment, of agonies unseen. See what I've done? See what I feel?

For you? For you. All for you.

Eero put his arm around her and she leaned into him. Brown eyes, she thought again, and nearly giggled with the simplicity of it. He said, "your dad would be really proud of you, Ina."

"Yeah?"

That meant something. Eero had known Zuen, in whatever way an adolescent could know a grown man. If he said it, then perhaps it was true. Perhaps she had not disappointed – would not disappoint – her father. Her reason.

"Absolutely. And Pekka too. He'd be… he would know how hard you're fighting."

She nodded tearfully against his jacket – Zoran's jacket, for Eero hadn't liked the World's taste in clothes, and had pilfered the spare clothes of the other male Warriors, mostly the garments for which Ilja had no more use as a guard, in a guard's garb.

"I'm proud of you too. Does that count?"

It would have. Ten years ago, before he'd died. Ten weeks ago, before she'd met the stranger wearing his face.

"You're doing your best," he said. "We all see it."

"My best," she repeated. The words tasted like ash.

"You're doing," he said, "exactly what you should be."

Fuck it. She'd still count it.

She said, because she could not think of anything else to say, "I think I just got chocolate on your sleeve."

"I'm being gentlemanly," Eero said, adopting the tone of a martyr, "and ignoring that for now."

It was astounding, Khalore thought, that all of Commandant's insistence on dancing lessons was finally paying off. Lorencio had led her little – she had fed him enough drink, then, that he would miss the worst of it – and they had spun about the square with a companionable competence that almost didn't make her dizzy. It was a lucky thing, then, that she had lost her arm and not a leg, for all the problems that would have caused. He had been good fun as well. Khalore hadn't realised before today that the general was inclined to gossip, but she was quickly disabused of that notion: for every tagma they passed, he had some morsel, some tiny observation that had Khalore giggling as soon as she thought that they were out of earshot.

Most of it was petty, but he said it with enough good humour that she didn't think less of him for it.

They had passed Inanna and Eero, however briefly, and Khalore had again averted her eyes and feigned ignorance. Kinga had been dancing as well, first with the captain who was all lips and hair and cheekbones, pretty enough that Khalore was quite certain that Ghjuvan had to have been both jealous and utterly correct in that jealousy. Then she had been swept away by a second, taller man, who bore such a strong resemblance to the first that they had to be brothers – equally well-dressed. This one was reed-thin from a lifetime away from the front-lines, though no less adept at what Commandant had always insisted was the martial art of tripping the light fantastic.

There had been a brief moment of applause and reverence as the royal family came through the square during a break in the Fall service – not quite the royal family, Khalore thought ruefully, but prince and princess alone, both wearing purple as though in solidarity with one another. Of course, they couldn't show the kind of favouritism that would be signalled by using one of the tagma colours; this was, no doubt, the compromise. The princess had caught Lorencio's eye, and he had bowed, and Khalore had, in a frozen moment of uncertainty, mechanically curtseyed at his side. Ilja had been a ghost in their wake, though he had caught Khalore's eye and mouthed something incomprehensible.

Was that the signal? The royals would engage on a brief tour of the town and then return to the cathedral for more preaching. This was their chance. This was the time to move.

Ilja had moved on with the royals, and Ina had disappeared with Eero to find food, and Kinga was finishing a drink in tandem with her tagma clique, the cadet and the captain's brother struggling to keep pace.

Khalore said, "will you excuse me, sir?"

"Come back quickly," Lorencio murmured. "I'll seem tragic standing here on my own."

"You're a likeable fellow."

"Too true. And Hijikata does owe me a dance."

Khalore laughed, and moved her hand from his arm, and followed Kinga to the edge of the square – for Kinga, too, had made her excuses and slipped away to one of the avenues on which the occupants had opened their houses to the revelries. Khalore strained to make her shadowing seem natural, coincidental; she lingered, for a moment, by a stall, and then moved on again, as Kinga turned the corner, careful not to rush. There were tagma patrolling the roof – she could spot at least one that probably thought herself well hidden – though they ought to have been given the day off.

Kinga went in through the back door of the recruitment office, and Khalore followed her. When she was quite certain that they were alone, and Kinga had slowed her pace to let Khalore catch up, Khalore said, "was that the signal?"

She was wearing a wristband Khalore had never seen before – bronze, like the chains Ina had described on her, with a glass gem on its face of a cut and colour to resemble an emerald. "Not quite."

The recruitment office was in total disarray from disuse: tables lay scattered about, lying this way and that, as though they had most recently been used for shelter rather than any form of administration. A thick layer of dust had settled on every surface; the personnel files remaining, scattered on the floor, were yellowed from age and greyed from exposure to the damp air. Kinga threaded a path through it all, and pushed open the door, eliciting a muffled shriek from Inanna, who had been sitting on the sill of the boarded-up window and who clearly had not realised that the office had any other accessible entrances.

"Don't do that to me, Kinga!"

Kinga said, "Ilja's called off the plan."

"What?"

Khalore didn't have to see Ina to know what she would look like – head drawn back in surprise, eyes narrowed in thoughtfulness, mouth twisting in confusion.

"I don't think Ilja has the authority to do that," Khalore said.

"No, but we… we should probably listen to him," Ina said. Khalore could see the sense in that, though her temper – and the part of her that had reconciled with the inevitable nature of what they had to do, with the idea of going home and leaving only destruction in their wake – rebelled against it. "Did he say why?"

Kinga said, "Silas told Belle about the Radiance."

"He just… told her?"

"He's planning to take the Radiance himself. Tonight."

Kinga shrugged.

"He thinks we should wait until the transfer occurs. Take prince and curse alike."

Take…?

Khalore's brain had moved as slowly as it ever did; Ina clearly had taken only a few seconds to realise whatever importance lay in Ilja's words. "Take him," she said. "Take someone."

Khalore turned to Kinga, eyes wide. "I don't…?"

"Gijs told us," Ina said. Had he? Oh – what was it he had said? The words were somewhere in her memory, but Khalore could not reach them as quickly as she ought until…. What had he said?

Listen: you're going to take someone.

"It makes sense," Khalore said.

"It doesn't feel good," Ina said darkly.

"Just think of it," Kinga said, with a tone that suggested she thought her words reassuring, "as saving his life."

They parted in the shadow of the Wall, close enough that they could hear the World's creations creeping and growling just a fortification away. It had put Ina on edge, standing so close to the darkest parts of the world, the things in the world which were least understandable; Kinga had smiled blithely, a girl who spoke the language and refused to provide a translation out of a sense of propriety.

Khalore had said, "until tonight, then."

She had averted her eyes from him. She had known only the man wearing his face, and had cared for him. She probably wished for him back. That was understandable enough.

It still irked, to realise that he was the least likeable version of himself.

He kept his eyes on Ina and Khalore as they went, until he could see them no longer, and even for a little while after that. Beside him, Jaga's sister clapped a hand onto his shoulder – she had to stretch to do so, but there was strength enough behind the gesture – and said, "you have no idea how tolerable you've become, boss."

He glanced at her. "Not a fan of the World?"

"Not a fan of his antics. Man couldn't answer a question straight to save his life."

He said, "try experiencing it from the other side."

She laughed. Did she know that she sounded like Matthias when she laughed? She was as much sister to him as any Szymanski. For whatever she said now – for all the love that she bore Pekka – he knew that she would have felt relieved when Kloet's knife had opened up his torso and spilled his guts onto the sand. Initiation was initiation. Sometimes choices had to be made.

He didn't want to waste a single moment of this day steeped in resentment – today, his one chance at living, at life. He said, "I hope he was good to you. All of you."

"I think he's in love with Ina."

"Who wouldn't be?"

Though his words were light enough, he could not - would not - keep the disapproval, the protectiveness, from his voice. Ina deserved better.

She had been his first and only wife, after all, he thought ruefully. It was a product of a childhood ceremony to keep her happy and diverted while their parents were at work. Pekka had served as the most resentful officiant that had ever existed, glowering at his brother over Ina's makeshift bouquet, pilfered from the window-boxes of unsuspecting neighbours. She and Pekka had spent more time on gathering and arranging the flowers than on the wedding itself, which had suited Eero fine until Mrs. Nilsen had come complaining to Kaapo about her desolated tears-of-Siarka that evening. Eero had still delighted in greeting Ina as darling-wife-of-mine for weeks afterwards, specifically to torture his little brother, specifically to delight little Ina.

He wondered if she remembered.

He and Kinga fell into step beside one another. After a moment of silence which might have, in any other girl, have seemed thoughtful, Kinga added, resentfully, "flirting with me as well. It's unforgiveable, Hämäläinen."

Eero said, almost patiently, "I just don't believe that's true, Kay."

"Hurtful," she said, but did not dispute it.

They did not have far to go to reach the atelier, though their short journey was, for Eero, a revelation of all that he had half-seen these long weeks past. Existing as a limb of the World was so often like living in a world of half-light, only passingly conscious of what transpired around you, a constant sleepy ignorance and veiled confusion which was, in its own way, preferable to the agony of awareness. He could see colours again; he was aware of the gravel underfoot, the scent of the flowers tangling in the windowsills overhead, the subtle sounds of life on all sides, existing even now, even unseen.

It made it all the sadder to realise what was about to happen to this place. It was alive, and real, and home for so many people. Dead men walking, the lot of them.

He was in good company, then.

"Remember what else Gijs told us?"

He had to pause in the midst of unlocking the door to the atelier. "I don't," he said, "I wasn't… what did he say?"

"That the World would take the Radiance from us."

"That's the end goal," he said, "isn't it?"

"Taken, though?"

"He's not a patient fellow."

She looked unconvinced, but followed him into the atelier without saying anything else. Eero went to the servant's space under the stairs, where Hyacinth still lay in her cursed stupor, and then to the stove, to which he set the kettle.

She lingered in the centre of the workshop for a moment, watching him. She had peeled off her eyepatch; her blackened druj eye stared at him with something that seemed more than sight.

He said, "what is it?"

"Just thinking," she said.

"You're afraid."

"Rarely."

"Of course you are. Of ending up like me. Outliving your own purpose. Defying the end that was written for you." He smiled. "Do you want tea?"

"I'm alright," she said, "but thank you."

Kinga dropped her canvas bag of harnesses onto the couch, stolen for use during their escape, and climbed the steps to the bedroom, where he could hear her quietly greeting a Pekka who could no longer hear her. Eero was glad she had done so, for he had desired little to perform the simple duty of ensuring he was still breathing or – whatever it was this odd, cursed version of his corpse needed to do.

Gijsbert had made the most of his nine hours, had he not? Eero hoped he was doing similarly. Hard to make up for a life stolen; impossible to adequately account for an existence in constant captive agony. The simple act of cutting bread that morning had proved a temptation almost impossible to resist, knife held tightly in his fist, blade glinting beautifully in the warm light of the kitchen. He had meant what he had said to Ina. He had meant what he had said about his brother.

He resurfaced for moments while the World held control. Flickers. Was that enough to continue such a wretched existence?

There was enough of Pekka left to suffer. Hyacinth, at least, seemed to be utterly gone and hollow. The Devil had done a number on her, as few Devils could have. Céluiz could only have aspired to such destruction.

This generation could have been the best, if only the World had not set them to such a thankless, miserable task. It mattered little. They would be home soon enough, home and safe and set to live out the rest of whatever years remained to them. The full ten, he hoped. They deserved the full ten years. That wasn't too much to ask, was it? They were so young. Ina, at least, deserved to spend that time with her father. Poor Zuen.

Would it make their lives feel worthwhile? Would it be enough?

The kettle shrieked its seethe.

"Does this count as grand larceny?"

"It's not theft if I work here."

"I don't think that's strictly true, Khalore."

Khal's laugh was more brittle than it usually was. She was nervous, Ina thought, more nervous than she usually was. That was strange, because she, rivalled only by Ilja, was utterly reconciled with the idea of drawing a close to this whole dreadful saga. There was surely no harm in burning bridges, so far as she was concerned. Khalore was not usually the type to care for subtlety.

When her eyes darted guiltily towards the door of the office for a fifth time, Inanna realised that it was a simple fear of disappointing someone which drove her so.

Ina said, "you're fine. I'm keeping watch."

She always kept a piece of broken mirror with her for Zoran; she had angled it now against the wall of the office, so that she could, while concealed behind the door, clearly watch the corridor for any encroaching Scholars or guards. Khalore was rifling through Lorencio's desk as silently as she could with her single arm, clearly moving with concerted intent. She obviously knew that the map had to be kept in one of a few places; she moved between them with a kind of focus Ina did not usually associate with the younger girl.

The office was as opulent as anything Ina had seen in Illéa, though the decorations were almost purposefully humble: though the ceilings were high, and the floor tiled emerald, and the shelves and desk the kind of fine mahoghany for which her father would have paid a small fortune, the desk was orderly and a spare jacket, neatly patched, hung on the back of the door. A pair of finely shined shoes had been set on a stool beside the bookshelves, a second-hand rug spared the tiles beside the prepared fireplace, and the only decoration upon the wall was an identity paper belonging to one Mrs Tejal Suero.

For each lock she came to, she reached into her pocket to produce the ring of keys Zoran had made for them, based on the key-marks Kinga had carried back to them in the block of butter pilfered from Lorencio's party all those weeks ago. It took a few tries, but most of the locks proved passable; Khalore needed only to flick through a few papers before she moved on to the next drawer, eyes focused.

She had grown into herself, and into her role. Ina wasn't sure that she would have recognised her eight months ago.

"Got it," Khalore said. It had only been about ten minutes of searching, but the relief in her voice was palpable. She waved the map she clutched tightly in her hand, smiling slightly. "We can consider the tunnels our own."

Ina smiled. "Nicely done."

The tagma had been mapping the tunnels for the last few months, and all of their knowledge was now reflected upon the general's copy. By taking it, they could, at the very least, guarantee their own safe passage through the worst of the druj-affected areas and prevent the tagma from following too closely behind.

It was a small gesture, but it was something. It was all Ina could do to keep from exploding. For all that this was finally the end, the hours seemed to be slipping past tar-slow. She wasn't sure if she wanted it to go by any quicker, of course: Eero's words still echoed in her skull. This is his mission, Ina. It always has been.

Was that really such a surprise? Why did it unnerve her so?

"Let's get going," Ina said, speaking over her own thoughts. "No use getting caught now."

Khalore nodded, tucking the map into her jacket pocket, smiling nervously. "Not when the fun's just beginning."

Reading through Matthias's notes, Zoran could not help but worry about his own future. He had believed, naively, that he had glimpsed insanity in those awful moments of tortured confusion – when he had done damage that he could never undo, when he had, for the first time, lost himself so utterly. Even so, what had thus far transpired seemed horrifically paltry, compared to the madness contained in this pages, from beginning to end.

Had he truly believed that this would be helpful? Or had it been the last cruel, petty trick played by a cruel, petty man?

He didn't want to admit how fervently he had begun to hope for the latter. Better that than to think the curse could draw you so far from clear perception, could blind you so thoroughly to that which ought to have been as natural as breathing.

Some of it made sense, but very little. Most of it had been what Inanna had first gleaned from it: words repeated, over and again, letters arranged into long strings that could not form any pronounceable phrase, long stretches of paper occupied by punctuation alone, commas and dashes and brackets without cousins. In some places, there were long grey marks, like a pencil running astray across the face of the page. In others, the pages had stained slightly, ink dripping from one page to another like so much blood. Here, you could see where Matthias had gone on typing even after the page had been taken from the typewriter's clasp, the ink bleeding along the edge of the sheet. It was pages upon pages of nothing.

And here and there, something – but that something was utterly useless. Jaga's name appeared, senselessly, as though the mere thought of her had stirred the Hierophant from his prophetic stupor. Once, he had transcribed what Zoran had decided had to be an exchange with another Warrior of his own generation – kloet for fucks sake i am going to break that typewriter over your head unless you help us look for him why im sure hell come back on his own like a good dog oh for gods sake esteban dont let him rile you – and once, on a page that Zoran had returned to time and again, there was a drawing of Avrova Vovk that he had returned to, time and again.

He had remembered the former Lover as an olive-skinned girl with hazel eyes that verged on gold, all long brown hair and wide white smile, but they had buried a blonde white girl with black scars under her eyes. The girl Matthias had sketched was more in that vein – she had a pale, heart-shaped face and a gap between her crooked teeth and larger, bluer eyes than Zoran had ever perceived in life, her porcelain face in composed in a kind of stoic neutrality that reminded him more of the Commandant than of Inanna.

Had the former Hierophant been the only person to see her as she truly was?

There had been an inscription on the edge of the page, as much nonsense as anything else: take him.

A low whistle stirred Zoran from his thoughts. He had been poring over the notes outside the café on Vrata Street, at the mouth of the alley which led to the atelier, warming himself with a long-cold coffee. They had put the chairs out onto the pavement, so that passer-bys had to thread their way around the tables in order to proceed along the street. Even now, as Zoran glanced up, a tall woman in excubitor green had to excuse herself and inch around him to continue on her journey, a rusted sword shining dully at her hip. Khalore watched her warily as she passed, but she must have been merely another reveller, for she moved past them without concern. Zoran almost laughed at how comically her eyes shifted back and forth when Lore was wary; it was like watching a chained dog take in its surroundings, ever-watchful without having the faintest clue of what it might do if something did prove worthy of suspicion.

And he couldn't help but smile when he saw Ina.

God, but he was pathetic.

Ina slipped into the seat across from him – still not too close, which was fair, even if his hands did close over themselves to keep his grief from rising in his throat, because it wouldn't be fair to her to feel any kind of resentment about his own sins – and said, "are things any clearer without…?"

She did not, as others might have, tap her temple; she tapped her cheek, just below her eye, the very cusp of her black scar. He loved her for that.

"Unfortunately not," he said. "I'm starting to think Matthias might have been playing a trick on us."

"Strange sense of humour."

Khalore reached into her jacket, and showed Zoran the very corner of the bundle of pages she carried. They would be alike now, he thought, in that sense. "Mission accomplished," she said. "Did Kinga get the harnesses?"

He nodded. He had passed her but briefly; Kenta Hijikata had been bartering with a stall-holder on his brother's behalf, over a set of bronze wristbands, and Kinga had drifted closely enough to him, feigning uncharacteristic interest in a set of books, to confirm that she had pilfered enough hooks for the lot of them to make their escape when the night came calling.

"Sabotaged the rest," she had added, smugly, right as she stepped away, and returned to her habitual place at the captain's heels, saying something to him which had him looking at her, and smiling, and muttering a riposte.

Good God, but Zoran was starting to worry that she was too good at this.

"That and more," he said. "Shall we set out now, then?"

Ina shook her head. "Ilja wants us to delay until tonight. Silas Schreave is initiating with the Radiance, and he reckons we should –"

Zoran, with a curt laugh that did not sound like himself, cut her off by spinning Matthias's notes towards her and tapping the words which accompanied the portrait of Avrova. Ina stared down at the page with the dread of one who has now been compelled upon a path they believed ill-advised, but against which they might not now offer any critique for fearing of jinxing the whole damned enterprise.

"Well," she said dully. "Always nice to get approval from on high."

"We are all puppets," Zoran said, "dancing on Mr Kloet's strings."

"For a dead man," she said, "he's pretty fucking smug."

They had gone back to the atelier as a trio, in a companionable conversation about nothing at all that had Ina desperately nostalgic: first, for the bakery and then, almost guiltily, for the mess hall at the academy. That should have been her first thought, her first comparison, and yet, when Khalore teased Zoran gently for spending all his time at a party engrossed in his reading, it was those long lazy afternoons in the garden that Inanna missed the most. She and Zoran had spent so many hours on those rickety chairs against the gable wall, while the sun set in a fiery bouquet of awaited light, while Khalore sat on the steps leading to her annex sewing useless stitches to adjust to a single good hand, while Azula ripped weeds from her immaculate flower boxes only to have Ghjuvan or Ilja or Kinga land in them boot-first, not without some murmured apology or guilty smile.

They had formed a good life here, she thought, for however long it had lasted. She hadn't realised that one could have a good life here. Embarking first on Toska's boat, she had believed – they all had – that they were setting out for a grey, monster-infested rock, a blighted wasteland upon which an armaggedon might have proved a salvation.

Instead –

Hours to go. It was almost enough to make a girl choke.

She roused herself from her thoughts with a shake. Enough of that, she thought. There was work to be done. Matters to be tended to.

And the front door to the atelier was hanging open.

That was their first sign that something was wrong. Khalore put a hand to her screwdriver, and Zoran put out an arm as though he could protect Ina by gesture alone, and Ina, heedless of it all, had moved forward, for there was no other direction she could move, and pushed the door open, and exhaled something that was sister to a sob at the sight that was waiting for them.

Oh. Oh.

If the sound her mouth had made had been sister to a sob, then the tableau which awaited was brother to a massacre. Her eyes fell first upon Hyacinth, who had been put somewhere beyond death by Azula and brought back again by whatever knife had found purchase in her chest. She was so bloodied that Ina could not properly discern what parts of her had been damaged, only that her mouth hung open and empty, that her eyes were no longer whole enough to stare, that she had been left lying half-out of her bed, as though dragged onto the tiles to be dispatched. It was a brutal, sorry end to a girl who had only ever been kind, a girl who had only ever wished to be considered hero, warrior, worthy.

And Eero –

She had known he was dead all this time, dead or dying or half-dead, should-be-dead, why-won't-you-die. Hadn't she known? hadn't he worn the tinge of unreality on him? The vague air that he could tell her anything and she would believe him, deliriously, desperately, because – hell – he was here? He was here, when he should have been nowhere at all?

She had known, but it made it no easer to see him like this: with his throat slashed out, his eyes staring, his mouth still curved into a smile as though he had seen her coming through the door.