MIKO

They tried to kill me four times before I could walk. Seven before I held any memory of the world. Every time thereafter I knew fear, but it was anger that chipped sharp edges into my soul.

I had done nothing but exist. Nothing but own the wrong face and the wrong eyes, the wrong ancestors and the wrong name. Nothing but be Princess Miko Ts’ai. Yet it was enough, and not a day passed in which I did not wonder whether today would be the day they finally succeeded.

Every night I slept with a blade beneath my pillow, and every morning I tucked it into the intricate folds of my sash, its presence a constant upon which I dared build dreams. And finally those dreams felt close enough to touch. We were travelling north with the imperial court. Emperor Kin was about to name his heir.

As was my custom on the road, I rose while the inn was still silent, only the imperial guards awake about their duties. In the palace they tended to colonise doorways, but here, without great gates and walls to protect the emperor, they filled every corner. They were in the main house and in the courtyard, outside the stables and the kitchens and servants’ hall—two nodded in silent acknowledgement as I made my way toward the bathhouse, my dagger heavy in the folds of my dressing robe.

Back home in the palace, baths had to be taken in wooden tubs, but many northern inns had begun building Chiltaen-style bathhouses—deep stone pools into which one could sink one’s whole body. I looked forward to them every year, and as I stepped into the empty building, a little of my tension left me. A trio of lacquered dressing screens provided the only places someone could hide, so I walked a slow lap through the steam to check them all.

Once sure I was alone, I abandoned my dressing robe and slid into the bath. Despite the steam dampening all it touched, the water was merely tepid, though the clatter of someone shovelling coals beneath the floor promised more warmth to come. I shivered and glanced back at my robe, the bulk of my knife beneath its folds, reassuring.

I closed my eyes only for quick steps to disturb my peace. No assassin would make so much noise, but my hand was still partway to the knife before Lady Sichi Manshin walked in. “Oh, Your Highness, I’m sorry. I didn’t realise you were here. Shall I—?”

“No, don’t go on my account, Sichi,” I said, relaxing back into the water. “The bath is big enough for both of us, though I warn you, it’s not as warm as it looks.”

She screwed up her nose. “Big enough for the whole court, really.”

“Yes, but I hope the whole court won’t be joining us.”

“Gods no. I do not wish to know what Lord Rasten looks like without his robe.”

Sichi untied hers as she spoke, owning none of the embarrassment I would have felt had our positions been reversed. She took her time about it, seemingly in no hurry to get in the water and hide her fine curves, but eventually she slid in beside me with a dramatic shiver. “Oh, you weren’t kidding about the temperature.”

Letting out a sigh, she settled back against the stones with only her shoulders above the waterline. Damp threads of hair trailed down her long neck like dribbles of ink, the rest caught in a loose bun pinned atop her head with a golden comb. Lady Sichi was four years older than my twin and I, but her lifelong engagement to Tanaka had seen her trapped at court since our birth. If I was the caged dragon he laughingly called me, then she was a caged songbird, her beauty less in her features than in her habits, in the way she moved and laughed and spoke, in the turn of her head and the set of her hands, in the graceful way she danced through the world.

I envied her almost as much as I pitied her.

Her thoughts seemed to have followed mine, for heaving another sigh, Lady Sichi slid through the water toward me. “Koko.” Her breath was warm against my skin as she drew close. “Prince Tanaka never talks to me about anything, but you—”

“My brother—”

Sichi’s fingers closed on my shoulder. “I know, hush, listen to me, please. I just… I just need to know what you know before I leave today. Will His Majesty name him as his heir at the ceremony? Is he finally going to give his blessing to our marriage?”

I turned to find her gaze raking my face. Her grip on my shoulder tightened, a desperate intensity in her digging fingers that jolted fear through my heart.

“Well?” she said, drawing closer still. “Please, Koko, tell me if you know. It’s… it’s important.”

“Have you heard something?” My question was hardly above a breath, though I was sure we were alone, the only sound of life the continued scraping of the coal shoveller beneath our feet.

“No, oh no, just the talk. That His Majesty is seeking a treaty with Chiltae, and they want the succession confirmed before they talk terms.”

It was more than I had heard, but I nodded rather than let her know it.

“I leave for my yearly visit to my family today,” she went on when I didn’t answer. “I want—I need to know if there’s been any hint, anything at all.”

“Nothing,” I said, that single word encompassing so many years of uncertainty and frustration, so many years of fear, of knowing Tana and I were watched everywhere we went, that the power our mother held at court was all that kept us safe. “Nothing at all.”

Sichi sank back, letting the water rise above her shoulders as though it could shield her from her own uncertain position. “Nothing?” Her sigh rippled the surface of the water. “I thought maybe you’d heard something, but that he just wasn’t telling me because he…” The words trailed off. She knew that I knew, that it wasn’t only this caged life we shared but also the feeling we were both invisible.

I shook my head and forced a smile. “Say all that is proper to your family from us, won’t you?” I said, heartache impelling me to change the subject. “It must be hard on your mother having both you and your father always at court.”

Her lips parted and for a moment I thought she would ask more questions, but after a long silence, she just nodded and forced her own smile. “Yes,” she said. “Mama says she lives for my letters because Father’s are always full of military movements and notes to himself about new orders and pay calculations.”

Her father was minister of the left, in command of the empire’s military, and I’d often wondered if Sichi lived at court as much to ensure the loyalty of the emperor’s most powerful minister as because she was to be my brother’s wife.

Lady Sichi chattered on as though a stream of inconsequential talk could make me forget her first whispered entreaty. I could have reassured her that we had plans, that we were close, so close, to ensuring Tanaka got the throne, but I could not trust even Sichi. She was the closest I had ever come to a female friend, though if all went to plan, she would never be my sister.

Fearing to be drawn into saying more than was safe, I hurriedly washed and excused myself, climbing out of the water with none of Sichi’s assurance. A lifetime of being told I was too tall and too shapeless, that my wrists were too thick and my shoulders too square, had me grab the towel with more speed than grace and wrap it around as much of my body as it would cover. Sichi watched me, something of a sad smile pressed between her lips.

Out in the courtyard the inn showed signs of waking. The clang of pots and pans spilled from the kitchens, and a gaggle of servants hung around the central well, holding a variety of bowls and jugs. They all stopped to bow as I passed, watched as ever by the imperial guards dotted around the compound. Normally I would not have lowered my caution even in their presence, but the farther I walked from the bathhouse, the more my thoughts slipped back to what Sichi had said. She had not just wanted to know, she had needed to know, and the ghost of her desperate grip still clung to my shoulder.

Back in my room, I found that Yin had laid out a travelling robe and was waiting for me with a comb and a stern reproof that I had gone to the bathhouse without her.

“I am quite capable of bathing without assistance,” I said, kneeling on the matting before her.

“Yes, Your Highness, but your dignity and honour require attendance.” She began to ply her comb to my wet hair and immediately tugged on tangles. “And I could have done a better job washing your hair.”

A scuff sounded outside the door and I tensed. Yin did not seem to notice anything amiss and went on combing, but my attention had been caught, and while she imparted gossip gleaned from the inn’s servants, I listened for the shuffle of another step or the rustle of cloth.

No further sounds disturbed us until other members of the court began to wake, filling the inn with footsteps. His Majesty never liked to linger in the mornings, so there was only a short time during which everyone had to eat and dress and prepare for another long day on the road.

While I picked at my breakfast, a shout for carriers rang through the courtyard, and I moved to the window in time to see Lady Sichi emerge from the inn’s main doors. She had donned a fine robe for the occasion, its silk a shimmering weave that defied being labelled a single colour in the morning light. Within a few moments, she had climbed into the waiting palanquin with easy grace, leaving me prey to ever more niggling doubts. Now I would have to wait until the end of the summer to discover what had troubled her so much.

Before I could do more than consider running down into the yard to ask, her carriers moved off, making space for more palanquins and the emperor’s horse, which meant it wouldn’t be long until we were called to step into our carriage for another interminable day on the road. Tanaka would grumble. Edo would try to entertain him. And I would get so bored of them both I counted every mile.

Tanaka had not yet left his room, so when the gong sounded, I went to tap on his door. No answer came through the taut paper panes and I leant in closer. “Tana?”

My heart sped at the silence.

“Tana?”

I slid the door. In the centre of the shadowy room, Tanaka and Edo lay sprawled upon their mats, their covers twisted and their hands reaching across the channel toward one another. But they were not alone. A grey-clad figure crouched at my brother’s head. A blade hovered. Small. Sharp. Easy to conceal. Air punched from my lungs in a silent cry as I realised I had come too late. I could have been carrying fifty daggers and it would have made no difference.

But the blade did not move. Didn’t even tremble. The assassin looked right at me and from the hoarse depths of my first fear my cry rose to an audible scream. Yet still he just sat there, as all along the passage doors slid and footsteps came running. Tanaka woke with a start, and only then did the assassin lunge for the window. I darted forward, but my foot caught on Tanaka’s leg as he tried to rise. Shutters clattered. Sunlight streamed in. Voices followed; every servant in the building suddenly seemed to be crammed into the doorway, along with half a dozen imperial guards shoving their way through.

“Your Highnesses, is everything all right?” the first demanded.

Sharp eyes hunted the room. One sneered as he looked me up and down. Another rolled his eyes. None of them had seen the man, or none of them had wanted to. Edo pushed himself into a sitting position with his arms wrapped around his legs, while Tanaka was still blinking blearily.

“Yes, we’re fine,” I said, drawing myself up and trying for disdain. “I stepped on a sharp reed in the matting is all. Go back about your work. We cannot leave His Majesty waiting.”

“I hate being cooped up in this carriage; another day on the road will kill me more surely than any assassin,” Tanaka said, stretching his foot onto the unoccupied seat beside me. “I hope His Majesty pushes through to Koi today. It’s all right for him, getting to ride the whole way in the open air.”

“Well, when you are emperor you can choose to ride wherever you go,” I said. “You can be sure I will.”

Tanaka folded his arms. “When? I wish I shared your confidence. This morning proves that His Majesty still wants me dead, and an emperor who wants me dead isn’t likely to name me his heir.”

It had been almost two years since the last attempt on either of our lives, and this morning’s assassin had shaken me more than I dared admit. The way forward had seemed clear, the plan simple—the Chiltaens were even pressing for an announcement. I had been so sure we had found a way to force His Majesty’s hand, and yet…

Across from me, the look Edo gifted Tanaka could have melted ice, but when it was returned, they were my cheeks that reddened. Such a look of complete understanding and acceptance, of true affection. Another day on the road might kill me too, if it was really possible to die of a broken heart like the ladies in the poems.

Edo caught me looking and smiled, only half the smile he kept for Tanaka. Edo had the classical Kisian features of the finest sculpture, but it was not his nose or his cheekbones or his long-lashed eyes that made the maids fight over who would bring his washing water; it was the kind way he thanked them for every service as though he were not the eldest son of Kisia’s most powerful duke.

I looked out the window rather than risk inspiring his apologetic smile, for however imperceptive Tanaka could be, Edo was not.

“His Majesty will name Grace Bachita his heir at the ceremony,” Tanaka went on, scowling at his own sandal. “And make Sichi marry him instead. Not that Manshin will approve. He and Cousin Bachi have hated each other ever since Emperor Kin gave Manshin command of the army.”

Edo hushed him, his expressive grimace the closest he ever came to treasonous words. He knew too well the danger. Like Sichi, he had come to court as a child and was called a guest, a member of the imperial household, to be envied such was the honour. The word hostage never passed any smiling courtier’s lips.

Outside, four imperial guards rode alongside our carriage as they always did, rotating shifts at every stop. Sweat shone on the face of the closest, yet he maintained the faint smile I had rarely seen him without. “Captain Lassel is out there,” I said, the words ending all conversation more surely than Edo’s silent warning ever could.

In a moment, Tanaka was at my shoulder, peering out through the latticework. Captain Lassel could not know we were watching him, yet his ever-present little smirk made him appear conscious of it and I hated him all the more. The same smile had adorned his lips when he apologised for having let an assassin make it into my rooms on his watch. Three years had done nothing to lessen my distrust.

Tanaka shifted to the other window and, looking over Edo’s shoulder, said, “Kia and Torono are on this side.”

The newest and youngest members of the Imperial Guard, only sworn in the season before. “Small comfort,” I said.

“I think Kia is loyal to Mama. Not sure about Torono.”

Again Edo hushed him, and I went on staring at the proud figure of Captain Lassel upon his horse. He had found me standing over the assassin’s body, one arm covered in blood from a wound slashed into my elbow. At fourteen I had been fully grown, yet with all the awkwardness and ill-assurance of a child, it had been impossible to hold back my tears. He had sent for my maid and removed the body and I had thanked him with a sob. The anger had come later.

The carriage began to slow. The captain rose in his stirrups, yet from the window I could see nothing but the advance procession of His Majesty’s court. All horses and carriages and palanquins, flags and banners and silk.

“Why are we slowing?” Tanaka was still peering out the opposite window. “Don’t tell me we’re stopping for the night—it’s only mid-afternoon.”

“We can’t be,” Edo said. “There are no inns within three miles of Shami Fields. He’s probably stopping to give thanks to the gods.”

Removed as we were from the front of His Majesty’s cavalcade, I had not realised where we were until Edo spoke, but even as the words left his lips, the first kanashimi blossoms came into view, their pale petals spreading from the roadside like sprinkled snow. A flower for every soldier who had died fighting for the last Otako emperor. Though more than thirty years had passed since Emperor Tianto Otako had been captured here and executed for treason, it was still a fearful sight, a reminder of what Emperor Kin Ts’ai was capable of—an emperor whose name we carried, but whose blood we did not.

Mama had whispered the truth into my ear as a child, and with new eyes I had seen the locked gates and the guards, the crowd of servants and tutors, and the lack of companions for what they were. Pretty prison bars.

The assassins hadn’t been coming for Miko Ts’ai at all. They had been coming for Miko Otako.

“Shit, Miko, look,” Tanaka said from the other side of the carriage. “Who is that? There are people in the fields. They’re carrying white flags.”

“There’s one over here too,” I said, pressing my cheek against the sun-warmed lattice. “No, two. Three! With prayer boards. And is that…?”

The carriage slowed still more and Captain Lassel manoeuvred his horse up the line and out of view. When the carriage at last drew to a halt, I pushed open the door, stepping out before any of our guards could object. Ignoring their advice that I remain inside, I wound my way through the halted cavalcade, between mounted guards and luggage carts, hovering servants and palanquins bearing ladies too busy fanning themselves and complaining of the oppressive heat to even note my passing.

“Your Highnesses!” someone called out behind me, and I turned to see Tanaka had followed, the gold threads of his robe glinting beneath the high sun. “Your Highnesses, I must beseech you to—”

“Some of those men are carrying the Otako flag,” Tanaka said, jogging to draw level with me, all good humour leached from his expression.

“I know.”

“Slow,” he whispered as we drew near the front, and catching my hand, he squeezed it, gifting an instant of reassurance before he let go. I slowed my pace. Everywhere courtiers and councillors craned their necks to get a better view.

Some of the men blocking the road were dressed in the simple uniform of common soldiers, others the short woollen robes and pants of farmers and village folk. A few wore bright colours and finer weaves, but for the most part it was a sea of brown and blue and dirt. Their white flags fluttered from the ends of long work poles, and many of them carried prayer boards, some small, others large and covered in long lines of painted script.

Upon his dark horse, His Imperial Majesty Emperor Kin Ts’ai sat watching the scene from some twenty paces away, letting a black-robed servant talk to the apparent leader of the blockade. The emperor was conversing with one of his councillors and Father Okomi, the court priest. They might have stopped to rest their horses, so little interest did they show in the proceedings, but behind His Majesty, his personal guards sat tense and watchful in their saddles.

In the middle of the road, Mama’s palanquin sat like a jewelled box, her carriers having set it down to wipe their sweaty faces and rest their arms. As we drew close, her hand appeared between the curtains, its gesture a silent order to go no farther.

“But what is—?”

I pressed my foot upon Tanaka’s and his mouth snapped shut. Too many watching eyes. Too many listening ears. Perhaps it had been foolish to leave the carriage, and yet to sit there and do nothing, to go unseen when His Majesty was mere days from announcing his heir… It was easy to get rid of people the empire had forgotten.

Only the snap and flutter of banners split the tense silence. A few guards shifted their feet. Servants set down their loads. And upon his horse, General Ryoji of the Imperial Guard made his way toward us, grim and tense.

“Your Highnesses,” he said, disapproval in every line of his aging face. “Might I suggest you return to your carriage for safety. We do not yet know what these people want.”

8220;For that very reason I will remain with my mother, General,” Tanaka said, earning a reluctant nod. “Who are these people?”

“Soldiers. Farmers. Small landholders. A few very brave Otako loyalists who feel they have nothing to fear expressing such ideas here. Nothing you need worry about, my prince.”

My prince. It wasn’t a common turn of phrase, but we had long ago learnt to listen for such things, to hear the messages hidden in everyday words. Tanaka nodded his understanding but stayed his ground, tall and lean and confident and drawing every eye.

“General?” A guard ran toward us. “General Ryoji, His Majesty demands you order these delinquent soldiers and their company out of his way immediately.”

Ryoji did not stay to utter further warning but turned his horse about, and as he trotted toward the head of the procession, I followed. “Miko,” Tanaka hissed. “We should stay here with—”

“Walk with me,” I said, returning to grip his hand and pull him along. “Let’s be seen like heirs to the Crimson Throne would be seen at such a time.”

His weight dragged as Mother called a warning from behind her curtains, but I refused to be afraid and pulled him with me.

Ahead of our cavalcade, General Ryoji had dismounted to stand before the protestors on equal ground. “As the commander of the Imperial Guard, I must request that you remove yourselves from our path and make your grievances known through the proper channels,” he said. “As peaceful as your protest is, continued obstruction of the emperor’s roads will be seen as an act of treason.”

“Proper channels? You mean complain to the southern bastards who have been given all our commands about the southern bastards who have been given all our commands?” shouted a soldier near the front to a chorus of muttered agreement. “Or the southern administrators who have taken all the government positions?” More muttering, louder now as the rest of the blockade raised an angry cheer. “Or the Chiltaen raiders who charge into our towns and villages and burn our fields and our houses and murder our children while the border battalions do nothing?”

No sense of self-preservation could have stopped a man so consumed by anger, and he stepped forward, pointing a gnarled finger at his emperor. Emperor Kin broke off his conversation with Father Okomi and stared at the man as he railed on. “You would let the north be destroyed. You would see us all trampled into the dust because we once stood behind the Otako banner. You would—”

“General,” His Majesty said, not raising his voice, and yet no one could mistake his words. “I would continue on my way now. Remove them.”

I stared at him sitting there so calmly upon his grand horse, and the anger at his attempt on Tanaka’s life flared hot. He would as easily do away with these protestors because they inconvenienced him with their truth.

Slipping free from Tanaka, I advanced into the open space between the travelling court and the angry blockade to stand at General Ryoji’s side.

“No blood need be shed,” I said, lifting my voice. “His Majesty has come north to renew his oath and hear your grievances, and if they are all indeed as you say, then by the dictates of duty something will be done to fix them. As a representative of both the Otako family through my mother’s blood and the Ts’ai through my father’s, I thank you for your loyalty and service to Kisia but must ask you to step aside now that your emperor may pass. The gods’ representative cannot make wise decisions from the side of a road.”

Tense laughter rattled through the watchers. They had lowered their prayer boards and stood shoulder to shoulder, commoners and soldiers together watching me with hungry eyes. Their leader licked his lips, looking to General Ryoji and then to Tanaka as my twin joined me. “You ask us this as a representative of your two families,” the man said, speaking now to my brother rather than to me. “You would promise us fairness as a representative of your two families. But do you speak as His Majesty’s heir?”

General Ryoji hissed. Someone behind me gasped. The man in the road stood stiff and proud in the wake of his bold question, but his gaze darted about, assessing risks in the manner of an old soldier.

“Your faith in me does me great honour,” Tanaka said. “I hope one day to be able to stand before you as your heir, and as your emperor, but that is the gods’ decision to make, not mine.” He spread his arms. “If you want your voices heard, then raise your prayer boards and beseech them. I would walk with you in your troubles. I would fight your battles. I would love and care for all. If the gods, in their infinite wisdom, deem me worthy, I would be humbled to serve you all to the best of my ability.”

His name rose upon a cheer, and I tried not to resent the ease with which he won their love as the crowd pressed forward, reaching out to touch him as though he were already a god. He looked like one, his tall figure garbed in gold as the people crowded in around him, some bowing to touch his feet and to thank him while others lifted their prayer boards to the sky.

We had been careful, had spoken no treason, yet the more the gathered crowd cried their love for their prince the more dangerous the scene became, and I lifted shaking hands. “Your love for my brother is overwhelming,” I said to the noise of their prayers and their cheers. “But you must now disperse. Ask them to step aside, Tana, please.”

“Isn’t this what you wanted?” he whispered. “To let His Majesty see what he ought to do?”

“He has already seen enough. Please, ask them to disperse. Now.”

“For you, dear sister.”

8220;Listen now.” He too lifted his arms, and where the crowd had ignored me, they descended into awed silence for him. “It is time to step aside now and make way for His Imperial Majesty, representative of the gods and the great shoulders upon which Kisia—”

While Tanaka spoke, I looked around to see the emperor’s reaction, but a dark spot in the blue sky caught my eye. An arrow arced toward us, slicing through the air like a diving hawk.

“Watch out!”

Someone screamed. The crowd pushed and shoved in panic and Tanaka and I were trapped in the press of bodies. No guards. No shields. And my hands were empty. There was nothing I could—

Refusing the call of death, I snatched the first thing that came to hand—a prayer board from a screaming protestor—and thrust it up over our heads. The arrowhead splintered the wood. My arms buckled, but still vibrating, the arrow stuck. For a few long seconds, my ragged breath was all the sound left in the sultry afternoon.

“They attacked our prince under a flag of peace!”

The shout came from behind us, and the leader of the blockade lifted his arms as though in surrender. “We didn’t! We wouldn’t! We only ask that His Majesty name his heir and—”

An arrow pierced his throat, throwing him back into the men behind him, men who lifted their prayer boards and their white flags, begging to be heard, but imperial guards advanced, swords drawn. One slashed the throat of a kneeling man, another cut down someone trying to run. A few of the protesting soldiers had swords and knives, but most were common folk who had come unarmed.

“Stop. Stop!” Tanaka shouted as blood sprayed from the neck of the closest man. “If I do not—”

“Back to your carriage!” General Ryoji gripped Tanaka’s arm. “Get out of here, now.”

“But they did not—”

8220;No, but you did.”

I followed as he dragged Tanaka away from the chaos and back to the cavalcade to be met with silent stares. Mama’s hand had retreated back inside her curtained palanquin, but His Majesty watched us pass. Our eyes met. He said not a word and made no gesture, but for an instant before doubt set in, I was sure he had smiled, a grim little smile of respect. Wishful thinking. No more.

Edo stood waiting at the door of the carriage but slid out of sight as Ryoji marched Tanaka up to it and thrust him inside. He held the door open for me to follow, and I took my seat, trembling from head to foot.

Still holding the door, the general leant in. “Do you have a death wish, boy?”

“I was the one trying to stop anyone getting killed, General, if you didn’t notice.”

“And painting a great big target on your back while you did it.”

“They loved me!”

General Ryoji snarled an animal’s anger. “You think it was you they were cheering for? They weren’t even seeing you. That was Katashi Otako standing before them once more.”

“And I’m proud to look—”

“Your father was a traitor. A monster. He killed thousands of people. You—”

Words seemed to fail him and he slammed the door. A shout to the driver and the carriage lurched into motion. Tanaka scowled, ignoring Edo’s concerned questions, while outside, more people willing to die for the Otako name bled their last upon the Shami Fields.

RAH

I t’s harder to sever a head than people think. Perhaps if one were skilled with an axe, it could be done in a single blow—so long as the body was not trying to run away at the time—but out in the grasslands, decapitation is done with a knife. The first incision is easy. Then you drag your serrated blade through the flesh and think you’ll soon be done. I thought so my first time. I thought it would be quick and simple and not involve such thick globs of blood.

But it is our way. The Levanti way. So though we grumble, we saw through still-warm flesh and long-dead flesh alike to free the soul within. Even when we are far from home.

“Why not just leave them?” Eska said, pacing behind me, every step a thud upon the track as though it had insulted his mother. “It will be night soon.”

Blood darkened one man’s face like the ragged remains of a mask. It had burst from his eye and poured from his throat—a slash there having done half my job already.

“Come on, Rah, let’s go. They were not worthy enemies.”

“All spirits are equal,” I said. “You should have remembered that before you gave the order to kill them.”

“Don’t give me that whisperer shit. They attacked us.”

I stood, a sigh deflating my chest as I looked upon the poor dead bastards. “We leave no soul behind,” I said. “Lok, Amun, Juta, cut ’em.”

Obligatory grumbling followed as the two men stepped forward, the boy between them.

“Juta is a not yet shorn, he—”

“Must learn.” I returned Eska’s scowl. “And opportunities to practise may be scarce.” I nodded to Juta, his long hair caught back in an untidy ponytail. “You know what to do.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“I’ll work beside you.”

Laughter filled the evening as the rest of our hunting party moved away from the slaughter, only Eska remaining to loom his disapproval over me. “We don’t know this land well enough to travel by night,” he said as I knelt in the dirt with the fallen. “Not without the aid of the Goddess Moon.”

“Our eyes will soon adjust to having only one moon in the sky.”

Eska grunted. “That makes it no less wrong. How can they stand so much darkness?”

I lifted the dead man’s head onto my knees and, using the slash in his throat as a place to start, began cutting. Blood dripped through the incision to stain the ground. Another thing you learnt early was to keep your knees apart.

Farther along the track, Amun was making quick work of his man, while Lok worked as slow and steady as ever. Juta’s face had screwed up in concentration.

“Kishava says it’s more than an hour’s walk back.”

I lodged my blade between vertebrae and regarded my second. His dark skin glowed in the last of the summer sunlight, but there was nothing bright about his expression. “If you think you can do this faster, then by all means take over.”

“I don’t think you should be bothering at all,” he said, the hushed words for me alone. “These are not our people.”

“No, but a soul is a soul, and that is why I am the captain and you are not. If you’re so concerned about our pace, then fetch a sack for the heads. Maybe two.”

Eying the others, he knelt at my side. “The sacks are all full,” he said, his lips almost to my ear. “Full of the meat we came out here to hunt.”

“I know. Move it around or leave some behind.”

“We need the food, Captain.”

“You think I don’t know that?” I said, twitching my knife free to slice the last cords of flesh in the dead man’s neck. “But what sort of Levanti would we be if we abandoned our honour the moment we stepped from our homeland?”

Eska snarled, “This is the sort of thinking that got us here in the first place.”

“If you want to lead the Second Swords, then challenge me,” I said, locking my gaze to his—this man I had called friend long before either of us had sworn our lives to protect the herd.

In silence he chewed at nothing, drawing attention to a scar tracing the line of his jaw. A lucky escape from a stray axe blow the day we had lost Herd Master Sassanji to a Korune raid.

“No?” I shoved him away when he did not answer. “Then get a sack. You’ll carry it back to camp and the heads will be your responsibility until we find a shrine.”

He got to his feet, all long-limbed grace. “Yes, Captain.” He pressed his fists together in salute, however brief, and walked away. His barked orders soon cut through the incessant buzz of insects and the complaints of a dozen Swords with nothing to do.

Beside me, Juta’s hands dripped blood, making the task twice as hard, while Amun had already finished and owned the look of someone who had been trying not to listen.

I rushed the rest of the job, making such a mess of the spine it looked like I had torn the damn head off. Watched by dead eyes, I spoke a prayer to Nassus under my breath. He might have preferred the One True God all the missionaries spoke of, but the Levanti god of death would have to do.

Wordlessly, Eska brought a bloodstained sack and I dropped the head in. Light was fading fast, darkening the forest in which we’d been hunting when the men attacked. The fools. I had tried to tell them we meant no harm, but they had understood our language as little as we understood theirs. The fight had lasted mere seconds yet had left me shaken. No Levanti returning from exile had ever described the locals as aggressive.

With the dregs in my water skin, I rinsed my hands and wiped them on the dead man’s sleeve. “All right, let’s go,” I said. “Before someone else comes looking for trouble. Kishava?”

The tracker swung a sack of deer flesh onto her shoulder. “We’ll have to move fast,” she said as the rest of the group gathered their share. “Night is coming.”

“Then we move fast.”

With a sack of heads slung over each shoulder, Eska strode into the trees in Kishava’s wake and I signalled for the rest to follow, Juta the last before I brought up the rear. Though he was not yet a Sword, he carried as much as the others. His scowl of concentration had not dissipated.

“Arm sore, boy?”

“Like I’ve been strung up all day,” he said, pushing back a bloodied clump of hair that kept falling into his face. “Damn flies.” Juta swatted them away from his bloody burden, but they came right back.

With both my hands occupied, I could only shake off the swarming insects that leapt from my sweaty arm to my sweaty brow and onto the sodden back of my tunic.

“Did we really have to do that, Captain?” he asked as we followed the trail of Swords cutting a dark vein through the trees. “They weren’t warriors.”

“Was Matriarch Petra a warrior?”

“No.”

We walked on through the lengthening shadows. “Was her soul freed?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’ve answered your own question. In the eyes of Nassus, all souls are equal. To leave one trapped in its flesh would do great injury to the Creator.”

He nodded, lowering his gaze to the dry undergrowth. He had listened to the lesson, but it ought not have been mine to teach. I had learnt at the herd master’s feet as did all young Levanti of the Torin herd. Or had done before Herd Master Reez let the missionaries come. Had let them help. Let them stay. Let them talk.

Bitter heartache pierced my soul, and just for a moment, I wished it all undone, wished we were home beneath the baking sun taking kills back to the herd. But it could not be undone. And allowed the choice again, I would have given the same orders.

I cleaned my knife while food made its way around the camp on two dozen battered tin plates, thin as leaves. It had made sense to leave the other eighty plates behind, freeing up space for tools and supplies, but whenever a fight broke out over who got to eat next, I’d have given anything to have them all.

Beyond the reach of the firelight, Eska held his usual court, and though I was sure he watched me from the shadows, I did not look up. Beside me, Yitti, our healer, slowly ate his dinner.

“Not eating, Captain?” he said between mouthfuls of rice and mushrooms wrapped in seared meat.

“Not yet, I want to finish this first.”

He chewed and watched me work. “If you clean that blade any more you’ll wear it thin. You’re worried. About the food supplies.”

“That rice we bought at the port is almost gone,” I said, thrusting my blade back into its sheath. “We need to keep moving. Everyone says there’s mercenary work here.”

The firelight bathed one side of his face, making grotesque shadows on the other as he picked something from his teeth. He took his time about it as he did about everything, Yitti a man who could mull over the simplest choice.

“Everyone? The Third Swords of the Ahn and the First Swords of the Bahmut said so five years ago, but Gideon never came back. Nor did any of his Swords.”

His calm words cut deeper than Eska’s anger. “You have a better idea?” I said, sounding like the child I had thought long left behind.

Still chewing slowly, Yitti shook his head. “No, Captain.”

Leaving him to finish his meal and make his rounds, I followed my nose to where the saddleboys had built a cooking fire and a coal pit. Crouched over, none of them worked with the speed or skill of the herd cooks back home.

“Changed your mind about food, Captain?” Juta said, barely glancing up from his work. Sweat dripped from the ends of his hair and the tip of his nose to hiss upon the coals. Beside him, Iya, our only saddlegirl, was pulling fresh meat from the bottom of a sack.

“Nah, I’ll wait and pick at what’s left over.”

“Wise.”

Himi appeared beside me, handing her plate to Juta and bumping me with her hip, though given her height, it was my thigh she hit. “Captain, fancy seeing you amongst the cooking coals.”

Having lumped some rice and meat onto the plate, Juta held it out.

“That’s all?” she said. “What happened to the mushrooms?”

“All gone.”

She scowled, but before she could snap, I said, “It’s hard learning how to cook for a hundred mouths when you’ve never had to do it before, Him. Let it go.”

She took the plate without thanks, made a poor salute with one fist pressed to her dinner, and walked back toward the main fire.

I released a long breath. “How are supplies?”

“This is the end of the meat from the last hunt,” Iya said, dropping a handful into the coals.

“But it should have lasted three days.”

“It didn’t.”

Juta pushed a sodden lock of hair behind his ear as Fessel, his young arms straining, poured fresh coals into the pit. Cooking shouldn’t have been their job—Swords didn’t do such things—but without a full herd, there was no one else to do it.

“We’re also running low on salt, Captain,” Juta said. “After we salt today’s meat it’ll be all but gone.”

I ran a hand over my eyes. “Fuck.”

“I could sure do with one,” he said, reminding me that back home, he would have been only a season or two away from being shorn and branded a man, but this was not the plains, and I needed a cook more than another warrior with a big stomach. If we managed to find work as mercenaries, then he might get the chance to join our ranks. If not, a disgruntled saddleboy would be the least of my worries.

“You and me both,” I said. “How far can we make it on today’s hunt?”

“Maybe four days if we ration,” Iya said, turning the sack inside out so she could peel the last of the meat from its waxed lining. “The horses would need more grazing though because there’s only two days of feed, maybe two and a half. Orun will know.”

I turned to go, but Juta stood and gripped my arm. “The others have been talking about leaving,” he whispered, his blackened fingers digging into my sleeve. “They say we might not yet be Made, but we are meant to be training to be Swords not slaves.”

“They listen to you?” I whispered back, sure Iya was watching.

“Sometimes.”

“Then keep them here as long as you can. We are stronger together than apart and our fortunes will soon take a turn for the better. After we find a shrine to see off the souls we carry.”

He gestured to where slivers of meat hung drying on a rack. Underneath it, the two sacks of heads sat unopened. “That had better be soon, Captain. In this weather, they’re going to start to smell real bad.”

“We have natron?”

“Some.”

“Then salt them or we’ll attract the attention of every vulture in Chiltae.”

After the meal, Eska gathered the Hand, and the five of us sat around a dying fire while our Swords prepared for sleep. Kishava the tracker, Orun the horse master, and Yitti the healer, along with Eska and myself, together made a complete Hand with which the Swords were wielded. At least that was the idea. I had learnt early that it mattered not how fine the intent; it still had to be carried out by men.

“Well, Captain,” Eska said, planting himself cross-legged upon the dirt. “What fine plan are you brewing now?”

Bitter, angry men.

“We’ve been here two weeks,” I said, looking at the four firelit faces around me. “There’s been no sign of Gideon, and life without a herd has been—”

“Shit.” Eska glowered at the flames.

“I was going to say harder than we expected.”

Orun shrugged one shoulder, the other weighed down by his horse box. “It is about how I expected it,” he said in the rasping tones of a man who has seen many summers. “There’s a reason why we travel in herds. Many hands make light work. We fight and hunt; others cook, weave, tan, and look after the foals. We can keep fighting and hunting, but no one is going to cook for us anymore.”

“Except the saddleboys.” Eska again, glancing to where Juta sat crouched before his pit of coals, Fessel a mere shadow as he hung the last of the salted meat.

“That isn’t their job any more than it’s ours,” I said. “But we can’t go back yet, so we have to find a way to go forward.”

“Very philosophical,” Eska sneered.

Kishava cleared her throat. “The captain’s right. We’re stuck out here for a full cycle of seasons, and that’s too long to sit and tear each other apart. We won’t find Gideon by staying here.”

Yitti rubbed the short pelt of his hair as though it helped him think. “Gideon might be dead. As First Sword of the Torin, three years is a long time to stay away by choice.”

“That’s what I have been saying all along,” Eska said. “He wouldn’t choose to stay here, and since he never came back, moving from here could be dangerous. We have water here, and animals. The scouts who’ve gone beyond the forest tell of only an endless stretch of lifeless rock.”

“There’s a city,” Orun said. “At least that’s what I think the girl was trying to say. One of the girls from that last village. I asked—” He made the shape of a pointed roof with his arms to show how he’d attempted communication. “She pointed south and said a bunch of nonsense, but I think it’s called Capital.”

“Capital?” I said. “Is it big?”

Again, that one-sided shrug. “She went like this—” He held his hands far apart. “But she might have just been in awe of my cock.”

Laughter broke some of the tension, Orun’s smile lopsided like his shrug.

“South then,” I said. “Perhaps Capital is on the Ribbon, which means water and food. We might even find someone who speaks our language, and we could ask after Gideon and get mercenary work.”

“Work?” I had braced for the outburst but still flinched when Eska rounded on me. “You want us to work? For money? Like the city folk back home? If that’s what you wanted, then you could have just kept your mouth shut and done what Herd Master Reez told you to.”

“Damn it, Eska, I don’t want to be here either, but could you have surrendered?”

He stood, his shadow towering over me. “If Herd Master Reez gave me an order, I would follow it, no matter what it was.”

“Herd Master Reez has lost his mind!” I leapt to my feet. “He no longer listens to his own people.”

Eska stepped closer, lowering his voice, though an audience was already gathering. “Then why didn’t you challenge him?” he said. “Huh? Why didn’t the great Captain Rah e’Torin stand up and speak before it came to this? I’ll tell you why. Because the great captain is a coward. Because if you had challenged him and lost, you would have been exiled alone, but this way you got to keep your honour and drag us all along for company.”

He spat, saliva hissing as it hit coals. “The only reason you were Captain Tallus’s second in the first place was because his sister liked the taste of your cock. But I don’t see any way that cock of yours can get us out of this mess, so perhaps it’s time you stepped aside and let someone else make decisions.”

“Like you?”

“Like me. If I had still been his second when he died, none of us would be here sucking water out of rocks and hacking the heads off savages.” Eska’s fingers closed around one of his sword hilts, and he withdrew the blade slowly. I did not flinch but stared back into his hatred, bitter satisfaction in the knowledge that a blade once drawn had to taste blood or be thrown down, never to be picked up again.

Had we been home on the plains, a matriarch or patriarch would have stepped between us, would have done their best to cool tempers before the Torin lost a much-needed warrior to a poor cause, but there were no matriarchs here, no patriarchs, and no herd.

My hand found the smooth leather of a well-worn hilt as fire pumped through my veins. “If you had stood before the Korune and said nothing, you would have thrown honour to the dirt,” I said. “You would have doomed every one of our souls to weigh heavy upon Mona’s scales. Do you think we would have thanked you?”

“Scales. Honour. Gods. Fuck you and your old glory, Rah. Look around and see the new world because whether you like it or not, things have changed. The cities are tightening their hold on our lands, and if we are going to survive as vassals, then—”

“Vassals?” The silence deepened, sucking away everything except the resilient crackle of the coals. “I would rather die than bend before the Korune. Or the Tempachi. Or anyone else who sought to take the plains from us.”

“Then die. It’s time the Second Swords had a new captain to lead them home.”

Talk erupted, but it was all noise beneath the hammering of my heart. “Well, Captain?” Eska lifted a challenging brow. “Will you fight me for leadership of the Second Swords?”

“Yes,” I said, though my heart cried a different answer. “I will not let you bring such shame to the Torin.”

I withdrew first one sword then the other from the dual scabbards at my hip, their weight in my hands gifting a vicious joy.

“This is stupid.” Yitti stepped between us, fulfilling the role of the absent herd leaders. “There is trouble enough without this.”

“Stand aside, Yitti,” Eska said, drawing his second sword, a prayer to Nassus etched into its blade. “If anything happens to you, you’ll have trouble stitching yourself up.”

With a grimace, the healer ran a hand along his hair, then stepped aside, leaving a firelit Eska to fill my vision. Noise and movement surged as the Second Swords made space, dragging logs and saddlebags out of the way while shouting at others to hurry. More came, forming a circle in the firelight that pushed and shoved and muttered, while inside every mind another fight took place. Who did they want to follow? Who did they want to win?

Eska licked his lips. “Gods stand on my side,” he called to the night. “I would lead these Swords home and fight for the Torin, not against them, for the new world, not against it, because screaming and thrashing in the dark does not stop tomorrow from coming.”

I ought to have thought of my own words, but my mind whirled free, snatching at horrors. This might be the end, here on these strange rocky shores far from home. Better to die than be exiled alone, but I clung to life as I clung to the blades that had never let me down.

“Gods stand on my side,” I said, spewing the first words that came to mind. “Because whatever change is coming, we are still Levanti, we are riders and warriors and nomads, we are the Torin, and we do not give in.”

The words were inadequate, but no words could have voiced the ache in my heart. An ache that deepened as my childhood friend stepped forward, spinning first one sword and then the other, their etched blades glinting. No cheers. No cries. Every watching Sword stood silent, holding their breath.

Another step. Another spin. I held my ground, blades ready, waiting for him to come to me.

I am a captain of the Torin. The gods are on my side. I am a captain of the Torin. The gods are on my side. I am a—

Ash and embers flew into my face, and through the stinging cloud, Eska lunged. I ducked, but the tip of one blade bit my shoulder as a coal bit my face. I rose, hissing, and backed away. He followed. “Come on, Rah. Captain Tallus said you were better than me. Prove it.”

He swung high, but it was his second sword I caught and parried, and at the clang of steel on steel, all thought fled. Fuelled by rage, I pushed him back, blades ripping air. His nipped my side. Mine caught his arm. And on we circled, not breaking gaze. “Intention is not in the blades,” Captain Tallus had always said. “It’s in the eyes.”

Eska’s brows twitched and he lunged. I met his low thrust and, ducking beneath his guard, pierced his thigh with my other blade, uncorking a trickle of blood. He could have conceded but instead leapt at me like a sand cat. I overbalanced, and steel sliced my hip in a line of fire, cutting leather and skin. My desperate deflection of his second strike hit so hard that my blade escaped my slick grip, ripping his with it. Together they thudded into the dirt beyond the glowing remains of the fire.

Bent double, Eska laughed, one bloodied hand gripping his remaining sword, the other a wound on his side I couldn’t remember inflicting. “Yield!” I said, chest heaving and head thumping. “This is your last chance.”

He only laughed harder, the sound awful in the silence.

“Yield.”

“No.” He flung his remaining sword at my head and I dropped, rolling through hissing coals and filling the air with puffs of ash. I thrust my blade up blindly and my arm juddered, almost buckled. A grunt, and again Eska laughed a soft, hissing laugh. “Fuck you, Rah,” he said, laughter breaking to a cough. “Fuck you.”

The etched prayers along my blade disappeared into his gut. “I’m sorry,” I managed, my lips sticky with the taste of blood.

Again that laugh. “I’m not.” Loose in one hand, he held his hunting knife. He jabbed it toward my throat. It ought to have killed me. We ought to have died together, but the proximity of death fuels one in ways nothing else can, and with a roar of pure fear, I heaved his weight off me and rolled. Eska landed with a heavy thud upon what remained of the fire and started to sizzle, the stink of singed hair and leather filling the suddenly dark night.

Shouts. Hurrying steps. A hand slapped my cheek. “Captain? Captain! Damn it, someone bring a torch!”

Either the torch was lit at great speed or I faded out, for when next I opened my eyes it was to the glare of flaming pitch. A torch was jammed into the ground beside Yitti, whose rough hands upon my sliced-up chest elicited a strong desire for death.

I groaned.

“Not dead yet, Captain,” he said, “but I’ll have to stitch this up, so it’s not over yet either.”

“Eska?”

“Dead.”

Stupid question. Of course he was dead.

“Kishava is preparing to free his soul.”

“No.”

Gods only knew why I said it. The last thing I wanted to do that night was cut Eska’s head from his body, but to have someone else do it…

“No, Captain?”

“No.” I gritted my teeth as his needle pierced my skin without warning. “I’ll do it.”

“You’re in no state to do anything tonight.”

“Damn it, Yitti,” I said. “Sew me up and I’ll do it.”

He didn’t answer but called out to the others without missing a stitch. I closed my eyes then, trying to focus on the sounds around me, on voices and conversations, on the scuff of steps and the snort of horses troubled by the scent of blood. I gave an order for Orun to do the rounds and calm them as best he could—at least I think I did. Everything blurred with the pierce and tug and burn of the needle and thread.

Once Yitti had sewn me up and cleaned my burns, he left me alone. The other Swords had long since returned to whatever entertainment they had been drawn from, though the relative quiet of the camp suggested many were sleeping. There was nothing I wanted to do more, but sleep would have to wait a while yet.

Yitti had left the torch, and in the circle of its flickering, crackling light lay Eska. Half-lidded, his eyes stared at nothing, and though the muscles in his face had sagged, his pride had not. Whether or not it was a trick of the light or of fatigue, the man seemed to smile mockingly up at me as I lifted his head, wriggling my knees in beneath his shoulders.

My hands shook, one cupping his skull, the other gripping my knife. His body had not yet cooled, not yet stiffened, and the first incision into the back of his neck let warm blood flow onto the ground.

“You fool,” I said, and though I tried to concentrate on slicing his skin, my gaze kept slipping back to his face. “You could have yielded.”

Despite his bloodless lips, I could almost imagine he smiled in the flickering light. “So could you,” he would have said. “But you were never going to, and neither was I. We have always been fools together.”

With a grunt of effort I hacked through his throat, the strength of the human body as fascinating as its frailty. Tears stung my eyes. It ought not to have been this way. We had been saddleboys together, both of an age that we had trained together, slept together, learnt together, and eaten together. Every Torin I thought of as family, but he had been closer than most.

“Do you remember that day we broke the herd master’s bowl?” I said, nicking the last of his skin and starting on the thick meaty flesh around his spine. “We shouldn’t have been in his tent. I don’t even remember why we were, making trouble no doubt, you were always good at that. I bumped the table and it fell and gods know I was so scared. I didn’t tell you that, didn’t tell you I was afraid they would throw me out and I would have to roam alone scavenging in the grasslands, but you must have known. I was too scared to even lie, but you—” I dug the tip of my knife into his sinews. “You blamed that dog that followed Aristas everywhere and they believed you because you could lie your way past Mona’s scales with that smile of yours.”

I couldn’t tell if I was laughing or crying, but tears blurred my vision as I hacked through Eska’s spine. It took longer than it ought with slippery, shaking hands, but soon he would get his chance to face Mona, a smile already upon his lips.

The man’s last breath sighed out between damp lips. It was a peaceful sound, graceful even, unlike the mess I had left. Protruding eyes. Blood. Saliva. Semen. Sweat glistening upon rolls of fat. He was still hard, but that was not unusual.

Can we not look at that, Cassandra?

Ah, She was back. I turned away, not for Her but because the dead flesh was beginning to sing its yearning song, a thing far more unnerving than blood or guts had ever been.

There hadn’t been time earlier to do more than ascertain an escape route, but now at my leisure, I examined the bedroom. Corpse notwithstanding, it was luxurious, full of velvet and silk and tassels—always tassels—but no amount of gilt frames and furniture could make up for the smell.

If you didn’t fuck them first, the room wouldn’t stink.

“Shut up.”

I wiped my knife on an embroidered… thing that had been thrown over the back of a chair.

That’s probably worth a fortune. It looks Kisian.

“Shut up.”

Of course, She wouldn’t. She never did.

The window hung open, allowing a humid cloud of city-stink to do battle with the pungent odour of stale perfume, wine, and sex. Down in the street, voices mingled. With the moon full, all the night markets would be busy, packed with pushing and shoving people trying to reach the best food vendors. My stomach grumbled.

Are we just going to hang around? I’d rather not get caught if it’s all the same to you.

I grunted and snatched up my belt, jamming my dagger back into its sheath. “It’s not like the servants are going to burst in when he’s occupied,” I said, keeping my voice low as I strode to the man’s dressing table—yet another gilded piece of furniture, with a mirror big enough to reflect half the damn room. Its drawer slid out as though mounted on felt, displaying a neatly ordered selection of jewellery. So it wouldn’t look as though anything had been stolen, I grabbed only a few small things. A pair of rings with big jewels, some ornate pins, and a medallion that bore the man’s merchant arms because you never knew what might be useful.

While I dressed, I giggled and chatted to the corpse in case any nosy servants were listening, then donned my cloak and made for the door. The dim hallway was empty—of bodies though probably not of eyes. Servants made more money selling their masters’ secrets than they were ever paid in a wage.

I met the first servant on the stairs, a young man who looked pointedly away and invoked the blessing of God. “Whorishness isn’t contagious,” I said as I passed, but the man only turned farther away. The growing fervour for old-fashioned values almost made the overlarge hood that hid my face unnecessary.

The young man scuttled off.

He might be going to his master’s room, She said. Run!

“Time enough if he yells.” I maintained my regal pace down the stairs. A knot of maids in the entrance hall scattered, one even hiding behind a gilded pillar. Pathetic. The lecherous old bastard had probably had each and every one of them, yet they still thought me diseased. Lucky for them I had removed him from existence.

Yes, I’m sure their lives will be much better now they have no master to pay them.

Two footmen opened the mansion’s front doors, letting noise spill in from the street—the shouts of vendors at the grand market, the rhythmic clack of hooves on stone, and an ever-present chorus of laughter like pealing bells. Whatever the season, the city of Genava never slept, and at the height of summer, it never even slowed. Though it was past midnight, carriages and sedan chairs clogged the street, while upon the sidewalk, a torchboy lit the way for a group of well-dressed merrymakers. Timing my steps so I could join the back of their group and disappear, I swept down the stairs.

But of course life could not allow me so elegant an escape plan. A sedan chair slowed to a halt at the bottom of the steps, and out stepped a man in a belted grey habit, a high cleric’s full-length mask hiding his face from view. Two guards in grey tunics joined him, but though both glanced at me, neither reached for a weapon. The high cleric eyed me through the narrow slits of his mask. I held my breath, heart pounding as though I were back at the hospice beneath the baleful glare of Cleric Oldem, but the high cleric just nodded.

As he reached the still-open doors, I sped down the last few steps to the sedan chair and pressed a coin into the head carrier’s hand. “Timpany. And fast.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The door closed behind me with a snap and the vehicle leapt forward, throwing me back onto the cushioned seat.

Did you just steal a high cleric’s sedan chair?

“Of course not; they don’t own things. They hire vehicles to pretend they’re just like poor folk.” Although it did smell like a priest, its general mustiness overlaid with the scent of freshly laundered cloth and floral oil. Cleric Oldem had smelled the same. “He knew who I was,” I said, turning to look back through the window at the now empty stairs. “That nod was like a thank you, wasn’t it?”

Are you actually asking me something?

“No, just thinking aloud.” I had been paid handsomely for the job, but while that was all that mattered, a high cleric was the last person I wanted to help.

I gripped the leather loop hanging from the roof as the carriers picked up speed, winding through the traffic in a way that threw me against the side of my box prison. I gritted my teeth. That high cleric had definitely known who I was, or at least known my purpose, yet had not stopped me. Did he know he was walking in to find Lord Eritius’s body? Would his cock have deflated before the cleric arrived?

You are disgusting.

A small flask nestled in my heeled boot, and though I knew it to be empty I withdrew it anyway, yanked the stopper, and tipped it up. A single drop landed on my tongue, gifting a thrill of relief, but it was not enough to shut Her up.

That stuff is going to kill us, Cassandra. Please stop drinking it.

Us. Had the flask been full I would have drained it in one go. Instead I pushed it back into my boot and stared out at the passing city, fretfully twisting the ties on my hood as flashes of light and noise sped by, the city all lit doorways and cloaked figures, flambeaus and lantern light glimmering off silk. The streets grew darker and narrower as we left Lord Eritius’s mansion behind, but even in the deserted stretches I couldn’t help turning to check no blessed guards followed. That little nod of thanks had lodged in my mind.

At last the sedan chair slowed before the Timpany Market’s welcome plaza. Usually it owned only a few lounging drunks and dull-eyed whores, but tonight it was crammed edge to edge with people—not just the poor folk common to the area but citizens of all kinds, the genial blending of classes as unusual as the presence of so large a crowd.

Not waiting for the carriers to open the door, I shoved my way out shoulder first, my heeled boots meeting the stones with a squelch. In the posh areas of Genava, lords paid boys to sweep and shovel horse shit, but here those coins all went to food, shelter, and Stiff.

Before the head carrier picked up his pole again, I pressed another coin into his hand. “For your silence.”

His chest heaved from the effort and sweat trickled down his face, but he nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

And that was it, because in Genava, everything could be bought or sold.

Especially you.

It was an old argument, so rather than answer, I wound my way into the hushed crowd. They seemed to be waiting for something, people occasionally stretching up on the tips of their toes to see the other end of the plaza before murmuring to their companions. No one stopped me. No one spoke to me. No one even complained when I pushed through, and by the time I reached the market entrance, my curiosity was so piqued I climbed the open iron gate for a better view. And there at the far end of the square, as though the men of God were following me everywhere tonight, half a dozen blessed guards stood on either side of a figure sitting on the stones. He wore the same mask as a high cleric, but no high cleric would ever sit in the dirt to bless commoners.

That must be Dom Leo Villius, She said, adding Her voice to the whispers of the milling crowd as a woman held out her baby to the kneeling figure. I hear he’s doing this most nights now. His father can’t be happy about it.

“You hear? How can you hear things I haven’t?”

Because you’re not always paying attention. I like listening to other people; your thoughts get boring.

After a minute with her head bowed, the woman with the baby rose with many little nods of thanks, and a young man in much finer clothes took her place.

If the Nine want war, they’ll have to get rid of him soon or risk him becoming too great a rallying point for peace.

“The champion of the poor?”

Something like that.

The young man rose with the same silent professions of thanks, but though someone else took his place, Dom Leo Villius looked up. At me. There were only thin slits in his mask, but so sure was I, that my skin prickled and my heart sped as it had back on the steps of Lord Eritius’s mansion. Heads started to turn, eyes hunting what had caught Dom Villius’s attention, and I dropped from the gate, tugging at the hood already covering my face as though it would make any difference.

He can’t have seen us.

Us again, that hateful word, but I left it unchallenged as I hurried through the gates and into the busy Timpany Market. Almost immediately I began to vanish, evaporating into the mass of beggars and workers and other whores, the sound of a thousand living creatures swallowing me whole. Yet my skin prickled with the remembrance of that gaze, and with my heart racing, the half-dozen dead bodies nearby called out all the louder. Not with voices. Nor cries. Not a sound that could be made by any living creature. They called to me in purest desperation. But they were dead. Rotting. Finished. What could they possibly need now?

What I needed was more Stiff. And fast.

Life brushed past on either side as I pushed through the clogged, narrow paths between stalls and buildings and makeshift tent slums. Unshaven men looking for a fight, women carrying squalling babies, children dressed in more dirt than clothing scampering through the throng clutching someone else’s purse—the dregs of Genavan society.

Gergo sat at his usual stall, tucked into a corner between a makeshift shelter of old sheets and horse blankets, and another stall where a woman sat eyeing all who passed in silence.

“Ah, you,” he said in greeting, licking the last of something greasy off his fingers. Fingers that twisted in ways fingers ought not. “What have your keen eyes found in the gutter this time, my beauty?”

I pulled the handful of jewelled pins and rings from my cloak pocket and spilled them onto the worn leather mat in the centre of his table. Cheap trinkets and junk piled around it like mountains around a lake, and somehow he managed to knock nothing over as he descended, hawklike, an eyeglass already pinched between one wrinkled cheek and a spiky eyebrow.

“People lose such beautiful things in the street,” he said, picking each up and turning them over, even biting one between his teeth to test its strength. “It really is sad.”

“Very.” I glanced around to be sure no one had followed. From a distance, weak strains of music called to the living as the dead called to me. I tugged at the hood of my cloak and almost pulled out my flask again just to be sure.

You need help, Cass.

“Yes,” I said. “I do.”

We don’t mean the same thing.

“What was that, my beauty?” Gergo looked up, one eye magnified by the glass.

“Just talking to myself since you’re taking so long, old man.”

He chuckled. “If I was twenty years younger…”

“I’d still be too much for you, so be grateful you’re not.”

Another laugh and he set down the pin. “All right then, my beauty, I’ll give you six for each pin and nine for the rings.”

“Make it seven and twelve and we have a deal. The sapphire is worth double on its own.”

8220;Trust a whore to know her jewels. All right, my beauty, but only because you’re my best customer and you’re going to give half of it right back to me, eh?”

“Perhaps today I won’t,” I said.

He pulled out a locked box and, taking a key from around his neck, clicked it open. “Oh yes, you can waste your breath telling me you’ll shop around, but we both know there’s no better price and no place you can get it as… safely as you can get it from me.”

Don’t do it. Take the money and get us out of here.

Us.

“Or as easily,” I said to Gergo. “Finding a better price would be a waste of a night better spent.”

“How much will it be then, my beauty? Your usual two quarts?”

“Make it four. No… six. I don’t know how long until I’ll be back. Business takes me away from Genava for a time.”

Another laugh stifled his surprise. “But how will I bear such lonely evenings without the hope of seeing you, my beauty?”

“I think you’ll manage.”

Once the price of six quarts of Stiff had been deducted from my sale, it took only a moment to count out the remaining coins—enough for a warm meal and a night’s lodging at Mama Hera’s and not much more. Gergo held them out and I snuck all but one into an inner pocket away from wandering hands. The last coin I left to fall, and while Gergo apologised profusely for such clumsiness, I knelt to reach under the tattered tablecloth. There sat six quarts in waxed jars. One slid neatly into each of my pockets and another I wriggled into my belt by sucking in my gut, but the rest I would have to carry beneath the fall of my cloak.

“It’s quite all right,” I said, straightening up with the coin pinched between my fingers. The jars bumped each other. “Many thanks, Gergo.”

“Anything for you, my beauty, anything for you.” He reached over the mountain of junk and I put my free hand into his, letting him kiss the back. The gesture never failed to amuse me. “Take care of yourself now, won’t you?” he said, letting go. “Don’t make old Gergo worry.”

“Never. I am quite capable of taking care of myself.”

Flashing him a smile, I slid back into the crowd. As one of many, I was invisible and Mama Hera’s was not far, but the weight and awkwardness of the jars made it difficult to move with any grace. Instead I was like a walking wardrobe, all shoulders and lumbering steps, turning all too often to check if anyone followed.

Only the smell of spiced flatbread kept me from going straight home. At one stall, an old man and his son were working fast to keep up with demand, the son taking money and handing out food while the father cooked. He rolled out each ball of dough and whacked it on the grill, dusted it with spices and flipped it, only to begin the process again. One was nearly finished, but rather than line up, I squeezed between the other stalls, and with my sleeve over my hand, I snatched the bread from the old man’s tongs.

“Hey!”

Jutting out one hip brought my dagger helpfully into view, and I smiled. “With my thanks, of course.”

You can’t steal food!

I groaned, but gripping the hot flatbread between my teeth, I grabbed some coins blindly from my inner pocket and dropped them on the grill plate. Ignoring the complaints that followed, I walked away.

“You are annoying,” I said. “They would have let me go without paying and we could have kept the coins.”

But it’s not right. We’ve been over this.

“Yes, we have, and it’s still boring.”

Mama Hera opened the door to my insistent knocking, scowled, and stepped back for me to enter. “Any messages?” I said as she closed and bolted the door before plonking down behind her desk in the small back room.

“Only one from me. Money or out.”

“I’ve got your money.” I dropped the end of the flatbread onto the desk in front of her and began digging in my pocket.

“What’s this?” She eyed the food like it was a dead animal.

“What does it look like?” I said, fingers hunting an elusive coin. “It’s flatbread. But that bit didn’t cook right through so it’s all yours.”

Surprise drained from her face, leaving her expression set in the much more familiar lines of annoyance. “Why thank you, I don’t mind if I don’t if it’s all the same to you.” She held out her hand, and I gave over all but a few of the coins Gergo had given me. Mama Hera counted them. “You’re still short for tonight.”

“Then I’ll make it up tomorrow. A girl needs to eat.”

“A girl needs to lie on her back and earn more money, and you’re hardly a girl anymore.”

Ignoring the barb, I said, “When this job is finished I’ll have enough to pay you for a whole year.”

Mama Hera grunted.

We could have paid for at least a season on what Gergo gave you for the jewels.

“You have a visitor,” Mama Hera said, tapping her quill on the open page of her famous ledger. A book in which no one ever wanted their name to appear; a book that could, in the right hands, ruin many careers.

“A visitor? Who?”

She shook her head. “Can’t say. I ought not to have warned you at all, so try to look surprised.”

Dark rings circled her eyes, but her flat expression gave nothing away. When I didn’t move toward the stairs, Mama Hera stopped tapping the quill, and a half smile turned up one corner of her mouth. “I don’t like you very much,” she said. “But you’re good, and I know a girl in trouble when I see one. I also know when a girl is carrying Stiff under her cloak, and the last thing I want is for that girl to drop it in shock and smash the foul stuff all over my floor.” Despite my gratitude, I cursed Mama Hera for her warning, for always taking such joy in increasing the ways I was beholden to her. She started tapping again. “You didn’t steal from Lord Eritius, did you?”

“Of course not.” My stomach twisted. “I’m a professional.”

The smile stayed. “I expect full payment next time or you’ll find all your jobs going to Sariah instead. I don’t give fourth, fifth, and sixth chances.”

I headed toward the stairs.

“And Cassandra?”

“Yes, Mama?”

“Play this right and you could set yourself up for life. You’re not getting any younger. Your beauty is starting to fade.”

That’s exactly what I’ve been saying for the last five years, She grumbled as I climbed the stairs. Already, less people look at us in the street than used to.

“Shut up.”

I stopped on the first landing to hide the Stiff, but the creaking floorboards left me no time to do more than dump the jars under a small table and hope no one was watching.

Doors lined the upper passage. All belonged to other women and all were closed except one. Mine sat ajar, the weight of its spilling light seeming to make the passage slant. A stab of fear spread my senses out, but there were no dead bodies in my room or anywhere else in the building, though from out in the street, two corpses called. One had been there for days; the other was new. I ought to have told Mama Hera, but the children at the hospice had called me a freak, a devil spawned from the dead, and I had learnt early never to trust, never to tell.

I pushed open the door. A man sat upon the single rickety chair in the corner, leaning close to the lamp to better read the book in his hands. My book, the only one I had taken when I left home. “An interesting read for an interesting woman.”

He looked up. The lamp lit half of his face to molten gold, but a more nondescript face I had never seen. It was dull, pale of brows and lashes, and owned neither features worthy of attention nor expression worthy of interest.

“Ah, Miss Marius at last.” The chair creaked as he rose to greet me. “Might I say you are even more beautiful than hearsay would have me believe. That is refreshing. Usually so many things fall short of my expectations.”

“How sad.”

“Isn’t it, though?” He ran his eyes over me, assessing, enjoying. All men did upon meeting a whore, although I had grown used to it long before I had called it a job. He smiled. “Older than I expected, which is also refreshing, if not entirely alluring.”

I forced an over-friendly smile to my lips. “Who are you?”

“My name is not important.”

“Then what is it you want, Mr. Not-Important?”

“Someone dead.”

“Anyone? Do you count?”

His brows lifted. “You already wish to see me laid lifeless upon the floor?”

“I don’t like suspense, nor surprises, nor strange men without important names waiting for me in my room. You must have paid Mama Hera very well.”

“Not a copper.”

That made me pause, eyeing the man up and down. If he had not paid her, then his name must be very important, whatever he claimed to the contrary.

“What do you want?”

He took a step closer and halted in front of me. My room at Mama Hera’s had barely enough space for a narrow bed, a chair, and an old wardrobe for my work clothes—fine dresses for fine men—but small though the room was, he didn’t need to stand so close.

“I think I already said, Miss Marius. I want someone dead.”

I fought the urge to step back, disliking his impassive face so near my own. Close up, his eyes had a dead quality.

“Why not talk to Mama Hera? She deals with such things. It’s safer that way. For both of us.”

“No. This is the way I like to do business, Miss Marius. Face-to-face. Eye-to-eye. And before you ask, I have chosen you because you are already in a position to complete my request with the minimal amount of fuss. You have been contracted to kill a young man travelling under the assumed name of Lord Thorius, have you not?”

“I don’t discuss jobs with anyone but Mama Hera.”

Another thin smile. “Of course. However, I know Lord Eritius was to accompany this lord and provide him safe passage across the border into Kisia, and I know that you have just killed Lord Eritius so another can take his place. Another who will hire you into his service as a maid and make sure all is clear for you to end this young man’s life once you cross the border. No—” He held up a hand to halt my retort. “There is no need to speak. I know you are being paid well for your silence. Considering the magnitude of this task, I am sure the payment upon completion will be… considerable.”

I tried not to let any sign of ill ease show upon my face. The man was well informed and that meant an information leak somewhere I could not control.

< i>I told you to refuse the job, She said. I told you it sounded political and nasty.

“And who is it that you wish me to kill?”

“A servant who goes by the name of Jonus, a young man you will find yourself working alongside on the journey across the border. I want his head.”

The man still had not stepped back and it was increasingly difficult to hold his gaze. “A servant? All this for a servant?”

CASSANDRA

“Even the smallest cog is important in the workings of a clock.”

I slid my gaze to the shadow-filled corner. The cries of the dead were getting louder the longer he stared at me. “And if I refuse? If I am being offered as much money as you say, then surely I don’t need to take your job as well. It would… complicate things.”

“I don’t think you will refuse. I am not offering money.”

My gaze snapped back to his dull features. “Oh? You’re going to threaten me? Or perhaps someone I care about? If you’ve found one of those, then you are to be congratulated.”

A gentle laugh shook his shoulders and at last he stepped back and began to stalk the room. “I did consider it,” he said. “But by all accounts you are as heartless as you are beautiful.”

“Thank you.”

“It is not a compliment.”

“It is when you’re talking to a whore who kills people on the side.”

“Perhaps. No, I will not try to force you with violence. Instead, I offer… the Witchdoctor.”

No!

“I know where you can find him.”

That he knew I had been hunting the Witchdoctor’s whereabouts was even more troubling than him knowing about the job.

“We try not to interfere,” the man went on, still slowly pacing. “But a man like that must be watched, must be locatable at all times. Should you complete the contract, you’ll be able to meet him.”

Don’t do it!

The Witchdoctor. To most he was nothing but a scary story told to children, a man who took people from their beds never to be seen again, who sewed pig heads onto dog bodies just to see what would happen. But no story needed to be outlawed, no myth condemned as an enemy of the One True God. He was real, and a man who could bring the dead back to life might be able to give me what I wanted most. Peace.

Please, Cass, don’t accept. Not for that. Please.

She knew, of course, because nothing in my head was ever secret.

Freedom. Silence.

“You have a deal, Mr. Not-Important. I can kill this Jonus before we leave Genava.”

“No.”

“No?”

He returned to stand before me. “As with the other, he needs to leave. He just cannot arrive. Best you kill them at the same time.”

Complicated, but worth it for the chance at freedom and all the money I had already been promised. “Fine, they will die at the same time,” I said. “Anything else?”

“No, Miss Marius, nothing else.”

“Then tell me how I can contact you upon my return and get out of my room.”

“You may find me merely by asking for me by name, and if you cannot discover my name, then you are not as good as I have been led to believe.”

“I would rather just have your name now.”

“There’s no fun in that, Miss Marius. Ah, now look at that scowl. Just as I have heard rumours of your beauty I have heard as much of your temper. Given that so many who see you inevitably end up dead, I consider myself fortunate.”

“There’s still time. You haven’t left yet.”

“Again with this desire to kill me.”

“I desire to kill many men. It’s nothing personal.”

He leant forward. “For someone whose business is the pleasure of men, that is very odd.”

“I don’t think so. You’re just lucky Mama Hera doesn’t like me to kill people for fun. She thinks it’s untidy.”

The man grinned, forming the most interesting expression his face had managed so far. “People do not usually speak so to me. It makes me glad I did not tell you my name. Perhaps—” His fingers traced a line down my hip. “Perhaps when your job is finished, I might enjoy your company further. Assuming Mama Hera would not consider that… untidy.”

“Not so long as you pay.”

His grin broadened. “I don’t think I’ll need to pay.” His hand dropped and he stepped back, bowing as a servant might to his master. “Until we meet again, Miss Marius.”