Book 4 Chapter 2

INTERLUDE 9A: INESCAPABLE

“The whole of Wisdom is refracted through its fragments and thus can it be inferred from a single splinter. Incompletion. It is what you have found, and what you seek, though you know it not. Allow me then to tempt you! To lead you deeper. Were the whole of Wisdom to be unveiled before your eyes at once, you would not see it for what it was. There is more grandeur in a single shadow than a thousand halls filled with light.”

– from ‘The Book of Lithiguil’, 13:208-214

When am I?

* * *

“And so it is with heavy hearts we lay to rest the fallen. Those whose passing we cannot bear shall break us in the passage, and if we cannot let go, all that is shattered within shall be pulled thither, move on with them in spirit, the breathing forms we leave behind becoming mere husks of men, given to the darkness.”

It was a windy day, not summer or autumn but somewhere in between. When the breeze came up off the sea, it was warm, filled with memory.

Summer.

Life.

When it came down the mountains it was cold. A promise of winter’s chill to come.

A promise of death.

A few leaves had already fallen, and they seemed to crowd about the open grave, like well-wishers gathering to pay their respects.

Thank you, Illodin, the boy thought.

The god displayed more mourning than the people. Sure, a handful had turned up. Mum and Dad had had a few friends. There were neighbours, too, random people who’d only ever said ‘hi’ or ‘afternoon’ to his parents, as far as he knew. But none of them brought their kids. None of them cared. When it came to certain families, a single elder had shown up, wearing a foul expression.

Each sombre grimace melted without fail into a twisted smile when regarding him, his sister, his brother. He and his sister were the youngest here, Kas the next youngest.

He’d never felt so alone. He wanted to ask Kas why they all kept insisting on smiling that way, why they were all so cruel, but his brother was too far away. He couldn’t whisper his question.

He looked down at Jaid’s right hand, squeezed tightly in his left fist.

He looked down at the other side. Empty hand, equally clenched.

‘Inseperble,’ that was what she’d called it as she took his hand when they left their house. She was always a little ahead of him when it came to the big words.

“Inseberble,” she’d insisted, like he was mad to have never heard of the word. “It means… hmm… we can’t be seberaded.”

“Se-per-aded,” he’d corrected her savagely.

“Imseperble, then!” she’d flared in response, only squeezing his hand tighter.

When they’d arrived at the shrine, they stayed behind Kas, following him to the grave, where Mortiforn’s men and the other ‘mourners’ were waiting for them. Finally stopping, Kas ushered them into place and went to stand between them, but Jaroan looked down guiltily at his sister’s hand, unwilling to so-easily betray her, break the vow of inseperblity. Even though he knew what that would mean. What it always meant.

So Kas had grunted, and moved to Jaid’s side, taking her free hand in his own.

If their big brother was the head – Jaroan was the tail. The least. Last. He was too far away to ask his questions. Mum and Dad were gone. There was no one else to answer.

He would wait, and he would forget. The questions would enter the deepest part of his soul, far beneath the matte, unreflective surface.

Why are they smiling at me?

* * *

“So do not give in to it! We do not invite the darkness. The Shadow cannot cross that threshold without our permit. As that which is illuminated falls, so too does the light it eclipsed, shedding radiance upon the new. It is with such lightened burdens that we must rise up again, and we must allow ourselves to feel that lightness. For there is no eternal sorrow in the light, no darkness to stain death’s sanctity. We commend the souls of Kabel and Ninadra Mortenn, true husband and wife, to you, O Enduring One. In the hand of Mortiforn let them meet once more, and pass together beneath the arch of his arm, beyond the Door.”

It was strange. Everyone seemed to be acting as though their parents were gone, but that couldn’t have been further from the truth, could it? Kas held her hand, and her body had done its share of weird things – she’d quivered, she’d cried… but that wasn’t how she wanted to be seen. It wasn’t how she felt. She tried a few times to tell Kas to stand on the other side, to hold Jar’s hand rather than hers – but he didn’t understand. He thought she was fighting something, fighting the horrible sensation in the centre of her chest. He’d never understood her before, and he didn’t understand her now. The horrible sensation – that was what was normal now. But there was no fighting it. It was only a kind of… a kind of waiting. A sense of anticipation so great that as it built on itself, hour by hour, day by day, she felt as though she were being filled up only to burst.

But she wouldn’t burst into tears, not again. Or if she did, it wouldn’t be tears of sorrow. It’d be tears of joy, when she saw them again.

They weren’t gone. The narrow-faced minster – the Mortiforn man – he understood. They were only resting.

She looked down at the turned earth before her, then immediately looked back up again at the priest.

Resting in the ground.

The scent of Mum’s hair came to her nostrils, the sound of her voice to Jaid’s ears. Her bones remembered the way Dad held her, when he lifted her up despite her being too big, too old…

Stupid body, she thought, screwing up her face against the tears that came burning down around her eyeballs. Stupid traitor. Not upset. I’m not. They’re resting. We’re imseperble.

She looked at Jaroan. He was staring at someone, and she followed his gaze – her twin’s angry eyes were fixed on Mrs. Sawdan.

Right away she realised why he was so upset with their neighbour. He hated her sympathetic smile. Why did she look sad, when they weren’t really gone?

She bit her lip now, and the tears of joy came.

She squeezed her twin’s hand.

He understands me. He understands us. Deep down, he does.

Imseperble.

* * *

“Kas, look, a raven.”

“Crow,” his sister immediately corrected him.

Kas was walking ahead of them, but despite his distracted demeanour he did turn to look –

Just a moment too late. The bird had already disappeared into the trees.

“It was a raven,” Jaroan said indignantly.

“Crow,” Jaid repeated, tone-perfect.

Gods, she had a way of speaking to him that instantly set him grinding his teeth. She didn’t have to be correcting him; she could just be offering him something, but the gloating undercurrent of her voice, her word choice, it would all add up and make him want to refuse her, deny her, out of sheer instinctive spite. She’d find a way to make him sound like an idiot, always. It was never so simple as asking him if he wanted a cup of water. It was an insinuation that he owed her a favour for doing it, or that he’d already somehow exasperated her before the first time she asked. As though she possessed some inherent superiority. As though she always wanted to sigh at him.

“What’s the difference, anyway?” he muttered, scowling as he trudged on in his brother’s footprints. The grass was long and wet, the evening dimness augmented by curtains of drizzle – sticking to Kas’s indentations helped keep his pants dry around the ankles.

“They sound completely different,” she sniffed.

“But it hasn’t even made any noises!”

Or did it? he wondered, suddenly doubting himself.

“The shape of the tail, too – they’re not even close.”

Ah – so she is lying.

“You’re not even close! It’s almost dark, you barely saw it – how in Twelve Hells –“

“Jar,” Kas said reprovingly.

“How in Celestium,” he grinned at Kas as their older brother swivelled now mid-step, glancing at him, “could you pick out its tail-feathers –“

“Jaroaaaaan… if you’re so sure it’s not a crow, why did you say you didn’t think there was a difference?”

She sounded so sweet, but sometimes he could’ve just murdered her.

“I didn’t say I didn’t think there was a difference, did I?” he sneered. “I said I don’t know what the difference is –“

“But what’s the difference between that, and not thinking there’s a diff-“

Kas had stopped, and they both nearly walked into his back.

They were almost there.

“Come on now,” Kas said quietly, not casting a glance back at them this time.

He didn’t need to.

Guiltily, Jaroan swallowed down his combative thoughts, entering the accustomed mode of thought for this place. Within a heartbeat he was someone else entirely. Patient and calm. He walked beside his sister the final yards, the quibbling gone from his mind.

Unfortunately, the argument with Jaid was the distraction he’d needed to stay sane. This clean, calm part of his young soul that he’d just accessed knew only suffering. The tiff was merely a way of staving off the truth, holding at bay the future rushing down at them.

They were going to get kicked out.

Xantaire had cried so hard that hearing her weeping through the wall had set Jaid sobbing, and, as much as he was loath to admit it, even to himself, he’d done his own share of shedding tears under the covers where no one could see him. Thinking about being ‘evicted’ couldn’t be endured; nor could it be avoided. It was an ever-present peril, like waiting on the block for the blade to fall. Like drinking poison and waiting for its fatal effects.

His mind tried to retreat, tried to flee back to the sibling rivalry, the frustration with his sister’s attitude that was his anchor in this stormy sea. But there was no purchase – he couldn’t do it. The seabed was still too loose. He couldn’t be angry here. Only sad.

The names – the gravestones were there. Realities graven in grey rock. Inescapable.

They didn’t remember Mum and Dad like Kas did, of course. That in itself made him feel guilty, made him want to retreat.

What’s come over him lately, anyway?

He found his distraction, regarding Kastyr as Kastyr stared down at the graves.

The way their brother had spoken to the Gentlemen – they’d listened through the wall, and it sounded as though he was doing it again. Getting mixed up in something illegal. Something like he’d used to do back in the old days, before… before they died and it all changed. Kas had hardly been eating this past week, and he’d been coming down here to their graves with alarming regularity. Was he coming to say sorry? Sorry for something he was about to do?

But Jaid didn’t seem to want to discuss it. The one time Jaroan tried mentioning it to her, she responded with some trite sentence to the effect of ‘shut up, it’s none of our business’. He wasn’t going to get any assistance there.

So he’d watched, and waited. He convinced himself that it was okay, that whatever Kas was planning to do, it was necessary. There was always a silver lining. He liked having something to lord it over Kas with. If their brother used his shady underworld contacts to help them get Peltos the money – well, where was the harm in that, really? And Jaroan could use it as ammunition against his brother, guilt him into giving him some leeway when he acted up.

He wouldn’t squander it on swearing. Jaroan would wait till he broke something, or lost something important.

“What’s wrong, Kas?” Jaid asked.

Jaroan heard the timidness in her voice, cast her a surprised look. She was right, though. He hadn’t said hi to their parents yet. He always did that when they arrived.

Kas turned back to face them, and his smile was tight, pained; his brow was furrowed in confusion. “I just thought… I wondered…”

Their brother fell back into silence, but his eyes looked engaged – he was clearly thinking about something important. Listening to his thoughts with every ounce of his attention.

“Wondered what, Kas?” their sister said softly.

She’s scared, Jaroan realised. She’s scared about what he’s doing. That’s why it’s ‘none of our business’. That’s –

“Yune,” Kas breathed, then whipped about, wild-eyed. “Run!” he barked, stepping in front of the two of them. “Off with ya!”

Jaroan peered around Kas to the one side, Jaid to the other. The graveyard wasn’t a still space: the rain still fell, and the blades of grass and leaves were stirred by the constant cool breeze – but it was serene, a dimness of stones and the shadows of trees.

It was obvious within a moment that neither of them could see anything, and after they glanced at each other Jaroan snapped: “What? What is it?”

But the response was a heated snarl, brooking no refusal.

“Go home – now.”

The sound – that awful yawning pit of otherness in their brother’s voice…

The twins looked at each other again, sharing in this new terror.

They ran, holding hands, and they didn’t look back. Jaid was tugging him along as usual, outpacing him slightly, and Jaroan pretended it was a game. It was a game, and when Kas returned, he would explain everything.

Mud and grass gave way to wooden fencing. They climbed, as agile as squirrels, and vaulted over, into the street.

Blood pounded in his ears. The fright, the terror, the uncertainty of it all – it was fun.

It was only when they arrived back that he realised why it felt so wrong – when Jaid raised her fist to knock on the door then looked at him anxiously before letting her knuckles rap against the wood. It was their first time going back to Mud Lane from the shrine of Yune without him. They knew the way, of course, but it was dangerous. Kas wouldn’t let them walk that far alone, not with night drawing in.

Jaroan lifted his hand, gave the secret knock. Xantaire let them in within seconds.

And when Kas did arrive he explained nothing to any of them; he just winked, even to Xantaire. He was smiling away at himself, sitting in silence with a book open in his lap, never turning the leaves, staring transfixed at the middle of the page.

Jaroan watched him until he fell asleep, dwelling on it over and over:

What is he hiding? Why are we being left out? What is he going to do? How dangerous is it? When will he tell us?

Why is he smiling?

* * *

The moment they were shut away inside the bedroom, Jaid pressed her ear to the crack of the door, doing her best to listen. She had the tips of unbraided lengths of hair in the corner of her mouth but she didn’t chew, focusing her attention on the sounds in the main room. Jaroan crowded her, doing the same, but she’d picked the prime spot where the gap between the door and the frame was widest.

“Whoop whoop! Shingalingaling.” Clack-clack. “Whoooo-oooop!”

Of all the times for the boy to start vocalising.

“Shush, Xas!” Jaroan snapped, pressing the side of his head so tight against the jamb it looked like he was going to crack a bone.

“Chu-ush, Xas… Chu-ush, Xas…” Xastur’s voice rose and fell in a sing-song as he repeated the words, smushing two of his toys together.

“Xastur, please!” Jaroan pleaded.

“Pweeeeee-eeeeze!”

“Give it up, Jaroan,” Jaid whispered. “Xassy’ll quiet down in a minute. Listen.”

Kas was pleading with the Gentlemen. The words were indistinct, but the tenor of the conversation wasn’t lost in transit. She could tell things were going badly.

More than anything else, she was listening out for the voice of the magister and when it came through, it was strong, stern, just like she’d expected. Backing Kas up. Making everything alright.

“Whoop whoop! Tingaling!”

Em was awesome. She hoped her and Kas would get married someday. Quite what the magister saw in Jaid’s brother, she wasn’t quite certain – she was clearly out of his league. Whatever he’d done, she hoped he’d be able to keep it up long enough for him to get the ring on her finger. (Long enough for Jaid to properly enjoy her bridesmaid dress.)

It wasn’t just that Emrelet was pretty – which she was, definitely – but her presence here was very reassuring. Jaid knew that Em would make sure everything was alright. The Gentlemen would leave, and they’d have their house back.

Then another female voice. Not Xantaire. Whoever it was, she sounded like a toad – a fat toad from one of the stories Mum and Dad read her when she was little.

“Are there Gentlewomen?” she breathed in wonder.

Jar snorted, but then caught himself, reining in the attitude before replying delicately: “A second magister, I think.”

It seemed Em and the stranger were at odds. The beautiful magister was saying something in the tone Kas often used with Jaroan – Jaid could imagine her wagging her finger at the toad.

“Do you think they’re going to cast spells at each other?” she pondered.

Jaroan wriggled a bit. “I don’t know whether I want them to or not!”

“I know!”

“What a croak on her! She sounds like –“

“Like one of them toads!”

“Yeah!”

“What’s that?”

“Wait – they’re… they’re coming, get back!”

The twins were sitting next to Xastur on the quilt, one on either side of the kid, when Xantaire swung open the door. They were holding swiftly-clutched up toys, leaning in as if to merely continue a game they’d been playing all along – yet Jaid noticed as Jaroan quickly pivoted, trying to get a glimpse through the doorway –

Orstrum and Morsus blocked his view as they entered, she could tell, and sighed ruefully. She would’ve given a slice of bread to get his report afterwards about what he’d been able to see.

The door was closed again, the two men heading for Kas’s bed and sitting back against the wall.

“What in Twelve –“ Jar began.

“Don’t you dare, young man,” Xan grunted, sitting down heavily almost on top of him, forcing him to scurry out of her way. “How’s it going, pal?” she asked her son, stroking his cheek.

“Tingaling!” he replied without looking – Xas was busy tapping a flat, horse-shaped piece of wood against another painted in a different shade.

“Seriously, that’s all?” Jaid asked. She felt herself blushing, but she had to say it. “What’s happening? Are we being ev… ev…”

She stumbled on the word.

“Evicted,” Jaroan said, his voice hard. No gloating.

He was helping her out.

She nodded at him, and he responded in kind.

“I don’t know what’s happening, Jaid,” Orstrum said in a kindly voice, then looked to Jaroan, “but it’s happening. Whatever comes, it comes. We’ll get through it.”

“Your brother, he will fix it,” Morsus said with all the fervour of a fanatic. “Do not be afraid, children! Tonight you will be happy!”

I don’t believe you, Jaid thought. Either of you. You’re wrong! We’re going to be evicted! We’re going to live in the mud and there’s no way I can – I can face it – my books…

She felt her lower lip going, heard the high-pitched noise coming from her nose.

Then Xantaire reached over, put her hand on Jaid’s. “You going to hold it together another five minutes?”

Jaid stared at her and nodded, pressing her lips together firmly.

Five minutes… Five minutes…

“Have we got any books in here?” Jaroan asked suddenly.

Now Jaid smiled. Her brother had the right idea.

Then her eyes widened as she recalled where she’d last seen it, and she turned, twisting, peering down under the bed.

“You’ve got Tales From The Dark Side V: Everyone’s Got A Skeleton, remember!” she gargled, blood instantly rushing to her head, chest constricted by the hard oak of the bed-frame. “I know I’ve seen it around here.” She hurled some of Jaroan’s junk across the floor. “That’s the good one, where Blighty gets taken to the necromancer’s pyramid!”

“Hey!” Jar roared. “He goes? He actually goes? Are you kidding me?”

“Ohhhhhh…” She sighed, rolling to look at him, gulping air. “You didn’t get that far?”

“No I didn’t – and now I won’t – damn it, Jaid! I’ve been reading that for –“

“Three weeks! Three weeks, and you haven’t even got to the pyramid bit yet? Are you kidding me?”

“Don’t say that to me!”

“You said it first…”

“You’re the one who just spoiled the whole book for me –“

“Whole book! It happens in the first fifty pages –“

“No way! No way!”

The confrontation in the main room forgotten, Jaid gave back as good as she got. It was the only way she knew.

“Guys!” Xantaire hissed.

They both turned to look at her. At some point Xantaire had gotten up and moved to the door, pressing her ear against the crack just like they’d been doing earlier.

Her face was pale.

And before Jaid could open her mouth, the main room howled.

She couldn’t explain it – it was as though she stood upon a precipice, braids being whipped left and right by a storm-wind. But she was inside her apartment. The storm in the main room – it was armed with a hail of books and she heard them clattering off the walls.

To her they were almost holy objects. They probably weren’t worth much to the highborn – magic made replication cheap – but they were worth something. Despite this, Kas had never succumbed to selling Mum and Dad’s collection, even when they were scraping every last penny. To listen to them being dishonoured in this way – it made her grimace, made her ball her fists.

But the anger was buried beneath concern.

“Kas?” she breathed.

Xantaire had stood up and braced herself against the door, as if to hold it shut in case something tried to get in – Morsus moved to help her when she beckoned him with a savage thrust of her chin.

Some thing – what if Em’s enemy was a sorceress? What if there were demons out there? She clearly wasn’t something good and wholesome, like a druid or enchanter. She was something noisy. Something dark.

Jaid shrank into herself in terror. She let Orstrum pull her into a hug as he gathered her and Xastur into his arms, his great-grandson only looking mildly bemused at the tremendous din – but Jaroan sidled out of his grip and went slowly towards the door.

When he got there, he joined his meagre weight to Xan’s and Morsus’s, sitting with his back against the base of the door, wedging himself in place with his feet out flat in front of him.

She admired his bravery. He had to understand what this could be. She could see it in his eyes, the extra-pallor of his face.

He understands.

Please, gods, let him live. I don’t care if we get evicted. Let Kas live. If we all have to live in the drop, I don’t care, just let him live!

Then the noise fell away, just as suddenly as it had started up.

“I hear his voice!” Jar moaned.

“It’s okay,” Xantaire said, turning and leaning heavily against the wall. “Praise be to Yune, and all the rest of them.”

It didn’t matter what Xan said – didn’t matter that Orstrum’s hug was as warm and reassuring as ever – Jaid couldn’t stop trembling.

It was almost funny, looking back. When later she thought back upon the evening, this wasn’t even close to the worst bit. Sitting here for a few minutes, thinking he might be dead? That was child’s play.

No. He was smiling when he opened the door, but it wasn’t a smile to reassure her, to help her or Jaroan come to terms with the fear, the nausea rolling over her – it was an easy smile; it was the casualness with which he finally entered the bedroom. He left with the two magisters, and other than a quick glance he exchanged with Xantaire when he thought Jaid wasn’t looking, Kas didn’t give a single outward sign of dismay.

That one glance, though. The fear – Kas felt it too.

What in Celestium is he doing? she asked herself.

The anxiety was compounded, folding in on itself, again and again until the terror had her paralysed. She sat there and watched while he prepared to leave.

Where are you going, Kas? Please, no. Don’t go. Em – Em, don’t take him, please…

But the door closed behind them, leaving her frozen in the detritus-wasteland of a broken home.

That was the worst bit.

Lying in bed, hours later, drunk on the scents of fey wine and thoughts of Kas’s new status, she could almost forget. But it was worse than the prospect of being evicted. At least if they got kicked out, they’d be together.

As much as she tried to reassure herself, tried to look on the bright side, Jaid instinctively recognised what was happening. Her soul knew it. It was one of those aches that could get better or get worse but no matter what, it would never fully heal.

He went out, and he was out for so long, she thought he was never coming back.

And when he came back, he was no longer him. He was someone else.

This…

This was separation.

* * *

The scents of smoke and sweat were overpowering – fear was on the air, and Jaroan partook of it, breathing it in, breathing it out. Jaid’s hand was in his, and her fingers were hard, immovable, digging into the backs of his knuckles.

He accepted the pain. He gripped her back in return at least as hard.

As they followed the other residents of Mud Lane into the Spannerwalk and reached the first corner, he looked back at the bullish heads of the demons, their cruel horns, their black spikes.

“We have to talk to him, you know.” He spoke quietly-enough that Xantaire and the others next to them wouldn’t hear over the sounds of splashing feet, the crying, muttering.

“We do?” Jaid squeaked.

“Those are demons, Jaid.”

“Yeah, but…”

He waited. The crowd ushered them around the bend, weaving up towards the next corner.

“Yeah,” she finished.

He felt the tears welling up in his eyes again at her acceptance of this evil. Before, he might’ve been wrong. She might’ve had her usual counterarguments. But she accepted it. She accepted it.

“He said he would be fey!” Jaroan whispered.

Jaid looked guiltily around at the others, but he already knew no one was paying them any attention.

“That was bad enough – to lose him to this… this new identity. Now what? Is he going to be using them for everything now?”

“But the wings!”

“It was an excuse!” he snapped. “Think about it! Where are the fey, Jaid? Where are all the fairies and gnomes and –“

“Gnomes aren’t fey,” she sniffed, “not really…”

“Oh, shut up! You know what I mean!”

“I thought you’d think demons were cool…”

That was a lie. He released her hand, walking on in seething silence.

He’d tried putting a brave face on it – tried doing everything exactly like Jaid told him to. It was easy to forget the darkness, the danger, in the daytime, when he could remind himself that Kas had awesome powers, that they were going to be rich… The whole concept of Feychilde was just perfect, to him. But just because their brother had said he was rejecting the notion of being some dark sorcerer, that didn’t mean he hadn’t changed. He had. He was starting to think of himself as Feychilde. Running away from reality, from Jaroan, from Jaid. From everything.

Maybe that was what he had to do, to become this champion, to put it on like he put on the robe, smile while he put his life on the line. Maybe it was unavoidable. And he saved people – there was no doubting it. Jaroan had seen it now with his own eyes. There was no going back – there was no coming back. For any of them.

But it didn’t change the fact that Jar couldn’t take it anymore. Kas was doing it all the time – running away.

Morsus dies, and how does he respond? He runs.

He takes them shopping – shopping, like they wanted or needed to go shopping – and as soon as he sees his obligation’s done with, he runs away again.

Em. Jaroan had liked her at first, but that was before he knew what was really going on – what was going to happen to his brother. Now? Sure, she was nice, but he’d cooled on her. It wasn’t like she’d shown back up with Kas to help save Mud Lane, either – she’d brought him into this world, and now she wasn’t even backing him up. It was wrong.

She took him away from us. Jaroan listened to the night’s screams, the panicked voices of the crowds. She took him away from us and our world fell apart.

He didn’t mention any of this to his sister. She idolised the magister almost as much as she did Lovebright.

If she won’t talk to him, I will, he resolved, looking down at his slop-covered feet and trudging onwards with the others. I’ll do it. I’ll tell him he’s stopped thinking about us. We’re no longer a priority to him. We’re just baggage. We’re just annoying little hangers-on, dragging him down when he wants to fly…

When Kas arrived back to the remnants of Mud Lane that night, their brother looked so upset that every one of the words he’d prepared dropped like leaden stones from his tongue, unspoken.

Jaid asked what was wrong, and Kas answered. Em was hurt. She was hurt, and it was bad.

And Jaroan never thought about voicing those thoughts again.

* * *

She sat staring at the page, doing a Jaroan. She was getting no further with the book.

She wanted to throw it at the wall. She wanted to put out all the candles and cry.

Where is he? she asked herself for the millionth time.

She flicked her gaze over to her twin. He was only pretending to be asleep. Only someone awake could be so tense, so inherently angry.

She kicked him, and then he kicked her.

She laughed, and he almost laughed back.

That was something, at least.

“Do you want a battle?” she asked.

Jaroan shook his head, keeping his eyes shut, trying to reclaim his brooding state of mind.

“Come onnnnnn.”

“Don’t – do – that.”

He kicked her again, more roughly this time, and when she squeaked he sat bolt upright.

“Look – I’m sorry. I’m sorry, okay? But I don’t want a battle. I don’t want anything. I feel sick.”

“You ate too much potato –“

“Shut up!”

“Okay!” She dropped the book in her lap, wrung her hands together. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry too. It’s just – he – it was so long ago, that he s-sent the…”

“Don’t you say it!” He came up on his knees on the bed, scowling. “He’s not dead!”

“He’s not dead.” She repeated her twin’s words, tasting their foulness, testing their weight for truth and finding it lacking. “He’s not dead…”

She shut her eyes, remembering him waking her up with a unicorn.

“I’ll be fine, Jaid. I promise. I came through the Incursion, and it won’t be worse than that.”

Both of them leapt up when they heard the knocking at the door. Xantaire got there first, ripping open the locks to let Em in.

Em, who’d been forced to stay behind, Jaid knew.

“What news?” Xan asked even as she was swinging the door open.

But the platinum-haired magister was half-smiling, half-frowning.

“You mean zat – he hasn’t returned? But zey all came back! It is all I know!”

Em whirled, not even crossing the threshold of the apartment before she was arrowing off into the sky again.

Jaid shrank down into a seat, chewing at her hair and staring at the door as Xantaire slowly closed it again, fastening the bolts…

“It’s okay,” Xan said reassuringly once she saw their faces. “It’ll be okay! You know him. What did you say he said to you, hun?”

“I – I’ll be fine, Jaid. I…” She licked her lips. “I promise.”

“So there you have it.” She looked down at them critically. “Come on now, it’s time you were getting ready for bed! Past time!”

Jaid didn’t believe it, really didn’t believe it this time.

“No!” she sobbed. “They – she said they came back!”

She whirled, flinging the bedroom door shut behind her, and Jaroan didn’t have it in him to try to calm her. He just sat dejected on Kas’s bed, staring at the covers.

When Feychilde came home, something in her changed.

It wasn’t him that was different – it was her.

She began to believe in him.

* * *

Who am I?

* * *

Jaroan ate his bacon butties in silence, moving the fortify pieces with the tip of his new knife, so that it looked as though he were doing it with mere force of will. The handle was small, easily palmed; he could extend his fingers, make it seem to the observer as if simply pointing was enough to direct his side of the engagement.

He was practising the movement-patterns for the Sow Matriarch. In contrast to her counterpart, the Boar Patriarch, she was an expensive, complex piece. When she consumed an enemy piece, she could take another move providing she could consume another foe. On each successive move within the same turn, the permissible directions and distances of her travel would alternate – as well as the types of terrain she could cover without halting. However, when executed perfectly upon an unassuming opponent whose pieces were laid-out within acceptable parameters, the Sow Matriarch could win games in a single go, hopping all the way from her spawn-spot beside your Hold and into your rival’s without stopping.

She was no good against Kas’s Geomancer, of course, but who ever picked Geomancer?

There had to be thousands of possibilities for winning in a single turn. If you could play the Matriarch, and chose the exact right moment to spawn her, and she wasn’t killed before your next go? A few Extra Move cards in your hand and the game would be yours.

If you could do it while just pointing your fingers at the pieces, moving them like a wizard… Jaroan mused. If you could do that – that would be awesome… The Matriarch’s basically an arch-diviner… Like, with enough forethought she’s basically –

“Jar!” Jaid cried from the doorway. “You coming outside? Everyone’s come down!”

Grumbling a bit, more for show than out of any actual lack of interest, he hopped up and donned his new coat before heading down to join her and the others in the lane. His Yearsend marbles with weird shapes inside them met with some interest. Nabim had a felt hat that was far too big for him. Brendy’s Yearsend gifts had almost all consisted in hard-to-obtain fruit, which had gone down a treat according to the rainbow stains down her smock. Tick was unusually quiet – probably he’d gone without this year, owing to the sheer amount of siblings he had crammed into that apartment with him. They sometimes took turns, Jaroan seemed to remember. One year a birthday present, the next a Yearsend one… it kind of made sense.

The whole time he was outside, he tested it – no one noticed the knife-handle tucked beneath his belt. So long as he didn’t let anyone press into his side, the dagger was truly concealed in plain sight. Only he could see its blunt-edged blade, gleaming away on his hip.

A few of Ticken’s older friends showed up, and two of them started wrestling in the muck, laughing and screaming like animals. After a few minutes of watching, Tick turned towards Nabim, who was playing with Jaroan’s (and Jaid’s) ball-on-a-stick.

In a single swift motion, Tick snatched it away from him.

“Hey, I was still playing with that!” the little brown boy cried.

“Give it him back, Tick!” Jaid said, stepping towards the taller kid, whose big mop of brown hair only served to make him taller.

“Why? Can’t I have a go?” Tick started to kick the ball from foot to foot, walking off towards the other side of the lane, but the mud stopped him from getting his leg up quickly-enough to catch the descending ball half the time.

His older friends halted their wrestling-game to watch the spectacle.

“You didn’t ask.” Jaid waded over to plant herself in his path. “Give it back.”

She held out her hand, and he spun about, pivoting on his heel and marching off in another direction.

Tick’s friends laughed at Jaid as she put her hands on her hips and made a ‘hmph’ of displeasure.

Normally Jaroan would’ve felt himself shrinking inside, wanting to look away, but for the first time he felt powerful.

Kas is watching over us, he thought. Kas is watching. I can’t – I couldn’t use the knife.

But its presence – it was like archmagery. A tool at his disposal.

He didn’t need to use it to know it was there. And those who raised their hands against him, against his sister, would be destroyed all the same.

He stepped forwards, splashing over to Ticken with the longest strides he could manage.

Jaroan was a year younger than the brown-haired boy, but he was almost as tall, despite the big mop.

“Give it her back.” He even managed to keep his voice under control, low and level.

“Or what, Jaroan? You get – your brother on me?”

The boy’s sneer was insufferable. He almost deserved the blade just for that much.

What would Kas say? What would…

“Or your friends get to watch you get your face shoved in the drop.” He rolled his shoulders, wondering what it would be like to punch someone in the face, properly – what it would be like to receive such a punch.

“Oh really.” Ticken straightened up, thrust out his chin.

Jar suddenly found himself not caring much – he just wanted the ever-increasing sense of anticipation to break like a wave on a rock – he just wanted something to happen –

“Do you think I’d be keeping my voice down if I wanted him to hear me? Hahahahaha!”

Jaroan spoke so quietly, when he barked laughter the taller boy almost fell over in fright. He swept out his arm to catch his neighbour, but he snatched back the stick at the same time with his free hand.

“Thank you,” Jar said politely, turning away.

Ticken, perhaps wisely, didn’t seem to want to press the matter. Jaroan returned triumphantly to his side of the lane – he went to pass the ball-on-a-stick to Nabim, but the boy no longer wanted it.

He curled his lip in derision, and glanced up to check for the champion’s appraising gaze – but Kas was busy with his glyphstone.

Jaroan didn’t even feel the need to sigh. Not anymore.

When their brother came down a few minutes later, he exchanged pleasantries with Ticken, proving he didn’t watch a damn thing.

“I’ve got to go,” Kas said, “and Orstrum’s headed down to the shrine. I’m going to get Xantaire to keep an eye out.”

Jaroan folded his arms across his chest, pinning the ball-topped stick awkwardly against his body. “We’ll be fine, Kas.”

“No, Jaroan – I’ll get her to watch, thank you. Xastur will be going down for a nap anyway, given the way he’s yawning.” He seemed to look upon Jaroan and Jaid with pity. Pity. “You need to be careful, you know. Behave yourselves, and I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Jaroan barely forced down his anger.

Was it anger? When did anger become hate? Where did it come from?

“It must be serious, if you’re going on Yearsend,” Jaid said worriedly.

“It’s not bad, I promise.”

Which means it is bad. You lie again, brother. You don’t even realise how much you’re hurting our sister, do you?

“And, look, if I die, you know where I stash the money, right?”

Kas actually grinned.

Jaid just hissed their brother’s name, but Jaroan couldn’t. Couldn’t just let it out with a word and a breath. It was too much for that.

A reflexive strike was loosed, fist dutifully smacking Kastyr in the arm.

The champion barely even seemed to notice, shaking his head and muttering something about being back soon, returning to the stairs, oblivious, as Jaroan stared down at his hand and seethed.

There was just too much aggression, pent-up inside me, Jar told himself. I just needed a target. I feel better, after hitting him.

It was true – he did feel better. The aggression had left him – but what it left behind was a cold emptiness. Like damp stones where the river receded.

He knew the river would return.

* * *

“Okay! My sister first!”

Jaid stared at him through her tears. “Wha… buh… Jar! Why…”

“Your sister?” one of the shorter thugs said. “You cowardly little git.”

“You reeking idiot,” Jaroan retorted instantly, an ugly scowl stamped on his face.

“Confident behind that… spell thing, aren’t you, little git. Wait till you’re out –“

“Shut – your – face before I cut it off.” The ugly old leader in his mouldy old get-up cut off his underling, then glowered down at her twin. “I get it. ‘E doessen, but I do. You send her cos I know you won’t let her go with me alone. I like it.”

Is that it? she wondered, looking imploringly at her brother. Is that why?

But Jaroan wouldn’t meet her gaze.

“… I won’t mistreat you.” The old man hardened his voice, lowered it: “Now throw her ‘ere before I change my mind.”

Throw… her…?

Jaroan turned to her, and she’d never seen that expression on his face before – the disgust and pride mingled in his far-off, unseeing eyes – the horrid, resolute grimace making his features those of an adult for the first time in his life – and her mind snapped.

“No! No, Jar! No, don’t! Don’t! No, please!”

The one thing he’d always been better at, unfailingly. He was just a bit stronger than her. Especially when he was motivated.

She didn’t even want to consider the notion that he was right with this plan of his. No. The rancid, drop-stained hand that was eagerly slapped across her mouth told her he was wrong. The leader was wrong, thinking there was some nobility in her brother’s actions. Only the one little man had seen the truth – that, or he alone was stupid enough to say it out loud it in front of his commander. And that little man was a killer.

Not for the first time, she wondered if Jaroan could possibly be evil – and Jaid the good twin of the pair, like something out of one of the books. They could be destined to do this confounding dance forever, both loving and hating each other, never seeing eye to eye except but for in the briefest moments…

When Xantaire was knocked out – then Jaid really started to struggle.

What have you done, Jar!

Her elbows were already trapped against her sides by a single heavy arm pressing horizontally across her midriff – but as soon as she tried, she found that she was able to slide down and kicked out –

She barely even connected once with the bearded man in front of her. He stooped, gathered up her feet, and together the two villains simply carried her.

Drop on you, Jar! she thought as she was humiliated, dragged like fear-drunk livestock along the walkway. You’ve only got yourself to blame for this! You! Mother-Chaos is in your heart!

Mother-Chaos is in your heart, and soon you’ll forget how to love…

The despair at how he’d treated her was the core of her fury as they took her, carried her up the lane towards the Gold Griffin. But the panic, the tears, the anguish: those were all for the way the shutters closed as she was choked, pinned, manhandled on her way to the slaughterhouse.

Drop on you all.

It was a curse, not an observation. She included her brother.

He might’ve understood her once. He might’ve been nice, kind, once. But he wasn’t himself, wasn’t even like Kas.

He was dark.

* * *

Are we definitely twins? Are we even related? How can you be such an idiot, Jaid? What in Twelve Hells are you even doing? Can’t you see I’m trying to save you? Save us all?

It didn’t matter how much he willed it – she couldn’t read his mind. Xantaire was going to die if Jaid didn’t go with the Bertie Boys, and that would be it. At least this way, there was a chance. But they wouldn’t be able to discuss things; he wouldn’t be able to calm her down. She was going to insist on struggling the whole way.

Not something he had the luxury of doing. Not if he wanted to keep his knife secret. They hadn’t patted him down when they took his coat, and no one had cause to press against his hip, not with him being so compliant, going along at their instructions.

When they entered the Bertie Boy headquarters, he almost balked. Almost. But to turn aside now, to start screaming like Jaid – that would’ve been worse than sending the two of them to a place like this in the first place.

Sticktown was a dirty place, sure, but those who dwelt there kept as clean as they could manage. Homes were homes, after all. But this was no one’s home; not really. The building belonged to the rats, not men. Mud and excrement, decades old, smeared up walls and doors. The scents were sweat and vomit.

In the end he closed his eyes, focussed on keeping the butties down. He half-opened them again when they came to downwards-leading stairs.

Or I could be sick. Be sick…

The nausea consumed him as he swayed down each step, legs trembling.

What would they do? What would it matter?

He imagined what he’d eaten – he couldn’t help himself – and the taste of it filled his nose, tomato, tomato and grease –

The moment they reached the bottom stair, he leaned over and retched.

A couple of the closest thugs withdrew, complaining, but at least one was laughing and clapped him heartily on the back.

Jaid started screaming louder, tearing at the ones who grappled her, but Jaroan froze.

He felt the invisible knife’s mooring loosen with each solid blow on his back, the handle threatening to slip from his belt near the front of his right hip.

For the first time, he realised how poorly things might go for him if the dagger should fall. It was invisible – it wasn’t weightless. It would still make a sound.

He wiped his lips with the back of a hand and smiled grimly before slowly straightening up.

The knife didn’t fall.

Like things could really be going any worse.

The room the twins eventually ended up in was low-enough that some members of their escort walking ahead had to stoop on entry, hair brushing against dark planks of wood that drank in the candlelight. Rough-textured colourless stone made up the walls and floor. In the centre with its ring of rocks, rope and pulley, was a well.

It even stilled Jaid, and when Jaroan glanced at her and caught her gaze, they shared the thought.

It wasn’t just that children were always getting pushed into wells in stories.

It was that this was how their parents died. Not the same well, of course, but that hardly mattered.

And he was bringing them… putting them here…

Deliberate?

“Keep an eye on ‘em,” Jar caught the leader saying to one of his men as the twins slowly stepped into the room. “If it rings, do ‘em. Quick. You hearin’ me?”

“Am ‘earin’ yer, boss. Like as yer says. Quick as Blackrush.”

“You, with me.” Then, louder: “Don’t be tryin’ to escape, little fella.”

Jar turned back, caught the boss’s eye as the old man stood in the doorway.

“Hibbern ‘ere can hurt you in ways you don’t ever forget.” The Bertie Boy he indicated was a massive man, hunched beneath the ceiling with teeth bared like a smiling gorilla. His hands were as big as plates. “Ways that ain’t gonna kill you, understand?”

Jaroan didn’t respond; he just looked at his sister and held out his hand to her.

Her red eyes glowed in the candlelight – her gaze moved from his face to his extended hand, and back again. Then, finally, she took hold of his fingertips with her own.

A gesture. Nothing more.

She hates me, he realised, and swallowed.

When he looked back to meet the leader’s gaze with all the defiance he could muster, the door was already swinging shut. Hibbern and one of his pals, a reedy man with prematurely-grey hair, were leaning against the wall on either side.

Jaid let go of his fingers, crossed to the far corner and hunkered down, weeping quietly and shaking.

Hibbern was grinning; he pointed at Jaid and muttered something to his colleague that set them both chuckling.

Jaroan let the arm Jaid had let go fall to his waist. Then, after a moment, he brought his hand across to the handle of the knife, placed it there.

Would he get a chance to use it? There were only two of them watching over him and his sister now. He could remember most of the path through the building… Hostages would be useless – he was hostage: he couldn’t put his knife to Hibbern’s throat or the reedy fellow’s, and march out of here… The Bertie Boys would rather see one of their own number die, than betray their boss’s orders, he was sure…

He went and sat in the opposite corner from Jaid, closing his own eyes, trying to conceptualise his possible futures like a seer.

The boss himself would order the death of a hostage. Hibbern – the other guy – they’d be as good as dead if he managed to get one of them under his control. Jar, and Jaid – they were the ones who were worth something. The only ones the boss cared about.

Because of Feychilde.

I could threaten Jaid. Or myself.

Instinct rejected the notion before the imagination could get hold of it.

Or I could kill them.

Instinct did nothing to stop this line of thought, and the imagination ran with it.

It’s excusable. It is. It has to be. Kas will understand. They’ll all understand. I have to protect her. I have to protect both of us.

But I can’t bring one of them over here and kill him. The other might just run off, and they probably have their own knives…

The boy hadn’t noticed them earlier, so he opened his eyes, stared at his jailers. They were wearing ordinary clothing, bulky coats over their vests.

“Wut yer got goin’ on there, boy?” Hibbern grunted, meeting his glare. “Don’tcha be lookin’ at me like that. You ain’t no little lord.”

Jar closed his eyes again, and the big man sniggered in satisfaction.

Bulge under Hibbern’s right arm, the same under the reedy man’s left. That means Hibbern’s left-handed, Jaroan realised. Take them longer to get their weapons out than me…

Could I take them both at once?

If he could get himself over to them, without them drawing their knives – or, even better, if he could get them over here…

I’d have to be fast, he thought, trying to put down the trembling that seized his wrists, knuckles. He clasped his hands together between his knees, struggling to control his breathing.

It wasn’t nervousness, or not just that. Not just fear.

Anticipation. The same thing that happened with Tick in the lane.

I’m going to do it.

Illodin, guide my hand. Illodin. Not any of the others.

“You want a fist in yer face?”

Throats. Eyes. It’s blunt, but they won’t be expecting me to have this weapon.

To have this… in me.

He looked back at Jaid before Hibbern felt the need to mouth off again, noticing that his sister’s shaking had become shivering. The room was actually warmer than the streets, to be fair to their captors, but the thrill of the danger had departed now, leaving her a quivering mess. Reality had started to sink in.

“Can’t we have our coats back?” Jaroan managed to keep his voice level. “My sister’s going to die from the cold, and your boss is going to be angry with you.”

“The both took the coath,” lisped the reedy man. “Ith his choith.”

“She far from dyin’, boy,” Hibbern growled. “Fer now, least.”

The gorilla-man cracked his knuckles, and the sound echoed about the small room, amplified by the well into a snap of thunder.

Jar moved closer to Jaid, but she shot him a look like a wounded animal at the approach of the huntsman: ‘Go away. Just go away.’

I won’t, he thought grimly, and sat down beside her, back to the stone, moving carefully so as to not dislodge the dagger. He looked down at his clenched fists on his knees.

I won’t – I won’t go away.

This is how I do it. This is how I kill them.

Some time passed. How long, exactly, he had no notion. He fell into the temptations of the imagining mind, pulled under by the current of emotion.

This is how I kill them.

“She’s really cold.” His voice sounded dead, even to his own ears.

“Tha’s it.”

The low roar from the thug didn’t bring him the satisfaction he’d expected.

Jaroan found himself filling with self-pity, shock at the man’s sudden aggression. He half-pushed himself to his feet, holding out his hands in a gesture of futile warding –

Hibbern batted the hands aside, reached out and took him by the hair.

Lifted him by the hair, onto the tips of his toes.

It was all Jaroan could do to hold onto the man’s left arm that was trying to rip off his scalp, simultaneously trying to rise with the thug’s tugging and to pull the wrist back down towards the ground. All thoughts of the knife fled from his mind, every parcel of consciousness given over now to razors of pain that left him yelping, bug-eyed.

“No! No, stop it, leave him alone!”

Jaid was clinging to his leg, making his job harder if anything.

“Are yer gonna keep aksin’ fer yer coat? Or I gotta take a chunk o’ yer hair off?”

“Please, no, I’ll stop, I’ll stop!”

The pathetic voice came out of his own mouth, and the huge man flung him back against the wall –

Thud.

It didn’t come from Jaroan’s collision with the stone, which hurt enough that for a moment he raised his fingers to the back of his head, checking there was no blood –

No. The sound came from somewhere upstairs.

Thud. Thud.

Not uniform sounds. One here, one there – louder, quieter…

Crackkkkkkk.

Furniture breaking. The splash of many objects against wooden walls, hurled with inhuman force.

Jaroan looked up through watery vision. The noises didn’t even appear to be coming from the floor immediately over their heads – somewhere higher up. Those sounds had to be loud.

He had expected the thugs to show some regret, some apprehension over the side they’d chosen in this one-sided war. But he was to be disappointed.

“Aw, yer big bruv showed up to frow a tantrum, az ‘e?” Hibbern merely patted Jar solidly on the head, driving the boy down to a crouched position again. “If I ‘ear the bell ringin’, well… We’ll give yer proper burials, like.” He grinned down at the twins. “Baha, wut am I on? You’s to get pigged, I reckon. Not mush left after tha’.”

“I dunno, Hib,” the skinny guy said from the doorway – and Hibbern’s face suddenly lost about fifty percent of its confidence. “Thith thtuff about the bell…”

The gorilla turned to face his mate, his brother-in-murder, exchanging some crude barbs and gesturing furiously.

Jar couldn’t have asked for a better opportunity to stab the big guy in the back, in the throat – the other would’ve surely given up, fled, if he made the big one bleed –

But Jaroan had given up and been borne away, broken by pain into a thousand bits, like crumbled twigs, cast from a bridge into a river.

Hope of rescue alone carried him on: Feychilde! Feychilde’s come!

And, leading on from that, self-revulsion dragged him under: What would he think of you now? What would he say?

There was no doubt in his mind at all that this was over. He would have to hide this half of himself. Hide it, and forget it.

Now he found himself shivering.

When he sat down next to Jaid, his eyes closed and struggling to control his breathing, she squeezed her hand under his arm and linked him, placing her head on his shoulder.

He smiled, but the peril was gone. What might have passed between them in union cast little more than a shadow over their minds, and only for one moment, one thought:

Feychilde’s here.

“Fink it frough, man,” Hibbern was berating his colleague. “If he ain’t got a way ter freaten ‘em, how’s ‘e gonna hold it over the champ-yun? Eh? Yer fink about tha’?”

“I’ve thought about it,” the one with a brain replied, “and it getth uth dead.”

“’E ain’t gonna use it, yer dolt!”

“And if he ain’t, Feychilde’th going to know that, ithn’t he?”

The gorilla grunted, and Jar only just opened his eyes in time to see the thug’s left arm reach up to the front of his chest – presumably reaching for his blade –

The boy went too cold to shiver, and as Hibbern slowly retrieved a long dirk from an inner breast-pocket, lowering it into view, Jaroan once more felt the stillness settle fully over him.

I’m safe, but the skinny guy? The one who doesn’t actually want to kill us?

The boy’s fingers twitched for his belt, and for a moment he considered less-than-lethal options. He could strike Hibbern in the leg, hamstring him – or aim for the spine, disable him but leave him in a state where Feychilde’s sylph could heal him –

But those options were less certain, too. The gorilla’s clothes would probably turn aside the blunt blade. And once Jaroan took his chance, he’d never get it again. If he left Hibbern in a condition to attack back, Jaroan knew he’d be killed outright.

Can I actually kill him – just to defend his friend?

Hibbern took a step towards his pal…

Can I actually sit here while he murders him?

The mingled emotions – Feychilde is here! But what will Kas think? – it wasn’t enough to dissuade him.

Act now! Before he gets closer!

He put down his hand, shifted his weight to help him launch himself up to his feet –

And just as he did so, there was a flicker, a single half-blink of time in which the door went from fully closed to fully opened, colour suddenly flooding across the candlelit space –

Then Hibbern and the reedy guy were lying comatose in separate corners on either side of the doorway, and Killstop was there, regarding the twins through the disapproving mask’s eye-slits.

“Stupid inkatra,” she muttered, even as she reached out a hand for each of them. “Come on, let’s –“

It wasn’t like he could’ve stopped her if he’d wanted to – her fingers closed around his wrist and the world lurched. He was vaguely conscious of his legs flailing as he was carried.

“– get you… ah… safe,” the arch-diviner finished, depositing them on the bench in the main room of his home and breathing deeply.

He took that as permission – he shrank back into the corner of the seat, panting – Jaid did the same in the other corner, as far from him as she could get.

The seeress looked between them, then her eyes behind the mask seemed to fall towards Jaroan’s belt.

Towards the dagger.

But she can’t… oh…

“She doesn’t have a clue… what you were going to do. I do.” Killstop’s voice was quiet, as she got her breath back, unusually-solemn. Almost grim. “I can either tell him, or not. One of… one of two ways. You get to choose. I know, before you say it – he bought you the knife, right? It’s his fault, right?”

He stared at her in mingled terror and fascination as she shook her head.

“He didn’t give it to you because he wanted you to use it. Yes, he’s stupid. But that’s beside the point, now. Which way’s it gonna be, Jar?”

He looked at Jaid, and only now realised that she was completely silent, locked in place, left out of the conversation. She seemed to be inhaling forcefully, but it was an unending breath.

He returned his attention to the arch-diviner in whose hands his fate had been placed, like a fortify Minion, ready to be spawned.

“Don’t tell him! Please!”

She regarded him wistfully for a moment, just long enough for him to realise she knew what his answer would be.

Then why make me say it?

“Okay. Okay, we’ll play it that way. But… okay. You’re not a machine, Jaroan. You weren’t made to work one way forever until you break. We all have emotions; we all struggle. You have to rise above it, sure, but that means digging your way out of the muck, not floating like a wizard. We all want to kill, don’t we, when we’re angry? We all want violence. You can’t just run from those feelings. If you keep running, one day you’ll find yourself in a corner. There’ll be no way out and you won’t be strong enough to fight. Do you get me? How does it put it… If you flee what you fear when you look in the mirror, then you will find it with you wherever you go. If you face what you fear, you will never see it again. You will have become it. Watch your reflection run.”

He had absolutely no idea what she was trying to tell him to do.

Face my fear?

She spent a second or two carefully assessing his confounded face with her all-seeing eyes, and then the champion ran. Time reasserted its flow.

Jaid reasserted her anger.

She woke Xastur up, but that was okay. Jaroan cried, and he wasn’t ashamed. He said he was sorry, and she somehow correctly interpreted his blubbers – she forgave him. He knew it because she held him again, gently placing her arms about him like he never wanted her to.

Like he always needed her to.

He found himself again, on the seabed of the abyss beneath this ocean of dismay. He found himself, and thought he’d never touch the knife again. Like its handle would be poison to him. Like the shame would never end.

He would be strong. He would face his darkest self. A hero from one of the stories.

Until the champion ran away for good.

Until they both left.

Forever.

* * *

Feychilde had been out all day. Jaroan was up to the part of the story with the necromancer’s pyramid, and was not to be disturbed. Xantaire had taken Xastur somewhere in Oldtown, and Orstrum had fallen asleep on his granddaughter’s bed, snoring peacefully.

Left to her own devices, Jaid wandered the apartment with unshed tears in her eyes, tracing the spines of the books on the shelves with her fingertips. When she got bored, she found some dust that needed dusting and some washing to wash. She braided her hair, and dutifully popped the end of the braid in her teeth as she went about the remaining chores she could find for herself.

She had no words for it, but she knew the emotion on an instinctive level: she was adrift. There’d been a time when family had been enough for her to know her place, what she was made for. To exist in this cocoon of familiarity. To satisfy her pleasures with flights of fancy, escape the meagre morsels of food and the cold, creaky mud of Sticktown on the wings of words. She’d always known that one day she’d have to grow up, but she thought it would always be in the next decade, next year, always a tomorrow away. And even if it came, even if reality rushed down to meet her imagination early, it surely couldn’t arrive before her fifteenth birthday, could it?

Yet it had happened, before she was even ten. Somewhere between all the dizzying events of the last few months, reality had crept in – not a destructive wave to crush her dreams in one fell swoop, but a nauseating trickle of venom seeping through cracks in the walls of her mind. She couldn’t explain it. There were no words in her vernacular for what she was feeling; she knew the word vernacular, yet the proper expressions still eluded her, too few accumulated experiences to draw on.

She was alone, before herself, exposed to herself in a way that she’d never known before, and the consciousness of her own existence was terrifying.

There were no flights of fancy. The stories in the books were just reflections on a puddle’s ripples, distorted before they even came into being. Even the Infernal Incursions – they’d always been at worst a semi-present danger. Now she’d seen it up close. She ate and walked and slept and dreamt within the shadows of a champion and his friends.

Her curious mind eventually seized upon the correct phrase.

Purposelessness.

It wasn’t quite enough. It was as though a second skin had been settled over her, unresponsive. Something hard. Brittle. But unbreakable. Halting all her movements, just a little. Slowing her, imperceptibly to all but her.

This is crystallised purposelessness.

That was it.

It wasn’t just a matter of what she needed to do with her life. Of course, there was that aspect – what can I do, what can I do that matters, without his powers? – but it was more than that. Feychilde – the change in Kas – it had drilled down into her identity and punctured the defenceless sack. She was leaking.

I’m leaking myself.

It’s not what I’m going to do. It’s who I am.

Who am I?

Eventually, something in her elected to take control of the body of flesh and blood and bone, dragging it down to the street.

There was no one to stop her. Who cared if it was dangerous? Feychilde would save her. He always saved them, no matter what was wrong.

She felt the eyes on her as soon as she shut the door behind her, but she drew a breath and composed herself before making her way across to the stairs, down into the mud.

Everyone knew. It was only a matter of time before someone said something to her about Feychilde. About Kas.

“Hey, Jaid!”

It was Iltri. Jaid increased her pace.

“Jaid? Jaid! Where’s your coat?”

Santamir Finnerfell’s voice. Instinct had forced her to turn her head just enough that she caught his upraised hand and expectant expression out of the corner of her eye – she forced her head back, staring straight in front of her as she started to skip –

Sweet Mother of the Mercies, where am I even going?

She had no answer – she only knew that she was going away.

Got to get out of here. Got to get away from me.

She knew that thirty, fifty, a hundred people were chasing after her. She could hear their splashing footfalls, their cries. She wouldn’t take the time to look back.

She was running now.

Why am I running? Running isn’t purpose. Running…

She only recognised what was really going through her head when she saw the fences, the bare tree-limbs of the shrine’s gardens.

She wanted to stop dead, root herself to the spot, but while she had the power to halt her running, Jaid nonetheless seemed incapable of coming to an actual stop. Her legs continued to eat up the distance, bringing her closer and closer at a steady walking pace. Despite her reduced speed, the hordes of inquisitive neighbours never caught up to her, and she caught herself before she cast about in surprise.

I imagined it. It’s a dream.

Just a dream.

So it was that she proceeded alone into the graveyard of Yune.

There were other people here, but they didn’t recognise her. She was safe. Some of the mourners she passed by smiled at her, speaking platitudes and wishing her the season’s greetings. She merely fixed a grin on her face, leered back at them.

Drop on them. They don’t know me. They don’t know what I’ve been through.

They reacted inappropriately to her offensive grimace, most of them sidestepping confusion and going straight for pity.

Jaid looked away, needing to avoid them. She didn’t know how her twin did this, lived like this.

She quickly veered off the well-trodden paths, entering the trees where she could flit towards her destination without further interactions. She bowed her head and looked down at her feet, watching the things on the ends of her legs as they went stomping through the scattered twigs, the long, frozen grasses, heedless of the noise, the destruction.

Not my destination. Their destination.

Everyone had been moaning about it, but the cold only touched her when she was kneeling there beside the grave. A frigid wind lapped the grass, her hair, her dress, sneaking in through the arms and neck and hem of the garment, sending shivers racing up her spine. The sky started to spit.

She sighed, and gave in, sinking down onto her backside. Who cared if she got wet, colder? It didn’t matter anyway.

She never liked talking to the dead, and liked it even less now she’d long-since said all she had to say. But this was different. She looked inside, and was left empty. She needed something from outside and there was no one else to give it to her.

I need you.

“Hello again,” she whispered.

“Hello, honey,” Mum said.

She dreamed the response. She could remember their voices, of course. Maybe she was wrong. But there was nothing stopping her from making her memory her new reality.

“Is it all just a dream?”

“What, honey? Is what a dream?”

“This. Everything. Everything that’s happened.”

“Now why would you go and say something like that?”

“Because you’re dead, but you’re still not gone, are you? Not really. I’ve seen it, Mum. I’ve seen what they can do. You’re never gone. I’ll never be gone. Even if I wanted to be…”

Mum didn’t answer.

What is the answer?

“It’s not a dream.” Dad’s severe voice shook her – she looked up at the gravestone in surprise, but there was only the brief message assigned by the ministers, half-obscured by the untouchable creeping moss:

LOCUS KNEW THEM – IN CELESTIAL INK SHALL THEIR SPIRITS FLOW FROM THE SCHOLAR’S PEN, AND BE AT REST UPON THE PAGE – UNTIL NIGHTFALL

“Dad?”

“It’s not a dream,” the priest repeated – now she located the sound she twisted about on the icy ground, facing into the drizzle on the wind. He was standing there, not fifteen feet from her, but in her reverie she must’ve missed the sounds of his approach below the breeze. His robe was brown, his frame short and thin. The man’s ruddy hair was greying at the temples, and contemplative eyes sparkled from deep-set sockets in his narrow face.

“But… but if you go on forever, isn’t it –“

“It’s not a dream. You can’t escape that way, even if you stumble across keys from time to time… No, it’s all that matters. Life shapes your soul. You need more than a dried-up heart, Jaid Mortenn. You need a clean spirit, a meaning, to pass through the gate.”

“How… How do you know who I am?”

“Who are you?” He asked the question directly, sharply, without any mysticism in his tone, which only served to further bewilder her.

“You – like you just said –“

“I know your name, but I don’t know who you are, child. Am I alone in that, or can I keep you company?”

She gaped at him.

You seem to know everything about me…

“Identity. The meaning of life.” He smiled thinly. “Only you can answer this, and you can answer it only for yourself. If it were otherwise, your soul would be shared, would it not? You would not be yourself. No, even one who knows you from this very place cannot roll that stone. Your epitaph shall be your own.” She saw the eyes lower briefly to the grave, then return once more to her face, and it was in a softer voice that the priest continued. “But do not be dismayed. The young do not know who they are; the gods war within the soul, disguised, and only time can tell whether light shall prevail, or the darkness be invited in.”

His turn of phrase – she knew him then.

He buried our parents.

He… He understood…

“You shall find yourself. Allow yourself time. Chraunator gives before he takes.”

“My brother, he… he has darkness within him. I think it might win.”

The priest nodded gravely. “Yet the heart of the champion, even the demonologist, is uplifted to the light. The fire of archmagery is not fully understood, but this much we of the clergy hold true: it is holy. It is not to be hindered by men’s hands.”

I… I meant Jaroan…

So this minister had already heard of Feychilde’s true identity, then – he’d put two and two together quickly, when he’d recalled Jaid’s name.

“Why did you come over to me?” she challenged him suddenly.

‘I heard the sister of Sticktown’s greatest champion was sitting in the grass, and…’

“There were reports,” he spoke sombrely, “of a girl striding through the wood, disconsolate and alone. I knew not who you were, Kultemeren as my witness, until I approached.”

“But when you saw me. When you realised who I was, it was exciting.”

The thin lips on the narrow face formed a crooked smile, and the older man shrugged lightly. “I am but human.”

“You hoped we’d start talking about my brother. Kastyr.”

“Child, I do not think –“

“I live in his shadow!” she cried. “I can’t, I can’t move, I can’t breathe – it’s too much! I didn’t even… I didn’t even mean Kas!”

There was a pause as he probably recalled the fact she had a male twin.

“Ah,” was all he could say.

“Yeah,” she spat, returning her gaze to her parents’ moss-covered gravestone. “And what about darkmages? Maybe being an archmage looks all holy, from outside, but on the inside? On the inside, it’s just like anything else. It’s…”

Decay.

She waved a hand, indicating everything, the mess of a world that surrounded her and this one sanctified, familiar place.

“Darkmages are aberrations,” the minister of Mortiforn said. “And even if every archmage so invested chose the darkness, this would remain true. It takes but one drop of filth to contaminate the vial of pure water. Yet we do not say all water is thus contaminated. We cannot excuse our inaction if the integrity of the city’s water-supply were threatened. We will not be overcome by the possibility of failure before we begin, and we will not call the holy unholy even if by our inaction we seek to permit its condemnation. Are the gods condemned as one, because so many of them are shadow-makers?”

She was still staring at the stone, letting his words wash over her.

Break upon her like raindrops on the cold grave, running off into the ground.

People will never be clean.

Her eyes narrowed as she suddenly understood exactly what had happened here.

If I kick their grave, will it happen to me?

It wasn’t something she could’ve brought herself to do, even if the fate of Materium depended on it. She didn’t have in her whatever it was in Kas that produced that action, the savage attack on their memories represented by the single fateful flick of a leg.

The sense of betrayal he carried around with him until that day had evaporated afterwards, though. His resentment of them… That was what it’d always been. What had driven him to this very spot, made him bring them so often, until that day.

Was that what he was feeling, all this time?

Was that what left him when the power filled him?

That’s what I need, she realised. But it’s not them I resent. It’s…

It’s him. It’s me. It’s all of us.

One word, one raindrop stuck.

“Filth. One drop of drop…”

“Child…” He almost said it reprovingly, like ‘drop’ was a proper swear-word.

“So you’re saying – if they had a single drop of drop in them – they won’t go to Celestium – they’ll be –“ she waved her hand at the grave furiously “– they’ll be somewhere else, somewhere dark, and Jaroan, he…”

I’ll go with him into the darkness. He’s changed, and he’s changed me –

“The Lord Suffering’s scalpel shall remove the detritus from their souls,” the priest said in a soothing voice. “They shall pass together beneath the arch, if they have not already done so. Rest assured.”

“But I bet you say that to everyone! Lies.”

“Truth… Lies… I am not sworn to Kultemeren.” He sighed. “Saying such words is all my purpose, child.” She heard the tremor in his voice, and looked up at him in surprise: he was gazing about the graveyard. “Is this not the place for hope?” he finished.

He wasn’t looking at her, suddenly-watery eyes scanning the trees – but the way she seemed to shake his faith restored her own.

He was right.

Hope!

“Truth or lies, it doesn’t matter,” she breathed.

He broke out of his reverie, stared at her strangely.

“You speak as one who has endured great suffering, Jaid Mortenn.” She saw as a faint smile twisted his lips, not happy or sad but somehow both simultaneously. “Far be it from me to steer your course, yet I might be your lighthouse, if this darkness seems overwhelming. Have you considered a future in the ministry? We would accept neophytes from their tenth year.”

“I… Learning about Nethernum – I’m sure it’s interesting –“

His smile broadened. “Oh, in the first years you would spend most of your time preparing corpses for the worms or winds, as their souls desire.” He saw her blench and carried on regardless, the softness of his voice enthralling her despite the disgust his words caused in her. “You are used to rough passage. We offer your vessel not quiet waters, but still: the silent expanse, where the emptiness within might be mirrored without. It is slow going at the oars, traversing the void – but rewarding when one comes at last to journey’s end.” He winked. “So I hope.”

His jest helped her realise what he meant:

‘Rewarding when one comes at last to journey’s end.’

Rewarding when you die.

She opened her mouth to reply, but the Mourning Bells spoke instead, pealing down from Hightown on a blast of wind that flattened the grass.

Gong! Gong! Gong!

There was no need to speak

He ran back to Mud Lane with her hand in his, wordless the whole way except to discuss the best route for her to return home. He almost lost her once, when the teeming crowds of panicked people split in half at an alleyway – but he kept his grip on her hand. When at last she reached her building he didn’t even stop her to bid her farewell, but went wading off towards Cutterwells at a more leisurely pace.

She watched the brown-robed man until he vanished around the bend, envious of the way he, unencumbered by a young dependent, walked casually while the Incursion descended on the city. The way he stopped to help others, even if only to move out of their way. He was in no rush.

It was power.

Rewarding, when you die.

And the next time she saw Brother Porsico, she was ready.

* * *

“The funniest thing happened to me the other day,” Xantaire said in a dreamy voice, sitting back with her eyes closed, mug of wine in her lap.

“Go on,” Jaid said automatically, moving her fortify piece backwards and forwards, unable to settle on a move.

Jaroan merely arched a single eyebrow at Xan, something he’d been practising. No one could see in the dim candlelight, he supposed, but he felt compelled to arch the eyebrow all the same.

“Well, there were these two people in Hontor’s – wait, I’m telling it all wrong. What happened is, I hear some guy say: ‘Hey! Who’re you hiding from?’ So I turn and look, of course, and sure enough someone’s crouching in the corner, in kind of a strange position, you know?”

Next Jaroan perfectly executed an eye-roll. Or, at least, he hoped it was perfect. It’d felt like a good one.

“She’s crouching, you know, like she was sitting down, except there’s no seat? Well, it was too good of an opportunity. I went up and said, ‘Finally – there you are!’ They laughed, then he said: ‘Now it’s your turn, Xantaire’…”

Jaid’s indecision was starting to get on his nerves. All the time Xan was talking, there was this incessant little scrape-tap-tap-scrape-tap-tap going on in the background. It was worse than the Bells.

“… like, ‘How do you know my name?’ Only, it’s only gods-damned Lerg Manatown and his sister!”

“Oooooh,” her grandfather cooed.

“I know! Been ten years since I seen them… Supposed to be meeting them for a drink sometime, but with the whole Kas situation –“

“Will you stop that?” Jar finally snapped, slamming his hand down on the board, sending half the pieces jumping in place. Three of Jaroan’s Minions fell over, but he didn’t care: at least his sister had frozen, the Swamp Hag in her hands no longer scraping or tapping the wood.

“I can’t stop! I can’t think!” Jaid muttered, lowering the Hag and moving her hand back. “Something’s wrong.”

He felt a cold smile slip across his face as he gazed upwards, as if to stare through the ceiling into the sky, where, perhaps, extra-dimensional entities warred with archmages above the earth.

Without even looking, he swept his arm across the board and knocked most of the pieces out of position. Some fell to the floor, plinking lightly as they rolled under the table.

“What’re you doing that for?” she snapped, grabbing his hand and stopping him, even though it was pointless now – the game was ruined.

“Well, why not?” He stood up, the smile still on his face. “Feychilde’ll be fighting demons for real. Never know – they might even come here again.”

“You quit because you were going to lose!”

He snorted. “Whatever.”

Maybe I did. Maybe I didn’t.

“No, seriously!”

Jaid tried her best pitiful gaze. He wouldn’t even meet her eyes, still staring up and smiling – but he could feel her regard. The air in the room was burning with tension.

“You want them to come here again,” she murmured.

Now he whipped his head about to stare at her.

Maybe I do, his mind whispered. At least it’d be something.

“Disgusting,” his mouth sneered.

“Jaid!” Xan barked at her from across the room, glaring at his sister, half-angry, half-horrified.

“What?” His sister said it like she was about to start crying. “Why are you blaming me? It’s him! It’s his fault!”

“Demonnnnnnnn,” Xastur said, wide eyes on his mother as he stood by her hip. “Deeeeeeeee-mon! Demons have claws!”

“I’ve had enough of this!” Xantaire snapped, ignoring him, her eyes brimming as she stared at Jaid and Jaroan. “You both need to sort your acts out. Five save us! Isn’t it enough already? Why do you have to make it worse?”

“Xantaire…” Orstrum tried to interject.

“No! No, old man, you stop too! I have to think about my son!”

She swept Xassy into her arms, stalked to her room, and slammed her door shut behind them.

“Well, that was dramatic,” Jaroan drawled.

“What’s happened to you, boy?” Orstrum growled. Jaroan hadn’t seen him like this in a long time, and it gave him pause. “Yes, bad things have happened to you. Yes, the world is a mess. Why do you think we have stories? Five save us indeed! What would Wyre do, or Litenwelt, or Brenwe? Do you think they’d be angry all the time?”

“They were archmages!” he retorted. “The greatest of them all.”

“Well what about me? Do you think you’re the only one who feels powerless?”

“You’re angry? Sorry, I couldn’t tell through all the drugs.”

“Well, my boy…” Orstrum passed a hand across his face. “Well maybe I’m ashamed – and maybe I’m not. Looks to me like one who refuses to be decent shouldn’t demand perfection from others. If my worst sin is trying to lighten my mood, so be it. At least I’m not trying to make every minute a living nightmare for those around me.”

That made the smile on his face slip. Jar slowly sank back into his seat.

“Yes, there’s something wrong,” Orstrum finished, gentleness entering his voice again. “Wait – that isn’t what I was going to…” He shuddered, choking: “Going to say…”

Orstrum’s brain must’ve fired off the command to utter those last three words, his tongue going through the motions even as the ragged figure began to materialise in their midst.

The old man fell back in his chair, eyes bulging in fright. Jaroan reached for Jaid’s hand, instinctively sliding away from the apparition, but it was too late.

Jaid cried out for Xantaire and Feychilde, an echo of the Mourning Bells still pealing out across the city.

It was no good. Jaid’s screams would avail them nothing. Jaroan stared, transfixed in terror, as the fiend took form not six feet from him.

It was a thing swathed in – maybe made out of – cloth.

Jar vaguely recalled Kas mentioning one of the most dangerous adversaries he’d seen: a demon of rags like this, shooting coloured lights from its hands…

But the only visible part of this attacker was a trio of awful nails, like blades of rust extending from a sleeve. No rays of light.

Then it spoke, its Rivertown accent suddenly shocking him into understanding.

Heretic.

The voice was young, deep – confident.

“You gotta understand, this ain’t about you. But yer all dead already. I’m just doin’ the gods’ work wi’ yas.”

Lethargy stole over him. Jaroan felt his eyes filling with tears as he slumped over.

His hand, still reaching for Jaid’s, fell limp from his wrist like a dead fish.

“Yer just gotta die. It’s a price what wants payin’. I’m sorry.”

Darkness, as the darkmage’s spells enveloped him.

Smiling, as he descended into it.

Feychilde will come.

* * *

A while ago she would’ve prayed to Yune, prayed for Kas to come back and rescue them, but there was no way that wasn’t happening. She didn’t need to pray – their brother was already on his way. No, Mortiforn was on her mind, and there was the heretic’s turn of phrase ringing in her ears. The thought she spoke was to Lord Suffering, if there were indeed any ear intended to catch it.

If there’s a price to be paid, let someone else pay it. I’m tired of settling a champion’s debts.

She thought at first it was the argument that had awoken her, and it took her a moment to isolate the otherworldly scent of Avaelar’s breath in her consciousness.

“This is it.” Xantaire’s voice, resolute. “It’s too much. You’ve got to go.”

“What?” Her twin. “No! This is our house! You go!”

Jaid could see herself coming down on either side of that particular debate. Her heart agreed with Jar, but her mind… her mind saw the truth.

“Truth or lies, it doesn’t matter. Hope!”

“Xan – Xan, it’s not enough. Y-you’re in danger, wherever I go, if they know you were…”

She listened to his words with her eyes closed, and it wasn’t the champion she heard – it was her brother. Her protector. Her teacher. And his heart was breaking.

When she opened her eyes, Jaid saw the champion sitting there, but it was her brother inside. He was still in there, still the same unsure, uncertain Kas, trying to do his best with another terrifying situation.

She crossed to him, hugged him, and lied to him.

It was only then that he started to tell them what had actually happened – what her casual, off-hand prayer bought for her second-favourite arch-druid.

Kas didn’t bother staying long. Within ten minutes of Jaid waking from the heretic’s spell, he was gone again. They were apparently safe once more, but the patrol of huge, nice-smelling squirrels he’d left in the apartment seemed to suggest otherwise.

As distractingly-cute as the creatures were – Jaid kept following them with her eyes, kept listening to their chirps in case she could extract some meaning, accusation, from it – she found herself returning her attention, again and again, to the spot where Nighteye had fallen. Feychilde’s minions had done a good job of cleaning up, but she imagined the mess as it might’ve been. She’d never met the druid, but she’d always known exactly what he’d looked like. The town-criers gave repetitive descriptions of all new champions, and she could remember the morning she’d first heard of him. Kas had actually obtained a proper news-paper, which contained an artist’s impression of the event – she could still see it before her mind’s eye as though it had been yesterday. A scrawled sketch of a short man walking out of an inferno, robed in fire-singed green, with a long pole like a bannister-rail slung over one shoulder. Clinging to the bending wooden beam was easily ten times his body-weight in soot-coated children, almost two-dozen of them hanging on for dear life as he carried them from the blaze.

And now he is dead. Because of me. Because I didn’t want to pay the price.

She looked at the blackened line in the wall where the killing-blow had fallen. A thin, jagged slice through the wood. Through Nighteye’s neck.

Like a sword.

Stormsword?

Certainty flooded her. She closed her eyes.

And Princess went for a paint-job. That’s code for dead, isn’t it? Princess died in the Incursion… Or right here, before he woke us up, fighting the heretic… He just didn’t have the heart to tell me…

She felt so guilty for all her previous thoughts, her attitude towards him. Kas was just trying to keep them afloat while the world went down the whirlpool. Kas, and Feychilde – they were two different people inhabiting the same body. It wasn’t that Kas had changed, not really – not yet, anyway. It was more like he was possessed. Like he had to put up with this other persona, stealing his time, his life…

She went for a wash, lit new candles, and headed to bed. The Bells had stopped. Whatever fate Kas was imagining for himself, for the rest of them, it couldn’t have been worse than the Incursion.

Her dreams knew better.

In her dreams, she stands at the side of a ditch in a road. A tall scythe is planted in the mud at her feet, and the long blade gleams over her in the moonlight, swaying in the breeze. Feychilde stands in the ditch below her, looking up at her. She can’t make out his expression below the mask – it looks like he is frowning, but it’s hard to tell. The distance, perhaps, makes his face amorphous.

She glances up at the scythe. It watches. It waits.

“Must you?” she asks.

The responding voice is a child’s, more so than her own – yet it is the steel which speaks, metallic inflections ringing in her ears.

“You already know. He must… pay. You cannot… pay for him.”

“Does he have to pay this way?”

“So must we all.”

The scythe swings itself. The grips are in her hands, but it swings itself, she swears it.

The beheaded one in the ditch topples. The devious covering comes loose, and she sees the facelessness beneath the mask. It’s not that he has no expression. It’s that he has no face to begin with.

No face.

“Only now can you see.”

She woke up, the words of the god-child, the words of the weapon still slicing through her memory.

Only now can I see…

She twisted in the covers, looking over instantly at Kas’s bed.

Empty. Unmade, the quilts left half hanging-off, but not from last night’s use. It was exactly how it’d looked when she went to bed.

He didn’t come home.

She roused Jar, pointing.

And that was the end of things, the end of the world as she knew it.

* * *

Where am I?

* * *

The snows had stopped, and even the rain had abated for a night. The smog’s translucent flesh squatted beyond the balcony against which he leant, more mist than smoke or vile stench: it was lying particularly thick, impenetrable, over the streets, and he felt that it was a boon from Belestae, hiding him in this place from unfriendly eyes.

Or Yane, he admitted to himself. It’s his work I’m doing.

The wave of repulsion he experienced at the thought was weaker this time; weaker every time.

The thrill was the same.

Mists of the Blade-Lord, conceal my actions from those who love me.

“Watcher after, Mortenn? Watcher lookin’ for?”

It was quite the philosophical question.

It was difficult, given the pause a proper answer necessitated, but Jaroan did his best to gaze back coolly into Ti’s beady eyes as he replied.

“Control,” he said at last.

There was an “ooh” of wonder from some of the other kids gathered on the balcony. Jar tried not to grin, but the instinct was irresistible.

Ti was nodding slowly. “Good answer, Mortenn. Gots ter have control, ain’t we? We control it all. We control ever’thin’.”

The others started nodding too, Jar along with them.

“Yer part of ‘er family now,” Ti said with a wicked smile. “Zandrina’s gonna own all this soon enough.” He flicked his gaze about the creaking wooden landscape, looming above and around them. “Not like ‘alf of it’s worth owt.”

That produced a chorus of chuckling from the assembled knife-boys.

He’s right, Jaroan confirmed silently. We might as well live in hell.

“An’ you, Yorbi?”

“I-i-it’s Yordi, sir,” whined an auburn-haired, freckle-faced kid, at least a year younger than Jaroan.

Ti just stared at him, and Jar shuddered inwardly. He wouldn’t have wanted to be the recipient of that stare.

“Errr, I mean,” Yordi looked around at the others as if for help before returning his gaze to Ti, “I mean, I want money?”

Ti laughed harshly, and another chorus of chuckles escaped the group.

“Money. Who don’t want money! An’ there’s gonna be a lot of it. Ere. Open yer ‘ands.”

Ti reached inside his coat pocket, producing a small coin-bag. He withdrew several gleaming metal discs, and, before Jar was even holding it, he knew it was gold.

When he had the surprisingly-warm coin in his hand, he clenched his fist tightly.

Is this how he felt? he wondered. How Feychilde felt, when he first got paid?

How Kas used to feel, when he was a street-thief.

Not that his brother had ever gone into details about that period of his life, but Jaroan and Jaid had once worked together to uncover the truth, sharing the titbits of information they’d each gathered over the years. He knew Kas took money from bad people. He knew Kas hurt people. Maybe it was a long time ago, but what did that matter?

No. He knew that, wherever his brother’s soul was now residing, Kas had no right to look down on him in judgement for what he was doing.

I’m doing what you did, aren’t I? Except I’ve got even more reason, haven’t I? What reason did you have? Mum and Dad weren’t even dead yet! You didn’t have to…

He couldn’t continue the thought. He’d never understood Kas, not really. He’d tried emulating him. Tried contrasting himself with him. None of it ever quite worked. He was never simple-enough to accept a definition from outside. Every time Jaroan thought he had a grip on him, Kas had changed.

No, Jar thought grimly. I’ll start at the beginning. Work my way up. Maybe, one day, I’ll be like you.

Locked up?

Dead!

Yeah. That.

“Now yer ‘ands are full, time ter get ’em dirty. I know what feels good. Rippin’ an’ slicin’ as a mob. But yer know what feels better? Winnin’. An’ I’m gonna show yer ‘ow ter win. Yer gonna learn. Yer gonna take orders, and yer gonna see ‘em runnin’ scared. See, our inkatra’s the best. Near ter eight minnits a go. Now. Who ‘ere ain’t got their blade?”

They all dutifully unsheathed the grimy little knives. Kitchen implements or crude woodworking tools, for the most part. Just one boy, someone whose name was unknown to Jaroan, had produced a proper dagger.

“Real fightin’ blade,” the kid said proudly as Ti passed him by, inspecting their arsenal.

“Ain’t no room for fightin’,” Ti said harshly, though not judgementally. He had the air of a teacher from a book explaining things patiently to a classroom of posh little dolts. “Dat ain’t what we about. Yer gotta fight, jus’ run. Trust me. Knives…” He presented his own dagger, almost as long as a dirk and spotted with old brown blood. “Knives is for killin’.”

Jar remembered the idea of it. Sticking his invisible dagger in the big guy’s throat in the Bertie Boys’ basement. It was a notion detached from reason, emotion. He could examine it in all its clarity.

He wished he had done it. He wished Killstop never came in with her crazy antics, laying out the thugs, laying down the law to Jaroan about what he could and couldn’t do. So what if she thought killing was wrong? It was easy for her to say that, someone who knew death intimately, knew how to avoid dying…

Someone with power. Control.

She’s forgotten what it’s like, he thought, staring at the stolen, iron-wrought knife in his hand. He’d cleaned it, and its edge gleamed in the mist-light. What vulnerability is.

“Yer gonna use the knife, an’ when yer do, doan show it off. Just use it. Fast. Underarm. Stab ’em ten times ‘fore they even know what’s hit ’em.” Ti demonstrated, violently savaging the air with a flurry of stabs, in-out, in-out, in-out. “Aim fer the middle, right? Doan matter where as you get ’em. They’ll leak, jus’ like a skin o’ red wine.”

Jar felt his eyes widen as he watched Ti perform the actions, mimicking killing people, and Ti seemed to notice.

“Doan be scared, kids. You got the control.”

Jaroan realised he was looking at some of the others while he was speaking too, and breathed an inward sigh of relief.

“Tell yas… If yer ain’t wantin’ to use it, then yer can – just show it ’em. Tell ‘em my name. Tha’s usually enough. Show ’em the knife, an’ let ’em know what’s what.”

Showing it. Just showing it.

Kas had bought him a knife with a blade only he could see. This was the opposite.

Not hiding. Taking control instead.

Ti handed out the assignments, speaking with surety: nothing was written down, of course. Whether that was due to a desire for plausible deniability or just because Ti was illiterate, Jar was unsure, but the older boy definitely had a sharp memory.

“You, an’ you – yer at Drink Alley and that stupid crone, Gittel. She owes fer ‘alf an ounce. You, an’ you – take this ter the Hurams an’ collec’ fer las’ time. C’mon, tekkit! Two ounces. You, an’ you –” he was indicating Jar and Yordi “– go see Venny on Finch Street. See if ‘e’s willin’ ter pay yet, an’ if ‘e is, I might jus’ be so kind as ter let ‘im off wi’ a scar. S’long as ‘e wants more produck, ya know. Uvverwise…”

Ti pulled a savage grin, and dragged his fingers across his throat.

Their gang-leader finished handing out his commands, and Jaroan was still frozen on the spot, staring.

Fingers across his throat.

Imagination and recollection met, and he was back in the cellars of Wyre, contemplating murder.

The future came pushing its hands back through the veil, grabbing his shoulders and pulling him through.

The sensation of warmth on his hands.

Killing.

Killing? I can’t do it.

Jaroan knew it, all of a sudden. There was no way he was going to be able to kill someone. Intimidate them? Sure. Scratch them? Why not? But… to actually put the knife’s blade inside them?

The contents of his stomach turned into a rotten flopping fish, too-long dead to have been eaten and far too alive to stay down – nausea flooded over him. He gripped the rail with his hand, drawing a deep breath and swallowing minutely, hoping no one would comment on his pallor.

It was dark. It was almost over. He just had to hold on. Vanish into the mist.

No. You can do it. You need to do it. It will be easy.

I can. I can do it. It’ll be easy.

“… stamp it out. Yer hear me? Yer all hearin’? Yer got yer jobs, now scarper! Two nights. We meet outside Berthoni’s on Giblet.”

Putting away their knives, the gang of kids quietly dispersed, Ti the first to leave. Jaroan turned about, looking for Yordi, and found the boy staring out into the mist as he’d been doing just a minute ago.

Sympathy arose in him, but something sliced it in two. The role Jaroan needed to play seized hold of him with purpose, dragging him through the motions.

“What’s up?”

Yordi started like he’d been struck.

“You havin’ second thoughts?” He grinned. “Ti wouldn’t like that.”

“I – oh, no… You,” Yordi licked his lips nervously, “you saw things, right? Your b-brother… Have you ever… ever killed someone?”

Jaroan’s grin melted into a smile, but he kept it from falling into a frown.

“Almost.” He looked the trembling little lad up and down, then sighed theatrically. “C’mon, Freckles. I’ll show you how it’s done.”

He put his arm around the boy’s shoulders, pulling him away. The kid was trembling. It was like the nervousness had left him, and entered the youngster.

Yane be praised.

Finch Street wasn’t far, and in the end he didn’t need his knife. He only needed his words. His tone. His smile.

As he collected the debts for his boss, Jar never asked himself why he was smiling. The reason was obvious.

Gold? A means to an end, but what was the end?

Control? That was a fanciful notion. It was more like submission. It was going with it. It was surrender.

Death.

Surrendering to the season of death. Letting the world finally turn. Turning with it.

That was why he was smiling.

* * *

The shrine of Mortiforn nearest the graveyard was small, and, despite its ominous reputation, somehow welcoming. It was located underground, a subterranean structure of brown brick and grey mortar. On the surface there was only what looked like a brick hut, its dark, gateless doorway floating there like a yawning throat in the middle of a particularly-wide road. Its stony base rose a few inches out of the drop, cart-wheels and passers-by sometimes stepping up onto it as they brushed past traffic coming the other way. A smattering of lantern-light was spilling up from below to illuminate the spiral staircase, but it was hard to pick out on the approach – Jaid only knew it was there because this wasn’t her first time here.

She waited for her opportunity, then sprang through a gap ahead of a pair of packhorses, lifting her feet out of the sludge with care to ensure her boots stayed on. No one gave her a second glance, and anyone who gave her a first glance knew better than to challenge her. Few things were holy, these days, she reflected, but death and its mysteries were still held in respect, even here in one of the city’s worst slums. No one went to Mortiforn without purpose. No one found themselves here by accident. The lost didn’t descend the stairs with skeletal faces carved into the stones, the empty eyes of skulls peering from the shadows.

It was a place filled with meaning, with divine intent, and she could feel it even just three steps into the stairwell. She was leaving Sticktown, leaving her old self behind.

The role she’d adopted since first setting foot inside this hallowed temple – it came over her again, completely consuming everything she was: her past, her trials, her emotion. It wasn’t some magical effect, from spell of enchanter or prayer of priest, and yet somehow it was all the more magical for it. She felt the relief as though it were a physical weight she had shed, a heavy, burdensome skin that came coiling away from her scalp, her temples, down her neck and back, tracing her thighs and calves to trail like a shadow at her heels.

The steps were shallow and broad, the stair itself describing a gentle, curving slope, designed for the small wagons used to transport corpses up and down. As she went, she passed a fellow neophyte on their way out: they nodded solemnly to each other, no other greeting necessary. It was in her nature to say a cheery ‘morning!’, she thought, but those instincts had long since atrophied. Now it was just an observation:

That’s how the old Jaid would’ve acted.

Whether it was the loss of her brother – the loss of both her brothers, really – or her tutelage under Brother Porsico, she was uncertain. She liked to think it was the latter, that it was her choices, not the things that had been done to her, that really mattered. But her initiation into the lay clergy of Mortiforn might’ve just been a symptom, rather than the cause of this new Jaid. She knew herself well-enough to recognise this. She knew it had all been taken; she’d given nothing, none of it willingly. Her life was in tatters and she’d not made a single sacrifice.

She rounded the bend, coming to the room they called the Chalice: square pillars were spaced at regular intervals, and the chamber itself was a perfect square, perhaps a hundred feet on a side with ten feet of room over her head. On her way to the centre, the ancient Sister at the undertakers’ desk shot her a smile, causing her to almost smile back: sometimes she wondered whether the crone was testing her or if the Sister felt some genuine affection for her. Jaid sensed a blush slowly spreading across her cheeks and turned her head back, locking her gaze upon her destination and snatching up an initiate’s robe from the table as she passed.

The chamber had many exits – tunnels of brick, or bored into layers of rock, leading to the various halls of inspection and internment. However, her shift wasn’t due to start for almost an hour yet, and before she headed off to perform her duties she had a more important rite to perform. She ignored the passageways, crossing implacably between the pillars as she pulled the brown woollen robe over her head.

The Chalice’s namesake was another perfect square in the middle of the room, a shallow pool perhaps fifteen feet on a side, appearing to be filled with water – but the nostrils alone gave the lie to that assessment, even before the eyes and ears picked out what the three other neophytes about its edge were doing.

She found a free spot, smoothed out her robe and sank down to her knees, putting her chin over the cold rim of the low stone wall. Then, at last, she raised her eyes to the statue in the very heart of the pool.

A man of melting, raw grey flesh, said to be rendered, renewed and remade eternally, all from the salt of their tears.

My tears.

“Illodin is the tension before the tears fall, and each tear shed cuts him, brings him closer to death. Mortiforn is the good to be found in death. Mortiforn is the realisation leading to release. Mortiforn is the way to Yune.”

I always thought we’d be inseparable. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The fat man opposite her had the edge of the wall biting into his throat as he wept soundlessly. The woman to her left was talking quietly about her mother, the one-legged boy to her right about his injury. She tuned them out, guiding her consciousness in a singular direction.

“I keep asking myself.” She bit her teeth together, grinding them for a moment before recovering the force of will to prise them apart, hurl the words from her tongue. “How can I be strong enough to… To take this. But I know. I know. We are not strong! I can’t be strong enough to take it! That’s why I put myself through it, over and over, lying there in bed, lying in it, in the agony… Why do I do it? Do I love the agony?

“I think we put ourselves through pain because we’re weak. We’re weak, all of us. Kas was weak. Jar is weak. I liked to think Kas was strong, liked to think he’d always be there to look after us. I like to think I’m strong. We only… pretend we’ve got strength. So that others won’t see us. True strength… I thought I’d seen it, but… does it exist? I’ve started to think, maybe Xan’s the strongest person I’ve ever met! But to give up… Give up what you want. Not for other people to see, though. Not even… Not for the gods. Just… Just for me.”

Her tears joined the pool’s. She moved the slowest, bitterest droplets with her fingertips, one by one as she’d been taught, taking them from her cheeks to the rippling surface and tapping them free.

“I give up my desire to be strong. To matter. I…

“I am thy sacrifice, my Lord Suffering.”

“You display remarkable improvement,” Brother Porsico murmured from behind her.

The sound of his voice held the same bittersweet tinge as the air they breathed, and she was the only one of the neophytes to turn their head, looking up to meet his gaze.

“Come with me, child.”

“Mortiforn wills it,” she murmured.

She got to her feet, shook off the last of her tears, and strode after the minister. He wasn’t walking at a brisk pace but he had long legs and she didn’t want to fall behind. They departed the Chalice, entering one of the brick-built corridors, insufficient torchlight throwing them into darkness for four out of every ten steps.

“Your brother?” Porsico asked conversationally over his shoulder.

“The same,” she managed to reply, trying not to pant. “Worse…”

“It is not for you to bear those burdens named to him, nor contest the trials he has ahead of him. Let him be.”

“But isn’t my brother my burden?”

Don’t I have to do my best to carry him, when he’s fallen?

“There is the adage, of Lord Ymer upon the sand, ere the Age of Nightmares fell. You have heard the name, Prince Rivorn?”

She shook her head.

“It is a tale of fairies,” he said somewhat apologetically, “yet there is a kernel of truth buried within the parable, I believe. So it is said that before he was made King of Adorathan, Rivorn, son of Starren, was apprenticed to the one the gods themselves learned from. Ymer, as was, pupil and master of the Tower of the Evening Star, arch-foe of Lithiguil. Together Ymer and Rivorn walked many worlds and times; the Lord put the prince through innumerable trials, hurled him alone into battles the likes of which cannot be imagined. The boy was bit, and burned, cut and choked, withered in body and wounded in mind. And then at last Ymer found him and freed him from his bonds, and took him to the shores of Hell, where an endless, bottomless ocean of blood seethed, wracked with red storms. They stood upon the crimson-drenched sands, and watched the sea’s violence as it broke upon the black rocks.”

Jaid felt herself shuddering. Brother Porsico’s voice continued in the same, almost amused tone, but even if the battles were unimaginable, she still found herself able to imagine this: the boy and the old man, tiny and frail against the monstrousness of that infernal landscape.

She thought again of Kas – of Feychilde.

“The boy pointed to the two tracks of their footsteps, and traced the line back, where a single set of imprints shadowed the sand. ‘That is where you abandoned me, left me to face the darkness alone!’ he accused.”

“I know this one!” she burst out, almost daring to grin. “This is from the Joran stories – Joran says, “No. That’s where I carried’ –”

Porisco halted and turned on his heel, raising a hand to stop her. She almost stumbled as she froze on the spot.

They were in the shadows between the guttering torches, and the minister of Mortiforn whispered.

“Yet Ymer only replied: ‘Yes. That is where I left you, to face the darkness alone.'”

She didn’t know how to reply, and Brother Porsico turned about smartly and continued on his way, forcing her to gather her feet as well as her wits as she struggled to resume her place just behind him.

She pondered the meaning of the story.

“Ymer sounds cruel.”

“There is the question as to whether Ymer meant he left Rivorn in relative safety, to face alone yet greater darknesses.” They descended another curving stair, and she saw from behind as Porsico affected a slight shrug. “This is, to me, quite obvious, and quite apart from the true meaning. The lesson we are to learn, I think, is that we require abandonment in order to grow. If you seek to carry a burden that has its own legs, trust that it was not made for one to bear. Set it down before it grows too heavy, before it bends your back – before you too must become a burden. Only thus may it learn to bear its own weight. The followers of Belestae would cast aspersions at me for this, but I do not believe you can gain without sacrifice. I do not believe in luck.”

“Kas gained,” she blurted, already knowing what he would say.

“And who has not paid a sacrifice for his gains? Him? You? Your twin? Even your parents… if you see time as the gods see it.”

The priest swung open a door, and the sweet aroma of decay struck her, making her eyes sting and skin crawl for a moment as it always did.

She steeled herself, of course. She only almost vomited that very first time, and she’d swallowed it right back down without causing a fuss. She was a Sticktown girl – she was born to handle strong smells.

He stepped aside, and she scanned the room quickly. It was one of the big halls designed for use following Infernal Incursions, hundreds of stone-topped tables spreading out imperceptibly into inky darkness.

Only a few of the nearest tables were occupied, three ripe cadavers lying motionless under candlelight.

She stepped after the priest into the midst of the corpses. A handsome man and a pretty woman, still youthful-looking even in death. Their complexions were chestnut-brown and the third could only be their child, a girl perhaps half Jaid’s age.

All of them cold.

“But… why are they here?” She stifled her own voice, barely breathing the words.

Why am I on my own this time? she longed to ask, but dared not.

“They may be contagious.”

She met Brother Porsico’s gaze as he swept out of the room and put his fingers on the door-handle.

“The will of Mortiforn protects you, Daughter. And if not – you only go to his arms, which await you all the same.

“Sacrifice.”

He closed the door behind him, leaving her alone in the vast blackness against which the candle-flames themselves seemed to shiver.

She looked down at her work. She would need to fetch cloth from the shelves, draw water from the rainwater cistern. Basic stuff.

Sacrifice.

And so she surrendered to her task, and found her own power by giving in.

I am thy sacrifice, my Lord Suffering.

* * *

The moment he heard the dreadful voice, seeming to bubble up from the very planks beneath his feet – Jaroan dropped from the balcony-rail and twisted away to run, reaching out a hand to grip Yordi by the collar.

Between one instant and the next, everything had changed. The wooden beams were teeming with life – or with death. The hundreds of rats pouring up the balcony’s supports weren’t coming to say hello. They were coming to feast. And at the same instant, the air itself thickened with a dark swirl of insects – thousands, tens of thousands of them, coming to devour him –

Feychilde – Kas – please –

He hadn’t managed more than a single step when the swarms passed over him, tickling him, not a bite or sting landing on his exposed skin.

He wanted to look back over his shoulder after them, wanted to see what they did to Ti; he could already hear the older boy’s gasps but something inside Jaroan wanted to behold the look on his face as his gasps became screams, as the reality of dark magic overtook his petty little world of knives and intoxication –

Maybe then he’ll know one fragment, one tiny fragment of what it’s like, being me –

But the opportunity never came.

Blackness, more complete than anything he’d ever before experienced, took him up and swaddled him.

Even if the darkness was strange to him, he’d experienced this kind of exhilarating motion before – he was even vaguely conscious of those moments beyond his control when his feet connected with surfaces beneath him, conscious of the way one foot fell in mud, the other on cobbles, the next on wooden planks –

The blackness over his eyes: textured, soft. A fold of a robe or sleeve…

The hardness of fingers, clutching him – they moved about his body with such speed, shifting his weight between handholds, that he could perceive only the roughness of her grip, never where exactly she gripped him.

Her scent. Perspiration. Vaguely nice.

The first few moments of his rescue had passed, and Jaroan’s mind quickly summed the various sensations into the answer:

An arch-diviner is saving me, taking me home.

Killstop?

It didn’t matter who it was. Even if it was the renegade, risking the Magisterium’s wrath to come back to Sticktown and shield him from a dark druid’s malice, he didn’t want to go back. Didn’t want to have his choices made for him.

Instincts cried out in revolt, but he tried to twist away from her, lifting his arms and bucking. He tried his utmost to throw himself out of the spell.

It was no good. He would’ve spun away from her but she had anticipated the motion, whirling with him. The fabric covering his eyes never budged a finger’s-width.

Momentum increased. Consciousness fell away. His feet no longer impacted the ground. He was being dragged, swept along on a tide of time.

Then he found himself, seated at his ease upon the frost-coated trunk of a fallen tree. The air smelt the cleanest he could remember, the breeze fresh and free. Beams of starlight fell between the branches, illuminating the glade, and he swiftly cast about.

Aside from the black-clad archmage sitting cross-legged on the grass, the bow slung across her lap and the quiver of arrows propped up beside her, the clearing was empty. A single owl was perched upon a branch, but there were no eyes were shining in the eaves or undergrowth, no shapes prowling amongst the thorns.

That hardly made him feel safer. He almost would’ve welcomed witnesses.

She didn’t save any of the others. Maybe the owl is the dark druid…

“No. We are alone, Jaroan Mortenn. Do not be dismayed. I merely wished to speak with you. You’ve been doing the gods’ work, Jaroan.”

The voice was level, though far more formal than he’d expected.

“The… g-gods?”

“Not the ones of whom you’re thinking. The ones of whom you thought. Yane –”

Just hearing the hated syllable spoken aloud brought him twisting up to his feet.

Not Killstop.

“Sit down, boy.” The black-clad figure raised a hand, waved it dismissively in the starlight, and he gingerly sank down, putting his rear-end back on the frost. “I have no interest in ending your life; this much should already be apparent. Glimmer’s gone mad, and won’t obey orders. I’m finally getting somewhere with her, but I have to protect my interests as well, you understand? I do intend to return you to Mund, into the loving arms of your sisters. I would just… speak awhile first.”

Sisters?

But the other question overrode his curiosity.

“Return me…” He cast about again, seeing with new eyes. “We aren’t in… in Treetown?”

“We are some miles from the city. Almost two hundred, in fact. The nearest settlement is approximately one day’s hard march,” she turned a little and pointed over her shoulder, “that way.”

The feeling of isolation came crushing down on him then. He wasn’t just alone, he was gone – at a darkmage’s mercy, and –

“Don’t say it aloud,” she murmured. “It won’t help. He’s gone. He can’t save you. Only I can do that. And you won’t even know what I mean, until it’s too late.”

She sighed, and reached up to her face with both hands; within a few moments she had released her black mask and hood, and was pressing her fingers into her temples.

Jaroan kept silent, smiling, suddenly flooded with relief.

She might’ve been pretending to be someone else – putting on a harsh voice, cursing like a darkmage – and maybe the events of the last month or so had really changed her. By the starlight, sections of it looked to have been dyed white right from the roots, gleaming like pearl. Maybe she really was different.

But it was still her. He was still safe, with her.

He watched without comment as she drew her fingers through her tangled curls, then tucked the sweat-damp hair, brown and white alike, back into her hood.

She replaced the mask, put her hands on her knees, and returned her focus to him.

“What do you want, Jar? Most of all?”

She’d dropped the pretence. She was a Sticktowner again, just like him – and he’d never heard her sound so dejected.

“Want?”

He stared at her.

“Would you go back? If you could, I mean. Would you go back, do it all differently?”

She’s asking for herself, he realised. She’s… she’s alone too.

But the arch-diviner would never know he understood this; there was no way he was going to say something like that aloud.

He shook his head slowly.

“It’s like that story – Chraunator’s pocket-watch,” he mumbled into the silence. “You do it again, only it’s worse – so you try again, and again –”

“Until the world is broken, and Chraunator offers you a chance to return to the initial timeline…”

“Exactly! Only this time, you realise this is…”

The silence crept back in. After a few seconds, the owl in the tree hooted softly and spread its wings, coursing off through the branches.

Nothingness swallowed it.

“You realise it is…?” Killstop prompted him.

He stared after the owl.

“How things are meant to be.”

“You don’t envy the bird its freedom?”

He blinked. “Sometimes… Yes. Of course.”

“And what would you do, with such freedom?”

She didn’t give him time to answer.

“They will never give it to you. You’ll sit in the drop, twiddling your thumbs till you die. You have to take it. That’s what I’ve learned. You can’t trust them. Can’t trust your powers. They’ll just take those too, leave you for dead. You can’t be granted freedom, only imprisonment.”

“You…” He didn’t know what to say, but his hidden desires spoke through him. “You regret it? Turning into an archmage?”

She shook her head softly, staring now at the ground. “I can’t regret it. I’d be – I’d be dead. But it broke me the same way it broke him. Almost all of us – why do you think the Thirteen Candles even exists? And now – now I can’t show my face. They’ll never respect me, never talk to me. I’ll never be me again. Can’t let anyone know I’m… I can’t… They’ll kill me!”

Suddenly she was sitting the other way, and he was staring at the back of her hood as she hunched over her knees, shoulders shaking with silent tears.

He slowly slid off the tree-trunk, heading towards her.

“Killstop –“

The warm folds of blackness returned, and with it his fear. This time his consciousness had only one object: she filled him with her voice, and he shrank into himself. He no longer felt safe. He knew what he should’ve known all along.

She never lifted a finger to save Ti from his doom.

“They killed Killstop. She was never real. They killed her, and they’ll die in turn. I am Nightfell. I’m what’s left. A harbinger of fate. The future they earned. I’ll show them.

“I’ll show them all.”

* * *

“Do you believe the blind man when he tells you there is no such thing as light? Do you see my problem now? How can I describe the Light to you? Of course you will deny it. It sounds like something super-natural…”

She put down the book when she heard the door, stashing it under the covers, and waited patiently for her brother to enter.

“Welcome home, Jar.”

Jaid managed to say it without animosity.

No love, either. But how could she love him? She couldn’t even love herself.

He didn’t reply, and closed the door behind himself with uncharacteristic gentleness. Jaid pursed her lips, scrutinising him. She only had a handful of candles lit, and his face was swathed in shadow.

“What is it? What happened this time?”

He sat down on his bed and pulled off his boots and socks, his face carrying the shadow with it. His eyes burned like coals.

“Jar!” she hissed. “What is it?” She licked her lips. “What did you do?”

“Nothing!” he snarled back suddenly, thrusting out his chin and glaring at her. “Go to sleep, Jaid. Just go to sleep.”

He pulled off his outer clothing, yanked the blankets up over his head and rolled over to face the wall.

She sat there, staring at the back of his neck.

He’ll talk, in time.

When the candles sputtered, one by one flaring their last, she didn’t light new ones. She let the room’s illumination dwindle and die. Let the darkness drink it all in until only their breathing was left. She lay there hugging her pillow, waiting.

He still wasn’t asleep. He’d pretended to be, then had given up.

“What happened, Jaroan?”

He started sniffling. She couldn’t feel sorry for him.

Did he kill someone? Is that it, Jar?

She imagined it – going to the shrine tomorrow – cleaning the body – not knowing whether it was the marks of his knife on the cold, cold flesh…

“I thought I could take the power back!” he moaned at last, rising to a sitting position. “I thought I could have control. Of my life. Fate. Whatever you wanna call it. But I can’t! They’re always there!”

“’They’?”

“The mages! The magic! It’s everywhere here, it’s in everything!” His voice ended up hoarse, and he continued croaking: “The men with knives, they took Mum and Dad. The mages took Kas. I just, I had to… I had to be someone – I had to know what it was like –“

“I understand.”

She spoke quietly, not meaning to interrupt, but he silenced himself instantly.

He looked at her for a long time in the darkness.

“Thanks,” he said at last.

“Did you kill someone, Jar?”

“What? No!”

It was good enough for her. She could hear the sincerity in his voice, and she didn’t much care beyond that.

She couldn’t remember falling asleep, but when she woke up, Kas wouldn’t stop pestering her.

Consciousness came flaring back into life, a candle-flame reignited, time running in reverse like upward-falling rain.

She whirled up from the bed, staring at the intruder.

The plain, angular face, half in shadow. The haunted green eyes, the long knots of fair hair behind the ears. The scar, a little crescent-moon high on his cheek.

It was perfect in its mimicry.

A fresh candle had been lit, and the shape looked like him, like it could have been him – once. But there was meat on the intruder’s frame. This was no prison-starved skeleton of a man. No weakness in his the words he’d said, still echoing around in her brain.

“… rustle up a blackberry pastry… if Pinktongue’s not scoffed them all.”

It couldn’t be him.

Unless he found healing.

No. A demon with his voice, his face, his clothes?

Ah. A darkmage. A heretic, impersonating him?

She remembered well all the nuances of the illusionist stories she’d heard – such a thing was certainly possible. The heretic at whose mercy they’d been held, during the Incursion – could it be him?

She froze, wanting to scream.

“Shh!” he said in Kas’s voice.

There’s only one way to survive this, she realised. Make him think it’s worked.

She ran to him, put her arms around him.

If only I had the invisible dagger…

He felt different. It didn’t feel like her big brother, someone she’d hugged ten thousand times. She caught a better glance of his face once he released her, and he was just too healthy. Too alive.

It isn’t him. Somehow, the knowledge was reassuring. It isn’t him, and I’ll find a way to kill him.

But why? Why?

Then she realised that her hair and forehead were getting wet, and, simultaneously, that the intruder was weeping. His chest wasn’t heaving; he wasn’t even breathing heavily. And yet, the tears fell, trickling down his face and down her own.

She twisted, looking up into her brother’s eyes. Grief and self-loathing, yes, and the pain of recent hardships… but there was something else. An almost imperceptible light of pure, heavens-sent exultation.

The whole embrace was transformed – now she was the stranger. She was the interloper here, the heart of the mistrust she was feeling. It wasn’t Kas who’d changed – it was her.

She heard Jaroan’s sob from behind her and that did it.

She almost screamed, and buried her face in Kas’s chest to stifle the sound. He’d asked for quiet, probably needed it… and she would give it to him.

Joy, and sorrow.

Once more the kinship almost bound their minds, but it couldn’t happen then. Couldn’t bring them to the brink of enlightenment. Something was, once more, missing.

She was left to think the thought alone, squishing her face into his mud-caked robes:

Inseparable.

* * *

Only a void separated him from the ground, but he was used to it. Even Jaid was starting to enjoy it now, he suspected. Gazing down on the shadowy forests and ravines, picking out the sparkling lakes and rivers, pools of starlight in the dense darkness – the wind moving over him, through him, barely even cold. After so many hours, it still didn’t get boring.

This is how gods feel, he said to himself silently as they flew. I found the bird’s freedom, Killstop. Or it found me.

But Killstop no longer existed, and he suspected he alone knew the truth of it. He would try to tell Kas sometime, maybe, if it came up.

If he deserved it.

Still, freedom didn’t quite encapsulate what he felt. He’d never before really understood why Nentheleme was even a thing. Freedom itself was a bit of a wishy-washy concept. He hadn’t had a context into which he could place his own self. Now he was finding out how small he really was, in the grand scheme of things. It filled him with pleasure and chagrin in equal measure. There was so much out there, to see, to do. So many not even half-ideas, vague notions of what life must be like in the various places they’d passed through. Lives he could live, if he chose to.

Jaroan had been to visit the sea with Kas and Em. He’d flown, multiple times. But this was different… so different.

The outside world had always been neatly compartmentalised in his mind. There was Mund, which was quite clearly the centre of everything, the nexus point of all important events in the universe. Even the dragonslayers had been drawn here, and the prophecies of the ancient wyrms apparently centred on this place. The seaside, Salnifast – that was only part of the city. It was important because it was close to Mund.

Now he frantically found he had to edit those thoughts – the dragonslayers had been drawn there – Mund was a ‘there’, not a ‘here’. Already it had disappeared, far behind them. Days behind them. Even now, it was difficult to remember he wasn’t just off in another plane.

I’m that far gone, he thought guiltily. That far gone, visiting other dimensions seems easier than this…

What was it they called it?

Exile? Yeah… Exile.

He seized upon the negative word and all its connotations, wrapping himself in it until he was a victim. Yet his unconscious thought knew it not as exile but as escape. Deep down, Jaroan was having the time of his life, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to deny it to himself.

For all that they’d left Mund behind, he was once more infused with magic, once more under a sorcerer’s spell. He had none of the control, none of the power. The mingled jealousy and anger he felt towards his brother had returned in spades even as he had to thank him for the opportunity to get out of there. To seek the change he so desperately craved.

He felt safe, but he told himself he didn’t want to feel safe. Jaroan knew that he was loved, that he’d been forgiven for his misdeeds, but he didn’t deserve it, didn’t want it. What had he done to justify such love? He’d not been punished. He’d spat in love’s face, over and over, and it was easier to keep doing it than to turn and face his mistakes head-on. He’d become his fear, ran from his reflection.

And was it really forgiveness? He felt judged. Rightfully judged. He’d carried the knife, and he’d moved inkatra, moved inkatra money. Kas might’ve bought him an invisible blade, might’ve been a bit of a thief when he was about Jaroan’s age – but those weren’t excuses and Jar knew it. Kas knew it.

There was nothing quite like being rightfully judged to make you want to close down, be the victim of it. Lean into it.

It was strange and it was stupid, and, most importantly of all, it was fake – how long would it be until Kas left them again? It didn’t matter what his brother said; it was inevitable. It had happened before, and it would happen again.

He forgives me, because that’s the easy road. Not because he really does. He’s still waiting for me to change.

Jaroan looked across to his brother’s wraith-face, coursing just ahead as the sorcerer pulled the twins across the sky. He could see the clouds through the transparent shadow of Kas’s substance.

I’ll never change.

* * *

She stood at the rail, and the breeze took up her golden braid, throwing back her muddy cloak, choking the breath in her mouth. For a moment she felt fear, facing the ocean – then the breathlessness became exhilaration.

It hadn’t taken long for Jaid to feel the disconnect. For her it happened the moment they drew up the anchor and the frozen wind caught in the sail. Blackice-town was still within arm’s reach, but then the tug of the first wave had caught the boat in its grip. Suddenly the wharf had been slipping away from her.

Not just the wharf. The land. The continent. The whole Realm…

I’ve well and truly left Mund now, she thought from the heart of the sea, unable to breathe. Gone, never to return.

Finally, she relented, facing away and drawing deep lungfuls of air. Not for the first or thousandth time, she looked back towards the stern, where she’d last seen solid ground.

Open ocean. The undulating skin of Northril.

What would Brenwe Bathor do? she asked herself, as the cold ocean dragged her away from her whole world.

It made it easier to fictionalise her life. Think of herself like a character in one of her books, like one of the Five Founders.

But that was a daft question. Brenwe wouldn’t have needed a ship – she’d have taken passage on her own wings, or given herself the shape of a dolphin…

Which was itself completely beside the point. Brenwe wouldn’t have shied away from an adventure like this. The arch-druid would’ve leaned into it, unworried by futures that might or might not come to pass.

Why never to return? I could go back, some day. Go back, see them again…

Unless Kas keeps his promise. He could bring them to us.

The thought of having Xan and Xas and Orstrum back at her side filled her with warmth that the wind couldn’t claim. Yet now that she thought of it, she found she preferred it this way. She didn’t want to be their old Jaid. She didn’t want the warmth.

I miss you, she thought at them silently, willing the words to cross the distances between them. I’ll see you again soon.

Maybe.

Or maybe you’re my sacrifice.

The pain was lesser than it had been when Kas went to Zyger, but only by degrees. Only by degrees.

She looked over at her brothers: Jaroan was looking like he didn’t know what to do with himself while Kas spoke to the captain, fidgeting with his hand at his belt where he used to keep the invisible knife.

Please, don’t tell me he’s still got it.

No. She could tell from the way he placed his hand, there was no blade there getting in the way of his fingers. It was just habit. Something that would pass, in time.

She caught herself smiling, and slowly removed the expressiveness from her face. There was no one else to see it – she was just doing it out of habit, in case someone cared to look.

She knew she was looking the wrong way.

She moved her eyes back over to the elder brother.

I thought you were my sacrifice, Kas. I thought you were gone and I was ready to change. Now I can’t. I can’t ever change.

We’re inseparable.

The thought horrified her, but she confronted it as she’d been trained.

This is my…

My penance.

Yet the knowledge was just part of it. It was only as the thought passed away like smoke into nothing, only then that she really began to transform.

What I really want is to be left alone.

* * *

What am I?

* * *

While Feychilde – Raz – spoke to the king, Jaroan and his sister were relegated to the dungeons. As much as Jar wanted to see this as an insult, he had to admit that the caverns were the best bit of Telior he’d witnessed so far. This was no dungeon – it was a maze beyond comprehension. A dozen tunnels opened into darkness from the first vast space they entered – their guides picked one, seemingly at random, and within two minutes Jaroan had counted a dozen more openings. They took the eighth left, the third right, the fourth left… It went on and on. Some passageways were crawl-spaces, low ceilings or high floors forcing them all to climb, crouch, slip and slide.

Frost caked everything down here. Jaroan almost got lost at one point, becoming distracted by a spider’s web in a corner as the others moved on. It was frozen thick and solid, which had produced a most-pleasing array of geometric shapes, all enclosed within the translucent white cords. If it weren’t for the female guests of the prince stopping for him, he would’ve been left behind.

“This place… predates? Yes. Predates ze iron mines.” Prince Lathenskar’s Mundic was pretty flawless, Jar had to admit, as the noble-born natives led the twins deeper under the earth. “Nobody knows who or vot made these tunnels. It is said zey span miles, going beneath ze bay. Zere are sunken chambers of living crystal, lost to men’s eyes, vhich only vizardry can find. Dark spaces of salt vater zat sink upon ze tide to reveal grottos viz floors of gold.”

Jaid made no sound, but when Jar spared her a glance he caught her with her head turned and her eyes far off, lost in contemplation.

She was only four or five yards off, well-lit by the prince’s torch, yet he’d never quite felt so far from her.

“Ve haf not… not found any… qvite like zat,” one of the prince’s two male companions huffed in an apologetic tone. This was a rotund lad in cream-coloured furs, blighted with an angry boil on his nose; he was apparently thirteen years old, but he only came up to Jaroan’s chin. The exertions of the expedition were weighing on him, going off the boy’s breathing.

Jar mostly ignored him – all of them. He was doing his best to impress the three young ladies of the entourage, of course, and this necessitated keeping his awareness focussed on the precision of his body posture, the confidence of his facial expressions. The cold was fading the deeper they travelled, for whatever reason, and it was easier to look self-assured when your teeth weren’t trying their best to chatter.

He didn’t know the ways of love, nor did they interest him, and yet the prettiest of his doting audience could’ve been a dark-haired angel sent from Celestium. She barely spoke any Mundic, and her voice was a gargling sound that made him almost physically ill to listen to. The one with the best Mundic was as plain as they came, her face seeming almost too small for her head, floating there above her chins. And the third, the eldest at twelve, just smiled mysteriously at him, still silent – he had no idea what to make of her. She was almost his height; her brown hair was pulled back in a short ponytail leaving fringe-trails at either side of her face, framing the button nose and knowing eyes.

Each of them was dressed in what probably passed for finery in a place like this, but was Hilltown-fashionable at best in his opinion. Still, he was keeping his options open at this point. He wasn’t stupid, and while the jealousy experienced by grown-ups was quite beyond him, he understood the concept. He could be friends with all of them, couldn’t he? Just friends?

Another of the prince’s male friends, a twelve-year-old who would’ve been handsome if he could’ve stopped scowling, kept shooting Jaroan poisonous looks.

“Back in Mund,” he said for what had to be the tenth time, “our brother knew a wizard. Got to go in the sea, once.”

“Under ze vater?” the prince asked, turning his head back, his open curiosity disarming.

Jar remembered the sensation, the high-speed motion that excited his stomach and left him breathless despite the water-breathing spells. The loss of self in the languid darkness, not hot or cold or even warm or cool.

It was something he couldn’t put into words.

Gone.

Forever.

He just nodded curtly instead. He already hated the prince.

Perhaps it was better that he couldn’t voice his thoughts – his reticence seemed to be mistaken for nonchalance, and the pretty, jarring-voiced girl tried to coo in awe, producing a nasal bleat.

“Arhhh yesz, ze zea of Munt! Ze vater is varm as ze coltron?”

Cauldron, his mind filled in for him after a moment’s consternation.

“Ha,” he said in acknowledgement, hoping her question was rhetorical, doing his best to smile at her.

“That sounds splendid!” gushed the round one. “You must tell us more, Vintilar of Mund. Could you communicate with the fish? Oh!”

He found himself looking once more to the silent one, snatching a glimpse of her chewing on a bit of her fringe before she noticed his gaze.

Slowly, deliberately, the girl withdrew her hair from her mouth and tucked the strand neatly behind her ear.

She then did her best to smile at him.

Maybe it’s a good thing, he reminded himself, struggling to move his eyes once more to his sister and the prince at the fore of the group. If it makes Jaid – if it makes Shirya want to stay…

I want her approval, he realised. After what I did – after what I became – I want to stay. And I want her to want to stay too. If she doesn’t – if she doesn’t, I’ll go with her.

But the dream had come too late and too early, and there was still something lacking. Unbeknownst to him, his fate was behind and before him, towering above, not a wave but a glacier, creeping across the plane of his future. He would never taste the lips of the mysterious girl as he thought he would one day want to. He would never taste any lips, never want to know the ways of love for himself.

Never grow up.

Unbeknownst to him, despite his youth and the burden of his potential on the fabric of reality, he bore the high doom of the Mundian. There would be no escaping this, no bird flying free to save him, any of them, from destiny.

The burden of the Crucible approached, and death would only be as an unburdening, in the end.

The dark elves are trying to break me, he thinks, feeling the distant sensation as his bones are pulped, over and over. I’m broken already.

We’re all broken.

* * *

“Vhen I was told zat my bride vould be the sister of a sorcerer, I voz… abrupt with Father. I imagined…” Lathenskar put on a tight, winsome grin. “I imagined an ugly, dark thing.”

“And I’m not ugly and dark enough for you.”

His smile only broadened, and he gave her that look, that look she sometimes saw.

“You are very beautiful,” he replied quietly.

The response she’d given was something the old Jaid never would’ve come out and said like that. The old Jaid would’ve been overawed at having a prince at her elbow, having his attentions showered down upon her. But Shirya? Shirya had washed the bodies of the dead. Shirya was the self she’d made, only to have been denied, killed permanently, she’d thought, by Kas’s return from Zyger.

But he was a necromancer from the very start, and he’d brought Shirya back, named her, thrust her into being. Now, if she couldn’t be Jaid, she had to be the girl who risked death, the girl who stood in the valley of Mortiforn’s door and was unafraid.

She smiled at the prince, smiled just as winsomely as him, moulding her face like clay. She was capable of this and more. She could snigger and cry in alarm, she could wince and whoop and babble and frown. It wasn’t fun, playing at being Shirya in name only, like Jaid still existed. But it wasn’t un-fun, either. It was just… necessary.

Shirya didn’t care what the prince thought of her. Yes, he was rich and powerful, and would be handsome some day. But he was just a boy, still, and she just a girl. Talk of marriage? The Jaid who’d wanted to ride Princess would’ve leapt at the opportunity just because that was the done thing for her, but Shirya, whose interest in the unicorn extended now only to the manner of its obliteration – Shirya didn’t care one whit about husbands and weddings. She was the god’s. There was no escaping her destiny in immortal bondage to this young man, whatever a seer had told him. There had to be other sorcerers with sisters in Telior. There would be no becoming the princess, as much as it sounded like everything she’d said she’d ever dreamed of.

The hearths blazed, servants piling on the wood until the voices of the fires became a crackling choir. The table was long, awash in delicacies and scents, some repulsive, others virtually demanding that she try them. She ate neither. The conversation between guests often took the form of bastardised Mundic, perhaps out of sympathy for their foreign newcomers; or perhaps in an effort to impress the Mundians with their educations.

She noted the girls eyeing her and whispering, her would-be foes, those who should’ve been her enemies – if that had been what her story was about.

Shirya was not impressed. Shirya was not insulted. Shirya was not much of anything, anymore.

For a time, she’d moved as though she were a statue. The flesh dimpled under pressure but she didn’t feel it. The tongue moved in her mouth, jaw swinging on its hinges as it performed for the benefit of those around her. Eyes and ears drank in everything, filing away the useful and separating articles of interest from the dross – but there was no internal impression, nothing working in the statue’s brain. She wasn’t alive, not really. There were rare moments when she felt the light burst into being within her once more, when she saw, she heard, she tasted… But such a flight of fancy was doomed, shovelled straight from the womb of its birth into its grave. The statue did not think. It did not feel. It only played its part, unchanging.

Telior was too close to home. Jaid’s brothers seemed to believe that they had enacted some great act of contrition. Moving from the haven of death and debauchery that was Mund to Telior was hardly a formidable feat. Mund at its fairest was far fairer than Telior, and at its ugliest, far uglier. But that was no achievement. She supposed the same could be said of all places, when you saw them from the inside. Her home – she would always think of it that way – was the greatest place in Materium. Everything else rose and fell in the shadow of Mund. And this place was as filled with shadows as any other.

I’m homesick, Jaid knew – and for the millionth time Shirya let that thought melt, let the statue become stone once more. It was her part to suffer, suffer for what happened to Nighteye most of all, and the self-petrification was the best she could do.

It was the evening of a fancy dinner in the palace, the celebration of the Ocean’s Eve, and Raz brought his new girlfriend. Nafala appeared to be as uncomfortable as Shirya, but she wasn’t half as good at hiding it. The sorceress barely nibbled her food, and, despite this being a gathering of her fellow countrymen, she kept looking at Raz for reassurance.

She’s adrift here, Shirya realised. They may be her countrymen but this is to her what dining in the Arrealbord would’ve been to Jaid. It’s… daunting to her.

How curious.

They didn’t get chance to talk, thanks to the prince and his friends. Instead, Shirya was forced to settle for throwing her some serene smiles of encouragement across the table. It was only what she was supposed to do. It gave her ample opportunity to study Raz’s latest trophy.

The woman – quite obviously no longer a girl, in spite of her height – was an open book. Nafala wore every emotion she felt on her face – either that, or she was a skilled actress, feigning vulnerability for some reason.

Why did she come in the first place? Shirya wondered. Is it just for him?

Nafala did seem infatuated with Jaid’s brother. She held his wrist from time to time, between mouthfuls, and he would pat the back of her hand with his free one until, a few moments later, she would release him and return her halting fingers to her cutlery. Her gaze when she looked at the archmage was that of a supplicant, like she was begging for him to excuse them.

She glanced at her twin. It was interesting. Jaroan had never liked Emrelet, not really, but he seemed to approve of Raz’s new partner. Perhaps it was just that they’d entered into a new world.

A world filled with Telese.

One where Shirya felt increasingly alone.

Telior itself was appealing to her, with its wanton wildness, the crash of storms out beyond the bay in whose tumultuous winds she would stand, hair streaming, void-lunged. She’d made her decision in the bowels of the palace: she would stay, for Jaroan and for Raz; she would pay the toll.

But Telior’s appeal was that of the grave. It felt like home, but it was still wrong.

Here I will live, and cease to live, and seek your embrace, my Lord.

She knew all the words, the catechisms to dispel her foul temper. She knew them, and that only made it worse. Her emotions only had the substance of an illusion. It was conscious belief that gave them a support structure and yet she believed. She believed in her frustration. She believed in her loneliness. She believed her life was already over.

“Vhen summer comes, zis squid vill no longer be in our vater,” the prince was saying to her – or perhaps across her. It was hard to tell sometimes, especially when she was only listening with ten percent of her brain. “You should make ze most out of it vhile ve have it!”

He forked a pile of gelatinous white tendrils and sucked them into his mouth with relish, like they were soft candies.

She forked her own mouthful, chewed –

Put down the nausea, swallowed –

Smiled, and asked some banal question about where the squid went in summer.

Lathenskar beamed, and continued to splurge his knowledge and opinions across the table, as, she supposed, princes were wont to do. Meanwhile, she returned to her thoughts.

We were never meant to be here. We were never meant to be these people.

The sensation is akin to weightlessness, so great is the agony. She floats, close-enough to annihilation that spirit is separating from flesh. Everything inside is ground paste and jelly and the fear, the fear is something she can’t comprehend.

She retreats. She hears the reflected echo and replies.

Yes, broken. Never to be made whole again. That is life.

* * *

“It doesn’t make sense!” Jaroan snapped, throwing the book on the floor.

Over four hundred symbolic templates for the binding of magic into an item. Thousands of different ways to summon an eldritch. So many geometries for force-lines that he wouldn’t expect even a mathematician to be capable of assigning the number. Yet each dropping one had a spell, a verse or two of ridiculous Netheric or Etheric or Infernal. Sometimes the reagent-list was the only difference between two spells and yet the rarer ingredients didn’t always produce more powerful creatures. Sometimes spells invoked gods, but it clearly wasn’t a requirement; they seemed to be mentioned more as an afterthought, and even then only one in ten incantations bothered.

There was no rhythm. No underlying order beneath the tangled chaos. No key to hold in the mind, unlock all the mysteries.

It all had to be learned, by rote. The shortcuts his fledgling genius wanted to seize upon simply weren’t there. At least not to his eyes. And the last thing he wanted to do was to ask for help. The Lord Warlock of Telior himself was asleep upstairs – or, more likely, off kissing his girlfriend… But he was hardly going to impress Raz with his sorcery when it was Raz himself who supplied the answers…

“It’s okay, Vin,” Jaid called softly from her room. She sounded as though she were asleep, or half-asleep at least.

Distracted.

“I’ve told you not to call me that, not when it’s just the two of us!”

Jar pushed down hard on the overly-comfy pillows behind him, propping him up on the low, wide bed he called his own. He swung over his legs, bent his knees, and hoisted himself up to his feet. Kicking on his ‘slippers’, a few steps brought him to the door, the corner of the frame where he could look in at his sister.

She wasn’t reading. Her candles and lanterns, braziers and globes – nothing was lit. Her eyes were open, unblinking, shining in the darkness. She’d wrapped herself tight in her quilt like a corpse in its death-shroud, the bed-sheets on either side of her smoothed perfectly flat.

“What’s wrong with you?” he asked. He tried to be as gentle as he could, but he could hear the sharpness of his own concern there in his voice.

“Wrong with me? Nothing. I’m just… trying to go to sleep.”

He assessed her. She’d seemed increasingly removed from things, recently – removed from him. She laughed and smiled just as often, but over the last few weeks there’d been an ever-growing mania behind her eyes.

Does she not want to marry the prince? he wondered for the first time.

Then, on the heels of that: How come I never asked her?

The answer to that was obvious. They no longer slept in the same room. The late-night incidental conversations had been reduced to minimal interactions, like this one right now. Jaid had her princely consort; Jaroan had his princesses always trying to get in his face while he did his best to study. At meal-times and in the classroom – the only times they really saw their elder brother – there were always piles of lore-filled scrolls and instructional books between them, many of them open, being actively interrogated as the mouth mindlessly chewed. The only conversations taking place around the dinner-table were happening inside brains where the self took both sides in the discourse, a consciousness-stream of high-concept terms and deceptively-plain language, sometimes not even occurring in mortal tongues…

Increasingly, Jaid no longer read while they ate. Often, she was just eating in silence.

A thousand memories rushed through him then. He remembered the fortify set Kas insisted they play, gathering dust on the shelf in the fifth floor’s communal area. The thing wasn’t a knock-off; it was a true diamond-inlaid import from Mund and had probably cost the warlock a year’s rent at Mud Lane rates.

I could talk to her… couldn’t I?

He spoke haltingly.

“Hey. Do you want – do you think a game of fortify would help?”

“Fortify.” She echoed the word without inflection.

“Come on… I practised my Sow Matriarch game…” That’s so long ago, now. “Jaid? You remember fortify, right?”

“Forti…fy. Yes. Let’s have a game, Vin.”

She wasn’t moving, still talking in the same trance-voice.

“Jaid!” he snapped, feeling scared as much as irritated by her continued use of the fake name.

She didn’t react at all.

“Jaid?”

He exhaled. Drew a deep breath. Exhaled again.

“Shirya?”

“Sorry!” Jaid finally sprang into action, jerking upright, fixing the wide staring eyes on him. “Sorry, I’m ready!”

He went down ahead of her to turn on the lights and flameless heater, set up the board. Nestled snugly in his bed-robe of thick greyish wool, he slumped down in the armchair, gazing over the Northern and Southern Holds he was honour-bound to protect. He structured his battle-plans, getting the strategy out of the way so that he’d be able to use his quick-wittedness on the conversation.

He knew the vague form of attack he wanted to use. Start by discussing the illogic of sorcery. Move into asking her about her own studies. Ask about the prince. Her mood.

Apologise, if he could. Her own repeated apologies when he broke her out of her reverie – they wounded him. It was his apology that was needed. It was his fault. If he’d stayed stronger when Feychilde went to Zyger – if he’d just stayed, in general.

But no. He too had abandoned her. Feychilde’s return tore her away from their adopted family.

Maybe – when Xan gets here. Maybe everything will be okay again…

But he knew it was futile. He knew Xan wasn’t going to work some miracle. What had already happened couldn’t be undone, not without Chraunator’s pocket-watch. There was no going back.

The first time the floorboards squeaked, he turned his head expectantly towards the staircase.

The second time they squeaked he knew better than to get his hopes up. It was just the tower creaking.

The third time, he was asleep, and when he awoke to the dull dawn-light behind the curtains it only reflected the dullness of his thoughts.

Rejection.

Inside, she retreats, and retreats, until she backs into him.

No. Being broken, unfixable – that’s death! he insists. It’s death, and you know it! Mortiforn!

Yes. Mortiforn. Just… not for us.

He thinks he is dying, and then realises he knows the truth already. The tuning rod is just a simple implement.

The truth exists in the minds of the dark elves in the room with him and his sister. A few of them – not the ones holding the long metal sticks – actually understand something of the tools’ ensorcellments.

He understands the ensorcellments. The truth exists in his mind.

And – and in her –

Our mind, Jaid Mortenn corrects.

Our mind, Jaroan Mortenn accepts.

It’s our time now.

* * *

The alarm was being sounded, a shrill clanging that brought her awake as readily as any Mourning Bells in Mund. In the darkness of her room in Telior, Shirya suddenly found herself floundering, and it was Jaid, Jaid that came through, leading her blindly from the bed and into her brother’s room.

“Vin!” she cried, finding him already putting his boots on. “Vin, what is it?”

“Get dressed!” he snapped – then, seeming to catch himself, he reached out and hugged her briefly.

The spontaneity of the physical contact – it struck her like lightning. The closest she’d been to another human being in weeks was when the prince took her by the elbow.

Tears practically leapt down her face. She stood perfectly still as he slowly released her.

“Please, Jaid, get your things on!” he pleaded.

His eyes – his – he still –

Cared – care. Yes, of course I care about you!

You’re sorry.

… Yes.

It wasn’t a question.

You feel it?

I know.

The statue-self went, and she shuddered back to life right there in front of him.

“Please?”

“I’m g-going. I’m going… Jaroan.”

He smiled at her, and it was a blow from a blade of confusion that pierced her at the temple, overwhelming her with its agonising bluntness.

Why is he smiling at me?

It’s not always an easy thing to tell, is it, sister?

No, and it was something so simple, to lead you astray. They were smiling in sadness – sympathy.

You know I know that now! But then…

It let you smile with the –

Yes. With the knife in my hand. I wanted –

To kill.

We aren’t going to kill the dark elves. I can’t kill.

You know I know that. I can’t either.

But Kas will.

They didn’t even think to look through a window, and didn’t see the ominous hulks anchored in Telior’s waters until they were already outside the tower, clutching their warmest clothing tight about them, standing together in the predawn breeze. Their brother was already gone. The night-shift workers were running amok – old Menild went shrieking off towards his family home, cursing in Telese, using a variety of words they didn’t yet understand. The streets were emptying, but, casting about, she saw pale faces at many windows. All eyes were staring at the purple-pulsing shapes of the dark elf vessels. All recognised the imminent danger.

She counted the glowing harbingers of destruction.

Eight of them. Eight ships.

“It’s an Incursion,” she muttered.

“It might as well be.”

“Ka… Raz will fight them.”

Her twin cast her a strange look, then swivelled to face the palace.

“Should we go find out what’s happening?”

He set off, but she returned her gaze to the elven armada. Within a few moments he returned to her side, sharing the moment with her.

The wind. The chimes.

The darkness. The canopy of stars.

The overbearing sense of impending doom.

She was afraid, and yet somehow she wasn’t.

“Do you think he’s out there, already?”

Jaroan drew a deep breath then sighed. “You’re jealous, too.”

The dark elf vessels lost her attention. She returned her focus to Jaroan.

“Jealous?”

He nodded glumly. “Isn’t that what this has been about, all along?”

“That might be how it started,” she admitted. “But – the night of the Incursion. The way everything changed –“

“It was scary –“

“It was dropping terrifying, Jar!”

“It was scary,” he repeated, “but we didn’t want to run, did we? Remember – when he was fighting the Bone Ring. It was Kas that scared us, not some necromancers, and I thought it was pretty exciting –“

“He left us,” she said icily.

“Em took him from us,” he retorted.

“No – he shouldn’t have – he shouldn’t have gone.” Tears stood in the corners of her eyes now, and when a burst of breeze next came pushing at her face they were send streaming down her cheeks, freezing as they went. “He stopped – stopped being our brother, and I thought – he was our protector –“

“But it’s not the same,” Jaroan finished for her in a grim voice. “It’s never been the same, and it’s never been right.”

She shook her head. “When he didn’t come back – when he wasn’t there for us… I felt like the world ended.”

“Is Telior any better?”

She looked back at him, completely nonplussed by the question.

“Telior…”

She slowly turned, taking in the city she had come to recognise, seeing it anew, as if for the first time.

The last time. It’s gone, Jaid. Telior’s gone. That’s what that sound is. That’s what was deafening Kas. We’ve got to snap out of it. Whatever they did to us, our minds, it’s done.

No, she replies. Not yet. Soon. It’s… it’s not complete yet.

Our story?

Our power.

Telior hadn’t improved anything, but she couldn’t pretend that Shirya only came into being after they crossed Northril. No, Shirya was born under the guidance of Brother Porsico, right there in Sticktown, under the nose of her brother, Xan, everyone. No one had seen what was happening to her. And here, across the sea, things had been no different. She had languished. She’d been allowed to become a non-entity, doing nothing more or less than what was expected of her.

I might as well have been dead. I was supposed to learn my worth in helping others. I learned I could risk my life to help others, yes. But I drew the wrong conclusions.

He had no place taking you into Mortiforn’s service, that priest. That wasn’t what you needed. You’re not worthless, Jaid. Your life has meaning.

It does now!

That’s not what I meant and you know it. You can’t just take your purpose from a god. What’s to make you choose Mortiforn and not Vaahn?

That’s meaningless! The world’s too big. There’s nothing!

Meanings don’t have to be big. They can just be –

Putting your hand on your belt, to remind yourself that you threw it away. It’s not under someone else’s ownership. It’s really gone. You really are the stronger person.

I wish to be.

Like Shirya?

Have you really thrown her away?

“No,” she answered heavily. “Telior’s no better. I –“

“We’ll tell him. We’ll be honest. We… We’re unimportant.”

Jaid was scared to do it, but instinct compelled her – she put her arms around her twin, clung to him.

He put his around her.

For the first time in half a year, they were themselves again.

Halfway across the courtyard, one of the brusque nobles stopped them.

“You!” he cried, pointing at them. “You! You must come! Come!”

Do you think he knew?

Yes. Of course.

Of course.

The courtier practically galloped them up the steps, guiding them wordlessly to Prince Lathenskar in an antechamber.

The room was lit only by a smattering of candles, but to Jaid the prince looked like he’d just finished crying. His cheeks were puffy, his eyes red – but he wore his usual smile, slowing and stopping his pacing as they entered.

“My friends – my good friends…” He squinted at them, as though the sight of them was a painful ordeal. “We must go to ze safe places now. You vill follow me?”

“Where’s Raz?” Jar demanded. “Is he… Will he fight them?”

Lathenskar lifted his head strangely, as if to look into the corner of the room behind them.

Jaid turned, followed his gaze – the corner was empty, a nest of shadows.

“I do not know,” Lathenskar admitted glumly. “I… know only vhere ve must go.”

Seeming to take their failure to produce further questions as acceptance, the prince gestured to the guard at the door – soon they were being escorted back into the maze of tunnels.

As they followed their past selves into the confusing network of dark twists and turns, the twins finally explored the dungeons of Telior together, hand in hand, mind in mind.

“Father will be pleased with me. I have done all they asked of me. I have brought honour to our kingdom. I have played my part, as prince, to defend the people from the evil. The warlock brought down the death upon his own head, upon those of his brother and sister. It’s not my fault. Father knows. He will be satisfied I’ve done it. Telior will remain. We shall be strong. Thanks to me. Thanks to this. This… sacrifice.”

There we go. He could see the dark elf in the room with us all along, and he knew what was going to happen.

What? Jaid? How can we hear what he thought? We aren’t there with him. I mean – we couldn’t hear it when we were there…

He remembers an approximation, obviously. And he’s still alive.

We can hear his thoughts – from Telior?

We can hear his thoughts from Telior. We can hear them all now, Jar.

Hear…?

The voices are self-translating, thousands of consciousness-streams opening to their fragile inner ears. In addition to the human-thought, their burgeoning powers are assaulted by frigid blasts of elf-thought, steeped in an ancient culture of degradation and necromancy.

One thousand, eight hundred and four of them.

Yet base potency provides a level of defence beyond requirements.

Instincts sift the worst thoughts, purging the obscene, rendering it all into information while isolating articles of interest for deeper scrutiny – pertinent facts are like words written in gold jumping off a page of blue ink.

The incoherence of the following events falls away – the little cove beneath the city where the dark elves await in the darkness – the face of the prince as he turns back with his escort – the twins’ contrite acceptance of their captors as the first enchantments settle upon them, spells commanding them to step out willingly onto the elf-wizard’s ice-floe – bidding them to be silent, and still, and afraid.

They had been brought back to themselves in what seemed to be seconds, sitting all of a sudden in metal chairs, still paralysed by magic, children beneath the need for bonds at wrist or ankle. Despite the fact there was no diviner’s speed-swoon, they knew instantly that they were now below decks. The luxuriously-appointed room could’ve been taken from the interior of a Treetown mansion had it not been swaying. Everything was black, to the point that they couldn’t make out the edges of the objects in the room.

Their minds were violated.

The tuning rods had been employed.

And it had begun.

They experienced agony – true agony – for the first time – the only time ever.

Then it was gone, as if it’d never happened. Stopping their bodies from reacting was a nuance temporarily beyond their grasp but even the first basic flexing of their wills as archmages released their sentience from the whims of broken bones. They’d never imagined sensation so complete, never anticipated the way their minds would retract, opening the flesh to pure unfiltered fire. Their coats of meat blackened and fell away, exposing – exposing –

The true self. The concealed insides.

The true world. The concealed outside.

We lost Mum and Dad. We lost our big brother. I thought I was going to lose you. I thought I had lost you.

I’m sorry. I forgive you.

After a few moments, sharing the bliss of unconditional reacceptance, one of them commented:

It’s unbelievable!

Not quite.

Colloquially. That day, when we went to the Giltergrove – what Kas said about enchanters…

You don’t think he had any idea, do you?

No. No way.

But he – he did have some idea. Look!

Oh yeah. There are… others.

The dream.

That was… a dragon… It wasn’t him. It didn’t happen – see, the Arrealbord… the dream…

I know, but… look at them! The ten of us!

He thought it would happen when Wyre took us, if it was going to.

It could’ve! It could’ve! But we – we had this between us.

But we’re still ourselves! I mean, we still have the same…

We want to be important. We want to be somebody.

Agency had been their craving. Its realisation was more than they could’ve ever expected.

Are we ready for this?

You mean, can we be trusted?

It’s…

Tempting?

To order the world to our liking? Of course!

But, the gods… Everything would fight us!

Oh, gods. What’ve they done to him…

Well, what has…

M-Mal Malas done to him…

Everything wants a piece of the sorcerer.

Vistas of imagination and dream, memory and nightmare, it all opened, unfurling, peeling back in innumerable layers – not the infinite mindscape of a single soul or even hundreds but thousands, tens of thousands…

The observing self, content for so long to exist as a solitary creature, was now embedded within an amalgamated consciousness, stretching out like a fresh shoot in exploration where before there had been only driftwood on the river’s water. Little did they doubt that to an ordinary arch-enchanter the process of awakening (thank you, Emrelet Reyd) would be a distracting, even uncomfortable experience. For this dual-moded creature, however, the replicative effect felt natural. To have one pair of eyes meant to have a singular focus, but the effect of having two pairs of eyes was not merely additive; no physical connection existed between their bodies. Their range was boundless. A million miles apart, planes between them, none of it mattered. There was an unending plenitude to see, smell, touch, taste, hear. Two pairs of eyes gave them infinite scope.

You were wrong! I didn’t – I never understood you. Never understood… love. I do now.

We never understood each other, Jaroan.

We’re twins. We’re supposed to understand each other!

Maybe that’s why we were chosen for this. Maybe this is what we needed.

It’s what we should’ve been.

Imseperble.

They shared their souls, and were like one.

It wasn’t a full subsumption of personae, but it took less than a moment for the symbiosis to form. Identity didn’t fracture, but along those borders where their minds met they melted into one another. The blend in those places was complete, two paints merged to form a new colour, strong and vibrant.

The stretched-out shoot found its Wellspring, and drank deep.

They accepted the souls of the others, and were many. Both partook in equal measure.

A goblet, bottomless and forever filled to the brim.

An elixir of wisdom, knowledge.

An elixir of prejudice. Attitude.

What – what is he doing?

It was hidden, but not from them. They saw it, through his eyes – the confrontation aboard the Scaleshaker – the destruction of the dark elves on the empty seas of Northril. They saw the ghosts he enveloped in waves of energy, their tall, iridescent shapes flickering, white and silver. Magenta rays inside the spirits’ throats poured like mage-light from their mouths, gushing between their pearly teeth – their magenta irises winked out, barely-discernible features wincing as Feychilde’s stronger, amethyst waves consumed them, whisking their wills away.

They cringed together, watching.

Yet they were not truly his eyes. The wraith. He’d relied upon it for his potency, and it’d undone him right at the centre of his being.

They saw through his eyes as he slipped back aboard the Scaleshaker, taking care to remain invisible to them until he was back under his covers.

No! – what is he doing right now?

They see through his eyes as Telior is brought to ruin in a matter of seconds, listen from inside his skull as that awful voice comes bubbling up within him.

We have to stop him! Change it! We can’t die!

We can’t! This is his memory!

What? No! Where’s the reality?

When? When is it now?

We’ve fallen prey to it too. They call it fatalism. Look what we did! We wouldn’t kill them, wouldn’t delete their minds, but we stopped them finding out…

What do you mean? What did we do? Oh…

Their minds were pulled in. They were…

Slaughtered.

Like animals.

They lived it, and shivered, moaning.

Every horrified last gasp.

Every cold final touch.

It’s worse than fatalism! It’s… nihilism. It’s in both of us.

Oh gods, yes… in almost everyone.

But this isn’t what Kas wanted, not really! Look! He’s good!

No – it is! Look again! Deep down here. Illodin’s tears…

Oh! Princess!

I know. I know…

What… what is that?

The part of him the wraith changed. That’s what he’d call it. But it’s not just that, is it? He’s like us.

Wall it off! Dam it and damn it!

Keep it walled off. His darkness with our own.

Yes!

The impetus was enough. The vague direction of their conjoined thought was like a river-gate rising, cutting off all flow in certain areas of their elder brother’s mind.

Look at that. The weakness. He would’ve fought after Zyger, but –

Emrelet… She was under a spell?

I can’t see.

Oh! Look what he could be if…

If we just…

But –

What was that? What have we done?

It’s not like we could help it! We want what’s best for him!

We gave him what he needed, that’s all.

In just the right places, yes… yes!

We can keep him afloat. Just the right places.

Can we go back to our bodies now?

Do we have to?

It’s over…

We’ll get better at it.

We have to.

They opened their eyes, beholding the carnage. The tuning rod had fallen from wet, nerveless fingers.

We really do.

Through Kas’s mind, they could sense the elven spectres thronging about them, as motionless as the bodies above which they floated, all awaiting their master’s call.

Can we touch their minds?

Now?

Kas has seen it done before.

But do you want to?

They didn’t need access to the ghosts’ thoughts – the twins both knew where the stairs were: the dark elves had known, before the ruthless creatures crossed over the one-way border into their shadowland-suits.

The twins picked their way between the bodies, noting details with neither detachment nor over-investment. There was an awful lot of highly-charged material floating around in their shared mindscape, and, despite the fact they weren’t actively seeking it out, it was still there. They still knew it. They were just hiding it from themselves. This array of rent-apart bodies was just one more element they added to the mix as they headed for the way up.

Better open a notch in the gate.

Already?

It’s our only way out of here.

Yeah, but…

Should he use it?

Yes.

We can’t keep using our powers like this.

Exactly.

What would you rather do? Swim?

Their brother complied with their thought, instantly starting the summoning on the top deck – they had to swiftly modify the pressure their desires exerted on him. This only led to him becoming confused about his own mental processes, and they had to learn how to edit out their mistakes as they went.

This really is going to be interesting, isn’t it?

It will be once we get there.

Home…

Mund.