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For the culture …

CHAPTER ONE

The Dead Cat Tail Assassins are not cats

Nor do they have tails

But they are most assuredly dead.

THE RED SCRIPT leapt out to Eveen, etched in cursive onto the plain brown card she held between a thumb and forefinger. After speaking the words aloud, she repeated them in her head twice again, trying not to snicker. She failed. Her laughter chortled into a snort that burst from her lips and nostrils like a thing seeking escape. The other patrons in the posh eatery swiveled stiff necks fitted into well-stitched finery to glare disapprovingly.

“It’s not supposed to be funny,” Fennis remarked. He sat across from her, his ginger eyebrows furrowing at her reaction.

No, it was absolutely ridiculous, she wanted to say, until she noticed the crimson splotching his cheeks. She wasn’t normally one to be concerned about feelings. But the man had a face like a baby—with big liquid eyes and cheeks that aunties and grandmothers would travel to pinch and wiggle. Who wanted to make all that upset?

“Umm, did you write this?”

He nodded, going more crimson. Crimsoner? Yes, he was going crimsoner.

“Oh. Well. Then. Ummmmmm.”

He sighed. “Just turn it over.”

She flipped the card. “Oh look. More words.”

The Dead Cat Tail Assassins.

Skilled. Discreet. Professional.

Here for your most pressing needs.

Eveen glanced back up at Fennis: an expectant cherub with a curly ginger halo.

“Stop looking at me like that. I’m doing my best here. What are we supposed to do with these again?” She motioned to the stack on the table.

“They’re calling cards,” he said, far too pleased with himself. “After you and the gang finish a job, you can leave them about. A way to drum up business.”

She held up a finger. “First, stop calling us a gang. We’re not street toughs with matching haircuts. We’re a guild of hired killers.” Another finger. “Second, what makes you think that the employers of someone we ship will want us doing more shipping on their behalf?”

“In this city,” he replied, “there’s always business for that sort of business.”

Well, Eveen admitted, he had a point.

Tal Abisi was a port city on the western peninsula. It was claimed more trade passed through here than through the three largest similar ports on the continent combined—silk and textiles from inland Vash, rum and blue spice from the Baleen Archipelago, magic-rich minerals and ores mined in far-off eastern Gulat, even wonders from the mechanical city of Kons. Goods flowed through Tal Abisi as readily as the gold and silver such trade generated. And where there was wealth, there were people to fight over it: business competitors, feuding mobsters, games of vendetta among the powerful who controlled the city, and more. Work, her kind of work, was ever booming.

Eveen tossed the card onto the table. “You ran this by Baseema?”

Fennis nodded. “She was quite amenable to the idea.”

“I bet.” Baseema was as hard as tempered steel, which is what you’d expect from a guild boss of assassins. But she had a soft spot for Fennis, who she’d hired to handle the guild’s paperwork. Probably that baby face.

Eveen’s attention—along with everyone else’s—was drawn suddenly to the trio that burst into the eatery. Instinct sent a hand reaching not for the two curved knives she kept strapped to her torso, hidden beneath the half-buttoned cobalt blue waist-length sailor’s jacket, but to the throwing dagger in the brown knee-high boot on her right leg. She’d teased out the black hilt, barely perceptible against the dark blue stripe that ran up her white breeches, before reassessing the newcomers.

One, a man in a fur-lined coat sewed with glittering sprocket wheels. Another, a woman, dressed similarly to Eveen. The two tussled over a third figure, in a puffy short skirt, sailor’s boots, and overly large coat, her skin painted a metallic gold. Eveen eased the dagger back into place. No danger here. These were actors and this was a bit of theatre. Not too surprising in Tal Abisi, on the third and final night of the Festival of the Clockwork King, the Pirate Princess, and the Golden Bounty.

Sitting back, she watched the impromptu show—complete with a competition of recited literature. Even this uptight crowd was riveted, gasping as the performers drew flintlock pistols that fired streams of orange ribbon, and descending into a hush as the golden girl reached into her chest to offer up a mechanical heart that burst into shimmering confetti. They were rewarded with applause, knuckle raps on tables, and a shower of coins. The small troupe hastily picked up their winnings, rushing out before the establishment’s matron—who stood smiling tightly and gripping the sides of her purple kaftan—lost patience. You could push things during Festival, but only so far.

“I never tire of hearing that tale,” Fennis murmured.

“I’ve read better,” Eveen said, flicking away confetti.

“All you read are those Terribles the presses in Kons churn out—Asheel the Maniac Hunter or Terrors of the Demon Lands.”

Eveen wagged a finger. “That’s solid literature! Asheel hunts maniacs—even though he’s a maniac! A maniac who hunts other maniacs? Genius! And Terrors of the Demon Lands are reputedly eyewitness accounts.”

Fennis regarded her skeptically.

“Whatever. Still better than the piss we just saw put on,” she retorted.

“Every story carries its own truths,” he said, in a very Fennis-like way.

“Pfft. A girl offers up her own life to stop feuding suitors—dramatic much?”

“She did it for love. And it saved Tal Abisi. Now she’s the city’s patron saint.”

“Love? More like caught between a conniving pirate and a megalomaniac.”

Fennis gestured at her. “Yet here you are dressed as the Pirate Princess yourself.”

Eveen tugged at the gold buttons of her jacket, pulling the white shirt beneath just past the cuffs. “I keep with the fashion. And who doesn’t like a festival? I’m just saying … the city almost gets laid to waste by an army of mechanical giants, is left with a magical hazard that makes an entire district uninhabitable, and almost three hundred years later that near-death experience is turned into three nights of revelry.”

“People deal with memories of trauma in odd ways,” Fennis replied.

“Memories,” Eveen muttered. “Wouldn’t know much about those.”

Fennis winced. “Sorry.”

She waved him off with a lie. “Hard to miss what you don’t have.”

The awkward lull was broken by a server, drinks in hand, wearing a lopsided smile. He’d been making googly eyes at her all evening, likely wondering if she and Fennis were an item. No worries there. The man had never once glanced at her with amorous intent. The only passion or arousal he showed was for food—like the way his face lit up now watching wine poured into a pewter goblet. He’d arrived here as a boy from a backwater village, Mara’s Bay or some such place, where the most exciting cuisine was bluefish, whatever that was. Tal Abisi expanded his palate, and he’d become a connoisseur of rare delights—which is why they’d ended up in this snooty spot, instead of the hole in the wall joints she preferred.

Pushing back twisted dark locs that draped casually over one eye, she bit her lip and caressed the stubble on the side of her scalp she kept shorn. The server was attractive enough. And that whole memory thing was working her mood. Some flirtation was better than having to watch Fennis inhaling the aroma of his wine with unbridled bliss. Aeril’s fiery tits. The man should rent a room already.

The server’s lopsided smile widened. Finger tracing the rim of her goblet, Eveen eased back into her seat, extending one leg its full long length in her tight breeches. That sent his eyes a bit more googly. Like using glow glass to catch river eels. She wondered if he’d pour some of that wine into Fennis’s lap? That might be fun. But his smile abruptly disappeared, face shifting to unease. He looked away, quickly filling her goblet before turning to go. She scowled at his back. What was that about?

“You keep forgetting to blink.”

Fennis eyed her above his goblet, sipping wine.

“What?”

He indicated the retreating server.

“Blinking. You forget that sometimes. It can be … off-putting.”

“Oh,” Blinking. One of those habits you had to remember, when you were dead.

Her eyes—after intentionally timed blinks—went back to the stack of cards.

The Dead Cat Tail Assassins are not cats

Nor do they have tails

But they are most assuredly dead.

No lies there. Eveen was dead. Like dead, dead. For real dead.

How that had happened—she didn’t know. No clue about who she’d been in life either. Not a single solitary memory. She was certain her name hadn’t been Eveen. She just liked the sound of it. Eveen. Eveeeen. Eveeeeeen. It rolled off the tongue. About the only thing she could say for certain was that she’d done this to herself. She’d been shown the contract and everything—the one agreed to in life, giving herself to the goddess she now served. Her fingers slid along the nape of her neck, touching the black tattoo imprinted against her dark skin: the jackal-eared hound, sigil of Aeril, Matron of Assassins, to whom she was bound, body and soul, in death.

She took a sip of wine—wishing it could evoke whatever it was doing for Fennis. Dull, of course. She could drink bottles more and she’d never get exactly drunk, just somewhere on the edge of inebriety. Everything was like that when you were dead. This wine. Food. Sex. The sweetness and verve—there was a nice word, verve—was just missing. Like someone baking you a pie and removing just enough sugar. You’d eat it, sure. What kind of weirdo turns down pie? But it just wouldn’t have the proper sweetness. No verve.

At least the guild had done right by her resurrection. Had to give them that. She wasn’t some shambling half-rotted corpse out to devour brains or the like. The reanimation sorcery kept her like a living person. Well, almost. Her skin had a dull cast to it, though nothing the right oils and a good soaking couldn’t fix. Some involuntary acts, like blinking, she had to force herself to do to keep up appearances. And, as a rumble in her stomach reminded her, there was eating.

Thankfully their server was returning. No more lopsided grin or googly eyes, and with others in tow. They set down dishes piled with food. Broiled stepper birds in pungent herbs. A braised shank of mutton doused in mint. One bowl of fried squid in a tangy sauce. And the honey-glazed ribs of some roasted beast. She dug in with ferocity.

The dead were ravenous for food—lots of it. Something to do with the sorcery preserving her undead flesh. Like everything else, none of it even tasted that remarkable. Still, even in death this body hungered for its sacrifices.

“Observing you eat is always a wonder,” Fennis commented, watching her crack open thin stepper bird bones to get at marrow.

“I don’t need your judgment. Aren’t you having anything?”

“Oh yes! Here it is now!”

The server returned with a plate of white yogurt and a sheet of thin flatbread. Two bowls followed, each filled with wriggling things that made her squint.

“Are those ants?”

Fennis nodded, riffling through his coat—a long gray jacket with endless pockets that swallowed him in its fullness—until he procured a small vial. Unstoppering it, he poured a dark viscous liquid over the wriggling ants.

“Peppered honey,” he explained. “A delicacy I learned from a Banari ship captain.”

“Thought all they had in Banar were knife duels if you looked at someone the wrong way,” Eveen said, crunching her squid.

“Well, yes.” He produced a pouch and pinched some green seasonings to sprinkle on the hapless ants. “But they’re also known for their daring cuisine. The ants are from the Splintered Isles, one set red, the other blue. They’re generally docile. But if ever the two cross they turn vicious! It is said the secretions they exude in battle taste like nothing else.” Tearing off a bit of flatbread, he dipped it in yogurt, then rolled it in both bowls of honeyed ants.

“Wait. You’re not going to—”

Before she finished, he stuffed the concoction into his mouth—chewing in ecstasy.

“Of course you are,” she muttered.

By the time they’d finished eating, Eveen had stacked up a pile of plates. And Fennis had had three more helpings of ants. They sat drinking hot kaf with sugary milk out of small blue porcelain cups, as was their usual end of meal ritual. This was more than a casual night of dining. Fennis was a handler for the guild. And sweetened kaf always preceded a commission for murder.

“So what’s the job?” she ventured.

In answer, Fennis pulled out rolled brown parchment from one jacket pocket, a pen from another, and a small bottle of ink from a third. The man was like a chest of drawers. He unrolled the parchment onto the table, using plates and cups to keep it flat.

Eveen’s eyes roamed over the endless legalese. Lots of “Whereby the contractor…” and “provided obligations are met” and “binding all concerned parties…” It was ridiculous the amount of paperwork that went into getting someone shipped.

“Just show me where to sign.” She took the pen and he pointed. With each signature she watched the ink dry, the sorcery of the vows sinking into her skin.

“And who’s commissioning the shipping?” she asked.

“The contractor has chosen anonymity.”

“So they paid extra.”

“As required.”

Anonymity was exorbitant—intentionally so. Better when everyone knew who had ordered a shipping, the cycle of revenge benefitting the four major assassin guilds in the city. If someone was willing to fork up the chunk of change it took to conceal their identity …

“Must be filthy rich.”

“And powerful,” Fennis agreed.

In this city, those two went hand in hand.

“You should know, they also requested you by name.”

Eveen looked up. Fennis’s baby face returned a knowing smile.

“It seems the Eviscerator still has admirers.”

She rolled her eyes. You open a guy up and show him his insides and people think you need a sobriquet. “It was only the one time,” she muttered. Finishing the last signature, she grimaced, digging nails into the table as the hound’s-head tattoo burned like a brand before cooling. One more death sanctioned to the goddess, who always claimed her due.

“The contract is accepted and just,” Fennis intoned.

There were lots of rules to being an assassin. Three were deemed unbreakable. The first was that the contract was just. Aeril was particular about her offerings. You didn’t ship kids. Or women who were with child. Or anyone who could be classified as pura innocentes. Everybody else was fair game, from monks to mobsters.

“The contract is accepted and just,” she returned. “Who’s getting shipped?”

Fennis rolled up the contract and slipped her a piece of paper. She read it.

“An address?”

“That’s what we were given.”

“And the find?”

This time he offered up a golden coin. Taking it, she looked it over—a Festival token. Finds were items that helped locate your job. Usually a personal belonging: clothing, jewelry, even a hairpin. This one was recognizable enough. But the design was decades old—an antique of Festivals past. Good condition though.

“How old is this person?”

“Can’t say. But you’ll find them at that address. Tonight.”

“So quick?”

“That’s the request. The contract is to be fulfilled—before dawn.”

Eveen grumbled. “No rest for the dead I guess.”

“You don’t sleep.”

She stared at him flatly. “It’s a figure of speech. Where can I find you to confirm?”

Fennis’s baby face brightened to a glow. “At the night market. The Traveling Folk are here for Festival. They have a fermented drink of spiced beer and curdled sky bison milk called oosha—”

Eveen held up a hand. “I’ll find you there. At least one of us will enjoy ourselves.”

“Could be worse,” Fennis said, disappearing the contract into a pocket. “You could be the person with the bad luck of getting shipped during Festival.”

Eveen downed the last of her kaf before standing and buttoning up her jacket. “Getting shipped is getting shipped. Doesn’t matter what night. It’s all fucking godsdamned bad luck.” Flipping the coin, she caught it again before turning to let it lead her to her unfortunate quarry.

IT WAS EARLY night as a round moon cast its ghostly light upon Tal Abisi. Eveen crouched atop a ledge on the Tomb of the Patriarchs—a blockish construction of taupe stone that housed the remains of the city’s foremost ruling families. Statues of the first twelve patriarchs were carved into its sides: long-ago founders who had journeyed here to conduct trade. Tal Abisi had grown from a small outpost into a bustling cosmopolitan port, where people from a hundred different lands settled. That history was written into the local pidgin and etched into faces—both as blended as the city’s hybrid cultures.

From this high vantage Eveen could make out the crumbling lighthouse on Tal Abisi’s eastern shore, which had once warned mariners of the rocky coast. Now it leaned like a nodding poppy piper in the abandoned Smuggler’s District. The region was illuminated by a cascade of light, what people still called the Shimmer: the Clockwork King’s lingering mark. To her immediate right were the central trading ports, where vessels of every conceivable make bobbed upon the waters: single-sailed dhows, larger galleons, and at least one gargantuan treasure ship whose curving hull alone dwarfed them all. To the left of the ports was the financial quarter, with its pristine colonnaded banks and merchant houses in neat rows like stacked coins. Adjacent was the clerics’ quadrant of temples, steeples, and spindly towers dedicated to a pantheon of divinities.

But most in Tal Abisi lived here in the center, beneath the stone glare of the Patriarchs’ tomb, what many still called the Old City: an endless array of smaller structures illuminated by glow lamps that blinked like hundreds of eyes. Through the ages, buildings in the Old City had been expanded or simply erected upon the bones of others. It was a mashup of architectural styles, stitched together amid winding stone streets bearing names like the Butcher’s Intestines or the Three-Eyed Way, and with districts from the upscale Fortunate Widow’s Row to the descending slums of the Wheelbarrow.

Umber terracotta tiles made from local clay covered most rooftops, while others were capped by colorful rounded domes or draped in lush greenery. Weaved into this mosaic were shops and markets, gamblers dens and funerary parlors, drinking holes and fine eateries, lavish homes and modest dwellings. Snaking canals crisscrossed it all: threads of tapestry traversed by curving flat-bottomed boats whose dangling lanterns shone against the dark waters.

Eveen often perched here to take in the beautiful mess of it. The dead didn’t require sleep. She’d tried. As liminal as the rest of her existence. She didn’t mind it so much. Only she wished she could dream. The way the living described it, sounded intriguing. Maybe her dreams would be of her past life. Or even of the dreams she once had—dreams of dreams. Then again, the dead probably just dreamt of all the ways they’d possibly died. Or of a stifling dark oblivion.

“You’re morbid tonight,” she muttered. The only living things to hear her on this ledge were two stepper birds, like the ones she’d had for dinner—little puffs of yellow that cheeped and hopped. They were flightless, and she had no idea how the things got up here. But stepper birds were always about, found on every continent, as if they’d hopped their way across each one.

“I ate a few of your friends earlier. If you’re smart, you’ll stay up here—away from cooks and canal eels.”

The birds tilted neckless heads, glass eyes blinking, as if trying to decipher her prattle.

“Another bit of advice. Before you die, think over the costs of post-death employment.”

More blinking.

“Look at me. I must have been what, in my late-thirtieth years when I kicked it? And I sign some infernal contract to work while I’m dead?”

Blink, blink.

“I’ve tried to figure it out.” She tapped her temple. “Wracked my brain puzzling at what kind of person would even do such a thing. But nothing comes up.”

Blink, blink, blink.

“Don’t even know how I kicked it. Slipped and broke my neck? Drowned? Suicide? Mauled by a three-horned bull cat? Or, what if I was shipped? Maybe I was some crime boss and got shipped—only to come back as a vengeful assassin. Story like that should be a Terrible! Escapades of Eveen the Eviscerator!”

Two short black beaks chirped, unimpressed.

“Yeah, well what do you know? Shoo!”

She flicked at one, sending it careening off the ledge—and plummeting like a rock.

“Wow. You guys really can’t fly for shit.” The puff of yellow became a speck in the gloom. “Sorry. That was uncalled-for.” The remaining stepper bird looked after its companion, then to her. “I said I was sorry. Here.” She laid down one of Fennis’s calling cards. “You need somebody shipped, look me up. Speaking of which, time to go to work.”

Reaching up, she pulled down her mask: a bone white cat with a feral grin. The stepper bird cheeped in alarm, hopped, and slipped off the ledge—a yellow ball tumbling into the dark.

She sighed. “That’s life. Short and stupid.” Shaking her head, she snatched up the card, then hurled herself from the ledge to the rooftops below. There was weightlessness, the air flapping her cloak before her padded boots struck terracotta tiles. The height of the drop alone should have shattered her legs. But being an undead thrall had its perks. Better than the fate doled out to unfortunate stepper birds.

In a burst of speed, she crossed the sloping tiles without a sound. Masked revelers feted in the streets below, unaware of the small figure that bounded from rooftop to rooftop. Up here she might as well be a ghost. A sweet scent hit her nose, and not missing a beat, she zig-zagged, swinging into an open window to flow like a silent breeze through a dark room. The woman intertwined with her two masked lovers never even glimpsed the shadow that snatched up a pastry, slipping back outside to crouch on the veranda.

Shimmer cake. Eveen lifted up her mask and bit down, smearing her lips with white icing dusted in golden sugar. Her fingers plucked out the figurine inside—the Pirate Princess. Tradition held she’d have either chaos or fortune tonight. Maybe both: whatever the Shimmer sent her way.

She’d traded in her costume for work clothes: soft-padded boots, black leather breeches, and a matching top. There was also the cloak—a thing of glimpses and shadows, with a hooded cowl to hide her face. As she ate, she looked down at a gathering procession, some in Pirate Princess costumes—set to reenact the march to the old Smuggler’s District to fight the Clockwork King. Nearly everyone held a burning cane stalk. Some jumped to the music provided by a troupe.

They wouldn’t actually go to the uninhabitable eastern shore of course. Instead, the marchers would take a meandering road to the docks—dousing their torches in the sea. That is, if they didn’t run into other bands along the way. Then there’d be challenges of recited literature and the chance of some real violence. Everyone was a little giddy—partly drink, partly the Shimmer at its peak churning out eddies of errant magic. Folks called that bacchanalia Shimmer Fever. There’d be lots of one-time trysts and babies conceived before this final night of Festival was done—alongside brawls and deadly cutlass fights.

“People deal with memories of trauma in odd ways,” she murmured, reciting Fennis.

Maybe she should try the same. Not the cutlass fights. But when she was done here, she’d play the pirate again and try to lose herself in the night’s festivities. Perhaps she’d even try Fennis’s fermented sky bison milk.

She made a face. Or not.

Finishing the cake, she tucked the figurine beside a dagger at her shoulder and set out again. She knew where she was going. The address she’d been given was guide enough. And the coin tucked into her belt pulled like magnetic ore. So it wasn’t a surprise when winding streets gave way to greenery and terracotta roofs were replaced by towers capped in stone. One of the wealthy districts. Not the kind where mobsters and jumped-up trade magnates played at nobility. No, this was old wealth—well-aged like sweet black rum.

She landed in the twisting branches of a tree, laden with bulbous blood-red fruit. Not native to Tal Abisi, so imported. Much of this garden looked to be. Part of a large estate—all stone archways, pillars, and a flat roof with crenellated parapets like a small palace. Towers capped in white enclosed each corner. And it was from one of them that the coin pulled.

That probably explained all the guards.

She hung upside down from the tree’s branches. From this vantage she counted at least twelve guards milling about the base of her intended tower, in red turbans and burgundy uniforms. Swords hung from their hips and the ivory hilts of long knives and pistols peeked from broad gold sashes. Hired help. She’d encountered this bunch before—the Iron Brotherhood or Lady’s Pride or some such thing. They always had stupid names. Then again, here she was a Dead Cat Tail, so maybe no judgments. One thing was certain, this wasn’t your run-of-the-mill security detail. This was a mercenary company: ex-soldiers, with the usual mix of leg-breakers and whatnot to fill out the ranks. She’d wager Aeril’s fiery right tit they were protecting whoever she was meant to ship. And while she could probably fight her way in—messily—assassin rule #240 said no assassin worth their blades actually sought out a fight.

“Where’s that fortune I ordered?” she whispered, rubbing the Pirate Princess figurine.

The words had barely left her lips before she found it—thick vines growing from the base of the tower, creeping all the way to the top. Righting herself, she dropped from the tree, moving fast in a low crouch. Once she brushed right by a patrol and one guard spun about, looking straight at her. The cloak did its job, and his eyes slid off, searching for what he couldn’t quite see. At a chiding from an impatient companion, he turned away.

She reached the tower, pressing flat against the cool stone, clinging to the shadows as more guards walked by. Peering up, her eyes passed four windows to land on one near the top—and the coin at her waist jumped. Of course. Why was it people to be shipped never lived on the bottom floor? Even the middle floor. It was as if the fates had decided killing should always take a good deal of climbing.

Grabbing hold of the vine, she tested its strength—a corded variety common to Tal Abisi, often treated with resin and turned into netting. Even like this, it was strong enough to hold her weight. Securing her footing, she started climbing, grumbling the whole while. All these guards. Her job in a tower. Like a bad fairy tale. More likely, though, some power move. Just you watch, she’d find a wheezing old geezer on his deathbed, with a line of impatient heirs—who’d set upon each other after his death. She’d best remember to leave a card.

When she reached the window, it was open. Unsurprising, when days were warm and nights still cool. But she took it as more good luck and peeked inside. Her undead eyes didn’t need adjusting. And though there wasn’t any light, she could see the rounded room. There was one door. And best of all—no guards.

She swung inside, padded boots landing on marble. The room was sparsely decorated. A giant vase in one corner. A black lacquered chest trimmed in gold against a wall. A divan with red and green pillows against another. What drew her eyes, however, was the bed pushed up near the back: black laban-wood fitted with four brass posts draped by a canopy. Behind the sheer cloth, a silhouette lay atop a mattress, their chest rising with inhalations.

She’d called it. Pull back that canopy and there’d be some shrunken little man with skin like crackled parchment. She drew her knife—one of two, with a black hilt and a dark curving blade long as her forearm. Both hummed in anticipation at the kill. Bloodthirsty things. She’d make this quick: through the heart, then a slashed throat. If her luck held, she’d be in and out undetected. Dropping her hood, she let her mask show. The last view before getting shipped. Like a going-away present. At the foot of the bed, she stepped aside, avoiding a chamber pot—the bane of assassins everywhere. With one hand she pulled back the canopy, knife raised.

Then stopped.

Eveen stared at a tranquil face framed by thick long braids the color of an azure dawn. A girl. The contours of slight cheekbones lay visible beneath her dark skin, as oval-shaped eyes trembled in slumber, and full lips parted to draw and release breath. Eveen frowned. She knew this face. She recognized it. Remembered it. But where—

The loudest bell in the world rang in her head.

Not recognition. Not recollection.

This was a memory!

Only she didn’t have memories. Not anymore.

Well you’re sure as fuck shit having one—now!

And what it told her …

No. This was impossible. This face was impossible.

A storm of emotions seized her: disorientation, doubt, and one she’d almost forgotten—fear. Dropping the canopy, she staggered back, foot stumbling on something. The stupid chamber pot. It tipped over—mercifully empty, but clattering loudly on the marble floor. The girl with the impossible face bolted upright, wide eyes searching until they found her.

Then she screamed.

Inwardly, Eveen cursed.

Aeril’s fiery fucking tits.

CHAPTER TWO

THE GIRL WITH the impossible face had some nice lungs.

Eveen was certain that her shriek was loud enough to wake the dead, present company included. More distressing, it was loud enough to alert half the tower. On cue, the door burst open, showing guards illuminated by a glow glass lantern. Six sets of eyes squinted hard before rounding, hands going for weapons. Too late, she remembered her hood was still down. So much for doing this quietly.

Snatching up the chamber pot, she flung it at the lantern holder—striking his forehead with a solid thonk! and dropping him like a stone. The glow glass fell with him, shattering and plunging them back into darkness. Calls came for another light. She didn’t give them the chance.

The second unbreakable assassin’s vow? If someone wasn’t contracted to be shipped, their life wasn’t for the taking. But you could do a lot short of killing.

Eveen cracked one guard in the temple with the pommel of her knife before swinging him headfirst into the giant vase. Another she punched in the throat, picking up the chamber pot to smack him full-on in the face as he tried to catch his breath. One had the sense to ready his pistol. She heard the hammer cock back in time to grab his hand, thrusting the muzzle down as he pulled the trigger. A flash of sparks from the flintlock mechanism lit up the dark as he fired, sending a ball into the boot of a companion—who howled, hopping up on one leg.

Yanking away the pistol, she tossed it aside just as something punched her middle, sending her stumbling. She looked down to find a silver saber buried in her belly. The guard who had run her through barked a laugh, until she swiveled her eyes to him. He looked at her stupidly, right up to when she took his hand and promptly broke it in three places. He didn’t stop screaming until she thonked him a few with the chamber pot. Thonkity-thonk-thonk! When she looked up, the remaining uninjured guard had fled—leaving his pistol. His howling companion hopped after him. Eveen pushed the door shut and was pulling the lacquered chest over to block it when someone spoke.

“That was amazing!”

She looked up to find the girl staring—that impossible face filled with awe.

“You don’t mind me bashing your guards?”

The girl frowned in an all-too-familiar way. “Guards? More like kidnappers!”

That caught Eveen by surprise. “You don’t live here?”

“You mean do I live in a bedchamber in a tower? Does this look like some kind of—”

“—fairy tale.” Eveen finished, unable to help herself. “Then why did you scream?”

“Because I woke up to that?” The girl pointed to Eveen’s mask.

Oh. Eveen touched the mask, then without another thought pulled it up. For a moment the two stared at one another. The girl studied her face, a hint of something forming that would have made Eveen’s heart beat faster—if it still beat at all—before dying away.

“What?” she asked.

The girl shook her head, long thick blue braids moving in time. “Nothing. I just…” Her eyes rounded. “Did my parents send you? Are you here to rescue me?”

Rescue? She forced down a laugh.

The girl grimaced, gesturing. “Are you going to do something about…”

Eveen looked down, just remembering the saber still in her belly. Grabbing hold of the pommel, she drew it out with a grunt. The girl watched, mouth agape, as the bloodless blade clattered to the floor. But if that shocked her, she recovered quick.

“So what’s the plan?”

“Plan?”

“You have a plan to get me out of here, right? I mean beyond beating up those guards.”

Eveen scowled. She had a plan all right. Her hand went to her knives. One into the heart. Or through the chin up to the skull. A slash across the jugular that would soak those white sheets. A dozen ways to finish her night’s work played in her head. Do it and be on her way. Forget what she’d seen here. Just another job.

But this isn’t just another job.

The truth gnawed. That impossible face was proof enough.

Banging at the door snapped her to attention. Their company had arrived.

“What’s it going to be?” the girl asked, blissfully unaware of what she was saying.

Eveen gripped her knife hilts. Between the noisy door and the girl’s expectant stare, time stretched before snapping back. Her hands slackened, and she cursed even as she made her choice.

“You’re coming with me.”

The girl nodded. “Well, yeah, I figured. But how?”

Eveen bounded to the window and peeked out—pulling back at a hail of pistol fire. Glass from the window’s diamond panes shattered and wood splintered from bed posts. The girl shrieked, diving for the floor.

“They could have killed me!” she cried as the firing faded.

“Don’t think they care,” Eveen said. Odd, for guards.

So the window was a no-go. That only left … She looked to the door. The banging had turned heavy, causing the wood to creak and shudder.

“Tell me you have a plan?” the girl asked.

“Yeah,” Eveen muttered. “But I hate it.” She came out of her cloak. “Put this on.”

The girl glanced to the window, expecting another volley. But she got up and ran over, taking the cloak and fitting it over her clothing—little more than a night shift.

“That isn’t going to hold for long.” Eveen nodded to the barricaded door. “When it comes down, a lot of angry is going to stream in. And you’re going to get out.”

The girl frowned, tucking her braids into the cloak’s cowl. “Just like that?”

“Just like that. The cloak will take care of you.”

The girl’s dark eyes widened. “A magic cloak! Does it make me invisible?”

“No. Just hard to see. Lots of eyeballs find reasons to ignore you.”

“How does it work?”

“No Idea. Took it off someone I … rescued. Stick to shadows and don’t draw attention. Shouldn’t be hard. The guards will be distracted.”

“What about you?”

Eveen bent to pick up the discarded saber. “I’m the distraction.” And with that, she promptly ran herself through. Again. The girl winced. But to her credit, she didn’t scream or do something stupid like pass out.

“Does that hurt?” she asked clinically—as if inquiring after the price of kaf.

Eveen answered with a grunt. You’d think being undead, she’d be free of such mundanities. No such luck. Sure, it hurt lots less than if she were alive. Her pain threshold would make a masochist blush. Undead flesh was still flesh though—and she could feel the cold steel push into her belly. The sensation was just dulled, like everything else.

A heavy BANG! almost knocked the door down.

“Get back!” Eveen warned. “When you leave, don’t stop. I’ll meet you in the garden.”

BANG! BANG! The door jumped a hinge. Did they have a battering ram?

“How are you getting out?” the girl asked, pressing against a wall.

“Gonna play the manicou.” Eveen reached to pull down her mask.

“Wait! I don’t even know your name. In case … we get separated.”

There was a pause before … “Eveen.” Then a frown. “What?” Another odd look had crossed that impossible face. But the girl only said …

“I’m Cyanna. You probably know that already. But everyone calls me Sky.” She put fingers to her blue hair.

See-anna. Eveen silently explored the name in her head, trying to draw some bit of life out of it. But there was nothing. Giving up, she pulled down her mask and lay on the marble floor, curling around the blade and settling to wait.

BANG! Her eyes found the girl, almost blended into shadows now. BANG! She traced the face beneath that cowl again and the memory it evoked. BANG! The only way she could make sense of whatever was happening was to get out of here. Maybe then—

BANG! The door came off completely, followed by the strain of people pushing. She could hear the chest scrape across the floor and footsteps charging inside, until legs and boots surrounded her. There was a sharp kick to her back, but she didn’t move. A barked order and a glow lantern lit up the dark. Someone bent down, holding it to her face where her unblinking eyes reflected the swirling luminous gas. Fingers touched her neck for a pulse before pronouncing her dead—naturally. There was more talk, but she let it recede into the background. Her gaze and thoughts were on the silhouette that now tiptoed around the occupied guards.

That’s it, girl. Keep moving. Let the cloak do its work.

The shadowy form paused once at the door’s entrance, just missing an entering guard. Then she was past him, gone. Eveen started to count. If the girl was quick, one hundred beats should get her clear. Then she could—

Her count stopped at twenty. She had rolled her eyes up to keep a watch on the guards. One was now slowly turning his head in the direction of the girl, as if glimpsing a shadow. She sighed. Always had to be one who couldn’t mind their godsdamned business. Twenty it was, then. Sliding out a dagger at her waist she took aim—and plunged it into the heel of the nosy guard, digging through the boot to reach tendons. That got his attention.

Time to start the show.

Eveen pulled the saber from her belly and leapt to standing. The guard now at her feet screamed, his companions staring at her poleaxed. By the time they came to their senses, she’d already broken one’s jaw with the saber’s pommel, kneecapped another, and kicked the one holding the glow lantern in the groin so hard he wheeze-coughed as he dropped. That left two. A woman with a saber. Not half bad either. Eveen blocked three well-aimed swings, leaned in close to take a slice in the side, then followed through with an uppercut that snapped the woman’s head back—sending teeth flying like red-stained pearls. The last guard she left sputtering and writhing against the saber pinning his hand to the lacquered chest.

All clear.

She bounded through the door that hung by a hinge, set to run, and bounced off a wall. The wall grew hands, grabbing and lifting her up. Not a wall, then. A man. Big and broad. She’d found the battering ram. Meaty arms encircled her in a crushing hug, trying to squeeze the breath from her. Waste of time, really, since she didn’t breathe. Angling back, she swung forward from her torso to deliver three headbutts in rapid succession. Bap! Bap! Bap! A geyser of red spurted from a ruined nose and he let go, reeling like a drunkard.

Eveen was leaping over him before he hit the ground, slamming a foot into the first face she found. Someone grabbed her and she pulled free, twisting the offending arm until she heard the bone pop from the shoulder. She slid past a sword swipe meant for her neck, caught the blade to pull the wielder close, and smashed an elbow into a cheekbone. Then she was free, the screams in her wake reverberating in the darkened hallway. The stairs came into view, a spiral built into the tower’s wall—and crawling with guards.

A hand went reflexively to a knife before pulling back. No killing. The hard way, then.

She met the first guard on the stairs at a run. He lifted his pistol, but she caught it and swung him around to fire into a second guard. The iron ball tore through a knee and ricocheted to shatter another’s wrist. Both men fell backward, tripping those behind them. Eveen threw the one she was holding after the lot, making sure to keep the pistol. She flitted past the mass of tangled and tumbling bodies, wielding the pilfered weapon like a cudgel. The ivory hilt broke shins, shattered forearms, and cracked ribs as she tore a path out of this mess.

When the door came into view she practically flew through, making quick work of a lone guard and using his prone form to catapult herself into the garden. Her eyes searched the dark, looking for the girl. If she was still trapped inside—

A shadow appeared alongside a tree, waving. She reached her and found that familiar face staring wide-eyed from under the cowl. That impossible face.

“You made it!” The girl looked her over. “Is that your blood?”

Eveen was set to explain that she didn’t bleed when a ball whizzed hot past her ear, embedding in the tree. Another burst one of the bulbous fruits to red ruin. Snatching the girl’s hand, she sped off, dodging volleys seeking to do the same to their heads, fleeing like a thief, with stolen goods.

THE SOUK WASN’T the only night market in Tal Abisi. The city boasted at least five, the largest of which floated upon the fuchsia waters of an inland lake. But the one Eveen now traversed sat in the center of the Old City—where shopkeepers hawked goods until daybreak.

This night, however, it belonged to the Traveling Folk.

Their colorful air balloons had floated in just days before, jangling with chimes and bells. The great brass longhorns of the city sounded in greeting, and their herds of blue-furred sky bison responded with bellowing moans in rumbling melodies. Traveling Folk had a reputation, much of it undeserved. Some lands banned them outright. In Tal Abisi, however, these intrepid nomads who wandered the skies to return with rare goods were kindred spirits. Their presence at Festival was considered a good omen for the coming season’s trade—and a chance to hone skills with champion hagglers.

But Eveen wasn’t here to haggle. She brushed off a man intent on selling her red-speckled mushrooms, a supposed aphrodisiac. He dressed like most Traveling Folk: a short kaftan and trousers of garish hues, with fire beads and charms encircling his wrists and ankles—where his bare feet moved to keep up. The whole while, he prattled on about his mushrooms, swearing their efficacy upon the holy name of his second mother: a string of words that sounded like Ayeeti Moon Dragon Uvesh Ul-Bathraki. Having heard enough, Eveen picked him up bodily and moved him out of her way.

This was why she missed her cloak.

Her gaze went to the girl, a figure draped in shadows that people slid around without notice. Not one haggler came her way. Eveen meanwhile had to make do with the burgundy jacket she’d lifted from that last guard, keeping her work clothes—and her knives—hidden. The two hadn’t spoken much since getting free of the tower. The girl said something once or twice about seeing her family, but Eveen had ignored it and she’d stopped. Now her large eyes looked out from the hooded cowl at the rounded tents—to drummers, banjo players, fire spinners, and more. The Traveling Folk could put on a show.

But Eveen hadn’t come for entertainment either. She was here for a little man with a baby face and a ginger halo. He usually stood out, with skin noticeably fairer than most of Tal Abisi—where hues commonly ranged from sand brown to her own smooth midnight pearl. Between the music, revelry, and sparkling fireworks, it was the keening sky bison that drew her to him. That and the scent of spices that tickled her nose.

Near the back of the market, the shaggy four-horned beasts hovered, tethered to the ground—while below, wood stalls roasted, fried, and churned out various cuisines. Ignoring her rumbling stomach, she searched until her eyes fell on several Traveling Folk women in bright-colored skirts who stirred great black cauldrons. Others poured a soupy concoction into small leather pouches like bladders—which waiting customers bought as fast as they could be made.

Fennis stood among them, tilting back a pouch to squirt its contents into his mouth. He had his eyes closed in pure contentment and was startled at opening them to find Eveen.

“You’re back!” He dabbed at his mouth. “Some oosha to celebrate? It’s quite good. I expected sourness, but there’s a sweet almost nutty taste—”

“We need to talk,” she cut in. “Things tonight … got complicated.”

Fennis eyed her quizzically, that grown-man baby face bizarrely suckling milk from the pouch. Aeril’s fiery tits. She couldn’t unsee that.

“What manner of complications?”

Eveen turned to the girl.

Fennis followed her gaze blankly.

The cloak. She yanked back the hood.

This time Fennis jumped. Swallowing, he leaned in to whisper. “Who is that?”

Eveen gave him a meaningful look. Fennis blinked, confused. She gave the look again, this time raising her eyebrows. He frowned, then his own eyes grew wide.

“That isn’t?” he croaked.

She nodded. “It is.”

Now he went pale. And a bit green. She took hold of him and moved them by a set of tents. He bent over, balancing his free palm on a knee. His wide eyes kept going back to the girl—who regarded them both as if waiting to be told the most important part of a story.

“Do you know what you’ve done?” Fennis asked hoarsely.

Eveen nodded again. “Gone and broken the third unbreakable vow.”

Not just the third, but by far the most important.

“Excuse me.” It was the girl. “Is my family here? When do I get to go home?”

They both looked to her, then turned back to put their heads together and whisper.

“You have to keep your vow!” Fennis urged. “It’s not too late!”

“I can’t exactly ship her here. Out in the open.”

“Find somewhere quiet. In one of these tents?”

“If I was going to ship her, I wouldn’t have fought a tower full of guards to get her out.”

“You weren’t supposed to get her out!”

“I know! My contract is to kill her, not rescue her—but things got complicated!”

“Wait, what?” The girl again.

They both looked up to find dawning horror on her face.

Eveen winced. “I didn’t whisper that?”

“You didn’t whisper it!” the girl said.

“You are bad at whispering,” Fennis agreed.

“Right. I can explain.” Eveen stepped forward. The girl scrambled back. “Wait! Yes, I was hired to ship you—kill you, I mean—but I didn’t. See?” She put on what she hoped was a reassuring smile. The girl bolted. Luckily Eveen’s reflexes were quicker. She reached her in a flash, clamping a hand over her mouth and dragging her between the tents.

“Stop that!” she snapped, as the girl kicked and bucked. “If I wanted you dead I’d have done it already! I fought a small army to free you, remember! At least hear me out!”

The girl’s darting eyes reflected terror, but she went still and nodded. Eveen relaxed, pulling her hand away—at which point the girl promptly screamed. She clamped her hand back down and swore.

“How did this happen?” Fennis asked, glancing about nervously for any passerby.

Eveen looked to the girl she held firm, into that impossible face.

“I was set to ship her, right off. Just like always. Easy-peasy. Then I recognized her.”

“You know her from somewhere?”

“Not somewhere. From before.”

“Before?” Fennis repeated in confusion. “You’re saying you had—”

“A memory,” she finished. “I know. The dead can’t have memories. But I had one.”

The girl was looking at her now, the terror faded, replaced with something unreadable. Eveen took a chance and pulled her hand away. There was no screaming. And no one ran.

The girl swallowed. “What do you mean dead?”

Oh, that. She took the girl’s hand and pressed it to her chest. No heartbeat. There was an awed breath.

“The sword impaled you. I thought it was some kind of trick! But … are you a zombie or something?”

Eveen stabbed at her with an admonishing finger. “I’m not a zombie. That’s racist. But I am dead. Well, undead. And that’s why the memory I had makes your face so impossible.”

The girl hesitated. “What was the memory?”

“I was looking at you. Staring into your face.”

The girl shook her head. “I don’t remember ever meeting you.”

“You wouldn’t. Because the face I was looking at…” Eveen paused. “… was in a mirror.”

The memory was still vivid. Standing and staring at a reflection. Her reflection. Putting a hand to her cheek to feel her own skin. Looking at her own self.

“What?” the girl whispered.

“You’re me,” Eveen said, still hardly believing her own words. “Aeril’s fiery tits if I can explain it—but you are me!”

CHAPTER THREE

“THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE,” THE girl said, breathless.

“Yeah,” Eveen replied. “But here we are.”

“Impossible!” the girl repeated. “As in crazy! Is that what you are? A crazy person?”

“I said I couldn’t explain it.”

“I’m me!” The girl smacked her chest.

Eveen smacked her own in retort. “Makes two of us!”

Fennis had gone quiet, his eyes squinting. “There is a resemblance. But … are you sure?”

Eveen looked the girl over. More than resemblance. Everything about that face—from the set of the lips to the dark brown irises—was her. The same long limbs and torso, the same slender neck and coil to their black hair. Even the same height. It was their age that was different. The girl looked ten or fifteen years younger. Soft too. Well, softer. There was also the matter that while she was very much alive, Eveen was good and well dead.

“I’m sure. What I saw was a memory. An actual gods-cursed memory!”

Fennis shook his head. “You’re not supposed to have … memories.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” she snapped. The magic that resurrected her was precise about that. Nothing about her past was to remain. Should be able to walk by her own godsdamned mother and not recognize her. It was a potent sorcery, meant to sever all ties from her time among the living. Probably never accounted for this though.

“What triggered the … memory?” Fennis asked.

“Her face. One look, and it was like a closed part of me opened up.”

“And you saw yourself as her, looking into a mirror?”

“Yep. Say, you think it’s some kind of doppler?”

“You mean a doppelgänger?”

“Yeah, that! A mimicky thing. Read about them in Terrors of the Demon Lands.”

Fennis looked uncertain. “Even allowing for that, why mimic a younger you?”

“Beats me. Who knows how mimicky things think?”

“This still doesn’t negate our central problem,” he pointed out.

“Yeah, yeah.” The third unbreakable vow. “But I couldn’t just … kill it.”

“So you decided to steal it and bring it here? To me?”

Eveen shrugged. “Thought you’d help me figure it out.”

“Hello?” It was the girl. She hadn’t tried to run again—in part because Eveen blocked her path. Now she glared at them. “I can hear you? I’m not some it. I’m a person. And I have a name. Cyanna Darnsha Abeg!”

Eveen played all three names in her head. Recited and repeated them. Nothing.

“I haven’t a clue what you two are talking about,” she went on. “All I know is that I was kidnapped and woke up in that tower, surrounded by those goons, until she”—her arms gestured vaguely—“came to rescue me. Only now I find out she’d actually planned to kill me! One of you want to tell me what’s going on? Who are you people?”

Eveen promptly handed her a card.

The girl read it and frowned. “The Dead Cat Tails? Those words don’t make any sense.”

“I know right,” Eveen agreed. “Is it the whole cat that’s dead? Or just the tails?”

The girl stared. “Why would just the tails be dead?”

“Maybe the cats’ tails got magicked, like these killer’s hands in one of the Asheel the Maniac Hunter stories…”

“I think we’re losing focus,” Fennis interrupted. “Cyanna, is it?”

“People call me Sky.” She touched her blue braids, as if from habit.

“Sky. No easy way to say this, but you were contracted for assassination—what my colleague here calls being shipped.”

“I came up with that,” Eveen added. “Everyone uses it. But do they give me the credit?”

The girl’s face wilted. “Who would want me killed?”

Fennis shook his head. “The contract was anonymous.”

She looked at them like they were monsters. “People hire you to kill for money?”

“Lots of money,” Eveen corrected. “For a goddess—Aeril.”

“Never heard of her,” the girl said.

Not surprising. Tal Abisi had numerous gods and pantheons. No need to know about a Matron of Assassins.

“But there are rules,” Fennis reassured her. “Might I inquire your age?”

“Nineteen,” she answered hesitantly. “Does that matter?”

“Means you’re old enough to be shipped,” Eveen said. So much for an easy out. “You claim you’re not a mimicky thing—”

“I’m not a doppelgänger!” the girl fumed.

“Right.” Touchy. “Then are you a crime boss’s daughter? The heiress to a fortune? Caught up in some vendetta?”

The girl laughed. “My family dyes textiles. You and your goddess have things mixed up.”

Fennis looked doubtful. “Aeril’s contracts do not get mixed up.”

“He means whoever ordered you shipped was wronged by you somehow.”

“So I wrong someone, and they can just have me killed?”

“If it’s worthy,” Eveen said. “Can’t be because you looked at them funny. Has to be enough to make a reasonable claim. Usually, you’re in the criminal underworld or really powerful and you’ve done some grievous harm along the way. Turns out, really hard to get rich and powerful without doing somebody some kinda grievous harm.”

“But I haven’t done anything to anyone like that!” the girl exclaimed.

“There’s always removal for purposes of personal hindrance,” Fennis reminded Eveen.

The girl blinked. “What?”

Eveen gestured matter-of-factly. “You know, someone wants some big life advancement and you’re in the way. Or you know some secret that could bring them down—they can claim you’re a personal hindrance and make a pitch to get you shipped. Gets approved most times.”

“You think some textile dyers with grand secrets want me killed?”

Eveen snorted. “They couldn’t afford us. Anybody bigger?”

“I’m telling you I don’t know anyone like that!”

“Sky,” Fennis tried diplomatically. “What do you remember? Before the tower.”

The girl took a breath, shaking her head as if to stir her memory.

“I was at Festival—first night. In the crowd watching the Procession of the Patriarchs. I caught a coin one of them tossed out. Everyone was reaching—but I jumped up to snatch it.” Her brow furrowed. “Things get fuzzy after that. When I woke up, there were people around me.”

“In the tower?” Fennis asked.

“No, outside. I heard water. It was bright. I remember being confused that it was day—because it had just been night. I was so tired. I drifted off. When I woke up again I was in that tower. Those guards would come in, bring me food, drink. But they wouldn’t tell me anything.”

Fennis’s baby face scrunched up, which only made it look weirder. He turned to Eveen. “The find?” She dug out the coin, holding it up.

“That’s mine!” the girl exclaimed.

“It’s what we used to find you,” Eveen related.

Fennis took the coin, examining its golden surface.

“You received this at Festival—two nights past?”

“Yes. Can I have it back?”

Fennis hesitated, then handed it over. “The engraving. Who is that?”

She regarded him strangely. “Pol Annasi IX.”

Eveen frowned. “Who?”

“Pol Annasi IX,” the girl repeated. “The Grand Patriarch of Tal Abisi?”

“Noooo. The Grand Patriarch is Pol Tala V. Grand Matriarch, to be precise—though I didn’t vote for her. Who in the gods’ spit is Pol Annasi IX?” Eveen looked to Fennis, whose baby face had taken on an air of wonder—as if seeing bubbles for the first time.

“Tal Abisi’s Grand Patriarch some…” He added in his head. “… sixty years ago.”

Eveen glared. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“What are you saying?” the girl asked.

But Eveen had rounded on Fennis. “Didn’t you say this anonymous contractor requested me? Named me for this job? Now it turns out that means shipping a girl—with my face?”

Fennis stared at her, a baby fitting puzzle pieces together. “This was done purposefully.”

“What was done?” the girl asked. “What’s happening?”

Eveen turned back to her. “Someone pulled you out of time. Pulled you right out of my past. Then they locked you up in a tower and made sure I’d come looking!”

“That’s im—”

“Don’t say impossible,” she growled. “Someone hired me, to ship my godsdamned self!”

Somewhere, Eveen thought, Aeril must be laughing her fiery tits off.

“WHY DO I have to wear this?”

The girl looked over her clothes—a puffy white skirt, sailor’s boots, and an oversized coat.

“You’re the Golden Bounty,” Eveen replied, tearing roasted meat off a stick.

“I know what it is. I mean why am I in a costume?”

Eveen spared a glance to their gondoliers, each using long oars to cut through river water. The one standing at the bow was haggling with Fennis, illuminated by the light of a hanging lantern. The other, standing at the stern, hummed a song under his breath—“The Clockwork King’s Lament,” she thought—as they were propelled across the winding riverway. Neither paid any mind to the talk of the two women sitting in the middle of the flat-bottomed boat.

“Because I wanted my cloak back,” Eveen answered. “And you need clothes.”

The girl fretted at the short skirt for the umpteenth time. “This the best you can do?”

“You’d rather run around in a night shift?”

“Better than playing some wind-up girl,” she sulked.

“Be glad we didn’t buy the gold skin paint to match,” Eveen retorted. “Or a little mechanical heart to carry around. Anyway, this way you blend in. Probably hundreds of Golden Bounties in the city tonight. Popular with girls your age.”

“I always preferred the Pirate Princess,” she retorted.

Eveen stopped chewing, to give an appraising look.

“What?” the girl asked.

“Nothing. It’s … nothing.”

They passed under a bridge packed with revelers who showered them in shimmering confetti before the boat turned down a canal to leave the Old City behind.

“I see Festival is still Festival,” the girl muttered, dusting off confetti. A troubled look crossed her face. That happened, Eveen noticed, whenever the girl acknowledged the reality of where she was—of when she was. It had taken convincing: letting her read broadsides and edicts; allowing her to ask random people the day, even the puzzled gondoliers.

“Everything just looks off,” she said. “Like that bridge we passed. I remember it being further downriver. That building.” Her chin nodded to a stone structure with tall cylindrical chimneys that belched out black smoke. “The central ironworks, right? It should be on the left bank, not the right.”

“Lots can change in sixty years,” Eveen said, starting on another skewer.

“Sixty years,” the girl repeated in awe. “Everyone I know is probably…”

She didn’t finish. She’d finally stopped asking to go home, realizing the parents she was looking for were long gone. But realizing and accepting were separate destinations, and she flitted between the two. Her gaze locked on Eveen with a familiar defiance.

“How do you know this thaumaturgist we’re going to see can help?”

“I don’t. But Fennis thinks it’s a good start.”

“To confirm I’m from where I say I’m from.”

“You tell a heckuva story. But we need to be sure.”

“I don’t have any motive in lying to you.”

Eveen shrugged. “Maybe. Could be you don’t even know you’re lying. Some sorcerer could’ve made you in his lair and put that whole story in your head.”

“That’s ridiculous,” the girl snapped.

“One time,” Eveen went on, “I chased this job across the city, only to find out he was a minion—made of animated clay. A decoy magicked to believe he was a real person. Thought he had a family and everything. Started crying for them when I caught him—and then in the middle of his sobs the magic gave out and ploop! Collapsed into a bunch of putty.”

“I’m not some … minion!”

Eveen finished off the skewer. “We’ll see.”

“Some nerve,” the girl huffed. “When you’re a ghoul—”

“I’ve told you already, undead. Not a ghoul.”

“How do you know you aren’t the created one? With that memory put in your head?”

“Because I wasn’t—allegedly—pulled out of time and stuck up in a tower.”

The girl gritted her teeth. “I’m not lying—”

“Sure,” Eveen cut her off. “Either way, whoever you are, hiring me to ship you means somebody’s fucking with me. And Aeril’s fiery tits, I don’t like being fucked with.”

“Why do you keep saying that?”

“What?”

“‘Aeril’s fiery tits’ this,” the girl mocked, dropping her voice. “‘Aeril’s fiery tits’ that.”

Eveen frowned. “It’s a saying.”

“Your goddess has fiery tits?”

“What? I dunno. It’s an expression.”

“Well it sounds stupid—and uncouth.”

“Are you your mother or mine?” Eveen muttered.

“According to your alleged memory, those might be the same thing.” The girl folded her arms, exhaling heavily. “So this is what I become? A foul-mouthed killer.”

“Hired killer,” Eveen corrected. “I don’t do it for free.”

“And that’s fine with you? Just offing people, willy-nilly?”

“I don’t off anyone willy or nilly. Each contract I get, rest assured they godsdamned earned what’s coming to them.”

“That doesn’t bother you? Murdering people?”

“Everybody dies. Present company included.” She bit into a third skewer.

The girl huffed. “Oh, and thanks for offering. Not like anyone else here is hungry.”

Eveen looked down. One skewer left. Grudgingly, she handed it over.

The two ate in silence, the sounds of Festival dimming as they passed into the clerics’ quadrant, where temples and statues rose up along the riverway like well-crafted hills.

“That’s a House of Kori.” The girl noted a statue of a smiling man with four heavy breasts standing before a colonnaded edifice. She dipped a finger in the river and drew a watery sign of devotion along her chin. “My parents keep icons at home. For luck, health, and wealth.” She locked eyes on Eveen. “What you said about not having memories, is that true?”

“Not a one. Until now.”

“Something to do with your goddess?”

“When you sign on to get resurrected, you give up your past. Practically reborn. Seven years back, I woke up like this.”

The girl frowned. “Seven years? I would’ve been almost seventy.”

“They don’t resurrect you right away. And sometimes there’s a backlog.”

“But you don’t look even forty yet. That would mean I…”

Eveen read her face. Real head game, finding out you had less than twenty years to live.

“Do you know how you…” The girl swallowed. “… ended?”

“Stop,” Eveen said. “Just stop. We don’t know anything yet. Let’s find out if we’re even the same person first. Then we can sit around braiding each other’s hair and you can tell me about being in love or whatever girls your age talk about. For now, just sit there and eat your food.”

The girl sat back. “You have odd ideas about girls my age.” But she was quiet.

Eveen settled her gaze on the river as they passed an austere temple of lion-headed deities, each brandishing a bow. Her face was serene. But inside, her mind worked furiously. Did the godsdamned girl not think she had questions? The missing pieces of her past life might be sitting right there. She’d like nothing more than to bleed the girl dry of every thought, every memory. But not yet. Not when she still didn’t know if the girl was even what she seemed.

“Almost there,” Fennis called back.

They were clearing the temples, approaching the scholars’ quadrant. She made out the Great Library—topped by a granite statue of the Matriarch who founded it, holding a golden scroll—said to house books and rare manuscripts dating back to the Lost Ages. Schools of varied disciplines had been built around it: philosophy, mathematics, alchemy, and more. They came closer and the boat pulled up to a pier. Eveen and the girl disembarked as Fennis paid the gondoliers.

“It’s gouging to charge more because of Festival,” he complained, as the boatmen pushed off.

“Everything costs more at Festival,” Eveen said. She stared at the building looming up in front of them, its round dome shifting colors in the moonlight.

“The School of Thaumaturgy,” the girl said, reading the words adorning its front.

Eveen glanced to her. “You read scholars’ script?”

“I’m a student,” she replied.

A student? Fresh questions perched on Eveen’s tongue, but she kept her mouth shut.

“This way,” Fennis beckoned.

They started up a set of wide steps that stayed illuminated as they walked.

“I don’t remember thaumaturgy being in this building,” the girl remarked.

“It has been for as long as I’ve known,” Fennis replied. “Less than sixty years, of course.”

“Of course,” the girl murmured.

“Who’s this thaumaturgist?” Eveen asked.

“My brother.”

“Wait, you have a brother? Who’s a thaumaturgist?”

Fennis nodded. “Half-brother. He teaches applied mechanical thaumaturgy.”

“You never told me you had a brother. Kind of thing you mention to friends.”

He gave her a sidelong glance. “No offense, but I didn’t know we were friends.”

She stopped to stare at him. “That actually hurt.”

He stopped in turn. “I always assumed we were more cordial work acquaintances. We only meet when there’s a job. You don’t even know where I live.”

The girl had stopped as well. “You two need a moment? Because you’re making the stairs dark.” Sure enough, the magic that kept the steps illuminated was dimming.

Eveen resumed walking. “Way to twist that knife, Fen.”

“Nothing personal,” he protested. “I’ve just never thought of you as having … friends.”

“Not easy when you’re undead.” It was true. With a few rare exceptions, most living people got uncomfortable if around the dead too long.

“Have you tried building relationships with the other Dead Cat Tails?” he asked.

“Who would that be? The four sadists or the pompous skeleton?”

“There’s Rejik,” he offered.

“Rejik is a whole weirdo.”

“True. The old man?”

“Please. I talk to you Fen. You’re my work … friend.”

He contemplated the idea. “A work friend. I suppose I can see that.”

“Glad you got that settled,” the girl said. “Do we have a way in?”

They were standing before the building’s stone front. And there was no door.

“I have the access sigil,” Fennis said. “My brother’s expecting me.”

Putting a finger to the taupe stone, he traced a hasty design. Almost instantaneously, an open archway materialized. Fennis stepped through, followed by the girl, and then Eveen—who was immediately thrown back. She tried again and something pushed against her heavily, sending her stumbling. From inside, Fennis looked on in confusion.

“I don’t believe the building cares for the undead,” he said apologetically.

“It’s thaumaturgy,” the girl noted. “The school naturally guards against dangers like—”

“If the next word out of your mouth is ghoul or zombie, I swear…” Eveen warned.

The sheer indignities she had to suffer. Undead were supposed to have rights in this city! Pulling one of her knives, she plunged it into the open space beneath the archway, setting off a crackle of lavender sparks. In one motion she sliced down through the air, creating a slit of light. Pushing on it like a curtain, she slipped inside.

“You cut right through that ward!” the girl exclaimed. “It’s at least fifth level sorcery!”

Eveen shrugged, sheathing the knife as the magic wound healed itself. Getting into inaccessible places was half her job description.

“This way,” Fennis beckoned.

They walked the school’s halls, empty this third night of Festival. Eveen couldn’t remember ever shipping anyone at a college to have gotten a chance to see one on the inside. But it was as predictably boring as she imagined. Statues and busts of people she’d never heard about lined corridors, and frescoes of sorcerers doing sorcerer stuff adorned the walls. They walked up long steps to stop before a set of black doors. From behind it came a sound like grinding metal.

“My brother’s laboratory,” Fennis said, knocking. “I should warn he can be odd.”

Eveen raised an eyebrow. “I’m undead, you have a moustache of fermented sky bison milk—no, I never told you because I thought it was funny to see you with it while haggling with that gondolier—and the girl might be a time refugee. So odd isn’t a problem.”

Fennis had stopped knocking to scrub at his upper lip when the doors flew open. It took a few moments for Eveen to register what she was seeing before nodding. “Okay. That’s odd.”

The laboratory was a vast rounded space that sat under a bulbous dome. The grinding they’d heard came from a large mechanical contraption of colorful orbs—some immense, others small, and many more in between. Each spun on its own axis: the smaller ones orbiting larger ones, and those in turn circling massive giants. They were attached to poles that extended in every direction from a large machine of brass and iron in the room’s center: reminiscent of a metal tree with multiple branches, laden with plump fruit that rotated about the room in a constant dance, both chaotic and harmonious.

Perched upon one of the globes was a man. He rode the thing even as it turned under his feet, rising and falling along a circuitous path. Eveen and the others pulled back in the doorway as several medium-sized orbs swept dangerously close, followed by an enormous sphere that rumbled like a boulder. Catching sight of the new arrivals, the man waved before jumping from his own sphere to land nimbly on the floor. He counted to himself, taking calculated steps to avoid being struck, until he reached the thick trunk of the contraption where he pulled a set of levers. A high-pitched squeal went up as the whole thing ground to a noisy halt.

“Fennis?” The man walked over. “I wasn’t expecting you for another hour.” He stopped, just noticing Eveen and the girl. “Oh! You’ve brought company.”

“Sorry, Ennis,” Fennis said. “Unexpected matters. This is Eveen and Sky.”

Fennis and Ennis? Eveen hid her smirk as they stepped into the room. The man definitely had a Tal Abisi father—with beige skin and a coil to his reddish hair. He carried something of a baby face too, but more mannish—if that was a thing—and with a close beard.

“Good night and happy Festival!” he greeted them, smiling. “Alas, I’m still in the middle of some work. Not quite ready to join all of you in reveling.”

“Riding that thing,” Eveen jerked a thumb up at the mechanical apparatus, “is what counts as work around here?”

The man chuckled. “How I pass the time. Half of thaumaturgy is waiting.”

“Is that an orrery?” the girl interjected, eyeing the contraption.

Ennis nodded. “Built to mimic the Great Orrery in the mechanical city of Kons.”

“An or-eh-what?” Eveen asked.

“An orrery,” the girl repeated, craning her neck to inspect the orbs. “The one in Kons is one of the twelve wonders of the southern continent. It’s a map of the stars, the many worlds, and their movements.”

“Ohhh! I read about some other world once, in Terrors of the Demon Lands. There were people there made up entirely of vegetables. Carrot people and leek people and—” Eveen stopped, as everyone turned to stare. “What?”

“Anyway,” the girl continued, “I remember the college talking about having one built, but I didn’t know they’d actually done it. How long has it been here?”

“Decades … long before your time.”

“Maybe not,” Eveen put in. The thaumaturgist’s face turned curious.

“That’s the matter we’ve come about—” Fennis stopped, startled at a sudden cacophony of bells.

His brother’s eyes widened, like a cook being reminded he had a soup on the boil. “Hold that thought!” he shouted, dashing off.

The three looked to each other before taking off after him, weaving through the stilled orrery to reach the other side of the room. It was lined with tables and shelves cluttered with objects—bound tomes and scrolls, sketches of bizarre beasts and plans for even more bizarre mechanical creations, an endless array of glass jars filled with powders, dried plants, and things preserved in emerald liquid.

The thaumaturgist ran past it all to reach the clamorous contrivance: a clock of some kind where a miniature Golden Bounty beat upon a bell. He shut it off, then bent before one of the tables to wait expectantly. They joined him, peering down at a wide round glass dish illuminated by glow lamps. In the dish’s center was a blue-green translucent blob. It sat there doing nothing and Eveen was about to ask the point of all this when the blob unexpectedly grew two appendages like thin spindly legs and began crawling.

“Well, that’s disgusting,” she remarked.

The now-walking blob hadn’t gone far before the thaumaturgist reached out with a small knife to slice it down the middle. Both halves paused, shivered, then each grew a new leg.

Eveen grimaced. “That’s even more disgusting.”

The one on the left shifted colors, settling on a shade of purple. Its companion turned a reddish-orange. Each blob then began walking away from the other.

“What is it?” the girl asked, clearly fascinated.

“A type of sea jelly from eastern Gulat,” the thaumaturgist said. “Bits of enchanted life, bubbling up naturally from magic-filled ores and minerals. It can live on land and adapts whatever is needed—tentacles, pseudopodia, even wings to glide.”

“You get paid to sit around cutting up magic sea jellies?” Eveen asked.

Ennis smiled. “An experiment. The creature is born of magic and reproduces by splitting. Normally it would remain dormant in Tal Abisi. Not enough magic here, as in its natural habitat. But with the Shimmer at high surge, the air is charged enough to tickle it awake.”

“So you got a sea jelly in the mood … and this is important why?”

“Think on it,” he urged. “One sea jelly is reborn as two. Then, they begin moving apart.” Indeed, the sea jellies had each retreated to opposite ends of the dish, treading small circles in their own spaces. Identical circles, with the exact same movements. “Put these sea jellies on opposite sides of the world, and they will follow congruous paths. Find themselves similar shelter. Seek out similar experiences—even though they live out separate existences.”

“How is that possible?” Sky asked.

“Magic,” the thaumaturgist said. “It imitates life, seeking symmetry out of randomness.”

Eveen looked up from the jellies to find the girl staring back. This talk of death, rebirth, and past lives was hitting too close to home.

“But I doubt you came to sit with me and ponder theories of quantum thaumaturgy.”

Fennis nodded. “Yes. About that…” His brother stood silent as the night’s odd events were related. The only thing that moved was his eyes, which grew rounder by the moment.

“Eveen!” It was the first word out of his mouth. “You’re Eveen the Eviscerator!”

“Eviscerator?” The girl’s jaw went slack. “You’re called the Eviscerator?”

Eveen rolled her eyes. “It was just the once.”

“I’ve read all about your escapade in the Wheelbarrow.” He turned to his brother. “Fennis, I didn’t know you knew the Eviscerator!”

“We’re work friends,” Eveen put in.

“Can you help us?” Fennis asked.

His brother absently twirled the gold Festival token they’d showed him, his other hand scratching at his beard. He stared at the two women the way he’d been looking at those magic jellies, as if deciding whether they could be stuffed in a jar. Eveen was starting to wonder if perhaps his beard was just itchy, and whether to recommend a good balm, when a light entered his eyes.

“I think I have just the thing!”

“SO WHEN YOU said just the thing, maybe you could have been more specific?”

Eveen spoke while looking up into the thaumaturgist’s eager face, as he fitted a metal cap over her head before securing its leather chin straps. She lay flat atop one of the tables. Directly opposite, the girl lay on another table, head fitted with a similar cap, her mass of blue braids spread out beneath. Like Eveen’s, her odd cap trailed corded ropes of copper, each leading to some gadgety-looking thing flanked by a rectangular sheet of black glass.

“You’re certain this is going to work?” the girl asked, her voice nervous.

“There are no certainties in the thaumaturgical sciences,” Ennis replied. “This device was created to manifest auras, what some call essences, perhaps even the soul—which leaves a particular spectral imprint.” He gestured to the glass. “I discovered that if you connect two living beings, the device allows their auras to share thoughts, in effect reading the other’s mind. You both need to find out each other’s truth. This should accomplish that.”

“You’ve used this before, then?” the girl asked.

“On myself, yes. And cats. Regrettably, they won’t let me experiment on students.”

“You shared your aura with a cat?” Eveen asked, half-expecting the man to lick himself.

“Yes. Remarkable creatures. Half in this world and half … who knows.”

“What is it cats are thinking about?” the girl asked.

Ennis shrugged. “Mostly fancy themselves predators who hunt and eat us. Delusions of grandeur. Anyway, the principle here should be the same. Though what will happen when an out of time girl meets the mind of her possible undead self—might yield some interesting results!”

With that he walked off, leaving them to wait. The sound of levers being thrown was followed by the rumbling of grinding metal. The orrery. The thaumaturgist claimed the thing acted as a large generator. As it spun faster, the gears on the gadgety device they were hooked into began to turn. Eveen’s scalp tickled as the cap vibrated while on the other table the girl’s breathing grew faster.

“You know,” she called out above the growing din, “in one of the Asheel the Maniac Hunter stories, this thaumaturgist straps him down and tries to cut out his brain to replace it with another maniac’s!”

The girl turned to her, wide-eyed. “That’s not helping!”

Eveen settled in to watch the orbs spinning above with a grin. “I know!”

Then the world exploded.

No, not exploded. It broke apart like cracked glass, or a fragile egg, and fell away in tiny pieces—taking her with it. She wasn’t in the laboratory anymore. She wasn’t anywhere. Didn’t even have a body. She was more a sensation, streaking through those tiny broken pieces of what had been reality. Passing through one she was suddenly a little girl holding a woman’s hand. Falling through another she was a bit older, running and laughing with other kids through back alleys. In another she was crying after spraining an ankle. Another. She yelled in angry tears after a girl who walked away. Another. She was on a river boat being serenaded and letting her fingers glide through the waters. So it went. They were memories. Thousands—tens of thousands. Memories of the girl’s life! They filled Eveen with a thrill of new emotions, and she reached for eager hands that didn’t exist, trying to grab each bit, to take them inside herself, filled with the need to join with them. But something yanked at her suddenly, pulling her back, ripping all those feelings and memories from her grasp—until they were motes of light in a black void.

Eveen was back in the laboratory. Above, the orrery slowed and the metal cap on her head no longer vibrated. She yanked it off, sitting up to find Fennis hovering, his face worried.

“How long was I out?” she mumbled.

“A few minutes.”

“Minutes? But it felt like—”

“Years,” someone stammered. The girl. She sat up as well, holding the cap in trembling hands. Her eyes met Eveen’s. “I saw your … the past seven years.” She swallowed. “All that killing. The emptiness. The loneliness.”

Eveen felt her face stiffen. She wasn’t keen on having someone poke around in her innermost thoughts. Then again, she’d done the same. Besides, this wasn’t just someone.

“I believe you,” she said.

The girl met her gaze. “Me too.”

Neither could deny it. Not after that experience. They knew the truth the way someone could if only they went swimming through their own thoughts. It was like the original memory she’d had of staring into that mirror—multiplied by thousands. The girl was her.

“So do I.” It was the thaumaturgist. He was looking to the rectangular sheets of glass. On each of their black surfaces was etched a pattern like calligraphy, written in light.

“Are those our auras?” Sky asked. “They look…”

“Identical,” he finished. “That should be impossible! No two people have the same aura. It would be like carrying the same soul. And that’s not all.” He pointed to the inner edges of the glass, where the patterns bent and reached toward the other.

“They were trying to merge,” Fennis explained, his own voice awed. “Ennis had to shut off the device, afraid you might both end up in just one body—leaving the other empty.”

Eveen remembered then trying to snatch up all those memories, trying to devour them.

The thaumaturgist shook his head in wonder. “I’ve never seen the like. But there’s no doubt—you are both the same.”

“So it’s true, then,” Fennis said, the awe now in his eyes. “Sky is you, pulled out of time and contracted to be shipped—by you. This is bad.”

“You think?” Eveen swung her legs to the floor, standing up to look at the girl—Sky, her name is Sky. Your name is Sky. “Don’t recall seeing anything that would mark you for a contract. Not exactly living life on the edge.”

“I told you,” Sky said. “My—our—parents, were just textile dyers.”

Our parents, Eveen thought. She had parents!

“I think we may be perceiving this wrongly,” Fennis cut in, his face indicating his mind was spinning like the orrery. “If you are both the same person, then theoretically you, Sky, may be responsible for acts you haven’t yet committed. Perhaps it was something done in the gap of time between your present self and Eveen’s resurrection—which is yet unknown to either of you. But, seeing that someone waited this long to make the commission…”

Eveen gritted her teeth. “It’s likely something I did.” Of course. How many people had she shipped? How many angry bosses, friends, and relatives left behind? “But I have immunity. Assassin rule #130: someone wants vengeance, they go after whoever contracted the shipping. But they can’t go after me. That’s the goddess’s law!”

Fennis bit his lip, thinking again. “Yes. But technically, they’re not going after you.” His eyes flickered to Sky.

“Someone found a loophole in your goddess’s law,” she said, resigned. “And I’m it.”

“Aeril’s fiery tits you are!” Eveen growled. “Hey, smart guy. How do we send her back?”

The thaumaturgist had stood listening, as if making mental notes.

“I wouldn’t begin to know,” he said. “Magic capable of pulling someone through time? That seeks to undermine a godling contract? Do you have any idea the danger involved? No college would teach a student such recklessness! Not to mention, the thaumaturgical energy required is astronomical! A score of these orreries wouldn’t be enough. Theoretically, it should be impossible.”

“This is bad,” Fennis fretted again. “The third—”

“I know,” Eveen snapped. “The gods-cursed third unbreakable vow. I know.”

“If I could be given several weeks to study this unorthodox magic—” Ennis suggested.

“We don’t have weeks,” Eveen countered.

“What’s this third vow?” Sky asked, sounding very much like she didn’t want to know.

“A contract signed and agreed upon must be carried out,” Eveen answered. Practically scripture. The other two vows you could bend. She ought to know. You might annoy the goddess. Have to appease her. But this one …

“What happens if you don’t carry it out?”

“Very bad things.” Eveen met Fennis’s knowing gaze. “I need to talk to Baseema.”

He shook his head. “No. Stay away from Baseema for now. Give me time to look through the laws on godling contract. This matter is unprecedented. There may be something in the books to fall back on. But whatever you do, don’t go see Baseema.”

Eveen looked right into his eyes when she lied to his baby man-face.

“Of course.”

CHAPTER FOUR

“I THOUGHT FENNIS said not to go see Baseema?”

Eveen pushed through drunken revelers reciting literature to Sky. Maybe that Golden Bounty outfit wasn’t the best idea.

“He did,” she responded, quickening her strides. “But I’m not leaving things up to obscure passages in godling contractual law. Not what Asheel the Maniac Hunter would do.”

“This Baseema, she’s the head of your guild?” Sky asked.

Eveen looked to her, and for about the tenth time since leaving the thaumaturgist found herself mesmerized—at the impossible face made possible, her own face. Sky seemed to be doing the same, in reverse. Their gazes lingered, then hastily broke away, like staring at your own reflection too long.

“Yeah, our guild boss,” Eveen answered.

“She’s the one who … brought you back?” Sky asked.

“Resurrected. Easier if you just say it. But no. There are these priestesses of Aeril and they do the reanimation. Then you get chosen by She of the Fiery Tits to work wherever.”

“As an assassin,” Sky said. Her voice tried to contain the revulsion—and failed.

“Actually, lots are cooks.”

Sky raised an eyebrow. “Cooks?”

“Cooks.” Eveen took them across a stone bridge, leaving behind the revelers to enter a row of shops, their doors and windows shuttered. “Aeril’s name translates in some moldy old tongue as Lady of Knives. Maybe because you also use knives for cooking? She supposedly has a whole other persona as a deity of fiery kitchens who forces hapless souls to grind bones for her bread. There’s a god in Aruth named Cerin that’s probably her in disguise.”

“Aruth, that city on the southern continent with like umpteen gods?”

“Yeah, real zealots, I hear. Anyway, lots of those resurrected by Aeril’s priestesses go into the culinary services. Most of the best chefs in Tal Abisi are her undead thralls. Have their own guild too. Was them that pressed for rights for the undead.”

“And they—you—got it?”

“Yup. Everyone likes to keep the cooks happy. That’s why Fennis ended up working for the Dead Cat Tails, I think. Trying to finagle his way up the social ladder to food critic.”

“Or down,” Sky muttered.

Eveen snorted. “Right. Food critics. Who needs them?”

There was a pause before Sky spoke again.

“So why are you an assassin? Were you trained … before?”

Eveen shook her head. “Nope. Woke up like this. With a head full of hands-on murdering instead of whipping up savory dishes and souffles. Aeril only knows how we’re sorted out.”

“Can’t recall if I saw that when we…” Sky tapped her temple. “It’s fading.”

She meant the memories. It was happening to Eveen too. She could barely remember most of what she’d seen when they’d almost … merged. Nothing but glimpses now. Like flipping pages of a book in a blur.

“This is it,” she said.

They stopped at the mouth of an alleyway across from a set of white stone buildings. Each was three stories with red-tiled terracotta roofs, all closed in by a black wrought iron fence topped with golden spikes. The Fortunate Widow’s Row wasn’t the wealthiest district in Tal Abisi. Not by half. But it was popular with those seeking escape from the Old City’s cramped quarters—if you could afford it.

“Nice,” Sky commented.

“Baseema has a taste for fine things,” Eveen replied.

“You think she’ll help?”

“Help is a stretch. But she might have answers.”

“Like who did this to me? To … us?”

Eveen looked into those dark eyes—as questioning as her own. For a second time tonight, she came out of her cloak. “Take this.”

“You won’t need it?”

“Won’t work. Baseema’s place is warded tighter than a bank. If I don’t make it back within the hour—”

“You think you won’t come back?” Sky asked in alarm.

“Just covering our bases. If I don’t make it back within the hour, find Fennis. He’ll be at the Great Library—think you can get there alone?” That was a lie. If Eveen didn’t make it out, the girl would be dead before even getting back over the bridge—cloak or no cloak. But what was the point in telling her that?

“Maybe.” Sky looked about. “Everything’s all turned around.”

“Well, backtrack. Just get to the river.” If you can even make it to the river.

She turned to go, then felt a touch at her arm. Sky’s face was sober as she anointed her chin and cheeks with a forefinger. “Be careful and Kori’s fortune.”

Eveen nodded uncertainly. She didn’t invoke any gods other than Aeril. Immortals were too needy. Light a candle for me. Burn this incense in my name. Sacrifice three goats. Blah, blah blah. Serving one was more than enough. But she allowed the girl’s touch, if only for the head-trippy feeling of being anointed by … yourself.

“Thanks, but I’ve got my own luck.” Pulling out the figurine of the Pirate Princess she’d managed to hold on to since earlier tonight, she kissed it before bounding for the fence—scaling it easily and soaring over the gold-plated spikes to land on the other side.

Fortunately, there were no guards. The fence was enough to announce that any interlopers would be hunted down and hauled before a magistrate. Of course, Eveen wasn’t just anyone. Shadows favored the dead, and clung to her, even without the cloak. She slipped around one of the buildings to a set of back stairs and made her way up, working out in her head what she might say once she got inside.

“Hey Baseema, you won’t believe the night I’m having!”

“Hey Baseema, things got a little crazy!”

“Hey Baseema, you want to hear the weird news or the really weird news?”

She was still trying them out when she came to the back window she wanted. It was partially opened, and she quickly shimmied herself inside. Passing through the wards protecting the place was like being dunked in fiery ice water—freezing cold with searing prickly needles all at once. But she didn’t burn to ash or turn inside out, so that was lucky.

She stood in a kitchen, where half-sampled foods sat on platters. Remembering she hadn’t eaten since the boat ride, she scooped up some oysters on the half shell topped with pungent onions, sucking them down before tearing off strips of fried pork slathered in jelly. Biting into a leg of roasted hen, she took quiet steps toward a curtain of beads—some wood, others colorful stone or glass. On the other side, in a large—no, freakishly huge—room lit by dimmed glow lanterns that hung from a vaulted ceiling, two voices danced in conversation.

A man, slurring in an accent decidedly not Tal Abisi. “Bassie. Tell me the story.”

A familiar woman’s throaty reply. “You know the story.”

“I want to hear it again.”

“I’m sure young lips have whispered it in your ear.”

“Your lips are sweeter than any whisper.”

“A tongue dipped in silver. Very well. The Clockwork King—”

“No, no! You must start with the Pirate Princess!”

“You telling this story or am I?”

“But you yourself were once a pirate, yes?”

“That, beautiful boy, was a lifetime ago.”

Tick-Tick

Eveen peeked from between the beads to the woman in question—Baseema, guild boss of the Dead Cat Tails. She sat reclined in a chair of lacquered blackwood with inlaid ivory. Large playing cards stood stacked into a house atop a desk of similar make. She turned one about in a tattooed hand, face drawn tight in wistful thought—so that the constellation of freckles dotting her light brown skin hurtled together.

“The Pirate Princess was not true royalty,” she began. “But she had earned the sobriquet, for her deeds and the many curiosities she had seen—having sailed between the five known continents and beyond, some say even past the Tempest Sea.”

“None have gone beyond the Tempest Sea,” the man interjected. Eveen could make him out on one edge of the room, sprawled amid a bed of turquoise and orange pillows. His bare chest rose as he pulled from a long mahogany pipe near dark as his skin, exhaling pungent smoke in curling streams. “The winds rend all to pieces. Nothing lives in those cursed waters but monsters who could swallow men whole and drag down a fleet of treasure ships.”

Baseema shrugged beneath the gold-leaf embroidered red kaftan that draped her ample shoulders. She added the card in her hand to the flimsy house, smirking when it didn’t fall, and pulled another from the deck. “Either the Pirate Princess did all that is reputed to her legend, or she didn’t, and there’s no need to sing her tales at all. So which is it?”

The man laughed, exhaling more smoke.

Tick-Tick

Baseema went on. “As I was saying, the Pirate Princess sailed her ship far and wide, and was celebrated for her deeds. Many said if ever pirates were to carve a throne, she would be crowned their princess.”

“Why a princess?” the man asked. “Why not a queen?”

Baseema’s full, crimson-painted lips quirked into a crooked smile. “This world has only ever known one pirate queen, Xasha-Ro of the Golden Fleet, who I sailed with upon Sea Lords’ Bay. There have been none like her, and there shall never be again.” Another card was added to the house. “Now will you let me tell this story?”

The man twirled slender figures in apology and acquiescence.

“The Pirate Princess had become bored,” Baseema continued, “lamenting there were no more great escapades. Until she learned of the Clockwork King. An inventor, from Kons—either expelled or in self-exile on a remote island, where he built great wonders. And none was as fantastic as the Golden Bounty.”

“Ah!” the man gasped. “The maiden of gold!”

“A clockwork maiden constructed of gold,” Baseema corrected, wagging a card held between two fingers. “Every bit of her, down to the smallest cog, with an ever-ticking heart imbued with magic that bestowed the spark of life. People claimed her very voice was golden, so that when she hummed birds flocked to hear, when she read beasts knelt to listen, and when she sang the sky opened to weep.”

“What men would not give to hear such a voice,” the man remarked.

“So the Pirate Princess thought. Many had attempted to steal the Golden Bounty. But the Clockwork King held guardians for his isle, who smashed any ships that came near.”

“But she found a way, yes?”

A card went gingerly atop the house. “Of course. She was the Pirate Princess, after all.”

Tick-Tick

“And she stole away the Clockwork King’s creation—who they say he crafted as a wife.”

Baseema shrugged again. “Wife. Consort. Daughter. He kept her like a bird in a cage all the same.”

“He was furious to see her go, yes?”

“Like a man who thought himself a god. He vowed to hunt down his treasure. But…”

“Oh! I like this part!”

“The Pirate Princess had done as she set out to do. The Golden Bounty was a prize she could sell to rulers on the far side of the world. What she had not expected was to fall in love. And for the golden maiden to love her back in turn.”

The man sat up lazily, his whip-lean body glimmering under the glow lights. Eveen took in the youthfulness of his pretty face, obscured by a cascade of black curly tresses. Her eyes traveled down to his waist, where a red-jeweled knife sat fitted into loose white trousers. Baseema dallying with men half her age was hardly news. But a Banari with a marriage knife? That was asking for trouble, from a set of husbands and wives—all with knives of their own.

“This is why Tal Abisi recite and sing poetry to each other during Festival, yes?” he asked.

“Or literature,” Baseema replied. “How the maiden won a pirate’s heart.”

“But how does one love a machine?”

“Love is love, silly boy. Anyway, when the Clockwork King learned his maiden had been brought here, he laid siege to the city to steal her back—with his terrible machines.”

“And the result was the loss of an entire district,” the Banari noted. “The Shimmer, you call it, yes? I can feel its magic on me. Do you know I almost had three duels tonight?”

Baseema’s nostrils flared. “You Banari don’t need Shimmer Fever for a knife fight.”

“True,” he chuckled. “But my point stands. Your city faced destruction over this mechanical girl. Why not give her up?”

Baseema put down the card she had been aiming and lifted a finger. “One, this was the home of the Pirate Princess—who was much admired.” Another finger. “Two, when he brought his army here, the Clockwork King united the city in outrage.” A third finger, and a smile. “Three, shrewd merchants, traders, and scoundrels all here may be—but Tal Abisi’s own heart was won over by the unlikely love of a pirate and a golden maiden.”

Tick-Tick

The Banari grinned. “For love, then. Will you read to me, like the golden maiden?”

“I thought you wanted to hear this story?”

“Yes. But now, you have put me in another mood.”

“You must be the most spoiled member of your household,” Baseema snarked.

His laugh came in a wreath of smoke. “Spoil me now, and I promise to spoil you later.”

“I’ll hold you to that. Choose a book, while I see to my company.” Adding another card to her carefully constructed house, she straightened, glancing up to peer through the veil of beads. “Are you going to stand there all night like some peeking pervert or step into the light?”

Eveen winced. The woman had known she was there the whole time? She stepped through the curtain with a rattle, feeling less the agile assassin and more the delinquent child. “I wasn’t peeking. Just … waiting for a good moment.”

Baseema’s dark eyes studied her, that round face unyielding as stone. “The ward you slipped through—it tells me not only when someone has entered my home, but precisely who.” She tapped one of the many rings on her fingers: some gold, others brass or copper, plain bands or with gems, engraved or with carvings—every last one a charm. The same for the four earrings in each ear, and the small jade loop clinching her nose septum. Eveen suspected the silver hair comb pinning up her graying curls was also an amulet, that could melt your brain or something.

“Is this another one of your dead things?” the Banari asked. He stood now on his tiptoes, scanning a shelf of books.

“Someone in my employ. The goddess’s employ. Who has some explaining to do.” She pointed to a chair on the other side of the desk, her meaning obvious.

Eveen wasn’t too surprised that the woman already knew. You didn’t become a guild boss by not being in the know. Besides, Eveen was counting on that to help her figure out what in the many hells was going on. Accepting the invitation—or summons—she straightened and crossed the room toward the one person who might be able to provide some answers.

Baseema had been born in Tal Abisi but left, as she liked to tell it, a skinny waif of a girl to serve on a trading dhow. She returned decades later, also as she liked to tell it, with flesh on her bones and pockets fat with wealth—enough to invest in several ventures, including the Dead Cat Tails. Get her drunk and she’d recount harrowing stories: from surviving the fighting pits of Mura, wherever that was, to hauling blocks of fire salt, whatever that was, across treacherous straits. Her days now were settled, and she vowed never to return to the sea. But mementos of her exploits decorated her spacious home—each telling its own story, and reputedly worth a fortune among those like Baseema who dabbled in rare goods.

The barbed harpoon on a wall, she claimed, was used to hunt giant sand squid that dwelt in a desert sea. The black feathered helmet and shirt of chainmail, fitted onto a faceless mannequin, were purportedly the raiment of a warrior monk who died in a quest to become a paladin—hoping to fight beside his gods in a war for the Third Heaven. Or was it the Fourth Heaven? One of the Heavens.

Then, there was her prize—Tick-Tick.

Eveen warily eyed the towering construction of bones held together by nails and wires: the bleached skeleton of a Titan Dread bird, distant cousin to the flightless steppers, with a broad beak that could swallow a goat whole. Baseema boasted of having helped bring down the monster herself, though it killed two of her crew. Now its remains decorated her home.

Well, they did more than that.

Eveen watched the dread bird’s hollow gaze track her movement, the neck creaking as the massive skull slowly turned. Was it surprising that the head of a guild of undead assassins kept the reanimated bones of a man-eating bird like some pet? Or guard dog? Probably not. But the thing still unnerved her, and she kept her distance from the oversized curved talon protruding from one bony toe—sharp enough to slice her to pieces. It twitched restlessly on the stone floor, making the sound that was the monster’s namesake: Tick-Tick.

She pulled her eyes from the giant bird, trying to judge how much of a run she’d need to reach any of the three balconies. And how to do so before Tick-Tick was on her. Assassin rule #480: guild bosses are inherently shady. Assassin rule #481: never enter a room you can’t get out of. Reaching the desk, she eased into the waiting chair—which sat lower, naturally. Baseema peered down with an imperious glare: commendable, given that she was dressed in a sleeping kaftan and house sandals.

“When word reached me that one of mine failed to complete a job, I thought it had to be a mistake,” she began. “I threatened to cut out the messenger’s tongue for a liar. Turns out, it was true.”

“Got to keep his tongue, then,” Eveen quipped. “His wife will be happy.”

The joke slid off Baseema like water off a canal eel.

“Instead of fulfilling your contract you made off with your job.”

“That’s absolutely not what happened!… Okay. That’s what happened, but—”

“Dozens of guards were injured.”

“Pfft. More like … scores.”

“Twenty-six.”

“Fine, two dozen. When did we start caring about injured guards?”

Baseema slapped the table hard enough to topple her house of cards.

“When you injure them fleeing an unfinished job!” she shouted.

The guild boss’s unflappable demeanor had become a roiling storm. Eveen had that effect on people. From somewhere behind, Tick-Tick’s bones rattled uneasily with the change in his mistress’s mood. So she chose her next words carefully.

“I know how it looks. But I can explain.”

Baseema crossed her arms, face reforming into stone. And Eveen explained.

She told of infiltrating the tower and that first memory, even the trip to the thaumaturgist. The only things she left out were arriving here, and that the girl in question was tucked into a nearby alley. When she finished there was quiet, only broken when the Banari sauntered up, extending an arm over Eveen’s shoulder to drop a book onto the desk.

“That is a wild story, dead thing,” he slurred.

She glanced past his taut torso to his pretty face, where red-rimmed eyes stared down. High as a bird. She glanced to Tick-Tick. Present company excluded.

“I believe her,” he announced, before wandering back to the pillows and his pipe.

Baseema remained silent, looking past Eveen toward a balcony. She had taken to restacking her cards, and now traced lazy lines across one with a manicured fingernail—the suit of ravens depicting the bald, bespectacled, bearded Clockwork King, cape and all, with iron giants trailing in his wake.

“Damn,” she spoke at last.

“You believe me then?”

Her dark eyes narrowed. “No one would dare tell me a lie that big.”

“I keep my lies manageable. How’d they do it then? Thought the reanimation spell would prevent something like this.”

“It godsdamned should! No memories. No past. No life.”

Eveen knew the scripture. She’d been drilled with that from the moment of her resurrection—opening her eyes as one of the undead, all ties to her past cut like a snipped thread. Meticulous steps were taken to assure complete disassociation. Some of it was common sense: resurrect you well after your death, so that your close connections had either died or moved on. But there was also magic: rendering you unrecognizable to any who might still know you. A person with no past has no weaknesses, the priestess who assisted in her resurrection had whispered. Aeril’s will.

“Someone found a way to undo Aeril’s will,” she said.

Baseema huffed. Her face was scrunched up in thought, the freckles colliding into each other again. She stayed like that for a while before her features relaxed. The look of someone who had come to a decision.

“Where’s the girl?” she asked. Silence. “Well, wherever you put her, go find her. Then slit her throat. Only way to set things right.”

Eveen started. “Did you not hear what I just said? The girl—”

“Is you. I heard. Someone, somehow, got through the anonymity magic, pulled your younger self from the past, then contracted you to take her out.”

“That doesn’t bother you?”

“Hells yes! It’s a godsdamned disaster! But not as much as that girl being alive.”

“Someone set me up!”

“No shit!” Baseema snapped. “Set you up to break a contract—and you fall for it. You take one look at that face, your dead brain farts out a memory, and then you can’t do your job. Just like they intended. Did you think of that?”

Eveen would have blinked, if she blinked. “They knew I wouldn’t do it,” she murmured.

“They counted on it.” Baseema jabbed a finger. “Counted on you to break the third unbreakable vow. You think you’re the only one set up here? We’re all at risk. Or don’t you understand that?”

Eveen touched the back of her neck, tracing the inked jackal-eared hound. The third unbreakable vow on an undead assassin was the simplest and most significant: once you accepted a job, you carried it out. Period. End. Dot. You didn’t, and you not only cheated death, you cheated Aeril. And for that, there was hell to pay. Literally.

“You know there were once five undead assassin guilds in Tal Abisi,” Baseema said, slipping into the storyteller. “The fifth, one of their assassins went and fell for a job. Claimed she made him feel alive again. He tried to cover it up, fake her death. But you can’t fool Aeril. They say the night her hounds came a wind blew through the city, reeking of brimstone and embers. People shut themselves inside, unwilling to venture out. And that night, the hounds hunted. They found the two lovers. Tore them apart. Then they went after every member of the guild—including their boss. After that their investors, the clerks handling their books, creditors, people who owed them money. All those souls, dragged before Aeril. And the guild—liquidated.”

A low whistle from the Banari pierced the silence.

Tick-Tick

Baseema leaned forward. “That’s what waits for us if you don’t finish this job.”

Eveen knew the story. Every undead assassin did. Told to you the way children were warned of shadow men lurking under their beds. Ship your job, or Aeril’s hounds will come for you. No one messed around with the third unbreakable vow. But no one faced what she was facing either.

“She’s me! What if I ship her and then go … poof?”

She’d been thinking on that. If she killed her younger self, would she then cease to be? And how could she kill herself if she never became herself in the first place? It was enough to tie her brain into knots.

“If you don’t, it’s the hounds,” Baseema retorted. “I know you like breaking rules—”

“That was one time.”

“And you’re still paying for it. Now you want us all to pay for your choices?”

Eveen was quiet before edging forward. “Who contracted the job?”

Baseema shook her head. “It was anonymous.”

Now Eveen huffed. “As if you don’t peek at the contracts. Come off it!”

Both women turned at the Banari’s laughter. “She has you there!”

“Grown folks are talking, precious,” Baseema chided sweetly. “Let me handle business.”

“Give me the name,” Eveen pressed.

“No.”

She scowled. “If I was pretty boy over there you’d give me anything.”

Baseema arched an eyebrow. “I’m sorry. Are we fucking?”

Eveen arched an eyebrow back. “Would that help? I do like the husky ones.”

That actually elicited a smile from the woman, displaying a bottom row of white silver teeth and molars studded with fire jewels—a damned fortune in her mouth alone.

“Give me the name,” Eveen urged. “And I’ll find who did this to me. To us!” Baseema eyed her long and hard. Then with a heavy sigh, fell back into her chair.

“You know if you won’t do your job, I can’t let you leave.”

Eveen sat back as well. “Yeah. Figured. So what you got planned? Tick-Tick?”

Baseema lifted a hand, turning a thick gold band on her thumb.

A prickling at her skin was the first sign Eveen got as new undead entered the room. They stepped from globs of shadows. Four women—in black assassin leathers, down to the breeches. Nice trick.

The Banari clapped. “More dead things!”

Eveen groaned. “The quads? You’re setting the quads on me?”

Baseema answered by lifting a finger and turning another ring. Eveen’s knives slid from their scabbards, hurtling into Baseema’s waiting hands.

“And you’re taking my knives?”

“What was gifted, can be retracted.”

“Oh, so it’s like that?”

Baseema set the knives onto her desk. “That’s how you made it.”

“Hey girlfriend,” one of the women called. “We’re not interrupting, are we?”

Eveen gave Baseema her strongest “you wrong for this” stare before standing and turning about. The four women had moved into a semicircle, their menacing poise and sharp smiles giving them the look of feral street cats—which wasn’t far off.

“Hear you’re having some problems,” the one who had called out said. Black painted lips pressed into a mock pout under a black cat’s mask that covered the top half of her face. “Wanna talk about it? Just us girls?” She balanced a slate gray war hammer over one shoulder, twirling the iron handle idly.

“Ooni,” Eveen said. “Or is it … Mimi?”

“She’s Mimi,” another one replied, jerking a square jaw at a third. “I’m Ooni.”

“Sorry. Then you must be Ini?”

“Ipi,” the hammer-wielder corrected. She gestured to a smaller woman. “That’s Ini.”

“Right. Always get you four confused.” Actually, Eveen didn’t. But she knew it irked them.

“Thinks she’s funny,” Ooni remarked, flexing broad shoulders.

“Cut her some slack,” Ipi purred. “Didn’t you hear? Poor ting ting’s had a rough night.”

“Went and had you a memory,” Mimi said, thumbing the jagged teeth of a giant cleaver.

Ipi shook her head. “Now she’s all … discombobulated.”

“Yeah,” Ooni drawled. “Breaking my fucking heart.”

Mimi gasped, eyes rounding in mock fright. “What if I go poof?”

The four laughed. Well, three. Ini, who never spoke, just looked on blankly.

“Do they always talk this long before fighting?” the Banari sighed.

“They like to draw it out,” Eveen said.

The quads were sisters. How they all ended up serving Aeril was anybody’s guess. Eveen liked to imagine their hapless parents had sold the terrors off. Baseema used them for the guild’s dirtiest work—wholesale massacres and the like. And they reveled in it.

Ipi grinned. “Drawing it out makes the end sweeter. Should try it.”

“I’ll pass on watching flesh worms burrow out eyeballs,” Eveen said.

Ooni huffed. “Thinks she’s better than us.”

“Like her shit don’t stink,” Mimi sneered.

“Oh we know it stinks,” Ipi added, tilting back the war hammer. “Eviscerator.”

Ooni chuckled. “That’s right. Almost forgot.”

“Hear you opened that job up like a fish,” Mimi said, biting her tongue between a smile.

“Bet you enjoyed it a little, right?” Ipi winked. “Just between us girls?”

“It was only the once,” Eveen replied evenly.

“Bleeding heart.” Mimi hefted the big cleaver. “Maybe we’ll try it out on you.”

“See if we can rip out your insides faster than you can heal,” Ooni nodded.

“No.” Ipi’s grin curled vicious. “Her we break. Then stuff what’s left in a coffin.”

“Undead and hungry in a box,” Ooni taunted. “Nothing to eat but your tongue.”

Mimi snickered. “Hear you go insane that way. Turn full zombie.”

“Don’t worry,” Ipi said. “We’ll let you out from time to time, to chase down our jobs for a nice meal. Now the girl, when we find her—”

Eveen cut the woman off with a wide and loud yawn. “I’m sorry. I zoned out there for a minute. Are you all planning to just talk me into a second death? Is that the torture? Is it happening, like, right now?”

From the other side of the room, the Banari guffawed. “Bassie, I think I would like that story now.”

Baseema, who sat quiet, picked up the book he’d dropped. “The Seven Sons of the Golem Lord?”

“I like fairy tales,” he said. “It will be a beautiful contrast amid the violence to come.”

“Spoiled boy,” she tsked, and opened the book to begin. “The first son of the Golem Lord was carved from a boulder rolled down from a mountain. Rainwater coursed through his veins and he was bound together with draughts of captured wind, the holy name of the Wandering One chiseled onto his stony skin…”

Ooni came for Eveen first.

The biggest of the quads was on her in moments, fists swinging. Ooni didn’t use weapons. Just brute force. And a mean pair of brass death’s head knuckledusters. Eveen pulled back, reaching for her knives before remembering they were gone. She dodged a second swing meant for her head and another for her chest—but couldn’t avoid the one to her middle. It hit like a cannon. She went hurtling, sliding across the floor and rolling to clutch her injury. Dulled pain or no, that hurt like the many hells. Trying to get her bearings she attempted to stand but Ooni was fast, kicking her hard enough to send her sprawling again. Then the big woman grabbed her by the hair, lifting her off her feet before slamming her to the ground with force enough to make a living person black out. As it was, Eveen felt like she’d been under a stampede. From nearby, the other quads laughed.

“Not going to leave much for us, Ooni!” Mimi complained.

“Don’t break her too bad!” Ipi added. “We need to know about the girl!”

Ooni snorted. “So much for the Eviscerator.”

Eveen was picking herself up, limping backward. Her gaze went past Ooni and out through the open balcony to the alley—and the shadow she’d left hidden there.

“Hey, I’m over here!” Ooni shouted. “That’s it. Stay with me. Thought you were supposed to be tough shit. I ain’t impressed.”

She surged forward in a burst of speed. This time, however, Eveen caught one of her wrists and reached up to dig fingers under the leather facemask, gripping tight. Spinning her about, she used the bigger woman’s momentum to propel her through the curtains and onto the balcony. Ooni caught the stone railing and might have prevented her fall—if Eveen hadn’t grabbed her unsteady legs and with a heave pitched her over the edge.

Turning around she stood straight, losing the limp. From outside Ooni’s startled yelp had become a cry that cut off at a sudden squelch—turning finally into howling curses. Likely, impaled on the gate. That had to hurt.

“Think she’s impressed now?” Eveen asked.

“I’m impressed!” the Banari shouted.

Baseema paused her reading, then started again. “The second son of the Golem Lord was molded from earth, under the light of a waxing moon…”

The other quads stared momentarily—before Ipi screamed.

“Fucking bitch!”

“That’s more like it,” Eveen muttered. Forget the fake smiles and clever taunts, Ipi was all poorly managed explosive anger. She came at a run, the war hammer singing. No, the thing was screaming! Eveen bent back as a hammer swing came inches from her face, the open mouth on the slate gray head shrieking in rage. She’d figured the weapon was enchanted. How else could Ipi even lift it? But screaming?

“Where’d you get that?” She avoided another swing. “You walk into some shop and say, ‘I’d like to see your finest screaming war hammers—extra shrieky?’”

Ipi growled, aiming the hammer for her midsection. Eveen jumped to one side, almost running into a swipe from Mimi’s giant cleaver. The weapon’s jagged teeth vibrated through some magic, buzzing loudly. She weaved away from the broad blade, barely avoiding the hammer again, which impacted with a patterned vase—shattering it to pieces.

A quiet descended as everyone realized Baseema had stopped reading. She was looking at her broken vase, then at them. “Sorry,” they all mumbled. Her scolding gaze lingered a moment more before returning to the book.

“The third son of the Golem Lord was forged in fire, with hammer and anvil, his body cast from bronze, his blood molten silver, and his heart crafted from gold…”

They started up again. Hammer to crush, cleaver to hack, and Eveen between. Neither of them could actually kill her. Everyone in this fight was already dead. But they could incapacitate her. Then, like they’d promised, they’d throw her into a box and leave her to rot in living torment. Hells to the no. That wasn’t an option. Needed to even these odds.

Faking a stumble, she goaded Mimi into an excessively eager swing. The cleaver came down in an overhand chop, striking the floor as Eveen slid from its path. Mimi tried to lift her weapon for another try, but the jagged teeth had cut into the stone, lodging there.

Finally. Breathing room. Reaching into her boot as Ipi came rushing with the hammer, Eveen pulled the dagger she’d been saving, and threw with perfect aim. The woman screamed, stumbling from her charge as the hurtling blade buried itself in one eye. Clutching the hilt, she pulled the dagger free and flung it away—leaving behind an empty hole.

“You fucking bitch! You fucking—!”

“You called me that already,” Eveen pointed out.

Ipi glared through one ruined eye, snarling like something inhuman. “I’m going to bash your fucking face in! Then let it heal and bash it in again!”

She charged, swinging her hammer. The thing screamed so close to Eveen’s face, she wondered if it might bite. From the corner of her eye she caught sight of Mimi, cleaver freed and running to the fight. “If you’re looking for something to bash…” Just as the two sisters closed her in, she leapt—imagining herself soaring over Tal Abisi’s rooftops—to somersault away as the hammer shrieked through empty air toward an unprepared target.

“No! Wait!” Mimi cried.

Too late. The steel head slammed into undead flesh, spinning her ass over shoulders. Her cleaver flew to clang across the floor, just before she smacked down face first—both legs now bent wrongly.

Eveen stood from a crouch, tapping a right eye at Ipi. “How’s that depth perception?”

That took the woman completely over the edge. She came in a fury, mouth and hammer both screaming incoherence. Her swings grew wild and Eveen easily dodged them, leading her on. Just a bit farther. Farther …

“The fourth son of the Golem Lord was forged from blown glass,” Baseema read, “infused with brilliance stolen from star jewels that shone with the secret name of the Lord of Light. His beauty—” She stopped, eyes widening as she caught on to what Eveen was doing.

Tick-Tick

Ipi’s hammer struck one of Tick-Tick’s leg bones a resounding blow, sending fractures running along its length and chips flying. The Titan Dread bird staggered before righting itself. Its hollow gaze fixed on Ipi, who had a moment to glance up before that massive beak clamped down like a vise, plucking her off her feet. The hammer slid from her grip, its heavy impact lost amid her screeching as Tick-Tick shook her ferociously.

Assassin rule #183: never piss off the guard dog.

Eveen turned to Baseema. “Gotta admit. That was—”

She hadn’t finished when something landed on her back, hissing and biting. No, not biting, stabbing. Ini. She’d forgotten the fourth quad sister. The small woman used thin knives to pepper her with wounds. Like being attacked by a crazed hummingbird.

“Enough of this shit,” she growled.

Grabbing onto Ini, she flung her to the ground. Then, hefting the abandoned hammer, brought it down twice in quick succession to pulverize both knife hands. Grabbing one leg, Eveen dragged the small woman across the marble floor—only pausing to snatch the harpoon from the wall. When she reached Baseema’s desk, she hauled Ini atop it and drove the hunting spear down, impaling her on the wood. The Banari clapped.

“Are we done here?” Eveen asked briskly.

Baseema didn’t answer at first. Then looking past Eveen, she whistled to Tick-Tick. “Drop her.” The Titan Dread bird promptly released Ipi, who fell unceremoniously to the floor. She looked like a beaten-up one-eyed corpse, her skin in some places hanging by strips. But she grabbed up her hammer, screeching curses and ready to pick up from where she’d left off, only to have Baseema stop her with a wave.

“Enough.” When Ipi made to keep coming, the guild boss’s voice grew sharp. “I said enough! You had your chance. Now go get Ooni off my fence before the neighbors complain about her caterwauling. Then you two come back and”—she gestured widely—“clean all this up.” Ipi gritted her teeth, shaking with rage. But she didn’t argue and turned to limp out of the room, dragging her hammer behind.

Baseema shook her head. Then she pushed several items across her desk, around Ini who had gone still—as ordered. Eveen looked down to find her knives and a folded slip of paper.

“What’s this?”

“Your weapons. You’ll need them.”

“But you just—”

“I just attempted to have you apprehended,” Baseema cut in. “It wasn’t successful. Then you forced me to procure the name of the contractor for tonight’s job. Under extraordinary duress, I relented.”

Eveen’s eyes thinned. “You knew I wasn’t going to be bested by the quads.”

“Would’ve been disappointed if you had.”

“And you let all this happen?” She indicated the skewered Ini.

“Body parts are replaceable. And it’s evidence.”

“That you tried to stop me.”

Baseema crossed her arms. “Proof of my due diligence.”

“But why are you even helping me?” Eveen huffed. “Never figured you for sentimental.”

Baseema huffed back. “Figured right. As I’ve already said, this is bigger than you. This risks taking down my guild. That I built with my own hands. And I don’t like that shit one bit. So I’m going to give you a chance to figure out how to clean up this mess.” Her eyes flickered back to the table. “You going to open that?”

Eveen looked at the paper now under her palm. Hesitantly, she unfolded it and stared. Then stared some more. Her eyes roamed back up to Baseema who returned an impassive look. “This doesn’t make sense.” She read the name written on the sheet again. Pol Oranus. “But he’s…”

“A Patriarch,” Baseema finished.

Eveen’s mind reeled. She’d been contracted by a Patriarch? The highest echelons of Tal Abisi society? “Aeril’s fiery tits!” she squawked.

Baseema nodded. “Exactly.”

“What am I supposed to do with this?”

“It’s all I can offer.” She paused. “You understand by the contract he’s untouchable? Harm as much as a hair on his head and Aeril herself might come to collect.”

Eveen nodded in annoyance. She wasn’t daft. “So what now?”

“Now you have the night. Or what’s left of it. You got until morning to sort this mess out. But as of this moment, you are in threat of a contractual breach. And it’s my job to get you sorted out.”

“You’re sending the others after me,” Eveen said, deciphering her meaning.

“Due diligence,” Baseema repeated.

Eveen did a check of who was left after the quads and stilled. “The old man. Is he…?”

“If the old man was here it’d already be over for you.” Baseema stood up.

True enough, Eveen thought. Though she couldn’t help peeking about.

“Consider this my last favor,” Baseema said. “A head start. You should take it. And get that girl out of that alley.”

Eveen started. She knew that too? “You’re scary.”

There was a flash of bright silver teeth. “As fuck.”

She had turned to go when Baseema called at her back.

“One more thing. I have a man coming in from out of town. A last resort. You get me?”

Eveen grimaced at the emphasis in the woman’s tone. She got her. Making as if to go again, she stopped, took a calling card from her pocket, and tucked it behind Ini’s ear. With her knives back at her side, she walked across the room—this time opting for the front door. On his bed of pillows the Banari stood perched, his own knife held up in salute.

“May the gods favor you this night, dead thing!”

Eveen returned a nod. She sure as hell hoped so.

CHAPTER FIVE

“A PATRIARCH?”

“That’s what I’ve said. About ten times already.”

Eveen shouldered through a crowd of costumed Pirate Princesses, Clockwork Kings, and Golden Bounties, gathered about the small yellow and green wooden stall. They reeked of sweat, spirits, and desire, most of them fresh from following one of the many parades roaming Tal Abisi’s streets. Now they were hungry for food to chase the drink and provide energy to last the night. She needed the same. That tussle with the quads had left her hungrier than a hostage.

“A Patriarch,” Sky murmured again. “Have you ever … worked with them?” She followed behind, people unconsciously slipping around her—courtesy of the cloak.

“Higher up the food chain than I’m accustomed to dealing with.” She’d never even heard of Patriarchs hiring assassins. Their hands weren’t clean—far from it. They just floated so far above the muck, they had hirers to hire the hirers.

Eveen stopped at the front of the stall, where stepper birds rubbed in peppery spices sizzled on fiery drums amid torrents of smoke. A few, well charred in choice spots, were taken off the heat and quickly chopped up—bone and all.

She ordered four helpings. Then added a fifth. She was really hungry.

“What happened up there?” Sky asked, not for the first time.

“I told you, a hiccup.”

“I saw a woman fall out a window then get impaled on a fence. She didn’t die and cursed up a storm, so I’m assuming she’s like you. And your clothes have stab holes all through them.”

“Four hiccups. And handled.”

“Your guild boss set her other assassins on you? Your own colleagues?”

“Colleagues? We’re not barristers. And they won’t be the last.”

Sky started. “What do you mean?”

Eveen paid for the food and pushed her way from the crowd—unwrapping the smoky meat from waxed parchment and biting off pieces, sending hot juice dribbling down her chin.

“I asked you a question,” Sky said, hurrying to keep up. “Are people coming after me?”

Eveen took them beneath the empty stone archway of a bridge, crunching and sucking down a bit of marrow before answering. “Baseema gave me an ultimatum. Ship you. Or end up on the receiving end of my … colleagues.”

Sky tensed, taking a step back. “And you told her…?”

Eveen flung a bone into the river, watching black glistening canal eels ascend to the surface to fight over it. Her eyes swung back to the girl. “I told her to get bent. I’m not shipping myself.”

Sky visibly relaxed, easing her grip on a blue braid.

“That doesn’t fix our problem,” Eveen warned. “The other Dead Cat Tails are coming after us. You, they’ll kill. I’ll get sealed in a box and buried.”

“Then why are we out here?” Sky cast nervous glances about. “Shouldn’t we be hiding?”

“Relax.” Eveen tossed another bone. “The undead, we can … sense each other when close. And most assassins won’t strike in the open. Well, the old man might. He’s crafty.”

Sky’s eyebrows rose. “You have an old man in your murder guild?”

“Among others. Anyway, we’re out here because I’m hells hungry. And to meet him.”

Sky shook her head. “Him?”

Eveen jerked her chin to a man stepping under the bridge, his eyes darting. He might have walked right into them if she hadn’t put out a hand to pull him over. He yelped, fumbling for the small cutlery knife she knew he kept in a pocket of his overly big coat. She rolled her eyes. In the time it’d take him to retrieve the thing she could break his arms four times over.

“It’s me, Fennis.”

The small man stilled, eyes squinting on that baby face. “Oh! I didn’t see you.”

“It’s what I do.” She nodded to the satchel on his back. “Read anything good?”

“Books on contractual godling law, dealing with Aeril. I hoped—”

He paused, taking her in. “You look like you’ve been in a fight with someone.”

“Four someones,” she drawled. “A set of sadistic sisters you know?”

His eyes widened. “You went to see Baseema!”

“Guilty. But she’s the only one who might have information.”

He shook his head. “I told you that wouldn’t be a good idea.”

“I didn’t think so either,” Sky added.

Fennis yelped again, blinking as he just made her out.

“Sorry,” she said, pulling down the cloak’s hood.

“I didn’t leave empty-handed.” Eveen held up the folded paper.

Fennis took it, reading the name. “Pol Oranus? Is this…?”

“The one who contracted the job.”

The blood drained from the man’s face. “A Patriarch?”

“So you noticed?”

There was silence as the weight of it sank in.

“Pol Oranus,” Fennis said. “He was to run for Grand Patriarch—but stepped aside.”

“Yeah, well now he’s into assassinations,” Eveen quipped.

Sky looked befuddled. “Your guild boss tried to capture you. Then hands you a name. Whose side is she on?”

Eveen snorted. “Her own. Baseema may not like people screwing with her. But if it comes to me or her investment—she’ll put me in that box herself.”

“You’ve said that already,” Sky noted. “That this involves your entire guild. How?”

Eveen flung away another bone. “There are three unbreakable vows in our work.” She held up three fingers. “First, that a contract has to be just. Second, you can only ship the contracted. And third—”

“Once you take a contract you have to carry it out,” Sky finished. “I remember. You said if you didn’t, bad things would happen. What bad things?”

Eveen dropped her fingers and allowed Fennis to tell it.

“Hounds?” Sky stammered when he was done.

“Of the monstrously demoniacal variety,” Eveen added.

Sky hastily marked her forehead and chin, invoking Kori’s protection.

Eveen shook her head. “That won’t help. Aeril always takes her due.”

Sky swallowed. “Then we have to do something. Maybe go see this Patriarch?”

“Out of the question,” Fennis said, shooting Eveen a warning look.

“I know that!” Why did everyone think she was so reckless?

“The contractor is protected as long as the contract holds,” Fennis explained. “By the goddess’s own laws. Move against him…”

“And Aeril herself might come to collect,” Eveen finished, recalling Baseema’s warning. “There’s this one Asheel the Maniac Hunter story,” she went on, “where he’s framed by a maniac—and all the other maniac hunters come after him. Only way to clear his name is to figure out why he was framed, then work on undoing it. Wish I knew how I pissed off this Patriarch.”

Fennis’s baby face suddenly lit up. He dropped to his knees, searching through the satchel. Sky looked to Eveen, who shrugged. When the small man stood up again he held a leather-bound book. “What you said, about undoing. I remember—ah there!” His finger traced a sentence amid a page of legalese. “Should the commissioned be already in a state of death or otherwise lacking corporeality or material existence, the contract shall be nullified.”

“So…” Sky reasoned, “if I’m already dead I can’t have a contract placed on me.”

“Can’t kill the dead,” Eveen agreed.

“Only, I’m not dead.”

“Yes,” Fennis said. “But it’s the other part. The contract is valid because you exist, with us, in this time. But you don’t belong here. Should we return you to your own time, then you would be outside of our reach—otherwise lacking corporeality or material existence.”

“If she’s gone, there’s no one to ship,” Eveen murmured, catching on.

“Would that actually work?” Sky asked.

“I can’t say for certain,” Fennis admitted. “But Aeril’s contract is a living document. It could not be drawn up until you existed in our present. If you cease to exist in our time the contract would be placed into a paradox—and, theoretically, should nullify itself.”

“I just have to be sent back to my time!” Sky’s face brimmed with hope, then fell. “Only your brother said it was impossible.”

Eveen sucked her teeth. “You standing here says otherwise.”

“Someone managed the impossible once,” Fennis agreed. “And we have his name.”

“Pol Oranus,” Sky said. “But you said he’s untouchable.”

“He is,” Eveen answered. “But I doubt some pampered Patriarch who has his ass wiped ten times a day could pull off this kind of magic. He hired someone. I plan on finding whoever that is, and then cutting off pieces of them until they undo what they’ve done.”

“I imagined it less vividly,” Fennis said. “But yes.”

Sky nodded slow, warming to the idea. “Where do we start?”

“YOU SURE IT’S a good idea to go home?”

Eveen had taken them deeper into the heart of the Old City. Here the architecture was less ornate and more cramped: buildings of faded stone pushed close like blockish teeth. The streets were narrower, winding between residences and shops that competed for space.

“Home would be a bad idea,” she said. “I’m taking us to a safe house.”

Assassin rule #303: always have a safe house. Assassin rule #304: always have a second safe house. You just never know.

They passed revelers frolicking in the streets, their gold-flecked bodies illuminated by glow glass baubles strung along ropes between buildings. Most preferred local celebrations to the gallant costumery in other parts of the city. So they created outfits from garish cloths, beaded sashes, and coppery sequins, adorning their skin in vibrant metallic dust—holding small fetes to the sound of raucous music. Eveen avoided the blocks where young men doused outsiders in colorful powders, paint, even mud. All harmless fun, but she wasn’t in the mood.

“This reminds me of home,” Sky commented. She watched as two groups hurled powder bombs shaped like mechanical hearts at each other from the edges of their respective blocks—a scene of taunting chants and laughter as explosions of shimmering blues and reds rained down purple clouds upon their heads.

“You weren’t at some block fete when you got … taken,” Eveen observed. She remembered the girl talking about watching the Procession of the Patriarchs. Not to mention getting that coin. No Patriarch ever set a silk slipper on these plebian cobblestones.

“No,” Sky replied. “I went into town. Wanted to see the lavish side of Festival.”

“Alone?” Tal Abisi wasn’t precisely unsafe. But the carnivalesque always carried hints of danger. Best to bring a friend or two. Eveen led them down steps where the street sloped. Here a more mellow scene unfolded, with revelers dancing close under dim lights to sensuous rhythms.

“I was supposed to go with someone. Didn’t work out on account of him being an eel-fucked lying, cheating prick.”

Eveen’s eyebrows rose. Girl had a mouth on her. Impressive.

“Wasn’t letting that ruin my plans. So I went. Look where that got me.”

“What was going to happen was going to happen,” Eveen said. “I doubt you towing along ‘an eel-fucked lying, cheating prick’ would’ve prevented things.”

Sky managed a smile. “Sounds like something I’d say.”

Eveen chuckled. “Technically, you just did.”

Turning a corner, they skirted around a woman in a scandalously short Golden Bounty outfit who braced herself against a wall as a man dressed as some cross of the Pirate Princess and Clockwork King wound his waist in time to her gyrating backside. Seemed Shimmer Fever was going around.

Sky pulled her gaze from the couple just as she stepped onto another street—and stopped. She stared past the jumble of buildings to the end of the block, where a strangler tree grew around a steepled structure to tower into the air. The fat woody roots wrapped about the roof to fall down like twisting tresses of hair on either side of the edifice, snaking between crevices to pry apart moss-covered bricks decorated in worn motifs.

“What?” Eveen asked, her senses going sharp. “You see something?”

Sky was frowning, furrowing deep lines into her youthful face. “I know this place.” She started walking again, taking the lead as her eyes ran along the block. “There’s a family of glassblowers in one of these buildings. All immigrants.” Her chin nodded to the steepled structure. “They chose here because of that chapel. It was built centuries ago, but they rededicated it to a triumvirate of goddesses they brought with them.”

It was Eveen’s turn to frown. “Yeah. They take up most of these buildings now—whole generations of extended kin. How do you know that?”

“I used to live here,” Sky replied. “My family did. When I was younger. It looks almost the same.” Her gaze stopped again on the strangler tree. “Except for that. I could’ve sworn they cut it down, to stop the roots from tearing the chapel apart. I remember the family quarreled for weeks over whether to do it—until their goddesses provided a sign.”

“Not the story I got,” Eveen said. “The family did quarrel. And their goddesses did send a sign—but to keep the tree, as a part of the chapel.”

Sky squinted in confusion. “My memory must be wrong. But, I haven’t forgotten where we lived.” Her eyes went straight to a door fitted beneath a rounded stone archway on a three-story building. “Is that your safe house? Top floor?”

Eveen stared at the doorway. “That’s it. But the bottom floor.”

“Oh. That’s at least something different. Why did you choose here?”

“I don’t…” Eveen fumbled. “It just felt right.”

And it had. As soon as she’d seen the place. It just … fit. In all of Tal Abisi, she had chosen to locate a safe house in a place where she’d once lived. What were the chances? No gods-cursed chance at all. She tried to shake off the strangeness of this revelation (no luck there) and made for the building. Sky’s footsteps took a moment, but soon followed behind.

Past the russet brown door, they walked a hallway lit by flickering glow lamps that took them outside again. There, atop a veranda where clothes lay hung out to dry, Eveen located a groove in the tiles and pulled back a thick slab of stone to reveal winding steps. Sky bent to peer down into the dark.

“When you said bottom floor, didn’t think you were being literal.”

“It’s a safe house. Not trying to advertise out front.”

“Fair enough,” the girl said, beginning her descent.

Eveen quickly scanned the night before following, pulling the stone slab closed over them.

“Ayii!” Sky cried, bumping into something. “I can’t see!”

“Sorry,” Eveen mumbled. She wasn’t accustomed to visitors. Reaching the bottom, she grabbed a small gunpowder lighter she’d had converted from a pistol, moving about the small room to light several candles. Sky blinked as her eyes adjusted to the now-illuminated space.

“Cozy,” she remarked.

Eveen was already coming out of her clothes, flinging away the burgundy jacket and unfastening clasps on her leather top. Slipping it off, she examined the puncture holes, then her own body—where purplish bruises indicated healing wounds. A godsdamned shit fest of a night. She pulled off her breeches to run a hand over her legs, checking for damage, then turned to inspect her back in a mirror—only to find Sky gaping openly.

The girl ducked her head, abashed at being caught. There was nothing lecherous in her stare—that would have been too weird. It was that clinical look again. Along with curiosity, she supposed, at a chance to see what their body might look like in near twenty years. Still, it was awkward. And Eveen was relieved when the girl covered it with a question.

“Don’t suppose you have any?” She was holding a silver kaf grinder. “Only had a few hours of sleep. Could use the kick.”

Eveen nodded to a shelf lined with jars and bottles. Sky worked her way through an assortment of spices, fermented peppers, teas, and spirits until she found one with dark beans.

“There’s a pot on the table,” Eveen said, hefting a large ceramic jug and pouring out water into a gray stone tub lined with mosaic tiles. “I pay one of the glassblower’s boys upstairs to fill these for me each night. He leaves a small copper one with hot water that usually keeps till morning. Should be along that wall, by the divan.”

Finishing filling the tub, Eveen added a flask of oil, then hopped in, submerging beneath the cool liquid. This wasn’t a luxury. Not exactly. The oil was an alchemical solution that maintained her undead flesh’s healing properties. Plus, it kept her skin hydrated. Undead ashiness was the worst. Besides, she wasn’t idle with her time. Her mind was already formulating their next move. Find whoever this Patriarch had hired to bring the girl here. Bleed them until he sent her back. Keep her alive in the meanwhile. She could do this. She could survive this night. Her thoughts were interrupted by someone calling her name, muddled through the water but urgent. She shot up, each hand holding a knife—which she’d taken in with her, naturally. Sky stood there, eyes round, holding a small white cup.

“What is it?” Eveen asked, searching for the threat.

“Nothing! I just—you were down there a long time! I got worried.”

She sighed, relaxing to sit with her head tilted back. “I don’t breathe.”

“Oh.” Sky offered the cup of kaf, choking as she sipped her own. “That’s strong!”

Eveen downed hers in one gulp, beckoning for more.

“I guess the dead don’t feel the effects of kaf either,” Sky murmured, refilling the cup.

“We do. Just … dulled. So it takes a lot. Stronger the better. Same with food or drink.”

“Explains all the fiery peppers and bitter teas,” Sky noted. “I was going to put a shot of one of your liquors in here.” She hefted a dark bottle stoppered by a thick cork. “Maybe I should pass?”

“That stuff scrapes barnacles off ships—you’d probably combust.”

“Definitely a pass, then.” She put back the bottle and took to wandering the room, examining an empty brass container for a glow lamp and then a set of playing cards.

Eveen watched the girl rummage through her undead life with an uneasiness she couldn’t quite explain. Trying to ignore it, she emptied a third cup of kaf and stepped from the tub to wrap herself in a blue cloth stitched with yellow hummingbirds. Wringing dry the locs on the unshaven side of her scalp, she pushed them back and walked to squat in front of a large chest, carved of red-brown wood and covered in patterned gold studs. Turning the dial on a lock several times clockwise, then the reverse, she listened for the audible click before opening.

“You really like these Terribles.” Eveen looked up to find the girl at a shelf stacked with books, reading off the picturesque titles on their fronts. “Asheel the Maniac Hunter and the Mechanical Terror of Kons. Asheel the Maniac Hunter and the Murdering She-Devil. Asheel the Maniac Hunter and the Thief of Eyes in the Demon Lands.”

“That last one was a crossover,” Eveen remarked. She turned back to the chest, taking out a clean assassin’s outfit. “Asheel has to enter the Demon Lands to go after this killer who plucks the eyes of his victims, then magics them into his own body—so that his skin is full of eyes!”

Sky chuckled. “I used to read these, when I was younger.”

Eveen stilled, one hand on a fresh set of throwing daggers. “Oh?”

“Can’t believe they’re still around. My favorites were with the rogue Maniac Hunter.”

“Asheel’s nemesis. A Maniac Hunter gone bad. Mine too.” Eveen frowned. Why did this bother her so much?

“What are these!”

She turned to find Sky gazing in wonder at a shelf. Arranged in rows were near three dozen glass figurines. The girl picked up a golden lion before Eveen could give warning. There was a surprised yelp as it jumped from her hands, gliding on blue gossamer wings to land back on the shelf.

“Play nice, Bati!” Eveen chided, pulling on her breeches. “The rest of you too!”

The other figurines—a colorful menagerie of fantastic beasts—all began moving at once.

Sky, having lost her initial shock, now clapped with glee, watching a sinuous orange dragon come to life alongside a galloping green seahorse. “Where did you find them?”

“Made them.”

“No!”

“Really. Learned it from the glassblower. Lots of time to pass when you don’t sleep.”

The girl glanced around, as if searching for the bed she only now noticed was missing. Returning to the figurines, she extended a hand and the gossamer-winged lion alighted atop it.

“Bati was my first success. The glassblower added the animation magic. A family gift from their goddesses, he said. Does the same now each time I finish one.”

“They’re beautiful.” Sky walked over, admiring Bati who still rested on her fingers. The lion flew to land on Eveen’s shoulder, inspecting the Pirate Princess figurine tucked into a leather strap. The girl followed, her look of wonder turning curious as she glanced inside the chest. She knelt, reaching for a black bundle.

“Don’t—”

Eveen’s words cut off as Sky lifted out the cloth, unfolding it on the floor. She ran fingers along silver metal tools, some curved, spoon-like, jagged, or needle thin—others with wide saw-like blades.

“Surgical instruments,” the girl whispered. She lifted a dark gaze. “Eviscerator. It’s what they call you, right? You use these on people?”

Eveen slid her knives into their scabbards. “One person. One job.”

A moment of quiet lasted so long she wanted to stab it. Finally, Sky sat back and spoke.

“I’m studying to be a surgeon. At the Medicine College.”

And now, Eveen recalled the girl saying she was a student.

“Was getting these instruments like coming here? A feeling?” When Eveen didn’t answer, she nodded. “When I first saw you, I had the oddest thought—that you were a relative. But I dismissed it. Then you told me your name. Even when I found out who you were, I couldn’t bring myself to tell you.”

“Tell me what?” Eveen asked, unable to mask her apprehension.

Sky met her eyes, searching. “Eveen was my—our—mother’s first-name.”

That left Eveen speechless. First-names, shed upon reaching your twelfth year, were a dying tradition in Tal Abisi. But it would still have been around half a century ago.

“You take our mother’s first-name,” Sky went on. “You move in here, where we once lived. You read the same books I did. You even get yourself medical instruments. Only you don’t use them to heal. I want to take an oath to help people live. You kill them. When I look at you, I don’t understand how my life turns out like this. How it all goes so wrong.”

Eveen felt each word like a dart, and she tried not to flinch.

“You think it’s easy being around you?” she asked, unable to keep the heat from her voice. “Seeing who I was, who I could have been? Learning I’m some echo of what you left behind. All the decisions I think are mine … just lost memories. I always felt detached. Not knowing who I was, how I came to be. Now I feel like a ghost. A shadow.” That’s what had been bothering her this whole time. What she hadn’t been able to put it into words.

There was another long pause before Sky spoke. “At least we got that out in the open. They say talking helps you feel better.”

Eveen raised an eyebrow. “You feel better?”

“Fuck no!”

Eveen cracked an involuntary smile.

Sky smiled back. “I think we have the same sick sense of humor.”

“Got it from you,” Eveen reminded her.

The girl turned serious. “You haven’t asked much about me. Back on the boat, you said you didn’t want to know until you were sure we were the same. We’ve known now since the thaumaturgist. But you still haven’t asked.”

“We don’t have time…” Eveen began.

“We won’t have any other time. I don’t know anything about your life, what it’s like, when you picked up glassblowing!”

“Wait, that’s not a thing you did too?”

“No! Never crossed my mind.”

For some reason, that made Eveen feel better—more whole than shadow. A bit, anyway.

“We’re going back out and who knows what’s going to happen,” Sky pleaded. “Let’s talk while we can.” She gestured to her outfit. “And tell me you have something in that chest I can wear other than this godsdamned costume!”

Eveen smirked. “Fine. Hope you like leather.” And they talked.

“A HUNDRED-YEAR CONTRACT?”

Sky twisted her head about, a cascade of blue braids turning with her glare.

Eveen nodded from behind, where she was securing straps on the leather top she’d found for the girl. More assassin’s gear, complete with breeches and padded boots. Best spare clothes she had. And it managed to fit—sort of.

“Standard death indenture,” she related.

They’d had their talk while preparing. Eveen told about as much as she could about her undead life, minus graphic details on the murdering parts. In turn, the girl told her of growing up in Tal Abisi, of wanting to be a surgeon, and her dreams.

“What could we have been thinking to sign up for that?” Sky murmured. She slipped on a small satchel she’d procured from Eveen’s chest.

“Ask myself that a dozen times a day. People end up in Aeril’s employ for lots of reasons—a personal favor, to protect someone else, even a plea to spare a contracted life.”

Sky turned. “That can happen?”

Eveen shrugged. “Never actually seen it. But if someone offers their life for yours and Aeril accepts the plea—yeah.” She stepped back, scrutinizing the girl. “You look like my sidekick.”

“Or you look like my sidekick,” Sky said, admiring herself in a mirror. “Do I get a knife?”

“Can you use a knife?”

“I’ve used a knife before.”

“For other than eating? Or … surgeoning?”

“Oh. I don’t think so.”

“Then no. Just take the cloak.” Eveen pulled on the cobalt blue jacket she’d worn earlier—part of her Pirate Princess costume. “I’ll work on blending in.”

“How about a dagger? I bet I can—” Sky paused, squinting into the mirror. “Is that a string?”

Eveen barely had time to register the question before her skin prickled. A hand went reflexively to her knife, pulling it free and swinging. Just in time too, as she batted away the strand of silver streaking toward them. Small sparks flew as metal struck metal with a loud ka-ching! The string retreated through the air and back up to the hatch.

“What was that?” Sky asked in alarm.

“Down!” Eveen shouted, as half a dozen new strands shot from the hatch. She moved with both knives now, lashing out and throwing up sparks with each contact. One. Ka-ching! Two. Ka-ching! Three. Ka-ching! She spared a glance at Sky, who cowered behind her. Four. Ka-ching! Five. Ka-ching! Six. Snip! Damn. She missed. But it hadn’t. She looked down to find her knife on the floor, along with the three fingers the strand had cleanly sliced off.

“Shit. Aeril’s fiery—”

“I spy little flies,” a raspy voice broke in. “Hiding, hiding, hiding from me…”

Eveen grimaced. She’d known one of the undead was here from the prickle on her skin. The strands were enough to tell her who. She turned to Sky. “The cloak! Get into the cloak!”

The girl looked to where she’d left it—on a table feet away. Eveen groaned. Might as well be miles. She lurched for it. But the strands were faster. Flashes of silver slashed at the cloak in quick strikes. In moments it was in tatters. Gone. Just like that.

The raspy voice tsked. “Little flies mustn’t be tricksy. Mustn’t hide, from the Spider.”

There was a scraping as the stone to the hatch slid open. The first sight that appeared was two brown bare feet hovering in the air. They were followed by legs in dark trousers, then the torso of a man dressed in a long black robe. His slender body was wrapped in thin silver strands that wriggled about—holding him aloft as he lowered into the room. His head appeared last, cocked to the side and wearing a cat mask made of rough brown sackcloth, with two mismatched buttons for eyes and a lopsided slash of red for a mouth.

“Goody night, Eveen,” he rasped. “Naughty flies playing games?”

She sighed. “Rejik. How’d you find me?”

The Dead Cat Tail assassin descended fully into the room, bare feet never touching the floor. The silver strands spilled out in every direction. They spread across her books, slid between spice jars, even opened the pot of kaf—as if making an inspection.

“How does a spider catch a fly? Spin a web. Then wait for it to hum.”

She looked over the silver strands. Each was connected to the man somehow. He’d probably left them all over the city. And she’d tripped one without even knowing. He just had to follow it back. Ingenious, if he wasn’t such a weirdo. One of the strands encircled a candle, the tip probing until it touched the flame—before jerking back.

“This must be the job,” he said, looking Sky over.

Eveen pointed her knife. “Don’t remember inviting you in, Rej. So if you don’t mind leaving?”

Rejik laughed. He twisted his fingers, and reams of silver flew to wrap about Eveen. She struggled as her arms were pressed to her sides and she was hoisted off her feet. Turning, she found Sky much the same way. Well, this wasn’t good.

“Better,” Rejik said. His hand made a tugging motion, and the strands encircling Sky pulled her closer to him. Those button eyes seemed to study her curiously. “It is you, then. And I get to devour you both. How delicious. The Spider will enjoy these little flies.” The strands around the girl began to tighten.

“I thought you were all cats!” she cried out under the pressure. It stopped suddenly.

“That’s what the mask is,” Rejik said, losing the rasp.

“Oh,” Sky said. “It’s just … ambiguous.”

Rejik exhaled in disappointment. “I was going for abstract. So a cat, but not a literal cat.”

“But … you call yourself the Spider.”

“Yes, well. The Spider is a cat.”

Sky looked at him askance.

“It doesn’t make sense to the rest of us either,” Eveen put in.

“What I mean is,” Rejik explained, “I’m a cat, but I’m also a spider. A Spider-Cat.”

“Then why don’t you have eight legs?”

“No, I’m a Spider hyphen Cat. Both exist in duality but not necessarily in opposition, see?”

Sky nodded slow but ended with shaking her head. “Sorry, I never got into theory.”

Rejik sighed, mumbling something about his artistic talent being wasted. Not for the first time Eveen wondered what the heck he had been in his past life.

“Doesn’t matter,” he rasped, flowing back into character. “Soon, you’ll just be dead.”

Sky gasped as the strands tightened. And Eveen decided it was time to make a move.

“Bati! Now!”

Assassin rule #182: if your job draws you into long conversations, they’re biding time.

Rejik cursed as the winged lion whisked by him, sharp glass cutting his exposed neck. He swatted at it with an arm. But Bati was fast, diving in and out. At a frustrated grunt, a silver strand lashed out. It caught the figurine like the crack of a whip, shattering it into colorful pieces that fell in a glimmering rain.

Eveen felt a stab of loss, then anger. “All of you! Now!”

Rejik cried out as dozens of glass figurines flew at him at once—a swarm of sharp teeth, claws, and pincers biting and digging. A three-tailed purple scorpion got under his mask, going for his face—and from the gagging he made, it had latched onto his tongue. Rejik was as dead as she was. The magicked figurines couldn’t hurt him terribly. But they were extremely annoying, and even better, distracting.

Eveen felt the strands about her slacken, some slipping away to help their master deal with his miniature attackers. Getting her remaining good hand loose, she used her knife to slice through the rest, dropping to the ground, then made quick work of the ones holding Sky.

“Get into the chest!” she ordered.

“What? Why?”

“The bottom gives way—it’s a hatch!”

“To where?”

“Out! Go!”

Eveen pushed the girl forward as Rejik snarled. His mask was pulled up partially to show the scorpion with a claw latched onto his bottom lip, as if trying to rip it off. He closed a hand around the figurine, crushing it to purplish shards. The mismatched buttons glared at her, and the strands came again.

She leapt to meet them, wielding the knife with one hand. This time, though, she didn’t stay in one place, forcing the strands to give chase, sending them lashing at her divan, her table, chairs—tearing up the place. When they hit the shelves holding her jars and bottles, everything came down in a crash, shattering and spilling their contents. Just as she wanted. Diving for one of the candles, she knocked it to the floor—and the flames roared.

She wasn’t exaggerating about the liquors in those bottles being combustible. They were also a backup plan. Assassin rule #305: always be ready to torch your safe house; you just never knew about that either.

Rejik let out a scream not of pain, but terror—echoed by a multitude of simultaneous shrieks as his strands joined him. She’d noticed their dislike of fire. Turned out that was also their master’s phobia. He batted frantically at the flames, wrapping himself in strands like a silver cocoon. And she again wondered what fears he might have brought with him from the grave. With a farewell glance to her sanctuary she ran for the chest, scooping up her dropped knife—and her fingers—before jumping inside.

She dropped a ways before landing, and someone started in the thick gloom. Sky.

“You could have told me it was so far down! I fell and almost broke my leg!”

“Did you break it?”

“No, I—”

“Then you’ll be fine. Come on!”

From above, flames lit up the dark.

“Is your place on fire?”

“Yeah.” Eveen was already walking. Sky followed.

“Is he … dead?”

The stony roof above began to slope, causing them to hunch down.

“He’s already dead. I just bought us some time.”

Angry shouts echoed after them. She moved faster.

“Where are we? Some kind of tunnel?”

Eveen nodded. “Found them when I rented the place. An old smuggler’s route, maybe.”

The path grew lower and soon they were crawling.

“Where does it go?” Sky panted.

“I told you—out.”

A scratching sound came—like wires skittering on stone. The inevitable voice followed.

“Little flies!” it called bitterly. “You’ve made the Spider very, very, angry!”

The last words reverberated in the dark. Neither said a word, moving faster. They were on their stomachs now, crawling in a space so narrow their elbows were at their sides as they pulled themselves forward. The voice behind them grew closer, along with the scratching.

Eveen let Sky get ahead, pushing the girl on as she searched in the tight space of the tunnel. A sudden yank on her leg let her know she’d been caught. She clutched at the ground as the strand tightened.

“What’s happening?” Sky called back.

“Keep going!” Eveen shouted, trying to kick free. “Just up ahead! Keep going until you see a long red wire! You can’t miss it! No, wait!” She fumbled in her jacket for the converted gunpowder lighter, tossing it forward. “You have to light it!”

There was no reply, and she only hoped Sky had gotten that last part.

Behind her Rejik did his creepy thing. “Caught one little fly! Coming for you! Coming!”

The silver strand had wound itself up her thigh and was encircling her waist. It pulled hard and she slid back a bit, her fingers—her remaining fingers—grasping on stone for purchase. She managed to wedge herself at an odd angle and her outstretched arms braced against the tunnel, even as the strand pulled harder. If she kept this up, the thing might just rip her in two!

A flicker from ahead caught her eye. It came once, twice. Then a flame. And a hiss.

Eveen listened as the burning fuse died away—only to be followed by dozens more.

“Take cover!” she shouted, as the first set of detonations went off, growing with force. Skaboom! SkaBOOM. SKABOOM! A rush of air and dust washed over her, and through it all she thought she heard Rejik howl alongside a multitude of shrieks. Then silence.

“Hello?” a voice stammered. “Are you there?”

Eveen worked grit from her mouth, moving her legs to find the strand gone.

“Here.” She crawled forward. “Keep going.”

They continued on, the only sound Sky’s labored breathing. The tunnel began to grow, the roof sloping upward. Soon they could crawl, and then walk bent over, until Eveen called for a stop. Pushing up on a bit of stone above their heads, she lifted it and poked her head out into the night. They were behind a set of buildings. She pulled herself out first before helping the girl. Both were a sight.

“What did you have me light?” Sky asked, shaking dust from her braids.

“Munitions,” Eveen answered, sliding the stone back in place.

“You collapsed the tunnel on him! Is he…?”

“I told you, he’s already dead. Though he won’t dig out for days.”

From somewhere near came the clang of fire carts. Eveen sprinted to look around the corner, where she could make out men and women hauling water to douse the flames of her safe house. The place was ruined, for sure. But hopefully they could put it out before it spread. She had made it plain this was a hazard when she started renting. Still, she’d feel terrible if the entire building got gutted.

“I think they caught it in time,” Sky said softly, as if reading her thoughts.

Eveen nodded. Hopefully. “Let’s go,” she said.

Sky hurried to keep up, no longer cloaked. “Where?”

“To find out who pulled you here.”

“You have a place in mind?”

“The Wheelbarrow.”

“The Barrow? What do you expect to find in the slums?”

Eveen held up the hand missing three digits. “First a surgeon. Then information.”

CHAPTER SIX

“THESE NEEDLES ARE exquisite,” Tamu marveled.

Eveen sat reclined in the surgical chair, an uncomfortable thing of brass and cushions, watching as the big man threaded a stitch, reattaching the last of her fingers. They’d been singed in the fire, but once reunited with her body, the magic that sustained her undead flesh began their healing. She flexed the two other rejoined digits, where the bone had already knitted together.

Sky hovered close, following Tamu’s handiwork. “Are those ghost sutures?”

“Good eye. Named for the magical resin. Gone in moments.”

True. The other stitches had already vanished—not leaving a trace.

“They’re hard to work with,” Tamu went on. He shifted close, rounding broad shoulders beneath the jacket of a sleeveless red and gold jerkin fashioned into a Clockwork King costume. The coiled hairs of his beard tickled, and Eveen inhaled the oil that gave him that familiar sweet musky scent. “But I was saying…” He reached a hand up to angle the light of a glow lamp. “These needles are well crafted. More than up to the task. Good thinking to bring them.”

Sky patted the black cloth she hugged to her chest. Eveen’s surgical tools. In their escape, the girl had had the wits to snatch them up. When Tamu had gone rummaging through the tall black chest fitted with endless drawers where he kept his own supplies, she’d offered up the needles.

“Figured you’d know how to use them,” she said. “You seem handy.”

Tamu’s eyebrows rose. “Handy? I’m one of the best surgeons in the Barrow.”

“And humble,” Sky teased. “Well, you haven’t made a mess of things.”

Tamu laughed, teeth clenched around a slow burning baka stick. He removed it to flick ashes onto the floor, his dark face jovial. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Consider yourself lucky,” the girl said with a wink. “Don’t give those out often.”

He laughed again, a rumble to match his voice, glancing to Eveen. “Where did you find this one, heh? Has your wit. Here, hold my stitching. I need more resin.”

Sky scooted onto his chair, letting Tamu guide her hands. As the big man crossed his workroom, her gaze drifted to follow.

Eveen lifted up, her voice low. “What are you doing?”

Sky turned, all innocence. “What?”

Oh, she was going to play it like that? “You got Shimmer Fever or something?”

“How do you mean?”

“You know exactly how I mean. You’re making googly eyes.”

She gave an unconvincing laugh that lasted too long. “I’m not making—”

“Aht! Aht!” Eveen wagged finger. “We have the same eyes, remember?”

The girl opened her mouth then stopped short, taking on a considering look.

“Wait, are you two…?”

“That’s none of your business.”

Sky’s eyes widened. “You are!”

Tamu glanced over at hearing the girl’s exclamation. They both smiled back at him.

Eveen gritted her teeth. “Fine, yes. Sometimes. It’s mostly physical.”

“Oh. Wow.”

Eveen’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, wow?”

“Nothing! It’s just with you being dead, I wasn’t certain everything down there…” Her free hand made a circular motion below her waist. “… was working.”

“Everything’s working fine, thanks,” Eveen snapped.

“Well … good for you!” Sky gave her a thumbs up.

“If you don’t put that thumb down I’m going to punch your face.”

Sky dropped her thumb. She grinned, turning to give Tamu the once-over. “Can’t blame you. I like the husky ones too.”

“Of course you do,” Eveen muttered.

Assassin rule #401: always keep a good doctor on call. While undead flesh could heal itself, some things—severed appendages or damaged organs—needed a nudge. She’d come to the Wheelbarrow hunting for a surgeon who could handle her unique condition. The Barrow was Tal Abisi’s official slum. But if you needed patching up for cheap, there was no place better. Tamu turned out to be quite good at it. Good at lots of things.

“Anyway,” Eveen said. “You’re almost half his age.”

Sky made a face. “Technically, you’re twice his age—and then some.”

They might have gone on but just then there was a knock. Both turned at once to the bright blue door of the small shop—one of many dotting the Wheelbarrow’s main souk. Eveen had her hand on a knife. She sensed no other dead nearby, but after Rejik, she wasn’t taking chances. The old man was still somewhere about, after all. Tamu didn’t appear to notice their concern and moved from the apothecary cabinet to pull open the door.

“Good night, Mama Birgini,” he greeted her. “Grateful you could come.”

Eveen untensed at seeing an old woman wrapped in mahogany robes that matched her wrinkled skin, broken only by a green shawl draped over one shoulder. A gangly boy in a white shirt and trousers accompanied her, helping her to maneuver as she complained.

“It is a wonder I could come at all, as my grandson thinks me infirm.”

The boy let out an exasperated breath. “I’m only here to help, Mama.”

The old woman kissed her teeth. At seeing Eveen, however, a warmth spread over her face, and she came over to plant kisses on either cheek of the assassin.

“Good night, Mama,” Eveen said. “Sorry to wake you.”

The old woman waved away the apology with fingers etched in black ink. “I don’t sleep much at night anyway. It happens when you get to my age. Keep one eye out for death!” She again tried batting away her grandson, who lowered her onto a three-legged stool where she sat like a queen come to listen to petitioners at court.

“When the surgeon sent word you’d requested to see me, I came straight away. For you, daughter, I, like all in the Barrow, will always be at your service.” The old woman touched an eight-pointed medallion adorning her forehead beneath wisps of white hair. “Oh! Where is my head? Boy, bring the food! You haven’t eaten it, have you? His stomach is like a pit, this one!”

The young man unslung a rough cloth bag from his shoulder and drew out wrapped bundles that he set on a small table. Eveen’s belly rumbled at the scent, reminding her she was—as always—famished!

“I know how much you enjoy my food!” Mama Birgini winked. “Go ahead. Eat! Eat!”

Eveen didn’t need to be told twice. She undid one of the bundles, pulling out a meat patty and biting into it. Tamu chuckled as he sat and began to stitch again.

“And is this one of your apprentices?” the old woman asked.

Eveen swallowed a mouthful of spicy meat pie. “Not exactly. Sky, this is Mama Birgini.”

The girl bowed respectfully. “Good night, Mama. I’m grateful you would see us.”

The old woman squinted inspecting eyes. “You are living. Not an apprentice, then.”

Sky shook her head. “I’m more like … family.”

Mama Birgini again touched the medallion on her forehead. “Who the Avenging Angel of the Barrow calls family, we honor as family too.”

The girl raised quizzical eyebrows. “Avenging Angel?”

“We don’t need to go into all that,” Eveen said, mouth full. “It’s not important.”

“How is such a thing not important?” Mama Birgini insisted. “Given the price you have paid.” She looked to Tamu. “Who is this girl that does not know these things?”

The big man shrugged. “I know no more than you, Mama. These two showed up on my doorstep only a while ago, looking like they’d been dragged through the streets. Said it was urgent she speak to you. I sent word. And started stitching.”

“About that—” Eveen began.

“I’d like to hear the story,” Sky spoke up. “About this Angel of the Barrow.”

There was a hush as her eyes met Eveen’s unblinking stare.

“Well…” Tamu began, breaking the silence. “I suppose it began four years back?”

Mama Birgini’s face darkened. “When the children first went missing.”

“Missing?” Sky asked in alarm.

Tamu nodded. “It seemed random at first. One here or there. Then it grew.”

“Children only as big as so,” Mama Birgini said, a hand to her chest. “Stolen away.”

“We didn’t know what became of them,” Tamu said. “Then we found the bodies.” He stopped his work, grinding the baka stump in a small wooden tray carved like the Clockwork King, his voice growing distant. “I was brought to see them. They’d been … cut open. With their hearts and blood missing.”

“Kori’s mercy,” Sky breathed, making a warding sign.

“A monster hunted our children,” Mama Birgini said grimly. “The Reaper of the Barrow.”

“Didn’t the city authorities hunt them down?”

Tamu rumbled a low laugh to Sky’s question, though it lacked mirth.

“You know why they call this place the Wheelbarrow? Because when Tal Abisi was first built, this is where the hewers of stone and carriers of water lived. These dwellings housed the workers on whose backs monuments were erected and trade flowed—like the burden of a wheelbarrow. No one gives a shit what happens to children here.”

Mama Birgini shook her head. “We were desperate. We pooled our monies, hired mercenaries, thief catchers—anyone to stop this Reaper. They took our coin, but did little before drifting off, leaving us with more dead and lighter purses. Then she came.” All eyes turned to Eveen, who had taken to staring at Tamu’s stitchwork. “She volunteered to hunt down our tormentor. Four children taken and yet alive were saved by her. And the monster who devoured our young was given her particular justice—as he had done to others.”

Sky turned to Eveen, realization dawning. “Eviscerator. It was him. The one you…” Her eyes traveled to the black bundle. “You did it to save children.”

“I did it,” Eveen said quietly, “for the ones I didn’t save.” She still remembered tracking the killer to the abandoned building he’d turned into a lair. The coppery stench like a butchery, the—

She shook her head. Those recollections she could do without.

“It’s like something from your Asheel stories,” Sky murmured.

“He was some kind of ritualist,” Eveen said. “Had notes and books in a script I couldn’t make out. Kept babbling on about me destroying his great work—right until I cut out his tongue. When I was finished I burned the place down and dumped what was left of him on the steps of the Tomb of the Patriarchs. I wanted the city’s powerful to see what they’d neglected.”

“The broadsides started calling her the Eviscerator,” Tamu said.

Mama Birgini tsked. “To us you are the Angel of the Barrow. Parents name their children after you to protect them. On walls in back alleys, murals bear your likeness.”

“Aeril has begun to appear among local shrines,” Tamu put in. “With a figurine of you as her holy acolyte.”

“As you see,” Mama Birgini said, “we in the Barrow remain ever in your debt.” The old woman bowed her head deep, folding wrinkled hands across her chest.

Eveen returned the gesture awkwardly, trying hard not to look at Sky who stared openly in wonder. She would never get used to all that. Angel? She was a killer, not a hero. “I need to call in that debt, Mama. I’m in a bit of trouble…”

She told them, nearly everything. Now wasn’t the time to hold back. When she finished there was absolute quiet—like she’d rolled a boulder through the place. Tamu, who had finished off the last stitch, gaped at her, then at Sky. Mama Birgini’s grandson stopped chewing on a pilfered patty, his cheeks bulging with food. Only the old woman reined in her shock. She nodded slow, as if someone had explained a particularly curious puzzle.

“I have heard that in far-off Jiba there are witches who revere a goddess who feeds upon misery,” she said finally. “That at the end of the world there is a battlefield where warrior monks fight to ascend into the Third Heaven, and monstrous worms feed upon the fallen dead. Some claim that gazing upon the Floating Terrace Gardens of Ilm will steal the very breath from your chest. This tale rivals even those wonders!”

“I’m hoping you can help.” Eveen leaned forward. “Mama Birgini, you’re the closest these slums have to a Grand Matriarch.”

The old woman shrugged. “I own a few entertainment establishments, is all.”

“You run half the brothels and gambling houses in the Barrow,” Eveen retorted.

Sky’s eyebrows climbed, reassessing the old woman, who shrugged again.

“Very well. How might I help?”

“I’m looking for whoever this Patriarch hired to perform this sorcery.”

Mama Birgini scoffed. “No Patriarch is coming to frequent my houses.”

“No, but I’m thinking whoever he hired might,” Eveen pressed. “The thaumaturgist I spoke to tonight claimed this wasn’t taught in colleges. Not something as reckless as subverting a godling contract. That illicit magic you find in places like the Barrow, where sorcery is less … regulated.”

The old woman was as still as stone for a long moment.

“There are three … fools,” she spoke at last. “With grand ideas of doing forbidden magic.”

“Edgelords,” Tamu spat with disgust.

“Edgelords?” Sky asked, looking truly puzzled.

“A bunch of privileged pricks,” Eveen answered. “Usually from well-off families who got themselves kicked out of decent colleges. Like to find banned texts or unsanctioned thaumaturgy. The riskier the better. Claim to be freeing magic from restrictions, pushing it to the edge. They come to the Barrow because there’s no one here to sanction them. Half the time you hear about zombie hordes or demon summonings, it’s probably an Edgelord playing cute—until something chews his stupid face off.”

“These call themselves the Three Beards,” Mama Birgini said. “Pull off small feats, childish antics. However, on the first night of Festival they appeared at my houses, throwing around coins like water. I was curious so I had several of my prettiest ply them. They bragged they’d landed a powerful patron. And had performed some great and dazzling magic.”

Eveen perked up, for the first time this bizarre night feeling some hope.

“Where are these three now?”

Mama Birgini frowned. “That is one of the strange things. In the past days, two have turned up dead. One burned alive in his bed. They say even his bones were cracked and charred, as if the fire came from inside him. The other was found sitting on a latrine, holding his severed head in his lap. No one knows what happened to his eyes.”

Sky swallowed audibly. Eveen felt her own hope deflate.

“Someone’s cleaning up,” Tamu noted.

“They’ve been shipped,” Eveen muttered, running a hand through her locs in frustration. Aeril’s fiery tits!

“But…” The old woman held up a finger. “There is one still left. At least last I checked.”

A bit of hope crept back. Eveen leaned forward. “Do you know where I can find him?”

Mama Birgini’s dark lips spread in a smile. “Naturally. But you’d better hurry. My gambling houses have taken bets that he’ll be dead before the dawn. And the odds aren’t in his favor.”

Eveen looked to Sky, who had that same glimmer of hope in her eyes. The odds hadn’t been in their favor all night. Time to see about changing that.

IT WASN’T TOO much later that the two found themselves outside a cluster of buildings along an unlit and unpaved street in the Barrow. The third from the center was as Mama Birgini had described—with fractures running along the stone and window holes fitted with red sheets. From inside, a small light glowed.

“That’s it,” Sky said.

Eveen glanced over. They’d both cleaned up a bit. And Mama Birgini had provided the girl a Pirate Princess jacket in a deeper shade of blue. It was like having a slightly off twin.

“Looks like this—what was the name?”

“Mael,” Sky offered.

“Mael … looks like he’s alone.”

“How are we going to handle this?”

Eveen raised an eyebrow. “We?”

Sky eyed her, indignant. “I’m not staying out here. It’s not safe.”

That did make sense. No cloak to hide her anymore.

“Fine. But this place is likely warded. Stay by me. In fact, stay behind me.”

Sky’s gaze dropped to where Eveen’s hand rested on a knife.

“You plan on…?” She let the rest go unsaid.

“No. We need him alive. Besides, second unbreakable vow.”

“You can’t ship the uncontracted,” the girl said, remembering. There was a pause. “I’ve been meaning to ask, how did you kill this Reaper? Mama Birgini said you volunteered. He wasn’t contracted then.”

There was a moment’s hesitation. “I broke the second vow,” Eveen answered.

Sky’s eyebrows rose. “Oh! What about the hounds?”

“Aeril’s minions aren’t sent for something like that.”

“But … Mama Birgini said you paid a price.”

Damn. The girl was perceptive.

“For my transgression, my indenture was … increased.”

“Increased? By how much?”

Eveen sighed. Not letting this go, was she? “A century.”

Sky’s jaw slackened. “What? Another century?”

“Yeah. They say after the first, you start losing count.”

“But that’s not fair!”

Eveen huffed. “Gods ain’t fair. Don’t let nobody tell you different.”

The girl seemed at a loss, her mouth opening and closing like a fish.

“I’m sorry that happened to you,” she said finally.

Eveen shrugged. “It is what it is.”

“I mean it.” Sky touched her arm, face serious. “I know you hide behind the ambivalence and the jokes. You had me fooled there for a while. Pretending you’re just some heartless killer. Maybe that makes it all easier. Like a suit of armor. But what you did for the Barrow was brave. A sacrifice. I’m … I’m sorry I judged you before. I don’t have that right. I don’t think I could be that selfless. But I’m kind of proud to think that someday I’ll be strong enough to make that kind of choice.”

Eveen mumbled a thanks, feeling laid bare. Gods! This girl had read her like a cheap book. Saying things she didn’t even like to admit to herself.

“Do you ever … regret it?” Sky asked.

“Nope,” she answered. “I’d carve that bastard up again. And spit in the eye of any god who tried to stop me.”

“I think you would.” Sky looked back to the building. “So, we sneaking in?”

Assassin rule #42: stealth is preferable to—ah, to hells with that.

“Nah,” Eveen said. “Let’s make an entrance. Just this once.”

“Okay. But before you start cutting anyone, maybe try to persuade them.”

“Seriously?”

“The threat of violence might be incentive enough,” the girl urged.

Eveen pulled down her mask. “Fine. But if it doesn’t work, I begin with fingers.”

Then she took off in a run. Sky quickly followed.

“Why can’t I have a mask?” the girl whispered from behind—just as they hit the first wards.

Aeril’s blades cut through them like butter—well, butter that threw off crackling sparks. Kicking in the rickety door, the first thing Eveen glimpsed was a fireball, streaking straight for her. She batted the thing away with her knife, sending it careening and exploding into a wall. This would-be sorcerer had some defense. But a godsdamned fireball wasn’t going to cut it.

His second attempt was stopped by a full open-palmed face smack that sent him sprawling. He tried for another spell and Eveen smacked him down three times again. Smackity-smack-smack! When he offered no more resistance, she dragged him up to eye level. A lanky young man with a bearded face glared back between trembling fingers.

“Please!” he stammered, eyes fixed on her with fright. “I haven’t told anyone! I still have most of the money! I can get the rest! My father works in the banking district!”

Eveen glanced to Sky. The girl had shut the door behind them and was using a thick rug to put out the fireball that left a charred scent in the air. The room was small. But the decor didn’t match the modest exterior: expensive furniture and a high-end glow lamp. Even the rug, with ornate gold and green motifs, didn’t look cheap. Neither did the man’s clothes. The fistful of shirt in her grasp felt soft as silk. Her eyes took in his clean fingernails, and supple hands that had never seen a hard day’s labor.

“Shut up, banker’s boy,” she said. “I’m not here to kill you.”

The man’s mouth snapped shut, relief and confusion flooding his face.

“You Mael?” she asked.

He nodded as his eyes shifted, only just noticing Sky. They went round as coins. “You!” His gaze swung back to Eveen. “That means you must be…”

“Yeah.” She lifted up her mask and flicked one of her calling cards in his face. “I’m her.”

“There’s a giant mural only blocks from here,” he stammered. “Looks just like you, but with these great big golden wings. People stop and light incense—”

He cut off as she dropped him onto a moss green divan. “I ain’t here to take in the local art scene.” Bending down, she angled a knife at his nose. “Funny that you know us though, but we don’t know you. Maybe you start talking, or—”

“I’m the one that did it!” he blurted. “It was three of us! But I’m the only one left!”

Eveen pulled up, frowning. “Just like that?”

Mael swallowed. “You’re the Eviscerator. I don’t want to be tortured. I’m thinking we can make a deal—”

She inched the knife closer, resting it under one of his eyes.

“You’re not in the deal-making business right now.”

“I’d listen to her,” Sky said, leaning against a wall. “If you want to keep all your parts.”

Mael stared cross-eyed at the blade. “What do you want to know?”

Eveen didn’t move the knife. “Everything.”

He swallowed again. “It started with a summons. By a Patriarch.”

“Pol Oranus,” Eveen said.

Mael nodded. “He’s the one. Wanted to see us, my friends and I, the Three Beards. Every Edgelord hopes to catch some big-time patron. But a Patriarch was beyond our wildest dreams!”

“Why would a Patriarch hire three nobodies?” Eveen asked.

“Because we were the only ones who figured out the mystery.”

“Mystery?” Sky asked.

“The mystery of the Reaper of the Barrow. We came here to solve it.”

Eveen balled a fist. “And why the godsdamned fuck would you want to do that?”

Mael looked startled. “Because he’s a legend! A sorcerer who pressed the boundaries!”

“He killed children!” she growled, fist tightening.

“Yes. That’s terrible, certainly. But … he was also going after some unbelievable magic! All the Edgelords have theories about it. We were the only ones who really studied him, though. Hunted every scrap of information. For instance, did you know he didn’t leave behind a body?”

“The city took control of his corpse after I dumped it,” Eveen said flatly.

“But then what?” Mael pressed. “Buried? Cremated? There’s no official record.”

“I don’t care if they tossed him into the sea,” she retorted. “He was some vagrant. No family. Or at least none wanting to claim him.”

“A man like smoke,” Mael said. “Convenient.”

Sky frowned. “What are you getting at?”

“We visited the place you burned down,” he told Eveen. “Found a journal.”

“Impossible,” she said. “If a thing like that existed, it would have been found already.”

Mael shook his head. “But no one goes there. People in the Barrow think it’s cursed. They won’t even rebuild. Nothing left but rubble. Besides, the journal was magicked. Fire can’t touch it. Hides itself. One of my friends, though, he has … had … a kind of knack for finding things. That’s how we got ahold of it. And we learned what the Reaper was after.” His voice dropped to a whisper, eager at sharing this great secret. “Immortality!”

He looked disappointed that no one appeared impressed.

“How does killing children grant immortality?” Sky asked, her face troubled.

At that Mael looked abashed. “We don’t fully know. The journal was … confusing. But we think it had something to do with children’s souls, being innocent and all that. The Reaper believed that such power was in the heart, in the blood.”

Sky sucked in a breath. “Blood magic!”

Of all the banned sorcery in Tal Abisi, that topped the list. Like lose your head, banned.

Mael nodded. “He was certain that one had to consume the spirit in the blood—”

“Enough,” Eveen snapped. She wasn’t listening to any more of this horror. “That all sounds like absolute eel shit. Your Reaper was full of absolute shit.”

“What does this have to do with the Patriarch—Pol Oranus?” Sky asked.

A slight smile graced Mael’s lips. “The Reaper’s journal. His entries were all signed: O.”

There was a stunned silence and he stepped in to fill the vacuum, eyes locked on Eveen.

“Did you know that Pol Oranus had a son? Aban Oranus. He was something of a recluse from what I hear. Died. Supposedly at sea on a ship bound for the Baleen Archipelago. This was right around the time you eviscerated the Reaper. Also convenient, don’t you think?”

Eveen stared, trying to resist the urge to punch his overly smug face. Then gave in.

Mael howled, clutching where she’d struck him. “I think you broke my nose!”

Uncaring, she grabbed his shirt and yanked him close. “Are you fucking saying that Pol Oranus was the Reaper’s fucking father? That the child-killing monster I put down was a Patriarch’s son? You expect me to believe this Terrible you’re trying to write?”

“Something like that couldn’t keep secret,” Sky agreed, sounding dubious.

“No, not if we did it!” Mael sputtered. “But a Patriarch? Who else could hinder authorities from coming to the Barrow to hunt down the Reaper? Who could make records and a body disappear? You know a ship did actually go down on the way to the Baleen Archipelago? Forty-six passengers and crew drowned. Who has the power to orchestrate the end of forty-six people, just to fake his disgraced son’s death?”

Sky sucked in a breath of disbelief. “But the other Patriarchs wouldn’t condone this!”

“I don’t think they knew at first,” Mael said. “Not what Pol Oranus’s son was doing. But when it was all done, how couldn’t they know? But they weren’t about to let that news out. The city would have been in riot! No, the best thing to do was hush it all up. Let the matter get buried and forgotten. It was just the Barrow, after all. The only real punishment was making Pol Oranus withdraw from running for Grand Patriarch. Anyway, when we told him what we’d found out, he didn’t deny it.”

Eveen released him. She took a step back, her mind swimming. “He admitted it?”

Mael nodded, nursing his bleeding nose. “Once we figured out things we contacted him—to offer the journal. We thought he’d maybe give us a reward. And we could talk about him becoming our patron. He seemed amenable. Even asked if we could complete his son’s spell.” At seeing the angry flash in Eveen’s eyes he held up his hands to protect his face. “We told him no! We’d never kill children! I swear it on all the gods of my forebearers!”

“He wanted immortality for himself?” Sky asked in horror.

“I’m certain of it,” Mael answered. “Whatever his son was into, Pol Oranus was too.”

“He just didn’t bloody his own hands,” Eveen said. “How do I fit into this?”

Mael’s eyes rounded again. “He hates you!”

“For killing his son,” she said.

“For taking away his chance at immortality,” he amended. “For ending his dream of becoming Grand Patriarch. But yeah, for killing his son too—eviscerating him like a pig. You can practically feel the rage in his voice when he speaks about you. He’s been looking for his vengeance for the past four years.”

It was odd to hear of being plotted against by someone you didn’t even know.

“Why not just pull his own son back from time, if he wanted him so much?” Eveen grumbled.

“Because he’s not undead,” Mael answered. “Your soul is in this time, and the past. We could ask one to seek out the other. But he’s gone. There’s nothing left here to…” He gestured, reaching for words. “… anchor him.”

“So, that’s what this is, then,” Sky reasoned. “Pulling me here. Contracting Eveen. This is how he planned on getting back at her.” Her voice grew cold. “Was it your idea? Did you give him this grand plan to mess up my life?”

Mael shook his head vigorously. “Us? No! This was all Pol Oranus. He even wrote the spell!”

That took Eveen off guard. “He’s a sorcerer?”

“No, he can’t do a trickle of magic. But he’s a genius at writing it!”

“That’s a thing?” Sky asked.

Mael nodded. “Of course. Like a songwriter who can’t carry a tune. I think he even wrote the immortality spell for his son. The one he created to pull you forward through time was mathematically beautiful! I’ve never seen such flawless thaumaturgical equations! Better than anything the colleges can do, trapped in their orthodoxy. When he offered us the chance to perform it, we accepted!”

The admiration and pride in his voice made Eveen want to punch him again.

“Now he’s trying to kill you,” Sky said wryly. “Already killed your friends.”

That took the air out of him. “I don’t understand. We did just as he asked.”

“You know fuck all,” Eveen said, shaking her head. “You and your Neck Beards.”

“Three Beards,” he corrected.

“Whatever. Pol Oranus didn’t invite you dolts to work his grand magic of vengeance because he admired your stupid little club. He did so because you’re expendable. The power that resurrected me, that protects my anonymity, is of Aeril. You know how dangerous screwing around with godling magic is? No sanctioned thaumaturgist would take that work. Not even unsanctioned sorcerers in the criminal underworld. But you boneheads don’t know dangerous when you see it. Tell me, any other Edgelords gone missing over the past four years?”

Mael’s face took on a shade of stupid. “A few…”

Eveen huffed. “Bet you weren’t the first expendables Pol Oranus tried this with. You just happened to be the lucky ones whose souls weren’t torn to shreds or burned out. Congrats. Oh wait, no, because now he’s getting rid of the only other people who aren’t fellow untouchable Patriarchs. Who know the secret of his child-killing son. Did the three of you give even a second’s thought before trying to blackmail one of Tal Abisi’s most powerful men—who also writes evil spells?”

Mael’s expression actually got stupider. “Oh gods, he’s going to kill me. I’m dead. I’m dead. You have to help me!”

Eveen was about to vividly describe the many sexual acts he could inflict upon himself before she’d lift a finger to aid him when Sky stepped forward.

“If we help you, we’d need something in return.”

Mael’s frantic gaze latched onto the girl like a drowning man.

“The spell you worked to bring me here. Can you … undo it?”

He looked at her blankly, before his eyebrows climbed in understanding.

“Yes,” he murmured, thinking. Then louder, “Yes! Yes! I can do that!”

“By yourself?” Eveen asked. “Took three of you last time.”

He nodded briskly. “I remember the spell work. Still have the equipment! I can send her back to where she came from! Then you can protect me, right? Smuggle me out of the city?”

Eveen eyed him coolly. “What did I say about you and me and deal-making?”

Sky crouched down before the frightened man, searching his face.

“He’s telling the truth,” she said. “Or at least he thinks he is.”

Eveen’s knife hand itched. She bent to whisper into the girl’s ear.

“Can’t I cut just a little bit off?” Sky returned a flat stare. She sighed, turning her attention to Mael. “We talked to a thaumaturgist. He claimed the magical energy needed for your spell was impossible to come by. How can you generate that again?”

That annoying proud look she wanted to punch returned to his face. “That’s the problem with these college-trained thaumaturgists. Don’t think outside the boxes they confine themselves in. We didn’t generate all that energy. We just tapped into it—from a source sitting right out in the open. We used the Shimmer!”

CHAPTER SEVEN

GETTING TO TAL Abisi’s eastern shore wasn’t easy. The Shimmer wasn’t a place people visited—not people with good sense. The Clockwork King’s infamous act had saturated the old Smuggler’s District with magic of undefinable and chaotic qualities. Three hundred years later, its potency remained. Ship captains steered clear. And canal routes had long been dammed off. The only way in was to hire a boatman to put them on the edge of the Old City, then trek by foot.

Eveen kept them at a steady clip. She had no idea how long this spell would take. And night was fast running out. Sky matched her pace as they walked the old empty road that led to their destination. Mael was another matter.

He was probably a decade younger than Eveen, but he stumbled through the dark—even with the lone lantern Sky had brought along. Of course, it was probably also the heavy satchel he carried on his back with the devices to work his magic. She could have helped but watching him struggle under the burden seemed fitting for his part in their troubles.

“Have you ever been?” Sky asked, sliding up. “To the Shimmer?”

Eveen shook her head. “We resurrected-by-sorcery types try to avoid magical hazards.”

“When I was small, kids made dares,” the girl said. “But we never went through with it.”

“It’s not as bad as all that!” Mael called from behind, breathing heavy.

“Says the idiot tapping into a well of chaotic magic,” Eveen remarked.

She still couldn’t believe what he’d told them—that he and his fellow Edgelords had drawn on the Shimmer’s errant sorcery to perform their spell. Supposedly it had been Pol Oranus’s idea. Even provided them the equipment.

“Being inside the Shimmer isn’t what people think,” Mael went on. “It won’t transmogrify you. Or make you combust spontaneously. At least, not right away.”

“Oh well, no problem then,” Sky retorted, sharing an is-this-guy-for-real look with Eveen.

“The magic in there is just more intense,” he said. “Like Shimmer Fever but tenfold.”

“Is Shimmer Fever what became of the last bunch who resettled there?” Eveen cracked.

Sky looked incredulous. “The city’s still at it? Trying to reclaim land from the Shimmer?”

“Every Grand Patriarch has a new plan,” Eveen said. “Last settlers got turned to stone.”

“Well actually,” Mael corrected, “it was a type of rare quartz.”

“Well actually,” Eveen snapped back, “they were still fucked. And you have dumb gods’ luck you all weren’t smeared to the twelve winds.” Harnessing the Shimmer’s power wasn’t a new idea. The last sanctioned attempt had produced a sorcerous backlash, setting off all sorts of oddities—buildings torn from their foundations and sent floating, a third of the city reduced to speaking unintelligible languages, canal eels enlarged into man-eating monsters. Prohibitions were placed against any future attempts, with stiff punishments for transgressors.

“I’m only saying,” the man tried again, “that maybe all this fearmongering about the Shimmer is a way to stop us from utilizing it. The thaumaturgists keep everyone frightened, reliant on sanctioned magics, while there’s power out here for the taking! Pol Oranus at least had the foresight to—”

“Did he come out here?” Sky interrupted. “With you, I mean?”

Mael took a second. “No. He gave us the equipment and told us where—”

Eveen barked a laugh. “He wasn’t about to get himself imploded if you failed!”

She made sure to laugh long and hard.

“But we didn’t fail,” Mael said defensively. “We did it. We did some amazing magic. We should be the most famous sorcerers in the city.”

“Now two of you are the deadest,” Eveen noted dryly.

That shut him up, and he fell into a brooding quiet. She almost felt sorry for him. He bore responsibility for what was happening. But he was just a dupe. In that way, they shared a commonality—playthings of a scheming Patriarch, like pieces on a gameboard. Or puppets on a string.

“What happens when I’m gone?” Sky asked. Her voice was low, meant for only Eveen to hear. “What if, knowing what I do…” She paused, her face uncertain in the glow lamp’s light. “… I don’t make the choice to become you?”

Eveen had thought on this already. She hoped with the girl gone, Fennis’s obscure clause would undo the contract. But what did it mean beyond that? “Maybe then I go poof after all,” she said.

They walked in awkward silence after that, Eveen contemplating nonexistence.

“There it is!” Mael said.

Both were pulled from their thoughts, looking to where the man pointed. The Shimmer lit up the near distance: a wall of cascading light covering the land and rising high into the sky. They stopped to take in the breadth of it—a monument to one man’s ego.

“Spurned men are such crybabies,” Sky whispered.

Eveen nodded, then walked down the road. The others followed.

Stepping into the Shimmer was like plunging through a ward with the force of a churning river. Eveen clenched her teeth as the magic enveloped her, the knives at her side quivering. Then she was in daylight. An oddity of being inside the Shimmer. It was always daylight here. The sun hung in a blue sky, sometime at midmorning—locked in the moment of the Clockwork King’s fury some three centuries past. And that wasn’t all.

The old Smuggler’s District was laid out before them—where pirates and contraband runners once put in to port. Tal Abisi had waged a long war with piracy, until realizing it was also good for trade. So they’d negotiated a truce allowing for the maintenance of the informal economy—creating a semi-autonomous zone where the rules of the main city were relaxed, provided proper fees and taxes were paid.

“It’s still here,” Sky whispered. She stood by Eveen, teeth chattering from the magic.

Everything was still here—the old Smuggler’s District as it had existed three hundred years past. Paved streets snaked between buildings large and small, all unmarked by time.

“We need to be at the shore,” Mael said, coming to stand by them. “Where the magic is strongest.”

Sky looked to him, touching a blue braid. “That’s where you pulled me through. I remember waking and hearing water, thinking it was day. But I was inside the Shimmer. And the magic is strong there because…”

She didn’t finish. Everyone knew why the magic would be stronger there—where the Clockwork King had carried out his destructive deed.

“Let’s go, then,” Eveen said, leading the way.

Moving through the Shimmer brought its own strangeness. The air shifted—waves of colorful light that danced before your eyes, leaving visible vibrations in your wake. Sky put out a finger to tap the space in front of her, setting off a rainbow of ripples like the surface of a pond. That errant magic. They were submerged in it now.

The sandy shore peeked between buildings, where waves crashed upon jagged rocks. When it all finally came into view, Eveen stared. She had looked out at the old lighthouse on many a night while perched atop the Tomb of the Patriarchs. But that didn’t do it justice.

The lighthouse had once risen up from a flat base, complete with a walkway. Now, it leaned low across the beach: a rounded edifice of stone banded in ochre and white, where diamond-shaped windows gave glimpses of a winding inner staircase. The massive construction had existed long before the first Patriarch came to Tal Abisi. Whichever ancient people had built it, they left nothing else of their presence—and perhaps they had only placed it here to assure ships safe passage. It seemed mindboggling that something so ageless could be felled like a tree. That is, until you saw the woodsmen.

Giants stood on the shore—beings wrought of iron and metal in the shapes of men. Sunlight glinted off the brass of their chests and the rounded heads that contained no nose or mouth, only two eyes of amber glass. There were nine in all, towering into the air with long metallic arms and hands that clutched great hammers and maces of black steel.

Eveen pondered the power of those weapons as they walked beneath the giants’ shadow. It was with these maces and hammers that the mechanical army had brought down the lighthouse: a show of force ordered by their maker, the Clockwork King. Though the threatened attack had never come, his army remained: sentinels of a past age who kept their eternal watch.

“This will do,” Mael said.

Eveen looked to find the man had stopped, his breathing quick and pupils dilated.

“Did you get high while we weren’t looking?” she asked.

“High?” His words came a bit too fast. “No, no. I just feel … fantastic!”

The Shimmer. Sky was practically shivering as she craned her neck to stare up at the clockwork giants. Eveen too could feel that magic prickling her undead flesh. They needed to be done and away from here, quick.

“Get started, then,” she told him.

Mael dumped out the contents of his satchel onto the sand. They looked like large silver pitchforks with blunted tips—only missing the middle tine, creating a U shape.

“Resonance tuners,” he explained—catching their curious looks. He planted one stem into the sand. “Imported from Kons and constructed of a special alloy. It’s long been known the Shimmer emits a resonance we can’t hear. It’s vibrating all around us. Pol Oranus had these made to tap into that reverberation.” He took out a small black rod and struck the implanted fork. It emitted a slight whine, drawing in light as a blue haze danced along the U-shaped top.

“It’s collecting the Shimmer’s magic!” Sky said in wonder.

Mael nodded, a bright smile peeking out from his beard. “Yes! It’s filling up, see?”

Eveen could see. As the magic hummed along the odd fork, the prickling on her skin began moving to the same strange harmony. “Is that safe?”

“If we keep it stable.” He gripped the fork to stop its vibrations, and the glow faded.

“Great,” she muttered, eyeing the thing warily.

“I’ve never actually seen the Clockwork King’s army up close,” Sky said. She’d turned back to staring up at the giants. “The stories don’t do them justice. How could anyone build things so … massive? Do you think they’re still alive? I mean, working?”

“Likely,” Eveen replied, trying to shake an itch in a shoulder blade. “Things here keep.”

Sky cocked her head, as if listening for ticking gears. “Why did you all turn them about?”

Eveen’s fingers struggled to reach the itch. Blast it. “Turn what about?”

“The clockwork giants. They’re facing the wrong way.”

Eveen rotated her shoulder to get at the itch. She looked up, to where great amber glass eyes, each an arm span wide, stared out to sea. “How do you mean? They’ve always faced that way.”

Sky frowned at her. “No, they haven’t.”

“Yes they have,” Eveen said. What was up with this godsdamned itch?

“They have,” Mael put in, unsolicited.

Sky looked at them both, puzzlement on her face. “But that’s not how the story goes.” At Eveen’s disinterested shrug, she rolled her eyes and began. “When the Clockwork King walked from the sea with his army and demanded the Golden Bounty surrendered to him, the Pirate Princess and everyone was prepared to fight. But the mechanical girl didn’t want to see such destruction. She walked out to meet him right here to say she wouldn’t return. That she was in love. And that he had to let her go. The Clockwork King was furious. He said if the Golden Bounty wouldn’t come back with him, then she had to give him back his gift—the power that made her live. So she opened up her chest, reached inside, and took out the clockwork heart he had built—so bright that people say it shined like a star. That’s when the amazing happened.”

“She didn’t die!” Mael called. He had placed four of the odd forks into the sand now.

“She didn’t die,” Sky repeated. “Whatever magic had given her life was a part of her now. She didn’t need his creation to live. So she bade him farewell, then turned back and went to her Pirate Princess.”

Eveen gave up on locating the bothersome itch. “That’s the story. What’s your point?”

“Well, the Clockwork King went mad,” the girl said. “In his fury, he threw down the heart and took out a large hammer to destroy it. But when he cracked the heart open the magic it released exploded. He was vaporized. The Shimmer is what was left behind.”

“Well actually, he wasn’t vaporized,” Mael began. “More like he was unwound—”

At a glare from them both, he fell into quiet mumbling and returned to the forks.

“Anyway,” Sky said, “the giants didn’t know where their maker had gone. Everyone feared they might yet destroy the city. But the Golden Bounty weaved a story for them—that their maker had gone inland in search of grand treasure. And that they must wait for him. That’s why the giants stand here facing the city, ever looking for the Clockwork King’s return.”

Eveen stared at the girl, momentarily forgetting the confounding itch.

“What are you talking about?” Mael shook his head, looking to Eveen. “What’s she even talking about?”

“It’s the story,” Sky retorted. “Everyone knows it.”

“Everyone does know,” Eveen told her slowly. “But the tale the Golden Bounty weaved for the giants was of their maker going to sea. That they had to stand and look out across the waters to await his return. That’s why they’re facing that way. Why they’ve always faced that way.”

Sky now looked utterly confused. “That’s not possible. Even over sixty years, the story couldn’t have changed that much.”

“There!” Mael broke in. He was standing with nine tuning forks arranged. “It’ll take a moment to get them fully powered. But when they draw enough magic, I can work the spell. I can send her back. Then you keep your end of the bargain? You get me out of the city?”

Eveen didn’t answer, meeting Sky’s questioning stare.

“Something’s wrong,” they both murmured at once.

In that instant, the itch in Eveen’s shoulder blade became a full body spasm.

She drew her knives, whipping her head around to find the danger. Her eyes fell on Mael. He was staring at her with a bewildered look of his own, before dropping his gaze to the curved hook of bone jutting from his chest, coated in his blood. He didn’t get a word out before he was violently yanked into the air, shooting up toward the leaning lighthouse. There, atop the stone, a figure stood waiting in a black cloak. Four skeletal hands caught Mael, holding him fast. Then, with a terrible wrenching, they tore his body in two.

“Eveen!” the figure called down in a male voice. He threw what was left of Mael away like discarded refuse. “It seems I have finally found you! Both of you! Good! Aeril be praised!” With a leap, he plunged toward the beach below.

Eveen jumped back, sliding between Sky and the figure, who landed in a cloud of sand, triggering intense vibrations of light. Now she understood the itch in her shoulder blades—the Shimmer screwing with her ability to sense the undead.

The figure pulled back a hood to reveal a grinning skull. The polished bone was misshapen, elongated to resemble something between a man and a cat, complete with long canines. The only flesh was the eyes: two white orbs with glowing red feline irises, fitted inside shadowy sockets.

“Eveen, Eveen, Eveen,” he tsked, sound emanating unnaturally from an empty throat. His clearly un–Tal Abisi accent made her name sound like Ah-veen, which always irritated.

“Valesh,” she greeted him. “Taking night strolls through the Shimmer?”

“I go where my job flees.” The Dead Cat Tail assassin flicked his bone whip, segments of joined spinal columns curling then going taut, sending blood flying from the curved end sharpened into a knife. Mael’s blood. He was dead. And with him, their only chance to send the girl home. After all they’d gone through tonight, to come so close was …

She fought off the despair. Best to focus on the immediate danger.

“Your job? Moonlighting for another guild now?”

Valesh sighed, shaking his grinning skull head as if dealing with a child. Pompous ass.

“My job was contracted through our guild,” he answered. “As were his associates.”

That caught Eveen by surprise. Valesh had killed Mael’s crew? This was Pol Oranus then. Had Baseema known? Set her on this path only to dash her hopes in the end?

“I tracked him here,” Valesh went on. “And surmised he had gone into the Shimmer when I could no longer sense his tell. What fortune that you and your job are also here. Now I can take care of three matters at once.”

“Valesh!” she said, urgent. “There’s something going on! Pol Oranus contracted the guild to take out Mael and his friends. It has something do with me and my job. She’s—”

“You,” Valesh finished with a nod. “I have heard the tale. A girl pulled through time.”

“Then you know none of this is normal. I think there’s even more to—”

“I don’t care,” Valesh broke in.

Eveen tried again.

“I’m telling you Pol Oranus is playing us! The entire guild is in danger!”

“Because you broke your contract.”

“Aeril’s fiery tits! I had to!”

That pompous head shake again, and she wanted to wring his skeleton neck.

“Always a reason,” he said, lecturing. “Always an excuse to break rules.”

“I paid for it,” she spat. “Still paying.”

“Too easy a penance. And why you are so cavalier in breaking them again.”

“So if you were in my shoes you’d just ship your younger self?”

“Yes. I’d turn about right now and cut my throat.”

His voice was unwavering. She thought the cocky bastard probably would.

“That is the difference between you and me,” he continued, unfastening his cloak. “You see rules as things to be set aside when they are inconvenient. To be broken when they suit your whims. I understand that rules are to be followed. No matter the consequence.”

He shook off the cloak, letting it drop away to reveal his body. A skeleton. But not just one. There were too many ribs, extra clavicles fused to make him broad, more femurs and humeri to give his legs bulk, scapulae welded along his back like a carapace—and from his shoulders, two sets of arms on either side, making for four arms in total. He was a monstrosity of bone: a mockery that only servants of a death goddess could dream up.

“Do you know what your problem is, Eveen?”

She grimaced. If this bony-faced fuck dropped his mandible to tell her what her—

“You are weak,” he said. “It is not your fault. It is your flesh.”

Oh. She rolled her eyes. This again? No one knew where Valesh had called home in his past life. Or how he ended up in Tal Abisi. But he had requested to become this monster upon resurrection. It was said people jumped to their deaths at the sight of him—certain some demon had come to drag their soul to one of the less pleasant hells.

“I am without such frailties.” He rapped a thick sternum. “Without your vanity. Your need to be tied to your flesh-bound past. What you fail to see is that we are no longer human. We have walked through the goddess’s veil and been reborn. This fragile thing—” He pointed a bony finger to Sky. “This bit of blood, brain, and viscera, is but old skin. To be sloughed off.”

“And become a soulless pile of bones?” Eveen quipped. “I’ll keep my frailties, thanks.”

That nerve-wracking sigh again. “Then I will kill her for you. After, I will scour away your flesh, so that what is left behind can be remolded into something stronger.”

The knives in Eveen’s grip hummed. “Not the first tonight to try.”

“I shall endeavor, then, to do better.”

He cracked the bone whip, snaking it in a flash toward her. Eveen batted away the curved blade seeking her flesh—once, then again. The third time the whip encircled a leg, and at a sharp pull, she went down. Her eyes went to Sky.

“Run!”

The girl didn’t hesitate.

Across from them, Valesh’s body shifted—bones creaking and clacking as he rearranged his skeletal frame. His spine elongated and he fell on all fours, becoming even more inhuman as he scampered after the girl.

Eveen tore the bone whip from her leg, wrestling the living thing until she had a grip around the handle. “You’re mine now!” she growled. Looking back, she caught sight of Valesh set to pounce on Sky: a beast after fleeing prey. She flung the bone whip to catch him midleap—pulling hard to send the bony mass crashing onto the sand. Running after him she threw herself onto his back, blades first.

Unfortunately, stabbing and slicing didn’t do much, her knives only scraping across bone. She found some luck in sliding a blade beneath a scapula covering his spine like a plate of armor. With a twist, she pried it off. She got several more before a skeletal hand grabbed hold of her and flung her off. Rolling on the sand, she came up knives out and ready.

Valesh shifted again, standing on two legs and holding the recovered bone whip. His skull swung about, red irises searching. But the girl was gone. Eveen hoped she kept running.

“No matter.” He refocused on her. “Once you are handled, the girl is mine to hunt.”

“Try and handle me,” she snapped. “Let that be the reason.”

“You know I searched your safe house,” he mused. “Went through your belongings.”

He meant the one the guild knew about. But the thought of his bony hands … blech.

“It was filled with rubbish,” he went on. “Like those Terribles you favor. Asheel the Maniac Hunter, is it?” His skeletal grin seemed to widen at seeing her stiffen.

“What did you do with my books?” she asked through clenched teeth.

“I looked through them, trying to find what you see in such childish things. But all I saw was nonsense. More pictures than words. So I ripped them up. Into small. Little. Pieces.” His hands made a motion, like throwing confetti into the air.

And it was in that moment that Eveen, without regret or remorse, chose violence. She pointed her knife. “Monster! You’ll pay for your crimes!”

“I’m sure,” he retorted. And the two charged.

Valesh had straightened his bone whip and now wielded it like a spear. Eveen met his attack, striking the weapon at angles to chip away bits. He was bigger, but she had the speed. Not to mention she was pissed. Tear up her books, would he? A swift knife swipe severed the spinal bones of the whip, breaking it in two. She took the advantage to slide into his guard—leaping up with the intent of plunging steel into an eye socket. She’d forgotten, however, he had other arms. Hands caught each of her wrists, while another crashed a bony fist into her jaw. She tried to roll with the punch but caught the brunt of it—and the world erupted in pain.

Eveen broke free, staggering back—her legs nearly giving out. Gods, that hurt! She couldn’t remember anything ever hurting like this. A coppery taste filled her mouth and she sucked in breath, blinking to regain her vision. It felt like—

She stopped cold.

Blinking? Sucking in breath? She was … breathing! And the coppery taste in her mouth. Fingers hastily dug inside came back out crimson. Blood? Her head spun. And not just from the blow. How was this happening? Undead flesh didn’t bleed. Her gaze took in the rippling vibrations of light their fight had kicked up. The Shimmer! That chaotic magic was working on her somehow. Even now she could feel a once-stilled heart beating faint in her chest.

Before she could put sense to what was happening, Valesh came again—hitting her like a rampaging bull cat. She was lifted up and slammed onto the sand—air flying from newly resuscitated lungs. She didn’t have time to recover before he struck her, bringing fresh pain that left her dazed. Another strike, and something broke. Probably her nose. Now teeth. She was certain the blows to her side had hit vital organs. It was probably only seconds, but the beating felt like hours. When it was done she lay staring into the red cat-eyed gaze of a grinning skull.

“The weakness of flesh,” he pronounced.

Her lips fought to do some proper cussing. Even spit at him—now that she had spit. But something gave her pause. She wasn’t healing. The smashed cartilage, the jaw and orbital bone she was certain were fractured, the spleen or whatever he’d pulverized, none of it was knitting back together. Damned Shimmer!

“Where are your jokes now?” Valesh mocked. “Your witty tongue and bombast? See what comes from failing to keep your word? But I keep mine.” A hand came forward brandishing the rejoined bone whip. The weapon collapsed, rearranging into a knife. “I told you I would scour the flesh from your bones.” With a high-pitched whirring the blade began to turn, spinning into a blur. She tried to move her head. But bony fingers gripped her chin, holding it straight. “We will start here. Scrape this face clean of all vanity and past ties. You will thank me, in the end.”

Eveen found the will to struggle, her hands gripping the bony arm holding the blade. It slowed but didn’t stop. Watching its descent, she wondered what was to come. Would she die, again? Or would she be left in limbo, flesh gone but alive, forever in torment? For the second time tonight, fear touched her. She surrendered it to it, wholly, letting herself drown in its depths—anything for the resolve to fight. Her focus was so fixed she barely glimpsed the figure who appeared suddenly behind Valesh to plunge something into his back. He stood quickly, turning about to find—Sky!

“You have returned.” His surprise matched Eveen’s. What in the hells was the girl still doing here? “Unwise. But I am saved the trouble of the hunt.” At a flick, his knife reformed into the bone whip, coiling like a serpent.

Sky at least had the sense to put distance between them. But she didn’t run. Instead, she yelled while pointing at Valesh. “Resonance! Magic! Collector!” Eveen caught every other word, and thought it gibberish, until she looked to the skeleton man’s back. Shoved among several scapulae was one of Mael’s odd forks.

“Only safe! Keep magic! Stable!” Sky yelled.

The jumble of words clicked into place at once. Eveen fought past pain to lift up, staggering, then limping, then running for Valesh. She held one of her knives. But when she reached the skeleton man she didn’t try to stab him. Instead, she brought the hilt down hard on the butt end of the fork jutting from his back. The thing vibrated when struck, emitting a blue haze and a building whine. Valesh looked down, just noticing the luminous metal lodged into his frame. Eveen spun around him, running faster now for Sky. She reached the girl, tackling her to the ground and curling about her as the whine reached a fever pitch.

There was an ear-shattering BOOM! as the blast of chaotic magic buffeted her. She gritted her teeth as bone fragments tore through clothing, cutting into her back with fresh pain, but held tight to Sky, trying to protect the girl as best she could. When it was over, she lifted her head up to look about. There was nothing much left of Valesh—just charred chunks of bone raining down to pelt the blackened sand. She searched through the mess until she found his severed skull lying face down. Standing on shaky legs, she staggered toward it, using her foot to flip it over. Two red eyes stared up from shadowed sockets.

“Are you kidding me?” Sky asked, coming to peer over her shoulder.

Valesh’s voice croaked. “A fine trick. You have proved a worthy opponent. But do not think this the end. We will face again—”

The words were lost as Eveen reached down to rip off his mandible. Gripping the skull by the gaping upper jaw, she mustered up all her strength and flung it out to sea. The skull sailed through the air to bounce off a rock before entering the waters with a ker-plunk! Then she collapsed. Sky dropped beside her.

“What’s wrong?” The girl’s hands traced Eveen’s body in alarm. “You aren’t healing!”

“Shimmer,” she managed, through ragged breaths.

Sky’s face lit up in some semblance of understanding and she helped Eveen up with a grunt. Both looked momentarily at the remaining odd forks.

“Let’s go,” the girl said. “There’s nothing for us here.”

In silence, they made their way from the beach, past the giants of the Clockwork King, who kept their steady and silent vigil.

THE NIGHT WAS quiet as they sat just off the old road. Leaving the Shimmer had broken the chaotic magic’s effects. Eveen felt it immediately—her pain receding to a familiar dullness as she healed. That was a relief. But the rest had gone too. The heart that briefly beat. The lungs that had taken air. All returned to undead flesh. She found herself running a tongue inside her mouth, yearning to recall the coppery taste of her own blood.

“Will Mael’s family be contacted?” Sky asked. She sat by a glow lamp, legs drawn up to her chin and blue braids falling over her knees.

“Not how it works,” Eveen replied.

“But somebody will miss him,” the girl countered.

Eveen studied her. Mael wasn’t exactly an innocent. Not by half. But he was a stupid kid, who had gotten a bad end. “I’ll try to see word gets to someone,” she said.

Sky nodded her thanks. “How long before dawn?”

Eveen glanced up at the stars. “A few hours.”

There was a stretch of quiet.

“I won’t be going back home, will I?” The girl’s words were a whisper.

Eveen paused, then shook her head. “Without Mael … I don’t see how. I’m sorry.”

Sky exhaled deeply before speaking again. “No need for both of us to suffer. If my dying saves you somehow, then…” Her eyes closed. “I just don’t want it to hurt.”

Eveen stared, bewildered by the offer. “I’m not doing that.”

The girl’s eyes flew open. “But your goddess will—”

“Fuck her and her fucking fiery tits!”

Sky made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “My gods, your mouth.”

Eveen returned a grin that slowly resolved into a frown.

“What is it?” the girl asked.

Eveen bit her lip. She’d been trying to make sense of a problem since leaving the Shimmer—one that might help them. Though she couldn’t yet figure out how.

“Do you remember our talk before Valesh appeared?” she asked.

Sky cocked her head, thinking. “We were trading stories.”

Eveen nodded. “We both said ‘something’s wrong’ at the same time.”

“I remember. It was about the giants—the way they were facing.”

“I think there’s more there. Something we’re missing.”

Sky shrugged. “They’re just stories.”

“Every story carries its own truths,” Eveen recited. “Something Fennis told me.”

“Poetic,” the girl said. “But how can that help us?”

Eveen tried to make the jumble in her head coherent, choosing what she might say. But instead of talking, she was looking at something in her hand. One of her knives. She frowned. When had she taken that out? Now her arm hung in the air—and she stared, confused. The next thing she knew, a fistful of blue braids was clutched in her grip as the tip of the knife pressed on Sky’s throat. The girl struggled, held fast by a knee pressing her down. Eveen’s knee. She was set to slide the blade across the waiting jugular—but a voice in her head screamed. It was her own voice. Only distant. Like it had fallen down a deep hole.

“Good night, Eveen,” someone said.

She looked up to find a man. A tall man. He wore a dark coat that hung past his knees, just above tall black boots—reminding her of a crow. Where had he come from? He lowered to a crouch beside her, tipping up a beaten wide-brimmed hat that partially hid a gaunt, narrow face. His yellow eyes drank her in as he spoke in an oddly quiet voice.

“I’m the man from out of town.”

His words set off a hundred forgotten alarms. Words Baseema had spoken.

I have a man coming in from out of town. A last resort.

She knew what that meant. Had known. It was the buried voice within her that spoke.

“Necromancer.” The word was a stammered whisper. Inside, she wailed.

The man didn’t smile. But he did nod, once.

“Eveen!” Sky shouted, still held fast by the knee in her back. Her head twisted up to glare at the man between long blue braids. “What are you doing? Who is this?”

Eveen fought to make her lips work. It felt like lifting a boulder. With her teeth. “Necromancer,” the stammer came again. She never even glanced down, unable to pull her eyes from the crouching figure.

Sky gasped, confusion giving way to shock, then horror. “Is he controlling—?”

The girl’s words were cut off as Eveen clapped a hand over her mouth.

The necromancer looked down at Sky, placing a long finger to his lips with a hush.

His attention returned to Eveen. “I tracked you here but kept my distance from…” He gestured to the Shimmer. “I interrogated the skeleton man who followed you—not that he would remember. I hoped he would resolve this matter. Obviously, he failed.”

The voice inside Eveen screamed to lunge at him. To bury her knives into some non-lethal but very painful part of his body—to the hilt. But she didn’t move. Not a muscle. Not a twitch. Her unblinking eyes stayed focused on him, unable to look at anything else. Right now, he was her entire world.

“It’s early still,” he went on tiredly. “Your guild boss was adamant I allow you until dawn. I will keep to that part of the contract. But why continue the chase when we can simply wait out the remaining hours? Here. Alone.”

He reached over to root about inside Sky’s satchel, inspecting the Festival token before tossing it. The surgical tools he took more of a liking to. Eveen was still as he opened her jacket, withdrawing one of her knives. His finger traced the edge of the dark blade, which jumped suddenly at the unfamiliar touch. He dropped it, cursing at being cut. The voice inside Eveen laughed raucously.

“Careless.” He tsked, sucking away blood. “I was warned those were not for the taking.” He reached instead to pull two of her daggers free, disappearing them into his coat. “A pity necromancy is banned in Tal Abisi. So that a man of my talent must skulk about in the shadows. Rights for the undead.”

He huffed in umbrage at the very notion, while pilfering the figurine of the Pirate Princess from Eveen. His hands moved over her shoulder to push back her locs, those yellow eyes studying her face. “You’re pretty. That’s a compliment. I’ve seen my share of the dead. You’re well kept. But you should smile more.” His fingers drew a curving line and Eveen felt the corners of her mouth tug upward against her will.

“Better.” He bent his head to look to Sky, who still lay flat. “A relative?”

Eveen only smiled.

“Of course,” he said absently, fingers moving. “Speak.”

The words flew out. “She’s me.”

A pair of bushy eyebrows rose. “Interesting. How is that possible? Speak.”

“Pulled from the past. You thieving eel-fucked son of a dead man-whore’s—”

Her mouth clamped shut, her teeth clicking as his fingers closed. “More than I asked. Strong willed. Well, there are ways to break that.” He returned to Sky, caressing the back of her neck in a way that made Eveen snarl inside. The little finger on her right hand jumped.

“I have no control over you,” he told the girl. “But her undead flesh is under my sway.”

Eveen’s little finger jumped again. The voice inside cried out at this small triumph.

“I have ways to make her hurt you. Ways to make you scream. We could see which—”

The necromancer’s face spasmed. He shook his head, beginning anew. “We could—”

This time his whole left side spasmed. He frowned, lifting a trembling hand, his words slurring. “What … is this?”

As she watched his body spasm further, the buried voice inside Eveen grew, filling her up until it was shouting. Her little finger jumped. Then another finger. And another. Whatever was happening to the necromancer, it was lessening his hold. If she could just push … She strained. It was like throwing herself against the whole damned world. Push. Push. Just a bit more … His hold on her broke abruptly—like ropes being cut. She released Sky and that damned smile. The necromancer now lay on his side, wracked by convulsive shivers.

Sky sat up, gulping air and rubbing her neck where the knife had rested. “What’d you do to him?”

Eveen shook her head. She was set to say she hadn’t done anything when she heard the humming. From her bewildered look, Sky heard it too. A child’s lullaby about the Golden Bounty. It came from the dark, with the sound of light footsteps. How many godsdamned people are on this road, she wondered? Then her skin … prickled. The two watched, bracing, as a new figure stepped from the shadows.

A boy, in a child’s Pirate Princess costume—complete with a pretend pistol. His face was covered in a white papier-mâché cat’s mask, cut with black eyes and a pink lolling tongue. He stared at them for a moment, then lifted his mask to rest it on a mop of thick curls. The brown face beneath couldn’t have been more than ten, with large eyes that reflected his bright smile.

“Hello, Eveen,” he greeted in a squeaky voice.

She let her knife drop with a weary sigh. “Hey. Old man.”

Sky gaped. “This is the old man?”

He turned his head sideways to look the girl over. “She does favor you.”

“How long?” Eveen asked, ignoring the small talk.

The old man sat down cross-legged, beaming up at them. “Since Baseema’s.”

She laughed tiredly. Here she thought they’d avoided one of the Cat Tail’s deadliest. And he’d been on their trail the whole tine.

“A lively night you’ve had,” he said. “Burying Rejik. What you did to Valesh!” He tittered, puffing his small cheeks out to mimic an explosion. “Bwoosh!”

“Is this a joke?” Sky asked, staring incredulous. “The old man is a kid?”

“Not a kid,” Eveen corrected. The old man had worked for other guilds before Baseema poached him. No one knew how a child had bargained with a death goddess. Or why he had died so young. But he wasn’t a kid anymore. “He’s more mature than he looks.”

“How mature?” the girl asked.

The old man winked, gesturing to the Shimmer. “I remember when that wasn’t there.”

Sky practically sputtered.

“You took out the necromancer.” Eveen gazed down at the man. He’d gone still. But his yellow eyes darted about, regarding each of them with a stunned look.

The old man smiled, showing boyish dimples. “You know my work.”

That she did. What made him so dangerous. And so damned good. He studied his jobs. Learned their habits. When you got shipped by the old man, it was through poison inhaled from your favorite flower. Or dabbing on a death potion, mixed into your usual perfume. He had an array of toxins that killed or paralyzed. The necromancer probably never felt the needle’s prick.

“Was this done to me?” she asked. Some of those toxins worked as well on undead flesh.

His child’s face went eerily flat, drained of all emotion.

“No,” he said in a hollow voice. “Nor the girl.”

Relief flooded her. But then … “Why? Baseema asked you to do the same as the others.”

“Asked,” he emphasized. “Not a contract. That’s different.”

She frowned. “Then what do you want?”

He grinned suddenly, a frightening child’s grin. Or the mockery of one. “To see the game finished!”

“Game?” Sky asked tentatively.

The old man turned a dead gaze on her and she flinched.

“The one that pulled you through time! That had Eveen carry out a contract on herself! All orchestrated by a Patriarch! I’ve been watching it play out all night. And he—” There was a frown for the necromancer. “—was going to ruin the ending!”

Sky looked befuddled.

“He’s into games,” Eveen said, not taking her eyes from him. “So you’re letting us go?”

The boy that was not a boy propped his chin on a small fist. “Depends.”

“On…?”

His face twisted, and he spoke with a snarl. “Whether you’re ready to stop dicking around and take this game to the only place it can end!”

Eveen shared a long look with him, staring into eyes far older than ten.

“We are.” She thought perhaps she had known it for a while now.

The old man’s face was all boyish delight again—like rainbows and puppies. His small hands clapped happily.

Eveen reached down to search the necromancer for their pilfered goods.

“Where are we going, then?” Sky asked, reclaiming her satchel and throwing disturbed glances at the old man.

“To see Pol Oranus,” Eveen answered, sheathing her daggers.

That took the girl by surprise. “But you said you couldn’t touch him.”

“I can’t.” She paused. “We’re turning ourselves in.”

Sky’s jaw dropped. But at seeing Eveen’s look, her face turned curious. “You have a plan.”

“Something like one. Maybe. Need to see to our thaumaturgist first.”

“Fennis’s brother? Why?”

Eveen tucked the Pirate Princess figurine back in place, then picked up the discarded Festival token, studying it before offering it back to Sky. “I want to talk to him about magic sea jellies. And symmetry. I’ll explain on the way.” She looked to the necromancer, then the old man. “What about him?”

The boy that was not a boy made a sour face. “I don’t like necromancers.” He bent until his eyes were level with the prone man. “And while I can’t kill you, I am going to break your fingers. Then your toes. After that, things should get … interesting. It will hurt very, very much.”

Eveen took some pleasure in seeing those yellow eyes fill with terror. She and Sky left the small assassin to his work—as the first crack of bone sounded in the dark.

CHAPTER EIGHT

IT WAS AS the sky turned to the reddish hues of the coming dawn that Eveen and Sky walked through the house of Pol Oranus. Beyond the estate’s domed towers and gardens, past prayer pools and colonnaded paths, the rest of Tal Abisi celebrated the final moments of Festival. Road marchers would soon throw their torches into the sea—bathing in the waters to greet the rising sun. Others slept drunkenly in doorways or were helped home by friends. Brawlers had their wounds tended; the grievously injured might yet not live. In quiet spaces, lovers exchanged last breathless whispers, their illicit trysts blamed on Shimmer Fever.

But all that was a world away from the home of the Patriarch.

Eveen walked slow, her padded boots silent on jade marble. Above, massive glow lamps hung from a domed ceiling, illuminating a fresco of vivid colors that told the city’s history—through ships, trade, and wealth. Sky matched her steps, as if the two performed a rehearsed dance. A small army was their unsolicited escort—the mercenary company from earlier, in familiar red turbans and burgundy uniforms. She fumbled for the name again. The Crimson Hand? This time they took no chances. Dozens of pistols encircled them both, alongside crossbows and silver-barreled blunderbusses. Two burly men carried broadaxes, with wide blades for severing, while in the balcony gunners on either side trained long rifles.

Assassin rule #112: sometimes fighting isn’t an option.

As the procession neared the end of the wide chamber, she spied a familiar face.

Baseema. She wore billowing maroon pants tucked into black boots and an ivory shirt, while ring-adorned fingers clasped the lapels of a charcoal-gray long coat threaded in pearls and with a bushy collar of orange-red fire-fox fur. Showoff.

The guild boss of the Dead Cat Tail Assassins regarded Eveen evenly, her freckled face unreadable. Beside her, broad-shouldered Ooni scowled, cracking wrapped knuckles. Ipi gripped her war hammer and gave Eveen a one-eyed glare, the other hidden under a black patch. Ini stared blankly, per usual. The old man was there too, cross-legged on the floor and eating a sweet, his mouth smeared in yellow icing. He waved, but Eveen was searching for someone else. Where was Fennis? Her attention was drawn to a black laban-wood table directly ahead, and to the man behind it.

She’d expected Pol Oranus to be frail—a squirrely figure with a head for books and devious machinations. But there was nothing frail about the Patriarch. He was a big man, with a thick neck and—she imagined, under his luxurious gold and crimson robes—an overly muscled physique. A close white beard crept over a square jaw to surround a mouth with lips pressed firm. He wore a Patriarch’s necklace, studded with ebon rubies that matched his eyes. His gaze was a butcher’s blade, stripping them bare like meat from the bone, to be consumed.

Everything about this man exuded practiced control, staunch certainty, and unquestioned authority. Eveen couldn’t help but feel small. This was who they now went up against—this bastion of power and privilege? She glanced to Sky and saw that same doubt reflected on her face. But something in the girl quickly hardened and she held her chin erect—a familiar intensity that met Pol Oranus’s devouring stare.

“Halt there,” a voice ordered. The procession stopped.

Eveen turned to a figure standing with an open palm toward them. A wiry woman with tightly coiled graying hair, uniformed similar to the guards—but with gold stitching of rank on her collarless jacket. Her gray eyes glared daggers, and it didn’t take much to deduce this was the mercenary company’s captain. Their name finally clicked.

“The Iron Lady’s Fist!” Eveen blurted out.

The Iron Lady in question said nothing, her face unyielding like dark weathered stone.

“Sorry about earlier,” Eveen said. “Things got out of hand.”

The mercenary captain scrutinized her, undoubtedly weighing the worth of an apology from an undead killer. Finally, she gave the slightest nod, one woman’s acceptance of another with an unspoken fuck you all the same, before turning sharp on booted heels to stand with her company.

Baseema took that moment to sidle up, whispering in Eveen’s ear. “When I received the message that you were coming here to surrender, I thought it was a trick.”

“So you brought everyone along to make sure I behaved?”

“Everyone available. Mimi’s legs are being set. We’re still digging out Rejik. And Valesh is missing entirely. The old man said I should ask you about that?”

Eveen shrugged. “I’m sure he’ll … wash up. You seen Fennis?” She craned her neck about.

Baseema shook her head, her voice dropping lower.

“I didn’t know about the contract on those three young men. It was done through some shell intermediary. If you’ve really come to surrender, then … that’s that. But if you’re planning something else, tread carefully.” She glanced to Pol Oranus. “This is a room of predators, and he’s the biggest one.”

Eveen flashed her most confident smile. “Always bigger predators about.”

The guild boss considered her curiously, then Sky, before someone interrupted.

“We are set to begin these proceedings, if you are quite finished?”

Both women turned to a thin small man who stood to Pol Oranus’s left. He wore clothes of fine cut and carried an air of self-importance. Eveen grimaced. A solicitor.

“I represent Pol Oranus,” he confirmed. “And this … fraternization is a gross violation.”

Baseema gave him one good cut-eye but walked away.

“Now,” he said nasally. “We can begin. We are here on the matter of a binding agreement between my client and a hired contractor for, ah, services of a personal nature—”

“She was supposed to kill the godsdamned girl!” Pol Oranus’s deep voice boomed. They were the first words he’d spoken, and they reverberated to leave quiet in their wake as every eye turned to regard him. Pressing palms onto the table, he rose to an impressive height and walked around to the front, shoving the lawyer aside. His eyes bored into Eveen before turning to Baseema. “I hired you to do a job. And your people have made a mess of it.”

“Great Pol.” The guild boss bowed. “We fulfill our contracts. Even with … complications.”

Pol Oranus’s nostrils flared. “Complications aren’t my concern.”

“I believe they weren’t external to you either.” She bowed again. “Great Pol.”

The Patriarch’s lips creased into a smile. Not even trying to hide his hand.

“Your contract lacks any reference to complications,” the solicitor put in. “They are thus irrelevant. Pol Oranus demands you meet your obligations—or be considered in breach.”

Baseema’s response was neutral. “Fine, I’ll do it.” She reached for a knife, eyes intent on Sky. The girl took a step back.

“No!” Pol Oranus roared. He raised a hand that balled into a fist before stalking over to Eveen. This close, she looked up into his face. The stoicism was gone, replaced by rage. Not so much in control then. Barely holding it together in fact. He seemed to realize this and smoothed his features. “I hired this one to do the job. And I expect only her to carry it out.”

“There you have it,” the solicitor pronounced. “My client’s demand is nonnegotiable.”

There was a tense silence, and Eveen looked to Sky—both likely wondering the same thing. Where in the many hells was Fennis? A hurried set of a footsteps and a familiar voice finally broke the quiet.

“Excuse me! Pardon me! Oh, that’s your foot! Yes, thank you!” Fennis emerged from the throng of guards, stopping beside Eveen and mopping his flustered baby face with a kerchief.

“Cutting it a bit close, you think?” she whispered.

“Sorry!” He shoved the kerchief into a coat pocket. “The streets are still filled with revelers!”

“What is this?” Pol Oranus glared at Fennis, the way you might a rodent that crawled into your home.

“Great Pol!” Fennis bowed. “I present myself as counsel for, uh, my work friend.”

Eveen smiled at that.

“Counsel? Why would she need—”

Eveen opened her mouth and shouted right into his face. “I request an arbitration!”

Pol Oranus frowned at her outburst. The solicitor looked equally flummoxed. Baseema and the Cat Tails held faces of absolute shock. Even the old man.

“What is she talking about?” the Patriarch demanded, looking first to his solicitor, then Baseema. “What arbitration?”

Baseema blinked as if recovering her senses, then edged close to Eveen, hauling her aside—ignoring the solicitor’s protests. “Are you out of your fucking rabbit-assed mind?”

“No,” Eveen answered. “I’m desperate.”

The guild boss rounded on Sky. “This your idea?”

The girl huffed. “Why would I know anything about your murder guild?”

“Not me!” Fennis said, under the older woman’s glare. “I warned against it!”

“It was mine,” Eveen said. “And it’s my right. Fennis just agreed to represent me.”

“I demand to know what you are talking about!” Pol Oranus shouted over to them.

“I object to this irregularity!” the solicitor added. “The employer should not meddle!”

Baseema swore, eyes pinning Eveen. “Gods! I hope you know what you’re doing. For all our sakes!”

“So do I,” she murmured back.

The guild boss turned to face the Patriarch. “Great Pol, as you know, my assassins made binding contracts with the goddess Aeril to be gifted resurrection. Their employment with me is akin to a lease. As such, they are her acolytes and in any matter such as this may appeal to her for arbitration.”

The solicitor still looked confused. “She intends to … pray?”

But Pol Oranus knew better. “No. The arbitration is to be conducted … directly.” His eyes burned venom at Eveen, and when he leaned close she thought he might strike her. Instead, he spoke low into her ear. “I have planned your undoing to perfection. A masterpiece. Whatever tricks you now play are meaningless. The outcome is inevitable. When the end comes I will enjoy hearing your screams.” Pulling away, he walked back to his desk and sat, like a man awaiting a performance. Or an execution.

Eveen tried not to let his words rattle her, looking to Sky. Whatever happened now, there’d be no going back. The girl returned a reassuring nod, ruined only by her trembling. Rubbing the Pirate Princess figurine for a final bit of luck, Eveen dipped her head, touching two fingers to the jackal-eared hound inked onto the nape of her neck, her lips moving in silent invocation.

A stillness followed, so that in the emptiness only breathing—of those who still breathed—could be heard. The silence was abruptly ruptured by a sound like cracking glass: a creaking that grew to a grinding screech. And as all watched, some part of the world broke. A fissure appeared in the space before them that ran up in a jagged fracture. Within was endless night that bled starlight. And Eveen knew that if she were to step inside, she would fall—forever, and ever, and ever. She tried to prepare for the impossibility of what would come next. She wasn’t ready.

Two great hounds emerged from the fracture, black as the darkness that spawned them and each large as a small bear. The strong scent of brimstone clung to them, mingling with the charred smell that followed a lightning strike. They padded forward, unearthly eyes aglow and sleek coats wreathed in blood-red flames. Rumblings like captive demons sounded in their barrel chests, and when the beasts peeled back long square muzzles to bare silver canines like daggers, Eveen took several steps back. As one, the small army behind her followed. But the night held graver terrors.

Aeril, Matron of Assassins, the Silent Blade, the Lady of Knives, Snatcher of Souls—and, sometimes, the Crafter of Delectable Culinary Delights—entered the world. The goddess stood taller than all about her. No, not just tall. She was more, as if this reality could not contain her grandeur. Her very presence made the vast chamber seem small. She wore a gown threaded from shadow and stitched with pearls that twinkled like stars. It draped her shoulders to hug a slender torso, blending with the skin of her bare arms that reflected night, as she gripped her hounds by chain leashes linked to spiked black-iron collars. Only her face was different: the upper half a bloodred that flowed from chiseled cheekbones to scalp—where braided rows of hair fell back in thick corded ropes that looked spun from gold.

Everyone gaped. The army of guards. The Iron Lady. Even Pol Oranus. Baseema had gone to one knee, head bowed. In a way, this had been her idea. Aeril herself might come to collect, the guild boss had warned. Eveen had simply taken the matter into her own hands.

She leaned over to Sky. “What’d I tell you? Fiery tits!”

“What?” The girl broke from her stupor. “You can’t even see—she’s on fire all over!”

This was true. Like her hounds, Aeril was shrouded in slight crimson flames—along her skin and hair, even her eyes, where fire danced like slivers of light in a dark abyss.

“Why not her fiery chin?” Sky went on. “Her elbow? Or the tentacles!”

Also true. Where legs should have been, thick tentacles spilled from beneath Aeril’s shadowy gown: a glistening black mass that crept across the marble floor. A ghostly susurration rose up from them, as if in their constant writhing they whispered upon an unseen wind.

“Aeril’s fiery tendrils makes more sense,” Sky muttered.

Eveen balked. “Fiery tendrils? That’s … that’s … just stupid, is what that is.”

A voice like a drawn blade sliced through the very heart of the world.

“Weh pawt di somadi who bright enough fi call mi to deh plane yah?” Aeril demanded, her god’s tongue thundering in a rhythmic chorus. “Mek dem show dem face and luk pan mi!”

Dozens of eyes turned to Eveen. She huffed. Snitches. Then stepped forward.

“Hey boss lady.”

Aeril’s gaze whipped about, those fiery eyes glaring. In a rustle of tentacles, she glided smoothly forward to tower before Eveen, drowning the smaller figure in a shadow blacker than night. The same scent of brimstone and lightning rolled from her in waves, accompanied by a sickly sweet smell somewhere between a sugar refinery and a butcher’s shop.

“Bumaye bumaya,” the goddess thrummed deep in a slender immortal throat. A murmuring tendril snaked about Eveen’s middle like a canal eel, the heat of it searing. “Nuff fool man di call up mi name. Mi nyam up dem soul, an mi belly neva full.” A split tongue ran under sharp ivory teeth. “Rat like fi romp roun’ puss jaw, ’im gwine en’ up inna puss craw.”

“I’m one of yours!” Eveen said quickly, recalling that canal eels also ate their young.

Aeril’s eyes thinned, and a whispering tendril slithered up to the sigil at the back of Eveen’s neck that now burned.

“Divine One,” Fennis broke in with a deep bow, his arms wide in supplication. “This is one of your acolytes, and I am—”

The goddess flicked him a disinterested gaze before resettling on Eveen.

“Yuh wear mi mark pan yuh skin. Still, a big man ting dis fi yuh call pan mi. A big man ting.” The tendril coiled around Eveen’s throat, blistering the skin and murmuring near her ear. “Suh wah yuh waan frah mi, gyal? Mi blessin tuh help yuh baide inna blood a di bad man dem? Teef di soul ah di wicked? Cut di choat ah di damned? All a dem gwine dead di same when dem come si mi … screaming.” She bared teeth in anticipation of impending violence and her hounds strained at the leash, as eager as Eveen’s blades.

“Divine One,” Fennis tried again. “Your acolyte has requested your presence to seek arbitration. On a contract?” He held it up.

The inferno in Aeril’s eyes dimmed and the hounds fell back.

“Arbitration?” She spoke the word sourly. “Yuh mek mi affi come all di way fi arbitration?” With a sucking of teeth that could have cut stone, the goddess extended a hand, beckoning impatiently at Fennis as the burning tendril around Eveen’s neck fell away, hissing its discontent. The small man gingerly eased forward to offer up the contract.

The parchment didn’t burst into flames in Aeril’s grip, and if anything seemed to grow. She read silently, long manicured black nails tracing words, as beneath, her tentacles writhed with ceaseless whispers. When finished, she looked up, those depthless eyes curious. “Di compact appear proppa. Wah happened mek mi acolyte a seek arbitration?”

“Divine One,” Fennis responded. “This particular agreement has some … irregularities.”

Aeril listened with the stillness of a mountain, as he hastily explained the predicament that had brought them here. When he was done, she turned again to Eveen, then moved to Sky. The girl shivered under that dark fiery gaze, like a minnow before a shark. No, a minnow before the things that haunted sharks’ nightmares.

“Likkle gyal teef fram time,” Aeril murmured. “Dem a try mek mi acolyte cut her own a choat.”

“Divine One,” Fennis said. “As the contract was formed through deception, your acolyte seeks nullification over this treachery.”

Aeril pulled her gaze from Sky, fixing it on the little man. “Yuh waan mi bun up mi own a word?”

Fennis swallowed. “Your contract magically binds your acolyte to your own power—”

“Mi nuh come yah fi hear ass dead an cow fat!” the goddess snapped. A black tendril cracked the air like a whip. “Mi nuh need yuh fi mansplain godling law!”

“Of course, Divine One,” Fennis stammered. “I only mean to say, the sorcery involved in this matter dishonored the anonymity magic you grant your acolyte. By doing so, the privacy of her past was violated—in defiance of your own power.”

From the heat that blazed in Aeril’s eyes, Eveen knew that had been the wrong thing to say.

“Nuh man can defy fi mi power,” she growled, teeth clicking. “Eff dis happen, it did mean fi appen.” Her gaze shifted to Pol Oranus. The Patriarch remained silent, his solicitor in his ear. If he was cowed by a goddess giving him the business, his face hid it well. That, or he was even more arrogant than Eveen thought.

“But Divine One,” Fennis pleaded. “Surely it is in your great power to break such a—”

“Fi mi word a fi mi power! Fi bruk mi own a word a fi unmek miself!” The goddess rolled her eyes. “Mortal dem mind likkle lak ants. Cyaan understan how powa wuk.” Her tone took on a sharp finality. “Wen wata trow weh it cyah pick up back. Di compact stands.”

From where he sat, Pol Oranus’s face opened into a victorious smile. His solicitor leapt at the opportunity. “At this finding your, er, grace, my client demands the immediate carrying out of his contract! Or the contractor will be considered in breach!”

Aeril’s withering gaze probably aged the man by years, and he stepped back shaken. “Mek a nex demand ah mi and a gwine feed yuh tuh mi hound dem.” She regarded Eveen. “But im tak true. Yuh muss honor di compact or be inna breach.”

Fennis gave Eveen an apologetic look. She nodded her thanks. This hadn’t been wholly unexpected. But worth a try. Pol Oranus sat grinning like a man still awaiting a performance that had only been delayed. She remembered his whispered words: “I have planned your undoing to perfection … I will enjoy hearing your screams.” Well, he’d have to wait through one more act yet. They had a final hand to play. She only hoped their gamble didn’t doom them all.

“There’s one other irregularity,” she spoke up, meeting Aeril’s expectant gaze. “Pol Oranus orchestrated this whole thing against me, as vengeance. You see, I killed his son.” The Patriarch’s smile vanished, replaced by a face hardened to stone. She turned to address him. “I got to one of your little sorcerer friends before you had him shipped. And he told a heckuva story.”

Pol Oranus’s stone demeanor had become a thundercloud on the verge of a downpour.

“None of this bears relevance—” the solicitor jumped in.

“Pol Oranus’s son was the Butcher of the Barrow,” Eveen spoke over him. “A child-killer. And a worker of banned blood magic!” She made certain to shout, and gasps went up throughout the chamber. From the guards. Even the Iron Lady. Baseema looked stunned. The quads gaped. The old man’s boyish eyes smoldered.

Eveen met Pol Oranus’s furious glare. That’s right, you sick fuck. Whatever else happens tonight, all of Tal Abisi will know the truth.

“He covered it up,” she went on. “To preserve his family name and because he was in on the blood magic.” The gasps about the chamber turned to open muttering amid the solicitor’s cries of slander. The Iron Lady was calling her company to order, but it was Pol Oranus who brought silence.

“You murdered my son!” He was standing, all decorum lost, face a picture of rage as he more screamed than spoke. “Carved up and tossed aside like an animal! You had no right!”

Eveen was taken aback. Was this genuine grief? Or anger over the loss of property?

“He killed children,” she said.

Pol Oranus’s nostrils flared. “My blood is worth more than a few filthy Barrow rats.”

Oh it was like that? “Your blood squealed like a pig, when I began cutting into him.”

The muscles on Pol Oranus’s neck bulged. And Eveen thought he might lunge at her.

“My client is not on trial here!” the solicitor shouted.

Aeril, who surveyed the dramatics with barely concealed boredom, sighed.

“Di facety man correck,” she said, gesturing to the solicitor. “Nuh matta wah dem duh or law dem bruk. Dat a fi mortal justice fi sekkle. Fi him vengeance pan yuh, dat a fi mi jurisdiction. An im have di rite by fi mi own law.”

“But jurisdiction is what I’m getting at.” Eveen pointed to Sky. “You don’t have jurisdiction over her.” A pause. “Because she’s not me.”

That brought strange looks all around.

The goddess frowned. “Explain yuhself.”

Eveen glanced to Sky, who nodded encouragement. She hoped she could. “Pol Oranus came up with this plan—to have me ship myself. That, or, I wouldn’t, and you’d wipe out the whole guild. He was so certain he’d thought it all through. That the magic would go searching through time to pull a younger version of me here. But like you said, boss lady, your power can’t be defied. The magic went looking but couldn’t pull me back—not without breaking rules you set. So, it did the next best thing. It pulled back someone else. From somewhere else.”

Eveen looked again to Sky. “Another Tal Abisi. Almost the same as here, but different. Maybe a building is on the right side of the river instead of the left. A tree cut down here was allowed to grow there. Or, in a story, clockwork giants are left facing toward a city instead of the sea.”

That last was what had triggered it. She’d known then that something was wrong. They both had. On the road back from the Shimmer, they’d gone through all the little changes Sky had mentioned through the night—that they’d chalked up to the passage of time. Fennis’s brother had helped them understand. Once they explained it all to him, the thaumaturgist had spoken of theories of other worlds where there were versions of yourself—just different by degrees. Claimed they might be endless. Judging by the way Aeril stared intently at the girl, she was seeing it as well.

“Alligator lay egg, but im a nuh fowl,” the goddess said. “Yuh nah come … frah yah.”

Sky shook her head. “No, Divine One. I’m from … somewhere else.”

That revelation had brought its own tangle of emotions for Eveen. The girl wasn’t her after all. Perhaps she was the nearest thing to help understand her past. But she still wasn’t her. They were as separate as the thaumaturgist’s sea jellies—treading near-identical paths, but still two different beings, existing in two different worlds.

“This is nonsense!” Pol Oranus shouted hotly, pointing at Eveen. “I demand—” He broke off at a warning growl from the hounds. His face fought to find humility, which seemed unfamiliar to him. “I mean to say, I request that my contract remain binding.”

The goddess turned back to Eveen, then Sky, her look long and considering. The black tendrils seemed to grow louder, as if they too were debating the merits of this peculiar situation.

“Mi muss agree,” she said finally.

Eveen’s hope faltered.

“But Divine One,” Fennis tried. “The girl isn’t under your jurisdiction. She’s not of this world. To kill her could bring irreparable harm to the world from where she was taken. And who knows what that would mean for us here. This is a severe irregularity not considered under godling contractual law—”

“Mi done tell yuh areddi,” Aeril broke in her voice rising menacingly. “Mi a tell yuh again. Fi mi word a law. Mi a di law! An dis world a fi mi yard! Di gyal nuh come frah yah. But once shi step inna mi yard, her life a fi mi fi claim, as a all pan dis world.” She crooked a finger, and one of Eveen’s knives flew into her waiting hand. The goddess bent low to offer it hilt first, tendrils wrapping about her assassin as she crooned into her ear—a hundred voices all speaking at once. “Nuff time done pass. Bleed her, daughter. Gi me dis soul wah a fi mi by rite. Or mi gwine destroy the wul a unuh.” She gestured with meaning at Baseema. The guild boss’s face was a closed book. But she gripped the lapels of her coat fiercely, understanding her fate lay with what happened next.

Eveen took the waiting knife that hummed in her grip. She could do it. The blade wanted her to do it. This bloodthirsty goddess wanted her to do it. The girl wasn’t her. No more worry about going “poof.” So, then, why did she even care? But … as she stared at that impossible face, she knew why. Whether this girl was her or not, taking her life would sever the thin thread that connected her to her humanity. In all her brooding over her undead existence, she hadn’t realized until now how much she fought to hold on to that bit of her soul. Killing this girl would break something inside her. And she was not about to deal with that headfuck for the next two centuries. She had enough problems.

Sky was staring at the knife too, breath held. Their gazes met. “I’m ready,” the girl said.

Eveen nodded. “Then do it.”

Bowing her head, Sky pushed back thick blue braids and touched the freshly inked jackal-eared hound on the nape of her neck—reciting the familiar invocation. There was quiet that seemed to last a lifetime. Then the sudden cracking like broken glass as reality gave way to reveal a fracture in the air. And from a blackness that bled starlight, a second goddess stepped into the world.

CHAPTER NINE

“AERIL’S FIERY FUCKING tendrils!” Eveen whispered. Okay. Not so stupid, then.

Because that’s exactly who this was. The newly arrived goddess was a mirror of the first, with slight variations. Her shadowy gown was strapless, and her gold spun hair was arranged in bulbous tight knots instead of corded rows. The dancing flames about her midnight skin were a dark sapphire blue rather than red. But nearly all else was identical, down to the whispering tentacles and the two great hounds she held by a chain leash.

Eveen shared an incredulous look with Sky. Holy godsdamned fuck! That had actually worked! The girl was the one who had proposed the possibility. If there could be another Tal Abisi, another Clockwork King and iron giants, another Eveen—why not another Aeril? They’d agreed summoning her would be a last resort. Had even gotten Tamu to pull a half-drunk inker in the Barrow from his reveling to tattoo the sigil onto the girl’s neck. But to see that supposition made immortal flesh was … mind-boggling!

“You can’t have my soul,” Sky said. She stared at the blood on her fingertips, rubbed from the still-bleeding mark. “Because it’s already promised.”

Sadness tinged her voice. She and Eveen had both noticed that the variations between their worlds were slight: a name, or building, or story changed here or there. The big things, however, all remained the same. If that held, it meant that on Sky’s world, in time to come, chances were high the girl would also give over her undead life to a matron of assassins. The ability to summon the goddess seemed confirmation of her fate.

The two Aerils began circling one another almost immediately, their snarling hounds moving with them, as they exchanged cut-eye that could boil away whole seas and turn volcanoes to ice. No one else in the room seemed to exist as they glared at one another—as if examining a slightly off-kilter reflection. There was an unease to the air, the world seeming to understand these two beings had no business occupying the same space.

“Blood…” this-world Aeril spat.

“… Fiyah!” the other finished. “Weh di rassclaat a gwaan yah suh? Who call pan mi?”

It was Sky’s turn to step forward. “Hey … boss lady.”

A searing gaze turned to fix on the girl, who swayed beneath its intensity.

“Mi acolyte…” Her bloodred face creased in sharper perception. “… inna time tuh come.”

Sky nodded solemnly. “I am.”

The new Aeril eyed her surroundings, nose sniffing the air and wrinkling at the unfamiliarity. “Yuh nuh belong yah. Mi nuh belong yah.”

“No, Divine One, we don’t.” In what had become a theme for this night, Sky explained. Eveen helped. So did Fennis. It was a group effort.

“All mouth nuh set fi tell di same lie,” the new Aeril said when they’d finished. “Suh wha yuh waan fram mi, fi call pan mi ’cross worlds?”

“As your future acolyte,” the girl asked, “do I have your protection?”

New Aeril shrugged. “Serve mi yessideh or morrow, time nuh matta.”

“Then I call on that protection now, Divine One.” The girl glanced meaningfully toward the goddess waiting to claim her blood.

Other-world Aeril nodded in understanding, before turning back to her twin. “Hear mi now, because fi mi word a law. Yuh cyaah tek dis one. Shi a fi mi by rite.”

This-world Aeril narrowed her eyes to bright pinpricks. “Cho! She promised tuh mi, by rite ah compact. Dat a fi mi word an fi mi law!”

Other-world Aeril drew herself up, blue flames flaring as her tendrils writhed and whispered in indignation. “Shi fi mi by rite ah mistress an acolyte.”

The first Aeril kissed teeth long and dangerously hard. “Rite? Wah rite yuh ave yah? Dis a mi own yard!” She gave her twin a dismissive once-over. “Remove yuhself!”

Other-world Aeril hissed, drawing a long fiery knife from nothingness. Her voice was a distant warning of thunder. “Yuh nuh waan ramp wid mi.”

“Rhaatid!” the first snarled, pulling her own fire knife. “Yuh draw pan mi? Inna mi own yard?”

“Yuh tink mi fraid ah some duppy goddess?” other-world Aeril mocked. “Mi ah di Queen ah Blades. Who waan tess mi?”

The first spat, smacking her chest with an open palm for emphasis. “Mi nuh cyare bout yuh name or weh yuh come fram. Walk and live! Or mi gwine show you mi a di queen ah dis yard!”

The two goddesses each settled into a crouch, with knives and hounds ready to spill divine blood—the whispering from their tentacles now a threatening cacophony. With their undulating movements, it almost seemed to Eveen they intended to dance rather than commit immortal violence. But the knives said otherwise. She exchanged a look of alarm with Sky. They’d thought the two immortals might come to some amicable solution. Instead, they were like those ants Fennis had eaten earlier that night—ready to fight at first glance. Maybe amicability wasn’t the strong suit of assassin goddesses. The heaviness in the air turned oppressive. And the mingled scents of brimstone and lightning, sweetness and blood, grew almost overwhelming with the impending specter of deicide.

“This isn’t good!” Fennis remarked, backing away.

“We need to stop them from fighting!” Sky said, urgent.

Eveen agreed. Whichever goddess emerged the victor, no one in this room would survive—not even the undead. Maybe not a good chunk of the city. She set her face in resolve.

“I got this.”

Both Sky and Fennis looked at her in surprise. “You … got this?” the girl asked.

Refusing to give that doubtful tone dignity, Eveen called out.

“Aeril—Matron of Assassins!”

Four burning eyes turned to regard her with a glare of blood and murder. And she was happy she didn’t have a heart to pound or give way in that moment. Summoning her courage—and a bit of sheer stupidity—she pushed forward.

“So you both answer to that name.” She walked up, putting a bit of swagger in her step. “Trust me when I say, I know exactly what a mindfuck it is to run up on some other version of yourself. Screws your whole shit up, don’t it?”

Neither goddess spoke. And their faces still held that murder, murder, murder, kill, kill, kill, kind of look. But … they hadn’t blasted her to ash either. So that was a plus.

“Tonight I got a contract asking me to ship my own godsdamned self. Kill someone who wore my own face. Hell of a situation, right? So, I stopped and asked myself, what would the hero I most admire do in a spot like this?”

Behind her, Sky had put her head in her hands and was muttering, “Please don’t bring up Asheel the Maniac Hunter…”

“Asheel the Maniac Hunter!” Eveen made certain to shout, ignoring Sky’s groan.

This time both goddesses frowned, looking to one another before one asked: “Who?”

“Asheel the Maniac Hunter!” Eveen repeated. “Only one of the greatest minds ever!”

“Mi neva hear bout nuh Asheel,” the first Aeril said. “Dem a wah god?”

Eveen shook her head. “A mortal.”

Other-world Aeril kissed teeth. “Den dem nuh matta.”

Eveen decided to ignore that insult. “But he’s no ordinary mortal,” she explained. “Asheel hunts down the most dangerous of the dangerous—the Mechanical Terror of Kons, the Murdering She-Devil! He’s even been to the Demon Lands, where he took down the Many-Handed-Many-Mouthed-Thing-With-No-Name!”

“Ah mortal dat hunt demons?” the first Aeril asked, dubious.

“Dis Asheel, dem a wah assassin den?” the second asked.

Eveen had never thought of it that way before. Asheel didn’t really go around shipping those he hunted—usually just caught and turned them in. Or, in the case of demons, banished them. But, a little embellishment here wouldn’t hurt. “Yeah, you could … say that.”

The two goddesses returned satisfied nods. “Den tell wi…” the first said.

“… wah Asheel wud a duh?” her twin finished.

Eveen thought for a while. “There’s this one Asheel story, where he meets another Asheel. A twin he never knew he had! This other Asheel is just like him in almost every way. Hunts the same. Likes the same foods. Even has the same bad temper. They both end up having to track down this maniac—the Hoary One-Eyed Tyrant from the Demon Lands! You’d think they’d work together and get along, right? Nope. They’re too much alike. They fight and argue. Fussing about which one of them is the better Asheel. The Hoary One-Eyed Tyrant pits them against each other. Then, wham! He turns the tables and starts hunting them!”

“Wah kinda nonsense dis?” the first Aeril growled. “Monkey nuh chase alligator!”

“Di hunta cyaan be di hunted,” other-world Aeril concurred.

The two goddesses exchanged frowns over their agreement before settling back on Eveen.

“Yeah. That’s what both Asheels had to understand. That they were the hunters. And hunters don’t go after each other. They go after prey. Once they did, they caught that Hoary One-Eyed Tyrant.”

“An cut out feem hoary eye!” other-world Aeril exclaimed.

“An mek im nyam it!” the first added eagerly.

“Uh, sure,” Eveen answered. “The point is, when I saw I was contracted to ship myself, yeah I could have done it. Easy. Slit her throat, bathe in her blood, then have me a snack.”

“Hey!” Sky began.

Eveen pushed on. “But I knew right away someone had cooked this up. My own Hoary One-Eyed Tyrant.” She looked pointedly at Pol Oranus. “Not some demon. Just a man who manipulates everyone around him. Stupid kids who he dupes to do his magic. Maybe even his own son. All just puppets to be danced around on a string. And I said, to hells with that!” She rounded back on the goddesses. “You know why? Because that’s what Asheel the Maniac Hunter would do! He’d say screw your rules! Screw your contracts! They’re not the boss of me! If this night started over, I’d do it all again if I had to. Not a single fucking regret. Because I’m no godsdamned puppet!”

Eveen glanced to Sky, who looked impressed and a bit confused. She’d take that.

Her gaze returned to the goddesses. “What happens to the world that loses an Aeril if one of you kills the other? All the contracts you have out? Your undead acolytes? Your priestesses? All the really good food places? Or what if you both destroy each other? What becomes of the word and the law you uphold across both worlds? Does it all just become…” She gesticulated, searching for a word. “… discombobulated? Assassins just killing who they want without contracts or rules? Not to mention unseasoned food!” She pointed at the hounds. “And who the fuck is supposed to take care of those things? You two stop to think on any of that?”

Leaning back and pursing her lips, she shook her head. “Here you are, the immortal Mistress of this … Matron of that … and you’re too busy trying to knife each other to realize you’re caught up in the same deception. More worried about some stupid contract than being led around by the nose. Thought you were supposed to be some kind of bad bitches or something. Trifling.”

Both Aerils glared. She’d likely, no definitely, overstepped. But she’d long made a habit of line-stepping. No use changing up now. So, she stared back, dead eyes unblinking. A tense pause followed, like reality was holding its breath, before other-world Aeril spoke.

“Yuh acolyte hav ah dutty mout. But shi talk truut—sistah.” Her knife vanished.

“She too bright. But powa inna her word dem—sistah,” the first Aeril agreed, disappearing her blade. She held up the contract, eying the parchment with disdain. “Dis compact a mek nuff chubble fi wi. Ah wholleepa bangarang.”

Other-world Aeril huffed. “Ah likkle mortal obeah run wi? Di wul ting mad.”

Her twin ground sharp teeth, gripping the contract tight. “Wi a Aeril. Wi word a law. An di law a fi wi powa. Buh wi run tings, tings nuh run wi!”

In a whoosh, the parchment burst into flames. And the contract was dissolved—literally.

Eveen felt the sigil on her neck burn hot, then cool again, as the binds on her fell away. Nearby, Fennis put palms to his knees, inhaling deeply. Baseema let out a shuddering breath—the usually unflappable guild boss unable to hide her relief. Sky tackled Eveen with a hug.

“You did it! You actually did it!”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Eveen remarked dryly.

“What were the odds there was an Asheel story that fit so perfectly!”

“Yeah.” Eveen gave her a meaningful look. “What. Are. The. Odds?”

“Why are you talking like—” Sky’s eyes widened as her voice dropped. “You made it up!”

Eveen shrugged. “It’s Festival. You know how much we enjoy a good story in this city.”

“This is outrageous!” a voice bellowed. Both women turned. Pol Oranus. He stood now, glowering at them. “I had an agreement! She’s to do what I want! What I order!” He grabbed hold of the solicitor by the back of the neck, pushing him forward. “Do something, you worm! Do something!”

The small man stumbled, sweat beading his face. Somehow he found his haughtiness though, sticking out his chin and addressing the goddesses. “This is preposterous! On my client’s behalf, I object to this … this … chicanery! We demand—”

“Overruled,” both Aerils pronounced. With a snap of fingers, four monstrous hounds broke their leashes and leapt for the man. He didn’t even get out a shriek before they were atop him, snapping and tearing.

“I think we’re out of solicitors,” Eveen murmured.

Sky covered her mouth with her hands—but did not look away.

Pol Oranus momentarily blanched, then glared at Eveen. “This isn’t over!”

She sighed. Why did they always say that?

The enraged Patriarch turned to Baseema, spittle flying with each word. “Your gods might protect you from their justice. But in this city, I am the power. My word can be made law. Your guild is finished! I’ll see you ruined! No bank will lend to you! Your creditors will call in every debt! Your client book will go thin! By the end of day, you will be as nothing!”

Eveen watched Baseema tense. Not idle threats. Pol Oranus was a Patriarch. Whatever loss he suffered on the matter of godling contracts, in the mundane world of financiers, wealth, and power, he still held considerable sway. This was how men like him rioted. Not with fires and vandalism. But wholesale salt-the-earth destruction all the same.

Sky, who was still watching the hounds make a meal of the lawyer, looked up.

“Divine One,” she called. “Will you be taking me back?”

Her goddess nodded. “Wi a go bac tuh di time before yuh did tek.”

“So I won’t remember—any of this?”

“Dat a jus wah yuh need. Suh di choice yuh mek tuh offa mi yuh soul a yuh own.”

Sky blinked. “I thought you being here meant I will make that choice.”

The goddess smacked her lips. “Wah di rass gyal? How cyaah yuh mek ah choice yuh nuh si yet? Mi yah because yuh likely tuh mek dat choice. But ah road nuh walked can still tun.” At the girl’s confusion, she sighed. “Mortal dem mind likkle lak ants.”

The first Aeril laughed aloud.

Eveen didn’t even try to understand. Her head might implode.

Sky shook off her own wonder. “Before I go, then, a request.” She turned to the first Aeril, bowing deep. “Eveen has been a faithful acolyte. Because of her, you avoided what might have been a dreadful mistake. For that, she deserves a reward, if you please—Divine One.”

The goddess held up a staying hand. “Eff yuh a gwine ask mi tuh bun up her compact wid mi, hear mi now: her choice did areddi mek an cyaah be changed.”

Sky bowed deep again. “But the punishment of an added century to her indenture can be. It was an unfair penance.”

“Shi bruk mi law, mi word,” Aeril retorted.

“And you got a soul all the same,” Sky replied, not backing down. “I know she plays this hard-ass. Lonely and without companionship. But I got to see the real Eveen tonight. Turns out she has friends.” A glance went to Fennis, who smiled with a nod. “She has interests and hobbies, like those Asheel books and collecting beautiful glass miniatures. In the Barrow, she has family of sorts. Even a lover.”

“Alright,” Eveen cut in. “That’s probably about enough.”

But the girl soldiered on. “Do you know they call her the Angel of the Barrow for what she did? That people name their children after her? That the goddess Aeril has joined their shrines, with her as your acolyte? I know something of gods. That you draw sustenance in part from the reverence of mortals. How many new devotees has Eveen delivered to you? How many now send up prayers and offerings to your name, by way of hers? Given all of that and what she’s done here tonight, I say her debt to you has been paid—with interest.”

Aeril pursed her lips thoughtfully then rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Eh dun.”

Eveen stared. Had that just happened? This wasn’t in their plan.

But the girl wasn’t done. She walked right up to Baseema. “I hear you wanted me killed.”

The guild boss stared down at the girl, impassive. “Nothing personal.”

“Of course.” A card appeared in her hands. One of Eveen’s cards. When had she gotten ahold of that? “That’s why I’d like to hire your Dead Cat Tails for a contract.”

Baseema took the card. “My Dead Tails? For a contract?”

“That’s what you do, isn’t it?”

The guild boss raised an eyebrow at the brash response. Probably impressed. “And who is it you want … shipped?”

Sky turned her gaze, and every eye in the room followed. “Pol Oranus,” she said crisply.

Baseema looked ready to choke. Eveen too. What even in the fuck was this girl doing?

Pol Oranus bellowed in laughter, as if it was the funniest joke in the world. “Stupid cow. I’m a Patriarch! No filthy assassin’s hands can touch me!”

“He’s right,” Baseema said, getting over her shock. “Patriarchs are off limits.”

“Is that a written rule?” Sky asked.

“No, but it’s understood.”

Sky looked to Eveen. “As we understand it, Pol Oranus isn’t in good standing with the other Patriarchs. They’ve covered up his secrets. Now all of that is set to get out. I’m just thinking, would they really miss him? If he just … went away?”

Baseema paused, no doubt thinking about Pol Oranus’s earlier threat. But she shook her head again. “A contract is expensive. I have to answer to investors and stakeholders. I would have to show them something quite considerable to take on such a job, with all its risks.”

Pol Oranus laughed again. “I’m worth more than you can afford, girl. Now run along.”

Sky ignored him, pulling something golden from her jacket.

Baseema eyed it skeptically. “A Festival token?”

“A Festival token,” the girl confirmed. “But from another time. From another world. One of a kind, I’m betting. Eveen tells me you’re a collector of rare things. That you have an eye for that market. How much might something like this be worth to buyers?”

Baseema’s eyes now gleamed. And she licked her lips, assessing the coin anew—as if it was a glittering jewel. There was a long pause before she seemed to find her voice again. “Any contract would need to be approved by my goddess,” she said hesitantly.

Pol Oranus looked like someone had slapped him across the face. “What?” he roared.

Both women ignored him, looking to Aeril—the one from this world. The goddess, who had listened to their banter with interest, clicked her nails together in thought.

“Mi still owed ah soul. An mi come all dis way…” She shrugged. “If yuh cyaah get turkey, satisfy wid John Crow.”

“Coo yah!” other-world Aeril exclaimed. “Sistah, hungry ave mi. An mi travel furda still. Yuh nah guh share dis sacrifice wid mi?”

“Feel no way, sistah,” her twin assured, “Wi can both gwine nyam dis soul.”

“Ah soul shared across wurls,” the other mused. “Im gwine be inna everlasting torment. Halla inna pain fi eva an eva.”

“Dat will mek fi im soul sweeter still,” her sister purred.

Both Aerils smiled sharp, their terrible gazes turning to fix on Pol Oranus as their tendrils moaned in hunger. For the first time that Eveen could remember tonight, the Patriarch looked truly frightened.

“A contract needs to be drawn up,” Baseema noted, getting down to business.

“I have a template,” Fennis volunteered. From inside his oversized coat, he retrieved a parchment, a pen, and even a bottle of ink. “We just need to fill in the particulars.”

“You can’t do this,” Pol Oranus said. He tried to muster outrage, but anyone could smell the fear that rolled off him. “I am a Patriarch! Descended from the founders of this city! You will not lay a hand on me. Guards! Kill the ones who are alive. Tear apart the dead!”

Across the large chamber, there was a quiet. The mercenary company’s captain had slowly moved away from the Patriarch as matters progressed. At the moment she was studying one of the hounds, whose luminous eyes peered back at her while it gnawed on what looked like the solicitor’s femur. Making some calculation in her head, the Iron Lady glanced up to Pol Oranus, gave a salute, then turned on her heels and strode out of the chamber without a word. Her small army quickly followed.

“Where are you going?” the Patriarch shouted. “Come back here! That’s a command!”

Eveen looked to the balcony, where riflemen shouldered their weapons and filed out.

“Just can’t find good help these days,” she remarked.

Pol Oranus finally seemed to realize his predicament in full. And the mask of indignation broke to show the naked terror beneath. “I have money,” he said. His words were directed now at Baseema. “I can pay far more than the girl.” When the guild boss ignored him, he turned in desperation to the other Cat Tails. “One of you! I could pay one of you! To get me to safety!”

The old man stuck out a tongue. The quads simply laughed.

“I think that’ll do,” Fennis said, sprinkling fine powder to dry the hastily written contract. “If you could sign, please?” Sky took his pen and marked her name. “Baseema, your seal here.” The guild boss removed a ring to stamp the parchment. “And the payment?”

“One Festival token,” the girl said, handing the coin to Baseema. “And Eveen, I have something for you.” Reaching into her satchel, she pulled out a black casing. Her surgical tools! “I thought you might want to give a showing?”

Eveen opened the casing, running fingers over the silver instruments.

Pol Oranus watched all of this, sweat now running freely down his face. At sight of the surgical tools, he lost whatever shred of decorum he was clinging onto and jumped up as if to run. But Eveen was there first. She grabbed his fancy robes, spinning him about to pin him bodily to the desk. Bending low, she whispered in his ear.

“Nuh uh. You get to stay for the party.”

IT WAS A short while later that Eveen stood before the same desk, which had been transformed into something of an exhibition table. Pol Oranus lay flat upon it, arms and legs splayed and properly tied. He sputtered behind a gag, trying to wrench free. But Eveen knew her knots.

Baseema sat in the Patriarch’s chair, a grin lighting up her face as she twirled the golden Festival token between her fingers. The quads lounged about on bits of hastily drawn together furniture, affecting the cool indifference of bored teenagers. In contrast, the old man lay on his stomach, small face propped on fists and his full attention on the proceedings.

The two Aerils stood watching as well. Fennis had brewed a tea plucked from his pockets and had somehow found a silver serving tray with two bowls—each once broken and mended with gold that ran in cracks across its ebon surface. The things looked like small teacups in the goddesses’ hands, as they sipped with interest.

“The tea is imported from inland Vash,” he was relating. “And it can be taken hot or cold. But the trick is to press the leaves, steep them well, and add a bit of spice with sweetened sky bison milk.”

“Dis ah fine brew,” other-world Aeril complimented him. “Wah a di added spice?”

Fennis leaned in, as if revealing a great secret. “Nutmeg!”

Both goddesses nodded appreciatively.

“Yuh ave a gud sense ah tayse,” the first Aeril lauded. “Yuh evah did tink bout a wuk fi mi kitchens?”

The man’s baby face lit up, his mouth forming a word that sounded like Squee!

Eveen lifted up a surgical knife, examining the blade. “You sure you want to see this?”

Sky shrugged. “I won’t remember it. Besides, I can offer advice—surgeon, remember?”

“That’s right.” Eveen leaned over Pol Oranus, propping an elbow on him. “I hope you get to do that one day.”

“If I don’t, seems I’ll have a backup plan.” The girl paused. “I’m sorry we never found out why you—or me—end up doing what we do. Giving ourselves to this goddess.”

Eveen sighed. “Well, I’ve got most of a century to maybe figure that out.”

“And I still have about two decades to see which path I’ll take,” Sky said.

“Looks like we’ve got some big things ahead.” Eveen paused. “Good luck.”

“Same to you.” There was an awkward pause as they met each other’s eyes, and once-impossible reflections. “I want to say I’m going to miss you. But I won’t even remember any of this.”

Eveen chuckled. “No worries. I’ll do all the missing, for both of us.” She reached to touch one of the girl’s braids. “Might even dye my hair blue, as a reminder.” They shared a smile before a furious gagging interrupted them.

“I think you’re cutting off his circulation,” Sky noted.

Eveen looked down to find her elbow lying on Pol Oranus’s neck.

“Oops! Can’t have you passing out yet!” She lifted up, handing over the scalpel. Pol Oranus’s eyes bulged, following the flash of silver.

“First cut?” Eveen offered.

Sky took the knife, holding it expertly between thumb and middle finger.

“Where do I start?”

Eveen folded her arms. “Impress me.”

The girl’s face turned serious, studying, before she lowered the blade and began.

As Pol Oranus’s screams filled up the chamber, Eveen smiled. Picking up a nasty looking saw, she joined in. Because sometimes there was nothing better than getting lost in your work, with no one but yourself for company.

Acknowledgments

ANOTHER NOVELLA! THE inspiration for this one came from a jumbled mix of old Forgotten Realms stories I read as a kid, and a host of flicks ranging from The Long Kiss Goodnight to Dancehall Queen. “Walk an’ live!” The soundtrack I had in my head as I wrote ranged from Sister Nancy’s “Bam Bam” to Rihanna’s “Better Have My Money.” At least one fight scene played out to Run the Jewels’s “Yankee and the Brave.” Somehow, all of that got thrown up in here. Fantasy is my first love when it comes to genre. And I set out to just have fun with this one—as fun as you can get with undead assassins and death gods. Thanks to the entire team at Tordotcom Publishing who helped get this done, from spark to finish. I can’t believe you let me keep that name! To my agent, Seth Fishman—as always, good to have you in my corner. A special thanks to Cassandra Khaw and Rebecca Roanhorse—two writers I really admire—for your much-needed notes and suggestions. An extra special debt of gratitude to Kaymara Barrett, who has long been a supporter and booster of my writing, but really came through with a much-needed patwa tutorial here. Gotta also give thanks to Kai Ashante Wilson, whose work taught me that there’s no “one voice” when it comes to fantasy. If there’s a lesson in this tale, that’s it. Lastly, ever grateful to the readers who give me motivation to write.

ALSO BY

P. DJÈLÍ CLARK

NOVELS

A Master of Djinn

NOVELLAS

The Black God’s Drums

The Haunting of Tram Car 015

Ring Shout

FOR YOUNG READERS

Abeni’s Song

About the Author

Born in New York and raised mostly in Houston, P. DJÈLÍ CLARK spent the early years of his life in the homeland of his parents, Trinidad and Tobago. He is the author of the novel A Master of Djinn and the novellas Ring Shout, The Black God’s Drums, and The Haunting of Tram Car 015. He has won the Nebula, Locus, and Alex Awards and been nominated for the Hugo, World Fantasy, and Sturgeon Awards. His stories have appeared in online venues such as Reactor, Daily Science Fiction, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Apex Magazine, Lightspeed, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and in print anthologies, including Griots, Hidden Youth, and Clockwork Cairo. He is also a founding member of FIYAH Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction and an infrequent reviewer at Strange Horizons.

Visit him online at pdjeliclark.com

Goodreads: P. Djèlí Clark

Twitter: @pdjeliclark

Instagram: @pdjeliclark

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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

THE DEAD CAT TAIL ASSASSINS

Copyright © 2024 by P. Djèlí Clark

All rights reserved.

Cover art by Martina Fačková

Cover design by Christine Foltzer

A Tordotcom Book

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Clark, P. Djèlí, author.

Title: The dead cat tail assassins / P. Djèlí Clark.

Description: First edition. | New York: Tordotcom, Tor Publishing Group, 2024.

Identifiers: LCCN 2024011342 | ISBN 9781250767042 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781250767035 (ebook)

Subjects: LCGFT: Fantasy fiction. | Action and adventure fiction. | Novels.

Classification: LCC PS3603.L36843 D43 2024|DDC 813/.6—dc23/ eng/20240315

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024011342

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First Edition: 2024