FTA: No Rest for the Wicked

V. No Rest For the Wicked

In spite of the family’s boundless love for all things military, for traditionalism and their quasi-noble status, in practice the Coultiers preferred to be informal and private. So it came to pass on the latter of two days’ stopping-over at Figaro for the convoy which bore the Razeland Guardians Regiment into the West Lowlands that Major and Captain Coultier would have yet another quiet meeting in private.

Edward and Alexis were twins, oft-quibbling about which of the pair of them was technically the eldest. They were reasonably close – moreso lately after a brief period of estrangement in their late teens which had come to an end a few years ago, when Edward “settled down”, as their Father put it. Alexis was a career soldier, and a veteran of the same tournament system Edward gained his fame in. Their styles were very different. Edward was light, nimble, agile. An intelligent fighter. Alexis couldn’t be counted as unintelligent, but relied heavily on strength both offensively and defensively. The American football player to Edward’s European one.

“I’m glad I was able to catch up with you one more time before we cast off again. Can’t stay long.”

“No no, I understand.” Edward offered a smile, and quickly set his papers aside as he gestured for her to sit, which she had been doing anyway. “I can’t imagine you have any more free time than I do.”

“Probably considerably less.” Alexis set the box she had been carrying onto his desk. “… You know, I could lobby to have a ship delayed. Probably get everyone off the island in one shot.”

Edward waved his hand dismissively. “I have a small detachment of the Maritime Force at hand myself. My instructions were to secure the island and re-establish civil order. That’s what I intend to do.”

Alexis nodded. There was a sense of each sibling trying to size another up. Steel was in their bones, to be sure – bloody steel at that. But the two had a fundamental difference that went beyond weapons of choice. Alexis was a proven and career militarist; an officer of the finest, whose career was already sparking speculation that she would one day replace her father as the nation’s first Lady Field Marshall of the Ground Self Defence Forces. It was a definite possibility. Edward, though, was different. He had a roguish, impulsive streak that made him unsuitable for military life, no matter how he aspired to emulate it with his private army. If Alexis was a model of the modern citizen soldier, Edward was an example of what had become of modern knight-errantry. A ronin in red. “Noble of you. I heard you suspended your tournament career this season.”

“The whole Club did. Assuming the Tournaments will even resume this season. Sporting events aren’t exactly a high priority when you’re staring down the barrel of a nuclear winter. Neither on the mainland or in Figaro.”

Alexis nodded again. “Running water?”

“And Sewer. Food supply and electricity.”

The major glanced at her watch. “I need to get going. You should open your gift.”

Edward’s expression changed to one of bewilderment. It wasn’t their birthday, nor was it Christmas or any other occasion. He supposed a gift of congratulation might be in order, but had expected no such favour from friends, let alone family. He rose, releasing the clasp on the box, and raising the lid. The velvet-lined interior contained a singular item. It was a short sword – in the fashion of a Roman gladius, but somewhat more leaf-shaped and curvilinear. The steel of the blade was slightly yellowish (likely bronze), but the binding of the hilt seemed brand new. It bore all the telltale markings of recent restoration from disuse or disrepair.

He lifted the weapon in both hands. The blade was sharp – he could nearly feel the edge before he had touched it. It was heavier than what he was used to in a main-hand weapon, on a shorter blade. It really was bronze. “… Magnificent. This must be an antique.”

“Malvolio found it in the Razeland. The Black Sands region, to be precise.” Alexis shrugged slightly. “I got the impression it was supposed to be catalogued and handed over to the expedition sponsors.”

“Agency?”

Another shrug. “Mallow’s a good boy. He doesn’t tell other people’s secrets.”

Edward nodded. The weapon’s luster was beyond that for which bronze was usually known. He turned it about, gripping it in his left hand – his off hand – and found that the extra weight might compensate somewhat and be nice in a main gauche. “… Did he say anything else about it?”

“He thinks he knows its name. It was in a small reliquary inscribed ‘Crocea Mors’. It means “Yellow Death” in latin, but he’s pretty sure that’s not the right translation.”

Edward nodded. “It probably means something in one of the Lipan tribal languages. I’ll see if I can find an expert here.”

Alexis checked her watch again. “I really have to go before I get charged with desertion. Good luck with that raid you’re doing tonight.”

“Don’t let the Deans bore you to death.”

“You should be so lucky,” she quipped, and sent her brother a smirk over her shoulder as she hurried off.

---

The sea, they tell, is a harsh mistress. Alexis considered that miserably from the relatively comfortable position she held on the bridge of the MDS Hall, the troopship that, as part of the convoy, carried the men, at least, of the Razeland Guardians Regiment. She, or one of her fellow leg officers was required on the bridge at all times – to liaise with the crew of the vessel. She didn’t quite share her brother’s general disdain for oceangoing travel; in point of fact, she considered it the best thing going when it came to moving large amounts of men and materiel at once. Except perhaps a train, but those didn’t do very well across brand-new bays that were downtown cores and suburbs a few short weeks ago.

Still, she was damn well smarter than to trust the combination of water and weather, and there was nothing at all unhealthy about dislike of waves large enough to break across the bow, or rain coming so close she could barely see the same bow for all the lighting in the world.

Drawing her mouth into a fine line for pause, she inclined her head toward the Officer of the Watch. As a general rule, he was on a similar level with her, holding the rank of Lieutenant Commander, but hell, this was his barbeque. “Permission to speak, sir?”

The man, a career officer five or so years her senior, sipped pointedly from his coffee before answering, checking each of three displays at his station in turn. “What can I help you with, Major?”

“This is a genuine question, sir, not a veiled suggestion. Why keep watchstanders on deck in these conditions? Surely they can’t see a damn thing in this lot that the radar and sonar techs can’t.”

The Lieutenant Commander nodded slowly. “Major Coultier, as I understand it you still make a fine living on leave, teaching the proper way to fight with sword and shield while armoured, is that right?”

“Yes, sir.” It was no secret, nor was it a contravention of code. Alexis was good. Had been great, when she was younger. There were better instructors out there, sure, ones who had the time for the training the style demanded. But the name carried with it a premium.

“Well, ma’am, when you have a good shield you are confident in, do you do away with your plates and mail?”

“No sir. Ah...”

The Lieutenant Commander nodded. “There is no material on earth that can completely withstand a gunshot or a torpedo burst. Radar and Sonar are good, yes. But, just in case, we might get lucky.”

“It’d have to be some luck,” Alexis said, “To see anything in this rain.”

“Are you ground officers in the habit of-“

“Captain on the Bridge!”

Alexis snapped immediately to attention, pleased to see everyone else do the same, within reason. There were a few jobs that couldn’t be long delayed, not that the captain, a stately older man with the rank of Commander and little prospect for further advancement, intended to keep folk waiting. “As you were. Major.”

“Sir.”

The lieutenant commander gestured with his mug. “We were just discussing pulling in the watch.”

The commander shrugged, lips thoughtfully downturned. “Might not be a bad idea. I was just on the horn with Commodore Lesseps. His meteorology team expects the storm to get worse. We’re going to deviate from course.”

The Lieutenant Commander nodded, and, with some reluctance in his low shoulders, turned to another officer. “All hands clear the weather deck.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Alexis hid her smile behind a glance out the window. Porthole, she supposed. The Captain saw it, but seemed rather lenient today. “Major Coultier, I suppose you were arguing the point of keeping the watch. No price too high for a little added security, and all that.”

She looked to him immediately. “Yes sir. It’s the view of the officer corps of the Ground Self Defence Forces that half a snowball’s chance in hell is better than none, sir.”

The captain laughed uproariously, and the tension in the air died down. Behind him, the Officer of the Watch frowned slightly. No doubt trying to guess Alexis’s game – she, of course, simply didn’t feel like arguing with the captain of a ship she was going to have to share for at least a day or two more. “Might I ask how far off course, sir?”

“You might. The long and short of it is that it will cost us ten, maybe twelve hours, but we can make up the difference with more aggressive manoeuvres as long as we stay as lucky as we have be-“

The voice that broke in was more panicked than Alexis would have tolerated in her own non-coms. “Contact! Relative four-nine, Course one-six-two decimal four-nine, Speed... 25 knots.”

“That could be a frigate moving at combat cruise,” the Officer of the Watch said. “But not in our direction.”

“Yet,” the captain said miserably. “Put the hammer down, Mister Lewis. Communications, inform the rest of the convoy. General quarters all hands.” He all but pushed the Lieutenant Commander out of the way, taking his post and expertly reconfiguring the controls to suit his own taste. Alexis was impressed. Grace under fire was hard to come by. “Major, there is a life preserver in that cabinet. You are required to don it.”

“Yes, sir.”

The tension lasted for hours. When the radar operator could see the unexpected ship, it was behaving in a manner far too cagey for anyone’s comfort. When he couldn’t, nobody wanted to relax enough to miss it reappearing again. All the while, the storm grew worse around them. Alexis, who rode horses for fun and IFVs for profit, began to feel the overbearing pressure of the waves upon her inner ear. She was thankful her post put her out of the way and out of mind, where she could hold onto a railing and try to forget anything she ever heard about using the horizon to suppress seasickness. When she could see the wave-tops amid flashes of lightning in the dark of night, they were never where her brain wanted them. It was only making matters worse. There seemed to be no axis upon which the vessel was not moving.

“I think,” she said in one particularly silent moment, “That your meteorologist fucked up.”

The captain nodded soberly. “You’re not wrong – we are moving deeper into the storm – but not because of our heading. There’s an unexpected current. We need to-“

The flash and the bang were simultaneous – for the human brain there was no meaningful difference in the arrival of the light and the pressure wave as lightning struck the deck. Alexis bit her lip in surprise to keep from shouting. Many of the other officers actually did. The Captain laughed. “Damage control, check the forward hold just to be on the safe side.”

Alexis looked to him, incredulous that the ship could shrug off that kind of damage, and that was when she saw the wave out the porthole behind his head. She had about enough time to point, before the water met the wall, the glass caved inward, and for a while, all was dark and calm.

---

Under other circumstances, Holly actually enjoyed when her duties carried her into Rainwright’s sanctum-laboratory in the secluded subbasements of the townhouse. The selection of dustless and aged volumes on the walls, his more exotic reagents which lined the cupboards, and even a few of the more curious specimens, immaculately hand-labelled, in specimen jars and shadow boxes on a mantel. She was examining one in her hands (Fetal Yeti, Leng, Formaldehyde, 1901) when the thing in the corner let out another of its horrible squelching sounds and dragged her attention sharply away from it.

Rainwright was a collector of the monstrous. Like, she supposed, begat like. How would he preserve this monstrosity? She sat the jar back on its shelf and beheld the wakeful Crawler, making no effort to conceal her disdain and disgust.

The creature – sprightly on its five arthropod legs – bore no semblance to earthly life on which she’d read or dreamt madness she’d encountered in even the worst of fever-dreams. She was no biologist, but it was not a creature that could have been, but that some damned fool had created it. Five legs, with three-lobed eyes between, armour above and below, but in only the most token amount. The joints were wide – like takaashigani – and she was confident that even with its cruelly-barbed tentacles waving about above it, she could drive a knife into any of the expanses of soft flesh between thin-looking plates of carapace and ended the thing.

She was tempted to, but no more could it escape the bars of Cold Iron that imprisoned it or the magic circle that had been inscribed around them with chalk than she could reach him through them. Instead, she glared at the creature contemptuously.

“Calls to mind Macrocheira kempferi, don’t you think?” The Viscount may well have been discussing an interesting painting or sculpture, from his tone of voice.

Holly returned her face to its usual passive contempt, shifting her eyes, and her eyes only, toward Rainwright, who had just entered the room. He wore, as he sometimes did, a labcoat and gloves over his expensive clothes. She doubted very much that either would protect him from the creature’s obvious secretions. “This one did not do well on her Latin schooling, my Lord.”

Rainwright pondered for a moment. “Spider crabs. The Japanese call them takaashigani.”

She supposed it did. The proportions were off – the body was larger and the legs shorter and thicker. The size was nearly right – it filled half the room with it and its enclosure. How it could walk on land, she wasn’t sure. Not that it mattered. Only five legs? And that wasn’t even the most unusual part of its anatomy. “This one prefers snow crab, though the concept of fusing calamari and crab might have some merit.”

Such a joke was rare for her – to joke at all, really, in public or private – and Rainwright favoured it with a polite, forced chuckle. “Perhaps I should go into the catering business.”

“Your lordship would have to dispose of the body somehow.”

Rainwright crossed into the room, and Holly could see the fascination on his face – equal, perhaps, to her aversion. What sense did he have that she lacked? Or was it, perhaps, the inverse – what sense saved her from being enthralled by this creature that he was deficient in. “Oh, Miss Bell, I have no intention of killing this creature. Anything that can survive what happened in Kraterburg and then weeks beneath the waves is worthy of considerable study.”

Holly disliked it. The muscles in her back crawled for a gesture she couldn’t quite express, and she stiffened, raising her chin slightly. “This one was summoned for a matter of some importance, we understood.”

“Ah, yes.” Rainwright turned to face her properly, glancing up slightly. She did as well. The ceiling – vaulted, as was necessary at the time it had been built, to withstand the weight above it – was carefully painted with glyphs, circles, and angles meant to bedevil remote observation. Holly recognized a few of them, having stood there while they were freshly repainted. The paint had come at some cost, but even Galba Dea had a host of those who would scarcely be missed. Rainwright had viewed the proceedings with some contempt, as though haemoturgy was beneath him.

As with many things, she bitterly thought, that wasn’t about to stop him.

“I should like to continue my studies of the other artefact. The peculiar knife.”

Holly remembered it well. Rainwright had loudly argued the point with the Crown Prince, when the younger man had expressed an interest in having the knife, taken it as de facto tribute, and safely left the matter of the Crawler both unspoken and uncontested. “If this one is not mistaken, it is now in the possession of the King in Waiting. Dearly-held, it would be easier for you to persuade him to give it back.”

Rainwright smirked. “Ah, but if you were to be the one obtaining it?”

Holly smiled, just barely. “My lord honours this one. Breaking into Redhall Palace will be a fine challenge of our abilities.”

Rainwright nodded, adopting the pontifical tones of the Grand Master of the Order of the Wheel and Pinion. “You go in my authority and with the protection of the Great Machine – may you ever be a factor of the Great Work.”

She responded in kind with the cog-tooth gesture of his peculiar gentleman’s club and excused herself. The mask she was wearing was growing heavier and heavier – soon, she would introduce him to her true glamour.

---

The human mind wasn’t really designed for finding itself under water, and that was perhaps the problem. Anybody sufficiently submerged experienced a phenomenon of perceived weightlessness. Some reported the subsequent loss of good directional sense, finding themselves unable to tell what way was up.

Blind panic seized a hold of Alexis and shook her like a ragdoll, tearing memory and logic free in its jaws as she finally fought clear of it. She closed her eyes, for a moment. Without breath, she had to resort to counting heartbeats. One, two, three... they raced by, cycling as quickly as her feet. Her lungs burned, screaming for fresh air she couldn’t give them. She recalled once being told that drowning was like falling asleep – she now realized she owed the liar who said that a broken nose.

Hold still.

She tucked her feet together, and forced her eyes open. It was pitch dark. Beneath her feet, the occasional flash of light. Fear’s hold was broken with a thunder strike, and immediately, her sense shifted. She was upside down beneath the waves!

The vest she wore – the vest meant to be saving her life – was dragging her to an early grave. Deliberately, she tugged the knife from her boot, dragging it along the front of the faulty garment, quickly parting it. She lost the knife itself in the struggle to shrug the jacket off.

It was dark. Her blood rushed in her ears like an unnatural current. All around her, she could see dim light, shining pale blue-green from beneath. Lines. Stripes, perhaps, on the back of some grand school of fishes – it could only have been such a school, for plants would not move, and no creature could have such a massive frame. She hoped.

Fear lashed out, and the Major kicked, and the surface of the water was sundered. She fell to her back as she lost her upward momentum, filling her lungs with the cold air and salt spray of the storm. She tread water, spinning in all directions, unable to see the ship.

Then, suddenly, it was right on top of her. She called out, trying to wave her arms to be seen without giving up too much buoyancy in the turbulent water. A blinding light seared out, and for the moment, she knew little more.

Don’t let it take me.

A force snagged her beneath her arms, and as she was hoisted up out of the water, she lost sight of the light.

---

“You’ve got to be the only person I’ve ever seen cut themselves out of a life jacket.”

Alexis coughed for what felt to be the thousandth time, and finally lifted herself up onto her feet from the cold, water-slicked steel deck of the ship that had pulled her from the water. She felt a pair of hands on her arm, steadying her. Her vision throbbed, eyes not quite willing to clear themselves just yet. “That’s the only life jacket I ever wore that sank.”

“Well, you Zaxtonians always did have lousy quality control.”

The haze cleared up pretty quickly, then. Alexis was on the foredeck of a vessel whose class she didn’t recognize, not being an expert on naval warships by any stretch. It was raining, but far calmer than it had been mere moment ago. The deck and the waters around were heavily flood-lit, and, moreover, staffed with men in the black and white uniform of the Dean Royal Navy, a Chief Petty Officer of which was taking her pulse.

Her immediate response was, perhaps wisely, to do nothing. “... Lousy at navigation, too.”

“I wouldn’t know much about that,” she countered, gesturing to her tunic. “Green means Ground Force.”

“I know,” the medical officer countered. “Take her to sickbay.”

As Alexis was lead away, she could only mutter an abbreviated and half-hearted thank you, and ponder what was happen next.

---

Holly had found herself in Bull Lane. She could blend in well enough there – messed up hair, less than thoroughly clean clothing, and less of it than the weather called for. She paced down the secluded, glorified alley on a mission, ducking into a particular building that had been rented out by floor to two competing brothels and a flophouse respectively, and slipped down into the basement which held, ironically, the only respectable business in the building.

The front room was a lobby of sorts, where she knew she would have to wait, regardless of being almost precisely on time. It was a comfortable room, if not much bigger than a closet. There were a couple of chairs, a stack of magazines that had to be as old as the business itself, and a small podium where an unattended but well-constructed cash box waited. The only other exit was an open doorway from which the door had been removed, and replaced with a thin curtain of cloth onto which protective knot-work and geometric arcana had been tediously (or lovingly) stitched.

Holly, always, refused to pass this barrier, and waited patiently for the figure within to come to her. Sometimes it was a longer wait than others. She could listen with her sensitive hearing, picking out the deep, even breaths of the sleeper just inside. Her nose was stung by the thickness of herbal smoke inside, leaving Holly to draw the conclusion that the practice of the woman she was waiting for was lax, and that she had, once again, fallen into sleep when she was meant to be meditating.

The assassin croaked, her voice no louder than a stage-whisper. “Greta!”

There was a rustle inside, as the sleeper evidentially pulled themselves together. Holly did not wait much longer after that. The young woman appeared in the door, pushing her curtain aside and looking decidedly unhappy to see the assassin. “Ah, it’s you. You’re early.”
“This one has been waiting for ten minutes,” Holly muttered. “And since we’re paying you twice today, we’re a little disgruntled.”

“Oh, come now, darling,” Greta lifted the curtain further and ushered Holly through it. The inner room was small as well, betraying a third doorway, a low, round table surrounded by cushions, and a number of shelves brimming with books, labelled jars, and paraphernalia both ordinary and esoteric. “Have a seat.”

Holly did as she was told – almost reflexively – and settled comfortably into a tangle of the cushions while Greta busied herself among the shelves, no doubt looking for whatever her instrument of the moment would be. Holly capitalized on this distraction, seizing the chance to lift a small censer from the centre of the table and steal a smudge of the ash within on her fingertip. Holly breathed deep of the scent. Belladonna, Cardamon, and Crocus. It was a peculiar combination. The Moth knew her herbs well – mostly those useful in her line of sordid work – but she knew this combination by reputation alone.

Her eyes narrowed at Greta behind the young witch’s back. Who owns you,now?

Greta by now had turned, lowering herself to the cushions with a well-worn Tarot to hand. She looked horrendously drowsy, and Holly could no longer blame her. She always had a soft spot in her heart for other people’s victims. “You’re going to be cagey again, aren’t you?”

“I have a bit of business tonight. I want your unbiased input on it.”

Greta rolled her eyes. Interpretation of the tarot was tricky. There were only 77 cards in most decks – including the classical Rider-Waite design she used – and while the order and combination of those cards could prove instructive, you could only do so much without the proper context. Still, in this regard, she could be said to be somewhat gifted. Gifted enough she made a living at it, anyway.

She had a few different spreads she liked to use for different questions – and in point of fact was not as creative as to have come up her own, or so false as to pretend they were some century-old technique handed down along family lines. Tarot was the magic of entropy, and entropy didn’t give a good goddamn what order you did things in.

The first card that turned up was the Tower. The art showed the eponymous tower of Babel, freshly struck down with the afterglow of the blow still lit and the civilians still airborne as they fell. It was not a happy card, but this in and of itself wasn’t dangerous. Greta would tell the moth as much. “Be cautious. Success can be clutched from the jaws of defeat, but know this – the odds are against you. Almost stacked.”

Her hand tracked to the left, and threw the next card over. A man gazed back up at them in profile, clutching a staff with green leaves and crowned. This card in this order was meant to represent the obstacle at hand. Face cards – hell, any card – did not necessarily mean a person. Greta hemmed on it for a while, but couldn’t quite push the idea from her mind. “… You are against a group, this time?”

Holly frowned. “Is it important?”

“Important enough I’m not going further until I know.”

The assassin nodded slowly. “Yes.”

“One of these people – a leader among them. That’s what the King of Wands likely represents. Someone in a position of authority.”

“And?”

Greta shrugged. “He’s in your way… let’s see now.”

Another card was flipped. “The third card is meant to be a factor you aren’t considering that you should. Today, it’s the magician. He’s a slippery card. It’s hard to tell what he means. Could be a person. Could be a caution against magical interference, or a magical angle of attack for you to consider. Could be authority, or The Authorities.”

Holly looked thoughtful for a moment, drawing up her knees to rest her chin upon. “Could it be all of them in combination?”

“Possibly.”

In the end, the other cards made the issue no clearer. Holly felt cheated, but Greta was deeply apologetic. In the end, Holly was soothed – and no poorer, materially, for the experience. Greta watched her go, marvelling at this interruption of her powers, this gap in her capacity to seek truth.

The heavy perfume of the room returned, and her head span so forcibly that she had no choice but to sit, and eventually lay, in her cushions. As the rush of her blood in her ears strengthened as she sank toward sleep, she could have sworn she heard it changing, twisting to the beat of the escapement of a truly massive clock.

That, she thought, was something new.

---

Rainwright had always demanded the most exacting missions of his servants, and Holly was no exception. He knew their limits, and intended, frequently, to push them. He rarely set out to fail – some element of his mysticism or skill of spycraft allowed him to judge the best place for each pawn – but that did little to help Holly’s confidence at the moment.

The sole consolation in the matter was that antiquity almost always constituted an advantage for Holly, and the ancientness of Redhall Palace was no exception. The building was, by most respects, secure. Staff were screened thoroughly by both civil government and military organizations. A military guard – this year the Clearwater Guards – was always posted. This was, after all, the summer residence of the monarchs of Galba Dea and their family.

However, even the most loyal of servants could be bought. This must have been true; after all, Rainwright had gone so far as to discover the precise location of the knife – his knife – in the building. And old buildings were like anthills for Holly.

She imagined Rainwright had come to some understanding of her true nature, even if the two had never discussed the matter. She was a being of means, not in the financial sense, but a more ephemeral one. The accidents of her birth granted her insights into arts no mortal possessed. Some – like the Witch Greta – came close, but Holly’s essence was steeped in the dreaming ways of the Fae. She had fallen into Dreaming young, and failed to return completely. She was changed, forever. A slaugh – a nightmare damned – stuck between waking and dreaming, between frail mortality and godlike omnipotence.

For her, the matter of the path from the steam-tunnels that ran beneath and eventually into the facility, and the vaultlike Curio Room of the north tower was a triviality. Achieving that path, and doing so without being caught by those meant to prevent her from reaching it, that was another matter. Still, she had advantages, when she needed them. As a slaugh, she was quiet to a fault. Her hearing and smell and most other senses besides were much-improved. Her body twisted and contorted in ways exceptional; on her best days, you could be excused for confusing her with some sort of animate fluid.

She huddled beneath a cluster of steam lines routed off of a distribution manifold, waiting for the changing of the guard, and her chance to disable the steam itself. It would be a cold night in the palace. She would have to wait here for several hours, with little to do but warm her bare palms against the aging pipes, and fret over Greta’s advice.

---

Most people would not have considered alarming the valve fittings on a steam radiator, even in a supposedly quite secure room. Most people, however, did not allow the powers of the fae to enter into their line of thinking when designing real-world security systems, in much the same way that most people did not consider the possibility of British, teenage wizards showing up and wrecking house.

When the fitting at the end of the radiator, itself the end of a steam line in the Curio Room, unscrewed itself, what flowed out apart from tepid, barely-boiled steam was a curious morass of textureless sinews that had to quickly pull itself back together into the Assassin’s form. She crouched low for the moment, letting the various components of her body settle back into the correct configuration, and sharpening her various senses against the next immediate obstacle – the room. The interior itself was poorly secured – the Deans had worked on a fortress mentality of preventing entrance to it.

She moved on all fours, faster and more silently than she would have by walking. She moved two limbs at a time in a rapid scurry, selecting which tiles to place her hands and feet upon carefully, though she doubted they were trapped in the way she perceived them to be. She sniffed deeply as she crossed the room.

There was a pungent smell in the air. The Curio Room was stuffed with Treasures of some antiquity. Many had their histories deeply impressed upon them, and were of fabled power, equally exaggerated and subdued. One smell, however, was fresher. It was not unlike iron – not quite iron, mind you – but also a deep smell of lilies, myrrh, death, and something else she couldn’t identify, but which stirred up deeply-set and half-forgotten memories of bright lights, giants, and overwhelming life.

Instinctively, she snuck toward it. The case from which the smell was coming rested atop a hundred-year-old chest of drawers. The case itself, after her careful, caressing examination, was not locked, but housed a magnetic catch that would no doubt tell some system or another once it had been opened. She bit her lip slightly, considering her options. Rainwright had said nothing about ensuring perfect silence.

---

Valarian’s midnight roaming, while no doubt the security staff’s worst nightmare, had become a routine matter. For his own part, they were fraught with anxieties. He was never certain he was entirely awake, and frequently performed small tests to see if he was dreaming, such as pinching himself or adjusting the lights. These tests, however, did little to assure him, but his restless insomnia was deeply set enough to keep him at his wandering in spite of his questioning his own wakefulness.

On such night-time quests, there was rarely an objective, either for destination nor achievement. He was not on a mission for a midnight snack or one last glimpse out the window at the harbour. Instead, he simply went, following some invisible compulsion, allowing the fata morgana invisible-hand of impulse to direct him.

The common thread in all of these wanderings, of course, was the solitude. From time to time he would catch a glimpse of guards in doorways, but invariably he shied away from them. And so, his questing dragged him deeper into the royal apartments at Redhall, up through corridors and stairwells into areas less commonly traversed.

He paced half-aware down a long corridor lined with portraits and suits of armour – the martial regalia of generations of his forebears. It was a lonely place, and he paused at the door at the end, turning to look back down along the corridor. The loneliness was insufficient. He never felt alone, in this hall. Instead, he felt as though the eyes of all the suits were just behind the visors. Watching him.

The Dean crown was to be a heavy one. Sighing, he opened the door, stepping into the Curio Room, to discover he was not alone. There was a figure looming over one of the display cases, tucking something into the front of their jacket.

Two heartbeats blasted by, as loud as the clockworks of the Old City Mills, and then, the room exploded. The thief gestured broadly with their free hand, causing the air between them to scintillate with steel. The impact, however slight, struck Valarian in the right shoulder. Valarian, for his part, shouted, reaching to his left for the nearest object to hand. His left, naturally – his right hand was somewhat weaker, owing to an injury he suffered in his infancy that had neither healed properly nor been surgically corrected.

By the time his hand closed against the brass sceptre and lifted it from its place, the situation had begun to feel increasingly unreal. An alarm blared distantly, and Valarian felt as though his mouth was suddenly stuffed with cotton. At the same time, though, everything became more real. Whether he meant to or not, this would-be-thief had given all of the Crown Prince’s anxieties a physical form. This was about the last thing you wanted to do, when it came to dealing with the monarchs of states whose royal families maintained a strong martial tradition.

The brawl that followed was probably shorter than Valerian’s slippery hold on the passage of time suggested. The thief was small and frail, not that Valerian was a mountain of a man himself, but the ultimate concern would be to avoid a blow from that sceptre. It was heavy, more solidly constructed than any part of the thief’s body. Even a moderately powerful person wielding such a weapon would do damage.

Unfortunately, the thief proved difficult to hit. They were agile, bending out of the way here, or rolling or vaulting across furniture and pedestals. They had a knife, but seemed to lack the opportunity or skill to use it.

More and more, however, the fighting became like fighting through sand. Valerian was tiring, faster than he should have been, and, ere long, he fell.

His heart beat in his ears, and the great clockworks began to slow to a crawl along with the rest of the world. As the scene stood still, he saw a glint of alabaster above him, and heard a stern, albeit soft voice cut in over the sounds of his flagging heart and the distant alarms. A cold, if not comforting, hand found his shoulder.

“No, no, no. This won’t do at all.”

Motion returned to the world as the thief vanished through a window, though it was not long before the inky blackness that had filled Valerian’s lungs took his vision as well.

---

Alexis’s reflection upon the unusual nature of the current cruise was interrupted rather fittingly by a muffled call of “superior officer in the room”, at which she immediately snapped to attention – a strange thing to do while you were staring at your own reflection in the window. She relaxed almost immediately after the customary call of “as you were”, which was to only be a brief break.

A new voice – one she hadn’t heard yet on this vessel – cleared her throat. “Is there a Major Coultier in the room?”
Alexis snapped to attention, reflexively calling out “Ma’am”, before turning to face the speaker. A young woman – only a few years older than Alexis herself, perhaps in her early 30s – in the uniform of a Dean First Lieutenant, nodded. “Major, your presence is requested on the bridge. Come with me, please.”

Alexis nodded her acknowledgement, and stepped out after the subordinate officer, scooping her baret up from the pillow of her bed and replacing it on her head as they went. The trip was short, and what was more, Alexis was somewhat surprised how similar both the path to the bridge and the layout of the bridge itself was. It was mostly the uniforms that were different – and the procedure. The pair stopped just inside the door, and Alexis followed the other’s lead in standing patiently at attention.

“Captain, sir.”

A man looked up from a communications workstation, giving something of a smile before removing his headset and handing it off to the ensign that had been standing behind him. “Thank you, Lieutenant.” He extended a hand. “Major Coultier, I presume?”

Alexis nodded, and shook the man’s hand. “Captain. Senior Zaxtonian Officer, Reporting.”

“I’m sorry we haven’t had any luck finding the rest of your personnel. You’ll be happy to know we have confirmed that only one vessel was lost in the storm, though I suppose that’s cold comfort.”

The small knot of officers followed the Captain up to the front of the bridge, where he seemed more pleased to hold this conversation. Alexis was no exception, and wouldn’t have characterized his news as happy. While she was thankful the situation was not worse (as she had suspected), it was certainly still dire. “Thank you, sir.”

“Speaking of news, I suspect your subordinate officers and men have been after you for some news of their own.” The captain turned to face her. “It is my sad duty to inform you that, while you will be going ashore soon, you will not be returning to Zvanesburg aboard this ship. You will be disembarking upon our return to Galba Roy.”

Alexis felt her back involuntarily stiffen. The Bastion Academy, followed by years of service, had reinforced the habits of her nearly-noble upbringing. “Captain, am I to infer that the Zaxtonian Contingent is being retained in custody?”

The Captain’s jaw worked silently behind his closed mouth. Like many officers, he was a man of breeding and education, and was taking the time to be very careful in what he said. “As you well know, no state of war exists between the Zaxtonian Union and the Independant Kingdom. However, your vessel was travelling through our waters in a military convoy.”

Alexis nodded slowly. “As you well know, it is the position of the Zaxtonian Union that the Blasted Bay remains internal waters of the union.”

“As you can see, Major, it is in this way our respective governments have painted us both into a corner. It would please you to inform and organize your men. As the senior officer, you will be held responsible for their deportment while ashore.”

Alexis seethed, but dismissal was dismissal. She snapped a salute, and strode from the bridge.

---

Holly’s paranoia, could, betimes, rear its ugly head. It was an occupational hazard – you had to be mindful of vanishing into the same shadows from which you worked. She even imagined, at times, that it was probably universal among assassins, both sanctioned and unsanctioned. However, she knew damn well that her relatively high standing in her profession made her a correspondingly high target, even if few people had ever heard of her. Even if her employers rarely survived her termination.

Accordingly, she did not at all like changes in her plans, particularly when they were imposed upon her. As her driver lead her across the balcony of the motel he’d decided they were meant to stop at, she’d considered dispensing of him. In the dozen steps from the car to the room, a dozen plans for her escape flashed through her mind.

A plan she retained as they stepped through the door. No sooner had the door clicked closed than Walter stepped into view from the closet in which he had concealed himself from the door. “Miss Bell. You can go, Driver.”

The driver, who Holly noted had yet to remove his driving helmet (and was therefore disproportionately obvious in a crowd, or even just in traffic), bowed out, closing the door behind him. Holly folded her arms defiantly across her chest. Walter was not a factor to be feared. His blindness was very actual – his prowess at organizational management belied it, but Holly had, many times, tested it. He had no sight, nor notable martial practice, and his magic, if he had any, would be of the typical human variety and likely wholly ineffectual.

“This was not a part of the original plan.”

Walter shrugged indifferently. “The Viscount is pleased to change his own plans at his leisure. Being indisposed, he has transferred responsibility in this matter to me. You were, at least, able to return with the knife?”

“I have it here.”

Walter nodded slowly. “Excellent. It is the pleasure of the Viscount that the weapon shall remain in your possession.”

This did nothing for Holly’s paranoia, quite naturally. The mission had been to retrieve a knife, a knife that very obviously had unusual and possibly magical properties. This knife was necessary because her employer wanted to further study it. To now dismiss it could only mean that she was to be a part of that study as well. A guinea pig, if you like.

“A fitting gift,” she quipped, masking her distrust from her voice.

“Indeed. Your employment is under review pending investigation,” Walter said, with his characteristic emotional dryness. “You will be staying here for the evening. I will contact you when you are to return to the household.”

“As you wish.”

Holly watched him brush past her, and step into the night. “... Good evening, Miss Bell.”

Damned, however, if she was to sleep through it.

---

Those who moved in the circles of Unseelie courts, such as that of Duke Adron’s court at Gladfen, knew that the best of business was often conducted in its own informal way – off the clock, off the books, and off the beaten path. Gladfen had among its many environs a farmhouse, now inundated, where the Duke liked to conduct business of a special sort – today from its attic.

The house – gone in the waking world – had long stood as a bridge between waking and dreaming, and tradition had a grip on even the Unseelie. Such a bridge was an ideal place to speak with his spy, who today arrived cloaked and hooded in the shadows themselves.

“I have been waiting for you, your Grace.”

“It is not so easy to travel as it once was. For either of us.” The Duke adopted his usual haughty tone, considering the jewellery of his left hand with some detachment. “You may make your report.”

The spy bowed slightly – inside or outside of court proper, a duke was still a duke. “As you wish. Your thane sends word that preparations for the first sortee are nearly complete; this much, you already knew. But I can top it.”

Adron’s interest visibly shifted to the spy. “Go on.”

“The Heir has fallen ill. The Seelie, from the Brass City, anyway, are fallen into disarray. Their attention has turned back inward.”

Adron smiled. “Then now is the time. At last, we shall reveal ourselves to the Autumn World, and forestall our Winter once and for all.”

“The Kingdom of the Fair is at hand.”

---

All told, the Regnum Crocus Mall (or, more accurately, its remains) was in far better condition – and a far better state of supply – than Edward had anticipated. The civilians (now prisoners awaiting trial, with one exception) had folded with little resistance – their small mousing guns and inadequate training bore little threat against the Crimson Knights.

He reflected on this as he prepared remarks to be given to the men later. He had little better to do, presently – nobody was quite ready to give him a full report on the action, and though he had travelled here personally to oversee the operation, the smart trick had been to split forces, and he’d yet to have a full picture of the situation.

The mall was without power, so even here, from the main security office, what few cameras probably remained in working order were useless. Everything was flashlights and electric lanterns. Still, it was a quiet spot – quiet enough that he heard Francis coming long before the man had knocked on the door. “Enter.”

“Captain. I am ready to report.”

Edward untucked the radio earpiece from behind his ear. His uniform had changed little for this assault – substituting his ordinary wool vest for a low-profile ballistic vest, and adopting the radio. “Anyone hurt?”

“Two of ours. Amanda Vale took a few air rifle rounds in the face. She’s pissed, but given some antibiotics and a bit of rest she’ll be fine.” Francis flipped his notebook. “Also Andy Gallant. Fell from a balcony. Left arm broken, and probably his collarbone too. He’s been rushed back to Headquarters for better examination.”

Edward nodded slowly. They were lucky. A few of the weapons he himself had seen were significantly more powerful than a 10-foot fall and a few small bits of relatively slow-moving lead. “Thank God it’s so few. I’d like to talk with both of them later. How about with the prisoners?”

“Four dead sir.” Francis’s tone dropped considerably. Nobody here had joined up to kill people. And those who had remained when Edward took his new commission had done so to keep the peace. To police, rather than soldier. “The two from the shop proper, one more during the skirmish in the loading docks, and the unfortunate gentleman I failed to properly disarm in the food court. None identified yet, obviously.”

Edward sat a little straighter, rubbing his hands together. “... You okay?”

“I was in the army before I was with you, sir. I’m trained to think about this sort of thing... safely.” Francis stood a little taller. “You were the gun shop.”

“I wasn’t about to let anyone else lead that,” Edward said bluntly. This was not his first time killing, either, though the more he thought about it, the more he realized it might be the first time it was entirely sanctioned. That was in and of itself a weird feeling. “... Who lead the loading dock team?”

“Knight First Class Lowell, sir. He maintains it was his kill.”
“Ask him to speak to me at his earliest...”

Edward had been about to say “convenience”, but was cut off by the sudden noise of his earpiece, into which someone was speaking very loudly. Francis winced, having not removed his, and as he watched, the man’s eyes widened, and thoughts of the situation having been concluded vanished from Edward’s mind.

“Security patrol failed to report. Service access for the food court to cold storage.”

Edward was already up, one hand tucking the headset back in while the other crossed his chest to draw his sword. The weapon felt energized, almost thirsty, in his hand. This was what he was put on the planet to do, he was firmly convinced. “Call in, Francis. Group Cross responding.”

The scene in the central atrium of the mall – the lower floor of which was given over to a large food-court, had become one of pure chaos. Sections of facade over walls had fallen away, caving inward or outward to give rise to what must have been impossible hallways, reaching in directions they should not have. At first, Edward did not recognize this as being what he was actually seeing, then, he resolved, it had to have been some trick of architecture.

He bounded down an escalator-long-turned-stairs and into what was rapidly devolving into a fray between his men and a second force of invaders, and as he passed near a stranger armed not dissimilar than he himself was, but with the face of the lion, he realized too late his mistake.

Francis, of course, seemed unmoved. Edward relied heavily on his gift – what his mother had called his Gaze – compensating with poor real-world vision with a form of true sight. Often, illusions failed on him entirely, and in moments of proper concentration, he seemed to see threads of light. Lines of magic, verboten or benign, weaving together the scene we think we see.

Francis saw only burly men who had clearly raided a Magnussun clearinghouse. The Lieutenent did his job well, intervening whenever anyone with a free blade got too close to Edward. The day, which had so far been relatively clean and bloodless, was to get much more violent.

Across the sea of people – at least two score, doubling his own men – Edward spied a figure that seemed taller than the rest, clad in black plates. The two locked eyes, and from there, the Crimson Knight had his target in mind.

To watch Edward move on the battlefield was to discard all notions of a connotation between albinism and sickliness. He was a wraith, but one which made his presence well-felt. As comfortable at the head of the charge or the rear command post. A being, reputation had it, of wrath and righteous indignation.

He was no such thing, of course. Edward Coultier was a mortal man, of flesh and blood and sinews and all the frailties and failings of the rest. But the reputation was well-deserved, and if he had frailties, they weren’t on display here. He moved as a crimson blur, cape flowing behind him. You had the impression he would vanish without it, as though he relied on it as a drag racer relies on his drogue chute.

In reality, of course, that was no more true than the other fantasy. Edward was a prized tactician – a master of combat on the small scale. He advanced only across distances he knew he could cover. He had no qualms about using the enemy themselves for cover – placing himself on the far side of a foe from those who could do him harm from a distance. His reputation as a swordsman was indeed well deserved, and though he could swear up and down about honour until he’d gone as red in the face as his cape, he knew every dirty trick in the book.

He’d met his match, it seemed, in the Duke. Few paired speed like Edward’s with the heavier protection of steel plates. Edward wasn’t trained for it. It wasn’t a tactic worthy of consideration – the human body simply wasn’t enduring enough to make it possible. He could only press what advantage he could – retreating from one foot-rest to another, bounding across table tops and chair backs in the Regnum Crocus food court as comfortably as a dancer took to the stage.

To his credit, though, his whirling blade, which seemed more to dance around his right hand than be truly wielded by it, had become a barrier every bit as impenetrable as the Duke’s blackened chest plate. Neither man’s sword fell still for long – testing the gaps in the other’s defence, neither wanting to blunt edge or test temper with direct contact. The duke’s expression was unreadable behind his visor. Edward’s was one of quiet frustration, a perfect study in the art of keeping the heart beneath the surface.

Abruptly, the dance came to an end. The two men caught each other crossguards-on, twisting powerfully to both try and retain their own grip and disarm the other. Edward moved back. From where Francis was standing, it seemed as though the cloak had enveloped him completely – a crimson ribbon bounding impossibly upward to the railing of the second floor’s balcony overhead.

“Feeling flighty, Captain?” the Duke called up, knowing full well the Crimson Knights were too deeply engaged to attack him without ample warning.

Edward arrested his balance, and lowered his sword contemptuously to his side. “I’m just waiting for you to get on my level, your grace.”

A blur of black, then, and so the men moved. From time to time as they came to rest in the same spot there was a ringing of steel. Edward, behind the protective silver arc of his blade, more than once saw flickers of black flame travel against the other’s blade, and knew any lesser will than his would have allowed his own sword to sunder.

Intention was the best defence against the renegade mage, Edward reminded himself. A strong force of will was as valuable a piece of your armour as any shield could be, in the right situation.

At the foot of a stair, Edward buckled, going down on a knee. The duke smirked, his weapon arcing up over his head for a dolorous blow, but he was seemingly not equal to the knight, who suddenly resurged, swinging up to his own defence, foxfire travelling across his own steel. The charm worked – when the weapons met, the duke was forced backwards several yards, landing again with some friction before he became entirely stationary, though to his credit he remained on his feet.

Edward stood again, and was at the point of speaking when the glass above caved in. The frenzied cries of the invaders turned to hush as several impossible beings – lobster-bumblebee-horses that were too like the world to not be of it, and too alien to possibly be here – landed around the central fountain in the annex.

A figure – dressed all in yellow with a black-brockaded tabard, bounded down from his unearthly steed, his voice booming out from behind his mask in a most unnatural way. Loud, but somehow unforced. “My Duke, you will attend to her majesty at once.”

The Duke smirked again, sheathing his blade. “Retreat, mortal. While there’s still somewhere to run.”

Edward breathed quietly, watching the man depart. His gaze travelled back to the strange herald, who seemed to meet his gaze, and nodded – a nod the swordsman returned with a salute before he sheathed his weapon.

Still, as he turned his back and rallied his remaining troops to escape the route, he couldn’t help but keep the long, cruel dagger that was his main gauche drawn beneath the shadow of his cape. The ancient sword throbbed in his hand. To Edward, it longed – deeply – to be tested against the Masked Man.

“We’re letting them have it?”

Among Edward’s talents was a wisdom beyond his years – a wisdom that thus far had kept him alive. “I’m not in the habit of dying for abandoned malls, Francis. We’re routed.”

Francis gazed at the figure near the fountain, a vein bulging in the side of his neck. “For the moment.”