This is the worst thing I have ever done.

 I am forever changed. I will never be the good man I wish to be.

I made this choice. I cannot unmake it. The ultimate betrayal, not just to my wife but to myself.

What have I done?

A Leash, Perhaps Given

 A few pretty good weeks. Limerence fades, as they all say it does. She says nothing, we go without seeing each other, and I feel that longing step back into the shadows and nearly disappear. But all it takes is one text to draw the specter back into my periphery.

I was thinking of asking if you wanted to go climbing.

And bam, that desire is back. I want to abandon my plans: want to abandon helping my grandfather, want to push back game night, just so I can... what, be near her? Just, like, in proximity?

It's chemical, all of it. Just a swirling maelstrom of serotonin and dopamine. A plunging want that tries to get me to do things that aren't me.

That's the crux of it, really. These feelings aren't me. They're things that are happening to me. Things I am experiencing. They will pass, and I will remain.

I'm all that remains, after this. Not these feelings.

But, God damn. How powerful that feeling is. How much I want to respond and give in to that.

Limerence. What a fucker.

I am scared of Death at all times

Some day I will breath my last.

TIME AWASH WITH BLOOD-- Chapter Seventeen

Eells tongue was dry. He licked his lips and tasted acrid smoke. He did not breath through his nose, not down here. From underneath the eaves of a shuttered shop he studied the the soggy list of names in his hands. Rain pattered above him, on the cobblestone around him. It fell hard, splashing his boots and staining the hem of his robe dark. He licked his lips again, tasted sweat and smog. A passerby coughed into their gloved fist—a thick, ragged sound, like a faucet disgorging sewer water.

Eells drew his tongue back in over his teeth and resisted the uge to spit.

His eyes scanned the six names again. They were all women, and they were all in Celedin. Beyond that he knew nothing. The document provided their residential districts, but not specific addresses. The interworld hub didnt have the authority or manpower to log the locations of the millions that traveled here from other worlds, especially when considering the fact that most people had no permanent address. The poor and destitute moved as frequently as the tides, wordlessly obeying the gravitic whims of economics and disease. Two of the names on this list didn’t even have residential districts—they were simply listed as “itinerants.”

He bit his lip, and looked over the six names circled in red ink.

• Aratria Geddon, Rainslick Plaza
• Tori Kebbulut, The Dregs
• Elspeth Frume, Poroncio District
• Therazine Morlo, Itinerant
• Xian Xiozu, Marrock Hill
• Dramm Ofthezeg, Itinerant

No other information. All women. None of them were nobility or prominent businessfolk. All of them had come from Lormian. His target was one of the women here. Primio had made certain of this, as his last act in the Real. The two itinerants would be most difficult to track down. The others would not be simple in a city that was brimming with over a billion fermenting souls, but how many Tori Kebbuluts could there be in the Dregs? Or Xian Xiozus in Marrock Hill?

Eells grimaced. That last name felt sour every time he read it. That was not a Celedine name. He could practically see the pits of bubbling tar and black skies of whatever world this Xiozu woman hailed from. He imagined the pagan idols that she must have brought with her when she migrated to Celedin—skull charms, sickly glowing Aether bands, bound clusters of animal bones. Perhaps her home would be easier to identify than the others.

“Why you reading in the rain?”

He looked up and saw a woman standing in the street before him. A wet grey coat hung from her shoulders. Her knotted hair fell in fat clumps over her shoulders. Her trousers were far too tight across her bulging thighs. She wore makeup of some sort, a clear varnish over her lips that Eells did not know the name for. But she had applied it poorly—it glistened around the edges of her mouth like a new scar.

He narrowed his eyes and said nothing.

“Why you reading in the rain?” she repeated. Her brow was furrowed, and her sunken eyes were full of curiosity. She did not seem to recognize the X-shaped scar on Eells’ face. The way she stood there, watching him. It was late in the evening. Did she not have to hurry back home? No. From the way she stood, from the vacuous way she regarded him, Eells was certain that she did not have family depending on her somewhere. There was a wax wrapper crumpled in her left hand, the refuse from an unnecessary midnight sandwich; no doubt her fourth or fifth that day.

Eells felt his stomach turn and growl as he thought of food, and he felt a bloom of pride at the resiliency of his spirit to withstand the body’s incessant carnal craving for food. He briefly wondered what other vices this woman surrendered to, but the images that snuck into his mind made his skin crawl.

“What is your name?” he asked.

The woman blinked. She opened her mouth and her neck sagged with it.

“I’m Desi. Who are you?”

“Begone, wretch.”

The woman frowned, and walked off down the street. She called him some name as she vanished into the rain and crowd but Eells did not pay her any attention. His eyes had returned to his list.

Marrock Hill was far, on the opposite side of Mount Recep. Similarly the Dregs was a district adjacent to the docks, and thus on the coast seven miles to the west. But Rainslick Plaza was only the next district over from where he currently stood. On foot he could reach the center of the district in a few hours. He briefly entertained the idea of summon a coach or cab, but the thought of a Bereaver using such mundane forms of transportation disgusted him.

He would walk, and arrive precisely when he was meant to.

---

Rainslick Plaza itself surrounded a large open area of land that at one point had been a park, but now was six square blocks of single-story squat buildings and fields of tents. Two short conversations had led Eells to a sore-covered vagrant who had set up his home under an ancient dead tree near the edges of the plaza. The vagrant did not consider himself fortunate enough to own one of the ramshackle huts or even the stained tents, but before he could regale Eells with his tale of woe he was silenced. Eells explained to the man that he did not care, that his plight was unimportant, and that all that mattered was that this man provide the Bereaver with the information he needed. Some gleam in the vagrant’s eye suggested he had some former schooling with the Order of Prevalistics, and that he knew exactly what Eells’ title implied. He capitulated in a stammering, apologetic way.

The woman in question, Aratria Geddon, lived in a building just up the hill. The vagrant gave him her apartment number, and her usual morning routine, and the various colors of dress that she wore whenever the rain let up, and the types of men that she invited into her home, and a detailed description of her smile and the bounce of her hair, and the special trick that was needed to knock down the ladder to the her fire escape, and the fact that the blinds to her bedroom window were bent and if you showed up just after sunset then—

Eells silenced the man again and left. He found the building—a tall, black stone structure with a crown of acid-eaten gargoyles. The streets surrounding the building were empty this early in the morning, and there were only two amber lights on in the myriad windows that covered its dark surface. The door to the lobby was locked.

He circled the building twice before finding the fire escape. The vagrant’s instructions had been accurate—with a knock from his sheathed rapier the ladder came down with a cold rattling clang. Were it not for the driving rain, the sound might have awoken someone. He climbed four stories. His hands were slick and scratched from gripping the rusted railings. A four pane window stood ahead of him. The blinds were drawn; there were no lights within. He leaned in and cupped his hand over his eyes, finding a gap in the old brown blinds and waiting for his eyes to adjust to the deep darkness within the apartment.

A cluttered room. Indistinguishable art on the walls. A figure bundled up on the bed.

Over the din of the rain, Eells heard the flap of wings. Talons clasped onto the railing of the fire escape. He turned, and saw a rotcrow perched there.

“Do I even need to say anything?” Silas said.

“Begone,” Eells said, looking back at the window. “You are not needed here.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’m here anyway. So, how are you going to do it? Pry the window open quietly and slit her throat? Or just bust the glass and pick her up? Maybe declare your divinity as you toss her to her death?”

“Your words won’t change anything here, Silas. I am free of conflict.”

The rotcrow spread its wings and looked back and forth. “Apparently not. I’m not real, remember? I’m just in your mind?”

“I said begone.”

“Or maybe I am real. Have you considered that? Your poor dead brother has returned from the Aether to warn you about the consequences of your wicked ways. Pretty sure mother read us a story like that when we were younger.”

“Mother never read us anything.”

“Maybe not you. But then, I was always her favorite son.”

Eells turned sharply.

“Your words,” Silas said. “Not mine.”

“Why are even here? Why are you trying to stay my hand, when it was you who has led me down this path?”

“I didn’t lead you anywhere. This is all you. I’m just telling you what I know.”

“You were the one who told me that the source of the Schism was a woman, foul creature.”

“Just giving you the facts as I know them. It’s you who is making these decisions, not me.”

“So are you or are you not trying to stop me?”

“Is that doubt I sense in your voice, dear brother?”

Eells struck out at the rotcrow, but Silas flapped and jumped to perch on the ladder above him.

“Not so loud,” Silas said. “You’ll wake her.”

“Get out of here,” Eells whispered. “Get lost, and never come back. You do nothing but cloud my purpose.”

“Maybe that’s my purpose. Have you thought about that?”

Eells growled. “Tell me what you have come to say and then leave.”

The rotcrow chirped, and a feather fell from its neck.

“It’s not her.”

Eells ground his teeth. “You can’t know that.”

“Maybe not. But that’s what I came to tell you. This isn’t the one.”

Eells regarded the window again. The blackness within, and the still form that lay within that blackness. One of six. The woman he sought was one of six.

“Then which one is it?”

“Not this one,” Silas said, rocking on the ladder.

“That isn’t good enough.”

“That’s what I have to tell you. Nothing else.”

Eells just stared at the window. After a moment of silence, the rotcrow spread its wings and flew away into the rain.

Eells breathed in deep, tasted the smoke in the air. He smelled feces wafting up from the tent city in the center of the plaze, heard a dog growl in the alley below. There were five other names on the list. They begged his attention now. But he had come all the way here. He tried the window and found it locked. He was frustrated, but not surprised. For a few minutes he simply stood in the rain and thought. Then he hissed through his teeth and descended the ladders of the fire escape. He almost reached the bottom before he stopped.

Was Silas merely a manifestation of his psyche? A specter from his past? He knew that strange magic existed in the distant realms of the Real, and knew that the Aether could generate even more terrifying apparitions. But how was one to tell the difference between sorcery and the flickering morality of the human spirit? What part of him was reacting to his own sound judgment, and what part of him was being manipulated by the Pale Light to be thrown off his path?

He hung on to the last rung of the ladder, just above the alley.

Rambolt Eells was the Bereaver. He had been given that title because he had a gift, a sight. He could feel the fissures in reality whenever the Aether attempted to spill into his world. That was why the Council had entrusted him with his job. He could not trust his thought, but he could trust his instincts. His intuition was truth.

And right now, that truth told him that Silas was lying.

He climbed the fire escape again. His shoulders ached as he pulled himself over the fourth-story railing. Without pause he shattered the central window pane to Aratria’s black bedroom. The woman screamed, and continued to scream as he crashed into the safety of her home. The next few minutes were a blurry, adrenaline fueled haze of groping hands, banging knees, and warm sprays of arterial blood. In the panic and darkness he never drew his sword. But when the screaming stopped and he stood above her bed sweating and heaving he knew that his holy work had been done.

His eyes could not be trusted. In darkness he had prevailed. His thoughts could not be trusted. Only his intuition, his soul, would tell him the truth. One down. Five to go.

A Dirge for Life

“I have spent all of my life in an effort to live forever. I have drained the economies of entire colonies, reduced once bountiful worlds to ash and rock. Billions have died so that I may continue living. And I’d done it. I’d solved the problem of death. Through the power of suns I’ve discovered the path to immortality—at a cost so significant that for centuries I had to deny the reality of it not only to the public but to myself. But with each life that was consumed a little of that shame died. With each burned-out gas giant I hardened myself, until I was both unending and unstoppable. The human race has suffered immeasurably for my benefit. No. Do not try to tell me otherwise, Renfro. I am a monster, and I have accepted that. Were there a hell, the devil himself would have cleared a plot for me centuries ago in the deepest ice of the ninth circle. There is no punishment fitting enough for the horrors that I have committed upon my fellow man. I was certain that the sacrifice of my species was an acceptable cost for defying the very nature of the universe. What else was my eternal life, if not the mightiest rebellion against entropy?”

“But now, there is this. Behold Theia. Once a jewel of this galaxy. A world spared my vampiric annihilation because I found it beautiful. No where else in known space did humanity flourish as much as it did here. When I could walk I spent many nights walking the turquoise forests of the northern continent, listening to the songs of the insects and the howls of the nocturnal birds. Did you know that at its height it was home to more than eleven billion people? All thinking, feeling souls, living and breathing and dying in rhythm with the incorruptable serenity of this world. Ancient Earth could not have supported this many of us—it was far too small, its resources far too minimal. Mankind squandered what it had there. But on Theia, we had reached harmonic perfection with nature. Do you remember the crystaline skyscrapers of Gimultera? How they glistened. How they twinkled in the setting sun. But now Theia’s green and blue have faded. Animals, plants, man—they are all gone. No shelters could save them. No medicine, no relocation. They just began dying. First the sick and the elderly, but then the children. I have stopped receiving contact from Theia’s surface. Only the automated signals from the the weather installations feed to me now, and they all tell me the same thing: Theia is dead.”

“Learning that Theia was not alone was the first time I felt fear in three-hundred years. Global death is a horrible thing to witness, but when one’s vision spans across millions of worlds one does not sweat too much over such a trivial loss. I loved Theia. I did. It was my garden world. But Theia its slow death was no different to me than watching a favored painting fall from the wall in a gallery. Anger, perhaps. Regret and disappointment. But no fear. It was when the same fate befell Tormador that I felt terror break through the dikes of my psyche. I dispatched fleets of scientists to discover the cause—an abominable new disease, or a weapon; I was certain that it was a weapon used by some crafty resurgent enemy. I had frontier worlds incinerated in an effort to stamp out imagined insurrections. New Callisto, Chadrion, Benimm’s Star. Millions consumed in cyclonic fire to simply sooth my paranoia. I was convinced that a war was coming and that I was making preemptive strikes. Imagine my embarassment when the scientists returned and told me that nothing was killing Tormador. No viruses, no radiation. It was simply dying.”

“For the first time in generations I encountered something I did not understand. Surely the problem was in the trade lines—something being transported along the space lanes between Theia and Tormador. I watched the Nimutz Trade Route anxiously, expecting to see another world die along that same lane. But then Zimaku faded into grey and darkness along the Hyperion Spine, and Ceta Centauria a thousand lightyears further away. Then the Dynas Cluster screamed its last. Nothing connected these worlds. Nothing other than them being planets where man formerly thrived, planets that I claimed. I dispatched my researchers across the galaxy on a scientific crusade—return with answers, I told them. Or do not return at all.”

“Over the next century I experienced multiple crises of faith. As my worlds—as humanity’s worlds—continued to die without explanation, I blamed outside influence. I led a war into the Dendrenian systems. You look vexed. Yes, they don’t teach of the Dendrenians anymore. Aliens, Renfro. Sentient nonhumans who once owned much of this galaxy. They aren’t to be spoken of. Would you like to know why? It is because when I thrust the head of my spear into the heart of their empire, I found nothing but the corpses of civilizations. What remained of the Dendrenians were isolated pockets of their withering government, fastened in their ferrocrete sarcophogai and hoping to wait out whatever was happening to the universe. Do you understand what I’m teling you? What was happening to mankind had already happened to the Dendrenians. Whatever this was, it had hit them first. I watched the last of their leaders die behind a metallic faceplate. If they had eyes, I would have stared into them and seen the last remnants of a sophisticated race fading into the background like radio static. They were gone.”

“I realized after that fruitless campaign that I had been blaming myself. I was never able to place why, but part of me was convinced that my manipulation of human biology had upset the circuits of reality in some way, and that we were now suffering the fallout. I had even, for a time, believed that some divine being was punishing me for my unforgivable sins. But witnessing the fate of the Dendrenians absolved my spirit, though it did nothing to sate my fears.”

“In the centuries that followed I watched thousands more worlds die. I felt it. Not just the loss of my empire and my species, but in my physical body as well. Even amidst all of this death I continued to siphon stars and planet cores for life-giving radiance. I had conquered death—I would not take my foot off of its defeated body merely because my attentions had been drawn elsewhere. But even as I sucked the life out of entire star systems I could feel it happening to me. I had legs fifty years ago. I could walk. My skin was bright and soft, my body supple. This atrophy happened quickly. Like the countless worlds before me, I was shriveling. Even you had a body once, Renfro. You weren’t ugly, but you are not much worse off now. Take comfort in the fact that you are a mind within a machine—you might be just artificial enough to outlive me.”

He turned his head, his neck popping and creaking with the effort. Renfro’s face blinked green once. He watched, waiting the three seconds for the next blink to come and tell him that his servant was still there behind the screens and steel. It blinked green, and he turned back to the canopy and beheld Theia once more.

“I found it this morning. The report. From the flotilla of scientists that I sent out oh so many eons ago. They are long since ash, but their data survived. It floated silently and unharmed through centuries of cold space. But now I have it. And not a moment too soon, I believe. Do you know what it is they discovered?”

Renfro’s light blinked once.

“They discovered a well. A fountain at the center of the universe. Imperceptable on all instruments. They had to invent new technology to find this invisible source, and when they did they practically went mad from the revelation. It was the spring of life. Not on a world or even in space and time itself, but real all the same. It was a fountain from which life flowed. The unseen stream of fire that flowed across the universe and sparked amino acids into forming the living organisms. Life is a constantly renewing and replenishing energy source. When a thing is born it is fed by this invisible river—the structures that make up its cells are given light and heat. When a thing dies, the waters ebb out of it and return to the cosmic source. Life flows from this well and back into it for eternity. Or so it seemed.”

“Generations of my crusading scientists studied this fountain. To their horror, they discovered that it was running its course. The river was drying up.”

“They tried to come back to me. They flew through the immeasurable black gulfs to inform me of the fact that life was draining from all things at an ever increasing rate. They never made it. None of them did.”

Theia loomed, a brown husk bathed by a yellow star.

“I have not heard communication from any of my princes in decades.”

He breathed in once, felt warm air rasp the ragged edges of his lungs.

“I believe that we may be the last two living things, my old friend. My scout ships have not returned. And look—oh, look. The oceans of Theia were once deep blue. A rich, gem-like blue that one could stare at for hours. When the world died the oceans turned a sickly green. I remember recognizing that as rot, that microbes had consumed all of the rampant death. But rot results from life, you see. Even decay is a product of river of life. The algae of the oceans bloomed without any threat from predation of competition. And soon enough it died, too. And the waters returned to blue.

“I have watched this world for thirty-one years without moving. To me that feels eternal, but it all happened in an instant. Slowly watching this sphere turn, knowing that the ever-encroaching horizon will never show me anything new. I wrote it all down almost a decade ago, when I’d heard the last scream broadcasted across the galactic waves. I composed a history of mankind. I detailed my own life, my journey. I followed the histories of old earth, of the first colonies. The wars with the Dendrenians, and—more prominantly—the wars with our own people who had been separated from us by thousands of years of isolation. Who we were as a people. As lifeforms. I came to two conclusions during this writing. The first was that all of human history could be summarized, and that thought caused me to mourn. All of the tens of thousands of years of our records happened in a cosmic blink. Ponder this for a moment: there are two-hundred billion stars in this galaxy. So many that no sentient mind can even comprehend that number. At any given moment unfathomable numbers of those stars are dying and being reborn again as waves of light and blackholes. They erupt or collapse in such spectacular fashion that their deaths can be observed on the other side of the galaxy. This cycle happens eternally, continuously, without any direction. And humankind’s entire existence spanned less time than the life of even one star. Far less.

“My thoughts at this time flattened me. For as grand as I believed my accomplishments to be, none of it was measurable. I thought my eternal life to be a defiant act, but the universe didn’t care. Worse, it was incapable of caring. I am not ignored—my existence is simply so temporary and reality so vast that there was never a possibility of my being significant. It was beyond incomprehensible.

“My second conclusion followed swiftly: the accomplishments of life mattered only to life itself. Thus, my record was meaningless. The well of life is draining and soon there will be no minds anywhere in the universe, and there never will be again. Anything I write will simply be sequences of data sitting frozen in a machine that will never again be accessed. There are no eyes to appreciate art, no psyches to feel dread at my harrowing words. There is, quite frankly, no point to it.

“Even as I speak now I see the futility of every word. You will not remember this, Renfro, because you too will soon be nothing. There are no future generations to spread our stories to. Very soon all will be cold and inert, except for the blazing energy of the stars in their phoenix cycles.”

He let out another breath, and felt the tug on his chest that he had been experiencing for the last four months.

“Was anything I did ever truly evil? With no other human beings to ascribe morality to my actions, was I an evil man? Here I speak, pondering the rightness of my life, in a language that means nothing with no ears to hear it. Where do we travel, I wonder? I regret. But at the same time, I feel no remorse for anyhting I have done. It is all ash and fractal patterns. What should I do? What will be the last action of the only living thing in all the cosmos? Years ago I screamed defiantly into the darkness of space. I strode out onto the upper deck and howled like a beast…”

His heart thumped.

“There will never be beasts again. That word, like so many others, carries no meaning now, except for what goes on within the shell of my skull.”

Over thirty seconds he breathed only twice. He tried to move his arm, and felt only prickly numbness.

“Does pain exist?”

Outside, Theia turned.

He drew in one large breath.

“I open my ears, and the void says nothing.”

Quantification

It is difficult to say if I am truly a writer.

For five years I have done nothing but edit my first novel and start three more. Half a decade of editing Wages of Sin -- fully a sixth of my life. In that time I have gotten married, I've seen friends die, I've traveled to distant corners of the earth, and I've continued to work at a restaurant and living in relative poverty.

I write. I do. But I don't do enough of the rest of things that come with being a 'writer.' I don't network. I don't publish. I don't... try. I don't try at all. Every day I watch my shows and exercise and paint tiny army men. All maintenance. All distraction. I feel so exhausted all of the time. Is that reason enough not to write?

Five years in. Wages is currently out making the rounds with literary agents. I've received six rejections in half as many weeks. Waiting on four more. It is hard to not feel like a failure when the thing that I have championed as my life's work for five years is met with mediocre critique and form letters. Why write if no one reads any of it?

"A life lived for art is never a life wasted," Macklemore says. Said, I guess. I imagine he doesn't say that too much since he sang it on his 2013 album. An album that I listened to while I was first writing Wages. When my brother was still in college.

Five years. The beast has been ravenous.

I must write more. I must. It is all that keeps me sane, that keeps me believing that I truly am a writer. Every day that I spend two to four hours writing I feel accomplished and prideful, all the way until sunset. Those are quantifiably good days. But I don't do it every day. Should I? Or is that simply another form of distraction? Do I use writing as sublimation for my fear of Time and Death (my two greatest foes), as distraction from it? All I know is that writing feels good. That I--

Shit. I told my therapist I'd write about... something. About something that we talked about last week. What was it? God damn. Sublimation, Distraction, Isolation, Anchoring... I suppose it is immaterial at the moment. At 1:40 AM, in the middle of another night lying alone in bed and just watching the sands of entropy slip through the pinprick hole that joins the two chambers.

So much time has passed. I am hesitant to say,"what do I have to show for it?" because I think I have a lot. Friends and wonderful family (family who I don't spend time with these days).

Gah. There it is. The chain-clad specter that is Shame, crawling on his skeletal fingers across the bedspread and threatening to choke me. I need to sleep. Never was a productive thought birthed of fatigue and shame.

I will write a short story tomorrow.

TIME AWASH WITH BLOOD-- Chapter Sixteen

It took six hours, not counting sleep, for Therazine to learn Anton Carlaca’s address. He was a local gent, still living in West Celedin after most of the wealthy had moved out east. In nine hours she had found his work schedule, his favorite local pub, and the underground boxing ring where he kept himself fit and vented the animalistic aggression that society injected into all of its citizens. In twenty hours she found him.

Anton Carlaca had been a lieutenant with the West Celedin Constabulary until two years ago. He was 35, athletic, and had no red marks, so his swift departure from the WCC stuck out to Therazine. Brief contact and sweet lies to the local department revealed that Carlaca’s family were farmers up north, and that they had been killed in a rebel attack. Carlaca had quit the service “to grieve,” she had been told, and was given a pension that was to last him an entire year. Such munificence was unheard of in this city, which led Therazine to believe that Carlaca must have been an exceptional officer and that the Constabulary wanted to make sure he came back.

But he never did. The year passed and Carlaca’s income ceased. He retained his apartment near Presidium Park and continued to go to all of his local haunts. He still jogged, he still shopped down on Ivy Street. His habits remained the same. It took Therazine locating an ex-girlfriend of his to determine why exactly he hadn’t gone back to the force.

Therazine played the role of recently scorned lover when she contacted Vivian Moroa by telephone. She claimed that she wanted to get vengeance on Carlaca, and that she was hoping Vivian would have some dirt on him.

Vivian’s voice was sugary and almost obnoxiously high-pitched. Therazine could practically see her through the static of the phone lines: straight-backed and smooth-fingered, pale and gasping for breath through her corset, wearing a gown and a half a pound of makeup even at midday. But Vivian’s testimony was nothing but favorable. She seemed to still pine for Carlaca, and said that their breakup was understandable if not mutual. Anton’s family had been slaughtered by those horrendous insurgents the previous year—for him to wish to be alone to rediscover himself was perfectly human.

That was how Vivian described Carlaca. Perfectly human.

What Therazine did learn from the woman, however, was that he was a compassionate man who cared deeply for the plight of the people living in the underbelly of this city. During and after his time with the WCC he witnessed the atrocious conditions that most of the people of West Celedin were forced to live in. Once free of his commitment to the Constabulary, he supposedly split his free time between fitness, drinking, and volunteering at local shelters.  Shelters for wirehead and the homeless were few and far between—neither the government nor the Order of Prevalistics invested into institutions to house and feed the millions living on the streets of Celedin. To fight against poverty in this city was to spit into an oncoming tidal wave. But Carlaca sought to help where he could, and according to Vivian he made quite a dent in the suffering of local transients.

Therazine very much doubted this. Shortly after her talk with Vivian she discovered that Anton Carlaca had officially put in his bid to run for Deputy Administrator six months ago. He had the support of the Constabulary and many of the trade houses and docks along the shore. He ran on a platform of reform and hope—his slogan was, ‘For a Brighter Celedin.’ Therazine had no doubt that many of the merchants along Ivy Street would also have been lending Carlaca their votes if they weren’t squarely under the boot of the Kettle family.

As to his current whereabouts, Anton Carlaca was soon attending a fundraiser in his honor at a lodge down near the edge of the Dregs, hosted by the Fraternal Order of Ravens. It seemed to Therazine an obvious move, if a safe one. The FOR was a community service organization that consisted almost entirely of retired whalers and veterans, two groups who Administrator Threlin and Deputy Administrator Kettle had actively denied public assets to in the last decade. Four years prior, after the sewer plague had transformed the Dregs into a nearly uninhabitable swamp at the water’s edge, a whalers’ union had petitioned the government for aid. Quarantine tents, trained doctors, Prevalist priests, and guns were all necessary if the plague was to be contained. Magistrate Denvos had denied them. No deficit or alternative plan had been proposed. The denial had simply traveled down the rungs of the social ladder until it had reached the desperate ears of the whalers’ union. The plague ran its course. Hundreds died or were transformed into throbbing, hungering polyps, and the government of West Celedin didn’t even notice.

If Carlaca was running against Kettle, he certainly had the vote of the people of the Dregs. By speaking at the Ravens lodge he was assuring that all of those who had been discarded by the Deputy Administrator would know that he existed, and that he was fighting for them.

When he stepped up to deliver his first speech of the night he was met with resounding silence. The creek of the planks from old ships that made up the stage upon which he stood were louder than anything else in the lodge, save for the persistent humming of the dim orange sodium lamp that hung in one corner of the room. The audience was filled with old men in ragged military uniforms bearing polished brass badges and empty holsters, or else whalers and fishermen in oilskins. The room smelled of piss and salt, with the occasional waft of sour beer. Somewhere in the back room a cook was listening to indecipherable music on a tinny radio.

Carlaca received a tepid round of applause after his first speech. No doubt cooler than he had hoped, but the buzz across the room started immediately afterwards. Three or four uniformed men approached him and shook his hand, mumbling words about support and curiosity. You’ve got massive balls to run against that fat bull Kettle.

Therazine sat near the back. She had been careful not to take any of the seats along the back wall—as the only woman in the room she did not need to stand out any more than she already did. Women were forbidden from joining the lodge’s ranks. That alone made her a curiosity. Her hair was done up in a knot under a newsboy cap and she had a heavy black raincoat over her shoulders. Vexxer had decided that entering a small room full of disgruntled Javadoan War vets was not the wisest plan. Therazine had gone in alone. She had received a few inquiring glances upon first entering the lodge, but after Carlaca had taken the stage all eyes left her.

She sipped delicately from a cup of coffee. Carlaca took the stage once more. This time there was a small tremor of clapping. A sailor woofed like a dog. Carlaca smiled wide and waved into the shadowed crowd where the grunt had come from. It was a warm, genuine expression—or at least it appeared that way.

“Thank you,” Carlaca said. “Thank you, really. I was wondering if I’d get a second chance up here. Was worried I bored you all so much in the first round that I’d just be asked firmly to leave.”

A light chuckle in the crowd. Carlaca smiled again. He cleared his throat and smoothed back a strand of his oiled black hair. There wasn’t a hint of unease about him. He reminded Therazine of a bartender back in Nalak—a charming young man whom Kohl had once told to fuck off for speaking too kindly to her.

“Now. I’ve told you who I am and what I’m about. Why I’m running. Not just the office, but what I am running for. I’d be lying if I told you that the Dregs, or even the Wharf District, was my biggest concern. Now don’t get me wrong—your plight here is some of the most tragic that I’ve ever seen. But like many of you I’ve lived in this city my entire life, and what happens here happens everywhere across Celedin. Not just here, not just in West Celedin, but across the entire world. The Bureau of Realside Accounting tells us that easing the vast amount of suffering across our city is logistically impossible, that there are simply too many people to treat everyone fair and right. They tell us that resources are spread too thin as it is. They tell us that industry can only do so much, that there are only so many jobs, that there is only so much glit, so much medicine, so much clean water, so much basic human dignity.”

Carlaca said this last word with venom, and his tone shifted. He gripped both sides of the knotted podium and gritted his teeth.

“They tell us this at the same time that we occupy new worlds. They tell us this as we settle infinite frontiers. They say there is no food, and yet farmers on Erukesh grow enough to feed the Real three times over. Tell me, friends: what results do you see from the Commonwealth’s distribution of resources? Is it cleaner skies? Is it purified, uninfected roadways? Is it peace in North Celedin? Medical innovations? No. This city is the same as it was before the war. You fought and died to claim Javadoa for the Commonwealth and yet you see none of it. When you signed up to conquer in the name of the Holy Emperor, what did they promise you? Glory? Mere reprieve?”

An angered grumbling came from the crowd. A pair of gloved hands made a wet, languished clapping.

“I ask you,” Carlaca said, “what reprieve have you been awarded? Is your life any better since the war?”

“Fuck no,” two old men said at once.

“You have suffered. You have bled, you have watched friends die, and you have been given nothing in return. This city has discarded you, because they say that you are logistically impossible to help. There is no relief from this life, is what they are selling. Everyone suffers. Bear that in mind the next time you see Deputy Administrator Patrick Kettle step out of his chrome-plated Zephyr for a dinner reservation at the Spire Lounge, with his fat sons in tow.”

A howl of anger came from behind Therazine. Fists went up.

“Patrick Kettle won’t save the Dregs from plague,” Carlaca said. “He thinks he has power over you. Invulnerability. He thinks that he deserves everything he’s got. But ask him if he’s ever lost a friend to war or sickness. Yes. You.”

A man stood up in the crowd. His jagged, blotchy face was hidden beneath a tattered wool cap and an unkempt beard.

“What are you gonna do about it?” the man asked. “What makes you any better than those pigshits?”

Carlaca nodded. “A fair question. And I’ll tell you exactly what I’ll do—When I’m in Patrick Kettle’s place as Deputy Administrator, I will hold Magistrate Denvos personally responsible for every crime Kettle has ever committed.”

“Easy to say,” the bearded man spat out.

“Easy to say, yes. And easy to do, too. Kettle has held the position of DA for fifteen years now. On the force I saw exactly the kind of horrors he got away with every day. The prostitution, the smuggling, the extortion rackets—I’m not going to call what he peddles ‘protection,’ because who exactly is he protecting you from? His own boys? I saw firsthand the monstrous things that he and his Corbie Club do. By all that’s Real, I’ve felt what they do.”

Carlaca undid the top button of his vest and pulled down the collar of his shirt. On pale skin he exposed a pink and white scar about three inches in length at the base if his throat. Therazine recognized it as a scar from extreme blunt trauma—a crowbar, she imagined. Or perhaps a fire poker. She visualized his shattered collarbone; he likely had trouble raising his right arm these days. Whoever had inflicted that on Carlaca had been looking to kill him. An inch or so higher and they would’ve succeeded.

Therazine also noticed the edges of a tattoo on his right breast. The spokes of a stylized sun, and the corner of an eye.

So Carlaca was a good Prevalist boy, as well. Therazine was impressed that he hadn’t revealed that bit of information yet—these old war vets all had soft spots for the faithful. A result of the indoctrination that the Order used to convince these sorry bastards that their wars were worth fighting.

“They don’t like me,” Carlaca said, and that received a hoot. “Which is good. I don’t want them to like me. They know I’m gunning for them. They know that I can’t stomach the way they treat the people below them—because I am one of those people. I’ve been stepped on by Denvos and Kettle my entire life, and now I have the power to do something about it. With me biting at his heals, Denvos won’t have any choice but to tread the path of righteousness.”

There it was. The tiniest hint of scripture. Therazine remembered Kohl reading the Writ of Becoming to her one time early in their relationship. The Aether pulls at your hair — at your skin — at your tongue — Surrender not to its claws — do not gaze into its Pale eyes — keep thy feet straight — and tread only the path of righteousness.

The crowd cheered. Therazine was impressed. Carlaca had appealed to these people like an artist, using heavy obvious strokes but nonetheless painting the picture they’d wanted to see. Now they were prepared to pay him for his work. A few men stood to clap, but most were too old and fat and stayed seated. Nevertheless she saw how they stared at Anton Carlaca, their eyes glazed in a mix of hope and possible justice. Some actually looked like they believed this young hopeful could make a difference.

This was her moment. The Calm overcame her.

Everything slowed down. The hazy light from the sodium lamps became bright and sterile. The clapping became muffled, the distant kitchen music faded away entirely. She saw Carlaca breath in heavily, slowly, and smile. All eyes were on him.

Her plan executed itself perfectly in her mind. With her right boot already on the edge of a chair she lept up onto the neighboring table and threw open her long raincoat. In an instant she’d drawn a long-barreled pistol—a sliver and dull brown piece from Madeline Rhines’ own masterful hands. The hammer was drawn back, the seven-round harmonica clip already slid into position. She merely settled the glowing radium sights on Carlaca’s forehead and pulled the trigger. She felt the magnificent kick of the gun, saw the room light up white like the Aether had breached a hole into the Real. Carlaca’s skull cratered inward, and black and red matter exploded across the faded raven painted on the back wall. There was no time for anyone to stop her, no time for Carlaca to even stop smiling before his handsome face was obliterated.

She saw this all in her mind’s eye. Even felt the twitch in her right leg as she was about to jump up. But she didn’t move.

Carlaca’s grin was filled with teeth more perfect than she had ever seen. But his expression was not one of victory, not one of accomplishment. He smiled at the ugly old men who approached him in earnest thanks and encouragement. He smiled to them, and for them. And they ate it up. She remembered Chestin Kettle smiling at her the day before, when he thought that he had her and Vexxer at a disadvantage. That had been the vacuous grin of a viper, of a predator circling its prey. This was different. Carlaca gave the smile of a friend.

Therazine’s moment passed without her doing anything, and veterans and sailors piled around Carlaca to clap him on the back and shake his hand.They chanted encouragement and exaltation, shouted for the destruction of Patrick Kettle and Magistrate Denzos. One signaled for the bartender to pour drinks, and shortly beer and shots were being passed around the room.

The Calm fled from Therazine as quickly as it had come, and she suddenly felt ice in her blood. She hadn’t done it. She hadn’t pulled the gun out, let alone pulled the trigger. She felt immediate shame at her hesitation, but she circled that and put it down. No. She had not failed. The Calm had given her clarity. If she desired it, Carlaca would be dead now. No one here could have stopped that.

She had actively decided not to kill him. This revelation hit her like a crashing wave, and threatened to pull her out into the raging seas of her self-doubt. She clawed at the shores and kept herself there, telling herself that she had done this on purpose. In that moment she had juxtaposed Anton Carlaca and the men who had told her to kill him, and she had made the choice to disobey.

This was not weakness, she told herself. This was—

Time slipped by. Seconds, minutes. Everyone was drinking, singing. Carlaca was smiling and making merry along with the rest of them, his slick black hair dangling into his face again. Carlaca, who had almost been brutally murdered and didn’t even realize it.

She stood up, clattered her chair back. An old man behind her grunted in anger. She strode forward, pushed through the crowd. Faces turned as she slid through the bodies. Beards mottled with milky foam pulled away from their pints to gawk at the woman pushing past them. She shoved aside a hunched man in a a grey oilskin and found herself face to face with the ex-lieutenant.

“Anton Carlaca,” she said, pulse pounding.

Voices around her went quiet. No one had expected to hear a woman speak in the lodge. Carlaca chuckled at some joke, and turned to her. He skillfully masked his surprise—his eyebrows stayed firm, his smile stayed fixed. But she saw the gleam in his eyes and the horripilation on his neck when she approached.

“I need to speak to you,” she said.

“Who let you in here?” came a slurred voice from her right. Someone stepped closer.

Carlaca’s eyes flitted around him. “Of course,” he said. “I don’t think we’ve met. Who am I addressing?”

“I need to speak to you in private,” Therazine said.

A laugh somewhere behind her. Then a whistle. “Who hired the blonde?” someone shouted.

Carlaca ignored them. His eyebrows lowered and he held Therazine’s gaze. He looked as if he was about to speak, and then simply nodded.

“Of course,” he said. He handed his beer to the nearest sailor, said that he’d return shortly. “The next round is on me.” Another cheer went up. Glasses clinked. Then he stepped up to Therazine.

She turned and led him through the crowd. Carlaca received a few more claps on the back and hoots from various drunken old men. Another whistled. A hand came out toward Therazine, fingers spread wide and lecherous. She avoided the assault with ease and only resisted breaking the hand through sheer will. She had no time to punish some drunk idiot. She pushed faster through the crowd and to the front door.

They stepped out into a cold mist. A rot crow flapped its oily wings and flew away into the dark, cawing in a watery, angry voice as it abandoned its putrid meal by the steps of the lodge. A foghorn blared. Carlaca closed the door behind them, entombing them in the sludgy darkness of the Wharf District at night.

Therazine breathed in deep of the caustic mist. Her heart raced.

“Alright,” Carlaca said. He stepped away from the lodge and stood beside her. They gazed out into the fog.

She looked at him. He was tall, like Kohl. Two wrinkles furrowed his brow, but otherwise he looked unconcerned. His hands were thrust into his pockets and the top button of his vest was still undone.

“Who are you?”

She swallowed. “That’s not important.”

“Okay. So what is important?”

“I was sent here to kill you.”

She expected him to run at that. To shout, or fight her. But his hands remained in his pockets. One of his eyebrows went up.

“That’s not surprising. You don’t look like one of Kettle’s boys. Where did he hire you from?”

“You expected this.”

“From the moment you walked in carrying that cannon under your arm. I’m still a constable at heart, ma’am. But I’m thinking you meant to kill me inside and not out here, yeah?”

Therazine blinked. This was not a conversation she had ever had before. For over ten years she had killed men for money. Never once had she chosen to talk to them instead. Oh, sometimes they would grovel. Threaten her, try to bribe her. But those were never conversations.

“You’re in Kettle’s sights.”

“I know that.”

She frowned. “Then why are you doing this?”

“Why am I doing what?”

She gestured to the lodge. “This. Why provoke him? Why so publicly, when you know who he is and what he will do to you?”

Carlaca smiled. By all that’s Real, was he handsome.

“No problems have ever been fixed by running from them, ma’am.”

Therazine felt her gut tighten.

Footsteps in the darkness. Carlaca’s eyes widened, and Therazine turned to see Vexxer Roz standing in the gloom. He towered over both of them, draped in black leathers and climbing gear. A glistening cloak hung from his shoulders—it was slick with rainwater, and camouflaged perfectly to the general grey and brown of the Dregs. His Darnull hung openly at his side. A scoped rifle was strapped across his back.

“What’s going on here?”

Carlaca breathed in heavily and looked Vexxer up and down.

“You people are professionals,” he said. “Kettle went all out. Are you Bloodletters?”

Vexxer ignored the man and stared at Therazine. “What is this? What happened?”

Therazine licked her dry lips. She shook her head. “He’s… we can’t follow through on this one.”

Vexxer grimaced. “What?”

“This isn’t happening,” she said. “We… we can’t.”

“You didn’t kill him.”

“No,” Therazine said quietly. That shame bloomed within her again, and she swallowed hard to beat it back down. “No, I didn’t.”

“What went wrong?”

“Nothing went wrong. Everything’s wrong.”

Vexxer was silent. Therazine looked back and forth between him and Carlaca. The ex-constable’s hands were out of his pockets now, rain tracing down his fists.

“Thera, you didn’t follow through.”

“Names,” Therazine said.

“It’s alright,” Carlaca said. “I won’t repeat anything I hear.”

Vexxer glanced at Carlaca briefly, without emotion, and then back to Therazine.

“Thera, what is happening here?”

“We can’t do this one. It’s not right.”

Vexxer bit his lip. “That’s not what we are.”

“It is now—”

“No,” Vexxer said. His voice deepened. “You’re feeling the Quandary. You’re not seeing straight. I’m sorry to say that, but it’s true. You’ve been out for a long time, which I understand has shifted your persepctive. But we are not arbitrators or constables. We are not in the business of morality. We are—”

“I’m not feeling the Quandary,” Therazine said sharply. But was that true?

“You are. No one ever notices it when they feel it, but you are. Which is understandable. You’ve been out for a long—”

“Vex, I am not feeling the Quandary. The people we were hired by, the bastards who want Carlaca dead… they’re bad people.”

“Doesn’t change anything. That’s not our—”

“It does. It does, damn you. This isn’t just a… just a political killing. This man is actually trying to help people.”

“Thera.”

“Did you see Maddy’s face the other day? The bruise on her eye? That was Kettle’s thugs. I’d put glit on it being Chestin Kettle himself. We can’t help them.”

“Thera, that is not our call to make. Do you remember your training at all?”

She took a step towards him. “Don’t you dare question my abilities. This is not me feeling sentimental. This is right and wrong.”

Vexxer bit his lip again. He turned away briefly before responding to her.

“Thera,” he said, voice low, “you have a reputation to uphold. As do I. We have—we had—a perfect record. I’ve maintained that throughout all the years since you left.”

“I don’t give a shit about records. They don’t matter.”

“Thera.”

“No,” she said. She looked at Carlaca. His eyes were wide, but his fists had uncurled. He listened intently, rivulets of acid rain streaking down his cheekbones.

“Listen,” she said to Carlaca. “Kettle hired us to kill you.”

“I picked up on that.”

“You have to run. Once they realize we aren’t going to finish the job, he will send someone else. You have to leave West Celedin—leave the world, in fact. They will find you.”

Carlaca shook his head. “As I said, no problem was ever fixed by running from it. I can’t do that.”

Therazine ground her teeth. “Obstinance won’t protect you from a stranglewire in a back alley. You have to trust me, and you have to run.”

“Thera,” Vexxer said.

“Stop calling me that.”

“Therazine,” Vexxer said with a growl.

She paused and looked at him.

“You have forgotten yourself,” Vexxer said. “Jobs do not go unfinished. It is not our way. We do not judge, we do not falter. We finish what we started. If you remember anything from your training with the Society—”

“I am no longer a Bloodletter,” Therazine shouted.

“I am,” Vexxer said. In one motion he drew his Darnull, cocked the hammer, and shot Carlaca in the head.

The muzzle of the revolver flared like dynamite. Carlaca’s jaw exploded in teeth and meat, and the back of his skull burst in a show of brain matter. His arms went up briefly before his whole body toppled into the sticky mud on the street corner.

Therazine shouted like an animal. No words, simply a gutteral rejection. Her feet quivered as her nerves fought between thelping Carlaca or attacking Vexxer. But Carlaca was a bleeding corpse and Vexxer was already moving. He holstered his Darnull and picked up Carlaca’s body. He threw it over his shoulder, ragged pieces of jawbone and a distended tongue slapping on his slick cloak. Vexxer marched the few steps to the lodge and hurled Carlaca through the oily window.

There were screams as the glass shattered inward over the bartop. Therazine caught a brief glimpse of Carlaca’s mangled body splattered over a table and knocking over an old man before Vexxer turned and blocked her view.

“Let’s go,” he said.

Therazine stood transfixed. Her cap was soaked with rain, he hair poking out and obscuring her sight. Shouts and more screams from within the lodge. She heard the door open behind Vexxer.

He placed a hand on her shoulder, gently. She shook her head, looked up at him.

“We need to leave,” he said.

Her heart pounded against her ribs. Rain stained her vision as she looked up at him. She wanted to scream, to fight. Instead she just nodded and the two of them disappeared into the fog.