TIME AWASH WITH BLOOD-- Chapter Nine

The interworld hub was no more quiet at three in the morning than it was during the brightest hours of the day. Every few seconds a cough could be heard, its disease-bearing sound echoing off the tiled walls of the subterranean station. It was the hour where one could not tell if they should count it as very early morning or very late evening. Groggy faces blinked their crusty eyes at the whining fluorescent bulbs that hung from the ceiling. Very few words punctuated the stinging silence of the place, only the shuffling of feet moving forward in the ticket line, eager to leave Celedin. Bereaver Rambolt Eells, it seemed, was the only person in the hub who wanted to be there.

“Destination?” the station agent asked without her eyes leaving her paperwork. She sounded bored, exhausted. Rambolt Eells wondered how long she had been working at this desk. Her drooping eyes and slurring words suggested that either this was the tail end of a very long shift, or she’d inappropriately prepared herself for waking up at two in the morning for work. Her posture was hunched and wrong, and her gut pushed against the metal desk at which she sat. She wore no makeup, had done nothing with her short hair. There was no effort or care to anything about her, no dedication to her work or commitment to keeping the blood of the city flowing. She worked at an interworld hub, manning the gates to one of the most crucial interstices in the city—and she didn’t even bother to cover up the sore that was growing in the corner of her mouth. Rambolt Eells found himself disgusted.

“I have none,” he said to her.

The station agent looked up at him. For a moment he saw surprise and then terror in her eyes as she noticed the X mark across his face—but no recognition appeared. It looked only like physical horror, like one looking upon a burn victim. She quickly collected herself and began moving a pencil around the desk, shuffling through papers as she remembered her duty.

“Excuse me?” she said distractedly.

“I seek not to leave. Only information.”

The station agent glanced at him again. She avoided looking directly at his face. “Sir, I’m selling tickets off world. If you have—“

“I’m looking for a woman,” Eells said. “She came through this place within the last few days. From Lormian.”

“Sir,” the station agent said. “If you have any questions—“

“It is of the utmost importance that I find her. I understand the vagueness of my inquiry, and that many people would fit this description. Thus I need a transcript of all of the travelers that have come from the Lormian-Celedin Aperture since last week.”

The station agent looked at first confused, but then rapidly her face scrunched and she became annoyed. Eells could see that he had turned from an interesting-looking character to an irritating customer. The station agent rummaged through the things on her desk, as if trying to locate something. Eells inferred that this was indeed the start of her shift, and she was unhappy about being confronted by such annoyance on so little sleep. He wondered what sort of debauchery she had been up to the night before.

“Sir,” she said, any trace of nervousness in her voice gone, “I can’t give you that. Do you have a destination, or are you done?”

“I need that transcript,” Eells said. “You have access to it. Give it to me.”

The station agent shut her red-rimmed eyes tight and sighed. “Sir, I can’t give out transcripts of public travel to a civilian.”

Eells frowned. “Civilian?”

The station agent leaned to her left and looked around him. “Next,” she said.

Eells raised his arm and stopped the man behind him from walking forward. The man stopped suddenly, alarmed and clearly also very tired.

“I am no civilian,” Eells said. “Do you not recognize my mark? I am the Bereaver, woman. What I ask, you provide.”

“Hey, pal—“ the man behind Eells said. Eells kept his arm up, not allowing the man to pass.

The station agent looked entirely irritated at this point. “Listen, sir. I don’t care who you are. It’s the law. Now, please, move so I can help actual customers.”

Eells flinched from the sheer heresy of her words. She didn’t care that he was a Bereaver? Was that true, or did she simply not know what that title meant? To think that someone could be entirely ignorant of their own culture, of their own history… Was she not an adherent of the Order? How dare she talk to him in such a blasphemous way. He thought to grab her by the throat, to grab her hand and hold it flat to the table while he removed one of her fingers… but the iron grating between the two of them prevented any such justice.

“Hey,” the man behind him said, and grabbed Eells’ shoulder.

Eells spun around, eliciting a brief shock from the man as he witnessed the mark across Eells’ face. Then Eells placed both hands into the man’s filthy mouth, grabbing the teeth of his upper jaw in one hand and his lower jaw in the other. He pulled up and down at the same time, hard, feeling the man’s jaw widen and hearing flesh tear like thick fabric. Eells pulled his bloody fingers free and the man screamed through his now exceptionally wide mouth. The man fell to his knees, wailing and clutching at his broken, bleeding face.

Eells returned to the station agent. She leaned back from her desk—a motion that the slouched shape of her body seemed to disagree with—and screamed as well. Eells grabbed the iron grating with both hands and leaned close to it. Around him, voices began to rise, their grogginess and exhaustion rapidly becoming eclipsed by wonder and horror.

“Listen to me,” Eells said through the iron mesh. “There is nothing you can say to disuade or slow me. Give me what I came for and I won’t come in there after you.”

The station agent fell out of her chair. She crawled to the back of her booth, never taking her eyes off of the ghoulish figure that pressed against the iron bars. She managed to open the door, and then crawled out shrieking.

Eells remained where he stood. The air around him had become electrified. People pushed against each other to get away from him. They tripped over the stanchions that confined them to their lines, pushing at each other to get distance between themselves and the moaning man on the floor with the bloody mouth. Eells heard an alarm go off. He breathed deep, and waited.

It wasn’t long before three men with guns showed up. They told him to get on the ground, to keep his hands where they could see them, but he paid them no mind. He glanced over at them, barely turning his head. They didn’t wear the green and gold of the Celedin constabulary—no, these were employees of the hub.

“Bring me someone who can help me,” Eells said. To his right, the man with the broken jaw let out another wail. The hub guards kept their pistols aimed at him, but they glanced at each other. It was clear to Eells that at least one of them remembered their history, and was filled with awe at the mark upon his flesh. They said something to each other, and then one of them retreated back into the depths of the hub. The other two kept their guns raised. Eells waited.

Another man appeared with them. He was older, well fed, and clearly terrified.

“My name is Jon Rakinson,” the older man said. “The administrator of this hub. Who are… What do you seek, Bereaver?”

Eells felt a tightening in his guts, a satisfied tension. To hear others call him Bereaver was still so alien, so exciting. There was a man at his feet in pain, a man who needed urgent medical care if he was ever to speak or chew again, and yet the attention and focus of everyone in the room was on him. Rakinson’s duty was to aid the patrons of this hub—and yet he did not because a Bereaver stood before him. Eells smiled, despite his best efforts not to.

It took ten minutes for the employees of the Lormian-Celedin Aperture to get him the transcript he needed. It was dozens of pages, rapidly bound within a spiral binder, and stamped with the holy symbol of the Order of Prevalistics. The worker who delivered it to him did so slowly, stopping to kneel before bowing his head and handing it up to Eells.

Rambolt Eells touched the worker on the forehead with two fingers. “Wards on you,” he said.

TIME AWASH WITH BLOOD-- Chapter Eight

Even this late into the evening, the merchants of Ivy Street kept their shops and stands open and bright. Just because the sun had set did not mean the day’s business was at end. The entire street was covered by an arched roof spanning from the buildings on either side, keeping the constant rain at bey and turning the street into a long, winding tunnel. The dust that swam around scarfed faces was illuminated by the sterile glow of neon lights hanging from the ceiling above. People meandered between the loud, brightly advertised shops, only occasionally stopping to peak at the wares that the downtrodden entrepreneurs  who sat in the middle of the street peddled. The street was cold, as it wasn’t sealed off from the outside on either end, and mud and trash splashed across the feet of anyone who ventured through.

Ivy Street. Therazine had spent a few years here after the orphanage, eking out a meager existence stealing from the shoppers and rummaging through trash bins. She didn’t dare steal from the shop owners. The proprietors of Ivy Street were not known for tolerating thievery. She recalled one of her childhood friends—a tall boy named Cris who had also been kicked out of the orphanage—going missing shortly after swiping an apple from Kurto’s Produce Emporium. A week later she found him in one of the dumpsters in the back alleys, his throat slit and his bones removed and sold to pharmacists.

Now that she thought about it, returning to the din and bustle of Ivy Street, there weren’t many kids she knew that had lived more than a year outside of the orphanage. They’d all been kidnapped by bandits, or taken in by the constabulary, or murdered for the glit in their pockets. One or two had been devoured by gutter polyps while they plumbed the sewers for food. She had been lucky. Lucky that she was born with the cunning and vigilance to keep her alive on the streets, and lucky that the Society had found her.

Therazine looked at the faces around her. Disheveled, busy, hungry faces. Old, young, and indiscernible. Any of these could be her from a few decades ago. Any of them could just as easily be a Bloodletter.

Vexxer pushed through the crowd and returned to her. He had a kebab in each hand. One was missing three pieces, and he handed the other to her. She took it, smelled it. Hot food.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Man says it’s beef.”

She licked the kebab. It was most certainly not beef. She bit into it anyway.

“So Maddy’s on Ivy Street?” she asked Vexxer through a mouthful. “Not very inconspicuous.”

“She’s selling legally now,” Vexxer said. “It’s been ten years. Things change.”

“Legally?”

“For the most part.”

“And you say she’s not selling to the Society anymore?”

Vexxer shook his head as they continued walking through the market. “No. Cut off her contract a long time ago. Was a big thing, too. Very dramatic.”

“I’d imagine. Maddy was the best gunsmith in West Celedin.”

“The Society wasn’t happy. Hell, I wasn’t happy. She made my Darnull. That thing’s one of a kind now.”

A man beside Therazine coughed. She stepped aside to avoid him and anything he might be carrying, then she looked up. An almost opaque brown cloud hung at the ceiling of Ivy Street, a conglomeration of all the fumes and chemicals and noxious particles that were generated within this confined, crammed space. It was seemingly eternal, having been hanging there since she was a child. Stagnant, persistant. The Ivy Street Ghost, was what they called it. She remembered her fellow children climbing the sides of the buildings on a dare to try and touch it, but it was too high up. They never reached it, which Therazine was thankful for. The Ghost was said to be deadly. All of the top floor rooms on Ivy Street were vacant, their windows boarded up where the Ghost tried to seep in. As far as she knew, there wasn’t a single inhabited top-story room in the entire market.

“She made my rifle,” Therazine said.

Vexxer nodded. “You also shot her with that rifle, if I recall.”

“She deserved that.”

“Didn’t say she didn’t. Just that… she may remember that incident, and you should probably heed that.”

Therazine finished her mystery kebab and tossed the skewer to the mud at her feet. To her right, a merchant shouted loudly about fish, and she wondered what sort of meat his product actually was.

“Up here,” Vexxer said, pointing with his skewer to a door along the eastern side of the street. This shop was not nearly as flamboyant and bright as the others that surrounded it, and there was no constant stream of customers through its door. A simple, stenciled sign hung above the door that read, “Madeline Rhines’ House of Clocks.”

“Clocks?” Therazine said.

“Can’t sell guns legally,” Vexxer said.

Therazine read the sign again. Maddy was a maker of firearms, a dealer in death. Her craftsmanship was legendary among those who lived in Celedin’s underworld. If you needed to do some killing, you went to Madeline Rhines for the tools to do the job. It was a pistol of hers that ended the life of the poacher Niles Gon Rakter. It was a bullet from one of her rifles tore that through the skull of Magistrate Minius Deruk on his inauguration day, terminating his short political career and earning Therazine quite a paycheck. The idea of her constructing timepieces was ludicrous. Mere legality would not hold back an artist such as Maddy Rhines from performing her craft.

But the more Therazine thought about it, the more a certain notion began to creep into her mind. The Bloodletters wouldn’t let her make guns. Not anymore. Not if she wasn’t making weapons for them.

Therazine walked up the three crumbling steps to the door, Vexxer following her. A sign reading “OPEN” hung from a nail. There was a greasy window to the left of the door, made up of dozens of panes and so fogged with oil that only the gleam of a lamp inside could pass through the glass. She lifted her hand to push open the door, but Vexxer stopped her. Therazine turned to him. He hadn’t grabbed her hand, nothing so straightforward and intimate as that. He simply held his own up and blocked hers.

“She is not going to be happy to see you,” Vexxer said.

Therazine frowned. She didn’t need reminding of that. Stepping by him, she pushed open the door, and a small bell rang.

The interior of the shop was tiny. It was inadequately lit, the only illumination coming from a kerosene lamp that sat on a broad wooden desk near the window. Hundreds of clocks covered the shelves in the small space, and Therazine realized she had walked in expecting to hear innumerable devices ticking away. There wasn’t a sound coming from the clocks. She stepped closer to the nearest shelf, making sure that these strange machines that surrounded her were indeed clocks and not something else. They were, undoubtably, upon close inspection. They had faces, and hands that ran in circles over numbers. The clocks looked sturdy; rugged and clearly well-designed. But not a single one of them looked good. No, the author of these devices clearly had no taste for the aesthetic. Their creative genius was all about functionality, performance. Efficiency.

Vexxer stepped in after her and closed the door behind him. He looked around the room, his eyes wide and filled with awe, his lower lip moving slowly as if half-trying to make words. That look made Therazine smile. She remembered that look on his face all the time back when he’d first immigrated to Celedin from his homeworld. Javadoa was a harsh land of tribal societies, and devoid of even the simplest technologies. Therazine imagined that no matter how long he lived on this world, Vexxer Roz would always be at a loss for words when surrounded by machines.

The door at the end of the room opened with a creek, and a woman stepped out. She was clad in black overalls and a black cropped jacket covered in pockets. Her skin was almost as dark as the clothes she wore. Her thick-knuckled hands were up by her shaved head, slipping a leather eyepatch over her left eye.

The woman froze completely upon seeing the two people in her shop.

Therazine held her breath. She’d never been able to predict Madeline Rhines’ behavior. She was just as likely to greet them with a disinterested wave of  hand as pull a gun on them. Therazine realized at the last available second that it was going to be the latter.

Maddy Rhines reached into her jacket and pulled a pistol from a shoulder holster. In the same instant, Vexxer shouted “no” and Therazine grabbed the nearest, biggest clock and pulled it in front of her. Maddy fired, blasting the face out of the clock and filling the small room with the ring of gunfire. The clock wasn’t thick enough to stop the bullet, but its robust design through the bullet off course and prevented it from burying itself in Therazine’s chest.

Therazine felt her heart slow, felt her blood cool. Her vision narrowed and her ears began to hum slightly. Time seemed to slow around her as her senses picked up every tiny stimulus around her. The busted clock in her hands was heavy, sharply angled, cool to the touch, vibrating slightly from the bullet that ruined it. The air around her tingled with the reverberations of the gunshot. The light from the kerosene lamp played shadows across the walls: slow-moving shadows that betrayed the exact distance, shape, and dimensions of everything in the room.

The was a feeling that she was immensely familiar with, but that she hadn’t felt in years. It was a kind of anti-adrenaline, a force that allowed her to slow down and assess a situation tactically and intelligently. It was a talent that had been invaluable to her as an assassin, and she’d learned to induce it whenever she needed it. Vexxer called it the Calm. It was as apt a name as any.

This feeling had not overcome her at her home when she’d killed the MonDozers. There was no calmness then.

But right now the Calm was strong and real. She heard the chamber on Maddy’s revolver turn. She saw the smoking barrel move a few degrees downward to account for the recoil from the first shot. She heard the hammer draw back to fire again.

Therazine hurled the broken clock forward, not hitting Maddy but causing her to lock up in defense for an instant. Therazine used that moment of hesitation to rush forward and grab the hot barrel of Maddy’s gun. The revolver went off again, this time into the ceiling as Therazine pushed the gun up. Maddy struck at her, but Therazine grabbed her by the wrist and twisted her arm back. She threw a knee into Maddy’s stomach and brought the two of them to the ground. In the blink of an eye, Therazine had pulled the gun from Maddy’s hand and was sitting on top of her, aiming it into Maddy’s face.

Maddy bared her teeth, narrowed her single eye, and moved like she was going to roll Therazine off of her. Therazine pulled the hammer back on the revolver. It was a pointless maneuver, as it was a double-action weapon. Both women knew that manually pulling the hammer back did nothing more than make an ominous click, but Therazine hoped that the sound would be enough to force Maddy into inaction. “Do you want me to shoot out the other one?” Therazine said.

“Get off me, you bitch,” Maddy said through clenched teeth.

“Do I have your assurance that you won’t try to shoot me if I do?”

“No.”

Therazine frowned, and then looked up at Vexxer. He hadn’t moved since Maddy had pulled her gun. He looked remarkably calm, in fact. This didn’t surprise Therazine. Vexxer never acted out of turn. If he believed Thera could handle a situation, he waited for her to do it. Maddy was no fighter; it was obvious to both of them that Thera was never in any danger.

Therazine tossed Maddy’s gun to Vexxer and then stood up. She reached a hand down to help Maddy up, but she only looked at her crossly. Maddy stood up. She looked at Vexxer, and then back at Therazine. If she had more guns hidden around the shop, she wasn’t going for them.

“What do you want from me?” Maddy said. Her voice was rough, quiet. Like she didn’t use it very often.

“Hello, Ms. Rhines,” Vexxer said from across the room. He waved to her with the hand that wasn’t holding her gun.

“Aren’t you surprised to see me?” Therazine said.

Maddy said nothing.

Therazine shrugged. “Maybe curious where I’ve been for the last ten years?”

“No,” Maddy said. “What do you want?”

Therazine sighed. “I see you haven’t changed. Fine, we’ll talk your way. Do you still make weapons, Maddy?”

Maddy laughed, or seemed to laugh. Therazine never could tell. She made a sort of exasperated grunt through her thinly opened mouth. Maddy looked again at Vexxer, and then back to Therazine, that faint almost-smile on her lips.

“Are you serious?” she said. “You want me to sell you a gun? You?”

“I had a hope, yes.”

“After you everything you did to me… you come crawling out of the Aether and ask for my help?”

Therazine looked away. The silence built between them, saying quiet words into Therazine’s mind without any need for actual sound. The silence spoke volumes. It always did whenever anyone tried to talk to Maddy Rhines.

“I’m… desperate,” Therazine said. “And I’m hoping you can look past whatever differences we have and try to see this as a professional arrangement—”

“Professional?” This time Maddy did laugh, a guttural, grating sound that was devoid of joy. “As if you’ve ever carried yourself with any semblance of professionalism. As if any of you ever have. I’ve never been so condescended to in my life.”

“Ms. Rhines,” Vexxer said, taking a few steps forward. “Thera’s not with the Society anymore. She’s coming her entirely of her—”

“Who the fuck are you?” Maddy screeched. She stormed over to Vexxer, stopping him in his tracks and staring straight up into his bearded, wide-eyed face. Maddy strode like an enraged beast, headless of the fact that its claws had been removed and the animal that it charged was twice its weight. “You have no privilege, no right to take what is mine, let alone speak to me!”

Therazine’s heart raced. Vexxer’s bronze skin had gone white as a sheet, his eyes as big as dinner plates. She knew Vexxer could easily handle Maddy if it came down to it, but what surprised her was the Vexxer had interjected at all. During all their years together, he always let her do the talking. Even when negotiations were going south rapidly, he always held his tongue, having faith in her to do mold the confrontation to their benefit. For the first time Therazine saw that Vexxer was not the same man he was ten years ago. He was more independent now. Had to rely on himself more. It dawned on her that there was probably much that had changed within him over the years.

Maddy tried to retrieve her gun, but Vexxer—even in his shocked, dazed state—reacted with the speed of a warrior and kept it from her. His training and instincts outmatched whatever momentary surprise Maddy had over him.

“Maddy,” Therazine said, calmly. “I’m here on my own business. Very important, very personal business, unassociated with the Bloodletters.”

Maddy turned slowly. “Do you think that means anything to me? I don’t care if you aren’t with them. You’re worse than them. I wouldn’t help you if my life was on the line.”

“I know you,” Therazine said. “Even if you don’t believe me, I know you, Maddy Rhines. And I have a job that I think you would be very interested in seeing completed.”

“A job?” Maddy said. Her tone was distressed, exhausted. “Who could you possibly be hired to murder that I would give a shit about?”

Therazine looked around at the walls of clocks. Many of them had collected a considerable amount of dust on their sharp edges and flat tops. The shelves themselves were covered in a thin carpet of grey. She saw that the desk by the front wall was aslant, pushed away from the window some time ago and never corrected. She imagined that the keys on the register had not been pressed in a long time.

“I know why you sell clocks now. You used to sell guns to the Bloodletters because no one else could buy them. Not because you fancied us, not because liked our glit. You—and your father—couldn’t sell to anyone else. The Commonwealth’s laws wouldn’t let you. We may have our differences, Maddy, but I remember when we used to be almost friends. Your father was…” Therazine paused, knowing how careful she must be about saying this next part. “He tried selling elsewhere. Tried expanding beyond the protection that being exclusive to the Society offered. It was the Commonwealth that—”

“I know how my father died, damn you.” Maddy said. “It’s not exactly a secret that I hate the government. So what? You have a contract on a magistrate? A governor or something? It changes nothing. They’re just men. Cogs in a larger machine that can’t be undone. Get out of here, Husk, and don’t bore me with your petty life of murder.”

A bolt of anger drove itself into Therazine’s brain as she heard Maddy say the name “Husk.” Therazine had never been popular in the Bloodletters Society, even when she was Archblade. Those who did not support her had taken to calling her Husk behind her back. It was a quick and easy way for them to say what they thought of her: that she was the fatherless daughter of a whore with no family, no attachments, and possessed of an unbridled, cold, methodical way of dealing with every situation. In essence they were saying that she had no humanity, no emotions, no soul. She was merely a shell of a person, a Husk.

It angered Therazine, even hurt her slightly, but she was calm. She was rational. She addressed Maddy in a soft voice.

“I don’t have a contract on a magistrate. This isn’t some… political feud. What I do will not be forgotten during the next election cycle.”

Maddy charged Therazine now, stopping right in front of her and glaring at her with one animalistic eye. “I told you I don’t care about your jobs, or your Society, or you. Now leave, Husk, unless you tell me you plan on assassinating the entire fucking Commonwealth.”

Therazine looked into Maddy’s eye and saw nothing but rage. She understood that fury, she realized. Now more than ever, untold leagues away from her broken, impoverished family. She glanced over at Vexxer and saw him biting his lower lip beneath his beard. He was nervous, anxious, and curious.

“Maddy,” Therazine said. “Hear me out.”

TIME AWASH WITH BLOOD-- Chapter Seven

Therazine sat atop a bluff overlooking the sea. Her legs were curled up underneath her, feeling the wetness of the wooden bench. A single tree grew next to her. This tree was entirely devoid of leaves. It had been for as long as she could remember. One of the tree’s heavy branches stuck out before her, protruding into the open air. A tattered, ancient rope hung from its end.

Over the edge of the cliff and far below were thousands of ships. She watched absently as distant fishermen unloaded their hauls and carried them to the rows of canneries set amongst houses and oil refineries. Factory ships sat anchored amongst the bobbing waves beyond the rocky barrier that surrounded the harbor. She heard faint shouts from men and women working the docks, tolling bells from work ships, and the fog horns of vessels just coming in. The canneries that rested in the hills above the docks were the heart of this place, and men and women streamed in and out of them like flowing blood. The smell of gutted, rotting fish wafted up to her, mingling with the salty air coming off the sea and the ever present egg-like stench of Celedin’s rancid atmosphere.

The rain had lightened up, but it was still omnipresent. It was cold and soft, like the mist of a wave breaking. The sun had just set, and the world was descending into wet, thick darkness. She caught sight of a massive whaling ship emerging from the smog, its electric lights shining like the eyes of a great waterborne demon. The ship bellowed, a deep, throaty sound. In the growing darkness she couldn’t make out any of the ship’s features beyond its lights, and she could only imagine what monstrous beast it held in the chains that dragged behind it.

She thought of the creature in the ship’s tow, and where it came from. The seas beyond the city of Celedin were vast and mysterious. To say that they were uncharted was not entirely accurate. Explorers had been going further and further into the great Aizhur Sea for thousands of years. Each time they came back with reports of new islands or reefs, but they never found an end to it. She’d read of voyages that lasted for more than a year before they returned. The sailors never found new land. The sea stretched away from the city in every direction, and it never ended.

It was strange to her that human beings had poked holes in the Real to find other worlds to inhabit, and yet they still hadn’t even discovered the entirety of their home world. But she recognized the necessity of it. Celedin was a vast city, stretching across the Continent from one coast to the other, but it was full. Buildings can only stretch so high, and when you’ve covered even the mountains in stone and steel then it’s time you look for other places to build. Mankind sought to pierce the dark membrane of the Aether not to blissfully colonize, but to survive.

Therazine wondered how many people were in Celedin. In her youth she’d read at the orphanage that it numbered in the billions, but that was decades ago. She could scarcely imagine the amount of people dwelling in this world; and it was only one of nearly a dozen. There seemed to her nearly infinite people within the entirety of the Real, and nearly all of them lived under the banner of the Commonwealth.

And she was supposed to kill their Holy Emperor.

She looked up into the black sky and let the sour rain fall onto her lips. Where should she even begin with a task as monumental as this? She knew that the job Alyxandir Arkide wanted her to do was going to be daunting, but she hadn’t imagined it was this. A thousand questions raced around her skull. Why do Arkide’s people want the Emperor dead? Were they part of the rebellion the ticket taker had mentioned? Where does the Emperor reside? What sort of defenses does he have? What does he even look like?

She’d never seen the Emperor. She doubted few people ever had. As the rain caressed her skin, she let her mind drift to her childhood, to find any stray memories that would give her any indication of who her quarry might be. The other children at the orphanage only traded in fantasy. The Ivy Street merchants spoke only rumors. The Society cared not for the machinations of the government, and so she’d learned little in their care. All she could recall was what every citizen in the Real knew: the Emperor was an ancient hero, the Emperor was immortal, and the Emperor was holy.

Immortal. She hung on that word. Was there any truth to it? He was clearly deified by the populace, which could account for the use of such an audacious word. But it was commonly said, in all circles. No one questioned the Emperor’s ageless, undying state. She’d seen some bizarre things during her years with the Society. An immortal king who rules the universe wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility.

She almost laughed. How does one kill an immortal?

The whaling vessel droned again. She craned her neck to try and peer through the smog that surrounded it. Some part of her was desperate to see the slain leviathan. Perhaps laying eyes on the dead whale, a creature of unfathomable size and power, would spark the confidence within her that she needed. But the shroud did not lift. Only the ship’s piercing lights were visible. In any case, the whaling ship was undoubtably armed for its job. Harpoons, chains, lines, and hooks assuredly hung from its sides, dripping with the blood of their kill.

Therazine had no harpoons with which to kill her whale. She ran a hand through her soaking hair. How helpful the Bloodletter Society would be right now.

“Thera?” came a gruff voice from behind her.

Therazine turned and saw Vexxer Roz standing just beyond the crooked tree. The large coat he wore clung to his huge frame, and water streaked down his bald head.

She blinked, and then turned back to the harbor, folding her arms across her chest.

“Thera, it’s getting dark. You said you’ve no place else to go. You can’t stay out here at night. You know you can’t.”

She heard his feet move slowly through the mud until he was standing above her. She didn’t look up at him, letting him stand there. After a moment he sat down.

“How’d you find me?” she asked.

“You always used to come out to the hanging tree when you needed to do some thinking,” Vexxer said. “You didn’t know I knew that, but I did.”

The boat sounded its horn again. It was coming to dock, and the tiny voices of longshoremen reached her ears.

“It’s dangerous out in the Dregs after dark,” Vexxer said.

“I’m not scared of muggers.”

“It’s not muggers you need to be afraid of,” Vexxer said. He reached into his coat and pulled out a soggy sheet of paper. He unfolded it and held it out for her to read.

Public Notice For The Bounty Of THERAZINE MORLO

WANTED by the LORD CEDRIC MONDOZER of Lormian for the murders of WALLACE MONDOZER, JED MONDOZER, NIGEL MONDOZER, and EMUEL MONDOZER.

Name: Therazine Morlo, born Therazine

Race: Unknown; Celedine features

Sex: Female

Age: 32 years

Target is considered Armed and Highly Dangerous. Live capture is NOT recommended. Lord Cedric MonDozer will pay TEN-THOUSAND GLIT ($10,000) upon proof of death (head), and will be compensated for equipment/medical treatment.

Posted by the Civil Justice Authority

She was not surprised. She did not take the page from Vexxer. He held it in front of her until it began to disintegrate from the rain, and then he stuffed it back into his coat.

“Who’s this MonDozer?” Vexxer said.

“A land baron.”

“Did you have a job on his family? Somebody pay you good?”

“No.”

Vexxer shifted, and his boots squeeked. “Then why’d you kill his kids?”

“Because they killed mine,” Therazine said.

Vexxer sat up straight. “But you said—” His hands moved, and for a moment Therazine was certain he was going to put his arms around her. But they just hung there at his sides, awkward and impotent. “Thera, I’m… I’m so sorry.”

Therazine watched as the whaler’s deck lights came on. Something crashed in the darkness below, something metal and heavy, and the longshoremen’s voices became aggravated and quick.

“I don’t know… I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry.”

Therazine shut her eyes tight, and tried not to think of Bren. She focused her thoughts on Cedric MonDozer, the bastard matriarch of the MonDozer clan. He put out a notice on her. The son of a bitch sought ‘justice.’ She pictured him sitting in his mansion in Nalak, signing another downtrodden immigrant family into servitude, or plowing one of his dozens of whore wives. Don’t dwell on sorrow. No progress ever came from despair. It’s rage that’s gotten you through the hardest times.

“I have a job,” she said. “Here. On Celedin.”

Vexxer waited, and then spoke quietly. “Do you mean like—”

“Yes. I mean a job. It’s a big one, too.”

“So you still are in the business?”

“No,” Therazine said quickly. “I am not. I haven’t been since last I was in this damned city. But MonDozer ruined my family. Butchered it. I need the money, and this is all that I’m good at.”

“Thera, that’s not true—”

“I don’t need pity, Vexxer, so stop it. This is what I’m good at. This is why I was approached for this job.” She looked over at him.

Vexxer glanced away and scratched his nose, avoiding her eyes. “So what… what’s this job?”

“I don’t think I’m comfortable telling you quite yet. It’s big, is all you need to know. Big enough that I realize I’ll need help.”

Vexxer returned to her, his eyebrows raised. “My help?”

Therazine nodded. “I don’t have anyone else to turn to in this world.”

Vexxer opened his mouth like he was going to object, and then scratched his nose again.

“The first thing I’ll need is equipment,” Therazine said. “Grapnels. Poisons. Trackers, rope, needles. Guns.”

“I’ve got some stuff, Thera, but not enough to outfit you. Most of my gear is kept at the Guildhall.” He pulled out the wet page from his pocket. “And I don’t think the society would be too keen lending to you.”

“No,” Therazine said. “They’ll be coming after me, no doubt. Even without the ten-thousand, they’d take in that bounty just to see me dead.”

Vexxer hesitated. “I don’t think that’s true.”

“Who’s Archblade now?”

Vexxer looked down at his feet and breathed in heavily before saying, “Crausk.”

“I thought so,” Therazine said, and she nodded again. “He wouldn’t miss out on an opportunity to legally slit my throat. The only advantage I have now is that they don’t know I’m even here.” She gave Vexxer a hard look.

His expression twisted. He looked hurt, and his red beard twitched. “I haven’t told anybody.”

“I know,” Therazine said.

A horn blared down in the docks bellow. Another whaling ship had come in, it’s electric demon eyes shining light through the harbor. It shouted at the whaler that was already in dock, clearly upset that its place had been taken. A shouting match ensued between the first whaler’s crew and the crew of the incoming ship, with the longshoremen trying to diffuse things.

“I’ll pay you for your help,” Therazine said.

“Bah.” Vexxer waved a dismissive hand at her.

“I will,” she said. “I don’t want any ties left to this world when I’m done. No debts.”

Vexxer said nothing to that. She watched the dockworkers trying to ameliorate the mixup between the whaling ships, and she felt a bit of a rise when the first punch was thrown.

“I’ve got my Darnull that I keep at home,” Vexxer said. “But it sounds like you’ll be needing more than one handgun for this job. If the Society isn’t an option, what are you going to do?”

Therazine stood. The muddy earth accepted her weight and rose around the edges of her boots. She threw her wet hair back and wiped the water from her face.

“I think it’s time we paid Maddy a visit,” she said.

TIME AWASH WITH BLOOD-- Chapter Six

He couldn’t stop shaking.

The water coming from the tap was warm on Rambolt Eells’ hands. He’d wanted it to be cold, to be refreshing and cleansing. But it was warm, and faintly brown with rust. Fetid and thick, and probably running straight from the sewers. He scrubbed his red hands again and again, trying to remove the stains from his trembling fingers. Dirt. Grime. Raw sewage spilling over his hands. The water is disgusting. Just like everything else in this damn city.

The red wasn’t coming off of his skin. He yanked the knob on the sink and shut off the flow of dirty water. He clutched the edges of the sink and breathed deep. Stop shaking, you coward.

His reflection in the bathroom mirror surprised him. The X-shaped mark on his face still burned and swelled, the raw skin almost pulsating. It had seared away the hair on either side of his head, just above the temples, giving him a permanent widow’s peak. A surge of stinging pain shot across his flesh every time he blinked. He reached a hand up, tenderly, to touch the soon-to-be scar, and once again found himself shaking as his red-stained fingers came into his vision.

“Literal blood on your hands, I see,” cam a voice from his left.

He spun towards the open window in the bathroom. Dusk had settled, the sun revealing itself as a thin red line below the clouds that still poured acid rain. The gabled roofs of Celedin were silhouetted by the glowing horizon, tracing a jagged line along the sky. The floor in front of the window was wet from rain—he always kept the windows in his room open. How else was he to hear the troubled shrieks of the city?

On the sill perched a rot crow. Its black feathers were matted with the filth, a product of living in the skies of Celedin. Its beak was scratched and misshapen, and sagging growths sprouted from its neck and torso. Dark liquid dripped from its feathers and beak, which Eells knew could be either the same water that came from his tap or blood from a corpse that was stuck in the drains in the street below.

The rot crow spoke without moving its beak. “Do you think this time it will stay there?”

Eells turned back to the mirror. “I’ve not the patience or the time for you, Silas.”

“Come now,” the rot crow said. “It’s been years since we’ve spoken. Surely you’ve something to say to me.”

“Nothing,” Eells said.

The bird cocked its head. “Not surprised to see me?”

Eells turned the faucet back on and ran his hands under the warm water.

“No, I suppose you’re not,” the rot crow said. “Not after what you did outside the Council’s tower. You knew I would come. Tell me, did they reprimand you at all? Did anyone say anything? Or did you just stride back to the abbey, climb those stairs, and lock yourself in your bathroom to contemplate the horrors you’ve committed?”

“Horrors,” Eells said. “I’ve done no injustice.”

“Tell that to the dead men you left in Rilani Plaza.”

“They were not worthy of their lives,” Eells said. “They were wastrels, blasphemers. The Aether coursed through them like it was their blood.”

“Did it now?”

“I’ve done the Real a kindness, clearing those rats from the streets.” Eells turned to the window. “I am no longer a mere man, Silas. Can you not see my face? The mark left by the Council?”

The rot crow preened itself. “All I see is the scarred face of a madman.”

“This,” Eells said, touching his tender skin, “shows that I am more than other men. I have ascended. I can do it now, Silas. I can cleanse this world, like I’ve always intended to.”

Silas cawed once, a guttural, high-pitched sound. “Is that your plan, then? To kill everyone? That’s how you’re going to cleanse everything?”

Eells shook his head. “It is not as simple as that. Man is a diseased rat. They bring plague upon the Real. But I am not mad. I know that I cannot eradicate all the rats that scurry through alleys and mortar walls. That is impossible. But what I can do, Silas, is burn away the plague. The Aether is the disease that the rats transmit. I need only kill the carriers. The presence of the Aether will die without its hosts.”

“You’re mad.”

“I am not mad.”

“Then why am I here?” Silas said.

Eells bared his teeth. “Why are you here, Silas? What guilt do you seek to feed off of? I feel no remorse for my actions today.”

“Did you feel no guilt over Wesh Armitage?”

Eells blinked and took a step back.

“Was he not worthy of his life?” Silas said.

“How dare you?” Eells said.

The rot crow cawed three times, quickly, almost like laughter. “How dare I? You’re the one who killed him.”

“Armitage gave his life trying to find the source of the Schism. We were partners.”

“And then you shot him in the heart. I was there. In fact, I believe that was the last time you and I talked, was it not?”

“It was the last time you haunted me,” Eells said. “Which doesn’t explain why you’re here now. What have you come for, you wretched thing?”

“That’s no way to talk to your brother,” Silas said. “After everything I’ve done for you.”

“I don’t have time for this,” Eells said. He shut off the water again and wiped his hands. A faint brown stripe was left on the towel that hung by the sink. “I have a mission. I have a higher calling.”

“That’s right,” Silas said. “I heard about that. You’re hunting the source of another Schism. Do you think you’ll kill any more innocents this time around?”

“Begone,” Eells said. “You’re not wanted here, Silas.”

“You’re breaking my poor heart,” Silas said.

“I didn’t cry for you when you died.” Eells grabbed his long coat off the hanger and threw it over his shoulder. He turned the knob on the door. “I won’t cry for you now.”

“I wouldn’t go that way,” Silas said. Eells paused and looked at the bird.

“There’s constables in the great hall,” Silas said. “They’re looking for you.”

“What?” Eells said. He felt both fear and fury rising in his stomach. They wouldn’t have the audacity to come for him, would they? “I’ve done nothing that wasn’t within my right as Bereaver.”

“Oh, I’m sure,” Silas said. “But there’s still two dead men outside the Council tower. They still want to question you. Learn the circumstances behind their deaths. Write accounts for their grieving widows and fatherless sons.”

Eells said nothing. He felt his face stinging.

“Besides,” Silas said. “You’ll want to get moving towards the epicenter of the Schism if you want to catch her.”

“Her?” Eells said.

The rot crow spread its filthy wings and cawed once before flying out into the night sky.

“Silas!” Eells bolted to the window and clawed out into the rain, trying to catch the bird by its feet. “Silas, you bastard, what do you mean ‘her’?”

But it was too late. The rot crow disappeared into the downpour. The sun was gone now, and the rooftops were lost in the drowning haze of steamy rain. The water was cool on Eells’ face. He breathed hard, frantically searching the roofs and the clouds for any sign of the rot crow. In the silence he heard voices behind him, followed quickly by a pounding on the door of his room. The voices called his name. They shouted questions. They sought answers.

Eells looked out into the desolate, reeking streets. His rapier was at his hip. He had his coat, and he had his mark.

“Her.”

Something about that simple world told him that Silas was right. The source of the Schism wasn’t an event, but a person. A woman. The rending of the fabric between dimensions was caused by a woman. A woman who was here. In his city. She was the source of the unholy energy of the Aether. She was the carrier of the plague. Eells ignored the calls and pounding behind him and stepped onto the windowsill. The street was only eight stories below.

She wouldn’t wait. He had to find her, before he lost her again.

TIME AWASH WITH BLOOD-- Chapter Five

Therazine banged a wet fist on the door. She was hunched over, clutching her roiling stomach. A mix of hail and rain fell in sheets. Her hair clung to her skin and stuck in her eyes, in her mouth. Six hours ago she’d exited the off-world station, and already she was hating being back on Celedin. Stepping through the aperture between Lormian and this wretched place had stricken her like a fever, as she’d anticipated. She dry heaved, fell to her knees on the stoop, and then banged the door again.

“Vexxer,” she shouted over the pounding rain. Every inch of her body was trembling and cold. A nauseous, burning feeling swam through her nerves, up her spine, and into her brain. She wanted to tear her flesh from its bones and escape this torment. Death would be significantly preferable to this. Oh, to find comfort in oblivion…

“Vexxer Roz,” she screamed.

The door swung open, and a shirtless man stepped out into the rain and put a gun to her head. With titanic effort she turned her head up, and saw she was staring up the barrel of a Darnull .45 lever pistol. Beyond that was a rotund bronze belly, topped by a square head with a fiery orange beard. The man’s ice-like eyes widened.

“Thera?” he said in a deep whisper.

Therazine scowled. “Get that gun out of my—” She doubled over. She heard the gun clatter to the stoop, felt his meaty hands grab her by the shoulders and pull her up. Beyond that everything was a maelstrom of sound, colors, and pain.

#

Eons of agony later she found herself laying on a bed. She sat up, her head pounding. The sickness had died down; more akin to a bad hangover than a raging blood fever. The room was dim, with a fire burning in a stone fireplace. The frame of the bed was stone, and covered in carvings, a style common to the people of Javadoa. She recognized it as the bed of Vexxer Roz, the very man she had been seeking when she was in the throws of her sickness. She sat still, quiet.

She smelled white ash wood on the fire. Outside she heard the patter of rain. From the other room she thought she heard water boiling. As her eyes began to adjust to the dimness of the room, she saw more Javadoan art: brutal-looking melee weapons hung above the fireplace, woodcuts showing wide-shouldered warriors fighting hordes of soldiers along the walls, gemstones on shelves still embedded with fragments of the crude rock they were pulled from. Very little of it was actually from Javadoa, she knew. Vexxer had brought few things from home when he relocated to Celedin. Most of this he had created himself.

With her fever subsiding she questioned the wisdom of seeking out Vexxer Roz. They were once colleagues, both working for the Bloodletter Society. She’d severed all ties with them. They would not be too anxious to see her again. But if there was any person that she could possibly trust in all of Celedin, she knew it was Vexxer.

The door to the room—painstakingly sculpted from a single, grand piece of oak—opened quietly. Vexxer Roz poked his bald, red-bearded head in. She looked at him without words. He opened the door further and stepped into the room. He was wearing a brown shirt now, and carrying a teapot in his left hand. He shut the door sat down on a stool beside her. They stared at each other, saying nothing. After a moment Vexxer picked up a mug from the bedside table and filled it with piping hot liquid, then handed it to her.

She took it from him. His head shined slightly in the firelight. Freshly polished? She noticed the faintest trace of red hair on the lapel of his shirt, and then realized that he’d trimmed up his beard. Dammit. He smelled of lavender as well.

She sipped the kiln tea. Terrible. Just like he’d always made. Vexxer watched her drink it, his hands clasped over his knees. She met his eyes.

“Been ages, Thera” Vexxer Roz said.

“Please don’t call me that,” Therazine said.

Vexxer nodded. “Course. Sorry.”

They were quiet again. She sipped from the mug.

“What brings you by?” said Vexxer.

“Business,” Therazine said, and then immediately regretted it.

“Business?” Vexxer said, leaning forward slightly. “Am I hearing you say that right? Do you mean business business?”

“It’s none of yours. I’m only here because I’ve just come from… from off-world. Need to recuperate. You know how it gets to me.”

“That I do. Hits you something fierce, if I recall.” Vexxer chuckled. “Do you… do you remember that one contract we had, on that feller on Koken? We got a room at the inn, what was it called, the Proletariat? We got a room and planned on sleeping off your sickness, only that bastard was right at the aperture when we stepped out from Celedin! Practically handed to us on a silver platter, only you were reeling and tossing about like a fish out of water. I never seen such gunplay as I did that day. Probably the only time I ever actually seen you miss a shot—”

“Vexxer,” Therazine said. “Are you still involved with the Society?”

“Aye,” Vexxer said. “You need to see someone?”

“No. The opposite. I don’t want them to know I’m even on Celedin. You have to understand the risk I took in coming to you. You cannot tell them that I’m in the world again.”

“They don’t got a mark on you. What are you afraid for?”

“You can’t tell them. Because I’m not here. I can’t be. I’m still off-world. I’m still gone.”

Vexxer frowned. “Okay. I won’t say a thing to the rest of them. But, I mean, Thera—they’re going to know if you get back into the business freelancing. You’re the great Therazine. You got a very particular style of killing, and they’ll recognize it. They call you the Stiletto in legends, you know.”

Therazine scoffed. The Stiletto? She’d never once used such a frail weapon to kill anyone. Any blade she wielded had a heavy head, and had to be buckled to a sash. Hell, she’d be ashamed if she used a gun that shot bullets as thin as a stiletto.

“I don’t recall being worthy of such an effeminate name,” she said.

“Well, you were the first woman to ever become Archblade. That sticks with folks in the underworld.”

“They should remember me for my deeds, not for what’s between my legs.”

Vexxer shrugged. “Folks will remember what they will remember.”

“People are asinine,” she said. “And you called me Thera again. Don’t do that.”

“Right,” Vexxer said. “That’s what he—Sorry. Won’t happen again.” He looked down at his shoes. The firelight danced off his bronze scalp. “So how’s… how’s he, by the way? You two still married?”

Therazine nodded.

Vexxer laced his fingers together absently. “Any kids?”

Therazine’s lips almost spoke the word two. She shut her eyes and held her breath.

“No,” she said quietly.

“That’s too bad,” Vexxer said. “Seemed like the type of man who’d want children.”

Therazine said nothing.

“But look at you,” Vexxer said. “Here you are. After a lifetime. Just, surprise— Back into my… back to Celadin again. After a lifetime. I don’t even know what to say. Enjoying your kiln tea?”

“You know I hate this stuff.”

“I know you hate that stuff,” Vexxer said, grimacing. “Right.”

For a while neither of them said anything. Then Vexxer clapped his hands on his knees, said something in Javadoan that Therazine did not recognize, and left the room. He paused at the door, almost imperceptibly, as if waiting for Therazine to speak. She turned to face the wall and he left Vexxer won’t say anything to the Society, she told herself. He won’t. His loyalties were clear.

But were they? It had been ten years since she’d seen him. She’d certainly changed in that time. How was she to be certain that Vexxer hadn’t as well? She looked around his room, at the war art that covered it, and realized she recognized every single piece. This room was exactly the same as when she last saw it over a decade ago. It was like a painting of a memory. The stagnancy concerned her, and she considered for a moment that Vexxer might have straightened up this room and changed it to look like it did all those years ago while she was passed out. That certainly seemed like a Vexxer thing to do, if she knew him as well as she thought she did. The Javadoans were paragons of holding on to the past.

Since the incident at her farm she’d been just moving, moving, moving. The rush to the city of Nalak, the negotiating with Madame Senzal, the chaos of the Aperture, the sickened walk through Celedin’s alien streets… She closed her eyes and let herself think for the first time in two days.

She thought of Kohl and Leshe. Her son had understood why she needed to leave Lormian so quickly. He was rational and pragmatic. He definitely took after his mother, she thought. But Kohl was not so agreeable. At first he’d begged her to stay with them, to hide with them on the streets of Nalak and figure out their uncertain future together. She’d explained to him why that was impossible, that the MonDozers and their fellow cartel families were everywhere, and looking for her. They had no money with which to pay off either the families or the authorities, no allies with which to fight back, no land with which to run to. Then he’d gotten angry with her, saying that he needed her after Bren’s death, that she was abandoning him to loneliness and mourning. She was running away to her old life. How could she do this to him?

She almost laughed. How angry Kohl would be to discover that she was now in the bed of none other than Vexxer Roz himself. How like a child he could be, driven by his emotions and sense of justice.

Kohl.

Leshe.

Bren… Oh no, Bren…

She felt a tremor in her throat, and she swallowed tears. She hadn’t cried since her first night with the Society. There was no point in doing it now. Crying had never helped anyone with anything. How many screaming, watery-eyed faces had she put a bullet through? How many—memories came rushing back to her, magnified by being in the city where she had committed so many of her atrocities. So many crying eyes. So many families, ripped apart and left bleeding. She began to shake. The sickness was gone, and her mind was free to remember and condemn.

She stood abruptly. The action caused her to instinctively reach for Vexxer’s bedside table to grab her gun (gotta go to work Thera there’s people need killin). Memories. She recoiled and left the non-existant firearm there.

The door to Vexxer’s room was unlocked, and she stepped through it.

It was, as she’d expected, different. Much of the art she remembered was gone, new furniture occupied spots that once were empty. He’d made up the bedroom for her, made it to look like it used to, to look like the past. It made sense, didn’t it? His memories of her were from long ago, and here she was: in a place where she told him he would never return to again.

Here she was. Back in Celedin looking to take on a job.

Jobs. Contract killings. Murders, is what they were. Nothing more. So many times she’d left this place to go kill, so many times she’d stumbled back after killing. And here she was, walking out again… to take a job. A nursery rhyme popped into her head.

Old ways, old ways,

Falling back on old things

Gone back, gone back,

Old birds still like to sing.

Vexxer looked up from the chair he was sitting in. A creeping, poisonous feeling ran across her skin, and she knew what he was going to say before he said it. It was what he would always say to her in the mornings.

“Rising like gunsmoke, lassie,” he said with a smile.

She fled. Out through his front door and into the streets, Vexxer Roz calling her name until she disappeared into the crowds.

#

“The Raven and the Cobbler” was emblazoned in glowing gas. The two raven statues that flanked the glass letters were rounded and misshapen, cawing with pitted beaks into the acid rain that washed away their features. Therazine thought of the factories that produced the noxious black clouds that hung above Celedin. She might have taken the driving rain as a bad omen if she didn’t grow up here and know that this was the norm for this world.

She walked inside, expecting the tavern to be filled with people—she was, after all, in the Wharf District, where the dregs of society congregated in such great numbers. But there were only a handful of people sitting quietly in the large, low-ceilinged establishment. The lights were dim, glowing blue from the gas bulbs that traced the walls. She caught the pungent odor of pipe smoke. A quick scan of the room showed her that none of the patrons were her contact.

“Close the door,” the bartender said. She let go of it, and the rainy street behind her went silent. Cut off from the noise of outside, she held her breath and listened: the wheezing of a patron at the bar, the light scuff of feet somewhere in the back of the room, the hum of the blue gas lights. No music of any kind. Large and open. Difficult to hide anywhere, should she need to.

She was immediately and astutely aware of how wet she was. She was dressed in the attire of a Lormian farmer. Leathers and breathable cloth, sewn from animal skins and plant fibers. Nothing like the water-resistant synthetic cloaks that everyone else on the streets was wearing outside. Every inch of her clothing was sopping and cold. She walked with squishy boots to the bartender.

“What can I do you for?” the man said in a hushed voice. He gave her his full attention, even as he cleaned the spigot of a tap behind the bar.

“Quiet night,” Therazine said.

“It’s one in the afternoon on a Songday.”

Therazine blinked. It was Thornsday when she left Lormian, and early evening at that. It had been so long since she’d traveled between worlds that she forgot they didn’t all operate on the same clock. She tried to recall the time difference between Lormian and Celedin, knowing it was something like 60 hours with a variable margin of 10. Or was it 15?

“Of course,” she said.

“Not from around here?” the bartender said.

“I’m looking for someone. Tall. Dresses very erudite.”

“Dresses what?”

“Dresses well,” Therazine said. “Has a turned-up mustache and long hair.”

“You’re describing a lot of people. Did this fellow give you a name? Maybe I’ll recognize it.”

Therazine looked into the bartender’s eyes. Was he a stand-in for her contact? Was she meant to meet with him? The bartender didn’t come off like an intermediary, but shed been cut down in the past for underestimating even the most seemingly innocuous people. It could be that he wasn’t even the actual bartender for this tavern. The Society could have discovered her presence in Celedin and replaced this man with one of their own. They could’ve even cleared out the bar just to get her exposed, leaving a few planted customers inside to throw off her suspicions.

“Must be the wrong bar,” she said, and she turned to leave.

“You’ve the right establishment, Ms. Therazine,” came a voice from behind her. She turned sharply, her hand going to her hip where no gun or knife sat. At a table near the middle of the tavern sat a man dressed in a fine hatch mark suit with its collar and cuffs extended. His black hair was slicked back, his mustache pointing upward along his cheeks. He motioned for her to sit down.

How had she not noticed him there before? She didn’t move, and kept one foot pointed towards the door. “Alyxandir Orgad?” she said.

“Close, but not quite,” Alyxandir Arkide said. “And if I were someone impersonating myself in order to trap you, I might have fallen for that and said yes.” He motioned again. “Please, Ms. Therazine. You look very tired and uncomfortable. Take your jacket off and have a seat.”

She stepped closer, keeping her hand on her weaponless hip. He gave her a thin smile and she sat down. She took off her coat slowly and threw it onto another chair at the table, all the while keeping her eyes on him.

“Terrance,” Arkide said, looking over his shoulder. “I’ll take a veneltian grain, with a rhine of orange. Neat. My friend here will have…” he glanced at her.

“Nothing,” Therazine said.

“It’s impolite to turn away a free drink,” Arkide said.

“I never take anything that I haven’t earned.”

“Ah, but you have earned it, my dear. By merely being who you are, you’ve earned it. Please, I insist.”

“I’ll do without.”

Arkide sighed. “Alright, then. Down to brass tacks. I am delighted to see that you’ve come, Ms. Therazine—”

“Mrs. Morlo.”

“Of course. My apologies. Mrs. Morlo, it makes me happy that you’ve decided to take my employer up on his offer.” Arkide stared at her expectantly. “You have decided to take the job, yes?”

“I might.”

“Splendid. That was such a quick turnaround. It wasn’t even three days ago that you chased me off your property with a gun. Now…” The bartender dropped off his drink, and Arkide thanked him with a palmful of glit. He waited until the bartender had moved away from the table before continuing. “Delicious stuff,” he said, swirling the drinking in his hand. “Hard to find. Only truly veneltian if it’s aged in Javadoan oak casks. Bottles sell for 200 glit, on average.” He paused. “This job I am offering you. I need to know that you can get it done. Are you still in top form?”

Therazine didn’t respond.

Arkidewaited a moment, and then took a sip of his dark drink. He pursed his lips. “I know this game you’re playing, Mrs. Morlo. You can’t hide your desperation from me. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t need my money.”

“How much?”

“Seven-hundred and fifty million,” Arkide said. “Deposited into the account of your choosing on the world of your choosing.”

Therazine held in an alarmed expression. When he said nine figures, she was sure he had been exaggerating. Seven-hundred and fifty million was more than she had made in her entire career. It was more than she’d heard of anyone ever making in her old line of work. It was an absurd sum, but Arkide presented it to her completely straight faced. She was confident he had the money. She was confident in her skills to do whatever this job was.

Therazine hadn’t killed a person for money in over a decade. She hadn’t had the urge to since then, and she didn’t know. That hideous person that she used to be was gone. She should never come back. What did it mean if Therazine took this job, then? Regression? Could she even do it anymore? Did she still have the stomach for taking a life?

She thought of putting a bullet through Wallace MonDozer’s neck. It felt—not good, but not reprehensible either. But there were other circumstances surrounding that kill.

She thought of Bren.

She thought of her family.

She didn’t have a choice.

“I’ll do it,” she said.

Arkide cocked his head. “You haven’t even heard what the job is.”

“If you were going to tell me before I signed on, you would have done so already. Whatever it is, it’s sensitive and you don’t want me knowing about it until I’ve agreed to your cause. So, yes. I’ll do it. You have me.”

“You don’t care who my employer is?” Arkide asked.

“No.”

Arkide smiled, thin and viper-like. “Copacetic.”

Therazine was losing patience with this man. An inward anger burned through her. “Who do you want me to kill?”

Arkide downed his drink and flipped the glass upside down. He set it gently on the table and leaned in close.

“The Holy Emperor,” he said.