Chapter 73

Song ran out barely took three steps onto the pavement, fingers tight on her pistol’s grip, before deeming it a lost cause. Ai was simply too fast.

Silver eyes peered through the curtain of pale, rolling mist being pulled across the street and the district beyond but it was not perfect. Not for a failure of her contract but because the thick, horrid stink accompanying the pale pricked at her eyes and she had to blink away tears. It would do worse to her throat should she breathe it in too much, so she pulled up her scarf up to cover her mouth. Ahead, near the end of the street, lay worse news yet. Streaming out of a wrecked house were men and women wearing cloth masks and simple garb.

Most of them were Asphodelian in looks, but with the leathery skin of seagoing folk. Fighting sailors from the magnate fleet, come in clothes that would not draw attention. The allegiance of the handful of Tianxi among them was made plain by the yellow sashes they wore. All had muskets and blades and moved like men who knew how to use them. Ai took refuge among the rebels, Song glimpsing her green-glazed shell coming apart and swallowing a scream of frustration.

One more shot. All it would have taken was one more shot, but now she was back where she started. No, perhaps even behind that. Ai would be warier of her now if she had any sense.

“Song?”

She glanced at Captain Wen, who stood frowning in the dark of the entrance hall with his hefty blunderbuss propped up against his shoulder and a cloth tied over the lower half of his face. The frown deepened when shouts echoed from up the street, the Yellow Earth partisans getting the locals into a firing line. They act like officers, Song noted, mentally tallying the numbers.

“Muskets up the street,” she said after. “Fourteen, most using guns that look like the same workshop muskets Angharad described. Magnates’ men with Tianxi sergeants.”

Tupoc was by them a moment later, smirking and maskless. Song did not even begrudge his presence – he was here on her behalf, after all, for all that the contract hiring him had been brokered by Wen and the Fourth’s own patron. She grimaced at the latter thought, for the ambush she had thought to spring had involved Lieutenant Mitra and a largely decorative Bait striking at the Yellow Earth’s back while they stormed the brothel.

The pair were either already dead or had thought twice of attacking a force both larger than expected and in the wrong position. No, Song decided, they must still live. Lieutenant Mitra was a Master of the Akelarre Guild, not some dabbler. Such men, in the face of open violence, did not die any other way than loud.

“Too many guns for us alone, I would think,” Tupoc said. “Are they advancing on the Amber Crescent?”

Song cocked her head to the side, impressed that beyond the smirking he remained professional. Perhaps she should not have been: Tupoc Xical was, for all his many flaws, a genuine believer in the Watch. He would not take a contract signed under the auspices of the black lightly. Lucky her, then, that the Fourth Brigade had finished their test early and were thus by technicality available to hire.

Not that the gold had moved him. She suspected it was the chance to kill a fearsome Yellow Earth contractor that’d driven him to accept, not that he’d refrained from draining the Thirteenth’s coffers. At this rate the brigade would have to borrow if they wanted to afford dinner back on Scholomance.

“No, they are keeping position,” she informed him, then took a stab at the implication. “You think we are getting surrounded?”

By Ai’s own words, there were two groups of lictors in the district: the band of twenty that had been guarding Evander near the brothel and a much larger group closer to the Collegium.

“I think the lictors running towards the sound of shots fired are about to get a nasty ambush sprung on them,” Tupoc said. “It’s what I would do, if I were them – clean up the vanguard, then have the larger force run around blind and anxious.”

He spoke not in some teasing, insinuating way but with the kind of certainty that came only from experience. How many times had he seen those tactics used, when he’d served in the Leopard Society?

“The Yellow Earth can’t afford to let Palliades get back to his guards,” the Izcalli continued. “If your boy it out of this mess, the valley houses will rally to him. That would be the death knell of this little revolt.”

Song pushed down a twitch. It was an unpleasant situation, to be on the side putting down a revolution to free Asphodel from tyranny – however well intended that tyranny and the tyrant providing it. That the revolution had been made the catspaw of bloodthirsty god would be her comfort, though it was a thin blanket to face a winter’s worth of unpleasant realities.

“He’s right,” Wen noted. “They can’t let him get to the lictors holed up down the street, much less the larger force lurking around the edge of the Collegium. Trouble is if we move now we risk running right into the ambush they set up. Best to hole up in the brothel until the shooting starts, that way we know where to avoid.”

The large man pushed up his glasses.

“Send up your Skiritai to the roof, Xical, he’s got fine senses,” Captain Wen said. “We need someone making sure the mantis won’t sneak into the place again.”

Song scowled at Wen’s use of that word, though he ignored her. The sobriquet came from an old Cathayan proverb about futility – ‘holding a mantis’ arm when faced with a chariot’ – and in the most ardently republican parts of Tianxia you would be struck for using it. A long beat passed, no answer coming. They both turned to the pale-eyed Izcalli, who smiled insolently at Wen then deliberately turned away from him and towards Song.

“I am under contract to assist you, Warrant Officer Ren,” he said. “Your orders?”

“As he said,” Song sighed, gesturing towards her patron. “With the added provision that we need to send someone to inform the main body of lictors about all this. If you are right about the ambush on the smaller detachment, they are the guns we need on the move.”

Tupoc nodded.

“I will go personally,” he offered. “I leave my cabalists under your command until I return.”

Song hesitated only a moment. Of his brigade, Tupoc was the most experienced sneak and his contract meant that even if he was wounded he should live through anything short of immediate lethality. Add to that his rank as captain of the Fourth, which the lictors would take seriously, and there was no denying he was most fit for the task. She agreed through a simple nod, which he returned before retreating into the brothel. She and Wen stayed out in the street a long moment, her eyes on the rebels – they remained in a firing line, waiting – and his on her.

“The Lord Rector will not work as bait for Ai twice,” Wen Duan quietly said. “What now?”

“Now I keep him alive,” Song said through gritted teeth.

“If that contractor lives-”

“Then my family dies,” she flatly said. “I am well aware. But we both know that for the rebels to be acting this boldly, sending armed men out with yellow sashes and shooting at lictors, the rising must be happening as we speak.”

Which meant it was likely Maryam and Angharad were currently prisoners of the cult, assuming Maryam had not gone ahead and melted her brain. Song’s belly clenched with worry. No, she must trust in Tristan. And, part of her was startled to realize, she did. Not because of his skill and cleverness, but because Tristan Abrascal may just value simple kindness higher than anyone she had ever known. He was not being cynical or glib, when he called kindness a luxury – he truly did think of it as something precious and important.

And that wasn’t something he had been taught by Scholomance or the Watch, much less his monstrous teacher Nerei: it was the rat that believed that. The very heart of him, what was left when stripped of all else. And maybe Song was being foolish, as she’d been when she had decided to trust Angharad that morning, but tonight was a tonight for foolishness so why should she not put her bet on Lady Luck’s favorite fool?

Wen’s impatient stare startled her back into the here and now.

“Keeping Evander Palliades alive may well be the only way to keep the Hated One contained,” Song said, mentally chiding herself for losing focus.

If he lived through the night, there was hope of preventing broader civil war in Asphodel – something sure to allow the new face of the Hated One to run rampant. Long years of training kept the grimace off her face at what followed.

“And that is more important than the Ren,” she forced out, the words like ashes.

A moment of silence. She turned to see Wen Duan staring at her with the strangest expression. The silence stretched out like a bowstring, growing ever more tense.

“Blackcloak,” he finally said.

The word felt heavy to her ear. Proud, but not without melancholy.

Before she could even begin to muster an answer thunder sounded in the distance. No, not thunder – an explosion. It was followed by a hail of shots as Tupoc’s grim prediction came true and the rebels tangled with what must be the detachment of twenty lictors coming to protect their Lord Rector. Ai had known of them, implied she knew where they were holed up. That did not bode well for their chances in a fight. The fighting was close enough she could hear war cries – two, three blocks down the street? Too close form comfort, and she suspected that was about to get worse.

Song glanced at the head of the street again and her teeth clenched as she found what she’d feared: the rebel musketmen were now advancing in a loose line spread across the street, Ai alongside them. One end of the street the ambush, their guns on the other: they have us bottled up. They had never meant to stay there, only waited for the fighting to begin and close the other avenue of escape.

“They’re coming,” she said, biting her lip.

Could they defend the brothel? The blackcloaks had muskets, fine fighters and as a signifier – if the enemy could be funneled into a small space, like the narrow corridor of the entrance, it was entirely possible for them to prevail. Against the musketmen alone, anyhow. But they were not alone, were they?

“We can’t hold this place against Ai’s contract,” Song finally said. “If she manages to take us by surprise even once we’re all dead.”

Even surprising her with an ambush they’d almost taken casualties. Song had no illusions about how the skirmish would go if it happened even slightly on Ai’s terms. It wasn’t like windows would do much to slow someone who moved as quick as she could think and struck hard enough to shatter a table with one arm.

“Agreed,” Captain Wen said. “The hidden entrance we first came through can lead us to the street to the west of here, I’d advise taking it.”

There wasn’t much of a choice, Song grimly thought. They ducked back inside to find everyone left gathered at the bottom of the stairs leading up: Alexandra Torrero and Expendable talking quietly and Evander being fretted over by his last living lictor escort. Tupoc was gone, presumably having informed his cabal of his assignment first, but Song was not the Fourth’s captain or in all that good a position to give the Lord Rector and his bodyguard marching orders. So she used the oldest trick to taking command, namely acting as if you already were.

“Expendable, you’ll stick with His Excellency,” she said. “Alejandra, with me. We’re taking the vanguard.”

Wen would go where he thought best and the lictor would naturally stay with her Lord Rector. The Fourth looked inclined to obey, if only because she spoke confidently, but not everyone was so convinced.

“And where would we be headed, Captain Ren?” the Lord Rector of Asphodel asked.

Song kept her face placid. Evander looked unharmed, save for the accidental cut Ai had left on his face. Someone had cleaned it, likely with cheap liquor, but there were still traces of blood on the side of his chin – that touch, along with the cold gleam of his brass spectacles in the lantern light, made him look surprisingly fierce. Song could not read his tone, or his face, for he had put on his court mask. Even if he were coldly furious she would not be able to tell.

It does not matter, she reminded herself. Anything between them had died the moment she used him for her own purposes, as it should be.

“Leading figures of the Trade Assembly have risen in rebellion, backed by Yellow Earth partisans,” Song said. “Some of their fighters are engaging your nearby lictors in an ambush, while even as we speak another armed band is marching down the street towards us.”

She saw his face tighten, but it told her little. Fear, anger? Song had known he had a spine from the start, to have ruled Asphodel and done so well with the odds against him, but seeing him stay together in the face of personal danger had raised her esteem of his mettle – which had not been low.

“We will be escorting you back to the lictors and help them cover your retreat,” she continued.

Where he would go after that she could only wonder. Not Fort Archelean, which would surely be under siege, and given that the nobles were rising in another coup the northeastern ward should be no safer – it’d be full of armed men whose loyalty was to their lord, not the throne.

“An interesting gesture, after drawing me here to begin with,” Lord Rector Palliades said, eyes stony behind his spectacles.

“It is very likely the palace is in the hands of rebels risen in Apollonia Floros’ name as we speak,” she evenly replied. “But full discussion of this matter can wait until guns are no longer advancing on us, Your Excellency.”

Surprise, genuine surprise. That one she recognized as it bled through the obfuscation.

“So it can,” Evander conceded. “I will have to trust my life to your hands again.”

And with that settled, the Fourth fell in line without a word of protest from either Alejandra Torrero or Expendable. Alexandra instead told her of the way in that Wen and the Fourth had used to slip into the brothel in the first place: an old iron trap door that led into the wine cellar below. It had been soldered shut and its body thick enough not even Ai would be able to kick her way in, but something Alejandra called the ‘Akelarre lockpick’ had let her cut around the iron.

She and Song were first into the cellar, pulling aside the wooden panel that’d been put over the hole in the cellar’s ceiling, and after they posted guards at the bottom of the stairs they were the first to climb. The signifier had not mentioned that the other side of the trap door led into a dead space locked in between four edifices – two of them much more recently built than the rest, explaining the malpractice. The west-facing wall was poorly built stone crumbling in places, making for easy grips, and as soon as the lictor was brought up Song began climbing.

It took an uncomfortably long time for everyone to get to the street left of the brothel, long enough that surely Ai and her rebels would be inside by now. Song’s hope was that the earlier ambush would have the insurgents moving slowly and carefully inside, perhaps buying them enough room that the pale would be able to swallow the sound of their flight. They set out as briskly as they could without running, which would surely be too loud for stealth.

It would have been easy to lose their way in the fog-swallowed small streets of the ward, but Song’s eyes could yet see through it and the air hardly even stung anymore – it had become more of a dull, entirely tolerable ache. She led their company further westward, away from the fighting and the handful of streets that a pursuer would first look through. Only when they were far enough would she turn southwards to head towards the Collegium and the larger body of lictors.

 

To her rising pleasure and surprise, their escape kept unfolding without a wrinkle. Ai must have thought the Amber Crescent only escapable by one with a contract like her, because Song’s regular glances back showed no pursuit. Her disbelief must have shown, for Alejandra addressed it.

“Stop looking so surprised, Ren, it’ll worry the others,” Alejandra told her. “Of course we’re getting away, it’s not like we’re facing a cabal. It’s hardly impossible to shake off a mob.”

“They are led by Yellow Earth,” Song reminded her.

“Which have yet to impress, beyond that one iron cast bitch,” the signifier shrugged. “You should not-”

Song caught the movement but nothing else, so it was too late by the time she brought up her musket: the man who’d been lying on top of the roof, now in a half-kneel, tossed… she could not see quite make out what, but it had been thrown up and not at their party. He would not get to remedy that mistake.

She steadied her back leg, raised the stock and breathed out and squeezed the trigger – a heartbeat later there was a sharp crack and the tanned man on the roof toppled, a gaping hole in his forehead. He died with a startled look on his face, as if disbelieving anyone could land a shot at this distance through the fog.

Then a shower of burning red tore through the pale-shrouded sky as the Tianxi fireworks the lookout had tossed up exploded.

“Shit,” Captain Wen cursed. “There’s no way anyone in the ward missed that.”

Song refrained from cursing, though she too felt the need. Rebels and worse would be headed their way.

“We can no longer afford to circle around westwards,” she decided. “Straight south now, to the Collegium.”

“We might run into rebels headed our way,” the lictor objected.

“Or into your fellow lictors,” Song replied. “They have eyes just the same as the magnates’ men.”

It all depended, she thought on whether or not the rebels had brought enough arms to bear to be able to risk fighting sixty lictors ready for violence. If they hadn’t all it took was reaching the larger force, but if Ai had rustled up the men for a fight? That might get very, very messy.

“It seems plain that your contract allows you seem manner of sight through the fog, by that shot,” Evander mildly said, gesturing at the corpse ahead. “I will trust you to steer us to safety.”

The last part was meant for his own soldier, though the lictor still looked like she wanted to argue. There was no time for it, so Song simply gestured at the Fourth to keep moving and trusted fear of being left behind to finish the job for her. She did stop by the corpse, though, Wen accompanying her. Besides a shoddy sword and a blocky pistol, the dark-haired man had two sealed paper bundles with a wick kept in a bandolier.

One such bundle must have been what he tossed up, and true enough there were streaks of paint on the remaining two: one red and one blue. Song pocketed these, and the accompanying pinewood matches as well.

“Another local,” Wen said, standing by her crouching form. “They must have men to spare, to send so many on a grab like this.”

“The Ecclesiast doesn’t want anyone winning,” Song said. “It stands to reason that if the coup of the ministers has the edge in quality of soldiers…”

“Then the magnates must have numbers to compensate,” Wen finished. “Well reasoned. Gods know they’ll need bodies to by the hundreds, if they hope to storm the walls of Fort Archelean.”

It was a mighty fortress. Not built in the modern way, but certainly not a fort that could be taken by a simple mob. It would take either a great many cannons or a great many corpses to take those tall walls. Or men on the inside, as Tristan had heard rumors of during his captivity. Privately, however, Song suspected that the cult would provide no such helping hand. The Ecclesiast wanted nothing more than the bodies to pile up as the magnates grew desperate to secure Fort Archelean, so why would he help them?

That thought was grim and kept her mood the same as their party fled south. Running, now, for the time for stealth was past. The houses and edifices here were closer to the Collegium and further from the Rows, meaning they were still in use – she glimpsed scared faces through shutters, doors closing and silhouettes hurrying inside at the sight of their party. The sting of having been caught by surprise once had Song sure to scan the roofs as they advanced in a hurry, which proved necessary. Barely three blocks past the corpse she caught sight of a woman climbing down from a roof under cover of gloom and pale, a blade clenched between her teeth.

Song snapped off another shot, taking her just between the nose and eye. Startled eyes turned to her.

“We cut to the next street over,” Song said, cleaning out her musket. “We must be getting closer, that was another lookout.”

The next street over, as it turned out, was no street but a town square. Deserted, the shops making up the four sides all closed and shuttered. The resounding emptiness leant the place an eerie touch even for Song, who saw further than any of them through the pale.

“I know this place,” the lictor called out from further back. “Pewter Market. If we take that narrow street across, it will lead us directly to one of the large avenues that carriages travel.”

Shots sounded in the distance, bursts of flame illuminating the smoke. They all tensed, but it was irregular – a small skirmish. Either way, it meant they were getting closer to the lictors. Hopefully the main body of them and not survivors fleeing the ambush, but any reinforcements would be welcome.

“Then we take that street,” Song said, lengthening her stride. “The sooner-”

The sound was startlingly light, and she would have thought it harmless if not for the wetness of it.

Song turned in horror, finding a massive length of steel buried in the lictor’s back – she had thrown herself between it and Evander, whom she now slumped over as he stumbled under the weight and surprise. It wasn’t a saber, not even a two-handed changdao – what little handle there was on it was broad and crude, as if not made for human hands, and the blade was too broad and thick. It was a great butcher’s cleaver, made seven feet long, and the weight alone made it an absurd weapon.

And it had been thrown so forcefully some of the edge could be seen through the dead lictor’s chest, burst through in a spray of gore.

“Get him out of here,” Song shouted, and everyone knew who she meant.

The soft touch of shell against stone was heard and in a heartbeat Ai was there, a boot on the dead woman’s back to rip out her weapon. Song pressed down her fear, raised her musket and took aim but immediately the corpse was in the way. Wen was there, pistol aimed at the back of her skull, but Ai backhanded him without even turning – there was a crunch as his spectacles broke and his nose behind them, Song’s mentor hitting the pavement. Was he… Hand on the chisel.

Ai raised the cleaver blade over her head, one-handed, and Song’s finger was on the trigger, but there were too many in the way – Expandable, the corpse, even Evander himself. Alejandra wrenched down Evander before his head could be hewn open, but before Song placed her shot Ai slipped behind Expendable. He went down with a shout a moment later, kicked in the back, and in the wake of that movement Song finally pulled the trigger.

But she’d rushed it and Ai had seen her coming, dragging up the lictor’s corpse to eat up the shot before tossing her away.

Song dropped the musket, reaching for her pistol even as her enemy casually leaped over the fallen Expendable with her large blade trailing behind. She raised her pistol, forcing her hand to stay steady, and saw from the corner of her eye how Alejandra’s fingers cut through the air while trailing Gloam. A Sign burst into existence with a loud wail and Ai stumbled, almost tripping as she landed from her leap. Song pulled the trigger again but that damnable cleaver was up before the powder even caught, covering Ai’s face and throat. The shot hit metal with a sound like a pan being struck.

The weapon was as much a shield as killing implement, explaining why the blade was so thick in the first place. This was not the first time Ai had fought muskets. The cleaver dipped back down to reveal Ai’s wild eyes set behind the leering mask, her armored leg kicking away what looked like a half-tangible entangling rope of Gloam. Song drew her sword, the other Tianxi laughing at the sight and-

Light caught on broken spectacles. Face bruised and bloody, Wen Duan lightly pressed the barrel of his blunderbuss against the back of Ai’s knee and squeezed the trigger.

Even taken by complete surprise, Ai tried to move her leg by reflex – and so the spray of shrapnel shredded her upper calf into bloody mist instead of the kneecap. She turned to lop Wen’s head off, screaming in pain, but he was so close to her he was almost pressed against her back. He turned with her, butterfly sword out as he tried hacking away at her back but found her too slippery. The steel kept catching on the edge of her shell. Fingers trembling, Song shoved her blade back into the sheath and reached for a powder charge. A shot would do better than her skills with a blade, against that.

Alejandra had Evander on his feet, dragging him towards the street the dead lictor had mentioned, but the signifier lingered to trace another Sign. In that moment of distraction Song found that Wen had been pushed down, Ai knocking him down at the cost of a wound bleeding down her back, and that the contractor was moving in a fluid, almost elegant straight line towards Evander and Alejandra. And Song could not reach behind the shell, from this angle, but that did not mean she could do nothing.

The bullet hit Ai’s hold on her cleaver just as she began swinging it down, when her grip was loosest.

The large blade slipped through her fingers, to the other Tianxi’s surprise, and Alejandra’s last traced line of oily darkness rippled in the air before disintegrating. Ai let out a shout of dismay, clawing at her eyes as the signifier laughed in triumph, and Song reached for another powder charge as she circled to get the contractor back. A shot, she had a free shot at Ai’s unprotected skull but no loaded gun to take it.

Fool her, ruining their best chance yet.

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Before she could finish loading Ai’s hand snapped out, catching Alejandra’s wrist, and she squeezed. The signifier screamed in pain and Song tasted bile at the sight of what was left of the wrist – dangling flesh and bone shards, everything in the contractor’s grip pulverized. Song swallowed, abandoning her half-loaded pistol in favor of drawing her straight blade and rushing there – anything else and Alejandra was dead. She was not alone, for Expendable was already more than halfway there.

Black cloak trailing, golden eyes burning, the Skiritai slipped past her and hissed words her way it took her a moment to understand – ‘get them out’.

Reluctant as she was, she must hold true to her word: keeping Evander alive was the most important part.

It was all a blur after that. Song gathered Evander and Alejandra. The latter was stupefied and pale-faced, needing to be tugged away even as the Lord Rector of Asphodel ripped up his sleeve to make a tourniquet for her arm. Wen was with them a moment later, having gathered her musket and pistol, but he kept blinking. Without his glasses he had trouble with the mist. Twice Ai tried to dart towards them, but both times she was stopped. She’d twice slapped around Expendable, today, so she did not take him seriously.

But she was now facing a Skiritai on flat open grounds, and that made all the difference.

Song caught only glimpses as she hurried the others across the square and into the street, but what she did catch was astonishing. Ai was faster than Expendable, stronger. She moved like the wind and struck with her great butcher’s knife powerful enough to rattle the cobblestones, but her movements were… direct. A consequence of her contract. And where she struck, Expendable was not. Always half a step ahead, turning around her forcing her to twist and pivot lest his spear find her neck.

The sight of Song and the others reaching the street had her howling in fury, wildly swinging her cleaver in an arc, and at last she caught him. Just a shallow cut on the shoulder, but the strength was enough to throw him off his feet and his wide-brimmed hat went flying. Ai turned, screaming in triumph, and raised her blade. Song stilled, warring with the urge to go back and help, but then there was a sound wet squelch.

A fanged maw the size of a chair caught the blade, metal cutting into its lips as it bit down and the iron shattered.

Ai backpedaled in fear as a vast beast finished bursting out of Expendable’s clothes, its striped coat shaking off the last bits of cloth. A monstrous hyena no smaller than a carriage shook its head and spat out blood and iron. Song bit down on a fuck, fearful of drawing that thing’s attention. The Malani was not in control when that beast came out. Instead she dragged away the others, bursting into a run, and the last she saw of that fight was Ai fleeing into the mist while the beast let out a cackle.

The four of them ran towards the sound fighting, until the dim dun became clearer shouts and clash of arms. Just past the corner, by the noise. The fighting was on the broad avenue the dead lictor had told them of.

“Stay hidden,” Song ordered the others, then risked a look past the edge of the house on the corner.

She swallowed drily at what she found, for it was utter madness.

The main body of lictors had struck out to rescue their Lord Rector, but the rebels had found them before they could. Not merely the small force of musketmen from earlier, but what must be the magnates’ full array of war in this ward – a hundred men, maybe? With mist and chaos it was hard to tell. The sight of it was… Song swallowed.

The rebels had flipped carts and stacked furniture as a makeshift barricade, holding it against a harsh assault by the lictors. Partisans bearing yellow sashes were shouting orders as screaming workmen with clubs and spears struck down at steel-clad ranks of the lictors, a curtain of steel and death climbing the barricade. The horrid pale hung thick over the mess, an unfolded carpet that had them all covering their mouths to breathe.

Sporadic gunshots lit up the smoke, fireflies on powder wings. The musketmen on both sides were half-blind from powder smoke and pale, firing at each other’s shadow painted on the wall from the back ranks. Even the brutal melee between the lictors and the rebels was as groping in the dark, men hardly able to see beyond a few feet from them. Swords cut into friend and foe, clubs any bones they could find.

No one was winning, she thought. It was a bloody, bitter stalemate.

And on a rooftop, looking down at it all, Song glimpsed a tall figure in a long dusty coat and wide-brimmed hat. Its face was deathly pale, its eyes flashed with eerie light and it held a broad oar. The Sculler, she realized. Asphodel’s own death god had come to behold the night’s work. She swallowed in fear.

Their street their band had taken down led just ahead of the barricade, but if they drew back westward for a block before joining the avenue then they would arrive at the back of the lictor formation. A fighting retreat under cover of pale was entirely possible, she thought, if the soldiers held their nerve. She turned to tell the others as much, opening her mouth, but ended up swallowing her words.

They were frozen to her sight, flies trapped in honey.

Not breathing, not moving. She gazed around and saw the smoke was no better, that the melee ahead had suddenly fallen silent. Song knew exactly what this was and so her stomach sunk.

“Not today,” she told the stillness. “Please, Luren. I cannot spare the time for your games.”

Only silence answered. It stretched out, indifferent, and Song forced herself to breathe in. To compose herself so the god would not be able to make sport of her before spitting her back out of his embrace straight into a battle resting on a knife’s edge. She straightened, pulled her cloak into place and breathed out.

Into the breach.

The bloody avenue looked half a painting, in this stolen moment. Song walked past the pushing line of the lictors, watching a rebel’s club smashing into a soldier’s nose – blood and phlegm hung in the air like small jewels, unmoving. A roaring musket from atop the barricade lit her way like a lantern, the priming powder frozen in the moment of ignition.

That was where she found the god, leaning over the Yellow Earth partisan’s musket with one hand on his peasant’s straw hat and the other holding a match to the lit powder charge. It caught and the vagabond god used it to light the slender pipe he held up by his teeth. He breathed in a few times, sucking in the flame, then flicked away the lit match and spat out a wreath of smoke. Luren grinned at her through his matted hair and unkempt beard.

“Do you know this?” he asked.

“Fuck you,” Song Ren replied.

It had been a long day. She’d earned it.

“Such language, Song,” Luren chided her with open delight.

“What do you want?” she asked through gritted teeth.

“To give you a gift,” Luren said, pulling at his pipe. “This one is a story.”

She bit the inside of her cheek to prevent another outburst. Best to let him finish, to get this over with. Luren grinned at her, as if reading her thoughts, and spat out a mouthful of smoke.

“In the days before King Cathay bound together earth and sky, the world was a wild place,” Luren told her. “War consumed the land like wildfire and many warlords reigned. The greatest of them was Marshal Shang, who had the strength of a bull and the temper of a tiger.”

Song openly sneered. King Cathay was no true figure, and she doubted this Marshal Shang was any different.

“Greedy for gold and grain to continue his wars, Marshal Shang came to the great monastery where this monk was taught,” Luren told her.

As if the false monk did not break every edict of monkhood she knew. What monastery would have such a wastrel?

“His army was large and loud, so the others flew into the mountain with all the wealth. Only this monk, who had been down in the village to drink and eat meat, did not wake up until the thunder of hooves shook him awake.”

The last part was, sadly, the closest to a truth this tale would come.

“This monk ran to the monastery, then saw what was happening and sat to wait with a cup of wine. The warlord blew through the open gates like a gale. He and his soldiers flipped every mattress and kicked open every cellar, but there was nothing to be found so Marshal Shang grew greatly angry.”

Luren did tend to have that effect on people.

“He stomped up in his armor and slapped this monk in the face, saying: little monk, where is the gold and grain? He was told: it is in the mountain caves.”

She eyed the god with distaste. Even in a nonsense story, to aid an enemy was nothing to be proud of. Luren, though was still grinning. Like there was a joke being told and he was the only one to notice.

“The warlord slapped this monk again and demanded to be led to the caves. He was refused.”

Luren took out his pipe and curbed his shoulders, as if pretending to be larger than he was.

“Do you know who I am, Marshal Shang demanded? I have won a thousand battles and I know no mercy. I can take out my demon-slaying sword and split you in two like a rice cake.”

Gods preserve her, he was doing a voice. Adding insult to injury, it was halfway decent.

“Know this,” Luren said, pipe back in his mouth. “This monk replied: do you know who I am? I am but a little monk, but my words can make Marshal Shang take out a demon-slaying sword and a split a man in two like a rice cake.”

Song smoothed away a twitch of the lips, refusing to allow him the satisfaction. She had, admittedly, not expected that turn in the tale.

“Shamed, the warlord did not dare kill this monk and prove himself the lesser man,” Luren said. “He trashed the monastery and left, returning to the world since were still towns to burn and young wives to make widows.”

He then stared expectantly at her, as if expecting applause. Song would have rather died.

“Do you not understand,” she said, “that I hold your stories worthless? You always lie.”

“Interesting,” Luren said, chewing on his pipe thoughtfully. “What is a lie?”

She gritted her teeth. This had the sound of yet another pointless lecture. How many was she to suffer through before he let her out of this prison?

“Something that is untrue,” she said.

“Then what is the truth?” he asked.

“Something that is not a lie,” Song replied.

Let him find logical fault in that. He laughed.

“Then what is nothing, Song Ren – a truth or a lie?”

She paused. If she said it was true, he would say it was no longer nothing. The same if she claimed it was a lie instead. She ground her teeth.

“If nothing exists, it follows that by your definition there is no truth and no lie,” Luren said, sounding delighted.

“Wordplay,” she dismissed. “I phrased my logic poorly.”

“You do it all poorly,” Luren conversationally replied. “That is because worth is something perceived and you see all things as poor.”

“What do you want, Luren?” she asked again.