Mirian reached the top of the tower, where he expected to find ashes and fire. Instead, it was cold and humid. As he stepped into the room where he'd left Indirk, where he'd seen the huge serpent and the blaze before, he stopped to stare at a ruined, blackened room that shone wet as though from fresh rainfall. Shards of glass gleamed among splintered wood, charred black to cold coals.
For only a moment, Mirian stared in confused wonder. Then, he understood. He'd seen this kind of magic before.
Indirk sat in the middle of the room, straight-backed, legs crossed, casual. She watched Mirian quietly. Behind her, near the broken window, there stood a deathly pale woman wrapped in gray rags. From beneath a tattered hood, yellow candlelight flickered in gray eyes. The Writhewives were always quick to respond to out-of-control fires in the city.
Meeting the Writhewife's gaze for just a moment, Mirian looked down at Indirk. "Has the fury left you now?" He'd half-expected to find her bled out and dead. He'd heard stories about Deepwood carnivates fighting past the point of death, taking their victory, and thereafter succumbing to their wounds.
Indirk didn't show any weakness, whether by stubbornness or strength. She just sat on the floor, staring at Mirian. Her expression was not quite angry, just a simmering bitterness that ran through every muscle. Her clothes had been burned to patchy tatters in some places, torn to shreds in others, her body a dark canvas of horrifying cuts and burns. She had her hands joined over one knee, her knuckles so deeply bruised they might be broken, her claws cracked, broken, two of them missing but for wet red roots.
"You should be dead," Mirian told her.
"I want to kill Mardo," she said.
"Why? Just personal?" Mirian shook his head. "He's not important. He's just a-"
"He knows fucking everything, dumbass." Indirk's lips parted crookedly, her tongue moving over reddened teeth. Her mouth and chin were stained red, like a wolf after a bloody hunt. "Mardo knows Norgash. She knows him. They're together, somehow, and she's at the middle of this. She was at the Sickle-Sough Festival. She was under the Embassy. The fire that was there is the same as the fire at the Festival is the same as the fire that was here."
Touching his half-mask, feeling the heat that roiled behind it, Mirian said, "I don't see the connection between her and Mardo."
"I do. Listen, I need a better deal."
"I can't do a better deal."
"Fucker's lying." Indirk glanced back at the Writhewife and repeated, "Fucker's lying," before looking back to Mirian. "I'm not going to be a refugee. You're clearing my name--my real name, Indirk Correlon--and when this is all done you're setting me up with a job someplace, a job like the one I had, and an apartment like I had. And you're letting me kill Mardo."
"I can't do that," Mirian said flatly.
* * *
“I will keep my deal of getting you out of this building alive and uncursed. However, you will be dead within days.”
Amo stood so close to the Maniaque’s doors that they could feel the heat radiating off of them. Death lay without, the man of obsidian had promised, and so Amo stood contained. Fists closed, Amo shook their head. “What? But you said-“
“This isn’t my doing.” Sethian Skin strode closer, dark hands gesturing. “I repaired your body, but your friend touched you with metal and damaged my spell before it could take hold. This body of yours is already beginning to break down. And if that’s not enough, dear Amo, Norgash and her apostles will be hunting you.”
* * *
Indirk stared at Mirian, quiet but not tired. She didn't seem fatigued at all, not even weakened by her many wounds. Her stare was hard, her breath even, her features flat and grim. The wind blew through the shattered window, glass shards cutting it so it sang, and Indirk stared at Mirian. The clouds moved and the god-writ moon shone through them, and then the clouds moved and the moon disappeared, and Indirk stared at Mirian. The Writhewife pivoted to look out at the sea, and she hummed a little song to herself. Indirk stared at Mirian.
"Killing Mardo is doable,” Mirian conceded, looking off to a side. “I know a time and place that he might be vulnerable, if I pull some strings.”
“I guess we’ll work on the rest of my conditions later,” Indirk grated.
“You need to let me have Nymir in the meantime, and you need to lay low for a few days. I have an operation planned, and I can’t have you trying to help your friends when I-“
“They’re not my friends,” she cut him off.
Mirian eyed her. “Even Amo? Nymir says Amo is the leader.”
“Hah.”
* * *
“Norgash is territorial,” Sethian Skin was saying.
“If you run into her, she will eat you,” Sethian Skin was saying.
“Her skin isn’t so special,” Sethian Skin was saying. “Her power can be ours, and another will rise to take the stage at the Veiled Night party.” And Amo’s mind was not on Norgash, when perhaps it should’ve been, thinking instead about the way that Darkweavers took their power and what Sethian Skin might have done to these garments all around them. In some ways, it wasn’t too different from the clothes that Sgathaich had conjured for Amo out of myth and story, but in other ways…
* * *
Indirk looked at her hand, the red wounds on two left fingers where claws were missing. “I want Myrel back. The others I don’t care about.”
Pondering for a moment, Mirian said, “Myrel. Nymir’s partner at that little fish shop. Missing since the ninth of this month, according to Nymir. I don’t know what’s become of Myrel. We don’t have them.”
Indirk snapped up a glare. “Don’t you?”
He shook his head. “The sorcerers have been disappearing people well enough on their own without help from the League Intelligence Office. It’s got nothing to do with my people.”
“Damn it,” Indirk growled, grinding her bloodied fists together. “I can’t do it, then.”
“Can’t do what?”
“I can’t kill Mardo.” She snarled and shouted, “Get out of here! Let me know when I can get to him. He’ll tell me where Myrel is, and they better still be alive, or I’ll send his skin back to his dear old family in Idylmir.”
* * *
“Oh, and Amo.” Sethian Skin stepped into Amo’s breath with chilling disregard.
Amo flinched. “What?”
“I don’t care about the war. It is beneath me. So let me sweeten the deal.” Sethian Skin showed his two open palms to Amo. “If you help my veiled night party succeed, either by completing your transformation and performing or by killing Norgash so that another can take her place, then I’ll pay you back by giving you what you came to the North for.”
* * *
As soon as Mirian left, Indirk collapsed limply onto her side. It was incredible to her how quickly her strength had faded, taking with it all sensation and thought. Her blood had gone silent and cold. Why did that feel so wrong? Limbs tangled and numb, blurry gaze watching glass shine around her, Indirk whispered, “Sjeze.”
“I’m here.” The Writhewife’s voice was very close, coming from just above and behind her. Cold hands touched her sides. “Don’t worry. I won’t let you die.”
“You abandoned me. You let the serpent find me.”
“My Gray love turned against you. I can’t betray my love, oh love.”
“I thought I was part of it. You said I was.”
“You can be. Be quiet now. Rest now. I hoped that Uncle Green could save you, but it can’t heal you now. I can do it, if you rest.”
“We let Avie down,” Indirk whimpered. She heard low, whispering music move around her, and felt cold water pour over her body. She watched the sun move, but was too numb to marvel at its speed, slowly saying, “We let Avie die,” as the day passed around her and the distant magic of the Aldalneld Writhe moved over her body.
* * *
In the evening, Mirian locked himself away in the small office he’d been given by the Admiralty. “Idylmir,” Mirian muttered to the candle on the desk, its pathetic light railing against the dark all around. Here, in deepest shadow and utter silence, where there was no magic, no music, no whispers, Mirian slipped deep into his labyrinthine mind to rifle through his library of memorized knowledge. “Why did she say Idylmir? If he’s Othrizen? Could he be?”
At the same time, in the alleys of the Angolhills, Anbash lay down and went quiet. Shouldering aside the great green cloak of his robe, Mardo carefully detangled the Guardian Serpent’s body and extracted Norgash from the cold, bloodied coils. The woman was limp and pallid, breath fitful, half-lidded eyes twitching. This is why I made you promise, Mardo said to her. It didn’t have to happen this way. If you’d only left that woman alone.
Mirian was putting a hand to his half-mask, there in the perfect dark where he could see the slightest hint of firelight escaping from under the leather that shrouded his eye. “If so, then so is she, and so was that serpent, that Anbash. Mardo, you fool.”
Don’t leave Anbash, Norgash was whispering, and Mardo was shocked that she had any awareness at all, so he said to her, We can’t take Anbash with us anymore. He made himself ignore Norgash’s frantic hiss of, You can’t let Anbash die. You can’t let her die, only finding it in himself to say, I’m sorry.
In his office, Mirian rose to his feet and glared into the candlelight as though it were the fire that he hated. “Are you really doing all this to protect Norgash? You can’t fix what they did to her.”
As Norgash found the strength to squirm in Mardo’s arms and push against him, accusing, This is your fault. Your fault! Mardo carried her away from where Anbash lay. He said to her, We won’t forget. Idylmir. The Saw. These cities. It’s almost time.
“After all this time,” Mirian reached out to snuff the candlelight. “It’s the Screaming Stone project again, at least in part. The Saltblood Cartel.”
Mardo spoke over Norgash’s cries, We will make them remember the Crimaddie.
As true darkness rushed around Mirian he spat, “The goddamned Cry Madly.”
