Antic Round -- Chapter 3 -- Piety written by Ashley @ casualvillain.com         "What is to be done, Sire? Duke Bardorba was not some corrupted politician... and even if it had been such 'twould have mattered not, the people loved him regardless. These accusations against ourselves and against Parliament of foul play are dangerous, dangerous liabilities. Groups in the southern provinces are rioting. They’ve done naught save burn a tax collection house and batter an undefended Knight of the Crown on his way from the District Building, but as you know, your Majesty, a single careless cry can trigger an avalanche.”         The advisor cocked his head slightly, his brown leather skullcap giving it the appearance of a little wooden knob, ornately carved and balanced from a spring, set upon his neck. He faced the man he was addressing humbly, King Excoffier too preoccupied to turn about. With a wistful sigh, the King adjusted the angle of his mirror just a smidge, then went back to preening his shoulder-length curly, blonde hair. The servants rebuked him when he groomed himself but there were some toiletries only royalty could perform properly. “Tweezers.”         “S-sire.” The advisor reached for the small gilded set perched upon a nearby tray and put them delicately and dutifully into the King’s pale outstretched hand. He then cleared his throat and continued as Excoffier plucked his eyebrows. “Sire, the peasants are upset. They feel betrayed by Bardorba’s murder, having considered him their champion of sorts. They are restless and belligerent. Many have stopped tilling the fields in protest, demanding the murderer be brought to justice. Sire, if something is not done soon, come harvest time the entire country will feel the repercussions.”         “Are they straight and even?” Excoffier took a step away from the glass and smiled, absently admiring it. The mirror was grand and gilded in gold with little fluttering doves and roses cast at intervals into the precious material. There were rubies and emeralds studding the sides as well, some of them set in place of the eyes of the birds with an especially large green gem adorning the very peak, surrounded by golden ivy and frozen sprays of baby’s breath.         It was a nice mirror.         The advisor peered over the King’s shoulder towards his reflection and his pair of arching blonde eyebrows. “Beautiful, Sire,“ he murmured, “Even and straight as always. I must say though--”         “What exactly are the rabble claiming?”         “Claiming about Bardorba, my Liege?”         “Yes.” Excoffier put a finger lazily against the cold hard head of one of the little golden doves on his mirror, stroking it absently as he waited for the sting in his forehead to subside. “According to popular opinion, exactly who do they believe is responsible for that murder?”         The other man looked uneasy, feeling suddenly very small and vulnerable alone with the King in this massive, red-carpeted and marble-adorned chamber. He shuffled his feet, wincing at the echo. “The rumours fly fast and hard. Some say ‘twas money-lenders and the Duke was in debt. Others say ‘twas the Müllenkamp cultists, mayhap Losstarot himself, or even one of his seconds.”         “Yet the peasants wouldn’t cry out against simple money-lenders or cultists,“ the King contradicted smoothly.         “Yes, Sire,“ the advisor returned quickly, flicking sweat from his right eye, “Many say... many say his murder was plotted by ourselves. Some others suspect the Church. Popular opinion, my Liege, is currently not in our favour.”         “Less in our favour than is customary, in any event. I am sure Parliament is eating this up with a spoon. I had wondered at the smirk infesting that crone Heldricht’s face this morning but now... ha... these are not my great grandfather’s times, I’m afraid... with proper evidence, I can be overturned and dethroned. ”         “They wouldn’t dare. The proposition itself would place your accuser on a very unfavourable pedestal. ‘Twould be like one tall tree in a field and we’d strike them down with the apathy of a lightening storm. No one man would step forward in Parliament to suggest an investigation, you have too many backers among the representatives. Fear not, Sire. In sooth, this is naught but a minor disturbance. However I would suggest sending a brigade of Knights to the southern provinces and squashing this rebellion. ‘Tis small, a mere buzzing in your ears. But kill the instigators now before the swarm forms.”         “Enough locusts will devour an entire crop in mere days,” Excoffier replied, mindlessly stroking the gilded dove’s head, “I will not let Valendia be undone from the inside out. I won’t see a repeat of the Wars. Batistum comes this morning, does he not?”         “In mere moments, if it pleases thee, Sire.”         “He comes to lecture me on Leá Monde,“ Excoffier sneered, ignoring his advisor’s blank stare and leaving the mirror at last to pace back and forth across the great width of his private chambers. It was warm and dry here, a wonderful contrast to the wet greyness of early morning he could see outside the window. A wan sun cast a pale square on the plush carpet. The King walked back and forth through it, hands tight behind his back, his bright blonde hair caressing his cheeks. “He thinks I might not have heard the scenario that’s even now spreading like wildfire through Valnain. What am I, some useless fool who cannot make out the buzz simply because of these thick palace walls? Ah, the old man just does not give His Majesty the credit he deserves. I may know even more than he does.”         “Sire, would you like me to fetch his Excellency now?” The advisor was itching to get out of this room. Excoffier kept glancing to the little golden dove cast into the mirror with brightly shining eyes as though expecting it to take wing and flee through the window. He was in foul, crazy spirits this morning. A dangerous man to keep company with.         “All evening did I spend pouring over parchments with a cabinet of fools, and then the early part of my morning was pointless palavering with Parliament.” The King grimaced irritably, hands become fists at his sides, “I have meetings with the governors of three separate provinces in only half an hour’s time, why should I waste these rare free moments on Batistum? The Cardinal can fly away with his nonsense, just as all good little red cardinals do in the autumn season.” Oh, how he envied the little birds and the way they could so easily leave behind the cold weather and bleak fields for warmer things.         He was a strong man still, the King of Valendia, only just having entered his thirty-seventh year. Full curly honey-blonde hair framed a fair complexion sprinkled with old pock marks that had faded with the years. His eyes were richly blue, almost uncannily blue so that they seemed to glow in low light. He liked to fix them on people, his eyes, leer crazily on occasion at the courtiers and the councilmen and even at the old Cardinal himself. He was half mad, was Excoffier, but he was the only one to really realize the depths of his own affliction. That knowledge gave him somewhat of an edge over the rest; a sort of secret power.         Snorting like a horse, the King stalked towards the mirror again. He pampered his face a bit more, adjusting a stray curl, setting the small crown back a bit further on his head, then pinched his cheeks to give them a glow and licked his lips, blinking prettily at himself in the glass. He noticed the little gilded dove watching from the corner of his eye and threw it a wink, never one to pass up a pittance to a worshipper. The advisor simply stared, waiting for some word of dismissal or condemnation.         Excoffier waved impatiently at him.         “Batistum has been planning something grand and wicked with Leá Monde,” he said, “I know this. I also know those plans went awry last week. He’s been thundering about the Palace in a complete tizzy, biting off the heads of the clergy and councilmen, rampaging like the scrawny bear he is. I’ve preferred to steer clear of his foul mood and have been rather successful with it until now. Of course, we cannot avoid each other forever. It is obvious the bear wants something. Or if nothing else, he is here to cover his tracks with a few oily, well-spoken words.”         The advisor knew nothing of what the King was spouting. He took a step backwards, hoping to flee and not be noticed. Excoffier could rant for hours. However, the moment he turned, leaving the King to his mad words and his obsessive grooming, he heard loud heavy footsteps approaching the Royal chambers from the marble halls outside and a brief exchange of formalities with the guards. Excoffier turned immediately away from the mirror, stroking two fingers over his image for luck. “So the sputtering old zealot comes,” he muttered, approaching a couch in the corner of the room with every dram of stately royal elegance he could muster. He seated himself cross-legged in its embrace, glaring slightly at the doorway so he would be the first thing the old man saw upon entering.         “Cardinal Batistum, your Majesty...”         A servant stepped into the room from the hallway, bowed, then melted back into the shadows like sugar-candy in water. The advisor walked quickly towards the doorway, not desiring to be present during a conversation between the two men. He did not want to find out their secrets now and pay for it later on with his life. Batistum nearly knocked him to the floor upon his entrance, brushing hard against his side.         “Oh, my apologies, your Excellency!” the royal advisor said immediately, bowing several times and backing away towards the exit. The Cardinal pulled up short, the hallway bathing him in golden light as the shadows of the King’s chamber cloaked his features. He smiled softly and nodded his head.         “God be with you, my son. Only do not make your way with such haste lest He is unable to keep up.” The advisor stared at the old man with his mouth hanging open, laughing weakly then whispering another apology before dashing through the door. Batistum turned his head slightly to watch the retreat, then took a stately step into the chambers, two pale blue eyes rising to meet the King’s expectant gaze. Excoffier raised a blonde eyebrow his way and suppressed a dancing smirk.         “Batistum,“ he greeted, not standing from the couch, “You look positively ready to be plucked. What ails thee?”         A stranger would have been confused by the statement. The Cardinal’s dress was exquisite. A long dark crimson robe hung to his feet, and a short caplet of unmarred white velvet covered his shoulders like snow. All of it was free of the flaws of dust or dirt; his belts and sashes were perfectly arranged around his waist; his slippers seemed newly cobbled. Only the King caught the errors. Batistum’s face was pale and his darkly silver hair, while slick and swept back, still harboured a renegade strand or two that now fell over his corrugated brow. His beard needed a trim and the hem of his robe was marked with a single spatter of mud.         Compared to how he normally appeared, the Cardinal was now a veritable wreck.         However, he ignored the comment. His demeanour comfortably elegant and his expression grave with his head bowed in thought and soft chin sunk into the cotton fronts of his robes, Batistum rolled both eyes upwards until they met the King’s from beneath the shine of a pair of silvery eyebrows. After a moment, he raised his head and assaulted Excoffier fully. “The country sinks to ruination, Sire,“ he intoned, “I tire of watching it die.”         The King let the smirk dance now. It seemed the old man was truly going to settle into his role as actor today. Here already was enough melodrama to choke a horse. He sat back a bit more comfortably upon his couch, crossing his arms and stroking his chin. “I spent the morning in pleasant toil. I saw the world through my carriage window and everything seemed dandy to me. Am I missing something?”         Batistum’s patience was endless. He had the bearing of a martyr who’d seen heaven and knew he’d see it again if only he waited long enough. “Don’t, Sire,“ he said abruptly, “Do not make light of this, I beg of you. The news is grave. The cult I sent my Blades to exterminate has doubled back and bared fangs. All of my Knights have been slaughtered and the murderers yet walk as free men.”         “Leá Monde did not go well then?” the King asked coyly. Batistum wavered on his feet, standing as close to the couch as he could but not daring to sit, to pace, or to engage in any activity that showed aught save reverence to his sovereign.         “Sire, there is evil afoot in Valendia that frightens even myself. God is lost in these dark times and the Müllenkamp sect is testament to the gravity of the situation. I sent Commander Guildenstern to rid the countryside of the infestation of vermin. He tracked Losstarot and his minions into the ruins of Leá Monde itself--”         “I’m aware,“ Excoffier yawned, waving a hand, “And might I add, you never asked my permission to venture there at all.”         “Sire, surely there is no authority above God’s...” Batistum shot the King a disparaging glance, slicing a hand back through his wispy grey hair. He was barely sixty but Excoffier could swear the man had aged ten years this past week. His long, angular face with broken by lines, his pale blue eyes were dull with exhaustion and anxiety while his beard hung like dirty laundry from his jaw. He kept his words calm but his agitation was painfully obvious. “You must understand the gravity of the situation. You must understand that nothing is as it seems, that evil, that the Dark, comes in all shapes, all forms, hidden away from our good judgement in the guise of precious servants or trusted comrades. Guildenstern, Sire... Guildenstern betrayed me.”         “How so?”         “The reasons are unknown to myself but he sided with Losstarot... in the end, he himself was betrayed and the cultist murdered him, murdered them all. At least two score knights dead, three commanders cut down and Sir Tieger is missing. I have already sent scouts towards Leá Monde but the entrance has sealed itself and the quakes seem to have returned. The city is daily sinking further and further into the sea.”         “The city too, it seems, would hide itself from this shame...”         “What mean you, my Liege?” Batistum’s frown was fierce now. Excoffier stroked his chin thoughtfully, letting a gaze he knew seemed uncomfortably crazy linger upon the Cardinal’s face.         “Why would Commander Guildenstern betray you?” he questioned lightly. After nearly twenty years of experience dealing with Batistum, he smelled the lie there. “It’s shocking to hear it from you, your Excellency. Romeo was a dear friend of mine and loyal as a puppy.”         “Losstarot has charms of his own and no small amount of cunning,“ Batistum replied somewhat snappishly, “I am not privy to the particulars, I know only what I know from Lady Neesa’s report and even that is to be taken with a pinch of salt. She’s returned from that Godless city half-mad, claiming ridiculous things and raving like a possessed woman.”         The King lost his smile quite suddenly. “I knew she had returned but you say she is not well?”         Batistum gravely shook his head and switched demeanours. “Her wits are gone and I fear they are not to return. She is as lost to us as the rest of the Blades. I weep for her. I detest the dogs that have done this to her...”         “Oh, do you?” The blonde-headed King stared at the older man for a moment or two longer, blue eyes roving slowly over his face, red robes, and the mask about his features. Batistum had lost more than simple servants to those ‘dogs’. What that was though, was the mystery. “Why did you send them to Bardorba’s Manor last week? Three statesmen in Parliament last evening said that your Commander and his men burned the ducal home to the ground. The peasants are in an uproar and revolt is rampant in the countryside. It is claimed that two days past, you sent some traitor from the VKP after Duke Bardorba and had him murdered in his bed. The representatives are pointing fingers, your Excellency. I don’t enjoy having to defend you.”         New fury, hell-born and iron-hard, raged suddenly in the Cardinal’s eyes as the first crack appeared in his disguise of control. Yet the cunning and self-possession returned before the anger could truly manifest and Batistum drew a coverlet of calm in front of the sordid bed of his thoughts. “Lies,“ he said assuredly, “Utter lies. ‘Twas Müllenkamp that has killed poor Duke Bardorba. Sydney Losstarot takes allies from the State at will and bends them to his own purposes. Surely, Sire, we may not stand by and allow him to steal honest men from us time and time again. It is God’s will that we silence that heretic, that prophet of the damned and sin-laden. He’s a curse on the land, on the church and on your rule.”         “Are you sure he is not merely a scapegoat?” Excoffier asked laughingly. Batistum seethed but kept control.         “I do not understand your Majesty’s meaning,“ he returned, “I serve your Liege and our God to the best of my humble ability. But once again I find myself questioned. Parliament points fingers? The people are suspicious of the Church? Your Majesty hints that I’ve turned the Müllenkamp sect into a scapegoat? Sire, I am the scapegoat. God Himself is the scapegoat. The people look for ideas, men, to cast blame upon for their woes. It is sad, but myself and my God are both very easy targets.” Batistum frowned for an instant, tilting his head to the side as though the weight of the burdens within were too much. He’d been feeling so old lately, so very, very tired.         Snorting his mirth like steam from his nose, the King rose quickly from his couch and crossed his chambers, his footsteps making a pleasant sound against the polished marble floor. He approached his mirror and eyed the little dove cast there, winking and smiling its way. Too entranced with his golden friend to turn, he addressed the Cardinal from over his shoulder. “You needn’t play your fiddle for me, Batistum. I’ve heard your song before. Will you not tell me what your true intentions were in Leá Monde?”         “Sire...” the holy man began wearily, a new protestation on his tongue, “I do not underst--”         “Save it.” Excoffier turned from his mirror, teeth flashing white in a grin. “I’m not the child you raised to be King any longer, old man. You do not seem to have caught notice, but I have grown up. I’m not so naive anymore. But I won’t press you. I owe you my throne. Do what you will, what you want, all I ask is you do not try to undermine me.”         Another rebel strand of grey fell from his swept-back locks, and Batistum soberly shook it from his eyes. The warning sparked a look of regret and the Cardinal sighed lowly, moving a pale hand up to finger the bit of gold strung round his neck. “None of it was about you," he answered, summoning strength from hidden reserves belied by an ancient exterior. There was a feeble air to him suddenly, and Excoffier got a sniff of mortality; of age and numbered days. The Cardinal sighed as though sensing it. “Guildenstern did betray me. It was entirely unforeseen; unimagined. The man clung to my robes like a child and never would I have thought he might one day strike to the ground the loftiest of my ambitions; my single most cherished desire; the Church’s salvation and the people’s salvation from themselves. Why? Was it Losstarot? Was it Leá Monde? Was it the simple taste of absolute power that corrupted absolutely? I did not believe Neesa’s claim that he was dead. Yet they all are... all of them; Duane, Grissom, Samantha, Sackheim, Goodwin... and Romeo... countless others... faces I think may haunt me in my dreams... I fear for their souls. I fear the stories are true.”         A stern edge crept into Excoffier’s voice. “That is a lot of men sacrificed in one simple venture. I do not approve.”         “You forget, Sire, that I never asked for your approval.”         “You are getting daring in your defiance of me," the King answered quickly, the humour hasty to return. His smile spread. “You are lucky I find you so endearing or I might have you put in the stocks for a week or two.”         “My Liege, you are like a son to me. Do not make me discipline you as a proper father should. I do not want to hear your threats. And I do not enjoy this cross-examination of yours. Take my word as fact and if it seems too false to be true, delude yourself. Leá Monde is my concern. It has always been my concern, my own trial. The cultists are the thorns in my crown. You rule your country. You tend to the restless peasants even now crying revolution after Bardorba’s wretchedly inconvenient murder... I shall do what I must do. I shall deal with my own problems.”         “What did you want out of Leá Monde?” Excoffier asked softly but adamantly. He’d been pondering that question for days and had yet to find an answer. The Cardinal wasn’t about to bless him with one now.         “I wanted something... that I’ve since discovered I cannot have. Whether ‘tis by the Will of God or by the cunning of the devil, I may not have it.” Batistum paused for a moment. He laid a wrinkled finger to his chin. “However I have gained the fear as of late, that if it is by the cunning of the devil and I give up my search now, that in doing so I wrong my God and invite His wrath. Perhaps this is a test... all the greatest Saints were tested...”         Excoffier lifted a wry eyebrow. “All the greatest Saints wound up stoned by peasants and half-mad.”         “Tests...” the Cardinal insisted softly. He then shook his head the slightest bit and pulled himself from his thoughts. “Sire, I must attend Bardorba’s last rites, it is expected of me considering his position with the State and his deeds during the wars. Is there anything you need of me?”         The King laughed aloud. “I need for you to behave yourself!” he said merrily, loud enough for the servants in the hall to hear and gawk at, “I need a Cardinal who stays in his Church! Go to the Graylands, Batistum... go and work out some of your anger over Leá Monde and then return to me in fairer spirits, eh? I tire of watching you kicking your sour chin about the hallways, ye great boorish bear.” Excoffier slapped the older man hard on his back, shuffling him towards the doorway a step. The Cardinal seemed less than pleased with the rough treatment.         “If there is a method to your madness I do not see it,“ he muttered, “My Liege, do not allow Parliament to blacken the Church’s name. If they must accuse us of Bardorba’s murder, convince them otherwise. If the Church should fall, your rule and your power would not be long in following it. ‘Tis fear and fervour that keeps the masses reigned. Any illusions you may have towards the strength of your own rule are just that: petty, petty illusions. Bardorba had power. He was a puppet master pulling strings from the shadows, relying upon wealth and reputation to keep him enthroned. He is dead now, dead almost as though God Himself has struck him down as an act of mercy towards us. We must not squander that gift. We must act and sweep through Parliament now, crush the opposition and create a unified body that will deny neither the Church nor Royalty what they so need.”         “The People will never allow your favourites to monopolize the Parliament building,“ Excoffier said calmly, “The bourgeois will not sit idly by for such a thing. I don’t want to be remembered as a King who watched revolution invade Valendia, nor as the fool who let the civil wars renew themselves after thirty years of peace. I want peace, Cardinal. You have power enough, do you not agree?”         Batistum shook his head. “You speak as though the power is for me. Nay. The power is God’s. I wield my sword in His name. He should reign on earth as He so reigns in Heaven. That is what I want to see with these tired old eyes. A world that again fears God. One that again loves Him.”         “I am sure,“ the King replied, a smirk twisting his lips, “Such piety I have never seen. We must all appear as veritable demons in your presence, hmm?”         “If you only knew. But I live for the people. Solely for the people.”         Excoffier let the humour escape his chest in a great bark of laughter. It was as it always was! Nothing ever changed and what a grand reassurance he found that to be! Excoffier and his Church had had their way for almost thirty years. The Royalty were little more than an extra limb to them and Parliament was the stone in their path. By God it was enough to live for and yet by God, Batistum had gone too far this time. So many men... men that the King had known... men that he had befriended... dead because of his aims.         Still, there was no reason to grow angry, nor to allow the amusement of the entire situation to fall from sight. The King latched onto it now, filling his chambers with mirth. When it had died away, he balanced it with gravity, sudden and swift like a rapier blade. “I will see Lady Neesa.”         “What?”         “We will go to her now, before I must away to my duties.”         Ach, more fodder for the fun when Excoffier walked quickly past the holy man and towards the doorway. Batistum looked either ready to kill him or ready to flee. He leapt after the King almost frantically, like a marionette who’d just had his strings jerked. “Sire! Her Lady is in no condition to...receive your presence properly. She raves, she screams, she cries either gibberish or impious oaths against us all.”         “I’ve dealt with the insane before,“ the King answered coolly, “I deal with them each day. But I do not believe you when you speak of her madness. Commander Neesa is a level-headed Knight of both the Cross and of Valendia. She has faced greater hardships in her years than a haunted city. She will overcome. You simply do not understand her nature.”         Batistum shook his head, following Excoffier from the room. “I know the nature of madness, Sire. I understand the pain of loss.”         Smooth like cream; not the slightest itching creak of bone.         Aaahh... seemed the ache of hard battle was finally beginning to work its way from her limbs.         She’d been sore all week, her body refusing to forget the strain she’d put it through in Leá Monde; cramping and shuddering in the mornings and leaving her exhausted by nightfall. It was mid-morning now by Neesa’s approximation, and she rolled from her bed easily, standing unhampered on two steady feet. She wished she could go out into the countryside around Valnain to where the sheep grazed and run laps about them, praise the day, offer prayer to God for the one life He hadn’t seen fit to take--         Yet she couldn’t of course. Locked doors and walls barred her from it. She was a prisoner in a pretty bedroom. A hearth, oak furniture, plush carpeted floor, tapestries of men and hounds on the hunt strung up against the walls.... pretty prison.         She paced it now like a caged dog does its kennel, counting off the steps it took to cross from one wall to the other. One, two, three, four...         ... thirteen.         Her mouth stretching to a grim line, Neesa paused. Unlucky number, that. Bad omen.         She was superstitious, despite her faith. Maybe because of her faith. Thirteen was as damning a number as any other and here was this prison room, spanning thirteen footsteps across.         But it was only unlucky to her. Others wouldn’t have treads as wide, or might have shorter ones. Tieger for instance, would have crossed this room in nine steps no doubt. She had unlucky feet.         Unlucky treads.         Thirteen.         Neesa’s naked dark hand crept slowly towards her throat, loosening her collar as though the air were choking. She called herself a fool and shook off the paranoia. She shook off the thirteen and resumed pacing. But she couldn’t stop counting and each time at the end she reached the same number.         She could hear palace noises from outside the door. This room was a prison in theory only. In actuality it was quite nice; plush carpeting, an ample bed, clean furniture with any personal items she might need or desire close at hand. A silver goblet from last night’s supper still sat on the dresser, half full of red wine. She downed the remains quickly, paying little heed to the fine skin of dust that had settled over the contents. It washed the foul taste of sleep from her tongue and knocked a dram of sense back into her skull. She felt stupid and scared and yet angry and ready to take action. She felt right then as she’d felt the entire time she and Tieger had chased down Grissom in their last hours in Leá Monde. Neesa tipped her head back and pressed the goblet hard to her lips, struggling to swallow the last drops of wine. She wanted to get drunk, as impious a thought as that was. She wanted to forget and maybe even laugh again. If the laughter had to be ill-founded and borne of nothing save a drunken stupor, so be it, so long as it came.         She couldn’t even cry. Not that she would have. Not that she had any memories of ever crying outside of childhood.         Daft woman... keep your head on. Keep focus.         With unsure fingers, Neesa replaced the goblet upon the dresser, nearly dropping it before the silver base could rejoin the wood. She steadied the little vessel with her other hand, catching a distorted glimpse of her reflection in its side...         Patches of colour... light and shade... her eyes were holes in her head smudged away as though she were one of those corpses, one of those walking dead. Neesa reached her fingers out to caress the phantom woman, so dead and so trapped there in the silver with the bright glints of light surrounding her face like little spirits, little seraphim... the lights of the prison were too bright, too jarring about her. The room spun and she reeled on her feet, gripping the dresser’s edge unsteadily, digging her short hard fingernails into the wood until it splintered. Her hair was in her face, silvery lace, brushing ‘gainst her eyelashes and tickling her dreadfully, delightfully. She tried to loosen her collar again but missed and scratched her fingernails against her throat, drawing blood with a wince.         “... course heard it said there is something Divine in even the most hideous of madnesses. Yet my heart still breaks to see. She is like a ruined painting, the oils still dripping, her colours all running...”         Running colours... that was what she saw in her reflection in the silver. She was all awash in acid and her flesh was melting away to show the pale bones beneath. What bloody nonsense. Tieger would mock her for it. It was so unlike Commander Neesa to babble on, either aloud or mentally, about the lower layer of things. But there was no lower layer here, just a coating of barely muted horror slapped upon the surface of everything she saw like paint. It was on her, the horror, and she looked suddenly for something solid to support her teetering legs, settling at last upon the wall just beside the dresser and leaning heavily against it.         It was cool under her cheek; prickly white plaster that was papered on the top half in a beautiful yellowed tone. She shut her eyes dreamily and felt the damp standing out against her lashes, staining the surface. She would not cry. She would not cry. She would not cry...         Even if she did, who would it be for? She didn’t know. She had no reason to cry, she would not cry and so she would never find out.         The room was swimming. The very walls were crawling over themselves in a drunken orgy that her wild eyes couldn't follow, slithering over each other's backs, rubbing their bellies into the sharp, sharp corners and chortling because Neesa couldn't tear her attention away. The entire room was afire with activity, even the most plain of surfaces glinted with...... something...... something beyond what should be there and definitely beyond the realm of explanation.         There wasn't an explanation.         That simple fact nearly caused her to burst into tears right there. She’d refill the dusty silver goblet with a liquid much more precious than the wine she'd wasted. God in Heaven, there was no explanation for any of it and she was the only one alive.         The door was like a living thing amidst the writhing walls of her prison. Dry-eyed but unable to breathe for the anguish in her throat, Neesa realized she was on her knees looking up at it, her mouth hanging open as she fought for a bit of air. Just a bit, just a drop. Just a moment of peace so she could collect her thoughts and silence the buzzing, screaming madness in her skull. The door opened suddenly as though in response to her pleas. It split apart from the walls like a mouth becoming a tongue, shooting out to devour her and she backed away in a panic on her hands and knees, putting an arm up instinctively before her face.         "Lady Neesa?"         The voice was familiar. It was almost calming. But Neesa was beyond trusting appearances ever again. Guildenstern had been calming. The Blades had been calming. Grissom had been calming. Familiarity, family, comrades, brothers, sisters...... all dead now and she would not join them. She would not!         Yet this was a voice she could not fight. Opening her eyes, ashamed that fear had caused her to shut them, Neesa found herself looking suddenly upon King Excoffier. Her Liege and her friend, here, come to visit her in hell.         "Y-your Majesty..." she whispered hoarsely, unsure why her voice seemed so ragged. She seemed to recall having used it a lot in the past week; screaming, pleading, accusing. She'd worn her tongue away with her accusing.         "Neesa," Excoffier answered. Why did he sound so sad? Had he heard? Did he know? Of course, he must. Oh God, did he blame her? Was she to die like some heretic in the pyre now?         "I am so sorry, your Majesty," she said, forcing dignity back into her voice. It was important to look proper for him, he deserved that respect and she would give it and pay no heed to the dancing walls nor the screaming face still standing out in the silver goblet. Give eyes to that face! That phantom woman was in need of eyes so she could see.         "You have nothing to apologize for," the King answered kindly. Neesa looked away in deference, unable to stand the sight of his face; so calm, so understanding.         "I am alive."         "That is something we should give praise for, not something that calls for apology. Come, Lady, be yourself now. You are safe inside these walls and nothing can hurt you."         Neesa blinked slowly, barely comprehending his words, barely believing the interpretation of them that gradually surfaced in her thoughts. "But they are not. My men are not. Samantha is not, nor, nor the brothers nor Tieger..."         "Grave losses," Excoffier intoned softly, "But you've lost comrades before. I know you and Tieger were the best of partners but he was called Home. 'Tis naught to mourn, my dear. And it is not your fault."         I know it is not my fault.         If only the guilt would let her be.         She wasn't guilty because they had died. No, she was guilty because she had not.         The woman in the goblet was screaming silently. Neesa could hear the hissing breath loud as thunder in her ears and was forced back by it into the walls. She panicked the moment the cold plaster was against her skin, barely able to keep from screaming herself. Oh how they writhed, every surface, every texture danced, nothing would be still and the guilt became the hot coughing anguish of unshed tears in the back of her throat.         She couldn't be still and these pleasantries, this... this... trying to act in the role of herself for this man, this was false and it would drive her insane. She wanted to grab the gilded sword from the sheathe at his side and wave it about like a magic sceptre that might restore the dead and give her her mind back. Neesa couldn't think straight, she saw his eyes when she closed her own, she heard him calling and saw the grand lofty spires of the cathedral and the way the light diffused into lacy patterns through the slatted windows of the city walls. She saw the little demon children, the little would-be angels who'd been denied Heaven and so would become the tiniest, most vicious of the damned in Hell. She saw herself cutting them to pieces... the tiny decaying bodies of the once plump and happy children of Leá Monde... the children... the dead children were haunting her to the same degree as her dead comrades.         She clasped her head in both hands to gather the scattered notions. She didn't care how crazy she looked. She sank to the floor and distractedly wondered when her hair had become undone. It cascaded like milk over the coffee of her skin and pooled onto the floor. She still could not cry.         "You see, Sire?" a new voice, no less familiar than Excoffier's, said suddenly, "She has lost her wits. A fragile and feminine creature she proved herself to be in the end, despite her years of denying it. Ach, may the Lord keep you and Bless you, Milady. I fear she'll be with Him soon."         "No," the King said abruptly and Batistum picked out anger in his eyes, real anger much different from the half-mocking irritation he'd shown so far, "I'll not lose anyone else to your scheming. Commander Neesa will overcome this. Shan’t you, Milady?"         She heard nothing but the silence. The noise itself became that thing without meaning that crept behind words and the silence was the thing that bore weight to her ears. Oh, but she wanted the silence to stop. She nearly clawed at Excoffier's silken robes and begged him to keep his voice coming for it stilled, though through merely fractions of sound at a time, the vicious thunder of the silence.         "C-Cardinal Batistum, my Liege..." she murmured, catching sight of the old man suddenly. He was there, she'd heard him, he was there as he'd been there this entire week, glaring at her with gleaming eyes from just beyond the reach of the light. His eyes were hungry for her. He frightened her. No longer could she see inside this enigma of Heaven on earth and find a comfort in his countenance... he was the same demon that Guildenstern had become at the end only she now realized that the Cardinal was different... there had been no change. He'd always been this monster and neither she nor any of the others had ever been able to see... She wanted to explain this to the King now. He had to see. "Sire, he went without leave to Leá Monde," she stuttered crossly, unsure why the words were so hard to form, "It was all a plot... all from the start he planned betrayal..."         Excoffier didn't look pleased at the words but he didn't look surprised either. "Be still, Milady," he said somewhat distractedly, "There's no need for you to explain aught."         "N-nay... th-the Grimoire... ask His Excellency about that!"         "Grimoire?" the King echoed. He'd never heard the word before yet he immediately liked the sound of it. From Neesa's intonation it was something of import. Batistum glided to his side like a shadow, his features grave and drawn.         "A fantasy that she's conjured to explain away Romeo's betrayal," he said, "I'm afraid that not only have the many deaths contributed to her deteriorated state of mind, but her Commander's back-stabbing has shattered her heart. We all held such great admiration and respect for him... it is no wonder really. My poor poor daughter..." Batistum stepped towards her, his arms extended as the benevolence lit his face like a torch. Neesa drew a sharp intake of breath and cringed back, her hair hanging in her face and her clothes dishevelled. She was cold. She was in nothing save a white flannel dressing gown; they'd taken her armour, her hammer, her pride, and her freedom...         But what could she do against these twisting visions and the Cardinal's sly tongue? She couldn't make sense of anything! "I have to go back..." she raved, eyes glassy with fever or madness, "Tieger's there with Grissom and I have to free them both... I should have died with the rest of them, Sire! You must forgive me for living! Please forgive me!" The sobs came at last but they were dry and painful to her raw throat. Excoffier laid a pale hand upon her bowed head, giving a little pat out like a pittance, no different than the wink he’d offered the golden dove on his mirror.         "Rest, Milady. I will make sure you are not disturbed."         "Sire, p-please..."         The King was unsure what more he could do for this poor crazy wretch other than leave her in the care of the maids and hope she'd come around. There was coherence here to an extent, she wasn't completely past hope... and there might even be things of value to be gleaned from her tongue once the malady had left her in peace. Yes. 'Twas very possible.         "I'll see her treated well," he said aloud so the women hanging back in the hallway would hear and heed, "Summon the physician and have her examined, then return her Lady's armour. She is a Knight and must not be kept from her duties."         "Your Majesty," Batistum interjected softly, "She's in no condition. She must be confined to bed and to the ladies' care until her wits have returned. She stumbled into my home over a week ago and I think she might have killed me then had my men not been at my side. She is mad, Sire. I love her dearly, I loved them all, but we must act in her best interests and not in the interests of our foolish sentiments..."         "Lovely speech, old man," Excoffier returned quickly, "So what do you propose? Shall we take her outside the gates and cut her down like a lame horse? What I said shall be done shall be done. You may get along to Valnain, your Excellency, your entourage awaits. You'll give my best to Bardorba's family, won't you? That little boy of his shall one day wield a great deal of power. Establish yourself in his good graces while he's yet impressionable. And hope that your reputation does not proceed you." The King scowled and turned to leave, removing his hand from Neesa's bowed head hesitantly. Batistum, poised and calm, followed his every movement with a pair of relentlessly blue eyes.         "Sire, you mustn't..." he began, touching a hand to his elbow. Excoffier shot back such venom in his stare the old Cardinal could almost see the fangs behind his lips.         "No, quite the contrary. I must. Get out of my city, Batistum. I want rid of the smell of you for a few days. Go stink up the Graylands. Watch out for Losstarot lest he catch your scent and finish the work he began years ago."         "Such impiety." Batistum mumbled the words low enough that the King could pretend he hadn't heard. But he had heard and the Cardinal could take some small amount of satisfaction in the fact he’d do nothing about it. Stern and annoyed like some gargoyle snatched straight from an enclave of the cathedral, grey-haired Batistum watched his puppet move swiftly from the small room and back out into the hall. It seemed he was fleeing this place; not some dignified retreat with his catchy last words uttered but some escape from a situation he didn’t want to deal with. That was Excoffier. The Cardinal who pulled his strings and took all he wanted from him couldn’t have asked God above for a more useful personality to abuse.         “Sire... King Excoffier, please...” Neesa tried to find her feet to chase after him but an awful weakness had locked her joints. She’d felt so capable when she awoke, so ready to leave this place and take action. Yet even the thoughts of a few moments before were indistinct to her mind; fogged. It had been thus for days, she was sure of it. Her mind was incapable of recalling time in such a coherent manner yet she felt it somehow. She'd been suspended in this place for longer than she cared to contemplate.         "...s-something wrong with me," she whispered, surrendering to the dizziness and sitting half-sprawled on the cold floor, "I feel so strange..."         "Of course you do, my child, you’re ill, " Batistum said absently, placing a hand upon her head that caused the creeping chills to move up and down her spine, a sick feeling to start up in her abdomen and add to her dizziness. His very presence was enough to make her retch and yet she couldn't really place what that was. Something with Guildenstern, something with the Blades...         Betrayal...         Evil...         False ties and a false love. For why would a man who loved his servants send them off to die?         Distracted but always solemn, always with his mask of ease, the Cardinal stepped quickly to the chamber door and said a few words to the women hovering there that Neesa could not make out. She heard the thump of her retreat being shut and looked up, expecting to see the old man gone and herself left alone again, trapped again. Yet he remained, standing with his back to the door and both slim white hands pressed against it as though afraid some power might appear to blast it back open and from its hinges. He was still the calm and deified leader of the Iocus Church but Neesa caught something then, even in her dulled state, that caused her to nearly panic; something awful and something that had never shown itself upon his countenance before.         Most likely it had always been there but it had been in hiding. Now he didn't seem to care who saw it, especially her since... since...         Neesa tried to crawl away from him. Her limbs would not work properly.         "Daughter, do not fear," he whispered, keeping his voice low in order to hide it from the attendants outside, not to ease her. "Why this sudden fear? Am I not the man who gave you a home and a family? Am I not the man who held you as a child?"         He was all those things... and yet Neesa could not shake her terror. "You... you sent us into that hell following that madman..."         "I did not realize the true danger Losstarot posed..."         "N-no!" Neesa drew herself up a bit, her back to the wall, "I speak of Guildenstern. Madman. Madman gone insane with the thought of power and things that no person should ever be given. And yet... it wasn't his fault. Yours... all of it... because you wanted that power. I knew we sought the Gran Grimoire but I was told we were going to destroy it, not grant it unto you so that you could then possess the powers of the things you fought. 'Twas wrong, your Excellency! 'Twas so, so wrong and all of those people... that 'family' you carved out for me... it killed them all."         "I did not know..." Batistum answered after a pause and there was a measure of sincerity in his tone. He was calm though. Forever calm. "I did not know, daughter, and always did I have the best of intentions. I do what I can to serve our God and the answers are not always clear; His message is not always so easily interpreted. I did not expect Romeo to do as he did. I never would have thought it and I can understand why you're so upset by the facts of the matter. Please do not accuse me of these deaths. Please unburden your soul and your conscience and accept it all as God's will."         God's will..?         Was that simple excuse how Batistum would explain all of this away? His own evil indulgence of temptation and the consequences it wrought? Oh by God's name, the Cardinal had lost his halo... Neesa had lost her loyalty...         Yet...         "P-please, your Excellency..." she murmured, sinking to her knees as the sickness embraced her again, "Answer me but one question: Were... were you the one who sank the city? Who killed the people?"         Perhaps she could forgive him a single transgression. She’d never see him as the Saint again but maybe she could once more be his Knight. Who wouldn’t want immortality? What old man didn’t dream of cheating death? Batistum was just a man after all!         He turned away, folding both hands behind his back. “Why do you ask me that nonsense?”         And with that, she knew that he had. Neesa had no idea how he had managed such a thing, but he’d done it. Those little children with the crumbling faces and the eyes rotted from their skulls... the people of Leá Monde who had done no harm to anyone of Valendia... “You damned them, then?” she asked, forcing breath behind her words, “You did?” She didn’t understand it and yet her anger died away before it could bloom. She merely sat upon the drafty floor and pulled her knees up to her chin, staring out at nothing because anything was better than staring at a murderer’s guiltless eyes. “Why?” she asked after a moment of directionless thoughts. Batistum watched her unblinkingly, his gaze large and staring like a horse’s.         “That was twenty-five years ago, daughter. It was so long ago, it may as well have never happened.”         “Sire, you-- you look upon that city-- look upon it and then you may speak. Look upon it and then attempt to say to me, ‘It may as well have never happened.’ If you’d seen... if had only seen the dead weeping for the dead and for themselves... the corpses digging in the ruins for the bones of their beloved twenty-five years after their beloved had shaken off their flesh... no, twenty-five years after YOU had ripped their flesh away for them--!”         “Please, my child, you are raving again...” Batistum’s brows were upturned in a sharp angle of sadness and he tried to wrap his narrow hands about Neesa’s trembling shoulders, pulling her to her feet. The Commander wouldn’t have it.         “Do not touch me...” she said in a single expelled breath, “Never touch me again.”         “You say such things to the man that cradled you as a child?”         Neesa shook her head, trying to find a proper answer for him through the sea of notions clouding her brain. Her eyes roved the tilting room like a drunkard’s and she felt the sickness and the dizziness again, turning her vision into a curse that made the light too bright and the glints of the dusty goblet on the dresser into fangs and claws. She lurched towards the little silver beaker and took it up in her shaking hands, looking inside. Batistum’s eyes were like two metal rods digging into her back yet she spoke in spite of the fear they might cut through to her heart.         “You... you’ve been dr-drugging my food... the wine...”         Of course he had. Neesa let the little goblet fall to the floor and it thudded with the weight of a severed hand against the carpet. “You make me mad. Help it along in any.. any event. Of course. Turn truth into ravings. How easily... how easily the fire of rebellion becomes the fire of a fever and I may die in the night with a whimper ‘stead of a curse. Oh, Sire... oh, Tieger, what fools we were.”         “You are ill, my daughter,“ Batistum said as though the words were naught but a minor complaint, “I shall put you to bed and have the maids light a fire for you, grand and warm, so you can cook like a little loaf of honey bread beneath the quilts.”         It was a soothing suggestion, those words spoken in the Cardinal’s wise and comforting baritone. Neesa looked away from the shine of the silver on the carpet, her limbs so exhausted she thought she might fall on her face right there and rest her cheek against the floor, close her eyes, drift into a dreamless sleep where the dead would not accuse her. She stumbled, dark hands moving out to find stability in the walls, fingernails clacking against the plaster and leaving little gouges there so that white powder caked beneath them. Batistum moved forward quickly and she reached to him. He was strong despite his narrow frame and very easy to hold onto. Trembling and feverish, she latched onto his shoulders so that they were almost embracing, resting her forehead into his chest.         When she’d been a much younger woman, almost a child, she’d have terrible dreams in the night time and he would come into her room and shush her and bring her warm things to drink. She would hold onto the old man like this and he was never anything less than a very dear friend then, if not a father. She made him into that again now and forced the revelations and the jarring truths away, making nightmares of them. It was the day now; the morning. She would stay here in his satin embrace until the tears stopped and she could go to train with Tieger, leaving the monsters in his care.         “I have made mistakes,“ he whispered into her ear, moving the both of them slowly towards the chamber’s lone bed, “My methods were... rough, like unfinished boards. I knew that a few of you might have to be sacrificed behind those distant walls but never did I imagine you all would be taken from me. I feel I’ve lost everything I ever had. I feel I’m being tried. Neesa, child, never think that I do not love you, nor that I would not bring your loved ones back for you if I could. I want them back too... every last man and woman. How quiet the hallways seem now... there is no laughter anymore. There are no more prayers.” Batistum rested his face for a moment in her bowed head of hair, moving the tip of his nose slowly back and forth through the fine and exotic white strands. Tears stood out in his eyes but seemed afraid to fall. “They are with God now and though I pray, though I have suffered, He will not let them return. So the best that I can do for you now, my daughter, is send you to be with them.”         Grieved expression never wavering, Batistum drew a dagger from the folds of his robe and plunged it through the soft white of Neesa’s gown, sliding it between two ribs until it met her spine with a hard and hollow thud. The Commander groaned and bent sickeningly over the blade, not comprehending the pain, finally falling backwards onto the bed with a helping shove from the Cardinal. She lay twisting in the sheets with two hands wrapped about the bejewelled dagger hilt, bleeding brightly onto the pale bedclothes; an unbeliever cast from the ether.         She pulled her eyes open and saw Batistum staring down at her with the sadness of God. He licked his lips slowly, then kissed his fingers and placed them on her mouth, lingering there for a moment to feel her rapid hot breaths against them. He seemed to revel in the sight of her for a moment, eyes softening with thoughts she couldn’t understand, particularly not with the blood opening like a red rose over her front. “S-sire...” she moaned, letting her head fall into the pillows.         Batistum shushed her. He turned his back and hurried from the room.         “She needs rest...” he whispered, closing the door behind himself and looking sadly to the two maids, “Please leave her be for the afternoon. I think a few hours untroubled sleep would be the balm she needs.”         “Excellency,” one of the women whispered, “I fear the things she says of you. You must forgive her Lady, she means none of it. The devil guides her tongue but there is God in her heart.”         “I know this. I will love her always.”         Batistum laid both hands on the women's’ heads and whispered a prayer towards the closed door. Then he shut his eyes for a moment and left them, moving swiftly down the hall and calling for his servants. Two young acolytes in satin and silk approached hurriedly, keeping in step with him as he gave orders. “Prepare the carriage and hitch His Majesty’s four black steeds. I want them brushed and strung with the silver bridles. We shall enter the Graylands as is proper of our position. We shall give the late Duke the respect he deserves.”         “It shall be done, your Excellency.”         The two moved off and the Cardinal beckoned to a page before stepping into his chambers to wash a bit of blood from his fingers. “Send a messenger ahead of us to GrandMaster LeSait of the VKP,“ he murmured to the man, bending close to his ear and keeping his soiled hand hidden in the fine creases of his robe.         “LeSait...?”         “Tell him I am coming.”         Joshua smiled through the blood in his eyes, wiping it away like tears and reaching again for the knife. When he held it in his small hands, fingers clenching the hilt in a white-knuckled grip, Sydney grabbed for it, holding the blade in his claws where it could not cut him.         “What do you want with this?” he asked softly, in no way berating the boy, only desperate to know.         “He wants to kill me.”         “Who?”         “Him.”         He pulled away. There was the terrible screech of iron against iron as the blade slid through Sydney’s grasp and he stumbled forward a step, ready to give chase, yet Joshua had already fled. It was sunrise now, a beautiful dawn that he might reach out and hold if he wasn’t afraid of punching a hole in the sky with these vicious claws. He stood for a moment, staring down the dawn, daring the sun to rise again. It did so in its own time, spoiling the canvas with its gaudy palette, using colour without care.         “What ails thee, boy? Why do you haunt me here?”         “Sydney, you left me alone.” Joshua was sad, clutching the knife close and looking down at the sands.         “Left you?” the other asked, mocking himself, mocking the child, mocking fate, “I never came to you. You never knew me. Away to your mother and leave me be.”         “I can’t. Father... Father hated me and so might Mother.” The little boy shook his head fiercely, taking a step backwards.         “Do not speak so ill of the Duke. He gave everything for you.”         “N-no... you gave everything for me. Sydney, you left me alone. I hate you.”         The older one turned away, grey eyes to the sunrise. “You cannot hate someone you do not know.”         “Then you cannot love someone you don’t know either. How can you love Father? How?!” Joshua threw the knife away and Sydney saw the blood upon it. His lips parted with a question but Joshua turned again, smearing crimson from his lips and eyes. There was no way to know if the blood was his or another's but seeing it staining his innocent features struck up a panic in the man and he moved after him, calling his name.         “Joshua! Why do you say this? I loved Father! I knew him and I loved him and I want you never to forget all he endured to keep you from harm! To keep the burden of the bloodline from falling upon you!” Couldn’t the brat understand?! Couldn’t he understand the sacrifices that had been made and appreciate the deaths for what they’d been?         “Sydney,“ Joshua cried, the tears slipping down his cheeks, “I don’t want you to be sad...”         “Hardin... I think that perhaps Fate has a tome of recipes... ways to flavour every day. Our courses are foreordained; each meal carefully planned. We sit at the sideboard with the napkins at our throats and there is a dish for today, a dish for yesterday, a dish for the Saturday ten years from tomorrow. What wine goes with today? What dessert shall we have to accompany twenty-four hours flavoured with honey and spice? I feel I cannot eat anguish again upon feasting on that horizon. I feel I may never again be sad.”         Sydney spurred his horse towards the distant mountains of Rhysmoor, a tight feeling in his chest when he looked at the dazzling pink mists surrounding the peaks. He wanted to be lost in this moment, in those mountains, in that mist. He wanted to be this horse and lay in the grass with the sun beating his nut-brown sides. Hardin was laughing at him of course.         “Sometimes you talk like the biggest romantic in the kingdom. And yet you scoff at the players in the square.”         “Players who speak from scripts and breathe emotion learned from a dozen rehearsals,“ Sydney answered with a small laugh, urging the Arabian he’d “borrowed” from a VKP outpost’s stables onwards. “If there’s to be romance, let it be real and from the heart; breathed to life as suddenly as the flame upon a wick. I do not want Fate. I do not want the players’ scripts. I want days such as today to be welcome surprises. By the Gods, look at the sunrise over the mountains. What wine would go with that, say you?”         “Ooooh...” Hardin expelled a breath, his horse trotting in step with Sydney’s now, “Something sweet and fairly new. Ach, I have no knowledge of wines, do not ask me.”         “Quite the nobleman!”         “A true nobleman knows of more important things than wine. Mine was a poor share in any event. Our cellars harboured a fine vintage of rat but the barrels were dry. Poor. Why do you think I joined with the Peaceguard? But come. We cannot be out here palavering like knaves in the fields. These beasts have purposes, we didn’t make thieves of ourselves for sport.”         Sydney sighed a little, his spirits dampening over with the toil and drudgery of what was to come and what had come before. He slowed his steed, running his hard forged hands through its black mane and trying to recall what the feel of horse hair was. Rough silk, had that been it? Smooth but wilful, aye. He patted the animal a little, sensing the tight coils of muscle and sinew beneath the rippling skin with its fine short hairs. “Must we return?”         Hardin looked at him oddly, but only said, “Of course.”         “Think you they’d miss us if we rode off into those mountains and lived as hermits in the caves there?”         “They’re your people. They’d ride off after you to rescue you from your own eccentricities. Is something the matter? Why speak like this?”         The cultist shook his head and then turned to flash a reassuring smile at the man. He said nothing. There was nothing that he could say. He couldn’t... he couldn’t possibly explain the vision that had come to him in his sleep the night before, nor Müllenkamp’s prophecy which had become his own prophecy. He knew now, with a certain sort of awful clarity, what the next few months would hold for them all. Perhaps that was why he now felt so desperately parched for the beauty of the horizon and the thoughtless colours of the sky. “Maybe there’s the desire in me to run away,“ he spoke aloud, “Mayhap I am not as brave as I might be.”         The horses breathed loudly, the snorts from their muzzles appearing as white smudges in the cold, thin air. Sydney watched the phenomenon idly as Hardin watched him, trying to mask a concern that he knew was almost resented. “Why do you question yourself?”         “Because it would be so wretchedly easy to ride now into the mountains with naught save a saddlebag of bread and spend the rest of eternity hunting birds for fare and melting snow for my water, thinking upon naught save how beautiful the sun shining through the lace of leaves onto the brook is.” Sydney shook his head a little. “Strange how the spices have changed. But the rest of today, of last night, was still wonderful. It can revert now. I’ll keep the memories.”         “You speak of happiness as though it were this slippery thing you must hold onto and cherish for it doesn’t visit often, “Hardin said roughly, the beginnings of frustration in his brown eyes, “Tell me why you’re so damned sad all of the time, Sydney, so that I may do something about it. Is it the Duke? I think I’d murder the old bastard for you if you wanted it so. But it isn’t the Duke. It isn’t any sort of creature I might slay. It’s naught I may even see. You’ve seen something you didn’t like and now it haunts you while awake, not content to leave you as a dream might. What’s on your mind? Ease the burden, put a corner of it on my shoulder. Unlike you, I’m willing to have it. I offer.”         “Leave me be, John.” Sydney dug his heels rather roughly into the Arabian, seeking out a path through the grasslands and into the forests beyond, the road through which lead on to the Graylands and the awaiting cultists. Hardin watched his narrow back for a moment, snorted like one of the horses, then gave chase.         “If you wanted to be left alone,” he called, “You would have kept silent! You speak in metaphors and pretty words, Sydney, but ‘tis the language of a desperate man all the same. I understand that. When the others do not, I do!”         “I said leave me be!” Sydney turned around with a small snarl curling his lips, suddenly angry enough that even Hardin was forced to take notice. He felt the cult leader’s will press his own, and the order seemed suddenly unable to be ignored. He had a hard time even recalling just why it was they were out there at all until Sydney caught himself and put his ‘gifts’ away. Enough anger could trigger the power and Sydney was angry enough now that he might wipe Hardin’s memory clean. He sped his horse and galloped into the forest, his friend hard pressed to keep up.         “Do not run away from me!”         “I do not run, I ride,” Sydney answered with a bitter laugh, “Return to the others. I wish to ride about in the morning air for a while. Alone.”         “There will be VKP here soon,” Hardin protested, “As soon as they realize the thievery of their two best mounts they’ll comb the fields for us. I won’t leave you alone to be caught and butchered. As much as you think you might like that.” He brought his horse again to the side of Sydney’s, riding the beast hard and sorry for it yet he meant his words. They’d be hanged for stealing horses and while a noose ‘round the neck wouldn’t kill the prophet, the hanging itself wouldn’t be a very pleasant experience. He put a hand on the other horse’s bridle, guiding him alongside his own. Hardin thought he looked more furious now than he’d seen him in a very long time, yet he didn’t quit his intentions. "Don't be sad anymore," he insisted, taking some of the gruff from his voice, "Come back with me and tell me these things you see. I won't repeat them. You know you have my confidence."         Sydney seemed as calm and collected suddenly as Hardin had ever seen. There were years in his eyes that weren't his own and Hardin drew back, strangely reassured. "We shall raid Bardorba's manor in a fortnight."         "Why?"         "He's hiding something from us and if we're to hold onto the Wellspring, we must take it from him."         "I see. This is... hard... for you then? To rise up against him."         "Of course."         Hardin released the horse's bridle, staring down at his own. "And that is all? This sadness as of late? By hell, I am not sure why I ask you at all. You'll lie when it's convenient, when you tire of my badgering."         "So do not badger," the prophet returned with a small smile, "And I shall not lie."         The manor was burning to ruin. Great plumes of blood-coloured smoke rose up from what remained and into the midnight sky. Hardin stared at the spectacle, distracted even as he roughly slid his sword across an unsuspecting Knight's belly, peering over his shoulder at the heavens beyond. The Blades were pulling back, controlled by cries coming from men he could not see, Commanders sitting on horseback in the shadows who had been instructed to ride hard out of the Graylands before the VKP arrived to take down names and record testimonies of the witnesses.         This entire escapade had gone so far beyond their grasps that Hardin was no longer sure what was planned and what was not. Sydney’s brief and sketchy instructions now seemed a distraction from his true aims, ones he wouldn’t even share with his second in command. He barely cared that the manor was burning now. He'd even helped start some of the fires with D'tok.         "Pull back!" he ordered the cultists who still could walk, slicing an arm towards the gates as he sliced a sword hard against a helmeted head. The Knight cried out and charged him but Hardin parried the unskilled blow and countered with one of his own that slid between a chink in the Blade's armour and through two ribs, piercing the lung so that the men fell hard, blood bubbling up through the grill of his helmet. Hardin kicked him off his sword then retrieved Joshua from a comrade's arms, laying the unconscious child across his shoulder and following a group of his own from the Manor grounds. He heard D'tok roaring from inside, a pained bellow that bespoke ill tidings of both it and its Master.         Sydney!         Hardin called out to him in his mind, hoping he was both conscious enough to hear and able enough to respond. He'd left him bleeding and pale in the chapel with that Riskbreaker dog and his vicious sword. He should have stayed! WHY did he always follow Sydney's orders so blindly!?         Damn it!!         A wagon of straw caught a stray bit of fire and burst into sudden flames, sharp, cruel orange licking up the wooden sides and panicking their few horses so that they bucked and kicked at the hands of the cultists trying to reign them. "Just lead the beasts!" Hardin cried, shoving shoulders left and right, "Don't try to ride them, they'll only throw your carcasses to the dirt! North! Leá Monde NOW!"         "But the Blades are blocking the road!" a young man called to Hardin's left, features black, orange, garish by the inferno's glow. He could have been friend or foe, Hardin wouldn’t have been able to recognize him by this hellish light.         "Then put all able men in front, the wounded in the back, and pray that we have strength enough to overpower them. Sydney wants us to regroup in the woods outside the City, then we retreat into the stronghold. Break past the Blades, their numbers are as diminished as our own. Have faith, damn it!" Hardin growled an oath that the child on his shoulder would have blushed to hear, then flung him across one of the calmer horses and led him out past the courtyard and the sounds of fighting and fire. The Knights were an ever present menace lurking just out of reach of the light, steel flashing, armour glinting cruel and bright with the hellglow. They were cutting down Hardin's own men and he suddenly pawned the child-laden horse off on another cultist, flourishing his sword and plunging into the darkness to avenge the slain.         He took down a fair number of the Blades in the next few moments but he knew time was short. Already the horizon was lightening and dawn was a promise he didn't savour. The cover of the darkness was one they'd used to their advantage throughout this entire doomed campaign but now it was fleeing as their leader seemed to have fled, replaced by this gaudy dawn light.         They were half way out of the manor, held up at the gate by a line of Blades led by a brute with a weapon that seemed more axe than sword. Hardin danced about him, feigning rights while lunging lefts, fighting with the deadly skill of a well-trained noble who knew enough of the ways of a ruffian to use what worked and discard what did not. He fenced and he hacked; followed the fighting theories he'd been taught by a Master from books and scrolls, then threw dirt in the bastard's eyes when none of them worked. He drew back after a moment, the Captain exhausted (Hardin not much better off), and let a pair of his more capable men finish off the Holy Knight. Their numbers had been cut in twain by the more skilled swordsmen of the Cardinal and the invading Riskbreaker, and the survivors were tired and disheartened. Hardin gave the rabble a once-over with sceptical eyes, then ushered them quickly through the gates and away from the fires. He thought he’d seen Guildenstern among the retreating Knights and had no desire to tangle with the zealot now. His sword arm felt ready to give out and he was nursing half a dozen gashes from the eager steel of the Blades.         The group managed to reach the road, silent save for the neighing of the purloined horses and the moaning of the injured. Hardin paused a moment to check upon his charge, squinting to make out Joshua in the low light, then gasped to see Sydney standing at his horse's side, a claw on its neck and shushing it against the roar of the flames. Head bowed, expression thoughtful, he seemed concerned with little more than the horse and the child’s well-being, paying no heed to the chaos of battle. Charmed somehow, Hardin stared at him for a moment, wondering how he’d managed to slip from the manor so quickly, but then shook his head in impatience. He focused again on the path they'd hewn from their enemies and signalled to the remaining men of his cult to move out, horses trampling the bodies of the slain, Hardin at their fore and tidying the chaff. An occasional sword thrust silenced any man who'd been unfortunate enough not to die quickly.         The air was still thick and jumbled with shouts and fire but already the true cacophony of battle was dying away. They moved past the red hell that Bardorba's home had become and out into the back alley of the outskirts of the Graylands. They were close to the countryside and left the hovels and buildings behind after only moments, but the red glow lined everything and the panic of battle would not fade out of the air.         "That was... certainly more involving than I had anticipated," Hardin suddenly heard whispered into his ear. He jerked about and saw Sydney at his side, leading the horse with Joshua upon it. The swordsman gave a small sigh of relief, then gestured a hand towards the angry bloody puncture through the prophet's chest. He drew a bandage from a pack of supplies in a saddlebag and pressed it against the wound, authoritatively grabbing Sydney's right claw and placing it over the dressing.         "Press down."         "The bleeding's already stopped. How many have we lost?"         "Too many," Hardin answered with a shake of his head. He looked about at the men and few women stumbling along the rough trail at their sides, faces pale in the sickly dawn light. "At least half of our numbers lay now on Bardorba's grounds dead or dying. We're fortunate to have escaped at all. The Blades will surely follow as soon as they receive the Cardinal's commands. Did you dispose of the Riskbreaker?"         "I did as I was told to," Sydney answered a little wearily, coughing blood into the bandage, then gazing down with some interest at the puncture in his chest that had temporarily killed him. "I cannot think positively of D'tok's prospects. Poor beast."         "Poor beast? Poor us. Do we continue this madness? They'll follow us right into Leá Monde, Sydney. The city will be our grave for they'll seal us inside like rats in our hole."         "Let Guildenstern and the Blades be my concern." Sydney threw the bandage away and straightened, wincing a bit. He turned around and ran weary grey eyes across his small troupe, looking for faces that he cherished but now were not to be found. "He will answer for this, fear not. Someone, even if it is not ourselves, will cut him open and air out the apologies that surely must lie buried somewhere in his black heart."         Hardin sneered, waving his bloody sword idly through the air. "I don't care about apologies. I want the dead returned."         "Watch your tongue," Sydney answered lowly, "You seem to forget what lies at the end of this road."         "He wants to kill me..."         Joshua stooped over and wrapped shaking pale hands around the dagger, looking up with wide and frightened grey eyes at Sydney as he approached. The blood was terribly bright against his skin, snaking down from his hair and wrapping thin, irregular fingers about his features. Sydney was too preoccupied to concentrate on his insane words. He wanted to wipe away that blood, scrub off every last trace of it.         "Who, child? Who would ever want to do that?" He stood at his side a moment, staring at the blood-matted strawberry-blonde hair framing the round face, the wide eyes, then stooped down slowly and used a corner of his robe to scrub it away. Joshua trembled against him, looking to his dagger for comfort. There was blood upon the blade and Sydney asked him whose it was.         "I don't know... I found it and I'll keep it because it's sharp and maybe it'll frighten him 'way from me..."         "Frighten who?"         "Father. All the servants and Mother and Nanny too... they don't know. But I know because I can see in his head and he thinks about it always, all the time; during dinner and at mass and when everyone's asleep but him and me, he thinks it."         Joshua gazed forlornly at the blade, the bright crimson streaked steel reflecting a bright red line through his pupils. Sydney took it gently from his hands and then swept the little boy up in his arms, laying his head in the crook of his neck so that he could cry into the soft folds of his robe.         "Father loves you and me too," Sydney whispered, running a hard hand idly over the small back, "You mustn't say these things."         "Wh-why did you leave me?" Joshua sobbed, "You were the only one to ever look at me p-properly."         "What mean you?"         "I don't know... only I'm glad that Father's gone now... might he return? Might you? Sydney, I didn't want you to be sad... Don't be angry. Don't hate me please please please..."         Sydney held him tighter, not understanding. He stroked his head anyway, kissing his cold little earlobe. "He's gone. He's dead. He loved you. He loved me. Did you always know then?"         "I d-don't know... can I have the dagger back?"         "If it's defence against someone who might harm you, no. Because there is no such person. You are safe. Father's heir. You have to be safe." Sydney sat down and let Joshua hide in the hollow of his lap, still pressed against his narrow chest where it was warm and easy to get lost among the white folds of the big robe. He crouched there and sighed shakily, playing with the cloth though his bloody fingers dirtied the white.         “Why are you afraid I might hate you, child?” Sydney asked after a while, letting Joshua’s sniffles die down and the tears dry up in his eyes, “I’m actually uncomfortably fond of you.”         The little boy peeked his eyes up past a fold of the robe, hiding the rest of himself away. “I did not... I did not mean to do as I did...”         "And what did you do?”         Timidly, Joshua rose away from the folds and moved his lips up close to Sydney’s ear, whispering his secret. His brother’s expression didn’t alter to hear it. “Perhaps I do remember now...” he whispered after a pause, pushing the boy back down in his lap and shutting his eyes against the sight of him.         “Pl-please don’t be sad...” Joshua whimpered, “Don't be angry with me. I didn’t want you to be...”         “My state of mind should never have been your concern,” Sydney answered with a small sigh. He looked off at nothing for a moment, a thousand separate notions spinning themselves out behind his eyes, then glanced back down at the child, almost smiling. “A marvellous power you have, boy... marvellous, marvellous.”         Dead or alive, John Hardin had never before seen the streets of the Graylands so jammed with carriages and horses. What made the sight especially spectacular was the finery of them all; these were the trappings of the most powerful, wealthy men in Valendia. Every coach sported silver or gold furnishings, the horses were decorated in feathers and fur, bridles were the richest of leathers, drivers were the most endeared of servants. He’d had all of this at one point too. Maybe not to this grand extent but he’d ridden with his parents and brother through the fields and into town, dressed in fine linens with the bit of white lace at his throat bespeaking his gentility. Even when his father and younger brother had died and the lands had gone to him, he’d kept up the farce for a while; after the State had confiscated his serfs’ contracts and sold off the family manor, he hadn’t gone out in anything less than his best; gold-trimmed scabbard, cotton shirts, velvet waistcoat, scented oils touched to his temples and collar.         The entourage entered the drab city from the south and Hardin moved out into the road itself to jog at their sides. He peered into the windows and spooked the horses, chuckling soundlessly at their frantic cries. They couldn’t quite see him, he didn’t think that they could anyways, but they sensed him in a way; the ticklish touch of his formless fingers against their necks and his breaths against their own nostrils. Not breaths though, and not fingers, he reminded himself. Those were words he hadn’t need for any longer. It was just the ideas of these things that stayed with him.         The cobblestones were rife with conversations, especially among the drivers of the carriages who shouted back and forth at each other across the way. Most wanted nothing more than directions on how to navigate the Graylands’ twisting streets but Hardin caught wind of a few words that sparked some interest and he moved closer to make them out better.         “Fo’ fuck’s sake, Harold, ‘ave ye ever been in this fog-pit afore? Master tells me take ‘im ta Bardorba’s ‘ome but gives me naught save a lashing when Oi ask th’ way!” The driver cracked his whip irritably and the horses would have reared if he hadn’t then yanked the reins so hard that his knuckles whitened. Hardin narrowed his eyes and moved closer, peering interestedly at the driver and the “Harold” he was addressing, another man guiding a carriage side by side with his own. He scratched his head and grinned and Hardin could just smell the spirits on him. Most definitely not a good idea to be drunk and driving a carriage down these jammed streets but the rich Masters he worked for likely didn’t care.         “’Tis the biggest pile of boards in this God-forsaken ‘amlet!” Harold announced, waving an arm spectacularly towards Bardorba’s secondary residence, which was actually the second biggest box of boards in town, the first having been his primary home which even now lay in smoking ruins at the other end of the city. “They ‘ave ‘im laid up in state like some blessed martyred saint. I’ve never even heard of the fella but all of Parliament ‘as their stockings in a twist now that he’s died. My wife said she heard there hasn’t been a to-do this big since the Queen shoved off and ta look at alla these genteels, I believe it!”         Hardin thought it somewhat amusing that so many people had died last week and never even been granted a grave while here this one man’s passing, Aldous Bardorba’s, had garnered the attention of all of Valendia. If he had been of the right disposition, he might almost have grown bitter over the fact. But he dismissed it.         “Oi do not understand the fuss,“ the first driver spat, whipping his poor horses again until Hardin thought they might chew through their bits, “The man’s dead. Ain’t n’boatload o’ flowers nor the prayers o’ Cardinal Batistum ‘imself gonna make ‘im rise again. Mercy, let ‘im be dead in peace.”         Hardin perked at that. Batistum himself was going to be gracing the city with his presence today? Even after the troubles as of late in the Graylands? Ah, even more amusing! He’d never stepped foot in the Graylands, not for years, not since Sydney had come into the forefront and declared unabashedly to those who would listen that the men of Müllenkamp did not bow down to the same God as those of the Church did. It was unsafe for Batistum here, barely safe for him in his own Cathedral, as had been proved with assorted attempts on his life. But now, with Sydney and most of his followers dead, what had he to fear from the Graylands? Of course he was here this morning! This was his chance to physically bury Bardorba, a long-time enemy! He would be sticking him in the cold ground today, throwing the bloody dirt on his cursed casket. Oh, the old man had to be enjoying this, no doubt!         Apparently Harold was interested by this as well.         “The Cardinal ‘ere this mornin’?” he breathed above the clacking horse-hooves and the rattling of the dozens of carriages over the pavement, “It shouldn't be so. ‘Tis unfavourable weather for an elderly man with the damp in the air and those ungodly, blaspheming cultist scum still on the loose. They be the dogs that ‘ave murdered this Statesman. Low... dirty and low with that devil-clawed monster leadin’ the sinners. All I say is that these precedin’s be hasty. The air o’ this place stinks to high ‘eaven with sin and no God-fearing man would ever call the Graylands home.” Harold made the sign of the rood over his chest and forehead then took a swig from a little bottle he kept next to him on the seat. His driver friend nodded gravely and whipped his horses again, casting suspicious eyes towards the smouldering ruins of Bardorba’s estate still visible in the distance.         On a whim, Hardin looked into the interiors of the pairs’ carriages and briefly spied the faces of Parliamentary representatives from Valnain, grave and expectant as they were led through the foggy morning streets. He listened for helpful words but since they all were travelling separately, he found the conversations of their drivers to be infinitely more useful and entertaining. In one carriage though, he discovered a certain wealthy landowner whose name escaped him but whose past did not. He was seated in an elaborate white coach pulled by a pair of magnificent white chargers, laughing with some mistress in a waist-length white powdered wig. This fool had insulted him once. It had been in one of the northern provinces in a tiny livery while he’d been having a horse reshod. Hardin had known the knave from his noble days and they’d recognized each other that afternoon. He’d snubbed him. Hardin had been covered in mud, freshly arrived from a raid he’d led the other cultists in, looking as far removed from a genteel as it was possible to look and this horse’s ass had asked him if his father had disowned his son for him to have sunk this low.         “What is low about having this beast’s shoe replaced?”         “Oh, why nothing at all,” the pompous fool had answered, there only to pick out a new animal to be added to his menagerie, “But there is something decidedly low about a landowner and a noble covered in dirt like a swine in the yard. I wonder who’s trough you eat out of now, Hardin? And does your sainted father realize you spent the last of your inheritance to feed the pigs who eat out of it with you? Ha... prison life has changed you so much.”         As hard as it was now to feel true extremes of emotion (Hardin had found this to be the case; death granted a person a sort of apathy, an elevated state of mind that harshly disconnected him with many of his thoughts) he found himself burning to remember these things...         It was somewhat difficult to do, but he managed to work up enough force to knock a bolt from the wheel of the bastard gentleman’s carriage. He moved away quickly and eyed those gorgeous white horses prancing down the way, their wheeled burden gleaming in the sun, and then mentally winced when the entire contraption shuddered and tipped over, a gilded wooden wheel snapping off and popping from the axle with such force it hit the carriage next to it, alarmed the horses leading it, and sent the driver to cussing like a sailor and jerking his reins for all they were worth. The beasts whinnied frantically and reared up with their forelegs clawing the air, massive heads shaking back and forth as if to declare once and for all that NO, they would NOT pull the damned carriage any further, and then their driver whipped them soundly on the flanks and jerked their reins about expertly, reminding them that AYE, they HAD to pull the damned carriage further, much further, and they would behave whilst doing it or be made into glue!         Hardin would have laughed aloud if he’d been able. He moved back to survey the white carriage as it lay tilted completely to one side in the middle of the muddy road, the remaining wheel creaking dangerously. Its occupants tumbled out after a moment and slid into the mud, the woman’s wig slipping off and her pretty black satin dress catching against a wooden lip of the coach and tearing open. The noble shushed her squealing then climbed painfully to his feet to yell at his driver, everyone about laughing like mad.         Not exactly a respectful scene for a funeral-going crowd to be involved in but Hardin found it amusing. He kicked a wind up with a short phrase in Kildean and knocked the noble back a few paces, in death giving him the shove that he never would have dared given in life.         All in all, very satisfying.         He left the scene behind after a moment of gloating and moved a good bit up a rise in the road to make out what lay beyond. It was a very pretty morning in the Graylands despite the coachmen’s complaining of fog; surely it was misty but the sun shone through it and made rainbows, breaking through the overcast like a little smile on an old woman’s face. The worn buildings were a comfort to him and he thought surely he could make eternity interesting enough by haunting this place.         He did not mind the wand’ring fate. Hardin had been rather surprised by this revelation.         Perhaps he should more accurately think he did not mind this wand’ring fate yet. Most likely, he now reasoned to himself as the noise of the scuffle he’d caused died away behind him, it could grow quite wearisome. He had nothing. He had no one. Perhaps Sydney might stay by his side for a while but he knew very well what happened to souls that lost their reason in death: they faded away. Or at least, something happened to them and then they weren’t heard from anymore. This caused him a moment of sadness but as he’d already observed, it was not a very profound sadness. He couldn’t grasp those old feelings anymore. Perhaps it was the airy feeling of being unbound to flesh that caused what was almost apathy, perhaps it was because he’d been fulfilled when he’d died, but he couldn’t keep a hold of extreme emotions anymore. He thought upon the world around him now with a certain sense of benevolence. It was a pretty good world. He liked it. He’d stay and he’d be content.         He liked the way the sky looked this morning. And even the funeral blacks that the mourners wore had a certain sheen... a certain tendency to recede in his vision... that he found pleasing to gaze upon. He smelled quite keenly the fresh wet scent of the grass and the rank of the horses was alive and almost tangible. The people all about him with their lives and their words were like living novels and he wanted to read them just as Sydney read them. He wanted to use his magick, which seemed closer to him now than it ever had before, and ravage those of them he didn’t like. Perhaps become some sort of mischief-making spook. Heh, he was off to an excellent start. Hardin wanted to laugh. He tried to, wondering if Sydney could hear the sound.         But the cultist had disappeared. Perhaps he’d faded already and that possibility put a stop to Hardin’s lighter thoughts.         The line of the carriages were stopping in the wide avenue before the ducal home, drivers leaping down from their seats to tether the horses and help their masters and mistresses step down from the interiors. Most of the city had draped black cloth above the lintels of the doorways of homes and businesses as a sign of respect towards Bardorba’s passing but the Duke’s home beat them all out, black satin hung from every window and the double-doors themselves painted a clean, mournful ebony. These latter were flung open to admit the newcomers, servants standing attention at the doorways to receive flowers, coats, and pass out food. Hardin thought the whole affair was ridiculous. None of these people had cared two figs for Bardorba. They were here for the paté and the wine. And because this had escalated into some bizarre social event where they each could measure their statuses against each other. Damned aristocrats. He didn’t miss that rat race in the least.         ...Hardin?         He turned about suddenly and there was Sydney.         The prophet was standing in the grasses and seemed lost, as though he’d stumbled accidentally from a path through the woods and now was turned about in the trees. But at least he looked better than he’d seemed the other times Hardin had glimpsed him. It was no difficult task to judge a soul’s state; it inevitably showed up in whatever mental projection of themselves they cast out; what the ‘eye’ of those who could ‘see’ perceived. Hardin saw Sydney now as he’d appeared in life, more or less, only perhaps a good deal less haughty and with that lost look about him. His grey eyes were blank though they weren’t exactly the windows to the soul that they might have been when alive and so were no longer the best way to judge his thoughts. But just the fact that he appeared with any semblance of his old self intact was heartening to the other man. These past few days he’d either been distorted, some younger version of himself (everything from a little boy to a screaming armless youth with blood gushing from his shoulders), or simply not there at all. Hardin approached him tentatively, keeping his own projection firm. He made himself appear to be John Hardin, aged twenty-nine, former noble, former Peaceguard captain, former Müllenkamp cultist, currently one of the wand’ring results of an incomplete death. He raised a formless, friendly hand and then found that perhaps his emotions weren’t as dulled as he’d supposed. The look on Sydney’s face now made him want to crumble.         ...Hardin... they bury my father today?         Aye. But ‘tis meaningless, Sydney, you know that. Just a body. Your father went wherever it is we go after we die. Heh, strange to have suffered the same and be yet ignorant of that destination. Ah, well.         Sydney didn’t seem to process the information, if he heard it at all. His form now was more a subconscious effect than an intentional one and Hardin winced when it cut out for a moment, as though the cultist were suddenly too preoccupied to bother.         Refrain from f-fading just yet, Brother... I have missed the sight of you... He smiled sadly, and wanted to reach out a hand to lay upon his shoulder yet had control enough to realize that would be foolish, there was nothing there to grab. Sydney reappeared for a moment and stalked out over the rise in the road, unheedful of the horses or the last few carriages still trickling in from the highway. After staring off at the mansion in the distance for a while, he started towards it, barely visible with the warm white morning sun washing him out entirely. Hardin followed with caution, keeping some bit of distance between them. He noticed Sydney’s left arm was positioned strangely, as though he were holding some figure, a child perhaps, against his side as he made his way. Glad enough that he was coherent again, Hardin didn’t question him as they drew closer to the funeral, eager only to keep him in his sights.         Dappled in the cool blue shadows of an ancient willow situated just to one side of the main gate of the Bardorba grounds, Ashley Riot was eager too. He’d picked the perfect disguise, cloaking himself in the appearance of a dung-smeared monk from the countryside, feet bare and burlap robes as putrid and tattered as he could manage. He kept the hood pulled close up around his face to conserve his concentration, not wanting to hassle himself with magicking his features until it was absolutely necessary. Besides, the smell of the horse manure he’d smeared onto his robes kept these powdered and primped aristocrats from stepping too close. He sneered in their general directions, expression hidden in the shadows of his disguise, but occasionally raised a right hand and blessed random bypassers, whispering a prayer in the Dead Tongue that so many of the zealous old hermits spoke and that now, he seemed to be able to speak too. When he thought hard enough upon it.         The words came easily as most knowledge did when he so required it, as though he now held the wisdom of forever inside some secret part of himself. But that was just one of a thousand random, idle observations he'd been making ever since his return from the City. He found he was a stranger to himself now, that Müllenkamp seemed more familiar to him than he did. He was filthy with the Dark, filthy with the successorship of a bloodline that had never been his own and he couldn't see what he'd been past the dirt any longer.         Really, he felt as though he had very little self left at all. There was only the ever-vicious will of the ever-present Dark that always demanded his attention, knowing full well that he would have to heed. Ashley would find himself grown dizzy sometimes with the Dark's want of him; how it bantered and sang in his mind and ears, all the while moving in and out of his soul as though it owned him. He truly imagined himself to be a conduit for the thing and it treated him exactly like its possession now; a living thing that realized its presence fully and would always act in its best interest.         The stench of the manure in his clothes was overpowering. Ashley hazarded a quick fresh breath by craning his neck back and letting a small part of the hood fall away from his face, exposing a bit of the cool morning air. He had thought the Dark might be a stronger presence in the midst of all these people. After all, it fed upon souls and the most negative of human emotions. The looks of disgust infesting these genteels’ faces might keep it satiated for weeks, he imagined. But to his surprise, the air was calm and the buzzing drone of the Dark was minimal. He heard distant murmurs, vague, generalized ideas, but no real strong drive. Perhaps these many non-believers intimidated it. Heh. Sydney had taught him that the Dark depended much upon the belief of others to exist and to act. So what would happen once all the believers had died or moved on? Would the Dark cease? Or would it simply sleep and grow, a fat dragon feeding off tribute and unchallenged, awaiting the next knight that might try to capture it, use it, force it from the cave to do battle?         Bah, he’d had enough of speculation. He needed to find Sydney. He could ask Müllenkamp later, tonight perhaps, just why it was the Dark was so finicky with where it would manifest and where it would not--         And then, like a kick in the head, the small powers about him began whispering like tiny elves, tiny invisible tree leaves sliding ‘gainst each other in the breeze and Ashley had to physically shake his head to clear it. Pulling closer the hood about his features, he moved past the stone gate leading to the Duke’s home and stood just inside the walls beside a city guard, causing the man to curse and walk quickly away, holding his nose and shaking his pike viciously at the air. There was a pick-up in the noise of the mortal crowd as well as the whisperings of the Dark and dead, and Ashley narrowed his eyes, keenly peering beyond an arrow-slit in the walls.         It was hard to see past the crowd of servants and funeral-goers but there was a grand black carriage clattering towards the gates from the road, powered by two pairs of expensive black horses. It was a fine show of respect, so much black for the dead, but there was more awing the crowd than that. Ashley heard mutterings of, “...the Cardinal..!” from more than one tongue and then shook his head hard, agitated. The buzzing in his skull from the disturbed forces was making it hard to focus, just as it had before when he’d fled the guards. This nonsense was quickly getting old, he needed to be given time to learn about himself before being plunged into all these blasted battles! He pounded a fist into the wall and clutched a fold of his dirty robes to be sure they were properly concealing the sword he had sheathed at his side. He was armed to the teeth beneath the monk’s frock actually. He’d paid a short visit to an armoury the evening before and hadn’t left much behind.         “Clear the way there! You! To the side ‘fore I smash your head open!”         Half a dozen guards thundered across Bardorba’s grounds suddenly from the Manor itself, armed and armoured. Ashley kept his head bowed and his back hunched, watching from half-lowered lashes as they burst through the gate and started flinging bystanders away, clearing a path for the new arrivals. They grabbed a hold of the black horses’ bridles and led them to the curb side, then the captain graciously stepped towards the carriage door to open it and escort His Excellency to the proceedings. The Cardinal’s servants wouldn’t have it though. The driver leapt down from his perch and swung at the guard until he backed off, then called for three of his comrades, uniformed Crimson Blades of the Church who’d ridden clinging to the carriage’s sides all the way from Valnain, to come forth and lead the Cardinal themselves. The guard captain wasn’t fond of being pushed around by a lot of loud-mouthed zealots but after a moment’s thought, he stepped aside. It was common knowledge that the Cardinal of the Iocus Church was God’s own representative on earth. He was to be treated with deference and respect and never served by anyone save ordained priests or acolytes.         Ashley tried to see Batistum’s exit from the carriage but the crowd closed in suddenly to catch a better view of the holy man and all he could make out was the sight of a dainty white, ring-studded hand grabbing hold of a servant’s outstretched fingers, and then the quickest glimpse of red satin. Ashley cursed in disappointment. He’d never seen the Cardinal with his own two eyes before. He was a mite curious.         The crowd shifted, moving like one rippling mass, and then the Cardinal and his entourage passed through towards the manor. Ashley trailed behind, shifting the crowd in his own right as the onlookers struggled to move away from the stench of his disguise. He was almost laughing at the reactions but then he cleared his mind and decided this was no time for levity. He’d stood watch at the front gate in hopes of catching Sydney’s entrance but either the cultist had used some other way in or he’d come in disguise for he certainly hadn’t passed under Ashley’s hooded eyes. Touching one hand to the concealed hilt of his sword, he moved slowly over the crisp, dew-drenched grass and towards the crowds forming about a stage newly built near the Bardorba’s burial grounds. He lost himself in those crowds but kept the Cardinal’s group clear in his sights. Finding Sydney had not been his only purpose in coming here this morning.         “There shall be a man posted at every dozen paces of the perimeter,“ Merlose instructed quietly with ease she did not feel, “Loud, obvious, alert. ‘Tis of the utmost importance that the people feel safe today, and well-guarded. What be that? A sword?” She tapped the pommel of a blade one of the young Inquisitors had tucked through his belt, “Move it out of sight, Wellington. We want to inspire safety, not fear. The sight of weapons stirs their unease. Understood?”         There was a collective nodding of heads from the group of young VKP guardsmen and Merlose answered it with a nod of her own. She’d never been put in charge before and the experience was unnerving to say the least. She felt a degree of responsibility not only for these cadets but for every man and woman in the crowd today. LeSait had assured her that simple guard duty was a small task but this was the first time she’d ever been given complete control of a mission before. No partner, no senior Inquisitor to check with nor confirm her decisions... just herself and her own judgement. Merlose shook her head a bit then motioned slightly to dismiss the guardsmen. There were seven of them, each hand-picked by LeSait himself. There were to be no complications with the services this morning. Not only was almost all of Parliament in attendance but the Duke of Dursbury and Cardinal Batistum as well. Bardorba had had many friends among the elite and that was shown this morning quite apparently. Merlose saw figures here she was sure hadn’t emerged into a social situation in decades.         “Zounds... that’s arch-bishop Jonesby from over the mountains... they say he wears women’s clothing beneath his frock on Sundays. And there be Lady Veronica, Jonesby’s mistress. ‘Tis said he can’t wear her dresses though, she’s too fat around the middle. Ha! Sir Delacroix! He was caught with his pants down, alone in the barn with a sheep!” Hadley broke into chuckles and wrapped his arms about himself, amazed at the faces in the crowd. Some were hard to pick out with all the servants bunched about them but what sights there were to see today. Merlose spared him a disgusted glance then moved off through the rabble.         “You shame the VKP,” she said as she made her way, “You are in training to be an Inquisitor.”         “In sooth, I know it,“ he answered, straightening and tucking his grin away, “So I share the information I’ve gathered. Is that not my job?”         “Worthy information,” the woman retorted, lips pursed in impatience, “Helpful things, useful things, things of import.”         “Ah, my cheeky vixen,“ Hadley cooed, placing a loving hand on her elbow, playing mock-escort as the crowds jostled them, “If you wish to teach me a lesson, I can think of more worthy subjects...”         Merlose paused for a moment, then stepped backward with the sharp heel of her left boot and ground it into the young man’s toe. She twisted it a bit until he yelped and let go of her elbow, then continued on her way. “T-truly... the gods granted you an excess of spirit, my lady...” Hadley smiled painfully, checked his shoe leather to see if he was bleeding, then hurried after, bedazzled.         Keeping the figure generous, Merlose would have guessed upon an attendance of nearly seven-hundred spectators here this morning. Between Parliament, family, servants, and Valendia’s elite, as well as a good percentage of the Clergy whom Bardorba had wooed to serve his own devices, the crowd was impressive and quite varied. All in all, there was very little to be anxious about security-wise. The VKP’s main concern lie with whomever it was that’d actually murdered Bardorba, whether it had been Ashley Riot, Cultists, errant Bladesman, or simple thieves. Merlose however had a certain edge over LeSait’s speculative knowledge. She, for one, knew for a fact that Riot was innocent. She also knew that a devastating number of Müllenkamp cultists and Crimson Blades were laying dead in Leá Monde. LeSait would not acknowledge her reports without clear evidence and at least a few retrieved corpses, so he was prepared for the worst. Even though attacking at the Duke’s funeral was not at all Sydney or the Cardinal’s style. Merlose was a good deal less edgy.         Still...         There were hooded figures in this crowd, certain men and women who would not meet the Inquisitor’s eyes when she looked upon their faces... she did not trust some of these strangers, not even many of the aristocrats who stepped away from her in distaste, noses in the air. She glanced towards the edge of the rabble to be sure her guardsmen had stationed themselves as instructed and gave a reassuring nod in their direction. There had been no Riskbreakers nor true seasoned fighters here in the Graylands, they’d had to settle for these recruits and newly initiated agents. They were capable, more than capable, but they were nervous at the large number of people. It was hard to manoeuvre amid a lot of civilians and extremely difficult to get a clean survey of the area. Merlose didn’t question their anxiety at all.         Hadley on her heels and muttering occasional comments about the passing bystanders, she worked her way up to the front of the masses. The Bardorba family’s burial grounds were very small and nearly unoccupied, situated just to the northeast of the secondary residence. Having hailed from Leá Monde, the Duke’s line were interned in its soil as was tradition. With the city gone, new grounds had been consecrated here in the Graylands almost two dozen years before when a young Bardorba son had drowned in a pond, grieving his father and sending the household into a state of mourning some residents claimed it had never really emerged from. Merlose gazed specutively at the small, unremarkable tombstone tucked away in a corner of the iron-gated grounds and narrowed her eyes, wondering exactly who, if anyone, was buried beneath.         Fortunately the rest of the well-kept cemetery was as of yet bereft of residents, though after today’s services that would change. A roughly worked wooden stage had been erected against the back fence and draped with black sackcloth and flowers, brass braziers worked over with roods emitting the fragrance of incense. The casket had been moved to the base of the platform only moments before, carried with prestigious pomp by a team of clergy and Knights, each great friends (or so it was claimed) of the late Duke. It had been sealed first in rosewood, then another casket of oak, and would be placed in a great marble tomb Bardorba himself had had commissioned while still alive. It was a great luxury of the rich, that, to not only be buried in the air but to be ensconced in marble as though one were gold and not rotting flesh.         Arrangements of white lilies were being draped over the casket now and a pair of falcons sat in cages at the head and foot, cawing restlessly at the noisy crowd. Iocus tradition would see the birds slain and their feathers scattered about the floor of the tomb to help fly the soul to Heaven; an old superstition began by heathens but that the common folk would not surrender to time.         “Methinks this man was more King than senator,” Hadley said lowly, quite impressed.         “Bardorba was a gentleman of the people,” Merlose answered, “The power and the popularity are worth far more than the gold. See the Church men in attendance? From the alters of Valnain. They won’t allow the pagan rituals that Bardorba secretly practiced, nor even let it be known he practiced them. An illusion, was the Duke’s piety towards Iocus. He attended the ceremonies and accepted their customs but he was always of Leá Monde and Kiltia, not far removed from the beliefs of Müllenkamp. If this was known, his burial would not be allowed and so the Church must keep his secret. The people would not like to see his body put in some unmarked grave nor burned like a warlock’s in the pyres of the Sinner’s Field.”         “But they do know?” Hadley asked, “Even old Batistum?”         Merlose nodded, raising her voice a bit to be heard above the chattering of those around her, “I do not doubt it. It lies in their better interests, however, to play along with the game Bardorba started. There have already been revolts over his murder and the rumours of the State’s involvement in it and in the slaying of his household. The situation is tight. They would not see it grow any tighter. Never underestimate the Church. They are far from naive. I think if the VKP would accept that instead of always tip-toeing a--”         “Wretch! Watch it!” Merlose turned about sharply in time to see Hadley slam some poor travelling Monk in the side, then sneer in disgust at his smell. “I doubt it would offend God too terribly if you took a bloody bath, brother!” The hooded man drew up in anger, a strange action for a pious travelling monk, then shoved it down and continued along on his way, humble once more. Merlose was half-tempted to tail him, something about the fellow raised her hackles, but Hadley’s whining was distracting. “Aren’t we monitoring who’s allowed here today? Is this to be an affair of every transient in the city? Gods!” He had manure all over his hands from shoving the monk and was looking for somewhere to wipe it. He caught sight of another monk, this one seeming a good bit more apathetic than the last and with a nice big white robe that looked like it almost might be fun to smear with dung. Hadley followed through with the urge then walked quickly away, whistling a song.         “We cannot monitor a funeral,” Merlose answered huffily as the clergy began to file upon the nearby stage, “We can only make sure that every soul here, transient, aristocrat, or otherwise, is safe from marauders. So keep a sharp look-out.”         “Aye, aye, my lovely...” Hadley said dismissively, picking at his fingernails with a tiny iron dagger he’d produced from a pocket. With a little burdened sigh, he looked towards the stage for a moment, kicking at any of the rabble that came too close. “Here come the Iocus slime.”         The crowd was disturbingly noisy for funeral-goers. There was no solemn hush nor moans nor sounds of weeping. True, a handful of faces seemed genuinely saddened and there were a few tears, but Bardorba had been a recluse for many years and though the idea of him was to be mourned for its passing, the man himself was largely unknown and misunderstood. With the arrival of the priests however, that expected hush began suddenly to ripple over the crowd, commencing with the group closest to the platform and then travelling in a backwards wave so that even the chattering nobles felt oppressed by the silence and stilled their tongues. Ashley quit his trek forward for a moment, biting his lip in distraction. Some sudden sensation gave him cause to touch the sword again beneath his robe and his fingers itched with instincts his conscious mind couldn’t comprehend. He went still, like a startled hare, then turned his head sharply towards where the rest of the crowd now gazed.         The clergy-men had left the Manor and were approaching the grounds in a solemn, glittering line. There were impressive names to be found in that snaking double column of holy men, a long line of almost two dozen practitioners, Lady Bardorba and young master Joshua tailing the end of it, the former holding on to the Father’s arm. The grounds about them were a beautiful emerald green that seemed almost to bleed into the overcast sky, a pale sun poking through at the heaven’s eastern rim. With all the colours of the procession it was like a moving patchwork scarf trailing down the grasses. The chant of the requiem was a solemn but lovely song that accompanied their passage and for a single moment, Ashley forgot why he was there and just watched the pretty display. But not for very long.         There were a few hooded figures accompanying the group and an on-looker would have noticed they seemed to hover closest to Cardinal Batistum, who had situated himself near the middle of the approaching line. Nearly at the forefront of the crowd and so close to the upraised platform behind the casket that he could have laid his palm flat upon it, Ashley finally got a good glimpse of Batistum. He was immediately impressed by how tall and sturdy the man appeared. He had long ago reached his sixtieth year and the wisdom of age was apparent in his features and the glimmer of his dark eyes but his stature had yet to bend at all and there was obvious power in his stride. His beard and hair had entirely silvered, blue eyes lay deeply buried in wrinkles that made them seem kindly. His face was long to match the general sense of verticality about him and the lines of his robes, hanging to his ankles with a black sash about his neck for the services, gave his figure a flowing elegance that indeed seemed Divine. His dress was bright crimson and against the green grasses, almost vibrated with contrast. Like a target he stood out against the lawns; the little scarlet centre of an archer’s mark. Was he so arrogant that he wanted to be the most remarkable figure in attendance, Ashley wondered, or was he trying to emit some false sense of vulnerability?         There were no such speculations from the