"Stars above! What an utterly shambolic state of affairs."

  Those were the words of Elket Qelas, Prime Militant and Second Pillar of the nation-state Shalashar, upon hearing the conclusion of her younger brother's report. And to those harsh words did said brother's eyes narrow at once, and his beard crinkled in such a way that one might very well imagine displeasure writ large across an unshaven face. "Seriously, Ralan," she goes on, heedless of his disapproval, "I would have thought this a practical joke, had I ever thought you capable of being funny."

  "And I," the big man at the head of the table rumbles back, "might have thought you capable of anything more than crass vulgarity and childish remarks, had I not known you for all of my life."

  This is an auspicious congregation indeed. Assembled here are the Four Pillars of the Shalasharan Star-Sanctioned Royal Government Apparatus—the aforementioned Prime Militant Elketteres Qelas, Prime Empiricist Yaujunasavan Daret, Prime Sorcerer Uskimikitano Hast, and Prime Celebrant Ralankasado Qelas—all gathered at this most portentous midnight hour in a chamber of strange grey-and-white-striped brick, of overlapping architecture and intersecting archways and half-risen walls all working in tandem to create a disorienting optical illusion. A great brass pendulum swings silently by, just beyond sight, and thus does the moonlight streaming in through myriad slits in the walls filter on, off, on, off, in perfect 4/4 time. Just about every facet of this chamber's unusual appearance is rooted in old Shalasharan tradition and steeped in eschatological significance; by this century, alas, there is no-one left to know or care why the whole of the Shalasharan Ziggurat is so damned strange to look at. So it goes.

  At any rate, Ralan Qelas—the Prime Celebrant, the political leader of this nation-state and the de-facto leader of this Governmental Apparatus—has just delivered his report regarding the death of Empress Ibis. A death in which he, of all four Primarchs, was most closely involved. Let it suffice to say that this report was far from what anyone at that table wanted to hear.

  "Oh, piss off," scoffs the Prime Militant, dismissing her brother with a wave of one hand. "Even you can't downplay this fiasco." Elket Qelas was a woman just over sixty years with silver-grey hair tied back in the most severe of buns; she was just as known for her legendary swordsmanship as she was for her acerbic tongue, and the blade on her belt was the implement by which the former very often backed up the latter. "This was supposed to be quick and quiet—we provide the blade, Taro guides the cut. Instead? A palace in flames! Thirty-four of our people dead! The consort—" she jabs a finger, "—that is to say, your son, lost in the wind! Which, by the way, regarding that other ludicrous sham: might I remind you all that we sold the Vokians a perfectly virile male Qelas and yet we still have, to date, no offspring to show for it!"

  "If the Empress was pregnant," notes Yauju, "then surely the child died with her."

  "Yes, thank you, very insightful!" Elket snaps back.

  "I'm moreso appalled at the waste of resources than anything else," the Prime Empiricist goes on, unperturbed by the Militant's growing choler. Yauju Daret was a narrow little sliver of a man sporting disastrously-thinning hair and a pair of round, wide-rimmed spectacles balancing carefully upon the bridge of his nose. He had a bad habit of chewing at his unlit pipe, and even now his fingers were drumming in complex polyrhythm upon the table below. All these tics were merely expressions of one simple fact—that Yauju was, at his core, a man who simply could not sit still. "Against my strenuous objections, we bequeathed to Taro Zhon no less than two of my Incipitors—and somehow he managed to get them both killed. By a Sorcerer, no less! The mind positively reels."

  Elket nods vigorously. "That's another thing: our intelligence said that Ibis was a dull-eye. How does she suddenly become such a powerful Sorcerer that she is slaughtering Negators?!"

  "Contact lenses," Uskimi cuts in, with her chin resting smugly upon folded hands. "To artificially dullen her eyes. It's an old trick. If you'd gotten me in front of her, I would've sniffed it out in an instant."

  "Please," Yauju rolls his eyes. "The Vokians would be mad to let you within even a hundred miles of their city."

  "Too true," Uskimi chuckles back, and with no small measure of self-satisfaction. The Prime Sorcerer was a skeletal, leather-skinned, heavily-wrinkled stick of an old woman—who was, in fact, actually just thirty-three years old. And that leathery skin was covered—quite literally covered—in thousands of tattoos, in swirling geometric patterns and concentric fractal rings and inscrutable symbols and vile runes and ancient names the likes of which only I and a select few other individuals can even still recall. From her earlobes dangle two copper scrolls, each engraved with thirty-three Significant Notations; from her neck there hangs a pendant of similar inscription, interwoven with the bones of several individuals long deceased. She wears at all times a thick blindfold over both her eyes. And there stands behind her, at all times, a singular stone-faced guard, who even now holds the tip of an obsidian spear against the small of her neck. This, you understand, is merely a sensible precaution. This is mere common sense.

  As this point, anyway, the Prime Celebrant declares "Enough," and raps his knuckles twice against the table. And at this point everyone quite promptly closes their mouths, because they all know there is a limit to that which the First Pillar will tolerate.

  Ralan Qelas was big. That was anyone's first impression of the Prime Celebrant. He was a broad-shouldered man of significant height, squarely and solidly built with a skull much akin to a flesh-wrapped slab of concrete—a flesh-wrapped slab of concrete the face of which was almost entirely obscured by a thick, bushy, immaculately-sculpted black beard. His eyes were like sparkling rubies. He wore fine, perfectly-tailored suits. And he was indisputably the most important individual in that room. He was certainly the only face and name that any Shalasharan peasant would know.

  Now, the Prime Celebrant leans forward, and folds a pair of huge ring-laden hands upon the table, and tells them: "There are two significant points to discuss."

  Reluctantly, Elket takes her seat. Yauju pushes up his spectacles and observes the proceedings with renewed interest, his hands having momentarily gone still. Uskimi, as always, just leans back and smiles to herself, and tilts her head towards the Celebrant as though she could peer right through her blindfold (she could not). Ralan waits, then, for just a moment, and then he goes on: "Point One. Taro Zhon has become blatantly antagonistic."

  "He blamed us for everything that went wrong," Uskimi clarifies, for the others, "then cut contact, and hasn't been heard from since." This was information she could not possibly possess, and yet none present were in any way surprised to hear her speak it aloud. One way or another, all Sorcery-abetted conversations seemed to reach Uskimi's ears in time.

  "His sister's been dead not even twelve hours and already the alliance is off?" Elket scoffs. "Guess the Z.Q. Pact won't be holding for too long, either."

  "That agreement died with Ibis," Yauju agrees somberly.

  "Looks like the war's back on," Uskimi chuckles—drawing glares from all three Primarchs that she cannot see but most certainly can intuit.

  "Well, shit," Elket sighs. "That's what we get for killing the smart one. So—now what? Should we just go and do something about this prick? Killing him gets a lot tougher after he's been crowned Emperor, you know. And past him there's no clear line of succession."

  "Ibis's assassination was a convergence of mutual interests and mitigating factors," Yauju objects, with a shake of his head. "Taro had Oculus looking the other way. That won't be the case anymore."

  "I concur," rumbles the Prime Celebrant, drawing the conversation back in. "Besides, our resources are now quite limited, and I am loathe to spend them carelessly. We still do not know the extent of the blowback to come from Ibis's death."

  "Blowback?" Elket scoffs, shooting her younger brother a sideways glance. "What are you talking about? Ibis is dead—she was friendless alive, and she's a rotting corpse now. And if there is any sort of blowback it'll be coming to the brother, not us. Right?"

  "Might I remind you all that my son, Tiger, is yet unaccounted for."

  Every head turns. Everyone shuts up. Ralan folds his hands once more, interlacing fingers wreathed in dozens of black-banded tattoos that mark him as a Sorcerer of no small ability. Ralan lets the implication sink in for just a moment longer before adding: "Her bodyguard, Panther, as well."

  It is Elket, of course, who speaks up first. "The one Ibis was sleeping with?" the Militant groans. "Oh, stars above, you've got to be kidding me."

  "It has been reported that neither was present at the time of the assassination," Ralan presses, relentless. "It has been reported that Ibis herself sent them away just five hours prior to her death."

  "Which means—" Elket starts.

  "She knew," Ralan confirms. "Ibis knew the attempt was coming."

  In the silence that follows, a dropped pin would have thundered like a cannon.

  "Worse," Ralan insists, jabbing one muscular finger right against the table, "Ibis knew the exact date and time the attempt was to be carried out. She knew, and now we know that she made at least one preparation in advance."

  "Perhaps I'm missing something blatantly obvious here," Yauju interjects, putting up his hands, "but if she knew, why didn't she try and stop it?"

  "That's exactly the point," Elket snaps. "This is Ibis we're talking about. Tiger and Panther are the scheme we can see. Now—"

  "—we have to worry about the scheme that we can't see," finishes Ralan.

  "Oh," is all the Prime Empiricist has to offer, to that.

  "Imagine it," Elket says—rising to her feet now, her usual crass vituperation banished in favor of a swordswoman's deadly focus. "Ibis works out what's going to happen to her, somehow. She knows she is going to die. And so she attacks the problem from every angle, runs every calculation she can think of, is up all day and night rolling the problem around in that giant, fucked-up brain of hers—only to come to the conclusion that there is no solution. No way to escape, no way to win. No way to survive. And imagine, now, how her focus must have shifted...and from then on out, Ibis is no longer planning for before, is she? No. From then on out, Ibis is planning for after."

  "What plans did her death set into motion?" Ralan agrees. "What plots, what contingencies were set whirling to life the moment Ibis passed on from this world? I worry there is so much that we do not see. But I am certain of this: Tiger and Panther are now her sole point of vulnerability."

  Silence. The pendulum swings one way. The room goes dark. The pendulum swings the other; the room goes sickly moonlit yellow. In this quiet moment one can almost make out the grinding of those colossal gears above, and the rush of air as the pendulum scythes by unseen.

  "So," Uskimi offers then, quite casually, "we hunt them down."

  "And erase them," Yauju agrees.

  "Tiger's your blood, Ralan," Elket notes with rare sympathy—not objecting, just offering a way out. But:

  "He's chaff," dismisses the Celebrant at once, with a wave of his hand. "I gave Tiger one chance to actually generate value for his family. Instead, he has knowingly done us harm. He is the very definition of a bad investment."

  "So a hunt, then," Uskimi grins, exposing two rows of rotting yellow teeth.

  "I have just the tool," Yauju cuts in, before anyone else can speak. "Ralan—let us discuss further, after the meeting is concluded. You would be wise to take me up on this."

  "Very well," Ralan nods, as Elket shoots the Empiricist a suspicious, narrow-eyed sort of look. "Yauju will set to the trimming of loose ends, and I shall oversee those efforts as need be. I shall also set to averting war with Vokia, if such a thing is possible. Elket, you shall set to preparations for if such a thing is not. I suspect you will have your work cut out for you."

  "Went real well for us the first time," Elket grimaces, and nods.

  To Uskimi, no task is given—because Uskimi does not govern. Uskimi is present only because she had at one point demanded a seat on the Governing Apparatus, and a newly-minted honorific as the Fourth Pillar of Shalashar. And when one such as Uskimi makes such a (relatively) simple demand, it would behoove any sane nation-state to swiftly and eagerly acquiesce. She was a woman to whom very few had the power to say no.

  "I'm telling you," yawns the Prime Sorcerer, "let's skip the whole long, drawn-out, miserable war that we all know is coming. Just cut me loose and I'll conquer Vokia overnight."

  "You would obliterate Vokia overnight," Elket shoots back. "At which point they'd unleash [-------], and then you two would probably end up sinking the damn continent while you were fucking arm-wrestling each other or whatever. Stars above, Uskimi, we're not having this conversation again. Give it a rest."

  "I concur," Ralan chimes in, as diplomatically as he can. "You, Uskimi, shall remain our last-ditch alternative. Know that the whole of Shalashar is, as always, eternally grateful for the threat of your protection."

  "Yes, yes, I know," Uskimi sighs, waving them all off. "Suit yourselves."

  "Now, you," Ralan says, turning to Yauju, "take me to see this 'perfect tool' of yours. Everyone else—this meeting is hereby adjourned."

  "Stars shroud our flawed human hearts," intones Elket, then, putting two fingers to her right shoulder, then eye, then throat.

  "Stars shroud our flawed human hearts," repeats Ralan, with the same gesture.

  "Stars shroud our flawed human hearts," repeats Yauju.

  "Good luck with that," Uskimi laughs.

  The door opens; a man steps in, steps to the center of the room, and then stands there at absolutely perfect attention. He is tall, well-built, of lean and corded muscle. He sports a crop of jet-black hair and a narrow mustache both. And he would be immediately, strikingly handsome—in a roguish sort of way—if not for the grotesque suture-scar ringing his skull like a crown. His irises are the sort of stark, startling blue that would ordinarily mark one as a particularly open Conduit. But this man is no Sorcerer, and he is a Conduit only by unusual technicality. This man, you see, is a very special case indeed.

  "Prime Celebrant," the blue-eyed man speaks, in perfect monotone, and his fist goes over his heart in perfect salute. "Hail to the Four Pillars. I am Incipitor-Errant Iteration Number Fourteen, known to all as Daiga. I am prepared to serve."

  It's freezing in here. Ralan hates this place; behind closed doors, he and his sister both refer to the Prime Empiricist's vast network of underground laboratories only as the catacombs. It is a name more apt than either of them could ever imagine.

  Right now the air reeks of soap, antiseptic, soil, and mildew all rolled together into one particularly offensive cocktail—and all of it is tinged, quite unmistakably, with the metallic texture of blood. That alone should suffice to explain the root of the Prime Celebrant's discomfort—to say nothing of the occasional distant scream. At any rate; Ralan observes this newcomer, now, for just a moment. And then that heavy iron-studded door swings shut, and he remarks aloud: "This is all you have to show me, Yauju? Another one of your Incipitors?"

  Daiga's expression does not change. He blinks exactly one time every ten seconds.

  "This one," Yauju says, with a narrow sliver of a smile, "is different." He steps forward, and puts a hand on the Incipitor's shoulder—to which Daiga offers no visible reaction. "I know you to be an observant man, Ralan, so I know that you must have noted his iteration number."

  "Yes. Fourteen. Quite low."

  "Oh, he's practically ancient history," Yauju grins. "Daiga here was one of my earliest prototypes, from back when I had just about mastered my techniques of cranial alteration and forced mental conditioning and what-have-you. At that time I had put the praxis before the theory—that is to say, I could warp my subject's minds in any way that I chose, but I hadn't quite yet nailed down what to warp them to. What the most efficient sort of agent might be. Nowadays, my ethos are simple—uncaring, unemotional, professional, and of course obsessively loyal. Every Incipitor you've ever encountered has been created in accordance with that final model."

  "The point, Yauju?"

  "The point," says Yauju, his grin growing even wider, "is that Daiga is different. Daiga is older. And Daiga has a mean streak."

  Daiga blinks on cue, and says nothing.

  "Go on," Ralan prompts, after a moment.

  "Just a bit of cruelty encouraged here and there," Yauju continues, stepping back now and pacing eagerly back and forth. His fingertips are drumming rapidly against his thighs. "Daiga pursues his prey with a vociferousness so very much unlike his peers, because Daiga truly loathes his prey. And that does, alas, make him terribly unsuited for the patient work of a bodyguard, or the careful subtlety of an assassin—but it also makes him an ideal headhunter. Believe me, Ralan, Daiga excels in his niche. I've had the privilege of watching him work," Yauju leans in close, eyes glittering, "and let me tell you, he is nothing short of ferocious once you set him on a trail." The Empiricist leans back and folds his arms with a look of great satisfaction, then concludes: "He might very well be my favorite."

  Daiga blinks again, right on time.

  Ralan's eyes are narrowed to slits. He observes the Incipitor very closely, with expression unreadable.

  Yauju stops pacing, and stops drumming his fingers, and waits for the verdict in taut silence.

  Finally, then, the Prime Celebrant rumbles: "His success rate?"

  The Prime Empiricist breaks into another grin.

  "In capturing or killing his quarry," declares Yauju, "Daiga's rate of success remains at one hundred percent. In twelve years of service he has never lost a mark."

  Ralan glances back, and meets the Empiricist's eyes.

  And then comes the verdict: "Fetch the Displacer."

  And so ten minutes later the three of them stand at the center of a carved stone dias, with walls of bubbling water rushing loudly on all sides. With them now is an emaciated man with a blindfold fixed tight around his right eye, and with a body covered in tattoos similar—albeit fewer in number, and subtly different—to Uskimi's own. And with him are two bald-headed servants, one with a bucket and one with a mop. These two are here to deal with the inevitable mess to follow.

  "I will speak now the fourth-level open command word," intones Yauju, whilst all but full-body jittering with excitement, "You, Ralan, will speak the parameters, and then I will speak the close word and the instructions will be set. Once assigned, Daiga will be physically incapable of deviating from said parameters. Once set, your instructions can only be amended via that same fourth-level command word or by my own fifth-level—"

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  "Just say the damn word already," Ralan snaps, with rare impatience. The Empiricist's blatant glee was by now beginning to grate, and Ralan knew there would be many hours to come before finally he could return to his bed. Another long night of stimulants, then. So be it.

  At any rate: "Incarnadine," says Yauju.

  Immediately, it is as though the Incipitor is a man possessed. A great tremor passes through the whole of his body and then abruptly Daiga is standing even more stock-still and rigid than before, with every muscle in his body now clenched painfully tight. His pupils are dilated to the tiniest of pinpricks; his teeth grind noisily together, one row against the other. The Incipitor's whole form seems to vibrate with some manner of fiercely-restrained energy; he seems to Ralan, in that moment, very much like a hound slavering at the end of a leash. And so the Prime Celebrant takes one single, unconscious step backwards.

  And then he remembers who he is, and where he is, and what he is doing. And so: "Daiga," says Ralan, and now for the first time the Incipitor is looking him dead in the eye with startling awareness. "You are to track down and pursue two individuals: Tiger, my seventhborn son, and Panther, the former bodyguard of the deceased Empress Ibis. Tiger is to be returned to the Government Apparatus alive, though if need be you may wound or cripple him in any such way that his mind remains undamaged. I personally recommend that you amputate his right hand and remove his right eye for expediency's sake. Panther is simply to be killed on sight by whatever means you deem most efficient. There are a cadre of undercover agents embedded in the Vokian province of Kaino; you are to rendezvous with their leader, Tertiary Lodestone Kizannokas Krell, and coordinate your efforts to track down and neutralize the assigned targets. You will likely be competing with agents of Taro Zhon's Oculus division as well; you may kill them, or any other Vokian commoner, if they are impeding your presently assigned task. Now, I have here—" he holds up a leather-bound tome, "all the information you will need, as well as childhood items of Tiger's with which his Aia can be tracked. All other relevant information will be provided onsite by Tertiary Lodestone Kizannokas Krell, to whom you are second-level subservient."

  All of this Daiga receives painfully unblinking, eyes reddening and watering, his gaze boring a hole right through the center of the Prime Celebrant's skull. A few more fraught seconds pass—and then Ralan says, "Yauju, I'm done."

  "Vermillion," says Yauju.

  And abruptly it is as though a great weight has been lifted from the man's shoulders; Daiga lets out one enormous breath and sags, then immediately returns to his full height, eyes now aware and alert and dilated all the way to wide black spheres. He seems almost an ordinary person now, his shoulders and chest rising and falling in proper time with his breathing, and with so many of those other unconscious little tics and fidgets have returned in full. Yet still does the Incipitor seem to hold just a mite too unnaturally stiff—and still, even now does he blink only in exact ten-second intervals.

  Then Daiga looks Ralan right in the eye once more—offers the Celebrant a perfect, dashing smile—and says: "Of course, Primarch. It would be my pleasure."

  Ralan shoots Yauju a skeptical glance; the Empiricist just grins, and shrugs his shoulders, and offers no explanation beyond, "He's a tad bit eccentric." But even then, Ralan notices that Yauju no longer pats his most-favored Incipitor upon the shoulder, and that the Prime Empiricist now keeps a very careful distance indeed.

  Now, the Displacer is beckoned forth. "Hail, Primarchs," says the tattooed man, with a brief bow at the waist. He jerks his head at Daiga, then prompts quite bluntly: "This is the subject?"

  "This is he," Ralan confirms. "The location is Kaino, Vokia. Do you have it?"

  "Yeah, I think so," the Displacer mutters, closing his left eye. He is silent for a few moments, then muses aloud: "Hmm. Would the town hall be acceptable? Big building, long and narrow, lots of witnesses milling about—but lots of alleyways to hide in, too. I think I could make it work."

  "Perfectly acceptable, thank you. There and straight back—no delay, or all the standard consequences will apply."

  "Of course."

  And so Ralan steps away, donning his overcoat once more—as, behind, the Displacer puts a hand around the Incipitor's wrist and asks: "You've done this before?"

  "Many times," comes Daiga's eerily smooth reply.

  "Great—so none of the usual crying, or screaming, or throwing up..."

  "Nope. Just the blood."

  Ralan descends stone-carved stairs and does not look back. Ralan puts it all out of his mind from the moment he turns away, and now he turns said mind to the vast myriad of looming threats to his country—as the Displacer pulls down his blindfold, and the whole chamber goes red, the temperature jumps three degrees, and everyone's ears pop at the exact moment the Displacer says "Shift."

  Casso Vos wakes up with a pounding headache.

  Casso Vos rolls, with great pain, onto his side.

  And when Casso Vos's blurred vision finally coalesces into a solid image, the first thing Casso Vos sees is a table littered with so many bottles like trees in a forest of filthy glass.

  Something reeks. Casso glances down and realizes he has, or had at some point, pissed himself. And this revelation is oh-so-swiftly punctuated by a ferocious series of knocks against his door, knocks that ring out somehow in perfect time with the throbbing pain of his skull.

  This is a bad morning. Or, to be more accurate: this is the latest in a very long series of bad mornings.

  "Alright, man, alright," Casso mutters—to himself? To the door? To all the spirits above and below?—as he rolls out of bed, lands quite painfully upon the floor, then hauls himself upright and staggers across the room. The knocking grows louder and more insistent by the minute. "Fuck's sake, you fuckin' prick, I hear you." Casso picks up a long-bladed carving knife—actually, he yanks it out from the table in which it was buried—and when he arrives at the door, Casso embeds said cutlery into the wall just beside that all-important Very Loud Door. He puts the knife there because he might or might not want to use it, depending on who it is that's just woken him up, and he's having the wall hold onto it because right now his own grip is tenuous at best.

  Casso really does not feel like opening that door.

  Nevertheless, he does. And when he does, he immediately finds himself face-to-face with a pair of starched-pressed pale-faced bastards in matching black vests and black jackets, with matching black knives on their belts to complete the whole monochromatic pageant. Blackjackets is what most Vokians would call these two, for reasons blatantly obvious. Engraved upon both their breasts was the symbol of a half-lidded eye shedding a single tear—the emblem of Oculus. Which for most people meant one thing, and for Casso meant quite the other.

  And so Casso Vos—haggard, scruffy-bearded, fifty-five years old and currently wearing nothing more than a pair of piss-stained trousers—looks out at these two dead-eyed Inquisitors with a near-total lack of interest.

  For a moment, the Blackjackets are too stunned to speak. So it is Casso who speaks, instead. "Yeah?" he prompts, eyes flicking lazily from one face to the other. "Taro wants to see me or what?"

  "That, uh—" starts the one.

  "Yes," nods the other.

  Casso arches one bushy eyebrow. "And this is paying work?"

  "Lucratively," the second confirms.

  Casso regards them both for a few moments longer. Then he looks up and sees that sickly-yellow moon and realizes, belatedly, what time it is.

  No bad morning, then. This one still qualifies as a long night.

  "Lemme go put on some pants," Casso grunts. And then, with no fanfare at all, he turns around and slams the door right in their faces.

  Twenty minutes later and Casso is sitting in a wood-paneled office with two others, his feet up on a desk and an old iron flask held loosely in one hand. He now wears (relatively) clean pants and a thick wool-knit sweater, with the same shabby old leather coat as always thrown overtop. Next to him is a bare-chested man with a face like a hatchet and a trio of golden snaked-headed bands encircling his right arm. Said bands constrict so tight that the surrounding flesh has gone grey and necrotic; nevertheless, the afflicted arm is also absolutely bulging with an absurd volume of muscle. His name is Kyar—a mercenary of some significant renown—and slung over his back is a bow of similarly serpent-headed gold.

  "I'm surprised, Taro," smirks the mercenary in question. "I wouldn't expect Vokia's new Emperor to go on associating with the likes of us. Which, hey—congratulations, by the way."

  Sitting across from them all—at a desk framed by three full-length vertical windows and a whole vista of red-brick roofs beyond—was indeed Taro Zhon, former head of Oculus and now Vokia's undisputed Emperor-to-be. He was very much a classically handsome fellow with perfect jawline and magnificent shoulder-length umber hair and a stately, modest little beard. He was also one of Casso's most frequent and well-paying employers. He was also—and this was certainly new—sporting a whole swath of warped, flesh-curdling burns all over half his face and all the way down to his right arm. Now, if anything, his beauty served only to further accentuate that grim deformity. Casso's only real thought regarding this was that he himself was lucky to be born an ugly bastard from the start.

  Now he watches as the Emperor's good eye narrows, whilst its lidless opposite just stares out milk-white and unblinking. "Spare me your usual prattling," Taro growls, through cleft lips. "I'm in no mood."

  Hearing this, Casso puts the flask to his mouth and chugs down three swigs of that particularly foul-smelling fermented swill. He was still far, far too sober. More to the point—an Empress had just died, which meant that this night now hung in the shadow of an ill omen. Definitely preferable to be drunk for ill omens if possible.

  "The job is simple," Taro tells them all, in lieu of any further pleasantries. He slides across the desk a pair of meticulously-rendered charcoal portraits: a curly-haired young man and a serious-looking young woman. "This one is Tiger. This one is Panther. Execute them both and I'll pay triple your usual rate."

  Nobody makes any particularly sudden moves to examine said portraits. Casso glances overtop the tips of his own shoes, with palpable disinterest, and grunts, "Uh huh."

  "Are they the ones who did—" Kyar smirks, reaches up and taps his cheek, "—that to you?"

  One must imagine Taro's lip would have curled, at that, were it not now already forever curling. "They are not," he hisses instead, through gritted teeth. "This was done to me by my miserable bitch of a sister, whose Aia I pray has already been three times swallowed by the maw."

  "Neat," says Kyar. "Okay." He yawns, stretches, cracks his knuckles, then adds: "So why are you bringing us in on this, anyway? I'm not one to turn down paying work—but this does sound right up the alley for you and your Oculus freaks."

  "Firepower," comes Taro's curt and immediate reply. "I want this fiasco over and done with."

  "They don't look like much," mutters Casso.

  "This one is supposed to be quite formidable," Taro counters, tapping twice on Panther's forehead. "I've heard certain stories about her, and I'd rather not find out for myself if they are true."

  "So what you're really looking for," comes a third voice, then, "is overkill."

  Everyone turns to regard this third fellow, because he doesn't speak often or much. He isn't sitting down—instead, he towers over the others at nearly nine feet in height, with his head threatening constantly to knock against the ceiling above. He is rail-thin and covered from head to toe in old, stained bandages, with only a thin slit left open for a pair of stark-white eyes. What little skin is visible is that of a deep, dark, mottled blue-black, and both of his arms are wrapped thick in lengths of rusted old chain. He is known, colloquially, as The Empty Man, which is a moniker more apt than anyone in that room is aware. I find him entirely distasteful.

  "That's the word," Taro agrees, pointing a finger. "Overkill. I want this thing over and done. My people will take the high road whilst you take the low; whoever finds these two can drag them somewhere quiet and kill them out of sight, and that will simply be that. By end of the week I'll be crowned Emperor, and by the end of the next we'll be marching on Shalashar. Everybody wins. Are we clear?"

  "Transparent," Kyar quips.

  "Yes," says the Empty Man.

  "Uh huh," grunts Casso.

  "Good," says Taro. "Now—one final note." And then, quite abruptly, the Emperor-to-be is leaning over his desk—and quite abruptly each mercenary is flanked by a pair of dead-eyed Blackjackets with very long knives in hand. And now, in a low voice, the Emperor-to-be is telling them: "Right now one, or all, or none of you might be thinking to yourselves that this is a prime opportunity. You might be thinking: stars above, this is my chance to get at the new Emperor while he's still mortal like the rest of us! You might be thinking, when you get your hands on those two—hey, wait a second, what might I do with these little shits? Hey, wait a moment...I wonder what Shalashar would be willing to pay for them! Who's more desperate, you wonder? Taro or Shalashar? How do I wring as much money out of this thing as possible? You might now be thinking that triple your rate is only just the floor, and that surely the depth of your fortune shall be only ever-increasing from here."

  Kyar's half-smirk never fades. The Empty Man is unreadable as always. Casso just takes another swig from his flask.

  "Well," Taro growls, "you'd be wrong. I just killed my own sister. What do you think I'd do to a trio of mongrels like you?" Nobody needed to respond, to that. "So don't get clever. Don't get cocky. Don't get cute. Just do your fucking jobs."

  The Emperor-to-be lets those last words hang, for a moment, then rises to his feet and dusts himself off—until he is interrupted by, of all things, a sustained belch from one Casso Vos. And that, there, is a perfect demonstration of the power that reputation holds—because every head snaps around, like they've all just been slapped, to regard the washed-up old drunk with his feet up on the desk.

  "Relax," says Casso. And now, for the first time, his gaze is crystal-clear and sharp as a razor's edge. "We're pros."

  Some time later, then, after the mercenaries were gone and Taro had become enmeshed in a whole exhausting plethora of paperwork and variables and problems with one hand cradling his head and the other stained thoroughly with black ink—quietly, surreptitiously, the door creaks open once more.

  Taro's blood goes cold. He does not look up. There has been neither announcement nor warning from his guards, and that means there is only one individual whom this could be. So Taro just resolves to stay as calm as possible, tempering his fear and his fury both, and continues to work in diligent silence—as the footsteps draw closer, and closer, and closer.

  The footsteps stop. There is no longer any choice. Taro has to look. So Taro does, and he already knows exactly what he will see: a man of pitch-dark ebony skin, utterly hairless and with eyes like molten gold. He is clad in a long coat and a wide-brimmed black hat; by most, he is called The Eye.

  (Though I know him by a different name.)

  Now The Eye reaches up, and tips his hat in greeting. And he does not speak.

  Taro, too, does not speak—until finally his ire eclipses his unease and he blurts, heedless of any caution: "What exactly is the point of an all-knowing informant who withholds information?!"

  The Eye tilts his head at that, in an odd facsimile of real curiosity. Taro goes on: "You didn't tell me that Ibis was a stars-damned Sorcerer—and an incredibly powerful one at that! If I hadn't hired that mutt Jaharo to protect me, I'd be dead! Stars above, look at what she did to me! Look at me!"

  The Eye was already looking.

  (The Eye was always looking.)

  "Answer my question," Taro snarls, jabbing a finger. "What is the point of an informant who—"

  "Is that what I am?" interrupts The Eye.

  And that's that. All of Taro's righteous indignation comes to one screeching, skidding halt. The ratio of fury and fear within him skews dramatically to one side. Taro freezes—and then he lowers himself very, very carefully back down into his seat, and he says in a quiet voice, "I sincerely apologize for my outburst."

  "Is Ibis dead?" asks The Eye, in lieu of acceptance.

  "What—"

  "Is Ibis dead?" The Eye's voice is deep, and eminently subterranean. He speaks like the shifting of tectonic plates.

  "I—yes," Taro stammers. "Definitely. For a fact. We confirmed it."

  "You're welcome," says The Eye. "Now, the cost."

  There is a pit at the bottom of Taro's stomach. He wants very badly to close his eyes, and to go to sleep, and to simply stop thinking altogether. He wants to be anywhere other than in this room with this individual at this particular moment in time. "Yes," Taro agrees, looking away. Looking anywhere but into those gilded eyes. "I know."

  "Fifty thousand."

  "I know," Taro repeats. "I'm working on it."

  "Fifty thousand."

  "I know," Taro insists, desperately. "I have a plan, I swear. It's already been set in motion. Just give me time to—"

  "Three months," The Eye reminds him, instead. "Fifty thousand. Or—" he steps closer, and reaches across the desk, and taps the center of Taro's forehead, "—just one."

  "I understand," Taro breathes, very carefully, his whole body trembling now, "the consequences. I will uphold my end of the bargain. I swear it on my father's grave."

  To that, The Eye offers no immediate reply—and then his hand drifts down, and without warning he flicks the new Emperor right on the tip of his nose. Taro leaps back like he's been electrocuted; The Eye just peels back his lips and lifts the corners of his mouth in a truly horrendous impression of a smile. "I believe you," says The Eye. And then he turns on his heel and strides right away, his footsteps going clack, clack, clack into that abominable silence to follow. He reaches the door, grasps the handle, prepares to pull—and then he turns, and looks right at me, and tips his hat in mocking salute.

  The Eye is a vulgar and dangerous individual. I offer him no reply.

  And so The Eye steps out, and with the close of that door it feels, for Taro, as though once more he can finally draw full breath. So for about thirty seconds Taro just sits there, indeed drawing said breaths—panting, sweat-drenched, scarred and ink-stained. A whole human heap of adrenaline and terror. And in those fraught few moments, all the new Emperor can think of is his dead sister's words:

  We're both such abominably sore losers, aren't we?

  Two seconds longer. And then Taro howls a curse, and sweeps aside all the contents of his desk, and sets to attacking said desk with punches and kicks and any other sort of physical implement on hand. He screams raging invectives and profanes a dead woman's name. And then finally, when all is said and done, he collapses back down into his chair—and so the Emperor of Vokia just sits there, wide-eyed and shattered, amongst the wreckage of his own decisions.

  Taro closes his eyes. Counts, slow and steady, with each inhale and exhale of breath. He counts and counts and counts until finally he is calm.

  And then, with eyes still closed, Emperor Taro Zhon starts working out how to escape the bag he's in.

  For the first time in both their lives, Tiger and Panther awaken to a world without Ibis.

  They both were dreaming of her. It takes them both a few seconds to separate dream from memory; the revelation to follow is a sobering one indeed. And so, for the first few minutes, neither one of them does anything more than wallow in the depths of her absence.

  "Hey," says Panther, finally, when she sees Tiger's eyes flutter open. She is very much grateful for any distraction.

  "Hey," says Tiger, after a moment, as Panther regards him from the corner of their room. He is very much grateful not to be alone.

  A few minutes later, then, after they've each gotten dressed and each composed themselves together as best they can: "I'm sorry about last night," says Tiger, apropos of nothing. He looks Panther clear and direct in the eyes whilst he speaks. "I was useless. You were forced to take care of me, when all the while I can't even imagine how you must have been feeling. I just, I hadn't—I haven't ever endured a loss like this before. I still don't know exactly what to do, or how exactly to...to swallow it. I just don't know. But I will be stronger today, and I will be there for you, just as you were there for me. Okay?"

  Panther just regards him, silent and stone-faced, as she so often does. She does not tell Tiger that there is no need to apologize, and she offers him no apologies of her own. She does not have to. For all their differences, she and Tiger know one another like they know all the stars in the sky—and so, when she offers only a small nod in response, Tiger still hears the unsaid clear as day. And Tiger knows, at once, that his friend is back.

  An awkward silence passes between them, until Panther extends the olive branch with a gruff, "Alright," followed by, "So. You're the smart one. Where should we go?"

  "North," the smart one replies at once. He's been pondering this for quite a bit. "Our first priority should be simply getting across the Shalasharan border—seeing as how it's the only one that Oculus will hesitate to cross. We might be wanted criminals up there, too, but we're definitely wanted criminals down here. There is also an exceptionally minor—but nonzero—chance that my family will grant us safe harbor."

  "Your family are cunts," notes Panther.

  "My family are cunts," Tiger agrees, with a what-can-you-do shrug of the shoulders. "So odds on that one aren't great. Nevertheless: we keep on going from there, we get past Shalashar and up beyond the coastal mountains. And from there...look, I'll be honest, I have absolutely no idea. But we have to pick a direction and we have to start walking soon, and I figure north is the best of all our bad options."

  "Works for me," Panther says, with a curt nod, and her sword goes into its scabbard with a hiss of steel against leather. "Once we're safe, we'll figure out who did this. And then we'll come back and pay those people a visit." Panther is very careful to speak in vagaries like who did this, for the morning is young and neither one of them is quite ready to hear their new reality spoken aloud.

  At this declaration of vengeance to come, Tiger's expression is marred with worry—but Panther is already lacing her boots, and does not see, and so the moment passes without event. And so the two fugitives gather their meager possessions and depart, out through the hall and down those rickety stairs and straight across a tavern now bustling with weary-eyed travelers and other such nameless itinerants. As they pass by the counter, Panther happens to catch the old man's eye—and alas, she can express her gratitude only through another curt little nod. A nod which, thankfully, the old man returns. And then he looks away, and returns to the thick-bound ledger before him, and so the fugitives depart through ramshackle double-doors—and so it is as though they had never existed at all. Just as they promised.

  Now Tiger and Panther step out into a dry, bitter morning, and already their breath is visible in clouds before them. Tiger reaches into his coat and withdraws a rolled-up cigarette of various bitter herbs; Panther, without a word, strikes a match against the heel of her boot and lights it for him.

  It is the very apex of dawn. Yet the Yellow Equinox is still ongoing, and thus the sunrise looks very little like warm fire and very much like a splattering of gore, with violent streaks of crimson and rotting chunks of purple all laid out in visceral panoply above. Tiger passes the cigarette to Panther; she takes one long drag, exhales dark smoke, then passes it back. And so the two of them stand there, smoking in silence, and they look out at all the faces of those with the audacity to live happy lives.

  For a few minutes, there is some semblance of calm.

  And then the cigarette burns out, and Tiger blows twin trails of smoke out through his nostrils, and then he says: "I hate this fucking country."

  Panther draws her cloak tight. "Me too," she says. Then: "You ready?"

  "Yeah," says Tiger. He drops his cigarette, crushes it down into the dirt beneath his heel. "Let's go."

  And so onwards they march, the bereaved, beneath a bloodied sky.

  End Credits Theme

  INFORMAL IBIS ABOVE PRONUNCIATION GUIDE:

  Kay-lass

  Ray-Len

  Yaw-Jue

  Oo-Skee-Me

  Die-Guh

  Kai-Ar

  Juh-Hah-Roe