Twelve hours ago, they found Daiga amidst an apocalypse of jagged ruin and emerald flame—clawing his way free of the gatehouse's charred skeleton like twenty-faced Ghal-Ghasan once had from the ruptured womb of that old, bygone earth. The mad giant had done so with plague spewing from his thrice-split lips; now, from Daiga's own mouth, there came only trails of phlegm and ghostly clouds of condensation. The whites of his eyes had turned to a furious bloodshot red; his pupils were dilated back down to the tiniest of pinpricks.

  And he was no longer smiling.

  Twenty minutes later, the Incipitor-Errant was standing in a safehouse packed to the brim with Fifth Pillar agents, and a man named Neidar Vol was explaining that this was exactly the state in which they had found him. And from the other side of a granite-slab old desk, Tertiary Lodestone Kizannokas Krell was listening and observing closely, looking Daiga over with narrowed eyes and one leg crossed quite guardedly over the other. He made no attempt to conceal his disdain. Daiga, by contrast, was forcing a polite smile and meeting his commander's eyes without apprehension. And blinking exactly one time every ten seconds, of course.

  Finally, after that long bout of explanation and desperate wheedling is done, the Tertiary Lodestone leans forward and folds his hands and remarks, with little fanfare or tact: "What the hell happened to your eyes?"

  "Ah," acknowledges Daiga, with a congenial tilt of the head. "One of the enemy combatants was some form of nonhuman Golem or otherwise Assembled-Entity. His blood proved toxic when coming into contact with skin; in the course of the engagement, some of it must have gotten into my eyes. Thus I am now partly blind, as well as in a great deal of pain."

  Kizan raises one eyebrow. If he feels any sympathy for Daiga—if he sees the Incipitor-Errant as a fellow human being at all—then he doesn't bother to show it. "Is that going to be a problem?"

  "Not at all," comes Daiga's smooth reply. "My other senses remain exceptional, and I don't need eyes to see my prey's Aia. He is, at this very moment, somewhere to the east."

  "I see," Kizan replies. Quite brusquely. And then, after a brief moment's consternation, he tells Daiga—tells all of them—The Way Things Are Going To Be. He explains that the Fifth Pillar has overplayed its hand in Kaino, that months of careful infiltration and assimilation have been undone by the debacle (he pauses, then changes to 'the massacre') at the southern gatehouse. Now the whole city is on high alert and Shalashar has been all but directly implicated. No doubt the forces of Emperor Taro Zhon will be arriving soon as well, and in great number. Even if the Fifth Pillar did manage to snatch up the seventh prince, they'd never be able to smuggle him out of the city intact. Thus the only sensible tactic moving forwards is to wait, to bide their time, to wait for their own reinforcements to arrive via Displacer-travel and then seize upon the inevitable chaos when someone does finally make a move.

  Daiga doesn't hate this. Daiga is physically incapable of hating this, so he does not. But he does want his prey. Very badly. Daiga wants him wants him wants him wants him wants him wants him wants him wants him NOW. Daiga's brain is buzzing and burning and thrashing all about within the suffocating confines of his own wretched skull; every second with purpose unfulfilled feels like sandpaper being dragged across the surface of his frontal lobe. His thoughts itch. Daiga's brain is a thing that has been torn down, deconstructed, and hollowed-out by the cruel hands of Yauju Daret—by dripping needles, by jagged-tooth saws, by blistering iron rods—and then rebuilt upon an edifice of physical violence and sheer, unmitigated, utterly obsessive hatred. Let me say that word again: hatred. Hatred, hatred, hatred. It is the seed from which all that great tree sprouts; it is a small thing from which ten thousand roots dig deep into the soil and drink endlessly, greedily, latching on and never letting go. It is what defines him, and this is entirely by design.

  Daiga, you must understand, was purpose-built. And right now he was being denied that purpose.

  Now, mind you, there were a great many things that Daiga could not think about Tertiary Lodestone Kizan Krell—because the Lodestone held second-level authority over Diaga, as assigned by the Prime Celebrant's fourth-level authority, and there existed a very complex series of rules and restrictions to go along with that particular status. Daiga could not hate Kizan, for one. Could not be angry with him. He could not grab Kizan by either side of his skull and smash his face down against that shitty old desk. He could not sink his teeth into Kizan's throat and dig until he hit spongy and foul-smelling meat; he could not put his thumbs to Kizan's eyes and press until the inevitable twin pops. And yet—Daiga was fully aware of the absence of said thoughts all the same, fully cognizant of the empty space wherein his hatred of Kizan Krell should have gone. And though he could not contemplate this absence, could never in a million years act upon it, still—

  Daiga knew.

  "We clear?" asks Kizan, finally, in such a way that is not really asking (and with a suspicious look cast in Daiga's particular direction). And everyone replies yes, Tertiary Lodestone, we understand and are ready to obey.

  Daiga forces another smile. "Clear as crystal," he affirms, with characteristic good cheer, and someone actually snorts at that. Kizan narrows his eyes, and Daiga forces the smile a little wider, and all the while he does not in any way, shape, or form contemplate murdering his superior.

  Only because he's not allowed to.

  Fifteen hours later, Tiger was making himself a profound nuisance.

  Which, granted, was kind of their whole strategy.

  As per Tiger's ultimatum—which, Panther had to admit, had been pretty good for some on-the-spot improvisation—he and Panther had indeed been semi-forcefully escorted to the Governor's mansion at the very heart of the city, wherein they had subsequently come to learn that Merkades Naok was away on travel and would not return until mid-afternoon the next day. Thus the whole of the manor was left with the very awkward custody of these unwanted prisoners/guests; nobody quite knew what to do with them, nor did they want to be in any way responsible for a war with Shalashar. And thus, Tiger—a natural in these worlds of pomp and circumstance and highly tenuous détente—had immediately decided to try and push his luck. After all, he and Panther were tired, and wounded, and filthy, and quite caked in their own filth and blood, and thus did Tiger seek to change this. And thus were his requests as follows:

  1. A Warm Bath (Approved)

  2. Fresh Pairs of Clothes (Approved)

  3. A Warm Bath for Panther (Approved; Initially declined by Panther, though eventually accepted after much haranguing and over-exaggerated descriptions of stench)

  4. Panther's Gambeson Cleaned, Repaired, and Returned (Approved; accepted by Panther only very reluctantly)

  5. A New Dagger for Panther, In Accordance With Her Very Particular Specifications (Denied; though Panther was allowed to keep her sabre, it seemed actually giving her a weapon remained a bridge too far)

  6. Rolled-Up Cigarettes of Any Variety Available (Denied; cigarettes were out of fashion in Kaino, and would have had to be imported from elsewhere)

  7. A Pipe, With Dried Latakia and Cavendish to Smoke (Approved)

  8. Medical Treatment for Panther's Wounds (Approved; aggressively Denied by Panther)

  9. The Materials Necessary for Tiger to Treat Panther's Wounds Himself (Approved; implemented with great difficulty and suffering for all involved)

  All this pageantry, this indulgence, this carefree nonchalance—to be frank, it galled Panther. She was a fighter and this was a fight, plain and simple. Yet Tiger seemed totally at ease enjoying the hospitality of his nominal enemies; seemed to think he had them in checkmate, that the right words spoken in the right order were some form of magical incantation by which all foes could forever be forced to act as friends. Panther knew better. Panther knew just how quickly gold could turn to ash in one's hand. Up until she met Ibis, after all, Panther's life had been little more than one battle after another—and it was only with Ibis that Panther had ever dared to believe, that she had ever truly thought that her situation might have come to an even keel.

  Panther, at a mere twenty-four years old, was already an old pro when it came to losing everything. Yet she had truly, foolishly believed that her happiness with Ibis could be anything other than a temporary state of being—and so, with Ibis dead and her hopes shattered, it was a simple fact that Panther would never trust in the security of her circumstances ever again. There would always be another shoe poised to drop. There would always be another punch coming, and it would always be coming in right from her blind spot. She couldn't see it and she couldn't dodge it—and so all Panther could do was toughen up, and learn to take that blow right on the chin.

  I love Tiger and Panther in so many myriad ways; yet, in just as many, I weep for them, and for the futures they have been so consistently and callously denied.

  At any rate, this was far from the only source of Panther's discomfit. She loathed the version of herself she had let slip to Tiger back at the storehouse—the bitterness, the childish insecurity, the painfully unfiltered shame—and so she lacerated her past self time and time again, in furious self-reflection, drawing deeper and deeper into her laconic shell all the while. She was just as self-aware of this maladaptive tendency as she was powerless to fight against it. And, to make matters worse, it felt in those fraught twenty-four hours as though Tiger was needling her at every possible opportunity—albeit unintentionally, or at the very least entirely without malice. But still. Once again, the sheer depth of his nonchalance was absolutely galling her, and this gall was driving her only further and further inwards. The result was like oil and water in every sense of those words.

  Panther wasn't used to feeling so petty.

  And so the two of them rarely spoke, beyond certain imperatives or stripped-down and lifeless facsimiles of their usual banter. There was a gulf between them, a chasm at once invisible and clearly discerned. They were each all that the other had and they had each decided, silently and unconsciously, to take it out on the other.

  Now, Panther thinks to herself, here it comes—the blow to the chin. Because right now the two of them are awaiting Governor Naok's return in a place someone referred to as the Sun Room, a saxony-carpeted lounge illuminated in the sickly crimson of its ever-immolating namesake. Tiger is sprawled out on one of several couches and smoking anxiously; Panther stands as ever at his back, expression kept carefully neutral, with the hand on her sabre concealed beneath her subfusc new cloak.

  Standing at the opposite end of that room, framed in equal parts sunlight and shadow like some manner of abstract-styled portrait, was their minder: a bare-armed, broad-shouldered man with a patch over one eye (the left one) and a pair of curved shortswords sheathed diagonal across his back. His name was Baras Toscht. Panther had heard of him, and she had heard that he was good, and so her hand rested just a mite tighter around the hilt of her sword than usual. Thus far he had offered them nothing more than a curt nod and a relatively congenial greeting—there had been neither threats nor restrictions, nor any subtle insinuations of violence—and yet Panther was quite certain that if either of them attempted to walk out those doors, his blades would come flashing out with not one moment's hesitation. And then, well—in her current state, Panther wouldn't stand a sliver of a chance.

  Minutes turned to an hour. An hour turned to several hours. The sun slunk low; the sky blotched gory violets and browns. The whole room stunk like Tiger's pipe. The tension and boredom were coming to such a head that Tiger seemed just about to open his mouth and loudly complain when Toscht said, quite casually, and completely without warning: "Heard you took on an Incipitor."

  Lost in her own head as she was, it took Panther a full second to realize Toscht had spoken. It took another to realize that he was speaking to her. And then his comment was so bizarrely prescient, so perfectly relevant to the exact source of Panther's mounting insecurity—that unsolvable puzzle called Daiga, that wild-eyed maniac whom she likely could never defeat and certainly could never escape—that her response came immediate, uncharacteristically unguarded, and totally without thinking: "Was I the only one who'd never even heard that word before?"

  Toscht laughs at once; the sound is both basso-deep and surgically precise, like the beat of some rapid-firing parade drum. "Nah, same here," the sellsword agrees, folding his arms. "I didn't know the first thing about those freaks until, well—" he puts a finger to his missing eye, "—I met one. Or she met me, rather. In pretty violent fashion at that."

  Starting somewhere around eleven years of age, Panther's default instinct in situations like this has been to simply close up and withdraw. Grunt, nod, glance away. Put up shields. Let the conversation wither and die on the vine, yes, that's the way. Doubly so with a dangerous individual like Baras Toscht. And yet—perhaps it was simply the prospect of chatting casually with anyone other than Tiger, for the first time in several long and arduous days. Perhaps it was the immediate commonality between them. Perhaps it was her own abominable loneliness—but either way, and for whatever reason, Panther chose to break from her facade. Rather than just quietly fade away, she met the sellswords eye, and she asked him quite dryly: "Well? Did you win?"

  "Well," Toscht replies, with a rueful half-smile, "Suppose I didn't exactly lose. Took her left eye, as payback for mine. And I didn't die, so...I guess that's as close to a win as I was ever gonna get." His eye flicks to Tiger, momentarily, then right back to Panther, and he continues: "So, how about you? Fare any better?"

  "Not really," Panther deadpans. "Bit off a finger. Just the little one, though." She pauses. "And I didn't die."

  "Sounds like a win to me," Toscht chuckles—and in the corner of her peripheral vision, Panther sees Tiger looking absurdly pleased to see her having some semblance of a normal conversation. Worse, he somehow seems pleased with himself, and Panther is suddenly far too self-aware and far too petty to let this continue on any further—and so she is just about to guillotine this budding camaraderie after all when, without warning, both the Sun Room's double-doors swing wide open.

  There's no time to react. In an instant, in comes Governor Merkades Naok—a rotund, cheerful woman whose eyes are all but brimming with a particular dangerous sort of intelligence—and half-dozen other assorted nobles and clerks and attachés who trail about her like flies swarming a fresh carcass. Tiger is already on his feet; Naok has already crossed the room and now the two of them are shaking hands and speaking warmly, and Naok is introducing each and every member of her entourage to none other than Tiger Qelas, the highly-esteemed Seventh Sanctified Prince of Noble Shalashar. More hands are shaken. More warm words are exchanged. All the while Panther and Toscht are each watching very closely, each now a hard edifice of potential violence with expressions kept totally vacant. And there is, perhaps, a certain commonality in this—even as each would hesitate for not a moment to slaughter the other.

  Eventually, the lower court is dismissed, and the room is left to Governor Naok alone—who moves now to close the doors, and seal them with a heavy brass-forged deadbolt, and all the while Tiger is still blathering on and on about a certain Shalasharan wine, or fragrance, or something Panther has barely been paying any attention to. Her eyes and ears are on everything but Tiger.

  Clunk. The doors seal shut.

  Panther and Toscht exchange the briefest of cold, sterile glances.

  Governor Naok sits opposite Tiger, and sets down a bottle of wine upon the burnished-oak table between them. Thunk.

  Tiger says: "Before we go on any further, esteemed Governor, please allow me to express my overflowing gratitude for this—"

  "Shut your mouth," Naok snaps, with no warning at all. "Wipe that smile off your face. We're not friends."

  The Governor reaches down, uncorks that bottle, pours it into one long glass whilst leaving Tiger's pointedly unfilled. She continues: "You are holding myself, my family, and my entire city hostage. You are placing us all right between you and your enemies." She lifts her glass, gestures as though to clink it against Tiger's own, then downs the drink in one gulp. "And," she concludes, setting her glass back down upon the table, and gazing across the table with newly frigid eyes, "your father does not love you. He does not care one iota whether you live or die."

  "Harsh," Tiger replies, after a moment. Though the smile upon his face does not falter, it does entirely vanish from his eyes and voice both. The pipe rests between his middle and index fingers like a weapon at the ready.

  "Shut up," Naok repeats. Her glass is refilled. Dark liquid sloshes and swirls. One more she raises the glass to her lips; once more, the drink is downed in one gulp, and the glass hits the table with an audible thunk. All the while Tiger just waits, patient, like a portrait of a handsome nobleman in arrogant repose, until finally Naok looks him right in the eye and tells him, "I want very badly to have you killed."

  Tiger, somehow, doesn't even blink. "I know."

  "Just as you know that I can't have you killed. Because that is the situation as you have devised it."

  "Mmh," Tiger acknowledges.

  "For the moment," adds Naok.

  "Mmh." This time distinctly in the negative.

  "You intend to force my hand?" Naok goes on, cold and relentless. "So be it. I acquiesce. I am not one to fight a losing battle."

  "You need Shalashar as a friend," Tiger agrees, voicing the quiet part aloud. "Or at least as a neutral entity, if you're ever to break away from greater Vokia. You can't risk angering my father with the death of his son."

  Now Naok's expression is perfectly blank. "Breaking away from Vokia?" She tilts her head. "I don't know anything about that."

  "People have been talking for quite some time, you know. It's all but an open secret. "

  "I don't much care for gossip."

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  "Please. Everyone cares for gossip. You just don't like being gossiped about."

  "The hound of Oculus is now the heart of all Vokia," Naok hisses back. "A whispered word could mean a noose around all our necks. Yours included, now that you've forcibly chained yourself to my side."

  "We're no strong supporters of the new Emperor either, you know."

  "I suppose it was quite shortsighted of you to kill the last one, then."

  Panther's fingers twitch. It is a pure involuntary response. Toscht sees, and now his eyes are all but glued upon her. He can see the shadow of her intent plain as day.

  "Now," Tiger says, his smile finally fading, "I've got to be honest, Merkades—that's something of a sore spot for me."

  "You find your own act of regicide distressing?" Naok lifts her eyebrows in mock-surprise. "Curious."

  "Don't test me on this."

  "Even if you didn't kill Ibis," the Governor snarls, very suddenly, leaning in, "you certainly didn't do anything to try and save her, did you? Otherwise you would most certainly be dead. Instead you chose to run away. And so you are here," she snaps her fingers, and this time Tiger does flinch, "scot-free. Hiding behind the same father who sold you to Vokia like a whore."

  Panther, without thinking, takes one step forward. Just one. She is very close to doing something very, very stupid. But Toscht catches her eye—and whereas Panther would have attacked him on the spot for such a similar offense to her own, all the sellsword does is slowly and subtly shake his head. Please don't, he tells her, without speaking. He doesn't even command or threaten—he requests. Please don't do this.

  So, reluctantly, she doesn't.

  "I get the impression that you haven't actually spoken with the man, yet," Tiger pivots cheerfully, with all a nobleman's smooth and effortless tact. "That strikes me as rather odd. Surely you have access to some manner of long-range Sorcery-abetted communication, after all. And I'm certain that his spies know I'm here by now. So why hasn't my father contacted you? I mean, if I truly am as unloved as you say..." the seventh prince trails off, for effect, "...then surely he would have already given you the go-ahead to chop my head, no?" He leans back, takes a drag from his pipe, exhales twin trails of smoke and then concludes: "I find that all quite curious."

  "Indeed. The First Pillar has made no attempt at communication. Our own attempts fall on deaf ears." Naok pours herself a third glass of wine. "Do you understand the implications of this, Tiger Qelas?"

  "That means you're in trooouble."

  "It means that, in the eyes of the Primarch, we are all already dead." Naok is glaring openly now; she braces both palms against the table and hunches forward, leans in close. "It means that he will not waste words with a woman whom he already intends to kill. It means that you—" she jabs one pudgy finger, "—will simply be taken by force. Most likely over my own dead body. It means that you, Tiger Qelas, signed my death warrant from the moment you set foot in my manor." She rises now, very sharply and suddenly, abandoning the glass beneath her, and she glowers down with an icy, calcified, visceral sort of loathing. "My family. My staff. My soldiers. My people. All walking corpses. And even now, even knowing this for all but a certainty, still I cannot kill or even harm you. Still must I cling to the faintest hope that your father would see you returned alive. Even though you and I both know that to be nothing more than your own desperately-babbled little fantasy."

  A long, fraught silence passes. Tiger is pinned to the spot, frozen and unable to move. Eventually, he tries, "I'm sorry, I never intended—" But no sooner has he begun to speak than Naok is storming away with Toscht following close behind, unlatching the deadbolt and putting a hand on each of those ivory-carved handles, and preparing to pull—Panther sees the muscles bunch in her shoulders, in her neck—and then, suddenly, the Governor stops. And turns. And fixes the both of them with a nakedly hateful stare.

  "You know," Naok tells them, "Ibis and I saw eye-to-eye on a great many things. We weren't exactly allies—she was a woman who did not have allies, to say nothing of friends—but we were aligned, nevertheless, to a similar end. I was one of the very first provincial governors to offer her a public display of support." She pauses. Lets Tiger and Panther wallow in that miserable revelation. Then she concludes: "The least you two could have done is died with her." And then she is gone, and the doors swing shut, and Tiger and Panther are left to bathe in the rays of a diseased and dying sun.

  Neither has anything much to say to the other, after that. Eventually they depart and are escorted quite sternly back to their shared room, wherein Tiger lays on the bed and stares up at the ceiling whilst Panther sets at once to her drills. Basic calisthenic repetitions—battles of agony and attrition against her accumulated wounds—turn to exercises of martial prowess, her sabre lashing out again and again at targets unseen. She forces herself through the pain, through the anxiety and the shame and the ever-mounting fatigue. Because, if nothing else, Governor Naok was dead-on about one thing in particular: that sooner or later, violence would be upon their doorstep. The punch, as always, was still coming.

  And right now Panther was far from ready to receive it.

  It is desperation that drives her the next day, to this. Desperation such that she actually confides in Tiger her plan, just so that someone will encourage her to go through with it. Which, of course, he does, despite his own obvious misgivings.

  So, with Tiger's blessing, Panther steps outside. Glances left, then right. Does not see him. Waits. Gambles—chooses left, walks down the hall, and of course finds him lurking just around the corner, just barely out of her doorway's line-of-sight. He is leaning against the wall with arms folded and eye closed and he has, obviously, been listening very intently this entire time.

  Panther coughs. His eye opens. "Evening," he says, casually enough. Seemingly still relatively friendly, despite the cold words of his current employer. "What, you don't sleep?"

  "Not often," Panther replies. "And never long."

  "I lived a few years that way myself." Toscht grimaces, glances away. Then, after a moment, his eye flicks right back. And: "So are you here to kill me, or what?"

  "Yes. I am here to kill you," Panther agrees, in flat deadpan, with not a hint of levity in her voice.

  "Man." Toscht frowns. "That's unfortunate. Can I at least, I dunno—" he gestures to his swords, "—draw my weapons?"

  "Why would I allow you do that?"

  "Excellent point. Carry on with killing me, then."

  "No, but—seriously." And now Panther hesitates. Toscht raises an eyebrow; Panther forces herself to say it: "Do you have any need for a half-decent sparring partner?"

  Toscht's eyebrow remains raised. Rather than answer, he meets her question with another: "Do you?"

  "Obviously."

  "Hmm. You any good with that sword?"

  "Half-decent, like I said. Better with my knife."

  "Which is...?"

  "Lodged in an Incipitor's arm, last I saw it."

  Toscht hesitates. Keeps his expression neutral. And Panther, suddenly, is profoundly uncomfortable—has broken her own facade, has let her guard down and left herself vulnerable before a man she hardly even knows (who is also, ostensibly, her enemy). There is no such thing as camaraderie between warriors, Panther knows. Nor any such thing as a warrior at all. There are only killers, and anyone can kill if they find cause to do so. For Panther, her one skill—violence, and the swift application therein—has never been anything more than a means to an end, a way to achieve a certain particular goal at a certain particular time. Fighters like he and her are not some alternative class of citizen, nor do they in any way constitute any sort of real profession.

  And yet. Still she is relieved, for reasons both practical and personal, when Toscht says, "Probably not supposed to, but...ah, fuck it, why not. Can never get good practice around here anyway. Think I'm starting to get rusty." He grins. "Been way too long without a good fight."

  "No such thing as a good fight," Panther replies, flatly, and she almost means it.

  Nevertheless—with no further consternation they move to her chamber and set at once to an unending sequence of blistering, fast-paced duels, their blades clashing again and again whilst Tiger, having given them half-sleeping permission to make as much noise as they like, watches from the bed with narrow-slitted eyes and a heavy fog descending over his thoughts. And eventually, somehow, he does manage to fall asleep—despite all those piercing metal retorts—and so Panther and Toscht continue to fight until the sun claws its way over the horizon once more.

  Panther loses the vast majority of these bouts. Toscht's twin-sword style is quick as lightning and never concedes even an inch of space; Panther, in sharp contrast, is fighting half-crippled and with neither her preferred weapon nor any of her usual tricks and sleights-of-hand. She stands at a marked disadvantage.

  But, hour by hour, she's winning more and more. And by the night's exhausted end, it is Panther who concludes on a streak of no less than eleven consecutive victories.

  This almost manages to feel like a triumph.

  And so the days march on, and so Tiger and Panther—especially Panther—pace about like rats in a cage, prisoners in a cell of their own devise. Naok's people show them the bare minimum of polite courtesy, and most requests are delivered in relatively timely fashion, and so the two of them are at least able to carry on more-or-less unhindered and unmolested. More or less.

  Gone are the days of Tiger indulging in the luxury of their hosts; now he, too, spends every waking hour in preparation for the cataclysm to come. Panther's mandate against Sorcery has come to a much-needed end, yet still has she made one stipulation very clear: whatever you do, Tiger, just be sure you can walk after it's done. I won't always be able to carry you.

  So Tiger pushes himself. Every hour, on the hour, he performs some manner of spell—something small, unobtrusive, a simple generation of heat or force—and every hour he bleeds, his head listing, his eye aflame and his hands trembling. There are two traits that set apart the good Sorcerers from the great, he tells Panther. The first is skill, yes, but the second is simply endurance. And so Tiger trains himself, day in and day out, to simply endure.

  Panther holds a significant measure of respect for his new undertaking, even as she also fears quite dearly for his life. Yet she expresses neither of these things sufficiently, despite knowing that it would go a long way to mending things between them if she did. She lambasts herself for this, internally—yet still, nothing changes. Still she cannot quite seem to cross that chasm.

  One night, very late, Tiger says very quietly: "You don't have a monopoly on grief, Panther. I loved her too. Not as you did, of course...not romantically. But all the same..." He looks up, dares look her directly in the eye. "I really did love her. And I miss her every single day."

  And Panther couldn't tell you why, couldn't possibly explain it—but his words provoked something deep within her, brought about a great stirring of acid in the pit of her stomach. And that same acid was dripping from her every word as she told him: "I always hated it. Sharing her. Letting you in. She was mine, and I was hers, and that's how it was supposed to be. But now she's dead, and now I have to share her memory with you. I hate it, Tiger. And I hate you for still being alive."

  It wasn't quite the worst thing Panther had ever told somebody, though it was certainly in the upper echelon. All Tiger had been able to muster, in response to that, was a very quiet, "I'm sorry," whilst Panther had already turned away for the sheer depth of shame and self-loathing that had so immediately consumed her. She regretted those words with every fiber of her being and yet she knew it was no longer her right to apologize and so she did not. She just swallowed the words—swallowed the idea that she would speak in such a fashion to her only friend in the whole world, to perhaps the sole remaining person with any interest at all in her well-being. And she swallowed the horrible thought that those words might be, even if by only the smallest of increments, true to the shape of her soul.

  Panther had, quite simply, been given too much time to think. And the vast well of her grief had been waiting, just waiting, for the quiet moments in which it could slip in and swallow her whole.

  Panther, quite simply, was falling apart.

  So, with Toscht's help, Panther did everything she could to pull herself back together again. Their partnership had proven most fruitful indeed; each of them was improving by leaps and bounds via the sheer osmosis of one another's knowledge. Virtually everything Panther knew had been self-taught; she followed no existing styles or forms, fought almost solely by instinct and improvisation and a whole cobbled-together patchwork of past experiences in her head. What she lacked in formal, technical understanding she had long made up for via superior reflexes, peerless instinct, obsessive practice—and, of course, a whole repertoire of underhanded tricks. A spectator to one of her duels in Ibis's court had once described her as 'the greatest drunken bar-fighter he had ever seen,' which was probably intended as an insult but had been received, in accompaniment with Ibis's nigh-imperceptible smirk, as the highest praise imaginable.

  Now, Panther was being taught—after nearly thirteen years of fighting—the basics. Most of it she already knew, by virtue of having had to fight against it, but performing it was exposing Panther to a whole new dimension entirely. The range of her improvisation was growing day by day. Toscht, likewise, found in Panther the perfect sparring partner—infinitely adaptable, razor-quick, consistently unpredictable and utterly punishing of even the smallest weakness or mistake. Fighting Panther felt like trying to box a wildfire. She, too, was honing him down to a very fine point indeed.

  And so they ran, these rats in their little wheels, whilst their enemies circled like carrion birds all the while. The Fifth Pillar watched, and waited. The mercenaries watched and waited. A battalion of full-armored Vokian Sathai appeared at the northern gatehouse, ostensibly requesting just three days' shelter—for Kaino was a tributary of Vokia, was it not?—before marching on to further secure the Shalasharan border. Yet anyone with two eyes and two ears knew that the Sathai were here for one purpose and one purpose only. And so now the other shoe was all but ready to drop; now the scavengers were watching very eagerly indeed, with clever eyes and bated breath and gleaming blades clutched tight in their hands.

  I, too, watched closely. I paced the halls of that doomed manor, and I too waited for that which was soon to come.

  At any rate: it was the eleventh day, just after the sun had set and the sky had turned to starless pitch, when the punch finally came.

  The door opens; Tiger glances up, pipe clenched loosely between his teeth as he pores over the famed Sorceror Ebo Eldaran's seminal thesis. Panther steps inside; the door shuts, and Tiger sees now that she is holding a sheathed dagger in both her hands. Cradling it, almost, with uncharacteristic reverence.

  Tiger raises an eyebrow. "They finally gave you a new one, huh?"

  "Toscht did," Panther corrects, unsheathing the weapon and holding it up to the lamplight. The blade oscillates silver and orange, seems almost to pulse in her hand. "It was a gift. Balanced, lightweight, single-edged, twenty-four-inch length." She stares up at the blade in a moment of rare unguarded awe. "I don't know how he knew, but it's perfect. Exactly what I'd have asked for."

  Though the world's endless permutations of daggers and knives and shortswords and longswords and greatswords and machetes and glaives meant about as much as an Equinox Beast's bowel movements to Tiger, still did he let out an appropriately low whistle in response. This was, for one thing, the best mood he'd seen Panther in all week. This was also the most talkative he'd seen her in ages. And, just as Panther had suspected, Tiger was indeed very pleased that she had made herself some semblance of a friend—though now, in light of this perfectly curated gift, and in spite of the uneasy ground upon which he and she still stood, still did Tiger find that he could not help himself. He blurted, then, out of genuine curiosity: "Okay, Panther, don't get mad at me—but do you ever wonder if Toscht might be..." he trails off, hoping that the implication will speak for itself. It doesn't. "You know?"

  Panther's expression is a frigid one. "No," she replies, warningly, "I don't know."

  "I mean, you guys just seem like very good friends, that's all."

  Panther blinks once, twice—and then realization strikes, and she furrows her brow and demands, "What? What are you even talking about? Toscht is very obviously gay." And she says this quite simply, with zero fanfare, as though it were the man's most readily apparent feature.

  "What?" Tiger blurts back, and this time he is the one blinking surprise. "Wait—how can you even tell?"

  "How can you not tell?"

  "I..." Tiger trails off, momentarily lost for words. Then, finally, he concedes: "I guess you of all people would know, huh."

  "I'll choose to take that as a compliment," deadpans Panther. And then, before their conversation can settle back down to uneasy silence, she immediately changes tact: "Anyway, this is still a very nice knife."

  Tiger smiles, partly out of relief, and raises both eyebrows. "No more sword?"

  "Sword's only for light work," Panther confirms, patting the sabre in its sheath.

  "Panther, I'm elated. I'm over the moon."

  "Thanks." Panther glances away, for just a moment, then muses aloud, "I should probably be thanking him, though. At some point."

  Tiger's eyebrows shoot up even further. "You didn't even say thank you?"

  "Well, he caught me off-guard, and I didn't know—"

  "Go," Tiger orders at once. He makes a shoo-ing motion with both hands, beckoning his bodyguard begone. "Get outta here. Right now. Go and be a good friend, damnit."

  Panther hesitates, looks just ever-so-slightly uncertain. "I won't be gone long," she agrees, eventually.

  "There's guards everywhere, and I'll lock the door behind you." Tiger dismisses her with a wave. "Take as long as you like, I'm in no danger here. Just go, for fuck's sake. Your bad manners reflect on me too, you know that? Stars above." He turns away with an exaggerated mock-sigh, having just caught the very faintest ghost of a smile on Panther's face, and he is momentarily elated to have even this small reprieve in the tension between them. The barest hint of the old days.

  So, when the door eventually opens—and then, of course, swings shut—those sounds, that squeak and that click, are all but music to Tiger's ears.

  At that same exact moment in time, a whole battalion's worth of bronze Vokian armor stands at the manor's front gate, instantly marked as elite Sathai by their narrow-slitted visors and thick, wool-knit black scarves. They stand in perfect formation with hands all resting upon their swords, and one of their number now presents the Kainoan gate-guards with a very simple demand. Or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say, an ultimatum.

  Elsewhere, Naok and Toscht are moving very quickly. Everyone is moving quickly. And inamongst all that chaos and scramble, the Governor tells her sellsword, "Don't die here, Baras. Not for my sake. Please."

  But Toscht just offers her a rueful smile, and replies, "You and your family will make it out of here alive. No matter what it costs." And then: "It's been an honor, ma'am."

  And, in the end, all Naok can do is rest a hand upon the sellsword's shoulder. "I'm sorry, Baras."

  "Don't be," Toscht replies, with an easy little grin. "This is only the job, that's all. This is what I do."

  Elsewhere, Kyar raps his knuckles twice against the table, and all present rise to their feet. "Let's get to work," he grunts, as Casso finishes his beer and the Empty Man gouges open his own palms, coating his blades in venomous dark-purple blood. Kyar slings that gilded bow over his shoulder; Casso throws on his coat, pats himself down to make sure that everything is in his pockets where they should be. They are—but there wasn't much to remember in the first place. Casso has always traveled light.

  Briefly, the three of them lock eyes. "Casso," Kyar says, voice dropping low, "don't forget our previous conversation."

  "Yeah, yeah, I get it," the old man yawns in reply.

  Elsewhere, whole bushes of orchids and roses are trampled underfoot.

  He comes barging right through the garden, right up to one of the manor's side entrances—a humble little wooden door, ostensibly blocked off by the twelve-foot-high wall surrounding said garden. He stomps right on through a perfectly-sculpted hedge, and treads carelessly upon whole rows of flowers and young saplings, for his path is clear and utterly unimpeachable. To impede him is simply to die.

  There is a groundskeeper haranguing him all the while, an old woman with no fear of death who follows right on his heels and shouts right in his ears as he makes his way to the entrance. He pays her no mind. The two guards posted at the door, though, these men he approaches quite closely, and greets with the wave of one four-fingered hand.

  At the sight of him, both their swords come right out. Someone shouts something—a threat, a warning, an imperative? It doesn't matter. It isn't relevant.

  "You pulled your weapons," notes the stranger, still approaching them with bloodshot eyes and a cheshire-cat grin. "That makes you viable combatants. Oh, thank the stars above."

  He comes to a halt. His hand goes down to the hilt of his sword. His pupils expand to wide, featureless black pits.

  "This is embarrassing to admit," says Daiga, as his blade hisses free of its sheath, and as each of the guards takes one cautious step back, "but I've been really, really, really looking forward to this."

  End Credits Theme

  remarkably slower! Sorry about that. Bad bout of writer's block and various other things; I tried to wrap this one up early next week to maximize my chances of putting out another in the next few days. I suppose we shall see...