His body, still standing, begins to tremble.

I stare, shivering, and I watch his ghost, twisting in the nethernal wind.

The body collapses – the ghost becomes transparent inside a tornado, a vortex of inevitability –

I watch him go, go for good, and feel the change as his flesh cries out to me, cries out for the sick half-life I can restore to it – a headless zombie –

“No!” I cry back at her out there, lunging forwards, far too late to do anything except catch the corpse before it suffers the same ignominy as his head.

I lower him to the floor with all the respect such a mutilated corpse deserves, and when I look back up she is there, right there, floating just off the balcony.

I see the anger in her eyes and I mirror it by instinct.

“What are you doing?” I shriek.

“Me? What? Kas!” She doesn’t understand, but she’s still angry – more angry – offended at my words. “We fought the demons – while – what, Kas? I thought you were saving them? What is zis? Look at you! Get avay from it!”

“It’s Nighteye!” I said, starting to get myself under control. “Nighteye! You killed Nighteye, Em! He’s dead.”

“What?” she muttered. “What? No, no, zat can’t be right, zere is no –“

I unleashed gremlin-light from my hand, illuminating the room, the corpse –

The shadowed face wasn’t quite free of the hood, but she could see the hair. It was enough to shut her up.

“You killed him, and he just saved them. He was going to leave Mund, he wasn’t –“

“He voz a heretic!” she screamed at me. “Vot – what are you? Kas!”

The desperation in her voice sliced my soul.

“Ze book…” The words were wrung from her; she spoke breathily, as though her insides were contorting in panic. “He told me – zis morning – he should’ve never have let you have ze book…”

I saw the tears coursing down her cheeks, streaming behind the phoenix-mask.

“Em –”

A flash of colour and a gust of super-charged air announced Tanra’s arrival. The seeress was crouching beside Theor’s body, looking down on him.

I could hear Killstop’s whimpering through the frowning mask.

“Oh – oh no,” she moaned. “Why? How did this happen, Kas? Why didn’t I see it?”

“Everseer sent him,” I said, “to save them. Save me from it.” I grated out the remainder: “Don’t you see. It’s all over now.”

“She saw it, then,” Tanra mumbled. “She could’ve come herself. She gave him a death-sentence.” She turned, the frown coming to centre on me – her eyes were shining through the slits. “She did this to us.”

“I understand now,” Em intoned.

That quiet, untrembling voice was dreadful to my ears.

I looked back up at her, and she was drawing away from the balcony, surrounding herself in a nimbus of light.

“Both of you, is it? How voz it I could have been so blind? You vere vith her, veren’t you? Last night.”

I couldn’t hold myself to the lie. I lowered my head in defeat.

Killstop blurred to her feet, daggers appearing in her hands, then froze –

“No,” Em said, moving farther away again. “You should know zat I have removed your flight-spells. You cannot stop me from leaving.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Killstop growled.

“Tanra, no!” I snapped, putting out my arm as if to restrain her.

Like I could restrain her.

“There’s a way to stop you without killing you; you know I would never do that, Storm!” the seeress continued in a more-measured tone. “You don’t need to tell them about this. You don’t need any of this. There are ways I can help you…”

The wizard floated there, incandescent, below the spans and walkways of Mud Lane. People were coming out of their doors and opening their windows to watch, even though the Mourning Bells were still ringing.

I didn’t like it, this sudden pause, and I didn’t trust Tanra not to attack Em. Even if Stormsword were trying to make it difficult for her, an arch-diviner of Killstop’s calibre could at least throw a knife, do her some harm…

Surreptitiously, I spread my shields across the space, so as to encompass both of them. Any violent will would hurl her out of its area, while keeping Em protected –

When my outer shield repelled Em, I instantly realised my mistake.

“Wait!” I cried, throwing out my hands in what I intended as a gesture of peace – how was I to know she was already harbouring ill-will?

It must’ve looked to her like I was trying to attack her with force-blades, because she drew away a few feet from my barrier, doubled her fists, and levelled her arms straight at me.

The white fire she sent tearing through my defences was as strong as I’d ever encountered. If she’d hit Winterprince with this, he’d have been steam on the wind.

Each barrier fell, taking longer and longer to buckle as she penetrated deeper into my shapes – until at last only the circle, triangle and square remained to cover me and Killstop standing beside me.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

The white light was a furious column of pure heat, and, in combination with the pressure of maintaining the shield, sweat sprung out on my brow almost instantly.

“Do you want me to fight her?” Killstop asked in a low voice, hard to hear under the billowing of the wizardry.

“What?” I asked her, panicked. “No! She –“

“I won’t kill her. I promise. She will be healed afterwards. We can bind her. Talk to her.”

“I…”

Em supports the Magisterium. She makes excuses for those who fed her and clothed her and gave her a purpose.

Those who sprinkle the seed of men in the mud and let the woebegotten fester there, misshapen and ignored. Those whose boot is upon every throat, of every creed and race and kind, save for their own.

She believes in death. She will never stop killing.

She killed Nighteye.

And at some point, at her side, I’ll do it too. I’ll kill. Then one day, I’ll even wear the smile while I do it, like a badge of honour.

I’ll be lost, like I warned, warned Nighteye, warned Theor before, before she –

“Too late,” Tanra murmured – and at the very next instant, Em gave up her attack, frustrated by the time it was taking to chew through my shield; she whipped about and soared away like a bolt of her lightning, climbing into the sky, heading north-east.

Towards Hightown.

“Where’s she going?” I panted.

“Gah!” Tanra blurted, whirling and stomping back into my apartment. “I can’t see – Zakimel, obviously, but who else? Where? What gets said? Oh… Bor…”

I followed her into the main room, staring at her nonplussed, but as soon as I came to a stop she just walked around me, heading straight back to the door once more.

“I have to move Mum,” she muttered, looking at the floor. “Kas… I’ll always be your friend, Kas. Please trust me. I’ll keep everyone safe.”

“Tanra – what – what is this…?”

I reached out, grabbed her hand; she looked me in the eyes, and shook her head softly.

“Goodbye, Kas – goodbye!”

She vanished, leaving me empty-handed in a room of stacked-up sacrifices, a sylph, and a heretic’s decapitated corpse.

I stood in the dark, my back against the damaged door, and tried to focus on my breathing. Tapping my wraith-essence helped. Avaelar was talking, but I was only half-listening… quarter-listening. My mind could only do so many things at once, and the sudden headache that started filling my skull with rocks wasn’t helping.

Everything had fallen apart, in a matter of seconds, and I couldn’t understand.

I was standing over Nighteye’s headless corpse, and the temptation to simply bring him back was surprising in its strength. The sorcerer’s mind I’d inherited along with my abilities was already going over the options with regard to the severed head. It could be an advantage to certain undead, the way I understood it…

Overriding those base sensations, though, was a sea of fire in my thoughts: the recognition, however unbearable, that my life now hung in the balance.

Thanks to Irimar’s games, Em had been put into the perfect position to turn on me. After our meeting with Nighteye last night, Timesnatcher had made plain to her the real nature of my betrayal, yet she’d said nothing all day. She knew it had nothing to do with romance. Instead, she’d had all day to mull over the notion I might commit Heresy.

Did Timesnatcher see this? Or a part of it? Did he know this was coming?

I wouldn’t have put it past him, even given Vardae’s potency.

“Can you wake them?” I asked Avaelar quietly, letting some radiance out of my hand to illuminate the room. My sylph just nodded, looking almost as disturbed as I must’ve been, then turned to his task.

I sent some gungrelafor with the pieces of Nighteye’s body to the shrine of Yune. The way I figured it, I could send a message to Fang now – the truth about Theor’s new identity was out of the bag. At least I could give the poor girl some closure. I doubted anyone else would care, at least outwardly – heretics being what they were, it’d be frowned-upon to grieve over the death of one, wouldn’t it? And Everseer had sent him to his death, as Tanra said… It wasn’t like she really cared about him…

I put the benches back in place and stretched out Orstrum’s mattress; one by one we laid out my sleeping family members in more comfortable positions, before Avaelar went to each of them in turn, blowing gently in their ears.

I had Xan awakened first.

She was on her side on one of the benches, opposite her son, and the moment she opened her eyes she rolled off the bench in a panic, literally climbing the table with her elbows and knees, such was her urgency, her desperation to get to Xastur’s side.

“Th-the scar might not… not fu-fully heal, but I’ll g-get an arch-druid to look –”

“No you won’t,” she said fervently, gathering her still-sleeping son into her arms and closing her eyes. “Oh no, no you won’t, Kastyr. This is it. I’m not even sorry. We can’t even be around you anymore.”

Orstrum was shaking his head groggily, looking about in a daze. He slowly rolled onto his side to face us as my sylph moved on to the twins.

“Xantaire –” he croaked.

“No, old man!” she burst out, opening her eyes and glaring across at him. “You listen to me now. You think you got Morsus killed? Well what about Xastur? What about my son!”

She welled up with tears, and clung again to Xastur.

“This is it,” she went on. “It’s too much. You’ve got to go.”

I shook my head. The tears were rolling down my face now.

“What?” Jaroan cried, furious even as he opened his eyes. “No! This is our house! You go!”

I ignored him for the moment. “Xan – Xan, it’s not enough. Y-you’re in danger, wherever I go, if they know you were…” I let my voice drop away, remembering Tanra’s last words to me:

“I’ll keep everyone safe.”

The moment Jaid was up she ran across to me, flung herself into my arms.

“Kas – I knew you’d save us,” she murmured. “I knew it. I prayed to – to Yune, and she answered…”

I shook my head again, holding her tight. “I didn’t. I didn’t, okay! It was all some stupid diviner’s game and, and if they’d decided differently you’d all be dead, and Nighteye, maybe he wouldn’t but –”

“Kas, Kas slow down,” Xan said, suddenly looking, if such a thing were possible, even more ill. “What’s this about Nighteye?”

As Avaelar crouched beside Xastur, still cradled in his mother’s arms, I explained. I censored the worst of it, but I explained. I didn’t mention that it was Em who’d done it.

When I was done, I caught Xan staring in mingled horror and awe at the thin slice a champion had taken out of the apartment, a blackened groove now cutting through the walls on either side of the door-frame and through the hinge-side of the door itself.

“So what… what does this mean?” she asked. “Are they going to come for you too?”

As if in answer, between one peal and the next, the Mourning Bells suddenly dropped away.

We sat there in silence, and I felt as though I were on the block, waiting for the headsman’s axe to bite into my spine, do to me what had been done to Theor… poor Theor…

I rose to my feet, slowly detaching myself from my sister. “I have to go – to the graveyard. His – he’s there. Nighteye. I have to look after him.”

“We’ll come with you,” Jaroan said defiantly.

“No you will not,” I said, letting my wraith-form take over my flesh and beckoning to Avaelar. “I’ll be gone before you could get there, so don’t try, okay? I’ll – I’ll be back. I won’t let them take me in, don’t worry.”

“You’ll fight?” my brother asked, eyes flashing.

“It won’t come to that,” I replied, spreading my wings. “I’ll run.”

“Can – can you leave Princess?” Jaid asked in a trembling little voice. Her bottom lip was going.

“I… Princess went for a paint-job… I’ll show her to you again really soon, okay? I promise. Hey, that’s not a bad idea, really…”

I bequeathed them a host of huge golden squirrels, under firm instructions to defend them against attack but not to strike the first blow. I set a series of shields over the apartment, and barely reinforced the outermost one, putting almost double the effectiveness into the next one. This way I ought to receive a better warning if someone started dismantling them.

“I don’t think I want to stay here,” Xan said, trying to stop Xastur from mounting the nearest fey squirrel. At first when he’d awoken he’d seemed sullen, but it hadn’t taken him long to cheer up.

“Trust the boy, Xantaire,” Orstrum murmured, sounding scared too – then his eyes met mine. “Trust the man.”

I nodded to him in gratitude as I let myself slip out of physical reality, into the shapes and shadows of the wraith’s motion. A beat of softly-glowing blue wings, and I was gone.

* * *