The night was mature when Peter and Julian returned to the tomb. Only a single sentry stood guard, an anthem to the day's failure. Sobs and wailing cast a dour ambiance on the tombs — the sounds of mourning from loved ones of those never to return, who were apparently unable to sleep.

Peter hadn’t realized how many civilians there were on the base. He had been there for only two days but hadn’t seen them as he heard them now. It only made sense that the soldiers wanted to keep their families close, but now Peter couldn’t bring himself to look any of them in the eyes.

A cry of surprise broke the night, and a shadow limped over to the arriving pair.

“Albert?” Julian acknowledged the mover. The first of the domestics Peter had seen when he came, there was no sign of his sister.

“You’re okay!”

Julian’s dry laugh in response said otherwise.

Albert’s face dropped. “Did any others make it back? Esmee?”

Julian winced sympathetically. “I saw Esmee go down.”

Albert’s face became a mask of forced control. “She honored her stewardship.”

Julian moved to comfort Albert, but the valet jerked away, his expression contorted with an unpleasant thought. “Did we make a difference today, High Steward?”

Julian looked back at him steadily with pain-filled eyes.

The moment was shattered by a loud shout. “Peter!”

Norah rushed swiftly towards the three men. She looked around. “Has the commandant seen you?”

“We just got here,” Peter explained.

“Let’s go.” She promptly began leading them toward the command tomb.

Peter inhaled sharply and dragged his feet as he tried to shamble after her.

“Are you injured?” Norah looked back at him, her pinprick eyes dark in the night.

“Yeah,” Peter grunted. “I don’t think I have my stomach back yet.”

“I didn’t know that was possible,” Norah noted. “I thought you couldn’t get hurt.”

“Yeah, well, so did I,” Peter answered.

“Van Seur,” called a familiar voice. The commandant left his office accompanied by Director Van Den Hoek and Captain Tobias Visser. Apparently, word had reached them that they had returned.

“We would take your report in my office,” the commandant explained, “But considering how full that room is, I think it would be best if you two gave your field report here. I’m sure no one wants to get leeched to death. You’ll excuse us, Norah, valet.”

“Of course, sir,” Norah clicked her heels together with a brisk salute before trotting away. Albert waited for Julian's nod of assent before he turned and left.

“Van Seur; Julian. What happened?”

“I engaged the elder liches and tried to retreat when we were overrun,” Julian explained. “I was pursued and escaped when I was able. I managed to kill General Montu and scatter some of their stables on my way out.”

Commandant Van Graif nodded curtly and stroked his light beard. “That is good news. Any chance you were followed?”

“None, sir.”

“I offer my most sincere condolences for your fallen comrades,” Van Graif said, his face stoic, his tone professional.

“I appreciate that, commandant,” Julian said. “They fulfilled their stewardships. Much like your fallen.”

Some unspoken understanding passed between the leaders, and Peter didn’t envy either of their positions.

“Now, Van Seur.” The commandant turned to Peter. “How about your report?”

“Oh, um,” Peter started, unsure how to give a military report. “I tried my best to hold off the ghouls but was overwhelmed. When given the order to retreat, I obeyed.”

“As you should have,” the commandant agreed.

“I couldn’t get too close to the others, or else I would have leeched them. So, when I got separated from Director Stegeman, I took to the sewers.”

Peter looked around. “Where is the Director?”

“He didn’t make it,” Captain Visser growled, biting back the bitterness in his voice.

“Oh,” Peter said in surprise. He knew people would die, but Peter’s aching insides twisted uncomfortably at the realization that he could never see his direct supervisor again.

“Anyways, I got lost in the sewer, so I came up to get my bearings. I saw that I was near the Library, so I —” Peter stopped.

“You what?” Van Graif asked.

“I attacked.”

“What?” Captain Visser cried. “You were given deliberate orders to retreat, and so you attacked a random facility?”

“It wasn’t random!” Peter insisted. “We are fighting a war on little to no data, so I took a calculated risk.”

“A risk that wasn’t your call to make!”

“Captain, please allow Van Seur to finish his report,” the commandant said.

The captain stood down, but Peter could feel the heat coming from him.

“Make no mistake, Van Seur, I agree with the captain,” Van Graif warned. “You should have stuck to your orders as you agreed.” The Commandant's brow knitted into a fierce arch.

“I — uh.” Words had become difficult. “I killed a lich there. Anubis said his name was Thoth.”

“Anubis?”

“Oh, right, I saw him when I went after —” Peter stopped as he anticipated the soldiers’ response.

“You went after what?”

Peter’s mother had always told him to be truthful, even when it might get him in trouble. So Peter bit his tongue before responding.

“When I went after Iris.”

Van Graif’s eyes flashed with venom momentarily before being masked by a deliberate calm.

“Van Seur. What was our agreement?”

Peter bowed his head. He had thought about their agreement as he broke it.

“You agreed to help me get her back if I helped you get the tiles,” Peter said.

“And …?”

“And I agreed to follow orders, and never to take the band off.”

“Van Seur, you directly disobeyed your orders when you made an unauthorized attack on the library; you went too far when you went after your friend. You will be punished.”

“Woah, wait.” Julian stepped in. “Captain, he was just trying to —”

“Let me remind you, steward, that he is my conscript, and it is my right to discipline my men.”

Julian raised a defensive hand. “The things the boy went through today —”

“He agreed to do them when he refused to hand over our greatest weapon,” Van Graif insisted.

Peter hung his head like a disobedient child caught in the act. “Commandant. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry won’t save my men when you disobey orders in the future,” Van Graif said pointedly. “The court band, please.” The Commandant held out his hand.

“Commandant,” Peter’s eyes blurred, “Please, I am now starting to learn how to use it. I Promise I won’t get distracted by Iris again because she’s —” Peter gasped as he forced himself to say it.

“She’s undoubtedly dead.”

Van Graif stopped. “I’m sorry,” he said, “for the loss of your friend, but Rahashel marches on Julleck tomorrow, and we must put everything we have into their only lines of defense: the band.”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Commandant,” Peter pleaded, “I can fight with you, but I need it; without it, I’m …”

“You’re what?”

“I’m just a nine-fingered seventeen year old kid in a ninety-year-old body.”

Captain Visser growled. “That’s what you always were! That band would serve best in the commandant’s hands!”

Peter nodded. The captain was right. If Peter could save dozens of people, the commandant could save hundreds.

“I got hurt bad in Stalpia. The band is the only thing keeping me alive right now,” Peter said. “If I take it off now, I might die.”

Captain Visser snorted. “What a pile of —”

“It’s true.” Julian cut in. “Anubis used some Court killing weapon on him.”

The Commandant glanced at Peter inquisitively. “Is this true?”

“I’m healing,” Peter said. “Just … slowly. Can I give it to you in a few hours? Taking it off now could very well be a death sentence.”

“Commandant,” Tobias protested. “You’re not going to tell me you buy into this-”

“Thank you, Captain, that will be all,” Van Graif dismissed him. “You can keep an eye on him until then if you like, but I’m not here to murder a boy who just lost his best friend.”

Julian stepped in. “I think you’ll find Private Van Seur’s actions have yielded more gain than error,” he said as he hefted a backpack. “He …”

Peter wasn’t listening; he knew the commandant was right. He had disobeyed, and now he deserved to be stripped of the power he held. He jammed his hands into the remains of his tattered pockets and his knuckles clucked against something hard.

Peter pulled out a small tile of dark glass with the glowing scrawl of the court script. He frowned at the glass chip.

Julian stopped talking, and Peter realized they were all staring at him.

A gun hiss and a scream from the outskirts of base spun the group.

Shapes started to leave the tombs and shelters to investigate. Peter could tell they were mostly women, accompanied with children, by their shape. Nine Fingers had few soldiers left.

The graveyard’s usual, murky fog was thick today and seemed to extend only a few yards in front of the area where the mouths of the tombs met.

Shadows stirred in the fog, and the man Peter recognized as the sentry flew into the clearing thrown like a rag doll. The mangled figure hit the ground and rolled to a stop, his limbs askew in strange angles. He didn’t move.

Hysterical laughter followed from the mouths of unseen adversaries masked by the fog. Peter instinctively reached for a weapon, but his holster was empty. Several dark shapes stepped out of the mist and into the dim gaslight that illuminated the remnants of Nine Fingers. There couldn’t have been more than fifty people in total. Children cowered away from the figures, but their mothers and the remaining few soldiers held pistols and crossbows at the ready.

Seven pale and ghastly men came to a stop before the defensive line. Wearing black coats and hats tailored in older fashions, and thin-bladed straight swords that military officers in Nosmeria used as a sign of authority, they giggled like hyenas. They weren’t mummified as was common for Rahashel’s ghouls, nor did they have the animal heads that his liches commonly had. They simply looked like pale and gaunt men.

The men chatted and tittered excitedly, with the edge of hysteria in their words.

“Well, this isn’t exactly the reunion I was expecting,” one of them snickered.

“Who would have thought these peasants had desecrated our homes?”

“It’s clever enough, I never would have guessed.”

“I guess we owe it to the young Court that we were able to find you.”

A few startled people gasped and glared at Peter.

“What?” Peter cried.

One of the ghastly ghouls stepped forward and held up a tile identical to the one in Peter’s hand.

“How clever of Anubis to tag him with a tracking tile,” one of them goaded from behind.

“Yes, and how nice it is to see he’s still alive. Taking the Bedorven from a corpse would have been a shame.”

“I’m just delighted that so many living things are in our tombs. Isn’t it ironic? The living hiding underground and the dead walking under the sun?”

Our homes? Our tombs? Seven of them and six tomb mounds behind. Peter gasped as he recognized the leader. His petulant, pouty lips now seemed unnaturally dark, and his sadistic laugh now matched his insolent face. Peter had seen him six months ago when he was first leeched to death by Court Rahashel himself: King Adrichem, the last living monarch of Nosmeria.

“They’re the kings!” Peter cried. “The ones who were buried here!”

Several people turned their weapons on Peter, accusingly staring at the tile in his hand.

“No, I’m not with them!”

“He’s a lich!”

“You idiots!” Norah barked at them. Small as she was, no one ignored her. “Turn your weapons on the ghouls; they’re Co-en!”

Cognitive-enforced ghouls.

“We’ve come for the court child and the Priest!” A ghoul that wore the body of an older king from generations past announced. “We also came for blood.”

The seven ghouls drew their swords, and the blades sang the song of metal scraping on metal as they danced out into the gaslight.

“Get the civilians out!” Commandant Van Graif bellowed before drawing his blade. His sword was of the same style the kings carried, only much less ornate.

The kings hissed and rushed forward, their blades gleaming in the gaslight, and the remaining people of Nine Fingers let loose a volley of gun and crossbow quarrels.

The kings staggered from the shock of the attack but picked themselves up and charged forward like vipers.

Peter rushed to meet them empty-handed.

“Van Seur!” Commandant Van Graif barked. “Get out of here!”

Not in the mood to disobey another direct order, Peter reoriented and ran.

He sprinted for the tombs; he would have to climb a little, like the rest of them, where the long mounds met together, forming a half star — but everything about running, and especially passing some mothers and children — bit at Peter.

“Van Seur!” A screamed warning from Norah turned him just in time to take a sword to the chest. The leech flair lit up, but the ghoul that wore King Adrichem’s body ignored it. It was unsettling to Peter to see his king's face grinning at him victoriously.

Peter choked as King Adrichem’s ghoul lifted him off his feet, skewered down to the hilt of his sword. These were undoubtedly very enforced ghouls.

Peter looked and, to his horror, saw several women and children that Adrichem had cut down to get to him. The laughing ghoul-king swung his sword in a circle and flicked Peter off, sending him crashing into the training tomb.

Peter gasped as he tumbled across the floor. The familiar tomb was adorned with the usual racks of weapons. Peter jumped to his feet and ran for the wall.

King Adrichem laughed as he followed. He flicked his sword experimentally, the whoosh of the blade cutting through the din of war from outside.

Peter pulled a spear off the wall; unlike the sentinel spears, this one had a long and slender blade.

King Adrichem rushed Peter and, with a few parries, got inside his reach. Peter’s leech flair lit up, leeching a lot of time from the king. This ghoul had dramatically more time stores built in than the run-of-the-mill sentinel.

With several wicked-fast cuts, King Adrichem dropped Peter to the ground and danced away until the leech vapor faded.

Peter coughed and bled onto the floor. What was this ghoul’s plan? Peter only had to leech him until he ran out of time, then the fight would be Peter’s. Unless the reanimated king had an Druk, he couldn’t win.

“Get off my floor!” A small figure bellowed from the doorway.

King Adrichem spun on the trainer, Norah. “Your floor?” he asked, mockingly. “This floor belongs to my great grandfather.”

He lunged at her and she ran for the wall, discarding an empty pistol. She was fast, but he was a ghoul.

He slashed at her, and she caught the blade in her prosthetic claw hand. The sword and clawed finger gritted and scraped against each other.

The trainer reached back with her free hand and pulled a strange gun off the wall that looked like someone mounted a funnel on half of a thick rifle. The weapon was so big, Peter worried that it would knock her flat if she tried to use it. She stuck it in his face.

The gun hissed thunderously and threw King Adrichem onto his back.

“Van Seur! Get out!” Norah screamed.

Peter scrambled to his feet and started for the door again.

Norah pulled a sword from the wall, a replica of the one the commandant had, only appropriately smaller, and she let out a shriek as she ran it through the supine ruler’s heart.

“With all due respect, Your Majesty, I think you would have wanted to stay dead.”

King Adrichem’s eye snapped open, and he laughed as he ran his sword through Norah’s midsection.

“No!” Peter screamed as he changed his direction, running for the ghoul.

King Adrichem was on his feet in a moment, and he stabbed Peter’s one-time trainer several times and dropped her to the floor before Peter got to them. No leech flared from Norah’s crumpled body.

Peter saw the dead expression in her small eyes, and watched as her wounds soaked blood into her clothing.

Peter slammed into King Adrichem and grabbed his face, lighting up the room with court light. “You can’t kill me, and you’ll drain just as easily as the next ghoul!” Peter snarled as King Adrichem’s face started to rot in his hands. “Your plan failed!”

King Adrichem laughed and easily kicked Peter off. He looked not at all disturbed by his leeching.

“We’re not here to beat you,” he scoffed. “We bring a message!”

“What message?” Peter demanded as he readied himself for another charge.

King Adrichem held out another tile, and glowing writing on it burned away as a small vaporous purple light shone above it; in the light was a semi translucent image of Iris.

Peter gasped and staggered. Tiny as the image was, she wasn’t old and bent. She was young again, the seventeen-year-old school friend he remembered her as, and she had Peter’s Van Gutter hat in her hands.

“Peter!” she cried in the voice he had grown up hearing.

“Iris!”

King Adrichem curled his bony fingers closed and stanched the light, ending the strange projection.

“You want her? Go to Stalpia and give the Bedorven to Anubis.”

“It’s a trick,” Peter cried, his voice thick and husky. He wiped tears from his eyes.

“It’s your only option.”

“Anubis sent you?” Peter demanded.

King Adrichem smiled. “Meet him at the printing shop. He’s waiting for you.”

“And, what, he’ll let us live?” Peter asked.

“Yes.”

“I doubt that.”

“Then she dies slowly. You have until tomorrow.” King Adrichem turned, flaring the tail of his coat, and marched away.

Peter wrenched himself to his feet and ran up to Norah; the petite woman’s blood had begun to seep across the floor. There was nothing he could do.

The sound of struggle died outside, and Peter prayed that his companions didn’t do so as poorly. It was over as fast as it started.

He pulled himself up and exited.

Commandant Van Graif, Director Van Den Hoek, Captain Visser, Van Dijk, Isabella, Owen, and Doctor Aarts were the only Nine Fingers combatants Peter knew who were left standing.

A spattering of noncombatants wailed in the night, and a disturbing number of civilians lay slaughtered.

Julian squatted next to Albert. The valet stared, glassy eyed, at the misty sky. His shirt was soaked with blood in the midsection. One of the seven kings jerked and twitched decapitated next to the domestics like a broken piece of machinery.

The mercenaries, Morris, Benedict, and Skye, were breathing hard, but unhurt. Many bodies littered the ground.

“They …” Director Van Den Hoek gasped as he cradled a woman’s head. Peter recognized her as the woman he spoke to at the gun range. “They focused their attack on the civilians … but … why?”

The Commandant placed a hand on his recently promoted second-in-command’s shoulder. “To send a message. To tell us we belong to Court Rahashel now and to foreshadow the reckoning that will fall on Julleck.”

A message — to me, Peter realized. They couldn’t force me to return with them, so they wanted me to know what they could do, what they will do to Iris.

Van Den Hoek choked and then let out a wail so raw, Peter clenched his teeth and looked away. The young Director cradled the woman’s head as he sobbed.

Peter looked down and saw Van Zon, the sentry from the night he visited Dr. Aarts. He had a sword wound through his chest. Peter recalled the respect he felt for the man standing out in the cold, ever vigilant. Now, the cold wouldn’t bother him again.

The others turned to Peter. “What happened in there?”

Peter turned pale. “He killed Norah … and left.”

Why did this have to happen? Why did Rahashel taunt them by dragging them around and taking everything they held dear? Why did Court Rahashel need Stalpia? Why did he conquer Calacray? How many more courts were there, and why did they s0w such pain?

Peter didn’t have the answer to most of his questions, but he did know some things for sure, with an icy certainty, deep in his bones. He knew Iris was still alive, and he knew that if he gave the court band to the commandant, she would die.