The angel without an aspect still dreamed of her mother’s home. Perhaps this was no surprise. What were dreams but recent thoughts cast across a canvas?

Sebastian had retreated to the country estate without explanation.

She wished to speak with him, but he had not answered her letters.

Thus she dreamed of her childhood home.

Yet when she walked the halls, whether young or grown, the rooms were empty.

And the sky was black.

  “And there remain no signs of Lace?”

  “While I am numerous, Alisandra, I am not infinite.”

  The demon doll and the young angel strode the park near the Cathedral of Fire. Though Spring arrived by the calendar, the flowers still slept. The grounds had been trampled into thick mud by the repeated demonstrations all Solace.

  With the protests done, the park once more hosted a steady stream of nobles holding innocuous conversations with their spies and the occasional bored child.

  How quickly revolutionaries abandoned the cause. Especially as the shops and workhouses reopened.

  “Are we sufficiently conspicuous?” Thea asked dryly.

  Ignoring the jibe, Alisandra pressed her inquiry. “Tell me that Mirielle at least agrees that Lace must be apprehended.”

  Unspoken, the young angel burned with curiosity: Did you kill Reed?

  Thea paused. “This witch possesses an artifact, does she not?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oliver described its compulsion, did he not?”

  Alisandra scowled. She had seen the photographs of the Dreamer’s Den.

  “What would you have constables do before such a power, Lady Mishkan?”

  “Lace is a threat, Thea!”

  “And you are an angel,” the demon doll rebuked. “Do you wish for me to gather myself and march forth? Would you have Mirielle scour the countryside? Would you have us sully our hands with dominion so that you might remain clean?”

  Thea pinned the angel with a cold stare.

  “You are free to request our services, Alisandra, but have a care. Payment will be required.”

  The two of them alone in a crowded park.

  “Alternatively, consider this. Your father has departed for the old places, and your butler has retreated to your estate. None stand against you. The future you wish to seize is at hand. We will not stop you.”

  Thea waited a perfunctory moment, but the angel chewed her cheek in annoyance.

  “Very well.” Curtsying, the demon doll spun on her heel and abandoned the park.

  Abandoned, Alisandra allowed herself a petulant sigh. “She all but demands I claim my dominion…”

  Now that the elder angels drift to their own affairs…

  Ah, but she whined like a churlish child. She was the Lady Mishkan, and she knew better than to sulk.

  Father, Sebastian, and the demons all stand aside. If they leave Lace to me, then I will give the woman her due.

  Returning to the car, she fetched her purse. Inside were two sets of papers, one granted the weight of a House and the second meant for the city manager’s eyes only.

  The first dossier detailed the latest reports on the carnage at the Dreamer’s Den, the known aliases for the woman known as Lace, and suggestions for how to deploy constable resources to apprehend her in all due haste.

  The second paper, hand written, outlined the steps necessary for the city manager to assist with the legal defense and – if necessary – relocation of Lumian witches to territory beyond the church.

  “What does Tura truly believe?” she wondered, smoothing her hair. Satisfied, she returned to the Cathedral of Fire and mounted the stairs to Tura’s office.

  Tura’s secretary spotted her approach and opened the door for her. “Lady Mishkan. You are expected.”

  “That is generally the purpose of an appointment, yes,” she snapped.

  The woman blinked several times but said nothing.

  Alisandra winced. Is this the kind of Lady I aspire to be? “My apologies. It has been a frustrating morning. May I enter?”

  The secretary nodded, accepting the apology. “As you please, Lady.”

  Entering the expansive office, Alisandra found Tura already in conversation with an interloper.

  He watched traffic from the window, idly spinning a decanter of wine between his hands. His black hair fell to the small of his back, woven into a lush braid with more care than a teenage girl and tied with green twine.

  Angela Cecille occupied the first plush chair with the assurance of an old cat, wearing a white coat over her skirts and carrying a bundle of liturgical periodicals.

  Hello, Inquisitor. I see you remain busy.

  Alisandra instinctively smoothed her voice to refined detachment. “Good morning.”

  “How nice to see you, Alisandra,” Angela hummed, making no move to offer her seat.

  Tura toasted his new guest from the window with the decanter. “Welcome, welcome!”

  “A little early for the wine, is it not?”

  “Oh, this? A small gift. Angela, I presume you two already know each other? Hard to imagine anyone who doesn’t know the Cecilles and their gracious hospitality!”

  “Of course. I loved your gown at the winter gala, dear,” Angela deigned.

  “Thank you. I’m afraid we did not have many opportunities to speak.” I was too busy smuggling witches.

  “Excellent!” Tura clapped his hands, happily oblivious to the knives in the mutual smiles across the table. “I apologize for the delay in booking. Scheduling! You have no idea how hectic my life has become already!”

  “I must admit surprise that Miss Cecille is involved in this matter,” Alisandra redirected.

  “Oh, yes. She happened to overhear discussions on this Redeemer matter, and she was moved almost to tears!”

  I am sure she was.

  “She offered a most heartfelt plea, and I could not deny her request. I hope this is no issue, Lady Mishkan?”

  “Of course not,” Alisandra lied. “Our first priority must be bringing justice to the fugitive Redeemer.”

  “You seem to be familiar with the facts of the case,” Angela noted. “Was someone you know involved with the murders at the Dreamer’s Den?”

  “This woman nearly murdered an Inventor in his home.”

  Tura coughed. “Oliver didn’t tell me that part!”

  “She attempted to murder Oliver Oshton?” Angela probed. “There was no mention of this in the papers. When did you learn this, dear? What is your relation to the young Inventor?”

  This footing does not favor me. There are enough rumors about Oliver and I already.

  “If we do not move quickly, I fear he will not be the last,” Alisandra continued. “Her whereabouts are unknown, but her association with Guildsmaster Reed has been confirmed from multiple sources.”

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

  The young angel tucked her purse close and opened the latch. She dipped a hand inside, using her forearm to block the contents within.

  Angela managed to attempt to peer without craning her neck, a feat worthy of a party hostess.

  Alisandra offered the first dossier to the city manager and tucked the second to the bottom of her purse.

  Tura has not yet grasped certain social realities, it seems. Like inviting a hostess to a private meeting between a city official and a House Lady without so much as a warning. His heart may be earnest, but his lips sing from the rooftops.

  “This is quite the docket,” Tura muttered, accepting the papers.

  Tucking her purse between her legs, Alisandra nodded. “Those are only the crimes that we have been able to confirm. There are many more we suspect. Given Reed’s backing, this little cult carried out a campaign of murder, intimidation, and smuggling across the city.”

  “Oh, Alisandra, smuggling is too nasty a business for a Lady to worry over,” Angela confided.

  Surely you have heard by now, Inquisitor. House Mishkan is a friend to those who wish to avoid the church’s burning gaze.

  What started with two terrified children in the dead of night – now living in Whistler lands until Alisandra could arrange transport south – would continue until the Inquisition starved.

  “My House has turned a blind eye to malfeasance for long enough,” Alisandra replied.

  “Blessed by Aure,” Angela agreed. “House Mishkan has made such a miraculous recovery! Why, this time last year you could barely afford your car! We are all looking forward to where your House will apply its touch.”

  “Wherever Ruhum needs our help, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  Tura finished thumbing through the documents and set them on his table.

  Angela snapped the dossier from the table and began to read without even asking permission.

  Quite unperturbed, Tura rubbed his hands. “This woman is quite the mystery! No name, no picture, and no motive. It amazes me to think that I have doubtless seen her at parties a dozen times and never realized I stood within reach of a murderer!”

  “Yes, she particularly enjoyed seducing bored noble boys,” Alisandra said, leaving her sources unstated. “With a proper description and the right legal backing, we can interview the Houses to obtain her various false fronts. From there, perhaps a party photograph, an offhand acquaintance, or a known venue. As the city manager, you have a great deal of discretion in the apportionment of constable resources.”

  “Chief Brookings was reluctantly forced to agree that is true,” Tura laughed.

  “Much of this information is anonymous,” Angela mused, scanning the pages. “You know how unreliable an uncited source is, Alisandra. What magistrate would sign a deposition without proper witnesses?”

  The two women locked eyes once more like bulls preparing to charge.

  Tura clapped. “Ah, Angela already sounds excited! Fabulous! A scoundrel whom murders people at prayer and attacks my friend had best fear the tread of the law!”

  “But are we sure that this witch is the true threat here?” Angela asked, slipping the dossier into her skirts. “Unlike the late Guildsmaster, she confined her slaughter to the lower classes. That seems the action of a petty criminal – hardly the sort for a good Lady to worry over.”

  “Even criminals understand the pecking order,” the angel retorted.

  “Oh? Even her employer?”

  “Reed would not have bothered with pageantry if he thought rifles would do the trick.”

  “By Aure’s grace, his folly was his doom,” Angela praised. “It would have been trouble if he fled to Whistler lands beyond the church’s easy reach.”

  The Inquisitor’s eyes flashed.

  “The Whistlers tend to frown upon Church activity in their lands,” Alisandra noted.

  “Though heresy knows no bounds or station,” Angela dared. Still smiling. “Who knows how many highborn souls are drawn astray by such easy words? We must ever be vigilant.”

  “Indeed, but misplaced vigor might spark a confrontation that would prove disastrous.”

  “Which is why we must bind ourselves to Aure’s will in all things. In fire, peace.”

  Even Tura began to look nervous as the two women fenced. “Ah, good Ladies…or good Lady and good Miss? Good gentlewomen! Pray set yourselves at ease. I will assign an entire squad to chasing down this villainous woman!”

  “I would like to be involved,” Alisandra requested.

  “As would I,” Angela interjected.

  “Your enthusiasm is praiseworthy but perhaps overstated.” Perhaps he envisioned the scathing headlines: New city manager gets Lady Mishkan and the most popular hostess in Lumia both killed. Not expected to be appointed for a second term. “The constables can handle a few interviews and the associated head knocking, my dear lovelies, and…”

  The decanter of wine began to wobble. A moment later, so did the pens in their hostler. A steady rumbling started in the basement and shivered into Tura’s office. It grew until the church shook like the chamber of a running engine. Furniture rocked, and tea cups smashed into the floor in other offices.

  “Hells,” Tura muttered, snatching the decanter from the edge of the table. “Not the wine!”

  “An earthquake?” Angela muttered, clutching her chair. “A foul omen…”

  After fifteen long seconds, the rumbling slowed and finally stopped, leaving the city quiet. Traffic on the roads stopped, pedestrians waited in confusion on the sidewalks, and shopkeepers cursed to see their wares shaken to the floor.

  Alisandra frowned distantly, an expression learned from her father. When he tarried on their walks, mulling over the world with that distant thought in his eyes, she wanted to hit him with a pillow. Now she copied his pose down to the slightly tilted chin, reaching into the depths of memory. Something tickled in the clouded recesses of her life before Blooming…

  “Barely a shake,” Tura reassured his guests. “Earthquakes are common along the southern borders of Whistler lands. The rise of the Plateau broke something deep in the earth that has never quite recovered, and standing structures rarely last there more than a year. Why, one time…”

  The angel scowled. She grew too used to perfect recall! There was a book in the library, one she had yet to commit to her angelic mind. She fumbled with mere human recollection…

And with his work complete, he set the earth to sleeping forever.

Aure thus conquered fire and gave birth to the Isle of Peace.

  “If you would excuse me,” Alisandra begged. “I will contact you about Lace at the first opportunity, but I need to see to a private matter…”

  “Of course,” Tura allowed, disappointed. He hadn’t even poured drinks yet!

  Bidding farewell, Alisandra fled the room, sure to her soul of one simple fact:

  The Isle of Peace did not have earthquakes.

***

  “Do you think the earthquake scared her?” Tura wondered after the Lady Mishkan.

  “Perhaps,” Angela Cecille demurred.

  “Where were we before she arrived? Ah, yes! As I was saying, my father and I were stranded without horse at this point…”

  “Actually, Tura, I had another matter I wished to discuss,” she interrupted.

  “Oh? Do tell.” He sighed internally. No one ever appreciated a good story in this rush-a-day city!

  “There are so many appointments here at the Cathedral left open. You must see them filled posthaste.”

  “Appointments!” The former Inventor slapped his knee. “Harpies on my eaves! I knew you Lumians loved mingling church and politics, but why is the city manager responsible for appointing altar boys? Doormen? Janitors?! Appointments by the hundreds!”

  “And the Keeper of the Flame,” she redirected firmly.

  “Oh, yes, the most crucial of all,” he muttered. Every other old man in this diocese wanted to be the Keeper of the Flame!

  “Then you agree that…”

  “I swore her position not two hours after my own.” He felt a guilty prickle of enjoyment every time he announced this. The position was filled! “A wonderfully well-spoken woman. She overcame terrible trauma as a child to rise again like the phoenix. She arrived like a dream, and her words touched my heart such that I wept!”

  Indeed, she was so eloquent he could not quite remember what she actually said. The memory brought an odd, sour taste to his tongue every time, though…

  Angela Cecille squeezed the dossier between her knees. “You appointed the Keeper of the Flame.”

  “Without a Keeper, my dear, the Conclave cannot even open deliberations! To say nothing of the fact that the Keeper is the only one who can unlock the door to this very building! Silly as that custom is, I must work within the legal framework of this land.”

  “Without even telling anyone?!”

  “Of course I told someone, my dear Angela. We needed two priests to officiate and the former Keeper to complete the ritual. It was a rather odd pageant, actually, involving quite a bit of iconography I am not familiar–”

  “Someone important,” she hissed between her teeth.

  Tura blinked. “The documentation on city manager was quite explicit on my authorities, limited as they may be.”

  Angela surged to her feet, fingers shaking with poorly disguised rage. “Thank you for your time, sir. I bid you farewell!”

  She stormed from the office, nearly slamming into the confused secretary.

  “Is everything alright, sir?” the secretary asked. “The earthquake, and…?”

  Tura sank back into his chair. “I fear I have disappointed the beautiful Cecille. She must have wanted that old sinecure.” He sighed, smiled, and reached for the decanter. “These nobles and their politics will be the death of me!”

***

  When the first tremor struck, Phi leapt from Oliver’s shoulder, flew furious circles around the lab, lit his pile of tarps on fire, and vanished into the kiln.

  By the time he batted the flames out, his partner brooded, only her peak poking out of the coals.

  “Phi? Hells, what in the world was that about?!”

  The phoenix puffed smoke at him.

  “Fine…” He closed the kiln. “Sleep it off, girl. Just do me a favor and save my arse if Lace tries to cave my skull in again, okay?”

***

  Alisandra arrived at the long driveway to her mother’s home shortly before lunch. She parked directly before the door, mounted the steps to the old mansion, and withdrew the key from the bottom of her purse.

  She stared at it for a long moment.

  This would be her first time opening the door herself.

  I borrow, but how could I claim to own?

  Grimacing, she opened her manor. The door sent swirls of thin winter dust across the atrium, and the halls practically howled.

  A lonely, abandoned place.

  The Lady Mishkan marched through the dark for Sebastian’s old study.

  As she neared, the air began to pulse, and her hair lifted into a floating wake behind her head.

  “Sebastian?” she ventured, carefully testing the study door.

  It swung wide.

  The angel of witness rested within, but he was in no condition to speak. He rested cross legged in a column of folded Light, runes and air and thought woven together into something brilliant and heavy like metal. Eyes closed, expression slack, he drifted on tides of distance and time beyond mortal reckoning.

  In his hands he cupped a small, black, broken jungle seed.

  “Sebastian…”

  Stepping into the room, she hesitated at the edge of his ritual circle.

  Runes etched into the air itself hissed at her approach.

  She chuckled dourly. “Father’s runes were always more polite. Are you not at ease with me, Sebastian?”

  The distant angel did not respond.

  “No, of course not,” she whispered, confessing to the sleeping man. “You haven’t been comfortable with me since I Bloomed.”

  I feel your eyes on my back, witness. You track me like an enemy.

  “The same distrustful gaze as Father let slip when I first grasped the Hand of God…”

  Her hand twitched, and three runes in the Work quietly adjusted their configuration like a student tweaking an abacus. Did it incorporate her movements or raise some quiet ward? Other than that, his Work appeared completely frozen. If the circle spun or the runes evolved, they did so at a rate too slow for her perception.

  For all she knew, this could be a spell of decades.

  “Father vanishes to the heavens, you to this,” Alisandra sighed, “and neither of you will confess a word of what you seek. Very well. Good luck in your endeavor, Sebastian. I will check in on you when I can.”

  Shaking her head, she retraced her steps towards the car, passing both her old room and her parents’ room without a second glance.

  I have dreamed of this place enough. What need is there to repeat myself?

  Besides, it was too early in the season; the flowers were not ready to bloom.

***

  Nearly an hour after Alisandra left, Sebastian’s brow twitched in slow motion. His lips formed words across long minutes, and he breathed words faint as a dying breath.

  “I know who you are…”