Devorah sat on the ledge of one of the great open-air windows of the Palace of the Taranaki Princesses overlooking the city. Far below her, the affluent of the city streamed to the domed arena where, minutes from now, the formal challenges issued over the past month would be resolved in trial by combat. Whomever determined these sorts of things had decided any fight involving the Night Hunter was the crowning event, so their fight had been scheduled for last. Devorah saw no point in arriving early.

She turned her gaze from below to above, where the full moon rose over the city building-tops. The Church of Khulanty regarded the moon as a symbol of punishment, of desolation, but from her vantage, it was beautiful: a yellow-orange orb scattered with shadowed valleys and shining plateaus. She wondered what it would be like to walk its surface, to know its landscape in truth.

“What are you looking at?”

Devorah jumped at the voice, nearly losing her perch. She hadn't heard Princess Gitonga approach. She cursed loudly and quickly put her feet on the firm floor of the hall. Princess Gitonga hurried forward to help, putting her hands on Devorah's shoulders.

“I'm sorry,” Princess Gitonga said. “I didn't think I could surprise you.”

Devorah smiled. “What are you doing here? Aren't you supposed to be sitting with the council or something?”

Princess Gitonga shook her head. “You took on this duel in my defense. I'll sit in your support.”

“Even though you think I'm about to die?”

“Especially so.”

Princess Gitonga smiled, but her eyes brimmed with tears. Devorah bit her tongue and fought the urge to roll her eyes.

“Devorah, you must know how I feel about you.”

Devorah nodded. “I do. And I'm sorry, but I just...”

Gitonga tightened her grip on Devorah's shoulders. “It doesn't matter. I wanted to tell you, the council is in deadlock over their support of you over House Loreamer.”

“I... I didn't know that.” Devorah was confused by the sudden change of topic.

“Your offer of plumbing and Chausiku's more and more obvious madness helped swing support to your side, but so did I. Do you understand?”

“You're finally beginning to exert your political influence,” Devorah said.

“And that's because of you. You are the strongest, toughest, most unflappable person I've ever met.”

“Because of me?”

Devorah protested, but Gitonga squeezed her shoulders again.

“Devorah, I don't understand this conflict between you and House Loreamer, but I have to assume you wouldn't pursue it if there wasn't a good reason. I trust that, if given the upper hand, you won't abuse it. Devorah, kill Chausiku tonight and I guarantee the Taranaki Empire will stand beside House Kempenny.”

• • •

The antechamber to the arena was a small stone cell. One doorway lead back to a preparation room where Devorah had dressed in loose black pants and shirt, and armed herself with rapier, daggers, and bow and quiver. The other doorway lead to the arena.

Devorah stood in the center of the antechamber, waiting for the signal to begin. There was still a match before hers. She was in one of three antechambers on this end of the arena. The arena beyond was well lit, no source of shadows for her to manipulate, but the antechamber was dim. Devorah played with the shadows, like dipping her fingers into a pool of water or leafing through a favorite book.

But it wasn't the shadows she was after. While dipping her metaphorical toes into pools of shadow, she drove her mind into the ghostly presence hanging over the arena. They were a dichotomous mixture of individuals with a single drive. They were afraid and they were bold; they were manic and they were melancholy; they wanted to be free of their undead curse and they wanted to hold on to their undead blessing. But mostly, they were starved, starved for the solidity of life.

Devorah sent her mind into the ghosts, promising them whatever it was they wanted, each promise individual to the ghost who wanted it. All she asked in return was their help in a single tiny matter, a matter that would, she assured them, feed their hunger.

A cheer erupted from the arena and Devorah knew a man had died. She could feel his death. He was a man from Yoshida, a knight to a lord. He had courted a married woman, though he hadn’t known she was married, and attracted the ire of her husband, a higher ranking knight. The angry husband had killed him, a sword slash to the stomach, and the young knight, as he crumpled to the sand, his blood and entrails spilling from his torso, could only feel surprise.

As he died, Devorah caught him.

She opened her eyes and went to the doorway to the arena. The elder Yoshida knight strode from the field of battle, toward her end and through one of the other arched entryways. He did not look at her. He did not acknowledge the cheering crowd. He marched, stone-faced, from the sandy surface. He was not proud of what he had done but neither was he horrified by it. It was simply something that needed done and he’d done it.

Devorah admired that.

In the arena, a pair of thick-bodied men ported the new corpse from the sand to a cart in a shielded alcove off to one side. It was piled with the bodies of the evening’s slain, nine dead bodies, each of which she could feel, each of which was ready to receive her power, each of which she reached for now.

Devorah could feel the anticipation of the crowd. Some howled for blood unabashedly, some, ashamed, hid their bloodlust. Either way, the arena hummed with anticipation of the final fight of the evening. Everyone knew of Princess Chausiku’s predilection for savage kills. Though the elder Yoshida knight had killed his opponent without remorse, he had done it quickly and cleanly. The crowd wanted something more colorful.

She heard the servant approach the doorway behind her and knew what she would say, that it was time. Devorah didn’t wait to be told; she stepped out onto the sand of the arena and felt the death that had sunk into it for years upon years upon years breathe across her skin. After weeks of communing with these spirits, they responded to her presence. They soared and cried, crept and sang, delirious with fear and joy.

The grandeur of the arena was lit in all its splendor with hundreds of lamps. The vast room was warm with the body heat of thousands. Even though she’d seen it before, the awesome architecture and simple human mass was enough to draw her attention away from the task at hand, a temptation she fought. To get caught outside the immediate would be to forfeit the fight.

On the other side of the arena, Princess Chausiku also stepped from her antechamber. She was clad in a loose, sleeveless robe of black. Her dark skin shone in the light of the lamps set high into the stone walls of the arena. She seemed to swell with the roar of the crowd. She raised her arms as though already victorious, and Devorah was reminded of the fighters in the illicit basement fight. For Princess Chausiku, this was a show, a show of power, of control, of confidence. It was a show to demonstrate why she was in charge of the Council of Princesses, and why challenging her was a fatal mistake.

Devorah drew her sword without flourish. She too, was putting on a show, but her show would be more effective if, for the moment, everyone was focused on the Night Hunter. At the same time, she drew on the ghosts of the arena, showing them the vitality of the Night Hunter. The air around Princess Chausiku shimmered faintly, though no one seemed to notice the anomaly, least of all Princess Chausiku.

The Princess turned to face Devorah across the sand. It seemed to Devorah that the distance between them was nowhere near as vast as it had been when Devorah first inspected it. It must have been a trick of the moment, her nerves getting the best of her.

She pulled at those shadows that still clung to her from the antechamber. Though they were thin here in the well-lit arena, they were enough to create a mist of shadow. They would be inconsequential against a beast that used its nose more than its eyes, but that wasn’t the point. It was a feint—such a feeble attempt to hide herself might lull Princess Chausiku into complacency.

Sword drawn, shadows swirling, Devorah stood at the ready and watched as Princes Chausiku shifted form, her simple dress shredding as her body quickly became too large for it. Her skin shifting from dark brown to absolute black, covered in short, black hair. Her posture shifting from upright and haughty to hunched, ready to pounce. It was fast. Faster than Devorah had expected. And within a moment, the jaguar’s great, loping strides brought her upon Devorah who had only a moment to react.

Though her power with a weapon in hand made her faster and stronger, she wasn’t as fast or strong as a giant hunting cat. Devorah leapt to the side and twisted. She lashed out with her sword, but the rapier’s edge did little against the thick skin of the cat but irritate it. Devorah hit the sand hard and rolled to her feet. Clearly the shadows did little good, and Devorah was certain her feint, had done nothing to distract the blood-thirsty princess or encourage her to take the fight less seriously.

Devorah’s power to read the Princess’ secret thoughts was likewise unhelpful. The thoughts of the cat were different than she was used to, containing none of the structure of a full human. The panther didn’t think about combat. She was a creature of instinct.

The Night Hunter pounced again, and again Devorah twisted out of the way just in time, neglecting to strike back. It wouldn’t have done any good anyway. The cat snarled and shook the sand from its fur. She opened her mouth, the pink tongue bright against her black fur, and huffed, the hot breath smelling of old blood.

Devorah, struck while the cat gathered herself. She dropped the shadows for a lost cause and pulled hard at the ghosts. She directed them at the Night Hunter. But unlike when she’d unleashed the ghostly murder victim on her murderer, these spirits did not immediately rend at the Princess’ mind. Instead, they swirled in confusion.

The Night Hunter sprang again and this time Devorah wasn’t fast enough. The great claws of the beast caught her across the back as she tried to leap out of the way, and her blood arced from her back in three sweeping lines. And when they struck the sand, it was as though her mind was thrown open. She blinked and in the moment of the blink she found herself in the mindspace, staring at the cosmos beyond the wall. As before, she was drawn into the cosmos not of her own volition, and the power that rushed into her should have been enough to burn her body to ash and scatter the ash to nothing. Instead, the vastness of the cosmos, the everything, put her in touch with the nothing and she could contain it because she didn’t have to. And in the moment after the blink, she grabbed hold of the remains of the dead and thrust them again at her enemy.

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The dead were powerless to ignore her.

In a visible haze, the ghosts descended upon Princess Chausiku, hungry for life. The dead upon the cart rose and dragged themselves to the large cat. They tore at her mind, her soul, her body. The Night Hunter seized, her whole body rigid at the sudden attack. Then she lashed out, but her claws rent only air. Twice more she slashed, eyes wide with furious fear, blood-tinged foam speckling the corners of her mouth.

If Devorah had let them, the ghosts would have taken their time gorging on the Night Hunter’s life, her misery, her fear, but Devorah was disinclined to wallow in a gruesome victory. It was not a symptom of mercy, but rather of pragmatism and showmanship. If the Night Hunter died at the hands of an unseen enemy, her own notoriety would gain little.

So she thrust her hand as though directing an unseen force. She twirled the blade thrice. And when she knew the eyes of the crowd were on her, Devorah thrust hard. The point of the blade pierced the top of the cat’s mouth and into its brain, coming out of the top of the skull in a spray of blood and bone.

The Night Hunter jerked violently, pulling the blade from Devorah’s grasp, and she let it. The ghosts and zombies descended upon the twitching cat, and she let them. The crowd sat in terrified silence, and she let them. She looked up, regarded the gathered with the cool dispassion of the cosmos. She wondered what they meant to her, why she’d wanted to impress them, why she shouldn’t simply take a position of power amongst them and lead them to her own ends. With access to the power of the cosmos, she was in a position to remake the Taranaki Empire, the nation of Khulanty, the Mountain Kingdom, all of it, into a better place.

It was Princess Gitonga who snapped her from the inhumanity of the cosmos. In a crowd of faces, each aghast and terrified and blood-crazed, Gitonga’s stood out. Gitonga’s thoughts were bare to her even through her shield. The gruesome feast of the undead had Gitonga both terrified and nauseated. Devorah, with a casual thought, undid the ties of the undead to the Prime Realm and the ghosts vanished, the zombies crumpled.

The death of the Night Hunter confirmed Gitonga’s growing power within the council. Devorah gestured grandly into the crowd at the Diviner of Winds, and all eyes were on her, the princess who had backed the foreigner who had killed the Night Hunter, Terror of Taranaki. And Gitonga’s love for her was laid bare. It was not the overprotective concern of a nurse, it was not the tough affection of a hard-nosed weapons instructor, it was not the abusive use of a Governor who saw others a means to an end. And that shocked Devorah back to her self.

The world crashed into her. The noise of the crowd: fear, bloodlust, hysteria; the light of thousands of lamps, the heat of thousands of bodies, all assaulted her, crashing about her thoughts. The smell of blood and death twisted her stomach so that bile and sputum and mucus filled her throat and she spat it into the sand where it mixed with blood and viscera.

The body of Chausiku was human again, though it was torn by tooth and nail. Her right arm had been completely removed and her torso laid bare, entrails pulled out. The rapier remained thrust through her mouth and head. All around her, zombies lay mid-feast.

Devorah turned, weak-kneed, and vomited.

• • •

“What am I doing here?”

The whisper lay dead in the antechamber. She did not remember leaving the arena.

She was met by Gitonga. “I can’t believe it. I watched it happen, but I can’t believe she’s actually dead. Can you feel the relief out there? They’ve all been afraid of her for so long they cannot hide their relief. Especially not from us. You did it, Devorah, you actually did it.” Gitonga’s prattle was a product of nerves and adrenaline.

Devorah let it wash over her for a time before she said, “I don’t…”

Princess Gitonga took a step back, falling silent mid-word, her mental shield slamming into place. “I know.”

“I just,” Devorah took a step toward the princess, and Princess Gitonga took a step back. “I thought… Madam Iyabo said flirting… I just don’t want to take advantage of you.” Devorah felt foolish, rattled. She wondered if she could feel for Gitonga what Gitonga felt for her. Maybe she already did and couldn’t recognize it. And what of Rory? She’d felt something for him but never taken the opportunity to explore it. But Gitonga was smart and tenatouc and what if now…

“It’s fine,” said Princess Gitonga.

They looked at each other for a time before the princess turned and left.

• • •

The halls were quiet after the roar of the arena. Devorah walked through the shadows to Madam Iyabo’s suite. She found the old woman sitting in the hall outside the door, waiting for her. She knew her teacher’s intentions before she spoke, and her heart hit the floor.

“You’re kicking me out,” Devorah said.

“Necromancers are the warden against undeath, not the masters of it. We are a shield, not a sword. You have destroyed, in a single brash, violent display, what I’ve spent decades working for. Now they will fear us again.”

Devorah could think of nothing to say. She looked at the floor in front of Madam Iyabo’s knees. The paving stone had been worn smooth and fitted together so closely Devorah could see no mortar. She wondered if the foor had been put together by someone with power over stone, or by a spectacularly talented craftsmen. In noticing the floor, Devorah couldn’t help but notice Madam Iyabo wore a surprisingly fashionable dress: white with red trim, and red symbols Devorah didn’t recognize. It framed her dark form like it was made for her. But Madam Iyabo was known as much for her humble attire as her necromantic power.

“What’s this?” Devorah gestured at the dress.

Madam Iyabo snorted. “It is the reason the Council called me to the palace. The position of Death Warden on the Council has been vacant for nearly a decade, and because I never married, I am eligible to retake my place as a princess.” She made an indelicate sound. “Me, a princess. What nonsense.” She held out her hand and Devorah helped her to her feet.

“I am sorry, but I cannot support your bid for military support.”

Devorah nodded. “And despite my recent victory over Chausiku and Gitonga’s growing power in the Council, you are Madam Iyabo. Who will dare to go against you?”

“It’s more than that, Devorah. You’re a danger to the Empire. I’m going to have you exiled.”

Devorah felt she’d been kicked in the gut. It wasn’t that she’d be exiled from the Empire, but that Madam Iyabo had called her by name. She’d grown used to Madam Iyabo’s affectionate nickname.

Devorah swallowed hard. “Tonight?”

Madam Iyabo laughed gently and patted Devorah’s arm. “No. Not tonight.”

• • •

Devorah had been afforded a small dignitary’s suite as Madam Iyabo would no longer share her rooms with her. Princess Gitonga had offered to share her suite, but Devorah had declined.

She lay on the narrow but comfortable bed and slipped to her mindspace. The cosmos were blocked by the wall, for which she was grateful, but knowing the wall could disappear at any moment, leaving her vulnerable to the awful lack of empathy beyond, made her skin crawl.

Ever since she had destroyed one of her blood-drinking undead from afar, Devorah had wondered if she could locate and destroy Vahramp in the same way. Every night since her night in the arena, she’d thought on the subject, focusing on it to the exclusion of all else. Even with her army marching upon Upton Port, even with her exile from the Empire imminent, even with Princess Gitonga avoiding her, she focused on Vahramp. Her mistake had unleashed on the world a terror, and though that terror seemed to be in hiding for the moment, though she’d heard nothing to indicate that he had returned, his destruction had become forefront for her.

But she couldn’t find him.

In searching, she had come across other undead roaming and terrorizing the people of the Empire. The creatures created by her via Vahramp were the easiest to grasp with her power and destroy by undoing the knot that tied them to the Prime Realm. The others, largely zombies and ghosts, were more difficult but still doable. And so, every night since, she stretched her necromantic senses through the shadows, seeking the undead and undoing them.

But though she could stretch her senses throughout the Empire and Khulanty, she could not find Vahramp; he was invisible to her.

• • •

The road from the city was as it had been. Large paving stones laid in an interlocking pattern provided a smooth surface cutting straight into the deep of the jungle. Once under the cover of jungle canopy, the road quickly became littered with jungle detritus.

A lone man leaned against a cart, broom in hand, taking as much advantage as he could from the shade of the jungle: just far enough in for shade but not so far in for stifling humidity. He watched Devorah approach.

“Madam,” the man said as Devorah approached.

Devorah stopped just outside the shadow, squinting in the sun. She’d have been more comfortable in the shadow, but she wasn’t feeling prone to comfort.

“Sir,” she replied.

The man with the broom laughed. “I’m no ‘sir’, madam.”

Devorah shrugged. “Why not?”

“I believe titles are best left to those who can afford them.”

“All right then. What’s your name?”

The man laughed again. “And what does a well-dressed young lady want with my name? There are stories, you know, of sorceresses who can drive men mad if they know their names. Names are like magic.”

Devorah nodded. Though she was disinclined to give in to superstition about names having power, she’d seen enough and done enough and read enough not to dismiss it out of hand. “And what would a man with a broom know of magic?” she asked in return.

“Ah. Fair point, madam.” He looked up, as though to gain wisdom from a cloudless sky so bright it was almost white. “I’m just a sweeper. I try to keep my head down and out of the doings of magic.”

“Then you’ve no wisdom to give me? There is no insight to be gained from the man standing at the threshold of the jungle, between the order of civilization and the chaos of nature, between light and shadow?”

The man smiled, teeth bright. “The river is high, madam, and the crocodiles are hungry. Best watch your step.”

The hut had fallen into worse disrepair than when Devorah had been there last. Only about a quarter of the roof was left and it listed to one side. Devorah had to admit the falling in of the roof was likely her fault, but the slant must have been due to the rising river weakening the supports that held the hut off the ground. Devorah mounted the steps carefully and sat under the bit of roof still intact.

Right on time, the afternoon rain began.

Devorah crossed her legs under her dress, set the black book upon her lap, and closed her eyes. The rain splashing on the hut floor speckled her with water. The benign spirit she’d contacted so many times when living here with Madam Iyabo was not difficult to find. When she contacted it, the song of the book, the song she’d learned to shut out, returned with such intensity that for a moment it was all she knew. For a moment she a child again, lying abed in Kempenny, blinded by headache and fever and nausea. But the moment passed and she came to, still sitting in the only bit of shelter to be had from the pounding rain.

Before her was a ghost, a spirit of pale yellow light; he was the only light in the hut. Night had fallen.

He was a thin old man with a wild fringe of hair and wide, mad eyes. His shape was solid enough but his movements were twitchy.

“I know who you are now, Dr. Milton.”

The mad old ghost cackled, a high-pitched, broken sound that melded seamlessly with the song of the black book.

“Took you long enough, little girly girl. My old, my old, my old student finally gave in, did she? She never could keep a secret that rotten little….” Dr. Milton settled into unintelligible muttering.

“No.” Devorah shook her head. It didn’t matter that Dr. Milton believe her, but she wanted to protect Madam Iyabo’s reputation, even to a mad old ghost of a man who probably hadn’t been particularly stable or kind even in life. “No, she didn’t tell me. I figured it out.”

Dr. Milton did not reply, he only continued to gibber.

Devorah took a breath, held it, and let it out slowly. “Death is not evil. Death is not the end. Death simply is.” Devorah reached out to her necromantic power and let it fill her, the familiar words easing the process.

“Yes,” said Dr. Milton softly, his image shimmering faintly. “Yes, I remember that, that, that…”

The knot of power holding the ghost to reality was tighter, more complicated than any she’d ever seen, even Frederick Vahramp’s. But the key was the book in her lap, the black book that sang softly now, a gentle melody. The book was a physical anchor to the Prime Realm.

“Yes, yes, yes,” breathed the ghost.

The book had its own knot of power, a smaller, simpler knot. She touched it, and at her touch it slipped easily apart. The song faded to nothing and a sense of relief made her shudder.

“I release you from your bondage, from your madness, from your hunger.”

And Dr. Milton faded away before her eyes, eager for release. In her lap, the book dried and curled and crumbled to dust. She stood and the dust scattered to floor, through the floorboards, and into the river that had risen to just under them.

Devorah looked out into the dark, her umbramancy revealing the secrets of the flooded jungle. And just beyond the edge of the doorway that now led only to a turgid swirl of muddy river, was a crocodile. Devorah didn’t pretend to understand the motivations of giant river lizards, but she was certain this one regarded her as nothing more than a snack.

“Not tonight.” Devorah reached for the shadows and pulled herself through.