“I am going to skin her alive.” Sil ripped the piece of very expensive paper into the smallest shreds she could manage. “I’m going to make a whip out of her epidermis. And I am going to flay Vergil bloody with it.”

Little shreds of paper got torn into even smaller shreds. She used her nails.

This wasn’t how things got done. She didn’t get to do as she pleased. That wasn’t their understanding. That wasn’t how they—

Except that Tallah did as she pleased, whenever she pleased. She may as well have been angry at the storm. Or at Vergil, for being hapless and eager.

But this was about Mertle! She had been terribly careful not to involve Mertle in any of their comings and goings. Mertle had other things to worry herself over, not the machinations of one unhinged pyromancer and her two thralls.

A thrall? Is that how I see myself?

Anger brought out the stupid in her. But she wanted to be angry. Maybe Mertle would refuse after all. Or Aliana would. She had little real love for Tallah, and even less reason for it. There was no reason for her to agree to anything so crass and risk-laden.

“Can you believe that fat-headed prim cunt?”

No…

Someone was talking very loudly out in the corridor, getting closer.

“Verti, this simply isn’t proper. She called me out, in this ugly weather, on Descent night, just because she thinks I measured her wrong. That is insulting. I barely convinced Tummy not to come here himself. He almost stripped the boy naked and marched him straight out of the shop.”

Sil sagged in her chair and closed her eyes, counting down the inevitable.

Sure enough, here was the knock. And here she was, walking as if to the gallows to answer. She really shouldn’t…

Mertle stared daggers from under a thick, snow-heavy cloak. Verti bowed next to her, smiling apologetically. Vergil brought up the rear.

She bowed back to Verti and signed her sincere apology then stepped aside. Mertle swept in with a sniff of annoyance, mumbling her displeasure.

“I will try and not let them get too loud,” Sil said as Vergil sidled past her. “I apologise so much for imposing on your patience today, Verti.”

“Just as long as the Mistress doesn’t set anything on fire again. Replacing scorched wall is a hassle I wouldn’t want to deal with in Winter, Your Grace.”

Sil gave her a tight lipped, apologetic smile.

“I promise she won’t.”

“Much obliged. I remain your servant. As does Pert, if the Lady changes her mind.”

She turned and headed back to her work. Walls and windows groaned in the narrow hallway, the winds outside smashing against the city’s inner wall. Above the building’s noise, Sil could hear the first bell of the night chiming in the distance.

When she closed the door and turned around, Mertle stepped in and hugged her with such ferocity that Sil feared a rib might crack. She was cold and sodden with melting snow, and she smelled of the storm and said nothing. They held each other for a long time.

“I don’t want you to do this,” Sil whispered. “Please say you won’t do it.”

Her lover still said nothing. Only her embrace tightened harder.

“Mertle, this is too much of a risk. You don’t know what they’ll do to you if the plan fails.”

“Tallah told me,” she replied, forehead pressed against her collar bone, voice cold. “I know what’s at risk. You—” She swallowed and her fingers gripped at Sil’s dress. ”You should have told me.”

She had been careful. She had been so incredibly, endlessly careful of how she and Mertle went about together, of how they spent their short moments alone, of what others saw. For years, she had never lapsed in her paranoia. And now Tallah wasted all her effort on a gambit.

“I didn’t want you to risk—”

Mertle drew back from her with whiplash suddenness. Her finger jabbed Sil in the rib, hard as a crossbow bolt, twice with the intent of one. Opalescent-black eyes tore through her prepared opposition with the intensity of a bolt of lightning.

“What I risk is mine to risk as I please. You don’t decide on my behalf.” She jabbed her again, grabbed and pulled her into the most passionate, confusing kiss Sil had ever received in her life. Whatever dregs of resistance she painstakingly rallied again crumbled into the pit of Mertle’s determination. “I want to help you. Danger be scattered to the winds.”

“But—I—You…”

Mertle undressed and handed her cloak to Vergil. He had waited very patiently in the doorway to the study, not saying anything up until then.

“Where’s Tallah?” he asked after a polite little cough.

“Gone ahead. She’s ready to attack the Fortress.”

Panic etched on Vergil’s face. He looked from her to the door, to the empty room, and back.

“Tonight? We… we need to go and help her.” His mouth worked without sound for some heartbeats. “H-how are we going to… uh...”

“How are three of us going to take on the Storm Guard at the bloody seat of their power? I sincerely have no idea.”

Mertle strode past Vergil into the room as if she hadn’t heard the exchange.

“What’s her plan?” she asked, much too calmly.

“Attack the Citadel. Make herself seen. Have you become Tianna. Make yourself seen at the same time. It’s mental.”

“Good. Doable. How long?”

Sil gaped as she followed her into the room.

“It’s not doable, Mertle. We barely have a bell strike left. There’s no time. Turning you will take a long time. You need to get out. Me and Vergil, we’ll figure something out.”

“I’ve seen you do it in a heartbeat.” She warmed her hands by the fire. Her voice had a strange sureness to it and a slight edge that Sil hadn’t heard before.

“Yes, but I’m used to the changes. It took us months the first time around.”

“Less time to twaddle then. Turn me.”

“You don’t understand. There are limits. You won’t be able to hold the shape. It takes days…”

Mertle was undressing by the fire, eyes closed and slightly swaying. Her posture changed as she shifted her feet and straightened her back. She lifted her chin slightly, in the same way Tallah wore Tianna.

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Vergil turned around and walked out of the room. “I’ll bring some of the dresses Tallah left behind,” he said.

Sil’s heartbeat thundered. Why wouldn’t Mertle listen? Time wasn’t on their side. It would all end in blood. They would fail to fool anyone coming, and then the Empire would remember her and Tummy and… and… Her fingers closed into painful fists.

Another one for the pile. What’s another one, Silestra?

“Stop gawking and turn me.” Mertle’s voice had taken on the impatient edge of Tianna’s condescension. She stood, hands on hips, a slight blush to her cheeks, and looked down at her. It was a marvel, considering the height difference. “With one mask or another, I only need to survive the night.”

With roles reversed, it was Sil’s turn to embrace her lover. “Thank you,” she whispered, face nestled in Mertle’s loose hair.

“Yes, well, I’m not getting younger. You and Tallah need to finish whatever it is you’re doing before I bite the edge. I don’t have the stomach to watch you two lose five years’ worth of your thrice-cursed secret work.”

Sil took up her staff from its support. “I need you to visualise Tianna. The closer you can, the better the result. It won’t be stable and it will be very disorientating at first. You may be even be sick to your stomach. The enchantment needs you to accept yourself as another.”

Mertle nodded and set her jaw, “No time like now.”

In a flash, Tianna was back in the room, slightly gaunt-faced and maybe a couple fingers shorter. Mertle didn’t have Tallah’s natural height, nor her wider shoulders so mass was an issue. Iliaya’s Staff could only do so much to compensate for the difference.

“This feels weird,” Mertle said. She patted the top of her forehead gingerly, finger tips running the contour of where her horns should have been. “My head feels too light.” She swayed but waved Sil away when she stepped in to hold her. “My hands are so pale. Why does she wear her fingernails so long?” She ran a finger along the inside of her palm and scratched at the skin. “No callouses. Never noticed.”

Tallah’s first time as Tianna had lasted for all of five heartbeats before she twisted back into her own shape and puked in a bucket. Mertle was shuffling about the room, swaying as she tried to get to grips with her new body and its balance. But she was stable. Sil couldn’t see a single ripple or mismatched patch of colour across the smooth skin, nor any asymmetric bones trying to poke out where they shouldn’t.

Mertle straightened up and shut tight her eyes. Her jaw clenched. She groaned and held up a finger.

“Best get a bucket, please.”

Vergil cracked open the door and thrust his arm inside, holding out some of Tallah’s dresses. “I’ll get one,” he said without looking in.

“No,” Mertle gasped out. “You go and get Verti. I need to talk to her.” She was turning slightly green around the gills. “The room should stop spinning before you’re back.”

“Right away.” The door to the study closed with a click. They heard the outer one open and shut.

Sil brought the bucket.

“How are you feeling?” she asked. Mertle leaned against a wall and panted, as if the mere effort of standing up was too much to handle. A ripple passed across her face, shades of her skin intermingling and twisting together before smoothing back out into Tianna’s paleness.

“I’ll be fine if I don’t see a mirror. Help me dress.” She dry-heaved and shuddered but kept her feet under her.

“Mertle…”

“Help me dress. Tell me everything that’s happened since you came back from your hunt. Occupy my mind.”

Sil told her of the maps sold to Lucian, of the Guard’s interest in them, of the figures in the crowd watching them ever since. Mertle shrugged into Tallah’s dress with some difficulty. It hung loose on her near skeletal frame. She listened and asked questions of Tianna’s reactions and peeves, of how Tallah played her cover when surrounded by unknowns.

“Big fortune, big head. About right,” Mertle said as Sil applied some of Tianna’s make-up to hide the gauntness. “That’s not far removed from Tallah herself. Should be enough.”

When she looked up, her eyes were of mismatched colours. Not something one would notice in poor light but Sil still redid the enchantment.

“I’m impressed of how well you’re handling this. I was a wreck the first time around. I think I cried my eyes out every time I saw my reflection.”

“No mirrors,” Mertle grunted. “I think it’d undo me. Otherwise, it’s just a disguise. It’s not my first.”

Verti would be a test. Vergil led her in, past Sil’s apologies for taking up more of her time on such a night. Tianna sat in one of the large armchairs, legs crossed, a pensive look on her face. Sil closed the door behind the elendine and leaned against it, barring the way out. If anything went wrong, she had a potent sleeping tonic ready. She’d hate herself to lay hands on Verti after all she’d done for them over the years. If worse came to pass, it couldn’t be helped.

“Good evening, Your Grace. I see you’re preparing to leave,” the host said as she looked about the now empty room. “You might have warned me earlier. Will you be returning come Spring? I can keep the apartment ready for you.”

“I think I shall be a while in returning. I can’t impose the burden on you, Verti. Thank you.”

She’s holding herself well. A bit stuffier than Tallah talks but close enough.

“I would like to ask for a favour, if you might indulge me.”

Verti looked back to Sil and raised an eyebrow. Is the mistress well? it seemed to ask. She shrugged apologetically.

“Of course, Your Grace, if it is within my means.”

Sil gestured for Mertle to relax. Tianna talked much more familiarly with Verti. She had been a guest there for years.

“I believe you know Mertle Mergara?” Mertle asked with a sour smile.

“I do, yes. Her family and mine are quite close, back in Beril.” She looked about the room. “I thought she was here. I don’t remember seeing her leave.”

“Oh, she stormed out some time ago. I believe I might have said something that she took offence to.”

Vergil gave a polite cough and interrupted, “She came down with me, miss. She left when I came to find you.”

“I see. You would like Miria to discuss her prices, I assume?”

Mertle’s lips quirked as she suppressed a grin. Sil couldn’t and had to cough in a fist. Miria was, to some, the bane and secret terror of the entire Agora. That elendine had been born with a forked tongue and a silvered eye. Merchants dreaded her worse than they dreaded the city’s taxation officers. She left them poorer by quite the margin and grateful for her patronage, and it took bells for the charm to wear off.

Mertle, on the other hand, had a reputation for a ruthless no-negotiation policy. Her prices were eye watering at the best of times, and ruinous if she were ever annoyed.

On any other day, Sil would have brought treats to watch that conversation unfold.

“Exactly. To my great annoyance, she refuses to see reason. Both myself and Silestra here have tried to get her to back down on some expenses but she simply refuses to be swayed.” She gave Verti a doe-eyed look and a sweet, begging smile. “I would be ever so grateful, Verti, if Miria lent me her aid.”

“Of course, Your Grace. When?”

“Tonight. I’ll be dressed and down in just a bit.”

“Tonight, then. I shall relieve her of kitchen duty for the evening. She’ll enjoy the chance to watch the Descent herself. Excuse me.”

It had gone exceptionally well, even if Mertle rushed to the bucket the moment Verti was out of the room.

“Is there a special event tonight?” Vergil asked. He was ensconced by the window, watching the night traffic flow by. “There’s a lot of people out there.”

Sil moved a curtain aside and watched the other side of the Meadow’s trench. People flocked to the tavern, in two and threes, sometimes even larger groups.

“Yes. The Descent. Gods come down and incarnate. Lots of drinking generally follows. Fire shows and the such,” she said as she surveyed the scene. “People start drinking here, keep going in the Agora. These aren’t revellers.” Soldiers dressed in common garb was her guess. Right enough, there were patterns in the movements, in the way they entered the buildings opposite them, in how they stopped and smoked and chatted at convenient knots in the alleys.

“I see five crossbowmen,” Mertle said over her shoulder. She swilled some water and spat it out in her sick bucket. “They’re covering from the rooftops. More went in that building over there.”

“How can you…” Vergil muttered. “Oh, right, I see them. Two more on the right, over there.” The snowfall hid them well, but not enough.

Something changed in the flow as what had been a flood started thinning to a trickle. Sil recognized a perimeters being set up. She couldn’t know how wide it was but recognized the tactic. She wondered if there were any casters coming in or if they were the second wave.

Whoever ran the operation was doing it precisely by the book. They had the element of surprise and advance knowledge of their target. The first step, always, was to limit and control the movement of the quarry.

“We’re being boxed in,” she noted as she pulled on her shawl. “If we’re doing this, we need to do it now before they move in. We need to be more proactive than them.”

Mertle rolled her shoulders, shook her hands and cracked her knuckles. She would either hold together or not, but they couldn’t take Iliaya’s Staff out with them. Their survival rested squarely on her shoulders.

Sil didn’t have the heart to suggest she run away. She knew it wouldn’t work. Instead, she packed Vergil’s helmet and the staff into a small Rend. She couldn’t open an entire room, like Tallah could, but a pocket was all she ever needed for essentials.

“Do or die,” Mertle finally said as she stepped out into the corridor. “I’d kiss you for luck, but it feels wrong to do it with this face.”

“Later, when we’re clear,” Sil replied. She squeezed the elendine’s hand so hard that it almost hurt to let it go. “Do or die. Tallah would be proud.”