“There is a family in this city called the Iblanie family.” The Rose Adept told him as they stood on the balcony surrounded by her flowers and fluttering spiritual creatures. “A family very like the Black Pipe sect you met in the Eight Pits.”

Thakur stood with his back to her while a half ball of glass clouded in his hand from the corruption he pressed into it to keep it out of his own flesh.

“Ambitious, overreaching, violent.”

He wiped at the blood running from one eye with the rough sleeve of his robes.

“They are not conent merely to collect the tribute of most organizations supported by an adept. They use him to slaughter and then flaunt their power while the streets run red with blood.”

She was silent for a moment while Thakur felt more blood rising in his eye and blinked it away.

“They ignore me.” The adept finally told him, told his back. “My clinic, this tower, is among the most powerful groups in the city, yet they ignore me, and any other entreaty to limit their slaughter. I could have him killed, but not without a risk, if he traces any failed attempt back to me, and not without serious cost to my power base for the next decade or two.”

Thakur looked down at the glass in his hand. “None of this concerns me.” He said.

“It should.” The Rose Adept replied. Invisible butterflies fluttered towards her in the still air and she extended a hand for them to twirl around, making the void inside of her ripple as though touched by the beat of their wings. “You agreed to help me, after all.”

Thakur’s hand wrapped tightly around the glass ball but he didn’t squeeze it as he’d squeezed the soap. “I’m no fool.” He told her without looking up. “I know that I’m still dying. I can feel it, every time I touch my breath.” He put a hand to his chest where the pain of his initial symptoms had transformed to a persistent itch in every organ now that his breath moved outside his flesh. He thought of Mayana and looked up at the false adept. “What more do I have to gain by staying here?”

The false adept regarded him with her empty eyes. “There is much I could do for your daughters.” She replied.

Thakur shook his head. “I’ve made arrangements for them, in the Pits.”

The adept turned to follow one of her butterflies with her eyes. “Did those arrangements include deciding your successor to the Eighth Pit?” She asked.” She looked at him, eyes black as an unlit tunnel marked by phantom lights.

Thakur gave no answer and she looked away again as her butterflies continued to move around her in a small storm.

“None of your apprentices were chosen to take over that role.” She went on. “Your daughters were quite upset when my agent found them. The sect leader my agent spoke to told him that they weren’t up to the task but I suspect the real reason was more political. You were dead to the Eight Pits. You had no more use to them, and so your daughters were on their own, regardless of promises made.”

“That’s not true.” Thakur said. He was surprised at how hard the words felt in his throat, at the force of them. He cleared his throat to repeat it again but still only whispered as he said the words. “That can’t be true.”

“Would you like to speak to my agent?” The woman asked.

“Anand promised.”

She gave him a pitying look. “Anand had a city to run, loyalists to reward.” She searched him with her eyes. “What use would your daughters have been to him?”

Thakur opened his mouth to reply, but she cut him off.

“And how, if everything I tell you isn’t true, would you have brought them home in the first place, if I let you?”

Thakur turned away from her. “I would take them myself.” He muttered.

“Not safely.” The Rose Adept replied. “Not without risking their lives in the same way you risked your wife’s, even if you did not know it at the time.”

Thakur put one hand on the glass over his view of the city and leaned on it for support as he stepped away from the Rose Adept. The glass fogged around his hand and he jerked it away, found his spirit moving chaotically in his aura and shoved it back into the half sphere in his hand. “It’s under control!” He snarled.

She just looked at the handprint in her window, looked at him. “You’re dying,” She told him, “but there are still things I can do for you. Everyone has final wishes. I’ve seen too many die not to know. Serve my wishes, in this, and I can see that your wishes are fulfilled in your lifetime, wishes your previous allies would not see fulfilled if you brought your daughters back to them again.”

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Thakur glared out at the city beneath the balcony. “It is, under control.” He whispered.

The glass half sphere cracked in his palm and leaked poison from its core to sting his hand.

“Then take them.” The woman told him. “I won’t try to stop you.”

He kept his back to her as he felt his spirit churn around the little ball of glass while more cracks appeared in its surface.

“What do you want me to do?” He whispered.

Nothing that you haven’t done before.”

He knelt in his cell weeks later, clawing blood from his eyes while his daughter knelt in the middle of a cell black with poison, her ice blonde hair practically glowing in the light from the hallway beyond the bars of his cell.

“Papa.” She whispered. “You look terrible.”

He didn’t answer her. He put his hands over his head and looked down at the floor. It smoked, gently, where the blood dripped on it from his cheeks. “You should go back.” He whispered. “Go back to your sister. You shouldn’t see me like this. It isn’t… safe to be near me.”

She didn’t move and Thakur fought with his breath to keep it locked in the cement behind him.

“I’m going to be married soon.” She told him. “She, Aunt Rose, she said, it was because of you.”

He looked up at that. Felt the blood running from his cheeks. Saw the tears sparkling in her eyes. “Is he a good man?” He asked. He looked away. “Do you like him?”

“I do.” Vasickni smiled despite her tears. “I… He’s very rich.” Her smile split into a grin.

“But do you like him?” Thakur asked again and looked up at her. “Will he make you happy?”

She nodded. “I think he will.”

Thakur reached towards her face, to touch her as he’d once touched both his children, then pulled back as his spirit shifted in the cement and he remembered his own affliction. He looked at his hand. “Then I’m so happy for you.” He said. He looked back up at her, not at her, but at the seasons he’d known her, watched her grow from a babe in her mother’s arms to the woman who now knelt before him on the verge of moving on and beginning a family of her own. “I’m so happy for you.” He whispered again, and turned his face back to the wall.

“I wish you could be there.” Vasickni told him.

“You should not come back.” Thakur told her. “Never. Never again.”

He glanced at her, saw the look of pain on her face and felt his spirit churn in the cement.

“It is not safe Vasickni. Go. You must go!” He blinked back mingled tears and blood as she stood. “Take my love to your sister.” He told her.

Vasickni nodded and he pushed himself, physically, back into his corner.

“Tell her,” Thakur said as he stared at the black stain shifting on the cement wall with his breath, “tell her that you should think of me as though I were already dead. Tell her not to come down here. Not to… to…” He put his head in his hands again and closed his eyes as blood dripped and smoke rose where it fell.

She opened her mouth to say more but a chunk of cement crumbled from the wall at the intensity of his breath and he didn’t hear her goodbye before he felt her little flame of spirit moving down the hall towards the elevator.

“Vasickni!”

He threw himself to the bars and looked out as she stopped and turned back.

He hesitated, then raised one hand through the rusting bars to extend it towards her in blessing. “May your home be the heart of happiness, and your children the joy of your lives.” He intoned. He thought of Mayanna’s head, bent next to his own on their wedding day as his father intoned the same blessing over them. “Ancestors make it so.” He whispered.

The bar in his off hand snapped as the rust bit through it and Thakur jerked away from the hall. He pulled at his spirit as he tucked himself back into his corner and folded his arms across his chest while black stains rippled in the cement at the touch of his breath. “Ancestors protect you.”

Then she was gone, and Thakur allowed his spirit to billow through the cell around him until the walls were black and crumbling with corruption.

“You promised my daughters would be wed.” Thakur told the Adept when she visited him in his cell only days before Vasickni arrived to receive his blessing. “Powerful families, powerful men. Men who can give them the lives they deserve.”

“It is not so easy to marry someone of your family’s lineage.” The dark adept replied from behind him. “They are the wrong color, and come with no connection but my own.”

“I am an adept!” Thakur shouted. He spun on her and his spirit lashed the walls, but only where he directed, leaving blackened trails across the ceiling like claws reaching for her before he stopped his breath and shoved it back into its habitual place on the wall.

“I am an adept.” He said again. “You claim you are the most powerful woman in the city. Prove it.” He pressed a hand to one of the bars that stood between them and let a bit of his breath turn it to dust in his hands so that nothing remained but open air between himself and the woman’s dark eyes. “Fulfill your oath.” He growled. “Or go away.”

He turned and stalked back to his corner where he dropped back into the position he used for most of his breathing exercises, exercises meant to keep his breath out of himself instead of strengthening it.

“You have two daughters.” The woman behind him mused aloud. “Do this last thing for me, and I will arrange for the eldest one to be married.”

Thakur drew a line on the floor with one finger and watched cement grow black in a trail along its path. “I killed for you.” He told her. “I killed hundreds of men. I killed an adept for you. You said, after the last mission, we would be done.”

The Rose Adept sighed. “I was wrong.” She said. “Things did not turn out as we hoped.”

Thakur drew another line parallel to the one he’d drawn a moment before and didn’t reply.

“The Iblanie have not slowed their conquest of their section of the city.” The Rose Adept said. “There is a Kotem executive, who has expressed some interest in your eldest daughter. I could arrange the marriage in as little as a few weeks, if you were willing to cooperate.”

“The Kotem.” Thakur replied.

“They are a large organization, much larger than your Eight Pits Sect, but they border the Iblanie.”

Thakur turned to glare at the woman beyond the bars of his cell.

She studied the dark palm of her hand. “A shattered rival would be a powerful dowry.”

Black eyes met bloody silver ones, and Thakur turned back to his wall. “How many people would I have to kill?” He asked.

“The sword adept had a son.” The Rose Adept replied. “An adept in his own right, apparently. Kill him, and I’ll make the arrangements.”

Thakur grunted and closed his eyes. “Make the arrangements now.” He told her. “And I will kill this Adept’s Son.”