Thakur reflected on the soldier’s visit for a long time the evening after he left, as the pipes thumped out the rhythm that marked the end of a day. He sat at the shore and watched his familiars dart across the water like lost souls, taking samples while fighting continued on the opposite shore, smoke curling beneath the few drifting floodlights that still hovered over the city.

He couldn’t sleep when he went home. His wife and daughters were tense from their long confinement in the shack so he spent an hour listening to his wife’s grievances without really hearing her as she kneaded rice flour from their stockpile into dough and rolled it out into cakes.

She carried a pistol, the same he held a life time afterwards while he rolled a lead ball in his palm and waited for the sword adept. She adjusted it constantly where it hung on a string around her waist and she kept glancing out of the window at the light of the burning city visible beyond the fence that was supposed to isolate them from the conflict.

Once, he’d hoped for more children, but after three miscarriages and a babe that died in her arms he’d accepted what he could not change, they, had accepted it. A grief they never talked about, buried now deep in their past. He spent the affection he could not lavish on those who’d never been born on the two who had. They were women now, sixteen and seventeen respectively, too old for the bed time stories he used to tell them while they snuggled into blankets in the home they’d shared in the city, but they still found him each evening, individually, to collect a hug and a whispered “sleep tight” before bedding down in a tangle of blankets on the floor of the utility shed that smelled of oil and rusting nails.

“Sleep tight my darling.” He whispered to Banya that evening, his youngest, when his wife was finished with her meal preparations and had retreated from the tiny lean too they used as a kitchen so the girls could give their ritual good-night in peace.

Banya wrapped pale arms around his shoulders from behind and pressed her cheek to his. “Sleep tight Papa.” She whispered back.

She didn’t move though, after she replied. She stood behind him and held him and he could feel, in the warmth of her cheek and the way she hung from him, some question that made him give her elbow a comforting squeeze.

“There.” He said quietly, quiet enough that his voice wouldn’t carry through the shed’s thin walls to the other two women in the house with them. “What’s the matter?”

She held him a little closer and snuggled into his neck as she’d once done when she was a child no taller than his knees lifting her arms up to him to bury herself in his hug.

“There was shooting outside the fence tonight.” She whispered. “It was very close. Me and Vasikni watched.”

He stiffened. “Banya,” he said, “If they were close you could have been seen.”

“We turned off all the lights Papa.” The girl replied. “Mama went upstairs. There was nothing for them to see, and they were fighting, like I said.”

“A risk.” He hissed.

She didn’t reply and he gave her elbow another squeeze.

“I thought, well, I thought, for a moment, that one of them, might have seen us.” She whispered. “There was a flash, and I saw him silhouetted against the fence. It was exciting at first, to think… then, I… I…” Her arms squeezed around his shoulders. “I realized.” She finally said.

“If they saw you-”, Thakur began.

“He died, Papa.” Banya’s voice caught just a little as she said it, and for a moment they were both quiet.

“How?” he asked.

“When I saw his silhouette I was going to run up and get Mama’s gun.” She said. “Only Vasikni said he couldn’t have seen us, then, it didn’t matter.”

“You know he is dead?” Thakur asked.

“There are… pieces of him.” Banya replied. “Out there.”

She looked down, at his chest, but Thakur looked out the shed’s only window to the fence only vaguely visible in silhouette against the glow of embers at the outskirts of the city. “I’m sorry.” He put both hands up to hold the arms she’d wrapped around him and they sat there in silence for a couple of moments as the tension moved from her arms to his.

“I’m so tired of hiding.” She whispered. “I just want things to go back to the way they were.”

He grunted and patted her hands while he watched restless smoke curl beneath distant floodlights. “I’m not sure things will ever be the same.” He finally replied.

“Sleep tight.” She whispered after a long silence.

“Sleep tight.” He replied.

He did not.

He lay in bed with his wife and stared up at the ceiling of the little attic they’d converted into a bedroom. He listened to the churn of the pumps on their low cycle while his eyes refused to close. Eventually he rolled off of the thin mattress and checked the four barrels of the pistol arquebus on the floor near his wife’s hand, then he stole quietly down the stairs with it tucked into his belt.

Outside the eighth pit churned and bubbled quietly near its center as cleansed water was pumped up from the seventh pit. Small waves lapped the shores in the darkness and he felt each thump of his heart echoed by the thump of pumps below their level of the underground.

The fighting had come near.

When he crept up to the fence he found a dozen spots where heat from sunflare beams had seared through the wire. The ruins of warehouses and homes smoked beyond the fence’s perimeter and he could smell charred meet when the ventilators pushed the smoke his way. The smell sickened him and woke a hunger deep in his gut all at the same time.

He found a ragged hole torn into the fence at hip height not far from the shack. He hesitated, then touched a clip on his shoulder to summon a familiar to illuminate the gap. He called it back almost immediately with a feeling of nausea at the carnage it revealed; bloody strips caught in the wire, and what looked like a chunk of arm embedded in the fence as though it had grown around it, left, apparently, when what was left of the body was dragged away.

He stood at the gap for a dozen beats of the pumps before he slipped through, careful not to brush against the gore that trailed from the fence. He looked back at the little shed/office where his family slept, then tightened his grip around the pistol and crept into the night.

It proved easier to find what was left of his old sect than he’d imagined. Sunflare Beams still lit the haze that hung over the city in periodic flashes like sudden lightning and he followed them, feeling like a fool as his palm sweat against the handle of his gun and he stumbled through rubble that had once been nearly open streets.

Much of the city still stood and he saw other shadows stealing through the night as he did, but no street was untouched. Bodies lay in some corners, and many intersections showed the scars of recent battles fought there. Ruins burned on every street, though some no longer danced with flames, smoldering instead with the deep red light of coals obscured by shifting smoke while others sat and exuded the scent of charcoal and burnt glass in the damp air.

He watched the ceiling as he walked, and when sunflares lit the smoke with their silent discharge, he tried to judge the position of the man who’d fired it and moved generally in that direction.

Eventually he was stopped.

A beam of angry orange light made the air snap a few feet from Thakur and he stumbled away from it as a wave of heat washed over him from the discharge.

“If you’re thinking of going further, I’d change that plan!” A voice shouted to him from the storefront ahead of him.

Thakur put up his hands. “I’m looking for your leaders.” He called. Their voices seemed loud in the still air despite the thud of the pumps below that made the ground tremble.

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“What do you want with them?” Another voice asked.

Thakur squinted into the darkness for the source, half blinded by the beam. “I… which side are you?” He finally asked.

“You tell us your business and we’ll tell you ours.” The first soldier shouted back.

Thakur looked up at the ceiling past his hands. “I, think”, he said, “I can end the war.”

A squad of four men appeared from storefronts and buildings around Thakur. They converged on him, and as his vision recovered, he was relieved to recognize the eight pits picked out in emblem on the chest of the man that seemed to be leading them.

“Aye.” The leaders said. “Then I suppose you’d best prove you won’t be wastin our time to bring you in.”

What was left of the Eight Pits Sect leadership kept their quarters in a small knot of still standing homes in the middle of a swath cut through the slums of the city by fire and war. He had to wind his way to them, like a pilgrim on his way through mountains made of rubble to an ancient temple, escorted by four guards while stinking smoke rose from the broken wasteland around them. The homes they occupied would once have qualified as mansions, or what passed for them in the underground. They were two stories tall, brick walled and surrounded, once, by a chest high fence of imported cinder blocks, an expensive commodity in a world where everything they built with had to be imported or fished from the sewage that washed into the first of the sludge pits that gave their sect its name.

The guards led him through a hole blown in that wall to a second hole blown into the first floor of the building where another guard stopped him to be searched and relieved of his quad barrel before a runner was sent for the sect head housed in the ruin.

The man who appeared at the hole in the wall looked as though he hadn’t slept in weeks. He was pale and grimy wrapped in an even grimier great coat. Hair Thakur remembered as immaculate in his last meeting with the sect head was a tangled thatch on top of his head and deep bags outlined eyes that seemed sunken into their sockets.

“Thakur.” The man’s voice was hoarse from smoke, and when a deep red familiar appeared above him to illuminate Thakur he found himself looking into two dead silver eyes that showed no sign of any emotion but deep exhaustion while the leader held onto the wall for support and stared at him. Thakur said nothing as he looked up at the man. Eventually the Sect Leader blinked and grated out a single word.

“How?”

Thakur shifted on the cement yard enclosed by the broken wall. “To end the war?” He asked.

The scowled impatiently and waved his hand. “No. To make butter pastries you imbecile. Yes. How can you end the way?”

Thakur shifted on the mansion’s yard and looked around at the guards before he looked back at the head. “Water.” He said. “Lots of water.”

The leader made no sign that he’d heard, only continued to stare at Thakur until there was a flash in the distance and his head jerked in that direction. He studied the world beyond the fence, then looked at the men around Thakur who faded back into the darkness without a word. The sect leader jerked his head inside and turned as his familiar disappeared into its clip at his shoulder. “Might as well hear you out.” He said. “Come inside and tell me about it.”

The upper story of the home was undamaged by whatever weapon put a hole in the wall of the first story. Hooded lamps gave the sitting room that made up the majority of the floor’s space a comfortable if shadowed light while thick curtains kept that light from leaking through the handful of windows along one wall. The sect head collapsed onto a couch with a sigh as Thakur stepped into the room and he gestured for Thakur to take the one against the opposite wall from him.

“Well, have a seat.” He said. “Won’t keep a man standing when I won’t do it myself.”

Thakur sat gingerly on the edge of the sofa and folded his hands in front of him as he watched the sect head close his eyes for a moment, then snap them open to refocus on Thakur. “Water.” The sect head said. “Dapat said you wanted to stop this war. How do you use water to stop a war?”

Thakur looked down at his hands and tried to remember this leader’s name. There were eight heads once, one for each of the pits connected by the maze of pipes in this part of the dregs. “The adept.” He said slowly. “They have an adept.”

“I know that.”, the sect head replied, and Thakur thought he was able to put a name to the face as it scowled. Babhul, or Bhamit, he could never keep the brothers straight.

“If he died,” Thakur said, “would that end the war?”

Babhul, or Bhamit, grunted. “Not immediately”, he replied, “but it would go a long way.”

“Would you win?” Thakur asked.

The Sect Head, Bhamit, Thakur was almost certain, gave Thakur a glare. “This is our home.” He growled. “Of course we would.” His throat grated on the last words and he coughed, putting a hand to his throat and glaring around as though for a pitcher of water that wasn’t present.

Thakur nodded and looked at his hands.

“We’ve been trying to kill him since he got here.” Bhamit went on. “We’ve tried a lot, sharp-shooters, assassins, booby traps, even whores.” He cleared his throat and spat onto the floor, ignoring the once expensive carpet that covered it. “What makes you think you can do it with water?”

“It’s not the water,” Thakur replied, “But…”, he looked at the window and the curtain that blocked his view of the world outside, then back at Bhamit, or Babhul, “Are the, waste pumps anywhere near no man’s land?” He asked.

A laugh jerked out of the sect head lying on the couch in front of Thakur. “There is no no man’s land.”, he said, “It’s all his. Whenever we try to hold ground he just blows it up, or slaughters everyone that tries to hold it. We run, and as long as we run fast enough, we can sometimes kill some of the Black Pipes before he has a chance to reach us, then we fade away.” He put one hand to his face and rubbed at his temples. “Much more of this and there will be nothing left on this level worth fighting over but the pumps. We’ve been avoiding them so far. Avoiding you.” Bloodshot eyes found Thakur who looked away.

“Thank you.” Thakur said.

“So how are you going to kill this adept, using water?” The head asked again. “Chuck him into the lake and hope he can’t swim?”

“The waste pumps, from pit seven.” Thakur replied. “The sludge in them is very… toxic. It’s concentrated see. Mostly just a sludge made up of different poisons being pumped to the disposal pit on this level, since the seventh doesn’t have one.”

“Seventh is just a big pipe down flow from six.”

Thakur nodded. “My father always told me that the water in seven was dangerous, but even touching the sludge from the waist pipes coming from six, seven, or eight, would kill you as sure as it would smell.”

Babhul, or Bhamit, pulled himself up a little on the couch. “How certain are you of this?” He asked.

Thakur shrugged. “I’ve never touched it, but I know what’s in it. It would kill any, normal, human.” It had killed his father, even dilluted by the lakewater in Eight, and, even if that death was a long protracted thing.

The sect head pulled himself the rest of the way into a sitting position and buried his face in his hands. “So, we need to examine those pipes.” He said eventually. “Find a way to lure him in somewhere then flood it.” He rubbed at his face, then touched one of the tabs on his coat to summon the ruby red familiar again.

“It’s not as simple as it sounds.” Thakur replied before the head could begin typing. “If you open those pipes, well, they’re under a lot of pressure. A lot. You’d flood more than just a couple of blocks of the city, and you’d probably contaminate the eighth pit as well. It would be worse than fire. You’d poison a quarter of the cavern, parmanently, and if the fumes were bad, you could kill, well, everyone. Everyone living here.”

Hard bloodshot eyes met Thakur’s across the glowing familiar. “Better than letting the adept take it.”

Thakur fell silent before the man’s conviction then looked down at his hands and pressed them together. “There is another way.” He said at last. “A better way. One that lets you retake the city, or at least gives you the chance.” He looked back up at the man he wasn’t certain he could name. “One that won’t poison the entire thing.”

“What way?” The sect leader rasped.

“I could do it.” Thakur replied. “If you can lure him in, I can reroute the waste to a tower along the pipes and isolate it so that it will only spill a few thousand gallons when we let it go, turn off the pipes to make sure it won’t flood the city or contaminate the lake. Control it. But there would be a cost.”

The sect head studied Thakur. “There is always a cost.” He replied eventually. “What do you want?”

Thakur stood and paced to one end of the room, hands tucked behind his back to keep from fiddling with them. He stopped when he reached the wall and turned back to the sect head. “Which one are you?”, he asked, “Babhul or Bhamit?”

“Anand.” the Sect Head replied. “The brothers are dead.”

Thakur nodded, looked at a shattered vase in one corner of the room, then back to Anand. “I remember you, from before. When you took tours of the pits.”

“And I you.” Anand replied.

There was a piece of the shattered vase that had fallen near his foot and Thakur touched it with his toe, pushed it back amidst the other remnants. “How many others are there?” He asked. “Still alive I mean?”

“If you mean the heads, most of them are dead.” Anand replied. “Payit’s second took his place, and there’s a cultivator we’ve elevated since he took over leadership in the pipeways around the fifth, but otherwise there’s just me and Aizadudeen.”

Thakur nodded.

“Why?” Anand asked.

“I have… a family.” Thakur replied. “I… Daughters. I’ve kept them safe, in one of the outbuildings.”

“I’d heard you remained at your station.” Anand replied, “For what little good it does us.”

“If I do this.” Thakur replied, turning away from the broken pottery. “Things can go back to normal. My position, at the Eighth Pit will remain and you can retake what you’ve lost on this level and on the others.” He waited, and Anand nodded slowly.

“Of course.” He replied.

“I have a family.” Thakur said, “I can’t let you contaminate the city, but, if I do this myself…” His hands shook and he clenched them behind his back.

Anand sighed and rubbed his face. “Spit it out man!”

“You must become a brother to me.” Thakur said in a rush, “You, and Aizadudeen, these others. The adept’s own men do not trust him, and I must guarantee the future of my family. If I do this, that is why I do it. So, you must become my brother in order to guarantee it when I am gone, if, I am gone.”

Anand was quiet as he stared at the wall opposite his place on the couch. “You do not trust anyone else to handle the pipes?” He asked after a moment.

Thakur shook his head and looked at the floor. “Not like this.” He replied. “Not with this.”

There was a distant thud outside as something exploded and Anand looked towards the window. The explosion reverberated from the cavern’s ceilings making the blast go on and on.

“The adept chases anything that burns.” Anand said as the reverberations faded. “He seems to smell it, for lack of a better term. Wood, oil, gunpowder, doesn’t matter. It’s why we use Sunflares exclusively these days. They don’t use fire the same way so he can’t track us, but we’ve used what we have left a few times as bait, and he doesn’t seem to realize that we’ve done so.” He looked up at Thakur. “There will be details to arrange between us,” he said, “But do this, kill the adept, and your family will never know want while I live to care for them.”