It turned out Daniels was correct. The morning after their struggle, after a half hour or so of cautious surveillance, they drove right past an abandoned Daevan checkpoint into the triangle. The guards had been called away to take part in the impending attack on Ulciscor.

They’d lost time, but the captain promised they would still make it with hours to spare. They spent the whole of yesterday recuperating after the battle against the Cathartes assassins, Luke with ribbons of Magenta and Daniels with— finally— some proper sleep.

The only thing of use they were able to find in the automobile was a sackful of gourds containing a few days’ worth of water and rations. By some scattered papers in the drawers and compartments they guessed the automobile belonged to a civilian whose transportation was ‘borrowed’ for the purpose of hunting Luke and Daniels down.

He’d decided to put the strangeness of how he’d been alerted to Niya’s presence out of mind for now. He had bigger concerns.

About an hour outside Cherima, they passed an automobile parked on the side of the road of a more modern design than the ones that were probably a decade old at this point— large and box-like, painted brown with a slight red tint. There was no one inside and nobody around.

“James,” Luke said softly.

“Has to be,” Daniels agreed. He whistled. “Pretty fancy though. That’s the newest model. Your brother must be well off. You sure you’re ready to see him?”

He hesitated. Was he?

The last time he saw anyone from his family was in the Purge. Now his brother was wrapped up in the affairs of the Terra Daevan military. Had the experience changed James? What kind of person was he now? Could Luke bring himself to accept the changes?

There was only one way to find out. He nodded.

“Yeah. I’m ready.”

———

Chessie whinnied softly as Typhos carefully adjusted her saddle. She was tied to an oil lantern pole next to a bench in front of what must have been a fountain long ago, its centerpiece statue crumbled to pieces in the basin and unrecognizable. She had been mostly tied up here in the center of town this trip, only taking him a ways out for the occasional hunt. She stamped in anticipation, eager to be off and away from this dead place. The mare’s name came from a particular patch on her black and white coat that vaguely resembled that of the squares on a chessboard.

“We’ll be leaving soon,” he told her, soothing her with a gentle hand. He’d already finished grooming her. He wouldn’t affix the bridle until just before leaving, but he found over the years that Chessie preferred to be kept abreast of his traveling plans in advance.

He felt the weight of Hagetaka at his belt beneath the tattered cloak. He would need to clean the blade again before he left. He’d scouted the area in the week and some days since arriving and knew of a good stream where he could do so.

He did not think himself cruel. Callous, yes. Yes, absolutely. That was the whole point of the training. He did not enjoy all the killing. He was just very good at it. The thrill inside him when he locked blades with a competent opponent was that of a hammer meeting a nail. As if he were made for that sole purpose. This, though? This was merely business.

Once upon a time, he’d have argued otherwise. What he was about to do was evil, he’d say. He couldn’t slay an innocent civilian in cold blood. He’d find a way around it. That was the time before he donned this ragged cloak and embraced who he really was.

He was Typhos, the Left Hand’s very own blood-drenched tachi. And his master’s enemies were his enemies. The Alder boy knew far too much. A two week reprieve was more than generous. He wouldn’t let Alder return to Luke’s side and tell him everything. That could set his cowardly little brother on a path he must not take.

“What’s her name?” Alder asked, walking over. He’d noticed him leaving the house, of course.

Alder knew as well as most captives that trying to escape from him was pointless. He would meet his death with honor. At least, he would until Typhos unsheathed Hagetaka. Even the most stronghearted tend to break down and try something in the final moment.

“Chessie.”

“She’s beautiful.” Alder tested the bench, then sat down when he was reasonably sure it wouldn’t collapse under him. He eyed the mare and nodded to himself. “She looks well cared for.”

“Thank you.” He scratched Chessie’s chin, and she rubbed against his hand affectionately. “She’s been a companion of mine for years.”

“So there are things important to you,” he said softly. Typhos probably wasn’t meant to hear it, but the heightened senses of his training allowed him to do so.

Alder did not strike him as the type to harm Chessie. He was more likely just surprised that a cold-blooded killer had such a bond with an animal. Heartless murderers like him were supposed to be growled at, bitten and chased. Or so people tended to think. That ubiquitous ‘sixth sense’ all animals supposedly possessed.

Master Vega’s training had cleared him of that notion. Animals could be fooled by the proper presentation and attitude. People were the most easily fooled animals of all, as his master would say.

That exceptional hearing of his soon drew his attention toward the rumbling of an approaching automobile. It couldn’t be. But the Alder boy had perked up at the sound. He heard it too.

Typhos went cold. Impossible.

Slowly, a dark green automobile rolled into the empty town square, coming to a halt. From within emerged two people, the visages of both familiar to him as they came close, perhaps one hundred feet off.

One was a captain of the Ulciscor Guard. His name escaped Typhos; a meaningless, unimportant man looking rather tired and worse for wear with a spear strapped to his back. The other was a young boy wearing a sky blue jacket with messy black hair and striking red eyes. And he knew that one’s name very well.

———

“How many did you bring, when I told you none?” James Nixus asked from afar. From the first words spoken, any lingering doubts that it wasn’t the same person evaporated. That was his brother.

James wore an unpleasant-looking patchwork cloak that seemed as if formed by a hundred filthy rags stitched together. A longsword’s sheath poked out from a waist belt. His blond hair rustled from a head-on gust of wind inside the cloak’s hood, and the lower half of his face was covered by a dark cloth mask. Luke could make out his brother’s scarlet red eyes even at a distance, measuring him. Judging.

Beside his brother was a saddled black and white horse tied to a lantern pole, and, thank the Twelve Flocks, Cyrus Alder. His friend must have felt the same, for he folded his hands in prayer after standing up.

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“One,” Luke said, marching forward. Daniels joined him at a nod, hanging a few feet back. James and Cyrus mirrored them.

“To drive you,” he said. He stepped carefully, as if the earth were made of fragile glass. “I understand. I should have written permission for this in the letter. I figured you would ignore some of it.” He shook his head. “Your choice of companion is quite bold. A captain of the Ulciscor Guard, whose involvement I expressly forbid.”

“I’m not with the Guard anymore,” Daniels called. Luke glanced at him. He shrugged. In a low voice he added, “May as well be true.”

How does he know, anyway? Daniels isn’t even in uniform.

“We’ll see. That’s far enough, spearman.”

That paused them. Luke and Daniels shared a look.

“Not the trusting type, is he?” the captain growled.

“It’s fine. Do you mind waiting here?”

“Be careful,” he said. “It’s been a long time since you two last met.”

Luke nodded and kept walking. He came within twenty feet before his brother stopped moving.

“What are you doing here?” James asked.

“Letter, remember?”

“Not that,” he said, gesturing in a wide arc. “I mean here. This region. Ulciscor. A special guest of Vander Wolf?”

Luke said nothing.

“The second boy who fled that little village. It was you, wasn’t it? Why in Asundria did you not turn tail right then and there? This isn’t a game, Luke.”

He ground his teeth. This part of his brother, he had not missed. No greetings, no hugs. Separated since the war, and this was the first thing out of his mouth. He suspected, but now he knew it for certain. James only asked him to come all the way here so he could chew him out.

“How do you know that, James?”

“Know what? That it’s dangerous?”

“You know Daniels by face. And about Castitas. How did you even find Cyrus? He was supposed to go there.”

“You must have pieced it together,” James said. “I’m with the Daevan army. It’s been that way ever since Lumina. That’s not what you should be concerned about. We’ve got to get you back home. I’ll pay your traveling expenses. Where are you living—”

“James!” The name practically boiled out of his mouth. “What’s happened to you? This is too cold, even for you!” He took a deep breath and felt his lip quivering. “How can you bring up Lumina like that? Like it was nothing?”

“It’s all in the past,” he said quietly.

Luke started toward him again. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to hug or shake or punch him. “James—”

“James is dead,” his brother cut in. “They gave me a new name.”

He hesitated, but shook his head and kept moving.

“No, you’re still James. You’ll always be James.”

At ten feet apart, his older brother drew the longsword from its sheath and pointed it straight ahead. His eyes were terribly cold.

“My name is Typhos,” he said, a heat to the words as if he were tempering steel. “And I am the Second Ace of Terra Daeva.”

Luke stopped dead. He’d never known his brother for a liar. The revelation struck him like a Red-enhanced punch to the jaw.

“You’re,” was all he could choke out. His throat felt awfully tight.

“Go home, little Luke,” he said, reverently sheathing the blade. “You must go. Leave Ulciscor— leave Mirastelle— before the morning of the twenty-second. There is nothing you can do in this place.”

Every sentence was like a hammer hitting an anvil. His brother was one of the leading figures of the invasion? Kindhearted, gallant James?

And yet it all fit. Of course James became an Ace. He could do anything he set his mind to. He was the greatest person Luke had ever known. The scale of the accomplishment was not what shocked him to the core. It was the content of what he’d accomplished.

“Dad,” he said suddenly. He dreaded to know, but Flocks, he needed to. “Where’s Dad? What’s happened to Raum Nixus?”

His older brother closed his eyes. He thought those scarlet red eyes could not grow colder, but when next they opened, they were ghastly. It reminded him of the eyes he saw in his nightmares, like crystalline frost.

“Becoming the Second Ace required candidates to demonstrate unwavering, implacable loyalty.”

A chill shot up Luke’s spine and forced out a violent shiver. He thought he knew before the words even left his brother’s mouth.

“To that end, Barbatos… No, Raum Nixus… I killed him.”

———

The wordless, sorrowful shout ripped from Luke’s throat reminded Typhos of James.

That was fine. Luke couldn’t— didn’t need to— understand. He just needed to go back wherever he was calling home these days. Always, this flightless fool of a sibling would push past his limits and get himself hurt. Here he was at the eve of war, trying to dive right into the middle of everything. Traumatizing his little brother all over again was a small price to pay if it meant getting him away from the battlefield. And better to let him know that his family was truly dead and gone than let him go on living a delusion.

Luke sank to his knees, head bowed, and began to wail.

Typhos gestured to Alder and Daniels. As they approached, he let out a small sigh behind his mask. He figured it might turn out this way. Luke was such an emotionally immature person. Not that being emotionally castrated was much better.

He would need to figure out where Luke lived and keep tabs on him. A problem for another time. He could probably wrench the answer out of one of these two after Ulciscor fell and things settled down.

“You may leave,” Typhos said once they were in earshot.

“What did you do to him?” the ex-captain— Daniels— said. He crouched down and set his hands on Luke’s shoulders. Luke fell forward into the man’s chest, heaving sobs.

“I told him what he needed to hear,” he said and turned to make his way over to Chessie. “Count yourself lucky, Alder.”

Alder said nothing and stiffened as he passed. That was fine, too. The boy seemed made of sturdy stuff. He would—

Clapping. Clapping from somewhere behind him, so out of place.

“A brilliant show, my lovely little apprentice.”

His blood froze at the voice.

Slowly, he turned to see Levian Vega rounding one of the abandoned buildings, standing tall in full charcoal-coated uniform with dark hair combed back and a broad smile plastered on his face as he clapped. Beside him strode a demure-faced man with midnight-black hair folded to the sides like an open book and dressed in a vivid purple tuxedo coat and a white cravat. Typhos had never once seen the man at his master’s side in nine years serving Terra Daeva.

“You approved my leave of absence,” Typhos said.

“I did,” Levian agreed. Though he spoke to Typhos, he kept his eyes on Daniels and Luke and was heading in their direction. He gestured to the man wearing the purple tuxedo coat. “Normally, only Calliphlox observes your vacations.”

Alder was rooted in place a short distance away, about halfway between Daniels and himself, and Typhos thought he smelled piss from upwind.

Calliphlox of the Flocks? What man dared name himself after one of the gods? He supposed it was not much more blasphemous than an organization of assassins called Cathartes. Wait. If he was talented enough to be employed as a spy for Typhos, that meant…

The sensation of being watched but no one there. The presence he could never prove. Always just out of sight.

He was the Shadow.

“What about Ulciscor? Will the others be fine without you?”

“I’m touched, Ty, but yes. Grendelle is handling the outside probing on our end. It’s not exactly complicated— find a scout, kill a scout. If that fool Guard tries anything, it’s Asmari’s job anyway, not ours. And you know Mammon and his sycophants are already inside the city. I was surprised to finally hear where they’ve been holed up all this time.” He snickered. “Trust me, they’ll be just fine until we get back.” Still smiling, he picked his way across the street and made a shooing motion at Daniels. “You were acting so oddly, Ty. I was curious, so I figured I’d come along.”

The ex-captain leaned over Luke protectively and seemed to consider the pair as if he could fight them. He glanced at Typhos. A common Guardsman fighting Cathartes’s best was like fighting the ocean waves on a piece of driftwood. During a storm. Typhos nodded curtly and the man wisely stepped back.

Levian closed the gap to Luke and reached down, grabbing him by the hair and pulling him up off his knees. The man called Calliphlox stepped between Daniels and Levian.

“I just had to see,” he said, meeting Luke’s eyes, “your little secret.”