With some effort she rolled Ossoff onto his back. The entry wound was ugly, but not compared to the one opposite. She crossed his hands over his chest. They were still warm and she very nearly dropped the one when she felt it. After that, Nikha closed her eyes and knelt. She didn't know the correct eulogic prayers, and she felt so frazzled she couldn't think of any other formal ones. Instead she made one up. Some people told her that when they prayed it was like having a conversation with the Annoumenos, but when Nikha did it she felt more like she was writing a letter that probably wouldn't receive a reply.

Dear Annoumenos,

I pray that you'll watch over this man's soul and forgive him for what you're able to. He didn't deserve to be in this whole situation. Maybe he deserved to get shot but he didn't deserve to die. I'm sorry if that doesn't make sense but I think you're smart enough to understand what I'm trying to say. I know I didn't like him much at all but- But. Odd that there should be a 'but' there, but there it was. She'd avoided Ossoff, resented him, but never had she truly wished him dead. As much as he'd disliked him, he'd been part of her life-a part that was gone forever, now. She finished praying. -but even though I wanted him gone sometimes, I didn't want it like this. So I hope you judge him with mercy, and me too. Ye'haristo. She supposed it was rude to pray for yourself in someone else's eulogy, but she couldn't take it back now.

Nikha stood up on unsteady legs, not sure how to feel. She'd killed someone. A human, somebody she knew. She was a murderer, or at least a killer. I had no other choice, did I? Ossoff had wanted to kill her. She'd given him every chance to stop attacking her- and she couldn't have gone on defending forever. Eventually she would have grown tired or made a mistake. And if it was a choice between killing someone, or dying herself and failing to help Papa, it wasn't really a choice at all. She had the dawning realization that in some ways, Papa had been preparing her for something like this.

She recalled a walk through the grounds she'd taken with Papa maybe two years ago. It had been a sunny day out and they'd walked slowly on the sun-dappled path beneath the trees. The breeze was gentle, carrying with it the scent of freshly-bloomed honeysuckle. For a while they'd moved in contented silence, the only sounds distant birdsong, the wind in the trees, and the quiet click-hiss of Papa's leg brace. Nikha had looked up at Papa to say something, though, and noticed the troubled look on his face.

"What's wrong, Papa? Is it your leg?"

Papa looked down and smiled. "No, Nikha. My leg is fine-or as close as it gets, these days." His brow remained furrowed, though.

"Then what is it?" she pressed on. If he didn't want to talk, he'd say so. Papa didn't dance around with words, at least not when he spoke with her.

For a few seconds he was quiet, the sound of the brace like a metronome for his thoughts. Then he asked her something that had shocked her.

"Is it ever right for one person to kill another, Nikha?"

She'd stared up at him with wide eyes for a second, before she realized what he was doing. It's a test, she thought. A test to make sure I've been paying attention in semichka class after chapel.

"In the Originatia, the Annoumenos forbid humans to kill one another," she proudly recited. "After It made the world, It made the first woman, Merowyn, and the first man, her husband Trisley. But Merowyn got angry or jealous or something and murdered Trisley. The Annoumenos saw and told her that by ending a life she'd wasted the human gifts of reason and, um...compassion! So It cursed her and drove her away, and then it made new people that knew better." Nikha put her hands behind her back and nodded. She'd definitely passed.

"Very good, very good," said Papa, and she stood up a little straighter. Then Papa gave her a sidelong look. "What about soldiers, though? Fighting for their country, or to defend their homes? Are they also forbidden to kill?"

Nikha’s brow scrunched as she thought hard. Matron Fulgin hadn't talked about that in class. She had said that the rules of the faith applied to everyone equally. But that didn't make sense. That would mean every soldier-even Papa-would go to the Blazes when they died, rather than joining the Annoumenos among the stars. That couldn't be right. "Ummm..." she said without having any idea what to follow it with. She couldn't square the conflicting principles in her mind.

"What about someone who kills to defend their life, then?" Papa pressed her. "Or the lives of their family? Are they damned also?"

"I don't..." Nikha had no idea why he was asking her these things.

"What if it was me, Nikha? What if someone was going to hurt me, kill me even, and only you could stop him? What would you do?"

She looked up at Papa nervously. "I...I would knock him out or something! I'd stop him without killing him."

"And what if you couldn't? Say he's too strong to knock out, too stupid to threaten. Say all you have is a gun, and he's not listening to anything you tell him. What would you do?" Papa had stopped walking, now, eyes intense behind his spectacles.

Well, in that case, there were only two choices. Lose Papa, or lose someone she didn't know, someone who'd come to bring harm to those she loved. She knew that sometimes you had to do things you didn't want to do, and that adults seemed to do more of these things than any others. "I would do it," she said after a few moments. "I would kill him if I truly had to."

Papa nodded seriously, expression unchanged. "And what if it was you he was after? What would you do, Nikha, if it was kill him or be killed by him?"

That one was somehow tougher and easier. It almost felt selfish-but she didn't want to die. She didn't deserve to die. There was no reason to give up her life for that of a murderer-and Papa would be sad if she was killed. "I'd kill him then, too," she answered quietly.

Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

With some effort and a phlogistic whine, Papa crouched down to meet her eyes. "Good," he said. "In a situation like that, Nikha, you aren't deciding that your life is worth more than your enemy's. Your enemy's decided that his life is worth less than yours." The rest of the walk passed in silence, with Nikha deep in thought.

Ossoff had made exactly that calculation, she realized. He'd thought a small chance to kill her was worth almost certain death for him. She wasn't sure whether to feel less or more sympathetic. Had he really hated her that much?

It didn't matter now. The man was dead and she had to keep moving. She checked the lagering room he'd come out of but there were no supplies in there, not even a glass of water. Maybe he hadn't thought that far ahead. She moved on. Assuming the house cooperated, she just had to go through the stairwell, down a short servant's passage and she'd be in the foyer at the center of the house-and halfway to Felisya Hall.

The stairwell was where it should have been. They were back stairs, but still richly painted and carpeted all in maroon. The phlogiston-blue arc sconces even had dimming shades to keep their light from clashing with the decor. She skirted the stairs themselves and went through the opposite door-and there was the stubby corridor, right where it should be! She rounded the corner- and stopped.

A mass of blue-gray brambles completely filled the hall ahead. The vines were hard-looking, liberally studded with thorns as long as her thumb. The tangle went floor to ceiling, wall to wall-and farther in some spots, where the vines had forced through the plaster. They were so deep and dense she couldn't see past it. Nikha let out a frustrated sigh, wondering how in the name of the Martyrs they'd grown overnight. Her answer was an irregular, metallic clicking sound coming from the thorns. Watching closely, she could actually see them growing, occasionally springing with movement as thorns shoved past one another. Despite its name, chopping this down would be work rather more severe than her woodsman bayonet was designed for.

She thought a moment, listening to the vines clink and rustle. "Hmm...Yes. That'll work." With the foyer closed off, she'd have to take a more circuitous route to the west. First up the stairs, then through the Stag Galleries, and finally through the basement. Having been built on several successive sets of ruins, Eldergrave's foundations were positively riddled with tunnels. She might even be able to get all the way to the ballroom that way, though she doubted the house-or chance, or fate, or whatever-would let it be that easy. She turned around and clumped up the stairs, which exited just next to the Stag Galleries.

These were a set of small but airy sitting rooms along the rear of the house, named for the deer one could often spot from their balconies. The first few rooms weren't much different from the rest of what she'd seen-which is to say very messy. The walls were painted with patterns of leaping trout and prancing stag-except for the outside walls, which were mostly windows and contained glass-paned doors out to the balconies.

The effect was ruined by the state of the rooms: mess and garbage everywhere, plates of half-eaten food spilled onto the floor, stains on the walls. The nature-scene canvases were all slashed or punched out, and much of the richly carved furniture was smashed. In the first room, a meathook hung from the chandelier. It wasn’t clean. In the second room, someone had pushed the tea table over to one corner and written on the ceiling in what looked like blood. Nikha craned her head to read the clumsy script: The old keys turn, the black locks open. But are we the doormen or the door? It approaches-I feel it like a WEIGHT- kaBarra suHULlghhi iA IA IAIAIA- It dissolved into more gibberish like what had been printing out of the Huws machine. Nikha squinted at it as though she could glare it into making sense. The words were not reassuring.

She passed through the next room, rifle raised in case of carrion dogs or worse. But the Galleries were quiet and empty of all but blood. More and more blood, Nikha saw, soaking the rugs and painting the walls in lurid fans. Its scent was in her nose, rich and heavy. The furniture was all shoved against the inner wall as if to make room for something.

The next room was even bloodier, more soaked than clean. When she stepped in, her boot fell with a soft squelch, and something grapelike popped under her heel. She looked down and immediately jumped away with a shocked "Myeep!" Where she'd tread were the flattened remains of a human eye, blue iris staring up with mute accusation. She fought very hard to keep from vomiting, and after several seconds managed it. Wiping clammy sweat from her brow, she looked very carefully around the rest of the floor. Lying amidst the great smears of blood were more pieces of people. Specific pieces: Eyeballs, ears, noses, and nails. Nothing else, as though they'd been discarded as undesirable. It was hard to tell with everything littered about, but there had to be at least twenty sets. Bright sunlight from the windows lit the scene with incongruous cheer. Setting her jaw, she moved into the next gallery.

More blood. More of the same body parts, dropped like pistachio shells. The furniture in here was just gone. There was something strange about the wallpaper, too. She went over to the right-hand wall and looked at it more closely. It was lumpy, with an irregular, stippled texture she could see and feel- like there was something beneath it. Moving further along the wall, she saw that a few things had poked through the wallpaper completely. Nikha inspected the closest one, not quite touching it. It was an inch or so long, pointed, white and shiny as glazed ceramic.

A tooth. The walls were growing teeth. She quickly stepped back, looked at the next room-the center one. It looked dark in there, fuzzy as if her eyes were unfocused. Too dark. It's too shady in here, even. I should- It was then she heard the noise. As soon as she did she realized it had been there for minutes now, building up as she went deeper inward, so slowly she hadn't picked up on it until now. It was a sound like creaking, ancient wood mixed with the rasping gargle of consumptive lungs. Not quite breathing, not organic but...organic-adjacent. To say Nikha was having second thoughts was to underestimate by orders of magnitude. She turned on her heel and ran back to the entrance to the Galleries, skirt swishing around her boots.

There she leaned against the wall with her gun clutched to her chest, panting a little. To go into that center room would have been death. She knew this with a bone-deep certainty. Now that she was away from it, though, Nikha knuckled her brow in frustration. She was being headed off at every turn. Now how would she- Wait! The balconies, you fool! Of course! The balconies outside each gallery room were easily close enough to jump from one to the next. Of course, the...whatever it was in the center room might extend outside, but maybe not. Monsters in stories usually hated sunlight, and it was very bright out today. Of course, the thing most recommending her plan was that she didn't have another one. It was this or nothing- or more likely, a spirit-crushing amount of backtracking.

Nikha went back into the first gallery and headed for the glass-paneled Asteroux doors leading outside. She pointedly did not look farther in. The balcony was a rectangle long as the room and about seven feet wide, tiled in slate and surrounded by a stone railing. It was a little cleaner than inside: she saw only a few orphaned cups and a jacket left folded over one of the wrought-iron chairs. There was also a loop of rope tied around one of the balusters; when she craned over the railing she made out some of the blue-gray creepers from the foyer questing over the ground two stories below. The rope itself had been torn off after only a few feet. Maybe I don't want to know what was on the end, anyway.

She went over to the right-hand railing and looked across at the next balcony. The gap was only a few feet, but after a look at the three-story drop a few feet suddenly seemed like rather a lot. Frowning, she decided to play things safe. Her pack went across first with an easy toss. It wasn't very heavy, but it made balancing awkward. She didn't even consider doing the same with her gun. She didn't want to be unarmed for even a few moments, and besides, she refused to treat it so cruelly. Instead she grabbed it round the barrel with one hand and carefully climbed up onto the balustrade. After a couple preliminary wobbles, she leaped before she could lose her nerve.