“Well,” remarked Ash, downing the dregs of his “coffee” and setting his mug on the table with great precision, “that should take care of the heat from the Dillingham and Spiregarden business. Isha, what do you say that we muddy the waters, so to speak, with regard to the Chime score?”

Raising my own mug of muddy water, I toasted him. “Cheers.”

“Faith, are you in?”

She yawned hugely and stretched like a big pink cat. “Oooooh, no, I wouldn’t dream of muddying anything. Have fun, dears! I’ll pay a visit to the lovely Lady Irimina. After all, we haven’t called on her in so long. We wouldn’t want her to believe that we’ve heartlessly abandoned her, would we?”

“I don’t think there’s any danger of that, especially not when Brannon consults her about Helene,” I pointed out.

“But it just isn’t the same, Isha! In our line of work, it’s all about that personal touch!”

True, you didn’t exactly get more personal than commissioning – or soliciting – assassinations. I sighed, eyed my mug of what probably wasn’t coffee, and gulped it down anyway. “Fine. Ash and I will deal with the crew’s heat. Give our regards to Irimina.” I managed to make it sound as if I believed that she was heartlessly abandoning her duties.

Faith, naturally, interpreted it literally. “Oh, I will!” she assured me. “She will be heartbroken not to see you, but I will do my best to assuage her pain!”

Leaving her to primp, the very-much-not-heartbroken Ash and I headed for nearby Brickston, one of the less savory neighborhoods of Coalridge, where sagging flophouses and ramshackle rowhouses practically toppled onto one another, and broken-down carts, laundry lines, and dirty children clogged the cramped alleys. Stopping in at the Blind Cat tavern, we ordered an early lunch of tasteless algae soup and chatted with whatever ne’er-do-wells frequented the place in the middle of a workday. It was, as far as I could tell, an unsurprising mix of unemployed factory hands fleeing their wives’ reproachful faces, would-be union agitators trying to fulfill Belle Brogan’s recruiting quotas, and hopeful young thugs flirting with the idea of joining Cortland or Ulf Ironborn or whoever would have them.

Shaking his head over his soup, Ash clucked, “Can you believe what I heard the other day? There were idiots wandering around a park in Crow’s Foot with golden handbags! Can you imagine?”

“Golden handbags?” yelped a thug, spinning around from showing off her newest tattoo to one of the Lost.

“Yes. It was ridiculous,” I sneered. If I focused on the algae bits floating in my bowl, I didn’t even need to feign disgust.

“What happened to them?” asked a second thug, banging his tankard of ale onto the table and thumping down next to us.

Ash shrugged very expressively. “What do you think happened?”

A thug practically carpeted in Skovlander mythological tattoos (no Sleipnir though – I checked) took interest and ambled over. “Five slugs the idiots got mugged,” he rumbled at the other two. They shook their heads, declining the wager. “Prob’ly killed too.”

Ash threw up his hands. “It’s a dangerous place!” he exclaimed in frustration. “Of course dangerous things happen there. I mean, what was this guy even doing in Crow’s Foot? I would never be seen there.”

“Yeah,” called the bartender from across the room. “You’re just taking your life in your hands if you wander around Crow’s Foot alone.”

Her assessment prompted a round of knowing nods and grunts of assent.

Having muddied the waters to our satisfaction, Ash and I finished our “lunch,” paid the tab, and headed back into the filthy air. As he strode along (and I tried not to scurry to keep up), he abruptly demanded, “Why was it so shocking that Bazso and I know each other?”

That was not a topic I wanted to discuss.

Espionage was my birthright. (The Patriarch’s voice, creaky with age and drenched with malice, ringing through the Great Hall: “The very survival of Iruvia depends on our House. Those who fail to gather adequate intelligence fail at our raison d’être” – his justification for refusing to reign in intra-House warfare even after it wiped out Cousin D’ruva’s branch. I’d liked Cousin D’ruva.) And now, somehow, two of the people closest to me knew each other intimately, had known each other intimately for years, and I’d never even suspected it. (Mother’s voice, echoing from an isle away: “Remember that those you trust most can hurt you worst.”)

Ash was still waiting for my response.

Why did it shock me that I’d missed their connection? “Because knowing things is my business,” I replied at last, more vehemently than I’d intended.

Because I’d failed spectacularly and publicly, in front of both Sawbones and Faith, no less.

Because here was the ultimate proof that the man who was the closest thing I had to a real friend in this cursed city trusted me about as much as I trusted Grandfather.

Trust.

My voice rose uncontrollably, the words just spilling out. “So if I didn’t know, then both of you were deliberately keeping it secret. From me.”

Ash promptly reprimanded me. “Most of our clients prefer that their personal affairs not be broadcast to the general public.” That was even worse: When had Bazso ever known me to broadcast anything to anyone? “We – or rather, my mother – provides good service, and part of that includes discretion.”

Lacking a good comeback (“But you should have told me” sounding too petulant), I stalked along in sullen silence.

A few twists and turns later, Ash broke it again with a question I wanted to answer even less: “So what’s going on with you and the Red Sashes?”

“What do you mean?” I ducked under a clothesline before it could slice off my head and swiped unnecessarily at a dripping sheet, buying myself extra time.

“Well, are you playing the gangs against each other? Whose side are you on – so I know whose side I should be on?”

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

So much for loyalty to his mother’s clients. “Mine,” I replied flatly.

“Hmmmm.” He apparently decided not to pry further for the time being. “I might do business with the gangs,” he said after a moment.

May all the forgotten gods save me from meddling, avaricious friends. “Don’t stir up trouble between them,” I warned without looking back at him.

“Not without telling you first,” he promised.

And unless I wanted to confess my real plan, I had to be content with that.

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At least Ash let me accompany him around Charterhall while he invested in Skovlander ventures that would profit from Doskvolian volatility in the event of an Akorosian-Iruvian conflict. On the legal documents, I caught a glimpse of scribbles that might have resolved into “That Which Hungers” and deduced that he was purchasing futures in the name of his god. (I honestly wasn’t sure how I felt about that, especially since we’d never managed to retrieve General Helker’s battle plans and no matter what I thought about certain parts of my House, I still didn’t want my family massacred.) Back in the railcar, Ash commandeered the common room table, spread out all the documents he’d received from the bankers, and calculated the return on investment for each of the futures he’d purchased. By the time he finished and put away everything tidily in his room, it was already sunset and the shattered sun was throbbing like a migraine on the horizon.

“I might be out late,” Ash told me. “Don’t wait for me for supper.”

Although he didn’t invite me to tag along to the Temple to the Forgotten Gods, I would have been extremely surprised if he hadn’t figured out by now that I was tailing him there.

This time, we found Ilacille lighting a sconce shaped like a sunburst on the altar of the Unbroken Sun. (Personally, I didn’t think that god was forgotten so much as dead.)

“Good evening, Ilacille!” Ash called out eagerly from across the sanctum.

Looking up from the candles, she replied with one of those serene, priestly expressions, “Good evening, Ash. Did you have more theological questions for me?”

“Well, sort of,” he answered, winding his way past all the little shrines and altars to join her. “I was curious about the connection between demons and gods.”

So was I, now that he mentioned it. Crouched behind the altar of The Thousand Faces, I listened as hard as I could.

Ilacille almost chuckled at Ash’s naivete. “There is none,” she answered flatly. “They’re entirely separate. A demon has its own agenda, and a god would never trust one.”

What good taste the gods had! Maybe that was why they were gods.

The priestess gestured at the graceful, tapering white candles in the sconce. “The Unbroken Sun is dedicated to eradicating all demonkind.” Well, there was a cause I supported. With an air of finality, she proclaimed, “A god would never work with a demon.”

Although Ash’s back was to me, I could hear the surprise in his voice. “Not even That Which Hungers? It’s very practical.”

Frowning in thought, Ilacille mentally cycled through her index of the deities. Then she shook her head definitively. “I’ve never seen anything to suggest it.”

“Hmmmm.” Giving up on whatever lucrative venture he’d considered, Ash turned to a different line of questioning. “What would one have to do to see a god manifest?”

Ilacille looked at him a little sharply. “You would need to enhance its following,” she replied automatically. “Ash, are you sure – ”

“It’s purely hypothetical,” he assured her quickly.

She frowned even more deeply but let it drop.

While she processed among the shrines, spending the exact same amount of time at each one (I timed her), Ash crossed the room to the altar of That Which Hungers, where he prayed fervently for guidance on directing the destructive forces of capitalism against the Imperium itself. At the end, a look of intense, almost inhuman hunger flashed across his face.

I took that as my cue to slip away.

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Meanwhile, according to one of the Kinclaith maids, Faith had been pumping Irimina for details on an immortality ritual over tea and scones.

“What would you do if you were immortal?” Faith inquired, fascinated.

Looking startled, as if it weren’t a question she had to answer very often, Irimina replied, “For one thing, I could restore my family name and get onto the City Council. For another, my work would continue unabated….”

Scooting close on the settee, Faith purred, “But what then? Eventually the new generation will move on.”

Irimina just gave her a look. “You’re assuming Roethe will have children.”

(“Has Lady Irimina ever expressed an interest in marriage or children?” I asked the maid, who shook her head. “Not that I know of, miss.”)

Coquettishly, Faith protested, “There’s no need to be so pessimistic!”

At that, Irimina chuckled, as if she were exceedingly diverted by the image of her little brother settling down. (The maid shared that assessment.)

“Who knows?” Faith pointed out. “Maybe someday you’ll settle down. After all, there are a lot of cute guys in forever….”

Irimina looked even less convinced by that possibility. “Salia would need – ” she began before stopping suddenly and correcting herself, “I would need to do things for the people who helped me.”

(“Who’s Salia?” I asked the maid. “Dunno, miss,” she replied.)

Although Faith stared at her as hopefully as a cat that smelled a saucer of milk, Irimina declined to elaborate. She said only, in a firm tone, “The important part is not ending.”

Into the silence that followed, Faith commented softly, “One of the advantages of all the time in the world is that you have all the time in the world to figure out what to do with all the time in the world.”

Then she flirted until Irimina cheered back up.

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After dismissing Irimina’s maid, I headed to the Sword Academy to teach the little kiddies, with a detour by the Leaky Bucket so Sawbones could check my legs. He pronounced them almost entirely healed, although his rueful expression suggested that he didn’t expect that to hold for long. Fair enough, but for the time being, I luxuriated in being able to demonstrate thrusts and parries myself. Exhilarated by my own agility, I launched into a series of illustrative examples, drawing on my personal experiences in U’Duasha and Doskvol. My students’ awed expressions egged me on, and eventually I found myself showing off attacks and feints for fighting a water demon in a canal (and which I wished I’d thought of at the time).

After class, while I was moping my forehead and realizing that I was woefully out of shape, Vaati tiptoed up to me. Under cover of his classmates’ excited buzz, he whispered, “Miss Glass?”

“Yes, Vaati?”

He hesitated, then spoke in a rush. “Miss Glass, a strange woman approached me yesterday. I’d never seen her before, but she immediately started asking questions about you and that other lady. Miss Glass, the woman was just wrong.” His voice trailed off.

For an Iruvian, “wrong” uttered in that tone could only spell demonic involvement. I prodded him for details, as I would a new informant. “What did you do?”

“I told her that I’d seen you and your associate – the one with the, er, fancy dress – together, and then I ran away.”

Better if he’d skipped straight to running away part, but it was too late now. “What else did you say?” I demanded.

“Noth– nothing else. I don’t think I said anything else…?”

My severe expression said everything that needed to be said.

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The next time I saw my associate of the fancy dress, I relayed the incident to her and Ash, pointing out that this odd woman was more along her lines than mine.

With a secretive smile that told me she knew exactly who the demon was, Faith purred, “Why, are you saying that I’m an odd woman?” Something about my air convinced her that I wasn’t in the mood for joking, because she gave a little shrug and said glibly, “Oh, well, if someone is starting a fan club, I should find them and give them pointers. I’m a complicated girl.”

Rolling my eyes, I pointedly turned my back.

“Yes,” agreed Ash, “finding them is probably for the best.”

“I want details on the ‘fan club’,” I informed the window.

“Oh, Isha, I knew you wanted to join it!” Bounding over, Faith threw her arms around me from behind, practically cracking my ribs in the process.

Wrenching free, I gave her a look that said that as soon as I located the members of this fan club, I would murder them one by one.

As usual, she ignored me. “By the way, Isha, I’ve been hearing the wildest tales about your prowess at fighting demons in canals! Your students think you’re the greatest canal-demon-fighter ever! I could have told them that.” She waggled her eyebrows at my legs.

Oh gods, the beginner class. The illustrative examples. I could feel myself turning bright red. “I – ”

“Don’t worry, Isha!” she assured me magnanimously. “I’ll take care of it!”

That was what I was afraid of.