I skipped lunch.

Not because I'd killed my appetite along with Kamilin, as I pleaded to the others, but because I needed my last remaining silver slugs for something more important.

"Never jump into relationships too fast," Mother used to warn in Skovic, on those melancholy days when she found the Well's flames oppressively bright. Subsequent to the famed romance in Lockport, the fair maiden departed the shores of dark, starry Skovlan for the black crystal spires and celestial fires of U'Duasha – and, of course, the snake pit that was her new husband's family. With far-flung branches tangled in internecine quarrels, cycles of murder and vengeance played out across generations, presided over and (some whispered) encouraged by the Patriarch. Scion of a cutthroat leviathan blood processing empire herself, the lovely young bride plunged in with gusto. Mother proved such a perfect partner for Father that some of my outmaneuvered aunts, uncles, and cousins even insinuated that the Prince of Shadows himself had something to do with their marriage.

Perhaps. Ixis played the long game – as did Mother.

But sometimes, after a long, lonely night during which my twin brother and I huddled in a closet, clinging to each other for comfort while the latest assassination – character or otherwise – raged through the halls, we'd creep out to find her standing by the window nearest our bedrooms, staring fixedly out across the city. Silently we'd join her, and with her watch the skies until the last glittering stars surrendered to the onslaught of dawn. Then, absently, she'd pet our heads and say, "Always take time to observe and evaluate. Remember that those you trust most can hurt you worst."

Now, an isle away, I followed her advice: For the better part of a week, I investigated my new crewmates. Turning down a few contracts I could ill afford to lose, I personally tailed Faith and Ash until I formed a sense of their habits, and then I dispensed the last of my slugs to buy informants.

"She's a disturbing one, is Mistress Karstas," reported a mousy-looking archivist from Charterhall.

Although it lay just across a canal from Crow's Foot, this district housed such lofty establishments as government offices, banks, Charterhall University, the Bellweather Crematorium – and the Sensorium, an elegant building with a marble façade kept white by weekly washings. This was one of the first places Faith headed after we earned our railcar. Peering through a window, I watched her traipse down a massive hall lined with rows and rows of comfortable couches. People sprawled on them like opium addicts, losing themselves in the memories of others. Some sighed and smiled; others twitched and convulsed; efficient attendants checked them periodically. Faith vanished into a back room where I couldn't follow, and I turned my attention to bribing the clerk who ran the memory archive.

Unfortunately, he wasn't a natural at espionage. "I want facts, please," I reprimanded him. "Not your personal opinion. I will judge whether Mistress Karstas is disturbing or not."

Looking abashed, he ducked his head so far that his bowler hat toppled off. Barely catching it, he muttered, "She comes in once a week on average, I hear for at least ten years. Sometimes she has a spirit bottle – those times she sells the ghost to Madame Keitel. Other times she comes to...experience. More often than not, she requests a particularly violent and gruesome memory."

That was another subjective statement, unless the Sensorium officially categorized certain memories as "violent and gruesome." Somehow I doubted it. "Such as...?" I prodded.

The man actually shuddered. Then the words came spilling out, as if he couldn't bear to hold them in. "She just comes in, wearing in that fussy pink dress, the one with the big sash and all the layers and layers of ruffles, and she waltzes past all the normal patrons – the ones who want to live a happy memory or a sensual memory or even a memory of a classroom lecture – you know, memories from people who are still alive – " In his agitation, he turned his bowler hat over and over his hands.

"Go on," I ordered.

"I sneaked up to listen, just like you asked." The hat spun through his fingers. "She says, 'Good evening, beautiful' to Madame Keitel. And then she says, sounding happy as a bird, that after such a stressful adventure, she needs to relax, and have you extracted any memories yet? And Madame Keitel says yes, it's damaged, but she got some. Um." Screwing up his face, he recited, "Lightning in the Dagger Isles, gang warfare in Crow's Foot...and more I can't remember."

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"That's all right," I said encouragingly. "Go on."

"And she – Mistress Karstas, I mean – just looks at Madame Keitel with that sweet, angelic expression of hers and says, 'Something brutal and violent.'" The archivist stopped again, practically sweating, as if he were living a particularly terrible memory.

After giving him a moment to collect himself, I prompted, "And then what happened?"

"And then Madame Keitel says, 'You want the end, don't you?' and they start walking towards the archive! I had to run back there as fast as I could so I could pretend I'd been there the whole time."

"Did you see what memory Madame Keitel gave her?"

He shook his head. "No. I – I was on the other side of the room."

Oh, amateurs. What I wouldn't give for even Mother's rawest, youngest agent. "That's a shame," I said gently. "Next time, you should pick a position from which you can see and hear better. What did Mistress Karstas do after Madame Keitel gave her the memory?"

The man looked even more terrified. "She lay down on her favorite couch – the really frilly pink one – and started living the memory. It – it looked like she enjoyed not enjoying it, you know what I mean? Halfway through, a few ghosts showed up and started trying to suck out her life force. And she – I don't know what she was doing – but she jumped up and grabbed a coat hanger and slashed it through the air, like – like a lightning hook – and the ghosts just scattered like leaves. And then she hung the coat hanger back up, tidily as you please, and lay down and went back to the memory!"

I made some soothing noises to calm him down, then paid him the amount I'd promised plus a small bonus. Fear drained from his face as he stared at the slugs, and I put a hand on his arm and said earnestly, "I need you to continue to keep an eye out for her. Report to me next week, and you'll get the same again."

The archivist, who lived in a tiny Charhollow flat with a wife and three children (yes, I'd tailed him home as well), gulped but slid the slugs into his purse and nodded obediently.

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As for Ash, I shadowed him one evening to the Temple to the Forgotten Gods, not too far from the Old Rail Yard. Like the rest of Coalridge, the temple was old and rundown and black with soot. Vandals had torn off whatever marble veneer they could, and in the wavering light of oil lamps mounted on either side of the door, the naked brickwork resembled raw, oozing wounds. At least someone had trimmed back the weeds around the foundations, lending the Temple an almost respectable air (if you didn't look too hard).

That someone turned out to be the priestess, a tall, slender woman of indeterminate age who wore a brilliant white robe and mask. As Ash marched up the packed dirt path towards the Temple, she came to stand in the doorway, hands clasped serenely before her.

When he saw her, Ash called out familiarly, "Good evening, Ilacille!"

"Good evening, Ash," she greeted him. "What can I do for you?"

"I had some questions about theology," he explained. "I was hoping you could answer them...."

Their voices faded as they entered. After giving them a few minutes to move away from the entrance, I crept up and peeked around the doorjamb. A shadowy hall gave way to a circular sanctum topped by a dome. Grimy columns, rising like spires from a clutter of boxy shapes, looked like they might date back pre-Cataclysm, although here, too, looters had left their mark. Deep cuts ringed the stone where men had tried and failed to saw through them.

Gathering my cloak closer about me, I dashed down the short hall, plastered myself against the wall, and carefully surveyed the sanctum through the doorway. The room was ringed by shrines – some big, some small, some imposingly complicated, some aggressively simple. After a moment, I figured out that they were organized by theology, almost like a color wheel. In fact, one of the altars near me bore a crudely painted, chipped stone carving of a color wheel.

Near the back of the sanctum, Ash and Ilacille stood by a shrine whose details I couldn't make out, speaking in quiet and reverent voices.

"How do you balance all the gods?" Ash was asking curiously.

"Each has its own cult," she explained. "I mostly maintain the memory of their existence."

After some more theological discussion that I didn't bother to follow, Ash came to the point: "I want to rise in the cult of That Which Hungers."

"I can't necessarily help you gain in the eyes of your mother and sister," the priestess replied gently.

"No, no. That's not what I meant." Ash shook his head emphatically. "I want to interact directly with the god."

In response, Ilacille stooped, picked up something rectangular and flat from the altar of That Which Hungers, and presented it to him ceremoniously. "This is an abacus," she told him. "You use it...so." Her fingers flew, and the light click-click-clicking of beads filled the darkness with an almost hypnotic rhythm. "And now, you present your offering to the god...so."

Tiptoeing into the sanctum itself and ducking behind one of the larger altars, I just barely made out the glint of a glass bottle in Ash's hands, and a blue glow studded with white sparks that flowed softly into a dark bowl that Ilacille held out. Something about that sight reminded me of Kamilin's bravado and loneliness in the tavern in Coalridge, and an unbearable melancholy swept over me. I left Ash to his sacrifice and went to recruit others to tail him.

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The next day, one of the street children brought me word that Ash had been seen in Nightmarket, following around corrupt but legitimate merchants.

The day after that, a Brightstone cabbie reported that Ash was inquiring about the sad, neglected third and fourth children of noble families.

I filed all of that away for future use.