Chapter 16: Circlebreaker

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> "To be a Crownspouse is to have proven yourself exceptional far above and beyond ordinary mortals. Sayf’s harem isn’t just a vapid indulgence on his part, they are some of the most incredible people to walk the Nested Worlds. And Prince Sayf himself is, of course, a Crown. What then of their children? What does it mean to be Crownchild? What power do they inherit not only from their, father, but from their mother as well? What miracles might such a person accomplish?" —Anoloa Nwodike, The Crowns

THE MASTER BEDROOM

Sayf’s Oasis 09.06.03.10.03

Ellaenie woke to the feeling of a small body climbing all over her, and a small troubled voice asking. “Mummy? Daddy?”

Beside her, Sayf stirred first and reached out to scoop his daughter up. “Heyyy, Pickle. It woke you up too, huh?”

“Uh-huh.”

Ellaenie stretched. She couldn’t have been asleep long. Three hours? It felt like three hours or so. “Mm…what did?”

“Something happened, Mummy!” Saoirse’s eyes were wide and scared. “Something big!”

“It’s okay, Pickle.” Sayf palmed the back of her head and kissed her cheek. He loved children, Ellaenie had learned. The sight of something so tiny and fragile in the hands of someone so incredibly powerful was enough to warm her heart.

She smiled and sat up. “What happened?”

“Jerl spoke Time. We’ve stepped back about…oh…six or seven hours.”

Ellaenie blinked, then frowned at her daughter. “You felt that?”

“Uh-huh!”

“What did it feel like?”

“Like I fell down.”

“Did it hurt?”

“Nuh.” Saoirse’s hair flopped cutely as she shook her head. “But it scared me a bit…”

Sayf smiled as she buried her head against his arm. “Tell you what. Let’s go get some juice.” He was a faultlessly dutiful father, and didn’t actually need sleep in any case. He rose from the bed with Saoirse cradled on one arm, and blew Ellaenie a small kiss that said ’you sleep: I’ve got this.’

“An’ an egg in a cup?” Saoirse’s favorite food was delightfully innocent: a teacup, a soft boiled egg and buttered bread, all mashed up with some salt and pepper.

“As you wish.”

Ellaenie settled back again and closed her eyes, but the sleep she should have fallen into instantly and without effort didn’t come. The thought that seven hours of her life had suddenly not happened because somewhere out there, Jerl had encountered a reason to use his power was uncomfortable in more than one way.

Of course, six hours of sleep was a lot less than the multiple days he’d hauled back some time ago. Poor little Saoirse had been almost ill after that, to the point of even coming down with a mild fever.

Ellaenie sighed and looked up at the ceiling above her bed. Her daughter’s sensitivity to time and its perturbations was…troubling. And she’d felt the way Saoirse had resonated with Jerl during his visit too. With the Sight, there was almost a silvery thread connecting them, the ghost of some future event—it could only be a future event, surely—that bound Jerl and Ellaenie’s little girl together.

Time being what it was, there was every chance it wouldn’t even happen. Or with the Words involved, it might happen then *un-*happen…

She frowned as a thought struck her.

A minute later she padded into her husband’s kitchens, where Saoirse was perched on the table swinging her feet happily and eating soggy yolk-stained buttery bread with all her troubles forgotten. Sayf was brewing up a pot of his favored coffee.

“Why did he speak Time?”

“Hmm?”

“Jerl. Why did he pull us back?”

“He had a run-in with Civorage at the Thundering Hall.”

“Civorage is on Stórsteinn right now?”

“Right now…” Sayf looked off into the infinite distance for a moment. Ellaenie got the distinct impression the walls and earthmote were invisible to him and the distance irrelevant, and that he was looking straight at Civorage. “…he’s aboard the Make Your Own Fortune.”

“What’s he doing?”

“Trying to account for the sudden feeling of being off-balance and having forgotten something.”

“…” Ellaenie paused for a long moment with her mind racing, then turned and darted from the room, dashing down the halls in her nightgown toward her study.

She was busily gathering her things and packing up her potion vials when Sayf filled the doorframe with Saoirse on his arm, leaned against it, and somehow managed to bring her up short without any word or expression.

“…Lisze,” she explained.

He nodded. “I figured.”

“Don’t try and stop me.”

“Of course not!” he agreed with a chuckle. “I just thought I’d mention that she’s not going anywhere, neither is Civorage, and you’ve only had two hours of sleep.”

Ellaenie hesitated, then sagged. “I don’t know how I can sleep now.”

“I can help with that.” When she turned an arched eyebrow on him, he chuckled. “I wasn’t thinking of any particular method. That’s your dirty mind at work, not mine.”

His humor, as ever, was perfect for her mood. Ellaenie laughed, and doubly so when Saoirse gave them the wide-eyed suspicious look of a precocious five-year-old who knows something has been pitched over her head, and asked “Mummy’s mind is dirty?”

Sayf chuckled too, and booped her nose. “I’ll explain some other time, Witchlet. You need to go back to bed, and so does your mother.”

“Aww, but—”

“Nuh-uh. You’ve had juice, you’ve had egg in a cup. It’s time to go back to sleep.”

“…Can you read me a story?”

Sayf snorted. “Fiiiine….” he said, with mock reluctance. He blew Ellaenie a kiss and carted their little girl way.

Ellaenie sighed and followed his advice, trudging back toward the master bedroom despite the image of Lisze that was still haunting her thoughts. Sayf was right, of course. She’d been enslaved by the Circle for eight years, eight more hours were probably not going to be a disaster, and Ellaenie would need to be fresh and rested before launching any rescue attempt, let alone hastily planning and launching one.

But the wheels of her mind wouldn’t stop turning. She couldn’t just march into the circle, Wordspeaker or not. She’d been experimenting with her new power the last few days, but the most she’d yet gleaned of it was that there was much still to figure out. And as her encounter with the masked man had taught her, having impenetrable skin was no defense against being wrestled to the ground and tied up.

She’d been planning how to get Lisze out for years, of course. And not just out of a selfish desire to have her friend back. They were going to need to dismantle the Circles to have any real hope of bringing Civorage down. If she got to rescue a beloved friend in the process, so much the better, right?

And the one she was in was a significant Circle. The biggest in Auldenheigh. Dismantling it was no small, meek test, it was a real strike against the enemy.

Waking up came as a surprise. She didn’t feel like she’d slept, she certainly hadn’t noticed nodding off. In fact, she was surprised it had happened at all. It couldn’t have been long, though, because what woke her was Sayf rejoining her in their bed and wrapping her in his arms.

“Seems you can sleep after all,” he whispered.

“Mm…How’s Pickle?”

“Out like a lamp as soon as I put her down.” He stroked Ellaenie’s hair. “I read Whopty Flopty Bunny anyway, just to be sure.”

Ellaenie gave a tired laugh and snuggled back into him. “I swear you love that book more than she does.”

“I love innocent things.” he stroked her cheek. “And it’s pretty damn good, as children’s books go.”

“You must have read a lot in your time, huh?”

“More than I can recall.” He said, fondly, and gave her a squeeze. “So what’s the plan?”

“First thing in the morning, I’m going to the Eyrie. I need to talk with Gilber. He’ll tell me how to make contact with Adrey and his people in Auldenheigh, and…we’ll figure it out from there.”

“Hmm.” He nodded and adjusted their pillows for maximum comfort.

“It’s not much of a plan,” Ellaenie confessed.

“Nor was Caisteal Vhannog. But you have something now you didn’t have then.”

“That I barely know how to use.”

“And you never will unless you do use it.” His lips touched her shoulder. “You’ll be fine, beloved. I’m certain of it.”

“And if I’m not?”

He was silent a moment. “You’re worried about Saoirse.”

“I know what it’s like to be orphaned. I…well, she’ll always have you, won’t she? But if something happens to me…”

“If something happens to you, she’ll know the truth: that you fought for a better world, not just for her, but for everyone. And I’ll make sure she’s proud of you.”

Ellaenie blinked, then wrapped her arms around one of his arms, squeezed it to her chest, sighed, and fell asleep again.

This time, she didn’t wake until morning.

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INTERLUDE: NUMBER TEN, BROADWALK

Auldenheigh, Enerlend, Garanhir 09.06.03.10.05

There were times that Adrey missed the old safehouse at Pickler’s Lane. The place had been chosen by Lord Drevin well before the Oneist crisis began, and he’d designed its content and secrets with the luxury of time, money and freedom.

But it was not the only safehouse, and such a gem was to be used sparingly so as to keep it secret and safe. The safehouse at Broadwalk was a product of this new secretive age. There were no secret compartments behind the bookshelves here, nor training pits in the cellar. There was not, in fact, a cellar. Adrey’s “dance lessons” as she and Mister Skinner continued to call them as a private joke, took place in what had once been a cow shed.

Of a time, Adrey would have been bothered by that. But she was a very different woman after eight years of practice, spycraft and quiet war. For one thing she was fitter, stronger…and a much, much better knife fighter than either she or Skinner had ever guessed she might become. She had, it turned out, a talent for it.

Clack, clack, clack, clang!

One, two, three, slashes and stabs in time with her rapid heartbeat. She parried one, then another, deflected the third, turned, swayed back and thrust out her arm so that Skinner’s blunted practice blade cracked harmlessly off the length of metal bar concealed inside her sleeve—better a ruined dress and bruised forearm than an opened belly—then retorted with a small cloth parcel concealed inside her cuff, flicked expertly up into his face.

Had it been real, Skinner would have suffered an eyeful of finely ground bleaching powder and likely been left blind the rest of his days. He grunted and stepped back, dropping his training knife to his side and holding up a hand. “Hit.”

“Dead,” Adrey corrected him with a small smirk.

He paused, then flashed her his signature gummy grin. He’d lost two more of his remaining teeth in the eight years they’d known each other. “Aye…reckon I would be.”

Adrey smiled, and sheathed her knife again, mindfully and carefully. Eight years of training had made her much more comfortable with them than she’d once dreamed she might ever be, but that comfort included a healthy measure of respect. Skinner had drilled that into her from the start: no showy theatrics, no spins or juggles or flips. A knife was just a damn sharp bit of metal and its job was killing. There was no room in Skinner’s philosophy for swagger. In his cutthroat way, he was actually quite an honorable man.

“I’ve been waiting to catch you with that one,” she said.

“Aye, ye did good. Ye’ve elf-quick hands, now’days. I can scarce keep up.”

Adrey picked up the jug of water she’d set aside and poured herself a cup. “Have you ever fought an elf?”

“I’m alive, so…no.”

“Killed one?”

“Nope.”

“…How would you do it?” she asked.

“How would you?” he retorted, ever the teacher.

Adrey considered it. “Up close? He thinks I’m just a soft human noble?”

“Sure.”

“Then my first thought is, use his own vamdraech. It’s made to be plunged into the heart at an instant’s notice, after all.”

There was a pause, then a snort rucked half of Skinner’s face up into a smile. “Winter’s tits, ye’re a merciless bitch, miladay,” he said.

Adrey knew a compliment when she heard it. “I’ve had a good teacher.”

“An’ the teacher had a bloody fine student.”

Adrey smiled, knowing he wasn’t one to hand out compliments lightly, and drank her water. She and Skinner had found a surprising relationship over their eight years of working together, and she’d come to know more about him than he’d really wanted to let on.

For one, he had a wife and six children. Adrey had been surprised by that: somehow she’d imagined that a man in Skinner’s line of work would make the sort of enemies who wouldn’t hesitate for a heartbeat at coming after a man through his innocent family. But Skinner didn’t have enemies.

He was much too effective to have enemies.

She’d often wondered what Mrs. Skinner must be like, though. Her husband was not exactly a handsome creature, nor a respectable one except in certain very specific company. Though, he had a winning charm of a sort. And by what she gathered, the children were all getting an excellent education at a good school thanks to their father’s expensive skillset and wealthy patrons.

“That’s the trick to it though, as I’ve ‘eard,” he added, after swigging from his hip flask. “Hit ‘em first, fast, an’ ‘ard.”

“So…just the same as everyone else.”

He flashed his few teeth at her again. “Jus’ the same.”

They both looked up at the sound of a knock on the door. Rat-tat, tat, ta-tat! It was the correct knock, but still Skinner kept his hand loose and ready for a knife as he went to answer, while Adrey moved toward the “rabbit door.” They’d had some close calls over the years, and the Circle always assimilated their allies, when found. All it took was the wrong person being caught at the wrong time…

Not today, though. Today, Skinner returned with a brown-wrapped parcel under his arm, exactly like an order of bacon dropped off by the butcher’s delivery boy. He slit it open and scanned its contents.

“One ‘fer you, countess.”

Adrey nodded and accepted it, though she’d known it was just by the sight of the wax seal on the back. The antlers were Ellaenie’s private mark, a nod to the witchcraft she’d inherited from Thaighn Saoirse and the twin antler wands she used.

Once upon a time, imagining her friend as a witch would have scandalized Adrey deeply. But, that was before she’d become what she was nowadays. She cracked the seal and scanned the letter’s content. It was coded, of course. They couldn’t dare be open and unguarded in media that might be intercepted, but its content was…

“Oh. Oh, wow.”

My dearest Darla,

I seat myself and take pen in hand to answer yours of the 14th instant, and share some most excellent news. I have been invited to the big city for one of Mrs. Fontan’s famed salons, and I thought what better excuse to see you again? (As though I need one!)

I hope my visit will not be inconvenient, especially as I hope Mother and Mr. and Mrs. Elbridge shall be coming with me—you must let me know at once if you cannot accommodate us—but I cannot wait to see you, as I have other news that I simply refuse to share in writing; you shall have to wait and hear it from me in person.

As ever, Mr. Kirkley sends his fond regards, as does Millisa.

Yours fondly,

Mrs. Madeni Kirkley

“What is it?” Skinner asked, suddenly alert.

Adrey folded the letter and tossed it in the fire. “Mrs. Kirkley’s coming for Mrs. Fontan’s Salon. She’s bringing Mr. and Mrs. Elbridge, and her mother.”

His face didn’t betray a thing, but she knew he understood the significance perfectly. “…Well then.”

“There’s something else. Some big news when she gets here.”

He nodded. “Aye. I’ll get everything ready for her,” he said, and vanished out the door. Adrey was left alone with her thoughts.

Part of her wanted to snatch the burning letter out of the flames and re-read it, somehow. She was struggling to keep her breath level and steady, and her heart was skipping in her chest. Mrs. Fontan’s Salon. The code-phrase for rescuing Lisze. At long, long last.

And they weren’t going at it half-heartedly, oh no. Ellaenie wanted to recruit Rheannach and Dragon. And then there was something else, some new factor that she couldn’t communicate in code.

The antidote was ready, perhaps? Well…that was a given, if they were moving on Mrs. Fontan’s Salon. So it was something else. What, though?

…No point in speculating, she decided. She had preparations of her own to make. People to meet, instructions to give, long-prepared contingencies to activate. She checked to make sure the letter was completely burned to ash, changed into a persona suitable for this work, and minutes later was out the door and anonymous in the street. In her element, nowadays. She’d become truly expert in the art of not being seen, of moving in confusing ways and, if necessary, in the art of dealing death. She knew all of that. But this time, her heart couldn’t stop pounding. This was it. The moment of truth. The moment she’d planned and prepared for all this time.

She wouldn’t let Lizzy down.

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> “On the day the Ordfey fell, I saw Rheannach in her war panoply with Scorn in hand, and she was glorious. Yet still I held my ground. I saw Yngmir stride up to the walls like a walking mountain and tear them down, yet still I held my ground. I heard the baying of Maicoh and Maingan and knew the terror of hunted beasts, yet still I held my ground. But when I saw Dragon, I dropped my spear and wept.” —Almathir Nadhtrancan Obis, Reflections on the Past

ON THE WING

Dragon’s Eyrie 09.06.03.10.05

Ellaenie had always meant to visit the Eyrie, and somehow had just never quite gotten around to it. It wasn’t an easy journey, as the Paths didn’t lead to it. There was, from what Gilber Drevin had told her, nowhere on the earthmote that was a suitable stepping point for them.

Now, from the air, she could see what he meant: there was not a speck of green anywhere on the Eyrie. Nor anything brown. The earthmote was a jagged, almost crystalline shard of pale grey stone frosted and frozen wherever it was flat enough for the ice and snow to stick.

They were low in the worlds, at an altitude so cold that Ellaenie would have been worried about frostbite if not for the fact that her skin now seemed just as impervious to the chill as it was to sharp steel. The freezing air washed over her without any bite, leaving her refreshed and alert as Rheannach flapped her wings and angled them down.

The Eyrie was vaguely talon-shaped, she realized. Broadly speaking it was a narrow triangle, with three asymmetrical ridges of razor-sharp rock at the flat end, and a single outthrust spike at the opposing point. The only visible structure was right in the middle, being a circular platform of smoothed stone that was oddly ice-free despite the compacted snow that crusted every other surface.

The reason why became apparent the moment they alighted. The platform was heated from below, to such a temperature that its warmth seeped up through to soles of Ellaenie’s boots and suffused the air around her. Her breath still fogged on the wind, but her toes were nice and toasty.

The platform was encircled by a wide spiral stair, broad enough for a horse and carriage to park across, though the only thing waiting at the top was Gilber Drevin. Ellaenie ran to him and threw her arms around him in a tight hug, though gently. He hadn’t been a young man the last time they saw each other, and that had been eight years ago. Now…

Well, being a Herald’s spouse apparently didn’t come with some of the perks of being a crownspouse. Or perhaps he’d simply declined them. He was old, now. The sparse red hair that had clung to the sides of his scalp was now as white as the snow-encrusted stone around him, and the lines of care that had already grooved his face were now deep in skin that had thinned and sagged.

But she needn’t have worried too much. There was strength and solidity in his bones yet, and the hug he returned was just as heartfelt.

“So…you finally found time in your busy schedule to come visit,” he quipped as he let her go.

“I know, I know…I’m sorry.” She shrugged. They’d been in touch, of course. But between research, practicing her mastery of the Craft, building her relationship with her fellow Crownspouses and, of course, raising a daughter…

He smiled, and forgave her with a fond squeeze of the upper arm. “Come on. It’s warmer below, and Dragon is waiting for you.”

“Brace yourself,” Rheannach advised Ellaenie as he led them down the shallow stair. “It’s quite a sight…”

No amount of bracing would have sufficed. As they descended, the spiral stair broke through the roof of a vast hollow chamber that must have filled the entire earthmote from surface to belly. Pillars stretched from floor to ceiling, thicker around than castles but made slender-seeming by proportion and scale. They flared out into the load-bearing vaults, but Ellaenie wasn’t fooled: there was more than mere architecture at work, here. The very air was thrumming and heavy with magic as the sustained will of a Herald politely but firmly instructed the laws of weight and structure to sit down and shut up.

Their own staircase was descending in a spiral around the central column , with a tall banistrade on one side for safety, but open enough to see everything.

The light came from two sources: titanic narrow windows as wide as towns and as tall as mountain which let in the pale light from outside to edge everything in silver, and slow-flowing rivers of flowing, glowing viscous liquid—molten rock, Ellaenie realized with a little help from Rheannach—which twirled and coiled down each of the pillars, emitting the same heat and glow as a banked forge. Their heat should have been scorching and stifling; instead it duelled with the frigid wind that blew through the window vaults, mixing and dancing so that Ellaenie’s face felt alternately fire-licked and snow-kissed from moment to moment. It averaged out to pleasantly warm, in its disarming way.

But the architecture was utterly trivial next to the occupants.

She spied Dragon quickly: the Herald took off from her throne as they descended the stair, looping and stretching upwards in what seemed like miles of gleaming golden scale. There hardly seemed to be an end to her, and even amidst these grand surroundings she seemed vast to Ellaenie.

Doubly so, when one considered her children fluttering around her. The Drakes. Each one fathered by a mortal, and in any company other than their mother’s they would have been breathtaking in their own right. One of them thundered past the stair, lifting his voice in a bugling welcome and the blast of air from his wings was enough to force Ellaenie back a step. He was the color of brushed steel from nose to tailtip, his leathery wings decorated with a fractal pattern in blue and silver. Another dived past going the other way, her scales as green as new leaves and variegated, chased by a drake whose skin sparkled like ten thousand tiny mirrors.

A tiny one—comparatively tiny, that was, in that he was only about as big as a draught horse—swooped up, tucked his wings in, slipped neatly through the gap above the balistrade, and alighted beside them. “Father! This is her?”

“This is her,” Gilber confirmed. “Her grace Ellaenie of House Banmor, rightful duchess of Enerlend…my son, Baralyr.”

“Hello!” the young drake trumpeted before Ellaenie could say it. “You’re powerful! I can feel it!”

“I’m…certainly trying to be,” Ellaenie granted. Part of her wanted to reach out and give his nose a rub just like she would a horse, but the more balanced part of her mind reminded her that this was a child, not a beast, and she hesitated.

Gilber chuckled, and to Ellaenie’s surprise he did scratch Baralyr behind the crown of his head, just like making a fuss of a large dog. “Go on, now,” he said. “We have something important to discuss with your mother. You’ll get a chance to meet the duchess properly later.”

“Yes, Father.” Baralyr ducked his head, a little regretfully, but slithered back over the banistrade and winged away on some thermal coming up from far below.

“Wow…” Ellaenie sighed, watching him. “He flies so gracefully!”

“Drakes grow a little faster than human children,” Gilber said. “At first, anyway. He’ll mature in mind rather more slowly, but he’ll live…well. None of Dragon’s children have yet died, so we don’t know. She thinks they can last forever, if they’re careful.”

“Speaking of whom…” Rheannach nodded, drawing their attention to the fact that Dragon herself was now coiling around the staircase in an endless river of burnished gold. As she did so, the Herald came to a hovering halt level with the stair’s bottom landing. The air thrummed with the immense power she was using to hold herself aloft.

Are we ready?

She didn’t speak aloud, of course. Ellaenie doubted her massive fanged jaws could even frame proper words in this form, but she didn’t need to speak aloud.

“I don’t know,” she answered truthfully. “We don’t have a plan.”

No. How could we? Any plan we made, Civorage would unravel. But I have faith.

“So do I.” She glanced behind her at Rheannach. “…Though, it’s easy to have faith when you have two Heralds alongside you.”

“And we have you alongside us,” Rheannach replied. “Before you acquired that Word, I was worried about what rescuing your friend would expose us to. Dragon and I don’t know how much power Civorage will have over us.”

But we know you should now be immune to him.

“And there’s my potion.”

“Also a point in our favor. But this is a commitment, Ellaenie. Once we start this, the war for Enerlend and Garanhir will begin.”

It will be the greatest war the earthmote has yet seen, Dragon added. The Circle is vast, and has assimilated many powerful people, including the Dukes. The free people meanwhile are confused. Civorage will keep them confused, or lure them to him.

“And it won’t just be any war,” Rheannach added. “Involving us? We’re forbidden from participating in mortal conflicts for a reason.”

But this is no longer a mortal conflict. Not with the Words involved. Not with…

Images flashed across Ellaenie’s mind. Dragon was being tactful, broaching a subject she didn’t know if Ellaenie was familiar with or not…The Forsaken.

For some reason, Sayf had told her all about them just before she left. He’d declined to explain why, exactly, just that the time had come for her to know a little more. And she had to admit, the existence of four rebellious Heralds hidden somewhere out there in the world, rendered mortal and thus free to act, and choosing to use that freedom to subvert, destroy, pollute and subjugate…

It had made several of the pieces fall into place.

She nodded, sending back an impression of her understanding. The rules had changed, even vanished. Things were no longer so clear as they had once been, and the hard line that Crowns and Heralds would not cross no longer existed, in this conflict.

“It has to start sometime,” she said aloud. “Now is the best chance we’ve had…and I don’t see any wisdom in waiting for a better chance.”

“Hear, hear,” Gilber agreed.

Dragon’s barbels lashed and her whole body undulated in a single solemn nod.

Then we agree. Let us waste no more time…climb on.

She turned, presenting a flat saddle on her neck, big enough for two humans to ride, and extended a clawed arm for them to use as a step. Ellaenie helped Gilber climb up, then settled in behind him. She’d expected Dragon’s hide to be cool, somehow, but instead she was uncomfortably hot to sit on.

Hot, but secure. Despite there being no handholds, no stirrups or straps, she felt entirely safe and stable as Dragon turned, undulated through the air and rose toward one of the windows, before shooting through it at incredible speed and out into the freezing air beyond, where suddenly her heat was entirely welcome.

When Ellaenie glanced back, the Eyrie was receding at an incredible speed. Already it was smaller than her outstretched palm, and even as she looked it shrank to the size of her thumbnail, then vanished in a bank of cloud which shot back in an endless stream.

She’d flown in Rheannach’s arms before, of course, and been carried by Eärrach too. Somehow, though, riding Dragon drove home the sense of incredible speed. Up ahead, a cone of vapor formed around Dragon’s nose, and some sense given to Ellaenie by her Word told her that the air around them would have pulverising, smashing force if she were to leap out into it.

She hunkered down instead, and glanced over at Rheannach who was keeping station to their left. With her pinions outstretched and flapping only once every other heartbeat or so, she made flight look effortless.

It was a sight glorious enough to lift Ellaenie’s heart all by itself, and always had been. But today…today it filled her with a thrill and anticipation unlike any other. Knowing where they were going and what they were about to do, she couldn’t keep her pulse steady. It seemed to ring through her like a bell, like a whole tower’s worth of bells alongside one single, overriding, wonderful and terrifying thought.

At long last, she was going home.

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INTERLUDE: MAKE YOUR OWN FORTUNE

above Stórsteinn Earthmote 09.06.03.10.05

One of Nils’s minor triumphs a couple of years back had been…hmm. A theft? Probably an ordinary person would say so, if they knew all the details. One of the Keeghan and Sons Guild’s most prominent inventors had suddenly realised the truth of Oneism and come over to the Clear Skies Guild, bringing with him a lockbox full of the Keeghan Brothers’ latest inventions, all of which turned out, quite mysteriously, to have not been properly registered for patent.

As far as the law was concerned the Clear Skies had done nothing wrong, even though they were the beneficiaries of this windfall. As for the engineer, he was in breach of his contract with his employer, and that had come with a hefty fine…which was only enforceable in the Craenen archipelago. In Long Drop City, where the engineer now lived, it was just a piece of sternly worded paper.

So now, the engineer was quietly turning his former employers’ ideas into Clear Skies products. And top of the list was a vehicle that had been the ambition for airship designers ever since Ógán Keeghan had first invented lift-gas: a miniature version, small enough to carry a few men from ship to ship, or ship to ground.

Hitherto, the weight to lift ratio just hadn’t quite been good enough. But the Keeghan guild had kept chipping away at it, developing lighter and stronger smallboats and bags, cutting weight and cutting weight and cutting weight until, at last, they’d crossed the tipping point where such a boat could carry a couple of passengers and a small engine.

It helped, of course, if the passengers were light. Elves were ideal, and also had the advantage that jumping nimbly from launch to deck was no problem, and heights held no fear for them.

Not that a Nornfey could feel fear anyway. They couldn’t feel anything.

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

Nils watched as the dark elf hopped over the rail and then sprang lightly up from the maindeck to the wheelhouse to deliver their report by staring in his eyes and letting what they had seen bubble up to the front of what passed for their mind.

Preparations. Sentries. Armament. The Cavalier Queen. Forewarning. Fortification. Futility.

Civorage growled in frustration. “Damn…wait there while I think.”

The elf folded their hands behind their back and stood placidly, their black eyes betraying no hint of boredom, anticipation, nor even dutiful attentiveness. As thoughtlessly hardworking as a bee, and just as bereft of individuality.

Civorage sighed and stepped away, feeling once again the wrongness of these poor benighted creatures. Even to his experienced eye, there was not much to tell one nornfey apart from another. In fact, though they wore no clothing, it was even difficult to tell male from female: every one of the features which might otherwise have made it plain was…not absent, but rather so underdeveloped as to make discerning their status a more clinical examination than Civorage really wished to perform. They were as sexless as a dressmaker’s form, and utterly unenticing to look at.

Even the tattoos were marks of caste, rather than of personal identity. Nornfey didn’t have personal identity. They didn’t have a sense of self at all. Their minds, to Civorage’s unique vision, were as completely peaceful as a barren, lifeless desert at night. They did not suffer. They felt no grief, no fear, no attachment or aversion, no longing, no ennui, not even boredom or pain. Whatever they did, they did wholly in the moment and in the zone, completely attentively and mindfully.

That was Lady Iaka’s gift to them: a total cessation of suffering, by removing any sense of ambition or desire from them. And it made them terribly useful. But it didn’t make them happy, because they also didn’t feel joy, satisfaction, warmth, comfort, closeness or accomplishment. They didn’t feel anything. They had exactly as much emotional range as a worker ant.

It was an…imprecise version of what Mind could achieve. The Oneness of the Circles was a blissful experience, one that left the individual intact but utterly fulfilled. A far superior condition to these wretches.

Still…the Forsaken Herald had done her best with the tools available to her. And Civorage would refine the Nornfey and allow them to experience the joy of Oneness, once their usefulness in their current condition was obsolete. For now, having a cadre of elves who genuinely felt no fear and had no concept of disloyalty was exactly what he needed.

Even when they brought him dismaying news.

Dammit, Holten was ahead of him again! How many times must he have pulled back on time itself to achieve these reliable disruptions? Was he living lifetimes, watching and waiting to spy on Nils’ next move only to undo it all and thwart him? Then there had been the heist on his Long Drop mansion. How many wrong attempts and failed loops must he have gone through while brute-forcing the safe combination?

Strange. He didn’t seem like a man with that kind of conviction and willpower. And Nils was nothing if not a good judge of character. Oh, Holten did have conviction and willpower, certainly, but on the scale necessary to endure subjective centuries of hardship and perseverance?

No. Not on that scale. Perhaps…

He stood and stroked his moustach as he considered the distant mountains, far below, and chuckled bitterly to himself. The hag-thaighn’s bloody curse. He’d felt it the moment she cast it, that infuriating night. Bitter and foul in the mouth, like spittle in coffee. May thy victories be sulled, may thy worst foes escape your wrath, may ye ever snatch defeat frae the jaws o’ victory.

So it had been for eight years. Everything, everything had to be perfect, or there was inevitably a setback. The slightest overlooked detail was the weak point through which disaster leaked. Nils had won many victories in the years since the hex of course…but he’d only achieved them through achieving perfection in planning and execution, by making defeat entirely impossible.

Now that there was not one but two other Wordspeakers opposing him, that could no longer be guaranteed. The enemy got a say. And that fact alone introduced enough imperfection that he could feel things slipping away. Dammit. There wouldn’t be another opportunity like this to ransack the Thundering Hall for its store of obscure lore for years. Yngmir had to be distracted by a long and deep eclipse for any heist to be plausible. And without the heist…he was no closer to finding Spirit.

Without Spirit, he’d never break the hex. He’d exhausted every option shy of that, and all of them had failed. Thaighn Saoirse’s dying work of witchcraft had been overwritingly powerful, scrawling his failure into the very fabric of reality on some fundamental level. The only force more powerful was a Word. If he never broke the hex, defeat was inevitable.

And even if he did somehow find Spirit somewere out there…his plan to claim it would have to be utterly flawless. Which would only be possible if he found it soon.

He realized he was gripping the rail so hard his hands creaked.

“…No matter,” he said, turning back to the elf. “We just need to change tactics.”

He let the idea he’d had flow into its mind. The nornfey nodded, its blank expression utterly unchanged. Then it vaulted the rail, sprang nimbly into the single-passenger launch, and zipped away to return to the scouting party’s forward camp.

Nils sighed heavily, and retired to his cabin for a snifter of brandy to drive out the lower-worlds chill. Was it a perfect plan he’d just devised? It seemed good. It seemed solid. But was it perfect?

Only time would tell, he supposed. Time, and trying, and not giving up until the very last. Setbacks were not defeat.

Not yet.

----------------------------------------

> The night the duchess vanished was a strange one. Across Auldenheigh, tens of thousands of people were abruptly roused from their beds without quite knowing why. The city’s arcane literati, however, knew instantly that some immense work of magic had just been performed, though its exact nature, or which superlative master of the Art had performed it remained unknown. And the mystery only deepened in the morning when the night’s Eclipse cleared, and the Duchess Ellaenie’s apartments in the ducal palace were found to have been blasted open from the inside… Of the duchess herself, there was no sign. —Millis Lemrey, The Fall of the Dukes

ABOVE THE ROOFTOPS

Auldenheigh, Enerlend, Garanhir 09.06.03.10.06

“It’s…just like I remember it…”

Somehow, that observation made Ellaenie feel much more off-balance than if they’d come swooping down out of the clouds to see the familiar skyline utterly transformed. Civorage had consolidated his tight grip on the whole continent, so she’d been expecting…what? Monuments to his glory? Parks paved over? Familiar landmarks torn down and replaced just to demonstrate the new order of things?

All of the above, on some level. She’d expected Auldenheigh to be unfamiliar now, but really the changes were quite subtle. There were more airship towers along the line of the river, and most of the ships moored at them bore the blue and white stripes of the Clear Skies guild. Here and there across the city, Ellaenie could see the lit rings of Circle communes.

More troublingly, she could see low-flying airships, playing searchlights down the streets. In the dark, their blue and white bags were as ominous as stormclouds.

But the single most visible symptom of the Oneist regime was a monster parked over the downstream docks, a ship big enough for other ships to lurk under. The Ring of Eternity. A flying Circle in her own right, crewed entirely by the Controlled, and bristling with weapons that would never have been allowed anywhere near the city under Ellaenie’s reign. Firepower like that could burn whole districts.

It was a reminder to everyone below of just who was in charge. And a reminder to Ellaenie of the reprisals Mrs. Fontan’s Salon might trigger.

“Won’t they see us?” she asked Dragon. She had a mental image of those ranked cannons sending a fusillade at them.

Not if I do not wish them to. We are quite invisible, I promise.

Ellaenie accepted that with a nod. Everything about Dragon radiated intense magic, from the enormous power that let her glide through the air without wings, to the way the screaming wind of her top speed didn’t blast Ellaenie and Gilber right off her back.

Dragon dipped, nosed down, twisted back on herself and corkscrewed downward toward…yes, that was Broadwalk.

Thank goodness, the curfew they’d feared the Oneists might impose had never yet been implemented. The streets were still lit, and populated by those whose business took them abroad after dark. Porters, delivery wagons, bakers, late-arriving ship crews, the constabulary. None of them glanced up as Dragon and Rheannach stooped in the air over a back alley, then down between the rooftops and laundry.

Ellaenie would later struggle to describe the experience of sitting on Dragon’s back one second, then standing beside her human form the next. Without quite being able to say how, she was safely deposited on the cobblestones, and then Dragon’s titanic bulk was slithering down and in, and in and in, bending and twisting smaller and smaller to leave behind…

She chose the form of a Yunei woman tonight, perhaps half Ellaenie’s height and branded across the forehead with the Yunish characters for “EXILE.” Still quite beautiful despite the brand, though. Her eyes flared forge-orange in the dark for a second, then faded to a normal human black-brown.

Rheannach was equally discreet. As she folded her wings in and her raiment faded from view, she shook out the skirts of a working woman’s dress in brown and blue, and let her hair fall as though she hadn’t had time to properly brush it for a day or two.

Ellaenie took a deep breath, focused, and looked about. The Sight was calm and still, and failed to draw her attention to any out-of-place detail. They were unobserved.

They’d landed a couple of streets over from the safehouse, perhaps a quarter mile. Nobody paid them any attention when they emerged out of the alleyway and into the main street, just a group of three young ladies being chaperoned on their way home by an older man. A group of Oneists in their white robes passed by going the other way and didn’t even glance at them.

The air was still changed, Ellaenie thought. Not that she’d often roamed outside the ducal palace or the noble estates of the high city, but there was still some deep-rooted tension thrumming through the nighttime streets. The city was dissatisfied in a way that couldn’t quite be identified, but certainly could be felt. To her Sight, it was like a deep and slightly out-of-tune bass note throbbing under the stones, in the postures of the people walking by, in the wary side-eyed attention they paid to the Oneists, and in the notices posted at every street corner and intersection.

These should have seemed benign. They promised help to the weary, relief to the suffering, sustenance for the hungry. They promised purpose, community and fulfilment. They were beautiful sentiments on beautifully designed posters, full of the imagery of clasped hands, smiling faces, and open skies. The intended impression was clearly one of unburdening and freedom, yet they were redolent of something far more sinister.

Of course, Ellaenie knew the truth of what being taken into the Circles meant. But it was clear the ordinary people could feel it too, even if they didn’t quite know why. Several of the posters had been defaced in some way: smiling faces had been given a blacked-out tooth, an outstretched hand of friendship had been turned vulgar by the addition of an ejaculating penis, so that the poster was masturbating at the world. One just had the word “BOLLOCKS” scrawled across it in black paint.

Even as Ellaenie was looking at it, a group of three robed figures came running with freshly rolled papers and new paste to replace the graffitied items. She looked away, and followed Gilber down a side street, then another street, then an alleyway, to a plain wooden door with a brass knocker. Gilber paused and scrubbed his boots on the doormat—a pretense that let him check up and down for spies—then reached up and knocked in a precise sequence.

Rat-tat, tat, ta-tat!

A skinny, wiry man with tattooed hands, whose missing teeth gave his face a shrunken aspect, opened the door, then grinned gummily and welcomed them in. The house beyond was…middle class. The furniture was solid and well-made without ostentation, the floor was carpeted, the hearth smelled of good cedar firewood rather than the peat and coal burned by the working classes.

The men gathered around it, on the other hand, were of a much rougher cut, just like the man who’d opened the door for them. They were as roguish a collection of flat-capped ruffians as Ellaenie had ever laid eyes on in her life, many of them bearing prison or army tattoos (or both) on their knuckles, hands, forearms and even faces, and each assessing her with the calculating gaze of a career scoundrel.

All of these things Ellaenie noticed at a glance. But somehow, it took her a second to recognize her oldest friend standing in the middle of the room. When she did, she squeaked her delight and rushed forward to bury herself in Adrey’s hug for the first time in years.

Adrey had changed so much. She’d always been tall and well-built, but the body Ellaenie found herself hugging was hard and strong where it had once been soft and womanly. Her hair was different too: gone were the long, buoyant curls she’d worn as a Lady-In-Waiting, to be replaced by a close-cropped cut so short that her scalp showed through on the sides. It was a middle-class affectation, a haircut designed to allow the ladies who wore it to don wigs in whatever style was newly fashionable. Ellaenie and Adrey had never needed it before: as Duchess and Countess, they’d been the fashion-setters, not its followers.

Somehow it suited her, though. It made her cheekbones stand proud, and sharpened her features…or was that the change in her mindset?

Maybe. Adrey Mossjoy was a very different person to who she’d been the last time Ellaenie had hugged her. But for a moment, the old Adrey was back as she returned the hug with long-missed sisterly affection.

Ellaenie wondered just how different she herself must be to Adrey’s eyes.

“Oh, Ellie…” Adrey kissed the top of her head. “Crowns, I’ve missed you.”

Ellaenie nearly wept. She didn’t, though. She choked it back, gave Adrey a big squeeze, then stepped back. “Letters just aren’t the same, are they?”

“Especially not when they’re coded.” Adrey shook her head. “…Look at you. You’ve…changed. It took me a second to know it was you.”

“So have you. It took me a second as well.”

“Mm. We’re no longer a Duchess and her lady-in-waiting, are we? We’re a witch and a spy.”

“Has it been dangerous?” Ellaenie asked, concerned. Though, she already knew the answer. To her Sight, it was written in every line of Adrey’s body: yes it had, but Adrey was dangerous herself nowadays.

“A few close calls.” Adrey shrugged lightly.

“…Right. We’ll have time to discuss it later. For now…”

Adrey nodded tightly. “Right now, we have Lizzy to worry about.”

“Yes. But first, I have news that might change some details of Mrs. Fontain’s Salon. Could you give me a knife, please?”

Adrey arched an eyebrow at her, then—Crowns. It just appeared in her hand. Not even Ellaenie’s Sight let her catch exactly where it had come from, or when Adrey had drawn it. She flipped it over easily in her hand and presented it to Ellaenie grip-first.

“Careful. It’s razor sharp.”

Ellaenie took it in her right hand, beamed sweetly at her, then stabbed herself in the left palm as hard as she could. It didn’t even feel like a pinprick: the knife skittered off as though she’d tried to drive it into an anvil

Adrey’s reflexes were incredible. She’d very nearly caught Ellaenie’s wrist to stop her mid-stab. A squeak of alarm escaped her mouth, before turning into a faint choked noise of sheer confusion. Around the room, Mister Skinner and the other men had leapt to their feet as well.

“…What…?” Skinner asked.

“I don’t have time to tell the full story. But I’m a Wordspeaker now.” Ellaenie stabbed at herself a few more times to make the point, then noticed she’d blunted and notched Adrey’s dagger. She pinched its edge between thumb and forefinger, ran them down the blade to smooth the metal back into its keen former edge, then handed it back. “I’m still figuring out the full extent of what it can do, but…I seem to be bladeproof. And probably bulletproof.”

“…Well, that’s handy,” Adrey ventured, with commendable poise. She inspected the dagger, pursed her lips thoughtfully, and then slid it up her sleeve, back into whatever sheath had previously held it.

“Rest of us aren’t, though. So I reckon t’ plan’s unchanged,” Skinner commented, then tugged at where his forelock had presumably once been when Ellaenie glanced at him. “Beggin’ y’pardon, y’Grace.”

“No, you’re quite right,” Ellaenie agreed. She fished in her satched and produced a handful of glass vials. “Here. We’ve tested these, and they’ve proven their power to break Civorage’s hold over the Encircled, and to deaden even a Herald’s psychic senses. They should keep us safe from him, and if we can feed a dose apiece to the Circle members…”

“’Tis a big circle, y’Grace,” Skinner pointed out. “Nigh on four thousan’. Unless y’grace’s satchel is a lot bigger on t’ than inside than on t’ out…”

Ellaenie nodded grimly. “I assume you have a plan for dealing with so many?”

“Ay, that we do, y’Grace. Lemme show ye.”

He gestured toward a table, on which he unrolled a map and pinned it at the corners with cups and books. It was a detail plan of the Circle compound, its ring-shaped outer wall, inner courtyard, and clear labels of various parts of the commune: dormitories, kitchens, library, workshop, exercise yard…

He tapped one tough and much-bitten nail down on a spot on the outer wall. “Sentries on t’walls all hours o’ day and night.” he said. “Dogs, too. If t’weren’t for Civorage an’ ‘is power, it’d be easy enough. Knife a few men on the walls, poison the dogs. We do that here, an’ the alarm’ll be up an’ we’re fightin’ t’whole Circle.”

He moved his finger and tapped a different spot. “Water comes from a well here. No gettin’ to it, so no druggin’ em.” Tap. “They do their own laundry, so no sneakin’ in the servants’ entrance.” Tap. “An’ they grow their own food, or get it delivered from Circle farms out in t’countryside, so no hidin’ in the grain sacks. Place is locked up tight, an’ there’s an airship patrol. Means there’s no way to do this quiet…so we don’t do it quiet. We do it so loud, so hard an’ so quick, they dunno which side they’re gettin’ hit from, or how.”

He looked around the room, then waved an introductory hand from Ellaenie to the other men. “These lads are t’ Pickler’s Lane Particulars.”

Ellaenie gave them a smile as a variety of callused and tattooed hands—some of them missing a finger or two for good measure—tugged at forelocks or tipped flat caps to her. She ran her Sight across all of them and blinked at what she saw. These were rough men, men with real monsters rattling the bars in their souls, but every single one of them had successfully collared and chained it.

One older man in particular didn’t tug his forelock, but straightened his back and gave her the most razor sharp parade-perfect salute she’d ever received.

“And you are?” she asked him.

“Sapper Jem Barriman, First Heighlenders, your grace!”

Ellaenie brightened and smiled at him. “My father’s regiment!”

Barriman nodded. “Pleased t’say I was with the Duke at Snake River, ma’am.”

“…You were one of his dambreakers?”

“Lit the fuse meself, ma’am.” Barriman’s grin was infectious.

“We call ‘im ‘Blaster’ Barriman,” Skinner commented. “The Particulars are all good at makin’ trouble an’ gettin’ away clean, ‘specially if t’constabulary are all busy wi’ something on t’other end o’ town…which they will be, thanks to our friends on Her Grace’s Constabulary.”

Ellaenie smiled. “Right.”

“So. We’ll ‘andle a nice big an’ loud distraction for you. You’ll ‘ave…not long. An’ if you want to get Lady Lisze out, you’ll have to be bloody quick.”

“Do you know where she is?”

“Aye.” Skinner’s finger tapped a spot in the women’s dormitory. “Right here.”

Ellaenie leaned forward, then frowned as she read the label. “…Maternity dorm?”

“It’s where the Circle’s pregnant women sleep,” Adrey said, flatly.

Ellaenie paused. “Oh. Oh, Lizzy…”

“It is what it is, Ellie. She’s had seven children these past eight years. She’s…one of Civorage’s favorites.”

The disgust, sympathy and sadness Ellaenie felt on her friend’s behalf condensed into a freezing cold knot of hatred. She stared at the spot on the map, then sniffed, drew her back straight, and nodded grimly. “He’ll pay for that.”

“In due course, yes,” Rheannach agreed.

Ellaenie nodded, and looked to Skinner. “Can we go tonight?”

“Tomorrow, y’Grace. If we go tonight, we’ll ‘ave only four hours of darkness on a clear night. We go tomorrow, we’ll ‘ave ten an’ it’s forecast for rain.”

Ellaenie nodded, though she had no idea how she was going to tolerate a fourteen hour wait. “What can we do in the interim?”

“Go over details,” Adrey said. “Make our plans for when things go wrong, because they will. We’ve planned this operation a long time, but there are still details to sort out. Starting, my dear Ellie, with your dress.”

Ellaenie looked down at herself. She was dressed like a working woman, or so she’d thought. hard-wearing linen skirts under a woollen overdress in dull hues of blue and brown. The sort of thing she would have thought nobody would glance twice at. “What’s wrong with it?”

Adrey just smirked. “Trust me. I know what I’m doing…”

Ellaenie blinked, then looked to Rheannach, who shrugged while Dragon smiled enigmatically.

“Alright, then…” she took Adrey’s hand, Adrey curtseyed to the two heralds, and she was led from the room to undergo some modifications to her disguise.

Adrey turned out to be right.

She really did know what she was doing.

----------------------------------------

> “Nobody pushed back. That’s what scared me most. Nobody pushed back. The Church of the One demolished whole districts to establish their Circle, and no-one in power protested. The new Duke passed laws granting them the right to seize property, and no-one protested. Their armed airships started prowling the skies, and no-one protested. The newspapers were silent, the politicians complicit, the elected officials went along with it, and the nobility either ran away or became zealous converts. Only the common people grumbled. But anyone who tried to get organized would just…vanish. Or have a sudden miraculous change of heart. There seemed to be no hope of fighting back, so folk just got our heads down and waited for something to be done. And so, the Oneists took over. —Riccard Reymund, The Noose: Memoirs of an Ordinary Man’s Life in Oneist Auldenheigh.

THE RAINY STREETS

Auldenheigh, Enerlend, Garanhir Earthmote 09.06.03.10.07

As promised, the rainclouds came rolling in about mid-afternoon, and settled down with a sort of leaden finality. It wasn’t the most dramatic weather Ellaenie had ever seen, but it was…solid. Workmanlike. The clouds were determined to get the city as thoroughly wet as possible, and came right down to street level to do their work.

The raindrops turned the streets into streams, sluicing away the horse manure and dirt of passing feet while gutters and sills became steady columns of water, and the streetlights and window lights became blurred, sodden outlines. When the Oneists’ patrol airships passed overhead, their searchlights did nothing more than make the fog glow for a moment, before the beam swept on to flicker over the river, the bridges, and the rooftops beyond.

Ellaenie was damn glad for Adrey’s alterations to her disguise. The waxed canvas raincloak and hood was doing double duty not only by keeping her dry, bu in further keeping her anonymity as well. But there were other details, as well. Adrey, it turned out, had whole wardrobes of clothes for every conceivable social class and occasion, but they all had a few things in common.

Deep pockets, for instance, for ease of access to tools and weapons hidden under the skirts. Adrey in particular was wearing at least three knives that Ellaenie knew of: a long needle-like stiletto strapped to her thigh, a straight stabbing knife under her bodice and a short broad-bladed cutting cinquedea at the small of her back.

And those were just the ones she’d shown Ellaenie. There were others, certainly.

But there were other details besides deep pockets. Like threaded pull-cords that let Adrey hike her skirts up for action with a quick tug and tie. Some very light chainmail and thin plate incorporated into her corselet and bodice, and her shortgown and outer petticoat were held in place by magnets, allowing her to rip them off and discard them in seconds for an instant change of outfit. She even had a small pistol hidden up her sleeve, loaded into a conraption of springs and levers that would deliver it instantly into her palm if she thrust her hand out just so.

“It only shoots two quite small bullets,” Adrey has commented after demonstrating, “but they’ll kill a man quite painlessly if I get him in his brains.”

Ellaenie had been a little chilled by this comment. Her friend really had changed, quite a lot. Or…no. She’d awoken and cultivated something that had always been there in potential, but simply irrelevant in the life of a countess. With the Sight, it was as obvious as the rain that she was a killer, somewhere deep in her soul. If they had to take lives tonight, Adrey’s hand would be swift, assured and certain, and her conscience would remain untroubled.

To think we would never have known this about her, had life gone otherwise…

To stay out of the rain and as further protection against the eyes and lights in the sky, they had stuck to the shelter of an arcade sidewalk and a covered market as they worked their way downriver toward the Circle. Now, it was looming in front of them, imposing and alien.

It didn’t fit the rest of Auldenheigh’s architecture at all. The buildings all around Ellaenie on every side were two or three storeys, with high gabled rooftops made interestingly uneven by belvederes and chimneys, and their stone frontings decorated by wrought iron balconets.

The Circle was just a circle. Smooth and utterly unadorned, a perfectly round wall with a perfectly smooth outer surface and a perfectly round gate facing the river. A band of white glass just below the parapet smeared out the light of the electric lamps hidden behind, so that the perfectly circular path that ran around the wall’s base was cleanly and uniformly lit.

It was the aesthetic of an absolute minimalist. No doubt its architect considered it the height of intellectual simplicity and purity: Ellaenie thought it was soulless. To think that dozens of characterful, interesting properties along this stretch of the river had been purchased (at best) for the sake of being torn down and replaced with this…

That was offensive enough. To think that Civorage’s ultimate aim was to convert the entire city into Circles made her shiver.

Focus, Maiden Mine.

Ellaenie glanced at Rheannach, then checked her pocket watch. She’d been given one by Skinner, who’d explained they were all made to an exacting standard by the same watchmaker, and he’d synchronized them. They had five minutes before the Particulars launched their distraction.

She nodded at Rheannach and steadied herself. Focus. There was more on the line than just Lisze’s freedom. This whole mission would have been unconscionable if that was the only outcome. Endangering so many men and their carefully cultivated resistance of network for just one woman? No leader worthy of the name would condone such an operation.

No. They were here to break the Circle. To prove that it could be broken. To show the people of Auldenheigh that there was resistance, that somebody was fighting back.

To give them hope.

Two minutes to go. With an eerily steady hand, she slipped her potion vial from her bocket and knocked it back. Around her, Adrey, Skinner and the Heralds did the same. The magic wrapped around them like silvery threads, enshrouding and armoring their minds. It was probably redundant now that Ellaenie was a Wordspeaker herself…but why leave anything to chance?

One minute. The airship patrolled over once again, and Ellaenie grit her teeth as the edge of the light it cast came within a whisker of the hem of her cloak. She fought down the urge to snatch her cloak back. Stillness was her friend, movement was a giveaway. Be brave.

The ship moved on in silence.

It was directly above the Circle when the first bomb went off.

----------------------------------------

MAKIN’ MAYHEM

Auldenheigh, Enerlend, Garanhir Earthmote 09.06.03.10.07

Winter’s tits but it felt good to be fighting back!

Jem Barriman had spent most of his life blowing stuff up, one way or another. He’d been the terror of Badridge Row with his various hidden surprises, and looking back it was a miracle he hadn’t blown the fingers off poor Mrs. Trend with what he’d done to her compost bin…

The army had found a troublemaker, and turned him into a sapper. Castle walls? No problem. Trenches? Just a pre-dug grave for the poor buggers in it. Dams?

Well, the ol’ Duke had known just fine that a dam was really just a fuckova lot of water waiting to be dropped on some poor sod’s head. The Battle of Rio Serpiente had been Jem’s most spectacular moment…up until tonight.

Tonight was his soddin’ masterpiece.

See, the art of demolition wasn’t to use more explosive, it was to use just the right amount in the right place. One stick of blasting gelignite could do what a whole cannonade couldn’t, if you found exactly the right weak spot to wedge it in.

If the weak spot was, for example, right in the middle of a stack of stolen fuel barrels, hidden on the rooftops among the chimneys of an abandoned house…it could even bring down airships. All you needed then was to be good with timing the fuses.

Jem was very, very good with fuses. The bomb couldn’t have gone off more perfectly, detonating exactly as the bowsprit was directly above.

The fireball was vast, despite the rain. It unfolded into the sky like a mushroom, boiling and writhing like a living thing before splashing into the Oneist patrol ship’s keel and rolling up either side of its belly to scorch the crew, torch the rigging, burn the bag—

The panicked shouts and screams of agony were music to an old sapper’s ears. But the drums of that music were the gunshot cracks of ropes snapping. The airship groaned like a bull being slaughtered as the flames caught in the dry bag-belly, then—*crack, crack, cracka-crack-brrrrack!!—*The rigging failed with a sound like a gun-line letting the lead fly.

The deck tipped, dropped, and flipped, spilled shrieking men into the air and then parted ways with the bag in a second series of gunshot cable failures. The bag, still ablaze, shot away into the sky to vanish among the clouds.

The hull dropped heavily onto the abandoned buildings in a shower of brick, tile and timber. With a splintering crunch, its keel broke and the whole ship came apart in the middle: the stern wedged itself in the rooftops, but the prow came tumbling down, turned a half-somersault in a rain of debris, and then smacked down into the river with enough force to raise a new rainstorm.

“Hooooly, fuck!” one of the Particulars whispered in the dark.

“Fuck me upside-down, Blaster,” Skinner murmured. “I’m glad you’re with us.”

Jem just grinned. “Steady now…” he reminded them.

“Aye. Weapons up, lads.”

They were armed with pistols, mostly. Saboteurs needed small and concealable weapons, though Mack “Trapper” Takes, a former poacher, was holed up down the street with his Fir-Mackley rifle, and that was a weapon that could shave the hairs off a spider’s back from a mile away, in skilled hands.

Sure enough, the Circle’s guards came running. And the Particulars knew exactly how this act played out. Patience, discipline, restraint…

And, when the moment came, a ruthless hail of precise gunfire. A dozen men died in the span of three seconds, poor bastards.

Skinner thumbed replacement rounds into his revolver and gestured sharply. “Alright. Move.”

They retreated. The streets were eerily silent now, somehow Jem had been expecting alarm bells or something from the Circle, or the sound of shouting. But of course, the Circle didn’t need bells or voice. And the constabulary were all, in theory, busy across town.

They fell back, set up another ambush. This time, the Oneists came in force with rifles.

This time, Jem had set more bombs.

When the dust cleared and the shooting stopped, they slipped away into the rain. They’d done their bit, created a huge distraction and drawn out the guards.

Now it was up to the Duchess, the Countess and the Heralds to finish the hob.

He wished them luck and slipped away into the night, flush with the thrill of a job well done.

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> “You would see an old friend wearing the white robes sometimes. Or an acquaintance, a cousin, a former coworker, neighbours, or just the shoe-shine boy who used to be on the street corner. At least, you’d see a Oneist with his face. But he wouldn’t be the man you knew. He would smile blissfully at you and tell you how happy he was. And he would give you the brightest, most blissful smile. Every time, the nameless dread that crawled across my skin made me want to flee for my life. I wanted to take my family, get out of the city and find somewhere safe. But of course, I didn’t have a travel pass. And where would I have gone? —Riccard Reymund, The Noose: Memoirs of an Ordinary Man’s Life in Oneist Auldenheigh.

RESCUE

Auldenheigh, Enerlend, Garanhir Earthmote 09.06.03.10.07

The second bombs were their cue to act. The sentries up on the walls had already run off toward the crashed airship, and the coast was clear. Rheannach grabbed Ellaenie from behind, beat her wings once, and carried them across the open ground in a matter of seconds: beside them, Dragon did the same for Adrey.

The wall towered above Ellaenie’s head, smooth and dull and ominous. She put a hand to it and concentrated, working her thoughts deep into its mortar, brick and plaster. Felt it fizzing with binding forces. The Word came to her easily, effortlessly: all she had to do was focus her will, and a seven-foot circle of wall dissolved into fine sand. With a gesture, she scooped it all out of the tunnel she’d made, and Rheannach slipped in ahead of her, furling her wings and drawing Scorn.

There were guards in the room beyond. While the dozen or so women scrambled away from the tunnel Ellaenie had opened, they drew stout cudgels and charged, intent on hammering back the intruder.

Scorn flashed twice in the gloom. And the nature of Rheannach’s sword was this: it only killed when she wanted it to. Otherwise, it could slash right through a man’s heart without leaving a mark on him, and send him instantly and painlessly into a dreamless sleep from which he would not awake until Rheannach released him.

In an eyeblink, Rheannach was at the door, preventing the Oneist women from running. Adrey was next through. She straightened and looked around, then beckoned Ellaenie through.

Ellaenie recognized Lisze instantly. How could she not? In fact, she was surprised by how well she seemed. She’d expected seven pregnancies in eight years to have ravaged Lizzie’s looks and figure, but her old friend looked quite healthy and trim. Not entirely unchanged, but far less wretched than Ellaenie had feared and anticipated.

Her expression, however, was not Lisze at all. It was…bovine. The curiosity and fear of a barn animal, without understanding or thought behind it.

There was no point in negotiation or persuasion here. She advanced toward her old friend, drawing a potion vial from her pocket and uncorking it with her thumb. “Lizzie.”

“…Ellie.” A slight vapid smile of recognition. “Hello.”

Even her voice was wrong. The real Lisze wouldn’t have been so…calm in a situation like this. Ellaenie shivered. She’d heard those same dreamy tones the night Saoirse Crow-Sight died.

Ellaenie focused the Craft down to a sharp scalpel’s edge, looked Lisze in her wide, innocent, happy eyes, gripped one of her fetishes in her left hand, and drained all its stored magic to empower a single forceful command aimed right at whatever was left of Lisze’s mind that might still remember and trust her: “Drink This.”

Lisze’s expression, somehow, got even duller and more unfocused. She put her hand out, took the vial, knocked it back and swallowed. For a moment, nothing happened.

Then, with a shocked gasp, she fainted dead away. Ellaenie caught her and lowered her to the ground with care and tenderness, feeling a surge of relief. Part of her had worried that eight years was too long, that Civorage’s power and control might have waxed beyond the point where her brew could do anything.

The other Oneists backed away, shuffling their feet nervously, just like cattle watching something unfamiliar invading their paddock. Adrey did the rounds, grabbing each on firmly but not unkindly, tipping potion into her mouth, inducing her to swallow. It really was like medicating livestock. She dosed the two guards Rheannach had knocked out, too.

“Time’s running short…” Dragon urged. “We’ve only got—ungh!”

She grunted and flinched as the last Oneist, who’d backed into the corner to try and stay away from Adrey, suddenly straightened her back and her expression changed. In an instant, she no longer had the wary affect of a sheep being medicated, but the proud bearing and sneer of…

Of Nils Civorage.

“…I see…” even her voice dropped an octave, somehow. “Oh, you came for your friend at last, Duchess. How touching.”

“We came to do a lot more than that,” Ellaenie replied, stooping. She lifted Lisze onto her shoulders with Word-enhanced ease, channeling her friend’s mass aside and around her so that the burden she settled onto her shoulder felt as light as a feather bolster.

“…Yes, you’ve done quite a number on this Circle,” Civorage commented, looking around. “Killed many, torn my gift away from many others…it will take quite some time to rebuild.”

“We’re not here to talk,” Dragon reminded them. She strode across the room, grabbed Civorage’s hapless vessel by the robes and hair, and tipped her head back. Civorage lashed out at her with a telepathic assault like an instant migraine, which Ellaenie felt slam into her like a wave…but she was a Wordspeaker, and she’d taken her potion. It passed over, around and through her without drowning. Dragon and Rheannach were equally hardened.

Adrey was the least protected. She staggered, her knee buckled and she leaned heavily on a bedpost for support. “Get…out…” she groaned.

Ellaenie reached out and touched her shoulder to fortify her with the Craft, but Civorage sensed weakness and redoubled his efforts.

Only the potion and Ellaenie’s support helped Adrey resist at all. But Ellaenie could taste the spiteful shape of his will as it crept over and dominated her. He couldn’t Encircle her…but he could compel her to rob them of their prize. His every effort was bent on compelling Adrey to thrust her arm out toward Lisze’s head, palm the little pistol, and shoot. A lesser woman might have done it, but Adrey fought back with a depth of will that was more than just Ellaenie’s magical and alchemical support.

Then the moment snapped. Rheannach had sprung forward with a vial and tipped it down his vessel’s throat. She choked and coughed, trying to spit it out, but the hands of two Heralds clamped over her mouth and massaged her throat. She was forced to swallow.

The fierce power of his will withdrew with shocking suddenness. But it hadn’t gone far. Only as far as the next vessel, and they weren’t far.

Adrey gasped, relaxed, then pushed Ellaenie toward the tunnel as she regained her footing. “Go. Go!” she rasped.

Dragon withdrew out through the tunnel first. The coast was clear: she beckoned Ellaenie out, and transformed. A river of golden scales extended away around the wall, and she ducked her head down low so Ellaenie could drape Lisze across her neck.

Adrey was next out. She led those of the freed Circle members who were still conscious, though frankly they were barely more so now than they had been a minute ago. Stunned, confused and bewildered, two of them ran away into the rain before Ellaenie could call to them. The rest, she managed to guide up onto Dragon’s neck until the Herald had no more room. One woman was heavily pregnant, within days at most of her labour, and her eyes were wide and wild with confusion.

“Go!” Ellaenie slapped the huge scaly flank in front of her, and Dragon ascended like a ribbon on the breeze to vanish into the foggy night.

That left Adrey, Rheannach, and the two male guards, now awake and groggily looking around. There was a loud bang from inside the room they’d just left as somebody struck the barred door, hard.

Ellaenie turned and touched the wall. Focused. How had the wall been before….? Ah. Yes.

It reassembled itself in a reverse-shower of grit and gravel. She didn’t do a perfect job—she had neither the time nor the inclination—so her work left a clear scar on the wall’s otherwise unblemished outer surface, a puckered spot where it was clear that masonry had briefly run like wax. But it was a barrier.

Up above, and far too close for comfort, she heard the drone of airship engines getting closer. It was ringing its bell and blaring its horn. Any second now, Oneist marines would be coming down on glider wings and rope lines.

But they were too late: the raiding party had won.

She turned, put her head down, and ran.

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Gilber Drevin was waiting for them as they reached the safehouse at Broadwalk. He’d been overseeing a small team in clearing the place out: this operation had burned it, for certain. Even now, the place was a hive of activity as the Particulars returned and immediately vanished out the door again with a pregnant woman in tow.

There would time for smiles and congratulation later. Right now, the focus was on covering their tracks and making sure the Circle never hunted down their missing members. Even so, one look at his face told Ellaenie there was something troubling him greatly.

“Gilber?”

“Not the unqualified success we hoped for, I fear,” he said.

“A success, though?”

“Yes.”

“Good. What’s the qualifier?”

He glanced toward the back room, and Ellaenie’s ears caught the sound of weeping.

Lisze’s weeping.

A glance at Gilber’s face confirmed they weren’t tears of relief and gladness, either.

Shit.

She swept past him and trotted into the back room, where she found Dragon kneeling by a couch, upon which Lisze was curled up in a tight fetal ball and sobbing. One or two other women in Oneist robes were sitting with her, rubbing her back: the nearer one looked up and gave Ellaenie a wide-eyed, slightly confused look.

“You…I know you…” she said. She was the one Civorage had used for a mouthpiece, Ellaenie realized. slim and oval-faced, with long and straight dark hair.

Ellaenie sat down, nodding, and added her own hand to try and comfort Lisze. “Probably…”

“You’re the duchess.”

“Yes.”

“The witch.”

“Yes.”

The woman withdrew with an expression of disgust and anger, then frowned at herself as though she didn’t know her own mind. “I…why did you do this?”

Genuinely taken aback by the question, Ellaenie blinked at her. “You were…slaves,” she said.

“We…” The woman looked down at her round belly, then rested a hand on it, closed her eyes and shivered. “I…yes. I’m sorry. I feel…very confused.”

“That’s understandable. We’ll get you somewhere safe. Somewhere they can’t get you.”

The woman nodded, and there was an unexpected silence: Lisze had stopped sobbing. Ellaenie looked down at her, and saw her friend staring up at her in wild bewilderment.

“…Ellie…?”

Ellaenie smiled and stroked a blonde tress out of Lisze’s face. “Hey, Liz.”

Lisze’s stare got wider, then became abruptly desperate, rose into escalating panic. “…No. Nonono, no, please, I can’t—! Send me back! I can’t! Send me back!”

She pounced on Ellaenie, grabbing her desperately, fighting her with mad strength, clawing and shoving and slapping. “Send me back!!” she shrieked.

Ellaenie raised her arms to ward off the flailing assault, though in truth she barely felt it. Lisze’s blows and fingernails skipped off her Word-hardened skin like rain, but Lisze was strong, surprisingly so. When the other women tried to restrain her, she shoved them aside with manic power and continued to try and beat Ellaenie’s face in. Her face was a mask of rage, betrayal, loss, anger, hatred—

Dragon put a stop to it: she touched Lisze in the middle of her forehead, and Lisze went cross-eyed, sighed faintly, and collapsed unconscious.

A moment later, Rheannach and Gilber burst into the room. They gawped at the sight of Dragon gently laying Lizzy down on the couch again, then Rheannach darted to Ellaenie’s side.

“What happened?”

Ellaenie couldn’t answer, try though she might. Words wouldn’t come, couldn’t force themselves around the hot, heavy leaden ball that had grown in her throat. Her heart felt like it had frozen solid. She’d looked into her friend’s eyes with the Sight and seen…

And seen only broken wreckage. Pieces of the woman who had once been. But it had been too long. Eight years under Civorage’s had broken Lisze completely, torn her down and replaced her with nothing but the Circle. By breaking that…

“We came too late,” she whispered, as tears sprang hotly into her eyes.

“No!” Rheannach turned her face away from Lisze and looked in her eyes. “Don’t give up on her now, Ellie. Not now you’ve got her back. It’ll be a long road, yes, but she can heal. You can heal her.”

“We owe it to her to try,” Adrey agreed. She’d gently drawn Lisze’s head into her lap, and was stroking her hair. Her own expression was sorrowful, but determined.

“But…” the woman Lisze had shoved away stood up carefully. “I don’t think you understand. It was…it was wonderful. We were…we were whole with each other. We were part of something beautiful. Now, it’s…” she looked shakily around the room. “I feel…cold.”

“And alone,” one of the others agreed.

“It wasn’t real,” Ellaenie told them, fervently. “It was just a lie to control you.”

The first woman sniffed hard and nodded, but reluctantly. “…Bloody good lie,” she said, with a helpless shrug. “And Lisze…oh, she’d already been there longer than anyone by the time I was pulled in. I don’t know, your grace. A lot of me wants to go back, too…” her voice broke as she said it.

“Questions for later,” Dragon said, firmly. “Right now, we need to smuggle you all out of the city. There’s a safe place you can go. We’ll figure out what to do for you after that.”

The former Circle members glanced at each other, clearly uncertainly. But the first woman nodded, steeling herself. There was quite a personality under there, Ellaenie thought. A fighting spirit waiting to be remembered.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“…Mel,” the woman said after a moment, as if it took her a second to remember. “I’m Mel.”

Rheannach took her hand and squeezed it. “Well, Mel…I promise you, you won’t be alone and cold. You’ll have community and company, and you’ll have freedom too.”

Mel swallowed nervously. “Freedom…I…I barely remember what that’s like. We’ll have to…make our own decisions again, won’t we? About what to do, and when, and…” She paused and took a shivering breath. “It sounds…difficult,” she said after a second.

“It is. But it’s worth it.”

Mel nodded. Ellaenie couldn’t tell if it was a nervous nod, a firm convicted nod, or just numb agreement.

“We need to get moving,” Adrey quietly reminded them. She looked just as disturbed by Lisze’s reaction as Ellaenie felt.

“Right,” Ellaenie agreed, and saw Mel nod numbly again. They bundled up, wrapped the forme Circle women in new clothing to disguise their robes, and Adrey bustled them out a back door, down into a wine cellar, and along a tunnel under the road to come up again in the back yard of another house two streets over.

Ellaenie could see airships patrolling low, the beams of their searchlights sweeping street by street, alleyway by alleyway. If it wasn’t for the Heralds, perhaps their smartest move might have been to hunker down indoors…but they had Dragon, and Rheannach, and enough space for the former to resume her customary grand size and form.

Moments later, they were aloft and the questing airships were far below, none the wiser to their ascent….or perhaps just unable to do anything about it. Ellaenie neither knew, nor cared. She held on tight to the slumbering figure of Lisze in her arms, and watched the city rolling away below. There was still a fire smouldering downriver where the airship had crashed by the Circle compound, but she could see the rain was conquering it. There would be much ado about the city in the morning. Perhaps it would inspire some hope and renewed resistance. That had been part of the point of doing this, after all.

But as the clouds swallowed Auldenheigh and she lost sight of her home again, as she vowed to come back and strike again, and again, and again until the city and Enerlend and all of Garanhir was liberated…she looked at Lisze’s face, still troubled in sleep, and wondered just how much of a victory they’d won after all.

And just how long, difficult, and painful the fight for her friend’s soul was going to be.

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