Bakeries. A staple of any city. Not a glorious profession by any means, nor a treasured bit of one’s diet. It is, nevertheless, the most important profession of any settlement, for it renders plant into food, into calories that can be easily consumed. And frankly, they constitute one of the only good smells in the whole warren of bodies that humans inhabit to pass dirty coins around and everything else civilization demands.

As such, the reward for baking is long hours of physical labor, little sleep, and outlandish rent prices for access to the ovens they need to keep people from starving. They wear their bodies out about as fast as bricklayers and breathe a cloud of flour smoke for half the day while slopping water into the tub and knocking elbows with their assistants.

In a town such as Rackvidd, the bread was known for a peculiar flavor, and a darker hue than elsewhere. The grain shipped in from the north, from Vassermark’s mainland farms to be traded for textiles and salt packed sheep goods. Salt too. One would think the bread there should taste like the bread to the north, they’re made of the same grains. As it turns out, the secret ingredient is tobacco spit. It is an acquired taste to say the least, though eventually somewhat addictive.

I say this all to build an image in the readers mind, not of the pleasant little storefront where a young woman could wave passerbys over to part with half a talon, but of the dungeon on the other side of the pass-through oven. No fresh wood had been tossed to the blaze since Medorosa’s arrival and slaughter, and yet the heat still saturated the air worse than a desert. Deserts are at least dry, and the body can cool itself with sweat. The air in a bakery has all the sweat it can take.

By Sister Mori’s direction, the Vassish guards surrounded the place, finding the doors and windows from which Medorosa might escape. Trapping him was all well and good, but did little to actually kill him. Between the barrels and the basins and jumbles of tools, the backside of the bakery hardly had the space to stretch one’s arms out, let alone swing a sword. The spears of the Vassish had a slight advantage in their thrusting, but a claustrophobia arose whenever the butt of a spear knocked into a wall, caught a doorjamb, or bounced off another’s boot. It made them slow and deliberate. They treaded through the bakery as though upon uncertain ice, oblivious to the storming of the mountain men to the north.

Oscar and Aisha arrived at the front. The air smelled of burnt bread, of loaves abandoned within the stone dome. The girl who should have manned the front laid dead at the foot of the stairs behind them. Rather than gruff orders to knead and to work and to flip loaves, they heard the shouts and clangs of combat. Through the door to the back they had to step over the still-warm bodies of the bakers to get to the blue-cloaked backs of the guards.

Aisha gasped, her voice strangled in her throat the moment she saw her brother’s final accomplice. “Almir!” The time for surrender had passed, as a spear had passed through his stomach.

The Giordanan man grunted, spilling blood from his mouth. Before the strength could leak from his body like wine from a cracked amphora, he surprised the Vassish with a strike from his short blade. He had brought in a crude, cleaver like weapon. Poor in a fight, but able to be swung in such a room. It caught the guard beneath the helm. The man gave a start. The muscles in his neck popped. Blood hit the ceiling as he faltered. Both men fell to the ground.

The guard’s companion roared, falling to one knee to see to his friend, but Oscar gave him a shove further back, around the bend to where Medorosa still contended. Aisha fell behind them, unable to step past Almir’s body. She sank down, kneeling in front of him as she covered her mouth with shaking hands.

The Cynizia showed a weak smile. “Aisha-ima… I didn’t even hope.”

“Why? Why did you come here?”

The color began to fade from his face. “Someone had to protect Medo-imo.”

“I told you to give up on this, didn’t I? That it would fail?”

“I wanted to believe.” Life left his body as the tears ran down Aisha’s face. She had never quite considered him a friend, but he had been a part of her life for years.

The bridge between him and her snarled and shouted. He expertly twriled his blade, circling it and driving away spear thrusts. Sweat and blood mingled across his body, dripping into his clothes and spraying off with every slash of his arms.

Oscar had seemingly let Medorosa escape to the back alley, to where carts would be laden and unladen with flour or goods. Now they had him surrounded. “Don’t be afraid. He’s just a man. His stigmata is useless if he can’t kill anyone. Don’t take risks! Shields men, shields! Take out his legs.”

Medorosa found his back to a wall. “You think you have such a great luxury here? Take your time! See if I care. The wrath of the Black Keep will be upon you. They have broken your wall. They storm in by the hundreds now.” He faltered. Eyelids drooping, he threw a hand to the wall and steadied himself. An act of anemia.

“Those barbarians will be slaughtered just as you will be,” Oscar shouted. “I want him taken alive. You hear me? We’ll have him crucified still living. Whoever brings him down shall journey north to the capital for his trial. How about that, boys?” A handsome reward.

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“How about not?” Almir growled, and threw an arm around Aisha, pressing the edge of his sword to her throat. Warm blood still leaked from his gut. The man didn’t breathe. The man was not Almir.

Aisha stiffened, her chin reaching up like it wanted to divorce from her shoulders. Her ears hammered with the beating of her heart, while her eyes went to her brother. Medorosa’s head rested upon his chest.

“Don’t move!” Almir’s corpse shouted when one Vassish soldier moved closer to Medorosa.

“Impossible,” Oscar growled, spreading his stance out and gripping his sword. He looked the two of them up and down. “I saw him die myself! It was at the hands of a guard.”

The corpse that had been Almir chuckled. “My stigmata does not require that I be the killer. Now then, dear sister who betrayed me, why don’t you beg? If you don’t want me ripping out your backstabbing throat.”

Aisha didn’t beg, but she did swallow. The edge cut the skin of her throat just enough to draw blood. “What do you imagine is going to happen here? That these soldiers will surrender to Karekale’s forces? You’re proving yourself to be an idiot, brother.”

Oscar signaled one of his men with a jerk of his head. A spear pointed at Medorosa’s body. “I wonder, rebel, what happens to you if you die while in a corpse? Do you still get to move for a bit? Do you become the walking dead forever? I think that will make a lovely spectacle for the king’s court.”

“Back off,” Medorosa hissed. “All of you step back.”

Oscar shrugged, holding his sword as loose as a bard holding a lyre. “Why should we? So what if you kill the woman. She’s Lord Raymi’s prisoner and nothing more. I won’t get in trouble if you kill her. She has served her purpose. All that will happen is you will have to face your goddess and say you killed your own sister… for nothing.”

The corpse of Almir breathed raggedly. The effect of Medorosa’s stigmata was a somewhat uncertain thing. It depended greatly upon the state of the body. Obviously, a decapitated body is of no use to it, nor would that of an elderly person. No tools to work with, and Aisha knew this well. What she didn’t know was what would happen to him if they did kill his original body.

I suspect that Medorosa didn’t know either. Perhaps he thought that he might end up a fleeing ghost. A soul doomed to leap from one decaying body to the next while fleeing from the Shepherd’s hunting dogs. She doesn’t like those who abuse the cycle of reincarnation.

What Aisha did know, however, was that her brother awaited the arrival of the mountain men because they brought death. There would be other bodies for him to leap to, a surprise to spring upon the Vassish, if he could just do it so elegantly as to not get his own body impaled.

He needed an opportunity, such as the emergency bells ringing a new tune across Rackvidd. They clamored like a church at noon suddenly, an incomplete melody. Four-four time but half filled : the signal that the harbor was under assault. Medorosa’s attack on the cannons had not been for naught.

Of course, I was there to oversee the redistribution of weapons after the great chain shattered. The Cynizia fleet did not reach the docks unscathed by any means; but, the men there in that alley were caught by surprise.

Medorosa threw his soul back into his body. Before Almir’s corpse even hit the ground, he had grabbed the shaft of the nearest spear and thrown himself into the man. They rolled, tumbling with body and limb. The Vassish compatriots leapt at him, but their weapons found only the blue-cloaked back of their comrade. Medorosa’s sword had gutted the man too.

“Stop him!” Aisha shouted, an obvious thing.

The chaos remained just that; a slash of weapons and rage. Medorosa dragged the Vassish into the mire of bloodshed and proved his experience. Out from the melee he sprang. He threw himself into the back of a barrel cart, while at once pushing his soul to the corpse he had just made. He, in the Vassish body, pulled down his pursuers, crawling atop them in search of a dagger.

The Vassish were wise to his strategy by then and Oscar wasted no time before stoving in the head of the deceased soldier. No second corpse was made, but at the same time, the barrel cart had been knocked free of its parking blocks. It tumbled down the road, veering and swerving, laden with Medorosa’s body while the Vassish crawled over the tangle of bodies.

“Do not let him get away!”

Sister Mori took Aisha by the shoulder and turned her around, pulled her from the bloody chase. “Come here, come here. This is no duty of yours.”

The songstress tugged at the priestess’ grasp. “He’s my brother. I can’t just run away from this.”

The old woman pursed her lips. Already, the sound of fighting grew distant. “You’re no warrior though. Look at you, torn between heart and brain. Half of you knows what must be done, but the other half weeps that it must be so. You’ve got nothing but pain to bridge the two.”

Aisha settled her breathing, bringing her senses back to the moment, to herself and her body. Tears trickled down her cheeks and she sheepishly wiped them away. “You know, I probably could have killed him in his sleep. Prevented all this.” Her gaze went down to the body of Almir at her feet.

Sister Mori shoved her a step back and interposed herself. “No, no I don’t think you could have. Let alone getting past his guards, you’re not the kind of girl who could do that to her brother, no matter what he’s done. Ratting him out to other people is about the most you could do I think. And there’s nothing wrong with that.”

Her lips twisted and she shrugged. “Sister, if I don’t go help them, they’ll never catch him. He’s… he’s like a greased up eel if he wants to be. Always has been, all the way back to getting out of temple lessons as a kid. The monks always sent me to go round him back up and bring him back…”

The priestess’ face didn’t crack, one of the best features of old religious people. Hard like bedrock. Certainly better than their views on tradition, even in the face of someone several centuries older than them. “It’s not your job to bring him back. You didn’t send him here. Leave it to someone else.”

Aisha shook her head. She pulled free of Sister Mori’s grasp at last and said, “I can’t though. I have to go. Maybe I have to find someone else first. Someone who doesn’t die even when they’re killed.