The sun is beginning its downward crawl when my warlock arrives in Chamchek, Temple Seat of the Tilliam Diocese. Chamchek, the Jewel of Varagos, its people call it, as they swan with heads high and imperious through the largest city on the coast. Chamchek of the thousand falcons, the brochures call it, owing to the peregrine statues that decorate its rooftops. Chamchek the spinning city, the pilgrims and truckers call it, thanks to its cloverleafs and roundabouts.

Jordan steers them down one of these asphalt corkscrews, into a decidedly unglamorous part of town. If Chamchek is the gilded mirror reflecting the glory of Pastornos back across the Montane Ocean, then the neighborhood they call the Chutes is the ugly cork bit you nail to the wall.

Crumbling and askew buildings, crumbing and askew people. Caspar’s view from the window is of a neighborhood turned punch-drunk from neglect, its horizon cluttered with tenements and the unadorned inverses of billboards.

Caspar peers out the window at the shuttered storefronts and grilled windows. “This isn’t the neighborhood I pictured you taking us to, Madame Inspector.”

“Spent the first half of my life here,” Jordan says. “I swore to myself more than a few times I wouldn’t come back.”

“Why have we?”

“Because if we’re gonna get you on that airship, saying pretty please won’t cut it. That flimsy-ass alibi didn’t even get us safe to Chamchek.” Jordan hand-over-hands the wheel down a cramped turn. “We’re here to make Abraham real.”

They stop the car in front of one of the few lit shops. It’s a Debbie Doughnut. Caspar’s cousin out in Marteshe got one of these recently and she’s obsessed. The only time he ever went inside he ordered a breakfast tea and it tasted like breakfast tea. Got that going for it.

“Hey.” Jordan calls to the corner, to a shabby fivesome of young people with the bomber jackets and braided belts of the low-hound scene. “You all ain’t gonna steal my ride, right?”

The oldest of them shakes her head. “No, ma’am.”

Jordan flattens a fifty-ducat note out on the hood of the car. “You make sure nobody else does, there’s another fifty once I’m out.”

She leaves the kids to argue about the money and ushers Caspar inside. The lights fizz and flicker a washed-out, unappetizing light over the flatracks of stale doughnuts. A cardboard cutout of St. Deborah of the Harvest guards the counter, her corrugated insides showing in vertical pinstripe across her bleached, beaming face.

“Welcome sister to Debbie Doughnut where the Father’s Fritters Fry Fabulously.” The zitty young man at the counter maintains a staccato monotone. “How can I help you today.”

“Yeah gimme a double oolong with honey milk and a lump, an old-fashioned, one of those guava sticks…” Jordan peers behind the cashier to his sticky display. “You need anything, Abe?”

“Small black tea.”

“And that. And go get your boss. Leonard. Tell him Jordy’s back for that favor.”

If Zits is impressed by Jordan’s namedrop, he does a fantastic job of hiding it. “Which first, tea or the boss?”

“Tea.” Jordan flops into a booth. “I’m not about to deal with Leonard under-caffeinated.”

Caspar sips an unremarkable tea from a styrofoam cup and squints out the dirty window. His experience with Chamchek is all fancy city core and stern municipal buildings. He didn’t realize it was this dilapidated in places. The only one of the thousand Chamchek falcons in view right now is stuck atop a billboard, one of its legs stripped of its brass and reduced to a skeletal wireframe.

There’s a slam from behind the counter and a scrawny leather whip of a man emerges, face stretched into a rictus grin. His “Inspector Darius!” is a clinic on forced cheer.

“Lenny!” Jordan stands up and sweeps Leonard into an embrace. Then she twists him around and slams him onto the table. Caspar grabs his tea as a dram of it spills out over the lip.

“Madame Inspector. Ahaha.” Leonard wriggles with desperation as Jordan unclips her cuffs. “I think we are both victims of a misunderstanding.”

“No misunderstanding.” Jordan binds Leonard’s wrists together. “Just an oopsie-daisy delay. That con you got the transfer papers to Exuma for? Shot a man in the gut and killed him. You’re an accomplice to murder.”

“Wh—I run a doughnut shop. The only deaths I’m responsible for are coronary.”

“Will you give us some privacy, young man?” Jordan smiles sweetly at the zitty employee, who remains miraculously zombified behind the counter.

“Kay.” He tugs a halfcloak on. “On break, boss.”

“Acheron 8:54, Lenny.” Jordan shoves Leonard into the seat next to Caspar as the young man departs and lays her gun on the table between them, fingers light against its stock. “He who turns from my slaughter without protest surely rests his hands upon the murderer’s knife.”

Leonard’s throat makes an exasperated rattle. “Always with the goddamn quotes, these inspectors.”

“In layman’s terms. This is a terminal fuck-up and your protection policy has run out.”

“You try to take me down I can hurt you.” The amount of sweat on Leonard’s upper lip is a biological fascination to me. “You know that? I can talk.”

Jordan chuckles. “You’ve been off street-level way too long, Lenny. Your survival instincts are gone. You don’t say that to the bitch with the gun.” She taps her index against the black metal of her .45. “The good news for you is that I’ve got an alternative for you. Say hello to Abraham.”

Caspar, who is taking to this situation like a fish to motor oil, gives a crooked little wave. “Hey.”

Leonard’s shivering eye turns to Caspar. He says nothing.

“Abe here needs a refresh. New ID, new papers, new life. He’s a bachelor with family in Pastornos.” Jordan stands. “You’ll fix him up, and then you can slip away before an inspector without my charitable nature comes by to shrive you.”

“I can’t just up and fuck off,” Leonard says. “I’ve got a business to run.”

With a slow orbit, Jordan takes in the empty, grease-spattered doughnut shop, its glistening confections, its collection of dead flies. “Your loss will be a blow that the sturdy, Father-fearing people of Chamchek shall lean upon their faith to weather.”

“You missed the morning rush,” he protests.

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“Mea maxima culpa.” She hauls him to his feet and unlocks his cuffs. “Let’s go to your office.”

“All right, all right.” Leonard massages his wrist. “It’ll take me a while. Pastornos papers, those things are tough to reproduce. I don’t suppose your man Abe knows how much he weighs.”

“Two hundred and fifteen pounds,” Caspar says.

Jordan whistles. “Well damn, Cas—Abe. You’re yoked.”

“Many oxes are,” mumbles Leonard, and I’d love to be a full goddess so I could make spiders crawl out of his eyeballs or something. He drags his feet all the way to a cramped office full of filing cabinets and smelling of glue, and gets to work under Jordan’s watchful eye, turning Caspar’s crappy lie into a half-decent fiction.

An hour later, the warlocks leave Debbie Doughnut with a stack of stale carbohydrates and a baker’s dozen of forged documents.

The bell chimes a farewell as they return to the Chutes. Jordan digs another fifty-ducat note out and pays the low-hounds by her cruiser. “Don’t spend it all in one drug den, now,” she calls after their retreating feet.

The squad radio has a blinking red light on it. Caspar gestures to it. “What’s that?”

“Shit.” Jordan squints. “That’s an emergency page. Right about now, they’re getting ready to put out an APB over a missing inspector. We gotta work fast and I gotta swing dick, but if we’re quick enough, I can get us seats on an airship to Pastornos.”

“Might be time to get some giddy-up in this cruiser, then,” Caspar says.

“Don’t sound too excited, buddy.” Jordan smirks. “The Father frowns on traffic violations.”

“How far’s the airship terminal?”

“If I’m a good little girl? Bout an hour with the crosstown traffic.” Jordan flips a switch on her dash and the red-and-gold emergency lights on top of the cruiser flash on. “But I’m a big, bad warlock now. Buckle up, Brother Abraham. And find us a station with something loud and fast on it.”

They stay off the criss-crossing highways and their rush hour congestion, keeping instead to the lower streets where Jordan’s flashing lights and wailing siren can speed them through the grids and intersections.

“So you went from the Chutes to this, huh?” Caspar watches the buildings straighten and brighten as they leave the squalor behind.

“That’s right,” Jordan says. “Couldn’t get to the academy fast enough. And once I was there, well. You come up in a place like the Chutes, you want to win. That ain’t exactly the Father’s way. But every time I got to see the looks on all the dynasty brats’ faces when the dirty little Chutes girl won top marks… ah, fuck it. Father’s dead. It felt amazing.”

“I bet it did,” Caspar says. “This was Chamchek Martial?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I went through the militia training there. Might have been we were around at the same time.”

“How about that. Might have been.” She takes her eye off the road for a moment to glance at him. “You ever think about the templars or the inspectorate? Big, obedient guy like you, they’d have loved it. And you wouldn’t have had to ship off overseas.”

He shakes his head. “Idea was just to do my bit and then go home. I suppose I felt that would be enough. To make up for the, uh, the straying I did at the clinic. And I wasn’t ever one to… stick out, I suppose. Wasn’t like you with the winning. I had my little corner, so to speak.”

Jordan smacks her lips. “Six foot one, two fifteen? Corner couldn’t have been that little.”

“Suppose not.” He rubs his thumb knuckle. “Never saw myself as a warrior, though.”

“That’s not a thrill to hear from the man who killed you, Cartwright.”

He laughs. “Apologies.”

“I wonder if—”

And that’s as far as Jordan gets before the world becomes sound, motion, and glittering shards of glass.

As the horizon inverts, Caspar gets a brief view of the pickup truck that hit them before the airbag blooms into his face. They skid, spin, the metal of the roof shrieking across the asphalt.

Then the only sound is clattering glass. Caspar blinks the blood out of his eyes and pulses my curative magic through himself. It closes the gash along his face and knits his broken nose.

A piercing scream from the street. A stampede of civilians. The little hatchback that was behind the temple cruiser at the light executes a forgivably sloppy u-turn.

Jordan is spitting and cursing as she scrambles upside down for her seatbelt. She turns to Caspar, starts to say something, then goes “Armor armor armor—”

The pickup door has swung open. A foot crunches against broken glass. A chunky mechanical catch-and-clack sound. That’s an autogun.

Caspar forms his armor just in time. The auto’s chattering roar shreds the passenger side of the cruiser open, splinters the dashboard and bursts sparks from Caspar’s chitin.

Jordan extracts her leg and tumbles to the roof/floor. She rams her puckered door open. “Move.”

The seatbelt’s been sliced from Caspar by a bullet. He seizes his revolver from the glove compartment and rolls out of Jordan’s door.

The ex-inspector’s wrist is turned the wrong way. She hisses in pain as she examines it. “Motherfuck.”

“Evoke,” Caspar says. “You can—”

Another storm of bullets. This one ends with a click. Caspar rises from cover and beholds a figure in sleek, blood-red warlock armor overhand hurling an empty autogun at his face.

It slams into Caspar’s helmet and knocks a buckle into the chitin. Then the red warlock is upon them.

It catches Caspar and slides them both to the ground. Behind them, near the cruiser, Jordan stands and then buttons right back down as the crack of more weaponry sounds. She curses aloud as she scrambles for cover, her magic popping and crinkling her hand back into its joint. Red here has friends.

Caspar winches his legs up into guard, tries to sweep himself out of Red’s grasp. But this enemy matches his strength. An errant shot from his revolver slams Red’s arm back with its force, and he turns the moment of discombobulation into a chokehold. That's the militia training kicking in. Caspar, you dumbass. He’s in armor. You can’t put a blood choke on a guy with a gorget. I remind myself that my warlock isn’t trained to fight people covered in full bug plate, which okay. Fair enough. We’ll fix that next time he’s in my demesne.

My claw shoots from Caspar’s forearm. He tries to punch it into Red’s skull, but the ensorcelled bone that hacked through kevlar and wood meets its eldritch match, and squeals a trail of useless sparks across Red’s dome instead. Find the articulation points, Caspar. Go for the armpits or the crotch. Think, you desperate himbo.

A twisting elbow from Red into his arm and the revolver spins away. Dark fluid jets from the enemy warlock’s palm and solidifies into a bristling gauntlet crowned by a long, protruding spike. Red launches a flurry of punches, aiming for the weaker grille across Caspar’s eyes.

Caspar grapples for advantage, teeth gritted. He spots Jordan, bracing her forearm against the frame of the car and popping off return fire toward Red’s accomplices. “Jordan!” He tries to trap Red’s gauntlet, but the barbs make it impossible. “Help!”

Jordan whips round to him, her empty magazine clattering to the ground as she reloads. Red braces Caspar and rolls him round. The barrel of Jordan’s .45 weaves as she seeks an opening.

Caspar feels the point of the punch-dagger scraping across his armored throat. His mind races. His arm flies off.

The red warlock falters, then reasserts his grip. Caspar’s severed arm clatters across the ground, steadies itself with palpating fingers, and closes around his dropped revolver.

With a crunchy slam, Caspar’s arm cannons back into place. The force spins both warlocks around and wrenches mine loose. Caspar sinks every remaining bullet in his cylinder into Red’s chest. Jordan roars triumphantly and unloads at the same time. The chest piece distorts under the ballistic force, and Red’s knocked from his feet.

Caspar pounces onto his fallen foe and rams his claw through the gap between Red’s arm and his chest. It slides right through and turns the inside of Red’s ribcage into a punctured, pumping mess. Red goes instantly, his armor cracking and bubbling as it runs in rivulets like blood off of his twitching body.

Jordan’s reacquiring her targets at the pickup before the light’s even left Red’s eyes. Caspar crawls to the upturned cruiser in time to watch pink mist burst from the skull of a gunman.

The other dives back into the truck and ducks his head behind the dash. The pickup’s engine growls back to life, and the hulking vehicle reverses at speed. Caspar slaps Jordan’s back to get her attention off the windshield, which she’s sinking shot after shot into. “Leave him. We gotta get off the street.”

Jordan snarls. “He fucked my fucking car. Fuck.”

“I know. I know. Come on.” Caspar lurches into a sprint, cutting for an alley, and she follows, leaving her prized Temple Cruiser a blown-out wreck on the intersection.

₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪

I make a grab for the red warlock’s soul, but he’s already pledged to one of my sisters, and he sluices off to her demesne before I can close my metaphorical fingers around him.

The trucker with the drilled-out brain, I drop into my lounge.

Iron-hard tentacles of gristle and rubber pinion him to the floor. His eyelids flutter in desperate confusion at the indescribable sensation of his brain regrowing.

From the dark I emerge, my body stretching and warping with every step until I am ten sinuous feet tall, my hair tendrils curling and hardening into jagged spines. The cyclopean eye on my forehead expands and pushes my rudimentary face down into a withered flap of skin hanging from my crocodilian jaw.

“And whose little mortal,” I say, as glutinous threads of drool run down my many teeth, “are you?”