1.

When the dreams came, a few things were always constant. The angel was always present, of course. It walked in the body of a boy Menchú once knew, mottled from face to fingertips with blood. The dreams always brought back the cries of the boy’s parents as they watched their son lovingly tear away their skin in thin, precise strips.

The dreams forced Menchú to relive the way the cobbles of the market square ran with streams and rivers of blood, deep and wine-dark in the rising sun. God help them all, it had been beautiful, in its way.

Then came the emptiness. Enduring the silence left in the angel’s wake, surrounded by the bodies of everyone he’d loved and everyone he’d failed, was worse, even, than the sounds of their suffering had been. Their dying hours were spent begging for their lives, but their silence afterward spoke of blame.

Menchú had sat in the pools of blood all that first day, listening to the unspeaking dead, and for a time it seemed he would never move again. But the flies had gathered, and the carrion birds. He stirred to perform the one service he owed them: He gave his flock their last rites, every soul. He also laid to rest the spirits of the soldiers and rebels who had perished here; forgiving them might one day light the way to forgiving himself. It was a start.

At dusk he began to dig a grave for them all in a fallow field nearby. He worked for hours without rest, until the skin of his palms was shredded and his muscles ached as much as his heart. The dead must be buried. He was still digging when Father Hunter arrived.

Those dreams were the worst: the ones where Menchú dug endless graves, where there was nothing left for him but grief and guilt. That and the memory of pale, inhuman eyes watching, judging, mocking.

• • •

Menchú woke shivering, his face wet. There was no light from his window; it was painfully early. He rose anyway and splashed water into his eyes and on his cheeks, then leaned heavily on the edge of the basin.

Hannah’s voice whispered in his ear, in his imagination. Not so far in the past as it had been:

Put your team together. You’re going to want them for what’s coming.

Menchú knelt on the tile floor and prayed for guidance.

• • •

An envelope waited for him at the Archives, centered neatly on his desk. The paper was thick, and of course black for dramatic effect. The looping silver ink gleamed faintly in the artificial light. Not that this particular envelope needed to be addressed at all. Menchú wondered, not for the first time, how it had arrived in his office; his usual mail was delivered to a box in a bland office in another building. If he asked, the Swiss Guard posted outside the door would insist that nobody had come in or out. Likely nobody had.

It was a stroke of good fortune that the Maitresse was, if not a staunch ally, at least not a staunch enemy.

Menchú pinched the bridge of his nose. Now, with his head still full of nightmares and their resources stretched too thin, was not the best time for reminders of all the places where he and his team were powerless.

Under the circumstances, the idea of walking into a marketplace full of supernatural phenomena and needing to maintain some cordial degree of diplomacy was actively repugnant. And not mere cowardice; he was rattled, and that would affect his ability to play the required role. If Liam came to him in this state, or if Sal did, he knew what he would tell them: Stay home. Someone else can go.

He weighed the envelope in his hands. “Stay home, Arturo,” he said aloud. “Someone else can go.”

There was a swish of fabric, and Asanti was at his desk. Her brows drew together. “Were you speaking to me?”

“No.”

“What are you doing here?” she asked. “It’s early.”

He looked at his watch. “I could ask the same of you,” he said. “Am I not allowed to be here?” Menchú regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth; they were beneath him. And yet, he couldn’t stop himself lately. For a breath, he hoped that Asanti would make up for his shortcomings. Not so long ago he could have relied upon her to do so.

Instead, her lips tightened. Before she could frame a response, he pushed the envelope across the desk toward her by way of apology. “‘Tis the season,” he said. “I’m sure you and the Maitresse have some catching up to do, so you should go this year, Asanti. Perhaps you and Frances? You’d get more out of it than anyone else.”

Asanti picked up the invitation. “I’d already begun to make the arrangements.”

Menchú quirked an eyebrow at that; his was the name was on the invitation, not hers. But this time he kept his tongue in check. There was a looming absence between them, only detectable because once, not so long ago, something had been there.

He missed it.

• • •

Menchú went outside to eat his lunch, hoping that a warm breeze and some sunshine would improve his outlook and erase the last lingering traces of dreaming. But the day had shown him as many horrors as night over the years, and his brain unhelpfully painted those images over the faces of the people around him.

He returned unrefreshed to find Cardinal Fox sitting at his desk, waiting with Asanti hovering over him, all but wringing her hands with dismay. Sal and Frances waited behind her, heads bowed and hands folded like children who had been given a good scolding.

The cardinal cleared his throat. “Busy, are you?”

Menchú inclined his head politely. “I was taking some fresh air,” he said. “Is there some particular, ah, business that brought you all the way down here?” He eyed the faces of his team, looking for some clue. Sal only grimaced.

“I like to keep an eye on the ground situation. I see you’ve received your annual invitation to the Market Arcanum.” The cardinal tapped the black envelope on Menchú’s desk.

It still hadn’t been opened. “I had thought Asanti—”

“No,” the cardinal said. He leaned forward and steepled his fingers on the desk. “Asanti is no longer permitted to do any fieldwork.”

“I’m in the room,” Asanti pointed out.

“Any fieldwork,” the cardinal pressed on as if the archivist hadn’t spoken. Fox took stock of Menchú, and couldn’t possibly miss his gray face and haggard disposition. “Menchú, you need more recovery time. Sal will go,” he decided. “And Liam.”

“Liam is still wounded,” Menchú said. “He shouldn’t travel.” He steeled himself to volunteer in Liam’s place; if the job required it, then so be it. He would find it in himself to get through the Market, bad dreams or not.

The cardinal’s brow furrowed as if he could read Menchú’s mind. “You should stay, in case something urgent comes up. Sal should go. I’ll send someone from Team One for backup. Grace will do.” Fox stood up and began to make his way toward the stairs going up.

The ruins of Team Three stood arrayed around Menchú’s desk, blinking at one another. “At least there won’t be a clock on this one, since it’s not a real mission,” Sal offered.

“No,” Asanti said slowly, “not a clock. But there is a mission.”

• • •

Asanti led Sal and Menchú to a series of shelves pressed against one of the walls of the Archives, talking all the while. “Last year at the market, I made a deal with a young scion of a very powerful Swedish family. The contract is coming due this year, and I thought I’d be able to handle it without troubling anyone else. It’s a simple enough matter.” She climbed a wheeled ladder up to a high shelf and brought down a small ebony box, fine-grained and inlaid with a mother-of-pearl chessboard on the lid.

“When were you planning on telling me?” Menchú asked.

Asanti pushed her shoulders back and pasted a grim smile on her face. “Here,” she said, handing Sal the little wooden box. “This is all you need to finish the trade.”

“What are you giving up, Asanti?” Menchú plucked the box from Sal’s hands and opened it. “Chess pieces?” A king and queen nestled in beds of velvet inside the box. They were charmingly carved from ivory and inset with tiny, twinkling jewels.

“What do they do?” Sal asked, all caution.

“Nothing,” Asanti answered. “The gentleman we’re doing business with is a collector, and this completes a set he’s been after. They once belonged to Lewis Carroll.”

“Not magic?” Menchú asked.

“Not magic.” Asanti glanced at him sidelong. “I’ve tested them thoroughly, with an abundance of caution. They’re no more magical than Beanie Babies or baseball cards. They’re really only valuable because someone wants them.”

“What are we getting in return?” Sal asked.

“A book. The Sexton’s Codex. It was in the library of the king of Sweden, but vanished during the Thirty Years’ War. I heard word that the family had recovered it during renovations just before the Market last year. Fortunately, they’re old enough and knowledgeable enough not to do anything impulsive with it.”

Sal picked up a chess piece and examined it closely. “Why haven’t we just taken the book from them?”

“It’s not like we’ve had weeks and months of sitting on our hands wishing for more ways to fill the empty hours,” Frances said, her voice dry.

Asanti hesitated. “Brute force isn’t always the right answer,” she said. “Team Two does more of this than we do, but this was a particularly delicate situation. The family can be prickly, and I’m not quite sure they know what their little Povel is up to. Discretion is of the essence.”

“What she means,” Menchú said, “is that if we tried to take the book away from him, we would anger the family. And should it come to a flat-out brawl with them, it’s not clear we’d be the last ones standing.”

“I said what I meant, Arturo.” Asanti’s voice was tired.

Sal looked from Asanti to Menchú, wondering if she should make some sort of joke to break the tension. Or maybe it would just make everything that much more awkward.

At least she’d be getting away from it all for a few days.