—Nerves—

“It’s safe,” said Ashlan, patting the side of her bag. “Relatively.”

Hollis pushed the flap open and peered out, his burlap brow nearly folded over. “What is all that?” he rasped, pointing at the black flames.

“They call it hellfire. Burns cold.”

“The name seems a trifle dramatic.”

“Bloodline nomenclature usually is. Not a lot of outside opinions involved. And it’s got nothing to do with hell, or fire—it’s the decomposing effluvia of the gods. These jokers can control it—some shady deal must’ve gone down, centuries ago—but they can’t get too far from Eth, or it dries right up. Why they’re eating people, I have no idea. That is entirely unrelated.”

He dropped down on the carpet of corpses. “Once again, Ashlan Ley, you prove remarkably well-informed for a small-time con artist.”

“I’m a lot of things.”

The ring had a circumference of fifteen corpses, give or take a few limbs. Those at the edges were thoroughly crisped, but the rest seemed unharmed by their proximity.

“Is there any way we can take it with us?” Hollis asked. “Just enough to cold-roast an eyeball or two, or maybe a gonad. I certainly wouldn’t want to be as quick dispatching the Puppeteer as that hairless procreator was with this lot. Swallowing one of his favorite bits with cold fire, though—well, it appeals to my aesthetic sense.”

The Puppeteer again. Every few minutes, Hollis looped back to the subject of his “creator,” concocting ever more elaborate fantasies about his death.

Luckily, he hadn’t noticed how uneasy this made her—he was too fixated on bloody vengeance for that—but Ashlan was increasingly eager to get all this over with.

Maybe he’d unravel along the way and save her some trouble.

That thought unnerved her, too.

“I mean, you could always ask the Devourers,” she muttered. “The last one seemed chatty enough.”

He turned on a platform heel, suddenly petulant. “Yes, and about them, Ashlan Ley. You ought to’ve slaughtered those depilated creeps—wrung their greasy heads right off their necks! There’d be two fewer captors to escape right about now.”

“When we got here,” she said, as patiently as she could manage, “you were telling me to pull the heads off the black-cloaks. Imagine where that would have landed us, Runt—once the Devourers showed up, we’d have been caught between the two clans. ‘Kill it if it moves’ isn’t going to get us to Eth.”

“It’ll get us there faster than allowing ourselves to be imprisoned by every pack of half-wits patrolling the wood!” He climbed onto a dead soldier’s back and gave it a petulant stomp. “I simply can’t understand why you allow all this. For my sake, I’m glad that you didn’t dispatch those junkies—but why did you allow them to ransack your chest cavity, when knocking off the two of them would’ve cost you nothing?”

“It’s just—easier. Laying low. Keeping the spotlight off me—and what I can do. People take what they want, and they go away.”

“That’s a flimsy argument,” Hollis muttered. “Pain seems hardly to bother you at all, and from what I can tell, there’s not a weapon in the kingdom that can waylay you for long, if you set your mind to it.”

She decided to let him believe that as long as he could.

“All of which makes your—your pacifism completely incomprehensible,” he went on. “Such strength you have, such resiliency, and such size! Why not cut down everything in your path? Why not let the world know what you can do? What good can you do for me—for yourself? for anyone?—if we’re bound by a cage of uncanny fire? And what difference could the destruction of your body possibly matter when you’re an hour away from wholeness, regardless of how much damage you take?”

“It ought to matter to you, if you’re hiding in my handbag.”

But she knew the answer well enough. The thought had haunted her since childhood.

What if she started killing, and couldn’t stop?

“I don’t know, Runt.” Ashlan stood, wincing. Her feet were all pins and needles. “I guess I might still be standing after I took on two dozen men. I’ve never tried it.” She hobbled to the edge of the ring, peering down at the gruesome litter of the battle. “But I do know this: the second the Devourers lit me up, you’d be a lump of fucking coal.”

She found what she was looking for: a severed arm, hacked off at the elbow. She chucked it into the wall of flame, where it crackled and shook, then rebounded.

Hollis stepped away from the cold, smoking twist of bone and gristle, his upper lip curling. “Well. Perhaps necromancers are a special case. But should we encounter a militia, for example, or an irregular group of bandits—”

“How many hits do you think I can take before you get skewered?” She found another severed limb and hefted it. “What if I drop you, and you get stepped on? Really, Runt, all it’s going to take is one good whack, and your century’s over. Plus, we’ve got these two to keep alive,” she said, waving the leg at the woman and the boy, “or we lose our shot at the Puppeteer. Right?”

She could see him marshaling an argument.

It died on his lips as she rammed the leg into the wall.

The limb leapt into the air the moment it touched hellfire. Grappling it, bracing with all her might, she rammed it through the squealing resistance until it finally popped through the other side. She yanked her hands back before they touched the flame, feeling grimly satisfied.

“Ashlan, what are you doing?”

“Experimenting. We’ve got to figure a way out of here that doesn’t fry the three of you.”

“How is that meant to help?”

“I’ll keep you posted.” She wiped her hands on her tunic. “I was kind of hoping some space would open up around it. But at least we know it’s not a wall. There’s a lot of push-back, but I could get myself through if I really had to.”

She pictured herself charred, still lurching on. Or falling down and being left alone a while.

It would be better to avoid it entirely. Hellfire didn’t seem like it offered the kind of pain she cared to deal with.

To her surprise, Hollis was seething. “So you’re openly planning on leaving me to die here,” he said, flexing his little fists. “After all I’ve offered you.”

“Easy, Runt.” She came to his side, kneeling until she was as close to his level as she could get. “No one’s ditching you. Worst case, I just—bury you, burn myself alive, and dig you up again when the Devourers are gone.”

He looked aghast for a moment, then guffawed. “God’s rot, woman, what a plan! But I can’t very well cry claustrophobia after asking you to dive unarmed into a small army of mages. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, eh?” Climbing over the corpses, he inspected the sleeping bodies. “As you noted, the real challenge will be keeping the junkies alive. They know where the Puppeteer is, and we don’t—so we can’t just let them burn, delightful as that might be. But are you sure they’re even stable?”

Ashlan wasn’t sure of anything, not in here. “I mean, I’ve used blood to keep someone alive in a pinch before. But they’ve always had medical attention after, from people with more field experience than me. I don’t know how far it goes on its own.” She lifted up the woman’s cloak and winced. “This one isn’t looking good. There are some things on the outside that ought to be in, if we’re going to start tossing her around. I got some of my blood down her throat, but she really does need—packing.”

“I’m really more of an unpacker,” he said, smiling. “Surely you can manage it?”

Ashlan looked down at her hands. “I’m not exactly hygienic. And I don’t have the tools.”

“Can’t you just—” He gestured vaguely. “I don’t know, bleed on her?”

“You want me to, what, cut off a hand and hose her down?”

He paused, considering. “Would that work?”

Ashlan sighed. “I would much rather not find out.”

The two of them were sleeping soundly, at least—Ashlan’s blood had a peculiarly soporific effect. And they looked almost childlike in repose.

The boy was olive-skinned, his nose aquiline, hair more curly than kinky. The woman was pale and road-worn, the sort of customer Ashlan could imagine reminiscing about some bygone crown her ancestors had never actually worn.

These were the people who’d scrapped her body to get themselves high. She’d expected to feel hatred, or at least some defensive twinge, but there was nothing. She’d have been more upset if they’d stolen her bag.

“I think the boy might be all right,” she said. “Do we really need both of them?”

“Hmm. What with all the Ace-ing and Deuce-ing, I think it’d be safer—if only to avoid suspicion down the line.” Hollis tapped his lips with a frayed forefinger. “Patch her up, and be quick about it. Meantime, I’ll try and find us a way out of this infernal cage.”

“Great.” She watched him toddle over to the edge of the hellfire, thinking idly of tossing him over and seeing if he survived the fall. Instead, she pulled Rafe’s dagger out of the dirt, wiped it passably clean, and held it to her wrist, frowning down at the woman’s face.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this for you,” she whispered.

The cut was deep and confident, the blood intoxicatingly dark.

Ashlan appreciated how steady her arm remained. She felt her breath changing as her body flooded with panic, then nausea, then warmth. She noted that hideous certainty that always arrived when she began to take herself apart.

There is no end to this, it said.

The pain itself was like an old friend walking through the front door, telling the same jokes that made her laugh every time.

Then, hot on its heels, the hunger.

Again, she felt a curious pang—which warranted no reflection, because she was already wrapping it up, clenching her teeth and clamping her fingers around her forearm. It seemed like the woman had already absorbed enough of Ashlan’s blood—she was breathing more steadily, her innards retracting, her black puncture blanching.

It would have to do. There was nothing clean to bandage her with, so if she fell apart when they moved her, so be it. They had no plan that could possibly get her out of this ring, anyway, and it could only be a matter of time before the Devourers returned.

Ashlan felt that boiling well of heat that always lay just below the surface of her skin. Over the years, she’d built a kind of wall to keep it from lashing out and healing every scrape she suffered. People reacted poorly, she’d learned as a child, when confronted with a regenerating girl.

And there were times when she just wanted to hurt awhile.

Now, with a long exhalation, she let the wall down.

Her arm began at once to prickle with emerging sweat. Her flesh seared, her mind went blank, and within moments she had a knitting wound and a splitting headache.

“Ashlan,” Hollis rasped.

“Give me a minute,” she muttered, pressing her temples.

What she wouldn’t give for a rack of lamb right now.

“Ashlan!”

She whipped her head around, furious, famished, thinking how nice it would be to bite him until he shut his tiny mouth.

But Hollis was staggering backwards, tripping over corpses, scrambling up and doing it again.

He couldn’t tear his eyes from the wall of flame.

It was moving toward the middle—quickly enough to gnaw through two or three lengthwise corpses every minute.

Ashlan stood, whispering a curse. The hellfire sizzled through the bodies at the edge, one cold, implacable inch at a time. She lifted Hollis, who squawked in indignation as she retreated to the center of the circle, watching it cinch toward them.

Down, she thought. That’s all she could think, as if a magnet was pulling her from below. She had to get him down.

“Guess it’s feeding time,” she said, setting him down near the boy’s feet. “We’ve got a few minutes, if we’re lucky.” Grunting, she heaved a corpse off of the matted grass. “Forget these two. We’ll find another way. Let’s get you in the ground. We need to start digging.”

“With what?” cried Hollis.

“I don’t know,” she shouted back. “Look around!”

Hollis ducked as a hideous screeching erupted at the edge of the ring. The hellfire had caught a dying black-cloak where he lay. From the feet up, his flesh was turning to char, but the man was too weak to pull himself away.

Ashlan picked up the dagger and started hacking at the ground, though she didn’t manage much besides loosening the grass. The earth was hard and rocky, and scraping it with the blade didn’t gain her enough ground.

“Nothing but sharpened sticks,” Hollis called from the edge, “and a satchel of your guts.”

“Grab a stick,” said Ashlan, dropping the blade. “Maybe I can get some leverage, break things up a bit.”

Hollis hefted a makeshift spear, balancing like a tiny acrobat as he made his way across the corpses.

“Damn it, Runt, you’re slow.” Ashlan lunged toward him, swiping the stick from his hands. “I can’t dig and keep track of you at the same time.”

She snatched up the satchel of guts, too, and tossed them toward the center. She didn’t feel like listening to them sizzle—not before the rest of her did.

Ashlan sank the stick into the unforgiving earth.

She pushed, and it snapped in half.

The black-cloak wasn’t screeching any more. The hellfire had swallowed his skull.

“Stay close,” she shouted, kneeling and clawing at the rocky dirt with her hands, earning nothing but dry, stingy palmfuls at first. She kept on, though, clenching her jaw so hard that her neck spasmed.

Before she’d cleared an inch, her fingers were bleeding. The earth was so studded with stones that she’d torn off several fingernails by the time she had anything she could call a hole. Pouring with sweat, she held back the full rush of heat and dug deeper, not even pausing to glance at the tightening hellfire. She dug until her fingers were pulped, then kept digging, flinging dirt beside her, hoping it was landing in something like a pile. She’d have to pack it over Hollis’ body again, and it would need to be deep enough to protect him from the flames that would soon be closing over his head.

How deep could the hellfire reach? The further she went, the more futile all this felt.

She felt a harsh vibration running through her arms as her naked finger-bones scraped the surface of a stone even wider than the hole she’d dug.

“Hurry,” pleaded Hollis.

“Toss me the dagger, Runt.”

Gripping its hilt with fingers like gory talons, she fought through the pain, gouging desperately at the edges of the stone. “Even if this works,” shouted Ashlan, “we’re going to need to find another way to Eth. I might just be able to get you under, but these two—”

“Just dig!” yelled Hollis, hunched beside her.

Grunting, she pried up the edge of the stone. It loosened a good bit of earth as she wrenched it free.

She hauled it up, and her heart sank. Even if Hollis curled up like a fetus, the pit was still too shallow.

“There won’t be time to bury an acorn,” he moaned.

The wall of hellfire was ten feet away, starting on one of the pale woman’s outstretched hands. She wasn’t awake, but she was shrieking.

And the boy was next.

“We’re fucked,” Ashlan said. Out of sheer frustration, she hurled the stone back into the pit, where it thudded—and then kept falling.

She and Hollis turned to stare at the sudden hole in the ground.

“What enchantment is this?” he cried.

“I don’t know.” She seized him by the front of his waistcoat. “But it beats waiting around.”

She dropped him, squealing, into the black.

“Hopefully.”

She dragged the woman from the flames and wedged her, feet-first, into the pit. Clods of earth broke off all around her, and she tumbled out of sight. She shoved the boy in after, watching him slide into darkness.

For a moment Ashlan stood at the edge, watching the oncoming flames gleam in the grimy tendons of her hands.

The hellfire was close enough to make her shiver.

Her nascent fingernails itched as they emerged. New skin was sliding up around the muscle like sausage casing. She shouldered her bag, flinching from the sizzling and popping of her guts going up.

For a wild moment she thought of staying.

But Hollis was bellowing her name from below.

It probably wouldn’t have killed her.

Ashlan stepped into the darkness.

She’d just pulled the woman and the boy clear of the long, diagonal shaft that led to the bottom, dragging them by their collars toward the sound of the mannikin’s voice, when the hellfire sent a wave of earth and flesh cascading behind her. She couldn’t see a thing, but she could feel rocks and dirt striking her back. Bent double to keep from bashing her head on the tunnel’s low roof, she dragged them farther on.

“Did the junkies live?” Hollis rasped.

“Give me a minute.” Pulling them closer to him, she knelt beside one of them, groping for a pulse. “This one’s all right. Breath’s pretty shallow, though. And the other one’s still hanging on, too.”

“You sound disappointed.”

“Well, are you going to carry them?”

“Hmph.” She heard him pressing on, dragging his hand against the wall. “Even if I could help, how do we know it would do us any good? This might well be a dead end, where I’ll languish until you dig your way out. Which would probably be the end of me, at the rate you dig.”

Suffocation wouldn’t slow her down forever, but running out of air would be markedly unpleasant. “Unless it’s the burrow of some giant rodent. A blind mole as big as an elephant.”

She heard his echoing gasp from down the hall. “Or a worm! Some massive, toothy lamprey of the earth.”

He was trotting back already. “Probably looking for voles to eat,” she said. “You’re about the right size.”

Hollis smacked into her leg and clung there. “Do you really think we ought to stay where we are?”

She rolled her eyes, invisibly. “Runt, if we’re figuring the odds between a tunnel collapse and a giant worm attack, I’m going to say we should keep going. You can work on your bestiary of imaginary dirt creatures on the way.”

He shoved away, huffing. “I’m sorry, does the invulnerable woman have something clever to say about cowardice? One day I’ll learn what frightens you, and lower you into a pit of it.”

“You just described every day of the past two hundred years,” she muttered. “Really, Runt, you’d better hope that this tunnel lets out in a village. These two need help, fast. I don’t think my blood’s going to do much more on its own.”

“Do you mean to say that dropping them from a great height didn’t improve their condition? My, you are an expert, aren’t you? Come along, then, before both of them die on us.”

She swallowed her retort, focusing on how she was going to handle them. “Okay. What’s your plan?”

“Pardon?”

He was powering on like this was going to be easy. “For moving them. What am I doing, dragging them on the ground? Carrying one toward you, then coming back for the other?” Either way, just thinking about it made her sweat. The air was close down here, and damp.

“My plan is for you to work it out for yourself,” he called. “Come, now! If you don’t dilly-dally, and nothing ferocious devours us, we’ll be aboveground in no time.”

But by the time they saw the light, her mind was as pulped as her hands had been. She’d expended so much heat healing the pain in her back and the gashes on her knuckles that her head was pounding. The tunnel never seemed to stop curving, and more than once she convinced herself that she’d lost an addict down some unseen fork. Her clothes were soaked, and there wasn’t a drop of spit left in her mouth. By now, all she could think of was food and drink, to the exclusion of everything else—she couldn’t even be sure that the addicts were alive, as it had been hours since she’d remembered to check their vital signs.

She couldn’t see Hollis, though, and he drifted far ahead.

More than once, she wondered if that had saved him.

It wasn’t sunshine that greeted them at the end of their path. The light was greenish-gray, and buckets of rain were pouring down the wide ramp that led to the open air.

“Ach.” Hollis frowned as he stepped into a puddle at the foot of the ramp, his burlap skin caked with dirt. “We lost the whole night down here.”

“Maybe our friends have horses,” whispered Ashlan, dragging the woman up beside the boy.

“What friends?”

She pointed. “Whoever dug that.”

The ramp was surrounded by a great, loose wall of displaced earth—except for a tidy path cut directly through its center. A shovel still jutted from the pile beside it.

“No horses,” came a curiously lilting, reedy voice over the rush of the rain. “A bear, though.” There was a thoughtful cough. “I am not the bear. And the bear is not alive.”

Hollis stepped back, his button eyes wide. “We can’t just walk up there,” he whispered. “That could be anyone!”

“What’s our option?” said Ashlan. “The tunnel is blocked, and I’m not leaving these two to die. Not after all this.”

“Could you hurry up?” said the voice. “You took longer than we thought. The food is cold. So are my toes.”

“I’m going.” Ashlan lifted the woman’s limp body for what she hoped was the last time.

“You can’t be serious,” hissed Hollis. “That’s a lunatic, with untold powers!”

“A lunatic,” said Ashlan, “with lunch. Do what you want.” She carried the body to the top of the ramp, then stopped abruptly.

Somehow she hadn’t been prepared for the actual bear. Standing upright, it was startling enough, little more than a piebald hide sagging over yellowing bones. Then it moved, lurching toward the shovel whose handle stood diagonally in her path, yanking it free with a surprisingly fluid motion. Its black lips flapped raggedly around its fangs, giving it an air of menace that its dull eyes belied. The fur of its chest swung, too, hanging open around some bright object that was splayed between its ribs with twine—a small, painted canvas, she saw, as it planted the shovel and came to a stop.

She peered at the painting, where robin’s egg blue and a rich, yolky yellow swirled around a curious illustration.

Curious, because it wasn’t a rune that seemed to animate the bear, but the likeness of a distant, ethereal face.

The face of the tall, paper-white woman with ink-stained fingers who stood beside it.

In her way, she was no less startling than the bear. Though her bare feet were muddy, she was quite dry, protected as she was by a vast, floating blanket of darkness. Some weightless substance of pure, shining black hung over her head, anticipating every diagonal drop of rain, writhing out to protect her from wetness.

As this otherworldly umbrella roiled, blotting out half the sky, the woman gave another pensive cough. “She’s almost dead, you know.” She stretched a stained finger toward the addict’s limp body, not looking at either of them. “You’ll want to put her in the sledge, with the other survivors.” Something seemed to occur to her, and she peered into the space over Ashlan’s shoulder. “Unless you wanted them to go—home?”

She stood a full foot taller than Ashlan, broad but slender. Her long hair was clean and combed, but full of burrs. She was dressed in hand-stitched furs and hides, festooned in feathers and animal bones, with the curled foot of a blackbird hanging from a length of twine around her throat.

“Home?” said Ashlan.

“Oh.” The woman smiled, her eyes seeming to focus five feet past the back of Ashlan’s head. “Not your home, of course. I meant death. You don’t want them to go to death.”

“No,” said Ashlan softly, wondering if Hollis might be right. It didn’t matter: the safest course was to humor her until they knew what she was after. “No, I don’t.”

“Then we’ll heal them, you and I.”

“You, uh—you sure you can?”

This was an absurd question to ask of anyone controlling a dead bear and a cloud of living night, and Ashlan regretted it immediately.

The woman looked irritated, then stroked a feather hanging from her hair, which seemed to calm her. “I am sure. I rarely heal—humans, other than myself. Never, really. But on the behalf of so esteemed a visitor, I’d be happy to. How many others have you brought?”

She’d heard them talking already, so there was no point in trying to hide Hollis. “Two. One other wounded, uh, human.”

The woman arched an eyebrow, glancing down the ramp. “Rest assured. Between what I know and what you are, they will be well in no time.”

“What I am?” Ashlan’s heart thudded. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yes. You do.” She looked disgusted, and rubbed at the feather again, more rapidly this time. “What need has an immortal to pretend? What company have you been keeping, Lady?”

“Look, you seem a little confused. I’m not—”

The darkness leaked out above Ashlan’s head, an angry, shining mantle that looked ready to swallow her whole.

Untold powers.

Regardless of the chances it stood of doing her any permanent damage, playing coy suddenly felt like a terrible idea.

“Okay,” said Ashlan, shifting the limp weight in her arms. “So I’m—different. From most people.”

The woman barked mirthlessly. “You are not some—carnival act,” she said, as if it was painful to explain this aloud. “A contortionist is ‘different from most people.’ You are not a person at all, Lady.”

“Look.” Ashlan nearly lost her grip on the body in her arms. “You obviously don’t know me.”

“No. But the gazing-tree does,” said the woman, looking up into the cloud.

Something about the phrase niggled at Ashlan’s memory.

Of course. The weird, burnt-looking oak beside the path of thorny vines. Hollis had leaned against it, and it had slumped away from his hand.

It’s a gazing-tree, he’d said, wiping his hand furiously on the earth. You’ve never heard of them? Something to do with the Gone-Away, or so they used to say at the Court of Cru. Their wood was lousy with them.

And the clump of tree he’d displaced had drifted off—into a cloud of soft, black spores.

This woman’s umbrella was made of them, Ashlan realized, peering up. At its edges, she could see the spores reaching out—and being rebuffed, by some unseen force, into a shape they were constantly resisting.

“That’s a tree?”

“Not currently,” said the woman. “But that’s what people call them, isn’t it? At one time, they were the sensory apparatus of Gone-Away Nex. Well, some say they belonged to Gone-Away Nunce, but that’s absurd—He barely had a brain, let alone one that spanned five kingdoms. But such are the problems of a modern translator of ancient Ethian.” She smiled to herself. “There was a time when each of the Gone-Away had their representatives in this world. Some, like the gazing-trees, yet remain, but they are—adrift, you might say, now that their gods are dead. This one,” she said, making it whirl with a gesture, “has decided it is mine, and I asked it, long ago, to keep watch for someone like you. You must have passed by another one yesterday, and the ward went off. I was napping, and it came streaming inside to tickle me awake.”

Ashlan struggled to keep her face blank. “Someone—like me.”

“Yes. You could not all be gone, of course—where would you go?—but I thought perhaps you were gone from here. I longed to meet you, but I couldn’t blame you for leaving. This wood was once so much more than a drainage ditch for the wars of Eth.” She flicked her wrist, exasperated again. “Oh, put her down before you exhaust yourself.”

Ashlan struggled to push all this from her mind. There was no reason to believe a thing this madwoman said. She wanted something from Ashlan, that much was clear—and Ashlan would need to negotiate with her, quickly.

“Where did you want me to put her?”

“Behind Umber,” said the woman, crouching down to peer at an earthworm that writhed in the muck at her feet.

“Behind—”

“The bear.” She pointed at a cape of serrated leaves woven into a long train that was tied to the bear’s shoulders with red and green ropes. So much was happening out here that Ashlan hadn’t even noticed. “I call him Umber. I call myself Tanka. Tanka Equinox.”

“Tanka.” Ashlan laid the body down behind the bear, grimacing as she looked at the blackened wreck of the woman’s right arm.

The hellfire had taken her hand, and half her forearm. Charred bone extended inches beyond anything that could still be called flesh. If Tanka could heal this, she was a miracle worker.

“I’m Ashlan Ley,” she said, turning away. “Or did you already know that?”

“Of course I didn’t,” she murmured to the earthworm, as if only it could understand Ashlan’s profound silliness. “The gazing-tree told me you were near, Lady Ley. It did not peruse the contents of your mind, or eavesdrop on your conversations. It simply sent a branch to tell me you had come. And so I asked it to dig toward you. Being what you are, I assumed you could easily feel its presence, and use your considerable powers to follow its path.” Her face fell. “I can see now that this was—overly optimistic.” She stood, and sniffed. “And now our tea is cold.”

“Right. I’ll, uh, I’ll get the others moving, then. Be right back.”

Ashlan trudged through the mud and into the tunnel, shaking her head.

Being what she was?

She had felt something, though.

A tug from below the earth.

She put it out of mind. Forgetting things might well be the only area of expertise she had any faith in.

“Why are you being so polite to her?” whispered Hollis, hidden in the darkness.

Ashlan turned on him. “What did you want me to do, Runt? Kick her in the shins and find out how strong her bear is?” Sighing, she peered back at the ramp, hoping the rain was loud enough to cover their bickering. “She’s crazy, yeah, but she’s calm. Let’s just keep her that way. She wants to have a tea party, so let’s play along. Unless you’d rather stay here, and have me send your regrets?”

“No.” He fiddled with the golden buttons on his waistcoat. “This is my expedition.” He brushed himself off, aggressively. “Is she—frightening to behold?”

Ashlan lifted the boy, grunting. “Compared to what, exactly?”

Hollis stood by the ramp. “Follow my lead, and do try not to muck this up.”

He waddled up confidently enough, then flinched as a sheet of rain struck his face. “Greetings!” he called when he’d recovered himself, giving a courtly bow. “My name is Hollis Runt, and I am the leader of this motley crew. My thanks for your unexpected and timely aid!”

“Lady Ley?” shouted Tanka as the cloud above her expanded to twice its size. “Why is that—thing talking?”

Hollis recoiled. “I beg your pardon!”

“He’s a mannikin,” said Ashlan, standing very still, hoping Hollis had the wit to do the same. “Like—like your bear. Animated by enchantment.”

“Like my—no.” Tanka frowned. “No, no, no. Umber is pleasing to the eye. And does not talk. This is a mobile excrescence in the shape of a doll.”

“Come now!” cried Hollis, pointing a finger up toward her. “You may be powerful beyond reckoning, and bully for you—but there is no excuse for such rudeness, madam!”

Ashlan was surprised to find her ire rising. “Hey, Tanka, could you, uh—go easy on him?”

“You would like me to treat it like a person?” Tanka cocked her head. “But it is a construct. A childish forgery of the city. A cage built of meat and words. And its rune-work is weak.”

“My rune-work has held for a full century!” Hollis shrieked.

“I don’t know about weak,” Ashlan muttered, feeling too defensive to control herself.

“Yes,” said Tanka, glaring. “Weak.” The black cloud had begun to descend, forming a bulwark behind Tanka that took Ashlan off guard. Even Hollis seemed cowed enough to shut his mouth.

Tanka seemed satisfied with their continued silence. “You should have a servant that better suits you, Lady Ley. I will happily paint you a helpmeet, when our work is finished.”

“Servant?” said Hollis quietly, balling his fists. “ ‘Servant,’ did you say? Why, I’m afraid you misunderstand, Tanka Equinox.”

“Easy, Runt,” said Ashlan, “let’s not—”

“I am no one’s servant,” snapped Hollis, “and I have taken too much abuse in my day to pretend otherwise. Your ‘Lady Ley’ is my employee, and this,” he said, gesturing broadly, “is my enterprise. I will be happy to treat with you, and I am by no means ungrateful for whatever help you might give, but I demand that you give me the respect I am damn well due.”

“Umber!” shouted Tanka, waving a hand. “Take the boy.”

Dropping its shovel, the bear lurched toward Ashlan, scooping the body from her arms with shocking swiftness. Its paws were surprisingly agile as they laid him down on its leafy sledge. Turning away, it lumbered toward a grand, hollow tree in the distance, around which a wooden ramp spiraled. Its bark was swallowed in new growth, and near its elephantine boughs, Ashlan spied carven windows alive with flickering lights.

“Tell the doll I meant it no offense,” said Tanka. She curled her fingers, and a long, black wisp emerged from the cloud, hissing down into the earth beside them, freezing both of them where they stood. “But it distresses me to think of you serving anyone. Much less—well. You belong to this wood, Lady Ley, as surely as it belongs to you.”

“I don’t know who you think I am,” Ashlan murmured.

That was all she could manage to say. She and Hollis had turned to gape as the wisp became a stream. As it flowed, it settled rapidly into the outline of a gazing-tree twice the size of the one they’d seen along the way. The spores were gushing in, root-first, filling its shell with an inky solidity as they shoved piled earth out of their way.

“It is clear,” said Tanka, “that you don’t. And that is no impediment, Lady Ley. You must walk whatever path you have found under your feet. It is not mine to question, nor to divert. But it does seem to be leading to my door, wouldn’t you say?”

Ashlan turned from the shining leaves. Tanka seemed to be waiting for her approval. Somehow this was more unnerving than any show of force.

“I mean.” She glanced down at Hollis. “That all right with you, boss?”

“Hm!” The word seemed to help him find his tongue. “So long as whatever business you have with Ashlan Ley can be conducted while you tend to the junkies,” he said, waving helplessly at the treehouse where they’d already disappeared, “I have no objection. As I said, I’m not ungrateful in the slightest for any aid you might give us! Or have given. I—I believe this little fracas was largely due to the long and frustrating night we spent underground. May we put it behind us?”

Tanka gave no sign that she’d heard him. She was still staring at Ashlan, waiting.

“Um.” Ashlan struggled not to stare back. “How about that tea?”

“It is cold,” said Tanka, striding suddenly into the rain, leaving the cloud of spores to finish unraveling.

Ashlan and Hollis stood for a long moment, watching her go.

“Runt, I think you’re going to have to play the silent partner a while,” whispered Ashlan, stepping slowly away from the looming shape of the gazing-tree. “This is—I don’t know what this is. But it could probably kill you faster than I could react.” Across the lawn, Tanka began to climb the spiraling ramp. “You good with that?”

“Yes. So long as we are clear,” he whispered back, “that your new friend has eaten too many mushrooms without a guidebook.”

“Agreed. So let’s just find out what she wants and get out of here.”

Hollis nodded, staring balefully at the gazing-tree. “As soon as possible.”

Tanka waved from a platform at the top of the treehouse, then stepped through a broad doorway curtained with hanging white moss, which swung behind her as she disappeared within.

“For your sake,” said Hollis, striking out, “let’s hope that bear can cook.”

It wasn’t moss.

Whatever white substance dangled from the doorway, sliding cold and rubbery across the nape of Ashlan’s neck as she followed Hollis inside, it wasn’t moss. Her whole body shuddered as she struggled through thick strands of the stuff. Once through, she twisted her arm behind her back in a futile attempt to brush the clinging sensation from her skin.

“Whatever is wrong with you?” said Hollis, squinting up at her.

“Sorry,” she said, struggling to steady the pounding of her heart as her eyes adjusted to the candlelight. There was no sign of Tanka, or the bear. “Look.” Kneeling, she turned her back to him, still pawing at the nape of her neck. “Is there something on me?”

“The rain has washed away the filth of the tunnel,” he murmured. “Unless you mean that cobwebby stuff in the door?”

“Yeah.” She rubbed her neck, peering up at the walls, spying dozens of tiny, unsteady lights among the riot of jumbled objects. That the whole place hadn’t gone up in flames was a wonder, unless enchantment kept it from burning down. “I guess it’s nothing.”

“Not that I can see. Though there’s certainly no dearth of—whatever it is.”

Indeed, strands of whiteness hung from every carven ledge. As a breeze blew through the glassless windows, sheaves of it waved from hooks driven into the high, domed ceiling. Tiny brown birds swooped and dove around its irregular, hanging shapes. Ashlan even spied it tangled in the layered paint of a grand, red mural splattered on a wall on the far side of the room.

“Nerves.”

Tanka’s voice rang through the grand chamber, but Ashlan couldn’t find her, by sound or by sight. There was too much to see in all these dimly-lit nooks: bones and baubles, books and brushes, branches and antlers, chalky diagrams and animal skulls. Alcoves and sconces were hidden everywhere, with just enough candlelight to make out the riot of paint that covered every wooden surface, repeating, again and again, their creator’s visage—though Tanka’s face never seemed the same twice. Here, she was slender as a skeleton; there, round-cheeked and -bellied; and in a knotted carving almost completely covered by candle wax, she was muscled and square-jawed.

“I’m sorry,” called Ashlan, pawing at her neck again, still feeling an echo of that rubbery wriggling on her skin. “Did you say—”

“Nerves.”

The ruptured bear lurched out of a dark corner, bearing a tray laden with wooden bowls and clay mugs, depositing it smoothly on a low, wooden table.

“Drink,” rang Tanka’s voice. “Eat.”

Ashlan mumbled an absent-minded thanks, then took a cup.

“Ashlan,” whispered Hollis.

“Silent partner,” she said, just before she guzzled.

The tea was cold, as Tanka had promised her, but it tasted pleasantly of honey and flowers where Ashlan had expected bitter roots and herbs. Chasing it with a berry cake that sent crumbs spilling over her tunic, she stared back at the overlapping networks of pale fibers that hung over the door.

“Nerves, huh?”

Hollis sidled up against her. “Ashlan.” He was peering around, slapping the back of her calf. “Where are they?” he whispered. “The junkies, can you see them?”

Ashlan, her headache abating, couldn’t think of any reason to be so suspicious. Everything seemed fine here. If Tanka wanted any of them harmed, they’d be harmed, that was all—what good would worrying do?

“I don’t understand,” she called out, looking around. “You mean—nerves from bodies?”

“Of course,” came Tanka’s voice. “Where else would one find them? These—belonged to Umber, once.”

Ashlan heard a chirping, and looked up.

“Here I am, Lady Ley.”

She could see Tanka now, as if she’d allowed herself to be seen. She was perched on a high ledge framed in grassy nests, her fingers entangled in an extraordinarily large skein of white stuff secured to the ceiling above. Now that Ashlan gave it some consideration, it didn’t resemble moss so much as an unearthed system of roots, organized around a long, central stem. That must be Umber’s spine, she thought, and the four fluttering branches were his arms and legs, and all those tiny rootlets had once been spread through his heavy, breathing flesh.

She wondered how Tanka had managed to extract them.

It no longer felt awful.

It seemed wondrous, now.

And perfectly natural that the cold scrap of white that had landed on the nape of her neck had made its wriggling way down her spine. Warmed by the heat of her skin, it tickled, not at all unpleasantly, as it began to stretch itself around her ribs.

Smiling privately, she took a bowl of soup and drank. It was a delicious melange of broth and root vegetables, so hearty that she didn’t mind its coldness, nor that Hollis was making such a racket as Umber carried him, by the ankles, down a shadowy hall.

“Are you curious about them?” said Tanka. “The nerves, I mean.”

“You gathered all these,” Ashlan said, sitting on the floor beside the table and cracking a boiled egg, “for your—collection?”

“For my research,” said Tanka. She hopped nimbly from her ledge, down a series of wide platforms and onto the floor, where she pulled a massive basket from an alcove, almost too broad for her arms to bear.

It was full of writhing, furry creatures. The largest one, Ashlan saw as she peeled the shell, was the carcass of a mountain lion, with a little painting like Umber’s in its own ripped chest. Tenderly, it was nuzzling the living kittens that were curled up beside it—and inside, since one was at play in its ribs.

“I had an ailment, once,” said Tanka, feeding the kittens, one at a time, from a leather skin. “It dwelt in my nerves for most of my life. I’m younger than you are, do you know it?”

“Most people are.” Ashlan, having devoured the egg, decided she was full. She sat back, cradling the teacup in her hands. The wriggling seemed intent on covering her entire body, as if she were being fitted with a very cozy suit—of warm rubber, perhaps, or supple skin.

“This ailment disturbed me deeply,” said Tanka, batting the mountain lion’s muzzle away from the milk. “It would often make me tremble. Sometimes it would make me shake. It distracted me from my work, and from the company of my friends. So I collected all of these, from people and other animals, to help me fix it. And fix it I did. I am pleased to say that I healed what the doctors of Eth said could not be healed, and that I have been healthy for many years.”

Ashlan had to set down her cup.

She was afraid she’d spill the tea.

Tanka looked up in surprise. “Does my story please you, Lady Ley?”

Ashlan realized she’d been laughing, hard enough that tears were spilling down her face. “Yes, it does.”

“Will you tell me why?”

“Because you can change living bodies,” she said. Her amusement was gone. Only the warmth of her suit remained. “And I—I want mine changed.”

She always had, she realized. Or at least for as long as she could remember.

Tanka turned her face away, smiling. “Then you have come to the right place.”

Ashlan arched her back and let out a great yawn.

“Lie down, if you’re sleepy.”

She did, right on the floor, and closed her eyes.

“But don’t go to sleep,” said Tanka. “Not just yet. I must be—honest with you. It is important to me that we are honest with each other. You are an esteemed guest, Lady Ley, as is the stag when he carries his heavy antlers onto my lawn, bearing news from home. For this is your wood, however you have learned to think of yourself in your long, unpleasant travels. Are you still with me?”

“Yes.” Ashlan could feel the suit closing around her fingers and toes, even the tip of her nose. She relaxed herself completely, surprised at how deep her breath could run, how slow.

“I have become a part of this wood, too, but for me it took effort, education. By now, I am more a part of it than of mankind. I have not spoken in words for many years—not since I dug the ailment out of my flesh, and replaced my faulty nerves with those of my friends and adversaries. No human has seen me in almost a decade, unless they were about to go home—or demanded to be sent there. Instead, I have given my life to my friends, and to my creation. I love both more than any troth could express, and I do not regret the time I have spent here. But what my friends tell me when they visit, more insistently each day—friends like Umber, when he was alive, and Lady Greatcat here, and all the unnamed others who still have breath in their lungs—is that I am missed, back home. Do you know what I mean by that?”

“Death,” said Ashlan, the word as heavy on her tongue as gold in her palm. “You mean death.”

“Yes,” said Tanka, settling down beside her. A bird seemed to have settled down, too, chirping as it pecked at the food on the tray. “Although that name is unpleasant to me. It conjures an end, where I know there is a land. My homeland. Most names are unpleasant, though, or at least ill-fitting. Even the one I’ve given myself. It seems—an approximation. For something better painted, or sung.”

Umber was dragging something heavy in. It had been some time since Hollis had made any noise, wherever he was.

“But I do not return home, not yet, for a single reason. Do you know what it is?”

Ashlan couldn’t imagine one. She wasn’t sure she’d ever been able to.

“No.”

“What keeps me here is my desire to create.” Another bird flapped down, and another. “I am a woman, both like and unlike yourself. But however far I have traveled, whatever I have woven with nerves and with flesh, whatever I might carve, or paint, or tell in song, the ultimate act of creation remains beyond me. And so I stand alone, unable to love, unable to give as I would—until I gain my final boon from this world. Tell me, Lady Ley, do you know what that is?”

Umber, by now, had dragged the heavy thing up to Ashlan’s side and trudged off.

Tanka’s riddle wasn’t hard to answer. It just felt nosy to do so, with or without an invitation. But between her height and the peculiar timbre of her voice, which belonged to no category but its own, Ashlan could guess.

She was reminded of a woman who’d been her lover long ago—of Tay, who’d proudly called herself crosswise, and broken the will, if not the nose, of anyone who’d shamed her for it.

Until the Liniment Boys slit her throat—for confusing them, as they’d put it.

Crosswise. Ashlan couldn’t imagine Tanka calling herself any such thing.

All the same, she’d asked her for an answer, and Ashlan had to give it.

“You don’t—have a womb,” she said.

Tanka gave a short, bitter laugh. “I do,” she lilted, “it simply hasn’t arrived yet. But I didn’t mean the crucible, Lady Ley. I meant its proof. A child.”

For a while they listened to the birds cracking seeds in a bowl.

“And this is where you will help me become myself—as Umber once did, with his nerves. I did not take his life, as I hope you have guessed. He died on his own, after we had been friends for a good while. It was painful to wait, but wait I did, and would have waited longer, for the sake of our friendship. But I have no such luxury now. My time is short, and you, Lady Ley, have no such—restrictions.”

Ashlan thought of how freely she’d given her guts to the addicts, and wondered how she could possibly object.

Something about that thought troubled her.

She realized, foggily, that she couldn’t object.

Nor could she say anything at all.

Because Tanka hadn’t asked her a question. Everything else Ashlan had said, for quite some time, had been at Tanka’s express invitation.

Umber was dragging a second heavy thing into the room. Ashlan struggled to open her eyes, and found that impossible, too.

“You may look.”

The woman and the boy were laying in low cradles on either side of her, still fully clothed, but blanketed in deep piles of orange fronds. They seemed to be breathing easier, though the boy was wheezing.

Tanka was squatting near Ashlan’s feet. “I care little for the lives of humans, as you may have gathered. But you, Lady Ley, are no human.”

Ashlan wanted to object.

This was what Tanka had been getting at all along.

But Ashlan had a mother, once, and siblings. They just hadn’t been—like her.

Cursed.

“It must have occurred to you.” Tanka smiled, and the wrinkles around her eyes reminded Ashlan that she was vulnerable, despite her power, and aging, even now. “However you might have pushed the question out of your mind. You are more powerful than I, Lady Ley. More powerful than most anyone alive. But you do not know yourself—that much was clear from the moment I met you. I think you must be a foundling. And so I have bound you, rather rudely, because I have waited so long for your arrival that I cannot wait for your understanding. Still, I will not take what I need without offering you an exchange. I might earn your exasperation, but I would not earn your enmity. And this is why it made me so glad to hear that you, too, are in need of change! That means that you can see me, doesn’t it?”

“Yes.”

That was the worst part.

Ashlan understand her perfectly.

She thought, without knowing why, that this must be the true reason she was keeping Hollis close.

Because she needed him as Tanka needed her.

Tanka reached toward Ashlan’s face.

“May I touch you?”

“Yes.”

The hand was warm and dry.

“Tell me.”

Ashlan’s breath thickened.

“Tell me what you are, that you would yet become.”

She tried not to speak.

“You have been seeking some goal. That much is clear just from looking at you. You’ve folded yourself around it, until you can barely breathe.”

The suit tightened around her skin until it felt like her eyes would burst.

“What have you been seeking, Lady Ley?”

Ashlan did not want to speak this truth.

She didn’t even want to know it.

But it was slipping out on its own.

“What I want,” Ashlan whispered, “is to die.”

Tanka did not take her hand away.

She watched Ashlan breathe for a long while.

“You are aware, aren’t you?” she said with a wistful smile. “That this is a far greater distance to travel, for one such as yourself, than for me to become a mother.”

“Yeah.” Ashlan looked at the ceiling, feeling her heart seize. “Is it impossible?”

“No.” Tanka stroked Ashlan’s cheek with her thumb. “I don’t believe so, Lady Ley. Not impossible. Just very, very difficult. And requiring components that are, quite frankly, beyond my means to purchase. They’d cost a king’s ransom. Now, you might find them and steal them, mind you, or kill their owners. But by then you might be asking these things of my child, and not of me—for by the time you’d won that war, I’d have gone home before you, whether I wished it or no.”

Ashlan was laughing again.

This time Tanka did pull her hand away. “Have I—upset you?”

“No. No, it’s fine. Just don’t—don’t hurt the doll. He has gold. A queen’s ransom. Enough to buy whatever you need.”

“Ah. Now I see why you tolerate him!” She laughed herself, a bright, musical sound. “But come, we have no need to delay what we’ve both waited for—not a moment more.” Standing, she peered down at the cradles. “Which of these two would you rather be?”

The smile slid from Ashlan’s face.

Something sought to buoy her mood, just as the suit held her body in place.

“Neither.”

“You must pick one, Lady Ley.” Tanka knelt next to the boy. “This one has fluid in his lungs. He hasn’t breathed properly for some time. I’m not sure why, but perhaps his body will tell us the tale. Umber, the shears?” The bear withdrew to an alcove, digging through a pile of clanking tools. “But it is a minor pain, as such things go. The woman’s arm is ruined, as you know. We can do nothing there, not without far more effort than she warrants. The pain will be excruciating, and constant. I’d go with the boy, if it were up to me. But you know them better.” She folded her arms beneath her breasts. “Choose.”

It hurt not to.

But it was only pain.

Now that she’d noticed Tanka’s spell at work in her mind, she could struggle against it. Not enough to move of her own volition, but enough to disobey.

“Don’t take me out of myself,” she gasped.

Tanka frowned. “Hush,” she said, flicking a finger at Ashlan’s mouth.

Ashlan felt the wriggling, supple substance of Tanka’s spell drawing itself over her lips, sealing them shut with comfort and warmth.

“This will not be quick, Lady Ley. This is untested magic. I have long theorized. I have imagined the forms extensively. I have filled sketchbooks with plans. But still, there will be—guesswork. It will take many drafts before I get it right. And while they are tested, I will not listen to a friend of this wood as she suffers interminably.” She laid a hand on the boy’s cradle. “To these two, I owe no such loyalty. So you and the boy will trade places, for a time.”

The bear lumbered back with a pair of shears, their blades as long as Tanka’s forearms. Kneeling, she laid one under his shirt, one over, and cut him out of it.

“Hm.”

Ashlan wrested her head up, though it felt like it would split her skull. She saw another layer of fabric under the boy’s shirt, startlingly filthy, wound tightly around his chest. The skin around it was angry, with open sores where the friction had been greatest.

No wonder there was fluid in his lungs.

“What—is this?” Tanka murmured. “What’s he done to himself?”

The answer was plain enough, at least to a former student of the Uni: the boy was as bent as a thrown-away nail, and he’d been binding his breasts for so long that he’d given himself pleurisy. He must have been wearing the makeshift binder in his sleep, probably to keep his partner in crime from learning the truth—as a matter of survival, if modern-day Eth was anything like its forebear.

What’s he done to himself? Tanka had never encountered a binder before, it seemed. So she’d asked a question, and Ashlan, focusing on her unspoken explanation, wedged her desire to answer against Tanka’s order to keep quiet—with enough force to part her lips at one corner.

It was barely enough to pull air through. She’d been foolish enough to hope that the spell would break if she managed it, that she’d be able to grab those shears and get free. Instead, the warm weight of the suit pressed down harder, sealing her mouth shut again—and closing her nostrils, to boot.

Tanka lifted the shears again, her white brow furrowed as she slid a blade beneath the bandages, directly under his arm, where she began, with obvious impatience, to cut him loose.

“I’ll get you settled in him quickly,” she was muttering, “and we’ll care for your new lungs before too much time has passed.”

Ashlan couldn’t draw breath. She could only watch as Tanka sliced the stiff fabric open, then began to tug it roughly from his skin.

Then she saw him, and her body froze.

She was staring at his breasts, marked deeply by the tight-wound fabric.

The shears clattered to her side.

Her face, so impassive all this while that each expression had come as a minor revelation, was roiling with complicated reactions that seemed to chase each other away, then recur. Several times she seemed about to speak, but nothing came.

Stars appeared in Ashlan’s eyes as she began to suffocate.

She watched as a bird landed on Tanka’s hunched back.

Tanka didn’t budge.

At last, even Umber seemed to tire of her silence, picking up the shears and shuffling off. This seemed to stir Tanka from her reverie. Hearing Ashlan’s body shaking behind her, she covered the boy’s chest with the orange fronds, either with tenderness or a depth of sorrow that amounted, however briefly, to the same. Looking drained, she leaned over Ashlan’s body and plucked at the back of her neck.

The warmth retracted from Ashlan’s body, all at once, as she gulped down breath. “Fuck,” she shouted. Every muscle in her frame was convulsing from the sudden cold.

Tanka didn’t look at her. She stared at the walls instead, settling at last on the grand, red mural. “Do you know,” she said, “it is possible that I have been away from humans too long?”

Ashlan struggled up, rubbing her arms, looking for something heavy to swing.

“I—I noticed nothing,” Tanka said.

Ashlan stopped herself. Don’t attack, she thought. Don’t run. Don’t even move. Not without a plan.

In the meantime, if Tanka was feeling talkative, let her talk.

“Don’t beat yourself up about it,” she muttered. “The kid’s doing a pretty solid job of passing.”

Tanka glared at the wall. “I don’t mean his—his body. That’s none of my concern, or yours. Don’t mistake me, Lady Ley; that the boy and I are not like you does not mean that we are like each other.”

“Okay.” Ashlan was peering at the shadowy folds in the walls, each one covered in a curtain of nerves, trying to determine where Umber had taken the mannikin. “So why’d you stop?”

She’d found the hall, she thought, but she still wasn’t moving.

It could only be because Tanka had said she could help her die.

Ashlan realized that she believed her.

There might be other enchanters, of course, who could do the job.

But Ashlan was wondering how any of them would know what she was, when she herself never had.

Tanka claimed to. And Ashlan believed that, too.

“I hate the city,” Tanka said softly. “I hate its denizens, in general. In groups, everything they do repulses me. The things that they build. The things that they believe. The men they choose to worship. But its people, alone—I know them not at all. Least of all the youth. And though I would prefer to forget it, I am one of them. I was born in Eth, under the bridge at Tunica Media.” She folded her arms. “This boy is awful, I have no doubt. He has done awful things, at any rate. And yet—he’s done none of them to me. And if I’ve proven anything in my short life, it is that I cannot see the future.”

“Me either.” Ashlan gave up.

For better or worse, she needed Tanka.

Let her call it home, if she liked. But Ashlan prayed that death would be an ending.

“Umber?” Tanka called. “Free the talking doll. I’ve gone about this all wrong.”

While the bear shuffled down the hall, Tanka crossed to an alcove, finding a dusty bag of grass-colored velvet. Turning to Ashlan with a thin smile, she pulled out a slender bottle and held it out.

“Is that—”

“Greenfellow’s Reserve,” she murmured.

“Single malt.”

Ashan was salivating. That distillery had burned down twenty years ago.

Since then, she hadn’t tasted anything but moonshine.

“I’ve forgotten most of the manners I knew,” said Tanka. “But I seem to remember liquor being essential to making amends.”

Much as she hated to, Ashlan turned away. “I don’t know. Let’s see what the boss has to say.”

Tanka’s face fell. She tucked the bottle under one arm. “Very well.”

Umber carried a large pillowcase out of the hall and dumped it, without ceremony, in the middle of the floor. Out of the mass of wadded cotton wriggled Hollis, who leapt away from the bear and ran, sputtering, to Ashlan’s side. “There’s more? I thought I’d be ground up by now, and sealed in this witch’s next pie. But what has this despot of droppings and acorns done to you, Ashlan Ley?” He pressed against her leg.

The fabric of his body was still damp from the rain. She tried to shrug him off, to no avail. “I mean. Not much, in the end. She choked before she got to the good part.”

“But she was about to do nefarious things. You can see it in her beady little eyes!”

Tanka snorted. “Am I to be tried in the Court of Almost, then? And who will be my judge?”

“At the very least, you altered the mind and body of my lieutenant,” he huffed. “Why did you stop?”

“I’ve decided to let you live, Mister Runt. Explanations are not owed to you.”

“Well,” said Hollis, sticking out his chin, “what matters is that we’re free to go. Unless you only brought me out to scramble my brains, as well?”

“Not unless you have the ability to imbibe.” Stiffly, she held out the bottle. “I admit that I headed down a—an unstable pathway. But I hope that we might still—benefit one another.”

Tanka treated herself to a generous slug of Greenfellow’s, then passed it to Ashlan.

Ashlan gulped, her eyes watering, her mouth full of peat. “What’s the move, boss?”

He squinted. “I don’t see why we ought to treat with her at all,” he murmured. “The junkies look stable enough to me.”

“That all depends on what you want them to do,” said Tanka. “Walking, for instance, is quite beyond them now. But it needn’t be.”

He looked to Ashlan. “You don’t really trust her, do you?”

She didn’t.

But she needed her.

“Yeah, I think she’s on the level,” Ashlan muttered. “Coming at it a little crooked, maybe.” She swigged again. “If it makes you feel any better, she already knows all my dirt. Might as well tell her what she needs to know.”

She’d take it anyway, if she wanted it, thought Ashlan, passing the bottle back.

Hollis scowled, and trotted away from her. “That doesn’t make me feel better at all, Ashlan Ley. What it does is make me wonder whether you’re still dazed from whatever whammy she laid on you while I was indisposed. No, I think I’d rather that Tanka Equinox set me at ease. Tell me—after all this skullduggery, why should I believe that you want to help us?”

Tanka had raised the bottle to her lips. She let it fall. “I’ve come to understand that Lady Ley and I share a certain—”

“I told her you want to kill your creator,” blurted Ashlan, glaring over his head at Tanka, who snapped her mouth shut. “That he’s building a, uh—a factory for murder dolls, and the addicts are going to lead us there.”

He whirled on one platform heel. “That was not yours to tell!”

“I know,” she said, dropping to a crouch. “I’m sorry, Runt. I was under the influence. Not whiskey, I mean. She—she put a whammy on me!”

His little shoulders were heaving. “You are both lucky that I have so little time left.”

Tanka strode to Hollis’ other side, arching an eyebrow. “But it is fortuitous, is it not?”

He gave a sour laugh. “How’s that? Because you can stuff more of me in pillowcases now?”

She nodded. “Just so. It may not be pleasant to work with one who loathes all that you are, Mister Runt. But I would gladly join you, for a time, if it means working to eradicate such shoddy rune-craft.”

“This shit again,” Ashlan muttered, reaching for the bottle.

Tanka looked startled at her thirst, but gave it up readily enough.

“You take me for a rube,” he said softly. “As if anyone with such powers would leave her stronghold just for the satisfaction of killing puppets.”

“Ah, you mistake me,” said Tanka. “Helping you helps Lady Ley. And helping Lady Ley helps me help myself.”

He looked at Ashlan, shocked. “Do you mean to tell me, Ashlan Ley, that you’ve promised this witch a slice of your inheritance?”

Ashlan, who’d been wondering how all of this could possibly come to a conclusion, nodded quickly. “Yes,” she said, wondering where she’d put the cork, then deciding that it didn’t matter. “That is what I did.”

She’d promised her all of it, she realized—whatever it took to get her spellwork up and running, at which point Ashlan would have no use for gold, because she’d be dead.

Hollis’ enchanted cabinet had seemed like a convenient excuse to keep him close, but it was lucky there was a hefty payoff at the end of all this, after all.

“Well.” Hollis scowled, but opened his palms. “I suppose it’s yours to divvy up as you see fit, should all this come to a pleasant conclusion—by which I mean the Puppeteer drowning in a pool of his own fluids. Very well, Tanka Equinox! Let us find the man responsible for making more of me, and force him to put down his needle for good. Perhaps you could help me immobilize him with your nerve blankets, so that I might carve at my leisure? I have a particular pattern I’d like to try, a sort of fleshy gammon-board that I think he’d survive for an hour or two at the very—”

“Hey, time for a cheers! Cheers, everybody.”

Ashlan drank enough to cover both of them and the bear, then sat heavily on the floor.

Tanka sized her up, judging her useless. “Tell me, Mister Runt, what you had in mind. The larger pattern, I mean.”

“Very well.” Hollis was stalking around the cradles, frowning prodigiously. “When I met your Lady Ley, these two ruffians were harvesting her organs on behalf of this vile Puppeteer, tearing the fruit from her basket while she played possum.”

Tanka looked aghast. “You allowed them to remove your insides?”

“Easier than fighting,” Ashlan murmured into the neck of the bottle. “Don’t judge me.”

“Our plan, at first, was to follow them to their lair in Eth, then gain entry with some degree of stealth,” said Hollis, poking at the woman’s charred wristbone. “But all that’s gone to pot. The best we can hope for, by now, is that you might be able to meddle with their minds, so that they wake feeling friendly. That should be a doddle for you, I’d guess.” He gestured at the ceiling. “Just slap a few of your dangling ganglia on their heads, and we’re off!”

Tanka pursed her lips. “No.”

“Damn you, Tanka Equinox!” He stamped his foot. “Have we forged an alliance, or no?”

She took a deep breath, then peered down at him. “Why would you want them to feel friendly toward you?”

Hollis looked blankly at Ashlan. “I thought you were the one who was drinking.”

“I think he’s trying to say that we need to know they’ll cooperate,” said Ashlan.

“No,” said Tanka again, stepping toward the cradles. “You need to know that they’ll obey. It is far easier to compel submission than friendship. Umber, my chalk.”

Hollis brightened. “Are you going to put little paintings in their chests?”

“One would think their fellow humans might notice,” murmured Tanka. Umber brought her a stick of chalk and a large shard of slate, and she sat between the sleeping bodies. “No, it would be best if we alter something simple. Like their relationship to what they love most.”

Ashlan shooed an errant kitten, which padded off to Hollis’ side, sniffing at him with interest. “Which is—?”

“Tlak,” said Hollis, waving the cat away. “Stay sober enough to keep up, Ashlan, this concerns you, too! But it is tlak,” he said to Tanka, “that is the very problem with any plan involving their obeisance. Should we try to bribe them, they’ll buy an ample supply and nod off before they’re useful. Threaten them, and they’ll be that much more likely to sell us out. To say nothing of their bizarre religion, which seems to inform their every decision, and in consistently unexpected ways. So unless you’re sitting on a veritable mountain of drugs, Tanka Equinox, with a direct pipeline to the whims of Fortuna, I fail to see how you intend to motivate them without mind control.”

“Not a mountain of drugs,” Tanka murmured, scribbling feverishly. “A valley.”

“Are you—” Hollis tilted his head. “Are you being purposely obtuse?”

“It is possible.”

Ashlan leaned over and peered at the slate. “Is that person—vivisected?”

“Opened,” said Tanka, pointing. “I’ll draw doors on their backs that will swing wide. All their soft parts will emerge, while your essence, Lady Ley, keeps them alive.”

She sighed. “You’re talking about my blood, aren’t you?”

“Your blood,” said Tanka, “and other vital magics.”

“You’d better have some more of those berry cakes,” said Ashlan, leaning back on her elbows. “At least a dozen. Maybe thirteen.”

“All fine,” said Hollis, “so long as your kittens don’t get peckish. But toward what end? What valley are you speaking of?”

“A good spell requires symmetry. They took Lady Ley’s insides,” said Tanka, sliding her slate before him. “So we shall rebuild theirs. When we are through, their metabolisms will be altered, such that they’ll get no pleasure from their addictions. They’ll still need the tlak,” she said, pointing to a labyrinthine squiggle in the midst of her diagram, “to fend off withdrawal. But they won’t feel anything, ever again. Unless, of course, they do just as we say.”

Hollis paused, dumbstruck.

“Oh!” he cried, giggling uncontrollably. “I suppose this witch of yours has her good points, after all.”

Ashlan polished off the bottle of Greenfellow’s as she stared at the sleeping bodies in the cradles, thinking of the hell they’d wake to. “You’re cold, T.”

Tanka smiled, rubbing the throat of the smallest kitten. “So they tell me.”