Zosia noticed the change as soon as she stepped up into the street. The frosty air still carried the tang of smoke, but unlike the night of her arrival it was mild enough to merely be the scent of a city, not necessarily a burning one. Choplicker had led her through a secret passage that opened into the rear of an alley several blocks away from the actual face of Castle Diadem, and as she followed her devil out to the main thoroughfare she saw they had been right to use a less obvious exit. At the end of the street a small mob was clustered in front of one of the castle’s many gates, using a team of oxen to try to raise it. If she hadn’t known how many more thick doors barred by stone and sorcery lay between them and the true interior of the castle she might have been concerned for Indsorith, alone in the great sepulcher of her palace, but as carefully as the Black Pope had locked up on her way out, it would take ages for anyone not in possession of a powerful and obliging devil to gain egress. Choplicker turned the other way out of the alley, and Zosia followed him into the city.
That first night had been far too hectic for her to appreciate being back in Diadem after all these years, but now that the riots had calmed and she was able to stroll along the quiet streets she was struck by how little the place had changed. The towering, close-packed buildings that made canyons out of every avenue looked so dilapidated that only being boxed in by their neighbors kept them from tipping over. Indeed, just about every other block there was a high, accidental arch where a teetering building had listed forward only to have its fall arrested by the structure across the street. Fire had recently gutted many of the rowhouses, and the whole city would have probably burned down if not for the perpetual drizzle of ash-stained rain that even now went to work dyeing Choplicker’s coat the same color as his soul. Assuming he had one.
The labyrinthine streets were completely empty, but faces peered out from behind shutters, and conversations were carried on far overhead as folk leaned out their windows or lounged on precarious balconies to address their neighbors across the street. Occasionally an insult or challenge would be hurled down at Zosia, and once a bit of masonry that might have brained her if Choplicker hadn’t diverted it with a swish of his tail, but she never caught sight of her presumably juvenile harassers. Only when she saw her wavering reflection in an oily puddle that filled one of the many claustrophobic courtyards did she realize that she might have been inviting more than the inevitable amount of unfriendly attention one attracts when venturing into rough neighborhoods: her dark hooded cloak looked a bit like a novice’s cowl, the scarf she’d pulled over her mouth and nose might’ve been a Chainwitch’s mask, and the large hammer she carried over one shoulder to discourage muggers was engraved with holy iconography. She had been worried someone might recognize her as the former queen, but really now, she looked like a Chainite. So much for low profile.
Glancing back with one of his lewd smiles, Choplicker turned into an arcade that opened onto the courtyard. The wide gallery was clogged with heaps of broken masonry, rotten timber, and stinking refuse, some of it reaching to the arched ceiling, but there was a narrow path winding through the debris. As soon as she stepped out of the rain into the arcade she heard a sharp whistle from the upper stories of one of the surrounding buildings, and a responding trill came from somewhere ahead, within the gallery. She must be getting close to something good, if instead of simply announcing her arrival the locals were trying to scare her off it.
She followed Choplicker into the close passage, the smell of a rained-out campfire now replaced with that of the black mold that bloomed throughout the garbage. It reminded her of a catacomb, only less pleasant, and she was glad they didn’t travel deep into the arcade before her devil led her to a secret passage far less effectively concealed than the one they had used to quit the castle. Even if Choplicker hadn’t stopped in front of the too-sturdy grandmother clock set too precisely in a too carefully stacked mountain of rubble, she would have suspected the spot simply based on all the footprints in the grime that led to and from its thick walnut waist. Zosia reached out to test the door but Choplicker warned her off with a bark, and pursing her lips, she made a big show of winding up her hammer to bash the thing in.
“None of that, now!” cried a voice from behind the heavily oxidized face of the clock.
“So you’re going to open up, then?” she asked, imagining how demented she might seem to a casual observer. The old lady talks to clocks. “I’m here to see Boris.”
“Not a Boris in the house,” said the unseen bouncer. “Just a dozen heavily armed bruisers who pay me to see they’re not disturbed while they take their tea. Now piss off or I’ll shoot you where you stand.”
“Ugggggh, you’re really going to make me say it, aren’t you?” Zosia was talking to herself, but Choplicker answered with a happy snort at her annoyance.
“Count of three, mum, and if you’re not gone—”
“Zosia lives,” she said, self-consciously glancing up and down the cramped track. What an embarrassment.
There was a pause from the clock, and then it said, “Come again?”
Clearing her throat and pointing a threatening finger at Choplicker, she leaned closer and repeated the phrase Boris had insisted was the universal password used by Diadem’s rebels. “Zosia. Lives.”
There was an even longer silence, and then the increasingly familiar-sounding voice said, “Still didn’t catch that, I’m afraid. Speak up a bit. Really enunciate.”
“Zosia lives,” she growled, “but Boris won’t if he keeps jerking me around.”
“We got to stop meeting like this, Yer Majesty,” said the frostburned little man as the great door of the long-clock popped open and he ushered her inside his burrow with a bow. “Word gets out that your devil fancies the scent of my trail and nobody will invite me to their parties anymore.”
“And here I thought you couldn’t wait to introduce me to your friends,” said Zosia as Choplicker stuck his nose in Boris’s crotch in the way she knew he absolutely hated.
“Don’t have much choice in the matter now that you’ve arrived,” said Boris, hands hovering on either side of Choplicker’s face as if he weren’t sure which was more dangerous, to push the devil away or scratch behind his ears. She noticed that while he still wore the ostentatious auburn cloak of dyed gorilla skin and the lemur hair vest she had scared up back at the Lark’s Tongue camp, he didn’t carry the battle-ax she’d insisted he take from Ulver’s smithy. “But looking on the bright side, I do stand to collect on a number of wagers as to whether or not I actually met the Stricken Queen, so let’s get you inside and introduced to those who’s running Diadem now that the Chain’s left and the Crown’s folded.”
She ducked inside after Choplicker and pulled the door of the clock shut behind her until it clicked. The false trash heap housed a cramped cave, with a small table and a pair of stools lit by a stinking cod lamp—the catch of the day in Desolation Sound was so greasy that wicks were wiggled into the mouths of the fish and used to provide cheap if rancorous light. “Impressive use of space, Boris. It may be smaller than your tent back at the camp but it’s every bit as smelly.”
“Ho ho,” said Boris, and when Choplicker left off him to go snuffle the fumes from the cod lamp he went to the rear wall and rapped his knuckles on an exposed beam. “My own rooms aren’t so fancy as this foyer, alas. I figured you’d be coming for me soon enough, so put the word out that if a crone and her hound came creeping around to come and let me answer the door. Had my suspicions you weren’t done with me yet.”
A seam of light appeared in the wall of the cave and a more skillfully hidden door swung inward. Boris ushered her into the open floor of what looked to be a tavern abutting the arcade, where a dozen big bruisers did indeed sit around tables taking their tea. A stout pair of women rose from the bench, and after giving Zosia the hard-eye went back out to take Boris’s place on guard duty in the clock-cave. None of the rest paid them much mind, and after snagging a bottle of rotgut Boris led her through yet another trapdoor in the back of the bar and down through a maze of sunken storerooms and corridors that bore a closer resemblance to mineshafts than to hallways … and every time they passed another guard that damn password got invoked, with Boris bowing to his companion as he said it just to twist the knife.
“What’d I tell you, Yob—Zosia lives, and I’ll be collecting those five krones directly, please and thank you.”
“Zosia lives, Alaka, and that’s a tael you owe me.”
“A very fine morning to you, Miss Pnathval, and if I might trouble you for three shiny pieces of six? No no, not a loan, but you see, well … Zosia lives.”
Not a one of them actually produced payment, even when Zosia begrudgingly acknowledged her identity to the incredulous guards, but Boris didn’t seem to mind much. “What comes around goes around, and once you’re acknowledged by the powers that be they won’t be able to welch. Let them think the con’s long for now; we both know it’s as short as your temper.”
“You didn’t waste much time using my name to turn a profit,” Zosia observed.
“I’m not one for waste,” said Boris, popping his thumbs through the drawstring of his orange cloak. “But really, anyone who wanted to call me a liar deserves to be shaken out of a silver or two, after all I been through to bring you here. They’re the ones who coined the phrase, after all, so you’d think they’d be the first ones to believe that … wait for it … Zosia lives!”
“If you can call this a living,” said Zosia, taking a pull on his bottle of turnipwine as they passed a final guard and entered a dank, circular stone chamber with a well in the center. “How big a cut of your winnings do I get when you finally collect?”
“Same as whatever percentage of the royal treasury you see fit to grant me, for arranging this meet between Diadem’s past and its future.”
“See, Boris, you never give me any credit—I’m not just the past, I’m the sort what comes back to haunt you.” Seeing Choplicker’s ears prick up and his tail wag as they came to the edge of the well where a spiral staircase descended into the black rock of the city’s base, Zosia cocked her own ear and heard a hubbub echoing up from below, like a host of devils cavorting in the deep. “What’s down there? A gladiator pit?”
“Close,” said Boris. “All the different factions who think they ought to run the city come together for a moot.”
“Ugh,” said Zosia, who would have preferred taking on ten comers in a battle royal to a political squabble. “Adding me to that mix is just going to be tossing peat onto the pyre. I tracked you down to get some answers about what the hell happened here, not raise a bunch more for whoever’s trying to pick up the pieces. Walk me back to the castle and fill me in as we go, and best of luck to whoever wants to try ruling this damn dump. I’m thick, I’ll admit it, but not thick enough to stick my head in the same noose I already slipped.”
“Not a chance,” said Boris, pointing to the stairs. “You’re going down there, Yer Majesty, so no sense dragging your slippers.”
“Excuse me?” Zosia had thought she was too burnt out to feel strongly about much of anything, but being ordered about by this punk set her teeth to grinding … and not just with his lip, but also at her own foolishness. The runt had seemed such a minor threat it hadn’t occurred to her to be chary as he led her deeper and deeper into an unknown force’s territory, past dozens of armed guards. Choplicker finally looked his old self again, after his mysterious errand to retrieve the battered Carnelian Crown had left him weaker than she’d ever seen him … but whomever Boris answered to must know who Zosia was, and that she had Choplicker with her, and yet they had still admitted her to their sanctum. There were legends all over the Star about rituals and relics and such that could allegedly counteract a devil’s power, so might they actually have some method of overcoming her unholy protector? Had she just come trotting into a trap of her own volition?
“You’re my miracle, Queen Zosia,” said Boris with a sneer, and Zosia moved to shove the scheming weasel down the stairs when she was brought up short by Choplicker, of all fucking things—the devil got in her way as he ambled over to sniff an appealing stain on the dirty floor, and while it only slowed her for a moment it was enough for the oblivious Boris to finish his thought. “Or are your words so empty you don’t even remember them as soon as they’ve fallen out your lips?”
“I … what now?” Zosia had no idea what he was talking about, but he sounded so sure of himself she bit the inside of her cheek and tried to puzzle it out.
“Back with the Cobalts, that pretty song you sung me?” He looked vulnerable, like it had been a damn fine speech but he needed to hear it again to keep his nerve up. Problem was she’d been so damn tired for so damn long she still couldn’t remember a damn thing. Reading her face, he filled her in. “When you and your devil here came for me in the camp, you looked me in the eye and said you were sorry, and you were ready to listen to me.”
She had said that? Didn’t sound bloody likely … but then it seemed even less likely he’d invent such a tall tale.
“You said you were ready to work with us to fix Diadem, to fix the Empire.” There was a pitiful shine of hope about the man, and it looked downright unnatural on his grubby features. “You said we had to work together to get rid of the Burnished Chain first and foremost, right, that you and me would come here to Diadem, and my people and your people would team up to take down the church. ’Cept since the Chainites went ahead and removed themselves from the song we can jump straight to the other things you promised. The ones what involve making things better?”
By the six devils she’d bound, that did sound familiar, even though she couldn’t picture herself saying it. More than the specific words was the feeling behind them, though, the optimism she must have used to sugarcoat her call to arms—the promise that there would come a day when the foes of the common folk were cast down and the rebuilding could commence. No wonder she couldn’t remember her pep talk; it had been hollow sentiment designed to get a heel-dragging heretic to sign on for a suicide mission. How many years had it been since she had honestly believed there would come a day when the yoke was lifted from the Imperial peasantry? How many decades?
“If you think the Chain’s gone for good you people are dreaming,” Zosia heard herself say, her tongue apparently toxic on reflex at this point. “Wherever they went I guarantee they’ll be back, or someone worse will take their place. That’s how it works.”
“Maybe that’s how it worked in your day, Zosia, but your day’s done,” said Boris, looking contemptuously at the former queen of the Crimson Empire. “The city’s ours now, and maybe we’ll hold it for a week or maybe we’ll hold it for a thousand years, but I guarantee you this much—our reign will be better than yours or any crown-wearing fuck-buckler who came before or since. So come down and lend a hand or piss off back to counting the days till you can use Portolés’s hammer to bust heads instead of chains, but if you go you find your own way out. I’ve got work to do.”
Zosia looked down at her devil, and her devil looked back at her, and she asked herself if the curl of his lips had always struck her as an evil smile because that was all she was expecting to see there.
“You must have heard some good speeches in your day, Boris,” she said at last, nodding faintly at the stair. Not like she had anything better to do with her day, even if she was completely fucking terrified of meeting the people who had thought her a martyr to their cause when in fact she’d sold them out for a cushy retirement package in the Kutumbans. She deserved a lot worse than anything they could give her, though, and had the consolation that she’d already lost more than they could ever take. “Let’s go, then, before I do something smart like change my mind.”
Boris grinned as wide as Choplicker and hurried down the stair, nattering on the whole while. “Glad you came when you did; even a day ago things were craaaazy down here. They’d been trying to quiet the riots ’fore we even arrived, if you can believe it, which I scarcely can given the state of the place. Hard to imagine all that fury was just the tail end of it all, and the worst was done a fortnight past. They said—”
“They being who, anyway, Boris?” she asked as the voices rumbling up the stair swelled to a roar. “Who are these factions squabbling over control of the city?”
“Well, my people have their board, right, but then there are the rival thieves’ guilds and other gangs, and the loyal Imperial soldiers who hid out when they saw which way the tide was flowing in the castle, and the holy-minded wildies the Chain left behind, and whatever rebel clergy they saved from the crucifixion forests, and the beggars’ society, and the nobles and merchants who bought off the lynch mobs, and—”
“I get the idea,” said Zosia, feeling increasingly imprisoned as they descended through the oily light of the cod lamps set in the stairway’s alcoves. She was practically shouting to be heard now over the cacophony from below. “Surprised they’re not just murdering each other.”
“Well, the day is young!” Boris was shouting now, as he reached the bottom of the stairs and greeted another guard. “Zosia lives!”
“What is this place!” Zosia asked as they emerged into a huge but crudely carved hall in the obsidian heart of the mountain, the guttering sea of lamps held by thousands of hands casting a low cloud that must not have come close to reaching the distant ceiling, given the acoustics of the place.
“Supposed to be a ghetto!” said Boris. “King Kaldruut ordered it! Wanted to clear out the tenements! Drive our kind down here! But you stopped it!”
“Who did?” Zosia’s ears were ringing, and it sounded like he’d said—
“You did! When you became queen! Remember!”
It sounded more like an order than a question, and sure enough, it did ring a distant gong way, way back in the recesses of Zosia’s memory. Kaldruut had implemented so many devildamned bad ideas that she’d put a stop to it was tough to keep track of them, really. “Why meet here?! A symbol?!”
“Only open space big enough for us all!”
“Oh!” And remembering another of her edicts that had flown in the face of Kaldruut and the rest of the corrupt politicians’ ethos, she said, “I know a better place we can go!”
“Eh?” Boris looked excited, like he might have an inkling but didn’t dare voice it lest his dream be spoiled.
“Got the keys to the castle, comrade!” Zosia shouted, and Choplicker barked his confirmation. How Indsorith would react to the unwashed masses crowding into Castle Diadem was a bridge she would cross when she got to it, but she figured the woman would approve. After all, Indsorith was the second-smartest queen to ever rule the Crimson Empire.