CHAPTER

36

It was a big tree. They all just stared at it from the gangway for a while, trying to take in its enormity. Utterly failing. It made the Winter Palace look no bigger than a hunting cabin, Othean’s walls as low as picket fences. That devil-haunted priest had creeped Zosia out plenty with its talk of She Who Comes leaving a lingering manifestation when the Gate of Gates abruptly closed, and she felt her hackles climb looking at the godly rowan. Of course, both the priest and the devil inside him were obviously insane or worse, so who knew how literally you could take what they said … but wherever it had come from, and whatever it meant—what a fucking tree.

Disembarking from the leviathan at Othean Bay attracted quite a crowd. Zosia hated crowds, but then again when was the last time anyone had thrown confetti at her instead of something substantially harder? Eventually they got through the thick of it and saw that most of the revelers had come down not to welcome them in particular but to marvel at the obscene mockery of natural laws that they had sailed down inside.

Most, but not all. Keun-ju was whisked away by uniformed Immaculates before they were a dozen feet out from the mob, and Purna and Best had been all set to cause a scene when they were informed he was needed to take part in a state function, at which point they couldn’t wash their hands of him fast enough. They had their own urgent plans, after all: to reunite with any and all old friends they could find and get roaringly drunk to celebrate the end of the war, which Zosia and even Hoartrap agreed was a very good idea. It was right up there with bathing, after being cooped up inside their living vessel for way, way too long.

Yet the next person to greet them on the quay looked even more serious than the Immaculates who had shown up for Keun-ju. She was a young, frail-seeming woman with more stray metal in her face than a blacksmith’s apron, and Purna and Best raced to be the first one to accost her—Best with questions, and Purna with embraces. Zosia and Hoartrap hung back a respectful distance, since she looked to be laying bad news on them.

“My apprentice, Nemi,” said Hoartrap, blinking like an owl in the morning sunlight as Choplicker stretched and yawned between them.

“The other witch, right,” said Zosia, already feeling a headache coming on from the glare off all the terraces. “Purna wouldn’t shut up about her. By the six devils I bound, Hoartrap, how’s a nice girl like that fall in with a goblin like you?”

“Would you believe I grew her from an egg?” Hoartrap dramatically arched his eyebrows and fired up the lavender-and-crotch-rot-reeking pipe Zosia had refused to let him smoke in their confined quarters. He sounded dead serious, which was all part of his supposed humor that she’d had more than enough of over the course of their long journey. Between puffs he said, “It’s … actually … an interesting … story.”

“One for another boat ride,” said Zosia, seeing that the girl had turned back down the quay and Purna and Best were following her off. “Hey-o, where are you ladies headed?”

“Oh, um …” Purna suddenly found something between Choplicker’s ears very interesting.

“My brother is hurt, but he asked you both to stay away,” said Best, always reliable in a pinch to tell you the truth however much it stung. Especially then.

“Stuff that,” said Zosia, moving to follow them anyway. “If I lost a tooth every time Maroto told me to piss off and never come back I’d be better at sucking eggs than Hoartrap’s … well.”

She was only going to say mother, but trailed off as she noticed the squirrely-looking apprentice glaring at her. The girl said, “His injuries are grave, and his bedside has been overbusy enough with welcome visitors.”

“Look, you two, I’ll sort this out,” said Purna, slapping one hand on Zosia’s arm and the other on Hoartrap’s. She let them linger there for a moment, as if appreciating how few people had ever done such a thing and walked away. “Quick to fight and quick to forgive, that’s our boy. Five minutes alone with me and he’ll be begging to see the both of you.”

“That I don’t doubt!” said Hoartrap, but let them go without raising his own stink about being kept from Maroto’s bedside. Interesting.

Less interesting but more depressing: how had Zosia grown into the sort of baggage the younger crowd ditched along with Hoartrap? That was a wake-up call if ever there was one … but for now there was nothing to do but make the most of it.

“Well, you old nightmare, what do you say we eat ourselves sick, drink ourselves stupid, and smoke ourselves sane again? That order, and I’m buying.”

“Would that I could, but I seem to be indisposed by the Snort of the Creaming Beasts,” sighed Hoartrap, pointing his pipe at the flagpole at the end of the quay. An old woman was leaning against it, and Zosia squinted to see who she might be, but then a yellow-robed figure stepped out from behind the pole … and another, and another, until a row of five had emerged from a space that had looked too narrow to conceal even one. In addition to their Immaculate robes they wore golden masks and matching horsehair hats, and each carried a staff with a different animal carved into the head, of similar make to the owl-stick Hoartrap always used to carry. Patting Zosia’s shoulder before picking up the pace, he said, “Try to stay out of trouble, and remember that as advocate for the nation of monsters who eradicated half this city you’re actually more hated than ever before in your especially hated life. Toodles!”

“Toodles,” said Zosia, trying to imitate his lilt, but from Choplicker’s snort he didn’t think much of her impression.

“Hey,” said an Immaculate-dressed Imperial girl at the end of the quay as Zosia almost walked right past her, eager to get out of the sun. Choplicker had stopped for a pet, though, tail wagging like all get-out, and Zosia nearly tripped over her own borrowed boots. With that white hair she’d assumed the woman was a lot older.

“Oh, hey!” It had been a little while, sure, and her hair had been bleached by her ride through the Gates, right, but Zosia couldn’t believe how much better Indsorith looked than the last time she’d seen her … or that she was waiting here for her? “You … you’re waiting for me?”

“Cobalt Zosia, the Banshee with a Brain,” said Indsorith, crossing the arms of her Immaculate coat. “Now why do you think that never caught on?”

“Maybe if we pool our noble minds over a cheeky half or twelve we can get to the bottom of that mystery,” said Zosia. “What do you say, Your Majesty?”

A haughty shadow flashed across Indsorith’s face. It was cute. Probably a lot cuter than whatever crossed Zosia’s as the younger woman smirked and said, “It would be an honor, Your Majesty.”

It was just a pint.

Well, it was just a bowl of rice liquor, if you wanted to put a fine point on it, but that wasn’t the pertinent detail. What mattered was that it was—somehow, in spite of all the reasons it shouldn’t be—normal. They sat together at the lacquered bar, putting away obscene amounts of food and sipping at their drinks, and chitchatted as if they were a pair of old friends catching one another up on a few weeks of idle gossip.

It was nice. Not dramatic, in spite of the fate of the world nearly slipping into the First Dark and a wicked nemesis bested on a demonic battlefield. Not romantic, either, not really, though Indsorith was beginning to suspect Zosia’s flirting might be more than idle habit. It was just … nice. The woman insisted on ordering for her, which was so old-fashioned it went from being annoying clear back around to endearing, and Indsorith had to admit Zosia knew her way around an Immaculate menu. Those sticky fishcakes and octopus in red chili sauce were quite possibly the greatest invention of mortalkind.

Course after course and hour after hour they talked and talked, but neither fallen queen broached the subject of what had happened to them back in Diadem, in the time between their separation in the Upper Chainhouse and their reunion on the lip of Diadem Gate. They would get there eventually, but this afternoon the People’s Pack was not invited. Nor did Indsorith’s thoughts ever turn to her mother or her father, and not even the ghosts of her brothers put in an appearance, hard as it was to believe after the fact. There were no unwelcome guests at their table at all—as the light faded beyond the open window and the lanterns were turned up they were just a couple of Outlanders making merry in a foreign bar.

They laughed. They laughed at stupid fucking jokes, as if they both hadn’t blamed the other for their deepest, rawest wounds at one point or another. As if they hadn’t wished the most brutal revenge against the other, and plotted and schemed to bring the other as low as the lowest worm, and then grind them into shit beneath their boot. They laughed at Zosia impetuously signing on to be ambassador to a mysterious land that apparently boasted all of eleven human-shaped entities, tens and tens of thousands of weirdly sentient insects, and stranger monsters still. They laughed at Indsorith’s new and inadvertently Immaculate haircut. They laughed at the prospect of the rematch Indsorith had challenged Zosia to, and they laughed at the results of the arm-wrestling bouts that stood in for a sword fight until the barkeep politely asked them to stop making such a ruckus. They laughed at Zosia’s good-tempered old devil, wagging his tail under the table as Indsorith slipped him seared pieces of pork belly. And then they laughed at the fact that they were laughing.

And when it was all over Zosia picked up the bill.

As well she fucking should.