“This can’t be happening!” Indirk hissed, leaning her forehead on an alley wall. She punched the stone and didn’t feel any new pain. The fall from the office had left her limp and gasping with every movement. She shivered against the pain, struggling for breath, growling, “What am I supposed to do?” as if there was someone who could answer.
She heard shouts in the alleyway, the echoing voices of Watch officers and Admiralty guards trying to find her. She could hear their clattering footsteps getting closer. Straightening to look toward the noise, Indirk huffed and limped the other way. When she’d first arrived in Gray Watch, she’d taken the time to learn every corner, plan her escape just in case, but it had been years. The roads had changed. New walls, different buildings, and once-reliable doors chained shut. She struggled to think through her pain, but she kept coming back to the same thoughts.
What was she supposed to do? How could she stop this? How could she get it back? Her home, her job, her life, all of it. Was it too late? Had she lost it all? She’d betrayed Amo, turned her back on Pharaul. She couldn’t go back. She wouldn’t want to. What was left? Nothing was left. What was she supposed to do?
Indirk squelched a wail of frustration, like holding back a pained shout. She couldn’t think! She couldn’t run! She had nowhere to go! And the echoing footsteps seemed all around her.
Then Indirk heard a subtle song and, looking up, saw a flick of yellow light in grim eyes. There, sitting like a tired beggar in an alcove in the alley, a rag-wrapped Writhewife watched Indirk in silence. The Writhewife’s face was unfamiliar, but the subtle song was the same. Indirk hissed, “Help me.”
The Writhewife sat up and gave Indirk a quizzical look, as though Indirk had made some nonsensical sound.
“Help me,” Indirk tried again. “Do something. They’re after me. I didn’t even do anything!”
“I can’t stop my Gray love from fighting itself,” the Writhewife said. “Help you, hurt them? Help them, hurt you? I won’t. I can’t do anything about this, Indirk Correlon. You have to stand alone for now.”
“You can’t? That doesn’t…” Indirk’s breath quickened. She grabbed at her chest. “No. Don’t pretend you don’t understand. It’s me! It’s me!”
“It is you,” the Writhewife agreed, and pivoted to look away from Indirk, settling back into her rest.
“Look at me!” Indirk took a step forward, but she didn’t sense the hand about to close on her shoulder. Then it had her, pulling her off her feet and violently dragging her through an open door. In a shadowed, dusty room where light leaked through boarded windows, Indirk fell on her back and rolled to her feet with a growling curse.
Standing over her was a Watch officer in armor polished to a shine, a great green cape swinging behind. The man in the shining armor spoke in a familiar voice. “Stay quiet, Indirk.”
She gawked at the helm, a metal bird skull as though from the Sickle-Sough Festival. “Phaeduin?” Looking him over, she recognized the pale bottoms of his hooves, the curves of his horns, the thin hair on his lazily swinging tail. But there was something wrong with the tail, with the rusty redness that stained the fur. Indirk said, “Why are you dressed like a captain? Promoted?”
“I stole the armor. Don’t go anywhere.” Hidden beneath the incongruent armor, Phaeduin stepped out the door into the alleyway. Crouching low, Indirk heard approaching steps, the voices of Watch officers in the alley. She heard Phaeduin say, “The wanted woman was spotted on Mill block. The north side is covered. You go through there, you go around Feywreath, and I’ll head straight for the cross-street. She’ll have to double back and run into one of us.” The men in the alley spoke quick agreement. Indirk heard them rushing away.
She relaxed. She glanced around the little room, just so much dust and scattered paper blown through cracks in the walls and windows. All the doors in and out of this room had been boarded up. A forgotten, abandoned space.
The rickety door groaned open. Phaeduin stepped back in. “They’re gone.” He closed the door behind him. “Get up.”
Letting out a sigh, Indirk rose to her feet. “Thanks.” Rubbing at her face, she groaned, “That dumbfuck Nymir turned on us.”
“Did you not turn first?”
“Hm?” She looked between her fingers too late to see the shining metal hand coming at her, the open palm that struck her chest and drove her back into the hard wood of the wall behind her. The back of her head hit hard and she cringed, dark blotches moving over her vision, everything blurry. She churned against the hand that held her, but she was dazed, too weak to even utter her confusion.
When her vision finally sharpened and she lifted her head, she found the blade of a sword held up close to her eyes. Beneath the metal bird skull, Phaeduin was completely invisible. All Indirk could do was stare at the arm that pinned her, the hand holding the sword, the pitiless surface of the metal skull, and Phaeduin’s curling horns. There was a dark red dappling Phaeduin’s pale horns. Now that he was close, Indirk could smell the stink of blood and death clinging to the man.
What was it Nymir had said about Phaeduin? That he’d gone insane? Phaeduin stood still and quiet, patiently waiting, but for what? He just held her in place.
Indirk took a deep breath and shook her head to try to clear her thoughts. It didn’t work. She muttered with a hoarse voice, “What are you doing, old man?”
“Tell me what happened on the night of the Sickle-Sough Festival.” Phaeduin spoke with a killer’s gravitas behind his rough old voice. “Tell me what happened to Myrel.”
“I didn’t see Myrel that night. Has something happened to them?”
“Nothing is going to stop me from getting to Myrel. Not the Watch, nor the sorcerers, nor even death if it comes. You, Indirk, will not stop me. Don’t think I’ll hesitate to do what I need to do.”
Indirk pushed backwards, testing her strength against the rickety wooden wall. “I don’t know what you want.”
“Admit the truth. You turned.” Phaeduin grabbed her collar and pulled her forward, a quiet warning that she wouldn’t leave so easily. “You betrayed Pharaul in exchange for a life here. You took a deal.”
Indirk huffed. “I almost wish.”
“Admit it.”
“I turned my back on Pharaul,” Indirk said without apology. “But I didn’t make a deal with anyone. It wasn’t like that.”
“Liar.” The bird skull shook and Phaeduin’s bitter voice grumbled from within. “You’re in bed with the sorcerers.”
“I’m not!” Indirk snapped. “I’m not in bed with anyone in the whole city except-“
“Mardo.”
The breath of Indirk’s anger left her in an instant. Her lungs ached. She gasped in a whisper, “How do you know that name?”
“One of the sorcerers in their cabal. They have their meetings in the Embassy District in accordance with the lunar sigils. Myrel and I have been investigating them. Mardo was our contact. Our betrayer. The one who took Myrel from me.” Phaeduin turned the blade of his sword one way and then another. “You’ve been sleeping in his bed, haven’t you?”
Her feature’s slack, the pain in her body numbed by a hollowness that ran cold through her limbs, Indirk said, “Mardo isn’t like that.” But what did Indirk know? She’d taken sorcery tools from him. The half-faced man—Indirk had once seen that man in the secret prison beneath the Embassy District—had spoken Mardo’s name, had talked about a timetable determined by Indirk, had said…
How much was there to know? After Indirk turned on Amo, she’d decided to hide from knowing things for awhile. What had she missed?
“Tell me,” Phaeduin said. “What happened at the Sickle-Sough Festival? What is Mardo planning? Where did he take Myrel?”
Indirk closed her eyes and shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Tell me!”
“I don’t fucking know!” Indirk shouted. “I wish I knew, but I don’t! It doesn’t make any sense, and I didn’t want to know, so I ignored everything. I don’t want to have anything to do with it! Let me go!” She pushed against his hand, against the wall behind her, gritting her teeth and putting her strength into it. The wall groaned. Phaeduin’s unyielding grip slowly tore through her shirt.
“I see. Fine.” Phaeduin lifted his arm. His blade shone in the haze.
Indirk grabbed the beak of Phaeduin’s helmet and pushed it to the side with all her might. She didn’t expect his head to twist with it. She didn’t expect the audible, boney crack that ran all the way down into his chest. When Phaeduin dropped the sword, let go of Indirk, and reeled away, grabbing at the metal collar of his armor and letting out a tortured cry , Indirk kicked him away. Phaeduin’s back hit the doorframe, breaking through brick and rusted nails. He fell among shards of stone, metal hinges, and the broken door. Half-lit by sunlight in the doorway, Phaeduin convulsed and shouted in wordless pain, back arching, legs kicking, tail swinging madly beneath him. His shaking hands grabbed at his armor and helm.
“Wind and Sunfire,” Indirk spat, stumbling away from the sight. This was a kind of pain she hadn’t often seen in her life, had only recently glimpsed in the breathless screams beneath the Embassy. She hissed, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve to die like this.” He was so old, days from death already. She thought she should shoot him, end his suffering, and she reached for her pistol to do it. But she didn’t have the pistol anymore. She’d lost it somewhere, so she just forced her way through a boarded door and ran.
Phaeduin punched at the air and pummeled the ground around him, feet kicking, old voice shouting madly as pain tore through his body and fury tore through his heart.
