"Nothing to tell," said Keun-ju, turning his veiled face to the whitewashed wall of the sandy cell the customs agents had locked them in. She was wearing him down, she could tell, and he would crack eventually. "Why must you badger me so?"

"Call me a romantic, but I want to know why before they kill us," said Zosia, hitting on the idea and running with it. The Virtue Guard knew less about Raniputri culture than Zosia did about guarding one's virtue. "The crime for bestiality in these parts is execution. They don't do trials here, either, so odds are when the guards come back for us it's death by elephant-they train the beasts to take their time with it, too, so we'll be in agony for a while. I'd like to go to the devils knowing why."

"They're not going to kill us, and certainly not with elephants," said Keun-ju, but he didn't sound convinced. "And why do they think you would... ugh."

"It's a setup, obviously," said Zosia, thinking out loud. "Bang could've sent word somehow, I guess, via homing albatross or some other means. Definitely a good way to make sure we don't come after her."

"So why not, you know... give them your real name instead of the alias?" Keun-ju whispered the last, heathen gods of his people bless and keep him. "Why tell them to look for Moor Clell instead of Cobalt Zosia?"

"That's a good point," said Zosia. "I'd hazard the guilty party thought customs wouldn't believe such a claim, considering I'm supposed to be twenty years dead."

"Or if the locals did believe it, they probably would make a big deal out of it, yes?" said Keun-ju. "A very, very big deal, if they have any wits at all. So why don't you tell them who you are? If nothing else, they might delay the execution long enough to attract some more fanfare to the occasion."

"You think they'd believe me?" Zosia shook her head. "We're doomed, kid, so you might as well spill the royal beans, die unburdened of secrets. We both know Ji-hyeon kidnapped herself; the only thing I can't figure out is why you didn't go with her, since you obviously love her."

"I do?" Keun-ju swallowed. "I don't. I mean, yes, or rather, no... She is my mistress, of course, so I do... um."

"Wow," said Zosia, recognizing that feeling all too well. "You've got it bad. She gave you the sword, right? A tri-tiger like that must have set her back a lot more than a week's allowance."

"It's not a three-tiger, it's a four," said Keun-ju, not even trying to mask his pride. "It's been in her family for three generations, and the swordmaker was an Ugrakari who could trace her lineage back to the Sunken Kingdom. She left no heirs to her art, so there's probably no sword like it left in the world. And now it's in the hands of a filthy Raniputri, thanks to you."

"The Raniputri put a higher commodity on bathing than Immaculates, so I wouldn't go down that road were I you. And the only reason you're still alive is thanks to me-if you'd killed those agents, you never would have gotten off the dock. Those lighthouses we passed coming in? The best archers in the Dominion keep watch from up there, just waiting for an excuse to shoot some foreign idiot."

"Better to have died with her sword in my hand than with it locked in some drawer," said Keun-ju.

"Well, that would make for a better ballad, I'll admit," said Zosia. "Personally, I can't believe they took Choplicker. The insinuation is beyond disgusting."

"What makes you think Ji-hyeon ran away instead of being taken?" asked Keun-ju, and Zosia caught her smile before it gave her away. Maybe he just wanted to talk about anything other than the crime she was accused of, but from the needy tone in his voice she guessed he might've bought the story she'd spun him about an imminent pachyderm execution. Granted, maybe they were about to be killed, but not for the reasons he supposed, and probably not with an elephant as the murder weapon-the beasts were rare outside of a couple of Dominions way to the east.

"Princes and princesses are always kidnapping themselves," said Zosia. "She takes after her dad, it sounds like, and that would be his style for sure. Add to that the lack of ransom note, and I'm guessing Fennec sweet-talked her into making a break for it. Fennec would be Brother Mikal to you. They're probably off somewhere fucking like rabbits while we await a grisly death."

Keun-ju crossed his arms. "No."

"No? Keun-ju, my lad, believe me when I say you don't know the first thing about it. A feisty young princess, stuck in an arranged marriage, and then along comes a silver-tongued fox with promises of a bright new future far away in Usba, or the Empire, or somewhere more exotic still? At this point he's probably impregnated her and made off with whatever treasure they nicked from Hwabun. I'd bet she's too embarrassed to come home and admit she's carrying the bastard of her tutor."

"No," said Keun-ju, more forcibly. "You don't know anything."

"I know the human heart, kid, which isn't something you learn by being a horny rich girl's sewing instructor," said Zosia, which was downright nasty but she was on the cusp of provoking him into righteous honesty, she could feel it. "I'm sure you thought you were best friends, sharing all your secrets, but the truth is a noble never shares everything with a servant, especially a Virtue Guard. You guys are notoriously gossipy, and-"

"We love each other," said Keun-ju, tears running down from under his veil but his voice steady as good steel. "A coldhearted crone like you could never understand that, but we do."

"Ah, the love of a lordling for her slave, and the attendant for his mistress," said Zosia, despising herself a bit in the moment-that was funny, she never used to think twice about playing people, but for some reason she was profoundly unhappy with herself over this exchange. She was already committed to it, though, so dealt the killing blow. "She's probably already forgotten you, and here you are about to be executed, all for-"

"We're lovers," said Keun-ju quietly, wiping his face and looking at the ground. Fast as Zosia had teased it out, the Virtue Guard had reeled his rage back inside. "I'll die for her, whether it's today or another, but I'll never doubt her. She hasn't forgotten me. She will never forget me."

"Lovers?" That was unexpected. "But... that doesn't happen, does it? Don't you have to swear some serious fucking oaths to-"

"I would rather break a thousand oaths than Ji-hyeon's heart," said Keun-ju, slumping against the wall. "I've loved her for as long as I've served her, but never dared dream it would be more than... than what you said. The affection of a mistress for a slave. Then, the night of the Autumnal Equinox, after we fended off that giant spirit in the pumpkin fields, I was helping her undress for the night, and..."

"And what?"

"And she made her feelings for me abundantly clear," said Keun-ju primly.

"Uh-huh," said Zosia. "Talk is cheap for moneyed kids, Keun-ju. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if you'd actually tried going through with something she'd have dried up faster than you can say forbidden fruit looks better than it tastes."

"And if the ripe young Lieutenant Bang had weighed down her branch enough for you to reach it, I suppose you would have polished her on your sleeve, taken one bite, then cast her aside? I saw how you were savoring her with your eyes throughout the voyage."

"And we saw how well that worked out for me, didn't we?"

"Ji-hyeon loves me, Zosia, and I love her, and even if you're so base as to believe carnal consummation is required, well... rest assured my oaths have fallen like overripe pears forsaken by even-"

"I get it, I get it," said Zosia. "What gives with all the poetry, Keun-ju? You go the whole cruise without contributing so much as a song for music night, and now we get you talking about the princess and you're laying down the fruitiest verse this side of the Othean orchards."

"I would never debase her memory by taking part in a so-called music night," said Keun-ju bitterly. "And I will be mindful of my language in the presence of such a discerning critic as yourself. To answer your question, yes, there are sacred vows we must swear before taking on our duty, and yes, I have broken them, and no, I am not proud that I have broken them, but..."

"Yeah, I hear you," said Zosia, contemplating the many solemn oaths she'd bent, creatively interpreted, or just plain ignored over her storied career.

"It's ridiculous, you know?" Keun-ju sounded plenty pissed, which was due. "How many nights Ji-hyeon and I stayed up afterward, whispering in bed, and how often our talk turned to you-the Arch-Villain, the one woman in all the Star who refused to take what the world offered her, who lived life on her own terms, who died rather than compromise. And here I find out you're actually still alive, and come to think we're almost friends after everything we went through together on the boat... But you aren't anything like the stories. You're just a flunky of Ji-hyeon's dads, a coward who gives up rather than fights, a creep prying into the sex lives of strangers... Were you always so pathetic? Were all the tales about you false? Were you ever the woman they said you were?"

Zosia looked down at her scarred knuckles. The sea air had played hell with them on the voyage; what had been the odd ache back in her old life in Kypck now a daily nuisance of arthritic cramping. She deserved what the kid had said about her, but all the same she felt the impulse to give him a stomping. She set her teeth until it passed, then sighed and sat down beside him.

"That's fair. I was trying to rile the truth out of you, and got a sight more than I was looking for. I'm sorry, Keun-ju." Zosia felt like she meant the words as she was saying them, but had to wonder when she finished with, "And hey, since deflowering a princess is probably a worse crime than helping one run away, why not tell me the rest? I've always known you helped her, and now I know why, so let's get the full account. You tell me the truth now and I'll see that you're reunited with Ji-hyeon."

"I thought they were going to execute us any moment?" said Keun-ju, a watery smile showing at the hem of his veil. "And aren't you supposed to return Ji-hyeon to Hwabun?"

"I've been in tighter spots than this and seen my colleagues through," said Zosia, though at present she didn't have much in the way of ideas. "And as for taking her back to her parents, that depends on if she and Fennec can make me a better offer. So long as I have my army I'm not particular about who funds it, and I'll admit to having a romantic streak."

"Oh, you definitely strike me as the sentimental sort. Fucking like rabbits."

"Fair again," said Zosia, and found herself being as straight with this sad boy as she'd been with any proven friend. "I hide it better than you, but we're out here for the same reason. Love's what haunts me, Keun-ju, love for a man, a man and his people. Love for those I'll never be able to hold again, or kiss, or laugh with over a jug of strong drink." From his expression she could tell he believed, and that made her feel like he owed her now, owed her more than he'd ever know. "So that's me, and I swear on my husband's cairn I'll keep your secret till the devils take me. Now out with it, let's have the rest."

Keun-ju was silent for a time, then met her eyes. Held them. "All right, I'll tell you everything. Ji-hyeon-"

A door banged open just down the hall, and both Zosia and Keun-ju scrambled to their feet. Their iron-barred cell was one of several opening onto a narrow corridor in the rear of the customs house, and four figures strode to their door and stopped. The late afternoon light coming through the skylights made the pink of the officers' saris glow like fire coral. Zosia and Keun-ju were blindfolded and then taken from the cell.

Doors opened and closed on either side of them, and then they were on the city streets, the teasing scents of urban living hardly a match for the odors of the cramped Crane's Bill but the riot of sounds far more jarring. Up stairs and down ramps they were blindly marched, past the smoke and din of a tavern or tubqhouse, and then through another door. It was much quieter in here, though Zosia could still hear the ruckus through the wall, and after stumbling on the too-soft floor, she at last had the heavy cloth pulled away from her eyes.

Blinded by green-filtered light, she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. They had not bound either her or Keun-ju, and, keeping her hand in front of her face to conceal her glances as her sight crept back, she took in the spacious room, looking for an exit. A stinghouse, pillows carpeting the floor, the wall-mounted terrariums teeming with cockroaches, centipedes, icebees, and a dozen other varieties of intoxicating insects. Between the glass cages were masked Raniputri women of decidedly shadier character than the customs agents who had delivered them and now quickly left out the back.

"I didn't believe it when I received Kang-ho's letter, but here you are," said a familiar voice, one that caused Zosia to drop her hand from in front of her face and stare at the rear of the room, where a figure reclined in a settee. Choplicker sat at the woman's feet, and she rubbed his head as she rose to her feet. "They're going to have to come up with a new handle for you, something like The Ghost Who Walks."

"Singh," said Zosia, taking in her old confederate. Keun-ju's jaw dropped as he realized they stood in the company of another legend, the Second Villain herself. "It's been a long time, Chevaleresse."

Whereas Kang-ho had gotten soft, Singh had hardened like a suit of sunbaked leather armor. Her black sari shone with golden moons and silver suns, and her nose stud and bangled wrists glittered in the terrarium light, but despite the casual attire an imperious ferocity radiated from the woman. Her hair was black as ever, though bound in two braids instead of a bun-Zosia wondered if Singh was widowed or divorced. Her once wild, waxy mustache had finally been tamed, the luxurious, upturned lip-weasel now maintaining its lilt by habit rather than force. Still handsome if haughty, with new scars glancing off her chin, cheeks, and bare feet, the knight brought a moist weight to Zosia's dusty throat. Singh looked damn good after all these years.

"I suppose I have you to thank for the more colorful charges against us?" asked Zosia, taking a step toward Singh. One of the guards melted off the wall and put herself between Zosia and her old friend.

"I thought you'd like that," said Singh, and to Zosia's chagrin she didn't call off her muscle. "I've been waiting for you all week. Kang-ho thought you'd make better time."

"Funny, Kang-ho claimed he didn't know how to find you," said Zosia.

"That's what he told you? Typical. You should have looked me up first, sister; things would be very different if you had." Singh put her hand on the guard's shoulder and she stepped away, leaving Zosia to look up into the taller woman's kohl-ringed eyes.

Zosia sighed. There was no sign of Anklelance, who usually coiled herself around her mistress's neck like a dull-scaled necklace. If Singh no longer had her devil, that was something in Zosia's favor, at long bloody last. Yet of all the Villains to go up against in a barehanded fight, she would have picked any combination of the others over Singh. According to the songs, the knight had been in martial training from the time she left her cradle. Given Zosia's experiences, she'd chalk that up to understatement rather than embellishment. "Let me guess. Kang-ho didn't send you to help find his daughter?"

"Oh, Zosia," said Singh sadly. "He sent me to kill you."

"Yeah, that figures," said Zosia, and talked fast, before the knight could move on her. "I challenge you to an honorable duel, Chevaleresse. I win, you're back to taking my orders, and you'll help me track down the others, starting with Fennec. We're going to war again."

Singh cocked her head to the side, and Zosia gave silent thanks to the insane codes of Raniputri knights. "And if you lose, General, then what-"

Zosia swung on Singh. Surprise could only take her so far, but she didn't have much else to work with. It didn't take her nearly far enough.

CHAPTER.

24.

Sullen and Grandfather had hoped that learning the name Uncle Craven had taken among the Outlanders would give their hunt a definite scent to pursue, but that wasn't how it panned out. It didn't help that neither Sullen nor Grandfather knew more than a few curse words of Crimson, and none of the folk they met spoke the Savannah tongue, so most of the time Sullen had to ask around until he found someone who spoke Immaculate. When he could make himself known to the Imperials, most of them had indeed heard of a powerful warrior named Maroto, but each and every taleteller sent them in a different direction. Inquiries after Hoartrap the Touch were even less fruitful, and met with anxiousness if not outright hostility. One trail took them up the cyclopean spires of Meshugg that clung to the sheerest eastern peaks of the Black Cascades like barnacles on a wrecked ship. Another brought them all the way down the Heartvein, to where the river opened onto Lake Jucifuge and spun the floating city of the Serpent's Circle in a perpetual gyre. Adventures were had, and skulls were split, and powerful foes vanquished, but if Sullen had wanted that shit he would have stayed in the Frozen Savannahs. Then, as summer gave way to fall and his spirits sank as low as the ground fog in the Temple of the Black Vigil where they again sought their quarry in vain, an unexpected lead...

While Grandfather dozed on a fallen column after declaring the mission a failure, Sullen wandered the hollow avenues, pondering the weirdness of the place. Sure, people called Emeritus the Forsaken Empire for a reason, but he still couldn't quite wrap his mind around the scope of the place. Take this temple, for example: that it was devoted to something called the Faceless Mistress had a queer ring to it, certainly, but was hardly that bizarre. Nowadays the Horned Wolf Clan bowed to the Fallen Mother, after all, which sounded close enough to beg the question of whether this Faceless Mistress was the same god as they had in Samoth and the Savannahs, just named something different. That happened a lot, according to the missionaries who had lugged the Burnished Chain up the Noreast Arm-turned out the Horned Wolves had been worshipping the Fallen Mother long before they'd converted, they'd just called her Silvereye and thought she was an ancestor of note who'd gone around slaying some giants and eventually ascending into the night sky to become the moon, instead of, you know, the One True God of All Things.

Far as the new faith went, there were some good stories, but a whole lot of it just didn't make much sense to Sullen. Inconsistencies and such, the sort of simple errors that cropped up from time to time in any tale, like how nobody could agree if the Old Watchers were gods or devils. Yet when he'd pointed out the Burnished Chain's contradictions to Father Humble, the priest had made him repeat a bunch of nonsense words and whip himself with a switch until his back bled. This was a marked contrast to how Grandfather would debate him for long hours on the particulars of any given saga or song, and thereafter Sullen kept his observations away from the ears of all but his ancient relation.

Anyway, faith was a fickle thing. You could be like Sullen, who suspected Grandfather was probably right when he said all tales had equal measures of wisdom, truth, and bullshit, or you could be like the true believers and erect whole empires to honor a single legend, like they'd done down here on the Soueast Arm. At the end of your trail, though, you all ended up rotting into the earth. Small wonder Old Black built her meadhall in the Land Beneath the Star, so that all worthy heroes might one day be reunited, or the Chainites said the Fallen Mother dwelled in a wondrous cave at the center of all things, or the Jackal Tribe worshipped the Noreast Gate, which had been carved by Rakehell when he'd escaped his infernal father-in-law. Obvious stuff, and the more stories you soaked up the more evident it became.

Anyway, they'd teased a few tales out of folk on their way down to Emeritus, but few had wanted to talk much about it at all. Odd, that, as usually people wanted to tell you all kinds of nonsense about their neighbors, but nobody wanted to talk about the Forsaken Empire, or how it got forsook, or what the deal was with their god. Matters only became stranger the day before, when Sullen and Grandfather had stumbled over an enormous, shattered statue of this Faceless Mistress. The ruined monument lay dashed in boulder-sized chunks across a four-block area, appeared to be made of charcoal, and gave off a faint buzzing that Sullen could feel in his teeth. Strange, but not unheard of.

Stranger yet was how every structure and street was drained of color, even the leaves of ornamental trees as grey as an old wolf's coat; if Grandfather hadn't displayed the same range of pigments as ever, Sullen would have assumed there was something wrong with his eyes. The crowning peculiarity about this place was the expanse of it-they called it a temple, but it was larger than most of the Outlander cities Sullen and Grandfather had visited... a temple the size of a capital, and totally deserted.

There was some bad swamp to cross at the southeast border of the Empire and the Emeritus Arm, and a few bog pearl divers had waved to them from a canoe as they picked their way along the wide, petrified boardwalks leading into the Temple of the Black Vigil. Now, after a week of scouring the empty buildings and desolate streets, there was no doubting that they were definitely the only ones alive in the whole place. No citizens nor squatters peopled this metropolis, nor beasts nor birds nor bugs. It might've been spooky, except it was the first place Sullen had ever set foot where he saw no trace of the devils that dogged him. Especially after becoming better acquainted with the fiends courtesy of that awful witch Hoartrap, this was no bad thing. Besides, Emeritus reminded him a bit of home, with the perpetual chill of the dull shadowed avenues offset by brilliant pastel skies and the orange sun of high summer; there was the world he walked through, grey and hollow, but a rich, colorful realm hovering above, just out of reach. He found himself wondering if he could talk Grandfather into prolonging their search another week, to better explore the sepulchral temple city.

Sullen had been raised better than to steal from the dead, if death was what had befallen the people who'd dwelled here. Surely there was no harm in admiring their abandoned hoards, though. Everything was in its place in the deserted storehouses and dining halls, apartments and palaces, offices and altars, with freshly prepared meals set out before shrines and waiting on many a table. The smells could be maddening, especially in one humble home where a warm pot of lentils waited on a cold stovetop, the long-absent aroma of berbere and pepper sending Sullen all the way back to his mother's kitchen... but Sullen was no thief. And besides, as disparate as the accounts of the fall of Emeritus were, the one constant was that the populace had vanished some five hundred years before. Whatever purpose kept those lentils hot and appetizing after all these centuries, Sullen doubted it was out of consideration for his homesick belly. For once, Grandfather agreed with his thinking, and they subsisted on the cold tack of the Imperials, wary of even kindling a fire from what fuel they might scrounge in this place.

Even so, exploring the temple nourished Sullen in a fashion he couldn't quite articulate. The world of the people who had dwelled in this place was obscure despite their every possession being laid out for his inspection, and long after Grandfather had relieved him on watch he would lie sleepless on the dusty street, contemplating the use of some gargantuan mechanical device or the symbolism in a lifelike painting of a weeping salmon. Grandfather seemed put off by the abandoned lives, which was why Sullen so looked forward to the old man's increasingly long midafternoon naps.

Today Sullen's wanderings took him farther and farther from their campsite in an orderly park where the great grey lawns and pregnant, pale orchards appeared carefully manicured, nary a weed sprouting in a single monochromatic flowerbed. Strolling for an hour, he turned down another nondescript boulevard, one he and Grandfather had not heretofore explored. He knew they had not come this way, for the faintly phosphorescent dust that coated every inch of the Temple of the Black Vigil here lay undisturbed by footprints. Even before he gained the intersection, he was somehow aware that this new road terminated in a great wall just a block or two down the way...

Huh. Striding out into the middle of the road, he sized up the dead end. The buildings on either side were the same austerely shaped white rowhouses that lined most every road in the temple, but instead of a wall this road ran straight into a high archway, and beyond the archway lay a Gate. Or maybe instead of ending at the Gate, this was where the road began-it was all a matter of perspective.

Sullen knew the oily pool of black mud that filled the carven-walled courtyard on the far side of the arch was a Gate because he had seen its twin, once, when he was but an unnamed pup. As he had dragged Grandfather home from the battle that had claimed his legs, they had passed within a mile or two of the Flintland Gate, a deeper patch of darkness on the horizon. The war had started because the Jackal Tribe had abducted and sacrificed several Horned Wolves, feeding them to that yawning mouth in the earth that they called the Ravenous God. Six nights later, when he was safely home in his bed, the devils had waited until he made the mistake of dreaming and then hauled him back to the Gate, carrying him as far as a plinth erected near its edge before he awoke. Horned Wolves weren't crazy savages who believed that if you died in a dream you died for real, but Sullen knew from the songs that devils could hurt you in your sleep, if they found a way past the charms hanging at your door and windows. For nine subsequent nights he had dreamt of the Gate, and each night the devils carried him closer and closer to the trembling lip of the abyss.

Then, on the tenth night, just before he fell asleep, he asked the devils not to take him back there. As a token of his earnestness, he had picked open the scabs he had acquired protecting Grandfather from a snow lion their first night in the wilds, and drifted off as the devils settled in to feed on his dripping arms. That night he dreamt of flight, but not the Gate, nor did he ever dream of it again. Strange, he hadn't remebered that in years, even after what had happened with Hoartrap on the plains...

Now he stood before a second Gate, and saw that his long-buried visions had shown true, for this portal in the earth perfectly mirrored that which he had dreamt as a boy who had never left the Frozen Savannahs. And here, in the wasted land of Emeritus, where only a Horned Wolf and his grandfather had dared to venture down many a lonely century, came all the devils he had not glimpsed since entering the temple.

Wide awake and unmolested by a witch as Sullen was, the devils materialized just the same, emerging not from the Gate but the puffs of dust rising beneath his battered boots. Up they rose, spiraling around him, the whisper of scale and fur tickling his skin and the muscles and bone beneath, and then they wheeled high into the air, winged toad and finned serpent, insectoid rodent and dog-legged crustacean, and a hundred thousand other flittering, slithering horrors. The devils came together into a squirming tornado that stretched from the dusty cobblestones high into the air.

"Aw, man," he said, not really having a lot of hope for his prospects here. Grandfather was wrong about some stuff, Grandfather was wrong about a lot of stuff, even, but he'd been right about one thing: Don't go wander off and get yourself killed in this dump while I take a nap. Sorry, Fa.

The cyclone of devils contracted further, coalesced, the awfulness of their individual parts forming an even less wholesome whole: a humanoid figure twice as tall as the surrounding buildings towered above Sullen, its pendulous breasts, featureless face, and extended fingers all writhing with unending movement as it bent down for him.

"Don't do it!" he shouted, holding up his open palms to the nightmarish giant. "I don't want to hurt you!"

As soon as he said it he recognized this was a pretty silly thing to tell a titanic, devil-spawned monster, and right enough, it didn't give the entity pause. A palm half as tall as Sullen slammed into his side, fingers as wide as his legs closing around him. The ground fell away from him and the true expanse of the temple came into sight as he was lifted several stories into the air, the Gate now but a small pool beside the giant's foot... not that he was paying much attention to the cityscape laid out beneath him. No, his focus was on the enormous face the hand held him up to, a blank oval as richly dark as the Gate itself.

As he watched, queasy from the unique experience of being lifted so high so quickly, the abyssal darkness of the face spread down the wriggling, patchwork neck. It radiated down the chest and out across the shoulders, the individual devils going rigid as the blackness seeped over and through them. The devils comprising the hand that held him became agitated as the darkness began to seep down that arm, beaks and barbs desperately prodding against him. It was as though the devils were desperate to avoid the creeping darkness and sought to crawl over or through him to escape it, but were trapped, swimming in circles around the man they grasped. Were they a captive of something greater, just as he was?

"I'll... do something," he said, speaking to himself, to the devils who bound him, and to the enormous black face. The Faceless Mistress, obviously, she to whom this temple was erected, the god of the lost people of Emeritus. One of them, anyway.

"What will you do?" Sullen hadn't really expected an answer, but as his ears popped and he heard his own voice pose the question, a distant constellation bloomed in the greasy depths of the giant's face. Even as these lights faded back into darkness came another question, and another flare of remote stars. "What do you offer?"

What did he have? It already had his person, if it wanted it, and he wasn't foolish enough to think a god would desire what few possessions he owned. Grandfather? A low thought, that one, and Sullen frowned to think that moments before he went to his ancestors he had considered selling out his most beloved kin, if only for a moment. What would Old Black or Rakehell do, if they were in such a pinch?

"Don't have much," he said, not really scared so much as... awed, maybe? Awed, sure, but not so awed he couldn't think or speak. It was like dreaming, that way. "Whatever you want, I guess."

Sullen wasn't any better versed in the ways of gods than he was in the motivations of devils, but as soon as he said it he figured that was a fairly stupid offer to make. This time, though, it seemed he might've blundered into saying the right thing, because the encroaching blackness paused at the wrist of the arm that held him and the devils holding him all went still. The gargantuan head moved closer and closer to Sullen, and, eyes or no in its light-swallowing surface, he knew he was being sized up by the Faceless Mistress.

Then, a distant twinkle of light in the heart of the void. It flickered, expanded, crackled with energy. Exploded outward, to the very edge of the blackness, so close Sullen could feel the heat... and then it contracted again, sucking the warmth back in with it, so fast and so cold that beads of sweat froze half-birthed from his pores. An ebon mountain filled his vision, though like the god's voice he couldn't tell if it was really there, or appearing only in his suddenly aching skull.

The dark mountain was hollow as a drinking horn, and brimming with people. It reminded him of nothing so much as one of the dire ant mounds back home, swarming with bizarre life. And as he watched, flaming oil bubbled up from the depths, cascading through tunnels and melting the inner walls of the mountain, incinerating all of the teeming residents, and vomiting from the top in a great spume of ash and smoke. A city even greater than this temple, populated by an incalculable number of folk, obliterated absolutely.

"Nah, not doing that," said Sullen. "Can't. Won't, even if I could. I'm a Horned Wolf, not a witch nor devil."

"No," said the winking stars. "Zosia will. Unless you thwart her."

Zosia. Though it took a moment to sink in, Sullen recognized the name. His uncle's old boss from the first time Craven had sought his fortune on the Star, according to some of the songs they'd heard along the road. His uncle's bride, according to others, who'd died before Sullen was born. An utterly ruthless, diabolically clever, and intensely dangerous woman, according to all, a Queen of Samoth whom not even death could stop from sowing madness and sorrow, a phantom returned from the bowels of the grave to savage all of the Star.

"All right," said Sullen. "Preventing that kind of thing seems best. There's kids there, and such. Where is she?"

"You shall meet her once you have found your uncle," said the god. "Under the snapping of Cobalt banners, in the Crimson Empire."

"Oh," said Sullen. "Thanks."

A ring of stars flickered once, like a mouth of light smiling in the depths, and the face filled his entire world as it came in to swallow him whole. He closed his eyes, but instead of oblivion received a gentle kiss. Her lips were small and warm as those of Stoutest, before the girl had earned her name and stopped having anything to do with him. Stoutest was the only woman to have ever kissed him, and so he never had cause to doubt her counsel that one should always keep their eyes locked on their partner's when receiving such affection. Opening his eyes, he stared into the vastness of the god, and kissed her back. He felt it all the way down in his treasure, like the one time Stoutest had put her hand down there and made him feel nine kinds of heavens, followed by twelve kinds of embarrassment. This was nine thousand kinds of heavens, with none of the surprise or shame after.

And then his stomach dropped along with the rest of him as the devils holding him broke away from her black wrist, fading into the air as he fell. He landed a moment later on a steeply canted rooftop, the wind knocked out of him, and above him the Faceless Mistress went rigid. He heard the cracking of ice just before a glacier crumbled free of a fjord, and then, with slowness as impossible as the rest of her, she broke apart. The arm that had held him clipped the edge of the roof as it fell, sending splintered tiles flying into the air, but the bulk of her tipped back, crushing the building on the far side of the street. An eruption of dust and debris blanketed the temple for miles, and when it lifted nothing remained of the Faceless Mistress but another decimated statue. Sullen stared down at the wreckage and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. It left a dark smear.