"Whatever, man," said Purna, though she wasn't much of an actor-girl was over the moon her old hero had decided to get out of bed. "But if you can't walk out of his tent on your own, there's no way I'm letting you get in the fight."

"Don't worry about me," said Maroto as she helped him into the breastplate he'd mostly been using as a platter at the mess tents. "The Mighty Maroto's got a trick or two yet to impress the devils."

Sullen crawled out of nightmares and his tent, on his hands and knees beside the cold remains of their campfire while horns bleated and packs of bleary-eyed soldiers rushed all around, torches waving in the darkness. He focused on the dirt between his hands, terrified to look up at the black sky lest he see the Faceless Mistress looming over him, returning to claim him for failing to carry out her will. Yet when he refused himself another moment's fear and looked up, he saw only the darkest purple that preludes dawn. A dream, nothing more. Wiping his mouth and seeing the greasy black smear his lips left on the back of his hand, he allowed maybe it was a little early to call it.

A soldier rounded his tent at a full run and nearly careened into him before pivoting past. It was the other woman his uncle ran with, the duchess, dressed in what looked something like a scalemail catsuit. She had one of the weakbows Grandfather hated so much, though it was the largest specimen he had ever seen, all polished wood and inlaid metal gleaming in the light of the lantern her companion carried. Hassan was the bloke with the light, and in his other hand was the meanest-looking sword Sullen had ever seen, all serrated edges and hook tip. It provided a dull, earthy contrast to his frilly armor-Sullen hadn't even known you could dye leather pink, but it admittedly suited the man.

"Sullen!" said the duchess. "Just the moon-head we were looking for!"

"Moon-head?" Sullen touched his globe of white hair, too self-conscious to be mad.

"Your uncle Maroto extends his most sincere wish that you and your grandfather join us on the front," said Hassan with a bow, "where we may fight side by side, back to back."

"Huh," said Sullen, remembering what had happened the last time he trusted his uncle on the battlefield and not so sure he wanted to give him a second chance just yet. What if he was the one to end up crippled on the ground, begging for Maroto's aid?

"We shall be acting as the personal guard of General Ji-hyeon," said the duchess. "It is the most honorable of-"

"We'll be there in five minutes," said Sullen, hopping to his feet and ducking back into the tent without wasting another breath. Dark as the tent was, his eyes seemed to be getting keener by the night, and, giving Grandfather a firm nudge, he started fitting his gear in place. Only when he was all set and the old man had yet to respond to his patient muttering for him to get up did he take a closer look at his grandfather. His heart stopped, and his "Get up, Fa," never left his lips.

Only Grandfather's face emerged from the blankets, but that was enough to tell. The old man's eyes were wide, his face frozen in a contorted rictus, his tongue drying out in his slack mouth. Sometime in the night, he had...

"Sulllllllen." The voice drifted from Grandfather's slack mouth.

"Fa! Are you... What's wrong?"

"I... Cannnnn't..."

Even now his voice was fading, and Sullen put his ear to the old man's lips as tears began to well. "What, Fa? Tell me."

Grandfather cleared his throat, a gummy, smacking sound, and whispered, "I can't feel my legs."

Sullen slowly sat back, staring at his grandfather. The old man lost it, laughing until he coughed, and then laughing some more.

"Not going to be able to feel your arms, in a minute," grumbled Sullen, but he was smiling, too. It was time to see if they could find Grandfather a worthier end than dying in his sleep, a million miles from home. As if in answer, another horn sounded from the front.

"What the bloody shits are they doing?" Domingo demanded of nobody at all, but Brother Wan glanced back at his passenger and answered the rhetorical question anyway.

"I believe they are announcing our attack, Colonel Hjortt," said the anathema, his ghoulish face so pale it could be seen even on this Gate-black morning.

"That was one of our horns, not one of theirs," said Domingo. "Think I don't know the difference? Some dunce in the ranks is giving away our position!"

Another Imperial horn sounded, this time from the left flank instead of the right, and before Domingo could mount a proper splutter the damned cavalry issued a toot of their own from the vanguard. What was the point in sneaking up under cover of darkness if you blew your fucking horns the whole way? Was this the kind of cocksure madness Efrain had cultivated among the ranks? If so, good riddance to bad command.

"Perhaps the officers mean to alert the Myurans to the attack?" said Brother Wan.

"What attack? There is no attack, not until we can see something-oof!" A bump in the murky morning punctuated Domingo's point with bone tremors and a heaving stomach. "Stop the cart, Wan, this is more than close enough-I said take us down a bit, do you know what a bit means? At this rate dawn will find us in the bloody valley, bumping up against the rear, and I need to be able to survey the full field."

"I wouldn't have you miss that," said Brother Wan, tugging the mare to a stop with malicious abruptness. "No, I want us both to be able to see everything."

If only Domingo's body could be mended by willpower alone, he would have leaped from his bower in the wagon bed and punched Wan in his lipless mouth, and not stopped until his knuckles were full of splinters from the anathema's wooden teeth. If only, if only... Domingo was even more on edge than he usually was at the start of an encounter. He already regretted his decision to employ the Black Pope's weapon, though so far all he had seen was a disappointingly mundane prayer performed over his regiment while the witchborn clerics walked down the lines, dabbing oil on their foreheads. After it was all done and they started moving out he'd asked Shea if she'd felt anything during the ritual, and she said she'd felt bored, so apparently you got the same result from taking the oil as not. Wan had tried to talk Domingo into accepting the mark as well, but he had countered by pointing out that Wan himself had said only those on the battlefield would be at risk, and as Domingo didn't intend to set a single wagon wheel in the valley there was no need for him to find religion this late in life.

"It was wise to press on instead of waiting for the Thaoans," said Brother Wan, tying the reins on the wagon's unlit lantern post and stretching his thin arms. "What a pity it would have been, if Colonel Waits had lived up to her name and insisted we postpone the attack until the queen sent her permission."

"Waits is a damn good woman, damn good," said Domingo, not much liking having his thoughts, however sensible, repeated back to him by this witchborn. "I appreciate her enough not to put her in a prickly position. And what did I tell you about sticking your nose into my nut, Brother Wan?"

"Do you wish to know a secret?" said Wan conspiratorially, twisting around and slinging his legs over the back of the riding board, so his dusty sandals brushed the edge of Domingo's padded command nest. "It's something I've never told anyone, not even Her Grace."

"Hmmm," said Domingo, not appreciating how chummy Wan had become ever since he'd come out of the horned wolf attack with a few bruises from a tent collapsing on top of him while Domingo was dashed near to pieces. Wan evidently took his grumbling for assent, as he usually did these days.

"You know why Her Grace entrusted this mission to me, and me alone, don't you?" The eagerness in the witchborn's voice was disquieting, but around them the black was finally giving way to grey, allowing Domingo to see his guards... Except even after suffering through the needles of pain in his neck to peer around, there was no sign of the six stout pureborn soldiers he had ordered to replace the two who had fallen during the wolf attack. He was alone with Wan on the dew-dusted hillside as light finally returned to the Star. "Besides my commitment to the Burnished Chain, and my ability to carry out this morning's ritual, there was another reason she blessed me with this sacred mission. Can you guess why?"

"Haven't the foggiest," said Domingo, cheering himself by focusing on the lack of mist this morning.

"It's because I share a... special relationship with Sister Portoles." At the mention of the queen's assassin Domingo spat over the side of the wagon. "Her Grace interviewed me after being apprised of my abilities by Cardinal Diamond, and of course my history with Portoles. It was then I was deemed essential for the job-the thought being that if we caught Portoles upon the road, I could plumb all her secrets, no matter how dearly she wished to keep them."

"This is not news," said Domingo, wondering just where this nonsense was going. He could see a bit farther down the hill now, and the silhouette of the Lark's Tongue was coming into view above the distant fires of the Cobalts, but he still couldn't make out the valley floor. He could hear distant shouts and the clang of metal, though, and it sent a warm thrum through him, just as that concerto does through every good colonel. "On further evaluation, take us closer, Wan, we're still higher up than I thought."

"I will take us down soon enough, Colonel," said Wan, and the casual refusal to follow an express order filled Domingo with a loathing quite unlike anything a civilian, or even a son, could ever inspire. "As I was saying, I entered into our pope's confidence in part because she assumed I might be able to dig into her mind anyway, and in part because she was sure I could look into Portoles's. Have you guessed my secret yet?"

"You're a bloody dull storyteller?" said Domingo, though they both knew that wasn't true, and the real reason was beginning to materialize; like the lightening landscape around them, even with large swaths missing a definite shape was taking form.

"The truth, Colonel Hjortt, is this..." Wan narrowed his eyes at Domingo, muttered something unintelligible, then grinned. "You blame yourself for Efrain's death. You regret not doing more to prepare him for the role he took on. You think that by punishing everyone else who played a part, however small, you can absolve yourself of the greater sin."

Domingo stared in horror at the anathema, then lurched forward to seize him by the cassock. He doubled over in pain without even getting upright, the jarring motion making him feel like a saw was slowly grinding across the back of his neck. Through gritted teeth, he managed, "I told you what I'd do if you looked."

Brother Wan clicked his horrible, inhuman mouth. "And that's my secret, Colonel Hjortt-I didn't. I couldn't, even if I wanted to. No witchborn can, as far as I know. My secret is the secret of all anathemas, that we concoct excuses for the pureborn to treat us with respect or, failing that, caution. Like others in the Dens, I possess excellent intuition, something you and I share, but also empathy, in which most pureborn are deficient. No witchborn would ever disavow someone of the belief that we could peer into their innermost thoughts, for to do so would be to sacrifice one of our few advantages. But in truth, anathemas of my presumed powers are simply good listeners, good guessers, and good at altering our personalities to endear us to those we seek to convince-if you had seen me interact with Portoles, you wouldn't have recognized me, I don't think. Why do you think they say our abilities work best with those we know intimately?"

"But I felt you, I felt you rooting around in my skull-"

"What you felt was nothing more than your own paranoia, Colonel."

"Why are you telling me this, then?" said Domingo, wrenching himself back up into a seated position against the back of the wagon bed.

"You try it," said Wan. "Put yourself in my position, factor in everything you know about me, my desires. And guess."

Domingo had made the barber use the scabbard of his saber for the splint on his leg, but in this position there was no hope of drawing it. Meeting the anathema's too-friendly gaze, he said, "You don't think I'm going to survive long enough to tell anyone about it."

Brother Wan's bulbous eyes widened in mock amazement, and he raised his arms to the dawn. "Behold, an anathema in our midst! This witchborn mind-reader has passed itself off as Baron of Cockspar, but now reveals itself!"

"If you think you can take me, monster, I'm ready for you," said Domingo.

"Tut-tut," said Brother Wan, squirming back around on the riding board and untying the reins. "Maybe you don't have the sight after all. Or maybe your mind is enfeebled with age. Don't you remember that I wanted you to bear witness to the battle?"

The wagon jerked forward, and Domingo shuddered as another paroxysm passed through his spine. "Whatever mad schemes you've hatched, Wan, my regiment may surprise you yet, and their colonel most of all."

"I think you're the one in for a surprise," said Wan as he drove the wagon down the long hillside, the first light of day shining on the glittering masses of the Fifteenth, and the Cobalts who manned their pickets on the far end of the valley. "Before it's too late, are you sure you don't want to be anointed? It's not too late to receive the Chain's blessing."

"Think I'll manage without," said Domingo, offering a silent apology to his murdered son. For all his experience, for all his vigilance, he had fallen into the same trap as Efrain. Why had he ever allowed an agent of the Chain into his command tent? He had learned long ago to salvage wisdom from his failed efforts, but of all his unsuccessful plans, this was far and away the worst, and one he might never be able to learn from.

"This is the worst plan you've ever had, no mean feat," said Purna as Diggelby laid one jar after another on his tea table with all the pride of a new parent showing off his progeny.

"The best ones usually are," said Maroto, thumping the pot in his hand and provoking the finger-long centipede into striking the glass. "I'm telling you, Purna, I won't be any use like this-only cure is a bellyful of the worm that gnawed me. It'll make me better than new."

"Until you come off it again," said Purna. "How bad will it be next time, if you keep eating them?"

"Baaaaaad," said Diggelby. "I know from experience."

"Me, too," said Maroto. "I swear on my honor, Purna. This is the last time."

She gave him a look he knew all too well, and it would have broken his heart if it wasn't busy racing at the prospect of another worm. She wanted to believe him enough that for the moment she did. Or maybe he wanted her to believe enough that she was going along with it; the end result was all that mattered. "I'm going to see what's taking them. Hurry the hells up. We should've already rendezvoused at the command tent."

"Ack," said Diggelby, pulling a face as he chomped his worm and passed the box to Maroto. The bug-headed noble didn't even take his own advice; he'd told Maroto just the other night not to chew the things. Extracting one of the grubs that extruded from the piece of bamboo laid in the box, Maroto gulped it in one go, then had another for good measure. And a third; these were a lot smaller than the one Diggelby had given him before, so he had to make sure he took enough to overpower his hangover.

"You really should keep them in cemetery dirt," he said, passing the small box back over. "I didn't even know they could live anywhere else."

"Ah," said Diggelby, nodding with the air of a master imparting wisdom to a novice. "Graveworms require such soil, but these little fellows are only found in this rubbery bamboo that grows down in the Dominions, on the border between-"

"Diggelby," said Maroto, more focused than he had felt in memory, and not from ingesting the bugs. "Diggelby, what did you just feed me? A graveworm, right? Just some exotic breed?"

"Hmmm?" Diggelby's eyes were all pupil, and Maroto began to panic. The pasha was off his fucking gourd on grubs. "Oh no. Nothing like a graveworm. Bamboo worms are..." He grinned, showing teeth dripping with white goo. "Unique."

"Unique how?" asked Maroto, having no idea if his pounding heart and sweaty brow stemmed from the insects in his belly or his anxiety at what they might do. He could have just slit his own throat.

"Dreamy," said Diggelby, waving his hand back and forth and giggling at the tracers they left hanging in the air. Wait, what? Ancestors watch over him, Maroto was already starting to hallucinate. "Something to help you sleep, and see such sights as-"

"Diggelby, you dumb moron, I said graveworms, graveworms!"

"No," said Diggelby, sounding completely sober as he leaned forward and pointed at Maroto. "You said you needed another of the worms I fed you last night. Last night I gave you one of these, because you'd spent all day puking and I knew you'd never sleep through the night without it. The graveworm was two nights ago, so don't blame me if you can't communicate with language like most upright persons."

"Why would I want to take something to sleep right before a battle!"

"Because when you take a hit off of this guy, you'll be more awake than you've ever been in your life, and still get to see all the dream stuff from the bamboo worms." Diggelby held up an empty wine bottle with an enormous scorpion clicking angrily in the base. "I put him in when he was tiny, and he's grown too big to get out. I don't know what I'll do when his stinger won't fit through the neck." Diggelby inserted his pinky into the opening, and before he'd wiggled it twice the monstrous arachnid jumped clear up the side of the bottle, burying its stinger in the fingertip. Diggelby yanked it out with a yelp, his pale pinky turning as blue as the bands on the scorpion's back. "You have to be quick about it, or your finger will swell and you'll never get it out."

There was a time when Maroto would have tried to stick his tongue down the neck of the bottle to get the most out of the experience, but those days were mercifully gone. Well, not so gone, then, considering he was starting to feel a torpor in his limbs from the whatsit worms, and sleeping this one out was starting to sound pretty capital, as Diggelby would say... The dreams of last night were returning to him now, stranger dreams than any he'd ever lived, and going back to that place would be so nice...

No. He had oaths to keep, and grabbed the bottle from Diggelby. Tried to, anyway, but his numb arm just knocked it out of his friend's hand, and it shattered open on a steel spike protruding from the shield at Maroto's feet. There was a desperate moment where nobody moved, and then everyone moved at once. The scorpion scuttled out from the shards of glass, and Maroto managed to get a sandaled foot in its path just as Diggelby lunged forward to grab at it, inadvertently headbutting Maroto in the stomach. Bless the gods of the undergrowth, for the scorpion planted its stinger deep in Maroto's ankle before scurrying across the tent and into the heap of Diggelby's bedding.

"I'll find you later," Diggelby called after it in a come-hither voice. "He got you, didn't he?"

"Uh," said Maroto, vibrating all over. It felt like he had injected magma into his ankle, the hit unlike any scorpion he'd ever sampled. He definitely wasn't drowsy anymore, his thoughts coming faster than he could voice them: "WhatkindoffuckingscorpionisthatDiggelby?"

"I don't know the Classical Immaculate name for the species," said Diggelby thoughtfully. "I just call it that brute I found in my slipper back in the Panteran Wastes."

Maroto stared at Diggelby, who seemed to be swelling like a puffer fish, ripples extending down his fleshy neck and across his padded caftan. He had just dosed Maroto with two separate exotic bugs, neither of which even an inveterate connoisseur of his experience had tried before, and one of which was presumably unknown outside of the wilds. They were both still giggling when Purna shoved her melting face into the tent and told them to move their arses. Snatching up the two heaviest shields in Diggelby's collection, Maroto glided after her. He had promises to keep, even though breaking them always came so much easier.

CHAPTER.

24.

So much for her esteemed personal guard. With first light showing but not a one of Tapai Purna's crew, Ji-hyeon mounted her charger and gave a final blow of her horn. With Keun-ju, Fennec, Choi, and Chevaleresse Sasamaso leading the dozen mounted knights that made up her bodyguard, she cantered through the camp, waving her flag-spear and picking up a wake of foot soldiers as she rode down the base of the Lark's Tongue, toward the bloody battle at its foot. Dark as it remained with the sun still hidden beyond the foothills, Ji-hyeon was pleased her army had been ready to meet their attackers, and begrudgingly impressed by the initiative of the Fifteenth Regiment.

The Crimson cavalry had attempted to crash through the pickets and pikers stationed just where the incline steepened, but before they'd reached the massed infantry more horns had sounded and the Cobalts responded in kind. Faaris Kimaera was an old sellsword Fennec had scared up in Nux Vomica, and the master horseman had led the motley Cobalt cavalry down from the southern ridge to intercept the Crimson riders. When the Imperials veered across the edge of the valley to meet them, Chevaleresse Singh's dragoons had swept down from the northern ridge, striking the Crimson cavalry across the rear flank. Beset on two sides by riders and with the Cobalt pikers jabbing at them from the slope above them, the Crimson cavalry nevertheless held their own. They defended their sides, repelling the Cobalts from penetrating their troop, and pushed hard up the hill, meeting rebel polearms with heavy lances and crushing the tightly packed defenders under hoof as they broke through the front lines. Behind them, the Crimson foot were charging fast, a wave of blood crossing the valley to wash up the base of the Lark's Tongue.

Avoiding the press of her main infantry, where she'd do more harm than good trying to break through and the soldiers jogging after her would be wasted, Ji-hyeon led her retinue and the several hundred infantry who had followed them from camp around to the north, where their fellows were thinner on the ground. Mostly deaf from the cacophony of the battle before she even joined it, she reached Kimaera's cavalry and skirted their edge, meaning to bolster their defenses from the charging red infantry while the Cobalt riders drove inward to meet Singh's contingent, squeezing the Crimson cavalry between them. Hoisting her spear aloft and giving the flag a final wave, Ji-hyeon set the weapon and spurred her charger into the oncoming horde, Choi on her left with an enormous crescent-bladed moon-spear and Keun-ju on the right with a long, tasseled trident. Fennec seemed to have fallen behind with Kimaera's cavalry, but her mounted knights and the crowd of panting foot soldiers still trotted behind them. Fellwing circled low over Ji-hyeon, and she tried not to be reminded of a vulture as her speeding horse delivered her to the fiercest battle of her life.

Arrows sped back and forth on either side of her, and then Ji-hyeon's charger crashed into the raging red sea. Her flag-spear punched through the breastplate of a bellowing woman in the front, and Ji-hyeon dropped the weapon just in time to avoid having her arm wrenched out of joint as the horse carried her deeper into the enemy infantry. She jerked the reins to wheel back out of the horde, but the Imperials were packed too tight all around her, with more pushing in all the time. Worse still, the Cobalt soldiers she had intended to lead into the fray had fallen behind, and now the front line was behind her. She had used this maneuver half a dozen times, but never driven so deep into the enemy. Shit.

Pikes jabbed at her, swords scraped across her horse's chainmail, bounced off her greaves. She fumbled her twin long swords from their scabbard, nearly dropping one as an arrow ricocheted off the side of her helm. Adept at riding as she'd become since leaving Hwabun, wielding a sword in each hand while surrounded by a furious armed and armored mob didn't allow for elegance, or much control of her charger. The warhorse was a better steed than Ji-hyeon was a rider, fortunately, his controlled bucking and kicking preventing her from being dragged down by the Imperials.

For now, anyway, the Crimson soldiers were throwing themselves at her, eyes wide under their pot helms and mouths flecked with froth as they careened at her, heedless of her horse's hooves or her steel blades. They were clearly mad with rage, behaving less like trained soldiers and more like fire ants swarming their prey. In the past her legendary appearance had instilled palpable fear in her foes, but here the soldiers betrayed no trace of anything resembling recognition or even understandable wariness, only a fury that was all the more disturbing for its presence on virtually every face. A man with skin as red as his tabard kept spitting and foaming after her sword jabbed through his throat, as though hate alone might keep him alive.

Two more men seized her leg on the other side, and as she swung around to beat them back, her faceplate was misted with blood as Choi's moon-spear hacked one of their heads off and embedded in the neck of the other. Still he clung to her greaves, trying to pull her down, and with a slash of a sword she completed the job Choi had started. Arms already sore, she spurred her horse's left flank, and the well-trained animal angled them back around as best he could in the tumult. Yet as he turned and Ji-hyeon saw Choi's spear blade fanning through the air to beat the red soldiers back, she realized in the press she had no idea which way they had come. This was exactly what Fennec had tried to warn her about; she'd done a very, very stupid thing, and was on the verge of panic when a chirp from Fellwing caused her to look up, beyond the chaos, and see the Lark's Tongue off to her left.

"Fall back!" she cried, but even as she gave the order she realized she couldn't hear her own voice over the raging battle, couldn't see Keun-ju or Chevaleresse Sasamaso or any of her other knights, only the turbulent waves of red curling with flashing steel and, impossibly distant, the ragged blue line of her infantry. A pike jabbed up, glancing off the snout of her helm, a sword pierced her charger's armor, causing him to rear up violently and nearly dislodge her, and Ji-hyeon cursed herself for the biggest fool to ever jump headfirst into hell.

By the time Zosia slid back down into camp, corralled the hundred confused foot soldiers Ji-hyeon had given her to command, and had them tap a like number of archers from the formation firing down into the valley, the Cobalts holding the front already looked to be in some serious shit. They'd be in a far riper mess if she didn't get things in hand on their rear, however, which she had to repeat three times to the lieutenant commanding the archers before the woman would let her take off with a hundred sorely needed shooters. Then it was a race back up the hill, through camp, keeping her eye on the exposed hump that marked where a small plateau jutted out of the Lark's Tongue five hundred feet farther up the mountainside. Any moment she expected to see the first Crimson soldiers crest it and come charging down the steep slope into camp, but nothing stirred among the rocks and cacti. The Lark's Tongue was bare to the hump and nearly bald from there to the summit, with only a few low bands of the pine that swathed the surrounding mountains, but she never would have scrambled high enough to spot the flashes of metal coming around the mountain's shoulder as the sun finally rose if Choplicker hadn't made such a stink about it.

There was nothing beyond the front of the range here but a lot of rough country, and ever since the Fifteenth had left the road fifteen miles south to follow the Cobalts' trail they'd been monitored by scouts, who'd reported no contingents splitting off to flank them. That meant the ambush had been set into motion before they even came down from the mountains, which bespoke a degree of tactical sophistication Zosia never would have credited to Efrain Hjortt-the boy must be taking things a lot more seriously since she'd cut his thumbs off. He couldn't have spared a large force for such a risky course through the trackless wilds, but it might have been enough to cripple the Cobalts, if Zosia wasn't there to help. She knew a classic wolf trap maneuver when she saw one, though she'd always led the Imperials into them instead of building the gambit around an existing camp; a lot could go wrong if you didn't already have both units in position to crush the enemy between them, as she hoped to demonstrate by taking that defensible plateau first and firing on the Imperials as they came scrambling down from the pass above.

As they reached the upper edge of camp, the runner she'd sent to alert Ji-hyeon of the ambush came huffing around a tent and waved her down. He didn't look like he had good news.

"Let me guess," Zosia called, "our fearless general's decided to lead from the front?"

"Uh-huh," panted the runner. "But I found these two, looking confused, in front of the command tent, so I brought 'em, 'cause you said bring any able hands."

The tallest figure Zosia had ever seen caught up to the runner, looking a sight less winded. Zosia grinned up at them, and called out in the Flintland tongue, "Well, you don't get more able than four hands on two legs, do you?"

"Uh," said Sullen, not meeting Zosia's gaze. "It's you."

"Manners, laddie," said old man Ruthless, resting his hands on his grandson's bulb of hair like it was a pulpit for his oration. "Anyone to lay out my son the way she did is worth a nod, if not a drink. What shall we call you, madam, since we've not been formally introduced? On the road we heard a lot of titles, so let's see, is it Cold Cobalt Zosia, Forsook Queen, Captain of Cobalts and Banshee of Blades, First Among-"

"Zosia is fine," she said, seeing where Maroto had inherited his love for the sound of his own voice. "I'll just call you Ruthless and Sullen, since I hear those are your names. Fair?"

"More than," said Ruthless.

"What..." Sullen was staring at Choplicker, who'd come over and rubbed his head against the man's leg. "What's your devil's name?"