"Bully for them. Now, a bath, food, drink, smoke, bed," said Zosia, yawning at a militiaperson who was sizing her up. "Let's get on with it."

Zosia had fond memories of Immaculate bathhouses in Linkensterne from long before the takeover, but she didn't remember any being as clean as the one Bang led her to. Jade tiles gleamed in the candlelight, the wide, terraced pools steaming like soup bowls. There were a dozen other bathers spread out in the tubs or lounging on the warm tiles, and as Zosia lowered herself into the hot water she felt true contentment for the first time since she had been forced upon this road she walked. Bang settled in beside her, and, seeing her out of her uniform, Zosia's interest in the girl increased substantially. She smiled to herself at the younger woman's flirtatious glances and offer to wash her back... but as soon as the smile arrived it wilted. Zosia dunked her face in the water and stayed down as long as she could, as if she could hide there forever from her past, and from her base nature. As if warm water and a rough sponge could scrub away what was wrong with her.

In a refreshingly dingy tavern off the main drag, Zosia and Bang were served up a steaming supper fragrant with long-missed spices. They ate at a yellowed floor table, filling their dishes from the large chipped bowl set between them. Mixing up the rice, fried quail eggs, peppery bean paste, and sauteed ferns and radish, Zosia passed the seared venison, curds, and sauerkraut to Bang-it had been decades since she had enjoyed real Immaculate cuisine, and didn't care to sully the experience with these concessions to Crimson tastes. Besides, she had eaten little else but deer jerky on her journey. She ate and she ate and she ate, offering no scraps to Choplicker even when he whined until the quail yolks turned red, the melting faces of people Zosia had killed leaking out into the rice. She raised bowl to lips and shoveled in the lot, imagining all the new victims Choplicker would haunt her with, once her work really got under way.

Zosia liked to drink and she liked to smoke, and she liked them best when she could enjoy them together. Once Bang had gotten the measure of her ward's preferences, they ambled through Linkensterne. They passed the tall, teetering kaldi houses (hash and bud of the saam only, please) and the fluttering silk panels of the sting warrens (insects, arachnids, and the odd kidnapping), arriving in their own full-bellied time at a longhouse that reeked of bitter beer, bitter sweat, and, sweetest of all to Zosia's nose, bitter tubq. Even this early in the season the rice paper shutters were slid open, the chill outside mitigated by the large firepit in the center of the room and the dozens of smaller furnaces the patrons puffed upon. Cheap clay tavern pipes were bought for pfennigs from the proprietor, a reedy old gent from distant Vasarat whose longstanding devotion to his brown mistress was writ across callused lips, stained teeth, and the yellow finger he dug into his nostril as though it were an obstinate bowl clinging to its dottle.

Having the end but not the means, Zosia sidled up to the bar, shrugging off her pack as she bumped past a woolly-bearded barbarian nursing a porcelain-headed jaegerpfeiff. Up and down his arms and neck sinuous indigo tattoos wrestled with jagged white scars, his lionskin cloak stank of wet dirt and old blood, and his pipe gave off the cloying aroma of lavender. Once upon a time she would have challenged the giant to a duel for smoking his pungent aromatic weed within sniffing distance of her; once, but long ago. Pushing her wide-brimmed hat back onto her neck, she settled onto a stool and plunked her smallest purse on the lacquered bar.

"Hi, honor friend," said the proprietor, his Immaculate even worse than hers.

"Right back atcha," said Zosia in Crimson as she undid the flaps of her enormous backpack. Withdrawing a pouch smaller yet more precious than the coinpurse set before her, she removed a pipe carved in the cutty style, its gently bent antler stem as long as her hand and its smooth briar bowl canted slightly forward, like a tipsy sailor leaning against a mast. Two tiny spurs descended from the base of the bowl, allowing it to sit steady on the bartop. "I'll be filling this with your finest vergin flake, my horn with your darkest stout, a dwarf of your smoothest ryefire, and a private room. That order."

It was the dwarf glasses of ryefire that got her. Bang matched her tipple for tipple and horn for horn at first, the pretty soldier doing her regiment proud. As she eyed Zosia's pipe the conversation flowed into the safe waters of stormy seas and naval entanglements, of which Zosia had seen more than many in her youth. Bang obviously had the brine in her veins, and as night gave way to early morning Zosia found herself genuinely enjoying the eager young fool's company-the girl seemed intent on seeing herself washed into an early grave, and it seemed a pity to send her off to sea without a bit more sand under her nails.

"Should've said something sooner, would've been easy to arrange a bedmate," said Bang as she ducked away from Zosia at the older woman's door. "Still could see, send someone up?"

"Nah, haven't paid for it in so long I wouldn't know the etiquette," said Zosia, trying to mask her embarrassment with braggadocio. Just as she'd known that last dwarf of ryefire was a mistake before it even hit her belly, she realized now that she had totally misread the situation, that she had mistaken basic kindness and mild flirtation for something more. "Just being friendly, was all."

"I am flattered," said Bang. "Really. Good night, friend."

"Sure," said Zosia. "Night."

Closing the door, she looked to Choplicker. He had nosed the paper screen over and had his front paws up on the windowsill, looking out into the dark city. Much as she disliked sharing her room with him, the alternative was to let him loose on the streets of Linkensterne.

Or she could set him free once and for all, in exchange for vengeance upon all those responsible. That would take the burden from her aged shoulders and ensure that none escaped their due. She wouldn't have to take another step into the Immaculate Isles, wouldn't have to bet her already slim chance of success on a hundred thousand variables-it had taken her over a season just to get this far; how long would it take her to achieve her ends? Why not just let the monster do what monsters did best?

"Not on your life," Zosia muttered, sprawling out on the mat. Hoartrap had claimed that devils could only speak to the sleeping and the dead, but Zosia knew better than to put faith in the word of a witch. She often wondered if the fiends couldn't also project a thought into your mind, the notion planted so surreptitiously as to make you think you'd conjured it up yourself. That would certainly explain how often she thought about turning Choplicker loose, even after he'd declined her previous offer for freedom.

And why she would have tried to screw the first available person she came across, with Leib not yet half a year dead. She remembered the wink and slap on the bottom he'd given her before riding out for the crossroads that last time and barely made it to the chamberpot in time. When she was sure that her guts were done, she wiped her mouth and looked to where Choplicker had curled up beneath the window, pretending to sleep.

Would that devils were responsible for our weakness, Zosia thought as she crawled back onto her mat. Would that there was somebody, anybody, anything else to blame for her lot. In the morning she would find many likely candidates, with Queen Indsorith of Samoth at the top of the list, but for now, squinting in the glare of sleeplessness, she could only twist deeper into herself, into her responsibility for the death of Leib and his village.

"My village," she whispered in the dark, "my village," but she never quite believed it.

CHAPTER.

12.

It was late spring when Sister Portoles's transgression at the village of Kypck truly caught up with her.

In the meantime, she had been lashed by Father Eddison as soon as she had led the cavalry back down the valley to rejoin the main force of the Fifteenth Regiment, the charred corpse of Sir Hjortt she had recovered from the ruins of the mayoress's house lashed to the back of his horse. She had fully expected this. She had been lashed again by the regiment's acting colonel once her clerical superior was done with her, which, again, she had both anticipated and welcomed. Finally, she had lashed herself in penance on every new moon since, but she had prayed to avoid any substantial probing into the particulars of that nobleman's ignoble death in a remote mountain town. Alas, it seemed a well-connected young colonel could not burn to death on a war nun's watch without a full inquiry taking place.

The summons came the week after she finally returned to her cell in the quadrant of Diadem's central Chainhouse known as the Dens. The Fallen Mother saw through the selfishness of Sister Portoles's prayers, and so the summons, and as the anathema read the letter in the dimness of her cell she nodded to herself. She deserved this, just as Sir Hjortt had deserved to die in the fire. Just as Portoles had judged him, now, too, would she be judged. Everything happened. Not for a reason, mind, for the Fallen Mother was beyond the need for justifications, but everything happened.

Sister Portoles set the summons down on her penitence bench and prepared herself to enter the Crimson Throne Room of Diadem. Her ablutions took the better part of the day, all of the hair on her body, and the odd patch of skin when her razor found resistance. Better to lose a little flesh than leave behind a trace of what she had been before this day. To be before Her Grace was to be reborn, and what babe comes to its mother already dressed in fur? A babe worthy of the pyre, not the teat.

Too late, she thought to call on Brother Wan, thinking he might be persuaded to sin with her one last time, the way they used to, but this was the thought of Portoles, anathema and sinner, and the penitent nun who crouched naked in the cell slapped herself across the face. Hard. And again. And now she wanted to see Brother Wan more than ever, so she stuck out her tongue and pinched it between her fingers, digging into the ridge of scar tissue that marked where the church had made her almost human when she was but a fledgling monster. She could no longer recall the tastes of the wind, of the night, but she could well remember the tang of blood and hemp as the papal barbers had sewn her forked tongue together.

A knock at her door. This was it, then. Rising, she dropped the black robe included with the summons over her stocky frame and went to meet her fate. Except instead of an escort to her judgment, it was a far more welcome visitor.

"Oh, Portoles." Brother Wan gazed up at her in the doorway. The pocked knot of flesh where his nose and upper lip should be, where his beak had been, trembled with emotion. "I would have come as soon as I heard about the summons, but thought... you might wish to come to me. Shall I go? I shall go."

"Temptation," growled Portoles, wondering if the Fallen Mother or the Deceiver had put this penultimate obstacle in her path. Not really caring either way. Kissing her brother-in-chains right there in the hall of the Dens, kissing him until her file-dulled teeth knocked against the wooden ones the church had given him, and then pulling him into her cell. They tripped over her penitence bench, came down with limbs tangled, and for what must be the final time rooted their hands beneath one another's vestments, groaning prayers together between kisses as they worked one another to forbidden rapture.

Employing only their hands did not betray the letter of the law, true, but as Brother Wan had always told her when they were done and he was regretting his weakness, their actions certainly ran against the spirit of it. He was correct that a lesser sin is still a sin, which only prompted Portoles to argue that that was all the more reason for them to consummate the greater evil their bodies craved. Everything happens, she would breathe in the humid darkness, but he always stopped her before she could damn them both.

When they were growing up together in the Dens, he had always set an example for Portoles to aspire to, and his ability to know her heart even better than she knew it herself had no doubt saved her from many a graver sin. Since becoming an attache to Cardinal Diamond several years prior, he had soared to such lofty reaches in his piety that he had rebuked her every suggestion that they resume their discreet meetings. That he had come to her this last time filled Portoles with the buzzing ecstasy that she only ever seemed to attain through committing a new sin; what did it say about her that frigging Wan was so much more exciting, now that he was so much holier?

"What happened out there?" Wan whispered as they lay together when they were both finished, Portoles licking her fingers clean. "The clerks are saying all sorts of horrible things, and Cardinal Diamond-"

"Pray for me, brother," said Sister Portoles, kissing her fellow anathema on the cheek and smoothing her robe. She had to go, now, or she would tell him everything, and she cared about him too much to burden him with more of her sins. "That's what we always used to do, after."

Giving Brother Wan a final sad smile, she went to meet her queen and, holier still, her pontiff.

Sister Portoles had only been inside Diadem's Jewel once, when she had been called by Abbotess Cradofil for enlistment in the Imperial military, and on that occasion she had been surrounded by a thousand other novices in the parade grounds on the bottom level. Now she walked alone-as all mortals truly are in the eyes of the Almighty Matron-up winding stairs carved into the ossified corpse of the volcano that housed Diadem, moving from the city below to the castle above. Daunting a journey as it would have been were she only meeting her pontiff, the knowledge that the Crimson Queen would also be present filled Portoles with terror.

It was not the ferocious reputation of Queen Indsorith alone that terrified Portoles, but the anxiety that stemmed from not knowing exactly how solid the ground was beneath her feet, now that another political seismic shift had settled. For most of her life Portoles had been taught that Queen Indsorith was second only to Pope Shanatu in the eyes of the Fallen Mother, and after praying to the Black Pope every novice turned her prayers to the Crimson Queen and her royal castle in the old capital of the Serpent's Circle.

But then the Burnished Chain had declared Queen Indsorith a traitor to the Fallen Mother, and in the ensuing civil war Portoles had fought the forces of a woman she had once worshipped... only to have Pope Shanatu declare a truce, restore the queen to grace at the Council of Diadem, and then promptly retire from his post, with his niece succeeding him as Black Pope. As if matters weren't turbulent enough, after the reconciliation Queen Indsorith had moved her court back to Diadem, ruling from the Crimson Throne Room for the first time in nearly twenty years, the old queen and the new pope governing their respective spheres from the same chamber. In a few short months Portoles had gone from killing Imperials at the Battle of Brockie to serving as personal bodyguard to one of their colonels... a position she had proven woefully inadequate for.

No wonder a lowly anathema struggled with her faith even before what the summons had called the Encounter at Kypck-like all of her monstrous ilk, Portoles was born to sin, and only the intervention of the Burnished Chain brought goodness into her brutish heart. She couldn't understand how anyone, even the Crimson Queen, could be excommunicated from the church one year, only to be declared the spiritual equal of the Black Pope after the war went poorly for the Burnished Chain. Brother Wan sternly admonished her not to ask questions beyond her comprehension, but Sister Portoles couldn't help herself; she wanted the world to make sense again, the way it had when she was young. Sadly, she was losing the war she fought with her own devilish nature, and now that she had effectively murdered Colonel Hjortt there could be no saving her: the two holiest women in the world would see her for what she was, and as Portoles went to fulfill the summons she knew she would never return to the Dens, the only home she had ever known.

After being admitted through a dozen gates of narrowing width and increased guard, she was given a black candle as thick as her wrist, and with the aid of a blind officiant melted its base onto her shaven head until she was able to affix it in place. Only when it was firmly welded to her scalded skull was she permitted to proceed up the unlit avenues of Castle Diadem, her pace painfully slow lest the flame flicker out. Gargoyles leered at her from every arch and buttress, gobs of wax mingling with her tears to leave a trail for her to follow back out should she be permitted to leave after the audience. The way was known to her by the will of the Fallen Mother, channeled through the pure heart of the Black Pope, who waited with the Crimson Queen... or so the summons had alleged, but Portoles found herself guided solely by the smears of phosphorescent slime on the flagstones that directed her ever upward. Perhaps they knew her sin was so great she could no longer feel the touch of the divine, and had thus provided her another means of finding her way.

An hour passed, maybe two, stair after stair, ramp upon ramp.

Everything happens, but still Sister Portoles struggled. The echo of Brother Wan's fingers now seemed shrill between her legs, and she would have cursed her weakness had her breath not been required to keep her chant at a respectable volume. It was not for the unclean to judge any but themselves-how many times had Abbotess Cradofil made her repeat that? And yet Sister Portoles had judged Sir Hjortt, and now she would be judged. The Fallen Mother loved her, and a war-worn sister should walk with her head high, even an anathema, yet the wax dripping down her nose and cheeks made her shame public. Any hope she had felt in her cell was gone here in the house the Almighty Matron had fashioned for her hierophants.

Once Sister Portoles gained the throne room's antechamber, the lighting improved even if her mood remained dark. Candelabras illuminated a posh old man dressed in the chartreuse regalia of Azgaroth. He waited on a bench, Abbotess Cradofil beside him, and both stood as Sister Portoles shuffled down the last shadow-draped corridor. Neither appeared happy to see her.

"Sister Portoles," said Abbotess Cradofil, her lips as slick and bulging as a pair of tadpoles. "I present you to Baron Domingo Hjortt of Cockspar, Retired Fifteenth Colonel of the Crimson Empire."

"Sir." Sister Portoles bowed as best she could without risking her candle. A rivulet of wax arced across her eye, but she did not cry out. This old rooster looked just as puffed up as his broiled chick. "I pray for Sir Hjortt's soul, and trust the remains and effects I returned to the Fifteenth safely found their way home to Cockspar."

"Let's get on with this," Baron Hjortt addressed Abbotess Cradofil. "I have no desire to speak to this creature."

"Perhaps, but Sister Portoles has something to tell you of your son," said Abbotess Cradofil, those dead eyes of her cutting across Sister Portoles. "Don't you?"

"I lament the death of Sir Hjortt," said Sister Portoles, but before she could stop herself the words came rushing out of their own accord. "I believe you would have had him die a hero, not a coward. Allmother forgive him."

Well, it was the truth, though the nobleman's horrified expression confirmed that he had not come to the Imperial capital for such insight into Sir Efrain Hjortt's final moments. Abbotess Cradofil's slimy mouth pursed tight, and Sister Portoles silently apologized for the wildness in her bedeviled tongue. Perhaps it would have been better if they had just removed it altogether, as Abbotess Cradofil had always said.

"I'll watch you burn ere the moon next rises," Baron Hjortt snarled, and Sister Portoles supposed he was right. She remembered the look that had appeared on his son's face when she had not braved the burning terrace to save him, the hatred and fear and confusion... The familial resemblance was unmistakable. She wondered if she would die better. She couldn't possibly die worse.

"After all I've done for you, this is the tithe you offer," Abbotess Cradofil murmured as she ushered Sister Portoles to the great white oak doors. No guards stood sentry here, the queen decreeing that any assassin was entitled to the same chance at her throne that she had once enjoyed. In twenty years of her rule, forty-seven contenders had breached this final portal, and forty-six skulls lined the archway, grinning down at the nobleman, the abbotess, and the anathema. The one missing skull supposedly belonged to a man unworthy of a death by the queen's blade, a wastrel cast out to seek a more fitting tomb among the scavenging devils of the Star. "Fallen Mother heed me, Portoles, if you speak so freely before our pontiff, I will snap your neck myself."

"I praise your mercy, Superior, but I shall not accept it," Sister Portoles heard herself reply, and marveled that sinning had apparently become something she did on reflex. Had the deviltry she had fought her whole life to smother come loose once she let Sir Hjortt die? Was the wickedness of the Deceiver stirring this mutiny in her breast? As much as she wanted to believe such excuses, in her soul Portoles knew that her love for sin was nothing new, that hard as she had fought against her base nature, transgression gave her more succor than obedience ever had.

The Crimson Throne Room was built into the rim of the petrified volcano, a roofless half-moon of polished obsidian ending in a two-thousand-foot drop down to the gables and cupolas of the city beneath the castle. It was told in songs that the stars blazed hotter here than anywhere else in the world, even when the moon was full, as it was this night, and other than Sister Portoles's candle no earthly light disturbed the chamber. She suspected that even had she a pair of pure eyes the room would seem bright as the flush of dawn.

The Queen of Samoth, Keeper of the Crimson Empire, sprawled across a huge throne of carven red fire glass that erupted from the obsidian floor, the flowing lines and steep curls of the seat making Her Majesty appear to float atop a plume of blood. The Black Pope, Shepherdess of the Lost, sat stiffly beside her queen in a shorter, plainer throne, this one crafted of onyx and inlaid with thick silver chains. Both women were opulently enrobed, but the queen was barefoot. The doors swung shut and Sister Portoles's candle guttered out. Three pairs of knees slipped to the hard floor, three heads bowed.

"Your Majesty and Your Grace," began Abbotess Cradofil, "I present unto you this worthy pilgrim, Sir Domingo Hjortt, Baron of Cockspar, Retired Fifteenth Colonel of the Crimson Empire, and the sister whom you seek, an anathema we have rehabilitated and given the name Portoles, for Saint-"

"Rehabilitated, you say?" came a surprisingly high voice, and Sister Portoles peeked up, one-eyed from the wax she dared not wipe away, to see if her queen or her pontiff spoke. It was Pope Y'Homa III, Voice of the Allmother, now sitting straight up, the tip of her conical hat nearly, but not quite, as high as the jagged carnelian crown of the seated queen. "This devil-spawned witch had but one purpose in the life we built her, and you dare allege she is reformed, after what befell her charge? Small wonder my cardinals counsel me to raze the Dens and be done with this ill-guided quest of yours."

"Your Grace, a single transgressor-"

"I did not call you here to debate theology." The Black Pope's pale sneer pushed through Sister Portoles's robes, into a secret tenderness she had never believed existed in her breast. That she was a sinner she readily admitted, and she prayed for punishment, but to hear that her actions might reflect upon all her wretched brethren was a poison to her nerves, a brand to blister her very soul. "You have claimed, to myself and my uncle before me, that an anathema may serve but a single purpose: to put itself between danger and the righteous. To serve as shield, however sullied. To protect the clean. Yet here we have a monster that dares return to its post not with the living pureborn it swore to serve, but his blackened bones! And as if such a travesty were not crime enough, it wears the robes I have given it, mocking this very office. And you would lecture me on the difference between one and legion?"

"Your Grace, I never meant to imply-" Abbotess Cradofil began.

"I know well the difference between a single devil and an army of them, Cradofil-the latter currently enjoy every comfort of Diadem while all across the Star faithful pureborn go hungry and cold, and the former has aroused such disgust in our queen that it has been brought here, to befoul the most sacrosanct space in all of the Empire as we ponder its punishment."

The words scourged Sister Portoles far deeper than the physical lashes she had brought upon herself, and she silently wept. Doubt was her devil, forever goading her, and she had fed the beast as eagerly as a disobedient child slipping scraps to a forbidden puppy. She had doubted Sir Hjortt, and that doubt had made her feel befouled when she had delivered the order to exterminate that village, and fouler still when she had personally executed the five members of the cavalry who refused the will of their colonel. And after the slaughter, it was her doubt that had kept her on the edge of the flames at the mayoress's house, it feeling just and good to watch Hjortt burning alive, after what he had ordered Portoles and the Fifteenth Cavalry to do...

Ever since Kypck she had been deceiving herself, pretending that killing the villagers was the true crime and Hjortt the true criminal, Portoles an avenging angel of the Fallen Mother, but now she recognized just how deluded she had been. Her innate corruption always perverted the truth, sin tasting sweetest upon her tongue and goodness smacking of ash and lye, which was why she had let him die, and why she had told no one of what really happened that day. Instead, during every confession after the event she had cast his death not as the result of her inaction but as the inscrutable will of the Fallen Mother. She had almost convinced herself that it wasn't a lie, not really, but of course it was, and of course the only sin that had been committed that day was her refusal to help the pureborn colonel who needed her aid. She remembered how he had thrashed in the chair he was bound to as the deck of the mayoress's house burned around him, hurling insults and promises and prayers at Sister Portoles while she watched him roast. From the corner of her eye she saw Baron Hjortt shake with silent laughter or barely contained emotion at the pope's condemnation of Portoles, and she would have whispered an apology to the grieving father had she not feared a cry would escape instead.

"That's all a bit much, isn't it?"

Sister Portoles's heart stopped, a half-birthed sob aborted in her throat. The queen had spoken. She sounded tired, her bare feet still dangling off the edge of the throne she lounged across.

"Sister Portoles, I wonder if we might hear from your lips what transpired in Kypck, and how Baron Hjortt's son met his doom there." Queen Indsorith shimmered, bathed in celestial radiance... or so she looked through the lens of Sister Portoles's tears. "My Askers have interviewed dozens of the deceased colonel's cavalry, so I have established a certain chain of events, but would have you enlighten us with your account. Mother Cradofil recounted the basics from your last confession for us, but I am interested in a more detailed telling."

Sister Portoles swallowed, willed her venomous tongue to work as her queen commanded. Finally, it managed, "If it pleases Your Grace?"

"Whether or not it pleases Y'Homa means less than nothing here, in my throne room, in my capital, in my province, in my empire," said Queen Indsorith, reclining farther into the ebon seawolf furs that bolstered her throne. "Whatever your station before you entered into the service of the Crimson Empire's armies, you are bound to heed my will. Unless you disagree?"

Sister Portoles was unsure if this last was directed at her or the pontiff, but when no response came from Pope Y'Homa, she steadied herself and began her confession, sparing no detail of her own failings. This time she would tell it true. And so she did, from her hubris to her disrespectful tongue, from her reluctance at carrying out her colonel's orders to her guilt and self-loathing at staving in the heads of the soldiers who wouldn't assist in the slaughter, and finally her doubts over the righteousness of killing the villagers in the first place. Yet just when she reached the climax, as she was about to confess how she had returned from the cleansed hamlet to find the mayoress's hut likewise aflame, the trapped Sir Hjortt wailing for help, and her own heart hard to his pleas, the queen cut her off.

"-And so when you returned to the mayoral house it was already on fire, and Sir Efrain Hjortt along with it. This is as I had heard from the men in Sir Hjortt's command, and those whom you previously confessed to. Please explain, Your Grace, how exactly does Sister Portoles's faithful enactment of the orders given her by Sir Hjortt qualify as sedition or"-the queen gasped dramatically-"deviltry?"

None spoke in the Crimson Throne Room, and then Baron Hjortt cleared his throat. When no response was elicited he tried again, and this time the queen snapped, "What do you have to say for your idiot son, Baron? Before I gave you permission to pass your command down to your boy, you always struck me as a worthy colonel, one well versed in the Crimson Codices. I believe you taught him to uphold my laws of war, did you not?"

Baron Hjortt was obviously at a loss for words, and the queen went on, finally leaning forward in her throne as she berated the retired colonel.

"Everyone in my armies from drudge to colonel knows better than to sack a single farm without my express orders, let alone an entire town, so what, pray tell, could inspire the dearly departed Sir Hjortt to commit such an atrocity? Did you accidentally tutor him in the ways of ancient barbarians instead of the civilized Empire? When you gave him your command, did you forget to mention the commandments of his queen, laws which were old when he was young?"

"Your Majesty!" Baron Hjortt finally spluttered, and then, clearly stalling, said it again: "Your Majesty!"

"Perhaps this creature blasted him with some geas or hex," supplied Pope Y'Homa, keeping her dark gaze on Sister Portoles. "That would certainly explain how a crone, as the anathema so eloquently put it, could murder both an experienced war monk and a knight of Azgaroth. It would be a pretty trick indeed to have Colonel Hjortt commit such evil and then dispose of him and her brother-in-chains when the crime was done."

"No!" cried Sister Portoles, surprising even herself with the outburst. "Never! I... I am not pure, I have never been pure, it is true... But I strive to be as good as the Allmother allows me to be! I am no witch, nor a conspirator-I am nothing if not loyal to you! To both of you, my pope! My queen!"

"Loyal to both of us?" the queen asked, exchanging a queer smile with the pope, and Sister Portoles blushed at her own folly. "Tell me, Your Grace, do you think this wretch tells honest, or do you still believe that the rust of corruption has eaten so deeply into the Chain that even the holy soldiers you place in my service are compromised?"

The wind picked up, roaring over the high wall of the volcano and stirring the queen's long auburn hair around her haughty face. Again, none spoke for a heavy moment, the two women staring at each other, and then the pontiff threw up her hands. It was an oddly petulant gesture, and for the first time Sister Portoles appreciated that the Voice of the Fallen Mother was decades younger than the queen, the pontiff sixteen years old if she was a day.

"I leave her future in your most capable hands, Your Majesty," said the Black Pope as she rose from her throne. "For now I must away and counsel with the abbotess and my cardinals, but as always you and I are of one mind on the judgment."

"As always," said the queen, slumping back in her high seat. "Take the old man with you before I decide to attribute his son's exceptionally poor judgment to bad parenting. Rest assured, Baron, if Sister Portoles had returned in time to rescue your offspring I would currently be flogging him in Diadem's square-already his actions have polluted our relations with a dozen outlying provinces. I will not see the Empire fall back into the savage cruelty of old. I never would have let you retire had I suspected your son would prove such a pitiful imitation of his father."

"Your Majesty," Baron Hjortt managed a final time, and then he quickly backed away toward the portico as the pontiff approached.

Abbotess Cradofil knelt until Pope Y'Homa III stopped before her and extended her jet-ringed hand for the superior to kiss. To Sister Portoles's bafflement and delight, the pope then offered her hand to the kneeling anathema. Sister Portoles kissed the ring with more love and tenderness than she had ever kissed Brother Wan, and then the Black Pope strode out of the room, Baron Hjortt stumbling backward before her, Abbotess Cradofil scurrying after.

The doors creaked shut behind them, leaving Sister Portoles alone with her queen in the Crimson Throne Room, only the dim stars, the looming moon, and the chill wind party to what came next.

CHAPTER.

13.

From Linkensterne, it was a long and rocky coach ride to the coast. When they eventually hit the end of the Norwest peninsula there came the worst leg of the journey, Zosia, Choplicker, and Bang crushed together in the back of a rickshaw and carried along the miles and miles of nauseatingly high boardwalks that linked the closest of the Immaculate Isles to the mainland. When they ran out of wooden roads they rented a boat, and after a long voyage Bang finally delivered Zosia to Hwabun, the last isle before the Haunted Sea, and the family seat of her old crony Kang-ho.

Both smaller and taller than its neighbors, Hwabun did indeed resemble the flower pot it was named for, grey stone cliffs laced with pink mineral deposits rising hundreds of feet above the waves before leveling off into a plateau of variegated vegetation. Bang steered their small catamaran directly at the walls of the island, and only when they were rapidly closing in on the rocks did Zosia make out the sea cave that housed Hwabun's modest harbor. Their way lit by an enormous blubber chandelier that hung from the ceiling of the subterranean cove, Bang maneuvered the vessel around to the docks, where a dozen craft of various sizes and makes were already moored.

A white-gowned old woman helped them tie off, and after a quick Immaculate exchange with Bang, the harbor keeper directed them down the dock and up a wide staircase built into the wall of the cove. They passed through a carven tunnel and emerged into a gazebo, where they were greeted by another servant along with a pair of armed guards, all of the staff dressed in the same bright white livery as the harbor keeper. Zosia couldn't remember if white was the traditional Immaculate color of mourning, of death, or of public shame, but none of the options boded well. They were led out of the gazebo and onto a black gravel path that led through the gardens to the main house.

Kang-ho had done well for himself-he had told her at length of the sorry state his ancestral home had been in when he left, as well as the improvements he planned to make if he ever returned. The structure before her, like most of the newer Immaculate estates she had glimpsed on her voyage, fused traditional island architecture with foreign designs. Unlike many of those attempted, the castle before her actually worked as a conglomeration of Gothic Crimson, Classical Immaculate, and Modern Raniputri... though the Usban onion domes on the outbuildings might have been a bit much. At least the wind chimes were old-school Ugrakari, singing sweet songs of better days to come in the soft sea air.

A pair of servants slid open the massive bamboo screens of the main hall, and a heavyset man dressed in a starched white overcoat scurried down the wide walnut steps to intercept Zosia, Bang, and Choplicker. Another staccato exchange in Immaculate, during which Zosia heard Bang mention her alias of Moor Clell no fewer than three times. The man must have been Hwabun's majordomo, to take such a snotty tone with guests. The majordomo gestured emphatically at Zosia, who, glancing down at her raggedy attire, allowed that it would have been a good idea to buy some more appropriate clothes during her passage through the country rather than spending all of her leisure time reacquainting herself with peated rice liquor, rare tubq blends, and spicy pickled cabbage. The majordomo spun away, his cape slapping Bang's chin, and hurried back inside.

"That could have gone better," said Bang. "But I think he'll take your request to King Jun-hwan's husband anyway. You're just lucky I know the family names this far out; nowadays most Immaculates seem to think the Isles end at Othean."