Long Night of Castle Seizo

This was the family fishing spot. For years he had fished with his father and grandfather, but now made the long trek from home all alone. He had brought his boy for a time, but now his son fished off the castle dock and brought fresh fish to the kitchens for the Lord's own supper. The thought of his son living in Castle Seizo always made him chuckle a bit. His grandfather would never have believed it. He and his wife never saw their son anymore, but that was for the best: he was on to a bigger life.

He enjoyed the silence of the lake in the morning, before the castle woke and the town began its slow boil into action, the lake's waves rippling gently out of respect for slumbering neighbours. That morning he arrived as usual: tackle basket in hand, bamboo poles tucked under his arm, sneaky pipe clenched between his teeth. He moseyed up the beach with his eyes on the rocks, picking his way past uneven divots in the pebbles, washed-up creatures, and tangles of salt-stinking weeds. He'd already set down his gear and stool before he noticed her.

A young woman squatted on one of the big rocks at the south end of the beach, staring thoughtfully into the water. Her back was a small grey speck against the looming height of the castle wall across the water. The walls loomed above them, repelling all, even the dawn light — which splashed across the rocky beach and bathed it in the colour of watery blood.  

She'd jammed a bamboo pole in the rocks next to her, the line dipped lazily into the small bay that fed the castle moat.  He couldn't remember the last time anyone had beaten him there. Maybe she was the daughter of one of the new families, or a young mother attracted by the possibilities of life so close to her Lord.  Many new people had arrived since the Lord had declared Castle Seizo his home. It was not the strongest, or prettiest, or most comfortable of the many castles that dotted the islands, but the Lord had been born in its walls — and killed his mother, the Crystal Princess, in the process. Blood Moon Above Castle Seizo was one of the most enduring stories of the islands, adapted into novels, operas, songs, plays, and children's rhymes. 

The old fisherman kept glancing at her as he set up, but she stared only at the water, crouched like a kingfisher watching for minnows in the shallows. He puffed his pipe and considered her strategy: it was too early for bass, the water too shallow for trout. What could she be after? His friend Maizat arrived and called from his spot down the beach, in the shade of the willow tree that drank from the lake. He waved back and cast his line.

Maizat came to him an hour or so later to say hello. They shared some rice and jerky. His old friend never once looked back to check his line, but kept looking over his shoulder at the young woman.

 "Too shallow for trout." Maizal observed.

"Warm enough for bass, now." He offered, though Maizal called, "Too shallow for trout!" over to the young woman.

Her head snapped around, like a cat disturbed in its hunt. Both men jumped, but her features softened quickly. She smiled, "I'm sorry?"

"You're fishing for trout," Maizal assumed, "It's too shallow there."

She took a second longer to answer than they expected. He felt Maizal start to repeat himself, but her face suddenly burst into an exaggerated show of embarrassment. 

"You're right! Thank you!" She giggled, then turned back to staring at the water.

Maizal chuckled, shook his head, then wandered back to his spot.

All day long, the old fisherman didn't see her pull the line up once. When he and Maizal went for lunch, she stared at the water. When he skipped stones in the lake out of boredom, she stared at the water. When he shuffled down the beach to  offer her a berry from his wife's garden, she took one from his palm without looking up. He made a comment about how fishing was about conserving energy, not spending it all day with your muscles tense. She didn't hear him.

She only straightened up once the sun began to fall and the light grew too dim to see anything in the water. She stood and stretched — she probably needed it! — and finally turned away from the castle.

"Long day!" He said, with a smile.

She nodded, marching past him.

"Have you been inside?"

She slowed, gave him a queer look, and stopped a few feet from him.

"No," She replied, "Have you?"

"No, I have no business with lords and generals," He chuckled but she said nothing, her intensity made him a little uncomfortable, "I hear it's beautiful, though."

She nodded and continued on. He gasped like one of the fish bundled in his catch basket, watched her swiftly go. When she was about to travel further than he could call, he said, "My son works there." He looked down at his feet, "Lives...lives there, too."

He looked back up. She had closed the distance between them instantly, and in total silence. She now stood very close to him, inappropriately so, in fact. Her stare was like the policemen who had come to his house to ask horrible, disrespectful questions in the days before the Lord moved to town. 

"Your son works in the castle?"

"Yes!" 

She absorbed his pride like a deep cave, "A soldier?"

"No, in the kitchens. He fishes, like me."

Her eyes searched. She took a step closer. She smiled, but it made him feel worse.

"He fishes where?"

"Off the dock."

"The dock?"

"At the back," he pointed over his shoulder, though the dock was on the west wall of the castle and they wouldn't be able to see it from there. "It's a small dock. He says no one uses it but him."

She said nothing, but he felt compelled to be helpful, either to please her or keep himself from harm, he didn't know.

"He fishes off the dock and carries his catch to the kitchens."

"The kitchens are close to the dock?"

"Yes. I don't know how close, but he says it's very convenient."

Just like that, she thanked him for the berries and turned away. He blinked and she was already at the fence that lined the beach. She slipped through a crack in a fence and was gone.

From his tree, Maizal exaggeratedly wagged his finger at this old man who stood so close to a young woman. He waved Maizal off and shuddered, surprised at his relief.

He considered her fishing spot. How could anyone spend all day hunched on the rocks like that and not catch anything? She'd barely moved! Not even a single impatient tug on the line. 

When he wandered over, he noticed a bundle of cloth jammed into the rocks, but manners got the better of his curiosity. Instead, he planted his feet right where hers had been and, after a few groans, crouched down low. Though it was getting dark, the water was clean and clear, and there were plenty of fish right under his nose. How had she not caught anything? He could have snatched one out of the water with his bare hand at her age! 

He chuckled at the folly of unskilled kids, then stood, angry ligaments popping in new and exciting ways, and wandered home. He did not notice the perfect reflection in the water's surface: the top of the castle wall, the arrow slats in the turret, the light of torches lit for evening patrol, the guards at attention — all clear as glass in the cooling lake. 

—

She slept all that night and the next day. She arrived on the beach at sundown as the fishermen were packing up. The kind old man who had pretended not to be staring at her gave her a friendly, if suspicious, nod as she passed. She returned it with stiff grace. 

Her bag was still there. She crouched on her rock again and watched the evening guard relieve the afternoon shift in the reflection on the water. She waited until the sun dropped behind the castle wall, Seizo's bulwark cold and dark, barely a glow from its candles and hearthfires escaped the ramparts. 

She picked her way in the darkness from the fishing spot to a tangle of reeds growing against a floodwall at the end of the bay. She slipped into the reeds and shrugged off her peasant's robes to reveal the fitted tunic and pants underneath. Her eyes stayed on Seizo as she unfolded her bundle and, one item at a time, cloaked herself in the costume of a killer.

Two rolls of cloth, like bandages, wrapped around the bottom of her pants and tightly across her feet. Her feet jammed into thin sandals woven from fibre and tied up top with a sailor's knot: when the sandals got wet, the knot would fuse like iron, and the sandals would mold to the shape of her feet to silence her footsteps. Her forearms were similarly wrapped. She unrolled a charcoal stick from a linen package, spat on it, then rolled it between the palms of her hands and over her face so not even the lightness of her flesh would give her away. The shine of her eyes would still show, but she knew how to see without looking. 

The cloth wrapping of the bundle itself was the final item. It too was dyed a midnight blue, but she could see the faint outline of a rabbit stitched into the cloth...or maybe that was only a memory. It was too dark to know for sure. She wrapped the cloth around her head, pressing her hair and nose flat, her mouth covered. She was careful to breathe only through her mouth: she knew the nostalgic smell would overwhelm her. 

Dressed now, she turned to her tools. One long black rope folded into an X and pulled across her chest and back. Into the rope she tucked four thin, light knives for throwing; a pouch filled with eight darts tipped in poison; a thin reed to propel the darts or allow her to breathe in shallow water; a bag of finely ground chilis; a leather sling; a long rope tied to a metal spike for climbing or combat. Finally, she fastened a thin, six-inch long knife to the small of her back. The metal of all her tools had been treated to shine and reflect as little light as possible. Only her mistakes would give her away.

Through the narrow slit of her mask she glared at Castle Seizo. The sun was down but the moon was not yet shining. She had a few minutes of total darkness to make her approach. In the stillness of the night, she became aware of her pounding heart, the rush of blood through the crooks of her elbows. There was one last bit of preparation required. 

Nose pressed tight in the mask, she closed her eyes and breathed in deep. After all this time, the fibres still held the smell of home: woodsmoke, jasmine, chamomile, apples, a guitar, her cat, dust on the road, scraped knees, bad jokes, late dinners and early breakfasts and birthdays and funerals and festivals and lessons and beginnings and endings. She filled her lungs with memories then, exhaling, opened her eyes. She saw not a castle, but a tomb. 

4 men. A general. His captain. A visiting merchant. The Lord. All would die before morning. If she took too long, or was discovered early, she would leap off the walls into the sea and never return — or else soak the wood of Seizo with her blood.  

She stepped out of the reeds and dove into the water, silent as a kingfisher.

—

The Majordomo didn't belong in the kitchen, Chef had made that clear. It was true when they worked together up North, it was true now. Though he acted like he was master of all the servant's spaces in Castle Seizo, he would have avoided the kitchen anyway. Chef had always been angry — he'd never known a chef that wasn't — but since they'd been conquered, Chef was harder, sharper, and shorter than he'd ever been back home. 

Their new Lord was mercurial, often demanding total changes to the menu during service — and expecting the new dishes immediately. One night, after a particularly grueling dinner — eight courses, four desserts, wine pairings — the Majordomo had invited Chef to his small room for a rare cognac. He'd paced and ranted and drank all the Majordomo's good liquor while his host sat on his small bed and listened. The Chef pounded cigarette after cigarette — the Majordomo was again glad to have the only servant's room with a window — and told stories of his kitchen in their former home province, now reduced to an ashen skeleton, and salted. 

Finally, Chef sat on the little wooden chair in the room and stared at him. The tight, fastidious man stared back, eyes squinting against the stinking smoke. Chef took a drink and pointed his cigarette at the Majordomo, "You're alive because of me."

The Majordomo nodded.

"I saved you."

He nodded again. 

"You owe me."

The Majordomo put his drink down on the floor between his feet. 

"No." He said. His father had owed someone a favour once. It cost him his hands. 

"Yes," The smoke curled, some of it coiled down into the drink, "Or I tell our new Lord I made a mistake. You're not as essential as I thought. Maybe, I even heard you say he was unfit."

The Majordomo swallowed. The smoke was making him sick.

"You've heard the song the bards sing of the night our home was burned?" The Chef continued, "They say I served our Lord a soup so good it spared both our lives. They call the song Saviour Soup."

"I've heard it."

"Fish. Onions. Jasmine. Chamomile. I'll make it for him. To celebrate our coming here, our new home, our new lives granted to us by his grace. You'll serve it to him. He'll call me out to praise me. When he does, we fall upon him with knives and take back our country." The Chef tapped his cigarette. Ash fell into their whiskies.

—

The General would be the easiest to reach. The training grounds were in the western section — far from where she'd dived but close to the outerwall. She swam from the bay into the moat, under the bridge to town, then around the other side. The dark was deep now, the moon still not risen, and the natural sounds of the water covered any noise she made swimming. She passed through the moat like a drop of oil. 

The bay on the opposite side was similar to the one she had fished in, but instead of a pebble beach there was a sandy cliff. A farmer's field reached as far to the water as possible, culled bit by bit every year by erosion. Scarecrows stood silent in the field, riddled with arrows. The ground around them too — collateral damage from ambitious archers testing their range beyond the dedicated targets that rose from the water.

She swam slowly, as silent as the trout she'd observed all the day before. She let the waves wash her against the rocks crowding the base of the castle walls, and crawled up them like seafoam. A barrage of arrows whistled above, fired from inside the castle courtyard. Some thwacked into the straw targets, others splashed into the bay. She wondered how many thousands of arrows cluttered the rocks under the surface, how many fish families were born among the trash of war. She saw corpses floating in the stream where she played as a child, blood leaking from a sleeve, fish nibbling at an eyeball.

An instructor barked from above, too far to make out any words. That unmistakable mix of anger, frustration, annoyance, and encouragement unique to military training. Without looking down at her gear, she fitted the sharp metal piton into the leather sling and pinched the attached rope coiled by her waist. With the barest movement of her wrist, the sling whirled in a perfect circle, water sprayed. From the top of the wall, another volley of arrows, more thwacks and splashes, more barks. She stared straight up. A volley, splashes, barks. She watched. Volley. Splashes. Barks. Volley. Splashes. She flicked her wrist and the piton soared vertical, rope sailing behind it. It jammed into the wood overhang of the wall. Another volley. No one noticed. 

She pulled on the rope to check its catch, then started to climb in a steady rhythm: pausing with the volleys, resuming with the angry barks. As she got higher, she made out words and phrases in the shouting, "...too high...before your arm starts to shake...how many times?...you are but a shard of ice..." The climb was hard, her arms ached, her back tightened. She wrapped the rope around her wrists and waist to rest, looking side to side to make sure no errant guard peered from a bolthole at the wrong time. 

Hanging there, she felt the first creeping nausea of terror. It coiled around her perception, emphasizing things she tried to ignore: the cold, the pain in her hands, the stiffening of her muscles. Years of training, preparation, rage — all of it designed to fight the fear. With every second of delay, the question got closer to being asked aloud: What The Fuck Am I Doing? She could climb, or fall and die.  She resumed her climb, either because she was rested or because to delay any further would cede ground to that Enemy, hesitation. The repetitive ache of the effort stripped away her doubt, but it wouldn't be the last time Fear would stalk her that night. 

She reached the top of the wall. The entire security apparatus — arguably the entire purpose of a castle — was to keep people out, but castles were also designed to let people in. Specific people, certainly, but castles weren't prisons: they were manors, military bases, schools, gardens, dining halls, towns, churches and, maybe most importantly, symbols. Symbols of power, of prestige, of privilege. Lords and tyrants built castles to say, "This is not for you. You may visit, at the time of my choosing, but always you must leave. My home is a flower that blooms when it chooses."

Arrogance is the castle's greatest weakness. The smaller the structure, the harder it is to infiltrate — imagine trying to sneak into a rowboat with someone at the oars. Big places mean lots of holes: gaps in observation, smoke holes, architectural flourishes. All present opportunities for the acrobatic or the resourceful to slip past. That's where the living defences came in: human guards to watch, report and leap into action. 

Guards. Paid poorly, fed worse. Holding a spear in the freezing rain as the delicate smells of a feast carried on the laughter of fat oligarchs tease and mock. It tested the resolve of the most dedicated sentry — and there were very few of them. The best guards were promoted to soldiers or bodyguards, released from the tyranny of boredom, leaving the inexperienced, the young, the old, and the fuckups. She'd met assassins and thieves whose craft lay not in skulking in the shadows, but in manipulation. Long nights in bars and brothels befriending the disillusioned, weak, and rebellious — then exploiting their desperation. Some of these killers never set foot in the castle, just applied the right amount of pressure to get their marks to do the work for them. If the guard was killed in the act, no matter: either they died in the approach and another could be ensnared, or, more often, they were killed after the attempt, a loose end tying itself off.

Effective, but impersonal. She needed to do this herself, and so the guards were an obstacle. Many of them would kill her for the pleasure of it. Despite the reassurances of the Church that people are inherently good, castles like Seizo somehow found dozens of people willing to be paid very little for the opportunity to kill without consequence. Some of them may convince themselves they're doing it for structure, or brotherhood, or because they have no other options — but swords and spears aren't for show. If you're being paid to hold one, you're being paid to use it. 

The roof had a bit of a slope, just enough for her to not be seen from the other side if she lay on her belly. She reached down and pulled the piton out of the wood, then secured it and the rope back to her kit. Another volley of arrows zipped over her head, buzzing like wasp wings. She flinched.

"Pathetic!" The archery instructor marched to the parapet to inspect their accuracy, "I can tell already." 

He used a little stepladder to peer over the wall. She stretched out, flattening her body to the roof. If someone looked right at her, very closely, they may have seen the odd bumps of her silhouette against the smooth tile. Pressed flat like this, her heartbeat throbbed in her throat. She tried to get her breathing under control. If she was discovered at this point she could still survive: leap off the roof into the lake, dive deeper than arrows could reach, swim to a dark place on the shore and vanish into the wild. She'd live. But she'd lose her chance. The four would never be in the same place like this again, and they'd be on alert. Was her life more valuable than their deaths? She had decided long ago it was not.

The instructor stepped down from his ladder and marched back to the archers in training. She'd timed her climb well — it was now too dark to see the targets. After a few more disparaging barks, the instructor ordered the trainees to gather their gear and fall out. As they marched back to the barracks, she rolled up over the peak of the roof and dropped silently to the other side. She was committed now. They would die, or she would, or they all would. Perhaps the last outcome was the most appropriate.

—

Juliet was in way over her head. Everyone said so — even if they wouldn't say it to her face. She heard their whispers, the tone of their voices that ran from pity to condescension. The subtext of, "Oh, honey... who told you you could do this?" that coloured every conversation she had with the house staff.

It was obvious she was poor. She didn't know how, but it was. The way the other girls walked, talked, smelled, and ate said it all. One her first day, as they were washing cups for the Lord's breakfast, Michy asked her what her favourite food was. She excitedly told the girls about the best meal she'd ever had. 

A rich man had visited her mother's shop to commission a silk gown for his daughter. To celebrate, he'd invited Juliet and her family to dinner. He'd served piping hot polenta, creamy as the silk of the gown, with garlic and green onion. It was still the best thing she'd ever tasted.

The girls listened patiently. Juliet was too excited to make friends, she didn't notice the amusement, the disdain, growing on their faces. When she finished, they all laughed at her. Michy patted her on the arm. They had creamy polenta with garlic and green onion that day for lunch, and every day after — it was the standard staff meal. After that, Juliet tried not to speak of home at all.

But she was good with a needle, so she kept to that. A big dinner was coming, a celebration of General Wellow's victory in the North. She'd spent most of her first weeks at Castle Seizo working away on a great big tapestry that would drape over the dining table. It was an embroidered mosaic of the Lord's life story. They all knew it: growing up poor in the south, in secret, the discovery by a travelling court auger, the revelation He was the long lost heir to the throne, the very baby from Blood Moon Over Castle Seizo! Returning home to study under His Father, assembling His Knights, His campaign against the loyalists. 

Juliet was tasked with commemorating His most recent victory: the annihilation of the mountain rebels. The weavers had a painting to guide them filled with gruesome detail. Screaming babies wrapped in flame, wailing mothers, men impaled on spears. She focused on the small things, like the curl of a single flame, to keep the horror of the full image from overwhelming her. Her and fifteen other women of all ages, rendering slaughter in crimson thread.

That focus kept the days moving quickly, but it wasn't the only thing. One night, after a nasty prank by Michy, Juliet had fled to watch the waves on the small dock off the castle kitchen. There, she met Heoch. The kitchen boy was fishing off the dock and the two started talking. He was kind, and curious, and wanted to help. Even if all his advice related back to fishing, Juliet was glad for a friend and nodded politely at his allegories.

Filling in the tablecloth and spending her evenings sitting with Heoch as he fished in the twilight, Seizo started to feel like home. Or, at least, as close to a home as she could imagine, now her father had exchanged her labour for a reprieve on his taxes. She couldn't go back home now, not for a while, anyway, but if she could spend her days at work and her nights with her handsome fisherman, things wouldn't be so bad.

—

General Wellow preferred if you called him Master — or, even better, just Saum. A fourth-generation swordsmith, Wellow became famous in his youth when, frustrated with a provincial Lord's continual rejection of his blades, he cut the man's thick oak desk in half as a demonstration. The Lord still didn't buy the sword — but one of his enemies did, and used it to cut him in half the following spring.

After that, Wellow showed off his weapons with elaborate demonstrations. Tables, chairs, wagons, sides of beef — once he even sliced a goldfish in half while it was still in the bowl. The more outrageous the target, the bigger the markup. He became richer than his fathers even dreamed by forging blades in the winter and giving his travelling demonstrations across the islands in the summer. 

One year, a Lord requested he test his blades on human targets — captured rebels. Wellow refused, but it gave him an idea. Cutting furniture and cheap pets was getting old, so he started ending his demonstrations by personally duelling his own bodyguards. Though no blood was spilled, the smith turned out to be a decent swordfighter. After another winter making blades, he hired his young nephews to sell them while he spent the summer visiting the great sword schools of the islands.

His reputation grew. Soon he was providing two services when he arrived in a town: his family sold the swords, and he sold his skills as a weapons trainer to rich sons. Each graduate received a custom Wellow sword — soon every wealthy family in the islands had one mounted above their fireplace.

When the new Lord rose to power, he demanded that Wellow become his in-house swordmaster. Wellow opened a smithy in Seizo's walls and trained the Lord's retainers, and the Lord himself, in his characteristic wild, unpredictable style — a holdover from his early days as an amateur.

One night, the Lord, drunk, woke Wellow and demanded a one-on-one duel. Wellow knew it was impossible to refuse and that to lose graciously might mean his death. He beat the drunk Lord easily. To save face, the Lord named Wellow General of his Northern army and sent him, and his nephew Tennum, to wage a suicidal campaign against the mountain people who drink streams of ice and kill in the darkness.

Against all odds, Wellow triumphed. He burned her village and murdered her family. Tennum himself, starved for glory, charged into the flaming village on horseback. He didn't notice when her brother fell beneath his warhorse, his small cheeks bursting under the weight of the hooves.

From the ropey bough of a linden tree, she watched Wellow and Tennum duel with wooden swords. They both fought wildly, but there was some discipline in Wellow's form. Tennum, on the other hand, was chaotic: Wellow kept stepping back and dropping his guard to yell that his nephew was drunk. Tennum would roar back, then resume his attack. Once, Tennum stumbled and fell flat on his face, and Wellow drove the point of his wooden blade straight down into the grass. He ranted at his nephew, obviously a little drunk himself. She hoped one of them would push the other too far and they'd kill each other right there.

Except, when the young man rose to his knees, she realized he was crying. Wellow left his wooden sword stuck in the dirt and turned to go into his house. He paused at the door. A beat: Tennum weeping, Wellow breathing. Smoothly, Wellow stepped back onto the lawn, scooped his nephew up by the shoulders, and walked him into the house.

She dropped from the tree to the courtyard. There were no guards here; rank bought privacy. The house was close to the keep at the inner edge of the outer ring, near the second moat, and the training yard was between Wellow's house and the defensive wall. As she crawled along the grass, she realized the seductiveness of safety. It was nearly silent here, only the occasional whirr of twilight insects or distant crash of human activity, the only light the moon and the torch fires. Her presence, bristling with weapons and rage, was a slash in the picture.

Wellow's house was only a single story, surprising considering his wealth and fame. A covered porch wrapped around the whole house. Slatted windows broke up the walls every five feet or so. One window, the last one on the left side before the corner, was held open by a stick though it wasn't a hot night. In fact, it was so mild she hadn't noticed the temperature at all, even after her swim. She slithered up from the lawn onto the porch and, staying on her belly, stuffed herself where the wall met the porch. There was some light here, but she moved slowly and with a smooth rhythm that wouldn't draw the eye. Under the window, just before she rose up to peer inside, a cloud of tobacco smoke burst into the night, followed by a tumble of ashes. She froze, heart pounding. A half second earlier and she'd have been face-to-face with the smoker, their eyes would have locked — and that would have been it.

She waited in a crouch while whoever it was smoked silently by the window. Finally, the butt of a cigarette followed a final cloud of smoke. A hand, battered and bruised by training, reached out and pulled the wood stick to close the window. Her hand darted and caught the rim of the window in the flesh of her palm. She expected the smoker to notice the window hadn't closed, but soon there were muted voices from the room beyond, another door closing, and silence.

Now she did peek her head up into the gently raised window. On the other side was a simple corridor, dimly lit. She heard voices from the door opposite the window and saw shadows moving under it. She poured silent into a house that smelled of a fireplace and stale vegetables. The taste of tobacco smoke and a coppery slice of adrenaline collected at the back of her mouth, the ball of her throat felt like it was going to burst from the force of her heartbeat. General Wellow and Captain Tennum, enjoying a smoke and a brandy, right on the other side of this door. The fireplace smell galled: the rank of burning cedar obviously held none of the same memories for them it did for her, for they killed and didn't care.

Drunken, hesitant singing from the other side of the door. A young man's voice, hobbled by melancholy. She pressed herself flat on the floor, ear to the gap, and listened:

So bubble broth and simmer

As fires consume the roofs

The Lord's blood ran thinner

When they served him Saviour Soup

A sudden roar, "SHUT UP!", a crash against the door, wetness and shards of glass fell in front of her face. 

"Do you know what he'll do to us if he hears you singing that?" She knew that was Wellow though she'd never heard him speak.

"Let him! What can he do to me that I haven't already done to my own soul? Cauldron pan and goblet—"

"Stop! Get out!"

Laughter without rhythm or joy. Manic. Sudden footsteps coming her way, shadows on the floor. She pushed hard on the floor, propelling herself up and pressed her back against the wall just as the door crashed open. She caught the swinging door in both hands, nearly squashed. Tennum blew past her, reeking of smoke and booze. He shouted something over his shoulder and forced the window open again, lit a cigarette, and stress-smoked while he ground his fingers into his forehead over and over again.

Heavier footsteps. Slower. Wellow stopped at the threshold. Through the gap in the door, he smelled like vanilla and cloves. She saw his knuckles were hairy. He had an ingrown toenail. 

Wellow spoke softly to his nephew from the door, "You need to hide those feelings away. This is my fault. I humiliated our Lord, he punished me, and I humiliated him again. I'm... sorry you were there."

"All I wanted was to sell your swords..." Tennum whined. It was easy to imagine what his voice had been as a child.

"I know," Wellow thrust a finger at his nephew's back, "But you also wanted glory. And you gave it to yourself. Glory comes from death, and now you have plenty."

Her brother under the hooves.

Tennum stared out the window, ignoring his uncle. Eventually, Wellow went back into the room. He left the hallway door open.

Her brother under the hooves.

Slower than the sunrise, she slipped out from behind the door. She saw Tennum in full now, shoulders hunched, cigarette blazing, smoke wheezing out into the night. He stood with his hip out at an angle, his ankles crossed, his arms twisted up in a self-embrace. At the massacre, his armor had made him enormous, fearsome, elemental. Here, in his leisure clothes, he was skinny, even slight. She wondered how old he was.

It didn't matter. He killed her brother for fun and burned her home for glory. He was a monster. Her knife emerged silent and thin. She was four steps from him. She forgot entirely about the rest of the house, Seizo, the guards, Wellow. The world shrank: Tennum, her knife, four steps. 

One. He sighed.

Two. He sucked long on his cigarette, fingers shaking.

Three. A cloud of inky smoke snapped up by the wind.

Four. The butt tumbled out the window. 

Tennum turned back to the room. He let out the tiniest gasp as the knife slipped through the flesh and cartilage of his throat and bit into his spine. He didn't see her below him. Trembling fingers reached up to prod the flat metal buried in his throat, drifted down to caress her hand. Only then did their eyes meet. Hers: furious, rimmed in black charcoal, molten tears flowing to blue fabric. His: confused, sad, swimming in booze and fear. She tilted her fist. The knife caught on his jaw, slowly pulled his skull down closer to her face.  She felt his breath on her eyes. A quick pull to the right. The edge of the knife burst through his neck. Black arterial blood flowed to the floor. She allowed the momentum of the pull to carry her around, her back to Tennum, her face to Wellow.

He was there, brandy carafe and glass in hand, mouth wide. She felt Tennum drop behind her and begin the slow process of drowning in his own blood. She took a step into the room, felt the warmth of the fire. Wellow spared a glance to the pair of swords stamped with his name hanging above the fire. She took another step, knife close to her face, dripping Tennum on the floor.

Eyes locked to hers, Wellow tried to set the carafe down on the small table. He missed. The bottle didn't break when it hit the floor, the brandy gulped out in mockery of Tennum's bleeding. She took another step, he looked at the swords again, she reached for her chest.

"Please," He said, his voice surprisingly even, "I deserve a due—" 

Faster than a word, she fit her thumb through the loop at the butt of one of her throwing knives, pulled it from the rope bandolier, flipped it into a forefinger pinch, and tossed it casually at his face. Her aim was off: the knife sunk deep into Wellow's occipital bone. He blinked. His eyelid tore on the edge.

"Wait," He begged. She hooked her thumb into another knife.

He surged for the swords above the fireplace. Her second throw caught him under his left armpit and he fell against the stone hearth, his other hand dragged both swords off the wall. He kept his grip on one and the other crashed to the floor. The hem of his robe caught fire. 

Wellow turned to face the spider in his room. Here began the great ceremony of a trained fighter. He slowly raised the sheathed sword to his face. With both hands, he deliberately, slowly, pulled the first few inches of the weapon from its sheath. The hint of steel blazed amber in the firelight. He whipped both hands down in an arc. The blade sang — and the force of the sweep popped the blade out of the hilt. It tumbled through the air, slammed into the parlour wall and clattered to the floor. The firelight caught a stamp on the steel: "TW."

Wellow stared dully at the empty hilt in his hand. She dashed forward. She struck three times with her knife: across the armpit, under the groin, a quick retreating stab to the heart. He coughed once, turned his back to her, and dropped face first into the fire. 

—

Juliet had never been on her feet for this long. Even when guests visited her mother's shop, she'd be able to sit and work or sneak away into the back with her brothers. When she attended the new Lord, she was expected to stand by the wall, but never against the wall, and wait. It was never clear what she was waiting for, but she was expected to know it when she saw it. The tip of his head, the wave of a finger, the smallest adjustment of a leg — any of these could be a command. All of them demanded instant response.

She didn't know for sure what would happen if she missed a cue — but the screams that erupted from the room at the top of the castle night, the girl's bruises the next day, told her enough. Her father would be ecstatic, deeply honoured, when she told him she had been selected to attend the Lord at his dinner. Her letters home were cheerful, excited. She didn't include the horrors.

The Lord had his back to her. He sat on the floor in a special pillow like a legless chair. No one outside Castle Seizo knew of his terrible back pain, the result of some childhood accident. His saddles, too, had backs, so in public and paintings he always appeared tall and virile, but in his home he walked deliberately and sat slowly. He would never debase himself with a cane, so was often seen leaning on a longbow, one of his many Wellow swords, or draped across the shoulders of the closest subordinate like they were good friends.

Presently, he was in good spirits, sampling from a long table filled with nuts and fruits, cheeses and sliced meat. The room was lit with hundreds of scented candles and oil lamps, their aroma overwhelming. Wine flowed from pitcher to cup to throat, the assembled men laughed and chatted, each trying to catch the Lord's attention. At the end of the table was their guest, the merchant from the mountain. Juliet had a clear view: his shaved head rested atop a pile of bright silks and linens, jewellery sprouted from his ears, lips, and nose like tree leaves.

Without a word, the Lord tipped his cup and poured the dregs of his wine on the floor. This must be her cue. Juliet snatched a rag from her robe's belt and rushed to his side. She fell to her knees and promptly sponged up the spilled wine. It smelled like fine perfume, peaches and mint. She grew dizzy — but not from the fumes. The Lord gave off a kind of heat when you were this close to him. Static electricity. Your stomach emptied, even if you'd just eaten, your fingers tingled, your heart closed.

The first time she'd been close to him, changing his bedsheets in the morning, he'd casually emerged from the bathroom naked. At the time she thought the sudden rush she'd felt was excitement. But later she admitted to herself the feeling wasn't at all like with the boys back home, or when her gentle fisherman touched her hair. It was closer to the hooked pull she felt at the back at her skull when she stared down a long, dark, open hallway. 

Another pair of sock feet dashed silently to the Lord's side. Juliet risked a quick glance up at Kane, tonight's wine pourer, a quiet girl with a red birthmark peeking out from under her collar. Their eyes met. A quick flash of solidarity. 

Dashed in an instant.

The Lord's hand snatched out and seized Kane's jaw in a viper's grip. He squeezed her lips into a grotesquery of a lover's kiss, 

"Am I a peasant, Kane?" He hissed. 

Juliet had expected the Lord, the most powerful man in the world, to be indifferent to them, to treat them as anonymous servants. It was so much worse that he knew all their names. 

Kane tried to shake her head despite his grip. 

"Am I an animal? A beast? A pauper? Hmm?"

The other people at the table, his retainers and captains and advisors, all bowed their heads. The other girls circling the room thanked God it wasn't them. Only the merchant from the mountains continued to eat, watching with curiosity.

"Have I done something to offend you? Does your position no longer please you? Have you outgrown my service?''

After an eternity, Kane squeaked out, "No."

Juliet was desperate to slink back to her place along the wall, but terrified of catching the Lord's attention. She continued wiping the same area over and over again.

"No?" the Lord proclaimed to the whole room, as if it was a great shock. "Then why have you poured fresh wine into my dirty cup? Are you creating a new blend? Are you my new sommelier? Did no one tell me?" 

The man seated three down to his left, the librarian, laughed, and the others joined. Juliet never understood how they knew when to respond and when to be silent. 

"Are you, Kane? Are you my new wine master? Hmm?"
"N...no."
"You're not?"
"No."
"I see,"
He smeared two fingers around the inside of his cup.
"It's the residue, Kane." Wine-slicked fingers forced their way into her mouth. She gagged.  "Yes it's awful, isn't it? Yes, I know," the Lord began to move his fingers in and out of her mouth, rhythmically, "I know..."

They all watched.

The Merchant cleared his throat, "Perhaps a new bottle, my Lord?"

The Lord pulled his fingers from her mouth and traced them lazily down her lip, exposing her crooked peasant's teeth.

"Yes, you're right Osmo!"

Suddenly released, Kane fell to her backside and scurried back to her spot on the wall. She clutched the wine jug like a toy.

"What should we have next?" The Lord asked.

Juliet looked up with only her eyes. Above the table, the merchant calmly swirled his wine glass. But under the table, where only she could see, his fist was clenched tight and trembling.

"What's the next course?" Osmo answered with no hint of fear.

The Lord sucked his teeth, it made a sound like a wet kiss,
"Osmo," he chided, "Six weeks of wealth and already soooo cosmopolitan. Hmm! Osmo-politan! Well that's your name now, I don't make the rules. Percy?"

The Majordomo moved for the first time in the whole ordeal.

"Yes, sir."
"What's the next course?"
"Blackened fish, my Lord."
"Well, Osmo-politan?"
The merchant's grin grew wider, a rictus.
"At your pleasure, my Lord. I am but your humble guest."
The Lord's smile spread across his face like a plague.
"Still a mountain-scrabbling skin seller at heart though, eh Osmo?"

Silence around the table. Juliet couldn't pretend to be mopping up wine any more. She got up very slowly, pressing the soaked rag to her belly.

"YOU." 

The Lord's attention hit Juliet like a hurricane wind. He'd never looked at her before. Everyone in the room was staring at their feet or their plates, but she could feel them watching her, relieved they weren't the new focus of his attention. All except the Merchant, whose curiosity was now laced with concern — or was it relief?

"What wine should we have with... what was it Percy? Fish?"

"Trout, sir." Clear as a church bell.

Juliet squeezed the rag against her body. Her tunic drank up the spoiled wine. The smell made her sick, sweetness grown rancid.

"I... I don’t..." Juliet stammered

A dramatic sigh, "Oh for God's sake look at me, Juliet, I'm not a monster."

She did. She'd never looked someone so important in the eye before. Swollen, the skin around them stretched and bruised, the pupils darted about like mosquitoes.

"I... I don't know my Lo-"

"Well, there's only two kinds, Juliet," he reached out and rubbed the tips of her elbows, gently, the way her father used to, "Red or white. Just pick one." 

She broke his gaze and searched the room, desperate for rescue.

Everyone looked away. Kane wept in silence. The Merchant stared with hungry intensity. The Majordomo's eyes were like a rabid dog's. She licked her lips with a child's tongue.

"White." She whispered. A fierce vibration of his pupils. He squeezed the bones in her arms.

"Well Osmo," he said finally, "Your sudden good taste is much less impressive." He leaned in closer, his breath smelled of cloves and sour meat, "White wine with fish, eh? Perhaps I'm paying you too well."

With one hand, he caressed her face, his hands were warm and soft, he licked his lips. She trembled with revulsion, terror, and heat. His caressing hand went rigid. He gripped her skull and whispered, "Now go get us some, pig."

Released. She fled for the door.

"Percy, help her pick out a good one."

The Majordomo swept out of the room with her. They left Kane behind, weeping silently.

The moment she was past the curtain, Juliet let out a shuddering sigh that threatened to grow into a sob, but the Majordomo's firm hand around her elbow and on the small of her back propelled her down the corridor and around the corner. He spun her around and pinned her to the wall. 

"Stop that." He demanded, "Listen to me: go to the cellar. Find the bottle of Beaudet of the Valley. It will be past the port casks, third row up, seventh section. While you're there, straighten yourself out."

She tried to answer, but instead squeezed her wine-drenched rag. He snatched it out of her hands and tossed it toward the kitchen. It hit the floor with a splat. He placed a hand, now also reeking of wine, gently on her shoulder.

"After you bring me the wine," he leaned down to meet her eyes, "Go speak to the fisherman's son." 

She met his gaze. The terror of hoping for kindness. 

"Check on his catch." He tilted his head to make sure she understood. The barest smile passed between them. 

"And take that dirty rag to the laundry on your way down." He finished sternly.

They split up — he to the kitchen, her to safety.

—

He watched her flee, hand on mouth — straight past the rag. Despite himself, he felt a flash of annoyance... then she scurried back around the corner to snatch it off the floor.

The Majordomo cracked a small, sad smile. The smell of dirty water and sour wine wafted up from his jacket. Disgusting. He headed for the same servant's stairwell Juliet had fled into to grab a spare coat from his room. On his way past the kitchen, he smelled something in the air: fish, onions, jasmine, chamomile. His skin prickled. That idiot! He was really making the damn soup? The Majordomo shoved the doors to the kitchen open, the back-of-your-throat stench of wine blasted away by that familiar kitchen blend of moisture and chaos. 

Cooks in white jackets hurried about. Plating, chopping, stirring; each absorbed in their own task, each terrified of what would happen if they screwed up: the wrath of the Lord or, worse, the wrath of the Chef. But the Chef was nowhere to be found.  Usually he held court from the middle of the chaos, Captain on deck, shouting orders and declaring mistakes. But not tonight. The Majordomo, as comfortable in a kitchen as any of the cooks, sliced through the chaos guided by his nose.

Fish, onions, jasmine, chamomile. Dammit. Two of them didn't even grow at this low altitude. Where did he get them? Had he... no. Chef couldn't have been planning this all along. Finally he found him, tucked way in the back, turned away from the kitchen. He worked slowly, thoughtfully, a scientist in the lab. You would think he was making dinner for a quiet night in with the care he was taking. Not care — joy. Yes, the Majordomo saw his face in the reflection of a hanging pan. Chef was smiling for the first time since...

As she approached, his mind tumbled with a hundred thongs to say. Shock, anger, desperation. Instead, he said nothing, just watched the Chef work. Two small bowls arrayed on the table filled with crushed jasmine and chamomile. The Chef dipped a spoon into the broth, blew gently on the steaming soup, rolled it around his mouth, thought, then sprinkled a pinch of jasmine.

Finally, the Majordomo spoke up,  "You should not do this."  

Chef ignored him. Stirring, tasting, adding. 

Another long silence, "What does it matter how it tastes?"

"Do you believe the story?" Chef asked without looking up from his work, "the story of the song, I mean."

"He's bad tonight." Even in the back of the kitchen, the Majordomo whispered, "He almost killed Kane and Juliet."
"Who are they?"
"Two of the girls."
"He has plenty of those." Another taste, "Soon none of them will have to worry."
"I'm telling you- don't do this." Silence. Bubbles. The clatter of the kitchen. 

Chef reached for a pepper grinder on a wall shelf.

"I remember so much of that night." Crack crack crack, sharp flavour dropped into the pot, "We were all soaked from the rain. We couldn't find the Telmor boy. I guess they killed him, eh? Advanced scouts or something came across him in the woods while he gathered mushrooms. I know so much about soldiers now."

Wistan Telmor. Curious. Adventurous. Like his mother. A memory of a yellow dress. The Majordomo said nothing. 

The Chef gave a cynical sniff, continued, 

"I remember how crowded the main hall was. All his people, not just soldiers. And prisoners. Our women and children. The silent sound of quiet crying. The look of him, so calm and casual. You know what I think it was? That look, I mean." 

The Majordomo didn't answer. He could see the scene in the boil.

"Boredom." Chef did look at him, then, "he was bored with us." 

Chef went back to the soup. Somewhere in the space between fear, rage, and despair, the Majordomo wondered: What should he do? What could he do? It was a familiar feeling, considering the memory Chef had conjured.

The Chef would not be convinced. Never could have been. He could only stop him physically, and that would kill them both. His cowardice had trapped him. Again.

"I remember...so much about that day. But..." Chef coughed, covered his mouth. Caught some pepper? No, not a cough. He was laughing. "I can't remember the damn recipe!" Chef looked right at home, face steam-swollen, eyes ready to burst. 

The Majordomo had never really looked at his face before. He was always looking down, distracted, angry, rushed, panicked.  He was older than he seemed. There had been passion once in that face. Now, all the Majordomo saw there was tired. God, they were all so tired.

They stared into each other's eyes for a long moment. Then, the Majordomo took a spoon and lowered it into the tumbling broth. One hand held under the spoon to catch the drops, he blew on the soup, tasted fire, blood, tears, and terror. The Majordomo licked his lips, then selected a silver serving bowl with galloping horses from a nearby cabinet, and began ladling the Saviour Soup from the pot. 

"What's your name?" Chef asked.
The Majordomo kept ladling, "Patrick."
"I'm Louis." 

With the care of decades of service, Patrick the Majordomo and Louis the Chef prepared the service. Patrick used a napkin to wipe a few errant drops of soup away. In the stain, he imagined a broad-leafed tree growing from a cliff side and a smile in a yellow dress. Each one dipped their own spoons into the serving bowl, a shocking show of disrespect to their Lord. They tasted it one last time.

"It's missing something." Patrick said.

—

Infiltration is the art of observing human behaviour.

When you study people, it's easy to tell when they're alert, when they're about to turn around, when their emotions are driving their decisions. Most people believe they are unique, that their feelings and reactions are special. They aren't. People are one thing: predictable. Exploiting the dichotomy between this belief and the truth is the key to stealth. Her people had observed and recorded many truths of human behaviour, many she'd had a hard time believing. 

One had always stuck with her: unless given a reason, people don't look up. She didn't know why. Maybe it was because humans have no airborne predators. Maybe it was because the sky held so many annoyances — the rain, the bright sun, bugs. Or maybe, as terrestrial animals, we simply don't bother with the sky, we have enough to worry about right in front of us.

Crossing from the outer castle grounds to the main complex had been simple. There were many bridges, and they were dark and lightly guarded. The hubris of the castle provides opportunity again. Inside the inner compound, a new challenge: the building itself, the true Castle Seizo, had few entrances, all guarded. She circled the castle many times searching for an opening before she remembered something the old fisherman had said, that his son sometimes fished off the castle's back dock.

She'd sprinted low and fast across the inner wall to the north side where Seizo erupted from the lake. Balanced on the rim of the wall, she looked beneath her, where a lantern on the wall cast a golden glow on a spearman 30 feet below. He was staring at something, she followed his gaze down a narrow stairwell and spied a few bamboo poles dipped into the water. Against the wall, a young man wrapped his arms around a woman in servant's clothes.

She descended by rope. As she drew closer, she could hear the hushed voices of the two lovers over the lapping waves; no words, just the brittle whispers of frightened people. The guard was straining to hear them — either for sordid reasons or to catch secrets he could bring back to his Captain. The stairs had no railing. The guard stood directly below her on a landing only a few feet square. Jagged rocks stabbed out of the water below. She had walked backward down the wall, her back to the earth, spooling rope from the coil at her waist. Now she gently kicked off the wall to spin about and face the lake. Doubled hands held the rope at her waist. Breathe. Wait.

Breathe.

Bored and stiff, the guard took his weight off the spear and straightened up. She let go of the rope. A crescendo of wind as she dropped. Her knees crashed into his shoulders, her weight a falling boulder on the top of his back. His lacquered armor crunched, his body fell, the sudden impact popped his spine out of the base of his skull. They both let out a grunt on impact and hit the stone hard. She tumbled backward, dazed from the fall, and crashed into the edge of the doorway to the castle interior. Vision doubled, she barely registered the guard's dropped spear rolling from his open hand. 

She dove for it, slammed her chest on the stone, no wind in her lungs to knock out. Spear held tight and face flat against the wet stone, she peered over the lip of the stairs at the lovers... who whispered on, oblivious to the violence. She struggled to breathe but kept her thick gasps quiet. She rolled onto her back, spear clutched to her chest, and tried to match her breathing to the clouds sliding by above and the lapping waves below.

Finally calm, she heard faint choking to her left. The guard, alive but spine-severed, gasping, wide-eyed, less than a foot from her face. She used his spear to roll him off the edge. Dashed on the rocks or drowned in the waves, she was already climbing the stairs.

She froze at the top. There was no door! The stairs simply ended in a section of wall, dim light slipping through the cracks. Face pressed to the wood, she heard kitchen sounds. She pressed lightly on the wood and the wall gave an inch. A predator's grin spread across her face: a secret door. Whether for servants or Highborn, secret paths through your castle were one of many frivolous indulgences of the rich happily exploited by their thieves and killers.

The hallway was dim. To her left, the kitchen blazed with light and heat and action, to her right, the hall ended in a sharp right angle. No doubt the dining hall would be around that corner, the angle designed to keep the kitchen's light and noise from spoiling the meal. There was no place to hide but in the darkness between sconces, but luckily no one stepped into the hallway while she passed. 

Around the sharp corner was a heavy red curtain. Pulled aside, it revealed a truly cavernous dining room, far larger than the 20-person table in the middle of the room required. Another sign of wealth: wasting space on a tiny island stuffed with people while your city sprawled below like a fungal growth. 

On either side of the curtain were servants and guards, no way she could get in without being noticed. She turned back. While both her remaining targets were sure to be at that dinner, an attempt to kill either in that colossal space would result in her certain death. Slipping around the corner, heading back to the secret door, the kitchen doors suddenly burst open and two men, one in black and the other in white, marched toward her. She froze, concealed for now in the shadows, but they were coming fast. 

Eyes darting, she noticed the wall was two-tone: white plaster near the floor, lacquered wood up above, separated by a solid beam of walnut. Could there be a — no choice, the men from the kitchen were steps away. She stepped from the wall, risking the men seeing her silhouette in the light beyond, then dashed forward and quick-stepped straight up, reaching for a — yes! The beam stuck out just enough for her to plant her fingertips. Momentum carried her feet up and she pushed back, twisting as she stretched behind her to grab the beam that ran along the peaked roof of the hallway. Stretched out, toes perched on the small outcropping in the wall and fingers pressed on the ceiling beam, she watched the men from the kitchen pass in silence beneath her. They were carrying a silver serving bowl, covered with a shining cloche.

Waiting until they rounded the corner, she probed with her fingers, found a space between the beam and the top of the ceiling, likely for smoke and heat to escape. She pulled herself into the tiny space, and, daring and hopeful, snaked her way along the ceiling to the curtain entrance to the dining room. The men from the kitchen paused at the curtain, something unsaid passed between them, then the one in black pulled the curtain aside and both stepped into the hall. Just her luck: the smoke passage opened into the dining hall, the room's ceiling must be even higher than she imagined. She slipped through the narrow space, another  unexpected dinner guest.

—

People don't look up. They certainly don't peer into the darkness far above their heads while eating dinner with the most powerful man in the province. The wooden beam had carried her from the red curtained entrance up along the wall, always with enough space for her to climb flat on her belly. Midway to the ceiling, the beam split in two and flattened out to reach across the expanse of the room. She followed it, and now found herself crammed between two parallel wooden beams right above the largest feast she had ever seen.

Directly beneath her was a great dining table, lined on either side by oligarchs in silk and linen. The table was crowded with plates, bowls, goblets, and utensils — more dishes for one person than most families had for all of them. Food was continuously swapped in and out, while platters piled high with fruits, cakes, and bits of meat stayed behind to be pilfered at will. Even the table cloth was complicated, some kind of woven tapestry depicting one epic battle or another. It was so loaded with dishes and stains, she couldn't make the story out.

At either end at the table were the Lord and the Merchant, each on resplendent silks, red and white, the poles of a magnet. She could kill them both, now, drop from the ceiling and slit their throats, then die soaked in virtuous blood: there were people everywhere, guests around the table, servants and guards along the walls. She'd never escape alive, but she'd win. Or, she could wait for an opportunity. And live. Her fingers, her back, her thighs burned and creaked with the effort of holding on.

The men from the kitchen hadn't moved any further into the room. the tight, fastidious one in black, stood straight as a young tree a respectful distance from the Lord. He carried the silver bowl on a platter so shiny that firelight danced on the ceiling. The chef, in white, hung back as the majordomo, in black, crossed reverently, the silver bowl polished to such a shine that firelight danced across the walls and ceiling. The Lord's raucous laughter died when he noticed the Majordomo approaching, and watched the procession of the soup with flinty silence. Everyone in the room was watching, the air thick and hot.

The majordomo placed the serving bowl just within reach of his Lord, then took a single step back and waited, head bowed. From above, she could see the sweat pouring down the steel-tight cords on the back of his neck.

"What's this?"
"Soup, my Lord."
"Soup? After the fish? Aren't you full of surprises, Patrick!"

He lifted the lid and inhaled the aroma deeply. The people close to the bowl stiffened instantly. A moment later, the smell reached her and she understood why: jasmine, chamomile. She allowed herself a silent "FUCK!"

The Lord considered the broth.

"A familiar recipe," he whispered, eyes flicking first to the Majordomo, then, much louder, "A familiar recipe!" to the Chef, who stared at the Lord, defiant from all the way at the back of the room. Careful, idiot.

The Lord, back to the Majordomo, "What's the occasion?"

"To celebrate your victory over the Mountain Tribes," the Majordomo stared straight ahead, his voice even and clear, professional, except for a slight hesitation before he added: "And peace in the islands."

The Lord considered this for a moment. "The Mountain Tribes. Your people. And yours eh?" 

Her blood froze, her fingertips dug hard into the wood. She expected him to look straight up at her, bark orders to the guards and scream with laughter as her arrow-riddled body crashed through the table. She had been taught not to stare, or even look directly at, her targets. People don’t look up, but they can feel when they’re being watched, so she buried her face into the crook of her arm. Something pulled at her guts, demanded she look down at Him, but she didn’t. She embraced the not-knowing, waited for it to pass by.

The Lord clapped once, a sonic boom in the silence. This is it! She thought, and her head snapped out of its hiding place… but he wasn’t looking at her, only at  the Majordomo and Chef again. She adjusted her grip, tightened her knees; her sweat was starting to make her slip.

"I simply must know how you recreated the recipe." He wafted the smell towards him with one hand, then slapped the table once, hard, with the other.

The curtains at the south end of the room, 90 degrees from the kitchen entrance, snapped open. Two guards, sweating and straining, their hands wrapped in thick towels, heaved a cooking stone toward the table. The was overwhelming, she gasped as it passed below her. With great effort they hauled the stone up and dropped it right on the great table. Dishes cracked and scattered, the wood of the table creaked and smoked, the seared varnish sent up fumes that made her dizzy, and the guests leaned back from the heat, a few fanning themselves with napkins. 

The Majordomo stood at attention, visibly trembling. In the shadows, Chef’s defiance had turned to sadness. He stared at something — or someone — far, far away. The Lord gestured encouragingly from Chef to the stone, currently blackening the table where it sat, then smacked his forehead.

"Oh, of course!'' He chuckled, then, deadly serious: "You can’t make soup without a pot!"

Another slap of the table, his eyes locked on Chef. The same two guards came back through the curtain, this time carrying a massive round pot... no, that wasn't right. She searched for the word to describe something so squat and heavy, made of crude black iron hammered with no thought of aesthetics. She settled on an ancient word, a word from stories of witches and cannibals:

Cauldron.

Everyone in the room was terrified, as aware of its mythological power as she was. Like a jet black asteroid, it projected a terrible, mythic power as the guards heaved it across the room. Everyone’s eyes were locked on the elemental thing though they leaned as far back as possible, recoiling further from its imagined power than they had from the real heat of the stone. Up onto the table it went, too, to rest on the smoldering stone. The table creaked some more, the rising smoke grew thicker, she squinted to keep it out and prayed she didn’t cough.

Neither the Chef nor the Majordomo moved, even as the Lord rose. His movements were shaky and halting, but his voice was strong and clear, like a trained actor.

"When I sent my beloved armies to the mountains, people doubted me — looking at you, Alaistair!" A toady at the table roared with laughter and clapped his hands in forced glee, "But I knew my glorious men, led by the legendary General Wellow, would prevail at sea, wood, or mountain.

“And I was right! Wasn't I?" This last bit he said as he stopped behind the Merchant. He whispered something else she couldn’t hear, and a poor substitute for a smile scraped across the rich man’s face. The Lord placed both his hands on the Merchant’s shoulders, then nodded to the cauldron, "Go on, Chef. I believe you have everything you need there, though I’m no expert.”

During his speech, guards had brought in a serving table loaded with herbs, spices, vegetables, and animal carcasses. All were rotten. Even from her post high up, she saw things wriggling across flesh and rind. A few guests near the spoiled produce covered their mouths with napkins or buried their noses in their wine glasses. Everyone waited. No one knew what to do. Slowly, like a creeping fog, The Fear joined her in the rafters, holding itself firmly in place with thin arms, spider-like. 

The Chef took a deep breath, then slowly marched from his hiding place in the shadows to the small cooking station. Flies burst from the spoiled meat when he approached the table. The Lord was totally still, watching. The only sound in the room were Chef’s footsteps, heavy breathing, the buzz of flies, and the crackling of the table under the heat of the cooking stone.

Chef considered the rotten bounty, then reached for a slimy leek. The majordomo called out, "My Lord," and everyone jumped a foot in the air.

"Perhaps our guests. My apologies. Your guests. Would enjoy some music? Or a dance?"

The Chef dropped a bundle of dried herbs into the pot where they instantly burned, a stream of weak smoke stung her eyes.

The Lord responded with a flat and lethal voice, never taking his eyes off the Chef, "Patrick, you devalue yourself with careless risk-taking. Our esteemed Chef understands the meal he is preparing. Remember how deeply I appreciate your service to me and do not put your life at risk by speaking again."

The Majordomo held still, his professional mask secure. He said nothing, but gave a slight nod and stepped back to the wall next to a servant who was quietly weeping. The Lord turned his attention back to the Chef, who dutifully chopped a maggot-infested loin of pork into even cubes. The Lord leaned in close to chat with him. She couldn't hear, but he appeared to be telling a story he found very amusing. He kept grabbing the chef's apron and weaving his hands about in the air. Chef dropped the cubes of pig flesh into the pot. The heat turned their flesh instantly white, the stench oozed through the room. Someone at the table retched. 

She wanted to do something, needed to do something, but her teacher's lessons rang loud in her memory:

"If you are not compelled to action by danger or discovery, do nothing. You are weak and alone, and even maximum advantage slips away in seconds when surprise is spent."

Despite the horrific stench, she took a deep breath. Her perch was precarious, but she was not currently in danger, and the room below was literally lined with threats. She reminded herself that she was not here to save the Chef or the Majordomo. All had made their choices, all had found ways to survive like she had. Only the Merchant had chosen a survival that harmed others, and she was here to punish him. But not yet. 

Not yet.

The Chef stepped back from the table. Sweat poured down his face but he did not wipe it away. The Lord cooked his head, "Done? Then let me have a taste.” The chef hesitated, then picked up a tasting spoon and, haltingly, reached into the cauldron to scrape some burned meat and herbs, now reduced almost to ash, from the sides. She couldn’t imagine the intensity of the heat on his arm. He passed the spoon to the Lord, even holding his hand under it to catch spillage. 

The Lord took one look and leaned back in his cushion. 

"Oh, Chef, all due respect to your expertise, I don't think that's quite right," he swept a hand above the table of spoiled ingredients,"Is something missing?”

A long pause, no one said anything, smoke curled from the cauldron. Finally, Chef croaked, "Water."

She imagined a predatory smile curl over the Lord’s face, “Of course. I suppose I’ve given myself away, haven’t I? Haven’t made soup for myself in… well, ever, really.”

Nervous laughter from the toads. The Lord beckoned Chef closer, then closer again, until the condemned man — for surely he must have known by now he was already dead — was as close as possible. The Lord suddenly reached out with clawed hands to seize the chef’s ample belly. Several people in the room jumped with fear, but the Lord only jiggled the Chef’s gut. He pressed an ear to the flesh, jiggled again, then leaned back and, with a condescending tap on the skin, whined, “Plenty of water in here.” 

Moving faster than she’d imagined, the Lord stood suddenly. He seized the Chef by the collar and genitals. The Chef screamed as the Lord, with some difficulty, heaved him off his feet. It looked like he was trying to lift the man over his head, but something went wrong. The Lord’s knee buckled and he went down. Chef’s feet slammed into the produce table, launching rotten food into the air, while his lower back cracked on the searing rim of the cauldron. Both men screamed, the cauldron’s shape amplifying Chef’s cries as he tumbled headfirst into the pot.

Chef's temple and cheek scraped and seared on the thick rim of the cauldron. He got his hands up in time to stop himself, but they, too, burned horribly on the rim of the pot. Instinctively he pulled them away from the heat, and tumbled fully into the black cauldron. He spun, got his feet under him, and tried to leap out of the cauldron, but only managed to hurl his belly across the rim. His apron and shirt gave no protection, even over all the calamity, she clearly heard his flesh searing. Then the smell hit her and she swore she’d never eat pork again.

Splayed awkwardly on the rim of the cauldron, Chef desperately tried to roll head-first onto the floor — but the guards had snapped out of their shock. Two, and then four, rushed in to stuff him back down. One stepped over to help the Lord to his feet, who batted the helping hands away with a snarl. 

The room filled with layers of horrible sounds: plump flesh searing on hot metal, Chef's inhuman, desperate screams, the Lord demanding all in the room ignore his weakness and, "Look at HIM! Watch HIM!" Chef kept scrambling to get out, the guards would simply push his face back and he would slip in, the shape of the pot and his own rending flesh making it impossible to get purchase. Ghoulishly, she wondered why they didn’t put a lid on it, then realized, of course, the Lord wanted everyone to watch, hear, and smell him die. Watch, hear, and smell flesh sticking to metal, pulling away from muscle and bone. 

At the end of the table, the Lord kept trying and failing to stand. His robe had pulled up and she noticed for the first time his crooked, bent legs. Had that just happened? No, he was too calm for someone who had just broken both his legs. They must always be like that, have always been like that. Even in the horror of the moment, her training whispered: 

“Find his weakness. Everyone has at least three: one physical, one emotional, one mental.” His emotional weakness was obvious: his pride and arrogance was on display in every inch of the castle. She’d seen enough cruelty tonight to know this was the default. And now she knew his physical weakness. The Lord finally accepted help from two honour guards in silver helmets, who dragged him from the room. All the way out he was screaming, “WATCH! HIM! COOK!" 

They obeyed. Whether slaves to curiosity, overwhelmed by terror, or just plain psychopathic, everyone in the dining hall stared at the cauldron. Guests and servants alike vomited on the floor, terrified to leave the room, all but the Majordomo, who slipped out the servant’s door as soon as the Lord was gone. Pinned to her hiding spot above the table, the smell of rending fat and burning clothes built like a housefire. She gagged, tears flowed, sensations flooded her mind. Flames, steel, blood, hair, hooves, walls, bridges, screams, meat, bone, fear, rage. What was memory and what was now? She squeezed her eyes closed and tried to breathe deep to clear it out, but all she inhaled was the stench of gristle and marrow. She shook her head, but the pressure grew and grew until the vertigo seized her and she began to spin. She forced her eyes open to keep from falling… and looked straight down into the pot where Chef lay slowly cooking, muscles peeling from bones like braised meat, eyeballs streaked with blood staring forever from sockets whose lids had melted away. He couldn’t be seeing her — his eyes were cloudy from the heat — but she felt the connection like the crack of a whip.

Whether from shock, sweat, exhaustion, or grease, her fingers began to slide from the wood. She knew she was falling but couldn't look away from this man desperate to survive in a body mechanically unable to do so. The world shrank, adrenaline sharpened her vision to focus on one of his unseeing eyes. It used to be green. Then it burst like a boiled egg. Fear charged into her, wrapped its talons around her waist, and pulled her down. 

The quick spike of terror from beginning to fall snapped her back to reality. She formed her body into the shape of a falcon about to grab a fish from the river. Her feet slammed into the table just forward of the cauldron, and the great table split in half, embers spraying into the air behind her. The guards around the cauldron stumbled to the floor in surprise, then scrambled away from the liquid hot grease spilling from the upended pot. The table tipped forward, toward the merchant, and she used the angle of the table and the momentum of the fall to roll toward the exhausted, disgusted, terrified man. She came up out the roll right in his face, her clothes and hair spattered with food and wine from the table. Sometime during the action she had grabbed the chili powder from its pouch, and now she blew a cloud of red daggers into his eyes. He screamed and tipped back to the floor. She sprang from the table and landed on all fours, spider-like, right above him. Face to face, a zap of recognition passed between them:

She saw the young trapper's son from their village, always filled with dreams of respectability, dismissive and rude even to those who dedicated their lives to protecting him, fleeing the mountains in the spring on a cart piled high with furs and pelts, returning in the fall loaded down with gold. Pleased with knowing that one day he wouldn’t return at all, that he’d leave the dirty and stupid mountain people behind for fine silks and exclusive banquets. Like the ones he wore now. Like one he was at now. 

Later, she would wonder what he saw in that moment through the fire the chilies had lit in his eyes. Had he recognized the girl whose hair he'd pulled, toys he'd stolen, first kiss he'd seized on a dare? Did he see in the narrow slit of her eyes the years she had struggled after he’d sold them all out for gold? Did he see her bite into a rat in a rain-flooded alley? Slice down to the bone the finger of the first man to touch her? Did he see her face bloody, jaw broken, nearly drowning in a mud puddle? And if he did recognize her, was there a second where he thought she was there to save him?

Her knife pierced his belly many times. Often, her father told her, their blades were so sharp and so fast the victim didn’t realize they were being killed until the fourth or fifth strikes — and the stabs kept coming, even as the target began to understand. There were many more than four or five strikes that night. 

Only at a distant cry of, "Assassin! Murder!" did she somersault off his chest towards the nearest door: the servant’s entrance to the kitchen. As she spun through the curtain, she spared a glance back at the dining hall, her training allowing her to take in many sights in an instant. It was a grotesque composition: the Merchant, clutching his bloody belly and whimpering like a child; the guards, dazed from the horror and smoke fumes, scrambling for their weapons; the guests and servants, shaking, screaming, vomiting; the Chef, blind, crawling across the floor on pure instinct, depositing a greasy slug’s trail dotted with sticky globs of flesh, some still connected to his body by strands of fat.

She was numb to it all now. Maybe forever. The Fear had pulled her down to hell and she had landed on her feet with a knife. She pivoted, silent and swift, through the beaded curtain, leaving the hot and stinking hell behind.

The kitchen doors were before her, the hallway pitch dark. She couldn’t see the secret door she had entered from, it must have been just as hidden from this side as the other. Iron-shod boots of the pursuing guards thundered behind her. She dashed for the kitchen door… just as the secret door cracked open. She found herself face-to-face with the boy and girl from the dock, arms looped around each other and laughing, her old terror forgotten, both ignorant of the new terror they were walking into. 

Faced by a blood-soaked, masked intruder fleeing the guards, and apparently threatening his girlfriend, the boy did what men are taught to do: he grabbed her. She was trained to avoid innocent death, not prevent it. Ultimately, the mission mattered more: the men they killed responsible for thousands of deaths. One or two innocents in the path of justice was the cost, and they paid it willingly. It was not a choice, nor was it something her people ever worried about. One for a million, three for three thousand, five for five hundred — it was always worth it. 

With boots and steel seconds behind, she grabbed him back, but while his grab was sloppy and instinctual, hers was trained and with purpose. The thin bones of his wrist snapped dryly. She bodied him back into the stairway and dumped him easily down the stairs. She was gone up the stairwell when he landed on his tailbone, at the next landing when he rolled back over his head, and a full staircase up when his spine crumpled and his neck snapped on the stone landing outside. She was deaf to the wails of his lover or his father, who was just now rising to greet the day and the early-morning fish.

---

She pounded up the stairs, arms pulling the walls, propelling her up, forward, a swimmers-motion. Behind her: screaming, rage, orders, swords scraping against walls, booted feet in heavy pursuit.

This action, fleeing up the stairs, was a mistake she compounded with every step. She didn’t know the layout on the keep, and had no idea where these stairs would take her. She knew the Lord’s room was at the top, but not that he would be there. He could have an armoured room elsewhere, buried deep, or a secret exit. 

He could already be gone.

Something else joined the soldiers chasing her up the stairs. The Fear. Failure, foolishness, hubris, disappointment, blood in the river, her brother under the hooves. It pulled itself along the walls like a creeping vine, not leading the soldiers but pushing them forward, leading from behind, driving them with the same powers it used to sap her strength: failure, disappointment, dishonour. Fear has few tricks, but they are effective.

The stairway walls were square, the risk of ambush around every corner. She was moving so fast she could impale herself on a waiting spear and make a hero of a common foot soldier in an instant. There was no choice. She had to move, had to run, legs burning, slowing down, stale adrenaline curdling in her blood. She’d just spent half an hour jammed between roof beams, before that she’d rappelled up and down castle walls. She’d killed four men. 

A new thought emerged — what she had already done was a miracle. No, not a miracle: she was winning! Look at what she had done with nothing but grit and toughness? Why should her training, her encouragement — her destiny — fear  simple blades? Any random soldier could have shot, stabbed, or crushed her. None of them had stopped her killing two world-famous warriors. If they could harm her, they would have already. 

A new spirit joined her in her mad flight up the stairs: Pride. Her speed increased. New air filled her lungs. She took the steps two, then three at a time, her feet skipping along the walls as she rounded the corners, gaining speed. As the tower went higher, she grew faster. How high was it? It didn’t matter. She would run straight through the roof and sprint into heaven. 

Little sounds began to bubble from her lips. Not laughter: a guttural, high-pitched yip. To the soldiers chasing her, losing ground with every step, it sounded like a pack of foxes had flooded the stairway. Pride smiled and Fear began to lose ground. Fear is a drug. It can provide great temporary benefits — for a price. The greater the boon, the greater the price, and the soldiers behind her had begun to crash. They slowed, some dropped their weapons, a few stumbled to their knees. 

But the soldiers waiting in ambush ahead of her gripped their weapons tighter. Unknown to her, she raced towards a phalanx of spears, three layers of wood and steel, three rows of steps packed with soldiers shoulder-to-shoulder. The Fear abandoned her faltering pursuers to their coppery failure and joined the waiting ambush, who received its presence with nauseous dread. The yips got louder, closer, the stair’s echo forming a choral chant. They heard no footsteps because she was barely touching the ground. She hurtled on the wind of her success, grinning, tiptoes and fingertips flowing fast, Pride whispering dreams of the feeling of her knife pulling apart the flesh of his neck.

Pride ends fast. She rounded the corner, body tilted sideways, feet on the walls. A flash of the Fear’s triumphant grin loomed enormous behind the rows of terrified spearmen, then she felt the sharp bite of steel. She was high and horizontal and that’s the only thing that saved her: speared by a man on the second level, not properly braced, inexperienced and lazy by the security given by the men in front and behind him. He was as shocked as she was when this young, chanting, laughing murderer, smaller than his sister, came flying around the corner and impaled herself on his weapon.

Her ribs deflect the blade like armour. She felt the edge scrape across every little bump on the bone, vibrating her skeleton right up to her teeth. She twisted up and away from the pain, the shocked soldier fell back, raising his spear, inadvertently lifting her above his head. The back row of soldiers was even less prepared to receive her: some of them managed to drop their heads as she sailed over, tumbling over iron helmets and crushing tense necks. She crashed into the stairs, panting in shock and pain, a hand trying to stop the bleeding. The impact knocked the wind out of her, she saw stars. 

There was a moment where everyone was equally confused about what just happened, then sense, duty, survival — it all came back in a rush of blood and fear. She scrambled backward, up the stairs, as the back row of spearmen, all tangled limbs and crunched spines, tried to pick themselves up. The middle row started to turn around, but everyone picked a different direction and their spears got tangled up in each other or against the walls. The first row, made of veteran soldiers who were the most confused due to the extremely unusual way this all went down, craned their necks over armoured shoulders to see what the fuck is happening back there? But, professionals all, they kept their spears held tight and forward, anticipating another attack.

It came. The company of pursuing soldiers, their lungs given new breath by the sound of action ahead, pounded up the steps as fast as their armour allowed. They were announced by a rolling, guttural war cry seconds before the lead group ripped around the stairway corner and impaled themselves on the waiting spears of the confused ambush squad. The first row of spear carriers snapped their heads forward in time to look in the eyes of their stunned and dying comrades... then the rest of the pursuing group slammed into the backs of their friends. Some hit so hard the spears went clean through the first man to pierce the second, then pushed further still when the third wave hammered into the melee. One man spat blood into the face of a friend he'd shared his dinner with minutes before: both of them smelled the pickled turnip on his last breath. Someone panicked in the second row of spearmen, and soon the entire line was stabbing down at the newly arrived soldiers, who awkwardly waved their swords as best they could to defend themselves.

She stood at the top of the stairs clutching her wound and watched the two groups of soldiers descend into a blood-fueled melee as the confused commander, finally catching up, screamed at them to stop. She left them to their combat, fleeing, slower now, ever upward.

—

Her side was on fire. The only thing keeping the pain from overwhelming her was the numbness creeping into her brain. She was weak, confused, great waves of blood pouring down her leg and onto the floor. She'd left the confused melee in the stairwell and pushed through the first hidden servant's door she'd found, two landings up.

She emerged into a richly-decorated hallway, oil paintings in heavy oak frames lined the walls, the floor flooded by a plush crimson-and-gold carpet. Word of the calamity in the great dining hall had ripped through Castle Seizo like a landslide. Servants and guests alike rushed from room to room carrying bags and suitcases, some just armfuls of stuff. Few paid her any mind beyond some scattered gasps, rats crowding the lifeboats. 

Passing room after luxurious room, her eyesight blurred, her breathing slow, she crashed into a broom closet crowded by clay pots and wicker boxes. She lurched from shelf to shelf, picking up anything that might hold — there! A small clay jar with a bit of liquid in the bottom. The type of liquid didn't matter, just as long as there was something, and the room was completely dark.

The closet was lit by a single stubby candle, quickly snuffed out. She needed complete darkness to heal herself, but it came with a wave of disorientation and vertigo. She swooned, let the riptide of unconsciousness carry her to the floor; she wanted to be close to the ground for what came next.

She reached under her tunic to find the wound, then, taking a deep breath, scooped four fingers through the rent flesh. The pain was exhilarating, she gasped, sucked her mask into her mouth, bit down on the cloth to keep from screaming. In the darkness, there was no way to see if she had grabbed enough blood and fat from her side, she'd have to trust her training. 

With shaking hands, she tossed the handful of gore into the bottle, then worked up a last gob of spit. Firmly but gently she swirled the contents. The repetitive motion made her swoon again, she nearly vomited. To keep from passing out, she counted the rotations of the bottle. When she got to thirty, she reached back in.

Whatever had been in there before had mixed with the clump of her blood, fat, and torn muscle. She pulled out a sticky, fibrous mass of shadow in her hand, warm as a surgeon's knife. The fibres gripped the bottle, reluctant to leave the world of the dead. As she pulled on the shadow, they reached for other things to grab: her clothes, her face, then the gash in her side. The shadow thing climbed eagerly into her wound, she felt every glass-sliver-thin tendril probe the scrapes on her ribs, her punctured lung, her gushing veins and arteries. It was as if a thousand spiders had hatched all at once inside her chest and were exploring her stomach, her spine. Counting, breathing, flexing her hands and feet — nothing distracted her from the creeping, knitting, pulling agony.

She passed out at least twice, awakening to the devastating agony again and again until, finally, it was over. She prodded the flesh where the spear had entered her: tacky, like fresh paint, and tender as a lamb, but whole. She'd be sore in that spot for weeks, not to mention the terrible stomach cramps she'd have to endure until she finally shit the damned thing out in a few days — but she'd live. 

Rising on shaky legs, she grabbed the stubby candle and stepped out into the hallway. Lighting the candle on a nearby sconce, she returned to the closet and found her improvised medicine bottle smashed on the floor. The remains of her shadow-conjured cure was pulling itself out of the bottle with the same tendrils that had knitted her insides back together. She dropped the candle and the shadow flashed into white flame. She watched it burn. Seizo was hellish, a charnel house, but the people here and in the town nearby didn't deserve what that thing would grow into if she left it alive. Or was that dead?

—

Following her blood trail, the guards stood puzzled at the closet door, staring, poking about, one even scratching his head at where the blood smear suddenly ended. They kicked open doors and demanded answers from the few guests and servants still on the floor; but she was long gone. 

The corner suite, ransacked by fleeing servants, had a big window overlooking the bay where she'd fished early that week. She'd climbed out carefully and now, very slowly, scaled the walls of Castle Seizo. Her rope had been left behind at the servant's dock, her fingers and toes now her only climbing tools. It was slow-going, one slip and she'd plummet many stories to the foamy rocks below, but being outside had its advantages.

She knew for certain now the Lord was still in the Castle. There had been no herald, she heard no pounding hooves, saw no small skiffs on the lake. True, she didn't know every secret exit, but she'd learned a lot about the Lord as she observed his killing of the Chef. Mainly, he would never slink away from his seat of power. If he were to flee, it would be loud and ostentatious, a big show, to prove it wasn't a retreat, but a tactical withdrawal. He'd be resplendent in his silver-and-gold stag's armor, with his back-braced saddle that hid the other vital piece of information she had learned: the Lord was lame, crippled in an accident or simply born twisted, his voice and spirit overcompensating for the betrayal of his body. 

As she drew closer to the summit, the Castle began throwing out architectural defenses: swooped awnings and loose tiles. She swung and flipped up and around them easily, her wound barely bothering her. Pride began to shadow her, but she ignored its praise and settled back into her trained rhythm of calm competence. True, she had beaten the odds three times now, but she had paid dearly for her hubris. There would be a greater cost down the line for pulling the small shadow out of the bottle, for taking something from Hell to save her life. They say The Ochre King is not an undertaker, but a banker — one who keeps a close eye on his books. She only hoped the four tainted souls she was delivering tonight would balance her account.

The chamber at the very top of Castle Seizo was designed in opposition to the gaudy spaciousness of the rest of the fortress. Slinking along the tiles, she spied through slatted windows what appeared to be a simple tea room. To her left was a sitting area, to her right the only entrance: a trap door in the carpet. A massive mural depicting a sea serpent dramatically leaping from crashing waves stretched from one end of the sitting area to the other. Looking closer, she saw shadows pulling down from every detail of the mural — it was three-dimensional, a relief, not a painting or tapestry.

The intended effect was clear: you emerge from the trap door on your hands and knees and crawl to the Lord as he humbly sipped tea in front of a massively intimidating and expensive piece of art. It was probably very intimidating, but she would not have the intended experience tonight.

The lord was screaming at his guard captains, waving his arms in a frenzy, and trying not to make it obvious he was leaning hard on a long sword to keep him upright. The silk brocade and golden thread of the scabbard caught the torchlight. A sword for display, probably never removed from this room. The captains kept their heads bowed. One held his side, blood soaked the carpet under him. Stench of fear and adrenaline wormed through the slats. She settled in for a long wait, but her opportunity came fast. 

The lord hobbled to the injured captain and stared at his bowed head. When the soldier finally looked up, the lord swung his cane hard into the man's injured side. He cried out and fell to his knees, the blood pumping faster onto the floor. The lord staggered and two of the captains moved to steady him, but he shoved them off and fell into his chair. He was spitting nonsense, she could barely make it out, and what she could hear wasn't worth remembering, just the panicked ravings of a dead rich man.

At his sullen command, two of the four captains retreated from the room, never turning their back to him, even as they descended the ladder and closed the door. The others listen to their brother bleed out, his armoured feet scratching divots in the floor polish, then also retreated while facing him, but they stepped to the far edge of the room, very near to the window she was peering in from. She did a quick shoulder check to make sure she wasn't silhouetted against the moon or a light-coloured feature of the castle, but saw only stars and blackness.

Two soldiers, heads bowed, their backs to her, only a few feet away. All of them waited, but the Lord did nothing, simply sat and brooded, staring at the corpse of the man he'd killed as his pooling blood traced a labyrinth through the carpet fibres. Slowly, she reached for the poison darts in her kit and slid the thin hollow reed from her sleeve. As she fitted one dart into the end, the Lord began to mutter:

"My dad used to say that the only thing worth a damn, more than money or land or sons, was people you could rely on. He used to work that little glob of obvious advice into stories and lessons, but once his mind started to go, he'd just say it. Every day. Many times a day. By the end, choking on his own piss in that huge bed that made him look like a little twig, it was all he said. Literally. He'd choke and wave his bony little finger at me, call me over like he was about to tell me the most important thing in the world and then: just that. The same shit. Find good men. Good men matter.

"Pretty rich coming from the guy who tossed me out of his house when I was a baby, just because I broke something that was meant to be used. I remember the way he grinned at the crowd when they brought me home, waving at everyone. He was furious. It was hilarious. 

"I waited 15 years for that used-up matchstick to die. And I followed his advice! I found the Best Men. Fucking Wellow! And his useless fucking nephew! Filling up my nicest house with their cheap swords and their farts. And you two. Well, you three. Who let rats into my house — this is my house! You just work here. I was born here. In a room not far from where you're sitting now."

Now he was looking at them with hooded eyes. He dragged his heels into the floor and the chair glided forward, it must have been on small wheels. He wheeled over to the first soldier, then leaned down to his face.

"Someone asked me once if I was happier living in a house made of sticks. Collecting mushrooms and berries. Herding sheep. Poor. His entrails made for fine fiddle strings.

"What is your job?"

The soldier didn't answer. He scooted over to the other, "What's your job?"

Silence. He tossed his hands, looking between the both of them. "What's your job? Answer me! There's no reason for me not to kill you, like I did to him, if you can't even answer that!"

One of the soldiers must have answered, she couldn't hear, because the lord vigorously shook his head, "Nooooo, that's not right.

"No no," he spoke very slowly now, "I shouldn't be afraid. Ever. That's your job. You don't protect me from knives or bullets— anyone can do that. You protect me from fear. If I'm scared, I can't do my job, which is ruling all the little dirty people scurrying around and filling up my land. Sending me gifts and tithes and children and girls and profit and those little funny shoes they wear in the northwest and all the very important things that belong to me. That I deserve."

It went on like that. Her attention drifted away. She had enough evidence of his rot. Instead she let herself feel the wind on the back of her hands, the sweet smell of flowering trees somewhere in the castle, the sound of waves lapping against the walls of Castle Seizo far below. Even the great moon seemed to hum in the silence of the night, caressed by stars whispering like candles. 

The lord scooted away from the soldiers. Idly, she blew hard into the reed, fit a new dart, blew again. Both soldiers reacted to the pricks in their skin like mosquito bites, wavered, and swiftly dropped to their faces. The lord didn't notice, so taken by whatever speech he was making to the magnificent carving that dominated the wall.

She stowed the reed, then lifted the slatted window, poured into the room like ink. She passed the soldiers, their faces pressed into the floor, suffocating by their own paralyzed lungs. One of them had shit himself, so she pressed her mask close to her face, but the stench overpowered the fading smell of home and she pulled the mask down completely.

Strangely, the smells of her old home lingered. Grew stronger, even, though her mask was bundled under her chin. It must be because she was so close now, so close to ending things. The ghosts of her family were with her, her father and brother and mother and sisters. She welcomed them, felt their eyes fix on his back, left the dying soldiers behind, and stepped up onto the low stage.

He was speaking so quietly even the dust couldn't hear. He had wheeled his little chair right up to the wall and rested his cheek against it, spread his fingers across it, whispering to the relief. She saw now it was made up of hundreds of objects, each one like a brush stroke. The serpent and the waves, the land of the island, the mountain and sun in the background; all were dusted in brightly coloured powder that streaked the lord's face where he'd touched it. The smell of jasmine and chamomile thickened.

Close to him, she saw how smooth his skin was, the thin lines under his eyes, the slight red marks across his cheeks. She saw he was losing his hair. His nails were a little long, and dirty. She reached back to produce her knife. Her heart pounded, her breath tasted like ammonia in her throat. She was staring at him, how could he not feel it? Any minute he could turn and...what? He was weak, soft, and sad. His gaze wouldn't stop her heart or burn her skin or launch her out of the room and off the roof. He was nothing. Just a man in ugly slippers. 

Even still, the quick movement of his hand startled her. She froze, but he didn't produce a weapon; he reached for one of the objects making up the relief and pulled it free of the wall. Ocean blue dust scattered onto the floor as he turned it over in his hands. The knife came out, her eyes wandered from his head to his neck, his heart, his wrists, his...hands.

He was holding the bones of a small human arm, each tiny bone of the hand still attached by wire. The hand was pointing to the wall and she saw now: the entire relief was made of bones. Bones that had been burned, crushed, chipped, or cut, then boiled and dusted in colour and set into the wall. She looked back down at the small arm he held in his hand, saw her brother reaching out to her as Tennum's horse drove his little face into the mud. It smelled of jasmine and chamomile.

She gasped and he looked over at her. His eyes were watery and dull, confused, drunk. He started to say "What?" when her knife slammed into his temple and buried itself so deep in his brain the point came out the other end. He reached for the hilt, his flushed full lips gasping like a fish, then the white of his eyes filled with blood that poured from his eyes and nose. He fell back against the relief. Several coloured bones crashed to the floor. He kept trying to pull the knife out, his fingers groped around hers with surprising strength. Her hand was wet. Not blood. Tears. She twisted the blade. The colour of his eyes rolled up to white as she destroyed his putrid brain. His slippered feet barely made a sound as they spasmed on the floor.

The carpet went up in flames from the coals of the tipped-over braziers. The bones wouldn't burn but the wall would collapse and scatter them. Workman scrambled below her in the castle courtyard, but the only entrance to the burning room was a trap door wreathed in flame. She watched as long as she could, until the rising sun began to compete with the flames, until the fire began to cook his corpse and fuse the silk threads to his boiling skin. She stepped to the edge of the roof and looked back. Her brother's hand waved in the heat.

—

He was late getting up that morning. He'd had a bad dream in the middle of the night but couldn't remember enough to explain it to his wife. Arriving at his spot late, Maizal, who was already there, wagged his finger at his tardiness. He waved back. The girl wasn't there again. He looked for his son, but of course the small dock was on the other side of the walls. Castle Seizo blocked all. He turned to his box, began to unpack his gear. Behind him, something hit the water, nearly silent, like a kingfisher.