Dramatis Personae And Legendarium

In the town of Burlesque:

Vorago Icelus - leader of The Dolly Boys/Evocati Loyal. Former lover of King Lucan, Queen Nessi Nessi, and Mundivagant. His son by Queen Nessi Nessi (The Princeling-To-Be) was declared by King Lucan to be the official heir. He has continued to fight even after the battle at The Friday Falls resulted in The Princeling-To-Be's death.

Iaido Paperwhite - Vorago's younger brother. They have the same mother, different fathers. He was also a Evocati Loyal, now he's Vorago's second-in-command. Called Crazy Iaido. Addicted to a drug called glee-dream. A master of the Nine Forms.

The Dolly Boys - the ragged remains of Vorago's army, now made of more freaks and outcasts than soldiers, the only ones to be named so far:

Lee Inkhorn (The Dandy) - a hedge-mage in a bowler hat. A practitioner of a low grade version of the All Sorts.

Wettercogs - a clockwork man. All brass and rubber and steam and rust. One of his hands is a pepperpot revolver.

Argos Tector - the 'Sodomite Prince'. He wears women's clothes and powders his face and carries two swords.

Deke Murlimews - wereraven, scout.

Fatty-Cakes - a huge eunuch. Strong. Known for crushing skulls with his hands. A nonnatural.

Engstrom Nacks - a newspaperman-turned-outlaw-turned Dolly Boy. Fond of taking duerrotypes of people, thinks of it as art.

Vin Fanticles - a savage.

Buck Thenaday - quiet. His face is scarred from the daemon that shares his body.

Runcy Jane - powerful witch. Practitioner of The Inwit - a type of sorcery much more powerful and mysterious than the All Sorts

Daumis - a piano player

Bonny Mary Shih - a fourteen year old girl. Graffiti artist of such slogans as DISCORD FOREVER and SUCK MY COCK.

Paul - a young lad with an unfortunate mustache.

Gurne - a young lad known for wearing monk's sandals.

Miles The Aeronaut - a young lad with the wild talent of manipulating air. An aerokinesist. Helped The Dolly Boys destroy a war-dirigible. Caused lots of bad weather on The Green Salt Sea.

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Outside of Burlesque, with the Queen's Army:

Jasper Mundivagant - A Evocati Loyal who declared for Queen Bellis over The Princeling-To-Be. A former lover of Vorago's, spurned.

Jackdaw - Mundivagant's manservant. They have a coded sign language.

Shrike - The Queen's Thaumaturge. A court magician and practitioner of the All Sorts. Out of place on the field of battle.

(Will) Thwankin - one of Shrike's more able apprentices. Handled himself well at both The Friday Falls and The Silent Field.

Justin Feague - one of Shrike's more able apprentices. Killed Big John Terminus with a nasty hex.

(Thom) Allemang - another apprentice who is helping Feague and Thwankin.

Ribroast (Xixin) - Mundivagant's torturer. Hasn't had any business since the town of Lovetooth. And there he started with the women and children.

Sad Bread - real name Herdotus Bread. Former teacher of many promising children who would grow up to become Evocati Loyal. Including Vorago, Mundivagant, Alytarch, Woad, and John Terminus. A bit of a revolutionary. Not sure about this war. His symbol is The Chimera.

Mundivagant's Captains, Commanders, Twice-Turncloaks, and Lickspittles:

Lord Calvera Twychild - his banner, the Hawk. Declared for Queen Bellis. Sir Alytarch was his son and heir.

Sir Vaughn Calenture - his banner, a row of Teeth. Declared for Queen Bellis. He is one of her suiters.

Sir Eli Thurindale - his banner, the Dragon. Declared for Queen Bellis. His nephew and heir was killed in a duel with Iaido prior to the start of the war.

Lord Caddis Ratherist - his banner, a Painted Hand. A member of The High Caste, he is one of Queen Bellis's suitors.

Sir Christopher Naufrage - his banner, the Sword. Declared for The Princeling-To-Be. Queen Nessi Nessi's older brother. Captured after the battle at The Friday Falls. Devastated by the death of the baby. Later killed Lord Helios at the battle of Wyrm's Galley.

Sir Mapache Scaum - his banner, the Ape. Evocati Loyal who declared for The Princeling-To-Be. Betrayed Sir Iaido during the battle of Terk's Square, killing most of Iaido's men.

Sir Lyle Offmangandy - his banner, the Asp. Evocati Loyal who declared for The Princeling-To-Be. Betrayed and murdered Sir Woad at the battle of Rushingburg.

Lord Dexter Ruricolist - his banner, the Hammer. Evocati Loyal who declared for The Princeling-To-Be. After his father's death, Queen Bellis was going to prevent him from taking the title of Lord of Hammerhall. He betrayed and almost killed Vorago during the madness of The Slingshot Battle. He is one of the Queen's suitors.

Sir Yul Quother - his banner, the Wand. Declared for The Princeling-To-Be. A dabbler in the All Sorts. He surrendered to Ruricolist after the battle of Hammerhall. Then he was hexed and tortured into declaring for Queen Bellis.

Thorton Oxgang - his banner, a Fist. A third son of a second son of a minor House. Mercenary. He joined up with The Queen's Army at The Silent Field.

Sir Infradig Motch - his banner, the Wasp. Declared for The Princeling-To-Be. His ship was overtaken on The Green Salt Sea. He found out that Queen Bellis has his wife and son held hostage.

Taghairm - called Dogflaws. A savage and a mercenary from The East Of East.

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Soldiers, dragoons, sawbones, and men-at-arms:

Henry Luck - a victim of Inwit hexes.

Doctor Sushruta Bishop - The Queen's Chirurgeon, a sawbones.

Lloyd - a soldier who runs afoul of The Sodomite Prince.

Pouncer - a soldier looking for blood and trophies.

Nosh - one of Pouncer's fellows.

Burke - one of Pouncer's fellows. Dead aim.

Mollisher - one of Ruricolist's leftenants.

Rook - one of Ruricolist's leftenants.

Tobsman - a private being groomed as Ruricolist's factotum.

Yannigan Bag - one of Ruricolist's leftenants.

Tresseno - Ruricolist's soldier.

Gammon - Ruricolist's soldier.

Voker - Ruricolist's Head Engineer.

Buttoner - Voker's apprentice, affected by the Inwit hex.

Neddy - Voker's apprentice, affected by the Inwit hex.

Chiv - one of Thurindale's soldiers.

Arikara - one of Thurindale's soldiers.

Reeb - in Chiv's unit, bitten by a daemon imp.

Slap-Bang Benjamin - in Chiv's unit. Almost a dentist. Wants to take the imp as a pet.

Santiago - one of Naufrage's men.

Old Epharim - one of Naufrage's men. An old salt. Master Of Five Forms.

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Back at the capital (Calliope):

Queen Bellis Katycho - sister of the late King Lucan. Fifteen years his senior. Declared herself Queen after Lucan's regicide. Denied his proclaimed heir, The Princeling-To-Be.

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The Irin, typically called The Watchers - a monastic order that travels in silver spaceships, recording both great events and mundane ones that occur on various planets of the firmament for their holy book, The Stelliscript. They are neutral in all conflicts.They utilize a decive called a tachygraph to make their records.

The Ambassador-Nun (Samyaza) - The Watcher sent to be inside Burlesque with The Dolly Boys during this final battle.

The Ambassador-Monk (Grigori) - The Watcher stationed near with Munidivagant's men. He has not been allowed the access that Samyaza has enjoyed.

Urakabarameel, Armers, Saraknyal - the names of three of the Irin teardrop shaped ships hovering over the castle-town of Burlesque.

Nephilim - a monk-in-training.

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The Dead:

King Lucan Katycho - murdered. Former lover of Vorago.

Queen Nessi Nessi Katycho (formally Naufrage) - Lucan's Lady Wife. When her husband would not provide an heir, she demanded the Vorago do so. She died mysteriously after giving birth.

The Princeling-To-Be - the son of Vorago and Nessi Nessi and the acknowledged heir of Lucan. Killed at The Friday Falls.

Lord Jacope Helios - Lucan's cousin. He declared for The Princeling-To-Be. Killed during the battle of Wyrm's Galley by Sir Naufrage.

Sir Raphael Woad - Evocati Loyal. Declared for The Princeling-To-Be. Stabbed and killed during the battle at Rushingburg by Sir Offmagandy, who began the battle as his ally.

Big John Terminus - Evocati Loyal. Killed by Justin Feague's nasty hex.

Sir Alytarch Twychild - Evocati Loyal. Declared for Queen Bellis, he was her castellan at Maiden Stairs. Was mysteriously in the capital the night of the king's murder. Fought a duel with Vorago the night he stole away The Princeling-To-Be. Was named General at The Friday Falls. Died when the bridge was destroyed.

Master Agoge - The Old Master. One of the teachers of Evocati Loyal. Gunslinger. Swordsman. General. Died of natural causes. Gave Iaido his sword. A Master of The Nine Forms.

Bernardo Paperwhite - Vorago's stepfather. Iaido's father. A merchant, wine-maker. Died of a brainstorm.

Clementine Icelus Paperwhite -Vorago's mother, a 'plaything' of The Old King.

The Old King (King Tycho Katycho) - Bellis and Lucan's father. Had groomed Bellis as his successor but after the birth of Lucan changed his decision.

Queen Getrude Katycho (formally Twychild) - mother of Bellis and Lucan.

Princess Isobel Katycho (married Frederick Helios) - sister of Tycho, mother of Jacope Helios.

Baron Hector Mundivagant - Jasper's father. A war hero. Baron of Do'Down. Called Lord Of The Skies. Flew airships for The Old King. Evocati Loyal. Killed Shivering Jemmy and Broad Arrow Bill and the revolutionary Sylas Glaums.

Sylas Glaums - an anarchist who wanted to bring down the Katycho monarchy.

Shivering Jemmy - a famous outlaw.

Broad Arrow Bill - a famous outlaw.

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Lands, Places, Etc

The Throne-land - the heart of the realm, an area of land directly controlled by the Royal House Of Katycho.

Oneiraas - The western continent, mostly controlled by The High Caste.

The capital - its name is Calliope, where House Katycho governs from.

The Laughing Court - one of the main audience chambers in Calliope

The Griffin's Garden - a Royal garden, hedge-maze in Calliope. Burned down at the start of the Sweetheart War.

Maiden Stairs - a castle outside of Calliope.

Mandrake - the township where Vorago and Iaido are from.

The Friday Falls - a spectacular waterfall and bridge.

Terk's Square - major merchant town.

Do'Down - a barony controlled by House Mundivagant.

Rushingburg - home of several colleges, typically a hotbed of revolutionary ideas and blather.

Hammerhall - the ancient caste keep ruled by House Ruricolist

The Silent Field - actually a series of beautiful canyons and mesas.

The Slingshot - a passenger train connecting Rushingburg with Easterling and The White Chalk.

The White Chalk - a no man's land at the eastern edge of the continent.

Easterling - a port town beyond The White Chalk. Sometimes just called East, or The East.

The Green Salt Sea - sea that sits between the western continent of Oneiraas and the eastern continent of Hypnaas.

Hypnaas - the eastern continent. Usually just called The East Of East.

Sullyport - a port town of Hypnaas.

Burlesque - a castle-town of Hypnaas a few days inland from the Green Salt Sea. Located in a small patch of dry desert land called The Bracelet.

The Bracelet - a desert land the cuts the Eastern portion of Hypnaas from the far-flung Western lands.

Say-shot

Say-shot



Say-shot - An opportunity in a game to regain, by one stroke, all that one had previously lost



So just open fire when you hit the shore, all is fair in love and war.

- Tom Waits

Hoist That Rag



Let be be finale of seem

- Wallace Stevens

The Emperor Of Ice-Cream

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Vorago looked into the blue sky where the teardrop silver Watcher ships floated. Not warships, not reinforcements from beyond the stars. Just The Irin, an interstellar monastic order who traveled from planet to planet, recording historic events and mundane details. Here they were, at this side-show, the final battle, the end of the Long Defeat. There would be no bright blast of atomic white to save them. No, the Watchers had turned down his request to ferry weapons to him. None of his men knew about that test, his moment of weakness, the last moment where he thought about victory.

None of them knew of the cold voice and prim mouth and gray habit of the wrinkled little nun, Samyaza, who the Watchers had sent to record the demise of Vorago's and his companions. Vorago assumed they also sent an ambassador to his enemies as well. So they could get the whole story.

It didn't matter, it was a moment of weakness, of doubt, nothing more. And the Watcher-nun Samyaza hadn't refused his second, lesser request, so things were in order. It had put Vorago back on his path through the world, to this empty backwater castle, its parapets reaching for the sky like a collection of grave markers. Or holy tablets.

The dry cough let him know Iaido was at his side. Iaido was like a list of all of words that were the opposite of how to describe Vorago. Short, pale, sandy-haired, impulsive, brutal, loud, and dirty. He hadn't bathed in months, maybe not since the Green Salt Sea. Iaido's blue eyes were angry and bright from glee-dream, he hadn't slept in days. Not since The Dolly Boys had arrived in the little castle-town of Burlesque. Vorago turned to his uterine-brother and smiled.

"Name it. What do you see out there."

Iaido spat, wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve. His brother's fondness for riddles and koan didn't touch him. Iaido was practical and deadly, he was what Vorago needed.

"I see fubbery and yird-swine. I see death. I see Queen's Men and I see all our old comrades, all of them, lickspittles and mice...I see them come here to kill us all. I see those Outer Darkness Star-Hopping Cowards here to watch us die and write it down for some old dusty book. If I squint, I can see Mundivagant's face, covered in that murdering whore's cunt-juice. They're here to kill us. End us. End The Dolly Boys. Every last Loyal Man"

Vorago looked down on the plains beyond Burlesque's high walls, beneath the hanging tin gods of the neutral and neutered Irin and saw his foes. Legion after legion of Queen's Men, their badges red and black, their standards multicolored moving through the air thick as soup. Chimera, that'd be Sad Bread's unit. It did make Vorago sad to think of his old teacher here, frothing at the mouth to see him dead. The old man had always been a little revolutionary himself.

The rest of the banners were not as friendly. Hawk, Asp, and Ape. Dragons and Fists. Hammers and Teeth. Wands, Swords, Painted Hands, and Wasps. And at the rear of the columns, under a simple banner of a Woman's Smile, somewhere, toasting his victory, was Mundivagant. Mundivagant, who took the elder sister's side, when Vorago had called on all Loyal Men to support The Princeling-To-Be.

Vorago wondered if Mundivagant looked as happy right now as he did that long ago evening in The Griffin's Garden, after they first took The Vows Of Loyal Men. Jasper Mundivagant, with his stoic little face and sweet, fumbling hands, his salty taste and his whispers, afterward: I love you, Vor, have always loved you. Did he look that happy now, so near the end. Or did he have on the confused face he wore that gruesome day at The Friday Falls? Which face is coming to kill me, Vorago wondered.

Vorago turned away from the sight of his enemies, to the dusty inner keep of his default headquarters.

"Name it again, Iaido. Look on our xyster, our sharpness, our brothers, the splinter-under-the-nail, the last sneer of our age. Tell me what you see."

Iaido rolled his drug-blue eyes, "I see Fatty-Cakes cooking the last horse and Inkhorn playing at myomancy, cutting up that rat's guts, hoping it'll tell him some future fortune that don't have him shot in the face."

Vorago touched his brother's, no, his second-in-command's shoulder. After that day at The Falls, after losing Sir Woad and Big John Terminus and Lord Jacope Helios, the King's cousin, he had relied more and more on Iaido. The little brother, the little Loyal Man. As their army was reduced to clowns and cutthroats, it was Iaido who kept order.

Vorago could feel the anger and hatred coming off of his brother like the tap-tap-tap of a cablegram. Iaido was warm to the touch, feverish. And not just from the drug. Their family had never been very lucky. Then lo and behold, not one but two children picked to become Loyal Men! And one of them so close with the King, his royal bodyguard! Iaido didn't share his prophetic outlook about this war. Or this last battle.

"See them as I see them. Our bravos. The Dolly Boys. They gave us that name to mock us. She gave us that name. The Cunt. The Whore. The Murderer. Now look at the host who has come to put the noose on our necks. We were the only ones that stayed Loyal. Loyal. Us. And now, they've given us this grand seppuku. This moment that will make us legend. Whether you call us Dolly Boys or Loyal Men...this is our moment...not theirs. Not hers."

Iaido didn't have any spit left or he might have spit in Vorago's face.

"The King is dead, Vor. And we let him die. Now, when they come, I'm going to take as many as I can for that. I'm going to make them paid in blood for every street of this city they take. I'm sure they'll like a few of my surprises, I know Old Sad Bread would enjoy some of them. And when I'm out of tricks and out of bullets, it'll be Whore's Bane here that does for them."

Iaido tapped the saber at his right side, a southpaw blade.

"And when she breaks, it'll be knives in the streets and bare hands and my last words will be the names of The King and His Lady Wife and The-Princeling-To-Be.....but don't think that I've come here to be part of your semi-messiah horse-shit. Now, I better go check on some of these press-ganged Burlesque town-folken.....more likely than not, once the fighting gets heavy they'll turn on us.....but hopefully Runcy Jane and her Inwit hexes can keep them honest for a while longer. Maybe somebody should tell them that they're about to have the honor of being scripture."

And with that, Iaido knuckled a salute to his brother and captain, and walked away.

The words didn't burn Vorago, didn't leave him cold. Iaido couldn't help it if he couldn't see the preaching-cross in the road, he'd serve it nonetheless.

Vorago looked down into the court yard. He saw them. He saw his men. He saw his boys. Most of the original soldiers were gone, fled or turned their cloaks. Not these men and women. There was Inkhorn The Dandy, a little hedge-mage in his bowler hat and dirty silks. Wettercogs, the clock-work man, all brass and rubber tubes and rust playing a hand of Drowned Sailor with Argos, the self styled, 'Sodomite Prince" with his painted face and twin scimitars.

And over in the shade, practicing the strange backward craft of The Inwit was Runcy Jane - - her face red with blood-sweat - - her odd efforts keeping The Queen's Men at bay with a Parabola Of Idiocy that had thus far confounded Mundivagant's thaumaturgies.

Murlimews yawning from his long flight and recent scouting, the thin wereraven still had feathers in his curly black hair. His movement birdlike even at rest.

Fatty-Cakes, his face slick from horse grease, sucking lard off each of the fingers of his skull-cracking hands. A eunuch, a genetic mule, a nonnatural. He was easily eight feet tall. With his warty hide he looked like a creature who should live under a bridge, or up in a cloud castle beyond a beanstalk.

Engstrom Nacks, the newspaperman-turned-outlaw-turned-Dolly Boy was setting up another of his duerrotypes of the fat eunuch eating. He called it Art. Of a sort. An acquired taste. Not quite as dapper as Inkhorn The Dandy but a close second. His thin hair was slicked to his skull with wax and comically parted down the middle. He wore a pearl handled gambler's pistol.

The Watcher-nun, Samyaza, stood next to Nacks and recorded him using the strange technology of The Irin. A little exoskeleton on her right hand moved rapidly, a Tachygraph copying her notes for The Irin's holy book, The Stelliscript. It compiled data and directed it up to the main Watcher ship, The Saraknyal.

That was good, seeing Nacks, a natural raconteur, babbling and smiling his brown toothed smile at the little nun. Vorago trusted that the little nun would keep her word.

Dreadlocked and primitive, Fanticles, danced by himself, in the weird ritual dance-prayer of his people. Some of whom were on the other side of Burlesque's wall, with Mundivagant's forces.

Thenaday and his daemon scarred face watched the card game and the dance and the chattering Nacks and the sleeping wereraven and kept quiet, kept to himself. That one rarely spoke. More and more and more of them, training, praying, sleeping, fucking, laughing, and waiting. Waiting most of all.

Waiting for Vorago and Mundivagant to play the final moments of the endgame.

But Vorago didn't sense any fear in them, no trouble-mirth. Unlike Iaido, most of The Dolly Boys had fallen under the sway of his prophetic message. They knew who stayed Loyal when the Cunt-Goddess Bitch Sister took the Throne-Land, when the Whore Queen smiled and made slaves out of The High Caste fools. When the secret history of The Sweetheart Wars was told, quietly at first, in small villages and then towns and cities, The Dolly Boys would prove to be the Great Example of Defiance, Vorago was sure of it. This would start religions, cults, rumors.....this would be the statement to bring down The Hurrion-Slut's False Rule.

Vorago could almost remember King Lucan's face and the face of his wife and his son. And how Lucan's wife, Queen Nessi Nessi had said that The Princeling-To-Be was strong. Strong as Vorago, she said, right before she died.

Waiting made him remember how everything had started. Lucan. Nessi Nessi. And himself. His promise to help them. Lucan's beautiful, strong face.....pinning the Bruised Lotus on his chest the day he took his Vows.....being named Captain Of The Loyal Men.....The King's Personal Bodyguard.....long, midnight walks.....Lucan's frantic first kiss in The Griffin's Garden.....Nessi Nessi's fierce green eyes, demanding an heir be provided.....her full breast.....his strong face.....her red lips.....his blonde, unruly hair.....Vorago's secret promise to them.....his love for them.....both of them.....beyond his duty or his Vows.....The Princeling-To-Be, with skin and hair as dark as Vorago's.

Vorago also remembered the cool smile of Lucan's elder sister, who wanted so badly to be a queen. Lucan and Nessi Nessi were lost to him but Vorago remembered the Whore Queen's smile very well.

This was the end...but sometimes beginnings were just as deadly and prophetic.

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Mundivagant felt the first spasms of the headache creep up his neck, towards his temples. The throb of his blood brought the icy sewage feeling to his stomach. Somehow, it was too bright in the tent. Too loud.

His hand reached into his pocket and brought out a small emblem. A purple flower. The Bruised Lotus. The symbol of The King and of the men he named Loyal Men. This one was scarred, almost broken. It had been tossed at Mundivagant's feet years ago. Now there were no purple flowers, just the blank smile of The Queen, staring out from everyman's chest. Loyal or false, we are all under her smile now, he thought. He put the useless sigul back in his pocket.

He watched his captains laughing and toasting each other over the victory that hadn't quite happened yet. Sycophants, lickspittles, and turncloaks. Some of them twice-traitors, once for betraying Queen Bellis for Vorago and once for betraying Vorago and his ragged Dolly Boys. These were the people he brought across one continent and half way across another, to The East Of East, to help him kill his best friend.

Standing at the back of the tent was the damned Watcher-monk, Grigori, fiddling with the dials and nodes on the contraption on his arm. Mundivagant didn't like the little spy being here but Sad Bread said there really wasn't anyway of keeping them out of it. They were just Watchers, he had said.

Looking around at a tent mostly full of people he would gladly kill rather than lead, Mundivagant was soothed by the fact that monster Alytarch was dead. Mundivagant had always thought him a simpleton and a bully. He could never understand why Queen Bellis had made him, of all the remaining Loyal Men, her General at the start of this rebellion.

Maybe because he had served her the longest at Maiden Stairs? Maybe because he was her cousin? Maybe it was because he was the one to witness the King's death at Vorago's hand? Or that he had been foolish or brave enough to duel Vorago the night Vor stole away with The Princeling-To-Be? Alytarch proved to be as bad a General as he was a duelist. For whatever reasons that the Queen selected him, the animal got what he deserved at The Friday Falls. And then Mundivagant was given the command.

It would have been so much easier if everything would have ended at The Friday Falls. But Vor had turned a rout into a draw. He had an almost quasi-magical talent for that. But his rack-rent had finally come due in this blighted little corner of the world. The dusty ground of Burlesque was going to drink a lot of blood. Under The Queen's Smile and the mirror ships of the flaccid Irin Watchers, King Lucan would finally be avenged and Queen Bellis's rule would be confirmed.

The Friday Falls. Who could have foreseen that? Vor, laughing and crying and covered in blood, after the dynamite took out the bridge. Screaming at Mundivagant that he loved King Lucan and Queen Nessi Nessi and The Princeling-To-Be. That he was Loyal still. Mundivagant remembered seeing the charred remains of Alytarch, still smoking. And a smaller bundle, not moving. There was something awful in Vor's shaky laughter as he picked up The Princeling-To-Be's little body. Who could have foreseen that? The bridge? The dynamite? Alytarch's idiocy? With the child gone, that should have been the end. But Vor made it just the start. Within days, the common folken all knew of the murder of the child. The fact that it was Vor's fault seemed to have passed under their notice. The Princeling-To-Be became The Princeling-That-Never-Was and the chase was on.

The battles played over and over in Mundivagant's mind like a scratchy phonograph. The Falls, The Battle At Terk's Square, Rushingburg (where peasants nearly stoned him to death), Wyrm's Galley, The Slingshot Battle, Hammerhall, The Silent Field, across The White Chalk and the Green Salt Sea, here, to the East Of East. Loyalists called it The Long Defeat. Romantics and lunatics called it The Sweetheart Wars.

The only real winners had been the singers and mummers. Common folken were always hungry for the next chapter of this bloody drama and every two bit player with a pageant wagon was painting his face, ready to be Brave Sir Vorago, Evil Lord Mundivagant, Crazy Iaido, The Dolly Boys, or even The Smiling Queen Herself.

At the back of the command tent, an oily, sharp head poked through. Shrike, the head thaumaturge. Mundivagant 'spoke' a few words to Jackdaw, his body servant, in their coded handslang: Don't let these fools drink themselves to death. Jackdaw nodded.

Mundivagant motioned for Shrike to follow him outside. It was bright outside too. The sick feeling in his stomach and behind his eyes increased. In his pocket, his hand found the Lotus and traced its edges.

"Report."

"General, it's the Inwit and it's tricksy. Men go in, past where the lines been set, and they get rabbit, piss themselves, some, others, they end up playing Seek And Creep or Bandits And Sheriffs...shooting their guns at each other...thank Holy Karrow that my 'prentices Warded them. It's all fit for the best comediographer in the capital...here we are, our prey bottled up, caught...and we can't no closer to them without our troops getting as useless as a dudsman with a head fulla straw. But that ain't all, even the equipment...sorta...forgets what it's suppose to do. Cannonballs fall outta the air, drop, like they'd rather be used for Nine Pins. One of the cannon is...growing flowers...right out of the metal! Fucking Inwit. Where'd Sir Vorago find one of them? The Quignogs, maybe?"

"Shrike. Do not address the traitor Vorago by his title again."

The little man nodded, attempted not to cringe. The headache slammed behind Mundivagant eyes, the back of his skull. His stomach rolled. It was too bright out here. Too dry. The whole landscape looked like a mummy exploded. In the sky, The Watchers ships reflected the baleful sun a thousand times. A million suns. So bright. The slight hum of The Irin ships' engines worked its way into his head. Ear-worm. Too loud. Too bright. Everything was happening too fast. He closed his eyes and felt the pulse in his head, the acid taste of his tongue, the knot in his belly.

He put two fingers up to his right temple, brushed the skin there, lightly. his other hand clinched the Lotus emblem, wishing it was Vor's windpipe, his skull.

"Are you the Master Thaumaturge of The Queen's Army?

"Yes, sir."

"Then open that city for me. Pop it's cork like comet-wine. You have one day. One day and then one of your apprentices gets a battlefield promotion."

"Sir, maybe you don't understand...most hexes work under a system commonly called All Sorts because so many of us with the Craft share ideas and publish theories...but the Inwit is...it's a closed system...those people don't communicate any of their secrets..."

"If you don't stop your excuse I'll give you over to Ribroast right now. He hasn't had any prisoners since that village near Lovetooth. Remember them, Shrike? They were slowing us down too, helping that asylum-case Iaido and that copper kettle man to hide from us. What happened to them?"

"I'll get to work, sir...Thwankin and Feague thought that we could invert..."

"Say it."

Shrike cringed again. Mundivagant remembered him back in the capital. Little more than a glorified fortune teller. All playing cards and rabbits and his little black 'wand' with its white tip. The greasy man before him looked nothing like that dapper fellow.

"He...tortured...them."

"Yes, he did, you little worm. On who's orders?"

Mundivagant watched Shrike's little black eyes vanish into the folds of fat in his face, as if he could hide in there. He made a little noise in his throat, half moan half belch. This coward will probably live to be one hundred, Mundivagnat thought. maybe it was time to promote Feague or Thwankin anyway. Thwankin had been useful at The Falls and The Silent Field. And Feague had killed Big John Terminus with some sort of nasty hex. The war was agreeing with his apprentices in a way it would never agree with Shrike.

"I gave the order, Shrike. The whole town. Children and women first. Figure out how to undo this Inwit trickery. Understood?"

"Yes, sir."

"The counting glass has turned, then. Get to work."

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"Pretty harsh, Jasper. You know Shrike's no good out here in the field. Should have stayed at The Court Of The Queen, in that silly cone hat with all the witchy moons and stars on it."

Mundivagant turned. Sad Bread's voice was as washed out and dry as the countryside. The old man probably liked it out here in The East Of East. But seeing him seemed to calm the headache a bit. Sad Bread wasn't one of these little snakesmen, at least.

"What do you want Herdotus?"

"Just to talk." Sad Bread's spine was a jumble, his gait as he walked a sort of carnival trick balancing act. He refused a cane. But Mundivagant noticed his arms shot out every now and then for balance. His bald head bobbed up and down and sideways as he got closer to Mundivagant.

"Just to annoy the pure shit out of me, you mean."

Sad Bread smiled. Not a smile like the Queen's. A warm smile. A real smile. Just beneath the old man's vest, Mundivagant could see the edge of a Bruised Lotus. The headache arced harshly into Mundivagant's left eye. There seemed to be phantom flashes around the emblem.

"Well, that is one of the side effects, I'm afraid." The old man's smile hit its apex and then reformed itself into something more serious. It's his professor look, thought Mundivagant. Always the teacher. Always a lesson. From the start of this bloody war, Sad Bread's support of the newly installed Queen Bellis was shaky.

"No more lectures from you. As soon as that Inwit Circle is down, this is over. This disgrace. This rebellion. Or revolution or whatever folken and singers and drunks and soldiers and bystanders are calling it. It is over."

Sad Bread seemed to crumpled down into himself. But then his chest puffed a bit and Mundivagant could see that the old arguments were still there. The old doubts. Doubts about Lucan's death. About Alytarch being in the capital that night, when he should have been at Maiden Stairs. About the Princeling-To-Be, who had been the calling card of Vor's treachery, his debased, vile disloyalty.

"Vor always was a seeksorrow. He should have been a priest. Or a mummer. He should have done anything except take The Vows."

Mundivagant remembered saying them. Vor and he stood side by side and said them. The holy words. The Vows. They became Loyal Men on the same day. Then, afterwards, in The Griffin's Garden, their secret place, Vor's quick strong hands and his chest and his warm mouth and it had all been so foolish and rushed. They had been friends. But only that one time had they been that close. Mundivagant remembered his whispered words, the ones he wished he could take back, the ones he wished he could have said again and again.

Mundivagant's face was made for scowls, a drab gray assortment of planes and angles. King Lucan liked his Loyal Men to also be handsome men, ready made for pageants and parades. He sent Mundivagant and a few others (including John Terminus, the only thing big about him was his nose) away to watch over the Maiden Stairs, where Bellis, Lucan's elder sister treated him as little more than a guardsman. She never smiled back then. Not at him. Her few smiles were for Sir Alytarch, the bully-turned-castellan of Maiden Stairs. And Mundivagant saw less and less of Vor.

"Yes. He should have. But his chance is gone. We'll burn him out. Like I burned The Griffin's Garden the night he killed The King and ran off with The Princeling-To-Be."

"It's not that simple..." Sad Bread's head bobbed its irregular pattern as he crossed in front of Mundivagant.

"He was my best friend. I loved him. And he left me..."

"The King was the one who sent you away. Vor didn't have anything to do with that..."

" He left me before that! I loved him. He didn't love me. He left...he killed...she told me...betrayal...with The Queen...Princeling a bastard...and I saw them...King and Vor...Griffin's Garden...our place...he said it was our place...my head..."

"Jasper you know as well as I that Lucan named the child his heir. There have been other arrangements made since The Year Of The Founding that are much more bizarre. I just question why Bellis's pet brute happened to be in the capital the night of the King's death. I can't be the only one here who is wondering why we have fought all these battles when the child was killed at The Falls?"

"It was Bellis or Vorago's bastard..." The pulse of the headache hit a pinnacle, an icicle, a barbed wire, a tunneling insect, the final note of an opera.

"We could have avoided this...The Loyal Men could have held a council...Lord Helios, myself..."

Mundivagant put both of his hands over his eyes, shutting out Sad Bread, pressing into his temple. The hum from the Watchers ships was making his teeth ache, his jaw, his eyes, his hand. Damn star-hopping voyeurs! Weren't there any other backwater planets for them to moon over with their strange technology and strange laws. That hum!

Vorago. With him in The Griffin's Garden. Not out of love, or friendship. Just because the world always found a way to bend itself around Vorago's will. Vorago. With King Lucan in The Griffin's Garden. With Queen Nessi Nessi in the royal chamber. Highborn or low, royalty or serving maids and baker's boys, Vorago refracted the world around him. His Vows meant nothing. The idea, the very thought of his bastard child seated on the throne...while Mundivagant turned into stone at the ass end of the kingdom, forgotten...

"Jasper...you're bleeding."

Mundivagant pulled his hand away and saw that he had cut himself on the edge of the Bruised Lotus. Vor's Lotus. The one Vor threw at his feet the night that Alytarch gave the order to burn The Griffin's Garden, the night that Mundivagant carried out that order. The night that The Loyal Men were broken.

He could still feel a trickle of his own blood running warmly down his face. Somehow, the headache had snapped and was gone. The opera was over. He looked up at the banner over his command tent. The Queen's Smile. Simple and merciless. When she finally smiled at him, it wasn't a friendly smile but it was exactly what he wanted. Exactly what he needed it to be. Simple and merciless. Exactly what he needed to be.

"We are done talking, Herdotus. I will make sure that your Chimera unit isn't in the first two waves that storm the town."

"But my lads are more..."

" They are under the command of a man with a hidden Lotus on his chest. A man I love and respect...which is the only reason why Ribroast doesn't have a new playmate right now."

"Jasper...King Lucan..."

"Is dead. And a cuckold. Queen Nessi Nessi is strangled and gone. The Princeling-To-Be is crushed against the stone of The Friday Falls. If you listen to the singers, they say he's buried at The Laughing Court and that Crazy Iaido keeps his fingerbones in a pouch around his neck, so he can use them to predict the future."

" Jasper, you know that Bellis..."

"Is my Queen. And that is all I need to know."

They stood there for a moment. For a second, Mundivagant thought that another Bruised Lotus would be thrown at his feet. Just when it looked like Herdotus Bread was going to speak, a lanky youth with green hair burst from the command tent and ran up to the two men. It was Justin Feague, one of Shrike's apprentices, his dark clothing was covered in bright chalk dust, yellow, pink, and blue.

"Sir...General...Sir!!"

"Slow down and tell me what's the matter."

"The Inwit circle...Sir....I've...We've found a way to cause a..."

"Yes! What?"

Feague smiled. Surrounded by unQueenly smiles today, thought Mundivagant.

"We can cause a backlash...we can break it."

"How long?"

"Another thirty minutes, I imagine, if Thwankin and Allemang drew their Book-Scorpion Circle in the proper alignment with my Mercurial-Finger Rhombus...and Mister Shrike's gotta form the Triangle point with his Womb-Pipe Lattice, then we should get inside, make short work of these rabble and all hail The Queen...."

Sad Bread chuckled. Mundivagant looked over at his old teacher, who was starting to hobble away.

"Yes. All hail The Queen, indeed."

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Runcy Jane's face sagged into itself. Every pore in her nose stood out with a bead of blood. Her skull and bones felt jellied, soft. The roof of her mouth felt like a patchwork of open sores. Her teeth were loose. The hair on her head (that hadn't fallen out) was brittle. A milky pus leaked from her nipples. Her violet eyes were faded, the whites turned yellow. A strange mole had arrived on the back of her left hand, a mole growing urchinlike strands of spiky red hair. There was a patch of scales on her chin. Her left foot curled around on itself like a spiral. It felt like her organs were shifting and reforming, stopping their usual functions and starting new, unsettling jobs. The Inwit was a demanding ally. Almost cancerous.

There it was again, that tickle at the edge of her senses. She could feel the attempt at the breach like a bawdy hand sliding up her leg, under her skirts. It felt smug and masculine and annoying.

It was exactly the sort of thing she had expected days ago. And days ago she could have flexed The Parabola Of Idiocy like a muscle, like the once-tight grip of her snatch, and caught these All Sorts bastards in a Struck-Comick Prism. She could have rubbed the inside of their brainpans with a dirty thumb, left them witless and pissing their smallclothes.

But now their fumbling little phallus was worming its way toward her. Creeping, riding the very aspects of her demarcation lines, lines she wrote on the ground of Burlesque with blood and spit and flesh and bile and shit and her own cunny-juice. The Inwit was only as strong as the amount of yourself you placed into it.

She could feel them through her Deepmusing. Feel the lines and webs go slack, fall like little dominoes. Feel them marching towards her with all the imagination of army ants. Why hadn't they tried a Triangle days ago? It was the simplest way. Instead they had let her control the metapsychosis of so many of their soldiers. She could still feel some of their souls at the back of her mouth, like vomit. Those men still had quite a shock coming for then once The Parabola was broken. At least she had lasted long enough for Vorago and Iaido to prep all their little surprises for the final battle.

She should tell Iaido, or Argos, or maybe that fool Inkhorn. Runcy Jane opened her mouth and a bubble of blood formed between her lips. She felt her bladder release and the front of her skirts became warm with piss. The blood bubble popped, soundlessly, not unlike a soap bubble.

"Inkhorn! You whore's canker! Come here."

He walked over with that silly bowler hat in his hands, fumbling with it in a deliberate way, like he was a mime or jester about to work himself up into a comedic routine with his straight man.

"You should get a monocle to go with that hat. Then every time you were shocked it could fall off."

Inkhorn smiled.

"Then I imagine it would spend most of the time dangling from my waistcoat."

"Yes. I suppose so."

"Do you need some water, Jane?"

"No. It's...they're getting in."

Inkhorn stopped fumbling with his hat. It was like a clock stopping. Runcy Jane looked at his once-pudgy-now-saggy-skinny frame. He looked like a grocer or a baker and anyone of a dozen other boring trades.

"Has your monocle fallen?"

"No...and yes. It's just that we're been here for days and at first I hoped that Vorago would come up with something more than his...his final act of defiance and...well...anywhen, I guess this is it."

"Yes. Soon. The bastards are getting closer every second. Once their Triangle gets to me, in me..."

His eyes did get wide then. Inkhorn didn't know much of the All Sorts, he just dabbled. Occasionally he would publish an article or a paper in some of the lesser grimoires. Once he'd had a letter printed in a Rushingburg Collegium Gazette. He was good at making diaplasticks and lintus. His traumasticks and sclerosticks and weaponsalve were all highly prized among The Dolly Boys. The higher order of things, Sensorium, Outcumlins, Gramarye, Intromathematique, Psychomachy, those things were beyond him. But he knew what it meant if a Concentrated Megrim made its way to Jane.

"Drop The Parabola. Drop it now, Jane..."

"No."

"But.."

"There's enough time to let Iaido know...twenty minutes, fifteen minutes...let them get ready, prepare...I drop it now...no good...and I still got a little Jawing-Tack left for them...I can promise at least one point of the Triangle won't be around celebrating their victory...and then there's those fools who...went into The Parabola...I...planted a Seed Of Chaotic Gillmaw...should prove...useful"

"Jane, you've done more than..."

"You're wasting time, Dandy."

At first he looked like he wanted to continue the argument for the next twenty minutes or so. Then, without another word, he turned on his heels, popped his bowler onto his head, and heading off to find Iaido.

"See you around, Inkhorn...somewhen."

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Mundivagant shouted orders once he was back in the command tent. Lords and captains and Loyal Men moved out to their troops to prepare. Out of the corner of his eye he read Jackdaw's hand signal: Only Oxgang is too drunk to be useful. Damn it all, Mundivagant thought, Oxgang was only from a Minor House but he typically showed these other moanworthy idle-worms what a soldier should be. But he was uncouth, almost as bad as Dogflaw's barbarians at times.

Mundivagant's orders filtered down through the chain of command and his captains deployed themselves. The piper's news was that only Vorago was to be taken alive. No prisoners among the rest of his queer-gotten curiosa. Kill them all. Special attention was given to the tasks of killing Crazy Iaido (although the rank and file soldiers shuddered at this, Iaido personally killed fifty men at Terk's Square) and the Inwit Witch (in case she was a resurrectionist).

Lord Twychild, Sir Alytarch's father, would have the command of the men assaulting the Front Gate. Under his direct command were Sir Calenture and Lord Caddis, two of the Queen's suitors, and Shrike. Caddis and Calenture were little more than libertines wrapped up in bandoliers. Twychild was as much an idiot as his son. Mundivagant expected heavy casualties during the first push for the Gate.

Attacking from the south would be Sir Scaum and Sir Offmangandy, the Asp and the Ape. Two of the three famous Twice-Traitors. Sir Scaum had ordered his men to fire on Iaido's men during Terk's Square, killing most of them and turning the tide of that battle for Queen Bellis. Sir Offmangandy betrayed Sir Woad at Rushingburg, cutting his throat. Those were the bloody coins they used to buy their ways back into the Queen's service.

With them was Sir Quother, who at least had the decency to have been hexed and tortured into rejoining the right side of the conflict. Mundivagant sent Feague to watch over him during the battle, to make sure the conditioning held.

Attacking from the north was Dogflaws and his painted savages. Most of them held battleaxes and clubs instead of carbines but there were plenty of them to throw at the watchtowers. A mongrel horde as odd as anything Vorago has ever picked up by the side of the road. They had spent the last two days chanting, hyena-like, into the night.

None too happy about their proximity to headhunters and cannibals were Sir Naufrage and Lord Ruricolist. Thwankin and Allemang were positioned there as well for thraumaturgical support.

Naufrage always blamed Vorago for The Princeling-To-Be's death at The Falls. It was his sword that spilled the blood of Lord Helios, King Lucan's cousin and Vorago's strongest supporter. His lustihood to see The Dolly Boys brought down was so great that few people bothered to remember that he was on the wrong side of the bridge that day at The Friday Falls.

Lord Ruricolist was the last and some would say most infamous of the Twice-Traitors. He almost killed Vorago during The Slingshot Battle, while they dueled on the top of train cars and uneven piles of coal. Only Vorago's strange luck kept him alive that day. Ruricolist was the heir of Hammerhall and another suitor to The Queen.

Mundivagant kept Sad Bread and Sir Thurindale and Sir Intradig Motch and Oxgang near the rear. Thurindale was a little long in the tooth to be riding lick-for-leather at the enemies gates, Motch came too late to the Queen's service, his ship lost on The Green Salt Sea and news of his wife and heir held hostage at the capital finally bringing him around. If there had been better winds on The Green Salt, he and his small number of men would be defending the walls of Burlesque right now. Oxgang was a third son of a second son, the other Lords and Sirs wouldn't have anything to do with him.

Mundivagant would try to keep these fools from choking all too much glory. He wanted the town taken quickly and simply. Like a surgeon's knife sawing off a leg. Like a quill scratching a new law on a piece of vellum. Like the quick stop of the gallows.

When Vorago was before him, chained and gagged. Then he would slow down. Then he would take his time. And there would be a species of glory in that.

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For the last few days, Vorago laughed with some of his men, telling bawdy jokes about the size and dimension of Queen Bellis's Royal Handbag. Others wanted to try and win back some of their money with a quick game of bones. None succeeded. A few wanted his blessing, or a piece of his clothing to wear as a favor. One just polished a brass horn, to nervous to speak. One talked about all the graffiti and painted slogans she had covered the town with. Some where high on glee-dream, wired and ready. Some on laudanum, with opiate smiles. Some shared cheroots and stories of children and wives and skinny bar maids. Some showed relics from past battles. Some showed scars and cysts and alchemical burns. Some talked about the movement of the stars in the firmament, about the twelve zodiac houses, pointing out the grim and glorious discord of The Ne'er-Do-Well flashing and exploding the night before. One fellow, named Daumis, played a sonata on an old upright piano. They came in silk coats. In steel toed boots. In blackened goggles. In the dusters of regulators. In domino masks. In spurs. His protean flotsam. His romantics and squires and viziers and gunslingers and cavaliers and elementalists and grotesques. His Dolly Boys.

When Inkhorn brought him Runcy Jane's final message, he felt his emotions tilt merry-go-sorry. There were tears on his cheeks and laughter in his throat.

"Come on, Inkhorn, let's go. It's time. Pack and penny day. The last day of the fair."

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Before Runcy Jane fell over dead, her last act to was to 'grip' one of the points of the Triangle in her 'teeth'. She spoke a Suaviloquy into the ear of Will Thwankin, who was half a mile away. She had a few brief flashes of men being hexed and killed, Thwankin's mind wiped of any loyalty or idea of self-preservation. That'll cause some trouble, Jane thought as she fell over. By the time her head hit the cobblestones, she was in the next world. Or oblivion. The second of her death triggered the release of her Seed Of Chaotic Gillmaw.

It wasn't quite high noon when the battle started.

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Mundivagant knew something was wrong when he heard the screams coming from the chirurgeon's tent. The sawbones and healers came pouring out. Some of them wounded, bleeding. One hit the ground, a puncture wound in his neck. Following them out of the tent, staggering drunkenly, was one of the soldiers who had been sent into the Inwit witch's circle. His face was covered in welts and boils. He was holding his right arm with his left hand. His right arm ended in a tumorous growth like a wasp's abdomen.

The arm was jerking around with a mind of its own. A rapier thin stinger jabbed itself into the soldier's chest and face.

"Please, help me!"

The idiot quacks just stood around, out of range, staring. Mundivagant took out his pistol, walked up to the soldier and put a bullet in his temple.

"How many men who went into that fucking sorcery did you send back to their units?"

Only Doc Bishop, The Queen's Chirurgeon, who was holding an ether-soaked rag to his nose, met Mundivagant's eye.

"All of the rest of them."

Mundivagant put another bullet through the ether rag. The doctor flew backwards and landed near his last patient. The rest of the medics and morons stood, looking silly in their white and red uniforms. Like candycanes stuck in the ground at some funfair, Mundivagant thought.

Mundivagant turned to Jackdaw and saw that his majordomo was already doing the math.

"Sixty men total, Sir. Spread throughout every unit. Highest concentration within Sir Scaum's and Lord Ruricolist's."

"Looks like we're going to have some trouble even before the last push."

"Yes, Sir."

"Tell Oxgang to divide his men up, spread them to the units who need them, starting with Scaum and Ruricolist. Tell Thurindale to help put down any of these mutations who present a threat. And to escort the tame ones back here, so that these fine gentlemen can see to their pain."

The sawbones shuddered at the order but moved back into the tent.

Mundivagant looked out towards the castle-town of Burlesque. Out in the middle of this desert plain it was a baroque haven. The castle itself perched on the far side of the town like a brass ziggurat. Its museums and saloons and universities and brothels and theatres were all obsidian and lime. Its outer walls covered with strange metalwork of bas-reliefs that Mundivagant couldn't make out. He'd been told they depicted strange gods. Winged squids. Masses of eyes. Drunken butterflies. Goat horns. Smiling odalisques. Elephantine potentates.

Mundivagant's army had come across the people Vor had let leave the town, before he shut it against invaders. They were cherubic and hennaed, with quick watery tongues. Some of the women had silvered rings around their elongated necks. A few of the men had chucks of onyx through their lips and ears and cheeks. Most of their eyes were glazed, almost drugged. They had told him, in their broken speech, that he was chasing a godling. At the time Mundivagant had shrugged that off as foreign nonsense. He knew that Vor was no god. Ruricolist had almost proved his mortality atop that locomotive, The Slingshot.

Now he realized that the refugees from Burlesque weren't talking about Vor at all, they'd been talking about the Inwit witch. That long line of travelers, young and old, men and women, rich and poor, all walking back towards the Green Salt Sea. Without any packs or waterbags. All with that same happy look in their eyes.

It was because of Vor's witch. She'd asked them to leave. Probably politely. Sure, The Dolly Boys had kept some of the able men (and maybe some of the prettier boys) but the rest had been asked to leave. They probably thought their god had asked this boon of them.

Mundivagant thought of them, walking towards the sea. Did she tell them they could stop there, he wondered. Or will that walk into the waves, under the water. Hoping that their winged squid will come and save them?

"Jackdaw."

"Sir?"

"Repeat my order that the Inwit witch needs to die sooner rather than later."

"Yes Sir!"

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The malignant energy of The Inwit released by Runcy Jane's Seed had no will to pinch and prod it into a desired shaped, so it chose with its mindless mind the form it would take.

Two soldiers simply burst into flames, their bullets exploding with arcane power. Another soldier collapsed into his own shadow, his comrades listening to the echo of his screams as he fell forever. His shadow still on the ground, an odd fold in space.

A young private's skin flew off of him, leaving behind wet muscle and bones. It was almost like when Mister Shrike pulled that tablecloth and left the crystal glasses in place. Except when Mister Shrike did it, the tablecloth didn't fly away as a swarm of cerulean beetles.

Two columns away yet another man fell apart, his body crumbling into a pile of marbles and silver dollars and old spectacles. The tinkle of his new form drowned out by other men's screams.

Some just dropped where they stood, asleep as if they were chloroformed. They refused to be woken. They breath and later the sawbones will find that they will eat if food is forced down their throats but they never wake up again.

Some are not so lucky.

A man in Scaum's unit had an equine-thing partially birth itself from his chest. The monster kicking at nearby men with its one good hoof, killing three, before being put down.

In the same unit a soldier with the ironic name of Henry Luck coughed up a cloud of poisonous gas. The toxin quickly killed the fifteen men standing near him. As he tried to shout and plead with his fellows not to shoot him, the emerald vapor killed five more. His fellows fired. Harry Luck hit the ground, green mist clinging to him, leaking from his wounds.

In Ruricolist's unit it's the same. Only it's different.

Ruricolist's best sniper had one leg transformed to stone. But his other leg was turned to butter. And it's melting, losing it's form in the heat, becoming an amoeboid thing. He left greasy yellow streaks on the ground as he crawled away, back to camp.

Here, a soldier's face fused into a sphincter. There, another with three arms, each with a bleeding fanged vagina in the palms. Everywhere, men changing form and killing or panicking or shooting themselves or shooting their friends.

But soon enough, the dangerous and the deformed are led away or disposed of. Lines reform, a little thinner. Runcy Jane's last gift to The Dolly Boys used up.

The Front Gates are rusted, not as cared for as the pictograms and hieroglyphics of the outer wall.

And they stand open.

In the confusion, The Dolly Boys decided to extend a welcome.

Even as men on the north and south attempt to scale the fishy harem girls and goaty pontiffs of the outer wall, finding easy handholds. Lord Twychild called for his men to charge.

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Shots rang out on the castle-town's main boulevard. Argos ran, one arm holding a scimitar, the other his petticoats. His make-up, white grease paint fit for a clown, was also running. It was too hot in Burlesque, that was a solid fact. He checked his black geisha-pout lipstick in the makeshift mirror of his scimitar. At least that's holding up, he thought. He'd lost his red wig a few streets ago and his make-up didn't go well with his blunt head and receding hairline.

"I'll make the most of it, I suppose."

More bullets slammed into the wall of a building as he ducked around a corner. Once he was out of immediate sight, he stopped, dropped his skirt in a way that he knew from much practice would make it swirl in a pleasing pattern and he pulled out his other scimitar. Both of the blades had a bright finish, an oily gleam from the weaponsalve Inkhorn had given him.

The three soldiers sprinted around the corner quickly. They had climbed over the walls ahead of their compatriots and had fallen victim to Argos's taunts of them being 'premature'. And now here they were, all mustaches and badges and gunsmoke.

"Lucky for you boys I don't have a gatling up my skirts."

Argos smiled. The soldiers fanned out. One of them darting looks up at windows.

"Are you on a snipe hunt, little man."

Argos felt the breeze from the bullet. His skirts ruffled. That should have hit him. He felt the sharp tingle in his hands that Inkhorn had warned him about. He said it would feel like a sting and it did. It wouldn't be perfect protection, it wouldn't last the day. But it would, for a time, curve some danger away from him.

"Missed me, missed me, now you have to kiss me."

Argos let his smile increase to what he thought of as Wanted Poster Strength.

"Just shoot him, Lloyd. We need to get back to..."

Argos was on top the speaker before the others could aim. By the time they were firing, Argos's protection was also protecting the soldier from friendly fire.

But not from Argos himself.

One slice across the belly and one across the throat. He left the swords sticking out of the poor idiot even as he helped himself to the man's gun. One somersault away from the body and Argos was firing at the second soldier, bullets punching into the man's skull.

But the third soldier had the drop on him. And there were his fancy-pants swords with their very useful charms. Too far away.

"Now you die, you cocksucker!"

With a quick ratta-tatta-tat, it was over. The last soldier dropped to the ground, nothing but bloody pulp.

From one of the alleyways, Wettercogs, the clockwork man, stepped out of the shadows. With his coppery barrel-body covered in grease and oil, he was actually fairly quiet as he walked over to Argos. One of his hands was a still smoking pepper-pot revolver and the other was a rubberized pincer. His eyes were bright as carnival glass. His voice was tinny and it issued from a little grill below a dial that served him as a nose.

"Let's get back to the main ambush, the pigs are ready. Iaido and Inkhorn got them worked up something fierce. That fool Twychild already ran over half his men into them grenado-traps we left. Meat everywhere."

Argos smiled his Wanted Poster Smile and retrieved his swords. Now the buzz was more insects crawling than insects stinging. They wouldn't last long.

"My friend, if you had a cock, I would suck it right now."

"If I had a mouth, I'd smile, now let's hop-along, Prince."

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It was humid and rank and noisy inside the warehouse. Or was it a slaughterhouse now? Iaido couldn't decide which term better suited the building.

Iaido looked down at the phial in his hand. It had Jane's scrawl on the stopper. She'd made it months ago for him. He'd forced her to make it. He pressed one of his revolvers into her poxy cheek. Why hadn't he told Vor about it?

The liquid inside looked black, strange. Like onyx. It didn't flow properly, like it was frozen. He put it back in the pocket of his longcoat. It wasn't time yet. But it was close.

Murlimews and Thenaday ran up to his perch. The little wereraven shouted over the noise of the huge porcine animals penned below in their wire and wood enclosures. The mere presence of Thenaday's daemon-scarred face seemed to rile the animals even more than Inkhorn's ministrations.

Iaido saw that Thenaday had noticed him putting the phial away. Thenaday's good right eye caught Iaido's. The eyebrow above it raised in a questioning manner. Iaido looked into Thenaday's face, the left side a pink smear of too-smooth burned flesh, broken occasionally by hoary yellow fingernail sized scabs. The left eye a miserable jelly of pure black, the teeth along that side of his jaw, shark like and bulging. Even his left hand looked sort of desiccated, a lich's paw. Truck with daemons, pay the price. That old rakasha sure made Thenaday pay, no doubt. But what did he gain, thought Iaido. He met the warrior's mismatched stare and nodded, slightly. Murlimews was so excited he didn't even notice.

"They're filling the main street now! Twychild and Calenture are dead from the first ambush!"

"You saw this with your own eyes?"

"Beady and black, yes sir!"

"I'm sure Alytarch gave his Da a nice warm welcome when he arrived in the Ninth Hell."

"Couldn't say, Sir, didn't see that."

"How is Fanticles faring against his former tribesmen?"

"Fanticles is holding the north wall but Scaum and Offmangandy have gotten in and have reformed with Caddis at the Front Gate! It's them pushing back down the main street!"

"Two traitors and one of The Whore's pups."

"Our trigger men are plugging who they can but that thaumaturge they got is powerful!"

"Must be that arse-pimple Feague. Are they past the second grenado-trap yet?"

"Not yet."

Iaido looked down at the writhing mass of flesh below him. Boars. Hundreds of them. Huge. The size of ponies. The Dolly Boys found them here, probably purchased from some merchant and brought here from Sullyport. Some of the men wanted to cook and eat them but Iaido had other ideas.

Under his orders they'd been starved and Inkhorn and a few of the other dabblers had placed a Raging Hex in them. The strong alphas had killed the weak and eaten their flesh, swelling with delirium. While the quiet siege had gone on around them, the boars fought a daily bloodsport, culling their numbers. Growing more and more feral and deadly. Now they were a milling reek of bristles, tusks, rabid-foam, and sharp squeals.

Iaido had a moment to hope that it would be one of his bullets or his sword that spilled the blood of Scaum and Offmangandy, not the mindless stampede he was about to unleash in the street of Burlesque. If he could only ask the deaf gods for one, he'd say Scaum. Leave that pig Offmangandy to these pigs. But Iaido knew from his dealings with prayer and gambling that he wouldn't have the dice fall his way. He'd probably just guaranteed that Scaum would find his way into one of these pig's stomachs.

"When you hear that explosion, open the slaughterhouse gates."

He decided slaughterhouse was the better choice. Perhaps the best choice for the whole town.

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At the front of the line, seven vanished in a haze of blood when another one of those thrice-damned booby-traps went off. Scaum cursed and spit a stream of tobacco juice. The main street was the over one that ran in a straight line from the Front Gates to the castle. The rest of Burlesque's roads were blind alleys and spirals and serpentines and cork-screws. But, of course, The Dolly Boys had rigged every inch of the thoroughfare with explosives and All Sort nonsense.

"We should have minced the whole town with cannonballs!"

None of his troops responded. His captains were borrowed from other units and didn't know whether or not to laugh or shrug. Of course Caddis and Offmangandy were nowhere to be seen. Shoring up the Front Gate or some nonsense, leaving Scaum to push these cowards and chicken-hearts deeper into the town. Bastards couldn't even make sure to hold his battle standard high.

"Forward, you yellow-belly jellyfish. You there, gutless wonder, raise that flag up! Reform lines. Feague! Keep sharp!"

Most of the men were jumpy from The Dolly Boy snipers. Feague couldn't burn them quick enough, they usually got off three shots and three kills before the lanky, green haired thaumaturge could zero in on them.

Then there was the suicidal remnant of the Burlesque militia, most of whom seemed to be fighting to leave the town. They had tied white ribbons around their weapons and white pieces of cloth around their heads like turbans. But in the confusion of coming across them, a fire fight had broken out and Scaum's men had killed them, blood soaking through their peace banners.

His fellow Lords and Loyal Men were probably cowering near the Front Gates. He should be the one cowering. His whole unit, fifty men strong, had been reduced to two adolescent privates before the battle even started. Men turning into horses and spitting poison. That's why he was surrounded by these cravens and rabbits now. They still hadn't reformed the line properly, they were shuffling backwards.

At first, Scaum thought the squealing noise was from the wounded but it kept getting louder and louder. The lines and columns started breaking down, pushing together. The ping-ping-ping of gunfire mixed with a thunderous tremor from up ahead.. Officers' horses began to buck and panic. Scaum lost control of his horse and fell to the stones of the street.

"Order! Reform!"

The men were pressing together, trying to filter onto side streets and alleyways. Some only found enemy bullets down those paths as The Dolly Boy snipers took advantage of the confusion. The ones who kept to the main street were shouting something.

"STAMPEDE!!! STAMPEDE!!!"

That was when Scaum saw the first of the boars. They filled the street ahead, running down men, trampling those who fell behind. They moved as one organism, a mob, a riot. Some actually caught soldiers on their tusks. Some tried to stop and kill wounded soldiers only to be trampled themselves. The air seemed polluted with shouts and bullets. Feague stepped sideways and vanished as if it were the easiest thing in the world to do, the only logical thing.

"FALL BACK YOU MAGGOTS!!! FALL BACK!!!"

But the rush of those raging bestial forms made the command pointless. All of his soldiers had defaulted to a primitive throwback desire to escape. Scaum aimed his scattergun at one of beasts and fired, it fell a rolling mass of viscera. Then the tide swept him under and the world was reduced to hooves and cobblestones and blood and tusks and excreta.

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The soldiers chased the three young Dolly Boys into the remnant of an old church. Inside, the world was dark, only a little light passed through the stained glass windows.

The fighting had been going on for a few hours. There were still pockets of resistance, Burlesque's curlicue streets working against The Queen's Men. Dolly Boys were dying. But so were Queen's Men. The north wall was where the majority of gunfire and arcane hissing was coming from at the moment. The castle was yet untouched.

But here were just a few ragged dragoons chasing down an easy meal. They had barely survived the boars and grenado-traps and just wanted a little blood. The Dolly Boys they were chasing were barely out of puberty.

The first lad was shot as his tried to duck behind a pillar covered with the glyphs of the strange winged squid. The second boy was hit in the shoulder and landed on an overturned pew. His whimper caused the third boy to stop.

"Not too clean Pouncer"

"Eh, well, fuck you, Nosh, I'm gonna carve 'im a bit, ain't I"

The last boy raised his arms in the direction of the men. A strong breeze whipped at their faces. Suddenly, they thought of all the storms that plagued them on The Green Salt Sea and the war dirigible that had been brought down when they first landed in the East Of East. Then there was a popping and sucking noise and the man named Pouncer dropped his knife and clawed at his own throat. His face was purple and he couldn't scream. The little breeze had grown into a stronger wind, chunks of church were being pulled from the walls.

"Fuck me, it's an aerokinesist, shoot 'im Burke, before 'e pulls Pouncer's lungs outta 'is throat!"

The one called Burke raised his carbine and plugged the boy in the face. He had a dead aim. The wind died down by the time the boy hit the ground. The other lad let out a small moan and tried to pull himself under the pew.

"You okay, Pouncer? Oi, Pouncer?"

Burke rolled his eyes. Why had so many of his fellows been killed by these sissy renegades and yet these two are still alive?

"Answer the man, Pouncer, you ass, or we'll all drown in Nosh's tears for you."

Pouncer responded by picking up his knife and stabbing the boy he'd shot in the shoulder over and over again. After the first strike, the boy didn't make anymore noise. But Pouncer kept digging the knife into the meat of the boy's chest. Then he walked over to the body of the little aerokinesist and slashed at his face. When he stood up, his uniform was covered in blood, dark patches on the dark cloth. In his hand was a piece of the aerokinesist's cheek. Pouncer was smiling, laughing.

"Anyone want to say a few words for the dearly dead departed?"

"I do."

Pouncer, Nosh, and Burke all turned back to the doorway of the church.

Standing there was Crazy Iaido.

The soldiers went for their guns. Burke came close.

Iaido was faster.

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He arranged the corpses side by side near the small pool of light provided by the stained glass window. The light was myriad, dappled. It cast mottled patterns on the three boys. Like they were at rest underwater. Maybe with Burlesque's octopus god, thought Iaido.

They weren't the youngest of The Dolly Boys, that honor went to Bonny Mary Shih, the fourteen year old graffiti artist who in the past two weeks had covered Burlesque's hospitals and town halls and empty cafes with her tags and slogans.

DISCORD FOREVER.

DOLLY BOYS ARE LOYAL MEN.

NEVER FORGET THE FALLS.

SUCK MY COCK.

Iaido smiled. Where was Mary now? Dead, most like, like these three. Her fingertips and chin smeared with paint and blood. Just like these three.

Paul, lucky, shot in the back. His face and ridiculous teenaged mustache made almost noble in death. Another little prince.

The others weren't as easy on the eye. Iaido recognized Gurne only from the monk sandals that he always wore. His chest and head were only so much wet meat. And Miles The Aeronaut, with his bird skull necklace and his strange talent, dead, a bullet in one eye, his teeth shining through a gash in his cheek.

He reached into his longcoat's pocket and pulled out the last of his glee-dream. He rolled the sticky tar-like substance into four greenish black rubbery balls. The three smaller ones he placed in the mouths of Paul and Miles and rubbed into the equivalent place for Gurne. The last ball of dope he swallowed himself.

It was a larger dose than he'd ever taken before. Iaido's mouth went dry, his spit reduced to a gummy paste. He licked his lips over and over. His eyes dilated to a blue-black. He felt restless and calm. There seemed to be a dizzy buzz around his ears. His cock had gotten painfully hard. The muted colors inside the church intensified, as if the walls sweated a burning phosphorus. Or I'm really under the sea, like in the deep places where creatures have to make there own light, Iaido thought. He was speaking aloud for two sentences before he realized it.

"I don't know any dactylic hexameter for heroes like you boys. Vor's better at that, as you know. I'll just hope The Ferryman and The Jackal guide you and weigh you proper. And whatever Demiurge you wish to see is waiting for you. Hopefully, one who's passing out virgin-nymphs to incoming heroes, ne?"

Iaido laughed alone. It wasn't quite strong enough to echo in the old church. The underwater light took in the sound, like a toy dropped from a boat into the ocean. Plop.

"Well. Anyroad, don't linger here, boys. This won't be a place for ghosts."

He removed his longcoat and his tricorn hat. His skin felt like it had been dripped in a chymical bath. Electric. His head was shaved, stubbly, scarred. He wore a pair of jeans so patched and baggy they were almost jester's motley. Steel-toed boots. A grimy, sleeveless undershirt of no particular color revealed the pattern of Bruised Lotus siguls he had tattooed on his upper arms and chest and shoulders. A pair of suspenders held the jeans up. Two of his guns crisscrossed his hips in gunbelts bumpy with extra shells. Two more were positioned in shoulder holster. On his right hip, just above the handle of his gun, was Whore's Bane, his sword, his lady. As he touched her battered sheath, he felt something within him release, a lonely climax. Never before the game, he thought. But since this was the last game, an exception could be made.

On his person was a straight razor, a bayonet tip, one grenado, two of Inkhorn's traumasticks, a little two-shot gambler's pistol, and several gee-gaws and trinkets and little glams to provide Wards against thaumaturgy. In one hand, he held a scattergun. In the other, Runcy Jane's phial.

All the Loyal Men were trained to fight. But most took the honor as just another trophy to add to their collection of titles and estates. Not so with Iaido Paperwhite. Bernardo Paperwhite had little to offer Clementine Icelus except a chance to be more than a pregnant, disgraced courtesan. He was a merchant and a wine maker and he loved her despite the position she was in. He had wanted to move them all away from the capital but Clementine wouldn't hear of it. The Throne-land was all she knew.

Only Clementine's High Caste connections got Vorago appointed to Loyal Man, and then a few months later, Iaido. Bernardo accepted his retroactive title and was proud of his sons (even of Vorago who was not his blood) but all of these dealings with the High Caste and the Throne-land made him queasy. Neither Iaido or Vorago were told of his death until after Iaido said his Vows. It was a brainstorm, their mother said. Iaido hadn't seen him for half a year.

Both of them devoured the lessons they were taught by Herdotus Bread, history, politics, calligraphy, mathematics. In some way, they were probably collecting father figures. Vor and Bread would debate philosophy into the night and while Iaido's mind didn't work in quite the same way, his brother and his teacher did appreciate his ability to slice through this moral snag or that much-touted metaphor.

Both of them also enjoyed the lessons of Master Agoge. Swordsman. Gunslinger. General. The Old Master. Swordsmanship. Gunplay. Strategy. The Nine Forms. While some, like Scaum or Caddis, yawned through the Old Master's sessions, talking up their weapons-masters back at their father's keeps, Iaido pushed himself far beyond any of the others. Even Vor only went as far as The Sixth Form. Even Ruricolist was only Eighth Form (something he showed Vor at The Slingshot Battle).

Iaido was a Master of Nine Forms.

Master Agoge himself had placed Whore's Bane in Iaido's hand when he died. The Old Master's sword. It'll need a new name, he had said, for the sword's current soul would leave the world with him. At first he thought he would call the sword Bernardo, for his father. So some portion of his father would very much be at home with his son in the Throne-land. But then the war broke out and that idea was left behind.

Iaido was glad there was no mirror in the church. He was sure that he didn't look like a hero, or a rebel, or a martyr. More like a daemon carnie, he thought. He looked back down at the bodies. Then he looked at the phial.

"This is going to be a place for daemons now."

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They caught up with Inkhorn in a piazza halfway between the Front Gates and the castle proper. Him and three other Dolly Boys had been ambushed and he was lucky to lurch away with just a bullet in the shoulder. But it seemed to throb with an unnatural intensity.

In the middle of the courtyard was a little pool, in the middle of the pool was a gnarled old tree. Inkhorn managed to stumble against the stone wall of the pool. He could see bright flashes in the shallow water, hundreds of irregularly shaped coins. Some kind of wishing well. There was an inscription engraved on around the top of the pool's wall: THERE IS NO PEACE AT THE GATES. On either side of this happy epigraph were those strange winged cuttlefish pictograms that were all over the place.

Inkhorn's shoulder hurt where the slug had punched into him. It felt like the little metal jag was trying to saw his arm off. He looked up and saw a dozen soldiers with Ruricolist's Hammer Fleur-de-lis running towards him, carbines raised. Suddenly, as if it were choreographed, they all stopped and pointed their weapons at the black and green chessboard pattern of the piazza. They were all around him.

The men who had him surrounded had bright chalk marks on their uniforms. Protection Wards. That's smart, he thought. But there were extra swirls and flourishes within each Ward. A code among practitioners of the All Sorts: May we talk for a moment.

A lanky boy with spiky green hair seemed to be in charge. Inkhorn could feel a powerful bounce of energy coming from him. He directed the chalk-marked soldiers into precise positions around the pool, spacing them just so. Every time another soldier fell into place, Inkhorn felt a wave of nausea, of weakness. His shoulder was the center of some nasty, wasting hex.

Finally, when the youth seemed satisfied by the arrangement of the men, he walked into the circle, towards Inkhorn, and hunkered down.

"Hello, old-timer."

"The...Intromathematique...weakens...keeps my wound..."

"It...expands upon the pain that puissant bullet must be causing you. See, the bullet works one half of the equation..."

"And your circle here...fills in the gaps."

The youth beamed. His face was plain and he was also covered in chalkdust, the green hair appeared to be the lad's natural color. even his eyelashes were green. His leather outfit was covered in symbols. Little cuniform patterns, stronger than the Wards for the soldiers.

"Exactly. Like cogs. The teeth connect. And grind the poor soul between. So all you have to do is position the men properly and at least graze your target."

"Clever."

"I'm a clever fellow. Well, look at you. Just an old hedge-wizard. An old cardsharp. You have been trouble."

"Oh...I don't mean to be."

"I mean, I know it was The Inwit witch that was keeping us out, giving us so much...hassle. But I've been aware of you too, old-timer."

"I'm afraid I've lost my monocle."

The youth gave a questioning look at that, then continued.

"You were there, at The Silent Field. The whole Fourth Regiment, all taken out! I looked over some of your works that we've found along the way. So much better than that idiot Shrike's."

"Thank you."

"The traumasticks are amazing. Your own design?"

Inkhorn nodded. He glanced around. Most of the chalked soldiers had a glazed look in their eyes. Like they were under the effects of Sensorium. Or maybe the boy was a Gramarye, able to imprint everyday words with powerful commands. The boy rambled on.

"And that Linctus of Mouse-Web. Even my old master back at Rushingburg couldn't make sclerosticks and diaplasticks half as powerful or stable as you...and those were the subject that made him famous."

"Professor Pomeroy?"

"Yes."

"He...doesn't...use the proper...admixture...in the weaponsalve...stubborn."

"Yes. He always was an old gasbag."

They smiled. Then the youth stood up, ran his fingers through his shock of green hair and nodded. Then he seemed to remember the soldiers, feel the strain of holding them in check.

"Well...I wish we had met under different..."

"Yeah."

"Justin Feague."

He held out his hand and Inkhorn shook it, his shoulder launching another assault on his nervous system. The lad was quasi-famous in Dolly Boy circles. This little twig had killed Big John Terminus. Terminus had three layers of Wards, both All Sorts and Inwit. This lanky kid had sliced through them like a cannonball through rice paper.

"Lee Inkhorn."

"I'm afraid that this is...going to be pretty awful."

"I imagine so."

"It's...the men...they want..."

"Blood."

"Yeah. Don't suppose you could tell me that admixture?"

"No."

"Okay"

Feague gave a short barking noise. The soldiers seemed to become aware of themselves again and moved forward to grab Inkhorn. Two held him while a few of the other threw a rope over one of the branches of the gnarled tree. One man stopped to reach into the shin deep water and pull out triangular and spiral shaped coins of a greenish coppery color.

When the noose was ready, they fit it around Inkhorn neck. One of the soldiers produced a wooden chair, probably from a looted home, and placed it in the water. Under the branch.

Some of them brayed like goblins, some were serious as priests. Some hacked and spit. Others flashed the sign of the evil eye. The scene seemed to go fast-fast-slow. The rope felt coarse against his neck. The gnarled tree provide no shade against the sun. Outside of the circle, Feague stepped sideways and was gone. Inkhorn couldn't believe it, Psychomachy, on that kind of level. How had he lived this long against people who knew such things?

Someone kicked the chair out from under him.

Instead of the quick snap, the length had been measured wrong. Inkhorn's face went red, then purple, then purple-black. His eyes and his tongue warped and strained in his skull. There was a sunburst of pain from his shoulder. His legs kicked and flailed and spasmed and then were still.

After they let him down, one brave soul shot him in the back of the head.

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Murlimews was bleeding blood and feathers. Thenaday's face was split and bleeding. There was a loose clattering sound coming from Wettercogs's barrel chest. Argos ran hither and yon in the shredded remains of his dress, his make-up smeared to ghoulish effect. Fatty-cakes was also covered in blood, most of it not his own. They were all running, trying to hide, to fight.

This second push into the town seemed much more focused. They had been cut off from Fanticles and the other men holding the north wall. The remnants from the first push were being absorbed into these fresh troops. We wasted all of our tricks on the rabble, Thenaday thought.

He and Wettercogs were dragging Murlimews between them. There seemed to be a constant stream of feathers and blood running out from his mouth. He was choking, he'd been shot in the throat while patrolling. The Queen's Men were aware to look out for a slightly larger than average raven flying around.

Murlimews's head lolled against Thenaday's scars. Wettercogs helped the scarred warrior carried the wounded wereraven down the labyrinthine back streets, chased by Queen's Men. The boy was light as air, his bones hollow as a bird's.

The tall buildings around them reduced the sky to a bright blue zig-zag above them. The air in this alleyway seemed to hold onto the night's moisture. Everything here had a slick, slimy look to it. Ahead of them, in faded orange lettering they could make out one of Bonny Mary's tags: DISCORD FOREVER. This is a bad neighborhood, Thenaday thought.

Argos had point ahead of them, cutting down the random soldier with his scimitar. Fatty-Cakes was guarding the rear, whistling tunelessly to himself.

"No one trusts me to guard the rear"

Wettercogs was the only one to laugh at Argos's joke. But his mechanical laugh was cut short as a bullet exploded from his metal chest. Thenaday and Murlimews were covered in the grease and coils and springs and cogs and oil. Thenaday just managed to pull the wereraven and the clockwork man into an open doorway as the vanguard soldiers opened fire again.

Fatty-Cakes pulled the head off the soldier who got the lucky shot, holding the bleeding neck stump to his mouth and drinking. They were screams and shouted curses from the Queen's Men. Several other bullets riddled his flesh but the nonnatural took no notice. He threw the headless body at the newcomers, nailing one of them with a sickening crunch of bones.. His smile was gruesome. Lost in his bloodlust, he chased some of the soldiers back the way they had come.

Argos danced and dove toward the others, his swords working like scissors. Snip-snip. Snip-snip. Armless and headless. Snip-snip. Snip-snip. Legless and armless. Snip-snip. And now headless too. But more and more troops kept coming. Bullets streaked in bright arcane lines down the alley.

Thenaday looked to Wettercogs. Wires and gears in his exposed chest were stuttering and loose. The metal exit wound splayed outward like brass fingers. The clockwork man's glass eyes blinked off and on, their light wavering. His dented head looked like an overturned coffeepot.

"Take out the cylinder."

His voice was tinny, scratchy. His bucket head was leaking more oil and spongy wires.

"What cylinder?"

"He...said...it...might...be...my...soul."

There was one last gush of oil and reddish fluids and then the machinery stopped. Suddenly, Wettercogs looked like a stove. Or like something that would fall out from underneath a train. Wreckage. Spare parts. There was still gunfire coming from the alley. There was no time to look for a cylinder.

Thenaday looked over to Murlimews. He'd tried for one last transformation. His nose and mouth were partially fused into a black beak. His skin was covered in scaly avian patches. His hair was mostly feathers. There was a hole in his throat the size of a child's palm. He looked both pained and tranquil. It was suddenly very quiet.

Argos came in the door. He was only holding one sword, his other hand clutched at his stomach. His ragged dress was getting redder and redder. There were wounds on his chest, his arms, dripping down his legs to his dainty shoes. Looking down at Wettercogs, Argos fell near his friend.

"Take my sword, Thenaday...there's still a little of Inkhorn's gris-gris in it...think that's all that holding me together..."

"Let's go, I'll..."

"I'll slow you down...and you've got, what? At least a few more hours to live."

"Wettercog mentioned a cylinder?...His soul?"

Argos rolled his eyes at that. He reached into the Wettercogs clockwork viscera and pulled and a tiny silver cylinder. It was covered with little bumps spaced at regular intervals.

"Don't tell me the Old Cookpot was catching religion in his last moments. We were joking with him. Here, take it, it's a piano roll from an old music box. It played a lullaby my mother use to sing to me. It fit when the Rust King here needed a part, so I gave it to him. Here, take it. A souvenir of the Battle Of Burlesque."

With that he slumped beside his friend and didn't speak again.

Thenaday left them there. He made much better time. As he ran, he wondered if there was anyway to get out of Burlesque alive.

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Burlesque was burning.

Gradually, inch-meal by inch-meal, the Queen's Men took more and more quarters of the city. Dolly Boy after Dolly Boy fell from bullets or blades or minor hexes.

Buildings were set aflame with incendiary weapons. Masked grunts tossed jack-at-a-pinch cocktails through windows and doors. Plumes of yellowish smoke drifted into the bright sky like crooked fingers.

The dry air was filled with lonesome chyrme - mournful bird song. Crows and white gulls from the Green Salt Sea. White and black spirals. White and black concentric circles. They were already feasting on the inch-meal, Queen's Men and Dolly Boys. Occasionally, one would fly through a finger of mustard smoke and drop from the sky and join the rest of the dead.

The city burned. The stone buildings seemed to sag and melt inwards. Captains shouted orders and lines of men regrouped and made their towards the township's castle.

The last of the Dolly Boys' grenado traps were disarmed. The Queen's Men made their way down the Burlesque's main street. The bodies of men and boars were dragged into nearby alleyways.

The city burned. Only the castle remained untouched. The Queen's Men made their way to the castle's gate.

Iaido stood at the castle's gate. Alone.

The soldiers shifted. Their numbers offered them catholicum, no comfort. This man before them was Crazy Iaido. The Master Of Nine Forms. He was the first to declare for his brother and The Princeling-To-Be. He'd been on the bridge at The Friday Falls. Fifty men had fallen to Whore's Bane at Terk's Square. The were-folk of The Silent Field worshiped him as a demiurge of their Great Animus God. He'd saved the Traitor Vorago's life on The Slingshot train (and given Lord Ruricolist his pretty scar, they said). The people of The White Chalk wanted him to be their king. He'd fought sea serpents and fish-men and The Pirate Lord Jack Tar on the Green Salt Sea. He was the most dangerous of the Traitor Vorago's generals. Faster than Sir Woad, stronger than Big John Terminus, and smarter than Lord Helios.

Iaido stood at the castle's gate. Alone. He smiled. His smile was monsterful.

"Surrender or slap leather."

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The soldiers opened fired. Their bullets popped like fireworks on the outer edges of Iaido's charms and Wards. Some of their hexed artillery left purple and black afterimages floating in the air. Cabalistic symbols burned and hissed. Death's heads and fingernail moons and fascinum and nazar and runes and fleur-de-lys and cat's eyes.

The air was full of the technical noise of reloading when Iaido charged. Nameless commanders yelled for their men to hold their ground.

There was a moment of dislocation, of baleful heavy weight. The soldiers around Iaido felt a puissant snap on their skins. The cobblestones under Iaido's feet were pressed down to powder as if he had a pachyderm's weight.

There was a flash in his eyes that was beyond glee-dream, beyond madness. Something that spoke of aeons, of vigintillions of years. There where wet lines of blood-tears streaming down his face.

Iaido seemed to be surrounded by a heat haze, a rippling and folding within the air. It was almost possible to pick out images. Here an anthropoid outline, there a bull's horns, again a spider's sharp leg, once again a tentacle, a goat hoof, a pulpy plant-like mouth, a bat wing. Most of the soldiers were too busy to notice.

Iaido tossed his last grenado and Inkhorn's traumasticks randomly into the crowd. The grenado blew the legs off of a group of soldier's wearing Ruricolist's standard. The one 'stick silently expanded outwards like greasy ectoplasm, every man it touched stuck a reloaded weapon in his mouth and pulled the trigger. The other 'stick had hit one soldier and melted him like wax.

As the chaos of this filtered through the lines, Iaido opened fire with the scattergun. Heads and shoulders and kneecaps burst like fruit. Men went down, dead or dying. When the scattergun was empty, Iaido used it as a club on a soldier still wearing his gasmask. The rubber caved in and the glass eyeholes shattered with blood.

Even though his Wards seemed to be holding, there were several lesions on Iaido's face and neck and arms. The wounds didn't bleed, they steamed. His skin twitched and undulated like a sheet of linen, like unnatural hands were pressing against the skin from the inside.

One grizzled veteran got the drop on Iaido but he was too close to Iaido's Wards. His gun and his arm up to the elbow disappeared in a wet spray. Iaido pulled the revolvers at his hip and put the old man down.

Discipline broke down, men attempted to flee. But the lines in the rear kept the soldiers in front bottled up. There was nowhere to go.

Iaido's revolvers were fired, dry fired, reloaded, fired again. He moved lick-for-leather, a blur compared to the men dying around him. His gunbelts were empty almost as soon as he started shooting.

With a quick, metallic sound, he removed Whore's Bane and stood in the ready position of The First Form.

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Thenaday watched the whole droll-booth show from a second floor window in one of the few unburned building near the castle.

There had been no getting out of the city. The Front Gates belonged to the Queen's Men now. The northern wall had finally been swarmed over with Fanticles' former tribesmen. The painted heathen pagini were dancing their strange dance and howling like hyenas. Their dogfaced chief was holding up Fanticles' head by its rope-like hair when Thenaday had attempted to see if there might be a way out near that part of the wall. The only good thing was that since they had killed Fanticles, the tribal warriors and their scary bulldog-jawed leader didn't seem too interested in fighting anymore. just celebrating Fanticles' death. Thenaday wondered what the tribesman had done to earn his people's wrath. Probably something as silly as why the rest of us are fighting, he thought.

Which had led him back towards the castle and maybe a few more minutes of life.

And that's where he found Iaido waiting, the rumble of the approaching army getting louder and louder. Iaido was looking at that Inwit whore's phial. There was something...blank about him. Usually, when you stood close to Iaido, you almost felt scorched. Now he seemed cold and empty.

"Iaido, we should get inside!"

"Can't. It's only Vor and a dozen or so left in there. Up there in one of the minarets, praying or fucking or whatever little messiahs do. Taking one last grace-drink?"

"We could call..."

"Who would raise the gate? That little scribe, Nacks? That Watcher cunt?"

"Then we need to hide. They're coming."

"Vor was the bastard. A foundling. Mother's disgrace. Kicked out of The Old King's court. But Father took him in as his own."

"Iaido..."

"And somehow...I was the one who became base. I became the bastard. Why was I the bastard? Why base in their eyes? And Vor just seemed touched by some panacea."

"Iaido...now."

"But everyone else...is pulled into the event horizon. Jacope, Woad, Terminus. Loyal Men. Argos, 'Cogs, Murlimews, Jane, Inkhorn. Dolly Boys. You. Me. All these Queen's Cowards. All the traitors. Sad Bread. Even Mundivagant. Maybe him most of all."

And then Iaido pulled the phial to his lips and swallowed the dark liquid. For a seocnd the contents of the phial didn't move. Then the onyx colored liquid flowed smoke-like down his throat. Like it decided to let itself be swallowed, Thenaday thought. He winced, his shrunken left hand twitched.

"Iaido...that was a mistake...the Archons...their deals...their powers...there's always a price. The only reason...the only way I kept my soul was to renege...that why my body...is this way."

"Thenday...I haven't offered them an exchange. I'm just giving myself to them. My soul. I don't want anything from them - except the destruction they can cause. This contract I just drank will make it...hard...for them to quickly...finish me."

"But the pain...you have no idea..."

"I'm going to choke them...and use them...for this last bit."

"You can't."

"Not for Vor and his delusions. For Lucan and Nessi Nessi and The Princeling-To-Be. Now, here they come...stay and fight or run and hide."

"Right. Fair dreams attend you, Iaido."

Thenaday ran.

And as he watched Iaido run through the Nine Forms and cut soldiers down like they were harmless puppies, his daemon-scars started to ache. Not painfully. Thenaday could feel a swelling of vitality and lustihood creep into his withered left side. He could feel a thin-ness in the stones and the sky. Like the sky and the ground were made of paper. Paper poked with holes. Holes leaking vital fluid. With his solid-black left eye he could see that Iaido's outline, his shape, his Wards, were shifting and changing. More than likely, none of the soldiers could tell yet. Maybe if there was a thaumaturge but not the regular grunts. They had no idea what was about to happen.

"Nonononononono...."

Thenaday started grinding his shark-like teeth and rocking back and forth in his hiding place. His left hand massaged at his groin with a mind of its own.

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Phalanx after phalanx dropped bleeding and dying. But as horrible as the courtyard in front of the castle looked, Iaido looked worse. Sores opened in his flesh, his eyes were a color darker than black, his flesh was gray and wrinkled. Or chewed. His teeth looked like they were filed to points. Streamers of saliva dangled from his mouth, greasy ash-colored sweat mixed with the yellowish-whit pus of infected wounds.

Iaido was muttering in some foreign, infernal tongue. The sounds made the eardrums of soldiers burst and fill with blood and brain matter and shards of bone as surely as a bullet. Then, with a contortionist's jerk of his neck, Iaido spat out his own tongue. It hit the street with a soundless slap. His smile broadened and he continued to fight, his lower jaw gnashing and snapping.

Patterns of burns and bites left their marks in his flesh. The hands holding Whore's Bane bubbled and it was possible for soldiers to see the fingerbones gripping the sword. As Iaido went through variations on The Nine Forms (Cat On A Ledge, Dancer Bows To His Partner, Rabbit's Kiss, Wink-A-Peeps, Tooth-Music, The Lady Loses Her Opera Glass, The Jongleur Juggles Five Pins, The Gallywow's Orphan, The Liversick Fisherman) he left drops of skin and pus and blood and ichor and marrow and hair and piss and shit and organs and other viseral remains in little circles and lines all around him.

Finally, the soldiers and captains left alive watched as the blade of Whore's Bane bagan to glow from some unknown heat source. At that point, Iaido looked like a scarecrow. His eyes burst in his skull. The skull itself seemed to sink in and bulge outward. His skin was shredded and underneath the flesh there were flashes of shiny black claws, chitinous armor, smooth sharp horns, ebony teeth.

Iaido fell to his knees. All around him were the bodies of his dead enemies. There was only a small group of about ten soldiers left alive. His sightless, eyeless head spotted them and he brought out the gambler's pistol and shot two of them dead. Then he turned Whore's Bane over in his hands and sliced into his own belly. A mixture of black-shelled scarabs and blood fell out of his body. The heat of Whore's Bane set the rest of his insides aflame.

There was the slightest slump of his head, as if in prayer, when Iaido soul was finally taken from his body.

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Lord Ruricolist watched his men clearing the courtyard. His eyes were hidden behind circular smoked lenses. His men couldn't tell who he was looking at. Most of the bodies were dead but a few were just short some limbs. Their moans mixed with the buzz of flies. Ruricolist waved a short riding crop around his ears to scatter the whining no-see-ums.

A few of his men started to move toward the body at the center of all the destruction. It was sitting on its knees, like a praying monk. The remains looked a thousand years old. The bones were yellowed. There were crystalline growths or deposits along the ribs. The skin was paper thin and it had taken on the look of a mathematical leather roll. It looked ancient. He looked ancient. Even the sword looked like half a relic.

The scar that ran from Ruricolist's right temple and across the bridge of his broken nose was a sickly white. He knew that sword well. Some of his men started to dislodge the blade from the body.

"Don't touch the sword!"

At the sound of Ruricolist's rich, cultured voice, the men froze.

"Leftentant Mollisher. Leftentant Rook."

His two trusted aides came forward. They had been following their Lord at what they hoped was a safe distance. With them was a Private they were grooming to take over their duties as Lord Ruricolist's factotum.

"I want the two of you to handle the body of Iaido Paperwhite. I don't want to see any of these proles making off with any of his bones or charms. Take special care with the remains. Send them back to General Mundivagant. But not the sword. That goes back to my tent. Rook, you take it back there yourself. Understood?"

"Yes sir."

"Then go."

With that, Ruricolist walked up to his head engineer, Voker. The squinty little man was adjusting bolts inside the boxy mecha-cannon, his face hidden. Steam hissed and jets of oil and grease randomly out of the machine.

"When will this contraption take down the gate?"

"When perdition freezes off your balls!"

Ruricolist drew one of his revolvers and in one smooth motion whipped Voker on the back of the head. The dwarfish man collasped at the foot of the cannon.

"Private Tobsman, cut this foul little creature's tongue out."

"Yes sir."

Tobsman had his long pig sticker out and ready but then Ruricolist held up a hand.

"Wait. Is he the only person who can operate this machine?"

"Yes. I believe so, sir. His assistants are back at the medical tent. Buttoner and Neddy both fell sick with that Inwit curse."

"That so?"

Voker was starting to come around. His moans added to the others all around them.

"Yes, sir."

"Well, let him finish his work and then put him on Ribroast's list. We can't have these commoners getting uppity."

"Yes sir."

As Voker sat up, rubbing the back of his head, Ruricolist crouched down next to him.

"Let's just get this gate down, shall we?"

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The mecha-cannon walked forward on its stubby legs. Its engines made clacka-clacka-clacka sounds. Voker adjusted dials and turned knobs in the automaton's ass end and then put his hands over his ears. The machine seemed to brace itself, there was a whirl from its elephantine kneecaps and its business end positioned itself toward the weakest point of the castle's gate.

Then there was a burning flash of sickly green light and the gate was smashed, slumped open in a whorish sprawl.

Ruricolist found himself smiling. It made the men around him nervous. Gentlemen and nobles born to House Major and Houses Of The First Water tended to smile at things that common folk want to shudder.

"Private Tobsman, inform Lords Naufrage and Thurindale that we are ready to proceed into the castle."

"Yes sir."

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The corridors of the castle had the same helter-skelter symmetry as the streets of the town. The foundations seemed to almost shift and distort where the eye looked. Lords Ruricolist and Naufrage and Thurindale issued commands and their men began to search.

The place was a connected series of curliques and dead ends. Some rooms smelled medicinal. Others smelled like cheap opium dens. Others smelled of roasted horseflesh. Soldiers not lucky enough to have rubber gasmasks wrapped scarves or kerchiefs around their mouths. One poor fool was found by Lord Ruricolist with the Hammer banner around his snotty nose. The sawbones were pretty sure that the boy would drink all his meals from now on.

Some hallways were too bright. Others seemed inky with shadows. Some chambers were empty. Some were stacked with furniture. Some looked flooded and warped. Some as if they were burned and melted. Still others were covered in a layer of ice. Or slime. Everywhere, the tentacled, cuttlefish-faced godling stared down at the soldiers from plinths. His bulbous onyx eyes seemed blank and dead.

Strange lettered signs announced (to the few soldiers who could read the almost mathematical scratching language of the Hypnaasi) the names of some of the larger halls and pavilions. There were tapestries and paintings. There were statues and thick rugs.

The Meridian Of Heavenly Pandemonium. The Concentric Horizon Of Relex. The Affinity Of The Dog. The Kindjal Of Barquest. Re The Therianthrope. Chnum. Ba. Most soldiers didn't look twice as they ransacked the place.

Here and there, little clay homunculi roamed the hallways. At one time, they were tiny servants. Now they roamed the broken hallways like little spectres, their normal patterns and protocols disrupted first by the Dolly Boys and now by the bands of soldiers who searched the castle and its grounds.

They ignored the soldiers, even the ones who stomped them into dust and twigs. They walked or limped along, on three legs or four or two, some with bland baby doll heads, some with fanciful triceratop horns, others with heads shaped like cocks or clocks or cups.

The first level was cleared. The soldiers moved into the next level.

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"Any more of that clamberskull, Chiv?"

The flint faced grunt passed the flask to his fellow Dragon badged soldier.

"Just a nip left, Arikara. It's yours."

The other five men were busy testing bricks in the walls, tapping and prodding and kicking and cursing. The rest of the castle was searched all to pieces. Every room and every floor had been given the once over. There was, however, a lone tower that stuck up from one of the castle's almost pyramid shaped corners. Chiv and Arikara and the rest were trying to find a hidden door.

Their group was comprised of Santiago and Old Epharim, two of Naufrage's Swords. In Chiv's opinion they were both decent coves and they looked like they knew which end of a shooting iron to hold. Especially, Epharim. He'd probably been around since Old King Tycho made the Free City of Easterling a part of the Throne-land.

"You two queer-gotten laggers want ta help us here?"

Then there were three of Ruricolist's Hammer-men. Looked like the pissy little puss-gentleman's uppity ways trickled down to his troops. Gammon, with his fat belly and perfumed breath. Trasseno, whip thin and wiry. And the biggest bastard of the three, Yannigan Bag, with his pouting face and shoulders like a stevedore.

Chiv locked eyes with Arikara. A silent thought passed from the hard faced soldier to the younger: Let it go. Then Chiv's hard face broke into a born actor's easy smile.

"Right away, Leftenant Bag."

Chiv resumed his half hearted knocking and poking at his section of wall. What did it matter now, anyway? There were plenty of dead Dolly Boys lined up in the streets. Crazy Iaido was dead. The Clockwork Man and The Sodomite Prince and The Inwit Witch and The Painted Savage. All dead.

There was no army left for the traitor Vorago to lead. Not that there was much of one to begin with. Just some rabble with a few sniper rifles and luck and a little daemon's blood.

Some of Chiv's outfit had stumbled upon a wizened, scabby pink monkey-like imp running through the streets. It had a huge distended head with black shark eyes and a row of teeth like a bear trap crammed into its hoary, scaly jaws. It had hissed and jumped onto Reeb's back and chewed a hole in his neck.

Its pink, blistered skin smeared with Reeb's blood, it leaped at Slap-Bang Benjamin, who shot it in the shoulder. The creature landed in the dirt, unconscious but alive. Instead of putting lead in its bulging forehead, as Chiv had suggested. Slap-Bang, who had trained as a dentist in his youth, had removed the thing's teeth and its claw-like nails. As far as Chiv knew, Slap-Bang planned on bringing the little imp back as a gruesome souvenir.

Tap-tap-tap.

Chiv frowned. This section of wall sounded different. Tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap. It sounded...

"Hollow....Hey, here we go...this section's hollow."

The other soldiers moved quickly to Chiv's section of the wall. After another second, Old Epharim fanned his fingers lightly over a brick that was at codpiece height. The old Sword-man muttered to himself.

"Found the catch."

"Wait. Stop."

This was from Yannigan Bag. he was whispering to Gammon and the fat soldier was off and running.

"We wait for Lord Ruricolist."

Chiv caught a look between Epharim and Santiago. And he felt Arikara eyes on him.

"Leftenant...we should..."

"Sergeant Chiv...we do not know how many of the enemy are left in their little eyrie...they could have thaumaturges...or men who know The Forms...or..."

"Or Vorago could have already fell on his sword or put a gun in his mouth or just be up there getting his cock sucked by some brown native boy."

"If you were one of my men I would have you beaten for talking to your betters in that tone of voice."

Chiv felt his mouth go dry and almost wanted to damn Arikara to the Ninth hell for drinking the last drop his flask's Bend An Elbow.

Lord Ruricolist had taken off his smoked glasses. His eyes were as cruel as his reputation. Gammon stood at his left shoulder and a worried-looking Private stood at his right.

"Since you belong to Lord Thurindale, I will have to report this to him. Bag, Gammon, Trasseno, Tobsman, follow me."

Epharim stepped forward, blocking Ruricolist's way.

"My Lord, allow us to come with you as well. I was at The Friday Falls...on the wrong side of the bridge...with my Lord Naufrage...let me come in the name of my Lord..."

Ruricolist smiled. Chiv saw that there was a steel door between his smile and his eyes.

"Yes...for your Lord...you may come."

Epharim bowed quickly and when his head snapped back up he caught Chiv's eye. just for a second.

"And let me come as well, Lord Ruricolist...in the name of Lord Thurindale."

Ruricolist's didn't smile but he did nod his head. Once.

And with that Epharim clicked the secret door's panel open.

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The passage led to a corkscrew staircase. The men moved quietly up the spiral. Little homunculi with frog-like legs bounced ahead of them, making shrill honking noises. The staircase opened up to a tiny alcove. There was no door on the other side of the alcove, just a thick curtain of glass beads. Blue and green and purple.

Ahead, the men heard the cocking of barking irons and the rustle of movement.

Ruricolist gave the men a few brief gestures in coded hand slang and then they burst through the beaded curtain.

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Gammon's head exploded, grey and red. Trasseno came in behind the fat man, rolling. As he stood up, he tossed a handful of throwing stars in a splayed, cardsharp's pattern. One caught in the throat of a Hypnaasi youth and he fell. Another gouged into the eyes of a pretty dollymop of a girl and in the next instance she was mowed down by gunfire.

Two more Dolly Boys were hidden behind an overturned table (a table with three wicked looking throwing stars sticking out of it). In a swift motion that betrayed his age, Old Epharim, leaped over the barricade and cut down the two youths with his no nonsense gladius.

A third Dolly Boy, positioned behind a rusty gatling, turned the old man to pulp. The gun jammed and the boy looked all of twelve years old when Santiago cut him down with his forearm length of blade.

Yannigan Bag was bravely shooting a group of children one by one. Bam. Bam. Bam. Chiv watched them, they didn't scream or even look up at their killer. When Yannigan Bag was done with the children, he moved to two gray robed figures in the corner of the room. He raised his revolver.

There was a loud report. And Yannigan Bag fell over dead, a hole in his temple. Ruricolist was behind him, his gun smoking. He shot his own man, Chiv thought.

The rest of the room was quiet now. The last of the Dolly Boys were dead. This last part of the last battle had only run about a minute and a half. The air danced with motes and dust and streamers of smoke and burning incense. Chiv thought it felt like a library up here. Or a church. And the quick firecracker battle was just the slamming shut of a book. Or the the last note of a hymn. The room at the top of the tower was a place for silence.

Ruricolist spoke and broke the spell.

"I apologize, Lady Watcher. My man showed bad form in aiming his weapon upon you and your..."

Samyaza, the Irin Watcher, met Ruricolist gaze with her own.

"This is my apprentice, Nephilim. And thank you for...for controling your man."

"Your counterpart back at our camp did not have an apprentice. I'm afraid, my Lady, that I must ask your apprentice to uncover his face."

"And why is that, Dexter...you afraid I'll try in sneak out of the city under a nun's skirt?"

Ruricolist and the rest of the men turned toward the opposite corner of the room, where the voice had come from. From another archway lined with blue and green and purple beads.

There, parting the spill of beads and letting the light from a balcony glow behind him, letting the high wind of the outside world touch and rearrange his clothing ever so slightly, was Vorago Icelus.

Vorago Icelus, the traitor who started The Sweetheart Wars.

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The Lords and captains argued. Some, like Naufrage with almost purple with rage. Others seemed detached, like Thurindale and Motch and Quother. Oxgang just cracked wise, saying it didn't matter one way or the other. Ruricolist and Ratherist (usually at the opposite ends of any argument) talked about laws and historic precedents. Sad Bread made his case for a trial back in Calliope, back in the heart of the Throne-land.

Mundivagant hardly noticed, his eyes were on the tent. The tent that was guarded by his best men. Fifty of them. Handpicked and loyal to Mundivagant. Jackdaw was in charge of them.

Somewhere in Burlesque, Ruricolist had found an old chariot and he had some of his men transform it into a makeshift cage on wheels. They had paraded him through the town, like an Emperor's trophy. Like a Triumph. Queen's Men had shouted and pumped their fists in the air and a few shot their pistols as well.

Mundivagant hadn't seen Vor when they brought him to the main tent, he'd been in the sawbones' tent, looking at the strange phylactery of Iaido's corpse. He'd never really liked Vor's younger brother but he had enjoyed watching the brutal displays of swordsmanship Iaido was capable of. Truly, he was Master Agoge's best student.

Mundivagant could remember Master Agoge telling him that he was too much like a slab of stone to be much of a swordsman. During the same class, Vor was compared to fingers of water, fluid. Later, Mundivagant would hear that Iaido was a mixture of quicksilver and loden-stone. Liquid and magnetic.

The cheers had brought him out of his mind's fakement and memory.

They had captured Vorago.

And now his captains and the Lords of the Throne-land were trying to decide when and how he should die.

Only Sad Bread noticed that Mundivagant had walked away. Toward the tent. His hand went to the Bruised Lotus under his robe.

As Mundivagant passed by Jackdaw he sent him a coded signal:

No one else comes near this tent. No matter their rank. We are not in the Throne-land. Use lead if you have too.

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Ribroast was working over Vor when Mundivagant lifted the flap. Vor was bound into a chair in the middle of the tent.

The light was very good. Little lamps all along the tent's walls cast Ribroast's and Vor's manically across the walls and ceiling of the tent. Their shadows merged with the shadows of The Watchers.

The Irin were present for Vor's torture. The woman, Samyaza, was quickly clicking the tachygraph on her hand. Grigori, the bland faced monk who had been wandering around Mundivagant's camp, was also ticking and clicking away at the exoskeleton on his hand. The third monk, however, was scribbling away with a snub of pencil, his face hooded and cowled. Ribroast didn't seem to be bothered by an audience.

He was a large man, more of a collection of boulders than a human. Probably one quarter nonnatural, thought Mundivagant. He was humming to himself, some old scald's song. Torturer, storyteller, poet. And he had the small, long fingered hands of a pianist. Hands the late Doctor Bishop would have been envious of, no doubt.

Vor's back was to Mundivagant. Even though, Ribroast was using a pair of nasty looking needles on him, Vor wasn't making a sound.

"Ribroast. That will be enough."

The torturer cocked his head.

"Silly sad and soaked. Let me finish with this bloke. His hands are bent and heaven sent..."

"Ribroast...Xixin...enough of your nonsense. Go. If I need you, I'll call you."

"Pitter-patter. Hush and flatter. Mush and mash. Bang and crash. Fingers broken. Just a token."

With that, Ribroast patted Vor's cheek and left the tent.

Vor shifted.

"I hear the falcon...but where is the falconer?"

His voice sounded like it was stuffed with gauze, it was thick and syrupy.

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Vorago had his head cocked to one side. He felt Mundivagant begin to shift and circle around. As he came into view, Vorago could see that this war had been hard on him. His hair was thin and shellacked to his head. His eyes were bloodshot and raw. There were wrinkles around the corners of his mouth and eyes. He still had that plain, sullen, forgettable face. He could have been a farmer or an assassin or a foreman or a grocer.

But he was a General Of The Throne-land. The son of a famed war hero, Baron Hector Mundivagant. The last of a long, ancient and humble family line that had protected House Katycho since the mythical days of The Red Crown and The Lady Dilage.

However, underneath it all. Underneath the last two years of fighting. Past that day on the bridge at The Friday Falls. Beyond the horrible night Lucan was murdered. Here stood that boy who stood awkwardly beautiful in the moonlight of The Griffin's Garden. Here stood Jasper Mundivagant.

"You still look like that stoic boy from Do'Down Barony."

The shadow of a ghost of a smile almost touched Mundivgant's face. Then it escaped and was replaced with a prim line. That same almost-smile he'd seen on Mundivagant's face hundreds of times.

Vorago could almost imagine how he looked. His clothes nothing more than savage rags. His face puffy. Black and blue and yellow and purple bruises covering his body.

At least the parts of his body that could be seen, the parts not covered with the thick corded rope that bound him to the chair. His hands, they were a mess. Bound in his lap, they still showed the remains of Ribroast's work.

There wasn't a finger or fingernail or joint or tendon or bundle of muscle that didn't look broken and twisted. The back of his right hand was splayed and kept open with sutures. Evil looking needles were sticking into the flesh there. The tip of his left thumb dangled by a strip of meat. Vorago could see that the first three fingers on that hand were turned completely in the wrong direction. The small finger of his right hand had more of the barbed pins under its nail. If it hadn't been for the nature of the rope, he was sure that he would have been a yammering, pleading mess.

When he first arrived at the camp, he was led to this green haired, goggle wearing fellow who took a section of his skin from his arm, a little syringe of blood and scraped his tongue with a knife. Then skin, blood and spittle were put inside of what looked like a little metal grasshopper. A rope appeared in the green haired fellow's hands and he took a frayed corner of it and wrapped the metal grasshopper with it. Then Vorago was bound with the rope and he realized that the rope might as well be made of heavy steel chain and the sinew of titans. It made him feel vaguely numb.

"Why a grasshopper for my symbol?"

The green haired boy had smiled, pulling his goggles off his face.

"It's not a grasshopper. It's a locust."

---------------------------------------------------------------

"You still look like that stoic boy from Do'Down Barony."

Mundivagant hadn't inherited his father's easy smile but it almost came to him then. Baron Hector Mundivgant's smile. The Lord Of The Skies. The smile of hundreds of pulp novels and penny dreadfuls and nickelodeons. The smile of the Loyal Man who had killed the pretender Sylas Glaums and Shivering Jemmy and Broad Arrow Bill.

Mundivagant couldn't smile like his father. But Vorago had always almost let him think that he could. Looking at him now, he felt a fluttering between his bellybutton and kneecaps. His stomach was wheeling and dipping. There was a spiderweb arcing of pain across his ribcage. His heart felt icy and heavy. His throat thinned to a straw. His mouth went dry and his saliva turned into a coppery paste.

Vorago was looking at him with his coffee colored eyes. There were odd flecks of lavender in them. Mundivagant remembered thinking that they were still very beautiful, even staring out of his bloody face. Seated there, he looked almost kingly. Like he summoned me here, Mundivagant thought.

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"Do'Down is far away from here."

It was a whisper, not much louder than the shuffle and snap of a barroom card game. Vorago chuckled.

"Yes. It almost seems like this has happened to someone else."

"And who is that?"

Vorago smiled. Ribroast hadn't yet started on his teeth, so the smile was fierce and full and very white in his bruised face.

"A Loyal Man. This all started out...for Lucan and Nessi Nessi and The Princeling-To-Be."

"Your lover. Your whore. And your bastard."

Vorago watched the prim line of Mundivagant's mouth twitch but he didn't say anymore, so Vorago continued.

"It was my fault...that Lucan's dead."

Mundivagant still said nothing. It was a caustic silence. Thick. Heavy.

"But it was Bellis who fooled me. Bellis and Alytarch. He may have been a brute and a bully but he had a decent enough grasp of the All Sorts. It was him...he...took Lucan's body."

Mundivagant shifted where he stood. He didn't want to hear this story again. It was the story Vorago told him when he threw his Bruised Lotus as his feet. It was quiet except for the mechanical clicking of the Watchers.

"After their meeting, Alytarch fell ill and had to be confined to one of the guest rooms. I remember making a joke with Lucan about whether or not the mold at Maiden Stairs had addled his brain - but Lucan snapped at me. Very unusual. And then he ordered me to stay out of Nessi Nessi's chamber during her labor. Also unusual."

"Yes. I'm sure."

Vorago looked up. Mundivagant had turned slightly away and was looking down at his hands.

"I should have paid closer attention to his eyes. I would find out later from...friends who knew about such things...that the body's form is easy enough to alter but that the eyes are tricky. Lucan's eye were indigo. The Lucan who went up to see his wife...his eyes were just blue. The same blue as Alytarch's."

Mundivagant held up a hand. Vorago stopped.

"I've heard a version of this story already. At The Friday Falls. I wasn't impressed with it then, I'm not impressed now. You don't even tell it as well as your propaganda master, Woad. Even Naufrage and Helios told it with more verve."

A small chuckle found its way out of Vorago's throat.

"I don't suppose Naufrage has told this version of the story in quite a while."

Mundivagant felt that loop de loop spinning in his stomach and groin again. He's so calm, he thought, damn him for being so calm when I'm so nervous. He swatted the air near his face, as if there were flies there. Or, as if tendrils of Vorago's persona were inching out towards him.

"How did the rest go? Let's see, Alytarch, a wizard of the blackest circle, underneath that caveman brow and slow wit of his, switches bodies or souls or some such with the king, then he delivers some abortive concoction that doesn't kill the child but forces the early labor and death of Queen Nessi Nessi, you fight with this diguised Alytarch but he gets away, then you realize that the wounds you gave Alytarch were being transferred to King Lucan through some All Sorts link and the King dies of those wounds."

The shadow of a ghost of a smile thrummed along the prim line of Mundivagant's mouth again. Vorago was watching him with those strong, strange coffee and lavender eyes. Yes, those eyes said, that's the simple story. Sad. Simple.

"This is an old story. Mummers in the capitol put on shows about the Witch Queen Bellis almost as much as they put on shows about the Fallen Loyal Man Vorago, Vorago Forsworn, Vorago, The Bastard Of Mandrake."

Again, the prim line jerked upwards and righted itself. It was too warm in the tent. Stifling. Womb-like. Unpleasant.

"Of course, there are also troupes who play lutes and lyres and call for people to listen to the tragic tale of Vorago, The Last Loyal Man. I think there are plenty of actors who have fought some bastard version of The Long Defeat. One night they get to be Vorago the Villain and Bellis the Hero, then Vorago the Savior and Bellis the Tyrant."

There was a spark of something like triumphant in Vorago's gaze. His eyebrows rose and fell. Probably hasn't heard any news from the Throne-land in months, Mundivagant thought.

"This has gone on for so long that most people don't care who was right and who was wrong. And no farmers or merchants or minor houses are going to care who was killed half a world away."

Vorago shifted. When he broke eye contact, Mundivagant could feel how far away Do'Down and the Throne-land were.

"All of your boys. The Dolly Boys. This nicknackitarian army of highway men and nonnaturals and sodomites will end up as a cast list of minor roles when some prancing wine soaked playwright of The Queen's choosing writes The Battle Of Burlesque."

Vorago smiled his too bright smile.

"So, someone will remember."

This isn't what I want to say, thought Mundivagant suddenly. He knew that outside of this tent, Lords and Captains were trying to decide the fate of this troublesome man.

"They'll remember a robber baron, nothing more. no different than they think of Shivering Jemmy or The Glaums King. Do you think of people of Rushingburg or Terk's Square or Mandrake care about the line of succession? They care that you rode into town with your Boys and stole from them. Robbed banks, trains."

Vorago's smile vanished. He strained forward. His spittle and foam didn't quite strike Mundivagant but it was a close thing.

"I held to my Vows. The Princeling-To-Be was the heir. That was Lucan's will. Lucan, who I loved more than my own life. Everything that has happened since the night of his murder has been to thwart his cunt whore of a sister. Even if someone with the weakest tinture of Katycho blood were to take The Throne, it would be just."

Mundivagant flashed his teeth, not in a smile, in the warning signal of a baboon. Fangs bared, his spittle did reach Vorago.

"You have never loved anyone or anything your whole life! Your Vows were as hollow as you as are! Everyone's a plaything...an ornament! The King, The Queen, The Princeling! All those poor fools you led to their deaths in this foreign shithole! Sad Bread! Naufrage! Helios! Woad! Terminus! Your mother! Your father! Your own brother! His daemon-tainted remains are two tents over. One of the doctors over there is a chakraempath, when your brother's bones were brought in the man starting wailing and gibbering, clawing at his eyes and chewing at his tongue!"

Vorago seemed to sink down inside of himself. Mundivagant's mind was split down the middle on how to feel. Good, part of it thought. There's no need to hurt him, the other said, it's almost over now. But he couldn't quite stop himself.

"Your brother and all those other fools, followed you like The Little Swineherd followed The Inwit Witch to her gingerbread house. You stuffed them and made them fat and stupid and then you pushed them into the oven."

"You didn't know Iaido very well if you think I led him by the nose. He held to his Vows as well. The rest of them...Runcy Jane, Inkhorn...they weren't bound by the same Vows."

"So it was acceptable for them to kill the passengers on The Slingshot then?"

"You should ask Lord Ruricolist who gave the order for those people to die."

"More propaganda."

"Jasper...don't you know who these people are? You have surrounded yourself with False Loyal Men. Vipers and spies and The Whore's bootlickers?"

"My captains aren't all of my choosing..."

"Why do you stammer? When it suited them, there were plenty of so called Loyal Men who answered my call to declare for The Princeling-To-Be. All of our Vows should have made this whole war moot. Why didn't you declare with me, Jasper? I took men like Scaum and Offmangandy and Ruricolist....who I knew didn't give any weight to their Vows. They just thought this was a chance for their Houses to move upwards. I would have given anything if you had stood beside me at The Falls."

Mundivagant's throat constricted. He rubbed at his raw eyes. He reached into his pocket and withdrew Vor's Bruised Lotus.

"Anything? You threw...this at my feet. I...couldn't believe...we said the words together...I said them with you...you were...the reason...I couldn't have become...Loyal...if...if you..."

"Jasper?..."

His chest felt pained. There were white starburst patterns across his vision. It was too warm in here. He dropped Vor's Bruised Lotus, it landed on his boot and bounced off into the tent's shadows. He needed air. Vorago was still calling his name as he left the tent.

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Jackdaw was arguing with Dexter Ruricolist when Mundivagant emerged from the tent. Just beyond them, Mundivagant could see Ribroast casually whipping a short, stubby looking man who was tied to a barrel. The squat man cursed and howl with every lick of the cat 'o nine. Ribroast looked bored.

"Ahh, General. Would you please tell your majordomo to let me pass?"

Mundivagant caught Jackdaw's eye and nodded. Ruricolist brushed past him, making sure that their shoulders jarred each other a little.

"A most obstenant fellow. it's good for a man to follow order but to behave in such a manner to his betters is really --"

"Do you have something to tell me, Dexter?"

Ruricolist gave himself a moment to collect himself. Probably adding that to his long list of slights, Mundivagant thought.

"It has been decided. Vorago is to be killed here. Tar and feathers. In one hour's time. Naufrage is in a state, of course. He wanted to transport him back. Quother and Motch waited until they saw which way the wind was blowing, just like them. Ratherist was being reasonable. Thurindale as well. That upjumped fool Oxgang wanted to challenge him to single combat but I explained that I had already given orders for Ribroast to break his hands and feet --"

"You gave the orders?"

It was a growl. It didn't come from Mundivagant's mouth. It seemed to come from his chest, almost from his feet, his stomach, his guts, his id. There was a fraction of a second where Ruricolist realized his danger and he would have drawn his blade. But he had left his sword back at his tent. Mundivagant's forehead connected with Ruricolist's nose with a sick pop.

Then Mundivagant was on top of him, pounding the little Lordling's smug face with his blacksmith hands. His strangler's hands. Like the Hammer of Ruricolist's House, Mundivagant's fists broke cheek and nose and jaw and teeth.

Jackdaw, who was no more than five feet away, made no motion to help Ruricolist or to hinder his General.

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Mundivagant made his way back to the tent. Vor didn't say anything about the blood on his hands and face. Their eyes met and Mundivagant realized that there wouldn't be any balm for the past few years. But he still wanted one.

Years alone at Maiden Stairs. Walking the grounds like a ghost. Little more than an ornament. When business would take Bellis into the capital, he would occasionally see Vor. Always with the king, always close with the king. While Lucan and Bellis would argue some archaic law in The Griffin's Garden or The Laughing Court, he would stand near Vor, both of their uniforms bright, their shoulders almost touching. Not speaking.

We said the words together, took The Vows together, here, in this place, and then you touched my face and I could feel every knot and worry release inside of me and I loved you so much. This is not what I want to say, thought Mundivagant. The words wouldn't come. How could you leave me, forget me, abandon me, destroy me so completely. Why did you get everything and throw me away?

"How could you do this to me?"

He could hear the strain in his voice, it sounded cracked and watery. Vor's bruised face looked confused.

"They are going to kill you here. In one hour. Tar and feather you. I can't let that happen."

Vor's face looked calm.

"Fine."

"You...you shouldn't have thrown me away. I would have been loyal to you."

"I know."

"The king...he shouldn't have sent me away...from you."

"Lucan could be a jealous man. And, in me, he found what he was always looking for: a stronger reflection of himself."

Mundivagant looked at Vor's face, Vor's eyes. Coffee and lavender. Purple. Royal. Lucan's eyes. Indigo. Vor's mother. Clementine Icelus, a concubine, a favorite of Lucan's father. Old King Tycho Katycho. Clementine, who was banished and who married a merchant. Banished. Disgraced. But with enough friends at court to call in favors to have her eldest son accepted into the Training to become a Loyal Man.

"Lucan was...your brother."

"Half-brother. I don't think that he quite realized it. He use to say that I was like a mirror. I think he saw in me things he would want to be. It was very heady for him. As a Loyal Man, when I king ordered me to be exclusive with him and later with his queen...I had to. I took The Vows."

"And you never told him."

"No. More than once, Nessi Nessi hinted that she knew. That's why, when Lucan wouldn't provide her with an heir...she asked me, knowing that some thin amount of Old Tycho's blood was in my veins."

"Your mother..."

"Had she lived, I'm sure that she would have been tickled pink to see her grandchild on the throne. But that didn't matter...not to me. The Princeling wasn't my son...he was their heir. One day, he would have been my king. I loved them and I said the words, The Vows, and I did as I was bid. Including breaking off contact with former lovers and friends who Lucan felt uneasy about."

"I should have joined you."

Mundivagant reached out with his hand and tilted Vor's chin up. He leaned in and kissed him on the forehead, then the eyelids, then his lips. Vor opened his mouth. The kiss was salty and warm and it reminded Mundivagant of that night in The Griffin's Garden.

The blood on his face ran down his cheeks and into their mouths, forming a coppery seal. Vor strained forward in his bonds. Mundivagant ran his hands through Vor's hair, traced the outline of Vor's face, his jawbone, his neck.

And then he squeezed.

Vor's eyes opened wide and he could see Mundivagant staring back at him, inches from him. There was the slightest nod between them and Mundivagant pressed harder with his blunt hands around Vor's throat.

Their kiss became more savage, teeth found bottom lips and bit down into them like grapes, bits of tongue were sliced on canines, cheeks and chins were scraped raw. Finally, there was a sharp crack and Vor went limp.

Mundivagant stepped back from the body. There he was, Vorago Icelus, The Forsworn. The last Loyal Man. It felt as if the skies should open up and revolt. Like the future was nothing but an empty wasteland. I chased you for so long, he thought. How will I ever find you again?

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The click and whirl of The Watcher's recording devices brought him back to the present. Samyaza stepped forward.

"General. Thank you most kindly for allowing us to add this tale to The Stelliscript. We must depart now."

As the three monks made their way out of the tent, Samyaza's apprentice-monk shifted his cowl a little, revealing his face. Mundivagant was suprised to find that he recognized it. From a Wanted Poster.

"Engstrom Nacks!"

He grabbed the fake monk by his collar and pulled off his hood. Sure enough, there was the Dolly Boys' unofficial journalist and worst shot, alive. And with a greasy notebook covered in cramped handwriting.

"I should put a bullet in your eye!"

Before Nacks could begin to yammer and plead, Samyaza stepped forward.

'This man is my acolyte, General. Need I remind you that The Irin are neutral."

"This yellowbelly didn't start out this battle neutral...and if you are protecting him...then I'm not so sure that I shouldn't have my men outside put a bullet in each of your skulls!"

Samyaza almost smiled.

"They are welcome to try. It was a request of Vorago Icelus that Mister Nacks join our order. It was debated heavily before we agreed. In our pursuit of new chapters for The Stelliscript, Mister Nacks will provide insight into several other Events and Moments and Notions. A living record, if you will."

Mundivagant released his grip on Nacks. The newspaperman slumped, supported by Grigori. he clutched at his notebook. His eyes met Mundivagant's for a second. And he winked.

This is what you wanted, Vor, Mundivagant thought.

"Take him."

The monks bowed. After an awkward moment, Nacks did as well. Samyaza tapped several keys on the exoskeleton on her arm and when they opened the tent flap, Mundivagant caught sight of a sterile blue room. It seemed very large. There were other gray robed monks and nuns wandering about in the room. When the tent flap fell, Mundivagant could see that the room had vanished.

He was alone with Vor. Truly alone. Mundivagant pressed his fingers to his lips and then brushed his fingers across Vor's lips.

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Nacks could hear the ocean. Sullyport must be near. His skin flaked and itched. His clothes were threadbare. His teeth ached. His bones felt wrong. He didn't want to look at the mark on the back of his hand. He needed to get to Sullyport.

The Irin were very trusting. And that was good since nacks was completely untrustworthy. He spent three days on their ship, The Saraknyal, before he convinced Grigori to explain to him how to retrieve information from the tachygraph exoskeleton that the monks used. That aspect of the device was simple, even if it made him feel a profound sense of vertigo.

Then he ask how to use the device to open a Door. This was much harder. The first time he tried, he had suffered from a solid ten minutes of delirium. The second time, it was only three minutes., Then nothing.

He gathered up several of The Irin's more interesting devices. The tachygraph. A floating globe-eye security system. A holographic mask. An image capture tube. And several cases containing technology that he had no idea what to do with. It all fit snugly into his satchel, also stolen. The satchel seemed to have more room inside of it than its size would lead you to believe.

Sullyport had to be close. Nacks went over and over all of the information that the Irin had recorded of The Battle Of Burlesque. Some of the accounts weren't useful for Nacks' purposes, so he deleted them.

He was compiling his book, The True History Of The Sweetheart Wars. He didn't need anything getting in the way of capturing the story.

His hand itched something fierce. ever since that last Door. He looked at it again. His right hand had a hole in the middle of it. nacks could hold it up to the sky and see the sun shine right through his hand. When he tried to touch the area, he could still feel skin. When he stopped to drink some water, he noticed little threads of his hand unraveling. The hole was getting bigger. And now the tip of the finger he touched it with was itching too.

He had to get to Sullport. He had to finish the story. He knew there was a printing press in Sullyport.