A wave crashed against the cliffs below, and with its destruction up went a spray of water obliterated into a mist. My thoughts were not dissimilar in their motion. I had endless questions about , this “Canonical Path,” what to do about Sinaya, my mories, everything. So crash, went my thoughts, shattering against the bulwark of my singular tongue which could shape only one question.
Plucking it from the ntal mist, I asked, “What’s the Canonical Path?”
Sphinx’s head spun until her face was backwards, hidden. Her voice a churning murmur of unease, “Nadia, I can’t answer that. You know I can’t.”
“I know, I know,” I repeat to myself. “It’s just, we’re bondmates and you weren’t there for . I was being unmade, and you weren’t there.”
We both knew that wasn’t entirely true. She was there. In my spirit the entire ti. Present for the incendiary consumption of my being. Silent, yes, but she was there. Though in the sa way one can feel alone in a crowd, I was abandoned even as my love was beside .
“Just help understand when I can count on you, please?” I begged.
Sphinx’s head ticked, slow as a clock in a classroom as it revolved back to . Her eyes slid to the ocean, broad and expansive. A slight smile illuminated her face with an idea.
She asked, “If soone asked you to describe the ocean, but you couldn’t fly them high above to see its majesty from the voids of space, how would you?”
I looked to the water, pressed my arms against the railing, and considered.
“I’d describe what’s around it—cliffs, beaches, broad sky. Probably what it isn’t—not a lake. How it makes feel—small, terrified, in love,” I said. “Sphinx, what isn’t the Canonical Path?”
“Destiny. Singular. A thing to be known by humans.”
So I had free will—to a point, I supposed—nor was its progression one thing with lines and marks to hit like a script. Impossible then to easily predict where or when it might grapple into its clutches. Though on that last point…
“It’s not like I’m human,” I said.
Sphinx’s head bobbled. “Nor are you an entity,” she pointed out.
“No special, hybridae clause?” I asked.
She smirked, “Alas, your existence is new, and still unlitigated in the judicial halls of Law or the Parliant of All That Is.”
“That sounds like a secret I wasn’t ant to know,” I said. “The Sovereigns have a parliant?”
Sphinx stood on her hind legs, and let her bulk rest upon the railing I’d been leaning on. She winked and flashed her fangs in a bright smile.
“You’ve seen the Real under the Onsight,” she said. “All of this, All That Is, is a negotiation between the Sovereign powers. It’s no great secret, but it is the remit of Revelation to make plain such insights. Provided, of course, you ask the right questions.”
“But even with that remit, as you say, Revelation has so secrets it can’t make plain?” I asked.
Sphinx turned away. “Every Court is…curtailed in so respect or another. Bound by the accords struck by our Sovereigns. Afterlife is a shut door, Ti flows in one direction—”
“And Revelation can’t make plain the Canonical Path,” I said.
“No one can, but yes. So of these restrictions were baked into making the Real stable, and others—” Sphinx said.
“Were won by way of sanctions?” I asked, winning a glance from her that said, how’d you know? To which I answered, “Revelation Unmaking implied.”
She nodded, and the two of us fell back into a silence comfortable only due to the feelings which flowed along the bond between us. Love, respect, concern, all beaded along our mystic tie like morning dew. Sphinx may have been smiling at our ga of slipping through loopholes, but she didn’t like it any more than I did.
My hand found the back of her head, stroking fingers through the black river of her hair. Eliciting deep throated purrs of pleasure. Though what traveled along our bond was the sharp, bright notes of elation that scattered the beads of pre-existing feeling. I didn’t want to keep things harsh between us—in the end, if she was right, it’d be just us after all.
“We’ve digressed,” Sphinx muttered between purrs.
“We have,” I said. “It’s easier than playing this ga.”
Sphinx nailed with a glance, soft yet pointed, “Then na yourself, Nadia, and step into the left-hand of your birth.”
My hand fell from her hair, and I set my eyes on the receding vestiges of night that dove past the horizon in a bid to outpace the morning sun.
“I’d get answers then?” I asked.
“Plain and true, but ultimately the path is one you walk yourself.”
“They’d hunt , Sphinx, the Tenken-bumon,” I said. “If what I saw was true…they’ve been hunting . At least like this, I have so plausible deniability. I’m human enough.”
My claws—gained from the flas that ate my arms the night earlier—gouged into the wood of the railing. Sphinx laid her head against my shoulder.
“Yet as you are, you aren’t entity enough. Not for the answers you want nor to claim the power that could make the swords of heaven rattle with fear in their sheaths,” she said. “As you are, the Sorcery which rises unbidden could make the deniability of your nature implausible. Strength unnad is a mindless beast, Nadia.”
She was right. Alls below, she was right, and I was…not entirely wrong either. Though in her language, relating the Sorcery I’d been doing semi-consciously as a “wild beast,” I found my thoughts turning to curses. Natural ones, ford in the Underside, were mindless things that infected—oh, they infected—anything they discovered that’d let them in. Working magic without nuance or elegance, raising up and casting down their hosts without heart nor ethos to divine. If I was human enough but not entity enough, was I a curse?
“Nadia—” Sphinx began, likely in an attempt to curtail that thought.
I asked, “My parents, were they killed because of ?”
Did the tenken-bumon catch up with them for harboring ? Was it a punishnt for interfering with the Canonical Path? I felt the ties of fate which I’d touched, burned, and examined wind about my throat forming a noose with which to catch my neck.
Sphinx dropped back from the railing—the balcony had us far past the cliff after all. Her eyes flicked from the churning sea now a rippling bejeweled curtain reflecting so much light.
“Would the answer change the course you’d wish to take?” she asked.
I glanced down to the ocean with its crashing waves and the bone-severing cliffs that stood against it. Then back to Sphinx, who sat within the doorfra leading back inside.
“It’d…it wouldn’t,” I admitted. “They’re still dead, and this world feels so ugly without them. Nesis still needs to die.”
“Then why ask?”
So, I’d know if anyone would have to go as well.
Sphinx sighed, “It’s unlikely to be the tenken-bumon.”
“So then it’s because they tampered with the Canonical Path?”
“Also, unlikely,” Sphinx said. “They tampered with your hybridae nature, yes, but not all hybridae walk the Canonical Path. Nor are walkers of it easily identifiable. Any accuser of your mother would have a steep climb in making the claim she knew and intentionally involved herself.”
“You’re telling my mother, a Sovereign, didn’t know?” I asked. “Swordbearer knew. You knew…you knew. You knew!”
My brow furrowed in frustration. I stord toward Sphinx—though looking back, she very much led —into the house. Fists clenched at my side. Mood flailing about in need of answers and targets. I threw my arm to the side casting off reason, Divid*** the floor and wall petulantly. A smooth groove cut from where I stood, climbed up the wall and severed a window.
Sphinx glanced at the wound I’d made in the house, and back to . Her eyes unclouded with worry or fear, but instead wet with sorrow. Sha fell upon heavy as a drenched quilt, driving to my knees. Tears beaded my lashes as I clutched the offending limb to my chest.
“Those of Courts related to the walker,” she explained, carefully picking her words around taphysical landmines, “are aware. I, by remit of Revelation and our bond, knew the mont I laid eyes upon you and we beca bondmates. In truth, I tried to say it without saying it, but while your skin is thin your skull is quite thick, my love.”
She pressed a kiss to my brow. In specific, the black four-pointed star that marked the spot where the entity which lurked within , now trapped in a mont belonging to the unforeseen future, had shattered the flesh of my temple. I reached up with shaking hands to cradle her face. Guide her kisses from my brow, down the side of my face, over wet tear-drenched cheeks, and onto my mouth which was done with questions and their hard answers.
Sphinx’s wings wrapped around while her tongue twined with mine. I was ravenous and she was generous. Doling out teasing flicks and nips of my lower lip, until my heart settled and my throat opened. We parted, I was panting and she was smiling—entities rarely tired after all. Her eyes slid to their corners, as she smirked.
“I thought you a puppeteer, not a voyeur,” Sphinx said to the air.
Then I Rembered that the door to the house was unlocked, had been opened and shut soti before my tantrum, and the third occupant had been leaning against the far wall where my gouging line had passed beside them. A wound marring the house's dosticity, but which this new occupant had been running their fingers within—absentmindedly most likely—while observing the way Sphinx brought my heart to a rest.
Secretary said, “Anyone would be a voyeur when you decide to carry on without respect to those who’d been waiting for your ti.”
“Sphinx, can I…?” I trailed off, but she understood.
With a quick glare at Secretary, Sphinx walked inside of leaving Secretary and myself to our relative privacy. I blinked through the sensual haze that dulled the bite of my recent mood. Focused on #404, whose gaze road across my body.
“I didn’t know you arrived,” I said, though my eyes widened quickly at the towering truth unspoken. “I didn’t Rember you did.”
“Wait, what?” Secretary asked.
Revelation Unmaking’s explanation whispered through my thoughts. The spell resistance was a byproduct of the energy used to nurture and awaken the entity inside of . It wasn’t really mine, and if all that power was directed into the trap we’d constructed…my fingers ran over that black star on my forehead.
My voice struggled to stay even, “I misplaced it, it seems.”
My body shivered at the realization of how naked my spirit was. How cold I was. They crossed the room to take my side, kneeled as I kneeled, but stayed their hand from wiping my tears. In their gaze, I saw pity peeking around the smooth-face of their professionalism. The sight of it caused a revulsion in —at the weakness which wrung tears from my heart, made them into their problem. I turned away, shoved aside the tears, and faced them again with a plaster smile.
“How long have you been here?” I asked.
Secretary’s hand fell. They said, “Since you were on the balcony.”
I chuckled, “And you say you aren’t a voyeur.”
Then I spotted a bead of bright carmine tracing down the razor edge of their cheekbones. It’d traveled from a wound on their ear—I rembered, in the normal manner, that they’d been beside the wound I’d struck into the house. It turned out that while they were whole they’d not gone unmarked.
I wanted to apologize, but when my mouth opened a hungry breath rolled from within my throat like a fog. That beautiful carmine bead beca my world. I needed it on my tongue. Then I caught Secretary’s expression—placid, assenting, and a soft smile.
“I’d need to clean myself anyways, little brute,” they said.
They’d given permission without judgnt. Found mundanity in my curse—handkerchief or tongue, they’d have to clean themselves one way or another. It was an extension of trust and, in so respect perhaps, an act of contrition for having placed the mask into my life. Nonetheless, if there was a strength in offering then I’d found the strength in denial.
I muttered, “I’m sorry for hurting you.”
“It’s not like you knew I was there,” they said, a firm erasure of fault on my part. “Besides, you’re not one to intentionally break what’s yours, are you?”
The image of my teeth in lissa’s throat ca to mind. How succulent her arteries proved to be as they gushed down my throat. Though that impulse was the curse, ultimately. A sublimation of my desire to be seen translated into a consumptive urge. That’s all.
“Never,” I said. “What’s mine is to be cherished, even when…”
Even when it turns out they’re an enemy?
“Nadia,” Secretary said, the usage of my na—rare on their tongue—drawing my attention.
“Huh?”
They said, “You’re crying again?”
And so I was. A blessing then, I thought, that I’d never been one for makeup really. At this rate I’d have wasted whatever supply I’d arrived to Brightgate with.
“Little brute, what happened in that exam?” they asked.
I waved off the question. “You probably got a hundred reports. What’s mine going to do in filling in the picture of yesterday?”
Their eyes narrowed as their hand struck fast as a mother pulling her daughter out of the street. Taking by the chin, and directing my face to et theirs.
“I don’t need yours to fill in the events of yesterday. We know that we’ve the local Underside. That even now, the Lurkers do as their nasake hiding amongst the applicants and subordinating our traditions—violent as they are—to advance their own ends.”
“See, you don’t need—”
They cut off, “What I want is to hear your story, Nadia. I’m yours and you’re mine. If you’re mine, then I’d like to know what—or as I suspect—who hurt you.”
A smile shuddered into position. It was forced, frail, and shattered with a tilt of Secretary’s head. My lips parted and out flowed a rendition of yesterday not too dissimilar from what I’ve already described. There were the abrasions my pride had suffered, struggling as I did beneath the urge of my curse. The wound lissa had inflicted—that I, in due respect to my own participation, aided—on my heart. I tried to elide past the cage and muzzle, especially when I realized how Secretary’s displeasure ca into relief beneath the thinning veneer of professional distance between us.
Only for things to crescendo at my informing them of The Angler Knight’s identity. First by na, which spawned little reaction. Then by deed, specifically our bathroom encounter, which tipped Secretary back onto their ass as they understood who he was…to .
They pushed back their hair, and said, “Oh little brute, you weren’t born for simplicity in your life were you?”
“Only monsters are simple,” I said, parroting Sphinx’s words from what felt like ages ago but had only been a few days.
Secretary sighed, agreent in an exasperated way. “Complexity is hardly a virtue either.”
I shrugged, a half-hearted agreent of my own. Secretary stood, dusted off their black miniskirt, and looked to the door. I tipped forward to catch their hand. Worked my thumb into the heart line of their palm.
“Wait,” I said, “why did you follow here?”
Secretary answered, looking away from , “I wanted to see how you were feeling.”
“Before you found falling apart?” I sniffed, “You’re hiding sothing.”
“I’m always hiding sothing, little brute,” they said. “I’m a secretary.”
“And my handler,” I said. “Or are you not mine?”
They looked away…again. The ends of my mouth fell low, weighted down Secretary’s hypocrisy. If I was theirs and thus so was my story, then they were mine as were their secrets. I shifted pressure from the pad of my thumb toward its tip, guiding my knife-sharp claw into their palm. They winced, turning back to regard and I imdiately relented the pressure—I only wanted them to look at .
“I am, little brute,” Secretary said.
Secretary inhaled what confidence hid in the air before speaking. “First, I was concerned about you—even before finding you here having…a mont,” they said. “However, it was also to confirm if you’d be capable of the mission happening tonight for many of the Lodge’s assets—probationary ones at least.”
“Why wouldn’t I be capable?” I asked.
I let Secretary’s hand go. They let it linger there in the air as if I’d change my mind about concluding this small bit of intimacy—I didn’t. In a bid to remind them that, despite finding in such a despairing mood, I was strong and capable in all the ways that normally mattered, I stood and rolled back my shoulders. Assud a smile like a bear trap—shiny, sharp, and wicked. The little brute they could rely on, and who I’d prefer to be than the weeping girl in an empty house curled up on a bare floor.
“It might involve killing Sinaya,” they said.
“Oh,” I said. “Anything else?”
With a sigh, Secretary continued, “It’d be an infiltration mission. The Lurkers, confident in their results—curtailed as they were by your own actions, of which the Lodge did make note—were going to celebrate. Likely an attempt to pull more examinees under their banner, and slay those who reject this Sage of the Deep as their leader. Our plan then being, to subvert this trap to our own gain and do away with the cult, these traitors, and those that lead them.”
“Of which The Angler Knight—Sinaya—is one,” I said, well aware that he was.
My bear trap smile rusted to dust, and my shoulders tipped forward in a slump. This was which required an interior strength that I didn’t know if I possessed. Though what snagged between my fangs was the idea that Sinaya had to be…dealt with. As if he was like the rest of the cult, gladly waging war against Nesis rather than being soone trapped.
That was it! That was what bothered —Sinaya didn’t want this, any of this. He was willing to let my glaive pierce his heart, and finally walk into freedom. Though it pained to realize it so late, Sinaya didn’t want to fight or kill lissa on a personal level. There wasn’t even a true ideological thrust motivating him. It was chanical. Did soone forced into that life, uplifted by a disgusting connection to a monster, need to die?
I shook my head, “I can do the mission, #404. It’s just—you all have Sinaya wrong.”
Secretary’s smile waned. “Really?”
“Yes, you do. Sinaya—to a fault—was forced sohow into this compromise with Marduk, that’s the Sage of the Deep,” I said. “He’s not committed. Why, outside of this barbecue place he told , um, he told how his grandfather—still Marduk—kept him in the dark so he couldn’t get away.”
“Nadia—”
“He was about to let kill him!” I shouted, then blushed as the house echoed back my voice. “Does that sound like soone who has to die? Can’t we do sothing else?”
Secretary asked, “Like what, flip him into an asset?”
I hurriedly nodded, “Yes, like that. Think about it, he knows—probably—where tons of skeletons are buried. With his help, we can really dismantle Marduk’s cult. He can be way more useful.”
Alive rather than dead. Secretary, undoubtedly hearing the unspoken portion of my plea, was not convinced. Instead, their expression was curdled by sothing I couldn’t hear within my words. They licked their lips, took to my side, and tried to take my hand.
“Little brute, I don’t really think—”
I snatched it away from them. “No, it’s a good idea.”
“Yes, it’s a good—”
“Then why not do it? I an I already have a connection to him, and—”
“Little brute!” Secretary snapped, their voice cold as shattered ice. “On paper, it is a good idea, but the flipping of one group’s agent into an asset of our own is a process that takes ti. It’s not sothing you do on a whim or without preparation. Especially when you’re compromised.”
“I’m not compromised,” I said.
Secretary’s laugh was tight and bitter. They clasped my head within their hands—I could feel the bloody stain I’d made in Secretary’s palm kiss my cheek.
“You fucked him, little brute.”
“In a bathroom,” I argued.
“You had dinner together.”
“In a group,” I defended.
“He wanted to die.”
“And I didn’t kill him.” My voice was a wilting blossom. I moaned, “I’m compromised.”
Secretary nodded, “It happens to every spy or asset, at one ti or another, but you need to understand that when the heart is involved it’s just as easy to be turned as it is to turn. I don’t want to lose you to so fling who...”
Was the source of my anguish? The origin of who knows how many tears? It was true, but the thing I wanted to say…struggled to do was express that I didn’t think he was just a fling. I still don’t. Despite it all, he was my cocksure Piggy. He’d saved my life. He was the first face I saw when this Nadia opened her eyes. The gallant dork had even left a glass of water for . If I’d just said who was on the list, he’d never have tried to kill lissa. He was good. I…
“I can’t kill him,” I said. “Don’t make kill soone I love.”
Secretary’s knowing smile shattered. They searched my face, read deep into my eyes, and flicked down to my mouth—did I say what they heard?
“You don’t an that,” they stuttered.
I said, “I do, and he’s mine and I won’t destroy what’s mine nor will I let anyone else do so.”
“You’d make an enemy of the Lodge for him? Of ?” they asked.
I frad their face with my hands. Claws gently depressing their skin. Searched their face as they searched mine, and in the rich gray vagaries of their eyes I found the promise we’d made to each other. It was what we’d built our working relationship—sothing akin to a friendship, perhaps—upon. I didn’t want to toss that aside. I said as much!
“Not you, never you,” I said. “But I won’t let him go either. Not when he’s suffering and in need of soone’s help. Don’t make choose between the two of you when there’s no reason for it.”
“Nadia, what would you do if you find yourself staring into the eyes of this love of yours, and what they ask of you would see you flying beyond the precipice of your morals?”
“#404,” I said, “my heart might be compromised, but I’m not a woman of compromise. You don’t have to worry.”
“I’m your handler,” Secretary said, “I always worry.”
They let go of my face, and I followed suit releasing theirs. Manifesting their sorc-deck from the air, and with it the professionalism we’d both misplaced, they swiped at its screen pulling up a mission brief before sending it to my own. On impulse, I opened the file and found myself flipping through the details within while Secretary explained the general shape the operation would go.
“Guests for the Lurker’s event tonight are being projected to arrive at pre-selected Staircases just a bit past sunset,” they said. “The timing, likely a bid to hide amidst the ever-flowing crowds of the district’s nightlife, is also an excuse to enforce a dress code: no weapons, no armor, and everyone wears an entrance bracelet.”
I glanced from the projected image before —a hexagonal bracelet made from a cloudy mineral, sat atop black cloth with its schematics beside—to Secretary, my brow piqued.
“Aren’t those usually paper or sothing?”
Secretary’s eyes brightened and her mouth turned up at the sweet notes of innocence in what I’d said. Only to shake her head when the aftertaste of that initial joy arrived.
“Little brute, this isn’t so Old World music hall,” Secretary said. “These bracelets are sorcerous technology used everywhere from the highest diplomatic etings to the capture of the lowest Veiled Market rchant. With one on your wrist, your spiritual mass and density gets scaled down to that of the weakest soldier. While your range drops to about an inch past your skin.”
“If the terms are that strict, why would anyone wear one?”
“There’s the best part,” they explained, “wearing one of these grants you a hyper dense auric field that’ll negate Sorcery graded to your non-suppressed spiritual density. Further enhanced by the stringency of the oaths you encode them with.”
“The bracelets beco your armor,” I said.
“And the key to the party itself,” they said. “A key we’ve gotten a hold of and reproduced
“What cos after that?” I asked.
“After that,” Secretary said, “we plant a series of bombs throughout said Staircases, and a secondary sorcerous explosive inside the throne itself. Just past the party’s apex, we activate the bombs in reverse plantation order. Damaging the throne’s structure and—post our own evacuation—severing the transdinsional connection between the throne and the city. In short, we arrive, enjoy the party, and leave before its conclusion whilst making a grand exit.”
“That’s a surprisingly simple plan.”
“It is, little brute, it is…before you decided to assign us this secondary mission,” they stated. “You have only the duration of our actual objective to find and flip Sinaya into a proper asset for the Lodge. Understood?”
I mumbled my agreent, my thoughts already turned to drafting a script for what I’d say to Sinaya. The first draft included far too many recriminations—I didn’t want him to think a nag, nor overly sanctimonious. Draft number two was better, maybe because it was composed using more body language than verbal rhetoric.
“Nadia,” Secretary said, their voice a whip crack for my attention.
“Hmm, yes?” I asked.
“Do you have any questions?” they asked.
Flipping through the brief, I hurriedly composed whatever I could to return Secretary’s grace at honoring my selfishness with the appropriate seriousness toward our true purpose. Their gaze, thin and sharp, caused my thoughts to stumble.
“How do we know which Staircases to go to?” I asked. “We can’t all show up at one mural. It’d be suspicious. Right?”
They scoffed, unimpressed by my query, “It would. Lucky for us we have a diligent Psychocartography Dept. that’s already noted a significant number of egoic waves arriving at about ten murals in particular.”
“They’re only using ten,” I said, “but the brief notes there’s upwards of fifty throughout the city.”
“If I was to invite semi-loyal assets into my facilities,” they said, “I wouldn’t stretch my forces so wide by manning every potential entryway. Besides the bracelets are the key, little brute, and keys should only unlock certain doors.”
“True, but what if I had a key—to stretch the taphor—that opened the doors you didn’t want guests to access?” I teased.
Secretary rolled their eyes, but their mouth curled into that slight grin of theirs—amused at sothing in my words. Their eyes dipped down to their sorc-deck; an instruction for to do the sa, which I did, and found a ssage waiting for on my own. It read: Then I’ll be expecting you and that key to et the rest of our team at my place.
“There’s soone else going with us?” I asked.
“Yes,” #404 said, “but it’s soone you’d hardly disapprove of.”
The list of people I wouldn’t be upset working with was rather short. It wasn’t like the competitiveness of the exam had made it easier to forge new friendships. Though if my list was short, the crossover between it and Secretary’s made a grain of rice seem long as my glaive. lissa was out because she would likely balk once a task crossed her personal code. Amber and Secretary mutually loathed each other—though at this point it seed like Amber’s loathing was to the role more so than #404 specifically. Which left only…Lupe?
A drought swept through my mouth desiccating any words that could form. My fingers walked across the screen of my sorc-deck to swipe through the brief faster, faster, faster…then there, in plain type, was Lupe’s na, Court, and link. The asset designation of “Consultant” beside their na in cheeky parentheticals.
“Little brute, will this be a problem?” they asked. Their tone made it quite clear that they’d appreciate it not being so.
“No, not at all,” I lied, blatantly and, likely, horribly. “I’ll see you tonight, then.”
Without waiting for them to put together their own agreent or dismissal, I was out the door. The anxiety that crackled across my brain had polarized, and saw shooting off an ard regint’s worth of ssages to get ahold of Lupe. Inquiries as to where she was, what she was up to, her state of mind, anything that could be chiseled into a toehold for the climb I had before . Her response to the hectic brevity of my ssages was equally brief and unequally calm.
Palace of Ghosts. See you there?
Two ssages. Three words each. The punctuation didn’t give pause, but the venue did. People only went to the palaces of the Godtenders when they were desperate or emotional. Grappling with problems that only the Sorcery of a divinity could resolve. The Palace of Ghosts being a quintessential example; only those haunted by grief unending found their heads bowed before its altar. A trait, it seed, that found a worthy victim in Lupe and made convincing her of the rewards in converting Sinaya—the slayer of her people—versus killing him, into a trial that’d rival any graduation.
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