Suddenly, Bee’s vision went black at the edges. A wave of vertigo washed over her.

  “Vash…” she gasped, clutching Vashante’s arm. The worms—the infestation she had tried to ignore—chose now to surge. Her insides felt aflame. Vashante held her. Bee felt herself cradled, her cheek resting against something firm and cool. Vashante’s armoured chest.

  She could hear the beating of her heart.

  “Bee! Bee, hold on,” Vashante said, taking her close.

  Bee wasn’t sure when they had both gently lowered to the blood-stained ground. She dimly felt Vashante’s hand brush hair from her face, and she felt the warmth of Vashante’s lap as her head was laid there.

  Voices clamoured. Yonmar was at her side in an instant, checking her pulse.

  “It’s too much. The infestation—” Yonmar was saying.

  Lady Isbet barked orders for a stretcher to be brought inside.

  Slashex loomed close, his sensor humming over Bee’s face.

  “Her vitals are plummeting,” he growled. “We must make pace. Now.”

  Bee’s fading sight fixed on Vashante’s face above her. How strange and lovely, she thought, that even with plates of metal and strange lenses, Vashante’s face looked so human. Perhaps because it shone with genuine love and worry. The Eidolon’s hand was clapped over her mouth; all the bravery and stoicism she usually showed shattered.

  Bee managed a faint smile and lifted a trembling hand.

  Vashante immediately took it, squeezing it tight.

  “I’m… sorry,” Bee managed to whisper. She wasn’t even sure what for—for pushing herself too far, for the horrors unleashed, for nearly leaving Vashante again so soon after restoring her. Still, she managed a few weak words.

  “I was sent here to kill everyone,” Bee said. “And since then, I don’t know... I’ve had so many choices. And I don’t know if I made the right ones. I don’t seem to have done anything right...”

  “Hush,” Vashante soothed, pressing Bee’s hand to her heart—that new, warm heart thudding steadily under her breast. “You saved me. You saved us all. You made us stand together. There is nothing to be sorry for.”

  Bee’s vision blurred. She struggled to keep her eyes open as exhaustion and fever pulled her down. Her ears popped from the escalating pressure inside her skull. Bee jerked in Vashante’s lap as her spine seized, and she groaned involuntarily.

  “Stay… with me,” Bee pleaded softly, barely audible.

  “I’m here. I’m not leaving you,” Vashante promised, bending low. Bee felt a light pressure on her forehead—Vashante’s lips, mechanical but gentle on her skin through the grime. Bee’s heart swelled with a peaceful warmth.

  In the distance, Bee heard Jhedothar rallying the troops to move. She heard the astonished whispers as the newly raised knights shambled out of the dome behind their leader, who seemed to gain some measure of command over them at Slashex’s behest, but those sounds grew muffled. Bee heard her own gasps for air filling her ears as the world plunged icy around her, and her senses began to fail her.

  It was broken only by the buzzing of stray electrodes. The laboured, uneven breathing and clamorous steps of the Catabolites. Bee forced herself to look at them as they passed, though every instinct screamed to turn away.

  Toshtta Yew, or what had been her. Her movements were stiff, one arm still bound to her side with Sar-ek’s weight heavy on her back. Her head twitched, neck breaking under the ravenous influence of wild phage and reforming. For a terrible moment, it was held only by strands of muscle and a metal brace.

  Yet she moved.

  The eyes under her lids moved rapidly as if dreaming. Perhaps it was a mercy that they had not opened; Bee couldn’t bear to see them empty.

  Sar-ek’s partial form clung limply to Toshtta, carried along wherever she went. For an instant, Bee saw the two bodies in silhouette and thought wretchedly of the mostly lowly freaks, unfortunate enough to be shed with an extra body growing from their mass. The shape was utterly grotesque.

  Cartaxa was next. His multi-lensed eyes glowed constant green now. He stood tall but slouched, a puppet to a power that cared not for the comfort of the body. One of his legs dragged—partially rebuilt by Bee but not yet fully functional—so SepGNT had locked a brace around it. He made a low growling sound, devoid of language, as he took a lumbering step forward.

  But with a whorling, crawling shimmer of the quicksilver mass, they changed again. Their corpse bodies snapped and wrenched, mutilated as they were repurposed further, midstride.

  It was too much. Bee looked away. Then, she could only focus on the gentle cadence of Vashante’s breathing and the firm embrace holding her.

  The world quietened further.

  Bee finally let her eyes fall shut, trusting that Vashante would not let her go.

  In the darkness, she felt the rhythmic beating of Vashante’s heart against her cheek—strong, reassuring, and alive.

  I gave her that, Bee thought with a final flicker of consciousness, a heart. In turn, Vashante’s presence became the lullaby of Bee’s descent into oblivion. Bee’s world narrowed to that heartbeat and the arms around her as she slipped away into deep, dreamless black.

  Word spread like a slow pulse through the battered ranks—Jhedothar had emerged from the dome, his towering form catching the searing light of the day. Scattered across the City’s rotted surface, the remaining soldiery raised weary heads, uncertain whether to hope or fear but roused by this new call to march.

  Those survivors gathered in ragged bands, their armour scuffed and their eyes hollowed by untold days of aimlessness. Them who could withstand the star’s punishing gaze—blessed with enough genetic augmentation or by luck in their birthright to endure the scouring rays—stepped from the half-living corridors and splayed tendons that riddled the dead City surface, blinking in the fierce light. Others, whose flesh would wither beneath that sun, hid beneath leathery rags and protective gear, lurching from crude hideaways. A few still refused to leave the gloom entirely, clinging to each passing shadow, vowing to follow at dusk.

  Yet Jhedothar gave no respite. He moved with a centaurian stride, hooves striking the City’s warped ground, carrying the ruby spear in hand. Behind him, a cadre of determined commanders barked terse orders, rousing drowsy freaks from their squalid dens. They spoke in low, urgent tones, calling the battered army to reassemble.

  A tremor, first felt only in the feet, rippled across the blasted plaza. No cry heralded it. No beacon flared. Instead, a low, infrasonic thrum bled through the marrow of every corpse strewn amidst the paving. The dead—felled only days ago, some already mummified where they lay during the day-star’s all-scouring passage and the subsequent crawl by their own bodily quicksilver—hissed as their dormant augmentations flared to life. Nanite filaments, inactive until this moment, unravelled like quicksilver vines through ruptured arteries, knitting snapped pistons to bone, soldering frayed tendons to steel.

  One by one, bodies twitched. A slack-jawed gunner rose, optics flickering emerald as his ruined jaw cracked into place. Beside him, a noble guardian’s crested helm swivelled, visor clouded with dried ichor yet still locking upon Jhedothar’s crimson spear. Spinal racks ratcheted; servo-motors, half-burnt, spat sparks but found purchase; half-eaten hearts clenched around pumps of conductive gel. The City’s ruin breathed again in a thousand misshapen lungs.

  No orders were spoken. Strings unseen tugged the Catabolites into a ragged phalanx, torsos canted, limbs juddering in imperfect synchrony. Where gaps yawned—where entire limbs or heads were missing—the nanowoven mass simply bridged the void, extruding grey-silver splints that pulsed with dim, lambent light. The air curdled with the stink of ozone and old gore.

  Among Jhedothar’s living ranks, a hush fell colder than any ashen night. Veterans who had bled through a hundred campaigns found their throats too tight for oaths; new recruits wept outright, clutching charms that suddenly felt childish.

  Yet the towering Jhedothar did not falter. He raised the ruby spear, and its fractal edge caught the star’s last glare—a silent decree that none dared question. Horrified, the army stepped in behind the dead, swords and rifles levelled, shame the only shield against their revulsion.

  Thus, the host doubled itself: the living, gaunt and trembling; the dead, flawless in their obscene renewal. Together, they shambled forward, the nanite chorus chirping insectile beneath metal skin while, distant and on high, the skull-keeps of Acetyn seemed to grin wider at the spectacle below.

  Destiny had come at last to confront the old order.

  The Nesta Barshaum shuddered, their multi-jointed legs waking from the long stillness at the bidding of hands trained by the Rose of Thorns far away. Pitted metal and organic plating slid into place, pressing away layers of dust. They ground out a heavy pulse, turning their cannons far downrange, oriented toward the looming front of Acetyn.

  The vast, skull-shaped keeps that haunted the horizon signalled their next destination—those hallowed Pate Gardens where the Lords of Bones was said to oversee his necrotic domain.

  One by one, the survivors fell in line, ragged but resolute. Some coughed in the acrid air, and others struggled under patched clothes that barely shielded them from the withering sun. A hush of renewed purpose threaded through them. The battered fortress-limbs of the Nesta Barshaum lurched forward, their automated innards squealing, giant legs seizing battered ground with each stride.

  And so they marched, the reformed host of Lady Bhaeryn—though few knew precisely what fate awaited them at the City’s forefront. Jhedothar led the column with unwavering composure, eyes fixed on the horizon, while the unstoppable, sun-scorched day forced the unprotected to scamper for fleeting cover or be left behind until nightfall.

  A long and difficult march beneath the endless vaulting heavens of the true sky.

  That insipid and all-burning terror of the day-star setting behind them.

  The promise of Paradise, be it above or below, carried them ever onwards. Ever onwards in the face of that malign lineage that demanded their eternal servitude. Ever onwards with the blessing of that self-same bloodline towards liberation.

  With a thunder of footfalls and grinding gears, the host moved. At the vanguard trundled the surviving Nesta Barshaum—the gargantuan fortress-creatures resembling titanic crustaceans of metal and ceramic plating. Once built to breach city walls in ages past, only a handful of these venerable behemoths remained operational. Their many legs, thick as towers, crushed debris to gravel and pulp as they lurched forward, carrying artillery batteries upon their broad backs. Behind them marched the living troops, weary but determined, flanked and followed by the tireless Catabolite horde that neither despaired nor felt agony, here exposed to the endless downpour of celestial radiation.

  When evening draped the land in a bruised sky, the Nesta Barshaum thundered to a standstill. Their multi-limbed chassis had advanced for hours, long enough to position themselves to face the looming shapes of Acetyn’s vast skull keeps. Now, under the haze of dusk, they unleashed a barrage unlike any seen in a thousand years.

  The massive artillery, polished with old star-metal plating and bound in sinew, roared in unison. Fire spewed from their muzzles in brilliant arcs, scorching a violent orange sky before slamming into the kilometres-tall fortresses. Cement foundations, metallic bone, and silicon flesh tore open in wide upheavals, columns of newly pulverised ruin cresting like tidal waves.

  The roar echoed across the City’s entire body, bellowing into every crevice and corridor.

  Far below, Jhedothar stood upon a vantage of twisted City flesh. His eyes narrowed, bestial skull set in emotionless determination as each shot hammered the old keeps.

  Once—this domain, the Pate Gardens—was considered a sanctified cradle where the Lord of Bone’s throne stood, and the old order reigned.

  Jhedothar watched as aeons of worship and the architecture of its regime were pulverised to dust under the unstoppable shells of the Nesta Barshaum. He offered no expression of triumph, only the stoic calm of an executioner completing his task.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Shell after shell detonated. Concrete spires, half-living buttresses of organic cartilage, and integrated systems that once pulsed with biomechanical life disintegrated into flaming debris. The shockwaves rattled what remained of Acetyn’s labyrinthian midsections. Clouds of dust and acrid smoke churned into the darkening sky, blotting out the day star’s last rays.

  Night came as the devastation continued, bringing with it a new wave of survivors who had hidden from the harsh daylight. At the helm of this nocturnal throng strode Lady Isbet Hash, her retinue in tow. Haggard freaks—rag-wrapped creatures who cowered from the sun—emerged at last from the labyrinth of decaying corridors just below. Staggering to join the host, they bore witness to the Barshaum’s relentless fury against the once-holy stronghold.

  Columns of dust and ash towered high, speckled red by the last glimmers of twilight. Even under the thick smog, all could see the muzzle flare—and feel the ground tremble in unison. The bombardment showed no sign of halting, the Nesta Barshaum’s monstrous cannons methodically pounding the very nidus of civilisation within Acetyn. With each thunderous blow, the horizon lit anew, culminating in a rising conflagration that set the ancient domain alight in flickering gloom.

  Thus, under that ragged, dust-choked sky, the new alliance of Lady Bhaeryn’s battered army, Lady Hash’s retinue, and those freaks who endured the day’s heat converged at last. Their dark pilgrimage found them on the cusp of obliterating an icon of the old world. And Jhedothar, unwavering at the Nesta Barshaum’s helm, oversaw the armageddon as his last grim, inevitable duty.

  Thus did the army of the Last Lady—diminished yet unbroken—advance on the ruined keeps of Acetyn. After many hours of siege, it was time for the advance.

  As they drew within range, a chorus of klaxon howls erupted from the fortresses. The cracked and wounded skulls awakened to war.

  From slits and pores in the shattered bone ramparts emerged grotesque living weapons wielded by the Ossein Guardians, personal soldiers of the Lord of Bones. Sculpted and vat-grown alike, these guardians emerged from their fortresses, charged with murder. They hefted their arms with unnatural strength and foul discipline, figures of pallid sinew and chitin leaping down onto the approaches.

  In moments, the ground before the keeps teemed with defenders—an army of pale, humanoid things with razored bone blades for arms or charged lances, their masks locked in rictus grins. At their head stood standard-bearers in tattered grey cloaks, the bleached sigil of the Lord of Bones unrecognisable by design, scoured by the ages. The defenders rallied with violent cries.

  The assault began in earnest. Jhedothar raised his shining spear, and the foremost Nesta, old Barshaum Neszek, planted its spiked legs and let loose a devastating barrage from the cannon grafted into its carapace. At its flank, another volley of artillery from the Nesta Barshaum answered the challenge. Shells cut howling arcs through the sooty air and smashed into the nearest skull keep’s brow. The impact shook the ground; chips of ancient bone exploded outward. One shell punched clean through an eye socket, blowing apart a guard tower within.

  The defenders retaliated swiftly. From the gaping maw-gate of that same keep came a beam of searing light, disgorged from deep in the fortress’s throat. The directed energy scythed across the plain, incinerating a dozen of Jhedothar’s front-line troops in a heartbeat, leaving only shadows etched in ash. Another keep, further along the line, belched forth a stream of caustic bile from vents along its ramparts—a pestilent green torrent that rained down on an advancing cluster of Catabolites. The living-dead things faltered, flesh sloughing from their cybernetics under the burning enzyme, but still, they pushed forward, heedless of pain or dissolution.

  Jhedothar gritted his teeth as the forces met and slaughter filled the horizon.

  “Concentrate fire on the nearest gate!” he roared, signalling all artillery to focus.

  Under his direction, the Catabolite soldiers surged ahead of the living, soaking up the brunt of the defenders’ fury. Biocannon bolts of sharpened bone and sinew thudded into their flesh without slowing those puppets. As casualties mounted on both sides, the ground grew slick with cloying oils, steaming blood, roiling quicksilver, and molten marrow.

  Barshaum Neszek and its brother-engines advanced step by ponderous step, each footfall sending tremors through the bone-littered soil. With mechanical precision, they fired volley after volley into the targeted keep. Cracks spiderwebbed across the gargantuan skull facade.

  At last, with an earth-shaking groan, a section of the wall gave way. One of the gate’s massive teeth—a colossal fang-shaped buttress—shattered under the onslaught and collapsed inward.

  A great cheer, tinged with hysteria, went up from the attackers as a breach appeared. The jaw-gate of the keep hung askew, half broken from its hinges of cartilage and metallic bone. Seizing the moment, Jhedothar signalled the charge. Catabolites swarmed toward the breach in unthinking obedience, scrambling over rubble and through the billowing dust cloud. Behind them came Lady Hash’s vanguard of mortal soldiers, voices raised in an ululating war cry.

  Suddenly, the fractured fortress groaned with the sonorous torment of a dying beast. The sound erupted from deep within its structure, resonating through marrow vaults. With that uncanny moan came a torrent of vile fluid. From the breached wall gushed a flood of thick, yellow-grey pus and syrupy preservatives, the ancient stock used to anoint and preserve the lifeless realm. Now unleashed, it poured out as if the great skull itself had been mortally wounded and bled not blood but rot.

  And a truth exposed. For when the Wire-Witch lay claim to this corrupted palatial expanse in her Godhead, her means were no less profane than the gnashing and relentless Catabolites that now tore at its desiccated flesh.

  The charging soldiery were swept off their feet by the sheer volume of the ooze. Catabolites closest to the breach were caught in the tidal wave of rot; they vanished beneath its opaque surface only to rise again moments later, dripping clots of gelatinous decay. Living soldiers retreated, gagging at the stench of chemical death. Even Jhedothar, safely back behind the artillery line, staggered at the sight. It was as though they had lanced a boil long-festered, releasing a purulence that had no place in the waking world.

  For a moment, no man or monster moved. All watched in horrified fascination as the viscous flood pooled across the plain, filling craters and shell holes with a shimmering toxic lake. Some among the superstitious whispered that the City itself was long dead and the profane secrets of the Lord of Bones were exposed, with its embalming spirits so spilt. Others murmured that perhaps this gruesome outpouring was a final expulsion of corruption—the City purging itself of ancient evils at last, with the help of their final intervention. Whether the gaping wound they’d torn in Acetyn’s defences was a mortal one or a cleansing catharsis, none could say. The steam of that hot preservative soup rose in reeking coils, blurring the boundary between City and sky as the battle lulled.

  When the wail of the stricken fortress finally faded, an eerie quiet fell. The first skull keep had been breached and silenced. The others looming behind it did not immediately continue the fight; perhaps the defenders within were stunned by the fall of their City’s first head or afraid that more artillery would crack their own walls and unleash similar fates. In that uneasy pause, a voice rang out from atop the shattered gate.

  “Parley!” cried a herald, a figure silhouetted in swirling smoke. He bore a tall standard of the Lord of Bones—bleached to the utmost—raised high for all to see. “Cease fire! Parley, in the name of the Lord!”

  Jhedothar raised a fist, signalling his artillery crews and soldiers to hold. Commands issued across the plain. The fighting fell to the still, the last vestiges of murder coming to a slow half.

  From the ruins of the gatehouse, a contingent of the defenders emerged: pale footmen with arms outstretched to show they carried no weapons (though their blade-like forearms could hardly be sheathed). At their forefront strode a singular sibilant figure draped in a cloak of stitched skin and dark star metal armour etched with ossuary motifs. On one gauntlet-clad hand, he wore wicked needle-like blades, and in the other, he carried the truce standard.

  Jhedothar knew at once who this must be: the Hand of Zolgomere, the Lord of Bones’ most righteous killer and the personal enforcer of his will. The Hand’s visage was obscured by a helm fashioned from the skull of some colossal hound; its empty eye sockets were ashimmer with cold blue witch-light. He moved with the confident gait of one who has never tasted defeat—despite the ruin around him.

  Jhedothar stepped forward from his lines, motioning for a few of his own to accompany him. Lady Isbet Hash fell in at his right, regal and grave in her battle-worn dress, her family’s blue-and-sable colours tattered and begrimed. Slashex crept to Jhedothar’s left flank, the many-limbed, mechanical prophet wrapping his frayed cloak tighter about his metal frame. The daemon master’s blind faceplate betrayed nothing, but faint clicks and whirs emanating from his body spoke of restless calculations within. Behind them, at a respectful distance, two Catabolite honour guards, the Knights Consort fallen, Toshtta, Sar-ek, and Cartaxa lumbered as silent sentinels, their posture grotesquely imitating the discipline they’d once had in life.

  They met the Hand of Zolgomere halfway between the armies, upon a field littered with bone shards and steaming pools of preservative.

  For a long moment, none spoke.

  The Hand’s contingent of Ossein Guardians regarded the living and undead envoys with expressions of blank hatred, their lips pulled back from black teeth in permanent deathly grins.

  The Catabolite guards behind Jhedothar stared back with eyes that saw nothing at all.

  The Hand of Zolgomere seemed to recognise what remained of Cartaxa’s hollow gaze. He turned away with a seething hiss.

  It was the Lady Hash who broke the silence.

  “We acknowledge your call for parley,” she said coolly, her voice carrying across the desolation. “No warrior here wishes to spill more blood needlessly.”

  The Hand of Zolgomere tilted his skull-helm regarding her. His voice was reptilian and callous when he spoke, with a slithering tongue.

  “And yet you have already spilt an ocean,” he replied. “You trespass on sacred ground, defiling what should never have been touched. The Lord of Bones still reigns in Acetyn. His law is absolute. In his name, I order you to withdraw your host and surrender. Your rebellion ends here.”

  Jhedothar’s fingers tightened around the haft of his ruby spear, but he held his tongue, allowing Lady Hash to answer first.

  The tall noblewoman inclined her head ever so slightly, a gesture of respect tempered with defiance.

  “We march not as rebels, but as liberators,” she answered. “If we have wrought desecration, it is only to break the yoke of a greater evil. These years last, the halls of greater Acetyn have darkened with fell omens. You know of whom I speak.”

  “The Pilgrim,” the Hand said, with something like a snarl beneath his helm. The witch-light in those hollow eyes flared. “He whom we welcomed as salvation. He whom your rabble now seeks to slander.”

  “My shape, my kin.” The Hand’s host spoke in unison. Their collective voices thumped against the sodden ground.

  The Hand then continued.

  “The Pilgrim’s coming was foretold by the Wire-Witch herself. And though he has strayed from our sight for a time, we remain faithful. The Pilgrim will lead us to Paradise. Your blasphemous war against him will be your doom.”

  At this, Jhedothar could contain himself no longer. He stepped forward, allowing his full imposing height to loom even against the Hand’s fearsome figure.

  “Your precious Pilgrim is a lie,” Jhedothar spat. “A cannibal and a butcher masquerading as a savior.”

  He pointed the shining ruby blade of his spear at the Hand.

  “Where is he, this noble redeemer, when your bretherin lay dead? Where is he now, as your keeps fall and the City itself emits as poison from a corpse? I’ll tell you: wallowing in the very filth we just unleashed, feasting on Acetyn’s suffering!”

  Each word dripped with barely restrained contempt. Jhedothar’s accusations rang across the field, and the Hand of Zolgomere stood motionless as a statue. Behind the skull helm, perhaps his face blanched or twisted in anger—it was impossible to tell. But Lady Hash noticed, with a keen eye, that the knuckles of the Hand’s gauntlet tightened at Jhedothar’s tirade. Seeds of doubt, perhaps, had been planted.

  “You speak treason,” the Hand said at last, though his tone lacked some of its earlier conviction. “Lies born of desperation. The Pilgrim of the Axiamat is the noble patriarch of our Lord. He is a progenitor in the real, as truly deific as the Immortal herself. He would never—”

  “Never what?” Slashex interrupted softly.

  The mechanical cultist had been silent until now, half-hidden in the folds of his cloak. At the sound of his voice, both Jhedothar and Lady Hash tensed, wary of what he might say. Slashex cocked his head, the smooth, featureless plate over his eyes belying the sly smile at his crooked lip.

  “Never betray his people?” He continued. “Never become the very monstrosity he was summoned to banish?”

  The Hand bristled, turning the hollow gaze of his helm upon the cybernetic figure. “Mind your wicked tongue, acolyte. I know what you are—”

  “Do you?” Slashex’s tone was almost playful, undercut by a metallic rasp. “I am but a humble advisor. And I merely pose a question. Tell me, Hand of Zolgomere… in your heart, have you not felt it? The faint tug of unseen strings, even as you carry out your Lord’s commands?”

  Slashex took a single step forward, and it seemed for an instant that the shadows of his tattered robes reached with him.

  “Perhaps not. But I suspect your master has.” The blank metal plane of Slashex’s sensing device tilted with a tip of his head as if tasting the air. “The Wire-Witch weaves in the darkness of the Ossein Basilica’s vaults. Who can say whose will dances at the end of her strings?”

  At the mention of the Wire-Witch, the Hand’s helm tipped sharply, a sudden tension rippling through his imposing frame. The blue witch-light in his eye sockets flared, then dimmed to a guttering glow. A long silence stretched between the two parties, broken only by the distant crackle of burning bone and the wet flood of the oozing breach behind them.

  Jhedothar saw the uncertainty creeping into the Hand’s stance. He fought to keep the triumph from his bestial voice.

  “We do not seek conflict with the Lord of Bones, nor with his faithful,” Jhedothar said, seizing the moment. He kept his tone measured now, tempering his earlier fury with reason. “Our quarrel lies only with the false prophet who has led this realm to ruin. Let us pass, and we will deal with the Pilgrim ourselves. If he is true and righteous, as you believe, then he can face us and prove it. But if he is the horror we know him to be… then we will end his threat, for all our sakes.”

  Lady Hash inclined her head in agreement. “Surely the Lord of Bones would not object to an enemy of Acetyn being destroyed, no matter the lineage, and no matter by whose hand,” she added icily. “We will not disturb your precious Basilica beyond what necessity dictates. All we ask is passage for a small party. The rest of our host can remain here, outside the holy grounds.”

  The Hand of Zolgomere regarded them each in turn: the fallen Knights Tyrant turned Knights Consort with ambition smouldering in his eyes, the noblewoman with reason on her tongue and intrigue on her mind, and the acolyte of his Lord’s witch-wife who had sown doubt like poison.

  He turned and gazed back at the towering silhouette of the Ossein Basilica visible beyond the shattered walls of the first keep—its great bone spires threatening to pierce the leaden sky.

  Within those walls, the Pilgrim waited.

  At length, the Hand lowered his head.

  “The Pate Gardens lie between the skull keeps and the Ossein Basilica,” he said slowly. “I will permit your force to enter the Gardens under truce to shelter them from the day star. There, at the foot of the Basilica, you will halt. Only a small delegation—armed, unarmed, it does not matter against Him—may approach the Basilica gates. The rest of this host will go no further.”

  Jhedothar allowed himself a tight smile.

  “That is acceptable,” he replied. “We agree to your terms.”

  Lady Hash stepped forward, extending a soft hand. After a tense pause, the Hand of Zolgomere gripped it briefly in confirmation. His gauntlet was cold, made from interlocking star-metal that scraped against the skin of her hands.

  “Fail in this and it will mean all of our deaths,” the Hand warned quietly so that only the Lady Hash, Jhedothar, and Slashex would hear.

  The Lady Hash answered him with a silent nod.

  So it was that the pact was struck under the gaze of both armies and the silent, sundered eyes of Acetyn itself.