Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

As Wood comes to a close, Eko runs into a little tiny small problem in that she cannot in fact contact Orange Blossom, which puts a bit of a blocker on her attempts to get her to help with the whole ‘dealing with the Shahbanu’ thing. She doesn’t know any spells that can find the woman, and she sort of maybe sort of forgot to find out how to find her. She did the jobs she was paid to do up in the Scavenger Lands, then ran out on her when she was done and maybe sort of didn’t get any way to talk to her if she needed to.

It’s probably all Yuu’s fault. Everyone should know that Eko isn’t good at remembering things.

As a result, the fact that one late afternoon when she is perfectly innocently lurking around in the naib’s palace looking for ways to steal spells or interesting shiny things from him without getting caught… well, it’s probably Fate that she hears what is definitely Orange Blossom’s voice.

Actually no, she’s aware it’s not Fate. It’s definitionally not Fate. Because Fate isn’t cruel or crude enough to tell a beautiful graceful maiden like herself what to do, and also people like Mama aren’t bound to it. So it’s not Fate that Orange Blossom showed up here anyway. It’s probably the narrative, which is favouring the lovely heroine Eko. As it well should.

She’s in the guise of one of Ney’s Blades at the moment, so she wastes no time in bouncing towards the source of the voice, slipping round a couple of corners, briefly running up a stark white wall to avoid another of those totally unfair not-clanky-when-they-should-be cleaning automata and cartwheeling down a short flight of marble stairs... mostly because she can, really, and there’s nobody watching so she might as well. She darts backstage as she gets close enough to hear words, though, stepping out of the narrative as just another unimportant local mercenary moving at a painfully slow human-like jog as they go from one post to another, nothing to see here, don’t worry about it.

The voices are coming from upstairs, up in the secure areas where highlander mercenaries - even the ones in the employment of Ney Adami - wouldn’t be let in. But those pipes that the naib ran through all the walls carry sound much better than even he realises. Ney knows, because he told Eko not to ruin a good thing by letting it slip that the pipes can leak information even if they’re so well made that they’d never leak water.

The voices are a little distorted, and lose a lot of the high register, but the voice is still clear enough for Eko to pick out the conversation.

“-oh, trust me, friend, while Taym is playing hard to get, he’s holding out for more. That’s all. He’s aware of the situation. He’s just aware of what people like me or you can do. He doesn’t want to be trapped in an oath that’ll cause him problems later.” That isn’t Orange Blossom. That’s... oh, what was her name? Zahra Rakeei, that was it! See, that’s why having her dramatically introduce herself as the foreign minister was so important. But Eko can only congratulate herself so much because then Orange Blossom is speaking.

“That’s just as well. I’m also aware how valuable good relations with your fine Deliberate can be. Of course, if you could put a little more pressure on him to let me know what he wants, I’m sure I would be very generous to you. My friend.”

Drama! Conspiracy! Politics! Eko nods solidly. Mama would probably enjoy this a lot if she was here, especially when she finds out that the foreign minister of Taym’s deliberative is someone that Orange Blossom has her hooks into. Abandoning even the pretence of going about Bladely business, she jogs up and down the empty corridor, throwing in a few twirls for good measure. Though on second thought; loitering, espionage and athletics are the kind of thing Ney approves of on general principle, so this might count as Bladely business after all. Still, the point isn’t to pass as being just an innocent little mercenary when there’s nobody around at the moment to act for; the point is to give herself some time to think.

Specifically, she needs to think about how she’s going to play this. Obviously she’ll be talking to Orange Blossom - who her brilliant understanding of the narrative has let her find just as she told Ney and Zanyi she could. But is she gonna tell Ney about Orange Blossom being in contact with Little Miss Friendly Foreign Minister? The naib obviously knows, so it’s not like it’s a big under-the-table secret… but will he have told Ney? Hmm, hmm, possibly not - in which case Eko could earn some big bucks by bringing it to Ney’s attention so he could look clever by already knowing if it comes up. But on the other hand, it’d also be super funny to catch him out with it - plus, if he finds out Orange Blossom is right here, he might make some mean and totally untrue comments about Eko only having gotten in contact with her by luck or something.

Hmm. Hmmmmm. A tricky dilemma, to be sure. Eko runs a thoughtful vertical circuit of the corridor, bouncing lithely up the wall and across the ceiling before ricocheting back down the other side, then draws Örömi Windcutter and gives her a contemplative twirl. Her pretty, elegant, beautifully sharp five-wave kris that was her birthing-gift from Big Mama has no helpful commentary to offer, except for the ever-present reminder that stabbing her way through her problems and cutting through anything in her path is always an option.

… huh. Eko hums to herself as that sparks an idea. It’s not like she couldn’t come up with a fun and interesting reason for being here if she went up to surprise Orange Blossom right now. And Zahra Rakeei is apparently clever and witty and sounds like she’d be interesting to talk to. Ah, but on the other hand, it’s a super secure area blah blah blah and they might set off another of the naib’s stupid alarms if she just pops out to surprise them and then she’d have to run away again and Ney would make annoying comments. Ugh. Fine. Listening to the rest of their conversation it is. She can follow Bloss when she leaves.

Settling herself down on a balcony as the sun descends towards the horizon, kicking her big boots around to make time go faster, Eko listens in to a conversation that is being very thoughtless and inconsiderate in how it’s not jam packed with fun secrets. They’re talking now about a party they went to and the foreign minister is complementing Orange Blossom’s necklace and they’re talking about people whose names Eko doesn’t recognise, blah blah blah-

There’s someone else in the room with them. Someone who hasn’t said a word. Someone who is big, very big, bigger than Vali, and from the way their breath rasps they’re wearing armour.

From the way their breath rasps, those aren’t human lungs. They have gills, too. If Eko had to guess, that’s a demonic bodyguard of Orange Blossom. Or maybe something more. She’s aware that Orange Blossom has her own souls and the implication is that there’s more than just Saride out there.

Well well well, as the szilf said to the soldier who fell down three cleverly disguised watering holes in a row. It was definitely a good decision to hang back, because this is probably Orange Blossom’s version of Eko. Not in the sense of being her joy and fun and whimsy, but if they’re the one she chose to be her bodyguard into the heart of a Solar empire, they’re probably the best fighter she’s got - and as Haneyl’s ability to do bureaucracy and paperwork or Calesco’s skill with a bow or Rathan’s ability to tell one side of a boat from the other all show, just because an Infernal can’t do something doesn’t mean their souls can’t. Orange Blossom’s own relative lack of stabbiness doesn’t mean her killing-soul won’t be… well, still not as good as Eko, obviously, but certainly strong enough to pose a real challenge.

(Which does raise the question of where they were on the trip across Cecelyne that Orange Blossom hired Eko for. Maybe guarding something back in the Scavenger Lands? Something to remember for later - and just to be sure she does, Eko pulls out a ribbon and scrawls herself a quick note. She can tell Yuu to remind her to follow up on it after she’s done here.)

The topic has shifted somewhat. “... of course, Taym is reaching out to them. A mercenary band with no fewer than three more Sun-chosen is something that Malra - or, rather, Taira - can use,” says Zahra Rakeei. “All the heroes of the Sun should be welcomed to the Neo-Deliberative. And it’s more... convenient if we’re not reliant purely on the Jackal. It’s not like we can replace him - but maybe he’d be more willing to do his job if he didn’t feel so irreplaceable.”

“Well, maybe I can help make them more amenable to joining the Neo-Deliberative,” Orange Blossom replies, and Eko can hear the smile in her voice. It’s a smile her Mama wears sometimes, and it is - via the wishy-washy wibbly wobbly inheritance thingie they have going on - a smile that often finds its place on Haneyl’s face. “Thank you for passing that along. Friend.”

“No, thank you. I swear, Taym doesn’t realise that I can’t be in two places at once. If he wants me down in Douzha, I can’t be over in the Ceruni lands dealing with those swamp barbarians. I’m sure you’ll benefit nicely from whatever you get out of them, but I don’t need three Sun-chosen warlords setting themselves up over the Ceruni either.”

Feh, thinks Eko. If they think they’re going to pressure Ney into being less lazy just by bringing in competition, they’re going to be rudely surprised. She and Aunty Zanyi are gonna steal him on behalf of mama. Also, he’d keep being lazy on principle even if they didn’t. But still, a three-Solar mercenary band sounds like something that’d be worth keeping an eye on if she had any plans to stay in the region. Could be that the naib is gonna wind up in charge of Taira after all, if he keeps recruiting this aggressively. Give or take a certain level of subversion by Orange Blossom. Which means Eko should probably let mama know, ‘cause that’ll shift the balance of things back in Hell a little further.

She scrawls herself another ribbon-note and hops to her feet, fed up with staying in one spot kicking her heels. She can’t afford to leave the listening-line of the pipes, but she starts circling around as best she can while staying close enough to them to keep tabs on the conversation above, manoeuvring herself closer to Orange Blossom’s most likely way out. And she also starts considering her opening while she’s at it. She wants to talk to Orange Blossom, not start a fight with her stabby-soul bodyguard.

The conversation as far as Eko can tell doesn’t have any more interesting plot revelations, but then again they’re mostly talking about people who Eko doesn’t know and drinking wine. Eko was told in no uncertain terms that Orange Blossom is like Mama and Haneyl so wine made from plants won’t get her tipsy, but maybe Zahra doesn’t know that.

Still, it’s boring waiting here in the shiny white and gold halls, just kicking her legs and pretending to be a background character, and Eko is very glad when Orange Blossom is all “I really must be off for now, but trust me, darling, of course I’m coming to your party” and Zahra is all “I hate to see you go, darling, blah blah blah”.

Urgh! Can’t they just skip over those bits and get where they need to go?

There are only really so many doors in and out of the palace, and even fewer doors that someone who’s trying to avoid being too obvious and visible about visiting can afford to use. Rather than hang around waiting for them to take forever saying goodbye, Eko darts around a corner and along a service corridor, bails out through a window, circles around a bit and finds a good wall to lean against that’s within sight of the exit but not so close as to obviously be lying (leaning?) in wait.

After rooting around in her various hidden pockets for a bit - oh, hey, that’s where her second-best dice set went - she produces her cute spiky red-and-black bandalore and starts entertaining herself with a variety of fun and whimsical tricks. She’s not just passing the time. It’d be a bad idea to hang out in her true form so close to the naib’s palace, but this particular little toy was the one she’d been using when mama first introduced her to Orange Blossom in Hell. And she’d also used it to cave in the skull of a glass-eyed man-fox on the way across the Desert while it was midway through leaping at her client’s throat from its hiding place in the sand. Hopefully Orange Blossom will recognise it and spare Eko the tedious, careful process of approaching her without setting off her bodyguard and starting a fight.

Orange Blossom’s heels click on the white stone floor like talons. As she makes her appearance around the corner, Eko can’t help but sigh a little. While obviously her taste is wrong, being far too much in favour of sleek lines and with a shocking lack of ribbons and frills, she at least owns her wrongness rather than cowarding out. Her high-cut dress is tight fitting, the white silk largely obscured by a great tiger embroidered in indigo and gold thread, and the dress is belted in with a lavish obi that sparkles with diamonds and starmetal weave. Her draped coat is spotless midnight black, cut to perfection, with a deep indigo lining. And of course she has a whole array of necklaces and bangles and bracelets, and none of them are re-used from things Eko has seen her wearing before.

Behind her trails a brute of a man, face flattened by a repeatedly broken nose, ears cauliflowers, and his shiny scalp scarred again and again. He looms over her. Eko is not fooled, though, for she can hear the wet rasp of those inhuman lungs and the chime of the moonsilver magic he wears. This is a false face, but unlike her own tricks this is not native to him; this is some stolen ancient magic that lets him pass himself off as human. And it is a thin pretence, because she can feel there are two people in front of her who are stronger than her, not just one. The crushing pressure of the spiritual morass walking through the halls of this place makes her skin itch.

She pauses mid-trick, leaving her bandalore to keep spinning halfway through ladder escape in the web of string laced between her fingers. She barely even pays attention to keeping it balanced as time slows in stillness, letting her get her surprise and offence out behind her cute but dangerously revealing half-mask.

Because how the heck is this guy stronger than her? That’s not meant to be allowed! What has Orange Blossom been feeding him? Eko and her siblings are stronger than that damn monkey and the other souls born from mama’s less intense passions, so either Orange Blossom is totally insane about something to the degree that it probably outweighs her survival instincts, or she’s been powering him up somehow. And if it’s the latter, Eko would quite like to know what the trick is so she can use it herself! She’s not gonna get left behind by the likes of this thing!

Her bandalore hops the string onto the next line down, and she completes the catch automatically, collapsing the net spun between her fingers and then pulling it apart into another ladder. A tilt of her head, a waggle of her fingers and a flashy bounce of the spiked bandalore sends a message that only Orange Blossom can decipher; an impish greeting and a request to chat that elide the simmering outrage she’s feeling underneath.

Orange Blossom ignores her. Or at least that’s what it seems like. “We’re heading to the Mid-Lake Great Eagle,” Orange Blossom says to her companion. “I need something to eat after all that. Something good. And I definitely appreciate their spiced tea - with plenty of honey. The reservation is under the name of Jamosh Serid.”

Her hulking companion grunts. But Eko gets the message from a woman who reacted in mild disdain (like some bitterness-loving plebian) at the sight of how much sugar Eko added to her drinks. Eko also knows about the Mid-Lake Great Eagle, one of the better class of coffee shops in Malra, and so she makes her way there separately from Orange Blossom.

It is located on one of the artificial islands within the mountain lake that Malra is built around, though as far as Eko’s been able to tell the coffee shop is one of the older structures and so is in fact located on the original small islands that pre-date the more recent expansion. The structure is an old brick compound, a stepped pyramid with wide, shallow steps that have been turned into cultivated gardens where seats under painted canvas shades sit in close proximity to coal-heated braziers that take the edge off the cold as the sun sets over the western mountains in the valley. It is prosperous enough that there are even a few of the much more ancient stone-and-crystal lanterns of the dragon kings that once dwelt in this land which have been mounted to give eternal cool blue light. The staff are young and attractive and the guests here are old and wealthy. Such is the way of the world.

But because it is the way of the world, no one notices one more elderly, wealthy customer, and if they should say they’re here with a reservation under the name of Jamosh Serid they can of course be quickly shown up to the one of the private booths within the structure. And this is a very private booth, because behind a lavish ash modesty screen Eko can hear the power of a blasphemous icon much like the ones Mama builds to hide places.

She pokes her head around to see what it is. The statue isn’t much like her mother’s stylistically; a statue of a gravid woman in painted marble which is extremely lewd in every way. Eko feels the hot blush rising and quickly turns away. That isn’t a demon she recognises, so it is either a soul of Orange Blossom, some soul of Kimbery that never comes to the conventicle, or possibly even a rendition of Kimbery herself. Maybe the latter, given the way those spread legs are turning into fish tails and then into waves. It is definitely not something Eko wants to think about and she’d really rather forget it, but she can’t. Not anymore. So instead she’s going to have to have this whole conversation with Orange Blossom knowing that shameful display is behind one thin screen.

Eko pokes her head around to check to see if she had misunderstood, and no, she had not. Seeing it again, she can in fact see even more disgusting lewd shameful details. She definitely thinks less of Orange Blossom for this. Mama is a pure and innocent ingenue by comparison, who would never decorate her lairs with such filth!

She slips into the booth and lets her role unravel once she’s out of sight of the rest of the shop. She can be herself around Orange Blossom, and she’s not going to play a generic old rich person for this conversation, especially not when Bloss knowing who she really is underneath it will punch it full of holes and make her bleed. Also, this way she gets to show off her pretty clothes. Today she’s wearing her wind-jacket, the knee-length duster of white oilcloth decorated with blood-red wind patterns that get denser and denser on the way down to its lacy hem. The highlander-style ruffled dress she’s wearing under it is red as well; a dozen different shades ranging from pinkish to maroon in a layered and dappled pattern, all adorned with gorgeous frills, flounces and ribbons - as well as a number of glittering blood-rubies from the Ruin. Her mask - carved of petrified wood - has two butterfly wings that curve back from either side of her face, and the painted eye designs on them seem to shift and look around the room as she curtseys to its occupants.

Who turn out not to be there yet, because she beat them here by ages. So now she has to wait for them to show up.

Ugh. Time for more bandalore tricks to pass the time.

It takes longer than Eko would have liked for Orange Blossom to arrive, who’s soooooo slow. At least when she does, she gets right to the point, settling down opposite Eko with the lurking figure of her demonic bodyguard at the door. “Are you representing the South West or are you here on your own behalf? And are you buying or selling?”

Eko gives a flourishing salute. She’s here on her own behalf, and she’s selling, she confides - both information and her aid on a super-secret special mission. A specific one, that is, not an open-ended offer. She’s got some juicy details on an upcoming opportunity that Orange Blossom will want to invest in, and can offer her services as one of the Director of the East’s elite agents in doing so.

Sitting back in her seat, Orange Blossom reaches into an inner pocket of her coat, and retrieves a pack of cigarillos. She lights one of the fine, thin sticks with a sleek little contraption of red jade, and takes a deep inhalation before sitting back. “Make your case. And my time is valuable. Don’t waste it,” she says, blue smoke escaping her mouth as she exhales.

Eko snaps both sets of fingers, turning them into pointing fingers aimed at Orange Blossom, then flicks a wrist to splay her fingers. There are five major powers in Taira, she indicates. One of them, is of course Orange Blossom herself, and Eko gives the ludicrously wealthy Hellish Directorate that sprawls across the whole of the East a respectful nod. An eyeroll and a thumb jabbed southward acknowledges the witch-queen of Pershwa, who has to be counted among the big names even if she’s far away and not really relevant to this conversation, and also Henna II of Douzha, who isn’t interested in being shahbanu and just wants independence for her city and so also isn’t that important right now. The fourth is Malra, given its due place as Eko’s hair spreads to gesture at their rich surroundings and the city they sit in. A mischievous wink congratulates the Fiend for already having her hooks in the rulers of a nascent Solar empire.

Then Eko’s nose wrinkles, and she splays out her fingers again, this time dropping her wrist to wave them pointing down. The fifth big power - or maybe the first - is the woman who currently holds the title of shahbanu, murdered young but Chosen by the icky gross powers of the Underworld and the Dead. Witch-queens are acceptable enough in general terms, even if they’re suspicious sorts who probably cheat at cards; kicking out imperial administrators and refusing to pay taxes is a sure sign of a free spirit that should always be encouraged; a neo-Deliberative friendly to Hell’s envoys is as much potential asset as potential threat, and Hell’s own Directorate is obviously all to the good - but the rotting, still-moving corpse of an empire that squats on Terema pays its allegiance to ancient ghosts and a vengeful dead woman. Super uncute, Eko nods firmly, and smashes a fist into her palm. Demons and the Dead have never gotten along all that well, and even if Orange Blossom has wormed a few tendrils into Terema, it doesn’t sound like Sabah II is at all inclined to listen to outside interests.

Sooooo, Eko concludes, wiggling her fingers and tapping Örömi’s hilt (she’d pull her out, but pulling a knife under the eyes of that bodyguard would probably result in violence). She’s willing to bet Orange Blossom would quite like it if the shahbanu got taken off the board, since that’d just leave her with a foot in Malra’s door, probably-already-subverted Douzha and maybe-some-progress-made-there Pershwa as competing factors for control over Taira as a whole. And Eko happens to be central to a plot that stands a decent chance of killing her if they can get just one more powerful asset involved.

Orange Blossom listens, and exhales another cloud of perfumed smoke. “You’re not selling; you’re buying,” she says simply. “Even if you dress it up, you’re wanting my help. You want rid of the shahbanu. More than that, you’re getting paid for it already - no, don’t pretend otherwise, you are, I know Keris and she’s a mercenary fuck.” Her thin, plucked eyebrows rise in a moment of veiled merriment before dipping down again. “So who are you dealing with, little Eko? And what are they willing to venture to be rid of Sabah II?”

What? No! Eko sits bolt upright in indignation. She’s selling, selling! Okay yes fine the bit about wanting to be paid twice for it is true, but Eko’s going home to the Anarchy after this; it’ll help Orange Blossom way more! Her motivations are pure and innocent and her only concern in this matter is selflessly wanting to clear out some icky Dead corruption from mama’s homeland in return for a fair bit of money and also some spellbooks and some other rewards that don’t really matter!

Orange Blossom’s eyebrow rises a fraction further. She says nothing, clearly waiting for Eko to answer her questions. Eko stares back, undaunted. The silence stretches as Fiend and demon lock gazes.

Eko breaks first. Looking aside, she grumbles silently for a moment before pulling out the half-mask she’d been wearing earlier from under her robes. Fine, her body language mutters as she tosses it onto the table. It wasn’t just a disguise earlier. She maybe tried to play a hilarious prank on the Jackal of Malra and maybe got caught by him refusing to follow the script like he was meant to and he maybe agreed not to tell the naib she was here and instead hired her as a sorceress washerwoman ninja consultant who’s been helping him stab some people down in Pershwa. And he maybe has a plan to go after the shahbanu, but her and Ney alone aren’t going to be enough, and it’s looking like it might be a bit dicey even if they figure out a way to use Mashy without her getting all Mashy-ish over the perfectly innocent fact that Eko happens through no fault of her own to be a blood-soaked demon lord who the Unconquered Sun hates for no good reason.

Those orange eyes (was she named for them, or is that a coincidence Eko wonders) meets hers. “I was surprised to find you here, but I am unsurprised to find out that you were the one plundering the naib’s sorcerous schools,” Orange Blossom says dryly. Her cigarillo makes a circle in her mouth. “So the Jackal’s been subcontracting his work? Also, distinctly not surprised. I would have considered how to alleviate his burdens in return for some considerations. Were it not for the fact that I can see how much his dilettante attitude is a veil for the mind underneath. An irritating man, but if you’ve been working for him you must know that already.”

Orange Blossom claps her hands, and sends for drinks. She orders for Eko, but given what she orders is Malran chai Eko is entirely content with the drink, which is both extremely sweet and served in adorable little cups (but with a nearby teapot so you can fill up your cute little cup repeatedly).

“You’re a demon,” she says, while they work. “This place, the whole East, it’s mine. So you’re going to be working for me here. And being paid, of course, because I can’t bind you and a wage is the next best thing. There’s no shortage of sorcerous secrets and ancient spells I could get you if you make it work my while. And since you’re going to agree to work for me, I won’t have to escalate this to the All-Thing because one of Keris’s souls is meddling in my directorate without my permission. Mmm?”

This feels kind of mean and pushy as a response to someone just innocently trying to do something helpful by removing a super disgusting yucky undead rival to Hell’s operations in Taira to Eko, but she’s being fed sweet yummy tea and so accepts that this is probably just Orange Blossom’s way of protecting her from factional reprisal and political knife-fights that aren’t like the fun kind at all. And Eko is doing an excellent job not thinking about the awful lewd statue that’s just hidden behind the screen, because she’s a genius. She drains her first teacup, pours herself a second and salutes her agreement to a temporary work contract, terms pending.

“Then why don’t you report on what you’ve been up to in my Directorate?”

Trickery! Deception! A malicious trap set for an unsuspecting maiden! Eko straightens in outrage at this blatant advantage being taken of her, and holds the pose for a moment of stillness to think things over. Honestly, Ney has mostly had her on the Pershwan beat, and she suspects he hasn’t been giving her any missions he’s not willing to let Hell find out about on account of quite wisely trusting Mama with his life and his heart but not with his money, secrets or dignity. Given that, and given that their contract has some fairly loose language around confidentiality outside of a few specific bits, and also honestly given that Orange Blossom’s help really is kind of necessary for this plan and the indebted socialite she has on the neo-Deliberative can probably get her a bunch of the information Ney passes up to the naib anyway...

Eko nods decisively, and launches into an animated retelling of her amazing victories against icky ghost-ridden killers and naughty Pershwan sorcerers and Tereman assassins and a manse that one time and so on and so forth. If she forgets a couple of details of things here and there or leaves out certain bits where she wasn’t actually doing anything in Orange Blossom’s Directorate (like visiting the highlands or her mama’s home village, where she wasn’t even running any missions, just sightseeing), then that’s probably just her being forgetful and leaving out things that would just be boring to retell.

Orange Blossom has more questions, more requests for details, and she is particularly interested by the revelation that Eko had been the one behind the destruction of that Pershwan manse and that they had bound Kalido the Flame Hoarder to try to get it built. “Their ambition exceeds their grasp in manse construction. I had expected that, but they’re being rash in binding demon lords. Would you know who the binder is?”

Eko shakes her head.

“As I thought. I know their witch-queen is a sorceress, but I don’t know if she’s their only sorceress of the Sapphire Circle.” Her fingers drum, and she sips at her chai, thinking.

The hulking brute that guards Orange Blossom leans in towards Eko, and in his Southern-accented rumble says, “I’d suggest not lying, little Eko.”

He has a voice that gives Eko the feeling that he is, with difficulty, restraining the urge to throw a punch at her. She gets the feeling this is someone who would be bad for Yuu’s health. Or any szilf, really.

She glares back, refusing to be intimidated. She’s not lying! She doesn’t know! Kalido didn’t mention it - and honestly they didn’t really talk much and what conversation they did have was mostly talking about fire, which was super interesting but not particularly informative on the subject of Pershwan politics.

Although, she adds with the tap of a linen-gloved finger against her lip, he had said that they screwed up building the manse before he even got there. The ground had cracked open and there were fire ants running rampant in the fissures and essence-veins and everything; it was a mess. Part of that was probably that there’d been some big unexpected shift of fire essence in the local geomancy from a forest fire or something, but the fact that it put the manse in such a bad state that they panicked and threw a demon lord at the problem is still probably a sign that whoever was in charge of the project sucks at manse-building - and yet still got put in charge, so either that idiot was one of the best Pershwa has, or they’re working on more manses than they have skilled architects, or some kind of nepotism or whatever is going on.

Regardless of the reason, there’s a good chance it won’t be the last botch job on a manse down that way, even without her helping things along.

The looming man doesn’t seem willing to let it go. “I detest people like you,” he says, working his shoulders with what Eko definitely recognises as the attitude of a fair maiden untying her hair so it’s free and she can carry more knives in it. “I hate them.”

“Sinensis,” Orange Blossom says sharply.

He ignores her. “Glib. Facile. Liars, one and all. And worse than liars. Telling your pretty little stories as you dance through life, outrunning the consequences of your actions for long enough to spread them to others.” He adjusts his cravat, and it’s revealed to be a wrap of vitriol-washed moonsilver that hides him in his false seeming. What’s underneath is a twisted suit of armour covered in a patina of metallic salts that take the shape of screaming faces and open mouths. He exhales, but what comes out of his mouth isn’t smoke like Orange Blossom breathes out, it’s a green wisp that moans and gibbers and tries to form a face before he inhales it once more. Eko can see nothing through the visor of the helmet, but she can hear wetness and the sizzle of vitriol against the air. “Bloss, a creature like this is of no use to you. She’s of no use to anyone.”

“Sinensis! Down!”

“Why?”

“I can never take you anywhere when you might encounter a peer. You can stand silently in the corner while Solar lordlings posture well-enough, but you, right now, are embarrassing me!”

He makes a gesture which in a human would be cracking his knuckles, but there’s only the clanking of metal. “Maybe you’d like to see who’s better, Eko Kit-borne. If your glibness and your facile twirling and your lies can stand against my hate.” Oh, how he relishes that word.

Eko’s eyes narrow. Seems like he’s only stronger than her ‘cause he’s been eating souls and fermenting and digesting them in his vitriol-soaked innards, huh. Yuck. She’s not interested in stealing a method like that; it’s disgusting. But more than that, the hostility is interesting. Eko hasn’t even done anything to him yet besides being a little glib, but here he is chomping at the bit to fight her. That’s not her admirable annoying-people skills at play; that’s the result of some major issues on his part. Glibness, lying, stories and dancing through life - all things he defines himself in opposition to. Bleh, he’s probably the super-serious dour sort who thinks his hatred and embracing of the awful poisonous horrible bits of the world are some kind of special truth or virtue, and that’s why he doesn’t like people who make the perfectly sensible decision to ignore all of those sad nasty things and focus on joy and fun and lightheartedness instead.

(It maybe says something about Orange Blossom that she has so much hatred and spite in her, too. Among the things it says is that she apparently really didn’t ever mind Mama being Mama, or she’d probably still be holding a grudge to this day.)

But enough thinking. If Sinensis - and that’s a name Eko is going to have to remember - does this with every peer he encounters... is that just Hellish demon lords, or Infernal souls? Does he do it to his sibling-souls? Questions, questions; but now’s the time for answers.

She flicks her hair, scoffing. Of course she’s not going to take up his challenge. She knows who’s better, and it’s certainly not the one who can’t get her name right. Besides, he can’t fight her. Even if he ignored his Greater Self and swung the first blow, there’s no way for him to win in the long term, regardless of who proved the victor. If Eko came out on top, he’d be beaten and shamed - and in the hypothetical case where she didn’t (which she supposes she has to admit is at least theoretically possible, given his strength), he obviously hates her too much to hold himself back from killing and eating her like he’s done with so many others.

Eko lets her head tilt sideways at an uncanny angle, and the painted eyes on her butterfly mask seem to swim and shift to focus on the woman across the table. How does he think Hell’s greatest assassin would react, she asks Sinensis, to one of Orange Blossom’s souls murdering and cannibalising Keris’s eldest daughter? Because getting himself and all his fellow souls killed as the result of a fight he started doesn’t sound all that smart to her.

“Do you think I’m that weak that I’d have to kill you? As opposed to sending you back with that smiling mask ruined and some acid burns to help you remember me.”

The air prickles. There’s something sharp here, something cutting. Something that makes the lanterns dim and flicker and take on a greenish cast. And yes, maybe Eko isn’t exactly helping things, because a dry wind stirs the drapes with a giggle.

“This is inane. Sinensis, sit. You’re like a dog who’s found an annoying cat in the same room as him. And you, Eko, stop provoking him. Much as you probably will struggle to do so, if you’re anything like Ki-”

Orange Blossom trails off. She must have felt what Eko just heard, an un-sound. Cold and dark and awful. Something that is by its nature and essence utterly abhorrent to the forces of Hell. She’s on her feet and pointed towards the source in a flicker-flash of motion, pulling Örömi from her sheath with no thought of Sinensis. Something else is here; something higher-priority. Something rotten in the heart of Malra.

A thick red tongue extends from Orange Blossom’s mouth as she tastes the air. “That’s foul. It’s like we’re in a shadowland,” she shoots a glare at her soul which he misses because to his credit he’s already facing the door, acid-ice blade in hand.

“The dead shahbanu seems to be thinking the same thing about killing off the naib,” he rumbles, tugging his cravat back on so he can pass as human.

“You work for me, Eko, so find out what the fuck is going on,” Orange Blossom orders. “And quickly. You are good at that, aren’t you?”

Eko snaps a quick salute and darts out of the booth, quickly pulling on the stage-role of one of Ney’s masked and faceless Blades as she goes. Ears pricked, eyes roaming, she narrows in on the centre of the disgusting feeling of decay and sprints light-footed and sure towards it.

The western sky is bloody red. The sun has just set, but this isn’t the cause of the sanguine hue. No, instead Eko can see the line of discontinuity where the morbid sky of the lands of the Dead intrudes on Malra. There is a schism-fracture in the world, and at the centre of it a not-exactly-waterspout is bursting out of the Gracious Nightjar district. It isn’t exactly a waterspout because what is coming out isn’t water; it’s dust and fumes and rock and in among it something bright that sparkles in the twilight.

That location isn’t near the palace. Maybe they couldn’t get close enough to do it without being caught, or maybe they’re going after something else. But Eko can hear the soul-scream of Creation from the wound in its flesh, and she can hear the rumble-roar of the strange spouting and the wailing of dying men and women that comes from it.

Fear churns in Eko’s stomach. She remembers Mama going on about this. Something about how Malra is built atop a river of coal dust and silver and human souls down in the lands of the Dead. It’s a minor miracle she remembers this, but Grandma Dulmea was very firm with Yuu having to remember it and repeatedly reminding Eko. It’s all tied into the very sad things that happened to Grandma Maryam.

She darts back into the booth and rushes through a rapid-fire series of hurried gestures to Orange Blossom, jerking a thumb behind her and then fluttering her fingers upwards and slashing a hand across her neck and down through the air. So it looks like maybe the River of Death formed from all the slaves who die in the Malran silver mines has combusted out of one of the rich-person districts in a huge awful geyser of decay and horror and necrotic essence that’s definitely causing some kinda discontinuity in Fate as the world-nature of the Underworld haemorrhages its blood out onto the city. Also a lot of people are dying and probably a lot of them will linger as ghosts ‘cause of how much Underworld essence their souls are being soaked in.

(And while she doesn’t say so out loud, Eko is pretty willing to bet that the Gracious Nightjar district happens to be where Mama visited the Underworld last time she was here and found out about the river in the first place. She doesn’t remember any details about that, which probably means they were really sad and she forgot them on purpose, but she knows what an artery spurting blood out of a burst-open scar looks like, and this feels more like a pre-existing, mostly-healed wound that’s been ripped open than a fresh cut made in unbroken skin.)

All that earns her a flat look from Orange Blossom. “Then go there, find out what’s going on, why, and determine whether it’s some damn fool idiocy from the naib that’s gone wrong or it’s hostile action. If so, kill the culprits if you can without getting caught. Do I have to spell it out for you?”

La, la, Eko mimes Ney-ishly. Bossy bossy bossy. She asks a girl to see what’s going on, and then complains when Eko gives her an update instead of leaving her completely in the dark and running off to stab the problem better. But okie dokies, Eko is on the case now! Her pirouette incidentally takes her close enough to snag the chai pot and chug the remaining yummy sweet tea, then with another salute she’s back outside and rushing down the pyramid towards the giant horrible murder-geyser, discarding the empty teapot on a passing table as she goes. Ney will no doubt have noticed this already - as, actually, will Mashy and the naib - so there’s a decent chance she won’t have to do much to actually close the breach, but finding any perpetrators will need her to keep her ears sharp. Especially since there are two or three groups that could be responsible, and it won’t necessarily be easy to tell the resentful Malran dead apart from the shahbanu or the witch-queen’s agents.

Wait, isn’t Ney gone at the moment? That might make her have to do more. Drat.

The boulevards in this area were once pretty, with wide streets tiled and kept clean and shaded by pleasant-smelling trees that Eko remembers Mama saying that the plant-sorceress lady whatshername had made for the naib. Such pleasantness is gone. The air is hot and stifling and stagnant, rasping in the lungs with each breath, and there is so much coal dust in the billowing clouds that ebb and surge that the wind itself tastes gritty.

The silver rain that falls burns. It’s molten silver, or at least it was. It has cooled in the air, but that still makes it fall like hot hail. Sometimes larger globules fall down which have retained enough of their heat to stay molten, and they splash. There are already fires spreading in the district where they’ve landed on dry wood or other flammables.

And there are spectres here, too. Wailing ghosts surging forth in huge numbers, their bodies bludgeoned and broken and starved. The air is so saturated in death that they can manifest physically. Eko can see them, and so too can the mortals who cower under cover from the hot rain, headscarves wrapped around mouths and noses to try to protect them from the dust.

She cuts through a few of the ghosts as she approaches the deathly fountain, releasing them from the Underworld’s chains as she dodges between the molten raindrops. That’s only half-hearted effort, though; she’s focusing most of her attention in two directions: inward to the centre of the fountain, listening for anything that sounds like a commander, and outward for the flare of sunlight that would signal one of Malra’s Deliberative getting involved.

Ney isn’t around right now. Eko recalls. She’s pretty sure. Well, to put it another way, he flew off with Akhmi and a wind of gliders a few days back and hasn’t come back yet, so he probably won’t be here. And from what she’s carefully deduced and her power-calcs for the ranking of the named characters here in Malra, she’s basically certain no one here is as fast as he is. Though of course, Mashid is like whoa-strong, like her essence is more bright and burny than even Mama’s - though Mama would totally win in a fight - but being whoa-bright and noisy doesn’t mean you can always run fast because many people are objectively inferior lifeforms who can’t run like Eko does. The naib’s also really strong, but he’s a useless book-guy who doesn’t fight. Y’know, like Rathan. And none of them seem to have been in Gracious Nightjar or any of the neighbouring districts when the breach tore.

Anyway to cut a long story short, she doesn’t think anyone else is here yet. Well, fine. Looks like Eko’s on her own, then. No longer confined to a backstage role; this time she’s taking centre stage.

Hark! her pirouette announces to the world at large, except not actually because she doesn’t want anyone overhearing her name. She directs her introduction to the narrative instead, which is much better able to appreciate it. Here in the midst of Malra’s darkest hour appears Eko Kerisdokht, Princess of the Ruin, Margravine of the Glyphstone Wastes, First Spear and Chief of the Five Winds Mercenary Cartel. Her wind-patterned duster billows out behind her, fabric snapping in the foul-smelling wind. Her highlander dress flutters and swirls, blood-rubies glinting in the dim light. She summons her power and the rank winds answer her call, curling around her as the stench of decay is drowned under blood and iron and sugar. A hundred phantom knifeblades strop across the air, honing sharpness held in waiting on the rising gale. The butterfly patterns on the swept-back wings of her mask swirl and dance, peering out at the world with knowing insight, and the jade-white blade of Örömi Windcutter tests the measure of a third spectre’s skin. It parts just as easily as a mortal’s and just like the first two, Adorjan’s gift cuts the poor, wretched thing free of the ties that hold it to stagnant life-in-death.

Mouth set in a grim line beneath her mask, Eko ducks past another group of ghosts, slashes the head off one that’s menacing a cowering family, aims herself at the dark and ominous whirlwind and breaks into a sprint.

Closer to the epicentre, the ground has cracked open, in the way an egg might. The hillside has opened up and what is revealed - seemingly just below the roads people had walked on - is a network of churning, writhing tunnels flooded with the seething mess of coal dust and molten silver and screaming spectres. Eko is quite aware that falling into any of this would be very bad for her health. Like, super-mega-bad.

Which is kind of a problem considering how much of the hillside these danger zones are starting to take up. The road is split, and the buildings are falling into the chaotic morass. It’s almost like they’re about to be swept up into the awful twisted cyclone.

Eko’s feet move fast, but her mind moves even faster. All the world’s a stage, and there’s meaning in everything if you only seek to find it. This whirlwind of death and mayhem looks chaotic and random. But even chaos has patterns; order sits at the heart of every wild endeavour, just as chaos fuels the heart of every structured edifice. Legs pumping, hair streaming, arms scything through cut and stab and parry, Eko tracks the trajectories of flying debris, traces lines along the swirling gusts, stitches ribbons in her mind’s eye to map the combustion spiral. Beneath all the rubble and rot and screaming, it’s a clean and simple shape; two lines spinning round each other but never meeting as they ascend towards heaven.

And with the spiral inked in scarlet on the inside of her eyelids, she can see how it’s tearing up the ground. Every revolution, the lines rip further out through Creation’s fragile flesh; each flying chunk of building is a step on the spiralling staircase. The churning tunnels of the dust-and-silver River are another extension of the spiral downward; the roots of the awful sickly tree that are being pulled and twisted inwards towards its base. The next break will be there, she predicts, and watches the ground crack open where her eyes are trained. Then there, then there, then here - she darts aside, just in time to avoid a rupture that splits the street beneath her feet.

Good. She’s got the pattern down perfectly. Which means now all she needs to do is aim for the safe spots between the twisting lines where the ground is stable and death-essence isn’t too thick. Anyone who looked at this howling tornado of coal and silver and ghosts and saw only the outward horror would say it was impossible.

But come on. You just gotta see the symmetry and then dance along with the rhythm. It’s not like it’s hard.

The silver rain falls around her, splashing and burning, but not one drop touches her. She is Eko Kerisdohkt and she is the Joyful Wind, and neither of her mothers would approve of her getting hurt by something as minor as molten silver falling from the skies. And it’s not like it’s difficult. Anyone could manage this if they tried hard enough.

(But secretly she’s maybe a little bit glad that Yuu isn’t here because her bestie might make a mistake and get hurt bad.)

At the heart of the cataclysm is a geyser that makes her think of those bits of Hell she saw when she was staying with Asarin where a channel of Kimbery gets superheated in the catacombs because it’s running through a place where Malfeas is raging and bursts forth. Only this isn’t caused by anything as natural or normal as an enraged titan. She knows this because she hears the awful chanting and very-bad-not-good ritual before she sees it, and slinks under the cover of a coal-coated crumbling building to peek over at the foot of the cyclone.

The whole area has collapsed into the Underworld. The Malran buildings are scattered rubble beside a roaring river of screaming souls and silver and coal and crushed bones. The ground below is bare rock, scored and pock-marked, and a hollow has been carved out and filled with a seething mass of ectoplasm. Faces twist and coil and seethe and boil within the stone cauldron - because that is what it must be, Eko immediately realises. This is a stone cauldron containing hundreds of dissolved human souls, combusting to fuel this dislocation in the worlds.

And there is the culprit here, elongated and stretched out, draped in a scarlet robe hemmed with black feathers, the skeletal limbs protruding from the too-long sleeves holding an oar that they are using as a stirrer for their stone cauldron. Eko guesses they’re female from the way the cloth drapes, but she isn’t sure that this matters to them. And more than that, they’re masked, just like her - but shadows bleed from the single eye socket in the centre of their tarnished-silver mask.

“Stir them clockwise, count to nine,” the figure sings to herself.
“Spill a secret, draw a sign.
“Ladle the light from each lost spark,
“Feed the flame in the hollow dark.”

Eko’s ears are keen; keener than any mortal. She trains them on this creature now, staring carefully under cover as she waits for her cue. She listens past the shrieking of tormented souls, past the ripping sound of Fate and the fabric of Creation tearing, past the horrible chant and the bubbling, turbulent brew within the cauldron. She listens to the beat of the masked woman’s deathly heart, to the pulse of whatever passes for blood in her veins, to the fluttering of ephemeral ribbons that trace the reaching-out of her power and to the secret anticipation of danger that lurks in the near future should Eko attack.

She listens to the strength of this Dead thing’s soul, and by the stagnant wind of its breath she takes its measure.

There is no melody there. No harmony, no resonance to its note. Eko simply hears a silence that drowns out even the funereal dirge of the Underworld. A silence that is not her silence, which even before she drank from the Sphere of Speech was not so absolute. And yet this silence is equal in magnitude to her own.

It’s one of the Greater Dead; a peer in strength to Eko and her siblings. Rathan or Zanara would draw back cautiously and reassess. Haneyl would at least hesitate, and Calesco would attack from range and concealment. Even Vali would consider this a challenge, not a foregone conclusion. But…

Nah, Eko thinks. I can take her.

Up from behind the rubble and across the unstable ground; leant so far forward she’d fall if not for her speed - in a vivid slash of white and scarlet, the Joyful Wind is on her feet and sprinting for her prey.

Her knife descends, only for something hateful and malicious to rip out of the back of that crusty robe the colour of dried blood. A barbed soulsteel chain wrapped around a tormented spectre interposes itself in the way of her knife, and even as Örömi Windcutter pierces through the ruined ectoplasm it bleeds force from her. Enough that the knife of Adorjan’s daughter skids off the writhing chains under that robe, pyreflame sparks spat out by the interposition of two opposed forces, and Eko has to dart aside to avoid the murderous chains which move too much like her mother’s hair.

The nephwrack twists, not like a person as a thing of muscles and movement but as a rotation in the air, led by the head. That hollow, shadow-leaking single eye in the mask exhales (is it a mouth instead?)

“Seven there were, seven sisters fair,
“Three sisters crossed where the black winds sigh,
“They laughed at the gate where the lost ones cry,”

And that red robe rips asunder, tearing from that long, thin frame. The hooded cowl remains, but Eko sees in the red-white-black world of danger that the form of the nephwrack is emaciated and awful and leathery, bound up in writhing soulsteel chains which are hooked into her very flesh. The chains move with a will of their own, and perhaps it is the will of the spectral heads bound up in them, at once their prisoner and their screaming malicious biting weapons.

“One by one, the dark took hold,
“Now they whisper from the damp and cold,
“Flee, eighth sister, oh child beware!”

There is such dry, lurking horror in the chuckle of this alchemist-priestess of murdered titans.

The bubbling brew of the cauldron belches out a globule of rotting spirit stuff, landing with a splat beside it. A twisted ghost, several faces screaming from its stomach and its neck a ruined, crushed stump pulls itself out of the brew, and with its many faces starts to sing a dirge to the Neverborn.

Nope, Eko thinks. Don’t like that. If she lets this kind of thing go, she’ll be drowning in a horrible chorus of monstrous spectres in no time. She hasn’t had time to work out all the details of what’s going on here yet, but she’s guessing this is situation like Zsofika’s kite flutes; the longer the nephwrack does her thing, the more spectres there’ll be, and their singing will probably make the ritual stronger.

(It’s just faintly possible, she thinks, that she might have made an infinitesimal whoopsie by aiming for the nephwrack’s back instead of her tongue. If she hadn’t been so focused on landing a critical wound as her first move, she might have been able to weave around those chains and silence her. But if she’s going to regret things that it’s too late to change, she might as well feel bad about not having Hanny’s fire to burn away that yucky cauldron, so she might as well move on and salvage the situation as it is instead.)

Abandoning her mono-focus on the nephwrack, Eko reviews her surroundings, fixing the cardinal directions in her head. She came from the east, where a pool of seething coal dust and molten silver sits among the ruined buildings she snuck up through. To the west, across the bubbling cauldron carved into the stone, is the epicentre of the awful rift into the Underworld; a howling vortex of combusting necrotic essence ripping open a slowly widening hole in the world around itself. Northwards, the touch of the rift is making the land crack and the soil ooze blood; rocks and boulders fall like rain as buildings collapse and rubble drops out of the cyclone.

And south...

South is the River of Silver Mining proper; a surging torrent of molten silver and choking coal dust and crushed bones and dissolving, shrieking souls. This is the ugly foundation Taym Matah has built his Neo-Deliberative on; all the karmic weight of death and pain and suffering crystallised into a current that flows down, down, down into the depths of the Underworld, carrying along the countless souls who died to make Malra rich.

Damn. Maybe she should just have tried to knock the nephwrack into that. Nothing that goes under those waters will survive - not even things already dead.

The dead crone turns away from Eko - as if she doesn’t even matter! The cheek! - but those lashing, screaming souls bound up in the chains writhe and squirm as they dart forth seeking blood. Eko sidesteps the first, which embeds itself in the cracked ground behind her, and uses that taut chain as a stepping point to hop over the next one - only for a third and a forth to try to take her head. She twists like a fish in mid air, her blade taking one of those razor-chains and knocking it aside, but she has to step back under the number of screaming souls seeking her head.

The nephwrack merely mumbles to herself as she stirs her seething, bubbling cauldron-rift in the ground, the tearing cyclone of spirits orbiting it intensifying the thickness. And the mutilated ghost that crawled out of the circle starts to chant, the wordless words of forbidden black tongues erupting from its several mouths.

Probably not good.

Eko ducks another screaming chain, springs back a few feet, lands upside-down on her fingers and pushes off in a running back handspring that comes down next to the new ghost. Örömi’s white blade is already flickering as her feet touch the ground, slashing at each of its mouths to shut it up. The malformed spectre is no match for Adorjan’s daughter. She lashes out with such speed that the very ectoplasm of the ghost is blasted away in the gust, carried back into the swirling whirlpool it came from where the component souls split apart into their rendered parts. They are lost to her sight.

That honestly makes Eko feel a lot better, because the fact she hadn’t even landed a scratch on the horrible lewd chain monster woman had stung. But there’s no time to revel in her brilliance because now the hunting seeking chains are lashing out again, and another spectre is crawling out of the swirling cauldron, this one all faceless brutality and a slathering stomach maw and- oh those chains are long, long enough to reach her here, the vicious chains and snarling faces trying to ensnare and tangle her up.

Nope nope nope nope nope. Eko twists around and dances on the very edge of the crumbling precipice as the chains come for her, weaving around them as they overshoot and deflecting them down into the River bare metres from her toes. It’s loud, as close to it as she is here, and she hears the hissing burns and the change in pitch of the screams as the chain-ends can’t avoid touching it. However metaphorical it is as a crystallised representation of a cause of death ferrying suffering-mortified souls from life to the depths of the Underworld, it certainly acts like molten metal when they touch it. Useful to know.

Anyone less capable than Eko, anyone less a divine queen of the battlefield would have been caught up in those flashing chains and it’d have probably been really bad. For those inferior lifeforms. But, y’know, that’s not Eko, who dances between the chains as they thrash and writhe at the end of their each. Across the cauldron-rift the new spectre opens its stomach-mouth and sinks out a dark revelation song in praise of murdered titans, as Eko readies her response.

She feints left, ducks right, retreats a step back towards the River and pretends to stumble. It’s bait. She’s taunting, teasing, tempting - and as another chain irritably swings at her, she takes her chance.

Silly ghost. Her chains are dangerous, yes, but she fails to realise they also give Eko a path right to her. Leaping up lightfooted, she lands on the links of the screaming chain itself and breaks into an instant sprint, her feet skimming weightless and swift across the moliated length of metal and soul.

Of everyone in her family, only Eko’s mama and little brother are faster than she is. She closes the distance with terrible speed, racing along the scything chain too quickly for its partners to twist in and stop her. Örömi swings again, aiming for the nephwrack’s horrible single eye, and the chains rise to meet and deflect her.

But the attempt to blind this creature is only a distraction. Her face isn’t Eko’s true target. Below the nephwrack’s line of sight - Lady One-Eye, Eko decides to call her - Eko’s hair coils around the oar she’s using to stir the bubbling pit of ectoplasm. She’s not used to fighting other beings with long prehensile tendrils, and it shows - she’s focused on Eko’s hands, and the knife held in them. Her first warning that they’re not the only things Eko can grab with is when the yank almost breaks her fingers.

She recovers well and tries to cling to the oar, but it’s too late - sheer speed and momentum, along with the element of surprise, break her grip before she can scramble to fix her mistake. And then Eko is past her, accepting the painful shriek of metal-on-metal as Örömi’s blade rebounds off the chains protecting Lady One-Eye’s face as she hops back onto the ground and keeps running, her prize held gleefully over her head in two ribbon-locks.

Ugh. Why couldn’t Ney have been around to see that? He’d have found it hilarious, and would’ve had to admit she’s simply the best thief he’s ever laid eyes on. Including mama. And now she might have to get very good at dodging, because the voices of the spectres rise up, with black aphasic chanting and more than that Lady One Eye screams and throws herself at Eko, razor-chains and claws all lashing out. There’s no rhyming couplets or witty rhetoric; just hatred and a desire to tear her apart for stealing that oar stirry thing.

But for all the horrid savagery of her assault, her anger makes her stupid. More than that; she wants the oar, and so as much as she’s trying to rip Eko limb from limb, part of her is watching Eko swing it around above her head, feinting that she’s about to throw it left or right. It makes her distracted, which makes her predictable, which makes her just not good enough.

(This oar, this stirrer, it’s sodden in filth and spiritual corruption. It makes Eko’s skin crawl just by touching it. It’s the kind of thing her mama would be more interested in than Eko entirely likes. It’s kinda like this ghost’s version of Örömi Windcutter.)

Eko laughs. She laughs, high and gleeful, and her laugh is expressive in a way no mortal language can be. It mocks Lady One-Eye’s stupidity in thinking only she can play with ribbons that move and grab and pull. It taunts her for letting her precious oar be stolen. It jeers at how slow she is, how pathetic her masters will find her. How funny her failure is to this princess of demons. Dancing just out of reach, Eko lets the chains get just close enough that the nephwrack thinks she might have a chance at getting her oar back, skipping up towards the cracked, blood-oozing ground where the spectres are chanting.

And then, for a split second, she hesitates. Because her first instinct is to toss it into the seething pool of molten silver and coal dust where the waters of death have been trapped away from their River, but if this horrible thing is like Örömi, that might not be enough. And while she doubts even a ghost as powerful and soaked in corruption as Lady One-Eye could touch the waters safely... what if she can make them part for her, or command them to give the oar back up?

No, better to hold onto it. She has limbs to spare, and can get Ney to throw it at Mashy later, who can purify it with her purifying faith and the burning light of the Sun and junk. That’ll get rid of it for good. So instead of letting the oar go, Eko leaps like a serval and flips through a tiny gap in the chains that have spread out to ensnare her, then sprints away across the cracked and ruined ground that oozes blood and into the empty holding cells that probably quite recently held sacrifices that fuelled this awful ritual.

Right now, they also hold the stomach-mouthed spectre, which is in no way prepared for what she’s about to do to it.

The wailing conglomeration of ghosts is only half-formed, and it dissipates when it tries to dodge Eko and just comes apart entirely. Ectoplasm sprays everywhere, staining the stinking landscape with a spray of fluorescent blue. It coats the walls of the holding cells, dripping down into the cracks. But she can’t stop this, because she can hear there’s another already crawling out of the pit and Lady One Eye is coming for her, chains lashing out trying to snatch back her oar-stirrer thing.

This time, Eko lashes forward with her own hair to deflect them. She’s had hair-fights with her siblings before; this one is just higher stakes. And as a bonus, if the nephwrack is still focused on her oar, she’s not going to see Eko’s next move coming. Gathering herself, she lets just a little of her inner wind leak out. The blood oozing from the ground ahead of her resonates at her call, necrotic essence overtaken for a moment by that of the Silent Wind and the Sphere of Speech. Rivulets of it form into tiny serpents that bare their fangs to the sky.

Princess Eko Kerisdokht, First Spear of the Five Winds, flips the jade-white blade of Örömi Windcutter into a reverse grip and banks off a wall to turn back towards the ghost she’s running from. She has her pride. She has her dignity. She will not flee like a coward without dealing a single wound, and she has just the move in mind to do so.

Calling on the wind in her veins and the blood in her wake, she breaks into a rush, then a sprint, then an all-out charge. She spins, and her spin is a dance and a cyclone and a thousand lethal cuts. After-images trail behind her. Wind-duplicates fan out to mimic her movements, slicing and slashing at everything within the killing gale she drags along like a cloak.

For just a moment, Adorjan’s daughter is loosed upon the world and the Joyful Wind blows swift and true across this pocket of the Underworld. She flickers, and at the end of the movement the howling spectres are dead and more than dead, their shredded essences inhaled into her. And Lady One Eye’s robe is shredded and tattered and torn from her body, her withered and shriveled corpse-flesh fully on display bound up in those spectral chains. She bleeds from the countless new lines of red criss-crossing her everywhere.

But she is still standing and Eko feels the rasp in her lungs as more spectres well up from the pool of horrors and Lady One Eye screams something from her red slash of a mouth. But Eko is still not fully coalesced back into solid form, and what blade can strike the very wind? The spectres’ claws meet only air, the scything chains cut nothing but gale-fluttering ribbons.

She’s done here. She hasn’t killed her opponent, but she’s interrupted the ritual, stolen Lady One-Eye’s precious oar and wounded her badly. And (beneath Eko’s pride) she has to admit: she’s almost out of stamina. For all that she’s been making it look easy, dodging those chains is hard. Calling out her inner gale is harder still.

No, it’s time to retreat. She can call this a win. There’ll be no shame in falling back to Orange Blossom - and her awful murderous bodyguard-soul. If Lady One-Eye wants to chase her into that, she’s welcome to try.

Hate gives the nephwrack strength. Eko dodges and dances and weaves and this time the metal hooks sink in. One tears into her shoulder, shredding her dress and the meat below and she tears off it with a splatter of cold blood. Another rasps against her thigh, the sharp links slicing like a blade. The pain is hot and sharp and sudden and then comes the seeping cold as the necromantic weapon tries to leech all the life from her.

She’s learned to work through pain, though, and she’s already moving. Better yet; it hit her shoulder but missed the oar, kept safe in two locks of hair that twist and jink to avoid the chain that goes for them. And it’s only the one chain, too, compared to four or five aiming for Eko’s flesh. Lady One-Eye’s hatred for her is starting to overwhelm even her reason for being here in the first place.

She’d be kind of impressed at how much she’s made this ghost hate her in only a minute or so of interaction, but unfortunately she can’t spare any limbs to pat herself on the back right now. Maybe later. For now, she tosses one last mocking wave over her shoulder: a derisive, lampooning laugh aimed to dig into the nephwrack’s ego and hurt as much as Eko can possibly make it. She wants this creature to feel humiliated. To feel looked down on. To feel beaten and stupid and small.

She doesn’t hang around to see if it works. She’s exhausted, wounded and carrying a trophy she can’t afford to let fall back into enemy hands. Safety beckons ahead in the choppy, broken terrain that will let her break line of sight and get back out into the sun and report back to Orange Blossom. Time to be running. Bye bye!

Pain makes her weak and slow. The sharp throbbing in her shoulder, the red hot lines across her legs: they are both different pains than the low level ache she lives with. Her breath comes fast and shallow and the too-thin, too-stale air of the lands of the dead hurts her further. And Lady One Eye is fuelled by hate and pain and rage and this is her home realm. She scrambles after Eko, arms wild and heavy chains rattling all around her. She is too close as Eko sprints across a fallen dead echo of one of the naib’s palaces, and Eko struggles to pull away.

But one of them is a superior lifeform and daughter of the Silent Wind and the other is an emaciated corpse who skipped cardio, so it was only going to end one way (Eko assures herself, trying not to think about the wailing screams of those chains right behind her). And the disruption of the ritual leaves the foul cyclone starting to collapse, because it seems the stirrer thing currently held by Eko under one arm was necessary for it. Bleeding, her shoulder throbbing and legs weak, Eko starts to get clear and the sudden sun-bright flare from somewhere else on the slopes of Malra tells her that someone else is fighting. It isn’t Ney, whose soul burns in blacks and golds, and she happens to know the naib is all twilight purples tinged with red, so she’s pretty sure that eye-searing white-gold has to be Mashy. If it’s burning her eyes that much, she probably doesn’t want to get close.

Oooooooh there’s the purple-red, atop one of the Malran pyramids, and from the spiralling twistiness Eko is pretty sure that the naib is doing some kind of sorcery thing, so that’s double reason to get clear of here.

She doesn’t have enough strength left to transform. Not properly, not with Sorcery, in a way where she can go throw this stupid oar thing at Mashy so she can kill it with sunlight. It takes almost everything she has left - she’s virtually running on empty; this is the first time in her life she’s been this exhausted, not even the thing she tries not to think about from Earth last year was this bad - to scrape together the pathetic, tattered, generic half-mask of one of Ney’s Blades.

It’d get her laughed and booed off any stage in the Ruin for how crude it is. All the details are lacking; the little touches that let her blend into the background by reassuring the audience that this person is perfectly normal and fits the rhythm of their day-to-day. There’s no stitching on any of the clothes; not just a lack of subtle, ordinary decoration, but no structural stitching holding the garments together. The leather of her boots doesn’t crease or wrinkle as she moves; her belt buckle is a solid piece of metal; her hair acts as a single textured mass with no flyaway strands or layering. Any close examination at all would make it fall apart.

But nobody’s going to be examining it closely. Everyone’s looking at the giant, horrible cyclone of death and destruction. Which means Eko is free to limp back towards Orange Blossom with her prize. Maybe she can sell it to her instead. She wants rid of it, regardless of who it goes to.

Orange Blossom quite thoughtlessly isn’t waiting for her where Eko is pretty sure she left her, but there is an imprint of her voice burned into the melody of one of the trees that guides Eko out to an estate on the edge of Malra well away from the danger where Orange Blossom has retreated to.

“Well?” is what Eko gets from the woman, who has changed from her stylish business outfit to a rather less stylish outfit that does have the advantage of being a buff jacket with sewn-in jade plates. “I can see the deathrift is shrinking. Did you find out what happened, or is whatever the Malran Sun-Chosen are doing working?”

Eko is tired, and doesn’t have the energy to dumb herself down or gesture more than she has to at the moment, and so defaults to her native dialect. Her body language is no less expressive, and perhaps more so for her lack of filter - there are acres of meaning in the slightest tilt of her head, the faintest twitch of her fingers - but the majority of it flies over the heads of everyone in the room not equally brilliant and steeped in the soundless language of Adorjan and the nameless glossolalia of Elloge. Which is everyone else in the room.

What Orange Blossom picks up from the ultra-dense, information-crammed shrug, head tilt and wincing jab over her shoulder is, approximately: rift’s haunted, robbed a ghost-witch, solars suck. The stolen, filth-caked, curse-soaked, spiritually corrupt artefact of foulest blasphemy in question gets waved vaguely in her direction and then returns to being used as a (disgusting) temporary walking stick to support a bleeding leg.

Orange Blossom has to put some effort into getting Eko to expand on that, but as it turns out feeding her sugar lumps does miracles for her willingness to communicate. She purses her lips, pacing back and forth. “That sounds like a nephwrack, I believe the term is for ghosts of that power and affinity for the Neverborn. A one-eyed witch with murderous chains ensnaring souls - I’ll have to see what my consultants know about that.” She pauses, eyes drifting again to the sullen, dying glow of the fading necromantic rift. “And does this mean that Sabah II has just learned how to bind such creatures, or was it a willing ally?”

Eko purses her lips and shrugs again. They didn’t exactly talk much, beyond the enraged screaming after Eko kicked the legs out from under her ghost-witchy ritual by stealing her oar thingy. But if she was going to go with her gut and make a snap judgement, she’d say ally. It felt more like how Eko’s working for Ney than how a bound demon lord serves their master.

If it was bound, then the shahbanu was handling it the way mama does; by asking it to do things it would already be inclined to do. And if it wasn’t bound... well, mama only started working with demon lords out in Creation once she was strong enough to summon and banish them, so best to assume Sabah II has plumbed those depths of necromancy regardless of this nephwrack’s status.

Orange Blossom exhales, and closes her eyes for a moment. Her orange eyes, when they re-open, lock on the twisted relic Eko stole, and she leans towards it, nostrils flaring. “It stinks of death,” she says. “Power, but rotten, stinking power. It’s soaked in curses for a very long time, absorbing them from the deathly mixes it’s used to stir. I have to believe this was a core implement of the ritual carried out by the Nephwrack you encountered which tore the hole in the world.”

Eko nods. That’s why she stole it. Lady One-Eye wouldn’t stop stirring the ectoplasmic cauldron, which was definitely some kind of massive cross-planar denigrated combustion event fuelled by incorporated human souls, even when Eko was actively trying to stab her. And as soon as Eko relieved her of the oar she got super mad - like, super mad. Eko may have a nemesis now. Or possibly be a nemesis. Or both.

What’s more, she adds with a raised finger, there were holding cells down there in the Underworld besides the big horrible rift, not far from the stone cauldron. Pretty large ones. And all empty, save for some petrified ghosts next to them that were mortified in contorted poses of horrified anguish that hopelessly beseeched a cruel and uncaring universe for mercy and all that junk.

Which means this probably wasn’t a quick thing done off-the-cuff; there was planning that went into this. Mama might be able to cause a Hell-breach this large with barely any prep time, because she’s mama, but holding cells like the ones Eko saw were for living people - living people who must have been transported to Dead Malra somehow and then kept there, probably as sources of fresh blood.

To get that many people captured - and probably granulated through relentless misery and despair and whatnot, because this seems like the kind of ritual that you can’t just feed random people into immediately - plus carving the cauldron and setting up the ritual around the rift-site... well, prep time for this attack probably ran to something between a week and a month. Maybe longer, depending on exactly how much pre-processing the sacrifices needed and how time-intensive it was. Eko’s experience with esoteric ritual fuel is more along the lines of hearthstones than people, so she can’t speak on that score, but this was definitely something Sabah II set in motion a while ago.

Something flashes on the horizon. A pillar of light erupts from within the ruined land, burning and hot, and seconds later Eko hears the deafening melody of the spell that caused it. She thinks it was some kind of evocation of a garda bird, a scaled up version of Flight of the Brilliant Raptor that she knows that the naib teaches to his sorcerers.

“Plenty of reason to retreat to a safer distance,” Orange Blossom remarks, shielding her eyes from the flash and the rising pillar of flame. “I see no need to get ourselves involved further. I will take the nephwrack’s implement to present to the naib as the cause of all this, and prevent that creature from gaining access to it again.”

Hey, hey, whoa now. Eko skips back a couple of steps, holding the oar out of reach with her hair. Going and scouting out what was happening in the giant cyclone of death and bringing Orange Blossom back vital information from the middle of a necrotic maelstrom that would have stripped a mortal man to the bone in seconds, that was just part of her job that she handled no problem. Stuff like that is why she’s such a good hire.

But this thing? She waves the oar again, emphasising its importance. She got stabbed for this thing. It has Eko’s blood on it (metaphorically speaking; the actual blood is on Lady One-Eye’s chains, which in retrospect is a little worrying and she should probably do some blood alchemy about that to stop the nephwrack cursing her through it). Point is, Eko-blood doesn’t come cheap, and neither do things she spilled it for! This is a high-tier premium-quality horrible disgusting cursed artefact of corruption, stagnation and malice! She’s not giving it up for free; it definitely merits some kind of bonus.

Orange Blossom eyes her up and down. “You wouldn’t be leaping for a new suit of armour, or a weapon - though you’d appreciate it,” she says, and Eko feels known enough that she feels a drop of blood ooze most of the way down her nostril. “Jade, silver - both worthless to you. Like your mother, while you appreciate the look of currency, carrying it isn’t something you like. But, ah. You are the one who stole the sorcerous texts from the naib, aren’t you?” She smiles, and her teeth gleam like the pearls that sit at the bottom of Kimbery to lure down the greedy. “Perhaps a certain measure of sorcerous texts that you couldn’t find in the libraries of Orabilis, or a stave of some sorcerer of times past?”

Eko perks up. New spells? New spells! She will absolutely take a new Silurian spellbook as payment for the yucky deathwitch’s oar, please and thank you, pleasure doing business. She passes the thing over, happy to get it off her hands and unworried about being the first one to hand over the goods. Orange Blossom is greedy, and not above getting things without paying for them but she’s a merchant princesses through-and-through and can be trusted to hold to her deals - at least with people it would be inconvenient to anger.

“Silurian, mmm. Would you then be interested in The Grammar of Birds, a text written as best my people have been able to tell by an early Second Age moon-chosen? It’s obtuse, convinced that the flight of birds forms a writing system innate to the flow of complex systems, and frankly my pet sorcerer has given up on finding more than the five spells already written in it - but surely your brilliance can find more.” Orange Blossom rolls her shoulders, arms crossed in front of her. “And of course, if you make any new innovations beyond the ones my people found, I’ll handily pay you in more texts.”

It’s not that Eko isn’t aware that Orange Blossom is flattering her by playing to her intelligence. It’s just that she’s right about it, and is also offering at least five spells and also a cool new symbolic language made of birds that echoes the archetypal atavistic linguistic patterns inherent to the fundamental nature of sorcery. She makes grabby hands, ignoring the throbbing pain in her shoulder. Gimme gimme gimme, the not-terribly-sophisticated sign language says.

Orange Blossom snaps her fingers, with a “Sandor, The Grammar of Birds, if you will,” and the air tears open in front of her. From the slit in the world squirms out flourishing, blooming branches of a greyish colour, festooned in bright flowers, and cradled within the branches is a loosely bound book which seems to have been more a selection of papers hastily stitched into shape. Compared to the mis-matched pages, the cover is a gorgeous slate grey with a pattern of tessellating raitons. She takes it from its cradle of branches and hands it to Eko. “Now, if we would, I believe we should depart. This incident will draw attention we don’t much desire.”

Eko is already three pages in, and her distracted nod and finger-wave manages to communicate Whatever you say, boss while at the same time saying I’m barely paying attention anymore. But perhaps this is just a cover for how much she’s hurting, for she sticks close as Orange Blossom departs, and the book - though fascinating - is carefully balanced to put no weight on her injured arm.

If Orange Blossom notices, she doesn’t mention it, or care. Keris Dulmeadokht would fret and fuss over any injured subordinate, but the Devil-Tiger of the East is a woman without a trace of her once-lover’s soft heart.

When Ney tracks her down, she’s holed up in a small market town half a day from the capital. It’s quite dirty that he found her by hearing about the unusual number of sugary treats that got bought here. She needed the sugar! It’s medicinal! She’s recovering from the stitches Yuu gave her to fix up her shoulder and leg.

“So, what happened?” Ney asks with odd seriousness, perched on the windowsill. “And given it managed to hurt you, it must’ve been real bad.”

Eko wrinkles her nose and steeples her fingers, then mimes an exploding fountain, wiggling fingers spreading out from where they met. He’s heard about the gross yucky fountain of death that blew up the Gracious Nightjar district, right? Well, Eko was nearby when it happened, and as a loyal hired mercenary sorceress washerwoman ninja contractor, she knew it was her duty to go see what was happening and then stab it in the face until it stopped.

Obviously she was first on the scene - since Mashy and Taym are super slow - and when she danced through the horrifying necrotic whirlwind of rock and coal dust and molten silver, she found a nephwrack conducting an icky ritual fuelled by the fresh blood of living sacrifices she’d stockpiled down there and also quite a lot of human souls. Some kind of cross-planar combustion of Underworld dragon lines into Creation through a weak spot between worlds. So she stopped it, which is what let Mashy and Taym get the situation under control and close the breach up again. Really, she hints meaningfully, she should probably get a commendation and another medal for helping cut the problem off at the root. She basically saved everyone.

“This was a trap,” Ney says, looking exhausted. “Not just in Malra. It happened when I was pulled off by an attack from Zamashi corpse-men. And this still isn’t the real trap. It’s the bait. Sabah II just spat in Taym’s face. He has to retaliate. And he’s spitting furious that this was done to his perfect city.”

He lets his head fall into his hands.

“She knew we were planning to attack her. I’m pretty much certain of it. More than that, she must have called that we’d be planning this, and set loose this hound among the geese to force us to move before we’re ready.” He lets out a wry smile, rubbing his short cropped hair. “I’ve always known she’s smarter than Taym. They might both be Tairan royalty, but she doesn’t have his stupid touchy pride. I’ve told him she’s luring him into a trap and he doesn’t care. ‘If it’s a trap, Ney, then deal with it. It’s what I pay you for’.” His mockery is perfect.

Eko grimaces. She hadn’t thought of it that way, but... yeah, it’d make a bit more sense if this is like the Battle of Bird Creek, only on purpose.

“The what?”

She waves a hand distractedly. Famous battle from back when she and Hanny were little, back before Calesco was born. Hanny had been gearing up to invade the Ruin over some kind of outrage about Eko and her friends throwing so many surprise tea parties in the Swamp, but before she could get around to it she’d caught Anyuu’s elite band of sugar-thieves (the first generation of the gang that became the Salt Raiders) breaking into one of her ancillary kitchens to steal all the sweet things and got so mad about it that she’d mustered her whole not-quite-ready-yet army and chased them across the border, right into the teeth of a hastily-assembled counterattack that ended up dunking them all in a blood-river and then covering them in feathers. Which then led to the Second Great Little Sibling Alliance a couple of weeks later after she took Yuu and the girls on an elite secret stealth mission to steal all of Rathan’s pillows and he... wait, no, she’s getting distracted.

The point is, she gets what Ney’s saying. The naib won’t want to be patient and finish preparing before launching his attack, and even if he did want to, he wouldn’t be able to without looking weak.

Fortunately, Eko might have a solution that she’d put into place just before everything started exploding in a clear demonstration of her forward-thinking proactivity.

That draws a grin from Ney, though there’s still tiredness in his eyes that he’d never normally show. “Go on, then. Wow me. You must be looking to show them up too because you had to sit still after being stabbed.”

It’s true, it’s true! Getting stabbed hurts, Eko agrees, especially when it’s by a murderous ghost soaked into the stagnant corruption of the worst parts of the Underworld who’s furious at you for stealing the key artefact she needed for her horrible evil ritual. But yeah, Eko managed to get in touch with mama’s Eastern counterpart; the hell-sworn Chosen of the Yozis who leads their wicked followers in the subjugation of this part of Creation, and...

She pauses. The butterfly mask tilts, its strange eyes shifting and narrowing in a way that’s similar to, but not quite like an optical illusion as the evening light falls across it. Her drumming fingers still for a moment, and her hand falls to the hilt of her knife to play across its black jade hilt and caress the red tassel.

Hey, hey, she says with a snap of her fingers. Quick question, totally unrelated, just a random digression for a second. How good is Ney at lying? Like, not the normal hilarious pretending-to-be-lazy kind. Actual for-realsies lying about important stuff, like being dream-besties with mama.

Ney raises his eyebrows. “Pretty good,” he says. “But then again, it runs in the family, doesn’t it? I am your father. It’s just your mother never told you that.”

Eko blinks. Wait. What? No, that can’t be true. It’s impossible! Mama only met him well after Eko had grown up; that was their first meeting! Unless... is this some kind of sympathetic thing? Like, like, maybe Ney is the real reincarnation of Marus, so when Big Mama decided to have a baby with mama-who-she-thought-was-Marus, the ontological wording of her intent resonated with Marus’s actual reincarnation and gestated a tripartite child whose syllabic nature rhymed with elements of all three of their essence-lexicons, which is why Eko is so fundamentally a highlander and feels so at home in the highlands and gets along with him so well and even kind of looks a bit- wait, no, hang on. He’s messing with her. He’s messing with her and that was just a big lie and her beautiful elegant explanation isn’t true and he’s grinning about it.

“Pretty good, though, isn’t it?” He smiles and stretches. “I needed that. Seeing you flap around like a dove that’s just found a snake in its nest... well, it cheered me up no end. Though... who’s Marus? The name rings a bell. Did Kiss mention him before?”

Whoops. Uh, bad topic, bad topic, Eko deflects, waving her hands (ow, okay, hand) and wincing. Bad stuff to do with ancient memories, not at all fun or cute. Moving on, she declares (and ignoring the faint sting of hurt offence at being pranked like that with a lie story that for a moment she’d hoped thought was true-)

She shakes her head. Moving on. She gives Ney one more careful look, bites her lip, hesitates for just a moment longer, then nods firmly. Yeah. Yeah, okay. Eko trusts Ney more than Hell. He’s better for mama than anything the Yozis can offer. So even though she’s not really meant to be sharing this, she will.

With the understanding that Eko definitely didn’t tell him any of this and if he found out at all then he can convince absolutely everybody that he discovered it from other sources... the Infernal in charge of the East is called Orange Blossom. She’s the Devil-Tiger from all those rumours; it’s her symbol. And she’s already in contact with the naib through Zahra Rakeei, who’s one of her many debtors. Eko caught them meeting - in Malra itself! - and pitched the assassination against the shahbanu to Orange Blossom in private. She’ll probably be willing to give Hellish aid to killing a powerful rival of her own interests in Malra, though it’ll come at a higher price now that Taym is backed into a corner. And she can definitely supply people who are strong enough to make a difference.

She continues for a while, as Ney watches her without giving much away. Keris Dulmeadokht’s firstborn daughter has chosen the side she wants to back of her own free will, and it is not the confidentiality that Orange Blossom would ask of her, nor the Tairan ambitions of Ney Adami’s employer. It is to the Jackal, and the Jackal alone, that the Joyful Wind spills her secrets, readily confessing to her contract with Orange Blossom and the details of past missions she gave her, leaving out only the occasional unimportant tidbit like how exactly she’d gotten in contact with the Director of the East and discovered her dealings with Zahra.

Ney listens and his question when it comes isn’t one Eko expected. “This Orange Blossom - I don’t expect she’s a good person. But what kind of a bad person do you think she is?”

Eko gives it some thought, then wrinkles her nose and rubs her fingers together. She’s a woman who makes everything into coin-hire. Trade and treasure, yes, but also lives, people, beliefs, values, feelings. A woman to whom nothing is sacred, who has no sentimentality. Someone who wants to own the whole world, and makes everyone else play on her terms: in cold wealth and grasping influence.

Ney sighs. “So the kinda person Taym’ll get along fine with, because you can predict what she’ll do by following the money. Tch. That’s not good for anyone. If he wasn’t raging over his city getting wrecked, maybe he’d use that mind of his, but right now - and with Zahra on Orange Blossom’s side too, can’t forget that - with all that, he’s not going to be thinking right. And from what you said, she’s got other people - like your ma? Fighty people?”

Bloss’s spiteful hateful killy-things soul is stronger than Eko in raw might, she nods grimly. ‘Cause of all the soul-eating he does, which, yuck, but she can’t dismiss the inner strength it gives him. And Orange Blossom’s right hand, Xansu, was the woman who taught mama she wasn’t invincible after she was Chosen, back when Eko was a baby. She’s no joke. One of the few people alive that mama’s pretty sure could not only take her in a straight fight, but also maybe still win one biased in mama’s favour; she’s as experienced as mama is but has spent that whole time training in warfare and combat - and is equipped with the best that Bloss’s empire can provide, to boot.

“Anyone else?” Ney asks, pulling a face. “Urgh. Kiss is dangerous enough as it is, but at least she has things she won’t do. I don’t really want to meet someone as dangerous as her who’s utterly amoral.”

Unfortunately, he’s probably gonna have to, Eko tells him. And if Orange Blossom’s gonna get her hooks into the naib, maybe it’s time to start thinking about moving on from Taira once the shahbanu’s dead, eh? Her aunty did make that offer, after all.

“La la, do you really think I’d just abandon my homeland like that? Am I really that shallow?”

Eko tilts her head, considering. Then she shrugs. What would he be abandoning? The land? That’s not going anywhere, and if he didn’t have an urge to see new places and cross new horizons, he wouldn’t have left the highlands in the first place. The people? His goat-herders probably aren’t gonna be super affected no matter who wins the war - neither Sabah II nor Taym Matah can stitch Taira back together from what it’s been cut apart into. His special precious people? Most of them are part of the Blades, or already overseas.

What’s holding him here, really? Only chains that weigh him down and stop him from flying free. Better to cut the things that tie you to one place and avoid the death that is stagnation.

“Listen to you, you tempting demon,” Ney says with a smile. “I’d never ever break my sworn oaths. Am I not the most honest of men?”

That earns him a delighted grin and a silent, gleeful laugh. Eko well knows, after all, that Ney is no more always honest than he is always a man. And more importantly, that he’d never make an oath that tied him to Malra forever. There must be break clauses, or ways to take his Blades and leave.

“I’d never succumb to your corruption, vile demon,” Ney says, stretching out casually. “And I also wouldn’t give my word to fall to your temptations while I might still be asked about it by the kind of people with an eye for lies. Something you, just thinking about it, prob’ly should pay more attention to when in Malra. Not when you’re around me, though. You’re just safe there, definitely certainly.”

Eko rolls her eyes. She knows she’s safe around Ney. She’s always known that, ever since mama met him and Eko saw what kind of person he is through her eyes. And her strategy for not being caught out by people who can sniff out lies is to stay in the background and avoid talking to any of them, obviously. Hence all the disguises and sorcerous shapeshifting. Oh, oh, speaking of which, she got a cool new book from Bloss that’s a great resource into her studies of the ontological mother-tongue! She might be able to develop some more spells from it, so Ney should both be very impressed and also ready to raise her pay accordingly.

“And I’m sure you want to tell me all about your successes,” Ney says, “but maybe I’ll let you have a little more time to really make some world shaking discoveries.” He pauses. “You are doing okay, right? Don’t know much about demon bodies, but you don’t have any horrible rotting curse-wounds from the big spooky ghost or stuff like that? No evil necromantic poisons or anything?”

Rather than answer immediately, Eko takes a moment to work her shoulder and flex her calves, riding up onto her tiptoes and then rocking back onto her heels as she slowly rotates her arm to test its range of motion.

She thinks she’s okay, she concludes. A lot of Lady One-Eye’s really nasty curse-soaked power was in her oar, which never touched Eko in anger - her chains were horrid, but seemed to mostly be about catching, storing and enslaving souls rather than laying curses. She only got Eko with a glancing blow, too, right at the end. It didn’t seem like she was calm enough to do anything subtle, and anything overt would have shown itself already.

She’ll keep a sorceress’ eye on it, though. Just in case. And do something to cut the arcane link back to the blood Lady One-Eye spilled, so it can’t be used to curse her.

“Well, as my hireling, I suppose I oughta order you not to get yourself killed. Or have your arm fall off because it went manky and rotten. No one wants a rotten manky arm,” Ney contributes helpfully. “Anyway, stay outta the capital for now, take a holiday, maybe,” he tosses her a note, “go take some of these jobs on the list. Taym’s probably gonna be a rash idiot, and the last thing we want is him assuming you’re a spooky masked ghost working for bad guys, rather than a clearly heroic masked demon on the side of righteousness. Not that anyone should make that mistake. Anything else? Because I need to get back and try to maybe persuade him that this is a trap and he shouldn’t be rash. I’ll fail, of course, but I want him to know that whatever disaster he blunders into, I said it was a bad idea.”

Eko hesitates. Beneath her butterfly mask, she bites her lip, eyes flicking to and then away from Ney. She sways forward, then back, caught between warring impulses.

It was a joke, is the thing. It was a stupid joke; he didn’t mean it, it was just to demonstrate how good he was at lying. He’s not actually her father. And sure, family isn’t just about blood; Eko knows that as well as anyone and better than most, but even if he moves to the southwest and becomes mama’s super best doki-doki friend (ew ew ew, ignore the lewd implications there), that still won’t make him a father to any of Keris’s children. He’d have to want it for that, and if he’s joking about it then he isn’t interested, even if...

... even if maybe it would be nice if he did. Not for all of them. Just for her. Because the father she’s got is scary and Eko fears her heart more than anything, but having Ney as a dad would be so, so much fun.

But that doesn’t matter! She doesn’t need a dad; she’s been getting along perfectly well without one for years. And maybe she’d really like a hug right now, but she has places to be and Ney has things to do, so there’s no point in dilly-dallying.

And yet she lingers for a second longer, looking off at the setting sun to make it clear she’s not hesitating because of him or paying him all that much attention while tracking his every move through sound.

(If she asked for a hug, he’d probably say yes. Would he say yes? He’d have no reason not to say yes. She’s got her pretty dress on that keeps her from eroding the things she touches, and she’s super huggable apart from that. It’s not like he’d refuse, or turn her down, or make fun of her. Mama would be super mad at him if he did something like that.)

(She’d just have to ask. To... to admit that she kind of wants a hug from her dad. To show her belly and reveal a weakness. To hope that if he did hug her, he’d mean it the way she wants him to mean it, and not just do it out of pity and forget about it by tomorrow.)

Time passes very slowly when Eko is still. It moves at a crawl, stretching out like the world is moving through treacle, miring her in indecision. When Ney starts to open his mouth, she sees it in slow motion; she hears the drawn-out inhalation, senses the beginnings of a hum in his voicebox, anticipates the coming words. Is he about to prompt her for a response again? Take her silence as having nothing to say and make some quip as he leaves? Or has he seen something in her hesitation? Might he be about to probe, or ask what she wants, or worst of all - call her out on exactly what she’s thinking?

The stalemate breaks. Pride and privacy win. Before Ney can speak, before she risks being perceived and has another mask punctured - Eko bolts. She tosses a wave over her shoulder to cover her escape; nothing else to say! She’s off to find Yuu and get herself patched up better! He can track her down again wherever she feels like recovering from her valiantly-acquired wounds!

(She can’t take a dangerous gamble on an untested hand of cards. As much as she likes Ney, she can’t let herself depend on him to see her weaknesses and still accept her. Better to keep her vulnerabilities safely tucked behind a mask than bare them to the world and get stabbed in the heart.)

BUREAU OF DESTINY CONVENTION OF THE EAST
CC. BUREAU OF DESTINY CONVENTION ON THE UNDERWORLD
CLASSIFICATION: GREEN/NEC
AFTER ACTION REPORT (AAR)

SUBJECT:
Major Failed Necrotic Incursion in Taira

DATE OF INCIDENT:
1 ASC. FIRE 2A776

LOCATION:
Malra, Capital of Taym Matah, Claimant to throne of Taira

1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

On the 1st of Ascending Fire, in the 776th year of the Second Age, a significant necrotic incursion began in Malra, the seat of one of the major claimants to the imperial throne of Taira. The incursion began at 1922 CST, corresponding exactly with sunset in that location. A Category 4-Major unstable quasi-shadowland type Loom breakdown (UQSLB) resulted, characteristic of a necromantic working-induced (NWI) surge-type UQSLB. No evidence exists of Creation-side UQSLB formation behaviour suggesting the NWI causation was physically located in the underworld. The UQSLB resulted in major and severe geographic devastation centred on the Gracious Nightjar district. The UQSLB as is common resulted in the reanimation of all proximate corpses present or generated during the necrotic phenomenon, as well as the materialisation of necrotic entities which flooded in through the UQSLB.

Forces loyal to the naib of Malra and his Solar neo-Deliberative immediately responded to the UQSLB, most prominently the Solar-enhanced militant priests under the command of Mashid Atrai and Taym Matah himself and his sorcerous apprentices. Upon notification from local divine reporting assets the Bureau of Destiny (BuDest) scrambled a CODE LAVENDER response, requesting the Bureau of Seasons (BuSea) to begin preparations for primary threat-destruction weather alignment due to the similarity with the fall of Thorns and fear that some threat comparable to Target Juggernaut was about to enter Creation.

The expansion phase of the UQSLB lasted for <= 30 minutes, whereupon its growth suddenly ceased and it began to contract. This occurred shortly before the first BuDest assets arrived on site. By midnight of the same day the UQSLB had stabilised into a category 1 shadowland with a rough diameter of 200m. Malran forces have begun surrounding the location in rock salt to prevent further incursions, though this will not prevent determined assaults by Underworld-aligned forces.

2. HOSTILE FORCES

Type I: Reanimated Cadavers (Po Animated)
- Former human remains in various states of decay
- Possessed by human po souls whether native to said corpse or previously unassociated
- High aggression, low coordination

Type II: Reanimated Cadavers (Hun animated)
- Former human remains in various states of decay
- Possessed by human hun souls
- Showing signs of coordination, drill, deliberation.

Type III: Posthuman Hun Souls
- Non-corporeal hun souls able to manifest in the proximity of the UQSLB
- Observers indicate hun souls were armed and armoured with grave good weapons similar to historic weapons of Tairan armed forces (c.f. “war ghosts”, “grave guard”).
- Observers report battle cries of “For the Shah!” “Death to the Usurper” and similar, suggesting allegiance to one of the other claimants (likely Leila Vokhaza aka Sabah II).
- Possibly variant of Type II.

Type IV: Abyssal Exalted (Unconfirmed)
- Speculated source of UQSLB (c.f. "Daybreak caste")
- Presence not directly observed
- Leila Vokhaza not observed on site. Given tendency to lead from front it is likely that she was not present.

The chandelier in the field office flickers. The field office was previously the sanctum office of the god of the lake in of Malra, but he has charitably let it be requisitioned by the agents of the Bureau of Destiny. The floor has the appearance of deep water but is as solid as marble, and a pleasantly cool breeze blows through the pine trees that ring the stone-arched structures. Now the lavish dining hall has become an operations centre where messenger-gods are constantly coming and going with fresh reports from terrestrial gods in the field which leads to the movement of status tokens on the map in the centre of the room.

Everyone here is looking busy, because a major catastrophe has just occurred and there is a Woman In Green on site. They don’t know who it is, but the word has already gotten out and in this Solar-ruled city plenty of the local gods have secrets they would rather Heaven not look into so they are trying to be maximally helpful.

They don’t know that said Chosen of Jupiter is here, wrapped in the destiny of a minor Bureau of Destiny secretarial goddess, and while she would in other circumstances enjoy ferreting out all their secrets and adding to her kompromat files, right now she’s tired and has a headache. Zanyira puts down the after action report, and pinches her brow. It uses so many words to say so little after this point. The executive summary says everything that Heaven truly knows at this point. Everything else is either tedious recounting of details that will become obsolete when more information is gathered, or is speculation.

What matters is section 9.

9. PROPHETIC INTEL

PropInt recorded a possible mass casualty event in an unknown location in Taira at T-31 hours before the incident. However, the precise details of the event could not be ascertained for reasons that are now clearly identified as the involvement of the underworld. As a result, initial BuDest efforts were misdirected due to its occurrence on the night of the new moon, and the incorrect evaluation that the mass casualty event would be related to demonic activity (ref. the Taira-776-11 manse destruction). This led to misallocation of BuDest resources towards the southern parts of Taira where demonic activity has been at its highest.

This is a farce. A farce that is not her fault. She was briefing in the tea rooms that the committee policy of focusing on the demonic threat to Taira with the extensive demon summoning in the south was misguided in the face of the threat posed by Sabah II. Now all she can do is use this moment to try to correct bureau policy so nothing like this happens again.

But later. Right now she has something else she can do. She has the chance to use something she's only recently acquired the authorisation to do. Zanyi drifts over to the tea table to re-fill her hip flask, and then hunches down over one of the work tables. Her pen scritches away as she fills out a supplication form to the Heptarchs of Tragedy, requisitioning with humility and grace the release of a sealed horror yet to come. It takes a few hours to properly scribe the prayer-requisition, and when she’s done she leaves. No one notices the absence of a secretary.

On the outskirts of the city, she lights a stick of incense and touches it to the prayer to the Heptarchs. The thin strip-paper burns cool and quickly.

In the stifling early Fire air her answer comes. The dry ground splits open, and up from the crack in the ground comes a brazen sepulchre. It is covered in front; it pings and chimes in the midnight air as frost falls from the warming metal. Atop the metal shape is the unclad cast of a man with six arms; one pair he covers his eyes, with other his ears and with the third his mouth.

This is something Zanyira knows the nature of; this is one of the sepulchres forged by the seven gods known as the Heptarchs of Tragedy, seven gods who hide fell secrets whispered from the future so that their horrors might not be known until it is time. There are those among the Five Score Fellowship who have authority to call up these graven tombs - this one seems to have been hidden in a place of ice, perhaps far in the north. And now she opens one of these sealed caskets for the first time in this lifetime.

She reaches into a pocket and pulls on a pair of soft gloves. Carefully she brushes off the frost, momentarily smelling the sea (had it been frozen in a block of ice), and takes a breath. She vaguely remembers the horrors that this can lead to, from another life. But she must know.

Within the unsealed sepulchre is a few sheafs from a chronicle of the history of Taira. But the thing is, it’s dated for an action on SA776 14 Res. Fire. A month and a half from now. The paper is water damaged from leaks within the sepulchre, but there are still elements that can be picked out. The naib of Malra will attack the old capital Zamash on the full moon of next month. It will be a bloody, messy trap. The lacunae in the histories no doubt correspond to the intervention of those enemies of fate, and the size of those gaps tell her; there is very little that divinations can pick out of the precise events. She suspects Eko will be there, but for all she knows her niece has already contacted Keris and Keris is preparing to intervene to save her daughter, the Jackal, or perhaps even Zanyi herself.

And probably to loot the imperial treasury of Taira, because Kiss might be a hole in Fate but that doesn’t make her not extremely predictable sometimes. Indeed, the history does record that the treasury was looted, which doesn’t necessarily mean Kiss will be there but also doesn’t discredit it.

And all that does not horrify her. Not compared to the fact that the history is written in her own hand. She recognises her own writing, the playful flicks of the cross-bars, the little imperfections compared to the way Sidereals trained from a young age in calligraphy in Old Realm writing. She recognises her own style and flair with words. This is a history she will later forge under a false identity, as to shape the way events are thought about by the inhabitants of Creation.

If this is true — and it always is, this is one of the horrors that the Heptarchs hide — she will be alive to see the end of the current age. Which might mean that it could still be thousands of years away. It could be.

She knows the numbers. Odds are, the Age will end within the next few centuries.

The next day, she goes to see her sifu in her dojo. “Sifu Patricia,” she begins, “I unsealed a casket of the Heptarchs for the first time yesterday.”

“Usually a mistake,” is her sifu’s blunt response. She doesn’t bother to look at Zanyi, instead working through the same few katas again and again. She was perhaps not the best sifu for Zanyira with regards to what Zanyi is good at, but Fate said that they would work well together. “I have done it before.”

“Have… you ever found anything from… well, yourself?”

Patricia pauses, fist outstretched. “Yes. The first time I did so. A few times since.”

She offers her sifu the papers. “I wrote this. Will write this.”

“Are you sure?”

“Trust me. I know my own style.”

“You know it doesn’t mean much.” Patricia’s voice is even less emotional than normal. “Even if you are correct, we can live a very long time. It doesn’t mean anything even if you find things that suggest that you will be alive at the end of the next Age.”

Something about that sits wrong with Zanyi, and she tilts her head, talking in the pale doll-like face of her sifu and her violet eyes that so seldom settle on whoever she’s talking to. “Those weren’t your words. That was a practiced speech.” She forces down the concern and rolls her shoulders, wearing her smile like a mask. “My, my. You — and perhaps more of the elders — think the end of the Age is coming much sooner than anyone thinks.”

Patricia is no more responsive than the doll she resembles in so many ways when she replies, “And if that is true, what will you do?”

Zanyi wanted to answer that she would scream, but that wouldn’t help anyone. So instead she smiles. “I suppose I’ll go try to ensure that the Malran sun-chosen are prepared for the ambush they damn well should expect is coming. And have tea with the Green Lady. The last thing we need is Taira’s many battlefields under the control of an Underworld proxy state.”

Her sifu presses her hands to her thighs. “Your smiles won’t fool anyone.”

“They won’t fool everyone.” Zanyira thinks of Baisha, and the sun going out there as the creeping dusk of the Underworld consumes the valley as the Dead lurch up the streets. “They might fool who they need to fool. And maybe, if the Green Lady doesn’t have the right intel, I might have to take a trip to Zamash to help her with that.”

“I will help you with that.”

“You don’t-” begins Zanyi, surprised.

“I know her. She helped me with my first placement in the Northern Convention. And I will not let you go to Zamash on your own. I am your sifu, after all. And your grasp of the lotus is still substandard.”