On rang the bells, and the guests, as if released from fetters, dispersed to take their seats. And here we are, Gama III thought. The table was full, the moment at hand. Anticipation moved as a wild fondle from seat to seat, bowel to bowel, quivers begetting moans and hoarse whispers, emotion stretching jaws with violence.

Sometimes we treated our anger as a polished jewel, too precious to be set aside. I retained mine for many long seconds before seeing it as a burden and letting it slip, unmourned, into the peace of the fine day. The last of it expressed itself with a grumpy, “For a man who makes eyes, you certainly have much to learn about the blind.”

"Then I shall teach him otherwise," I said, folding my fan with a decisive snap. "Wish me luck. And if you see the conte before I return, then both of you stay right here, or I may never find you again." With that, I dove once more into the crowd.

In the gallery, the lawyers turned and hushed his mistress at once. Both Arla and the Marquis had been speaking, yes, but of the two of them, she was the one with scales. The lawyers regarded those scales with disdain. He stopped smiling at once. The lawyers’ behavior was not a new reaction to Arla, true, but the Marquis had the privilege to forget about the insults she suffered. Remembering them annoyed him afresh.

The town bandstand has medallions of iron recently emblazoned to it; in the last twelve years since the Hayes election, all respectable towns have added them to the places where politicians might speak. But those are only enough for the local offices. The mayor, the city council. Any redcap or jenny-greenteeth might slip into one of those positions, were the local election commissioners unwary; might find a way around the medallions.

My prayers are automatic, the movements worn into my fingers. With each Hail Mary and Lord’s Prayer, I can feel my shoulders tense. I haven’t had confession since I left the convent. Haven’t taken communion. I say my prayers, but when my mouth shapes the words, they come out tarnished. There’s nothing holy in this path on which I’ve set myself. I remember his teeth.

This man. His accent is strange, foreign. How old is he? His hair is long and grey and curly, like Fedor's. He drinks from my glass. I'd forgotten what it's like to have a man sit at your table, drink from your glass. His smell. The old scar around his neck. Is it a double one—an old scar on yet an older one? The trembling of his hands. What am I doing. What am I doing.

I thought Yut would be glad to see me gone, a respite from my vigilance. Instead she fusses over my departure and sends along one of her owls to see me off. The shadow bird is surprisingly soft, weightless on my shoulder and affectionate, nudging my chin with its burred head. It dissipates before we reach the gate, the limit of Yut's sending.

A good Gallows Girl knows how to steady a man when he twitches at the end of the rope. She’ll take his hands and hold them tight, or grab him by the forearms if she needs to. The firm touch of a good Gallows Girl is usually enough: he’ll go slack, stop kicking, and let the noose dig. The death is just as ugly, but the passing is eased.

Near the southernmost curve of the Cheyenne, Breed dismounts to scratch his back against a boulder he uses every year. It’s shaped like a big whitish head, or isn’t really but looks like a man’s head after his hat leaves his hair flatted down. Marcus watches from horseback and says, “I was wrong about Silas.”

“That is a very handsome bag,” Oskar said to no one. “Bespoke, no doubt. It is very kind of the Köln office to send such a handsome bag, but it would be even kinder if they sent the necessary instructions!”

Yes, one of the Three Jewels of the Tao was compassion, as my father would expound at great depth—and length—to anyone foolish enough to sit still for it, but in practice we asked a price for such assistance. Nor did we usually offer such services to creatures both invisible and unnatural, and I said as much to Mei Li.

Nev did not like violence, as a rule. He knew too much of bodies. But violence was his profession, had been since he was just a young girl in a rural little wastewater like this one. Eight years, and the outside world had let him alone. They had been good years. But the outside always intruded, eventually.

"And to further the cause of diplomacy, I will bring the child with me. A Kven child bringing a gift to Veralduki people—surely this will help her people to understand that they ought to sue for peace."

Which was why, when Delia walked in, Stag came near failing to believe it. Delia, all the way from the city, not in slinky red but scarred boots, mittens, a wool coat high enough at the collar it hid every part of her fine flesh but her face, which stayed frozen even when her eyes met his. She disappeared outside quick as she'd come.

She had seen these kinds of displays before. The people said all the right words and went through all the motions of piety, but their faces remained closed to her. There was almost a sense of mockery in their exaggerated subservience, a bluster that precluded any chance of an honest connection. Part of her wanted to shout at them, to embrace them, to do anything that might break through that wall of denial. For how could the truth ever reach them if they would not even admit to their heresy?

"Vanilla," she said instantly, scent and 'sense telling her true. She could feel the faint tug of it below her ribs, almost imperceptible—a gentle essence, not a powerful one. "A Nariguan strain."

Though these actions were not illegal, they were deemed deviant, and so Lecteur-Marèchale Davisson, Chanteur-Marèchale Redwyn, and I set off in pursuit. Darune disappeared beyond the Shore into the Desert. However, he left deep footprints in which we observed rich printed text. The marshals and I immediately made plaster casts rubbed with charcoal and copied in triplicate, all of which have been delivered to you with this letter.

Fear arises in many delightful vintages, and we Magisters Subtle make it a point to be connoisseurs of all its varieties. The hint of it that rose now from Lady Mermingosa nearly made the edges of my mouth curl in the approximation of a smile. “This is just a formality,” I said. “We’re just tying off all avenues of inquiry. Do not be alarmed, please.”

We look at one of the gaps in the Book of Amram; I read aloud what there is of the passage and he suggests a word that might fill the part that is missing. I’ve taught him that writing has styles, and that if one knows the poetic conventions of the day or the habits of a book’s author, it is sometimes possible to fill in the missing places even without a mafteach. And though Muqan still can’t read, he is adept at recognizing patterns.

But the litanies Obb calculates during divine offices can only ever be approximations—even if he extended one to a hundred thousand places, and worked out x99,999/99,999! + x100,001/100,001!, et cetera, this wouldn’t cure but only bury the imperfection, dormant, deep below the surface, powerful and secret.

Across great distances I hear her voice rolling over the sand, traipsing gently above bones of impossible beasts that perhaps had one day populated the desert. The Tumbleweed Star speaks to its twin sibling, the star to which I am tethered. She speaks of secrets I will never understand and do not want to overhear; of time above the clouds, of darknesses, of absences.

Even though I had slept, I was still fatigued, and I half-suspected that the Raker had simply assumed I possessed the stamina of youth, for all he had tried to be careful—but the rush of our powers had revived me. I felt fully myself now, my spirit stretching my skin, my blood aflame with the exhilaration of that danger. He did not know yet how to be safe. He would choose to be, for me, if he knew how. That I believed.

A truth about rivers: we have always been able to draw our water together into solid bodies, to walk on two legs. But it is not without risk, and not without cost. We lose much of ourselves in the transformation, and if there's not enough of us to start with, well...

All was silence, and Uhammad was alone with the desert and his phial of spice. He held it above his left eye and focused on his strongest memory from their journey. After pulling back his lower eyelid, he tapped some of the powder into it. It burned worse than the bright red peppers he used to flavor his dishes. He felt weightless. Despite his sudden wish to fight its call, it had all too soon taken hold of his entire being.

We hold the entire kingdom hostage, the two of us. We have their names. Those that her clerk cannot find for her, I search out myself in the stacks of Tsud’s library. Tsud was nothing if not meticulous. He had every clansman and kinsman listed, along with their wealth and their holdings. They send a tithe of their family to us, and we use them to again people the palace.

She gritted her teeth against the mounting pressure in her skull, like steam rising from a kettle. Is that when the void breaks through? A brokenness of the soul and a wound in the body; so Brighteye had described the moment of awakening to sorcery. There were people in the world who lusted for that terrible power. The same sort of people, Orha assumed, who would kill and leave the corpse its jewelry.

The giant man’s eye went wide as he looked at me, truly looked at me. He hefted the hammer, but it was too late. It had been too late from the moment they stepped from the trees. Voice soft, pictures solid in my mind, I did as I’d been taught, and flawlessly.

Moogh decided, with regret, that he would have to temporarily abandon his trek due west and instead walk alongside this water for a bit until either he outlasted or outpaced whatever curse made it seem to go on forever. He declared its true name to be the Tricksy River, and decided if he ever found the trickster responsible for it he might justifiably commit some minor violence upon their person.

I snapped the flute in half across my knee. Junko’s scream drowned out the faint whistle and much louder crack of the flute coming apart. He dove toward me, nearly incoherent in rage. Kenji managed to trip him as he hurtled past, and Junko went sprawling, though he quickly scrambled back to his feet. “I’ll kill—”