I didn’t look over my shoulder as I stumbled forward. I didn’t want to see whatever emergent form Yzyrchye was taking. My head pounded with every beat of my heart, and streaks of light and color flashed across my vision. I fumbled with my good hand for the belt buckle around my waist and let the belt and empty rapier scabbard fall behind me. Three swords and one dagger lost in a single day. That was a personal record. And the injuries … they were a record, too. I’d taken worse over the years, but never without Might there to heal them.
I might die without it. And all I needed to do to get it back was turn around.
“Forget it, Yzyrchye,” I hissed. “I don’t need you or your gifts.”
The street lurched under my feet. I staggered as the stone crust warped into an all-too-familiar shell, growing thin phalanges that swayed back and forth, groping for something. The street shook again. I crouched, placing my hands on the shifting stone to steady myself, and squinted up at the cathedral.
It was growing, stretching, extruding thick blood vessels that coiled around the street and broke it down, assimilating the shattered bale into itself.
Lorencz had stopped, staring in awe as the cathedral’s walls blossomed with pulsing vessels that swayed in the bale and shed a dull scarlet glow. Kyrchye’s cathedral was growing, sucking the street into it and pulling Yzyrchye’s palace closer.
I opened my mouth to shout, but Lorencz had already grasped the threat and was running back toward me again. The cathedral swelled behind her, transforming into a grotesque version of Kyrchye’s sun — the sun as a huge, pulsing heart, forcing bale-blood through an infinite number of ray-like vessels. I didn’t know where Cardinal Croix was, inside that monstrous baleform, but it occurred to me that if this was what Kyrchye did to its petitioners, being Yzyrchye’s Hound hadn’t been such a bad deal, after all.
“Droit, what the hell are you doing here?” Lorencz stumbled to a halt next to me, wheezing like the suicide smoker she was and grabbing my arm. “We gotta —”
Her eyes rose behind my back and widened. I was going to have to look, after all. I braced myself and turned.
The asylum was gone: absorbed, collapsed, I had no idea. Only one warped street was left to link the heart-cathedral and the crustacean-palace, which was now covered with tower-high spikes, snapping mouths the size of double doors, thrusting beaks, and slashing talons. Thousands of eyes rolled in all directions, seeing everything, and a sea-urchin’s armor of rippling spines and sensory probes moved back and forth in a fringe along its underbelly.
Lorencz’s fingers tightened on my arm.
“Maybe this wasn’t such a bright idea,” she whispered huskily as the street beneath us trembled again.
Everything swam around me. I smelled the salt beef we used to eat on the ship, back when I’d been a convict sailor in the navy. I smiled, not knowing why, as the behemoth that was Yzyrchye moved closer.
“They’re fighting over us,” I said, my voice sounding far away. I registered the phenomenon, acknowledged it as a bad sign, and dismissed it as uninteresting. “Isn’t it nice to be wanted?”
Between both monsters stood one lone figure in a greatcoat that flapped against the balewind. Its arms were outspread, and the space between its arms was filled with snow and grey stone.
Home.
The street swelled and shifted beneath our feet. I looked down and saw an advance guard of capillaries shooting through the balestone, under our feet and past us like a crimson wave.
“Let’s go.” Lorencz started to run. I staggered after her, my eyes fixed on her back and nothing else.
The street twisted and warped beneath my feet as Yzyrchye and the cathedral — I wasn’t entirely certain if I should call it Croix, or Kyrchye, or some transient amalgamation of the two — drew closer together, bound together and fighting for dominance. Only Far stayed motionless, holding the Line. We clambered over the last huge blood-vessel/carapace twists of bale that warped the balestreet and felt the fresh, cold air of Cislunar on our faces.
Something snapped around our legs, yanking our feet out from under us. Impossible pain split my skull open and set fire to my brain. Lights skewered through my eyes and I tasted lemons. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d tasted a lemon.
“Tegeus.” “Hound.” “Broken.” “Mine.” “Mine.” “Mine.”
I opened my eyes, twisting around. Eyes stared and mouths whispered, crooned, and demanded. Probes advanced toward me like a swarm of long, thin wasps. I raised my hands to protect my face.
“Shit! Droit!” Lorencz was kicking at the claws that held her legs.
“Yzyrchye! Let her go!” I dropped my hands and stared up at the hundreds of eyes. “Let her go, and we’ll talk.”
“Droit —” Lorencz scrambled backward as the claws released both of us.
“Shut up and cross.”
“You said you wouldn’t go back to it!”
“Eyes.” “Breath.” “Return.” “Tegeus.” “Mine.” “Bound.” “Welcome.” “Lover.” “Tegeus.” “Petty.” “Hound.” Hundreds of voices said different things, deafening me.
“I lied. Get out of here.” I staggered to my feet, braced by Yzyrchye’s suddenly soliticious appendages. My head spun and I dry-heaved.
“Like hell I will,” she snarled.
“I’m dying anyway. Go keep Michael safe.” I flinched as probes began to investigate the wound beneath my bandages. “Go take care of Elliot.”
“If you think I’m going to let you die like a fuckin’ hero —”
“Hey, Lorencz.” I turned and held out a hand. Surprised, she took it. I yanked her forward against my chest, buried my fist into her solar plexus, and shoved her through the gap in the Line that Far was still holding open.
“Is that shit enough for you?” I shouted as she collapsed onto the snowy cobblestones, fighting to draw a breath. Everyone else was already on the other side, staring at me with horror. “Close the Line, Far!”
The transient dropped his hands. Both he and the city vanished.
The bale around us roiled.
“Tegeus.” “Hound.” “Mine.” “Tegeus.” “Eyes.” “Tegeus.”
I turned, lifting my hands to hold my skull together. Probes thrust between my fingers, still crawling over my flesh. A kaleidoscope of lights and colors blurred my vision.
“I said we’d talk, Yzyrchye. Not that I’d agree.”
“Mine.” “Oath.” “Hound.” “Tegeus.” “No.” “Death.” “Lover.” “Might.” “Stay.” “Mine.” “Heal.” “Eyes.” “Petty.” “Conquer.” “Mine.” “Repair.”
“I don’t —” I stopped as the ground beneath me buckled and twisted. The appendages investigating me were suddenly crosshatched by blood vessels. The cathedral hovered several yards away like an all-absorbing star of blood.
Sharp probes made of exoskeleton and gauzy fans made of blood vessels danced around each other, surrounding me. I couldn’t move without brushing one or the other. I smelled burning vanilla. My head pounded.
“Go away,” I said, still clutching my skull. The bandages felt sodden beneath my palms. “I’m not making any deals with Kyrchye, either. A walking set of eyes and ears or a big pulsing ball of blood — you gods ask too much. All Far wants is a dead animal.”
“Broken.” “Hound.” “Death.” “Mine.” “Stay.” “Oath.” “Heal.” “Forever.” “Hound.” “Serve.” The probes twitched, caressing my face.
“I’m nobody’s servant.” I batted at the probes as they crawled over me like insects. “Not yours, not Kyrchye’s, not Far’s, not my father’s, nobody’s!”
“Incorrect,” said Jaspin, and what the hell was he doing here, anyway? “When you joined the Watch, you agreed to serve the Ministry of Justice. And that means me.”
I raised my head. Michael and Lorencz stood before me, the latter glaring at me, her arms bare and scored with knife-wounds. The two of them, and the children, held the Line open, their hands on its bale-bleeding edges. Everything made of bale that had come with them across the Line had vanished.
Jaspin was favoring his bad leg and looking up at Yzyrchye, his scarred face twisted with awe and determination. Probes flew at the investigator, extending through the gap to tap his empty eyesocket, his crippled arm and leg.
“Broken.” “Come.” “Stay.” “Oath.” “Heal.” “Mine.” “Come.” “Broken.”
“I’m a reverent man, Yzyrchye,” Jaspin said. “I’ve already sworn myself to Kyrchye.”
“Heal.” “Mine.” “Broken.”
“You’re all going to get yourself killed,” I muttered, curling my fingers over the bandages around my skull. My knees began to buckle.
“Come on, Tegeus.” Michael stepped across the Line and grabbed me. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking as he inspected my face. “Let’s go.”
“Tegeus.” “Lover.” “Hound.” “Stay.” “Victory.” Broken.” “Hound.” “Oath.” “Wait.” For the first time, Yzyrchye’s voices, all speaking at once, seemed desperate.
I hesitated. Jaspin grabbed my coat cuff with his good hand and Caro took my other sleeve. Lorencz grabbed the shoulder Michael wasn’t holding, sweat still beading her pale face. I made a futile effort to resist, but together they yanked me into Cislunar and the Line closed behind us.
“You are a shit,” Lorencz said thinly. “Next time you hit me, I’m going to kill you.”
An icy wind whipped through the tatters of my clothing. I shivered, looking around. Cislunar again, complete with the smoky smell of the recent fires. But dark, very dark, except for the streaks of red and flashing lights that blurred across everything.
My bale-bandages and bale-coat had vanished, and the air was icy on my wounds.
“Come on,” Caro said, sliding a hand into mine. “We have to get inside.” Her hand was hot. I clung to it, anchoring myself, and tried to nod. I don’t think I succeeded. Everything tilted.
“The hospital.” Axton’s voice was tight. “Now.”
“Is it safe?” Lorencz asked.
Someone threw a coat over my shoulders.
“The hospital or my flat.”
“You still live in a cellar?”
“Yes.”
“Hospital it is.”
The coat was warm and smelled like old blood and stale food. Axton’s. Maybe someday Michael would teach him how to do his laundry.
Michael.
“Michael.” I forgot what I was going to say for a moment. Then I remembered. “Can you see?”
“What’d he say?” someone asked.
“All mental and physical changes experienced across the Line have remained intact,” Axton murmured in my ear. Was he the one holding me up? “Your cousin is fine, General.”
“We left Croix in hell.” Lorencz didn’t sound happy. “Do you think I should go back and get him?”
“How?” Michael asked. “Besides — he chose his fate. It’s out of our hands.”
“What’s going to happen to us?” one of the boys asked. Milka began to explain about the Vigilance. I concentrated on walking, wondering who was stewing onions. Somebody making dinner or another hallucination? Or the smell of Axton’s coat? Stewed onions was a poor man’s meal.
“Michael….” I forgot what I was going to say again. Caro’s hand tightened on mine. Or maybe it was Axton’s. I couldn’t tell.
At some point or another we reached Blackstone Hospital. A number of people surrounded it. They argued. I remember Axton’s voice, low but insistent, and Lorencz shouting, and at some point someone released my hand, but by then everything was very dark and I lost track of what was going on.