Yzyrchye had changed since the last time I’d seen it, but that was its nature. It pushed through the hole in the Line and the world bent with a nauseating twist. For a moment we stood outside, staring at the interdicted hospital walls; rescued the children from transients; fought the four strangers; suffocated in a fire that sucked the air out of the room; fell on each other in a maddened rage; prostrated before Yzyrchye in mindless worship; screamed as we were devoured by its manifold mouths—a whirlwind of shattered mirror-fragments of reality spun around us, endlessly reflecting each other in ever-darkening images of possibility. Time and space and probability bent to accommodate Yzyrchye’s infinite mass just as Aidan’s flesh had bent to accommodate the twitching, phallic organ that impaled his body and dragged it along behind the hell-god’s vast bulk. The young man’s eyes were open and his mouth stretched in a scream, even though all that came out of it was a high whining noise. The remains of corpses in various states of decay hung from the other appendages jutting from Yzyrchye’s torso.
Hargrave thrust Rosian forward. She twisted and nearly escaped, but a whip-sharp claw streaked down from a place where the ceiling should have been and closed around her, jerking her up into the void.
Lorencz’s hand closed around my arm and yanked me backward. I staggered, blinking and off-balance. Someone was shouting my name. Another set of hands grabbed me and liquid ran down my face, stinging my eyes and bearing a sharp, sweet scent that cut, for a moment, through the bilious scent of Hell.
I tasted oil and came to my senses. I’d been standing frozen in front of Yzyrchye, dazed by pure, pulse-pounding delight. Might dangled from my hand, all its temptations forgotten and meaningless.
Another scream. Either Hargrave or the physician had been harvested. Probably the physician. Yzyrchye almost never killed its summoner.
Michael was shouting something, but I couldn’t hear him over my own pulse. Croix smeared the sign of the sword and disk on my forehead. I jerked my head away.
“Tegeus.”
One word, spoken by a dozen voices as mouths erupted across Yzyrchye’s mass. I had no trouble hearing that. I heard it down to the deepest and darkest core of my being.
“I brought him to you, my liege!” Hargrave shouted with pride. “I brought him — Tegeus Droit, your unfaithful servant, your disobedient hound!”
“Yzyrchye knows who I am,” I said, my heart pounding to the sound of hell’s voice. Might was dead in my hand. I sheathed it. “We don’t need an introduction.”
“Droit, I charge you in the name of Kyrchye to resist the temptation to return to its service,” Croix commanded. He stepped forward, next to me. Oil glistened on his forehead, too. I laughed as I realized what he’d done. The conniving communicant had given us both last rites.
Now Croix looked up, twitching as he registered the extent of the being before us. His voice trembled. “Yzyrchye, I defy you.”
A serrated bone talon hurtled down toward the cardinal. Croix stood, pale and shaking but steadfast in his faith. The talon stopped an inch from his chest and gently tapped it. Yzyrchye had been taught its sense of humor by the lowest examples of humanity.
“Droit, I’m going to kill you when this is over,” Lorencz breathed. To my surprise, she stepped up to stand beside me. Her face was drawn and colorless in contrast to her brightly dyed hair, and she kept her eyes focused on the floor a foot ahead of her. Vomit from her first glance at the Sovereign of Hell was spattered over the toes of her boots.
More claws moved forward, a dozen thin, sharp, barbed limbs that twitched over us, touching our faces and shoulders with insectile delicacy. I’d faced Yzyrchye’s curiosity before, but Lorencz and Croix tried to strike the appendages away, cutting their hands on the razor-sharp chitin of its sensory organs.
“Don’t move,” I advised, staying as still as possible while the organic knives slid across my face. “You should have left when I told you to.”
“I’m not here for you, Droit.” Croix said, his voice still shaking. “I’m here for Cislunar.”
“I’m just too sick to run,” Lorencz groaned.
The mouths spoke again, male and female and beast: “Names?” “What?” “Who?” “Names?” “Who?”
“Don’t,” I said, too quickly. A razor edge sliced the side of my mouth.
“We will not give you our names,” Croix declared, straightening up defiantly. The move cost him some flesh.
“Kill them, Great Yzyrchye.” Hargrave took a step forward, free from any probing talons. “Kill them and give Might to me. I’ll be your Hound. I’ll take Cislunar for you!”
“Ethan,” the mouths hissed, savoring the flavor of his name. Hargrave grinned, turning an eager gaze on me.
“Yes, my liege! A sentinel will make a better servant than a mundane. I have allies in Cislunar, allies who will heed my cry for help, allies who can bring down this city in twenty-four hours!”
“Impossible,” Croix hissed, outraged.
Needle points scraped down the side of my cheek, tapped the white of one of my eyes. I stared straight ahead as razor-edged bone knives monitored the pulse at the base of my throat and slid past folds of leather and canvas to rest over my heart and my groin. Chitinous proboscises tickled my palms, tasting my sweat.
“Ethan Hargrave is a nobody,” Lorencz said, her voice faint.
Yzyrchye’s limbs shifted, rearrange themselves around us. The pincer lifted from my eye and I blinked rapidly. I’ve never liked having my eyes touched.
“Nobody?” “No-one?” “Nonentity?” “Nonbeing?”
“I’m a member of the Banishat,” Hargrave protested, “and we are legion. Arcady Lorencz is your enemy, Yzyrchye. She’s dangerous. Kill her.”
“Demanding, aren’t you?” I risked a glance at him. “You’re going to learn that Yzyrchye doesn’t take orders.”
The pall around us glowed stronger as bale pulsed from the hole in reality. The light was stark white and unforgiving, illuminating every pore and wrinkle on Hargrave’s face and gleaming off the chitin and bone and stretched skin and glistening mucous on Yzyrchye’s towering, shifting collection of body parts. The wind from beyond the Line became stronger and more fetid.
“Go back to hell and take your damned sentinel with you,” Croix snapped, squaring his shoulders. Fabric ripped as sharp limbs sliced through his clothes to touch, taste, and test. He swallowed but stood his ground, even when a twiglike hook lifted the holy symbol around his neck, turned it, and let it fall back against his chest. Blood seeped from tiny cuts all over his body. “In the name of Kyrchye, I abjure you — leave this place!”
Yzyrchye’s reality shifted, parts of it vanishing into otherness, new parts emerging from the fractures of space around it. I glimpsed part of Rosian impaled on a hundred small white spines, her fingers still twitching, before she moved out of sight. But the Sovereign of Hell itself didn’t leave.
“Kyrchye is a myth,” Hargrave sneered. “A desperate legend created to cope with Yzyrchye’s awesome reality. When’s the last time your god responded to your call, cardinal?”
“I don’t call Kyrchye. He calls me.”
The probing limbs left me and I turned. Lorencz was dry heaving; she must have seen Rosian, too. Several of Yzyrchye’s slender, straw-like phalanges clustered around my partner’s mouth to sample her bile. Croix, too, was still under inspection. I was apparently less interesting than the two of them. But then again, I was a previously examined quantity.
I didn’t dare glance behind me to see what had happened to my too-quiet cousin. I hoped he was alive; I’d always promised myself I’d be the one to finish him off.
“What do you want?” I asked Yzyrchye. “Why are you here?”
“It came for me,” Hargrave hissed. I ignored him. He hadn’t dealt with Yzyrchye before. I had.
The mouths began to babble, providing a confusing barrage of explanations, declarations, questions that mixed in with Cardinal Croix’s exhortations in an incomprehensible cacophony.
“Stop!” Hargrave stepped forward, reaching out and calling a balesword from the vomitous morass surrounding us. “Yzyrchye, give me Might!”
“If you want it, come and get it,” I snapped, drawing the sword a fourth time. Might was as light and dead in my hands as a desiccated corpse.
Yzyrchye’s voices fell silent and a high-pitched screaming rose overhead. Both Hargrave and I looked up. Claws held the orderly’s body above us. A set of huge, bone-white pincers descended from the blinding balelight and snapped it in half. Hot blood rained down on our hair, faces, and clothing, followed by a heavy hail of internal organs.
Croix’s prayers faltered, and when they started again, they held a note of hysteria.
Lorencz crouched, clutching her head.
I lunged.
Hargrave raised his balesword just in time and Might slid off its length. I hissed. At any other time, Might would have sheared through unfixed bale like a razor through gelatin. The breach was strengthening Hargrave’s constructs as it weakened Might’s power.
Hargrave sneered as the orderly’s blood dripped down his face.
“Yzyrchye has deserted you,” he blustered, swinging. I moved right to parry and hit a knee-high balewall. Caught off-balance, I raised Might too high and Hargrave’s balesword slashed through my crimson-drenched leather coat, just missing flesh. I shook the orderly’s gore out of my eyes and recovered. Croix’s prayers were a desperate wail behind me.
“Yzyrchye doesn’t give a damn about either of us,” I said.
Hargrave circled my legs with balewalls. I stepped over them, parrying another blow, swung, and hit a balewall that erupted between us for a split second before collapsing back into the puddles of bale around our feet.
“Nice,” I grated, giving him his due. I’d never fought a sentinel so adept at combat calling before. Then again, I’d never fought a sentinel in the middle of a breach before, either.
The orderly’s two halves dropped between us, forcing us both to jump back. I glanced around. Yzyrchye’s limbs had withdrawn, giving us space to fight.
Once, long ago, I’d been forced into combat with Yzyrchye’s slicing limbs and probing needles surrounding both me and my opponent, sampling each of us as we tried to kill each other. It had been one of the most unpleasant duels I’d ever fought. But today, having given us its bloody benediction, the Sovereign of Hell seemed content to watch from its hundreds of mismatched eyes.
Balewalls rose to my left and right. I jumped forward, rolling, predicting that a third was about to rise behind me to pin me in. Hargrave’s sword cut through leather and scored my back as I passed him. I slammed against another balewall and twisted, scrambling to my feet and parrying his next blow. Long leather strips from my coat were dangling around my feet. My back burned from the cut.
I moved to one side and hit a balewall. Hargrave thrust and bale slid through my coat, piercing my side. I swore. Hargrave’s eyes lit up and spikes erupted from the balewalls around me.
I gritted my teeth and advanced, using Might to batter his sword back. Hargrave was a good swordsman, much better than Aidan, but he was still the product of a classroom rather than a battlefield. I kept moving forward, pressing him backward as I slid my dagger from my belt.
At last he parried Might with too much vigor, opening his guard. I stepped in sideways, slamming the dagger into his gut.
He wrenched away, trying to get enough distance to bring his sword to bear. I moved with him, pressing against him like a lover, so close that I could see the sweat beading in his pores. I twisted the dagger, feeling resistance as it gouged through muscle and organs. I slammed a knee between his legs just in case the knife wasn’t enough.
Hargrave gasped. His balesword vanished as his knees buckled. I slid the hand that held Might under his sword arm, supporting him. Yzyrchye’s probes descended, insinuating themselves around and into Hargrave’s body. Several touched me, as well, measuring my pulse and heartbeat, tasting my blood.
“Yzyrchye,” Hargrave gasped.
“You care too much to be Yzyrchye’s Hound,” I whispered in his ear. “The trick is to not give a damn one way or the other.”
“Bastard.” He fixed his eyes on mine as if his gaze could drag me down into death with him. I kissed him, tasting his blood on his tongue.
Somewhere someone whistled, a long, piercing sound that shrilled across the Line the way Croix’s prayers did not.
I stepped back, licking my lips and pulling my dagger out of Hargrave’s gut. His corpse collapsed at my feet.
“He wasn’t worthy of you, Yzyrchye,” I said as the cloud of probes rose to surround the infinite bulk that was my former master.
“Tegeus,” the voices said. Most of them sounded affectionate. One or two sounded angry. “Hound.” “Eyes.” “Ears.” “Lover.”
I’d once believed that I could gauge Yzyrchye’s mood from its voices. Over time, however, I’d learned better. Yzyrchye mimics human behavior and emotion, but it doesn’t understand them.
“Mouth.” “Tegeus.” “Hands.” “Breath.” “Tegeus.”
“No. Not anymore.”
“Yzyrchye!”
It was Axton’s voice. I spun. I’d thought he was dead, and my cousin with him. But the alienist stood in the doorway, looking like a slender doll in his oversized greatcoat. Michael stood behind him, his face averted, one hand resting on Axton’s shoulder. Neither had been harmed.
I shifted my gaze to the two figures beside them. I’d met both before, briefly: a twelve-year-old girl holding a piece of chalk in one hand, and a large transient in the guise of a man, wearing a workhouse jacket and badge.
Milka and Far had arrived at last.