Catharina’s ghosts screamed in deafening concert. They always did when she climbed the stairs, knowing full well what awaited one of them once she reached the summit.

  As used as she was to their cries, today they were hard to ignore.

  It would’ve been quicker and easier to float up and bypass the long, winding stairs altogether. A chill hung in the air tonight, and the storm above threatened a flood. But Catharina needed the reprieve. If not from the wailing in her head, at least from the responsibilities she bore.

  Climbing on her own feet allowed for precious thinking time. It was becoming a commodity, now that her enemies were becoming legion.

  Of least importance and impact, yet somehow constantly on her mind, was Cinder. Catharina caught snatches of that one’s exploits, when she had the time to spy. The more she watched, the more she worried over what her old Justice was capable of. Lately she hadn’t had the energy to focus on Cinder as much, so she’d delegated the task to Iliaya… and the reports somehow made her worries even worse.

  For good or ill, she could do little about that one for the time being.

  If she set out that night, she could reach the Cauldron in about two days, but that meant leaving Ort unsupervised. Nowadays it took her and Leea’s combined efforts to lull the god back to its fitful sleep. And it woke far too often to risk leaving Aztroa.

  The Cauldron itself was becoming a headache. Her relief force was en-route, but they’d never get there in time to reestablish order. In the days since Iliaya had figured where Cinder was and what the situation there was, the force should have reached reached the midway point between Drack and Ria, weather and luck permitting.

  Maybe the daemons would do Catharina a favour and kill Cinder, but that was unlikely. That madwoman would escape whatever it was that brewed there, and Catharina’s forces would be mired in an extended campaign to re-pacify the area. Sending out six of her best channellers was hard to stomach, especially after losing an entire cadre.

  Her original plan had been to send Falor there early in Thaw, just to check what was happening with the communication interruptions.

  But, as if to spite all her plans, Falor was off gallivanting into the wilderness. He had removed himself from her board at the worst possible moment, gone chasing squirrels at Cinder’s behest. If Catharina had been wiser—as Iliaya kept berating her—she would’ve leashed him on the Night of Descent, and made sure he wasn’t going to do anything stupid. Boy had too much curiosity and far too little sense.

  The wind picked up. It whistled among the Crown’s peaks and gorges, building itself up into a proper howl. Some days she missed the calm, soft weather of Nen.

  Even from halfway up the mountain, she felt Ort straining his chains, his hunger grown into gluttony. The old monster was awake again, and louder than ever. It took all her focus to blot out his braying.

  ‘Cinder has made contact with Panacea,’ Iliaya’s voice whispered in her ear, her tone as venomous as ever. ‘As I warned she would. I was banished again, but I saw enough, The situation there is dire. You must act!’

  Catharina sighed. Plots and ploys and plans and secrets. Why did everyone have to move now? A fresh challenge emerged out of every hole and from under every rock.

  “Tell me some good news at least,” she said, putting one foot in front of the other, still clawing her way up.

  ‘I have none,’ the ghost said. ‘We’re burning out the sister to maintain this surveillance. It’s taking more and more power to pass through whatever defences Cinder’s aid conjures up. Soon I won’t be able to establish contact and you’ll have no more advance warning.’ Iliaya provided the image of a sneer to accompany her words. ‘When a coin is launched to smear you to paste, I hope I’ll still be entwined with your soul for long enough to remind you that I have predicted this danger from the very beginning.’

  Catharina sighed, her breath puffing white. “Thank you, Ili. It’s refreshing to be reminded I’m human and fallible.”

  ‘What you are—’

  “Yes, thank you, that’s quite enough. I know what I am.”

  A thrice-damned fool on a fool’s quest serving a fool’s dream. She blocked Iliaya from that thought. The girl was already too wilful and opinionated without being given more reason to be.

  It was time for Catharina to start moving as well. She was nowhere near ready for the next stage of her plans, but she couldn’t ignore the signs any longer. She barely had a score of ghosts left to feed the god, and no more candidates in her dungeons.

  Rebuilding what Cinder had destroyed all those seasons prior had proved almost impossible. She was just about ready to give up by now, her efforts yielding no results and no viable replacements for the people Tallah Amni had slaughtered in her escape. Some days she felt she could have traded all her ghosts just to get back that Dreea Iluna monster of a healer. Alive, that one had had vinegar in her veins, the morals of a starving corallin, and the silence of a grave.

  Funny how that worked. Finding cruel men was the simplest thing. She could cast a pebble from the mountain’s peak to some random spot in Aztroa, and chances were good she’d hit someone that was more than capable of cruelty with no consequences. But finding people who could keep their gob shut was a challenge into itself. The last thing she and the Empire needed was the rebel imbeciles getting more ammo for propaganda against her.

  She stopped atop the final steps and looked back, down into Aztroa Magnor, her jewelled city. It shone beneath the storm, raised from a ruined fortress into a wonder of the world not even the aelir could threaten. Centuries of sweat, blood, and tears to finally bring humanity back on its rightful path, all threatened just a few short seasons away from success.

  It was enough to make her piss boil and her scars ache. She scratched absent-mindedly at the one crossing her face, then turned and passed the threshold.

  Ort’s cage lay in a hollow on the western slope of Aztroa’s Crown, hidden behind several layers of wards and glamours, protected by Falor’s failed siblings.

  The first two guards, spitting images of Falor himself, nodded their acknowledgement as she passed through the first layers of protection. She felt the tickle of illum on her skin, and scratchy feeling of gazes on her back. Each one of the eidolons was worth a small army in strength, but all ten of them together were less powerful than Falor.

  She’d probably have to send Leea to retrieve the boy. Or Yriea, if the aelir’matar could be arsed to answer her heart sister’s summons.

  A deep breath. Held. Exhaled. She passed the final layers into the prison proper, fighting the disorientating sense of vertigo the final wards induced.

  Rents had been carved into her wards, deep wounds that still struggled to heal. Ort had made a rather good attempt at trickling out. Catharina couldn’t repair them fully without taking the entire, complex mess down, and that was simply too dangerous to risk with the god in this aggravated state.

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  The space beyond straddled the barrier between real and unreal, an intersection between Edana’s objective plane and all the others that crowded around it. Concept ruled in this inverted rend and what met her was hunger. All-consuming, all-demanding, bottomless, fathomless, and insatiable. It despaired of its confinement, strained against the chains binding its form to the moral realm, and cursed in a thousand tongues as her steps echoed on the smooth stone floor.

  The cage proper was just ahead, a translucent cube of power that shone sky-blue in the Egia sight.

  “Nice seeing you too, Ort,” she said as she approached the chaos swirling in the prison.

  The god cursed at her in several different tongues at once, a concert of vileness that almost had Catharina’s ears blushing. Some of the curses that she could understand were quite creative.

  Leea was already there, sitting cross-legged on the floor, meditating. Her power was a net around the captive god, pushing back its attempts at reaching beyond its confines. When she stirred and looked up, there were heavy bags under her eyes, the strain all too visible on her face.

  “How are things, Leea?” Catharina asked, surveying the damage.

  “Not great, Your Grace. He’s… agitated.” She reached out a hand and Catharina helped her rise. “Something’s got him in a tizzy and it’s making his containment difficult.”

  “He doesn’t need feeding, I take it?”

  “No, ma’am. If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say he’s panicking.”

  Now that was something unexpected. They hadn’t seen Ort in a panic since the day Panacea had slapped him and freed Catharina from his direct influence. That had been the moment she’d bound him to his sanctuary, courting disaster with the Aztroa Ascendi illum hearth ready to blow as she siphoned its power to weave the prison.

  “Has he said anything?” she asked, taking a step closer to the shimmering, oil-stain of a sight. Within the storm of power, she could spy the shape of a man, sitting on the cold floor, regarding them. Everything else, the sights of gaping mouths, bleeding eyes and assorted theatrics, were mere illusions.

  “I’d rather not repeat what he’s been saying, ma’am,” Leea said. Her blush said plenty about Ort’s ramblings this time, though the song and the threats were all old by now.

  Could it be anything to do with the Cauldron? Not for the first time that day, Catharina cursed inwardly that Cinder had figured a way to obfuscate their connection. Iliaya hadn’t been able to hear anything Cinder had discussed with the cadre traitor.

  ‘Something’s happening,’ Iliaya whispered, as if on cue.

  Ort shuddered. The entire cavern shuddered. The man-shape rose from the floor and advanced to the edges of the confining barrier. He slammed his fists against Catharina’s wards. Cracks formed in the air and quickly healed over.

  As one, Catharina and Leea pushed right back, re-doubling the protective wards. The extra protections would burn out within the day, given the god’s agitation, but for now it was enough to push him back and away from the wall. The chains appeared around Ort’s wrists and ankles and dragged him back to the centre.

  “You can’t hold me forever, Cat,” Ort’s voice boomed in the small cavern. “Release me or face the consequences.”

  “I’ve been doing fine for quite a while now,” she answered back, still forcing her illum into the rents Ort had managed to gouge in the wards. “I’ll free you soon, when you won’t be a threat anymore.”

  The laughter that followed shook the very world. Catharina and Leea watched impassive, the display one they’d seen before. Ort paced inside the prison to the limits of his chains. His illusions drew back and left only the man-shape.

  His musk filled the room, a wet, animal stench, of raw meat and blood, of sacrifice and what lurks in the night. That, at least, wasn’t an illusion. Ort was afraid.

  That, more than anything, sent a shiver up Catharina’s back.

  ‘This doesn’t make any sense,’ Iliaya said. ‘The Rock will be lost. Panacea left without helping. Took one of the black daemons but left Cinder to fend for herself. Something’s happening, but nobody knows what yet.’

  Again, Ort forced a laugh, as if he were hearing Iliaya’s words. He maintained human shape, though took no features. He was a pink mannequin, shaking with laughter.

  “Falor’s missing,” he said, voice pitched in a musical tone. “He is far, far away.”

  Catharina stiffened but said nothing, waiting for more from Iliaya. Leea maintained her impeccably cool demeanour, detached as always.

  Ort went on, “I know he’s running around without mandate. My servant has met him.” A white grin split the featureless skin of Ort’s face. “You can’t keep me contained for much longer, not if you know what’s good for you.”

  “After a century, Ort, I’d expect you to gain some fresh threats. You’ve been repeating yourself for decades now.”

  Catharina finished working on the ward repairs and resealed some of the gaps. Knowing Ort had a servant somewhere was no revelation. He had many, most of whom she knew already and even controlled. They were harmless without Ort’s full strength to keep them going. If one had run into Falor, she didn’t feel it worth the worry. The boy was pretty much incorruptible, and mostly indestructible due to his eidolon nature.

  “Oh, I don’t mean to threaten you, Cat,” Ort said, still grinning. “I don’t need to do anything now. You will come begging my help soon enough. And you will not afford the price I’ll demand, I assure you.”

  “I sincerely doubt I’ll ever need your help again, Ort. But I’ll indulge you.” Catharina approached the barrier, resolved not to let the god get under her skin. Iliaya’s silence was already a cold fist around her heart. “What is coming that’s so terrifying?”

  Ort raised a finger and shook it. “Not what, Cat, but who. And you’ve been too cruel for me to spoil your surprise.”

  “Why are you shaking, Ort?” It was Catharina’s turn to grin. Her ghosts all lay quiet, except for Iliaya. In that stillness, it was all too easy to see how even the wards trembled with Ort’s panic. “Do you think I can’t feel it still? You’re terrified. I think you’d rather be in there than out here just now, your efforts just bluster. Tell me I’m wrong, Ort. But try and be honest.”

  This time, she got no response. Ort’s grin faded. She’d gambled and gained a nugget of information.

  Now… what to do with it?

  ‘Cat, there’s something happening in the crater,’ Iliaya said. Her voice trembled. ‘Blood and bone, you need to see this. Come. Now.’

  Catharina turned to Leea, “Contact Yriea for me. Send her after Falor. I’ll watch this one while you’re gone.”

  “Anything else, ma’am?” the Adjunct asked, her tone easy-going and unperturbed.

  “See about my lords and ladies. I want the empire quiet—”

  ‘Now, Cat!’

  “Just go. We’ll talk after.” She sank into a sitting position and turned her attention inward.

  The cringing, bowed shape of Rhine Amni met her in Iliaya’s mindscape. The ghost scrambled out of her way, propelling herself into a corner to fall to her knees, forehead to the floor, hands covering her head. Catharina ignored the creature and, instead, followed the illum connection that Iliaya kept open.

  A sight she hadn’t seen in decades spread out in front of her. It was impossible not to feel her heart beating faster seeing the masses of daemons hammering the gates—

  Was that a dragon?!

  Her jaw dropped as she regarded the magnificent black beast. Cinder was… communicating with it?

  Oh no…

  “Not that,” Iliaya said from several paces away. “Look to the crater.”

  She did. And immediately pulled out of the connection, turning her real sight on Ort.

  “What’s coming through?” she asked, voice slightly higher than she’d intended.

  Leea was barely out through the first wards.

  Ort regarded her from a sitting position. “A dead god,” he said without even a note of mirth. “And a thrall of the Prison to ride it. He's sold your world... for a chance to kill me. We're all doomed.”