Tezca picked Claws up by his head and winked an eye to peer inside his ear. Claws had sliced up his own face and neck while trying to get the piece of rock out.

  “Let me help, you idiot,” Tezca said, shoving his fingers into Claws’s earhole while the man struggled against him.

  “Stop, Self, stop!”

  “I’m helping!”

  “You’re not. Your fingers are too big. You’re just—ahhh—pushing it deeper.”

  Tezca gasped and dropped his clone to the floor. “How dare you!”

  Gwil curled up with laughter, a strange thing while his head was on backwards. He felt like a banana or a rocking horse. Oh, man. I could get used to this.

  “Just leave it,” Claws said, scrambling away. “It’s fine. I can’t feel it anymore. You fixed it. You pushed it all the way in.”

  “You need to stop messing around, Claws,” Tezca said. “We must deal with these demons quickly and then make our escape. Yuma must be close by now. I… fear that I’ve botched the gathering of the servants.”

  “Oh, me too,” Claws said, standing up while repeatedly suctioning his ear with his palm. “I killed a bunch of them on my way here.”

  “Whoops,” Tezca said. “No matter. I’m sure Tail did his job and is presently on the ship, along with a gaggle of servants, patiently awaiting our triumphant arrival. We will rebuild.”

  “What are you guys talking about?” Gwil said, stumbling toward them. It was hard to walk like this—he found it most natural to sidle along. He struggled to breathe too, with his neck all knotted up. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  Tezca clapped his hands. “Mwahaha! What do you care? You’ll be dead.”

  “Erm, Self?” Claws said, speaking out of the corner of his mouth. “Don’t we want to retrieve the Goddess’s corpse before we leave?”

  Tezca’s mouth hung open as he slowly turned to face Claws. “WHAT? Do you mean to tell me you haven’t already secured her corpse? What have you been doing all this time? Are you fucking kidding me, Claws?”

  “N-No, Self,” Claws said. “How could I have? I only just thought of it. I didn’t realize—”

  “You didn’t realize?” Tezca roared. “I explicitly told you to go down and get it.”

  Claws shook his head. “No. You didn’t.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “No, you really didn’t, Self!”

  “Don’t argue with me, Claws. Not ever. Dammit. Umm…” Tezca held out his hands and raised them up and down in imitation of a scale. “Right. The corpse of the Goddess is much more valuable than petty revenge. Congratulations, demon boy, you get a stay of execution. Best of luck dealing with Yuma.”

  With that, Tezca turned and ran toward the stairs. Driven by Nirva, silvery vapor trailing in his wake, he moved with impressive speed, his sandaled feet cracking the pavestones with every step.

  For two heartbeats, Gwil and Claws stared at each other. Then Claws went running after his maker.

  “Wh- Hey!” Tripping into a sort of gallop, Gwil chased after them. “Hurry, Challe!”

  Gwil turned as he reached the collapsed staircase. Challe was still lying there. He hadn’t expected her to follow him, but he’d hoped the sense of urgency might get her on her feet.

  He went back to her and fell over when he tried to kneel, his sense of balance thrown off by his backward-facing head. Gwil shook Challe’s shoulder, but she only turned away—needlessly, for her disheveled hair fully blanketed her head.

  Gwil plinked on one of her jadestones with his fingernail. “Get up. They’re getting away.”

  “No!” she shrieked, and the accompanying thunderclap shook the ground beneath Gwil’s feet. Still, the storm was not ebbing with her outbursts as it had before.

  “Gah, I know this sucks, Challe,” Gwil wheezed. He grabbed his throat and roughly massaged it to open a better airway. “Getting upset isn’t gonna help. You need to be angry, not sad.”

  “I’m furious, Gwil,” Challe said, bolting upright. Her eyes glittered with welling tears as she bit down on her lip. “That’s the problem. I-I-I don’t know who I am. What I’m doing. I can’t control myself. I’ve been hurting people. I feel crazy.” She slammed her hands on the floor and drilled her fingers into the stone, ripping off the fingernails and drawing blood. “I can’t get these stains off my hands and when I try, there’s just more blood.”

  Gwil poked himself in the eye when he tried to reach around to scratch his chin. The novelty had already worn off—he needed to get his head turned the right way around.

  He placed his palms on his temples and twisted, but as soon as he applied force, his legs kicked out in a split and his body went completely numb.

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  Dammit. Maybe he could trick Tezca into knocking it back into place.

  “No problem,” Gwil said, as his nerves tingled back into working order. “I’ll carry you.” He picked Challe up—fumbling a bit since he couldn’t see what he was doing—and cradled her in his arms. “Hey, why does Tezca want the statue so bad if it’s just a corpse?”

  Challe ignored his question. Gwil galloped over to the stairs, jumped up onto the broken end, and proceeded to the top. He hesitated at the three-way intersection. “Could you at least tell me which way to go?”

  Gwil leaned forward to lean backward, so they were face to face. “Hellooo.”

  Her lips twitched with something that might’ve been a smile. “Straight,” she said.

  That gave Gwil an idea. He set her down, and she didn’t drop to the floor in despair—a good sign.

  “But we need to—”

  Gwil waved her off. “Watch this.” He sat down and started doing sit-ups, smacking his face into the floor with every rep.

  “Huh? What are—that’s not funny, Gwil. It’s horrible, and it’s my fault this happened to you. All of this is my fault. I’m so scared.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Gwil said. “If not for you, I wouldn’t have gotten to have this interesting experience. How about this?”

  He switched to push-ups, his face facing the ceiling. Then he crawled around like that. “Now I really do look like a demon.”

  Nothing.

  He stood up. “Look, if I do this…” He bent all the way over, putting his head between his legs, and then he walked toward her. “I can see forward, just like normal. Can you even tell that something’s messed up?

  Challe covered her mouth, but a smile peeked out from behind her hand.

  “Top o’ the mornin’ to ya,” Gwil said, holding out his hand for Challe to shake. “My name is Norman.”

  “Stop that, st—” Her voice broke into laughter. And it was a good laugh. She had such a deep, powerful voice, and it translated into an infectious, raucous laugh.

  Gwil sprang up and turned to face her, grinning wide. “I don’t think I ever heard you laugh before. When you come with us, you’re gonna be laughing all the time.”

  Before she could respond, he grabbed her wrist and started running, dragging her until she fell in step with him. “We gotta catch up. Which way?”

  Challe took the lead, and they returned to the atrium’s grand central pavilion.

  An intensity still choked the air, but the fighting had ended, save for a few small scuffles relegated to the outskirts of the space.

  Beleaguered Malikauans were spread all throughout the atrium. Some huddled in small, quiet groups. Some wandered alone, dazed. Others were frantic—wailing at the cavernous ceiling above, running around, checking over dead bodies. Protective circles had formed up around clusters of injured as they received treatment.

  “See?” Gwil said to Challe, who had halted upon entering. “It’s gonna be okay.”

  A host of loud voices dominated the discordant atmosphere. Several men and women spoke from elevated positions—platforms and piles of rubble—with large groups gathered around them, listening to their words.

  Gwil couldn’t make out what they were saying, but he recognized a few of the faces. Most of the speakers were people who he’d fought off in the staircase. They’d witnessed the events with Tezca and Claws.

  One woman stood out to him, not only because of the blood that masked her face, not only because of her green hair, not only because she was the one who struck him with the candelabra. No, it was something in her tone, at once beseeching and strong.

  Gwil was shocked to see that, off to the side of that woman’s audience, Leira and… Cort? sat huddled against the wall, along with their piled-up gear. For a fleeting second, Gwil hoped to find the snaketopus among them, but the creature wasn’t there…

  Still, his excitement at finding them made him yelp with joy as he galloped toward them.

  “Cort! What happened to you?”

  “Gwil! What the fuck?” Leira cried.

  Cort lay on his back, propped up slightly, and it looked like he was wearing twelve sweaters and six pairs of snowpants. His whole body was wrapped in a cast of Leira’s white, webby substance, so thick there was no way he could move his arms and legs.

  Gwil reached him and then turned around so he could look at Cort’s uncovered face.

  Cort sneered and the cocoon-like formation creaked as he made a jerky, stunted movement. A bundle of spores was bunched up beneath Cort’s jaw, so when he spoke, his voice came out as a gravelly growl.

  “Don’t talk to me until your head’s facing the right way.”

  Leira laughed and so did Challe, though she’d sat down next to Eagle-man—who also looked ravaged and was also covered in globs of white spores. He was listening to the green-haired woman’s speech, enraptured.

  Gwil leaned down and poked Cort on the nose. “Nice job killing Legs, you guys. I saw how you fucked up Claws, too.”

  “What about the big one, Gwil?” Leira asked. “What happened? What’s with your… neck?”

  “He socked me a good one, but uhh, we’re looking for them. Tezca and Claws. They ran away. Did you see them? They want to take Challe’s statue and then try to escape.”

  “Not mine,” Challe spat.

  Leira looked toward the gaping hole in the floor on the far side of the pavilion, which led to the crucifix pit. “They didn’t come through here.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Don’t just stand there,” Cort grunted. “If that’s where they’re going, they must have taken a different path.”

  “Right. Ready, Challe?” She stood, but… “Wait, are you okay, Eagleman?” Gwil asked, though he no longer wore his eagle hat.

  This whole time Quez had not looked away from the green-haired woman. He wore a placid smile all the while. Even at Gwil’s question, he’d nodded without turning. Gwil took a moment to listen to her.

  “…Brothers and sisters, the blood you see on my face is the blood of our sister. The clawed Jaguar, who we have known as the Elder Warden, slit her throat. I will never be able to cleanse this stain, nor do I deserve to…”

  “That’s Lall,” Challe said. “Quez is in love with her.”

  Gwil nodded. “She smashed my balls with a candlestick.”

  “That’s Lall for you,” Quez said, finally turning to face them. “She was a fierce loyalist to Tezca and the Jaguars.”

  “Yeah,” Cort said. “She tried to get your own warriors to execute you, Quez.”

  Quez nodded enthusiastically. “She’s as loyal as can be. She came here leading a host of others who witnessed Challe’Jade’s clash with Tezca. They saw his crimes, heard his testimony. They’ve been screaming the truth at the top of their lungs. For Lall to have turned… Her words carry a lot of weight. Others will follow her.”

  “Ooh!” Gwil yelled. “Nice one, Challe—your violent brutality paid off. This is great. You’re all gonna be living it up when those assholes are gone. Let’s go, Challe.”

  Leira tugged at his sleeve as he made to walk away. “Gwil, remember that a King is coming.”

  He nodded. “Don’t worry. We won’t let him do shit. Wait here, guys. We’ll be right back.”

  Gwil galloped off and Challe ran alongside him.

  “Gwil!” Leira shouted. “Ask Tezca about the Oubliette!”

  He flashed a thumbs-up over his shoulder as he and Challe danced through the Malikauans. No one attacked them. No one screamed at them to call them ‘demon’ or ‘traitor’.

  Gwil frowned. It seemed to him that things were going in the right direction, but Challe didn’t look as happy as he would’ve thought.

  Maybe she was just focusing on the task at hand. This wasn’t over yet, and Tezca was a wily bastard. Gwil thought he’d better focus up, too.

  They reached the chasm in the floor. The enormous statue of Claws-Warden still lay within the fissure, providing a way down into the auditorium.

  Instead, Gwil grabbed Challe’s hand, and they jumped.