A Vision in Bronze; A Sidereal quest

"What is the Lunar going to do next?" you ask. Lew sends you a surprised, alarmed look — this is the first he's hearing about a Lunar.

Flotsam seems to try to resist, but he's on the edge of death, his supernatural might spent. The power of a Throne Shadow master is insidious and deceptively hard to escape. He manages to speak around the puncture in his lung, his voice wet and gurgling. "She'll skip town when we don't make the meeting point — I made her promise." He visibly wavers, his eyes drooping, his vision going out of focus. It becomes very hard to hear his words over the echoing background roar of seawater. "After that, she was... we were... there's more than one Realm fleet in the West." With that, Flotsam slumps to the side, his anima completely guttering out, as dead as Rika before him.

You lean your weight against a nearby rocky outcropping, trying to catch your breath and gather your thoughts. "The Merchant Fleet, obviously," you say, thinking out loud. "House V'neef or their holdings was a target as well. It still might be, it depends on what exactly the Lunar was planning. It's going to have to go in my report, regardless."

"What Lunar are we talking about?" Lew asks. With his free hand, he wrestles with the buckles of his borrowed navy cuirass, finally dropping it to the ground with a clatter. To your relief, you see that Flotsam's last stab had not been deep enough to cause real damage after it had pierced his armour.

"They had one working with them, it was not a nice surprise," you say. Steeling yourself, you fall to your knees beside Flotsam's corpse, carefully undoing the satchel to examine its contents. "I didn't meet her, but she may have been bonded to him. They were lovers at any rate. She set a fire to cause a distraction while they were down here — some of the monks who were supposed to be in the rear guard went out of position as a result. They're all dead."

"Things are never boring," Lew says, grimacing.

Inside the satchel is a disc of solid white jadesteel, its surface etched in a mixture of Seatongue and Old Realm characters formed of black jade and orichalcum. You lift it free from the satchel like the dangerous weapon that it is, turning it over to examine the set of orichalcum spikes on its underside. You have no idea how it works, but based on what Rika had claimed, it's probably best if you turn it over to the Crimson Panoply of Victory for study and safe storage, rather than letting House Peleps stumble onto a city-destroying superweapon made with Solar-level artifice.

"Are the other Solars down?" you ask.

"I helped keep the Blasphemous busy until Peleps Paran could put an arrow through her skull," Lew says. "That's what kept me. The other one didn't seem like he was coming back out of the water when I left."

Sure enough, The distant brilliance of the other Solars' anima banners has also gone out — both Smiling Chalus and Descending Radiance are now dead. In the end, it had all landed within acceptable parameters.

"Our losses?" you ask.

"Hana went down right before we killed the Blasphemous. I think one of the Water Aspects got hit pretty bad in the fighting. Aside from that, some injuries. The Dragon-Blooded knew their business," Lew says. He isn't happy about the losses — he'd fought alongside these people, obviously — but there's a certain fatalism about how he describes it. There's always an ending, after all.

You aren't a Reckoner, obviously. Still, you've had to grow very accustomed to people dying as a result of your decisions as well over the years. You don't like it but you try to focus on the positive — losing three Dragon-Blooded in the process of killing four experienced Solars is a very favourable trade, pragmatically. "You should go tell the shikari that you killed him," you say, putting the weapon back into the satchel and lifting it free of Flotsam's body. "When they ask, we can say that the artifact fell into the water during the fight."

"Well. About that!" Lew says, giving you a deeply inappropriate grin, given what you were just discussing.

You give him an incredulous look. "You ruined your resplendent destiny while you were grandstanding, didn't you?" His cover had been as a Dragon-Blooded scion of House Peleps, and deliberately gloating about being a Chosen of Endings had surely at least damaged it — from Lew's expression, you assume that it had already been frayed enough from an earlier slipup to fail entirely.

"Yeah, sorry, I forgot," Lew shrugs. "In my defence, you knew what you were doing when you set me up for that line."

"Saturn Chose you to play a joke on me, specifically," you say, shouldering Rika's satchel. You don't immediately rise, though — you're going to have to, but your injuries are definitely slowing you down.

"I'm not sure that's exactly her sense of humour. Who can say, though," Lew says. "Either way losing the destiny is annoying for me too — I was supposed to meet up with Paran after all this."

You frown at him, horribly certain you know exactly what he'd had in mind. "Why, exactly, were you going to meet Peleps Paran after this?"

Lew's smile, if anything, gets a little more brazen. "Just some good, harmless post-battle celebration between two Dynasts. You know how men are. It doesn't matter now, though, he'll have forgotten."

You ignore the jab at certain Realm gender norms that Lew is currently entirely living up to, and think about Peleps Paran, a man you have met in passing during the planning of all this. "Good. He's too old for you."

Lew scoffs. "And his wife is too old for him."

"I don't see what that has to do with anything, Lew!" you say, heat slowly building in your face.

"What do you expect me to do, fuck someone in the Fellowship?" he asks. "That would just make things worse, if you're worried about 'too old for me'. Old man Kejak is very spry for someone who's pushing five-thousand, though."

You know that he's only saying this to needle you, but that doesn't stop it from being appalling. You glare up at him.

"What can I say? Power is very attractive. Oh relax, Auntie Grace. You'll give yourself wrinkles looking like that."

He offers you a hand up, and you reluctantly take it. "Don't talk to me like I'm an old woman — I'm not even thirty."

"You're sure moving like an old lady at the moment," Lew says, watching you straighten up. Despite his cavalier tone, there's genuine concern in his eyes. "He got you pretty good, huh?"

You try your best to hide the stab of pain that straightening up gives you. "Have you ever had to defend against someone using Metal Storm before?"

"In training," he says, looking even more alarmed, "and never when they were armed."

"Well. It's worse when they're actually trying to kill you. I'll be fine once we're out of here and I can see about getting some medical attention." You hesitate before adding, more quietly, "thank you for the save, though. I knew you'd come after me."

Lew glances at you critically, and bends to pick up his discarded cloak, tossing it to you. "Those rags are not doing a lot right now, Grace. Here."

You manage to catch it. It's sized too big for you and incredibly ostentatious, but at this point you're not going to complain. He's not wrong. Your down-on-her-luck bureaucrat disguise is getting perilously low on intact fabric at this point. And you don't want to walk around advertising some of the cuts you've taken — a mortal would be in the middle stages of bleeding to death. You reverse the cloak to at least hide the most garish of the bright colours and flame pattern.

"We should go," you say. "The shikari will come to look for him before long, and even if I put my resplendent destiny back on, I don't have a good explanation for how I could have killed him. And they'll try to take the artifact from me."

"Right," Lew says. He produces a rag and cleans the blood from the head of Rika's longfang, examining the weapon with a freshly appraising air. It's made in a Randani style, its tip long, thin, and blade-like with a maker's mark etched into the golden metal, its shaft solid orichalcum in place of wood. Along the shaft, placed perfectly for where Lew would place his hands, is a sharkskin grip. Now that you look at it, you're struck that the weapon seems to have subtly resized itself to better suit its current wielder's height. Orichalcum doesn't resonate very well with Sidereal Essence but it does have its beneficial quirks at times.

Lew shoulders the weapon, letting you set the pace as you put distance between you and Flotsam's corpse, heading toward an exit that you know lies deeper in the caverns. "Does this thing have a name?" he asks you.

"Heartshine," you say, remembering what Rika called it.

Lew makes a face. "I'll think of something else."

You don't have the energy to laugh, but the comment does produce a tight sort of smile. Things certainly got dodgy at the end, but you're both alive, the Anathema are dead and Bittern is still standing. You'll have to call that a win. Reaching for a cord that miraculously still hangs around your neck, you pull a leather pouch out from beneath your rope. Inside it is a small stick of graphite, a roll of paper, and several friction matches. Not your preferred medium for sending important memos, but understandable under the circumstances. You carefully tear off a piece of paper and write:


You strike a match along a halfway dry stretch of cavern wall and light the piece of paper on fire. It's consumed almost instantly. You're surprised when the reply comes as fast as it does, a much neater piece of paper falling out of your sleeve into your palm.


The praise is gratifying, even though you're certain he'll find several points of gentle criticism for how you've handled things. His being in Yu-Shan for three whole days at a stretch is rare enough these days, though — he spends most of his time in the Palace Sublime in Sion, wielding his influence through the Immaculate Order.

At Lew's questioning look, you hold up the note for him to read. "My plans were a wash anyway," he says. "I'd like to at least find out for sure how the hunt went before we go, though. We could ask that monk who helped arrange this."

"We can," you say. You'd also like to know the final outcome, both for your report, and as a matter of personal interest. It had come as a surprise to you, but you'd known one of the Dragon-Blooded House Peleps had scraped together for the hunt, even if not closely. You feel obligated to find out how she fared.

You don't know what you'd do, if one of the women Ambraea loves were killed during an operation you planned and coordinated.

---

Radiating cold, blue-black anima, Erona Maia emerges from the fetid seawater, hauling an unconscious monk twice her size. She ignores the salt-burn in the deep gash on one leg and the smaller abrasions to her face, laying the monk down on the island that the ambush had been centred around. A small sigh is the only outward sign of relief she allows herself.

Behind her the dark water is stained with Exalted blood. Two bodies float on the waves. The larger one belongs to one of the monsters that they'd all lain in wait here to kill. The smaller corpse, floating in several pieces, belongs to one of the other Water Aspects that had fought the Forsaken Anathema with her. Maia hadn't known him well — her cold heart doesn't stir for him.

Maia is a small, slight, androgynous woman, her hair and eyes the black of an oceanic abyss, her presence bringing a sense of cold and dark places to any who meet her. She wears form-fitting silken armour of cloth-of-black-jade, a refitted hand-me down from her grandmother she'd only received the year before, easily the Erona family's greatest heirloom. Even with its miraculous ability to repel water leaving it bone dry, it still reveals her wiry build and contrasts her pale, classically-Wàn features. Despite her size she cuts a foreboding figure, the sinister coil of her blood lash wrapped around one arm. The weapon is an eerily fluid whip with a barbed head, the entire thing the red-black of fresh arterial blood.

The last time she'd been on a Wyld Hunt, she'd been twenty-one, not even a secondary school graduate. Barely an adult, with far too much time in waiting and nervous anticipation as they'd tracked their quarry through the wilderness. In the end her Hearth and their allies had been the ones to be ambushed by far more Anathema than expected. She and her lover, V'neef Ambraea, had fought desperately against a foe who had outmatched them. Only its rank arrogance had allowed them to kill it together. In the aftermath, three Anathema had lain dead, and Ambraea had swept Maia up into an awkward, fumbling, relieved kiss, for once not caring who saw them — despite everything it had been the best kiss of Maia's life.

This hunt had been different in almost every way. Mere days ago, she had been on the verge of leaving Bittern after landing there from the Isle of Wrack, sent north on a dark and vital task by her family. The errand had promised her a rare opportunity to see some of her Hearthmates again — Ambraea included. She had cleared it with her Peleps handlers, packed her things, and arranged transport. Then she had been instructed of a last minute change of plans. Maia had been told to join a hastily assembled and direly important Wyld Hunt. From there, she'd been forced to follow a daring scheme that had hinged on an ambush where any number of things could have gone disastrously wrong.

It had worked out better than it had any right to. This time they had taken the Anathema by surprise. They'd had every advantage they could possibly arrange, equipment, planning, numbers, location. Once in the water, the Forsaken Anathema had been so slow, sluggish, gradually drowning. Maia and the other Water Aspects had swam circles around it, breathing as easily as if they'd been on dry land. The monster had still fought with all the fury of a cornered animal, fully living up to its kind's reputation as army-shattering war demons.

At the end, Sister Peleps Valri had gotten in close, plunging black jade claws into the Anathema's chest, ending up bludgeoned into unconsciousness in the process. This had left the Forsaken too preoccupied to stop Maia from laying its jugular open. The blood had filled the water so thickly that at first she hadn't known whose it was, or even that they'd won. Now here she is, standing alone and cold in a stinking cavern with no Ambraea to collapse against. There's not even a trusted comrade here who Maia can truly let her guard down in front of.

She has barely had time to catch her bearings when the sole surviving demon scuttles up to her, stopping just short of where her anima would cut rather than simply sting. Its smoke-shrouded body towers over her. Nonetheless, it affects a low bow as best it can, dipping its unseen head in a way that makes the entire cloud swift downward. "Mistress," it says, its voice hissing and chitinous, but always strangely polite.

"Which are you?" Maia asks, her eyes flicking around to assure herself that the other two demons really are dead.

"You called this one 'Tomescu Two', Mistress," the demon says.

Maia nods. "Well-done on surviving then, Two." The three tomescu she had had in her service at the beginning of the day had been fairly interchangeable in most ways, but it's still good to know. She steps past the demon without a further word.

On the far side of the island, multiple Dragon-Blooded animas rage, Air, Earth, and Wood, originating from the other survivors of the fight. Two bodies lay motionless on the ground at their feet. Rather than immediately approach, Maia glances down at another body:

The dead Anathema takes the shape of a woman even smaller than she is, its pathetic form sprawled on its face. Maia nudges the body over with one foot, staring dispassionately down at it. Its eyes are blank, its chest feathered with arrows and utterly devoid of breath. Nonetheless, one can't be too careful with an Anathema. Heedless of the way her anima bites into the monster's dead flesh, Maia produces a dagger with the flick of a wrist and cuts its throat for good measure. Satisfied at the lack of any response, Maia straightens, and prepares to greet her betters.

One of the other bodies on the ground belongs to a third Anathema, it having put up an impressive fight. This one has been so thoroughly peppered with arrows and hacked at with weapons before dying that Maia feels confident that it won't be getting up again. The last, though, is a Dragon-Blooded woman, an Air Aspect clinging to life after her throat had seemingly been torn out with the Anathema's barely hands. Her anima is already guttering, and she stares up at the ceiling of the cavern in uncomprehending pain. A Wood Aspect man kneels over her, doing his best to save her life, though Maia thinks he won't succeed.

Maia does a quick headcount. Originally there had been six Dragon-Blooded, between herself, the other two Water Aspects, and the three on land. Her three tomescu were very dangerous as lesser demons went, but not individually a match for an Exalted warrior. The marines overhead, who Paran had commanded. Against four Solar Anathema? Even with as well-executed an ambush as this had been, surely they should have had at least two or three more Exalted present on the island — there would have been room enough for that, and there are several with the rear guard who could have been called upon, rather than simply laying in wait to cut off the enemy's avenue of escape.

Maia is contemplating this when one of the survivors finally speaks to her, an Earth Aspect with one arm hanging broken at her side. "Erona Maia," she says, politely inclining her shaven head, even offering Maia a pained smile. "I am pleased to see that you survived."

It's more courtesy than she looks for from the Dynasts, but the Erona family has held quite a bit of favour with the Immaculate Order, ever since they'd given over her elder brother to the monkhood — an Exalted son is the sort of extravagant show of piety that the Immaculates don't forget. Maia returns the bow, despite her protesting leg. "You as well, Sister," she says.

The monk glances behind Maia, at the motionless form of the monk she had pulled out of the water with her. "Sister Peleps Valri..."

"... should recover, I hope," Maia says. "She took a blow to the head at the end of the fight, right as we killed the Anathema together."

"Thank you, she is a friend," the monk says, sounding genuinely sincere. She bows again before going to see to her fallen comrade, giving Maia's tomescu a wide berth.

The Air Aspect gives one last gurgling gasp and dies. The Wood Aspect stays kneeling over her for a further second. "Well-fought, cousin," he whispers, before rising. Peleps Paran is a Dragon-Blooded man who physically looks at least thirty, roughly placing his true age several decades older than that. He's tall, broad, handsome, his neatly-trimmed hair and beard tinted green. A bow of supple black jade is slung over one shoulder, and a quiver of arrows hangs at his back. He regards Maia unsmilingly.

"Peleps Lai Hana is no longer with us, I see," Maia says, bowing to him. "My condolences. And congratulations — is that your arrow through the Anathema's eye, my lord?"

"It is," Paran says, with less relish than he otherwise would have shown.

"I regret to inform you that Peleps Rolon has also fallen," Maia says. Then, because it's expected, she adds: "He was very brave."

"Thank you," Paran says, without warmth. "My family appreciates your skill, as ever." Maia knows how little he actually appreciates her presence. Maia is undeniably useful — this horrible Wyld Hunt she's been most recently dragged onto is testament to that. But she has several marks against her. She's a patrician, and a sorcerer, and is Sworn Kin to both V'neef Ambraea and V'neef L'nessa, two highly placed young members of House Peleps' most hated rival within the Dynasty. To say nothing about the vague suspicions still whispered about the mysterious death of Peleps Nalri back in secondary school. That Maia is quiet and unsettling on top of all that is just the last straw.

Maia pulls the Forsaken's grimcleaver off of her belt, offering Paran the black jade weapon haft-first. Hana had been in command, and with her dead, that responsibility now falls to Paran. Maia can see the assembled mortals, monks and marines both, waiting uneasily on the walkway, out of range of the anima flux that is still a threat to anyone unblessed by the Dragons, looking to him for further orders. "What became of the fourth Anathema, my lord?" she asks.

"The Wretched ran with the artifact," he says, seeming to abruptly realise how serious that should be as he says it. How he'd forgotten, Maia doesn't know. "The mole pursued them. I think. A great deal was happening."

Maia frowns. "Wasn't your spy with the Anathema a mortal? Did anyone else follow them?"

Paran looks as though he's about to say 'yes', but he stops, frowns, a deep furrow forming in his brow. "I... did anyone?" he asks.

Somewhere in the back of her head, Maia can almost hear L'nessa saying: "A sad object lesson in what happens when men are placed in leadership unsupervised.".

"I could not say, my lord," Maia says, trying not to sound frustrated, or like she is questioning his competence as much as she is. "I was underwater, if you'll recall."

Paran nods sharply, seeming to come back to himself. He raises his voice, looking to the mortals behind him, focusing his attention on the highest ranking mortal officer. "Scalelord, send word to the rearguard, — we are moving to secure the Blue Chimney site."

"I can send my demon after the Wretched, my lord, to scout the Anathema's location," she tells him, already steeling herself for the possibility of this day growing longer, and the possibility that she may yet die here for the good of the Realm. There's more at stake than that, though — House Peleps has tried with mixed success to avoid Maia acquiring any intelligence she could hurt them with if she decided to start supplying it to her Hearthmates. Maia has still spent the past five years serving the house, though, and has spent quite a bit of time on the Isle of Wrack, in close proximity to the decision-making apparatus of the Imperial Navy.

Peleps relies on Bittern's drydocks and shipyards to build and maintain their ships. If this attack were to succeed, if Bittern were destroyed and that capacity and expertise along with it, they would very likely do something very rash. With the Realm already steadily hurtling toward civil war, why would they wait another two years for the Throne to be officially declared vacant, letting their ships deteriorate and their strained financial straits worsen? Under such circumstances, it is not difficult to imagine the bloodthirsty old women of the Admiralty Board turning a hungry gaze on House V'neef's shipyards in Eagle's Launch, dragging their allies into a war that no one is entirely prepared to fight.

Maia's family might secretly be pleased by this outcome, but it would be exceptionally bad for more than one person who Maia loves.

"Do it," Paran says.

Maia nods, looking over to the tomescu. "Did you hear that?" she asks it. "Did you see the direction the surviving Anathema went?"

"I did, Mistress," it says. "It will be done." With that, it dematerialises again, seeming to vanish out of the world.

They will all be very confused when the demon reports finding Flotsam's corpse, and alarmed that the artifact itself is not with him. By that time, though, you will be well clear.

---

From the still-smouldering naval docks, the column of smoke is visible from almost anywhere in the city.

Aboveground, Bittern is built around a series of steep hills rolling steadily down to the waterfront. The Hill of Seventeen Spires rises up impossibly high among the rest. From atop it, stately mansions and governmental buildings literally looking down on the common folk of the city, wealth literally flowing uphill.

Between the hills and the city's myriad wharves and docks, the streets become a chaotic tangle, filling the city's ancient walls to burst with vibrant life. Bustling markets peddling the stolen wealth of the West — spices, precious minerals, rare woods and dyes are only scratching the surface. Tenements rise up mere streets away from affluent storefronts and the generational homes of wealthy peasants. These themselves are only a few wrong turns away from crumbling, blighted slums. Neighbourhood enclaves for countless peoples from across the West coexist here, making Bittern one of the Realm's most cosmopolitan cities — Seatongue is nearly as common as Low Realm.

It's still a little strange, after a childhood growing up in the Imperial Palace and the Imperial City, just being in a Realm city with so many people who look like you. It makes you unusually conscious of the mannerisms you learned in Scarlet Prefecture, and the way you speak even Low Realm with a noticeable High Realm accent. That you were educated to at least interact with Realm high society, whether as a servant or through providing some other service to Dynasts or patricians, feels painfully obvious.

Street musicians play on busy corners, ordinary peasant men run errands for their families, poor children run through the streets, expertly weaving through the crowds. Carts and wagons navigate the warren of streets, bringing goods up the hill from the waterfront, and carriages carry the wealthy to and fro without their having to set foot on squalid streets. Slaves are deceptively rare in this part of the city. Officially only a Dragon-Blood can own a slave, and so most of those who live in Bittern are either the household servants of Dynasts or engaged in labour at naval docks. Out of sight or not, you know that they are here in their thousands.

A note of strained tension hangs in the air above it all. The people do not know exactly what happened, exactly how close they'd all come to sudden death. Still, they know something is wrong, between the fire and the conspicuous movements of marines, the Black-Helm constabulary, and the city's many Immaculate monks. With the entire Blessed Isle hanging on the edge of war, they don't entirely trust this kind of trouble to remain ignorable.

After escaping from the Undercity injured, dirty, and tired, the exit you'd picked had fortunately not been far from the Immaculate Temple where you'd stashed most of your things at the outset of this operation. Fortunately, unlike Lew, you still have the resplendent destiny that you'd used to make contact with the Immaculate Order. Using it, the abbot you'd dealt with before had immediately recognised you as the same woman, and remembered the unconventional credentials you'd shown her. This gives you a chance to wash, receive basic medical attention, and slip into a set of clothing that is neither ragged nor filthy.

The abbott and some of the others involved with the Wyld Hunt will remember the figure that that particular resplendent destiny inspires for as long as you maintain it. A junior bureaucrat named Sea Breeze, hardworking, plucky, but obviously in over her head and involved in dangerous things beyond her knowledge. Details about her will slip away — your hair, your eyes, the sound of your voice, maybe even the specific name you used — but the general impression will remain. You, Singular Grace, will not be remembered by a soul here anymore than Lew will be. One of the harsh realities of life in the Fivescore Fellowship is that you can never rely on anyone as much as you can on one another.

"Who was that sorcerer to you?" Lew asks.

"Erona Maia?" you ask, moving across the crowded street and expecting Lew to follow. You still feel far from your best, and the injuries to your face draw more than a few glances. You're wearing a clean set of clothes in the style of a merchant or other affluent peasant, though, and you don't stand out so much beyond that.

No one casts a second glance at Lew, despite the fact that he's still carrying an orichalcum spear on his shoulder. His near-Northern features make him stand out more on the streets of Bittern than you do, but the eyes of the crowd pass over him as if there's nothing else unusual about him, not truly registering the weapon he bears. It's a handy trick that you've never quite picked up, although you keep meaning to.

"Is there another sorcerer involved in all this that I'm not familiar with? You asked that monk about her by name back there," Lew says.

You suppose that it would have been stranger for him not to notice that. "She's Sworn Kin to my former lady," you say. "I knew her a little, in Chanos. She often... came and went at Lady Ambraea's residence there. During the summers where they weren't both at the Heptagram."

"Came and went, huh?" You don't need to look back at Lew to know that he's smirking.

"Yes, they're lovers," you say, cutting through his insinuations with a roll of your eyes. "It would have been awkward if she'd been among the fallen. Lady Ambraea and I didn't depart on bad terms. She would take the loss very hard." You've successfully fought your way to the front of the crowd outside a market stall, the tangy scent of hot broth filling the air.

You produce a string of coins to pay the proprietor, who raises his eyebrows at you. He immediately addresses you in Seatongue, and it takes you a moment to understand what he's saying — the Solars had been speaking Seatongue the entire time you'd been among them, but they'd settled on some variety of elevated Wavecrest trade dialect amongst themselves. In truth, you struggle more with the highly colloquial dialects commonly spoken by many other Blessed Isle peasants of Western descent.

"You alright? You look hurt, Miss," he says.

"Two bowls," you say. "And, I'm fine. I took a fall earlier."

"Onto a knife? Repeatedly?" He asks, waiting for you to provide an explanation that never actually comes. When none comes, he adds: "Half a yen for two." Your money spends just as well no matter what you've been up to.

"That is robbery," you say, without much conviction. Times are hard, and your generous salary in Heaven doesn't leave you needing to quibble over pocket change. You unthread a single copper coin, and drop it onto his countertop. He shrugs, lifts a cleaver, and brings it down in a hard, practiced motion. He sweeps one half of the coin into a wooden box beneath the counter, leaving you to retrieve the other. A moment later, two steaming bowls of noodles are placed in front of you.

"You still sent her into the water," Lew says, picking up the thread of conversation as you step away with the food. "You know she's the only one who came back out in one piece, right?"

"I knew Peleps was sending a sorcerer who would be providing combat demons. I didn't know that it was going to be her, specifically, until it was too late to do anything else," you say, "And, we all had our risks. My plan gave us very good odds."

"I guess so," Lew says, looking much more dubious about the bowl in your hands than about your words. He still accepts it and leans his spear against the wall beside him, before taking a set of chopsticks as you push them into his free hand. "Are you sure this isn't spicy?" Lew asks, staring down at the contents of the single-use clay bowl as if they might rear up and bite him. It's filled with Wu-Jian style noodles in fragrant broth, thick with shellfish and pickled vegetables.

You lead him to a spot a little ways away from the stall. You lean against the dais of a nearby dragon statue, not currently up to pulling yourself up to perch on the edge of it without a great deal of pain. "No," you say, once you've properly swallowed your first mouthful of noodles. They're as good as you'd hoped, and you're ravenously hungry — nearly dying has that effect.

"See, that's what Saph said about that horrible Gralon stew she made me eat, and that nearly killed me," he says.

"Sapphiria did that on purpose, as a joke, because she is a habitually cruel woman," you say, eminently reasonable. The curry in question had also been extremely good.

He eyes you dubiously. "You laughed too!"

"Well," you admit, "you were being extremely dramatic, at the time. Still, I don't find it particularly hot." You demonstrate this by picking up a shrimp with your chopsticks, and happily eating it. Despite everything, being surrounded by people who would be exceptionally dead without your efforts is doing a lot for your mood. You try to relish the feeling whenever your work feels this gratifying.

"Right, sure, but you're from the Realm, you people will basically eat anything as long as you stole it from somewhere else first."

You laugh. "Only the parts that taste good."

Lew gives you a long, suspicious look, before he inexpertly maneuvers some of the noodles into his mouth. "It is a little spicy," he says, but fails to act like you've poisoned him, so you'll take it.

You're most of the way through your impromptu meal when you're taken by surprise by yet another slip of paper falling out of your sleeve. You just barely manage to catch it before it ends up in your broth.

"How many Memorial Style messages do you get in the run of a day?" Lew asks.

"Depends on the day," you say. In addition to formal Bureau business, you frequently use the technique to exchange messages with your particular friends among the Fellowship. You expect it to be something of the sort, until you recognise the tight, efficient hand it's written in.


"Bad news?" Lew asks, studying your expression.

"Silver is here," you say.

You watch Lew go from shock to slow anger. "Oh, that absolute hypocrite!" he says.

"We don't know that he had anything to do with it," you caution.

"Then why is he here, Grace?" Lew demands. "What did he say to you the other month? That 'the blood of every soul the Realm murders is on your hands'? Then he's just coincidentally here when all this happens?"

"Let's not jump to conclusions. It wouldn't be like him to contact us just to gloat if he'd been outright involved," you say, although you're not exactly sanguine about this development either, and it shows in your grim tone. You bring the bowl to your lips and drink up your remaining broth. When you finish you toss the unglazed vessel into the gutter. It shatters amid the shards of past customers' bowls. "There's only one way to find out, I suppose."

The fisherwomens' section of the docks is, thankfully, as far away from the naval docks as possible. You can still see them swarming with activity where at least one warship had been set alight, in a way that had threatened to spread to other ships or even to the city itself. A very handy distraction that likely would have kept the heat off the Solars for more than long enough, if your mentor hadn't been tipped off about the scheme ahead of time — Descending Radiance had been far too trusting of the wrong ocean gods, in the end.

Here, humble vessels are moored to a slew of smaller docks, mostly belonging to the locals who fill Bittern's nearby fish markets. Barrels of bream and halibut are staged on the docks — the smell is inescapable, but you resolve to ignore it. The collapsed pier, a neglected older structure markedly larger than most of the working docks around you, is not hard to spot, its support posts and a few sad boards all that remains out of the water. Sure enough, nearby you find a familiar little sailboat.

"Try not to say anything rash?" you say to Lew. You step back out of the clattering path of a fast-moving cart laden down with crab traps.

"When am I ever rash?" Lew asks.

"Right now, judging by your tone of voice," you say. You skirt around a group of street urchins attempting to use a stolen fish to bait a fat, black cat down from atop a stack of barrels.

"I'm not going to kill him," Lew says, defensively.

"Well, that wasn't in question."

"What?" Lew demands. "You think I couldn't take Silver?"

"Let's not find out," you say. At least he's too angry to turn this into an excuse for innuendo.

Up close, the sailboat is sleek and trim, painted a handsome red-brown. It has a single occupant sitting with one foot braced against the gunwale, watching the children and the cat with a strangely morose look.

Scattered Silver, Chosen of Mars. A Tya from the Auspice Islands, he would stand out anywhere in the Realm but a major port. Dressed in simple sailor's garb, he's short, compact, and well-muscled. His bright purple hair is shorn nearly to the scalp. He has piercings in his ears, his nose, and dangling from his lip. Nautical tattoos start just below his jaw and continue down to disappear beneath the neck of his shirt, fish and ships and sea monsters. He also has a very nasty looking black eye, which surprises you. Not because Silver isn't prone to getting into fights, so much as he's usually very prone to winning them.

"Silver," you say, refusing to sound winded. Your injuries and being on your feet for so long are taking a toll, inconveniently.

"Grace." He glances over to take you in, pausing as he sees the wounds on your face and neck. Then Lew steps forward, and Silver's gaze lingering on the spear that Lew carries. "You took a trophy, I see," he says.

At times, Sidereal Circles have a strange tension about them. While entry into one is never involuntary, their formation within the Bureau of Destiny is almost always strongly influenced both by convenience and a degree of institutional pressure. There are tasks, after all, that require the intervention of more than one Division, and an established working group with representatives from several or all of them is useful to more than just the individual members. In your case, when five Sidereals are Chosen in under ten years, each of a different Caste, when the Bureau is busier than it's been in centuries, it starts to feel like the Maidens themselves are trying to send a message.

You and Silver work well together, can rely on one another under pressure, can even compliment one another's abilities. You saved one another's lives, a year or two back. The thing that keeps you from getting along, primarily, is politics. Unlike your more pleasant relationships with Gold Faction Sidereals, he is much less willing to talk around an awkward point of disagreement at the best of times.

"What are you doing here?" Lew asks. He's keeping his voice low, but it comes out with exactly the kind of hostility that gets Silver's back up.

Silver sits up, frowning at Lew's tone. "I was in the neighbourhood, and I knew you'd be here."

Lew doesn't bother taking another step forward. He leaps neatly onboard the boat, briefly setting it to rocking, and looks down at Silver with clear accusation. "Right, just in the neighbourhood. On the day that four Solar Anathema try to murder the whole city."

Silver springs to his feet, perfectly steady on the deck of the boat. The top of his head only comes up to Lew's nose, but you all know exactly how little that matters. Despite his youth, Lew was trained to be an elite Clovinan monster hunter by his ancient noble family and the Immaculate Order — he's deadly, relentless, and very good at what he does. By contrast, Silver came up brawling with men twice his size and killing pirates with his bare hands long before he was Chosen by the Maiden of Battles herself. Whatever Lew's ego might require him to believe, it would not be a good matchup. "Stojca, I'm not here to pick a fight, I'm here to talk." Silver says. "Back off."

"Lew, take a breath and give him some space, you're not helping," you say, stepping closer to the edge of the dock. You could make the jump to the boat, but you suspect you'd re-open the cut on your chest.

"When he answers the question!" Lew says, shooting you an outraged look.

"Today is a bad day to push me," Silver says, a note of genuine warning in his voice.

Dragons give you strength in the face of headstrong men. You take a deep breath, and vault over the gunwale. You're not quite able to avoid staggering as you land in the face of the expected shooting pain in your chest. It forces you to throw a hand out to brace against the mast to avoid slumping to the deck. It's enough to distract Silver, at least. "Are you alright?" he asks.

"One of the Solars nearly killed her today," Lew says. "He— Shit! Grace!"

Sure enough, you can feel the blood seeping out of your chest wound, soaking through your bandages immediately, followed by the blue-grey of your top. Silver gets to you first, grabbing hold of your arm and lowering you down to sit onto the spotless deck, the boat's gunwale giving you a modicum of privacy. "What happened?" Silver asks, all traces of anger gone.

"I had to distract the Night Caste. Metal Storm," you say, not stopping Silver as he starts to undo the ties on the front of your dress. He's played team medic before, even if you've never been hurt quite so badly in front of him, and you trust him for this as much as you'd trust him at your back in a fight. Re-opening your wound is more annoying than immediately life threatening, at present. Exalts bleed, but never enough to kill them on its own, and you don't need to worry about blood poisoning from the filth of the Undercity. It's still far from pleasant for you.

"Anyone ever tell you that you're tougher than you look?" Silver mutters, more concerned than you would have expected.

"Often," you say, "including you."

Silver manages a smile, although you can tell his unhappiness today runs deeper than your injuries or Lew being overly aggressive. "Who killed him?"

"I did," Lew says, hovering nearby. "Grace helped." He isn't exactly giving Silver a friendly look, but this has at least deflated his anger. Maybe you should have collapsed sooner.

"Sounds about right," Silver says, not sounding particularly happy. He studies the bandages under your clothes. "This was good work before you ruined it, Grace. Mortal healer?"

"I bandaged her up the first time," Lew says, stung.

"Right, I should have guessed. Are you ever going to learn anything in the sequence of the Maiden and the Road that isn't for killing ghosts?"

"I'm an exorcist! Dealing with ghosts is important!" Lew says. An embarrassed flush is creeping up into his face.

"You sure are," Silver says. The Scripture of the Maiden and the Road is associated with the constellation of the Corpse, which governs the end of life and other sudden changes. It's also associated with physicians, which is both a bleak notion, and currently a useful one. "Let me try to fix it. Healing supplies are in the green sack over there, Stojca," says Silver. Lew hesitates a moment, but sets his spear down and follows instructions.

"You knew the spear," you say as he works at your bandages. "You met them before."

"You could say that," Silver says. "Short-sighted idiots." Despite his obvious frustration, his scarred, tattooed hands are gentle as he works on your bandages.

You study his face, eyes lingering on his black eye. The realisation that he really had been treating with the same monsters you'd had to deal with earlier is hardly welcome, but something about his expression stops you from leaping to the same conclusion that Lew had earlier. "You had a disagreement."

Silver outright scowls. "You could say that," he says again. "That dumb brute practically laid me out — that's what you get for letting your guard down around a fucking Azurite."

"Right, like Anathema are fine as long as they're not from Azure," Lew says, handing Silver the green pouch in question.

"You're not from Coral. Don't talk about things you don't understand just because you're pissed off," Silver says, accepting the pouch and pulling fresh bandages free from it. "I tried to talk them out of this. I told them that they were compromised. I told them that they'd just die and not accomplish anything. That they should just write the plan off. Live to fight smarter another day, kill fewer bystanders..."

"You expected that to work?" You think you do a good job of not sounding outright scornful.

"It might have, if it weren't for that fucking Lunar being there and telling them not to trust me," Silver said, keeping his voice low enough not to carry. "Radiance was always reckless and bloody-minded. She could get the Randani and the Azurite to go along with her nine times out of ten. Flotsam was usually better than that, even if he was a ruthless bastard. I don't know what the Lunar said to him but he wasn't listening to anyone else."

"Did they know who you were?" Lew asks. He has his eyes averted as Silver changes your bandages.

"No. More trouble than that's worth half the time. They knew the destiny I was wearing, though. I'd helped them before. Sit up a bit, Grace, if it's not going to kill you."

You comply. "I think I'll survive," you say. "You didn't know the Lunar?"

"No," he says, "she was new. Spirit shape's some kind of dog. She seemed Realm-born, but not as posh as you sound. You can't tell anything like that for sure with a Lunar, though." He gives you a sharper sort of look. "I don't know much more than that, but don't try to pump me for more information; you know that's not how this works. There." He finishes tying off the bandages over a wound that you can already tell has not only closed again, but is also quite a ways down the path to healing. You recognise the technique — Silver has deferred the injury for you, and as long as he keeps deferring it for the length of time it would have taken to heal naturally, you won't have to worry about backsliding.

"Thank you," you say, experimentally rising. Finding yourself steady, you begin to retie your shirt. There's no helping the blood stain, unfortunately — you'd liked this outfit.

"Yeah," Silver says, straightening up and tossing the bloody bandages into a nearby bucket. You follow his gaze. The children you'd noticed before are staring, having apparently caught sight of your earlier collapse. One of them is now holding the cat, its dark bulk dozing contentedly in the girl's thin arms. Silver cleans his hands on a handy rag, and moves over to a barrel on the far end of the deck. Reaching inside, he tosses several objects to the children, one for each of them. Oranges, you realise.

Despite the distance involved, the fruit arcs its way over to the urchins, and those of whom are not currently holding a cat catch them — they're surprised, but if they didn't snap up an opportunity for free food, they wouldn't make it far. The one with the cat grins in thanks, and they all disappear down a sidestreet in a hurry, before the strange sailor can either change his mind or try to get something from them.

Silver watches them go, the troubled look from earlier returning. "I don't like what you do, or who you do it for," he says, glancing between you and Lew.

"I know," you say, "you've told me quite often."

"I'm not finished," Silver says, flashing you an annoyed look. "I don't like what you do — and those four you killed today didn't need to die. You didn't make them come here, though, and you were actually protecting something worthwhile for once. There are real people here, not just a vague idea of 'the Realm."

"There are always real people," you say, shrugging. "The Realm is made of them."

Silver rolls his eyes, as if you've missed the point. You wonder if he feels any differently about the Division of Battles authorising a city's destruction, when it comes in the form of violent conquest, rather than a handful of Exalts taking it upon themselves to engineer a calamity. You don't bring it up, though — you all need to rationalise the things you do for the sake of destiny, at some point.

"Was that your way of saying it's alright that we killed these Anathema in particular?" Lew asks.

"Don't put words in my mouth Stojca," Silver says, giving him a hard look. "The Blessed Isle would have less Exalted looking to destroy its cities if you all spent less time murdering them."

"Or it would have more," you say. "Considering that we're spread so thin that we are currently spending less time doing that, and you can see where it gets us."

Silver takes a deep breath, biting back something less charitable than he might otherwise say. "I'm going back to Yu-Shan," he says. "Like I told you in the note, I can still give you a ride. I can't have this argument again today, though."

"As you wish," you say, finding a seat on the boat somewhere out of the way. Silver is more than capable of operating it on his own. "Thank you. Are the port authorities just letting people leave right now without permission?"

"No," Silver says, "but I already bribed an official. And if he gets any ideas, they can try and catch us." He sets about preparing the boat to push off. Lew recovers his spear and takes a seat near you.

"Please tell me you're not going straight back into the office to write a report when we get back," he says.

"I'm going home first," you say.

"Are you sure?" Lew says, raising his eyebrows.

"Yes," you say. "I do go home, sometimes!"

"Alright, then," Lew says, giving you a grin. "Good for you."

You are going to have to go into the office soon — some of what's occurred here and what you've learned should be known to the Bureau sooner rather than later. You're also going to need to speak to your mentor while he's in Yu-Shan as well. But after a day like today, you would like at least a few hours of actual sleep in an actual bed. And you'd like to speak with your mother.

You have to steal quiet moments for yourself when you're able, before the next crisis.

End of Arc 1

Article:

When you go back to heaven, you intend to first stop by your home, a manse you inherited from your predecessor, located in a relatively quiet neighbourhood in the heavenly city near to the Cerulean Lute of Harmony.

A manse is a magical structure, a house, palace, or fortress, built through advanced geomantic techniques to harness the power of a demesne. Demesnes themselves are wellsprings of supernatural power, fed by Dragon Lines and aspected to a particular kind of naturally occurring Essence. A manse will reflect this aspect in its design and power. On Creation, most manses are aligned with one of Creation's five elements — Air, Earth, Fire, Water, and Wood. In heaven, however, the vast majority of manses are Celestial in nature, built to harness Lunar, Sidereal, or Solar Essence. Yours is not an exception.

What best describes the manse that you inherited when you first came to heaven?

[ ] Lunar

A miniature palace, prominently featuring a great deal of glass, mirrors, and filigree, its interior confusing to those not used to navigating it. You're still finding new rooms that seem to appear overnight.

[ ] Sidereal

A deceptively sleepy looking tower, obscured by ornamental foliage and shrouded in vines, the noise of the city outside completely cut off. It appears larger and more luxurious from the inside.

[ ] Solar

An airy, open structure built around a central garden thick with exotic plants and water features, the different structures connected by bridges and covered walkways. It seems to be highly opinionated.