A Vision in Bronze; A Sidereal quest

Standing there with a knife to your throat, you're on the verge of reaching for the impossible little sidestep that will let you execute Avoidance. It would take you out of this room like you'd never been there at all — you've already learned what you came here to find out, after all. Looking into that mirror though, something about Maia's hard, determined face gives you pause. She isn't officially at this wedding, and is obviously at loose ends whenever she isn't... spending time with her Hearthmates in private. Erona Maia is a very capable woman who can move without being seen, and whose skills cover different areas than your own — now that you're sure there really is a Lunar here, you can use her help. "You want to keep your Sworn Kin safe, miss?" You keep your voice meek, not surrendering that note of fear.

"Enough to kill you and apologise to L'nessa later, if you don't start giving me a good reason why I shouldn't." She's glaring, but there was a flash of something in her eyes, the way she holds herself. There's an almost desperate edge to her feelings for her Hearthmates — she loves these women who chose her and would stand by her, as only a profoundly lonely person can love. It might be the first time you've ever looked at Maia and found something to relate to.

Maybe that's why you try what you do next, beyond the mere practicality of it. "I'm not their enemy, miss. Or yours," you whisper.

"And yet here you are, snooping through Ambraea's rooms without permission. Why were you staring at that key? If I were to take a look through the papers that came on the ship that brought you, would I even find a proper bill of sale?" Maia asks, not relenting an inch.

This is a very regrettable tack for her to take, not least because she is absolutely on to something. You've been relying on your resplendent destiny and the Desperate Maiden techniques you've employed to smooth the way for yourself — no one had paid enough attention to this sort of thing. "I was a gift, miss," you say.

"As if anyone would give a supposedly high-value slave as a wedding present to a matriarch's daughter without a paper trail to go with her. To brag about the expense of your training, if nothing else," Maia says.

This isn't working. It's not going to work if you keep up what Maia has correctly identified as an act. If getting her assistance requires breaking character, then you're going to have to break character. Outright sloughing off the destiny for the span of this conversation isn't necessarily an option — you want her to at least remember that she's agreed to work with you, not that she's been warned about a potential Anathema threat by someone whose existence has completely slipped out of her memory.

You take as deep a breath as you dare with the knife pressed to your throat, and sigh. In the mirror, you watch your entire posture change, servile body language disappearing, the fear leaving your face. "Fine, then. Miss Maia, please listen carefully: I believe there is an Anathema hiding on this island."

Maia immediately tenses. That isn't a thing that people just throw around carelessly among the Dynasty. "What?" she asks. Despite her having suspected you of being something different than you'd represented yourself as, she's still having difficulty processing the change in your demeanor. It's working at cross-purposes to your resplendent destiny, which is still working to make you seem like an obedient handmaiden.

You can feel the destiny straining at the seams, the strands you'd carefully woven beginning to fray. You'll have to be careful with it from now on, but it's too late to second guess your course in this conversation. You plough on, brisk and confident: "My masters sent me here because of a lesser concern, but I was already worried, and I've found evidence. A Face-Stealer. She was involved with the incident at Bittern."

"We didn't find a Face-Stealer at Bittern," Maia says, "and how would you know so much about it, anyway?"

"No, you didn't. But someone helped plan the attack, and someone set those fires as a distraction," you say. "Does it matter who I am, if a thing like that is here? You can trust me in this." Carefully, from an angle that your bodies block from sight in the mirror, you trace the Lesser Sign of Venus with one finger. Blue stardust trails behind the digit and hangs in the air for just a moment. It lends your words a subtle weight — she can trust you. You can help her make sure this isn't as bad as you're making it sound, and keep her Hearth safe.

"... We never did find that artifact," Maia says, voice very quiet. Slow, she pulls the knife away and steps back.

You gingerly rub at your neck. Your hand comes away with just the smallest drop of blood on it — why does that feel so familiar to you, just now? You turn to face Maia properly. "Thank you, miss," you say, voice cool. You're not going to correct her about who took that weapon, for obvious reasons.

Maia is still looking at you like you're a prey animal she released and is considering snatching up again. She still has the knife in her hand. "What is this 'evidence' you have, then?" Maia asks.

"I noticed that someone had been tampering with the door to the sky mantis tower. I came to see if the key had been stolen or copied," you say. You nod at the key.

"It's still here," Maia says. She doesn't seem to want to take her eyes off you long enough to properly investigate it.

"The mirror, miss," you say, voice respectful but firm.

Maia's eyes flick over to the part of the mirror where the key should be visible. This time she sees what you're talking about. She mutters something distinctly improper under her breath. Mirror magic is not the sole province of the Lunar Exalted, but Luna governs mystical boundaries and liminal spaces. A reflection certainly counts.

"If I'm wrong, I promise you can kill me then," you lie.

Whether or not she believes you, the comment draws a grim sort of laugh from her in spite of herself. "What is your name?" she asks.

"Pearl, miss," you say, bowing. You're slipping back into your servant persona, and she can see you doing it.

"Fine then. Pearl. Do you suspect anyone in particular?" Maia asks.

"A sentry called Wood Sparrow has been in places she shouldn't be, and has said some strange things at times," you say.

Maia nods, considering that. "Fine. I'll play along for now. We're not shouting 'Anathema' in a crowded building just yet, obviously — a general panic before we know more is the last thing we need, if it really is here. I'll be in touch. Don't be in this room by the time I turn back around," Maia says. Then she sends the knife elsewhere with an impossible bit of sleight of hand, and gives her back to you, presumably going to see about putting on some decent clothes that actually belong to her.

You bow again, and take your hint.

You don't see Maia for the rest of the day, spent busy at work between your service to L'nessa and your surveillance. As the fifth day of the gala and the actual wedding ceremony rapidly approaches, you can't help but feel like things are coming to a head.

When you lay down on your thin mattress in the servants' quarters that night, your dreams are intense, disturbing, and true.

---

Northleg district, the Lap,
Realm satrapy in the near-Southern Threshold,

Realm Year 743

In your dream, it is mere days before your birth, and you are kissing a married woman who has just betrayed her family for your sake.

Ragara Tulira makes a sound of protest as you pull away, her grip tightening on your shoulders. "Don't we at least have a few moments?" she asks, eyes pleading. She's a mortal woman of at least thirty, plainly pretty, dressing in clothing that a Dynast might consider to be inconspicuous.

You press a finger to her lips, a silencing gesture as much as a flirtatious one. "Not today. It isn't safe to do this here — you know what's at stake." It's even true, rather than a put-on. You've enjoyed your dalliances with Tulira as much as they serve a specific purpose. She isn't skillful enough to disguise these periodic clandestine meetings entirely, but so long as her husband, one of the co-satraps of the Lap, only believes that she's sneaking out to see a lover, he won't have reason to suspect her of espionage or heresy.

She relents, her shoulders slumping in resignation. She lets go of you to reach into a fold of her clothing, and pulls out a folded and bound stack of papers, which she presses into your hands. "I do," she says.

The two of you are in the back room of an upscale shop that you've arranged to be empty for this hour, the two of you wedged in tightly amid crates of textiles. You accept the papers gravely, tucking them safely away in a pocket of your jacket. "I know you bring me this information at great risk to yourself. You have my word that your faith will save many lives," you say, gaze soulful.

Your resplendent destiny paints you as a revolutionary and an idealist, a brave agent for the persecuted Cult of the Illuminated — but it is also a destiny of the Ewer, and as such requires you to be a romantic revolutionary. It gets more than a little exhausting at times. Still, at the moment, looking into Tulira's admiring eyes, you can't pretend that you mind.

You have spent months developing her as an asset off and on, the neglected mortal spouse of a powerful Dragon-Blood. Tulira herself is a poet by trade, but she is still entirely capable of getting ahold of privileged information from her husband's desk. The Lap is the breadbasket for the Realm's operations throughout the region, and knowing where it ships its grain can tell you what you need to know to predict troop movements and composition.

It has been centuries since Ayesha first convinced you to join in on her scheme to infiltrate and co-opt the Cult of the Illuminated, ostensibly to provide support and guidance to the handful of surviving Solar Exalted in the world. Over time, despite the dubiousness with which many of your politically aligned colleagues hold for it, it has become a project that you truly believe in. It's a particularly cruel twist of fate that you will die only twenty years before the Solar Resurgence would see your work vindicated in the eyes of the broader Gold Faction.

Soon, you watch from the shop window as Tulira descends narrow stairs to the street below, where a servant has been patiently awaiting her. The view beyond her is spectacular. The Lap is built onto one of the great surviving wonders of the First Age, a stone statue of a man sitting in contemplation known as the Penitent. It's made at such a gargantuan scale that a forest grows across his shoulders and crossed arms. The city itself is built across his folded legs, buildings clustered closely to fill the limited available real estate. At the moment, the sun is low in the sky behind the Penitent, painting the scene in fantastic colours.

Your eyes drop back down to Tulira, who has raised a hood to try and obscure her face. As the two of them round a corner into a dark alleyway, something in the posture of the servant woman makes you frown. You've seen her before — a small, dark-haired Varangian woman, soft spoken and determined to notice nothing at all about these meetings. Today, though, when you look at her an uncanny chill goes down your spine despite the fading warmth of the evening sun.


You aren't the only one who can notice and exploit a weak link in a powerful satrap's family.

You burst out the door and vault over the railing to the street below, rushing after the two of them fast enough to send affluent Laplanders scattering out of the way. You throw yourself around the corner in time to see the attendant, dutifully walking paces behind her mistress, reaching for the back of Tulira's neck with a hand that something gleams ominously in.

Before either of them can notice you coming up behind them, you're there, interposed between the women with a sheathed sabre in your hands. The spiked ring concealed in the attendant's hand glances off the unassuming wood of the scabbard without so much as scratching the lacquer. The attendant reacts with honed combat reflexes, almost skittering backward away from you. Tulira whirls around with a startled cry.

"Assassin! Tulira, run!" you tell her, drawing your sword and putting yourself firmly between her and her assailant. The sabre comes free of its scabbard with an oddly joyful metallic chime. A ten-ringed daiklave forged from elegantly curved white jadesteel. Its tip, edge, and the rings strung along the blunt side of the blade are all solid starmetal. Yellow-and-white ribbons hang from its pommel, incongruously cheerful. It had seemed like an ordinary sword while it was sheathed, but now it's obvious to both assassin and victim that it's anything but. You feel the threads of your resplendent destiny straining almost to the breaking point from the dissonance — you're posing as a mortal.

Tulira doesn't need to be told twice, thankfully. Sincere convert or not, she is still a Dynast — it's one of the few commands they're trained to actually follow from their lessers. "Be careful!" she says, genuinely fearful for your safety, before she flees down the alleyway.

"She isn't going to die today. Leave her alone, and walk away your life," you tell the assassin. You slough off your resplendent destiny and settle into a familiar stance, the scabbard of your daiklave still held in your off hand.

A disconcertingly canine growl comes out of the assassin's throat. Her stance reminds you of a completely different animal, though — her knees are bent low, her hands curled for claw strikes, twitching from side to side at erratic intervals. You know the style, but you're certain there's something else there. "You don't know what you're meddling with," she says.

She darts forward, rapid punches and claw strikes aiming for your eyes, nose, throat — anywhere that can put you down hard and fast. You turn each of them aside using your sword's sheath, brightly painted wood cracking painfully against her wrist and knuckles each time.

"Neither do you," you say, face calm and serene despite the intensity of your focus. She lunges again, mouth open to offer a retort. This time, though, when you block it with the scabbard, you force her hand down and use the opening to give her a chastising tap on the side of the head with the blunt of your sword. The Wandering Blade's rings jangle musically with even so light a blow.

She darts backward again, somehow melting into the shadows in the space between blinks. You smile, though. After that exchange, you have the stock of her — she's still here. "Rat style is common enough for cowards and low criminals bereft of honour. It's quite a bit less common that I encounter someone genuinely educated in White Veil, though. Less common still that I meet an assassin crass enough to combine them."

"You're not mortal," the assassin says, the accusation coming to you from a point behind you.

You don't flinch. The Scripture of the Maiden and the Scythe runs through your head once again, anticipating the real strike to come. "That ring on your finger is a heartpiercer. Moonsilver, if I'm not very much mistaken. And I've heard that particular servant speak before — your Varangian accent is quite good, but she's from Urim and you keep slipping into something closer to Yane. Did you kill her too, Lunar?"

"I don't kill slaves," the Lunar says, her voice coming from an entirely different angle this time. She outright drops the accent, her Flametongue now strongly coloured by Low Realm. She sounds genuinely exasperated. "And no one was going to die today, until you interrupted me. I just wanted to make her come down with something. Now I'll have to make sure that that woman never arrives back home if I want to salvage this. I hope you're happy."

"You're not going to beat me here," you say with well-earned confidence. "She will arrive home, and her husband will learn of an assassination attempt by an 'Anathema'. The entire satrapy will be put on alert. She will be guarded night and day and watched for any sign that you've stolen her face. Whatever scheme you were working on ends today. Be reasonable. Walk away, try again later. You have plenty of time."

In a general sense you wish her good luck in disrupting and weakening the Realm, even if the Silver Pact's methods sometimes leave an annoying amount of collateral damage to destiny. You have simply put too much time into making Tulira an asset to allow this to continue, however. And besides that, you're not the kind of woman who enjoys letting her lovers come to harm, or tolerates it when it's unnecessary, no matter what you're using them for otherwise. Part of you is outright angry if you're completely honest with yourself. Things might have gone differently if you were more detached about it.

Silence, stretching on for several seconds as the sun goes down and the shadows deepen. Just long enough that you might have thought she really had left. But feel that same eerie sense of dread again — you know she hasn't.

The assassin lunges out of the darkness. You sidestep, bring your scabbard down on her shoulder. You've already realised your error by the time she vanishes into motes of moonfire. You spin on your heel, driving your sword's pommel into the the real Lunar's stomach where she'd surged forward on a burst of feral speed. She gasps and staggers back. A crescent moon now burns silver on her brow, and a tracery of moonsilver lines seep up out of her skin, glowing faintly. Behind her, cast in the light of her own anima, the shadow she casts is in the shape of a snarling dog.

"My patience has a limit," you say. "I have no quarrel with you if you leave Ragara Tulira be. Go before someone sees you like this and you have a Wyld Hunt after you. I have no love for the Realm, and I am not an enemy of the Silver Pact — Whatever your goals, though, I simply cannot allow you to... to... to meddle in this."

For some reason the Lunar smiles at you for the first time since this all began. It's a slow, cruel expression that fits her stolen face poorly. Why is she looking at you that way? As soon as you think the thought, your vision swims at the edges and a strange sense of vertigo comes over you, a directionless sort of confusion fighting for your attention at the back of your head. You raise the hand that holds your scabbard to your neck — your knuckles come away with a tiny smear of red, where the needle of the Lunar's heartpiercer ring had slipped into your skin without you noticing.

She's given you some manner of supernatural disease. This is what you get for trying to extend a little grace to a student of Rat Style instead of simply crushing her immediately. "You'll regret that. Survival is control," you say, something flat and deadly coming into your voice.

The assassin scoffs. "What—" her words cut off and her smile dies as you blur forward, moving faster and more aggressively than you have before now. For just an instant, the entire world is dyed a charnel red as your daiklave lays open her face. Its edge dissolves the very Essence of her flesh, slicing down to the bone without any resistance at all. She screams in pain and falls back, clutching her face with blood streaming past her fingers.

You look at her for just a moment, your own Caste Mark glowing blue on your brow. You tuck your scabbard under one arm in order to reach into a pocket, pull out a hat, and pull it on, obfuscating the glow. "You were warned," you tell her. Then you walk away, leaving her to flee and be grateful you left her with her life for however long she even remembers you exist

Arrogance is ever the downfall of the Sidereal Exalted.

---

You wake up early in the morning, staring up at the ceiling of the room you'd fallen asleep in the night before. This is precisely why you avoid sleeping when you can help it.

The other two handmaidens you're rooming with are still asleep in their own beds. Through the window set into the wall, you can see that the sun hasn't risen yet. The room is small for three, but clean and comfortable, particularly given the temporary nature of these accommodations. It's far better than what many poorer members of the Blessed Isle's peasantry can expect in their lifetimes. In the Realm, the conditions a slave lives under are wholly dependent on the whims and means of the Dragon-Blood who they belong to, from the most wretched jade miner to the most pampered advisor.

Without thinking, you raise your hand to touch the tiny nick Maia had left on your neck. It's not exactly in the same place that the Lunar from your memory had jabbed Prayer, but it's a close thing. Had that and the stress of your own Anathema problems been the only thing that had triggered the memory? You're reluctant to read too much more into it than that. It's too much to hope most of the time that the memories you receive from your past life will actually be useful for anything. All the same...

"I don't kill slaves."

The assassin hadn't claimed not to kill innocents, mortals, or servants in general. She had claimed not to kill, specifically, slaves. A very selective sort of moral code.

Bitter Cherry had been enslaved on the Blessed Isle since childhood before the moon madness had taken her, if Incarnadine Chorus's sources are correct. It's interesting, the marks that someone's upbringing can leave even when they're tooth and nail against the culture that raised them. The Celestial Exalted each come from somewhere just as much as Dragon-Blooded do. That must be as true for Anathema as it is for Sidereals — it's not a comparison you're comfortable with making very often.

Chorus's information also said that Bitter Cherry has been active for several decades. Wayward Prayer died shortly before you were born, less than thirty years ago — the prospect of your predecessor having had such a confrontation with the Anathema you're hunting now so soon before her mysterious and violent death is disquieting, to say the least.

Even if Prayer had been a misguided idealist whose lax attitude toward Anathema had no doubt cost many people their lives over the centuries, she still hadn't deserved what happened to her anymore than the Anathema's other victims had. It would be one more reason to stop this Face-Stealer.

You feel a very strong urge to send a message to one of your closer colleagues to discuss the dream with them, at least in brief. Writing a secret missive to a Sidereal and then ritually burning it is very likely to finish off your damaged resplendent destiny, however. Slipping it off just for that while you're in a room with two mortals would also be a dubious decision. You'll just have to wait until you finish here, however things work out.

You're already dressed and ready for the day when the other two girls blearily get up, standing at the window watching the sunrise.

"Of course you're always up first. You're just bent on making us look bad," one of them complains. Night Petal, the elder of the two, gives you an irritated look. She's of indeterminately Southern extraction — pretty enough, when she isn't glaring at you.

"That wasn't what I meant to do," you say, glancing away from her gaze. You have been making them look bad in comparison to you over the past several days, you suppose. The girl you replaced will hopefully not be sick forever — you know her a little from years ago, in fact, and found her quite lovely. If you really were staying on long term, one of these two would very likely be set to other work to allow you to stay on. It's difficult to compete with an Exalt in one of her areas of expertise.

Serving as one of L'nessa's personal handmaidens is a very good place compared to nearly anything else these two could be tasked with. Beyond the temperament of the lady herself — not particularly onerous for a Dragon-Blooded — such a position comes with subtler advantages. The proximity to power can provide some small measure of protection or status on its own. A free Realm citizen who would ordinarily sneer at a slave, or at the daughter of a slave, will hesitate before doing so when she may be wielding the bestowed authority of a Prince of the Earth. There are reasons why the Scripture of the Desperate Maiden immediately made sense to you the first time you heard it.

"Pet, leave her alone. Fresh from training with House Cynis, and she's told to get an Exalted lady ready for a wedding gala? Of course she's trying too hard." Lei, the younger of the two, is taming her hair with a very expensive tortoise shell comb. The comb had apparently been cast aside after one of its teeth had broken — only the most impoverished of Dynasts would ever condescend to use it in this condition. Lei looks vaguely Zhao to you, like Wayward Prayer had been, even if there is otherwise no resemblance.

"I could do... worse?" you offer. They speak Flametongue amongst themselves. You've made a point of making yours sound worse than it really is — it wouldn't have been a priority in Pearl's training.

"Too late. You've already gone and given the lady expectations. She'd know if you started slacking now." Night Petal says, laying out her own clothes for the day on her bed. She rolls her eyes, but without much venom. She examines her dress and tsks. "The hem is torn. Do you still have that needle, Lei?"

"Get your own, sometime," Lei says, setting her comb down to look through her meagre possessions for a sewing needle. She finds it, and hands it over.

"I suppose it's not so bad that Pearl is here," Petal says, accepting the needle, "if we rope Garnet into it, we'll have enough for a game of throwing-heaven-and-nine. No one's gonna need us while the ceremony's going on."

"I don't think I've played this game before," you offer with false uncertainty. This is even true, although you're familiar enough with the concept — it's popular with Blessed Isle peasants in some of the cities. You wonder where Petal picked it up.

"That's why she wants you to play," Lei says, voice dry. Satisfied with having removed the worst of the tangles, Lei begins to carefully braid her hair. "Not that we usually bet real money, but she likes to win. Evening Garnet, though? Are you sure that the freedwoman's gonna lower herself to come play with the likes of us? My grandpa used to say, give a Tengese girl a bucket to stand on and she thinks she's High Queen."

Definitely Zhao, you decide.

"Maybe she'd be less high and mighty at you if you knew less Tengese jokes, Lei. I like Garnet," Petal says. "Bit of a slut sometimes, but maybe I'd want a distraction between my legs too if I had to feed that snake of Lady Ambraea's everyday." She shudders for dramatic effect.

Lei cackles.

You quietly look between them. These two women who don't particularly like you but are willing to try to, as they go about their small lives. It's easy to imagine how things might have been if you hadn't Exalted, with them gossiping about you rather than Garnet. Your distance from your old life has never felt quite so profound.

You try to remind yourself that you should have your guard up as the wedding ceremony approaches. Either one of them could still be a Lunar in disguise, that you can't rely on their being safe because of an idle claim in a past life memory that could be only a coincidence in the first place. Still, watching them is a reminder of why you do what you do. Whatever Bitter Cherry's intent is in coming here, you're sure that it isn't going to do anyone on this island any good. When the great and powerful try to destroy one another, it's always the ordinary people who get trampled. Even if your mentor has cautioned you against it, it's difficult to make yourself overlook that.

It doesn't take long for the three of you to finish getting ready and get to work. You spend the morning at various tasks that give you a chance to see much of the manse, quietly on the lookout for anything truly amiss. You don't find it.

Hours later, when L'nessa arrives in her dressing room, looking as bedraggled and nervous in a way no one else would be permitted to see, the three of you are waiting for her, identically-dressed.

The dress that you, Lei, and Night Petal help L'nessa into is in crimson and white, the wedding colours of the Scarlet Dynasty. The ostentatious, multi-layered cut of the garment nodding to traditional wedding garb while stretching the confines of it. House V'neef's mon features prominently along the hems of the garment. In spite of her worries about red clothing and her colouring mixing poorly, the dress is perfect for her — V'neef has obviously spared as little expense on the dress that announces her daughter's readiness to found her own household as she has on any other part of this occasion.

L'nessa's hair is woven into an elegant style, dripping with jade and silver. Despite her outward calm, more autumnal leaves than usual are drifting down from her hair. From long experience, Night Petal simply plucks them out of the air and deposits them in a basket you suspect has been set aside for this purpose. She does her best to ignore the messenger sprite currently hiding among L'nessa's jewelry.

"I think I'd be more comfortable if some minor disaster had shaken things up before now. It's all been worrisomely smooth," L'nessa says, in a tone that doesn't require a direct response from any of you. You wish she wouldn't — you're trying to apply her makeup — but it is not currently your place to object.

It is also your professional opinion that this sort of comment under the current circumstances is tempting fate, but you suppose she doesn't know that yet. The wedding ceremony proper would be a suitably dramatic time and place for whatever the Lunar is planning. As such, you'll need to be on guard.

"Well, no need to borrow trouble," L'nessa says. She notes the way you're standing completely still, brush still in your hand, as if you're politely waiting for her to stop speaking. "I suppose I'm interrupting you."

"It would not be my place to say, my lady," you say, lowering your eyes. Nothing about your tone or your posture communicates anything objectionable, but at the same time, she cannot help but get the message that yes, she is interrupting, and you wish that she'd let you get on with serving her properly so that she isn't late. It's a tact that you ordinarily wouldn't take with a woman you've been in service to for less than two weeks — you have no power to direct L'nessa other than what she elects to give you, and presuming familiarity too quickly is a dangerous game. However, the gilded cage you've symbolically trapped yourself in has its advantages.

L'nessa gives a light, amused sigh, and stops talking, letting you get back to work.

You wish your house spirit were here to take notes.

---

Sister Tranquil Grove stands in front of the couple, her eyes closed as she recites a lengthy blessing for the purity and spiritual health of their marriage. The couple are both dressed in crimson and white, each adorned in a small fortune's worth of silk and finery.

Tranquil Grove is very young to be given this task in such a major wedding, a sister of the Second Coil only a decade older than the couple are. On one hand, it's a statement about the degree of adult responsibility that V'neef expects her daughters to shoulder. On the other, the monk is also Daro's cousin, another of Cynis Wisel's grandchildren, like Wilim.

Tranquil Grove finishes, and steps aside.

Unseen, you stand on a balcony overlooking a hall that drips with flowering vines, all of the wedding guests filling the space in their own best finery. All eyes are on the dais at the front of the room, everyone standing in perfect silence as Cynis Belar Daro reaches up a jewelled hand to delicately lift his veil. His face betrays the perfect amount of nervous, masculine excitement. L'nessa look back at him with an air of elegant calm, all traces of her earlier anxiety gone. It's calculated on both their parts, of course, but Dynastic weddings are not the venue for emotional sincerity.

As one, the couple turn to face V'neef Arrow, who begins to recite the terms of the marriage contract in euphemistically floral language, ready to pronounce it legally binding. From this point on, the couple's job is simply to look attractive, and to answer affirmatively at several points while prompted.

You wish you could say you were enjoying seeing how well your handiwork with L'nessa is paying off, but you're far too distracted throughout the entire ceremony with a sense of anticipatory dread. Everyone is gathered here for the main event, after all. What better time could there be for a Lunar infiltrator to strike? You're watching the proceedings like a hawk, eyes darting from L'nessa to V'neef to Cynis Belar to Ambraea — the latter is not nearly as likely to be a target, of course, but you are in the end still human.

As the judge reaches the end of her speech, a hand claps down on your shoulder. You have to stop yourself from letting out an undignified squeak of surprise, but you recognise who it is by the time she pulls you into the shadows and spins you around to face her.

Maia needs to stop doing this to you — one of these times, you're going to mistake her for an actual attacker and break her arm. Accidentally, of course.

"Come with me," she says, barely audible. Her expression is both blank and deeply troubled.

You glance over your shoulder at the ceremony, a questioning look in your eyes. Maia follows your gaze, her expression landing on L'nessa. A momentary regret passes over her face. She'd like to stay and watch for her Hearthmate's sake, would probably have liked to do so publicly if it were possible. Her bearing hardens again, though — you have given her a task to do, one that her oath demands she give her full attention.

"Now," she says, brooking no argument. She pulls you along for another step, out into the dim hallway. You hesitate enough to remain in character, then follow. It isn't out of the question for Pearl to watch the grand proceedings in secret like you have been, but it would certainly be to ignore a direct order from a woman who is both Dragon-Blooded and your lady's Sworn Kin.

"Miss?" you ask, hurrying to keep up. Maia is shorter than you are, but she's moving very quickly, heading away from the brightly lit gala.

"You'll see," she says, not looking back at you. Maia is dressed in a form-fitting garment, jet black cloth-of-jade stifling all noise, not even giving off the faintest cloth-on-cloth whisper to betray her movements. You find that if you take your eyes off of her, you have to work to find her again in the dimly lit hallway — it's like trying to spot something through several feet of dark water. You realise that however plain and insubstantial it looks, she's wearing better armour than any of the guards in their ornamental breastplates.

There's a palpable tension in the set of her shoulders, an urgency that hadn't been there even when you told her about the possibility of an Anathema being on the island. Maia has found something very bad.

She takes you out of the manse proper, not even hesitating as she steps out into the chill air, angling across a stone courtyard toward the outer wall. She seems to have timed things so that none of the sentries are close enough to spot the two of you from a distance. Rather than take you up onto the wall, you see that Maia is heading for a small wooden door set into the base of the white stone. It's locked, but she produces a key that she should certainly not have and opens it.

You follow her out of the brisk wind, into the cramped, austere confines of the wall's interior. You're very grateful that the two of you are built small — a taller woman might have to duck her head to avoid brushing it against the dank stone of the arched ceiling. Maia takes a turn to the left and proceeds several metres until she arrives in a slightly larger chamber. There isn't much light here, only what little filters in through small, barred windows. You find yourself hunching against the cold almost as much as you had outside.

You look around, not quite seeing what she's trying to show you. "Here," Maia says, walking over to a door set into the back wall, partially obscured by several crates. As you get near it, the smell hits. A sense of deep foreboding grips you.

"No one noticed this?" you say.

"The door was hidden, somehow. A tarp was covering it, and you just... couldn't see it without magic," Maia says, voice grim. She picks up an object sitting on the nearby crate, fiddling with it until it emits a strong sorcerous light akin to the lighting fixtures in the manse. It looks suspiciously like she's removed a crystal from one and put it into a glass oil lamp. "I hope you have a stronger stomach than it looks like you do."

She pushes the door open. Immediately, the stench gets worse, hitting you in a fetid wave. Fortunately, you do have a stronger stomach than you look like you do. You follow Maia into the room with a reluctance that you don't even remotely need to feign.

It's another storage room, barrels of provisions shoved up against the far wall to make room on the floor for exactly what you knew you'd find. Three bodies are laid out here, motionless in death. You freeze in the entrance, taking them in with a mounting horror.

"You see our problem," Maia says.

You do. Each of the corpses has had its chest opened up, ribcages pried open with disturbing delicacy. Even from here, you can see why. As horrible as that is, though, it's not the worst of it.

"Do you know them?" Maia asks, when you don't immediately speak.

You nod slowly. "I thought I did."

The first corpse, beginning to decay enough that you might not have recognised her without the sentry uniform, is Wood Sparrow. You'd expected that. Things only get worse from there. Beside her, face already looking sunken and ghastly, is Cold Rain. The third is unmistakably Five Gardens.

"I've seen them together in the same place, miss" you say, voice barely a whisper.

Maia gives you a hard look. "Recently?" she asks.

"I think so," you say. The prospect of there being more than one Anathema at work is very nearly the worst news you could have gotten.

"Oh, dear. That is a problem."

You give a start, twisting around to find Sesus Amiti standing behind you. She's still dressed for the gala, wearing a violet dress adorned with a snowflake pattern. Not knowing what else to do, you step out of the way as she comes into the room. She spares you a glance. "Maia, why is L'nessa's handmaiden here?"

"She's more than looks," Maia says, cryptically.

As Amiti steps closer to the bodies, Cold Rain's corpse gives a sudden jerk as though startling awake, before laying still again. Both you and Maia step back in alarm. "Sorry, my fault! Corpses just get a little excited when I get too near to them. They know I could get them up and walking again. Well, they don't really know anything, but metaphysically," Amiti says, not sounding nearly somber enough for the situation. As if to demonstrate her point, Wood Sparrow's corpse lets out a low, wet moan.

"Amiti, focus. You remember what I asked you for?" Maia asks, long suffering.

"Right, right," Amiti says. There's a horrible sense of unconcern to her as she leans down to look at the bodies, standing so close to them that you're a little worried about the hem of her dress. She pulls a dark, tear-shaped pendant from beneath her clothing. From previous exposure, you know that it's a piece of Amiti's own lower soul carved out and forged into soulsteel. This is why you're appalled, but not quite surprised, when she blithely puts it into her mouth. As she thinks, she works it back and forth the way someone normal might suck on the back of a pen.

You'd understood that by telling Erona Maia about this situation, that you had no capacity to keep her from telling someone else. When you tell a Dragon-Blood about a problem, even a patrician Dragon-Blood, you always risk them simply deciding that they're now in charge of things. Out of all her Hearthmates, though, you hadn't expected her to bring Sesus Amiti into this, for obvious reasons.

Five Gardens' corpse twitches horribly again as Amiti points at him. You've gotten used to the zombie servants that Yula brings with her everywhere she goes, but they're at least clean, well-preserved, and politely shrouded behind concealing clothing and death masks. Nothing about Amiti's necromancy feels particularly clean or polite.

After several moments of silent study, Amiti straightens up and points to Wood Sparrow's corpse, letting the pendant drop out of her mouth to speak, her tone chillingly casual. "She's been dead for well over a week, two at most." Next, she points at Cold Rain. "Maybe five days? And the man at least a day, but not much more — not as putrefied as the others, but the stiffness has passed. No bloating on any of them because they're carved open like that."

You have a sudden, horrible recollection of Cold Rain taking Five Gardens aside after he'd made an advance on you — he hadn't just been reprimanded, it would seem. You have certainly seen him and Rain together since then. The time for subtlety is very quickly coming to an end. You'll need to warn the matriarch as soon as you can without starting the kind of panic that could work in the Lunar's, or Lunars' favour.

"I can't say for sure what killed them," Amiti says, bringing your thoughts to a sudden halt.

Maia gives her a strange look. "Amiti, they've had their chests butterflied like fish and their hearts removed," she says, giving voice to your own private reaction.

"Well, obviously, yes, but that didn't kill them. There's not nearly enough blood in here," Amiti says, as if this is patently obvious. Sure enough, while there is quite a bit of dried blood in evidence, it's nothing compared to the arterial fountain that tearing into a live person should have produced. You avert your eyes — it's starting to be a little much for you.

Then you raise your hand to your neck, to exactly the place that Wayward Prayer had been pricked by a Lunar's heartpiercer ring. A weapon frequently used to deliver poison or the diseases that certain martial arts — martial arts like Rat Style — can inflict. You think back over the dossier that Chorus had provided. Bitter Cherry had used poison at times.

Amiti freezes up, something changing in her posture. "There are three Anathema here, aren't there?" she says. As if she's only just considered what that really means now that she's finished offering her gruesome expertise. "Are they here for one of the matriarchs? For L'nessa?" An edge of panic starts to creep into her voice. She takes a step back from the bodies.

Maia shoves the lantern into your hands, stepping over to take her by the shoulders. Amiti is barely taller than you, letting Maia look directly into her wide eyes. "We don't know what's happening yet. Calm down, there's no time to panic."

Amiti nods as if she understands that Maia is correct, but can't seem to translate it into practice.

You consider the two of them. You have arrived at a circumstance where time is of the essence, in a way that acting the servile handmaiden will not help with. You're distantly aware of the frayed edges of your resplendent destiny. Even if things are very likely to get a great deal more exciting in short order, it is still a useful destiny to maintain — the last thing you want is to be caught out as the mysterious stranger who no one can recall once the Dragon-Blooded start trying to hunt down an Anathema. That is also a risk with your current course of action, but you're confident in your ability to manage it.

While neither Maia nor Amiti are looking in your direction, you quietly shrug out of you resplendent destiny for the first time in nearly two weeks. You allow yourself a second to straighten up and breathe easy without worrying about playing your role. "Lady Amiti. Miss Maia. May I speak?"

The two of them look around as one, both staring at you as if they're really seeing you for the first time. They are, in a sense — the magic hanging around your service to L'nessa is still in place, but apart from that, you're simply yourself now with none of the obfuscation of a resplendent destiny. A real person, not an archetype they're primed to disregard when they don't need something. They know that you're the same individual, that you physically look the same, but they're currently trying to square their earlier impression of you with the woman standing in front of them now.

You choose to take their surprised silence as assent, giving them a brisk but respectful smile. "I think we can take away a few things from this situation. Firstly, the Anathema has failed to take overt action up until this point. They did not interrupt the wedding ceremony at all — I assume your Hearthmates would have contacted you were that the case, even if the general alarm didn't go off. Tonight, as well as the last two days of this gala, will feature much less regimented celebration, as well as heavy drinking. The guests will have their guards down."

Maia nods, looking at you with a certain narrow-eyed expression, obviously reassessing your general competence. Amiti is giving you a surprised, thoughtful look that seems to have knocked her out of her panic. Her gaze is lingering very intently on your eyes.

"That seems likely," Maia agrees. "The other things?"

"None of these bodies are of guests. They're all servants or guards — free servants. This fits with what I know I have learned about this specific Anathema's tendencies in infiltration. It also narrows down who we have to look for. I also don't think that they will be likely to have set up more than one..." you make an expression of distaste "... makeshift charnel house. It is possible that they killed a guest before coming here and replaced them at the party, but I do not believe that this particular Lunar enjoys posing as a Dynast or trying to navigate their social circles where she can avoid it. I believe that she will still be posing as one of these poor souls, or as all of them." It's an educated hunch.

"She," Maia says, noting your slight slip up, "you still think there's only one?"

"I cannot be sure," you say. You think back to that fight you recalled, the way the Lunar had made herself be in more than one place at once. What are the limits of that talent? "A Face-Stealer has many unnatural talents."

"Yes," Amiti says, coming around to this idea. "Some of them can pluck out a hair and turn it into a copy of themselves — I've read about it in at least two books. Credible books, Maia, Wyld Hunt chronicles, not romances." She adds the last to forestall the question that Maia had been about to ask.

You nod, encouraged. Then you add: "If it does not offend the lady or the miss, I would suggest we proceed assuming the worst, but not counting on it. We are regrettably out of time for discussion, I think."

Amiti surprises you by continuing to be practical. "We need to tell Matriarch V'neef. Ambraea and Sola know something's wrong, but not how bad it is. You said something about the mantis tower in your message? You were running out of breath by that point, I think." You're also surprised by how quickly she's accepting you as any kind of a useful ally or authority on this subject — Maia at least knows you're some manner of well-informed spy. You have no idea what Amiti must be thinking. Perhaps she just trusts Maia's judgement.

"We need to watch it," Maia agrees. "I can do that. I'm not supposed to be here anyway. Amiti, find Ambraea — V'neef will listen to her."

Amiti nods. She glances back at the bodies, worry and regret coming back over her face. "We're going to ruin L'nessa's wedding night, aren't we?"

"Better us than the alternative," Maia says. You're inclined to agree.

Article:

Things are about to become more exciting than anyone will like. They will, in the end, spiral somewhat out of your control. As the sun sets and two full days of debauchery begins in earnest, who do you spot first? This will determine the circumstances under which you meet your quarry, and what they are doing.

Even if a Lunar can contrive to be in three places at once, Luna has only Chosen her once. The fullness of her power can only be in one of them.

[ ] "Cold Rain", V'neef's head of housekeeping

[ ] "Five Gardens", a humble footman

[ ] "Wood Sparrow", a sentry