“Do you know how many people your price-gouging could have killed? How much damage might have been done if I hadn’t noticed your idiotic attempt at swindling me? I supplied that amount of eighteen-karat gold for a reason! The cheap copper you replaced it with was barely fit to channel a hedge mage’s cantrips, not conduct and enhance potent arcane currents! Now return what you’ve stolen, along with twice what I paid you, or face pyromantic consequences!” - Letter from Magus Nanian to the alchemist-smith Eric Urdall. (Used as evidence during the latter’s disbarment from the Guild of Metallurgists)

  Natalie kneeled on the grimy street, staring down at Yara’s unconscious body, and silently berated herself for myriad reasons. At the top of her list of failings was that she’d somehow managed to avoid learning how to set a jagging bone despite living inside the Tenth Temple of Vindabon for several months. Yara needed a healer, especially since she’d been covered in ghoul gore before receiving her injuries. Even with considering the antiseptic properties of vampire saliva and Yara’s own enhanced constitution, a deadly infection seemed inevitable. This was another thing beyond Natalie’s ability to treat, but maybe not Cole’s.

  Not knowing what else to do, the nervous vampire reached down and lifted Yara gently as she could. While moving someone with a bit of bone sticking out of them seemed a bad idea, just staying here in the middle of the street felt like an even worse option. So Natalie put every bit of her undead dexterity to use, carrying her thrall in the direction the carriage went. But no sooner than she’d taken three steps, a problem in this plan emerged. Yara was still bleeding, and Natalie was hungry. Keeping her vampire instincts in control grew harder with every slow beat of Yara’s heart. The temptation presented by the helpless victim literally in Natalie's arms was incredible. Yet, she pushed against the thirst, forcing herself to keep moving and focus on anything but the utterly wonderful scent leaking out of Yara’s minor wounds.

  “She wants to live,” Natalie muttered to herself over and over as she tried to balance her gait’s speed and smoothness. “She wants to live, and I’m going to help her live.”

  The struggling vampire’s eyes darted about, looking for any form of distraction, until she noticed something lying towards one side of the street, something that was bleeding. Before Natalie quite knew what she was doing, she’d changed her direction and headed for dwindling life lying on the cobblestones. It was a rat, one of the two she’d carried into this entire mess out of misplaced self-confidence. The rodent had been thrown violently from the speeding carriage and landed badly enough to break many of its tiny bones. Pink foam dribbled from the rat’s snout as it sucked in short, frightened breaths.

  A shocking amount of guilt settled on Natalie’s shoulders as she stared down at another victim of her recklessness. She should have set the rat down on one of the rooftops, just as she shouldn’t have left Yara and Kit alone with Mak. But the guilt she felt wasn’t enough to make her not do what needed to be done. After setting Yara down, Natalie gently picked up the rat and reached out to it with a chain of will. The poor thing’s mind was drowning in pain and terror. To be left so exposed and unable to do a damned thing hurt the rat as much as its splintered bones. This suffering, more than anything else, was what convinced Natalie to follow her instincts.

  Quick as she could, she bit the rat and drank down its life. It was a paltry amount of blood, but a few mouthfuls might just be enough to keep her thirst from sniffing around Yara. With that bit of ugliness done, she moved on to the next piece, and severed the rat’s head. After pocketing this grisly trophy for later ritual use, Natalie shut her eyes and reached out with her mind.

  With her thirst reduced from clawing at her psyche to merely scratching at it, she sought Cole through the link she’d crafted. As her mind touched his, a backwash of disorienting sensations flowed through the link and nearly put Natalie on her ass. Cole’s mind was sloshing between unconsciousness and overstimulation with nauseating unpredictability. Once she was done wishing she could still vomit, Natalie racked her newly throbbing mind for answers. Thankfully, an explanation surfaced from lessons with the vampire madam, Pryia. Cole was badly concussed. Clearly, things with the carriage had gone poorly.

  After letting go of the link, Natalie massaged her temples and tried to force down her rising panic. She needed to get to Cole quickly, but she also needed blood. As her cistern just didn’t have enough in it to fuel any useful abilities, at least not without driving her straight into a frenzy. But, as her downcast gaze caught on the rat she’d just exsanguinated, a solution came to mind—an ugly solution, for sure, but one better than failing either Cole or Yara.

  The Alukah sent a few psychic chains slithering through the Aether as she gathered up her thrall in her arm and got moving. Each of the chains found a tiny mind somewhere nearby and bound it to her will. Before Natalie was even ten meters down the street, the first rat came scampering up to her. It, along with the dozen more that came after it, died painlessly.

  With every wretched meal, Natalie clawed back a little more power, and in the process, became more and more aware of a change in her chains. The psychic constructs had become sharper, or at least that's the best metaphor her mind could conjure to describe this shift. The chains now sank into lesser minds effortlessly, instantly cutting through the primitive psychic defenses of even intelligent animals like rats. But this ease of use was secondary to a much larger change she’d had the time or mental space to really examine till now. Natalie had been taught that psychic links required some form of metaphysical connection to be formed, usually through eye contact. Yet, her chains reached out and took control of the rats without her even seeing them.

  This wasn’t like the jury-rigging she’d managed with the ghoul swarms, where the dilapidated state, and near-gestalt nature of their minds and souls could be used to control dozens through a connection to one. Nor was it kin to her growing awareness of night creatures. No, Natalie was breaking one of the basic rules of psychic magic, and she didn’t even know how. While she’d still needed to find and establish proper links with the three plaza rats, there had been no such requirements for the other animals she used to expand her mental map while chasing the carriage. Instead, she’d just followed her instincts, as taking such a primal shape pushed her to do, and stumbled onto this new discovery like a baby bird might learn to fly.

  As she hurried towards the bridge, and hopefully Cole, Natalie conducted a few experiments on the few ghouls she spotted. Her chain’s cut into the hungry corpse’s minds, but not with the effortlessness she’d seen with the rats. In fact, it took an annoying amount of time to pierce the ghoul’s barely present psychic defenses. The difference was akin to that between cutting tender meat with a good kitchen knife and trying to saw through uncooked leathery flesh with the same implement. Just making eye contact with the ghoul and then worming her chains through its mind to its fellows was still much easier.

  The origin of this change in her powers wasn’t hard to guess. Molek didn’t just allow her use the skills and powers of her victims; it also strengthened the magic she’d inherited from Annoch. But while drawing upon the abilities of the vampires she’d consumed, via the yew tree, came with a terrible price to her, this evolution seemed far more straightforward, which still worried Natalie. Images from the Apocrypha of Red Twilight flashed through her mind as she considered her past feats and how her powers might develop. How many more souls would she need to consume before her chains sank into a person’s mind as easily as they did a rat's?

  But further conjecture would need to wait, now that the bridge had come into view. There was no sign of the carriage, but she did spot a suspiciously Cole-shaped lump lying on the ground where the bridge and road met. Natalie hurried forward as fast as she dared while still holding Yara. As she approached, the awful scent of brimstone filled her nose, overpowering even the elk-things’ stink, and giving a big clue to how exactly Cole had been so terribly concussed. Durable as her partner was, even he couldn’t shrug off one of Mak’s alchemical explosives.

  Sure enough, she found an ugly star pattern of scorch marks covering the ground near Cole, along with a meter-wide pothole that was still faintly smoking. While Natalie was no expert on this sort of thing, she’d wager anyone not protected by dwarven armor and Master Time’s boons would have been torn apart by such a blast. After setting Yara down, she knelt at her partner’s side and gently called his name.

  “Cole? Can you hear me?”

  He answered with a low groan that eventually resolved into slurred words. “Nat?”

  “It’s me. What can I do to help?”

  Cole started to grope at his belt pouches till Natalie took his fumbling hand and started looking into the different pouches. “What am I looking for?”

  “Small, Medal boddle, fourth to the leffed.”

  She fished out the finger-sized container and brought it to his lips. The milky yellow fluid inside the bottle smelled horrendous, but Cole gulped it down with a snarl. After shaking his head with a hiss, he sat up and groaned. Natalie started to help him stand, but he pushed her back. For a few moments, he just stared at the ground a little before him, then cursed and got to his feet while muttering. “Don’t think I’m going to throw up.”

  He turned to look at Natalie and nearly fell over. She caught him, but not before he spotted Yara. Cole turned his stumble into a step as he approached the wounded woman, with a curse. “Fire-and-fucking-iron. How bad is it?”

  “I was hoping you’d tell me,” Natalie replied with a wince.

  Cole half-collapsed to his knees beside Yara, and after a few moments of shaky examination, muttered. “I’ll need my pack.” Then added “ Fuck, it’s back at the plaza.”

  This was actually something Natalie had anticipated. Once she’d consumed enough rats, she’d sent a few of her wolves pack the way they came, to collect what they’d left behind. After conveying this to Cole, she elaborated. “They’ll be here in a minute or two. Till then, tell me what the hell happened with Mak and the carriage?”

  The vaguely nauseous expression Cole had been wearing since first standing up turned into a mask of bitter anger. “He’s planning to sacrifice Kit. To use him and the lantern in a ritual. Something he thinks will hurt the fae.”

  Leather and metal rubbed against eachother as Cole’s fists tightened into balls. “I had the chance to stop him, but I hesitated. Which he anticipated and used against me.”

  “Stop him or kill him?”

  Cole’s silence was answer enough to Natalie’s question. But speaking of silence, there was someone else who should have stopped Mak and had been frustratingly quiet. “What of Master Time? Why didn’t he warn us about this, or I don’t know, speak to Mak about whatever jagged scheme he’s cooked up?”

  “I… have some ideas, but none are particularly comforting,” Cole muttered. “Mak claimed whatever he’s going to do will not just avenge Harmas, but save the world. If that is true, then the situation with the court is worse than he let on; perhaps even to the point where a genuine fae incursion might be possible. Which is the sort of thing the Pantheon has long been willing to make sacrifices to stop. So… perhaps Mak’s plan has Master Time’s approval.”

  Before Natalie could curse up a storm at the Tenth God, Cole held up a hand. “But I don’t think that’s the full story. Rather, to me, it seems like the gods have prepared a last resort option, one meant only to be used if all other methods of stopping the fae have failed.”

  Natalie grimaced when she understood what Cole was getting at. “But Mak doesn’t see any other choice. The crazy bastard is going with the doomsday plan, because he’s a few quarrels short of a quiver and thinks nothing else will work!”

  Cole nodded, and Natalie let out a bitter sigh. “Okay, but that still doesn’t explain why Master Time hasn’t intervened.” Cole started to speak, but she cut him off. “And don’t give me that ‘we’re the intervention’ speech. Because stopping a rogue paladin from engaging in human sacrifice seems the kind of thing a god should put some extra effort into.”

  That got her partner to hesitate for a moment, then his eyes widened as some connection sparked behind them. “The ice bridge ritual! Remember, on the night the white orcs attacked, I felt when it happened through my god-touch. Master Time was pushing me towards Harmas with more force than ever before. Back then, I thought he was mainly warning us of the corpse-tide, but now I’m thinking there was more to it. A ritual like that would require extensive preparation and a massive amount of power. Where Mak and whatever magi he was working with could provide the first part, I think only god’s might, channeled through priests, would be enough for the second. And considering the bridge was supposed to be made of sanctified ice, it's an easy guess which god was providing the necessary power.”

  “But the ritual was sabotaged, the ice wasn’t holy, and the bridge just let the corpse-tide escape,” Natalie muttered. “Meaning Master Time’s magic was directly used to unleash an undead calamity.”

  The couple met each other’s eyes as stories from the Book of Miracles surfaced in both their minds, of how, during the bloody centuries of the Damned Age, the Pantheon had been maimed by the misuse of miracles. Blinding them from seeing entire sections of the world, reducing how much power they could give to their priests, and in some particularly egregious cases, forcing them into stretches of inactivity.

  “You don’t think…” Natalie trailed off upon seeing Cole’s worried expression.

  “I doubt it's anywhere as bad as back then, but odds are Master Time’s ability to intervene directly here in Harmas has been severely weakened. Probably especially when Mak is involved, considering he was at the heart of the ritual and so much that went wrong here.”

  That made a frustrating amount of sense, especially when considering why exactly the ritual went sour. Mak had spoken of betrayal, and recent events had shown that a certain kind of treacherous scheme was capable of slipping past the Pantheon’s notice. One of the people working with Mak must have been under the same geas as Mina. Resulting not only in the hunter paladin, but his god as well, being caught completely off guard.

  Several members of the Lupus pack arrived then, bringing with them the group's abandoned bags, along with Requiem, which had been thrown during the fight between paladins. With his weapon and gear back in hand, Cole quickly got to work, using a mixture of potions, bandages, and the little healing magic he knew to help Yara. Natalie watched this process with a mix of worry and interest. The obvious issues surrounding blood and her instincts reacting to weak prey had kept Natalie from expanding her knowledge of heal craft. But being nearly useless earlier was spurring her past those concerns.

  Carefully, through a mix of preservation magic, a knife washed in anti-septic, his own remarkable dexterity, and some fleshy needlework, Cole managed to get Yara’s forearm bones back inside her. As he finished stitching the ugly laceration, the Homunculus muttered. “I don’t think I’ve ever done surgery like this on someone else.”

  Looking up at Natalie, he added. “I’ll smear some of your saliva onto the wound next, but all of this is really just a stopgap. Tonight, you’ll need to fly her out of the city and back to the barge. The war priests and Deborah will be able to properly take care of her then.”

  “What about you?” She asked.

  “I need to find Mak and rescue Kit before he can do whatever jagged ritual he’s got planned.”

  Natalie didn’t like the idea of leaving Cole alone to deal with his rogue mentor and any other dangers Harmas had in store, but she couldn’t deny the logic in her partner’s words. “Fine, but until night comes, I’m going to help.”

  She then fished a blanket out of Yara’s pack and, with Cole’s help, constructed a crude litter using bits of the broken bridge barricades. A litter that her wolves could bite onto and carry. With that bit of logistics settled, they headed across the bridge, following after the carriage. Even without her wolves’ help, Natalie could track the cursed thing, as its puller’s stench still hung in the air.

  As they neared the far side of the bridge, having passed over its span this time without incident, Natalie asked. “Those elk creatures, they're the sort of thing from the old stories, right? People twisted and mutilated by faerie magic?”

  Cole nodded. “Mak always told me the worst of the Sidhe viewed fleshcrafting as the highest art form.”

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  “But the court aren’t actually Sidhe.”

  “Not yet, at least. What we fought back at the plaza was, in essence, a highly mutated changeling.”

  Natalie considered this for a moment, then asked. “Do you think Wolfgang and the Duchies knew his plague was going to have this kind of effect?”

  “Unlikely, considering the Duchies loathe the fae nearly as much as the old empire they pretend to be did. But I bet the Reaper of Sorrows and whoever else Wolfgang is working with had an idea.”

  “Then what about the alliance between the court and the duchy agents?”

  Cole let out a tired sigh and rubbed his brow. “More treachery, most likely. Just of what kind, I can only offer guesses. Perhaps, Wolfgang isn’t the only servant of Duke Umbria whose been subverted. Or maybe this alliance was just part of the scheme to destroy the city? They lead on the court with promises of protection and unity, while their kingdom rots around them. It wouldn’t be the first time the Duchies have taken lands through such methods.”

  Being reminded of her monstrous grand-uncle only soured Natalie’s mood even more. “I need to see if I can contact Isabelle before tonight.”

  A long silence stretched out between them, as the worry over their shared partner weighed heavily on both Alukah and Homunculus. Then, Cole hesitantly said. “I have a confession to make.”

  Natalie frowned at that, but said nothing, as he continued. “Part of me, a part I’m ashamed of, wants to ignore Mak and just head right for Isabelle. To not get bogged down in all this faerie madness, when she’s in so much danger.”

  “I feel the same way.” Whispered Natalie, as her gaze fell to the ground. “If it's a question between saving Kit and saving Isabelle, then… well…”

  The silence returned, this time curdled by the ugly truth they shared. Eventually, Natalie balled her hands into fists and put more confidence into her words than she felt. “Soon, I’ll reach Isabelle, and then I’ll be able to help her. Maybe, I can smuggle her out of her skull and into my mind or something?”

  “Maybe.”

  Continuing onto the city’s central island, they followed the trail of fae-stink, fresh wheel marks, and run-over ghouls. After finding some clearer hoofprints, Cole declared the carriage was moving more slowly than before, probably due to the frostbite the elk creatures had suffered. This small bit of good news got them to pick up their own pace, and they hurried down the empty throughfare, hoping to cut into Mak’s lead. But as the buildings around them grew larger and more ornate, they spotted other pedestrians shambling down the broad road. Ghouls were steadily trickling out from within and around the surrounding structures, attracted to the sounds and smells of living flesh.

  Holding Requiem in one hand, Cole glanced around at the slowly growing mass of corpses. “Can you stop them from encircling us?”

  Natalie took a moment to respond with a nod, as her focus was on a subtle sound she’d barely caught on the edge of her hearing. With an effort of will, she sent a few chains snaking out to the nearest ghouls, while also ordering one of the Lupus pack to scout ahead. Upon seeing the spectral wolf lope ahead of them, Cole asked. “What’s wrong?”

  Instead of answering, she let part of her mind ride along with the wolf. With every bounding stride of its phantom paws, the wolf’s senses became more immersed in the awful dry stink of undead flesh and the constant low groan of corpse song. Another swarm of ghouls awaited them down the road, this one even larger than what they’d faced in the plaza. Which, while annoying, wasn’t the reason for Natalie’s focus. As the wolf drew closer, its incredible sense of smell caught whiffs of other odors near buried under the ghouls. Fresh warm blood, spilled entrails, and even more of that gods-awful spoiled perfume stink the elk creatures gave off.

  Natalie relayed this, along with what exactly first tipped her off. “Laquered wood, like what the carriage was made of, has a distinct sound when it breaks, which I swear I heard a minute ago. I think the ghouls brought down the coach.”

  “Fuck!” Cole swore, and then he sprinted down the road, knocking aside any ghoul in his way. Natalie conjured up more of her wolves to act as an honor guard for Yara’s litter, while she matched and then exceeded Cole’s pace. Chains of will lashed out from her constantly, steering ghouls out of their way, and grabbing the few rats she could find; every drop of blood would count for what came next.

  Soon, her scout wolf reached the edge of the swarm, and through its senses she confirmed what she’d expected. The coach sat amidst the hundreds of ghouls, its structure being steadily torn apart by all those cold, grasping hands. At first, Natalie thought the ghouls were after someone inside the listing carriage, but as her wolf finished its approach, she realized the splintering of wood and ripping of fabric was merely collateral damage in the swarm's efforts to reach their true objective. The elk-things were being steadily torn apart and devoured by the dozens of ghouls who swarmed over the carcases like agitated ants. But for each feasting ghoul, there were a hundred more struggling to find a place at the table. Undead bodies pressed against each other with enough force to crack ribcages and crush trapped limbs, but the ghouls suffering these grievous wounds paid them no mind; for all that mattered to them was the promise of warm flesh.

  But at the edge of this cloud of gore and hunger was a silver lining; her wolf only smelled ghoul and elk-thing blood. Mak and Kit hadn’t been devoured, but this good news carried its own double edge, as now the question remained: where were they? She sent this information to Cole through their psychic link, and he responded quickly. He wanted her to push the ghouls away from the carriage, to give him the chance to look for any sign of where Mak might have gone. This was a good idea, but Natalie wasn’t certain she could play her part. It was one thing to distract a ghoul pack or two; it was another to interrupt a massive feeding frenzy.

  When she told Cole this, he barely hesitated before responding. +I’ll deal with them then.+

  +How can I help?+

  +Put their focus on me, then get clear.+

  Cole then sent her a vague outline of what he intended to do, and they hurried onwards to the waiting swarm. As the first of the ghouls came into sight, Natalie sent out another chain, a sturdy but simple implement, meant to drive a single fact into hundreds of undead minds. At her command, the chain struck the swarm’s edge and burrowed deep into it, alerting each ghoul touched to Cole’s presence.

  One by one, then score by score, the ghouls turned from their overcrowded meal and towards the fresh meat awaiting them. Standing in the middle of the road, maybe forty meters away from the swarm's edge, Cole must have seemed an easy meal, or at least one far less contested than the elk creatures. So, with Natalie’s encouragement, much of the swarm slowly wheeled about and began their shuffling march towards the waiting paladin. Natalie then hurriedly grabbed Yara’s unconscious body and scrambled up a nearby building, before settling on a high balcony. It would not pay to be on street level when Cole’s working was unleashed.

  The Paladin sheathed Requiem and then knelt on the cobblestones. From her vantage point, Natalie could see his broad chest heaving as he took deep, exaggerated breaths. Despite the warm spring sun overhead, each breath left him with a plume of icy vapor, vapor that grew thicker and thicker with every exhale. As the first of the ghouls got within a stone’s throw of Cole, a low groaning, cracking sound reverberated up off the street as fingers of frost slithered out from the Paladin and traced gaps in the worn stone. Even the air around Cole was changing, having gained a stark unnatural clarity, only disrupted by the faint twinkling of minute ice crystals.

  Natalie clutched Yara close and tried to wrap them both up with the blanket used in the litter. For even with several dozen meters between them and Cole, the cold pouring off him had teeth. Yet, bitter as this chill was, Natalie knew it to be merely a preliminary to what was about to be unleashed. As Cole intended to take all the knowledge and power he’d acquired since first meeting her, and apply them to one of his oldest spells.

  Just before the swarm could grow close enough to lunge at him, the Paladin took one last breath, stood up, and then exhaled. A bitter north wind, the likes of which even the worst arctic gales would fail to match, flowed out of Cole and towards the ghouls. For the first and last time of their unlives, this piece of the Harmas corpse-tide met its match: a wave of killing cold with a hunger greater than any ghouls.

  The roar of an impossible winter gale washed over the swarm, snuffing out their chorus of constant moans and replacing them with an erratic staccato of cracks and pops. Peeking over the balcony’s bannister, Natalie watched as the wave of frost swallowed the entire street before slowly dissipating into swirling currents of frigid mist that settled onto the newly icy road. Out from the fading fog emerged a parade of grey statues, each silent and still, their gaunt forms wreathed in ice that glimmered with a pale blue light. Cole’s spell had frozen the entire swarm solid. No, more than that, the frost tide hadn’t just trapped dead flesh; it had freed the souls within.

  As the full scope of this miracle became apparent, Cole’s legs buckled, and he fell to one knee with a loud crack. But before Natalie could shout his name in alarm, she realized the crack hadn’t been him, but the layer of ice that now covered the ground. A series of long, winding fissures spidered out from Cole, slithering towards the swarm, and creating a constant song of warbling pops. The ghoul closest to this spreading pattern began to list as the ice beneath it shifted and shook. With a loud snap, the frozen corpse’s outstretched arms broke off. They exploded into myriad shards upon striking the ground, and the now maimed body finally toppled over.

  More cracks spread across the ice like fire through dry brush, and soon other ghouls came apart, their frozen bodies collapsing into piles of frozen splinters, which only helped push other corpses to their breaking point. So, with a chorus of crashes and snaps, the swarm came apart, leaving naught but black ice and swirling vapor in their place.

  After managing to finally stand, Cole began to trudge across the field of devastation he wrought, heading for the only thing still standing amidst the street of frozen flesh. Through sheer luck or Cole’s skill, Natalie knew not which, the carriage still sat relatively intact. Twinkling ice crystals coated its wooden frame, and the sight of its stricken form amidst the ruined swarm made Natalie think of some long-lost ship wreck, beached upon some arctic shore.

  Natalie grabbed Yara and clambered up the building she’d been watching from. Moving between rooftops, she kept up with Cole’s progress while keeping herself and her thrall safe from whatever bleak temperature the street was at. Perched atop some more stable shingles, she watched as Cole started examining the carriage. As he worked, currents of agitation and worry flowed through the psychic link.

  +Find anything?+ Natalie asked.

  +Not yet.+

  As Cole bent down to look beneath the carriage, he nearly lost his balance, only catching himself thanks to his grip on the coach’s running board.

  Natalie started to rise from her spot atop the roof. +Are you alright?+

  +Light-headed. I used too much power.+

  Looking down at the path of destruction, he’d carved with a single spell, Natalie couldn’t help but ask. +Was this wise?+

  Cole glanced around at his handiwork, then up at her. +No.+

  Carried in that single word was a weight of emotions and thoughts. Cole was furious at himself for not only letting Mak escape but also allowing him the opportunity to betray them in the first place. This frustration at this newest failure, along with his barely contained fear for Isabelle, had boiled over when yet another problem he blamed himself for got in their way. Despite Natalie’s words and his own logical mind, Cole still felt a responsibility for every ghoul and other tragedy filling this city. So, still punch-drunk from his earlier concussion, and sick of his own perceived failures, he allowed himself to cut loose.

  Natalie thought of a dozen different sets of comforting words before finally settling on +Yara is alive, and all these souls are finally at rest.+

  After taking a moment to consider this pair of victories, Cole nodded + You can come down now. +

  With a bit of tricky acrobatics, she returned to the street, while leaving Yara up above with her wolves as guards, which turned out to be a good idea, as the air still held needles. Thankful she no longer needed to breathe, she approached Cole, who worked unbothered by the extreme cold. If this was due to one of Isabelle's or Master Time’s gifts, Natalie couldn’t guess. He was examining the coach’s side, particularly a pattern of swirling decorations that coalesced around a central sigil near the coach’s ripped-off door. The sigil was a coat of arms, one depicting a large oak tree, flanked by two towers, with a bending river running beneath all three. She’d seen this symbol before; it was the personal mark of House Janic.

  To her surprise, Cole unsheathed Requiem and started scraping at the sigil, messily cutting away the paint, lacquer, and wood. With a scoff common to all crafters when an amateur was at work, she took the axe from his hand and said. “Let me.”

  The axe was no proper tool, but vampire strength and dexterity more than compensated. After a few smooth scrapes, Natalie understood what Cole had been trying to do. The sigil was painted over a thin metallic disk inlaid into the wood. Roughly as wide as her hand was, with fingers splayed, the disk was primarily copper, but at its center was a piece of polished flint, encircled by thin gold filigree. Sigils of all kinds covered the disk; each flowing into the next in a looping, exaggerated way. Natalie recognized a few of the symbols as common arcane runes, and that made her wonder if this was some spell written in the magical equivalent of cursive.

  Looking at Cole, she asked. “How’d you find this?”

  “A side-effect of my working; I’m seeing into the Aether.” He then peeled away more of the paint and lacquer, revealing threads of copper spreading out from the disk, and inlaid into the wood beneath the decorative patterns he’d traced earlier. “The carriage was enchanted, or at least it used to be.”

  “Used to be?”

  “The spell is damaged, and the magic is fading fast.” He answered while following one of the hidden copper wires up towards the coach’s driver's seat. After yanking the stained and cracked leather covering free, he stared down at a hidden cubby. Natalie clambered up next to him and joined his examinations. A thick copper wire passed through the compartment’s side and coiled at the bottom, forming a wire mounting. But this was just a cursory detail, her mind latched onto as it tried to grasp what was in said mounting: a severed human hand. Set so its splayed palm was facing the sky, the hand was gnarled by time and bore many faded tattoos on its leathery skin. In the center of its palm was a pool of dried wax, whose rivulets had started to trickle between the hand’s fingers before hardening.

  “What the fuck is that?” She whispered as Cole reached in and freed the sinister object from its mounting.

  While holding up the hand and examining the collection of tattoos covering its desiccated skin, Cole muttered. “A Hand of Glory.”

  That got Natalie to do a double-take. “Those are real?”

  He shrugged. “A hanged man’s hand can be used as a very effective foci and fuel source for certain spells, particularly necromancy and illusion ones.”

  After setting down the fell trinket, he continued rummaging around in the driver's seat compartment, prodding the wire mounting and pulling free a few tiny quartz crystals woven into it. With that done, he leaned over to look at the exposed disk on the carriage’s side and muttered. “How fitting. Just like its original owners, this carriage is a corrupted liar.”

  Seeing Natalie’s arched eyebrow, he quickly elaborated. “The disk, the metal strands, it's all part of an enchantment, one with two purposes. The first is security, the second is subtlety.”

  Moving over to said disk, he got to work prying it free from its inlay. “This here acts magically, just as the symbol that used to be on top of it worked physically. It told you who the carriage belonged to and where it was allowed to go.”

  His prize came free with the snap of splintering wood. “I’d wager that when this is working right, it would let the coach pass through all manner of wards the court has in place.”

  “Which… is a pretty jagging good reason for Mak to go through so much effort to steal the carriage.” Natalie mused before adding. “Then I’m guessing the Hand of Glory, when combined with that enchantment, is what made it so the ghouls didn’t attack.”

  She looked at the disgusting trinket and the wax covering it. “Or at least, not until the candle it carried burned out.”

  “Kind of.” Cole shrugged. “See, the carriage telling everyone who it belongs to isn’t always a good thing, which is where the second half of the enchantment comes into place.”

  “I knew those runes looked familiar!” Natalie said with a snap of her fingers. “A subtlety enchantment, right?”

  “Yes, one that could be turned on or off by supplying it with magical power. That mounting was meant to hold a gemstone or similar fuel source. The Hand of Glory could fill that role, but with the addition of a necromantic element to the illusion. But an item like that has a time limit, one that caught Mak off guard.”

  Leaving Cole’s side, Natalie went over to continue her examination of the carriage. “So that answers many of our questions, but still leaves us with how the hells did Mak-”

  She paused midsentence as she stared into the carriage’s exposed interior. Much of the floor had been torn apart, but not in the way it should have been. Something from inside the carriage had smashed apart the floor. “Cole, you should take a look at this!”

  He complied, and the pair of them inspected the damage. “Looks like repeated blunt impact, maybe the butt of Mak’s crossbow?”

  “But why? If the carriage got swarmed, why put an extra hole in it?”

  They exchanged looks as they both came to the obvious answer. Using Requiem like a shovel, Cole got to work removing the bits of dead ghoul from beneath the carriage. It was messy, disgusting work, but soon enough, their target came into sight. A heavy iron grate, covering a shaft leading down into the city’s sewers.

  “You have got to be jagging kidding me,” Natalie swore, before looking at Cole with genuine horror in her eyes. “Please tell me we’re not going down there?”

  To her relief, Cole shook his head. “Trying to track Mak through a labyrinth would be dangerous and pointless. We’d be stuck dealing with whatever traps and tricks he might lay, long after he’d surfaced and was well on his way to the next part of his plan.”

  “Then what? We wait and hope to catch some sign of him before he does whatever he’s planning to do to Kit?”

  ”Are we closer to the city palace or the Almgrove?” Cole asked while moving away from the carriage.

  Natalie shut her eyes and perused the mental map she’d constructed with the help of so many rats and bats. “The palace. You think that’s where Mak is heading?”

  Cole held up the metal disk he’d pried from the carriage. “Yes, and he’ll need this, or something like it, to sneak in. Meaning we have some time to regroup and plan our next move.”

  “Good point. And besides, considering everything he did to get the carriage, odds are we’ll notice his next attempt at getting a ward key.” Replied Natalie, before shifting the subject. “What does regrouping look like?”

  After pausing to rub at his forehead, Cole replied. “First off, killing myself, to make this headache go away. Then, after that, how about you start experimenting with contacting Isabelle while I get a consultation?”

  “From who and on what?” Natalie spluttered.

  In answer, Cole fished through his pack and pulled out a human spine wrapped in black pearl prayer beads, the prison of a priest turned dullahan.

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