“The problem is some distance away.” Amir checked his sword and tightened the strap on his shield. “We will never get to it if we stand about.”

  “Hold,” she repeated. “There should be no great gate in the foyer.”

  Amir rubbed his brow, his fingers coming away sweaty and dirty. “Speak plain. Gate?”

  “That thing,” she stabbed a finger at the purple ring, “is a great gate. It is like a doorway that connects two points. One point is here, the other,” she glared at the ceiling, “could be anywhere. We know Wild Sur wants Morgan to open a gate, but this one is already open. Why? To where? And there should be no gate here. This is the welcoming foyer.” She said these last two words as if explaining why water was wet to a supreme imbecile.

  “Right,” Amir said. “But what if the thing you wanted to bring into the welcoming foyer was larger than anything from those little doors? What if it was a really big welcome?”

  She glanced between him and the walls, then did it once more. “What could they want to bring through that’s so large?”

  "What can they bring through?” Amir frowned. “I don’t know what these are. Where I’m from, we use doors like normal fucking people.”

  She counted on her fingers. “You can make a portal go anywhere there’s another portal. Which means,” another finger, “you can put them on the other side of the world, or in the ocean.”

  “Why would you put them in the ocean?”

  “It’s the fastest way to the bottom,” she said. “Once you’ve been there once, you don’t need to swim down again.”

  “Can you swim to the bottom of the ocean?”

  “I think you’re losing track,” she chided. “You can also put a gate in space. Or…” She drifted to silence.

  “Or?” Amir looked at the purple ring. “Were you thinking of a good place?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Just tell me,” he said. “It’s better if I take the shock up front.”

  “There is one place you don’t need another gate.” She looked at the portal. “We don’t know why. I always thought it was because it was a kind of … not-place, a realm where all things end up.” She looked at the floor. “Where the demons are.”

  “Are demons big?” At her glance, he said, “You thought I was losing track, but the size of the portal is important, right? Can demons be as big as that thing is?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are they easy to kill?”

  “No.”

  “Have you killed one?”

  “Yes.”

  “Of that size?”

  “No.”

  “Help me out here,” Amir said. “The one-word responses are precise but they don’t give me much to work with.”

  Tarragon fingered the hilt of Requiem. “No one would open a gate to a demon realm. Not anymore.”

  “Because they killed your world?”

  “Yes.” At his glare, she elaborated, “My world ended because the demons got here and drove everyone at each other. People who should have worked together were at war. I didn’t see how the war ended because I was locked in a cage, but I saw what came after.” She looked miserable and lifted her arms in an all this gesture. “Mud and misery. Blood from a juicer. I heard Knight Champion Mireille gave her life at the final battle when the orbital strikes came. Everyone died. Everyone. But the demons were still here. Still hunting our starlight. And each time we died, they got a little hit. They grew stronger and opened another gate. And the High Justiciar’s best friend, who was apparently the spitting image of Mireille, in deed if not looks, gave her life to close the gate. Shut it for good. The gods came. The world stopped, and time went backward, and night became day. And we were saved.”

  “That was more than one word. Thank you.”

  “Any time.” She looked away. “No one would open a gate there. Not again.”

  “A couple of things.” Amir took a few more steps toward the gate, then thought better of it. “People are stupid. They don’t learn fire’s hot if they’ve never been burned, and the people here now have never even laid a hearth. Second, someone opened the demon gates in the first place. They had reasons. Maybe those reasons came back.”

  “Doesn’t matter. You’d need a … oh. Three’s mercy.” Tarragon looked at the door, then to Amir. “You’d need a Ritualist. Or a Holomancer.”

  “It’s a good thing Morgan’s not here. Nor the fellow who walks like he remembers a younger man’s steps.”

  “Meriwether?” Tarragon eyed the door again. “But they’re both so close.”

  “So, we must keep them away.”

  “Amir,” came a booming voice.

  Amir turned, eyes widening in surprise. His giant friend Faust had stepped through one of the many doors along the west wall. “Faust?” He glanced back at the entranceway. “How did you get here?”

  “We are both here.” Larochette entered from a door on the east wall. “We came to see the enemy’s forces.”

  “There is no one else,” Faust said, too cryptically for Amir’s liking.

  “Do you know about the gate?” Amir pointed to the far wall, picking up his feet to join his Tresward siblings. He felt an absence behind him, and faced Tarragon, who was still mired in indecision on the pavers behind him. “Tarragon?”

  “Something is not right here,” she hissed. “There is a gate. There are no soldiers. There are two previously missing Tresward, who happened to know how to get through the foyer and into the rooms beyond.”

  Faust closed the distance, pace by pace. “The doors were not locked.”

  “Yes, they were,” Tarragon said. “They can’t not be locked. This is Vehement Systems.”

  “Many things from the old world broke,” Amir offered.

  She looked at him like he was a simpleton. “They’re doors.”

  “Do you call me a liar?” Larochette was very close now.

  “Hey, now,” Amir said. “Perhaps you could tell us what you found.”

  “For certain,” Faust said.

  The room was bathed in blue-white light as Tarragon drew Requiem. Her eyes were hard green stone, her face chiselled granite. “Stop walking.”

  Larochette looked like she might have something to say about that, but Faust raised his hands. “Peace. Allow me to explain.” He nodded as if agreeing with himself. It was a typical Faust-like expression the large man got away with because no one else tended to disagree with him on general principle. “We don’t speak of our past. Not to each other.”

  “No,” Amir agreed. “No need.”

  “Except there is now.” Faust held a hand out, palm up, toward Larochette. “Our sister in battle was a slave when we found her.”

  “With you so far. I believe I was pivotal in springing her from the clink.” Amir wished Tarragon would sheathe Requiem, but the once-fairy was cast iron, immobile, eyes moving between Faust and Larochette.

  “I was a slave because I killed a Justiciar,” Larochette said. “My fellow mages stripped me of my power⁠—”

  “You’re no mage,” Tarragon said.

  “If I’d been allowed to finish my sentence, I’d have explained that nothing drives incompetence in quite the same way as bureaucracy,” Larochette said. “I drew the wrong sort of attention. The coven was at risk, so I was denounced, readied for trial, the Tresward summoned.” She barked a harsh laugh. “Then some imbecile put me in a slaver’s cage, and when the Tresward arrived they ended my brothers and sisters.” She looked at her hands. “If you can’t beat someone, learn their tricks. I became what hunted me, so I didn’t need to fear again. And if I find the head of the slavers, well, so much the sweeter.”

  “Hmm,” Amir allowed. “What’s this got to do with the doors in here?”

  “Ah,” Faust breathed. “You always were the clever one.”

  “I try.” Amir spread his hands.

  “His past is worse,” Larochette said. “His life before was … sweet.”

  “I was married.” Faust’s eyes gazed over Amir’s shoulder, seeing something in the amber of memory, the man’s eyes soft as he remembered great sadness. “Your precious queen began a hunt for the Vide. Cut the head from the assassins. But she cut the head from my wife.”

  Amir took a cautious step back, the ground no longer seeming so safe and firm. “The Raven Queen had it in for your wife?”

  “IQs definitely dropped over the last eight hundred years,” Tarragon hissed. “The Raven has not been the best ruler this world has seen, but she is far from the worst. Most I’ve seen touched by her grace are better for it. She is no tyrant. No crusades. No meaningless purges. This was⁠—”

  “This was because my wife knew someone high up in the Vide,” Faust rumbled. “I have learned the tricks of the best sword masters in the world to make my way to her and cut out her heart.”

  “But, why?” Amir blinked, confused. “She … Morgan only hunted Vide.”

  “Do you not see it, friend Amir?” Tarragon pointed with her glowing blade. “Faust killed his wife.”

  The large man’s eyes blazed, two coals under the bellows. “I did no such thing.”

  Tarragon spat, “He killed his wife because he was the head of the Vide.”

  The words dropped on the stone floor, the silence following profound, a deep lake of knowledge that could not be unlearned. Amir opened his mouth, closed it, and tried again. “Faust? Is this true?”

  “It is true.” Faust straightened. “And I will have her head. We have allies now, Amir. We have a leader who doesn’t hide his gifts. Wild Sur has been as harmed by the world as we three. We are trusted by him and can bring you with us.” A slight hint of appeal entered Faust’s tone. “Please, Amir. Join us.”

  “Or die, am I right?” Tarragon’s tone was mocking. “That’s some starter villain shit right there.”

  Faust glanced at her. “There is no third path.”

  Amir took another step back. He looked to Tarragon, and suggested, “Run.”

  “I will not leave you.”

  “These are Tresward.”

  “They are hacks,” she pronounced. “Let’s dance.”

  Another door opened down the hall. Amir realised his sword was half-drawn, and he wasn’t sure who he was fighting, or why. This is fucked. These are the two who made me whole. There must be another way. “Don’t do this.”

  The door widened, and an elderly Feybrind entered. ‘Elderly’ was like saying lightning was bright; the cat’s fur was grey beyond any Amir had seen, but he walked without stoop. He wore human-like clothes. It was ancient’s attire if Amir was any judge of style, of which he believed himself to be one of the world’s foremost experts. The clothes were cut well to fit the Feybrind’s frame. There was no hint they were destined for a different species in how they hung.

  The cat was disfigured. Both ears were gone, leaving ruined holes in his skull, but his golden eyes were forge-bright. About his throat was a collar and at his waist a sword hung, but Amir’s eyes were drawn to the other weapon he carried. It had the look of one of the ancient’s beam weapons, all fire and spite, a heavy thing for dirty work. “We are here to set the world right.”

  Amir blinked. Did that fucking cat just talk? The Feybrind’s mouth had opened every so slightly, throat working, but not much else going on. The voice was smooth, soft, inoffensive. “A talking cat?” The words had the hollow ring of vapidity, but they were out there now, nothing to be done about them.

  “Your kind stole the voices from mine,” the Feybrind said. “I forgive you.” He touched the collar at his throat. “Our Handspeak was too difficult for some of the ancient world to master. A weary burden on the master over the slave, so they set to work making these. It is hard to use but gives me speech. So many things about this place,” he turned, taking one hand from his weapon to gesture at the room, “require a voice to use. I will take my enemy’s devices and make them regret their forging.”

  Larochette stepped to Amir’s right, positioning herself. Amir supposed he should be flattered they thought tactics were necessary, but then he caught the glimmer of Tarragon’s blade in his peripheral vision on the same side and he understood. She is wise to mind Requiem. And I carry the Storm. I’ve not seen those two command it with any honesty. “Am I your enemy?”

  “Her,” the Feybrind gestured with his weapon at Tarragon, “and those like her. Ancient, ideas so old they rust in the skull. Those who would call others servant, or slave. Those who crave power. All the corrupt queens lording majesty over others who barely have enough to eat. People who crowd others to the edges.”

  Amir tried to keep track. “You’re saying humans, or any lucky enough to have survived these long years?”

  “Not all humans. But most.”

  “But I might not be the enemy?”

  Faust, a stone to this moment, shifted. “Friend Amir, Wild Sur has⁠—”

  “This is Wild Sur?”

  The giant nodded, nice and slow. “He⁠—”

  “I expected an evil overlord to hide in the shadows.”

  Faust rubbed a weary hand against his forehead. “Can I finish?”

  “No problem. Get to the good parts first, though. Larochette is trying to get the drop on Tarragon, and I admit I’m unsure how that fight will end.”

  “It will end with Larochette dead,” Faust said.

  “Hey,” Larochette said. “I’m good with a blade.”

  Wild Sur stalked closer, his weapon ready. “She holds a magic blade forged from a fallen star, and she knows the patterns of the Tresward well enough to summon the Storm. She once was a fairy. Her heart burns with the fires of shattered atoms.”

  “Three on one, though,” Larochette said. “Four, if we’re lucky.”

  “Shouldn’t it be three on two?” Amir felt unstable, his heart drifting to his friends before him, to his friend beside him, and back again.

  “We’re hoping you might be convinced to join us,” Faust rumbled. “Failing that, we hope you will stand aside.” He frowned. “This is the way of it. The people of this world are broken, and we have a remedy.”

  Amir tossed a glance at Tarragon. “Have you any idea what they’re talking about?”

  She didn’t blink, eyes locked on Larochette, her feet easy in classic mid guard. “There is an orbital weapons platform above. It has many weapons capable of destroying this world, or large parts of it.”

  “Seems bad,” Amir suggested.

  “It is how the world ended once before.”

  “We will cleanse the unworthy,” Wild Sur said. “The barbarians will fall, leaving us to inherit a cleaner palace. We will destroy all the ancients’ works at the same time. This time it will be a blow that removes all taint from the world.”

  “Sounds final.”

  “It will be.” The Feybrind tapped one horrible scar on the side of his head. “This was a gift, you know.”

  “I’m lost,” Amir admitted. His sword was still half out of its sheath, and he wondered if now was the right time to draw steel.

  “I can’t hear.” Wild sur half-smiled. “A group of your kind found me after the weapon broke the world. They thought⁠—”

  “You’re eight hundred years old?” Amir’s eyes boggled. “You look great for your age.”

  “I’m older than all that. I’ve had time to learn many things, like the shape your lips make when producing certain sounds. I also learned Feybrind must hear to be Commanded.”

  “A truly free soul,” Tarragon whispered.

  “I prefer ‘liberated’. But ‘prepared’ works well, too.” He opened his ancient’s shirt one-handed, weapon ever ready, still levelled at Tarragon. Beneath he revealed a scarred coat, and a shiny medallion hanging from a thick chain about his neck. Wild Sur’s golden eyes were heavy on the once-fairy. “You know what this is?”

  Amir turned to her. “I don’t. What the fuck is that?”

  “A … weapon of hubris,” she said.

  “The fairies made these.”

  “We had to.”

  “Were you Commanded?” The cat’s eyes were harder now. “Did you really have to?”

  “It’s complicated, because⁠—”

  “If I may.” Amir cleared his throat. “What is it?”

  Tarragon’s eyes darted to Amir’s, and he saw hopelessness there, alongside guilt and fear. “A weapon of last resort.”

  “It’s the weapon you never have to use, until you don’t care if you have to.” Wild Sur’s half-smile got a millimetre wider. “It is bound to my life. My soul, perhaps. I don’t know how it works. But if I die, then I explode.”

  Tarragon snorted. “That’s not right.”

  Amir looked between them. “What. Is. It?”

  “It is linked to a personalised weapons platform in the heavens above. There is a single large yield device that will strike the location where its wearer died.”

  Amir’s hand trembled a fraction on the hilt of his half-drawn sword. “What does ‘large yield’ mean?”

  “It will end the world again,” Faust said. “But our preferred way is cleaner. You join us. We kill the … whatever she is,” he waved a hand at Tarragon, “and then open this gate to the platform above.”

  “You need a Ritualist,” Tarragon said.

  “That is the only reason the Raven Queen yet lives,” the large man said.

  “Also, that gate doesn’t go to the platform above.”

  “We can remedy that,” Wild Sur said. “I have studied its magics.”

  “Faust,” Amir said, then ground to a stop. He has spent his life hunting the person who he believes killed his wife. He has the Vide behind him, and the Storm is millimetres from his grasp. What can I say? “Faust, please.”

  “Stand with us or stand aside.” Faust moved, oil back in his machine, and hefted his hammer. “All is as it should be.”

  Tarragon took a step back, her eyes hard, and she glanced at Amir again. “Don’t listen to them. Please.”

  Amir slipped his blade back in its sheath. He straightened, closed his eyes, and bowed his head. Think, man. Think. He remembered Faust and Larochette at the slaver’s camp. Their long road of toil to learn the Treswards’ patterns. Their companionship, and their friendship. Then he thought of the once-fairy, who failed her exams, and was one of the ancients who broke the world. About how she loved one of the corrupted, broken people who … meddled. Then he opened his eyes and drew his sword clean and swift, then turned to face Tarragon. “You are one of the ancients.”