The sound-scape was throbbing bass, laced with discordant synthetic trills. Pink and purple neon light dripped from priceless crystal chandeliers over a sea of gyrating bodies, all sheathed in the finest silk, lace, and leathers. Borne on tides of designer narcotics or stimulants, the dancers’ eyes flashed joyless, manic glee from their painted, too-perfect faces, and their flailing limbs cast frenetic shadows against walls of planed marble and rows of jade pillars.

As Sadea watched, a woman wearing nothing but feathers and strips of silk mounted the man closest to her and began to take her pleasure. Another dancer jabbed a nano-syringe into the corner of his eye socket and depressed the plunger. The sorceress shrugged. It wasn’t anything she hadn’t seen happen on the dance floor of a megapolis night club before. Only this time, she wasn’t in any night club, with its typically crusty floors, overpriced drinks, and mediocre drugs. And the dancers weren’t overworked manufactory workers or agri-serfs desperate to escape the drudgery of their lives.

They were Hegemonic nobles, of Houses both minor and mighty, and she was in the ballroom of Claudius Antonius’s palace at the heart of the megapolis Neo-Mizuru, attending a gala the former Hegemonic Lord had insisted on throwing in her honor.

Well, not just in her honor.

Raksha stood beside her, his unease evident in the cast of his youthful features and the slump of his hulking shoulders.

“I don’t like this,” he mumbled.

“Would you rather be fighting a horde of rabid reanimated corpses?” Sadea asked, snagging her fourth fluted crystal glass of brandy from a waiter’s tray.

“Yes.” Raksha patted the hilt of his sword.

“Men and their swords.” Sadea rolled her eyes. But the martial scientist wasn’t the only one armed at the gala. The carousing nobles’ laces and silks sported intricately integrated weapon belts and holsters. There were blades and pistols aplenty amidst the revelry.

A noblewoman clad in a snug snakeskin dress—a tiny emerald glittered in the middle of every scale that crawled across her body— emerged from the crowd and slithered up to them. The platinum tiara across her temples blazed with sapphires, setting off her bright green eyes and metallic-purple makeup. Sadea groaned inwardly in envy as the noblewoman raised her gloved hand in greeting: every velvet-sheathed finger sported a ringlet encrusted with diamond studs.

“You two must be Antonius’s guests of honor, Sadea and Raksha,” she said, straining her voice to be heard over the music. “Mutant-killers, demon-vanquishers! Oh my, how exciting!”

“Yes, yes, Great Lady,” Sadea replied. It wasn’t the first time they’d been approached by nobles that night. Some had been curious and fawning, others sneering and condescending. “We are oh-so honored and everything to meet you. Please feel free to return to your drugs and dancing.”

“They say you massacred a horde of serfs-turned-heretics and then burned their forest stronghold down,” the noblewoman went on, running the tips of her fingers over Raksha’s chest. Then she turned to Sadea and stroked her cheek fondly. “And you reclaimed a major manufactory from a demonic beast conjured by resentful workers, after making sure the latter all got eaten by the very thing they wished into existence. And then, together, you eliminated an avatar of the Old Gods themselves that was threatening the Necromantic Bureau’s control over the province’s dead!”

“Well, that last part didn’t quite go as well…” Sadea winced. They’d burned down a mortuary plant worth thirty million credits. Leona had given them two options: be executed for the crime of destroying government property or work off the debt by hunting down and destroying whatever emerged from the fruits of the Tree of Hearts. It wasn’t much of a choice at all, and after they’d made theirs, and Leona had crowed about how they now belonged to her, she’d put them at Antonius’s disposal.

Apparently, the former Lord of the province survived the subsuming of his House and was now Leona Belisarius’s vassal. Claiming that something spawned from the Tree of Hearts was threatening Neo-Mizuru, the megapolis that held his palace and the province’s central hydroponics facilities, Antonius had requested aid from his Liege Lady.

So Sadea and Raksha were here, to kill on Leona’s behalf.

“And oh my, how the two of you stand out in this crowd, dressed the way you are,” the noblewoman tittered. Sadea quirked an eyebrow at the comment, but she had to agree.

A skirt of amber silk hugged her hips. She wore a similarly hued and fabricated sleeveless top trimmed with red floral scrollwork. Her intricate green scarf hung over one shoulder in its customary place and arrangement. Delicate earrings of curled copper dangled about her cheeks, and bangles of gold and brass jingled at her wrists. She held her utility kilt, made compact by its spatial enchantment, as a leather clutch in her left hand.

Raksha had been forced to change into a high-collared robe of black silk with slashes of red velvet. Golden embroidered threads spelled runes from a pre-Hegemonic tongue along the cuffs of his sleeves. His legs were sheathed in dark silken pants and his battered worker’s boots had been replaced by fine leather ones, adorned with gleaming buckles of polished steel. Much to his chagrin, his long, unkempt hair had been combed out and tied back from his face with a fine leather cord.

Leona’s valet, a man named Vermillion, had picked out their clothes from her personal wardrobe and personally tailored all the necessary adjustments. But amidst a crowd of nobles bedecked in the luxurious raiment of their station, Sadea and Raksha looked austere, impoverished, even.

“Oh, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that.” The snakeskin noblewoman covered her mouth and giggled, letting Sadea know that she’d given voice to her thoughts about their attire. “Hegemonic Lady Leona is as infamously brutal in fashion as she is in battle. As her Household retainers, you both definitely look the part.”

“I’m not her retainer, woman!” Raksha growled. “I only agreed to destroy the fruit-things for her! And I was going to do that by myself, anyway!”

Sadea jabbed her elbow into his ribs and forced a smile on her face. “Pardon this moron, Great Lady. He speaks like an idiot, but in this, he’s correct. We have merely been Contracted to resolve a very specific issue, upon which our obligation to our employer, your Liege Lady, will be over.”

“Oh, in that case, I wonder if Antonius knows this. After all, he’s been spreading the word over the last few days that you two are the greatest champions of this province’s Hegemonic regime. Psi-graphs of your names and faces have been plastered all over Neo-Mizuru, along with details of tonight’s gala. He even spent so much on the decorations and entertainment for tonight that he couldn’t hire nearly as many guards as such a huge event would call for,” the noblewoman said. “A strange thing to do for a pair of hired mercenaries.”

Sadea narrowed her eyes. A quick sideways glance at Raksha told her that he’d come to the same conclusion.

“Yagyu spy,” the martial scientist snarled.

Sadea didn’t know what a Yagyu was, but Little Miss Snakeskin had just irrevocably broken her cover and revealed herself as one of Leona’s covert operatives. “Leona’s confidence in us is truly inspiring. You’ve got a name, spy?”

“Whatever are you talking about? I’m Rini of House Hirai, once-vassal of House Antonius, now loyal subject of Hegemonic Lady Leona Belisarius, God bless her.”

“And as one fellow loyal subject of Hegemonic Lady Leona Belisarius to another, what do you think she would have us do, in light of Antonius’s actions?”

“Why, what she hired you to do, of course. Kill any mutants, heretics, and traitors you find.” Rini smiled and blew them a kiss. And then suddenly, she was gone, swallowed by the swirling crowd and frenetic neon lights, her words lost amidst the thumping music.