Nikha awoke with a jolt, the morning sun bright in her eyes. For a moment she lay still, fragments of her dream slowly fading away. She had dreamed she visited Mama. She'd been in her dim sickroom, the curtains drawn as they always were. The darkness had made her nervous, as it always did. Mama's eyes had been closed by something deeper than sleep, her breathing nigh-imperceptible. She was pale and beautiful, seemingly made of moonlight and spiderwebs, so fragile that Nikha had feared to touch her lest she break.

But the dream was already melting away in morning's light, so she pushed aside her disquiet and sat up with a yawn. Judging by the light, she'd certainly slept in later than she was supposed to. Why hadn't Yesika or Matron Fulgin woken her? Perhaps something had come up suddenly, and they'd given her the morning off. She decided to see what was going on.

Nikha hopped out of bed and went to the door, relishing the feel of the fluffy Samarqish carpet between her toes. She left the room still in her long nightgown and headed down the hall. Her room was in the east wing, so she headed west. Though the house was oddly silent, everything else seemed normal. The corridor was floored in hardwood covered with a slightly threadbare rug. The floor and the wainscoting both were stained almost black, and the rest of the walls painted a deep golden color. They were hung with old paintings from who knew where, landscapes and naval battles and portraits of ancient relatives. Most of these were unlabeled, so she'd named them herself. On her way she passed some of the old standbys: Count Crosseye, Lady Reindeer, the Clown Lord.

A little farther on, though, and Nikha realized something wasn't right. This hallway was rather longer than she remembered it being, rather more dusty than it ought to be. She no longer recognized any of the paintings. No, it wasn't right at all. She was pondering heading back to her room when she spotted something up ahead: a lump lying in the middle of the hall. She jogged closer, squinting. Was that-yes, it was a person! She broke into a run, bare feet making no sound on the carpet.

She recognized Yesika as soon as she got close. The young maid was lying on her side, curled up as though her stomach pained her. "Yesika!" called Nikha. "Yesika, are you alright?" Yesika did not answer. Nikha dropped to her knees beside her. "Yesika, what ha-" She put a hand on Yesika's shoulder and immediately jerked it away, going silent. The woman was cold. It felt so very wrong for a person to be that cold. It was as if she'd touched snow and burned herself. Her mind reeled out a litany of denials. No, no, she's just sick, she'll be okay, she isn't...

With a grunt of effort, Nikha managed to roll the woman onto her back. She pulled Yesika's hands away from her belly where they'd been clenched, the chill of their skin making her shudder-and recoiled, falling back onto her own hands. The front of Yesika's uniform was stained a deep red, as was the embroidery of the rug beneath her. There was a small slit in the dress over her belly, the sort that would be left by a knife thrust. Her eyes were open, their deep blue clouded. Nikha's breathing grew shallow, shuddery. Yesika was dead, she knew. Kind, sweet, Yesika, who snuck sweets from the kitchen and told Nikha bawdy jokes from Kheritsyn City when no one would overhear. Tears welled up in her eyes, and she felt a hitch in her chest that would soon become a sob.

No! Nikha squeezed her eyes shut as hard as she could, focusing on her breathing until it was almost regular. She would be fourteen, soon, and with Mama sick she had to be the lady of the house. She didn't have time to cry. Especially because it was obvious that Yesika had not only died-she'd been murdered. She took a deep breath, sniffed and wiped her eyes. What would Papa do in this situation? Oh, that was easy. The first thing a soldier would do is find a weapon. She had to get back to her room and kit up. With as much gentleness as she could muster, she closed poor Yesika's eyes and murmured a quick prayer for her. "Mart'iriz kathodikon, foz parniy'ekon." Martyrs find you, Light take you. Then she stood and ran back down the strange hallway as fast as she could, nightgown flapping about her ankles.

Upon entering her room she immediately shut the door and locked it, before leaning against it to catch her breath. It was obvious something was very wrong. With a murderer in the house, Papa would surely have come for her already if he was able. That he hadn't could mean a couple of things: he either didn't know anything was amiss, or he was unable to get to her. Either meant he was in danger. Waiting for someone to come help her wasn’t an option, she decided. She would have to get to him herself. And to do that she would need supplies.

Her room was appointed in much the same style as the hall outside. The only difference was that one wall was all of built-in cabinets, their wood stained the same brown-black as the floor. It was here that Nikha went first. Before anything else, she opened one of the larger cabinets and got her rifle. She laid the case on the bed and flipped it open. Despite the current situation, she still felt the same little twitch of pride she did every time she opened the clasps. Her rifle was a five-line Czarp breechloader, with double set triggers, a fine-scale ladder sight on the grip tang, and a long, heavy octagon barrel. It was finely done up in rainbow case-hardening and bluing deep as midnight, with furniture of Oestian fiddleback walnut and fittings of polished pewter. It was, in fact, the same rifle as was issued to sharpshooters in the Imperial Army, just with the stock made a little shorter to suit her height. It even came with the matching knife bayonet. Papa had given it to her for her twelvth birthday, and it was her most prized possession.

She pulled it out of the case, savoring its weight, and pulled the hammer back to half-cock. Then she dropped the loading lever, slid in a cartridge from those stored in the case, and closed the breech. Now all she had to to was pull the hammer back to full-cock and she'd be ready to fire. Like Papa always said, an unloaded gun was nothing but a second-rate club.

That done, Nikha laid the gun on the bed and got dressed. Some of the other girls she knew had servants to choose their clothes and dress them. Jyatis had even made fun of her for going without, calling her poor and uncultured! Papa thought such things were ridiculous, though, and Nikha was inclined to agree. How was a noble lady to be trusted to rule if she couldn't even be trusted to dress herself?

She picked out soft cotton trousers and a shin-length pleated skirt of dark cloth to go over them. Tucked into the skirt went a long-sleeved white blouse with buttons down the front and a dark ribbon around the collar. An old double-hasped cartridge belt of Papa's went around her waist, the loops already full. For shoes she put on her calfskin hunting boots, the black ones that laced up almost to her knees. On one hip went the bayonet, on the other the cavalryman’s war-knife that Papa had once carried into battle-it was another gift. She tied her hair into a ponytail with a silk ribbon and glanced at the mirror, then nodded at herself. Yes, this will do. Already she felt better prepared to face whatever was going on. After a moment's thought, though, she decided she'd better pack the best supplies she could. Something strange had been going on with that hallway, and while she had absolutely no idea what was causing it she'd rather not be trapped in an endless corridor with nothing to eat or drink.

Luckily, she'd started keeping salt pork and deer jerky in her room for the same reason she kept her gun there: being able to go out hiking without having to sneak past Ossoff. She always kept a rucksack ready for the same purpose, loaded with rope, flint and steel, a phlogistic lamp, a couple canteens, a thin raincoat and various other useful accoutrements. While loading it up further with jerky and extra ammunition, she thought about what might have happened. She'd known something out of the ordinary was going on since last night. Guests had been arriving all day, a very unusual occurrence. Eldergrave Manor was quite remote, and as nobles went the von Kranssovs were not very important.

The people themselves were strange, too-mostly other aristocrats, but she'd spotted a few Army officers and war summoners among them. There'd even been some businessmen and lower-class people along. Nikha'd overheard some speaking with odd accents, and some didn't speak Tsev at all, talking in what she thought were Thurnian and Cymdwish. There’d even been a tall Oestian in a ridiculous, broad-brimmed hat. Papa had said they were members of a scientific society, here for a dinner party and a meeting. As daughter of the host, she'd expected to attend, or at least to greet them at the door. Papa had kept her away from them, though, even sending her to bed early with a rarely-used firmness in his voice. All quite unusual, but nothing that helped her understand what was happening now.

Satisfied that she was as packed as she was going to get, Nikha buckled the rucksack's waxed-leather straps and put it on. She slung her rifle over her shoulder and gave the room one last once-over, trying to think of anything she could have forgotten. "Oh!" she exclaimed after a moment. She went to the writing desk in the corner and retrieved a small leaden key from the drawer. It went to the door locks Papa used on his workshops. She'd made it about a year ago after secretly taking a clay mold of the old one, just like the heroes sometimes did in her adventure stories. She'd just wanted to see if it worked (it did), but hadn't had a reason to use it until now. Maybe it would come in handy.

There was nothing else she could think of to bring. Nikha went around the room and shut off the phlogiston sconces, took a deep breath and entered the corridor. She headed the same way she had before, west toward the center of the manor. She paid more attention to her surroundings, now, glancing at the paintings on the walls and out the leaded-glass windows. At first the view showed the familiar gardens and grounds, and past them the rolling, cedar-covered hills and distant mountains for which Kheritsyn Krai was known. But there came a point where the carpets were a little too threadbare, the paintings on the wall unfamiliar, and the view out the window reduced to a shadowy blur by the filthy glass. She tried to open one of the latter, but it was swelled in its frame and would not budge.

Nikha knew she would come back to Yesika's body soon, but before she did a strange noise echoed down the hall. Up until now, the only sound had been the muffled thump of her boot-heels on the carpet, but now the silence was broken by a wet, crunchy snuffling. It was a sickening noise, viscerally organic. Nikha froze as soon as she heard it, then shook her head and unslung her rifle. She stepped forward as quietly as she could, slow and careful like she was stalking a deer. Yes, there was Yesika's body. And worrying at it was-her blood ran cold. A monster.

It was the size and shape of a big dog, hairless, covered in pale skin that was too loose and wrinkly around the joints, too tight everywhere else. Its limbs were unsettling, far too human-like. Both the front and back limbs were forward-jointed, ending in long-fingered hands. Its head was the worst, though. Eyeless, noseless, a featureless doughy mass split by a too-large mouth filled with blunt tombstone teeth. Even as she watched it gnawed at Yesika's arm, eating her, choking down the meat and lapping up spilled blood with its long purple tongue. It seemed to notice her then, its blunt head angling up at her.

Fear and revulsion filled her, but they were quashed by cold rage. Nikha’s movements were just like she'd practiced, almost unconscious. She cocked and shouldered her rifle, set the front sight just behind the thing’s foreleg, exhaled, and squeezed the trigger. The gun punched back against her shoulder, its report deafening in such close quarters. Through the cloud of sulfurous smoke, she saw the thing take a single step towards her before it collapsed onto the carpet. It was dead, almost certainly. Still, it paid to be sure. She reloaded, took careful aim, and put another slug right through its head before getting closer. That took care of the 'almost.'

Satisfied, Nikha stepped up to the thing's corpse. It wasn't any prettier up close. She'd never heard of an animal that looked like this, and even if she had it wouldn't have belonged in the halls of Eldergrave. Besides, 'animal' might be the wrong word. It gave on an acrid, chemical stink that cut through even the smell of gunsmoke, and the blood leaking from its wounds was a translucent pinkish-gray. The word that came to mind was 'unnatural.' It didn't even look like any of the things she'd heard of war summoners calling up. Nikha frowned down on it, scared and disgusted. She gave the corpse a wide berth as she stepped past. It wasn't all bad news, though. Whatever it was, five hundred grains of lead put it down.

The thing had made a mess of Yesika's body. Nikha had gutted and cleaned deer before, had thought that inured her to the sight of gore. When it was a person, though, someone she knew? It was different. Nikha blinked away tears, looked up at the ceiling. She still didn't have time to mourn, but she swore to herself that Yesika would get a proper burial when this-whatever that meant-was over.