“Glass, I’m afraid I have orders not to let you in until further notice.”

As soon as I passed through the gates of the Red Sash Sword Academy, Mylera’s foot soldiers dashed inside to report, and it was their second-in-command, Xayah, who greeted me at the door. Although she sounded slightly apologetic (we usually got along quite well), her gaze was firm, and in the cold wind, her sleeves rippled over daggers strapped to her forearms.

She also very solidly occupied the center of the top step, the way Irimina’s butler Rutherford did when he declined entry to tradesmen and beggars.

Stopping at the foot of the stairs, I propped one boot on the bottom step, shifted my weight onto my left leg so my sword hilt flashed – a reminder that I was almost as good a fencer as she – and affected a relaxed pose. “Orders from Mylera?” I drawled, playing for time.

“Of course,” Xayah replied calmly, knowing perfectly well that I knew perfectly well that no Red Sash lieutenant would ban me on her own initiative. Like all her Ankhayat leviathan-hunter-captain kin, Mylera brooked no dissent from her underlings, even as she accepted that the greater part of wisdom was humility. (That bizarre mix of military imperiousness and scholarly restraint made Ankhayat the hardest House for any young Anixis to impersonate properly.)

Without speaking, Xayah stared steadily at me and waited for me to remove myself. Well, if she planned to play butler, then it was time to remind her that I was high Iruvian nobility – which her family had served as stewards and legal counsel for generations. (In fact, one of her great-uncles terrorized the Anixis estate, silently and efficiently executing the Patriarch’s will.)

With a haughty lift of my chin, I declared in upper-class Hadrathi, “Please inform Mylera Klev that if she wishes to ban me from the premises, she needs to release me from our contract first. I am legally obligated to teach this class.”

Generations of servitude had left their mark. With a sigh, Xayah replied reflexively, “Please wait here. I’ll see what she says.”

“Thank you.”

In her absence, I advanced onto the top step and leaned casually against one of the marble columns. Normally, I would have felt guilty about pulling rank – after wrangling that first meeting with Mylera two years ago, I’d dropped the aristocratic accent in favor of street Hadrathi – but right now I was desperate. I could not make amends to someone who refused to see me.

Mylera’s familiar footsteps heralded her arrival after roughly the length of time it took for Xayah to hurry upstairs and report, and then for both of them to proceed downstairs at Mylera’s normal walking speed.

An Anixis would have kept me waiting.

An Ankhayat disdained mental games.

This particular Ankhayat leaned against the doorjamb, folded her arms across her chest, and skewered me with a long, hard look. “I thought I told you to get out.” Her voice was hostile and harbored no hesitation to remove me from her front step, personally and by force if necessary. All around the courtyard, her people stood to attention, hands on hilts and sashes.

But while Mylera might have been an Ankhayat, I was an Anixis.

Taking one quick step forward (a few Red Sashes started in alarm, then subsided at her signal), I lifted a hand to my heart, bowed my head – and plunged into the deep obeisance that members of one House made to the Patriarch of another.

Gasps rose around the courtyard as I held the pose, waiting for her to speak first.

“I have no interest in being involved in any Anixis plots, Glass,” came her icy voice.

When I glanced up, I noted that my opening move had elicited no more than one raised eyebrow. (Xayah’s eyes, on the other hand, were practically bulging out of her head.)

“Glass, I left all of that behind when I left Iruvia. I don’t know what your House is trying to accomplish in Crow’s Foot, but I and my Red Sashes want no part of it. None whatsoever.” With a sharp, emphatic motion, Mylera gestured for me to drop the act and get up immediately.

I rose slowly and gracefully, keeping my head bowed to hide my exasperation. For the life of me, I could not fathom why she persisted in believing that my House sanctioned any of my actions. Still, I kept my tone respectful as I replied, “And I can understand that.” Keeping my right hand over my heart, I enunciated, “I swear to you that House Anixis is not interested in anything going on in Crow’s Foot.”

At all. In fact, nothing would please the aspect of the House demon bound inside my sword more than if I simply left the Crow’s Foot gangs to their own devices.

Still unconvinced, Mylera glowered at me. “Then what are you doing here?”

On the way over, I’d already decided to tell her the truth about myself, but I’d counted on confessing in the privacy of her office, out of earshot of all her foot soldiers, runners, and students – many of whose families cherished uncomfortably close ties to the Iruvian Consulate.

“Must we have this conversation out here?” I waved my hand around the courtyard, encompassing all the thugs who were practically toppling forward in an effort to eavesdrop. Practice swords in hand, some of the students were peeking out from behind Xayah, craning their necks for a better view.

Mylera glanced with disinterest at her people, who immediately struck up animated conversations about nothing at all. “Yes,” she snapped. “I think we should have it right here. Go on.”

“Would you be willing to have a conversation about why you left Iruvia out here?”

Her eyelids flickered once in acknowledgement, but her tone did not soften. “However, Glass, in this situation, you are begging me for something that I am extremely unwilling to give – because I don’t trust you. So I am quite happy to have this conversation out here, surrounded by all the people I do trust.”

Except that her relationship with the Iruvian Consulate wasn’t any better than mine. Whatever internal politics had driven Mylera out of U’Duasha continued to ensure that Elstera kept a close eye on her on behalf of House Ankhayat (and probably Anixis too, although that was nothing personal).

“In that case,” I suggested, “I propose that we have this discussion in front of all your trusted lieutenants, but not anyone who might report to Elstera Avrathi.”

For a moment, she stiffened. Then she sighed. Without taking her eyes off my face, she ordered, “Xayah, go gather the other instructors. We’re going to the Cat.”

The Cat and Candle was their equivalent of the Leaky Bucket – technically neutral ground for all gangs, but in practice a second home for the Red Sashes. (Occasionally, some of the newer and dumber Lampblacks would dare each other to order a beer at the Cat, and whereas nothing ever happened to them, none of them tried it twice.) Followed by Xayah and the other swordmasters, Mylera swept into the pub as if she officially owned it, snapped “Get out” at the handful of drinkers nursing their tankards, and commandeered a long table in the center of the room. While the barkeep scuttled into the kitchen, the Red Sash lieutenants, six in all, arrayed themselves on the bench to either side of their leader, with Xayah positioned on her right. I sat down smoothly across from Mylera, faintly amused that I got a great deal more space.

Planting her elbows on the stained wood, the head of the Red Sashes steepled her fingers and gave me another long, hard look. “Go on,” she ordered at last.

Selecting my words carefully – and monitoring her lieutenants out of the corner of my eye in case any of them were Consulate spies – I began, “Remember how you knew from the start that I was descended from House Anixis? But you made certain assumptions regarding the…legitimacy of any claims I might make on the House?”

The corners of her mouth turned down. “Yes,” she said sourly. “That was foolish of me.”

Diplomatically, I offered, “Well, I wouldn’t call it that….” Then I hesitated, biting my lip and bracing myself to speak the name I hadn’t claimed in two long years. It was surprisingly hard to force out the words: “My name is Signy Anixis.”

Murmurs rose from Xayah and the other lieutenants. The ones born in U’Duasha twitched, as if engrained instinct urged them to jump up and perform the requisite obeisance.

Holding Mylera’s gaze, I said softly, “I ran away two years ago.”

Slowly, she nodded. “I’d heard about this.”

“I think most of Iruvia has by now,” I said in a rueful tone, making a shameless play for sympathy.

Mylera was silent for a very long moment, while she mentally catalogued and reinterpreted all of our interactions. When she spoke again, I could tell that this time she would actually listen to what I had to say. “So then – why?” She leaned forward, and a stream of questions tumbled out. “What are you doing in Crow’s Foot? Why are you involved with us and the Lampblacks? Where do your loyalties really lie? Because that is probably the most pertinent question.”

Well, only if you weren’t an Anixis. “To answer your first question: by accident.”

“By accident,” she repeated flatly. (Beside her, Xayah sighed and rolled her eyes very slightly.) “You accidentally inserted yourself as a double agent in our gang war. That is literally the most Anixis thing I’ve heard in my entire life.”

Well, yes. Hadn’t I just told her I was an Anixis – and an Anixis whose brother stood to inherit the House, no less? In spite of myself, a note of sarcasm slipped out. “Then you should probably realize that if an entire family tells you that this sort of thing keeps happening to them, it’s the sort of thing that keeps happening to them.”

The Ankhayat did not look impressed.

“Look,” I explained in a more appeasing tone, “I got off the train, I took a wrong turn, I wandered into Crow’s Foot without knowing anything about this district, and unfortunately I got picked up by Pickett as a Red Sash spy.”

“Okay.” Mylera and her lieutenants seemed more than ready to believe that of the Lampblack second-in-command.

“Suffice to say that after a certain amount of…misunderstanding – ” very, very painful misunderstanding – “Bazso figured out that I was not actually a Red Sash and hired me to spy on you.”

“I see.”

“At which point, I came to you and told you exactly what he said – and you hired me to spy on him.” I had to suppress a smile at the irony. When you thought about it, mine really was a uniquely Anixis situation. Sigmund would roar with laughter if I ever regaled him with my escapades (if he didn’t already know, that was).

Mylera, on the other hand, looked entirely unamused. In fact, I’d seen rocks in the deathlands that looked less unamused. “That still doesn’t answer my question: Do your loyalties lie with your countrymen – or do they lie with your lover?” When I opened my mouth to counter that she couldn’t very well complain about my relationship with Bazso when she was the one who’d sent me to seduce him, she cut me off. “Oh, yes. I’ve been doing my own research.”

And, apparently, drawn her own conclusions regarding the sincerity of aforementioned seduction.

Uncertain just how much she knew, I temporized, “It’s complicated.”

Sharply, she said, “It needs to not be complicated.”

“I’m an Anixis,” I pointed out, the name still sounding odd on my tongue. “Everything is complicated for us.”

Infuriated by my recalcitrance, Mylera actually slammed a hand on the table and half-rose. “And I’m an Ankhayat – or was – and we prefer things to be clear!”

Gods save me from blockheaded military types who couldn’t bend their angular little brains around the concept of subtlety. If we ever put House Ankhayat in charge of espionage, their Patriarch would march straight into the Immortal Emperor’s throne room and demand what the Imperial fleet was doing in Bright Harbor. (A tactic that, admittedly, might prove useful under very specific and limited circumstances – but only if we were planning to replace Ankhayat leadership anyway.)

“Mylera,” I murmured, “did you ever wonder why I fled U’Duasha?”

The question snapped her out of her rage. Reigning in her temper, she sat back down in a carefully controlled motion and stared at me steadily. “I presume you got tired of all the bloodshed.” A tiny hint of compassion seeped into her voice. “That’s why most of the Anixises leave.”

The unexpected sympathy nearly broke me. Even though I’d never been as close to her as I was to Bazso, Mylera had always understood me so much better. When I was with her, I didn’t need to explain anything. She already knew.

Leaning across the table, I said with a great deal more emotion than I’d planned to show, “My brother and I grew up swearing that we would change things. And when he was named heir, I thought we had an actual chance.” Bitterness filled my voice, but that was all right, because Mylera would understand that too. “But he changed. And so I came here to figure out what to do. And when I saw the gangs of Crow’s Foot at each other’s throats, just like the branches of my own House, I thought, ‘What better practice for fixing my family, than to fix Crow’s Foot first?’”

For a moment, I saw before me not a low-class Doskvolian tavern, but the Great Hall of the Anixis estate, ablaze with electroplasmic chandeliers, with the Patriarch in the center of the dais and Sigmund by his side, and Ixis whispering insidious lies into both of their minds.

“We’re practice?” Mylera’s exclamation shattered the vision and wrenched me back to Doskvol. A few feet in front of me sat my ex-friend, furious and offended and hurt all at the same time.

And that was what I got for being honest. No wonder the House discouraged it.

“You know what I meant,” I sighed.

“Hmmm.” She must have been in a merciful mood, because she opted to let it slide. For now. “I suppose a great many things make more sense now,” she mused before her voice sharpened again. “Is there really a Hive threat?”

“Yes,” I answered immediately. Taking a gamble in a bid to win back her trust, I confided, “We have someone in the Hive.”

“The Lampblacks do?” she asked, startled.

“No.”

“Oh, your other crew – them.” She processed that and seemed to find it a lot more plausible for a tiny crew consisting of three assassins in a broken-down railcar to plant an informant inside a massive, wealthy, powerful, Imperium-wide criminal organization – than Bazso and his Lampblacks. “Well, that’s gutsy,” she conceded grudgingly. Her mask cracking slightly, she addressed me as if we were alone in her office, chatting over an afternoon cup of coffee. “Look, Glass, I don’t know how I can ever trust you again. I realize that we are not as lofty as one of the great noble Houses of Iruvia, but this gang means something to me. We’ve built something. And I need people to be committed to it.” She stopped, and in her eyes I read the question that she wanted to ask but didn’t dare voice, because it would make her look weak and House Ankhayat abhorred weakness: Do you even care?

I answered it as gently and as honestly as I knew how. “Look, Mylera, I care about you as a friend.”

Her eyebrows rose very slightly at that.

I looked around at her lieutenants. “I care about the Red Sashes as a gang.”

Xayah regarded me impassively.

I returned my gaze to Mylera. “But if you’re asking if my first and only loyalty goes to the Red Sashes, then the answer is no. I’ve told you my priorities.”

At that, Mylera heaved a gusty sigh. “No, I understand….” She frowned at her steepled fingers as if the answers might be branded into her skin. “All right. All right. I get it. I do. And I suppose you’ve given me a lot of good information over the past two years – at least, I assume it was good information – not to mention a lot of timely warnings.” Beside her, Xayah nodded emphatically. One of my desperate last-minute warnings had saved her from a Lampblack ambush. “I will let you continue your contract, Glass – Signy,” she proclaimed.

I opened my mouth – whether to thank her or protest at the use of my real name I wasn’t sure – but she held up a finger.

“But you cannot provide any more information about the Red Sashes to Bazso. That needs to stop.”

Releasing a deep breath, I met her eyes. “Agreed.”

“All right then.” Rising, she extended a hand across the table.

Standing up too, I shook it.

In a much more cordial mood, Mylera, her lieutenants, and I returned to the sword academy, where we found our students milling about the foyer and inventing rumors for our absence. Although the entire gang knew that I was – had been? – a Lampblack spy and the atmosphere stayed tense at first, Mylera had clearly accepted my excuses and her word was law. The awkwardness gradually faded as the other instructors and I rounded up our respective students, berated them for not running drills on their own, and bellowed them back into the classrooms.

Nothing like shared frustration for forging bonds.

Meanwhile, Ash was also learning that an attempt to de-stress could be incredibly stressful in and of itself. Even if he and That Which Hungers thought that forcibly converting an acolyte of a different forgotten god cult was completely justified, Ilacille obviously did not share their theological realpolitik. (And neither did her acolyte, who later reported the encounter to me with expressions of deepest disapproval.)

When Ash sauntered into the Temple to the Forgotten Gods, the priestess and Marston Haig (our erstwhile kidnappee) were both waiting for him. Marston’s eyes lit up, but Ilacille only folded her arms across her chest and barred Ash’s path to the altar of That Which Hungers.

“Adept Slane,” she enunciated in an icy voice.

Ash stopped short, looking bewildered. “Ilacille.”

“Adept Slane, I realize that you were only recently initiated into the mysteries of the gods, and so I am willing to be lenient,” she pronounced, with no whisper of forgiveness in her tone. (The acolyte mimicked it for me.) “This time. But what you have done to this man is not acceptable and will not happen again.”

Marston made a quick movement forward, but she laid a restraining hand on his shoulder.

“It was the will of my god,” Ash protested, turning from one to the other in confusion. “That Which Hungers hungers for followers.”

Drawing herself up arrow straight, Ilacille intoned, “Of course he does. They all do. However, they are all perfectly aware that there are accords, and there are protocols that must be followed – one of which is that you do not poach one another’s followers. Especially not in the manner that you employed.”

“But….” Faced with a wrathful priestess, Ash groped for the appropriate theological argument. “But…my loyalty is to my god.”

“That may be so, but in this situation, certain practicalities must be considered,” she replied, softening not one whit. “No one benefits from conflict among the gods.” When Ash opened his mouth, she cut him off. “Some amount of rivalry is to be expected. I looked the other way for Helene,” she reminded him. Ash’s mouth snapped shut again. “But people must come to the mysteries of their gods naturally. Not like this.” She gestured angrily at Marston.

Not looking particularly remorseful (Ilacille’s acolyte reenacted this part for me too), Ash conceded, “I will grant that this is a necessity so long as the Church suppresses our worship. I apologize for not keeping my god in check, but it is not easy.”

“Did your god actually command you to do this?”

Ash tried to dodge the question. “He’s very hungry.”

Unfortunately for him, Ilacille knew both him and That Which Hungers too well to miss the evasion. “But did he command you to do this?”

“I’m not sure,” he confessed in a low voice.

She stared at him, as stern as any headmistress, until he bowed his head. “All right,” she pronounced at last. “This will not happen again. As I have told you, Adept Slane, faith is not about power.” Ash looked a little mutinous at that, but she silenced him with: “If it were, we’d all be members of the Church of Ecstasy.”

Convinced at last, he acquiesced. “I understand. We cannot afford to wage open war when we are not permitted to worship openly.”

With a regal nod, she lifted her hand from Marston’s shoulder. “Now I suppose you’d better take care of this.”

As she withdrew to minister to the other forgotten gods, Marston practically threw himself at his former kidnapper. “Adept Slane! Tell me everything about That Which Hungers!”

Ash was only too happy to oblige.