In fact, Mylera was the one who needed a little extra caffeine, because she procrastinated so long on funeral invitations that the Lampblacks – normally not the more, shall we say, organized, of the two gangs – wound up holding their ceremony first. Without an arcane spirit well to suck in and destroy the souls of the dead, Pickett’s and Xayah’s bodies had long since been collected by the Spirit Wardens and dissolved in electroplasm at Bellweather Crematorium. Doskvolian funerals never involved the body and constituted what we’d call memorials in U’Duasha, although I opted not to quibble over terminology.

One bitterly cold evening, much like the one on which I first met Pickett, Ash and I donned somber black suits and trudged through the sleet to the Leaky Bucket. Light spilled from its windows as it always did, but the pub was eerily quiet and a sign on the door read, “Closed for a private event.” Inside, the Lampblacks had swathed all the tables in black cloth and arranged a cluster of small white candles on each, like handfuls of stars. Although Ash and I arrived early, the whole gang was already assembled, filling the pub with a sea of black overcoats. Grim and tight-lipped, they sat facing Pickett’s booth, where a single silver taper illuminated a framed photograph.

Next door in his own booth, Bazso conversed in low tones with Mylera and Ardashir, who both wore the stark white cotton mourning robes of Iruvia. A quick, faint smile indicated that Bazso had registered Ash’s and my arrival, but that was all. As soon as we slipped into the last empty seats at the back, Mardin switched off the electroplasmic lamps and plunged the room into a gloom broken only by wavering pinpoints of candlelight.

Dignified and imposing in a well-tailored suit that I’d never seen before, Bazso rose to his feet, commanding our attention. A small white candle cupped in his palms, he positioned himself in front of Pickett’s booth and began, “Thank you all for coming.”

Deliberately, he looked around the room, his gaze passing over and giving the impression of acknowledging each of us in turn. In the darkness, the yellow glow of his candle highlighted the planes of his face, the solemnity of the ceremony lent him a regal air, and for the first time, I realized that he wouldn’t look out of place on a dais in a great hall, in Doskvol or Lockport or U’Duasha or anywhere else.

“We are gathered here today to remember our friend and colleague, Pickett.” Although Bazso’s voice remained level, his jaw tightened. “She was a good fighter, a loyal friend, and a loving daughter.”

Here, he nodded respectfully to an elderly couple sitting next to Henner in the front row. Pickett’s father’s eyes were fixed on his daughter’s picture, and I doubted that he heard a word of Bazso’s eulogy. Pickett’s mother, though – as her head turned sharply at Henner’s murmured condolences, I glimpsed pinched lips and a pair of very familiar, icy eyes.

Drawing a deep breath, Bazso concluded, “Pickett has been – was – with the gang from the very beginning. I could not have asked for nor received a better second-in-command. She will be greatly missed.”

He closed his eyes, bowed his head briefly over his candle, and set it down reverently in front of the photo. Then he returned to his seat.

To my surprise, Mylera rose next, in the flowing motion of a dancer or sword master. She gracefully extended a hand towards the Lampblacks, her candle poised on her upturned palm like a votive offering. “It is my honor to be here today, to pay tribute to Pickett of the Lampblacks.” The words rolled off her tongue with a poetic cadence. “Although I cannot say that I knew her well personally, I was very familiar with her tactics and strategy.”

Her tone struck just the right balance between sincere sorrow and wry humor, and she actually drew some weary smirks from her erstwhile enemies.

“I speak for all of the Red Sashes when I say that we respected Pickett’s skill in combat and her sheer determination and courage – even when we disagreed with the uses to which she put them.”

At that, Bazso chuckled outright, drawing answering guffaws and snorts from his gang. I tried to catch his eye, to share the moment, but he wasn’t looking in my direction.

The rest of the Lampblacks were staring at Mylera, absolutely charmed and hanging on her words as if they hadn’t wanted to murder her just weeks ago. A flash of amusement in her eyes suggested that she appreciated the irony, and she bestowed a compassionate smile on Pickett’s parents before addressing her closing remarks to the room at large: “Pickett did not know the meaning of the word ‘surrender.’ She was a worthy adversary and, more recently, a worthy ally. She will be missed.”

In a controlled swirl of her white robes, she set her candle next to Bazso’s. Then she, too, sat down.

Nervous and awkward, Henner lumbered to the front of the room next and paid tribute to the woman who had recruited and mentored him in the gang. He was followed by Ardashir, who praised Pickett’s fierceness and aggressiveness and general bloody-minded relentlessness. That last point garnered a number of smug hear, hears from the Lampblacks, and I felt a surge of pride in them and the Red Sashes and this entire alliance that I’d achieved at such cost to myself.

Again I looked to Bazso, hopeful that he recognized it too, but he was focused on Ardashir as the Red Sash second-in-command concluded, “She will be missed.”

After that came a flood of tributes from Lampblacks who had grown up with Pickett, trained with Pickett, fought beside Pickett, learned from Pickett. They recounted tales (almost certainly exaggerated) that celebrated her prowess as a fighter, her ruthlessness as a gang leader, her steadfastness as a friend. With sheepish glances at her parents, some even confessed to youthful escapades on the streets of Crow’s Foot, games of “Dare” gone awry that ended in mad scrambles under clotheslines and through picket fences to flee irate Crows or Bluecoats (or both). Pickett, as a teenager, had had quite the talent for needling the local constabulary – which somehow did not surprise me. All of the speakers finished with the ritual phrase, “She will be missed,” either uttered with grim determination, or choked out past tears, or hissed through gritted teeth.

As the speeches proceeded, the candles piled up in front of Pickett’s photo and shone like motes of the Unbroken Sun, while the rest of the room sank deeper and deeper into blackness. At last, the line of mourners petered out, and there was a long enough lull that people began to eye one another and Bazso, wondering if everyone who wished to speak had gone. As Bazso tensed to rise and close the memorial, I found myself pushing back my chair, picking up a candle, and advancing towards the front. As if in a dream, I caught glimpses of the Lampblacks’ upturned faces – some stern, some puzzled, some almost offended by my temerity.

After the darkness at the back of the room, the blaze of fire on Pickett’s table – no, altar now – practically blinded me. From the photograph, a teenaged Pickett, her long, glossy hair in a sleek braid, wearing a white shirt with an unexpectedly ruffled collar, smirked across the flames at me. Never guessed I had another side to me, did you, girl? she seemed to gloat.

And she was right: I’d been so busy hating her that I’d never tried to learn who she was.

When I tore my gaze from hers, Bazso caught my eye and raised one doubtful eyebrow – Are you sure about this? – while Mylera regarded me impassively, her face betraying no hint of support. I turned away, scanned the crowd, automatically noted Pickett’s mother, dry-eyed and gaunt; her father, rigid as a corpse; and the rest of the Lampblacks, grief-stricken, stunned, faintly curious about what I had to say.

As was I.

To be honest, I didn’t know what I would say – what I could say – to honor a woman for whom I’d harbored such an infamous enmity. All I knew was that I would regret not saying anything at all.

Cradling the little candle in my palms and hoping the melted wax wouldn’t drip, I opened my mouth and let my thoughts tumble out as they would. “I think everyone here knows that Pickett and I didn’t get along.”

At that understatement of the Imperial Era, half of the Lampblacks smiled bleakly; the other half tensed, ready for an insult and a brawl.

“As soon as I arrived in this city, we got off on the wrong foot, to put it mildly, and somehow we never recovered from that.” (Literally. I still bore scars from that beating.) “But I’d like to think that we respected each other, and certainly I valued her honesty. Pickett was someone I trusted never to stab me in the back – because she made it abundantly clear that she’d rather stab me in the chest.”

That actually raised a chuckle from the gang, although Pickett’s poor father looked appalled.

Encouraged, I continued, “I think…I think everyone here knows what I am and hence will understand when I say that, in my line of work, honesty is both rare and precious.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Bazso’s lips quirk upwards in an affectionate, That’s my girl.

“So no,” I confided to the Lampblacks, “I did not like Pickett. But more importantly, I trusted her.” Instead of the ritual passive-voice phrase, I declared, “I will miss her.”

Dead silence filled the room as the gang processed my break with tradition, the implications thereof. The candles on the altar made little scraping noises, the only sound in the pub, as I nudged them aside to eke out space for mine.

At last, I squared my shoulders, lifted my chin, and faced the crowd. In a low voice, I vowed, “She will be avenged.”

Pickett’s mother skewered me with a hard stare, so much like her daughter’s, then inclined her head in regal acceptance.

Two days later, the Red Sashes held Xayah’s ceremony in the foyer of the sword academy. Although a true Iruvian funeral was impossible, they approximated a coffin using a waist-height table and draped it in scarlet silk shot through with gold threads. Heaped high along its length were roses in all the shades of blood, ranging from the crimson of arterial spray to the brownish-purple of an old scab. Over the blossoms presided an antique brass brazier filled with glittering black sand, from which rose a single stick of incense, as thick as my forefinger and purchased at unspeakable cost in the Silver Market. Fragrant whorls of smoke wafted over our heads, its spicy aroma blending with the thick scent of the roses and creating a surreal atmosphere.

Not for an Ankhayat the informality and spontaneity of the Lampblack memorial: Printed programs, handed to each white-clad guest at the door, specified the order of ceremony, listing speaker names and the recital of Vaasu poetry. It was a minor miracle that the Red Sashes didn’t assign seating too (although maybe they just ran out of time).

After a formal convocation and the litany of Vaasu demon-stars, Mylera and her lieutenants each rose in turn to deliver precisely timed speeches – dry, factual, stripped of any emotion – that described a stylized woman who bore little resemblance to Xayah herself. (Iruvian ceremonies were less about celebrating the individual, and more about reinforcing the social order.) In a mirror of Pickett’s memorial, Bazso and Henner spoke too, but as neither had known Xayah personally, their eulogies were as formulaic as the Sashes’.

Once again, I kept to the back of the room, feeling awkward and out of place among all the mourners. At one point during a particularly tedious speech, I glanced around and thought I glimpsed my brother, but when I blinked, it was only one of the Sashes.

After the final dirge – half-sung and half-chanted in ancient Hadrathi that probably only Mylera understood – the guests formed into a long, winding reception line to pay their respects to the Red Sash and Lampblack leaders. Bazso’s eyes roamed over the mourners until they found mine, and he shot me tiny, rueful smile. This may take a while.

I just barely tilted my head to a side, acknowledging the apology. I know. Flitting out a side door, I drifted aimlessly towards the canal.

Not entirely to my surprise, a hooded figure in a dark cloak, which fluttered open just long enough to hint at white robes underneath, materialized out of the fog and fell in step beside me. “So that was Mylera Klev,” came my brother’s voice, thoughtful and assessing, as if he’d taken the measure of her and filed her away for future use.

“I didn’t know you knew her.”

His shoulders rose and fell in a casual shrug. “I don’t. But I was curious to see the scapegoat of the Hunter’s Spear Incident.”

Of course the heir of House Anixis would know Mylera’s true story, the one I’d never succeeded in extracting from anyone in Doskvol because she’d maybe confided it to one person at most – and that one person had just taken it to the grave.

Or, rather, the electroplasmic vat in Bellweather Crematorium.

Too proud to confess that he knew my friend better than I did, I arched my eyebrows and inquired, “And?”

Either Sigmund assumed that I knew already and merely wanted his opinion of Mylera, or he had no intention of divulging more intelligence than I was willing to beg for, because his only response was, “She seems to be doing well for herself here.”

Without even thinking about where we were going, I’d been leading him north, away from the sword academy. Now I cut east across the bridge to Charterhall, where no one would recognize me. After wrestling down my pride, I bowed to his superior resources and spy networks. “So what really happened?”

My question provoked absolutely no reaction, meaning that he’d already guessed I didn’t know. Ambling along the deserted canal-side path, he recited in a dispassionate tone, “Lieutenant Mylera Ankhayat was commanding the harpooners on board the Dawn Eagle when it found itself in the same hunting grounds as the Ankhuset ship, the Hunter’s Spear. You know leviathan hunter captains: irascible, obstinate, incapable of negotiation or compromise.” Based on my interaction with Captain Clave, I could believe it. “While they were arguing over who had priority, the largest leviathan ever reported in the Void Sea attacked. The ships were hopelessly outmatched. According to the official account, Lieutenant Ankhayat panicked and fired a shot that crippled the Hunter’s Spear. Its rudder, to be precise. Seeing that there was no way to save it, the captain of the Dawn Eagle determined that his duty to Iruvia required him to preserve his own ship, and so the Ankhayats left the Ankhusets to their fate.”

“Mylera would never panic – ” I began hotly.

“I didn’t say she would,” Sigmund overrode me, sounding disapproving. “I did specify that this is the official account, did I not? In the aftermath, while brokering peace between the two Houses, House Anixis established that the order to fire came from the captain of the Dawn Eagle. However, House Ankhuset demanded justice and threatened war. As House Ankhayat valued an experienced ship’s captain over a junior member of the House, they pinned the blame on her. They were, in a way, generous – the claim that she panicked exonerated her of criminal intent, and House Ankhuset grudgingly agreed to let her live. Naturally, she had no prospects in U’Duasha after that, and so she left.”

“I see.” My lips twisted in disgust. Politics, Mylera had said, bitter and defensive, when I asked why she left Iruvia. Politics and wolves and being done with “all of that.”

Only in U’Duasha would we call destroying a young officer’s reputation and career generosity.

Lost in thought, I was caught off guard when Sigmund seized my arm and spun me around to face him. “Signy.” There was an urgent note in his voice. “I was at the Lampblack memorial. I heard what you said. Promise me you won’t lose objectivity.” At the accusation, so antithetical to all of our training, I flinched. “Promise me you’ll be careful.”

Indignant, I tried to wrench free, but he clamped down harder. “I’m always careful,” I snapped.

At such a blatant lie, a humorless chuckle burst from his throat. “No, you aren’t,” he stated, encompassing in three words everything I’d done since the night I snuck out of the banquet hall, stole Grandfather, and ran away from home. “I can’t lose you,” he breathed, half a plea, half a command.

That was a funny sentiment given that he was the one who’d left me first, abandoning all of our dreams and withdrawing further and further into his bond with Ixis, where I could not – or would not – follow.

I scoffed at him. “So says the assassin sent here to kill me.”

He recoiled like a kicked dog, face full of hurt. “That’s not fair, and you know it.”

As I leveled a very Pickett-like scowl at him, he clutched his cloak to keep it from flapping open, and suddenly I realized that he was shivering in those ridiculously thin cotton robes but couldn’t dress more warmly because he had to fit in among the Sashes.

And why? Because he’d wanted to spy out my associates to determine what manner of people they were.

Because that was the Anixis way of showing love.

That realization and the sight of his misery melted my anger, and I stood on tiptoe to wrap my arms around his shoulders. “I know, I know,” I crooned, rubbing his back as I had so many times in the past, before he was named heir, before he learned that the Imperium wanted to destroy our home, before he was set the impossible task of killing me to prove his loyalty. “We’ll be all right,” I soothed. “We’ll figure this out together. I promise.”